The bonds that bind America to the Jewish people and the Jewish state of Israel are comparable only to the bonds between brothers–with a common heritage of the struggle for freedom forging a shared commitment to liberty, tolerance, and democracy. This is why our enemies are the same. This is why the forces of evil do not discriminate between us. It is, however, also true that common foes often mean common defenders. This is the case with David Horowitz in Islamo-Fascism and the War Against the Jews, Volume IV of The Black Book of the American Left.
Horowitz starts the book by identifying the bad guys–who they are, and what they believe:
The Muslim Brotherhood is a global organization and the leading force behind political totalitarian Islam. It is also the fountainhead of terrorist Islam, and in particular the Islamic terror groups al-Qaeda and Hamas. The Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna. Al-Banna was an open admirer and supporter of Adolf Hitler, and had Mein Kampf translated into Arabic in the 1930s. His disciple, Haj Amin al-Husseni, the patriarch of Palestinian nationalism, spent the Second World War in Berlin recruiting Arabs for Hitler’s legions. Al-Banna’s ambition was to create a global Islamic empire instituting sharia as a global law: “It is a duty incumbent on every Muslim to struggle towards the aim of making every people Muslim and the whole world Islamic, so that the banner of Islam can flutter over the earth and the call of the Muezzin can resound in all the corners of the world: God is greatest [Allahu akbar]!” The motto of the Muslim Brotherhood inspires its members to achieve this plan: “Allah is our goal. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest aspiration.”
In fact:
Hamas identifies itself as a creature of the Brotherhood in its founding charter: “The Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas] is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a world organization, the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era.” Al-Qaeda founders Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden, and top leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, were all members of or trained by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s reach also extended into Shi’ite Iran. Navab Safavi, founder of the Iranian Islamic group Fedayan-e Islam, which was active in Iran in the 1950s, was strongly influenced by the Brotherhood; Savafi himself went on to become a close associate of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini, of course, was notorious for calling America after the name of the large pillar that Muslims stone during the pilgrimage to Mecca: the “Great Satan” – that is, the leader of the anti-totalitarian, anti-Sharia, infidel world.
With all the conversation about Israel, Horowitz says that the main point is always overlooked: “It is the Arabs’ aggression against the state of Israel and their desire to push the Jews into the sea that is the cause–the sole cause–of the conflict in the Middle East.”
Even the conversation about he Palestinians is off. “The Big Lie which is repeated by Hamas and the PLO, and by everyone on the political Left and by all supporters of the Palestinian cause, is this; the claim that Israel occupies Palestinian land, or that it occupies Arab land. This is false.” When Newt Gingrich said that the Palestinians are “an invented people,” he was telling the truth because “there was no people calling itself Palestinian until 1964, 15 years after the state of Israel was created.”
What is “Palestine”? “Palestine is the name of a region, it’s like ‘New England.'” It is not Arabic in origin, but Roman, given to the region after the the Jewish Revolt to humiliate the Jews–named after the Jews’ then regional foes, the Philistines. “There were no Arabs, by the way, in this region at that time. The Philistines were red-headed Aegean sailors. They were not Arabs.”
The land that Israel was created on, which is the same land that Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan were created on, belonged to the Turks for 400 years prior to that. Turks are not Arabs. The Turks were on the losing side in the First World War, which meant that when the war was over the Ottoman Empire would be dismantled. This is according to both international law and international tradition. After the war, the European victors were given mandates over the conquered empire, and they carved out the five nations I mentioned. The “Palestine Mandate,” which described a portion of this territory, referred to a region, not a people. There were Arabs living in this region, but there was no “Palestinian people.” In 1922, Churchill assigned 80% of the Palestine Mandate to Jordan, created the state that is now called trans-Jordan. Seventy-percent of the people living in this area were Arabs who inhabited the region called “Palestine.” In other words seventy-percent of Jordan is Palestinian. But you never hear anybody complain that Jordan is “occupied” by the Hashemite minority that rules the state. Jordan is a Hashemite monarchy with a majority Palestinian population. It is 80% of the land mass of the original Palestine Mandate. Where is the movement for the self-determination of the Palestinians of Jordan? There is none. There is none because the agenda of the Palestinians and their leftwing supporters is not to create a Palestinian state but to push the Jews into the sea.
The above quote is from a speech some brave students at the University of North Carolina invited Horowitz to give. The moment he said that, “about 40 members of the audience, most of them members of the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine, supporters of Hamas–some wearing kaffiyeh’s the terrorist symbol created by Yassir Arafat–marched out of the room on a pre-arranged cue.”
