Monday, April 11, 2011
The Ivorian Bi-National State
Lessons from the Ivory Coast
Posted By Steven Plaut On April 11, 2011 @ 12:05 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage
The crisis in the Ivory Coast has important lessons for Europe, Israel
and the United States. And none of these lessons is being conveyed by
the Western media.
The most important aspects of the crisis in the Ivory Coast are being
overlooked or deliberately disguised by the Western media. One can
read media report after media report without discovering the basic
fact that the Northern Ivory Coast "rebels" are Muslims. Indeed they
are Muslims who by and large entered the Ivory Coast as infiltrators,
through borders that are poorly patrolled, from neighboring countries.
A better advertisement for stronger border control cannot be found.
At least four million illegal immigrants, mostly Muslim, entered the
Ivory Coast during the past two decades, tilting the demographic
balance there.
And these Muslim infiltrators and interlopers, increasingly backed by
African, French and Western powers, are challenging the control by
Ivory Coast natives over their own country. The sufferings and
violence in the Ivory Coast may well illustrate what awaits Europe if
it continues its own demographic suicide and if it continues to flood
itself with Muslim immigrants. The conflict also illustrates the
extent to which the Western powers are willing to subvert their
commitment to Wilsonian principles. Since Woodrow Wilson and the end
of World War I, the West was nominally committed to erecting and
defending nation states. We now see that the Western powers (and
African regimes) are willing to abandon this set of principles
whenever faced with a cheap way to curry favor with Muslims. Finally,
it shows what awaits Israel if its seditious Left ever has its way and
implements a Palestinian "Right of Return" that converts Israel into a
"bi-national state."
The Ivory Coast of today, or Côte d'Ivoire, is essentially a
bi-national state, although each "nation" is in fact a collection of
tribes. The northern "nation" is Muslim; the southern "nation"
consists of Christians and other Non-Muslims. Built upon a territory
that had once been home to several tribal statelets before the era of
colonization, it fell under French partial control in the 1840s, and
became a formal French colony in 1893. French is still the official
language spoken there, in addition to many local tribal tongues. The
French hung around until 1960, when the Ivory Coast became
independent. Once independent, the country was one of the most
prosperous in Africa, thanks to its large cocoa crop. The country has
been politically unstable since a coup in 1999 and a civil war that
began in 2002.
The background to the civil war and the current constitutional crisis
is the massive in-migration of Muslims from the countries neighboring
the Ivory Coast, mainly from Burkina Faso. The infiltrators settled
in the northern half of the country, and also in pockets in the south,
including in some neighborhoods inside the country's largest city,
Abidjan. Today Muslims, including illegals, are almost 40% of the
population of the country (although Muslim and other sources claim
they are really considerably higher), the remainder being a mixture of
Christians (mainly Roman Catholics) and animists.
Tensions between the immigrant population and the indigenous Ivorians
goes back to the 1960s. Successive governments there have regarded
the immigrants to be "circumstantial Ivorians" (their term), as
opposed to the "pure Ivorians," who are the natives. The illegal
"aliens" constitute more than a quarter of the current population of
the country. The alien-native dichotomy overlaps to a large extent
with the divisions between non-Muslims and Muslims, and is the most
important background factor in explaining the ongoing civil war.
The current political standoff in the Ivory Coast is largely a
Muslim-Christian confrontation. The "rebels" represent the Muslims of
the country, especially of the north, and in particular the "aliens."
They are led by Hassan Ouattara, whose parents were evidently illegal
immigrants into the Ivory Coast from Burkina Faso. Hence he
personally illustrates and epitomizes the "alien" character of the
"rebel" forces. An economist who once worked for the IMF, he calls
his rebel militia the "New Force." The "government" forces represent
the indigenous and traditional non-Muslim Ivorians. Their leader is
the current President (or, if you prefer, "president") Laurent Gbagbo,
a one-time university professor, who has been the official head of
state since 2000. He claims to be a socialist and anti-imperialist.
The government claims that neighboring Muslim states have intervened
in the civil war on the side of the Muslims.
Civil war broke out in the country in 2002. The "rebels," whose
support base is the Muslim north, challenged the "government," whose
power base was the non-Muslim south. Atrocities were committed on
both sides. Each side accuses the other of using mercenaries. French
military forces in the country participated in some of the fighting,
increasingly on the side of the "rebels."
