Jennifer Hanin . com

Grow­ing up, being a lib­eral meant you were an intel­lec­tual who stood for noble causes like progress, peace and human rights. I’m proud to say my dad was one  –  he knew the wrongs that needed to be resolved but also knew when some­one put lip­stick on a pig. Yet today, those that claim to be lib­eral are often walk­ing con­tra­dic­tions. How can you claim to be for progress, peace and human rights yet side with ter­ror­ist Hamas or the Pales­tin­ian Authority?

Most aca­d­e­mics know that the Hamas Char­ter calls for the destruc­tion of Israel and it’s no secret that the PA is wag­ing an inter­na­tional cam­paign call­ing for coun­tries to boy­cott, divest and sanc­tion (BDS) the Jew­ish State. Unfor­tu­nately, the cam­paign is gain­ing solid ground. How could it not? Num­bers mat­ter when you con­sider there are 1.57 bil­lion Mus­lims world­wide com­pared to 13.2 mil­lion Jews. This is why if you’re seri­ous about progress, peace and human rights, you will read on, rethink your posi­tion and con­sider the lives of the 7.3 mil­lion Israelis (1.5 mil­lion of which are Arab) that hang in the bal­ance every time you or some­one you know pub­licly dele­git­imizes the Jew­ish State.

It’s hard to grasp why main­stream media and many lib­er­als choose to ignore the human rights atroc­i­ties that occur in Arab states. Just today, a judge in “eye-for-an-eye” Saudi Ara­bia (aka the coun­try who likes to chop off hands of thieves) con­sid­ered whether to sever the spinal cord of an attacker with a cleaver. Hmm. Not much human rights here.

Iran doesn’t fare any bet­ter. It has con­tin­ued to fol­low such bar­baric prac­tices like ston­ing. Most recently, an Iran­ian court doled out the death penalty via ston­ing to Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two. Luck­ily, this case received world­wide media cov­er­age and is only scratch­ing the sur­face of how the Arab World hasn’t risen much past the Span­ish Inquisition.

I’ve blogged about how Arab League coun­tries deal with gay men and women. Cruel and unusual pun­ish­ment doesn’t even come close to it. Try receiv­ing the largest apartheid sen­tence on earth: the death penalty. In fact, pub­lic hang­ings in Iran are com­mon­place. Just to under­stand how many coun­ties oper­ate this way the Inter­na­tional Les­bian and Gay Asso­ci­a­tion acknowl­edge seven Islamic coun­tries that dole out the death penalty for gay, les­bian and bisex­ual indi­vid­u­als that engage in same-sex actions. Those coun­tries are:

• Iran
• Mau­ri­ta­nia
• Saudi-Arabia
• Sudan
• United Arab Emirates
• Yemen
• Nige­ria (death penalty applies to 12 North­ern provinces with Sharia law)

I’ve also blogged about how the real Mid­dle East apartheid is occur­ring in the Arab states that enforce Sharia Law, honor killings, and green light the prac­tice of child brides and even child exe­cu­tions. By all accounts, Sharia law has reduced rights of women in Islamic coun­tries to that of minors in West­ern coun­tries. What grown woman needs an escort every­where she goes? I’m talk­ing to you: Jor­dan, Syria, Egypt and Iran. And what’s up with the seg­re­gated side­walks for men and women, Saudi Arabia?

How have lib­er­als been able to bypass oppres­sive, total­i­tar­ian regimes that deny their cit­i­zens basic free­doms of polit­i­cal expres­sion, speech, press and due process? Some­how, I’m get­ting an awful image of Sean Penn chew­ing fat with Venezue­lan (aka Israel/ Jew hater) Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez. Another actor that I’ve lost ALL respect for.

Keep in mind that even the Arab Human Devel­op­ment Report (pub­lished by Arab researchers) from the UN Devel­op­ment Pro­gram found that out of the seven regions of the world,

Arab coun­tries had the low­est free­dom score.

No one seems to bring this up. Besides Arab coun­tries tank­ing in the free­dom depart­ment, they also had the low­est rank­ing for “voice and account­abil­ity,” a rank­ing of var­i­ous aspects of the polit­i­cal process, civil lib­er­ties, polit­i­cal rights and free­dom of the media. Cen­sor­ing the media in Arab coun­tries is a great way to raise future Israel/Jew haters and it goes against what most lib­er­als say they believe in.

Human rights atroc­i­ties are the norm rather than the excep­tion in Arab League coun­tries. In fact, it’s worth not­ing that Iran is still hold­ing the three Amer­i­can hik­ers, Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Joshua Fat­tal that I’ve blogged about in Tehran’s Evin prison. Iran has held them over a year for allegedly cross­ing the bor­der ille­gally while hik­ing (though the cross­ing part is debat­able), and are com­mit­ting a num­ber of human rights vio­la­tions includ­ing denial of  med­ical treat­ment. As of July 30, 2010, Iran has yet to charge them or sched­ule a trial.

Who can for­get Israeli sol­dier, Gilad Shalit? Ter­ror­ist Hamas kid­napped him over four years ago and con­tin­ues to move him secretly while bar­gain­ing for release of some of the most dan­ger­ous Hamas oper­a­tives in Israeli pris­ons. Most recently, Hamas turned down a pris­oner swap that included 1,000 Hamas pris­on­ers for Shalit. Hamas has vio­lated the Geneva Con­ven­tion by refus­ing to allow the Red Cross to see him for med­ical treat­ment. Where is world con­dem­na­tion for groups like Hamas or any other gov­ern­ment (think Iran) that is com­mit­ting human rights vio­la­tions right under our noses?

So those that demo­nize a tiny, demo­c­ra­tic coun­try — nick­named the Sil­i­con Val­ley of the Mid­dle East — that has more com­pa­nies on the Nas­daq than any coun­try out­side of the US isn’t really tak­ing into account that these seven mil­lion peo­ple chose progress over war­fare. These same seven mil­lion peo­ple also chose reli­gious free­dom and all other free­doms that accom­pany a demo­c­ra­tic society.

I haven’t seen any lib­er­als pro­mot­ing a BDS cam­paign against China, Cuba, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Rus­sia, Saudi Ara­bia, Soma­lia, Sudan and Zim­babwe or any other coun­try sighted for hor­ren­dous human rights abuses. Talk about unfair. The world became more out­raged when Israel defended itself against vio­lent attack­ers on the Gaza bound flotilla from Turkey that ended nine lives, then when North Korea killed 46 sol­diers when it launched a mis­sile into a South Korean war­ship months earlier.

Israel is a Jew­ish state that wants peace with its neigh­bors, and yet it’s fac­ing the same type of eco­nomic dis­crim­i­na­tion and inter­na­tional iso­la­tion that its Jew­ish ances­tors faced thanks to Adolf Hitler.

Wanted: Lib­er­als that can tell the dif­fer­ence between the facts and a fic­tional nar­ra­tive con­structed to anni­hi­late 7.3 mil­lion Israelis.

Related posts:

1. Israel Aids Haiti While Arab Nations Are Notice­ably Absent
2. Glocks, Crocks & Shades of Gray
3. The World Did Not Blink
4. Trad­ing the United States Flag for a Cres­cent Moon and Star
5. Cure the Dis­ease, Not the Symptoms