Psalm 137

by Zack Lieberberg

By the rivers of Babylon

there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth,
saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion!
How could we sing the Lord's song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.
Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem's fall,
how they said, Tear it down! Tear it
down!
Down to its foundations!
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay you back
what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!

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Long time ago, as a young man, fresh out of Moscow University, I lived for a few years in
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, which was, at the time, one of the 15 Soviet republics.
Those were not the most enjoyable years of my life, but they gave me my first-hand
experience of living among Muslims and the basis for understanding them, their grievances,
and their dreams. More often than not, those bits of understanding were gained from
isolated, seemingly meaningless episodes.
One such episode occurred on a summer morning, before dawn, when, for a reason I no
longer remember, I had to go somewhere with a friend of mine. I was waiting for him near
the Aeroflot ticket office where he was supposed to pick me up. He was late. I felt sleepy
and bored. The streets were empty, with the exception of a small group of people standing
in a tight circle near the corner at the end of the block. Judging by their clothes and by the
heavy bags they were holding, they were Azeri peasants on their way to the marketplace.
They were all looking at something located at their feet inside the circle. They resembled
people watching the victim of a fatal accident while waiting for the authorities to pick up the
body.
 Citizens of Calais by Auguste Rodin
But there had been no accident. I decided to come closer to take a look. The group paid
no attention to me. They were completely absorbed in the spectacle unfolding on the
sidewalk in front of them. They were watching it in reverent silence. Their rough, peasant
faces were solemn and seemed illuminated by an inner light of the kind that can sometimes
be seen on the face of a man when he is reading a favorite book which he hadn't touched
for years. He knows what's going to happen, but that knowledge does not diminish his
pleasure. Not having ever witnessed an execution, I imagine that those who have might
have a somewhat similar expression on their faces: the complex combination of the sadness
of the event, the physical revulsion at the inevitable details, and, overall, the profound
feeling of rightfulness of what's happening.
Inside their circle, nervously glancing at the silent, immobile spectators, two stray dogs
were hurriedly mating.
For a few moments after they disengaged and went their separate ways, the peasants
continued standing there, looking at the now empty stage, keeping their dramatic silence
while the light gradually faded from their unshaven faces. Finally, one of them moved, and
the entire group slowly came back to life. Without a single word, they looked at each other's
faces, and the degree of mutual understanding I saw in their eyes could only be a result of
shared intimacy. At last, they too began moving apart, and, for a fraction of a second, the
disintegrating group looked almost as dramatic as Rodin's The Citizens of Calais.
I was reminded of that completely inconsequential episode when I saw a photograph
showing a group of Muslims burning a Danish flag. They looked just as immobile and as
solemnly satisfied as those Azeri peasants. The resemblance was not accidental. In both
cases, the Muslims, cruelly deprived of the real thing, found comfort in whatever substitution
was available.
 The Azeri peasants, in accordance with Muslim laws and traditions were deprived of a
normal sex life to such a degree that I don't think they knew such a thing existed. Everything
about sex that we consider normal constitutes the most depraved debauchery to the
Muslims; we, on the other hand, gently disapprove of their zoo- and pedophilia.
The flag-burners, on the other hand, were deprived by cruel circumstances of an
immediate opportunity to wash their hands in the blood of the infidel, which, under the same
Muslim laws and customs, is both their sacred right and sacred duty. In both cases, the
substitution was precious and, at the same time, lacking.