The elections that were to have taken place in 2005 were postponed
repeatedly until 2010, in part at the initiative of the UN. A
power-sharing arrangement between the two main sides in the conflict
went into effect in 2007 but did not hold for long. None of the
forces in the country seemed to want new elections to be held, since
electoral forces were evenly matched between the two halves of the now
"bi-national" state. When they were eventually held in 2010, Gbagbo
lost by a thin margin. But he refused to accept those results as
conclusive and compelling. Aside from claims of widespread fraud,
Gbagbo insisted that the victory of the party of Ouattaro was entirely
thanks to the votes of the millions of illegal immigrants
participating in the election!
Other African countries, led by predominantly-Muslim Nigeria, have
been backing the "rebels." A number of African countries have called
for armed intervention on the side of those "rebels." After a period
of respite, violence began to escalate a few weeks ago. New Forces,
now renamed the Republican Forces of Côte d'Ivoire (RFCI) have been
beating Gbagbo's army in the field, took the country's capital city,
and are now holding parts of Abidjan. Gbagbo is under siege in his
headquarters and expected to fall any day now. Hundreds of thousands
of people have fled the battle zones, seeking refuge in neighboring
countries, especially Liberia.
The conflict is too complex for a simplistic assignment of forces into
categories of "good buys" and "bad guys." There are solid bases for
skepticism about the true commitment to democratic rule by either
side.
Nevertheless, the conflict in the Ivory Coast shows what happens when
massive illegal immigration leads to the demographic eclipse of a
native population. The same Western powers so ready to strip the
Serbs of their heartland to create a second Albanian nation-state in
Kosovo have been unwilling to sustain any nation-state for indigenous
Ivorians, and indeed have backed the aliens. Evidently the Western
countries still adhere to Wilsonian principles about ethnic states and
self-determination only when it is to the liking of Muslims.
But the even more obvious lesson from all this is the instability of
"bi-national" states and the impossibility of preventing them from
morphing into killing grounds. This should have been obvious from the
experiences in Rwanda.
Yet this is precisely the fashionable "solution" to the Middle East
conflict being promoted by the Bash-Israel Lobby. The bigots and
boycotters demand that Israel agree to be demolished and enfolded into
a larger "bi-national state," one that would be dominated by Arabs and
Muslims. Such an experiment in "bi-nationalism" would end in the
best-case scenario as a civil war resembling the one in the Ivory
Coast, and in the worst-case scenario in a Rwandan-style genocide.
Ultimately, a new genocide against Jews is exactly what the
Anti-Israel Lobby seeks. It is also the hidden agenda of the "BDS"
(or Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement of economic aggression
against Israel, and its close ally, the "Israel Apartheid Week"
Hitlerjugend.
Massive Muslim immigration is also transforming Europe
demographically, in ways strikingly similar to the influx of
immigrants into the Ivory Coast. France, Belgium, and other parts of
Western Europe may soon find themselves the European Ivorians, the
"Other," the stranger and disenfranchised inside their own home
countries.
2. The UCI Hillel Jihad against the Jews:
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/11/a-chapter-that-should-be-expelled-from-hillel-3/
A Chapter That Should Be Expelled from Hillel
Posted By Nichole Hungerford On April 11, 2011 @ 12:20 am In Daily
Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments
It is an open secret that university Hillel chapters often find
themselves on the side of campus constituencies that support the
agenda of Israel's most vicious enemies. One particularly appalling
example of this alliance comes to us from the University of
California, Irvine (UCI), whose Hillel chapter has formed an
incestuous association with the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), a
controversial student program that emulates the model of the terrorist
front group, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and indeed,
even works with ISM leadership. In its most scandalous episode yet,
the OTI has been exposed for arranging a meeting between students and
a prominent leader of the genocidal terrorist organization Hamas. UCI
Hillel's on-going alliance with such an organization and its record of
deceit demand that drastic measures be taken.
Controversy with UCI Hillel erupted in November 2010 when the
organization's president promoted a speaking event featuring a
Palestinian activist named George Rishmawi. The event was arranged
under the auspices of the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), but was
promoted over Facebook by Hillel leadership. Importantly, the original
Facebook flier described Rishmawi as the "cofounder [of] the
International Solidarity Movement" (ISM) and the "head of [the] Siraj
Center for Holy Land Studies." This is crucial to note, as the
significance of Rishmawi's affiliation with the ISM cannot be
overstated. The ISM is a viciously anti-Israel organization that
endorses Palestinian terrorism and is infamous for its abetment of
terrorist operations in Israel through its facade of "nonviolent"
activism. The group specializes in propagandizing Westerners, whom it
uses as human shields to provide cover for terrorists.
