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ISRAEL THE BEAUTIFUL: A VINEYARD IN EARLY SPRING Posted by Yehoshua Halevi, February 28, 2009.

A vineyard in Gush Etzion in early spring.   This is one of Yehoshua Halevi's Golden Light Images. Yehoshua Halevi writes: "HOW I GOT THE SHOT: Look closely and you may be able to count more than 30 stripes of varying colors running across the frame of this photograph. For some unknown reason, it reminded me of a Neapolitan ice cream bar — three perfect pieces of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. I followed the evolution of this view over a period of weeks last Spring as I shuttled my son to and from a Judo class on the outskirts of Efrat, in Gush Etzion. What began as a uniformly brown terrain emerged about a month later as this candy-striped scene. This small valley lies below the road, so I had a good view each time I drove the carpool. I waited out the grass until it reached a height that added significant color to the shot. I'm not sure why it varies in color, but I'm guessing the fields were plowed at different times or perhaps there are different types of grasses or nutrients in the soil which affect the color. I love it when I capture something beautiful so close to my home. Often we take for granted or become blind to the things we see every day. Yet in the backdrop of our routines lie many hidden treasures, not just the kind that hang on the wall in frames, but those more important blessings in our lives. Contact Yehoshua Halevi by email at smile@goldenlightimages.com and visit his website: http://www.goldenlightimages.com. Reproductions of his work as cards, calenders and posters may be purchased at http://www.cafepress.com/halevi18 To Go To Top

PRINCIPLES OF SHARIA LAW Posted by Janet Lehr, February 28, 2009.

1> 25 Principles of Sharia Law. Sharia Law is not identical in all Muslim nations, nor is Common Law. — but the rights of citizens in general outline are the same in Muslim nations and the rights of the individual are the same under Common Law. BUT, the rights of the individual and the position of religion are very different under any form of Sharia Law than under any form of Common Law. At its root is the question of whether there is freedom of religious practice or not; is there separation of Church and State, or not. What does the Shariah law actually state? Here are some examples of Shariah law In a step toward total governance under Shariah Law, most countries of the Middle East and North Africa maintain a dual system of secular courts and religious courts, in which the religious courts mainly regulate marriage and inheritance. Saudi Arabia and Iran maintain religious courts for all aspects of jurisprudence, and religious police assert social compliance. Laws derived from sharia are also applied in Afghanistan, Libya and Sudan. Some states in northern Nigeria have reintroduced Sharia courts. In practice the new Sharia courts in Nigeria have most often meant the re-introduction of harsh punishments without respecting the much tougher rules of evidence and testimony. The punishments include amputation of one/both hands for theft, stoning for adultery and apostasy. Though Islamic law is interpreted differently across times, places and scholars, most Muslim fundamentalists following the literal and traditional interpretations believe it should legally be binding on all people of the Muslim faith and even on all people who come under their control. This is the position of Muslim fundamentalists today. There are four schools of Islamic Sacred law; Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali, but on the following 25 points, there is no disagreement 1. Offensive, military jihad against non-Muslims is a communal, religious obligation — It is personally obligatory for everyone. The objectives of the caliph is to make war on Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, provided he has first invited them to enter Islam in faith and practice. If they will not, to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya). 2. A person who is ignorant about Islamic legal opinion must follow the legal opinion of a scholar (Muslim) 3. The penalty for a Muslim apostate (someone who no longer believes in or no longer follows the tenets of Islam) is death. There is no penalty for killing an apostate since it is killing someone who deserves to die. 4. When slaughtering animals for food, a knife must be used to cut the windpipe and gullet. 5. A woman is only eligible to receive half the inheritance of a man. 6. Marriage may be forced on virgins by their father or father's father. 7. A non-Arab man may not marry an Arab woman. 8. A woman must seek permission from her husband to leave the house. The husband may forbid his wife to leave the home. "It is not permissible for a woman who believes in Allah and the Last Day to allow someone into her husband's house if he is opposed, or to go out if he is averse". But if one of her relatives dies, it is preferable to let her leave to visit them. 9. A Muslim man cannot marry a woman who is a Zoroastrian, an idol worshipper, an apostate from Islam or a woman with one parent who is Jewish or Christian, with the other being Zoroastrian; a Muslim woman cannot marry anyone but a Muslim; 10. A free Muslim man may marry up to four women. It is unlawful for a free man to marry more than four women. 11. Retaliation is obligatory in most cases when someone is deliberately murdered except when a Muslim kills a non-Muslim, a Jew or a Christian kills a Muslim apostate or a father or mother kill their offspring. The following are not subject to retaliation: a Muslim for killing a non-Muslim; a Jewish or Christian subject of the Islamic state for killing an apostate from Islam; a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring; 12. Non-Muslim subjects (Ahl al-Dhimma) of a Muslim state are subject to a series of discriminatory laws — "dhimmitude"; Non-Muslim subjects are: (1) Jews; (2) Christians; (3) Zoroastrians; (4) Samarians and Sabians, if their religions do not respectively contradict the fundamental bases of Judaism and Christianity; (5) and those who adhere to the religion of Abraham or one of the other prophets (upon whom be blessings and peace). (a) follow the rules of Islam (A: those mentioned below (o11.5) and those involving public behavior and dress, though in acts of worship and their private lives, the subject communities have their own laws, judges, and courts, enforcing the rules of their own religion among themselves); (1) are penalized for committing adultery or theft, though not for drunkenness; (2) are distinguished from Muslims in dress, wearing a wide cloth belt (zunnar); (3) are not greeted with "as-Salamu alaykum"; (4) must keep to the side of the street; (5) may not build higher than or as high as the Muslims' buildings, though if they acquire a tall house, it is not razed; (6) are forbidden to openly display wine or pork, (A: to ring church bells or display crosses,) recite the Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals and feastdays; (7) and are forbidden to build new churches. (b) and pay the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya). It is collected with leniency and politeness, as are all debts, and is not levied on women, children, or the insane. 13. The penalty for fornication or sodomy is being stoned to death; 14. The penalty for an initial theft is amputation of the right hand, whether he is a Muslim, non-Muslim subject of the Islamic state. Subsequent thefts are penalized by further amputations of feet and hand; If a person steals a second time, his left foot is amputated; if a third time, then his left hand; and if he steals again, then his right foot. If he steals a fifth time, he is disciplined (def: o17). If he does not have a right hand (N: at the first offense), then his left foot is amputated. If he has a right hand but loses it after the theft (O: by an act of God) but before he has been punished for it, then nothing is amputated. After amputation, the limb is cauterized with hot oil (A: which in previous times was the means to stop the bleeding and save the criminal's life). 15. A non-Muslim cannot testify against a Muslim in court; a person who is "without respectability" cannot give legal testimony; a woman's legal testimony is only given half the legal weight of a man's (and is only acceptable in cases involving property); to legally prove fornication or sodomy requires 4 male witnesses who actually saw the act; 16. The establishment and continuation of the Islamic Caliphate (by force, if necessary) is a communal obligation; 17. Sodomites and Lesbians must be killed; 18. Laughing too much is forbidden; 19. Musical instruments are unlawful; 20. Creating pictures of animate life is forbidden; 21. Female circumcision, which includes the excision of the clitoris, is obligatory; In application, in Egypt this is more than 90% applied — in other Muslim countries less so. This is social co-ersion of the most primitive, heinous sort. 22. Slavery is permitted; The 57 State Muslim council OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference] dominates the Human Rights Council of the UN. Slavery may not be mentioned, instead the word 'abduction' is used. 23. People may be bribed to convert to Islam; 24. Beating a rebellious wife is permissible; and, 25. Lying is permissible in a time of war (or jihad). settling disagreements, and a man talking with his wife or she with him (A: in smoothing over differences)." or gaining the sympathy of a victim legally entitled to retaliate against one so that he will forbear to do so; it is not unlawful to lie when any of these aims can only be attained through lying. But it is religiously more precautionary in all such cases to employ words that give a misleading impression, meaning to intend by one's words something that is literally true, in respect to which one is not lying, while the outward purport of the words deceives the hearer, though even if one does not have such an intention and merely lies without intending anything else, it is not unlawful in the above circumstances." 2> CAIRO DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ISLAM (CDHRI) was adopted on August 5, 1990. The 57 nations (when they speak of 58 nations they are including palestine). The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) established on September 25, 1969 an international organisation with a permanent delegation to the United Nations, consists of 57 member states, from the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Caucasus, Balkans, Southeast Asia, South Asia and South America. (when 58 states are mentioned it includes palestine). According to its charter, the OIC aims to preserve Islamic social and economic values; promote solidarity amongst member states; increase cooperation in social, economic, cultural, scientific, and political areas; uphold international peace and security; and advance education, particularly in the fields of science and technology.[1] Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rights_in_Islam Discussion [followed by the complete declaration itself] The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) is a declaration of the member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which provides an overview on the Islamic perspective on human rights, and affirms Islamic Shari'ah as its sole source. CDHRI declares its purpose to be "general guidance for Member States [of the OIC] in the Field of human rights". This declaration is usually seen as an Islamic counterpart of and a response to the post-World War II United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948. Predominantly Muslim countries, such as Sudan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, frequently criticized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for its perceived failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-Western countries. In 1981, the post-revolutionary Iranian representative to the United Nations Said Rajaie-Khorassani articulated the position of his country regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by saying that the UDHR was "a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law.[1] The CDHRI was adopted on August 5, 1990 by 45 foreign ministers of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to serve as a guidance for the member states in the matters of human rights. Contents The Declaration starts by forbidding "any discrimination on the basis of race, colour, language, belief, sex, religion, political affiliation, social status or other considerations". It continues on to proclaim the sanctity of life, and declares the "preservation of human life" as "a duty prescribed by the Shariah". In addition the CDHRI guarantees "non-belligerents such as old men, women and children", "wounded and the sick" and "prisoners of war", the right to be fed, sheltered and access to safety and medical treatment in times of war. If affirmed, this would indicate that acts of terrorism are violations of human rights. The CDHRI gives men and women the "right to marriage" regardless of their race, colour or nationality, but not religion. In addition women are given "equal human dignity", "own rights to enjoy", "duties to perform", "own civil entity", "financial independence", and the "right to retain her name and lineage", though not equal rights in general. The Declaration makes the husband responsible for the social and financial protection of the family. The Declaration gives both parents the rights over their children, and makes it incumbent upon both of them to protect the child, before and after birth. The Declaration also entitles every family the "right to privacy". It also forbids the demolition, confiscation and eviction of any family from their residence. Furthermore, should the family get separated in times of war, it is the responsibility of the State to "arrange visits or reunions of families". The Declaration prohibits to force anybody "to change his religion to another religion or to atheism". The Declaration protects each individual from arbitrary arrest, torture, maltreatment and/or indignity. Furthermore, no individual is to be used for medical or scientific experiments. It also prohibits the taking of hostages of any individual "for any purpose" whatsoever. Moreover, the CDHRI guarantees the presumption of innocence; guilt is only to be proven through a trial in "which he [the defendant] shall be given all the guarantees of defence". The Declaration also forbids the promulgation of "emergency laws that would provide executive authority for such actions". Art. 19 stipulates that there are no other crimes or punishments than those mentioned in the Sharia, which include corporal punishment (whippings, amputations) and capital punishment.[2] The right to hold public office can only be exercised in accordance with the Sharia,[3] which forbids muslims to submit to the rule of non-muslims. The Declaration also emphasizes the "full right to freedom and self-determination", and its opposition to enslavement, oppression, exploitation and colonialism. The CDHRI declares the rule of law, establishing equality and justice for all. The CDHRI also guarantees all individuals the "right to participate, directly or indirectly in the administration of his country's public affairs". The CDHRI also forbids any abuse of authority 'subject to the Islamic Shari'ah.' The Declaration grants individuals the right to express their opinion freely. It encourages them to propagate that which is right and good. However, it forbids the misuse of this right in order to "violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets", "undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate", "arouse nationalistic or doctrinal hatred" or commit an "incitement to any form of racial discrimination". The CDHRI concludes in article 24 and 25 that all rights and freedoms mentioned are subject to the Islamic Shariah, which is the declaration's sole source[4]. The CDHRI declares "true religion" to be the "guarantee for enhancing such dignity along the path to human integrity". It also places the responsibility for defending those rights upon the entire Ummah. The CDHRI has been criticized for falling short of international human rights standards by not upholding the fundamentality of equality of rights for all. Whereas the Universal declaration states 'Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.' CDHRI does not guarantee equal rights, but merely equal dignity: 'All men are equal in terms of basic human dignity and basic obligations and responsibilities, without any discrimination on the basis of race, colour, language, belief, sex, religion, political affiliation, social status or other considerations.' In particular, CDHRI has been criticised for failing to guarantee freedom of religion.[5] In a joint written statement submitted by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), a non-governmental organization in special consultative status, the Association for World Education (AWE) and the Association of World Citizens (AWC): a number of concerns were raised, that the CDHRI limits Human Rights, Religious Freedom and Freedom of Expression. It concludes: "The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam is clearly an attempt to limit the rights enshrined in the UDHR and the International Covenants. It can in no sense be seen as complementary to the Universal Declaration."[6] The Centre for Inquiry in September 2008 in an article to the United Nations writes that the CDHRI: "undermines equality of persons and freedom of expression and religion by imposing restrictions on nearly every human right based on Islamic Sharia law."[7] Article 5 prohibits imposing any restrictions on marriage stemming from "race, colour or nationality", notably excluding religion from the list, so that men and women may be prevented from marrying on the basis of their religion. Similarly, CDHRI is criticized as not endorsing equality between men and women; moreover, it is accused of asserting the superiority of men.[8] In the Article 6, women are guaranteed equal dignity, in contrast to the Universal declaration which offers equal rights. The significance of this distinction is unclear. Finally, it makes no mention of the practice of having multiple wives in some Islamic countries, but whether this automatically creates a human rights concern in the absence of abuses is debatable. Adama Dieng, a member of the International Commission of Jurists, criticized the CDHRI. He argued that the declaration gravely threatens the inter-cultural consensus, on which the international human rights instruments are based; that it introduces intolerable discrimination against non-Muslims and women. He further argued that the CDHRI reveals a deliberately restrictive character in regard to certain fundamental rights and freedoms, to the point that certain essential provisions are below the legal standards in effect in a number of Muslim countries; it uses the cover of the "Islamic Shari'a (Law)" to justify the legitimacy of practices, such as corporal punishment, which attack the integrity and dignity of the human being.[9] References NOTE: these references are all from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rights_ in_Islam&action=edit§ion=4 1. "Universal Human Rights and 'Human Rights in Islam'". 'Midstream'. http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-littman011903.asp. 2. There shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in the Schari'a. 3. Smith (2003), p.195 4. Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam,Aug. 5, 1990, U.N. GAOR, World Conf. on Hum. Rts., 4th Sess., Agenda Item 5, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.157/PC/62/Add.18 (1993) 5. Kazemi, Farouh. "Perspectives on Islam and Civil Society" in Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism and Conflict, Sohail H. Hashmi, ed. Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-691-11310-6, p.50 6. "The Cairo Declaration and the Universality of Human Rights". http://www.iheu.org/node/3162. 7. "CFI Defends Freedom of Expression at the U.N. Human Rights Council". http://www.centerforinquiry.net/newsroom/cfi_defends_freedom_of_expression_ at_the_un_human_rights_council/. 8. Rhona, Smith. "Textbook on International Human Rights", Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 1-84174-301-1, p.195 9. "Universal Human Rights and 'Human Rights in Islam'". 'Midstream'. http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-littman011903.asp.   THE LAW Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam,Aug. 5, 1990, U.N. GAOR, World Conf. on Hum. Rts., 4th Sess., Agenda Item 5, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.157/PC/62/Add.18 (1993) [English translation]. The Nineteenth Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers (Session of Peace, Interdependence and Development), held in Cairo, Arab Republic of Egypt, from 9-14 Muharram 1411H (31 July to 5 August 1990), Keenly aware of the place of mankind in Islam as vicegerent of Allah on Earth; Recognizing the importance of issuing a Document on Human Rights in Islam that will serve as a guide for Member states in all aspects of life; Having examined the stages through which the preparation of this draft Document has so far, passed and the relevant report of the Secretary General; Having examined the Report of the Meeting of the Committee of Legal Experts held in Tehran from 26 to 28 December, 1989; Agrees to issue the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam that will serve as a general guidance for Member States in the Field of human rights. Reaffirming the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which Allah made as the best community and which gave humanity a universal and well-balanced civilization, in which harmony is established between hereunder and the hereafter, knowledge is combined with faith, and to fulfill the expectations from this community to guide all humanity which is confused because of different and conflicting beliefs and ideologies and to provide solutions for all chronic problems of this materialistic civilization. In contribution to the efforts of mankind to assert human rights, to protect man from exploitation and persecution, and to affirm his freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari'ah. Convinced that mankind which has reached an advanced stage in materialistic science is still, and shall remain, in dire need of faith to support its civilization as well as a self motivating force to guard its rights; Believing that fundamental rights and freedoms according to Islam are an integral part of the Islamic religion and that no one shall have the right as a matter of principle to abolish them either in whole or in part or to violate or ignore them in as much as they are binding divine commands, which are contained in the Revealed Books of Allah and which were sent through the last of His Prophets to complete the preceding divine messages and that safeguarding those fundamental rights and freedoms is an act of worship whereas the neglect or violation thereof is an abominable sin, and that the safeguarding of those fundamental rights and freedom is an individual responsibility of every person and a collective responsibility of the entire Ummah; Do hereby and on the basis of the above-mentioned principles declare as follows: ARTICLE 1: (a) All human beings form one family whose members are united by their subordination to Allah and descent from Adam. All men are equal in terms of basic human dignity and basic obligations and responsibilities, without any discrimination on the basis of race, colour, language, belief, sex, religion, political affiliation, social status or other considerations. The true religion is the guarantee for enhancing such dignity along the path to human integrity. (b) All human beings are Allah's subjects, and the most loved by Him are those who are most beneficial to His subjects, and no one has superiority over another except on the basis of piety and good deeds. ARTICLE 2: (a) Life is a God-given gift and the right to life is guaranteed to every human being. It is the duty of individuals, societies and states to safeguard this right against any violation, and it is prohibited to take away life except for a shari'ah prescribed reason. (b) It is forbidden to resort to any means which could result in the genocidal annihilation of mankind. (c) The preservation of human life throughout the term of time willed by Allah is a duty prescribed by Shari'ah. (d) Safety from bodily harm is a guaranteed right. It is the duty of the state to safeguard it, and it is prohibited to breach it without a Shari'ah-prescribed reason. ARTICLE 3: (a) In the event of the use of force and in case of armed conflict, it is not permissible to kill non-belligerents such as old men, women and children. The wounded and the sick shall have the right to medical treatment; and prisoners of war shall have the right to be fed, sheltered and clothed. It is prohibited to mutilate or dismember dead bodies. It is required to exchange prisoners of war and to arrange visits or reunions of families separated by circumstances of war. (b) It is prohibited to cut down trees, to destroy crops or livestock, to destroy the enemy's civilian buildings and installations by shelling, blasting or any other means. ARTICLE 4: Every human being is entitled to human sanctity and the protection of one's good name and honour during one's life and after one's death. The state and the society shall protect one's body and burial place from desecration. ARTICLE 5: (a) The family is the foundation of society, and marriage is the basis of making a family. Men and women have the right to marriage, and no restrictions stemming from race, colour or nationality shall prevent them from exercising this right. (b) The society and the State shall remove all obstacles to marriage and facilitate it, and shall protect the family and safeguard its welfare. ARTICLE 6: (a) Woman is equal to man in human dignity, and has her own rights to enjoy as well as duties to perform, and has her own civil entity and financial independence, and the right to retain her name and lineage. (b) The husband is responsible for the maintenance and welfare of the family. ARTICLE 7: (a) As of the moment of birth, every child has rights due from the parents, the society and the state to be accorded proper nursing, education and material, hygienic and moral care. Both the fetus and the mother must be safeguarded and accorded special care. (b) Parents and those in such like capacity have the right to choose the type of education they desire for their children, provided they take into consideration the interest and future of the children in accordance with ethical values and the principles of the Shari'ah. (c) Both parents are entitled to certain rights from their children, and relatives are entitled to rights from their kin, in accordance with the tenets of the shari'ah. ARTICLE 8: Every human being has the right to enjoy a legitimate eligibility with all its prerogatives and obligations in case such eligibility is lost or impaired, the person shall have the right to be represented by his/her guardian. ARTICLE 9: (a) The seeking of knowledge is an obligation and provision of education is the duty of the society and the State. The State shall ensure the availability of ways and means to acquire education and shall guarantee its diversity in the interest of the society so as to enable man to be acquainted with the religion of Islam and uncover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of mankind. (b) Every human being has a right to receive both religious and worldly education from the various institutions of teaching, education and guidance, including the family, the school, the university, the media, etc., and in such an integrated and balanced manner that would develop human personality, strengthen man's faith in Allah and promote man's respect to and defense of both rights and obligations. ARTICLE 10: Islam is the religion of true unspoiled nature. It is prohibited to exercise any form of pressure on man or to exploit his poverty or ignorance in order to force him to change his religion to another religion or to atheism. ARTICLE 11: (a) Human beings are born free, and no one has the right to enslave, humiliate, oppress or exploit them, and there can be no subjugation but to Allah the Almighty. (b) Colonialism of all types being one of the most evil forms of enslavement is totally prohibited. Peoples suffering from colonialism have the full right to freedom and self-determination. It is the duty of all States peoples to support the struggle of colonized peoples for the liquidation of all forms of and occupation, and all States and peoples have the right to preserve their independent identity and control over their wealth and natural resources. ARTICLE 12: Every man shall have the right, within the framework of the Shari'ah, to free movement and to select his place of residence whether within or outside his country and if persecuted, is entitled to seek asylum in another country. The country of refuge shall be obliged to provide protection to the asylum-seeker until his safety has been attained, unless asylum is motivated by committing an act regarded by the Shari'ah as a crime. ARTICLE 13: Work is a right guaranteed by the State and the Society for each person with capability to work. Everyone shall be free to choose the work that suits him best and which serves his interests as well as those of the society. The employee shall have the right to enjoy safety and security as well as all other social guarantees. He may not be assigned work beyond his capacity nor shall he be subjected to compulsion or exploited or harmed in any way. He shall be entitled — without any discrimination between males and females — to fair wages for his work without delay, as well as to the holidays allowances and promotions which he deserves. On his part, he shall be required to be dedicated and meticulous in his work. Should workers and employers disagree on any matter, the State shall intervene to settle the dispute and have the grievances redressed, the rights confirmed and justice enforced without bias. ARTICLE 14: Everyone shall have the right to earn a legitimate living without monopolization, deceit or causing harm to oneself or to others. Usury (riba) is explicitly prohibited. [Ed note: Though Sharia Law prohibits interest, it provides for a mandatory payment of 10% to Muslim directed use.] ARTICLE 15: (a) Everyone shall have the right to own property acquired in a legitimate way, and shall be entitled to the rights of ownership without prejudice to oneself, others or the society in general. Expropriation is not permissible except for requirements of public interest and upon payment of prompt and fair compensation. (b) Confiscation and seizure of property is prohibited except for a necessity dictated by law. ARTICLE 16: Everyone shall have the right to enjoy the fruits of his scientific, literary, artistic or technical labour of which he is the author; and he shall have the right to the protection of his moral and material interests stemming there from, provided it is not contrary to the principles of the Shari'ah. ARTICLE 17: (a) Everyone shall have the right to live in a clean environment, away from vice and moral corruption, that would favour a healthy ethical development of his person and it is incumbent upon the State and society in general to afford that right. (b) Everyone shall have the right to medical and social care, and to all public amenities provided by society and the State within the limits of their available resources. (c) The States shall ensure the right of the individual to a decent living that may enable him to meet his requirements and those of his dependents, including food, clothing, housing, education, medical care and all other basic needs. ARTICLE 18: (a) Everyone shall have the right to live in security for himself, his religion, his dependents, his honour and his property. (b) Everyone shall have the right to privacy in the conduct of his private affairs, in his home, among his family, with regard to his property and his relationships. It is not permitted to spy on him, to place him under surveillance or to besmirch his good name. The State shall protect him from arbitrary interference. (c) A private residence is inviolable in all cases. It will not be entered without permission from its inhabitants or in any unlawful manner, nor shall it be demolished or confiscated and its dwellers evicted. ARTICLE 19: (a) All individuals are equal before the law, without distinction between the ruler and the ruled. (b) The right to resort to justice is guaranteed to everyone. (c) Liability is in essence personal. (d) There shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in the Shari'ah. (e) A defendant is innocent until his guilt is proven in a fast trial in which he shall be given all the guarantees of defence. ARTICLE 20: It is not permitted without legitimate reason to arrest an individual, or restrict his freedom, to exile or to punish him. It is not permitted to subject him to physical or psychological torture or to any form of maltreatment, cruelty or indignity. Nor is it permitted to subject an individual to medical or scientific experiments without his consent or at the risk of his health or of his life. Nor is it permitted to promulgate emergency laws that would provide executive authority for such actions. ARTICLE 21: Taking hostages under any form or for any purpose is expressly forbidden. ARTICLE 22: (a) Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari'ah. 1.. Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari'ah. (c) Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical Values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith. (d) It is not permitted to excite nationalistic or doctrinal hatred or to do anything that may be an incitement to any form or racial discrimination. ARTICLE 23: (a) Authority is a trust; and abuse or malicious exploitation thereof is explicitly prohibited, in order to guarantee fundamental human rights. (b) Everyone shall have the right to participate, directly or indirectly in the administration of his country's public affairs. He shall also have the right to assume public office in accordance with the provisions of Shari'ah. ARTICLE 24: All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari'ah. ARTICLE 25: The Islamic Shari'ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration. 3>THE LEFT AND A WOMAN'S SEVERED HEAD Phyllis Chesler, former wife of a Muslim, Professor of Women's Studies, considers the beheading in Buffalo on February 12, 2009. Was this an effect of Sharia Law? How does this beheading relate to violence against women generally. What are the differences? Phyllis Chesler FrontPageMagazine.com 2/25/2009 Within hours of the news of Aasiya Z. Hassan's February 12th beheading, allegedly by her husband, Muzzamil Hassan, in Buffalo, American-Muslim organizations and individuals began a dirge bemoaning the existence of domestic violence. But thanks be to Allah, they affirmed, such violence exists among all faiths and ethnicities. Such family violence, they insisted, had nothing to do with Islam. Muslim leaders emphasized that honor killings were "anti-Islamic" or "un-Islamic," a holdover from "pre-Islamic times." They vowed to preach against it in the mosque. All well and good. That Mr. Hassan beheaded his wife — well, that simply wasn't dwelled upon. Muslim religious feminist, Asra Nomani, and Irshad Manjie, both referred to the Buffalo beheading as an "honor killing" and despaired of the silence which still surrounded this form of domestic violence against Muslim girls and women. As Muslim women, they were not as squeamish about condemning violence against Muslim women by Muslim men and by Islamic culture. Zarqa Abid, a soulful-sounding religious Muslim woman claimed that her cousin was once married to this same Hassan, and she denounced Hassan as a "monster." Abid also criticized the Islamic community for having refused to listen to her when she attempted to alert them to Hassan's criminal nature and deeds. Instead, they shunned her and continued to shower him with their money and to honor him. Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, a Muslim author and activist, said that "there is so much negativity about Muslims (this beheading) sort of perpetuates it. The right wing is going to run with it and misuse it. But we've got to shine a light on this issue so that we can transform it." Imam Mohamed Hagmagid Ali, of Sterling, Virginia, vice-president of the Islamic Society of North America, said that "violence against women is real and cannot be ignored." Nevertheless, Muslim organizations are relatively silent about this atrocity, given how vocal they usually are when Islam or Muslims are involved. A Google search of CAIR and beheadings only revealed that CAIR had given the alleged murderer an award." Alright, some Muslims are calling it an honor killing, most are insisting that it is not an honor killing and that it has nothing to do with Islam; some Muslims are admitting that, like other groups, Muslims also have a serious problem with violence against women. Progress, of sorts. What did American feminists have to say? Well, I'm certainly one , and I have been on record a long, long time opposing Islamic gender and religious apartheid, both in Muslim lands and in the West. I write about this subject weekly, often daily. Nonie Darwish, a Muslim-born Palestinian-American feminist, has condemned Sharia law as dangerous to women and other living beings. Now, for the first time, an American non-Muslim feminist has joined us. On February 13, 2009, Marcia Pappas, the President of NOW-New York State, hit the ground running. She was quoted world-wide, even as far away as India. Pappas bravely asserted that the Buffalo beheading was a domestic violence murder that smacked of terrorism and jihad. The February 16, 2009 NOW-New York State press release quoted her as saying: And why is this horrendous story not all over the news? Is a Muslim woman's life not worth a five-minute report? This was, apparently, a terroristic version of "honor killing," a murder rooted in cultural notions about women's subordination to men. Are we now so respectful of the Muslim's religion that we soft-peddle atrocities committed in its name?...What is this deafening silence? And exactly what do orders of protection do? Was Aasiya desperately waving the order of protection in Muzzamil's face when he slashed at her throat? Was it still clutched in her hand when her head hit the floor? You of the press, please shine a light on this most dreadful of murders. In a bizarre twist of fate it comes out that Muzzamil Hassan is founder of a television network called Bridges TV, whose purpose it was to portray Muslims in a positive light. This is a huge story. Please tell it! Alas, other than Pappas, and the feminists who supported her privately, most feminist leaders either attacked Pappas or remained silent. News of the beheading became public the evening of February 12, 2009. Eight days later, on February 20, 2009, more than a week after NOW-NY State President Pappas began talking to the media, and four days after Pappas released a press release, President of the National Organization for Women, Kim Gandy, finally published a column in which she stated that the beating of pop music star Rihanna is every bit as bad as the beheading of Aasiya Z. Hassan. Or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Gandy joins many of the Muslim groups in failing to differentiate the difference between a terrible, humiliating beating, (Rihanna), and being stabbed many times and then beheaded while you are, quite possibly, still alive, perhaps even conscious. Yes, I agree, and I share Gandy's concern: Domestic violence against women is an epidemic. Although we have laws against it, police officers and judges ready to arrest and prosecute, as well as (too few) shelters available for those intended victims who manage to escape — still, we have not managed to abolish the scourge of domestic violence. Gandy is, understandably, frustrated. Many women, (the statistics vary), are killed by their intimate partners. Amy Siskind, at The Daily Beast, tells us that "Sadly, this type of tragedy is hardly unusual in our country, where each and every day three or more women are murdered by their husband or boyfriend. In fact, statistics tell us that in the ten days since Aasiya died, 30 or more women in America have been murdered by their husband or boyfriend. The attention on this case comes as a result of the gruesome way in which Aasiya was murdered — torture and then decapitation — and what a beheading symbolically means." Yes, I agree. However, Gandy and her supporters still refuse to consider that Muslim women and immigrant women in general probably face much greater danger, both in terms of being beaten and being killed than do non-Muslim women; that Muslim women in Muslim countries are prey, targets, human sacrifices, every single day; and that if we do not stop the forces of jihad that are headed our way that many more women will be beaten, veiled,and killed both at home and on the street. Feminist women. Educated women. Christian and Jewish women. Yes, even me and Kim Gandy. Gandy rejects focusing on Aasiya Z. Hassan's beheading because it might play into the hands of conservative "racists;" it might lead to "profiling." Wait a minute. NOW has conducted a serious campaign against religion, mainly against Christianity and Judaism. Why the sudden respect for Islam, a religion which is, in reality, not a religion at all but is rather, a totalitarian political ideology which has undergone no evolution for 1400 years and which is dangerous to women and other living beings? Gandy fears that we might only focus on Aasiya's beheading or even on Rihanna's beating as entertainment, escape, lured by such sensational or celebrity cases. It's possible, but, perhaps it is equally possible to learn from such cases precisely because they've grabbed our restless attention spans. Let me repeat: Apples are not oranges. Domestic violence is not femicide. Let's be careful not to mix the two up. And, western-style domestic violence/femicide does not often end with an Islamic-style beheading. I am saying that we must make these distinctions, not be blinded by political correctness. For those American feminists and Muslim-Americans who still insist that beheadings and domestic violence/femicide against Muslim girls and women has absolutely, definitely, positively, nothing to do with Islam or Muslims: I dunno. Ask Nonie Darwish, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Robert Spencer, Geert Wilders, read Nonie's recent book Cruel and Usual Punishment, about the nature of Sharia law and Muslim women. My God, talk to Muslim feminist dissident-activists like UK-based Maryam Namazie, or the group "Muslims against Sharia Law" which I have now joined. Kim Gandy: Please, I implore you, read what I've written about Islamic gender apartheid and its penetration of the West in The Death of Feminism. Read what I've written about this Buffalo case, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. Yes, domestic violence exists everywhere, both in America and on every other continent. But it is not normalized nor is it glorified everywhere. In the West, it is now criminalized and increasingly prosecuted, with imperfect but increasing success. In Pakistan, where Mr. Hassan comes from, it rarely is. In Pakistan, girls and women are still decapitated by the Arabized Taliban, buried alive, routinely beaten in childhood and in marriage, (yes, and while they are pregnant); women are gang-raped — and when they legally protest, threatened with death. Women who want a divorce are shot, even in their feminist lawyer's offices. Muzzamil "Mo" Hassan's heart and mind remains in the East, in Pakistan. His body remains in custody in Buffalo, charged with second degree murder. Until or unless "torture" can be proved, he is eligible to be tried only for second-degree murder. In my article, "A "Cultural" Offense/Defense — But For the Prosecution. Some Thoughts for the Prosecutor of the Buffalo Beheading," at Pajamas Media, I have suggested that the prosecutor consider that Mo Hassan was completely in control. Hassan selected the weapon or weapons. He planned this beheading. He was not out of control when he stabbed and beheaded his wife. He was controlling the situation in a Pakistani male Muslim kind of way: By decapitating the woman, who had once been his wife, who had turned uppity enough to dare to eject him from his own home and who planned to keep his children. Hassan may have been living in America for more than thirty years but he still remains a Pakistani Muslim male through and through. Beating a wife is the "normal" way to relate to her. Killing her for being disobedient, in his mind, was what she deserved. 4> UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (10 December 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris). The Guinness Book of Records describes the UDHR as the "Most Translated Document"[1] in the world. The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled. It consists of 30 articles which have been elaborated in subsequent international treaties, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions and laws. The International Bill of Human Rights consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its two Optional Protocols. In 1966 the General Assembly adopted the two detailed Covenants, which complete the International Bill of Human Rights; and in 1976, after the Covenants had been ratified by a sufficient number of individual nations, the Bill took on the force of international law.[2] It is important to read The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in conjunction with Cairo Declaration Of Human Rights In Islam. We live in one world, aggressively being divided in two. Wikipedia References below are to found in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights Prelude The ideas and values of human rights can be traced through history and in religious beliefs and cultures around the world. European philosophers of the enlightenment period developed theories of natural law that influenced the adoption of documents such as the Bill of Rights of England, the Bill of Rights in the United States, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in France. During the World War II, the Allies adopted the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from fear and freedom from want, as their basic war aims. The United Nations Charter "reaffirmed faith in fundamental human rights, and dignity and worth of the human person" and committed all member states to promote "universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion".[3] When the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany became apparent after the World War II, the consensus within the world community was that the United Nations Charter did not sufficiently define the rights it referenced.[4][5] A universal declaration that specified the rights of individuals was necessary to give effect to the Charter's provisions on human rights.[6] Such a declaration was proposed by Cuban diplomats Guy Pérez Cisneros and Ernesto Dihigo. The following reproduces the articles of the Declaration which set out the specific human rights that are recognized in the Declaration. Article 1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Article 2 Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty. Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. Article 4 No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. Article 5 No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Article 6 Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. Article 7 All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. Article 8 Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law. Article 9 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. Article 10 Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him. Article 11 1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. 2. No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed. Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. Article 13 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. 2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including their own, and to return to their country. Article 14 1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. 2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. Article 15 1. Everyone has the right to a nationality. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality. Article 16 1. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. 2. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. 3. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. Article 17 1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property. Article 18 Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. Article 19 Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Article 20 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. 2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association. Article 21 1. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of their country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. 2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in their country. 3. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures. Article 22 Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality. Article 23 1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. 2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. 3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. 4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests. Article 24 Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay. Article 25 1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. 2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection. Article 26 1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. 2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. 3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. Article 27 1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. 2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author. Article 28 Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized. Article 29 1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. 2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. 3. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. Article 30 Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein. Janet Lehr is editor/publisher of a daily e-mail called "Israel Lives." She can be contacted at janetlehr@israellives.org To Go To Top

AMERICA IS NOT SAFE FROM JIHAD Posted by Saul Goldman, February 28, 2009.

This was written by Nidra Poller and is entitled "Europe's Woes America's Warning." and it appeared on the IsraPundit website: http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=10221#more-10221 Nidra Poller is an American who moved to France in 1972 and is a journalist, novelist, and translator.

It is difficult to imagine how European nations could find the will and the ways to counter the subversive forces they have invited upon themselves and allowed to flourish for more than three decades. The current phase of global jihad, already underway in the much vaunted decolonization process, coalesced with the seizure of power in Iran by Ayatollah Khomenei (who had been living as a pampered refugee in France). But the American reader should be wary of concluding that Europe is lost...and the United States is standing firm. On the contrary, all of Western civilization is under fire. As promised during the campaign, Barack Hussein Obama is making a radical change in American policy. Not of course the glorious change his worshippers promised themselves, but a troubling shift toward dhimmitude. The newly elected president lost no time in pleading guilty as charged by Muslim authorities and promising to refrain from further rebellion in order to receive their benevolent indulgence. Similar methods produce similar results. Jihad forces in Europe — and in the United States — used Israel's Cast Lead operation in Gaza as a pretext to organize virulent, violent pro-Hamas demonstrations. Because Europe is further down the path to surrender, the enraged pro-Hamas mobs were more violent, destructive, and physically threatening here than in the United States. But in both cases they advanced their dominion. This should be recognized as authentic conquest of territory by enraged mobs bearing down on hapless victims in an ominous show of force and not, as claimed and widely accepted, citizen demonstrators exercising their right to free speech. If you can carry signs equating the Magen David with the swastika, if you can scream "Jews to the ovens" in the face of Zionists in Ft. Lauderdale Florida, if you can storm into a synagogue in Caracas, Venezuela and terrorize the congregation, if you can bully the police in England, smash up the Place de l'Opéra in Paris, burn Israeli and American flags, shout Allahu Akbar without meeting resolute opposition, it means you can keep going and ultimately fulfill those murderous promises. Do American Jews understand what was acquired by these phony demonstrations that are really paramilitary operations? Wherever those enraged mobs set foot they transformed the streets into de facto waqf territory. Each successive crisis is an opportunity to ratchet up Jew hatred and the concomitant assault on Western civilization, achieving, step by step, tacit acceptance of the unspeakable. Here is how it works: first, the provocation. Jihadist attacks — thousands of rockets launched against Israel, a few airplanes flown into the WTC, capture and beheading of hostages, roadside bombs, inhuman pizzeria bombers, nuclear weapons programs — finally provoke a riposte. Bingo! The Muslim wailing machine goes into action. It is immediately picked up by complicit Western media and transmitted, with a Good Journalism stamp of approval, to public opinion. Israel, the United States and anyone else who dares to fight back is accused of war crimes, peace crimes, and original sin. This justifies subsequent acts of subversion and aggression against the free world. When the United States used its formidable military force and assumed its international responsibilities, European nations, with rare exceptions, exploited opposition to "the war in Iraq" to undermine the American superpower. This agitation was exploited in turn by jihad interests to advance the Islamization of Europe...and by ricochet to influence domestic politics in the United States as Obamamania surfed on the theme of repairing America's battered image. The European Union, with France in the lead, vaunting its diplomatic savoir faire, competes with the U.S. for influence in the Middle East, and always seems to pull in the Arab direction. French ceasefire diplomacy restrained Israel's capacity to defeat Iranian proxies — Hizbullah in 2006, Hamas today. The harsh criticism of Israel and the U.S. that underlies this self-righteous peacemaking fuels domestic pro-jihad protest marches that end in attacks against police and property, further undermining government authority in Europe and endangering local Jewish populations. All of this subversive activity is advanced by what I call "lethal narratives." These are stories of what is happening generated by global jihad and relayed by Western media and officialdom. Unlike propaganda, which is used in conjunction with military activity aimed at defeating an enemy in battle, lethal narratives are used in lieu of military action. Promotion of enemy propaganda in past conflicts was limited to a small minority of traitors and fellow travelers; today, lethal narratives are swallowed by all but a minority of résistants, who are marginalized, labeled extremists, persecuted and prosecuted. Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers who stormed through European cities screaming "death to Israel, death to the Jews" go scot free but Dutch politician Geert Wilders is prosecuted for "hate speech" for showing the connection between these same declarations, from Qur'anic verses to contemporary sermons, and murderous acts such as 9/11. The lethal narrative, a tissue of lies made credible by a superficial journalistic veneer, becomes the accepted version of what is happening. G.W. Bush lied about Saddam's WMDs, the neocons wanted a war in Iraq, torture at Guantanamo, hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, an unbeatable insurgency, the war spawned a thousand terrorists for every one that was killed, etc. Another tissue of lies was issued during the Cast Lead operation: the homemade rockets were harmless; Gaza is an open prison; the Gaza population suffered a humanitarian crisis, no food, water, electricity, medicine; Israel engaged in intentional massacre of civilians, bombing mosques, UN schools, babes in arms and, the last straw, deliberately killed the daughters of the good-hearted doctor who practices in both Gaza and Tel Aviv. In less than a decade life has become problematic for European Jews. It started with the al Dura blood libel on September 30, 2000 and has steadily worsened since. During periods of relative calm, we tell ourselves that the nightmare is over. When the tension exacerbates, as happened during the Gaza operation, it becomes obvious that we have no future anywhere in Europe — and Europe has no future anyway! France, with the largest Muslim and Jewish populations and the greatest diplomatic ambition, is emblematic of the Western European condition. The Sarkozy government is sincerely troubled by the upsurge of anti-Semitism — approximately 150 incidents reported since the start of Cast Lead. The president promises to put an end to this unacceptable behavior but declares, in the next breath, that "Islamophobia" will be punished as severely as anti-Semitism, falsely implying that Jews are attacking Muslims, and effectively blocking an honest investigation of the Islamic sources of Jew hatred On another level, the "Obama effect" works against Jews in France and more generally in Europe. Thrilled by the multicultural chic of a black president in the powerful U.S., Europeans vow to give more than equal opportunity to their own "visible minorities" in the hopes of getting themselves a YesWeCan president in the near future. Unfortunately, the integration of law-abiding Muslims into European society also serves as cover for infiltration by subversive Muslims. Political enfranchisement of European Muslims in the absence of genuine acceptance of Western values is another destabilizing factor. Instead of promoting a peaceful climate of mutual respect, the rise of Muslims into executive positions in public and private sectors may lead to ethnic favoritism that will be prejudicial to Jewish colleagues and candidates, rebuffed to get even for an alleged previous supremacy or punished whenever there is a flare-up in the Middle East. Serious problems in public education, up to the university level, further compromise the future of Europe and more precisely of European Jews. The far left, unashamedly aligned with European jihad movements, proudly marched with pro-Hamas mobs that systematically ended their "demonstrations" with attacks against property and the police. Fearful of losing ground, the parliamentary left also sidles toward this constituency, hiding its perfidy behind dubious humanitarian concerns. CID [Centre d'information et de documentation de démocratie et de Moyen Orient] reports from Brussels that all political parties except the droite libérale marched along with the keffieh-wrapped mobs that shouted "death to Israel, death to the Jews." Another aggravating factor is the economic crisis, exploited by the left to mobilize and channel discontent into increasingly aggressive demonstrations, strikes and civil disobedience, while the right, hungry for capital, welcomes sharia finance with open arms. In 2003, when Jewish boys from Hashomer Hazair were beaten up by anti-war protestors, I described the incident as a "peace march verging on pogrom." Alain Finkielkraut applied the term to the 2005 banlieue riots, then withdrew it as inappropriate. Was it an exaggeration? Or foresight? There can be no doubt that the enraged mobs storming through European and American cities will go further. No longer content to throw fire bombs or ram burning cars into synagogues, they now want to break in during services. Thirty men traveled from Mulhouse to Strasbourg for that purpose. Their plan failed...that time. Carjackers in a Parisian suburb, discovering their victim was Jewish, slashed his neck four times with exquisite cruelty until the blood flowed. That crime was denounced as anti-Semitic but the culprits have not been found, and other incidents are left hanging with question marks, as if to calm the populace. A Jewish doctor was shot dead in another Parisian suburb, the warehouse of the biggest kosher food distributor in still another was burned down. Europeans who do cherish their freedom try to organize, speak out, influence their governments. They see — or saw — America as a refuge, a haven, a beacon of liberty. Many see Israel as a sterling example of résistance against global jihad. Though life looks quite normal on the surface, we are living in a perilous, highly volatile situation in which, precisely, normal life is a battlefield. As these lines are written, Iran announces the launch of a satellite that could leave southern European cities no less vulnerable than Sderot. The news landed like a monster walking into a bustling café. The excited chatter about peace talks and negotiation and friendly outreached hands falls silent. If existential fear has finally stricken the heart of European governments, all is not lost. Contact Saul Goldman at gold710@bellsouth.net To Go To Top

WHY ARE WE BANKRUPT? T'AINT THE WAR. IT'S THE ILLEGALS Posted by Marc Samberg, February 28, 2009.

