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The Road to Serfdom

by Car­o­line Glick
REAL CLEAR POLITICS [1]

In Israel, as in the rest of the free world, we are wit­ness­ing the death by a thou­sand cuts of free thought.

Last month, two stu­dents at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty’s Clare Col­lege became vic­tims of this state of affairs. The stu­dents ded­i­cat­ed an edi­tion of their satire mag­a­zine to the one-year anniver­sary of the glob­al Mus­lim riots which fol­lowed the pub­li­ca­tion of car­i­ca­tures of Muham­mad in the Dan­ish Jyl­lands Posten news­pa­per. As the stu­dents recalled, those riots led to the deaths of more than a hun­dred peo­ple.

Although the British media refused to repub­lish the car­i­ca­tures, British Mus­lims held ter­ri­fy­ing protests through­out the coun­try where they called for the destruc­tion of Britain, the US, Den­mark and Israel and for the mur­der of all who refuse to accept the glob­al dom­i­na­tion of Islam.

In their mag­a­zine, the stu­dents pub­lished some of the car­i­ca­tures and mocked the Mus­lims for their hypocrisy in accus­ing British soci­ety of racial prej­u­dice while call­ing for its vio­lent destruc­tion.

The Mus­lim reac­tion was appar­ent­ly swift. Fear­ing for their lives, the stu­dents were forced into hid­ing.

But the Mus­lims were not alone in their anger. Clare Col­lege set up a spe­cial dis­ci­pli­nary court to con­sid­er action against the stu­dents. And the Cam­bridgeshire police opened a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion against them in late Feb­ru­ary.

The per­se­cu­tion of these stu­dents pro­vides a case study of the two-pronged offen­sive being car­ried out today against West­ern cul­ture. First there are the jihadists, who call for our destruc­tion. Then there are the left­ist intel­lec­tu­als and pub­lic fig­ures who defend rad­i­cal Islamists and work to silence those who crit­i­cize them by crim­i­nal­iz­ing speech and con­demn­ing free thinkers as racists.

The direct con­se­quence of this two-pronged offen­sive is the repres­sion of free thought.

FOUR YEARS ago, US Pres­i­dent George W. Bush called the inva­sion of Iraq “Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom.” The inten­tion was clear. The pur­pose of the war was not mere­ly to bring down Sad­dam Hus­sein’s mur­der­ous, ter­ror-sup­port­ing regime. It was to bring about the defeat of the vile world view that sup­port­ed the regime and to replace that view with the val­ues of free­dom, tol­er­ance and democ­ra­cy.

Four years on, US forces con­tin­ue their hero­ic fight to bring order and secu­ri­ty to that vio­lent land. But the pur­pose of their efforts is no longer clear. The US no longer push­es the Iraqis or the greater Arab world to aban­don jihad in favor of free­dom.

Ear­li­er this month, colum­nist Joel Mow­bray gave evi­dence of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s aban­don­ment of the war of ideas in a Wall Street Jour­nal expose on the US tax­pay­er-financed Ara­bic-lan­guage tele­vi­sion net­work Al-Hur­ra. The US launched Al- Hur­ra in Feb­ru­ary 2004 to com­pete with jihadist tele­vi­sion net­works like Al Jazeera. Its stat­ed aim was to present a lib­er­al, pro-democ­ra­cy and pro-human rights voice to the Arab world. Yet, as Mow­bray report­ed, since for­mer CNN pro­duc­er Lar­ry Reg­is­ter was appoint­ed to lead the net­work last Novem­ber, that aim fell by the way­side.

In Decem­ber the net­work began allow­ing itself to be used as a plat­form by arch ter­ror­ists like Hizbul­lah com­man­der Has­san Nas­ral­lah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Last month, when the Israeli Islam­ic move­ment began attack­ing Israel for con­duct­ing an arche­o­log­i­cal dig by the Aksa mosque, Al-Hur­ra’s cov­er­age of the sto­ry was more extreme than Al Jazeer­a’s. Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty mufti Ikremah Sabri was brought on live and accused Israel of shoot­ing and throw­ing bombs into the mosque and of deny­ing med­ical care to those it had sup­pos­ed­ly wound­ed. Al-Hur­ra has also host­ed an al-Qai­da ter­ror­ist who rejoiced in the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks on Amer­i­ca.

