Empty buildings, broken hearts

I just finished reading this very good article by Paula Stern called The Face of Islamic Religious Intolerance, and I felt my throat tighten. Stern writes:

Today, as I knew they would, crazed Palestinian mobs are desecrating 25 synagogues in Gaza, setting them on fire and destroying what it took years to build.

I thought to myself as I read this, why bother with the usual politically correct explanations of why palestinians do what they do. They have been given license by liberals and leftists to act as savages because the disease of liberalism thinks it is quaint to act out your culture, no matter how unevolved it is. The libs think aren't those burqas so pretty and oh those pretty mosaic tiles.

I continued reading:

The world will quietly offer Israel their condolences and throughout the world, in places like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and even in Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Ukraine, people will wonder if maybe they could destroy a nearby synagogue too. Why should the land on which these buildings sit continue to be wasted when there are no Jews around. Could there be a way to rid Europe and Arab countries of these buildings in which Jews once prayed? The first step, of course, is to deny.

And that's when I felt the bile rise into my throat. What if Germans, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians and other Europeans did in fact destroy the empty local synagogues in their neighborhoods. The thought was conceivable. Why wouldn't an affluent and spoiled Europe, which is no longer democratic in the American sense, want to revitalize the land on which holy buildings sat - wasted - when there were no more Jews around to utilize them?

I realized upon having that thought, that I have been infected with the shame that Europeans and Arabs have intentionally placed upon Jews for the past 1,400 years. I am convinced that the world is full of visceral hate for Jews and hatred of Israel and, I would not be shocked if synagogues around the world were to start to be demolished.

See, folks, the palestinians have invigorated a precedent that Muslims had already set several centuries ago - desecrating the holy sites of non-Muslims. As Stern says,

Palestinian President Abu Mazen has become a rabbi, apparently. He can now determine the holiness of a synagogue and has issued his rabbinic decree that these buildings are no longer synagogues, no longer holy.

The whole notion that Arabs can live in peace under the Israeli flag but the Jews have no right to live at all under the palestinian flag is lost on the general public I am afraid. Oriana Fallaci once wrote "…a respected Muslim cleric told the crowd: "Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you. Thanks to our Islamic laws we will conquer you."