"Why do they hate us?"

Oh, I am so tired of hearing people on the street and the talking heads on all the news programs whining, asking "Why do they hate us?"

Anyone who has bothered to read a history book or two instead of news stories for the most part written by people who apparently only read other news stories, instead of doing their own historical research, will find the answer to be simple indeed:

They want to kill us because we are not Moslems.

It used to be okay when terrorists were called Palestinians and they only blew up or gunned down Jews. I mean, who gives a fuck about Jews, other than other Jews. So, big deal. Blow 'em up. Obviously, it's the Jews fault, right? I mean, they must have done something to garner such focused and violent hatred, right?

They did.

They refused to convert when asked nicely by Mohammed and his early followers.

They refused to convert when later given the option of converting or dying by the sword (just as they refused to convert to Christianity when given that option or being burned at the stake…which to be fair was just the Christian world getting back at the Moslems for the 700 years of murder and fear known as the Moorish occupation. Of course, since everyone hates the Jews, why not force them to convert or die along with anyone else swept up in the Inquisitor's net).

Then the Jews had the audacity to refuse to lay down and die or all jump into the Mediterranean when the British, who took over a nice chunk of the Middle East from the Ottoman Empire, left the tiny fragment known historically and currently as Israel so sink or swim. Er, die or swim. Not like they had any doubts who would win, since the Brits had caved into Arab demands to only let the Arabs have arms, not the Jews.

The people who claim to be Palestinians are the individuals and descendents of the individuals who listened to the leaders of Egypt and Syria and the other Arab nations to leave Israel for a few days (or a couple of weeks, at most) until the combined Arab armies could drive the Jews into the sea. Then, the Arabs who left could come back and take over the property and businesses scraped from nothing by the refugees of Hitler's hell, people who joined those Jews who had been living in that area for a couple thousand years.

And while we're talking Palestinian refugee, how many refugee populations around the world still call themselves refugees nearly 60 years after they became refugees (legitimate refugees: after all, if the Arab residents had just stayed where they were instead of heading to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, there would be no refugees or "refugee camps" issue at all, then or 60 years later. Of course, that means they would have had to figure out another reason to kill the Jews. Oh. Wait. it is because they are Jews! Silly me.

I am reminded of a joke:

The Israeli Prime Minister is sitting down with Arafat to try to work out an agreement. The Prime Minister asks if he might first tell a story. Yasser Arafat tells him to go ahead.

"When Moses was in the desert for forty years the Jews got very thirsty and Moses asked God for water and there appeared a beautiful lake.

The Jews first drank and then bathed themselves. Moses did the same but when he came out of the water his clothes were gone.

"Moses shouted, 'Where are my clothes? Who took them?' The Jews answered 'The Palestinians took them.'

Arafat quickly objected, "There were no Palestinians at that time!"

The Prime Minister looked at Arafat and said, "Now we can begin to negotiate."

So, getting back to the original question, why do they hate us? Well, hate you, because I'm Jewish and it's been a foregone conclusion in my mind since I was born, practically, since relatives of mine in Israel were getting blown up and shot at by Syria and Lebanon, not to speak of the assorted terrorists who used to fire rockets and things but now just suicide themselves.

Anyway, where was I.

Oh, yes. They hate YOU because you aren't Moslem.

They claim to hate us (hell, I am an American, too) because of our values and customs.

You know, like women wearing clothes instead of being completely covered when out in public.

You know, like 'letting' women drive cars all by themselves, as well as appearing in public without being accompanied by a male relative AND covered up from head to toe.

And let's talk about some other cultural differences. When a woman commits adultery in the West, the worst that happens is she is shunned by some of her friends (especially if it was with one of their husbands), or legally divorced by her husband, or has her picture smeared across the tabloids, before or after montaging in PhotoShop. That's what we do.

Now, shall we talk about what our esteemed friends and allies (and major oil producers) do? Can you say, stoned, boys and girls? And I'm not talking about ingestion of recreational substances here. How about beheaded?

We Jews and Christians have learned other ways of living by the Word of God without taking Leviticus literally any more.

The Moslems? If thine eye offends thee, strap on a bomb vest.

Jack Paar once said, "I have never seen a bad television program, because I refuse to. God gave me a mind, and a wrist that turns things off."

