lights under the stars

Demographic time bomb? An ideology of religion or religious ideology? There are no answers and the data is mixed, a muddy glass that is difficult to discern what is actually inside. A common view is that secular liberal democratic values will be unable to absorb Islamic populations and will be overrun by a higher, mean that rabid birthrate, a collective spawning of population that will amount to a quiet insurrection in the West. To speak otherwise is to dust off the skeleton of Nuremberg laws and the rights of reproduction. The echoes of eugenics speaking of a limiting of family size, as opposed to the view of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Mark Steyn who assert that Islamists have staked a quiet revolution on the basis of fecundity. A war of the womb. That is very debatable. The impetus to permit immigration was based on the need for immigrants to help finance the massive scale of government, the social welfare state, increased consumption and taxes needed to maintain services. It was a less than savory ideal from the get-go; and truth is, if corporations were to start investing their cash hordes it would create more technological unemployment making social tensions even worse. And socially, the Muslims, which is a misnomer given the startling diversity and traditions of internecine conflict bordering the calamatious and tragic, are near generic replacements for another semitic can-kicker. The jews.

—In the 1960′s, a little-known group that called themselves The Lebanese Rocket Society, was founded at Haigazian University to beef-up the Science Club. Turning their attention to rocketry, this group of students, mostly freshmen, built and launched the rockets that mark the Arab World‘s entry into the space race. While they saw their success and reputations grow, by 1967, the group abruptly disbanded. These days, many people do not know about or remember the wonderful scientific achievements that made Lebanon part of the thrilling exploration of space travel.—Read More:http://christinedonley.com/2012/02/07/abraaj-capital-art-prize-winners-joana-hadjithomas-and-khalil-joreige/

When you think about it, a couple weeks ago three astronauts took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan en route to the International Space Station:  American Sunita Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. Whether this is financial boondoggle that will have no impact on the  well being of earthlings is not important. What is significant is that not long ago, these three countries were enemies with the Cold War still in memory. But today, there is cooperation on an international mission and no one takes any notice of the import. It is no longer news. There has been a quantum leap where we have been accustomed to peace very quickly and cooperation is no longer shocking, but the norm. The Medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides wrote of an age where, “there will be no jealousy nor competition”, …Therefore “good will be bestowed in abundance, delicacies as plenty as dust, and the whole world will be preoccupied with the knowledge of G-d alone.” It is easy to grumble in our society of dissent, but it is doubtful many want to turn back the clock too far.What would a Hitchens or Harris say if there was actually a complete and true redemption?

Doug Saunders:Core to the “Muslim tide” ideology is the belief that the jihadist terror attacks of the past decade are the result of the immigration of Muslims to the countries of Europe and North America. It has become popular to believe that violent jihad is simply an extension – – or perhaps the essence – – of ordinary Islamic belief. “It’s not merely that there’s a global jihad lurking within this religion,” the popular “Muslim tide” author Mark Steyn wrote in a typical passage, “but that the religion itself is a political project – – and in fact an imperial project.”…

—It turns out that back on the night of Tisha B’Av, during the Women in Green’s march around the walls of Jerusalem, MK Eldad did say: “…When the time comes to build the Holy Temple, and that will be soon, we will then cut up the structure which is there now. We will cut it up, and they can take it wherever they want – because that is where the Third Holy Temple should and will stand – speedily in our days!”
OK, so he got carried away a little… But seriously, Israel has been willing to sit down and listen to Palestinian leaders with actual blood on their hands – the least the other side can do is listen to an elected official who’s proposing a respectful, new order.
No go.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, ISESCO condemned the “suggestion by an extreme right-wing Member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, that the mosque must be taken down and rebuilt elsewhere in order to build a temple in its place. Aryeh Eldad’s remarks represent incitement to carry out a terrorist and criminal act.”—Read More:http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/mks-proposal-for-equal-access-to-temple-mount-is-met-with-hysterical-muslim-resistance/2012/08/09/0/?print image:http://framework.latimes.com/2011/06/03/the-week-in-pictures-38/#/0

…Is Islamic extremism simply a more explicit extension of ordinary Islamic belief? Is it cheered, even if not actively supported, by Muslims throughout the West?…Extremism tends be the preserve or fairly wealthy, educated Muslims who are isolated from other Muslims in relatively well-off neighborhoods. It’s not the “Muslim tide” that is creating extremism, but rather the political beliefs of a few middle-class loners.


Indeed, a large-scale new study conducted by a group of U.S. researchers who examined the Koran passages quoted by 2,000 Islamic terrorists and supporters found no suggestion that any of them want to convert the West to Islam – – rather, their messages are of a nationalistic nature, based on preserving the separation of Islamic and non-Islamic worlds. …

—In response to the horrific murder of three Jewish children and a rabbi earlier this month at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, Eli Wiesel asked: “Will the hatred of the Jews ever finally vanish? Will Jewish children always be in danger?”
He observed: “When a blood-thirsty Jew-hater wants to kill Jews, he goes first to the Jewish schools. Jewish children are his primary target.”
Yet speaking of the old, well-established and “dynamic” Jewish community of that city, Wiesel added: “In the streets, you can see Jews wearing yarmulkes. Nobody thinks of antisemitism. Spiritually, it is one of the richest Jewish communities in France.” …In the March 21 Globe and Mail, reporting from Toulouse, Doug Saunders observed that in response to threats from the far-right in France, the Jewish community had taken all sorts of security measures at the school, including security guards, iron gates, high walls and video surveillance. Read More:http://www.cjnews.com/node/89586

…Yet this is the most misleading myth of them all. Muslim family sizes and population growth rates are falling faster than among any other population in the world. Even in the most religious Islamic countries, family sizes are fast falling below the population-growth rate of 2.1 children per family. In Iran, where the average number had 7 children in the 1980s, it has fallen to 1.7 – – lower than in France. In Turkey, it is 2.1 children; in Lebanon, 1.9; in Tunisia, 2.0; in Indonesia, 2.19 and falling fast. Bosnian Muslims, at the heart of so many of the “Eurabia” theories of population takeover, have 1.23 children per family – – the very lowest rate in Europe….


