Fear Not Islamo-Fascism Nor Ahmadinejad

David Klinghoffer writes:

During Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, a Jewish friend asked me with breathless excitement, “Did you see on Little Green Footballs [a blog] how the thugs at Berkeley attacked Nonie Darwish and had to be pulled off her?” He was referring to the Egyptian-born Muslim-turned-Christian writer, who spoke at the University of California. Her memoir calls the “Islamo-Fascists” worse than the Nazis or communists.

In fact, my friend had misread an ambiguous headline on LGF. The nutty Berkeley left-wingers didn’t attack her. They interrupted her speech with slogans and rude behavior and were ejected from the auditorium.

I recall a wildly overheated article on, of all things, the Web site of Aish HaTorah, the Orthodox outreach group. The author cited as authoritative an implausible tale he heard on wacky right-wing radio host Michael Savage’s program that 20 Al Qaeda suitcase nukes were already in the United States, ready to be detonated any minute. That was a couple of years ago.

Like me, you are probably bombarded by e-mail lists from well-meaning but hyperventilating Jewish activists bursting to provide information about the wicked lies and terrible deeds of the Iranians, the Palestinians, the Syrians and the rest. There is a whole galaxy of popular Web sites and book authors devoted to banging away at this theme with harsh, braying words and images.