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Bigotry and Terrorism

 

By Rabbi David Eidensohn

 

            Recently I attended a funeral for a neighbor who died in the World Trade Center bombing. The bombing was in September, and the funeral was in May. They didn't find the body until now. At last, the family of the deceased has the peace that comes from a funeral. They waited for the news for eight months. Is daddy dead? Is daddy alive? Now, at least, they know.

            People who attended the funeral, and people who attended similar funerals, and all of the people who cried with everyone else at the tragedy now know that the F.B.I's top terrorism expert figured out the World Trade Center bombing plot before September 11 and recommended ways that would have prevented it. Agent Willams from Arizona saw flight schools swarming with Arabs. Williams, described by Newsweek as a "superstar" for his nailing of Michael Fortier in the Oklahoma City bombing, was an expert in terrorism and was working to combat it. Incredibly, his memo was ignored.

            Why? Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman give two opinions in the New York Times op-ed. Dowd says that "laziness" and "arrogance" of F.B.I. officials are to blame. Friedman says that Americans in general lack "imagination" and cannot appreciate what goes on in the head of certain evil people. Both completely miss the mark. Dowd's suggestion that the superiors of Williams were too lazy to make a phone call to a flight school is ridiculous. In addition, what does arrogance have to do with this? Don't superiors sit in their offices awaiting input from their local branches? Are they too "arrogant" to deal with them? If they F.B.I. had supervisors who were too arrogant and lazy to work, how does the F.B.I. get through its day and preserve its reputation? Not only is Dowd's suggestion ridiculous, but also we must think why she even offered it. Stay tuned.

            Friedman assures us that,  "Even if all the raw intelligence signals had been shared among the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the White House, I'm convinced that there was no one there who would have put them all together, who would have imagined evil on the scale Osama bin Laden did." This is ludicrous. Any ten year old would have reacted. For years, the terrorists have been hijacking planes, blowing up buildings and seeking better ways of destruction. How much imagination do you need? Please. Not only could our officials imagine, they did. Agent Williams of the Arizona office figured out the plan that resulted in the September 11 bombing, so here was somebody who did imagine it. Williams and his supervisor both "imagined" what would happen exactly as it could happen and did happen. Therefore, Friedman's idea is wrong.

            The obvious errors in these two articles are a story onto themselves. There is, fortunately or not, a true take on what happened, and when we hear it, we know exactly why Dowd and Friedman dished out those ridiculous columns. There is a true story why our government of hardworking and intelligent people refused to accept the William's memo. It is the most important story of our times. The key to the failure to prevent the September 11 attack was because of our passion with civil rights. There was a reluctance to target the swarms of foreign Arabs training at American flight schools. How can you single out a minority? One CIA operative in Afghanistan asked for a translator for a group of refugees at a critical time in the recent operations there. He was told that a translator was not available, but he would get an expert on sexual equality.

            The American reaction to the September 11 bombings was to assure everyone in America that Islam was a great religion. Conversions to Islam rose after September 11. Opra did her thing, and even President Bush went to a mosque, sitting next to someone who declared that Arafat was unworthy of support for trying to make peace with Israel.

            Hitler invented Civil Rights. Allow me to explain. Hitler made Civil Rights paramount. Before Hitler, nobody cared very much about Civil Rights. Up to the Second World War, a major American radio preacher, Father Charles Edward Coughlin, spoke about Jews in a way that Hitler would appreciate. Henry Ford published a book of hate that influenced Hitler. Hitler, by showing how far bigotry could go, made everyone conscious of the need to do something about civil rights. When we realize this, we understand that civil rights and the respect for minorities are unnatural, and occurred only because of an extreme historical aberration. How long can an unnatural thing based not on nature but on the wish not to be like so and so last? The future is about this question.

            Europe is in shock because one of France's candidates for president was a Fascist. Holland is in shock because of the enormous gains of the extreme right-wing party there. For years, the tension between civil rights and toleration of minorities has increased in Europe. Millions of Arabs come to Western countries, do not integrate, utterly despise the host country's mores and culture, and devote themselves to a religion that seeks domination over others. Some French Moslems speak openly of making war and making France a Moslem country. Is this feasible? It is feasible. The Moslems have a huge birthrate, and the French have a minimal birthrate. As time goes on, there will thus be more and more Moslems, who already number millions, but there will be either less or about the same number of non-Moslem French.

            When AIDS arrived in America, it was restricted to the homosexual community. It had not yet arrived in the drug-users community or in the inner cities. Stopping the epidemic was a simple thing. If a sick person comes to the doctor, he is recorded as one with HIV, and must inform the government of his partners. If he acts irresponsibly, he is locked up. That is how all infectious diseases are treated. That is why, in America, we have so few infectious disease.

