Sunday, January 31, 2010

Dear Ali

Our Danish correspondent TB has translated an important op-ed from the Danish press. He includes this explanation of the article’s significance and history:

This is an op-ed that was published in the print edition of the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende a few months ago. It was not available online until a few days ago when Jeppe Juhl himself uploaded it to the online paper 180 Grader as a protest against one of the editor’s [Lars Pilegaard] obvious lack of knowledge about what is going on in our times.

Jeppe Juhl is a journalist and former editor. In 1989 he received the greatest prize a Danish journalist can get, the Cavling Prize. He won it for digging up a whole range of disproportions related to the administration of the Copenhagen Municipality. He has worked for several media outlets, including TV3, Kanal 5 and Ekstra Bladet.

I cannot hope to do Juhl’s op-ed full justice here. It is brilliant in Danish. I have done my best in translating the piece but I bear no illusions about living up to the quality of the original. But less is definitely also worth spending time on when the point of departure is of such a high standard.

The op-ed can be found here.

Here is TB’s translation:

Dear Ali

By Jeppe Juhl

Foreword by the author:

This op-ed is dedicated the anti-Zionist Lars Pilegaard [an associate of the Danish editor Ole Birk Olesen who can best be described as a Danish equivalent of Charles Johnson — translator] and uploaded to 180 Grader in an boundlessly naïve hope that moral relativists and other blinded souls will soon begin to understand that massive anti-Semitism have again emerged in our latitudes, and that criticism of Islam has nothing to do with racism.

The Goldstone Report about the alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza is just a cover for the decisive and indisputable fact that the very core reason for the miserable conditions in the Middle East is a suppressed and inherited hatred towards Jews in the Muslim world, which the Western world dares not address.

The fact that a naïve South African Jewish lawyer has been exploited as a figurehead for another round of demonization of the Israeli nation in the UN should not come as a surprise. Not even for the least well-informed. The Goldstone Report about the war in Gaza is a political perversion on which I will waste no more time. It is a symptom of the sad — and unfortunately empirically indisputable fact — that there exists widespread anti-Semitism in the Western World. In claims more than fulfilling Orwell’s’ notion of ‘newspeak’, these openly anti-Semitic Muslim countries and their Third World collaborators try — in all kinds of insufferable and easily seen-through ways — to transform night to day. If you skip all the intermediate results and current accounts, there is only one way forward as I see it: to address the root of evil — the thorough and deeply founded anti Semitism in the Muslim world. That is why I have written this open letter to the taxi driver Ali, who dropped me off in the middle of the highway when he overheard a conversation I had in my mobile phone, which made him realize that he was driving with a… Jew.

Dear Ali,

You don’t know me. And I don’t know you. One thing, however, I sadly do know for certain. The chance that you feel a deep, personal and heartfelt hate towards me is a statistical fact. Chances are that you and your brothers also would try to disable me if we ran in to each other on Nørrebrogade. And what is worse: you would be proud of your deed. Your friends, your family, and all of your acquaintances would back you up when you were summoned before the judge in court to receive your mild sentence. They would salute you as a hero while the judge presented to you your punishment, and your status in the open and pleasant Danish prison would be strong.

You see, Ali, I am a Jew. I do not have the characteristic curls, I do not wear a skullcap, and I have only been in synagogue six times since my Bar Mitzvah 36 years ago. Actually, I am not even a member of Mosaic Faith Community, but that is also completely irrelevant since you would hate me anyway.
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Even though I no longer believe in the tooth fairy, Zeus, or Xualiltihocp as I believe in Yahweh. Even the thought of the non-historical Jew, Moses, receiving the stone tablets on Mount Sinai after migrating from Egypt — where the Jews never were — is as ridiculous and absurd for me as is the story of Jesus walking on water and raising the dead, or as the pedophile Mohammed taking to the sky on a white horse with wings. But it would not matter. You would still hate me. Because I am a Jew.

But Jewish I am. Nobody can take that away from me. Actually I am proud of my Jewish roots and of all the fabulous things that Jews have contributed throughout human evolution. Incredibly proud. Once in a while in an embarrassing way on the verge of being outright ridiculous. And then I am in other respects Danish. I write explicitly not ‘in other respects also Danish’. For me there exists no demarcation line. There are no religious, ethnic, cultural or emotional barriers between my Jewish background and the simple fact that I am as Danish as can be. And actually I am proud of being Danish. Incredibly proud. Once in a while in an embarrassing way on the verge of being outright ridiculous.

