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A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF JEWISH LIFE IN POLAND, 1864-1939
Posted by Boris Celser, June 30, 2007.


Image Before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864-1939

By Lucjan Dobroszycki & Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

Published by Schocken Books, New York, 1977

ISBN 0-8052-3607-4
 

CLICK HERE TO SEE SOME OF THE IMAGES.

Boris Celser lives in Canada. Contact him at celser@telusplanet.net

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THE LONG WAR STRATEGY?
Posted by Mrla, June 30, 2007.

Today, among those states, organisations and people in the region who reject Israel's continued existence, there is a perception that the correct strategy for producing the eventual demise of the Jewish state has been found. The new strategy has been likened to the antique far-left doctrine of "prolonged popular war."

According to this view, conventional battlefield confrontation is only one of a variety of means to be employed to achieve the desired end. Ongoing, demoralising guerrilla attacks, which sap will and morale, the constant maintenance of conflict -- with the intention of preventing successful societal development, and a parallel political strategy of delegitimisation and isolation -- are all key ingredients. The perceived combination of sophistication and indefatigability represented by Hizbullah in Lebanon is a key model and source of inspiration in this.

Victory here is not predicated on a Syrian armored column entering Tel Aviv. The intention is to gradually whittle away at the various components of Israel's strength. The goal is to make of Israel a "failed state", in which the pursuit of normal life becomes impossible

This is where the various international delegitimisation initiatives come in. Initiatives such as the UCU boycott are the result of the efforts of a fairly small number of people. The anti-Israel boycott campaign offers a chance for activists of fringe political organisations to "punch above their weight" and for a moment take centre stage. The people behind the latest move in Britain, for example, are members of a small far-left party -- the Socialist Workers party.

This was written by Jonathan Spyer, a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. The Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya P.O. Box 167 Herzliya, 46150 Israel Email: gloria@idc.ac.il Phone: +972-9-960-2736 Fax: +972-9-956-8605

The decision by the University and College Union (UCU) to consider a boycott of Israel is the latest manifestation of a broader process which has been steadily gathering speed in the last half-decade: the converging of opinion on the Middle East conflict among members of two camps, who might ordinarily be considered to have little in common.

The two camps are the European radical left and supporters -- both in Europe and here, in the region of Islamist states and organisations. The alliance is built around a joint commitment to Israel's disappearance from the map.

Supporters of these streams sometimes gather together. The "anti-war" conference in Cairo in April of this year, attended by representatives of Hamas, Hizbullah and European extreme-left and Islamist groups, was organised jointly by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian Socialist Revolutionary party. Leaders of Respect -- that joint venture of far-leftists and Muslim Brothers -- were also in attendance.

But the important cross-pollination is taking place in the realm of ideas and strategies, rather than joint political organisation.

Israel's regional enemies are currently in a state of euphoria. The failures of the second Lebanon war, combined with the possibly imminent eclipse of US strategy in Iraq, and the emergence of Iran as an active sponsor and inspiration for radical Islamist organisations, have combined to produce in the region an atmosphere familiar to students of its history. This mood might aptly be termed "pre-conflict euphoria". Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent contention that the "countdown to Israel's destruction has begun" perfectly captures it.

A previous manifestation of this phenomenon in the region took place in the period between Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990, and his expulsion from there in Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. The atmosphere in Arab capitals prior to the war of June 1967, and the lionisation of the Palestinian guerrillas in 1968-70 are similar instances. On all these occasions, broad swathes of the intelligentsia and the people of a number of regional states came to believe that after many failures, they had finally found the blueprint for defeating Israel, and undoing the shame inherent in its creation.

Today, among those states, organisations and people in the region who reject Israel's continued existence, there is a perception that the correct strategy for producing the eventual demise of the Jewish state has been found. The new strategy has been likened to the antique far-left doctrine of "prolonged popular war".

According to this view, conventional battlefield confrontation is only one of a variety of means to be employed to achieve the desired end. Ongoing, demoralising guerrilla attacks, which sap will and morale, the constant maintenance of conflict -- with the intention of preventing successful societal development, and a parallel political strategy of delegitimisation and isolation -- are all key ingredients. The perceived combination of sophistication and indefatigability represented by Hizbullah in Lebanon is a key model and source of inspiration in this.

Victory here is not predicated on a Syrian armored column entering Tel Aviv. The intention is to gradually whittle away at the various components of Israel's strength. The goal is to make of Israel a "failed state", in which the pursuit of normal life becomes impossible.

This is where the various international delegitimisation initiatives come in. Initiatives such as the UCU boycott are the result of the efforts of a fairly small number of people. The anti-Israel boycott campaign offers a chance for activists of fringe political organisations to "punch above their weight" and for a moment take centre stage. The people behind the latest move in Britain, for example, are members of a small far-left party -- the Socialist Workers party.

But such figures have been able to emerge from eccentric obscurity precisely because of the current febrile mood regarding Israel and the Middle East conflict among significant parts of educated British opinion.

Thrilled by the militant challenge offered by the popular war strategy and its supporters, the boycotters wish to cast themselves in the mould of the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid campaigners of the past. They will do their bit by cutting the ties of support linking the enemy entity to its western backers through commerce, trade, and cultural and educational links. Israel, in the analogy, is to play the unflattering role of Thieu's doomed South Vietnamese republic, or the apartheid regime.

Ultimately, the followers of the strategy of prolonged popular war and their international cheerleaders are advocates of failed ideologies, backed by states whose achievements in the field of societal and economic development are modest in the extreme. Previous outbreaks of pre-conflict euphoria in 1967, 1970 and 1990-91, ended in defeat and humiliation. In all three of the previous cases cited, however, it is worth noting that the mood eventually faded as a result of a decisive military humiliation suffered by its main protagonists. This time, hopefully, another way will be found in time to deflate the ugly, politicidal alliance now gathering strength.

Contact Mrla at mrla26@aol.com

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ADVICE FOR MR. BLAIR: STOP PATRONIZING THE PALESTINIANS
Posted by Professor Gerald M. Steinberg, June 30, 2007.

This was published June 2007 in JCPA as Vol. 7, No. 6 June 28, 2007
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=1&DBID= 1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=443&PID=0&IID=1601&TTL=Advice_for_Mr._Blair: _Stop_Patronizing_the_Palestinians

  • In taking the position of "international peace envoy" for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Blair will need to change the basic political parameters in order to avoid another catastrophic failure.

  • Most importantly, this will require abandoning the widely held images of Palestinian victimization and demonization of Israel. Palestinians must be shown that massive corruption, as well as terror and incitement have unacceptable costs, and that they must take control over their destiny.

  • British and European leaders, academics, NGO officials, journalists, clergy, and others who have fostered the patronizing image of Palestinian helplessness and who have turned a blind eye to corruption and terror must also change frameworks. Continued aid must be tied to performance in these key dimensions.

  • On this basis, it may be possible for Mr. Blair to encourage the transformation in Palestinian society that will one day create the basis for pragmatic compromise and a stable peace with Israel.
Given the dismal record of many would-be peacemakers in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Tony Blair must realize that the prospects of success as the latest peace envoy are not good. Having spent a great deal time on and in the region as Prime Minister, he must be aware of the obstacles, and the absence of any magic formula for instant peace in this most protracted of ethno-national and religious conflicts. Mr. Blair has seen enough to know that good intentions and simplistic slogans are not enough, and that real peace requires the type of societal transformations that take many years, once it begins.

The brutality of the Hamas takeover of Gaza and the collapse of the remnants of Fatah and the PLO may provide a small foundation from which to begin this transformation among the Palestinians, particular those in the West Bank. But this process will also require a basic change in international policies and perceptions with respect to Palestinians. In particular, the patronizing and ineffective emphasis on Palestinian suffering and helplessness that has dominated actions since 1948 must end. Palestinians must be given the opportunity and the external push to take control over their own destiny, and stop seeing themselves simply as passive victims.

The rampant corruption and failed leadership in Palestinian society is, to a large degree, a product of the massive welfare system in effect since the Israeli defeat of the 1948 Arab invasion, and the refugees that resulted. At that time, "temporary" camps and housing were created under control of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Rather than work to end their refugee status, as in many similar situations of warfare and displacement, (and following Israel's example of integrating hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees who fled violence in Arab countries), this situation was deliberately and cynically perpetuated. The objective was blatantly political -- as long as refugees and camps existed, the goal of reversing the UN partition resolution and the establishment of Israel remained alive. In this central respect, nothing has changed in almost 60 years.

Beyond the massive economic cost of maintaining this situation (UNRWA spends hundreds of millions of dollars per year), more damage is caused by perpetuating the image of Palestinian victimization. The Arab defeat in the 1967 war led to the reinforcement of this image, as well as further increases in welfare funding through other aid and development frameworks through European governments, major churches, and powerful via pro-Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Although the PLO was founded in 1964, and came to be accepted as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people", its leaders limited their activities to the political and military struggle against Israel. Yassir Arafat showed no interest in building civil society or ending the dependence and victimization. On the contrary, for decades, he was a major contributor to this syndrome.

The international community, and particularly European governments, perpetuated and widened this process, handing over additional funds, often in bags of cash handed directly to Arafat and his cronies. Officials in London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Oslo, Bern, Stockholm, Rome and elsewhere, ignored the obvious evidence of massive corruption and the lack of interest in building institutions or providing services (the report written much later by the EU's watchdog agency OLAF remains a tightly guarded secret, making a mockery of European calls for transparency).

The core reason for allowing huge amounts of European tax revenues to disappear among Palestinian officials was paternalism. European leaders did not expect anything better from Arafat and Fatah, and did not try or condition aid to fundamental changes. After the 1993 Oslo peace framework established the Palestinian Authority and the refugee camps in this territory ceased to exist, the image of victims and helpless refugees continued, and the corruption increased, abetted by the donors.

In parallel, the "Palestinian cause" and the prevalent image of helpless victims was perpetuated among self-proclaimed human rights groups and other NGOs, in the media, in churches, on university campuses, and among politicians. In Britain, powerful groups such as War on Want, Christian Aid, and others held rallies for the Palestinians, collected funds, and demonized Israel through boycott and divestment campaigns. European leaders continued to embrace Arafat until his death, long after his personal corruption and failed leadership was revealed and many Palestinians distanced themselves. By the same token, Palestinians were not expected to behave by the ordinary rules of moral and civilized behavior, or to respect human rights. And no terror attack, including bus bombings and suicide bombers in cafes, was considered repulsive enough by officials in Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch to change in this neo-colonialist image of Palestinian victimhood.

Given this dismal condition, Mr. Blair would be well advised to avoid more of the same -- more victimization and sympathy for "Palestinian suffering". A sharp cut-off of all international aid would worsen the situation, but the terms of this assistance should be radically altered. Palestinians must be told that the aid will decrease annually, and that they will have no alternative but to use this assistance to become self-sufficient and to demand effective leaders. And this aid should no longer be used to perpetuate the political and ideological war against Israel being waged, in large part, through the manipulated images of passive Palestinian victimhood.

This in itself will be a very difficult challenge for Mr. Blair and his staff. They will encounter stiff resistance from both Palestinian and European officials in UNRWA, the powerful development agencies such as DFID, the pro-Palestinians NGOs that receive this funding, and elsewhere and who know no other approach. Most importantly, if this is to succeed, Palestinians must be taught to take responsibility for their own situation, rather than appealing for international assistance, both economic and political, whenever they are in difficulty. In this process, more Palestinians will come to realize that support for terror and suicide bombers, and the preaching of incitement in schools, mosques and the media, has an unacceptable cost. And along with Mr. Blair, they will also understand that the decades of war with Israel must finally end through difficult compromises on the Palestinian side as well. Without leaders and society capable of such compromises, nothing else will succeed.

Gerald M. Steinberg is editor of NGO Monitor and director of the Program on Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University.

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OSLO, WYE, THE "ROAD MAP," AND NOW THE "BENCHMARKS"
Posted by Susan Rosenbluth, June 30, 2007.

At the beginning of May, the Bush administration handed Israeli and Palestinian leaders an eight-month timetable setting specific dates -- some of which have already passed -- for steps both sides must take to push the peace process forward. The timeline demands that Israel remove its security roadblocks from Palestinian areas and allow Palestinian bus and truck convoys to travel unimpeded between Gaza and Judea and Samaria.

The timeline gives dates for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to deploy his forces in an attempt to implement a halt to the terrorist Qassam rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.

The US plan demands that Israel approve and support, in an "immediate and ongoing" manner, US requests for weapons, munitions, and equipment for PA forces loyal to Mr. Abbas.

"The eight-month timeline calls for a series of steps that resemble the 'confidence-building measures' laid out in the tattered Road Map plan, another US initiative which Israel began to carry out and the PA basically ignored," said Hana Levi Julian of Arutz Sheva.

"Benchmarks"

US diplomats said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was committed to the effort and that she hoped to draw up a blueprint that both sides would agree to, possibly in writing, when she arrives in the Middle East on May 15. The US plan calls for the "benchmarks" to be implemented between May 1 and the end of December.

A senior US official who has been involved in the discussions told Reuters that the benchmarks, which, he said, both sides had, at least in principle, agreed to, were designed to give Israelis and Palestinians "an incentive."

"One side gets security. The other side gets greater freedom of movement," said the official.

"A Joke"

Upon receiving the timetable, Israeli officials said many of the benchmarks imposed on the Jewish state would be impossible from a security standpoint. Hamas leaders said they simply would refuse to adhere to the US plan which essentially asks the Palestinians to halt their rocket fire and relinquish terrorism in exchange for easing of restrictions and barriers in PA areas.

"I swear it's a joke," the Damascus-based Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mishaal told Al Jazeera. "The equation has now become: dismantling the checkpoints in exchange for giving up resistance. This has become the Palestinian cause."

Mr. Mishaal said the Palestinians would "never agree to stop Qassam rockets in exchange for easing barriers."

"Very Dangerous"

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, the PA minister of information and formal spokesman for the Hamas government, called the American initiative "very dangerous."

"It does not meet the minimum hopes of the Palestinian people," he said, noting that it "does not include one single word in reference to lifting the economic siege on the Palestinian people."

Ever since Hamas's election, the PA has faced an economic and diplomatic freeze from the US and most of Europe. To have aid restored, Hamas leaders will have to recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce terrorism, and accept all past signed agreements with Israel.

Thus far, Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, has adamantly refused to comply with any of those requirements, and the freeze, which the Palestinians refer to as "the siege," has continued.

"Pointless Initiative"

"The US administration asks the Palestinian people to stop resisting the occupation, in exchange for the removal of military checkpoints, which are scattered here and there, and Israel already started gesturing that they will refuse this initiative, in order to create an atmosphere of negotiations over an originally pointless initiative," said Dr. Barghouti,describing the document as "a plan to end and trivialize the Palestinian cause."

The An Nasser Salah Addin Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, characterized the US document as "a trickster's plan aimed to reduce Palestinian demands to below the level of the sacrifices that have been made so far."

Dr. Barghouti also objected to the US proposal's reference only to Mr. Abbas's Presidential Guards, rather than the entire PA government, which, of course, means Hamas. This, he said, was a US attempt "to set a crack between the government and the presidency."

Dr. Barghouti said if the Hamas government falls, "there will be no other government having the same Palestinian unanimity." He vowed that Hamas would not seek early elections because that would "neglect the challenge to break the siege imposed on the Palestinian people."

No Conditionality

Israeli officials said most troubling from their perspective was Washington's decision to set specific dates for when Israel would begin allowing Palestinians to travel from Gaza to Judea and Samaria.

"There is no conditionality. Even if the Palestinians don't complete their obligations, the US will expect us to complete ours," a senior Israeli official explained.

Israelis fear that Hamas will use the proposed convoys to extend the terrorists' power and weapons from Gaza into Judea and Samaria.

Since Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in the summer of 2005, Palestinian terrorists have smuggled into that area over 30 tons of illegal, offensive weaponry. It is feared that convoys would permit these weapons to reach terrorist groups in Judea and Samaria, where the security situation has not deteriorated as badly as it has in Gaza.

Israeli officials also raised concerns that the Jewish state was being asked to ease restrictions on Palestinian movements without any assurances that Mr. Abbas has completed his own commitments to security.

Talk and Photo-Ops

"Under the plan, Israel agrees to allow the transfer of weapons to the Palestinians and to unilaterally and unconditionally forfeit Israel's security. At the same time, all the Palestinians are required to do is make declarations, hold meetings, publish documents, and have photo-ops, including at least one showing they are 'beginning to destroy tunnel networks,'" said Dr. Aaron Lerner of the IMRA news agency.

He pointed out that the Palestinians already have produced some photos of PA forces pouring cement into tunnels as well as deploying forces, efforts that had no impact on either smuggling or Qassam rocket fire.

Dr. Lerner maintained that, if the US were really serious, it could have required a different set of benchmarks for the Palestinians, such as the destruction of a specific list of "hard targets," including training camps or specifically identified fortifications.

The US plan says nothing about requiring the Palestinians to close down rocket factories or confiscate rockets, weapons, or explosives, or hand over contraband for removal or destruction.

Nothing Real

Asked why he thought the American proposal has no real benchmarks for the Palestinians, Dr. Lerner offered two possibilities: The Americans don't really think the Palestinians can meet any goals, or the Americans "really don't care."

"Which is worse? In either case, this means the US is proposing that Israel unilaterally increase the exposure of its citizens to terror attacks," he said.

It is suspected that even the minimal security demands on Mr. Abbas could bring a backlash from Hamas and other terrorist groups, which have already stated that they have no intention of complying with the US plan.

"Some of these steps are difficult," said Mr. Abbas's aid, Saeb Erekat. "But it's the right approach."

Not All Demands

On May 4, officials in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said Israel would not be able to agree to all the demands in the US document, especially the issue of the convoys. Other requirements in the plan, such as the lifting of restrictions on Palestinians' movements, seem more acceptable, the officials said.

"Some of the ideas in the timetable Israel is already implementing; others are already well advanced; and there are some that Israel will not be able to address at the present because of security concerns," an official in Mr. Olmert's office said.

The demand for a corridor between PA territories is not new. Such convoys were approved in a deal brokered by Ms. Rice in November 2005 before the Hamas terror organization became the ruling faction of the PA government.

Hamas in Gaza

Although Israel faced numerous attacks before Hamas's election, the number skyrocketed after the terror group took control of the PA in January 2006. Since Hamas has been in power, Gaza has been the site of kidnappings of an IDF soldier, foreign nationals, and Palestinians from many different factions.

In fact, the situation in Gaza has so badly deteriorated that thousands of PA residents are reportedly lining up for visas that will enable them to live in other countries, far away from life under the PA government.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and wounded in the internecine fighting between Hamas and Fatah as they battle for control of the government, despite the unity coalition that was supposed to end the bloodshed.

Journalists Targeted

Reflecting the general consensus that Gaza is simply not safe, many foreign journalists no longer maintain permanent bureaus there, and the Foreign Press Association recently warned its members to avoid on-site coverage in Gaza if at all possible.

Since Hamas took power, a number of reporters have been kidnapped, including journalists from the Associated Press, Fox News, the French Agence France Presse, Presse, and others. Some were held for a few hours; others much longer.

On March 12, Alan Johnston, a Scottish national who works as a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation and had been in Gaza for three years, was kidnapped and has not been heard from since. In mid-April, a Gaza group, "The Battalions of Jihad and Tawheed in Palestine," said to be allied with the Islamist terror organization Al Qaeda, issued a flyer claiming it had executed Mr. Johnston and promised to release a video showing his murder.

The announcement connected Mr. Johnston's kidnapping with Israel's imprisonment of convicted Arab terrorists from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

Beyond the flyer, there has been no further confirmation of Mr. Johnston's death and no video has been released.

Unpopular Prime Minister

Perhaps one of the major obstacles to the US plan from the Israeli side is the fact that it was Mr. Olmert who agreed to it, and no one knows whether his government will last another week, to say nothing of eight months.

At the end of April, the Winograd Commission, which was established to investigate the government's mishandling of the Second Lebanon War last summer, issued its findings which severely castigated Mr. Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and former Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who had already resigned.

In the wake of the Winograd Commission's findings, there have been serious calls from inside the government and from the public, for Mr. Olmert to resign and for new elections to be held.

Mr. Olmert's support levels in the polls had been hovering at about three percent before the Winograd Commission's report. Afterwards, they dropped to nearly zero.

Waiting for Bibi

The polls also predict that, if Mr. Olmert's government falls and new elections are called, the Likud party will receive between 30 and 35 Knesset seats, compared to its present representation of 12 MKs. The polls have consistently shown that the head of Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu, is favored to be the next prime minister and that he would have little trouble forming a politically conservative coalition with the National Union/National Religious Party, Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu, and a hareidi religious party, such as Shas. The three parties are expected to garner about 30 seats together, easily giving Mr. Netanyahu the necessary 61 seats to form a government.

In addition, a recent poll gave Russian businessman Arkadi Gaydamak's prospective new party nine seats. Mr. Gaydamak has already forged a political alliance with Mr. Netanyahu.

Asked about his plans, Mr. Netanyahu said he felt ready to reassume the position of prime minister. He said he had learned his lessons from his previous term at the head of the government, and he predicted Mr. Olmert's government would fall prematurely due to public pressure.

Mr. Netanyahu and the Likud are regarded as much more security-minded than are Mr. Olmert and his government, meaning that a Netanyahu government is more likely to object to any US benchmarks that involve security risks.

Israel's security establishment has already said the moves required in the benchmark plan would dramatically endanger already vulnerable Israeli civilians who face constant missile launchings from Gaza, suicide bombings, and other terrorist attacks.

A Gift

According to IMRA's Dr. Lerner, the new American proposal may be an inadvertent gift to Mr. Olmert.

"At the very moment that many Israelis are focused on getting rid of the rascals, Ms. Rice has provided a common enemy in the form of a one-sided ludicrous proposal for Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to fight on behalf of the Jewish state," he said.

The PA's problem is that while Mr. Abbas may agree to the US plan, he has, in the past, proven powerless against Hamas, who has already stated its objections to it.

Not Yet Accepted

The US blueprint was written by US security coordinator, Major-Gen Keith Dayton; US Ambassador to Israel Dick Jones; and US Consul-General in Jerusalem Jacob Walles.

Ms. Rice approved it before it was presented to Israel and the PA, neither of whom has formally accepted it yet.

Palestinian sources told Ha'aretz that the PA's Mr. Abbas has accepted the document, but, the sources said, it is feared that Mr. Olmert will "sabotage" it due to his precarious political situation.

Binding Document

If both sides accept the document, its rigid timetable will become a binding agreement.

The bus convoy operating five days a week between the Erez checkpoint at the entrance to Gaza and the Tarqumiya roadblock at the entrance to Hebron is required to be established no later than July 1, 2007.

Even earlier --

June 1, 2007 -- Israel is required to remove specific roadblocks and other traffic and movement restrictions in Bethlehem, Hebron, and Shechem (Nablus).

The document requires the PA to develop a plan against the Qassam rockets no later than June 21, 2007, and Mr. Abbas must deploy his forces against the terrorists by then. Palestinian forces are also required to act to prevent arms smuggling in Gaza in coordination with Israel.

The plan requires Israel and the PA to re-establish coordination and liaison headquarters in Judea and Samaria.

Transferring Weapons

Some Israeli officials expressed dismay at the new plan's requirement for Israel to transfer or allow others to transfer weapons to the PA. This, too, is not a new idea. In the past, Israel has been encouraged to allow weapons to reach Palestinian leaders who allegedly were going to make efforts to stop terrorism. It never worked, and the weapons that went to the Palestinians usually were eventually used to kill Jews.

In May 2006, weapons given to the PA were used in terrorist attacks that resulted in the death of one Israeli and the wounding of another.

Last December, when another series of weapons were transferred to PA forces loyal to Mr. Abbas, a Palestinian-terrorist leader frankly told the press, "We promise to show Israelis very soon that the weapons brought for [Mr. Abbas's] Presidential Guard and [PA] security forces will be used against the occupation."

Yuval Steinitz, then chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, predicted that "a lot of IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians will be killed with these weapons."

No Discussion of Benchmarks

According to Mr. Olmert's foreign press adviser, Miri Eisen, benchmarks were not discussed by Messrs. Olmert and Abbas at their meeting in mid-April.

"They certainly discussed the problem that the Palestinians have not addressed the security issue to Israel's satisfaction at all," Ms. Eisen told Dr. Lerner. She called the halting of Qassam rocket-fire into Israel "a pretty obvious benchmark."

"This is something that comes up at every meeting. And the bottom line is that Israel is not willing to expand -- certainly not the 'non-ceasefire,'" she said.

However, she said, there has been no discussion between the Israelis and Palestinians on any concrete benchmarks that fall into a timeline for achievement.

Endanger Israeli Lives

In the US, the Zionist Organization of America took immediate exception to the "benchmark plan." ZOA president Morton Klein, who is urging Israel to reject the plan, wrote to President George Bush, asking him to revoke it.

Mr. Klein said the plan "entails major Israeli concessions to the unreformed Hamas/PA terrorist regime and will thus endanger Israeli lives."

Mr. Klein pointed out that the plan does not mention the need for the PA to fulfill its commitments under the signed Oslo agreements and the Road Map to jail terrorists, close Palestinian-terrorists' weapons factories, and end the incitement to hatred and murder which is regularly heard in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools, and youth camps that feeds terrorism.

"None of these commitments have been fulfilled by the PA," said Mr. Klein.

Rewarding Terror

He pointed out that, in return for many far-reaching concessions by Israel, all the "benchmark plan" requires of the PA is that it deploy security forces and merely "begin curbing rocket fire" into Israel by Palestinian terrorist groups.

"The 'benchmark plan' is simply a dangerous mistake that rewards the PA's promotion of terror and refusal to comply with their signed commitments. It not only fails to hold them accountable for their horrific actions, but sends a message that we are not serious about their compliance with past agreements," said Mr. Klein.

He maintained that because the plan "seeks to launch Israel along the road to major concessions to the PA regardless of the on-going non-fulfillment of PA commitments" to past agreements, the "benchmark plan" is "divorced from reality" and "dangerous to the security and welfare of Israel and its citizens as well as to America and its citizens."

Under these circumstances, he said, the new plan "not only makes a mockery of Israel and US, but sends the message to Al-Qaeda and others murdering Americans in Iraq and elsewhere that terrorism pays."

No More Weapons

Mr. Klein also strongly condemned the "benchmark plan" requirement that Israel supply weapons to the PA at the discretion of Maj-Gen Dayton, calling it "an insult to Israeli sovereignty and a danger to Israeli citizens."

"Israel has taken huge risks for peace in the past, handing over all of Gaza and half of Judea and Samaria to the PA, as well as money, assets, and even arms, all of which were simply used to murder and maim more innocent Jewish men, women and children. The very existence of this new timetable for further, dangerous Israeli concessions to the PA, which has done nothing to jail and arrest terrorists or end incitement to hatred and murder within the PA, shows that these realities are simply being ignored by Secretary Rice and her advisers," said Mr. Klein.

He called for the Israeli government to "decisively and utterly reject this plan" and for President Bush to "disown it."

"The 'benchmark plan' is simply incompatible with the President's insistence that he is 'the best friend Israel ever had,'" said Mr. Klein.

Susan Rosenbluth is published and editor of Jewish Voice and Opinion in Englewood, NJ. Contact her at susan@jewishvoiceandopinion.com or visit the website: http://jewishvoiceandopinion.com

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HAMAS, AL-QAEDA, IRAN AND THE GAZA CIVIL WAR
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 30, 2007.

To: president@whitehouse.gov

Dear Mr. President,

There is a real civil war going on in the Gaza Strip now. Hamas is winning. Hamas seems to have planned an assassination attempt on both PM Abbas and PM Olmert. Hamas seems suddenly to have gone in to high gear with attacks on Fatah as well as on Israel.

Two questions come to mind:

1.) Why is Hamas diverting some of its bellicose energy against Israel, even while its fighters roam the streets of Gaza assassinating putative Fatah sympathizers and attacking Fatah emplacements and personnel?

my hypothetical explanation: to get Israel involved in the civil war.

Any Israeli retaliation against Hamas or its affiliates permits Hamas to blame Israel for the violence and deaths, to call the fighting an Israeli plot to divide the Palestinian forces, and, perhaps most important, to put Fatah in a position that puts it in a no-win situation and renders it incapable of functioning as a government --

-- if Fatah does not join Hamas in Hamas' attacks on Israel, and does not join Hamas in whatever counter-attack Hamas undertakes against Israel, then Fatah is a collaborator with Israel and loses support from the rank and file that support Hamas and want to see the terrorism continue....and then Hamas is justified in killing any Fatah people they can find....killing them for collaboration.

But if Fatah does join Hamas, then Abbas and the PA lose any ability to pretend to Israel and to the West (and especially to Condi and Bush) that Abbas and the PA are a moderate force struggling to contain Hamas (the old Arafat good-cop/bad-cop routine). So, either way, Fatah loses. And when Fatah loses, Hamas wins.

2.) Why now? Hamas is 20 years old, has grown in power and support and funding over these decades, and has risen from a local religious extremist terror group (sort of a regional franchise of the Muslim Brotherhood) to Arafat's partner, and then Abbas' partner, and now Abbas' boss (thanks to the Mecca Accords).

But why not continue that progress, and leverage its new political power into greater positions of power within the Palestinan populace and within the supportive (almost cheerleader) EU and UN?

Why now suddenly turn to civil war and armed assault on erstwhile partners....thus destroying any semblence of willingness to compromize and make peace -- that semblence being the political ambrosia that nourished the hope held so dear by Condi and Bush that with enough concessions and enough flexibility and enough restraint, Israel could somehow coax Hamas in to some sort of peace mode?

My hypothetical answer: el-Qaeda and Iran have taken over.

Per the analysis below, el-Qaeda has been in Gaza since c. August 2005, if not before. Its operatives have grown in strength and in recruits. And as some may recall, Dr. Ayman ez-Zawahiri (el-Qaeda's #2 terrorist leader) had some very harsh words with PA Prime Minister Isma'il Haniyeh earlier this year when it looked like Haniyeh was going to enter in to some type of agreement with Abbas in order to advance the notion that a 'Hudna' with Israel was in the works. ez-Zawahiri's chastizement of Haniyeh came on the tail of an argument between Haniyeh (who lives and works in Gaza) and Khaled Mesha'al, the operative leader of Hamas living in exile in Damascus. Mesha'al was displeased with the degree to which Haniyeh was ammenable to Abbas' more flexible approach to Israel, and to his willingness to meet with Rice about peace talks with Israel.

It looks like Mesha'al and ez-Zawahiri won.

And where does Iran fit in to this? Israeli security sources noted months ago that Iranian operatives were located in the Gaza Strip. Let's recall that despite their Shi'ite-vs.-Sunni differences, el-Qaeda and Iran have worked together for decades. And Iran has long desired (since the Presidency of Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani at least, and more probably since the Ayatollah Khoumeini's 'Islamic Revolution' back in November of 1979) to be the leading force in the world-wide Jihad against 'global non-belief', displacing Saudi Arabia who held that honor since shortly after the six-day war (June, 1967).

So, with Israel's evacuation of the Gaza Strip, the anarchy and power vaccuum there created the ideal circumstances for the injection of el-Qaeda forces in the Strip, with Iranian funding.

My guess (just a guess) is that Iran now funds Hamas, and with that funding gains leverage such that it, via its Damascus puppet Mesha'al, decides that Hamas needs to stay true to its doctrine and its commitments -- terrorism until victory of martyrdom. And to make sure that Haniyeh is not seduced by the power that he could wield if he were to acquiesce to the west's pressures to moderate, Iran sends in the el-Qaeda troops.

So, what better way to establish the supremacy of Jihadist Imperialist Supremacist Totalitarian Triumphalist Terrorist Theocratic Tyrannical Islamofascism than to:

a.) get rid of the more moderate competitor/partner in a civil war which Hamas is sure to win (recall that many PA police and security forces moonlighted for Hamas during the Intifada 2 years)

b.) re-envigorate the great Jihad which will go on until victory (destruction of Israel) or martyrdom (which is really not such a bad alternative if the Qur'an's promise of 72 virgins for all eternity is correct).

It may not be likely that this will lead to a better life for Palestinians, but it will most assuredly advance the cause of el-Qaeda's war against global non-belief and strengthen the position of Akhmedi-Nejad as the first and only Muslim leader to be in a position to really wipe out Israel and take on the full force of western opposition to the 'Islamic Revolution'.

That's why the civil war is happening now.

So, Mr. President, what should you learn from these events and analyses?

a. THERE IS NO PEACE PROCESS. HAMAS DOES NOT WANT TO GOVERN. HAMAS DOES NOT WANT PEACE. HAMAS WANTS TO FIGHT AND TERRORIZE AND ATTACK UNTIL ISRAEL IS DESTROYED -- AND THEN THEY'LL START ON OTHER WESTERN TARGETS, IN OPEN ALLIANCE WITH EL-AL-QAEDA AND IRAN.

b. SO STOP SENDING SECRETARY RICE AROUND TO PRESS ON HELPLESS HAPLESS HOPELESS ABBAS (who, by the way, is now a target for assassination by Hamas operatives) AND ON WEAK WITLESS WILELESS WEIGHTLESS OLMERT. NOTHING THEY CAN CONCLUDE BETWEEN THEM WILL HAVE ANY MEANING REGARDING ANY PEACE OR TRUCE OR HUDNA.

c. START DEALING REALISTICALLY WITH HAMAS (OR ALLOW ISRAEL TO DEAL WITH HAMAS) JUST AS YOU TOLD THE WORLD YOU WOULD DEAL WITH TERRORISTS WAY BACK IN SEPTEMBER OF 2001.

Yours,
David Meir-Levi

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

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SCANDAL: THE WELFARE STATE OF "PALESTINE"
Posted by Moshe Dann, June 30, 2007.

According to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) tens of billions of dollars (one-third from US taxpayers, the rest mostly from Canada and European countries) have been spent over the last 50 years providing "Palestinian refugees" and their descendents. An estimated half million people 60 years ago, that number is now over four million and increasing daily.

UNRWA's purpose: to insure the "Palestinian Right of Return" -- the destruction of Israel.

No Arab country except Jordan -- where they constitute more than two-thirds of the population -- accepts them as citizens. Saudi Arabia, for example, recently passed a law allowing all foreigner workers in the country to apply for Saudi citizenship next year – except Palestinians.

More than 400,000 "Palestinian refugees" living in UNWRA-supported "camps" in Lebanon cannot work or even go to school outside their designated areas. Ditto for Syria.

Most "Palestinian refugees" listed by UNRWA (which includes Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and Gaza) in 2002, don't even live in the camps, but in nearby villages and towns. All receive free assistance and services for the rest of their life, including their children, their grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, ad infinitum.

According to UNRWA's rules, anyone who applied for relief, claiming they lived in Palestine for at least two years prior to 1948 (when Israel was attacked) and claimed to have lost property and livelihood was entitled to assistance, regardless of where they came from, or where they live today. Once a "Palestinian refugee," always a "Palestinian refugee" –no matter what.

That explains why the number of "Palestinian refugees" who receive aid has grown from a few hundred thousand to four and a half million (although no one really knows the exact numbers because of UNRWA's faulty records). That number could double in a generation – along with UNRWA's nearly half-billion-dollar annual budget.

UNRWA is supposed to verify that those who receive assistance don't work. Not surprisingly, however, no one checks. No one confirms the validity of those who receive benefits from UNRWA. After death, certificates of eligibility are simply passed on to others. No one checks bank accounts, automobile registrations, or property ownership.

With multiple wives families can comprise scores of children – all "refugees."

And, according to UNRWA rules, even if one parent is "Palestinian," the entire family is eligible for assistance and "refugee" status.

UNRWA openly admits that they don't monitor programs that support terrorism, or payments to families of terrorists by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hizbullah and (until recently) Iraq's Sadaam Hussein.

In fact, nearly all teachers employed by UNRWA are members of terrorist-controlled unions. Funding these teachers and the curriculum of hatred and bigotry which they teach supports terrorism and terrorist organizations. This may explain why so many children are willing to blow themselves up, carry weapons and explosives and place themselves as shields for terrorists.

Although responsible for what goes on in the areas it administers, UNRWA ignores the fact that terrorists are being trained there, including the next generation of homicide bombers, that bomb-making factories flourish inside the camps, and that arms and ammunition are stockpiled there.

UNRWA ignores the launching of thousands of rocket attacks against Israel from within territory under its responsibility.

And most outrageous, UNRWA is accountable only to the UN General Assembly, dominated by the 56-member Organization of Islamic Conference which is also part of the 115-member Non-Aligned Movement -- an automatic majority in the 191-member U.N.

UNRWA violates its own UN mandate (Resolution 302), which states (Paragraph 5): "constructive measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief."

UNRWA (Paragraph 7) indicates only two responsibilities: to work with Arab governments to provide jobs for the refugees and to help Arab governments end (not perpetuate) international assistance. UNRWA has been doing the exact opposite.

The "Palestinian Right of Return" (to Israel) -- their basic, non-negotiable demand – encourages the refusal to accept Israel's existence and fuels Palestinian terrorism. It reinforces Palestinians' belief in their victimization, promotes a culture of denial and self-destruction, and sabotages any hope for change. UNRWA facilitates this mess.

And we pay for it. Had enough? Stop the funding, now.

Moshe Dann, a former asst professor of History, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.

This essay comes from the May 2007 Edition of the Jewish Magazine
(http://www.jewishmag.com).

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A MIGHTY SPIN: PARAMOUNT IN BED WITH CAIR
Posted by Arlene Peck, June 30, 2007.

This essay appeared in Arutz-Sheva
(http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7223).

CAIR has perfected the art of spin.

Move over, Bill O'Reily! CAIR has so perfected the art of spin that I don't think even you would catch the con job until it was over. At least, I'd bet that the innocents at Paramount didn't have a clue that the screening they arranged for the movie A Mighty Heart was a ruse to make CAIR, the terror-supporting organization, look good.

Hussam Ayloush, Executive Director of CAIR-Greater Los Angeles Area, joined forces with Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, a nondescript nobody whom no one has ever heard of. Lacking credibility, his claim to fame, apparently, is that he is head of a dot.com "synagogue" and a group called "Jews on First.com." He shared the panel with another group called "Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace" (don'tcha just love it?). Oh yes, another of the panelists was DeDe Gardner, co-producer with Brad Pitt/Plan B Entertainment. She was on the stage thinking she would be discussing the movie in an effort to publicize it. The event was held in the Sherry Lansing screening room at the studio. I thought it kind of a clever that the venue was a site named for a Jewish girl who made good.

It was simply a forum for presenting the audience with a means to discuss how to "Build Unity and Understanding in Today's World." Folks, for this terrorist-supporting organization to carry that off.... Well, imagine the Nazi party having a car wash benefit for a group of yeshiva boys. I was waiting for them to raffle off a puppy.

The movie, about Daniel Pearl, was made to show the sick, barbaric mentality of his captors and the primitive and savage lifestyle in that part of the world. Yet, Paramount gave CAIR a platform from which to proclaim that the criminals out there were giving Muslims a bad name. Hussam, referring to CAIR, claimed that Muslims suffer from misconceptions: "There is widespread belief that Muslims are sympathetic to terrorism," and, of course, "CAIR cares about all religions." I think that he referred to what is happening now as the "demonization of the Muslim religion." Finally, he smiled and said, "CAIR cares about not only Daniel Pearl, but all human beings. CAIR is speaking against evil through their own people."

Of course, had we been allowed to ask questions during this so-called "dialogue," I would have said that if that were the case, then how come the Koran says that if you're not one of them, then you must be destroyed.

Of course, they carefully picked a self-hating "rabbi," who never said where his congregation was located -- except in the universe of the dot.coms. He spoke movingly about how the Jews should be so grateful because the Muslims gave them refuge in Turkey in years past. And how no Jewish group would be "brave" enough to bring together a group such as the one gathered. And that the "problem in the Jewish community is because they suffer from Islamic phobia," and he commended CAIR for the courage that they showed. He couldn't imagine a Jewish organization having the "courage" to bring about a dialogue such as the wonderful evening we were experiencing.... Gawd!

While the now-benevolent group CAIR was presented by the good people at Paramount as a loving organization, with all of its 33 chapters, I couldn't help but wonder what Daniel's wife and parents would think of that evening. I don't blame Paramount because they are so clueless. Here, in the land of Hollywood, they don't even know what FOX news is, much less CAIR or its intentions. However, it might have been prudent for Paramount to do a little homework before giving this group credibility by letting CAIR use their studios to promote its propaganda.

In the movie, the terrorists made the comment that it was "the Jews" who were responsible for 9/11 and that 4,000 Jews stayed home from work that day at the Twin Towers. I thought it wouldn't have hurt had this misconception been corrected. In fact, the ultimate spin was the end of the movie, when they didn't show the beheading. These peaceful people needed a reminder.

One of the primary comments, repeated often, was that there was no reason to be ashamed of being Muslim. Oh really? It was interesting that this so-called panel was, in reality, a sounding board to promote the Islamic culture. Although the evening had been billed as a "dialogue" about the movie, only two hand-picked, bland questions were asked. Then, suddenly, an announcement was made that there was,unfortunately, no more time for questions.

Apparently, there was no time for questions at all. Especially the one that I had written, asking, "If the Muslim religion is such a peaceful one and the 'criminals' don't represent the masses, then why aren't we seeing 'million man marches' protesting the actions of the murderous and the dysfunctional, by the 1.6 billion people they claim to represent?" In fact, forget the million-man marches, how about a twenty-five-man march? (Women, in many of those Islamic countries, aren't even allowed on the streets. Look at the pictures next time and see how many women you see in the crowd.)

The moral of the story? Maybe the Israeli government ought to hire CAIR to handle their public relations, as CAIR sure seems to be doing a better job at it. Maybe they could get a big Hollywood studio to help them in their endeavors. Maybe they'll even raffle off a trip to the Holy Land. Or at least have everyone leave with a hug.

Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. She can be reached at: bestredhead@earthlink.net and www.arlenepeck.com

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SIXTY YEARS OF SILENCE: THE STORY OF GUNTER GRASS
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 30, 2007.

This was written by Petra Marquardt-Bigman, a freelance writer and researcher with a Ph.D. in contemporary history. She has published a book and a number of articles on American intelligence on Germany during and after World War II; her current work focuses on Europe's political discourse about Israel and the Middle East conflict, and she is writing a related blog, "The Warped Mirror", at the Jerusalem Post's Blogcentral site.

This article was published as Volume 1, Issue 2 (April 2007 / Iyar 5767) Article 8/9 in Covenant -- Global Jewish Magazine by the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya -- P.O. Box 167, Herzliya, 46150, Israel. The email address is covenant@idc.ac.il

Abstract: In August 2006, the German writer and Nobel laureate Gunter Grass caused a media-quake of major proportions when he revealed that he had served in the SS. While the ensuing controversy pushed the debate about the war between Israel and Hezbollah into the background, both issues once again brought up the problematic legacy of a past that, reflecting postmodern preferences, is increasingly viewed as a "grand narrative" structured in terms of "victims" and "perpetrators." Highlighting a casual remark of Grass about his supposedly first encounter with racism as an American POW and his failure to break his silence when he accepted the offer of an honorary doctoral degree from an Israeli college, the article explores how Europe's "grand narrative" shapes the European discourse about Israel and the Middle East.

At the end of 2006, the Guardian's Berlin correspondent noted that Germans would remember the year "for just one rather marvelous thing -- the World Cup." [1] Under the title "The War is Over", the article highlighted some of the World Cup's aspects that doubtlessly were appreciated even by those (relatively few) Germans who couldn't care less about football: the country had shown for all the world to see that it had emerged from the shadows of its past -- Germans could wave their flag and cheer their national team without projecting anything but a harmless, infectious enthusiasm for a popular sport.

Among the fans watching the World Cup was the famous German author and Nobel laureate Gunter Grass. The almost 80-year-old writer had just finished his latest book, an autobiographical work about his youth that was due to be published a few weeks after the World Cup. He had also been offered an honorary doctoral degree from an Israeli college, and in between watching the World Cup matches and reading the proofs for his book, he made time to meet the representatives of Netanya Academic College.

It was reportedly a pleasant meeting that took place at Grass's home near Lubeck in northern Germany. The Nobel laureate told his guests that he was happy to accept the honor offered to him and that he looked forward to visit Israel for an official ceremony that would be organized by the college. But Gunter Grass did not tell his guests what he would tell an interviewer a few weeks later: his forthcoming autobiography Peeling the Onion[2] would reveal a secret that he had kept for more than sixty years. The secret was a most unexpected one from a man like Grass who had spent a lifetime speaking out passionately about the need for Germans to face up to their Nazi past. The secret was that Gunter Grass himself had kept silent for more than sixty years about his own service in the SS.

It quickly became clear that the young Grass had been drafted for service in the Waffen-SS towards the end of the war, and that he had not been involved in any of the atrocities committed by Himmler's notorious organization. Yet, it was unavoidable -- and some thought, calculated -- that his confession caused a media-quake of major proportions that would reverberate for months throughout Germany and even in the European and international press. The history that during the World Cup had seemed just a faded memory was back in the headlines again.

But it was not just the confession of Nobel laureate Gunter Grass that forced Germans in mid-August 2006 to once again confront their past. The summer's war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah had already brought back the sensitive question of whether Germans could feel as free as others to criticize Israel's conduct. Yet, this debate was quickly drowned out by the flood of editorials, commentary and TV programs that covered any conceivable reaction to Grass's confession and tried to square the rather belated revelation with the writer's lifelong pose as a righteous leftist.

In the respected Suddeutsche Zeitung, two younger writers soon issued an exasperated "plea for less Grass and more debate on the Middle East."[3] Protesting that the generation of Grass was dominating the political discourse, they criticized that "all express their understanding, their consternation, their disappointment, even their nausea -- none of them is under 75. A class reunion of old German intellectuals who feel chronically inclined or obliged to enlighten us on the same topic: Hitler and me.[...] It's shameful that within three days, the Grass affair has elicited more statements and morally-grounded positions from German writers and thinkers than the war in northern Israel and southern Lebanon did in the 33 days prior."

There was another aspect of the frenzy surrounding Grass's revelation that was perhaps no less "shameful" and certainly no less telling: In the lengthy interview before the publication of his book, Grass had smugly recalled how he, a young SS recruit who was held as a POW by American forces, encountered "direct racism" for the very first time when he witnessed the discrimination of black soldiers in the US Army.[4] It was a rather casual remark, and among German commentators, it went largely unnoticed. But the Wall Street Journal picked it up for what it was: an editorial noted with some sarcasm that, growing up in Nazi Germany, the young Grass should have had a few opportunities to notice racism prior to his capture by American forces. Describing the Nobel laureate as "a darling of the anti-American and anti-globalization set," the editorial concluded that SS-recruit Grass "felt morally superior to those damn Yanks, and he still does six decades later" -- all of which earned him, in a pun on his most famous novel, the designation "Tin Moralist."[5]

A Hungarian commentator highlighted another aspect: the public intellectual Grass, who claimed to speak with the authoritative voice of moral indignation on Germany's past and present, had obviously failed to notice in his youth that Jews were disappearing; sixty years later, he was an outspoken critic of America, but had once again nothing to say about the threats of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[6]

There was indeed something very characteristic in the casual and smug way in which Grass had recalled his first encounter with "direct racism," and the incident -- as well as the fact that it was barely noted in the flood of commentary that engulfed Europe's media in the aftermath of Grass's belated confession -- may well serve as an illustration of a crucial mechanism that shapes the views of Europe's elites not only about America, but also about Israel.

Europe has come a long way in its approach to the country that was established because of the very direct racism that went unnoticed by the young SS recruit Gunter Grass. Guilt-ridden support for the state of the Holocaust's survivors has given way to sharply critical attitudes that do not always stop short of accusing Israel of crimes as evil as those committed against European Jewry. Neither Israelis nor pro-Israel advocacy groups seem quite to understand what feeds the hostility that they see coming from Europe: the countless calls to boycott Israeli academia, films, exhibitions, companies, and products; the threats to try Israeli army personnel and Israeli politicians for war crimes, and, beyond calls and threats, actual measures like the ban that prohibits refueling stops of El Al planes with military cargo in several European countries, Germany among them. Equally hard to understand is how those who used to fervently endorse the pledge of "Never Again" would remain somewhat aloof when the call to wipe Israel off the map was issued from Teheran. Eyebrows were raised, dismay was expressed, but in the end the response remained muted, and neither the intellectual nor the political debate took much notice of the existential threat that a nuclear Iran poses for Israel.

But perhaps Europe simply sees little reason to worry about existential threats to Israel -- after all, in the fall of 2003, a survey in the European Union revealed that 59 percent of Europeans regarded Israel as a greater threat to world peace than Iran. As always in situations like this, Israeli media and international organizations like the Anti-Defamation League blamed latent antisemitism for European hostility towards Israel. But this well-worn explanation fails to grasp the formative forces that are shaping European public opinion. In this context, Grass's casual remark about his first encounter with "direct racism" may be paradigmatic: Obviously a young man who grew up in Nazi Germany and went through SS training did not encounter "direct racism" for the first time when he witnessed the discrimination of black servicemen in the US Army, but doubtlessly that was the first time Grass noticed racism. His sensitivity to manifestations of racism might have been enhanced by his "demotion" from being a member of what he perceived to be SS elite troops to being a prisoner of war, in other words: from being a potential perpetrator to being a potential victim.

Some sixty years later, Gunter Grass seems to have devoted precious little effort to questioning his perceptions or the notions that were formed on the basis of these perceptions. It is the narrative that preoccupies him -- and it is narratives that preoccupy the political discourse in postmodern Europe.

In the prosperous and largely peaceful environment that Europe has provided for its citizens in the past few decades, the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s have receded into history. While the Holocaust is obviously still widely regarded as part of a traumatic and formative past, prevailing postmodern preferences have shaped the discourse about this past. On the one hand, the Holocaust has given rise to a "grand narrative" that structures European perceptions of the past and present in terms of "victims" and "perpetrators." On the other hand, the postmodern perspective which views the legacy of the Holocaust as a narrative construct has diminished the acceptance of interpretations that tied European, and particularly German, guilt for the destruction of European Jewry to the establishment of Israel and required a basically positive view of the Jewish state. After decades of diligent Vergangenheitsbewaltigung -- that quintessentially German construct describing the process of coming to terms with the past -- Germans and Europeans alike feel that they have graduated beyond the constraints of "political correctness" in the discourse about Israel. At the same time, this discourse reflects Europe's grand narrative and is thus generally still conducted within the coordinates set by the categories of the "victim" and the "perpetrator." The perception that, in the case of Israel, the state and the people that had been accorded unquestioning victim status have become perpetrators makes this discourse particularly resistant to voices that speak for a country that wants to be neither victim nor perpetrator.

Europe's tendency to now overcompensate for the previous "political correctness" towards Israel also has to be understood in the context of the current challenges that are posed by the radicalization of Muslim minorities in Europe and the related threats to social peace and public security. Faced with these problems, Europe has, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, experienced a sense of being threatened. In a somewhat paradoxical switch of roles, the political right tends to interpret that threat within a conceptual framework that conjures the specter of the rise of a new fascism; by contrast, the political center and left resolutely reject any attempts to look for parallels in the past and insist that the present policies of the US and Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories are the major factors that cause the radicalization of Muslim populations. What seems to be rarely noted in the European discourse is that this view echoes quite uncritically the narrative that has been instrumentalized for decades in the Muslim world to channel popular dissatisfaction with repressive and stagnant regimes.

Thus, the publication of a statement of support for Gunter Grass by 46 Arab intellectuals, who dismissed criticism against the writer as a ploy to divert attention from the crimes of Israeli "neo-Nazis," may have been an embarrassing show of solidarity, but it was not necessarily a completely undeserved one.[7] The Neue Zurcher Zeitung that carried the report noted critically that the statement reflected an intellectual discourse divorced from reality, feeding on slogans, empty rhetoric, and conspiracy theories. This criticism may not only apply to the intellectual discourse in the Arab world.

The dichotomy between the role of the victim and the perpetrator that dominates the discourse about Israel in Europe and elsewhere reflects perhaps a deep-seated human longing for morality and justice. However, as the example of Gunter Grass might illustrate, the human experience is more ambiguous: what would have happened if he had been just one year older, and had been drafted earlier in the war? Would his misguided youthful idealism have made him a willing perpetrator, or would he have refused participation in murderous SS commandos, and have become a victim? And what would have happened to a Jewish US soldier taken prisoner by Grass and his comrades? Futile questions perhaps, and Grass himself seems either never to have wondered about them, or is simply all too sure of the answers.

Against this background, it is interesting to note that Tom Segev, in an article in Haaretz,[8] still thought that Israelis should appreciate the positive response of Grass to the offer by Netanya Academic College, because "Israel these days is not a major source of attraction for people who stand for the values of justice and human rights, even if they're German." After the interview in which Grass revealed that he had served in the SS, the college requested and received from Grass a letter of explanation -- which clearly was formulated with German public opinion in mind -- but eventually it was decided to "defer" the granting of the honorary degree to Grass. However, Segev suggested that Grass should perhaps still be invited at some point to Netanya, so that Israelis would have a chance to hear "what a person like him ought to say about the occupation and the oppression in the territories."

