Swing Low Sweet Sharia
by Nidra Poller (April 2012)
The play within the play
What decent human being would not have misgivings about the release, in exchange for Shalit, of 1027 murderers, thieves, and thugs determined to use their liberation as a license to renew the persecution of Israeli Jews? And who could not feel, seeing the first images of Gilad roughly handled by Hamas and Egyptian intermediaries, that no price was too dear for the release of one single human being from the tomb in which he was jailed and left to slowly extinguish like a flame without oxygen.
On one side of the border husky men were welcomed triumphantly with bear hugs and slaps on the back, while Gilad Shalit, still wearing the ugly shirt imposed by his jailers, had to endure one last act of torture: an Egyptian TV interview conducted in violation of the swap deal. Freelance journalist Shahira Amin, bare headed and ostensibly modern, prodded the dazed young Israeli with insolent questions.
Gilad Shalit, finally dressed in uniform and wearing his glasses, stood straight and tall, saluted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was reunited with his parents, returned to his village in Galilee where he was welcomed with flowers, Israeli flags, blue and white balloons, and humane discretion. Shalom. The quiet voice of peace and peacefulness. The released hostage enters the family abode in a gesture so light it is almost weightless, so strong that it effaces any image of the Israeli as victim.
20 October, two days after the release of Gilad Shalit, Mouamar Gaddafi is dragged out of a rat hole culvert, sodomized with a knife,[iii] delivered up to the murderous mob, beaten bloody, shot or bludgeoned to death or both. His putrefying body covered with a flashy blanket is exposed for days in the (no-longer) cold storage room of a supermarket in Misrata. Families stand in line to view the body with contempt and take pictures with their cell phones. Fathers holding toddlers in their arms wait patiently in the hot sunshine for the joy of showing the dead dictator to their kids. The stench is almost visible on our TV screens while in the foreground honey-voiced newsreaders describe the scene to the music of Arab springtime. Declarations by NTC leaders who swear that the Libyan dictator was shot in a crossfire as rebel fighters were bringing him to the hospital alternate with footage of the gory death of Gaddafi at the hands of a savage mob.
Weaving a path through confused statements from the NTC, NATO, and European and American officials, one could reasonably assume that Gaddafi was delivered into the hands of Libyan fighters by a NATO bombardment of his convoy as he tried to escape from the bastion in Sirte where he had made his last stand.
Curtain!
Hope and change
Occupy Wall Street
Kill or be killed
Without demeaning the last acts of the desperate, one must still ask what do they want, where are they going, how are they doing it. The articulation of aims, purposes, values and strategy is lost in the flash of dramatic footage. Or is it deliberately hidden? Because no sooner does the tyrant scram, dead or alive, than the victor arrives, and his name is sharia.
Jihad, sharia, dhimmitude
This sheds light on another aspect of Occupy Wall Street: Jihad = convert the infidels, make them act as if they are already living in an Islamic society where there is no political structure through which to express demands. Politics is reduced to gathering in a public square, setting up tents, living in anarchy, mouthing slogans and, ultimately, kill or be killed. Where does the 99% really live? In Egypt, not in the United States. The dhimmified pawns of the Occupy movement literally shit on their own land, pour contempt on the financial system that brings prosperity to the masses, invite Muslim Brotherhood thugs into their midst, glorify the illiterate masses of Tahrir Square and espouse their values.
French connection
Hours after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003 French media were still reporting that American troops were bogged down and likely to remain outside the city for another three months. This time around, exploits of the Libyan rebels were hastily celebrated though no evidence of their victorious battles was never produced and glowing reports from their own ranks were usually contradicted within 48 hours by facts on the ground.
What should a woman wear in the Arab Spring?
What strikes me is that, in the case of Caroline Sinz, a clear warning of imminent assault was visible on camera. The subjects of the report, seen with tender sympathy, were moving into place to become actors of the assault. Did the cameraman recognize it? Did he warn his colleague? Did it happen too fast or did it happen because neither of them had any street smarts. Their personal ordeal fits right into the play within the play. The curtain of the lethal narrative of Arab Spring is ripped away to reveal with raw brutality the place of women under the sharia rule. The flesh and blood truth.
Indeed! International opinion was so distraught, for example, by the approval of housing construction in Gilo in October that it could hardly be distracted by shaky cell phone images of Syrian protestors mowed down by tanks or snipers and sharp professional footage of Egyptian Copts burned alive in churches, crushed under the wheels of military vehicles.
How about a Jewish Springtime?
This is the puzzle that has been constantly jiggling in my head since the end of September 2000 when the al Dura blood libel inaugurated an international wave of neo-pogroms that persists, expands, and worsens, reaching terrifying proportions and, simultaneously, becoming so commonplace that an accurate appraisal sounds like a hysterical false alarm.
[i] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15368819
[ii] http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2011/10/shahira-amin-lied-about-abusive-shalit.html
[iii] http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/111024/gaddafi-sodomized-video-gaddafi-sodomy
[iv] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/27/libya-death-toll-could-be_n_854582.html
[v] Reportedly Gaddafi family survivors want to take the case to the ICC.
[vi] http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/39174
[viii] http://www.theblaze.com/stories/john-lewis-is-not-better-than-anyone-occupy-atlanta-refuses-to-allow-civil-rights-icon-to-speak-at-protest/
http://www.investigativeproject.org/3304/conspiracies-terrorist-defense-at-anti-nypd-rally
www.TheUnitedWest.org October 17, 2011
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/285042/qaradawi-s-odious-vision-andrew-bostom
[xiv] [http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/39174 ].
[xv] Figaro newspaper:
Ms Poller is an Associate Fellow of the Middle East Forum. Her most recent book is Karimi Hotel.
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