The Flavors Of East River Pollution

Kofi Annan would have you believe that

Political tensions, rather than religious differences, lie at the heart of the growing rift between the West and the Muslim world, and any broad solution to the problem must include an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict...

Annan went on to say that

"We should start by reaffirming and demonstrating that the problem is not the Quran nor the Torah or the Bible," Annan said after receiving a report by an international group of scholars that proposes ways to overcome the rift. "The problem is never the faith; it is the faithful and how they behave toward each other."

With these few words, Kofi Annan has shown why the UN remains an abysmal failure at understanding conflict and preventing the tragic loss of life.

The ideas were generated by an UN sponsored organization referred to as the 'Alliance of Civilizations.' This august body is filled with representatives like former Iranian President, Mohammed Khatami, who was president of his country during the time of that nation's nuclear program made most of it's advances. Under Khatami, legions of religiously motivated suicide bombers targeting America and Americans were recruited. In the recent Hizbollah-Israel war, suicide bombers left Iran to fulfill their religious obligations against Israel.

Khatami was also in charge and oversaw the arming of Iran's proxy, Hizbollah, headquartered in Lebanon. Hizbollah's leader, Hassan Nassrallah, has made clear his beliefs, In a 2002 (Oct.23) interview in the Daily Star, he said that

If the Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.

In her book, Hezbollah: Politics & Religion, Amal Saad-Ghorayeb noted the roots of that anti Jewish organization. She quotes the Hassan Nasrallah, the Iranian funded and supported terrorist, as he describes his own beliefs- all of course, approved by his masters in Tehran (To believe the Iranians would arm anyone with beliefs and ideologies so different from themselves is absurd). The following words, uttered by Khatami's boy, Hassan Nasrallah, are quoted from an article New Yorker in October 2002:

If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I did not say the Israeli.

More on the founder of Hizbollah, in his own words, can be found here. It is important to grasp that most of Nasrallah's utterances were made as he was being armed and funded by Iran under the 'leadership' of the 'moderate' Khatami.

Another member of Kofi Annan's 'Alliance of Civilizations' is Karen Armstrong, a make believe 'scholar' of Islam. Her 'credibility' in the Islamic world is derived in no small measure by labeling of anyone who disagrees with her skewed version of reality as 'Zionist.' She dismisses the eminent Bernard Lewis and others in that vein, while at the same time, ignoring history and reality when necessary (Ms Armstrong has a hard time acknowledging that that Israeli 'occupation' is the result of a1967 Arab initiative to eradicate Israel and the slaughter of Jews that would result in 'rivers of blood'). She also describes European anti Semitism as a kind of fabricated mirage and predictably, it is all a conspiracy-

"... It is part of a campaign to discredit European input in any future peace process."

Apparently, Ms Armstrong dismisses reported violence directed toward Jews throughout Europe, now at record levels.

The other members of the ridiculous 'Alliance of Civilizations' have equally hollow bona fides.

It also bears remembering that notwithstanding the Secretary General's pronouncements, most, if not all, of the violence is described as religiously motivated by those who commit the atrocities. Reformists in virtually every Arab and Islamic nation have noted that the violence is the result of misguided or deliberate distortions of Islam religious ideologies.

The 'Alliance of Civilizations' report does not address why government controlled Arab world media is filled with some of the most vile hatred and bigotry directed at non Muslims. Nor does the UN funded study address the reason school textbooks are so hate filled (see this, too, for latest reference to Jews as 'apes' and Christians as 'swine' references).

While there is no doubt that the Israel-Palestine issue is a 'hot potato' in the Arab world, it is by no means the cause of all the problems in the region.

The Israelis are not the reason the UN Human Development Index placed the Arab world at the bottom of the barrel.

The Israel-Palestine issues are not the reasons Iran is a human rights disaster or the GIA in Algeria raped children as a matter of course.

The Israel-Palestine issue is not the reason for the Arab Janjaweed slaughter of the Darfurese in Sudan, nor is it the cause for Arab slave traders plying their evil trade in Mauritania. The despicable criminals in Australia that raped non Muslim women, had the audacity to say that they were 'entitled' to take what they wanted, because they were Muslim. Those despicable remarks were rejected by most Australian Muslims.

It is not the Israel-Palestine political issues that are behind the tsunami of Muslim Holocaust denial, or the reason Mein Kampf is a perennial best seller in the Arab world. The Israel-Palestine issue is not behind the dysfunctional behavior and cruel tyranny of Arab world leaders.

To believe the rabid hate and anti semitism will dissipate like smoke in the wind if an Israel-Palestinian peace accord is signed is to confirm a real detachment from reality. That truth is perhaps best exemplified by Syrian President Bashar Assad's welcoming remarks on the occasion of John Paul II visit to Syria:

They [the Jews] tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality with which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Mohammed.

Does that even remotely sound like political remarks? John Paul II was subjected to the carefully prepared remarks that insulted not only Jews, but the Pontiff himself. It was under the Pontiff's watch that Catholic-Jewish rapprochement was allowed to flourish.

Dr Sanity, in Doomed? notes that the Arab world pathologies are uniquely their own- and Israel has nothing to do with that dysfunction:

This is an enemy who has no desire to win the "hearts and minds" of the people... to their cause. They simply ruthlessly kill as many as...they possibly can.

...has revealed the enemy for what it truly is--a mindless, death-worshipping ideology that cannot be reasoned with; cannot be appeased; and cannot be ignored. We cannot walk--or run-- away from it; we cannot make deals with it-- not in Iraq; not in Iran; not in Lebanon; not in Gaza; and not anywhere this malignant anti-human, anti-life, anti-freedom ideology has taken root. Either we fight it now, no holds barred, knowing that we are all that stands between the forces of death and destruction and those of life-- or we will be doomed to suffer even more of their barbarism in the near future.

Finally, that Kofi Annan wants to see a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict is admirable. That he insists the 'negotiations' include those who refuse to acknowledge Israel's existence- and right to exist- and who openly call for the destruction of Israel and the wholesale slaughter of Jews, only serves to highlight the level of moral and ethical pollution Mr Annan has brought into the United Nations.