A RARE LOOK AT SECRETIVE BROTHERHOOD IN AMERICA Posted by Tsila, January 31, 2006.

This article was written by Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Sam Roe and Laurie Cohen, Tribune staff reporters and was published September 19, 2004 (www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi- 0409190261sep19,1,3910166.story?page=7&coll=chi-newsspecials-hed). Tribune foreign correspondent Evan Osnos, staff reporter Stephen Franklin and Hossam el-Hamalawy contributed to this report. [Editor's note: The Yusif Qaradawi discussed below is the same Yusif Qaradawi who founded Islam Online.net, which said about the furious reaction of Muslims to some Danish cartoons of Mohammad -- to view them click here. -- that "... while it is unreasonable to expect Europeans to overlook the cultural experiences of several centuries, it is equally unreasonable to expect one billion Muslims to take it for granted that free speech affords others a right to ridicule their religion, while staunchly protecting another religion from the same treatment." I wonder if the Muslim trashing of Joseph's tomb and their eradicating Jewish archeological finds from the Temple Mount are examples of the Muslim regard for other people's religion. (Note that the quote from Islam Online comes from Jeff Morley's column on world opinions on the topic of the day -- blogs.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/2006/01/ cartoons_that_o.html.]   A group aiming to create Islamic states worldwide has established roots here, in large part under the guidance of Egypt-born Ahmed Elkadi Over the last 40 years, small groups of devout Muslim men have gathered in homes in U.S. cities to pray, memorize the Koran and discuss events of the day. But they also addressed their ultimate goal, one so controversial that it is a key reason they have operated in secrecy: to create Muslim states overseas and, they hope, someday in America as well. These men are part of an underground U.S. chapter of the international Muslim Brotherhood, the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group and an organization with a violent past in the Middle East. But fearing persecution, they rarely identify themselves as Brotherhood members and have operated largely behind the scenes, unbeknown even to many Muslims. Still, the U.S. Brotherhood has had a significant and ongoing impact on Islam in America, helping establish mosques, Islamic schools, summer youth camps and prominent Muslim organizations. It is a major factor, Islamic scholars say, in why many Muslim institutions in the nation have become more conservative in recent decades. Leading the U.S. Brotherhood during much of this period was Ahmed Elkadi, an Egyptian-born surgeon and a former personal physician to Saudi Arabia's King Faisal. He headed the group from 1984 to 1994 but abruptly lost his leadership position. Now he is discussing his life and the U.S. Brotherhood for the first time. His story, combined with details from documents and interviews, offers an unprecedented look at the Brotherhood in America: how the group recruited members, how it cloaked itself in secrecy and how it alienated many moderate Muslims. Indeed, because of its hard-line beliefs, the U.S. Brotherhood has been an increasingly divisive force within Islam in America, fueling the often bitter struggle between moderate and conservative Muslims. Many Muslims believe that the Brotherhood is a noble international movement that supports the true teachings of Islam and unwaveringly defends Muslims who have come under attack around the world, from Chechens to Palestinians to Iraqis. But others view it as an extreme organization that breeds intolerance and militancy. "They have this idea that Muslims come first, not that humans come first," says Mustafa Saied, 32, a Floridian who left the U.S. Brotherhood in 1998. While separation of church and state is a bedrock principle of American democracy, the international Brotherhood preaches that religion and politics cannot be separated and that governments eventually should be Islamic. The group also champions martyrdom and jihad, or holy war, as a means of self-defense and has provided the philosophical underpinnings for Muslim militants worldwide. Many moderate Muslims in America are uncomfortable with the views preached at mosques influenced by the Brotherhood, scholars say. Those experts point to a 2001 study sponsored by four Muslim advocacy and religious groups that found that only a third of U.S. Muslims attend mosques. In suburban Bridgeview, Ill., some moderates say they quit attending the Mosque Foundation because the leadership became too conservative and dominated by Brotherhood members. Documents obtained by the Tribune and translated from Arabic show that the U.S. Brotherhood has been careful to obscure its beliefs from outsiders. One document tells leaders to be cautious when screening potential recruits. If the recruit asks whether the leader is a Brotherhood member, the leader should respond, "You may deduce the answer to that with your own intelligence." Islamic state a long-term goal Brotherhood members emphasize that they follow the laws of the nations in which they operate. They stress that they do not believe in overthrowing the U.S. government, but rather that they want as many people as possible to convert to Islam so that one day--perhaps generations from now--a majority of Americans will support a society governed by Islamic law. Muslims make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. population, but estimates of their number vary widely from 2 million to 7 million. Federal authorities say they have scrutinized the U.S. Brotherhood for years. Agents currently are investigating whether people with ties to the group have raised and laundered money to finance terrorism abroad. No terrorism-related charges have been filed. Former leader Elkadi, who has been questioned at length by federal authorities about the inner workings of the Brotherhood, says the group has served Muslims in the United States well. He personally helped establish an Islamic community in the Florida Panhandle, with a mosque, school and health clinic. And though he eventually lost it all--even his medical license--some Muslims still view him as a great Islamic leader. "Islam is for everyone," he says. "It's good for America, good for Muslims too. . . . It's good knowledge, and good knowledge should be available to everyone." Mohammed Mahdi Akef, head of the international Muslim Brotherhood, based in Egypt, lauds Elkadi and the activities of the U.S. Brotherhood. "They have succeeded in saving the younger generations from melting into the American lifestyle without faith," he says. "They have saved their children." Once one of America's most influential Muslims, Elkadi now spends most of his days in front of the TV in his two-bedroom condominium in Sterling, Va., across the Potomac River from Washington. Earlier this year he was diagnosed with a neurological disorder that affects motor skills, speech and memory. He often has difficulty expressing himself and seldom speaks more than two sentences at a time. Sometimes, he says, he smiles for no reason other than to try to remain cheerful. But on many days his memory is clear, and his statements about the major events of the U.S. Brotherhood have been confirmed by others associated with the group. Elkadi, a 64-year-old with a closely trimmed white beard, says he is willing to speak about the Brotherhood because he believes he has nothing to hide. Both he and his wife, Iman, 60, say they have devoted much of their lives to the Brotherhood, and Elkadi says the reason for that is simple: "It's genetic." Both of their fathers were early Brotherhood leaders in Egypt, where the group began in 1928 as an opposition movement to the British-backed Egyptian monarchy. Its founder and leader was schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna, who advocated a return to fundamental Islam as a way to reform Muslim societies and expel Western troops. The Brotherhood slogan became "Allah is our goal; the Messenger is our model; the Koran is our constitution; jihad is our means; and martyrdom in the way of Allah is our aspiration." When Egypt imprisoned and executed some Muslim Brothers in the 1950s, many members fled the country and helped spread the philosophy throughout the Arab world. The group's ideological voice became philosopher Sayyid Qutb, who abhorred Western values and believed the Koran justified violence to overthrow un-Islamic governments. Over time, the Brotherhood gained notoriety for repeatedly attempting to overthrow the Egyptian and Syrian governments and for spawning violent groups, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian group Hamas. Today the Brotherhood remains based in Egypt, where it officially is banned but is tolerated. The group has renounced violence and now largely organizes political protests, runs professional unions and operates charities, providing social services that the government does not. Brotherhood supporters hold 15 of the 445 seats in the Egyptian parliament. And while Brotherhood activities vary from country to country, and chapters are officially independent, international leaders in Egypt say that all chapters are united in their beliefs and that the Egyptian office gives them advice. In recent months Akef, the international Brotherhood leader, repeatedly has praised Palestinian and Iraqi suicide bombers, called for the destruction of Israel and asserted that the United States has no proof that Al Qaeda was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks. Iman Elkadi's father, Mahmoud Abu Saud, was particularly involved in the Brotherhood's beginnings in Egypt and remains well-known in the Arab world. An accomplished economist, he is widely regarded as a pioneer in Islamic banking, which requires that interest not be charged for loans. He also was jailed repeatedly for his Brotherhood activities. "My grandfather would tell me that if my dad didn't come home for dinner, he would send someone to check the jails," Iman Elkadi recalls. The Elkadi and Abu Saud families were linked in marriage in 1963 after Ahmed Elkadi, then a 22-year-old preparing to go into the Egyptian military, ran into his future father-in-law at a mutual friend's office. When the young Elkadi learned that Abu Saud had an unmarried daughter, he inquired about her. The father, familiar with the young man's family and its devotion to the Brotherhood, invited him to their home. Soon after, the families arranged for Ahmed and Iman to marry. The wedding was held in Cairo, in a grandparent's garden. Only relatives were invited, though others were keenly interested: Soon afterward, Egyptian intelligence officials called the couple in for questioning. Iman Elkadi says, "They asked my husband, `Couldn't you find anybody else to marry except Mahmoud Abu Saud's daughter?'" A mission in U.S. The Elkadis arrived in the United States in 1967, settling in the small Louisiana city of Monroe, where Ahmed Elkadi continued his medical training at a local hospital. By then the Muslim Brotherhood already was operating in the United States, though secretly. A U.S. chapter of the Brotherhood, documents and interviews show, was formed in the early 1960s after hundreds of young Muslims came to the U.S. to study, particularly at large Midwestern universities, such as Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. Some belonged to the Brotherhood in their homelands and wanted to spread its ideology here. But to protect themselves and their relatives back home from possible persecution, they publicly called themselves the Cultural Society and not the Brotherhood. Many young Muslim professionals joined, including Elkadi. One of his daughters, Mona, recalls that when she was a teen, she often fielded phone calls from women who did not know that their husbands were in the Brotherhood and wondered where they were on a given night. She says the husbands "put the fear of God in me about keeping this a secret. I'd get lectures from some of the men about how I was going to expose them." Not anyone could join the Brotherhood. The group had a carefully detailed strategy on how to find and evaluate potential members, according to a Brotherhood instructional booklet for recruiters. Leaders would scout mosques, Islamic classes and Muslim organizations for those with orthodox religious beliefs consistent with Brotherhood views, the booklet says. The leaders then would invite them to join a small prayer group, or usra, Arabic for "family." The prayer groups were a defining feature of the Brotherhood and one created by al-Banna in Egypt. But leaders initially would not reveal the purpose of the prayer groups, and recruits were asked not to tell anyone about the meetings. If recruits asked about a particular meeting to which they were not invited, they should respond, "Make it a habit not to meddle in that which does not concern you." Leaders were told that during prayer meetings they should focus on fundamentals, including "the primary goal of the Brotherhood: setting up the rule of God upon the Earth." After assessing the recruits' "commitment, loyalty and obedience" to Brotherhood ideals, the leaders would invite suitable candidates to join. New members, according to the booklet, would be told that they now were part of the worldwide Brotherhood and that membership "is not a personal honor but a charge to sacrifice all that one has for the sake of raising the banner of Islam." Mustafa Saied, the Floridian who left the Brotherhood six years ago, recalls how he was recruited in 1994 while a junior at the University of Tennessee. After Saied attended numerous prayer sessions, a fellow Muslim student took him to a quiet corner of a campus cafeteria and asked him to join. "It was a dream, because that's what you're conditioned to do--to really love the Ikhwan," Saied says, using the Arabic term for Brothers or Brotherhood. After he joined, he learned the names of other local members. "I was shocked," he says. "These people had really hid the fact that they were Brotherhood." He says he found out that the U.S. Brotherhood had a plan for achieving Islamic rule in America: It would convert Americans to Islam and elect like-minded Muslims to political office. "They're very smart. Everyone else is gullible," Saied says. "If the Brotherhood puts up somebody for an election, Muslims would vote for him not knowing he was with the Brotherhood." Saied says he left the group after several years because he disliked its anti-American sentiments and its support for violence in the Middle East. "With the extreme element," he says, "you never know when that ticking time bomb will go off." By the 1970s, Elkadi had moved to Missouri and, he says, become treasurer of the U.S. Brotherhood, collecting money from members from across the country. His wife was the unofficial bookkeeper, tracking who was behind on dues. Members were required to pay 3 percent of their income per year, with the money going to travel, books and annual conferences, the Elkadis say. The conferences were held under the Cultural Society name, usually in large hotels and always on Memorial Day weekend. They were invitation-only, with word spread through the prayer groups. Some years, up to 1,000 people attended; every other year, elections were held. While the U.S. Brotherhood was influential from its beginning--in 1963 it helped establish the Muslim Students Association, one of the first national Islamic groups in the U.S.--Elkadi thought the group could expand its reach. And when he was elected president in 1984, he vowed to do just that. Executing his strategy Elkadi had a strategy to make America more Islamic that reflected a long-standing Brotherhood belief: First you change the person, then the family, then the community, then the nation. By 1990, U.S. Brotherhood members had made headway on that plan by helping establish many mosques and Islamic organizations. Some of those efforts were backed financially by the ultraconservative Saudi Arabian government, which shared some of the Brotherhood's fundamentalist goals. Elkadi himself helped create several noted Islamic organizations, including the Muslim Youth of North America, which attempted to draw thousands of high school students to Islam by sponsoring soccer teams, providing scholarships and offering a line of clothing. He served as president of the North American Islamic Trust, a group that helped build and preserve mosques. Some of those organizations eventually would distance themselves from the Brotherhood. The Islamic Society of North America, the umbrella group for the Muslim Youth of North America and the Muslim Students Association, says Brotherhood members helped form those groups but that their overall influence has been limited. Groups that the Brotherhood helped form printed Islamic books, many of which were distributed at mosques and on college campuses. They included Sayyid Qutb's "In the Shade of the Koran" and "Milestones," which urge jihad, martyrdom and the creation of Islamic states. Scholars came to view his writings as manifestos for Islamic militants. "These books had questionable paradigms, especially a dichotomous division between `us' and `them,'" says Umar Faruq Abdallah, a noted Islamic scholar who heads a Muslim educational group in suburban Chicago. "It was very harmful. It helped to create a countercultural attitude in our community." Inamul Haq, professor of religion at Benedictine University in Lisle, Ill., says the U.S. Brotherhood pushed Islam in a conservative direction. "They were in a position to define American Islam. Since they were well-connected in the Middle East, they were able to bring money to build various institutions." Without the Brotherhood, he says, "We would have seen a more American Islamic culture rather than a foreign community living in the United States." In his own community, Elkadi practiced what he preached. After moving to Panama City, Fla., in 1979, he borrowed $2.4 million from a Luxembourg bank managed by his father-in-law, Abu Saud, the early Brotherhood leader, and built a large Islamic medical center just outside of town, real estate records show. Called the Akbar Clinic, the two-story brick building had a surgery center, an emergency room and dental, psychiatry, nutrition and acupuncture services. Inside the clinic, Elkadi set up a small mosque and an Islamic school. The school occupied several rooms on the second floor until the students became too loud and classes had to be moved to a trailer on clinic grounds. In many eyes, Elkadi was a true Muslim leader. "Everyone flocked to him whenever there was a problem," says Aly Shaaban, a Muslim leader in Panama City. "He was a father figure. He had this magnetism. You see his face and you just want to kiss his face." A life's work in ruins But things were beginning to unravel for Elkadi. By 1995 he had lost virtually everything he had worked for: his clinic, the school, his medical license and the presidency of the U.S. Brotherhood. First to go was the clinic. Elkadi had fallen behind on the bills, and by 1988 creditors had won thousands of dollars in judgments against him. To prevent a sheriff's sale, the Islamic bank in Luxembourg took over the property, and eventually it was sold to a drug rehabilitation clinic. But Elkadi faced an even more serious professional problem: Florida regulators started disciplinary action against him for performing unnecessary surgeries at a Panama City hospital and for doing major operations, including a mastectomy, at his clinic without proper precautions, such as an adequate blood supply. Regulators determined that Elkadi had performed unneeded stomach surgery on nine patients. The Florida Board of Medicine concluded that Elkadi "exhibited a total lack of judgment" and was "not a competent physician." The board revoked his license in 1992. At the time, Elkadi adamantly denied the allegations and accused Florida regulators of being "grossly unfair," according to filings with the state. By the mid-1990s, his problems deepened. Not only was he forced to close his now-overcrowded and dilapidated school because of financial difficulties, he learned that Brotherhood leaders wanted him out as president. It remains unclear why he lost his position. Current and former Brotherhood members say they do not know or that Elkadi simply was voted out of office. Elkadi and his wife say he was removed because he was not conservative enough. They say he had been pushing for women and other Islamic groups to be more involved in the Brotherhood, and some members did not like that. "For some members, it's a very ingrown type of mentality," Iman Elkadi says. "You work only among Muslims, don't contact non-Muslims, so that your work is limited to a small circle." She says the Elkadis believed that "the message of Islam is for everybody." Elkadi's daughter says he took this and other rejections hard. Elkadi now says he is not angry about his ouster and still loves the organization and its members. "They are good people because they follow Islam," he says. A change of face In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation's major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members. Some wanted the Brotherhood to remain underground, while others thought a more public face would make the group more influential. Members from across the country drove to regional meeting sites to discuss the issue. Former member Mustafa Saied recalls how he gathered with 40 others at a Days Inn on the Alabama-Tennessee border. Many members, he says, preferred secrecy, particularly in case U.S. authorities cracked down on Hamas supporters, including many Brotherhood members. "They were looking at doomsday scenarios," he says. When the leaders voted, it was decided that Brotherhood members would call themselves the Muslim American Society, or MAS, according to documents and interviews. They agreed not to refer to themselves as the Brotherhood but to be more publicly active. They eventually created a Web site and for the first time invited the public to some conferences, which also were used to raise money. The incorporation papers would list Elkadi--just months away from his ouster--as a director. Elkadi and Mohammed Mahdi Akef, a Brotherhood leader in Egypt and now the international head, had pushed for more openness. In fact, Akef says he helped found MAS by lobbying for the change during trips to the U.S. "We have a religion, message, morals and principals that we want to carry to the people as God ordered us," he says. "So why should we work in secrecy?" But U.S. members would remain guarded about their identity and beliefs. An undated internal memo instructed MAS leaders on how to deal with inquiries about the new organization. If asked, "Are you the Muslim Brothers?" leaders should respond that they are an independent group called the Muslim American Society. "It is a self-explanatory name that does not need further explanation." And if the topic of terrorism were raised, leaders were told to say that they were against terrorism but that jihad was among a Muslim's "divine legal rights" to be used to defend himself and his people and to spread Islam. But MAS leaders say those documents and others obtained by the Tribune are either outdated or do not accurately reflect the views of the group's leaders. MAS describes itself as a "charitable, religious, social, cultural and educational not-for-profit organization." It has headquarters in Alexandria, Va., and 53 chapters nationwide, including one in Bridgeview, across the street from the mosque there. Shaker Elsayed, a top MAS official, says the organization was founded by Brotherhood members but has evolved to include Muslims from various backgrounds and ideologies. "Ikhwan [Brotherhood] members founded MAS, but MAS went way beyond that point of conception," he says. Now, he says, his group has no connection with the Brotherhood and disagrees with the international organization on many issues. But he says that MAS, like the Brotherhood, believes in the teachings of Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, which are "the closest reflection of how Islam should be in this life." "I understand that some of our members may say, `Yes, we are Ikhwan,'" Elsayed says. But, he says, MAS is not administered from Egypt. He adds, "We are not your typical Ikhwan." MAS says it has about 10,000 members and that any Muslim can join by paying $10 a month in dues. But to be an "active" member--the highest membership class--one must complete five years of Muslim community service and education, which includes studying writings by Brotherhood ideologues al-Banna and Qutb. There are about 1,500 active members, including many women. Elsayed says about 45 percent of those members belong to the Brotherhood. MAS' precise connection to the Brotherhood is a sensitive issue, says Mohamed Habib, a high-ranking Brotherhood official in Cairo. "I don't want to say MAS is an Ikhwan entity," he says. "This causes some security inconveniences for them in a post-Sept. 11 world." Preserving Muslim identity Elsayed says MAS does not believe in creating an Islamic state in America but supports the establishment of Islamic governments in Muslim lands. The group's goal in the United States, he says, "is to serve and develop the Muslim community and help Muslims to be the best citizens they can be of this country." That includes preserving the Muslim identity, particularly among youths. MAS collected $2.8 million in dues and donations in 2003--more than 10 times the amount in 1997, according to Internal Revenue Service filings. Spending often is aimed at schools, teachers and children, the filings show. The group has conducted teacher training programs, issued curriculum guides and established youth centers. It also set up Islamic American University, largely a correspondence school with an office in suburban Detroit, to train teachers and preachers. Until 18 months ago, the university's chairman was Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent cleric in Qatar and a spiritual figure of the Brotherhood who has angered many in the West by praising suicide bombers in Israel and Iraq. The U.S. government has barred him from entering the country since late 1999. He says that action was taken after he praised Palestinian militants. In the Chicago area, MAS has sponsored summer camps for teenagers. Shahzeen Karim, 19, says a camp in Bridgeview inspired her to resume covering her hair in the Islamic tradition. "We were praying five times a day," Karim says. "It was like a proper Islamic environment. It brought me back to Islam." At a summer camp last year in Wisconsin run by the Chicago chapter of MAS, teens received a 2-inch-thick packet of material that included a discussion of the Brotherhood's philosophy and detailed instructions on how to win converts. Part of the Chicago chapter's Web site is devoted to teens. It includes reading materials that say Muslims have a duty to help form Islamic governments worldwide and should be prepared to take up arms to do so. One passage states that "until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful." Another one says that Western secularism and materialism are evil and that Muslims should "pursue this evil force to its own lands" and "invade its Western heartland." In suburban Rosemont, Ill., several thousand people attended MAS' annual conference in 2002 at the village's convention center. One speaker said, "We may all feel emotionally attached to the goal of an Islamic state" in America, but it would have to wait because of the modest Muslim population. "We mustn't cross hurdles we can't jump yet." Federal authorities say they are scrutinizing the Brotherhood but acknowledge that they have been slow to understand the group. In 2002, customs agents stopped Elkadi at Washington Dulles International Airport and questioned him for four hours. They wanted to know who was in the Brotherhood, where it gets its money and how the Elkadis invested their money. A month later, agents came to Elkadi's home with similar questions. He recalls that he answered every one. Elkadi remains highly regarded in some Muslim circles. An article in 2000 in the MAS magazine praised him as a great Muslim in the ranks of al-Banna and Qutb. He and his wife say they hope the Brotherhood succeeds. After all, they say, everyone in the Brotherhood agrees on the main issue. "Everyone's goal is the same--to educate everyone about Islam and to follow the teachings of Islam with the hope of establishing an Islamic state," Iman Elkadi says. "Who knows whether it will happen or not, but we still have to strive for it." Brotherhood has grown in influence The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt more than seven decades ago, is among the most powerful political forces in the Islamic world today. 1928: The Muslim Brotherhood is formed in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna to promote a return to fundamental Islamic beliefs and practices and to fight Western colonialism in the Islamic world. Late 1930s: The Brotherhood starts forming affiliated chapters in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. 1948: The Brotherhood is implicated in the assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmud Nuqrashi, who had banned the group. Al-Banna denies involvement. 1949: The Egyptian government retaliates for Nuqrashi's assassination by killing al-Banna. 1954: A Brotherhood member tries to assassinate Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and fails. Nasser executes several of the group's leaders and incarcerates thousands of its followers. 1962: The Cultural Society is created as the first Brotherhood organization in the United States. Society members help establish numerous Islamic organizations, mosques and schools. 1966: Sayyid Qutb, a Brotherhood ideologue who urged Muslims to take up arms against non-Islamic governments, is executed by Nasser's regime. 1982: In Hamah, Syria, at least 10,000 people are killed by government troops suppressing an uprising by the Brotherhood. 1993: The Muslim American Society, initially based in Illinois and now in Virginia, is created to be a more public face of the Brotherhood in the U.S. 2001: The U.S. names Brotherhood member Youssef Nada and his Swissbased investment network, allegedly established with backing from the Brotherhood, as terrorist financiers. Nada denies any terrorist links. 2002: Tens of thousands of Brotherhood supporters fill the streets of Cairo during a funeral for group leader Mustafa Mashhour on Nov. 15. 2003: U.S. authorities investigating alleged terrorism funding describe Virginia businessman Soliman Biheiri as the Brotherhood's "financial toehold" in the U.S. Biheiri denies any terrorist links. 2004: The Egyptian government rounds up dozens of Brotherhood supporters, freezes members' assets and ousts one of its backers from parliament. Contact Tsila at tsilagroup@yahoo.com To Go To Top

A SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS OR WHAT NEXT? Posted by Walter Bingham, January 31, 2006.

The result of the election for the leadership in the Palestinian Authority's administered areas brought into sharp focus the defence of Israel as a priority that requires to be addressed urgently. The victory of Hamas should serve as a wake-up call for those who are currently conducting the political affairs of this country and the question arises, whether the present defence Minister Shaul Mofaz if fit to hold this important position in the face of the lies which he has repeatedly uttered recently on a number of important matters. In mid December, just two days after he said that he would not do so, Shaul Mofaz joined the Kadima Party and his resignation from Likud came just a few days after he said that politicians who switch from Party to Party:"... show a lack of stability and a lack of leadership" and after he criticised Kadima by saying:"...I don't think Kadima will show the proper determination to stand up for Israel's critical needs". And the defence of Israel is in the hands of this man. According to a report on Israel National News, Mofaz gave orders against actions such as buttressing towns adjacent to Gaza following the expulsion, so as not to lead to a perception that the disengagement might worsen Israeli security, which the former Chief of Staff predicted and which has indeed materialised. And the defence of Israel is in the hands of this man. There's more. MK's, Members of Knesset from across the political spectrum accused Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz of deceiving a Knesset agreement regarding a purported agreement between Israel and the P.A. the Palestinian Authority to run the Rafiah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, a border notorious for weapons and drug smuggling. At a session of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, no less, Chairman Yuval Steinitz accused Defence Minister Mofaz, who has deserted Likud for Kadima, of lying to the committee in regard of the purported agreement to operate the Rafiah crossing. Mofaz told the Committee, that Israel had worked out a written agreement with the Palestinian Authority on operating the terminal. That agreement, brokered by the United States was reportedly designed to protect Israel's security interests at the terminal, without actually having an Israeli presence there. Now it appears that no such agreement has been signed. "The Rafiah agreement never existed" said the Chairman. "This is the most serious case ever of deception of the Knesset" he said. And the defence of Israel is in the hands of this man. In any other democratic country, such a liar would have been booted out long ago from a senior ministerial post; in fact from any government position. Anywhere else, a man of character would have resigned, but apparently not in Israel where integrity and honesty and sticking to the election promises are not in our current politicians' vocabulary. It is high time, for a change in the electoral system to bring about a representative parliamentary democracy, where prospective parliamentary candidates stand in a constituency for election by the people of that constituency and if they don't perform according to their election promises, they are out next time. Their job in the Knesset should depend on what they do - and not whom they know. The Knesset that was just dissolved, 'though known as the 16th, was in fact the 30th parliament since the founding of the State of Israel 60 years ago. That averages at 2 years per Parliament. Such a transient body is only the custodian of the country's landmass and wealth - for the period of its short tenure. It is in my view therefore a criminal act to dispose of any land, against the express wishes of a large percentage of the population if not the majority, - quite apart from the Torah perspective. I am certain, that former Prime Minister Sharon believed he was doing the best for the country; after all he was a brave soldier too. But his judgement was seriously clouded. We now know why; - and those reasons were kept from the people. A policy based on the promises of Mahmoud Abbas, the founder of Fatah, and the right hand of Arafat could only be instituted by a person whose capacity to reason clearly is affected, even if only slightly. Furthermore, the almost total submission to American pressure to serve her own purposes and not those of the sovereign State of Israel would have been resisted by anyone with pure and not corrupt intentions. As for the acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, it seems that he has few ideas of his own and is continuing the dangerous policies of Sharon. Yet, as I already said, any government is only a transient body for a short period of time, an acting caretaker of the affairs of our country, and therefore not entitled to dispose of tracts of our holy land. Its task is to manage it. But there are two more reasons why Ehud Olmert is acting totally undemocratically and against all principles of morality. Firstly, he became a temporary 1st Minister after and not before a General Election has been called, which does not allow him to change the country's status quo in the interim. Secondly, and more importantly, the party that he now represents has no legal right to govern, since it was not the one chosen by the people at the last General Election. It was Likud that was elected and during the latter part of Likud's term of office the party reconstituted itself at the whim of the Prime Minister to emerge in a totally different form as Kadima. It emerged after that metamorphosis - with different policies from those for which Likud was elected and it took power by what can only be described as a bloodless coup. A dirty trick; creeping in through the back door. The way I read it, as Olmert and those who changed to Kadima left Likud, then it should be Binyamin Nethanyahu the senior Likud member who should lead the interim government. But then logic, morals, a code of ethics and principled beliefs are not the hallmark of turncoats like those who change parties for the sake of gaining a better chance of a ministerial post. The policy of appeasement, which this government under Sharon and now Olmert are pursuing is leading to disaster. To hand over more territories and force more of our kith and Kin out of their homes to make a present to the Palestinian Arabs for having perpetrated terrorism against our population, that policy will invite more of the same because, - and forgive me for repeating what has been said a hundred times before, because such action will only be interpreted as a success for terrorism. I am old enough to remember when in 1939 the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from a meeting in Munich with the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. At the foot of the steps of his airplane he waved a piece of paper, bearing Hitler's signature and he declared proudly: 'Peace in our Time'. When Hitler was challenged for wanting to occupy the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia, he promised that if he is given it - he has no more territorial demands. He got it and soon afterwards took the rest of Czechoslovakia followed by the same false promises. Then he marched into Poland. The world was prepared to sacrifice the area of the Saar adjacent to France, Austria and Czechoslovakia, thinking they gave land for peace, despite the fact that it was not their land to give. Neither is it anybody's right today, to want Israel to trade its soil to placate the Muslim world - in the mistaken belief that if the Israeli Palestinian conflict is solved, terrorism in the world will vanish. Do they not realise, that this conflict is only an excuse not the raison d'etre for world terrorism. The people of Israel are not prepared to be the sacrificial lamb for the glory of any World leader. We shall stand steadfastly together to prevent this disastrous plan of setting Jew against his brother and sister. It may well be, that the government is under serious pressure from the US and certainly from the European Union, but we are a sovereign power, autonomous and well capable to withstand the foreign leaders, who each seek to outdo the other - to go down in history as having brought peace to the Middle East. Where were they when Israel faced attacking Arab nations on three occasions? Did they send us help? And the one time when they did, in 1956, the Americans - sneezed and the British and French caught a cold. Today's actions against Israel by the European leaders are driven by their necessity to placate the Cocoo they have themselves invited into their nest. It is their desperate attempt to prevent a hostile takeover of their countries, - for it has been predicted that in less than 100 years time, Europe will be largely Muslim. On the one hand, I fear what sort of plan Olmert is hatching next, but on the other, I believe that a man who is weak enough to reverse his sincerely held and publicly declared conviction - within a year or two under foreign pressure, can be made to change again under the pressure of his own people. We in Israel must be vigilant and prevent a man-made erosion of our land. Fellow Jews and our Christian friends, in the Diaspora, G-d fearing or secular, must make their voices heard and impress on this and the next Governments, that Israel can't, - won't - and never will surrender its soil to anyone. One can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. Walter Bingham is a veteran journalist and broadcaster from London who made aliyah and now lives in Jerusalem. His weekly radio programme, Walter's World, can be heard on Israel National Radio.com. Contact him by email at walter@IsraelNationalNews.com To Go To Top

OLMERT AND LIVNI -- RUNNING FOR COVER Posted by Avraham Weissman, January 31, 2006.

Dear Friends The following charges (read the article below by Emanuel Winston) have been and are still being made - against Ariel Sharon and the inheritors of his policies - Ehud Olmert and the Kadima Party, its associates and allies. I know that at least - some of what has been reported below has also been reported by Israeli intelligence and Israeli news sources, for example that tons of new improved weapons, including longer range rockets have been brought into the Gaza Strip from Egypt, placing large areas of Israel within their range. There is also no doubt that the Hamas win throughout Palestinian Authority controlled areas is also a result of the retreat from the Gaza Strip ordered by Ariel Sharon and his associates in the LIkud Party and their allies in the Labor Party. - It is certainly a very serious (but was also a foreseeable) development. Democracy works when people are educated to respect their fellow human beings and their rights - including those that differ with them! It doesn't work when those who go to the polls have been educated to believe in "jihad" or holy war and violence against those who differ with their religious beliefs and customs, and who believe that their religion has the innate right to force itself on all others, and that they -- and only they -- have sovereignty rights in all of the Middle East. The US and Europe are and will continue to be the "big losers" in this latest development in so called Arab "Palestine," not just Israel. The US "make nice" policy toward the Palestinians and other jihadi Arabs has failed as "appeasement" of crime and criminal activity always does. How they empathized with the so callled "poor and suffering" Palestinian refugees, whose suffering were caused by Moslem Arabs themselves - and the Arab World in general.. US policy has too long been controlled by a policy of naive "expedience" (read "short term good" for some - at the price of "long term harm" toward freedom and free societies, ) expedience - toward Arab - Muslim "oil" power. Now there are those in the "free world" that are calling for US disengagement from Iraq and the Mid East - who are advocating the same thing "Chamberlain" advocated toward Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany in the 1930's. If they win, freedom and the free world will lose even more and the existential threat to the free world will grow! "Eternal vigilance" is only the initial "down payment" for living in freedom, the full price includes the willingness to defend it with all it takes! I hope the leadership in the free world learns from this latest development and reacts appropriately and soon, before oil power and its ensuing pollution damage the natural environment and the free world irreparably. This was written by Emanuel A. Winston. Emanuel A. Winston is member of the Advisory Board and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies.   Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has appointed Tzipi Livni as Foreign Minister. Olmert has assigned her the task of issuing cover-up statistics for "Kadima" on the Gaza/Hamas blunder. Livni issued a statement to the effect that "Israel (Sharon) opened the door of peace by abandoning Gaza and the Muslim Arab Palestinians slammed it shut." Perhaps, since Livni is not experienced in propaganda and disinformation, the pro-Arab State Department speech writers gave her a hand. After Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was incapacitated with a major stroke, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert had to scramble to make the Gush Katif/Gaza withdrawal look like a wise decision, and that it wasn't their fault or that of their new Party "Kadima" that the Palestinians' election voted an overwhelming landslide for Hamas (the most violent of the Palestinian Terrorist organizations). Hamas got 74 seats, Fatah got 45 out of 132 seats. First, Olmert played a strong role in advising Sharon to abandon Gaza. Next, Sharon was advised repeatedly by Generals at the top of his Military and Intelligence staffs that leaving Gaza was a bad move and the Muslim Terrorists from all over the world would use the area as a staging base for attacks against Israel and the West. It became common knowledge on the streets of Israel that Sharon needed a substantial diversion from the Attorney General's numerous charges against him and his sons for illegal financial deals. So many illegal activities were surfacing, including a major exposé of a $3 million loan uncovered by the police that Sharon and all around him grew increasingly panicked. The sensationalistic drama of the Gaza withdrawal was a necessary diversion, merely for him to stay in office in order to keep his sons out of jail. Everything predicted by Sharon's military advisors and the different Intelligence Services has come true. Now Olmert and Livni, heirs to the Sharon cover-up and monumental blunders, needed to change the world's perception of history and their role in the blunders. As Gaza fills up with all the Muslim Arab Terrorist organizations, there is not even the pretense by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (nom de guerre Abu Mazen) that his Fatah can maintain control. Now Hamas will achieve full control of the Arab Muslim Palestinian government and put Hamas operatives on the payroll. These operatives have been well trained and armed - for Terror, not for Government. That may be short-lived, given that Abu Mazen has spent Fatah (his inner Terror organization) and the PA into bankruptcy. He paid out all the incoming monies from Israel (who still 'pay' the PA millions of dollars a month) America and Europe - the donor countries, to his own Police 'cum' Terrorists, lest they turn on him. As a result of Hamas winning a huge majority, the Fatah Police cum Terrorists have indeed turned against him as was seen on TV internationally when they rioted in Gaza and elsewhere after the election. Sharon's gamble didn't pay off as the area of Gaza has now become, as predicted, a mini-Terrorist state, armed to the teeth. Mountains of arms and terrorists flowed into Gaza from where they were stocked in the Egyptian Sinai Desert within days of Sharon evicting 10,000 Jewish men, women and children. This is the legacy of Sharon to the country and to Kadima, his one man party. Now that he is incapacitated (perhaps dead but kept alive on life support systems in a 'coma'), his whole house of cards has collapsed. Tzipi Livni, as Foreign Minister, under orders from Ehud Olmert, is now as busy as a cat trying to cover up its dropping on a tin roof. It just can't be hidden but, they are trying anyway. When Ehud Olmert, at the behest of the U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, allowed Hamas to be on the ballot, he displayed his weakness as a leader - in addition to his lack of knowledge of what was boiling over in the Palestinian communities.Being uninformed and wobbly on decision making, indicates both he and his Kadima Party are totally without substance. As is said, all the chickens have yet to come back to roost in Gaza. What Tzipi Livni is trying to cover up is the strength of the combined forces of the Muslim Terrorists now uniting under Hamas radical leadership. The Israeli people have yet to grasp what Sharon's "Disengagement" Plan has done to them. While Hamas has won and angered Fatah loyalists, they will soon coalesce into one mightier force. The Hamas leadership, speaking from Iran and Syria, has already proposed that the Hamas forces will be 'folded' into the Fatah forces to create one cohesive Army of Terrorists. All will operate under the umbrella of Islamic Jihad. Believe it, the sum will be greater than the sum of its parts. The Charters of both the Fatah (PLO) and Hamas will be merged into one document of purpose. Hamas has a Charter pledged to the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel. Fatah has its Charter which was never (I repeat: NEVER) been cancelled - which also pledges the destruction of Israel. And Fatah has its own fighting force called the Al-Aq'sa Martyrs Brigades. (Note! Both of the Charters are similar and can be read over the Internet.) The weapons, both in volume and quality, poured into Gaza in unimaginable tonnage when Sharon surrendered by retreating the soldiers and the Land made green by the 9,000 settlers. Here we find the assistance of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt who acted the enabler to supply weapons and explosive material which came from Iran and Syria and were stored in the Sinai Desert under Egypt's protection. The low-tech Kassem Rockets made in Gaza with a 5 kilometer range are being replaced with missiles of 17-27 kilometer range (11-16 miles) - which can reach most of Israel's dense population centers up to Tel Aviv. The vacuum created by Sharon by evacuating 500-600 Jews from the four communities in the Samarian mountains, also gives the Terrorists free access to battle bases and munitions storage depots from which to attack the center and north of the country. Even as the Hamas Palestinians pledge to destroy Israel as per the terms of their Charter, Olmert (Kadima), Amir Peretz (Labor) are promising more unilateral withdrawals from Judea and Samaria with Hebron on the immediate list and dividing Jerusalem - in effect, repeating the blunders of Oslo and Gaza. Israel will be truncated to an indefensible sliver - no longer a military asset to America - with her people put at great risk. Meanwhile, as Tzipi Livni is trying to cover up the Gaza abandonment and Hamas election blunders, Sec. Rice is doing the same thing in Washington. Here the coverup of a naive blunder is the belief that one can introduce American-style Democracy into Muslim Theocracies of the Arab/Muslim culture. President George W. Bush with the now incapacitated Sharon, unleashed the collective power of Global Terror in Gaza. The Terrorists simply voted themselves into power. Therefore, IF they voted, it is a democracy. Right?! In Egypt, at the insistence of Bush and Rice, the vote brought the Islamic Brotherhood, one of the oldest Islamic Terrorist Organizations one step closer to controlling Egypt and converting it into an Islamic-driven nation run by radical theocrats, holding the largest arsenal which was supplied by America with the gift of more than $60 Billion in annual aid over the years since Camp David. These American tax-payers' dollars bought those weapons, the best in America's high tech. America even assisted in developing Egyptian factories to build some of those most powerful weapons. To wit, then Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger gave Egypt a "turn-key" factory to produce America's top Heavy Battle Tank, the M1A1 Abrams. America supplied the parts, the money and the technicians to put them together. Try to imagine how much that money would do for America in jobs and money resources IF it was spent in American manufacturing. Who can forget the peanut farmer Jimmy Carter who with delusions of democracy dancing in his head, brought the Ayatollah Khomeini out of his exile in France back to Iran, toppling the Shah of Iran and losing the tons of weapons America had supplied to the Shah in his good days? Let us not forget Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres who brought Yassir Arafat and his Terrorists back from Tunisia, where they lived in ignominy, where they had been driven during the 1982 War in Lebanon - forgotten until Rabin, Peres and President Clinton resurrected Arafat, the Master Islamic Terrorist of our times. In all three cases, stupidity doesn't even begin to describe the results of not understanding the sub-culture of the Islam and Arabic civilization. No question that there will soon be a very massive war aimed at the Judeo-Christian civilization in the Free West. The only question is: Will the fighting start along the outer edges of Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley or will it be as Olmert and Peres have predetermined it, fighting with our backs to the Sea, shooting from the windows of the Shalom and Arieli Towers in Tel Aviv? It is a bad time for Israel to have naive Leftist leaders whose first methods of defense is retreat. Where are the strong leaders who make Israel's strength into our best deterrent? Contact Avraham Weissman at avna@bezeqint.net. To Go To Top

HAMAS VICTORY IS GOOD NEWS Posted by Deb Kotz, January 31, 2006.

I like Jacoby's column very much, but I'm still a pessimist at heart when it comes to the Mideast peace process. I'm afraid the world will accept Hamas after the shock of the election wears off, under the delusion that there's no other option. I say this because we all thought that the world would finally wake up when Arafat walked away from Barak's offer of more than 90% of the land. Instead, the world continued to blame Israel for the Palestinian plight and found justification for the PA terrorist war that followed. I hope, I hope, I hope to be proven wrong. I hope the world FINALLY sees the Palestinians for who they are: hell bent on the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people and completely unfit, at this point in time, to establish a democratic nation. I'd like to go back to being an optimist. Pessimism isn't in my nature. Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for the Boston Globe. Contact him at jacoby@globe.com This article appeared January 29, 2006 at www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/ 2006/01/08/bringing_faith_into_contempt/ WESTERN reactions to the outcome of the Palestinian election last week came in two varieties: highly negative and decidedly undecided. In the first category was Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who moaned that the Hamas defeat of Fatah was a "very, very, very bad result." In New York, the Anti-Defamation League pronounced the results "a tremendous setback." Others insisted that the significance of the election couldn't be known until Hamas decides whether or not to abandon its foremost objective: the liquidation of Israel. In the words of FBI Director Robert Mueller, "Hamas has a choice to make." It was a line echoed everywhere, from the British Foreign Office to the New York Times editorial page. Well, put me in a third camp: I think the sweeping Hamas victory is by far the best result that could have been hoped for. I say that not because Hamas is anything other than a blood-drenched terrorist group, but because its lopsided win is an unambiguous reality check into the nature of Palestinian society. And if there is one thing that the West badly needs, it is more realism and less delusion about the Palestinians. Some of that delusion was on display at the White House on Thursday, when President Bush painted the Palestinian election as a "healthy" exercise in civic reform: "Obviously, people were not happy with the status quo," Bush explained. "The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find healthcare. And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories. ... There's something healthy about a system that does that." Spare us, Mr. President. If a slate of neo-Nazi skinheads swept to power in a European election, would you say that the voters were seeking "honest government" and "services"? Palestinians are not stupid, and it insults their intelligence to pretend that when they vote to empower a genocidal organization with a platform straight out of "Mein Kampf," what they're really after is better healthcare. Islamist extremism isn't needed to fix Palestinian hospitals any more than fascism was needed to make Italian trains run on time in the 1920s. If Palestinians turned out en masse to elect a party that unapologetically stands for hatred and mass murder, it's a safe bet that hatred and mass murder had something to do with the turnout. By the same token, Hamas's new duties are not going to turn it into a moderate group of diligent civil servants. When violent Islamists win political power, their brutality and zealotry do not diminish. (See Khomeini, Ayatollah and Taliban, Afghan). The notion that Hamas now has "a choice to make" is just another example of the delusional thinking that is so pervasive when it comes to the Palestinian Authority. In his remarks on Thursday, Bush went on to say that he didn't "see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as part of your platform" or "if your party has got an armed wing" and that Hamas is therefore "a party with which we will not deal." If that means that the Bush administration will shun the new Hamas government as it once shunned Yasser Arafat, well and good. But why was Mahmoud Abbas treated any differently? Like Hamas, Fatah -- the PLO faction Abbas and Arafat co-founded 45 years ago -- advocates Israel's destruction in its basic charter. Like Hamas, Fatah has an "armed wing" -- the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- that is guilty of horrific terror attacks. Fatah's emblem shows crossed rifles against a map of "Palestine" that depicts all of Israel; on the Hamas emblem, the map is the same, but the crossed weapons are swords. The only important difference between the ousted Fatah party and the incoming Hamas leadership is that for PR purposes the former sometimes pretended to accept Israel's right to exist, while the latter is openly and unabashedly committed to Israel's elimination. Yet that is why the Hamas landslide is good news. It will now be much harder to wish away the unpleasant fact that after a dozen years of PLO misrule, Palestinian society is deeply dysfunctional, steeped in hatred and violence. All but the willfully blind can now see that the Palestinian Authority is no "partner in peace." Until it is decisively defeated and thoroughly detoxified, the Palestinian people will never enjoy the blessings of liberty and decent governance. Ironically, the ascendancy of Hamas may have brought that day a little closer. Deb Kotz is an active member of the Brandeis Chapter of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and maintains an email list to distribute articles of interest to the local community. She can be reached at DebKotz@aol.com To Go To Top

HEBRON, POLLARD AND JEWISH ANTI-SEMITISM Posted by Women in Green, January 31, 2006.