Muslim flag burners

The major difference between the two groups is that the Azeri peasants will never have
their dreams whatever they might be fully realized. Unlike them, the flag burners have
a pretty fair chance to realize theirs.
The media report the latest fit of Muslim rage with even more sympathy than they
displayed while reporting the recent Muslim riots in France. According to the New York
Times, those riots were caused by France's failure to assimilate the immigrants.
Being an immigrant myself, I can comment on that with confidence. I came to the
country of my choice, the United States of America, uninvited. I am forever grateful to
America for letting me come and stay and for treating me equally under its laws. I have
assimilated myself to the degree which made me feel comfortable, no more and no less. I
never expected America to be assimilating me. What's more, I would never choose to live in
a country that would make an effort at assimilating me. The Soviet Union kept trying to
assimilate me for the first 34 years of my life, and failed.
Some of my friends are immigrants themselves. Their degrees of assimilation vary, and
some of them are much less assimilated than I am. I know a lady from China who has lived
in this country for 20 years. Once I invited her for lunch to an Italian restaurant. She was
unfamiliar with even the most common dishes. She thought that the word Pizza was the
name of a store chain, like Te Amo. She was surprised to discover that some of that foreign
food was actually palatable. She was terribly unassimilated, and it caused her some very
serious problems. Nevertheless, I guarantee that under no circumstances would she ever
consider addressing her problems by burning a car. She was not a Muslim.
 Samples of Cro-Magnon art
The excuse the Muslims have used this time seems almost reasonable in comparison.
How many times have you read that they consider any image of Mohammad an insult to
their religion? Guess what? That's just another Muslim lie.
There is a book sitting on my desk, The Legacy of Jihad by Dr. Andrew Bostom. Its
cover is adorned with a depiction of the massacre of the Jews of Medina. Presiding over the
massacre is the non-prophet himself, along with his (if I am not mistaken) cousin, Ali, and
their faceless wives. You don't need to be an art expert to realize that it is a Muslim painting.
Produced in the 19th century, it betrays its author's complete ignorance of the laws of
perspective and other basic techniques used by European artists for many centuries.
Flames in that painting look like a plywood model of a cactus, and it takes an effort to figure
out which of the victims are already down and which are still standing.
In short, this Islamic masterpiece does not quite reach the level of sophistication
achieved by Cro-Magnon artists some 30,000 years earlier. Nevertheless, it provides an
accurate, even if artless, depiction of one of the many genocidal episodes comprising the
entire history of Islam and the genocidal blood thirst that constitutes its essence. I have
never heard that Muslims objected to that picture, even though their beloved fuehrer, if you
look closely, appears to be severely constipated.
Generally, I believe that people individually or collectively never deserve more
respect than they show towards others. When was the last time observant Muslims
demonstrated any respect for anything or anyone outside their death cult? The answer is,
never. But then, the question itself is tricky, since, in the Muslim world, respect is
synonymous with fear and submission. It gets even trickier if you recall that the so-called
Muslim world every square inch of it was taken by them from its rightful owners by
ways of jihad, the Islamic war of conquest and genocide continuing non-stop for 14
centuries.
Do you remember how, in 2002, a group of Arab terrorists escaping capture by the IDF
barricaded themselves inside the Church of the Nativity and took hostage the priests who
happened to be inside? The Arabs did not hesitate to urinate and defecate inside the
church. Imagine the reaction of the Muslim world if infidels had done something similar to
the most insignificant mosque on earth.
Although the Church of the Nativity constitutes one of the most important Christian holy
places, not a single Muslim objected to its desecration. Christians did not demand any
apology from that particular group of Muslims, or their leaders, or Islamic authorities in
general. There was no anti-Muslim backlash in any Christian country. Instead, Christians,
following their 2000-year-old tradition, blamed the Jews for the incident. Jews, faithful as
ever to their own customs, did not respond to the new libel with a backlash against the
Christians either.
This demonstrates the importance of anti-Semitism in the world affairs. To the villains, it
offers a convenient scapegoat. To the majority of their intended victims, it offers a comforting
delusion that the villains are after someone else. This simple tactic allows our common
enemy to pluck us out one by one, and every time we lose one of ours, we delude ourselves
into thinking that they will never come to our door.
They most certainly will, just as they have come to the door of Denmark. The Christian
response is as cowardly as the Israeli response to the Arab atrocities on its territory. Take
the boycott of Danish goods, for example. What would be the appropriate response of the
civilized world? Any response as long as it is meaningful. But not a single Western country,
not a single Western manufacturer has taken its goods off the shelves in the Muslim world
out of solidarity with Denmark's stand for the freedom of expression.
Was there ever any danger of such a response? Of course, not. We are doing
everything in our power to fulfill Lenin's prophecy about selling to our enemies the rope on
which they will hang us.
What would be the appropriate American response to the accusation of mistreatment of
the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay? The immediate confiscation of every single copy of the
Koran from the prisoners. Is there any danger of that? Of course not. It is far more important
