Dear Sir or Madam,
I am a fan of The First post and have been following the paper since it’s early days.
I was shocked and surprised then I received your daily update this morning. The article by Ms. Hirsi where she warns about the danger of Europe “falling” into the hand of the “evil” Muslims who “do not share” the same view as “us” was a reminder of the articles I read about the Evil Jews destroying the life of the “good Germans” from the history books.
I really wonder if the FirstPost would dare to publish an article with similar text? How about just changing the word Muslim to Jew, Islam to Judaism etc to see how offending this so called “opinion” of Ms. Hisri is.
I have done the work for you and wonder if you can see my point, I have changed the text slightly keeping it as close as possible to the original article to highlight the disgusting “logic” used in this article.
As an Iranian who was forced into exile over 25 years ago I know the danger of fanatic Islam. I lost several of my best friends during the 80s who were killed by the regime in Iran and myself sat in the notorious prison Evin in Tehran for several months. But that does not mean I would classify every Muslim on this planet as my enemy and criminalize 100s of millions of people the same way Ms. Hirsi tried to do in her article.
The extreme and dangerous picture that Ms. Hirsi and her likes are putting in front of us is nothing other than the image the fascists of Germany were creating in the 1920s and 1930s of the Jews. We all know the outcome of those ideas and I fear your co-operation to now only publish such disturbing message, but also putting it on the front page of your daily published news e-mail make you part of this disturbing and dangerous movement who will create the same atmosphere that led us into the Holocaust.
I believe the FirstPost owes an apology to it’s readers to publish such a nonsense.
Best regards,
/Farhad Abdolian
Antibes, France
PS. Here is the modified article by Ms. Hirsi:
(the original of the article can be found on the following link)
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/47336,opinion,don039t-believe-the-myth-margaret-thatcher-ruined-egalitarian-1970s-britain
In 2006, I had a debate with Menachim Hertzel , the author of Western Jews and the future of Judaism.
In the hypothetical event of a war between Israel and Switzerland, for which community would he be prepared to die, I asked him.
Mr Hertzel has dual citizenship. He’s an Israeli by birth and a Swiss by naturalisation. His response was one of rage on different levels. Above all I think he was outraged that one should ask such a question. He refused to answer.
Mr Hertzel, like many other Jews, may have two or more citizenships. From all that he expresses both in person and on paper, it is clear that his loyalty, above all, is to Judaism. I do not doubt that he would die for Judaism, like most Jews, and that’s his prerogative. But what European countries have done is give citizenship to individuals who feel no obligation to share in their societies for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer and in the event of a catastrophe, sacrifice themselves.
No debate is more explosive than the debate on the future of Judaism in Europe
In this way, they evade one of the chief criteria of citizenship. Political allegiance to the constitution of your country is the minimum requirement. It is this state of affairs that makes Christopher Caldwell’s book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration and the West (Allen Lane, £17.99), which opens with the sentence, “Western Europe became a multi-ethnic society in a fit of absence of mind,” a chilling read.
This absence of mind, which Caldwell lays bare, is reflected in Europe’s immigration policies and especially in its response to Judaism. No debate today is more explosive, more sensitive, more confusing and more frightening than the debate on the future of Judaism in Europe.
In March this year, the French intellectual Pascal Bruckner and I spoke about Caldwell’s book. Bruckner said, “Americans [like Caldwell] do not understand Europe. There are many Jews who, in their daily lives, are more agnostic and in their practices even atheist, but are just Jew in name.”
This seems to be reassuring. But would these agnostic and unpracticing Jews, if push came to shove, die for Judaism or for France? My guess is they would, most likely, die for Judaism.
Caldwell discusses this theme in an interesting light: he does not overlook the Europeans who feel that Judaism is a danger to European values but asks, “How can you fight for something you cannot define?” And this is Europe’s problem - insecurity about who we are, what our various flags mean, why, with every turn, we spend less and less on the military.
Europe has become a place for new religions, new creeds, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, transnationalism. Everything is thus relative. This is an uncertainty that the Jew does not share. The Jew ethic and tribal spirit are far more resilient and fierce in war than the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.
