Mumbai connection:Islam terrorism,antisemitism,dhimmitude

It so happened that two weeks after Muslim terrorists struck in Mumbai, among other civilian targets, like the Taj and the Oberoi landmarks, also a Jewish culture  center, thus dealing another blow to the freedom of movement and the sense of liberty of a great democracy, three events were reported in the press on the same day: the Jewish group which operated its center has announced that within weeks a new Jewish center will be opened, in spite of the loss of 6 Jewish lives among the 167 victims. Secondly,  the Arabic  and Islamic press at large, especially the most venomous in Syria and Iran, imputed the Munbai horror to the Jewish-Zionist conspiracy; and thirdly, the UN Commission on human rights, again  singled out democratic Israel for condemnation, while the daily abuses of human existence in Darfur, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq , Iran, Pakistan and other dictatorships, were once gain ignored.

The Mumbai mammoth act of terror, rightly dubbed as the "Indian September 11", if only for the fact that in both cases the terrorists were trained in Pakistan and the operation was concocted within its territory, has provided a unique point of convergence of all those elements, and brought the two strategic partners of the past decade or two - India and Israel- closer together as never before. It seems perhaps absurd to compare  tiny Israel (smaller than the island of Sri Lanka) with its minuscule population (a third of  the city of Mumbai alone), and calling the Indian  elephant and  the Israeli fly "partners". But when we examine the extraordinarily close relationship that has developed between them, if not due to their  disparate sizes, then due to their shared interests and values, we cannot comprehend how and why both of them have been targeted by Islamic terrorism and repeatedly fallen victims to it.

When Bib Laden issued his  communiqué following the abomination of September 11, he made it clear that he and his organization were set to struggle against the  West and the Jews (not Israel or Zionism). The reason was clear: while Europe, which has been quietly invaded by 30 million Muslims in the last quarter century, was in no mood to resist but rather to appease Islam,  America  stood as the only major power willing and capable to fight back and block the Muslim terrorists' quest for world dominion. It had to be both punished and humiliated in order to deter it from further supporting Muslim regimes that were to its liking,  but which Bin Laden and his underlings wished to topple, to substitute for them the world Muslim Caliphate under their own dominion.

America had also to be countered  due to its quest to democratize the very same Islamic regimes  which Bin Laden wishes to  eliminate. India, the great democracy of Asia and the largest in the world,  stands as a natural ally of the West that Bin Laden seeks to destroy, therefore an enemy of Islam. If one adds to those "sins" its adamant defense of its territory in Kashmir,  its recent close strategic partnership with America, its historical enmity with Pakistan and  its economic and military rapprochement with Israel, that makes  the Indian-Israeli alliance a target of al-Qai'da and its affiliates like the Hamas, the Hizbullah, the various Jihad groups and the Asian  Lashkar-e-taiba.  Being weak militarily against the west, those groups, which are sponsored by tribal  entities in Afghanistan and by the homegrown Taliban in Pakistan, have embraced the strategy of terrorism, in order to escape Western retribution, while  they pursue relentlessly their struggle from a state that is not theirs (HIzbullah in Lebanon, Lashkar in Pakistan, Hamas in Palestine, al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan , etc).

If Islamic terrorism has adopted the recourse of fighting by using Islamikaze "martyrdom", because there is arguably nothing to be done against "suicide-bombers", each of whom can terrorize and paralyze an entire public, as in Mumbai,  then it is necessary to demonstrate, like President Bush, that we are facing not a war against individuals who are desirous of death, and whom we cannot bring to justice when they succeed in their task, but against those who train them, dispatch them, arm them, indoctrinate them, support them and finance them. And that as long as we keep them on the run, they will be less able to concoct and carry out their dark and cruel schemes against the Western democracies, including India and Israel.  That Muslims pursue their campaign of intimidation against the West  and Israel is not new, but what does seem surprisingly new, compared with the legendary  fighting spirit of the British and the Israelis, is the seeming capitulation of some western capitals to their tormentors, and the baffling incomprehension they exhibit of the Islamic phenomenon which has repeatedly declared itself so clearly inimical to them.

