Chestlessnes

COMMENTARY
August 30, 2006

Chestlessness

The case of the two Fox News journalists, held hostage in Gaza, is worth dwelling upon. They were released after their captors had made tapes of them dressed as Arabs and announcing they had changed their names and converted to Islam.

Lately I have been looking at the large -- at how the West is proving unable to cope with a threat from a fanatical Islamic movement, that it ought to be able to snuff out with fair ease. (See my column last Sunday.) But the large is often most visible in the small.

The degree to which our starch is awash is exhibited in the behaviour of so many of our captives, but especially in these two. They were told to convert to Islam under implicit threat (blindfolded and hand-tied, they could not judge what threat), and agreed to make the propaganda broadcasts to guarantee their own safety. That much we can understand, as conventional cowardice. (Understand; not forgive.) But it is obvious from their later statements that they never thought twice; that they could see nothing wrong in serving the enemy, so long as it meant they’d be safe.

I assume they are not Christians (few journalists are), but had they ever been instructed in that faith, they might have grasped that conversion to Islam means denial of Christ, and that is something many millions of Christians (few of them intellectuals) have refused to do, even at the cost of excruciating deaths. Christianity still lives, because of such martyrs. Not suicide bombers: but truly defenceless martyrs.

You don’t necessarily have to be a Christian, to be Western. Two years ago, an heroic Italian captive, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, asked to make whimpering statements as part of the video of his execution in Iraq, ripped at his hood and instead declared, “This is how an Italian dies!” to his contemptible captors. He must have upset them: for they shot him instead of sawing off his head. In making his stand for human dignity, he also turned one of their propaganda videos, into one of ours.

But Quattrocchi had three friends, who all successfully begged for their lives. And the two Fox journalists, whom I will not stoop to name, begged for their lives even though, in retrospect, their lives probably weren’t in danger.

Why did Fatah bother to make the video? Didn’t they realize conversion under duress means nothing? That no one, East or West, would take it at face value?

They didn’t make it for face value. They made it to show the whole Muslim world, via satellite television, what wimps these Westerners are. That they’ll do anything at all to save their lives, that they don’t think twice about it. That is the substance of most Islamo-fascist propaganda: that the West consists of straw men, of men without chests, of men easily pushed over.

These two journalists were captured and held under nasty conditions by a branch of Fatah: the Palestinian party associated not with the “radical” Hamas, but with the supposedly “moderate” party of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority. They were for use as chips in prisoner exchanges. They could be sold, or exchanged for other prisoners.

President Abbas could have had them sprung at a word, but did not do so at first, for he had nothing to lose by “playing with the crisis”. At no point, for instance, was he told he could either release the prisoners, or have his compound at Ramallah levelled. We don’t “overreact” in the West, the way we used to do -- we don’t like to put out little fires, we prefer to wait until they are big ones. And we prefer blaming ourselves to blaming the enemy, when the enemy lights the fire. We assume they only do it because we must have done something to annoy them.

Jean-François Revel: “Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it.”

At the time Revel said this, the enemy power was Soviet Communism. The intellectuals, the smart journalists, the fashionable academics, the smug urbane of all descriptions, were hardly pro-Communist. They were more ironical than that, they were “anti-anti-Communist”. Today they are anti-anti-Islamo-fascist.

I created a scene with a column, many years ago, when I wrote about the young men in the corridors of the University of Montreal, who stood by and watched while Gamil Garbi (alias Marc Lépine) shot fourteen women to death. To a man (if you could call them men), they explained afterwards, “We couldn’t do anything, he had a gun.” As I pointed out at the time, we have bred young men who will stand by and watch a psychopath shoot defenceless women, so long as he assures them he will not shoot them. And we have bred the young women these young men deserve.

Men without chests, men without character, men who don’t think twice.

David Warren

© Ottawa Citizen

Comments

[karen Loeschorn]

I read a book quite some time ago called "Jesus Freaks do Talk and the Voice of the Martyrs" I hope it has effected me. When I heard the story of the two journalists, I couldn't help but remember the stories I had read and tried to put myself in their place.I like to believe, I need to believe I would choose the only correct path. In the cover of the book jacket, there is this statement "There are more Christian martyrs today than there were in 100A.D. - in the days of the Roman empire. According to the world's Christian encyclopedia, there were close to 156,000 Christians martyred around the world in 1998. An estimated 164,000 will be martyred in 1999." I asked the question of friends "What would you do?" all answered, including myself, "I would like to beleive I would give my life BUT I am not in that position." Personally I think we were all lying, trying to be nice and not say what would seem boastful, the same as when someone calls us "Holy" we say "No, not me." I do not think that any one of my friends who I asked would deny Christ in favor of life here. But I do think we need to speak up and not deny Him while we are here. Karen

[Elizabeth Murphy]

David Warren writes from the safety of Ottawa to judge as cowards two journalists serving in the cause of truth in the most dangerous place on earth! He is just another chicken hawk.

David Warren says that most journalists are not Christians. What is he implying? Am I detecting anti-semitism? And why does he make anti-intellectual attacks when he himself must be considered an intellectual to be writing for Commentary?

David Warren gives kudos to a man whose hubris caused him to be killed whereas he mocks the men smart enough to save their own God-given lives. If I were the mother of all of those men, it's the dead one I'd think was the foolish son who needed to be forgiven.

David Warren, I think, might have a chest, but what is inside it certainly appears to be arrogant, judgmental, cold, dark and mean-spirited. God help him if ever he has the courage to go where those journalists he criticizes have gone.

[Alice Seidel]

Cowards?! Don't get me started! Where was David Warren on September 11, 2001? Was he one of those going up the staircases in the towers, was he one of those standing in a 100th floor window, deciding whether to jump or to be cast into the inferno? Or was he on one of the flights into hell?
Did he feel the blast when it ripped into the Pentagon, or was he enveloped in the cloud of human despair when the towers fell? Did he charge up the aisle of Flight 93 and did he get his hands around one of those Islamo-fascists?
Maybe the West is breeding men of little character, I still think not. But Americans still stand tall; we make patriots every day, in God's name we do.

[Philip-Michael F. Tangorra]

You all raise very good points. Mr. Warren seems to add insult to injury at times and confuse bravery with stupidity. Yet there are some things, without judging Mr. Warren, but solely looking at his thoughts, that are worth examining.
In the early Christian Church, the Christians faced death for their faith in Jesus and not the Gods of the Emperor. Those who under severe brutality and the loss of their life renounced Christ and worshipped the pagan gods were called Apostates. Not to be confused with Apostle. Apostasy to this day is a grave sin. Pope Benedict speaks about this by saying that those who force one to convert commit violence against the soul. Those who committed apostasy were no longer welcome in the Christian community, this is one of the reason why the Sacrament of Penance was developed.
Apostasy is serious and can't be taken lightly. Jesus never said that those who followed him would not have their cross to carry. In fact he warned the Apostles that what they would endure would be even worse (cf. Acts 9:16) History shows that the Apostles suffered horrific deaths. Yesterday, Sept. 19th was the Feast of St. Januarius and early Martyr. We must not forget that "the Blood of the Martyrs is the seed of the Church." Un-shaking Faith in Christ (cf. Matt. 10:33).
Whether or not the two Fox News journalists or the men on the University of Montreal capus were chestless is not for us to decide, but is something that is between them and God. Yet from a Christian perspective, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matt. 10:39)In all things, even the way we die, we are to bear witness to Christ.
It is a good question to ask whether David Warren would do this. For as St. Francis said, "Preach at all times and when necessary use words." In other words our actual witness speaks louder than empty words.
Pray for Peace!