Blog about politics (mideast and pro-Israel, Canadian and local Montreal), world events, and random thoughts.

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The World I Know is updated on a semi-regular basis by segacs.

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5:44 PM
Terror in Madrid:

It's been more than a day since the horrible bombing in Madrid that killed over 200 people who happened to have been unfortunate enough to have been taking a commuter train yesterday... and I'm only posting about it now. For the most part, I've been observing the story with an odd sort of detachment - a sense that this is stuff for the major news outlets, and that I don't really have anything particular to add to the coverage. Not that the blogosphere's been quiet on the story, mind you. Just the opposite. Damian has some thoughts on the finger-pointing going on for responsibility (ETA? Al Qua'eda? Someone else?) and a very telling picture. LGF reports, among other things, a subtle shift in language used by the media. Imshin has the bizarre rationalization of why the Islamist terrorists would consider Spain a "legitimate" target, and also some poignant words of caution for everyone in the world who thinks terrorism is someone else's problem. There's lots more, of course.

But it wasn't until I read what Lair had posted, that I really felt that someone had managed to put my thoughts into words:

I wake up early, I check a few headlines, and I read about some boom-booms.

Want to know what my first thought was?

"Thank God they weren't in Israel."

You don't see the United Nations creating agencies and commissions and special assemblies concerning the "Basque Occupied Territories." Where's Kofi's statement demanding that Spain return to the bargaining table with the ETA? Where's the global shunning of Spain's legitimate government while welcoming the Socialists meeting with the ETA as distinguished guests, potential partners with which to write Madrid Conventions calling for a new land-for-peace territorial surrender?

I have yet to hear the European Union demand the granting of a Basque state (or the acceptance of credentials of a "Basque Observer Permanent Mission"), or President Bush declaring that he's come up with a Roadmap for them. Mexico and Venezuela are too busy propping up their corrupt crypto-democratic regimes to pay for arms smuggling into Spain with their oil revenues.

Where's the separate telephone codes? Where's the top-level two-letter Internet country code? Where's the cheese-flavored chips with the ETA leaders face on them?

Instead, the battle cry is unanimous: kill the ETA. Obliterate the ETA. Protect Spain's sovereignty.

Feh.

I certainly don't want to belittle the tragedy that has occurred. But whether or not it was the ETA (and it's looking less and less likely), Lair's point is a good one: why is it only terrorism when it happens somewhere outside of Israel?

Then I saw this headline:

Millions of grieving Spaniards poured into the streets crying "cowards" and "killers" on Friday as Basque separatist group ETA denied responsibility for the Madrid bombings that killed nearly 200 people.

As darkness fell, two million in Madrid alone joined a mass protest, whistling, banging drums, carrying black crosses or candles, and waving placards saying "No More Killing."

I'm heartened to see millions marching against terrorism in Spain. But where are the millions marching in Israel? Where are the millions of Palestinians taking to the streets marching against terrorism? Where are the millions marching in Europe for the over three years of incessant terror that Israel has been facing? In North America? Anywhere?

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10:19 AM
B'nai Brith sounds the alarm:

The annual audit of antisemitic incidents in Canada has echoed the disturbing worldwide trend of a rise in antisemitic incidents - 584 in 2003, up 27% since last year and 119% since 1999. B'nai Brith has also pointed out what the EU tried so hard to keep quiet: that the source of many of these incidents is young Arabs and Muslims:

Issuing its 22nd annual "audit" of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada, B'nai Brith's League for Human Rights took the unprecedented step of naming Arabs and Muslims generally as perpetrators of incidents.

"We've been able to identify 30 probable Arab perpetrators of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada in 2003," said Stephen Scheinberg, a Concordia University history professor who is the League's national chairperson.

"We're not saying all Arabs and Muslims are implicated, not at all," he told reporters at a Montreal news conference.

"But we are saying a small minority have brought these ideas with them" from the Arab world, he added, and "have been worked up" and "propagandized" by what they hear in Internet chat rooms and on Al-Jazeera broadcasts.

"And it's caused some real problems for the Jewish communities," Scheinberg said.