This was written by Moshe Feiglin. Jews have a peculiar habit of attempting to escape their Divine mission. The Jew tries to imitate the non-Jews, to blur his identity and to flee the entire burden of being Jewish. But then anti-Semitism comes and brings the mirror close up to his face. No costume will help. You are a Jew. This creates a strange chain reaction. Non-Jews hate Israel because it is the state of the Jews. Israel refuses to recognize the fact that it did not mange to escape its Judaism. Instead of negating anti-Semitism, it simply joins in the fray in a futile attempt to deflect the hatred down the line to the religious Jews and the settlers. Last week in Israel we witnessed two blatant anti-Semitism issues that were entirely homegrown. In a virulent attack on Hebron's Jewish community, Israel's politicians and media unleashed the anti-Semitic specter against the firmly Jewish community reclaiming its heritage and property rights in the second-holiest city to Judaism. Tens of thousands of illegally built Arab homes do not threaten the "rule of law" in Israel. But when Jews with sidelocks and beards return to Jewish property in Hebron that was robbed from them after Arabs murdered the Jews there in 1929, it "threatens the very foundations of the State". Anti-Semitism has been a potent political weapon for centuries. If you want to prove that you are a strong leader, batter the Jews. Olmert learned this lesson well. Zero tolerance for the settlers! We'll teach them who is boss here! Batter the Jews and transform yourself into the beloved father figure, just like Sharon. Jumping on the anti-Semitic bandwagon, Police Chief Karadi prepared the public for the eventuality that the police will shoot at the settlers. The anti-Semitic winds are blowing harder in Israel than anywhere else in the world. A Prisoner of Zion in America? Jonathon Pollard has been in a cruel American prison for 21 years. Israel recruited him to spy in the US and to access vital information that our "great friend" chose to withhold from us. Among other things, this information pertained to plans to destroy Israel. It is possible that Pollard saved us all from evaporating in an Iraqi atomic mushroom cloud. The US was hostile enough to Israel to warrant Israel's activating a spy there to retrieve information vital to its survival. But the US is not hostile enough for the Israeli Supreme Court to recognize that after 21 years in prison, Jonathon Pollard is a Prisoner of Zion. Pollard made a naive decision. He sacrificed his liberty for his brothers in Israel in a country that just happens to be the ultimate Israeli dream. If we recognize the fact that Pollard is a Prisoner of Zion, we will be accusing America of being an enemy of sorts. We can do that with the USSR without getting confused. But if we even hint that America is adversarial toward Israel, what will we be left with? If America is our enemy, then who are we? Jews? So, the anti-Semitic reasoning goes, let Pollard rot another 20 years in prison and leave us alone... In Moshe Feilgin's new book, "The War of Dreams," he writes: "Two people fled from the FBI to the security of the Israeli embassy. One of them was an Israeli -- Brigadier General Aviem Selah, a high-ranking officer in the Israeli Air Force and Pollard's handler. The second was a Jew -- Jonathon Pollard. The Americans demanded that both be turned over to them. Israel extricated the Israeli despite heavy American pressure. But it threw the Jew outside the embassy gates. That is the whole story. Pollard is in jail because he is a Jew." Israel prefers that Pollard remain in jail because he holds us before an impossible mirror image. When push came to shove, a Jew saved Israel from the Americans. Only an Israeli can understand the destructive significance of this fact to the universal Western consciousness that the Israelis attempt to create for themselves. The last thing that the anti-Jewish Jews need is for Pollard to get to Israel and to start to talk. He must be swept under the rug -- deep inside the walls of the North Carolina penitentiary. Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

DRY UP THE FUNDING Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, January 31, 2006.

There is no one or cadre of nations that formally declares war on the civilized world through state sponsored acts of sadistic terrorism, yet several Islamic fundamentalist regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Sudan substantially finance fanatics worldwide who perform such acts. Hence, such underwriters of homicidal/suicidal behavior that now imperil the health and safety of planetary populations must forthwith be put out of business despite the industrial world's obsessive desire to avail itself of the vicious viscous black gold reservoirs they possess. A Faustian covenant written in blood that allows these despotic criminals to prevail as long as their spindly talons loosen about fossil fuel faucets, continuously satisfying the energy needs of Earthly addicts, must be declared null and void. Organized armies of extorted aggrieved nations including but not limited to the U.S., Israel, Britain, and Spain, whose citizens having born the consequences of heinous barbaric homicidal acts, are ever justified in invading and confiscating the properties above and below ground of criminal governments as just compensation for such suffering. Furthermore, all monetary assets of such crime-controlled entities located outside their boundaries should be frozen without delay. Abetting criminally extreme acts including crimes against humanity can no longer be tolerated. Severing the primary sources of funding ever needed by perpetrators of destruction will no doubt impact heavily on their ability to function. Hand wringing pundits who for one denounce Israel yet unceasingly have slathered praise over poor bereaved presumably occupied Palestinian waifs will angrily oppose such a logical initiative. Of course ivory tower observers, impaired by skewed thinking, have not likely born proximate witness to deranged mesmerized Muslim militants shrouded in explosives. Such neophytes to the real world deserve no serious response, not comprehending the potential devastation wrought by but one crazed blown-to-bits-cadaver-in-progress strapped to a nuke. Dry up the monetary life-blood of these creeps now before metaphorical and actual human life-blood flows more copiously then all the black poison gurgling beneath the swollen buttocks of robed grim reapers raping the planet of its dignity and sanity. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net To Go To Top

ARAB "OUTREACH"STUDIES GUIDE OMITS ISRAEL HISTORY Posted by Avodah 15, January 31, 2006.

This was written by Ted Siefer and appeared in The Jewish Advocate (http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/news/?content_id=812) January 30, 2006. A Harvard-affiliated center in Cambridge that provides seminars on the Middle East to Massachusetts public school teachers and students recommends materials that promote a stridently anti-Israel point of view, an Advocate investigation revealed this week Among the materials used by Harvard's Middle East Studies Outreach Center is the Arab World Studies Notebook, a 500-page binder of curriculum materials produced by the Middle East Policy Council and Arab World and Islamic Resources. MEPC receives direct funding from the government of Saudi Arabia, and AWAIR receives funding from Aramco, the Saudi state oil company. Critics of the notebook, including the American Jewish Committee, charge that it is riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods. The notebook "appears largely designed to advance the anti-Israel and propagandistic view of the Notebook's sponsors," AJC said in a statement last year. Some of the problematic passages in the book cited by the notebook's critics include: In a chapter on American policy in the Middle East, one of the book's contributors writes: "The questions of Jewish lobbying and its impact on Truman's decision with regard to American recognition [of Israel in 1948] -- and indeed the whole question of defining American interests and concerns -- is well worth exploring." In a chapter called "The Question of Palestine," the book asserts that before the start of the 1948 war, "armed Jewish groups had driven much of the Palestinian population from their homes, thus capturing most of the Palestinians' land through acts of sheer terror and intimidation." In the section on Arab culture, one chapter is devoted to Jerusalem, described as an "Arab city" surrounded by high rises "built for Israeli settlers to strengthen Israeli control over the holy city." Israel is missing from a map of the Middle East; a map of Palestine encompasses the pre-1948 boundaries. Harvard's outreach center has used the notebook in department of education-sponsored teacher training institutes. The center is one of 18 Middle East centers around the country that receive federal funding under title VI of the 1958 Higher Education Act; each center receives about $500,000 a year, according to a report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2005. The department of education stopped contracting with the Harvard center after 2002; however, the center still recommends the notebook as a resource for teachers and it is used in seminars it conducts in Massachusetts schools. Center director Barbara Petzen told the Advocate that the notebook is one of a "multitude" of sources it uses in teaching about the Middle East, and that it is not used in teaching about the Arab-Israeli conflict. But, Petzen stressed, almost any material on the Arab-Israeli conflict is bound to anger one side or the other. "As with any conflict in history, as historians our job is to look at multiple perspectives. I'm not an activist; I'm trying to understand the place we are at and how we got there," she said. Sandra Stotsky, a former commissioner with the Massachusetts department of education, wrote about the notebook and teacher training institutes put on by faculty from the Harvard center in a 2003 report titled "Stealth Curriculum: Manipulating America's History Teachers." For her, the lack of scholarly rigor in the notebook goes beyond a "slanted" version of the Arab-Israeli conflict. "This is not just a Jewish issue," Stotsky said. "It's a Christian and an American issue," she said, stressing that the notebook's editor, Audrey Shabbas, has also been taken to task by members of the Algonquin Indian tribe over a passage from the materials that claims Arabs had arrived in North America before Europeans and intermarried with members of the tribe. Shabbas, whom the Harvard center's Web site describes as a "respected educator," taught a teacher-education course on Islamic art at the center last year. Stotsky said that it's not hard to understand the allure of the notebook, which only costs $15 when schools also participate in a free workshop, funded by the MEPC. On its Web site, the council claims to have given workshops in 175 cities in 43 states. "Teachers figure, 'We've got to have professional development, this is a free workshop, so let's bring in Audrey Shabbas and the Arab Studies Notebook. There's no problem with it because it's clearly been vetted by Islamic scholars,'" Stotsky said. Another local organization that specializes in providing curricular materials and training to history and social studies teachers is Primary Source, a Watertown-based nonprofit that has put on workshops in more than 30 school districts around the state. Primary Source's Middle East studies program is closely linked to the Harvard center. It lists Barbara Petzen as a faculty member, and this fall the two organizations put on a series of adult education seminars together, including one titled "Palestine." The Arab Studies notebook is one of the resources available in the center's library of resources. Primary Source's Middle East studies program coordinator did not return calls for comment. Contact the poster at avodah15@aol.com To Go To Top

TU BSHVAT IS COMING. PLANT A FRUIT TREE IN ISRAEL Posted by Manhigut Yehudit, January 31, 2006.

Show your love for Israel on Tu B'Shvat (February 13th) by planting a fruit tree! From the comfort of your computer, join with thousands of Israelis as they plant fruit trees on this traditional day. Zo Artzeinu --"This is our Land" -- is once again spearheading its annual drive to plant fruit trees all across YESHA (Judea and Samaria) -- 7,000 fruit trees already planted! Order by clicking here. Connect to the Land Provide a livelihood for the Jewish families who work the fields Perform a mitzvah; "When you enter the Land, you shall plant all types of food trees" (Leviticus 19:23) Personalized, full color certificate mailed to all participants! Click here to plant. It's that simple. We can run a program for your school or organization! Many Yeshivot already participate. Call (516) 295-3222 Click here to watch a short video clip on tree planting in the Holy Land of Israel. Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) is a group of people inside the Likud party who want to see Israel adopt a more Jewish character. Moshe Feiglin, its cofounder, has emphatically said he does not want a theocracy, but he does want a State based on Jewish values. The Manhigut Yehudit website address is http://www.manhigut.org. To Go To Top

PA FISCAL CRISIS DUE TO TERRORISM AND ARAFAT Posted by David Meir-Levi, January 31, 2006.

Here is a letter that I sent to a bunch of newspapers. The one below to the Wall Street Journal compliements the author for noting in the article that the crisis is due to PA mishandling. So I can add the issues of terrorism and Arafat's graft. The same letter can be sent to newspapers that do not put this bit of info (PA has only itself to blame), but then you need an opening like " XXX's article omits a very important fact from the treatment of this issue:...." I encourage all of you to write to your local and national newspapers. they should get thousands of letters on this issue, especially if their article did NOT mention the graft and corruption and arafat's greed and the terrorism. david ml To the Editors, (238 words) Special thanks to Karby Leggett for "Hamas faces Crisis if Funding dries up" (WSJ, 1/31/06). The Palestinian people are in desperate need of foreign aid. BUT? The Palestinian Authority (PA) payroll is bloated, with 170,000 employees: an average of one government worker to every 18 Palestinians! The PA gave raises of up to 40% to its employees last year, prompted in part by armed terrorist employees shooting up government offices to punctuate their demands! The finance minister notes that there will be a very serious crisis if wages are not paid. Certainly! Because the terrorist employees will then shoot up more offices, and maybe shoot some officials. Most damning, from 1994 to 2004 Arab countries poured over $5,000,000,000 into the PA. The EU gave half of its total foreign aid to the PA every year. The USA gave c. $400,000,000 per year, but gave over $900,000,000 in 2005. Over the past decade, about 20% (c. $3,000,000,000!) went to Arafat's private accounts. Most of the rest went to fund his terror war against Israel. Almost none reached the Palestinian people. The PA's fiscal crisis is entirely of its own making. Last year Secretary Rice used the metaphor of the USA "birthing" the Palestinian State. Now we, its parents, don't like its behavior. What does the responsible parent do when the wastrel child behaves badly, squanders his allowance, and then comes whining for more? David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com To Go To Top

PARODY TRUE TO LIFE Posted by Richard H. Shulman, January 31, 2006.

First we had eulogies for Sharon, for committing treason, which they called adherence to the Road Map for peace. Now the NY Times feeds its readers a ridiculous slant on the Hamas victory. I was about to speculate that it would not be long before the same people who got thousands of Jews wounded in the name of a phony peace process with Fatah, would find an excuse for doing the same with Hamas. Lo and behold, that same day, January 27, an Op-Ed essay proposed just that. Too bad! The Hamas victory would have been a blessing, if it were deemed unacceptable. Alas, the West will deal with the devil! Let us start with the 1/27 editorial. It called the Hamas victory a "step backward." As usual, it partly faulted Israel. It blamed Israeli "hardliners" for not having strengthened Abbas' political party by making concessions. How unfair, false, and misleading! First, it calls "hardliners" Israelis who retain some safety measures against the terrorism that Abbas supported. Second, Israel did make concessions, though often under US pressure. It did: (1) Shut down many checkpoints; (2) Withhold most retaliation and certainly did not methodically dismantle P.A. terrorism; (3) Continue paying funds into P.A. coffers; and (4) Allow thousands of P.A. residents to work in Israel. Thus the claim is false. Problem with the Times is that it is so biased against Israel, that in its eyes, Israel can never do enough for the Arabs and the Arabs never have to do anything for Israel. The Times is filled with excuses for the criminal Arabs and with recrimination for the excusable Israelis. The result of Israelis' restraint has been their murder by Arabs. It therefore is unfair and callous of the Times to expect one-sided Israeli concessions to Arabs who have broken all their peace agreements. The Times' continued faith in the redemption of those genocidal Arabs isn't so much unintelligent as part of its record of anti-Zionist bias. How misleading to claim the election is a step backwards, a blow to the "peace process." There is no peace process. There is a process of continual Israeli concessions to the Arabs, engaged in jihad against the Jews. Fatah is about as evil that way as Hamas. The Op-Ed, one of whose authors is from Harvard, rationalizes that Hamas fielded professionals as candidates and is "disciplined, pragmatic and surprisingly flexible." Although its charter and campaign demand the destruction of Israel, its campaign manifesto did not. It does not reject "useful" negotiations with Israel. Besides, this is the will of P.A. voters, democratic. Therefore, the West should deal with a Hamas government. Cutting off aid to it might bankrupt it, "further destabilizing the region." Qualities of political skill are not positive in a genocidal Party. Sure Hamas might negotiate, if it thought it could gain eventual domination. Islamists destabilize, so bankrupting them would help stabilize the region. Diminishing the Arab presence and increasing the Israeli presence in the Territories would reduce the force of jihad. That would be the Western goal, if the West could cease its appeasement and antisemitism. 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

TIFERET, ASAF, AND YISRAEL HY"D Posted by Shifra Shomron, January 31, 2006.

The names "Tiferet, Asaf, Yisrael HY"D" jump boldly out of a large sign fastened to a prefab shul here in the Nitzan Caravilla site. The thick white letters stare down at me from the depths of their engravement. I didn't even have to think twice. After all, Tiferet Tretner, Asaf Tzafira and Yisrael Lutati are not only engraved in a cold metal sign high up on a prefab shul in temporary Nitzan; they are also engraved deeply in our beating hearts. How can I forget those three vibrant youths severed from our midst so cruelly? Tiferet was killed by a mortar that smashed through the roof of the house; its sharp shrapnel pieces piercing her soft flesh. It was on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holy day when G-d puts the seal on our verdicts, and our government had once again committed the unforgivable sin of standing idly by their brothers' blood. Asaf was shot to death by the Arab workers near the hothouses of Rafiah Yam. In the midst of all the vegetation, a budding Jewish sapling was hewn down. Yisrael was a soldier, "killed in the line of duty". What a blank description that is of a handsome young man shot while protecting a Jewish community from enemy infiltration! We, the Gush Katif family, honored our fallen -- our heroes! Our youth built a wooden shul in their names. And they planted beautiful flowers around it. And they made a path that led from Neve Dekalim to the 'Tiferet Yisrael' shul. And these wonderful Gush Katif youths found themselves, for the first time in their young lives, confronting Jewish soldiers. Staying up all night -- so that the army wouldn't destroy this 'illegal outpost'. It was a rude awakening for the Gush Katif youth who had spent the winter baking cakes and serving soup to the soldiers. Yes, a rude awakening. And also a taste of what they would have to digest in the summer. Did we digest it? It was forced down our throats. And once again a shul carries the names of Tiferet, Asaf and Yisrael. Tiferet means glory. Asaf means gathered. Yisrael means the Jewish nation. May Hashem return the glory that has been gathered from the Jewish nation. And may their blood be avenged. Shifra Shomron is a young writer who was among the Jews expelled from Gaza. She now lives with her familly in temporary quarters. To Go To Top

EU BOLSTERS SYRIA; HAARETZ EXPOSED; SAUDIS TOWARDS EUROPEANS Posted by Richard H. Shulman, January 31, 2006.

EXPULSIONS CONTINUE S. Arabia and the P.A. are subsidizing a rash of illegal Arab building. They hope to influence the Israeli Supreme Court to move the security fence so as to allot more land to the Arabs, lest the fence inconvenience them. (This would reward Arab illegality.) Meanwhile, the government of Israel is demolishing what it calls "illegal" outposts by Jews. The outposts are houses on land bought by Jews before the State was established. They lie in what supposedly is one of the major settlement blocs that Sharon claimed he would preserve by virtue of abandoning other areas. Israeli Police and troops are treating non-violent Israeli opponents with their usual brutality against Jews (Arutz-7, 1/11). Israel has a statist notion of illegality that serves partisan purposes and not Jewish ethics. Sharon's Cabinet now is whittling away at the areas he only pretended to be preserving by sacrificing other areas. Israelis never should have believed him, but Israeli politicians and US Presidents find them gullible. E.U. POLICY TOWARD SYRIA Syria main trading partner is the E.U., which subsidizes it. The E.U. has not declared Hizbullah a terrorist organization (Sen. Bill Frist, NY Sun, 1/26, Op. Ed.). Most of my friends are critical of Pres. Bush, and urge him to coordinate his policy with W. Europe. W. Europe does not understand the Islamist menace. Unfortunately, Bush seems to be altering his policy to match Europe's. ELECTION OBSERVERS The EU sent hundreds of election observers to the P.A.. It declared its continued support for the P.A., because Abbas pledged peace (IMRA, 1/21). What is the point of assuring that the P.A. did not interfere in its election? Whoever won, the result is intolerance and war. How dangerous is the EU's pretense that because Abbas, who lauds terrorism, pledged peace, he isn't making war! Bet it wished he defrauded the election. AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ON EVANGELISTS "Rabbi David Rosen, Israeli-based director of the American Jewish Committee's Inter-religious Affairs Department (and a founder of Rabbis for Human Rights) told Israel Radio that the Christian Evangelists were bad basically because they oppose Israeli withdrawals." (IMRA, 1/11). "Inter-religious?" He condemns a powerful pro-Israeli sect over a political difference. WHAT KIND OF A NEWSPAPER IS HAARETZ? "Israel's leftist daily Haaretz is in fact not a newspaper at all, but rather a propaganda advocacy sheet. It is the main Palestinian (pro-Arab) newspaper published in Hebrew. Its editorial positions resemble those of Israel's communist party in all matters except economics. (A bit strangely and inconsistently, it tends to be pro-market.) It reprints anti-Israel articles from all over the globe. It seeks out ways to bash Israel and delegitimize it. It has a 6% market share in Israel." "Haaretz's anti-Israel pieces are picked up all over the world, and international media like to proclaim it the 'Israeli New York Times'. Given the bias against Israel in both newspapers, there is something to the comparison but not what the people making the comparison have in mind." "The very worst Haaretz writers are Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, and Akiva Eldar, who have yet to hear about a mass murder of Jews about which they wish to express disapproval. The first two are openly on record favoring the dismantlement of Israel altogether as a Jewish state. Hass has been convicted in court of fabricating false libels against Israeli settlers. Hass, who does not speak Arabic, lives in Ramallah and is in the eyes of herself an expert on Palestinians and what they think, although (she) has never heard a single Palestinian cheer suicide bombings." "All three of these write anti-Israel columns for the pro-terror leftwing neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch." "Once every two weeks Haaretz allows a token non-leftist point of view to be expressed in the paper, roughly at the rate of one non-leftist article for every 150 anti-Israel leftist pieces. This is the Haaretz notion of pluralism." (essay by Prof. Stephen Plaut, 1/12). THE CLUE TO BUSH'S POLICY TOWARDS ISRAEL The main formulator of US policy towards Israel, and a key advisor to Pres. Bush, is the pro-Arab Under-Secretary Nicholas Burns. Sec. Burns thinks that all the problems of the Mideast derive from the Arab-Israel conflict. He is responsible for the US adoption of the EU policy of dialogue with Iran instead of striving for regime-change there and in Syria, of waiving sanctions against Muslim countries for human rights violations, of currying favor with the Arabs by pressuring Israel (Winston Mid East Analysis, 1/12). The Arabist State Dept. almost always prevails, to the detriment of the US. It is turning Bush into a Kerry. It must be cleaned out. SAUDIS TOWARD EUROPEANS Saudi TV frequently features Islamic law professor Sheikh Abd Al-Aziz Fawzan Al-Fawzan. He advised Muslims they are obliged to hate Christians (IMRA, 1/11). Contrast the Islamic way with this story from Brooklyn. A very poor Irish family lived near some Hasidim. The Catholic woman used to assist them on the Sabbath. One Christmas was particularly bleak for the Irish family, having no means to celebrate. The Hasidic family came over with gifts, so that the Christian neighbors could celebrate their most important religious holiday. 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

NEVER MISS THAT OPPORTUNITY....TO MISS THE OPPORTUNITY Posted by Arlene Peck, January 31, 2006.

I recall an old song that goes "What Can I say, after I say I'm sorry". Well, folks, I have been humming that tune a lot of late but it keeps coming out, "except I told you so!" For more years than I care to remember, I have been writing endless columns about the 'Big Lie' and the fact that what is trumpeted loudly, in every quarter, as 'the plight of the Poor Palestinians' was, in fact, a travesty caused by their own Arab brothers. I seem to recall I have also said once or twice that Israel is the prime candidate to take the fall. Frankly, I am neither unhappy nor even surprised at the state of affairs we have arrived at with the Hamas election victory. It's also no surprise to see these dysfunctional, macho savages, parading around Gaza, firing their guns aimlessly and pointlessly into the air, or at anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths. Who can be surprised, seeing them begin the entirely predictable pattern of destroying themselves from within? The old adage concerning them, "The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity", could not be more true. You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear! For years, I have been told that Palestinians are an educated people. Pardon me if I remain unconvinced. Intelligent and articulate people of good will do not rampage through the streets, rioting and shouting, "Jihad, Jihad!", and "Death to Jews". I have been to Gaza a few times. If it were in the hands of anyone with a little sense, or an IQ higher than an eggplant, something could be made of it; something resembling an economic lifeline, like the most beautiful of resorts, for just one example. The sea and beachfront areas are superb. Except, even then, all the Palestinians excelled at was throwing stones at passing cars, burning tires and, oh yes, smoking that laughing water out of funny looking vases. But, when given the opportunity to demonstrate their sense of civic duty and pride, what do they do? How do they go about rectifying all those years of corruption Arafat and company blessed them with? Why, they vote in a known and violent terrorist organization, a group of people who, from their inception, embraced hatred, death and destruction as their only way of life. Their nursery schools and kindergartens, even their version of Sesame Street, carefully teaches their children, systematically, how to embrace death, so that, when they are old enough to grow up and murder innocent Jews, they can become martyrs. Having looked into Palestinian "schooling", I know this is the highest aspiration a child of this misfit and evil culture can aspire to. Their parents "harvest" children so that they can grow up and blow up. Now that some of them have grown up and come into political power, what happens now? Let's not beat about the bush! The future of Palestine has been laid out in its past. There is no hope coming from that quarter! For years, I have been making the point, wherever I can, that our government and the general population, just don't "get it". President Bush expounds endlessly about how these people just need "the vote". Democracy will bring out their true nature and there will be a miracle. Yeah, right! Well, they got it! - And now that the Palestinian Terrorist Party has won the elections, are they happy campers? I wonder if the Hollywood crowd which surrounds me, with their secular, leftist and very politically correct lifestyles, where a 'hug' and a crusade in the name of 'social justice' fixes every ill, are actually watching the debacle unfolding nightly on our televisions? Would it ever occur to them that this wanton, wholesale destruction was inevitable? And, this time, they can't even blame Israel. Hell, most of them couldn't even find Israel on the map. The level of some people's incomprehension - or is it duplicity?- is breathtaking, condoning and accepting the utterly evil premise of organisations like Hamas, something that even the worst anti-Semites in our State Dept and the United Nations have difficulty doing. Hamas is an international terrorist organization, a militant offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which in itself is another terrorist organization that calls for the total destruction of the State of Israel. There, that's simple, isn't it? It gets even easier when descriptions of Hamas, like this, are common currency: "Hamas militantly opposes all peace proposals that include a two-state solution and escalates its terrorist activities when peace negotiations make headway. Hamas denies the right of any Arab country or even of all the world's Kings and presidents to give up even a part of Palestine." So much for the planned hug-in the United States, the European Union and the United Nations have been attempting to foist onto the Jewish state, these past few years! Ah, no thanks guys, democratically speaking, we'll pass, thanks all the same! Hamas is not a newly emergent 'solution'. It is not a democratic party. It has simply usurped the democratic process for its own ends. They have been feverishly working, the past decade or so, towards TWO goals only, the total Islamization of Palestinian society and the total destruction of Israel. This is not a political party that has come into power, nor are they interested in political solutions. Neither do they harbour intentions compatible with any westernised understanding of democratic process. In short, using the word democracy in association with Hamas is a joke! Palestine, under Hamas, is a religious "nation", which lives for and by hatred, mass casualty suicide bomb attacks, and the murder of as many Israelis as they can manage. They have no other agenda. No Economic Policy was promoted pre-election. The entire 'dialogue', if you can call it that, was about power. That is all that interests Hamas. Their philosophy will make Iran look like a pussycat, when they implement their changes. The Sharia law, which is going to be enforced, will prohibit normal male/female interaction; music is going to be banned. G-d help you if you are homosexual, as they especially like to behead them. I cannot yet shake the memory of 'honour killings' brothers or fathers perpetrated on daughters they suspect of dishonouring them. This is about to become the norm, under Hamas, even the law of the land. They have managed to murder or chase out most of the Christian minority, but those who are still left may find themselves paying the dhimmi tax, yet another benefit for "unbelievers" in Islam. What right will we have to criticize them over these coming human rights abuses, when we endorse the authority that will bring all this about? None. In addition, that will be another "I told you so", far too late. 'Missing The Opportunity ' might not be confined solely to Palestinians, after all. Yet, despite all of this, despite the fact they have proudly declared themselves the enemies of Jews, of America and of civilized values, the Palestinians have declared with their 'votes' that they want no peace. Aid? That's another story. Jimmy Carter, who was the worst governor of my home state of Georgia before he inflicted himself upon the world stage, obviously believes that they are going to need our help. Lovely. This is a group of people who have wasted billions and billions of American taxpayers' money. Yet Carter has never changed his tune. He still hasn't found a terror group active against the Jewish state that he couldn't love! Unbelievably, he is on record, declaring, "We must continue funding PA President Mahmud Abbas." Ummm, why? It is sad when the senile cannot be stopped from shooting off their mouths. And, that goes for Peres also. It is going to turn interesting now. Bush is also on record, warning of a cut in funding. Yet, rumour has it that the State Department, with President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have found a way to approve funds to funnel American tax dollars into the Palestinian pockets. In the past, despite the will of Congress, they funnelled money through International Charities and Non-Governmental Organizations located in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Shame some of that money couldn't find it way into Israel for the benefit of the victims of Arab terrorism. Several things about all this amaze me, not the least being that, once again, it is the "usual suspects" who are expected to kick the can: the USA, the European Union and the United Nations. What is it that makes them feel responsible? I don't, not for a long time. Probably because I added up the amounts given to Arafat over the years, and wasn't surprised to be told it was approaching 20 billion dollars. Maybe Suha Arafat could go to the secret vaults and take out some of the billions she is reported to have stashed away in her Paris shopping bag. I am also amazed that the Arabs, who have all the money in the world, especially now that oil is again at high levels, don't do anything to help their "Arab brothers", but sit back smugly, happy that the burden of aid falls on everyone else, except them! Amazing, that Saudi sheiks have seemingly unlimited funds to set up "Muslim Chairs" at American Universities, and are buying American real estate at the speed of light, but are too cash-strapped to help build the schools and hospitals 'Palestine' is going to need. And need them they will, because, if it were up to me, I'd make sure that Israel turned off the water, electricity, medical options, etc., and make sure they didn't get one damn thing more from her good heart. Hamas made no promises or statements to the Palestinian people about financial management and responsibility, so surely the responsibility is on us to exercise some! They are already pleading that they are on the edge of bankruptcy and cannot 'function' without more international funds. Since they have no export except terrorism, no infrastructure, and no industry to speak of, they're not going to be able to meet the payrolls of their 130,000 PA employees, mostly terrorists of one kind or another, let alone promote a better fiscal future for their 'nation'. Good! Maybe they might notice that their leadership is a present day Nazi party and the rest of the world might think twice about funding another Reich. Or Caliphate. It's already come back to bite them in the tush in Paris and a dozen other countries which once befriended them. And, let there be no mistake about it. Now that fanatical Islamic fundamentalists have won so overwhelmingly in Iraq, by their curious use of the "democracy vote?, and Palestinians have sold their soul to the world's primary terrorist group, we are all on the road to hell. Hamas has won convincingly in Gaza, on the West Bank and in many other locales in the so-called Palestine Authority. Now they have their hands out, demanding aid from the world to build their new state, and all their friends are waiting in the wings, expectantly. I have no doubt that their savage cohorts in Morocco, Iran, Tunisia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc., are waiting with bated breath to see how the lunatic left feels about pushing through aid and congratulations, because they are now "one of us" in democracy. This is a terrorist state in the making. This is high stakes blackmail. Pay us, or we will continue to murder. It's that simple. It's that obvious. Palestine has always had all the elements of a terrorist state, only lacking in validation. Now that validation has come. Nothing will change because of this vote, but the character of that "nation" will now come increasingly to the forefront. These people cannot be negotiated with. Aid cannot, must not, be forthcoming and the only thing that can be done to them is to make certain of their destruction in the name of civilized society. That, folks, is something they understand. Hugs don't work with this group of 1.4 billion people. Power, yes, that they can comprehend and they must - now! Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. She can be reached at: bestredhead@earthlink.net and www.arlenepeck.com To Go To Top

THROW THEM OUT Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, January 31, 2006.

Why are the people in the area allowing these saboteurs [the Yesha Council] to speak for them? Unless the residents clearly and unequivocally denounce them as outsiders who do not represent the people of the area in any way, these lackeys of the Junta will once again destroy any chance of success. Earlier we heard all sorts of grandiose rhetoric about Maccabees and not allowing their home to be destroyed. Now we are hearing the usual claptrap of the saboteurs about how THEY are trying to reach a compromise but the Junta isn't interested. So of course this means that the people whose home are about to be destroy must capitulate. Right? Does this all sound familiar? Isn't this what they did in Gush Katif? If the fact that the Junta is unwilling to abandon its venomous hatred of Jews is a reason for loyal Jews to capitulate seems a non sequitur to you, welcome back to reality. This comes from today's Arutz Sheva - IsraelNationalNews.com - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=97637 and is called "Yesha Council: No Compromise, But Not Because We Don't Want One." (IsraelNN.com) The self-declared leadership of the struggle for Amona and the Yesha Council announced Tuesday afternoon that no agreement had been reached with the governmern regarding the permanent houses slated for demolition in the next 24 hours. "We would be happy if the other side was interested in arriving at a compromise, which is completely within its power to reach," a statement from the Yesha Council stated. "[Acting Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert wants a struggle and will receive one." Members of the council met with Olmert Monday evening in an attempt to reach a compromise with the new prime minister, who took office following Ariel Sharon's second stroke and the coma which followed. "We are repeating our call for all who care about the Land of Israel and who the State of Israel is dear to them to come, en masse, to Amona using any possible way." Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. To Go To Top

US STATE DEPARTMENT AND POLITICIZED NGOS Posted by Dov Rabinowitz, January 31, 2006.

NGO Monitor is urging the US State Department to stop relying on politicized NGOs for its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. NGO Monitor's detailed reports on these NGOs show that they promote a political agenda -- including efforts to impose academic boycotts, and divestment -- at the expense of accurate analysis. NGO Monitor analyses of the NGOs quoted in previous editions of the "Israel and the Occupied Territories" section of the report show that these NGOs display a consistent anti-Israel political bias. The State Department report refers to its NGO sources as "reputable international organizations" and "credible NGOs." However, according to NGO Monitor, these NGOs have no independent research capabilities, provide insufficient documentation for independent verification, accept anecdotal claims from politically motivated groups or individuals, and discriminate between sources based on political agendas. In a letter to Paula Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, NGO Monitor urged the State Department to refrain from repeating unverified allegations of politicized NGOs in future reports. The next report is scheduled for publication within the month. "Many of these NGOs are active participants in incitement," said Professor Gerald Steinberg, Editor of NGO Monitor. "They demonize Israel through false allegations of human rights abuses and selective citations of international law." Highly politicized NGOs found in the State Department Report include the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, B'tselem, Adalah, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. For the text of the NGO Monitor letter to the State department go to: http://www.ngo-monitor.org/ Dov Rabinowitz is Communications Director of NGO Monitor. Contact him at communications@ngo-monitor.org To Go To Top

END THE OCCUPATION! Posted by Steven Plaut, January 31, 2006.

Iran is openly calling for Israel to be destroyed, claiming that Israel is an alien "colony" that "occupies" land that belongs to the Palestinians. And when was the last time that the lands of Israel formed a Palestinian Arab state? Well, never. On the other hand, there is another country under the illegal occupation of a foreign entity. I am referring of course to Iran. Iran is under the illegal temporary occupation of Iranians but it clearly should be restored to its legitimate Mongolian rulers! After all, if "Palestine" is eternally Arab because some Arab armies conquered it in the Dark Ages, why should not Iran remain permanently Mongolian after the Mongolians conquered it in the Dark Ages? Just to refresh your memory, the younger brother of Kublai Khan, Hulaku, captured Bagdad, on 5 Feb., 1258; and the Khalif, Al-Mustansir Billah, surrendered to the Mongol chief on 10 February. Hulaku was thus the founder of the dynasty of the Ilkhans of Iran, which included the following princes: Hulaku, until 1265; Abaka (1265-81); Nikudar Ahmed (1281-84); Argh.n (1284-91); Gaikhatu (1291.); Ba.du (1295); Ghazan Mahmud (1295-1304); Ghivas eddin Oljaitu Khudabendeh Mohammed (1304-16); Abusa.d Bahadur (1316-35); Mo.zz ed-dunia we'd-din Arpa (1335-36); Musa (1336); Mohammed (1336-38); Toogha Timur (1338-39); Izz ed-din Djehan-Timur (1339); Satibeg (1339); Suleimen (1339-44); Adil Anushirwan (1344-53). They were all destroyed by Timur (Tamerlane) or his successors. So after we in the West bomb the bejeebers out of the Iranian nuclear facilities, let us destroy the Iranian colonialist state and restore Iran to its legitimate rulers!Oljaitu 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him by email at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il To Go To Top

STRIP THE STRIPES? Posted by Batya Medad, January 31, 2006.

Things are getting stranger and stranger, or is the truth just coming closer to the surface? The Arab terrorist Hamas Party leader announced: The several conditions Zahar named included a demand that Israel change its flag. "Israel must remove the two blue stripes from its national flag," said Zahar. "The stripes on the flag are symbols of occupation. They signify Israel's borders stretching from the Euphrates River to the Nile River." Now, most of us just thought that they were like the stripes on the " Tallit."[1] (Thanks, Judith) This makes me wonder. The American flag has lots of stripes, actually thirteen to represent the original thirteen colonies/states. Six are white, and seven are red. Now, just to take this further according to Hamas leadership. The Israeli flag has only two blue stripes. If the stripes connote or symbolize "occupation," then America with 650% more stripes than Israel must be considered six and a half times more an occupier, or imperialist nation, than little Israel. And if we want to talk symbols, let's look at the colors. The Israeli flag is sky blue and white, while the American one has a dark, midnight blue and bright red with white. Israeli stripes are blue, the color symbolizing freedom, vigilance, perseverance, justice, prosperity, peace, and/or patriotism. But the American flag has red stripes, the color of war and violence. Let's put this all together according to the statement of Hamas leader, Zahar, just a little logic, please. Israel's flag, with a dominance of blue on white symbolizes a peaceful, just country, and that's even when if finds itself as an "occupier." While the United States has a flag with seven bright red stripes, which symbolize a violently aggressive imperialist society. I didn't say it; I just took Zahar's demand a little further... Batya Medad lives in Shiloh. She can be reached by email at Shilohmuse@yahoo.com or visit her website http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/ or go to http://www.shilo.org.il This is archived at shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2006/01/ strip-stripes.html To Go To Top

AN OPEN LETTER TO EACH MEMBER OF THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT AND MEDIA: THE WORLD IS WATCHING Posted by Paul Rotenberg, January 31, 2006.

An Open Letter to Each Member of the Israeli Government and Media As we in the Diaspora are listening closely to the difficult political decisions of how Israel will respond to the Hamas political victory, we are puzzled and troubled by the inexplicable priorities of the Israeli government. By your actions the Jewish families who are residing in the Avraham Avinu neighbourhood market of Hebron and nine families in the Amona neighbourhood on the edge of Ofra seem to be your most dangerous military threat. In the context of geopolitics, we are alarmed that the Israeli government is planning to deploy thousands of soldiers and police to Hebron and Amona. You are determined to evict these Jews families from their legally owned land. The families in Hebron live on land owned by the Jewish community of Hebron for over one hundred years before the massacre of 1929 and re-inhabited in 1975. The nine families of Amona also have legal deeds to their land and the government itself encouraged the residents to build their homes in Amona, and connected them to the electric and water infrastructures. They have been there since August 1995. Ten years ago when Arab-initiated violence in Hebron was at its high, the Israeli army decided to remove the Arabs squatters from the marketplace. Commander-in-Chief of the IDF, Maj. Gen. Ehud Barak supported this action. Several years later after 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass was shot to death by terrorists, the Jewish inhabitants of Hebron decided to re-inhabit the empty market that the Jewish community of Hebron owned outright, and began renovating the stores, turning them into livable apartments. The Jewish communities of Hebron and Amona have rigidly adhered to the rules, rules of property ownership, and applied for permits for their construction. May I bring to your attention that over 40,000 of the 120,000 Arabs who live in and around Hebron are squatters. There are thousands more in the Judean and Samarian Hills. They erected their homes with no legal purchase, no consent of the government, and aren't even required to pay property taxes. Nevertheless, they have remained in their illegally built homes with no consequences. There are to date, more than 7,380 court-ordered eviction notices against illegal Palestinian homes in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), but the Israeli government has never acted on them. In East Jerusalem alone, there are over 20,000 Arab buildings illegally constructed, and instead of moving to remove these structures acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has discussed, with the PA, legalizing that construction. This is an unacceptable double standard. Why are Jews who legally own their property and homes not allowed to stay while Arabs who have no title to land left alone? The Israeli government seems to have lost sight of its mandate. Do you, the government ministers, intend to expel the 100,000 plus illegal Arab residents of structures that have been built in your midst? We have heard that some of the Jewish property owners have no title to their land. In fact, these lands have all been legally bought and legally inhabited. We know that the plans were submitted and a good portion of the work that has been completed, has been finished with the help of the Israeli government and army. Only the last stages of the permits were withheld so that, on a technicality, the government can now say they are illegal. The residents have made every effort to fulfill all legalities. We turn to you to uphold the truth and to leave these residents where they are by finishing the last stage of permits so that they may live in peace and stability, in their homes, within the land of Israel. Paul Rotenberg Toronto, Canada Contact Paul Rotenberg by email at pdr@rogers.com To Go To Top

KIBBUTZ MEMBERS IN SUPPORT OF SETTLERS Posted by Women in Green, January 30, 2006.

This is a news item from www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3207626,00.html Kibbutz member: "These are pioneers of Hebron, just like the Kibbutz movement had pioneers; there's no difference between us" -- Miri Chason, YNet On the eve of plans to carry out the evacuation of the Amona outposts and settlers from the Hebron market, a surprising show of support has emerged for the embattled settlers: Kibbutz members and moshav residents, usually identified with the Left's wish to leave the territories, have aligned themselves with Hebron settlers slated for evacuation. They have organized a conference of support, to be held in Hebron on Tuesday. "At a time when they are trying to expel Jews from their legal land, there are 700,000 Jews and Arabs in the country who live in illegal homes and nobody cares. Why are they singling out the wonderful pioneers who live in Hebron." This sentence was said not by a right-wing person or senior official in Yesha, but by Tzafrir Ronen, one of the organizers of the conference of support and identification with the settlers by Kibbutz members, under the banner: The working communities and citizens of Israel are with the community of Hebron." "These are pioneers of Hebron just like the Kibbutz movement had pioneers," said Ronen. "There's no difference between us." Meanwhile, IDF Central Command Chief Yair Naveh signed restraining orders against 21 right-wing activists following suspicions that they will attempt to harm security forces and Palestinians during the course of the evacuation of the Amona outpost and the Hebron market. The IDF and police are preparing to carry out the clearance this week. They are expected to work along similar lines to the way the disengagement from Gaza was implemented. 'We won't abandon pioneers of Jewish Hebron' "These are wonderful people who are loyal to the country, but the media has turned them into animals," Ronen added. "The people who set up Kiryat-Arba and Gush Katif were members of the Labor party. The same is true of the settlements of the Jordan Valley, and communities in the Golan Heights. The youths don't know this, and they are ensuring that the youths remain ignorant of this. The first group of pioneers in Netzarim, for example, was from the Hashomer Hatzair (Zionist left-wing youth movement). I myself have seen how the police create provocation and the media just takes pictures. There's no way around it -- the media is political," he said. Organizers of the conference have announced that officers, academics, and religious leaders from various kibbutzim and moshav communities will attend. "We won't leave our friends, the pioneers of Jewish Hebron, alone against the malicious war launched against them," an advertisement for the conference said. "We'll strengthen them and be with them during the difficult hour because their struggle is our struggle." Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

PROPOSED LEGISLATION REGAARDING THE TRANSFER OF FUNDS TO THE HAMAS-LED PA Posted by Buddy Macy, January 30, 2006.

To All Americans Against Terrorism: I urge you to support the drafting of the following proposed legislation: A new bill is being formulated in the U.S. Congress, in the wake of Hamas' election victory, that will make the transfer of funds to the Palestinians, both directly and indirectly, much more difficult. Should the proposed bill become law, it will enable the U.S. to place the Palestinians on a list of terror-supporting countries, resulting in severe sanctions on trade with the PA and major restrictions regarding the transfer of funds to it. Since the first reports of the Hamas victory surfaced in the U.S., senior Congressional members have expressed unequivocal views on the subject of the transfer of funds to the Palestinian Authority. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida and Chairwoman of the Congressional Subcommittee on the Middle East, is leading the legislation effort in an attempt to make it more difficult for the Bush administration to offer aid to the Palestinians, and, to make it easier to isolate a Hamas-led government. Ros-Lehtinen said the U.S. must ensure that American taxpayers' funds are not transferred directly or indirectly to those who have carried out terror attacks. Republican Eric Cantor said the Palestinians would not receive a penny. Senators from both parties said during television appearances, that aid to the Palestinians must cease. The proposed bill is also intended to demand the closing of consulates and to reduce diplomatic contacts with the Palestinians; and, to prevent the entry of Hamas leaders into the United States. In accordance with current law, the U.S. cannot transfer funds directly to the PA without the President's signature, for reasons of "American national security." Thank you, in advance, for writing and speaking out in favor of the drafting of this vital piece of anti-terrorism legislation. Most sincerely, Buddy Macy Contact Buddy Macy by email at vegibud@aol.com To Go To Top

DOUMANI'S "BLAME ISRAEL FIRST/LAST/ALWAYS" BACKFIRES Posted by David Meir-Levi, January 30, 2006.

Beshara Doumani's "Israel can blame itself for Hamas' win" (SJMN, 1/30/06) is a ludicrous attempt to reverse reality. But in the face of the undeniable evidence of that realty....it fails. Doumani is right that Israelis have said: "we have no partner for peace". But not because it was ever "...an ironclad...Israeli policy". Rather, because every attempt by Israel, the UN, the UK, and the USA to create a Palestinian state alongside of Israel (15 such attempts since 1937) has been met by Arab violence, terrorism, murder, and war. For the past 70 years destroying Israel has been far more important to Palestinian leadership than creating a Palestinian state. No state alongside of Israel....only instead of Israel. His assertion that "...the Israeli government...engineered the failure of the peace process..." is so outre that it is risible. On the very same day that he signed the Oslo Accords, Arafat publicly announced his intentions, in Arabic to his followers, to ignore his Oslo commitments and start his jihad. Within weeks he was overseeing and coordinating the terror war that he would later ratchet up to the 2nd Intifada. And Israel, desperately trying to keep the peace process going, at first registered its complaints to Arafat. Then, when it became clear that Arafat was orchestrating the violence, Israel complained to the UN and to the USA while the terrorists launched as many as 24 terror attacks daily. Only after 9 years of post-Oslo terrorism, almost 20,000 terror attacks, more than 1,000 dead and thousands more injured or maimed for life, did Israel RE-occupy the West Bank to stop the terrorists. As for "...the daily life of Palestinians ...deteriorated to almost subhuman levels...": Professor Doumani should be aware of the World Bank statistics that show the West Bank and Gaza Strip enjoying an average annual GDP of 13% between 1967 and 1993. Roads, electricity, sewerage, water sources, water purification, telephones, television, radio, 7 new universities, modern medical facilities....all were brought up to 20th century standards for the Palestinians by Israel. During Israel's 27-year rule, the Arab population tripled, infant mortality plummeted, tourism sky-rocketed. And Arafat torched it all when he took over in 1994. By 2003 the West Bank GDP was literally one-tenth of what it was in 1994. The galactic venality of his graft and corruption, the embezzlement of billions to his personal accounts, and the siphoning off of c. 80% of foreign aid to fund his terror war....these are what reduced the Palestinians' lives to brutal, grinding poverty. Factual errors of such magnitude regarding the Arab-Israel conflict indicate that either professor Doumani is abysmally ignorant (but wait!! He is a History professor), or he simply hopes that your readers are. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com To Go To Top

JEWS TO BE EVICTED FROM AMONA TOMORROW Posted by Lee Caplan, January 30, 2006.