Needless to say, when the Orange County Jewish community was alerted
to the event, many were outraged. The Orange County Independent Task
Force on Anti-Semitism publicized the event on its website, but
shortly thereafter, the event information, including biographical
information on Rishmawi, had changed. Rishmawi was described as the
"Coordinator for Siraj, Center For Holy Land Studies" and a "former
member of the International Solidarity Movement" (emphasis added).
Hillel UCI President Matan Lurey explained on the event's page that
there are, in fact, two George Rishmawis, and that there had been
confusion about which one had been invited by OTI. Defenders of the
talk claimed that it was George S. Rishmawi who was invited to speak,
not George N. Rishmawi, a relative and colleague of the former, and
notorious cofounder of the ISM.
Unfortunately, the controversy only escalated from there, much of
which, is chronicled at www.ha-Emet.com (Hebrew for "the truth"), a
community response to events exposed in November. Numerous members of
the Jewish community, led by Dee Sterling, were disturbed by the
Rishmawi talk and dispatched a letter to Jordan Fruchtman, executive
director of Orange County Hillel (which oversees the UCI Hillel). The
letter was also sent to Shalom Elcott of the Jewish Federation of
Orange County (JFOC) and Jay Feldman, coordinator of the JFOC's Rose
Project, which funds the OTI. More broadly, the letter objected to
Hillel and the federation's support for the OTI, which was being
increasingly exposed for the radically anti-Israel student
indoctrination program that it is. The letter read, in part:
"It is particularly disturbing that the UCI Hillel, under the guidance
of Hillel Director Jordan Fruchtman has also contributed to supporting
the OTI. A former Hillel Israel Fellow participated in an OTI trip and
the current student leader of Hillel is actively promoting the event
this coming Monday with George Rishmawi….We also ask Jordan Fruchtman
how Hillel which, '…provides opportunities for Jewish students to
explore and celebrate their Jewish identity…' can reconcile this noble
work with the history and actions of the ISM."
The response from the recipients of this letter, however, was truly
disgraceful. With respect to Fruchtman in particular, rather than
accept responsibility for the egregious lack of judgement, Fruchtman
disseminated a letter to the Orange County Jewish community personally
attacking Sterling, claiming that she was maliciously spreading
untruths and was mistaken about which Rishmawi was speaking. "Hillel
does not support George N. Rishmawi or ISM, the organization with
which he is affiliated," Fruchtman said. "As a matter of principle,
the values of ISM are in direct conflict with Hillel's values and
Hillel's stance on Israel…[T]he person that has been invited by the
Olive Tree Initiative to speak at UCI on November 22, 2010, is a
different George Rishmawi, whose full name is George S. Rishmawi[.]"
Fruchtman advised others to ignore Sterling's "reprehensible"
statement.
Beyond the extreme lack of decorum in terms of the letter's personal
attack against an active, upstanding member of the Irvine Jewish
community (for the crime of voicing her objections to a malicious
anti-Israel activist being brought on campus), the letter sent by
Fruchtman was seriously factually challenged. First, it is
incontrovertible that an event featuring the "cofounder of the ISM"
had been promoted by Hillel leadership. In fact, the Simon Wiesenthal
Center of Los Angeles issued a similar objection to the JFOC based on
the same information. The alleged confusion was only "clarified" when
public criticism was made of Hillel publicizing the event in the first
place.
Secondly, George S. Rishmawi (the "good one") also has a close
relationship with the ISM. His biography at the Siraj Center also
describes him as the "cofounder" of the ISM. Moreover, although
Fruchtman in his letter claimed that George S. "was no longer
involved" with the group, it is not as if organizations like the ISM
offer membership cards or any other formal recognition of association.
What it means to say that one has "cut ties" or dropped affiliation
with the group is extremely ambiguous and practically impossible to
verify.
But in fact, such verification is not even necessary. OTI itineraries
from 2008-2010 identify two George Rishmawis giving talks and tours to
students on OTI trips to Israel and the disputed territories
(including Hillel members). These two individuals are clearly
differentiated on the 2008, 2009, and 2010 itineraries as "George S.
Rishmawi (Siraj Center)" and "George Rishmawi (cofounder ISM)."
Clearly, both Rishmawis are involved in the program, unless, for some
strange reason, George S. Rishmawi — the "good" ISM cofounder
according to UCI Hillel — was identified two different ways on the
same itinerary.
The Tale of Two Rishmawis remains unresolved in Orange County,
California. The OC Hillel president has not issued a public apology
for his organization's proven association with a group infiltrated by
high-ranking ISM activists (again, this a group that endorses and
abets Palestinian terrorism). This may, in fact, have much to do with
the OC Hillel President Jordan Fruchtman's personal affinity for the
OTI himself. According to a 2010 OTI booklet titled "The Olive Tree
Initiative: Expressions/Impressions" obtained by the Orange County
Independent Taskforce on Anti-Semitism, Fruchtman is listed as an
"individual supporter" of the OTI. It is no mystery why UCI Hillel
will not publicly condemn this program or disassociate from it, after
being given every opportunity.
