The Global Gomorrah

by Yashiko Sagamori

Then Abr aham said, May t he Lor d not be angr y, but let
me speak j ust once mor e. What if only t en can be f ound
t her e? The Lor d answer ed, For t he sake of t en, I will not
dest r oy it .
Gen. 18

I can remember only two occasions when I watched the Discovery/Times Channel for
more than a few seconds in a row. The first time they were showing a documentary about
Saudi Arabia. There was a room with several women seated around a table. It was difficult
to figure out how many of them were there because, covered head to toe with burqas, they
all looked like big, black bowling pins and were just as impossible to tell apart.
The women were trying to outdo each other extolling their incredibly good fortune to
have been born into a culture that went to such drastic extremes to protect their honor. I
listened for a while how happy they were to have to ask male relatives for a written
permission to leave the house every time they had to go somewhere; how beautiful it was
to become a third wife to a man you had never met until he climbed into your bed to claim
your virginity; how wonderful it was to live without a face that could attract unwanted
attention, without a clitoris that might produce a sinful sensation, without a job that might
result in a dangerous exposure to strangers, without freedom that could be so easily
abused, without practically everything that makes up a normal life of a normal person in a
normal world.
Of course, normalcy is in the eye of the beholder. But while listening to them speak in
Arabic and reading the translation of their halleluiahs in the subtitles, I suddenly
remembered what I had read about the will left behind by Mohammad Atta, the leader of
the 9/11 highjackers. In his will, Mr. Atta, the great Muslim hero, mastermind and
executioner of the most spectacular mass murder of modern times, demanded that no
woman, especially no pregnant woman, be allowed to desecrate his holy memory by
attending his funeral or visiting his grave. There goes your honor, sisters, I thought. No
matter what you sing while perched in your cages, your owners will always find a way to
remind you that you are nothing but unclean animals.
What can be worse than being a slave? Only being a loyal slave.
The other time they were airing a documentary about North Korea. I turned it on during
an interview with a North Korean general. The general was slightly beyond middle age and
had a pleasant outdoorsman's face that radiated confidence and healthy power and
looked a bit incongruous under a wide, richly decorated, Soviet-style military cap. He was
speaking in a placid, measured tone of voice. He was saying how much he hated the
United States, how passionately he was dreaming of killing as many Americans as he
could possibly reach, how hopeful he was that now, with the help of new military hardware
developed under the guidance of the Dear Leader , his dream might finally come true. He
called it defending our revolution .
After him, they showed a North Korean defector who also used to be in the military,
although in a much lower rank. He had served as a guard at a prison camp. People jailed
there were mostly guilty by association with a known criminal, but their association was
not strong enough to warrant an execution. They were imprisoned together with their
entire families. The inmates had no rights whatsoever. The guards had the power to
execute any of them on the whim, without the formality of a trial. Inmates, who committed
offences that, in the opinion of a guard, deserved to be punished by death, were rarely
executed alone. Usually, they went to their doom accompanied by their families and
neighbors. The former guard told about an especially memorable day when he personally
killed 31 people. He didn't reveal what any of them had done wrong. He also told how
guards routinely killed babies born to inmates by throwing them on the ground and
stepping on their throats. That was not a punishment; that was a routine procedure
performed immediately after birth in front of a still bleeding mother. But even that was not
the most interesting part of his interview.
The main purpose of that particular camp was to test chemical and biological weapons
on human subjects. The former guard naively called people who conducted the tests
scientists . An inmate didn't have to commit any offense to be used as a guinea pig.
Usually, he or she had to be generally healthy and, sometimes, have some special
physical characteristics. The former guard told about one particular occasion when he
escorted a family, the parents and two young children, a boy and a girl, to a gas chamber.
The walls of the chamber were made out of glass so that the progress of the experiment
could be observed. The four were stripped naked and placed inside.
Try to imagine what it was like for them. Even for prisoners of a concentration camp,
life goes on as long as they are still alive. Imagine the two adults, suddenly taken away
from the grueling daily routine of the camp, thinking of the work that was to be resumed
when they were allowed to return to their barracks, standing in the middle of a glass cage,
trying to cover their nakedness. Imagine the two children, unaware that their life could
have been very different from what it was, looking with normal children's curiosity at the
unfamiliar surroundings.
Then gas was pumped into the chamber. It didn't kill them instantly. For a while, the
dying parents were trying to save their children by giving them mouth to mouth, but that, of
course, didn't work. While they were dying, the scientists positioned around the glass
walls were busily taking notes.
