The First Step On The Road To Peace Is Calling Each Other "Microbes"

I have some advice for nutjob Islamic fundamentalists. Are you ready, nutjobs? Here comes the advice:

Your propaganda needs to be more sophisticated.

I say this to you nutjobs with all love, because you're missing out on some wonderful opportunities. Take this section of a recent New York Sun article:

...meetings [in 2002 between the US and Hezbollah] were arranged by a former British MI-6 officer, Alastair Crooke, who served as the European Union's liaison with Hamas between 2001 and 2003, before he was recalled to London.

[Israeli] Reservist Brigadier General Shalom Harari^*, said the former MI-6 officer had "become addicted to Hamas... What happened to Crooke is what happened to many researchers who make research on biology. He fell in love with the microbes he was researching."

Can't you nutjobs see that this is PURE GOLD? If you had your act together, you would already have emailed it to every newspaper columnist in America, along with concerned quotes about "eliminationist rhetoric" from a professor at Brown holding a chair you endowed. By this time tonight the professor would be on cable television, talking more in sorrow than in anger about the way such statements permeate Israeli culture.

To see how microbe propaganda should be done, check out this recent dispatch from the pros at MEMRI:

As part of our Arab TV Monitor Project, MEMRI monitors Friday sermons from mosques throughout the Middle East which are broadcast on government TV stations.

Sheik Abd Al-Jalil Al-Nazir Al-Karouri gave another recent sermon, from the Al-Shahid Mosque in Khartoum on August 24, 2004.

..."Our advice [to America] is like that of [Benjamin] Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers: The malaria microbe known as the Jews, which the U.S. carries in its stomach, will kill it sooner or later.

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about! You better believe this sermon long ago made it into Bill O'Reilly's hot little hands. It's certainly been scooped up by the wonderful folks at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

So the Israeli nutjobs are fulfilling their responsibility, which is to hype your "side"'s nutjobbery. Why can't you Islamicist nutjobs bring your game up to their level?

BUT SERIOUSLY: One thing that fascinates me about propaganda is that it can be 100% true. For instance, I'm sure the MEMRI mosque quote is real. The secret is to heavily publicize all the craziest statements from your "enemy," while never acknowledging your "own" lunatics.

And to be fair to Islamicist nutjobs, they sometimes seem to do an okay job of this. There have been many psycho statements by American Christians about Islam, such as Billy Graham's son Frank declaration that Islam "is a very wicked and evil religion." Concerned Christian missionaries in Islamic countries have reported back that:

"Comments by Christians in the West about Islam and Muhammad can and do receive much attention in our cities and communities on local radio, television and print sources."

(NY Sun story via Laura Rozen. Missionary statement via American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush by Kevin Phillips.)

^*I particularly appreciate Shalom Harari's first name. Hey, you microbes: Shalom!