Police in the western German city of Duisburg have admitted they removed flags a student had hung in his apartment in support of Israel during a pro-Palestinian protest march in the city. Officers broke down his door and removed the flags. The city's police chief has issued an apology, but outrage is spreading.It's certainly not a new phenomenon in Germany for feathers to be ruffled every time bombs fall or rockets fly in the Middle East. It is unusual, though, for German police officials to use force to enter into an apartment and remove an Israeli flag from a bedroom because people protesting the Gaza Strip invasion on the street below are bothered by it.
But that's what happened this weekend in Duisburg in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Around 10,000 people had gathered on Saturday morning at the central station in the city, located in the Ruhr region, to protest against Israel's course of action in the Gaza Strip. The protest, organized by the Islamist group Milli Görüs, which, although legal, has been monitored for years by German domestic intelligence agencies in charge of observing potentially radical or fundamentalist groups.
After a short time, the protest passed along one of the city's main thoroughfares. At a house on the corner, protesters spotted two Israeli flags -- one hanging from a balcony and the second from the window of a bedroom inside the apartment. Twenty-five-year-old student Peter P.* and his 26-year-old girlfriend had mounted them there.
Here's video of what happened:
And here's a German-language news report of the disgusting spectacle.
Understand what happened here: the police kicked down the door of a German citizen to remove an Israeli flag from his window to appease the snarling mob below.
The Germans are losing their country, and their freedoms. They're just rolling over for these Islamofascist barbarians. They might think they're going to buy safety by throwing the Jews, so to speak, to the Islamic mob. But it's self-deception. As Henryk M. Broder, a German citizen, wrote after the Danish cartoon fiasco:
Fear may be a poor counselor, but when it comes to educating the masses, there is no more effective tool. Mao famously said: "Strike one to educate one hundred" -- an axiom that helped him solidify his power.It is not respect for other cultures which influences behavior, but rather the awareness of just how fanatic and ruthless our adversaries are. The wilder and more brutal they appear to be, the more likely they are to attract attention and gain respect. Whether venturing into unfamiliar territory means taking a walk in a different neighborhood or visiting a foreign culture, our natural tendency is to avoid conflict.
"Nowadays acts of terrorism are not committed for their own sake, but in the name of an ideology one could call Nazi-Islamism," Romanian-American author Norman Manea told the German daily Die Welt in March 2004. The only difference, in Manea's view, is "that this ideology invokes a religion, whereas the Nazis were mythical without being religious." Manea believes that what he calls a "World War III" has already begun. "The Europeans are putting off the recognition -- as they did in the 1930s -- of the tremendous tragedy that awaits them and that has, in fact, already arrived."
This sounds like an extreme exaggeration, conjuring up visions of a Day of Judgment, of an Apocalypse Now! Of course, in 1938 hardly anyone could have imagined where the policy of appeasing the Nazis would lead. History does not repeat itself, and yet there are parallels that do not bode well. The willingness to submit to self-deception is as widespread today as it was in the years leading up to World War II.
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While its true that there is no shortage of official violations of free speech here in the US (political protesters being hustled off to the oxymoronically named "free speech zones" for instance), given Germany's history, one would think that they would be especially sensitive to such things, particularly when it touched on things related to Judaism.
I second what Forestwalker said above. At some point, Rod, you considered no longer using the term "dhimmitude," and I think it would be more than appropriate to drop that term, or at least, employ less frequent usage of it.
Of course, the German police ought to have been defending the rights of those flying the Israeli flag, because in my opinion that is part of the job of those in authority to preserve the freedom of expression of Germany's citizens, even when they are going against popular sentiment.
I support Israel's right to defend itself, but I'm not sure that this war in Gaza is helping Israel. I'm not sure I would have had the courage these young people had to fly the Israeli flag in the face of a passionate (and perhaps violent) anti-Israel demonstration.
Perhaps the German version of the ACLU needs to lend a hand.
I recommend checking out the back-and-forth discussion about Gaza between Beliefnet bloggers David Gibson and Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, and also the post about Eboo Patel's suggestions on the Progressive Revival blog.
Courtesy of Making Light (http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/):
'Amtrak photo contestant arrested by Amtrak police'
http://carlosmiller.com/2008/12/27/amtrak-police-arrest-photographer-participating-in-amtrak-photo-contest/
This proves - ah, what? That the First Amendment no longer exists in the USA? Or that certain police can be douchebags, along with petty tyrants in the bureaucracy?
To paraphrase Brimelow, the elites' faith in multiculturalism, open borders, and coerced diversity are Hitler's posthumous revenge on the West.
Part of me wishes that the Muslims would all go ahead and congregate in some favorite elite vacation spot - say, Paris - in sufficient numbers to take it over and enforce sharia over the whole city. No wine, fornication/contraceptives, homosexuality, pork, cigarettes (credit cards?) - all of it. Maybe once they're forced to connect the dots between their attitudes and their consequences, they'll become a little more provincial.
Paris cafes have already banned indoor smoking, effluvium. I'm a non-smoker, but I think on some level, a smoking ban in Paris is a sign of the Apocalypse.
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