FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE JEWS….

Unfortunately it was lost in the daily swirl of events, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s plea to the world last week was of profound importance. In an impassioned speech he begged his near neighbors Iran and Syria, implored the more distant Arab nations, and then reached out to the world beyond to…stop the suicide bombings. He, and perhaps his nation, had reached his limit after yet another day of carnage, mayhem and slaughter. Some two million Iraqi’s have had enough and have
become a nation of refugees. Maliki’s words were striking. He tied together 9/11 and the bombings in Madrid, London, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, attributing the terror to religious extremists who were incited to action by Islamic mullahs.

Most interesting, however, was his total omission of the ground zero of Muslim suicide bombings in Isarel. Did he forget that his predecessor Saddam made suicide bombings a cornerstone of Iraqi foreign policy by offering rewards of $50,000 dollars to the families of these Islamic fanatics? Was it a senior moment that he failed to mention the universal justification, if not outright glee in the Muslim media, of the deaths of Jewish women and children out for ice cream or just riding the bus? Is he not aware that the Arab media invented and promulgated the code word for justifying this horror as “resistance,” the very word now used to describe the killing of his people in Iraq? Can he not recall the dancing in the streets of Jenin and Gaza, the passing out of candy to children in Mosques to celebrate the dismembered limbs and charred flesh of Jews in Tel Aviv, Afula, Jerusalem and Haifa?

Exactly like the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller about Nazi oppression:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

The Muslim world from Qatar to Rabat is reaping the karmic harvest of death that comes from their endorsement of suicide bombings against innocents that started with Israel. Let us not forget the justification for this Islamic campaign of death against Jewish children. According to the Sheiks, since all Israelis, including women, were conscripted to the army they were all potential soldiers— thus legitimate military targets. All types of apologists spewed this doggerel in the Arab and even western media. Let’s not forget how easily the Europeans were sucked into believing that the occupied Palestinians had few other tools of war at their disposal thus the slaughter of civilians was understandable. Except when it is in Madrid or London then it is inexplicable.

What happened in the war against Israelis was that Muslim fanatics correctly observed that slaughter against civilians was conditionally acceptable. They observed that Muslim clerics and politicians (remember the “million martyrs to Jerusalem” of Arafat) would condone, endorse and even incite suicide bomb, belt-wearing congratulationists. So since it was a question of the victim’s value, not the tactic, it was only a matter of time until suicide-bombing metastasized into a universal action for everyone who hates enough and thus dehumanized the enemy.

When a few weeks ago 44 Pakistani police recruits were slaughtered by a lone bomber in the name of Allah, you knew that you were witnessing a horrific new chapter in religious barbarity. Two weeks later, in an Internet café in Casablanca, two bombers blew themselves up after watching Jihad websites. More Muslims have been killed by this tactic than by any other means. Maliki knows of what he speaks when he makes the plea for this to stop. But by leaving out Israel he will never exorcise the cancer that has spread to his own body politic. Slaughter against civilians cannot be gradational. It cannot be justified in some cases or legitimate against some people for some reasons. Suicide bombings directed at civilians is either a crime against humanity or it isn’t. You cannot cheapen some lives without cheapening all lives. Jews cannot be lesser without everyone being lesser. Targeting civilians in one country means targeting civilians in all counties.

These are the lesions that Maliki has almost learned. However, his tutorial in the truth will not be finished and his people freed from their horrors until he includes Tel Aviv in the list of victim cities along with Anbar and Hilla. He is getting close, but he needs to open his eyes a little more in order to rescue his countryman from being burned and dismembered by the “resistance.”