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The state of mind of Anders Breivik is beyond understanding for a normal person.  There’s been some discussion as to whether there are ‘signs of mental illness’ in the document that he provided to ‘explain’ himself, but asking the question is ridiculous — clearly there is a big piece missing from his brain, or soul, or whatever. One doesn’t need to be a psychologist to recognize a monster.

It’s probably unavoidable that there will be a few sociopaths like him in our societies. When the pathology is combined with intelligence, energy and resourcefulness, they can be tremendously dangerous. Sometimes they even become the leaders of nations, where they can do thousands of times more damage than Anders Breivik.

But our response to them ought not to be hysteria, but rational thought. And the reactions to Breivik have been anything but rational.

Voices from the Israel-obsessed Left claim that he was working for the Mossad, acting to punish Norway for its support of the Palestinian Arabs. These types are as crazy as Breivik, if somewhat less dangerous.

No, I’m talking about the ‘moderate’ voices in our media, who have pitched themselves into an abyss of illogic in response to this terrorist act.  Illogic — and character assassination.

Here is what the respected columnist Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post (and it will probably appear in my local paper this week):

The monster who admitted slaughtering at least 76 innocent victims in Norway was animated by the same blend of paranoia, xenophobia and alienation that fuels anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States. Yes, it could happen here…

In a 1,500-page screed setting out his philosophy, Breivik referred favorably to the work of several well-known anti-Muslim polemicists in the United States — zealots who usually boast of their influence but now, for some reason, seek to deny it.

Breivik quoted Robert Spencer, a writer who runs a Web site called Jihad Watch, more than 60 times. Spencer is the author of such books as “Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs,” “Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t” and “The Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion.”

Robinson has just asserted, without any attempt at proof, that Robert Spencer’s opposition to Islam is based on “paranoia, xenophobia and alienation” which is the “same blend” as that of Breivik. But whether or not you agree with Spencer, who thinks that Islam is inherently expansionist, or with Daniel Pipes (whom Breivik also quoted a few times), who thinks that a radical interpretation of Islam is contending with a more traditional and less confrontational one, these are rational points of view.

They are based on analysis of Islamic writings and statements, and historical and current facts. They may be right or wrong, but they rational. Nobody knows what demons possessed Breivik, but he certainly did not get the idea of “executing traitors” from Spencer.  Robinson’s blazing non sequitur constitutes defamation of Spencer and others.

Nevertheless, Robinson tries to prove that there is a direct connection:

At least one anti-Muslim blogger had the decency to acknowledge feeling “terrible” about being cited in Breivik’s writings. The anonymous “Baron Bodissey,” who runs a Web site called Gates of Vienna, wrote that Breivik “is a monster and deserves just as little pity as he gave to his innocent, unarmed victims.”

Unfortunately, the blogger went on to write that Breivik’s “total lack of respect for human life is not, however, something he can have picked up from me, or from any of the other Islam-critical writers I know. . . . Indeed, the lack of respect for human life is often one of the great shortcomings of Islamic culture that we have consistently pointed out.”

Think about the implications of that last sentence. If Muslims have no respect for human life, why should anyone respect their lives? Or, for that matter, the lives of the government officials who invite Muslims to live among us? Or the lives of the sons and daughters of such traitorous quislings?

The sentence in question says that a lack of respect for human life often — not necessarily, but often — characterizes Islamic culture. And I’m sure that the blogger in question would cite mass terror attacks and suicide bombers as evidence for that.

Now, I wouldn’t make a statement like that, even with the qualifier ‘often’. I would be much more specific about which Muslims I was referring to. Nevertheless, I see the point of it (if you don’t, note the Palestinian attitudes toward terrorism revealed in this survey).

But the leap to the idea that therefore one should not respect their lives, or anyone else’s, is not justified by logic or reason. It is a non-sequitur, not unlike Robinson’s attribution of devilish characteristics to Robert Spencer, and in particular the kind of non-sequitur that a deranged psychopath with murder on his mind might find useful. It was a peg for Breivik to hang his murderous hat on.

Robinson’s statement that the “implications” of the statement he quotes are that murder is justified, along with the accusations that Spencer and others are “prejudiced purveyors of anti-Islam vitriol” constitute an attempt to characterize legitimate political discourse as hate speech and to shut it down.

Robinson is actually relatively mild, compared to some others. But it’s not unexpected. After all, as Rahm Emanuel almost said, a massacre is a terrible thing to waste.

Technorati Tags: Anders Breivik, Eugene Robinson, Norway, terrorism

Anders Breivik (from his manifesto). The badge declares itself a "multiculti traitor hunting permit"

The terrorist attack in Norway that was called “the deadliest attack by a lone gunman anywhere in modern times” was committed by an individual who placed himself in the tradition of Charles Martel and other Christian defenders of Europe. If you can bear it, here is a boring 12-minute video he posted attacking “cultural Marxism,” multiculturalism and Muslims. And here is a 1500-page document in English that he wrote to explain himself (I haven’t read most of it).

