Jihad for kids: “Birds of Paradise”

Remember Umm Nidal, a proud Palestinian mother (Mother From Hell – Robert Spencer), who sent 3 of her 6 sons to die (while murdering Israelis) and for that was honored by getting elected into Palestinian Legislative Council?

The same “culture” now brings the grateful humanity this: “Birds of Paradise” – Martyrdom Recruitment as Children’s Entertainment (IPT News)

The little girl’s dark brown eyes look heavenward as she sings,

When we seek martyrdom, we go to heaven.
You tell us we’re small, but from this way of life we have become big.
Without Palestine, what does childhood mean?

This is not a song from Hamas television in Gaza, nor is it a Hizballah anthem. “When We Seek Martyrdom” is the latest hit from a production house called Birds of Paradise.
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My country and my blood are like its sands
Without Palestine, what does childhood mean?

Youtube has dozens of editions and edits of the video, ranging from Arab parents having their children parrot the lyrics to Jihadists using it as background music in terrorist videos. “[Birds of Paradise] is one of the most widely distributed children’s songs group in the Arab world, and it seems to have crossed the ocean to Canada and Britain,” wrote journalist Fawzia Nasir al-Naeem in the Saudi Arabian newspaper, Al-Jazirah.
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“When We Seek Martyrdom” encourages children not simply to throw rocks, but to carry out militant attacks and to ambush Jews. It even broadcasts clips of the children carrying out practice attacks. Violence is not only the answer for children, but it is framed in a cute, kid-friendly way.
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The Effect of Training Preschoolers in Hate

The message of the video is directed at toddlers up to elementary school ages, the precise period of a child’s life where they tend to copy educational materials as mental facts. Kids of these ages cannot process issues which contain subtleties and nuances. Thus, the material imprints itself into their memory as a part of ‘what is normal,’ said child psychologist Joan Lachkar. “Smaller children cannot organize the data of experience into concrete and abstract categories, as opposed to older children who possess abstract thought and wider varieties of mental decision making. This video is particularly dangerous in the shame/honor system of the martyrdom ideology, because it represses the child’s ability for freedom of thought, individuality, and creative thinking,” Lackhar said. “This society is teaching its youngest children that peace is linked to the destruction of non-believers and that violence is an acceptable and even preferred method of self-expression.”

The psychological effects of such encouragement are profound, even in at an age where the complexities of the message are not fully grasped, Lachkar said.

“Children in the ‘martyrdom culture’ become robotic and clone-like, so much so that they are compelled not to express genuine emotions or any sense of vulnerability,” she said. If they do so, they are shamed and punished. On the other hand, if they conform to the cultural standards set for them, they believe that they are good and that they will be loved.” This system of violence becomes self-reinforcing and it is more difficult to break the hate which is connected to the children’s earliest childhood memories.
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The emphasis is mine. Maybe I am not “progressive” enough, but cultural equivalence and moral relativism just don’t work for me. If a culture does not promote individual freedoms, personal growth and creativity among kids, it is inadequate. If it turns its own children into suicidal robotic drones ready for mass murder and imperial conquests, it is perniciously sick. Any chance of protest from the UNESCO?

Andrei Sakharov’s widow Yelena Bonner speaks out

IsraelNN published excerpts from Yelena Bonner’s moving speech at Oslo Freedom Forum:

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Read Sakharov’s Memoirs. It’s a pity his Diaries haven’t been translated; they were published in Russia in 2006. Apparently, the West isn’t interested now in Sakharov.

The West isn’t very interested in Russia either, a country that no longer has real elections, independent courts, or freedom of the press. Russia is a country where journalists, human rights activists, and migrants are killed regularly, almost daily. And extreme corruption flourishes of a kind and extent that never existed earlier in Russia or anywhere else. So what do the Western mass media discuss mainly? Gas and oil — of which Russia has a lot. Energy is its only political trump card, and Russia uses it as an instrument of pressure and blackmail… Russia will remain the way it is now for decades, unless there is some violent upheaval.

…They say people are coming together — but in reality, they are growing apart. And that isn’t because an economic depression suddenly burst forth, and swine flu to boot. [It] began on September 11, 2001. At first, anger and horror was provoked by the terrorists who knocked down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and by their accomplices in London, Madrid and other cities, and by the shahids, suicide bombers who blew themselves up at public spaces like discotheques and wedding parties, whose families were rewarded $25,000 each by Saddam Hussein.

Later, Bush was blamed for everything, and as always, the Jews — that is, Israel… So it is about Israel and the Jews that I will speak… At one time, the Nobel Peace Prize was the highest moral award of our civilization. But after December 1994, when Yasser Arafat became one of the three new laureates, its ethical value was undermined. I haven’t always greeted each selection of the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting with joy, but that one shocked me. And to this day, I cannot understand and accept the fact that Andrei Sakharov and Yasir Arafat, now posthumously, share membership in the club of Nobel laureates.

