Dr. Richard Benkin

On November 1, 2008, I delivered the Arvind Ghosh Memorial Lecture to the Human Empowerment Convention in suburban Chicago. The address was interrupted more than a half dozen times with applause and received a standing ovation at its conclusion. The following are excerpts from that address.

“Some years back, my mother, wife, and daughter were sitting in a Jerusalem restaurant enjoying a meal. Not many weeks later, a Palestinian terrorist entered the restaurant and blew himself up, [and] I realized that had my mother, my wife, and my daughter been there that day, the murderers would have considered their deaths something glorious…. Anyone who could glory in the deaths of my mother, my wife, and my daughter is an enemy so vile that…there can be no quarter, no negotiation, no compromise; and in the fight against it there can be no rest….

“Why is there any question about the need to fight them unrelentingly and to destroy them utterly….Our enemy’s expressed goals are to destroy our faiths, our values, our ways of life….Fuzzy thinking about this can destroy us, and…no matter [who] tries to convince us otherwise, [we] must remain focused on what we have to do to defeat them….This enemy has a name, and we need to use it: radical Islam. Not terrorism, which is only a tactic; or unspecified radicals, militants, or whatever politically correct word is in fashion but Islamist radicals….If we are engaged in a war on ‘terror,’ we are [merely] reacting to a tactic [and] not engaged in a comprehensive effort to defeat the terrorists and those who send them. If our enemies are merely “the extremists,” we have [abandoned] the search for any ideology…that unites those extremists and motivates them. [That] dilutes our struggle, weakens us, and strengthens our enemies…radical Islamists.

“An alliance of Israel, India, and the United States…can [easily] dispose of the terrorists and the national leaders that support them…Look at what each nation has done by itself. Ever since its 1948 birth, Israel has been bedeviled by nation-states and terrorist groups determined to destroy it. It is the only nation on earth that has never known a day of peace….Invaded by multiple Arab militaries in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973…Israel beat them all back so thoroughly, that they had to change tactics and send terror proxies to do their work…. But the terrorists have failed, too. Suicide bombings [and rocket strikes from Gaza] have been virtually eliminated….In a 2007 conversation with an Israeli insider, I noted how the number of terror attacks dropped significantly, even though the terrorists keep trying….‘Let me tell you a secret,’ he whispered, smiling. ‘We stop most of them in their beds.’ Israel has survived; more than that, it has thrived to become one of the world’s technological giants….

“India was born with an enemy dedicated to its destruction on its northwest border. For the last ten years, Pakistan has been a nuclear power. It has supported anti-Indian terror for decades, and since 1996, the entire Muslim ummah in the form of the Organization of Islamic Conferences and its members stand with Pakistan in claiming Kashmir. India faces a steady stream of terror attacks [and] a steady flow of Muslim infiltrators trying with some success to change the demographic realities in East and West Bengal. As I rode through villages near the Bangladesh and Nepal borders…I was told how each one has gone from having a mixed Hindu-Muslim population to an exclusively or almost exclusively Muslim one.…Yet India, too, survives and is becoming one of the new century’s economic giants….

“The United States remains the world’s only superpower and its largest economy…[Its] efforts in Iraq are succeeding. Terrorist actions are down, calm is returning, and Iraqis are taking on ever more of their national responsibilities. [It] has defeated an Islamist onslaught…conducted with no regard for the safety of innocents or for any international conventions. It has done so despite a worldwide ideological crusade by leftists and elites to demonize the United States and its anti-Islamist efforts. They have called it a war for oil, a war for Israel, and a war against Islam….

“Radical Islam threatens every country and people on earth but targets these three nations specifically for extinction….Yet, all three nations are told to negotiate with the enemy; to make concessions; to understand their grievances and our sins….Never mind that Israelis were being blown up on public busses; Palestinians said they were ‘humiliated’ by Israel’s security checkpoints. So the world leaned on Israel, not the Arabs, to engage in what they called confidence building measures [that is] unilateral concessions [that only built] our enemy’s confidence in our weakness….