Furthermore, it is difficult to believe that investigating the
controversy did not at the very least bring to the attention of OC
Hillel leadership (Fruchtman among them) the fact that the campus
chapter was committing an egregious error by associating with the
event as initially publicized. Instead of accepting an iota of
responsibility for this disgrace, offering an apology, or ensuring
that misled students were corrected for wrongfully endorsing the
event, Fruchtman was moved only to personally discredit the messenger.
To further besmirch and cow the opposition, Fruchtman publicized a
petition "signed" by Hillel students. The problem was, many of the
signatories were exposed to be fraudulent. Pajamas Media discovered
that numerous individuals alleged to have signed the petition never,
in fact, did nor did they have knowledge of the petition. A UCI PhD
candidate Joe Wolf reported, "The student president of Hillel at UCI
publicly admitted to a group of students and community members on
Monday, November 22, that the majority of students who were listed
were never shown the letter before it was sent out the afternoon of
Friday, November 19."
The president, Matan Lurey, claimed that the seemingly fraudulent
petition was the result of a mailing list error: "Using both the
contact lists in my phone, and my friends, who run two other large
Jewish groups at UC Irvine, we compiled a list of students we would
contact to get their approval for the response letter. Unfortunately,
due to the frenzied environment … the letter was accidentally sent out
to the mailing list, where it was copied to a blog and forwarded along
several other sources."
As if this saga weren't enough of a betrayal of the OC Jewish
community, the coup de grace is only now just being uncovered. What is
also printed in the 2010 Expressions/Impressions booklet is the 2009
OTI itinerary, which lists Aziz Duwaik, a high-ranking Hamas
politician, among the scheduled speakers. The timing of the Duwaik
talk was mere months after Duwaik had been released from an Israeli
prison after being arrested in 2006. It should be common-knowledge to
most FrontPage readers that Hamas is a US-classified terrorist
organization which is expressly devoted to exterminating Jews.
A recently publicized letter written in 2009 to the Chancellor of UCI,
Michael Drake, from Shalom Elcott of the JFOC and two co-chairs of the
federation's Rose Project (The federation identifies itself as the
"largest funder" of the OTI) expressed distress over the Duwaik
meeting. They claim that students were told — it is unclear by whom,
as the name was redacted — to keep the meeting secret in order to
avoid detainment crossing borders, problems traveling to and from the
US, and backlash from the OC Jewish community. Nonetheless, all of
these parties — the federation, UCI, Fruchtman — all continued to
support the OTI. Many of them claim the Duwaik meeting was impromptu,
saying that a canceled meeting was replaced extemporaneously with
Duwaik by a leading graduate student in the field. However, no one
seems concerned how it is possible that OTI leadership could possibly
arrange a spontaneous meeting with a leader of a genocidal terrorist
organization.
The Hillel-entwined OTI has not only been infiltrated by the likes of
terrorist sympathizers and leaders, but the program itself shares the
modus operandi of the same skillful anti-Israel propaganda
technicians, like Rishmawi and Duwaik, who posture as moderate
"peace-seekers" in order to seduce erstwhile pro-Israel students to
their deadly cause. It was the OTI's George N. Rishmawi himself who
opined in a 2004 interview: "When Palestinians get shot by Israeli
soldiers, no one is interested anymore, but if some of these foreign
volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will
sit up and take notice." How long before it is a student at UC Irvine?
Unfortunately, the only voices who seem capable of calling this
insanity what it is and warning students of the significant danger it
poses are the ones that are routinely opposed by Hillel chapters on
college campuses. "Why would they [Jewish students] be going over to
meet with people who want to kill them except to be deceived into
thinking they're civilized?" remarked David Horowitz, who has recently
launched a campus campaign, the Palestinian Wall of Lies, which is
designed to refute the patently false assertions of the Israel
Apartheid Week movement (chief among them, of course, that Israel has
an apartheid system). The degree of opposition from Hillel chapters
throughout this campaign has been most disturbing, and typically
accuse the campaign of spreading hate.