Photo Essay: Inside Amona, In the Shadow of Destruction The community of Amona, built with help from the World Zionist Organization and Israeli government, is seeking to prevent the destruction of nine new homes built there. Arutz-7 offers a look inside. http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=97567 "Olmert Rejects Call to Postpone Amona Eviction" Jan 30, '06/1 Shevat 5766 (IsraelNN.com) Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday rejected a request from Yesha leaders seeking a two-month delay in the planne! d eviction of residents from Amona. Mr. Olmert stated he would not grant any extension and plans to implement the eviction on Tuesday night after receiving a green light from the Supreme Court on Monday, which rejected a petition seeking a restraining order to block the eviction. 'IDF Prevents Buses From Reaching Amonazzzz' Jan 30,'06/1 Shevat 5766 (IsraelNN.com) Tens of buses carrying Amona supporters have been stopped at checkpoints entering Samaria. The military is not permitting non-residents into the area, seeking to prevent opponents to the eviction to reach Amona. Many travelers got off of buses earlier, attempting to reach Amona on foot. Urgent Action Alert on this coming Tuesday's Amona Expulsion. Please know the Facts: There are 20,000 Arab buildings in East Jerusalem illegally constructed without permits, and Olmert has discussed with the PA legalizing that construction. There are more than 30,444 illegal buildings in which Arabs are squatting in Israel. There are more than 7,380 court-ordered eviction notices against Illegal Palestinian homes in Judea and Samaria ( West Bank ), but the Israeli government has never acted on them and has no plans to. Yet, this Tuesday, the Olmert interim unelected government is going to send hundreds of IDF troops and Police to evict Jewish families in the Israeli-controlled area of Amona, for no reason whatsoever. This Tuesday, tens of thousands of armed Hamas and Fatah terrorist murderers will be free as usual to roam Hebron and the West Bank shooting automatic rifles into the air. EXPULSION ORDERED BY OLMERT On Tuesday, Jewish citizens will once again be expelled from their homes in the State of Israel, for no logical reason whatsoever, by the Radical unelected Leftists running the government like their personal property- Olmert, Weisglass, Peres, Beilin, Omri, Mazuz, Mofaz, etc, at the behest of Peace Now, ISM, the EU, the Quartet, Hamas, the PA, the UN, for secret deals that only they know about and that only they benefit from. The forces will be deployed in three rings: the first ring will be made up of 1,500 policemen trained to deal with violent protests and will also include mounted forces. The second rings will consist of several hundred Border Policemen and the third ring will be made up of four infantry regiments. Policemen will be responsible for direct conformation with the settlers, while the IDF will close off the area to incoming protesters. Security Minister Shaul Mofaz has declared that a policy of "zero tolerance" would be employed against settler violence, and IDF officers said that in this evacuation, they will "demonstrate only determination, without sensitivity." Settlers are planning a major solidarity conference Tuesday against the evacuation. Politicians, rabbis and academics are among those expected to attend the gathering. Representatives of five parties - Eli Yishai (Shas), Zevulun Orlev (NRP), Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu), Zvi Hendel (National Union), and Meir Porush (Agudath Israel) - sent a letter to Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over the weekend urging him to postpone the evacuation of Amona and Hebron until after the elections, in line with the general principle that major, non-urgent decisions should not be made prior to an election. Phone &fax numbers: President Moshe Katsav; Tel: 972-2-6707211 Fax: 972-2-5610037 State Comptroller's office: tel: 972-2-666-5000 fax: 972-2-666-5204 and fax the department responsible for the police: 972-2-530-9999 Prime Min spokesman: Assaf Sharif 972-2-5666920 (dir.) fax: 972-2-5669245 cell: 972-50-7724881 Olmert's spokeswoman: Chaya Peri tel 972-2-666-2301 fax 972-2-666-44-00 Defense Min. spokesman Eli Kamir tel. 972-3-6975546 fax: 972-3-6916940 cell: 972-50-6298005 Foreign Affairs Mark Regev tel. 972-2-5303343/555 972-2-5303408 (fax) cell 972-50-6203264 Justice Min spokesman: Shai Ben-Maor (Adviser) 972-2-6285438 (fax) cell: 972-50-6247138 Ministry of internal police tel 972-2-5308500 fax 972-2-530-80-39 Chief of Police, Mr Aharonishky: tel 972-2-5308100 fax 972-2-5308118 Hebron police: (those directly responsible for brutalizing Deli landau) tel 972-2-9969-444 or 972-2-9969-473/86/96/62 Shalom Court (address faxes to Judge Eilata Sziskind who put Deli under house arrest at her parents, away from her children, BEFORE TRIAL even started!!! fax 972-2-624-34-24 Prosecutor's office fax 972-2-646-700-1 Justice ministry fax 972-5602246 Chief Rabbinate: Rabbi Shlomo Amar fax 972-2-537-1305 Rabbi Yonah Metzger fax 972-2-5377872 The Rishon Lezion Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu Shlita fax 972-2-653-6842 In addition copy and paste onto an email to these press and Knesset members: wolf@cnn.com; ombud@globe.com; suggestions@lauraingraham.com; atc@npr.org; jdvorkin@npr.org; countdown@msnbc.com; opinion@msnbc.com; beltway@foxnews.com; foxreport@foxnews.com; oreilly@foxnews.com; info@creators.com; comments@foxnews.com; foxnewsonline@foxnews.com; askfox@foxinc.com; viewerservices@foxnews.com; hannity@foxnews.com; special@foxnews.com; afterhours@foxnews.com; colmes@foxnews.com; atlarge@foxnews.com; bullsandbears@foxnews.com; cash@foxnews.com; friends@foxnews.com; feedback@foxnews.com; newswatch@foxnews.com; lateedition@cnn.com; cjr@columbia.edu; onthemedia@wnyc.org; newswatch@foxnews.com; reliable@cnn.com; abramsreport@msnbc.com; kurtzh@washpost.com; hardball@msnbc.com; joe@msnbc.com; letter@globe.com; editors@interactive.wsj.com; nightline@abcnews.com; al-alwada-news@yahoogroups.com; jsmith@globe.com; kwadington@suntimes.com; alipinski@tribune.com; cmcmahon@tribune.com; dclifton@plaind.com; cnn@cnn.com; cjr@columbia.edu; editorial@jewishledger.com; mconnolly@newstimes.com; rush@eibnet.com; letters@star-telegram.com; comments@foxnews.com; special@foxnews.com; bret@jpost.com; caroline@jpost.com; letters@courant.com; cbglick@zahav.net.il; john.carroll@latimes.com; marjorie.miller@latimes.com; worldnews@herald.com; cday@middletownpress.com; editor@newbritainherald.com; letters@nhregister.com; editor@theday.com; editors@newsweek.com; atc@npr.org; bdrake@npr.org; newsdesk@nysun.com; editor@nysun.com; jgershman@nysun.com; crosett@nysun.com; elake@nysun.com; bavni@nysun.com; foreign@nytimes.com; public@nytimes.com; editor@orlandosentinel.com; editor@phillynews.com; foreign@phillynews.com; nragen@netmedia.net.il; janetlehr@mindspring.com; msill@newsobserver.com; oquarles@newsobserver.com; letters@sun-sentinel.com; david.smith@uniontrib.com; readerrep@sfchronicle.com; eletters@starledger.com; editor@think-israel.org; james_kelly@timemagazine.com; etinsley@usatoday.com; letters@usnews.com; foreign@washpost.com; westhartfordnews@ctcentral.com; onthemedia@wnyc.org; alankeyes@renewamerica.us; alison.sharman@bbc.co.uk; vaadharabbonim@yahoo.com; americanredcross@processrequest.com; amnestyis@amnesty.org; ai-news@amnesty.org; admin-us@aiusa.org; info@prescon.org; mailing@norpac.net; andrew.steele@bbc.co.uk; barry.langridge@bbc.co.uk; public.info@consilium.eu.int; christopher.patten@cec.eu.int; info@cre.gov.uk; sg-plaintes@cec.eu.int; letters@haaretz.co.il; maariv@newmail.net; editor@maariv.co.il; releases@jewishpress.com; focus@yetioth.co.il; hannity@foxnews.com; Speakout@foxnews.com; Viewerservices@foxnews.com; live@foxnews.com; mac@haaretz.co.il; mail@thelikud.org; editlett@jewishaz.com; editor@reuters.com; media@actcom.co.il; yvaknin@knesset.gov.il; nzeev@knesset.gov.il; eyishay@knesset.gov.il; egavrieli@knesset.gov.il; ggamliel@knesset.gov.il; mgafni@knesset.gov.il; gezra@knesset.gov.il; gerdan@knesset.gov.il; meitan@knesset.gov.il; zaevb@knesset.gov.il; efye@knesset.gov.il; yedri@knesset.gov.il; yedelstein@knesset.gov.il; ndahan@knesset.gov.il; izchakec@knesset.gov.il; amncohen@knesset.gov.il; eaflalo@knesset.gov.il; uria@knesset.gov.il; ravraham@knesset.gov.il; dazulay@knesset.gov.il; rbaron@knesset.gov.il; slomob@knesset.gov.il; nblumentl@knesset.gov.il; dbenlulu@knesset.gov.il; belon@knesset.gov.il; gfinkelshtein@knesset.gov.il; mgorlovski@knesset.gov.il; ysteinitz@knesset.gov.il; davidt@knesset.gov.il; sshalom@knesset.gov.il; nslomianski@knesset.gov.il; avrahamsh@knesset.gov.il; oritn@knesset.gov.il; ylitzman@knesset.gov.il; hkatz@knesset.gov.il; akara@knesset.gov.il; iherzog@knesset.gov.il; ndahan@knesset.gov.il; izchakec@knesset.gov.il; rbrison@knesset.gov.il; avilan@knesset.gov.il; mnahari@knesset.gov.il; yhazan@knesset.gov.il; eichler@knesset.gov.il; egavrieli@knesset.gov.il; zhanegbi@knesset.gov.il; yiskatz@knesset.gov.il; llivnat@knesset.gov.il; dnaveh@knesset.gov.il; bnetanyahoo@knesset.gov.il; ndoron@knesset.gov.il; iyasinov@knesset.gov.il; vbrailovsky@knesset.gov.il; ulandau@knesset.gov.il; natan@aliya.org.il; uria@KNESSET.GOV.IL; sar@moag.gov.il; pm_eng@pmo.gov.il; mkatsav@knesset.gov.il; sar@mof.gov.il; sar@mfa.gov.il; sar@molsa.gov.il; sar@moch.gov.il; sar@tourism.gov.il; sar@mops.gov.il; minister@most.gov.il; sar@moag.gov.il; sar@moia.gov.il; sar@education.gov.il; sar@mot.gov.il; sar@mod.gov.il; sar@matat.health.gov.il; sars@int.gov.il; marens@knesset.gov.il Contact Lee Caplan by email at leescaplan@yahoo.com To Go To Top

HAMAS DEMANDS ALL, CEDES NOTHING Posted by David Meir-Levi, January 30, 2006.

Josef Federman's "Israel says Hamas still off-limits" (SF Chron, 1.30.06) gives a summary of the current post-election impasse, but misses a few important aspects of this tired dynamic. Israel will not negotiate with Hamas until Hamas abandons its commitment to Israel's destruction. Hamas will not stop its terrorism against Israel until Israel withdraws to the '49 armistice lines, releases 7000 terrorists in Israeli prisons, stops pre-emptive prevention of terror attacks, and bisects itself to make a geographic link between the Gaza Strip and West Bank. So, Hamas refuses even a symbolic and tentative concession (agree to no more war) which could be easily reversed, but demands from Israel very concrete and costly and difficult concessions which are not easily reversed and which would greatly enhance Hamas' ability to fulfill the core goal of its Charter: the destruction of Israel and the genocide of its Jews...a Charter which it refuses to amend. Why would any country agree to help its enemies destroy it? David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com To Go To Top

AZ-ZAHAR TELLS IT LIKE IT IS: NO RECOGNITION, NO NEGOTIATIONS, NO PEACE Posted by David Meir-Levi, January 30, 2006.

This recent CNN interview with Hamas' top official in the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud ez-Zahar, gives us some helpful insight into what Hamas will do with its new-found power and why Israel is right to refuse negotiations until Hamas revises its Covenant, agrees to stop terrorism, and agrees to recognize Israel and negotiate a peaceful resolution: a.) Hamas' demands are still of the traditional Arafat/PLO/Arat states' genre: The Arab sides offer symbolic and tentative concessions (which are easily reversed) in exchange for Israel's very concrete and costly and difficult concessions which are not easily reversed and may be impossible to reverse. Thus, in this scenario below, Hamas will countenance the POSSIBILITY of a LONG-TERM TRUCE (not make peace, not make a truce of indefinite extention, but only ackowledge the possibility of a truce, and one with a time limit: one year? five years? ten years? so what happens after the time is up? and what has Hamas done during this time of truce to improve its military position?). But, it will consider this possible truce only if israel is ready to actually WITHDRAW to the pre-67 borders (NB!!: he does not say that Hamas will make a truce, only that it is possible that hamas will do so). b.) All agreements must be made in the absence of negotiations. Israel must simply agree to do what the Arabs demand, and hope that the Arabs will do what they say they will do. Ez-Zahar rejects any possibilty of negotiations. So Israel must simply accept the Hamas demand, no discussion, and retreat to the pre-67 borders, dismantle all communities (c. 200,000 people), recreate the "Auschwitz borders", ...and then hope that Hamas will keep its word and consider the possibility of a truce (not peace).....and then hope that Hamas decides that the possibility is reality, and that the truce turns into peace in some magical way. c.) Hamas makes demands to which it knows that Israel will not agree: Release of prisoners has been a constant monotone demand since Israel first began imprisoning Hamas leaders. Hamas knows that decapitation works....but only once you have c. 15%-25%of leaders out of commission (dead or in jail). Because of Israel's successful decapitation of Hamas, Hamas as a fighting force was on the ropes until last week's election, in large part due to the inaccessibility of its jailed leaders. Israel cannot consider the release of these prisoners because they will immediately re-enter the Hamas ranks and swell them and retake their places in the leadership cadre....thus making Hamas a far more formidable military force. In the absence of a peace treaty and actionable evidence that Hamas wants a peaceful resolution to the conflict, Israel would be committing suicide if it released Hamas prisonerse. Same with "stop the aggression". It is almost standard procedure that terror groups attack Israel even as committees from both sides meet to discuss ways of creating a meeting of higher level committees which will discuss ways of starting a peace talk (or a truce talk) process with still higher level leaders. So what does "stop the aggression" mean? Would any nation allow its enemy to continue perpetrating lethal attacks during negotiations? And Hamas is refusing to negotiate. So what this demand really means is that Israel should do nothing to stop terrorist attacks while Hamas mulls over the possibility of a truce....and since Hamas and other terror groups have perpetrated 1990 terror attacks in 2005 during a so-called 'truce', it is not reasonable to assume that Hamas will maintain its side of the truce, or that Hamas will refrain from outsourcing terror attacks to terror groups not covered in the truce ("islamic jihad did it. not hamas. we have no control over them"). And note too the demand to bisect Israel with geogrpahic connections between the west bank and gaza strip. So Israel should agree to be bisected? Recall the fuss made about ma'aleh adumim which (incorrectly) pro-Arab spokespersons said would bisect the west bank. If the West Bank cannot be bisected (which it would not be, anyway, by Ma'aleh adumim), then why can Israel be bisected? CONCLUSION It should be patently obvious that Hamas' offer is not an offer for a resolution of the conflict. It is a ploy to gain diplomatic ground ("See, western countries and especially the USA!! We are offering a truce and Israel is rejecting it!"). Hamas knows that Israel will not go along with the charade; but it counts on the participation of the UN, EU, and some forces in the UK and USA to support it and say "So, Israel, what have you done to reciprocate Hamas' offer?" ADDENDUM: HOMOPHOBIA Note also ez-Zahar's uninhibited homophobia in "... secular system allows homosexuality, allows corruption, allows the spread of the loss of natural immunity like AIDS,". He is indirectly telling the world what a Hamas Islamic state will look like....no room for western-style human rights (inter alia, freedom of sexual preference). David ml YNet. Internet news (Israel). 1/30/06 "Hamas: Ceasefire for return to 1967 border" Top Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar tells CNN "long-term truce" possible if Israel withdraws to pre-1967 borders, releases Palestinian prisoners; as to possibility Hamas would renounce terror, Zahar says, "Israel is killing people and children and removing our agricultural system - this is terrorism" -- Yitzhak Benhorin WASHINGTON - Top Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar told CNN that a "long-term hudna or long-term truce" is possible. He would not commit to negotiating with Israel and would not say whether recognizing Israel's existence is a long-term possibility. The conditions included Israel's retreating to its pre-1967 borders and releasing Palestinian prisoners. Zahar told CNN if Israel "is ready to give us the national demand to withdraw from the occupied area (in) '67; to release our detainees; to stop their aggression; to make geographic link between Gaza Strip and West Bank, at that time, with assurance from other sides, we are going to accept to establish our independent state at that time, and give us one or two, 10, 15 years time in order to see what is the real intention of Israel after that." "We can accept to establish our independent state on the area occupied (in) '67," he said. Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six-Day War of 1967. Key conditions could allow Palestinians to give a "long-term hudna or long-term truce," and "after that, let time heal," he said. But when asked about Hamas' call for Israel's destruction, Zahar would not say whether that remains the goal. "We are not speaking about the future, we are speaking now," he said. Zahar argued that Israel has no true intention of accepting a Palestinian state, despite international agreements including the Road Map for Middle East peace. 'We are not taking money from Iran' Until Israel says what its final borders will be, Hamas will not say whether it will ever recognize Israel, Zahar said. "If Israel is ready to tell the people what is the official border, after that we are going to answer this question." Asked by CNN whether Hamas would renounce terrorism, Zahar argued the definition of terrorism is unfair. Israel is "killing people and children and removing our agricultural system -- this is terrorism," he said. "When the Americans (are) attacking the Arabic and Islamic world whether in Afghanistan and Iraq and they are playing a dirty game in Lebanon, this is terrorism." "Negotiation is not our aim. Negotiation is a method," he said. Zahar said the government will use international donations to do reconstruction and build needed institutions. "We are looking for this money, but this money should not be conditioned," he said. Zahar added, "We are not taking money from Iran," denying suggestions by Israeli and U.S. officials that there are growing ties between Hamas and Tehran. Iran's president has called for Israel's destruction. According to CNN, news reports have said Hamas plans to establish separate schools for boys and girls in the Palestinian territories and implement stricter Islamic law. 'We're going to review all of our assistance programs' When asked whether he plans a theocracy instead of a secular government, Zahar responded, "Do you think the secular system is ... serving any nation?" A secular system "allows homosexuality, allows corruption, allows the spread of the loss of natural immunity like AIDS," he said. "We are here living under Islamic control. Nothing will change ... If you are going to give a hint that Islamic society will be against the modern life, I think it's incorrect." Defense Minster Shaul Mofaz said Sunday the principle according to which Israel will not hold talks with Hamas as a terror group will be maintained, stating that only the annulment of the charter calling for Israel's destruction, recognition of Israel's right to exist, the disarmament of all terror groups and the recognition of all the agreements reached with Israel so far would pave the way for dialogue. "The chances that Hamas will carry out all of these conditions in the near future seem quite slim." "We are not intervening in what goes on in the Palestinian Authority; we have already seen tension between Hamas and Fatah, which can be referred to as an 'aftershock' from the election results. 'No help for government that wants to destroy our friend' U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is expected to meet E.U. foreign ministers in London on Monday in an effort to formulate a unified position on a Palestinian government consisting of Hamas members, said, "The United States is not prepared to fund an organization that advocates the destruction of Israel, that advocates violence." Should Hamas acts against Israel, Mofaz threatened to "use all the means available to us (against the group), including targeted killings," adding that the activity against Islamic Jihad would continue, especially in light of the fact that intelligence information indicates the organization is planning suicide attacks against Israel. "We're going to review all of our assistance programs, but the bedrock principle here is we can't have funding for an organization that holds those views just because it is in government," Rice added. United States provided a total of USD 403 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority in 2005, according to U.S. officials. International Support [Merkel: Hamas must recognize Israel / Ronny Sofer: German leader lands in Israel, says Europe would not fund Hamas-controlled PA unless group renounces violence, recognizes Israel; visit marks first time Acting PM Olmert hosts leader of major western country] President George Bush said Sunday that the United States will not give aid to a government led by a violent Hamas party. "We won't give help to a government that wants to destroy our friend and ally," Bush told CBS News. "I don't see how you can be a partner in peace if you don't give up violent intentions," Bush said. Hanan Greenberg contributed to the report. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com To Go To Top

THE HAMAS ELECTORAL VICTORY Posted by David Bedein, January 30, 2006.

OPEN ENDORSEMENT OF MURDER During their successful election campaign, Hamas leaders who mow sit in jail for murder were allowed by Israeli security officials to meet with the media. In their interviews, Hamas leaders openly said that they expect to be free very soon, that they expect to resume their "operations", that they have no regrets for their actions, and that their purpose is to overthrow the State of Israel and to replace it with an "Islamic State of Palestine". These Hamas leaders spoke calmly, with self-confidence, and were pleased to pose for the cameras after each interview. CULMINATING HISTORY OF PLO-HAMAS COOPERATION And now Hamas has won the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council, following an 18 year process of official cooperation between Hamas and the PLO's Fateh organization, which had been the dominant party in the nascent Palestinian Authority. Hamas, founded in 1987, and the PLO, founded in 1964, operate with the same funding source: Saudi Arabia, one of the Arab nations that had attacked Israel in 1948 to destroy the news Jewish state. Saudi Arabia has never signed a peace treaty (like Jordan and Egypt) and has never even signed an armistice (like Syria and Lebanon) The PLO nurtured Hamas for leadership in a Palestinian state -- something that any reporter would know by covering the PLO cooperation with Hamas's popular movement which was conducted in the open, yet hardly reported. When Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Peres and PLO leader Yassir Arafat all got a joint Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December 1994, I asked Rabin and Peres if Arafat would crush Hamas and cancel the PLO covenant calling for Israel's destruction. Peres and Rabin held their own press conference and assured the media that they had ironclad commitment from Arafat to crush Hamas and to cancel the PLO covenant which calls for Israel's gradual destruction. However, when I asked Arafat the same questions, he laughed at the idea that he was supposed to "crush the Hamas" and instead described Hamas as "my brothers" and denied any assurance that he would cancel the PLO covenant. 250 news agencies heard Arafat's answer. Not one reported it. Four months later, in April, 1995, after intense negotiations between the PLO and Hamas, Arafat committed himself to licensing and distributing weapons for the Hamas. At the time, the Voice of Israel Radio had reported that Arafat was "confiscating the weapons" from the Hamas, as did the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Yet on May 9th, 1995, The PA held a ceremony in which it formally distributed weapons to Hamas in an event was reported on the Voice of Palestine radio, and picked up by the New York Times. Yet the story was relegated to the back pages of Israeli newspapers and, to this day, most people to this day do not know that Hamas is armed by the Palestinian Authority. In December, 1995. the PA and Hamas reached a cooperative agreement in Cairo to absorb Hamas into the framework of the Palestinian Authority, after which the PA ceded the all important position of "minister of communications" to an Hamas official. However, the PLO--HAMAS Cairo agreement was carried out in the weeks that followed the assassination of Rabin, and the impact on public opinion was not really felt. The Cairo Agreement was also relegated to the back pages of the media. After the breakdown of Israeli-Palestinian Camp David negotiations in the summer of 2000, two key PLO members and officials of the PA -- Muhammad Dahlan and Marwan Barghouti -- established a "joint military command" with the Hamas -- in a cooperative agreement to carry out murder activities in a coordinated fashion, with no pretense of a "good cop" for the Fatah and "bad cop" for the Hamas. And on the last day of last week's election campaign, one of the founders of the Fateh, PA foreign minister Nabil Shaath, promised that he would "never disarm the Hamas". PA STATE CONSTITUTION: COMPATIBLE WITH HAMAS Meanwhile, the PA state constitution, adopted by the Palestinian Legislative Council, a full three years before the Hamas electoral victory this week, mandates that a future Palestinian State will be based on Sharia Islamic law, modeled on Saudi Arabia and Iran, in which there is no juridical status for Jews. Our agency obtained the official POA constitution from the Vatican's Ambassador, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, after he presented it to a US congressional delegation in May l, 2003. Yet the Israeli government and the US government vehemently denied that such a constitution exists, yet PA spokespeople acknowledged its veracity, without any hesitancy. In other words, the PA constitution is quite compatible with the Hamas Charter. ABBAS'S POST ELECTIONS SPEECH: EXUDING CONFIDENCE Meanwhile, as reported in 48, an online new service of the PA, "PA President Mahmoud Abbas declared on Thursday that he would begin the necessary consultations to form the new Palestinian government as soon as the new PLC is inaugurated". In his words, "Dear sisters and brothers. [...] Today, I received the official results of our PLC elections that were conducted with transparency and honesty... I congratulate our people for this great democratic achievement That is a great example that the whole world respects. I shall start immediately the necessary consultations to begin the formation of the new Palestinian government as soon as the new PLC is inaugurated." What most people have missed is that the Palestinian State constitution mandates that security services remain in the hands of the PA President, while matters of social services and education are in the hands of the PA legislative body, now in the hands of the Hamas. That means that Hamas will be able to change the curriculum in schools: by adding formal Islamic studies and emphasizing even more rejection of Israel than now exists in the Palestinian school system. The current Palestinian school books, translated at www.edume.org, already teach non-recognition of Israel and no connection of the Jews to the land of Israel. Now these schools will get an Islamic stamp of hatred. FAULTY INTELLIGENCE Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin instructed the director of his control department to examine military intelligence assessments concerning the results of the Palestinian parliament elections and the landslide victory won by Hamas. On October 27th. 2005, I met with senior Israeli intelligence officials to ask them why they thought that the Abbas regime was moving Palestinian society in a moderate direction. Their answer was that they simply "relied on Abbas", and that official PA incitement had lessened. When I pointed out to them that the virulent anti-semitism had continued in the PA media and PA school books, and that Moslem clerics employed by the PA media continued to preach hatred of Israel on official PA TV, the response of senior Israeli intelligence officials was that this was not what they considered to be "incitement", and that their definition of incitement was only when and if the PA media called directly for murder of Jews. MOFAZ'S STRANGE ASSURANCE Meanwhile, only hours after the Israeli government decision of January 29th to institute a boycott of the Palestinian Authority if Hamas would take part in the PA government, Israel Minister of Defence Shaul Mofaz told the Israeli media that "the Hamas is presently acting with total responsibility." At the moment of Mofaz's statement that Hamas was behaving with "total responsibility," journalists Dr. Michael Widlanski and Dr. Aaron Lerner asked Hamas spokesman Musheer al-Masri if the Hamas charter calling for Israel's destruction would be changed. The answer that they received, on tape, was that "The Hamas charter will never be changed." Mofaz was asked how the Hamas statement jives with his statement that "Hamas is presently acting with total responsibility." Mofaz would not comment. PA WITH HAMAS LEGISLATURE WILL MANAGE ON THEIR OWN At the same time, Palestine Monetary Authority Governor, George T'Abed, responded to threats from the US, Israel and the EU that they might stop funding by issuing press statement that -- Israel could block the transfer of funds to the PA from Iran or other Arab countries via the banking system in the West Bank and Gaza Strip." Saudi Arabia also announced that it would contribute its part to increasing its funds to the PA, if the US, Israel and the EU would withdraw funds to the Hamas-dominated PA. The conclusion: The Palestinian Authority, having elected the Hamas as the dominant factor in its legislative council, will be able to go it alone, without funding from Israel or from the west. David Bedein is bureau chief of the Israel Resource News Agency (www.IsrtaelBehindTheNews.com) in Jerusalem. To Go To Top

REMEMBER WHAT I AM TELLING YOU TODAY Posted by Nurit Greenger, January 30, 2006.

In "Transit Premier" Mr. Ehud Olmert and Israel's leadership: Dear Madams/Sirs, Now that Hamas in the Palestinians ruling party and leadership, you MUST stop allocating and dividing Israel to area A (completely under the control of Palestinian Authority and their thugs) and area B (under the security control of the Israeli army). If you do so, Jews of Jerusalem and other parts of the country are going to have to move. And so, this is how we turn Jerusalem and other growing community into a Hamas stronghold. Now, you are making a big show of force on nine families in Hebron living in JEWISH OWNED PROPERTY THAT WAS EXPROPRIATED by the Arabs during the massacres in Hebron. And so the perfidy begins, with, as usual, no one to even understand how it is happening. It creeps along slowly, and gently, without much fanfare. Remember what I am telling you today, because in the future, don't say you didn't know about it. We are very tired of fighting the people who are running Israel into the ground. We are tired of one wrong decision following another at a disastrous pace and no one ever paying the price for it. Now that everything that opponents of the disengagement said has come true, where are those responsible for this? I'll tell you where. They are making the decisions for the next disaster in the making. What I'm wondering though, is how many bad decisions can we make and still survive?! Interesting question?! Mr. Olmert, you have no vision, the Israeli "leadership" has no vision, you are skating in the direction Mr. Sharon pulled you, without the sense to reevaluate and go back. Stop it or Israel will be NO MORE! Though residing outside Israel, our heart is there each day of the week and we want to help to make things RIGHT for all JEWS. Contact Nurit Greenger at aloritusa@hotmail.com To Go To Top

HEBRON AND AMONA Posted by Ethel Shwartz Bock, January 30, 2006.

STOP THE DISGUSTING, DISGRACEFUL AND UNLAWFUL ACTIONS AGAINST THE JEWS OF HEBRON AND AMONA. I am a New York Jew who loves Israel passionately and find the actions of Olmert and his ilk as anti-semitic and anti-Israel as any actions taken by Palestinian terrorists. These politicians have joined forces with Hamas and Fatah against the Jewish people. Contact Ethel S. Bock at esbock@worldnet.att.net To Go To Top

THREATENED EVICTION OF JEWISH FAMILIES FROM JEWISH-OWNED LAND IN HEBRON Posted by Robin Stone Einbinder, January 30, 2006.

I am an American lawyer, a conservative, a Jew, and a frequent visitor to the City of Hebron whenever my family is able to visit Israel. I am appalled by the proposed intentions of the Israeli Defense Forces to evict nine peaceful, law abiding Jewish families from their homes in JEWISH OWNED PROPERTY, which they occupy with the FULL CONSENT OF THE LEGAL OWNERS OF THE PROPERTY. The Israeli government speaks of maintaining Jerusalem, but forgets, or chooses to ignore, that Hebron is also one of the four holiest cities in Judaism and one which the Bible expressly states was purchased by our forefather, Abraham. I am especially disturbed since this action is being taken by an unelected caretaker government headed by Acting PM Olmert. The Supreme Court of Israel has ACKNOWLEDGED that the property at issue is Jewish-owned, notwithstanding false media claims to the contrary, and I understand that the legal owners would gladly execute leases to the residents if the government would permit them to do so. Surely, some compromise to keep these families in their homes should be possible. The proposed evictions are especially difficult to understand given estimates of approximately 20,000 illegal Arab buildings in the eastern section of Jerusalem, more than 30,000 illegal Arab buildings throughout Israel, and MORE THAN 7,000 COURT-ORDERED EVICTION NOTICES AGAINST ILLEGAL ARAB BUILDINGS IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA (the so-called West Bank), which have NEVER been carried out. What purpose is accomplished by evicting nine peaceful families from their homes? Israel has not even found homes for those they evicted last summer from Gaza. Must more Jews become homeless? The eviction of families from Gaza did not bring peace or any benefits. To the contrary, the eviction was clearly viewed as weakness by the local Arab population, which promptly voted for Hamas, an avowed terrorist organization, to become its government and continue its path of "resistance," i.e., murder and terrorism, with the clearly stated goal of destroying Israel. The eviction of families from Jewish-owned land in Hebron will send a similarly incorrect message and encourage further terrorism. Indeed, evicting Jews from Hebron will indicate that unlike the Arab population, which closely adheres to the Koran, the Jewish community speaks of its Bible but ignores the truths contained therein. If Israel evacuates Hebron, which our forefather purchased, and to which the Jewish people have, among others, both a historical and a legal claim (based on thousands of years of continuous residence in this holy city, except when barred by the British from entering, etc.), then what claim can Israel make to any other city or section of the country? The people of Hebron have endured a campaign of intentional demonization as well as numerous terrorist attacks, and they deserve our praise and admiration. The families living in these homes (converted shops) are harming no one and neither evicted Arab families nor interfered with their livelihoods. All moral people of truth and good will should protest and object to the proposed eviction of these families. Contact Robin Stone Einbinder by email at kareinlaw@yahoo.com To Go To Top

APPLY LESSON FROM ISRAEL TO BUSH; REASON ARABS FAVORED HAMAS; SHARON'S LEGACY; DEADLY NAIVETE Posted by Richard H. Shulman, January 30, 2006.

LEARN FROM ISRAEL TO WATCH BUSH A current American controversy is whether Pres. Bush exceeded his powers and acted illegally in spying on Americans without court authorization. Some newspapers report each side's assertions but not the facts. Few of us know enough to offer a definitive opinion. I can state a principle to use in evaluating this issue. The Bush Administration claims it has authority for such spying on the basis of a Congressional mandate to defend the country from terrorism. Members of Congress point out that the means the Administration used violates legal restrictions. Logically it is clear that specific restrictions modify general mandates for defense. Otherwise, the specific restrictions would be meaningless. Therefore, the President's argument is poor. An instructive lesson about the abuse of power comes from Israel. Emergency measures authorized against terrorism are being applied to peaceable Jewish patriots. These include administrative detention and keeping people incarcerated until their trials, months later. Often these people are indicted for minor matters, such as attempting to "harm" police by throwing raw eggs at them or by scratching them. Actually, the police are savagely beating them for standing in the way of surrendering territory to the Arabs, who use such territory for making war on Israel. In this case, the government is not defending the country from terrorism but conducting it. It lays the country open to terrorist attack and undermines Jewish title to the country, itself. Thus a law supposed to be applied to only one element gets applied to others. While the police beat up Jews for petty or fabricated charges, Arabs are rioting in the north of Israel. The Arabs threw rocks at police and civilians. No arrests reported and certainly no beatings. Why do Israeli police beat Jews and not Arabs (not that they should beat up either)? Afraid of the Arabs, or fascistic and antagonistic towards Jews? A separate issue is the resentment one is entitled to feel at President Bush's having lied to the people by denying he had ordered the spying. His deceit bolsters critics who accuse this Administration of dissembling as a general policy and of a tendency towards fascism.. I don't believe the accusations that Bush lied about the need for the war in Iraq, but he does lie about environmental matters. REASON FOR FAVORING HAMAS P.A. voters express bitterness over P.A. corruption and not working in Israel. They are taking it out on the regime by favoring Hamas. Hamas, however, would keep up the war and keep Israeli jobs out of reach. The US is trying, with only partial success, to pressure Israel to let the P.A. Arabs come in and work (and help finance the war on Israel). Neither the US, nor Israel, nor the P.A. acts in behalf of its own people. Hamas wouldn't, either. It is aggressive; war is not in the people's interest. SAUDI SERMON AGAINST U.S. A Saudi imam told his audience that excesses by a few souls is the pretext for a campaign defaming Islam. He did not specify the US but implied it in language clear to Muslims. He also made the perennially but never realized accusation that Israel seeks to destroy al-Aqsa mosque. "While the Imam's sermon repeated the insistence that only a very few Muslims are involved in terrorism, much of the Muslim public favors such activity and denunciation is rare, except when committed against home countries. Furthermore, it is standard that ultimate causal blame is assigned to non-Muslim forces." (IMRA, 1/11.) Bush praised Islam more than deserved. A Saudi doctoral dissertation gained public notice recently. It accuses a couple of hundred modern Arab intellectuals of heresy. The Islamic punishment for heresy is death. Threats, too, are a form of terrorism. Not so few are involved in terrorism, when one considers the armies at war, the infrastructure of terrorist missions, and the support mechanism, including subsidizers, schools, media, and contributors to terrorist fronts posing as charities. WHEN ACCUSERS FALL SILENT The Left has been accusing settlers of chopping down olive trees belonging to Arabs. No settler has been convicted (though the leftist prosecutors would dearly love to do so.) There is no evidence for the accusation. Most settlers are religious, and cherish trees. Other explanations about the trees have been have been proved, including Arab destruction of trees for insurance compensation. Arabs cut down trees in Israel for fuel, thanks to the high price of oil, or they set forest fires in Israel. The media and the accusers ignores this true vandalism in favor of false allegations against Jews. The environmentalists and humanitarians also ignore the Arab cutting down of Jews (Prof. Steven Plaut, 1/11). So much antisemitic hypocrisy by "progressives"! ISRAELI GOVERNMENT COMPENSATION The Sharon regime did not offer the successful farmers who pioneered agriculture in Gaza, and whom it expelled from Gaza, land or funds sufficient to replace their farms. Thousands of middle-aged people without other working skills are ruined (David Bedein of Israel News Resource Agency, 1/10). The government had promised to take care of the people it was giving no choice but to abandon their businesses and property. If the government instead had admitted that it was going to ruin them, would its plan have passed? Such is Sharon's legacy. DEADLY NAIVETE IN ISRAEL & U.S. Some Israeli intellectuals suggest: (1) Israel can induce Iran not to develop nuclear weapons, by dismantling its own; or (2) Israel can live with a nuclear-armed Iran, just as the US did with the nuclear-armed Soviets (Prof. Steven Plaut, 1/10). Pres. Bush endorsed a Russian plan to let Iran partially enrich uranium and then sell it to Russia. During the months needed for negotiating the plan in detail, Iran could pursue its clandestine weapons development. The plan would enable Iran to gain nuclear knowhow afterwards. The plan is not economical, and the produce is inferior to what Russia produces, so there is some question whether Russia will buy it (NY Times, 1/27, A3). The basic fallacy of the Israelis' suggestions is their assumption that Iran is reasonable. Iran is fanatical. Its rulers' faith glorifies death and destruction, including self-destruction. Its President observed that Iran is so big that it can survive an Israeli nuclear retaliation, so it plans to wipe Israel out when it can. During Iran's war with Iraq, Iran sacrificed its own children to test for mine fields and masses of its own troops to charge into machinegun fire. Israel had better take his threat seriously. These intellectuals should study jihad, rather than make uninformed suggestions. The Soviets, although totalitarian, too, were cautious. Besides, they could not survive a retaliation by the US, with its thousands of a-bombs and numerous means of launching them. No, Israel cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran. There is a question whether Europe or the US can. They are being threatened, too. This threat is more as a deterrent against other Iranian aggression. I think that, too, is unacceptable. The fanatics governing Iran would not be impressed by Israeli unilateral disarmament. (Israel's unilateral abandonment of Gaza won little friendship from the P.A..) Rather, it would encourage Iran and the Arabs, whose forces are greater than Israel's, to attack Israel with whatever it has, including weapons of mass-destruction. The Arabs are striving for nuclear weapons. They would love nothing better than for their hitherto strong prey voluntarily to give up its chief deterrent to being overrun. Why call ignorant morons "intellectuals" and authorize them to guide college youth? As for Bush, he should know better than to trust Russia to monitor its chief customer, Iran. The deal is called face-saving for him, because he can pretend there's no need to bomb Iran. But it's just a pretense. Wonder if Russia would like Iran to bomb the US. WHY LAMENT THE PASSING OF FATAH RULE? Abbas let Hamas set up its own TV station in the P.A. (IMRA, 1/10). It's not just that he can't disarm Hamas, it's that he cooperates with Hamas. 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

NO TO THE HEBRON EXPULSIONS Posted by Erik Boet, January 30, 2006.

NO, to rewarding terrorists, NO, to negotiating with terrorists, NO, to appeasing terrorists,fraud NO, to giving away hard obtained land that was Jewish anyway (paid for twice!), NO, to pleasing an anti-semitic world, NO, to the destruction in Israel, --even if it's 'only' piece by pece, NO, to the costs of the result this operation, --more human lives-- NO, to disbelieving God's promises, NO, to the devil's peace, NO, to the roadmap for Israel's annihilation, NO, to consenting with the killing of Jews, NO, to 'forbidden for Jews', NO, to tyrannie, may God grant you the prudence to choose for your own blessing, the people of Israel and eventually that of the world. Erik Boet, (Christian) The Netherlands Contact Erik Boet at e.r.boet@planet.nl To Go To Top

HANDING JERUSALEM TO HAMAS Posted by Naomi Ragen, January 30, 2006.

I have an Arab village a five minute walk across a wadi from my home, which is a ten minute drive from the heart of Jerusalem. This village is called Beit Iksa. During the Six Day War, the villagers fled. Moshe Dayan begged them to come back, and promised no harm would come to them. They did. It is now situated between two Jewish neighborhoods, Ramot and Mevasseret, that have about 50,000 or more Jews living in each one. It is also near one of Jerusalem's major highways, the number one road. While it was well known that villagers were involved in hundreds of break-ins and thefts in both Ramot and Mevasseret, our police did nothing. During the Intifada, villagers regularly walk across the wadi and up the steps past my home to work in construction jobs in Ramot and elsewhere. This, even after terrorists were found with suicide belts in Ramot, and admitted they were planning to blow up a synagogue and a public bus. The police never checked these workers. No one ever stops them, despite repeated phone calls and warnings. During the Oslo days, when we were marking villages as area A (completely under the control of Palestinian Authority and their thugs) and area B (under the security control of the Israeli army), Beit Iksa became a "B". Yesterday, a newspaper article in Haaretz revealed the security fence around Jerusalem is slated to be between Ramot and Beit Iksa. What this means, is that instead of fencing off Beit Iksa from terrorist infiltrations, they have made Ramot (and probably Mevasseret) the new border with the Hamas, now slated to move into Beit Iksa. In a tour of the area yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu said it was outrageous. When he entered Beit Iksa, there were already armed Palestinian guards waiting for him there. Ehud Olmert, who is now making the decisions, even though no one elected him to be the head of the government after his failed stint as the corrupt Jerusalem Mayor, said clearly yesterday: "We are not changing the fence." And so, area B, now becomes Area A, without discussion or protest, and two peaceful communities of thousands of Jews are now sitting with Hamas on their doorstep. And for those of you who have hopes that our good relations with Beit Iksa will prevent this, I have some other news: In the elections, Beit Iksa voted one-hundred percent for Hamas. Please understand what I am telling you. If Mr.. Olmert gets in, we Jews of Jerusalem are going to have to move. And so the perfidy begins, with no one to even understand how it is happening. It creeps along slowly, and gently,without much fanfare. Remember what I am telling you today, because in the future, don't say you didn't know about it. I am going to make an effort to organize my community against this. But I'm just one person, and frankly I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting the people who are running this country into the ground. I'm tired of one wrong decision following another at a disastrous pace and no one ever paying the price for it. Now that everything that opponents of the disengagement said has come true, where are those responsible? I'll tell you. They are making the decisions for the next disaster in the making. What I'm wondering though, is how many bad decisions can we make and still survive. Interesting question. For those of you outside the country, if you'd like to discuss this with the Israeli government, such as it is, I have no doubt you can Google some addresses. I wish I had the heart to do it for you, but you know what, I just don't feel up to it today. And so, this is how we turn Jerusalem into a Hamas stronghold, Naomi 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

THE JAR OF LIFE Posted by Aish HaTorah, January 30, 2006.

Click here to see Aish.com's new 90 second movie. You'll be glad you did. Aish HaTorah is a non-profit, apolitical network of Jewish educational centers, with 25 branches on 5 continents. Aish provides opportunities for Jews of all backgrounds to discover the beauty and meaning of their heritage in an atmosphere of open inquiry and mutual respect. To Go To Top

A POTENTIAL HUMAN RIGHTS DISASTER IN HEBRON AND AMONA, ISRAEL Posted by Buddy Macy, January 30, 2006.

Dear People of Conscience: Please speak out against the imminent physical removal of nine Jewish families from Jewish-owned property in the Israeli-controlled area of Hebron. On Tuesday, thousands of police and Israeli Defense Forces will move in on the tiny community in Hebron, to expel the Jewish families from their homes. Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is intent on carrying out the expulsions (as a political weapon), even though t he Supreme Court of Israel has acknowledged that the buildings in question are Jewish-owned property (contrary to false reports in the media that they are "Palestinian" shops.) The Jewish leadership in Hebron tried to obtain leases for new tenants from the Israeli government, as a compromise, but the Olmert government rejected this plan, and it refuses to grant leases to any Jews on this Jewish-owned property in Israeli-controlled Hebron. Last August, Ariel Sharon expelled 9000 Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria. The U.S. Government was a major supporter of the "disengagement." This has proven to be a horrendous mistake, as it has caused misery amongst the Jewish children, adults and elderly forced to leave, and it has given Hamas tremendous confidence in its publicly announced quest to destroy the Jewish State. The withdrawals from Gaza and northern Samaria were viewed by the Palestinian people as a demonstration of significant weakness by the Israeli Government and military, and were the main reason for Hamas' victory in last week's elections. As the expulsions take place on Tuesday, tens of thousands of armed Hamas and Fatah terrorists will continue to call for the destruction of Israel. There is still time to prevent this devastation. Let the world know that Israeli citizens have the right to live on Jewish-owned land, and that terrorism will not defeat democracy and a civilized society. HEBRON EXPULSION ORDERED BY OLMERT This Tuesday, the tiny Jewish property in Hebron will be cleared of all Jewish citizens, for no logical reason, whatsoever. The forces will be deployed in three rings: the first ring will be made up of 1,500 policemen trained to deal with violent protests, and it will also include mounted forces. The second rings will consist of several hundred Border Policemen, and the third ring will be made up of four infantry regiments. Policemen will be responsible for direct conformation with the settlers, while the IDF will close off the area to incoming protesters. The IDF issued a warrant Sunday declaring the Jewish section of Hebron a closed military area, and Jews who are not residents of the area will not be allowed entrance. Security Minister Shaul Mofaz has declared that a policy of "zero tolerance" would be employed against settler violence, and IDF officers said that in this evacuation, they will "demonstrate only determination, without sensitivity." This represents a potential human rights disaster. Settlers are planning a major solidarity conference Tuesday against the evacuation. Politicians, rabbis and academics are among those expected to attend the gathering. The religious Jewish Chabad Movement is embarking on an "uncompromising struggle to prevent the expulsion of the Jews of Hebron." Chabad representatives paid a solidarity visit to Hebron Sunday. Representatives of five Israeli political parties - Eli Yishai (Shas), Zevulun Orlev (NRP), Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu), Zvi Hendel (National Union), and Meir Porush (Agudath Israel) - sent a letter to Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over the weekend urging him to postpone the evacuation of Amona and Hebron until after the elections, in line with the general principle that major, non-urgent decisions should not be made prior to an election. In your capacity as one whose voice is listened to and respected by a large group of people, please speak out and write about the terrible injustice that is about to take place. Hopefully, the volume of our collective voices will prevent the needless suffering of more innocent Israeli citizens. Thank you so much for your consideration of this extremely serious, human rights matter. Most sincerely, Buddy Macy Contact Buddy May by email at vegibud@aol.com To Go To Top

ROTARIANS ARE ENEMIES OF HUMANITY -- SO SAYS HAMAS! Posted by David Meir-Levi, January 29, 2006.

