Higher Strategy behind Insulting Caricatures?

When asked why the Danish rightwing Jyllen-Posten would publish such offensive caricatures of a personality beloved by Muslims throughout the world, the usual hypocritical mob would chant blindly the mantra of ‘freedom of speech and expression’, while pretending not to remember how they persecuted Prince Harry or any Holocaust denier. Others would attribute the reason to the newspaper's fascist past and a sinister anti-Muslim campaign to stop immigration of Muslims/Arabs into Denmark.

But could there be a higher strategy to demonise the Arabs?

At the surface the culprit seems to be the cultural editor of the Jyllen-Posten which started the deliberate insult of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). There have been suggestions that the aim had been to provoke the Muslims into violence.

The cultural editor of the Jyllen-Posten is Fleming Rose. That paragon of 'freedom of expression', Fleming Rose had earlier refused to publish a cartoon showing Israel's Ariel Sharon strangling a Palestinian baby. Perhaps the cartoon alluded to Sharon's complicity in the Sabra-Shatila massacre where thousands of Palestinian women and children were massacred after Sharon let in his Phalangist allies [Lebanese Christians], or merely his day-to-day oppression of Palestinians. But unlike his readiness to publish the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) cartoons at all cost, Rose suddenly lost that western value when it came to Sharon.

Rose claimed that publishing that cartoon would be construed as racist, yet he didn’t hesitate in insulting Arabs by publishing the caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in various demeaning terrorist roles.

Incidentally, Rose is known to be closely associated with neo-con Zionists. As you would have guess, the term ‘neo-con Zionist’ implies an American Jew in President Bush’s camp.

The neo-con Zionist that Rose is linked with is Daniel Pipes, who is notorious for his rabid anti-Muslim proclivity. Pipes had been noted to have said the only path to Middle East peace will come through a total Israeli military victory.

As mentioned. Pipes is an American Jew. His parents were Polish Jews who fortunately escaped the clutches of Hitler by running off to the USA where they met and married. Like his father, a Harvard historian, Pipes became one too specialising in Arab and Islamic studies.

When Pipes was appointed by President Bush to the board of the United States Institute of Peace, a congressional sponsored think tank dedicated to the peaceful resolution of international conflicts, the respectable Washington Post stated that the appointment was a ‘cruel joke’ because Pipes had been described as an anti-Islamic extremist.

One of America’s best known blogger, Juan Cole, who among many of his exemplary credentials is a Professor of Modern Middle East, wrote in his blog "I urge academics and others to boycott the United States Institute for Peace this year, as long as extremist ideologue Daniel Pipes serves on it."

Juan Cole has also earned the badge of honour in being sued by the Israeli-run MEMRI. Brian Whitaker of the British newspaper, Guardian, provided us with his investigation of MEMRI.

During his academic career, Pipes had set up a website called Campus Watch that encouraged university students to submit reports on university professors who criticized Israel, from which it then published a blacklist of such professors. More than 100 academics, outraged by Pipes’ McCarthyism demanded to be included on the list as well. Campus Watch had to backpedal from that sinister blacklisting and removed the list from their website. We can see from this where Pipes' political preference lies and to what extent he had been willing to do.

Back to the issue, one cannot but help but wonder to what extent Rose had been influenced by the neo-con Zionists in bringing about the demonisation of Arabs by baiting them. Unfortunately the Arabs have once again fallen into predictable violence, perhaps in the way their enemies had designed them to do? Though the hurt to their belief has been enormous they need to keep an eye on the strategic manipulations of the more devious elements of the Zionists.

Could the demonisation of the Arabs and therefore by default the Palestinians has anything to do with a higher strategy to alienate the Europeans from supporting the Palestinians and their aspired statehood?

Before Muslims rush off to condemn the Danes or the Swedes, who have in the main been very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, do pause a moment and ask whether you too are being manipulated by the baiting of a rightwing newspaper, perhaps acting on a sinister plan of higher strategy?