"The alleged 'hate' in our [Wall of Lies] ads is that we call lies,
lies. When we ask what is offensive about them, our detractors don't
have a response except to issue insults," Horowitz said. The
Palestinian Wall of Lies campaign is strictly factually-based,
refuting point-by-point the predominant falsehoods promulgated by the
Israeli apartheid fiction. Instead of joining with the Freedom Center
in this cause, "Hillel members are willing to join coalitions with
groups like MSA which is a Muslim Brotherhood front group and is
sponsoring anti-Israel hate weeks."
And in some cases, as with UCI, Hillel members are willing to hear out
a terrorist group leader and give him his say. At the same time, it is
those who speak loudest against radical anti-Israel hatred who are
quickly castigated from the dialogue. "They'll dialogue with Hamas,
whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, rather than have an
open community dialogue with those of us who support Israel as a
Jewish State and oppose Jewish funding of OTI," explained Dee
Sterling, who has been prevented from speaking publicly due to her
grassroots activism against the UCI Hillel and other Jewish groups'
continued association with the OTI. Unfortunately, it is a travesty
that is becoming more ubiquitous, not less.
3. You will all be interested in learning that Barry Chamish is now
wishing his readers "A Wonderful Easter" in his postings.
The local conspiracy nuts are suddenly on a high because an Israeli TV
channel ran a documentary on the murder of an Israeli military attach
in the US in 1974. Joe Alon was shot in Maryland. As you know,
shootings are not exactly an unusual event in the US. Another
Israeli I was friendly with was murdered in his gas station in Phila a
few years before this. I wonder why the conspiracy nuts have never
written about THAT!
The TV show had no evidence whatsoever about who or why Alon was
killed. But that is all conspiracy nuts need. If there is no good
answer as to who and why, then it just MUST be some sort of grand
conspiracy led by (choose from among the following) the CIA, the
Council of Foreign Relations, the Mossad, the World Jewish Conspiracy,
the Illuminati. How sad for the conspiracists if it should turn out
that Alon was killed by a junkie trying to steal cash for a fix. The
evidence of any conspiracy at all? Well, some family members of Joe
Alon think the murder was suspicious. Have you ever heard of any
murder that was NOT suspicious? For what it is worth, Palestinian
terrorists in Cairo took credit for that "hit," although they also
took credit for the heart attack of Levi Eshkol.
Chamish himself is trying to get involved in this. See
http://www.news1.co.il/showTalkBack.aspx?docId=58437&subjectId=3&talkBackId=1172149
4. "Land Day" at the end of March has become the annual day in which
Israeli Arabs and their Jews-for-a-Second-Holocaust accomplices
demonstrate against the existence of Israel. This week the Ministry
of Education is demanding that schools report the names of teachers
who did not show up for work on "Land Day." They presumably went to
the Nuremberg Rallies against Israeli existence instead. The Israeli
Left will no doubt proclaim this demand for reporting the absentees as
yet another example of "Israeli fascism."
5. The Arab League is proposing a "No Fly Zone" over Gaza, kind of
like the No Fly Zone over Libya, as a way to prevent Israel from
attacking the same terrorists who fire missiles at school buses.
Naturally the Israeli Left is all in favor.
It occurs to me that Israel should instead erect "No Treason Zones."
It can put up special signs, like those for "Drug Free Zones" around
schools in the US, especially around Israeli universities.
6. As you know, recently members of the Fogel family were brutally
murdered in Itamar. Among the dead was a baby stabbed in the heart
and another who had his throat cut. Right after news came out of the
murders, a group of 20 Arabs working in the "Kimat Hinam" Israeli
department store in Modiin, not too far from the scene of the murders,
started dancing in joy to celebrate the murders and threatening others
in the store with violence. The owner of the franchise fired them for
this.
But this is post-survivalist Israel. The head of the section for
enforcing "equal opportunity" at the Israeli Ministry of Commerce and
Industry filed a court petition to order the store to cancel the
dismissals and rehire the 20 terrorists. And even to restore their
back pay. The court agreed, because the terrorists had not been
granted a formal "Hearing."
Want to know who the "Equal Opportunity" commissioner here has never
found time to defend? Prof. Yeruham Leavitt, fired without a hearing
by Rivka Carmi at Ben Gurion University, for daring to express a
politically unfashionable opinion about children being raised by
homosexuals.
7. Another Israeli court, in Jerusalem just ladled out generous
"compensation" to a band of violent leftist thugs who were "falsely"
arrested while participating in a demonstration demanding that Jews be
prevented from living in homes they own in the Simon the Righteous
(Sheikh Jarrah) neighborhood in Jerusalem. Want to know who has NEVER
been compensated for being falsely arrested? Protesters who are NOT
leftist anti-Israel extremists.
The Israeli dual justice system continues to operate without the
slightest sign of a blush.