I saw it on the Discovery/Times channel. I believe it would be reasonable to assume
that the New York Times knows what is being shown on a TV channel it partially owns.
Apparently, North Korean atrocities did not fall under the category of news fit to print. And
that raises the inevitable question of the New York Times's political agenda.
But that's not the only question that comes to mind.
We've all heard the version of World War II history a la Pat Buchanan that proclaims
that the United States decided to enter the war in order to liberate Jews from German
concentration camps. If we were to believe that, we would have to express our regrets that
the decision didn't come 6 million Jews earlier. But let us not worry about the Jews who
have been dead for so long that the very fact of their pre-Auschwitz existence is easier to
deny than to confirm.
Not so long ago, NATO mostly, the United States bombed Yugoslavia out of
existence for the alleged, but still unproven crime of genocide against its Muslim
population. Why then the United States, along with NATO and the rest of the peace-loving
world, wouldn't even consider going to war to liberate North Koreans from the North
Korean concentration camps?
Why did a bra placed by a fool in uniform on the head of a terrorist held in Abu Ghraib
attracted more attention of the humankind than the mass murder of North Koreans or
even the mass murder of Iraqis that went on at the very same Abu Ghraib for decades,
while Saddam Hussein was in power?
Why the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners are kept in more
humane conditions than in any other POW camp in history, although never in history
captives deserved so little humanitarian concern, excites defenders of human rights so
much more than the tortured death at the hands of Dear Leader's goons of people who
had done nothing wrong?
While the dying parents were desperately blowing poison from their lungs into the
poisoned lungs of their dying children, the institution misnamed the International Court of
Justice was diligently seeking the legal basis for the condemnation of Israel for building a
fence in an equally desperate (and, predictably, equally futile) attempt to prevent Arab
terrorists from murdering Jews. Of the three, only the court achieved its goal. The
population of this planet of ours supported the unjust decision of the unjust court with rare
unanimity. Neither the Arab atrocities, nor the Korean ones have succeeded in attracting
the attention of the court or its world-wide courtroom.
To a naïve person, this may look like most people on Earth have suddenly lost their
God-given ability to tell good from evil. Such a hypothesis can be easily disproved. If the
humankind had been choosing between the two randomly, then, in approximately 50% of
the cases, they would have opted for good. This is not happening. The humankind has
made its choice and is sticking to it.
When Israel put Saddam out of nuclear business, the entire world, including the United
States, condemned the unprovoked Israeli aggression against a sovereign country. (In the
Reagan cabinet, the most enthusiastic proponent of a severe punishment for Israel was
the then-Vice President George H. W. Bush.) There was no logic in that condemnation.
Israel would, no doubt, become Saddam's first target, but believing that it would have
remained his only target is beyond ludicrous. In 1981, Israel literally saved the world.
Years later, the West acknowledged Israel's heroic deed in the most unofficial manner
possible.
History repeats itself. Today Israel is fighting Hezbollah, and, as it always happens, the
majority of governments, organizations, and individuals around the globe condemn Israel
for defending itself. But Israel is not only defending itself. Like Saddam's aborted nukes,
Hezbollah is not just threatening Israel. Its sleeper cells are omnipresent in Western
countries. What are those countries pushing for? A ceasefire the only way to prevent
the demise of Hezbollah at the hands of its righteous nemesis. Why do people want to
save a terrorist organization, which, at the very first opportunity, w ill turn their own cities
into Beirut on the Thames, Beirut on the Spree, Beirut on the Seine, Beirut on the Tiber?
Beats me.
God promised Abraham to bless those who bless Jews and to curse those who curse
them. A few short years ago, you might need some complex reasoning and compelling
historic examples if you wanted to convince the ignorant that, so far, God has kept His
promise. On July 24, all the proof you needed could be found in a short documentary
posted on CNN. It showed two Lebanese children severely burned by Israeli bombs. Even
though the show might have been staged Arabs are well known for this kind of PR and
Western reporters are usually happy to present their productions as documentaries I
knew that Israeli raids on Lebanon have caused civilian casualties, and some of them
were children, and some of those children suffered the way no human being should suffer.
Such is the price the Lebanese people are paying for their hatred of Jews, in general,
and their support of Hezbollah, in particular. As terrible as that price is, it doesn't look
unfair or disproportionate to me. You may be a Jew-lover or Jew-hater, Republican or
Democrat, Communist or Nazi, Sunni or Shiite, but as long as you stick to the facts, you
must know that, in the last two thousand years, Jews have been the only people on earth
who have never committed an act of aggression against anyone, including Lebanon.
