Collective Punishment? What about Collective Beliefs?
When it comes to Gaza and the Palestinians, there's a lot of talk about the evils of collective punishment. And maybe that is correct. Israel and the IDF are certainly trying to avoid it. But I think it's long past time to have a serious discussion about what Palestinians and Muslims collectively believe.
Let's start with some questions:
What percentage of Palestinians support Hamas?What percentage believe that Israel should not exist?What percentage believe that homosexuals should be killed?What percentage believe that apostates should be killed?What percentage believe all Jews should be killed?
Here's a few more to ask them: What should be done with a woman who commits adultery? What should happen to a woman who is raped? What should be done with a Palestinian daughter who wants to marry a Jewish man?
How much moral ambiguity do these questions allow?
And then, just for fun, ask these same questions in other Muslim countries. Start with sunni Saudi Arabia and shia Iran. Even with their supposedly vast theological divide, you'll get a lot of agreement on these questions. You know, questions that matter today.
I would love to add that we should ask these same questions to Muslims residing in the West. But I don't think you could get honest answers. Muslims behave so much better when they are less than five percent of a society than when they are, say, twenty percent. Although we have learned that if they cover their faces and go protest in the street with their coreligionists, they're more likely to tell you the truth.
Here's another question to ask Muslims: What should happen to the infidels? And especially as the percentage of Muslims in a society rises? You know, all those people who do not see, in fact refuse to see, that a murderous, pedophile, rapist, polygamist, warlord was the perfect man for all time. Can these non-believers breathe the same rarified air as Muslims? Here again, not when Muslims are a well-behaved five percent of a population, but when they are approaching twenty percent, or more. What then Muhammad?
In fact, why is it that the only peaceful Muslim societies have either less than five percent or more than ninety-five percent Muslims? And between these extremes, we find bloody conflicts and generational wars of attrition.
Should we not look to history for the answer to these questions? Sweden, are you not interested in these questions? Maybe the Humanitarian Superpower should consider all of these questions before it becomes another Bosnia. Of course, the bombings have already started.
And while we are looking to history, here are some additional questions. Whether you believe in the divinity of Jesus, or not, he was a Jew living where? In fact, how many Jews were then living in the area we call Israel today? And finally, how many Muslims? I ask these questions not for myself, because I do not think they are terribly important, but rather for Muslims and their decolonization allies.
Now, just for fun, let's answer these last few. Jesus was a Jew living in what we today call Israel. How many Jews lived there at the time? ALL of them. Yes, at the time, every Jew in the world lived there. And how many Muslims? Exactly zero. Let that sink in.
To be fair: Were there also pre-Islamic Arabs? Undoubtedly. Nomadic, tribal, and warring to be sure. But the religious injunction to hate and murder Jews came only with the birth of Muhammad and his creation of the Islamic faith – 600 years later. Six hundred years.
I remember when the particularly nasty Helen Thomas said that Jews are occupiers, and that they should go home...to Poland and Germany. So many Muslims and decolonization types think this way. At the time, I remember thinking, why does no one ask her Where the Jews came from? That is, Where were they before they fled to Poland, and why did they flee?
No, the question of Who was there first? does not help the Muslim argument. And while I don't find the question very important or relevant today, I am not the one asking it. If Muslims and decolonizers want to argue We were here first, I think they have a historical problem.
The Nakba of 1948 followed the Nakba of 570 with the birth of the murderous maniac Muhammad. Both continue to this day.
Now, as the argument goes, one is ancient history and the other is within living memory, and therefore, somehow actionable. Whatever that might entail and however bloody that might need be.
But in the 1,400 years since Muhammad’s reign of terror, Islam has conquered its way from the Atlantic coast of north Africa to Indonesia just off the Pacific. That's from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the long way. Now it’s working its way north and south over this same multi-continental span. We cannot and will not dismiss over a millennia of Muslim aggression and conquest because it had a setback in 1948. So yes, we can carve out a little space for a Jewish homeland, and yes, we can defend it.
But in fact, they only ask the question as an excuse – A justification to eliminate the state of Israel and to murder Jews. That's it. Helen Thomas knew this. Palestinians know this. Iran knows this. Muslims know this.
The decolonization types don't know anything other than the doctrine of virtue signaling. They only know that they are on the side of the oppressed. More accurately, they are on the side of those they have been told are oppressed. As if Muslims do not have fifty-seven nations of their own...including the richest nations in the history of the planet. And as if the Jews are not the most oppressed people in the history of the world...with one tiny little sliver of an enclave, about the size of New Jersey. You raging ignorant lunatics.
So our Muslim Question is: What should be make of all this and what should we do about it? At a minimum I think all of us who believe in western civilization need to understand who we are dealing with and what they believe. Until then, we will never be able to address the civilizational problem before us.
And for those of you in the West who do not believe in western civilization, well I have never seen one of you, of any background, who did not reap the benefits it offers. Not one.
One final question for Muslims: What do you think should happen to someone who asks these questions and shares this opinion? Try to be honest. Let everyone see who you are.
But show us your hands.