Of course this accusation is drawing an immediate flurry of criticism for B'nai Brith for "generalizing" - even though Scheinberg clearly accused a "small minority". Also, there are some questions as to the legitimacy of these audits - were there really more incidents, or were there simply more people reporting them? And does B'nai Brith's line of counting certain anti-Israel incidents as antisemitic fall in a different place than some other organization would draw it? We're sure to hear all of this and more, as antisemitic groups launch their usual backlash against B'nai Brith.

Doesn't change the fact that they're simply daring to speak the non-politically-correct truth. And that Canada will need to face up to that truth if we're going to improve the situation.

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11:16 AM
Why do the Israeli and Palestinian officials keep publicizing their meetings in advance? They might as well hand out engraved invitations to the terror groups to give them a time and place for their next attacks. Because to the terrorists, any form of diplomacy - no matter how small - is something that must be sabotaged. The only question is, who will be the next innocent victims?

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2:41 PM
Is that fear I smell?

Writer and journalist Irshad Manji gave a talk at McGill University last week, where she reportedly issued a challenge to the Concordia Muslim Students Association to join with Concordia Hillel in inviting her to speak there. MSA promptly turned her down:

"I challenge the Muslims and Arabs at Concordia to give proof of their love of democracy by inviting me to come speak and creating an open forum for debate and discussion," said the 35-year-old Manji, who's been labelled by The New York Times as "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare."

When reached for a comment, the president of Concordia's MSA, Ahmad Hussain, promptly declined Manji's request for an invitation. "I don't know why she didn't extend the same invitation to MSA at McGill. It's not fair and very provocative. She didn't wait for the MSA."

Hussain continued: "I think she's angry with her experience with Islam. She's a self-proclaimed scholar of the Koran and she doesn't even read Arabic. Honestly, I think she's looking for publicity. She's quick and rash to judge and she's not qualified. Her message is based on little more than rhetoric and personal anecdotes laden with speculations and generalizations. I've read many academics and journalists have dismissed her simply because the content of her message is unscholarly and unfounded as I've mentioned before. I think the only people who sponsor her speeches and hail her as "refreshing", are those who already agree with her."

Sounds like a lot of excuses to me. Could it be that MSA is afraid of Manji's message?

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1:14 PM
Why does this somehow not surprise me?

This year, The Link would like to dedicate the International Women's Day Issue to the memory of Zhara Kazemi and Rachel Corrie. While various Link members and staff may or may not have disagreed with the politics these two women held dear, we all agree the violent deaths they suffered in their non-violent opposition to human rights abuses was tragic, and a travesty of justice.

This as part of the Concordia paper's special Women's issue, which was, as they put it, produced by throwing "all those who identify as men out of the office and allows the women a Women Only Space to complete production of the paper".

Let the eye-rolling begin...

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12:37 PM
Paul Jané has the latest horror stories from Zimbabwe about brutal "training camps" that use gang-rape as a tool to indoctrinate youngsters to torture and kill. A BBC documentary got a chilling inside story reminiscent of their exposé on North Korean prison camps:

Debbie was taken to one of the so-called training camps for President Robert Mugabe's Green Bombers youth brigades. That night the camp boys came into her dormitory. They locked the doors, then took it in turns to rape her. "The boys... told me: 'If you cry, if you make a noise, we'll beat you.' " The ordeal didn't end there. Debbie said she was raped again - and again, every night for the next six months. She shared her blanket with an 11-year-old girl called Sitembile. The little girl would scream night after night as she too was raped.

The morning after being gang-raped for the first time, Debbie asked the camp commander for medical help. He told her not to complain and sent her on a 20km run. Like many of the other youths in the camp, she was often deprived of food for days at a time, and frequently beaten.

One day Debbie was caught trying to escape, and was sadistically punished. She was buried up to her neck in the ground. When she was dug out hours later she was made to roll in raw sewage. "The water, it was dirty," she said. "My head was rolling inside." The commanders then forced Debbie to eat her meal with the other inmates without being allowed to wash. "The commanders, they laughed," she said.

Debbie, now 22, is understandably a deeply traumatised young woman. She fled to South Africa after speaking publicly about her experience in Zimbabwe. As a consequence, she now lives isolated and in hiding, in fear of Mugabe's secret police. At least two Zimbabweans have been tortured, one to death, for telling the truth about the camps.