My family’s story is one of inconceivable sufferings: About pogroms, persecution, and lack of basic rights in an anti-Semitic Eastern Europe. It is a story of systematic scorn, mockery, and ridiculing, about desperate flight, about concentration camps and about survival. The story ends beautifully. With total assimilation in one of the best countries on the face of the earth. Beautiful and wonderful Dannevang [Denmark — translator].

My grandparents came here to create a better life, and by hard labor and love for the country that received them, they succeeded. There was no hate in Denmark. Only the deepest respect and an enormous amount of gratitude which is perhaps best symbolized by reciting the end replica of the Jewish divine service in the synagogue in Krystalgade: “God save the Queen and our native country Denmark…”

Yes, Ali. I am a Jew. I have a strong Jewish identity and I am a great supporter of the state of Israel with all the rational nuances upon which a thinking individual should build his personal views. Of course you do not like Israel, for which I cannot blame you and which I will return to in a moment. But there is another and much more important and fundamental difference between you and me — besides our view on Israel and our different points of origin: I do not hate you. On the contrary I wish you a long and rich life in peace and tolerance. Why in the world should I wish anything else? My reason to write you, Ali, is deeply personal. You see, I have almost completely given up the idea of dialogue. Dialogue requires two parts. Both parts being willing to listen. Dialogue demands will. Dialogue demands empathy and ability to listen to things that hurt. I must admit that I believe that this exercise is a complete waste of time, but for the benefit of you and those of like mind I will use what little doubt is left.

I will now ask you — and Frank Aaen, Torben Lund and Mogens Lykketoft [all MPs who have been very critical of Israel — translator] and all your other Danish friends — to follow me in a mysterious experiment. This experiment demands that we all clean our insides of prejudicial notions. Together we will wash the table clean. Completely clean!

Forget the bombardments in Gaza for a moment. Yes, I know it’s hard, but it is a precondition for this experiment. Forget the illegal Israeli settlements and the outright unintelligent attitude towards war and proportionality. Forget how the allies dropped bombs on the citizens of Dresden and Hamburg during the Second World War. Forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Forget the moral relativism which saturates an action-paralyzed and indifferent Europe. Completely ignore the meaningless UN. Forget that the mightiest state on earth with one corner of its mouth initiates aggressive wars in the name of democracy while with the other it cooperates with the worst Islamists of them all: the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. who use billions of dollars to poison Muslim youth in perverse madrassas around the world. Let sixty years with a complete absence of historical perspective, objective and factual distortions about backgrounds and causes of the unfortunate conflict in the Middle East rest for a second. Let us all ignore the obvious fact that it is a dangerous illusion to project western moral notions and rational thought upon movements which operate in an irrational world where life in the hereafter is more important than life in the present. Let us all forget what we think we know about the conflict.

I do that right now: I erase from my mind my certain knowledge that you and your brothers have been brought up in an environment with a systematic lie and a hate of such enormous dimensions that all hope of peace for many generations to come is in vain. That the lie becomes the truth just by repeating it again and again. That evil men who preach murder, darkness and medieval values exploit you and your younger brothers. That you have almost no chance of escaping this perverse spiral. That hopelessness, repression, and poverty logically force you into the arms of these men from the darkest of ages. That your religion has never had, and will never find, the enlightenment which is the embryo of a free life. That democracy is not the immediate solution for a bankrupt civilization. I force myself right now to clinically erase from my mind the obvious fact that you and your brothers in Gaza and in the Arab world are the unhappy victims of cynical despots, who rightly fear Islamism more than The West does. I repress the fact that you and your brothers have been exploited as political pawns in a prolonged, perverse, and opportunistic political game founded in religious and inherited anti-Semitism. I forget my fear about Iran developing a nuclear capability; repress the horror scenario which logically can only lead to a preventive and catastrophic intervention from the Israeli side. I ignore the rage that rises in my heart when moral equivalence between what is demanded from Israel stands in such sharp contrast to what is demanded of everybody else. I erase, here and now, my firm conviction that what is believed to be Israel’s fight is also the fight of The West. I use everything in my power to repress my negative view of the illegal settlements and my contempt for the religiously motivated mechanisms that constitute the biggest problem of them all: the division of Jerusalem as a utopia. I forget your hatred. I close my ears to the message from Hamas: “We, the Muslims, love death as much as the Jews love life”. I am purifying my mind.

It is pure now. Is yours?

Now we will both dig deep. All the way down into the substance which in mysterious ways defines us as human beings. Each of us should now ask himself the simple question: Do I want peace?