Just a few days after Segev's article appeared, Israelis actually did get a chance to hear something that was probably not far from what Grass would say: considering what is known about the views held by Grass, it is safe to assume that he would largely agree with the positions expressed by a group of mostly German academics who, in mid-November 2006, published a "manifesto" demanding a re-evaluation of the "special" relationship between Germany and Israel.[9] Under the title "Friendship and Criticism", the authors devote considerable room to assuring readers of their friendship for Israel, but they reject the notion that Germany's past requires them to uncritically support Israel; at the same time, the manifesto repeatedly invokes the need, even the duty, for "special sensitivity."

Unfortunately, the manifesto shows little evidence of "special sensitivity"; indeed, it would rather seem that there is "special insensitivity" when the manifesto echoes some of the favorite lines of such "friends" of Israel as the Iranian president. Just like Ahmadinejad, the manifesto's authors seem to regard the establishment of the State of Israel as a historic injustice against the Arabs: "It is the Holocaust that has, for six decades, caused the continuous, and currently even unbearable, suffering of the Palestinians.[...] countless dead, families torn apart, expulsion, and life in make-shift housing up to today have been the consequence." The text continues to argue that, without the Holocaust, Israel would not feel justified to ignore so intransigently the human rights of Palestinians and Lebanese, and without the Holocaust, Israel would not be backed in this -- materially and politically -- by the US.

By arguing that Israel owes its existence exclusively or primarily to the Holocaust, the authors of the manifesto seem to deny that Zionism was a legitimate quest for a Jewish homeland. Indeed, the manifesto emphasizes that the UN decision to "accept" the establishment of the State of Israel was taken still under the "shock" of the Holocaust and "against the Arab states." According to the manifesto, the Middle East conflict has German and European roots, and it was no fault of the Palestinians that "a part of the European problems was transferred to the Middle East." Obviously, this has been said before in Farsi and in Arabic.

There is equally little "special sensitivity" when the manifesto's authors declare that they are "convinced" that Jewish intellectuals like Adorno, Einstein, Freud, Marx and Zweig -- "of whom we are so proud and without whom German culture and the German contribution to the sciences would be so much poorer" -- would subscribe to the principle that only respect for equality, human rights and international law can guarantee peace and the continued existence and security of Israel, Jews in the Diaspora, and the future Palestinian state.

It is indeed likely that these German-Jewish intellectuals would have agreed with this principle, but the problem that is overlooked by the professors who authored the manifesto is that there has been historically a severe shortage of Arab-Muslim intellectuals who agree with this principle. In fact, not long before the publication of the manifesto, the Berliner Zeitung carried an article by an Iraqi-born writer who discussed the "Two faces of Arab Intellectuals" and criticized that Arab intellectuals would routinely condemn terrorist attacks in English, German, or French, and praise them in Arabic.[10]

However, the authors of the manifesto clearly prefer to focus on what can be criticized about Israel. While there are unequivocal condemnations of suicide attacks and the launching of Qassam rockets, the manifesto leaves little doubt that it is the suffering inflicted by Israel on Palestinians and Lebanese that is "unbearable." Notwithstanding all the reaffirmations of friendship for Israel, the nine pages of the manifesto paint Israel as the victims' state that has become a cruel perpetrator, cynically trampling human rights and dignity in its lust for land, a mighty militaristic monster, propped up by 20 percent of America's foreign aid budget, oppressing, terrorizing and killing Palestinians and Lebanese at will.

It is simply remarkable with how much righteousness European intellectuals feel entitled to criticize Israel based on a simplistic view of the Middle East conflict that ultimately reflects Europe's "grand narrative" of victims and perpetrators. Europe's image of Israel is central for European perceptions of the Middle East: torn between feelings of obligation from their historic guilt and resentment arising from the often unacknowledged notion that the Jewish state has to prove that it is indeed a worthy guardian of whatever might be defined as the "legacy" of the Holocaust, Europeans feel increasingly justified in condemning Israel as racist, militaristic, oppressive, and generally malevolent. Perhaps one should also not underestimate the power of the associations triggered whenever the issue of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories comes up: when the French hear "occupation", they think of the Nazi occupation of France, not of their own colonial rule in North Africa and elsewhere; and when the Germans hear "occupation", they think of the Allied occupation of Germany, not of the Nazi occupation of much of Europe. Thus, Israel becomes the greatest threat to world peace, and the Star of David somehow gets distorted into a swastika. And since Europe's grand narrative assigns the role of the perpetrator to Israel, the role that remains for the rest of the Middle East is that of the victim.

Yet, when Europeans, and certainly Germans, look at themselves, the dichotomy between the victim and the perpetrator all but dissolves. The story of Gunter Grass is paradigmatic: as we learn from his autobiography, the young SS recruit "somehow" managed before his capture to strip off his SS uniform and change into a more innocuous Army uniform; with equal ease, he managed to strip off his role as a potential perpetrator and change into a potential victim by taking offense at the discrimination of black US soldiers. And while it would be just a strange historical coincidence if -- as Grass has implied -- the German Nobel laureate and the German Pope really came to know each other as POWs in an allied camp, it may be less of a coincidence that the Pope suggested in a speech in May 2006 at Auschwitz that the Nazis had been "a ring of criminals" that "used and abused" the Germans, and that the Shoah was "ultimately" directed against the sources of the Christian faith.[11]

Coming to terms with the past for many meant not only acknowledging guilt, repenting, paying reparations, and building memorials, but also working up the courage to say: "we were victims, too" -- because the perpetrators were "a ring of criminals" that victimized the rest of Germany and Europe. Not surprisingly, one literary critic commented that Grass narrated his memories in a way that made it "comfortable" to recall life in the former Reich territories: "West and East Prussia re-emerge from the fog of the Cold War, reflections about expulsion can take place under his watchful eye and it's even acceptable for the Germans to be victims too."[12]

Like the Guardian's Berlin correspondent, many Germans seem to feel that "the war is over", that it is time to see Germany untainted by its past. Having graduated from a lengthy, though not always entirely voluntary process of Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, many also seem to feel that they can claim a moral superiority that entitles them to judge the Middle East conflict all the more harshly. A decidedly nonconformist German voice -- the author and songwriter Wolf Biermann -- summed it all up in his characteristically polemic way:

Three decades after the Holocaust, the Germans had just about forgiven the Jews for what they'd done to them. But now the perpetrators are becoming increasingly ungracious towards this hopeless ongoing conflict of their victims. Again and again I hear the cold-hearted argument: these Jews must have learnt what oppression is at the Nazi school of hard knocks. Precisely! Which is why I cold-heartedly counter, having learnt their Shoah lesson, the survivors have no desire to get slaughtered all over again.[13]

NOTES

[1] Luke Harding, "The War is Over," December 26, 2006, at:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/luke_harding/2006/12/post_839.html.

[2] Gunter Grass, Beim Hauten der Zwiebel [Peeling the Onion], Steidl 2006. The projected publication date of Grass's book in English, by Harcourt, is Fall 2007.

[3] Eva Menasse and Michael Kumpfmuller, "This Endless Moral Flutter," originally in German in Suddeutsche Zeitung, August 17, 2006; English at: http://www.signandsight.com/features/909.html.

[4] An English summary of the extensive debate in the German and international press about Grass's revelation can be found at http://www.signandsight.com/features/899.html; Grass's remark about his first encounter with "direct racism" was addressed mainly by non-German commentators, e.g.: Neue Zurcher Zeitung: "The Staged Confession," by Roman Bucheli, August 14, 2006, available in English at: http://www.signandsight.com/features/903.html.

[5] Wall Street Journal editorial: "Tin Moralist," August 16, 2006; Page A10.

[6] Rudolf Ungvary, Elet es Irodalom (August 25, 2006), English summary at:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/899.html.

[7] Neue Zurcher Zeitung, "Peinliche Solidaritat", September 14, 2006, at:
http://www.nzz.ch/2006/09/14/fe/articleEH125.html
English at: http://www.arabia.pl/english/content/view/209/16/.

[8] Tom Segev, "I was Young and Stupid," Haaretz Magazine, November 10, 2006, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/786092.html.

[9] Text in German at: http://www.frankfurter-rundschau.de/in_und_ausland/dokumentation/?em_cnt=1009679; a documentation of the ensuing debate in Germany is at: http://www.frankfurter-rundschau.de/in_und_ausland/dokumentation/?em_cnt=1014426; a news report in English is at
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3328858,00.html; see also this author's comments at
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3331319,00.html.

[10] Khalid al-Maaly, "Two Faces of Arab Intellectuals," originally in German, Berliner Zeitung, September 14, 2006; English translation at:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/993.html.

[11] Address by the Holy Father, "Visit to the Auschwitz Camp," Auschwitz-Birkenau, 28 May 2006, at:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/may/
documents/hf_benxvi_spe_20060528_auschwitz-birkenau_en.html.

[12] Ina Hartwig, August 22, 2006, quoted in English at:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/899.html.

[13] Wolf Biermann, "Germany Betrays Israel," October 26, 2006, English at:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1020.html.

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ISLAM'S WAR AGAINST BUDDHISM
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 30, 2007.

Christians and Jews are not the only ones in the islamofascist cross-hairs. This was written by Dhammajarat and it appeared in Front Page Magazine April 4, 2007.

Allahu Akbar! The tinny P.A. system tore asunder the pre-dawn peace and quiet.

I was jolted in my mind, almost like experiencing a car wreck, suddenly and without any warning. This totally incongruous sound intruded upon and encompassed everything, causing even the birds to rustle in the darkness.

It was just after 4 a.m. I was seated underneath the holy Maha Bodhi Tree in Bodh Gaya, in the state of Bihar in India. It was a few days past the full moon of May 2004, a few days past Veesak. This was my second visit to this unparalleled location, the site of the Lord Buddha's attainment of full Enlightenment over 2,500 years ago. Now, towards the end of my 10 day stay, I had applied for and been granted the great honor of permission to spend the night within the Maha Bodhi compound.

My plan was to spend the entire night practicing seated meditation, walking meditation, and circumambulation of the great Maha Bodhi Stupa. The air was warm and my practice was going very well as I alternated between the three practices, as the hours passed.

The beautiful waning full moon light filtering through the glistening leaves of the Maha Bodhi Tree, the soft fluttering of the leaves, the serene quiet, took me back to that time long ago when the Buddha himself had sat very near this same exact spot.

Or so I thought...

The mussein's call to prayer for the faithful of Islam, here in this most sacred location to all of Buddhism, ripped me back to modern reality. I was stunned! How could this be? Here in one of the most significant spots of Buddhism, loud speakers come on at four in the morning every day, to shock and intrude upon meditators and Buddhist practitioners using this spot for that which it has to offer in its most special way?

How could this be allowed? It is...

The Muslim call to prayer seemed to go on and on...20 minutes to a half-hour later, the scratchy recording thankfully ended and quiet returned.

My concentration was thoroughly blown. Instead of following my breath, I found myself looking at the great distraction and paradox I had just experienced.

I thought about Mecca!

Could any other religion intrude itself there in the holiest of places to Islam, as the tenets of Islam had so intruded itself here in the holiest place of Buddhism?

No way! I could imagine immediate death being visited upon anyone that would even try -- that is, if they would be admitted anywhere close to the Muslims' holy Kabah -- let alone be allowed to set up a loud public address system that would broadcast the message of another religion across the courtyards of the Grand Mosque, or any other Moslem religious site. The hypocrisy was astounding.

After awhile, I ceased to be so shocked and began to calm down. I began to see that this was merely a continuation of a long and sad trespass against Buddhism perpetrated by the faith of Islam.

In my previous visits to India, I had visited every site that was specific to the actual life of the Lord Buddha. At every location the pattern was the same: Just the partial foundations remaining of what had once been great Stupas or elaborate religious universities of Buddhist learning and practice. Even the place of the Buddha's birth had been destroyed and buried, with modern day excavations only now giving some restoration.

I had learned from guides on location, and then from further studies once I returned home, that these locations had all been laid to waste in the early Moslem invasions of India, starting in the 900's by Turkic hordes issuing forth from what is now Afghanistan, and continuing for over a thousand years until the Mughal era. A prolonged and calculated assault, an assault designed to wipe an entire belief, an entire religion, off the face of the Earth. The long history of Islam, being spread by the sword and by fire, had left its indelible mark on these wonderful peaceful, harmless, legacy sites of Buddhism.

I learned how the monks and nuns and religious students were slaughtered without mercy and piled up and burned, and all terrified survivors were driven like dry leaves before a strong wind, out of the region of India entirely, wherever this Islamic wind blew.

I was told this is how Buddhism actually came to Tibet and Southeast Asia, by Buddhists fleeing for their lives! My faith had been rendered a refugee faith via the tender mercies of Islam.

I learned how Islam was particularly unkind and brutal to Buddhists, because to Moslems the Buddhist represented the most reprehensible type of human personality: the "atheist" holding no monotheistic God image as their object of worship and veneration. We were worse even than the far more numerous Hindus, with their vast pantheon of multiple gods. The Buddhists, to the Muslims, only worshipped the image of a man, and no God higher.

Apparently they did not bother to look into the philosophies of Buddhism any more deeply. That was enough for the sword to come down and the fire to be applied. And so they have over the centuries until today.

I remember, some years back, before the gripping situations that we face today had quite come in to focus for many of us, I followed the story of the great Buddhas of Bamiyan, in sad and war torn Afghanistan. The Russian war was over, and the rein of the Taliban was in full force, but they were not content to merely rule the people with an iron hand by the strictest applications of Sharia law. They had to physically erase the "infidel" past, as well.

I remember shedding tears as I saw the footage of those magnificent Buddhas, the tallest ancient statues in the world, being reduced to rubble by explosive charges and artillery shells. I remembered hearing on the news footage, that same cry of Allahu Akbar! -- as the dust of Bamiyan settled to reveal the emptiness of the destruction. The same cry that destroyed my meditative absorption under the Bodhi Tree.

Now, I pray we never hear this call in this our home, America. Not until and unless Islam totally and completely reforms itself after over a thousand years of ravaging and sweeping all others before it.

I feel, through my direct experiences of it, that Islam has not changed its ways in the least. In fact it has become more aggressive now than at any time since its period of greatest expansion in the 900s to the 1200s. "Modern" Islam seeks to return humanity to those very same times -- a revival of the dark ages of Islamic slaughter, mayhem, and pillage -- all in the name of Allah.

We Buddhists must realize that we, and our cherished practices, would be swept away entirely and crushed utterly, should Islam ever gain ascendancy in this world in which we live. Islam is the only belief that propagates itself thus == by the sword.

And it is very patient.

Satu

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

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THE SPIN STOPS HERE
Posted by Ted Belman, June 30, 2007.

Dr. Aaron Lerner is Director of Independent Media Review and Analsis (IMRA). Its website address is http://www.imra.org.il IMRA offers examples of spin below.

1. Spin after Hamas exploited decision of Sharon and Olmert administrations to ignore reality and avoid addressing the smuggling from Egypt to Gaza Strip: "fall of Gaza to Hamas is an opportunity"

2. Spin after Fatah terrorists exploit proposed timeout to murder Israelis: "now that Fatah has regained the respect of the Palestinian street by murdering Israelis they will be strong enough to make peace"

3. Spin after the next shipment of weapons America supplies are turned against Israel: "now the world appreciates the sacrifices Israel made to try to bolster Mahmoud Abbas"

4. Spin after successful mega attack murders thousands of Israelis: "this opens a window of opportunity for the IDF to act without concern for bad press".

Now Aluf Benn reports Cabinet approves transfer of withheld tax revenues

The prime minister added that at Monday's summit in Sharm el-Sheikh he will present "our expectations as well as our demand for a fight against terror."

"At the same time, we will declare our intention to assist the new government."

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the cabinet that any diplomatic progress would be dependant on the actions of the Palestinian emergency government.

Livni slammed Russia as well as some Arab states for refusing to give their full support to Fayad's cabinet, accusing them of trying to revive the unity government between Fatah and Hamas and thus thwart any chance of diplomatic progress.

The spin is that Israel must offer "gestures" or "confidence building measures" to support the Abbas government. I can't think of one instance where such gestures have resulted in increased support for Arafat or Abbas, or for that matter a benefit for Israel.

On the other hand it may be argued that making gestures increased support for their policies of intransigence and violence. Such gestures merely reward intransigence.

The Government of Israel must explain how gestures will result in Arab compromises for peace. The latter must be a precondition for the former.

Furthermore it is not enough to say Abbas is moderate or willing to compromise for peace. Such willingness must first be demonstrated by his words to his own constituency and then by action.

Rather than hold the Arab feet to the fire by demanding compromise we say what they want because they won't say it and because they don't want it. Similarly we call Islam a religion of peace so Muslims don't have to take a stand on the issue.

What we say is spin and it doesn't accord with reality. Abbas has yet to indicate his willingness for substantial compromise. If he is not willing to compromise, why are we sucking up to him.

INSS just published a paper "First We Take the West Bank..." byAnat Kurz.

[..] The common aspiration of Israel and Fatah to prevent the fall to the Islamist camp of the West Bank, as well, does not constitute a basis for agreement on permanent status. Fatah's main concern now is to block the rise of Hamas power in the West Bank and to regain control in Gaza. Preparing for agreement with Israel -- which entails historical concessions -- is not on its agenda.

In any case, it could not impose any agreement it might negotiate. And Israel's security and ideological reservations about territorial concessions in the West Bank will continue to complicate the task of reaching a compromise with Fatah -- just as they did in the years preceding Hamas' electoral gains.

Moreover, the current political break between the West Bank and Gaza does not relieve Fatah leaders of their obligations to Gaza residents or signal the end of Hamas' intention to expand its presence in the West Bank. With the revival of a political process, the West Bank and Gaza will be on the negotiating table as a single entity. And any Palestinian delegation -- religious, secular, or mixed -- will insist on maintaining that link. Israel will not be able to ignore demands in that spirit, however much they may complicate matters.

Now that's a bit of truth telling.

Ted Belman is a Canadian lawyer and editor of the IsraPundit.com website, an activist pro-Israel website. Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com

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WE'RE NOT DOING ENOUGH TO COMBAT OUR ADVERSARIES
Posted by Phyllis Chesler, June 30, 2007.

The cultural war between Islamic barbarism and Judeo-Christian civilization is raging even as Gaza and Sderot are under siege. The manipulation of propaganda is a key factor here. Britain -- the country that turned Nazi-era European Jews back from Palestine's shores -- is now trying to boycott and isolate Israeli doctors, journalists, and university professors. The British Anglican Church, well-financed British-based NGOS (Christian Aid, World Vision, Amnesty International, etc.) and British academics have joined their voices to the Islamist-led jackal-chorus against Israel.

In order to understand such British actions -- or in order to see how Jew-hatred is synchronized in Britain -- let me refer to two recent British cultural offerings.

First, a Welsh-British theatre troupe appeared in New York City and, in a powerful and well acted play, "Memory," presented yet again the morally false equivalent of Nazi soldiers and Jewish civilians in Germany in the 1930's and 40's with Israeli soldiers and Palestinian villagers today. Both sets of soldiers are only "following orders."

While our sympathies are with the persecuted and murdered Jews, they are also meant to extend to the Palestinian villager in the play who, appealingly, holds a basket of fresh oranges as he contemplates the demolition of his home. (There is absolutely no discussion of why his home is being demolished, no mention of the non-stop terrorist violence against Israeli civilians.)

Thus, our terror, pity, sorrow, and moral outrage on behalf of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust and our considerable repugnance toward the Nazis is masterfully manipulated so that we transfer exactly such negative feelings toward (undeserving) Israelis and positive feelings toward (undeserving) Palestinians.

Obviously, many Palestinian civilians are worthy of compassion. Like the rest of the civilized world, they, too, are held hostage by hate-filled terrorist maniacs. The barbarism of Hamas gunmen toward Fatah gunmen and leaders has revealed to the world that Israel never had a peace partner in Gaza and that neither the secular Fatah nor the Islamofascist Hamas is able or willing to protect the Palestinian civilian.

Most Palestinian civilians, however, along with their many Western allies, still scapegoat Israel rather than their own leaders for their considerable misery and danger. Like the so-called moderate Muslims (whom we cannot easily find) who maintain a loud silence, Palestinians do not denounce and resist their own corrupt and murderous leaderships and are still filled with a pathological hatred toward Jews and Israel.

The other recent British cultural offering that warrants discussion is a "mockumentary" directed by Gabriel Range and titled "The Death of a President." Drawing on our collective trauma over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, this film, which poses as a documentary, transposes 1963 emotions onto an event that has not occurred, namely, the assassination of President George W. Bush. The British desire for the death of the American president is so great that wish-fulfillment fantasy is presented through a reality-form technique.

Surely, this is a new kind of propaganda. The man jailed as the president's assassin, Jamal abu Al Zikri, is really an innocent Muslim whose wife, Zahara, is presented on camera as a soft-voiced, eminently sympathetic figure in hijab. The true assassin is an African-American father whose son was killed fighting the war against jihad in Iraq.

Beyond culture -- or rather as an extension of it -- the siege against the Jews also includes the rockets raining down on Sderot and the bizarre international silence about it; the Western intellectual glamorization of Tariq Ramadan (who, I might add, teaches at Britain's distinguished Oxford University whose press publishes his clever double-speaking books which essentially strive to present a Muslim Brotherhood message for the twenty-first century).

One might expect that Jewish advocates and Israeli intellectuals would condemn all this and boycott or at least ostracize those who write books justifying the demonization of Israel. Some do just that, but many others do not.

For example, the influential American Jewish Book Council just gave a showcase to Stephen Walt, who together with John Mearsheimer authored a paper about how the "Zionist Lobby" was causing unrest both on American campuses and in terms of American foreign policy. Walt was invited to speak at the council's annual Jewish book network conference in New York. (Walt and Mearsheimer have expanded this dangerous libel into a book to be published this fall.)

Meanwhile, Brandeis, the "Jewish" university, gave Jimmy Carter a stand-alone platform to spout his anti-Israel views. And then there's the Forward -- a Jewish newspaper that has previously honored me and in whose pages my work has appeared -- which covered the latest British attempt to boycott Israeli academics mainly by focusing on the allegations of one Israeli-American academic, Dr. Yigal Arens, a professor of computer science who insists that he has been " boycotted" or disinvited to a conference at Ben Gurion University because of his anti-Israeli politics. This is passing strange since so many Israeli academics are themselves left wing and specialize in criticizing Israel.

And now leaders of Americans for Peace Now, Israel Forum, and Brit T'zedek v'Shalom are contemplating a merger in order to increase their clout and attract "more money to push for a two state solution."

Nevertheless, there is some sanity on the horizon:

  • Austin, Texas-based physicist Dr. Steven Weinberg, who is also a Nobel laureate, cancelled a trip to the UK in protest of the boycott of Israeli products called for in April by British journalists.

  • Dudu Himmelfarb, chairman of the worker's union of Maman, an Israeli cargo company, has announced that "if the British union decides to go ahead with the boycott, we will stop unloading cargo from the British Aircrafts and imports from Britain."

  • Just this month some 100 Israeli reservists from Sderot refused to serve, saying, "We, reserve soldiers and officers from Sderot, have been brought up on the values of Zionism, Judaism and the sacrifice for the state and its citizens. We used to believe that army service was a privilege and a duty for the State of Israel and its residents, and that this was the only way to ensure the existence of a safe home for the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora....Last summer we were called up for the war in the north and responded to the call out of a sense of mutual commitment, national duty and a shared destiny with the residents of the north. We feel that this commitment is being violated in Sderot and the Gaza-area communities by the Israeli government.... The government does not offer a solution to the threat."

  • Media watchdogs CAMERA, HonestReporting.com, MEMRI, and a host of ex- and dissident Muslims together with Christians and mainly Orthodox Jews from all over the world continue to fight Israel's demonization.

  • Rank-and-file members of the various British bodies that have called to boycott Israel are demanding second votes. Jewish groups are launching petition drives and calling for the British to reconsider their obsessive delegitimization of Israel. The noted law professor and author Alan Dershowitz has called on academics worldwide to affiliate with Israeli universities. (I had already done so long ago as part of a drive undertaken by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.) The Goldhirsh Foundation has announced that it will not fund any UK scientists.

It is not enough. Nothing is enough. It is not our fault; the forces arrayed against us are overwhelming. Therefore, I implore the grassroots members of the Jewish Book Council not to invite Professors Walt and Mearsheimer to any more Jewish book fairs. (I do not have enough space to discuss why this seeming relaxation of our commitment to free speech may ultimately save the very civilization in which such an idea evolved).

So many non-Jewish universities are caving in to Islamist demands for pro-Islamic programs; I hope administrators at Brandeis (where I once taught and where my beloved son went to school and loved it) will consider it incumbent upon them not to join this lynch mob; may they "boycott" Walt-Mearsheimer and others of their ilk as lecturers -- unless they allow for face-to-face debate.

Finally, I hope that, like the Nazi-era Danes, other American and European professors will proudly "wear the Jewish star" and join me in affiliating with Israeli universities.

Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the author of many works including the bestseller "Women and Madness" (1972), "The New Anti-Semitism" (2003) and "The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom" (2005). Her forthcoming book is titled "The Islamification of America."

An Emerita professor of psychology and women's studies and the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women's Health Network, she may be contacted through her website, www.phyllis-chesler.com

This article appeared June 27, 2007 in the Jewish Press.

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IS THIS THE END OF PALESTINE?
Posted by Daily Alert, June 30, 2007.

These are excerpts from an article written by Martin Peretz which appeared in the New Republic.

* So what is Palestine? It is an improvisation from a series of rude facts. Palestine was never anything of especial importance to the Arabs or to the larger orbit of Muslims. Palestine was never even an integral territory of the Ottomans but split up in sanjaks that crossed later post-World War I borders, a geographical and political jumble.

* When the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine was passed, envisioning a "Jewish" state and an "Arab" (not, mind you, Palestinian) state, even the idea of a separate Arab realm was met at best with a yawn. Though almost no Arab wanted Jewish sovereignty in any of Palestine, virtually no Arab seemed to crave Arab sovereignty, either. Foreign Arab armies did the fighting against the Haganah, and foreign states sat for the Palestinians at the cease-fire negotiations.

* Indeed, from 1949 through 1967, what was the West Bank of Arab Palestine was annexed -- yes, annexed -- by Jordan, and what was the Gaza Strip was a captive territory of Egypt, unannexed so that Gazans had no rights as Egyptians (whereas the West Bankers had rights as Jordanians). The Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964, was not founded to liberate these territories. It was founded to liberate that part of Palestine held by Israel.

* The final fall of Gaza to Hamas puts the whole question of Palestine and the Palestinians into a new perspective. There are now three cohorts of Palestinians between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. (Four, if you count the Palestinian majority under Hashemite rule.)

* The most serious near-term danger actually comes from the West Bank. Rockets and more precise weapons aimed at the thickly populated heart and narrow waist of Israel from almost any place in what is now Fatah land would revive both the anxieties and military reflexes of Israel. That is why U.S. policy must not assume that there are facile ways to render the West Bank peaceful. What keeps that area more orderly than Gaza is the presence of Israeli troops.

The Daily Alert is sponsored by Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and prepared by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). To subscribe to their free daily alerts, send an email to daily@www.dailyalert.jcpa.org

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TWO YEARS LATER, GUSH KATIF EVACUEES STILL NEED HOUSING
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 30, 2007.

What a rotten way to treat people who made the wildness bloom, who contributed to Israel's economy, and who, by the superb quality of the produce they marketed, won the respect of the European community, which was conditioned by Arab money and their own low resistence to the Anti-Semitism virus, to hate Jews. The Israeli government hasn't the competence to resettle 10000 people. But their solution to fighting their Arab enemies? They babble on about expelling up to another quarter of million Jews from Samaria and Judea (the West Bank for the illiterati). It kind of reminds you of Stalin killing off his best generals despite the certainty that the Germans were about to start to invade Russia. This was written by Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent, and it appeared June 22, 2007 in Haaretz
(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873931.html).

Almost two years after the disengagement from Gaza, construction of permanent housing has begun at only two of the 26 sites intended for 9,000 evacuees, according to a report by the Gush Katif Settlements Committee.

For example, no groundwork has been laid at Nitzanim and Talmei Yafe, projects decided upon months before the disengagement began.

The committee predicts that the trailer parks now housing the evacuees will remain in use for at least five years, instead of the two years that the government intended. The resulting problems are legion.

-Some 1,450 former residents of Gush Katif are still unemployed.

-More than 500 families are in bad financial shape, and some even receive food packages and help from welfare agencies.

-Because of the rampant unemployment, many families are using their state compensation funds for daily subsistence instead of saving it for building a house.

-Only 33 farmers out of 400 have been given alternate lands, and of these, only a handful are back in real business. Those who resumed growing crops face major infrastructure hurdles such as erratic electricity, sewage, drainage, etc.

-Farmers lost their overseas markets, buyers and distributors.

-A memorandum of understanding with the government on amendments to the Evacuation Compensation Law improved matters on a personal level. However, business owners and farmers will not be compensated for lost income until they can rebuild their businesses. Furthermore, compensation for Gush Katif evacuees is low and does not reflect the true value of their property. For instance, compensation for greenhouses is 60 percent of the cost of erecting them. Compensation for seniority is 10 percent of that granted to people evacuated from Yamit under the peace treaty with Egypt. And 650 people who requested individual property appraisals have received either no decision or a very low assessment, because the state froze individual appraisals after it turned out that many were higher than the compensation afforded by the law.

Despite all the above, the committee noted that more than 85 percent of evacuees continue to live in a community framework, in order to uphold their ideals and provide a support network for each other.

MK Uri Ariel, who chairs both the National Union-National Religious Party faction and the Knesset lobby for the evacuees, said the report underscores the state's colossal failures. "Housing at temporary sites is continuing long beyond the period intended, and no government ministry has a working plan for the extended stay," he said.

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TWO STATES OF DESTRUCTION
Posted by Daily Alert, June 30, 2007.
This article was written by Cal Thomas and it appeared June 20, 2007 in the Washington Times
(www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070620/ COMMENTARY09/106200010/1012&template=nextpage). Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.

The Bush administration's announced goal for Israel and the "Palestinian people" has been two states, living side by side in peace. The administration is two-thirds there. There are now two states -- one in Gaza, headed by the militant Hamas organization, which shot its way to power; and another in the West Bank headed by accused Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas. Unfortunately for Israel, there is no peace, which should not surprise those who have been predicting exactly what is now coming to pass.

Whatever their names, be they groups like Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda, or states like Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, their objectives are identical: the annihilation of the democratic Jewish State and the elimination of all Jews, either by death or displacement, from the land. To argue otherwise and to continue believing the fiction that "infidel" diplomats from the State Department or European Union can magically transform people commanded to hate Jews and Israel based on a twisted mandate from their corrupt notion of God, is to be in extreme denial.

Hamas won't stop with Gaza. After Hezbollah's victory over poorly directed Israeli forces in Lebanon last summer, why should it? The one thing terrorists understand is weakness. They perceive Israel, under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, as weak and they are going for Israel's jugular. Benyamin Elon, a conservative member of Israel's Knesset, said, "The Fatah is diminishing in front of our eyes, and a group of gangsters is taking over. Israel can wake up now from the delusion of an independent Palestinian state."

Will it, or will Mr. Olmert be passing out and swallowing, himself, more diplomatic sleeping pills during meetings this week with President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and members of Congress? The violence and broken agreements are not being perpetrated by Israel. They are being perpetrated on Israel. It is mystifying why Western diplomats continue to pressure Israel to "do more" when "more" has brought Israel less.

Each time Israel gives up something necessary for its security, it receives in return more war, more terror and more insecurity. If more for less remains the "strategy" of the United States, Israel has two choices: surrender now or prepare for all-out war with catastrophic results.

Since President Bush laid out his "vision" for a two-state solution to Middle East turmoil four years ago this month, Israel has frozen expansion of Jewish communities beyond the armistice lines of 1949 (a major Palestinian demand). As Caroline Glick wrote in the Jerusalem Post, "Israel expelled all Israeli residents of Gaza and northern Samaria in order to render the areas Jew-free to the Palestinians."

What was the Palestinian response to Israel's construction halt? Did they suddenly embrace the two-state solution of peace and harmony with Israel? No. The Palestinians held elections in January 2006 and instead of picking leaders to make peace with Israel, they overwhelmingly voted in members of Hamas to head the Palestinian Authority. A flood tide of terrorists and arms subsequently flowed into Gaza.

The intentions of Hamas and other terrorist groups are not hidden. They openly proclaim what they intend to do and do it. Osama bin Laden said five years before September 11, 2001, that he planned to attack the United States. Few took his statement seriously enough to eliminate him when they had the chance.

Those still in doubt or denial about what Israel's (and America's) enemies plan might benefit from reading Jed Babbin's new book, "In the Words of Our Enemies" (Regnery Publishing). In it, Mr. Babbin assembles what the Islamic terrorists, Chinese and North Korean communists and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez are saying they want to do to us.

This quote from the al Qaeda training manual leaves no room for diplomacy: "The confrontation that Islam calls for with these godless and apostate regimes, does not know Socratic debates, Platonic ideals nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine-gun."

Anyone who questions the sincerity of such a statement is a fool. Apparently enough fools remain in leadership in Israel, the United States and Europe to encourage the killers to fight on until victory is attained.

The Daily Alert is sponsored by Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and prepared by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). To subscribe to their free daily alerts, send an email to daily@www.dailyalert.jcpa.org

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TWO FAILED STATES -- HAMASTAN AND FATAHLAND
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 30, 2007.

It isn't often the Guardian sounds like a news-paper and not like a ranting I-hate-Israel rag. Savor this. Of course, the columnist writes as if Palestinians are a real people and deserve a state. But he recognizes the "palestinians" have screwed themselves out of a state -- at least in the short run.

This was written by Emanuele Ottolenghi and it appeared June 18, 2007 in the Guardian
(http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/emanuele_ottolenghi/2007/06/ already_in_its_death_throes.html).

Already in its death throes after seven years of futile struggle against Israel, the Palestinian national movement suffered a fatal blow last week, when Gaza fell in the hands of Hamas. Now, instead of a state-in-the waiting, Palestine is two failed states, under two governments at war with one another.

Hamas in Gaza might still pursue its fight against Israel; and Fatah in the West Bank might still voice the rhetoric of grievance against Israel as the occupier. But the two are now locked in a deadly struggle. Anti-Zionist rhetoric has been waving the ghost of a one-state solution -- implying that Israel might disappear, replaced by a united binational state comprising the West Bank and Gaza as well as present Israel. It now looks as though there will be a one-state solution after all -- Israel, alongside two failed states, both Palestinian, and fighting each other.

It has not been easy for Palestinian nationalists. Ever since their late leader and national symbol, Yasser Arafat, chose to exploit the Intifadah, in September 2000, to extract more concessions from Israel, everything that could possibly go wrong, did. First, violence turned Israeli public opinion against the now moribund Oslo process: Ariel Sharon quickly replaced the left-wing peace coalition against which Arafat had unleashed his Intifadah. Systematic resort by Palestinian factions to terrorism against Israeli civilian targets only created the momentum for Israel's military offensive in late March 2002. West Bank towns were reoccupied and the backbone of the terror network that seemed so close to breaking Israel's will was crushed.

Arafat's flirting with gun-toting militias and a myriad offshoot of armed groups only earned him confinement by Israel and isolation from America. Sharon easily won the next electoral round and set the stage for unilateralism -- Israel would withdraw to borders of its choosing and the Palestinians would be left behind, once more. The spectre of this move did nothing to propel Palestinian leaders into action to bring an end to the mounting anarchy within their ranks and sue for peace. Instead, Arafat allowed anarchy to grow, as if it would only harm the enemies of Palestine, and not Palestine itself. Eventually, the persistent refusal of the Palestinian Authority, first under Arafat, then under Abu Mazen, to disarm all militias and dismantle all terror networks yielded the outcome all but fools would predict. In January 2005, I wrote that:

"Terror groups have grown stronger since the intifada began. Abbas' predecessor... used terrorism to pressure Israel into more concessions. Convinced as he was that outsourcing violence to a network of terror groups would promote his goals, he willingly let them run amok, thus renouncing the monopoly over the use of force. Four years later, terrorists pose a formidable challenge not only to peace, but even more crucially to Palestinian statehood. Today, terrorists mainly attack Israeli targets. But tomorrow, unless disarmed and forced to recognize that only the Palestinian Authority has the monopoly over the use of violence, they could use their weapons and their militancy to dictate conditions or carve out areas of influence through threats, blackmail and intimidation. They have to be disarmed -- not for Israel's sake, but for Palestine's sake."

Alas, it is too late now. Brother will fight brother, while the West Bank and Gaza go their separate ways. At last, Abu Mazen seems to have understood the need to establish the monopoly over the use of force. Hamas has clearly understood it too, as it moved to disarm everyone not loyal to Hamas in Gaza. But this is too little too late. Two governments are now in place, and with them, two separate entities are slowly coming into being. They'll play this war out to the bitter end. The west has already chosen its horse, not realizing that this is a cockfight, where the audience can do little else but watch.

There is little rejoicing in this turn of events, but it must be understood for what it is: the end of Palestinian national aspirations.

Hamas' takeover in Gaza has created a small Islamic state on the shores of the Mediterranean, next door to Israel and to Egypt. Helped by Iran and Syria, Hamas has now opened a southern front in their war against Israel but in the process, it has made Palestine as a state even less viable than before.

Now, Hamastan needs to conquer the West Bank to make itself the credible and legitimate champion of the Palestinian struggle. Meanwhile, Fatahland will try to regain its lost territory of Gaza before it can even begin to negotiate credibly with Israel. An endless war will further contribute to Palestine's demise. For ordinary Palestinians, seven years of the Intifadah yielded nothing but grief, death, and poverty. The passage of time did nothing to strengthen Palestinian territorial claims: if anything it gave time to Israeli settlements to expand and Israeli control over Jerusalem to tighten.

As Hamas assumes control over Gaza, Gazans are longing for the return of the despised Israelis. Palestinian intellectuals have conceded that Palestinians might need to be "re-occupied" by an international force led by the Arab league -- a return to the pre-1967 occupation by Jordan and Egypt, no less. Now, not even this option seems available -- unless, that is, foreign forces are sent to fight Hamas and re-conquer Gaza.

With the Gaza takeover by Hamas, history has finally drawn its curtain on the two-state solution. Before Palestinian nationalism can reclaim one Palestine, complete, before it can even settle for the meager leftovers Israel held for 40 years, Palestinians have to face their own, wearing each other out, Hamastan against Fatahland, while the Israelis look on.

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PALESTINIAN POLITICS: "GOOD GUY FATAH VS. 'BAD GUY' HAMAS" IS NO POLICY SOLUTION
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 30, 2007.

The problem here is that while Fatah is certainly less extreme than Hamas (and there are good reasons to prefer a Fatah victory between the two), we should have no illusions about Fatah's moderation. An international policy of "backing" Fatah is not a good idea, not least of all because it is spreading many of the same ideas and using the same tactic (terrorism) as does Hamas. Moreover, the two are willing (at least at times) to be partners. And, I regret to say it, I think Hamas is the long-term leading group in the Palestinian movement though Fatah will of course also remain powerful. At least, Hamas is going to set the [Arab] agenda on all things concerning Israel, even if many do not accept Islamization.

Given the Middle East's grim circumstances and poor prospects for peacemaking, it is tempting to see the Palestinian scene as a struggle between good-guy moderates, Fatah, and bad-guy extremists, Hamas. If so, the best policy seems simple: support Fatah against Hamas in hopes of strengthening those favoring peace and compromise.

It would be good if this were true but unfortunately it is not. Fatah is not better than Hamas because even if it is slightly less extreme, Fatah itself is the core of the problem. Only by recognizing reality can policymakers be freed to find better ways to ameliorate the situation -- including reducing the Palestinian people's suffering.

Why does this conflict remain unsolved? If the issue is merely a wish by Palestinians, led by Fatah, to create a West Bank-Gaza Strip state, the issue would have been settled long ago with such a solution. But despite Western media interviews in which the Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas expresses such ideas, this is not Fatah's line. The problems are legion:

  • Abbas is a weak leader incapable of restoring order or making the compromises necessary to achieve peace.

  • Abbas himself is not so moderate, having a strong personal dedication to the demand that all Palestinians who so wish can go to live in Israel rather than a Palestinian state, both a deal

  • breaker in itself and a sign of a higher priority on destroying Israel than creating a viable state for the Palestinians or ending the remains of the occupation.

  • Abbas lacks support within Fatah itself, which remains overwhelmingly hardline, seeking a total victory in which Israel would be wiped off the map.

  • Fatah is so riddled with corruption, factionalism, and incompetence that it has earned the disdain which many Palestinians have toward it.

  • Fatah's strategy is not to offer a peaceful alternative vision but to compete with Hamas in maximal demands and the glorification of violence.

1. Weakness as Leader

  • Abbas lacks political skills, having literally never even made a public speech before becoming the PA leader.

  • He has no personal base of support within Fatah. Being a behind the-scenes bureaucratic intellectual by nature and experience he is timid.

  • Nor is he particularly moderate, only being so in comparison to others in Fatah.

  • To some extent, the only reason he remains leader is that he is a useful front man for the real power-brokers in convincing the West that Fatah is not so extremist.

  • He has failed completely to advance negotiations with Israel, solve the PA's problems, fix Fatah's ailments, take control of the Gaza Strip after the Israeli withdrawal, or stop Hamas' growing power. Abbas has raised and dropped plans in quick succession without making any attempt to implement them. His skills are more than overmatched by his colleagues' radicalism, the younger generation's challenge, the security forces' assertive independence, and Hamas' rivalry. Even within Fatah, his personal support was far less than 20 percent, and his few backers fought with him and among themselves.

There is no possibility that he will take a strong hold over the movement or the PA and he is incapable of defeating Hamas or taking decisive steps toward compromise and peace.

2. Fatah's Shortcomings

  • Widespread corruption. The movement has done zero to clean up its reputation in the 18 months since a humiliating election defeat. Even the highest leaders are badly corrupted, even by regional standards, including Abbas's closest advisors. This means, for example, aid money is not used to help the people but goes into their bank accounts.

  • Incompetence: Fatah did a terrible job of running the PLO for 40 years and the PA for 12 years. It was indifferent to building a good infrastructure or running successful institutions. Health, education, economic progress and social welfare took a back seat to armed struggle against Israel.

  • Factionalism: Fatah's official leader is not Abu Mazin but the hardline, popular, pro-Syrian Farouq Qaddumi who opposed the Oslo agreement. Fatah leaders know Abbas is too weak to challenge their power but is valuable in presenting a more moderate face to the world, better able to retain Western support and funding than an openly hardline leader.

  • Hardly one member of the Fatah Central Committee is personally committed to Abu Mazin or known for taking a moderate stance. Fatah is still in the hands of Arafat loyalists who see no reason to change their view that the conflict's only acceptable outcome is a Palestinian state in place of Israel.

  • Factionalism makes Fatah incapable of acting decisively or changing course. The dissident younger generation is led by the terrorist al-Aqsa Brigade, which is an integral part of Fatah, and Fatah's grassroots' Tanzim group. The main leader is Marwan Barghuti, serving a life sentence in an Israeli jail as organizer of the 2000-2005 terrorist campaign. Barghouti's strategy is an alliance with Hamas, not more moderation. Since the election defeat, Fatah has made no reform or leadership change to resolve the factionalism which caused it.

  • Fatah and the PA under its rule has never interfered with, arrested or punished those launching terrorist attacks against Israel. There has never been a single case of a Fatah member being sanctioned for such behavior. In short, Fatah has not lifted a finger to stop terrorism or educate toward moderation.

3. Fatah's Strategy

In 2000, Fatah rejected a peace agreement that would have quickly ended the Israeli presence, created a Palestinian state, made possible repatriation of refugees, and provided more than $23 billion in international payments. Instead, it launched a disastrous five-year-long war based mainly on terrorism, and ending with Hamas taking over control of the PA.

Moreover, the group insists on the return of all Palestinian refugees to Israel -- rather than their resettlement in a Palestinian state -- as a way of subverting Israel. Abu Mazin is personally strongly wedded to this demand which is absolutely critical in Fatah's thinking. Qaddumi explained, "The Right of Return of the refugees to Haifa and Jaffa is more important than statehood."[1]

Equally, Fatah favors a two-stage process -- in which any Palestinian state would immediately be used as a base for a renewed conflict to conquer Israel -- not a two-state peace. It remains loyal to the 1974 program proclaiming that any Palestinian state is only a way-station to total victory.

One might expect Fatah leaders to take a pragmatic stance along the following lines: We are in a terrible situation and have no state because of our incorrect strategy. Violence, radicalism, and maximalist demands have not brought benefits. We must instead try a strategy of compromise, peace, and moderation. Let us accept Israel's existence; get our own state; bring home the refugees to become productive citizens; and focus on economic, social, and cultural development to benefit our people.

This would have required a new program based on self-criticism of the past and a sense of reality about the present. Fatah could have made a deal with Israel to end the conflict and obtain a state. It might have focused on raising living standards; convincing refugees to return to a Palestinian state (rather than demand they move to Israel); gaining credibility with Israel as a peace partner; creating a strong economy, schools, and health system; and other such steps. There is no evidence that the leadership of Fatah or the PA -- except for a handful of people -- ever seriously considered such a program.

Refusing to acknowledge the situation means Fatah rejected the usual response of those being defeated: changing course, being cautious, reducing expectations, and offering compromises. Instead, it tells its own members and people: Our armed struggle is winning. Continue the battle, produce more martyrs, make no concessions, gain international support by projecting an image of moderation, and we will win in the end as Israel collapses or surrenders, no matter how many years are required, lives it costs, or resources must be spent.

Fatah has never told Palestinians that in 2000 the United States and Israel offered a comprehensive negotiated solution including an independent Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem. Misinformed that Israel poisoned Arafat and told that it wants to wipe out the Palestinians, that Israel is the enemy of Islam, has no right to exist, and offers them nothing, Palestinians understandably see long-term armed struggle as their only alternative. Told repeatedly -- by Fatah as well as Hamas -- that total victory is just and that the whole world supports them, they believe this program will triumph. Certainly, such a conclusion makes them unlikely to opt for a comprehensive moderate rethinking of their world view.

This political culture -- spread through the PA-controlled schools, mosques, and media -- has now been passed to a new generation. At the same time, the kind of program required as a minimal basis needed to achieve peace with Israel is basically defined as treason, a charge that the many rivals for leadership in Fatah would not hesitate to fling at anyone deemed excessively moderate.

More immediately, Fatah failed to use the opportunity of a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip to build a stable polity. Instead, the collapse of Gaza in anarchy, radicalism, and violence provides a vision of what a Fatah-led state would look like.

For Fatah, weakness and failure is guaranteed by internal divisions and the inability to make key decisions, on one hand, and the lack of moderate goals or a viable strategy, on the other hand. As a result, it is unable to achieve a state, improve its people's material well-being, or end the violence.

As a result of all these factors, other than on the specific issue of Islamism there is little difference between Hamas and Fatah. Given Fatah's low credibility, poor performance, and inability to offer success or an alternative vision, it is understandable -- though very regrettable -- that most Palestinians support Hamas.

Conclusions

Here is the paradox: Money is given Fatah it is likely to be stolen, not used to improve the lives of Palestinians. Arms and military training given Fatah will be turned against Israel

Fatah is unwilling to challenge Hamas militarily or even to restrain it -- and smaller radical groups -- from terror attacks and rocket launching against Israel. It will either reject or not implement any promises it makes in this regard, as experience as repeatedly shown.

The correct response to this unpleasant situation is to decertify the Palestinian movement. Since it failed the test of the peace process, and events since then, and is now in the hands of a movement that opposed the peace process, there is no sense giving it the rewards based on pledges to do otherwise. As before 1993, the world must wait until there emerges a Palestinian movement that is truly ready to cease terrorism, negotiate seriously, and make a permanent peace with Israel. Such a movement would be offered great rewards but until then there is nothing to be gained by dealing with Fatah or Hamas.

Notes

[1] Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2002

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, has written and edited 50 books on the Middle East. His latest book, The Truth About Syria, has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

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The FOURTH WAY IS THE BEST
Posted by Fred Reifenburg, June 30, 2007.

I find it amazing, that bright and experienced people keep hitting their heads against a stone wall, and won't face up to a simple fact. There cannot be peace with Muslims, specially since they've made it ever so clear they wish to destroy Israel and the west. I'm sure if they succeed it wouldn't stop there.

So....enough already at finding peaceful solutions.

There is IMO, another way to settle the matter. The west has got to get its act together, and fight this menace.....to victory. Not likely in our time, but it's the solution that has always worked, where as negotiation is looked upon by our enemies as a sing of weakness.

Think about it. And read this piece by Israel Zwick, who can be reached by email at israel.zwick@earthlink.net or go to his website: www.cnpublications.net

In his op-ed column in the NY Times on June 6, 2007, Thomas Friedman made some astute observations about the prospects for Arab-Israeli peace. The article was aptly titled, "What a Mess." Friedman noted that the three methods that were tried so far have all failed. Land for peace, favored by the Left was discredited by the failure of Oslo. Permanent occupation, favored by the Right, was rendered impossible by Palestinian militancy. The third way, unilateral withdrawal, was discredited by the debacles in Lebanon and Gaza. So the solution to the mess can only come about via a still undetermined "fourth way."

Mr. Friedman, who has a long and deep involvement with Middle East affairs, should know that a fourth way has already been proposed over 20 years ago and offers the best possible solution. However, it is still considered to be too politically taboo to be placed on the table. This plan involves voluntary relocation of the Palestinian Arabs, while the remaining Arabs in Israel and the territories will form a commonwealth government that would be in federation with Israel.

There are a number of variations to this plan but the essential elements are as follows:

1. All Arabs living within the 1947 boundaries of Palestine as well as those living in the UNRWA refugee camps would be offered a compensation package to end their refugee status and allow permanent relocation. The package would include a $50,000 cash payment per family, compensation for their property, and free transportation to any country of their choice that is willing to take them. The 22 countries of the Arab World must participate in this process and be willing to absorb some of the Palestinians and contribute to resettlement costs. Recent polls have suggested that a large portion of the 4 million Palestinian "refugees" would be willing to consider such an offer. To avoid discrimination, Israeli Arabs should be offered the same opportunity. This stage of the plan is expected to take about three to six years for completion. It would be financed by the same donations that are now funding the Palestinian Authority, UNRWA, and UNICEF.

2. The current Palestinian Authority and all of its militias will be dissolved. It is widely recognized that the PA established by the Oslo Accords has been a failure. There should be only one central security apparatus and no private militias. No country can tolerate gangs of armed gunmen who make their own rules and carry them out by force.

3. In place of the PA, the remaining Arabs living in the 1947 Palestine boundaries, and those that are allowed to return, will form a new commonwealth government modeled after Puerto Rico, which has been "occupied" by the United States for over 100 years. Gaza, Judea, and Samaria will be annexed to Israel but the Arab areas will become a self-governing entity. Security arrangements, passports, monetary system, and international commerce will still be monitored and controlled by Israel. Otherwise, the Arabs will govern themselves with their own mayors, judiciary, parliament, and civil police force. The Arab areas will be function in confederation with Israel, in peaceful coexistence with mutual cooperation. The Arabs will be allowed some form of representation in the Israeli Knesset.

The advantages of such a plan are as follows:

  • There will be no more Palestinian refugees or refugee camps. All Palestinians will have a permanent residence and citizenship in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, other Arab countries, or other locations of their choice.

  • The Left will be satisfied because there will be no more "occupation" of Palestinian Arabs. All Arabs living in the 1947 boundaries of Palestine will have their own government. Israel will still control security arrangements and the military.

  • The Right will be satisfied because the historic lands of Israel will remain a part of Israel. Jews will be allowed to remain in communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

  • The Palestinians will be satisfied because they will have the best of both worlds: self-government and the privileges of association with Israel. Puerto Rico has benefited from this type of arrangement and is not complaining about "occupation." Those that aren't satisfied will have the opportunity for voluntary relocation with compensation.

  • The US, EU, and UN will be satisfied because there will be peace and harmony in the Middle East.

As Thomas Friedman acknowledged, the three ways that have been attempted so far have failed to bring peace to the region. So it is time to dismiss the political taboos and try an innovative fourth way, such as this plan, which has the ability to satisfy all the interests in the conflict. Variations of this plan have been floating around for the last 30 years. Perhaps it is time that they be seriously considered.

Reference:
http://cnpublications.net/2006/10/23/ editorial-consider-alternative-forms-of-government/

Contact Fred Reifenberg at freify@gmail.com

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PREVENTING THE ISLAMIZATION OF EUROPE
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 30, 2007.

Below is part of an extensive article on how to prevent Islam from conquering Europe. The whole evolving article is to be found on Islam Watch (http://www.islam-watch.org) The list is at
http://www.islam-watch.org/NoSharia/archives/oldindex.html. It was written by No Sharia.

The excerpt below is "is Policy Area 12: Foreign Policy Part B 12.3 'More about Goals and Policies.'" It is part of a section archived at
http://www.islam-watch.org/NoSharia/Prevent-Europe-Islamization8.htm

Among the numerous new proposals are the following:

  • All current Conventions, Declarations and Programs of EU, or parts of them, which work against the goal to prevent the islamization of Europe, shall now be changed or eliminated.