In many of Sakharov’s publications… [he] wrote and spoke about Israel. I have a collection of citations of his writing on this topic. If it were published in Norway, then many Norwegians would be surprised at how sharply their contemporary view of Israel differs from the view of Sakharov. Here are several citations from Sakharov: …

“All wars that Israel has waged have been just, forced upon it by the irresponsibility of Arab leaders.” “With all the money that has been invested in the problem of Palestinians, it would have been possible long ago to resettle them and provide them with good lives in Arab countries.”

…Now, a new motif is fashionable (in fact it’s an old one): ‘Two states for two peoples.’ It sounds good. And there is no controversy in the peace-making Quartet, made up of the U.S., the UN, the EU, and Russia (some great peace-maker, with its Chechen war and its Abkhazian-Ossetian provocation). The Quartet, and the Arab countries, and the Palestinian leaders (both Hamas and Fatah) put additional demands to Israel. I will speak only of one demand: that Israel accept back the Palestinian refugees. And here a little history and demography are needed.

According to the UN’s official definition, refugees are considered those who fled from violence and wars, but not their descendants who are born in another land. At one time the Palestinian refugees and the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were about equal in number — about 700-800,000. The newly-created state Israel took in Jews (about 600,000). They were officially recognized as refugees by the UN Resolution 242, but not provided with any UN assistance. Palestinians, however, are considered refugees not only in the first generation, but in the second, third, and now even in the fourth generation. According to the UN Works and Relief Agency’s report, , the number of registered Palestinian refugees has grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 4.6 million in 2008, and continues to rise due to natural population growth. All these people have the rights of Palestinian refugees and are eligible to receive humanitarian aid.

The entire population of Israel is about 7.5 million, of which there are about 2.5 million ethnic Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. Imagine Israel then, if another five million Arabs flood into it; Arabs would substantially outnumber the Jewish population. Thus, created next to Israel will be a Palestinian state cleansed of Jews, because in addition to the demand that Palestinian refugees return to Israel, there is also the demand that Judea and Samaria are cleansed of Jews and turned over to Palestinians – while in Gaza today there is not a single Jew already.

The result is both strange and terrifying, not only because Israel will essentially be destroyed… Because the plan “two states for two peoples” is the creation of one state, ethnically cleansed of Jews, and a second one with the potential to do the same thing. A Judenrein Holy Land – the dream of Adolph Hitler come true at last. So think again, those who are still able, who has a fascist inside him today?

And another question that has been a thorn for me for a long time. It’s a question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn’t the fate of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit trouble you in the same way as the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners?

You fought for and won the opportunity for the International Committee of the Red Cross, journalists, and lawyers to visit Guantanamo. You know prison conditions, the prisoners’ everyday routine, their food. You have met with prisoners subjected to torture. The result of your efforts has been a ban on torture and a law to close this prison. President Obama signed it in the first days of his coming to the White House…

But during the two years Shalit has been held by terrorists, the world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why? He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions say clearly that hostage-taking is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Shalit’s rights.

The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations with the people who are holding Shalit in an unknown location, in unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights documents?

And yet I still think (and some will find this naïve) that the first tiny, but real step toward peace must become the release of Shalit. Release – and not his exchange for 1,000 or 1,500 prisoners who are in Israeli prisons serving court sentences for real crimes.

Returning to my question of why human rights activists are silent, I can find no answer except that Shalit is an Israeli soldier, Shalit is a Jew. So again, it is conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism. Again, it is fascism.

Thirty-four years have passed since the day when I came to this city to represent my husband, Andrei Sakharov, at the 1975 Nobel Prize ceremony. I was in love with Norway then. The reception I received filled me with joy. Today, I feel Alarm and Hope (the title Sakharov used for his 1977 essay written at the request of the Nobel Committee).

Alarm because of the anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment growing throughout Europe and even further afield. And yet, I hope that countries, their leaders, and people everywhere will recall and adopt Sakharov’s ethical credo: “In the end, the moral choice turns out to be also the most pragmatic choice.”

I hope they listen. Here’s the speech in original Russian.
BTW, Andrei Sakharov was not Jewish, but he perfectly understood the importance of Israel. I highly recommend his memoirs.

