Tuesday, June 28, 2005
So much for peaceful dialogue, and guess who one of the boycotters is? Why, none-other than hater-about-town, Livingstone and Galloway-pal, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi. According to the Reuters report at Haaretz:
This is the first time Jews have been invited to take part in what was previously an Islamic-Christian conference held for the past two years in the Gulf Arab state.
Organizers said Egypt's Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, one of the Sunni Muslim world's most respected clerics, and Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, an outspoken Egyptian Sunni cleric, were boycotting the forum, which starts tomorrow in Doha.
"They said they would not attend the conference due to political reasons. ... Opposition is not to Judaism, it is a protest against Israeli aggression against the Palestinians," said Aisha al-Manai, head of the organizing committee...
The cold-shoulder approach that the Israel-rejectionists have exercised since Israel's founding, and particularly since 1967, has been the chief and most visible (and legitimate) justification for every Israeli "unilateral" action since. You can't negotiate anything with people who won't even talk. Instead, you do what you have to do to go on living, including taking unilateral police action and building real walls to represent the figurative ones other people have already erected.