As is the case in Britain, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s deci­sion to large­ly aban­don the ide­o­log­i­cal bat­tle­field is the result of an uncom­pro­mis­ing and unre­lent­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal assault against the voic­es that jus­ti­fy the war against the glob­al jihad gen­er­al­ly, and against the hawks in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion specif­i­cal­ly.

Don­ald Rums­feld, Paul Wol­fowitz, Dou­glas Fei­th and John Bolton — and arguably Scoot­er Lib­by — were all forced from their posi­tions in the Pen­ta­gon, the State Depart­ment and the White House after com­ing under unre­lent­ing attack by the Left which all but accused these men of trea­son for their vig­i­lant sup­port of the war against Islam­ic total­i­tar­i­an­ism. A cen­tral com­po­nent of the onslaught against them was the repeat­ed claim that their sup­port for Israel is what brought these men to delude Amer­i­ca into believ­ing that the glob­al jihad is a threat to US nation­al secu­ri­ty.

One of the cen­tral play­ers in this con­cert­ed attack has been the bil­lion­aire George Soros. Soros is an anti-Zion­ist Jew with a trou­bling past. Specif­i­cal­ly, by his own admis­sion in inter­views with 60 Min­utes in 1998 and PBS in 1993, Soros col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis in seiz­ing Jew­ish prop­er­ty in Budapest in 1944.

Author Serge Trifkovic, who is cur­rent­ly research­ing a biog­ra­phy of Soros, tells of a Holo­caust sur­vivor in Hun­gary who claims that the rea­son Soros was allowed to remain free was “the boy’s spe­cial knowl­edge of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and its attempts to pro­tect its prop­er­ty from con­fis­ca­tion.”

Since 2003, Soros has donat­ed more than $100 mil­lion to rad­i­cal left-wing groups and to the polit­i­cal cam­paigns of far-left anti-war Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates in the US. His mon­ey has made him one of the most influ­en­tial forces in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

After Hamas won the Pales­tin­ian elec­tion last Jan­u­ary, Soros turned his guns against Israel. Last Octo­ber he announced his inten­tion to work with left-wing Amer­i­can Jew­ish groups such as Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, Amer­i­can Friends of Peace Now and the Israel Pol­i­cy Forum to form an effec­tive­ly anti-Israel lob­by­ing group that will com­pete with the pro-Israel Amer­i­can Israel Pub­lic Affairs Com­mit­tee (AIPAC). Soros accus­es AIPAC of mak­ing com­mon cause with the war hawks and so harm­ing US and Israeli nation­al secu­ri­ty.

This week Soros laid out his anti-Israel views in the New York Review of Books. In a long­wind­ed screed enti­tled, “On Israel, Amer­i­ca and AIPAC,” Soros presents an inco­her­ent hodge­podge of slop­py log­ic and con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments. On the one hand, he acknowl­edges that Israel’s with­draw­al from Gaza rad­i­cal­ized the Pales­tini­ans and brought Hamas to pow­er. On the oth­er hand, he insists that fur­ther Israeli with­drawals will cause the Pales­tini­ans to mod­er­ate. While he acknowl­edges that Hamas is a ter­ror group, he insists that the US must rec­og­nize it and force Israel to rec­og­nize it and that AIPAC is respon­si­ble for nei­ther rec­og­niz­ing Hamas as a legit­i­mate polit­i­cal force in the region.

Soros claims to want peace for Israel. Yet he demands that the US and Israel embrace the Sau­di plan which calls for Israel’s effec­tive destruc­tion through a forced Israeli with­draw­al from Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria and the Golan Heights and the demo­graph­ic destruc­tion of the Jew­ish state through unim­ped­ed immi­gra­tion of 4–5 mil­lion for­eign-born Arabs.

In effect, Soros’s argu­ments make clear that protes­ta­tions aside, the advance­ment of human rights and peace can­not pos­si­bly be his true goals. Rather, what seems to inter­est him most is the ero­sion of the US-Israel alliance. A US aban­don­ment of Israel is seen as a nec­es­sary com­po­nent of an over­all strat­e­gy for caus­ing the US to cease its fight against the glob­al jihad.

In her vis­it here next week, Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleez­za Rice is expect­ed to pres­sure the Olmert-Livni-Peretz gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue diplo­mat­ic con­tacts with the Hamas-Fatah ter­ror gov­ern­ment through PA Chair­man and Fatah com­man­der Mah­moud Abbas. In light of the admin­is­tra­tion’s weak­en­ing stand on Hamas, it is clear that
Soros’s views have tak­en hold in ever-widen­ing pol­i­cy cir­cles in Wash­ing­ton.