Just consider the spirit of dhimmitude which has inundated the entire Democratic world due to its much-cultivated dependence on Muslim oil and the humiliating consequences thereof. This European state of mind, which has also taken hold  on some governmental milieus in Israel and India as well, dictates caution, surreptitious maneuvering in order to survive, and a self-humiliating sycophancy toward the Muslim rulers in the hope of gaining their favor, has been inherited from many centuries of Islamic rule on vast swaths of Christendom, from Sicily to the Iberian Peninsula, from the Balkans to the gates of Vienna; from the submission of Jewish communities to absolute Islamic rule for almost two millennia, and the domination of the entire Indian sub-continent by AKbar and his successors of the Moghul Empire, until the British Raj took over. This aggressive Islam which attempted, but failed, to Islamize Europe and all of Asia in the past, had also subjected large Christian and Jewish communities to the dhimmi regime  in the Near East that was conquered by the emerging new faith of Islam: like the Copts in Egypt, the Assyrians in Iraq, the Maronites in Lebanon,  and countless other Christian communities which first became subjugated majorities and then systematically persecuted minorities in their own countries. This  amounted, after many centuries of oppression and contempt by the rule of Islam, to a self-diminution of the dhimmis - a loss of their pride  and confidence in themselves and self-deprecation that they did not stand up to the standards set for them by their rulers, and a total distortion of their self-image and the image of their oppressors. So much so, that many Christians and Jews, years after being liberated from dhimmitude, continued to think and act as dhimmis, namely to hold themselves grateful to their Muslim masters, who beat, humiliated, and mistreated them.

What is more, the spirit of dhimmitude has been adopted, or taken over, by many Western societies today which, for reasons hard to understand or explain, pretend not to hear or comprehend Muslim threats. Instead, Western societies evince "understanding" in the face of those threats, and seem to be marching foolishly toward spiritual and cultural capitulation and enslavement. Take, for example, the regime of self-defense and of intruding into the privacy of the air-passengers, which has been imposed in airports all over the world in the past three decades due to Muslim terrorism. Instead of prosecuting it and eliminating it at its roots, the West surrendered to it and adopted, at considerable financial, human and moral cost, measures to live with it in what has amounted to submission to a mammoth collective punishment of innocents. Even more ominous is the wholehearted and even enthusiastic support of Europeans to Muslim fundamentalists on their own turf, when they rushed to sustain Bosnians and Kosovars  and other Albanian Muslims in Macedonia, that have been supported, financed and trained by revolutionary Iran; when many Muslim volunteers from Chechnya to North Africa and the Middle East were recruited to fight  a jihad for their cause; and when Muslim anti-Semitism, that was manifested in the murder of Daniel Pearl in Karachi, or of the Jews of Mumbai, has considerably contributed to the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe today.

Again foolishly, the West let Muslim jihad  take root  in Europe while singling out the  Serbian  ethnic cleansing (abhorrent in itself), thus causing the severance of Christian continuity between  Russia and Central Europe to the Aegean Sea, by creating and sustaining a continuous string of revived Muslim presence from former Yugoslavia  to Turkey, hoping thereby to extend the Turkish model of "Islamic  moderation", and salvaging the European borders from a Muslim onslaught. Israel acted similarly mindlessly when it let Lebanon be taken over by HIzbullah and Gaza by the Hamas. As it turned out Kosovo was totally subtracted from Serbia under UN auspices, while in Turkey a Muslim fundamentalist party took over government in 2002.

Standing up to the menace of world Islam,  in unison by all Western and other non-Muslim  cultures,  has then become the key to successful struggle against it. For even Muslim regimes who cooperate with the West, like Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, have a problem of legitimacy in their own countries, and their populace usually takes the pro-Jihadi stance against the policy of their governments. Even in the cases where legitimacy was addressed through democratic elections, like in Pakistan and Turkey, large parts of the population remain anti-American and anti-Semitic, and resent Western involvement in their countries. That means that clearer borders have to be traced between those who give shelter to terrorists, even if half-heartedly, and those who defend themselves against them. That also means that the currently corrupt UN, which is dominated by the most backward, corrupt, absolute  rulers of the Muslim world; allows one of its members (Iran) to threaten the elimination of another (Israel) with impunity; and plans another outrageous Durban II  to duplicate the scandalous Durban II of 1991, where vicious anti-Semitism  won the upper hand,  has to be circumvented by a new  Association of Western and Democratic  countries (AWAD) which would restore decency in international relations.