The threat of Islamist terror has been exaggerated out of all proportion in the media. It pales into insignificance compared to the violence in Africa and Central America that is seldom seen on the television screens or in the newspapers. The threat of the re-emergence of a new cold war with intercontinental missiles carrying hundreds of nuclear bombs is often consigned to the back pages. Statistically Muslims are now, and have always been, far less violent than Christians. Historically Christian genocides killed AD 940-1917: Russia (tsarist): 2.1m; AD 1095-1272: European slave trade: 17.3m, AD 1492-1900: Latin America: 13.8m Amerindians, AD 1600-1900: Caribbean: 10.0m slaves worked to death, AD 1618-1648; Thirty Years War: 5.8m, AD 1651-1987: British Empire: 1.1m (not counting slavery), AD 1800-1900: Brazil: 1.5m Amazon rubber companies, AD 1900-1920: Mexico: 1.4m, AD 1933-1945: Germany (Nazis): 20.9m, AD 1945-1948: Poland: 1.6m, 1998 - 2008 5 million dead in Congo, Muslim genoocides of a million or more: 400-1900: Iran: 2.0m 1110-1918: Ottoman Empire: 3.9m 1958-1987: Pakistan: 1.5m 1983-2005: Sudan: 1.9m Nuer, Dinka, Christians, Nuba, etc Christians have killed eight times more people in genocides than Muslims: 76.5 million compared to 9.3 million. Almost the same rate as for war. In the 1990s Sarajevo an Orthodox Christian Serbian army besieged a Muslim city shelling it unmercifully. In that genocide in the heart of Europe 45,000 Muslims were killed including at the genocide at Srebrenica. In majority Christian South Sudan, up to 100,000 people have been killed in the continuing war. Between 1998 to 2008 5 million were killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Uganda 1.6. million people were herded into camps and thousands killed. Furthermore, the US and UK are making enemies in the Muslim world through aerial bombardments and drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. By comparisonn to Christianity, Islam is relatively good at fulfilling its pledge as a religion of peace. As Jewish journalist and peace activist who visited Gaza, Max Blumenthal explains most extremist Jews and Christians advocate methods of terrorism far worse than Anders Behring Breivik’s and far more socially acceptable: Many of the American writers who influenced Breivik spent years churning out calls for the mass murder of Muslims, Palestinians and their left-wing Western supporters. But the sort of terrorism these US-based rightists incited was not the style the Norwegian killer would eventually adopt. Instead of Breivik’s renegade free-booting, they preferred the “shock and awe” brand of state terror perfected by Western armies against the brown hordes threatening to impose Sharia law on the people in Peoria. This kind of violence provides a righteous satisfaction so powerful it can be experienced from thousands of miles away. And so most Islamophobes simply sit back from the comfort of their homes and cheer as American and Israeli troops — and their remote-controlled aerial drones — leave a trail of charred bodies from Waziristan to Gaza City. Only a select group of able-bodied Islamophobes are willing to suit up in a uniform and rush to the front lines of the clash of civilizations. There, they have discovered that they can mow down Muslim non-combatants without much fear of legal consequences, and that when they return, they will be celebrated as the elite Crusader-warriors of the new Islamophobic right. Before exploring the online subculture that both shaped and mirrored Breivik’s depravity, it is necessary to define state terror, especially the kind refined by its most prolific practitioners. At the dawn of the “war on terror,” the United States and Israel began cultivating a military doctrine called “asymmetrical warfare.” Pioneered by an Israeli philosophy and “practical ethics” professor named Asa Kasher and the former head of Israeli military intelligence, Lt. Gen. Amos Yadlin, and successfully marketed to the Pentagon, the asymmetrical warfare doctrine did away with traditional counterinsurgency tactics which depended on winning the “hearts and minds” of indigenous populations. Under the new rules, the application of disproportionate force against non-combatants who were supposedly intermingled with the “terrorists” was not only justified but considered necessary. According to Kasher and Yadlin, eliminating the principle of distinction between enemy combatants and civilians was the most efficient means of deterring attacks from non-state actors like Hamas and Hezbollah while guarding the lives of Israeli soldiers. Asymmetrical warfare has been witnessed in theaters of war across the Muslim world, leaving tens of thousands of civilians dead in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip. The strategy was formalized in the Dahiya district of southern Beirut in 2006, when the Israeli military flattened hundreds of civilian structures and homes to supposedly punish Hezbollah for its capturing of two Israeli soldiers. From the ashes of the Israeli carpet bombing campaign emerged the “Dahiya Doctrine,” a term coined by an Israeli general responsible for directing the war on Lebanon in 2006. “IDF Northern Command Chief Gadi Eisenkot uttered clear words that essentially mean the following,” wrote Israeli journalist Yaron London, who had just interviewed the general. “In the next clash with Hezbollah we won’t bother to hunt for tens of thousands of rocket launchers and we won’t spill our soldiers’ blood in attempts to overtake fortified Hezbollah positions. Rather, we shall destroy Lebanon and won’t be deterred by the protests of the ‘world.’” In a single paragraph, London neatly encapsulated the logic of state terror. The online Islamophobes who inspired Breivik tacitly accept the reality of Israeli and American state terror. And they like it. Indeed, American Islamophobes derive frightening levels of ecstasy from the violence inflicted by the armed forces against Muslim civilians. Blumenthal notes that “state terror” and “asymmetric warfare” has been perfected by extremists the mainstream establishment in America and Israel and accepted unquestioningly by fringe elements the vast majority of citizenry. Killing civilians has become normalized and internalized by society so that it is hardly questioned anymore. This is clearly reflected in the Gallup poll.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 13:01:10 +0000