#should we be worried about islamophobic and anti-arab violence? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

loudlytransparenttrash · 8 years ago

Text

The 99.9% of Muslims Aren’t Extremists Myth

A number of what I can only hope are well-intentioned people, including Barack Obama, have claimed that the Islamic State and other militant radical groups have practically no support among Muslims and only one percent of Muslims worldwide hold extreme views. In response to a question of why his administration avoided using the phrase, “Islamic terrorists,” Obama responded by saying the vast overwhelming majority of Muslims reject radical interpretations of Islam, distinguishing between those with extreme views and the remaining “99.9 percent of Muslims.”

Every day we are told that Islamist terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. They say the causes of al Qaeda and ISIS are not Islamic and we are told to align ourselves with the 99.9 percent of Muslims who are looking for the same thing we're looking for. But is it true that 99.9 percent of Muslims don't support extremism? I understand the desire to believe this and the optimism expressed in such a claim, but what is the evidence for it? Our feelings? It’s what our Muslim college friend told us? What about major research and polling organizations who have repeatedly shown a very different picture?

There are two main arguments that are in significant need of addressing. The first is against the claim that the beliefs and goals of al Qaeda and ISIS are not Islamic. The truth is, those who repeat this lie don’t actually know much about Islam, especially the liberal teenage Hillary supporting Muslims living in California who want to call everything and anything Islamophobic. It may sound surprising but most of them don’t even speak Arabic and haven’t read the Quran and only choose fragments of the Quran to follow, they only know what they hear from their parents and their Mullahs, and so most of them think the radical Islam actions are against Muhammad's teaching and Islam does not support these things.

Why are they ignorant about their own religion? Because the interpretations of Islam and most of the Quran verses are very vague which leaves the door open to multiple interpretations, none technically being more correct or incorrect than the other, all equally Islamic. Most people don’t bother to do a little research or read some books since they can easily be refuted, so they will usually say “do your praying and that’s good enough, if you look any deeper into Islam, it will just be confusing.” The ones who actually do the research and learn the history of their religion and the meaning of their scripture, usually they become one of these three things:

They become horrified and either become non-religious and abandon the faith. They become “reform” supporters who try to focus on the good side of Islam while wanting to repeal and move on from the violent and oppressive ideas of Islam. Or they become terrorists.

It’s easy to say the extremists are taking the Quran out of context but who’s to say their interpretation is wrong? Are you saying there are no calls for death, violence, torture and extremism in the Quran? It’s only love and peace? Give me a break. There are hundreds of Islamic scholars and clerics all studying the context and none of them can agree on one interpretation and amongst them are both moderates and terrorist leaders. There is no Islamic world leader like the Pope who can set the record straight so every Muslim has their own interpretation of being a good Muslim, and their ideas simply cannot be called un-Islamic as they have taken their interpretations from the exact same book and the exact same scripture. That’s why Dr. Shabir Ally can talk about the fair nature of Islam while the leader of ISIS - who also has a PhD in Islamic and Quranic studies - is running a campaign of terror in the name of Allah. There isn’t a moderate version and a terror version of the Quran, it comes from the same book and they are legitimately interpreting and practicing what it says. Everything terrorists are doing today is what Muhammad and his men have already done and it’s all there within the Quran and Hadiths. To deny the link between terrorism and Islam is to deny there is no link between belief and behavior and that my friend, is to deny yourself rationality and impartiality.

Now the other argument that is all too often being regurgitated is the myth of 99.9 percent of Muslims do not support extremism. As anyone who cares enough or has the courage to admit, Islam has a problem with extremism but it’s more than just terrorism, it’s extremism as a whole and it’s about time we have an open, honest and fact-based conversation about it. Our society has evolved to a point where we can have a civilized debate about almost anything, except what may be the most important issue of our time - the rise of radical Islam. The left somehow feel worried that they're going to be called racist if they criticize an ideology but it’s this fear of being called a racist that has caused many people to act against their better judgment and it has lead to the cost of innocent lives.