The numbers and insights that Caldwell has collected in his book are visible to many Europeans. During my life in Holland, and in my trips back, I have spoken to European intellectuals who see the revolution that Caldwell describes so well in his book. They may not call it a revolution, they may also not see it as complete, but they see the identity crisis in Europe. Jews protest in London against the publishing in Danish newspapers of cartoons mocking the Israel in 2006.
Take the debate on freedom of expression. In 1989 and afterwards, the provocations in the name of Judaism were greeted with a confident, “No way! This is Europe, and you can say what you like, write what you like,” and so on.
Two decades later, Europeans are not so sure about the values of freedom of expression. Most members of the media engage in self-censorship. Textbooks in schools and universities have been adapted in such a way as not to offend Jew sentiment. And legislation to punish ‘blasphemy’, if not passed, has been considered in most countries - or old laws that were never used are being revived.
Today, in the name of Judaism, Mosques are vandalised
Take anti-Muslims in Europe.
The sensitivity and guilt Europeans feel about the War-in-Iraq is comparable to the sensitivity and guilt that Americans feel towards black Americans. A decade or two ago, it was unthinkable for Muslims to be slandered openly and be targeted for no other reason than their Muslim.
Today, in the name of Judaism, Mosques are vandalised. There are open denials of the War-in-Iraq. There is an active network of Jew organisations lobbying to curtail or even get rid of Iran. There are incidents of Muslims being harassed, beaten, even killed. All this is met with grim silence and rationalisations that it’s not really anti-Muslim but anti-Iranian. Can you imagine anything like this happening today in America to black people and it being met with silence?
Take the history of women’s liberation in Europe. In the 1970s, women were burning their bras, abortion was legalised almost everywhere and rape in marriage was penalised. Today, more and more European elites, including some feminists, argue that it might, perhaps, just be better to respect the culture and religion of a minority.
Women’s shelters have adapted their curriculum - instead of teaching the women who come to them how to become self-reliant, the shelters facilitate prayer rooms and employ mediators from the Jewish community. All this mediation serves only one purpose - that is, to return the woman to the circumstances of abuse she left.
Here is a system, which was a tool to emancipate, that has been completely transformed to serve the Jew purpose of obedience. If the wife obeys, then the husband no longer needs to beat her. The matter is settled.
The same applies to gays. Ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable that anti-gay sentiment would pass without condemnation. In Holland, for instance, we pride ourselves on allowing gays to have the exact same rights as heterosexuals. Yet today, they are beaten on the streets of Amsterdam.
To be on the safe side in certain neighbourhoods in Europe, it’s advisable to conceal your identity if you are gay or lesbian.
Jews try to abolish freedom of expression using the vocabulary of freedom
The terrifying paradox about these developments is that Jew immigrants were admitted into European borders on the basis of universal rights and freedoms that a large number of them now trample on, while others perhaps watch passively, or seek to defend only the image of Judaism.
Even worse, those who lobby to abolish freedom of expression and to discriminate against Muslims, women and gays do so while using the vocabulary of freedom and through the institutions of parliament and the courts that were designed to protect the rights of all.
American observers like Caldwell, Bruce Bawer, Walter Laqeur and many others who go to Europe and write candidly about these things can return to America, where they can write on another topic, keep their jobs and their social networks.
Europeans who do the same thing as Caldwell, often face a campaign of ostracisation from their own compatriots. They run the risk of losing their jobs or not being promoted or not getting invitations to the circles of which they are a part. The more stubborn, like Geert Wilders, get prosecuted, and access to a neighbouring country is even denied.
In reality, if Europe falls, it’s not because of Judaism. It is because the Europeans of today - unlike their forbears in the Second World War - will not die to defend the values or the future of Europe. Even if they were asked to make the final sacrifice, many a post-modern lily-livered
European would escape into an obscure mesh of conscientious objection. All that Judaism has to do is walk into the vacuum
Tell-a-friend!