This is astounding and infuriating. Why isn't this in the papers? Please read and pass it on. WHY ARE WE BANKRUPT? Informative and mind boggling!

You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much? Read this: Boy, was I confused. I have been hammered with the propaganda that it is the Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us. I now find that to be RIDICULOUS. I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the readers gets sick of reading them. I also have included the URL's for verification of all of the following facts. 1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments. Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77 2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens. Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html 3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens. Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html 4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally, and they cannot speak a word of English! Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html 5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html 6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/%20TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html 7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens. Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html 8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by the American taxpayers. Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html 9. $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens. Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html 10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US. Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html 11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S. From the Southern border. Verify at: http://tinyurl.Com/t9sht 12. The National Policy Institute, estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.' Verify at: http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf 13. In 2006, illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances to their countries of origin. Verify at: http://WWW.rense.com/general75/niht.htm 14. 'The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly one million sex crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States.' Verify at: http://www.drdsk.com/articles.html The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR; AND IF YOU'RE HAVING TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING THIS AMOUNT OF MONEY, IT IS $338,300,000,000.00 WHICH WOULD BE ENOUGH TO STIMULATE THE ECONOMY FOR THE CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY......... Are we that stupid? YES, FOR LETTING THOSE IN THE U.S. CONGRESS GET AWAY WITH LETTING THIS HAPPEN YEAR AFTER YEAR!!!!! If this doesn't bother you then just delete the message. If, on the other hand, it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, I hope you forward it to every legal resident in the country including every elected representative in Washington , D.C. - five times a week for as long as it takes to restore some semblance of intelligence in our government policies and enforcements.... Contact Marc Samberg at mechelsamberg@gmail.com To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: MOTIVATION? Posted by Arlene Kushner, February 28, 2009.

Motzei Shabbat (After Shabbat) Today's good news today is that the Obama administration has decided not to participate in the Durban Conference because of its anti-Israel, anti-Semitic tone. The news came via a conference call between White House aides and leaders of the Jewish community. This must be celebrated. It would be unreasonable to say otherwise. But celebrated with a proviso. ~~~~~~~~~~ The conduct of the Obama administration — most specifically with regard to decisions that impact Israel made by Obama himself — has been exceedingly troublesome in several regards. And, in trying to understand what is going on, I have found myself fluctuating between various interpretations of what Obama's motivations are. Is he, as I originally concluded, simply enormously naive? Is he willing to sell out Israel in order to court the Arab/Muslim world? Or, as I have come to think more recently, is he inherently and deeply anti-Israel?. It is very difficult to swallow Obama's original reason for sending a delegation to participate in the planning sessions in Geneva for the Durban 2 conference: To try to improve the tone of the planning document. The evidence from knowledgeable persons close to the happenings at those planning sessions made it clear that the US could not have had an effect on the proceedings. The American delegation went to sit on a committee with the likes of Libya, Iran, Pakistan and Cuba; it was outnumbered seriously by Arab/Muslim and Third World nations that have an anti-Israel agenda. What is more, the Durban 2 conference is being held "to foster the implementation of the [original] Durban Declaration and Program of Action." This means the focus of the upcoming conference was set in stone and not amenable to a shift in tone. That original declaration was viciously anti-Israel. Could Obama really have believed that the group he sent to participate in Geneva had any chance of changing matters? To further muddy the waters, we have the evidence of Anne Bayesfsky's report, that the US delegation sat quietly during anti-Israel proceedings. This cast serious doubt upon the claim that the delegation was there to try to improve the situation. ~~~~~~~~~~ I tend to believe, along with others, that it is the fact that this whole Durban situation was being so closely watched and received so much publicity that ultimately made the difference. This is a lesson here, for Obama, and for all of us. The diligence I last wrote about is as necessary as ever. For the Durban incident has to be considered in a broader context, which includes Obama appointments such as Chas Freeman, who actually blamed 9/11 on Israel, and Samantha Power, who came out at one point in favor of a major international force to protect the Palestinians from Israel. ~~~~~~~~~~ Even if Obama's motivation was truly sincere, and he did send the delegation to try to change the tenor of the proceedings, I don't think what he did was OK. I don't have a "you have to give him credit for trying — no harm done" attitude. Quite the contrary. I think innocent misjudgments can have serious consequences. In particular do I think of Iran, with whom Obama would like to "dialogue;" the problem is that the Iranians will take advantage of this as a stalling tactic. A US president who doesn't perceive this is a danger to the Western world. ~~~~~~~~~~ I think it is highly appropriate to tell President Obama how pleased we are with this decision. We have to take in from there and continue to monitor. There will be more to say on this and related issues... Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

PALESTINIANS COMING TO AMERICA AND YOU ARE PAYING FOR IT! Posted by Arny Barnie, February 28, 2009.

On January 27, 2009 — United States president Barack Obama signed an executive order [presidential determination] that effective immediately, Palestinian refugees would be allowed to come to the United States. An Obama fund is set aside to the tune of $20.3 million for 'humanitarian needs of Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.' It was first posted to the Federal Register February 9, 2009 (http://www.thefederalregister.com/d.p/2009-02-04-E9-2488) Federal Register: February 4, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 22) DOCID: fr04fe09-106 FR Doc E9-2488 Presidential Documents U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement NOTICE: Part II DOCID: fr04fe09-106 DOCUMENT SUMMARY: [[Page 6115]] Presidential Determination No. 2009-15 of January 27, 2009 Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related To Gaza Memorandum for the Secretary of State By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2(c)(1) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 (the "Act"), as amended (22 U.S.C. 2601), I hereby determine, pursuant to section 2(c)(1) of the Act, that it is important to the national interest to furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to exceed $20.3 million from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for the purpose of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration needs, including by contributions to international, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations and payment of administrative expenses of Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration of the Department of State, related to humanitarian needs of Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza. You are authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register. (Presidential Sig.) THE WHITE HOUSE, Washington, January 27, 2009 [FR Doc. E9-2488 Filed 2-3-09; 8:45 am] Billing code 4710-10-P [NOW is the time that we must pray as never before] Pray that none of these new Palestinian 'refugees" will become terrorists among U.S. In other incredible news the Obama administration is set to pledge $900 million of your hard earned money to rebuild Gaza for the Palestinians after the Hamas terrorists in Gaza caused the destruction of their own neighborhoods by firing missiles into northern Israel. Querry why the U.S. should help rebuild this hotbed of terror when the terrorist leaders and the people of Gaza cheered and celebrated on 9/11/2001 when the Twin Towers were destroyed by Al Qaeda? Let the Palestinians go begging elsewhere.They will only use our money to re build their tunnels to smuggle in more weapons to destroy Israel and to attack U.S. Their leaders will skim as much as they can for themselves off the top and the ignorant masses of Palestinians will be left holding the (empty) bag one more time! The $900 million would be better spent if we gave it to Israel to help protect itself and U.S. from the Palestinians who are threatening peace and safety in the region. To Go To Top

STOP THE AFGHAN DRUG TRADE, STOP TERRORISM Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, February 28, 2009.

This was written by Rachel Ehrenfeld and it appeared in Forbes www.forbes.com/2009/02/26/drug-trade-afghanistan-opinions -contributors_terrorism_mycoherbicides.html Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is director of the American Center for Democracy and author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It.

"The fight against drugs is actually the fight for Afghanistan," said Afghan President Hamid Karzai when he took office in 2002. Judging by the current situation, Afghanistan is losing. To win, the link between narcotics and terrorism must be severed. That is the necessary condition for a successful strategy to undermine the growing influence of al-Qaida, the Taliban and radical Muslim groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is all about money — more precisely, drug money. The huge revenues from the heroin trade fill the coffers of the terrorists and thwart any attempt to stabilize the region. Though not traded on any stock exchange, heroin is one of the most valuable commodities in the world today. While a ton of crude oil costs less than $290, a ton of heroin costs $67 million in Europe and between $360 million and $900 million in New York, according to estimates based on recent Drug Enforcement Administration figures. Since its liberation from Taliban rule, Afghanistan's opium production has gone from 640 tons in 2001 to 8,200 tons in 2007. Afghanistan now supplies over 93% of the global opiate market. "This is a source of income for the warlords and regional factions to pay their soldiers," warned former Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalili in a May 2005 interview with Reuters. "The terrorists are funding their operations through illicit drug trade, so they are all interlinked." In 2004, the G-8 designated Britain to lead counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan. Its three-year eradication policy was designed specifically not to alienate the local population. It dictated the crop eradication be done "by hand." Moreover, the British entrusted the provincial governors with the eradication process, even though Afghan provincial governors, many of whom are powerful warlords, have been engaged in the drug trade for decades. Not surprisingly, the eradication effort failed miserably. The exponential growth in narcoterrorism in Afghanistan led to a well-entrenched narco-economy, strengthening the power of tribal warlords, the Taliban and al-Qaida. The growing violence led NATO leaders, who met in Budapest in October 2008, to agree to allow their military forces to strike the drug traffickers. However, NATO troops were not ordered to attack; in fact, NATO's European allies are "averse" to drug eradication programs for fear of alienating the local population and because of the risks associated with such operations. Though Afghan opium production shrank a little to 7,200 tons in 2008, it still accounts for 97% of the country's per-capita annual GDP, or $303 of $310. Yet Afghan heroin is worth $3.6 billion to $6.4 billion on the streets of most Western nations. According to the latest report of the International Narcotics Control Board, the Taliban's income for 2007 from morphine base and heroin production is estimated between $259 million and $518 million, up from just $28 million in 2005. This provides more than enough to fund the most sophisticated weapons, training camps, operational and even public relations funds, and plenty of bribes to local tribes' chieftains and politicians. While no one expects Afghanistan to become a peaceful, self-sustaining democracy overnight, there is a better solution for stabilizing the country than adding 17,000 American soldiers to the 38,000 already there. Without an effective strategy to turn the situation around, the surge is likely to result in the unnecessary loss of human lives and billions of dollars, while failing to remove the major reason for the instability in the region — the heroin trade. There is, however, a strategy that could reduce the cost of fighting terrorists and drug traffickers alike, while helping to establish a self-sustaining economy in Afghanistan and defusing the tensions in the region. It would also cut down on the social and economic cost of heroin use in the U.S. The Obama Administration should implement an innovative and safe poppy eradication method that previous U.S. governments spent billions of dollars developing. Mycoherbicides are naturally occurring fungi that are used to control such illicit pest plants as the opium poppy and other noxious weeds. Unlike chemical controls now in use, mycoherbicides assail only the targeted plant, rendering its cultivation uneconomical. These fungi continue to live in the soil, preventing the future growth of the opium poppy plant, but are harmless to other crops, to humans and to the environment. On Dec. 29, 2006, then-President George W. Bush signed Public Law 109/469, of which section 1111 requires the Department of State to fund a concluding study of the effectiveness of mycoherbicides on the opium poppy and the coca shrub. Yet the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy failed to conduct the one-year study, apparently because it prefers to use pesticides for eradication. Concluding these studies should become a priority for the Obama administration. The use of mycoherbicides in Afghanistan, combined with adequate enforcement by the military, will mitigate the production of heroin and cut off the terrorists' major money supply. This would free up the $150 to $200 billion now used to fight the drug trade and its byproducts — crime, addiction, diseases, accidents, etc. — in the U.S., and make these funds available to help fight terrorism directly. Implementing this new strategy, while subsidizing the Afghan economy until other crops and industries can replace the illegal heroin trade, which leaves most Afghans poor, seems a better way for America to succeed in fighting terrorism and endemic corruption. It would also free up resources for an array of social and governmental reforms, which should be clearly defined and strictly supervised. With no heroin to fund terrorism and subvert the economies and political systems of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the American agenda could take a huge leap forward. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

JEWISH POLITICOS AND THE NEED FOR REEDUCATION AND REDIRECTION Posted by Ted Belman, February 28, 2009.

This was written by Matthew M. Hausman and it appeared today in IsraPundit.

Recent news reports suggest that the Obama administration intends to solicit the help of American Jewish leaders to sell its prescription for Middle East peace to their constituents. The strategy is to shore up Jewish support in order to lend credibility to President Obama's foreign policy, regardless of how ill-advised or detrimental for Israel. That this White House is seen in the Arab world as either weak or willing to undercut Israeli sovereignty and security is of no moment. Most of the putative leaders who will be courted are already slaves to a political confederation known as much for what it rejects as what it promotes and leaves little room for original thought or dissent. Moreover, they are committed to political consorts who expect Israel to bow, bend and break to accommodate enemies who deny her history and are committed to maintaining the state of conflict. Unfortunately, these figureheads tend to ignore left-wing or liberal antipathy for Israel in the mistaken belief that antisemitism is the exclusive province of the political right. Antisemitism has indeed been a political force in right-wing politics, particularly when associated with reactionary governments and churches, radical groups and demagogues, but it historically has been no less potent in leftist or liberal circles. As the ghetto walls came down in 19th Century Europe, many Jews flocked to the nascent liberal movements in the belief that anything opposing the forces that had oppressed them was good. Yet, they were so enamored of their apparent enfranchisement, and so eager to assimilate into a new European society, they could not fathom that the movements that seemingly afforded these opportunities were no more tolerant of Jews and Judaism than the old regimes had been. And this false affinity carried over to New World shores where it persists to this day. Many American Jews truly believe that antisemitism does not exist in leftist circles because of the idealized history they associate with the birth and growth of European liberalism. But this history has been sanitized of its sordid reality and of the Faustian bargain required of Jews seeking membership. Most Jewish liberals are unaware that some of their most cherished philosophical icons were as virulently antisemitic as the systems of government they were rejecting. Voltaire, for example, was well-known for his hatred of Jews as were Diderot, Holbach and the later fathers of European socialism. Georg Ritter von Schonerer led the vocal left-wing antisemitic movement in Austria, while Wilhelm Marr, a German socialist, actually coined the term "antisemitism" in two pamphlets published in 1873 and 1880, in which he promoted hatred of Jews on political, economic and racial grounds. Perhaps most famous was the hatred and self-loathing of Karl Marx who, with Friedrich Engels, wrote the Communist Manifesto. Most left-leaning Jews are unfamiliar with early socialist history and are unaware that Marx and Engels learned the theory of dialectical materialism and Hegelian philosophy from Moses Hess, a traditionally educated Jew who had become radicalized in his youth. Hess was considered one of the early pillars of European socialist thought and was highly regarded as such until Marx and Engels determined that all nationality was evil and that the Jews represented the most pernicious of all national spirits. It was then that Hess realized that the Jews' salvation lay not with socialism but rather with Jewish nationalism and self-determination. His epiphany prompted him to write "Rome and Jerusalem," which presaged Herzl's "Der Judenstaat" by more than a quarter century. Unfortunately, Hess's national stirrings did not similarly move his political brethren, and the sad reality was that Jews could be accepted into leftist society only if they were willing to cease identifying religiously, nationally and intellectually as Jews. The requisite disaffiliation was often expressed by outright rejection of traditional values. And this rejection was a common thread binding Jews who rose to prominence on the left, whether those of the old Komintern who bowed without question to Soviet authority, or the radical leftists of our day, epitomized by the likes of George Soros, Noam Chomsky, and Norman Finkelstein, who disingenuously advocate for enemies of Israel and the Jewish people. These modern demagogues engage in pathological conduct rivaling the calumny of those medieval Jews who joined the Dominicans and instigated the burning of the Talmud and other holy writ. Now clearly, not all liberals today are ardent, self-rejecting leftists, and in fact most consider themselves part of the non-extremist mainstream. And for the most part that's probably a fair assessment. Where they go wrong, however, is in their failure to view their political bedfellows critically and hold them accountable for moral inconsistency or to condemn behavior that is clearly antisemitic. If liberal criticism is leveled at Israel for her response to terrorist aggression but not at those who foment the aggression that sparks the response, if the United Nations condemns Israel's right to defend herself, or if Human Rights Watch falsely accuses Israel perpetrating "massacres" that never occurred and then refuses to retract, these Jews become complicit by their silence. In extreme ideological circles, such silence implies agreement with the accusations no matter how absurd. Where left-leaning Jews also go wrong is in their willingness to abandon the religious, cultural and philosophical precepts that kept the Jewish people intact during two millennia of exile, and to replace them with secular ideals that are not necessarily or automatically compatible with the Jewish historical experience. Those who knowingly reject their values are only slightly worse than those who are completely ignorant of their heritage and who, because of their ignorance, cannot honestly distinguish transient political concerns from authentic Jewish priorities. The knowing rejectionists are like the wicked child spoken of at the Seder table who rebels despite his knowledge, while the benignly ignorant are like the child who does not know how to ask and risks moral darkness and spiritual decline. The risk in being the child who does not know how to ask is that it renders one susceptible to the blandishments of those who misrepresent history for the sake of political agenda. Those lacking in Jewish self-awareness can be manipulated into believing that support for Israel is not an absolute and is antithetical to humanist values. Supporting Israel, however, should not be a conservative versus liberal issue. Rather, objective knowledge of world history should a priori engender support for Israel despite political affiliation. The late Ronald Reagan is a case in point. During his first administration, his relationship with Israel had a rocky start under the guiding influence of James Baker, George Schultz and Caspar Weinberger, none of whom were friends of Israel and all of whom had ties to the Arab world. Shortly after Israel's annexation of Golan in 1981, the administration secretly negotiated with the Arab countries a "peace plan" calling for a ceding of the Heights and a retreat to indefensible borders. Israel was not informed of these talks, but was presented with the "final plan" as a fait accompli, which Israel nonetheless rejected. That same year, the administration also condemned Israel's bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor and weapons plant. Menachem Begin rose to these challenges, publicly rebuking the administration through its ambassador and endeavoring to educate President Reagan regarding Jewish and Israeli history and Middle East politics. Although they would not always agree, President Reagan thereafter became for the most part a trusted friend. The point is that the Republican administration in the 1980s was neither inherently supportive nor opposed to Israel based on philosophy or doctrine. The relationship between the two countries eased only after the president's education about the realities of the Middle East and Israel's historic rights. If President Obama now wishes to call upon his Jewish political allies to promote his Middle East policy in order to lend it credence, it is up to the constituents of those allies to say "enough" and to reject their stewardship. Their support for a toxic foreign policy that first spawned Oslo and now presumes an unworkable two-state solution must be met with vocal resistance, grounded in history and informed by the knowledge that left-wing antipathy and liberal discomfort for Israel is often tinged with antisemitism. Although Menachem Begin is no longer with us, we need to channel his resolve and character in the hope that the current administration can be similarly educated. The effort may not succeed, but silence will be taken as acquiescence. Ted Belman is a Canadian lawyer and editor of the IsraPundit.com website, an activist pro-Israel website. Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com To Go To Top

OBAMA'S DIPLOMACY ENDANGERS ISRAEL Posted by Steven Shamrak, February 27, 2009.

President Obama's policy of direct diplomacy with Iran may buy Tehran enough time to produce nuclear weapons, Shabtai Shavit, former chief of the Mossad intelligence agency, warned: "I don't believe there is a political solution which can be achieved through negotiations with Iran." "My concern is that until Obama finishes his learning curve of the subject, the Iranians are going to have maybe the first or even more nuclear bombs." United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday that Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb. The new figures come in a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog. Iran is Developing A-bomb Delivery Systems. Iranian Deputy Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said the country has built an unmanned surveillance aircraft, which can reach Israel. Syria's Chemical and Nuclear Weapons Program. Syria has been conducting extensive construction work on a chemical weapons facility in the country's northwest. The images of a chemical weapons facility identified as al-Safir were taken by several sources from 2005. According to UN nuclear agency, samples taken from a Syrian site have revealed new traces of processed uranium. What is "Really Matter" for Kadima? "Tonight's meeting did not get me closer to sitting in the government or give me the answers I was looking for on the issues that really matter," Livni said after the meeting with Netanyahu. — Why is creation of another Islamic terror state on Jewish land more important for Kadima, party was formed by self-serving political traitors from Labor and Likud, than the national inspiration and security of Jewish people? Food for Thought. by Steven Shamrak We are ALL in Range Now: An Iranian satellite was launched into space not long ago. Some spin-masters immediately stated: "This test tells us they have not yet mastered long-range multistage rocket technology". The technology Iran is using can be easily changed into long-range ballistic missile systems. This is the message the Iranians have sent. Must Israel be the only country that worries about nuclear Iran? Lame Apology of the Delusional President. "Whatever will happen in the future, we shall not repeat the mistakes we made in leaving Gaza ," Peres said in a question and answer session with a group of American Jewish leaders. "It should have been done otherwise. I was for leaving Gaza . I consider myself as one of the persons mistaken." (At the same time he still advocates the two-state solution. I am sure that he will make the same lame and meaningless apology when rockets, G-d forbid, fall on Jerusalem from the West Bank.) Another Smear Campaign has Failed. At the request of the Royal Court a Jordanian parliamentary delegation has indefinitely postponed a planned trip to Hague meant to launch legal proceedings against Israeli leaders for alleged war crimes during Operation Cast Lead. UN Helps Hamas to Arm. Hamas took possession of seven tons of unexploded ordnance that the UN had collected in Gaza for safe disposal since the end of the war. The ordnance included three 2,000-pound bombs and eight 500-pound bombs as well as many artillery shells. (By its presence and interference the UN only helps anti-Israel terror flourish!) Livni: Give up "Half of Land of Israel" for Peace. Tzipi Livni, who hopes to be appointed Israel's prime minister-designate, told a convention of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Organizations, "we need to give up half of the Land of Israel," (Israeli forces forcibly evicted 8,500 Israelis living in the Gaza communities — many of whom remain homeless to this day — and opened the way for Hamas' takeover.) using a term that refers to biblical borders that include today's Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. (...and Trans-Jordan, 82% of Eretz-Israel, the land Jews were robbed of in 1922! Did it bring peace? Israel needs people in leadership who are prepared to reunite Eretz-Israel, not traitors who are proposing the national sell-off!) Quote of the Week: "For the first time in many years, definitely since the Oslo peace process started in 1993, a significant majority of the Knesset does not believe in Oslo, and does not believe in the disengagement from Gaza in 2005-in short, does not believe that peace with the Palestinians can be achieved..." — Natan Sharansky — Will the Israeli political elite be able to transform this epiphany into a change of direction in implementing the plan which will end Arab terror and reunify all Jewish land? It Should be an Official Statement! The IDF says the remarks made about Turkey by army commander General Avi Mizrahi were personal. "This is not the position of the army," said the IDF spokeswoman, after General Mizrahi called on Turkish PM Erdogan to examine his country's history concerning the Armenians, the Kurds and northern Cypriots, before criticizing Israel . Mizrahi was referring to Erdogan's verbal clash on stage at the Davos Economic Forum. (The anti-Israel outburst by Erdogan was official. Why was the criticism of Turkish genocidal behaviour not ?) Demand for Shalit is Blackmail? Senior PA negotiator Saeb Erekat accused outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of "blackmail" after Olmert had stated that Israel would not agree to a temporary truce with Hamas prior to the release of kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. (but keeping Gilad imprisoned by Hamas is not blackmail?) Trade that Never Was. Egypt suspended quarterly talks on commercial cooperation with Israel on Thursday, after Israel 's cabinet decision on Wednesday not to open its border crossings with the Gaza Strip until Hamas agrees to release abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit. (Since the Camp David agreement Egypt never has been true partner in peace with Israel . It was all just a game in order to get Sinai back and receive US aid for nothing!) Hypocrisy of the 'Loaded' Headlines: "Israel set down tough conditions for a proposed ceasefire with Hamas" — International Herald Tribune — Israel's desire for the release of a captured Israeli soldier in exchange for hundreds of PA terrorists is the "tough condition", but are continuous rocket attacks having a positive effect on any proposed ceasefire? Red Cross is Fostering anti-Jewish Discrimination. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) this week started to transfer 8,000 tons of apples between the Golan Heights and Syria . (Apples grown by Druze farmers only are sent to Syria , excluding 'Jewish' apples. Please, think twice before donating your Jewish money to this organization!) Please, not Another self-Hating 'Jew'? Khazali, son of Ayatollah Abu Al-Kassam Khazali, says that Ahmadinejad changed his Jewish name on his ID card in order to hide his roots and is hiding his Jewish roots by attacking Israel and the Jews, and by expressing strong Muslim religious beliefs. (According to a rumour, Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi had a Jewish mother. Now an anti-Semitic card is used in the Iranian internal political fight. Jewish anti-Semites are never good news for Jews and Israel!) Let Them All Go. Thousands of Druze residents of the Golan took part in a pro-Syrian march a week ago. The march commemorated the Knesset's 1981 decision to reunite the Golan with Israel . Syrian protesters joined from the other side. Protesters in the Golan waved Syrian flags and called for the Golan to be given to Syria. (The truth is there is no loyalty to Israel among Israeli Arabs or Druze. All of them must be returned to their ancestral lands!) A German's View on Islam by Dr. Emanuel Tanay A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. "Very few people were true Nazis "he said, "but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, we had lost control and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories." We are told again and again by "experts" and "talking heads" that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or who are honour killers. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the "peaceful majority", the "silent majority" is cowed and extraneous. ...Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because, like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life. Steven Shamrak was involved in the Moscow Zionist movement. He worked as a construction engineer at the Moscow Olympic Games project and as a computer consultant in Australia. He has been publishing an Internet editorial letter about the Arab-Israel conflict since August 2001 and has a website www.shamrak.com. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak.e@gmail.com To Go To Top

LIBERAL FASCISM Posted by Barbara Taverna, February 27, 2009.

This was written by Melanie Phillips and it appeared yesterday in the Spectator www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3392771/liberal-fascism.thtml

On Harry's Place, Dave Rich makes some good points about the now common analogy that is drawn between Israel and the Nazis, or Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto, as used by such Israel-haters as George Galloway, Jenny Tonge, the British Muslim Initiative and others. Its import, as he says, lies in far more than its mere offensiveness and demonstrable barmyness. It is used for very specific political purposes. Since Nazism is totally beyond the pale — and since the Israel-haters believe, falsely, that Israel's legitimacy rests upon the Holocaust — tarring it as a Nazi state delegitimises it and thus advances the agenda of its destruction. But Rich points out a further consequence of demonising Israel in this way: If Israel is a Nazi state, then anybody who does not oppose Israel is morally no better than a Nazi. There is only one place this train of thought can end: with the demonisation and social isolation of the vast majority of ordinary British Jews. It means that when mainstream Jewish community leadership bodies organise a rally with the slogan, "Stop Hamas Terror: Peace for the people of Israel and Gaza", and launch a Jewish community fundraising campaign for hospitals in both Gaza and Israel during the fighting, Richard Seymour accuses them of "cheerleading the massacre" and concludes that anybody who goes on the rally "ought to be shunned, and treated as the moral and political degenerates that they are." It means that a research paper published by the School of Oriental and African Studies to investigate "legal aspects of economic and trade issues arising from Israel's occupation of the OPTs" lists the names, addresses and contact details of kosher food shops in London and Manchester. Once the central argument of anti-Israel campaigning in this country is that Israel is Nazi Germany, then this is no longer an anti-Zionist movement: it is an antisemitic one, with an antisemitic politics as its driving force. Precisely so. And that is why so many British Jews now feel under siege in a country that to their horror and astonishment has now turned against them — which they feel every time they switch on the BBC or read the newspapers or go to the office or stand around over drinks with people they once thought were friends but who now force them to make a choice: renounce Israel and be accepted, or support Israel and be a pariah. I would also make a further point that Rich does not make. Calling Israel a Nazi state retrospectively sanitises the Holocaust and lets complicit Europe off the hook — Britain too. After all, Britain was partly responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews to whom it refused entry to Palestine — in order to appease the Arabs of Palestine who were in league with the Nazis — and who perished in the Holocaust as a result. If the Jews have become Nazis, then their victimisation at the hands of the Nazis stops being the crime of crimes. It also allows people safely to hate the Jews once again. As I was told to my face by a prominent man of impeccable liberal views, the enormity of the Holocaust had meant that it was no longer possible to disdain or loathe the Jews as before, at least not in public. But with Israel painted as a Nazi state, it can be open season on the Jews once again. As the thinker Paul Berman points out in an interview on Z Word, the problem of Jew-hatred today lies principally with people just like this. The idea that it is reserved for knuckle-dragging right-wingers is simply wrong. Throughout history, it has been people pursuing the mostly high-minded visions who have wanted the Jews out of humanity's hair once and for all. As Berman notes: The unstated assumption is always the same. To wit: the universal system for man's happiness has already arrived (namely, Christianity, or else Enlightenment anti-Christianity; the Westphalian state system, or else the post-modern system of international institutions; racial theory, or else the anti-racist doctrine in a certain interpretation). And the universal system for man's happiness would right now have achieved perfection — were it not for the Jews. The Jews are always standing in the way. The higher one's opinion of oneself, the more one detests the Jews. ... But the disdain takes another shape, too, which is cruder, though it follows more or less from the first version. In the cruder version, the Jews are not just regrettable for being retrograde. Much worse: the Jews have done something really terrible. By forming their state and standing by it, they have set out actively to oppose the principle of universal justice and happiness — the principle that decrees that a people like the Jews should not have a state. So, yes, the comparisons to apartheid — or, more radically and these days more typically, to the Nazis. ... Israel's struggle puts it at odds with the entire principle of universal justice and happiness, as people imagine it — no matter how they choose to define the principle. Other countries commit relative crimes, which can be measured and compared. But Israel commits an absolute crime. In the end, it is the grand accusation against the Jews, in ever newer versions: the Jews as cosmic enemy of the universal good. Having stated these truths, Berman then flinches from the contemporary political application, refusing to agree that the human rights movement is intrinsically a vehicle for Jew-hatred. But it is. It is very noticeable that hatred of Israel and the Jews today goes hand in hand with higher social class and education, and high-minded progressive ideals such as human rights, the replacement of war by law, post-nation universal values and the forcible eradication of any views that challenge this agenda. It is, in short — as the title of Jonah Goldberg's excellent book proclaims — liberal fascism. Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com To Go To Top

DOES FREEDOM OF RELIGION IN AMERICA COVER JIHAD? Posted by LEL, February 27, 2009.

This was written by Dave Gaubatz and it appeared in Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.2628/ pub_detail.asp Dave Gaubatz spent 20 years as an active duty USAF (Special Agent/OSI), 3.5 years as a civilian 1811 Federal Agent, trained by the U.S. State Department in Arabic, and was the first U.S. Federal Agent to enter Iraq in 2003. He is also a counterterrorism counterintelligence officer. Gaubatz currently owns "Wahhabi CT Publications" and conducts CT Research on behalf of high profile non-profit organizations. His website is here, and he can be reached at davegaubatz@gmail.com.

I believe Americans are extremely frustrated about a number of things, including the sad state of our national security and the declining economic situation. They are rightly concerned about their children's future. They are losing interest in socialism taking over the news media. Many I have talked with no longer want to listen, read, or watch people ranting about how our country is secure. They are annoyed with the news headlines that focus on ladies who have eight babies and the multi-year "Aruba case." Americans have little patience and want people who "allegedly" know the situation our country is currently in to come to the point and fix the problem, not respond to incidents after they have happened. A good example of this is the manhunt[1] for the former student of a high school in Georgia who allegedly has a gun. This is a legitimate concern, but the threat is 100 times higher within just a few miles of many schools throughout America. (A hint to law enforcement: Go to any inner city school in the U.S. and within a mile in any direction, there are gang members with guns.) Instead of locking down the school, it would be safer for the children to immediately be removed and allow their parents to protect them. The last tactic that should be tried is to have hundreds of students in a school surrounded by hundreds of armed law enforcement officers and possibly a student with a gun. There is more chance of students being harmed in crossfire by staying than if they left the school. There is another danger in Georgia that few people are talking about. I have conducted first-hand research in Islamic Centers throughout Georgia. The Imams in many centers are telling the children to hate America, hate Israel, and to kill anyone who does not adhere to "pure Islam." During the last two weeks I have conducted first-hand research at many Islamic Centers in Tennessee. It's a very, very, dangerous situation. Muslim children are being encouraged by their Islamic leaders (trained in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) to follow Islamic terrorists like Ali Al Timimi (convicted[2] and currently in U.S. prison for advocating terrorism against the U.S.) The Muslim children throughout the U.S. are being encouraged to learn how to use guns, bombs, and other weapons for the sole purpose of being utilized in Jihad Qital (physical Jihad) against their enemies in America. In Blacksburg, Virginia, there is an Islamic scholar advocating to the students at Virginia Tech to commit treason against the U.S., instill Sharia Law, and to study the works of Islamic terrorists in order to meet these objectives. How much do Fox, CBS, NBC, or other news (and I say this laughingly) outlets report on these incidents which threaten every child of every race, culture, and religion? Do the law enforcement officers who are our "first-line" defenders respond in force to Islamic Centers who are advocating "sedition" against our country? No. Why not? Simply because if an Islamic scholar tells a Muslim child to kill other students who do not follow "pure Islam," or if the scholar tells husbands to beat their wife, or if the scholar informs Islamic Jihadists in America how to stay current on new weapons technology (such as biological and radioactive weapons) it is considered religious freedom. As an American I do not believe that when anyone tells a child to kill others and to commit treason against our country it is covered under any religion (even if told to the child in an Islamic school). God help Islam if the best examples they can use as role models are Ahmad Sakr, Siraj Wahhaj, Ali Al Timimi, and Abul Mawdudi. The following is a statement being streamed through the Internet to Muslims in America: "You Islam heroes: America is falling down behind the mirage, so hit it with an iron hand so it wakes up from its dream. At last we ask Allah to grant success to the Mujahedeen, to enable them, to grant mercy on their martyrs, to cure their injured, to release their captives, to unify their efforts and enable them to defeat their enemies, Ameen." Footnotes [1] http://www.examiner.com/a-1870628~ Atlanta_area_high_school_put_on_lockdown.html [2] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,154635,00.html Contact LEL at LEL817@yahoo.com To Go To Top

BRITAIN BARS DUTCH WHISTLE BLOWER ON ISLAM; ISRAEL'S ANTI-ZIONIST EDUCATION; UNIVERSITY'S POLITICAL GOAL Posted by Richard H. Shulman, February 27, 2009.

UNREALISTIC HUMAN RIGHTS DEMAND The Palestinian Center for Human Rights demands investigation into who tortured a Gaza Arab to death and that the authorities punish them (IMRA, 2/8). So unrealistic, those demands are amusing. Who does the Center suppose authorized and0 committed the murder? The Hamas authorities, as usual. Expect Hamas to investigate fairly? Same goes for similar incidents in the other part of the P.A.. The Center may be concerned about rights of Palestinian Arabs under P.A. jurisdiction. When it comes to Israel, however, it engages in jihadist propaganda. Everything Israel does it finds wrong and culpable. It does not denounce P.A. authorities like that. The lesson here is that Arab Muslims generally believe that they have rights and that non-believers do not. TERRITORIAL JEWS TO VIDEOTAPE ASSAULTS ON JEWS Up to now, the Left trained Arabs to videotape ethnic conflict. The Arabs then doctored the tapes to make Jews seem the aggressors. Now, Jews in Samaria are taking classes in videotaping and other forms of propaganda. They will photograph Arab stoning of their cars, police abuse, and other assaults on Jews. The other side no longer will be able to get away with its crimes (Arutz-7, 2/8). Passers-by will be able to film police seizing cameras that photographed their abuse. BRITAIN BARS DUTCH WHISTLE BLOWER ON ISLAM Britain forced Dutch M.P. Geert Wilders onto a return flight, contending that his presence endangered public safety. A Pakistani Member of the British Parliament, Lord Ahmed, had lobbied the government for the ban. He said that Wilders would provoke "violence and hatred" against Muslims, the great majority of whom renounce terrorism. Britain has let visit Muslims who advocated terrorism and repression of women and homosexuals, but has barred some, more recently (John F. Burns, NY Times, 2/13, A8). Anti-Muslim violence is rare, outside of India. Geert has not urged violence nor suggested hating. He does point out that Muslims do and threaten to conquer Europe. If Muslims became violent upon hearing his criticism of their intolerance, they'd prove him right. They constantly commit religious violence in Britain and elsewhere, a real threat to public safety. Maybe they renounced terrorism. Were they sincere? They admit wanting to replace native cultures. They demand privileges that foster that goal? Can't cite that goal in Britain? SHIITE-SUNNI RIFT The Gaza offensive is in the context of the Shiite-Sunni rivalry. Iran heads the Shiite campaign; Egypt and S. Arabia head the Sunni campaign. Iran ordered its [Sunni] protégé, Hamas, to attack Israel, leading to the Israeli offensive. Iran wants its protégés to attack Israel. Egypt and S. Arabia want Arabs to make peace agreements with Israel. They claim Arabs [including Sunnis] are working with Iran not in the Arab interest — Iran wants to re-establish its former empire over the region as well as subordinate the Sunnis to Shia (IMRA, 2/9). If Egypt bordered Iran, its rift with Iran might provoke mutual war. Let us not confuse peace agreements with peace. The proposed agreements would eviscerate Israel and therefore foster its conquest. As far as Israel is concerned, the Shiites and Sunnis are vying over how to conquer Israel. IN A WIDER WAR... In a wider war, the Israeli Air Force could not lend as close support to ground troops as it did in Gaza. It would have other missions, too (IMRA, 2/9). Would Israel use artillery for such support, though it means more civilian casualties and, worse in my opinion, more "friendly fire" casualties? Has the IDF learned from Gaza how to reduce casualties from "friendly fire?" ANTI-ZIONIST EDUCATION PROGRAM IN ISRAEL Min. of Education Tamar, of the Labor Party, plans to indoctrinate Israelis in the Arab point of view. The Arabs do not deem Israel a legitimate state. They think that Arabs have as much right to immigrate to the country as Jews (IMRA, 2/10). Considering that Israel is being warred on by jihad, the Arab view is treason. Labor's self-defeating multi-culturalism would confuse Jewish youth about their own country's legitimcy. How come any Jews in Israel vote for the Labor Party? AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL (A.I.) FINALLY SPEAKS OUT A.I. finally reports on Hamas purges of rivals in Gaza. Hamas forces are the only ones allowed to go about with unconcealed arms. They break into houses and hospitals, to shoot former P.A. police, Fatah members, or Arabs accused of cooperating with Israel against terrorism. The drawback and signifier of A.I. bias is to introduce this internecine war within the context of the Israeli offensive, which it falsely claims killed more civilians than troops (IMRA, 2/14). UNIVERSITY'S POLITICAL GOAL Bard College in New York State is collaborating with Al Quds U. in Jerusalem and Abu Dis. The venture aims at "injecting American educational values and expertise into Palestinian society, in hopes of contributing to a future democratic State of Palestine." One of the educational goals is to teach students to raise questions instead of accepting all their information and views from teachers. "Bard anticipates complaints from some American Jews unhappy — because Al Quds is a Palestinian institution partly in Jerusalem — which many Jews consider the indivisible capital of Israel — and because Al Quds is no stranger to radical Palestinian politics. [Note the deceitful understatement, as will be shown below!] The initial financing is coming from George Soros..." The head of Al Quds U. is Sari Nusseibeh. "Mr. Nusseibeh is the scion of one of the most distinguished Palestinian families, one filled with judges, scholars and politicians, and whose history in Jerusalem goes back 1,300 years..." He has been arrested and jailed. The Pres. of Bard, Leon Botsein said, "It is also clear that being a Zionist and favoring the security and healthy future of the State of Israel is absolutely compatible with creating a Palestinian state. That's why we're very proud of what we are doing." (Ethan Bronner, NY Times, 2/15, A14.) "Al Quds is no stranger to radical" Islamic politics? The university student body long has been solidly Islamist. Students get further indoctrinated there in violent intolerance. That is the opposite of democracy. Al Quds classes train them in technology used for terrorism, such as making explosives. Mr. Nusseibeh supported the anti-democratic, jihadist culture there, and was subversive in Jerusalem. Mr. Bronner has so understated the university and Nusseibeh positions as to thoroughly mislead readers. His description of Nusseibeh is designed to make that pro-terrorist respectable. Such treatment the Times never gives Jewish nationalists. Most Arabs there are of recent immigrant families. If the Bard program were sincere, it would work against the P.A. culture. It would re-educate students to accept Israel as a legitimate Jewish state, whereas the P.A. does not. (Nusseibeh would be executed for that.) It falsely assumes, without justification or attempted explanation (except to claim it is "clear") that a state for those Arabs would end the conflict. No, the P.A. claims all of Israel, because the conflict is religious. Tolerance is not said to be in the curriculum. Mr. Soros is pro-Arab. Mr. Botstein misstates Zionism. Zionism is not turning parts of the Jewish homeland over to gentiles, and ones who want to expel the Jews. Israel doesn't gain security from ceding secure borders to a sovereign power that could import arms and armies against Israel, without interference from Israel. Bard's venture into interference with Israel is intrusive. Who are Botstein and the Times to suggest dividing Jerusalem from Israel? Anti-Zionists. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com To Go To Top

POLLARD LANGUISHES Posted by Justice For Jonathan Pollard, February 27, 2009.

This was written by Kenneth Lasson and it appeared today in the Baltimore Jewish Times. Kenneth Lasson is a law professor at the University of Baltimore.

