From the Wall Street Journal:
In one episode of the 29-part Ramadan special "Al-Shatat, The Diaspora," a rabbi orders his young son to kidnap a Christian friend so that his throat can be slit and the blood drained into a bedpan to be used to make food for Passover. The rest of the series tells the usual anti-Semitic plot of alleged Jewish aspirations for world domination. This TV show is just one example of the programming run by Hezbollah's global satellite channel, al-Manar. While the spread of this kind of hatred is despicable in any context, when it is broadcast to millions of viewers by terrorists intent on destroying lives, it becomes a weapon of global jihad.
Al-Manar routinely runs videos encouraging children to become suicide bombers, calls for terrorists to attack coalition soldiers in Iraq, and promises that "martyrs" will be rewarded in the afterlife.
Hezbollah established al-Manar in 1991 as an operational weapon to incite hatred and violence and recruit children and adults as terrorists. According to al-Manar officials interviewed by Hezbollah expert Avi Jorisch for his book "Beacon of Hatred," the station's programming is meant to "help people on the way to committing what you call in the West a suicide mission." Viewers are told: "The path to becoming a priest in Islam is through jihad," as Hezbollah's Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech on March 23, 2002. Every day al-Manar reaches millions of Arabic speakers in the Middle East, Europe and North Africa.
But these are the only areas where the station is available today, thanks to a broad coalition of organizations and individuals -- Muslim, Christian, Jewish and secular -- as well as lawmakers in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America. When made aware of al-Manar's programming, seven satellite providers -- based in France, Spain, Holland, Hong Kong, Australia and Barbados -- decided that it was contrary to laws or basic decency, and ceased their broadcasts. These satellite providers recognized that far from being a freedom of expression issue, calls to murder can never be a legitimate part of the public debate.
But two satellite companies continue to broadcast the station's programming: Arabsat, whose largest shareholder is the Saudi government, and Nilesat, which is majority-owned by the Egyptian government. The footprint of these two providers covers all of Europe, from Spain to southern Sweden and the Balkans. It extends to North Africa and the Middle East. As a result, Arabic speakers in Paris, London, Madrid and elsewhere continue to have access to a station that fosters a culture of terrorism 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As al-Manar's former chairman Nayef Krayem said, "There is no act of resistance that can be classified as terrorism." The European Union must pressure the Saudi and Egyptian governments to stop broadcasting this hatred to impressionable young Muslims in Europe.
Read the full article by FDD's Mark Dubowitz and Roberta Bonazzi, director of the Brussels-based European Foundation for Democracy and a founding member of the Coalition Against Terrorist Media here.
Some rational people are seemingly too blinkered to understand that irrational people aren't rational. It's seemly beyond some rational people to understand that understanding the irrational is not the result of wishing rationality upon them. Some intelligent people are incredibly stupid.
A doctorate in International Relations might be some evidence of a person's ability to successfully cope with higher forms of bureaucracy but it's no evidence that the good doctor has the slightest idea of what it is to think like a savage. To understand the mind that runs to savage irrationality is to stop being so highly educated that one can't see objective reality.
Hire some thugs from Los Angeles to get some insight into Islam. Spend a few months in Haiti with the locals. Stop thinking in terms of the office and the suburbs. We're not dealing with intellectuals here. If our civil servants can't figure that out, can't figure out who we are dealing with, and can't figure out how to deal with our enemies as they are rather than as we think they must be, then we are in serious trouble.
Oh, wait a minute! We are in serious trouble. More thinking about social planning just isn't going to work. Forget rational, get real. Meet some local snake handlers. Meet the rest of the world. They hate you, and they're scarey. Deal with it-- or find someone who can.
Posted by: dag | October 04, 2005 at 07:49 PM