Apparently, Moslems are not able to turn the TV off when programming offends them. I really don't understand why, with all the oil and aid dollars and pounds and whatall funds they've received through the years from the West to build their universities and research centers and health clinics and businesses why no Moslem has invented a G.S. chip.

Similar to the V(iolence) chip responsible parents can use to filter the programs their kids can access through cable or satellite, the G(reat) S(atan) chip could filter out everything remotely Western in nature. That way, they wouldn't even have to consciously make the decision to choose not to possibly learn something constructive and useful. After all, dehumanizing ones victims is the employed by serial killers and mass murderers of all persuasions, including Moslems.

Please don't tell me that not all Moslems are this way. If the terrorists were just Jihadists or whatever today's term is, then there would be massive uproar heard from Moslem countries around the world as well as the not insignificant Moslem residents in the West. If they were truly against what has been happening, then there would be a concerted effort to rout out those who are promulgating hate and violence against the Infidels (excuse me, non-Moslems).

But they aren't. Oh, yes, every once in a while, like after 7/7 and 7/21, when it suddenly got more difficult to get through a security checks at airports and, increasingly elsewhere, and it became clear that people of Middle Eastern and Indonesian aspect were again being given suspicious looks, THEN and only then did a couple of people speak out about how that is not the way of Islam. Whiners.

All one has to do is to read history. Nothing much happened to the largely feudal Islamic society until Western oil dollars started pouring in.

Okay, there was a brief time in the 1700-1800s when the pirates off the north coast of Africa were busy stealing ships and cargos and killing or enslaving the survivors. The U.S. refused to pay tribute to the Barbary pirates when one of our ships was captured; Tom Jefferson put our collective foot down and said no.

Oh! I guess that's another reason why they hate us Americans, along with being Infidels of loose morals who let our women go free and spew human images across our virtual and analog landscapes and media.

Anyway, the only thing that's changed is that our oil dollars have been pouring into a few of those Islamic nations, and some of those dollars were actually used for things of benefit to the citizens of those nations, and not just for private jumbo jets, shopping trips to Gucci and Bulgari in Rome, the casinos in Monte Carlo, and gambling clubs, the Rolls and Bentleys and Saville Road suits in London.

(Not to speak of mansions in Beverly Hills, including the abortion with anatomically painted nude statues that disgraced Sunset Blvd for a number of years.)

So, back to my point, some of the oil dollars went to build schools and universities, which trained students in the sciences. But this veneer of civilization and civil behavior was only thinly overlayed, and instead of just turning off the TV or electing to live in communities such as the Amish and Mennonites do to this country, keeping their old traditions in the midst of the 21st century, the Moslems decided it was our fault. What was our fault? Everything they don't like. Period.

After all, hating others and deciding that killing them is holy means you don't actually have to sit down and work out what exactly the problems are and how to fix them. Well, the Saudi government did: they paid off Osama bin Laden and kicked him out of Dodge. But that wasn't exactly the type of solution I was talking about.

What would happen, I wonder, if the Islamic countries were suddenly and immediately plopped back into the late Middle Ages, just after, say, the gutting of the Moorish Empire. Or back to the days of the Ottoman Empire (Israel excluded, of course).

What I find soooo amusing is that if we really were guilty of all they claim, if we really did have colonization of the oil-producing Arab countries in mind, we could easily accomplish that with a variety of well-placed bombs.

In this era of political correctness, we go too far when we forbid racial profiling to identify terrorists. Yes, behavioral profiling is critical, too, and by combining both together, screeners will have a better chance of stopping the bad guys.

As the world gets smaller as people travel all over, and as our own population of citizens and aliens continues to grow and public transportation moves millions of people a day, we must learn from the past to build the tools--and mindset--to keep as many of us as safe as possible in the future.

The past is past. The age of innocence and terrorist-free America died on September 11, 2001.

If you think what is happening here is a civil libertarian hell, then move to Iraq and offer your services to the people there who were trying to rebuild their country. And if you get blown up, or kidnapped and beheaded? ::shrug:: Oh well. You must have deserved it.

For those who think this nice Jewish girl is whacked out from spending too much time with her lizards and yarn, check out the Middle East Media Research Institute.

For those not familiar with Jewish history, especially American Jewry, these sites provide interesting reads:

• Jewish-American History On The Web
• National Museum of American Jewish History: Creating American Jews