The worldwide Jewish community waits, at varying degrees anxious and rueful, to see how President Obama will treat Israel. Anxious, because no one knows what audacious aspirations he can realistically harbor for a Mideast foreign policy that has been challenged by intractable hatreds and hopes for more than half a century. Rueful, because a lot of us felt that George W. Bush, while a bad president for America, was a good one for the Jewish state. Not so fast. Even for many of those inclined toward the latter view, Mr. Bush turned out to be a great disappointment in handling the needlessly festering case of the imprisoned Jonathan J. Pollard. In his two terms, fervent appeals were made quietly to the president — from people as diverse as U.S. senators and members of the Knesset, American law professors and the chief rabbi of Israel, and thousands of common citizens worldwide. To many of them, Mr. Bush appeared to be receptive and respectful, and he promised a thoughtful response. A petition for clemency was on his desk the day he left office. He did nothing. Is there any chance that Mr. Obama will be any more enlightened, honest and just? The plight of the former U.S. naval intelligence analyst, convicted in 1985 of passing classified information to Israel and sentenced to life in prison, is a sorry stain on the moral fabric of two great countries. Pollard has been used and abused by both America and Israel — treated unjustly by our generally fair-minded system of justice, and forsaken by a Jewish state founded on humanitarian values and ennobled by the single-minded pursuit of its enemies and the redemptions of those held captive for its sake. Why is Jonathan Pollard still in prison? Never mind the legal arguments — that he was convicted on trumped-up evidence that he's never had the chance to challenge, that the U.S. Justice Department violated an honest plea agreement and that his life sentence is grossly disproportionate to any other punishment of similar offenders. The hard facts remain that he was never charged with treason, never caused Americans any great harm, and has suffered mightily for the confessed sins of others. On the other hand, there is a good case to be made that Pollard is being punished for a crime he did not commit — the one to which the convicted traitor Aldrich Ames has openly confessed; nor was he ever charged with treason. In fact, the "victim impact statement" offered by prosecutors did not impute to him any damage to American interests or harm to intelligence personnel. The life sentence handed out to Pollard for an offense that normally nets a four-year term amounts to a gross miscarriage of justice. So does the fact that the government of Israel abandoned one of its loyal agents, Applying for parole is not an option for Pollard, because of a severe and wholly unique impediment placed in his way by the Department of Justice: His current attorneys — both of whom have been given top secret security clearances — have never been permitted to see the documents submitted to the judge before Pollard's sentencing in 1987. Without access to that file, persons opposed to parole have free rein to say anything about Pollard they wish, with no risk of being contradicted by the documents. Thus, Mr. Obama should show clemency for clear, straight-forward reasons: He'd be correcting a longstanding miscarriage of justice. Pollard's life sentence — by far the harshest ever meted out for a similar offense — continues to make "equal justice under law" seem like little more than a palsied proverb. Of the dozens of Americans convicted of the same crime, many more perfidious spies have received lesser or no punishment. He'd be acting the way other countries have acted toward us. Few know the mirror-image cases that make Pollard's plight all the more sadly ironic: In the 1990s, Israel caught at least two Americans and one Mossad agent spying for the U.S. The Americans were noiselessly expelled, the Israeli pardoned. He'd be making an important gesture of America's appreciation for Israel's abiding friendship, acknowledging the Jewish state's willingness to accede to much of our Middle East strategy. In short, the president should act now to reflect the time-honored values of fairness and decency to which the nation he leads has always aspired. Here's a change he could implement without spending a penny — a moral stimulus every bit as necessary as an economic one. Jonathan Pollard has already served 24 years in prison. Grant him clemency. Reach Justice for Jonathan Pollard by sending an email to justice4jp@gmail.com and visit their website: http://www.JonathanPollard.org To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: THE GOOD AND THE BAD Posted by Arlene Kushner, February 27, 2009.

Before Shabbat, and with great brevity, first the good: Livni will not be sitting in the government. What is also good, is that the reason she won't is because she "saw no sign of Bibi's commitment to the issues." Which means he refused to commit to a "two-state solution." Baruch Hashem. Now we'll watch as the coalition takes shape. ~~~~~~~~~~ The bad is that Chas Freeman's appointment is official. I was waiting for official word and it has come. Found it in The Washington Times: an announcement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "Ambassador Freeman is a distinguished public servant who brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise in defense, diplomacy and intelligence that are absolutely critical to understanding today's threats and how to address them," said the director, Dennis Blair. "The country is fortunate that Ambassador Freeman has agreed to return to public service and contribute his remarkable skills toward further strengthening the Intelligence Community's analytical process." If his expertise is critical for the US, the US is now going down a very different road and the world is a different place. There is no way, here and now, for me to say all I wish to say on this subject. But it's time for the supporters of Israel in the US to wake up and realize they have a government that is going to work against us — and to stand strong against those efforts. We cannot rest for a moment (except on Shabbat). ~~~~~~~~~~ Another blessing, among the many that are ours: It is pouring torrentially. How we need this! Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

WHO ARE THE 'EXTRAORDINARY' MUSLIMS? Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, February 26, 2009.

This was written by Spengler and it appeare February 3, 2009 in Asia Times http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KB03Ak03.html

"My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives," United States President Barack Obama told an Arabic television channel on January 26. Really? What are their names? Word has come to the West of no extraordinary Muslim thinker since the 12th century. There is one first-rank Arab writer working today who tries to explain why there are no extraordinary Muslims — but on that more below. By "extraordinary", to be sure, Obama means no more than Garrison Keillor meant in saying that the children of Lake Wobegon all are above average. There is no "there" in Obama's "patchwork", as he characterized America in his inaugural address. America is all patches and no quilt, arranged in no particular order, as in his remark in the same interview that America is "a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers". Everyone is ordinary, or maybe extraordinary — whatever. If Obama had said that "the Muslim world is filled with ordinary people, etc", his meaning would have been clearer. It's worth holding Obama to his words, though. In the real world, the ordinary depends on the extraordinary, for it is the extraordinary citizens of a nation who set a mark for the aspirations of ordinary people. Cultures that can't produce extraordinary individuals can't survive. That bears on the other half of the president's assertion. It is true that most Muslims simply want a better life, and the two or three million American Muslims mostly are well-educated economic immigrants who value prosperity over tradition. But it also is true that among the 1.4 billion Muslims in the world there are tens of millions who would rather kill and die than endure what they perceive as an intolerable humiliation. The majority of Muslims will be content to eat crumbs from the table of the West and conform to the misery of their circumstances. It is the substantial minority that will not be content that should worry Obama. The failsafe definition of an "extraordinary person" is what an ambitious mother will tell her feckless children, "Work hard and you might grow up to be like him (or her)." Successful cultures produce people whose contributions resonate through the world — scientists, poets, musicians, entrepreneurs, or philosophers. Just one great individual can transform a nation, by setting an example for ambitious youth. Thanks to the composer Jan Sibelius, Finland with just 5 million people became a force in the world of classical music. But woe unto cultures whence comes no contribution to the rest of humanity. Where are the Muslim scientists, novelists, entrepreneurs, athletes and musicians? Apart from political leaders, a reasonably diligent reader of a quality newspaper in the West will not be able to name a single Muslim distinguished in any field of human endeavor. Excluding the politically awarded Peace Prize, Muslims have won only three Nobel prizes since their inception more than a century ago, or one for every 450 million Muslims alive today. By contrast, there have been 169 Jewish Nobel Laureates (excluding the Peace Prize), or about one for every 89,000 Jews alive today. During the past century, a Jew was 5,000 times more likely to win the Nobel than a Muslim. The last native of a Muslim country to receive the Nobel was the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, a secular critic of his native country now living in New York City in virtual exile, unable to return to Istanbul in safety. I favorably reviewed his last novel Snow. Only one Muslim writer today is mentioned as a frontrunner for the literature prize today: the Syrian poet Adonis (the pen-name of Ali Ahmad Sa'id), whom I profiled (Are the Arabs already extinct? Asia Times Online, May 8, 2007). Adonis is a man whom the world should know better. Almost singlehanded, he created a modernist poetic style in Arabic that vividly conveys the terror of the Muslim encounter with the modern world. Adonis calls his work an obituary for the Arabs. "We have become extinct," he told Dubai television on March 11, 2007. "We have the masses of people, but a people becomes extinct when it no longer has a creative capacity, and the capacity to change its world ... The great Sumerians became extinct, the great Greeks became extinct, and the Pharaohs became extinct." Islam itself destroys the creative of Muslims, Adonis argues: "Because Islam — the last message sent by God to mankind — has placed the final seal on the Divine Word, successive words are incapable of bringing humankind anything new. A new message would imply that the Islamic message did not say everything, that it is imperfect." The most melancholy Slav sounds like Jerry Seinfeld next to this poet of despair. The blame for Islamic backwardness, Adonis claims, lies in the concept of "oneness," or tawhid, of Allah. "Oneness" conveys not just monotheism, but exclusionary comprehensiveness; it refers more to totality than to unity. As the leading European Islamist Tariq Ramadan explains tawhid, for a right-thinking Muslim, it is literally inconceivable to raise doubts about God. A Muslim, Ramadan explains, might forget, but he cannot doubt. The trouble with a religion that permits no doubt — unlike Christianity, of which Pope Benedict XVI said that "doubt is the handmaiden of faith" — is that it becomes an all-or-nothing proposition. Either Islam regulates the totality of life and thought, such that questioning may intrude within its magic circle, or it becomes nothing. Islam is inseparable from the traditional life of subject peoples; it cannot find roots in the thin soil of modernity. Measuring modernity is difficult, especially because its onset in the Muslim world is sudden, but there is one unerring gauge of social transformation that shows how quickly Muslim societies are changing. That is population. Thrust into the modern world, Muslims are overtaking the West only in one dimension: they are aging, and aging faster than any other part of the world. Iran is the fastest-aging country on the globe. The developed world today has a median age of almost 40, the sad result of two generations of demographic decline, while the largest Muslim countries have a median age of 25. But by the middle of the century, according to United Nations projections, the average age of the largest Muslim countries will be 47, converging on the aging industrial world. Only with extreme difficulty will the developed countries manage the burden of a rapidly aging population. It is hard to envisage how the much-poorer Muslim world will manage it at all. The potential for civil as well as regional instability will continue to rise. Increasingly, the Muslims find themselves with the worst of both worlds, that is, with the same dependency profile as the populations of the West, but without the wealth or the capacity to generate wealth that gives the West some wiggle room. Japan may have a declining population, but it is a wealthy land with enormous inventiveness and the capacity to substitute capital for labor. Excepting Turkey, no Muslim country has a single industrial company that can compete on world markets. The Muslim world thus far has failed to produce the sort of extraordinary men and women who can innovate and adapt. Shrinking resources and growing need are a formula for social and regional instability. Iran's insistence on acquiring nuclear weapons stems from more than a paranoid antipathy to the state of Israel. Iran looks wistfully towards the far shore of the Persian Gulf where Saudi Shi'ites dominate the monarchy's main oil-producing regions. Fifty million aging Persians, for that matter, might be more concerned about 175 million young Pakistanis to their east than about Israel. Most Muslims want to better their lives, as Obama said, but their lives are getting worse rather than better, and nothing they know can make things better. In theory, there might be a future state of the world in which the Islamic world could live in peace and prosperity, but today's Muslims cannot get there from here. In dozens of essays during the past five years, I excoriated former president George W Bush for imaging that he could fix the problems of the Muslim world by promoting American-style democracy. If Obama spends more time reassuring, and less time trying to fix the Muslim world, he will do better, by default. America's policy towards the incurables should be to live and let die. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

MUSLIM "MODERATION" TACTIC; THE LEBANESE ARMY IN REALITY; DEEPER TUNNELS; ISRAELI RETALIATION EXAGGERATED Posted by Richard H. Shulman, February 26, 2009.

MUSLIM "MODERATION" TACTIC Muslim leaders who purport to be moderate act as intermediaries between Western governments and Islamists. They advise those governments to accede to some of the Islamist demands or suffer attack by the Islamists. The advice sounds to me like a partnership in blackmail between the purported moderates and the Islamists. The Islamists carry guns and the purported moderates speak for them. The purported moderates don't denounce the Islamists as violent, undemocratic bigots. They don't rally their masses against the Islamists. Nor do they urge Western governments to resist. The urge what would advance the program of Islam. TONE OF THE TIMES The NY Times has been criticizing Pres. Obama freely. Quite a shift in mood! The editors no longer think he is walking salvation. Now they notice his clay feet. They praised, however, one of his most foolish moves. That was his offer to work out a cooperative relationship with Iran. The President of Iran replied favorably. Iran may exploit Obama's naivete as an opportunity to gain the last, critical months needed for developing nuclear weapons, after which Iran can start blackmailing or destroying other countries, by itself or via proxy. EUROPEANS & DEMOCRATS OWE BUSH AN APOLOGY Buried in a long article was a statement that China "...is the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases" (Marc Landler, NY Times, 2/11, A8). Europeans and Democrats had pressed only the US to reduce greenhouse gases. They condemned Bush for not signing the Kyoto pact. Pres. Bush had argued that Kyoto unfairly let some developing countries pollute considerably. He was right. To be fair, the issue was murky. Both those who set national policy and those who criticize it owed the people an explanation of their stances in sufficient clarity and detail to be understood. Neither side did. CHUTZPAH When the worst criminals believe their claims can be accepted, their temerity reflects a low state of public ethics. Thus the P.A. is striving to have Israel put on trial for war crimes in Gaza. Israel didn't commit war crimes then and there, but acted in exemplary fashion. The P.A. committed war crimes every day then and there, and there is no public demand to put Hamas on trial. This isn't about war crimes or morality. This is about immorality and ganging up on the Jews. CONSUMER FRAUD BY ALLEGED HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is not a human rights group but an Islamist rights group. It almost always supports, as if a right, terrorist efforts to import arms, smear, and commit terrorism. ACRI has attempted a consumer fraud against Israel's legal lights. It informed 37 leading lawyers that it would put their names on a petition accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, unless they specifically rejectied the petition. The lawyers all replied to withhold their names. It was a new low for ACRI. Unethical. Nervy! For examples, ACRI claimed that Israel was occupying Gaza, so Arabs in Gaza had a right to fight against Israelis. [They had a peace accord, could have negotiated, have no right to resort to terrorism banned under all conditions, and Israel no longer had troops in Gaza, just didn't want the non-sovereign Hamas to import weapons for making war, as it did.] An ACRI report claims that Israel was racist against Arabs. It did not investigate Muslim prejudice against Jews. Its findings of Jewish racism were not or were not proved to be. It alleged an increase in "anti-Arab incidents," but did not show they were from prejudice. It states that Jewish hatred of Arabs doubled, but did not explain how it concluded that. From media reports, one may surmise that its standard is that Israelis want to continue veterans' benefits. Many countries offer veterans' benefits. Nothing prevents Arabs from joining the military or performing other national service. [ACRI wants the Arabs to declare themselves enemies of their country and enjoy veterans' benefits. Ultra-Orthodox have other reasons for not performing national service, and aren't entitled to veterans' benefits.]] ACRI almost never supports the rights of victims of terrorism or attempts to repress the speech of opponents of terrorism. For example, Prof. Steven Plaut was sued for criticizing a leftist professor. The criticism was truthful. The purpose of the suit was to impose costs on Plaut that might shut him up. Plaut asked ACRI to support his free speech. It refused (Plaut, 2/5). Israel abounds in discrimination against Jews, as by curbing their dissent and framing them, but ACRI and B'Tselem do not protest against those real examples, only against false ones in favor of the country's Arab enemies. THE LEBANESE ARMY IN REALITY The head of the Lebanese Army said that his Army and the Syrian Army have the same ideology. He said that the Lebanese Army's first priority is defense from Israel, in conjunction with Hizbullah (IMRA, 2/7). There you have it, the Lebanese Army is an ally of terrorists and Syria, which are taking over Lebanon. Why is the US arming it? To harm Israel? DEEPER TUNNELS The Arabs claim that newer arms smuggling tunnels are too deep to be detected or bombed. This means that airplane attack, alone, does not suffice. It takes troops on the ground. It always does. Even military brass forgets that in any big military operation, the air force is auxiliary. They like to imagine an easy aerial bombing can do the whole job. ISRAEL NOW IN THE TRANS-SHIPPING BUSINESS? Since Israel let some ships through the blockade, now many ships try to get through. Israel now sending their cargoes through, by land. This shows the problem with settling each instance separately, as Israel admitted it had done. It is wiser to think through the matter and establish a useful policy at the outset. U.S. FLOUNDERING The Obama regime is floundering. I get no satisfaction from evidence of his inexperience. He didn't just have less experience than his rival, he has insufficient experience. This has cost him much of his prestige and adoration. It impedes US economic recovery. It will not improve his policy towards Israel. Usually, US Presidents seeking to regain respect imagine that they can solve the Arab-Israel conflict and will do so on the backs of Jews. This distracts them from more pressing issues. In their conceit, they don't realize that they have no more magnetic a personality than their predecessors, who have failed at that quest for half a century. The quest isn't fulfilled by personality. How can charm inveigle the most hardened fanatics in the world? Muslims use charm on us. They have done so before. They pretend to be cooperating, as per lran-Contra. Problems can be solved by policy. The earlier policy of land-for-peace has not changed. How can the same policy work now? The Arabs are more vengeful and jihadi than before. Yes, the Democrats imagined that their man has a new policy, but they were wrong. He's got the same diplomats and the same theory that they merely have to negotiate, based on the lie that the prior regime did not negotiate. And what about the prior, Democratic Carter and Clinton regimes? LUNATICS Not all lunatics are antisemites, but most antisemites are deranged. Deranged people used to be locked up. We progressed from that era. Now they either become head of government — i.g., Castro, Putin, Sarkozy, Assad — or they are given personal computers and keep out of trouble by sitting at home and venting. The insane asylum might substitute PCs for mood altering drugs. Perhaps they already do. The wardens coach them: blame everything on Israel and the Jews. Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. IRAN NEARER TO NUCLEAR WAR Two phases in starting nuclear war: (1) Develop the weapons; (2) Deliver them. One, flexible means of delivery is by long-range missile. Iran has just demonstrated its ability to launch such missiles, when it sent a satellite into space. There hardly was a ripple from the governments and media of Europe, which Iranian missiles now can reach, and from the US. Israel had warned Europe that it could be targeted, too. The UNO has issued a resolution against Iranian shipment of arms. The US inspected such a ship, but claimed, as if the resolution were just an exercise in words, that it lacked authority to seize the ship. The US also insisted that Israel not seize the ship, to prevent its cargo from getting smuggled into Gaza. Apparently the US is appeasing Iran, to facilitate smooth negotiations, but Obama does not insist that the purpose of the negotiations is to prevent Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons. Lieberman joined the Olmert Cabinet when he said Iran is too dangerous for Israel to lose time in new elections. He did not do anything about Iran, but for two years he kept in power the Cabinet that procrastinated. Livni said that one must negotiate with Iran, but she didn't. Instead of criticizing foreign appeasement of Iran, she praised their toothless resolutions. Defense Min. Barak failed to lobby among Israel's friends in the US government for the equipment it would need to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. Netanyahu, not in the government, persuaded many American state pension systems to divest from companies doing business with Iran. He backed efforts to try the President of Iran for the crime of inciting to genocide. Those efforts brought the nuclear issue onto the American agenda. His three rival politicians, Lieberman, Livni, and Olmert disparaged him for it, instead of supporting him. He is the only one with credibility on this issue (Caroline Glick in IMRA, 2/7). I suppose Obama's emissaries will be negotiating peace with Iran on the day of Iran's sneak attack, just as FDR's emissaries were negotiating peace with Japan on the day of Japan's sneak attack in 1941. Obama will be thought wise on the day before, and most foolish on the day after. ISRAELI RETALIATION EXAGGERATED In response to attacks from the Gaza fence and to aerial bombardment, the IDF bombed some tunnels and arms depots (IMRA, 2/7). Israel ended the offensive, but when Israel is attacked, it finds targets to bomb. I suspect that it withheld attacking those targets before, so it can do so when Israel is attacked again, as if its response were significant. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com To Go To Top

THE IRAN-ISRAEL NUCLEAR ENDGAME IS NOW MUCH CLOSER Posted by Daisy Stern, February 26, 2009.

This was written by Edwin Black and it appeared in The Jerusalem Post www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1235410719930&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull The writer is The New York Times best-selling investigative author of IBM and the Holocaust, Internal Combustion and the just released The Plan: How to Save America When the Oil Stops — or the Day Before (Dialog Press). And visit his website at www.edwinblack.com

In recent days, four key developments have clicked in to edge Iran and Israel much closer to a military denouement with profound consequences for American oil that the nation is not prepared to meet. What has happened? First, Iran has proven it can successfully launch a satellite into outer space as it did on February 2. Teheran claimed, to the incredulity of Western governments, that the satellite was to monitor earthquakes and enhance communications. Few believe that, especially since America's own space program continuously launches unpublished military satellite missions. Teheran plans three more satellites this year, creating an easily weaponized space net that worries American military planners. Second, the International Atomic Energy Agency last week admitted that it had underestimated Iran's nuclear stockpile by about one-third. The watchdog group now confirms Iran possesses 2,227 lbs. of nuclear material, sufficient to create at least one nuclear bomb. That stockpile includes 1,010 kilograms of low-enriched uranium hexafluoride, or approximately 700 kilograms containing the vital uranium 235 isotope, the stuff needed to weaponize. Third, Iran has ramped up its enrichment program with thousands of new homegrown, highly advanced centrifuges. As The Cutting Edge News reported in April 2008, Iran wants 6,000 centrifuges to speed the enrichment of weapons-grade material. The number of working centrifuges now exceeds 5,400, including 164 new ones believed to be the faster and more efficient IR-2 and IR-3 models made in Iran. These new Iranian centrifuges are at least as sophisticated as its recently imported P-2 models. American policymakers are now convinced that Iran, despite all protests and charades, is in a mad dash to create a deliverable nuclear weapon. The Obama administration has almost openly abandoned the assertions of the CIA's much-questioned 2008 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iran was not pursuing nuclear weaponry for the simple reason that its atomic program and military programs were housed in separate buildings. Fourth, Binyamin Netanyahu has just become prime minister of Israel. He is determined to take action before — not after — Iran achieves its nuclear potential. This creates a volatile, hair-trigger situation that could explode at any moment. Hence, the endgame is now vastly closer than it was in mid-January, when many believed Israel might take action during the lame-duck interregnum. Israeli countermeasures to date have included a massive international covert program of equipment sabotage, assassination of key nuclear personnel and a vibrant diplomatic offensive. But all these efforts combined amount to nothing more than delaying tactics, as Iran is irrevocably determined to achieve a nuclear weapon as fast as possible. Many believe such a weapon will be used to fulfill its prediction that Israel will soon be wiped off the map.   THE CONSEQUENCES for this confrontation are apocalyptic because Iran's full partner in this enterprise is Russia. The Russian company Atomstroiexport has provided most if not all of the nuclear material for the 1,000 megawatt Bushehr reactor, along with thousands of technicians to service and operate it. Following its invasion of Georgia, Moscow forged ahead with final delivery plans for the S-300 advanced air defense system which can track scores of IAF airborne intruders simultaneously, whether low-level drones or high-altitude missiles, and shoot them down. But the S-300, the linchpin of Iran's defense against Israel, will not be fully operational for several months, creating a narrow window for Israel to act. Indeed, Russia has just announced a pause in missile deliveries for the system in fear that it will accelerate an Israeli response. Iran, of course, has repeatedly threatened to counter any such attack by closing the Strait of Hormuz, as well as launching missiles against the Ras Tanura Gulf oil terminal and bombarding the indispensable Saudi oil facility at Abqaiq which is responsible for some 65 percent of Saudi production. Any one of these military options, let alone all three, would immediately shut off 40% of all seaborne oil, 18% of global oil, and some 20% of America's daily consumption. America's oil vulnerability has been back-burnered due to the economic crisis and the plunge in gasoline prices. However, the price of gasoline will not mitigate an interruption of oil flow. The price of oil does not impact its ability to flow through blocked or destroyed facilities. Indeed, an interruption would not restore prices to those of last summer — which Russian and Saudi oil officials say is needed — but probably zoom the pump cost to $20 per gallon. American oil vulnerability in recent months has escalated precisely because of oil's precipitous drop to $35 to $40 a barrel. At that price, America's number one supplier, Canada, which supplies some 2 million out of 20 million barrels of oil a day, cannot afford to produce. Canadian oil sand petroleum is not viable below $70 a barrel. Much of Canada's supply has already been cancelled or indefinitely postponed. America's strategic petroleum reserve can only keep that country moving for approximately 57 days.   THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, like the Bush administration before it, has developed no plan or contingency legislation for an oil interruption, such as a surge in retrofitting America's 250 million gas guzzling cars and trucks — each with a 10-year life — or a stimulus of the alternate fuel production needed to rapidly get off oil. Ironically, Iran has undertaken such a crash program converting some 20% of its gasoline fleet yearly to compressed natural gas (CNG) as a countermeasure to Western nuclear sanctions against the Teheran regime that could completely block the flow of gasoline to Iran. Iran has no refining capability. The question of when and how this endgame will play out is not known by anyone. Israeli leaders wish to avoid military preemption at all costs if possible. But many feel the military moment must come; and when that moment does come, it will be swift, highly technologic and in the twinkling of an eye. But as one informed official quipped, "Those who know, don't talk. Those who talk, don't know." Contact Daisy Stern by email at daisystern1@gmail.com To Go To Top

GANG-RAPED WOMEN PUNISHED BY SAUDIS Posted by Marc Samberg, February 26, 2009.

This was a news item in Asia News http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=14486&

Jeddah, gang-raped woman sentenced to prison, one hundred lashes According to the judge, the woman is guilty of adultery and of accepting a ride from a stranger. Following her rape, she became pregnant, and will finish her pregnancy in prison. The one hundred lashes will be given after her baby is born. Jeddah (AsiaNews/Agencies) — The victim of sexual violence after which she became pregnant, a 23-year-old Saudi woman has been condemned to one year in prison, and 100 lashes. The news has been reported by the Saudi newspaper Saudi Gazette, which says that the judge punished the woman because she is guilty of "adultery," having accepted "a ride from a stranger." The man and his friends abused her the entire night. The court of the district of Jeddah handed down the sentence after the unmarried woman "confessed to having forced intercourse with a man who offered her a ride." According to the young woman's testimony, he took her to a house east of Jeddah, and, together with four friends, abused her the entire night. Following the rape, the woman became pregnant; she was eight weeks pregnant when she went to the military King Fahd Hospital. According to the judge, the woman is guilty of "adultery" simply because she is not married, and she has been sentenced to a year in prison. The hundred lashes will be given after she delivers the baby; the child will take his mother's last name. In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive, and can ride in a car only if they are accompanied by a husband or relative. In recent days, Saudi princess Amira al-Tawil, wife of prince Al Walid Bin Talal, had defended the right to drive for all women in the country. Contact Marc Samberg at marcsamberg@yahoo.com To Go To Top

AHMADINEJAD MEETS WITH OBAMA'S BUDDY IN KENYA Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, February 26, 2009.

This was on the Gateway Pundit website http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/02/ ahmadinejad-meets-with-obamas-cousin-in.html

Barack Obama's cousin Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Kenya today. In this photo released by the Kenyan Prime Minister's Press Service, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, left, is seen with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, during their meeting at the Laico Regency hotel, Nairobi, Kenya, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009.(AP/Kenyan Prime Minister's Press Services) Ahmadinejad declared that relations between the regime in Iran and Kenya are improving after the meetings. In 2006 Barack Obama took a trip to Kenya at US taxpayer's expense. While visiting Kenya as a guest of the government Obama campaigned with opposition leader socialist Raila Odinga, who also happens to be his cousin (says Odinga): Odinga's party lost the 2007 election in Kenya. His party claimed the election was rigged in favour of President Mwai Kibaki. Barak Obama and Raila Odinga Odinga's thugs then went on a rampage killing hundreds of Kenyans and burning churches. At least 600 people died in rioting after the election and 250,000 were displaced. Odinga was accused of ethnic cleansing during the clashes. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

WHAT IS MISSING IN THE TERRORIST THREAT ASSESSMENT Posted by FSM, February 26, 2009.

This was written by Douglas Farah and it appeared today in Family Security Matters (FSM). www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.2622/pub_detail.asp Douglas Farah is an award-winning investigative journalist and Senior Fellow in Financial Investigations and Transparency at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. E-mail him at doug@douglasfarah.com.

In recent days, two high-level assessments of the threats facing the United States have come out, and both are striking for their stark omissions of the same central theme: the criminal/terrorist nexus that is driving so much of what we see around the world. The first assessment is the Annual Threat Assessment presented by Dennis Cl Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, presented as Congressional testimony. The second is FBI Director Robert Mueller to the Council on Foreign Relations. Both are interesting reading, and it's heartening to see the Horn of Africa move far up the priority scale in both discussions. The DNI report also focuses some passing (but more than any other public statement) attention on Latin America, particularly Venezuela. Director Mueller correctly states that: The world in which we live has changed markedly in recent years, from the integration of global markets and the ease of international travel to the rise and the reach of the Internet. But our perception of the world — and our place in it — also has changed...The universe of crime and terrorism stretches out infinitely before us, and we, too, are working to find what we believe to be out there, but cannot always see. What has changed less, it seems, is the ability to integrate into out thinking and assessments changes as they occur. The paradigm shift in terrorist financing from states and large donors to crime and quasi-state institutions is a clear trend that is accelerating. While the Taliban use of drug money is mentioned in the DNI statement, and there is a passing reference to the FARC's drug revenue, organized crime receives a small, separate section in the report, and no overlap with terrorist activity is noted. Given the shared information that likely shaped both presentations, it seems the conventional thinking in the intelligence and law enforcement communities (with the notable exception of the DEA) is that organized criminal groups and terrorist groups remain separate entities, with little overlap. The objective reality is that this is no longer true. The Taliban, FARC, AQIM, Hezbollah, HAMAS, ETA and others all rely on significant organized crime ties to survive. Hezbollah has perfected the ability to work with established networks of Lebanese diaspora entrepreneurs, legal and not, to collect funds totaling tens-if not hundreds-of millions of dollars a year (see the West Africa diamond trade and Tri-Border region). AQIM participates in and collects taxes on cigarette smuggling and human trafficking, etc., etc. These activities are not tangential to the terrorist operations, but fundamental. That is why the failure to grasp this nexus is so important. If the mutually-beneficial ties are not understood, tackling the threat will be impossible. Contact Family Security Matters (FSM) at info@ familysecuritymatters.org To Go To Top

AVRAHAM BURG AND THE POST-ZIONIST WRECKING OF THE PRI HAGALIL ENTERPRISE Posted by Steven Plaut, February 26, 2009.

Avraham Burg is without a question one of the worst Israelis in the world and also a despicable person. A one-time Knesset Member from the Labor Party and a speaker of the Knesset, and later Chairman of the Jewish Agency, Burg is openly seeking to put an end to Israel's existence as a Jewish state. He is a leader in the "Post-Zionist" movement of ultra-leftists, Israelis and ex-Israelis seeking Israel's annihilation. But now he is also up to his ears in financial scandal. It turns out he is one of the central figures involved in the collapse of the Pri Hagalil company, a collapse that has dominated the economic news in recent weeks in Israel. Let's back up a little. Avraham "Avrum" Burg has been a far-leftist for decades. He is the son of the great Joseph Burg, a Holocaust survivor and one of Israel's founders. Father Burg was a leader of the National Religious Party and sat in Israeli cabinets for so many years that there were many jokes about him having sat in a cabinet with Pharaoh. Mother Burg had grown up in Hebron and survived the 1929 Arab pogroms against Jews there. Junior Avraham had been a leader in "Peace Now," and supposedly was standing near the favorite martyr saint of the Israeli Left, Emil Grunsweig, when the latter was killed by a grenade tossed at the demonstrators by a rightist. (The perp, by the way, is NOT on the list of people Olmert wants to release as part of the general release of terrorists.) Avraham is religious, sort of, showing his ambivalence about that by wearing a yarmulke smaller than many postage stamps. In recent years he has been making headlines for his demands that Israel stop being a Jewish state, that the Law of Return for Jews be revoked, and that Jewish symbols of the state be junked. He is a founder of the new anti-Israel lobby in the US, "J Street." He has lived in recent years in France. His current "thinking" can be read here: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/868385.html As speaker of the Knesset, "Avrum" defied Israeli law and illegally went to speak before the PLO's "parliament" in Ramallah in 2002. Since then he has morphed into one of Israel's most extremist "Post-Zionists" (http://www.arabworldbooks.com/arab/avraham.htm). He denounces Zionism in the anti-Israel Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1042071,00.html). The anti-Semite Pat Buchanan has applauded him (http://goliath.ecnext.com/comsite5/bin/pdinventory.pl?pdlanding=1&referid= 2750&item_id=0199-1403773). He has denounced Israel as an evil entity (http://www.haaretz.com/GA/pages/ShArtGA.jhtml?itemNo=360539). The journal Azure reports (http://azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=117&search_text=) that Burg 'declared the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz (of 'Judeo-Nazis' fame) to be his 'moral compass.' Burg's advisers Haim Ben-Shachar and Arik Carmon have developed a plan whereby the Zionist movement would drop its focus on Jewish immigration and concern itself with distributing 'pluralistic' Jewish material over the Internet. He teamed up with Yossi Beilin to promote the latter's "Geneva Misunderstandings" to dismember Israel (http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=36&x_article=599). Burg demands that Israel desist altogether from defining itself as a "Jewish state". His take on suicide bombers? "Having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, [Israel] should not be surprised when they come full of hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism." He has published an anti-Israel 'book', one that ruminates about Israel and Zionism, compares Israel and Germany, harshly criticizes Eichmann's hanging by Israel, reflects on Judaism in the age of globalization and remembers his father's house. In 2007 the media reported that Burg junior had left Israel altogether to do "business" in France. We will see in a minute what sort of "business." Meanwhile, back to Pri Hagalil. It is a fruit canning and processing company located in the impoverished Israeli "development town" of Hatzor, not far from Kiryat Shmona, close enough to be on the receiving end of many a Hezbollah rocket. It is the main employer in the town, and it is broke. The background to this is that the company was once one of so many mismanaged enterprises owned by Israel's Histadrut Trade Union Federation. The Histadrut is essentially Israel's leading organized crime family. Pri Hagalil had been managed by the Histadrut's own industrial holding company Koor, before the latter was privatized. Pri Hagalil was sold by Koor in the 1990s to two dubious characters, an Israeli business man named Aviv Algor, and a British investor named Ian Davis. I say they are dubious, but I mean they are crooks. A month ago the two were convicted of serious fraud in a separate affair involving the Mediterranean Pipes Company (Maariv Feb 25) and had other previous fraud convictions (see http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1131043721728&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull). The two crooks had purchased Pro Hagalil and at the same time purchased the "Vita" company, which makes soups and other processed foods, and merged it with Pri Hagalil to make a new company. The merged enterprise was owned by "Kedem," their own holding company, which also bought up other failing Israeli companies from different industries. At that point they struck a deal with .. (drumroll) . our own Avrum Burg! He came in as a partner in their corporation and was appointed chairman of the board of directors of Pri Hagalil. The company kept losing money (if you are interested and read Hebrew, you can check its books out at http://maya.tase.co.il/bursa/CompanyDetails.asp?CompanyCd=157& company_group=3000). It went deeper into debt, borrowing from the banks and others. And to make matters more confusing, the assets of Pri Hagalil were pledged as collateral not only for the factory's own debts but also for the debts of the other companies owned by the fraudulent duo and their Post-Zionist partner, Burg. Burg did not pony up much or any cash of his own to become the partner of Algor and Davis. So what exactly did he offer them? Perhaps his wide-ranging political contacts as the past Speaker of the Knesset? In any case, Pri Hagalil went bust, and is now insolvent. The two large Israeli banks that are its largest creditors began preparations to foreclose and liquidate the company. That has serious implications because it is the lifeline of the large portion of the population of Hatzor. Shutting down the factory would make Hatzor look like Oklahoma in a John Steinbeck book. So in the past few weeks, the business news in Israel has been revolving around the prospective shutting down of the factory. Its workers are striking on and off, and holding noisy demonstrations. The banks are demanding that the court put the company into receivership, and that a "rehabilitation plan" be negotiated. Everyone is pretty clearly trying to pressure the government to bail out the company Obama-style. But the new Minister of Finance will likely be Bibi and he is opposed to corporate welfare. Burg and his buddies are accusing the banks of insensitivity in trying to get repaid the money owed to them by the Pri Hagalil company. The banks themselves are in the red even without writing off their investments in Pri Hagalil, because of the financial crisis and recession. They are accusing Burg of mismanaging the company and its finances. The bottom line is that the mainstay source of sustenance for an entire impoverished development town in Israel was destroyed under the stewardship of dear old Avraham Burg And then to top it all off, Maariv Feb 25, 09 is reporting that the Israeli banks are accusing Burg of being involved in the disappearance of funds plowed into the factory. They claim they invested 270 million shekels in keeping the factory operational and that these funds simply "disappeared." Whither did they disappear? The media are not saying and neither is Burg. As of this morning, the court gave the company a brief reprieve before putting it into receivership, so that its owners can try to negotiate with its creditors. My guess is that the Israeli government will bail it out, forcing taxpayers to pony up the cash to cover Burg's incompetence. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. Write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

BIRD BALLET Posted by Fred Reifenberg, February 25, 2009.

Contact Fred Reifenberg by email at freify@netvision.net.il and visit http://fred343-enjoy.blogspot.com/ and http://4batya.blogspot.com/ to see other examples of his graphic art. To Go To Top

FATHERS GO TO WAR Posted by Aliza Karp, February 25, 2009.

To My Daughter's Dear Friend Mushka, The other evening you asked me if it was not irresponsible for a father to leave his family and go to war. I do not like the way I answered you. I answered about danger. If the definition of danger is the odds — one out of one hundred or one out of one million — of getting hurt, then there is a greater chance of being hurt in traffic accidents in Eretz Yisroel than going to war, and yet every day we willingly go into traffic. My answer may have made sense, but I find it heartless. We are emotional beings — not computers with and on and off switch. On our way to the hillside restaurant where you asked me the question, just before we made our final left turn towards Bat Ayin, there was a sign to Rosh Tzurim. Rosh Tzurim is a town in the Gush Etzion Bloc south of Yerushalaim, not far from Efrat, half way to Hevron. It is home to a few hundred religious families. It is attractive and well kept. In Rosh Tzurim is an excellent school for special needs children and young adults. They even have horses for the students to care for and ride. The morning after you and I and Huvi had dinner on the hillside under Bat Ayin I came back to Rosh Tzurim with Chaya, a friend of mine from the nearby town of Alon Shvut. Although she is the one who lives in the area, I showed her something she had not known about. I took her to the highest point in Rosh Tzurim. From there we could see Yerushalaim in the north and Ashdod and even Ashkelon to the southwest. The country is so small! There is a war in Ashkelon. From our restaurant, had we been gazing out windows at the back, instead of the side, we would have been able to see the war zone. There is a little park where Chaya and I were standing. It is called Mitzpeh Tzachi. Mitzpeh means a lookout. Tzachi is a nickname for Yitzchok. The park was established and beautifully designed for Tzachi Sasson. When Chaya and I walked into Mitzpeh Tzachi we saw a group of young men landscaping and gardening. At first glance the group looked unusual — I was on my guard for something suspicious. But as we get got closer I realized it was a group of special needs teenage boys with their counselors. The park was made for Tzachi after he was murdered by a terrorist who shot him in the head when he was driving between visiting his parents in French Hill, Yerushalaim and going home to his wife and sons in Rosh Tzurim. He was one of the earlier casualties of the 2001 Intifada. Tzachi was gem. I walked with Chaya to show her the stone memorial the family had made for Tzachi. On it is engraved the words of a letter he sent to his younger brother when his brother was entering the army. It is a long letter telling his brother in loving detail to Daven and study Torah regularly, to carry out his army duty with excellence and to be a good example to others. I remember Tzachi as a good looking, fun loving teenager who was respectful, kind and generous. This letter showed me a depth to him that I would not have doubted but wound never have known about. Tzachi's mother's name is Aliza, like mine. When I was neighbors with Aliza, we did not have a common language but I knew her well. When I first read the news about Tzachi on the internet, I knew Aliza would be devastated beyond comparison. Even though he did not die in battle, his death was at the hands of those who want to destroy us, in a different form of warfare. So I think we can learn from his death, the impact of a father going to battle and not returning home. Hashem should avenge Tzachi's blood and all those who have lost their lives Al Kiddush Hashem, for the sanctification of G-d's name. The Sasson family built the beautiful park atop Rosh Tzurim. Other projects were also done in his memory. I donated a full Chitas to each family in Rosh Tzurim so they could put it in their car as a safety precaution. The Sassons have other children and they have grandchildren, including Tzachi's children Bli Aiyn Hara. His wife did what Tzachi would have wanted her to do. She pulled herself together and re-married. Tzachi's sons are taken care of, and they know their father died Al Kiddush Hashem. They have a loving mother, step-father and loving grandparents — but no one and nothing will replace their father. If I still feel pain when I think of Tzachi — I cannot come close to fathom how his family still suffers. Mushka, my answer to your question was about statistics. Jewish lives are not statistics. Every victim of war and terror is one hundred percent someone's Jewish son, husband, father, brother, cousin, friend, classmate... There is pain because there is love. The Lubavitcher Rebbe repeatedly stressed the section in Shulchan Orach that when we have an enemy we have to make a pre-emptive strike. We have to got to war. Who is more qualified to fight to protect his children, than a father? As the fathers battle alongside young men who do not yet have families, the younger men are encouraged and empowered by the unique energy of fathers fighting to protect their children. If there were no imminent danger, fathers would not go to war. But when there is danger. Real danger. Fathers go to war. I showed Chaya the memorial for Tzachi and told stories about him. We also spoke about the three soldiers who had been killed the night before, at the war in Aza, and the trauma their families were now feeling. Chaya's twenty six year old daughter knows someone in each of the families of the fallen soldiers. I did not know yet that I also was connected, through my work, to one of them. I was in a sad, pensive mood as we walked back to the car. We passed the group from the special school who were now sitting by the walkway, taking a break from their landscaping. Chaya asked one of the counselors to take a picture of the two of us. As she was showing him how to use the camera, one of the students came towards me. A counselor called to him using the name Eitan. I guessed Eitan had Downs Syndrome but I was not sure. He ignored the call to return and I said to him, "Eitan, are you coming to give me a hug?" He did not speak but continued to approach. As he hugged me, I hugged him back. I like to think that Eitan could sense I would be accepting of him and that I would appreciate the hug. It was just what I needed. Ahavat Chinum, love without ulterior motives. I insisted Eitan be in the picture with me and Chaya. Eitan will not be a father and he will not go to war. Eitan senses when his hugs are needed and he is not afraid to do what he does best. I think Eitan's hugs make the world a better place. Who can understand the ways of Hashem? There is pain and there is love and the only definitive answer is Moshiach Now, With love, Huvi's Mom Aliza Karp, the Administrator of the Friends of Families of Hebron fund, writes about issues of concern to the Jewish world, including the Lubavitcher Rebbe's perspective on defending Israel. Contact her by email at basmenachem@gmail.com To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: FORGING, FORGING Posted by , February , 2009.