            Immediately the gay lobby began to cry out that it was being persecuted. The government replied that no gays were targeted and that no discrimination existed. People who came to doctors of any race or creed had to obey the rules of infectious disease control. The gays argued that this could lead to discrimination. The government argued that only public health doctors knew what was happening, and they knew secrets and kept them. The gays argued, maybe, perhaps, a doctor would go tell out that so and so has AIDS, and this could lead to discrimination. This ridiculous argument won the day. In New York State, California and Florida, and other gay lobby states, HIV and AIDS were taken off of the list of infectious diseases! All of the people who contract HIV of AIDS can thank their politicians for this, and of course, the gay lobby.

            There are thus almost a million people in America with HIV and AIDS. The past year saw an increase of 25% in new HIV cases over the previous year, from 40,000 new cases to 50,000. Everywhere, gays are getting and spreading all types of sexually transmitted diseases. They have learned that they are immune from the criminality of infecting someone with disease. What does the government do about this? It gives the gay organizations that made these laws more money.

            When AIDS arrived in India, the health department immediately targeted the gay community, because then, the gays were the only ones to have AIDS. The United Nations was aghast. How can you target a minority? It suggested a "more integrated approach." Since the only way to stop an epidemic is to control the local population where it breeds, India did not stop its AIDS epidemic. Now India has a major AIDS problem. To deal with such a huge population in terms of medicine and health care would challenge the financial resources of the country. All of this misery could have been stopped, by targeting the homosexual community. What is so terrible about targeting the homosexual community? Did the doctors want to hurt them? They simply wanted to find out who was sick and wanted to prevent them from infecting others. Why don't the "others" have rights? That is the key. In the post-Hitler world, "others" have no rights. We have become fanatics about minorities.

What happens when minorities make problems? When the homosexuals made problems, we just let them alone. America funds the homosexuals who spread AIDS by supporting gay organizations. The government gives millions and millions of dollars to gay organizations that use this money to teach people the glory of homosexual sex, and the disease is spread increasingly.

What does France do when millions of Moslems move in and block the sidewalks when it is time to pray and bow? How do they react to the numerous Moslems among them who are ready to die to spread Moslem domination? One the one hand, post-Hitler Europe is fanatic about civil rights. On the other hand, there is still some instinct for self-preservation. When someone, like the right-wingers in France and Holland, call for dealing with something that is obviously a serious crisis, the civil rights establishment roars in anger, but they still get backing. Incredibly, Holland, the most liberal of European countries, is the one with the strongest right wing. Extreme begets extreme. That is the problem. Are we going to deal with our problems of survival by becoming bigots, or are we going refuse minorities the privileges of harming the majority, not because they are minorities, but because they are like everyone else?

Why does a country not defend itself? Obviously, civil rights have become another fanatic religion, where people die rather than transgress. The problem is that this religion is a secular one, and is very young. People can decide, one day, that it is too harsh a deity and no-thank you. If so, people may decide to go back to Hitler, saying that when there were Fascists, at least the garbage got picked up and we live without fear. In the early twentieth century, major governments became dictators, such as Germany, Italy, Poland and Russia. When people can't get a normal life out of democracy, the mood is set for some extreme person or group to promise order and seize control.

When will we reach, with AIDS and the Moslem minorities, a flash point? Possibly, there will never be a flash point. However, over time, the patience of the populace will be so taxed that it will inexorably move to improve its conditions. We have seen in America, in just the past few years, a changing of attitudes towards the HIV Confidentiality Laws. Many states have changed their statutes, even though they still don’t put HIV and AIDS on the infectious disease list. The call of the Center of Disease Control that every homosexual man be tested yearly could never have taken place in previous years.

The issue is not only one of demography and disease. The secular Westerner has a very nebulous value system, mostly centered on bigotry, if anything, and such does not support a war for survival. Secularism is mostly about number one. The Moslems have a very "together" system of values. They are often willing and even anxious to die for their religion. What would happen when these people make demands and back them up with suicide bombers?

The battle against homosexuality in the West has gone badly because our religious values are not secure. Nonetheless, the family community has held its own better in American than in other countries. In Canada, biblical passages proscribing homosexuality are hate crimes. Less we think that this happens only in Canada, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the gays in Romer, in the Colorado case. One reason given was that the biblical proscription on homosexuality was based upon hate.

The future of the world will be decided by who, in the West, wins the war about bigotry. If the secularists who feel that bigotry is the cardinal value, and all must die rather than violate it, triumph, we will have a world epidemic of AIDS and other diseases. If those with Sinaitic morality win the war, no minority will push death onto others in the name of Civil Rights. If the secularists who feel that bigotry is the one supreme value win the war, the West will not gird itself against the Moslems intent on destroying it. If the Sinaitic people win, they will grind the terrorists into the mud.

At this point, the secularists have the upper hand, but as time goes on, and present processes develop further, things will change. What will happen then? When the world throws off the yoke of fanatic civil rights, will it become a humane and sensitive Sinaitic person, or Hitler?

                         

 

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