It seems odd that no journalist or editor, in any of the plethora of articles about Hamas since the recent Palestinian elections, has seen fit to educate readers as to the content of the "Hamas Covenant": the founding document and defining guide of what the State Department calls "the A Team of terrorists". The prologue insists that "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it". "Others before it?" Well, yes. Let's recall that for 1,300 years, from Spain to India, Islamic warriors ruthlessly destroyed four civilizations, killing tens of millions and enslaving millions more, obliterating their cultures, languages, and religions, replacing them with Islam -- at the point of a sword. Then the Covenant Introduction states: "Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious." Notice that the enemy is JEWS, not Israelis; and note below, section 7. In section 6 we learn that "The Islamic Resistance Movement... strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine". Not much room for Israel there. In section 7 we learn that Mohammed has said: "The Day of Judgment will not come until Moslems fight the Jews, killing the Jews. When the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, the stones and trees will say 'O Moslems... there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him'" (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem: the two most accurate and reliable of the four main compilations of Mohammed's extra-Qur'anic teachings). So now we must understand that Hamas' goal is not just the conquest of "Palestine". Hamas also has an end-of-days scenario that requires the destruction of all Jews everywhere (remember the Introduction!). So Hamas is now the only democratically elected political power in the world whose foundation agenda includes the genocide of the world's Jews, and whose sole defining paradigm is terrorism. In section 11 we learn that "... the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force." This is important. Spain, Greece, Sicily, Albania, Hungary, part of Rumania, the Balkan states... these countries too are all in Hamas' cross-hairs. I wonder how these countries feel about coming under Moslem rule again. In section 13 we learn that "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors." So how is Israel supposed to negotiate with Hamas? And just in case the authors of this document might have left anyone out, they tell us that Freemasons and Rotary Clubs are also numbered among the enemy: "...(the Zionists) lackeys...are infiltrated through Zionist organizations under various names and shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others...The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated." Rotarians, did you know that you are hostile to humanity and Islam? Well, now you have been warned! David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com To Go To Top

PREPARE! Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, January 29, 2006.

A worldwide addiction to processed prehistoric carbon atoms as the energy generator of choice imperils the long-term well being of Israel. Alas, if push comes to shove, the oil-bereft beleaguered Jewish democracy's best interests will be trumped by the proclivities of its sworn Arab and Persian enemies whose spindly talons grip the fossil fuel faucets affixed to the vicious viscous stuff that directly or indirectly energizes most Earthly mechanisms. The threat of global warming does not move the true movers and shakers of this planet, in fact policy decisions are made to scuttle compelling scientific data and dire consequential pronouncements. Big oil and its politico sycophants rule, concerned only with profit oriented bottom lines, not at all concerned with any planetary bottom line. Israel, of course, does not rate a sympathetic blip on such a radar screen whose best interests would likely be the butt of some anti-Semitic joke in any OPEC influenced corporate boardroom. What then does the mistreated stepchild of nations do? Prepare! When the natural forces of this mistreated third stone from its sun push, Israel's peril will be no greater than those oblivious first, second, or third world collective populations who naively allow corporate and political predators to blithely ravage their one home in the universe. Already buried within a less than desirable desiccated region of the world, Israel has perhaps less to lose than say the continent of Europe, blessed with a relatively warm climate with respect to global latitude, wholly dependent on Dame Fortune's continuing smile manifest in the 'Atlantic Conveyor' flow a/k/a the 'Atlantic meridional overturning current', the Atlantic Ocean's heretofore perpetual heating channel between the tropics and cold northern waters. Alas, the journal Nature's recently published data suggests a weakening of this current by approximately 30 percent between 1957 and 2004, a direct result of glacier melt from global warming. Egad, does this imply Europe's half billion or so dwellers will need to adjust to comparably sized Canada's hearty climate, comfortably sustaining roughly 33 million souls? This could make the invasion of fundamentalist Islam a comparable walk in the park. No doubt, other ill prepared regions of our imperiled planet will feel the heat (or perhaps cold) in a few decades or so, and not be able to get out of their metaphorical kitchens. By then the lion's share of fossil fuel reserves will have truly gone the way of the dinosaur; having done in Earth's climate while fueling houses, industries, and S.U.V.s of a thoughtless species; concurrently creating a staggering planet wide energy/economic crisis. Israeli scientists and planners, funded by prescient leaders, have little time to waste amidst the background noise created by hostile neighbors who have no clue. A cheap efficient energy alternative, for one, will be needed to replace dwindling oil supplies. Most importantly, strategies must be developed to cope with the worldwide adverse impacts of global warming. Israel could very well be a beacon in a sea of darkness, wrought by mankind's disregard for his only home in the universe. It would be wise to prepare for that role now. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net To Go To Top

HAMAS ELECTION CARTOONS Posted by Simon Pilczer, January 29, 2006.

The first was created by Mike Luckovich, Atlantic Journal-Constitution; the second by D.T. Devareaux; the third by Cox and Forkum (www.coxandforkum.com). Contact Simon Pilczer at pilczer@aol.com To Go To Top

THEN AND NOW: TWO NOTES ON THE MANDATE Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, January 29, 2006.

Events in the Middle East during the past 50 years and more, events centering on Israel show that although America fought a war of Independence against Great Britain, and succeeded in establishing an accountable, dignified Constitutional Republic, in the Modern Era America's diplomatic establishment and then its media, and then its people (through taxation and its armed forces) have been co-opted by the British establishment and serve the interests it has pursued since 1919 -20. In this regard America and Americans are NOT free and independent: we are dis-informed dependents used by the British elites to accomplish their goals of world dominion. We have examined this subject often (e.g. "Endtime Curiosities," I & II). Today let us look briefly at two passages in Samuel Katz's invaluable study, Battleground (3rd edition, 1983, re-printed 2002, Taylor books) that emphasize the strangling continuity of Mandate policies and attitudes Consider this first person account of a soldier in a batalion guarding against an Arab uprising aided, abetted, even ignited by the soldier's own leaders: "At night, when we are guiding the line against the Arabs who come to blow it up, we often see them at work but are forbidden to fire at them. We may only fire into the air and they, upon hearing the [rifles'] report, mae their escape. But do you think we can give chase? Why, we must instead go on our hands and knees and fine every]spent cartridge-case which must be handed in or woe betide us." (chapter 3, page 74, "The Origin of the Dispute"). Some readers may already have recognized the similarity, the near identity to the situation of IDF soldiers since the Oslo process began: forbidden to fire at the would-be murderers of their people and families, and the destroyers of their state. Instead, for every warning shot [!] they fire, being forced to retrieve the spent cartridges so their compliance with the surrender policy can be monitored and they can be disciplined if necessary. IDF soldiers have been threatened, dispirited and de-sensitized this way since the days of Labor's havlaga (against Arabs) in the 1930s and in the suicidally flaccid response to Arab violence since. It is not only America, from the elites to the grunts, who servilely follow British policy, but Israel to, from the willing, high-placed 'buttons' to the poor grunts in the field who often pay with life or limb for the "restraint" of their masters. But when it comes to expelling or ghettoizing Jews the pent-up frustration and ferocity are unleashed..... just as they were against Jabotinsky & his original Haganah in the 1920s and against Etzel and Lehi in the 1940s and subsequently against Begin, until, and even after he toed the "Palestinian people" line at Camp David. The remarks of the British soldier cited above were first printed in the London Journal, New Statesman and Nation, September 20, 1936. Item two is the pan-Arab dream hatched in Whitehall (place of the British Foreign Ministry), or more specifically, in the Cairo offices of Britain's diplomatic establishment that eventually won control for its agenda of the entire Ministry and British media outlets and British government policy. That geo-strategic grand plan was for a nominally independent Arab world functionally dependent on Britain and its allies for money, technology, food, strategic direction and apologias. Thus Britain chopped up the Ottoman Empire's holdings in the Middle East into numerous quasi independent Arab led nations (filled for millennia with non-Arab peoples) that could be held together by one obsession only: hatred of Jews and of the idea of an independent Jewish state. "The Palestine" [sic] issue was the instrument to bring about such a policy... it became an understood fact of British policy that the Arab states [it had created] had a right to intervene in the affairs of Palestine." Thus, Britiain "invited the Arab rulers to the 'Round Table Conference' of 1939 where they refused to meet the Jewish leaders, an attitude enshrined in the White Paper that immediately followed," the White Paper ofo 1939 being a British government executive decision to severely restrict Jewish emigration (15,000/year maximum) and that number only if the Arabs agreed: they did not. And thus Britain's policy was a major cause of the near - extinction of European Jewry as it earlier had been in severing the Gilead, etc ["Transjordan"] from the Jewish State and in creating a Pan - Arab bloc unified by a British-enflamed hatred of Jews. Thus the Arab League, "first mentioned by Anthony Eden in 1941 and created in 1945" became and remains the public sign of all efforts to destroy the Jewish state by a combination of diplomatic schemes, media vilification, and the relentless, Western-supplied and financed Arab war of attrition against Israel (Battleground, 78-9). Today, with the invaluable help of American pressure, threats and suasion, Britain again nears its goal, a unified semi-dependent, but volatile Islamic state stretching from Mosul and Basra to the Mediterranean. If their Arab tools had been pliable, in 1937 they would have had this done. The fact that their tool turns in their hand and wounds them so often (eg. the pro-Nazi coup in "Iraq" in 1940; and 7/07/05) and yet they have never discarded it shows how intensely they are committed to their anti-Jewish geo-strategic goal. The fact that America's diplomatic establishment has been committed, with slightly varying degrees of fervor or hesitation to this goal since the Evian conference of 1938, indicates the forces arrayed against Jewish Israel. But the Anglo-American powers pushing this end game do not have solid backing from their publics for it, especially not in America. If Israel had governments that cared about Jews and Jewish land, the scheme would halt or at least suffer major impairments and delays. However, the opposite is the case. Historical review thus makes clear that Israel must have regime change if it is to extricate itself from the lethal game long being played against it. To Go To Top

HISTORICAL FACTS ON ISRAEL-PALESTINE ISSUE Posted by Iran Political Club, January 29, 2006.

This is archived as http://iranpoliticsclub.net/club/viewtopic.php?t=559 Comrades: History has been often twisted & obscured. Pro Palestinian Rights (So Called) Activists, have been feeding stories with no historical values to the public. Amazingly, public often grasps these stories & believes them, simply because not many people are historians nor familiar with historical facts. Now, I would like to talk about my stands, yet with historical evidence. I am a man of science & history. Logical reasoning is my game & I do not fall for hypes which influences the emotional feelings of the public! Let's do a historical analysis & take a journey to the roots of the problem & let me respond to all, about my stands & why do I take this stand on this issue. Let's for once & for all, get this situation sorted out in IPC & beyond, can we? Specifically for the Liberal Faction of IPC who believes that Israelis occupied Palestine & kicked them out of their lands into exile & they are wondering how come I take sides with Israel, even though I am an Atheist, yet both Palestinians & Israelis are religious fanatics (so said) & believe that the land is their God given right! Let me clarify this once & for all. First, Palestine was never ever an independent nation since the beginning of history! This is not fiction, this is a fact. There was never ever an independent nation called Palestine which was made up of Palestinian Arabs residing in the region of what we call Israel now. Therefore, Israel could have never taken over the land which has never actually belonged to Palestinians & kick them out of their own land! Furthermore, Israeli's according to historical facts have been creating an independent Jewish Nation since 1000 - 923 BC which was The Kingdom of David. Let's go back in history since the beginning & check out what has been happening in the land of Israel or Palestine from beginning until now: History of Israel-Palestine: 3000-1468 BC: Canaanites Palestine is known as "Land of Canaan" settled by the Canaanites, mainly along the coastline. 1468-1200 BC: Egyptian Control Egypt conquers the Canaanites in 1468 BC at the battle of Armageddon in Magiddo. Egyptian control of Canaan continues until 1200 BC. 1200-975 BC: The Philistines (Cretian Greeks) The Sea People, thought to have come from the island of Crete, attack Canaan under the Egyptians and destroy Canaanite cities. A large number of the Sea People (later known as the Philistines) settle in Palestine and rebuild the coastal towns of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashqal, Ekron, and Gath. 1000-923 BC: The Kingdom of David David becomes king of the Jews. He unites the Israelites, builds a strong army and captures Jerusalem from the Jebusites (Canaanites in origin). 923-722 BC: The Southern Kingdom of Judea, The Northern Kingdom of Israel The Canaanite Phoenicians lose major parts of their land to the Israelites. At this time, the kingdom of Judah was poor and cut off from trade with the kingdom of Israel to the North, by Trans-Jordan to the East, by the Philistines to the West and by the desert to the South. 925-700 BC: The Phoenicians Building their naval trade sea power in Mediterranean, also controlled the present land called Israel. 700-612 BC: The Assyrian Empire The Assyrians defeat and destroy Samaria leading to the collapse of the kingdom of Israel. 586-539 BC: Babylonian Empire The Babylonians, from Iraq, invade the Assyrian City of Neynava, defeating the Assyrians. Babylonian King Nebuchadnezar II conquers the Philistines and Phoenicians and appoints a puppet king, Zedekiah, in Jerusalem. They destroy Jerusalem and burn down Solomon's Temple. So basically by this time, Jewish Kingdoms of Israel & Judea had been destroyed by Assyrian & Babylonian Empires. 539-332 BC: Persian Empire The Persian forces invade and destroy Babylonian power, occupying the areas under Babylonian control. Free Babylon from Tyranny but leave them to pray to their religion & Gods. Persians freed Jews from slavery & relocated them back to Jerusalem. Cyrus The Great declared the first Human Rights document in the world called The Cyrus Cylinder. Cyrus freed over 42,000 Jews from Slavery of Babylon. 332-63 BC: Macedonian Greeks Soon after crushing the revolt in Palestine, the Persian army was attacked by Macedonian Greeks under the leadership of Alexander the Great Drunken Homosexual Pervert. 63 BC-636 AD: Roman Empire The Roman general, Pompeii the Great, invades Palestine. After civil war, the emperor Caesar maintains control over the districts of Judea, Samaria and Galilee. 636-1260 AD: The Arabo_Islamic Empire Palestine becomes an integral part of the Arab world. 1099-1291 AD: The Crusaders The Crusaders, for five weeks, surround and attack the city wall of Jerusalem, and later spread their control over the entire area of Palestine. 1187-1253 AD: The Ayubid Arabs At the famous battle of Hitin in 1187 AD, Salah el Din al Ayubi defeats the Crusader army in Palestine. 1253-1516 AD: The Mamluks The Turkish Mamluks expel the last of the Crusaders from Palestine in 1291. 1516-1918: The Ottoman Turks Rule The Ottoman army invades Palestine after decimating the Mamluk cavalry. The Turks rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. Ottomans ruled the whole or most of the Near East @ times, from North Africa to Middle East during this era. 1831-1840: The Egyptian Rule Egypt invades Palestine in 1831, lifting Palestine out of its depression. 1917-1948: The British Mandate/Protectorate After World War I, Great Britain defeat Turkish Ottoman troops and enter Palestine. British occupation continues until Britain loses control over the situation and leaves. In this era, Palestine was basically under Anglo control of the region or known as a Protectorate of UK. 1948: The creation of the State of Israel During and after the 1948 war, 800,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes and villages. 418 villages were depopulated and demolished. High price of creating a Jewish State but somebody had to pay it! 1967-1993: Israeli occupation of Gaza, West Bank, Golan Heights, and Sinai Israel occupies the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, Sinai, and Golan Heights during the war of 1967. 1993-present: Israeli occupation and the Palestinian National Authority This time is characterized by the signing of the Declaration of Principles which established limited Palestinian self-rule. Settlement building and expansion continues despite the peace process. Arafat did not accept the best offer that he would have ever receive from Israel. Arafat betrayed Palestine by not accepting this agreement (Oslo Agreement). Second, So as you see there was never ever an independent Palestinian nation in the history of the world! But there was a Jewish independent nation as far back as 1000-923 BC: The Kingdom of David! So as far as who had the right to the deed first, it is obvious that Jews had it. Not many people know this fact, simply because not many people are historians! Huge Palestinian propaganda going on & on about how the land was theirs & the Jewish oppressors took their land & kicked them out & bla bla bla......will not let the public opinion to actually study the history & think for themselves, but they follow Palestinian Arab propaganda & they take it for granted that it is the undisputed fact! If Arabs made to move from the land after 1948, so were Jews that been mass murdered & forced to be moved from a variety of Arab lands from Mecca all the way to Jerusalem & Palestine, throughout the history & since the very first episode in which Muhammad The Prophet personally massacred them in Mecca (Early Islamic Massacre of Jewish Tribes)! Third, Have in mind that on 925-700 BC: The Phoenicians control, had occurred. The Phoenicians even though not Palestinians, yet back then occupied the land, colonized it & add it to their territory. They were basically from the land that we call Lebanon today. So if by a slim chance, Arabs want to consider Phoenicians as fellow Arab Hemites & ancestors to present Palestinians, then still we must have in mind that they appeared about 925 BC to take absolute control & way after the Jews which have appeared in 1000 BC! Fourth, Israelis practically settled in the land just like they been doing for thousands of years, just like Palestinians been doing the same thing. Fifth, Now this is crucial & very important, so please pay attention, during Barak's time, Palestinians & Arafat could get the best deal possible from Israel. Israeli Government had put an offer on the table to give about: 95% of the absolute control of the West Bank & Gaza Strip & 1/2 of Jerusalem to Palestinian New Government so they can create their own country for the first time in the history of the world. Corrupted thief Arafat & his lap dog spokes woman, that ugly Arab woman Dr. Hannan Ashrawi did not accept this! It is like, you give them a toe, they want a foot you give them a foot, they want the whole leg! He wanted a better deal! Well, now, Arafat & Ashrawi can chew on Sharon's Schlong! The poor Palestinian people are victims of Arafat's Greed, Corruption & Treason! So eventually Israel said the fandango with them! And now the situation is where it is today! Groups like Hamas do not even want the existence of government of Israel, they want to throw the Jews in Mediterranean Sea! Sixth, Now let's pay attention here about my stand: This is not true that I take sides here behind the Jews & against the Arabs! This is also not true here that I take sides with Zionists against Palestinians! But I simply support Israel against Palestinian Terrorist Groups. Why? 1. Except these 24 years of IRI, Israel was & is the natural ally to Iran. Israel & Iran are two major non Arab powers of the region drowned in the sea of Arabs in the Near East. It is only logical for them to have close ties to survive. 2. There are about 100,000 Persians living in Israel as citizens, residents, visitors, etc. Persian Jews are a major economical factor in Israel, a link between our two culture. 3. Cyrus freed over 42,000 Jews from slavery of Babylon. Cyrus has been called the Great Rescuer & savior of The Jews. This is in history, in Bible, in Torat & every other historical document. 4. Every known Palestinian political group as of now, including PLO, Hamas, Jihad, etc. are Terrorist Organizations receiving finance, military training, support from Islamic Republic of Iran. 5. Palestinian Guerillas/PLO have been a great factor in: a) training Iranian Islamic Guerillas in Palestine & pre 1979 b) directly participating in Islamic Revolution of Iran @ 1979 c) indirectly supporting the Islamic Revolution of Iran @ 1979 6. Arafat personally danced in the victory party of Imam Khomeini in Tehran, kissed his hands & cheered. 7. Since 1979, until this day, there has been a great number of Palestinian Pasdars (Revolutionary Guards) working as Mercenaries in Iran & their numbers are getting larger every year, specially in times of riots by Iranian Students/Freedom Fighters to overthrow the Islamic Regime. These Mercenaries come handy to crush all freedom movements in Iran. Many of Iranian Pasdars have been refusing to open fire on Iranian people or crack Iranian people's heads, but Palestinian PLO or Lebanese Hezbollah members of Sepahe Pasdaran gladly do these tasks. Iranian Mullahs can absolutely rely on Palestinian Pasdars & Foreign Legion of Sepah Pasdaran to crack Iranian Stuent's & Freedom Fighter's Heads. 8. PLO has been officially having close ties with IRI. The Islamic Regime has a yearly salary for Arafat & PLO & every other Palestinian Group in Palestine to support Terrorism. 9. Arafat has no intention of creating a peaceful Palestinian nation to co exist with Israel as it's neighbor. Arafat & other Palestinian Leaders love to create yet another terrorist nation next to Israel, just like Syria, Libya or Ex Baathi Iraq (Saddom Era). 10. Until there is not a legal, elected democratic government system elected by Palestinians as their leaders & until they give their word of honor to create a peaceful nation in West Bank/Gaza next to Israel, then Israel must continue retaliating with extreme measures against the Arabo_Muslim Terrorists of Palestinian kind! 11. Arabo-Muslim Terrorism is the present enemy of civilization & civilized world. Palestinian Groups like PLO, Al Jihad (both Egyptian & Palestinian branch), Al Hamas, Hezbollah of Lebanon & others are nothing but little miserable terrorist groups as tentacles of the Mother Octopus Terrorist Bank "Islamic Republic of Iran". By all means I support the destruction of IRI & all it's satellites from Bosnia to Palestinian Puppet Terrorist Organizations. 12. State of Israel is the only Democracy in the Near East. 13. All of my reasons to take side here are political, for world's security, for civilized World, for Benefits of Iran & Persians, & on logical bases. I am an Atheist & do not care for Judaism or Zionism. However, I strongly believe that Islam is not just another religion, yet it is a dangerous political ideology. 14. We are @ war here with Global Terrorism & Palestinian Muslim Terrorist Groups are part of the problem just like Al Qaeda. Conclusion: Clear as a whistle it is! I am a Freedom Fighter to free Iran from IRI but my higher duty is that I am a Freedom Fighter fighting against global Tyranny of Islamic Terrorism to save the Civilized World! Do you need any other reasons that why I support the state of Israel & why I take a stand against all Palestinian Terrorist Groups?! I believe by now I have responded to many questions on my stands coming from outside of IPC & even inside of IPC or from Comrades such as Queen, Zen James, & others. Now I have a question for you guys: Give me one good reason that I should not take Israel's side in this conflict & take the side of Palestinian Terrorist Groups on this issue?! I hope I clarified myself. Fighting for The Civilized World against Nomadic Barbarianism, AX Contact The Iran Political Club at IranPoliticsClub@aol.com. "Iran Politics Club supports the fight to establish Freedom, Secularism, Federalism, Human Rights and Democracy in Iran." To Go To Top

THE MISSING CHAPTERS FROM THE BOOK OF JOSHUA Posted by Steven Plaut, January 29, 2006.

We have discovered that there were actually several chapters in the Biblical book of Joshua that were lost for millennia and only recently rediscovered. We bring them to you here for the first time: And after conquering many of the lands of the Canaanites, Joshua came to speak with the Lord and said unto him, Oh Lord we seem to be having failure to communicate with the Children of Israel." And the Lord asked, "Tell Me, My son, what seems to be the problem?" And Joshua said to the Lord, "Well things were going just fine at first. We were kicking Canaanite butt right and left and they were everywhere in flight. Victory was in sight. But then the Israelites sent a delegation to them with a proposal for a change in plans. 'We wish to reach a compromise with the Canaanites,' they told me. "Yep, I know it is hard to believe, but these Children of Israel demanded that we stop the campaign to conquer our promised land and instead seek a compromise by splitting the Land of Israel fifty-fifty with the savages. Never mind that THEY aleady own all the land from the Atlantic to Central Asia! The Israelite dimwits are demanding that we offer the Canaanites half of the country, including the territories holding most of the holy sites and shrines from the period of the Patriarchs." "You are not just yanking My chain here, Joshua?" asks the Lord. "I am serious, oh Lord. But it gets worse! These people are suggesting that we let the Canaanites organize their own militias and army, right here in Jericho, Shechem and Hebron. They claim these militias will be used to suppress Canaanite radicals and terrorists. They then want the Levites to collect a tithe of 10% of the income and property of the Israelites and hand it over to the Canaanites. They claim they want to try to swap land for peace with the pagans. And they even want to let the Canaanites set up altars of their own in Jerusalem after we conquer it!" "Now hold on to your heifers here, Joshua! I thought we had an understanding? "I thought Moses had made it clear to these people that their job is to impose their sovereignty over the entire area I promised them! They have no right to 'compromise' with My Land. They have no permission or mandate to trade My land for peace. "Their job is to exercise the military option and to achieve unchallenged victory. The only compromise they are authorized to offer the Canaanites is to demand their unconditional surrender and maybe allow them to hold commuting day jobs as cutters of wood and drawers of water." "Hey, I am on Your side, your Lordness," answers Joshua. "But what can I do? The tribesmen claim we held an election and the 'peace camp' won." "We will see about that," says the Lord. "If these stiff-necked dingbats refuse to see reason, if they refuse to take the initiative and impose their sovereignty over the entire territories and lands that have been granted by Me to them, then We will have to take measures that leave them with no choice but to declare war on the savages! We will have to create the conditions under which they have no choice but to attack the Canaanites, to use military force, and to achieve victory." "You're the Boss," says Joshua. "You show the way!" And the days pass and the Canaanites begin to snipe at the passing Israelites with blowguns and crossbows. "Ah, You clever One," says Joshua to the Lord. Surely, this will bring them to their senses. Surely now they will realize there can be no territorial compromise with the pagans and that the only way to deal with them is through military initiative and conquest." But lo, more days go by and the tribal chiefs simply expand their dialogue and talks with the Canaanite terrorist leaders. "It is not working, oh Lord," says Joshua. "We will see about THAT," responds the Almighty. In the coming days the Canaanites escalate their conflict. They start sending epistle bombs, consisting of parchment wrapped around explosives, to homes of the Israelites. They invade several villages of Israelites and burn down their homes. They fire catapults randomly into Israelite civilian homes. "Any progress yet, Joshua?", asks the Lord. "Alas," answers Joshua, "they are responding to these new atrocities by demanding that we turn over even more territory to the savages and give them more chariots and weapons, as well. "Time to turn up the heat some more," says the Lord. "This will surely put the fight into them and fire in their bellies." In the coming days the Canaanites send out gangs of assassins to roam the roads and fields of the Israelites and to murder them. "But," Joshua explains, "EVEN THIS is not producing the needed change. The Israelites suggest that we just give up their our flags and psalms, and instead adopt those that are less offensive to Canaanite sensitivities. They want to teach Canaanite poetry and philosophy in their schools. Israelite universities teach about the tragedy that has befallen the Canaanites from the Israelite migration across the Jordan, and several teachers in Israelite universities erect Canaanite flags and banners with images of Baal and Moloch on them." "You don't seriously mean to tell Me that the morons are still trying to make peace with the murdering barbarians?" the Lord asks Joshua. "Maybe You should have given them some more common sense and IQ points back at Mount Sinai instead of so many commandments?" suggests Joshua. "No more Mister Nice Guy," answers the Almighty. The Canaanites escalate further. They place large bombs aboard the public transit chariots of the Israelites. They murder Israelite children. They blow up Israelite universities and nightclubs. They murder Israelites engaged in the Passover sacrifice. They scream that they will annihilate all the Israelites. They demand that pagan armies from all over the world come join in the campaign of annihilation. They dress up their own people, including their children, with explosives beneath their cloaks and place camel bombs in the Israelite marketplaces. The campaign of atrocities makes the Plagues against Egypt seem like children's games. The carnage continues, all as part of the Divine program to force the Israelites to take up arms, to impose their will on the savages, to defeat them militarily and to exercise sovereignty. The lands of Israel became the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The Divine re-education of the Israelites proceeds with no rest. "They will be goaded into military victory over the Canaanites or My name is not Oh You Know What," comes a voice from the sky. "There is no alternative," declares the voice from the sky to Joshua. "I was hoping I would not have to do THIS. But these dullards give Me no choice. Since nothing else will work, I will eliminate all choice for them. The Canaanite heathens will hold an election and I will ensure that the Amalekite Hamasniks win the election, and then the morons will stop with the games and realize that they just have no choice! That they have to stop make-pretend peace process games and - instead - take up their weapons and GO TO WAR!. I regret I had to use this, but what choice did they leave Me?" Months go by and turn into years. The carnage toll skyrockets. Not a single family of Israelites remains untouched. And when things could not possibly go on even a single day longer, the Israelite tribe leaders at last come up with a plan of action and present it to Joshua. "Ok, Son of Nun," they tell Joshua, "we give up. We are ready to do what must be done. "We have decided on a unilateral cease-fire combined with goodwill measures towards the Canaanites, plus an offer to recognize an independent Amalekite Hamas Canaanite state with Mount Moriah as its Capital, plus talks at the White Pyramid overseas, and in the meantime we will allow the Canaanites to operate their diplomatic altars in Jerusalem, while we disarm ourselves further to show we seek peace and we will issue an apology for any Canaanites that might have been killed by our troops while shooting back at attacking Amalekite hordes." 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him by email at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il To Go To Top

THE COVENANT OF THE HAMAS: MAIN POINTS Posted by IsrAlert, January 29, 2006.

This is from www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1980_1989/ THE+COVENANT+OF+THE+HAMAS+-+MAIN+POINTS+-+18-Aug-8.htm The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement was issued on August 18, 1988. The Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as the HAMAS, is an extremist fundamentalist Islamic organization operating in the territories under Israeli control. Its Covenant is a comprehensive manifesto comprised of 36 separate articles, all of which promote the basic HAMAS goal of destroying the State of Israel through Jihad (Islamic Holy War). The following are excerpts of the HAMAS Covenant: Goals of the HAMAS: "The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine." (Article 6) On the destruction of Israel: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." (Preamble) The exclusive Moslem nature of the area: "The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Holy Possession] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon it or any part of it." (Article 11) "Palestine is an Islamic land... Since this is the case, the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Moslem wherever he may be." (Article 13) The call to jihad: "The day the enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In the face of the Jews' usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised." (Article 15) "Ranks will close, fighters joining other fighters, and masses everywhere in the Islamic world will come forward in response to the call of duty, loudly proclaiming: 'Hail to Jihad!'. This cry will reach the heavens and will go on being resounded until liberation is achieved, the invaders vanquished and Allah's victory comes about." (Article 33) Rejection of a negotiated peace settlement: "[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility." (Article 13) Condemnation of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty: "Egypt was, to a great extent, removed from the circle of struggle [against Zionism] through the treacherous Camp David Agreement. The Zionists are trying to draw other Arab countries into similar agreements in order to bring them outside the circle of struggle. ...Leaving the circle of struggle against Zionism is high treason, and cursed be he who perpetrates such an act." (Article 32) Anti-Semitic incitement: The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7) "The enemies have been scheming for a long time ... and have accumulated huge and influential material wealth. With their money, they took control of the world media... With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the globe... They stood behind the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution and most of the revolutions we hear about... With their money they formed secret organizations - such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and the Lions - which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests... They stood behind World War I ... and formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains... There is no war going on anywhere without them having their finger in it." (Article 22) "Zionism scheming has no end, and after Palestine, they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates River. When they have finished digesting the area on which they have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion. Their scheme has been laid out in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'." (Article 32) "The HAMAS regards itself the spearhead and the vanguard of the circle of struggle against World Zionism... Islamic groups all over the Arab world should also do the same, since they are best equipped for their future role in the fight against the warmongering Jews." (Article 32) Harv Weiner, a businessman in Dallas, Texas, is the founder and moderator of Isralert. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

HAMAS PLEDGES TO FORM ARMY, PROMISES TO CONTINUE TERROR ATTACKS Posted by Hillel Fendel, January 29, 2006.

The Hamas terrorist group, days after winning a landslide victory in the PA elections, is calling for the creation of an army even larger than the current 60,000-man force. "We will form an army like every other country," Hamas chief Khaled Meshal said Saturday at a press conference in Syria. "This army will defend our people against aggression." Explaining what he meant by defending against aggression, Meshal said that Hamas would continue to carry out attacks on Israeli civilians. "Our presence in the legislature will strengthen the resistance," he said. Hamas, which popularized the tactic of suicide bombing to the Middle East, won 76 of the 132 seats last week in elections to the Palestinian Authority (PA) parliament. Meshal said that Hamas would honor commitments made by the PA to Israel, provided that those commitments "serve Palestinian interests." Meshal had been asked about the possibility of ammending the Hamas charter, which calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state and its replacement with a state run according to Islamic law. The Hamas spokesman also expressed what is being lauded in the world media as a hint of moderation. "We are realistic and we know things are done gradually," Meshal said. "Being against the occupation does not mean that I can eliminate Israel in mere seconds." He invited Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group to join a Hamas-led government. "We believe it is in everybody's interest to ride the Hamas train, because this train will reach its destination," he said. "We extend our hand to everyone. We need each other." Meanwhile, hundreds of Fatah members marched in Ramallah on the grave of Fatah- founder Yasser Arafat, protesting the group's poor showing under Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). Abbas's security prevented the armed group from reaching the Fatah chairman's office. Earlier Saturday, armed Fatah members took over the parliament buildings in Judea and Gaza, shooting in the air. Cars and tires were also burned outside the building in Gaza. Some demanded the resignation of Fatah politicians, while Al Aksa Brigades terrorists declared publicly that they would kill Fatah members who joined a Hamas government. Attacks between the two terrorist groups spiked over the weekend. Hamas and Fatah terrorists exchanged fire in Gaza Saturday morning after two Fatah members working as PA police officers were wounded by a Hamas attack in Khan Younis. Another attack took place on Friday night. An earlier brawl injured three Friday afternoon. Amid international threats to cut aid to a Hamas-led PA, Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh said that alternative funding would be found. "This aid must not be a sword held over the heads of the Palestinian people and will not be allowed to blackmail our people, Hamas and the resistance." Haniyeh made his statement after the US threatened to eliminate the funds it gives each year to the PA. Meshal attacked international governments for criticizing the democratic choice of the Arabs of the PA. "The world should respect the results of democracy," Meshal said. "If you want to punish the Palestinian people for practicing democracy then the Americans should be punished for choosing President Bush." Meanwhile, Shimon Peres said Friday that Israel would engage in talks with Hamas if the party "abandoned terrorism." It is unclear whether statements to that effect or a temporary cease-fire would suffice. "Israel will have to see where [Hamas] are going," Peres told the BBC, "back to the road of violence and terror, or ahead to the route of peace. They didn't take yet a decision. They weren't prepared for this victory." Oslo architect and Meretz Party leader Yossi Beilin told Israel Radio that Israel was to blame for the Hamas victory. "Israel played a large role in weakening the Palestinian Authority and strengthening Hamas," Beilin said. "The unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, not as a part of an agreement with Abu Mazen, greatly strengthened Hamas," he said. This was written by Hillel Fendel and appeared in today's Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNationalNews.com). To Go To Top

OVER 300,000 AT FUNERAL OF WORLD'S SENIOR KABBALIST RABBI Posted by Mordechai Ben-Mordechai, January 29, 2006.

This was written by Hillel Fendel and appeared in today's Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNationalNews.com). Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri, known as the "Senior Kabbalist Elder," passed away last night in Jerusalem. Over 300,000 people participated in his funeral. Rabbi Kaduri, who commemorated his 105th birthday several months ago, had been in serious condition for the last two weeks in Bikur Cholim Hospital, where he was cared for by his personal physician. Police closed off Jerusalem streets for the Sunday afternoon funeral, which became one of the largest ever in a city known for large funerals. The funeral began at noon at Yeshivat Nachalat Yitzchak, in the Bucharim neighborhood, between Geulah and Shmuel HaNavi. Rabbis Ovadiah Yosef and Mordechai Eliyahu eulogized him, as did President Moshe Katzav. Rabbi Kaduri was buried in the Mt. Menuchot cemetery. Students of the righteous rabbi say that the blessing of the Ben Ish Chai (considered the leading rabbi of Sephardic Jewry, d. 1904) and that of the Lubavitcher Rebbe - both of whom blessed him that he might live to see the Final Redeemer - came true. The rabbi's closest followers say that Rabbi Kaduri told them he met the Messiah on Cheshvan 9, 5764 (Nov. 4, 2003). He reportedly said that the Messiah is not promoting himself, and that a study of his [Rabbi Kaduri's] words in recent months would provide hints of his identity. "He is not saying, 'I am the Mashiach, give me the leadership.' Rather the nation is pushing him to lead them, after they find [in my words] signs showing that he has the status of Mashiach." So said Rabbi Kaduri to one of his close relatives. Rabbi Kaduri was also quoted of late as saying that the imminent arrival of the Mashiach will "save Jerusalem from Islam and Christianity that wish to take Jerusalem from the Jewish Nation - but they will not succeed, and they will fight each other." This past Yom Kippur, shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Rabbi Kaduri said, "Jews must come to the land of Israel to receive our righteous Mashiach, who has begun his influence and will reveal himself in the future." Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, spiritual leader of much of Sephardic Jewry in Israel today, announced, "We are in mourning over the Elder of the Kabbalists, a remnant of the Great Assembly, Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri." Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger expressed his great sorrow "over the taking of the great righteous Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri, of blessed memory. He was a great and humble tzaddik [righteous person]. In his greatness, he dedicated his days and nights to blessing Jews, to pray for Israel, and he felt the pain of those who turned to him for all their troubles. Rabbis from around the country and the world admired him and asked for his blessing." A statement released by President Moshe Katzav's office said the president "is pained by the death of the important and accomplished rabbi whose reputation is world-renowned. Rabbi Kaduri, one of the great rabbis of the Jewish People, was noted for his love of Israel and in his second-to-none expertise in Kabbalah, contributed to Jewish unity, and was a source of inspiration for the Jewish People in Israel and around the world." Rabbi Kaduri came to the Holy Land in 1923, where he learned in Yeshivat Porat Yosef in Jerusalem. He studied Kabbalah under the tutelage of Rabbi Ephraim Cohen and Rabbi Salman Eliyahu (father of former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu). Rabbi Kaduri's son said there were only 60 Kabbalists in the Holy Land at the time, and that only one who prayed for 15 years with "Rashash intentions" was accorded that status. When the Old City of Jerusalem was captured by the Jordanians in 1948, the Yeshiva was evacuated to the Bucharim Quarter. Rabbi Kaduri studied Kabbalah there until 1970, when such study was stopped in Yeshivat Porat Yosef. He also studied for many years in Yeshivat Beit El on Rashi St. in Jerusalem, and then moved with his students to found a new institution called Yeshivat Nachalat Yitzchak. Rabbi Kaduri engaged in bookbinding. He perused all the books he bound, including many old manuscripts which he "photographed" in his memory. Graced with a phenomenal memory, he was said to have known the entire Babylonian Talmud by heart. "In one instance," a source close to him relates, "in disagreement with a leading Halakhic authority of today, Rabbi Kaduri smiled in his inimitable manner, lifted his hand to the bookshelf and immediately opened to the right page, proving his point. The [other] rabbi was astonished at his familiarity with the [non-Kabbalistic] sources." Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben-Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org To Go To Top

DANIEL PINNER FOUND GUILTY Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, January 29, 2006.

The Israeli UnJustice system in action. And the Kangaroos keep hopping. Daniel Pinner, who shot in the air when attacked by a rock-throwing Arab mob, was found guilty by the Be'er Sheva District Court of causing willful and malicious injury. He faces a 3-year sentence. Pinner, who made Aliyah from England and lives in Kfar Tapuach, has been in prison for over seven months. He was arrested on June 22 for allegedly firing at and injuring an Arab on the Gush Katif beach. Pinner has maintained that he shot in the air in self-defense when a mob of some 50 Arabs threw rocks at him; Arab witnesses and participants admitted in court that they were throwing rocks. Pinner, 38, an unmarried teacher and licensed electrician, was in Gush Katif at the time to volunteer his services in the refurbishing of the Palm Beach Hotel for new families. Four days after the incident, he was arrested at home, with the police first claiming that he had shot an Arab in the chest, and then later in the leg. Even after months in jail, Pinner did not lose his sense of humor, describing his court hearings in the following manner: "...It was Wednesday 28 September, and I was up for the second hearing of my trial... Justice was proceeding at its usual sedate, calm pace, undisturbed by such concepts as presumption of innocence, factual evidence, or the right to a speedy trial. The hearing itself was comparatively brief - about an hour or so, in which two police officers in charge of the interrogation testified that: ... yes, they found a spent cartridge from my Uzi; no, they had not bothered to check the range or angle of fire to see if that could possibly have been the bullet which allegedly hit Nasser Wafi; no, they had not been able to run an identity parade to ask the Arab eye-witnesses if I was the shooter; no, they could not explain why it was impossible to do an identity parade; no, they could not explain why the police did not think of photographing me in order to run a photographic identity parade." Atty. Baruch Ben-Yosef expressed disgust at the ruling, saying it "simply ignored all of our legal claims, such as the expert who said that it was impossible to ascertain whether the wound was even caused by a bullet... The judge believed the Arab witnesses, despite the discrepancies in their testimony." The ruling was handed down Sunday morning by Justice Rachel Barkai of the Be'er Sheva District Court. Ben-Yosef believes there are strong grounds to appeal to the Supreme Court, and Pinner is likely to do so. In the meanwhile, however, sentencing hearings are currently scheduled for March 8. A probation report must also be prepared for this purpose. He faces a possible three-year prison sentence. This is the article that Daniel Pinner wrote in Arutz-Sheva January 23, 2006. It is archived at www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=5959. It is called "How to Be a Menace to Society." Daniel Pinner is a veteran immigrant from England, a teacher and an electrician by profession; a Torah scholar who has been active in causes promoting Eretz Israel and Torat Israel. His website address is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DanielPinner/ Very well, I confess: when about 50 Arabs attacked me with rocks, I fired a few warning shots in the air, in order to cover my retreat. I saw my life was in clear and present danger, and in pure instinctive self-defense, I fired those shots. Many people (in particular, judges and other assorted intellectuals whose lives center around the genteel suburbs of north Tel Aviv, Ramat Hasharon and Tzahala) will argue that rocks are not dangerous to life. Other people who have seen rock-throwing Arabs, can testify that rocks are dangerous to life. Unfortunately, those who know this fact can no longer testify. Come to that, the court itself recognizes that rocks are dangerous to life. As I write these lines, my friend Shimshon Cytryn is under house arrest, and faces a charge of attempted murder -- for allegedly throwing a rock at an Arab. Apparently, a rock thrown by an Arab is harmless, while a rock thrown by a Jew is lethal. In my case, I was accused of shooting an Arab named Nasser Wafi, who alleged that he was hit in the thigh by my bullet. In addition to the testimony of Nasser Wafi, several Arab "eye-witnesses" disposed of almost everything alleged by the government: how many people were holding firearms; how many shots were fired; what the alleged shooter looked like; what time Nasser Wafi was shot; the range at which he was shot; which leg he was wounded in. However, the only thing these witnesses all agreed upon was that before any shots were fired, they (the Arabs) were throwing rocks at Jews. But I digress. The Court decreed, months ago, that I would be held in jail until the end of proceedings (to date, 6 1/2 months). When I appealed this decision, Her Honour Sarah Dovrat decided: "The actions of the respondent [Daniel Pinner] are dangerous, regardless of the political background [i.e. the Disengagement]. A person who carries a weapon and uses it, testifies to the menace inherent in him, and is not a result of political tension.... Under these circumstances, the end of the Disengagement does not neutralize the respondent's menace." (Decision of the Be'er Sheva District Court, Case # B.Sh. 021515/03, given on 24th Tishrei 5766 - 27th October 2005) If Her Honour happens to read this essay, I want her to know that I never imagined that by defending my life, and carefully not endangering the life of anyone else (not even the Arabs who would have happily taken my life), I thereby became a menace to society. I have legally held a firearm for about five years, and have used it precisely once -- when I judged my life to be in danger. Even the prosecution did not claim that I am a serial shooter, or that I would be likely to shoot for no reason. Through my lawyer, Baruch Ben-Yosef, I appealed the 24th Tishrei decision to the Supreme Court. We lost. Then, as the case for the prosecution grew steadily weaker, we made another attempt to get house arrest. The same court, the same judge, a different date; the same decision: "The circumstances have not changed in any way, nor has any new fact been shown me, which can neutralize the respondent's menace." (Decision of the Be'er Sheva District Court, Case # B.Sh. 021515/03, given on 7th Kislev 5766 - 8th December 2005) I have a couple of questions for Her Honour, Sarah Dovrat: If the Court eventually acquits me, then should I nevertheless be held in jail indefinitely as a "menace to society"? And if the Court convicts me, then should I be held in jail for the rest of my life, on the grounds that even after serving time, I might still be a "menace to society"? On Monday, 4th Kislev (5th December 2005), a suicide terrorist detonated himself in a shopping mall in Netanya. Five Israelis were murdered, dozens injured. In a radio interview, a security guard stated that even though he recognized the suicide terrorist for what he was, he chose not to shoot for fear of what would happen to him if he did. Countless other security guards have made identical comments; they know that if they shoot terrorists, then they -- the security guards -- are likely to be arrested and held for months in jail, even if they are eventually acquitted. It is simply less hassle to shout a warning, let the terrorist detonate and hope that as few Jews as possible will be killed. So, my final question to Her Honour Sarah Dovrat is: Which one of us (you or me) is the real menace to society? Addendum, January 30, 2006, from Dina Moskowitz: Daniel's bills and expenses still go on, while he has no capacity to earn money to pay them. He needs your help now more than ever. There are utility bills to pay on his home in Tapuach, the care and feeding of his dog, the rent on his house, phone cards so that he can call people from jail, and other outstanding bills on personal expenses. Once again, due to the fact that Daniel is facing a lengthy time in incarceration, I am appealing to the generosity of your heart and soul to bring Daniel peace of mind and hope that when he is finally released, he has something to go back to. Daniel has temporarily lost his physical freedom due to a thoroughly corrupy legal system - but let's make sure he doesn't lose what he has in his life outside of jail! Your support - which Daniel has been so grateful for up to now, and for which he thanks all donors from the bottom of his heart - is more vital than ever. Help ease the burden of his family and friends who have been shouldering the load now for the 7 months since Daniel has been incarcerated. For all of those living outside of Israel: Please send checks made out in my name - Dina Moskowitz - in any foreign currency, to my address: P.O. Box 6355, Jerusalem 91062. I will then turn the currency into shekels and deposit the money into Daniel's post office bank account. Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. To Go To Top

SO WHAT'S THE FUSS ALL ABOUT? Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, January 29, 2006.