At the moment it looks as if, please G-d, we will have a right wing coalition government. In theory, Netanyahu is still supposed to meet with Livni one more time on Friday, but coalition negotiations — which will determine ministry assignments and platform details — have begun, starting with Shas, Yisrael Beitenu and United Torah Judaism. The assumption, then, is that Netanyahu has no further expectations of Kadima in the government. He is expected to build a sizeable cabinet of some 22 ministers. Negotiations are being handling by a committee headed by MK Gideon Sa'ar, Likud faction chair; he says he intends to build a strong coalition that will last until 2013, when the next elections are scheduled by law (barring collapse of a gov't). ~~~~~~~~~~ A prime reason Netanyahu gave for wanting Livni in the coalition is to show solidarity with regard to Iran. But she has assured him that from the opposition she will totally support him on this issue and lend whatever assistance is necessary. ~~~~~~~~~~ The 18th Knesset was sworn in yesterday, and includes 31 new MKs. ~~~~~~~~~~ I have learned that appointment to the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council can be done automatically by the president. And so, Chas W. Freeman Jr. apparently would not have to be confirmed by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. However, I have picked up no word that the appointment is final, and as long as that is the case, I encourage communication with the Senators of the Committee any way. It is all together appropriate to express your outrage as an American citizen and request that all possible leverage be brought to bear to prevent this appointment from taking place. ~~~~~~~~~~ Fatah and Hamas have held some preliminary meetings — mediated by Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman — prior to major negotiations aimed at forging a unity government. The animosity between the two groups is enormous and there are deep ideological differences. But there is also motivation now to come together for purely pragmatic reasons: they need to present a united front to arrange the authority for rebuilding in Gaza, and to attempt to secure the opening of the crossings. I will note here, and will continue to note, that there is no demand being placed on Hamas with regard to relinquishing terrorism or recognizing Israel's right to exist. And yet, as far as the international community is concerned, this unity government, which also would provide one address for negotiations, is seen as a necessary precursor to advancing the "peace process." Don't look for logic. Yesterday, Hamas strongman Mahmoud Zahar told Reuters that, "It's our right to bring in everything — money and arms. We will not give anyone any commitment on this subject." ~~~~~~~~~~ Recently the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar Ilan University released a study, that had been headed by Prof. Ephraim Inbar, that indicates that a "two state solution" is not viable: Says Inbar, the Palestinians have too many internal rifts; neither Fatah nor Hamas really wants peace with Israel (many continue to assume Fatah, which pretends it does, really wants peace); and neither the PA nor Hamas would be capable of governing a state. Who's listening? ~~~~~~~~~~ And just a month ago, Khaled Mashaal, political chief of Hamas in Damascus, announced a campaign against the PLO, which is dominated by Fatah. Declaring that it was Hamas's goal to replace the PLO with a new organization that would serve an agenda of "resistance," Mashaal said: "At this moment, the PLO is no longer a unifying point of reference, but has become impotent and a tool for deepening Palestinian divisions." What this means is Hamas wishes to be in charge, and to change the rules by which the PLO represents Palestinians world-wide. ~~~~~~~~~~ Obama has committed $900 million for reconstruction in Gaza, to be channeled primarily through UNRWA. This is presumably to keep it out of the hands of Hamas, but anyone who know how UNRWA conducted itself during the recent war in Gaza knows what a joke this is. UNRWA persistently echoed Hamas's fallacious charges of "war crimes" against Israel. Most blatant was the UNRWA charge that we had hit one of its schools and killed 40 civilians, when it turned out we hadn't hit the school at all and only 12 people were killed, none of them terrorists. Yesterday a senior Israeli government official charged that UNRWA provides political cover for Hamas: UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd passed a letter, on behalf of Hamas, to Senator John Kerry, Chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, when he was in Gaza last week. Said the official: Unfortunately, there is a pattern here. "That no one finds it strange that UNRWA, whose mandate is humanitarian, is the vehicle through which Hamas passes messages on to the US, just shows where UNRWA is at." For insight into how UNRWA functions, see my report at: http://israelbehindthenews.com/pdf/UNRWAOverviewAndCritique.pdf ~~~~~~~~~~ Barry Rubin's new piece, "American, look behind you! Turn around! Turn around!" merits a serious read: "America: A freight train is heading your way and you're standing right on the tracks, looking in the wrong direction. "Or perhaps it is like a horror film in which the killer sneaks up behind the hapless victim while the movie audience yells: "Turn around! Turn around!" And then blood spatters the screen. "Unfortunately, in this case, it might be our blood, and it won't be produced by a special effects department. "Today, US policy and the dominant thinking are not based on realpolitik but on international affairs as a popularity contest. Its motto might be, 'The nice will inherit the Earth,' as the Obama administration tries to prove that it's not like that mean old Bush." http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1235410694225&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

DID YA' EVER HEAR THE ONE ABOUT COHEN AND THE IRANIAN JEWS? Posted by Shaul Ceder, February 25, 2009.

This was written by Richard Z. Chesnoff and it appeared today in Jewish World Review. Vveteran journalist Richard Z. Chesnoff was Senior Correspondent at US News & World Report, and is now a columnist at the NY Daily News and the Huffington Post. The paperback edition of his book, Pack of Thieves: How Hitler & Europe Plundered the Jews & Committed the Greatest Theft in History is now available.

Ever notice how often the reputedly astute prove amazingly naive if not downright dumb? Take the New York Times' much lauded op-ed columnist Roger Cohen. In a long rambling piece datelined Esfahan, Iran, wandering analyst Cohen recently told his global readers that the remnant of Iran's once thriving Jewish community is doing just fine — in fact, it's actually living the life of Reza side by side with Islamists, enjoying freedom of worship, business and family life and just dying to join other patriotic Iranians in angry anti-Israel street demonstrations. To back up his contentions, Mr Cohen quotes that esteemed expert Morris Motamed, the man who once served as the mullah endorsed Jewish stooge in Tehran's rubber stamp parliament. It all reminded me of my 1990 Baghdad visit to the remnant of Iraqi Jewry — a Diaspora community older and once larger than even Iran's. Like most Iranian Jews, the vast majority of Iraq's 150,000 Musawi or ""Mosaics" wisely fled for Israel and the West in the early 1950s. Of course, they had to leave behind everything they owned. By the time I visited Baghdad, there were less than 300 Jews left in a city where Jews once comprised 25% of the urban population. These Jews also prayed in their synagogue on the Sabbath where their community president told me with great flourish (while Saddam Hussein's omnipresent agents listened to every word) that he and his fellow worshippers were "proud to be both faithful Jews and loyal Iraqi patriots". The truth was very different — as it is in Iran where the Jewish community is under constant surveillance, where teaching Hebrew is prohibited, where Jewish women are forced to follow the same modesty laws their Muslim sisters do, where Jews are barred from certain jobs and some imprisoned or hung on trumped up charges of contact with "Zionists". Another journalistic sin of Mr Cohen's piece was his insistence to use Iran's supposed tolerant treatment of its remaining Jews as an excuse to take another of his nasty jabs at Israel. After all, Cohen tells us, perhaps Iran's threats to destroy the Jewish state are merely a "provocation to focus people on Israel's bomb, its 41 year occupation of the West Bank, its Hamas denial, its repetitive use of overwhelming force." He then goes on to ignore the hard fact that Iran is behind Hamas as well as Hezbollah and most of the terrorism that currently confronts Israel , the very terrorism that frequently obliges Jerusalem to invoke its "overwhelming force". Mr. Cohen also attacks "some American Jewish circles" for their "misleading and dangerous...'Mad Mullah' caricature of Iran". In other words we really shouldn't worry about Iran's race to obtain a nuclear weapon — even though such a weapon would not only threaten Israel, but the rest of the world including the United States. And as if to underscore its increasingly perverted sense of journalistic balance, today's NY Times runs a second Iran focused op-ed piece alongside that of Cohen's. This one by Iranian born journalist Ali Reza Esraghi is oddly entitled "Our Friend in Tehran" and urges President Barack Obama to stop wasting time and "seize the opportunity to shake the Iranian President (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's) outstretched hand". Lord protect us from the reputedly astute! Contact Shaul and Aviva Ceder at ceder@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

NEW KIND OF TERRORISM; OBAMA BETRAYS ISRAEL, DURBAN II, DONATES TO FOREIGN ENEMIES; AMNESTY INTL. UNFAIR Posted by Richard H. Shulman, February 25, 2009.

HOW HAMAS RECRUITS FEMALE SUICIDE BOMBERS Muslim rape victims are shamed more than rapists. Hamas arranges for young women to be raped. A female Hamas agent then persuades the victims that they can erase their shame by becoming suicide bombers. An agent admitted this to police and reporters (IMRA, 2/4). But the world' indignation is against Israel as inhumane. HAMAS STEALS MORE HUMANITARIAN AID Hamas gunmen raided an UNRWA warehouse. They made off with thousands of blankets and hundreds of food parcels. (IMRA, 2/4). The NY Times is full of biased UNO accusations about Israel blocking the flow of goods into its enemy, Gaza, but sparse about the facts on Hamas stealing and selling UNRWA goods meant to be given to the people, free. BAD SAMARITANS Rustling by Arabs has been rising. There were 2200 incidents of it in 2008. Arabs from Samaria made off with a prize herd of 200 goats owned by Israelis in the Galilee. Police recovered them (Arutz-7, 2/4). GUNS BEFORE WATER Syria is suffering from drought. Most of its water flows into agriculture and industry. Damascus has periods without water. Residents buy it on the black market. Syria is depending on Japan buying water for it (IMRA, 2/5). Syria need's Japan's charity because it won't adopt birth control, as Japan did, and it spends its billions of dollars on armaments. Japan's charity is vital to Syrian imperialism and aggression. Not so humanitarian. Why don't these so-called humanitarians help decent people? NEW KIND OF TERRORISM Islamist videos circulate on the Internet urging murder of US groups and giving their addresses. The videos are more than just a rant, for they exhibit signs of being carefully crafted not to break the wording of US statute (Arutz-7, 2/5). We must counteract radical Islamic ideology and eradicate its activists. We should not allow masses of Muslims in Western countries, where they establish a reign of terror. They are abusing our tolerance to stifle our freedom. OBAMA BETRAYS ISRAEL, & DURBAN II The Obama administration refuses to join Canada and Israel in boycotting the Durban II Conference. Its rationale is that US participation may keep the Conference from becoming the antisemitic diatribe that Durban I was. The rationale is false. The purpose of Durban II is to implement Durban I. Durban I was primarily anti-Israel. It denounced Israel as a racist state and its law of return as racist. In other words, Jews may not have national self-determination and may be killed with impunity. Durban II inevitably will be the same. The UNO still is controlled by the Islamic bloc and allies, among whom Iran, Cuba, Libya, and Pakistan were prominent in setting Durban II's agenda. "And that agenda includes multiple assertions of the basic illegitimacy of the Jewish people's right to self-determination. The... agenda also largely adopted the language of the 2001 NGO conference that called for the criminalization of critical discussion of Islam as a form of hate speech and racism. That is, the 2009 conference's agenda is not only openly anti-Israel, it is also openly pro-tyranny, and so seemingly antithetical to US interests." Durban II is stacked, and the US cannot alter it. "Since it came into office a month ago, every single Middle East policy the Obama administration has announced has been antithetical to Israel's national security interests. From...Obama's intense desire to appease Iran's mullahs in open discussions; to his stated commitment to establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible despite the Palestinians' (Arafat's Arabs') open rejection of Israel's right to exist and support for terrorism; to his expressed support for the so-called Saudi peace plan, which would require Israel to commit national suicide by contracting to within indefensible borders and accepting millions of hostile, foreign-born Arabs as citizens...to his decision to end US sanctions against Syria...to his plan to withdraw US forces from Iraq and so give Iran an arc of uninterrupted control extending from Iran to Lebanon, every single concrete policy Obama has enunciated harms Israel." [He also is pledging significant subsidy of Gaza.] Those policies may not have been intended to harm Israel. [They don't help the US, except the one about Iraq, if Iraq can defend itself.] They may result from conceit and naivete. Attendance at Durban II, however, is so intended, since the purpose is to gang up on Israel. US attendance there legitimizes it and discourages European states from boycotting it. Worse, at a planning session, the P.A. proposed adding to Durban's agenda by endorsing the Intl. Court of Justice opinion against Israel's security fence, that calling for "the international protection of Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory." That means that Israel has no right to self-defense. The US did not object. Neither did the US demur when Iran objected to mention of the Holocaust. Thus the Obama rationale for attending is a lie. It is not even attempting to head off the evil that Durban II represents. In 2001, the US walked out of Durban I (Caroline Glick in IMRA, 2/21). In foreign policy decency, courage, and intelligence, Obama makes Bush look good. Perhaps Obama is a secret Islamist, after all. U.S. PROMOTING HAMAS-FATAH UNITY REGIME The US approves of unity negotiations (IMRA, 2/21). In addition to above! A unity regime would give the US an excuse to pretend that it now can deal with all of the P.A. and give it money as if that money would not go to terrorism. The papered-over unity would enable the US to pretend that Israel now has an entity to which to concede territory. Actually, Hamas would be given the opportunity to organize in Judea-Samaria. It soon would take over the whole P.A.. It would acquire, as it said it would, the arms that the US and Israel gave Abbas "to strengthen" him against Hamas. It would turn those arms on Israel and import more. It also would help Iran and the Islamists take over more countries, developing a more powerful anti-US axis. We need a patriot with at least half a brain in the White House. OBAMA DONATES TO FOREIGN ENEMIES Sec. of State Clinton attended a donor conference on rebuilding war-torn parts of Gaza. The US will donate $900 million to Gaza, not thru Hamas (IMRA, 2/24). The NY Times implicitly defends the aid by remarking great exaggeration that Gaza was "devastated" by the battle. Some of the money would go through UNRWA (NY Times, 2/24, A7) staffed by terrorists. The US also claims that its funds for Abbas' P.A. don't go for terrorism. Abbas then pays the Hamas regime's salaries, and Hamas gives priority to terrorism. Abbas' regime trains troops for the same purpose, they commit terrorism, his media promote it, he praises it, and his diplomacy advances it. He threatens war unless Israel accedes to conditions that would render it indefensible. The US claim is phony, like most of its diplomacy. The people of Gaza may not like Hamas anymore, but they picked Hamas for its non-corruption and harsher line against Israel. They would not now choose otherwise, if they could. They cooperated with the war they started and still goes on. They want Islam to conquer the world, including the US. They are not innocent people. They should not be helped financially. They should be ruined. Part of the way to save the world from Islamist domination is to bring down Islamist regimes and let their suffering be a lesson to others. That $900 million would be in addition to about half a billion each for Abbas and Jordan and $2 billion for Egypt. Almost all of it prepares anti-Americans to make war on Israel. Egypt's is for: (1) Stability, though airplanes and warships don't make stability; (2) In the secretive hope that Egypt would be a proxy for the US. Arab beneficiaries of US aid keep dashing that hope. They have different and irreconcilable interests from ours, and are incompetent; and (3) To bolster regimes against terrorism, but they favor terrorism and the P.A. is terrorist! Abbas' P.A. steals most foreign aid. Therefore, the aid helps the regime not to become popular but unpopular. Eliminate subsidy of the Arabs and the US could end subsidy of Israel. The US should cancel Israel's debt, as it did for Egypt, and discontinue further aid. If we must give foreign aid, give it to the genocidal victims of Sudanese radical Muslim Arabs, from whom jihad took everything. Better to withhold foreign aid until we learn how to give effectively. Most of it, including funds for the UNO, is wasted or spent on evil. Best to suspend foreign aid, for we really are out of money. Obama, stupidly enough before the economic crash, to double foreign aid. He's crazy now to increase it when our own people don't have enough to live on. He's counter-productive in giving it to the Arabs. How perverse! We are trying to avoid a depression. Cant do so by misguided business as usual. By the time our rulers get through with us, we won't have a great country. JERUSALEM WATCH Israeli police broke up a gathering in Jerusalem called by the PLO. PLO events are banned in Israel (IMRA, 2/21). If the regime relaxes the ban, it would signify intent to cede parts of Jerusalem. AMNESTY INTL. (A.i.) A.I. accused Israel and Hamas of recently misusing foreign-supplied weapons to attack civilians. It demands an embargo on both sides and suspension of US military aid to Israel. Israel responded that the its "military never intentionally attacked civilians," but Hamas used civilians as human shields (Isabel Kershner, NY Times, 2/24, A7). What is behind those claims and how they are reported? The news brief sounds neutral and even-handed. If balanced, then it is pro-Islamist. The demand for embargoing arms for both sides would be fair if the premises were fair and if an embargo would be fair. Consider the embargo. Hamas already is supposed to be under an arms embargo. It doesn't abide by it. It smuggles arms in. Likewise, Hizbullah is under an arms embargo, but the evil axis doesn't heed UNO resolutions and sends Hizbullah arms. In the 1930s, FDR embargoed both sides in Spain, but the Axis supplied the fascist side. In 1948, Pres. Truman embargoed both sides, but Britain armed Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. The US embargoes harmed just the victims of aggression. The Spanish republic lost and Israel almost lost to the invaders. I accuse A.I. of knowingly trying to put Israel into that position, again. Perhaps its excuse is stupidity. Considering its constant bias against Israel — casualty statistics based on false numbers and sophistry in defining civilians, biased eyewitnesses, unverified testimony, and failure to include Israel's case — surely the unfairness here is just as intentional as usual. Israel's response is poorly put, the Times manages, as usual. The Times, if not Israel, should have stated that the IDF never intentionally attacked civilians whereas Hamas mostly does. Then should have come the explanation that Hamas used civilians as human shields, which, under international law, makes them and not Israel responsible for civilian casualties. Israel must be well armed, because Hamas commits aggression and self-declared genocide. A.I. doesn't know that if Israel were more poorly armed, other enemies would attack it? Both A.I. and the Times again are accomplices of attempted genocide. Adding insult to injury, those auxiliaries of Islamistm pretend to be objective and humanitarian. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com To Go To Top

THE IRANIAN GAMBIT IN GAZA Posted by Jonathan Schanzer, February 25, 2009.

The Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip that began in late December has focused the world's attention on the conflict between the Jewish state and the armed cadres of the Palestinian terror faction Hamas. Yet the media coverage has, for the most part, failed to provide an accurate picture of the larger geopolitical confrontation in Gaza. The conflict is viewed as simply another battle in the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinians. But in fact, the Israelis found it necessary to move against Hamas in part due to the machinations of an outside player that has long fomented discord and civil war within the Palestinian population for its own ends. That outside actor is Iran. The predicate of Jerusalem's decision to move against Hamas targets was the decisive outcome of the 2007 Palestinian civil war that left the Islamist group in control of Gaza, one of the two territories under Palestinian management. The other territory, the West Bank, is under the shaky authority of Fatah, the faction directed by Yasser Arafat for 30 years before his death in 2004. Now under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah is the dominant force within the Palestinian Authority, the official governing body of the aspirational Palestinian state. But Abbas has no power or authority in Gaza, which is now a Hamas fiefdom. The Palestinians in Gaza are the chief victims of Hamas's decision in December to provoke more bloodshed by raining rockets on southern Israel following a loosely observed six-month ceasefire. The Israeli retaliation has reinforced Hamas's status as the primary voice of "resistance" to Israel (the same Israel that disengaged itself from Gaza in 2005 and is, therefore, no longer an occupying force requiring "resistance"). Accordingly, the Arab world and its sympathizers in the West have railed against the Israelis for their targeting of Hamas fighters and arms supplies. But the real fear of Abbas, and of the surrounding Arab countries, is actually the same as Israel's — that Hamas, and, by extension, its Iranian sponsors, will, in the end, be able to declare the Gaza action a victory for their cause. Such an outcome would be the flowering fruit of an Iranian intervention in Palestinian politics that dates back decades. The internecine Palestinian struggle began in 1988, in the early days of the first intifada, when the upstart Hamas organization began brazenly to circulate bayanat, or leaflets, in direct competition with Arafat's Fatah for leadership of the struggle against Israel. The tension between Hamas and Fatah grew steadily, until it reached its zenith with the June 2007 Gaza coup, during which Hamas took control of buildings, roads, and the media. Public discussion of the Hamas-Fatah struggle for domination of the Palestinian cause has been flaccid. Academic analysis has been virtually non-existent. It should therefore come as no surprise that Iran's significant role in exacerbating the conflict is all but unknown. _____________ In 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini succeeded in ousting the Shah from power and launched Iran's Islamic Revolution, Khomeini had Fatah leader Yasir Arafat to thank, at least in part. While Khomeini was still in exile in France, Arafat's Lebanon-based guerrilla network, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), aided his cause by providing military training and weapons. Indeed, the first members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is now the elite military force under whose auspices the country's nuclear program is being managed, were recipients of Arafat's largesse. In a show of appreciation for Arafat's support, Khomeini closed the Israeli embassy in Tehran, handed the keys over to Arafat, and flew a Palestinian flag overhead. The building became an official PLO entity, complete with an ambassador. The honeymoon did not last long. During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, the Palestinians threw their support behind Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and Khomeini rejected Arafat's attempts to mediate between the two countries. But it was Arafat's 1988 decision at the United Nations to call for peace talks with Israel that ultimately led to the total unraveling of the relationship. In 1989, Khomeini's successor, supreme leader Ali Khame-nei, denounced Arafat as "a traitor and an idiot." One of the factors contributing to Arafat's decision to embrace negotiations after decades of launching terrorist attacks against the Jewish state was the outbreak in 1987 of the first intifada, the violent Palestinian resistance effort in the territories held by the Jewish state. At the time, Arafat was based in Tunisia, to which he had been exiled after being ousted from his perch in Lebanon in 1982. As the uprising spread, he ordered Palestinians loyalists in the territories to take control of the broad spectrum of groups comprising the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising. But he found himself unable to manage the situation from a distance of 1,500 miles. Members of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood created a breakaway organization called Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement), whose acronym was Hamas. By February 1988, Hamas began dropping its leaflets challenging Arafat's authority. Thereafter, the two groups engaged in a propaganda war for the loyalty of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians. Each offered competing guidance, and sought to claim credit for inspiring and leading the uprising. In an effort to retake the initiative during an emergency meeting of the Palestine National Council later in 1988, Arafat recognized General Assembly resolution 181, passed in 1947, which mandated the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. He soon called for peace talks based on other UN resolutions. The West rushed to begin a direct "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians. Almost overnight, the PLO and Fatah were treated as though they constituted a makeshift government. At the same time, Hamas took the place of Fatah as the leading edge of the openly violent, openly rejectionist resistance, with its primary, indeed its only, stated aim being the destruction of Israel and Israel's replacement with a rigidly Islamic Palestine. Hamas's intransigent approach was clearly more in synch with Iran. The mullahs quickly understood this and reached out to the new group. In December 1990, Hamas leaders paid an official visit to Iran, along with other rejectionist groups, for a conference in support of the ongoing intifada. Once U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations enshrined Arafat as the West's only interlocutor in the Palestinian camp, Iran steadily increased its support for Hamas. As early as 1992, Arafat complained that Iran had provided some $30 million to the rival group, in effect corroborating a report in the Lebanese magazine Al-Shira that Iran had been doling out some $10 million a year to Hamas in funds from oil sales. After Arafat became a party to the 1993 Oslo accords, signed on the White House lawn with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, his relations with Iran worsened further. In December 1994, hundreds of Iranian demonstrators occupied the PLO embassy in Tehran, destroying property and condemning Arafat as the "biggest collaborator with Israel and the United States." The mullahs were careful to distance themselves from the incident. But around the same time, Iran began openly to offer support to PLO members still in exile in Tunisia, from which Arafat had returned in glory to the West Bank, if they would maintain their opposition to Arafat. A 1995 report in the Independent, a British newspaper, claimed Iran had backed an attempt to assassinate Arafat. Other hazy reports from the region said Iran was training Hamas members in redoubts in Sudane, Lebanon, and elsewhere. The Clinton administration recognized the threat that Iran posed to the peace process through its support for Hamas and other terrorist groups, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hizballah. International financial aid, weapons, and military training were lavished upon the PA in an attempt to strengthen it, and Iran came under increased sanctions. Indeed, the 1995 U.S. trade embargo on Iran and the 1996 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) were designed in part to weaken Iranian support for Arafat's enemies. In an effort to humiliate Arafat and disrupt the Oslo process, Hamas had inaugurated a wave of suicide bombings inside Israel in 1994 — a form of terrorism perfected by the Iranian-backed Hizballah, which had used car bombs as an effective terror weapon in Lebanon in the 1980s. There is evidence that Hamas adopted the technique as a result of Hizballah training. Mohammed Hafez of the United States Institute of Peace says that when Israel deported 415 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad activists to Lebanon in 1992, these Palestinian exiles received support and training from Hizballah. In the words of Michael Horowitz, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, "Hizballah was the hub from which suicide tactics spread to the Palestinians and other groups." Suicide bombing quickly became Hamas's preferred tactic of terrorizing Israel. Moreover, every time Hamas carried out an attack on Israeli soil, it sent a signal that the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority at best did not speak for all Palestinians, and at worst had no ability to exert control over its own people. Prompted and armed by Washington and Jerusalem, the PA cracked down on Hamas and PIJ, carrying out mass arrests of their activists (though many would quickly be released). The two factions continued to fight for the hearts and minds of the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians. Support for the PA dwindled rapidly on the streets of the West Bank and Gaza during the late 1990's, as Palestinians grew frustrated with the fact that billions of dollars in international aid were disappearing into the pockets of Arafat and his cronies. All the while, Hamas improved its standing by maintaining its steadfast opposition to the Oslo peace process, and by waging its savage campaign of violence against the Jewish state. More and more Palestinians came to believe that, in contrast to Fatah, Hamas was fighting for the Palestinian cause. That it was doing so with Iranian money did not appear to be a concern to the majority of Palestinians. _____________ In the late summer of 2000, the Camp David II talks, designed to bridge the gap on several thorny outstanding issues dividing the Palestinians and Israelis, broke down when Arafat rejected a dramatically generous Israeli land-for-peace offer that went far beyond any previous concessions. Rather than continuing to negotiate, Arafat elected to launch the war against Israel that he called the "al-Aqsa intifada." The fact that he chose violence over continued negotiations is likely a reflection of the fact that by this point, the Hamas approach to the conflict had begun resonating far more powerfully among Palestinians. By his own admission, Arafat — a secular Marxist-Leninist by training and inclination — finally surrendered to the Islamist agenda. As he said to Iranian President Mohammed Khatami: "We chose the way that . . . Muslims have entrusted to us." He named his violent assault on Israel after the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site, and exhorted Hamas and Islamic Jihad to join forces with Fatah's manifold paramilitary groups. Those groups included the newly formed al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades — an Islamist subsidiary of Fatah that had clearly been modeled on Hamas. Iran supported Arafat's decision. According to U.S. intelligence, Iran provided funding to the Brigades, "mostly through Hizballah." Zakariya Zubeidi, one of the Brigades' West Bank leaders, confirmed the connection: Without the help of our brothers in Hizballah, we could not have continued our struggle. They give us money and weapons. We coordinate our military operations. Unambiguous proof of Iran's new alliance with Arafat came in early 2002, when Israel captured the Karine A, a Hizballah ship in the Red Sea bearing 50 tons of Iranian-supplied weapons on its way to Gaza. Israeli sources suggested that the shipment was the work of Imad Mughniyeh, Hizballah's operations chief, who coordinated closely with the Iranians. Though Iranian funding for Arafat's paramilitary operations appeared to indicate an overall thaw in ties between Fatah and Iran, Fatah continued to lose ground to Hamas in the court of Palestinian public opinion. Amidst the gruesome cycle of Palestinian terrorist attacks and Israeli reprisals, Hamas found that its attacks against Israel had the ancillary benefit of weakening Arafat. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon punished the Palestinian Authority for nearly every Palestinian attack on Israel, even when Arafat's men were not responsible for the specific assault. The more Hamas bloodied Israel, the harder the Israelis pounded the Palestinian Authority. Within months, Arafat found himself trapped in his Ramallah presidential compound surrounded by Israeli tanks while the rest of his Palestinian Authority infrastructure was reduced to rubble. With the PA in shambles, Arafat's Fatah could no longer provide what few government services it had dribbled out to the disgusted masses in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas's dawa, or outreach network, picked up the slack by providing food, education, and other vital services. At the same time, Hamas began to encroach on territory once unquestionably controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Tribes, families, and clans loyal to Hamas fought openly with those loyal to Fatah. As the mainstream media filed story after tired story about Israeli-Palestinian violence, internecine Palestinian skirmishes grew increasingly common and went mostly unnoticed. When Arafat died in November 2004, he left a yawning vacuum. The territories were in disarray. None of the Fatah leaders — and especially Abbas, the heir apparent — seemed to know how to assert leadership. Hamas itself was also in flux. The Israelis had launched a campaign of targeted assassination that forced many of the group's leaders underground. Hamas's political office, based in Syria, assumed increased prominence, while the group's infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza shrank. Hamas increasingly appeared to be run from abroad, and the close relationship between Iran and Syria suggested that Hamas had become entirely dependent on Iran for its succor. At around this time, Saudi Arabian funding for Hamas dried up. A rash of domestic terror incidents inside the kingdom had forced the ruling family to reconsider its monetary support for Islamist terrorist infrastructure. This was painful for the Islamist group. While the exact figures are difficult, if not impossible, to find, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimated that in 2003 Hamas received $12 million annually from Saudi Arabia — about one quarter of its total annual budget. The Saudi cutoff provided Iran with an opportunity to increase its hold. Iranian funding increased over the next two years while Hamas continued to fill the void left by Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. According to an article on the website of al-Jazeera, "Iran is known to have given $120 million to Hamas" over the past three years. After Israel completed its disengagement from Gaza in the summer of 2005, local elections were held in January 2006, and Hamas stunned Fatah by scoring a landslide victory. In response, the United States imposed sanctions to ensure that no Western aid dollars for Palestinians would be run through Hamas's hands. As the West, following the American lead, threw its support behind Fatah, a Hamas spokesman confirmed that Iran "was prepared to cover" the group's "entire deficit." During a 2006 visit to Tehran by Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh, Iran pledged $250 million in aid to compensate for the Western boycott. The standoff between Hamas and Fatah continued through June 2007, when Hamas launched the brutal military offensive that toppled Fatah in Gaza. Within weeks, Fatah intelligence sources were openly accusing Iran of funding the coup and training the fighters. "It was," according to Tawfiq Tirawi, "a joint program with Iran." _____________ While the stated goal put forward by Israel's leaders for their incursion into Gaza in the first week of 2009 was merely to make it more difficult for Hamas to fire missiles at Israel, the fate of the Palestinian Authority was clearly on their minds as well. So long as Hamas rules Gaza and can use it as a base for anti-Israel violence, it will have an effective veto over any peace initiative. The tacit support the Israeli offensive received from Egypt, which views Hamas and Iran as a threat to regional stability, illustrates as well how the internecine Palestinian conflict has mushroomed into an international crisis. Hamas's reckless decision to risk a new confrontation with Israel cannot be understood without taking the full measure of Iran's role in nurturing, training, sustaining, financing, and perhaps directing the group's actions. As the Obama administration begins its tenure with the intention of bringing new energy and determination to Middle East diplomacy, it would be folly for the new President and his team to assume that restraining Israel from measures of self-defense like the recent incursion into Gaza will aid their efforts. Until there is some resolution of the conflict within the Palestinian body politic, there will be nothing to discuss, primarily because there is and will be no legitimate interlocutor on the Palestinian side. And if Hamas, with the backing of Iran, finally emerges victorious in its twenty-year effort to be the defining force of Palestinian nationalism, it will have no interest in serving as that interlocutor, no matter what Obama and the West might do or say or promise. If the past two decades are any indication, a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority will, instead, openly act as the vanguard for Iran's dogged determination to see Israel (in the phrase of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) "wiped off the face of the earth." Jonathan Schanzer, a former intelligence analyst at the U.S. Treasury, is deputy director of the Jewish Policy Center and the author of Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine. This article appeared in Commentary Magazine February 2009. It is archived at www.jewishpolicycenter.org/article/790 To Go To Top

BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL COMPLAINS OF 'OBSCENE' ATTACKS BY PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY Posted by Barbara Taverna, February 25, 2009.

This was written by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1235410704498&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

The editors of the BMJ (British Medical Journal)'s widely read print and Internet editions have declared that they will "ignore" all "orchestrated e-mail campaigns" related to politics, and have just published an article strongly criticizing the "pro-Israel lobby" for using this weapon in the form of "pornographic," "abusive" and "obscene" attacks — many by people "who have never read the original articles" they comment on. Fiona Godlee and Tony Delamothe of the London-based general medical journal (www.bmj.com) write in an editorial that appears on Wednesday that such nasty e-mail messages and letters will be regarded as "not worth the paper they're written on" and suggesting that "authors, editors, publishers, advertisers and shareholders do the same." Five articles appear in the latest issue; one is by Karl Sabbagh, who describes himself as "the British son of a Palestinian father [who] has been the target of pressure from supporters of Israel's policies against the Palestinians." He writes about nearly 2,000 "hostile e-mails" about an 2004 BMJ article criticizing the "systematic violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention by the Israeli army in Gaza," by Derek Summerfield, an honorary senior lecturer at London's Institute of Psychiatry and a teaching associate at Oxford University. Sabbagh says that most of the pro-Israel e-mails were generated by HonestReporting, a Web site that "claims to be the largest Israel media advocacy group in the world." Yet there was no evidence that any of the authors of these e-mails had actually read the BMJ article they were criticizing, Sabbagh maintains. In his analysis of the e-mails nearly five years after the Summerfield article appeared, Sabbagh concluded "that the BMJ was the target of an orchestrated campaign to silence criticism of Israel. "There is nothing intrinsically wrong with organizing an effective lobby group," writes Sabbagh, "but the ultimate goal of some of the groups that lobby for Israel or against Palestine is apparently the suppression of views they disagree with." Sabbagh also charged that as a result of another pro-Israel campaign, the International Diabetes Foundation recently apologized for an article on the difficulties faced by diabetic Palestinians in Gaza, and the editor of the foundation's Diabetes Voice on-line journal resigned. He also describes a similar experience in 1981 when World Medicine, a popular medical magazine, published an article criticizing then-prime minister Menachem Begin, and says the pro-Israel campaign "led to the dismissal of Michael O'Donnell as editor and the closure of the magazine." "Such campaigns cannot be allowed to succeed — not so much because they are wrong about the issues — but because their ultimate aim is censorship and suppression by means of intimidation," Sabbagh concludes. Writer and broadcaster O'Donnell, who was editor of World Medicine for 15 years, writes in the new BMJ issue that the British journal should be "applauded" for publishing Sabbagh's analysis. "The best way to blunt the effectiveness of this type of bullying is to expose it to public scrutiny," he wrote. He added that some of the hostile and even disgusting letters he received were addressed to his children. O'Donnell, who identifies himself as being in a family "linked harmoniously by marriage to an Israeli Jewish family that has contributed to the political and cultural development of Israel," says most of the messages came from the US. British journalist Jonathan Freedland, who describes himself as "a trustee of Index on Censorship, which campaigns for freedom of expression" and whose "mother was born in Palestine in 1936," suggests the BMJ "grow a thicker skin. In today's wired world, he says, wading into any topic of controversy triggers a deluge of e-mails. "It simply comes with the territory... The harsh reality is that what Sabbagh described as a rare, exceptional event is increasingly common — and clearly not confined to the Israel-Palestine conflict." Freedland, who is Jewish, added that "there is a strong desire to see the pressure from pro-Israel activists as somehow unique. But each of the elements Sabbagh cites — demands for resignations, the enlisting of non-readers of the publication involved — have been present in these other cases. "True, Israel-Palestine probably generates more venom than most topics, but that is hardly one-way traffic. In January 2009, anti-Israel activists forced their way into the offices of the pro-Israel lobby group, the British Israel Communications and Research Center (BICOM), damaging computer equipment, cutting phone lines and throwing documents out of the window. "True, BICOM is a partisan lobbying organization, not an independent medical journal like the BMJ. But that episode surely represents a rather more direct attempt at silencing a point of view than sending nasty e-mails," Freeland says. Prof. Elihu Richter, a public health expert and head of the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine's Genocide Prevention Program, told The Jerusalem Post: "My own direct personal experience with the BMJ is that it does have a bias against things Jewish and Israeli." By contrast with the "repetitive opinion pieces the BMJ has published by Summerfield and others, it has rejected quality papers from Israeli researchers, including one on the fine trauma care Hadassah provides for all, including Palestinians, for the flimsiest of pretexts," he says. "The problems seen with the BMJ are also seen in Britain's other leading general medical journal, The Lancet, whose editor, Richard Horton, published a report on Gaza years ago that was full of misinformation and distortions based hearsay... and invokes double standards, includes mis- and disinformation, and implicitly accepts a lower standard for the value of human life of Israelis than it does for his own," Richter continues. He called Horton and Godlee "the Ferdinand and Isabella of medical journals" (these Spanish rulers in 1492 banished the Jews from the country). The new BMJ issue also published an article by Prof. Mark Clarfield, chief of geriatrics at Soroka University Medical Center and Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, who was invited to publish four postings from his own blog about the Second Lebanon War in the BMJ. "Despite my attempts to concentrate in the blog on medical matters, a number of responses actually had little or nothing to do with the content of my postings. Some were vituperative, blaming Israel for all kinds of purported war crimes and misdemeanors. "Curiously, these authors never seemed to address the fact that Israel was responding to the breaking of a cease-fire that had just preceded eight years of unprovoked missile attacks on its southern and sovereign territory," Clarfield says. EDITOR'S NOTE: Some trenchant comments by readers. 21. Or Perhaps a "Medical" Journal should STAY OUT OF POLITICS ??? What is the British Medical Journal doing writing about the Palestinain issue? Do we have to read an article to know that a medical journal's proper role is not taking sides in a contentious political issue? Telling a medical journal to stick to medicine and avoid advocacy in politics is entirely appropriate. BMJ's editors only expose their own hypocrisy. And the attacks by Muslims on the slightest perceived insult are a 100 times more. Supporters of Israel are nto doing enough, not by a long shot. Jonathon Moseley — USA (02/27/2009 13:13) 5. Myopic Leftists spouting political statements behind veil of "academia" Is this really what the academic world has become? They feel the freedom to express their opinions, make racist comments and even freely libel one without proof because they represent the self-proclaimed "free thinking academia"?? This follows the same path as both the UN and journalists become more subjective, against their own rules and mandates. Academia should be one thing if not anything — objective, and the Brits lost this a long time ago. In the statement, BMJ insists it will not print political editorials....AFTER receiving responses on their previous political editorial. Such facism! William — (02/25/2009 22:16) Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com To Go To Top

UNRWA OFFERS POLITICAL COVER TO HAMAS Posted by Barbara Taverna, February 25, 2009.

This was written by Herb Keinon and Tovah Lazaroff, and it appeared today in The Jerusalem Post www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1235410706632&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

The UN Relief and Works Agency is systematically providing political cover to Hamas, a senior government official told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, lashing out at the agency for passing a Hamas letter to US Sen. John Kerry when he visited Gaza last week. UNRWA head Karen AbuZayd gave the letter to Kerry, along with other material, during his brief visit Thursday to the Gaza Strip. The letter, written by a Hamas Foreign Ministry adviser and later disavowed by the Islamist group, was addressed to US President Barack Obama. Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, handed the unopened letter to the US Consulate in Jerusalem. Kerry told Fox News that he never read the letter because it was sandwiched among other promotional papers the UN had given him. "Unfortunately, there is a pattern here," the senior Israeli official said. "That no one finds it strange that UNRWA, whose mandate is humanitarian, is the vehicle through which Hamas passes messages on to the US, just shows where UNRWA is at." Furthermore, the official said, UNRWA was lobbying around the world for governments to drop the international community's three preconditions to talking with Hamas — that it recognize Israel, disavow terrorism and accept previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements. It is not clear how this, or calls by UNRWA for an "independent international investigation" into alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza, fell within the organization's mandate, the official added. UNRWA spokesman Sammy Mshasha denied the allegations, saying the Israeli official should first check his facts. It was UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself, during his visit to Gaza, who called an investigation into IDF actions in Gaza, Mshasha said. As to the overall charge that UNRWA was speaking to international governments on behalf of Hamas, Mshasha said, "We are not in the business of supporting one side over the other. We are in the business of supporting Palestinian refugees and helping them." He denied UNRWA was lobbying on any party's behalf, saying the organization "is a specialized agency of the UN, mandated to aid and assist the Palestinian refugees in its five areas of operation." Regarding the Hamas letter given to Kerry, Mshasha said it was dropped at the gate of UNRWA's office and had the seal of the Palestinian Authority. "We just delivered it to the intended party. We did not open it. We are not in the business of opening other people's mail. We did not know the content," he said. UNRWA has also come under criticism from Israeli officials who say it is parroting the Hamas line. The senior Israeli official said that during Operation Cast Lead, UNRWA adopted Hamas's position of calling for a cease-fire without any preconditions, such as an end to the weapons smuggling and the missile fire on Israel. "They just echoed Hamas's positions," the official said. Likewise, the official said that the organization was very critical of Israel's actions during the war. At one point, UNRWA spokesmen indicated that at least 40 refuge-seeking civilians were killed on January 6 in a UNRWA school facility in Jabalya. Christopher Gunness, the UNRWA spokesman, said on January 7 in an interview on the Democracy Now radio program, "Well, first of all, for the attack at Jabalya, we said yesterday 30 confirmed fatalities and 55 injured, including 15 critically. Very sadly, overnight, 10 people passed away. "The fatality figure has now risen from 30 to 40," he said then. "The people in the compound, over 1,300 people — by the way, some of those, many of them had been told by the Israeli army to leave their houses and move to a safe place. Of course, Gaza is unique in being a war with a fence around it. "But they nonetheless came — frightened, terrified, vulnerable — to our center. They were coming to what they thought was a neutral United Nations shelter, and then the rest is history — 40 people killed." According to the Israeli official, this was an example of how UNRWA routinely and uncritically adopted Hamas' narrative and claims of casualties. According to the IDF, only three civilians and eight to 10 Hamas gunmen were killed near the school. The IDF said that an IDF unit that came under fire from a Hamas cell near the school returned fire. No shell hit the school. The UN issued a revised report earlier this month admitting that as the result of a "clerical error," it was mistaken when it reported that the compound itself was shelled. Gunness has told the Post in the past that UNRWA never stated that the shell hit the school, but rather always spoke in more general terms of the casualties in the area. Mshasha said the charges leveled by the Israeli official "undermines our work and makes it that much more difficult." This type of criticism "creates the impression among the public at large that UNRWA will take sides. UNRWA does not take sides. It delivers humanitarian aid. It will be a beautiful day in Gaza when we turn our attention away from immediate humanitarian aid to human development," Mshasha said. UNRWA provides 900,000 Palestinian refugees with basic food supplies. "We do not support terrorism. We do not condone it," Mshasha said, adding that UNRWA has spoken out against the Palestinian rocket attacks on civilians living in southern Israel. "It is in the same breath that we condemn the Israeli army actions that violate international law," he said. Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com To Go To Top

THE LATE ISRAELI DEMOCRACY — DIES ON A CAR BUMPER? Posted by Steven Plaut, February 25, 2009.

This appeared in the Jewish Press http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/02/late-israeli-democracy-dies-on-car.html

Freedom of speech in Israel just took another bullet. The Leftist First Amendment, under which anti-Israel leftists and Arabs are entitled to the protection of freedom of speech for everything they say but know one else is, made a comeback this week. The Israeli dual court system also struck back. Neria Ofan was convicted this week of racism by a Jerusalem Magistrate's Court. He was convicted of driving with an insensitive bumper sticker on his car. This is not a spoof. It really happened. Ofan's felony? Ofan, who lives in the West Bank, had a bumper sticker on his car that reads, "Where there are No Arabs, there is No Terror." That, fatwa-ed the court's judge Shulamit Dotan, constitutes racism. Another Jew was similarly convicted in criminal court six months back for wearing a Tee shirt containing the same slogan. You can see the bumper sticker in Hebrew just below here, but if you do not hear from me again for several years, it is because my posting it here was also deemed "racism" and I was sent off to prison to learn sensitivity. Now what does NOT constitute racism or incitement in post-democratic Israel? Arab students chanting "Death to the Jews" does not. Waving PLO and Hamas banners on campuses does not. We know that merely calling for Jews to be exterminated and for Israel to be annihilated also does not. The Supreme Court ruled just before the last election that two Arab parties whose platforms call for Israel's annihilation should be allowed to run and to sit in Israel's parliament. We know that Holocaust revisionism is protected speech, or at least that is what an Arab woman judge in Nazareth court wrote in one of her better known verdicts. We know that cheering on terrorist murders of Jewish children is not racist. After all, there are scores of leftist faculty members at Israeli universities who do THAT all the time. Dotan was one of the judges who had earlier "convicted" Moshe Feiglin of "sedition" because he had blocked a traffic intersection in the 1990s with a group of protesters against Oslo. Blocking traffic intersections for other things, such as for the demands of the Histadrut or when students want lower tuition, is democratic and permitted. Among Dotan's more notorious acts of bias was this: she was the lead judge in the trial over the indictment of Israel's ex-President Moshe Katsav, accused of sexual molestation and rape. Except that it is looking more and more like Katsav is innocent and the prosecutor is right now proposing that the case be thrown out (see this). It seems that Judge Shula held deliberations on the punishment sentence to be handed to Katsav even before his trial began!! See this. As for that slogan, "Where there are no Arabs, there is no Terror," it is very close to being an empirically verifiable statement. One can, I suppose, find terror here and there in places where there are no Arabs, like in Sri Lanka. But racism? I mean, if the court had accused the driver of perpetrating a drive-by slight empirical exaggeration, perhaps it might have a case. It actually turns out that the slogan and bumper stickers were first the invention of an operator of a bed and breakfast on the Golan Heights, who handed them out during the 2000 intifada violence in the Galilee. Its point was that the Galilee is dangerous, but the Golan, where there are virtually no Arabs, is safe, so come on up for the weekend. The sticker was then picked up by others, perhaps with a different agenda. I personally prefer the bumper sticker that reads, "Where there are No Leftists there is no Treason," and I am prepared to go to prison for having one on my car if anyone can get one printed up and sent to me. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. Write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

BEWILDERED PERES: 'I DON'T UNDERSTAND' Posted by Hands Fiasco, February 24, 2009.

