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(Page 7 of 18)

I fled the U.S. for the crap that continues to unfold there, Mr. Orlet's opinion merely the most recent example I can cite, and thought I had found a better place. Wrong, it resembles America more and more with each missed opportunity to respond in a different way to the world reality we all must suffer.

Hirsi Ali resigned the Parliament on Tuesday and I cried, cried for my personal loss of having found what I thought was a society based on humaneness, and cried for Hirsi Ali herself who, for being the vessel of truth that she is, continues to suffer and be forced down what must be the loneliest journey a human can make, never once, not even once, complaining in the process.

Everything this is nothing less than a battle of truth, and in my world, the truth always wins out, regardless the number of people assassinated to prevent its emergence.

It is a dark day for democracy, one which will be remembered in the future of Dutch politics as the day everything changed.

I need not tell you how revolting this entire business of revoking Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Dutch citizenship is. As you may or may not know, not only are they threatening to take away her passport she has also been ordered by court, on request of her neighbors, to leave her home. This is the first home she has had for many years and the reason her neighbors want her to leave is because she is a threat to their safety. After all, Islamic terrorists want to kill her and her neighbors fear to get caught in the crossfire. Sixty years have passed but not much has changed. People still ask the police to remove their persecuted neighbors instead of giving them shelter. And why not? Human beings are followers and in this case they simply follow the behavior of their leaders. Nobody inspires them to behave any better. The irony is that Holland is a country where everybody loves to talk about solidarity without showing any. Like Pim Fortuyn, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has shouted "fire" in a building that is burning and people hate her for it.

After the murder of Theo van Gogh I remember quite a few American columnists writing that Holland would finally wake up to the threat of radical Islam. They couldn't have been more wrong. Instead of waking up to the threat, Holland preferred to respond to it by going into coma. Maybe the differences between the U.S. and Europe are so big that it has become impossible for you to understand how people think here. This is a very individualistic society -as is yours- but because the notion of a collective is not stimulated nations in Europe seem to behave like individuals. Just think of the rioting French students. If I am only an individual with rights and not a member of a society to which I owe my liberty and wealth, then why should I be asked to sacrifice anything? Have you ever heard of Sylvia Millecam? She was a Dutch actress who was diagnosed with breast cancer but she let herself be convinced it was some sort of virus. She ignored the threat, ignored it despite all symptoms. She did that because it's easier not to deal with a life threatening disease than it is to face up to the fact that in order to stay alive you must fight a battle which you might loose. Faced with such a future it is tempting to believe that what is a threat is not and what is not a threat is. If you managed to understand the meaning of this rambling sentence I just explained to you why people prefer to hate America.

I'm not an American but I'm not much of an European either. In 1993 I made the decision to move to Israel and I lived there until 2002. One of the differences between the peoples of the Middle East and the Europeans is their different attitude towards the past. The European view of the past is that of a line, the Islamic and Jewish view the past that of a circle. It may be the cause of a lot of our troubles but it gives us a sense of who we are, where we're from and where we're going to. The Europeans believe the past is gone and that they have no relation to it. Jews and Muslims believe they are the continuation of the past. With that notion comes a feeling of responsibility and I think Americans -with their secular state religion- share that view of the past. The Europeans are the odd man out. They don't understand the power of religion, the pull of ideology and the dynamics of fanaticism. This is why they tend to ignore it.

Now the question is how this has come about and the answer lies in the past. Specifically the experience of the two world wars and the lessons we learned from it. I don't need to explain the history so let me just quickly tell you what I mean. After World War I the Western Democracies were convinced they should never go to war again. This may have been a breakthrough in our history but the timing was not right. It's not just that pacifism in the face of tyranny is an abdication of responsibility. "Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist," wrote George Orwell. "This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other....In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.'" It's interesting to see a contemporary George say the exact same thing ("You are either with us or against us") and be ridiculed for it. Those European countries that gave Germany a chance to rearm and that sacrificed their allies to Germany never had to take responsibility for their acts. Nor did the Soviet Union ever have to take responsibility for allowing the destruction of the second front in 1940. Or for the simple fact -- conveniently forgotten -- that the Second World War started with a joint attack on Poland by the Soviet Union and Nazi-Germany after they had formed a military and economic alliance. So it was Germany and Germany alone which was condemned for causing the war and committing genocide even though many nations helped her along on the road to disaster. The lesson that the Americans and the Jews learned was that appeasement is wrong and that tyranny must be opposed. If we don't oppose it we will have to deal with it under much worse circumstances. Even though we cannot always live up to it, this has been a guiding principle for the United States of America and for the State of Israel.

But think about Europe, what did it learn from that period? Only Germany had to accept the blame and the lesson is clear: Abandon your allies and you will get away with it. It learned that doing nothing in the face of aggression is not a crime. Sacrificing Czechoslovakia was not a crime nor was closing the borders of Palestine when millions of Jews were in mortal danger. Even being an ally of Nazi Germany and starting the Second World War together with her is not something to be ashamed of. And in a way this has become the foundation of International Law. Doing nothing is not a crime. This is how Kofi Annan can come to the conclusion that the invasion of Iraq was illegal whereas what is truly illegal was to allow Saddam Hussein to remain in power. I just heard that Romano Prodi said that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. He doesn't understand that this is only so if the U.S. looses the conflict. Instead of making sure the US doesn't, all he does is to come to the conclusion it's better not to act.

People relate to 1945 as if it is a kind of year zero and for a while maybe it was. We consider it a year zero because it was the start of a new world order which we foolishly believe was due to the creation of the United Nations and International Law. But in fact the stability of that post war period was solely created by the balance between the USSR and the U.S. We all know this but people seem to ignore the only possible logical conclusion that with the fall of the USSR we have returned to pre-WWII chaos. For a while we fooled ourselves into believing that Europe could be the soft-power replacement of the Soviet Union in order to counter balance the United States of America. As if holding America in check would somehow bring stability. We forgot that the world is much larger than just the major players of the Cold War. With the fall of the Soviet Union those areas of the world which were once our playground are waking up. And those nations aren't exactly democratic. When Mikhail Gorbachev got a letter from Khomeini offering him to convert to Islam most people thought it was a joke. But now that an Islamic superpower based on Jihad power is emerging very few people find such letters still reason for amusement. Those who do are making a very serious mistake.

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