In December 2005, I wrote that Hamas needed to be on the slate for the recent Palestinian Arab elections. In "Time To Put Up Or Shut Up" (http://www.muslimworldtoday.com/shutup.htm), I emphasized that there was basically no difference between Abbas' Fatah and the Hamas/Islamic Jihad crew. The former was simply more willing to sing a tune more acceptable to a much too willingly gullible West to gain its support. Blown buses bring bad press and such, so let's destroy Israel but by 'more acceptable' means became the strategy...at least some times. What the West--the American State Department included--likes to ignore is that the terror and attempts at terror continued, and Fatah's own affiliates and members were often the perpetrators. The Fatah "good cops"--terrorists through and through--now blame Hamas' victory in the polls on Israel. If Israel, after all, didn't hold the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority responsible for the continuing terror under its watch and simply allowed Jews to be maimed and killed by Arabs with no retaliation, Fatah's Abbas, & Co. would be stronger today. I believe that Prime Minister Golda Meir, of blessed memory, once said something to the effect that it's not what Gentiles think but what the Jews will do that ultimately will determine Israel's fate. She was right. Nothing's changed for Israel of substance with Hamas' victory. If anything, things are better off now than before. Israel was slowly but surely being shrunk back to its suicidal, 1949, U.N.-imposed, 9-mile wide, armistice line existence while Fatah's well known destruction in phases scenario was playing out to perfection with the help of even Israel's closest friends. Indeed, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was the latest leading the pack, squeezing Israel to forsake such things as even the safety of its main airport while America itself claimed the right to act thousands of miles away from home for its own national security interests. The promise of 1967's U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 to replace the absurd 1949 armistice lines with secure and recognized borders was being sacrificed by those dedicated to the birth of the Arabs' 22nd state...regardless of what effects it would have on the sole, microscopic state of the Jews. My main argument in that earlier article mentioned above was that with the Fatah wolf in sheep's clothing PA in power, terror by Hamas and such could be blamed on the other guy, the "bad cops." But, with the people themselves being able to choose in an election whom they wanted to call the shots (both figuratively and literally), terror would gain--via the people themselves--an official address that could not be denied afterwards. Indeed, the Arab voters have now willingly become the accomplices of the next atrocities. So, the next bus, restaurant, shopping mall, or whatever/whomever that gets blown up by Arabs from Arab-controlled territory will have been victimized as a matter of the official policy of a democratically-elected Hamas-run state which openly calls for the death of Israel and the murder of its citizens. What happens next is up to Israel. What would any other country do under such circumstances? The United States' own Powell Doctrine calls for the use of massive force against its enemies. The time of Israel limiting its options to mere targeted killings is fast drawing to a close. Hamas must at last be held accountable as it's never been before. President Bush has said that those who harbor terrorists will share in their fate. Israel must get itself leaders who will know how to draw the line and do so in a way in which Israel's security needs can be best addressed--regardless of the pressures that will be brought to bear on it. While Israel can be expected to give up still more of the disputed territories for the sake of true peace (not a hudna), a meaningful territorial compromise must be worked out. Again, this was built into the final draft of Resolution 242 by its architects in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War. A reading of Eugene Rostow, one of those architects, is essential for this subject. Lately, Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying the right things in this regard, but only time will tell. Not only have the Arabs of would-be "Palestine" (the second, not first, Arab state to be formed within the original 1920 borders the Palestine Mandate--Jordan emerging on 80% of the entire territory after 1922) harbored terrorists, they've repeatedly elected them--starting with Arafat and his successor close associates dressed in suits, Abbas, Qurei', and so forth. The PA/ PLO's Charter calling for Israel's destruction was never really amended--despite all the claims otherwise. Hamas and Fatah's goals remain one and the same. And now the Arab Street has spoken, once again, and brought an organization to power which is at least honest about its murderous intentions towards both Jews and the Jew of the Nations. When the next Jew is murdered, Arabs won't be able to claim any disconnection. Arab voters decided on this course of action collectively themselves. So, Israel is actually now left in a potentially better position than it was before. No reasonable nation can tell another that it can't defend itself from murderous neighbors whose official policy is the destruction of its state as well as its citizens. While the double standard has been used repeatedly against Israel before in these regards, it now becomes much harder to apply it with these new circumstances. While Abbas' official policy--despite the whitewashing of the American State Department and others--was also the destruction of a Jewish Israel, and his fellow "moderates" repeatedly called all dealings with the Jews merely a Trojan Horse, he could hide behind talk of a hudna (temporary ceasefire) and the facade constructed for him by others allowing him--with Condi and others tightening the screws--to sweet talk unilateral concessions out of the Jews. With Hamas now elected, the facade is gone, the curtains are lifted, and the Arabs must--at long last--be held accountable. After the next act of barbarism occurs, Israel must issue an ultimatum...the same way other countries would do. When that ultimatum is predictably ignored and the United Nations predictably does nothing--or blames the Jews themselves--Israel must unleash massive retaliation...not the tit-for-tat variety. Using expensive missiles and such to take out one terrorist is not cost effective. Taking out fifty to a hundred at a time makes the point much better. They have their rallying places. Israel needs to pay them some visits when the time comes. There is no talking with a neighbor which openly admits that your death is its goal and acts accordingly. What would America--3,000 miles wide--do with such a neighbor? Or anyone else? The war that must be fought will be better fought sooner rather than later. Later, Hamas' buddy, Iran, may have nukes. As American bombers have targeted terror strongholds in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hamasstan must get at least this and more. And when the Arab's launch their next revenge attacks, Israel must strike back each time exponentially harder than before. If peace ever comes between Arabs--who elected a government dedicated to Israel's destruction--and Jews, it won't be because of any "acceptance" on the part of the Arabs. The latter are convinced that, despite the presence of scores of millions of non-Arabs in the region, only Arabs have political rights in what they see as purely Arab patrimony. Just ask the Copts, Kurds, Berbers, Black African Sudanese, Assyrians, one half of Israel's Jews whose families fled the Dar ul-Islam, and so forth if you have any doubts about this. If peace ever comes, it will be because the Arabs realized the terrible price their attempts at Israel's destruction caused them. That's what brought the late president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, to Jerusalem three decades ago. I wish there was another way, but I seriously doubt it. Taking out a like number of murderers for innocent Jews slaughtered won't do the trick. There comes a time when the body of the snake must be addressed along with its head. Arab civilians who die in Israel's retaliation will die because their elected Hamas heroes hide behind and among them. Furthermore, those civilians will be virtual accomplices to the terror masters themselves...i.e. not exactly "innocent," and not the same as the Jewish kid coming home from school on the bus that gets blown apart. As always, Israel must make clear its desire to be a good neighbor. Countries around the world have benefited tremendously via their association with Israel. But Israel must also make unmistakably clear that it will no longer allow Arabs to dictate how the game will be played. And it must be willing to take a cut in American aid and such if it comes to that. If Hamasstan does as is expected, Israel must fight to win--despite demands from elsewhere that it still fight with one hand virtually tied behind its back. Israel won't make any new enemies that it doesn't already have. But it will eliminate many others that already exist. Only afterwards, when the dust settles (as in other wars elsewhere), will there then be a chance for some kind of peace. Gerald A. Honigman, a Florida educator, has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in both the print media and on websites. Contact him at honigman6@msn.com or go to his website: http://geraldahonigman.com/blog.php To Go To Top

DRIVERS WOUNDED, WIVES TAKEN AS HOSTAGE Posted by SMCCDI, January 29, 2006.

This is archived as daneshjoo.org/publishers/currentnews/article_3630.shtml, January 28, 2006. Tens of Tehran's Collective Bus drivers, technicians and workers have been wounded by brutal militiamen who have attacked the strikers gathered in some of the terminals. The strikers were refusing to allow Bassij para-military members to take the wheels of their vehicles. Wives of at least 3 strikers have been arrested at their homes and brought to an unknown destination in order to be use as tool of pressure against their husbands. Threats have been made about their fate if the strike doesn't come to an end and that the drivers and other employees of Tehran's Collective Bus Company don't start work on Sunday morning. But despite all repressive methods used by the Islamic republic regime, many of the employees have stayed home by forcing the Islamic regime to deploy its plain clothes security agents in the streets of the Capital and behind the wheels of the buses. The un-experienced appointed drivers have a hard time to insure the service and many users are refusing to take the buses in sign of solidarity with the strikers. Many workers, students and governmental employees, such as teachers, are using the transport problem for not showing up at their works or classes. Tracts have been distributed in the Capital by underground social or workers groups declaring solidarity with the strikers. Many cab drivers have put their head lights on and are using their horns in show of solidarity and many residents are showing the 'V' (Victory) sign. The move is very noticeable in the Enghelab and Azadi squares. Militiamen are looking very worry and are arresting the residents. The strike has created serious problems in the transport despite the fact that hundreds of regular drivers and the Greater Tehran's Collective Bus employees have been arrested or threatened. Many of the arrests took place, yesterday evening, at the homes of those suspected to be part of the strike and the Islamic judiciary is intending to trial many of them for conspiracy. False charges, such as, "Drug trafficking", "Having Prohibited Arms" or "Endangering the National Security" are expected to be use against the arrested employees. Threats have been made against the family members of many employees and militiamen have been deployed in the terminals in order to control the situation. The Islamic regime has also transferred many militiamen of the Bassij Force's logistic to fill the shifts of the arrested employees. The regime's leadership was hoping to limit the impact of the action by resorting to its usual repressive actions. The Greater Tehran has appreciatively 12 millions of inhabitants and many Tehranis, who are using this cheaper way of transportation, are supportive of the strikers. The move is expected to plunge the Iranian Capital into a relative chaos, as it did during the last two collective actions. Users showed, on December 23, 2005, an extreme sign of patience and their support of the strikers. Many refused to take the buses which were drove by militiamen and the domino effect created more complication for the regime, as, many governmental or industrial employees didn't show up at their posts or works while being able to justify their absenteeism. The same trend was followed on January 7, 2006, when hundreds of drivers made a symbolic action on a very symbolic day, resulting in fear among all factions of the Islamic regime. Hardliners and Islamist 'reformists'. Partial strikes were made and most drivers put their head lights, in the middle of the day, for showing their exasperation. The move coincided with the anniversary the "Iranian Emancipation Law" adopted by the former Iranian regime, in 1935, and banned by the Islamic republic in 1979. Of course, this action had fewer echoes as the so-called "reformist" faction of the regime and most ultra Marxist groups preferred to pass it under silence. Never less many Tehranis, especially among females, were seen considering the bus drivers' move as a hidden support for the message of modernism, equality and secularism of the banned law. Many were seen showing the "V" (Victory) sign (well known in Iran) to each other and to the maverick drivers. The today's move is putting more pressure on the Islamic republic regime, at a time that it's facing more international pressure. The strike, if extended due to the free world's support, might lead to the apparition of a worker movement, such as, the 1980's Solidarnosc (meaning Solidarity and which was the independent Polish Shipyards' Workers Union formed in Gdansk and lead by Lech Walesa) which was able to rally other cities drivers and various economic sectors behind it and to create the possibility of radical political changes. Most National-Secularist groups, such as, the SMCCDI and the INSP (Iran's National-Secular Party) are supportive of the strikers and in general of any clean and clear move for a genuine democratic and secularist change in Iran. The two movements' members and supporters have been asked to help the families of the drivers. The expression of this support and calls on the population to protect the strikers have been made, at several occasion, on the waves of abroad based Iranian radio and satellite TV networks broadcasting for Iran. The strikers' move and legitimate aspirations are not only limited to internal Iranian debate and in this line, several western workers' unions, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and influent politicians, such as, the U.S. Senator Rick Santorum have already declared their support of the "Tehran Collective Bus drivers". In a letter dated, January 6, 2006, Santorum requested from the U.S. Secretary of State to intervene on behalf of the arrested Tehran's Bus drivers and the repressed Iranian People. Slamming the Islamic regime for the persistent human rights abuses and the brutal attack of the strikers, the Pennsylvanian Senator stated in part of his letter: "I ask that you and other senior leaders of the US Government make a concerted effort to reach out to groups of individuals, such as unions and students, to let them know the People of America stand with them in their fight for greater freedoms and liberties". Without doubt, the continuation of such public declarations and a real financial support for the strikers can plunge the Islamic regime into an abyss from which it can not escape. The result would no more lead to just obtaining some greater freedoms or liberties, but to a total liberation of Iran due to a secular and democratic revolution without any need to any kind of military intervention. The trend has become so noticeable, as especially the absolute majority of Iranians have well taken their distances from the regime's "reformists from within" and some of their docile so-called student associations, such as, the "Office of Consolidation Unity" (OCU). Contact SMCCDI, The Student Movement for Democracy in Iran, at peyk@daneshjoo.org. Or go to their website: http://www.daneshjoo.org/ To Go To Top

COMMENTS FROM BANGLADESH BLITZ Posted by Salah Choudhury, January 29, 2006.

Dear Friends: Greetings! Don't you think that voice of Bangladeshi press is rather very much biased towards mega-terrorist organizations like Hamas? This is the world where we are living in and still continuing our battle against the radicals through our voice as well through Blitz. Very steadily, Blitz has already become number one periodicals in Bangladesh. You must have read the editorial comments in Dhaka's English press, by now. We can only tell you, the voice of vernacular press are even worst. Unfortunately, our media here are busy in spreading the message of hatred instead of spreading the message of peace, which Blitz is certainly continuing to do, with all our commitments and courage. In past four months, we did not get even a single inch advertisement, just because of our unique editorial policy; but it is not the matter which would stop us at all. We shall continue our battle against radicals, extremists and against the culture of hatred, without looking into any other issues, except that of our mission and commitment. Although in our Blitz project, we are alone, but in our mission and the message Blitz is publishing, we have all of you with us, giving us the opportunity to be a GREAT TEAM. Please coninue reading Blitz and let us always be blessed with your suggestions, opinion, criticism or your write ups. Shalom Uvracha... The writer is a journalist, columnist, author, and editor of "Weekly Blitz". Email him at salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com To Go To Top

PLEASE CALL TO SAVE JEWISH HEBRON Posted by Marlene Young, January 28, 2006.

Urgent Action Alert on Tuesday's Hebron Expulsion Please know the Facts: There are 20,000 Arab buildings in East Jerusalem illegally constructed without permits, and Olmert has discussed with the PA legalizing that construction. There are more than 30,444 illegal buildings in which Arabs are squatting in Israel. There are more than 7,380 court-ordered eviction notices against Illegal Palestinian homes in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), but the Israeli government has never acted on them and has no plans to. Yet, this Tuesday, the Olmert interim unelected government is going to send hundreds of IDF troops and Police to evict 9 Jewish families from Jewish-owned property in the Israeli-controlled area of Hebron, for no reason whatsoever. The High Court of Israel has acknowledged that this is Jewish-owned property, despite false reports in the media that these are "Palestinian" shops. The Jewish leadership in Hebron tried to obtain leases for new tenants from the Israeli government as a compromise, but the Olmert government rejected the compromise, and refuses to grant any leases to any Jews on this Jewish-owned property in Israeli-controlled Hebron. This Tuesday, tens of thousands of armed Hamas and Fatah terrorist murderers will be free as usual to roam Hebron and the West Bank shooting automatic rifles into the air. On Tuesday, this tiny Jewish property will be cleared of all Jewish citizens, for no logical reason whatsoever, by the Radical unelected Leftists running the government like their personal property- Olmert, Weisglass, Peres, Beilin, Omri, Mazuz, Mofaz, etc, at the behest of Peace Now, ISM, the EU, the Quartet, Hamas, the PA, the UN, for secret deals that only they know about and that only they benefit from. The forces will be deployed in three rings: the first ring will be made up of 1,500 policemen trained to deal with violent protests and will also include mounted forces. The second rings will consist of several hundred Border Policemen and the third ring will be made up of four infantry regiments. Policemen will be responsible for direct conformation with the settlers, while the IDF will close off the area to incoming protesters. The IDF issued a warrant Sunday declaring the Jewish section of Hebron a closed military area, and Jews who are not residents of the area won't be allowed entrance. Security Minister Shaul Mofaz has declared that a policy of "zero tolerance" would be employed against settler violence, and IDF officers said that in this evacuation, they will "demonstrate only determination, without sensitivity." Settlers are planning a major solidarity conference Tuesday against the evacuation. Politicians, rabbis and academics are among those expected to attend the gathering. The Chabad Movement, at an annual conference for Chabad emissaries in Zichron Ya'akov on Saturday, also decided to embark on an "uncompromising struggle to prevent the expulsion of the Jews of Hebron." Chabad representatives will pay a solidarity visit to Hebron Sunday. Representatives of five parties - Eli Yishai (Shas), Zevulun Orlev (NRP), Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu), Zvi Hendel (National Union), and Meir Porush (Agudath Israel) - sent a letter to Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over the weekend urging him to postpone the evacuation of Amona and Hebron until after the elections, in line with the general principle that major, non-urgent decisions should not be made prior to an election. Phone & fax numbers: President Moshe Katsav; Tel: 972-2-6707211 Fax: 972-2-5610037 State Comptroller's office: tel: 972-2-666-5000 fax: 972-2-666-5204 and fax the department responsible for the police: 972-2-530-9999 Prime Min spokesman: Assaf Sharif 972-2-5666920 (dir.) fax: 972-2-5669245 cell: 972-50-7724881 Olmert's spokeswoman: Chaya Peri tel 972-2-666-2301 fax 972-2-666-44-00 Defense Min. spokesman Eli Kamir tel. 972-3-6975546 fax: 972-3-6916940 cell: 972-50-6298005 Foreign Affairs Mark Regev tel. 972-2-5303343/555 972-2-5303408 (fax) cell 972-50-6203264 Justice Min spokesman: Shai Ben-Maor (Adviser) 972-2-6285438 (fax) cell: 972-50-6247138 Ministry of internal police tel 972-2-5308500 fax 972-2-530-80-39 Chief of Police, Mr Aharonishky: tel 972-2-5308100 fax 972-2-5308118 Hebron police: (those directly responsible for brutalizing Deli landau) tel 972-2-9969-444 or 972-2-9969-473/86/96/62 Shalom Court (address faxes to Judge Eilata Sziskind who put Deli under house arrest at her parents, away from her children, BEFORE TRIAL even started!!! fax 972-2-624-34-24 Prosecutor's office fax 972-2-646-700-1 Justice ministry fax 972-5602246 Chief Rabbinate: Rabbi Shlomo Amar fax 972-2-537-1305 Rabbi Yonah Metzger fax 972-2-5377872 The Rishon Lezion Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu Shlita fax 972-2-653-6842 Phone and Fax numbers from Women in Green. Sources: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/675859.html http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/676051.html Contact Marlene Young at marleneyoung1@yahoo.com To Go To Top

CHURCHILL AND OLMERT Posted by Ken Heller, January 28, 2006.

This comes from David Hornik and from Naomi Ragen. "We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old." -- Winston Churchill, June 4, 1940, speech before the House of Commons "We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies." -- Ehud Olmert, June 9, 2005, speech to Israel Policy Forum in New York. Ken Heller is a pro-Israel activist and a member of the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans For A Safe Israel. He can be reached at kayjayphilly@yahoo.com To Go To Top

THE 1944 SAISON - THE 2006 SAISON Posted by Nadia Matar, January 28, 2006.

Now it's official. After the statements by Olmert last week and by Inspector-General Karadi this week [Editor's note: see below], there no longer can be any doubts: the Saison, the "hunting season" against the Jews in the Land of Israel, is evident to all. As Yehudah Lapidot tells us in his book The Saison: the Hunting Down of Brothers: "the appellation Saison (hunting season in French) was applied to the attempt by the Haganah in [19]44-45 to eliminate IZL [Irgun Zevai Le'umi also known as Etzel]. In order to realize the goals of the Saison, the Haganah used almost every means at its disposal, that included kidnappings and protracted interrogations (of Etzel members and supporters), that at times were accompanied by extreme torture; expulsion from places of employment and schools; taking Jews forcibly from apartments, and more. The most drastic step, however, that aroused stormy controversies in the Yishuv (the pre-State Jewish community in Land of Israel), was the surrendering to the British CID (plainclothes detective branch) of those suspected of belonging to the Revisionist movement in general and to Etzel in particular. The persecution of members and supporters of the Revisionist movement reached its peak shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel, when Ben-Gurion ordered the sinking of the Altalena, and gave the order to shoot at the Jews on the ship. Sixteen Jews on the sinking Altalena and who were swimming towards the Tel Aviv shore were murdered in cold blood. Their only "crime" was belonging to the movement of Menachem Begin. Ben-Gurion gave the order; Yitzhak Rabin was happy to carry it out. The "holy cannon" was the name given by Ben-Gurion's people to the weapon that they used to sink the Altalena in their implementation of this despicable political murder. Ben-Gurion never ceased to regard the Etzel as a political rival that must be eliminated. In collaboration with the British, he initiated a campaign to persecute the Etzel's members and supporters. The Saison and the Altalena episode silenced the Revisionists for many years. At present, the entire Jewish-national camp, headed by the public of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, constitutes a threat to the rule of the left. Demographically, the left, with an average of one child, or a maximum of two children, has no successor generation. These children receive a shoddy, spoiled education, without Judaism or Zionism, that turns them into Hebrew-speaking non-Jews: without roots, without knowing what it is to be a Jew, without an understanding of what they are doing here in Israel. In contrast, the many children (God bless them) of the Jewish camp (both the religious and the traditional) are educated to love of the Torah, the people, and the Land, and, before we know it, with God's help, they will be the majority here. The left is panic-stricken. It still controls the key positions in the country: the media, the State Attorney's Office, the High Court of Justice, and the Knesset - but its days in power are numbered. It needs to silence the Jewish-national camp, once and for all. Flooding the country with hundreds of thousands of non-Jews from the USSR was the first attempt to block the demographic revolution of the Jewish camp. But, a miracle occurred, the majority of those from the USSR, both Jews and non-Jews, who know what Bolshevism is, and who instinctively understand just who the Arabs are and what they want, voted for the right! The first scheme to preserve leftist rule was unrealized. The Oslo accords were the second attempt in this direction, when the Oslo architects gave cities of refuge in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza to Arafat and his band of murderers, along with weapons and ammunition. The Oslo criminals hoped that the members of the PLO and Hamas would only use these weapons against the settlers in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, turn their lives into hell on earth, and thereby force the Jews to leave Judea, Samaria, and Gaza of their own free will and return to within the 1967 lines. In this manner Shimon Peres and Ben-Gurion's other successors hoped to crush the settlers in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and, through them, the entire Jewish camp. This would have been a cheap and easy solution for the problem of the Jews of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and their supporters. But, once again, things went wrong: the PLO and the Hamas couldn't restrain themselves, and instead of heeding the advice of the extreme leftists in Israel and murdering only Jews within Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, those stupid Arabs also began to blow themselves up within little Israel and murder Israelis! Thus the Arabs let everyone understand that they do not draw any distinction between the "settler" from Tel Aviv and the "settler" from Ofra. Moreover, the Jews of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza were not deterred. Like the Children of Israel in Egypt, "the more they were oppressed, the more they increased" and were strengthened. In their settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza - the right gained power, this time under the leadership of Israeli war hero Ariel Sharon. The left no longer knows what to do with itself. It's really losing it. The years pass, but they haven't succeeded in neutralizing the Jewish camp. To the contrary! The people is increasingly convinced that it is the policy of the national camp that is correct. This is the reason why Sharon was elected, and not Mitzna. What did the left do? It used Ariel Sharon to implement the mission of neutralizing the Jewish camp. It threatened Sharon that if he would not realize the policy of the left, his sons would go to prison. Ariel Sharon, a totally corrupt and egotistical person, did not hesitate to cooperate with them. Overnight, people like Peres, Sharon, Beilin, Olmert, Livni, Mofaz and others coalesced into a one-dimensional monster, a Party called "Forward [Kadima]. With determination but without sensitivity, it would quickly crush the national camp, and support the continued rule of the Left". Of course, they still don't openly proclaim this as their aim, they sell the public all kinds of stories, as if "the disengagement is essential to stop the "Arab demographic problem". But anyone who uses a bit of his intelligence knows that the truth is different, and that this is a contemptible plan to curb the Jewish demographic problem. First, the Sharon-Peres monster decides to disconnect the Jews from their oxygen: the settlements of Gush Katif and northern Samaria. The mission is carried out with humiliating and intolerable ease. The mamlakhti (state-oriented) and naive Jewish victim dances and embraces the hangman. Color returns to the cheeks of the left. "Just look, at long last, we finally moderated our bitter rival", they think to themselves. "We beat the "right" with a knockout. Now we can easily toss him out of all the settlements of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza". We will disperse them, defeated and beaten, throughout little Israel - without assistance, without support, without compensation, without any possibility of rising again. Once and for all, this will take care of our problem with the Jews. Now we can return to the 1949 lines and establish a bi-national state. "At long last, the nations of the world will love us. Without Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and without the annoying Jewish camp." It appears, however, that the left's rejoicing was premature. The Jewish victim is still breathing! And its youth even kicks! In the attempt to destroy the home in Neveh Daniel and the distribution of the evacuation orders in Hebron, the youth did not act as in Gush Katif. They did not dance or embrace, but dared to raise their head and declare: "Another expulsion of Jews from Israel? Never again! This time we won't let them! Our eyes have been opened. We understand that they want to eliminate us, as the first phase in the elimination of the entire Jewish state. No! Here's where we draw the line!" The Sharon-Peres-Olmert-Livni monster is losing its cool. This can't go on! How dare the Jews continue to be faithful to their principles? How dare they speak about Greater Israel? Now, the Olmert-Livni-Mazuz-Diskin-Halutz-Karadi gang takes off the gloves and broadcasts to all: Any Jew who is unwilling to commit suicide with dances and hugs - we will crush him, we will trample him, we will persecute him, we will spray him with tear gas and pepper spray, and even shoot him, if necessary. Although Ben-Gurion had wanted, for a long time, to get rid of Herut and Lehi (the fighters for Israel), the official excuse for initiating the Saison was the assassination of Lord Moyne in Cairo. Moyne had been appointed by the British as Minister of State for the Middle East, and from his headquarters in Cairo he was responsible for the implementation of the White Paper policy. Lehi regarded him as responsible for the expulsion of the "illegal" immigrants' ships, decided to kill him. But, as we said, this was just an excuse to begin the Saison. If there had been no assassination, Ben-Gurion would have found some other pretext. The same holds true for us today. Olmert's official reason for his public and grandiose declaration of war against the settlers of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza as a whole is the "violence of the lawbreakers in Hebron." Anyone with eyes in his head, however, realizes that this is merely a pretext, and this is actually a continuation of the Saison that began in 1944: the left's organized and ongoing persecution of the national camp. Olmert's speech last week with his demand for forceful action against the "Jewish lawbreakers" took us back 62 years, to 1944, when, in a Histadrut convention, Ben-Gurion called for the elimination of the Herut movement, for which he gave operative orders. To quote him: "We have been requested by the supreme bodies - the Zionist Executive and the Va'ad Le'umi - to vomit them [the supporters and members of the IZL] from our midst, and I want to translate this demand into the language of reality and action. If a young man, a member of these gangs or a supporter of them, works in any factory or office, the workers and the other office employees are required to expel him..... I intentionally chose this harsh example, everyone who is connected to these gangs, everyone who supports them - not necessarily if he uses a pistol or throws a bomb, but anyone who disseminates their literature and pastes their announcements - he must be removed from his place of work [...] The same holds true if he studies in a secondary school or other [school] - and not only if he himself participates in acts of murder and robbery, but even if he brings the terrorists' unclean literature to youth, and disseminates it among them. He must be expelled from the school, so that he will know, and his siblings will know, and his parents will know, that the public rises up against these crimes, that endanger, not only the individual, but the nation as a whole. "The second thing that is required of us: not to give them refuge and shelter. We must tell every Jew in Israel to withhold shelter and refuge from all the members of the gangs and from all their supporters. It is forbidden to give refuge to these criminals who endanger our future. And the third thing: Not to surrender to their threats! We must create such a regime in the nation that they will not be able to threaten anyone. Every boy and girl will be instructed by the school in which they study that if these gangs come to his father and mother to demand money - the proper place is to be immediately informed; if he does not know of any address - he is to go to the police." As regards collaboration with the British, Ben-Gurion said: "To the extent that the British authorities and the police are interested in the destruction of terror [let there be no misunderstanding, (Ben-Gurion did not speak of the Arab terror, he referred to the IZL as the "terror" gangs - N.M.), "I repeat, our interest in the elimination of terror is greater and more vital that of the British government." Compare Ben-Gurion's speech with the statements by Olmert, the head of the General Security Service Yuval Diskin, and the Chief of the General Staff Dan Halutz in a special meeting of the security-legal leadership before the evacuations in Hebron, in Amona, and in the other outpost settlements. "The Jewish lawbreakers" threaten the existence of the state; they declared. They engage in a "dangerous ideological criminal activity". They called for stiffer enforcement measures against these Jewish "rioters"; announced that they would increase the use of expulsion orders and administrative detention; and said that they would enlarge the police force in Judea and Samaria - not in order to stop the Arab terrorists who continue to fire Kasam rockets at Israel and murder Jews on the roads, but to smite, to persecute, and to repress these "idealistic" Jews. Add to this Karadi's statement about the possibility of shooting at settlers demonstrating for the territorial integrity of Israel, and we have a return to the time of the Saison in 1944. This frontal attack on the settlers of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza seems daunting. Every newscast, every radio program, and press which attacks and besmirches Jews loyal to Israel, would not shame the anti-Semitic authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We can really identity with what Yaakov Shavit wrote in his book The Hunting Season: "In practice, the organized public opinion turned the IZL into a group that was isolated, shunned, and mercilessly persecuted". The IZL was described as "insane Jewish fascism" that would lead to the suicide of the Yishuv and "therefore it deserves an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth!" This is the attitude of the ruling leftist elite today, against the loyalists of Israel. Accordingly, in light of the renewed Saison, it is important for us to remind ourselves and our wonderful youth that such things already happened, and that we have nothing to fear. We should tell everyone that, in the end, the Saison of 1944 did not succeed, and this time, as well, we will not allow them to succeed. Despite the informing, the arrests, the torture, and the surrendering of underground members to the British authorities; despite the Altalena; and despite the paralysis of the national camp, in the long run Ben-Gurion and his band failed to eliminate the IZL. Actually, the opposite is the case. The British eventually left Israel, thanks to the activities of the IZL and the Lehi. Today we - the camp of Israel loyalists - comprise a tremendous camp that continues to realize the idea and vision: that all of the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel according to the Torah of Israel, and no one has the right to hand it over to foreigners. Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOUR OPINION Posted by Salah Choudhury, January 28, 2006.

HAMAS got massive mandate in Palestinian election, which leaves a dangerous sign to world peace. Many of the political analysts and experts on Middle East are terming this victory as emergence of the mega terrorist organization as the legal entity in Palestine now, which will probably use state machinery in PA for its ugly and cruel anti-humanity actions. We in Blitz are also closely monitoring the Palestine issue and are extremely worried to know that HAMAS now emerges as an elected force in the troubled territory of Palestine. As we all know, for decades, Palestine Authority had been one of the world's most corrupt entity, now with the mega terrorist HAMAS in power, possibly Palestine will now emerge as one of the most potential threats to the Global peace. There is mixed reaction in the Muslim world on the victory of the mega terrorist organization in Palestinian election. It also proves that, people of Palestine might have now opted for putting a dangerous organization like HAMAS in power to show its nasty fangs to Israel and the world. We want to publish comments and op-eds from the valued contributors and readers of Blitz on this issue. ! Please send us your write ups (minimum 500 words) in MS Word Format at the earliest convenience and oblige. Please cover any or all of the following points: 1. General view on HAMAS 2. Terrorist activities and strength of this organization 3. Death of innocent people in the hands of HAMAS men 4. Why Palestinians voted for HAMAS 5. Threat to the Middle East Peace and World Peace 6. What should be the reaction of international community Editorial: "US-ISRAEL-UK axis re-defining democracy" Bangladesh Today The Hamas has won victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections. Immediately following the announcement of the result, Israel has said it will not deal with a Palestinian Authority which includes the Hamas. US president Bush has already declared he would not deal with the Hamas. UK Foreign Secretary, as expected, echoed more or less the same stuff. Who are the US, UK, and ISRAEL to determine the future of Palestine? Where is the United Nations? If it has died, why is it not wrapped up in a coffin and laid to eternal rest? The world does not need to carry on with a carcass. The verdict of the people is the litmus test of democrac! y. If the people of Palestine have chosen the Hamas to lead them, who are others to declare their acceptance or refusal of that verdict? Anyone wishing to deal with matters relating to Palestine, must now speak with the Hamas. The electoral victory of a nation does not require ratification or endorsement from anybody except its' own people. Will nations of the world await the approval of these fascistic democracies before they announce their election results? We expect the entire world to accept the peoples' mandate in the Palestinian election and ask the UN to play its' role or declare 'de jure' ( which is the actual 'de facto' reality ) that USA has supplanted the UN. The writer is a journalist, columnist, author, and editor of "Weekly Blitz". Email him at salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com To Go To Top

HAMAS KICKS ABBAS' BUTT. WHAT'S IN IT FOR ISRAEL Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, January 27, 2006.

Erstwhile U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson once suggested he would rather have then F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover in his tent urinating out then outside his tent urinating in. After a perhaps stunning so-called Palestinian election upset, the radical Islamic Israel/Jew/Infidel despising Hamas has been swept by popular demand into the "big tent" (some might say circus tent), however, unlike Johnson Arafat understudy Abbas and his "gang that couldn't govern straight" Fatah has been for all intents swept outside that tent not unlike the leavings of the circus animals they resembled in the eyes of their population of angry able-bodied unemployed Muslim men and bitter women. Most importantly, how might this affect Israel? No doubt, Hamas did not exactly expect to win this election, thus become directly responsible for the lack of jobs, broken infrastructure, and every pressing needs of its chaotic constituency. Furthermore, might the fulminating fanatics realize the camel's share of such constituents voted to boot out Arafat's legacy of corruption and incompetence, not exactly a resounding endorsement for Hamas' brand of fundamentalist Islam including a sharia code that is down right nasty to the rights of females? Israel, if it presciently plays the hand perhaps serendipitously dealt, can rightly refuse to deal with a cadre obsessed with the Jewish state's destruction, thus not stupidly cede further land justifiably secured in 1967 as a consequence of vanquishing Arabs likewise obsessed with the Jewish state's destruction. Indeed, in lieu of a U.S. brokered Road Map strewn with the metaphorical road kill of Israel's future generations; in effect less land, less security, still no peace; now a wiser Knesset can justifiably order a higher wider wall between Israel and the soon-to-be dysfunctional terrorist enclave of Gaza and other Hamas infected Islamic ghettos, maintain sovereignty over all the rest of its land, without very many boulders cast from self-righteous popinjays worldwide. In fact, now that former Palestinian potentate Prime Manipulator Ahmad Queria is unemployed, Israel can let bygones be bygones hiring his family's cement company to build the security wall, putting a few extra shekels into his pocket. Wouldn't that be a magnanimous gesture? Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net To Go To Top

THOUGHTS ON 1937 AND ENEMIES OF THE JEWS Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, January 27, 2006.

Middle brows whose brains are filled with the congealant of Newspeak (see Orwell's "1984," chapters 1-6, passim) are flustered by the predictable victory of Hamas, yet another of Hashem's acts of grace and honesty for His people, the Jews, and the world. Those whose brains are de/formed by attention to the mass media (the NYTimes and CNN are worse than comic books), "liberal" people who believe that there cannot be peace unless Jews are expelled from Israel, etc., are like a herd without their bell cow, like a dog whose master has forgotten the commands. Their code is messed up: the pod people are screaming! But it ain't no 'scream' for us humans. 1. As many observers of the matzav have indicated many times, the silver lining of the black cloud of Ishmael is that mostly they refuse to behave as anything other than Jew-hating, homicidal maniacs, thieves and rapists. Their 'religion' is a cult of sex and violence, a rather colorless form of death worship and world domination that makes them perfect objects of Hollywood's perverse love and sanitizing. "Rape, murder, it's just a [script] away," re-tooled for soccer-moms, hunks, geeks & babes. 2. Hamas asserted its claim as one of the leading groups in global jihad by reiterating its intention of wiping Israel off the map. Of course, its leaders, per instructions of the Koran, will agree to "negotiate" periodically when it suits their ultimate goal. This already has been seized upon by the mucky mucks in Foggy Bottom and picked up by media from Al Jazeera II (CNN) to FOX. Their Israeli puppets would go along but they've got an election coming up also, and while the Jewish people are numbed by decades of socialist betrayals, newspeak, and grief, they still know a hawk from a handsaw... mostly. 2a. The danger is that refusal to negotiate with Hamas, conditioned upon its refusal to recognize "Israel's right to exist" will be blathered about till an 'asset' like Olmert or Mufaz is elected. Then the next stage of processing-Israel-in-the-blender-of-diplomacy will ensue. The inheritance of the Jewish people will fill up further with violence and desolation; the Jew-hating Israelis of Herzliya, Caesarea, Ramat HaSharon, etc, will increase their death grip on the nation. These and the Kangaroo Court that gives the "color of law" to the desturction of Israel are the main enemy of the Jewish people in their land. They are the reason the "piece by piece process" was able to get traction and still proceeds its horrible way, grinding and crushing. Jews need to remember the words of Shimon Peress after his defeat in 1996 when he severed his camp explicitly from the Jewish people saying "we -- Israelis" lost and "they, the Jews won." If only that had been true. An example of this hatred, this sinat hinam is playing out in Hebron, indeed, has been playing out in Hebron, Jerusalem, and the entire land since June 14, 1967 when the goyishe leaders of Israel openly took on the role of Esau and "spurned their birthright." And spent the rest of their time afflicting all Jews who sought to claim and nurture it. Afflicting the Jews of Hebron is a special pass time for them for they sense the centrality of its Jewish root. 2b. The Histadrut - Labor and its affiliates have been waging war on Jews, on Jewish national integrity, pride and survival almost continuously since the late 1920s, and very emphatically since the "hunting season" of the 1940s. The anti-Jewish left's collaboration with the anti-Jewish powers of the world had an early climax with the sinking of the Altalena in June 1948. And hence Jerusalem remain divided to this day, and the Temple Mount not sovereign for and accessible to Jews. (The fullest account in English of the matter of the Altalena is in Samuel Katz's "Days of Rage," 1968, appoximately pages 196-252). Read it, and keep the implications in mind). Here's a contemporary correlative: with the land filled with Hamas, with Arab missiles and rockets falling for six years INSIDE the pre-June 1967 borders of Israel (that's called war, fellas), the political Generals, uniformed representatives of Shimon Peress and his alien pals, busy themselves with destroying a guard dog training program that gives life-saving protection to some Jews in the Jewish heartland and with declaring war, including threats of live ammo against Jews living in the tiny amount of Hebron where the Israeli government allows Jews to live (and the Jews had to fight, and work, and bleed for every inch of it, again). 3. The enemies within empower the enemies without. Labor - Kadima - Likud are the real Trojan Horse. In their churning belly are the death-to-Jewish Israel process and its agents. With Bibi already anointed by "conservative," ostensibly pro-West (sometimes this includes Israel) American insiders, look for the Likud to continue what Begin and Sharon began, a horrific example being displayed last August. Unless Hamas, true to itself, sounds an alarm too loud to be ignored, the talking hairstyles and opinion-shapers will have their new mantra and wo/man in place soon. "This way to the gas, ladies and gentlemen." Except this time it will be a major bombing, perhaps 'accidental' collateral damage from America 'protecting' Israel whose rulers refused to pre-empt the clear and present danger to their people. 4. Get a map of the partition plan proposed in 1937 by the Peel Commission on "Palestine" (a copy is on page 258 in chapter 10 of the 3rd and re-printed edition of Samuel Katz's "Battleground"). There you will see the Jewish state toward which the Anglo-American elites have been marching, with the Arabs they fund in the role of heavies, since 1922 and the creation of "Transjordan." Notice, right in the middle, the separate section, "British Mandate, Jerusalem" which in recent decades has been termed the "cor separatum," the heart cut out of Judah and ruled by internationalist forces. At its widest, around Jerusalem, about 5 miles across, the steadily narrowing corridor reaches the sea at Jaffa-Tel Aviv. (Herzliya's been left inside, so it can destroy, the tiny Jewish state in the Galilee and around the Kinneret. That's what Israel is heading for if it doesn't effect regime change that recognizes Hamas, Fatah, Egypt, Syria, and their handlers for what they are:mortal enemies of the Jewish people. The IDF, what's left of it, will become an appendage of the international armed force that will 'manage the peace' and freedom process west of the Jordan; manage, too, it's long-planned integration with Iraq. The pieces are in place in plain view... Of course it won't last or even hold up; it's not meant to. It's meant to destroy what's been built of a Jewish state and to alienate Jews once more from their holiest sites and entire inheritance. The gods of this world cannot abide competition when it comes to authority and to determining right and wrong, what is required and forbidden. Review the Peel partition map, look at a map (available from Carta) of Yesha including the partition (ghetto) fences, and for alternative perspective on the issue, consult Joel 3, Zechariah 12 - 14, Ezekiel 37-8, or just use your mind a bit. Do you want another terror state where Israel is, or would you prefer a genuine Jewish state, making the entire Promised Land flourish and exporting good produce and good news throughout the world? If you're in America, contact your congressman and let them know you're very angry and worried about what the Bush regime is doing to Israel. As for the Israeli regime, it's Humpty - Dumpty: let's just hope it doesn't take the whole state, and all Jews, down with it. A great fall is coming. Professor Eugene Narrett teaches writing and Literature at Boston University. He is the author of hundreds of articles, columns and reviews on politics, American culture and the arts. He is completing a study on Romanticism and the longterm decline of Western Culture. He writes often on subjects relating to Israel and Judaism and is a weekly columnist for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Massachusetts. To Go To Top

BAKSHEESH; ISRAEL SUPPORTS NEGOTIATIONS WITH HAMAS; STAYING POWER Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, January 27, 2006.

BAKSHEESH In English "Baksheesh" translates into "bribery". In the Arab world it is simply the way of life. The Hamas leaders accurately claim that Fatah was riddled with corruptions which meant that all those receiving donor money from America and Europe were feeding at the public trough of Baksheesh. But, Hamas was not given space to feed on the Free West's donor monies also. Now it is their turn to gorge on the monies that come in from America, Europe, UNRWA (UN) and whatever they can squeeze out of the very rich Arab oil countries. Actually, the Arab oil money is also the income from the West for the oil to which we are addicted. (Note! The Rich Arab countries always pledge but rarely deliver because, having their own system of Baksheesh, they know where the money is really going - into the personal pockets of the Muslim Arab Terrorist leaders.) They depend upon the donor countries of the West to keep shoveling out the dollars (courtesy of their own tax-payers) in the $Billions to the Muslim Arab Palestinian Mafias and they don't have to. While Hamas was currying favor with the Palestinian Muslim Arabs by providing services which Fatah was not, they won the hearts and minds of the people. In addition, they were simultaneously carrying out the Jihad against Israel with suicide/homicide bombings, launching Kassam and Katyusha rockets (while claiming a "pretend" or "ersatz" cease-fire or truce which has lasted a year according to the International Media). Since Hamas, like Arafat, talks truce while continuing Terror and the Media parrot the claim of a cease fire - knowing it is false. I just heard former President Jimmy Carter hold forth on how we must continue funding PA President Mahmoud Abbas (nom de guerre) Abu Mazen, Fatah and the Palestinians. Having already wasted $Billions of America tax-payers' money, I wonder what goes through the mind of the peanut farmer who, when he was in office, literally put Ayatollah Khomeini into power in Iran. Clearly, Carter is still part of the "Baksheesh" crowd who never found a Terror group he couldn't find a reason not to fund. Let us see if the State Department, with President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice find a way to approve funds to funnel American tax-dollars into the Palestinian pockets. It has been reported that, due to Congressional cut-offs, the Bush-Rice team is working its way around the will of Congress by funneling money through International Charities and NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) located in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Gee. If you can't trust your President and the pro-Arab American State Department to honor the will of the American People, who can you trust? ISRAEL SUPPORTS NEGOTIATIONS WITH HAMAS We are told that 50% of the Israeli people support negotiation with the major Terrorist organization in the Palestinian Authority: Hamas. Would these be the same 50% who also supported Oslo 1 and then Oslo 2 - even as they not only failed but also led to a substantial killing of Jews. I am never too surprised or impressed with the abject stupidity of Leftist Jews, bleating for "peace" even as the Muslim Palestinians cheer every successful Terrorist act within Israel. The furor is escalating in Gaza and other areas controlled by the Fatah PA, courtesy of the Clinton-Rabin Oslo 1 and 2. The Fatah realize that they are going to lose their padded jobs and perks as they are replaced by Hamas. They may get around to lynching Abu Mazen whom they blame for losing the January 25th elections to Hamas in a landslide or tsunami - as the New York Times reported. Clearly, the fraud, corruption and "baksheesh" managed by Fatah will now be replaced by the fraud, corruption and "baksheesh" of Hamas. Actually, Fatah and Hamas should get along quite well, given the terms in each of their Charters as virtually the same, namely, erasing the Jewish State from the map. STAYING POWER For years I have followed a tactic used by Muslim Jihadists to hold off defeat. No doubt, there is an Arabic word for the tactic, like Hudna (temporary truce) which allows the Jihadists to rebuild their military forces and attaack again. There are other such tactics embodied in Arabic such as the phrases "Dar Islam" (house or world controlled by Islamic law) and "Dar al Harb" (house or world of war - those areas NOT controlled by Islam and therefore subjected to attack by Jihad - the sword - until victory.) Presently, we observe that Hamas, a Muslim Terrorist organization, needs a period of silence in order to consolidate their hold on the Palestinian Government before they can continue their pledge to destroy Israel. They are looking to the Leftists of Israel to plead for peace by giving up more territory. Olmert of the "Kadima" Party and Amir Peretz of the Labor Party seems ready to accommodate Hamas. Pledging a Hudna is SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) and it always works because its victims have No Staying Power. It is perfectly understandable that civilized nations and their people always yearn for the elusive "peace". But, when your enemy proves intractable, as are the Muslims, there is no choice. The Muslims all declare that they intend to wipe Israel off the map - as they have in the school textbooks, TV logos, symbols on uniforms, stationary, etc. They always seem to have their picture taken with visiting Western VIPs in front of the Golden Dome which sits on top of the Jewish Temple Mount. When you are finished counting the years of aggression, when you have totaled up the dead Jews from this aggression, when you see every gesture you offer used as their opportunity to the so-called "peace partner" to continue their killing - then you must cease further gestures of any kind. If you do NOT, you then fit the homiliy: "Dumb is curable, but stupid is forever". In Israel, a segment of the population loosely referred to as "the Left" or the "Left-Liberal" who fit another axiomatic condition known as the Lemmings: referring to those small rodents who, for inexplicable reasons, choose to hurl themselves over a cliff and thereby to die en masse. Here we find such titles as: Labor Zionists, Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), Gush Shalom etc., where they gather under one banner in preparation to hurl themselves (and regrettably all other Jews) over the cliff - like Lemmings. While the fanatical Jihadists send their young to commit ritual suicide - at least in their delusions, they believe they will get something out of their sacrifice. Not so with the Leftists. They are prepared to commit suicide for absolutely nothing although some believe the world will hate them less. Presently, we see Acting PM Ehud Olmert and his Kadima Lemmings, saying that their response to Terror is to withdraw from territory so the Terrorists can fill the vacuum and to be even closer to Israel's population centers. Clearly, in the minds of the Kadimites that will teach the Terrorists 'cum' Muslim Palestinians a severe lesson. Not to be outdone by the "Kadimites", the leaders of the Labor Party, Amir Peretz pledges to even outdo the "Kadimites" by abandoning even more and more Jewish Land. Not to be left behind, Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu (now head of the Likud Party) picks up the Sharon mantra that he, too, will make "painful concessions". In the meantime, the Hamas - linked to all other Terror groups, plainly say that they will help the "Kadimites", the Laborites and the Likudniks to fulfill their desire to commit national suicide. Where is the Nuremberg Tribunal and those hanging platforms just when they are needed most? In closing, CNN and FOX NEWS both show Fatah rioting in Gaza, the violent men shocked and furious that they have lost the election. Primarily, they have lost their cash flow. Let us next watch a build-up to a Civil War as they fight over the donor monies. In the meantime, President Bush is trying to explain why his push for Democracy in Arab lands has turned out to be the greatest gift he could have ever given to Terrorist groups, driven by Islamic dreams of world conquest. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at gwinston@interaccess.com To Go To Top

IS DEMOCRACY THE ANSWER TO ISLAMIST TERRORISM? Posted by Avodah 15, January 27, 2006.