  • The religious education at schools or universities (in moslem countries) shall not contain hate against people of other faiths, or against people without religious faith. Neither shall it contain teachings contrary to the UDHR, muslim supremacism, incitements against western countries, ... A country which allows such elements as a part of the schools´ religious curriculum is an enemy of important values of the European countries.

  • One rule regarding immigration: In some countries or regions in the Middle East, the proportion of marriages between first and second cousins are about one half of the total number of marriages. If they would choose freely, muslim women would choose cousins as partners in the same low proportion as in Europe (1% or less). A ban on marriages between first and second cousins is one of the most effective ways to help young muslim women in Europe avoid forced marriages arranged in order to strengthen the extended families important in the Middle East. A ban also weakens the extended families which -- like earlier in Europe -- in itself has positive consequences for the feeling for, and growth of, citizenship in the relevant group.

  • A new International Center for Crimes Against Human Rights (ICAHR) shall identify, find and arrange for the arrest of persons who regularly commit specially serious or abhorrent crimes against UDHR in countries where the governments do not protect human rights enough. Examples of possible criminals to be given attention by this center are:
    -Prison guards in moslem countries who regularly rape girls or young women before their execution (often for political /religious reasons). These acts are committed in order to prevent them from going to heaven, and are a common practice in e g Iran.
    -Specially notorious torturers of political prisoners of e.g. the democratic opposition in a country
    -Medical doctors who regularly earn a good income by performing Female Genital Mutilations (FGMs)
    -Religious leaders in moslem countries proclaiming specially abhorrent fatwas violating UDHR, against citizens or residents of t h a t country a s o

  • All collections of money for charities in EU countries shall be tightly controlled. The distribution shall later be controlled by an EU-, or state, organization.

  • All financing of mosques, or financing of religious activities in EU, by states which do not allow full religious freedom on their own territories, is forbidden..

He also describes how the future political development will lead to a dismantling of the non-economic parts of the EU constitution, and the historic possibility that will appear to replace social democracy and social liberalism as important forces on the political scene of Europe.

Islam Watch is a website run by a dedicated group of Ex-Muslims, who have made it their mission to tell "the truth about Islam." They put "Islam under scrutiny by Ex-Muslims."

12.3 MORE ABOUT GOALS AND POLICIES

Besides some new goals, attention is here mainly given to policies regarding some goals stated in 12.2. The order of subjects is not the same as in 12.2.

1. The European Union shall declare its view of terrorism and Islam in the following manner: Western countries and the European Union have no responsibility for the occurance of Islamic terrorism based on one or more interpretations of Islam´s holy or most respected texts. Many of the common explanations now for this terrorism are excuses without value. Islamic terrorism is a consequence of the goal to impose Islam on the world, and -- if necessary -- by force.

It is a basic goal for the foreign policy of the European nations to actively uphold universal values like those defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations (UDHR; 1948). That is also a recognition of the fact that the only way western nations can coexist "peacefully" now with real, traditional Islam is by compromising over time all their basic values. But since that is an utter impossibility, it means that Islam must change -- and by that enter the modern world.

A. The religion Islam contains parts which are not accepted in the European Union as parts of a religion in a modern western sense. Some parts of Islam violate the human rights of individuals according to e g UDHR. Such parts can therefore not be accepted by the members of EU on the basis of the principle of religious freedom. One human right -- religious freedom -- cannot be allowed to violate many other human rights.

B. Acceptance and introduction of some other parts of Islam in Europe would weaken or make impossible the long-term integration and assimilation of Muslims in the specific country, and are therefore not accepted. Acceptance of them would only build parallel societies (in the meaning given in Policy Area 6) and are therefore forbidden as a long-term threat to a free and democratic society based on human rights and which allows freedom for all religions incl the right not to have a religion. They are therefore not recognized as valid parts of a religion.

C. The remaining parts of Islam are allowed and respected in EU as a religion. These concern e.g. personal worship and include the five pillars of Islam.

2. All current Conventions, Declarations and Programs of EU, or parts of them, which work against the goal to prevent the Islamization of Europe, shall now be changed or eliminated.

3. It is an important goal for the European Union to promote human rights in countries where human rights are widely violated on a daily basis. The violations regard e.g. women and children; religious minorities: christians, buddhists, hinduists etc; apostates, atheists and secular humanists; and members of the political democratic opposition. Special attentions shall be given to countries geographically close to the Union. In the long run, this policy will secure peace even if it may sometimes create extra opportunities for political gains for Islamists in the short run.

Just the treatment of the christian copts in a so-called moderate moslem country like Egypt is abhorrent but the treatment of atheists/secular persons there, is worse. The treatment of Muslim women in a so-called moderate country as Malaysia, or persons in that country who want to leave Islam, is unacceptable. Any country with similar uncivilized and cruel domestic policies is not a true and reliable friend of the western democracies even if e.g. Malaysia is a democracy, but in a more limited sense. But in reality it, like Egypt, is an enemy of important values of the European countries. It shall have consequences for all types of contacts.

4. It is of vital interest to EU that the school education in moslem countries consists of real subjects incl science, and that religion is just is a small part of the curriculum. The children will then get impulses of many types which is important for their intellectual growth, and they learn for the future. Improvements in these school systems are an important part of the dismantling of the ideological infrastructure of extremism.

The special subject of religion at school ought to contain objective descriptions of other religions. The religious education at schools or universities shall not contain hate against people of other faiths, or against people without religious faith. Neither shall it contain teachings contrary to the UDHR, Muslim supremacism, incitements against western countries, promotion of physical jihad, encouragement of terrorism incl glorification of forced Islamification of infidel countries a s o. A country which allows such elements as a part of the schools´ religious curriculum is an enemy of of important values of the European countries. It shall have consequences for all types of contacts with that country.

5. The principles expressed in p. 4 are also valid regarding the contents of sermons and all messages conveyed in mosques and other buildings used for religious activities and education. The government of the specific country has the duty to control that no teaching supporting violations of human rights is performed. Neither shall any enmity, hatred or contempt of nonMuslims based just on their religious affiliation or lack of it, be expressed on a regular basis (see p.4).

6. A new International Center for Crimes Against Human Rights (ICAHR) shall identify, find and arrange for the arrest of persons who regularly commit specially serious or abhorrent crimes against UDHR in countries where the governments do not protect human rights enough. New legislation shall be introduced in EU countries when there is a lack of legal rules concerning responsibility for certain barbaric acts based on religion. New principles or interpretations of international law are probably needed to increase the personal responsibility for inhuman acts based on the rules of a religion, anywhere in the world. Religion is now the primary reason for violence, terrorism, conflicts and wars, and special rules are therefore necessary in this area.

It is self evident that only a very small part of all abhorrent crimes against human rights can get attention, be investigated and have their perpetrators arrested and tried in a court in a EU country. However, just the possibility that such crimes a r e investigated, the publicity around various trials, and that attention aimed at certain crimes, will have important effects. Priority is initially given to countries close to EU.

Examples of possible criminals to be given attention by this center are:

-- Prison guards in moslem countries who regularly rape girls or young women before their execution (often for political /religious reasons). These acts are committed in order to prevent them from going to heaven, and are a common practice in e.g. Iran.

-- Specially notorious torturers of political prisoners of e.g. the democratic opposition in a country

-- Medical doctors who regularly earn a good income by performing Female Genital Mutilations (FGMs)

-- Religious leaders in moslem countries proclaiming specially abhorrent fatwas violating UDHR, against citizens or residents of that country aso

7. All financing of mosques, or financing of religious activities in EU, by states which do not allow full religious freedom on their own territories, is forbidden. This prohibition also regards companies and all types of organizations in, or from, those countries. Financing includes all types of gifts or loans, directly or via middlemen. No already existing financial agreements of these types may contain conditions regarding choice of personnel, rules about the contents of the religion in the specific building or organization etc. Such agreements shall no longer be observed. The local mosque in question shall decide regarding such matters.

It is well-known that moslem countries discriminate against other religions than Islam, and that specially Saudi Arabia, where other religions are not allowed, finances a fundamental interpretation of Islam in many western countries. Its financial muscles help it to take over and dominate other versions of Islam. The ultimate goal of eg Saudi Arabia regarding its financing of wahabism in Western countries is also to help to transform these countries to Islamic countries. Then other religions will heavily discriminated or even forbidden, christians and jews forced into dhimmitude, and e.g. apostates, atheists and agonostics persecuted and sometimes killed. Allowing religious financing from those moslem states is the same as financing the Islamisation and future limitation of e.g. religious freedom and freedom from religion in EU countries. This type of financing shall therefore be forbidden.

8. All collections of money for charities in EU countries shall be controlled. The distribution shall later be controlled by an EU-, or state, organization. No activities of the organizations which in other countries receive the money are allowed to violate the UDHR. If a specific sub-organization is active in social work but another suborganizaton belonging to the same umbrella organization is active regarding religious extremism or terrorism, no money is allowed to be distributed to the social work-organization.

There are no possibilities to make certain that money is not distributed to terrorist organizations, or organizations which partly support terrorism, if the receiving organizations (and the activities the money is meant for) are not tightly controlled. The controlling or distributing state/EU organization therefore has a strict responsibility that unsuitable recipients do not receive any money.

9. All countries (1) where one religion is given preferences by the constitutions and/or laws, and that religion is in opposition to UDHR regarding important aspects, or (2) which have signed the The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (1990), shall be prevented to:

(a) buy existing companies active in the following industries in EU countries, or

(b) otherwise in EU engage in activities concerning:

-- Media of all types: newspapers, magazines, TV-stations etc
-- Industries of importance for defence, or companies engaged in research for the national defence or defence-related areas
-- Industries of importance for the national security of the specific nation (communication, transportation etc).

If these rules violate earlier trade agreements etc, these shall be renegotiated and amended, cancelled, or just copied and reconfirmed by the parliaments but now with certain countries excluded.

10. (1) Immigration, (2) the demographic growth of the Muslim population in Europe and its consequences in form of an increasing radicalization of it, and (3) the acceptance as members of EU of countries with populations trained in a version of Islam that often violates human rights, are all parts of the same problem. Policies regarding them must therefore be formulated from the same point-of-view and with the same goal. Issues regarding immigration will be treated in Policy Area 8. Just a few desirable components in a future immigration policy are mentioned here: A. In order to increase the strength and power of the extended family that is so vital in many clan/tribe based countries in the Middle East, marriages between cousins are common. In some countries or regions, the proportion of marriages between first and second cousins are about one half of the total number of marriages. In western countries where the reason for marrying generally is love and affinity, this proportion is insignificant.

For that reason, Muslim girls are influenced or forced to marry cousins from their homecountries in order to strengthen their extended families. A male Muslim immigrant in Europe marries his daughter to a nephew in the home country (1). The opportunity to increase the family in the west is often seen as so important and the pressure on the daughter is so hard that the daughter very often doesn´t have the power to resist the pressure. A ban on marriages between first and second cousins is therefore one of the most effective ways to help young Muslim women avoid forced marriages. If they choose freely, the same low proportion of them as in Europe would choose cousins as partners. The psychological drive of her parents -- and specially when forced marriages have been made unlawful -- to force the daughter to marry a non-family person is also much weaker. At the same time a ban weakens the extended families which -- like earlier in Europe -- has positive consequences for the feeling for, and growth of, citizenship in the relevant group.

B. People who base their careers on applying or teaching a version of Islam which often violates human rights, are not neutral or negative to these violations. If they were, they would have chosen another career. Instead these people constitute the strong base for continuous human rights violations in a Muslim country. They accept and approve of the violations and teach and argue for them. Their values and goals make them dangerous for a tolerant democracy. Regarding visits or immigration to Europe of such persons and their families, certain special rules were indicated in P A 4 (4.2).

Special restrictive rules shall apply to: (1) professional teachers and students of shari'a and Islamic jurisprudence; (2) jurists which practice sharia laws except defense attorneys (new category); (3) politicians, representatives and employees of Islamic religious parties which don't accept UDHR; (4) managers and representatives for religious or faith organizations, financial organizations etc with charters, policies and/or record of earlier actions that violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and/or the rights of a citizen or an individual defined in the Constitution of X-country.

Such persons are not allowed to visit or immigrate to EU unless they are able to show that their opinions regarding human rights don't in any way contradict the UDHR. They have the burden of proof. No members of any Islamist organization like the Muslim Brotherhood can visit EU or immigrate here.

No immigrants shall be allowed to enter Europe without a psychological test of his /her values regarding democratic and human rights and a written assurance that he/she will accept the important values of his/her new country; and that he/she will bring up his/her children to accept the laws and important norms of his new country.

11. Islamic clergy with traditional Islamic education and training in countries that have signed the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, or have received similar education in other countries, are not allowed to act as clergy regarding religious activities in EU. It is a training that is built on contempt for human rights, inequality and dislike for non-Muslims, and recommends all types of practices that are contrary to UDHR. A reformed education of Islamic clergy must be created by Muslims in Europe with a contents that is not contrary to the UDHR, Individual members of the clergy who are able to give ironclad assurances that they will never act or talk in any manner against UDHR, can be allowed to function as clergy. During a period of transition, traditional clergy may temporarily be allowed to work even without such an assurance.

12. Lying about the holocaust, or the genocide against the Armenian people, has been criminalized in a few countries. The pervasive atmosphere of a certain definition of multiculturalism (meaning that Islamic values have the same worth as western values), and the intolerance in media against everybody who dissents from this view, makes it necessary to counteract the tendency in media to conceal negative aspects of Islam.

Media are in their practical work dominated by socialists and socialdemocrats who are now trying to regain the political initiative for the left by destroying the non-socialist market society by using multiculturalism (in the given meaning), Islam and immigration as tools. Many of the journalists understand that an Islamic society and Islamic laws are fundamentally unsuitable for handling the modern world and complex economies. They believe that moslem politicians will then turn to socialists to find help. So after the cold war showed the bankruptcy of the socialistic ideas, the socialists would again be able to revive their collapsed doctrine because Islam will need s o m e theory for running large, or complex economies.

Market economy has as its foundation individualism, freedom, creativity and democracy with protection of minority rights -- all values antithetical to Islam. That Islamic countries historically have partly used a market economy for their primitive industrial sectors and their commerce activities will not be enough of an obstacle to introducing extensive socialistic policies in European countries.. The collectivism of socialism will be found to be more suitable for Islam in western societies.

Another advantage of socialism is that its first purpose in practice was never to produce goods and services effectively but -- to control people. The future Islamic regimes in the west will appreciate the possibilities to cement their positions of power and realize the Islamization of society by using all control mechanisms that socialism offers. That socialism is a totally unsuitable system for economic growth and development doesn't matter, because future moslem societies in Europe will stagnate and decline anyway.

It is not correct today to see the media as a guarantee for political freedom. For many of the left-oriented journalists, a revival of socialism is probably more important than freedom. They therefore want to suppress everything that can prevent the Islamification and hinder Muslims positive to sharia to get into power in the west. In order to reach their political purposes, they try to conceal all negative matters regarding Islam and call nearly all criticisms for Islamophobia, racism, cultural imperialism etc. Then the population is kept in the dark and therefore passive.

It shall therefore be a crime to conceal the religious background of criminals in cases it may have played a role. For example, data from various countries show that rape is committed much more frequently by Muslim young men than by men from other religions. It is evident that religion may play a role in that. The matter shall be freely discussed, and the opinions of the citizens shall be heard. But in order not to cause any obstacles for their political goals the journalists instead suppress all negative matters regarding Muslim persons where the religion may play a role. That behaviour shall therefore be criminalized and the religious background of e.g. criminals shown.

13. Leftist governments and governments sympathetic to Islamists shall not be able to use the bureaucracy and decision-making processes within EU to prevent effective anti-Islamist or antiterror measures. It is therefore important for governments really concerned about protecting human rights to agree outside EU on such measures concerning national security, in case differences of opinion inside EU prevents the union from acting.

The most important parts of the anti-Islamist/anti-terrorist work by police, intelligence/security, or military personnel shall either be carried out outside the EU organization, or -- if kept in EU -- an organization shall be prepared by interested governments which organization immediately (if needed) can take over all functions (relevant for those countries) of the specific EU administration.

14. Anti-Islamist (ie Human Rights) parties which are members of coalition governments in various countries shall together determine and cooperate regarding those EU policies to which they give special priority. The Human Rights (HR) parties can then force, or gain important concessions from their domestic coalition partners concerning just these EU policies by sacrificing their own standpoints regarding less vital domestic matters. By concentrating on a small number of issues and sacrificing others, essential results may be won.

One can foresee that at some point in time during phase 5-7 of the future development of Europe (see part 1), one EU country will during a crisis declare that certain specified EU laws, conventions etc are not operative (valid) any longer in that country. It just stops to apply these specified laws that EU has created and forced upon the member states. Some other countries will later follow that example. Because the EU establishment at that time have pushed through too many laws without support of, or against the wishes of a majority of the population in EU, the union will have lost part of its legitimacy and support. And the populations have generally started to understand the great danger that the politicians have put Europe in.

The governments committed to human rights, and sympathizers in coalition governments in other countries will be able to prevent that any effective measures are taken against them by EU. The HR parties will in various countries threaten to topple the coalition governments if those want to support the EU commission. New elections can't generally be used by the establishments, because at that time most political conditions will support the HR parties. The consequences of decades of disastrous policies regarding immigration and wholesale acceptance of Islam start to become visible to everybody. And if decisions are made by EU, they are ignored. The legal process is too slow and cumbersome and unable to handle such political processes. And if any verdicts are made, they will be ignored. When EU has lost its legitimacy, legal issues will anyway in practice have little importance.

By paralyzing the political process and ignoring a number of EU laws and conventions, these states will get back their freedom of action and can then carry out the policies they find necessary in accordance with their national interest and national rules. EU loses rapidly its importance outside the economic sphere, and its house of cards consisting of various conventions, declarations and programs etc with no basis in the will of the populations, will crash.

15. The intelligence about all types of Islamist activities in the EU countries shall be improved. A considerable effort shall be made so that enough persons in the police, intelligence services, the military, diplomatic corps a s o swiftly learn the Arab language All large mosques and Muslim organizations where any Islamist activities can be suspected, shall be under surveillance. All possible Islamist organizations shall be infiltrated.

A European center shall be created that gathers information from national centers in EU countries regarding all (1) acts of violence, or (2) threats of violence that can be judged to be political and are motivated by religion. Political violence and political murders constitute the beginning of physical jihad (see phases 3-5 (c-e) in part 1). Good indicators regarding the degree of radicalization of various parts of the Muslim population shall be created.

A European center shall be created with the goal to collect the information from national centers regarding all crimes against the human rights of Muslims by Islamists and other Muslims, owing to religion or traditions, which in practice are accepted and/or supported by religion. These crimes aim at supporting or strengthening parallel societies in Europe, and are often directed towards women, girls, apostates, or Muslims who are not enough religious. They constitute an important part of the efforts to undermine Europe.

16. All legal obstacles for an effective anti-terrorism and anti-Islamist policy shall be removed in all EU countries. Countries may have to modernize their legislations so that laws used in a state of war, can be used during e.g. armed rebellion and civil war. Terrorists are not soldiers and shall not be given any protection similar to that a soldier has according to the Geneva Convention. They shall not be tried in civilian courts: special or military courts and military laws shall be used.

A terrorist is according to his philosophy and way of fighting, a fundamental enemy of the specific country and also of civilization. Any type of armed rebellion for religious reasons against a member state of EU shall be treated as if the participants have committed high treason during war. Using explosives is comparable to using a firearm against own citizens and soldiers, and helping the enemy in wartime.

A military state of emergency is an extremely drastic measure, and a small number of less drastic "Levels of Emergencies" with varying limitations of human rights shall be defined for the EU countries. They shall be suitable for combating lower levels of unrest and violence than a widespread armed rebellion.

17. In order to meet a new political situation in Europe, new laws and punishments are necessary. Economic criminals are sometimes forbidden to work as business men. Likewise, it shall be possible to forbid political/religious criminals to work with political and/or religious matters. Members of the Islamic clergy who have committed e.g. religious hate crimes or crimes against integration (see PA 4 -6) shall not be allowed to take part in religious work or activities. Other punishments which may be new in some countries are: ban against moving outside a geographic area; house arrest; ban to meet people besides the family; ban to communicate with others via telephone, internet etc.

The new crime called |Betrayal of the European Civilization" was described in sect 12.2 p.6. It is necessary to establish such a crime because the nation state is now heavily influenced by the actions of non-elected international administrators and bureaucrats, who can seriously damage the specific country. If the consequences of the actions of such EU employees are highly detrimental to the national interest of a state, and can be judged to be part of a political agenda that aims at promoting the interests of radical Islam, or objectively helps radical Islam to gain influence in Europe, such a crime is committed. The proper definitions, criteria and safeguards for the legal rights of the accused will be formulated by the European states which introduce this crime in their legal systems..

It can be expected that laws in different countries may counteract each other regarding such a crime. However, during a political process similar to the one described in p. 13 above, there will probably be possibilities in various countries to apprehend and bring accused EU employees to justice even before an armed rebellion or civil war in Europe has been started by the Islamists. After military operations start, there will be a widespread demand among the European populations that those politicians and EU employees who are responsible for the misguided policies that have caused a disaster for Europe, shall be brought to justice. Then other parts of national laws will also be relevant.

____________________________________________________________
(1) http://www.isteve.com/cousin_marriage_conundrum.htm

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HAMAS TV MICKEY MOUSE BEATEN TO DEATH BY ISRAELI
Posted by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, June 29, 2007.

Hamas TV Mickey Mouse becomes Martyr in final episode

The Hamas satellite TV channel has responded to the international controversy over its hatred-spouting Mickey Mouse clone by having the character beaten to death by an Israeli and becoming a Shahid, martyr for Allah.

Al-Aqsa TV broadcast Friday the final episode of the children's program Tomorrow's Pioneers, starring Farfur, the Mickey Mouse lookalike whose teachings about world Islamic domination, violence and hatred outraged the world after PMW made them public in May.

Without apparent regard for the sensitivities of their child viewers, the show's creators killed off the character in a particularly violent way that allowed them to continue the show's rabidly anti-Israel messages.

In this last episode, the squeaky-voiced Farfur receives land documents from his grandfather. The episode ends when an Israeli investigator tries to force Farfur to give up the key and the papers that his grandfather had given him. When Farfur refuses, the Israeli continues his brutal attack and beats Farfur to death.

Although Farfur's death is not shown to the child viewers, the hostess of the show, Saraa', sadly announces his death to the children:

"Yes, our children friends, we lost our dearest friend, Farfur. Farfur turned to a Martyr while protecting his land. He turned into a Martyr at the hands of the criminals, and murderers, the murderers of the innocent children."

PMW reported the existence of the Mickey Mouse knockoff and his hateful messages in May, prompting worldwide outrage. The New York Daily News dubbed the character "Terror Mouse," while Walt Disney's daughter Diane described it as "pure evil."

Despite promises by the PA that the show would be suspended immediately, it remained on the air for another week, and was then suspended during the violence in Gaza. This final episode, which includes the killing of Farfur by Israel, enabled Hamas to remove the program while continuing its hate messages.

Click to view video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9lL81QhiR8)
or PMW website (http://pmw.org.il/asx/pmw_mickey290607.asx).

The following are excerpts from the final episode:

[Text:] "Farfur in Interrogation"

Israeli interrogator: "Sit down, Farfur... Farfur, we want to buy the land, we will give you a lot of money. You will get a lot of money, and we will take the documents."

Farfur: "No!! We will not sell our lands to terrorists!"

Interrogator: "Farfur!!! I want you to give me the documents, give me the documents!"

Farfur: "I'm not giving the documents! Not giving! Not giving!"

Interrogator: "Farfur!!! [Visual: interrogator beats Farfur] Farfur! Hand me the documents. Farfur! Hand me the documents, Farfur!"

Farfur: "I am not handing them to criminals, to terrorists!"

Interrogator: "You call us terrorists, Farfur?!

[Visual: interrogator beats Farfur again]

Take this! Take this! Take this! Take this!"

Farfur: "Stop! Stop!"
 

Saraa': "Yes, our children friends, we lost our dearest friend, Farfur. Farfur turned to a Martyr while protecting his land. He turned into a Martyr at the hands of the criminals, and murderers. The murderers of the innocent children... [Talking to a child caller] You saw that the Jews let Farfur die as a Martyr. What do you want to say to the Jews?"

Shaimaa', 3 years old, on the phone: "We don't like the Jews because they are dogs! We will fight them!"

Saraa' [sarcastically]: "No, the Jews are good, oh Shaimaa'. The Jews are our friends, and we play with them, isn't it so?"

Shaimaa': "They killed Farfur!"

Saraa': "That's right, oh Shaimaa'. The Jews are criminals and enemies, we must expel them from our land."
-- [Hamas, Al-Aqsa TV June 27, 2007]

Itamar Marcus is director of PMW -- Palestinian Media Watch -- (http://www.pmw.org.il). PMW is based in Jerusalem. Barbara Crook, a writer and university lecturer based in Ottawa, Canada, is PMW's

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ASSOCIATED PRESS -- TRUTH UNFIT TO PRINT
Posted by Daniel Mandel, June 29, 2007.

In February, I dissected a classic example of malign reportage by Associated Press (AP) in which an attack in Jerusalem upon Jews worshipping at the Western Wall by Muslims throwing stones, bottles and refuse was presented as an unprovoked Israeli police assault upon peaceful Muslim worshippers that included a (non-existent) storming of the Al-Aqsa mosque. AP achieved this Orwellian effect by the propaganda devices of distortion, tendentious expression and obscuration of salient facts.

Now AP has done it again -- this time in relation to one of its all-too-rare reports on the Palestinian media, a perversely skilled hate industry that incites hatred and murder of Jews. Its depredations on the Palestinian mind, especially that of Palestinian youth, have been systematically reported by organisations like by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and the Middle East Media Research Institute.

PMW has a detailed report, including transcripts, on the antics of Farfur, a clone of Disney's Mickey Mouse featured on Hamas Al-Aqsa TV who devoted his air time to indoctrinating Palestinian children with hatred of Jews and America. AP now reports (hat tip to Barry Rubin) that Farfur, in a final program broadcast today, was shown beaten to death by an actor posing as an Israeli official trying to buy Farfur's land. But AP found no space to inform the reader of the incitement to hatred, the anti-Semitic statements, the promotion of the theme of Muslim world domination that characterized Farfur's stint on television. AP noted only that "the character urged Palestinian children to fight Israel."

AP seems determined to keep the public in ignorance of the hatred within the Palestinian Authority and its promotion of it in its media. A public aware that hatred drives the conflict rather than the usual suspects of occupation, settlements, statehood et al would end up having a very different view of the conflict. That prospect AP does its best to preclude.

Daniel Mandel is a Fellow in History at Melbourne University and author of H. V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist (Routledge, London, 2004). His blog can be found on the History News Network.

This essay appeared today on the History News network (HNN) website
-- http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/40409.html

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15 SECONDS OF TERROR
Posted by Jenny Grigg, June 29, 2007.

This presentation comes from Honest Reporting.

Honest Reporting monitors the media for inaccuracy and unfairness in how they report the news about Israel. Ther website address is http://www.honestreporting.com. You can help support their research online or by sending contributions to: HonestReporting, 400 South Lake Drive, Lakewood, NJ 08701-3167.

15 seconds isn't a long time, unless you are a resident of Sderot. That's about as much warning as they can hope for once missiles are launched and en-route to their homes and schools. 15 seconds of fear and panic can seem an eternity, as captured in our latest short film.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW FILM.

The people of Sderot are under constant bombardment. It is a horrifying situation that demands the world's attention in a context that reveals the full extent of civilian suffering at the hands of Gazan terrorists.

Watch our short film about the situation and help us demand that the media report accurately on the intent of the terrorists' actions and their psychological impact instead of a simple analysis of damage assessment. As our movie shows, there is no child who survives those 15 seconds, who is likely to live a life unharmed.

Click here to view film.

Together we can make a difference in media coverage of Israel. Click the image above to view, and thank you for supporting our cause.

Want to skip the film? Head straight to our donation page at www.honestreporting.com/a/securedonate.asp or click the button below.

Contact Jenny Grigg at jennygrigg@gmail.com

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TONY'S TRAGIC BLIND SPOT
Posted by Daniel Mandel, June 29, 2007.

This week, Tony Blair departed office after ten years, the British Labour Party's longest-serving prime minister, the only person to have led the party to three consecutive general election victories, and the only Labour prime minister to serve more than one full consecutive term. He leaves office with 61 percent of the British public judging him to have been a good prime minister. Add to that the high popularity that he enjoyed through much of his tenure and it becomes difficult to reconcile it with his earlier than intended departure under compulsion from his own party. What happened?

To say the Iraq war happened, with Blair's stalwart support and involvement, is the lion's share of the answer, but that in turn poses other questions. Opposition to the war generally splits into two: those who revile the Western powers as motivated by all manner of avarice and aggression, and others who know that good is intended but who doubt or reject the means used to achieve it. No argument will sway the former, but the latter have been listening and many in the end have found the argument wanting. Why?

It used to be customary for the war's supporters in America to bemoan President Bush's inarticulateness while breathing a sigh of relief when Blair stepped into the breach to make a rousing case for removing Saddam Hussein and reviving Iraq. That he led a British Labour government was only to be marveled at, just as his defiance of popularity at home over a matter of conviction was only to be admired in a man often held to be manipulative and media-obsessed. (Even by his own recent admission, he devoted "inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour to courting, assuaging and persuading the media.") Yet in the end Blair's argument failed to sway enough of the British public and even his own party.

Partly, this is bad luck. There was no reason to assume that the post-Saddam epoch would be one of prolonged American mishandling and several, not easily reversed, mistakes. The operational decisions being American ones, Blair was to that extent at the mercy of events. A swifter and more decisive outcome would have caused much of the criticism to wither away. There is little point complaining about liberating Iraqis from tyranny.

But on-going bloodshed is another matter, say the critics. They are right, but only if one accepts the premise that a failure to bring tranquil democracy to Iraq is the decisive test of the war's merit.
 

MANY, PERHAPS MOST, SUPPORTERS of the war, including me, did not subscribe to that view. Instead, we cited Saddam's chronic violations of the 1991 Gulf war ceasefire; his retention of the technology, toxins and research infrastructure to achieve it; the massive human toll of his rule (eclipsing today's casualty figures); his past genocide, aggression and patronage of terrorists. The problem is that Tony Blair, the war's most effective spokesman, did subscribe to the democracy litmus test. What possessed him to set the bar to such heights and to invite a negative verdict on his own conduct?

Blair believes that democracy is a cure for terrorism. In a sense he is right. But in an important sense he is mistaken. That which militates against democracy -- religious fanaticism, ideological totalitarianism, tribal loyalties trumping civil society -- also produced the repression that Blair sought to cure. Yet he failed to understand that there is no democratic silver bullet, that a society devoid of democratic traditions and memory cannot become democratic in the short space of a few years.

To think otherwise exposes a confusion of democratic processes (elections, parliaments, constitutions, referenda) with the characteristics of democratic society (separation of religion and state, contractual, law-abiding, pluralistic, tertiary educated) that alone permit democratic processes to have meaning. The nature of the society in question, not assemblies and documents, is the deciding criterion.

Failure to understand this leads to polices that stress democratic processes at the expense of democratic purposes -- something witnessed last year when the Bush Administration foisted legislative elections upon Palestinians, thereby bringing to power the doctrinally genocidal Hamas movement. Similarly, in Iraq, making democracy a higher priority than security, at least until now, has thwarted efforts to bring either to Iraq.

Yet Blair understood this no better than Bush, to judge by one of his fullest statements on Iraq -- his July 17, 2003 address to a joint session of Congress, as these excerpts show:

"There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people."

Like so many, Tony Blair believed that, given half a chance, all would seize liberty with both hands. Yet the instinct for autocracy, for rule by ruthless men who dispose of the complex problems of life, has in the past permitted even the most educated societies to tolerate fascism, to vote in Nazism, to yearn for various forms of communism or to acquiesce in the terrors of all three. The Middle East is no different.

Now, it is perfectly true that Afghans celebrated the fall of the Taliban; that Iraqis too are free and in the main relieved, no matter the editorials masquerading as news insinuating otherwise. But democracy has few roots in the region. Authoritarian nationalist or Islamist parties could win the day in most parts of the Middle East were elections held today. To curbstone pundits, that would make authoritarianism or Islamism democratic. All it actually proves is that certain societies are unprepared for democracy, since "one man, one vote one time" is no democracy at all.

"Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police."

Were it only true. Admittedly, the election of Hamas was then in the future, but had Blair not noticed what nearly occurred in Algeria in 1992 when elections presaged an Islamist victory which, when curtailed, led to a horrific internal war that makes Iraq's present one look tame? Egyptians and other Arabs once idolized Nasser, who introduced the political concentration camp into the Middle East. If successful in appealing to our baser instincts, dictatorial regimes are often venerated and their crimes ignored or justified.

"How hollow would the charges of American imperialism be when these failed countries are and are seen to be transformed from states of terror to nations of prosperity, from governments of dictatorship to examples of democracy, from sources of instability to beacons of calm?"

"Examples of democracy"? "Beacons of calm"? It was bold of Blair to suggest this outcome even in 2003. How much better it would have been to say forthrightly that the Taliban and Saddam were rightly removed because both harbored terrorists capable of inflicting enormous damage against innocent lives everywhere. Both produced the bulk of refugees that had come from the Middle East in recent years. Both were exceedingly brutal to those who fell under their rule.

Removing the Taliban and Saddam warded off international dangers, freed captives, and allowed Afghans and Iraqis to breathe easier. Instead of saying as much and standing on that record, Blair conceded the logic of his critics, arguing that anything less than establishing a new golden age would be a failure. Small wonder that Blair wanted then, as now, to see dividends on the Israeli-Palestinian front, as if that had anything at all to do with Afghanistan or Iraq.

"This terrorism will not be defeated without peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Here it is that the poison is incubated. Here it is that the extremist is able to confuse in the mind of a frighteningly large number of people the case for a Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel."

This reverses matters. Terrorism is a symptom of war, not an aberration that can be cured by peace. It follows that its defeat is a condition of peacemaking, not the other way around. In the Oslo years (1993-2000), Israelis sought a peace based on two states for two peoples, whether Arabs wanted it or not. Thus the blind eye towards Yasser Arafat's sponsoring of a culture of terrorism and hatred. Successive Palestinian polls indicate enthusiasm for terrorism and rejection of Israel. Israelis awoke in 2000 from the delusion that a two-state solution was obtainable from men dedicated to a one-state program. Others, including Tony Blair, have still not.
 

UNFORTUNATELY, BLAIR'S ADVOCACY, like Bush's, failed to clarify issues that went to the heart of how Iraq was to be restored and secured and how other regional conflicts related to it and should be managed. Increasingly, Blair was caught in a pincer movement of dislike of Bush at home and ongoing conflict abroad.

That is a tragedy, because the ideals that animated Blair were both principled and in short supply in a cynical world. As a result, Britain has yet to awake from the illusion that it can have its war on Islamism in concert with Europe rather than the United States.

His support last year for the American position favoring giving Israel time to dispose of Hizballah in Lebanon (a task Israel botched) led his party, which dislikes Bush, is unsympathetic to an Israel under attack and fed up with bad news from Iraq, to press for his departure. David Pryce-Jones has it right when he avers, "It is a horrid irony that his best decision is the cause of his unpopularity and downfall."

Daniel Mandel is a Fellow in History at Melbourne University and author of H. V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist (Routledge, London, 2004). His blog can be found on the History News Network.

This article was published in the American Spectator and is archived at
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11653

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LEIKEN'S FOLLY AND WHY IT ENDANGERS US ALL
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 29, 2007.

Bob Leiken*, phony Islam expert, has written a poem about me which he is sending around. For those who don't know, Leiken is a Latin American expert turned immigration expert turned Islamism expert. He hasn't read the sources and knows nothing about the subject, of course. He makes the most basic errors.

I wrote a satire making fun of him. You can also read my article on Muslim Brotherhoods at
http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2007/issue2/jv11no2a8.html--which Leiken himself read and disregarded before launching himself on his latest career as the Muslim Brotherhood's apologist. Lenin called such people "useful idiots."

This ignorance wouldn't matter if he weren't advocating that the United States team up with Muslim Brotherhoods, thus helping the forces responsible for extremism, repressive dictatorships, and terrorism in the world.

Imagine someone who advocated in the 1930s that the fascists were misunderstood and you could work with the more moderate ones. Same goes for the Stalinists. How different would the world be if the appeasers had won out on those occasions.

In this current conflict, what Leiken doesn't know -- well, one of many things he doesn't know -- is that when people like him talk about engagement with Muslim Brotherhoods, people in the Middle East reach the following conclusion:

The Islamists are winning, even the Americans are recognizing it. We better either join the Islamists, give up or make our own deal.

Lives are at stake. People are tortured, murdered, blown up. This is not a game. The policies Leiken advocates cost lives and may even cost countries. Just imagine that you are an Egyptian or a Jordanian who doesn't want to wear a veil, lose the limited freedoms now enjoyed, or have a regime that implements Islamist punishments. You hear about some American pseudo-intellectual who is advocating that the West work with those who want to turn your countries into Iran- or Taliban-type societies. And if you want to discount 10 or 20 percent for the "moderation" of the Muslim Brotherhood go right ahead.

How typical that Bob has responded with a poem -- poem which makes no reference to the Middle East or Islamism. Not a detailed discussion of the issues but a poem which you are free to interpret as you wish.

I will only remark on the opening three lines:

Line 1: To suggest that those who oppose revolutionary Islamism lack a heart is pretty shocking. Think of the victims of this movement. Now think of someone who is promoting his career by advocating cooperation with the closest thing to totaltiarianism in our era.

Line 2: To suggest that those who actually research their topic and can provide detailed refutations of his claims have no mind is equally shocking. Isn't the absence of mind something that arises from the lack of real research, serious analysis, and instead just talking to people who want to seize state power and create dictatorships and believing them?

Line 3: Well if goods offered to the public are worthless, whose goods does that label best fit? I think this poem is all too revealing.

I repeat, as much as during the struggle against fascism and the struggle against Communism, the fate of freedom and civilization is at stake. This is no game for dilettantes.

And yet we are living in an era in which fools and ignoramuses too often seize the floor and the microphones. What is truly remarkable is that they don't even see how clearly they are demonstrating their total lack of qualification to conduct rational discourse.

And if you have any doubt on that point here's the poem

Absence of heart -- as in public buildings
Absence of mind -- as in public speeches
Absence of worth -- as in goods intended for the public,

Are telltale signs that a chimera has just dined
On someone else; of him, poor foolish fellow,
Not a scrap is left, not even his name.

Indescribable -- being neither this nor that --
Uncountable -- being any number --
Unreal -- being anything but what they are,

And ugly customers for someone to encounter,
It is our fault entirely if we do:
They cannot touch us; it is we who will touch them --

Curious from wantoness -- to see what they are like --
Cruel from fear -- to put a stop to them --
Incredulous from conceit -- to prove the cannot be

We prod or kick or measure and are lost;
The stronger we are the sooner all is over;
It is our strength with which they gobble us up.

If someone, being chaste, brave, humble,
Get by them safely, he is still in danger,
With pity remembering what once they were,

Of turning back to help them. Don't
What they were once was what they would not be;
Not liking what they are not is what now they are.

No on can help them; walk on, keep on walking,
And do not let your goodness self -- deceive you;
It is good that they are, but not that they are thus.

 *  Robert S. Leiken is Director, Immigration and National Security Program, at The Nixon Center.

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, has written and edited 50 books on the Middle East. His latest book, The Truth About Syria, has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

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URGENT!! THREE WEEKS TO SAVE SHOAIB CHOUDHURY'S LIFE
Posted by Naomi Ragen, June 29, 2007.

Friends,

On July 18, the Bangladeshi journalist whose only crime is his pro-Israel stance goes on trial for his life. He faces a judicial system that is weighted against him. We need to urgently contact our Senators, Congressman, and political leaders in countries around the world to help him. You can google to find out the name and e-mail, or phone number of your representative. Below, a heartrending letter from Shoaib's brother. We need to get behind this man whose only crime is that he is a Muslim who dares point out the Koran says the land of Israel was given to the Jews. Please help. Please forward this. We cannot let Shoaib be sacrificed.

In America, to find your representative, go to
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

In Australia,
http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/senators/index.htm

In Canada http://www.canada.gc.ca/main_e.html

For the rest, just google.

Below is an appeal by Choudhury's brother.

Naomi

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

My brother Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury went to court today, June 28th, filled with optimism. The Government of Bangladesh had recently sent the judge and public prosecutor who, until now, had been trying his case, to another part of the country with the result that his trial would have to begin again with a new judge and prosecutor. We were hopeful that this might result in this judge dropping the charges again Shoaib today. Sadly, it appears that the government has only removed a judge who was hopelessly tainted by his public assertions that he would convict Shoaib regardless of the evidence that might be presented.

Today, the judge stated that he is prepared to proceed quickly, and the prosecutor was prepared with witnesses ready to testify against Shoaib.

You may recall that, in Bangladesh, there will be no jury in this trial on charges of treason, sedition and blasphemy. Neither will Shoaib's attorneys be permitted to bring any witnesses in his defense. The only option open to the defense is to cross examine the prosecution witnesses. In addition, the judge has the option of ending the trial and issuing a verdict after only half of the witnesses have been heard. It is safe to assume that the witnesses who can make the most convincing case against Shoaib will be heard first. If convicted the penalty will be either death by hanging or thirty years in prison, which is, in fact, a death sentence.

This only reason for the present delay is that there is one more appeal to void the charges now pending in the Supreme Court. While the Supreme Court is on vacation, it may or may not be possible for the judge to press for a decision from a jurist in chambers rather than from the full appellate court.

Shoaib Choudhury is on trial because he urges his government to recognize the State of Israel. This is not a crime. He is on trial because of rumors originating in Saudi Arabia that he is a Mossad agent, something so patently ridiculous that no reasonable court would even consider it. Why would a secret intelligence agent publicly proclaim his support for Israel in an Islamic country? The Qur'an states that Allah/God gave the Land of Israel to the Jewish people. His country proclaims that Shoaib's support for Israel is treason because it is in opposition to their policy and that it is blasphemous, a charge they find convenient. He is on trial because he has Jewish and Christian friends and because he publishes their articles in his newspaper. This is not blasphemy, and it is not a crime. although some extremist Muslims would like to think that it is. He is on trial because he writes plainly about the danger of extremist madrassas teaching children as young as five to hate Jews and Israel. The majority of Bangladeshis cannot afford any other form of education for their children and are willing to send them anywhere as long as they learn to read and write. Every charge against Shoaib is false. Shoaib works tirelessly for interfaith understanding. Bangladesh considers this treason and blasphemy.

He has committed no crime at all, except for his attempt to travel to Israel -- a minor passport violation for which others have been assessed a fine equivalent to about US $7.00. Yes, seven. Shoaib was imprisoned, tortured and held in solitary confinement for seventeen months. His glaucoma was not treated, and he lost his sight in one eye. During that time, he was never tried. He was released only because of the efforts of his dearest friend and brother in the United States, Richard Benkin and a U.S. Congressman, but without the charges being dropped.

Please note that Shoaib takes no public position on matters of Israeli policy.

We will begin again. We will not give in to defeatism or despair.

There is a new U.S. Ambassador in Dhaka who has scarcely had time to unpack. We cannot give him the luxury of easing into his responsibilities.

PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATORS AND YOUR REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS. TELL THEM THIS IS AN URGENT HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERN, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH. REMIND THEM THAT THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES PASSED RESOLUTION #64 IN SUPPORT OF SALAH UDDIN SHOAIB CHOUDHURY IS MARCH OF THIS YEAR BY A VOTE OF 409-1. URGE THEM TO CALL THE STATE DEPARTMENT NOW. WE WANT OUR AMBASSADOR TO BANGLADESH TO TAKE THIS TO THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT THERE. THE TIME IS PAST FOR LOWER LEVER DIPLOMATS TO MAKE INEFFECTIVE GESTURES SUPPORTING SHOAIB. THESE HAVE BEEN APPRECIATED, BUT THEY ARE NOT ENOUGH. WE HAVE LESS THAN THREE WEEKS TO SAVE SHOAIB'S LIFE.

Yes, this is a worst case scenario. There may be further legal delays, but it is equally possible that there may not be. What is absolutely clear is that this new judge and prosecutor are fully prepared to hear the case against Shoaib quickly. In Bangladesh, this is never a good sign. We must proceed as if the worst will happen, because it is very possible, and then pray that it does not.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO OTHERS WHO MIGHT CONTACT SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES. THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE CLERGY, PLEASE SPEAK TO YOUR CONGREGATONS AND ASK YOUR MEMBERS TO CALL CONGRESS.

Additional information about Shoaib may be found at www.interfaithstrength.com.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING TO HELP SHOIAB.WHEN YOU CALL CONGRESS, PLEASE TELL ME WHO YOU REACH AND WHAT YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED. PLEASE DO NOT GIVE IN TO FRUSTRATION. IT IS OFTEN DIFFICULT TO REACH OUR PUBLIC SERVANTS.

Wishing you abundant blessings,

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.

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BALAK: BELIEVING IS SEEING
Posted by Avodah, June 29, 2007.

This was written by Rabbi Yaakov Zev. Rabbi Zev writes from Jerusalem. His commentary was distributed by the Aloh Naaleh organization.

Sight is not an objective sense given to all.

This week's parasha, Balak, includes the fascinating story of Bil'am and his donkey on their journey to curse the Jewish people. Suddenly, the donkey stops in his tracks, unable to continue; whereas, Bil'am, in his rush to complete his mission, sees no reason for the sudden delay.

The obvious question presents itself. "How is it possible that the donkey sees that which Bilaam does not see?" Rashi explains: "God permitted an animal to see that which man is unable to see." Only eight verses later, we are told that "God gave sight to Bil'am" to see the reason for the road blockage.

It seems, then, that sight is not an objective sense given to all living beings equally. In the story of Hagar exiled from Avraham's home, she becomes thirsty and God opens her eyes so that she can see a well of water only a few feet away from her. An automobile accident witnessed by two people standing at the same location will be seen differently by each of the witnesses.

The subjective phenomena of sight is based on factors related to the intellectual and emotional background of the viewer. Evidence of this is found in the midrash describing the sight of the "cloud on the mountain" seen by Avraham and Yitzchak, but not by Eliezer or Yishmael. Their spiritual capacities were very different.

About two months ago, the Jewish people celebrated the 59th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. The founding of the state opened the doors of the country to immigration for the first time in 2,000 years. Since then, the population of the state has grown to almost half of the world's Jewish population, a miracle in itself. There is, however, the other half of our people whose "subjective vision" is still blurred by all kinds of issues, blinding them from "seeing" the "cloud on the mountain," God's gift to our generation -- the possibility of returning to our homeland.

May they soon see the beacon of the Light of Zion, guiding their way to the birthplace and future of our People.

Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com

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WAS THERE EVER A PALESTINIAN 'NATION'?
Posted by Avodah, June 29, 2007.

This was written by Ofir Haivry and it appeared today as an opinion piece in YNet
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3418074,00.html). Dr Haivry is a fellow at the Shalem Center's Institute for Philosophy, Politics, and Religion.

The growing political and cultural rift between the Arabs of the Gaza Strip and those residing in Judea and Samaria has stirred debate about the possibility of establishing two separate political entities and the future of Palestinian nationalism in general. Yet perhaps we should be asking whether there ever really was a Palestinian "nation"?

In many places in the world, arbitrary borders set by colonialist powers define a "nation" that do not exist in practice. Is there such thing as a Sudanese "nation" or Iraqi "nation"? Or are we talking about a collection of tribes, groups, and even nations possessing vastly different ways of life, religions, and values that has been gathered together by chance and who are paying a bloody price for this to this very day?

The borders of British Mandatory Palestine too were set, just like the case with its neighbors, on the basis of colonial interests. In many areas, the border was drawn in a rather random manner. Had it been performed a little differently, would the Arabs of Marjayoun in southern Lebanon become Palestinian? Would the Arabs of Tarshiha in the Galilee be Lebanese? Are residents of Trans-Jordan, which was initially part of Mandatory Palestine and a few years later became the Kingdom of Jordan, Palestinian or Jordanian?

During the less than 30 years of the existence of this Mandate, from which the Palestinians draw their name, no significant indications were to be found of a united national identity of their own. The leader of Mandate Arabs was the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who viewed himself as a pan-Arabic leader, imposed his rule through the persecution and assassination of his rivals, and headed a loose alliance of clans, tribes, and local interests that were mostly united by hatred towards the Jews, and to a lesser extent towards the British.

Illusion of national identity

Hence, in the bloody clashes of 1936-1939, where the Arabs seemingly fought the British (and of course massacred the Jews,) more people were killed in intra-Arab violence than at the hands of the British. Similarly, in 1947-1949, the Arabs fought against the establishment of the Jewish state in a disorganized and separate manner, in various locations, such as the Jerusalem mountains, the Galilee, Jaffa, and so forth.

Following the Mandate's end, it is even more difficult to find a united national activity or perception, aside from the hatred of Israel. Under Egyptian rule in Gaza and Jordanian rule in Judea and Samaria, there were neither substantial cultural development attempts nor national activity or a demand for the establishment of a state in those areas. The only objective that aroused support and stirred activity -- and saw the establishment of Fatah and PLO to that end -- was the establishment of an Arab country in place of Israel.

After 1967, the unification under Israeli rule created an illusion of national identity. Yet the characteristics of Arafat's leadership replicated those of the Mufti -- one-man rule focused on hostility to Israel, and based on regional and clan calculations alongside the persecution and assassination of rivals.

Arafat's death and Israel's withdrawal from Arab population centers revealed that forced unification and hostility towards Israel are apparently the only characteristics of the Palestinian "nation." Perhaps when a state existing within superficial borders has been in place for a long period of time, there is a point in maintaining it without genuine national identity. Yet Mandatory Palestine ceased to exist about 60 years ago and hatred towards Israel is no substitute for national identity.

This conclusion should prompt us to ask new questions regarding the conflict's essence, ways of addressing it, and possible objectives.

Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com

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NY POST COLUMNIST, RALPH PETERS, TAKES ON SIX DAY WAR HISTORICAL REVISIONISTS
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, June 29, 2007.
This article was written by Jason Moaz, Senior Editor of The Jewish Press and it appeared June 7, 2007 in the Jewish Press.

Trolling the Internet these past couple of weeks has served to quash any lingering, hopeful doubts that the post-Zionists have indeed won the battle over how Israel is perceived. (... by the ignorant, the uninformed and deliberate liars) jsk.

The historical revisionists, whose initial attempts at recasting Israel's image from David to Goliath were focused on the events surrounding Israel's creation, have in recent years focused increasingly on the 1967 Six-Day War, which for the first decade or so after its occurrence was widely seen as a case of Israel's justified response to Arab threats and aggression.

But, as Israel in the 1970's and 1980's came to lose favor among liberal and leftist academics and journalists, there was a significant shift in the way the Six-Day War was being portrayed -- in terms of both cause and effect. The change was already evident well before the term "post-Zionism" was coined, and became even more pronounced as post-Zionism came into its own in the 1990's.

So it was refreshing to see military historian and New York Post columnist Ralph Peters take on the post-Zionists this week with a free-swinging celebration of Israel's 1967 victory. Peters, a retired intelligence officer, castigated, "revisionist historians [for] reinventing the Six-Day War as the source of Israel's problems."

Reading the revisionists, he wrote, one would think "prior to June 1967, Israelis had lived in an Age of Aquarius, eating lotus blossoms amid friendly Bedouin neighbors who tucked them in at night. The critics also imply that, by some unexplained magic, Israel might have avoided war and its consequences."

Contrary to the doomsayers, "June 1967 announced Israel as a regional great power -- less than 20 years after the state's desperate founding. And the Six-Day War remains more important today for what it achieved than for the Arab failures it left behind....

"The Six-Day War didn't create the Middle East's problems, it only changed the math. For Israel, it marked a coming of age. Taken together with the Yom Kippur War, six years later -- two rounds in a single fight, really -- the war of June 1967 meant the end of Israel's basic struggle for existence and the beginning of its 'quality of life' wars."

"In the real world," Peters concluded, "outcomes aren't perfect. There are no wars to end all wars. The proper question is, "Are you better off than before the shooting started? Judged by that common-sense standard, Israel is vastly better off than it was on the eve of the Six-Day War. Thanks to the heroes of June 1967, Israel survived. Miracle enough."

Peters's column brought to mind a piece written two decades ago by the redoubtable George F. Will. A slew of American and Israeli intellectuals were marking the 20th anniversary of the Six-Day War by lamenting Israel's lopsided victory, which, they sobbed, had transformed Jews into occupiers and oppressors and hardened them to the plight of the Palestinians.

It remained for Will to cut through the muck (crap) of leftists wallowing in misplaced guilt, which he did in a Newsweek column titled, "A Just War Remembered." "It has been 20 years since those six days that shook the world," he wrote. "Because of what happened then, a united Jerusalem is capital of Israel, and Israel never again will be 12 miles wide at the waist. Because of the war the West Bank, which Jordan seized militarily and held for 19 years, is rightfully Israel's to dispose of, as it deems prudent.

