RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s hard not to notice certain parallels between Saturday’s events in Copenhagen and events in Paris last January 7 and January 9.

In the latter case, first people were attacked (at the Charlie Hebdo offices) for having insulted Islam, and then “folks” (in President Obama’s memorable formulation) were attacked for being, well, folks. In the Copenhagen case, similarly, first Islam-insulters were attacked, and then…folks.

In both cases the “folks” were Jews—what a coincidence.

Of course, sarcasm aside, it wasn’t really a coincidence at all. For thousands of jihadists in the world and many millions of Muslims—certainly not all, but significant numbers—who support them, having been born a Jew is sufficient grounds to be killed. In an earlier iteration, this was known as Nazism.

Yet, while there is clearly an Islamic tradition of antisemitism rooted in the Koran, Jews and Jew-killing have generally not been an obsession in the Islamic world. What makes our era different, of course, is the existence of that intolerable outrage known as the state of Israel, which occupies one-sixth of 1 percent as much land as the Muslim Arab countries, and of course, an even tinier proportion of the total land mass of the Muslim countries.

Comparative religion is not a statistical exercise: it is meaningless to tally up the victims of Crusaders and compare them to the victims of Islam and quibble about which religion is more violent. Religious war of conquest, that is, jihad, has the same role in Islam that the Lord’s Supper has in Christianity. Christianity (and Judaism) have exercised violence in the past but never sacralized violence. That is unique to Islam among the self-styled Mosaic religions.

The great German-Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig argued that Islam was not a monotheistic religion, but a “parody” of one, a monistic paganism in which the old pagan gods were rolled up into a single deity. I have summarized Rosenzweig’s views in a number of locations, and taken the argument further in two essays published a decade ago (“Jihad, the Lord’s Supper, and Eternal Life” and “The Blood is the Life, Mr. Rumsfeld”). Below I offer some extracts from those essays, first published in Asia Times.

Even if the Israeli government will not cooperate, there are other avenues to obtain relevant information regarding the incidents you are investigating.

Everyone knows what will happen to a person in Gaza who speaks against Hamas. In addition, the shameless, almost pathological, mendacity of Hamas (and other Palestinian spokespersons) has been exposed over and over again.

I have heard you will be taking submissions of “evidence” by private telephone call.

It is impossible to understand what is happening on the region without reference to Hamas’ charter calling for the destruction of the State of Israel and the elimination of the Jewish people.

As you well know, the legal concept of proportionality does not involve a simplistic BBC/New York Times-style body count,

“A crime occurs if there is an intentional attack directed against civilians…or an attack is launched on a military objective in the knowledge that the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage.” Luis Moreno-Ocampo, former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court

If Hamas has the resources to fund and arm a new “Liberation Army” consisting of 17,000 fighters, why does it continue to demand that the international community allocate billions of dollars for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip?

Hamas has turned the Gaza Strip into a huge training camp for jihadis and militiamen affiliated not only with it, but also with the Islamic State.

Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar declared that some of the boys would be recruited to fire mortars and rockets at Israel. And of course, he reiterated Hamas’s true goal, namely the destruction of Israel. When Hamas talks about “liberation,” it means it wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and replace it with an Islamic state.

Obviously, the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, do not see Hamas’s cynical exploitation and abuse of Palestinian children as a war crime.

Like math and the Midwest, ISIS confuses progressives. It’s not hard to confuse a group of people who never figured out that if you borrow 18 trillion dollars, you’re going to have to pay it back. But ISIS is especially confusing to a demographic whose entire ideology is being on the right side of history.

Raised to believe that history inevitably trended toward diversity in catalog models, fusion restaurants and gay marriage, the Arab Spring led them on by promising that the Middle East would be just like Europe and then ISIS tore up their Lonely Planet guidebook to Syria and chopped off their heads.

But ISIS also believes that it’s on the right side of history. Its history is the Koran. The right side of its history is what Iraq and Syria look like today. It’s also how parts of Europe are starting to look.

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by movie producer Aaron Shuster (“The Bank Job,”) Ann-Marie Murrell, the CEO of PolitiChicks.com and Ari David, host of The Ari David Show Podcast.

The guests discussed Brian Williams: Reporting, Lies and Videotape, analyzing the imagination and punishment of an NBC News anchor (starts at 25:10 mark).

The Gang also focused on Obama: Liar, Liar, Obama’s Prayer Breakfast Comeback Moment, Obama: Deflecting for Islam, and much, much more:

In the aftermath of the killing of a man at a Copenhagen synagogue by a member of the Religion of Peace, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “This wave of attacks is expected to continue. Jews deserve security in every country, but we say to our Jewish brothers and sisters, Israel is your home.” Russian emigre Natan Sharansky echoed Netanyahu’s call, stating, “There is no future for Jews in western Europe.”

In response, European leaders shouted down Netanyahu. “We know there are doubts, questions across the community,” said French President Francois Hollande, who was elected with in excess of 93 percent of the Muslim vote. “I will not just let what was said in Israel pass, leading people to believe that Jews no longer have a place in Europe and France, in particular.” The same week, Jewish tombstones were spray-painted by the hundreds in eastern France.

President Obama’s ongoing antipathy towards Egypt is no accident. Our feckless president has long had a soft spot in his heart for the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and Egypt’s removal of the terror group from the corridors of power has rankled the administration. So what is it the Egyptians understand and our president denies? The Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments insists that ISIS was birthed by the MB.

Dr. Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa and other Egyptian scholars have explained that while ISIS is publicly hostile to the MB, they share identical goals. Last August, the Ministry illuminated those goals. “They are both waging a war against their homelands with vandalism, destruction and murder—murder on behalf of the enemies of the state who fund them,” read a published statement. Other similarities include the exploitation of women to further their agenda, and the reality that both groups use “lying and deception in the name of religion,” and both have “ignorant and lying” leaders who “use religion to play with the minds of the public,” the statement explained. “The main commonality between the two groups is their terrorist acts,” it added.

That marvel of American self-government—the separation of powers—is once again frustrating President Obama ’s habit of suspending statutes that conflict with his political goals. This time a federal judge in Texas has rebuked and blocked his attempt to rewrite immigration law—potentially rewiring the debate in Washington.

Judge Andrew Hanen issued a preliminary injunction late Monday against Mr. Obama’s order that awards quasi-legal status and work permits to some five million illegal immigrants. His meticulous 123-page ruling is a vindication of the 26 states that brought the challenge and, more significantly, for the rule of law.

Last November the Department of Homeland Security published memos instructing immigration enforcers to disregard federal laws that require deportation of the undocumented and place strict limits on who may work in the U.S. The White House and DHS claim this “deferred action” is nothing more than routine prosecutorial discretion, as if the department is merely conceding that its officers cannot hunt down and deport the millions of illegals in the country.

Obama’s temporizing has been his foreign-policy trademark, from Iran and Syria to Libya and Ukraine.

With the supposed cease-fire in eastern Ukraine a mirage, the White House can soon be expected to return to its public pondering of whether to supply Kiev’s military with lethal aid to fend off the Russian-backed insurgency. If President Obama finally does decide to send antitank weapons and other hardware the Ukrainians have pleaded for, it will be only the latest example of the administration’s too-little-too-late temporizing.

Indecisiveness is the predominant characteristic of how Mr. Obama executes U.S. national-security policy. Undoubtedly there are other influences: ideological blinders; mistrust of America’s presence in the world; inadequate interest, knowledge, focus and resolve. But in implementing his policies, good or bad, the president has shown that equivocating is what he does best.