The Crime of Building a House

Daniel Greenfield

In Niger, two Frenchmen were murdered by their Islamic kidnappers. Saudi Arabia sentenced a 23 year old girl who was gang raped to a year in prison and 100 lashes. Iran arrested two dozen Christians for the crime of being well... Christians. Which of these awful things did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU's Red Baroness Ashton forcefully condemn?

The answer is none of them. Instead they forcefully and vigorously condemned the demolition of a hotel built by a Muslim Nazi collaborator and now owned by an American-Jewish businessman who bought it in order to build an apartment complex on the spot. An apartment complex for a mere 20 families that is somehow worse than all the aforementioned murders and atrocities. So much worse that they demanded the personal intervention of the highest diplomatic officials of the United States and the European Union.

The Shepherd Hotel in Jerusalem is not the Plaza Hotel. It is a dilapidated neighborhood eyesore that has been abandoned since the 1980's. No one lives in the Shepherd Hotel, a grim ugly fortress surrounded by barbed wire, that remains behind as a legacy of the Mufti of Jerusalem, who championed Hitler and helped recruit Muslims to serve in the SS. But with its demolition, people might actually begin to live on that spot. Children might actually play on ground that had been previously fenced off by barbed wire. And the worst thing of it all is that those people and their children will be Jews.

Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, might have been displeased to look up from the netherworld and behold the demolition of his hotel, but to see the representatives of the United States and the EU taking up his work and treating the demolition of his hotel as the gravest issue of the day would surely have cheered him up. If he had ever been worried that his work would die with a bullet in Berlin or when his Holy War Army, even with the support of seven Arab countries and half the British officer corps failed to drive the Jews into the sea during the War of Independence, the statements of Hillary Clinton and the EUSSR's Red Baroness Ashton testify once again that the evil that men and muftis do lives on after them.

In her statement, Hillary Clinton said the United States is "very concerned" about the demolition of a Nazi collaborator's abandoned hotel. In a world where North Korea and Iran are racing ahead to build nuclear weapons, Russia and China are racing to outstrip the United States in weapons development and the economy is on the brink-- that is what the Obama Administration is "very concerned" about. That 20 Jewish families will be able to have homes in the capital of their own city.

Hillary Clinton chose to attack Israel from Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, a totalitarian regime whose own construction boom was built on slave labor imported from India. Where there are no political freedoms and where non-Muslim foreigners have few rights, if any. Where a video showed the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi torturing a man in ways too horrifying to describe, with the approval of the police and the judicial system over a debt. Where 42 percent of the prisoners are there for being indebted. The UAE is essentially a slave state, built on the backs of mostly non-Muslim migrant workers with no human or legal rights.

While in Abu Dhabi, Hillary Clinton might have called on its rulers to open up the system to democratic elections. She might have raised the issue of Western women who are raped in Dubai and then sentenced to jail for being raped. Or the case of Roxanne Hillier, who was sentenced to jail for just being in the same room as her male boss. It certainly would have been appropriate for Hillary Clinton to have challenged the UAE on its abusive treatment of female visitors and tourists. But none of that happened.

How dare the Jews bulldoze this man's hotel?
Instead Hillary Clinton used the platform of a barbaric skyscraper studded dictatorship to denounce the only democracy in the region. In a speech more inspired by Monty Python, than any concern for human rights, she described the demolition of a long abandoned hotel as a "disturbing development" and warned that "this move contradicts the logic of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the parties on the status of Jerusalem". Yet oddly enough, Arab construction does not contradict such an agreement, only Jewish construction does.

This is not about Israel vs Palestine. The population of Jerusalem, both Jew and Arab, are Israeli citizens. If the Shepherd Hotel were being demolished to build homes for Arab citizens of Israel, does anyone seriously believe that Hillary or the Red Baroness would be getting so worked up over it? It's not the passport that makes the difference, but the race and the religion. And if so, it's not Israeli roads that are Apartheid, but the policies of Obama and the EU which strive to carve out a new "Pale of Settlement" where Jews may and may not live.

The Red Baroness, who has been too busy ordering bulletproof limousines and dispatching dozens of EU diplomats to such trouble spots as Barbados for vital martini drinking assignments, to actually attend European Commission meetings-- found time to blast Israel instead. Baroness Ashton has missed two thirds of the EC meetings, but she has found time to show her commitment to human rights by lobbying on behalf of the People's Republic of China. She may have ignored the persecution of Christian Copts in Muslim Egypt-- but when the Jews demolish an abandoned hotel, then by all of the EU's stars, the Red Baroness is on the ball.

"I strongly condemn this morning’s demolition of the Shepherd Hotel and the planned construction of a new illegal settlement," said Baroness Ashton. The "settlement" is somewhat confusingly a housing project being built in place of an existing hotel in one of the oldest cities of the world. But somehow the term "settlement" no longer means a new town in an unsettled region, it now simply means a place where Jews live. Or propose to live. As Nazi Germany termed some art as "Jewish art" and the Soviet Union euphemistically labeled some science as "cosmopolitan science", the word "settlement" has become untethered from its literal meaning and instead become synonymous with a Jewish dwelling place.

While Baroness Ashton sent out her spokesman to condemn the attack on Christian Copts in Egypt and the assassination of Salman Taseer in Punjab, she personally declared her outrage over a hotel in which no one was killed, aside perhaps from a stray lizard or two sunning themselves on the nearby rocks. It's rather clear where her priorities lie and it isn't with the victims of Muslim terror, rather with its perpetrators. For that same reason, Hillary Clinton can't be bothered to offer sympathy to the Western women raped in Dubai and raped again by its Muslim legal system, but lashes out over something as petty as the demolition of an abandoned hotel.

The EU's Red Baroness
It was perfectly fitting for Hillary Clinton to deliver her condemnation of Israel from Abu Dhabi, one of the region's centers of corruption, where oil money buys human slavery, and rape victims are sent to jail by the law of a Muslim tyranny. And the West keeps silent, rather than offend the fat greasy hands of the royals who control the pipeline. It was similarly fitting that the Red Baroness neglected representing her country, in order to come prancing down to Israel, berate the locals for not dismantling itself quickly enough to suit the rulers of those same oil rich countries, who pull the strings on those like Baroness Ashton, that the Soviet Union grew tired of playing with.

Hillary Clinton and the Red Baroness accuse Israel of obstructing peace negotiations by demolishing the Shepherd Hotel. But was there any serious prospect for negotiations before that? While the Mufti's hotel still stood, then Israel was charged with obstructing peace by allowing Jewish families to build homes in Judea and Samaria. And during the 9 month construction freeze in which they were not allowed to do it-- then Israel was charged with obstructing peace through its blockade of Gaza's terrorists. And before Israel withdrew from Gaza, it was charged with obstructing peace by not withdrawing from Gaza. And before Israel liberated Gaza in 1967, it was still charged with obstructing peace by refusing to do one thing or another that the Arab Muslim regimes wanted from it. Israel is always under attack and always at fault. If not for one thing, then for another. And while women are gang raped and whipped by our friendly allies in the Gulf, Israel is charged with the terrible crime of building a house.