When you have reached your answer I will ask you: Do Hamas and Hezbollah?

Best wishes,
Jeppe Juhl

8 comments:

Zenster said...

Each of us should now ask himself the simple question: Do I want peace?.

It can be said without the least equivocation that both sides want peace. The sole problem being that Muslims desire, for both sides, only the peace of the grave.

The author correctly notes how:

"... it is a dangerous illusion to project western moral notions and rational thought upon movements which operate in an irrational world where life in the hereafter is more important than life in the present".

This singularly profound difference between Muslim and Western thought is so symbolic of all else that divides us whereby little remains which is of importance.

There is simply no way possible to debate or argue the significance of coexistence with a person who could not care less about it. Irrespective of kitman and taqiyya, Islam's total disregard for the sanctity of human life prevents all productive diologue or exchange.

When one couples into this already hopeless equation Islam's doctrinally sanctioned deceit of kitman and taqiyya, all possibility of reconciliation or accord simply vanishes as if it never had existed in the first place.

Protracted consideration of the futility involved just as often leads one to conclude that if Muslims are so enamored of the afterlife, it is almost churlish that we in the West should deny them it.

After all, Islam utilizes every opportunity available to ensure that we Westerners are admitted into the hereafter. It is long past tea to begin returning the favor.

filthykafir said...

TB: I do not know Danish, but I suspect you did an excellent translation. The piece is moving throughout and at times rises to eloquence in English. Thank you for making it available to us.

Anonymous said...

@Filthykafir

Thanks a lot for you comment :o)

laine said...

Zenster, the majority of Muslims are not so enamored with the afterlife that they want to leave this one.

In fact, they take rational steps to improve their standard of living by immigrating to the West where even on Welfare, they are living head and shoulders above their compatriots remaining in Muslim countries.

However, what even the Muslims who are not into suicide are enamored of is the notion that they will reign supreme over infidels including in what are temporarily infidel lands. Many Muslims whom we consider "losers" of no accomplishment, not even taking advantage of free education nevertheless strut about like the owners of the joint, kicking the baseboards and measuring for curtains, harming the present "tenants" and their property at will.

It's this overweening sense of superiority unfounded on any accomplishments of Islam or themselves that native Westerners should start noticing. The bad behavior towards kaffir in areas that Muslims already dominate is our future unless we wake up.

Zenster said...

laine: Zenster, the majority of Muslims are not so enamored with the afterlife that they want to leave this one.

Laine, as is so often the case, we are in violent, raucous agreement.

The problem I see is that those Muslims who are "so enamored of the afterlife" represent the most dangerous faction of all because they are the ones who want to kill us in the largest numbers possible.

Furthermore, their fellow and ostensibly "moderate" Islamic travellers exhibit not a jot of concern regarding the nefarious goals that are being so overtly stated by this supposedly fanatical minority.

The conspicuous absence of any genuine attempt at distancing themselves from this exceptionally lethal subcomponent of Islam makes it obligatory to lump together these so-called "moderates" with their ultra-violent fellow believers in order to streamline whatever strategies that finally evolve in dealing with them at some later date.

Thus will the putatively moderate Muslim baby be thrown out with the jihadist bathwater.

In their deafening silence, the "moderates" have begged for this on bended knees.

Anonymous said...

Andrea, the exponential population growth happens because stupid misguided Westerners make it happen. Half of Haiti's population lived on international welfare, for example. These are people that wouldn't have existed. The same stands for a lot of Africa. We also take their excess population in our countries, while subsidizing their reproduction.

Anyway, resources aren't as relevant. As they get depleted, alternative ways become cheaper in comparative terms and they get researched. And I would leave Earth simply because my own group disgusts me. A bunch of pussified idiots who are busy bending over backwards to accomodate all kinds of minorities and don't even aknowledge their existence as a group. Or they're downright traitors.

Anonymous said...

Andrea, funny enough, they probably said this thing so many times in history. My mother works in this field(energy research) and there are a lot of possibilities. It's just that right now the costs are too big, but as oil and gas get more expensive, they will not seem as pricey to develop. But yes, this is a complex conversation that would take tons of posts to have. ;)

Anyway, the solution is sending their immigrants home and stop the foreign aid. Besides, when we take immigrants we take their most able people(even though by our standards are good to have on welfare), so they suffer too.

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

Me too would also take to the final frontier the first chance I got, on one condition, that both the ride and the destination is 100% guaranteed muslim free!!