This was written by Stan Goodenough who is a "Mayflower descendant; an 18-year resident of the State of Israel; husband to a wonderful wife; father to five extra-ordinary children; a journalist by profession; and a Bible-believer by God's mercy and grace." He is editor of Jerusalem Watchman. Read him on www.jnewswire.com This article was published January 12, 2009 in Jerusalem Watchman http://www.stangoodenough.com/?p=187.

More than any other Israeli, State President Shimon Peres has promoted — and cajoled and bullied his countrymen into following — what he insists is the route to peace: a "peace process" that has served only to dangerously weaken his country territorially and divide it internally in the face of its ever-stronger and more determined Muslim foe. Joint Nobel Peace Prize winner with the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the thankfully-now-dead PLO terror chieftain Yasser Arafat, Peres has doggedly refused ever to countenance the possibility that his pathway to peace is delusional. He has furiously, almost violently, brushed aside arguments and the reasoning of those of his countrymen who cannot support his approach to the conflict with the Arabs. Ever since "Oslo" in 1993 — the agreement spawned by illegal meetings held under Peres' direction — the evidence of its weakness and failure has been glaringly and painfully evident: Israel has no partner for peace. Surrendering territory to the Arabs only leads to more terrorism and more violence. Islam is at the heart of the problem. Its adherents believe they are destined to eradicate the Jewish state and wipe out its people — once and for all. Dismissing all these concerns with a wave of his hand, Peres has plowed ahead and continues to pour his influence and his resources into trying to secure a lasting peace, against all the glaring evidence and proof. Over the years I have grown accustomed to seeing and hearing the arrogant self-assurance with which he routinely disparages his critics. He even told a Jewish woman who demonstrated against Oslo that she should leave Israel and "go back to where [she] came from." But the Peres I watched give 17 minutes of his time for an interview on Sky News in the middle of last week was, by contrast, anything but his normally cocky self. Though he made some really strong and good points. Repeatedly wringing his hands as he discussed the ongoing Gaza operation and the toll it was exacting on human life, the president stressed that this was "the first time in history that a war of this nature is taking place. "A nation under siege" is standing "against a group of terrorists that don't respect any norms, any laws." What Israel has had to experience during these past years, Peres said, was "very hard" to show on television. "I can tell you, for example, that we have to keep almost a million people in shelters. You don't see it on television that we have had to stop our schools; children are not going to study; that during this morning, already, we have close to eight or ten missiles over our heads." Sounding incredulous, almost bewildered, Peres said that Israel "can hardly understand what are those people fighting [for]; why are they shooting." From Israel's standpoint "we left Gaza completely. Not only that; we made a supreme effort to withdraw our settlements by force, and handed over an independent Gaza with all the passages open, with all the commerce..." So, "what do they want? Why are they shooting? Why are they firing?" It's not clear where Peres was when right-thinking Israelis were warning, before the "disengagement," that the Arabs would only use the abandoned territory to attack Israel. Sounding helpless, the eloquent elder-statesman said "there are many things I would like to see differently: But simply, I never heard from anybody any suggestion how to stop it. It's very easy to criticize; but what can a nation do to stop when you find yourself under such an unusual, terrifying attack?" "You know about the children. It's unheard of to use children as a shelter for arms; to use mosques as an arsenal for missiles; to disguise terrorists as sick people in the hospital. And we have concrete information from this particular school — they shot mortars against us. I mean, we have to stop them; and we warned them; We say: "Don't do it." Before we bomb any place that there may be civilians, we phone them personally, and we say "leave the home." "Now what is our choice? To surrender?" Peres bemoaned the way Israel is accused of being "disproportionate" in its response to eight years of missile fire. "[T]o Israel you cannot talk about proportions. They don't have any proportions; they don't have any measurements, and nobody can explain what are their aims; what is their outlook. So I mean, no nation has ever had such a confrontation; you can't compare it with anyone else." Asked whether a ceasefire was one of Israel's aims, Peres said, "It's not a ceasefire, but shall I say a cease of terror" that we need. "It's not that we started to fire against the Palestinians and they fired against us. The problem is to end the terror. We never started it; we shall never start to shoot. We don't need any urge." "I want to tell you sincerely," the veteran peacenik stressed, again clasping his hands. "We don't want to extend the war. We don't want to prolong the war. We don't have any territorial ambitions. We're interested to bring an end to it. But to bring an end not only to the present situation but to bring an end to terror. ... They force us to reply. It's not our choice. It's the lack of choice that guides our lives." Interviewer Eamonn Holmes tried to squeeze an apology out of Peres for the deaths of Arab non-combatants in the IDF operation: "People want you to say sorry for the deaths of those innocent civilians and children yesterday." "I am sorry for all innocent death. There are innocent deaths all over the place. It's also an innocent impossible situation. A country cannot live like this. Let me say, really: If it would happen in London, you wouldn't wait a minute. ... We are the same human beings. But from far away you can serve as judges, I don't complain. We are not judges. We are victims. And we have to stop it and nobody [has] suggested [another solution]." Peres made some more strong points: Asked why Israel did not use diplomacy to deal with the Gaza issue, he explained that it takes two to tango — or to talk. "For diplomacy you need that the other side will accept diplomacy. They don't accept diplomacy. ... But just by diplomacy — unfortunately — it cannot be solved." Hitting at the bizarre and telling global viewpoint that charges Israel — a nation that has made unprecedented overtures and gestures for peace with its enemies — with warmongering and expansionist ambitions, Peres said cuttingly: "We are not so trigger-happy. We are not so enthusiastic to see our soldiers, in the winter days and nights, in Gaza. They don't have any purpose which is of a territorial or political need [to be in there]. No." He also made it perfectly clear that his country understood that it needs to use force, and that force works: "You know there was another gentleman in the north by the name of Nasrallah [Hizb'allah's leader]. He also started by firing bombs and missiles against us and a war broke out [in 2006], at the cost of the lives of a thousand people. And then he stood up and said: If I had known that Israel would react so seriously I would not have started this. "We want the Hamas people to understand that there is a cost to what they are doing. And they can save each of their children, all of their women, by not shooting. "We don't ask for any submission. We don't ask for any surrender. [We ask] simply [that they will] stop shooting. And we cannot accept that they will shoot and then that we won't shoot. We are entitled to have security like anybody else." The interviewer then came close to the very heart of the matter. "But, Mr President, surely it is not as simple as that. Hamas is not just an army of force. Hamas is an ideology. How do you bomb ...?" Peres drove in hard and fast: "What is their ideology? What is their ideology? Would you know?" Holmes squirmed to avoid the question: "But it is harder for you to tackle...." Peres pressed him: "No, no. What is their ideology? They cannot say that we occupy Gaza because we stopped the occupation. We left it completely. So what is their ideology?" SKY: "Well..." PERES: "I am not arguing with you..." SKY: "Yes." PERES: "I am trying to understand." Bang! Bang! There it was. The journalist could not answer. And Peres himself could not, or would not, say it. For Hamas' ideology is pure antisemitism and the total eradication of Israel and of all Jews. And this is not some deeply hidden secret whispered behind closed Arab doors. Hamas and all Muslims who agree with their Koran-centered worldview, shout it from the rooftops. Literally. As do their supporters — including those Floridians who chanted "Nuke, nuke Israel" at a rally last week. But neither the leftist Israeli president nor the leftist British interviewer could bring themselves to spit it out. Tacking for a more comfortable issue, Holmes aired the widely-punted notion that Israel is afraid of the incoming Obama administration: "What is your time scale in this? You've got Barack Obama waiting to become the president of America. People say ... you only listen to America; you only listen to the Bush administration. Is it important for you to finish whatever you are going to do before President Obama is inaugurated?" But the Israeli ducked the question, choosing to rather spell out how his nation has approached the conflict with the Arabs. "The ideology of Israel is peace with the Palestinians, and ready to pay the price for it, as we paid the Jordanians and the Egyptians. That is our ideology." For Peres, this price has included great chunks of his tiny historic homeland and promises of a whole lot more, including parts of its ancient capital and its holiest site — the Temple Mount. Israel has also paid in the blood of so many of its people who have been killed as a direct result of what can be called the Peres Process. And Israel has paid by weakening itself geographically and by driving deep piles into its national unity. As far as the Arab side was concerned, he continued, "they can stop endangering their children and women. It doesn't make sense. To put rockets in the kindergarten. To put shells in the rooms of the children. It never happened [that others would use human shields in this way]! Sky scurrilously accused Israel of doing the same, then tried to rapidly move on: "But Mr President you're doing the same. People are seeing it the same way. Do you see an end to...?" Peres struck: "Just a minute. No! What are we doing in the same way? Sorry. We never do it. We never did it!" Holmes tried again. "In the UN..." But Peres wouldn't let him. "No, no, please. Be careful. We never put children as shields. Did we ever put arms in kindergartens? NEVER!" Homes fell into his own trap, coming to the defense of the heinous Arab practice and accusing Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. Others wouldn't — he strongly implied: "But the fact that they are using children as a shelter ... maybe there are other people who wouldn't attack because the children are there." Then he added, lamely, "I am just portraying to you the image that is going around the world." Peres didn't flinch. "Our problem is how to put an end to the firing against civilian life in Israel for no reason, day in, day out. If you have a good answer to it, it's okay. While Israel has "due respect for public opinion ... we have to give an answer to the security of our people, and we don't want to hurt anybody in Gaza. We don't have any ambitions there, you must understand this. Our ambitions are not in Gaza." And then this man who refuses to recognize and acknowledge the reality facing his nation waxed poetic. "Our ambitions are in Israel. To see a blue sky; a safe day; without rockets and without missiles. "To this simple answer one must give either an alternative or suggest something else." Well, that's the same thing. For years, Peres and Israel's other leftist leaders have refused to hear another alternative — to consider something else: That Israel's enemies hate her because she exists. That the enemies of the Jews hate them because they exist. That their hatred cannot be negotiated away or talked away or bartered away. It can only be blown away. This is the brutal reality. And it is dictated by the Arab side. Is this finally breaking through, for Peres? SKY: "Mr President ... Can you offer us any hope, any lifeline, that things will get better?" His answer: "If the terrorists will win, none of you and none of us will know a peaceful day. If they will learn the lesson, all of us and all of them will be ... victorious. "I suggest to every free person to give a hand to bring an end to the most brutal, unbelievable, bloody craziness. I think it would be a victory for you and for me and for the Arabs and for everybody." It would be a victory for reality, and for truth, is for sure. FOLLOWUP: "PERES PLEADS FOR PALESTINE". February 24, 2009. hasn't this man done enough damage to Yisrael, already? Israeli President Shimon Peres appealed Tuesday to the new Israeli Parliament to use its term to finalize the creation of Palestine in the historical heartland of the Jewish state. Speaking at the ceremonial opening of the 18th Knesset, the leftist elder-statesman who more than any other Israeli official has facilitated the land-for-peace process that has so damaged Israel's security, urged Israel's lawmakers to 'complete negotiations with Palestinians during this term.' "Distinguished Arab leaders" had assured him, he said, that a peace accord with the Palestinian Arabs would be regarded as a regional peace agreement in which Israel would be included. Israel's president is a ceremonial figure and not part of the three-tiered Israeli government structure, which is comprised of Prime Minister and his government, the Knesset or Parliament, and the Supreme Court. Contact HandsFiasco at handsfiasco@webtv.net To Go To Top

DOES ISRAEL HAVE A RIGHT TO EXIST? Posted by Paul Lademain, February 24, 2009.

This is from Molly at pelago2000@gmail.com

Re [Road 90] Does Israel have a right to exist? (see below) Israelis should not ask this question ever again because it unnecessarily begs a negative answer from those who covet your lands. So stop begging for a beating. Unless, of course, you have a masochistic need to be bullied and reviled. If you don't stop re-opening this Pandora's Box, you will cut yourselves off at the knees. You must therefore approach such issues from a new direction. Instead, you SHOULD be asking whether Saudi Arabia has any right to exist. So get up off your knees, stiffen your backs, and present the world with a new and different image of Israelis and Jews. Practice this question: Does Saudi Arabia have any right to exist? Then argue NO! We like the sound of this question. Because it forces people to examine the means by which Saudi Arabia came into existence in 1932. Or, are you too young to consider asking such questions? If so, hit your history books! And not the ones written by self-soiling Jewish/Israeli seditionists. OK, here's the answer: The tribal chief (Abdullah, of the Saud) who eventually persuaded the Brits to recognize him in 1932 as "monarch" of the new islamic state to be known as Saudi Arabia, used the same tactics against the native peoples of the Arabian Peninsula as were used by the thankfully-dead Egyptian terrorist, Yasser Arafat: terrorism; random attacks by masked and armed forces against entire villages. Women and children, those who were not fit for breeding and slavery, were butchered. Men were beheaded and tortured. Entire villages were sacked, much as is now the case in Africa. That's how Abdullah "The First" conquered the Arabian Peninsula. Abdullah persuaded the Brits that they were obliged to recognize his conquered lands as a "theocratic Islamic monarchy to be ruled in perpetuity by himself as king" with the argument that the Brits owed him this recognition because the British government had earlier ruled that Palestine would become a Jewish Homeland. Remove your noses from your own navels and look up around you. There are plenty of facts for you people to use against those who enjoy bullying Jews. Now it's up to you people to stop asking silly questions about yourselves, and go after your tormenters. Learn history. Use it to your advantage! Viva Israel — Molly Contact Paul Lademain by email at lademain@verizon.net To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: WITHOUT END Posted by Arlene Kushner, February 24, 2009.

First things first: mea culpa. In an atmosphere of pressure, longing to share to the maximum, I have made a handful of typos and small errors: perhaps four or five in the course of the past week. Most are quite minor, but even so, not consistent with my own professional standards. And so I apologize and thank those who caught errors, and also those who read past them. I must also ask your indulgence should this happen again. Only one typo must be mentioned here. The e-mail addresses I provided yesterday for the two Congressional aides were incorrect. They are, properly: firstname.lastname@mail.house.gov. Working from habit, I inadvertently typed "org" in place of "gov." ~~~~~~~~~~ Now, to the very problematic issues at hand, which seem to be coming "without end." News has broken of the impending appointment of Chas W. Freeman Jr. to the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council. Freeman, who was U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989-1992, has an alarmingly, I will say viciously, negative and distorted attitude towards Israel. In a speech for the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs in 2007, he said; "American identification with Israeli policy has also become total. Those in the region and beyond it who detest Israeli behavior, which is to say almost everyone, now naturally extend their loathing to Americans. This has had the effect of universalizing anti-Americanism, legitimizing radical Islamism, and gaining Iran a foothold among Sunni as well as Shiite Arabs. For its part, Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them. Palestinian retaliation against this policy is as likely to be directed against Israel's American backers as against Israel itself...This makes the long-term escalation of terrorism against the United States a certainty, not a matter of conjecture." (emphasis added) Elsewhere he said, "...We abandoned the role of Middle East peacemaker to back Israel's efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoized Arab populations. We wring our hands while sitting on them as the Jewish state continues to seize ever more Arab land for its colonists." (emphasis added) On yet another occasion, he said: "There will be no acceptance of Israel, by the Arabs or by the Muslims — including the Iranians, and the Indonesians, and others, if Israel does not find a way of coexisting peacefully with the other inhabitants of the land in which it has established itself... Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; sadly, it has shown no talent for peace... (emphasis added) "..Tragically, despite all the advantages and opportunities Israel has had over the fifty-nine years of its existence, it has failed to achieve concord and reconciliation with anyone in its region, still less to gain their admiration or affection." ~~~~~~~~~~ Commentator Melanie Phillips points out that Freeman even blamed Israel for 9/11. In 2006, he said: "We have paid heavily and often in treasure in the past for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel's approach to managing its relations with the Arabs. Five years ago we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home." (emphasis added) She further cites Ed Lasky, an editor at The American Thinker, who terms Freeman "a de facto Saudi Ambassador to America" because of his promotion of the interests of Saudi Arabia. "He shares Board membership with executives from major multinationals with major markets in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world..." ~~~~~~~~~~ As chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Freeman would have the major influence on the intelligence briefings presented to the president (remember the damage caused by the National Intelligence Estimate, the NIE, in 2007, which erroneously downplayed the dangers of Iran), and would be called upon often to give direct briefings to the President. This is a matter of enormous gravity. And I see two reasons for concern. One is with regard to the damage Freeman can do. But the other is what is implied by the appointment of Freeman. A president who seeks to maintain an Israel policy that is even passively benign (not out to hurt Israel) simply does not select someone like Freeman to the top intelligence post — someone like Freeman to depend upon for securing intelligence information. Obama has exposed his true intentions to Israel here, and they are seriously malicious. As Phillips concludes: "....can anyone...doubt that the appointment by America's 44th President of Chas W Freeman as chairman of the NIC would be a stunning coup as a weapon in the armoury of the enemies of the Jewish people and the free world?" ~~~~~~~~~~ It is not too late to stop this. The appointment has not yet been made. I want to urge everyone reading this to act, and to pass the word so others will as well. This is an instance where you can make a critical difference. Freeman's appointment is not automatic, but must be passed by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Members of that committee must hear about the outrage and fear American citizens are feeling at the prospect of Freedman as Chair of the National Intelligence Council. Below you find names and contact information for key members of the committee. Please, address them with courtesty, as they are not responsible for Obama's choice, and indeed, have the power to block that choice. Some of them are warmly predisposed to Israel. Explain that this appointment would be detrimental to the true interests of the US and the Western world. Some of the reasons you can give: * Freeman would seriously undermine support for the only democracy, and the bastion of Western values, in the Middle East. * Israel is at the forefront of the fight against radical jihadism, which is of concern to all democracies, and should not be weakened, as Freeman would seek to do. * Freeman's perceptions of Israel are badly skewed and dangerous. As appropriate, you might use small portions of the quotes I provide above in making your case. Please, take the time to reach out to all of them. And remember that, when possible, fax or phone is more effective. ~~~~~~~~~~ Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Chair of the Committee Phone: (202) 224-3841 Fax: (202) 228-3954 For e-mail form: http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe Christopher (Kit) Bond (R-MO) Vice Chair (important to reach) Phone: (202) 224-5721 For e-mail form: http://bond.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.ContactForm Others who are friends, and should hear from us: Orrin Hatch (R-UT) Phone: (202) 224-5251 Fax: (202) 224-6331 For e-mail form: http://hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Offices.Contact Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) Phone: 202-224-3521 Fax: 202-224-0103 For e-mail form: http://chambliss.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction= ContactUs.ContactForm&CFID=6992675&CFTOKEN=44678780 Tom Coburn (R-OK) Phone: 202-224-5754 Fax: 202-224-6008 For e-mail form: http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction= ContactSenatorCoburn.Home Evan Bayh (D-IN) Phone: (202) 224-5623 Fax: (202) 228-1377 For e-mail form: http://bayh.senate.gov/contact/email/ Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) Phone: (202) 224-4654 Fax: (202) 224-8858 For e-mail form: http://mikulski.senate.gov/Contact/contact.cfm Olympia Snowe (R-ME) Phone: (202) 224-5344 Fax: (202) 224-1946 For e-mail form: http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorSnowe.Email With thanks to Jeff D. of ZOA, here. ~~~~~~~~~~ More to follow tomorrow. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

REPLYING TO THE LIES PROMULGATED BY THE ETHNICS STUDIES PROGRAM AT UC SAN DIEGO Posted by LS, February 24, 2009.

I think you will enjoy this read. It is from the San Diego TEAM Group and was sent to one of the professed professors in the Ethnic Studies Program at UCSD, Jose Fustes. As usual the Ethnic Studies Dept is condemning Israel. It hasn't an unkind word to say about Arab behavior. It was also posted on the Ethnic Studies Department blog. In case you don't see it there. You may find some arguments to use (for those who will be attending their "panel" tomorrow night)." See http://ethnicstudiesucsd.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/ statement-on-racial-violence-in-the-gaza-strip/#comments

Jose, All the sources that you rely on are indeed very biased and therefore unreliable by themselves, allocating as they do the majority of their time and resources to the Israel-Arab conflict, to the detriment of all the others. Additionally, their reliability regarding the facts has been proven time and again to be driven by their political agenda rather their declared mission (be it the protection and defense of Human Rights or Humanitarian Law). It is symptomatic that there are legions of organizations who all have "human rights", "peace" and "justice" in their name, when in fact they make a mockery of these lofty concepts by harping almost exclusively on Israel while ignoring the considerably worse offenses committed by every Arab country (to name only small portion of offenders worldwide). They follow the same logic you do: Israel must, by your definition, be a model student that is expected to respect all the rules, while all the others are allowed to literally get away with murder. Your double standard is sickening, and so is the way these unreliable organizations behave. But being the astute — if hopelessly biased — academic researcher that you are, you will of course ask for proof of what I'm saying, and that's easy: read their reports and draw a chart of their resource allocation to the Israeli-Arab conflict as opposed to the rest, and then add another chart on top of all the conflicts going on in the world at any given time, and you'll see the grotesque disproportion of resources obsessively allocated to the Middle East, while many areas in dire need of assistance remain wide empty spaces. It is beyond shameful, but your myopic obsession with Israel prevents you from seeing that dreadful big picture. Yes, the United Nations and the European Union are equally partial and unreliable sources because they have abandoned a long time ago the neutrality and objectivity that the citizens of the world are entitled to expect from them. These organizations were not created for the sole benefit of the Palestinian people and for the exclusive bashing of Israel. By the content of their lopsided number of anti-Israel resolutions and the huge amount of subsidies given away without supervision to the Palestinian thugocracy, they have and are still indeed proving that they have long ago decided to side with the aggressor and blame the victim, instead of the other way around. Don't distort what I wrote: I said that the Israeli Government (incl. the IDF), the Jerusalem Post, and Daniel Pipes are indeed more trustworthy sources than B'Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Haaretz, the Guardian, and all the other notoriously biased sources you listed as the ones you rely on, but I don't claim that they should be the only ones. Contrary to you who demonize the ones I mention above, I think that an objective researcher and analyst, which clearly you are not, would use all sources available, use his head and proceed with analytical precision to find the truth, not just rely on the worn-out propaganda clichés of the pro-Palestinian mythical and unsubstantiated "history". As for Palestinian sources themselves, they are notoriously unreliable, having shown time and again that facts are of no relevance when opposed to a good sloganeering opportunity (as illustrated in the famous Jenin hoax, followed later by the Mohammed Al Dura one). If you rely on these sources exclusively, you open yourself to blatant manipulation and lies. If you chose to be a willing dupe (i.e. you think you're smart, but you clearly are not), that is your privilege, but don't you dare demand of us that we do the same. Now look who's using logical leaps and somersaults to make me say what I never said. I am not in the least interested in assessing whether every other department at UCSD is guilty of racism because that is not the issue. Nice try at obfuscating my point, José, but no cigar. What is troubling here is your pathological obsession with Palestinian "victims" and your blatant ignorance of far worse, and lethal, treatment of far larger segments of population, if only in Africa alone. You and your department claim to address the scourge of racism in the world, but in fact all you do is relentlessly bash Israel. You ignore real racism everywhere else under the excuse that you need to focus on an inexistent Israeli racism. You are the racist, on two counts: you couldn't care less about the fate of black Africans, and you loathe anything Israeli in a way that any bona fide racist would envy. You are misappropriating time and resources to satisfy your personal agenda/vendetta/pathology. I believe the department of Ethnic Studies would be well inspired to remove you from your bully pulpit and take measures against such blatant abuse. Then you say that "all these conflicts in Africa deserve as much media attention and action as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict". No, they don't. You completely missed my point: they don't deserve as much media attention, they deserve FAR MORE media attention. The Israeli-Arab conflict is, in terms of casualties, a tiny coda on the landscape of world human suffering, but your myopia makes it the most important one. You should be at the forefront of that fight, but instead you are betraying it. As for it being "unfortunate that Obama didn't appoint several African envoys as well", what would that achieve? So you can easily get off the hook because it's not your problem any more, and you can go back to your favorite occupation of ranting and foaming at the mouth against Israel? That's a copout if I've ever seen once. As for Mr. Pal Ahluwalia, the Department's "specialist on African studies who has written extensively about all the conflicts you mention", how nice to hear that he exists. How utterly strange then that the Department's blog is filled with your ranting and we haven't heard anything about Arab racism in Darfur or African racism in the Congo. You say that "other faculty members do research on matters of race and state violence in other parts of the world", but (sadly) "of which nothing has been written in terms of departmental statements". What a fascinating admission. So by default, even though you claim that research is being made in other areas, our luck (or rather misfortune) is that you're the only one we are condemned to hear from? There may be some very respectable research made within the E.S. department, but since the only public one we hear about is the incredibly flawed and biased one you are producing, one is entitled to wonder if the rest of the department produces equally shoddy work. The department's blog should indeed be the window to the world of ALL research accomplished there. There is no valid reason why it should be confiscated by one graduate student who uses it as his personal tribune. I hope someone in the E.S. Department is paying attention. Then you go on with a long string of absurd statements that prove how limited, and therefore partial, your understanding of the whole conflict is: "1) Palestinians are the longest suffering and largest refugee population in the world today (4.25 million people registered with the UN and an estimated million more unregistered)." Oh please. Ever heard of the Tibetans? Ever heard of the hundreds of millions of refugees who at the end of WWII were displaced and relocated? Ever heard of the 750,000 Jews from Arab countries who had to flee from places they had lived in for generations? The difference is that all of them were relocated and started new lives, as opposed to the Palestinians who were herded in 59 refugee camps where they still are today because that's where their Arab "brethren" want them to stay, refusing to integrate them. Why don't you use your considerable analytical skills (even if flawed) analyzing the brutal pattern of racism Arab countries practice towards the Palestinians? In Lebanon and Syria in particular, the Palestinian "refugees" are confined in mini-Bantustans (the UNWRA-run camps) from which they are barred to live. That is real Apartheid for you. Compare that to the 1.5 million Arab Israelis who are full citizens of Israel. "These, of course, are the descendants of the approximately 750,000 Palestinians that were expelled from what became Israel in 1948 and the ones that fled in 1967. None were ever allowed by Israel to return)". The accepted figure is 650,000, not 750,000, and the overwhelming majority fled rather than being expelled. As to their not being allowed to return, why should Israel let them back in? The Arabs attacked with every intention to destroy Israel, the Arabs lost, end of story. If you don't like the outcome of your actions, you should have thought about it before. It's called taking responsibility for the consequences of your choices. "2) what makes this conflict unique is not so much its negative outcomes (in terms of numbers of casualties and victims there are much worse conflicts) but the amount of disinformation and spin that has historically surrounded it. Fortunately, the age of the internet and new historical research based on declassified Israeli documents and memoirs is changing that." Not quite. What the age of the internet has brought to light is the uniquely peculiar ability of the Palestinians and their friends to rewrite history because they didn't like the outcome of what actually happened (since they lost every time they attacked, they have reasons not to like it, I understand that, but everyone has to face unpleasant consequences for the choices they make, that's no reason to rewrite history to pretend that the bad choices we made were never made). Hence the so-called oxymoronic "Palestinian narrative". Oxymoronic because the very fact that it needs to be qualified as the "Palestinian" narrative indicates that truth has become irrelevant, replaced by a rosy version that blames the victim (it was Israel that was attacked by the Arabs, not the Arabs who were attacked by Israel), and glorifies the aggressor. It is indeed history upside down. Disinformation and spin are perfect synonyms for "Palestinian narrative". The bottom line is that it is so thoroughly discredited that it is not worth paying any attention to any more. "3) the US has been at best extremely impartial and at worst extremely complicit in the conflict" And why, pray tell, should it always be the US job to solve that problem when its source remains the refusal of the Arabs to accept the existence of a Lilliputian state in their midst? Arab rejectionism is the one fundamental obstacle to peace, and if they are too immature to grow up and accept that reality, let them keep paying the price of instability. It is not the US' responsibility to force Israel to make concessions with neighbors who never make any (with the wobbly exceptions of Egypt and Jordan). In strategic terms on the other hand, it is indeed the US responsibility to make sure that destabilizing states (Iran, Syria) or failed ones (Somalia, Lebanon) do not jeopardize the delicate equilibrium of the region. If anything, Israel is the only one that the US can solidly rely on in the entire Middle East. "and 4) most middle east experts agree that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is an enormous obstacle to creating peace and stability in the region (Israel gives many of the dictators and war lords in the Middle East plenty of excuses to exist by virtue of them (falsely) claiming to be the defenders of Arabs and/or Muslims against "the Americans" and "the Jews"). Do you realize the absolute absurdity of what you wrote here? Israel is the excuse for the many dictators and war lords' existence in the region? Are you demented? Dictators and war lords since the beginning of times have never needed any excuse to be dictators and war lords and to do what dictators and war lords do, which is plunder and abuse their own people. One has to be severely dim-witted to attempt to establish a correlation between their abuse and the existence of a tiny State where these primitive practices do not hold sway. This comment actually betrays a really racist, demeaning and contemptuous attitude towards the Arabs: what you are saying is that they are too primitive to shed their barbaric ways, but since the problem can't be stated in those terms, the next best thing is to find a convenient scapegoat, which by the very nature of its society is the exact opposite of these primitive countries. What better choice than Israel, who had the audacity to create a post-tribal country with values that benefit all its people rather than just the neighbor's warlords and their kin? Beyond that, think about it: do you really think that you are helping the Palestinians by lining up one excuse after another for their inexcusable behavior (let me count the ways: complete rejectionism of Israel's right to exist, systematic deceptions and lies, terrorism, culture of hate, victimology and dependency on international charity)? These are all the signs of an unruly, immature, stubborn and extremely disruptive adolescent. Normally it's just a phase. But just as when idiotic and doting parents excuse all misbehavior on the part of their kids, which inevitably results in more and more offenses against society on the part of those kids, the Palestinians have been kept in this state of delayed adolescence by well-meaning but very misguided people of your sort, resulting in removing any incentive for them to ever change their behavior. The questions I have for you is: how much longer are you going to condone this adolescent destructive streak (and keeping blaming the neighbor)? "What I'm saying is that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is no small matter yet I do agree with you that there are others that are equally important." So nice to hear you finally admit that, even though you are wrong again when you say there are other matters that are "equally" important. No, they are not "equally" important, they are considerably more important, for the simple reason that large numbers of people are not just inconvenienced, displaced, arrested or what have you, but are just plain massacred in other places. These are not abstractions. These are human beings wiped out because they happen to belong to the wrong group du jour. So, be consistent then: stop whining about the Israeli conflict, stop putting all the blame on the Israelis, start upbraiding the Palestinians into behaving like adults and responsible members of the world community, and last but not least, focus on places where racism is violently in effect. Then, maybe, the work done at the Ethnic Studies Department will start having some relevance. To Go To Top

GRADUATES OF GUANTANAMO; UNRWA THREAT WORKED; ARABS RUN PARTS OF ISRAEL; Posted by Richard H. Shulman, February 24, 2009.

IS ISRAEL GAINING ARAB ALLIES? Foreign Min. Livni thinks so. She gave as an argument for land-for-peace the notion that countries neighboring Israel are with Israel against Iran (IMRA, 2/1). She doesn't understand. Egypt is annoyed with Iran. But it continues to let arms be smuggled to Iran's proxy in Gaza, because Hamas fights Israel. NEGOTIATIONS WITH IRAN IS NOTHING NEW For 30 years, the US has been negotiating with Iran and making concessions. Iranian officials made false promises. They like to talk for concessions, not make peace with us (Prof. Steven Plaut, 2/3). BARAK'S SOLUTION He favors giving the P.A. a state in the Territories and connecting them beneath Israel by a tunnel whose traffic the P.A. would control (IMRA, 2/2). Is that tunnel safe for Israel? WHY IT IS UNETHICAL TO REBUILD GAZA Israel blockaded and then bombarded Gaza, partly to show that Hamas brought suffering upon its people, whereas Abbas did not. Now, out of misguided sentimentality, the world wants to rebuild Gaza. Then Gaza would not contrast unfavorably with Abbas, after all. That is not the lesson that the world supposedly wants the Arabs to learn. The lesson would be that Hamas can make big mistakes and take grave risks. It can keep shooting at Israel, because the world would restore Gaza to pre-war condition. The world would rebuild Iran's base there or Gazans would steal the foreign aid, as usual. Most of it would go to Hamas and followers. The people of Gaza overwhelmingly support Hamas' struggle against Israel. Why help Gazans to live better? (Prof. Efriam Inbar in IMRA, 2/2). I am suspicious of an uncaring world being so solicitous of jihadists against Israel. What is their real motive? GRADUATES OF GUANTANAMO S. Arabia listed 85 suspects in an attempt to revive al-Qaida there. 11 were released from Guantanamo and passed through S. Arabia's touted rehabilitation plan (IMRA, 2/8). Released too soon from prison and from rehabilitation. ASSESSING THE 2-STATE SCHEME [NOTE: I think that the Jews deserve the land, the Muslims don't, and giving the Muslims another Palestinian Arab state merely boosts jihad.] The West, including Israel, gave the PLO billions of dollars and trained 75,000 of its troops. The PLO enjoys international support whatever it does. It could have built a state in all but name. That would show responsibility. It could have taught its people democracy and peace. Instead it made its autonomy gangster-ridden and indoctrinates the people in endless jihad. John Bolton, Daniel Pipes, and Efraim Inbar find the two-state scheme proved unworkable. They assume that Israel doesn't want to control the Territories. Actually, Israelis don't want to relinquish Judea-Samaria. The three suggest that Egypt reassert control over Gaza and Jordan reassert control over Judea-Samaria. They know that Egypt and Jordan both reject that idea, because Hamas and the PLO would endanger national security in Egypt and Jordan. It is a well founded fear. Also, it would leave Israel with indefensible borders. Another problem with the suggestion is that although all those Arab parties are rivals, they or at least their people overwhelmingly share the same jihadist ideology: hate the Jews and destroy Israel. Arafat cracked down on Hamas only when it threatened his rule, not when it raided Israel. How is Egyptian control over Gaza going to protect Israel from terrorist raids [like those from Hamas which obtains arms because Egypt lets arms it and from raids that Egypt and used to sponsor when it controlled Gaza before?] How long would Egypt control Hamas, before Hamas and Egypt's Muslim brotherhood control Egypt? If Israel intervened against terrorists in territory controlled by Egypt or Jordan, those Arabs states could be incited into war on Israel. Caroline Glick seemed to suggest that Israel retain control over the Jewish Territories until the Muslim Arabs civilize (IMRA, 2/9). That is unjust for Israel. Also, it could take a hundred Years. The Jewish people have a better claim to the Territories, under the Mandate and under international law permitting the taking of land for security against another attack from that land. I wrote about that to Caroline Glick. She replied that she agreed with me. UNRWA THREAT WORKED Armed men hijacked truckloads of relief goods that UNRWA had intended to give the people of Gaza free. UNRWA announced that it suspended aid to Gaza until the goods were returned. The goods were returned! (IMRA, 2/9.) NUISANCE SUITS DON'T RESOLVE ISSUES The Palestinian Center For Human Rights accuses the IDF of perpetrating "systematic war crimes" against Palestinian Arab civilians. It represents a family that claims that the IDF shot a member wantonly. It asked the IDF to investigate and compensate. The IDF replied that it needed the bullets extracted from the cadaver, so it could attempt to trace them to an Israeli soldier's weapon. The family refused the request. It said, let the IDF accept P.A. medical records. The IDF said that is insufficient forensics. There it stood. After several years, the IDF decided to end the suit, by offering limited compensation, which was accepted. The offer did not resolve who, in or out of the IDF, was responsible (IMRA, 2/10). Were I running Israel, I would not have given the Center, which is a propaganda organization, any satisfaction or foothold. P.A. hospitals collude with their regime. The P.A. blames Israel for deaths it causes. There is no evidence against any soldier. OIL PRICE COLLAPSE ENDS ARAB "OIL THREAT" An article acknowledges that markets change, but counts on Arab oil exporters being out of money, implying that they couldn't boycott the US. When the recession ends, they will be back in the money! We lack a program to reduce oil dependency and the related pollution and over-consumption of resources. Arb threat not ended. Arab budget deficits are illusory. When prices rose, they boosted budgets. Prices fell, they post deficits. All they have to do is reduce their inflated budgets. Iran still has funds for nuclear weapons development and for financing terrorism. Oil is fungible. If demand got tight, again, and the Arabs withheld oil, rather than just refusing to sell it to us, we couldn't just buy more from other suppliers. Other customers would have taken up those suppliers' product. Prices would rise. I think we are dependent upon imports and profligate with tax revenues. We need a major program to return to practicality and to sensible values. ELECTION PROVES LACK OF DEMOCRACY IN ISRAEL Umm El-Fahm has a high population, all Arabs. It is notorious for counting more ballots than are eligible. Arabs at the city's entrance barred possible election monitors, threatened to riot if activist Marzel came, so the Attorney-General barred him, and threatened riots unless another left (Arutz-7, 2/10). TURKISH PREMIER'S RANT At Davos, the Prime Minister of Turkey lost his temper and made strong but false accusations against Israel. Turkey has perpetrated actual brutality and crimes, worse than the ones fabricated against Israel (Prof. Steven Plaut, 2/4). WHAT "ZIONIST PROPAGANDA MACHINE?" The Arab European media are making Israel seem illegitimate. Europeans don't know enough about Israel to identify with it. British campuses are leading an effort to submerge Israel under Arab rule. They call it the "one state solution" [but it would put the Jews' fate in bloodthirsty Muslim Arab hands]. Israel needs to mount public relations campaigns of its own. Israel has no satellite broadcasting in Arabic or in English, to match al-Jazeera. Nor does it have a media department for doing so. The government was inclined to set up one, but the Finance Dept. said it lacked the funds for it IMRA, 2/4). Those facts contradict the impression that anti-Zionists try to give, expressed with indignation and unwarranted suspicion, that there is a Zionist propaganda machine. The claim is ludicrous. That is especially true of the anti-Zionist or appeasement-minded ruling class in Israel. U.S. VENGEANCE AGAINST POLLARD Jonathan Pollard gets a lot of mail. He considers it his lifeline. However, when he attempts to write back, those who check it for unauthorized information discard it all. All! (IMRA, 2/4). That petty vindictiveness by the US government is disgraceful. THE IDF SHOOTING OF DR. EL-EISH'S DAUGHTERS The IDF was engaged in heavy and close combat with Hamas for three days in Sajaia. The IDF had warned inhabitants of the area to evacuate temporarily, for their own safety. Israel telephoned Dr. El-Eish several times, urging him to evacuate his house, as others had done from theirs. The IDF found tunnels for ambushing troops and identified booby-trapped houses. Under heavy fire, the troops saw which house most of it was emanating from. They also noticed figures in the next house acting suspiciously like people spotting for artillery strikes. The IDF fired at those figures. Later they found they had killed Dr. El-Eish's daughters. They were criticized for harming civilians (IMRA, 2/4). I think that Hamas and Dr. El-Eish deserve that criticism. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com To Go To Top

CROSS-POLLINATION IN TERRORIST GROUPS Posted by Family Security Matters (FSM), February 24, 2009.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Douglas Farah is an award-winning investigative journalist and Senior Fellow in Financial Investigations and Transparency at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. E-mail him at doug@douglasfarah.com. This article appeared in today's Family Security Matters (FSM). It is archived at (http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.2602/pub_detail.asp).

My colleague Zachary Abuza wrote an interesting look at the Tamil Tigers (LTTE), now in demise. As he notes, the LTTE pioneered many innovations in the use of terrorism that spread to other terrorist groups around the world. Among the strategies the LTTE innovated are the use of suicide bombings and fund raising outside of state sponsorship. One of the most adaptive groups using some the LTTE model has been the FARC in Colombia, while suicide bombing have been taken up by Islamist groups around the globe. This is, to me, one of the biggest changes that the new world order has brought in the past 15 years among non-state armed groups — the ability to rapidly exchange "best practices" and experiences across the globe. In years past, Marxists would train Marxists, (the Cubans, Sandinistas and FMLN for example, in the Central American conflicts) and U.S.-sponsored groups would receive instruction, but there was no real way — except direct meetings in camps and under state sponsorship — to exchange experiences. The Internet has changed that, and the end of the Cold War has helped erase many of the lines that once existed in who will deal with whom. At the same time, state sponsorship for many organizations was being reined in or cut off. The shifting lines was largely lost on the intelligence community looking at radical Islamist groups, who believed Sunni groups like al Qaeda would not deal with Shiite groups like Hezbollah, although the documented cross-training between the two groups began at least in the early 1990s, while bin Laden was in Sudan. As LTTE pioneered certain tactics, so did ETA in Spain (the use of explosives and LNG bombs), the IRA and IRA-P in Ireland (also explosives and cell structures) and others. The FARC, in turn, picked them up, improved on them, and taught new techniques. The sharing is not new. But the Internet and lack of ideological constraints have greatly accelerated the ability to share knowledge among terrorist groups. Manuals can be found on the internet, the FARC and other groups regularly exchanged ideas with both non-state actors and state actors (Cuban and Venezuelan intelligence) and the lag time has shortened. Those using IEDs in Iraq were quickly able to transfer the technology to the Islamists in Afghanistan, in matters of hours or days, rather than weeks or months. Money transfer mechanisms, pioneered by the drug cartels and other groups around the world (the Black Market Peso Exchange, a perennial favorite in the drug world, has been adapted by terrorist and organized crime groups around the world, with regional adaptations.) My point is that the cross-pollination among terrorist groups, secular and religious, has greatly accelerated and now any group will deal with almost any other group in the mix if the situation is mutually advantageous to do so. We can no longer compartmentalize among them and pretend they don't deal with each other. They do, and often it does not have to be face to face at all. Chat rooms, electronic bulletin boards and virtual classrooms make that unnecessary. The Tigers, FARC and others are far ahead in information sharing than the law enforcement and intelligence community is. Contact Family Security Matters (FSM) at info@ familysecuritymatters.org To Go To Top

PLEASE READ AND ACT ACCORDING TO YOUR CONSCIENCE Posted by Fred Reifenberg, February 24, 2009.

This comes from Jane Curtis. Jew Watch is a hate-filled site. It hates Jews. It distorts and lies. It is a disgrace.

Subject:Fwd: Antisemitic website- PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO READ THIS AND TO DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO....NOW! PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO YOUR LISTS, AND SIGN THE PETITION. A website named "jewwatch" is available on Google. It is at http://www.jewwatch.com WITH OVER 500,000 SIGNATURES WE CAN HAVE IT REMOVED. ITS CONTENTS ARE DISGRACEFUL AND SHOULD BE TAKEN EXTREMELY SERIOUS. SIGN THE PETITION BELOW AND GET Jew Watch BANNED. NOW. Please sign at http://www.petitiononline.com/rjw23 If we each do nothing to make a difference, then the world will never change. Thanks FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ THIS AND DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO. Sign at http://www.petitiononline.com/rjw23 AND PLEASE FORWARD THIS ON TO ALL YOUR CONTACTS. Contact Fred Reifenberg by email at freify@netvision.net.il and visit http://fred343-enjoy.blogspot.com/ to see examples of his graphic art. To Go To Top

THURSDAY THE RABBI GOT FOOLED Posted by Moshe Phillips, February 24, 2009.