"And, because of the echoing thunderclap from Israel 20 Junes ago, the security of Israel and hence the spiritual well-being of world Jewry have been enhanced. The Holocaust ended in 1945, but the Holocaust as aspiration was not destroyed until June 1967, when Israel smashed encircling armies that had the inescapably genocidal mission of obliterating the national gathering of Jews."

Noting the inclination in certain circles to denigrate the idea of history being determined by the actions of individuals, Will wrote that it was "invigorating to revisit in memory the Six-Day War, a clear case of enormous consequences assignable to the decisions of particular people -- Nasser, Hussein and some young Israeli pilots and tankers who reminded the world of the good that can come from a just war."

George Will and Ralph Peters -- two non-Jews with more intellectual honesty and moral clarity than all of Israel's post-Zionists and their American Jewish fellow travelers put together.

Jerome S. Kaufman is National Secretary of the Zionist Organization of America and hosts the Israel Commentary website (http://www.israel-commentary.org).

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CIVIL WAR IN GAZA; TREASON BY PERES & OLMERT; WAR BY SUMMER
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 29, 2007.

S. ARABIA BUILDING MORE MOSQUES

S. Arabia is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Wahabi-type mosques in northern Africa. Basically its foreign policy is to promote that version of Islam. Unfortunately, Wahabiism is similar to al-Qaeda ideology (IMRA, 6/11).

HAMAS FIGHTING ALL OUT

Declaring war, hundreds of Hamas troops attacked Fatah troops all over Gaza. They inflicted many casualties. Hamas captured some Fatah headquarters, thousands of rifles, many rounds of ammunition, and armored jeeps. Hamas took over northern Gaza, and warned P.A. security men not to enter. Hamas is pursuing leading Fatah men by attacking their homes. Pundits call northern Gaza "Hamastan."

The P.A. called it a coup, but Hamas pointed out that Fatah was the one being given US weapons against its coalition partner (IMRA, 6/12).

The civil war was predicted. So was Hamas' victory. To the aggressor, goes the victory. Fatah waited, but Hamas organized and attacked. The US bet on a lame horse (tough only against civilians). The thousands of rifles that it gave Fatah are ending up in the hands of Hamas, as Hamas boasted they would and right-wing Israeli commentators feared they would. PM Olmert had approved the arms transfer to Fatah. Soon they will be used against Israel.

I think that Israel should have evened the odds by attacking Hamas more, this past year, so both sides would lose more gunmen. Israel should not, howver, have let Fatah bring in arms.

HOW GOVERNMENT WORKS

The June 13 NY Sun headline: "Mayor Cheers As Math Gains Start To Show." The story was that N.Y. City math students had almost caught up to the state's.

The June 12 Op.-Ed. headline was, "An Invitation to Cheat." The story was that American faculty change test scores to favor their students. Mayor Bloomberg pays $15,000 bonuses to principals whose students make substantial gains on reading tests. In one New York City school, students went from about 40% passing to 80% in a single year. Next year, the principal retired with the $15,000 bonus and, as a result of the bonus, $12,000 more in annual pension. The percent of passing fell back to the original 40%. The matter is under investigation. The Mayor's repeated misuse of before-and-after comparisons is deceptive. Although, he is getting a reputation for competence, it should be for incompetence and using statistics misleadingly.

SHIMON PERES' TREASON

Peres opposed PM Begin's plan to bomb Iraq's nuclear reactor. He threatened to leak the plan of attack. Iraq would have been able to destroy Israel, if Peres had his way.

Peres betrayed Israel's agent, Pollard, to the US government, and lied about it.

Peres subverted PM Rabin's policy of not negotiating with the PLO. Peres foisted Oslo upon the country. He armed Arafat's terrorists and brought them to the edge of Israel's cities. As a result, at least 1,500 Israelis have been killed.

Peres and his associates bribed politicians to support Oslo. Politicians who disputed the policy were falsely indicted. With Oslo, the government politicalized the Army, promoting officers who supported Oslo. Furthering the corruption, IDF generals retired into partnerships with terrorist chieftains. (Some of Israel's negotiators with the PLO had partnerships with PLO leaders.) The government defamed civilian opponents and restricted their civil liberties. "The Israeli media corrupted public debate by silencing and demonizing voices of opposition. The education system of Israel was corrupted when schoolchildren were provided with new 'peace friendly' textbooks which taught a revisionist history of the state that called into question the morality and legality of the establishment of Israel."

As Foreign Minister, Peres canceled his agency's public relations. Now it could not explain Israel's right to the land, that Peres did not believe in. He used his position to make public relations for the terrorists. He courts foreign, anti-Israel politicians.

Peres' Peace Center gave a monetary award to one of those officials, who was on its board. That official, Larsen, falsely accused Israel of war crimes in Jenin. Larsen seems to have tried to influence the Nobel committee in Peres' behalf (Caroline Glick in Winston Mid East Analysis, 6/12).

As opposition leader, Peres undermined the first war in Lebanon. Leftist generals performed suspiciously badly. Peres may be behind the death of PM Rabin and others and perhaps PM Sharon's coma. He seems to want to get Israel destroyed. He does seem to be a foreign agent, I though, French. It's been hinted to be Russian, however.

WHY OLMERT ASKS FOR UNIFIL AT GAZA BORDER

In order to retain power, PM Olmert pretends that UNIFIL successfully checks Hizbullah arms smuggling in Lebanon, rather than admit his terrible mistake in inviting UNIFIL. Now he suggests that UNIFIL guard arms smuggling into Gaza, even though it would cause Israel great harm (IMRA, 6/12). I think IMRA has assessed Olmert shrewdly.

IRAQI SUNNIS VS. AL-QAEDA

Al-Qaeda has outraged the Sunnis of Iraq. They have joined the government effort against al-Qaeda (IMRA, 6/13).

They are from a province that a few months ago, a Marine intelligence officer called hopelessly lost.

ABUSING ISRAELI HUMANITARIANISM

Islamic Jihad trained two Arab women in suicide bombing. Then it sent them on a mission to blow up people in and near Tel Aviv. They got there on a false application of needing medical attention, but were captured by guards.

Dr. Aaron Lerner cites this as evidence why Pres. Bush ought not demand that Israel let down its guard for the convenience of Arab life (IMRA, 6/13).

Those Arabs want independence? Let the P.A. provide their medical care! It is not Israel's responsibility to save the P.A. money and to save enemy lives.

WAR BY SUMMER

Syria has removed governmental archives from Damascus. That is a sign of imminent war. Pres. Assad declares readiness to negotiate peace, but when Israeli officials accept his invitation, he does not respond. Apparently he declares readiness to negotiate merely for public relations (Arutz-7, 6/15).

Israel's folly is to let Hizbullah and Hamas build up forces that could divert the IDF from dealing with Syria. Syria might not have chosen war, if Israel forcefully eliminated Hizbullah and Hamas and had pounded Syrian positions on the Lebanon border that supplied Hizbullah. Israel didn't even have its planes over Gaza, to bomb the ammunition trucks Hizbullah captured from the P.A..

ANOTHER STATE DEPT. FOUL-UP

"American Middle East military envoy Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton said last week that reports of Hamas forces being superior to those of American-trained Fatah were incorrect. He and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently convinced American Congressmen to approve more than $60 million to help equip the Fatah militia despite the danger that Hamas might confiscate its weapons." (Arutz-7, 6/15). That was only days before Fatah's collapse in Gaza. The State Dept. is adept at arming America's enemies. It also is adept at avoiding the blame. We need a President who will clean out the State Dept..

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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THERE IMAM BUSH GOES AGAIN
Posted by Andrew Bostom, June 29, 2007.
This essay is called "Dhimmification' on the march" and it was written by Diana West. It appeared today in the Washington Times
(www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070629/ EDITORIAL04/106290013)

If anyone wants to know why Muslims the world over tell pollsters the United States is at war with Islam, just read President Bush's speech at the Islamic Center of Washington, especially the part about American-style religious freedom -- in the president's words, "what we wish for the world."

He began this way: "For those who seek a true understanding of our country, they need look no farther than here."

No, not the mosque itself, but down the street it occupies. "This Muslim center sits quietly down the road from a synagogue, a Lutheran Church, a Catholic parish, a Greek Orthodox chapel, a Buddhist temple -- each with faithful followers who practice their deeply held beliefs and live side by side in peace," the president explained, standing in his Islamically observant stocking feet before a cool Muslim audience. "This is what freedom offers: societies where people can live and worship as they choose without intimidation, without suspicion, without a knock on the door from the secret police."

As one who has attended a Bar Mitzvah at that synagogue down the road, I have news for the president: Freedom, American-style, has changed. To enter, I passed an armed guard holding an automatic weapon manning the door. Armed guards like him man many such doors in many such cities. In fact, so common is it for religious worship (mainly, but not exclusively, Jewish worship) to require armed protection today that we miss the implications: the degree to which freedom to worship without fear in America has been curtailed by the open-ended threat of Buddhist violence.

Whoops, sorry. I mean, curtailed by the open-ended threat of Greek Orthodox violence. Or was that Catholic Lutheran violence?

No, the peril to the synagogue was, and remains, Islamic violence. The resulting diminution of freedom is a symptom of advancing dhimmitude -- the diminished cultural condition of non-Muslims living in relation to Islam.

So, freedom of worship ain't what it used to be. But even in its terror-constrained state, the spread of American religious freedom actually threatens religiously unfree Islamic cultures, which, for example, consider "apostasy" -- deciding not to be Muslim -- a capital crime.

But that threat is only on paper. Where Americans actually become involved in the Islamic world, Shariah (Islamic law) is protected, enshrined even, as shockingly attested by Shariah's primacy in the American-fostered constitutions of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian Authority. The president doesn't seem to understand that. I don't think he even understands Shariah, under which the primacy of Islam is absolute, and other religions are "tolerated," at best, at the high cost of dhimmitude. Nearly six years after September 11 -- nearly six years after first visiting the Islamic Center and proclaiming "Islam is peace" -- Mr. Bush has learned nothing.

In fact, his peroration on freedom at the Islamic Center mainly underscored "America's respect for the Muslim faith here at home." Abroad, too. Even as he was asking Muslim leaders (again) "to denounce organizations that use the veneer of Islamic belief to support and fund violence" (some veneer), the president announced the United States would send an envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a global Islamic support group that does a large bit of that. "Our special envoy," the president said, "will listen and learn from representatives from Muslim states and share with them America's views and values."

What can the Free World learn from the Unfree World? Maybe something about the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam adopted by the foreign ministers of the OIC in 1990. In dire contrast to the United Nation's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Islamic document recognizes only human rights sanctioned by Shariah -- which, basically, leaves women and non-Muslims without human rights.

Hmm. Might Mr. Bush -- or anyone in our leadership, civilian or military -- notice the unbridgeable cultural differences revealed by these disparate notions of human rights? Alas, probably not. Islam's still peace, according to the prez. Those pesky "extremists" fighting jihad are not, he said, "the true face of Islam."

There Imam Bush goes again. "I am astonished by President Bush when he claims there is nothing in the Qu'ran that justifies jihad violence in the name of Islam," jailed jihadi cleric Abu Qatada said under similar circumstances almost six years ago. "Is he some kind of Islamic scholar? Has he ever actually read the Qu'ran?"

No. He's just leader of the Free World -- a Free World that has become less free and more dhimmified on his severely myopic watch.

Contact Andrew Bostom at abostom@cox.net

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HAMAS IS THE REAL THING
Posted by Judah Tzoref, June 29, 2007.

Castigating the Hamas has become an international fad. Across the West and particularly in Israel, public figures condemn Hamas and berate it with multifarious terms of abuse on media channels and every public podium. The more such condemnation of Hamas appears to be mordant and excruciating, the more it emerges as a redemptive process of self purification, typical of every generation's prudes.

However, launching the poisonous arrows of censure at Hamas alone, as the epitome of evil and the ultimate obstacle to every prospect of reconciliation, is not necessarily indicative of virtue and greatness of mind. In general, the sweeping condemnation of Hamas reflects the extent to which the West has fallen in love with its own lies. So much so, that it has been driven to the point of fundamental misconception of the reality in which it fumbles its way.

Hamas is indeed murderous, abusive and recalcitrant, but it can boast a basic advantage, by which it outshines many others: it is the real thing. Hamas compels us into focusing our reluctant eyes straight to reality. The overwhelming reality encroaches upon our sanity once we are bold enough to cast a close-up glance at it, so that in every possible manner we attempt to circumvent any direct visual contact with it. However, when the unsavoury reality is exposed before our eyes and intimately imposed on us, it's most convenient to point our blaming finger at Hamas.

Not surprisingly USA is the most bitter enemy of Hamas, which indulges in the bad manner of undermining well-established American lies. America, that ardently nurtures the cult of the "politically correct", prefers to wallow in the quagmire of moral and cultural decadence, wrapped up in its fine veneer of sublime values. It is the same USA, the population of which amounts to only four percent of the world population, that consumes about 25 percent of the world energy sources. It is USA that preaches to the entire world on morality, but at the same time features as the star polluter of the globe, deteriorating it to the verge of ecological catastrophe.

USA avows its most staunch friendship to Israel, but at the same time channels her into the treacherous path of disaster-begetting Judenfrei land plans. Those pernicious plans are first and foremost foiled by Hamas, for its own motives and interests, dusting away the grimy layers of fraud and counterfeit accumulated on them. Hamas is the only factor that is capable of curing us from the delirious addiction to the narcotic peace potion before too late.

Above all, only the Hamas is endowed with the power to force us, Jews, to contemplate our unfortunate image reflected from the mirror of Israeli reality. With a razor-blade sharpness it confronts us with a truth invoked from the roots of our spiritual identity: "If you are indeed the Jews that have returned home, then prove it, otherwise, if you are just imposters, then go away".

Moreover, without inhibitions of political correctness, Hamas flings the purest truth in our faces, the truth we fear so much, up to the point of escapism into mental hideouts of denial and suppression. The self-demanding message is openly conveyed to us by the Hamas: "If you have in mind to get entrenched here along the coastal plain within a noisy, dense and polluted ghetto, teeming with towers, real estates, carnivals, pride parades and non-stop urban buzzing, then forget it. This kind of story is already behind us. There isn't any justification for yet another Crusader Kingdom in a pseudo-Jewish style. You don't fathom the Holy Land, and you don't deserve it."

The more we understand that Hamas is an indispensable essence of present-day reality, the deeper we shall be able to perceive its fierce nature. For Hamas is an inevitable product of our substance, and is the one that scourges us with the whip of truth and wakes us up from the twilight zone of lies, illusions and self-delusions, in which we have bogged down, and consequently losing contact with reality.

Dr. Judah (Yehuda) Tzoref is a scientist, trained at the Technion in Haifa and Oxford University in England. His expertise is in physics and energy engineering. He is a grass-roots activist on behalf of Israel. He lives in Rehovot.

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THIS THE END OF PALESTINE?
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 28, 2007.

This was written by Martin Peretz, editor in chief of The New Republic (TNR). Ir is archived at
www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070702&s=peretz070207

Think back two years. Ariel Sharon was not only alive but healthy and staking his place in history on an idea he had never truly believed: that the Arabs of Palestine might be ready for peace with the Jewish state. This idea may have run against both his deepest convictions and his basic instincts. But somehow he carried many of his old comrades with him: comrades from Israel's old wars and comrades from the political right--where, after a brief parliamentary stint on the left, he had positioned himself.

Carrying comrades to a place they had not been before also entailed making enemies, and Sharon's enemies were bitter and vindictive. Nonetheless, he carried out the withdrawal of all 8,000 or so Israelis from Gaza unconditionally and without making explicit demands on the Palestinians--or inexplicit ones, for that matter. He also dismantled four settlements in the West Bank, from what he and his friends called Samaria. No one thought that these would be the last to be vacated, no one. And Israel's entire security establishment (army, intelligence, the diplomatic corps) laid out various maps for discussion that were uncannily reminiscent of the (overly generous) proposals put forward by Ehud Barak in the waning days, the pathetic waning days, of the Clinton administration. Condoleezza Rice even persuaded a few American Jewish zillionaires to ante up roughly $15 million to buy, as a parting gift from the Jews at once symbolic and practical, for the Gaza Arabs the hothouses that had helped make local agriculture, for the first time in history, so abundant and also valuable. Ask about the hothouses of Gaza now, and people will laugh. Ask about the rest of Gaza, and people will cry.

They cried even before Gaza was put through the trauma of civil war. For what was unraveling was the whole idea of the Palestine nation itself. Of course, some said, "I told you so." (I count myself among those entitled to say that.) I was never taken in by the dream of Palestine, although I realized that Israeli dominion over so many Arabs did somewhat dim the incandescence of the Zionist reality, a free Jewish people, free in politics and in spirit, in arts and in science and above all in literature, in law, and in the press, free from the religious coercion of the rabbis, a nation speaking its own language at home at last.

No people moves without an elite committed to the whole. That the Palestinian elites were and are corrupt is a historic reality, a shabby reality. It was the Palestinian aristocracy that sold off its lands for Jewish settlement from the very beginning of the Zionist experiment. And the last act broadcast on television: the dismantling of the gaudy riches of Palestine's "revolutionaries" in Gaza.

Contrast this with the secular, although economically impoverished, aristocracy of the kibbutz, created by the early Zionists, which, as Dorothea Krook has shown, shaped the ethos of both the movement and the state. There was an exhilarating and learned asceticism to the Jewish pioneers, an asceticism that has almost altogether vanished but remains as contingent reproach. It is needed now.

Most of the Arabs of Palestine resented the Jews. But resentment is not a foundation for a nation. In some uncanny way, Yasir Arafat grasped the guilefulness of Palestinian peoplehood and so was always inventing new myths (e.g., Jesus was the first Palestinian). There has been a big to-do in academic circles over the last quarter-century about "imagined communities" as nations. This was meant to help legitimize groups whose coherence was incoherent. But, alas, even Benedict Anderson, in fitting his lax definitions with history, does not refer at all to the Palestinians. The British Communist historian Eric Hobsbawm does allude to the Palestinians in his book on nationalism, but only to dismiss them as a nationalist movement.

One of the harsh truths that we have learned is that terrorism may be the prime expression of a fledgling nationalism, perhaps even its only collective expression. But it does bring a certain dread to its adversaries, and Palestinian terrorism has over the decades brought that dread to Israel. A suicide bomb also makes a big and incredulous splash, and with that comes to its instigators the sense that they can no longer be ignored. Of course, their hapless but willing instrument is dead. Poor man, increasingly we can also say poor woman, poor pregnant woman.

"Palestine" is not the only place where the very idea of the nation is so weak that its violent eruptions seem to be dismal admissions of failure. But, however impoverished the reality, it has caught the fancy of many outside Palestine. The fact is that, had these outsiders--some cynical, some hopelessly muddle-headed--not embraced the cause, the cause already would have perished from its own exhaustion.

So what is Palestine? It is an improvisation from a series of rude facts. Palestine was never anything of especial importance to the Arabs or to the larger orbit of Muslims. Palestine was never even an integral territory of the Ottomans but split up in sanjaks that crossed later postWorld War I borders, a geographical and political jumble. When General Allenby captured Jerusalem, it was a great happening for believing Christian Europe, not a tragedy for Islam. When the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan for Palestine was passed, envisioning a "Jewish" state and an "Arab" (not, mind you, Palestinian) state, even the idea of a separate Arab realm was met at best with a yawn. Though almost no Arab wanted Jewish sovereignty in any of Palestine, virtually no Arab seemed to crave Arab sovereignty, either.

Foreign Arab armies did the fighting against the Haganah, and foreign states sat for the Palestinians at the cease-fire negotiations, as they had sat for decades at the international conferences on Palestine convened by the powers. Palestine was being fought over to be divvied up by Cairo, Amman, and Damascus. The Syrian army was overwhelmed by the Israelis. No rewards there. It was different for King Farouk and Abdullah I, who got land in reward for their soldiers' combat.

Indeed, from 1949 through 1967, what was the West Bank of Arab Palestine was annexed--yes, annexed--by Jordan, and what was the Gaza Strip was a captive territory of Egypt, unannexed so that Gazans had no rights as Egyptians (whereas the West Bankers had rights as Jordanians). The Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964, was not founded to liberate these territories. It was founded to liberate that part of Palestine held by Israel. We are long past this history, and Israel had become accustomed to the idea--if not exactly the precise reality--of an independent Palestine for the Palestinians, the name of their desire. Ehud Olmert gladly would have signed on the dotted line if the Palestinian Authority could bring itself to realize it would get what it could get (and perhaps even a little more) if the Palestinians would finally stop their war against the Jews. And their rage.

But the Palestinians' war against the Jews is actually also a war against one another. While Mahmoud Abbas probably would have settled for being president of a cartographically realistic Palestine, there were integral parts of Fatah, and particularly its fighting gangs, that still held out for the grand irredentist map--if not "from the river to the sea," something more than was ordained in 1967. Could Abbas, in the end, rein them in? Not when Hamas had set the terms of the intra-Palestinian conflict as all or nothing. Those are characteristic Hamas conditions, with other Arabs as with the Jews. It is true that Fatah men of combat were battling for their lives. But they were not battling for peace with Israel.

The disintegration of Gaza began as soon as the Israelis departed. This was not an issue of what Israel did or did not do. The ur-religious and the ur-nationalist were in psychological control of the strip from the beginning. Hamas did not shoot (many) rockets across the border into enemy territory. But its surrogates did. Hamas did nothing about this, and Fatah really couldn't. They couldn't, although Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, the American coordinator in the area, assured they could, especially after supplying arms to Fatah and persuading Olmert to supply more weapons, which, as luck would have it, are now in Hamas's possession. The ordinary Gazans clearly were not pleased by the chaos and the haphazard murders on the streets. They were and are objects not subjects, victims not victimizers. But Hamas is also bitter, embittered by its costly victory. For them, there remains the project of Reconstruction, in the American Civil War sense, of the souls of their neighbors.

The final fall of Gaza to Hamas puts the whole question of Palestine and the Palestinians into a new perspective. There are now three cohorts of Palestinians between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. (Four, if you count the Palestinian majority under Hashemite rule.)

Let's deal first with the easiest of these to grasp: the Arabs of Israel, citizens of Israel with freedoms--legal and social--that are unimaginable in any Arab country. Their loyalties are always tested by kin and undermined by the residual discriminations of the Jewish state. But their loyalties are also the subject of an inevitable internal struggle. They are, after all, the privileged Palestinians, the Palestinians who live in a decent society. But one thing of which they will not hear--and that is a perfectly logical proposal--is that some of them, together with their land and homes, become part of whatever Palestine will be. The hostility to this idea will, by way of compensation, radicalize these Israeli Arabs and thus make them more and more suspect by their Jewish fellow citizens.

Then, there is the West Bank. The optimism about peace prospects there is, at least, very much premature. And, frankly, from what I know about locales like Jenin and Hebron, I wonder why commentators think that the Judea and Samaria territories are so different from Gaza. In fact, these Palestinian cities historically have been centers of Arab extremism, although--and this is a curious characteristic of Arab extremism--this rarely ties one locale to another. So what you have is the bane of fanaticism without the bonds of community. Indeed, the defining loyalty among many Palestinians is loyalty to family, clan, and tribe, not progressive social formations, as they say. But Rashid Khalidi does not focus on these persistences in his book Palestinian Identity, which he optimistically subtitled The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. In fact, the persistence of these antique ties is another reason why the Palestinians are far from being a coherent people. But, then, Pakistan is also not a nation, and neither is Iraq. I recall that Palestinian embroidery differs in every town and city. That is quaint, and it makes for pretty dresses in many styles. But it is not a model for a nation-state.

The initiative remains with the Gaza Palestinians, which is to say, Hamas. It will not be tempted, as many of the journalistic prophets informed us when the group won the parliamentary elections, to become responsible. Rage is actually its way in the world, and it is a shrewd, if not wise, tactic. Your adversary becomes uncertain and jittery, afraid to provoke but loath to ignore. Rockets will continue to land in the towns and kibbutzim of the Negev and further into Israel. More advanced weapons will be smuggled into Gaza--alas, from Egypt, which did not, over the past years, demonstrate either the will or the capacity to stop the running of war materials from the Sinai to the Strip.

Israel must now make choices that will determine Egypt's responsibilities. Given the fact that Hamas has declared war on Israel, Jerusalem could decide to simply seal its border with Gaza. Enemies at war do not generally supply one other with food and medical provisions, let alone gas and electricity. What should persuade Israel to make such arrangements? To win goodwill? Nonsense.

Of course, Egypt could assume greater responsibility, including the shepherding of endangered Fatah Palestinians to safety. But a corollary to that would be the obligation to truly bar weapons from being sent underground to Hamas. So what if Israel responds to Hamas rocket and missile assaults harshly and with the precision that its air power permits? Is not Mubarak afraid of Hamas's cousins in the streets of Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood, already chafing under the regime's heavy hand? Israel might also recapture the Philadelphia Corridor and police the Gaza border with Egypt.

There is at least one assumption that we can make: Israel will not permit attacks without appropriate response. The abandonment of Sderot by a third of its population is a stain on Zionism. It will not occur again. And, with Israel under such intense pressure from Gaza, it is hardly possible to imagine that even Fatah will be able to resist the temptation of armed mischief. And why do I say even Fatah? I shouldn't.

Then, of course, Hezbollah may be tempted, and Syria, too. The resulting combination--assaults from the north, the east, and the west--would be a peril for Israel. But the most serious near-term danger actually comes from the West Bank. For rockets and more precise weapons aimed at the thickly populated heart and narrow waist of Israel from almost any place in what is now Fatah land would revive both the anxieties and military reflexes of the state and its population. Surely that would not be good for the Arabs.

That is why U.S. policy must not assume that there are facile ways to render the West Bank peaceful. Almost everyone has admitted, some with bitterness, that what keeps that area of Palestine more orderly than Gaza is the proximate presence of Israeli troops near Arab population centers.

Would that there were a mature national will among the Palestinians. It might even be able to temper the rage of the Arabs against one another. Not until their sense of peoplehood conquers their rage against one another will they be in the psychological position to think of peace with Israel. I doubt this will happen any time soon. This is the end of Palestine, the bitter end.

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. Or write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

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ARNOLD ROTH: 'THAT FEMALE IS OUR CHILD'S MURDERER'
Posted by Doris Wise Montrose, June 29, 2007.

This comes from the Solomonia website:
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/015906.shtml The website has an audio link to a piece of a speech by Arnold Roth
(www.solomonia.com/blog/images/march07/Arnold_Roth_2007_03_18cut.mp3) Sol of Solomonia writes: "Listen as Roth responds to a question ('shouldn't journalists face charges of malpractice just as physicians do?') and describes the phone calls he got from journalists soon after his daughter was murdered. Usual apologies apply for the quality, but it's well worth a listen."

The essay was written by Arnold Roth. His daughter was one of the people massacred when Arab terrorists blew up the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem in 2001.

Left -- Tamimi in 2001
The prisoner whose picture appears in the New York Times is Ahlam Tamimi. She was twenty years old at the time of the Sbarro massacre. From the Malki Foundation Facts about the massacre
(http://www.kerenmalki.org/Press/Press_Listing.htm) "Far from matching the media cliché of under-privileged and 'desperate', she was a university student and journalist with a troubled personal past who transplanted herself from Jordan to Ramallah in 1998. In the days before the massacre, she visited the center of Jerusalem several times, collecting intelligence information. After her arrest, she confessed to a previous attempt at civilian mass-murder by planting a bomb among beer-cans on the shelf of a mid-town supermarket, a few minutes walk from Sbarro in the center of Jerusalem on July 30, 2001. This bomb was discovered in time and innocent lives were saved. Ten days later, the outcome was completely different."

June 27, 2007 -- The New York Times carried a review of a film called "Hot House" that goes inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian prisoners. We're not recommending the film or the review. But we do want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article. You can see it here.

The film is produced by HBO. So it's presumably HBO's publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamor-style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie.

Ahlam Tamami, Arab terrorist

That female -- Ahlam Tamami -- is our child's murderer. She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail. Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates. The background facts are available at
http://www.kerenmalki.org/Press/Press_Listing.htm.

Neither the New York Times nor HBO are likely to give even a moment's attention to the victims of the barbarians who destroyed the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and the lives of so many victims. So we would be grateful if you would pass along this link to some pictures of our daughter whose name was Malki. She was unable to reach her twenties -- Hamas saw to that.

Though she was only fifteen years old when her life was stolen from her and from us, we think Malki was a beautiful young woman, living a beautiful life. We ask your help so that other people -- far fewer than the number who will see the New York Times, of course -- can know about her. Please ask your friends to look at the pictures -- some of the very few we have -- of our murdered daughter. They are at http://www.kerenmalki.org/photo.htm

And remind them of what the woman in the Israeli prison -- the woman smiling so happily in the New York Times -- said last year. "I'm not sorry for what I did. We'll become free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison."

With so many voices demanding that Israel release its terrorist prisoners, small wonder she's smiling.

With greetings from Jerusalem,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
On behalf of Keren Malki

Contact Doris Wise Montrose at doriswise@sbcglobal.net

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HAMAS IS STRONG IN THE WEST BANK. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE USA?
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 28, 2007.

Dear Mr. President

A very ugly picture is emerging from the new situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Until now it was possible to assert (and, in fact, I often asserted) that the overwhelming majority of Palestinian people (the rank-and-file, man-in-the-street) wanted peace and did not want to destroy Israel and genocide its Jews. It was their leaders, their terrorist leaders, who were the cause of the problem, and the people as a body politic were afraid to speak out because their terrorist leaders terrorized them just as they terrorized the Israelis.

The articles below offer up, indirectly, some distressingly clear evidence that this is not the case any more (and indeed, perhaps it never was).

1.) Note in the NY Times article that Hamas remains strong in the West Bank, even after slaughtering Palestinians in Gaza. Not only did the Palestinian people vote Hamas in to power as the Palestinian Authority leaders, but they also voted for Hamas locally as well....in dozens of city and town councils in the West Bank. Qalqilyah is a Hamas stronghold in the West Bank, and an apparently very large number of West Bank Arabs still strongly support Hamas.

Some pundits were wont to opine that Hamas won the 2006 elections on a ballot of clean government...although Hamas spokespersons denied that this was the case, saying that Hamas' priorities are completely clear and well known to all in the Palestinian Authority territories: destroy Israel, genocide the Jews.

But even if the pundits were right (they were not, but even if they were), they cannot make that claim any longer. Hamas' non-transparency has become obvious, as has its disregard for 'clean government'. Moreover, its role as the prime mover and inciter in the recent, very brutal and very brief civil war underscores its brutal terrorist nature and disregard for the concepts of 'Palestinian unity' and democracy which were part of its platform. It is also now clear that Hamas has become a proxy for Iran and Syria, as is Hezbollah.

It is now beyond obvious to those who tried to whitewash Hamas, that Hamas is a brutal, thugish, barbaric terrorist group. Few are still alive in Gaza who do not support its Islamo-fascist rule; but it still has the support of many, perhaps most, Palestinans in the West Bank.

2.) In the Yahoo article, Fayyad's baby steps toward rule of law in the West Bank seem to be one small baby step in the right direction: disarm 'militants' and stop the incitement in mosques. But note that armed groups are defying Abbas' demand to disarm, and Hamas preachers (many of whom are elected officials in local government) defy Fayyad's demand to end the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate-preach that has typified Hamas friday sermons since the terror group came in to existence in 1987.

Perhaps even more telling, Fayyad condemns Israel's military operations in the West Bank to stop terrorists before they blow up civilians. Why? Because it '..undermines... (Fatah's).... efforts to provide security and end the chaos'. Hmmm...how does stopping terrorists undermine Fatah's efforts? Only if Fatah's efforts are to continue terrorism.

There are two possibilites:

either Fayyad must say something anti-Israel in order to dis-associate from Israel, or he and Abbas have other plans for the deployment of those terrorists later (and recall that many Fatah 'security personnel' moonlight for Hamas). Either way, Fayyad's condemnation of what should logically be seen as Israel's cooperation with Fatah, to strengthen the PA in the West Bank, tells us that he and his constituency are not seeking peace and cooperation with Israel.

3 & 4.) Note the Pew Poll discussed in these two newspapers: A majority of the Palestinian people support Iran's acquisition of WMDs. Iran's acquisition of WMDs is opposed by every Arab state and almost every Muslim state in the world...leaders and populace. Yet a majority of the Palestinian people, and two Islamo-fascist terrorist states, are rooting for Iran's bomb. Let's recall Akhmedi-Nejad's promise: a world without Israel, and a world without America.

So what is the ugly picture that emerges from these news items:

1 & 2 = There is some very significant plurality, or majority (hopefully a small majority, but we really cannot know, and hope is not a contraceptive) of Palestinian people (the rank-and-file, man-in-the-street) who really do not want peace and co-existence with Israel. They really do support Hamas in its commitment to genocide every Jew in Israel, and they remain supportive of that Hamas goal even as Hamas slaughters other Muslim Palestinians and openly grabs power and destroys any hope of a Palestinian state other than a Hamas terrorist state run by Shari'a law. That is what they really want, that is why they voted for Hamas, and that is why they still support Hamas in the West Bank, and that is why they do not want to give up their arms, and that is why Fayyad must distance himself from Israel even as Israel helps him and Abbas hold on to power in the PA.

3 & 4 = A majority of the Palestinian people have aligned themselves with the enemies of the USA. At first glance this would seem odd. After all, the USA has provided billions of dollars of aid to UNRWA for the benefit of Arab refugees over the past 55 years; whereas the Arab countries pay less than 3% of the annual UNRWA budget. The USA has provided hundreds of millions of dollars to Arafat and the PA since the 1993 Oslo Accords, turning a blind eye to the obvious fact that almost all of that money (USA taxpayer money) was going to support Arafat's terror war. The USA has provided, twice since the Oslo Accords, advanced and sophisticated weapons and training for the PA security forces with the understanding that they would be used to keep order and quell terrorism, and then turning a blind eye to the fact that many Fatah operatives turned these weapons in terror attacks against Israel. The USA supported and hosted and feted and honored and lionized and white-washed Arafat and his terror war during six presidential administratons. Clinton hosted him more times than he hosted any other head of state. In sum, the Palestinian people have received more aid, per capita, than any other political body in the entire world (with the exception of the tiny African state of Cape Verde) over the past 14 years, much of it from the USA.

So why do they support America's enemy and cheer when their leaders shout 'death to America'?

Well, a brief look at history gives us the answer. In the 1930s and 40s, Palestinians under the leadership of the Haj Amin el-Husseini, sided with the Nazis. During the 50's to 80's under Arafat's leadership they sided with the USSR. After the Cold War came to an end, they sided with Saddam Hussein and cheered when he bombed Israel and cursed the USA for Gulf War 1. And they sided with el-Qaeda and cheered when el-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And they sided with Saddam Hussein and cursed the USA for Gulf War 2, and then mourned Saddam's fall. And now they side with Iran and root for the Iranian Bomb -- the bomb whose sole raison-d'etre is the nuclear destruction of Israel...the very same Israel in which they themselves live.

In sum: a significant majority of the Palestinian people have always sided with the totalitarian, tyrannical, triumphalist, supremacist, imperialist, fascist anti-Israel and genocidally Jew-hating side of the world's dominant conflicts, over the past 85 years. The Palestinian people have always sided with America's enemies...who have also been Israel's enemies.

If 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' then 'my enemy's friend is my enemy'.

Britain supported the creation of a Jewish State: so the Palestinians adored Hitler. The USA supported the existence of a Jewish State: so the Palestinians helped the Soviets. Saddam opposed the USA....and the USA aided Israel...so the Palestinians adored Saddam. el-Qaeda plans to wipe out both the USA and Israel, so the Palestinans support el-Qaeda. Hamas promises the destruction of both the USA and Israel, so the Palestinians support Hamas.

The Palestinian national movement, such as it is, displays two glaringly evil characteristics:

1.) it is the only national movement, in all the world and throughout all of world history, whose sole defining paradigm is terrorism, and whose unique and unrelenting goal is the destruction of a sovereign state and the genocide of its Jews

2.) its lust to achieve that goal trumps all other considerations: no amount of aid or money or support from the USA can erase the USA's monumental betrayal of Palestinian hopes and dreams of an end to Israel and an end to Jews. No amount of prosperity and democracy and freedom under Israeli sovereignty, or the potential of that prosperity under a Palestinian state co-existing and cooperating with Israel, can dull the commitment to Israel's destruction. No amount of penury, suffering, disempowerment, oppression under a thugocracy, poverty under a kleptocracy, lost opportunities for peace and prosperity, can be stark enough, severe enough, to shake the supporters of this misbegotten pseudo-nationalism from the moorings of terrorism and of war until victory or martyrdom.

No matter what the human and economic costs, no matter what the suffering, no matter how many dead....if the leaders promise the destruction of Israel and the humiliation of Israel's ally, then those leaders have the followers they need in order to rule. Even though the Iranian promise of a nuclear attack on Israel means the death of millions of Palestinians...the Palestinians cheer wildly for this nuclear consumation, seemingly blinded to this dire reality by their intense hatred for Israel and desire for its destruction. Now, that's a real suicide bombing.

So, from the current state of affairs in the West Bank, and from a brief look at Palestinian history, we must conclude that the Palestinian people are the enemy of Israel and the enemy of the USA.

And in case you are thinking...well, really it is not the majority...recall that Hamas was voted in to power democratically, and recent polls say that hamas would win again if there were another election. Whether a plurality or a majority, enough Palestinians want Hamas to lead them in its end-of-days armageddon-scenario eternal cosmic war against Israel....such that Hamas does indeed lead, and is likely to continue to do so.

So, even if it is not the majority, it is enough of a plurality. And enough of that peaceful majority are silent in the face of that pro-terrorism plurality, such that Hamas can continue to rule, terrorism can continue to increase, and the dream of an end to Israel and an end to Jews can continue to burn in the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people, and continue to mobilize the energies of that society.

And in case you are thinking....well, really it is just the leaders....recall that there are no leaders without followers.

I encourage you, and Madame Secretary, to temper your enthusiasm for a West Bank state of Palestine with the information noted above.

1.) In West Bank, Hamas Is Silent but Never Ignored
By Ian Fisher
New York Times
June 28, 2007
HAWARA, West Bank

A new code was born here overnight. No one, it seems, belongs to Hamas in the West Bank anymore. Everyone now is an "Islamist," a word that neatly, and maybe more safely, shears the religious from party affiliation amid the uncertainty of a Palestinian people newly divided.

"I don't want to spend my life in jail!" a 35-year-old restaurant owner said, refusing to give his name after expressing pro-Hamas sentiments in an interview here.

Hamas, shrewd as it is deadly, has gone to ground in the West Bank, which is controlled now by its secular rival Fatah and supported by the United States, Europe and Israel as the territory with the only workable Palestinian government.

Dozens of Hamas members have been arrested in the last week, since the militant Islamic group drove Fatah out of Gaza, the West Bank's smaller and more radical sibling. Men with beards -- the symbol of religious devotion and, often, of Hamas -- say they are sticking close to home. Hamas's charities, a bedrock of the group's support, have been attacked, and their workers are lying low.

But in scores of interviews in the West Bank with people of all political shades, one thing seems clear: Hamas remains a powerful presence in the West Bank, even if kept somewhat in check by both Fatah and the Israeli Army. This may be the most crucial fact that Israel, the United States and others will have to absorb as they bolster the West Bank as a sort of trial Palestinian state.

"If Hamas doesn't like it, Hamas can destroy it," said Fais Hamdan, 34, a stone cutter with an "Islamist" beard in this village of 6,000 near Nablus, as he sat in the restaurant with the owner who would not give his name. "If they want to kill any political deal, they only have to attack a settlement or another Israeli target. Don't think that Hamas is very weak in the West Bank."

The central issue, as it has been for years, remains credibility.

Hamas crushed Fatah politically last year, sweeping legislative elections in January 2006, partly because Fatah was perceived as corrupt and aloof. That reality, even many Fatah members complain, has changed little.

Hamas also still remains, on paper at least, a strong political force, with the majority of legislative seats in parliament and in control of dozens of city and town councils around the West Bank. Israel has curtailed that as best it can. Of the 74 Hamas legislators, 40 are in Israeli prisons -- and many of its other leaders have been arrested since the fighting erupted in Gaza.

But that could end up helping Hamas because Israeli prison is where Palestinian leaders often gain their contacts and organizational skill.

More broadly, many Palestinians seem to hold little hope that anyone -- America, Israel or even Arab states fearful that Hamas's Islamism could spread -- will actually make good on promises of aid to the West Bank.

[..]

For the moment, political leaders and security officials say, the danger of the Gaza violence spilling into the West Bank seems remote. Fatah is stronger here and, unlike in Gaza, Israeli soldiers still occupy the West Bank.

At any rate, Hamas seems for now to have taken itself out of any fight in the West Bank -- though its critics say that is not only because its members fear arrest.

"If they are hiding, then they are hiding for shame at the crimes that were committed in Gaza," said Ahmad Hazaa Shreim, a legislator and leader of Fatah in Qalqilya, a Palestinian city of 40,000 close to the Israeli line.

Qalqilya, walled off almost completely by the Israeli barrier, presents a telling test case for the future of Hamas in the West Bank. Flags of both Fatah and Hamas still fly here, and in 2005, its residents voted in a 15-member city council composed entirely of Hamas members (including the mayor, who was in an Israeli jail at the time and was arrested again last month).

But then last year, the city bucked the trend, voting in a majority of Fatah legislators at a time when Hamas won elections around the Palestinian territories.

Now the two forces are locked in another standoff. Hamas is coming under verbal fire for pushing Fatah from Gaza.

[..]

Akram al-Himouni, a local Fatah leader, said he saw some hope if Hamas apologized for Gaza and allowed Fatah back there. If Hamas does not "say sorry," he said, "then the story will become worse, and there could be a military resolution."

He added grimly: "I know Hamas. I believe there may not be a dialogue; the resolution may be unfortunately by force."

But many others predicted some sort of reunion, if not from love than from an inescapable logic tied, as always here, to what the outside world decides to do.

If the outside world manages to create stability in the West Bank, and thus hunger for real peace, many argue a final settlement cannot happen without Hamas, which represents a sizable, if unknowable, percentage of the population. [On Wednesday, Saudi and Jordanian officials called for Palestinian unity.]

[..]


2.) Fayyad warns Islamic preachers
By Mohammed Daraghmeh, Associated Press Writer
June 28, 2007
Associated Press writer Ali Daraghmeh contributed to this report
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070628/ap_on_re_mi_ea/
israel_palestinians&printer=1;_ylt=Ar5Ett4__PqS5iOwyar5aagUewgF

The new Palestinian prime minister delivered a stern warning Thursday to hundreds of Islamic preachers, including Hamas supporters: He won't tolerate calls for violence delivered from mosque pulpits and plans to collect militants' weapons.

Salam Fayyad's meeting with some 800 Muslim clergy marked the latest attempt to stem the influence of Hamas in the West Bank following the Islamists' violent takeover of Gaza this month. Security forces have arrested dozens of Hamas activists in the West Bank, and President Mahmoud Abbas is trying to dry up funding to Hamas with a review of all private organizations.

But Fayyad's crackdown on Hamas was complicated by Israel's hunt for gunmen from Abbas' Fatah movement in the West Bank city of Nablus. 'We view this aggression as a way to undermine our efforts to provide security and end the chaos,' Fayyad said.

Israel described the operation as a routine one targeting militants involved in plots to carry out attacks, and said troops found weapons and explosives in Nablus. Five Israeli soldiers were wounded by bombs as they moved from home to home through the densely populated Old City. Tens of thousands of residents were confined to their homes by a curfew.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has promised to bolster Abbas' government in his struggle with Hamas. Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, said the Israeli government is committed to working with Abbas, but would not risk the safety of its own citizens. 'We will go forward with full strength to strengthen Abbas, and full strength to stop the terror,' she said.

This week, Abbas issued a decree barring militants from carrying weapons, but it is doubtful he will be able to disarm Fatah's violent offshoot, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. Fatah gunmen said they need their weapons for future confrontations with Hamas and Israel, and will not surrender them. Previous attempts to collect illegal weapons ended in failure.

In his meeting with clergymen Thursday, Fayyad was accompanied by Abbas' top security official, Interior Minister Abdel Razak Yehiyeh. 'We will collect weapons and replace them with pens and books,' the minister told the crowd. 'The phenomenon of militants is very dangerous, and we want to stop it in all forms.'

Fayyad told the preachers to take politics out of their sermons. 'We won't allow them (mosques) to be turned into places of incitement and intimidation,' he said. 'It's the responsibility of men of religion to ... present religion as a way of tolerance, not as a cover for bloodshed.'

Hamas is influential in many mosques in the West Bank and Gaza, and has been using Friday sermons as a vehicle for spreading its hard-line message. Preachers have also been actively involved in politics. In Nablus, seven of eight Hamas members of parliament are preachers, said Suhair al-Dubai, a moderate clergyman from the city.

'The government has realized how important the mosques are in forming and leading public opinion,' said al-Dubai, who attended the meeting with Fayyad. 'But Hamas is very well organized in mosques ... The government can restrict them, but not eliminate them because they are part of a structure and can always find a way to play a political role.

Mohammed Abu al-Hasan, a Hamas preacher from the West Bank town of Jenin, said clerics would continue to speak their minds, regardless of any government directive.

'We will not accept these restrictions and we are going to respond with our own message in this Friday's sermons,' he said. 'Fayad is a politician, he can handle political issues and we...can handle religious issues.' Copyright


3.) Israel Today,
Jerusalem News Wire
Headline News
Thursday, June 28, 2007
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=13253

Palestinians rooting for Iran to get 'the bomb'

A majority of Palestinian Arabs are in favor of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, according to the results of a global survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Despite their reliance on American aid and their constant insistence that Washington support their nationalistic claims, the Palestinians continue to exude some of the most anti-US sentiment in the Middle East.

This phenomenon first came to light for most following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The fall of the Twin Towers in New York and the partial destruction of the Pentagon were joyously celebrated by huge crowds of Palestinians throughout Judea, Samaria, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem.

The same tendency to back the enemies of America, no matter who they might be, is believed to also lie behind the Palestinians' support of Iran obtaining nuclear arms against the efforts of the US-led international community.

The Pew survey also showed that Israel is one of only four nations where a majority backs America's war in Iraq and its efforts to establish a stable democracy there.


4.) Poll: Most Palestinians favor Iran nukes,
Associated Press,
The Jerusalem Post
Jun. 27, 2007

Iran's potential acquisition of nuclear arms is favored by majorities in only Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Palestinian territories, a poll released Wednesday showed.

The international survey conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center also indicated that unease with American foreign policy and with President George W. Bush had intensified in countries that are some of the closest US allies, while Russia and China also face growing international wariness. Support for the US-led war in Iraq, the NATO military action in Afghanistan and worldwide American efforts against terrorism have dropped since 2002, and views of the US in much of the Muslim world remain particularly negative.

[...remainder of article unrelated to this issue]

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

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TURN AROUND
Posted by Arlene Kushner, June 28, 2007.

I have been reporting in recent days on the growing sense, reinforced in many quarters, that Palestinian nationalism is dead and will be replaced by a more overt allegiance to clans, factions, etc. And this is, indeed, the way matters are likely to ultimately go. But the nationalism seems to be in the throes of a last gasp.

Last week, I shared the response of a furious Saudi Arabia, which had worked hard to mediate the Mecca agreement for a unity government, that they were not having it any more: no more mediation. I shared, in fact, a report on the disenchantment with the Palestinians being widely expressed within the Arab world. Now, however, according to Agence France-Presse (cited by IMRA), Saudi King Abdullah told Egypt's President Mubarak on Monday that Saudi Arabia would resume mediation between Palestinian factions.

"We need some time for the spirits to calm down, for the verbal clashes to subside," he reportedly said. "We need time to create the climate conducive to mediating between the Hamas people and the Palestinian Authority in order to sort out their differences."

"Sort out their differences" indeed. My take is that the Saudis can mediate until the cows come home, but will not achieve genuine national Palestinian unity. The nationalism is too shallow and the other allegiances (the "differences") too deep. If the Saudis are not yet prepared to acknowledge this, they will simply delay the inevitable.

~~~~~~~~~~

Of course, Hamas is in deep trouble, isolated as it is in Gaza. And so at present this terrorist group is presenting a conciliatory face. According to a Palestinian news agency, Hamas has said that it is prepared to relinquish the position of prime minister and allow an independent to assume the post in order to bring about reconciliation. A high level (unnamed) Hamas official has reportedly said, "Hamas is ready for dialogue and to form a government with an independent figure at its head. Hamas is ready to return things to normal. [Normal?] Hamas is not willing to control the [Gaza] Strip, or the security offices and headquarters, or other departments, but rather Hamas calls on Abbas to begin dialogue..." This source said Hamas is ready to deal based on "national criteria and not factional criteria." Coming from a member of Hamas, this is nonsense.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Saudis are not moderates, nor promoters of moderation; they fund and promote terrorism. It is important to remember that when they "mediated" the Mecca agreement, they were partisan, pushing the Hamas position down Abbas's throat. Reports surfaced from a reliable source, after the fact, about how Abbas felt coerced to accede to Hamas demands. (The fact that he did accede rather than walking away is another story.) It is possible that the Saudis may have as a concern now the rescuing of Hamas.

~~~~~~~~~~

There is yet another element to be factored into this picture:

According to the Middle East Newsline -- a security oriented news agency -- Egypt quietly supported the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. MENL reports that Egypt cooperated with the infiltration of weapons into Gaza that would strengthen Hamas. This is not a surprise. We saw this, we knew this. Egypt has been turning a deaf ear to Israeli demands that it stop the flow of weapons coming from the Sinai. What is startling is the reason why they apparently did this. MENL cites Western intelligence sources that say Egypt was worried about al-Qaida, which presents a serious threat, and that Fatah was allied with al-Qaida as a way to undermine Hamas. According to this report, Hamas's strongman, Ma'ashal, was in communication with Egyptian intelligence chief Gen. Omar Suleiman with regard to this matter.

Ma'ashal specifically fingered Fatah's Muhammad Dahlan as the man dealing with al-Qaida. It has long infuriated me that Dahlan is represented in the media as a "moderate" ally of Abbas, capable of unifying the security forces in a positive way. For Dahlan is a terrorist, no more than scum. That he may have been involved with al-Qaida does not shock. And it may help explain why Hamas has had such virulent hatred for him.

This report dovetails with other information: For Egypt has also now declared a readiness to "mediate" between Palestinian factions. It would make sense. Having helped to secure a Hamas victory in Gaza, Egypt would be ready to help Hamas out of its bind of isolation.

~~~~~~~~~~

There is a great deal to be learned from all of this, starting with the fact that matters, in this part of the world especially, are frequently not what they seem. There is here a vast complexity -- often counter-intuitive -- regarding the relationships between groups. The prevailing motivation is one of self-interest and short-term survival, not necessarily ideology at all, and some surprising covert alliances result.

Most significant is the overwhelming evidence that there is nothing remotely "moderate" about Fatah.

~~~~~~~~~~

From the other side comes a decree from Abbas, announced on Tuesday, that includes an exemption from fees and taxes for all people living in Gaza. As it was officially worded: "item 88 of the constitution will be suspended in the southern governorates." Not that Fatah could collect fees and taxes there in any event. But this is significant in that it indicates Abbas has not washed his hands of Gaza but is continuing with the assumption (or the fiction) that all Palestinian areas are under the jurisdiction of the PA.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ismail Haniyeh, who was removed as prime minister by Abbas, has made an offer, through channels, to Israel that was rejected. Haniyeh requested that crossings to Gaza, in particular Karni, be opened, and in return they would stop the terrorism.

What has been made clear by Israeli officials is that this was not a plea for crossings to be opened for humanitarian purposes, but rather commercial purposes, to enhance prosperity for the area.

The fact is that there is no humanitarian crisis, as relief -- in the main, food and medicine -- is going into Gaza daily, primarily through the Sufa and Keren Shalom crossings. Yesterday alone, according to the IDF spokesman, supplies that went into Gaza included: 581 tons of animal feed; 319 tons of straw; 327 tons of sugar; 164 tons of flour; 5 tons of semolina; 143,000 liters of oil; 134 tons of rice; 27 tons of seedlings; 32 tons of salt; 30 tons of baby formula; 24,000 liters of hypochlorite (a water purifier); and 50,000 vaccinations. Additionally, 22 Palestinians were taken for medical treatment in Israeli hospitals.

The first commercial shipment into Gaza since Hamas took over -- a joint effort of Israel and the Dutch government -- made its way to the Rafah area in the last two days: One million flower bulbs, which must be planted now if a season of growth is not to be lost.

~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile the EU monitors who served at the Rafah crossing have said they would not return while Hamas was in charge, but only if Abbas's presidential guard, Force 17, came back. They are in Ashkelon, 70 strong, awaiting orders.

This is one of those matters that sounds serious but is truly a joke if you know that background. The EU monitors monitored. They watched terrorists and weapons move through the crossing. Watched.

