Yesterday I drove up to Jerusalem again and joined Ari Abramowitz and Jeremy Gimpel in the Voice of Israel studios. Ever since hearing their interview with Anjem Choudry the other day, I had a few things to say. We spoke for the first half of their show. You can find the whole show here and I’m embedding just the bit with me.
https://soundcloud.com/voiceofisrael/hl-1-inspired-jan21-2015
Brian of London, founder [NOTE From Brian: I’m not the founder, I’m just a very naughty boy] of the popular blog “Israellycool”, explains his obsession with focusing on the darkness of Islam versus sharing the beauty of Israel. Then, why was Brian so taken with VOI’s encounter with British radical Moslem Anjem Choudary? Also, should there be a fundamentally different approach between the way Israel and the west cover Islam?
During the show I told a story that had been passed on to me about the subjugation of Japan. I’ve only now done some rudimentary online fact checking but here’s how the story came to me and what I said on the show.
Someone I know very well had business in Japan with a partner. That partner was a fabulously successful businessman (now passed away) and he told my friend this story who told it to me. I had a glance around the web and have found at least one website to back up what I said and with tremendous comments from people there at the time though it differs in exactly which building we’re talking about but not the substance.
The business partner had been a young man at the fall of Japan. He had been educated in the US before the war so he spoke English and that gave him a very valuable skill. He went to work for the American as a translator and therefore worked in the command HQ. As I understood there was a debate on whether to remove the Emperor from his Imperial Palace or not. In the end MacArthur chose to leave him in his palace but needed to be physically above him. Tokyo (owing to earthquakes) was not a high rise city and the palace sits on a hill.
Without removing the Emperor (who was revered as a god by the people) he had to show superiority over him and be seen to have humbled him. Humiliated is another word we might use. As it was told to me, MacArthur actually had an extra floor (or two) added to The Imperial Hotel (though from the web it was the Dai-ichi Hotel) in order to be higher than the Emperor.
The point of the story, in the context of today, is about winning. The Allies won WWII. There is no ambiguity. They humiliated the Japanese and German peoples. They fought for and won total, unconditional surrender. They didn’t seek a ceasefire as Israel is always instructed to do and has largely done.
Whether or not the humbling and humiliation of violent Jihad will ever take place I can’t say, but it would seem that we’re going to be fighting the ideology of Jihad for a very long time because it will not surrender willingly and it’s adherents have very strong faith in the correctness of their beliefs.