This was written by Anton LaGuardia and appeared in UK Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid= CTVP1RB03TFFVQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/opinion/2006/01/27/ do2702.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/01/27/ixop.html). For the past two years, America has pursued the idea that democracy is the answer to Islamist terrorism. Now the Palestinian people have spoken clearly - and they have voted for the terrorists. Other elections have yielded worrying results: the Muslim Brotherhood, the forebear of all radical Sunni movements, did well in Egypt and would have done much better had it not been for the government's crude suppression; a Shia Islamist group with strong ties to Iran is in the driving seat in Iraq; and, in Iran, a radical president with an alarmingly apocalyptic tone has placed his country on a collision course with the West over its nuclear program. If the Syrian regime collapses, it may well be replaced by Islamist radicals. In Saudi Arabia, the alternative to the House of Saud is not Western liberalism but something more akin to the Taliban. Arab leaders - and not a few Europeans - will be muttering to the Americans: "We told you so. Allowing the ordinary Muslims to vote freely is a bad idea." Yet this would be the wrong lesson to draw. The popularity of political Islam reflects the bankruptcy of the political order that has gone before. When the state fails, as it has done across the Middle East since the end of the colonial era, then Muslims instinctively turn to the mosque. Palestinian leaders have turned weakness into a diplomatic art-form, telling Israel and the West they needed more concessions in order to have the authority to take on Hamas. With the terrorists in office, there should be no such ambiguity. When the suicide bombs go off, the address for protests will be the office of the Palestinian prime minister. Contact Avodah 15 at avodah15aol.com To Go To Top

"ARMED WING" MISCONCEPTION; WHAT DOES THE STATE DEPT THINK IT'S DOING?; SHARON'S JUDGMENT Posted by Richard H. Shulman, January 27, 2006.

THE "ARMED WING" MISCONCEPTION The NY Times reported that Hamas refuses to give up its "armed wing." The assumption is that terrorist organizations have two, separate wings and purposes, one military, the other civilian. This is a misconception. The purpose of Hamas is jihad. That is military and religious, there being no separation of the two in Islam. Its civilian services support jihad by providing terrorist families with insurance and by gaining popular support for its totalitarian program. It is difficult to believe that the Times does not know this. I think that the paper deliberately is misleading readers. It wants them to believe, contrary to experience, that peace can be negotiated with a non-military wing of a terrorist organization. Through negotiations, Israel can be divested of territory, in accordance with the Times decades-old anti-Zionism. Years ago, I explained the source of that anti-Zionism as the Jewish owners' answer to their fear of being accused of dual loyalty. If they opposed Jewish sovereignty, they thought, gentiles would not accuse them of singular loyalty to their Jewish people. In recent years, however, the family converted to Christianity. The original motivation for its anti-Zionism is gone, but the policy has become embedded in the paper's solidarity with the State Dept.. Pity. WHAT DOES THE STATE DEPT. THINK IT'S DOING? The State Dept demands that the P.A. election go forward. It insists that Israel permit Arabs who live in eastern Jerusalem to vote in this election. Has that election some value? No, it is a contest between two groups of terrorists over who should conduct the war on Israel and who is in charge of the budget. Why the US insistence? First, the State Dept. has no compunction against interfering in the sovereign affairs of Israel, which cannot hit back at State. Second, the vote is part of a pretense that an election, any election with competing parties, reflects US support for democracy. The election, however, does not produce a free press, minority and female rights, non-conformist parties, or any other feature of democracy. Third, letting Arabs in eastern Jerusalem vote in the P.A. elections is another nail in the coffin of Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. In its eagerness to deflate Israeli sovereignty, the State Dept. strengthens anti-American terrorism. The State Dept. is an adjunct for anti-Americanism. ISRAEL VS. POLLARD The editor of Globes wrote an impassioned and ethical rebuke to the government of Israel for, in effect, murdering Jonathan Pollard. As everybody knows by now, the government admitted that Pollard was its agent. Nevertheless, the government helps keep him in a life sentence, in effect, condemning him to death in prison. It does so by opposing in court his petition for recognition as a "prisoner of Zion." He had sought to protect the Jewish state as much as anyone else imprisoned for protecting the Jewish state. Chief Justice Shamgar easily could have ruled that way instead of the reverse. Opposing him in court undermines Israel's efforts to get the US to release him, for if Israel won't recognize him, why should the US? (IMRA, 1/20.) It was a decent article but exhibited surprising ignorance about Israel's stance towards Pollard. The government, i.e., the Cabinet, conspicuously has done nothing to attain Pollard's release under clemency. It claims to have, but the prisoner's wife refuted those claims. When PM Sharon visits Pres. Bush, carrying a petition for clemency from the Knesset, but does not present it to him, Bush realizes that Sharon does not want Pollard out. The editor should have criticized the government for this implied condemnation. Why has Sharon acted this way? Is he appeasing the US? Perhaps. Probably more important is his complicity in the spying and in the abandoning of Pollard. He would not want Pollard free to inform Israelis of Sharon's guilt. THE QUESTION ABOUT SHARON'S JUDGMENT Sharon reversed his policy, when he turned on the settlers with vicious and deceitful tactics that aided the Arabs. The earlier theories to explain this inconsistency were pressure by the US and by leftist Israeli prosecutors. Another reason may have operated in tandem with those earlier ones. It is Alzheimer's disease. In explaining the use of certain medicine, Sharon's doctors mentioned an earlier onset of that mental disease. They did not state how serious it became. This diagnosis raises further questions. Did his entourage keep this news from the public, rather than incline him to resign? Did the US exploit Sharon's failing judgment to foist its policy, harmful to Israel, upon Israel (Winston Mideast Analysis, 1/11) What rights does the public have in such cases? Has it a right to know? DEMOCRACY THWARTED IN ISRAEL The Central Committee helps run Likud. Many Committee members sympathize with Sharon's Party, but have not resigned from Likud. They continue to wield influence in their rival, Likud (IMRA, 1/11). We know politics isn't always fair, but this is too much. 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 HAMAS VICTORY:COMPLETING THE PROCESS OF PLO/HAMAS COOPERATION Posted by David Bedein, January 27, 2006.

Over the past month, our news agency has been facilitating a documentary film on the subject of the Hamas, in which our colleagues interviewed Hamas leaders who serve prison sentences prison for dispatching people to commit acts of murder, in which their victims -- men, women and children of all ages -- were killed in cold blood in shopping centers, schools, coffee shops, open air markets, or in their living room at home. Each of these Hamas leaders openly said that they expect to be free very soon, that they expect to resume their "operations", that they have no regrets for their actions, and that their purpose is to overthrow the State of Israel and to replace it with an "Islamic State of Palestine". These Hamas leaders spoke calmly, with self-confidence, and were pleased to pose for the cameras after each interview. And now these very Hamas leaders have won the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council, to complete an 18 year process of cooperation between the Hamas and the PLO, which had been the dominant party in the nascent Palestinian Authority. The Hamas, founded in 1987, and the PLO, founded much earlier, in 1964, work with the same funding source: Saudi Arabia, one of the Arab nations that had attacked Israel in 1948 to destroy the news Jewish state. Saudi Arabia has never signed a peace treaty (like Jordan and Egypt) and has never even signed an armistice (like Syria and Lebanon) Meanwhile, the PLO has nurtured the Hamas for leadership in a Palestinian state. As the Oslo process gathered momentum, the PLO cooperation with the Hamas's popular movement was conducted in the open, yet hardly reported. When Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Peres and PLO leader Yassir Arafat all got a joint Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December 1994, I asked Rabin and Peres if Arafat would crush the Hamas and cancel the PLO covenant calling for Israel's destruction. Peres and Rabin held their own press conference and assured the media that they had ironclad commitment from Arafat to crush the Hamas and to cancel the PLO covenant which calls for Israel's gradual destruction. However, when I asked Arafat the same questions, he laughed at the idea that he was supposed to "crush the Hamas" and instead described the Hamas as "my brothers" and denied any assurance that he would cancel the PLO covenant. 250 news agencies heard Arafat's answer. Not one reported it. Four months later, in April, 1995, after intense negotiations between the PLO and the Hamas, Arafat committed himself to licensing and distributing weapons for the Hamas. At the time, the Voice of Israel Radio had reported that Arafat was "confiscating the weapons" from the Hamas, as did the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Yet on May 9th, 1995, The PA held a ceremony in which it formally distributed weapons to Hamas in an event was reported on the Voice of Palestine radio, and picked up by the New York Times. Yet the story was relegated to the back pages of Israeli newspapers and, to this day, most people to this day that the Hamas is armed by the Palestinian Authority. In December, 1995. the PA and the Hamas reached a cooperative agreement in Cairo to absorb the Hamas into the framework of the Palestinian Authority, after which the PA ceded the all important position of "minister of communications" to a Hamas official. However, the PLO-HAMAS Cairo agreement was carried out in the weeks that followed the assassination of Rabin, and the impact on public opinion was not really felt. The Cairo Agreement was also relegated to the back pages of the media. After the breakdown of Israeli-Palestinian Camp David negotiations in the summer of 2000, two key PLO members and officials of the PA -- Muhammad Dahlan and Marwan Bargouhti -- established a "joint military command:" with the Hamas -- in a cooperative agreement to carry out murder activities in a coordinated fashion, with no pretense of "good cop" for the Fateh and "bad cop" for the Hamas. And over this past week, on the last day of the PA political campaign, one of the founders of the PLO, PA foreign minister Nabil Shaath made a solid campaign promise that he would "never disarm the Hamas." Meanwhile, the PA state constitution, adopted by the Palestinian Legislative Council, a full three years before the Hamas electoral victory this week, mandates that a future Palestinian State will be based on Sharia Islamic law, modeled on Saudi Arabia and Iran, in which there is no juridical status for Jews. In other words, the PA constitution is quite compatible with the Hamas Charter, and the cooperation between the PLO and the Hamas will continue unabated. On the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the first entity since the Third Reich has been established to sanction the cold blooded murder of Jews. David Bedein is bureau chief of the Israel Resource News Agency (www.IsrtaelBehindTheNews.com) in Jerusalem. To Go To Top

ISRAELI POLICY PAYS OF AT LAST -- WITH A HAMAS NAZI STATE Posted by Steven Plaut, January 27, 2006.

There is something smugly satisfying when watching the end of a long dramatic movie, when all of the strands come together, where the audience can at long last see how all the seemingly unrelated pieces lead logically to the single ending, where all the suspense and mystery have been resolved. The emergence of a Hamas nazi state in the suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is the inevitable and predetermined result of the past 14 years of the Oslo "Peace Process". There is a single unbreakable strand that leads from the secret illegal Oslo "negotiations" of a handful of Israeli leftist pseudo-academics in the late 1980s, through the Peres-Rabin initiative in 1992, through the 1993 White House ceremony announcing the first Oslo Accord (with Arafat dressed in military fatigues), to the emergence of the Hamas nazi state today with the overwhelming majority vote in the Palestinian "election". Everything that the Israeli political establishment did over the past 13 years led directly and unwaveringly to the Hamas nazi state. The Labor Party and the Likud are equally to blame. The campaign of national self-abasement; the demonization of the anti-Oslo dissidents; the anti-speech McCarthyism after the Rabin assassination by Yigal Amir; the self-recruitment by the Israeli media -- under the near-hegemony of the Far Left -- on behalf of endless appeasement of the Palestinians, the Peace Now campaigns; the Tel Aviv "peace" rallies with their numbers inflated manifold by the media; the conversion of the Israeli universities into Petri dishes of Post-Zionism; the propaganda and indoctrination in the public school curriculum; the "We have a Partner in Negotiations" campaign; the make-pretend cooperation with the Palestinian Authority; the suppression of much of the news of the daily atrocities by the PLO and its affiliates; the campaign to get international recognition of the PLO; the Israeli funding of the Palestinian Authority; the arms sent by Israel to the PLO; the campaign to grant the PLO representation and legitimacy in international forums; the turning of a blind eye when Israel was flooded with international "solidarity" protester thugs assisting the terrorists and attacking Israeli soldiers and police; the persecution of Jewish settlers when they defended themselves; the fabrication of the "settlers vandalizing trees" and "settlers attacking Palestinians" canards; the turning a blind eye to the open treason of some Israeli Arab politicians; the turning of a blind eye to the enormous growth in Islamofascism among Israeli Arabs; the insistence by the Israeli political elite that the nazi propaganda coming out of the Palestinian Authority was "just talk" and "letting off steam"; the "controlled carnage" agreements with the Hizbollah and the PLO; the release of hundreds of murderers to appease the Hizbollah after it murdered three captive Israeli officers; the turning of the other cheek when hundreds of Kassams landed; the refusal to retaliate when Jerusalem neighborhoods were targets of PLO gunfire; the cowardly abandonment of Sderot to the shelling and rockets; the "Really Really Hard" empty threats after each PLO atrocity; the hectoring of the public by the politicians about how "we really need to make painful sacrifices"; the acquiescence to a policy of "Israel makes peace while the Palestinians continue to make war"; the promotion of the doctrine that peace can best be achieved by pretending that war does not exist; the lecturing of Israelis by their leaders about how they are selfish and unwilling to share; the campaign to purge all symbols of Judaism from the state and all Jewish content from the school curriculum; the promotion by Israeli leftist leaders and professors of "Naqba Day, in which Israel mourns its own creation; the continued employment of traitors and anti-Semites as university faculty members; the celebration of leftist "army service refusers" and mutineers as moral heroes; the refusal to prosecute Arab and Jewish extremists for treason; the indictment and investigation of Rabbis; the expulsion of the heroes of Gush Katif, and the ethnic cleansing of the Jews of Gaza; the labeling of all anti-Oslo dissidents as "inciters"; the campaign to accuse all anti-Oslo dissidents of collective guilt in the death of Rabin; the abandonment of any attempt to stop the smuggling of explosives into Gaza from Egypt; the countless make-pretend "projects of cooperation" with the Palestinian Authority; ignoring the open endorsements of suicide bombing and terrorism by Israeli Arab and Jewish extremists; the failure to indict Yossi Beilin and Ami Ayalon for their "initiatives"; the proposals to purge the Israeli flag of the Star of David and to expunge references to Jewish yearnings from the national anthem; the Israeli offers to abandon half of Jerusalem. At the end of the film Casablanca, all the strands come to their denouement, their inevitable end. Will the emergence of the Hamas nazi state in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem at last wake Israelis up? If so, then -- like Bogie walking off with Claude Rains -- we will at last have the start of a beautiful friendship. 2. Over the past few days Barry Chamish, the inventor of the world's most infantile conspians for a Safe Israel are backing him and endorsing his "theories". This claim is as truthful as everything else Chamish writes. In fact, Chamish's followers behave exactly like a cult and a handful of Chamishites infiltrated a chat list nominally associated with the AFSI on Yahoo as moles. The list was hijacked by the Chamishites, who posted endorsements of Chamish's "theories", even including his "theories" about UFOs. Cults commonly infiltrate chat lists as moles -- it is a common tactic of the LaRouchians and Newmanites, to name but two. The Chamishite cult seems to have a few dozen members. The AFSI has now purged all the Chamishite moles from its list and issued a statement denouncing Chamish and Chamishism. Chamish has invented brain-numbing theories about how Israel is crawling with giant space aliens, how Natan Sharansky is a KGB spy, how Shimon Peres gave Ofra Haza AIDS to silence her and how Peres knocked down JFK Jr's plane and murdered a US Congressman, how the head of the Bank of Israel is a spy, and how the publishers of Foreign Affairs magazine really knocked down the WTC on 911 by planting bombs inside. Chamish is now an official columnist on the neonazi Holocaust Denier web site RENSE.com, which promotes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and runs numerous Holocaust Denial articles, such as "Auschwitz is a Myth", in addition to the familiar conspiracism nonsense. Chamish chooses to publish his conspiracist trash with RENSE.com, and also with several other neonazi web sites, including that run by the Adelaide Institute Nazis in Australia (they have run over 40 Chamish articles). Chamish's main detective techniques in uncovering conspiracies seem to be the decoder ring and disappearing ink he got from the back of a comic book. Chamish is on record as saying that Labor Zionist leaders planned the Holocaust. Chamish's "theory" of the Rabin assassination is as truthful and credible as all the other Chamish fabrications. The AFSI has unambiguously denounced Chamish and the Chamish cult. 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him by email at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il To Go To Top

HAMASTAN: WHAT TO DO NOW? Posted by Dovid Ben Chaim, January 26, 2006.

The "Palestinians" have spoken: they want a Islamist government that will destroy Israel. Smart people, decent people, honest people must now seize this clarifying moment to begin thinking and formulating a way to ensure a new proposition enters the MAINSTREAM for serious consideration. To wit: After 60 years on the table, quite obviously the "two-state" solution has proved to be a dead-end and a chimera. Israel and her true friends now need to reconsider the idea of a "one-state" solution; Israeli sovereignty from the Jordan to the Sea, with the status of Arabs living therein determined by the will of the Israeli people. Anyone willing to look history in the eye knows there is simply no other way, no other alternative. Everything else means succumbing to more illusions, delaying the inevitable and needlessly killing more Jews (and others) in the process. Contact the author at dovidbenchaim@myway.com To Go To Top

ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE FAILURE ON HAMAS' ELECTION WIN Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, January 26, 2006.

Reminiscent of the infamous failure of Israel Intelligence to anticipate the Yom Kippur War in September 1973 and the fumbling of decisions by the Golda Meir Government, the Israeli Intelligence fumbled again on Hamas on January 26th. It is known that Israeli Intelligence assured Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Fatah, under President Mahmoud Abbas (nom de guerre) Abu Mazen would win the elections. As is now apparent, Hamas won in a landslide and, therefore, controls the Palestinian Government (such as it is). The question arises, why with all the on-ground Humint (Human Intelligence) scattered throughout Gaza and the cities controlled by the Palestinian Authority, did Israeli Intelligence miss the assessment by such a wide margin? Several answers come to mind: First, the Israel Intelligence has become so politicized that their level of competence has dropped to a very low level. Second: Because the agencies have been so loaded with PCs (Politically-Correct Leftists) that realistic assessments are no longer possible. So, the information given to Olmert was consistent with what Olmert wanted to hear. Keep in mind that, in terms of Intelligence Operations or the Military, Olmert is not the brightest bulb. Olmert made the decision not to interfere with Hamas and its electioneering. Presumably, if we look a little past Olmert, we would see the ever present Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice giving instructions. The Intelligence failure was dramatic -- given the results. Apparently, on the streets of Gaza City, Nablus, Ram'Allah, Bethlehem, Jenin, Qalqilya and Jericho the Muslim Arab people were not hiding their tilt to Hamas. So, how could Israeli Intelligence miss by so wide a margin? As for Olmert and his Kadima crowd, none of them are too swift in being able to make probing assessments of incoming Intelligence. Raw intelligence is like an onion. You must peel it back, layer by layer, until you think you have arrived at the correct level of evaluation. Olmert and his crew are just not capable. Without Arik Sharon's military experience, Ehud Olmert is merely an empty shell. Clearly, there should be an inquiry by the Intelligence and Defense arm of the Knesset. Something is dreadfully wrong with the various Intelligence services. If they have been emasculated by the politicians and loaded with political appointments, then they desperately need a shakeout or a shakeup. I would add that goes for the military which has far too many officers who owe their appointments to the political establishment. If ever there was a need for such an inquiry, it is now. There was such an inquiry regarding the Yom Kippur Intelligence failure and heads did roll. It is time for another inquiry before -- not after -- the next war. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at gwinston@interaccess.com To Go To Top

ISRAEL, JEWS AND THE PRESS Posted by David Meir-Levi, January 26, 2006.

This comes from the Fred On Everything (FOE) blog. Years back, when I was writing a military column for Universal Press Syndicate, I heard of a book on women in the armed services called The Kinder, Gentler Military (the title as it turned out was ironic) by Stephanie Gutmann, a Jewish woman out of Manhattan. The latter didn't sound like a recommendation. I expected a feminist tirade. However my friend Catherine Aspy spoke well of it. Kate had graduated from Harvard in 1992 and, setting a historic record for wild improbability, enlisted in the US Army. She knew the military. She had seen what Gutmann was writing about, and liked the book. So I read it. To my surprise, Gutmann knew what she was talking about. She wasn't political, just reportorial, and described perfectly the fraud and double standards used to make women look successful in the army. Much of it would be hard to credit, except that I had seen it from outside as Kate had from the inside. In the course of events I met Steph a couple of times, chatted on the phone, and lost contact with her. The book got few and bad reviews because it was not what the media wanted to hear. It was a fine book. (Amazon has it.) A couple of months ago, I ran across a blurb about another book that she recently wrote, The Other War, described as arguing that Israel takes an unfair beating in the press, which is skilfully manipulared by the Palestinians. If Alan Dershowitz had written it, I'd have dismissed it as propaganda -- but then, I have read Dershowitz. Instead I ordered the book. The subject interested me for various reasons, one being an odd contradiction I had noticed. I get considerable mail from the anti-Jewish backchannels on the net telling me that the Jews control the American media. Often these are accompanied by lists, usually accurate enough, of important positions in the media held by Jews. My correspondents then assert that because of this control we hear only good things about Israel. Well and good -- except that for perhaps fifteen years I had never heard anything good about Israel from the media. The Israelis were always deliberately shooting little Palestinian children, bulldozing houses from sheer vindictiveness, reducing Palestinians to poverty, murdering Palestinian leaders, torturing all within reach, and intimidating the press. The Palestinians were noble freedom fighters, just like Davy Crockett, or hapless victims. Hmmm, I wondered. If Jews control the press and only tell us good things about Israel, how come I never hear anything from the press about Israel except bad things? I was also interested because I'd had considerable if scattered experience in Israel, and indeed cut my journalistic baby-teeth there. In 1967 on recuperative leave from Bethesda Naval Hospital I had gone to Europe with a shot-up squid off of PBRs in Asia, gotten bored, and gone to Israel. We hippied about, had the usual adventures, got mortared in Eilat. (The hippies didn't understand why we were suddenly on the floor. We knew what "ka-chung" meant.) In '73 I went to Israel as a greenhorn war correspondent for the Fredericksburg, Virginia, Free-Lance Star. I was pig-ignorant of the news racket, looked like Mehitabel the Cat's degenerate brother, and must have astonished the Israelis, but my credentials checked out and the info people were pretty decent. I got to the Golan, the Sinai, and so on. I was there for the doings of the early 80s. Anyway, Stephanie's book arrived. In it she makes a (well documented, example-filled) case that the mainstream media are relentlessly hostile to Israel. Yes, I know. This is so contrary to what we are told daily that to doubt it feels a bit like doubting gravitation. And don't important papers and networks all agree? When you are told something often enough you begin to believe that you know it. And since I hadn't been to Israel in twenty-five years, I couldn't speak from recent personal experience. But something stank. The news from the region was too pat, too homogeneous. Her description of the behavior of the press in Israel, with which she is intimately familiar, was exactly what I had seen in countless other places -- ignorant, herd-like, egomaniacal, adversarial; unremmittingly partisan, moralizing, all snottily in agreement, with much clawing over each other to make a name. Of this I knew a great deal. With today's media, taking sides instead of reporting is usual. Most of us I think know this from daily observation. For example, if whites murder a black for reasons of racial hostility, it is news for weeks, but should the crime go in the other direction, the story will be downplayed and then suppressed. One is as bad as the other -- but that is not how it is reported. Should a man suggest that men are better than women at mathematics, the press will not regard it as a question to be investigated but as a crime to be punished. "Political correctness" is nothing but herdwired advocacy journalism. If the press couldn't get anything else right, I thought, why should I trust them on Israel? I have seen endless inaccuracy and untruthfulness. I was in Phnom Penh for the final siege. The papers in the States spoke of "barrages" of rockets "pounding" the city. Actually, there were scattered rockets, six or eight a day, and probably not one reporter in fifty knew what "barrage" meant. When Americans were reading about the "starving" city, I was stepping over pigs, quite chubby, tied on sidewalks. One of the newsweeklies, I forget which, ran a cover of Cambodians running in terror with the city in flames behind. I was there. No flames. It was a file photo from who knows when. For years in Washington I covered the military in the company of reporters for allegedly meritorious publications -- the Washington Post, the New York Times, the networks. There was the same preachy witless partisanship. Everyone has heard about the $600 toilet seat and the $17 dollar bolts bought by the Pentagon, no? I covered these stories. They were nonsense. The reporters easily could have determined that they were nonsense. In those days the entire press corps (the pack effect) insisted that American weapons didn't work, were too complex, broke constantly. Not even close. On and on. When a woman I know to be a fine reporter tells me that the press in Israel behaves exactly as I have know it to behave everywhere else, I'm inclined to take her seriously. My objection to the behavior of the press in general, and I think hers to its behavior in Israel, is not to its political positions but to dishonest reporting. The view that, say, Israel should get out of the West Bank is a political one, legitimate in a column. The Palestinians are part of the story too and should be covered fairly. But sloppy reporting according to a heavily-agendaed double standard is just lousy journalism. When Guttman writes about reporters hanging around the press bar in Jerusalem and writing I-was-there stories when they weren't, or about photographers looking for the Pulitzer photo without knowing or caring what was going on, or about craftedly dishonest writing to support a political position, she is describing something I have seen over and over elsewhere. It's just how the business works. A curious fact, though she doesn't mention it, is that many of the reporters she cites as most hostile to Israel are Jewish. For example, Ted Koppel. I assume that Suzanne Goldenberg and Rick Kaplan are Jewish, though I grant that they may be Chinese Protestants with Jewish names. She cites the New York Times, Jewish owned, as particularly hostile. Jews whom I know say the same thing: It isn't caricature anti-Semites but the liberal press. Explain it as you will, but I have noticed the same thing. It doesn't add up to Israeli control of the press. If the Middle East interests you, I recommend The Other War. Judge it as you will. But read it. To Go To Top

HAMAS HIRES SPIN DOCTOR Posted by Israel Resource News Agency, January 26, 2006.

This was written by Chris McGreal, Middle East Correspondent, and it appeared January 21, 2006 in the Guardian. Hamas is paying a spin doctor $180,000 to persuade Europeans and Americans that it is not a group of religious fanatics who relish suicide bombings and hate Jews. The organisation, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, has hired a media consultant, Nashat Aqtash, to improve its image at home and abroad because it expects to emerge from next week's Palestinian general election as a major political force, and wants recognition and acceptance by the US and EU. "Hamas has an image problem. The Israelis were able to create a very bad image of the Palestinians in general and particularly Muslims and Hamas. My contract is to project the right image," said Mr Aqtash, who also teaches media at Birzeit University in Ramallah. "We don't need the international community to accept Hamas ideology, we need it to accept the facts on the ground. We are not killing people because we love to kill. People view Hamas as loving sending people to die. We don't love death, we like life." Mr Aqtash, who describes himself as opposed to violence and "believing in the Gandhi route", has advised Hamas leaders to change their image by explaining that they do not hate Israelis because they are Jews. And he is attempting to persuade influential foreigners that Hamas is essentially a peaceful organisation that was forced to fight, but is now committed to pressing its cause through politics, not violence. "Hamas does not believe in terrorism or killing civilians. But Ariel Sharon pressed buttons to make people angry. Sometimes we are innocent enough to react in a way that the Israelis use the reaction against us," he said. Next week Mr Aqtash says he will address the former US president Jimmy Carter and former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, and other prominent foreigners monitoring the election. But he admits he and his small team working from an office in Ramallah have their work cut out. Hamas is responsible for scores of suicide bombings, killing and maiming hundreds of civilians (many of them children), although not for yesterday's attack in Tel Aviv. Hamas's founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel and it wants to impose an Islamic state on all Palestinian territory. Mr Aqtash, who says he is not a member of Hamas and does not know where it got the money to pay him but frequently refers to the group as "we", says he has told the leadership it has to change its rhetoric. He says Hamas has not helped itself by celebrating suicide bombings; he advises against celebration. And he has told Hamas leaders not to talk about destroying Israel. "Abdel Aziz Rantisi [the former Hamas leader killed by Israel two years ago] was on television saying things that foreigners cannot accept, like we will remove Israel from the map. He should have talked about Palestinian suffering. He should have said we need this occupation ended. Foreigners will accept this," he said. Mr Aqtash has also advised Hamas leaders to emphasise that they are not anti-semitic or against Israelis because they are Jews. Hamas has taken the message on board. In an interview earlier this week, Muhammad Abu Tir, who is second on the Hamas election list, twice (and unprompted) offered an assurance that he is not a Jew hater. "Loving others is part of our religion. We are not against Jews as Jews, we are against oppression," he said. Mr Aqtash also told Mr Abu Tir to rid himself of a red beard, coloured by henna, because it makes people laugh. The PR man wriggles away from questions about whether Hamas has more than an image problem when it sends bombers on buses and into cafes. "I'm personally against killing. All civilians should not be killed. Killing Israeli civilians is not accepted by the international community. They think it is a terrorist act," he said. "But Sharon was responsible for killing civilians too. During this intifada Hamas killed a thousand Israelis, some of them civilians, some of them soldiers. But the Israelis killed 4,000 Palestinians. It's a war. The Israelis use F16s; Hamas uses people. Anyway, Hamas hasn't sent a suicide bomber in a year." Hamas is also attempting to soften its image at home with the launch of a television station in Gaza that includes a children's show presented by "Uncle Hazim" and men in furry animal suits. [Editor's note: see below.] The station, named Al Aqsa Television after Islam's third holiest site, says it intends to put across the group's message "but without getting into the tanks, the guns, the killing and the blood". It will instead focus on religious readings, discussion programmes and a talent show. Mr Aqtash, however, is not entirely confident in his powers of persuasion. "How did I do?" he asked as the interview ended. "Did I make you think differently about Hamas?" Helpful hints The advice Nashat Aqtash gave to Hamas: Say you are not against Israelis as Jews Don't talk about destroying Israel Do talk about Palestinian suffering Don't celebrate killing people Change beard colour (if red) The Israel Resource News Agency (http://Israelbehindthenews.com), is based in Jerusalem. David Bedein is Bureau Chief. To Go To Top

SODOM AND GOMORRAH Posted by David Wilder, January 26, 2006.

In 1983 Deli Landau, then 19 years old, left London to live in Israel. A few years later she married Menachem, and for over twenty years the couple has lived in Hebron. Menachem is the principal of the Kiryat Arba Religious Junior High School for boys. Deli, in her words, specializes in mops and diapers, while taking care of her eleven children. She is also a professional medic who frequently journeys in Hebron's ambulance to Jerusalem, accompanying, among others, women on their way to give birth. She also cares very much for where she lives, for her land and for her people. Not a bashful woman, Deli makes her opinion known, not only with words, but also with actions. Last week, on her way into Kiryat Arba from Hebron, was stopped at the gate by a police officer, who asked her if she was from Hebron. When she responded positively, he demanded to see her ID card. Her response: "if you only demand IDs of Hebron residents, your motives are political." With that she put her foot on the gas and drove into Kiryat Arba. Moments later a police van pulled up behind her and, speaking through a loud speaker, yelled at her to stop. She suddenly heard the policeman screaming that she had tried to run him down. An officer, peering into her car, demanded that several others hand over their Israeli IDs. When they refused, they were arrested. Deli was ordered to follow the police to the local police headquarters. There she was charged with attacking a police officer, (as opposed to attempting to run him down). However, the primary charge against Deli Landau revolves around the issuance of expulsion orders to Hebron residents of the Mitzpe Shalhevet neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. Two uniformed officers of the Israeli "Civil Administration" arrived in the neighborhood at about 10:00 in the morning, accompanied by dozens of police, the riot squad, soldiers, and journalists. When the expulsion forces met, face to face with Hebron residents and supporters, a volcano erupted. During the ensuing fracas, Deli, whose apartment borders the homes of the endangered Mitzpe Shalhevet apartments, stood on a porch and poured a pitcher of water onto people standing under her, in the road. Her goal was several police, but her aim was off, and the water splashed a few yeshiva students who got in the way. As a result of her attempt to waste water on Israeli expulsion forces, Deli was charged with attacking police officers and rioting. Last week, following her arrest, Deli and her 15 month old son spent the night at the Neve Tirza woman's prison. The next day, during a court hearing, the judge agreed to allow her to spend Shabbat at her parent's home in Jerusalem, under house arrest, until a second hearing. The prosecutor's office was demanding that she be remanded in prison until conclusion of all proceedings against her. This morning, at the Jerusalem Shalom Court, judge Ilta Ziskind rendered the following decision: * Deli must remain in house arrest at her parent's home in Jerusalem, until conclusion of expulsion from the Mitzpe Shalhevet neighborhood. * Following conclusion of the expulsion, the police will be notified and Deli will be allowed to return to her home in Hebron. * Deli is forbidden from being anywhere else in Judea and Samaria for a year. * She must deposit 5,000 shekels cash and sign a bail bond for another 20,000 shekels, which will be collected should she violate the court decision, or not appear at trial. During the hearing, the 'honorable judge' lectured Deli: 'As the mother of eleven children, you should be more responsible and refrain from rioting and attacking police. Your children are liable to learn from you actions, and this is one of the reasons you must not be allowed home, to prevent your children from learning from your deeds.' What can we determine from this court decision? 1. The judge has already decided that there will be an expulsion in Hebron. (I asked Deli what will happen if, for some reason, the 'expulsion' is delayed or postponed. Her response: "Wow -- I'll really be stuck." 2. Judges know better than mothers how to educate their children 3. Israeli courts may punish citizens, despite the fact that they haven't been tried or convicted. (Exile from all of Judea and Samaria for a year!) (I asked Deli if she was allowed to enter Kiryat Arba, to go to the doctor, post office, grocery store, etc. She didn't know). 4. Most importantly: pouring water on a policeman is a horrific crime, to be equated with 'physically attacking police.' Deli isn't the first person to lately be so oppressed by Israeli 'justice.' A 15 year old Hebron youth was 'distanced from Hebron (where his family lives) for two months. He is under 'yeshiva arrest,' i.e., he cannot leave the yeshiva where he studies, except for Shabbat, when he is allowed home. Why? What did he do? The police have a photograph of a male with his face covered by a stocking hat, whose jacket is similar to the Hebron boy's jacket. So, of course, that is proof enough to determine final identification and justify preemptive punishment and exile from his home. Other examples: A 15 year old girl, with no criminal record, was charged with rioting, disturbing a policeman who was fulfilling his duty, and entering a 'closed military zone' because she attempted to leave Kiryat Arba to Hebron, despite a military order declaring the area a 'closed military zone.' She was not charged with any violent activity, but the prosecution demanded that she be held in prison until conclusion of all proceedings against her. The court ruled that she be held in house arrest until conclusion of the expulsion from Mitzpe Shalhevet. Only then will she be allowed to return to her studies at the Kiryat Arba religious girls High School. A 15 year old girl, without any past criminal record, was arrested because of 'unbecoming behavior' (chuztpa). She resisted arrest and scratched an army officer. The same officer provided 'an eyewitness account' that he had seen her rioting several days earlier. As a result of this single witness, the judge ordered that the girl be held until conclusion of all proceedings against her. She is incarcerated in the Russian compound in Jerusalem, in very harsh conditions. A 16 year old boy, from a family of terror victims, was arrested when a policeman argued that he could identify him as having 'pushed police' with his head covered by a stocking hat. As a result of this testimony, the boy has been in jail for over a week and the prosecution is demanding that he be remanded until conclusion of all proceedings against him. Attorney Naftali Wertzberger noted the following trends presently utilized by the Israeli prosecution and courts: * Demands to imprison until conclusion of proceedings, even when dealing with minors, breast-feeding mothers, and people without any criminal record. * Usage of 'house-arrest' punishment on minors, causing them to miss school 'until conclusion of the expulsion from the 'shuk' in Hebron.' * Very frequent visits by police to 'check' those under house arrest -- up to 5 to 6 times a day. * Demands to deposit 5,000 shekels cash to the court. In addition, it has been learned that the director of special tasks in the prosecutor's office, Attorney Shi Nitzan, is taking a personal interest in the present cases, is following them and has issued instructions forbidding police prosecutors from reaching any kind of agreement or compromise with the 'suspects.' Any such agreement must have his personal stamp of approval. Tomorrow Deli Landau's attorney will file an appeal with the Jerusalem municipal appeals court. However, no one has any illusions as to the outcome of the case. It is quite clear that prosecutor's office and the courts have joined together, not to seek justice, but rather to seek repression of basic human rights, punishing prior to trial and conviction, while oppressing Israelis attempting to protest a most dastardly crime: eviction and expulsion from Jewish homes, presently in Hebron, and likely also in Amona and other communities throughout Judea and Samaria, following in the footsteps of Gush Katif and the northern Shomron. We are living a replay of Sodom and Gomorrah, when justice and hospitality were an anathema and evil was the name of the game. And we all know what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. Phone & fax numbers: President Moshe Katsav; tel: 972-2-670-72-11 or 5611033 fax: 972-2-567-13-14 State Comptroller's office: tel: 972-2-666-5000 fax: 972-2-666-5204 and fax the department responsible for the police: 972-2-530-9999 Prime Min spokesman: Assaf Sharif 972-2-5666920 (dir.) fax: 972-2-5669245 cell: 972-50-7724881 $ID To Go To Top

ISRAEL AT 57 Posted by Gary S., January 26, 2006.

This is from the Jerusalem Post "Here are some of the reasons I love Israel, in no particular order: 1. The clock radio rouses me with "Shema Yisrael," the Jewish pledge of allegiance, and the weather is nearly always fine. 2. On Memorial Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day, the act of remembering halts traffic. 3. The Israel Prize recognizes lifetime achievement for actresses and rabbis, scientists and singers. 4. Mother's Day is celebrated on the yahrzeit of Henrietta Szold, who organized Youth Aliya with Recha but who had no children of her own. 5. All citizens have health care, and the fight is on to get coverage for foreign residents. 6. If my car overheats, even men in designer suits will leap to help me. 7. 25% of Israelis have been close enough to hear a bombing, yet two million of us were out vacationing on Pessah. That's resilience. 8. An evening of singing is still a popular grown-up pastime. 9. Entire families show up for military graduations and bring enough food to feed an army. 10. A circumcision ceremony, brit mila, is important enough to take an hour off from work. 11. Israelis give out their cell phone numbers -- the difference between our private and professional lives isn't neatly delineated. 12. Supermarkets deliver. 13. We have more In-Vitro Fertilization per capita than anywhere because we love children. 14. Our beggars are courageous -- they solicit on even the highest-risk street corners. 15. Nearly every family story includes persecution, battle experience, and the upheaval of uprooting -- yet Israelis are optimists 16. Street musicians are good enough to play in chamber orchestras 17. Despite the stress, creativity flourishes: Israel has more start-up companies than any country outside the US. 18. We're talkative -- both the cell phone and voice mail were invented here 19. We get excited about cyclamens, almond blossoms, and drive far to see budding Lupins (tormosim). 20. On Friday, religious or not, everyone is hurrying towards Shabbat. Check out the bakery lines 21. Aliyah stories can make the evening news 22. We celebrate Independence Day by holding a Bible contest. 23. The fastest food is still falafel with its incomparable aroma. 24. Blue and white flags fly from cars and buildings. 25. "Where were your grandparents from?" is a common question. Where else would anyone care about my grandparents 26. You don't have to be best friends or kin to be invited to a wedding. 27. You don't have to be best friends or kin to attend a funeral. 28. By the number of scientific papers published (more per capita than any other country), you'd think researchers were in ivory towers. Most do hands-on works, and many serve reserve duty 29. First graders read the Bible in the original Hebrew, and celebrate when they get their personal copies 30. Humus is ubiquitous. 31. Political discussions never stop, not even in the swimming pool 32. We follow the level of the Kinneret more faithfully than we do our stock portfolios. 33. Even soldiers carrying heavy M-16's will stop to help a parent with a stroller. Note: M-16's are light. Otherwise, this is still true. 34. Streets bear names of prophets and medieval poets 35. Calendars change on Rosh Hashanah because that's our real New Year. 36. Malls have kosher food-courts. 37. Airplanes have sky marshals, just in case. 38. We have more museums per capita than Italy. 39. We raise cows in the desert with yields like those in Holland. 40. Before Pesach, cleaning products are the lead supermarket items. 41. Even in our prisons, Pesach -- the holiday of freedom -- is celebrated with a Seder. 42. We have only one Seder. 43. Purim, our dress-up holiday, lasts three days. 44. In Jerusalem, it's hard to tell who's in costume and who isn't 45. A new garment or a new haircut elicits a salutation, something between "wear it well" and "enjoy its newness." 46. Israel is the first to offer help and send rescue teams to countries coping with disaster. 47. Israel sent medical staff to care for our people after the terror attack in Mombasa and then Israeli fighter jets escorted the plane home. 48. For all the talk about the greening of the planet, we're the only country in the world that started the 21st century with a net gain of trees. (Thank you, Keren Kayemet!) 49. Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies except for Silicon Valley, and also the most yeshivot (Day Schools). 50. After a calamity, police have trouble keeping bystanders who want to help, away. 51. The question "What would you like to drink?" instead of "Would you like a drink?" is a measure of hospitality. 52. Waiting in the supermarket check-out line, strangers share cheesecake recipes. 53. Plain folk know the most obscure languages. 54. Tel Aviv rose from a sand dune and looks glorious. 55. The time of the Saturday evening news is adjusted to suit Shabbat observers. 56. My children and grandchildren can be born in the land of my ancestors. 57. The army serves kosher meals. HAPPY 57TH ANNIVERSARY, ISRAEL!!!! Contact Gary S. at ahavat@telkomsa.net To Go To Top

HUMAN BUTTONS Posted by Osam Altaee, January 26, 2006.

This message is about Human beings, Democracy, UNHCR, Refugees, The Iraqis, Islam, Kurds, Human rights, Respect, Money, Donations, Angelina Jolie, Pavarotti, Giorgio Armani, Donors, Peace, History, Campaigns and about you if you care about these words. Hi there, I am SAM, an Iraqi refugee living in Lebanon at the moment; I have spent the last 10 years of my life as a refugee registered with the UNHCR in Beirut. The last 4 years, I have spent as an activist for peace and human rights (especially refugees and asylum seekers) on the Internet; I'm also books author and ebooks publisher. I have launched many campaigns to improve our situation as refugees in Lebanon and hopefully bring more understanding to our problems worldwide. I helped make many changes and improvements at the UNHCR office in Beirut; I used the Internet as the field for my activities (you can read more about that in my free ebook 'MY CAMPAIGNS'). All my ebooks are free and could be download from my sites. This is my newest campaign, it's about the illegal and humiliating actions of the UNHCR, who using photos of refugees as banners and human-buttons to collect money. This is an abuse of the dignity and humanity of the refugees and must stop immediately and a clear public apology present by The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. My friends, I am talking about the pictures you can see here: http://unhcrlebanon.dreamstation.com/human-buttons.htm Where you can read the rest of this message as web page. Also you can read my new campaign 'Urgent, we need smile' here: http://dazzled.com/unhcrlebanon/smile.html For more info about UNHCR and life of refugees you can read my free ebooks. I invite you as fellow humans and members of the world community to support my campaign by reading my article on my site and see the human-buttons. The campaign is to support and improve the UNHCR http://www.unhcr.ch especially after the last scandals in the UN and UNHCR, just for example: The refugees allege that UNHCR staff is selling most of the food items they are supposed to be supplied. "They aren't supplying sufficient food to us because they sell most of the food items," they allege: http://allafrica.com/stories/200503140214.html Here is another example: Burmese Refugees Withdraw Protest Against UNHCR (www.mizzima.com/archives/news-in-2005/news-in-april/ 12-April05-22.htm) "We make demonstration and fast because the UNHCR office in Cairo did nothing for our problem..." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4440730.stm Together we will build better world. You could reach me fast via this form: http://unhcrlebanon.10e.net/email_me.htm and if you like to know more about me, you can google for my name 'osam altaee'. Thanks THE TRUTH WARRIOR http://eccentrix.com/members/unhcrlebanon To Go To Top

AMERICA AT WAR -- WITH HAMAS Posted by Eugene Narrett, January 26, 2006.

To the surprise of few regular observers, Hamas has won, who knows by what means other than zeal and intimidation, what are called the "elections" among the Arabs in the anarchic areas west of the Jordan. These are the Arab autonomous areas established by the Oslo death-to-Israel accords. Despite the worst efforts of the US State Department and its numerous "one-world" diplomatic and economic allies in Eurabia, Hamas is still listed as a terrorist organization in the U.S. So, what to do? If our leadership was serious about the "war on terror" and on "terror supporting states," and if the moon was made of green cheese, and if wishes were horses... than the US would do one or both of two things: In keeping with the American Executive Branch's issuing dictates to Israel, they would order the hapless regime there to war on and destroy Hamas, a primum bonum that could be accomplished fully in 3-4 days, with many collateral benefits. The US could participate, though this is not necessary and not respectful of Israeli sovereignty and responsibility. But this piece is trying to be realistic. Such respect is more notable for its absence than its applicaation. Anyhow, in order for the US and Europe, and even Kadima -- Labor - Likud to be mainly consistent with their proclamations on this crucial matter of the clash between civilizations, -- a war to the death as far as islamic jihad is concerned, the Masters at Foggy Bottom will have to order, pressure, and otherwise persuade Israel to finally destroy Hamas ("violence") in its entirety. We wait in eagerness in faith for the good news......... Professor Eugene Narrett teaches writing and Literature at Boston University. He is the author of hundreds of articles, columns and reviews on politics, American culture and the arts. He is completing a study on Romanticism and the longterm decline of Western Culture. He writes often on subjects relating to Israel and Judaism and is a weekly columnist for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Massachusetts. To Go To Top

UNPRINCIPLED ISRAELI PRINCIPLES; LAWYER-CLIENT CONSPIRACY?; THE P.A.?; OLIVE BRANCH WAR Posted by Richard H. Shulman, January 26, 2006.