The meaning of jihad

While some think that the Global War on Terror is happily over… Raymond Ibrahim has a great article in Pajamas Media (reprinted in ME Forum): Words Matter in the War on Terror explaining very relevant concept of Jihad (which as of recently also officially became an unmentionable, at least in the U.S.) Ibrahim picks apart a piece by Colonel Jeffrey Vordermark, who attempts to explain – or rather excuse – Jihad to the gullible Westerners. I recommend the entire thing, here’s a short excerpt:

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“Jihad” has a very precise, juristic definition; more to the point, Sunni Islam — which accounts for nearly 90% of the Islamic world — is, in fact, “simple and monolithic,” thanks to the totalitarian nature of Islamic law (Sharia), which categorizes all possible human actions as being either forbidden, discouraged, legitimate, recommended, or obligatory. Indeed, of the major religions of the world, none is perhaps so black and white, so clear cut as Islam, which meticulously delineates to Muslims the correct “way” of living (“way,” incidentally, being the literal definition of the word “Sharia”).
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The real problem here is that Vordermark’s assertion that the military “jihad” has been “traditionally” limited to “defensive warfare” is totally false.

Even so, Vordermark is to be excused; he warns us about accepting definitions of “jihad” from “pundits, academics, and laymen,” and surely his falls into this category. Thus let us dispense once and for all with infidel-based definitions — including my own — and see what Islam’s own most revered authorities have to say about what “jihad” really means:

First, it needs to be borne in mind that Sunni Islam is wholly dependent on the various rulings (ahkam) of the so-called four schools of jurisprudence (al-madhahib al-arba’). I am currently reading an Arabic manual called Al-Tarbiya al-Jihadiya fi Daw’ al-Kitab wa al-Sunna (“The Jihadi Upbringing in Light of the Koran and Sunna”), written by one Sheikh Abd al-Aziz bin Nasir al-Jalil. After closely examining the word “jihad,” he concludes that “jihad is when Muslims wage war on infidels, after having called on them to embrace Islam or at least pay tribute [jizya] and live in submission, and then they refuse.”

The book also contains terse summaries of the word “jihad” from each of the four schools of jurisprudence, which have the final say as to how Islam — or in this case, jihad — is articulated: According to the Hanafis, jihad is “extreme and strenuous warfare in the path of Allah, with one’s life, wealth, and tongue — a call to the true religion [Islam] and war to whoever refuses to accept it”; according to the Malikis, jihad is “when a Muslim fights an infidel in order that Allah’s word [Sharia] reigns supreme”; according to the Shafi’is, jihad is “fiercely fighting infidels”; and, according to the austere Hanbalis, it is “fighting infidels.” (Note: “infidels,” or kuffar, simply means non-Muslims.)

In short, the “traditional” meaning of jihad is offensive warfare to spread Islamic hegemony — period. This is doctrinally, textually, historically, and consensually demonstrable. At any rate, who probably better understands what jihad means, the non-Muslim Jeffrey Vordermark or the Muslim Abd al-Aziz bin Nasir al-Jalil? More to the point, whose definition will Muslims actually take seriously?
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Emph. added by me.

Islamic radicals keep polio alive and spreading in areas they control

StrategyPage reports on Islamic Biological Terrorism:

Islamic radicals continue to wage a biological warfare campaign on Moslems in several parts of the world. And they do it in the name of God. Over five billion dollars has been spent on the polio eradication campaign, which began in 1988, when there were 350,000 cases of polio worldwide. The disease had already been largely wiped out in the West, so the eradication campaign was largely to the benefit of poor countries mostly in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and throughout Africa. Since then, one of the three strains of polio, Type 2, has been wiped out (or at least no cases of it have been reported in this century.) The worst strain, Type 1, is almost gone, with fewer than 200 cases reported a year, versus nearly 1,700 three years ago. It is believed that Afghanistan contains one of the few active populations of Type 1 polio.

The few remaining cases of polio exist in Nigeria, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Islamic radicals in Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan urge Moslems to refuse the vaccination for their children, and sometimes attack the vaccination teams.
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So while India is on track to eliminate the disease, Islamic radicals are succeeding in keeping polio alive and spreading in areas they control. While most Moslems understand what polio vaccination is all about, the few Islamic radicals can still use terrorism and force to interfere with the effort to destroy polio for good.

Is this a kind of Darwin’s revenge? Poor children.

Imam who took part in Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace calls for extermination of Jews

Via IMRA: PMW Bulletin: Hamas Cleric Calls for Extermination of Jews
(includes transcript)

Bulletin Apr. 19, 2009 Palestinian Media Watch
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A Hamas cleric who once participated in an international conference of “Imams and Rabbis for Peace” — whose delegates vowed to “condemn any negative representation” of each other’s religions — has wholeheartedly espoused Hamas’s racist ideology in a recent Friday sermon on Hamas TV.
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Video:

My comments:
First, we should listen to what they say to their audience in Arabic, not to the West and in English.
Second, I do not think that mere “talking” will resolve all the problems, Mr. President.