The Jizyah is the name we give to the tax imposed in Muslim-ruled societies on the non-Muslims. These are the so called "protected people."  They are protected, by a method of legalized community-wide extortion, from the Muslims themselves. The aid that is given, by Infidel nation-states, to Muslim nation-states and polities, out of some dreamy belief that this will somehow make those Muslims like us -- i.e., be less Muslim -- rather than simply make them better able to continue to engage in the Jihad, using whatever instruments come to hand, and are deemed most effective for a particular time or a particular place (from qitaal, or combat, to the money weapon, Da'wa, propaganda, and of course demographic conquest).

The aid that has been given by Infidel governments in Western Europe, and in North America, in the manner in which it is both given, and in which it has been received, and in which it is now by universal agreement of both donors and recipients assumed as being given as a matter of right, and can only be halted, and then only temporarily, in the most extreme circumstances, exhibits all the features of the Jizyah that for 1350 years was paid, by non-Muslims, to Muslims within those Muslim-dominated societies, and that is now being given, by non-Muslims, who even before their societies have been taken over by Muslims, have taught themselves the habit of dhimmitude, a proleptic state of psychological capitulation, before those who would be judged both hostile and primitive by any rational and self-assured Western observer.

The local shock troops of the Lesser Jihad against Israel are those Arabs who renamed themselves, with cunning, in order to disguise as a "nationalist" undertaking -- you know, the "two tiny peoples" business, what otherwise would appear to be, as in fact it is and always has been, an enormous gang-up, by Arabs, and by other Muslims, with all their numbers and vast territories and incredible, unearned wealth from oil and gas deposits, on a sliver of land so small as to be nearly invisible on maps of the world. That "two tiny peoples" argument hides both the real basis for the refusal to recognize, and by "recognition" we mean of course not merely taking notice that Israel now exists (which is how Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah mean it, and of course have explained this to those stubborn members of Hamas who prefer the Fast Jihad to the Slow Jihad), but "recognition" as meaning -- yes, we accept you, in perpetuity, we have abandoned the ultimate goal of destroying Israel as a Jewish, i.e., Infidel, state, we have accepted the idea that non-Muslims, too, have histories, and rights, and we will in fact, extend that understanding to other non-Muslim peoples and, as well, to other Muslim but non-Arab peoples, such as the Kurds, the Berbers, the black African Muslims in Darfur.

That, of course, will never happen. It can't happen because Muslims cannot go against the central duty of Jihad, and the basic opposition of Believer to Infidel that is to last for all time -- at least, they cannot do so and remain Muslims. And the hold of Islam on its brainwashed-from-birth followers is immense, is like no other religion, is like nothing so much as what happens to the fanatical members of a political cult, such as the Nazis or the Communists, where deviation from the party line could be grounds for removal and even imprisonment, even death.

Here we have a comical spectacle: two branches of the same army fighting the Lesser Jihad against Israel (which is only a local branch, or outpost, or manifestation of what is a World-Wide Jihad), meet under the auspices of the fabulously-rich Saudis. And the main point of the meeting is to arrive at some formula by which the Infidels will again have a flimsy formula offered them by which they, those Infidels, will turn on the spigot of aid. And the denial of that aid has been called, referred to endlessly, as a "blockade" or a "boycott." Now I wonder how many of us who in our own lives, out of some misguided impulse, heaped large sums of money on those who gave every indication of regarding us, despite that aid, as their permanent enemies ("Infidels"), who were to be regarded with contempt, with hostility (their holy books telling them they must not take us as friends, they must indeed, either "cut off the heads of the Unbelievers" or, if those Unbelievers -- and we are those Unbelievers -- are finally conquered, they are to be offered only a choice: death, conversion to Islam, or a permanent state of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity, that status known as being a "dhimmi," and its rules codified in the Shari'a or Holy Law of Islam. (See Antoine Fattal, "Le status legal des non-musulmanes en pays d'Islam").

