“Chaver” or Hysteria?
Radbam November 8th, 2009
His words were painfully prophetic. Though paraphrasing and telescoping his sentiments, assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, whose murder was commemorated this week, often cited fundamentalism as the greatest enemy of peace and freedom. Not Islam as a faith or culture, and not any specific Arab nation. And this from the warrior general whose “Iron Fist” policy proved futile against the first Palestinian Intifada.
As if to prove Rabin’s point, Yigal Amir, a delusional Jewish settler fed a steady diet of fanatical rabbinic fatwas and bombastic comparisons of territorial withdrawal to Nazi population transfers, stopped Rabin’s progressive agenda by stopping his heartbeat with lead. The Mossad never thought to defend against a Jewish threat. Now they do.
As followers of this blog can increasingly attest, I seek meaning in serendipity. And thus, find it more than coincidental that the massacre at Fort Hood came within the same week that we remember Rabin. The post mortem (of many) analysis grows and morphs. The shooter, Maj. Hassan, an American born Palestinian, was an army psychiatrist overwhelmed by the pressures of his job (debriefing traumatized soldiers), plagued by fears of active deployment, intensely ambivalent about fighting other Muslims, and troubled by perceived anti-Muslim bias in the military.
This does not mitigate emerging evidence that he resonated with certain jihadist sentiments. But it does provide a wider context for his increasing psychosis, an illness exacerbated by all of the above. The critical concern demanding our careful vigilance: Out of fear and impulse, we not mirror the sickened fanaticism of Hassan–that we not allow our reaction to this tragic terrorism metastasize into hysteria over a domestic Muslim “fifth column” that can, with painful irony, bring about the kind of bifurcated, dualistic and hateful world sought by fundamentalists.
A criminal investigation is necessary, and perhaps even a congressional inquiry into treatment of Muslims in the military is in order. But let us not forget last century’s slippery slope of profiling that slid insidiously to Manzanar and McCarthy. Let us secure our freedoms without sacrificing our ideals.
- Uncategorized
- Comments(2)
Rabbi,
Certainly a timely post.
I’d like to propose a thought experiment: Let us suppose that after taking enough verbal abuse, Glen Beck finally snapped, walked into a NOW meeting screaming “Jesus is Lord” and started shooting, killing 13 feminists. Does anyone doubt that pundits and media would unanimously (and appropriately) jump to the conclusion that this fit the profile of a ‘right-wing Christianist’?
Now compare Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Neopolitano’s pleading “Not to rush to judgment” with respect to Maj. Hassan’s terrorist attack and her departments’ report warning of the threat of ‘right wing extremists’. What is it about the tolerant multi-culturist that their first response to acts of terror is to be concerned about their fellow citizens attacking others who share the perpetator’s faith? Were there bands of roving American’s beating Muslims and burning their houses after 9-11? Does the government have such little faith in Americans that it honesty expects the reaction to the terrorist attack at Fort Hood to be revenge attacks on Muslim citizens? Waving the bloody shirt of ‘McCarthyism’ and ‘Manzanar’ is oddly discordant and echoes our government’s lack of faith in its citizenry. We have much more to fear from the pernicious effects of multi-culturalism on our culture and the increasing government intrusion into all aspects of our daily life.
I’m sorry, citing PTSD (in this case ‘Pre-traumatic stress disorder) as an excuse for Maj. Hassan’s actions is preposterous and avoids the obvious. Maj. Hassan didn’t just have jihadist tendencies, he had tried to contact Al Qaeda. He took a ritual bath and shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ as he shot his fellow soldiers. And if Chris Matthews questions whether “contacting Al Qaeda is really a crime”, wouldn’t it have been appropriate for someone to be just a little suspicious if an American put in a call to Goebbel’s secretary during 1943? Moreover, invoking psychological excuses for Maj. Hassan’s behavior (much like explaining away 9-11 because of ‘root causes’) treats him as less than human by taking away his G-d given gift to make choices between good and evil.
That the army and government knew about Maj. Hassan’s ‘tendencies’ speaks more to the dangers of today’s political correctness. If we avoid calling this what it was; a terrorist attack, then how can we effectively deal with the threat of radical Islam? As always, I will preface that most American Muslims are peace loving and just want to participate in the American dream (and it tells you something about our the intolerance of multi-culturalism that this is always the requisite preface for this sort of statement). However, choosing to ignore the truth that many Muslims are at least sympathetic to Al Qaeda (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-ervin_05edi.ART.State.Edition1.434e069.html) does not make us any safer.
I also believe in the serendipity of events. Yesterday was the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. This presaged the triumph of Western values over the most monstrous human construct in history, a victory ultimately completed when the West stood up and called communism what it was: evil. Let us hope that our leaders find the courage to call the Fort Hood massacre and the jihadist culture that breeds it what it is: evil.
All good points….and I agree, and said so publicly, that F. Hood was terrorism (and I evoked the Berlin Wall on Friday night). That being said, what I heard on talk radio and some of the usual sources was the kind of blanket jingoism that conflated 9/11 with Iraq, with far more dire consequences than merely the rhetorical. I guess it is the bane of pluralistic democracies to err more on the side of tolerance than vigilance….but quite frankly, I prefer this to the alternative…