People have become afraid of reporting suspicious activity in fear of being called a racist. The perfect examples being San Bernardino and the most recent Manchester bombing. Political correctness seems to have cost people their lives yet nothing changes. Freedom of speech is supposed to be a liberal principle but today’s liberals bury that basic right the moment Islam is mentioned. Muslims don’t need to be defended by teenage girls with blue mohawks or ISIS roleplaying “anti-fascists,” they need to be protected from the radicals in their own religion who want them dead along with the rest of us.

There are about 1.6 billion Muslims, in fact there’s probably a lot less since in almost every Muslim country it’s illegal to denounce Islam. There’s almost a billion less Muslims in the world than Christians yet most of the terrorism in the world today involves Islam in one way or another. Obviously, not all Muslims are terrorists, in fact a small percentage are, I agree, but how many hold extremist views and beliefs? How many could you say are as peaceful as Obama and left-wing activists want us to believe? This is significant because when we are considering even small percentages of the Muslim world, then we are still talking about tens, if not hundreds of millions of people. This is especially concerning when we consider the different types of Islamic extremism and what they mean for us.

There are three main categories of Islamic extremism. The left automatically jump in at this point screaming “they’re not all terrorists!” but they have to understand that when we are talking about extremism and Islam, we are not just talking about just terrorism, we are identifying and talking about the very specific extreme ideas of this particular ideology, which creates the link between belief and behavior. It has nothing to do with race and it’s so much bigger than just terrorism. Terrorism is the result of dangerous fundamentals and it’s those fundamentals we are talking about when criticizing Islam. It’s not racist or xenophobic. It’s critical analysis.

First we have the jihadists. These are people who wake up in the morning wanting to kill apostates, they believe paradise is waiting for them if they kill infidels, they believe in martyrdom and global Islamic domination. Jihadists are organizations like ISIS, al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, Hamas and the various jihadi lone wolves who murder people in San Bernardino, Texas, Paris, Belgium, Jerusalem, Ottawa, Madrid, New York, London, Boston, Sydney, Orlando, to name a few. It’s these “bad apples” that the left only focus on when defending Islamic ideology, they say because only a tiny minority of Muslims actually commit terrorism, it’s no reflection on Islam. But Islam extremism doesn’t stop with terrorism, it’s only the tip of the Islamic iceberg.

Next we have the Islamists. These are people who are just as convinced of martyrdom and global Islamic domination but they are more willing to work within the system, they're aren’t yet prepared to blow themselves up on a bus, they instead want to overtake governments and use democracy against itself. Islamists want many of the same things as the jihadis, it's just that their tactics differ so instead of engaging in terror themselves, they use the political and social systems to further their aims. Perfect examples are the Palestinians who voted terrorist group Hamas into power and the Egyptians who in 2012 elected the Muslim Brotherhood into power. The Muslim Brotherhood have not hid the their stated goal of establishing a global Islamic state run in accordance with Sharia law. Another Islamist group that’s actually on our doorstep in North America, CAIR, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and has been listed as a terror organization. CAIR presents itself as a moderate civil rights group representing the interests Muslims in America. They pop up often in the media calling everything Islamophobic and getting every film or ad they don’t like shut down. This is who Linda Sarsour is working for when she continuously tries to convince young American women that Sharia law is so cool and progressive and the sad part is, it’s actually working.

The third category of Islamic extremism are the fundamentalists. It’s this group that the left ignores the most in order to keep the numbers as low as possible when trying to debate the percentage of peaceful Muslims and those who don’t hold any extremist views. Sadly, Islamic fundamentalists come in the masses. They hold views about human rights, women and homosexuals that are deeply troubling and the people who should be concerned the most are feminist, LGBT and left-wing activists but we get the exact opposite reaction from them.

In a 2013 Pew Research poll of Muslims around the world, they found only 57 percent had an unfavorable view of Al-Qaeda and only half had an unfavorable view of the Taliban. 13 percent of respondents declared outright support or favorability for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The Pew numbers showed remarkable consistency when they came out with their 2015 poll that focused on Muslim responses to the “Islamic State.” In an average of ten primarily Muslim nations sampled in that poll, Pew demonstrated alarmingly high percentages of either outright support for ISIS or many respondents who were undecided on how they felt about the world’s largest terrorist organization. In Pakistan for example, just 28 percent of Muslims were against ISIS. In Nigeria, 34 percent of respondents either saw ISIS favorably or undecided how they felt about them, in Turkey the number was 27 percent, in Indonesia 22 percent, in Malaysia 36 percent, and in Senegal it was 40 percent. In total, only half of all Muslims polled throughout Islamic countries rejected ISIS and other terror organizations.