Who cares where they are?

~~~~~~~~~~

President Moshe Katsav. I have not written about his situation in some time. But now he's top of the news again, as Attorney General Mazuz has negotiated a plea bargain with him. The rape charge will be dropped and he will plead guilty to two lesser sexual charges (indecent assault and sexual harassment); he will resign and pay penalties, but receive a suspended sentence and not do time in prison.

The furor surrounding this is considerable: Questions are being asked as to why Mazuz did this and whether he was, in the final analysis, without the evidence to convict him of rape. The woman who leveled that charge and her attorney are furious. So are women's rights groups, who see a person of status as being able to get away with major wrong doing.

Mazuz, in making the announcement, spoke about "evidential difficulties due to legal limitations," but said there were also other considerations. There was considerable interest in not subjecting the nation to a trial that would be embarrassing and put Israel in a bad light. What is more, if Katsav had been indicted on rape, he might have been convicted and might not have been; this way there is a certain guilty plea.

Katsav himself said he was tired and was prepared to do this to save his family anguish.

Clearly, Katsav is guilty of wrong-doing of a sexual nature. Did he rape? I cannot say. I had assumed that if the investigation was headed in this direction that there was reasonable possibility that this was so; but heard unsubstantiated statements subsequently that made me wonder. The bottom line is that at this juncture I do not very much care. There is too much of greater importance to deal with. And I, for one, am frankly very glad that our nation won't be exposed to an extended trial in this regard. It would not have done us any good. As it is, Katsav's career has ended and he will suffer public censure for his misconduct.

~~~~~~~~~~

A small correction in the interest of accuracy: The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Briefing I alluded to yesterday on the matter of possible Jordanian federation with Palestinian elements in Judea and Samaria is not new, but was originally released in 2005. Another arm of the JCPA just publicized this Briefing and I was not diligent in picking up its date. It was publicized now because it is relevant now -- and that is the most significant point, I think.

Arlene Kushner is Senior Research Associate, Center for Near East Policy Research, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem, Israel. Contact her at akushner@netvision.net.il

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JEWISH GOOD WILL; ENTERTAINMENT IN GAZA; WHAT PEACE WITH EGYPT MEANS; U.S.-ISRAEL IRRATIONALITY
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 28, 2007.

ISRAEL BOMBS THOSE IT ARMS

The IDF bombed a Fatah arms factory in Gaza (Isabel Kershner, NY Times, 6/11, A9).

Only weeks earlier, Israel had authorized thousands of rifles for Fatah.

JEWISH GOOD WILL

Israeli settlers and soldiers fixed some Arab tombstones that a few rogue Jews had broken. Leftists and Arabs were trying to get the media to denounce settlers as a whole for the original vandalism. The story of the reconstruction should have made the headlines. Arabs often wreck Jewish cemeteries, but never reconstruct any (IMRA, 6/10).

KIDNAPPERS OF ISRAELI SOLDIER ON P.A. PAYROLL

When the kidnappers were killed, the P.A. pensioned their families (IMRA, 6/11). Thousands of Fatah and Hamas terrorists are on the P.A. payroll! So much for Abbas' moderation!

EU RESUMES SOME AID TO THE P.A.

The Finance Minister promised to spend the money properly (IMRA, 6/11).

The P.A. is in a war of aggression, imperialism, and genocide, but it would spend this money on officially designated projects. Some standard, the EU has!

Since the aggression, imperialism, and genocide is against the Jewish state, the EU does not mind helping the P.A.. It calls its aid to jihadists humanitarian.

IS THE U.S. INCONSISTENT?

The US demands independence for the western Palestinian Arabs, but encourages Morocco to grant the western Saharans autonomy (IMRA, 6/11).

I AGREE WITH NPR

Accusing NPR of having implied that Pollard spied for the Soviets, Jonathan Pollard's attorneys demanded that NPR apologize.

I read the passage. I agree with NPR that it is clear that not all the spies it named had worked for the Soviets or for enemies of the US (IMRA, 6/11).

THREAT TO ISRAELI AIR TRAFFIC

Illegal Arab radio stations in Judea-Samaria have interfered with communication between pilots and Ben-Gurion Airport. When the problem becomes acute, flights are canceled or delayed, and airport workers threaten to strike, then the Israeli Communications and Police Ministries detect the station and close it. Apparently detection and penalty are not much deterrent, because there have been 50 such closings this year (IMRA, 6/7).

The article did not state what penalty was exacted.

DEALS BASED ON ISRAELI CONCESSIONS

In addition to the usual arguments, Dr. Aaron Lerner note the blunders made by Israeli commanders and prime ministers, and suggests that risking Israeli security for peace-on-a-paper would go poorly for Israel if future leaders blunder again (IMRA, 6/7).

Here's the next possible blunder. Fatah asked Israel to allow it to have armored personnel carriers and anti-tank missiles, ostensibly for use against Hamas. PM Olmert is mulling this over, rather than rejecting it out of hand. He should reject it, because the Fatah has used weapons Israel allowed (actually supplied) to attack Israelis (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/7).

This brief is out-of-date, but Prof. Plaut's warning was prophetic. He foresaw what would happen. Why didn't Olmert?

ENTERTAINMENT IN GAZA

Gazans have a new form of TV entertainment. They watch videos of lavish villas formerly owned by Fatah officials and scenes of the heavily armed Fatah militiamen fleeing at the first sign of battle with Hamas. This is bound to disgust the Muslims of Judea-Samaria with Fatah. They know that Abbas has 60,000 gunmen on the P..A. payroll, which consumes most of the lavish foreign aid, and most of which the rest goes into building more villas and bulging private accounts.

Fatah originally was more secular. When it turned more virulently Islamist and indoctrinated the people in hatred and warfare, it legitimized Hamas, which has the same ideology. Thus is boosted its own nemesis.

NARROW-SIGHTED ECONOMICS

Avi Shauli wrote an analysis of what it cost Israel to control the Territories. He wonders how much poverty Israel might have avoided, if it had not taken over the Territories and had not spent those billions of dollars. If it had not, Dr. Aaron Lerner suggests, the Territories long ago would have been like Lebanon, with Israel under terrible siege, immigrants not coming, investors not confident, the economy not expanding, and the country perhaps not surviving (IMRA, 6/9).

It if had crushed terrorism, reclaimed territory, and encouraged Arab emigration, it would have saved a lot of money.

SHIFTS IN LEBANON

The Lebanese Army finally stopped adhering to the agreement not to enter Palestinian Arab towns in Lebanon, which agreement Syrian-backed terrorists abused in order to gain sanctuary from which to build up forces and attack the Lebanese Army. The regular terrorists within may be ganging up on the Syrian agents, in order to put down the insurrection that otherwise is drawing the Lebanese Army in and could put them down, too.

The Lebanese Army caught Hizbullah men ferrying arms. As usual, the Army let the men go, but this time it confiscated the arms (Arutz-7, 6/7).

Lebanon can use the arms. Its duty is to stop their flow to Hizbullah, but it usually looked the other way.

The Palestinian Muslims make such trouble wherever they are given sanctuary. No wonder the Arab states want to foist them upon Israel!

WHAT "PEACE" WITH EGYPT MEANS, in part

"We naive Jews truly believe in peace, but actually, now that we have 'peace' with Egypt, we all know what it means to have peace with an Arab country. Egypt is right now mediating between Hamas and Fatah to have them point their guns at us, at Israel, instead of at each other. Egypt is also responsible for supervising the border with Gaza to ensure that no weapons or terrorists are smuggled in -- and look how 'efficient' they have been. They just freed from prison some terrorists who built the tunnels... Egypt wages war against us in the United Nations and everywhere else..."

A phony peace is not desirable. The goal for as long as Muslim Arab culture remains intolerant should be co-existence. Co-existence requires strength to deter, not concessions to signal weakness (Arutz-7, 6/11).

Concessions not only signify weakness, they also often make for weakness, because they give away strategic ground, etc..

P.A. ARABS DON'T BELIEVE P.A. ARABS

In an attempt to kidnap an Israeli soldier, Gaza gunmen approached Israel in a jeep marked "TV." Islamic Jihad, however, denied the jeep was so marked by the gunmen. It accused Israel of having stuck the TV signs on the jeep upon retrieving it. P.A. journalists did not believe Islamic Jihad's claim (Op. Cit.).

By contrast, Human Rights Watch accepts unknown P.A. Muslims' accusations against Israel. If the P.A. journalists don't believe fellow Gazans' claims in contrast to Israel's claims, why does Human Rights Watch? The terrorists committed the war crime of "treachery." Why doesn't Amnesty Intl. condemn it instead of falsely condemning Israel for war crimes.

U.S.-ISRAELI IRRATIONALITY

The US is pressing Israel to agree to Abbas' request for permission to bring from Sinai armored personnel carriers, thousands more rifles, millions more bullets, and anti-tank weapons. This is supposed to enable his forces to fight Hamas. But they are too poorly motivated to do so, meaning that the weapons would end up in Hamas' hands, and Fatah usually fights Israel more than it fights Hamas.

Israel has objected to the US plan to sell "smart" bombs to S. Arabia, lest the bombs fall into Osama's hands. An objection that should be made but isn't is that the government of S. Arabia may use them against Israel, after having violated its agreements with the US by station in jets only 100 miles from Israel.

The US plans and US refusal to sell Israel the F-35 and to let Israel install its software in purchased F-22s are part of Bush's shift against Israel after losing ground in the recent election. Bush has turned to James Baker's notion of preserving stability by supporting at the expense of Israeli security the extremists it calls moderate Arabs. Bush officially rejected Baker's recommendations, but replaced some of his top staff with people who favor some of them. Israel also adopted Baker's illusion that one can negotiate peace with Mideast fanatics.

Baker's notions make no sense in this era of all sorts of Muslim alliances. Bush said he would not attack Iran's nuclear facilities, so Arab states are engaging in a destabilizing nuclear arms race. Iran and Syria, are arming rebels to destabilize Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and the P.A.. The elderly leaders of Egypt and S. Arabia are not stable or moderate, despite what Olmert says they are. Egypt refuses to stop the arms flow into Gaza. S. Arabia subsidizes Hamas, and its diplomacy would get Israel destroyed. PM Olmert refrains from attacking Gaza much, lest that destabilize it (IMRA, 6/9 from Caroline Glick), but Gaza already is destabilized.

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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ONE YEAR AGO AND--GILAD, UDI, ELDAD--ARE NOT HOME YET!...
Posted by Nurit Greenger, June 28, 2007.

This next is from the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles and is entitled "One Year in Terrorist Captivity". The Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles is located at 6380 Wilshire Blvd. #1700, Los Angeles, CA, 90048.

THE ABDUCTION

Eleven months have passed since the unprovoked abduction of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser on the Israeli side of the Lebanese border, an action that precipitated widespread confrontation between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hizbullah terrorist organization. To date no word has been heard from the two captive soldiers, and neither their families nor the government of Israel have any knowledge of their whereabouts or their current state of health.

Two weeks prior to their abduction, another soldier, Gilad Shalit, was abducted as well, this time on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza. His family, too, anxiously awaits news from him. Especially grave is the fact that these unprovoked abductions were carried out on sovereign Israeli territory.

Taken from their families ten months ago, these captive soldiers are denied the most basic of human rights as enshrined in the Geneva Convention. In a gross breach of U.N. Resolution 1701, the terrorist organizations that carried out these abductions, and Syria and Iran who support them, behave as if these human rights are nothing more than a bargaining chip in their game of negotiation, refusing even to transmit messages to the captives from their families. International bodies who met with the captives' families have also tried to forward messages and letters, but they have been met with a negative response as well.

The Israel Foreign Ministry is active in efforts to gain their release on all levels: Foreign Ministry Tzipi Livni and her fellow ministers, alongside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, raise the issue at the highest levels in their diplomatic meetings, in Israel and abroad -- as do the Foreign Ministry's director-general and other senior officials. The Foreign Ministry also assists the families of the kidnapped soldiers in their meetings, both abroad and with visiting dignitaries in Israel, in an effort to keep the cause of the abducted soldiers on the international public agenda.

Israel's embassies abroad are also taking part in this effort, with emphasis on the humanitarian aspect: the families await a clear sign that their sons are alive and well. Those with influence, whether direct or indirect, on Syria and Iran are being asked to exert this influence on these countries. Thus, it is hoped, Syria and Iran, which sponsor the terrorist organizations holding the abducted soldiers, will be forced by growing international pressure to bring their influence to bear to obtain the hoped-for news and their eventual release.

Neither Israel nor any other civilized, law abiding country can accept this situation. We urge you to support us in our endeavor -- to bring our soldiers home.

POWERPOINT PRESENTATION

http://www.banim.org/download/EngPowerPoint.ppt

MOVIE CLIPS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2-olR1HfhU
a short movie showing the current Israeli MIAs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHIDSH2SKKI  HaTikva -- Rally for the release of four Israeli soldiers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBex3EMM67w  Interview with Israeli Kidnapped Soldier's Wife.

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com. Visit her blog:
http://ngthinker.typepad.com

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kyISRAEL'S BLACK AFRICAN PRIORITIES
Posted by David Bedein, June 27, 2007.
This was published in Arutz-Sheva
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7229

Rescue operations conducted by the government of Israel to bring more than 16,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel represented one of the few times in history that a Black African community willingly and enthusiastically moved to a majority-White Western country. From the point of view of Ethiopian Jewry, they had come home to Zion. Having visited Ethiopian Jews during their trek from Ethiopia during Operation Moses in 1984, this reporter heard numerous stories from Ethiopian Jews about their own prophetic lore. Passed down from one generation to the next was a tradition that Ethiopian Jews would be repatriated to Zion when the last emperor of the Solomonic dynasty would fall. And when Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia, was overthrown in 1974, that was one of the signs that Ethiopian Jews would indeed come home.

Although Israeli Jews of Ethiopian origin now number more than 100,000, there were some Ethiopian Jews who were left behind. They are the 15,700 Ethiopian Jews from a group known as the Falash Mura, the remnants of Ethiopian Jews who had been forcibly converted over the course of previous generations. After intense pressure, the Israeli government made a decision on February 16, 2003, that anyone who can trace maternal descent to Jews of Ethiopia would be allowed to return to Israel under the Law of Return. The Israeli government then launched Operation Promise to raise funds to bring this last community of Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

With expectations raised, these 15,700 Ethiopian Falash Mura have moved their residence into three temporary compounds in the Gondar region of Ethiopia, awaiting their repatriation to Zion. However, the Israeli government will only allow 300 Falash Mura per month to arrive in Israel. No one in the Israeli government will give an explanation as to why such a low quota exists.

Meanwhile, although the Israeli government is supposed to be providing "Immigration Eligibility Forms" for the Falash Mura, no Israeli government representative has visited the three compounds where the Falash Mura have been lingering since the decision to bring them to Israel. No Israeli government official will give an explanation for this policy.

However, the Israeli government is making every effort to absorb at least 5,000 Muslim Sudanese refugees from Darfur, who are leaving transit camps where they had been living in temporary accommodations in Egypt. The Israeli collective farms known as kibbutzim are absorbing the Darfur refugees and giving them work in exchange for room and board. How an unpaid Muslim population will integrate into Israeli society is a question that no one in Israel is prepared to deal with.

Now the Jewish State prepares to welcomes Black African non-Jews, who are strange to Israel, while it turns its back on Black African Jews who perceive Israel as their home. To learn more about the plight of remaining Ethiopian Jewry, check out the web site of The Struggle to Save Ethiopian Jewry at http://www.SSEJ.org

David Bedein is Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency. (http://Israelbehindthenews.com). He is president of Center for Near East Policy Research. Contact him by email at media@actcom.co.il

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BUSH'S CONDESCENSION TO JEWS--THE WHITE HOUSE SENT OUT A MESSAGE TO "JEWISH LEADERS"
Posted by Nurit Greenger, June 27, 2007.

It is becoming increasingly infuriating when politicians give away our money like it's their own, while shamelessly pandering to special interest groups. The same is with foreign aid; it hurts the country that gives it as well as the country that receives it! Sending a dime of foreign aid to any country in the world is unconstitutional, which should be enough reason not to do it; it's also counterproductive! Kind of like welfare; receiving welfare over a long period of time is a result of confiscating by force the wealthy and seducing the other side to dependency on government.

Recognizing the morally qualitative difference between Israel and any other nation in the Middle East is a given. Anyone who takes a noncommittal backseat on this issue must be carefully examined.

Israel however, is not better off today because of all the billions of dollars -- in foreign aid -- U.S. taxpayers have pumped into her economy of its enemies! And America is not better off because of all the billions of dollars --in foreign aid -- U.S. taxpayers have pumped into the coffers of misguided politicians around the world -- including, as scary as it is -- madmen like Kim Jong-il, Arafat, or now terrorist Abbas in suit-Abu Mazen, a new foreign aid fiasco in the making.

The time has come for the U.S. to stop thinking that we can buy peace and freedom for our allies from our enemies. No money is ever given away to anyone with no strings attached therefore, giving it creates restrictions on the defense of freedom foreign aid. Foreign aid ultimately represents pandering to -- all type of -- special interests groups, therefore must end.

This was written by Joseph Farah and it appeared today in WorldNetDaily
(http://www.worldnetdaily.com:80/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56377) Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist. His latest book is Stop The Presses: The Inside Story of the New Media Revolution. He also edits the online intelligence newsletter Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, in which he utilizes his sources developed over 30 years in the news business.

The White House sent out a message to "Jewish Leaders" last Wednesday.

For some reason, I, an Arab-American Christian journalist, received a copy. (This won't surprise those who deride me as a "neocon," which has become a euphemism for Jew.)

The message came from Jeremy Katz of the Office of Public Liaison, who identifies himself as the White House liaison to the Jewish community. (I couldn't help but wonder how many other taxpayer-supported liaisons there might be.) Katz offered that he wanted to ensure that recipients "didn't miss this important statement from the president."

Here's what it said:

"I am strongly committed to Israel's security and viability as a Jewish state, and to the maintenance of its qualitative military edge. During our meeting today, I told Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert that I am committed to reaching a new 10-year agreement that will give Israel the increased assistance it requires to meet the new threats and challenges it faces. The work on this new agreement was launched during the prime minister's previous visit. I will send Under Secretary of State Nick Burns and an interagency team to Israel in July to lead discussions aimed at concluding an agreement soon."

Translation?

This president, who seems hopelessly confused or inept when it comes to protecting his own country's security and viability is going to send more of my hard-earned money and your hard-earned money to Israel, a nation that also seems hopelessly confused and inept under its recent political leadership when it comes to protecting its own security and viability.

What's wrong with this picture? Plenty.

Do you detect the condescension in this message?

Do you hate it as much as I do when politicians give away your money like it's their own, while shamelessly pandering to special interest groups?

Do you know foreign aid not only hurts the country that gives it but the country that receives it as well?

I take a backseat to no one in recognizing the morally qualitative difference between Israel and any other nation in the Middle East. But I don't think America should send a dime of foreign aid to Israel or any other country in the world. It's not only unconstitutional, which should be enough of a reason not to do it; it's also counterproductive.

Think of foreign aid like you think about welfare. Is receiving welfare over a long period of time a good thing for anyone -- those whose wealth is confiscated by force and those who are seduced into dependency on government?

I don't think so. Most of us have been able to see the harmful effects of welfare on both the recipient and those of us who are coerced into this supposed act of compassion.

It, too, is wholly unconstitutional and counterproductive. Nowhere in our founding documents will you find any provision for forcible redistribution of wealth -- and that's exactly what domestic welfare and international welfare, aka foreign aid, are all about.

Is Israel stronger today because of all the billions of dollars U.S. taxpayers have pumped into the coffers of its misguided politicians? No.

Is Israel better off today because of all the billions of dollars U.S. taxpayers have pumped into the coffers of its enemies? No.

Is America better off because of all the billions of dollars U.S. taxpayers have pumped into the coffers of misguided politicians around the world -- including madmen like Kim Jong-il? No.

It's time to end the foreign-aid fiasco.

It's tie to end the charade that suggests we can buy peace and freedom for our allies and from our enemies.

It's time to end the pandering to special interests groups that foreign aid ultimately represents.

It's time to end the restrictions on the defense of freedom foreign aid often represents -- because no money is ever given away to anyone with no strings attached.

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com. Visit her blog:
http://ngthinker.typepad.com

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HELP ISRAELI SOLDIERS
Posted by Yasharlachayal Organization, June 27, 2007.

Dear Friends,

Please take a few moments to look at our latest project helping soldiers through Sderot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcFRZcCmrEs

Just a reminder, every donation goes 100% to helping Israeli combat soldiers.

We would greatly appreciate passing this link to as many of your friends and relatives throughout the world.

Thank you,
Leon
www.yasharlachayal.org

Contact the Yasharlachayal Organization at yasharlachayal@yahoo.com

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BOLTON: I'M 'VERY WORRIED' FOR ISRAEL; THE 'SPIRIT OF ENTEBBE'; DEMONIZING ISRAEL AGAIN
Posted by Michael Travis, June 27, 2007.

1. by David Horovitz Jerusalem Post June 27, 2007

Sanctions and diplomacy have failed and it may be too late for internal opposition to oust the Islamist regime, leaving only military intervention to stop Iran's drive to nuclear weapons, the US's former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Worse still, according to Ambassador Bolton, the Bush administration does not recognize the urgency of the hour and that the options are now limited to only the possibility of regime change from within or a last-resort military intervention, and it is still clinging to the dangerous and misguided belief that sanctions can be effective.

As a consequence, Bolton said he was "very worried" about the well-being of Israel. If he were in Israel's predicament, he said, "I'd be pushing the US very hard. I am pushing the US [administration] very hard, from the outside, in Washington."

Bolton, interviewed by telephone from Washington, was speaking a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency announced it would send a team to Teheran, at Iran's request, to work jointly on a plan ostensibly meant to clear up suspicions about the nuclear program. Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani had met on Sunday with IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei, and a day earlier with top EU foreign policy envoy Javier Solana.

Bolton, however, was witheringly critical of the ongoing diplomatic contacts with Teheran, which he said were merely playing into the hands of the regime.

"The current approach of the Europeans and the Americans is not just doomed to failure, but dangerous," he said. "Dealing with [the Iranians] just gives them what they want, which is more time...

"We have fiddled away four years, in which Europe tried to persuade Iran to give up voluntarily," he complained. "Iran in those four years mastered uranium conversion from solid to gas and now enrichment to weapons grade... We lost four years to feckless European diplomacy and our options are very limited."

Bolton said flatly that "diplomacy and sanctions have failed... [So] we have to look at: 1, overthrowing the regime and getting in a new one that won't pursue nuclear weapons; 2, a last-resort use of force."

However, he added a caution as to the viability of the first of those remaining options: While "the regime is more susceptible to overthrow from within than people think," he said, such a process "may take more time than we have."

Overall, said Bolton, it was clear that Iran had surmounted "all the technical problems of uranium enrichment," and it "may well be that we have passed the point of Iran mastering the nuclear fuel cycle." If so, it was now merely a matter of time before Iran reached a bomb-making capability -- "a matter of resources and available equipment," he said -- and it was solely up to Iran to set the pace.

To his dismay, however, the Bush administration was still clinging to the empty notion that the sanctions route could work, "even though [the UN's sanction] Resolutions 1737 and 1747 were full of loopholes. The US is still seeking another sanctions resolution and Solana is still pursuing diplomacy," he said bitterly.

Bolton lamented that the Bush administration today was "not the same" as a presumably more robust incarnation three years ago, because of what he said was now the State Department's overwhelming dominance of foreign policy. "The State Department has adopted the European view [on how to deal with Iran] and other voices have been sidelined," he said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "is overwhelmingly predominant on foreign policy."

Asked where this left Israel, Bolton said simply: "Israel's options are as limited as those of the US, except that you are in more danger in that you are closer. I hate to say that."

Bolton, who served as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security from 2001 to 2005, before taking the ambassadorial posting to the UN from August 2005 to December 2006, said the failed handling of the Iran nuclear crisis was one of the reasons he had left the Bush administration. "I felt we were watching Europe fiddling while Rome burned," he said. "It's still fiddling."


2. Whatever happened to the 'Spirit of Entebbe'?
by Michael Freund
June 26, 2007
The Jerusalem Post

Once upon a time, and it truly seems like it was a very long time ago, the State of Israel knew how to take swift and decisive action in order to protect its citizens and punish its foes.

I know, dear reader, that may be hard for you to believe, particularly in light of recent events. After all, Israel has spent much of the past decade in retreat, ignominiously capitulating to terrorism and turning over vast swathes of territory to Palestinian control.

With Cpl. Gilad Schalit being held captive by Palestinians in Gaza for the past year, and the residents of Sderot and the Western Negev dodging Kassam rockets on a daily basis, it is easy to forget that words such as heroism, daring and bravery once exemplified our government's approach towards combating terror.

None of these qualities were on display the other day at Sharm e-Sheikh, of course, where Prime Minister Ehud Olmert saw fit to heap concession after concession on the ineffectual and increasingly irrelevant Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

After agreeing to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to the Abbas-led regime, and to strengthen the armed Fatah gangs loyal to him, the premier presented his Palestinian counterpart with an unexpected parting gift.

"As a gesture of goodwill to the Palestinians," Olmert declared, "I decided today that I'll bring to the Israeli government at its next meeting a recommendation to release 250 prisoners from Fatah without blood on their hands."

Then, in what passes for Israeli resolve and determination these days, the premier insisted that the Fatah terrorists would be freed, but only if "they sign commitments not to become involved again in terrorism." Phew. And I thought they would be let go for nothing.

Apparently, it didn't dawn on the Prime Minister to link the release of Palestinian terrorists with freedom for Gilad Schalit, or to condition any further movement on the diplomatic front with progress towards his return home.

Instead, the fact that a young Israeli Jew serving his country was abducted 12 months ago by a group of thugs was treated as if it was a pesky and tiresome nuisance, rather than a substantive and fundamental matter of principle.

In light of the Prime Minister's sorry display, it is especially important that we recall the anniversary of an important event that took place just over three decades ago this week, one which offers us a potent and timely reminder of just how terrorism should truly be fought.

IT WAS 31 years ago today, on June 27, 1976, that armed gunmen from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, together with some German accomplices, hijacked Air France flight 139, diverting it to Libya and then on to the city of Entebbe, in Idi Amin's Uganda.

As the world looked on, the terrorists proceeded to separate out the Jewish and Israeli passengers, threatening to kill them if Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails were not set free.

Back then, however, Israel was not yet in the habit of yielding to terrorist demands. No international summits were convened at Sharm e-Sheikh, no "gestures" were made to the terrorists, nor were any tax receipts transferred into their coffers.

Instead, Israel reacted precisely as it should have, by launching a stunning military raid on July 4, 1976, freeing virtually all the captives and bringing the situation to a sudden and dramatic end.

In one fell swoop, Israel had underlined its role as the sovereign defender of Jews everywhere. An entire generation was inspired to believe that the Jewish people were determined to defend themselves whatever the consequences might be.

THE RESCUE at Entebbe was also a powerful symbol for the entire free world. It showed that with a little courage and resolve, and a healthy dose of military force, the scourge of international terror could be defeated.

For years afterwards, it was the "Spirit of Entebbe" which guided this country, and which deterred its enemies from once again thinking that Jews and Israelis were fair game.

Looking back, it is hard to believe how much has changed since then. In just three decades, Israel has gone from being a country which frees hostages to one that frees terrorists. Instead of refusing to negotiate with the bad guys, we now offer them unilateral concessions while getting nothing in return.

In times such as these, we must seek to revive the "Spirit of Entebbe" and infuse it into our national life. Jewish lives were once considered precious enough to warrant risking international condemnation over saving them in a distant land. That must again become a pillar of Israeli security policy.

By refraining from taking the steps necessary to protect itself for fear of how the world will react, Israel is effectively placing greater importance on international public opinion than on the lives and well-being of its citizens. That calculus is not only morally warped, but short-sighted and dangerous too.

As Entebbe so clearly demonstrated, winning the war against terrorists comes not when one yields to them, but when the terrorists themselves are forced to yield.

Only by regaining the spirit of triumph and fortitude that was embodied at Entebbe, and by hitting back at our foes, can Israel possibly hope to dissuade them from committing further atrocities and outrages.

And the sooner our government adopts this basic and self-evident approach, the safer all of us will be.


3. Here we go again, demonizing Israel
From Boker Tov Boulder!
http://bokertov.typepad.com/

It's not big news when Palestinians throw one another from the roofs of tall buildings, engage in gunbattles in hospitals, hunt down opposition Palestinians (identified by numbers and different colored stars) and either execute them or shatter their kneecaps with a bullet to the back of the knee...

... after an hours-long gun battle ... the Hamas military wing removed all the family members from their compound and lined them up against a wall. Militants selected a 14-year-old girl, two women aged 19 and 75, and two elderly men, and shot them to death in cold blood...

... BUT when Israel does anything, Dhimmedia is on it!

Israeli troops kill 10 Palestinians

JERUSALEM -- Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday killed 10 Palestinians, including a 12-year-old boy, Palestinians said, the bloodiest fighting in the area since the Hamas militant group violently seized control two weeks ago.

That is all the American reading public will ever hear or know of it. Never mind the context, supplied here by Arutz Sheva reporter, Ezra HaLevi: 5 Terrorists Dead in 2 Counter-Terror Operations in Gaza

Five terrorists were killed as the IDF carried out counter-terror operations in Judea, Samaria and two parts of Gaza Tuesday night.

In Khan Yunis, next to the destroyed Jewish town of N'vei Dekalim, Islamic Jihad terrorist Di Abu Daka was killed in a gunbattle with IDF Givati Brigade troops pre-dawn Wednesday. Two more terrorists were wounded, and no IDF injuries were reported.

Three terrorists of Hamas were later killed in Gaza City by an IDF tank shell after they engaged soldiers with anti-tank rockets.

In addition, Islamic Jihad's senior terrorist in charge of launching rockets, Raad Fanuneh, was killed in an explosion while driving in the city's Sajaiya neighborhood. PA reports claimed it was an IAF air strike, but the IDF says it has no knowledge of such an attack.

The IDF forces entered Gaza through the Karni Crossing in the north and Sufa Crossing in the south for the two morning operations.

Shortly afterwards, terrorists fired a Kassam rocket from Gaza towards Sderot; it landed uneventfully in an open area.

An IDF tank in northern Gaza was damaged and the soldiers lightly injured when terrorists fired anti-tank missiles at it Wednesday before noon. The Salah a-Din Brigades of the Hizbullah-backed Popular Resistance Committees took responsibility for the attack.

IDF sources said that the army would continue to take action in Gaza to fight the terrorist threats against Israel, particularly the manufacture and launching of Kassam rockets. This, regardless of the "internal Hamas-Fatah situation in Gaza, which is not Israel's concern."

Judea and Samaria

IDF soldiers engaged an Islamic Jihad terrorist in a gun battle in Burkin, a village near Jenin, Tuesday night -- after he resisted arrest and opened fire on the troops. The man was seriously wounded, despite PA reports he was killed in the fighting.

Two other terrorists were wounded in the fighting and taken to Afula's HaEmek Hospital for treatment. No IDF injuries were reported. The terrorists were involved in Fatah terrorism in addition to Islamic Jihad operations.

And (from the same link) you will NEVER see this in American newspapers:

IDF Continues Humanitarian Aid Despite Dangers

The Kerem Shalom Crossing was closed Tuesday after terrorists targeted it with gunfire and mortar shells. A large bomb was discovered near the crossing earlier Tuesday.

The crossing had been used to transfer humanitarian assistance to the Arabs of Gaza. At least 80 trucks filled with food crossed into Gaza via the Sufa crossing after Kerem Shalom was closed. The shipment also contained 600,000 young plants for Gaza's greenhouse farmers.

Argh. This drives me crazy.

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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WEAKNESS IN ISRAELI POLITICAL SYSTEM; LEBANON UPRISING STAGED BY SYRIA; WHAT PEACE WITH EGYPT MEANS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 27, 2007.

LYING U.S. OFFICIALS NEVER CHALLENGED

Sec. of State Rice and other US officials keep asserting such falsehoods as that most western Palestinian Arabs are moderate and want a two-state solution. Neither journalists nor Israeli officials challenge the assertions or ask what they are based on. They let officials assert whatever they want.

Poll after poll finds that most P.A. Muslims want Israel conquered. When asked about descendants of refugees, P.A. Muslims reply that they want those millions to be able to move to Israel. If they moved in, they would take over and make a single, Muslim state. They have not declared yet whether they would bury or cremate the Jews. But they explicitly don't want ultimately there to be two states, one being for the Jews.

WEAKNESS IN ISRAELI POLITICAL SYSTEM

It sounds democratic. Israel's elected Knesset picks the President, a largely ceremonial post with the crucial power of pardon. Why crucial? Israeli politicians, whether in the Cabinet of Knesset, by and large are venal. Since Israel lacks a constitution, institutions carve out powers for themselves, as have the attorney-generals and the Supreme Court. So might a President, especially if that master of corruption, Shimon Peres becomes one. In addition, Peres, who helped the US prosecute Pollard, is sure not to appeal for US clemency.

The problem in letting the Knesset pick the President is that the Knesset, itself, is not democratic. It is elected by proportional representation, which is democratic in theory and non-democratic in practice. Proportional representation means that a certain number of most parties' candidates are going to be elected, a few more if the party gains more popular favor. The party bosses pick the candidates. To get an assured place on the list for each election, aspiring Members of Knesset cater to the party bosses, not to the electorate. Therefore, the party bosses really pick the President, and for reasons of their own. The US method of districts electing their own representatives is more democratic.

WHAT IS THE U.S. DOING WITH EGYPT?

The US has built up Egypt's military sufficiently for it to challenge Israel's. Polls of various Muslim countries report the people of Egypt being the most hostile both to Israel and to the US. Perhaps the State Dept. thinks that the risk of Egypt's military falling into Islamist hands is small -- I don't -- and perhaps it thinks that Egypt may help the US defend S. Arabia -- which it once tried to capture -- but in the 28 years or so since US subsidies began, the US has gotten nothing for its $50 billion gift to Egypt. Israel may get attacked.

JERUSALEM, WHOSE?

Passed after the Six Day War, "Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem and this omission was deliberate," said the author of 242, Ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg. Re-dividing Jerusalem and the other proposals for Israel to withdraw from all the territory it gained up to the armistice line of 1967, gained in self-defense, would make Israel difficult to defend and therefore a likely object of war. Imagine, turning non-Muslim holy sites over to Hamas, after the precedent of Jordan destroying all 50 synagogues upon seizing Jerusalem in its earlier aggression! (former Israeli Ambassador Dore Gold, NY Sun, 6/8, Op.-Ed.)

At least don't call Israeli concessions to the aggressors a peace process.

AMERICAN DIPLOMAT EXPLAINS

An American diplomat agrees with the Gulf Cooperation Council that it is entitled to develop nuclear energy for peaceful use, as Iran would be. He hopes that Iran finds a diplomatic solution to its development for non-peaceful uses (IMRA, 6/5).

There is no diplomatic solution; this is not a diplomatic problem. Iran has no grievances. Iran is building nuclear weapons in behalf of its religious goal of conquering the world and destroying some of its enemies at the outset. That problem is religious. Not willing to reform its intolerant, imperialist religion, and finding no resolute resistance to its weapons drive or its wars by proxy, Iran continues to pursue its goal. It welcomes diplomacy without teeth, equivalent to time for weapons development without hindrance.

There would have been a purely economic sanction, but other great powers support Iran. That leaves these options: (1) Overthrow the regime. Iran is too close to culmination of weapons development for the US to accomplish much with dissidents; (2) Bomb certain non-nuclear facilities, making an economic crisis that may topple the unpopular regime. This may or may not work. Probably not enough time to take a chance on it, as the sole remedy; and (3) Attack the nuclear facilities. That would work in combination with other options, and if rebuilt nuclear facilities were attacked, in turn.

What a naïve US diplomat! The route to nuclear weapons is to develop industrial nuclear facilities and learn the technology. Then, under cover of industrial nuclear works, sneak in development of nuclear weapons. The diplomat might have noticed that Iran's and N. Korea's rogue development, rogue behavior, and ability to develop nuclear power clandestinely in violation of pacts, sparked interest in Gulf development. The GCC doesn't need it to save oil!

NEW EVIDENCE FOR CONVENTIONAL VIEW OF WAR

Pro-Arab, advocacy historians are turning the evidence on its head to make Israel seem to have fought the Six Day War for nothing, and to blame it for not having peace and for seeking territory.

The revisionist "historians" (including Benny Morris) do not consult Arab sources contemporary to the time. Genuine historian Michael Oren did research Arab sources. He found their 1967 plans to attack Israel. He also notes that Israel did not let citizens settle in the Territories for years. Instead, it immediately offered the Territories back, for peace, but the Arabs said "No, no, no, no." An offer of the Territories indicates no craving for more land (IMRA, 6/5). The Arab aggression and their "No" does indicate a craving for more land.

Of course the Arabs planned war! Various Arab states put their armies under a unified command that frequently boasted of a blood-curdling purpose. Hostile armies mobilized on the edge of Israel, which is an act of war. Egypt closed an international strait Israel used as a shipping lane, another act of war. Israel asked Jordan to stay out of the war, even after Jordanian bombardment. When Jordanian ground forces started moving in, Israel retaliated.

I remember the gathering of enemy forces, more formidable than Israel's, and the mounting of dread in my circle.

How diseased is the human mind that so many people seek to blame the victims! We Jews experienced that often, but some of us are so desirous of outsider approval, that we help place that blame. Isn't that sick!

LEBANON UPRISING STAGED BY SYRIA

Syrian agents and terrorists under Syrian auspices staged an uprising in a Palestinian Arab town of Lebanon, just as the UNO seemed about to start a tribunal for assassins of Lebanese officials, probably at Syrian orders. Syrian agents told journalists that the uprising was at the behest of Lebanon or the US, rather than admit being behind it. Generally uninformed, the journalists swallowed the line.

The terrorists in question are part of a Syrian-sponsored organization. Its leader operates from Damascus, meaning under Syrian protection. Its commander long has been a Syrian agent. When Jordan demanded his extradition, Syria claimed to punish him, but imposed a three-year sentence, if he even served it, instead of shooting him "while attempting to escape," their usual punishment. Sentence over, Syria let him go to Lebanon (Barry Rubin, IMRA, 6/6) to foment strife.

NARROW-SIGHTED ECONOMICS

Avi Shauli wrote an analysis of what it cost Israel to control the Territories. He wonders how much poverty Israel might have avoided, if it had not taken over the Territories and had not spent those billions of dollars. If it had not, Dr. Aaron Lerner suggests, the Territories long ago would have been like Lebanon, with Israel under terrible siege, immigrants not coming, investors not confident, the economy not expanding, and the country perhaps not surviving (IMRA, 6/9).

It if had crushed terrorism, reclaimed territory, and encouraged Arab emigration, it would have saved a lot of money.

SHIFTS IN LEBANON

The Lebanese Army finally stopped adhering to the agreement not to enter Palestinian Arab towns in Lebanon, which agreement Syrian-backed terrorists abused in order to gain sanctuary from which to build up forces and attack the Lebanese Army. The regular terrorists within may be ganging up on the Syrian agents, in order to put down the insurrection that otherwise is drawing the Lebanese Army in and could put them down, too.

The Lebanese Army caught Hizbullah men ferrying arms. As usual, the Army let the men go, but this time it confiscated the arms (Arutz-7, 6/7).

Lebanon can use the arms. Its duty is to stop their flow to Hizbullah, but it usually looked the other way.

The Palestinian Muslims make such trouble wherever they are given sanctuary. No wonder the Arab states want to foist them upon Israel!

WHAT "PEACE" WITH EGYPT MEANS, in part

"We naive Jews truly believe in peace, but actually, now that we have 'peace' with Egypt, we all know what it means to have peace with an Arab country. Egypt is right now mediating between Hamas and Fatah to have them point their guns at us, at Israel, instead of at each other. Egypt is also responsible for supervising the border with Gaza to ensure that no weapons or terrorists are smuggled in -- and look how 'efficient' they have been. They just freed from prison some terrorists who built the tunnels... Egypt wages war against us in the United Nations and everywhere else..."

A phony peace is not desirable. The goal for as long as Muslim Arab culture remains intolerant should be co-existence. Co-existence requires strength to deter, not concessions to signal weakness (Arutz-7, 6/11).

Concessions not only signify weakness, they also often make for weakness, because they give away strategic ground, etc..

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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FRIMET ROTH SPEAKS IN A TELEVISED DEBATE ON FREEING THE MURDERERS
Posted by Boris Celser, June 27, 2007.

Please give your support to the Malki Foundation
PO Box 23637 Jerusalem 91236 Israel
Office Phone +972-2-567-0602 * Office Fax +972-3-542-3783
On the web at www.kerenmalki.org

Dear Friends of Keren Malki:

It's one of the most vexing issues of the day in this country: does it make sense to open the gates of Israeli jails and release convicted Palestinian Arab prisoners now. And if yes, what do people hope is going to be achieved by it?

This afternoon, Infolive.tv posted a streaming video of a debate, moderated by journalist Margot Dudkevitch, between two women with quite different viewpoints on this life-and-death question.

One is Naomi Hazan, a professor of political science and previously a member, on behalf of a very left-wing party, of Israel's parliament, the Knesset. The other is Frimet Roth, the mother of Malki who was murdered in the Hamas terror attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant in August 2001.

This being Israel, the debate is a lot closer to the bone than the abstract sort of airey-fairy discussion that sometimes goes on in other places. One of the names being touted for release in the current initiative happens to be that of a convicted murderer who was involved in the murder of the Roths' daughter. Prof. Hazan has very definite views about whether and why that convicted felon ought to go free now, right now. (And about whether he's actually a political prisoner.) Frimet Roth has a different position.

The streaming video of the debate is at

http://www.infolive.tv/en/infolive.tv-7119-israelnews-great-debate-should-israel- release-palestinian-prisoners

Good wishes, The Team at Keren Malki

Boris Celser lives in Canada. Contact him at celser@telusplanet.net

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NATIONALIST SUICIDE
Posted by Daily Alert, June 27, 2007.

This was written by Fouad Ajami and it appeared June 24, 2007 in U.S. News and World Report (the July 2, 2007 edition).

Five summers ago, on June 24, President George W. Bush, in a landmark speech, offered the Palestinians his and America's commitment to support "the creation of a Palestinian state." America was in the throes of a campaign against terrorism; the Iraq war, as we now know, was in the planning phase. It was important for the Bush administration, or so it seemed, to set the stage for these two campaigns by a generous and forthcoming policy toward the Palestinians. This was claimed to be nothing less than an American equivalent of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which had pledged Britain's support for the creation of a Jewish "national home." Bush's pledge drew the right moral and political parameters. America's support was contingent, the president said, on leaders "not compromised by terror." The vision was generous and held out to the Palestinians the promise of normalcy: "You deserve democracy and the rule of law. You deserve an open society and a thriving economy."

The Palestinians were to squander the chance given them by that diplomatic opening. Tahani Skaik, a woman of Gaza, in the most recent dispatches coming from that setting of grief and anarchy, understood what had become of the dream of statehood. "I feel now it's far away. As a Palestinian, I feel very empty." The Palestinians have lived, and for decades now, on a sense of historical entitlement. The world owed them a state come what may; it would be delivered to them even when their leaders faltered, even as they fell afoul of international norms and expectations. Now they know better. Another telling dispatch laid bare the Palestinian malady: It has come to pass that the Fatah leaders in the West Bank have served notice that they are done with the Qatar-based al Jazeera television. In bitter, scalding language, one of the influential leaders of Fatah -- Yasser Abed Rabbo -- accused al Jazeera of being a "partner in the crimes of Hamas," of covering up the mayhem of Hamas in Gaza while playing up "individual transgressions" in the Fatah-dominated West Bank. The Palestinians have come full circle. The "second intifada," which broke out in September 2000, had played out on al Jazeera's broadcasts. The insurrection and al Jazeera were twins.

The mayhem of Palestine. In the intervening years, the "Palestinian street" would be whipped into a frenzy, and the anarchy and the cruelty of the homicide bombers would become a diet for the Palestinians -- and for a wider Arab audience that lived, vicariously, on the mayhem of Palestine. This was not destined to last, but the Palestinians never grasped that. The American war on terrorism that would come in the aftermath of 9/11 had put before the Palestinians one of those great, defining moral and political questions: They could opt for the forces of order, tie their fate and their cause to sobriety and realism, or ride with the outlaws. Terrorism had lost its glamour, but the Palestinians had persisted with the belief that their bargaining power had increased because America was now on the ground in the Arab-Islamic world. Saddam Hussein was a marked man, but he was a hero to the Palestinian street. To the bitter end, the Palestinians insisted -- and have continued to do so -- that they were entitled to judge what was best for the Iraqis, that the Iraqis had been better off under the tyrant. The Shiites of Iraq had risen, they had come forth with their grim tales of what they had endured during the long night of Baathist despotism, but the Palestinians remained hostile to the claims of the Shiites. They seemed to begrudge those tormented people of Iraqtheir moment and the right to their own grief.

By the time the fury of the second intifada burned out, as it was bound to, the Palestinians were politically bankrupt and bereft. The Arab world had bigger battles to fight in Iraq and the Persian Gulf; the Israelis, keen to conciliate the Palestinians, had grown weary of them. There was a diplomatic dance, the quartet, which brought together the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations in a halfhearted effort to keep the Palestinian world afloat. But the Palestinians would do all in their power to snuff out those diplomatic efforts as well. Given a chance, by an election in early 2006, to signal their desire for normalcy, the Palestinians voted for mayhem. Two convicted terrorists, Marwan Barghouti and Abu Ali Yatta, headed the Fatah list; all in all, 14 members of the new parliament were serving prison sentences. National movements are often carried away by delirium, their politics can become deeds of self-immolation, and the Palestinians have come to embody the suicidal streak of mass-based nationalism.

This is not a failure of the Bush diplomacy, the disorder now on full display in Gaza and the West Bank. This is the harvest of Palestinian history. What we see is the inevitable fate of a national movement given over to the cult of the gun.

The Daily Alert is sponsored by Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and prepared by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). To subscribe to their free daily alerts, send an email to daily@www.dailyalert.jcpa.org

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HAMASTAN
Posted by Naomi Ragen, June 27, 2007.
Friends, The article below by Barry Rubin was forwarded to me by Jim Sinkinson, director of FLAME, with some wise remarks, including the following:

"Hamas" Coup in Gaza Makes Mid-East Peace a Remote Fantasy: It's Time for a Change in U.S. Policy I'm sure the irony of last week's flurry of Mid-East "peace initiatives" was not lost on you. Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert have been invited to a summit meeting in Egypt that will include Condoleezza Rice and representatives from Egypt and Jordan. And they will discuss what exactly? Only the most naïve Mid-East observer would claim that the conditions for peace between Israel and the Palestinians have improved over the last three months or six months or year. To the contrary: Overall, the Palestinians as a group have become less interested in and less capable of forging a peace deal than ever in the history of the conflict."

Peace-nowers and those who naively swallow their fantastical reasoning, people who have not stopped agitating for Israel to continue its suicidal policies of far-reaching iniatives that would lay her throat bare to the knife of Hamas terrorists or PLO murderers, have truly become a fifth column. All those who continue to support policies calling for peace talks, or any other word containing the word peace, when our enemies are committed body and soul to a war of annihilation against us, should please stop calling themseves Israel's "friends and supporters." Just admit you agree with Hamas and Abbas and want Israel wiped off the map. So much more honest. Mr. Bush, Ms. Rice, these words are meant for you as well. We all need to reexamine our outlook and our thinking in light of unfolding realities.

This was written by Barry Rubin, and it appeared in the Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2007. Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, has written and edited 50 books on the Middle East. His latest book, The Truth About Syria, has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

Naomi

The seizure of the Gaza Strip by Hamas opens a new period in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Middle East. A new Islamist state is being established and it doesn't bode well for the West or regional stability.

And yet we can hope that something will be learned from this experience. Israel's left-leaning Ha'aretz expresses the lesson with what some would call British understatement: "Anyone in Israel still contemplating the question of a Palestinian partner might also need to do some rethinking. In Gaza, at least, it seems there is nobody left for Israel to talk to."

In 2000, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat turned down President Bill Clinton's offer of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem and an opening offer of $23 billion in aid. Ever since then it has been clear that there is no diplomatic solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arafat's renewal of terrorist violence only reinforced this point.

The problem was not just Arafat, but the overall strategy of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian movement. Since the peace process began in 1993 with the Oslo Accords, that leadership made hardly a single effort to move Palestinian society toward peace and moderation. Fatah did have an attractive alternative it could have offered: We will get a state, return the refugees to live in it, develop our economy and culture and enjoy large-scale international aid in exchange for ending the conflict.

Instead it continued to glorify violence, spread hatred of Israel and America, and raise a new generation with a belief in eventual "total" victory and the extinction of Israel. After Arafat died, Fatah remained incompetent and corrupt but lacked a strong leader. Unable to obtain a state, unwilling to make peace and uninterested in governing well, Fatah dug its own grave. Why should anyone be surprised that Hamas replaced it? At most, Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and American pressure to hold fair elections only accelerated this process.

There has been another important lesson in this recent history: Most of the Arab states and movements need the conflict to continue. After all, what would mismanaging dictatorial regimes do without having Israel as a scapegoat? If, for example, Syria made peace with Israel in exchange for getting back the Golan Heights, it would be the beginning of the end for that regime. Within weeks, its people would be demanding human rights and free-enterprise economic reforms. The regime could not use anti-Israel and anti-American demons as an excuse to continue the dictatorship, deprive its people of rights and material well-being, and mobilize support. The same applies to radical Islamist movements seeking to gain power.

So let's get this straight: There is no near-term solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. There is no Palestinian side with which a compromise agreement can be negotiated. Many Arab states seek to exploit the conflict. Others would like to make peace but are too scared, and it is to the West's discredit that such states don't believe that it can or will protect them.

There are several key policy conclusions to be drawn from the Hamas triumph. First, Western and especially U.S. policy must get beyond an obsession with solving this conflict. It is going to go on for decades. Peace plans will go nowhere. Hamas will not be persuaded to moderate -- why should it when it expects victory at home and appeasement from Europe? Hamas is the enemy, just as much as al Qaeda, because it is part of the radical Islamist effort to seize control of the region, overthrow anything even vaguely moderate, and expel any Western influence.

Second, since Palestinian politics have clearly returned to a pre-1993 status, so must Western and U.S. policy. This means no Western aid and no diplomatic support until their leaders change policies. The Palestinian movement can only earn financial help and political backing on the very distant day when it accepts Israel's right to exist, stops endorsing and using terrorism, and is serious about negotiating a real two-state solution.

Third, it is time to support Israel proudly and fully. Israel has done everything possible for peace, taking great risks to do so. But the idea that evenhanded, confidence-building behavior can broker peace is regrettably dead.

There are wider strategic implications for U.S. and Western interests in this dramatic yet predictable development. The radical forces have gained a major new asset that will encourage theq recruitment of new cadre. Iran, Syria and Hezbollah will grow more confident and aggressive.

We are now in the middle of the third great battle with totalitarianism in living memory. As with the struggles against fascism and communism, this conflict can only be won by a mobilization of Western resources and resolve. What has happened in the Gaza Strip is a lost battle in that process. There is not room for too many more of these defeats.

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.

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THE ISLAMIC APARTHEID THAT CREATED A MYTH ABOUT ISRAEL
Posted by American, June 27, 2007.

This comes from The Reality Show website -- http://lightonthings.blogspot.com

The very APARTHEID bastion of the world, otherwise known as the `Islamic world', or the totalitarian dictatorships inc. where no one is ever equal there, not women, not one class to the other, not one minority has any decent rights, but persecuted in the regular Arab racism's supremacy & Islamic apartheid, or Islamo fascism.

In order to divert attention from the real criminals of apartheid in this world [or to disperse their populations' resentment of the oppressive regimes, after all, what else can can so 'unify' that intolerant culture than common hatred?], and much much worse then that [to say the least], they, in their collective hatred & Apartheid motivation against the `non Arab' the `non Muslim' entity AKA Israel, to deny it's right to exist, have come up with a myth about "apartheid in Israel", what it actually means is that if democratic & free Israel dares to defend it's self from a Racist Arab terrorist it is doomed to be branded as an "apartheid" system.

The sad part is of course that some have been bought by Arab oil money like Jimmy Carter, but the world should not let the magic sand cover the Arabian monsters including those "freedom fighters" fascists in Gaza that oppress Christians or those "moderate" `Palestinians' that try to ethnic cleanse all Jews from the land, and so far there's not one Jewish family under "moderate" fascist `palestine'. Contact American at American1627@yahoo.com

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"JAWS OF LIFE" NEEDED FOR TAPU'ACH FIRST-RESPONSE TEAM
Posted by Ya'aqov Ben-Yehudah, June 27, 2007.

Kfar Tapuach is located in the Shomron 15 minutes from Sh'chem the burial place of Joseph, and 10 minutes away from Har Brachah, where we received the blessings when we first entered Eretz Yisroel. As you may very well know, this area is one of the more dangerous areas in Israel. The Tapuach First Response Team is comprised of 18 dedicated members eight of whom are paramedics.