In advanc­ing their anti-Israel views, Soros and his allies (most recent­ly, New York Times colum­nist Nicholas D. Kristof), invoke the work of rad­i­cal left­ist Israeli orga­ni­za­tions like the Gene­va Ini­tia­tive, B’t­se­lem and Peace Now. Like Soros, these orga­ni­za­tions claim to act for the advance­ment of peace and human rights. And like Soros, these orga­ni­za­tions effec­tive­ly coop­er­ate with pro-jihadist groups in erod­ing Israel’s abil­i­ty to defend its rights as a Jew­ish democ­ra­cy.

The pub­lic storm that ensued this week after Jews in Hebron took con­trol of a build­ing they recent­ly pur­chased in the city was a clear exam­ple of this left­ist-jihadist col­lu­sion.

In demand­ing that the IDF move imme­di­ate­ly to eject the Jews from the build­ing they had bought, Peace Now and B’t­se­lem ignored human rights and open­ly advo­cat­ed the abro­ga­tion of the human rights of Israeli Jews to pur­chase and hold prop­er­ty. In so doing, they lent their sup­port to the racist jihadist view that Jews must be barred from step­ping foot in so-called Arab areas.

B’t­se­lem spokes­woman Sar­it Michaeli told The Jerusalem Post on Sun­day that whether the Jews pur­chased the build­ing or not was imma­te­r­i­al. In her words, “Our oppo­si­tion in prin­ci­ple is that these set­tle­ments should be evac­u­at­ed any­way and that there should­n’t be these pock­ets in Hebron.”

She added that “oth­er than watch­ing and mak­ing sure that [the sale] was done in a legal way, the IDF has the oblig­a­tion to make sure that set­tlers don’t take over more areas.”

In so argu­ing, Michaeli gave effec­tive Jew­ish Israeli sup­port to even more out­ra­geous state­ments by Israeli Arab par­lia­men­tar­i­ans. As she claimed that the IDF’s job is to fight Jews, Arab MKs Ibrahim Sar­sour and Muham­mad Barakei par­tic­i­pat­ed in the PA’s “Jerusalem First” con­fer­ence in Ramal­lah. Sar­sour called for “Mus­lims and Arabs” to “lib­er­ate Jerusalem.”

Sar­sour declared, “Just as the Mus­lims once lib­er­at­ed Jerusalem from the Cru­saders, so must we today believe that we can lib­er­ate Jerusalem. It is not an impos­si­ble dream.”

Barakei accused Israel of try­ing to “emp­ty Jerusalem of its Pales­tin­ian inhab­i­tants.” Call­ing Jerusalem a “nation­al issue, not just a reli­gious issue,” he called on Pales­tini­ans to act imme­di­ate­ly to “reclaim the city.”

As for Hebron, on Tues­day MK Taleb a‑Sanaa called for an inter­na­tion­al boy­cott of Israel in response to the Jew­ish pur­chase and takeover of the build­ing.

The Arab MKs spoke against the back­drop of Israel’s first Arab cab­i­net min­is­ter Ghaleb Majadle’s refusal to sing the nation­al anthem and the pub­li­ca­tion of a Uni­ver­si­ty of Haifa poll show­ing that 76 per­cent of Israeli Arabs believe that Zion­ism is a form of racism and that 28% of Israeli Arabs deny the Holo­caust.

Need­less to say, no crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions into pos­si­ble trea­son charges have been opened against the Arab politi­cians.

A CLEAR line con­nects the Cam­bridge stu­dents, the Amer­i­cans in Iraq, and the sit­u­a­tion in Israel. The left­ist-Islamist front is erod­ing the free world’s sense of jus­tice. Rather than assert our lib­er­al, demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues and defend our free­doms, fear­ing left­ist con­dem­na­tion, politi­cians and opin­ion shapers have per­mit­ted them­selves to become shack­led to ide­olo­gies that negate every­thing for which the free world stands.
Israel, which stands on the front lines of free­dom, is duty-bound to stem the tide. But our igno­ble lead­ers have pre­ferred to stop think­ing and silent­ly sur­ren­der.

This is how a civ­i­liza­tion col­laps­es.