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield can be counted among the foolish people who thought that they knew Muzzammil Hassan and what he stood for. "Mo" Hassan is the Islamic TV executive who confessed to murdering his wife and leaving her decapitated body in the offices of the Bridges TV network they created together. Rabbi Hirschfield was fooled by Hassan into believing he was interested "fostering understanding between cultures and diverse populations." Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is a foolish rabbi. Rabbi Brad is the president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (CLAL) and wrote the foolish book You Don't Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism. In that 2008 masterwork Rabbi Brad attempted to overturn thousands of years of Jewish Thought and proclaim that there is no absolute truth. Foolish book. Foolish Rabbi Brad. Rabbi Brad foolishly decided he wanted to be a TV star. His foolish show is called Building Bridges: Abrahamic Perspectives on the World Today, which began airing on an American Islamic TV network called Bridges TV in 2006. The foolish show is described as "Rabbi Hirschfield is joined by Christian and Muslim leaders to look at world events from their common Abrahemic Roots." Foolish Rabbi Brad thought that he was working with "moderate" Muslims. On February 12, 2009 Muzzammil Hassan, the founder of the pro-Islamic Bridges TV network, beheaded his estranged wife Aasiya Zubair Hassan. "Mo" Hassan had violently abused his wife when they lived together. The controversial Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) organization presented Muzzammil Hassan with an award at the first banquet of their Pennsylvania chapter on April 7, 2007. CAIR National Chairman Parvez Ahmed posed with Hassan for pictures at the Hilton Hotel in Philadelphia. Investor's Business Daily in a March 6, 2007 editorial declared CAIR to be "the PR machine of militant Islam." A second TV series called, American Pilgrimage, was created by Foolish Rabbi Brad in 2008 for Bridges TV. It was described as "bringing viewers into the homes and mosques of Muslim leaders across the country..." Rabbi Brad most not have cared about CAIR. One wonders what Foolish Rabbi Brad thought of the abuse in the Hassan family's home. Foolishly Newsweek magazine declared Rabbi Brad to be "one of the nation's 50 most influential rabbis." The media loves foolish rabbis. Rabbi Brad has a weekly radio show and has been on PBS many times. On PBS Foolish Rabbi Brad criticized the "extremist" Jewish Settlers in Judea and Samaria (that he foolishly referred to as the "West Bank"). PBS spoke to Foolish Rabbi Brad for their Frontline pogrom, er program, about the September 11th Islamic terrorist attacks. For PBS Foolish Rabbi Brad stated: "It's just that when I look at those terrorists, I don't see something wholly "other," because I know from my own life experience what it means to allow your most deeply felt beliefs to motivate you to do violent things to other people. Now, it's true, I haven't done anything even approaching that. I don't even think that Jewish terrorists have done — and there are Jewish terrorists who are using the traditions I hold most dear to justify and to motivate their terror — have done anything approaching that. But I'm not going to sit here and pretend it's wholly other, because it's not. When I look in their faces, I do see the shadow side of what were once some of my dreams and aspirations, and continue to be for some of my teachers from that time." Foolish Rabbi Brad compared the 9/11 hijackers to fellow Jews. Now that's not just foolish; that's what our forefathers used to call beyond the pale. FOXNews.com reported on Feb 17, 2009 that Foolish Rabbi Brad stated the following on the day of Aasiya Zubair Hassan's funeral "I will only say to those who leap to the conclusion that this kind of thing is intrinsic to Islam, ask yourselves if you think that drunkenness is intrinsic to Irish Catholics, or cheating in business is to Jews?" The statement came from Rabbi Brad's foolish "Windows & Doors" blog on beliefnet.com. How can one even begin to respond to such foolishness? Jews in America have a choice. Be foolish and allow Rabbi Brad to participate in organized Jewish life or shun him as the fool he is and hope that he finds a real job more suited to his intellect. Perhaps as a stable boy cleaning horse manure from barns? And now let us join in prayer: May G-d bless and keep Foolish Rabbi Brad far, far away from us. Moshe Phillips is a member of the Executive Committee of the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans For a Safe Israel — AFSI. The chapter's new website is at: www.phillyafsi.com. To Go To Top

JUST THREE YEARS AGO — MUSLIMS' FASCIST GANG ATTACK ON ILAN HALIMI Posted by American, February 23, 2009.

MUSLIMS' FACSIST GANG ATTACK ON ILAN HALIMI The Shocking unimaginable Torture for weeks (to the sound of reciting the Quran...) and murder by a gang of (about) 30 Muslims called the "Barbarians" [with additional "drop in" Muslim friends that happily participated in the torture] of the young french Jew Ilan Halimi (seduced by a Muslim prostitute sent by the gang to get into a trap). French authorities admit: RACISM played a "role" in barbarian act. http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/AntiSemi/7856.htm Murder of Targeted French Jew: "They acted with indescribable cruelty," the judiciary police chief leading the investigation said. "They kept him naked and tied up for weeks. They cut him and in the end poured flammable liquid on him and set him alight." http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2006/02/ murder_of_targe.html The Murder of Ilan Halimi Tuesday, March 07, 2006 ...Little by little, information emerged about the crime. There were at least fifteen thugs, maybe more. They had used a girl to seduce Halimi into the trap where he was captured. They knew he was a Jew and they had chosen him for that reason. In his pocket they found the phone number of a rabbi and he was the first person they called, telling him: "We have a Jew. The family has to pay. If the family cannot pay, it will be the synagogue." In succeeding days, they called the rabbi again, howling sentences full of hatred. Later, they called the family, asking for $600,000, before lowering the price to $5,000. They spoke to the mother, to Halimi's sisters, uncle, and father. When they were not asking for money, they were reciting suras from the Quran. In some of the conversations it was possible to hear Halimi screaming in the background. The thugs sent a videotape showing the young man naked, humiliated, handcuffed, just like on a Zarqawi videos from Iraq. .. During the last ten weeks, the people who tortured and killed Ilan Halimi had tried unsuccessfully to kidnap four other Jews.. http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID= 609AC68E-E190-4749-A7E8-CF30DF89AF58 ... Barbarians seemed an appropriate name. The shocking cruelty inflicted on Halimi seemed to have little to do with efforts to extract money from his anguished family. It evoked the sadistic moral universe of A Clockwork Orange, the novel by Anthony Burgess, with a dose of anti-semitism thrown in. Thanks to Yalda's charms, Halimi was imprisoned and tortured with acid and cigarette burns for more than three weeks in the heart of a council estate. More than 30 neighbours in the building knew what was happening but said nothing about the crime, part of a worrying wave of attacks against Jews all over the country. Besides Yalda, several women have been arrested in an investigation into their role in botched efforts to lure other Jewish men into "honey traps". "He wanted a Jew," a girl called Audrey told police, referring to Youssouf Fofana, the charismatic leader of the Barbarians, who was listed by the girls in their telephone directories as "Youssouf the barbarian". His choice of victims was based on two anti-semitic myths: that Jews are all rich and that they stick together. "They're a big community," Fofana told Audrey. "United and willing to pay." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2114296_2,00.html Brutal murder was anti-Semitic crime, says Sarkozy | World news ...Feb 22, 2006 ... Mr Sarkozy told the French parliament that the gang sought for the murder of Ilan Halimi, 23, whose naked body was found by railway tracks ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/22/france.mainsection Tale of Torture and Murder Horrifies the Whole of France ...Feb 22, 2006 ... The murder of a 23-year-old cell-phone salesman, Ilan Halimi, took place over three weeks, during which he was tortured while his captors ... http://www.nysun.com/foreign/tale-of-torture-and-murder- horrifies-the-whole/27948/ The murder of Ilan Halimi — Commentary by Melanie Philips February 24, 2006 As if the kidnap, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi near Paris wasn't bad enough, the way it has been dealt with and reported has graphically illustrated what can only be described as a pathological refusal within Europe to acknowledge the fact that French Jews are being attacked and murdered by Muslims in a kind of rolling pogrom. Ilan Halami was a Jew. He was... kidnapped and murdered because he was singled out as a Jew for this fate. A number of recent kidnappings have taken place of which the vast majority of victims have been Jews and their kidnappers Muslims. As Nidra Poller has reported in the Wall Street Journal [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114064452021880485.html]: ... the gang phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Quran, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background. The family has publicly criticized the police for deliberately ignoring the explicit anti-Semitic motives, which were repeatedly expressed and should have dictated an entirely different approach to the case from the start. Police searches have now revealed the presence of Islamist literature in the home of at least one of the gang members. The highest echelons of the French government are now preoccupied with the murder of Ilan Halimi. Paris is well aware that the case threatens France's international reputation, but far more than that is at stake. Once again, as in the suburban riots of 2005, the country is forced to come face to face with the criminalized, alienated and racist Muslim youth and their adult enablers in its midst. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin declared, in a long speech delivered at the annual dinner of the CRIF, that this heinous crime was anti-Semitic, and that anti-Semitism is not acceptable in France http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=236 according to reports in the French press, some of the suspects in police custody said that they tortured Ilan with particular cruelty simply because he was Jewish. No longer able to deny or play down the racial motive, the investigation is entering a new phase. One of the most troubling aspects of this affair is the probable involvement of relatives and neighbors, beyond the immediate circle of the gang, who were told about the Jewish hostage and dropped in to participate in the torture. Ilan's uncle Rafi Halimi told reporters that the gang phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background. The family has publicly criticized the police for deliberately ignoring the explicit anti-Semitic motives, which were repeatedly expressed and should have dictated an entirely different approach to the case from the start. Police searches have now revealed the presence of Islamist literature in the home of at least one of the gang members. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008006 Halimi suspect Extradited http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/world/?content_id=2941 Mideast Dispatch Archive: Ilan Halimi: Tortured and killed in ...Feb 23, 2006 ... ILAN HALIMI A VICTIM OF "ISLAMO-FASCISM" .... http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000645.html Gang of Barbarians http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=031506D French suburban 'barbarians' (mainly Arab Muslims) target Jews http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060402-092358-1704r Mark Steyn on the murder of Ilan Halimi http://www.judeoscope.ca/breve.php3?id_breve=0860 May his memory be a democratic blessing http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=8755 Halimi died because he was Jewish http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/692684.html Halimi's recent murder is only now being recognized in France as a racist hate crime. While the delay in such recognition needs to be addressed, the French are finally beginning to acknowledge that such offences are being perpetrated in France and must not be explained away or ignored — for the good of the country as a whole. http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=4/b/viii/010320061 NY Memorial for Ilan http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=99333 Commentary http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=236 Remembering Ilan Halimi http://powerlineblog.com/archives/013259.php French leaders pay tribute to Ilan Halimi at Paris synagogue http://www.ejpress.org/article/news/france/6232 Mother of murdered French Jew http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=16437&intcategoryid=2 Father of Ilan Halimi describes kidnapping ordeal http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395555768&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull The story of Ilan Halimi's murder at the hands of a terrorist gang of French Muslims brings to the surface the various pathologies now converging to make the prospect of annihilating all Jews seem possible to our enemies. First, there are the murderers who took such apparent pleasure and felt such pride in the fact that for 20 days they tortured their Jewish hostage to death. This makes sense. Anti-Semitism in the Muslim dominated suburbs of Paris and other French cities is all-encompassing. As Nidra Poller related in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, "One of the most troubling aspects of this affair is the probable involvement of relatives and neighbors, beyond the immediate circle of the gang [of kidnappers], who were told about the Jewish hostage and dropped in to participate in the torture." It appears that Ilan Halimi's murderers had some connection to Hamas. Tuesday, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that police found propaganda published by the Palestinian Charity Committee or the CBSP at the home of one of the suspects. The European Jewish Press reported this week that Israel has alleged that the organization is a front group for Palestinian terrorists and that in August 2003 the US government froze the organization's US bank accounts, accusing it of links with Hamas. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395477657&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Ottawa memorial service recalls murdered/tortured Jew http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=8735 There you have it, Quran-ic Torture, Islamic Fascistic hatred, "Palestinian — charity" & Propaganda all in one case, involving around 30 Muslims, plus "ordinary" 30+ Muslims (neighbours) that knew and said nothing! ______ A FOLLOW-UP ATTACK? "Jewish teen tortured in French town where Ilan Halimi was killed" 06/03/2008 The incident of brutal abuse began at 10 A.M. on February 22. Mathieu Roumi, 19, whose father is Jewish, was strolling through his neighborhood in the Paris suburb of Bagneux, which has been the site of violent riots by immigrants in the past two years. The suburb became notorious as the scene of Ilan Halimi's 2006 murder, which horrified France. ...after which they beat him and, with the help of a third friend, dragged him to a dark basement. The three assailants were joined by three other youths, all neighborhood residents and neighbors of Roumi. For two hours the attackers tortured the young man. One shoved cigarette butts into his mouth, another took issue with Roumi's Jewish origin, grabbed correction fluid and scrawled "dirty Jew" on his forehead. The six men proceeded to scream at him and threaten that he would die the way Halimi did. They identified themselves as members of the "Barbarians," the same gang that kidnapped Halimi from his store, demanded ransom for his release, and when that was not forthcoming, tortured the 23-year-old over the course of three weeks. Moments after he was dumped on the street, Halimi died. ... "We admire Youssouf Fofana!" they shouted at him, referring to the leader of the gang that murdered Halimi. Fofana and 29 other suspects are on trial for abduction, torture and murder. If convicted, they can expect a life sentence. ...the six assailants were arrested. Most are in their 20s, two come from Muslim homes... http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/961212.html Contact American at american1627@yahoo.com To Go To Top

THE SYNAGOGUE OF UMM EL-KANATIR Posted by Carol Flatto, February 23, 2009.

We toured this excavation on our last AFSI mission Last November. This articles was written by Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304824152&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg is a senior fellow of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archeological Research in Jerusalem.

The Golan remains a mystery for many of us. Before the Six Day War, little was known about it in literature and even less on the ground. Only after its conquest by the IDF in 1967 could historians and archeologists begin to reveal its rich history. The structure's size makes it one of the biggest ancient synagogues. (Photo: Golan Tourist Board) They began to find and document dozens of synagogues from the Byzantine period, towns of the Jewish revolt against the Romans, early Christian sites of the time of Jesus, a city of the Hellenistic period, major Iron Age settlements, Early Bronze Age tombs and even one of the most mysterious constructions of Chalcolithic times, 6,000 years ago, when men and women worked in copper and stone to form remarkable monuments. But even today, a little more than 40 years after the end of the Six Day War (and 40 years is a significant figure in our ancient history), the Golan is still off the beaten track and its impressive historical remains are not as well known as those of Galilee and the Negev. Today on the Golan, the greatest Jewish interest centers on the synagogues, which number as many as 25. Some have been largely renovated, like that of Katzrin, but one of the most fascinating stands in ruins at Umm el-Kanatir, and is now being carefully reconstructed stone by stone by engineer Yeshu Drei and archeologist Haim Ben-David of the Kinneret Academic College and Bar-Ilan University. Drei has erected a giant mobile crane on the site and plans to lift all the remaining black basalt stones, which have been carefully numbered from one to more than 2,000, into position within the next two years. The work has been going on apace for some five years and, when complete, it will be a fine monument to the skill of the original builders of the fifth and sixth centuries CE and the meticulous reconstructors of today. It already gives us today an impressive picture of what the synagogue must have been like in the past. The name of the site, Umm el-Kanatir, is Arabic for "mother of the arches," as it is situated just 200 meters from a natural spring that issues from the cliff and has been directed into three basins originally surmounted by three monumental basalt arches. They are the work of a Roman settlement, of the time of Rabbi Judah Hanassi, that venerated the natural water source and had seemingly worshiped cultic statues in the niches between the arches. Only one arch remains intact, but the water basins are still running with their natural supply, and it looks as if the early Jewish inhabitants used the abundant water for the washing and whitening of flax, a local product. The process would have made it into fine clothing material for the rich and prosperous citizens of the local Jewish and pagan population of the adjoining cities like Sussita and Beit Saida, called Hippos and Julia by the Romans. But flax was also used for run-of-the-mill peasants' clothing and thus this center would have supplied many surrounding villages with their cloth. Umm el-Kanatir seems to be relatively difficult to get to, there is no clear track or pathway, but to have reached it by donkey would not have been a problem. Besides the growing of flax, the land was suitable for small-scale husbandry, olives and herding, but too steep for large-scale crops and there is little evidence of terracing. After the Roman period, Jews settled here and became wealthy enough, probably from the flax industry, to build their fine synagogue in the fifth century. To the surprise of the archeologists, they found another floor level and column bases below the main floor, and there is a suspicion that the structure was started 100 or 200 years earlier on a lower base. The synagogue we see today would have been the remains of a sixth-century embellishment made 100 years or so later than the main phase. The Jews lived on in the village for several hundred years after the completion of the synagogue, but their buildings, including the synagogue, were largely destroyed by the major earthquake of 749, which also destroyed the Christian monastery of Kursi and most of the buildings in Sussita, both fine constructions near the shores of Lake Kinneret. The ruined buildings of Umm el-Kanatir survived in poor state and were used by local shepherds for many years and, as late as the 1950s, Syrian herders moved in and built their primitive houses from the stones of the ruined synagogue. So the site was to some degree in continual habitation and in fact it was not completely unknown to scholars before 1967. In the late 19th century, Gottlieb Schumacher, a German Templer engineer, surveyed the area of the Golan for the Hejaz railway line and its branch to Haifa, and he found the synagogue ruins, as did Sir Laurence Oliphant, an eccentric British diplomat who had worked in China and Japan. Oliphant became an ardent Zionist and lived for some years near Haifa. He had travelled extensively in Russia and Nepal before turning his attention to the then-desolate Golan, which interested him because of his fascination with the mysterious and the occult. They both recorded their observation of the ruins but could do little except to identify them as a synagogue. This was fairly clear because of two column capitals with the figure of a menora and shofar, and a pronounced bima, four meters high, in front of the ark, the only such feature among the synagogues of the Golan and Galilee. The bima, which is being restored, was approached by a short flight of stairs, still in position. The size of the structure, 18 meters long by 13 meters wide and calculated to have been 12 meters high, makes it one of the biggest of ancient synagogues and indicates the relative wealth of the village community. It will have served as a community center, as most synagogues did, with learning facilities and accommodation for travelers. It had an upper story but this was not necessarily for women, rather it was an overflow for days of greater attendance, for town meetings as well as services. Whether women attended the synagogue is still a matter of debate. If and when they did, they would have sat in a separate section, probably on the ground floor, either in a side room, of which there is evidence in some synagogues, or in a roped-off section of the main hall. Most ancient synagogues were single-story structures with benches around three sides of the hall, and without provision for the women, and it is indeed doubtful if, at this earlydate, the women ever left the home to attend services. Besides the capitals crowned with the menora and shofar, already mentioned, there are a few strange carvings that have still to be interpreted. There is a column base showing one animal attacking another and being watched by a chicken, whose meaning is obscure. Another shows the face of a grotesque man sticking his tongue out at the beholder. The researchers think these pieces were stolen from nearby pagan sites and just used as infill stones, their carvings hidden from view. Another panel is inscribed with a nine-branched candelabra on a plain background, which may have been carved so as not to imitate the seven-branched menora of the Temple, which the rabbis said should not be copied outside of it. But it may indicate that a hanukkia was already in use at this early date, as there are at least two other carvings of nine-branched menorot, from early Golan synagogues, both of which are now in the local archeological museum at Katzrin. The site of the synagogue is on the hillside overlooking the beautiful valley of Nahal Samak, and two kilometers west of Natur. It can be approached by car from Route 808, taking the turn to Natur and then following along the gravel and sign-posted track that leads to a sizable car park. From here, there is now a well-paved path (laid with the help of the yeshiva boys of Haspin) with basalt steps down to the synagogue, and a pathway to the left (south) to the remains of the village and the triple-arched water basins. After the traumas of the Jewish Revolt and the Bar Kochba Revolt, Jews moved north from Judah and settled in the Golan and lived here in peace and quiet until the time of the short-lived Persian invasion of 614 and the later Arab conquest of 638. In this relative backwater they continued their unfettered rural life, and it was not till the earthquake of 749, which affected a large area of the Golan, that the inhabitants left to settle elsewhere. They left behind them the ruins of a beautiful synagogue that modern-day researchers and engineers are rebuilding with the use of new technology, and which they believe will one day bring the ruins back into use to become one of the oldest working synagogues in the Golan. Contact Carol Flatto by email at plypress@juno.com To Go To Top

BLACK HISTORY MONTH; ENVIRONMENTALISM IN TIMES OF CRISES Posted by Seth J. Frantzman, February 23, 2009.

1) And you thought it would end: Racism and black history month and Eric Holder: Seth J. Frantzman February 20th, 2009 With the election of Barak Obama some people, including myself, hoped that the endless whining about 'America is a racist society' would end or be toned down. But Attorney General Eric Holder's 'nation of cowards' remark during Black History month commemorations illustrates the opposite. American race mongers seek to transform the past into an un-nuanced 'white versus black' just as they wish to call 'racist' anyone who tries to discuss the race, and then they call us all 'cowards' or not discussing race. Some people were under the mistaken impression that with a 'black' President the obsession with race, the whining, the endless calls of 'racism' would finally end. But Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the U.S came out during 'Black History Month' and declared on February 18th, 2009 that "we are a nation of cowards." A nation of cowards? The full text of his comments dealt with his concern that despite priding ourselves on being a melting pot Americans "simply do not talk enough with each other about race... if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us... hasten the day when the dream of individual, character based, acceptance can actually be realized... the history of black America and the history of this nation are inextricably tied to each other. It is for this reason that the study of black history is important to everyone — black or white... Separate public facilities, separate entrances, poll taxes, legal discrimination, forced labor, in essence an American apartheid, all were part of an America that the movement [Civil Rights] destroyed... In law, culture, science, athletics, industry and other fields, knowledge of the roles played by blacks is critical to an understanding of the American experiment. For too long we have been too willing to segregate the study of black history... an unstudied, not discussed and ultimately misunderstood diversity can become a divisive force. An appreciation of the unique black past." It is hard to understand Holder's comments until one realizes that his comments are part of the problem and that his contradictions are the essential portion of what makes race such an inseparable and unsolvable problem. Let us begin from the beginning. Holder calls us, Americans at least, cowards for not speaking frankly about race. But let's really think about this. Anyone who speaks frankly about race is condemned as a racist. In the shallow, skin deep, ignorant society that pervades one finds that condemnations of 'racist' are thrown on those who have not even discussed race, let alone those who do. Someone using the word 'niggardly' in a public broadcast as asked to apologize for being 'racist' and fired. But niggardly does not come from Nigger, no matter how much ignorant uneducated people want it to. If niggardly (the act of being cheap, miserly or stingy or covetous or parsimonious) came from nigger than it would be hard to explain why people are called 'nigger-rich' (spendthrift or profligate). Niggardly, which is to say covetous, is a quality often applied derisively, to Jews whose financial habits are not usually associated with those of blacks. But that would be racist to mention, for both groups. So let's be honest. We can't talk 'frankly' about race because to do so is actually to be racist. It's obvious the degree to which this is true when one considers the recent cartoon controversy over a cartoon in the New York Post. The cartoon showed a dead chimp shot by two policeman. One is saying to the other "I guess we will have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." Immediately the racial mafia of wealthy white leftists, whining sniveling leftist students and 'black activists' such as the ever-present and honest Al Sharpton were calling for blood at the Post. Why? Because of the past sensitivity of people comparing blacks to monkeys. The cartoon supposedly insinuated that Obama was a monkey, or something of that nature. It couldn't be that the cartoon implied that the Stimulus Bill was written by monkeys. In a climate of racial fascism where a few off-hand comments, like Don Imus' "nappy headed hoes", lead to his being publically lynched how can we be expected to speak 'frankly' about race. Things that aren't frank or aren't even about race are interpreted to be so. God forbid someone might actually talk about it. If we can't use the word niggardly, don't ask us to talk about the word 'nigger'. And don't call us cowards when the very people who call us cowards for not being 'frank' are the same one wagging the 'racist' finger. But Holder went further than whining about a 'nation of cowards'. He spoke of a nation that should judge people on their "character" and not their race. But M. Holder spins his quadroon race as much as possible. He is the 'first black attorney general'. But if we count the blacks in Holder's family tree we certainly will not find as many as we find whites. We would need another three or four Mr. Holders in order to get one fully black attorney general. It's a lot like the joke about Cherokee Indians told by other Indians. "What do you call forty Cherokees in one room? A full blooded Indian." That is because of the propensity of white people to 'discover' their Cherokee heritage and because of the Cherokee tendency in the 19th century to marry Scottish immigrants who lived among them in Georgia. But if Holder exploits his race he must be kidding about judging people on their 'character'. The fellow travelers of Holder, the oped writers at the Times, all told us Americans we had to vote for Obama because he was black in order to cancel the sin of slavery and 'make history.' So which is it? Are we supposed to judge based on character or on skin color? Too often it seems those who use skin color as currency are those who then pretend that money is colorless. Holder tells us about the mythical segregated entrances and toilets and buses and eating facilities and even speaks of an American Apartheid. But let's be honest. All this talk of slavery and segregation attempts to link to American history in totality. But a majority of American states never had slavery and never had segregation. That point is often forgotten among Americans and among non-Americans who have been led to believe, by people like Holder, that segregation and slavery was the 'American way'. But it was not. It was not the way of most Americans, ever. To compare it to Apartheid shows the ignorance of Holder more than it insults America. If Apartheid had existed in Northern South Africa, say in the Free State and Transvaal but not in the Cape Town area, would we have thought about it the same way? People need to believe that states like Maine and Massachusetts were the same as Virginia in order to perpetuate the idea that we need to all be knee deep in the racial guilt about slavery and segregation. Guilt for not ending it sooner at the point of a rifle, but certainly no guilt over it actually for most Americans have no connection to it. But Holder becomes even more contradictory when he tries to tell us that we need to recognize the unique roles of blacks and at the same time integrate 'black history' into that of America. But it is Mr. Holder, speaking on the occasion of Black History Month, who contradicts this. If he wants to integrate the important contribution of blacks then he should stop recalling them all as black and start treating them like people. This cannot be stressed enough. It is the liberal good intentions that took all the blacks out of American history and placed them all in the context of their 'blackness'. So Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis and Tiger Woods and Barak Obama and others are all recognized first as blacks and as being 'the first'. Its problematic. Is Jesse Owens only famous for being black? Or Mohammed Ali? Apparently not. We want it both ways. We want Black History Month and we want photos of the first black man in space and first black at the North Pole and first black to go down in a Submarine injected into our history books alongside stories about the North Pole and the Moon and we then want the same pictures in the section that is specially devoted to 'Black History.' The truth is hard to speak. If people like Mr. Holder were not segregated as 'the first black attorney general' then they would probably disappear into the morass of attorney generals who are mostly forgettable. How many do we really recall? Bobby Kennedy. That's about all. Who was the guy that Bush hired that was supposedly a neo-fascist and restricted our Civil Liberties and was so controversial? Mullgren? Ashcroft? Some white guy. Oh well. But Mr. Eric Holder? He's pretty famous. He's very important. He accomplished a lot in life? He's controversial? No. No. No. He's just black. That's why we should remember him. But he wants us to integrate him. Well then he will be pretty unmemorable probably. He's no Bobby Kennedy. And we only remember him because of his last name. Eric Holder embodies all the problems of the very racism he claims to understand. He yearns for equality and frank discussions and yet at the same time he wants to celebrate the uniqueness of black history. He wants blacks who succeed to be recognize for their success and their character, not their race, but yet he glories in the blackness of his heroes, not just heroes such as Martin Luther King, but Jackie Robinson. The same problem confronts so many people such as Colin Powell, Tiger Woods and Barak Obama. The desire to succeed irrespective of race and to live in a color blind society and yet the secret knowledge that in modern society being 'black' is an asset in certain situations. It is enough to remind people of Nadine Gordimer's book Beethoven was One Sixteenth Black. Her short story isn't actually about Beethoven, but if it did turn out that the composer was 1/16th black we should wonder, would he be called the "greatest black composer" or the "first black composer to play at such and such a place"? Would his name be enshrined during Black History Month. Maybe it should. Him an Shakespeare and George Washington and Jesus. I mean, maybe they were black. Maybe we all are. And if we all are then maybe can get to the post-racial society that people all preach about. The truth is that we can't escape our racialized history, not because we are unable to, but because we glory in the simplified and wrongheaded simplicity of a 'black and white' society. Simon Schama's recent television documentary on America entitled The American Future creates new myths about race out of the modern need to separate everything based on race. In speaking about the history of Texas he speaks of 'white illegal immigrants' coming to Texas and looking down on the 'indigenous Mexicans'. What is he talking about? He imagines that the Mexicans of 1830s Texas were like the Mexican immigrants of 2009. But he projects a false racial consciousness back into the past. The 'Mexicans' of 1930s Texas were Spaniards who had colonized and settled Texas. They were Vecinos. Their society was heavily segregated into Castas, Mestizos, Coyotes, mulatos, criados, nixoras and Sonorenses and nortenos. We can't expect Schama, a white man from England, to tell the difference between all these shades apparently. But in those days people knew and the 'Mexicans' were not only a stratified society but most of the ones encountered by the Americans moving to Texas were as white as the Americans. Santa Ana wasn't some half Indian brown 'Mexican' as Schama imagines him. But Schama needs 'white racism' to pervade Texas history. So he needs 'black' Mexicans to fight the 'white' racist Americans. He couldn't imagine anything different. But no one can imagine something different because in 2009 we are more racially conscious than in 1839. In Susan Faludi's new book The Terror Dream she speaks of how America has a history of imagining "traumatizing assaults by non-white 'barbarians'." Really? This is because Faludi, whose last name seems to reek of low-class Italian ancestry but is apparently Hungarian-Jewish, imagines a past of whiteness and blackness. She wants to link King Philip's Wompanog natives to the 9/11 terrorist hijackers in one large 'non-white' morass. She wants them all to be lumped in with the Japanese of 1941 and apparently the Germans and Russians too. They are all 'non-white', a catch all phrase for everything in the world apparently. People like Faludi need 'non-white' myths of blackness in order to juxtapose them with her hated 'white America'. The same 'white America' that took in her Holocaust survivor ancestors. It's odd that old Europe, that wonderful ivory tower of actual white people, killed off her ancestors but she so hates America that she imagines an evil America always lashing out at fake enemies because of a supposed traumatic past of Indian attacks on a few isolated Anglo settlements in the 17th century. The truth is that the Faludis and Schamas and Holders and others need racism. It doesn't matter how colorful America is, the entire country is always cleansed in history and bleached to make it into a 'white' man fighting and suppressing some mythical blacks. Those 'blacks' can be lily white Mexicans or white Japanese who were fighting their own race war in Asia, or anyone else. Define them as 'non-white', so that America can continue to be 'white' because white is evil and America must be seen as 'racist' and evil. So define the Russians as 'non-white'. Define the Arab terrorists as 'non-white'. Define some white blond woman from England who converts to Islam as 'non-white'. Whatever it takes. In the case of 1/16th black people, define them as black. Create a myth of whiteness to go alongside a myth of blackness. Make Mexican colonists who had just finished exterminating the Indians of Texas into 'blacks' so that Americans can be 'white'. Then turn those Mexicans into 'whites' so that the blacks in Arizona can still be the 'largest minority' group. Whatever it takes. Play the race game. Change the race, lie about race, talk about race, then call people racist, mistake the word niggard for nigger and whine and cry and complain. That's America. Holder's 'nation of cowards' was a disgusting and disgraceful comment. One wonders if he would have had the chagrin to say it to the half a million Union soldiers who died in the Civil War fighting to end slavery. It would be interesting to know if he would have called them cowards. Maybe he should have given the speech at Arlington or Gettysburg. He could have given it at Appomattox. Or maybe at the theatre where Lincoln was murdered. Or Harpers Ferry where John Brown led his raiders. Mr. Holder is the coward for he so easily dismisses so many who fought and wrote and died to end the evil institution of slavery. If we are cowards it is because of people like Holder and his friends, gangs of half black men and women whose white ancestry is as deep as their black one and who have chosen to emphasize their 'blackness' and use it to their advantage to make themselves appear more interesting and more 'colourful' in a society that they have told to value 'color'. It is they who have endlessly shamed and complained and spit on people calling other racists wherever they go, spreading racial discord and calling cowardly those who care not about race and do not wish to join their extremist worldview where everything is 'black and white' and one suffocates under the self righteous racial idiocy of endless whining and complaining and shrill comments.   2) The worst of both worlds: The financial crises and environmentalism: With the financial crises in full swing some might think that disposal government income might finally dry up and pet environmental projects, which are costly and have no clear benefit, would be set aside. One might have thought that foreign aid and other largesse would be stopped. But it is not stopping. Instead the environmental lobby has smelled blood and is pushing through more extreme environmental plans that are bankrupting us all. A year ago we were living large. The banks were secure. Al Gore's prophecies about "extreme weather" seemed to be coming true. Flush with cash our time could be spent buying 'green'. Everything was going green. From the organic food craze to Harper-Collins books, there was not an item that wasn't fashionably environmental. Cars too were going electric, even if they had to be charged every few hours and could only go 30 mph. Carbon offsets were the rage and guilt conscious air travelers were 'doing their part' by offsetting their travel. There were few things in life that one couldn't check a special box and have that thing be 'environmentally friendly.' Then the economic crises came. People are tightening their belts. The government is spending like a drunken sailor in order to shore up everything from banks to bankrupt state governments. People are giving tomatoes to their girlfriends on Valentines Day instead of roses to save money. People aren't taking vacations. The beaches lie empty in the Bahamas. But one news item hasn't disappeared. Environmentalism is at an all time high. One part of the Stimulus bill passed by Congress and signed by President Obama stipulated that tens of millions must go to making the federal office buildings 'energy efficient', which is to say environementally friendly. With England in the throes of a terrible economic crises the government is going forward with a plan, set to begin in February of 2009, to tax airlines based on their carbon emissions. According to reports "the tax increase will save the equivalent of three quarters of a million tonnes of carbon every year by 2011." A British treasury spokesman claimed that "the Treasury took all relevant factors into account before deciding to increase Air Passenger Duty to better reflect the environmental costs of air travel." In addition "the revenues raised from the increase will secure extra resources in the coming spending round for our priorities such as public transport and the environment." In total each passenger will pay an extra $7 for economy class and an extra $30 for first class to offset their carbon output through the tax. Advocates such as Ryan Nabil, note that "in the context of world's financial situation, it'd be very unwise to impose the tax on airline companies... Airline passengers should pay for the harm they are causing to the environment and the proper way to do that is to pay a carbon emissions tax... If airline passengers can buy airport novels for $10, it would not hurt them to pay $3.75 to recompense for what they are doing to the environment. " They claim that the money will be spent on "subsidizing biofuel or other green-tech energy sources if found." This is quite brilliant. Cash strapped passengers will be charged more money as a tax that will be placed in the hands of the government and supposedly spent to help offset carbon emissions. But like the money raised by governments from cigarette taxes or lawsuits against cigarette companies there is no guarantee that any money will be spent to 'offset' the carbon even if there was a way to offset it, which there isn't. But the dream world of the environmentalists, whose jobs and livelihoods and ability to fund their never ending extreme activism has not been damaged by the economic crises, is unchanged. Just at the time when states and people have little money environmentalists are putting the last nails in the coffin. In California a new plan for a Powerlink (apparently meaning lots of electric lines) from San Diego to Imperial Valley is a case study in environmental extremism. It was only approved so long as it twists "around a state park, an Indian reservation and much of a forest. Its builders would be banned from harming burrowing owls or rattlesnakes." But that wasn't enough for other environmentalists who have sued the state anyway not to build it. As The Economist notes " Barack Obama wants to create green jobs, but he needs to create jobs above all, and quickly. Environmentalists, who know how to hold up big projects better than anybody, will not be bounced so easily." But this state of affairs should only remind us of the insanity that has confronted anyone who wants to build windmills to create 'green' electricity. For years environmentalists campaigned to close coal power stations and then their alternative, nuclear ones. Left with little choice they proposed wind power as an alternative. But when people actually wanted to build wind power generators every attempt was prevented by the same environmentalists who now argued the "wind turbines' would harm birds. There is a silver lining. The destruction of the economy may yet dent the pocketbooks of the environmentalists and those who fund them. Whole Foods and Trader Joes may yet be cut low, even though they themselves merely profited off of the environmental extremism, their products were not truly 'organic'. But it seems for now we are living in the worst of both worlds. Environmental extremism forcing us to pay more in taxes and for 'green' products while we have less and less money and the government is 'stimulating' the economy by hiring more and more hippie-environmental consultants on how to spend taxpayers money on creating 'green' jobs, which means more jobs for the environmental elite and less jobs for people who are actually out of work. Contact Seth J. Frantzman at sfrantzman@hotmail.com and visit his website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com These essays appeared on his website. To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: IN A BAD WAY Posted by Arlene Kushner, February 23, 2009.

The state of the world, that is. Events have been so overwhelming and deeply distressing that it is difficult to know what to deal with first. (And without question some issues will have to be tabled for another day.) But what I would like to start with today is the visitation of two Congressmen — Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Brian Baird (D-WA) — to this part of the world. They visited Gaza the end of last week, and yesterday made their inimitable statement regarding Israel's decision not to open crossings except for humanitarian supplies until Shalit is released. Their position: Banning lentils and pasta from Gaza does not help the cause of peace. "When have lentil bombs been going off lately?" asked Congressman Baird. "Is someone going to kill you with a piece of macaroni?" Cute, huh? Is he simply foolish and lacking basic knowledge, or is he being exceedingly coy and disingenuous here? Opined Ellison, "Israel's policy is not designed for success or to win the release of Gilad Shalit." He knows this? ~~~~~~~~~~ It's disturbing when US elected legislators are as clueless or off-base as these guys are. Disturbing, but not surprising. Some time ago, Congressman Ellison (Congress's only Muslim representative) was part of a Democratic Congressional mission to this area. When the group called a press conference, I attended. And so was present when a journalist asked Ellison what his take was on the (very old and very serious) Shi'ite-Sunni rift in the Muslim world — a rift that, for example, puts Egypt and Iran at odds. Well, he intoned, everyone wants the same things: good education for their kids, decent housing, and pensions for their old age. And if we can see that they have these things, we won't have to sweat the rest of it. My jaw dropped, and I knew we were in a lot of trouble. ~~~~~~~~~~ We should, therefore, never miss an opportunity to do education of such Congresspersons. Either we will truly be alerting them to information they were lacking and giving them a broader perspective, or we will be letting them know that their nonsense doesn't play with us. Either way, a good thing. In a word: I cannot speak for pasta and lentils in particular, but food — as part of the humanitarian supplies — goes into Gaza. The people are fed. This is not remotely the issue. Hamas wants the crossings opened for commercial reasons (to bring in furniture and machinery and whatever else) to promote their economic viability, and to bring in supplies that can be used for making weapons and building terrorist infrastructure. That includes fertilizer — ostensibly for farming but which becomes an ingredient in manufacturing explosives, and concrete — ostensibly for building homes and schools but which is used in making bunkers for weapons. And so, keeping the crossings closed hurts Hamas and has a great deal to do with what is going on. More to the point is why these two Congressmen didn't vociferously and publicly criticize Hamas for holding Shalit and not even allowing the Red Cross to see him, as mandated by international law. Why is the focus on what Israel is doing "wrong" and not what Hamas could do to bring the entire issue to closure? ~~~~~~~~~~ You might want to communicate with these two Congresspersons — or, more accurately, their offices. If so: Congressman Keith Ellison Phone: 202-225-4755 Fax: 202-225-4886 His staffer for ME affairs is Walaya Jariyadham, and her e-mail is walaya.jariyadham@mail.house.gov Congressman Brian Baird Phone: 202-225-3536 Fax: 202-225-3478 His staffer for Middle East Affairs (offered here without comment) is Jamal Abdi, and his e-mail is jamal.abdi@mail.house.gov ~~~~~~~~~~ Returning just briefly to the Durban 2 issue: According to Roni Leshno Yaar, the Israel Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva (where the Durban meetings are being held), the draft document is problematic for not only Israel but for Western democracies in general. Besides dealing with Israel (the only nation criticized by name), it also deals with issues of free speech (which it would inhibit), discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and defamation of religion. He does not see any opportunity for the American presence to improve the document. "In fact," said Leshno Yaar, "I expect the text to get only worse on all issues that are important for Western democracy." ~~~~~~~~~~ Amos Herman, head of the Jewish Agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, says, "As far as we believe, Durban II is going to be the anti-Semitic event of 2009. It looks worse than we expected, even though it's not clear what the end results will be... "Operation Cast Lead [in Gaza] is going to take center state at Durban II and we have to be ready for that." The Task Force members are doubtful that the US presence will change the conference's direction, and some are dubious, as well, as to whether the US delegation will walk out, no matter what transpires. Among the things anticipated in Geneva at the Durban 2 conference: use of Holocaust imagery with regard to Israel's military actions in Gaza, the possibility of demonstrations, and an all-out "hate-fest" on the part of NGOs present. (It was the NGO Forum that was the most vociferously anti-Israel last time.) ~~~~~~~~~~ Please! Raise your voice on this issue. Contact info. is provided again at the bottom of this posting. ~~~~~~~~~~ A tiny ray of light. According to The Jewish Chronicle of Britain, Britain and Italy are considering withdrawing from participation in Durban 2. "Britain's Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch-Brown said on Tuesday: 'If we can't go forward now, we will withdraw. I was at the first conference. I have never seen such a disgraceful event in quite a long international life.' "Later, he said: 'There are red lines that need to be made for us to participate...We are not going to stand idly by and allow this racist stuff to get through and be seen as acceptable. We are not going to have it.' "...Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said: 'We will not send an Italian delegation [if it is the same as Durban 2001], but we will try to harmonies our position with other countries who are the friends of Jews. But we will leave a decision until the last minute.'" And there we have the rub, and the reason why the ray of light is so tiny: These nations are looking to the US to take the lead. ~~~~~~~~~~ Relevant to the issue of the delegitimization of Israel, please see the piece by Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice of Canada and professor of law with considerable human rights expertise. "Making the world 'Judestaatrein' [i.e., devoid of a Jewish state]" Writes Cotler: "...The new anti-Jewishness overlaps with classical anti-Semitism but is distinguishable from it. It found early juridical, and even institutional, expression in the UN's 'Zionism is racism' resolution — which the late US senator Daniel Moynihan said 'gave the abomination of anti-Semitism the appearance of international legal sanction' — but has gone dramatically beyond it. This new anti-Semitism almost needs a new vocabulary to define it; however, it can best be identified using a rights-based juridical perspective. "In a word, classical or traditional anti-Semitism is the discrimination against, denial of or assault upon the rights of Jews to live as equal members of whatever host society they inhabit. The new anti-Semitism involves the discrimination against the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations — the denial of and assault upon the Jewish people's right even to live — with Israel as the 'collective Jew among the nations.'" http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304849224&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull ~~~~~~~~~~ And on Iran (the greatest worry of all): A report unveiled in Vienna last week by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency suggests that the 1,010 kg. of low-enriched uranium already produced by Iran is sufficient for building a bomb. The low-enriched uranium would have to undergo additional enrichment before it could be used for a nuclear weapon. But a US Iranian analyst suggests that Iran my be "one step before the nuclear stage" and is operating a shadow nuclear program in tandem with its public program. Additionally there has been a report from Teheran that the preliminary phase of operations for the first Iranian nuclear power plant — a 1,000 megawatt light-water reactor in the southern port city of Busehr — will begin this week. ~~~~~~~~~~ Be that as it may, the Obama administration is said to be at least two months away from establishing policies on the issue of a nuclear Iran. There is widespread speculation that Obama is waiting until after the Iranian presidential election, scheduled for June 12, in which former president Mohammad Khatami — who is considered somewhat more Western oriented — will be challenging Ahmadinejad. But that would be a long time for the US to go without a firm and coherent Iranian policy. And if Khatami wins, that is still no guarantee that Iran won't go nuclear or that it's not the mullahs who will insist on this. And so, there is also troublesome speculation that the Obama administration may be resigned to a nuclear Iran. ~~~~~~~~~~ The International Atomic Energy Agency has just released a report indicating that new traces of uranium have been found at the site — presumed to be a nuclear reactor — where Israel bombed in September 2007. The particles "are of a type not included in Syria's declared inventory of nuclear material" and that "there is a low probability that the uranium was introduced by the use of missiles." According to the IAEA report, Syria must provide additional information and documentation about "the use and nature" of the building that was bombed. And Syria "needs to be transparent by providing access to other locations alleged to be related" to the site. Right... ~~~~~~~~~~ Meanwhile, recently Obama decided to appoint the first US ambassador to Syria since 2005, when Bush without drew the American ambassador after the assassination of Harari in Lebanon. Obama's choice, Frederic Hof, a member of the National Advisory Committee of the Middle East Policy Council, is said to be a close to George Mitchell. Obama is also preparing to lift sanctions against Syria, in particular the Syrian Accountability Act. Syria has been listed as a State Sponsor of Terrorism since 1979. The US has now agreed to sell Syria spare parts for two Boeing 747 jets. ~~~~~~~~~~ It is the issue of security, more than any other, that seems to be driving Binyamin Netanyahu right now as he pushes to put together a broad-based coalition. After meeting with Tzipi Livni again last night, she walked away echoing the same refrain: Her voters expect her to honor the principles she ran on — principles of a "two-state solution." She said the differences between Kadima and Likud were just too great. And yet Netanyahu is persisting, and says there can be a means of achieving conciliation for cooperation in a coalition. Livni has agreed to meet again. ~~~~~~~~~~ Do I understand Netanyahu's persistence? I most certainly do not. His partners-in-the-making to the right, most notably National Union, will not sit still for a coalition with Kadima that makes compromises on the issue of negotiating with the Palestinians. The NU had sought assurances from Netanyahu that there would be no mention of a Palestinian state in the coalition guidelines, and, according to MK Aryeh Eldad, "he replied that we will be able to live with the coalition guidelines." From the perspective of NU, Netanyahu has given his word on this. The principles of Kadima and the nationalist parties are simply too far apart to reconcile. Even Likud and Kadima are far apart, as Likud ran on a platform of no dividing Jerusalem, and certainly Livni would hope to do so. A coalition that encompasses everything stands for nothing. Will Netanyahu turn out to be a purely political animal devoid of all principles (which is how many see him), who tilted right and courted the right, for his purposes, and then will move left because it gives him more numbers in a coalition? In a way, this is a time of reckoning for him. But in the end, it may be the persistence of Livni and her party, in refusing to join, that wins the day for the nation. Right now the majority of Kadima is said to agree with her. It is the presence of the nationalist parties at the right flank of his coalition that would keep Netanyahu honest. Absent that, who knows. ~~~~~~~~~~ As to needing a broad-based coalition for security reasons, it is possible to assemble one for a brief time. When there is serious action to be taken, or confronted, a temporary unity government can be formed so the world understands that there is no division where acting for Israel's sake is concerned. I do not minimize in the slightest the need to stand strong for Israel's security — most especially with regard to Iran. It is here that Netanyahu has maximum credibility, as he has been raising the issue of confronting Iran for a long time. ~~~~~~~~~~ Typo correction: Ron Prosper is the ambassador to the UK, not the UN. (Thanks Ora and Barbara.) ~~~~~~~~~~ President Barack Obama: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ (for email contact form) Fax: 202-456-2461 White House Comment line: 202-456-1111 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: Public Communication Division Phone: 202-647-6575 Fax: 202-647-2283 e-mail: secretary@state.gov To locate your representatives in Congress, see: http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml To locate your senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm You can often secure best contact info. by logging on to the website of the representative or senator. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

INFILTRATING OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM Posted by Ari Bussel, February 23, 2009.

