LARA LOGAN’S ASSAULT DETAILED IN LONDON TIMES : What happened to CBS News’ Lara Logan in Tahrir Square? She suffered a “brutal and sustained sexual assault,” according to the network, and over the weekend the Times of London offered the first details on exactly what she went through: A source tells the paper Logan was stripped of her clothing by a crowd of 200 men, punched, slapped, and then pinched in a way that left red marks all over her body. She was also whipped with flagpoles and taunted with jeers of “Israeli” and “Jew.” A group of soldiers and women protesters rescued Logan and brought her to the Four Seasons, where she was treated by a doctor who sedated her.
There is so much violence on TV and so much sex on the Internet filled with horrors and make-belief scenes: People’s parts being sawn off, brutal and senseless shootings, drug consumption, perverted sexual scenes, a seemingly endless supply. One does not have to wander far from the major networks or the evening news. It is all there for us to witness.
As the Middle East is being reshaped, we were abhorred to learn that CNN’s Anderson Cooper was attacked, “punched in the head,” and that CBS’ Lara Logan was sexually assaulted. How dare anyone defile the holy status of a journalist, especially those from Mount Olympus? They tell millions what to think, shaping the global opinion on matters including such items as Mubarak’s faults.
They do their holy work, believing themselves immune, and then pronounce their verdicts and opinions, rather than report the news. Anderson Cooper was accosted (“roughed up” to use the language of the reports), yet he sustained no damage other than, possibly, his bruised ego. “How dare anyone have even approach him with anything other than reverence, appreciation and gratitude? HE, after all, was leading the fight against Mubarak!
No one wished for Anderson Cooper to be sexually assaulted or beaten the way Lara Logan was. Perhaps if he felt a real taste of Middle Eastern “peaceful protest,” he would have changed his tone and demeanor.
There is nothing benign in all these Middle Eastern Muslim countries. They have no understanding of what freedom or democracy entails. Theirs is a savage mentality, a culture of hatred and death. Thus, Anderson Cooper should be going to Church, even if he is not a religious person, and counting his many blessings multiple times a day.
Lara Logan must find the strength to return to normalcy, to have the courage to look at herself in the mirror, or even closing her eyes without the sounds, feels, tastes and smells that refuse to leave her. Hers is a long journey of recovery, possibly never to be achieved.
There were other previous cases, Daniel Pearl, who was Jewish and an American (Lara Logan is NOT Jewish), his head separated from his body on a live Internet feed. The list goes on and on, but the real question is: what have we learned?
We still engage in “interfaith activity,” in “building bridges,” in “discussions and dialogues.” It is always the Christians and Jews who go with a hand extended to the Muslims. The latter, though, are neither interested nor initiate these activities.
Possibly if we only listened and looked closer, we would see and realize what we are up against. The savagery knows no bounds. Lara Logan was guilty because she is a woman. She represents the West. She is an American (the very manifestation of the Devil). Thus, to beat her, to mutilate her body, to use her as a sexual object among all the men and women in the crowd is nothing short of ordinary.
It matters not she is not Jewish. She is guilty if not for one reason than for another. More importantly, she served a purpose, satisfying the crowd’s craving for action, for a sheep to be slaughtered, her innocence and blood letting for all to smell and incite the senses.
It is not much different than parading the bodies of American soldiers in the streets, then setting them on fire (whether or not any breath remained in them) and then hanging them up on a bridge for the world to see.
It is exactly what they hear weekly in the mosques, from the pulpits: Non-believers are pigs and apes. The Sword is the only remedy. There must be no place for non-believers to hide. Their fate is to die. America and Israel are the Devils. The Jews are responsible for all the ills of the world.
It is no different from what their democratically elected officials and representatives are calling for. Whether it is Ahmadinejad’s call to wipe Israel off the map, Nasrallah’s call to conquer the Galilee (what does one think will happen, an orderly transfer of power?) or Hamas’ Charter’s instructions to destroy Israel?