Like most twenty-something year olds today, in the university, I was taught the exact opposite of what Horowitz writes. But I was a reader of Horowitz’s Frontpagemag.com (and, once it got started, Breitbart), and it was very apparent that what the professors and their obedient student “radicals” preached were lies. It doesn’t take much knowledge (I once saw a sign on campus that read “Solidarity Wit Geaza.”) or courage (The professoriate bent over backwards for anti-Israel “radical” perspectives.) to bash Israel from the ivory tower. They won’t even listen when the truth is explained in simple terms.
There is a more insidious side to this campus anti-American activity in that–like the communist student groups of the 1930s–it is being orchestrated by jihadists, and it is a vehicle for recruitment. Horowitz tried to warn students, attempting (usually unsuccessfully) to place ads in college newspapers. One such ad, bringing attention to Daniel Greenfield’s outstanding pamphlet Muslim Hate Groups On Campus, was “headlined, ‘Where Are They Now?’ and featured nine former presidents of the Muslim Students Association who had gone on to leadership positions in al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The most famous among them was Anwar Awlaki, mentor of the Christmas bomber and the Ft. Hood assassin, who had previously been president of the Muslim Students Association at Colorado State University.” To put an exclamation point on the issue, recall this infamous exchange between Horowitz and an MSA member in the University of California, San Diego:
Jumanah Imad Albahri: Good evening. I just wanted to say thank you for coming to campus tonight and presenting your point of view. It’s always valuable to have two sets of views going on at the same time. Very useful. My name is Jumanah Imad Albahri and I am a student here at UCSD. I was reading your literature. I found that much more interesting than the talk. And I found some interesting things about the MSA, which is an organization that is very active on campus and it is hosting our annual “Hitler Youth Week.” You should come out to those events. If you could clarify the connection between the MSA and Jihad terrorist networks, because last I checked, we had to do our own fundraising and we never get help from anyone. So if you could clarify the connection between UCSD’s MSA, or if you don’t have such information, if you could connect other MSAs on UC, because the connection wasn’t too clear in the pamphlet.
David Horowitz: Will you condemn Hamas here and now?
Jumanah Imad Albahri: I’m sorry, what?
Horowitz: Will you condemn Hamas?
Albahri: Would I condemn Hamas?
Horowitz: As a terrorist–genocidal–organization?
Albahri: Are you asking me to put myself on a cross?
Horowitz: So you won’t. I actually have had this experience many times. You didn’t read the pamphlet (“The Muslim Student Association and the Jihad Network”), because the pamphlet gives chapter and verse on the connection. The main connection is that the MSA is part of the Muslim Brotherhood network as revealed in the documents produced by the FBI in the Holy Land Foundation trial.
Albahri: I don’t think you understood what I meant by that. I meant, if I say something, I’m sure that I will be arrested for reasons of Homeland Security. So if you could please just answer my question.
Horowitz: If you condemn Hamas, Homeland Security will arrest you?
Albahri: If I support Hamas–because your question forces me to condemn Hamas–if I support Hamas, I look really bad.
Horowitz: Well, if you don’t condemn Hamas, obviously you support it. Case closed. I had this same experience at UC Santa Barbara where there were 50 members of the Muslim Students Association sitting right in the rows there. And throughout my hour talk, I kept asking them, will you condemn Hezbollah and Hamas. And none of them would. And then, when the question period came, the President of the Muslim Students Association was the first person to ask questions. And I said, before you start, will you condemn Hezbollah? And he said, well, that question is too complicated for a yes/no answer. So I said, okay, I’ll put it to you this way. I am a Jew. The head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally. For it or against it?
Albahri: For it.
Horowitz: Thank you. Thank you for coming and showing everybody what’s really going on here.
The campus Left isn’t bothered by any of this. It’s simple for tyrannical movements to get their support. Just speak in the language of “social justice” and supporting the “oppressed.” On my campus, I once saw the Queer Union come to the defense of Muslim Brotherhood front organizations–like Horowitz has seen Hillel groups come to the defense of those same organizations. All in the name of “justice.” As always with the Left, those in the way of “justice” must be eliminated–or, in this case, “pushed into the sea.”
The fact that such vacuous thinking is enough to convince college kids to abet genocide is proof positive that Israel must exist–as a militarily strong, democratic and Jewish state. Zionism is the true “National Liberation” movement of the Middle East, and the fate of Zionism is the canary in the coal mine for all oppressed peoples who dream of peace and freedom.
David Horowitz knows this, and he proves it in Volume IV of The Black Book of the American Left.
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