We respond to everything from roadside shootings and hostage situations to car accidents. The members of the medical team have all been trained by Magen David Adom (Red Star of David), and attend regular refresher courses. The medical team responds to over 95% of the car accidents in our area and are often the first on the scene. We have gone through extensive extraction training using our rescue saw as well as the Jaws of life. Currently there are not any government nor local organizations that are willing to help us obtain equipment. All of our equipment that we have obtained so far, was obtained through private donations. Currently, we are looking to buy a battery-operated "Jaws Of Life." It can be brought through a company in Israel at the cost of $11,850, or in New York for $9,900. The same company in New York has one, second-hand unit for $6,630. It is two years old and they claim that it is in excellent working condition but will probably need new batteries.

We accept donations through Hatzalah Yehuda & Shomron. Please contact them before sending any donation and tell them that you wanted to donate specifically to "The Tapuach Medical Rescue Team." Please write that on the check in the memo area as well. Please also notify me about any donations, so I can keep track of them.

Thanking you in advance,
Shaul Levine

If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me. I can also be contacted through
Yahoo, AOL, and MSN messengers, as well as Skype at shaultapuach

Contact Details for Hatzalah Yehuda & Shomron:
Email: info@hatzalah.org.il
Website: www.hatzalah.org.il

In the United States:
Hatzalah Yehuda & Shomron
130 Church Street #324
New York, NY 10007
Tel: (866) 428-0310

In Israel:
Hatzalah Yehuda & Shomron
Givon 108/2
Givaat Zev, 90917
Tel: 1-700-700-911

Hatzalah Yehuda & Shomron is a charitable 501(c)3 non-profit organization as determined by the US Internal Revenue Service, ID # 20-1239468, and in Israel as a registered Amutah under article 46 of the Israeli tax authorities. ID # 58-036-3885. All donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

Contact Ya'aqov Ben-Yehudah at yaaqov.ben.yehudah@gmail.com

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WHO KILLED PALESTINE?
Posted by Mrla, June 26, 2007.

This was written by Bret Stephens and it appeared as an opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal. Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.

A failure with a thousand fathers

Bill Clinton did it. Yasser Arafat did it. So did George W. Bush, Yitzhak Rabin, Hosni Mubarak, Ariel Sharon, Al-Jazeera and the BBC. The list of culprits in the whodunit called "Who Killed Palestine?" is neither short nor mutually exclusive. But since future historians are bound to ask the question, let's get a head start by suggesting some answers.

And make no mistake: No matter how much diplomatic, military and financial oxygen is pumped into Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, it's oxygen flowing to a corpse. Palestine has always been a notional place, a field of dreams belonging only to those who know how to keep it. Israelis have held on to their state because they were able to develop the political, military and economic institutions that a state requires to survive, beginning with its monopoly on the use of legitimate force. In its nearly 14 years as an autonomous entity, the PA has succeeded in none of that, despite being on the receiving end of unprecedented international goodwill and largesse.
 

HAMAS'S SEIZURE of the Gaza Strip this month--and the consequent division of the PA into two hostile, geographically distinct camps--is only the latest in a chain of events set in motion when Israel agreed, in September 1993, to accept Arafat and the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. An early indicator of what lay ahead took place on July 1, 1994, when Arafat made his triumphal entry into Gaza while carrying, in the trunk of his Mercedes, four of the Palestinian cause's most violent partisans. Among them were the organizers of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre and the 1974 Ma'alot school massacre. If ever there was an apt metaphor for what Arafat's rule would bring, this was it.

Arafat was determined to use Gaza and the West Bank as a staging ground for attacks against Israel, and he said so publicly and repeatedly: "O Haifa, O Jerusalem, you are returning, you are returning" (1995); "We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion" (1996); "With blood and spirit we will redeem you, Palestine" (1997). With equal determination, the Clinton administration and the Israeli governments of Rabin, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak treated Arafat's remarks as only so much rhetorical bluster. Mr. Clinton desperately wanted a Nobel Peace Prize; Israelis wanted out of the occupation business at almost any cost. These were respectable goals, but neither had as its primary aim the creation of a respectable Palestinian state.

Later, after the second intifada had erupted in all its suicidal frenzy, former U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross would admit the Clinton administration became too obsessed with process at the expense of substance. He should give himself more credit. The decision to legitimize Arafat was Israel's, not America's; once he was brought inside the proverbial tent he was bound to put a match to it. Still, the Clinton administration elevated Arafat like no other leader of the 1990s. If the rais came to flatter himself as a second Saladin, the flattery of White House banquets surely played a role.

The global media also did their bit in Arafat's elevation. Successive generations of Jerusalem bureau chiefs developed a conveniently even-handed narrative pitting moderates on both sides against extremists on both sides--a narrative in which Arafat was a "moderate" and Ariel Sharon was an "extremist." When Mr. Sharon took his famous walk on the Temple Mount in September 2000, it was easy to cast him as the villain and Palestinian rioters--and, later, suicide bombers--as the justifiably aggrieved. Cheering Palestinians on from the sidelines were the Arab media and the governments that own them, happy to channel domestic discontent toward a foreign drama.

As with individuals, nations generally benefit from self-criticism, and sometimes from the criticism of others. No people in modern history have been so immune from both as the Palestinians. In 1999, Abdel Sattar Kassem, a professor of political science in the Palestinian city of Nablus, put his name to the "petition of the 20," written to "stand against [Arafat's] tyranny and corruption." Arafat imprisoned him; the rest of the world barely took notice. Arafat's global popularity reached its apogee in the spring of 2002, exactly at the same time the civilian Israeli death toll from terrorism reached its height.

Yet what served Arafat's interests well served Palestinian interests poorly. Arafat learned from his experience with Mr. Clinton that one could bamboozle an American president and not pay a price. George W. Bush took a different view and effectively shut the Palestinians out of his agenda. Arafat learned from the "international community" that no one would look too closely at where its foreign aid was spent. But a reputation for theft has been the undoing of Fatah. Arafat thought he could harness the religious power of "martyrdom" to his political ends. But at the core of every suicide bombing is an act of self-destruction, and a nation that celebrates the former inevitably courts the latter.

Above all, Arafat equated territory with power. But what the experience of an unoccupied Gaza Strip has shown is the Palestinians' unfitness for political sovereignty. There are no Jewish settlers to blame for Gaza's plight anymore, no Israeli soldiers to be filmed demolishing Palestinian homes. The Israeli right, which came to detest Mr. Sharon for pulling out of the Strip, might reconsider its view of the man and the deed. Nothing has so completely soured the world on the idea of a Palestinian state as the experience of it.
 

WHAT DOES this mean for the future? At yesterday's summit in Egypt, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah threw rose petals at Mr. Abbas's feet. But the potentates of the Middle East will not midwife into existence a state the chief political movement of which has claims to both democratic and Islamist legitimacy. The U.S. and Israel will never bless Hamastan (even if the EU and the U.N. come around to it) and they can only do so much for the feckless Mr. Abbas. "Palestine," as we know it today, will revert to what it was--shadowland between Israel and its neighbors--and Palestinians, as we know them today, will revert to who they were: Arabs.

Whether there might have been a better outcome is anyone's guess. But the dream that was Palestine is finally dead.

Contact Mrla at mrla26@aol.com

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THE MARKET SQUARE IS EMPTY
Posted by Nurit Greenger, June 26, 2007.

An article very few will know about or read... The (Hebrew) article is based on The Market Square Is Empty: The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem, 1967-2007, written by Dr. Hillel Cohen. It should remove any doubt that "the Palestinian dream to see East Jerusalem become the capital of Palestine, which in the early 1990s appeared within reach, now appears further than ever from being attained."

Lacking the leadership to address the crisis, Israel can only hope that the Palestinian Arabs seal their own fate. For sixty years, like clockwork, the Palestinian Arabs have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

If the book, entitled The Market Square Is Empty: The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem, 1967-2007, does not make an impression on readers, nothing will. It states, "The Palestinian dream to see East Jerusalem become the capital of Palestine, which in the early 1990s appeared within reach, now appears further than ever from being attained."

Israel, therefore, was recently able to celebrate the fortieth year of the unification of Jerusalem with greater ease. Scarcely any real hope remains for a Palestinian capital based in Jerusalem. For the past fifteen years, East Jerusalem has sunk into ruins. The area is chocked to death with heaps of filth. It is a ghost of Palestinian politics. East Jerusalem is a divided from the rest of the city. It is also isolated from Judea and Samaria, which are areas surrounded by many Jewish communities. In protecting against terror, the security wall, moreover, is ensuring the demise of East Jerusalem.

The second Intifada, also known as Intifada El Aksa, sounds like a pitiful joke if one examines the willingness of Jerusalem Arabs to be part of a Palestinian state and their affinity for the Palestinian Authority (PA). One has to differentiate between the affinity of Jerusalem Arabs for Palestinian or Arab nationalism or for Islam. Because of what they have gone through with Israel and because of the internal struggles and weakness of the PA, affinity for the PA is not strong. At present, the Palestinian Arabs residing in Jerusalem prefer to ignore the PA, but this does not mean they have lost their basic hope for nationalism.

To severe East Jerusalem from greater Jerusalem is to invite the chaos of the territories. The East Jerusalem Arabs are identified as a neither here nor there hybrid society somewhere between Israeli Arabs citizens and the Arab residents in the territories. Their legal position and rights also differ from their brothers, and being isolated by the wall makes their reality much different. The fact is that East Jerusalem Arabs feel more comfortable in a mall in Jerusalem than the Kasbah in Hebron.

After Oslo, the general Palestinian Arab populous perceived East Jerusalem Arabs to be somewhat privileged. Others think that they suffer much more from Israel's "occupation." Being governed by Israel has its advantages and disadvantages. The movement of East Jerusalem Palestinian institutions to Ramallah increased the crisis in that part of the city.

In reality, the balance of power is in Israel's favor, and this is most noticeable in East Jerusalem. There will be no problem to squelch any uprising or resistance. Therefore, truthfully speaking, those still trying to get organized and take action no longer speak about armed struggle.

It is not that pleasant to reside in East Jerusalem, and many who have the wherewithal are leaving. Ever since Palestinian Arabs living outside the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem were denied Israeli residence identity cards, many from all social classes have been flocking inside the city. Those who benefited from social security or who could work in Israel came back. People wanted back in at all cost, even if it meant taking residence in half-demolished, half-livable buildings, which led to overcrowding and further contributed to the city's economic and social decline.

The Palestinian Arabs' society, filled with sexual taboos, is in crisis largely due to its exposure to Israeli society. The Palestinian Arab youths working in West Jerusalem go out to have fun there are made confused by the breakdown in their conventionally accepted behavior. Poverty and congestion have made prostitution, rape, and incest clear characteristics of East Jerusalem culture.

What has really happened since 1967? What has happened to the Palestinian Arabs' traditional customs of hospitality from just thirty years ago? Everything has changed. Today, nothing from then is possible -- not from the Israelis or from the Palestinian Arabs. The level of suspicion and mistrust has intensified. People are leery of strangers. They worry about being identified of collaborating with Israeli authorities. In fact, the entire world around has changed. Most of the Palestinian Arab villages are now small westernized towns with increased consumption and satellite television service. Now, when a Jew enters such a village, the Arabs become suspicious, thinking that the Jew will not leave, will claim the land, and will settle it!

In 2002-2003, Jerusalem endured many terror attacks mostly at the hands of East Jerusalem residents. Today, this threat has been reduced, and sitting in a city café is a smaller risk. This has changed throughout Israel. The Israeli intelligence and military crackdown has worked. Israel crushed Fatah and Hamas in the West Bank but not in the Gaza Strip where the situation is different. The harsh IDF crackdown has made it clear that the armed struggle of the Palestinian Arabs is problematic, and many of them understand it today.

Some say the security wall is the deterrent of terror, but the wall does not necessarily prevent the terrorists from entering Israel. The wall proved that Israel can do whatever it wants, and acts of terror only gives Israel the right to seize more land that Palestinian Arabs sit on. The Palestinian Arabs do not gain anything from armed struggle. Okay, they kill many Jews, but what do they gain by it? Nothing!

Since 1996, many Israelis have known that Hamas would screw the Palestinian Arabs. Israel will use Hamas to stop any further disengagement and to capture more "Palestinian Arab land." And that is exactly what has happened. This was Faisal Husseini legacy as well (Faisal Abdel Qader Al-Husseini, July 17, 1940-May 31, 2001, born in Baghdad, was the PLO representative in Jerusalem and a Palestinian Authority (PA) minister. He was thought to be a possible future leader of the Palestinian people. In his last post as Palestinian Authority Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, he was based in East Jerusalem. Husseini was considered a pragmatist by journalists. He taught himself to speak Hebrew and regularly appeared on radio and television shows in Israel to explain the Palestinians' point of view. Following Husseini's death, Israeli police seized his headquarters, the Orient House.)

In Oslo, the PLO gave up on Jerusalem sovereignty. That was the first step. With that, they provided Israel legal ground to shut down the POL institutions in Jerusalem. The second step was the struggle to weaken Husseini's influence. Budget cuts and his competition for power with Arafat helped. All of this undermined East Jerusalem. It became apparent that all the struggles in Jerusalem failed. How long one can struggle without reward?

Oslo was a main reason for the second intifada of 2000. Since the Oslo Accords, 2,000 new Jewish communities have been built on what the Palestinian Arabs see as their future state. All the diplomatic meetings and protests did not help. The tragedy of the Palestinian Arab armed struggle is that it brought about the same, if not worse, results. They lost at every turn. Perhaps Israel taught them that only force works and that they lack the required force to resist.

Another tragedy is that the Palestinian Arabs found themselves living on land that legally, according to the League of Nations, belongs to the Jews. It is rightly the historical land of the Jews. Contrary to what the Palestinian Arabs think, the Jews have historic roots in Eretz Yisrael, and they established solid foundation there. This is where the tragedy really begins. If the Jews did not arrive, nothing would have developed the way it did. But the Jews did arrive, and they are much stronger on all levels.

Assessing this equation, what should the Palestinian Arabs do? The disaster in this equation is that if the Palestinian Arabs keep quiet and do not protest it does help. Protesting peacefully does not work. Turing to an arm struggle screws them over. No matter what they do, they are screwed.

What are the Palestinian Arabs to do? Theoretically, if they launched another massive peaceful protest, they would only achieve another Oslo like process. If an alien from Mars came to ask what nation would be worthwhile joining, the answer definitely would be, not the Palestinian Arab nation!

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com. Visit her blog:
http://ngthinker.typepad.com

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SHURAT HADIN: NY TIMES and WASHINGTON POST  LEGALLY COMPLICIT IN TERROR
Posted by Honest Reporting, June 26, 2007.

In November 2005, Al Qaida spokesman Ayman al-Zawahiri said "We are in a battle and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media." Like Al Qaida, Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by the US State Department. Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently described Hamas as "murderous terrorists".

American newspapers would not give Osama bin Laden op-ed space. So why would they give the oxygen of publicity to a Hamas terrorist whose organization is responsible for the murder of US citizens in Israel and whose charter calls for Israel's destruction and is filled with unadulterated anti-Semitism? This is the question being asked following the appearance of op-eds by Ahmed Yousef, advisor to former Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh, on the same day in both the New York Times and Washington Post.

Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center is a Jewish legal rights institute staffed by some of Israel's leading attorneys. It provides legal representation to assist the hundreds of Israeli victims of Palestinian terror to fight back, through Israeli, American and European courts, against Palestinian terrorist groups and their financial patrons. Asked for comment by HonestReporting, Shurat HaDin Director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner said:

It is bewildering and shameful that these newspapers would bestow any measure of legitimacy on an Islamic terrorist organization like Hamas by providing them a public forum. The liberal doctrine of freedom of expression should never be extended to organizations which are openly dedicated to carrying out acts of murder against Jewish civilians and who draw encouragement from their new found respectability. Legally speaking, it would seem that there is not much difference between outlaw regimes like Iran and Syria, which illegally provide material support and resources to terrorist organizations, and liberal media outlets which provide millions of dollars in free advertising and access to groups like Hamas when they publish their leaders' dangerous messages. The NY Times and Washington Post are every bit the supporters of the terrorist organizations that Tehran and Damascus are when they facilitate the publication of Hamas' messages.

Many people around the world were, quite rightly, appalled that Hamas, having brutally taken over Gaza, could score another coup, having its propaganda published in two of the most influential US broadsheets. However, according to Reuters, it seems that the only embarrassment felt by the newspapers was the admittal that neither would have carried the articles had they known of the other paper's publishing plans.

While the Washington Post's Ombudsman, Deborah Howell has yet to address this issue, NY Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt, in response to outraged readers, issued a rather weak response: "The point of the op-ed page is advocacy." And, Rosenthal [editorial page editor] said, "we do not feel the obligation to provide the kind of balance you find in news coverage, because it is opinion."

Op-ed pages should be open especially to controversial ideas, because that's the way a free society decides what's right and what's wrong for itself. Good ideas prosper in the sunshine of healthy debate, and the bad ones wither. Left hidden out of sight and unchallenged, the bad ones can grow like poisonous mushrooms.

We agree that left unchallenged, bad ideas can grow like poisonous mushrooms. But has the New York Times really ever challenged the negative portrayal of Israel that consistently appears in its own pages and those of much of the mainstream media?

Could the New York Times and Washington Post be guilty of providing material support for a terrorist organization? After all, many legitimate charities and political groups would pay tens of thousands of dollars for a prominent ad in these newspapers. Instead, Hamas has been given the equivalent publicity for no charge whatsoever. Not to mention other newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune, Sacramento Bee and Salt Lake Tribune, that republished these Hamas op-eds in their own pages.

We urge you to write to the New York Times and Washington Post, inviting them to contact Shurat HaDin, which has been at the forefront of providing legal representation to victims of Hamas terror. Demand that these terror victims are given equal op-ed space to tell their stories and to present their case that Hamas is a terrorist organization whose messages and goals are illegitimate.

MASS MEDIA AS A TERRORIST WEAPON

The above is a prime example, along with the broadcasts of kidnap victims Alan Johnston and Gilad Shalit, of how, as a Jerusalem Post analysis explains, modern terrorists have adopted the mass media as their weapon of choice:

"The better the show is, the higher the ratings are. The higher the ratings, the more people receive the terrorists' message," said Eviathar Ben-Zedeff, a research fellow at the International Institute for Counter Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, on Monday.

"Terror is a political act of psychological warfare. The terrorists' purpose is to influence the viewers and to motivate them into political action. That is achieved by creating fear among the viewers who, as a result, are ready to put pressure on their politicians to change policy, for example, to give back occupied territories or to free many prisoners," Ben-Zedeff explained.

According to Ben-Zedeff, this is part of a propaganda mechanism aimed at leveraging the terror organization's ideas.

Read the full article here and remember to ask why the New York Times and Washington Post have allowed themselves to be party to exactly this sort of manipulation.

BBC SLAMS DOOR ON HR SUBSCRIBERS

Many of you have expressed your disatisfaction with the impersonal nature of making complaints through the BBC's website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints. In our last communique, we gave you the e-mail address of Fraser Steel, the BBC's head of editoral complaints. Unfortunately, your complaints bounced straight back. While it was certainly a genuine working e-mail in the past, it appears that the BBC has discontinued Steel's address to avoid dealing with volumes of e-mail.

So it's back to the website for complaints to the BBC. But please do not be disheartened -- the BBC usually replies to your complaints (even if the responses are rarely satisfactory). Please continue to hold the BBC to account for its anti-Israel bias.

Honest Reporting monitors the media for inaccuracy and unfairness in how they report the news about Israel. Ther website address is http://www.honestreporting.com. You can help support their research online or by sending contributions to: HonestReporting, 400 South Lake Drive, Lakewood, NJ 08701-3167.

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AL-QAEDA DESCRIBES HOW THE PERFECT MUSLIM ACTS: TEAR HEARTS OUT, CUT OFF HEADS & LIMBS...
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 26, 2007.

If you, or anyone you know, still labors under the Islamo-fascist apologist falsehood that jihad is really first and foremost a psychological battle within your own psyche to make yourself a better person, or a spiritual struggle against one's evil impulses, be sure to read (or have your benighted acquantances read) the MEMRI article below which appeared in a recent Islamo-fascist Jihad media outlet.

Islamophile apologists claim that the West misunderstands the concept 'jihad'. There is, of course, the historical interpretation of jihad as conquest....but this is the 'lesser jihad'. Far more important in Muslim tradition, they say, is the 'Greater Jihad'...the spiritual jihad against one's evil inclinations (like smoking, eating too much, praying to little, etc.). Hence, they say, once the West understands better the 'true Islam', the Islam of peace and tolerance and brotherhood, then the West can better appreciate the 'radiant face of Islam' and then understand as well that the so-called Islamo-fascist threat is really no threat at all, but just an internal misunderstanding among Muslims as to the true nature of jihad.

In my opinion, such Islamophile apologists are doing far more than just misrepresenting jihad as a theolgocial concept. They are obfuscating the reality of Islam's nefarious history and whitewashing a truly great evil in order to allow that evil to advance more effectively. That is not merely misrepresentation. In time of war, that is treason.

I am not a theologian, and certainly no expert on Islam. Hence I have no way of knowing what the 'true Islam' really is. In fact, no one seems to know what the 'true Islam' really is, since there are at least 7 different interpretations of Islam (Shi'ite, Sunni, Alawi, Suffi, Hanaffi, Salafi, Wahhabi)and at least four different interpretations of Shari'a law. Each claims its interpretation as the unique truth of Islam.

Thus I cannot know whether Islam's interpreters among el-Qaeda, per the MEMRI article below, are correct in their representation of 'true Islam,' or whether the Sufi version of Islam is correct and Islam's 'believers' should denounce violence and war and seek universal acceptance of Islam via exemplary living and wonderously effective teaching.

But, now, as we are engaged in World War 4, that distinction does not matter: not for us, nor for the tens if not hundreds of thousands (and if you include Sudan, it is millions) of victims of Jihad.

As we can deduce from the material below, if some brave and brilliant Sufi got in front of Osama and proved to him categorically and irrefutably that Osama had mis-interpreted the Qur'an, and in fact Allah wanted Islam to prevail world-wide ONLY via exemplary living and wonderously effective teaching, and in fact Mohammed's Jihad, which was indeed slaughter and massacre and conquest and rapine and pillage and genocide.... was NOT at all what Allah REALLY wanted [i.e., what ALLAH really meant when his Angel Gabriel talked to Mohammed was the 'greater Jihad' of spiritual struggle]....

In light of all that Sufi wisdom, Osama is not likely to respond with: Oh My GOD!!! I've been wrong all these years. Stop the fighting, call back the Mujahideen, dismantle the WMDs...we've got some serious internal repentance-"greater jihad"-inner-struggle to do!!

If anyone out there does think that Osama might repent if he could be shown the 'radiant face of Islam', please email me with a rational account of why you think I am wrong. But consider first the reason why I presume to know Osama's response.

The 1375 years of war by Moslems (especially Arab Moslems) against all non-Moslem nations that bordered upon Arab/Moslem conquered lands [starts in Arabia, moves to middle east, then west across africa, then north into spain and france, then moves east into iraq, iran and then 500 years of fighting against india, then intermittent war and terrorism against other smaller states so that parts of Asia and what was once Soviet Central Asia become Moslem -- but, bottom line, endless war and terrorism] cannot rationally be understood as one gigantic and horrendously erroneous mis-interpretation of Islam?

Were all those Moslem warriors and historians who rejoiced in the conquests and slaughter....were they all deceived, or were they all in error as to the correct interpretation of 'jihad', were they all just unfortunate mis-understanders of Mohammed's message?

Osama's 'True Islam' and the 'True Islam' of the writer in the MEMRI article below are completely consistent with, and in fact modeled after, the 1,375 years of Islamo-fascist Jihad....an unending relentless assault on the non-Muslim world by Muslim forces, killing hundreds of millions and obliterating half-a-dozen civilizations....all in the name of 'true Islam'.

Whatever 'true Islam' may be, the dangers to Jews, to Israel, to Christians and to Hindus, and to the USA, and to all of Western civilization, are inherent in the interpretation of Islam that is exemplified in the article below. This interpretation, demanding ruthlessness in slaughter and endless war and violence and terrorism and decapitations until Islam reigns supreme in all the world ('Islam uber Alles'), is used by the Islamo-fascist Jihadist terrorists to justify their terrorism, their imperialism, their supremacism, their triumphalism, their anti-democracy tyranny, their totalitarian shari'a law, their theocratic caliphate, and the beastly and brutal acts of inhumanity which characterize their war against us.

And their colluding apologists try to lull us into inaction with speculation about 'true Islam' and its 'greater Jihad'.

This article comes MEMRI (http://memri.org); it is Special Report No. 1635 (http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP163507).

Senior Al-Qaeda Sheikh: 'May Allah Send Someone Who Will Kill Them Even More [Savagely]... Tear Their Hearts Out... Cut Their Heads Off, Tear Them Limb From Limb, and Shed Their Blood in Rivers'

The April-May 2007 issue of the jihadi e-magazine Sada Al-Jihad, published by the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), includes an article by Sheikh Hussein bin Mahmoud [1] titled "Let Them Find Ruthlessness in You," in which he criticizes the Muslims for being too lenient in their war against their enemies. Bin Mahmoud states that Allah commanded the Muslims to fight their enemies fiercely, without compassion or mercy, and uses Koranic verses to back up his assertions. He extols the example of Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi, who cut off the infidels' heads and struck terror in their hearts.

The following are excerpts from the article:

"When... Al-Zarqawi Went Out and Slaughtered a Few Infidels, the [Advocates of] Tolerance and Friendship Had a Fit"

"The way of [waging] jihad changes according to the [available] means, innovations, ploys and practices. Over the history of Islamic conquests, jihad was [waged] according to these [changing] general principles... which we cannot enumerate here fully. We can, however, mention one aspect which our [Islamic] nation is now in dire need of, since many Muslims today have a distorted [understanding] of Islamic principles and tenets, due to [the influence of] the enemy, or due to [the influence] of some Muslims whose spirit has been defeated... and they have begun to distort the [true] meaning of Koranic verses on [the pretext of] rationalism, moderateness, a civilized [outlook], or similar notions. These notions have lost their [true] meaning and have become synonymous with defeat, withdrawal, impotence and falsification of the truths of Islamic shari'a.

"The aspect that Muslims must accept is that of ruthlessness and firmness in jihad. Many Muslims today are educated in a spirit that is far from the [true] spirit of the Koran... The Muslim nation is the strongest nation in history... since it has the mightiest prophet, the mightiest book [i.e., the Koran] and the mightiest religion on Earth, and it is the nation which strikes its enemies hardest, [since it fights them] according to Islamic shari'a. Owing to these qualities, [the Muslim nation] is the most awe-inspiring of nations, and nobody [dares to] covet [what belongs to it], as long as it adheres to its principles and to the sources of its strength, which are the Koran and the sunna.

"It is no exaggeration to say that many Muslims today have never heard of the Koranic verses [that speak of] jihad... and do not believe that the Koran includes verses that speak of force, firmness, terror and cruelty, since they have heard so much about peace, security, compassion, friendship, justice, grace, honesty and moderateness. These are all words of truth, but in times of war, they are used to express falsehoods.

"When the emir and commander Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi went out and slaughtered a few infidels, the [advocates of] tolerance and friendship had a fit. They jumped up, made threats and swore that this [act] runs counter to the spirit of [Islam]. How much suffering have these people and their supporters caused us! When we told them that Allah commanded to cut off the heads [of the enemies], they would say, 'be mindful of Allah, and do not make things up,' and we had to bring the Koran and show them these verses so that they would believe [us]. Some of them even turned the book over [and looked] at the cover to make sure that it really was the Koran. These [people] had read the Koran many times, but they had not read it [carefully]..."

"The Perfect Muslim is Gentle with His Fellow Believer and Harsh Towards His Enemy, the Infidel"

"A quick review of some Koranic verses [will help us] characterize [the concept of] cruelty in battle, so that the Muslims understand the truth about this matter and [realize] what is missing from their [school] curricula, sermons and religion courses. The [Muslim] nation must urgently familiarize itself with these military aspects of the Koran, so that it can deal with its enemies and fight [them]... in the way prescribed by Allah in order to grant [the nation] victory. After the great battle of Badr, Allah told the Prophet [Muhammad]...: 'It is not for any prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land. You desire the frail goods of this world, while Allah desires [for you] the hereafter; and Allah is Mighty and Wise [Koran 8:67]'... The word 'prophet' in this verse appears in the indefinite form, which means that [all] the prophets used to kill many of their enemies by the sword rather than take them captive... Allah says this explicitly [in the following verse]: 'So when you meet the infidels in battle, then cut off their heads, and after you have killed many of them by the sword, place [them] in shackles, and afterwards either set them free if you choose or let them ransom [themselves] until the war ends [Koran 47:4]'...

"The first real battle fought by the Muslims was the battle of Badr, in which they captured many polytheists in order to hold them for ransom, according to the custom of the [pre-Islamic] Arabs. Allah rebuked them and explained to them that this was not the way of the prophets, for [the prophets] killed many of the infidel leaders and soldiers in order to purge the land of them... and [in order to] prepare the world for da'wa for the sake of Allah. During the battle of Badr, something momentous happened: Allah ordered the angels to fight alongside the Muslims and to strengthen their spirits, and He told [the angels] that he would strike terror into the hearts of the infidels. [The Koran says]: 'Remember thy Lord inspired the angels [with the message]: I am with you. Give firmness to the Believers, [and] I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers. You cut off their heads and smite all their fingers off them [Koran 8:12]'... "This was the beginning of the war against the infidels, and the initial shock, [meant to] fill the hearts [of the infidels] with fear and terror of the Muslims, so that they would stop resisting and accept the treaty, and later either convert to Islam if they want to, or continue to live under the treaty and come to no harm... "[The question is]: This violence, ruthlessness and firmness -- Is it [meant to be] a permanent law and feature of war, or does it apply only to the early [years of Islam]? The answer [is given in] Koran 9:123, where Allah says: 'O ye who believe! Fight the infidels who are near to you, and let them find ruthlessness in you, and know that Allah is with the faithful.' This was one of the last suras to descend, its verses were among the last to descend, and the laws [they set out] are timeless... The perfect Muslim is gentle with his fellow believer and harsh towards his enemy, the infidel..."

"Allah Commanded the Believers... to Show [Their Enemies] No Mercy or Compassion"

"Today, the content of all these verses is perhaps encapsulated in a single verse, which is: 'If ye punish, then punish with the like of that wherewith ye were afflicted [Koran 16:126].' [In this verse], Allah commands [us] to fight the enemy the same way he fights us, to kill him in the same way he kills us, and to deliberately kill those who set out to kill us. Today, our enemies hit us with nuclear bombs, cluster [bombs] and chemical [bombs] which have killed many of our men, women and children, destroyed homes and crops, spread disease and burned [people's] bodies. We [therefore] have the right to fight back by the same means, by the command of Allah who [instructs us] to be ruthless and fierce [with the enemy] and to smite him, in order to teach others a lesson...

"These verses teach us that Allah commanded the believers to be firm, forceful, ruthless and radical in killing the enemies who fight against [Islam], and to show them no mercy or compassion... This applies to offensive jihad. What about [the case in which] the infidels attack the Muslim states, shed [Muslim] blood, violate women's honor and offend [Islam]? In that case, there is no doubt that they must be struck and killed with even greater ruthlessness, as a lesson to others and in order to fill them with awe for the [Muslim] nation, so that no-one will wish to attack [the Muslims] anywhere, ever again. For Allah has said in the Koran: 'If ye gain the mastery over them in war, disperse them and those who follow them, that they may remember [Koran 8:57]'...

"Wars are fought on the basis of theories of warfare, and not [on the basis of] a hodgepodge of peace[full terms] and philosophies that are all talk. [War] is bloodshed and killing, and not [a matter for] religious arguments, theories, debates and... programs on the satellite channels. Our righteous forefathers implemented the principles of the Koran, and the results were amazing: [they gained] victory after victory and Allah's triumph was realized, because they defended his faith and obeyed his command to kill, disperse and smite the enemies of the faith...

"Looking at the Islamic [world] today, we find that these divine edicts are hardly ever implemented. We once had two men whom we beseeched Allah to give a long life so they would revive the tradition of Khaled [Bin Al-Walid]. [2] [These two men were] the commander Sayf Al-Islam Khattab [who led the jihad in Chechnya] and the slaughtering Emir Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi... Despite their short lives, they left an enduring legacy that will be remembered for generations to come... They were among those who stood most firmly against the infidels, and reminded the Muslims of some of the [Koranic] verses [that they had forgotten]. They killed and cut off heads, and the mere mention of their names on any front was enough to scare the enemies and disperse those who followed them...

"May Allah send the [Muslim] nation someone who will kill them even more [savagely], strike terror in their [souls], tear their hearts out... cut their heads off, tear them limb from limb and shed their blood in rivers...

"Hussein Bin Mahmoud

"The 29th day of Rabi' Al-Awwal, 1428 (April 17, 2007)."

Footnotes

[1] Sheikh Hussein Bin Mahmoud is the pseudonym of an Al-Qaeda leader who frequently writes on Islamist forums (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, London, November 30, 2006).

[2] Khaled Bin Al-Walid, also called Sayf Allah (the Sword of Allah), was a commander during the Muslim conquests.

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

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THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO STOP HAMAS!
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 26, 2007.

Unless and until Hamas and kindred spirit terror organizations are forced to cease launching deadly Qassam missiles into Israel, wrecking havoc in Israeli neighborhoods, destroying the lives of aggrieved Israeli citizens, nothing current prime minister Olmert and his Kadima party do in a presumed effort to secure peace for the beleaguered state they steward has any consequence. Period! Making nice nice with Holocaust trivializer Mahmoud Abbas is a farce. Negotiating with Arab movers and shakers is a farce. If Olmert and his crew cannot even secure the safety of Israeli citizens, routinely bombarded by missiles, ever projecting an image of weakness to the world, ever allowing his nation to be disgraced by taunting Arabs, these elected leaders have no credibility whatsoever!

No other nation would or should tolerate the 'in your face' day in and day out militant behavior Israel absorbs. Any other nation would deploy its military, crushing an enemy that will not be subdued by reason. But Olmert, in consultation with the Bush Administration, dances to the beat of a different drummer. He and his Kadima cronies make life a bit uncomfortable for Hamas on occasion, sounding the clarion call for an intrepid IDF to put to sleep or jail a murderous jihadist or two, but such waltzing about or doing a two-step in lieu of a war dance on steroids brandishing potent weapons does not cut it. Harsh verbiage, as well as sanctions, for the most part, Olmert and Bush's primary weapons of choice, bizarrely challenged by former U.S. president and Nobel peace prize recipient Jimmy Carter, directed at militant atavist cadres like Hamas, as if those that shroud their own vulnerable adults and even children in suicide gear effectively deserve merely verbal castigation and trade embargos, will not stop the intolerable Qassam missile launchers, obsessed with jihad and the annihilation of Israel at any cost to an Arab populace they care little about. And what does it matter if Israel finesses its strategy? As Jackson Diehl points out in his opinion piece 'A human rights watchdog barks only at one nation', published in the 06/26/2007 edition of the Newark Star Ledger, Israel is virtually the only nation excoriated again and again by the United Nations Human Rights Council, composed of a cadre of presumably civilized 'humane' countries. Bizarrely, member in good standing Sudan, Islamic General Omar al-Bashir's oil-rich racist genocidal regime, distinguished by tendencies to torture, rape, and murder Muslim Black African's with virtual impunity, co-sponsored on behalf of the Arab League the latest condemnation of the Jewish State. Never forget, even a despicable nation that happens to be drenched in oil will always trump Israel in the hearts and minds of mostly all industrial nations, many of which happen to squat on the aforementioned 'morally principled' council, including India, South Africa, China, Mexico, eight nations of the European Union, and many others apparently immune to shame.

Enough! If current Israeli leaders refuse to deploy enough troops, supported by state of the art air power, into Gaza and wipe out an enemy that grows stronger each day, let them resign forthwith, making room for others that truly have Israel's best interests at heart.

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 larose@snip.net

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UN AS PROPAGANDA PLAYGROUND FOR ARAB LEAGUE
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 26, 2007.

This Washington Post article is for anyone you may know who still thinks that the UN condemnations of Israel have any moral or legal valence.

This article is another piece of evidence strongly substantiating my assertion that the UN is run by the Arab league, and is nothing more than a platform from which to demonize Israel and the USA.

That the Arab states have done this is no surprize. Part of their long term strategy to destroy Israel is the PR war, of which the UN condemnations are an imporant part.

But...why do western NGOs and Human Rights groups, and western nations, go along with this macabre charade?

The article was written by Jackson Diehl and is called "A Shadow on the Human Rights Movement". It appeared yesterday in the Washington Post and is archived at
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/24/ AR2007062401373.html?

Where does the global human rights movement stand in the seventh year of the 21st century? If the first year of the United Nations Human Rights Council is any indication, it's grown sick and cynical -- partly because of the fecklessness and flexible morality of some of the very governments and groups that claim to be most committed to democratic values.

At a session in Geneva last week, the council -- established a year ago in an attempt to reform the U.N. Human Rights Commission -- listened to reports by special envoys appointed by its predecessor condemning the governments of Cuba and Belarus. It then abolished the jobs of both 'rapporteurs' in a post-midnight maneuver orchestrated by its chairman, who announced a 'consensus' in spite of loud objections by the ambassador from Canada that there was no such accord.

While ending the scrutiny of those dictatorships, the council chose to establish one permanent and special agenda item: the 'human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.' In other words, Israel (or 'Palestine,' in the council's terminology), alone among the nations of the world, will be subjected to continual and open-ended examination. That's in keeping with the record of the council's first year: Eleven resolutions were directed at the Jewish state. None criticized any other government.

Genocide in Sudan, child slavery and religious persecution in China, mass repression in Zimbabwe and Burma, state-sponsored murder in Syria and Russia -- and, for that matter, suicide bombings by Arab terrorist movements -- will not receive systematic attention from the world body charged with monitoring human rights. That is reserved only for Israel, a democratic country that has been guilty of human rights violations but also has been under sustained assault from terrorists and governments openly committed to its extinction.

The old human rights commission, which was disparaged by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan for casting 'a shadow on the United Nations system as a whole,' frequently issued unbalanced condemnations of Israel but also typically adopted half a dozen resolutions a year aimed at the worst human rights abusers. For the new council, Israel is the only target. Eighteen of the 19 states dubbed 'the worst of the worst' by the monitoring group Freedom House (Israel is not on the list) were ignored by the council in its first year. One mission was dispatched to examine the situation in Darfur. When it returned with a report criticizing the Sudanese government, the council refused to endorse it or accept its recommendations.

The regime of Gen. Omar al-Bashir, which is responsible for at least 200,000 deaths in Darfur, didn't just escape any censure. Sudan was a co-sponsor on behalf of the Arab League of the latest condemnations of Israel, adopted last week.

This record is far darker than Kofi Annan's 'shadow.' You'd think it would be intolerable to the democratic states that sit on the council. Sadly, it's not. Several of them -- India, South Africa, Indonesia -- have regularly supported the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement in their assaults on Israel and defense of Cuba, Belarus and Sudan. The council's chairman, who rammed through last week's decisions without a vote, is a diplomat from Mexico.

The European Union includes countries holding eight of the council's 47 seats. It has made no serious effort to focus the council's attention on the world's worst human rights violators. According to a report by the independent group UN Watch, the European Union 'has for the most part abandoned initiating any country-specific resolutions.' At one point before last week's meeting, the European Union threatened to quit the council, effectively killing it. Yet when the meeting ended, Europe's representative, Ambassador Michael Steiner of Germany, said that while the package of procedural decisions singling out Israel 'is certainly not ideal ... we have a basis we can work with.'

What about Western human rights groups -- surely they cannot accept such a travesty of human rights advocacy? In fact, they can. While critical of the council, New York-based Human Rights Watch said its procedural decisions 'lay a foundation for its future work.' Global advocacy director Peggy Hicks told me that the council's focus on Israel was in part appropriate, because of last year's war in Lebanon, and was in part caused by Israel itself, because of its refusal to cooperate with missions the council dispatched. (Sudan also refused to cooperate but was not rebuked.) Hicks said she counted only nine condemnations, not 11.

Never mind how you count them: Is there a point at which a vicious and unfounded campaign to delegitimize one country -- which happens to be populated mostly by Jews -- makes it unconscionable to collaborate with the body that conducts it? 'That could happen, but I don't think we're anywhere near there,' Hicks said.

That's the human rights movement, seven years into a century that's off to a bad start.

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

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STOP FUNDING FATAH TERRORISM
Posted by UCI, June 26, 2007.

Terrorist organizations like Fatah should not be financially supported, especially by Israel and the United States. We urge you to send this letter to President Bush and oppose the support of Fatah. A sample letter and President Bush's contact information are shown below. Please feel free to change the wording to express your own thoughts.

SAMPLE LETTER

Dear Mr. President

With Hamas in control in Gaza--and now in possession of huge quantities of American military equipment--Washington is pressing for the Jews to allow Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") to be turned into another Gaza.

Forcing Israel back to its 1949, 9-mile wide armistice line (not border) existence will simply bring most of its population and industry within easy range of Fatah's American weapons (whether Hamas winds up with them or not). Most people travel farther than that just to go shopping or to work.

And what does Israel get for this "partnership?" A hudna...ceasefire. As Abbas' folks point out, the same thing their prophet, Muhammad, granted to his enemies until he was strong enough to conquer them.

Where is the evidence for Fatah's "moderation?"

Are Fatah's web sites, schools, mosques, television stations, press, etc. spreading this alleged "acceptance" to their own people--whom poll after poll show that, if Israel withdrew from all disputed lands, would mostly seek Israel's destruction anyway?

With Fatah's chestnuts temporarily being pulled out of the fire, one might think that Abbas would be seeking a real partnership with Israel himself.

"No! He can't do that," some will say, "it will make him a traitor!"

Precisely...

Israel would be suicidal granting vital concessions to folks who still can't reconcile with the right of Jews to have in one, tiny, reborn state what Arabs insist upon having almost two dozen of in over six million square miles of territory mostly conquered from non-Arab peoples.

America must press Abbas and Fatah to show their true intentions before anything else is expected of Israel.

A peace treaty--not a ceasefire--along with meaningful territorial compromise in the disputed territories is a must. And Abbas must realize that the days of his excuses are over. After yet another grace period to get finally his and Fatah's act together, Israel will deal with attacks launched from territories they control the same way America would react to attacks upon its own territory and people.

Mr. President, this should be the message you convey right now...not, "it's time for Israel to give away the store for empty Arab promises" yet again.

Signed,

(your name and email address)

CONTACT INFORMATION
President George W. Bush
Email: president@whitehouse.gov
Fax: (202) 456-2461
Please send a copy of your letter to voices@israelunitycoalition.org or fax to (913) 648-7997.

UCI -- The Unity Coalition for Israel (http://www.israelunitycoalition.org) -- is "the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel."

"Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard!"

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A MOTHER BRUSHES HER YOUNG SON'S HAIR AT 7:00, SO THAT HE WILL BE KILLED AT 7:30
Posted by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, June 26, 2007.

A Palestinian journalist has expressed despair about the society of death worship in Gaza. In so doing, he has corroborated PMW findings documenting the death culture promoted in Palestinian Authority education.

The journalist wrote:

"We knew that they would do it, especially in Gaza, where a mother brushes her young son's hair at 7:00, so that he will be killed at 7:30, and where the children learn that death is preferable to life! We knew that they would do this, it was clear to us: with language overflowing with the rhetoric of death and the norms of killing, in the religious rulings [Fatwas] and in Friday and holiday sermons."-- [Ghassan Zaqtan, Al-Ayyam, June18, 2007]

The journalist's critical mistake is that he seems to attribute the death culture only to Hamas, whereas it has been the Fatah leadership and education that initiated and still actively teach that death is preferable to life.

For example, a Palestinian Authority schoolbook written by Fatah educators teaches 13- and 14-year-olds literally to prefer death over life, while it is the "enemies" who cherish life:

"O heroes, Allah has promised you victory ... Do not talk yourselves into flight...Your enemies seek life while you seek death. They seek spoils to fill their empty stomachs while you seek a Garden [Paradise] as wide as are the heavens and the earth. Do not be anxious to meet them [enemies], for death is not bitter in the mouth of the believers. These drops of blood that gush from your bodies will be transformed tomorrow into blazing red meteors that will fall down upon the heads of your enemies." -- [Reading and Texts Part II, Grade 8 (2002), p. 16]

The words introducing this poem are: "Read and enjoy."

PMW has been alerting the world in numerous reports since November 2000 that the PA has been indoctrinating children to see death as preferable to life. Senator Hillary Clinton severely criticized this PA education when she introduced PMW's latest report on PA schoolbooks earlier this year:

"When we viewed this report [on PA textbooks] in combination with other media that these children are exposed to, it basically, profoundly poisons the minds of these children." -- [Press conference introducing PMW report, US Senate, February 8, 2007]

The Director of the Palestinian Children's Aid Association, Firial Hillis, explained that it was an integral part of the official educational policy to educate young children to aspire to Shahada -- Martyr's death. These are her words:

"The concept of Shahada for him [the child] means belonging to the homeland, from a religious point of view. Sacrifice for his homeland. Achieving Shahada in order to reach Paradise and to meet his God. This is the best. We also teach our children to protect the homeland, belonging and to reach Shahada". [PATV, May 4, 2003]

View video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFnbNy6MMDA)
or PMW website (http://pmw.org.il/asx/PMW_Frial_7.asx)

Music videos that have run thousands of times on PA TV have reinforced this message to children to aspire to Shahada.

The following are some examples:

1. In a video broadcast on Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority TV hundreds of times from 2001 to 2004, a young boy leaves a farewell letter to his parents and goes off to seek Shahada, describing the death he achieves as "sweet." This PA clip is designed to offset a child's natural fear of death by depicting Shahada as heroic and tranquil.

Click to view video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0_ExnR6yxs)
or PMW website (http://pmw.org.il/asx/Farewell_letter_7.asx).

2. From 2000 to 2003, PA TV broadcast a music video depicting the delightful Shahid paradise of Muhammad Al-Dura, who died in a crossfire. The child actor is shown flying a kite, frolicking on the beach and even at an amusement park. The clip opens with an invitation to other children from Al-Dura to aspire to death: "I am waving to you not in parting, but to say 'follow me'." This video directing children to follow Al-Dura to paradise as Martyrs was suddenly broadcast again in June 2006, after Israeli troops had gathered at the border of the Gaza Strip after the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Click to view video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=canTCmXEMk8)
or PMW website (http://www.pmw.org.il/asx/pmw_duraclip2006.asx).

The result of such virulent PA indoctrination is apparent, when listening to the interview on PA TV with two 11-year-old Palestinian girls talking about Shahada and describing it as a primary ideal and personal goal. They explain that "all Palestinian children" view Shahada as more worthwhile than living, because of its promised grand Afterlife. Click to view video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dPb1bF-s4M)
or PMW website (http://pmw.org.il/asx/PMW_Walla_7.asx).

Itamar Marcus is director of PMW -- Palestinian Media Watch -- (http://www.pmw.org.il). PMW is based in Jerusalem. Barbara Crook, a writer and university lecturer based in Ottawa, Canada, is PMW's

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LONGING FOR THE OLD COUNTRY
Posted by Manhigut Yehudit, June 26, 2007.

A new mishigas (nonsense) has entered the Jewish world. It is becoming more popular by the day. It's called traveling to Europe to see the great alter haym (old home). The goal of these trips is to relive the wonderful life the Jews had back in those good old days. Very often, prominent Rabbis lead these trips, whose frequency and popularity are growing rapidly. Virtually every week, a major Rebbe goes to Hungary, Ukraine or Poland. Thousands flock with him to walk the sacred European ground where his grandfather once stood. Ahhhh, what holiness! What a privilege to travel to these places where Jewish life once flourished.

In reality, however, the opposite is true. Those places in Europe were never great. The alter haym was replete with poverty, depression and sickness -- not to mention pogroms, blood libels, book burnings and forced conversions. Europe is dripping with Jewish blood that has not stopped bubbling. The smell of the crematoria is still in the air; it is the scent of Jewish weakness and defeat.

When I think of Jewish life in Europe I do not see greatness. I see tragedy, sadness, persecution, desecration, defamation and humiliation. In short, I see an exile that has been turned into an illusion of paradise. Yes, there were great people in those countries who overcame unbelievable obstacles to become Torah giants. Yes, they built Yeshivas, wrote works of Torah scholarship and started Chassidic dynasties. I am not saying to forget them. Heaven forbid! These great Jews are our pillars of strength and their words are holy and pure. But here is my point: Their words are holy;their villages in Hungary are not!

Think about the message we are sending our youth when we glorify these foreign, anti-Semitic cities. If Radin is holy because the Chofetz Chaim lived there, then the Lower East Side is holy because of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. If Lublin and Volozhin are special because of the yeshivas they once had, then Lakewood and Baltimore are too! And if Munkatch and Bobov are special because of the Chassidus that grew there, then imagine how wonderful Boro Park, Williamsburgh, Monsey and Monroe are. Virtually- the Holy of Holies!!!

Let us be clear. These towns served a purpose and in many of them Torah grew. It is vital we hold on to that Torah -- never letting it go -- but at the same time, it is equally vital we stop glorifying the dirt and rubble these places became. Europe is not holy -- period! There is only one place that a Jew calls holy and it's not anywhere in the exile. Similarly, there is only one language that a Jew calls his own and it's not Yiddish. Sorry to disappoint you, but holding on to that language is yet another example of clinging to -- and exalting -- the world of the exiled, battered and punished Jew. Yiddish served a purpose, as did Ladino for our Spanish brothers and sisters. But those days are over. Our language is Hebrew and it is our obligation to study it and speak it to our children.

During holiday prayers we say: "Because of our sins we were exiled from our land." This means that the exile is a punishment. We must never forget that. No matter how you look at it, it is still jail. Jewish life was meant to be in Israel and only due to our sins did we end up in places like Poland, Germany and New York. Stop glorifying those places and focus all of your energy on the one and only place for Jewish life -- the Land of Israel. May we merit to meet there soon!

Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) is a group of people inside the Likud party who want to see Israel adopt a more Jewish character. Shmuel Sackett, together with Moshe Feiglin, is its cofounder. The Manhigut Yehudit website address is http://www.manhigut.org.

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WAS CHURCHILL A FRIEND OF THE JEWS AND ZIONISM? MORE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Posted by Daniel Mandel, June 26, 2007.

"Was Churchill A Friend Of The Jews And Zionism?" was posted by Daniel Mandel, May 21, 2007. To read it, click here. This is a followup to that essay and was published on History News Network (HNN) and is archived at
http://hnn.us/articles/39644.html

I thank those who have discussed my piece on HNN, " Was Churchill a friend of the Jews and Zionism?" published on 21 May. Putting aside all exchanges extraneous to the precise subject, three major challenges have emerged from readers:

  • Churchill wrote in 1920 an article in which he blamed atheistic Jews for Bolshevism, demonstrating that he was anti-Semitic

  • Whatever Churchill thought about helping the European Jews during the Second World War by bombing the railway lines and/or death camps, the bureaucracies of the US and UK were not interested in helping the Jews and Churchill effectively permitted the bureaucracies to have their way.

  • Was not the British Foreign Office, presided over by Anthony Eden, guilty of the decisions in Iraq that permitted the farhud against the Baghdadi Jews to take place in June 1941, and if so, how can one say that Churchill was not in ultimate authority and therefore not implicated?

1. This Churchill article attacks "Jewish domination" of Bolshevism, of which Churchill had rightly written the previous year that it "means in every country a civil war of the most merciless kind between the discontented, criminal, and mutinous classes on one hand and the law abiding on the other." At the same time, Churchill contrasted the Jewish role in Bolshevism to the "simpler, truer, and far more attainable goal" of Zionism, hoping to direct Jewish energies in that direction. Such a hope was hardly anti-Semitic, but the belief in Jewish domination of, as opposed to participation in, Bolshevism conveys, in the words of Churchill's biographer, William Manchester, "a sour tang of anti-Semitism."

Why Churchill briefly took this line (for he never recurred to it) is a matter for speculation. It has been suggested that this was the baleful influence of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which had exploded onto the international scene and was everywhere in the air at the time. My own view is that this was an uncharacteristic lapse. My evidence is that Churchill, who at this time was backing mightily the anti-Bolshevik military campaign of the White Russians under Anton Denikin, was not blind to the persecution of Jews under the ancién regime that had contributed to the Jewish gravitation to Bolshevism. Accordingly, he was far from being an uncritical supporter of Denikin. Churchill urged upon Denikin several liberal commitments, including demanding a written promise to suppress anti-Semitism in Russia. Which anti-Semite, furnished with an opportunity to harm Jews, would have done that?

2. I cannot see how the notion that Churchill permitted the bureaucracies to abandon the Jews to their fate at the hands of the Nazis can be inferred from what I wrote. I referred to the failure of the RAF to bomb Auschwitz stemming from the overriding of Churchill's directives on sometimes spurious logistical grounds. In other words, Churchill supported the idea, but the relevant bureaucracies did not. To understand this better, here is Gilbert's explanation of Churchill's reaction on 7 July 1944 to the news received that day from the Jewish Agency for Palestine that Jews were being gassed at Auschwitz:

The ... request of the Jewish Agency was, "that the railway line leading from Budapest to Birkenau, and the death camp at Birkenau and other places, should be bombed."

When Churchill was shown this request by Eden, he did something I've not seen on any other document submitted to Churchill for his approval: He wrote on it what he wanted done.