Now, funnily, these sums we have been doling out to these people who are inculcated with the belief that we must be hated, we must ultimately be conquered and our lands made places where Islam dominates ("Islam is to dominate and is not to be dominated") and Muslims rule, are regarded by us as something we simply must keep paying, otherwise those whom we initially may, out of ignorance and naiveté, sought to treat with such kindness, such generosity, will turn on us, will harm us.

And in turn, those recipients of our largesse do not show us any kindness. They denounce us. They grab and kill our citizens, our aid-workers, our representatives coming to Gaza only to announce the winners of scholarships to America, our ambassadorial staff in Khartoum. They have not modified their murderous desires in the slightest, but have only used what aid the Infidels -- that is, we -- have given them -- to make war on other Infidels.

Now we have the Saudis, who have received several trillion dollars since 1973, and have never been asked, it seems, to divert some of the money they spend on sowing the seeds of Islam everywhere in the Western world, with mosques built, and then maintained, through Saudi (and other Arab) money -- in Rome, in London, in Paris, and in a thousand or ten thousand other places. In those mosques the most horrific sermons, the most horrific audiocassettes, the most horrific literature, denouncing the Infidels in murderous language, is a given, at least until some Infidel police manage to uncover, here and there, a particular case of what is in fact a systematic scandal.

Yet in Mecca, the Slow Jihadists of Abbas and the Fast Jihadists of Meshaal came away with the idea that the Infidels should renew their Jizyah. No one seems to think this absurd, in the Western world. No one seems to think that there is anything wrong with the Infidels, already having transferred ten trillion dollars -- the greatest transfer of wealth in human history -- to the almost entirely Muslim membership of OPEC since 1973, all because of an accident of geology and not out of any actual effort or merit on the part of those Arab and Muslim states that happen to sit on top of this oil, and who are going to continue to receive similar, though even larger sums, in the future, should be the ones properly asked to support -- if support there is to be -- for those local Arabs and fellow Muslims, whom some persist in pretending should be identified as a separate people -- what a semantic farce -- that is, the "Palestinian people."

What presidential candidate will stand up and say what I have just written here? Who will stand up and say "Stop the Jizyah" and in saying that, start the public discussion of what the JIzyah is and always was, and point out the absurdity of the vast sums being spent, not only in Iraq to create that idiotic Light Unto the Muslim Nations, but also to create a pseudo-prosperity when there is no connection between prosperity and the fanaticism of Muslims pursuing Jihad, but Infidel aid can only make that pursuit more likely, more easy of achievement. Finally, the man (or woman) who stands up and says simply -- We Must Not Renew The Jizyah to the "Palestinians" -- will also force others to discuss this matter, and to discuss as well, ways to use up Saudi Arabia's discretionary income that it plows into the Jihad that harms us so much, and one of those ways is to make the poor Arabs and Muslims stop counting on the West, but to go hat in hand to the Saudis. Let them pay for the "Palestinians," let them keep Mubarak's Family-and-Friends plan going (why should Egyptians continue to blame Americans for propping up the corrupt and oppressive regime? Let them blame the Saudis). If Abdullah of Jordan is, as some say, a force for stability and "moderation" (this is the usual unthinking nonsense, but in the spirit of the first-year law student who likes to preface his remarks or his exam answer with "assuming arguendo" we can run with it here), then surely Saudi Arabia, that "staunch ally" of the United States, circumjacent to Jordan, has a much greater stake in that country's stability and prosperity, and should be the one most desirous to prop it up -- shouldn't it?

Not everyone in the United States is a fool. Not everyone shares the foolishness, the mental inertia, or the sheer hectic vacancy and busy-business (too busy to find out about Islam, too busy to read history, too busy to think) of those who are "taking a leadership role."

Be leaders. Study. Learn. Make sense of things, the way Washington, Adams, Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Lincoln would have known how to do. You don't have to be as mediocre as you have allowed yourselves to be.

Those you presume to protect and instruct deserve better.