Death of the free world

In an age where there is no truth and no lies - only narratives, we need a new policeman to distinguish between good and evil.

By BEN-DROR YEMINI
Sweden Stockholm suicide bomber 311 ap (photo credit: AP)
Sweden Stockholm suicide bomber 311 ap
(photo credit: AP)
Don't expect to see an obituary or a funeral notice. This isn’t about an event that happened in the past or that will happen on some future date. But the reality remains the same: the free world, as we know it, is disappearing fast. Adversaries from within and from without have assumed control. Other than a few signs of life here and there, the free world is dead.
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The media records events as they happen but only history can take into account long-term processes. When bad things happen, as they tend to do, we often employ suppression mechanisms. This isn’t happening, we tell ourselves. Yet aren't we still enjoying life’s little freedoms? Our economies are functioning, our restaurants are full and there are still elections. Except that all of it’s a farce. New forces are growing - hostile forces. Enemies. While some of these enemies speak in discursive euphemism, others openly proclaim "we will destroy this world to its foundation."
The deluge of documents released courtesy of WikiLeaks serve as a prime example; they bring things to light that we did not need or even want to know. In the free world there is no policing, and some might argue that it doesn't require policing. This approach could not be more erroneous. There is a frightening alternative to a world with a bad cop: a world with no cop at all. This is the world of reckless abandon in which we now find ourselves. A world where violence is prevailing.
The previous policeman, George Bush, made every possible mistake in his struggle against the “underworld”. The officer that replaced him, Barack Obama, is making even larger blunders. His first error in judgment was making it clear to the “underworld” that there is no policeman, there is only “dialogue.” Such a notion even merited our new policeman with a Nobel Peace Prize. Consequently, the “dark forces” felt they were given a carte blanche to execute their every whim. The scales have tipped so that the weaker the United States becomes, the stronger Iran is; the more conciliatory Obama is, the more aggressive Ahmadinejad becomes. The smaller players have acclimated themselves to this new balance, so that now we find leaders such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar Assad, Sa'ad Hariri, Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal heading a new battlefront under the auspices of Iran. A bloody war still rages between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites yet they remain united on three counts: their hatred of the free world, the US and Israel.
But on the horizon new policemen are appearing. They operate under the guise of “human rights organizations,” “the UN,” and “the international community.” These policemen are concerned with the welfare of the aggressors and not the victims. Just this month the Gadhafi International Prize for Human Rights, named after Libya's leader Muammar Gadhafi, was awarded to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan. Turkey's desire to join the EU is countered by its leader's loyalty to the "dark forces" that want to control Europe. These institutions wave the “rights” flag and yet suffer from profound hatred of the free world and ally themselves with "dark regimes." So that when we hear catchphrases like “international community” or “international law,”  we should be aware that these are terms dispensed by tribunals which include countries such as Sudan, Iran, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Countries that, in addition to financing entities involved in spreading anti-Semitic and jihadist rhetoric, persistently trample on human rights.
These institutions define our current period in history. They have battalions of support within the free world and are destroying it from within. Thousands of them are recruiting or being recruited for jihad worldwide and yet no one can touch them. There is something fundamentally wrong with a world that allows them to disseminate their teachings in hate centers. And despite their open proclamations to destroy the free world, the free world remains in the steadfast grip of paralysis.
Symptoms that the end of the free world is nigh continue to surface all the time. We are now in a world in which Hamas is a rising star, and as its celebrity status increases, the truth is gradually wiped out. The truth that Hamas is unequivocally an anti-Semitic organization, and that its leaders, including Khaled Mashaal, Yunis Al-Estelle, Muhammad Abu-Ita, explicitly call for the destruction of Jews and the conquest of the entire free world by Islam  These people are no longer terrorists, they are “;freedom fighters”, and their fight is supported by solidarity marches and aid flotillas. We are in a world which permits one of the most fervently feminist organizations in the US, “Code Pink”, to collaborate with the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
The disease has penetrated centers of power all over the world, including those of culture, creativity, media and academia. In the UK, Islamic study centers that reportedly spread extremist ideas were set up in eight universities, backed by multi-million-pound donations from Muslim organizations. The most recent academic to join the jihadist cause is Abdulwahab, the Swedish national responsible for Saturday's Stockholm bombing. A family friend claims that Abdulwahab before he moved to Britain in 2001 to study at the University of Bedfordshire.
“Nothing is more Western than hatred of the West.” So the writer Pascal Bruckner opines in his new book, The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism. The free world ironically endorses one to hate the free world. When the critique comes from the West, it is simply a mutated version of self-criticism. When the critique is somehow connected to the global jihad, it becomes political propaganda of devastating proportions. The supporters of jihad do not hate the free world because of what it does, they hate it because of what it is.
The question now is if there’s any chance that the free world will be reborn.. There seems to be a healthy disillusionment growing among the European right, but unfortunately they too are often afflicted with anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Thus turning to the right cannot provide the answer. What the world needs then, is a new faction, one that is neither right nor left, but that is able to distinguish between good and evil. An alliance that promotes collaboration with liberal Muslim reformists to suppress all forms of fanaticism and block channels of communication that preach hatred (including jihadist oriented web sites). This new, free world will dismantle all international institutions – the current policemen -that the dark regimes reign over, and cripple the financial conduits that feed hundreds of millions of dollars to entities engaged in preaching hatred of the West.
Articles such as this commonly end with sentences that express hope. Not this time, however. It is time for us to strike the gong that will awaken the free world, whose frail body lies before us, still breathing but only just.
The writer is a regular columnist at Maariv.