When asked if religious judges should decide family and property disputes using Sharia law which includes being sentenced to lashings, being stoned to death and hung for crimes committed ranging from dating a non-Muslim, talking to a man or being gay, between 66 and 94 percent of Muslims in 10 Sharia countries said they supported it. An average of 81 percent of Muslims in South Asia and 57 percent of Middle East - North Africa Muslims support cutting off the hands of thieves and while 76 percent of Muslims in South Asia and 56 percent of Muslims in the Middle East - North Africa support the execution of those who convert from Islam to another faith. When you take the average from all the Muslims surveyed around the world, an average of 27 percent believe that apostates should be executed, 39 percent of all Muslims believe that honor killings can be a justifiable punishment for a woman who has had pre-or extramarital sex while 42 percent of French Muslims, 35 percent of British Muslims and 26 percent of American Muslims, 39 percent of Palestinian Muslims, 29 percent of Egyptian Muslims, 39 percent of Afghani Muslims, 26 percent of Bangladesh Muslims, 18 percent of Malaysian Muslims, 15 percent of Turkish Muslims believe suicide bombings against non-muslims can be justified. Is none of this extremism? Is this just “cultural differences?” How exactly did the left come up with the 99.9 percent figure?

In South-Eastern Europe, 88 percent of Muslims say homosexuality is morally wrong, same applies to 95 percent of Muslims in Southeast Asia, 89 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, 82 percent in the Middle East - North Africa and 80 percent in Central Asia. 51 percent of Turkish Muslims living in Germany believe that homosexuality is an illness. As for sex outside of marriage, 94 percent of Muslims in the Middle East - North Africa and Southeast Asia and 87 percent in South Asia want it illegal. As for women’s rights, 93 percent of Muslims in Southeast Asia, 88 percent in South Asia, 87 percent in the Middle East - North Africa, 70 percent in Central Asia and 43 percent of Muslims in South-Eastern Europe believe women must not have the right of choice, she must obey her husband and she must cover herself. Only 25 percent of Muslims in the middle East - North Africa believe daughters should be paid inheritance equally, Jordan 25 percent, Iraq 22 percent, Morocco 15 percent and Tunisia 15 percent believe daughters should be paid and treated equally.

36 percent of 16 to 24-year-old British Muslims believe converts to another religion should be punished by death. 13 percent of 16 to 24-year-old British Muslims "admire organizations like al-Qaeda that are prepared to fight the West” and 58 percent believe that "many of the problems in the world today are a result of arrogant Western attitudes.” 40% feel it is unacceptable for Muslim men and women to mix freely. Two thirds of British Muslims say they wouldn’t alert police if another Muslim joined ISIS, one in four British Muslims want British law replaced with Sharia law, one in four British Muslims say terrorism is justifiable, 100,000 British Muslims sympathize with suicide bombers, over thirty percent of British Muslims believe violence against anyone who mocks the Prophet is justified, half of British Muslims believe homosexuality should be illegal, forty percent believe wives should submit to their husband and five percent agree with stoning cheaters to death. This whole 99.99 thing isn’t quite stacking up now, is it?

it is not just Pew reporting such findings, as a number of other polls have demonstrated similarly depressing results. Consider the 2015 survey by ORB International which found that 22 percent of Syrians see the Islamic State as having a positive influence on their country. A 2011 MacDonald Laurier Institute Poll found 35 percent of Canadian Muslims would not oppose al-Qaeda. A 2015 Metropoll that found that 20 percent of Turks supported the slaughter of Charlie Hebdo staffers and cartoonists. A 2015 poll by The Polling Company CSP Poll showed that 37 percent of Muslim-Americans viewed ISIS beliefs as Islamic or correct and 33 percent said the same about al-Qaeda.