Two years ago today, following my attending a three session, 16 hour LA Unified School District (LAUSD) Salary Point Workshop titled "Teaching about the Arab World," I wrote about my experiences of this anti-Israel brainwashing scheme. I came open minded, knowing there is much to learn about the Arab World — from culture to language, geography, archeology, history, mathematics and calligraphy, to name just a few areas of personal interest. Like me, teachers came interested in the subject matter, expecting to broaden their horizons and learn something new. Attendance, participation and follow up projects would entitle the participants to a professional staff credit, which eventually translates into a salary bonus. I did not know, but was soon to learn, that everything throughout the Arab world is somehow connected to the very existence of Israel — the Jewish Homeland — in an area so small relative to the vast lands of the Arab World that one immediately realizes this is not a territorial conflict. When the Workshop ended I was in a dire need for an outlet: How can I help the poor palestinian children in the occupied territories and throughout their homeland? What can I do to stop the imperialist Zionist war machine? Training a Christian Audience The content of the workshop described Israel, at least in one instance, as the new Nazi regime. Interestingly, the stories presented were about Bethlehem, a "Ghetto" in present day palestine. It was by design not coincidence, that Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, was chosen. A very calculated move to address the local Christian audience who does not know that Christians cannot survive under Muslim rule, as is evident in Lebanon, under the PA rule in Bethlehem, and elsewhere throughout the world. I took the time on Christmas Eve, 2008, to visit Bethlehem. I can attest that Israel Ministry of Tourism's effort in welcoming both local and foreign pilgrims were so successful that I could not discover, despite my persistent efforts, the connection between the stories told to the teachers and reality. Sadly, the following day, the Archdiocese in New Zealand published an article about Christmas in Bethlehem 2008. It explained my inability to substantiate the stories of the Workshop: "a result of 'extraordinarily efficient' propaganda from Israel, the message going out internationally from Israel is very biased and does not represent what is happening on the ground." Since I was personally in Bethlehem the night before, I realized a total eclipse must have occurred, causing me to become "momentarily" blind for the duration of my visit. Thus, unbeknownst to me until the following day's article, some three quarters of a million "refugees," mostly Muslim, have become — as a direct result of Israel's 60 years of occupation — intermingled in Christmas Day, 2008. This extraordinary chain of events was successfully captured by the article's author and presented to worshipers of Christianity on their most spiritual day of the year. The Power of a Picture in the Context of Israel-Bashing Back in LA a year and a half earlier, the world seemed to be full of like miracles. If the story does not match reality, tell it anyway. If anyone dares to contest the information, discredit and attack the person rather than the merits, and when all else fails, change the subject. The presenters know that the most effective instrument of delivery is a visual. How many of us, when asked what are the most famous pictures of the Holocaust, will not think about the young boy with his arms up in the air and a German storm trooper pointing a gun at him? My father was a young boy at that time, possibly not much younger than the boy in the picture. He managed to escape the Warsaw Ghetto, where the picture was taken, before the uprising. This picture became an icon, as did the spirit of the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, whose brave stance against the Nazi war machine astonished even the Nazis themselves. Today, the picture serves as another source of inspiration: associating the Jewish Homeland with the very same acts carried out by the Nazis. Interestingly, some deranged individuals claim the Holocaust was only a hoax to legitimize the Jews' claim for the small piece of land in the Middle East. They have no problem to make this claim then use falsified images that force us to make the parallelism to that era. One of the magazines given to all participants of the Workshop depicted a very similar picture on its outer cover: An Israeli soldier pointing a gun at a palestinian boy. The boy, his hands raised, was looking intensely at the soldier. There is a complete series of such pictures and one-to-one comparisons now circulating the internet. The organizers of the Workshop were very well aware of the different observers and other participants in the Workshop, so the specific word "Nazi" was not used. If the description and references were not crystallized in one's memory, the word "Ghettoization," for instance, appeared vividly in one of handouts given out and in at least one of the websites to which the teachers were referred. One must not belittle the usage of descriptions within a certain context. Both were so clear that it was no surprise to find the actual words in the written material. Evaluating the Workshop Series The main purpose, it seems, of this workshop was not to educate teachers about the Arab World. Rather, it was to try and utilize our own system of education and freedoms to push sanity one step backward, until it trips and eventually succumbs. If, along the way, one or two innocent bystanders (teacher) are actually moved to do something for and on behalf of the palestinian people, it would be considered a fringe benefit, but not the real purpose. The success of the series starts by the fact it was held in the first place, continues in the fact that it was allowed to be held repeatedly year after year, and culminates now in the quest to attain even great heights: pushing the frontier to a point of no return. The failure of different advocacy organizations, like the Anti Defamation League and Stand With Us, to effect meaningful change and prevent the series from taking place is a result of the same organizations holding workshops of their own. Thus, decisive action was mellowed down, diluted to a written protest, to be "on file" so to speak. If there is no place in the curriculum for workshops about the Holocaust, Fighting Hate or Israel Past and Present, then they should not be allowed as part of the program. However, to admit a program which is an anti-Israel scheme disguised as an educational tool about the Arab World should not be tolerated. Bias and trickery, deceit and hatred should be banned from the LAUSD playing grounds and its headquarters building should not be a host to this Workshop. Imagine the public outcry if a workshop titled Fighting Hate would teach that the all the faults of a crumbling economy are related to People of Color. An outrage could not be contained, riots may break and the workshop scrapped in an instance. Doing the same but exchanging the labels to target Israel is apparently permissible. A Tour of Palestine (Jordan and Israel) Two years have past. The workshop continues and is apparently quite successful. A sixteen day study tour of Jordan and Palestine — including Israel — is proposed to all past participants, almost free. Touted as "the occasion to probe further and deeper into the many topics covered in the 'Arab World' workshops and to experience these directly and personally," this unusual opportunity is subsidized by the generous will of a teacher and curriculum specialist who visited the Middle East, became fascinated by Arab history, culture and contemporary problems, and apparently had left in her will funds for educational projects. To commemorate the enthusiasm of that person, LAUSD teachers who participated and completed one of the "Arab World" workshops are urged to join. An experience of a lifetime awaits them, including a preparatory background reading and an orientation session prior to departure and follow-up projects they will need to complete. What an ingenious way to penetrate the very fabric of society that is most impressionable and to shape and mold attitudes of teachers who influence young minds in their classrooms with hatred toward Israel. This is not a workshop about the Arab World, for there is much more in the Arab World than cartoons for children in which every symbol of the West is satanic. This is an attempt at using a system that should focus on algebra and arithmetic, music and physical education, science, English and languages and not on planting the seeds of hatred. The organizers must be congratulated. The trip to Israel promises not to end with the return to Los Angeles. Each participant will have to present "lesson plans, reports to colleagues and students, articles for community groups and assisting with future 'Arab World' workshops." Is our tax money going to be used also to pay for additional bonuses to these teachers? The phenomenon of using our own system and the vast freedoms it affords against the West must be stopped. Let us go back to basics before we turn the LAUSD and other school districts across the country into battlegrounds much like the universities are today. Contact Ari Bussel at busselari@gmail.com To Go To Top

MAYFLOWER MUSLIMS? WHAT OBAMA'S PROPOSED INTELLIGENCE CHIEF IS TEACHING YOUR CHILDREN Posted by Marcia Leal, February 23, 2009.

The first essay below is from Sammy Benoit, editor of the Yid with Lid Blogspot http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2009/02/ mayflower-muslims-what-obamas-proposed.html The second is the Email Letter sent by William J. Bennetta to Stuart Elliott of Wichita, Kansas.

1. From Yid with Lid website: Do you know that when the British explorers came to the "New World" they met "Iroquois and Algonquin chiefs with names like Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik?" That is just one of the "facts" in the textbook Arab World Studies Notebook, published by Middle East Policy Council (MPEC). The President of the organization, Chas Freeman Jr. has had his name "floated" in the media as President Obama's selection for Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. In 2005 the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA), a Jewish News organization, investigated what American Students are being taught about Israel, America and Islam. One part of the series (called Tainted Teachings) gives an overview of what Ambassador Freeman is teaching American Children. Arab World Studies Notebook , a joint project of Freeman's MEPC Berkeley, Calif.-based Arab World and Islamic Resources, or AWAIR, (www.awaironline.org) who gets a major part of its funding from Saudi Aramco, the Saudi government-owned oil company. Below is a selection from that study. (Source JTA.) "Some of the references are subtle [in Arab World Studies Notebook] critics say, making them all the more harmful. For example, the manual: Denigrates the Jews' historical connection to Jerusalem. One passage, describing the Old City, says: "the Jerusalem that most people envisage when they think of the ancient city, is Arab. Surrounding it are ubiquitous high-rises built for Israeli settlers to strengthen Israeli control over the holy city." Suggests that Jews have undue influence on U.S. foreign policy. Referring to Harry Truman's support of the 1947 United Nations resolution to partition Palestine, separating it into Jewish and Arab states, it says: "Truman's decision to push the U.N. decision to partition Palestine ended in the creation of Israel. The questions of Jewish lobbying and its impact on Truman's decision with regard to American recognition — and indeed, the whole question of defining American interests and concerns — is well worth exploring." Suggests that the Koran "synthesizes and perfects earlier revelations," meaning those ascribed to by Christians and Jews. Leaves out any facts and figures about the State of Israel in its country-by-country section, but refers instead only to Palestine". Sandra Stotsky, a former senior associate commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education, is one of a growing number of critics of the Arab World Studies Notebook. It is one of the examples she cites in a study, "The Stealth Curriculum: Manipulating America's History Teachers," in which she examines supplemental teaching materials. In an interview with JTA, Stotsky called the notebook "a piece of propaganda" rather than scholarly work. Another review of the book was conducted by the Textbook League. The league is a resource for middle-school and high-school educators. It provides commentaries on over 200 items, including textbooks, curriculum manuals, videos and reference books. (You can read the analysis in Bennetta's email — see below.) In his analysis of Arab World Studies Notebook, Textbook League's president, William J. Bennetta details some concerns with Freeman's Text, not the least of which is that it claims to have the be "Highly Regarded" by the California Board of Education. The Board denied this claim. Mr. Bennetta's report points to the inaccuracy of much of the information contained in the workbook: "The Notebook is a vehicle for disseminating disinformation, including a multitude of false, distorted or utterly absurd claims that are presented as historical facts. I infer that the Notebook has three principal purposes: inducing teachers to embrace Islamic religious beliefs; inducing teachers to embrace political views that are favored by the MEPC and AWAIR; and impelling teachers to disseminate those religious beliefs and political views in schools." He points to the subtle ways the notebook "exploits" Jesus, talking about how the book teaches "Jesus is an important figure" in Islam but omits that "Koran 9:30 — i.e., sura 9, verse 30 — we read that Muhammad wanted Christians to be damned because they said that Jesus was the son of God." Perhaps the most stunning of Chas Freeman's History errors involves the history of North America. Again, from William J. Bennetta: "....article [in the Notebook] in which Shabbas and someone called Abdallah Hakim Quick disclose that Muslims reached the New World in pre-Columbian times and spread throughout the Caribbean, Central America, South America and even Canada. By the time when Columbus arrived, it seems, the New World was fairly crawling with Muslims — and English explorers met "Iroquois and Algonquin chiefs with names like Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik." Do Quick and Shabbas cite any sources to support such claims? No, they don't. They don't even tell the names of the English explorers, let alone the titles and dates of the documents in which those explorers reported their encounters with Amerindian Muslims." Ambassador Chas Freeman Jr. is being considered for the position of Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. In that job he will evaluate the information coming in from the many U.S. intelligence organizations and decide which information is important enough to move "up the ladder." It would be a troubling development if that position is filled by someone who can't even figure out who discovered America. 2. "Arab World Studies Notebook lobs Muslim propaganda at teachers." e-mail letter of 8 October 2003 from The Textbook League's president, William J. Bennetta, to Stuart Elliott, of Wichita, Kansas http://www.textbookleague.org/spwich.htm 8 October 2003 Dear Mr. Elliott: I have been reviewing schoolbooks and other instructional publications for about eighteen years, and during that time I have developed three general observations. Writing an analysis of a good publication is enjoyable and usually is easy. Writing an analysis of a weak publication is typically a more difficult task, requiring much explication of the publication's failures and follies. Writing an analysis of a patently fraudulent publication is the most demanding task of all, for this reason: Although one can see immediately that the publication is a hoax, one still must give an extraordinary amount of time to studying it and to demonstrating its deceitfulness in some detail. Such work — requiring that a great deal of time be devoted to dissecting the antics of tricksters who deserve only contempt — can be exasperating. My inquiry into the Arab World Studies Notebook, the publication that you called to my attention a few weeks ago, has been exasperating indeed, and I am happy to say that the inquiry is nearing its end. My review of the Notebook now exists as a draft that has about 4,700 words. I will not be able to finish my writing, however, until I do some further library work and until I receive some items of information and documentation that I have requested from one of my colleagues. Hence I am going to lay the draft aside for a while — but before I do so, I want to give you an idea of how my inquiry has been going. In the rest of this message, I shall sketch some of my findings. For the sake of brevity, I shall keep the number of quotations and citations in this message to a minimum. In my review I shall use quotations and citations abundantly. The Organizations Behind the Notebook The Arab World Studies Notebook, a publication aimed at teachers, is a big collection of readings, lists of resources, and so-called lesson plans, all contained in a loose-leaf binder. It seems to exist in at least two versions. The version that I have examined shows 1998 as its copyright date. Pages i through xxi carry an "Introduction" and some other prefatory material; pages 1 through 513 carry the readings, the lists, the so-called lesson plans and some auxiliary items. According to its title page, the Notebook is published jointly by the Middle East Policy Council and by "AWAIR: Arab World And Islamic Resources and School Services." The Middle East Policy Council, a pressure group based in Washington, D.C., formerly called itself the Arab American Affairs Council. It adopted its present name in 1991. The MEPC's activities include the sponsoring of "teacher workshops" that allegedly equip educators to teach about "the Arab World and Islam." AWAIR, which operates from Abiquiu, New Mexico, distributes printed items and videos for "ALL LEVELS — Elementary to College" and runs the "teacher workshops" sponsored by the MEPC. The director of AWAIR, Audrey Shabbas, is also the editor of the Arab World Studies Notebook, and her name appears on many of the readings and other items that the Notebook contains. In AWAIR's current catalogue, the Notebook is described as "An anthology of secondary curriculum level materials." I take that to mean that the Notebook is chiefly intended for use by high-school teachers. AWAIR sells the Notebook for $49.95. (The MEPC doesn't sell the Notebook as such, but the MEPC provides a copy of the Notebook to each participant in the "teacher workshops.") On its Web site, the MEPC displays claims about the extent and success of its "workshops" program, as well as alleged testimonials from participants in past "workshops," but the claims are too vague to be checked, and all of the testimonials are anonymous and unverifiable. The MEPC's Web site also carries promotional claims for the Notebook, and one of those claims is a gross falsehood, as I now shall explain. The MEPC's False Claim When I began my inquiry into the Notebook, I toured the MEPC's Web site, and (on a page headlined "Arab World Studies Notebook") I saw this claim: "The Arab World Studies Notebook is . . . an updated and enhanced version of the Arab World Notebook (1990), a previous work so highly regarded that educators in California were permitted to purchase it with state funding." I immediately recognized that claim to be false. The Curriculum Framework and Instructional Resources Office (CFIRO) of the California State Department of Education does grant approvals to certain pedagogic publications, clearing the way for local school districts to buy those publications with state money — but the approval process does not entail any appraisal of any publication's content or pedagogic merit, and the granting of an approval does not mean that the approved publication is "highly regarded" by anyone. On 8 September 2003, in an e-mail message, I brought the MEPC's claim to the attention of Suzanne C. Rios, the administrator of the CFIRO. Since then, Rios has informed me that her office has no record of any approval covering "the Arab World Notebook." She further has informed me that she called the MEPC's executive director on 22 September, told him that the claim in question was false advertising, and told him that the CFIRO "wanted it taken off IMMEDIATELY!" At this writing, the false claim still is being displayed on the MEPC's site. Purposes of the Notebook On page v of the Notebook, in the section titled "Introduction," Audrey Shabbas writes: "Believing firmly that teachers are the vanguard of change in any society, AWAIR has taken as its mandate, to impact the very resources chosen and used by teachers as well as the training and sensitizing of teachers themselves." The articles in the body of the Notebook soon make clear what Shabbas's phrase "training and sensitizing" means. It means subjecting teachers to heavy bombardment with religious and political propaganda. The Notebook is a vehicle for disseminating disinformation, including a multitude of false, distorted or utterly absurd claims that are presented as historical facts. I infer that the Notebook has three principal purposes: inducing teachers to embrace Islamic religious beliefs; inducing teachers to embrace political views that are favored by the MEPC and AWAIR; and impelling teachers to disseminate those religious beliefs and political views in schools. The promotion of Islam in the Notebook is unrestrained, and the religious-indoctrination material that the Notebook dispenses is virulent. Muslim myths, including myths about how Islam and the Koran originated, are retailed as matters of fact, while legitimate historical appraisals of the origins of Islam and the Koran are excluded. Shabbas wants to turn teachers into agents who, in their classrooms, will present Muslim myths as "history," will endorse Muslim religious claims, and will propagate Islamic fundamentalism. In a public-school setting, the religious-indoctrination work which Shabbas wants teachers to perform would clearly be illegal. I shall say more about this in my review. Exploiting Jesus On page 11 of the Notebook, an item labeled as a lesson plan tells that "Jesus is an important figure" in Islam. On page 13, in another lesson plan, a list of quotations from the Koran includes three statements that mention Jesus. And on page 16, a third lesson plan says (with little regard for syntax) that Islam "Recognize Jesus in their religion." Whether Jesus is an "important figure" in Islam is debatable, but there is no doubt that Jesus appears in various verses of the Koran, and there is no doubt that Muslims "recognize" Jesus. They certainly recognize him well enough to deny and denounce basic perceptions of Jesus that are held by a huge majority of today's Christians. Muslims deny that Jesus was an aspect of a triune god, they reject the very concept of the Trinity, and they deny that Jesus was divine. (Indeed, in the Koran 9:30 — i.e., sura 9, verse 30 — we read that Muhammad wanted Christians to be damned because they said that Jesus was the son of God.) On instructions from the Koran, Muslims even deny that Jesus died by crucifixion. (See the Koran 4:157.) Muslim propagandists who operate in America (where about 80% of the adult population consists of persons who identify themselves as Christians) routinely and dishonestly exploit Jesus in their promotional material. Striving to create the impression that Islam is similar to Christianity and congenial to Christianity, these propagandists project palatable, grossly distorted impressions of how Jesus figures in the Koran and in Muslim religious doctrines — and at the same time, they conceal the Koranic passages which explicitly reject essential Christian beliefs about Jesus, and they conceal the Koran's depiction of both Christians and Jews as people who are unfit to be accepted by Muslims as allies or friends. (See the Koran 5:51 — "O believers, do not hold Jews and Christians as your allies. They are allies of one another; and anyone who makes them his friends is surely one of them; and God does not guide the unjust.") The distorted, disingenuous stuff about Jesus in Shabbas's Notebook is formulaic and unremarkable. I have seen similar tripe in other publications that purvey Muslim propaganda. Look, Columbus — They're Muslims! Not all of the phony "history" in the Notebook consists of religious myths. There are other flights of pseudohistorical fakery as well, including a farcical article in which Shabbas and someone called Abdallah Hakim Quick disclose that Muslims reached the New World in pre-Columbian times and spread throughout the Caribbean, Central America, South America and even Canada. By the time when Columbus arrived, it seems, the New World was fairly crawling with Muslims — and English explorers met "Iroquois and Algonquin chiefs with names like Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik." Do Quick and Shabbas cite any sources to support such claims? No, they don't. They don't even tell the names of the English explorers, let alone the titles and dates of the documents in which those explorers reported their encounters with Amerindian Muslims. In the context of the Notebook, Quick and Shabbas's unsupported claims about Muslims in the pre-Columbian New World amount to business as usual. The tactic of spewing forth bizarre claims without any documentation or support (or even a pretense thereof) appears early and is used often — and this leads me to say a little about the audience for which the Notebook has been fashioned. The Notebook isn't aimed at our entire population of high-school history teachers or at high-school history teachers in general. Rather, it is aimed at that sorry subpopulation of teachers who, for want of education or want of intelligence, will believe almost anything and will question nothing. It is aimed at teachers who never have absorbed the concepts of evidence and reason, who know nothing of historiography, and who can be treated as dupes. Hence the Notebook teems with fake "facts" that are simply tossed forth as glib one-liners. For example: In an article that starts on page 27 of the Notebook, one Thomas Cleary nonchalantly flings this tidbit to Shabbas's victims: "As is well known, the Qur'an was revealed through the Prophet Muhammad, . . . ." Well known? By whom is that well known? And how is it known? Cleary doesn't bother to say. In truth, what Cleary depicts as a "well known" fact isn't well known, isn't known at all, and isn't a fact. It is an Islamic-fundamentalist myth. The origin of the Koran has been the subject of much scholarly speculation, but historians haven't been able to determine when the Koran's various parts were written, or who may have written them, or how many versions of the Koran were written and rewritten before the canonical version was assembled. (See, for example, Toby Lester's article "What Is the Koran" in The Atlantic Monthly, January 1999.) By the way: Cleary also announces that the Koran is "the last link in a chain of revelation going back to time immemorial, even to the very origin of humankind." Any reader who has an IQ above the freezing point (if I may borrow a phrase used by the business writer Tom Peters) will ask, "How in the world was that ascertained?" Shabbas is manifestly confident that this question will never occur to readers of the Notebook. One more example: Shabbas's dupes learn from the Notebook that the Koran condemns wars of "territorical [sic] conquest" — and they also learn that, from the 8th to the 13th centuries, Arabian Muslims built a great empire that "extended across North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, from Spain to the borders of China." Does this mean that those Arabian Muslims spurned the Koran? Does it mean that they assembled their empire without fighting wars of conquest? Exactly how did they do that? You may well ask the questions, but you won't find any answers in the Notebook. Correspondence with Shabbas The first item in the body of the Notebook is an unsigned piece called "An Introduction to Islam." In that piece, the anonymous writer puts forth the claim that "There are six million Muslims in America," but there is no indication of where the number "six million" has come from: The claim is undocumented and unsupported. The claim also is bogus, and I knew this when I wrote to Shabbas and asked her to support it. Please read on. Muslim propagandists in America fabricate wildly inflated claims about the size of America's Muslim population, presumably because the Muslims think that such claims can be transformed into political influence. (In one notorious instance, an outfit known as the American Muslim Council announced that — according to the Census of 2000 — the number of Muslims dwelling in America was between 6 million and 7 million. Alas, the Council's liars had failed to notice that the Bureau of the Census doesn't collect information about Americans' religious affiliations!) Respectable studies conducted in 2001 have indicated that the United States has about 2 million Muslims, and accounts of those studies have been published widely. See, for example, "How many U.S. Muslims?" in The Christian Science Monitor, 29 November 2001, and "Studies Suggest Lower Count for Number of U.S. Muslims" in The New York Times, 25 October 2001. On 23 September 2003 I dispatched this query to Audrey Shabbas, by e-mail: I have been reading your Arab World Studies Notebook (1998). On page 4, in the unsigned section titled "An Introduction to Islam," I find this statement: "There are six million Muslims in America." I'll be grateful if you will send me a citation of the source from which that number was acquired. Shabbas replied, but she didn't send me any citation. She made some evasive claims about some published "works," and then she wrote: The U.S. media since 9/11 has [sic] been using the number of "seven million" and so I am now using that number. In an April 1996 ABC/Nightline program with Ted Koeppel [sic], he uses [sic] the figure 5 million. I had to laugh. Did she imagine that her vague allusion to the "U.S. media" would dignify the six-million claim? And how about the many "U.S. media" articles — e.g., the two that I've cited above — which have reported estimates of 2 million or so, and which (very importantly) have explained how those estimates were developed? Shabbas evidently assumed that I was unaware of any such reports, and that she therefore could bamboozle me. She was wrong. You'll learn more about Shabbas and her antics when I send you my full review of the Arab World Studies Notebook. (You'll also learn more about Thomas Cleary, for I shall describe how Cleary uses specious "history" in a strikingly bold denigration of Christianity.) I hope that, in the meantime, you will read the articles that I have cited from The Atlantic Monthly, The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times. William J. Bennetta Contact Marcia Leal at marcia.leal.eejh@gmail.com To Go To Top

TREASON FROM WITHIN — HOW DID THIS COME TO PASS? Posted by Barbara Taverna, February 23, 2009.

This was written by Ruth King and it appeared in OUTPOST http://mideastoutpost.com/archives/000538.html

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, in a speech to the Roman Senate, 42 BC) In 1929 Zeev Jabotinsky warned the Jews of Europe to get out in face of a coming cataclysm. Absorbed in their daily lives, most Jews ignored the escalating anti-Jewish rhetoric in the newspapers and the academies; the boycotts of Jews among Polish factory workers and trade groups; the ritual murder libels in Lublin and Vilna; the mounting attacks and beatings; the riots and desecrations of synagogues; the discriminatory laws and taxations; and the staggering failure by host nations to protect their Jewish populations. Yes, the tragic Jews of Europe just tried to get on with their lives. Who could fault them? Who could have foreseen Auschwitz? But what about today? After many decades of Jewish renewal and enhanced prestige brought about by the advent of Israel, Jews are threatened by the recrudescence of world-wide vicious anti-Semitism, all couched as "anti-Israel not anti-Semitic." Even here in the United States trade and religious and academic institutions boycott and "disengage" from Israel, synagogues are vandalized and the mainstream media, at fever pitch to condemn Israel, gives scant attention to the threat against Jews. Why has the American public lost sight of the fact that Jihad threatens the entire Western world and not Israel alone? Why did conservative Jews, even those who stood firm against Oslo become so besotted with President Bush that they swallowed whole the "road map" and the ensuing departure from Gaza without understanding or pressing the fact that Israel is in the front line of the war against Islamic terror? The sad fact is that Jews themselves have contributed to the morass in which we find ourselves. First, let's examine those whom Cicero calls the fools and the ambitious. Women of Hadassah: Your work in the ingathering when you provided rescue to millions of wretched survivors of the Nazis and those expelled from Arab states is the stuff of legend. When did abortion rights, gay rights and assorted trendy environmental crusades become more important than Jewish survival and Israel? Listen up, ADL: You had a distinguished history in defending Jews against defamation. How did you get into the business of defaming our Christian evangelical supporters? Do you really think that Mel Gibson and a crackpot Catholic Bishop threaten Jews more than Arabs and Jihad? And, speaking of Holocaust deniers what say you about Abbas, whose doctoral thesis was devoted to that topic? Esteemed grandees of the Conference of Presidents: There was a time that you were an instant deployment group, your clout felt in the corridors of American power when there was serious offense to Israel and Jews. What have you accomplished in the past ten years? Your major "achievements" were to insult Sarah Palin and elevate Mahmoud Abbas to the role of "peace partner." Even now, faced with the disastrous results of leaving Gaza — from which you egged Israel on to withdraw — you prod Israel to accept its dissolution with the "two state plan." Can you not see that your servility contributes to the climate of blaming Israel? Now let's discuss The Filth Column.....the traitors within. Jews who defame Israel are the most pernicious tools in the war against Israel and Jewry, those who, to paraphrase Cicero, move among us freely, teaching our young, their sly moral equivalence, which equates Israel with its tormentors, heard in the halls of government itself. They preen and strut as supposed devotees of "peace" and "justice." They besmirch Israel with vile comparisons to the Nazis. They pepper their talk with Yiddish, indulge in Holocaust metaphor and willfully and maliciously provide fodder for the cannons of those who would extinguish us. They are in a league of their own. Here is a baker's dozen list of The Filth Column: Not in Our Name Coalition, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews Against the Occupation, Jewish Peace Fellowship, Gush Shalom, Jews Not Zionists, Truth Justice and Human Rights in the Middle East, Rabbis for Human Rights, Visions for Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jews Against the Occupation, Jewish Women for Peace and Justice in Israel/Palestine, Jewish Social Justice Network. JATO (Jews against the Occupation) recently hung banners calling for "Free Palestine" from bridges and highways. Its spokesman Ethan Heitner states: "Even if foreclosures and unemployment weren't decimating our neighborhoods, surely there are better uses for $3 billion a year than helping the Israeli government commit war crimes." Students for Justice in Palestine has groups on many campuses. Matan Cohen of Hampshire College in Massachusetts works among them to get "total international disinvestment from Israel." Then there are the "independents" such as Norton Mezvinsky, who runs the Middle Eastern Studies Program at Central Connecticut State University who recently invited Norman Finkelstein, another pillar of the Jewish Filth Column, to bash Israel. They have rotted the soul of the Jewish nation and undermined the pillars of Israel. Yet they proliferate in the media, the academies and the arts. They deserve the obloquy of all self respecting Jews and a corner in hell. It is 1928 again, but unlike the unsuspecting and tragic Jews of Europe we cannot remain in denial. A strong Israel is our only guarantor of survival. In spite of those who have unwittingly contributed to the present climate and those who are active accomplices of our enemies, we cannot give up or fail. To do so will mean the end of the Jewish people. Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com To Go To Top

DEMOGRAPHIC POLICY FOR ISRAEL Posted by Yoram Ettinger, February 23, 2009.

Demography has been a critical national security issue, and it is incumbent upon the new government of the Jewish State to adopt a comprehensive demographic policy. Enclosed you'll find my latest OpEd — "Let's Leverage the Good Demographic News" — which was published today, February 23, 2009 by the Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304849323&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull.)

The bubble of demographic fatalism is bursting, according to the most recent data, published by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS). The data should be leveraged by the new government to formulate a demographic policy aimed at increasing the current 67 percent Jewish majority west of the Jordan River (without Gaza). The policy would uproot demographic fatalism and advance demographic optimism, thus energizing Aliya, the economy, overseas investments, diplomacy, national security, posture of deterrence and minimizing Jewish-Arab tension, which is fed by demographic fear. According to the ICBS, the country's Jewish population is getting younger and the Arab population getting older. The number of annual Jewish births increased by 45% between 1995 (80,400) and 2008 (117,000), as a result of Aliya from the USSR, the shift by the Soviet Olim from a typical Russian rate of one birth per woman to a typical Israeli rate of two-three births, the rising secular Jewish rate and the sustained high Orthodox and haredi rate. The number of annual Arab births has stabilized — since 1995 — at around 39,000, reflecting a most successful integration by Arabs into the country's infrastructures of education, health, human services, commerce, finance, culture, sports and politics. The fertility gap is down from six births per woman in 1969 to 0.7 in 2009, and the proportion of Jewish births has grown from 69% (of total births) in 1995 and 74% in 2007 to 75% in 2008. The downward trend typifies, also, the Arabs in Judea and Samaria due to large scale emigration, entrenched family planning, reduction of teen pregnancy, rapid urbanization, expanded education especially among women, record divorce rate and higher median marriage age. The Westernization of Arab fertility rate (3.5 births per woman in pre-1967 Israel and four in Judea and Samaria) is apparent throughout most of the Arab and Muslim world. For instance, the 2008 map of the UN Population Division documents an average fertility rate of two-four births, compared with over four births 30 years ago. Even Yemen, the flagship of robust Arab demography, is adopting family planning. This month it approved a new law setting the minimum age for marriage at 17 for boys and girls, prohibiting marriage without the consent of the woman and benefiting divorced women.   THE JEWISH DEMOGRAPHIC tailwind behooves the new government to introduce a demogra phic road map, which would increase the Jewish majority, while respecting the rights of the Arab minority: 1. Placing Aliya at the top of the order of national priorities, as expected from the Jewish state and as required by economic and security challenges. The global economic meltdown, and the rise in anti-Semitism should be leveraged to increase Aliya from the former USSR, US, Europe, Latin America and South Africa. 2. The conversion of some 250,000 Olim from the former USSR — in accordance with Jewish laws — should be expedited. 3. Jewish immigration to — instead of emigration from — Jerusalem would be facilitated by the availability of jobs and lower-cost housing, created through entrepreneurs attracted by a drastic enhancement of the city's infrastructure (airport, fast railroad, Loop, additional freeway, industrial and residential zones). 4. Enticing the return of expatriates and reducing the number of quality emigrants by improving education and research and development infrastructures. 5. Expanding high school and academic programs for prospective Olim. 6. Significant development of infrastructure in the Galilee and in the Negev, triggering emigration from the Greater Tel Aviv area, which would yield economic, environmental and demographic benefits. 7. Synchronizing industrial and educational 9-5 schedule, which would facilitate raising children and obtaining employment. 8. The establishment of a global Jewish foundation, which would support Jewish fertility worldwide, in view of high assimilation, low fertility rates among non-Israeli Jews and Holocaust-driven demographic challenges. In 1949, David Ben-Gurion considered demography a top priority to salvage the Jewish state, thus transferring to his successors a foundation for a long-term robust Jewish majority. In 2009, the new government will enjoy an impressive critical mass of demography, military, economy and technology. Will it resurrect the Ben-Gurion legacy and buttress the future of the Jewish state by reinforcing Jewish majority? Ambassador Yoram Ettinger is a consultant on US-Israel relations as well as the Chairman of Special Projects at the Ariel Center for Policy Research. Formerly the Minister for Congressional Affairs to Israel's Embassy in Washington, DC, Ettinger also served as Consul General of Israel to the Southwestern US. He is a former editor of Contemporary Mideast Backgrounder, and is the author of the Jerusalem Cloakroom series of reports. Contact him at yoramtex@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

DO DONORS TO NEW ISRAEL FUND (NIF) KNOW THIS?; ANOTHER MITCHELLISM; NONSENSE ON FUNDING GAZA Posted by Richard H. Shulman, February 23, 2009.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE A HUMAN SHIELD Gaza residents told the official P.A. daily that Hamas used their farms and houses for firing rockets, digging tunnels, and storing arms. Objectors got shot in the legs. One farm was turned into a fortress that Israeli forces ruined. Now the family is waiting for Hamas to compensate it (IMRA, 1/30). One family opposed Hamas because it belonged to Fatah. How many oppose Hamas for committing war crimes or just making war? How many because they want to preserve their own property, but wouldn't mind sacrifices by others? DO DONORS TO NEW ISRAEL FUND (NIF) KNOW THIS? Donors have given NIF about $200 million. Some money goes to good purpose. Much of it, however, goes to organizations having wholesome titles and statements of purpose, but conducting anti-Israel campaigns in the UNO and media. They describe the Arab-Israel conflict as if the Arabs were the victims, terrorism were justified, and Israeli self-defense were not. "For example, Adalah, which is listed in NIF's annual report under the entirely legitimate heading of a 'legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel' (receiving $105,396 in 2007), joined militant Palestinian (sic) NGOs such as Badil, Al-Haq, and Al-Mezan in referring to the Israeli military operation as 'collective punishment,' 'war crimes' and 'willful killing... not justified by military necessity and... carried out unlawfully and wantonly.' In this statement, there is no call for Hamas to stop its deadly rocket fire. If this is NIF's concept of 'Arab minority rights, which precludes the existence of the State of Israel..." what good is NIF? Adalah urges an end to Jewish sovereignty. It and related groups intend to prosecute Israelis in European courts for alleged war crimes. NIF donates to the same groups as does the [anti-Zionist] EU. "Were NIF donors told outright that they were supporting organizations which demonize Israel using terms such as 'apartheid' and 'racism,' that campaign for and not against anti-Israel boycotts, they would surely demand an end to such funding..." If it denounced such organizations, the EU would find it difficult to subsidize them. NIF donors think they are improving Israel, not helping to destroy it (IMRA, 1/30). STILL THINK BUSH WAS A FRIEND OF ISRAEL? Bush failed in eight years to grant clemency to Jonathan Pollard, Israel's agent. Pollard has spent 24 years under very harsh prison conditions for a crime that usually runs 2-4 years. His main antagonist admitted it was exaggerated. His original lawyers' incompetence precluded parole (IMRA, 1/30). OBAMA DEFAMED U.S. He said "to the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect." He said we needed to restore the relationship we had with Muslim world 20 years ago. He is wrong. "In these most recent 20 years...America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved — and resulted in — the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq. We also tried to save them from starving in Somalia. Some of those efforts were entirely out of decency, others out of self-interest. [Muslims not involved gave the US no credit for it. In behalf of Bosnia, the US targeted civilians; Bill Clinton should be tried for war crimes.] What did the Muslim world do, more than 20 years ago? It executed our Sudan ambassador, imposed an oil embargo, held hostage the people in our Teheran embassy, blew up the Marine barracks in Lebanon, and attacked other US installations. Nevertheless, six days after 9/11, Pres. Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington and said publicly, "Islam is peace," to extend fellowship and friendship to Muslims, to insist that Americans treat them with respect and generosity of spirit. And America listened." Obama is slandering America (IMRA, 1/30). He is missing the problem with Islam. He'd better grow up fast and throw off his radicalism and gain some patriotism. Otherwise, he will make things worse. ANOTHER MITCHELLISM He suggests opening the Gaza-Egypt border, under Fatah control, to end an incentive to smuggle (Arutz-7, 1/30). Fatah before and smugglers now import illegal arms. Mitchell is not logical. SPAIN TO PROSECUTE ISRAELI A Spanish judge approved prosecution of an Israeli official who ordered the assassination of the head of Hamas forces. The target was responsible for murdering hundreds of Israelis [and had not retired from that activity]. Spain has a law permitting prosecution for terrorism committed outside of Spain and not against Spaniards. The judge based his decision on the fact that the target's house was in a civilian area and some civilians were killed (Arutz-7, 1/30). He decided before receiving case documents. Therefore, his decision was political, not judicial (IMRA, 1/31). That standard is not based on international law. It is abused to stifle self-defense, to grant immunity to terrorist bases, and to guarantee more innocent victims of terrorists. It absurdly assumes that war is waged with perfection. NONSENSE ON RECONCILIATION WITH SYRIA Candidate Livni would cede the Golan Heights to Syria, to change the Mideast balance between moderates and extremists (IMRA, 1/31). One day, Syria is extremist, allied to Iran. Next day, having signed a treaty with Israel that fulfills part of its imperialist goals, Syria instantly would turn moderate? Life and religion are not like that. More likely, Syria would feel encouraged, influential as it has resumed being in Lebanon, and having gotten the Golan from which it could harass Israel without Israeli artillery being able to reach Damascus, to continue on the jihadist offensive. What kind of fools are Western leaders, still to believe in the transformative power of agreements with adversaries who don't honor agreements? God may make miracles, but treaties don't. Who are our leaders, to decide how much would satisfy our enemies, when our enemies demand much more, including our heads? With Arabs, once Israel cedes territory, more demands for territory spring up. Suppose the miracle occurred. Would the Syrian regime's Alawite minority be sure to retain power, or lose it to the Muslim Brotherhood, Sunni terrorists who certainly would exploit the Israeli withdrawal for religious imperialism? The notion of moderates who can make genuine peace with Israel and extremists who cannot is a diplomatic or journalistic fabrication. Before the rise of Islamists, neighboring Muslims resorted to terrorism, and it had nothing to do with the territory Israel gained in a war that those "moderates" started. NONSENSE ON FUNDING GAZA & RECONCILIATION US policy is to withhold funds from Gaza, because terrorist Hamas is in charge The Prime Minister of Turkey suggests that Israel end its blockade of Gaza, to permit reconciliation with the Arabs there (NY Times, 2/10, A). Instead, the US gives funds to terrorist Fatah, which passes them on to Gaza. What kind of ethical rectitude and practicality is US policy based on? Tricks? Reconciliation? Hamas and Fatah were set up to destroy Israel. Their attempts to do so led to the blockade. They have no wish to reconcile with Israel. The Prime Minister is making it seem as if Israeli self-defense is the cause of Muslim aggression. Logic is, first comes aggression, then self-defense. FBI SEVERS TIES WITH ISLAMISTS One of the last acts by the Bush administration was to sever its relationship with the Council On American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Saudi-financed lobby. The FBI used to consult CAIR about issues involving Islam. No reason was given for the change (Jewish Press, 2/6, p.3). The reason should be that CAIR is Islamist, rather than moderate. Why didn't the FBI give its reason? Still afraid of Islamist opinion? Or embarrassed over having depended on CAIR? The relationship was a shameful one for the administration, but very few objected to it. One would think that the NY Times, which likes to differentiate moderates from extremists, would have fussed over it. I don't think that the distinction is fully valid. Basic Islam is imperialist, but there are some Muslim societies in which the faithful are not interested in persecuting others. However, Islamists are trying to energize them. NOTION THAT FUNDAMENTALISTS ARE IGNORANT The elite likes to imagine that religious fundamentalists are uneducated and uninformed. The liberal, secularist elite reads the NY Times or Washington Post and listens to NPR. The elite is uninformed (Mark Gold, Jewish Press, 2/6, p.4). ABBAS' ORGANIZATION FIRES AT ISRAELIS Fatah's militia took responsibility for opening fire on the Jewish town of Itamar, in Judea-Samaria. It called Itamar an "illegal settlement." "How is it that gunmen from the illegal militia under 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah openly take credit for a terrorist attack?" "Simple: Because all the people involved in the international project to arm and train 'moderate' Fatah and the amen chorus backing them refuse to allow reality to interfere with their program." "The whole enterprise of arming and creating an [another] independent Palestinian state to 'bring peace' isn't because it is logical that it will bring peace but instead that it is an article of faith that it will bring peace." (IMRA, 2/1.) Sec. Rice kept calling Abbas' people "moderate." Westerners who calls Israeli towns in Judea-Samaria illegal give terrorists the brass to attack them. EVALUATING THE GAZA OFFENSIVE Daily attacks from Gaza prove that the IDF offensive was incomplete. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: SOUNDING THE ALARM Posted by Arlene Kushner, February 22, 2009.