But Mugabe is Zimbabwe's "democratically-elected" leader, right?

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11:59 AM
Those horrible Zionist oppressors are at it again... this time they're trying to ease conditions for Palestinians:

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz approved a set of proposals calling for a new code of conduct for Israeli soldiers manning roadblocks who come into daily conduct with the Palestinian population, Israel Radio reported today.

The proposals, prepared by Brig.-Gen. (res.) Baruch Spiegel, will soon be implemented at seven major roadblocks and afterwards will be introduced at smaller army roadblocks as well, the radio report said. Spiegel said that technological measures would be introduced to ease conditions for the Palestinians, and soldiers stationed at the roadblocks would undergo special training.

[ . . . ]

Some of the improvements at IDF roadblocks will be financed by money confiscated from terror group bank accounts in Ramallah last week, media sources reported.

Sounds like poetic justice to me.

But wait, there's more:

Infrastructure at the roadblocks will be improved. Roads will be repaved, adequate restroom facilities will be added, and proper lighting will be installed. The proposal calls for the "inspection points" to be manned and open 24 hours a day, in order to relieve the crowded conditions and long lines that have been common at roadblocks until now.

[ . . . ]

Ofir Hacham, spokesman for the IDF's Coordinator for Operations in the Territories, explained the rationale behind Spiegel's team and the proposals. "This was a strategic team that was established to check how we can improve conditions for the Palestinian population at roadblocks and gates. This is another step to allowing stable civilian life, for those Palestinians who are not involved in terror," he said.

Yep, those damned Zionist oppressors are at it again, all right. Shame on them for having compassion!

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10:49 AM
The newest group with a god-complex: Quebec Conservatives:

All ridings being created equal in the Conservative leadership race, fewer than 10,000 members in Quebec's 75 ridings count for almost three times as many points as nearly 100,000 members in 28 Alberta ridings.

[ . . . ]

Harper was desperate enough to do the merger, and confident enough he could win the leadership regardless of the rules, that he went along with a system which, in Quebec, is greatly to his disadvantage.

So he can hardly complain now that Belinda Stronach, who barely speaks French, is racking up big gains with small numbers in Quebec.

Of the 9,000 Conservative members in Quebec, about 5,000 were members of the former PC party - Tory activists of good standing. Some 4,000 new memberships have been sold, and of those Stronach has sold about 3,500.

Of the 7,500 points available in Quebec, Stronach looks like winning around 5,000, or about one-third of the 15,401 votes needed to win the leadership.

Sometimes fact really is stranger than fiction.

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10:44 AM
Hey, if the rhetoric works for the Palestinians...

Ousted Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide appealed from exile in Africa Monday for peaceful resistance to what he called the "occupation" of Haiti and repeated a claim he was kidnapped by U.S. forces.

Not that I'm supporting the rebels, mind you. Haiti's a mess. But Aristide wasn't much more of a "legitimate" leader than the rebels who outsted him, and his willingness to immediately tap into world hatred of Americans to get sympathy of the despots isn't scoring him any brownie points in my book.

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10:41 AM
The fence is working.

The Israeli security fence around Gaza, and the one under construction in the West Bank, must be doing a good job at preventing new terror attacks, because Hamas seems to be so frustrated that it's resorting to claiming responsibility for year-old attacks:

Hamas claimed today (Monday), for the first time, responsibility for the terror attack at Tel Aviv's "Mike's Place" pub on April 30, 2003. Yanai Weiss, 46, Ran Baron, 24, and Caroline Dominique Hess, 29, died in the bombing.

A leaflet issued by the group's military wing, the Iz-a-Din al-Kassam Brigades, noted that the attack was carried out by two British citizens of Pakistani origin in retaliation for the targeted killing of a senior Hamas figure, Dr. Ibrahim Makadmeh.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on the first anniversary of Makadme's "targeted killing" in the Gaza Strip. The leaflet also noted: "This is a clear message to the Zionists: The al-Kassam Brigades will continue to fight Israel as long as the massacre of the Palestinian people continues".

In other words, it was a slow news day and Hamas was getting antsy about having no new attacks to broadcast. Think maybe they had planned on having other news to report?

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