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| What begins with the Jews never ends with the Jews...
Kenneth R. Timmerman Thursday, October 23, 2003 - Newsmax.com The words from his mouth were no accident. He did not make a slip of the tongue, nor was he misquoted or taken out of context.
On the contrary, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad has reaffirmed his beliefs many times since his speech last Thursday to the assembled leaders of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur. Muslims had better get their act together, he said, because "Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."
The bald anti-Semitism of Dr. Mahathir's comments was immediately condemned by the U.S. State Department, and by President Bush during his swing through Asia. But not surprisingly, in Europe &endash; where anti-Semitic attacks have been on the upswing over the past three years - foreign ministries either kept silent or covered it with mayonnaise.
In Brussels, French President Jacques urged fellow European leaders to shelve a statement condemning Mahathir as inappropriate for a European summit. After he was harshly criticized in Israel (where one daily splashed his picture across the front page with a screaming headline: "the face of French anti-Semitism"), Chirac sent a weak letter to Mahathir, for which the Malaysian premier thanked him for his "understanding."
The French foreign ministry reaction to Mahathir's statement was contained in these three sentences. "We respect the Organization of the Islamic Conference. We respect the huge Muslim community represented by that organization. We expect that those who express themselves in the name of the OIC would have the same respect for other religions, in harmony with the spirit of tolerance that is the spirit of Islam."
But Dr. Mahathir's comments were not just intolerant: they were baldly racist, bubbling up from a deep underground spring that for centuries has fed bigots and murderers. Jews, he went on, "invented Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power."
Think of it: a Jewish world conspiracy, operating in secret, today controls the world's most powerful countries. Adolph Hitler shared that belief, as do the homicide bombers who kill Jews on a daily basis. This is the basic covenant of the anti-Semitic creed.
In interviews I have conducted with senior Muslim clerics and with jailed Palestinian terrorists over the past several years, I found tremendous support for the deep anti-Semitic beliefs Dr Mahathir expressed. Such views are being spread throughout the Muslim world by governments who call themselves friends and allies of the United States.
They are being taught to children in Palestinian schools, whose textbooks are filled with anti-Jewish hate. They are being preached from the minarets of Cairo, Gaza, Jerusalem, Qatar and Riyadh. They are being spread in America by front organizations that claim to represent the Muslim "mainstream." And increasingly, they are becoming accepted currency once again in a Europe that for two generations has prided itself on putting the Holocaust behind it.
I call them the "preachers of hate." The bad news is that they are no longer confined to the fringes of the Muslim world. In many important ways, they have become the Muslim mainstream, until moderate Muslims speak out.
Consider for a moment the unending stream of hate speech and incitation to violence coming from the state-controlled mosques of the Middle East.
"The Jews are the Jews," Gaza prayer leader Dr. Ahmed Yusuf Abu Halabiya told worshippers in a July 28, 2000 sermon that was broadcast live on Palestinian Authority television. "There never was among them a supporter of peace. They are all liars… They are terrorists. Therefore it is necessary to slaughter them and murder them, according to the words of Allah… Kill the Jews and those Americans that are like them."
Or again, listen to how Yusuf al-Qaradawi ended this Nov. 1, 2002 sermon broadcast by state television in Qatar. "Oh God, destroy the aggressor, treacherous Jews. O God, destroy the aggressor Americans. O God, destroy the fanatic pagans. O God, destroy the tyrannical Crusaders."
Al-Qaradawi is frequently represented in the U.S. as an Islamic "moderate," and has addressed the annual conventions of the American Muslim Council and other so-called Islamic organizations in the United States that call terrorism "resistance," where he has made equally incendiary remarks.
The Malaysian Prime Minister is no radical. He thinks the Islamic world should defeat its "enemy" &endash; the Jews &endash; through peaceful means, not violence. But make no mistake: it is the Jews, "a much smaller enemy," who have imposed "humiliation and oppression" on Muslims everywhere, he insisted.
To Dr Mahathir way of thinking, 1.3 billion Muslims have been systematically oppressed by 12 million Jews, spread across a diaspora in more than 140 countries of the world. If Muslim countries remain underdeveloped &endash; despite trillions of dollars in oil revenues over the past thirty years &endash; it's all because of the Jews. If their societies are unproductive, their regimes autocratic, their young people dissatisfied and yearning for change, it has nothing to do with their own actions. It's the Jews!
Foreigners often call us naïve, because as Americans we are brought up to revere the truth. Obvious falsehoods seem to us ... well, obvious falsehoods. But this is not the case through much of the Muslim world today, where governments and state-sponsored clerics indoctrinate citizens to believe the most outrageous slanders about Jews and about America, and to reject fact in favor of odious conspiracies.
It is vitally important that Americans of all backgrounds understand that today's anti-Semitism, while aimed at Jews, stems from a belief system that equally rejects Americans and indeed Western civilization as a whole. When Jews are killed in Jerusalem, or synagogues are attacked in Britain and France, Americans in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago become more vulnerable.
Jews are like the canary that miners take down into the pits, to warn them when they are about to die. Jews get attacked first, because the enemies of America can't attack Americans. But make no mistake: we're next. It begins with the Jews, but it never ends with the Jews.
Kenneth Timmerman author of the bestselling "Shakedown", is the author of a new book, Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America, just released by Crown Forum in New York.
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| MEDIA: TO BOOK KEN ON YOUR SHOW, PLEASE CONTACT THERESA BRADY AT 212 572-2598 OR BY EMAIL: TBRADY@randomhouselcom From the author of the national best-seller, Shakedown!
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E-mail ktimmer@bellatlantic.net