for us to remain politically correct than to win the war unleashed on us by the Muslims.
Every lame anti-terror measure of the Bush administration is being malevolently
scrutinized for possible violations of our constitutional rights and erosion of our freedoms. I'll
tell you what constitutes the vilest, the most dangerous violation of my constitutional rights,
what threatens my freedoms more than anything else. It is the ever growing influence of
Islam in this country. How hard is it to understand that the most important component of
freedom is not listed in the Bill of Rights because it is taken for granted like the oxygen in the
air we breathe? How hard is it to understand that the most vital component of freedom is
physical safety?
You cannot be free if you are not safe. You cannot be safe in your own country when its
Muslim population is growing. You cannot be safe in this world when Islam is spreading like
metastasized cancer, and Western governments, including our own, instead of doing
anything at all to oppose it, compete with each other in their expressions of abject
dhimmitude.
But there has not been any terrorist attack inside the country in more than 4 years, you
might object. Very well, let us ask why. Is it due to the heroic efforts and unbelievable
efficiency of the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA? To a degree, yes,
although juries composed of decent American citizens routinely undermine their successes.
But these organizations, by their very essence, can only provide passive, defensive
measures, and you know as well as I do that no war can be won by passive, defensive
measures alone.
The truth is that our enemies do not need to commit another atrocity right now. The
mass migration of Muslims to the United States continues. In a couple of generations, there
will be enough of them to vote the Constitution out and Sharia in. When our policies begin
threatening the success of their venture, there will be another terrorist act in the US, and our
leaders, along with their colleagues from Western Europe, will obediently make the
necessary adjustments.
Our misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq do nothing to prevent that from happening.
The administration must have realized long ago that our military presence there does
nothing to diminish the threat of terrorism; that's why they substituted the original,
unreacheable, goal of our invasion with the chimera of establishing democracy in the Middle
East. That's why Osama bin Laden keeps dictating his letters to the American people.
The only tangible result of our absurdly benevolent conquest is the ongoing deterioration
and impending destruction of the only democracy that is possible in that poisonous region.
Once the imams and ayatollahs established that Western voting rituals, although
meaningless, do not contradict Sharia, the Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Arab-
occupied territories of Israel went to the voting booths. In Afghanistan, the election was as
meaningless as it used to be in the Soviet Union, where people were forced to cast their
votes for the only candidate on the list. In Iraq, it brought to power people openly hostile to
us and our goals, but that was inevitable since everyone in Iraq is hostile to us and our
goals. In Israel, the Arabs cheerfully used the occasion to shamelessly demonstrate that
they are not a "people", but a terrorist organization.
Nevertheless, we continue treating the nobody called Hamid Karzai as an ally. We
continue pretending that the death of our soldiers in Iraq does something good to this
country. And we are holding our breath waiting to see if Hamas will accepts Israel's right to
exist. Why isn't Hamas worried whether Israel will accept its right to exist?
These are not signs of our defeat. These are signs of our disintegration.
Twenty-six years ago, Iran attacked the United States and took 66 of our citizens
hostage. The general consensus was that the United States was powerless to respond to
the Iranian aggression since that might lead to the execution of the hostages. Unfortunately,
the United States accepted this cowardly point of view.
It was cowardly because, at that time, Iran could not, even in theory, harm more than the
66 hostages they were holding. The United States, however, could easily hold hostage their
entire country, with a clear, credible promise to unleash the wrath of God on it for any harm
they might have caused to their captives.
A minimally decent person in place of Jimmy Carter, would have given the ayatollahs 24
hours to deliver the hostages and the 500 revolutionary students who had invaded the
embassy, and, if they failed to meet the deadline, proceed with the systematic and thorough
destruction of Iran's holy places, elite residential areas, oil installations and whatever else it
was necessary to incinerate in order to ensure that the new Iranian regime would forever
remain the most convincing proof of Islam's unshakeable peacefulness. Even if the
revolutionary students were stupid enough to harm their captives, no Muslim would ever
again contemplate taking Americans hostage or flying our planes into our skyscrapers.
But Jimmy C. was not the kind of a guy who would take their little ones and dash them
against the rock. He has always preferred to see our little ones dashed against the rock,
which is exactly what earned him his Nobel Peace Prize. Today, 26 years later, one of the
organizers of that attack on the United States is leading the Iranian front of global jihad in
the official capacity of the president of the Islamic Republic and is about to acquire nuclear
weapons. What are we going to do? What can we do?
We can do a lot. We are perfectly capable of stopping jihad forever by next Wednesday.
Instead, we will do nothing, because taking Babylon's little ones and dashing them against
the rock takes the courage we no longer possess.
We, my dear friends, are not really that different from those Azeri peasants. Only,
instead of stray dogs, we are silently, passively watching the unfolding of a new holocaust.

Translated by Yashiko Sagamori

February 7, 2006