Thursday, January 22, 2015
From Ian:
Tarek Fatah: In Failing to Confront Islamism, the Left Betrays Itself
Privileged Yet Unequal: An Essay on the Anglo-American Legal Principle of ‘Jews Lose’
Tarek Fatah: In Failing to Confront Islamism, the Left Betrays Itself
As the world struggles to understand and cope with the rise of pan-Islamism and international jihadi terrorism within Western countries, one thing is becoming increasingly clear - the success of the Islamists is partly due to what I believe is a grand betrayal of civil society by the political left in Western democracies. Instead of leading the fight against the fanatics' religious obscurantism, they have embraced it.Israel omission from Asian Cup video embarrasses Asian Football Confederation
The refusal of social democrats, liberals and leftists to stand up to Islamofascism in the democracies of Europe, North America, India and South Africa, has also had an unintended consequence. It has paved the way for an anti-immigrant backlash against all non-whites, in which the left are portrayed as apologists for religious fanaticism. An unnecessary rise of xenophobia that could have been avoided, had the left led the struggle against Islamofascism, is now entrenched.
Imagine if Labour in the UK, Democrats in the U.S., the Congress and CPM in India, socialists in France and the left in Canada had not catered to Islamists, but instead drawn a line in the sand on such issues as gender apartheid. Think how different things would be today. Instead we've had more than a decade of appeasement.
Last week I sat down with a few surviving friends on the left from the 1960s, who are fortunately in Canada now. "What is wrong with the left today?" we asked ourselves.
The Asian Football Confederation has been embarrassed by revelations its official video history of the Asian Cup omits any mention of Israel, a former host and winner of the tournament.
A three-minute video posted on the AFC’s official website stirringly recounts the history of the cup, beginning with South Korea’s 1956 victory, up to Japan’s 1-0 defeat of Australia in the 2011 final in Qatar.
Israel hosted and won the Asian Cup in 1964, the only piece of silverware in the country’s football cabinet, during a golden age in which it finished runner-up in the previous two tournaments and third in 1968 (albeit against much weaker competition than today – only six other countries entered in 1964).
Many Arab and Muslim countries refused to play the Jewish state, and in 1974 the confederation adopted a Kuwaiti motion to expel Israel from the AFC. It wandered in the footballing wilderness until it was accepted into the European confederation in 1994.
AFC officials told Guardian Australia they were baffled by the omission, and would be seeking answers. It is understood the video was produced by an external agency. Israel does appear in a table on the tournament’s website listing all past winners. (h/t Rabbi Burns)
Privileged Yet Unequal: An Essay on the Anglo-American Legal Principle of ‘Jews Lose’
Last week, the Community Security Trust—the institutional body primarily responsible for the safety of Jews in Britain—released its preliminary figures on the number of anti-Semitic incidents that had occurred over the course of 2014. The news was not good. Anti-Semitism had hit an all-time high, with a particular spike occurring in July during the course of renewed hostilities between Israel and Gaza. Another poll found that nearly half of all non-Jewish Britons held at least some anti-Semitic views, and for their part British Jews expressed unprecedented feelings of fear and vulnerability. More than half of the Jewish community stated that they feared for their future in Great Britain, and a quarter claimed to have considered leaving the country.
Because I am a lawyer and law professor (albeit not a British one), my natural instinct in these circumstances is to appeal to the law for protection. Anti-Semitic harassment, intimidation, violence, and discrimination are illegal, and a primary purpose of the courts is to provide a shield for vulnerable minorities. Unfortunately, when it comes to Jewish litigants coming to the English courts with allegations of discrimination, doctrine, precedent, and case law all fall away at the hands of one simple rule: Jews lose. They lose consistently, they lose badly, and they will often be humiliated in the process. In her magnificent 2011 book An Unfortunate Coincidence: Jews, Jewishness, and English Law, English law professor Didi Herman concludes that—since the passage of the Race Relations Act of 1976—a Jew has never won a reported discrimination case against a non-Jewish defendant.
British courts seem to bend over backward to avoid finding wrongdoing, even in the most obvious cases. To take one particularly egregious example, one case involved a job applicant who was told by the hiring agency that the company in question simply would not hire Jews. It then asked the candidate what his religion was; instead of answering, the applicant (who was indeed Jewish) stormed out. The court concluded that no discrimination occurred because the plaintiff voluntarily terminated the interview without revealing his Jewish identity.
