The Respect Party has introduced a fresh example of sectarianism and communalist politics into mainstream British politics. Respect comprises a coalition of the Socialist Workers Party and elements associated with the Muslim Association of Britain, along with antiglobalization activists and antiwar protesters. Its ideology is thus an amalgamation of radical international socialism and Islamism and offers a basis for cooperation around a shared agenda. Although Respect preaches peace and social j
El-Baradei’s complicity in the Iranian effort to acquire nuclear weapons is counterproductive. If the IAEA and El-Baradei were to join in the effort to warn and deter the Iranian regime, it might still be possible to halt the uranium enrichment and similar activities, without needing to use force.
Normally conspiracy theories remain at the margins of a culture. But when conspiracism moves from the margins to the center, and from passive responses to active ones-Nazis and communists in the twentieth century-it can produce convulsions of paranoia and violence that leave tens of millions dead. After World War II, Western culture appeared to have definitively marginalized conspiracy theory. And yet, at the turn of the twenty-first century, there has been an aggressive rise in (traditional) Mu
Recent years have seen greatly increased attempts to manipulate Holocaust history and its memory. For several decades much attention has been devoted to Holocaust denial. Distortions of the Holocaust past, however, occur in many other ways. The number of mutations of such distortions is also expanding. Manipulations belong to several groupings, such as: Holocaust Promotion, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust Depreciation, Holocaust Deflection, Prewar and Wartime Holocaust Equivalence, Postwar Holocaust
The immigration of a large number of Muslims into the Netherlands over the past four decades has led to major challenges for the Dutch Jewish community. These include, for instance, increased verbal and physical violence against Jews and the Jewish community, the need for greater security measures, impacts on the teaching of the Holocaust in Dutch schools, and changed attitudes of the authorities and third parties toward needs of the Jewish community.
European-Israeli Relations: Between Confusion and Change? Part I
Manfred Gerstenfeld
European-Israeli Relations: Between Confusion and Change? Part II
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Nonofficial chronologies of NGOs give evidence of a considerable extent of anti-Semitic graffiti and destruction in East Germany. An extensive and deeply rooted right-wing subculture exists in the five new German federal states. In the last two parliamentary elections for East German federal states, the neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) achieved significant success.
Recent Iranian implied threats to “liberate” some of the Gulf states, and an Iranian editorial calling Bahrain a district of Iran, have caused great consternation in the Gulf states. In Iran’s view, every region of the Gulf is essentially Persian and not Arab; moreover, a large Shiite population lives in the Gulf. In the eyes of the Arab states, the threat to wipe the Sunni world from the map is graver than the Iranian promise to annihilate Israel.
Despite Iran’s enormous oil and gas reserves, ironically, one of its most glaring areas of vulnerability is in the economic sphere. Iran is a country whose revenues stem almost completely from the export of crude oil. Yet the international sanctions imposed so far do not indicate that there has been any serious mobilization for a real struggle against the Iranian nuclear bomb.
In many ways, people are still fixated on a model of the Middle East that has now become obsolete. For the last quarter of a century we have been in the midst of a conflict with militant Islam, which seeks to assume power and deliver a corrective to the historical decline of Islam and the rise of the West. The first major victory was when the Iranian Ayatollah regime displaced the Shah in 1979.
In the past, Israel did not have to pay the price of rhetorically accepting full withdrawal in order to gain a diplomatic dialogue with the Arab world. The basis of the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference was UN Security Council Resolution 242. The Madrid conference also produced a multilateral track that led to direct diplomatic contacts between Israel and the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia. If 242 was sufficient in 1991, why is it not good enough for 2007?
The false accusation of Holocaust inversion—the portraying of Israel, Israelis, and Jews as Nazis—is a major distortion of history. This anti-Semitic concept claims that Israel behaves against the Palestinians as Germany did to the Jews in World War II. “The victims have become perpetrators,” is one major slogan of the inverters. By shifting the moral responsibility for genocide, Holocaust inversion also contains elements of Holocaust denial.
Tehran pays 100 percent of the Islamic Jihad budget and gives a bonus for every Israeli murdered. In addition, through Hizbullah Iran pays the Al Aqsa Brigade, which belongs to Fatah in name only. Iran imports 40 percent of its consumption of refined oil products. An embargo on gasoline could create a very serious problem for the regime. In addition, Iran is dependent on the flow of money and credit from Europe, which could be severed.
Since it has now been ruled that states can be tried for genocide, a case can probably be brought under the Genocide Convention against Iran since Article III of the Genocide Convention describes incitement to genocide as a punishable act. The ICJ ruling may have applicability to the Palestinian Authority, as well. The Charter of Hamas, the leading party in the PA, calls for genocide.