“India is the key. Israel and the United States have had a strategic relationship at least since the 1960s. [India] did not even recognize Israel until 1992 and was a staunch ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.…But the collapse of the Soviet Union and growth of the Islamist enemy changed international realities and caused most nations to take a new look at their strategic interests….

“This has caused something of a generation gap among members of the India’s media and government. Many remain tied to the ideologies and policies of the past, while much of the younger generation does not….The [leftist] Congress Party recently broke with its communist allies over the…nuclear cooperation deal with the United States [and] West Bengal [Communists] suffered some reverses in local elections for the first time in its thirty-year, iron-fisted rule of that state….Earlier this year, I addressed a group of journalism students at the University of Lucknow [about] Islamist ethnic cleansing of Bangladeshi Hindus. [They] voiced their opinions about how the Indian media has failed to identify the true nature of this genocide-in-the-making [but also] avidly drank in any detail I could provide about life in the Jewish state…and about the way Jews and Hindus share so many values and sensibilities. More than anything else, however, these journalists of tomorrow wanted to know how tiny Israel was able to ‘defeat the terrorists and jihadis…so India can adopt these methods and defeat our terrorists like the Israelis did….’

“Members of [the] mainstream media…were quite candid about the media’s leftist bias, corruption in the Congress government…and about the severity of the Islamist threat….But because, they told me…they “would surely be sacked” if their editors or colleagues heard those candid opinions, we met in out of the way hotels, coffee shops, and other inconspicuous places….

“In the United States…the political correctness police see a potential offense in virtually every comment that calls our enemy what it is. In Israel, it is the misnomered peace camp; misnomered because the only peace their policies would bring is the peace of the grave. In India, it is pseudo-secularism, a policy that legislates Hinduism to a second-class status….The recent budget included millions to fund Muslim religious pilgrimages but not a penny for Bangladeshi Hindus living stateless and abused in refugee camps. Even in its final days in office, Israel’s Kadima Party is looking to strike a deal that would give up ancestral Jewish lands on West Bank, but also part of Israel’s capital, Jerusalem [and] Hebron, where Judaism’s patriarchs and matriarchs are buried….There had been a continuous Jewish presence in Hebron from biblical times until 1929 [when] Muslims with help from local authorities rioted and attacked the ancient Jewish community. Those who were not murdered were expelled [and] today, the descendants of the murderers have the gall to say the descendants of the victims have no title to the land, and the world disdainfully calls them ‘settlers.’ So, tell me, at what point does the statute of limitation run on genocide….

“We are also fighting what I have termed the Red-Green Alliance… of Communists and Islamists…In 2004, Al Qaeda terrorists were on the run from U.S. forces that dislodged them from their strongholds in Afghanistan….Friendly [Pakistani] border guards got them safely… to terrorist-controlled sections of Kashmir and into Nepal where they set up terror bases….Nepal is overwhelmingly Hindu and hardly a likely candidate to become the next Taliban state, but the Nepalese King had seized dictatorial powers in response to a decades-long communist revolt. That made for social chaos and uncontrolled borders that allowed Islamists in the Pakistan Embassy to engineered an agreement with the communists to provide Al Qaeda with safe haven.

“The Islamists were…interested in the world’s third-largest Muslim country just down the road: Bangladesh [where] Islamists had infiltrated virtually all of the country’s social institutions and had been part of the government since 2001. They were all set to make further gains in the upcoming January 2007 elections [until] a military coup stopped them—for the moment. [But] the Islamists remain in the area ready to seize power when conditions allow it….The Maoists’…reward was a role in Nepal’s coalition government, which gave them enough legitimacy to masquerade as a political party and run in the next election [and seize] power. [We see Red-Green] collusion between West Bengal communist government and Bengali Islamists [in] ongoing attacks by local and Bangladeshi Islamists that the government tolerates. I recall one village where the local commissar got there before I did to intimidate the refugees into silence. It appeared to be working until one elderly woman stood up in the public square and said, ‘I’m not afraid of anyone,’ and with the red official looking on, proceeded to tell me about the continuing attacks. [Its] less violent side is even more influential in blocking a US-India-Israel alliance….Leftists sympathize with Islamist goals, demonize Israel, and oppose anything the United States does….