So what other evidence might one point to as a justification for the 99.9 percent claim? None. While it’s easy to prove against the firm assertion of ISIS and extremism having practically no support in the Islamic world, which has been repeated by most western politicians and leftist activists, I am not suggesting that most Muslims agree with the extremists in their faith, only that the extremists represent a much, much larger and more troubling minority than anyone on the left will ever be willing to admit so it continues to be swept under the rug and never talked about. It denies reality and does nothing to address the endless problems described above or aid those Muslims who are making efforts to combat a very real problem among their co-religionists and one that ultimately impacts us all, Muslim or non-Muslim. We have a deadly virus that is spreading rapidly and will soon be out of our control, we have to identify the virus honestly and openly and fight against it while we still can. We have to start being honest about Islam.

#islam

105 notes · View notes

friend-clarity · 7 years ago

Text

No free speech in Canada

Canada: Islamist-Leftist-Government Alliance Silences Free Speech

by Christine Douglass-Williams January 8, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11693/canada-islamist-leftist-alliance

For writing and warning about political Islam, I was terminated as a director at the federal government's Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF), an agency usually at arms-length from the federal government.

As I wrote at Jihad Watch:

I have been terminated from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, four months after a threatening letter by Heritage Minister Melanie Joly about my writings on Islam at Jihad Watch,

Joly made good on her threats. The Privy Council has terminated my appointment, despite my years of dedicated commitment to the Foundation, on which I also served as Chair of the Investment Committee, and as a member of the Human Resource and Executive Committees. Why? Because I dared to criticize political Islam on Jihad Watch, and because of My Personal Warning to Icelanders, in which I warned about the deceptive works of Muslim Brotherhood operatives in their infiltration of the West. Their tactics are well documented.

I personally make a distinction between those who choose to practice Islam in peace and harmony with others, and those with an agenda to subvert democratic constitutions, demand special privileges over other creeds, and attack innocent people as a supremacist entitlement. It is odd to be removed from a race relations foundation for my private work in criticizing Islam, which is not a race.

Canadian Press (CP) gave my story balanced coverage. It was run by Post Media outlets, Canoe, The National Post and even Huffington Post. The lengthy Toronto Star story -- "Board member of anti-racism agency fired amid accusations of Islamophobic commentary" -- however featured a number of far-left, pro-Islamist sources; among them: The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), CAIR-CAN/NCCM and the Mosaic Institute.

In examining these questionable organizations:

According to the SPLC, "Antifa" is not a hate group but Jihad Watch is, and its Director, Robert Spencer is "one of America's most prolific and vociferous anti-Muslim propagandists". The Washington Examiner described the SPLC as "a fraud and nobody should treat them as responsible actors". Unfortunately the Toronto Star did. Now, the Christian Broadcasting Network has rightly bemoaned that "Merry Christmas and Jesus are appearing on the SPLC's monitoring hate hashtags list." Even the left-leaning Politico asks the question: "has the Southern Poverty Law Center lost its way?"

CAIR-CAN, renamed the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), is an affiliate of the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR). Although it changed its name, it admitted to being the same organization. CAIR is designated as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates, "placing it in the company of Al Qaeda, Islamic State", and was found to be an unindicted co-conspirator in America's largest terrorism funding trial in its support for Hamas, The Holy Land Foundation trial. CAIR-CAN/NCCM has foisted upon Canada its "Islamophobia" agenda, which is heavily pushed by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in order to shut down any criticism of Islam.

CAIR-CAN/NCCM has been involved in the establishment of "anti-Islamophobia" charters in six major Canadian cities and an "Islamophobia" snitch line. CAIR-CAN/ NCCM "sent a formal letter to the government in October", where its executive director, Ihsaan Gardee, said my removal from the CRRF is an "appropriate corrective measure taken by government to address (her) disturbing public record." Back in August, CAIR-CAN/NCCM stated that I had no place on the CRRF, and that they were "confident the federal government will take appropriate action with respect to this matter."

The Mosaic Institute is a little known promotions partner of CAIR-CAN/NCCM with allied "diversity" and "inclusion" initiatives that heavily endorses the "Islamophobia" narrative. The Mosaic Institute also compares the peaceful black civil rights movement to Black Lives Matter. The Mosaic Institute stated that my removal "reflects that the personal behaviors of a board member do actually matter."