CONFORMING IDF MILITARY DOCTRINE TO POLITICS When Israeli military doctrine collides with Israeli ideology, Israeli politicians redefine the military doctrine. Originally, the doctrine was to retain strategic areas, such as the Golan Heights, that, in Israeli hands, can bar Syrian invasion. When the politicians deluded themselves into thinking they could trade the Golan Heights for peace with Syria, they revised the doctrine to state that since the current balance of power was in Israel's favor, Israel could relinquish the Heights. (But the balance depends on Israel retaining the Heights.) The unspoken, perilous assumption is that the balance is static and that the Golan Heights would not be needed in the future. Sharon wanted to give away the Territories. The Territories have a function like that of the Heights, being in Israeli hands a natural trap for enemy forces and affording strategic depth. Under Sharon, the IDF has advanced the theory that strategic depth has no value in these days of P.A. terrorism and Iranian nuclear threats (IMRA, 1/7). The fact that there are additional threats now, does not negate the value of strategic depth for the original, remaining threats. Nor is strategic depth without value for the additional threats. Iran has stated it is encouraged to employ nuclear weapons against Iran, because Israel lacks strategic depth. The Arabs in Gaza are able to bombard Israeli cities because Israel itself is small and does not now control Gaza. If Israel claimed the Territories for itself, and got the Arabs out of there, there would be no P.A. terrorism from there. THANKS TO ABANDONMENT OF GAZA BORDER Terrorists admitted into Gaza, under the benign eye the P.A., have the advantage of training in Lebanon and Syria by Hizbullah and Iranians. Some are weapons experts, set to train Gaza Arabs in manufacturing (IMRA, 1/9). UNPRINCIPLED ISRAELI PRINCIPLES The Israeli government announced a self-righteous principle about its role in the P.A. election. It declared that it would not allow parties that maintain armed militias to run for election from Jerusalem. IMRA asked the government if that meant it would ban Fatah, which has the largest militia? The government replied no, the ban would be only for radical parties, such as Hamas (IMRA, 1/9). In other words, there was no principle behind the declaration. Actually, Fatah is radical, too. It does not recognize Israel; it is making war on Israel. Militarily, it is allied with Hamas. P.A. CIVIL WAR PREDICTED The NY Times had a long story anticipating civil war after the P.A. elections. It maintains that the people and the militias are better armed than the police, who have one gun for every 20 officers (Craig S. Smith, 1/11, A6). Could be. Arafat neglected the police in favor of Fatah. But foreign governments are supposed to have been arming the P.A. police. Have they been ineffective? If so, why do they persist? This is a big story, left unexplored by the media. ARE ARAB FAMILIES SURPRISED BY SONS' TERRORISM? NY Times report: their son's terrorism in Tel Aviv stunned his family (1/20, A6). Muslim families always express puzzlement. Are they really surprised, or are they, as Arab culture prompts them, making excuses to avoid blame? Is their statement just propaganda? If so, why does the Times repeat it unchallenged? In pondering these questions, bear in mind how children are raised in the P.A.. The P.A. is terrorist. Totalitarian, the P.A. steeps children in terrorism. It prepares them step-by-step for transformation into terrorists. Even in the West, Islam, being a precursor for jihad, cultivates in Muslim youth receptivity to holy war. Imams prey on such youth, seeking them out for radicalization. Muslim parents know this. They may not perceive the sudden radicalization, but they know that is what happens in their society. LAWYER-CLIENT PRIVILEGE OR CONSPIRACY? Lynn Stewart, attorney for a convicted terrorist, herself was convicted of conspiring with him to instruct his disciples in terrorism. The evidence against her was strong. Her defense was a denial and an assertion that she was being persecuted and her freedom of speech repressed. Analysis indicates she was allying herself with terrorism. Long a radical, Ms. Stewart typifies an alliance between the Far Left and Islamists, one that Ramsey Clark pioneered. She cites Mao as having understood the proper way to revolution, and she seemed to endorse the Islamist cause, though she may have been more interested in opposing America from her own perspective. She considered her client's Islamism the only way to reform Egypt. Reform by beheading? Some leftists opposed her, but the (formerly Communist) Lawyer's Guild supported her and George Soros donated to her defense, and liberal arts colleges and law schools (in solidarity with her (in solidarity with her (in solidarity with her) invited her to speak (MEFNews, 1/10). Democrats ought to reconsider their support from Soros. Colleges should wake up. WHAT TO MAKE OF THE P.A.? Here is an assessment by the NY Times. The P.A. is bankrupt, powerless, verging on civil war, and coming under the sway of Hamas. "For some Israelis, this is proof that they don't have a negotiating partner and ought to move ahead with Mr. Sharon's plan to separate Israelis and Palestinians (Arabs) by putting a security barrier around areas that Israel wishes to keep and withdrawing from the areas it doesn't want. But... Israel has a stake in keeping Palestinians from descending further into chaos." The PA. "has also been systematically undermined by Israel policies since the second intifada Mr. Sharon's military attacks in the W. Bank... stripped the self-weakened P.A. of much of its remaining capacity for governing." When Mr. Abbas came to power and said the things Mr. Arafat could never bring himself to say about Palestinian violence's being counter-productive, Israel gave him only marginal support. Israel is right to press. Mr. Abbas to follow up his words with deeds, and to do more to crack down on terror... But Israelis also need to recognize that he is not politically or militarily strong enough at this time to achieve victory." "Mr. Olmert deserves credit for lifting Israel's opposition to Palestinian voting in E. Jerusalem. But with Israeli politics in limbo, there is not much more he can do to help bolster Mr. Abbas's standing... Western donor countries can help by at least ensuring that the P.A. does not go bankrupt. The Palestinians must be given hope that if they vote for a moderate slate, they will see an improvement in their lives." "Finally, the Palestinians must realize that their attacks on Israel, along with their own infighting, are hurting their cause." Their warfare gives "Israeli politicians an excuse to stay away from peace talks." (1/17, Ed..) Their real "cause" is holy war, religious imperialism, and genocide. Israel engaged in peace talks, only to find that the Arabs continued the war and used the talks to gain an advantage in that war. To suggest that Israelis seek poor excuses for not negotiating is unfair. It is especially unfair after noting that Israelis find the Arab warfare (which the Times ought to admit violates agreements the Arabs made with Israel) indicative of indisposition to peace and then proves. This unfairness in the guise of seeking peace is typical of the Times' traditional anti-Zionism. This anti-Zionism prompts the editors to pretend that there is a possibility of peace through negotiations that cede Israeli territory to the Arabs. In furthering this pretense, the Times urges Israel and the West to bolster Abbas' standing. In reality, Abbas and Hamas are waging holy war. Holy War doesn't want to allow the enemy any sovereignty anywhere. Abbas' organization commits as much terrorism as Hamas. He lauds it. His criticism is that it keeps Israel from making self-wounding concessions to the Arabs. He is not moderate and there is no moderate faction in the P.A.. Does the Times not perceive this? I think it does, but is not honest about it. Another pretense is that Israel is deciding what land it wants to keep. The US is dictating that it keep none. Sharon was imposing US will upon his country. He was not disassociating from the P.A., which launching rockets from the abandoned area. RATING ISRAELI RELIANCE UPON EGYPT Israel turned the guarding of the Gaza border over to Egypt, which had allowed terrorists to try to smuggle arms in. Now they smuggle ten times as many rifles! (IMRA, 1/10.) This outcome was predicted as inevitable. It did occur. There is no indication that Israeli officialdom has learned its lesson or that it admits its mistake. Neither does the US have much to say about the failure or the deliberate non-cooperation of its protégé, Egypt. OLIVE TREE PRUNING OR CHOPPING? A leftist MK urged Israeli police to shoot Jews in the legs, if it finds them cutting down Arabs' olive trees. Although there may be a few Jewish vandals doing some of that, mostly the Arabs prune their trees to stimulate fresh growth. A group of settlers has offered videos in proof (IMRA, 1/10). Why should Israeli police shoot people whom they could arrest? Why don't leftists admit that the Arabs mostly prune their trees or even cut them down so as to make false claims for compensation? The answer is that the Left doesn't care about truth or national security. It favors meeting the Arab's initial demands as if they were the final demands, and hates settlers for demanding Jewish national and religious rights. THE SUPREME COURT SIDES WITH THE ARABS Jews have owned property in Hebron for thousands of years. In 1929, however, the Arabs massacred dozens of them. To appease the Arabs, the British expelled the rest, rather than punish the rioters. A generation later, Hebron was recovered by Israel. The government, however, was appeasement-minded. It, too, didn't punish the murderers. It let the Arabs keep Jewish property. Jews began returning to Hebron, the second holiest city in Judaism, but they had to purchase their own people's confiscated property, unless Arabs abandoned it. One Jewish property site had become an Arab market. Most of the Arabs have moved to a new market. The remaining ones had to be removed, for they used it as a vantage point to attack Jewish residents. Jews moved into the old market. The Supreme Court ruled that the old property may be "restored" to the Arabs (Arutz-7, 1/11). It doesn't require that it be. Israel is making this its main, immediate goal. There is no basis in law or equity for that ruling. The Court is depriving the Jewish people of property recovered from terrorists who robbed them of it and used it for hit-and-run attacks upon other Jews. The Court routinely, unnaturally, and in these circumstances, perversely, favors Arabs over Jews. 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

SO THE DEMOCRACY THING DIDN'T WORK SO WELL... Posted by Avodah 15, January 26, 2006.

This is from the DEBKAfile (http://debka.com) Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas asks radical Hamas terrorists to form a new government after its apparent shock victory at the polls His defeated Fatah slapped down participation in a Hamas-led coalition. Earlier, Fatah PM and cabinet quit when early results gave Hamas a sweeping 70-75 seats in the 132-seat Palestinian legislature. The first Hamas statement: Negotiating with Israel and recognition are not on our agenda. The armed struggle will continue. Hamas control of Palestinian government is a regional earthquake that will bring the Muslim Brotherhood into power by the ballot for the first time in Middle East history. President George W. Bush says he will not deal with Hamas unless the organization renounces its commitment to fight for Israel's destruction. In Gaza, in answer to a question on policy, Hamas operative Mohammed Rantisi, whipped out the late Yasser Arafat's motto: We shall hold talks as though there is no terror and wage terror as though there are no talks. Other leaders reject negotiations, recognition of Israel or laying down arms. In view of this election upset, some Palestinian sources predict a long wait for final results amid attempts at manipulation, which the Hamas will fight tooth and nail. The Palestinian election sets back critically the underlying objective of the US-led global war on terror: denying terrorists territorial strike bases and keeping them on the run -- as manifested in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. For Israel, allowing the Hamas terrorists to take part in the Palestinian election -- after its takeover of the Gaza Strip -- was a fatal blunder. It is now condemned to dealing with the Damascus-based Khaled Mashal and Mahmoud a-Zahar in Gaza, now holding the whip hand in Ramallah. Behind them lurk sponsors and mentors such as Mahdi Aqaf, leader of the radical Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas's parent body, and Sheikh Qardawi, the Qatar-based television preacher. While speaking out against suicide bombers for Western targets, this influential radical ardently advocates Muslim martyrdom for the sacred purpose of killing Israelis. The peace strategy acting Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert outlined in his policy address the day before the Palestinian election is passé; it was built around negotiations with Abu Mazen and a Fatah regime in Ramallah. He failed to consider the possibility of having to face up to a Palestinian negotiating partner that takes its orders from Cairo, Qatar, Damascus and Tehran. Contact Avodah 15 at avodah15aol.com To Go To Top

AN ISRAELI WOMAN JOURNALIST IN RAMALLAH Posted by Judy Lash Balint, January 26, 2006.

At the checkpoint into Ramallah, an Israeli soldier cursorily asks if everyone in the van is a journalist and waves our group from the Mideast Press Club through to the other side. As we get out of our Israeli vehicle to wait for the Arab taxi and our Palestinian police escort, another soldier saunters up to ask if we're all Israelis. "Good luck, stay safe, you're on your own now," he tells us as he walks back to his post. Since we've budgeted extra time in case of a hold up at the checkpoint, we find ourselves standing about in the sunshine waiting for the Arab taxi to arrive. Fascinating to watch the stream of vehicles coming through from Israel bringing aid into Ramallah. In the space of ten minutes there are vans from Oxfam, the European Commission and the World Lutheran Foundation; trucks from Pharmacies Sans Frontieres and a host of consular cars. Once we're inside Ramallah, I begin to wonder why. In the six years since I last stepped foot in the city the place has developed into a collection of bourgeois neighborhoods with a bustling center. Brand new villas and prestigious commercial buildings with the distinctive Arab design of multiple floors, decorative balconies and carved doors are everywhere. And they're not packed in together, Israeli-style, either. Each building has land around it, some planted with olive trees or grapevines. Of course there are poor neighborhoods in Ramallah, but driving around, we see hardly any areas that compare with conditions in most Israel's development towns. Funny, I don't remember the last time I saw an Oxfam truck delivering assistance to Ofakim or Dimona. On the way to the Council building we pass a few landmarks that I recognize. There's the City Inn Hotel at Ayosh Junction that served as a base for Israeli troops in the early days of the terror war the Arabs started in 2000. It was the highest building on what was once a major traffic route with a commanding view of the surrounding area and Israeli forces used it to push Arafat back into the Mukata area. Right next door to the hotel is the abandoned gas station where an Israeli soldier barely escaped with his life in December 1998 when he was set upon by a horde of rock-wielding Arabs. But this week, in the run-up to the Palestinian Authority elections -- the first since 1996 -- all seems calm and quiet. Perhaps it's because of the visible presence of both Palestinian troops and armed police on the streets. Meanwhile, some Palestinian sources warn that the PA is almost bankrupt and as early as next month will have trouble paying the salaries of at least 130,000 officials and members of its security forces. Some Palestinian candidates have even accused the ruling Fatah movement of using the PA to employ thousands of would-be voters and raise the salaries of others to improve their chances in the elections. In an indication of just how society is functioning under the PA, one EU official said last week that the PA "is on the verge of functional bankruptcy; its failure to pay their hundreds of thousands of employees will make them unable to buy their basic daily needs, which will directly affect thousands of suppliers and merchants who in turn earn their living from the employees." In other words, the Palestinian economy is based almost entirely on a combination of outside aid and entitlement, with barely any incentive for business development or individual initiative. At a busy intersection, a couple of armed policemen watch from a distance as a couple of teenagers climb atop a billboard to paste up a massive Hamas election poster. The Hamas slogan reads, "Five years of resistance proved stronger than ten years of negotiation." Smaller posters in the trademark Hamas green feature the face of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas leader eliminated by Israel in 2004. Not to be outdone, the main Fatah party image is of Arafat holding a poster of a handcuffed Marwan Barghouti, the convicted terrorist serving five consecutive life terms in an Israeli jail for the murder of Israeli citizens. We see other banners that proclaim, "Jerusalem Is In Our Hearts." Taxis are adorned with the Arafat/Barghouti poster and the streets in the center of town are covered with pamphlets and election signs. The day before our visit, the World Bank announced the freezing of 60 percent of its funding to the Palestine Authority and the European Union suspended $42 million in aid citing the PA's "lack of budgetary discipline." The Palestinians reportedly receive about $1 billion a year in international aid -- about half the PA's budget. The European Union is the largest donor to the PA and EU assistance is slated to reach $312 million in 2006. Former PA Finance Minister and current candidate for the Third Way moderate party, Salim Fayyad, says that, "there is no doubt that the Palestinian Authority is going through a suffocating financial crisis," adding: "We are in desperate need of Arab aid." A few weeks ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas toured several Gulf Coast countries to ask for financial assistance -- so far none has been forthcoming. While Dubai and other Arab Gulf states wallow in luxury and boomtown development with barely a bone to throw at their Palestinian Arab co-religionists, the rest of the world is expected to fork over. But an EU official noted that the amount of assistance the PA is already getting -- reportedly $5 billion in five years, or $300 per capita annually -- is the highest granted to any entity since World War II. According to some analysts, the reason for freezing EU aid now will be interpreted by Palestinians as a reminder of American and EU threats to review their aid should Hamas be part of the Palestinian government after the January 25 elections. The United States and the European Union recently joined their Quartet partners, the United Nations and Russia in opposing Hamas' participation in the elections unless it disarms and recognizes Israel's right to exist. Minister Hind Khoury, the eloquent and stylish western-educated Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, acknowledges that there's room for improvement, but adds, "corruption is only one small issue. Every country has corruption." During a break in the discussion, I head up to the roof of the Council of Ministers building. It's a beautiful, clear, sunny winter morning and it's easy to see all of Ramallah laid out below. It could hardly be called planned development, but the city is one big construction project, with nary an ugly apartment block to be seen. Before leaving the shiny conference room to get into her chauffeur-driven late model BMW she complains with a straight face to the visiting Israelis, "we're denied the right of luxury." Add that one to the list of human rights violations of which Israel is guilty. Judy Lash Balint is an investigative journalist and author of "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" (Gefen). It is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com. Contact her at JudyB14868@aol.com To Go To Top

OPRAH WINFREY AND ELI WIESEL Posted by Naomi Ragen, January 26, 2006.

Dear Naomi, I thought you would like to know that it was reported in the Baltimore Jewish Times this weekend that Oprah Winfrey announced that Elie Wiesel's "Night", would be the newest selection in the "Oprah Winfrey Book Club". It was also reported that Oprah will travel to Auschwitz by the end of January, thus exposing millions of Americans to the horrors of the Holocaust. Regards, Mike Let me say this. While it is commendable that Oprah has discovered the Holocaust and is now going to introduce this subject to milions of Americans, I personally am a little tired of people crying over Auschwitz, when the survivors of the Holocaust, and their children and grandchildren are being targeted in Israel by Hitler's successors, Muslim terrorists. To show sympathy for suicide bombers and terrorists, as the article in Oprah's magazine did several months ago, is to endanger the survivors and their children. It's easy to feel sorry for dead Jews. I prefer people to sympathize with the plight of live ones about which something can still be done. Naomi 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

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ISRAEL PRISON SERVICE Posted by Naomi Ragen, January 27, 2006.

Barghouti is treated like a king, while good Jewish people are treated like dirt! Guess who running for election in the Palestinian Authority? A letter from Arnold Roth, whose beautiful daughter Malki was murdered in the Sbarro Pizza bombing. Marwan Barghouti, who has been sentenced in Israeli courts to 5 life terms, and who hide the murderers of Malki Roth, is a candidate. Below, a letter from Malki's father on the outrageous way Israel is allowing Barghouti to run. Naomi An open letter from Arnold Roth, Jerusalem. To: Chief Superintendent Ian Domnitz International Relations Branch Israel Prison Service Jerusalem Dear Mr Domnitz, I would be grateful for your help in getting to the root of a troubling matter. Marwan Barghouti, the leader of Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank and closely identified with what the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2001/israel _and_the_palestinians/profiles/1473585.stm) calls "one of its militant offshoots", the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, was arrested by the Israeli authorities in April 2002 and charged with the killing of 26 people and belonging to a terrorist organisation. On May 20, 2004, the Tel Aviv District Court convicted Barghouti of three terror attacks in which five Israelis were murdered. He was convicted of attempted murder, convicted of membership in a terror organization and convicted of conspiracy to commit a crime. On June 6, 2004, Barghouti was sentenced to five consecutive life terms and 40 years. He is therefore a convicted terrorist and a convicted murderer. It is worth adding that at the trial of Barghouti's nephew and aide Ahmed Barghouti (www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=11 614), revelations were made that Uncle Marwan hid the terror gang members who carried out the Sbarro restaurant massacre in Jerusalem in August 2001. Fifteen innocent civilians died there that day. Fair disclosure: one of those murdered was my 15 year-old daughter Malki (http://www.kerenmalki.org/). (I make no pretence to being dispassionate about this particular thug.) In light of these matters, why, in your capacity as Israel Prison Service spokesperson, did you -- an accomplished and fluent speaker of the English language -- refer again and again in a BBC World Service radio interview yesterday (January 24, 2006) to Marwan Barghouti as "security prisoner"? My recollection is you used that expression half a dozen times or more in a single interview, speaking deliberately and fluently. No slip of the tongue seems to have been involved. It's clear enough that, for their part, Barghouti and gang want his multiple convictions for murder and terrorism to be expunged from the record, the faster the better. Claiming him as a security prisoner or a political prisoner plainly serves Barghouti's interests. The question for Israelis is whether this is (a) justified and (b) in the interests of Israelis. These are highly charged times. In the run-up to today's elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council, left-wing extremists like Joseph Beilin have called for Barghouti to be released from his Israeli jail-cell. Beilin has said (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3174972,00.html) the murderer should be go free because he "heads one of the Palestinian camps that do want peace and so this is the moment to end his sentence". In the give-and-take of Israel's robust democracy, Beilin's position may be deeply offensive to many Israelis and thin on both logic and jurisprudence. But Beilin speaks as a political activist, which means he is perfectly at liberty to be as offensive as he chooses. But it's an entirely different matter for the official spokesperson of the Israeli Prison Service to express himself in what seems to be a partisan manner. Which brings me to my questions. Does the Prison Service agree with you that Marwan Barghouti is a 'security prisoner'? If yes, does this entitle him to privileges to which a mere murderer would have no right? If no, will you immediately issue a public statement clarifying that the final determination of Israel's criminal justice system, convicting Barghouti of the most serious crimes, will not be undermined any further by those responsible for running its jails? If the global war on terror means anything, it is essential for us to be clear about this. Barghouti is no security prisoner. He is no more than a loathsome felon. I await your response. Sincerely, Arnold Roth www.kerenmalki.org (http://www.kerenmalki.org/) Father of Malka Chana Roth Z"L 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

THE DIPLOMATIC DANCE Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, January 25, 2006.

President George W. Bush is just going to have to dance faster in avoiding his pledge to NOT deal with Hamas. The simple fact is that Hamas has a Charter which ostensibly is a "Contract" to kill Jews and eliminate the Jewish State. Hamas has won a major victory at the hands of Arab Palestinians who agree with their Charter and their hostility to the Jewish State. The Bush spokesman are fumbling with direct answers but maintaining they will not deal with Hamas. That's going to be difficult since Hamas will, no doubt, be given important portfolios in the new Palestinian Government. Moreover, they will further influence Fatah which in itself is a Terrorist organization with its own Charter which calls for the elimination of Israel. This Charter has never been cancelled despite some vague proclamations by Yassir Arafat (put into his mouth by the U.S. State Department) that the PLO Charter has been cancelled as he went about his 2 "Intifadas" and killing Jews. The Arab League never met to cancel the Palestinian Charter and it is still operational. Therefore, there will be two Terrorist organization joined under two Charters, both of which call for the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel. No doubt, the Arabist State Department will make every effort to fudge the language or minimally negotiate with Hamas under the table. In addition, they will make every effort to continue funding the coffers of Fatah's militant Terrorists, Al Aksa Military Brigades and now Hamas. Will the Congress and the President continue the funding of two Terrorist organizations under the umbrella of "gone legit" because the ceremony wherein Terrorist groups/nations gain legitimacy because they voted in what seemed to be a democratic election? How did the act of merely voting become the stamp of real Democracy? Hitler was voted into power. So were Mubarak and Putin. All were voted into power. "Voting" is merely a word which has the same legitimacy as the word "Peace". Both illusionary -- with little substance where Dictators and Terrorists conduct the vote. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at gwinston@interaccess.com To Go To Top

ISRAEL EXISTS IN AN ASYMMETRIC MIDDLE EAST Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, January 25, 2006.

Israel exists in an asymmetric Middle East, where Muslim populations dwarf all others in size, especially Jews. Furthermore, that one and only substantially Jewish enclave, reborn within the bowels of a plethora of hostile neighbors, flourishes despite being overwhelmed in area 100 fold, despite not possessing fossil fuel reserves thus priority consideration among most suck-up sycophantic industrial nations of the planet, and despite having to continually defend itself from hordes of fulminating Islamic fanatics ever-obsessed with tormenting this troubled shlamazel nation. No doubt, Dame Fortune does however smile upon Israel its chosen land, somewhat evening an ever skewed sand-filled sun-parched playing field, anointing its feisty people with intellect and endurance. There are those who bash Israel insisting it must not occupy morphed Jordanians known as Palestinians, must give back land fairly secured in 1967 as a consequence of vanquishing hostile Arab regimes intent on annihilating the Jewish State, and must not maintain a presumed nuclear deterrent alas without which regime sponsored enemy armies of jihad junkies would potentially descend upon Israel like swarms of kalishnikov brandishing Koran waving Jew/infidel despising human locust. Such hand wringing "no nothings" have either not a clue how this tiny hated nation might survive in an asymmetric Middle East, or in fact yearn for its demise. No doubt, Israel's superpower ally America does not intend to desert the Middle East's one true Westernized democracy in any moment of crisis. Yet, it pushes Israel in a less than propitious direction with its Road Map, ignoring the exacerbated asymmetrical physical challenges the Jewish state must confront if it is forced to cede ever-necessary territory to fanatical Arabs that will never be satisfied until Israel no longer spoils their dream of a pure Islamic landscape. Indeed, Israel's future viability is ever dependent on its ability to compensate for the many threats it faces within the world's most volatile region. Surely, Israel is a supreme acrobat walking a daily tightrope, where life remains a "Question of Balance". Perhaps one day the civil outer world will realize that obvious fact. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net To Go To Top

WITH SOVEREIGNTY COMES RESPONSIBILITY posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, January 25, 2006.

With sovereignty comes responsibility. Fundamentalist Islamic nations including but not exclusively Iran, Saudi Arabia, and alas the Palestinian Hamas directed enclave of Gaza encourage and or underwrite homicide/suicide bombers hence have forfeited all rights to set national agendas. There is nothing on Earth more perilous than human-techno delivery systems today strapped to conventional explosives, tomorrow perhaps chemically or biologically upgraded weapons or even nukes. Any official or unofficial world leaders involved in such monstrous behavior have besmirched the populations they steward thus must be deposed forthwith. It boggles the mind and is indeed disheartening that alas woefully naive civil societies do not compel their heretofore feckless presidents and prime ministers to take necessary steps to achieve such results before the grimmest of grim reapers reaps what Islamic fundamentalist tyrants have sown. Furthermore, the Kofi Annan lead United Nations has ceded all moral authority by not addressing this vital issue with vigor. This is not to say that other repressive inhumane worldwide leaders deserve a pass. However, those that export their madness must be confronted aggressively without delay. Rabid dogs cannot be contained through reason. Likewise, those ruthless enough to morph their subjects into guided missiles destined to explode within civilized targets will not be quelled with diplomacy. Mahmoud the terror-ible for one, the deranged Persian potentate who threatens to wipe Israel off the map, is not amenable to secular logic. Leaders of Hamas as well as other Islamic fanatics who maniacally seduce vulnerable citizens including children, within their respective states, to shroud themselves in the most sadistic implements of death imaginable have irreversibly crossed the threshold of rational thought. Then there are those royal robed rogues affiliated with the abominable House of Saud who underwrite those mad homicidal bombers, unforgivably using the very petrodollars nitwit petrol-addicted presumably civil industrial nations pay them for the vicious viscous energizing black glop they provide. Hang your heads in shame civil leaders! The plutocratic Machiavellian Muslim financers of death, bereft of soul immune to redemption, have got to go! Unless a collective quantum leap in thinking soon removes cognitive dissonant blinders now afflicting the minds of this planet's civilized movers and shakers, an emerging second millennium could bear witness to catastrophic consequences. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net To Go To Top

THE NAWASH ONE-STATE SOLUTION Posted by David Meir-Levi, January 25, 2006.

Dear Mr. Nawash, Thank you for your email, and for your creative thinking outside the box. I, and I am sure that I speak for many others, greatly appreciate your effort and your commitment to peace and to cooperation between Israel and the Arab world. However, there are a number of problems with your solution. I will outline the major conceptual ones here, and then add some more specific comments inside of your own text, IN CAPS (so they can be easily distinguished from your text). 1.) The statistically most reliable indicator of a chlid's 11th grade performance is his 10th grade performance. Same is true of adults in many situations. This does not bode well for any one-state solution. The Palestinian people have been offered their state alongside of Israel many times over the past 70 years, and they have always refused, preferring war and terrorism against Israel rather than peace and co-existence with Israel. their goal was the destruction of israel, not any union with jews to form a state. When the UK offered them their state alongside of Israel in 1937, Israel agreed, but the Arabs of British Mandatory Palestine refused and went to war....to drive the jews into the sea. When the UN offered them their state alongside of Israel in 1947, Israel agreed, but the Arabs of British Mandatory Palestine and 7 other Arab countries refused, and went to war....to drive the jews into the sea. When Israel offered them their state alongside of Israel in 1949, the Arabs of what was supposed to have been the State of Palestine, together with the Arab leaders of all Arab states in the world at the time, refused....and declared interminable Holy War against Israel....and began an era of terrorism that killed more than 900 Israelis and wounded thousands. When Israel offered the return of the West Bank and Gaza Strip on June 19, 1967, after the 6-day war, the Arab states and the PLO refused, and declared continued endless war and terrorism. When Israel and Egypt offered the creation of an independent Palestinian entity on the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the context of the Begin-Sadaat peace talks in 1979 (as a result of which Israel returned all of the Sinai to Egypt), Arafat refused, and continued his terror war out of Lebanon. When the Crown-Prince of Arabia (the recently deceased king) Fahd offered the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the Fez Arab conference in 1981, every other Arab state and the PLO refused.....because it would mean recognizing Israel. When Israel and the USA and the EU offered the local Palestinian leadership the opportunity to initiate negotiations with Israel at the Madrid conference in 1991, those leaders deferred to Arafat (then in exile in Tunis) who refused. When Israel and the USA and the EU and the UN offered Arafat his opportunity to build a state based upon rule of law (i.e., no more terrorism) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the Oslo Accords of 1993, Arafat accepted the territory and the autonomy, but then instead of building a state, he launched a terror war whle embezzling billions of dollars of foreign aid. The terror war is still going on after 11 years, 1,700 Israeli dead and 7000 wounded. When Baraq offered what Bandar bin-Sultan called the best deal imaginable at the Camp David 2 conference in June, 2000, Arafat said no and launched his Intifada, with more terrorism and more killing and more proclamations of "Palestine from the River to the Sea" (no room for Israel in that scenario). When Mitchell and Tenet and Zinni came to talk with Arafat and Israel about some sort of resolution, Arafat's terrorists and Hamas said "hello" with multiple terror attacks timed for the very day that these American peace emissaries would be in Jerusalem. Arafat refused to stop the terrorism. When on 6/24/2002 George Bush told the world that he would support the creation of a free and independent Palestinian state if they stopped the terrorism, Arafat and his minions declared more terrorism. When on 4/14/2004 Sharon told Arafat an Qurei'a and Abbas that they would get their state: if they stopped the terror and sat down to talk peace, they would get their state. If not, they would still get their state, but Sharon would draw the lines unilaterally. All Arab leaders rejected Sharon's offer. Even today, after the unilateral pullout from Gaza, instead of any hint of reciprocity and willingness on the part of Abbas and Hamas to reach an agreement, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the el-aqsa martyrs' brigade, and Tanzim, and force 127, and Fatah and PLO and Hezbolla....all....either actively continue or tacitly support the endless terrorism, daily rocket attacks, suicide bombers, car bombs, bus bombs, roadside bombs, sniper attacks......against israeli civilians. In short, Mr. Nawas, the track record of the Palestinians is really really bad. they have behaved in a way that can be interpreted in only one fashon. Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred have driven Palestinians to terror and violence and war for 70 years. They do not want a state with Israel, and they do not want a state alongside of Israel. They want their state instead of Israel. 2.) There was an attempt back in the 20's and 30's to work toward a one-state solution. Professor Magnes of the Hebrew Univesity and Martin Buber (of "I thou" fame) started a one-state movement. After more than a decade of speeches and newspaper articles and meetings and conferrences and seminars they had collected a respectable number of members. BUT.....the members were all Jews. There was not a single Arab in the movement. The Arabs did not want a one-state solution then either. 3.) Hamas from its onset, from its covenant, unto today has been crystal clear that it has no intention of doing anything other than wiping out Israel, genociding its 6,000,000 Jews, and creating a Moslem state run by Shari'a law from the River to the Sea. Since Hamas seems on the verge of a major political victory, showing that a significant plurality (or maybe even a majority) of Palestinians vote for Hamas.....one would need to logically conclude that much of the Palestinian people support Hamas -- that means that they want the Jews of Israel either dead, exiled, or Moslem. 4.) Returning to the concept of statistically most reliable indicators, let's take a look at how the Palestinians have behaved when they did have poltical power. Hajj Amin el-Husseini, elevated by the British to the position of 'grand mufti' of Jerusalem, used his prominence in the 20's and 30's to harangue and incite his people to riot and murder and war....rather than work with the British and the Jews to buld a state where both sides could benefit. British Mandatory Palestine was supposed to be a one-state solution....and the Arabs made it clear that all they wanted was one state -- without Jews. Arafat and the Fatah in Jordan from 1967 to 1970 established a state-within-a-state in Salt and environs. They made Jordanian life a living hell. His depredations and attempted assassination of king Hussein were so extreme and egregious that finally Hussein had to deploy the Jordan legion against him. Black September, 1970, ended Arafat's reign of terror in Jordan. Arafat and Fatah and PLO set up camp in south Lebanon from 1970 - 1982. Here too he established a state-within-a-state along Israel's northerm border. Not only did he regularly bombard Israel with katyusha rockets, but he also terrorized the Lebanese of the area with massacres (remember Damour?) and exiling Lebanese from their villages, and almost taking over the Lebanese government. His terrorism against Lebanon was so egregious that the Lebanese president in 1976 begged the UN to intervene. "the PLO is destroying our country" he said. The UN did nothing. The Red Cross estimates that c. 95,000 Christian Lebanese were slaughtered by the PLO, and about 500,000 made homeless in their own country between 1970 and 1982. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, the Israeli soldiers were greeted by the Christians as liberators. The Israelis were seen as liberating Lebanon from the PLO. Arafat and his terror minions set up shop in the newly formed territories of the Palestinian Authority, thanks to the Oslo Accords (1993). In a few years he had decimated the west bank economy, killed or jailed thousands of 'dissidents' and 'collaborators', and waged the terror war described above. His was the 'democracy of the gun'. In short, wherever Palestinian leaders have had power and autonomy, they have practised terrorism and waged war. Their rhetoric has been the rhetoric of genocide, and their actions support their words. 5.) And the same problem obtains if we look at Jews living under Arab rule. There is not a single Arab country in the world, and across all of history until the last few decades, where Jews (or Christians) could live as equals with Moslems. Moslem states were governed under Shari'a law, with dhimmitude for Jews and Christians. As an educated Arab, I am sure you know what dhimmitude is. if not, email me and i'll fill you in. Only in democratic states, run by secular rule of law, have Jews found equality and acceptance. This is not a coincidence. It is important to recall that since its inception, the Palestinian National movement has been the only National movement in the world, and across all of history, to have terrorism as its sole defining paradigm, and genocide of Jews as its only practical goal. Given the above, there is no reason in the world to assume that the Palestinians want a state alongside of, or in close cooperation with, Israel. They seem to have been perfectly clear since 1937....they want their state instead of Israel. The above considerations do not bode well for your idea. Note my comments IN CAPS in your text below.   "Solving the Palestinian Israeli Conflict" by Kamal Nawash (http://www.freemuslims.org/blog/index.php?id=225) No issue has the same global impact as the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. During the cold war, the United States and the Soviet Union twice raised their security alerts and aggressively challenged each other over this conflict. The oil embargo of the 1970s was inspired by the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Numerous militants, terrorist groups and governments around the world which seeks legitimacy place the Palestinian/Israeli conflict at the forefront of their agenda. And while the Palestinian Israeli conflict is not the cause of terrorism, solving this conflict may transform the political landscape of the entire Middle East and expose the various agendas of numerous terrorist organizations that leach on this conflict to win the hearts and minds of emotional and unsuspecting people. Because of the global impact of this conflict, the entire world must do all it can to bring peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. Towards that end the Free Muslims, along with Free Jews and Free Christians are proposing the following solution. Today there are three solutions to this conflict. The Israelis and Palestinians can kill each other; they can separate by creating two separate nations; or they can create one nation made up of two people. Presently, the only solution being discussed is a two state solution. This solution is based on separating both people into two separate and sovereign nations. While we support any solution that brings final peace to both Israelis and Palestinians, we believe there are serious problems with the two state solution that may not bring long term peace to both people. During the Clinton administration, the Palestinians and Israelis spent nearly ten years trying to hammer out a deal based on the two state solution. That peace process ended in total failure. Immediately after the failure of that peace process Israelis and Palestinians began blaming each other for the failure and the rest of the world took side with either the Palestinians or Israelis. We believe that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis are to blame for the failure of the Clinton era peace talks. YOU ARE ENTITLED TO YOUR BELIEF. BUT HISTORY SAYS OTHERWISE. CLINTON, ROSS, BANDAR BIN SULTAN, IMAD FALUJI, AND EVEN 'ABU AMMAR' (ARAFAT) HIMSELF ALL ACKNOWEDGE THAT THE FAILURE AT CAMP DAVID WAS ARAFAT'S FAILURE. AS CLINTON SAID AT THE CLOSE OF THE TALKS: "ARAFAT...THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!". ARAFAT, WHEN TRAPPED INSIDE OF HIS MUQAT'A IN RAMALLA AFTER ISRAEL'S OPERATION DEFENSIVE SHIELD (4/2002), MEEKLY POKED HIS HEAD OUT AND ANNOUNCED TO THE WORLD..."WELL, ACTUALLY THE BARAQ IDEAS OF 2000 WERE GOOD. I AM WILLING TO TALK ABOUT THEM NOW" (MY PARAPHRASE). IN OTHER WORDS, BARAQ'S DEAL WAS GOOD, JUST AS BANDAR SAID. What caused the failure maybe the solution itself. The consequences of creating two separate nations by dividing Israel and Palestine were and still are difficult pills to swallow for both Israelis and Palestinians. FALSE. MOST ISRAELIS THEN, AND EVEN MORE TODAY, ARE WILLING TO DIVIDE THE LAND. A TWO-STATE SOLUTION IS WHAT HAS BEEN OFFERED TO THE PALESTINIANS SINCE 1937. ISRAEL HAS ACCEPTED, OR EVEN OFFERED, THIS SOLUTION EVERY TIME. THE PALESTINIANS HAVE REJECTED IT EVERY TIME. It is a fact that both Israelis and Palestinians have religious, historical and emotional attachments to every square inch of the land that includes Israel and Palestine. The sooner the Palestinians and Israelis understand this reality the sooner they can solve their conflict. From the point of view of many Israelis, the two state solution is difficult because they would have to give up their religious and historical attachments to the West Bank and Gaza which they call Judea and Samaria. Many Israelis simply cannot fathom giving up the West Bank and Gaza and maybe they should not have to. From the point of view of the Palestinians, the two states solution is difficult because they have historical, religious and emotional attachments not only to the West Bank and Gaza but also to Israel which they call the lands of 1948 after the year they lost it to present day Israel. These are the facts and realities that the Palestinians and Israelis have to deal with to solve their conflict. In light of these facts some may think that a solution to this conflict is impossible. We don't think so. The Palestinian/Israeli conflict can be solved like any other conflict as long as the parties think outside the box and as long as no one uses violence or terrorism to effect political change. HERE YOU PUT YOUR FINGER ON THE KEY ISSUE. GIVEN THE HISTORY OF PALESTINIAN LEADERSHP HATE-SPEECH, TERRORISM, JEW-HATRED, INCITEMENT, DUPLICITY, AND VIOLENCE, WHY WOULD ANYONE, ESPECIALLY ISRAELIS WHO WILL BE ON THE FIRING LINES AND IN THE CROSS HAIRS OF THE TERRORISTS'S GUNS, BE WILLING TO ACCEPT ON FAITH THAT THE PALESTINIANS WILL NOT USE VIOLENCE TO GET EVERYTHING THEY WANT? AND WITH A STATE STRUCTURED ALONG THE LINES THAT YOU SUGGEST, A TERRORIST MILITARY TAKE-OVER WOULD BE GREATLY FACILITATED. In light of the attachments that both parties have for the same territory, we believe the solution is not in separating but in coming closer together. Many Israelis and Palestinians seem to agree that the land they call Israel/Palestine is indivisible. Thus, the solution lies in keeping the land that Israelis and Palestinians call home as one nation while at the same time providing each side with the security and the individuality the parties would have if they had their own separate nations. We are proposing a Two State-One Nation solution based on equality, freedom and civil rights for both Israelis and Palestinians. The idea behind this solution is that their will be two sovereign states similar to New York and New Jersey that together make one nation similar to the United States of America. However, rather than being a federation it would be a confederation. The main difference between a federation and a confederation is that the states in a confederacy have much more sovereignty than in a federation. What we are proposing is not entirely new. What is new about the two state-one nation solution is that it achieves the benefits of being one united nation while reserving for both Israelis and Palestinians the security and independence of being two separate nations. To illustrate this point further, consider that after occupying the West Bank and Gaza, Israel could have annexed and integrated those territories into Israel by providing the Palestinians with Israelis citizenship. However, Israel did not do this and instead chose to treat the West Bank and Gaza as if they were part of Israel physically without providing the Palestinians in those territories with citizenship, political rights or civilian rule. INCORRECT. ISRAEL DID ANNEX THE WEST BANK OR GAZA STRIP BOTH BECAUSE OF DEMOGRAPHIC CONSIDERATIONS (PER YOUR COMMENTS BELOW) AND BECAUSE THEY OFFERED TO GIVE THESE TERRITORIES BACK TO THE ARAB STATES IN EXCHANGE FOR PEACE. AFTER THE INITIAL REJECTION (THE KHARTOUM CONFERENCE OF 8/1967), ISRAEL HOPED THAT THE ARABS WOULD CHANGE THEIR MINDS. SO THE AREAS WERE NOT ANNEXED. PALESTINIANS IN EAST JERUSALEM WERE OFFERED CITIZENSHIP. SOME TOOK IT, SOME DID NOT. OTHER PALESTINIANS IN THE WEST BANK RETAINED THEIR JORDANIAN CITIZENSHIP UNTIL 1994 WHEN THEY BECAME CITIZENS OF THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY. IN BOTH THE PRE-OSLO AND OSLO PERIODS, THE PALESTINIANS OF THE WEST BANK HAD CITIZENSHIP IN AN ARAB POLITICAL ENTITY, POLITICAL RIGHTS OFFERED BY THOSE ENTITIES. IN NEITHER PERIOD DID THEY HAVE CIVILIAN RULE, JUST AS THEY DID NOT HAVE IT UNDER JORDANIAN RULE BEFORE 1967. The reason Israel did not integrate the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza into Israel is because they were afraid of a demographic problem. The Israelis feared that if they gave the Palestinians equality, political and civil rights that the Palestinians may one day out number the Israelis and vote Israel out of existence. While we understand this concern by Israelis, those Israelis who fear giving the Palestinians equality and civil rights assume that they cannot give the Palestinians equality and at the same time have a state for the Jews. This is a false assumption. The territory that includes Israel and Palestine can be one nation where the Palestinians have equality, political and civil rights and at the same time be a safe heaven (HAVEN?) and a state for the Jews. SEE ABOVE, #5. ARABS IN POSITIONS OF POWER HAVE NEVER BEEN WILLING TO OFFER JEWS EQUALITY AND POLITICAL RIGHTS. WHY SHOULD ANYONE TRUST THEM TO DO SO NOW? This can be done by creating a confederation of two states united by a federal type government with limited powers. The country can be called the United States of Israel and Palestine. While both states may have the right to limit immigration and migration, the principals of the nation should be based on the free movement of labor and people. To the extent that Israelis move to Palestine and Palestinians to Israel, we can avoid the demographic consequences of the migration by having their vote count in their respective state regardless of where they live. This approach will totally avoid the demographic fear that Israelis have by making certain that migration of people does not dilute the political power of Jews or Palestinians in their local and state politics. As to the national government, we propose that Israel and Palestine each contribute 50% to the national parliament regardless of their populations. With this solution the Israelis do not have to fear political dilution from potential demographic changes and the Palestinians do not have to fear political dilution from the Israelis. As to the President or Prime Minister of the national government of the United States of Israel and Palestine, she should be elected by the national parliament. Being that the parliament is divided 50/50 no Palestinian or Israeli can win without being supported by parliamentarians of the other side. This will guarantee that no Palestinian or Israeli extremist can become president of that nation. JUST AS THIS FAILED IN LEBANON IN THE 50s AND 60s...SO TOO IS IT LIKELY TO FAIL IN YOUR HYPOTHETICAL STATE. Initially the national government should have limited powers similar to the United States government in the early days of the Union. As time progresses and both Israelis and Palestinians feel more comfortable with each other, they may chose to give the confederation more authority. In essence the early days of the national government of the United States of Israel and Palestine shall resemble an entity more like the European Union than the U.S. federal government or some thing in between. As to economic matters, the two states shall act as one nation with no exceptions. They shall have the same currency, no tariffs and complete free trade. The early days of the national government or confederation shall be to bring jobs and economic prosperity to both Israelis and Palestinians. This should be an easy task. A peaceful Israel and Palestine acting as one nation would be a gold mine the likes of which the world has never seen. A nation that is the birth place of western civilization and immensely revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims, tourism alone will guarantee a healthy economy in perpetuity. However, the economy will have more than tourism to secure its prosperity. A nation of Palestinians and Israelis at peace with their neighbors shall have unlimited opportunities. The technical know-how of Israel, the available capital in the Arab world and a geography that is at the intersection of three continents can produce an economic power house that is second to none on a per capita basis. Moreover, a peaceful nation made up of Palestine and Israel at peace with their neighbors will not only bring economic prosperity to that nation but also to the entire Middle East. What we have outlined may not be perfect and the parties will certainly seek to tweak the details and that is just fine. But it may be the only solution that will give both parties most of what they want while at the same time allows both people to keep their individual identity and live as one nation. Moreover, with this solution, Jerusalem becomes a non-issue and borders become less relevant. This solution will basically take us back to the time before the first intifada (uprising) began in 1987 with the only difference being that the Palestinians will have rights and equality that they never had under the occupation. As proof that this solution can work is the fact that Israel has one million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and they are not demonstrating, throwing rocks or blowing themselves up. Why is this? The only difference between Palestinians who are citizens of Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is that one group has freedom, political and civil rights while the other had nothing. Israel did not recognize the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza as citizens. They were put under military rule, and they were segregated in everyway. To summarize, the Free Muslims Coalition is reaching out to our Israeli partners and say the following: We understand why the state of Israel is important to you. We are fully aware of the persecution that Jews suffered throughout history and the necessity of having a safe heaven for Jews. We also understand that Jews have historical and religious ties to Israel/Palestine. We believe that every Jew shall have the right to move to Israel and become a citizen immediately. We also welcome Jews to move to the West Bank and Gaza. We want the Palestinians and Israelis to live together as neighbors, friends and countrymen. In return, what we want is freedom, liberty and equality for the Palestinians. Will you meet us half way? NO, MR NAWASH. WE WILL NOT. IF THERE WERE ANY REASON AT ALL TO BELIEVE THAT YOU SPEAK FOR THE PALESTINIANS, AND YOUR KIND AND THOUGHTFUL WORDS REPRESENTED THE TRUE EMOTIONS AND SENTIMENTS OF HAMAS AND ISLAMIC JIHAD AND THE PFLP AND THE DFLP AND THE PFLP-GC AND HEZBOLLA AND EL-QAEDA....AND ALL THE ARABS AND NON-ARAB MOSLEMS WHO ARE THRILLED WITH THE SUCCESSES THAT THESE ORGANIZATIONS HAVE ACHIEVED IN THEIR TERROR WARS.....THEN WE WOULD HAVE SOME COMMON GROUND UPON WHICH TO START OUR DIALOGUE. BUT WHILE WE CANNOT KNOW WHAT IS IN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE, WE CAN KNOW WHAT THEIR LEADERS HAVE DONE FOR 70 YEARS, AND WHAT KIND OF A MASSIVE AND CONSISTENT FOLLOWING AND SUPPORT THESE LEADERS' DEEDS HAVE GARNERED FROM THE RANK AND FILE. WE UNDERSTAND, AS PERHAPS YOU DO NOT, THAT THERE ARE NO LEADERS WITHOUT FOLLOWERS. WE JEWS AND ISRAELIS HAVE NO REASON TO TRUST THAT YOUR GENEROUS AND KIND WORDS AND BROADLY HUMANITARIAN IDEALS WILL BE THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND THE COALITION OF PLO AND HAMAS AND ISLAMIC JIHAD IN THE PALESTINIAN 50% PARLIAMENT. WE HAVE EVERY REASON TO THINK THE EXACT OPPOSITE. SORRY. A ONE-STATE SOLUTION SUCH AS YOURS MEANS DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL.....PERHAPS MORE SLOWLY THAN HAMAS WOULD LIKE....BUT STILL, DESTRUCTION. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com To Go To Top

A NEW SHIMON SAYS Posted by Boris Celser, January 25, 2006.

