PJV#32
February 2008

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Full page New York Times ad placed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
News and Opinion

The Suicide Lobby
Exposed.

-- Phyllis Chesler

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has taken a high-minded, utterly rational, and insanely expensive full-page ad in the New York Times and in the International Herald Tribune in which it denounces "Suicide Terror." It calls upon the "world to act" against the "plague" of such attacks which have "murdered thousands of innocents," and it displays the photo of the late Benazir Bhutto, whose claim to innocence has been widely disputed but whose assassination, in my opinion, was utterly tragic.

The ad is bravely naive. For example, it calls upon the United Nations General Assembly to hold a "special session to deal exclusively with the scourge of suicide terror."

Why do I think this will not happen, that the United Tyrannies will convene 100 sessions to condemn Israel and the so-called Israeli Lobby before they dare focus upon suicide terror which is viewed as an only-fair Third World option? Given that the West has superior weaponry, the willingness to die in order to kill and terrorize is presumably the only affordable choice for a country whose poverty is allegedly due to Western colonialism, etc. The fact that most of the victims of suicide terror are other Third World people is an inconvenient fact that even the West dares not mention.

C’mon: Terrorist fiends routinely blow civilians up --- then send another crew to blow up the mourners at the funeral afterwards. Although suicide terrorists have perfected this Dark Art mainly against Israel (and in Sri Lanka), the truth is that suicide killers mainly terrorize Third World civilian populations. Why would anyone think that most Third World UN diplomats who comprise the General Assembly really give a good goddamn about their own civilians? Most are loyal only to the tyrants who have appointed them and who hold their families hostage—and to their own families and clans.

The Wiesenthal ad also suggests that "suicide bombings should be designated Crimes Against Humanity." I could not agree more, but the UN may sooner choose to stop the repeated public gang-rapes of women and children in Sudan, Kenya, and Congo before it will actually designate Suicide Terror as a universal crime. After all, the United Nuts (and their Western supporters) do not believe in universal human rights; over there, everything is culturally relative, although all things are equal. Barbarism=Civilization and anyone who challenges this is obviously a "racist" and a "Zionist."

The ad further calls upon "Religious leaders to act. They can no longer ignore the fact that most suicide terrorists are believers." Ah, what religion remains unnamed here and why? It must be Buddhism yes? Did the New York Times refuse to name Islam? Did the Weisenthal Center believe it would betray its own ethic of religious tolerance were it to name Islam?

Finally, we are all asked to sign a petition "urging the UN to take action against suicide terror." 

Despite all my reservations, I strongly recommend that you sign this petition. Let us be the wind beneath the sails of this noble sentiment. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I am not surprised that a Jewish group has launched this campaign. For some time now, it has been clear to me that what happens to Jews happens to all humanity; however, Jews have a long tradition, not only of pleading their own case but of pleading humanity’s case. The Wiesenthal Center knows what a Holocaust is and can do and, given the horrors of terrorism and the possibility of nuclear terrorism, is now pleading humanity’s case.

That is what Jews do. Some say it’s why we are still here after so many thousands of years.



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