Also weighing in was "expert" Amarnath Amarasingam, an ideologue who ignores the worst, unprecedented attacks and assaults by Islamists while asking the question "what about the terrorism of the far right?" He states, "the idea that someone who sits on the Canadian Race Relations Foundation's board would have anything to do with Jihad Watch or Robert Spencer is mind-boggling to me."

The Toronto Star article about my "firing" illustrates a concerning portrait of how far the Muslim Brotherhood has managed to weave its way into Liberal/leftist policy circles:

Tom Quiggin, a former military intelligence officer and a court-appointed expert on jihadist terrorism in Canadian courts, documents a troubling trend in Canada, such as the bullying of a Sun Media Journalist, Anthony Furey; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's passion in battling "Islamophobia;" his pro-Islamist sympathies in welcoming back foreign Islamic State fighters; and tabling an anti-islamophobia motion M-103 in parliament.

Motion M-103 can be traced to troubling, influential players in Canada with historic links to the Muslim Brotherhood. As Quiggin writes:

"Douglass-Williams' firing is worrying as it emanates from the Canadian Heritage Ministry – the same ministry which is holding hearings into the anti-Islamophobia Motion M103....the firing does not occur in isolation and should be seen in a specific context. Canada has an Islamic supremacist entryist problem in government... anyone who speaks out against this support for the cause of political Islam will be silenced by the Government of Canada as it moves towards a greater acceptance of Islamic extremism and violence."

When repeated calls to incorporate the term "anti-Muslim bigotry" in Canada's plan to "eliminate all forms of racism" was presented as an alternative to "Islamophobia", it was flatly rejected. Canada's influential Jewish advocacy group, CIJA stated:

"We stand in solidarity with the Muslim community against anti-Muslim bigotry...Words matter. We believe the wording of M-103 is flawed. Specifically, we are concerned with the word 'Islamophobia' because it is misleading, ambiguous, and politically charged."

Words indeed matter, "Islamophobia", unlike "anti-Muslim bigotry" is a word that is intended to beat down critics of Islam, is heavily pushed by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in its efforts to criminalize criticism of Islam.

This wished-for criminalization -- complete with jail terms, fines or even death sentences -- includes prosecuting those who sound the alarm against the spread of Islamism and jihad terror. This is the essence of M-103, which is a "slap in the face to democracy." Such resolutions pose a grave danger to the freedoms of Canadian citizens and destabilizes the future of the country, not to mention its relations to the United States.

According to the Muslim Brotherhood plan for North America:

"The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

Canada's Motion M-103 puts Islam above all other religions in that any other religion can be discussed openly, criticized openly and even be mocked openly without punishment or state penalty.

The infiltration detailed in the Muslim Brotherhood plan requires the participation of Western partners, and the racism industry has been the seat of its efforts. Pro-Islamist groups have managed to brand "Islamophobia" (including criticism of political Islam) as a form of "racism" and hate. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Trudeau declares that "we have a problem with Islamophobia in Canada", although Canada has a much bigger problemwith anti-Semitism, followed by anti-black and anti-gay hate crimes.

Motion M-103 has become a wall of divide, mostly along partisan lines. Many who support M-103 claim that it is just a harmless "anti-racism" motion and cast opponents to it as racist and "Islamophobic". Critics, however, consider that M-103 usurps democratic rights and freedoms and imposes sharia values in which Islam will not, and must not, be criticized. The Toronto Sun also points out how M-103 Heritage Department committee hearings turned to "prosecution" and "censorship" of those who criticize Islam. Rebel Media, for instance, was cited as a possible target.

A "bombshell" revelation recently exposed an alliance between far leftist radicals and ISIS/al-Qaeda jihadists. Former editor in chief of The New York Times Magazine and best-selling author, Edward Klein, uncovered in his book, All Out War: The Plot to Destroy Trump, "an FBI field report about the collusion between American anti-Trump radicals and foreign ISIS/al-Qaeda operatives." While this uncovers an extreme alliance between the "left" and Islamists, there are varying degrees to this troubling partnership. There seems to be a strong tendency for leftists to sympathize with and facilitate Islamists. In Canada, for example:

The Conservative Party sought to defund terrorist-linked groups, strip citizenship from terrorists, implement a zero tolerance policy on "barbaric cultural practices", overwhelmingly voted against the passing of "anti-Islamophobia" Motion M103 and shut down Iran's embassy in Ottawa. The Liberal Party, conversely, has repealed the Conservative provision to strip the citizenship of terrorists, erased use of the phrase "barbaric cultural practices" and introduced the anti-Islamophobia motion M-103 that referenced the Conservatives as "Islamophobic". Trudeau has defended returning ISIS fighters with a stunning personal passion, while under tough questioning by Conservative opposition leader Andrew Scheer in Parliament.