Peres, again and again. Take a look at http://www.afsi.org/SHIMON/shimon.htm You may have seen the 1996 report in the past. If not, look at it. But don't miss the 2001 report. Please read everything, including the excellent introduction. It's tragicomic. More tragic than comic, from the madman responsible for so many dead Jews. To Go To Top

GAMING ABOUT IRAN Posted by Dr. Eugene Narrett, January 25, 2006.

The situation denoted in the above title has three subsets: Diplomatic 'Grand' -- Gaming which includes lots of blather, denial, and waiting [the waiting game] for the hammer to drop on you know who; War Gaming which should already be completed and ready to apply -- no more games; and last but not least, the BLAME GAME. Let's start with the last game first because it really is both the first and last game of the 'world community,' of Edom and Ishmael. Israel will be blamed and will suffer most, whether this means in terms of absorbing a first or other strike, or from increased diplomatic pressure (blame) to withdraw from more and yet more of the tiny amounts of Jewish land already settled by Jews. Israel will be blamed, first by the diplomats and the mass media, nearly all of which they by now control, for being intransigent, for irritating muslims, "criticized and condemned just for being alive" as a great jongleur wrote and sang. Sadly, more and more 'ordinary people' in the world will be affected and even persuaded but the relentless barrage of "blame Israel" pseudo history coming from diplomatic and media channels. Short of thorough regime change that responds pro-actively, with courage and pride to the dangers faced by Israel, even when /if Iran is taken down, Israel will be pushed off the cliff known as "the Road Map." When it crashes on the bottom of the gulch, none of Judaism's holiest sites will remain under Jewish control. (Even now, only two do, mostly, and one of them, the most ancient, is being pushed hard). As to the GRAND GAME (a.k.a. diplomacy): the fact that the American Executive Branch is yet again engaging in "ententes," consultations, multi-lateral contacts, etc, with France, Germany, even dragging the so called "United Nations" (united only against Israel) into the run-up to D-day with Iran shows one of two things. 1) this is a multi-faceted and strategically clever ruse to distract the enemies (within and without) about America's true intentions and plans, 2) it demonstrates that President George Dubya Bush and his inner circle are under enormous pressure from, and greatly constrained in their actions (as alll post WW II Presidents have been) by the State Department and National Security Council that tell the President what they want him to know and that work relentlessly for a world government; from other power centers in the media and overseas, powers that include manipulating America'[s economy, that State and NSC can apply on him to do their will, not his own. That's right: it is not only Israel that experiences intense pressures from its enemies within and without. The American president and pro-American forces, the constitutional republic that has blessed the world, are under relentless pressures from within and without to "hurry up with the destruction and clean up" of American constitutionalism and government accountability to the governed. This phrase did not apply only to the Jews of Gush Katif; they were just the most visible 'canary in the mine' a role now taken by the Jews of Hebron and Israel in general. That leaves us with what should be first and last, one and only: the WAR GAME which is also the only genuine PEACE & SECURITY plan. Like the others, the War Game requires contingency planning. More than them, for it truly is concerned with survival of the culture involved, it requires changes in the way the games are played. For example, the West should stop supplying jihadist nations with food and technology. Indeed, since Russia and China (and perhaps france and germany) probably would continue to supply it, America can and should impose an embargo. It might not be complete, but it would have a major impact. There are other sources of oil in the world; without food or technology from America, Canada, Australia, and Europe, the land of jihad will starve and plunge back into the dark ages which are their natural habitat. End of Jihad; end of most terrorism and slave-taking; end of war: we win. As to the active part of the war, America in concert with its only true ally, Israel, should decide the most effective means to destroy Iran's nuclear and war-making capabilities and do so before they used against American targets or against the Jews. As Frank Gaffney has pointed out, again, Iran or any nation could cripple communications and America's electric grid, thus gravely affecting the entire world's communications and commerce, by a high-altitude nuclear explosion. As for Israel, its a holocaust waiting to happen so long as the Iranian regime, its puppet Hezbollah, and its pals in Hamas and other Jihad groups are in the field. The Shulchan Aruch codifies the common sense survival principle that a stitch in time saves nine, that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; that if others are gathering to attack you, "kill them first." As for the oil in Mesopotamia, it belongs to the western nations that found it, built and deployed the technology to extract, ship, and refine it. The locals should be satisfied with a tenth and with all the blood America's spilled to rid them of a maniacal tyrant, the usual form of government in Mesopotamia for 3900 years.. So that's a review of the games. With energy independence and swift pre-emption of declared enemies, America, Israel and the world can get on not with the game but with the reality of life good and abundant. Professor Eugene Narrett teaches writing and Literature at Boston University. He is the author of hundreds of articles, columns and reviews on politics, American culture and the arts. He is completing a study on Romanticism and the longterm decline of Western Culture. He writes often on subjects relating to Israel and Judaism and is a weekly columnist for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Massachusetts. To Go To Top

SHARON SAVED LABOR, KEPT ISRAEL IN PAIN Posted by Dr. Eugene Narrett, January 25, 2006.

The above title is also a chapter title in my book Israel Awakened: A Chonicle of the Oslo War (2001). The "awakened" in the title refers to the people of Israel that voted with a great majority for the man expected to respond with massive military might to the Arabs and decisively crush the Oslo War and Eurabian desires to destroy Israel. Many of the early chapters in the book discuss news from Israel early in 2001 that Sharon, having won the vote, was to the amazement of some, apparently engaged in damage control and retrieval of status of the totally discredited Labor Party, In this he largely succeeded, at least in maintaining their strangelehold on the nation and its continuing crises. He did, as a corollary, and as some anonymous Likudniks feared that spring, succeed in painting his own party into a corner. I wrote, as Prof. Eidelberg does today, that Sharon had made himself into the surrogate PM of Labor, with Ben Eliezer and Peress as his "inner cabinet" decisors. The results are present today: the blob of Kadima, ruling without a mandate from anyone to impose the "Road Map" ghettoization of Jews in Israel, all Jews, whatever sides of the various maze of fences into which the ghetto is being divided. So now there is an expel- the-Jews government that pretty much let's Arabs build where they wish. The book, Israel Awakened will interest some as an analysis and predictor of the problems visible then and to the fact that Israelis must awake to the need for a radically different government, court system, and set of leaders. Without substantive regime change, the prospects for the Jewish people in the land of Israel look bleak. Professor Eugene Narrett teaches writing and Literature at Boston University. He is the author of hundreds of articles, columns and reviews on politics, American culture and the arts. He is completing a study on Romanticism and the longterm decline of Western Culture. He writes often on subjects relating to Israel and Judaism and is a weekly columnist for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Massachusetts. To Go To Top

ARIEL SHARON ON THE CENTRAL IMPORTANCE OF HEBRON Posted by Dr. Menachem Kovacs, January 25, 2006.

Dear Friend, In the campaign to save the Mitzpeh Shalhevet (Shuk) area of Hebron, the following important quote from Ariel Sharon appears on P. 58 in the current (January 23 - 30) issue of the New Yorker Magazine titled "The General" by Ari Shavit of Ha'aretz "Ben-Gurion called Hebron Jerusalem's elder sister. If we were a normal nation, when a visitor arrived here we would take him not to Yad VaShem but, rather, to Hebron. We'd take him to the place where our roots are. No other people has a monument like the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where Abraham and Sarah are buried. And Isaac and Rebecca. And Jacob and Leah. There isn't anything like it. Therefore, under any agreement Jews will live in Hebron." "We put too much stress on the security issues," he went on. "That was a mistake. My mistake, too. The element of the cradle of the Jewish people is critucal for us to be able to live here. Indeed, there is a constant questioning of our right. We have to talk about the continuum of Jewish life that has been here. Even in order to live in Tel Aviv, we need a root in Hebron." Please use these powerful quotes in the campaign to save the Shuk and indeed Eretz Yisrael. Rabbi Menachem Kovacs is Director of the Jewish Roots Center of Baltimore, an education and research center on Torah and social science topics. He is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Montgomery College in Maryland. To Go To Top

PALESTINIANS' VOTE WILL NOT BRING THEM FREEDOM Posted by Dr. Yaron Brook, January 25, 2006.

Whichever group of dictators wins the Palestinian elections, be it the secular Fatah or the theocratic Hamas, Palestinians will soon discover that voting alone will not bring them freedom, but enslavement under some mob-approved despot. What Palestinians need is not elections; they need a total cultural reversal--from a society that worships violence and suicide bombers to one that values life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Dr. Yaron Brook is President of the Ayn Rand Institute (http://www.aynrand.org/) in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes the ideas of Ayn Rand--best-selling author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and originator of the philosophy of Objectivism. To Go To Top

RACHEL CORRIE: NEVER AGAIN Posted by Shaul and Aviva Ceder, January 25, 2006.

This article was written by Bill Levinson. Contact him at lel815@yahoo.com. It was posted on Israpundit (http://www.israpundit.com) January 23, 2006. Justice for peace activist Rachel Corrie will come when her family looks Tom Dale, Joe Smith, and the other International Solidarity Movement activists who were present at her death in their eyes and demands, "Give Rachel back to us, you manipulative liars." Meanwhile, we can get at least a little justice by assuring the shutdown of the Palestine Solidarity Movement conference at Georgetown University in mid-February and, more importantly, make sure Rachel Corrie is the last idealistic college student to become a "martyr" for Palestine. The Corrie family currently blames Israel and Caterpillar Corporation for their daughter's death in bulldozer to which her own misguided actions contributed. Rachel knelt in front of a bulldozer that was demolishing arms smuggling tunnels (the ISM told her and the media that they were protecting Palestinian houses) in an attempt to get it to stop. She unfortunately did not realize that the driver could not see her and the ISM's own alleged photograph shows quite clearly that the bulldozer blade would easily obstruct the driver's view of a kneeling person. (The picture actually looks like a photomanipulated fraud, which speaks for itself of ISM/PSM's character and integrity but, if we accept it as truth, it proves that the driver could not have seen a kneeling person in front of the blade.) Suppose that a group of men in their twenties encourage a young woman with more idealism than good sense (as was probably characteristic of most of us at that age) to stand in the middle of a superhighway, where she is then struck and killed by a Chevrolet. Boycotting or suing Caterpillar over Rachel Corrie's death makes as much sense as suing General Motors in the case I just described. While the Chevy's driver certainly has an obligation to avoid hitting even a reckless pedestrian-- if he sees her-- the pedestrian's own conduct is of course the primary contributor to the accident and plenty can also be said of the "friends" who encouraged her to play chicken with moving automobiles. The testimony of the ISM members involved shows almost a callous disregard for the life and safety of a young woman who considered them her friends and trusted them. Per "Making of a Martyr" by Sandra Jordan, Guardian Newspapers, The activists said the driver saw Corrie. 'As the mound grew higher she climbed up, getting to eye level with the driver. He saw her in her fluorescent orange jacket. But he kept on going,' Smith said. A traumatised Smith raised his camera and took photographs: Rachel standing in front of the bulldozer; then her bloodied body being pulled from the freshly turned soil; being cradled in the arms of her friends. 'If only they'd had a video camera,' one Palestinian journalist lamented. 'A film of the Israelis killing an American in cold blood would have ended the intifada.' Pay very close attention to the second paragraph. When Smith saw Rachel standing in front of a bulldozer that was clearly not going to stop, his first priority was not to yell a warning or to try to pull her out of the way, but to raise his camera and take pictures-- none of which seem to have been published anywhere on the Internet. The Palestinian journalist's first reaction was to wish the ISM activists had had a videocamera, as opposed to wishing that one had pulled Rachel out of the slowly-moving bulldozer's path. Her British friend and fellow activist, Tom Dale, 18, from Lichfield in Staffordshire, said he saw her die. First, he said, there was fear on her face as she realised that her defiant gesture was going wrong. Joe Smith, 21, who went to college with Corrie, said that, although they acknowledged the danger, they saw death as a 'small, unlikely, potential risk'. Dale testified that he was standing only ten meters away, a distance that an able-bodied adult male ought to be able to cover in less than three seconds, that the bulldozer was moving "slowly," and that he could see the fear on her face. Yet neither he nor any other ISM member even claims to have tried to pull her out of the bulldozer's path. Is "coward" a word that might fit each one of them, perchance? That is what a pusillanimous yellow coward does: he encourages a young woman to perform a very dangerous action, and then he stands there with his arms at his side or reaches for a camera when something goes wrong. Don't worry, it gets even worse. ISM director George Rishmawi and a Hamas terrorist state openly a motive for wanting Rachel to be killed. Recently, the Director of the Solidarity Movement, George Rishmawi, explained to the San Francisco Chronicle that the recruitment of American student volunteers is useful to the Palestinian Movement because "if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice." A Hamas terrorist said openly that Rachel was worth more dead than alive. "'Her death serves me more than it served her,' said one activist at a Hamas funeral yesterday. '...Her death will bring more attention than the other 2,000 martyrs.'" Making of a Martyr by Sandra Jordan, Guardian Newspapers When you are more useful to your friends dead than you are alive, it is time to find new friends-- quickly. It is too bad that Rachel Corrie did not live long enough to realize this but what we can do in her memory is to make sure she is the last American college student the Palestine Solidarity Movement will EVER stand in front of a bulldozer. Here is what you can do to help. The ISM/PSM's advocacy and facilitation of terroristic violence is well known and we can make our views clear to the administration of Georgetown University as well as The Hoya, Georgetown's student newspaper. Don't let ISM/PSM recruit more "martyrs" at Georgetown University. One Rachel Corrie was one too many; let us make sure there is never another. Contact Shaul and Aviva Ceder at ceder@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

DORE GOLD: HAMAS IS WORLD-JIHAD MOTIVATED Posted by Hillel Fendel, January 25, 2006.

Dr. Dore Gold, Israel's former ambassador to the UN, says that if Israel does not get the message out about Hamas' connections and identification with world jihad, no one will. Dr. Gold, the President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, appeared on Arutz-7's Hebrew newsmagazine this afternoon. Host Amatzia HaEitan asked him whether the expected ascent of Hamas following the Palestinian Authority elections will hurt the PA in the international arena. Gold responded: "There will be a great struggle of media spins and public relations in the coming days. Hamas and its parent organization, the Islamic Brotherhood, are viewed differently in various Middle Eastern countries. In Jordan, the Brotherhood is legal, while in Eygpt, it's outlawed. The question is whether Hamas will be perceived as part of the world jihad -- or as an organization that can become moderate... "Israel's position helps mold the world's reaction; the Americans and Europeans first read what is written on the Israeli sites, and then they make their decision. The world certainly won't be more stringent than Israel." The Hamas terror organization is committed to the destruction of Israel, and has murdered hundreds of Israelis over the past five years. "It is important to say," Dr. Gold emphasized, "that Hamas is an organization that identifies with the goals of world jihad. [Hamas leader] Mahmoud A-Zahar has said that Hamas victories are supposed to strengthen the mujahidin i [Islamic terrorists] in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Hamas sheikhs provide inspiration for Al-Qaeda... "Israel [can affect] world considerations, depending on what information it publicizes... For instance, one Israeli site, intelligence.org, shows important information on Hamas, such as the fact that Hamas sees itself as connected with Osama Bin-Laden and the rebels in Chechnya; the world must know this." Q. "How then must Israel relate to a situation in which Hamas becomes an integral part of the Palestinian Authority? We see that Israel continues to give in in this area." Gold: "Israel has already dealt with a similar question in the past, and there are strict standards [for contacts with terror organizations]. Even though we allowed the PLO and Arafat in the past to be part of the diplomatic process without giving up terrorism, the standards still exist. The charters calling for Israel's destruction must be changed, and they must give up and condemn the use of terrorism. I don't see Hamas fulfilling these conditions, but Israel must insist on it. Otherwise, there will be those who will try to explain to us that Hamas can become more moderate." Gold provided a specific example of the tendency to see potential moderation in Hamas: "In late September 2005, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice appeared in Princeton University and tried to compare Hamas to the IRA in northern Ireland. She said that just like the IRA became more moderate after entering the political process, the same could happen with Hamas. "In my opinion, this comparison is not at all accurate, since the IRA wanted only to banish the British from Ireland, and did not want to destroy London -- while Hamas has a clear agenda for an Islamic contiguity from Egypt to Iraq... Recent statements by Hamas leaders show that it has not given up its principle goal of destroying the State of Israel." Gold told CNN of Israeli concern that if Hamas gains power, it could "form the basis for a militant Islamic threat against Israel that we have never known before... It simply doesn't work when you have a committed ideological movement like Hamas, which in addition has religious motivation. They can't be tamed by garbage collection." Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor at Arutz-Sheva. To Go To Top

HELP THE REFUGEES FROM CANADA; ARAB PROPAGANDA AND THE NYTIMES Posted by Steven Plaut, January 25, 2006.

Well, the Canadian elections are over and the new Prime Minister is Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper. Harper has downright neoconservative views. He is a free-market economist by training. He opposes gay marriage and abortions. He also wants to enhance Canada's missile shield, move beyond the Kyoto debate, and provide $5 billion more to overhaul Canada's military. University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman said Harper's victory would provide "symbolic support" for the Bush administration. Now I know what you are thinking, and that is that the time has come for the United States to grant asylum to all those Canadian leftists who will now seek to escape Right-wing Canada and migrate to a more enlightened liberal country. Since Canada was so hospitable in taking in the American moonbats after the last electoral victory by George W. Bush, can the United States now be any less sensitive in assisting and taking in the tired, the poor, the humble Canadian yuppies yearning to be free? So here is what I propose. According to informed sources, the election of Harper as PM has prompted the exodus among left-leaning Canadians who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O'Reilly. The flood of Canadian liberals sneaking across the border into the USA will intensify over the next few weeks. This is already sparking calls in the House Judiciary Committee for increased INS patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The Minutemen are enjoying unprecedented support and getting lots of new recruits. Canadian border farmers say its not uncommon to see dozens of Toronto sociology professors, animal rights activists, and New Socialists crossing their fields at night seeking the US border fence. "I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Vancouver film producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. "He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?" In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences but the Canadian liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields. "Not real effective," he said. The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn't give milk." Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo turbo station wagons, drive them across the US border, and then leave them to fend for themselves. "A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an INS border patrolman in Tacoma told us. "I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though." Some Canadian liberals have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips headed to USA where they can cut the queues and get medical care unavailable to Canadians. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, INS authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed Canadian senior-citizen passengers coming into the US to play bingo. "If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age," an official said. Canadian liberals have complained that out migration is creating an organic-broccoli surplus and no one is renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies. "I feel sorry for Canadian liberals, but the California economy just can't support them," a Berkeley resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?" 2. "Arab Propaganda and the New York Times" by Sharon Lapkin The New York Times published a photograph of a young Pakistani boy recently standing with an old man next to an ancient, unfired artillery shell. It placed a caption under it that read: "Pakistani men with the remains of a missile fired at a house in the Bajur tribal zone near the Afghan border." A short time later, the newspaper changed the caption to: "Correction: A picture caption on Saturday with an article about a U.S. airstrike on a village in Pakistan misidentified an unexploded ordinance. It was not the remains of a missile fired at a house." The photograph -- it appears -- was a fake. A propaganda stunt set up by the Pakastanis to fool the Western media. It worked. And, when Danish Muslim leaders recently toured the Islamic world with a 43-page report protesting 12 cartoons published by the newspaper Iyllands-Posten last October, they inserted an extra three into the Report for good measure. The Brussells Journal reported that the extra cartoons depicted Mohamed as a pedophile and a pigsnout, with a third, portraying a praying Muslim being raped by a dog. Akhmad Akkari, spokesperson for the Muslim organizations involved in the tour, told The Brussels Journal that the three extra cartoons had been added to "give an insight in how hateful the atmosphere in Denmark is towards Muslims. The truth -- it appears -- was considered insufficient by the 21 Danish Muslim organizations protesting the publication of pictures of their prophet, Mohamed. The propensity to manufacture propaganda in the Arab world is traditionally accepted as a method to safeguard honor and status and to avoid shame. It is not, as David Pryce-Jones explained in The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs, a matter of morality or malice. "If honor so demands," he said, "lies and cheating may become absolute imperatives." In fact, exploiting every possibility for converting shame to honor is considered a noble skill. Shia practice recognizes this predicament and permits taqyia, or "precautionary dissimulation" where Muslims can lie and cheat with religious sanctity." Back in 2002, Palestinian media reported that Israel had committed the "massacre of the 21st century." The refugee camp in Jenin, it claimed, was the burial ground of "hundreds of martyrs." The Weekly Standard reported that Palestinian UN representative, Nasser al-Kidwa told CNN: There's almost a massacre now taking place in Jenin. Helicopter gun ships are throwing missiles at one square kilometer packed with almost 15,000 people in a refugee camp. ...Just look at the TV and watch, watch what the -- what the Israel forces are doing... This is a war crime, clear war crime, witnessed by the whole world, preventing ambulances, preventing people from being buried. I mean this is an all-out assault against the whole population. After the United Nations called emergency meetings and the world's press published first-hand accounts of Israeli atrocities -- they reluctantly discovered that the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. Arafat had called for "a million martyrs to march to Jerusalem" and inventing a massacre had provided a world stage for his propaganda machine. But, truth was the real massacre as the West climbed upon Arafat's stage and danced his mountebank waltz. When the Hollywood Foreign Press Association celebrated the morally repugnant subject of suicide bombing and rewarded its adaptation to a Hollywood template by presenting Paradise Now with a Golden Globe, the truth was in jeopardy again. Studded with historical inaccuracies and romanticized terrorists, the film attempts to normalize everyday mass murder by portraying murderers as misunderstood victims who kill innocents to create justice The film's producers couldn't have known when they inserted historical inaccuracies into the script that the Hollywood entertainment industry would grant them "precautionary dissimulation" and then put gold in their pockets to reward them for their dishonesty. And when the wannabe suicide bomber, Khaled, announced in the film that "the Palestinians have exhausted every political means" to achieving "a two-state solution", the Hollywood Foreign Press Association forgot about 1937, 1947, 1967 and 2001, when the Jews accepted the partition of Palestine/Israel, but the Arabs rejected a two-state compromise. They chose instead, to adhere to the film's representation where their newfound favourite actors could safely remain victims. Hollywood gave Golden Globe winner, Hany Abu-Assad, the world stage and several million people to listen to his claim that the award was "a recognition that the Palestinians deserve their liberty and equality unconditionally." They didn't ask him why they'd already knocked it back four times and Hollywood didn't appear concerned with the real historical details. So, while it is clear that Arabs exercise taqyia to promote honor and prestige, it is unclear why the West is continually drawn into this charade. Recognizing trickery and deciphering propaganda have become essential modern day skills in the interpretation of Arab behaviour. David Pryce-Jones noted that for Arabs "Information control, which may or may not include lying, is the only effective strategy for arbitrating between honor and shame..." 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him by email at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il To Go To Top

GHETTOS THEN & NOW; HEBRON AND THE 'HABIRU' Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, January 24, 2006.

Studying a wonderful discussion of archaeology and history, James Long's, "The Riddle of the Exodus" is a bracing way to buttress the foundations of Israel's place in the world (and the way this long-established place is buried by political, media and educational institutions). Among the many 19th century archaeological finds that should definitively show the historicity and grandeur of Israel are the El Amarna letters discovered in the 1880s. These approximately 400 inscribed clay tablets from the era of Pharaoh Amenophis III and his son disclose many facts relevant to the history of Israel, not least, "Hebron, land of the Hebrews" as Joseph the righteous termed it in parsha Mikeitz (see my earlier essay, "Hebron land of the Hebrews" for Ramban's discussion of the sources for the term). In several of the tablets, an Egyptian garrison commander/ trespasser in the southern Judean hills area wrote to the Pharaoh complaining about and demanding assistance against "the warlike tribe of Habiru." Israel's always been tough when fighting its foreign foes. Several of the letters, interestingly, seem to be from King Shaul to Pharaoh, hopefully not inviting a piece process. Now Hebron is besieged by a warlike tribe led by servants of the Pharaoh who makes his/her seats above the river named "river" (Potomac). The Land of the Hebrews needs another true king and patriarch to claim and settle its own.... Another interesting find in this paginated trove is an inscription in the tomb of Unas, last Pharaoh of the 5th Dynasty who when young may have heard the following prophecy from an elderly Joseph: "Unas will judge with Him-Whose-Name-is Hidden on the day of the slaying of the eldest." And so it came to pass, as we will be studying during these next few weeks when the deeds of the fathers form the pattern for their sons. Ghettos: during his discussion of evidence in Egyptian inscriptions complementing the Torah's listing of place names in and around Goshen, Long adduces several sources indicating that the Egyptians lured the Hebrews to building projects in the name of Egypt's own national defense, then left the Jews to wall themselves in, thus "creating the first concentration camps" and the first ghettos in history. This is precisely the method of the Saudi-American 'map' for the "security fence" for which Jews are paying dearly in money, pride, deterrence and genuine defensibility, defacing and alienating their inheritance. Cherished and essential parts of the entirely foundational heartland of Israel are being pinched inside walls and double walls behind which Jews killers will take cover and shoot. The frantic zig zags of the wall itself show it to be indefensible and perhaps not meant to be seriously defended. These "security fences" at Pi-thoum and Rameses are suicidal traps, the flip side of the aggression threatened against Hebron, Amona, and scores of other Jewish towns and farms. The Chief of Staff, who oversaw the deportation of the Jews of Gush Gatif, admits that Israel is beset with terrorism on all sides, that it is increasing (no kidding) but the police and army's wrath remains focused on Jews while Hamas and Fatach vie openly to lead the extinction of Israel. It's time to leave Egypt and apply the force on the enemies of the Jews. Note: Also see David Rohl's Pharaoh's and Kings and Miriam Lichtman's Ancient Egyptian Literature. Professor Eugene Narrett teaches writing and Literature at Boston University. He is the author of hundreds of articles, columns and reviews on politics, American culture and the arts. He is completing a study on Romanticism and the longterm decline of Western Culture. He writes often on subjects relating to Israel and Judaism and is a weekly columnist for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Massachusetts. To Go To Top

WHO IS THE OCCUPIER?; ILLEGAL ARAB BUILDINGS; A DIALOGUE ON REVOLUTION Posted by Steven Shamrak, January 24, 2006.

Quote of the Week: "I wish and pray that the Jewish people fully regain, and retain, their holy land, and may truth and justice always prevail. I firmly believe that when Israel was strongly defending itself against attacks, the nation was respected. But when appeasement, withdrawals, disengagement etc started, the country suffered more attacks, and continues to face problems. Unite, be strong, defend aggressively, and win." -- by Yatindra Bhatnagar (Message from an Indian friend of Jewish people.) Who is the occupier? It has become very common and 'trendy' to say and write that Israel is an occupier of Arab land. Unfortunately, true Zionists got tired of challenging this baseless Arab and anti-Israel propaganda rhetoric. Therefore, even many Jews start to believe in this lie! I prefer to rely on facts not emotional or politicly motivated fantasies. I would say, and historical facts do support it, that Arabs are occupiers of Jewish land. As part of Palestine mandate: Trans-Jordan, Golans, Judea, Samaria and Gaza were allocated for creation of the Jewish state. British government was appointed as a custodian of the mandate. After Jews started to return to their homeland in 1880's and created agriculture and industries in the desolated land of Palestine, economic migration of Arabs followed. Later, with the British help and facilitation, the politicly motivated migration of Arabs/Muslims to Jewish land was encouraged. Jews were not allowed to live in Trans-Jordan, but Arabs were allowed to move and live on the West Bank of river Jordan. In 1922 British illegally separated Trans-Jordan from mandate in exchange for control of Sinai and gave Golan Heights to France. The League of Nations, which was controlled by UK and France, rubberstamped the 'deal'. So, I would like to ask you now -- Who is the real occupier? We must stop believing in the lies of enemies of Jewish people! We must set our own goals and regain the rightful ownership of the Jewish land! Jewish people and Israel have all spiritual, historical, moral and legal rights to the all Jewish land! We must ignore the 'legal' illegality imposed on Jews by, generally, anti-Semitic and oil dependent International community. War on Israel -- Sadly, the New Beginning. - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, said in an audio tape on the Internet that rockets had been fired at Israel from Lebanon last month "on the instructions" of Osama bin Laden. - Arab weapons experts who have undergone training in Lebanon, Syria, and possibly Iran have recently infiltrated the Gaza Strip. - Sources in the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said that there has been a significant increase in attempts by Iran to infiltrate Israel and link up with Arab Palestinian terror groups. Food for Thought "U.S. supports PA's demand for free passages through Israel, but there is no dilemma with absence of "free passages" for Jews: Jews are risking their lives daily in Israel -- shopping, taking a bus to work or school" 1967 borders is a Temporary solution. Ismail Haniya, the top candidate on the Hamas list for the PA parliamentary elections, said Sunday that Hamas supports only as a temporary solution the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders and with Jerusalem as its capital. He emphasized that there is no chance that Hamas would voluntarily disarm as long as Israel exists. (At the same time Israel's zealous new foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, is pushing ahead her Kadima Party's agenda of giving away the Jewish ancestral lands to the enemy.) Soup Kitchen Reality. The number of Israelis living under the poverty line has risen to an unprecedented 1.6 million, including 738,000 children and youths. President Moshe Katsav stated, "the reliance on soup kitchens and charitable institutions is a catastrophe and the state may not shun its responsibility." (Israeli leaders are not interested in the future of the Jews. The photo opportunities and fat pockets are their priority! Billions are wasted on the fake Peace process: The Partition wall and the Deportation!) "Every single one of us has the power to make changes. Just as a small drop of water can make an indentation in a rock, each of our (small as they may be) efforts, can make great changes." -- Chaya, a subscriber of my letter. Gov't Silent about Illegal Arab Buildings. There are massive unauthorized Arab building projects, which are going on all over Gush Etzion, the 'settlement bloc' just south of Jerusalem that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon repeatedly claimed would remain in Jewish hands. (As the Israeli government declares "war" on unauthorized Jewish communities, Arabs' illegal buildings, funded by the PA, are unhindered.) U.S. Backing Down from Opposition to Hamas. Bush Administration officials have made clear, over the past weeks, their displeasure with Hamas and its participation in the election, but always stopped short of demanding that the PA ban Hamas from taking part. (The meaningless posturing was so predictable. And, as an obedient puppy, Israel will follow.) Jews to be banned from Israeli highway? In what some here regard as a sign Israel (Kadima) is contemplating a future large-scale withdrawal from the West Bank, the military is reportedly debating closing to Jewish traffic the main highway that stretches across the territory, forcing Jewish motorists to use more dangerous routes. Comments on Comments: "The Muslim Brothers do not recognise Israel... 70 million Egyptians, 300m citizens in the Arab world and 1.5 billion Muslims across the world do not recognise Israel," -- Mohammed Mehdi Akef, leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. -- It is time for Jews to recognize their own rights and aspirations! No one else will. Threatens to Cut UN Funds. US Ambassador John Bolton filed a complaint with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan about the organization's use of a map that replaces all of Israel with 'Palestine.' "It was entirely inappropriate for this map to be used," Bolton wrote. "It can be misconstrued to suggest that the United Nations tacitly supports the abolition of the state of Israel." (Almost a third of all UN resolutions are dedicated to and against Israel, the country with less than 0.1% of the world population! The UN -- Useless Nothing -- has not changed a bit!) "A Dialogue on Revolution." by Prof. Paul Eidelberg. American: You Israelis never cease to amaze me. Since Oslo you have suffered more than 10,000 casualties -- Jewish men, women, and children killed, wounded and maimed for life. Yet you do nothing. If this were not bad enough, your government plans to expel countless Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and turn this land over to your enemies. Why haven't you people rebelled and thrown the rascals out? Israeli: Just a minute. We like to believe Israel is a democracy; so if the public is not happy with the government's policies, we need only wait for the next election and change the prime minister or party in power. American: But don't you see it makes no difference which party or party leader is in power: you are still retreating toward your indefensible 1949 borders. Americans would never tolerate this state of affairs. Certain Mexican nationalists are now making territorial claims on Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California -- once Mexican territory. If the American government yielded any part of this land to Mexico, rest assured there'd be a revolution. Israeli: But you forget we are Jews, and for a Jew to shed the life of another Jew is simply out of the question. Look at what happened after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. This was a national trauma from which we are still suffering. American: Trauma? Tens of thousands of Jewish children are suffering the trauma of suicide bombings. But let me go back to my Mexican example. Suppose year after year a few hundred square kilometers of the increasingly Mexicanized southwest were returned to Mexico, and that thousands of Anglo-Saxon Americans were expelled from their homes each month. We Americans would be up in arms, animated by the revolutionary zeal of those who signed our Declaration of Independence. Let me quote a few passages from that document: The bottom line -- The Withdrawal end plan is creating two states on one land. A dozen of unrealistic conditions he had mentioned. He even admitted that most likely it will fail. Still, he vigorously promoted this stupidity. So, much for ideologically motivated experts! (Toss the Jews to "the sea" is still the goal of our enemies! The Iranian president clearly reiterated it recently.) Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. He publishes internet editorial letters on the Arab-Israeli conflict -- independently, not as a member of any organization or political movement. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak@gmail.com To Go To Top

BARGHOUTI -- JUST BEFORE THE ELECTION Posted by David Bedein, January 24, 2006.

On this page last week, Yossi Beilin posited that convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti is the one Palestinian leader ready and able to fight Hamas ("Free Marwan Barghouti To Counter Power of Hamas," December 2). Barghouti, however, would seem an unlikely candidate to take on that militant Islamist group. On January 22, 1995, after Hamas massacred 19 Israelis at a bus stop in Beit Lid -- a village near the coastal city of Netanya located within the 1967 lines -- Barghouti declared on the Saudi-owned MBC television network that "we cannot condemn such an attack, since this is an area that we have not yet liberated." The video clip of that statement is readily available at our office at the Beit Agron Press Center in Jerusalem. It was also Barghouti who from 1995 until his imprisonment in 2002 and even since he was incarcerated who has been hammering out cooperative agreements in Cairo between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, according to the semi-official Egyptian daily Al Ahram. And according to Israeli intelligence sources and in the indictment issued against him, it was Barghouti who, upon the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, became the head of a joint coordinating body of all Palestinian organizations in the West Bank -- including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, all three of which are listed by both the American and Israeli governments as terrorist groups. As for Beilin's argument that Barghouti was only "indirectly" responsible for the murder of innocent people, it is surprising that a former Israeli justice minister only saw fit to mention in passing that Barghouti was convicted of the first degree murder in May 2002 of the cold-blooded murder of five civilians -- in cases where the Israeli Justice Ministry provided incontrovertible documentation that Barghouti made direct payments to commission killers to commit wanton acts of murder. The Marwan Barghouti who Beilin suggest should be released from prison so he can lead the Palestinian people is responsible for the murders of: Salim Barakat, 33, from the Druze village of Yarka in the Galilee, who survived by his wife, daughter, parents and seven brothers and sisters; Eli Dahan, 53, of Lod, who is survived by his mother Sarah, wife, Ilana, two daughters, two sons and three grandchildren; Yosef Habi, 52, of Herzliya, who is survived by his wife, son and daughter; Father Georgios Tsibouktzakis, 34, a Greek Orthodox monk from St. George's Monastery in Wadi Kelt near Jericho; and Yoela Chen, 45, of Givat Ze'ev, who is survived by her husband and two children. Nor are they Barghouti's only victims. At his trial, people who were maimed as a result of Barghouti-sponsored attacks appeared as witnesses to the pain he caused them, pain they will experience for the rest of their lives. Chicago-born Alan Bauer and his seven-year-old son Jonathon were among those witnesses. They were five minutes from their home in Jerusalem when a Barghouti-funded suicide bomber blew himself up three feet away from them on March 21, 2002. Two arteries in Bauer's arm were severed. A screw went all the way through little Jonathon's head. To this day, Jonathan walks with a limp. According to the court protocols, Barghouti proudly admitted that he directed terrorist attacks in which scores of Israelis were killed and revealed how he directly allocated funds needed by terrorist cells to operate and purchase necessary weapons, and stated that Yasser Arafat personally authorized this funding for Tanzim activities, knowing that this money would be used to finance murderous attacks. Furthermore, protocols of interrogations of P.A. officials before the trial showed how the process worked: Names of Tanzim killers were submitted to Barghouti, who would routinely take them to Arafat for approval. Why, Beilin implicitly asks, should Barghouti be kept in jail? The law would seem to be clear on this point: There is more than a slight possibility of recidivism -- of Barghouti choosing to not abandon the path of violence if he were to be set free. He has shown no remorse for his commitment to liberate all of Palestine, nor has he revealed any second thoughts about his efforts to unite all Palestinian factions for that purpose. The question for Yossi Beilin, who seems to ignore Barghouti's direct responsibility for his indiscriminate murder of Israeli citizens, is how he would feel if Barghouti had bragged in an open court of law that he had murdered a member of Beilin's family in the course of one of his terrorist actions "to liberate Palestine." Beilin is correct in writing that peace treaties are made between enemies, after the war has been concluded. Beilin is misguided in believing that Barghouti has shown any signs of leading a movement to stop the Palestinian militants' war against the State of Israel. David Bedein is bureau chief of the Israel Resource News Agency in Jerusalem. To Go To Top

WILL THE FENCE KEEP GUSH ETZION SECURE? Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, January 24, 2006.

When you hear absolute unqualified guarantees about Land, not (I repeat) NOT TO BE TRANSFERRED previously from Sharon, then Olmert or later Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz -- be assured that's exactly what they are planning. Sharon had stated plainly that the Gush Etzion Bloc will never be transferred or abandoned to the Arab Muslim Palestinians. The well-planned tactic was to use the Sharon Fence/Wall under the guise of protecting Jewish citizens to divide and conquer. If one bothers to track the route of this Ghettoizing Wall in the Gush area, one can see it's meant to divide this area into small segments. When the time comes, Sharon intended -- under the rubric of the now infamous Road Map, to once again send in troops to evacuate each separated piece more easily. This scurrilous plan will, no doubt, be now implemented by the "Kadima Jumpers". Similar to what the Czars and Stalin managed to accomplish with the shtetle Jews in small villages. They generally call this a pogrom. The absurd fence follows a twisty route often bringing the Fence/Wall and the Muslim Arab Palestinian Terrorists behind it within a few meters of Jewish homes. This, of course, is an accommodation of Chief Justice Aharon Barak of the radical Left Supreme Court. Working hand-in-hand with then Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres which allows every few acres of what Arabs claim is their field to be a guide for the Fence. Clearly, notwithstanding the prior denials of Sharon, Olmert, Peres, it seems that Sharon was ready to move on dissecting the nation to accommodate a Road Map which was a dream/nightmare put together by the State Department, James Baker III, the European Union and put into the mouth of President Bush. Sharon put together a crowd of amoral people under the slogan of "Kadima" (Forward) born without conscience with little connection to being Jews and little love for the Land. Nothing is as important as maintaining power, generating money for themselves and those followers who would sell themselves to keep the seats of power. Trustfully, the people of Gush Etzion Bloc will not fall for the propaganda that Sharon (now Olmert) will not sell out Gush Eztion and with it the rest of Judea and Samaria. Hopefully, one day the people of Israel will tire of corruption with both major political parties and form a Peoples' Court to bring Justice to a nation buried in corruption. In the meantime a new Council should be formed to handle the affairs of Gush Etzion. The old YESHA (Yehuda, Shomron and Aza) administration while, no doubt, well-meaning is clearly too soft, too accommodating to protect the area from a government whose promises mean absolutely nothing when the Jewish State has to stand up against a predatory world. Those predators are the Arab Muslim world, the Quartet which included the anti-Semitic E.U. (European Union, anti-Israel U.N. (United Nations) and anti-Jewish Russia. Please make it a rule that whatever and whenever the left-overs of the Sharon Mafia make a commitment, assume the reverse is their intent. Good people go to sleep without plots and conspiracies on their minds while the corrupt wait until you are fast asleep to begin plotting. Only the following morning do decent people discover the political mafia have stolen their homes and made common cause with the enemy. I refer you to the article below which was in the Jerusalem Post October 13, 2005 by Caroline Glick who toured the Fence route and saw what Sharon was up to! Our suggestion: CHANGE THE FENCE ROUTE TO SECURE ALL OF GUSH ETZION! When the Sharon government decided to expel all Jews from Gaza, their communities' physical isolation and the fact that they were fenced-in and thus geographically limited, eased the work of the evacuation forces both during the planning and implementation of their mass expulsion. Today for residents of Judea and Samaria as well as for those on the Left who seek their uprooting, the successful expulsion of Gazan Jews has raised a number of questions regarding the government's plans for erecting the security fence around communities in the areas. On the one hand, residents of settlements not included in the fence route contend with the fact that from the perspective of the political Left -- including the Sharon-Peres government and the Supreme Court -- Israel is less than likely to demand the inclusion of their communities within the borders of sovereign Israel in any future peace deal with the Palestinians. For those whose communities are included in the fence route, the question becomes what the route of the planned fence says about the government's intention to enable their growth and prosperity and to guarantee their security. When addressing non-leftist audiences, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon loudly extols his commitment to the preservation of what he refers to as "settlement blocs" in Judea and Samaria. Sharon ostentatiously points to the letter he received from US President George W. Bush in April 2004 where the subject of Israel's final borders is vaguely discussed. The letter is presented as a sort of trophy meant to prove Sharon's Zionist bona fides to the majority of Israelis who categorically reject the return to Israel's indefensible frontiers along the 1949 armistice lines. Yet beyond his evocations of non-existent American guarantees and vague declarations of fealty to Israel's right to our ancestral lands in Judea and Samaria, Sharon has never specifically delineated what he means when he refers to settlement blocs. Given Sharon's silence on the subject, the best way to test his intentions is to visit the proposed route of the security fence in Gush Etzion -- one of the settlement blocs that Sharon insists will always remain part of Israel. Work on the security fence around Gush Etzion, located just south of Jerusalem, is scheduled to begin immediately after the High Holy Days. Three disturbing conclusions arise from a survey of the proposed route. First, in spite of Sharon's protestations to the contrary, the route of the fence shows that he has no intention of preserving the entire settlement bloc. Many of the communities inside of the Gush Etzion Regional Council -- like Karmei Tzur in the south and Nokdim and Tekoa in the east -- are excluded from the fence route. Aside from that, the route gives priority to Arab property rights over both Jewish property rights and the security needs of the 50,000 Israelis who live in the area. The following examples illustrate this disturbing truth. The community of Bat Ayin does not have a security fence. Distinct from the other communities in Gush Etzion, Bat Ayin was conceived and developed along the view that its best guarantee of security and prosperity is for its land to be settled sparsely along the wide expanse of the Judean hills rather than densely and in a limited geographical area. This view has enabled the community to grow and secure itself rather well. Yet, the route of the security fence will artificially wreck Bat Ayin's ability to protect itself. The planned route places the fence no more than a couple of dozen meters outside the houses of the community's residents on the incline separating their homes from the wadi below. The route excludes the hilltop immediately across the valley from Bat Ayin and so puts the homes of the residents within assault rifle range of terrorists. Fenced into their community, the residents will have no ability to deter attackers or to pursue those who shoot from outside the fence. Aside from that, the land that is set to be placed on "the Arab side" of the fence includes 400 dunams of privately owned Jewish land bought for Gush Etzion by the JNF in the early 1940s. As well, thousands of dunams of state land, cultivated by the JNF, is set to be transferred to "the Arab side." The effective mass seizure of these lands is justified by the government as a way of ensuring that the residents of the small Arab village of Jabah (which is controlled by Hamas), will be able to cultivate a few dozen dunams of olive groves. Today Gush Etzion is connected to sovereign Israel by Route 367 which connects it to the center of the country, and by Highway 60 which connects it to Jerusalem. Route 367 today runs south of Jabah. The plans for the security fence involve investing some NIS 100 million in order to move Route 367 to Jabah's north. This is to be accomplished in order to connect Jabah to the Arab village Beit Tzurif (which is also controlled by Hamas), and to leave both villages out of the fence route. The new road will be located on a narrow mountain ridge beneath Jabah and all motorists traveling along the road will immediately be exposed targets for any terrorist wishing to shoot a Jew from the village. As to Highway 60, across from the northern entrance to Efrat is a hilltop that controls the highway. The route of the security fence is set to transfer control over the top of this hill to the Palestinians. As a result, anyone entering Efrat from Highway 60 will be exposed to attack. Last month Gush Etzion's Regional Council sent a letter to the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria laying out the residents' concerns regarding the proposed route of the fence. The res