‘AMERICA ISRAEL TERRORISTS’ said the placard

How do you account for the lunacy of the Left? No, really…?

There it was briefly on the TV screen bobbing around in the hands of an attractive young white woman, a placard bearing the message in great black letters: AMERICA ISRAEL TERRORISTS. It was during a television report on the Earth Summit recently held at great expense and fanfare in Johannesburg, South Africa. The attractive, chicly dressed European woman was with a bustling group of others of a similar class demonstrating against those she considered the criminals and terrorists of the world: America and Israel.

Just a year ago, a group of Moslems belonging to a worldwide network of terrorists, Al Qa’ida, flew two planes into the Twin Towers in New York and one into the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth plane meant for the Capitol building in Washington was brought down by the actions of the passengers on board who knew from telephone calls with loved-ones that they were going to their death.

'Holy Tuesday' was the murder of three thousand civilians

During the past year, the world has learnt a lot about the deliberate intricate planning and the goals behind the attacks and those responsible for them. We learnt about the vast funding by wealthy well-educated Moslem Arabs behind the terrorist agenda. The confirmation has come mostly from the mouths of the leaders of Al Qa’ida itself. As recently as 9 September 2002, two self-confessed masterminds of the 11 September attacks claimed on Arab television that ‘Holy Tuesday’ was settled upon in 1999 and that the attacks ‘were designed to cause as many deaths as possible and havoc...’ (The Australian, 9 September) Who were these people they were determined to kill?

Were they soldiers in the battlefield guns ready to shoot down the Moslem crusaders, military personnel aiming their deadly technology at Islam’s cities, the pilots of enemy aircraft ready to bomb Moslem territory, tank commanders pointing their great muzzles at the Moslem armies? No, the people they wanted to kill, and still are determined to kill, are people like you and me. They were husbands and wives, girlfriends and boyfriends, people with mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children all going about their daily lives in their workplace. In brief, those brave Moslems in the planes under the order of Osama Bin Laden were intent on killing as many defenceless civilians as they could. This was their great victory – that they killed thousands of defenceless civilians. This is the reason they refer to their actions as ‘Holy Tuesday’ and thank Allah for their great achievement. The message of ‘Holy Tuesday’ is that if you are a non-Moslem, a Jew or an accursed infidel (meaning Christians), then you are of no account and you are a legitimate target for killing then and now.

So if you and your family are out on a pleasant Sunday trip, perhaps around the beautiful parks of one of our cities or strolling casually through the city centre, and you happen to be on the spot of one of those soft targets selected by the Al Qa’ida men or by other similar Islamic terrorist organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah, then you are of no account. You and your children will be blasted into pieces and the doers of the deed will cheer with joy and that joy will be reflected in the celebrations of the many sympathetic Moslems around the world – just as it was after the success of the 11 September attacks. Posters and t-shirts will appear triumphing over the spot where you and your children were blown apart.

Now the blind and deluded of the educated PC-class will roar their dismay at these claims and will reach for the usual invectives of racism, ignorance, discrimination and so on, but ordinary people unaffected by the propaganda that saturates the lecture halls of our universities will know that this is no exaggeration. The words of the terrorists and their sympathisers are well-known. Arab television has shown the great master of modern barbarism himself, Osama Bin Laden, congratulating himself and being congratulated on his success in bringing down the Trade Centre and killing all those defenceless civilians. The images of the results of the terror are well-known. The scenes of the dancing and cheering Moslems are there for anybody to see. The supporting graffiti in Western cities is there to be read. What sort of mind and mentality would you have to have to deny this?

Blowing apart civilians to advance the holy war

Go back over the news reports of the last two years about Israel. Let’s leave aside the terrorist events before then. What do you have? You have a Moslem campaign against Israeli citizens. No military target is ever aimed at, is ever touched. There are bombs blowing apart shoppers in a market place, bombs blowing apart children in the streets, bombs blowing apart teenagers at a disco, bombs blowing apart people at a wedding reception, bombs blowing men in a pool room, bombs blowing apart students in the canteen of an international university, bombs blowing apart people in their homes – there are bombs blowing apart civilians in any place or time that gives the opportunity to those Moslem warriors.

Let’s be under no illusion about this. Al-Qa’ida, Hamas, Hezbollah and other such murderous organisations will never allow Israel to exist. They will continue their campaign there and abroad until they can achieve their aim of destroying Israel, the Jews and the accursed infidel. The media and the deluded Left will be manipulated to further those aims wherever possible. Thus we will see the likes of the venal Richard Carleton over there in Israel to put together a ‘60 Minutes’ program that makes the Israelis seem like the villain. There is little regard to the Israeli women and children blown apart by the terrorist bombs. They are of no account when there is a top rating television program to be made. Richard presents us pointedly with the devastation brought about by Israeli retaliation in the face of this barbarism, as if no other peoples or nations would retaliate in a similar manner.