Normally, he would have said, "Bring this up to War Cabinet on Wednesday," or, "Let us discuss this with the Air Ministry." Instead, he wrote to Eden on the morning of 7 July: "Is there any reason to raise this matter with the Cabinet? Get anything out of the Air Force you can, and invoke me if necessary." I have never seen a minute of Churchill's giving that sort of immediate authority to carry out a request.

As Gilbert relates in Road to Victory (Volume 7 of his Churchill biography), Eden duly passed on Churchill's request for bombing the railway lines to the Air Ministry. Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Secretary of State for Air, replied that it "was out of our power" and that bombing the gas chambers could only be done by day, thus necessitating action by the US 8th Air Force, which conducted the daylight raids on the Third Reich. Churchill was not shown Sinclair's reply and the US War Department turned down the request.

In short, those who say that Churchill permitted the bureaucracies to have their way are mistaken. Much more to the point is that the bureaucracies were peopled with hostile and anti-Semitic officials. That this was so can be demonstrated also by other indices, of which the following is telling: one British Foreign Office official, Armine Dew, felt moved to minute on 1 September 1944, "In my opinion a disproportionate amount of time of this office is wasted on dealing with these wailing Jews." As Conor Cruise O'Brien comments on this passage in his The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism, "Officials don't write that sort of thing on files, if they feel that other officials are likely to think the comment in poor taste. The comment was in fact neither reproved nor exceptional; it represented the dominant official view."

3. Readers who argue that Churchill could and should have initiated timely British action to stop the farhud against the Baghdadi Jews have simply ignored the fact that, like other war leaders, Churchill was compelled to delegate many important decisions to diplomats and commanders in the field, of which the Iraqi situation in 1941 was a classic instance.

I said in my earlier piece that the defective judgment of the British ambassador in Baghdad, Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, and the military commander, General Archibald Wavell, were to blame, but some readers maintain that the Foreign Office ran affairs in Iraq and Churchill could and should have initiated timely British action to stop the farhud. This is inaccurate. Large discretion was invested in Cornwallis and Wavell and not even the Foreign Office took the fateful decisions that permitted it to occur.

The Foreign Office and Wavell believed in propitiating the pro-Nazi Rashid Ali al Kaylani and coming to terms with him rather than putting an end to his take-over of Iraq. If the decision had been left to either, that is probably what would have occurred. However, the efforts of the Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, the government of India (with its justified strategic anxieties about securing supply lines to India) and ultimately Churchill himself prevailed to override their objections and put into effect the operation to quash Rashid Ali's coup and establish control in Iraq which is recounted with panache by Somerset de Chair, a British intelligence officer who participated in it, in his book The Golden Carpet. This move and the decisions that flowed from it in London forced Rashid Ali's hand by compelling him to militarily oppose the British before German forces in the Mediterranean theatre could come to his aid. In this connection, Kedourie writes in Arabic Political Memoirs that "Churchill's hand is clear in this swift and decisive response."

However, even after Rashid Ali's coup had been suppressed, Wavell remained devoted to the idea that Britain should leave, to use contemporary parlance, a "light footprint" in restoring the pro-British administration. He also gave orders that, once communications had been reestablished with Cornwallis in Baghdad, that the latter would issue all directives on the ground. Cornwallis, like Wavell, had believed that Rashid Ali was a man who could be dealt with, that he represented Iraqis in some meaningful sense and that consequently firm British action would be resented by Iraqis and so tended to the improvisatory, weak policy favoured by Wavell. It was Cornwallis who, on behalf of Britain, approved the terms of the armistice with the internal security committee appointed by Rashid Ali, which included permitting the Iraqi military to retain its arms.

This clause, and others like it, was motivated by the flawed assumption that British interests could not be secured unless the fiction was established that Britain had not clashed with the Iraqi army but was there solely to reinstate the legitimate Iraqi government. This in turn led Cornwallis to insist that British troops not enter Baghdad or its environs. (The failure to station troop in Baghdad was even remarked upon in the Foreign Office as contrary to expectations and mistaken). Responsibility for the maintenance of law and order thereby devolved on Iraqi police and troops, but since they were "debauched by Nazi propaganda, and bereft of leadership, they ran amuck and themselves began the attacks on the Jews" (Kedourie). Until the Iraqi regent signed orders on 2 June to suppress the rioters, no one moved to end the killing, which claimed the lives of 180 Jews. De Chair with justice commented bitterly, "All who cared to defend their own belongings were killed, while eight miles to the west waited the eager British force which could have prevented all this. Ah, yes, but the prestige of our Regent would have suffered."

To reiterate, the vital sequence of British decisions that permitted the farhud to occur were made by Wavell and Cornwallis, not by Churchill -- and one could add, not even by Eden and the Foreign Office. This reflects the inescapable fact that fateful decisions on the ground in war-time are often made by local commanders and officials, not prime ministers and cabinets.

Dr. Daniel Mandel is a Fellow in History at Melbourne University and author of H.V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist (Routledge, 2004). His blog can be found at
http://hnn.us/blogs/3.html.

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DEMOCRACY: HARDLY PRACTICED; HAMAS BECOMES PRACTICAL; MEDIA BIAS; GUILT FELT BY INNOCENT ISRAELIS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 26, 2007.
In theory, informed adults select consumer products and elect officials to govern as the people would wish. Observing an in-flight movie without being distracted by its sound track, I was struck by how much adults are manipulated rather than informed.

You know that direct advertisers generate unnecessary desires. The movie was a comedy about ordinary people. Their dwelling was not ordinary. Room after room! All were equipped with similar and therefore largely useless furniture, all lamps aglow continuously. TV producers save time for the plot by not having the actors turn lights off and on, but I think that viewers get the habit and desire to over-consume power and housing. This is a form of indirect advertising for waste.

During the vacation, we walked past immense, single-family houses that recently displaced attractive but moderate ones. Show-offs! Many affluent homeowners set up second and third houses. The additional houses receive the same federal tax deduction on local real estate taxes and mortgage interest intended to encourage people to own their own home instead of renting. This causes some of the urban sprawl and the resulting car pollution and municipal expense for roads and extended sewage lines. Americans denounce the pollution that their way of life increases but mostly ignore the sprawl.

When the people demand an end to such abuses, lobbyists for the status quo overwhelm their representatives. American business is losing its competitiveness and is being drained by excessive lawsuits and excessive fines, but the Trial Lawyers Association lobbies mightily against reform.

In other respects, American government often reflects what business wants, in conflict with what the people want. You probably know that the Bush administration had the polluters' lobbyists write its environmental legislation. The latest Bush attack on the environment is to reinstitute last year's attempt to sell off millions of acres of wilderness. A great outcry last year thwarted the proposal. The wilderness had been accumulated as a national treasure reflecting the wonder and beauty of our continent-wide country. The rationale by a profligate Administration (not that Congress is less profligate) was that sell-offs would help balance the budget. Another trick is to legislatively or administratively redefine a food ingredient, but keep the label the same, so as to deceive the people. Thus the proposal to allow pasteurized almonds to be sold as "raw" on the label.

It takes a lot of abuse to rouse the people, and sometimes they are roused for the wrong cause (against national defense). What do the people know? Working longer hours, many people return home too tired for what TV broadcasters still call "the news." It is just enough news to misunderstand. Others read newspapers that slant into more detail. NY Times readers have a great depth of misunderstanding, more depth of it than the skimpy broadcasts that strive primarily to entertain. Every week, the readers absorb another lesson in why they should oppose Pres. Bush. It may not be the right reason, but it is their reason. They get steered in the direction of changes that exacerbate the problem. Wouldn't be dire, if it weren't a matter of survival against jihad.

We are supposed to pick among candidates, but the candidates are anything but candid. After winning, they still try to evade tough issues. Tough issues are ones whose solution requires voters to pay a price. The longer the evasion, the higher the price, until only a crisis sees a reform through.

Congress and more so the New York State legislature pass a flood of bills, each hundreds of pages long, on little notice. Few solons can claim to have read and studied them and none to have debated them. But they pass the hasty concoctions. Then come the inevitable complaints. Oh, exclaim the solons, as if not responsible for the new problems, we must do something about it.

One could go on in this vein. Point is, the system has several serious weaknesses that produce problems instead of solving them. The people are manipulated by lobbies and advertisers. Our democracy in some ways is more theoretical than actual.

"OCCUPATION" AS MYTHICAL CAUSE OF THE CONFLICT

Arab propaganda, in collusion with the radical-led "human rights" organizations and the media, has succeeded in keeping people from awareness of the Arab-Israel conflict's origin. They don't know of the decades of Arab terrorism and aggression that led to the 1967 war. All they know is that in 1967, Israel took over the Territories. All they hear after that is the false claim that this led to the present conflict, so therefore Israeli withdrawal from the Territories would end the conflict. They don't understand the Arab imperialism and Islamic jihad that initiated the conflict and still impels it.

The so-called human rights organizations ignore Arab terrorism against Israel, and mis-characterize the Arabs as victims of Israel.

Foreign groups and governments finance radical Israeli organizations that promote the concept that if Israel treated the Palestinian Arabs better, they would make peace. (I have seen cited no evidence for the concept but much against it.) It is the Arabs who treat Israel badly, not the reverse.

Most Israelis have come to see the bankruptcy of Oslo-like concessions to the Arabs (Gerald Steinberg in IMRA, 6/5). Israel is no occupier.

Most Jews have no idea of the collusion among the Arabs, "human rights" organizations, the media, and European governments against Zionism.

STINGS OPERATIONS AGAINST TERRORISM

They work (Ernest Sternberg, NY Sun, 6/7, Op.-Ed.).

HAMAS MOVES TOWARD PRACTICALITY

Hamas has just declared a willingness to accept a state in the Territories. It would not deem that a solution but a step to capturing Israel, too (IMRA, 6/5).

Hamas now is more dangerous, because it can accept more concessions.

I bet that if it did take over Israel, it would bring up the fact now conveniently ignored by those who ask Jews to "compromise" territory," that Palestine includes Jordan (whose detachment form the Mandate was Zionist compromise enough), and demand that it merge with Jordan. Islamists work, in stages. They don't upset people by presenting their total demands at the outset, though Hamas demanded more, publicly, than did Arafat. That was what was dangerous about Arafat. He was more able to deceive the West. Of course, the West and Israeli leaders, being anti-Zionist, want to be deceived by the Muslims.

ISRAELI MEDIA ADMIT THEIR BIAS

Several Israeli radio broadcasters admitted that they and news editors often slanted the news to promote the prior withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon. They wanted to get their sons out of combat. They were not apologetic for their breach of journalistic ethics and deceit of their audiences, and even though they admitted that the prior withdrawal led to the recent war and casualties.

Another journalist admitted that, just as the Right has claimed, the media protected PM Sharon from criticism earned by firing Cabinet Members who opposed his withdrawal of Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria. The media deliberately helped his policy because they favor it. There were no calls to punish the miscreants and reform the institution (Arutz-7, 6/5).

NY TIMES SHOWCASES ITS BIAS

The June 5 edition has an Op-Ed piece by "new historian" (i.e., falsifier of history in behalf of appeasement) Tom Segev. Mr. Segev claims, "I belong to a generation of Israelis who slowly but surely came to believe in peace." He insinuates that that the prior generation did not want peace. That is libel. Of course they wanted peace! They didn't start wars nor commit terrorism. The Arabs did; Israel was forced to defend itself. Mr. Segev aids his country's critics who ignore Arab imperialism and defame Israel as bellicose.

Segev also questions the wisdom of having taken over the Territories and the Old City. The Old City has the Jewish people's holiest site, and the Territories contain the historical core of the Jewish homeland, a major attraction for a Zionist return to the Jewish homeland. He questions this, because he is a "post-Zionist" and evinces little devotion to the Jewish religion. He doesn't understand the religious role in anchoring Jewish claims to the country and to its purpose in redeeming the country, though Jewish secularists do not object to Muslim religious claims to the country.

In questioning the wisdom of take-over, he confuses a worthy goal with weak policies that fell short of goal. After having weakened those policies, Segev and other secular leftists illogically cite policy failure as indicating poor goals.

In the June 9 edition, Steven Erlanger quotes leftists who call the "occupation" corrupting and who suggest "Israel must reach out to the majority of Palestinians who want a two-state solution." Leftists don't show why it is an occupation, what is corrupting about it, and where is the majority that want a solution. Polls show the Arabs want dominance. The Left's leaders are corrupt, as police investigations show.

PHILOSOPHY BEHIND FLOODING ISRAEL WITH ARABS

The euphemistic label, "right of return," is false. It isn't a right for people who tried to seize the country and commit genocide. It isn't a return for most of those who would flood in, because they never lived in Israel. Their parents and grandparents did, for the most part.

Dr. Aaron Lerner has his own term for the philosophy behind the alleged right: "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine." (IMRA, 6/6.)

U.S. WOULD HELP HAMAS

Israel's Gen. Yadlin said, "Hamas is demanding open passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip because it is interested in exporting the knowledge it has gained in Gaza to the West Bank." Then it would be able to fight Israel from there, too (IMRA, 6/6).

The US has demanded open passage between Gaza and Judea-Samaria, too.

ISRAELI CONFUSION OVER ROLE OF UNIFIL

UNIFIL's mandate is due to expire soon. Should it be continued? Israel: (1) Complains that UNIFIL does not patrol where Hizbullah tells it not to; but (2) Asks that UNIFIL be extended to the Syria-Lebanon border to stop arms smuggling and northern Lebanon. What a contradiction, asking that a group that failed in its current task be given two more like tasks! (Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA, 6/6).

Israel should recommend ending UNIFIL, so that nobody could pretend Hizbullah is being checked and so that UNO troops would not be in the way when Israel must fight Hizbullah, again. Israel should proclaim UNIFIL a failure, to open people's eyes to how counter-productive the UNO is. Alas, Israel goes along with pretenses: that the UNO tries to preserve peace, that the US is pro-Israel and trustworthy, and that the Arabs would make peace if only the right formula of concessions to them were found.

ISRAELI URGES ISRAEL TO ADMIT GUILT

A psychology professor at Tel Aviv U. who fashions himself an expert on terrorism suggests that Israel apologize to the harm it caused the Palestinian Arabs and accept millions of them. It would not undermine Israel's legitimacy, he (falsely) says. Instead he thinks if Israel stopped its "racism," the Arabs would make peace. Prof. Steven Plaut thinks it absurd to apologize to those who launched a genocidal attack, and instead the Arabs should apologize. The Arabs don't have legitimate grievances and terrorism is not caused by grievances (6/6).

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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ACCESS DENIED IS JUSTICE DENIED
Posted by Justice for Jonathan Pollard, June 26, 2007.

This article was written by Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman and was published in Legal Times 6/25/07 under the title "Give Pollard a Chance."

Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman are litigation partners in the New York office of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle. They specialize in white-collar criminal defense, securities litigation, and complex commercial litigation. Dora Straus, an associate of the firm, assisted with this article.

Richard Jones, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, issued a public apology on May 22 for stating that Jonathan Pollard, our pro bono client, had committed "treason," and that "[t]he fact that he wasn't executed is the mercy that [he] will receive" from the U.S. government.

The ambassador's statements had caused an uproar. Pollard delivered classified information to Israel, an ally of the United States. He was never charged with treason, which entails aiding an enemy of the United States. And Pollard's crime, espionage, was not a capital offense.

This incident raises the question of why he remains in prison after nearly 22 years. What harm did he actually cause the United States, and does it warrant continued incarceration?

To this day, about 40 pages of the court docket upon which Pollard was sentenced remain under seal, at the direction of the U.S. government. The sealed portions contain the government's projections, circa 1987, of possible harm from Pollard's conduct that might arise after sentencing. More than 20 years later, the government refuses to allow us, Pollard's security-cleared attorneys, access to these portions of the docket.

The likely explanation for this stonewalling is that the government's projections did not materialize. Importantly, this renders invalid the premise underlying Pollard's life sentence and the justification for keeping this man in custody.

On Nov. 21, 1985, Pollard was arrested on a charge of delivering classified information to Israel. He has been incarcerated since that day.

In 1986, pursuant to a written plea agreement, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage. Although he was never charged with intending to harm the United States, in 1987 he was sentenced to the maximum sentence, life in prison.

Before sentencing, then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger submitted a declaration to the court, specifying the claimed harm caused by Pollard. Portions were designated classified and placed under seal. Before sentencing, they were shown to Pollard and to his attorney. We, however, have never seen the classified portions of the Weinberger declaration.

The publicly available Victim Impact Statement filed by the government before sentencing describes the actual damage to the United States: "Mr. Pollard's unauthorized disclosures have threatened the U.S. [sic] relations with numerous Middle East Arab allies, many of whom question the extent to which Mr. Pollard's disclosures of classified information have skewed the balance of power in the Middle East. Moreover, because Mr. Pollard provided the Israelis virtually any classified document requested by Mr. Pollard's coconspirators, the U.S. has been deprived of the quid pro quo routinely received during authorized and official intelligence exchanges with Israel, and Israel has received information classified at a level far in excess of that ever contemplated by the National Security Council."

Although this was the actual harm caused by Pollard, we know from the public record that the sealed portions of the Weinberger declaration contain projections of possible future harm that might occur from Pollard's conduct. Pollard's lawyer noted to the court that the Weinberger declaration did not allege that the United States "has lost the lives or utility of any agents, that it has been obligated to replace or relocate intelligence equipment, that it had to alter communication signals, or that it has lost other sources of information, or that our technology has been compromised. Indeed, the memorandum only discusses the possibility that sources may be compromised in the future" (emphasis in original). The government responded by urging the court to consider "the reasoned concerns of a U.S. Cabinet member as to the real potential for further injury resulting from defendant's crimes" (emphasis added).

In sum, the thrust of the Weinberger declaration was to project what might happen, and to urge the court to sentence Pollard as if those projections had already happened. The court was evidently persuaded, as it sentenced Pollard to life in prison.

OVERLY AGGRESSIVE

There is real reason to believe that Weinberger's projections were overly aggressive. In a second declaration, Weinberger inappropriately described Pollard's crime as "treason." Four years later, the Justice Department admitted that it was "regrettable" that Weinberger had used the term "treason."

In 1992, addressing Pollard's habeas corpus petition, Judge Stephen Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit went much further. He called the government's misuse of the word "treason," in conjunction with other government misconduct at sentencing, a "fundamental miscarriage of justice requiring relief" from the life sentence. Williams was outvoted, 2-1, largely on the basis of procedural impediments to relief, such as the heavy burden of proof on habeas review.

Pollard's only remaining avenue of relief is executive clemency. If Weinberger's projections have failed to materialize, we can present a compelling argument for clemency because the premise underlying Pollard's life sentence will have been invalidated.

In 2000, we took Pollard's case pro bono. We applied for, and were granted by the Justice Department, the requisite security clearances needed to see the sealed portions of the Weinberger declaration. But despite our security clearances, the Justice Department refused to consent to our viewing the sealed portions, even under strict conditions of confidentiality. The department claimed we had no "need to know."

We filed a motion, asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to allow us access. We explained that we were applying for executive clemency from then-President Bill Clinton and that we needed to be able to address authoritatively what harm Pollard had actually caused. The government argued that we had no need to know the contents of the court docket. It stated that the sealed docket materials were irrelevant, intimating that they had lain dormant and unread by anyone since the sentencing. The district court refused to grant us access.

In the face of the government's insinuation that the materials had not been accessed since the 1987 sentencing, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) demanded that the Justice Department inform him whether any persons had been permitted access to the department's copies of the sealed materials since the 1987 sentencing, and if so, provide the details of the access. The Justice Department admitted that between 1993 and 2001, it had unilaterally allowed access to its copies of the sealed materials on at least 24 separate occasions. None of those instances of access were by anyone representing Pollard. It was apparent from the dates that access had been allowed precisely at times when initiatives were under way to obtain executive clemency for Pollard -- clemency that the Justice Department has consistently opposed.

Since, by law, no one could see the materials without a "need to know," the Justice Department conveniently determined on at least 24 occasions that someone had such a need to know because the purpose was to oppose clemency for Pollard.

In 2001, we moved for reconsideration based upon this newly discovered information. Surely, if opposing clemency provided government personnel with a need to know the contents of the documents, seeking clemency should provide security-cleared defense counsel with a corresponding need. Basic fairness mandated such a result.

In 2003, our motion for reconsideration was denied. We then appealed to the D.C. Circuit.

NO JURISDICTION?

At oral argument on our appeal in 2005, Judge David Sentelle sua sponte expressed the unprecedented view that the D.C. Circuit lacked jurisdiction to allow us access to the sealed docket materials because our motivation for access was in conjunction with a contemplated clemency application and the separation of powers would somehow be violated were the court to allow us to see materials in its docket.

The documents in question were created as part of a judicial process, are governed by a court-issued protective order, and were filed with the court under seal pursuant to that protective order. The protective order expressly contemplates that, in the future, additional persons may obtain access to the sealed materials. And, while jurisdiction is not conferred by stipulation, it is noteworthy that neither the district court below, nor the government, our adversary, had ever expressed the slightest concern about jurisdiction. To the contrary, the government had expressly conceded that there was jurisdiction.

Nevertheless, in a 2-1 decision, Judges Sentelle and Karen LeCraft Henderson of the D.C. Circuit ruled in 2005 that it had no jurisdiction to consider our motion for access to the sealed docket, because the doctrine of separation of powers provides the executive branch with sole jurisdiction to decide who may have access to court docket materials if the access is to make a clemency application.

A dissenting opinion by Judge Judith Rogers vigorously rejected the reasoning of the majority, stating "Neither Pollard's counsel's request to the district court nor the court's potential granting of it ... poses interference with the President's clemency power" and therefore implicates no separation-of-powers concerns. In the absence of any such concerns, the majority's ruling placed the district court "in the untenable position of lacking jurisdiction over motions that relate to documents that were filed with it and over which it has continuing control." The dissent further noted that because this case does not involve the typical request for access to classified documents within the executive branch's possession, there was no concern that the court's exercising jurisdiction could open the floodgates to similar motions.

The Supreme Court denied certiorari.

FACT, NOT SURMISE

The courts have thus left the decision whether to allow us access to the materials squarely with the executive branch.

To make a serious and effective application for clemency based on fact and not on surmise, we should be permitted to see the sealed docket materials. This is not a discovery request. We are asking to see only documents previously shown to Pollard and his counsel. We have the appropriate security clearances, and we have the "need to know." The Justice Department has never questioned our integrity.

If, as we anticipate, Weinberger's projections did not materialize, the appropriateness of clemency after 22 years in prison will be manifest.

Basic fairness mandates that we be provided access to these materials so that we can make a fact-based presentation in support of clemency for a man sentenced to life in prison on the basis of projections of harm that, most likely, have never come to pass and never will.

Our system of justice is predicated on the constitutional protection of checks and balances, so that those in political control are prevented from wielding the authority of government to deny justice to those who are disliked or unpopular. It is the role of the judiciary to protect the individual against prosecutorial overreaching. Unfortunately, the judiciary did not fulfill that role in this case, and the executive branch remains unchecked.

Where a life sentence is, in all likelihood, unfairly premised on projections that, two decades later, have not materialized, justice requires access to the sentencing docket materials by security-cleared counsel. We need to be able to make a viable clemency application to right the wrong of Pollard's continued imprisonment.

Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman are litigation partners in the New York office of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle. They specialize in white-collar criminal defense, securities litigation, and complex commercial litigation. Dora Straus, an associate of the firm, assisted with this article.

SEE ALSO:

*Give Pollard a Chance -- Legal Times -- [PDF of the original publication of the above article]

The Executive Summary of the Pollard Case -- by Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2002/051502.htm

Don't be Fooled by Ron Olive -- By Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2006/112906.htm

The Court Case Page (legal filings, documents, articles)
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/court2000.htm

Contact Justice for Jonathan Pollard by email at Justice4jp@gmail.com

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CONGRATS HAMAS: AN OPINION PIECE INTO THE NY TIMES AND WASH POST ON THE SAME DAY IS UNPRECEDENTED
Posted by Naomi Ragen, June 25, 2007.

Journalist Tom Gross points out in an article in the National Review Online that Hamas scored a publicity coup, getting its propaganda into both the NY Times and the Washington Post on the same day as an editorial! Wow, what do we need Al Jazeera for? Tom also points out what the Times and Post forgot to mention about Hamas. Sort of like letting Goebbels have his say, without mentioning the activities of the Nazi Party, wouldn't you say? And these are the "newspapers of record" of the free world? Boy, are we ever in trouble.

Tom Gross' article appeared June 24, 2007.

Naomi

Congratulations Hamas: Getting an opinion piece into the NY Times and Washington Post on the same day is unprecedented

While Hamas was still executing people in Gaza last week, including civilians, the New York Times, Washington Post, and the NY Times-owned International Herald Tribune all rushed to promote the propaganda of one of the world's most murderous terrorist groups.

Getting an opinion piece into the Times and the Post on the same day is unprecedented. Congratulations Hamas!

Even Reuters acknowledges the achievement: Hamas scores publicity coup in U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Shunned by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, the Islamist group Hamas scored a publicity coup this week by defending its policies in Gaza with opinion pieces in two of the country's most influential newspapers on the same day.

The New York Times and The Washington Post gave space to Ahmed Yousef, a senior Hamas figure, on Wednesday to argue that the United States should not interfere in Gaza, where Hamas took control after six days of bloody fighting against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah fighters.

Yousef is senior political adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, who became Palestinian prime minister after elections last year. He is now contesting his dismissal by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who formed a new government in the West Bank after Hamas took over Gaza.

Hamas leaders rarely have access to major U.S. media to express their views unfiltered, and getting an opinion piece into the Times and the Post on the same day appeared unprecedented.

Here is what the New York Times and the Washington Post didn't put on their editorial page. This is what Ha'aretz reports
(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873758.html) this weekend:

Hamas was not using a random hit list. Every Hamas patrol carried with it a laptop containing a list of Fatah operatives in Gaza, and an identity number and a star appeared next to each name. A red star meant the operative was to be executed and a blue one meant he was to be shot in the legs -- a special, cruel tactic developed by Hamas, in which the shot is fired from the back of the knee so that the kneecap is shattered when the bullet exits the other side. A black star signaled arrest, and no star meant that the Fatah member was to be beaten and released. Hamas patrols took the list with them to hospitals, where they searched for wounded Fatah officials, some of whom they beat up and some of whom they abducted.

Aside from assassinating Fatah officials, Hamas also killed innocent Palestinians, with the intention of deterring the large clans from confronting the organization. Thus it was that 10 days ago, after an hours-long gun battle that ended with Hamas overpowering the Bakr clan from the Shati refugee camp -- known as a large, well-armed and dangerous family that supports Fatah -- the Hamas military wing removed all the family members from their compound and lined them up against a wall. Militants selected a 14-year-old girl, two women aged 19 and 75, and two elderly men, and shot them to death in cold blood to send a message to all the armed clans of Gaza.

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.

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A 3-STATE SOLUTION? WHAT A GROTESQUE AND STUPID IDEA
Posted by Boris Celser, June 25, 2007.

The article below is such a grotesque and stupid analysis that it hardly deserves comment. It is just disengagement propaganda disguised as policymaking.

Why not a 4-state solution?

Two Palestinian states, one in Gaza and the other in the West Bank.

Two Jewish states, one anti-settler, one for the settlers. The settlers, smaller in number, would be the equivalent of the Gazans, since the Israeli media and most politicians consider them pariahs, and they have little in common with mainstream Israelis, just like those in Gaza and the West Bank.

The settlers can then demand the whole Judea and Samaria (as they should), and launch Kassam attacks against the moderate Palestinian state in the West Bank. Of course, in this case the world would not deny the West Bankers the right to defend themselves against the savage settlers, who will also want Hebron to be divided, so they can set up their capital there.

The bloody Americans would of course support a Abbas-Olmert alliance to crush the enemy, considering them the Jewish version of the Taliban. Olmert would then visit MJ Rosenberg and the Israel Policy Forum, and declare that as far as the illegal settler state is concerned, he is not "tired of fighting, tired of wining, tired of defeating his enemies", because destroying these enemies, unlike the other ones, will bring him glory and power.

The settler state would have to rely on the kidnapping of Jews from the main Zionist state, in order to obtain the release of its prisoners and tax revenues. Of course, in this case the main Zionist state would cut off electricity and water to the settler state, because it is not a partner for peace.

The Olmert government, to avoid being accused of killing its own people, would arm, train, and pay terrorists from the bad mean Gaza Palestinian state to attack the Jewish settler state. It would transport them there, ensuring contiguity from Gaza to the West Bank, after all.

Eventually the settler state would succumb to the joint Arab-Israeli effort to wipe it out, leaving a 3-state solution in place. But not for long, because the Gazans would be considered heroes by the Palestinian West Bankers for their role in the fighting against the settlers. They would join forces and proclaim a common Palestinian state on temporary borders, which would result in a two-state solution. This new stronger Palestinian state, immediately recognized by the world, would launch attacks on the remaining Jewish state, embued with all the confidence of having destroyed with one of the two Jewish states. The purpose is to create a one-state solution" Arab Palestine. The remaining Jewish state, now settlerless, would collapse out of total demoralization.

My question is: Why is the Jerusalem Post sending this exclusive to registered users only? Are the non-registered users smarter? Apparently so.

This essay is called "The three-state solution?" and was written by Jacob Savage, a graduate fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. It appeared in today's Jerusalem Post.

Separating Gaza from the West Bank makes more historical sense than forming a unified Palestinian nation. (AP)

The Hamas takeover of Gaza this month revealed deep fissures within the Palestinian cause. The Americans, the Israelis and the Palestinians all might like to think these divisions are temporary, but the reality is not so simple. To a large extent, residents of Gaza and the West Bank are two different peoples, and the idea of a three-state solution -- Israel, plus a Hamas-run Gaza and a Fatah-governed West Bank -- makes historical sense.

Gaza was, starting in the early 1800s, culturally dominated by neighboring Egypt. Though Gaza was part of the Ottoman Empire, a large number of its residents were Egyptians (and their descendants) who had fled political turmoil. The West Bank, on the other hand, became culturally and economically linked with Jordan after the kingdom's founding in 1921. Unlike Gaza, the West Bank always has had a prosperous Christian minority, which served as an important moderating influence.

The two regions' experiences after the establishment of Israel in 1948 also were quite different. In 1950, Jordan annexed the West Bank, granted its residents citizenship and created a bureaucratic and legal infrastructure that helped connect the West Bank with the rest of the Arab world.

The simultaneous Egyptian occupation of Gaza, however, was both careless and brutal. Gazans remained stateless and were forbidden to leave the strip. Egypt never created a Gazan civil service, placing Egyptians in charge of all civil and military posts.

Even today, the two economies are almost entirely disconnected. Gaza wallows in a poverty that has led to political and religious radicalization. In 2006, Gaza's unemployment rate was more than 35 percent, compared to 18% in the West Bank. With the exception of the joint distribution of foreign aid and political patronage, the two regions have very little to tie them together.

However, the most important difference is the way that refugees who fled or were expelled from Israel in 1948 have assimilated. More than a million refugees and their descendants live in the Gaza Strip, making up more than 84% of the total population -- and nearly 50% still live in camps.

The much larger West Bank integrated its refugees far more successfully. Only 26% of refugees are in camps there -- representing less than 10% of the total population. Because they have created familial and economic ties to the West Bank, they are more rooted and amenable to political compromise.

It is conceivable, for instance, that West Bank Palestinians would give up the refugees' right of return in exchange for Israeli territorial concessions. Yet many Gazans, who have lived in refugee camps their whole lives, are tragically, if understandably, unwilling to accept such a compromise.

The idea that national identities remain static is a late 20th century fiction. Palestinian identity has been in flux since the Ottoman period, and there is no reason to think that it is now frozen in place. Indeed, after receiving Jordanian citizenship in 1950, many residents of the West Bank came to see themselves as Jordanian. Yet following the Israeli conquest in the 1967 Six Day War, they quickly adopted a panPalestinian identity.

All that was needed for this identity to shift was a single generation severed from Jordanian power, influence and institutions. (Acknowledging that his ostensible subjects would never again view themselves as Jordanians, King Hussein renounced all claims to the West Bank in 1988.) A similar division has existed for some time between Gaza and the West Bank. As a result of Israeli travel restrictions, an entire generation of Gazans has never set foot in the West Bank, and vice versa.

In light of the current political schism between the West Bank and Gaza, Yasser Arafat's vision of a united Palestine seems more remote than ever. It is finally time to seriously consider a threestate solution.

Israel would be able to treat Gaza as a pariah state and respond to Hamas's rocket attacks accordingly. Israel could then await Gaza's further descent into a quarantined chaos or the unlikely emergence of a more moderate political leadership.

West Bank Palestinians also could profit from such an arrangement. Indeed, the Israelis are already considering giving Fatah the nearly halfbillion dollars in tax revenues they've been withholding. Once detached from Gaza, the West Bank leadership probably could force Israel to dismantle roadblocks and evacuate settlements. Following a perverse logic, the benefits might even extend to residents of Gaza. Freed from West Bank hegemony, Gazans could live in whatever Islamist dystopia they choose.

A bifurcated Palestine ultimately might facilitate a temporary solution to the conflict: peace between Israel and the West Bank, continued fighting between Israel and Gaza. This is an admittedly partial solution, but it is better than the status quo of no solution at all. (Los Angeles Times)

Boris Celser lives in Canada. Contact him at celser@telusplanet.net

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COMMEMORATING THE ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE ABDUCTION OF ISRAELI SOLDIER GILAD SHALIT
Posted by Rachel Kapen, June 25, 2007.

A Name is Better than Oil

There is a Hebrew proverb: tov shem mishemen tov -- a name is better than oil, which actually can be interpreted, and often is, to mean the reputation of a person. However, the first meaning is just as valid. The name a person is given at birth accompanies him throughout his entire life and may have an effect on it for good or bad.

Jews in general and Israelis in particular see the TANACH -- the Hebrew bible -- as the best source of names for their children and barring the instances when naming a child after a deceased grandfather or other close family member, they prefer to choose a name which implies bravery. Such is the name Ehud which I chose for our son, albeit, the reason was actually to make it sound similar to his paternal grandmother for whom he was named. Ehud ben Gera, son of Gera, was a biblical hero from the Book of Judges. His heroism was tempered with cunning. He was left-handed. He came to bring a gift of offering to Eglon, the king of Moab and the enemy of the Israelites at that time. His left-handedness was relevant to the method he used to outwit the oppressive king, kill him, and thus save his people.

The parents of the two most important people responsible nowadays for the security of the State of Israel named them Ehud, Ehud Olmert the Prime Minster and Ehud Barak former Chief of Staff of the IDF, former Prime Minister, and currently the Defense Minister. However, it is also the name that was given to one of the two Israeli IDF soldiers, namely, Ehud Goldwasser, abducted by the terrorists of Hizbullah. Let us hope and pray that the legacy of their ancestor and namesake Ehud ben Gera from the Hebrew tribe of Binyamin -- the courage and cunning which he possessed and which enabled him to save his oppressed people thousands of years ago -- will be transferred to his modern namesakes Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak and inspire them to bring back the three IDF abductees real soon and in good health.

Contact Rachel Kapen at skapen285466MI@comcast.net

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IRAN SPEAKS THE TRUTH, UN SPEAKS THE TRUTH, HAMAS SPEAKS THE TRUTH. YOU NEED TO LISTEN
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 25, 2007.

When Iran speaks the truth, and the UN speaks the truth, and Hamas speaks the truth, it behooves you to listen.

The Hamas putsch in Gaza was done at the behest of Iran. Iran said so. they are not joking about their commitment to wipe Israel off the map. They created Hezbollah 25 years ago to do just that, and now they are co-opting the leadership of Hamas. Now there's an 'axis of evil' for you.

When the UN says something nice about Israel, you need to take note. Israel is pouring food and water and electricity and medicine in to the Gaza Strip....at no charge...to prevent a humanitarian crisis. None the less, Hamas is causing the crisis.

And when Hamas tells you that you and Madame Secretary Rice look like absolute fools as you pour money and weapons in to the hands of terrorists, pretending that the terrorists will not use their new-found lucre for terrorism.....well, I suggest that you take their criticism to heart.

The American strategy for peace in the middle east is a failure. A complete failure.

when a strategy fails over and over and over, it is time to take a look at it with a critical eye....an eye toward revising it, re-evaluating it, replacing it.

Here are some concrete suggestions:

a.) Stop pouring money in to Fatah's and Abbas' pockets. Have you forgotten all those emails I sent you telling you that Fatah terrorists moonlight for Hamas? The money and weapons will end up in Hamas hands, one way or another. They will be turned against the USA and Israel.

b.) Stop pretending that Abbas is a moderate. He is simply Arafat in a suit and tie. Moreover, he has no power now and is rapidly having less than no power as time progresses. And every time that you praise him and call him a moderate, his stature and power and influence in the West Bank is reduced....because he looks like a lackey for the Great Black Satan (USA) and the Little Black Satan (Israel).

c.) Stop demanding that Israel exercize restraint. Israel's restraint is seen by the terrorists as weakness. Weakness promts the psychotic murderer to murder more....the easier the target, the more the desire to strike at it.

d.) Start supporting Israel directly, and in the UN, for a major military assault on the Gaza Strip.

These news items come from Jerusalem Newswire (http://www.jnewswire.com).

david ml

Iran admits aiding Hamas, Hizballah
by Staff Writer
Sunday, June 24, 2007

While Fatah officials have accused Iran of carefully orchestrating Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza, Hamas leaders deny any connection.

Palestinian Authority Intelligence Chief Tawfiq Tirawi accused Teheran of funding Hamas and training hundreds of their gunmen. He told a news conference that the Hamas leadership planned the takeover in a meeting in Syria a month before the battle for Gaza began.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed the allegations of Hamas-Iran cooperation as 'baseless fabrication,' and denied Hamas fighters had been trained in Iran.

The chairman of Iran's Supreme National Security Council admitted to Newsweek magazine, however, that Iran indeed supports Hamas.

"We do support Hizballah and Hamas; that is right. But these two are not terrorist groups. These are the two groups that are defending their own land," Ali Larijani said in an interview published on Friday.

Larijani scoffed at American, Israeli and international efforts to bolster Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Have the Americans seen any miracle coming out of the support they have given to Abbas?" he asked.

Tirawi, meanwhile, warned that Hamas is stockpiling weapons in the West Bank and might try to target Palestinian government installations there.


UN official says Israel doing all it can for Gaza
Headline News
Sunday, June 24, 2007 by Staff Writer

In a rare commendation from one of the many UN agencies established specifically to deal with the "Palestinian issue," John Ging, director of UNWRA (United Nation Relief and Works Agency) operations in Gaza, admitted that Israel is doing everything possible to prevent a humanitarian crisis in the Hamas-controlled coastal strip.

"The Israelis are very committed to stopping such a crisis from happening," Ging told Israel's Ynet news portal on Saturday. "The problem is on the Palestinian side, or lack there of."

Ging said he is coordinating with Israel on how to get supplies into Gaza via one of the several border crossing terminals without allowing Hamas to exploit the situation.

He recognized that "Israel, naturally, can't accept Hamas being there," but stressed that some solution must be found to aid the people, who "really are just stuck in the middle."


Hamas: Thanks for arming us, America!
Headline News
Sunday, June 24, 2007 by Staff Writer

Hamas has successfully transformed itself from a fringe terrorist group into a powerful military machine thanks largely to the generous financial aid the United States has given to the Palestinians, according to one of the group's co-founders.

"Two years ago, one bullet in Gaza cost around $4 -- now it would cost 35 cents. The American aid money has been translated into weapons. Thank you, America!" said former Palestinian Authority foreign minister Mahmoud al-Zahar in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel.

Despite imposing a crushing economic embargo on direct aid to the Palestinian Authority since Hamas' electoral victory last year, America and Europe have continued pour funds into humanitarian operations in Judea, Samaria and Gaza at an unprecedented rate. Zahar is not the first Palestinian official to admit the bulk of that money is used for guns, not bread.

On top of that, Hamas took possession of a massive cache of US-supplied arms when it defeated its rivals in Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah-aligned security forces two weeks ago in Gaza. The Bush Administration decided to militarily bolster Abbas in order to curb Hamas' growing strength, but the Iranian-trained terrorist militia easily overran their CIA-trained Fatah foes in a stunning three-day assault.

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

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LEVERAGE IN HAMASTAN
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 25, 2007.

This article was written by David Horovitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post. To my mind, the most interesting thing about it is that the usually timid and conciliatory Horovitz advocates bartering the services Israel has continued to suppy its sworn enemy instead of giving them to the Gazan terror thugs for free.

That's certainly better than being totally stupid. But Horovitz seems to think in terms of leverage. Leverage and subtlety and hard bargaining are all good tactics when both sides want to negotiate and actually end hostilities. Hamas (openly) and Fatah (quietly) don't want to negotiate. They are dedicated to their mission: to destroy Israel and then go on to take over the West. When they are losing badly and someone offers them a deal, they'll take it -- on a temporary basis. They make deals but they don't keep them, even when a reasonable person would think they've gotten everything they need to administer a thriving economy and a contented citizenry. When they recover, they go back to carrying out their mission. What's worse -- the "innocent" Arab civilians are, for the most part, just as bloodthirsty and gungho for massacring Jews as their leaders.

I liked one of the comments made by a reader of the article. "Not Jewish" from the USA said:

The Jews are in a death fight with these vile Gazan heathens. Israel needs to destroy Hamas, retake Gaza and eliminate the Islamic threat to her existence and citizens.

To me that's a cleaner and more effective solution. It's going to come to it anyways -- and the longer Israel delays, the bloodier it will be. Israel should stop pretending -- as Condi, the Bush wacko does -- that Israel can make peace with the "good" terrorist, Abbas. A terrorist is a terrorist and it is no more comforting to be killed by a "moderate" terrorist than a "bad" terrorist.

Let's be sure we've got this straight. Hamas has taken over the Gaza Strip, with a display of ruthless brutality toward its own people. We've seen Palestinians shoved off the roofs of buildings, by other Palestinians. We've seen Palestinians with literally dozens of bullets pumped into their heads, by other Palestinians. Palestinians murdered in front of their families, by other Palestinians. Palestinians murdered as they waited, desperate and helpless, to get out of the Strip, by other Palestinians.

Hamas's gunmen were gleefully prepared to mow down their own people. They even looted the home of the very icon of the Palestinian cause, Yasser Arafat, stealing his Nobel Prize -- terrorists, farcically, snaffling the globe's most prestigious peace award from the late laureate who had so signally and duplicitously thwarted the possibility of peace. But the prime target of their murderous aspirations, of course, remains our reviled Zionist state.

Israel, to Hamas, has no right to draw breath. It must be destroyed. There can be no Jewish sovereignty here. Young Palestinian minds must be educated to murder us infidels at any and every opportunity.

Now Hamas may have cemented its hold on Gaza via the resort to barbarism, but it was the Palestinian public, of its own free will last year, that entrusted Hamas with the task of parliamentary governance.

Yes, the people wanted to be rid of the corrupt Fatah. But they knew everything about Hamas's uncompromising and violent fundamentalism, and they were not deterred. And it was that other duly elected leader of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, who chose to enter a full governing partnership with this murderous outfit.

Yet this ballot-box-rooted and now bloodily culminated rise of Islamic extremist military rule on our doorstep in Gaza is being hailed in some international circles as enabling a positive transformation. Abbas, who legitimized Hamas politically, who chose not to confront Hamas terrorism militarily, whose loyalists have often outdone Hamas in carrying out acts of terrorism and whose American-trained and American-armed forces failed to put up a fight against Hamas in Gaza -- thus, incidentally, providing Hamas with great additional quantities of weaponry -- has been rewarded with a renewal of Western aid. This despite the fact that some of the international funding will obviously be conveyed to Gaza, as he maintains the fiction of PA rule there, where it will be used, for instance, to pay salaries in the very education apparatuses that are so systematically teaching hatred of Israel and the West.

At the same time, Israel is now being called upon to ensure that the people of Gaza survive the Hamas takeover that they themselves helped effect. Israel is called upon to insist on delivering water and gas and food to a Gaza dominated by a leadership that doesn't merely fail to coordinate the receipt of such assistance but emphatically denies the very fact of our existence. Israel is called upon to keep supplying electricity to Gaza in the certain knowledge that such electricity will be used, among other purposes, for the manufacture of Kassam rockets and other weaponry to try and kill Israelis. And Israel, of course, does feel a moral obligation to help ordinary Palestinians in need.

Israel is also now called upon to put aside the inconvenient issue of the Hamas takeover of Gaza and the consequent emboldening of its fundamentalist ideology and that of its key state champion, the would-be nuclear, Israel-eliminating Iran. Israel is called upon to set aside, for a moment, the daily escalating threat posed by Hamas's full control of what is now an overt arms supply route via the Philadelphi Corridor from Egypt. And instead it is being urged -- and its government is ostensibly endorsing the idea -- to seize the moment to advance substantive peace talks with the suddenly tough-talking but hitherto demonstrably impotent Abbas over the fate of the next slice of territory Hamas is eyeing, the West Bank.
 

HERE, IN the words of Giora Eiland, the former national security adviser, is how Israel should be grappling with Hamastan and its repercussions.

First, suggests Maj.-Gen. (res.) Eiland, Israel might take the elementary step of setting out its immediate interests in Gaza, which he lists as 1) an end to Kassam attacks, 2) a prevention of the further arming of Hamas, mainly via the Philadelphi Corridor, and 3) a deal for the return of the captured Gilad Schalit.

Next, he recommends, Israel should recognize that it enjoys a certain leverage to try and achieve those interests. Hamas's coup damaged the Palestinians, all Palestinians, he says, "more than they understand. It broke two iron-clad rules -- no civil war ("the Palestinians had always stepped back from the brink") and no differentiation between Gaza and the West Bank.

Furthermore, as the sole address in Gaza now, he notes, Hamas has a lot more to lose than in the recent past.

To that end, the last thing Israel should be doing is throwing away its leverage by declaring that it recognizes that it must provide humanitarian aid, electricity and water, and must open the border crossings and so on. Rather, on the declarative level, it must say that "Gaza is an enemy political entity, in its activity and its orientation."

As a consequence, Israel should further say that it must insist on keeping border crossings closed in order to stop arms smuggling, and that it is prepared to attack not only Kassam cells but also Gaza government targets and supply routes in order to improve security for Israel. This would prompt international protests, Eiland recognizes. "But Israel's response would be, 'Well, that's how we have to act because we are up against Hamas.'" However, Eiland goes on, Israel should also declare that "if our three immediate interests are met, we'll be able to step back."

The guiding principle, Eiland stresses, is that it is not in Israel's interest to maintain supplies to Gaza, "so why do it for nothing? Why give up on our interests? If we give Gaza all it needs, and Hamas is able to keep firing and keep rearming, we are left with no leverage."

How would this unfold practically? "Israel makes clear, discreetly if necessary, that if there is a complete halt to Kassam attacks from a given date -- and it doesn't matter who is behind such attacks, because Hamas is the sole government address now -- it will slowly open borders and allow supplies. But this stops if a single Kassam is fired."

Similarly, Eiland goes on, "Israel makes clear that the current situation on the Philadelphi Corridor is intolerable and that it may need to retake and widen the corridor to hundreds of meters. This would require the razing of houses, leaving people homeless. The world would protest. And Israel would say, 'Okay, we'll be prepared to pull back if the border is respected.'"
 

IF EILAND'S recommendations, in our phone conversation, have thus far been delivered in his familiar sober tones, his voice ratchets up a few notches when he speaks of the wider political situation. "I just don't understand this talk of diplomatic options," he says. "What are they on about? Any political deal has to apply to the West Bank and Gaza. But what can Abu Mazen do about Gaza? The last thing Israel should do is deal with Abu Mazen in the West Bank and reconcile to Hamas in Gaza.

"Abu Mazen and [Prime Minister] Olmert say they want renewed political talks," he goes on, "but how can that work? Israel will say it wants a permanent accord, but security issues have to be resolved first. Abu Mazen will say there's no chance of resolving security issues, not even in the West Bank, until there's a permanent accord. It's a dead-end."

Prime minister Ariel Sharon's national security adviser, now based at Tel Aviv University's INSS (Institute for National Security Studies), does not anticipate Hamas replicating its Gaza success in the West Bank in the near future, though he doesn't marginalize its strength there and doesn't doubt its ambitions. "Fatah is stronger in the West Bank. The West Bank is more secular and more modern than Gaza. There isn't equivalent popular support for Hamas. And Israel, of course, is deployed there and prevents Hamas gearing up in the way it did in Gaza."

In terms of the specific dangers posed by Hamas's Gaza takeover, Eiland's main concern is over the weapons flowing in, and the fighters going in and out -- including for Iranian training, which proved so effective against Fatah.

As it stands, he says, the 50-100-meter-wide Philadelphi Corridor cannot be effectively sealed even if Israel were to redeploy there. "It should be at least 500 meters wide," he says, to thwart the tunnelers, and Israel should clear such a space, which would involve knocking down houses. "That sounds tough. But we need to create a new reality. To say, 'I'm here and I'm staying.' And to be prepared to rethink if the Egyptians and/or an international force are demonstrably ready to police it instead."

Indeed, Eiland reveals that after disengagement from Gaza had been announced, but before it was implemented, when Israel was insisting it would stay in the Philadelphi Corridor unless the security situation enabled its departure and the international community was pressing it to leave, an international proposal was put to Israel to resolve the issue. Under this proposal, international forces, recognizing that the corridor needs widening and effective policing, would have done the job instead of Israel. "They said, 'If you leave Philadelphi, we'll destroy the homes near the existing route and we'll rehouse those people in Gush Katif."

Of course, no such agreement was reached. "And after we'd left Gaza, in that interim period when we were still holding Philadelphi, defense minister Shaul Mofaz suddenly announced that Israel was prepared to give up Philadelphi." At that point, of course, says Eiland, the international community recognized that if Israel was ready to go anyway, there was no need to pay any such price to get the IDF out.

This, says Eiland, was symptomatic of Israel's mishandling of Gaza. "Where disengagement is concerned, we closed our eyes to reality," he charges. Sharon decided not only that Israel was going, but that it would do so one-sidedly. "He didn't give the Palestinian relative moderates the chance to take control. This strengthened Hamas and prevented any political chances."

The debate over leaving Gaza, he laments, was "so superficial" -- something, as he has stressed often in the past, that typifies the decision-making process here. "What happens is that it is recognized that a certain situation is no good. Someone has an idea. And it's a case of "yes" or "no." Maybe there are other options? Well, they're not discussed."

In the case of Gaza, "Sharon announced at [the] Herzliya [strategy conference in December 2003] that leaving is good for us. That meant right away we'd get nothing for it. If you tell your neighbor you're throwing your fridge onto the trash, he's hardly going to offer to buy it from you. We decided we were leaving Gaza. We declared it had no value and so we gave it up for nothing in return. We sacrificed all leverage."

That is precisely what Eiland fears Israel risks doing again now with regard to easing Hamas rule. "And amazingly," he goes on, voice rising again, if it hadn't been for the rude awakening of the war last summer, and the collapsed credibility of unilateralism, "we'd be doing the same thing right now in the West Bank. Unbelievable."

The argument at the heart of Kadima's thinking, he notes, was that the security barrier represents Israel's best line of defense, and that troops should be pulled back to that line, unilaterally if necessary.

But the consequences of withdrawing unilaterally "would be terrible," he argues, and offers one small example. "A couple of weeks ago, you'll recall, the Israel Airports Authority wanted to shut Ben-Gurion Airport because pirate radio signals were interfering" with communications between the flights and the control tower. By extension, "if you install radio transmitters in Ramallah, you can close down the airport. So if Israel were to leave the West Bank without an agreement, before Iran even brings in the weapons, a few innocent radio transmitters will play havoc with normal life here."

"We are here and they are there," he quotes, witheringly, from the unilateralist mantra. "It's childish. And yet," he notes, "that's the platform that won Kadima more votes than any other party in the last elections."

Eiland's stillborn initiative

Giora Eiland himself, when still heading the National Security Council under Sharon three years ago, advocated leaving Gaza only as the first stage of an internationally sponsored multi-stage negotiated program leading to a permanent accord.

Specifically, Egypt would have been asked to contribute to the resolution of the conflict by allocating a 20-kilometer by 30-kilometer (230 sq. miles) rectangle of sparsely populated Sinai territory on its side of the border to allow Gaza reasonable space to grow and flourish. Conjoined with today's Strip, this enlarged Palestinian Gaza, boosted by overseas investment and support, was intended to feature a major city, major airport and major seaport -- and to come to serve as an attractive potential destination for Palestinian refugees seeking a return to the new homeland. In return for its territorial generosity, Egypt would have been compensated with a strip of land perhaps a third of the size from the Israeli western Negev, with its president receiving the adulation of a grateful world.

The initiative also envisaged that tunnels from Jordan under the Negev to that new strip of Egypt, and routes up through the Sinai to the new Palestinian Gaza seaport, could carry oil and other commodities to the world from Saudi Arabia and beyond -- with Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinians all benefiting financially. Jordan would also have gained from the fact that, with Gaza a newly attractive location, the dire threat of a Palestinian refugee influx to its territory would be much reduced.