“Wherever I went in India, I heard, ‘There are no democracies between Jerusalem and New Delhi.’ India and Israel…have been able to maintain their democracy without military coups or contrived states of emergency, without the suspension of rights or elections, despite pressure so continuous that few nations would be able to withstand it. In our tripartite alliance, we have the world’s oldest democracy, the United States, the world’s largest democracy, India, and the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel…. Each offers something the others do not….India’s greatest enemy is Pakistan; at least for now, the United States maintains extensive relations with it. Iran is Israel’s nemesis (America’s, too); and India has a good relationship with that country. America’s greatest rival, China (also a threat to India), has some serious ties with Israel.

“In the area of energy, competition for resources between India and the United States helped drive up the price of oil. [They accounted] for one third of the world’s oil consumption ….We appeared dependent on OPEC while they seemed independent of us [until] recent US actions to increase drilling, dip into its oil reserves, and conserve energy…drove down the price of oil [and] sent OPEC into a panic. If these two giant oil importers could unite in deliberate action to collapse the price—then take advantage of some extremely exciting Israeli advances in alternate energy technologies—the three could turn defeat and dependence into victory….

“Both the United States and India now have troops training in Israel, studying anti-terrorism tactics, urban guerilla warfare, and other tactics. In January, an Israeli spy satellite was fired into orbit on the back of an Indian rocket; and…India is now the largest importer of weaponry from Israel….Intelligence sharing has also grown with time, and Israeli intelligence is particularly active in providing India with good information to keep Pakistan in check….

“To make an India-Israel-US alliance a reality….First, we have to commit ourselves to doing what it takes to achieve this…As I have found in my own human rights efforts, there is nothing that can stop a committed individual who continues to impress upon leaders the moral nature of his or her claims. Second…we have to organize…identifying people who are willing to put together structures, raise funds, and do the leg work needed to convince people in Washington, New Delhi, and Jerusalem to further these ties. Third…we need to make this an issue that [politicians] cannot ignore. Bring it to their attention; tie donations to it; take out ads; get media time [and secure] cooperation of lawmakers from [all] parties…When I toured the Hindu refugee camps earlier this year, it was a member of the Congress Party who stood with me [even though] many in his party opposed his decision but….It is no different in the United States. The last protest letter I asked be sent to the Bangladeshi government was signed by four Members of Congress: Trent Franks of Arizona, a conservative Republican; Mark Kirk of Illinois, a moderate Republican; Steve Rothman, a moderate Democrat from New Jersey; and Allyson Schwartz, a liberal Democrat from Philadelphia….And work to defeat those who reject the seriousness of the existential threat that all three nations face. Do it as if your life depended on it because it does.

“Fourth, there are many ways to build a corps of supporters in the United States Congress and Senate. Networks of like-minded individuals exist in all three countries and all over the world….Fifth, find the ‘good guys’ in the media. Although we rightly complain about a media tendency to avoid naming the threat and to downplay its seriousness, there are many writers and outlets that are not like that. We need to identify them and cultivate those relationships….

“Over the past couple years, I have become more and more involved in trying to protect the Bangladeshi Hindus from the genocidal efforts of Bengali Islamists, the corruption of Bengali leaders, and the shameful inaction by India, the United Nations, Amnesty International and the other so-called human rights groups…Some 20 million Bangladeshi Hindus who should be here are not….As a Jew, I am extremely sensitive about the Nazi holocaust against my people. I have family who survived it and family who did not. There is nothing in history that comes close to it [but this situation is eerily familiar]….Contact me….Work with me….Do not let this opportunity pass.” You can help me return to India in March to fight for the Bangladeshi Hindus by donating at Interfaith Strength.

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Tags: Bangladesh, Hinduism, india, israel, Politics