Here are some things that are almost certain:

• No Christians anywhere will celebrate his actions and give out sweets in his honor
• Right-wing groups in Europe who are opposed to multiculturalism and worried by what they consider the threat of an Islamic takeover there will nevertheless not claim to ‘understand’ his actions
• He will not turn out to have received funds or other help from any government
• Unlike the 9/11 or the 7/7 attacks, this one does not advance the political objective of its perpetrator

Despite the fact that this is one of the most viciously executed acts of terrorism of recent years — and we’ve had plenty to compare it to — I think it will be entirely ineffective as a political act.

One of the objectives of political terrorism is to draw attention to the grievances of a group or movement. How many departments of Middle East studies have been created in the US since 2001? How much material about Islam appeared in American newspapers before then?

But political terrorism is systematic. It always carries the threat that the latest outrage is only the beginning. It is intended to create a “Stockholm syndrome” effect that paradoxically leads its victims to support the cause of their tormentors. Do you think the Israeli Left would be less strident in its irrational demands for national surrender if it weren’t for the serial murders that have traumatized Jews in the Middle East for the past century or so — the phenomenon called the “Oslo syndrome?”

I do not believe that any group will claim Breivik, nor will there be follow-up attacks. His appropriation of the symbolism of Christianity will evoke revulsion. His terrible action will be seen to be disconnected from any political purpose. It’s as if he murdered nearly 100 people to protest the price of milk.

His action will probably damage the anti-multiculturalist movement in Europe.  Those who want to deny the importance of ideological and religious motivations for Islamic terrorism will say “you see, both sides have crazy sociopaths — the real enemy is extremism and terrorism.”

His manifesto is a disjointed, childish collection of ramblings, some of which make sense and some which do not. It calls for a new Crusade, and points out that the Church granted indulgences for Crusaders in the Eleventh Century. It includes detailed plans for deporting Muslims, protecting Christians in Muslim-majority nations, making body armor, making bombs, obtaining weapons, obtaining nuclear weapons (really), physical training, misleading enemies, fighting techniques, lists of targets and political strategies. It discusses the need for his defense attorney to provide him with a “Justiciar Knight” uniform to be worn at his trial. It also contains chilling descriptions of the tactics that he actually employed in his attack, such as dressing as a police officer.

Despite his ideological obsession, in his vicious, personal terrorist act he doesn’t represent anyone. He is closer to Charles Manson than to Mohammed Atta.

Technorati Tags: Norway, Anders Breivik, terrorism

Ilan Pappé's Middle East peace plan

Renegade Israeli academic Ilan Pappé is one of the most passionate anti-Zionists around. Does it also make you an antisemite if you want to see the Jewish people dead and/or dispersed? Anyway, here’s a few drops of his venom:

…we have to extricate ourselves from the politicians’ grip on our lives. In particular we should not be misled by the power game of politicians. The move to declare Palestine, within 22 percent of its original being, as an independent state at the UN is a charade whether it succeeds or not…

This is another gambit in the power game politicians play which has led us nowhere. When Palestinians solve the issue of representation and the international community exposes Israel for what it is — namely the only racist country in the Middle East — then politics and reality can fuse again.

And slowly and surely we will be able to put back the pieces and create the jigsaw of reconciliation and truth. This must be based on the twofold recognition that a solution has to include all the Palestinians (in the occupied territories, in exile and inside Israel) and has to be based on the construction of a new regime for the whole land of historical Palestine, offering equality and prosperity for all the people who live there now or were expelled from it by force in the last 63 years of Israel’s existence.

Nice. But

• 22% of the “original being” of ‘Palestine’ is exactly nothing. So is 1000%, because there never was a ‘Palestine’, only a bunch of Arabs whose ancestors mostly migrated from Syria or Egypt to take advantage of the development wrought in the land by the hated Zionists.

As Elder of Ziyon tweeted this morning:

How come there are Palestinians with the name al-Masri [Egyptian], al-Hourani [Syrian], al-Turki, al-Hindi – but none named al-Filastini?

Pappé’s insanity is flagrant when he foams, “Israel is the only racist country in the Middle East.” Come on, Ilan: Israel is probably the only non-racist country in the region! Certainly ‘Palestine’, where selling land to Jews is a capital offense and whose ‘President’ has announced that “not one Israeli will remain” after independence, isn’t getting off to a non-racist start.

The best part is his solution: there are about 5 million Arabs living in the Land of Israel, including Israeli citizens and those living in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and East Jerusalem. There are supposedly 9 to 11 million ‘Palestinians’ outside the Land, including the 4.5 million that claim refugee status in the Middle East and expatriates all over the world. So Pappé  wants to ‘construct a new regime’ for these 15 million Arabs along with the 5.8 million Jews that live in Israel today, in the area between the river and the sea. The old one is ‘racist’, so it will have to go.

What a deal! All the land and property there, including nice cars and women will of course be divided fairly among the ‘owners’.

Ilan Pappé actually gave a talk here in Fresno back in 2003, sponsored by the same fair and entirely unbiased academics who are now in charge of Fresno State’s Mideast Studies Department. Pappé now teaches at the University of Exeter in the UK. He was forced to resign from the University of Haifa in 2007 after his disturbed rantings were too much even for the very ‘post-Zionist’ world of Israeli academe, where almost anything is tolerated.

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Shabbat shalom!

Technorati Tags: Ilan Pappé