It is also worthwhile to highlight that an article by the Toronto Star entitled, "Canadians need to do a better job of calling out racist language and actions", outed a "working relationship" between the Toronto Star, the Mosaic Institute and the NCCM/CAIR-CAN. In a panel, these three organizations assembled together and criticized Donald Trump, the late conservative Toronto mayor Rob Ford, Conservative Party politician Kelley Leitch, Steve Bannon and "white supremacy".

In a registered letter dated July 27, 2017, which eventually led to my termination of duties on the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, Heritage Minister Melanie Joly wrote to me:

"I have become aware of language used in your online articles and blogs that appear to be inappropriate and inconsistent with the CRRF mandate vision of promoting diversity and inclusion, and respect for democracy".

Joly cited three specific articles:

My personal Warning to Icelanders, where I highlight the smooth strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood in their practice of deception and dissimulation (aka: taqiyya)

Canada Moving Toward Criminalizing Islamophobia, providing background information as M-103 headed for a Parliamentary vote

I Was Challenged: Why Write About Jihadists and Muslim Migrant Crimes?.

In each of these articles, I overtly explain and highlight the actions of Islamic supremacists and supremacism, and the dangers they pose to democracy.

I found it particularly troubling and peculiar that Joly would accuse me of violating the CRRF mandate of promoting diversity, inclusion and respect for democracy when this is precisely what I did in my dedicated duties at CRRF. Outside of the CRRF, I do the same routinely in my writings. Political Islam espouses the opposite of all I stand for as an activist for human rights for all. I oppose its treatment of women, female genital mutilation (FGM), child brides, killing of gays, goals to obliterate Israel, raping of infidel women, blasphemy laws etc., as any proponent of human rights and those who battle intolerance should.

Christine Douglass-Williams is author of the book The Challenge of Modernizing Islam. She is also an international award-winning broadcast journalist, regular writer for Jihad Watch and past external advisor to the former Office of Religious Freedom in Canada.

0 notes

thegreenamerican · 7 years ago

Text

Putting The Cart Before The Horse On Israel-Palestine

The real problem is the conflict, not what people say about it.

By Hunter Stuart

About a year ago, after returning from a year-and-a-half working as a freelance reporter in Jerusalem, I wrote a feature for The Jerusalem Report magazine about how living there had made me a lot more sympathetic to the Israeli perspective. (I was pretty anti-Israel when I moved there in 2015.)

My story went viral, in large part because conservative Jews (in Israel, Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere) were pleased with it. It seemed to confirm that they were “right” and the haters, so to speak, were wrong.

So I want to clarify a few things.

That article was written during an emotional time. My wife and I were living in central Jerusalem, in an area where Palestinians were stabbing Israeli Jews, or trying to run them over with their cars, at least once a week, for months on end.

Above: Me in Gaza, 2016.

‘While this was happening, some of my friends and family, plus a majority (yes) of the U.S. media, seemed to take the view that Israel was to blame for Palestinian terrorism. That started to piss me off, so I wrote my piece, which was titled “A View From The Frontlines: A year working as a journalist in Israel and the Palestinian Territories made Hunter Stuart rethink his positions on the conflict.”

I wrote it in a kind of fever. Writing in a passion gives force to your prose. But it sometimes means you’re perhaps too close to your subject to see the full picture.

Now that I’ve been away from Jerusalem for a year, away from the mayhem of Israel and the Middle East, I feel more removed, more thoughtful, about things.

To start, in my article I wrote that I was “no longer sure” that an independent Palestinian state was “such a good idea” because when the Palestinians in Gaza were given their own enclave in 2005, after 9,000 Israelis voluntarily left their homes (or were yanked out by the IDF), they chose to elect a political party (Hamas) that openly promotes and condones violence against Israelis and Jews in general.