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ADDENDUM:

Nicky Larkin:So I was frustrated to see Provo graffiti on the wall in the West Bank. I felt the same frustration emerge when I noticed the missing ‘E’ in a “Free Palestin” graffiti on a wall in Cork. I am also frustrated by the anti-Israel activists’ attitude to freedom of speech.

Free speech must work both ways. But back in Dublin, whenever I speak up for Israel, the Fiachras and Fionas look at me aghast, as if I’d pissed on their paninis.

This one-way freedom of speech spurs false information. The Boycott Israel brigade is a prime example. They pressurised Irish supermarkets to remove all Israeli produce from their shelves — a move that directly affected the Palestinian farmers who produce most of their fruit and vegetables under the Israeli brand.

But worst of all, this boycott mentality is affecting artists. In August 2010, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign got 216 Irish artists to sign a pledge undertaking to boycott the Israeli state. As an artist I have friends on this list — or at least I had.

I would like to challenge my friends about their support for this boycott. What do these armchair sermonisers know about Israel? Could they name three Israeli cities, or the main Israeli industries?…

—You will recall that Yaron London wrote a piece in Der Shturmer YNet calling for ‘shrinking’ Israel’s Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) population. Yitzhak Tesler exposes London.
What’s clear is why London does not suggest shrinking the number of Arabs as well. Such proposal would of course be racist, not politically correct, and illogical. Apparently, in the view of liberals of London’s type the Arabs are inferior and dumb, and therefore we cannot have any qualms with them in face of police data showing that although Arabs make up only 20% of the population, they are involved in 41% of murder and arson cases, 52% of robberies and 80% of shooting incidents.
However, London and his ilk apparently believe that the Jews are a wiser creed, and therefore the inferior part of this creed, the haredim, can be slammed and asked to “shrink.”
In other words, like most of Israel’s Left, London suffers from the soft bigotry of low expectations from Israel’s Arab population.
Read More:http://israelmatzav.blogspot.ca/2012/05/soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations.html image:http://webpage.pace.edu/nreagin/F2005WS267/MarinaStolerman/PhotoGallery.html

But I have more important questions for Irish artists. What happened to the notion of the artist as a free thinking individual? Why have Irish artists surrendered to group-think on Israel? Could it be due to something as crude as career-advancement?

Artistic leadership comes from the top. Aosdana, Ireland’s State-sponsored affiliation of creative artists, has also signed the boycott. Aosdana is a big player. Its members populate Arts Council funding panels.

Some artists could assume that if their name is on the same boycott sheet as the people assessing their applications, it can hardly hurt their chances. No doubt Aosdana would dispute this assumption. But the perception of a preconceived position on Israel is hard to avoid.

Looking back now over all I have learnt, I wonder if the problem is a lot simpler.

Perhaps our problem is not with Israel, but with our own over-stretched sense of importance — a sense of moral superiority disproportional to the importance of our little country?

Any artist worth his or her salt should be ready to change their mind on receipt of fresh information. So I would urge every one of those 216 Irish artists who pledged to boycott the Israeli state to spend some time in Israel and Palestine. Maybe when you come home you will bin your scarf. I did… Read More:http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/nicky-larkin-israel-is-a-refuge-but-a-refuge-under-siege-3046227.html

Yaron London:I’ve heard all the prevailing views and none of them convinced me. When a question has no answer for a long period of time, we must realize that no answer exists and come up with another question. Hence, the correct question is not how to draft the haredim and draw them into the job market, but rather, what should be done in order to minimize their rate within Israeli society.

Once the haredi population declines, the gravity of the issue of enlisting them to the army would decline as well. In other words, the enlistment question is no more than a slight nuisance in the framework of a broad spiritual and political struggle, which Israel’s majority fears to engage in. Yet without a quick change in current trends, all hope will be lost in the coming years for the Hebrew state in its Zionist version. The haredim shall win.

Hasn’t the time come to openly say what we feel? Haredi society educates people to be parasites and cultivates poverty. Indeed, it is the most powerful agent of spreading ignorance, prejudice and all sorts of other nonsense. It is an enemy of the sciences, shuns the arts, disparages the rule of the people, hates women and exploits them. It despises those who are different, regardless of whether they are foreigners or members of our own people.

The strengthening of haredi society is a guarantee for weakening Israeli society to the point of ultimate defeat. Hence, the intellectual effort dedicated to the issue of IDF enlistment should be dedicated to the great challenge: Shrinking the ranks of the haredim. Read More:http://israelmatzav.blogspot.ca/2012/05/ynet-jewish-der-sturmer.html

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