What about terrorism outside America and Israel? Not likely in Australia? The experts are telling us that the Al-Qa’ida network is well established in South-East Asia, that the terrorist organisations are intent on recruiting Moslem youth for their ‘holy’ wars wherever there are Moslems communities. There is a punishment for those moderate Moslems who will not cooperate with the holy war. People like Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf, who have stood against the barbarous agenda are marked for assassination. Dr Rohan Gunaratna, an acknowledged expert on Al-Qa’ida and a visiting fellow at a Singapore university, says that President Musharraf will not survive the assassin more than eighteen months (ABC TV, 8 September).

The rights and duties of all citizens

All citizens of Australia enjoy the rights and duties of citizenship. The Moslem community in Australia is no exception. This is no dispute that they be accorded the normal rights of citizens. The corresponding duty is that they recognise their duty to declare themselves against the terrorist agenda of the Moslem terrorists and accept the prevailing social and political make-up of their adopted country.

In terms of our traditional democratic values, there is in fact more required of Australia than merely recognising the rights of citizenship in the case of the Moslem community at this time. It is both right and in our interests to enter into close dialogue with the Moslem community in order to understand how best their rights as Australian citizens can be preserved and to ensure that ordinary peaceful Moslem families are free of threat and violence. It is right and in our interests to join with their leaders in order to understand the specific problems migrants from Islamic countries experience in Australia, and to seek solutions to such things as gang violence and unemployment. There is, of course, the corresponding duty of the leaders of the Moslem community to closely supervise their communities in order to detect the possible presence of people seeking to promote the agenda of the terrorist organisations and the recruitment of young men for their worldwide jihad. This is a grave duty in the circumstances.

The Left would grant this – free of an emphasis on the duties. There is, however, a ground of obligation towards the Moslem community the Left would not recognise: Christian belief. The Pope has been at pains to state the need for Christians to act always in charity. His writings are full of the obligation to recognise the dignity of each person ‘created in the image and likeness of God’. It is in this dignity that each person must recognise the duties that flow from the ‘greatest commandment’: love God and thy neighbour as thyself. Thus the rights and duties of the traditional democratic order are not prior to Christian belief but historically and metaphysically underwritten by the Church and Revelation. It is a grave failure of the Christian to neglect his duty of charity towards anyone in our society. Such failure only provides material for the anti-Christian bigot to exploit.

The Left have been in their element this year uttering their platitudes about democratic values, ejaculating piously over the treatment of refugees, denouncing their opponents in the debate as racist and ignorant, and adding to the great canon of PC mythology about the deeds of the ordinary Australian – those ignorant people who will never qualify to be inducted into their class. But there is one charge missing from all this pious deploring of the moral deficiency of ordinary Australians: the charge of anti-Semitism. The charge of anti-Semitism has always been a trump card of the Left. It has always been used to silence the Left’s opponents.

Who’s a hypocrite now?

Who’s a hypocrite now? Who is guilty of the clearest form of anti-Semitism and of the worst possible case of hypocrisy? But never mind, it will be like water off a duck’s back. Such blatant inconsistency and appalling hypocrisy has marked the Left ever since it emerged from the socially exclusive salons of Paris, erected the guillotine and slaughtered thousands of French peasants. And that was only a hors d’oeuvre, an aperitif, before the feasts of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. That has never bothered them. Why should a little hypocrisy over Israel and the Jewish community bother them now?

There is a more tangible side to the Left’s most recent display of hypocrisy – besides the evident ideological inconsistency. The loudest denunciations of the treatment of the Moslem community in Australia since the 11 September attacks have come from the PC-class as they wring their hands and despairingly console each other over the ‘increasing racist incidents’ in the community. But what they rightly demand for the Moslem community (tolerance and security of family and property) they have never guaranteed for one particular community in Australia.

There is one community, and only one, in Australia who is obliged to maintain the most stringent security with regard to personal safety and the safety of their organisations. It is the Jewish community. It is bad enough that business offices and such like of the Jewish community have stringent security. It is a foul blight on the democratic values the Left constantly bleat and bleed about that security guards are posted at all Jewish schools. What is it one finds in these schools? Children in strange clothes, the maintenance of incomprehensible custom, secret cellars where bombs and terrorist plans are made and hatched..? No, what you find is indistinguishable from what you see in the majority of Australian private schools whether they are Catholic, Protestant or secular.

There is a critical question to be asked here: against what is that stringent security established? It is to guard against terrorist attacks by Moslem extremists – is the answer. Has the Moslem community in Australia any reason to set up the same stringent security for fear of Israeli or Jewish assaults? There is absolutely no evidence to suggest it. But there is evidence to suggest the same circumstances in Israel require the same pattern of security.

One can only wonder what goes on in the head of that woman holding the placard: AMERICA ISRAEL TERRORISTS. What has made her hold the victims responsible for the acts of terror – against all the evidence? What is it in her life and education that has brought her to a point she shares with the members of her class? The Left has a history of defending the criminal against the victim: Russia, China, Cambodia and so on. Now yet again we must sit back and listen to leftwing ratbag after leftwing ratbag blaming the United States for the Moslem attack on America and blaming the Israelis for the bombs that blow their citizens apart. We must sit quiet yet again while all the arguments about American imperialism, neo-colonialism, safeguarding oil, and so on ad nauseam are taken up by the enemies of the Christian West and recycled back against us to justify the violence and hatred. Who has the clue to this insanity?