Theirs is a culture of death and deceit, cruelty the likes of which our refined taste cannot fathom, going beyond anything we see nightly on the news, every hour on cable or constantly on the Internet.
Anderson Cooper’s righteous indignation should be translated into action: Expose Islam for what it really is-and by no stretch of the imagination can be it called “a peaceful religion.” Tell the truth the way it really is-and Tahrir Square was not a “youthful, peaceful revolution.” Protect all that is dear to your heart: honesty, integrity, journalistic professionalism, ethics, foresight and responsibility.
Some may mistake the transformational wave sweeping the Middle East to be the greatest hour of Al Jazeera and Anderson Cooper. Both forgot their duty as media and journalists to report.
Anderson Cooper and Lara Logan experienced first hand what Israelis have grown accustomed to facing: the unimaginable, a real life inferno.
Their “peace partner” has kidnapped Israeli soldiers and butchered them, returning their body parts in exchange for hundreds of terrorists going free. Their “peace-loving Palestinians” went into their hotels and restaurants, auditoriums and shopping malls, markets and stores and exploded themselves to bring as much mayhem and murder as possible. They perfected their methods, adding AIDS-tainted blood and little sharp metal objects to the mix. So one can find the wounded in Israeli hospitals in a much worse state than Logan. Why are these methods and activities going unreported and being glossed over by “reputable” journalists?
The “peaceful Arab Muslims” who claim they believe in “THOU SHALL NOT KILL” have no problem lynching innocent bystanders whose only crime was getting lost, right in the very police station to which they were brought, throwing their bodies out the window to the blood-thirsty mob below to finish the job.
These “rightful owners of the land, the victims” of this story like to shoot pregnant women and young men, only because the men wear yarmulkes and the women look Jewish.
The Arabs who want to live “side by side” take axes and go to the neighboring Jewish towns and crash the heads of 13 year-old boys out playing near their homes or smash the skulls of younger children against rocks. Their fault: being Israeli Jews.
Israelis somehow have learned to live with the impossible and still advocate and yearn for peace. Peace with whom, I ask.
Mistake not – this has nothing to do with Israel. In Europe women were attacked, mistaken (or believed) to be Jewish. Like Logan, facts mattered not. Clearly, the women “instigated trouble,” and deserved what they got. The sheer disregard for human life is abhorrent.
In Paris, a young Jewish man was kidnapped, lured by a beautiful woman, to be tortured for days. His screams could be heard day and night, for the durations he was conscious, and his capturers felt the joy of mutilating him. Not one of the hundreds of families who lived in the same building bothered to notify the authorities. In their warped minds, he DESERVED WHAT HE GOT. Finally, when they were somewhat satisfied, they threw his body, still alive, to die on a road.
The brutality and savagery are all excused. Muslims need to stand up and speak against it, but they do not. The “THOU SHALL NOT MURDER” only applies to Believers. Thus, homicide bombings at Jewish weddings are perfectly acceptable, the same at a Jordanian (Muslim) wedding is not ok.
There will be a day when Muslims will stand up to speak, but that will only come after tens or hundreds of millions of Muslims die in the hands of other MUSLIMS.
In the meantime, dozens or hundreds of Muslims die each day in “free, liberated and democratic” Iraq-all at the hands of Muslims.
We look and do not see. We experience and we deny. We avoid the obvious. We refuse to hear. We live in a world that is all good, until it “suddenly” crumples upon us and buries us under our own foolish denial. But things do not happen suddenly, we simply ignored the warning signs all along.
Open your eyes and look around. We are at war against our very existence, and we do nothing. As if we live elsewhere. The Middle East is reshaping in front of our very eyes and we-with great stupidity-call it “Democracy.”
The only “Democracy” one can find in the Middle East is Israel, and she is ailing, possibly on her deathbed as well. Like us, she too ignores the obvious, oblivious to the signs.
Let us wait a little longer, we will find ourselves looking directly at the abyss, as a shout of horror escapes our throats, a nano-second before we are no more.
