September 13, 2012 | 8:13 pm

It’s Not About The Video

Posted by Ariel Blumenthal

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It’s not about the video.

Rest assured, actress who spoke this morning on the air in tears, shocked that she was part of a project that “brought the death of 4 people.” You didn’t do it.

If an idiotic video on YouTube is reason enough to kill 4 people and burn down the US Embassy, what kind of violence would the wealth of fresh hate, venom and incitement against Israel on the web amount to?

This is not about the video. By the time I’m writing these lines it’s clear that the attack in Benghazi was a premeditated operation by an Islamist militia. Alastair Crooke, a former MI6 operative living in Beirut said yesterday: “This was not at all surprising. The most extreme end of the Islamist spectrum is serving notice it is a force to be reckoned with.”

Last month a summer festival in Israel was targeted by Muslims because it took place in a lot adjacent to the yard of a museum that used to be a Mosque. We’ve seen a Mozart opera cancelled in Berlin, episodic television revised, cartoons, books, YouTube videos - all deemed offensive enough for mortal riots. Pre school with AK-47’s.

It’s becoming evident that more and more Muslims from Benghazi to Northeastern University are in the business of seeking grievances. The free world should now decide whether it is going to play along with it.

By including the disclaimer “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others” in his reaction to the attack, President Obama on Tuesday dragged us an inch deeper into the swampy discourse of getting-offended. No need to make the link from the highest podium in the land - It’s not about the video.

Kudos, on the other hand, to Google, owner of YouTube, who removed access to the video in religiously-testosteroned places like Egypt and Libya, but left it up for the general audience in observance of a thing called free speech. It’s now reported though, that Google’s non-hysterical attitude is challenged by a hysterical White House: The administration has officially asked Google to remove the video.

The protection of free speech covers most kinds of expressions - tasteless, pathetic and amateur included; The White House should now decide whether talking about Islam remains protected, or whether we are going to be bullied into submitting to blasphemy laws, which create injustice and misery in many Muslim countries (And are now being pushed at the UN as a universal ban.)

Secretary Clinton included a different disclaimer in her statement: “This was an attack by a small and savage group – not the people or Government of Libya.” This is an odd choice: As it is, America’s allies in the Muslim world are not always able or quick to act against the Islamists in their midst; Under these circumstances, wouldn’t it be smarter not to grant the Libyan government such a broad exemption from responsibility?

It’s not Clinton’s role to minimize the severity of the attack. Why did she find it necessary to provide this clarification in the first place? Did she fear a terrible Islamophobic wave hitting the US? Was she trying to avert an angry American mob from storming the Libyan Embassy?

Don’t worry, they won’t do that. For some reason only in the Muslim world do young and able men go on violent rampages because of a YouTube video - What an excuse! I hope my son’s teacher would know better if he ever shows this kind of audacity summoning excuses for doing stuff.

“How could this happen in a country we helped liberate?” Clinton asked, “In a city we helped save from destruction?”

I guess it’s an Arab Spring thing.

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September 10, 2012 | 11:41 am

Meanwhile, In The Magical Mountain Kingdom Of Tibet

Posted by Ariel Blumenthal

Damchoek, a TIbetan in his 20s, set himself on fire last week in Lhasa, he killed himself as the only means to protest Chinese occupation under total lockdown. Imagine the despair. His sister, Tenzin Choezin did the same in February.

Please leave a comment if you heard about either deaths; Imagine the tragedy in burning yourself because that’s the only way you can tell the world about your suffering, and have it gone utterly unnoticed.

In Tibet, precisely that happened over 50 times in recent years.

I hear about these deaths from UK based Free Tibet campaign. This is the most prominent Tibetan solidarity organization in the world, and it feels like a girl scout drive during particularly aggressive times, most other days it’s a gift shop. Where are the activists? Seekers of justice and freedom? Where are the artists? The writers? Where is the UN? Its Human Rights Commission?

-- Silence. --

It’s hard to believe the motivations of so called pro Palestinian activists in light of the quiet suffering in Tibet. They invent a narrative of Palestinian victimhood where the reality is that of a national (and sometimes religious) conflict, in which the so called “victim” has consistently been the rejectionist. The Tibetans, meanwhile, are being shredded to pieces under total occupation that is random in its inception and devastating in its nature.

The Palestinian narrative is highly suspicious, densely stained with bad faith, bad intentions and indiscriminate violence, and nurtured by loath, hatred and total disregard to the rights and lives of Israelis and Jews. This whole package is drenched in a history of relentless refusal to any peaceful proposal, and constant promotion of hate, and of a solution that is antithetical to peace: a total Palestinian victory.

The Tibetan narrative in contrast, is brought to you by the the Dalai Lama.

This is the reward our sad world gives non-violence. I wonder whether Ghandi himself could have outdone the constant Palestinian chatter. At the pinnacle of this sorry phenomenon are those “human rights”, “justice” and “peace” activists, for whom human rights, justice, peace and self-determination are selective rights rewarded to the Palestinians only. The Tibetans don’t deserve them, no one hears about them anyway. (The Israelis, incidentally, can forget about them too.)

When I visited Tibet in 1998, the Tibetan capital of Lhasa had already been 97%(!!) Chinese. That’s one hell of a settlement. Han Chinese immigrating population easily overwhelm the roughly 5.4 million Tibetans who survived Mao’s atrocities and constructed famine.

But the 1.7% of the West Bank that is settled by Israelis drive activists nuts: Unparalleled injustice!

Government jobs in Tibet are only given to people who speak Chinese. Since Tibetans are not taught Chinese in school, there are no government jobs for Tibetans. In a Communist country that’s A LOT of jobs unavailable, so when I visited Lhasa 14 years ago young Tibetans mostly sat around drinking.

Today - they burn themselves. But the Israeli “Apartheid wall” brings “human rights activists” to the brink of insanity. The many lives it saved are inconsequential - It’s a crime against humanity!

The nature of the activists is the nature of those they think they’re helping: Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, said more than once that the Palestinians are “The last people in the world that live under occupation”, And just like that he erased the Tibetans (among others) who according to his own narrative, are his brethren to oppression and humiliation.

This is the leader of the people that the one thing they’re hooked on more than international generosity and the solidarity of the uniformed lot, is their own violent contempt. And he can’t offer a shred of compassion or even recognition towards the suffering of others. (The suffering of the Jews, incidentally, is just as insignificant.)

Clearly, this is a bad comparison for a pro-Israeli blogger to make: Israel is China? Palestinians are Tibetans? In the single dimensional world many loud people live in, this set of equivalencies is possible.

I decided to write about it anyway, as I’m sure my readers are able to see that the fact that Israel is not China and the Palestinians are not Tibetans is precisely what’s so angering about Palestinian victimhood. It erodes and distorts the highly cherished ideas of justice, human rights and peace.

When human rights are selective and peace activists speak the language of hate, we have a moral inversion that we simply cannot allow. As I wrote before, it’s time to remove “human rights”, “peace” and “justice” from before “activists”, and describe anti Israeli campaigns as what they are: anti-Israeli, with destructive motivations I can go on about for many posts. (As you know I will...)

It’s time to claim the language of peace and human rights back: Justice to Tibet! Freedom to Tibetans!

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Follow me on Twitter @lostroadtopeace

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