Above: A Palestinian village in the West Bank, at dawn, one day in October 2015. (photo by Hunter Stuart)

Today I believe, once again, that giving Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza political autonomy is, in fact, a “good idea.” I don’t know whether it’s possible, or whether it’s going to be better than the current status quo.

But I believe it is at least a good option, and if that is what the majority of Palestinians want (which it seems they do, although polling in Palestine is a total can of worms), then the international community should encourage Israel to at least talk it through with their cousins.

Above: Palestinians in the Old City of Jerusalem (photo: Hunter Stuart)

Also - The Jerusalem Post (which owns the Jerusalem Report but is editorially independent from it) reprinted my article, their editors gave it a new headline: "How A Pro-Palestinian American Reporter Changed His Views On Israel And The Conflict."

Above: How The Jerusalem Post headlined my story.

JPost’s headline implies I’m no longer pro-Palestinian, when in fact I am. Not in the commonly understood meaning of the term, which is taken to mean “anti-Israel.”

But I’m pro-Palestinian because I support Palestinians’ desire to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as they see fit. (As long as it doesn’t include violence.)

I have over a dozen Palestinian friends, some of whom I still keep in touch with. I just sent one a Christmas present. And as much as it outraged me to hear the anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic views of some of the Palestinians I met while traveling in the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan, I cannot forget that many of those same people were kind to me, and let me stay in their homes and eat at their tables, and listened to me, often with an open mind.

Above: A man in a refugee camp near Jerusalem shows me where bullets from Israeli soldiers came through his window and into his family’s living room during an IDF raid in the street outside his home one night in 2014. His 24-year-old son was killed in the gun battle. (photos by Hunter Stuart)

While the response to my article was flattering, it alarmed me to have so many conservatives, most of whom were Jewish or Christian, who enjoyed it SO much. Jews and non-Jewish conservatives from around the world told me it was the best article they’d read all year, and that it gave them hope for the future.

I have nothing against conservatives (as long as they’re thoughtful, humane people, which most of them are). But to have two demographics cheering my story so ardently, and others (Muslims, progressives, people of color, etc) furious with me, or simply not reacting at all, has worried me over the past year.

“Hunter, nothing you said was really extreme,” a friend told me. “But extremists could use it that way.”

Yes, there were Jews who didn’t like what I wrote, and there were Muslims, Arabs and people of color who praised me for it.

But as a journalist, if the response to an article is split down ethnic or religious lines, you know you weren’t balanced enough.

I also want to clarify that the fanatics I met in the Middle East were not just on the Palestinian side -- a lot of them were Jewish. My neighbor in west Jerusalem, for example, was an American Jewish guy in his 40s who told me in all seriousness that he believed Palestinians should be killed if they refused to leave the West Bank.

The guy in the cell-phone shop in Jerusalem, who I got to know relatively well after going in to his shop over and over again to figure out my inscrutable Israeli plan, was virulently Islamophobic. He told me, word for word (trigger warning):

“We stole this land from the Arabs, but I don’t want to give it back. I don’t want peace. In America, you have many enemies, but the Arabs are the worst. I’m a racist. I hate all Arabs. Islam is the worst religion. They are like animals. Their trash is all over the street.”

I know I’ve got this quote mostly right, because I transcribed it as soon as I got back to my apartment that day.

This guy, who told me his name was Mike, was a born-and-bred Israeli (or maybe he’d been born in Russia but moved to Israel when he was young, I can’t recall). He was about 30 years old, and was modern Orthodox. He was lively and could be fun to talk to. But he was also shockingly racist.

Mike’s coworker told me that he’d lost a family member to Palestinian terrorism, so trauma may be why he’s so hateful towards Palestinians. Still, believing those things, and speaking openly about them, is really fucked up. And it sounds similar to a number of other conversations I had with Jewish Israelis and English-speaking Jews living in Israel.

Though it was flattering to get such an overwhelming response to something I wrote, to some extent I believe that it’s putting the cart before the horse.

Because the real problem is the conflict, not what people say about it.

#jerusalem #israel #palestine #hunter stuart #hunter stuart journalist #hunter stuart jerusalem post #a view from the frontlines #the jerusalem report #hunter stuart chicago #hunter stuart israel

0 notes