February 22, 2009 My postings go out to many people in the US, and it is to all of you in particular that I speak now. That Israel has friends in the US is incontrovertible. This is the case notably within right wing segments of the Jewish community, and within certain segments of the Christian community. But there is the sense here in Jerusalem today that as a nation we stand alone among the nations of the world as perhaps never before. (The one exception at the moment being Canada, which I note with gratitude.) This is how Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz puts it: "Israel is the only sovereign state whose destruction international society will excuse." Horovitz wrote this in the context of talking about the state of politics in Britain today, where, according to British journalist Nick Cohen, the modern Left, "succors and indulges...the clerical fascists of radical Islam": "From the broadcasters, through the liberal press, the Civil Service, the Metropolitan Police, the bench of bishops and the judiciary, anti-Semitism is no longer an unthinkable mental deformation. As long as the conspiracy theories of the counter-enlightenment come from the ideologues with the dark rather than white skins, nominally liberal men and women will not speak out." ~~~~~~~~~~ Why do I address this to you, in America? Because Horovitz also tells us that Israel's Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor warned, during a talk at the recent Herzliya Conference, that: "...where Britain is today, America will be in a few years time." Exaggeration? I think not. I am watching as a president with Muslim identifications and connections actively courts the Muslim world, while a good portion of the American populace still thinks he's great and deigns not to criticize him. As I face this truth, an icy chill grips my heart. ~~~~~~~~~~ I know that there is precious little that I can do to stop Obama, except to sound alarms such as this one via my writing, and to consistently provide pertinent information. And that is why I address each of you. I hope you won't find the picture of the finger pointing, below, offensive. I most certainly don't mean it to be: I intend it, rather, to emphasize the significance of having each of you take this message personally. For the unvarnished truth, the painful reality, is that the future of Western society, with the US at its core, depends on people like you. And it's time for each of you to take this charge seriously. A simple silent agreement with what I write won't cut it. "Tch tch" or "Oy!" is useless, even if most sincerely intended — useless, unless it is accompanied by action. How does that saying go? "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing." ~~~~~~~~~~ Action: Work hard to convince others — relatives and friends — of the dangers the US faces. Write (brief, unemotional, fact-filled) letters to the editor. Contact foreign desk editors, registering complaints (nicely — nasty doesn't work) when the news reflects an anti-Israel bias. Of great significance, contact elected and appointed officials and register protests, clearly and frequently. The White House, the State Department, and members of both Houses of Congress must hear what you have to say. I will follow with specific names of greatest import. Garner groups of local activists to do all of these things with you. Get out contact information of Congresspeople (information on this follows below), and provide talking points for important issues (which I will always help with). Be a catalyst. Be brave and determined. Form a list. If you are a member of a major Jewish establishment organization — American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Hadassah, Emunah, ORT, B'nai B'rith, AMIT, etc. etc. raise your voice within those circles and insist that they be involved officially in making protest. The majority of these organizations have been all too quiet, and they need to hear from their members and financial supporters on this issues. No more passivity. Act as if the lives of your children and grandchildren will depend on this. For they will. ~~~~~~~~~~ To those on my list already doing these things — and some of you have been in contact with me — I say thank you, and please don't stop. (Bunny S., you're great!) ~~~~~~~~~~ There will many issues to be addressed that I will raise over time. Here I want to return once again to the Durban 2 preparatory committee and the issue of US participation. This participation is the single most alarming decision Obama has made yet. It not only has serious repercussions, it points in an exceedingly dangerous direction. That is why the Obama administration must get the message — immediate and vociferous — that this is not acceptable. The US is headed down a very slippery slope. ~~~~~~~~~~ Today I begin with the most recent column of Caroline Glick. In part she reviews material covered the other day by Anne Bayefsky of Eye on the UN (whom I cited last week). Ostensibly, the US delegation sent by Obama to participate in the preparatory committee — along with the likes of Libya, Cuba, Iran and Pakistan — is only there to try to make things better. The US says it still holds out the option of refusing to attend the actual sessions in Geneva in April if improvements aren't made in the document that will set the agenda of the conference. But, says Bayefsky, this is exceedingly disingenuous for several reasons: The decision to participate at all represents a major shift in US policy, as the US government, since 2001, has boycotted all Durban proceedings. The stated purpose of Durban 2 is "to foster the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action. This is non-negotiable and cannot be changed by U.S. participation, period." "...all U.N. states attending these preparatory sessions have already agreed to 'reaffirm the Durban Declaration.'...joining negotiations now means agreeing to its provisions for the first time." As Glick puts it, as the original Durban Declaration "include[s] the anti-Israel assertion that Israel is a racist state, it is clear that the Durban II conference is inherently, and necessarily, anti-Israel." ~~~~~~~~~~ But Glick now carries this further: "The second reason that both the State Department and the White House must realize that they are powerless to affect the conference's agenda is because that agenda was already set in previous planning sessions... and that agenda includes multiple assertions of the basic illegitimacy of the Jewish people's right to self-determination. "Beyond all that, assuming that the Obama administration truly wishes to change the agenda, the fact is that the US is powerless to do so. As was the case in 2001, so too, today, the Islamic bloc, supported by the Third World bloc, has an automatic voting majority." Writes Glick: "SINCE IT came into office a month ago, every single Middle East policy the Obama administration has announced has been antithetical to Israel's national security interests. From President Barack Obama's intense desire to appease Iran's mullahs in open discussions; to his stated commitment to establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible...; to his expressed support for the so-called Saudi peace plan...; to his decision to end US sanctions against Syria and return the US ambassador to Damascus; to his plan to withdraw US forces from Iraq and so give Iran an arc of uninterrupted control extending from Iran to Lebanon, every single concrete policy Obama has enunciated harms Israel. "At the same time, none of the policies that Obama has adopted can be construed as directed against Israel. In and of themselves, none can be viewed as expressing specific hostility toward Israel. Rather, they are expressions of naiveté, or ignorance, or — at worst — deliberate denial of the nature of the problems of the Arab and Islamic world on the part of Obama and his advisers. "The same cannot be said of the administration's decision to send its delegation to the Durban II planning session this past week in Geneva. Unlike every other Obama policy, this is a hostile act against Israel. This is true first of all because the decision was announced in the face of repeated Israeli requests that the US join Israel and Canada in boycotting the Durban II conference. (emphasis added) "...what lies behind Israel's requests for a US boycott is not a partisan agenda, but a clearheaded acknowledgement that the Durban II conference is inherently devoted to the delegitimization and destruction of the Jewish state. And by joining in the planning sessions, the US has become a full participant in legitimizing and so advancing this overtly anti-Jewish agenda. (emphasis added) ~~~~~~~~~~ Glick goes on to describe what happened at a committee session last Thursday, when the Palestinian delegation proposed that a paragraph be added to the conference's agenda, which "calls for implementation of... the advisory opinion of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] on the wall, [i.e., Israel's security fence], and the international protection of Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory." "The American delegation raised no objection to the Palestinian draft. (emphasis added) "Issued in 2004, the ICJ's advisory opinion on the security fence claimed that Israel has no right to self-defense against Palestinian terrorism. At the time, both the US and Israel rejected the ICJ's authority to issue an opinion on the subject. "On Thursday, by not objecting to this Palestinian draft, not only did the US effectively accept the ICJ's authority, for practical purposes it granted the anti-Israel claim that Jews may be murdered with impunity." ~~~~~~~~~~ Glick's conclusion: "...through its behavior at the Geneva planning sessions this week, the US has demonstrated that State Department protestations aside, the administration has no interest in changing the agenda in any serious way. The US delegation's decision not to object to the Palestinian draft, as well its silence in the face of Iran's rejection of a clause in the conference declaration that mentioned the Holocaust, show the US did not join the planning session to change the tenor of the conference. The US is participating in the planning sessions because it wishes to participate in the conference. (emphasis added) "The Durban II conference, like its predecessor, is part and parcel of a campaign to coordinate the diplomatic and legal war against the Jewish state... "By participating in the conference, the US today is effectively giving American support to the war against the Jewish state. "The open hostility toward Israel expressed by the Obama administration's decision to participate in the Durban process should be a red flag for both the Israeli government and for Israel's supporters in the US. Both Israel and its Jewish and non-Jewish supporters must openly condemn the administration's move and demand that it reverse its decision immediately. (emphasis added) /www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304831938& pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull ~~~~~~~~~~ Now, as the alarm gets louder, I add information from one more very recent article by Anne Bayefsky. This is what she says: "The Feb. 20 State Department press release says the U.S. delegation in Geneva 'outline[d] our concerns with the current outcome document' and in particular 'our strong reservations about the direction of the conference, as the draft document singles out Israel for criticism.' One member of the delegation told The Washington Post: 'The administration is pushing back against efforts to brand Israel as racist in this conference.' In fact, tucked away in a Geneva hall with few observers, the U.S. had done just the opposite. The U.S. delegates had made no objection to a new proposal to nail Israel in an anti-racism manifesto that makes no other country-specific claims. (emphasis added) It's an Obama administration "cover-up," says Bayefsky. Which means we cannot depend on what is reported on this issue by government sources or journalists tending to support the administration. The silence of the U.S. delegation is all the more disturbing because Bayefsky reports that it had no trouble raising objections on other issues at the meeting. www.forbes.com/2009/02/22/obama-israel-holocaust-durban-opinions- contributors_united_nations.html ~~~~~~~~~~ Contact the White House, the State Department, and your elected Senators and Congresspersons on this issue. Be strong and clear in your demand that the US pull out of Durban planning sessions. Use the information provided above to make your case succinctly: The US cannot change the anti-Israel direction of the proceedings and is instead legitimizing the process of undermining Israel. Phone calls and faxes are most effective. Use e-mail if that is what is possible for you. An important hint when contacting Senators and Congresspersons: Call their respective offices and ask for the staffer who is responsible for foreign affairs or Middle East affairs. Either speak to that individual directly, fax in care of that individual, or secure an e-mail address for him or her for sending a direct message. Members of Congress do not have the time or energy to read all messages, or consider all facts. They depend upon key staffers to advise them. You reach the members of Congress most effectively by reaching the appropriate high level staffer. President Barack Obama: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ (for email contact form) Fax: 202-456-2461 White House Comment line: 202-456-1111 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: Public Communication Division Phone: 202-647-6575 Fax: 202-647-2283 e-mail: secretary@state.gov To locate your representatives in Congress, see: http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml To locate your senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm You can often secure best contact info. by logging on to the website of the representative or senator. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

FROM ISLAMABAD TO BRADFORD DEGREES OF ACCOMMODATION Posted by LEL, February 22, 2009.

This was written by Mark Steyn and it appeared in the National Review Online http:/article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmVhYzRmOGYzYmQ3ODRhYjBiMzllYz c2NDNhZmZjMzU=. Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone.

'It is hard to understand this deal," said Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's special envoy. And, if the special envoy of the so-called smartest and most impressive administration in living memory can't understand it, what chance do the rest of us have? Nevertheless, let's try. In the Swat Valley, where a young Winston Churchill once served with the Malakand Field Force battling Muslim insurgents, his successors have concluded the game isn't worth the candle. In return for a temporary ceasefire, the Pakistani government agreed to let the local franchise of the Taliban impose its industrial strength version of sharia across the whole of Malakand Region. If "region" sounds a bit of an imprecise term, Malakand has over five million people, all of whom are now living under a murderous theocracy. Still, peace rallies have broken out all over the Swat Valley, and, at a Swat peace rally, it helps to stand well back: As one headline put it, "Journalist Killed While Covering Peace Rally." But don't worry about Pakistani nukes falling into the hands of "extremists": The Swat Valley is a good hundred miles from the "nation"'s capital, Islamabad — or about as far as Northern Vermont is from Southern Vermont. And, of course, Islamabad is safely under the control of the famously moderate Ali Zardari. A few days before the Swat deal, Mr. Zardari marked the dawn of the Obama era by releasing from house arrest A. Q. Khan, the celebrated scientist and one-stop shop for all your Islamic nuclear needs, for whose generosity North Korea and Iran are especially grateful. From Islamabad, let us zip a world away to London. Actually, it's nearer than you think. The flight routes between Pakistan and the United Kingdom are some of the busiest in the world. Can you get a direct flight from your local airport to, say, Bradford? Where? Bradford, Yorkshire. There are four flights a week from Islamabad to Bradford, a town where 75 percent of Pakistani Britons are married to their first cousins. But don't worry, in the country as a whole, only 57 percent of Pakistani Britons are married to first cousins. Among that growing population of Yorkshire Pakistanis is a fellow called Lord Ahmed, a Muslim member of Parliament. He was in the news the other day for threatening (as the columnist Melanie Phillips put it) "to bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the House of Lords" if it went ahead with an event at which the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders would have introduced a screening of his controversial film Fitna. Britain's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, reacted to this by declaring Minheer Wilders persona non grata and having him arrested at Heathrow and returned to the Netherlands. The Home Secretary is best known for an inspired change of terminology: Last year she announced that henceforth Muslim terrorism (an unhelpful phrase) would be reclassified as "anti-Islamic activity." Seriously. The logic being that Muslims blowing stuff up tends not to do much for Islam's reputation — i.e., it's an "anti-Islamic activity" in the same sense that Pearl Harbor was an anti-Japanese activity. Anyway, Geert Wilders's short film is basically a compilation video of footage from various recent Muslim terrorist atrocities — whoops, sorry, "anti-Islamic activities" — accompanied by the relevant chapter and verse from the Koran. Jacqui Smith banned the filmmaker on "public order" grounds — in other words, the government's fear that Lord Ahmed meant what he said about a 10,000-strong mob besieging the Palace of Westminster. You might conceivably get the impression from Wilders's movie that many Muslims are irrational and violent types it's best to steer well clear of. But, if you didn't, Jacqui Smith pretty much confirmed it: We can't have chaps walking around saying Muslims are violent because they'll go bananas and smash the place up. So, confronted by blackmail, the British government caved. So did the Pakistani government in Swat. But, in fairness to Islamabad, they waited until the shooting was well underway before throwing in the towel. In London, you no longer have to go that far. You just give the impression your more excitable chums might not be able to restrain themselves. "Nice little G7 advanced western democracy you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it." Twenty years ago this month, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative ministry defended the right of a left-wing author Salman Rushdie to publish a book in the face of Muslim riots and the Ayatollah Khomeini's attempted mob hit. Two decades on, a supposedly progressive government surrenders to the mob before it's even taken to the streets. In his first TV interview as president, Barack Obama told viewers of al-Arabiya TV that he wanted to restore the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago." I'm not sure quite what golden age he's looking back to there — the Beirut barracks slaughter? the embassy hostages? — but the point is, it's very hard to turn back the clock. Because the facts on the ground change, and change remorselessly. Even in 30 years. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30 percent of the global population to just over 20 percent, while the Muslim world increased from 15 percent to 20 percent. And in 2030, it won't even be possible to re-take that survey, because by that point half the "developed world" will itself be Muslim: In Bradford — as in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and almost every other western European city from Malmo to Marseilles — the principal population growth comes from Islam. Thirty years ago, in the Obama golden age, a British documentary-maker was so horrified by the "honor killing" of a teenage member of the House of Saud at the behest of her father, the king's brother, that he made a famous TV film about it, Death Of A Princess. The furious Saudis threatened a trade boycott with Britain over this unwanted exposure. Today, we have honor killings not just in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, but in Germany, Scandinavia, Britain, Toronto, Dallas, and Buffalo. And they barely raise an eyebrow. Contact LEL at LEL817@yahoo.com To Go To Top

LET'S TALK ABOUT WATER Posted by Daisy Stern, February 22, 2009.

This is a picture of the water I collected last night: here are some. In only one night, this is what fell. I could have collected a lot more, but didn't feel like it; maybe next time. We also have a little man-made pond — that my son dug out with his own hands — which only fills up a couple of times a year. Today is one of those days. I hope you follow my example and start collecting the rain water that is legitimately yours: it fell on your roof, didn't it? Where will it be going if YOU don't keep it? Who will eventually either take it for themselves (Arabs digging illegal wells into the aquifers, or USAID in Bani Naim), or sell it to you at a profit (Mekorot from the Kinneret, etc)? Don't give our enemies a chance to deprive you of your deserved greenery , fruits and vegetables. The slogan always seems to be "WATER RATIONING" these days: WHO SAID IT HAS TO BE SO? Why cooperate with people who don't have your best interest at heart? So keep the water, use it for your gardening needs, indoor plants, or whatever purposes brackish water can be used for, and ENJOY! THIS WATER is staying RIGHT HERE, in Kiryat Arba, and will be used to water my GARDEN: Yes, you read it. It will water EVERYTHING in this garden, from the fruit trees, to the shade trees, to the flowers. G-d gave it to me, right here, and I sure hope EVERY GOOD JEW FOLLOWS MY EXAMPLE AND KEEPS THE WATER G-D GAVE HIM OR HER, right where he or she lives. Enough with this water tyranny: the government supplies it to the Arabs more than to us, whether in Jordan or in Yesha, and they steal it themselves anyway, if not for the Americans giving it to them via USAID. Don't you see it is another assault on our sovereignty? They'll do everything they can to deprive the Jews of anything good; first it was Gush Katif, now it is water rationing. If we distributed the water equitably to the Jews, and forgot the Arabs, there would be enough for everybody. But no, they have to supply our enemies first, and let US , the JEWS, suffer. I am NOT buying it. Better I use is than the Arabs. Or that I should have to pay Mekorot to sell it to me at outrageous prices. Tough luck if you don't like it. When the fruits and the fragrant flowers come, I have to give maaser — one tenth — to the Cohen. And since there is no Cohen to give it to, it does go to some form of charity (you are not allowed to even taste the fruit until to give maaser; did you know that?). So YES, the water stays here, but NO, the product is NOT all mine. And if a THIRSTY JEW comes along, believe me, he or she gets his/her drink. Whenever I have guests, they always get the very best water, even my workers: never tap water, always spring water, so I am NOT selfish when it comes to that. But there is no way I'll let the b.......s get the benefit of all the water flowing back into the aquifer... and then they take it illegally anyway. Also, did you know that the arabs all have water collecting systems on their roofs, to collect rain water? If they do it, WE certainly should. Do you really believe , knowing that they want us dead, that they care if we suffer from lack of water? On the contrary, they are delighted. I won't give them this pleasure, and you shouldn't either. Just to make my point: today, as I was driving through BEIT UMAR, a HOTBED OF TERROR, I slowed down enough to take a good picture of the green grassy football field I had told you about. Mind you, while there had been a drought for two straight months, and our grass was all yellow and dried out.... And grass uses the most water of all plants here. So I am asking you, WHERE DOES that water come from? WHO gave it to them? From WHOM did they steal it? And HOW THIRSTY CAN THEY BE, if they can afford to water their fields like this in the middle of a drought? If you read their sites, they don't stop complaining about how we steal their water. Now you can see first hand the TRUTH OF THE MATTER. Contact Daisy Stern by email at daisystern1@gmail.com To Go To Top

LIVING IN A DUMB NATION Posted by Joseph R. Black, Jr., February 22, 2009.

Having read all op-ed columns in The Florida Times-Union and The Columbus Dispatch as they appear today, I would like to report that I am no less depressed than I was yesterday. Please send a team of psychiatrists to my apartment at your earliest convenience. My topic for today is the foreign policy of the U.S. as it relates to Mexico and North Korea. If that topic doesn't depress you, I don't know what will. The U.S. borders only two nations. One good, and one evil. I'll let you decide which is which. The U.S. does not border North Korea. If it did, its evil-border batting average would rise from .500 to .666. Sounds almost biblical, doesn't it? Anyway, U.S. foreign policy as it relates to Mexico and North Korea has been, by any sane reckoning, an abysmal failure. We're so dumb we can't seem to recognize that there are some nations we can't trust. North Korea and Mexico are among them. Make a deal with North Korea, and it will renege. Make another, and it will do the same. North Korea is once again engaged in saber rattling, this time with its Taepodong 2 missile. But don't worry about a thing. All the U.S. needs to do is make another deal with North Korea. Perhaps Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should negotiate the latest deal, thereby providing her the prospect of winning the Nobel Peace Prize a la President Carter. Contact Joseph Black at plasma12@bellsouth.net To Go To Top

VOLUNTEER TO HELP HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN ISRAEL Posted by George Iversen, February 22, 2009.

If you are visiting Israel and have the time to perform a mitzvah, volunteers are needed to help alleviate the difficult plight of many survivors of the Shoah in Israel. There are a number of organizations working to improve and enhance the lives of survivors. However, Israeli and international law concerning the rights of survivors has changed, and much needs to be done to educate survivors and their families about these changes. Volunteers will attend a 10-hour training seminar and then either staff a telephone hotline or visit the homes of survivors to help them fill out forms and to explain changes in the law with respect to their rights and benefits. Fluency in Hebrew, Yiddish, or an East European language is required. For information on this project or other volunteer opportunities in Israel, please contact: In the United States: George Iversen at george.iversen@israelvolunteer.org OR Toll free at 1-866-624-1853 In Israel: Adi Liran, the International Volunteer Coordinator of Ruach Tova, at adi@ruachtova.org.il Thank you George Iversen

Contact George Iversen at georgeivers@yahoo.com To Go To Top

OBAMA'S DURBAN GAMBIT Posted by Naomi Ragen, February 22, 2009.

[Background: The 2001 UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban quickly became a disgusting display of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel Propaganda. No other country was singled out. It was clear the attack had been carefully-planned and cleverly-executed. Israel had been blind-sided.] The Bush Administration was going to boycott Durban II, whose whole purpose is to implement the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic resolutions of the Durban I hate-fest. But the present U.S. administration has decided to "engage." The result will shows what "changes" are in store of us. This is by Caroline Glick and it appeared February 20, 2009 in the Jerusalem Post. Contact her at caroline@carolineglick.com

While most Americans were busy celebrating Valentine's Day, last Saturday the Obama administration announced that it would send a delegation to Geneva to participate in planning the UN's so-called Durban II conference, scheduled to take place in late April. Although largely overlooked in the US, the announcement sent shock waves through Jerusalem. The Durban II conference was announced in the summer of 2007. Its stated purpose is to review the implementation of the declaration adopted at the UN's anti-Israel hate-fest that took place in Durban, South Africa, the week before the September 11, 2001, attacks against America. At Durban, both the UN-sponsored NGO conclave and the UN's governmental conference passed declarations denouncing Israel as a racist state. The NGO conference called for a coordinated international campaign aimed at delegitimizing Israel and the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, and belittling the Holocaust. The NGO conference also called for curbs on freedom of expression throughout the world in order to prevent critical discussion of Islam. As far as the world's leading NGOs — including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — were concerned, critical discussions of Islam are inherently racist. In defending US participation in the Durban II planning sessions, Gordon Duguid, the State Department's spokesman, argued, "If you are not engaged, you don't have a voice." He continued, "We wanted to put forward our view and see if there is some way we can make the document [which sets the agenda and dictates the outcome of the Durban II conference] a better document than it appears it is going to be."   WHILE THIS seems like a noble goal, both the State Department and the Obama White House ought to know that there is absolutely no chance that they can accomplish it. This is the case for two reasons. First, since the stated purpose of the Durban II conference is to oversee the implementation of the first Durban conference's decisions, and since those decisions include the anti-Israel assertion that Israel is a racist state, it is clear that the Durban II conference is inherently, and necessarily, anti-Israel. The second reason that both the State Department and the White House must realize that they are powerless to affect the conference's agenda is because that agenda was already set in previous planning sessions chaired by the likes of Libya, Cuba, Iran and Pakistan. And that agenda includes multiple assertions of the basic illegitimacy of the Jewish people's right to self-determination. The conference agenda also largely adopted the language of the 2001 NGO conference that called for the criminalization of critical discussion of Islam as a form of hate speech and racism. That is, the 2009 conference's agenda is not only openly anti-Israel, it is also openly pro-tyranny, and so seemingly antithetical to US interests. Beyond all that, assuming that the Obama administration truly wishes to change the agenda, the fact is that the US is powerless to do so. As was the case in 2001, so too, today, the Islamic bloc, supported by the Third World bloc, has an automatic voting majority. Beyond chipping away at the margins, the US has no ability whatsoever to change the conference's agenda or expected outcome.   SINCE IT came into office a month ago, every single Middle East policy the Obama administration has announced has been antithetical to Israel's national security interests. From President Barack Obama's intense desire to appease Iran's mullahs in open discussions; to his stated commitment to establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible despite the Palestinians' open rejection of Israel's right to exist and support for terrorism; to his expressed support for the so-called Saudi peace plan, which would require Israel to commit national suicide by contracting to within indefensible borders and accepting millions of hostile, foreign-born Arabs as citizens and residents of the rump Jewish state; to his decision to end US sanctions against Syria and return the US ambassador to Damascus; to his plan to withdraw US forces from Iraq and so give Iran an arc of uninterrupted control extending from Iran to Lebanon, every single concrete policy Obama has enunciated harms Israel. At the same time, none of the policies that Obama has adopted can be construed as directed against Israel. In and of themselves, none can be viewed as expressing specific hostility toward Israel. Rather, they are expressions of naiveté, or ignorance, or — at worst — deliberate denial of the nature of the problems of the Arab and Islamic world on the part of Obama and his advisers. The same cannot be said of the administration's decision to send its delegation to the Durban II planning session this past week in Geneva. Unlike every other Obama policy, this is a hostile act against Israel. This is true first of all because the decision was announced in the face of repeated Israeli requests that the US join Israel and Canada in boycotting the Durban II conference. Some could chalk up the US's rejection of Israel's urgent entreaties as an honest difference of opinion. But what lies behind Israel's requests for a US boycott is not a partisan agenda, but a clearheaded acknowledgement that the Durban II conference is inherently devoted to the delegitimization and destruction of the Jewish state. And by joining in the planning sessions, the US has become a full participant in legitimizing and so advancing this overtly anti-Jewish agenda. On Thursday, Prof. Anne Bayefsky, the senior editor of the EyeontheUN Web site, demonstrated that by participating in the planning sessions the US is accepting the conference's anti-Israel agenda. Bayefsky reported that at the planning session in Geneva on Thursday, the Palestinian delegation proposed that a paragraph be added to the conference's agenda. Their draft "calls for implementation of... the advisory opinion of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] on the wall, [i.e., Israel's security fence], and the international protection of Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory." The American delegation raised no objection to the Palestinian draft. Issued in 2004, the ICJ's advisory opinion on the security fence claimed that Israel has no right to self-defense against Palestinian terrorism. At the time, both the US and Israel rejected the ICJ's authority to issue an opinion on the subject. On Thursday, by not objecting to this Palestinian draft, not only did the US effectively accept the ICJ's authority, for practical purposes it granted the anti-Israel claim that Jews may be murdered with impunity. This assertion aligns naturally with the language already in the Durban II agenda, which calls Israel's Law of Return racist. This law, which grants automatic citizenship to any Jew who wishes to live here, is the embodiment of Jewish peoplehood and the vehicle through which the Jewish people has built our nation-state. In alleging that the Law of Return is racist, the Durban II conference asserts that the Jews are not a people and we have no right to self-determination in our homeland. And Thursday, by participating in the process of demonizing Israel and its people, the US lent its own credibility to this bigoted campaign.   OBAMA'S SPOKESMEN and defenders claim that by participating in the planning sessions in Geneva, the administration is doing nothing more than attempting to prevent the conference from being the anti-Jewish diplomatic pogrom it was in 2001. If they are unsuccessful, they will boycott the conference. No harm done. But this claim rings hollow. As Bayefsky and others argued this week, by entering into the Durban preparatory process, the US has done two things. First, it has made it all but impossible for European states like France, Britain, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, which were all considering boycotting the conference, to do so. They cannot afford to be seen as more opposed to its anti-Israel and anti-freedom agenda than Israel's closest ally and the world's greatest democracy. So just by participating in the planning sessions the US has legitimized a clearly bigoted, morally illegitimate process, making it impossible for Europe to disengage. Second, through its behavior at the Geneva planning sessions this week, the US has demonstrated that State Department protestations aside, the administration has no interest in changing the agenda in any serious way. The US delegation's decision not to object to the Palestinian draft, as well its silence in the face of Iran's rejection of a clause in the conference declaration that mentioned the Holocaust, show the US did not join the planning session to change the tenor of the conference. The US is participating in the planning sessions because it wishes to participate in the conference. The Durban II conference, like its predecessor, is part and parcel of a campaign to coordinate the diplomatic and legal war against the Jewish state. By walking out of the 2001 Durban conference, and refusing to participate, support or finance any aspect of this UN-sponsored campaign until last Saturday, for seven years the US made clear that it opposed this war and believed its aim of destroying Israel is unacceptable. By embracing the Durban campaign now, it is possible that the Obama administration will water down some of the most noxious language in conference's draft declaration. But this doesn't balance out the harm US participation will cause to Israel, or to the Jewish people. By participating in the conference, the US today is effectively giving American support to the war against the Jewish state. The open hostility toward Israel expressed by the Obama administration's decision to participate in the Durban process should be a red flag for both the Israeli government and for Israel's supporters in the US. Both Israel and its Jewish and non-Jewish supporters must openly condemn the administration's move and demand that it reverse its decision immediately.   FOR THE past two years, the American Jewish Committee has been instrumental in convincing the American Jewish community to reject repeated Israeli requests that they call for a US boycott of Durban II. To secure US participation over Israel's objections, the AJC even went so far as to sign a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking her not to boycott the conference. In return for the AJC's labors, its senior operative Felice Gaer is now a member of the US delegation in Geneva. Happily ensconced in the Swiss conference room where the Holocaust is denied, the Jewish people's right to self-determination is reviled, and Israel's right to defend itself is rejected, Gaer now sits silently, all the while using the fact of her membership in the US delegation as proof that the Obama administration is serious about protecting Israel at Durban II. Whatever the AJC may have gained for its support for Durban II, Israel and its supporters have clearly been harmed. Some might argue that no Israeli interest is served by openly condemning the White House. But when the White House is participating in a process that legitimizes and so advances the war against the Jewish state, such condemnation is not only richly deserved but required. It is the administration, not Israel that threw down the gauntlet. If Israel and its supporters refrain from vigorously criticizing this move, we guarantee its repetition. EDITOR'S NOTE: Update February 27, 2009: From Newsdesk@jta.org U.S. pulling out of Durban II conference The Obama administration has decided to boycott the so-called Durban II conference out of concerns for anti-Semitism. Multiple sources on a conference call with the White House on Friday told JTA that the Obama administration had opted not to attend any further preparatory meetings ahead of the planned U.N. conference against racism in Geneva in April. But he sent people to participate in the "Planning Session" that wrote the language that will be used to demonize Israel in Durban 2. What kind of schizophrenic game is this?   Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. To Go To Top

SHOAIB CHOUDHURY, ANTI-RADICAL MUSLIM JOURNALIST ATTACKED IN BANGLADESH Posted by Dr. Richard L. Benkin, February 22, 2009.

Dhaka, Bangladesh — At 10am today, local time, internationally-acclaimed journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, was attacked as he was working in the office of his newspaper, Weekly Blitz, by "a gang of thugs" claiming to be from Bangladesh's ruling Awami League. I spoke by telephone with Choudhury as he awaited medical treatment for eye, neck, and other injuries suffered in the attack. The renewed violence marks the first against him since he was abducted by Bangladesh's dreaded Rapid Action Battalion a year ago. A large group stormed Blitz premises and attacked newspaper staff until they found Choudhury. At that point, he said, "they dragged me [and two staff] into the street" where they beat them "in broad daylight...They looted my office and stole my laptop" with "all my sensitive information. As of this writing, the attackers continue to occupy the Blitz office. According to Choudhury, the police were impassive and seemed intimidated when the attackers emphasized their party membership and accused him of being an agent of the Israeli Mossad. They later threatened to attack his home should Choudhury go to the police again. Choudhury was arrested in 2003 by government agents, in cooperation with Islamist forces, because of his advocacy of relations with Israel and religious equality, and his articles exposing the rise of radical Islam in Bangladesh. He was tortured and held for seventeen months and only released after strong pressure by human rights activist Dr. Richard Benkin and US Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL). In 2007, the US Congress passed a Kirk-introduced resolution 409-1 calling on Bangladesh to stop harassing Choudhury and drop capital charges against him after extensive evidence confirmed them to be false, contrary to Bangladeshi law, and as admitted by successive Bangladeshi officials, maintained only to appease Islamists. The Bangladeshi government continues to remain in defiance of that resolution and its provisions. For further information, contact Richard Benkin at drrbenkin@comcast.net To Go To Top

CRY ISLAMOPHOBIA AND LET LOOSE THE DOGS OF WAR Posted by Sultan Knish, February , 2009.

The Muslim oversensitivity to any perceived insult is in directly inverse proportion to how much hate Muslims themselves are willing to display for others. If you go by Muslim standards, removing a man wearing a t-shirt with Arabic words off a plane is an unacceptable display of Islamophobia, but banning an Israeli tennis player from Dubai is completely legitimate. Drawing cartoons of Mohammed as a terrorist is not acceptable, but calling for the deaths of the cartoonists is. Writing a book parodying Islam is unacceptable, but murdering the book's translators around the world is reasonable. Israeli checkpoints on the Gaza border are unacceptable examples of apartheid, but Saudi Arabia barring all non-Muslims from entering the city of Mecca or from holding Saudi citizenship — is their right. A protest against Hamas and Al Queda that desecrates their flags, which have verses from the Koran on them, is unacceptable offensive to Muslims — but Muslim student associations waving those same flags is something that no one may question. A Muslim "refugee" who is arrested for illegally entering a European country is being imprisoned solely out of "Islamophobia", as are the terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay — but Westerners who enter a Muslim country lose all rights and may be imprisoned, tortured and flogged on the flimsiest of allegations from a Muslim. Western countries expecting that a Muslim woman remove her Hijab for an ID photo is Islamophobia. However Muslim countries have the right to demand that even the House Speaker and First Lady cover up their hair when visiting a Muslim country. When a Muslim man has woman's underwear put on his head, while detaining for trying to kill American soldiers, that is the vilest crime against humanity. However when Muslim men hang and flog women for adultery... that is their culture and we have no right to judge. Not unless we're Islamophobes, that is. Muslim paranoid fears of Western culture can legitimately express themselves in banning magazines, Valentine's day celebrations and movies. However any Western resistance to the Koran or Arabic is a clear sign of Islamophobia. A Koran in a toilet is a hate crime. However burning the contents of the Library of Alexandria because "if it's not in the Koran, it's superfluous", is a legitimate expression of Muslim views on non-Muslim literature. Prejudice against Muslims is unacceptable. But Muslim prejudices against women, Jews, Christians, gays, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Atheists, and just about everyone else — are part of their culture. And who are we to judge if they feel they have a right to hate and kill anyone who isn't a Muslim male. The problem with all of these examples is that Muslims want to have it both ways. On the one hand they want a blank check that allows them to treat any negative feedback as Islamophobia. On the other hand they want to be able to express any degree and form of hatred for others and support for terrorism in public forums without any repercussions. What Muslims really want is Political Correctness for us, and none for them. They want a chain around our necks with the leash in their hand, while the other hand waves a Hizbollah flag. And that can't work. If Danish cartoonist can't draw Mohammed, then Muslim protesters should at the very least be unable to call for the murder of their political opponents. If Christian pastors are to be censored for denouncing Islam, then the Finsbury Park Mosque rabble should be too. Neither hate nor tolerance can be a one way street, yet Muslims have exploited charges of Islamophobia to do just that. Saudi backed organizations such as CAIR or the MSU routinely spread hate, and then are outraged when anyone calls them to account for it. Canada's largest group, the Canadian Arab Federation, had no problem being part of rallies featuring Hamas and Hezbollah flags. They did have a problem when Canada's Immigration Minister Jason Kenney criticized them for it, so naturally the President of the CAF called him a "professional whore". Kenney in turn responded by saying, "We should not be rewarding those who express views that are contrary to Canada's best liberal values of tolerance and mutual respect" and announced plans to pull the CAF's funding. Naturally the CAF's response was to cry Islamophobia. The Canadian Arab Federation decided to host pro-Hamas articles on its site, to push for airing Al Jazeera in Canada, to participate in openly terrorist rallies and then respond to criticism by insulting the Immigration Minister. But naturally the consequences of all that only came due because of Islamophobia. Muslims have gotten too comfortable sweeping a lot under the rug by crying Islamophobia. But that implies that they actually wish to be part of a tolerant multicultural society, where everyone's rights are respected. By their actions and agendas however, that is not the society they wish to be a part of. Neither in Ridyah, Tehran, Gaza, Karachi or London, Paris and Detroit. It is up to Muslims themselves to decide what role they wish to play abroad and in the global culture. They can be intolerant fanatics who stay at home and expect everyone else to stay at home too. Or they can be open and tolerant enough to live side by side with others. But they can't be intolerant fanatics who expect us to be tolerant and open toward their fanatical intolerance. Not on our dime. That is the problem, and it is a Gordian Knot that Muslims can either try to untie themselves, or someone will wind up cutting through it for them. Contact Sultan Knish at sultanknish@yahoo.com To Go To Top

BRITISH MUSLIMS PROVIDING TALIBAN WITH ELECTRONIC DEVICES FOR ROADSIDE BOMBS TO KILL BRITISH TROOPS Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, February 22, 2009.

These people are traitors and should be deported ...Sadly the death penalty for treason is not applied any more.... Truth is while they remain on British soil they are a clear and present danger. ..... Further .... we need to think NOW if British Passports should start to be constrained and have VISAS to travel This was posted by Raymond yesterday from the Jihad Watch site http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024950.php

With fellow countrymen like these, who needs enemies? Electronic devices such as "mobile phones filled with explosives, which could kill or seriously injure British soldiers patrolling on foot, and more sophisticated devices that can be used against military vehicles." Quite ingenious these British Muslims; combining their Western heritage (e.g.., technology) with their jihadi blood-lust, they can sure be quite creative. "British Muslims 'providing Taliban with electronic devices for roadside bombs,'" by Con Coughlin for the Telegraph, February 21: British Muslims are providing the Taliban with electronic devices to make roadside bombs for use in attacks against British forces serving in southern Afghanistan, The Telegraph can disclose. The devices, which enable Taliban fighters to detonate roadside bombs by remote control, are either sent to sympathizers in the region, or carried by volunteers who fly to Pakistan and then make their way across the border. Details of how British electronic components have been found in roadside bombs were given to David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, when he visited British troops at their military compound at Lashkagar, in Helmand province, earlier this week. In a briefing on British operations in southern Afghanistan by Brigadier Gordon Messenger, the Royal Marine commander of the British battlegroup, Mr Miliband was shown examples of the crude, home-made devices that are being used in attacks against British patrols. They included mobile phones filled with explosives, which could kill or seriously injure British soldiers patrolling on foot, and more sophisticated devices that can be used against military vehicles. Explosives experts who have examined the devices say they have found British-made electronic components that enable Taliban insurgents to detonate their home-made, road-side bombs by remote control. The electronic devices smuggled into Afghanistan from Britain range from basic remote control units that are normally used to fly model airplanes to more advanced components that enable insurgents to conduct attacks from up to a mile away from British patrols. "We have found electronic components in devices used to target British troops that originally come from Britain," a British explosives officer told Mr Miliband during a detailed briefing on the type of improvised explosive device (IED) used against British forces. When asked how the components had reached Afghanistan, the officer explained that they had either been sent from Britain, or physically brought to Afghanistan by British Muslims who had flown over. The disclosure is the latest in a string of suggestions from British commanders about the connections between British Muslims and violence in Afghanistan... Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

THE ARAB LEAGUE STARTS LEGAL PROCEDURES FOR PURSUING ISRAELI WAR CRIMINALS Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, February 22, 2009.

This is from Sana, the Syrian Arab News Agency and is archived at http://www.sana.sy/eng/22/2009/02/21/213885.htm It was written by Fadi Allafi/Ghosoun.

Cairo, (SANA) — The Arab League started today the legal procedures to guarantee that none of the Israeli war criminals will escape punishment for the crimes they had committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza Strip. In a statement to reporters, Head of the League Secretary General's Office Ambassador Hisham Yousef said that two committees were held today at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Arab League presided by the Secreatry General, Amr Mousa. The first committee consists of international jurists headed by the French international jurist Jean Dugrd. This committee is going to study the situation in Gaza Strip and the Israeli crimes committed against the Palestinian people and the role of the international law in dealing with those crimes. This committee also includes the Arab League and will be aided by a Palestinian human rights organization. "The second committee held today presided by the Arab League Secretay General is for the Arab originations. This committee is going to discuss the role of the establishments of the joint Arab action to rebuild Gaza, and it consists of agriculture and industry organizations to discuss the Palestinian people's needs and the means with which they can help within a framework of organized Arab effort for the rebuilding process", Yousef added. The legal committee, yousef mentioned, is going to make a report about the human and international law violations and discuss details of the war crimes carried out by the isareli army against the Palestinian people in Gaza paving the way for international law steps in this domain. Yousef also mentioned that it should be taken into consideration that such issues take long time and that this is the beginning. He also pointed out that the committee will present its report to the Secretary General. "The international law committee may pay other visits, and experts and technicians may share". Yousef added. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

CHAS FREEMAN SAYS HE TOOK $1 MILLION FOR SAUDI "PUBLIC RELATIONS" Posted by Bryna Berch, February 22, 2009.

When Obama was a candidate, it was racist to say Obama was Muslim. When he became president, he made being a Muslim sound like a job requirement, and boasted about his Muslim roots. When he was candidate, many Jews reassured us that he'd fired his troupe of anti-semitic policy advisors. With Samantha, Susan and Z Big Bryzezinski the Ancient Anti-Semite, he had almost a full house of people who hate Jews. He's apparently ready to complete the crew with an Saudi Arabian slave — the dishonourable Charles Freeman. This was written by Steve Rosen And it appeared on the Middel East Forum website. http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-monitor/2009/02/freeman- says-he-took-1-million-for-saudi-public-relations.html

Chas Freeman, reportedly nominated to head the National Intelligence Council preparing finished National Intelligence Estimates for President Obama, acknowledged in 2006 that the $1 million donation to his Middle East Policy Council that he received from "the generosity of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia" was for public relations in the United States. He said in an interview with the Saudi-U.S. Relations Information Service, "Frankly, I'm delighted that the Kingdom o