Nevertheless, CNN will not show you even a two-minute-long movie about the
suffering of Jewish children who have become victims of Arab aggression against Israel,
although there is a not too subtle difference between the two groups of victims: The Jews,
including even infants, were targeted deliberately, and the cesspool known as the Arab
street has supported the attacks enthusiastically and unanimously. Why then should they
and their children be exempt from a similar fate?
Now would be a good time for you to remind me about the Geneva Conventions. The
Geneva Conventions protect the innocent from harm at the time of war. Or do they? In a
hypothetical war between Switzerland and Denmark, they might. A hypothetical war
between Switzerland and Denmark would be fought by properly uniformed armies, and
every person who wasn't armed or wearing uniform would be classified as an innocent
civilian.
But ask any Muslim, and they will tell you that a non-believer cannot be innocent by
the definition, be he or she a member of enemy armed forces or a church choir. This is
perfectly logical. Everyone can convert to Islam at any moment. All it takes is a formal
announcement witnessed by Muslims. By choosing not to convert, you are persisting in
your crime of unbelieving; therefore, you are not innocent; therefore, you are not a subject
to the mythical benevolence that, according to Condoleezza Rice, is found at the heart of
Islam. Therefore, killing you, or your child, or your grandmother, or, better yet, all of you
together, would promote jihad and, therefore, be perfectly legitimate according to Muslim
laws.
 Jihad, which is the only state in which Islam can exist, is an interesting phenomenon.
Modern jihad is not fought by armies, and it's easy to see why. Iraq had the most powerful
army in the entire Muslim world. During its war with Iran, it inflicted terrible devastation on
its enemy. But when confronted by the United States military, it was unable to present any
opposition whatsoever. That's why modern jihad is being fought by civilians.
Uniformed soldiers are liable to be shot on sight. Thanks to what we mistake for
humanism, civilians who ambush and blow up our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are
subject to criminal prosecution, the so called due process . The reality convincingly
demonstrates that the due process is totally senseless in the context of modern jihad.
Therefore, the jihadists are fighting us unopposed.
To prove my point, the current Iraqi prime minister is supported not only by the US
military. He is also supported by Moqtada al Sadr, the most prominent Shiite warlord
opposed to our liberation of Iraq. Al Sadr was allowed to gain his prominence while Iraq
was already occupied by our forces. The very fact that he or any of his followers are still
alive testifies to our inherent weakness and gives us the right to ask what exactly have we
won in Iraq. The answer to that question is simple: exactly nothing.
It is the same with Hezbollah and Hamas. Contrary to what you hear from our
politicians, they do not have to disarm. The formidable goals of these organizations cannot
be fulfilled without a prolonged armed struggle. Those goals are wholeheartedly supported
by tens of millions of seemingly moderate Muslims who constitute their power base.
Hezbollah and Hamas are responsible to neither Western governments nor naïve Western
pacifists. They are solely responsible to those who put them in power. And those who put
them in power want them armed, because Hezbollah and Hamas defend their interests.
Therefore, if you want to take power from Hezbollah and Hamas, disarming them is not
an option, because those who put them in power will eventually find a way to arm them
again. Physically exterminating Hezbollah and Hamas is not an option either, because
those who put them in power will find plenty of others willing to fill the vacancies.
Physically exterminating those who put them in power is not an option either, because that
would have inevitably amounted to genocide, and our civilization prefers to succumb to
genocide rather than inflict one, unless, of course, the people on the receiving end of it are
Jews. That's why the UN, along with the entire peace-loving humanity, is so worried about
the Lebanese who have been suffering at the hands of the ruthless Israeli agressors for
almost three weeks, but hasn't done squat to protect Jews from the Arab aggression that's
been going on for at least 6 decades.
The only remaining option is to attempt to eradicate Islam without eradicating Muslims,
because Islam is the motivation behind jihad. Technically, this is possible (remember
World War II?), but only technically, because Islam is a religion, and all religions are equal
in the eyes of the enlightened Westerners. (I myself believe that all religions are equal only
to atheists.)
So, what's the solution? There is none, unless we decide to fight jihad in earnest. But
there is no danger of that. Today, the United States has found it to its political advantage
to resist the calls for ceasefire in Lebanon. Tomorrow, as it has happened so many times
in the past, it will change; Israel will be instructed to stop in the middle of a battle, and
Islam will be handed yet another victory it could have never won on the battlefield.