Meanwhile, having pulled out of Gaza as a good-faith first step toward this negotiated solution, Israel would have completed its West Bank security barrier along the route Eiland was finalizing at the time, leaving 11 to 12 percent of the territory and some 90% of the settlers on the Israeli side. And with Egypt and Jordan deeply invested in the new arrangement, they would have had an unprecedented interest in ensuring its success.

That, at least, was the idea...

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GOV'T OKS $562 MILLION TRANSFER TO FATAH TERRORISTS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, June 25, 2007.

Unfortunately, MANY think like Olmert and none will learn until they are and WE are DEAD!

The way the Arabs flip flop on their word, tomorrow Hamas will make nice with Fatah, take the money and then kill them again! Bush and Olmert have not learned a THING.

The Chutzpah Olmert has to state in clear conscious: "...In case this (Hamas and Fatah make nice, nice for a while...) happens, Olmert admitted, the funds being transferred will likely fall into Hamas' hands."

And, dumb Bush still thinks that transfer of funds would open "a window of opportunity for 'the peace process.'" What peace and with whom? Empty skull moron!

God!...I am sooooooooooooo mad I cannot hold myself together! Where is the Kamikaze unit!?

The article below is called "Gov't OKs $562 Million Transfer to Fatah Terrorists." It was written by Gil Ronen and it appeared in Arutz-Sheva
(www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/122855#replies).

"MK Eldad noted that the government was now Hizbullah's partner in arming Fatah"

(IsraelNN.com) The Israeli government approved a phased transfer of $562 million Sunday to the terrorist Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, also known as 'Abu Mazen'. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acknowledged that there is a risk that Abbas will cave in to pressures from the Arab world and again form a "unity government" with Hamas. In case this happens, Olmert admitted, the funds being transferred will likely fall into Hamas' hands.

Olmert said, however, that he left his meeting with US President George W. Bush with the message that the transfer of funds would open "a window of opportunity for 'the peace process.'"

The first installment of the transfer is expected to be handed over within the next few days. The government was assured that the transfer is to be accompanied by the establishment of an "oversight mechanism" that will supposedly ensure that they do not fall into terrorist hands.

The funds in question are tax monies collected by Israel for the PA from residents of eastern Jerusalem. They were frozen after the Hamas won the PA elections in 2006.

The money transfer will be the chief "gesture" the government intends to present to Abbas in Monday's regional summit meeting at Sharm el-Sheikh. Diplomatic sources said there was no intention at the moment to hand over more weapons and ammunition to Abbas, but hinted that Israel would be forthcoming if asked by American mediator Keith Dayton to take additional steps -- presumably, to ease restrictions on movement in Judea and Samaria.

Only two ministers voted against the measure: Avigdor Lieberman and Yitzhak Aharonovich of Yisrael Beiteinu. However, Minister Lieberman said Sunday that his party would not leave the ruling coalition despite the decision. "Abu Mazen, [Fatah Gaza terror leader Mahmoud] Dahlan, and the rest of those wimps have no intention of arresting even one terrorist," Lieberman said, adding that "Abbas is an opportunist who tours the world but has violated every agreement." However," Lieberman added, "Yisrael Beiteinu will remain in the coalition in order to influence the government from within."

Olmert was asked about the risk involved in easing restrictions on the PA, and replied: "When you make a move like this, you have to be willing to take risks, although it isn't easy."

At this point, Minister Lieberman said "the problem is that we only take risks and never get anything in return. Oslo A, Oslo B, the Disengagement. We took risks but what good did it do?"

General Security Service (Shabak) chief Yuval Diskin told the government that Abbas, whose forces were clobbered in Gaza, is weak in Judea and Samaria as well. "The Fatah is divided and crumbling," he said. "It is not as strong in Judea and Samaria as one might think."

Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) said that by handing over the money in stages, "we will be able to verify if Abu Mazen's strengthening is only declarative... If he does not get stronger we will stop transferring money."

"Lieberman is a partner to terror"

Four members of the National Union / National Religious Party fired a simultaneous rhetorical salvo at Minister Avigdor Lieberman, for his decision to stay in the government despite the decision to aid the PA

MK Aryeh Eldad called the decision "foolish and criminal," and called on Minister Lieberman to leave the coalition, saying that Lieberman was now a "partner to terror" despite voting against the money transfer. He noted that the government was now Hizbullah's partner in arming Fatah.

MK Effie Eitam called on Lieberman to leave the government as well, saying the government's decision "proves that Lieberman has zero influence." Eitam added: "Lieberman's earlier statement -- 'if Hamas is not taken apart, the government will be taken apart -- was proven today to be a hollow one. Meanwhile, the Hamas took apart Gaza and Olmert is taking apart Lieberman in the government."

MK Uri Ariel said "Minister Lieberman is trying to be a member of the government without being responsible for its failures...These funds are fueling terror and no sleight-of-tongue will change this."

MK Tzvi Hendel asked -- "How far shall we take this folly? Instead of bringing back our deterrence capability and finishing off Gaza's terror and its leaders, Olmert is nurturing a new false Golden Calf in the form of Abu Mazen and the Fatah, and thus building the basis for a new keg of terror which will go off in Judea and Samaria."

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com. Visit her blog:
http://ngthinker.typepad.com

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STAND ASIDE, MOTHER TERESA, FOR ABBAS THE SAINTLY
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 25, 2007.

"Pope" George W. Bush and "Popess" Condileezza Rice have bestowed "sainthood" on the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen). He can do no wrong and he has done no wrong -- according to the current DIS-information campaign. For 40 years Abu Mazen was Yassir Arafat's companion, assistant and financier in global terrorism. Arafat was the godfather of modern terrorism -- including ordering the murder of the American Ambassador Cleo Noél, his aide and the Belgian charges des affaires, the Munich massacre, Entebbe, blowing up of airplanes, attacking children in schools, bus bombings, suicide terror attacks, sniper shootings, etc. Are all those murders and vile acts to be forgotten and forgiven?

Arafat's various terrorist champions in the field (now under Abu Mazen) will carry a virtual "knighthood" bestow upon them by "Pope" Bush with the sword of Muslim Arab Palestinian Statehood. The knights of Arafat and Abu Mazen are the PLO, the Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigades, Tanzim. Within each of the aforementioned there are the cells of Hamas, Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Syrian Intelligence and Iranian Intelligence Agencies. Add to that the Palestinian "saints" in the seven cities turned over to Arafat and now under the, supposedly, benevolent guidance of "Saint" Abu Mazen.

I wonder. Who appointed Bush and Rice to a Washingtonian Papacy -- with the power to erase the sins of Abbas and his Arab Muslim Palestinians? Who gave Bush and Rice the authority to take $100 million dollars from the American taxpayers' in the U.S. treasury and gift it to Abu Mazen for salaries to these various terrorist groups? Each of the 7 cities Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres surrendered to the Arab Muslim Palestinians has a core group who is manufacturing Kassem Rockets, suicide belts, and training young people (from the age of 3) to be irrevocably dedicated to hating and killing "infidels" (non-Muslims), both Jews and Christians. They are pledged to use every weapon in their possession to attack Israel and replace the whole Jewish State with a Muslim Palestinian one.

Is that what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meant when she said on NPR, June 24th that there could be only one State of Palestine?

One day, perhaps under the Freedom of Information law, we will find out how a series of pro-Arab U.S. State Departments and the CIA have been training and paying Arafat and Abu Mazen's terrorists. We will look through the records of George Herbert Walker Bush and James Baker to examine their role in assisting terrorists, via Saudi Arabia whose agenda was to destroy the Jewish State of Israel.

We should also be able to review Bill and Hilary Clinton's connection to Islamists when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas and again as President.

Then we can examine the connection of President Bush and family to Saudi Arabia for the U.S. taxpayers' dollars in the Billions that were funneled to Palestinian Muslim Arab terrorists through various false fronts like the UNRWA (United Nations Relief Works Administration).

We await the results of the meetings of the Quartet (the U.S., the E.U., U.N. and Russia) in Sharm el Sheik with Egypt and Jordan to decide the fate of the Jewish nation as was done at the Waunsee Conference under Hitler's orders.

Making Abu Mazen more "saintly" than Mother Teresa is the campaign of the moment. "Pope" Bush is trying to recruit England's retired Prime Minister Tony Blair to leader the beheading of Israel's defenses.

One can only be reminded of the British blockade of Jews trying to escape the graveyards of Europe. When the British were finally forced out of Mandatory Palestine the Arab nations' armies marched in to demolish the newly born Jewish State of Israel on May 14,1948. When the British left, they turned their Taggert forts and tonnage of weapons over to the Arab Muslims as they left. Yes, "Pope" Bush, Tony Blair is the perfect recruit to undercut the Jewish State.

But, "Pope" Bush has other fallen "saints" and "angels" whom he has enlisted: You remember President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt? He has been called upon to employ his saintliness to call Hamas and Fatah together to end their current bloody Civil War. Mubarak assisted Muslim Arab Palestinian terrorists by facilitating the smuggling of weapons and men across Israel's Southern border and by ships such as the Karin-A (caught on January 4, 2002) and the Santorini bringing weapons from Iran which freely transited the Egyptian Suez Canal intending to unload their weapons near Alexandria. There the Muslim Arabs Palestinians of Gaza could take delivery in small boats. The Israelis interfered and captured the ship, exposing Egypt's complicity and the Iranian origin of the weapons.

Mubarak was supposed to stop the smuggling of weapons through tunnels dug deep from Egypt into Gaza. "Somehow" Egyptian soldiers rarely found those tunnels -- even when they were dug from the middle of Egyptian military camps. "Saint" Mubarak wanted arms pumped into Gaza with the intent and knowledge that those weapons would be used against Israel. Making Israel bleed was what "Saint" Mubarak wanted. So much for having a summit meeting of the key players against Israel. What does it really mean?.

Of course, the chorus of fallen"angels" would not be complete without Olmert whining and begging forgiveness for being a Jew. At his elbows are the other "angels": Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak. They too are blessing Abu Mazen as a worthy, "saintly" figure in order to gift more of Israel's precious treasury -- despite the needs of his own people, the Jewish people. It has been reported in Israel that of Israeli children go to bed hungry.

But, who are Bush, Rice, Abu Mazen, Mubarak, King Abdullah of Jordan, Peres, Ehud Barak and the Europeans actually worshiping as they appoint such flawed "Saints" and "Angels"? Perhaps they have actually chosen Moloch, the underworld god, who feeds on human sacrifices...especially children. We all think of "Angels" as higher spirits but, there are also those fallen "angels" -- straight out of hell.

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@gwinston.interaccess.com

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GAZA AT ITS NADIR AS A POVERTY-STRICKEN, ISLAMIST TERROR STATE
Posted by Boris Celser, June 25, 2007.

The Tragedy of Gaza: The once 4th largest growing economy in the world now rivals Mogadishu
  by Yula

An indictment of just about everyone from scruffy radicals to State Department squares, from oil sheikhs to British profs

During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world -- ahead of such "wonders"as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself... GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, [but] expand[ed] tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715... By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's... Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.

Gaza has now reached its nadir as a poverty-stricken, Islamist terror state. Gazan poet Bassem al-Nabris writes that, if there were now to be a referendum in Gaza on whether the Israeli "occupation" should return, "half the population would vote yes. But in practice, I believe the number of those in favor is at least 70%."

How did things get this way? Is it time for soul-searching among the Western countries -- including an important part of the Israeli body politic -- that long regarded "Israeli occupation" as the ultimate evil, to be ended at all costs without checking too closely how it was done or the consequences?

Although statistics specifically for Gaza are hard to come by, an important 2002 Commentary article by Efraim Karsh noted that under the Israeli "occupation" -- more fairly termed administration -- that began in 1967, Gaza and the West Bank in fact made "astounding social and economic progress":

In the economic sphere, most of this ... was the result of access to the ... Israeli economy: the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to 66,000 in 1975 and 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule.

During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world -- ahead of such "wonders"as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself... GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, [but] expand[ed] tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715... By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's... Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.

If the Left-dominated Western media largely "missed" this story, it was because it was too sold on the idea of the Palestinians as victims of Israel to even inquire if that was really the case. Within Israel, more legitimately, the Zionist ethos of Jewish self-sufficiency seemed challenged by an influx of Third World menial workers who lived under Israeli rule but lacked citizenship rights.

The Israeli Left, however, instead of seeing a complex situation entailing benefits and costs for both sides and requiring a patient approach, cast it in Manichean terms of the corruption of the Zionist dream and joined the international community's pressure on Israel for a rapid "solution."

Yet, as Karsh pointed out, the great gains for the Palestinians under Israeli rule went well beyond employment and economic growth. Life expectancy rose sharply while mortality and infant mortality rates plummeted, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980's, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent, and the number of classes by 99 percent, though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more dramatic was the progress in higher education. At the time of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990's, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria.

But it all started to unravel -- fast -- as Israel, under the euphoric glow of the Oslo "peace process," withdrew from Gaza and the Jericho area of the West Bank in May 1994, turning them over to Yasser Arafat's rule. Gaza was especially hard hit.

As a dramatic spike in terrorism led Israel to impose repeated closures, unemployment in Gaza rose as high as 50 percent and by 1996 economic output declined about one-third. From that year to 1999 the situation improved under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as terror reverted to pre-Oslo levels and the Israeli closures decreased.

But Netanyahu lost to Ehud Barak in the 1999 election, and the rest is well-known recent history: Barak's rejected offer of statehood to Arafat in summer 2000, the outbreak that fall of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and Gaza's (and the West Bank's) conversion into a launching pad for an all-out terror war necessitating Israeli closures and other measures, Gaza's severance from Israel under the 2005 disengagement plan, Hamas's win in the 2006 election and takeover of Gaza in June 2007 -- leaving Gaza in a state of violent squalor comparable only to Mogadishu and with its residents apparently longing for the "occupation" once seen as the epitome of evil.

With that "occupation" -- bête noire of just about everyone from scruffy radicals to State Department squares, from oil sheikhs to British profs -- partially gone from the West Bank and gone from Gaza, Gaza-2007 is one of the many dire results. In reality, the Israeli administration of the territories brought great socioeconomic benefits to the Palestinians there and great security benefits to Israel, along with a problematic psychological situation of dhimmi-Jewish rule over Muslim Arabs that was not really the greatest of evils, far from it, and would have required a solution involving genuinely moderate Palestinians and genuine security guarantees for Israel.

But the world didn't have the patience for that, and now the indigent jihadist statelet on the Mediterranean is the world's problem.

Boris Celser lives in Canada. Contact him at celser@telusplanet.net

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QUALITATIVE EDGE; DOES BUSH BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY?; NPR--NATIONAL PALESTINE RADIO
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 25, 2007.

QUALITATIVE EDGE

Background: The US claims that its arms sales maintain for Israel a "qualitative edge" over Israel's enemies. That is not true and if it were, not sufficient.

Would you feel secure on the "edge" of a cliff or volcano? The desired goal against genocidal and jihadist aggressors should be superiority, not advantage by an "edge."

By emphasizing qualitative, the US indicates that Israel has a quantitative inferiority. If the enemy makes a surprise attack that takes out some of Israel's best defenses, and deploys much greater numbers of sophisticated arms, it could win. It certainly could inflict heavy casualties. A small, beleaguered country cannot survive heavy casualties. Such casualties would set it up for defeat in the next, inevitable round of warfare. Why inevitable? Because the US limits Israeli victory so it isn't decisive, the world forgives the Arabs their debts, and the Arab and Iranian arms purchases begin again.

US arms sales are a matter of economics and lobbying, not much of strategy. "Edge" is not measurable. It is estimated. With each sale of arms to the Arabs, the Pentagon issues a disclaimer that this sale will not shift the balance of power. Of course it does shift. Who is to tell at what point the shift is decisive? What is behind the disclaimer? Nothing. That's right. The Pentagon offers no analysis. It makes no analysis. It just puts in the disclaimer as lip service. Sales go on.

The US sells mostly the same advanced weaponry to the Arabs as it does to Israel, only more of it. Thus the US built up a modern Egyptian military, whose Navy is superior to Israel's. Where's Israel's naval edge?

Sometimes the US puts restrictions on the sale to Arabs. For example, it conditioned the sale of certain jets to S. Arabia on their not being stationed near the border nearest Israel and on their not getting an aerial refueling capability. S. Arabia violated those conditions, without penalty. Thus the US does not maintain Israel's edge. By contrast, when the Pentagon thinks that Israel has violated its condition of sale to Israel, it withholds contracted goods until Israel proves it hasn't. It sometimes demands that Israel not incorporate into the purchased weapons superior Israeli technology. Guess why?

News Brief: Israel planned to buy from the US the F-35. The US, however, insists that Israel not incorporate into the purchased planes Israeli technology. As Dr. Aaron Lerner put it, "the US apparently doesn't want Israel to be able to have an aircraft that is superior to what they will eventually sell to Arab neighbors." Bad for business! At the same time, the US is resisting an Israeli demand for limits on the sale of "smart bombs" to S. Arabia, which Israel thinks would be destabilizing (IMRA, 6/5). Other US policies undermine Israel, too. The US would take away Israel's defensive borders and anti-terrorism tactics.

DOES BUSH BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY?

One of the most informative analysts is Barry Rubin, who writes in the Mideast Forum News. Pres. Bush just made an excellent speech in the Czech Republic about freedom and democracy, great if it weren't hypocritical. Mr. Rubin points out that the Hamas electoral gains in the P.A. and in Egypt shocked the Bush Administration out of promoting democracy in favor of stability. He suggests that such a policy ends up losing both democracy and stability. It entrenches the dictators, whose only organized opposition is Islamist. The Administration's deceitfulness about this undermines its credibility. It excels at fine announcements, but is poor at carrying them through.

The Bush administration's mistake was not in favoring democracy but in urging premature elections. It failed to promote an economic development and growth of civil institutions that would anchor democratic institutions and movements. Such growth would have paved the way for democratic elections to work out.

Not only was there a rush to elections, but the elections really were not democratic. The US should have demanded democratic standards. The main one is that parties should not be eligible if they have militias. The militias intimidated voters and committed fraud.

Sec. Rice and Coalition Provisional Authority administrator Paul Bremer set up proportional representation in Iraq (and in the P.A.). That (as in Israel) made candidates dependent upon the party leaders who chose them and who ranked them on the electoral list, which determined whether they got elected, rather than on voters (for whom their campaign could get only a marginal increase in seats).It emphasized ethnic or sectarian rivalry (the bane of Iraq, today).

The National Security Council, run by Rice and a successor, was supposed to see to it that officials complied with policy, but she did not. The President was not firm, either. The National Security Council was filled with people who had disdain for Pres. Bush and who had partisan loyalties to his opponents. The State Dept. is filled with diplomats who prefer the ease of getting along with rulers, and come to represent them rather than us, to meeting with dissidents in promoting democracy. Some of them look forward to retiring into highly paid, Saudi lobbying (which is anti-American). Some were Kerry people, who dropped (i.e., sabotaged) funding for democratic opposition in Iran, (which might have spared us from the future nuclear attack). And they called him stupid!

Rice and the others are interesting in sounding good, so they go through the motions of diplomacy. They won't accomplish much, especially because Iran senses and openly declares their inner weakness (6/4).

To look good, they may force a phony peace agreement upon Israel, that would ruin Israel. It would have an anti-American effect, in strengthening jihadists.

THE U.S. & ISRAEL ON BENCHMARKS

PM Olmert was to meet with Pres. Bush before Bush's major speech on what he expects, especially about the benchmarks. Israel has not stated what it expects. It reacts defensively, trying to minimize some demands and extend implementation of others (but the State Dept. is relentless). Israel neither denies the right of the US to make demands of Israel in regard to Israeli national security, nor rejects the US demands, which undermine Israeli security and therefore peace, nor sets up its own demands of the Arabs. The Olmert regime still fails to criticize the benchmarks for not including specific, measurable, timed, and useful dismantling of terrorism.

Dr. Aaron Lerner cites the continued US pressure on Israel as refutation of Sharon's notion, which I remember Sharon defenders citing, that the major concession he was giving by withdrawing from Gaza and northern Samaria would relieve Israel of pressure for concessions for some time (IMRA, 6/4).

Since the State Dept. wants Israel out of all its defensible borders, there is no limit to US demands. Israel should tell Americans that State Dept. support for P.A. terrorists harms US security and interferes with Israel's security.

NPR: "NATIONAL PALESTINE RADIO"

Emanuel Winston calls National Public Radio that. NPR commemorates the Six-Day War with a pro-Arab interpretation, by having mostly commentators known for Holocaust-denying and other anti-Jewish, pro-Arab, propaganda lines. One is the notorious Prof. Norman Finkelstein, without scholarship or integrity.

The months before the war featured constant threats from Arab rulers and commanders that they were going to wipe out the Jews of Israel. If it weren't for a pre-emptive Israeli air assault on the Arab forces already mobilized, which is an act of war, the otherwise vast Arab forces would have committed the genocide. Nevertheless, NPR features hardships of Palestinian Arabs.

NPR did not mention that those Arabs had been taken over illegally and repressed by Egypt and Jordan. Neither did it mention that Jordan wantonly shelled Israel, although Israel refrained from counter-attacking. Only after Jordan moved ground forces to Jerusalem, did Israel finally respond. Israel is not responsible for Palestinian Arab adversity, but NPR makes it seem as Israel were (Winston Mid East Analysis, 6/5).

Israel greatly boosted the Territories' standard of living and civil rights, but got terrorism in return. That is the real story and the real tragedy. NPR does not show the Israeli decency and Arab evil.

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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DEJA VU -- NAIVE ACADEMIC BOYCOTTERS VERSUS RUTHLESS OPPONENTS
Posted by Israel Academia Monitor, June 24, 2007.

This article was written by Dr. Judith Apter Klinghoffer, an affiliate professor at Haifa University, Member of the International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom of Bar-Ilan University and was the 1996 Fulbright professor at Aarhus, Denmark. She is the co-author of International Citizens' Tribunals: Mobilizing Public Opinion to Advance Human Rights and the author of Vietnam, Jews and the Middle East: Unintended Consequences. It appeared on HNN -- History News Network
(http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/40158.html)

No, you'd not guess it from the headline. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised by it. I got used to the Economist reflexive anti Israel, often anti-Semitic stance. But here it was. "Slamming Israel, giving Palestinians a free pass:A strangely one-sided boycott in Britain stirs global rage." Seems balanced, doesn't it?! "Slamming" vs. "rage." But read on: the text is nothing of the sort. Instead, the text reinforces the stereotype of thin skinned, aggressive Jews overreacting to politically naive genteel idealists' well meaning efforts to aid hapless Palestinian victims.

The deceptively lighthearted tone of Yair Lapid's "A letter to the British academic" provides them with just the ammunition. For the Israeli columnist begins by mocking the traditional British academic attire.

It was with great interest I read of the British University and College Union's call for an academic boycott of Israel. I was glad to discover that the association has not yet made a final decision as to how best to boycott us. Their highnesses are still pondering the decision. The blue-gray smoke wafts from their pipes, their foreheads wrinkle, a watch on their wrist sits underneath the sleeve of a Harris Tweed jacket with its leather elbow patch. Maybe they say to themselves, perhaps we'll boycott them immediately or maybe we'll wait a bit. No reason to be hasty, these sweaty baby-makers somewhere in the Middle East, won't stop killing each other in the near future. In the meantime let's have another pint and study the rare 18th-century manuscript that we found in the library.

Not so, the Economist writers protest indignantly. Our academics also wear Jeans:

ALMOST everybody loves a nice, neat stereotype, and Yair Lapid, an Israeli writer and talk-show host, is no exception... In reality, of course, British professors are a variegated species -- as likely to be wearing soiled denims as well-cut tweed -- and exactly the same goes for Israeli ones. Along with quite a few of his compatriots, Mr Lapid regards his country's campuses as "fortresses of the radical left" -- though he clearly finds enough merit in them to consider them worth defending from the absent-minded academics of Albion.

Why such dismissal? To demonstrate that they are weak and unimportant and that the entire issue is merely a tempest in a tea pot unworthy of serious opposition. To further make that case, the Economist uses the well honed strategy which call for the presentation of the boycotters not as shrewd political operatives engaged in a lengthy campaign but naive underdogs caught in a whirlwind:

No ... spirit of subtlety or differentiation was evident in the vote taken on May 30th at the inaugural conference of a newly formed association of British academics, the University and College Union, which claims to speak for 120,000 teachers and other employees. A mere 257 of them took part in the "anti-Israel" ballot, with 158 voting in favour and 99 against. In favour of what, exactly? To be precise, what they endorsed was the circulation (to all the union's branches, for "information and discussion") of the full text of an appeal by Palestinian trade unions to boycott Israeli academic and cultural activities. Things are not going to move very fast, at least in the dons' view of things. Local branches of the UCU will debate the text, probably during the autumn term; then there may be a ballot among all the members. Sally Hunt, the union's general secretary, has said she doesn't believe a majority of her members either support the motion or regard the issue as a priority.

In other words, nothing of importance happened. Anthony Julius and Alan Dershowitz tell a rather different story:

The University College Union on May 30 passed two boycott resolutions. Resolution 30 endorsed the call for an academic boycott of Israel by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). It also committed union funds to promoting it on campuses. But it did not commit the union of university teachers itself to a boycott. Resolution 31 condemned the USA and EU boycott of the Palestinian Authority (that is, the "suspension of aid"). There is symmetry here. Thirty calls for a boycott; 31 calls for the ending of a boycott. Israel's universities, which are liberal institutions, are to be shunned; the government of the PA, which is governed by a party committed to the destruction of Israel, is to be embraced. Does not seem like the actions of political amateurs? Does it? There is more --

These resolutions are the successors to boycott resolutions passed by the predecessor academic unions, the AUT in 2005, and NATFHE in 2006. The AUT resolutions purported to justify a boycott of named Israeli universities by making specific -- though false -- allegations against them. The NATFHE resolution, which was much like UCU resolution 30, "invited members to consider their own responsibility for ensuring equity and non-discrimination in contacts with Israeli educational institutions or individuals and to consider the appropriateness of a boycott of those that do not publicly dissociate themselves from such policies." The AUT resolutions were reversed following a special conference; the NATFHE resolution lapsed upon the union's dissolution only a few days later. As this resolution is NOT a boycott one, the membership would have no opportunity to reverse it. Naive? Julius and Dershowitz continue:

The UCU resolutions are in a 2007 series of boycott resolutions. They follow the National Union of Journalists resolution, and precede the UNISON resolutions. The NUJ resolution called for "a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa". One of the UNISON resolutions affirms the union's "right and desire to act in solidarity with the Palestinian people". These resolutions open with a very one-sided, hostile account of events in the Middle East.

Again, does this look like the work of a bunch of "absent minded Albions?" So why present it as such? The answer is simple. In order to present the response of the friends of Israeli academics and even Israeli trade unionists as excessive.

The Economist begins thus:

Tony Blair, at least, showed somewhat quicker political reflexes: the prime minister immediately telephoned his Israeli counterpart to voice his disapproval and dispatched his universities minister, Bill Rammell, to Israel to try limiting the potential damage (amid warnings from Israeli trade unions that they may refuse to unload British goods. "How disproportionate," it seems to argue. And this was just the beginning! It is followed by veritable blitzkrieg by powerful American boycott "opponents" who write damning articles, place newspaper advertisements, call the boycotters unpleasant names and threaten not to cooperate with the boycott:

If the British eggheads are taking things at a leisurely pace, the same cannot be said of their opponents, whose reaction was instantaneous and incandescent -- especially in the United States. Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard University law professor, has said he is rounding up a team of 100 lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic in order to "devastate and bankrupt" anyone acting against Israeli universities. He predicted that British academia would be "destroyed" if it went ahead with a boycott of Israel, because the countervailing reaction would be so powerful. That reaction is already gathering pace: more than 2,000 American scholars, including several Nobel Prize winners, have pledge to stay away from any event from which Israelis are excluded...

The Anti-Defamation League, a movement which fights anti-Semitism, has placed some dramatic newspaper advertisements to underline its case that the singling out of Israel by British academia -- at a time of terrible misdeeds in Darfur, Zimbabwe and Iran -- can only reflect prejudice...

The more venerable parts of the British academic establishment seem to agree: there have been condemnations of the UCU vote from the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and Universities UK, which groups all universities' vice-chancellors.

How silly of the British boycott advocates to underestimate the powerful forces arrayed against them. Didn't they see the fierce responses to the April British National Union of Journalists's decision to boycott Israeli goods? Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate at the University of Texas, "instantly dropped plans to visit London's Imperial College in July, saying it was 'hard to find any explanation other than anti-Semitism" for the union's move.'" Can you imagine a more "inappropriate response"?

Does the that mean that the boycotters should cease and desist the boycott? Not according to the Economist writers. They call the "politically naive" leaders of the boycott, defiant and that always implies approval:

But the British academics who have spearheaded the boycott campaign, citing a moral imperative to support their Palestinian colleagues on the hard-pressed campuses of the West Bank, are defiant. Hilary Rose, who with her husband Steven has been at the heart of the boycott movement for the past five years, sees positive results. One of these, she says, is the objections raised recently by some staff at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to the appointment of a former chief of Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence service, Carmi Gillon: the objectors argued that such appointments would harm the image of Israeli academia at a sensitive time. Also encouraging, from her viewpoint, was the fact a group of Israeli academics were now calling for Palestinian students to have freer access to their universities.

Of course, they do not mention that the "hard pressed" Palestinian campuses are filled with members and voters of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and, hence, constitute a direct threat to the Israeli institutions which have seen their share of suicide bombings. They elegantly sumsume Yair Lapid's inconvenient truth under the phrase "close up:"

I am aware of the argument that the occupation is the root of all this horrible violence. It's just that this is an argument, well, how shall I say it -- okay, academic. After all, Arab terror started long before we occupied even one piece of this land. Every major wave of Palestinian terror came as the chances of a peace treaty came closer. It was the situation when there was the wave of terror bombings on public busses in the "Black March" of 1996, which destroyed the prospects of the Oslo Agreement. This is how it was when the second intifada erupted as it did just after Ehud Barak proposed giving up nearly all the occupied territories including part of Jerusalem. That is the way it is now with the wave of Qassam rocket attacks in the wake of Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza strip.

I still believe in peace. I am interested in the occupied territories, the bloodshed and cruelty. I believe in peace as I have all my life and I know that a price will have to be paid to achieve it. All I am asking for in the meantime is a fair chance to still be alive when it comes.

Of course, this inconvenient truth is not part of the Palestinian script of What Really Happened in the Middle East, and it is that script that the Economist writers want the boycotters to rewrite with the help of boycott opponent Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestinian president of Al-Quds University in east Jerusalem which hosts branches of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror organizations throughout Gaza and the West Bank. Perhaps together they can come up with a less blatantly anti-Semitic strategy which would not endanger important British academic and commercial interests. "When confronted with such unreasonable, aggressive, prickly Jews," the Economist seems to be saying, "one must tread lightly." Is the Economist following a familiar Anti-Semitic script? I think so.

For more information on Anti-Israel Israeli academics, go to
http://israel-academia-monitor.com/; contact the organization by email at e-mail@israel-academia-monitor.com

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WHEN EUROPEANS WERE SLAVES: MORE COMMON THAN PREVIOUSLY BELIEVED
Posted by Fred Reifenberg, June 24, 2007.

Research suggests white slavery was much more common than previously believed. This comes from Ohio State U's Research News
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 -- a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm

In a new book, Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa's Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.

Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn't try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.

Davis's new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan).

"Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe," Davis said. "Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear."

Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger -- about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.

"One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature -- that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true," Davis said. "We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people."

During the time period Davis studied, it was religion and ethnicity, as much as race, that determined who became slaves.

"Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland," he said.

Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa -- cities such as Tunis and Algiers -- would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children. The impact of these attacks were devastating -- France, England, and Spain -- each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. At its peak, the destruction and depopulation of some areas probably exceeded what European slavers would later inflict on the African interior.

Although hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves were taken from Mediterranean countries, Davis noted, the effects of Muslim slave raids was felt much further away: it appears, for example, that through most of the 17th century the English lost at least 400 sailors a year to the slavers.

Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic just between 1785 and 1793.

Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one's agenda to discuss what happened.

The enslavement of Europeans doesn't fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as "evil colonialists" and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

Davis said another reason that Mediterranean slavery has been ignored or minimized has been that there have not been good estimates of the total number of people enslaved. People of the time -- both Europeans and the Barbary Coast slave owners -- did not keep detailed, trustworthy records of the number of slaves. In contrast, there are extensive records that document the number of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.

So Davis developed a new methodology to come up with reasonable estimates of the number of slaves along the Barbary Coast. Davis found the best records available indicating how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.

"The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down -- figure out how many slaves they would have to capture to maintain a certain level," he said. "It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available."

Putting together such sources of attrition as deaths, escapes, ransomings, and conversions, Davis calculated that about one-fourth of slaves had to be replaced each year to keep the slave population stable, as it apparently was between 1580 and 1680. That meant about 8,500 new slaves had to be captured each year. Overall, this suggests nearly a million slaves would have been taken captive during this period. Using the same methodology, Davis has estimated as many as 475,000 additional slaves were taken in the previous and following centuries.

The result is that between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.

Davis said his research into the treatment of these slaves suggests that, for most of them, their lives were every bit as difficult as that of slaves in America.

"As far as daily living conditions, the Mediterranean slaves certainly didn't have it better," he said.

While African slaves did grueling labor on sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas, European Christian slaves were often worked just as hard and as lethally -- in quarries, in heavy construction, and above all rowing the corsair galleys themselves.

Davis said his findings suggest that this invisible slavery of European Christians deserves more attention from scholars.

"We have lost the sense of how large enslavement could loom for those who lived around the Mediterranean and the threat they were under," he said. "Slaves were still slaves, whether they are black or white, and whether they suffered in America or North Africa."

Contact Robert Davis by emails at Davis.711@osu.edu and Jeff Grabmeier at Grabmeier.1@osu.edu

Contact Fred Reifenberg at freify@gmail.com

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A GRAVE PANDEMIC
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 24, 2007.

When Sunni Islamic terrorist organizations, for one, such as Hamas, are ever willing to routinely wrap even children in explosives, morphing human beings yet to experience the world, as well as other vulnerable so-called martyrs, into weapons of choice to murder and mutilate innocent victims, and one pompous ass such as former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, a Nobel peace prize winner to boot, harangues his nation and Israel for not dealing with that democratically elected cadre of psychopaths, we are in serious trouble! We are in more serious trouble because the feckless media does not excoriate Carter, because the feckless media does not seriously address the grave implications of that democratically elected as well as kindred spirit maniacal organizations, demonstrating a willingness to intentionally so blow up members of mankind, and because the vast majority of mostly worthless, presumably moderate Islamic leaders, do not stick their necks out verbally blasting those that so violate and besmirch the faith they have chosen to represent. Furthermore, we see that same martyr driven mindset rearing its ugly head in other parts of the world, at an accelerating pace, especially in war torn nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan, especially among Sunni Muslims affiliated with radical groups such as al Qaeda and the Taliban. No doubt, war is hell and horrible atrocities are committed when populations are driven to engage in warlike behavior for whatever reason, yet the concept of wrapping human beings in explosives, to be used as weapons during full-blown war, or to commit such acts of terror during in effect perpetual states of war, demonstrates a malignant sickness challenging the very primacy of life's natural survival instinct. People truly outraged, in fact, need to first contemplate the religious roots thus justification of such metastasizing behavior if there is to be any serious attempt at eradicating it, despite the lack of effort so far displayed by the aforementioned media as well as presumably moderate Muslims collectively.

We cannot logically deny that the concept of a spiritual heaven, hovering above our material world, can become a perilous notion when attached to anti-secular sadomasochistic thoughts, especially those extolling martyrdom. Susceptible Muslims, mesmerized by Machiavellian mullahs into believing suicide missions will guarantee them a fast track ticket to heavenly paradise, perhaps amidst compliant virgins, is the primary extreme yet relevant example of that contention. In light of this, might honorable visionary intrepid religious leaders of all faiths consider relocating conceptual heaven, as envisioned by religious souls, into the very material domain their flocks encounter on a daily basis? Furthermore, might such leaders also consider relocating their conceptualized deity solely within that same domain, in essence within the hearts and minds of not only their followers but all humans, no longer in some imagined distant spiritual land? Is this a radical shift in religious thought, altering indeed the nature of so many faiths? Of course! Yet, how else are we to combat a catastrophic pandemic that has befallen mankind? One manipulated mesmerized Muslim, wrapped in a nuclear suicide belt, obsessed with his or her mutated mission, could change life as we know it on today's disrespected terra firma, less meaningful to the mutated madman or madwoman than some imagined far away spiritual heaven encased in sharia law.

Still, should all faiths consider so altering their conceptualizations of heaven and any deity presumably dwelling within it when today only the Islamic faith has mutated that belief into a scourge of horrific proportions? It behooves all of mankind, no doubt, to attempt to end war, to attempt to care for aggrieved citizens, to begin acting like a species worthy of inhabiting and dominating the third recorded millennium. How might any man hurt his neighbor or anyone else in any way if he believes that a deity resides within that person's material being? How could one tribal member hurt any member of his or any other tribe if such an act would also befall the internalized deity? This idea deserves serious consideration.

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 larose@snip.net

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GILAD SHALIT COMES BEFORE PALESTINIANS' WELFARE!
Posted by Lee Caplan, June 24, 2007.

Tell Olmert, Barak and Zippy Livni: Gilad Shalit comes before Palestinians' welfare!!

MK Rabbi Yizhak Levi was horrified to hear the government's decision, today, to provide "humanitarian aid" to the Hamas regime in Gaza including electricity, water, food and medicine. He has approached the Prime Minister with the idea that Gilad Shalit's release, which is also a humanitarian issue, should come before Israel provides any of this humanitarian aid. This is a very good idea because it is so obvious that even these three weak ministers can manage to understand it.

So, please call

PM Olmert 02-6705555,
Defense Minister Barak 03-6976663
and Foreign Minister Zippy Livni 02-5303531.

Tell them in a firm way, that you heard about MK Levi's helpful suggestion for securing Shalit's release, and ask what did they think about it, please, and has it been implemented already? You can mention that you think TODAY might be a good time for the minister to get moving with respect to this suggestion. If you have a son in the army, mention that too.

Contact Lee Caplan at leescaplan@yahoo.com

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THE THREE WEEKS
Posted by BabbaZee, June 24, 2007.

This comes from the Aish website:
http://www.aish.com/torahportion/shalomweekly/Balak_5767.asp

GOOD MORNING! The story is told that Napoleon was walking through the streets of Paris one Tisha B'Av. As his entourage passed a synagogue he heard wailing and crying coming from within; he sent an aid to inquire as to what had happened. The aid returned and told Napoleon that the Jews were in mourning over the loss of their Temple. Napoleon was indignant! "Why wasn't I informed? When did this happen? Which Temple?" The aid responded, "They lost their Temple in Jerusalem on this date 1700 years ago." Napoleon stood in silence and then said, "Certainly a people which has mourned the loss of their Temple for so long will survive to see it rebuilt!"

___If we know our history and understand it, then we can put our life in perspective. We can understand ourselves, our people, our goals, our values. We will know the direction of our lives, what we want to accomplish with our lives and what we are willing to bear in order to fulfill our destiny. Friedrich Nietzsche put it well, "If you have a 'why' to live for, you can bear with any 'how'."

___We are now entering the Three Weeks, the time between the 17th of Tammuz (Tuesday, July 3) and the 9th of Av (starting Monday night, July 23rd). This is a period when many tragedies happened to the Jewish people. Why do we mourn the loss of the Temple after so many years? What did and does it mean to us?

___The Temple was a central focal point of the Jewish people. Three times a year -- Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot -- the Jews living in the Land of Israel came to worship and celebrate at the Temple. It offered us the ultimate opportunity to come close to the Almighty, to elevate ourselves spiritually. It represented the purpose of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel -- to be a holy people united with the Almighty in our own land ... a Jewish state. That is what we seek to regain and that is why we mourn and remember the loss of what we once had.

___What can one read to gain knowledge, get perspective, to understand who the Jewish people are and what we are about? Certainly, reading the Five Books of Moses is the place to start. I recommend the Artscroll Stone Edition. Nineteen Letters by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch will give a tremendous understanding of the Jewish purpose. Nine Questions and Why the Jews? by Praeger and Telushkin address central issues of the Jewish people. And then there is Judaism in a Nutshell: God by Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf for people who are long on curiosity, but short on time. For more history and understanding of the holidays, read Book of Our Heritage by Eliyahu Kitov. All are available from your local Jewish book store, http://www.judaicaenterprises.com or by calling toll-free 877-758-3242.

___In Jewish cosmology, the Three Weeks are considered to be such an inauspicious time period that one is not allowed to get married. From the 1st of Av (July 16th), one is even advised to push off court cases until after the 10th of Av (after July 25th). We refrain from hair-cutting, purchasing or wearing new clothing, listening to music and pleasure trips. It is a time for self-reflection and improvement.

___On the 17th of Tammuz, five calamitous events occurred in our history:

1. Moshe broke the first Tablets of the Ten Commandments when he descended from Mt. Sinai and saw the worshipping of the Golden Calf.
2. The Daily Sacrificial Offerings ceased in the First Temple due to lack of sheep.
3. The walls of Jerusalem were breached during the siege of the Second Temple.
4. Apustumus-the-Wicked burned a Sefer Torah.
5. An idol was placed in the Sanctuary of the Second Temple.

___The 17th of Tamumz is a fast day. The fast begins approximately an hour before sunrise and continuing until about an hour after sunset. The purpose of the fast is to awaken our hearts to repentance through recalling our forefathers' misdeeds which led to tragedies and our repetition of those mistakes. The fasting is a preparation for repentance -- to break the body's dominance over a person's spiritual side. One should engage in self-examination and undertake to correct mistakes in his relationship with God, his fellow man and with himself.

___It is interesting to note that Saddam Hussein was a student of Jewish history. He named the nuclear reactor (from which he planned to create a bomb to drop on Israel) -- you guessed it, Tammuz 17! (Want the source? Two Minutes Over Baghdad by Amos Perlmutter.) I also highly recommend http://www.ShabbatShalomAudio.com and http://www.aish.com/holidays. There are many excellent articles and insights on our website.

Contact BabbaZee by email at babbazee@cs.com and visit the website The Outraged Spleen of Zion at
http://babbazeesbrain.blogspot.com

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THE EARTH IS ROUND
Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, June 24, 2007.

Dear friends,

If you are still confused about the maze of Middle Eastern politics...

If you are still in doubt about the roots of the conflict...

If your mind is open to Arab/Palestinian propaganda and lies...

Here is a good article written by the Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Warren Goldstein.
(www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1182409621159&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull).

It may help you organize your thoughts and gain some knowledge about the TRUTH.

Your Truth Provider,

Yuval.

Sometimes we make the most fundamental errors. When large numbers of people make mistakes -- even monumental ones -- it is almost impossible to challenge the resultant prevailing view. It was once the conventional wisdom that the earth is flat. In ancient times if anyone dared to claim that the earth was round, they would have been denigrated as being detached from reality. When, in the 16th century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared suggest that the sun was the center of the solar system and not the earth, he was regarded as a heretic.

In today's world any attempt to explain the Arab-Israeli conflict in terms other than "Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land" and the "denial of Palestinian nationalist aspiration" is often regarded like a declaration that the earth is flat and the center of the universe. But what if this view is wrong? What if, in terms of understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are living in pre-Copernican times? What if the Jewish State that is considered to be the root of all evil in the Middle East were instead the victim?
 

SOUTH AFRICA'S apartheid history is often invoked against Israel both internationally -- by former president Jimmy Carter among many others -- and in South Africa by trade union leaders and politicians. But what if the real apartheid of the Middle East is the one directed against the Jews? And what if Israel is more akin to the African National Congress (ANC) -- the famous South African liberation organization led by Nelson Mandela and now the governing party?

In South Africa the conflict was caused by a white racist apartheid regime. The ANC was always ready to talk peace, but the regime refused to talk and so the conflict could not be resolved, and the ANC was forced into an armed struggle. Like the ANC, the Israeli government has always been ready to talk peace but has been forced since the birth of the Jewish State into an armed defensive struggle because the anti-Semitic Arab world has not been prepared to talk peace.

The ANC had to wage an armed struggle for many years until finally white South Africans were ready to talk, and then the long-standing conflict was resolved relatively quickly. Unlike the ANC, Israel has not found genuine negotiating partners. And so its struggle continues, and peace remains a distant dream.
 

WHAT IF Zionism is not colonialism but rather an ancient people's deep connection to their native, historical and covenantal land? What if the real colonialism is Arab expansionism, which contests a Jewish state on even 1/520th of the area of Arab lands?

Nearly 4,000 years ago the forefathers of the Jewish People, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived in the land of Israel, which God had promised to them and to their descendants forever. That promise was confirmed at Mount Sinai, and was delivered upon by God through Joshua, after the death of Moses, more than 3,300 years ago when the Jewish people entered the land after being liberated from Egyptian slavery and oppression. About 3,000 years ago King David established Jerusalem as the capital city of the Promised Land.

The Jewish people lived in the Land of Israel for 850 years until their expulsion by invading Babylonians. They returned in large numbers 70 years afterwards and remained for many centuries until their eviction by the Roman Empire.

Despite unremitting anti-Semitism and persecution some Jewish communities managed against great odds to remain in Israel during the long interval between the Roman dispersion and the events leading to the re-establishment of the Jewish State in 1948.

WHAT IF the dispute has never been about Palestinian statehood but really about the destruction of the Jews and the only Jewish State on earth? In 1917, the Balfour Declaration, confirmed later by international law through the League of Nations, declared the British Mandate of Palestine to be a National homeland for the Jewish people, recognizing 4,000 years of Jewish connection to the land, and the injustice of the destruction of ancient Israel by the Romans and the forced removal of the Jewish people.

In 1922 the British took 76% of the land designated for a Jewish state in Palestine and allocated it instead to the Arabs, creating east of the Jordan River a new country then called Transjordan, and later, to be known as Jordan, which to this day has a Palestinian majority.
 

IN 1947 the United Nations voted to establish two states -- one Arab and one Jewish -- west of the Jordan river on the remaining 24% of the original portion of land allocated for a Jewish State by the international community.

In spite of this reduction to their original portion the Jews accepted the offer, which was then rejected by the Arabs. This was the beginning of a long history of Arab rejectionism. And so, in 1948 the newly reborn State of Israel was invaded by Arab armies from Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and the Arab Legion, all of which made it quite clear that they intended to destroy the tiny Jewish state at its rebirth and to massacre its citizens, many of whom were Holocaust survivors. Israel survived the war, and from 1948 to 1967, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were in Arab hands and there was no "occupation" of these territories then.

If the cause for the Arab-Israeli conflict is the "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza then why did the conflict rage throughout these years unabated, with continued Arab refusal to recognize Israel and to make peace with its Jewish neighbor? Why was it that in mid-1967 just before the Six Days War, and before the West Bank and Gaza fell into Jewish hands that Arab leaders called for the destruction of Israel? What "occupation" was at issue? Why at that time did the Syrian leader order his soldiers to attack Jewish civilian targets to "pave the Arab roads with the skulls of Jews"?

FOR THE 19 years that Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip, the Arab world had the opportunity of establishing another Palestinian state in those territories, and chose not to.

Why not? If the conflict is about Palestinian statehood, then why was there no talk whatever of a Palestinian state for all those 19 years? After the Six Days War Israel immediately tried to enter into negotiations with the Arab world about the political future of the West Bank and Gaza. The response came from the Khartoum Conference of all the Arab States on September 1, 1967 in the form of the infamous 3 No's -- "No Peace, No Negotiation, No Recognition."

And so, when in 2000 at Camp David, Yasser Arafat rejected without making a counter-offer at all, Israel's proposal of 95% of the West Bank and Gaza as well as land compensation for the remaining 5%, his intransigence was wholly consistent with Arab rejectionism of any Jewish presence at all.
 

IF THE Arab-Israeli conflict is about a Palestinian state than there has always been an obvious solution of two states living in peace side by side. The conflict is more fundamental and therefore, all the more intractable, and is really about Arab rejection of the very presence and existence of a Jewish State, and probably any Jews at all, in the heart of the Middle East.

And so the charter of Hamas calls for the murder of all Jews world-wide. And rockets from Gaza continue to target Israeli civilians even after Israel's evacuation. And threats of genocide and a second holocaust, together with denial of the first, emanate from Iran. And the Arab world is awash with the most rabid and pernicious anti-Semitism.
 

WHAT IF the war directed against the State of Israel, is really the global war of fundamentalist tyranny against freedom and democracy? Then indeed all of those who believe, with the best of intentions, that they are defending a vulnerable victim, are actually being complicit in one of the worst injustices in the history of human civilization. They will have sided with the forces of death and destruction, of fear and prejudice.

What if the world is siding against the only beacon of freedom and democracy in the Middle East, thereby endangering us all, because the fate of Jews is often a sign portending the future? Hitler came after the Jews first, and then he attacked the world. Suicide bombings began in Jerusalem and then migrated to New York, Bali, Madrid, London and Nairobi.

We need clarity to understand these tumultuous times. We also need an ultimate vision of peace and reconciliation between Arab and Jew. The conflict in the Middle East is between brothers, and that is the real tragedy. We are all the children of Abraham; Jews are the children of his son Isaac, and Arabs the children of his son Ishmael.

The Talmud tells us that, although the sons of Abraham fought for many years, when Abraham was buried in Hebron, Isaac and Ishmael were reconciled at his grave. Let us all pray to God that we will merit to see the day when brother will once again be reconciled with brother in the Middle East.

Yuval Zaliouk writes the Truth Provider columns. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il

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JIMMA BOY
Posted by Bruce Tuchman, June 23, 2007.
This is by Dr. Rusty "John Doe" Shackleford.

Jimmy Carter's New Book?

Contact Bruce Tuchman at bruce@nycat.org

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THE TRUTH ABOUT FATAH AL-ISLAM'S UPRISING IN LEBANON
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 23, 2007.

Fatah al-Islam, a Palestinian Islamist group, has been waging an uprising in Lebanon which has attracted huge media coverage. Most journalists identify this group with al-Qa'ida or are just plain confused as to its identity. In fact, what is happening is a major deception operation by Syria, a rather typical case of how radical forces in the region fool the West, score against their adversaries, and avoid any retaliation for their deeds.

Let's first describe the story briefly, then explain the motives and proof behind it. An outline goes like this:

* Step1: Syria wants to sponsor violence and terrorism in Lebanon to bring that country back under its control and intimidate the Lebanese from supporting an international tribunal to investigate and punish those responsible for murdering Lebanon's most popular politician, former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, and 22 bystanders on February 14, 2005. Since all the evidence points at Syria's leaders as the murderers, killing the investigation is their highest priority. The timing of this uprising came at the very moment that the UN Security Council was voting to hold the tribunal.

* Step2: Organize and order a shadowy group of terrorists, called Fatah al-Islam, to disrupt Lebanon.

* Step3: And this is the scheme's most clever part, blame the terrorism on your victim, Lebanon's own government, and your enemy, the United States. Get some gullible or ideologically inclined journalists to talk to Syrian officials, be fed this line, and then spread it throughout the world.

So how do we know that the uprising in the Palestinian camp of Nahr al-Bared in northern Lebanon, which killed well over 100 people and led the Lebanese army to shell the camp, was a Syrian operation?

Well, first, the group itself, Fatah al-Islam, is merely part of an older group, Fatah al-Intifada, which has been a Syrian front group for almost 25 years. That is a rather strong hint of who these people are and from where their pay and arms come. But there is much more.

The leader of this group is a man by the name of Colonel Abu Khaled al-Amleh. And he lives and operates out of Damascus, Syria. The Syrians do not let terrorist groups function in the country unless the regime likes them and finds them useful. That is also a major piece of evidence. But we are just getting started.

The field commander of the group is a man named Shaker al-Absi. He has been working as a Syrian agent since 1983. In 2003, Absi joined the insurgency in Iraq against the Western forces there. Of course, Syria is the insurgency's main sponsor. Hundreds of fighters cross the Syria-Iraq border; reportedly there is a special government bus that takes them to a good jumping-off point. This record reinforces the idea that Absi is working for Syria.

In Iraq, Absi worked with Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qa'ida--Usama bin Ladin's group--there. There is no inconsistency here. After all, when Syria helps the insurgency, most of the forces they assist are led by al-Qa'ida. While al-Qa'ida is by no means controlled by Syria, the radical duo has some common interests.

Mr. Absi was involved in the murder of a U.S. diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Jordan on October 28, 2003. Naturally, the Jordanians wanted Syria to extradite him so he could be questioned and punished. Syria refused, clearly because its regime would not benefit from having Absi tell what he knew, especially about Syria's own role in his activities. In 2004, Jordan sentenced Absi to death in absentia.

So instead of turning him over to Jordan, the Syrian authorities announced that they were going to punish Absi themselves. Accordingly, they claimed Absi was sentenced to three years imprisonment for his violent actions in their own country. Three years is a joke. Terrorists who attack the Syrian regime are put to death or given very long sentences. Often, they happen to die conveniently in a manner that used to be described as "shot while trying to escape."

And of course there is no evidence that Absi was ever in prison and certainly not for three years, since only two years later he is back in business as a terrorist. For all we know during this period in between he was living very nicely and engaged in training himself and others.

On being "released," in November 2005, Absi came back to Syria and went to Lebanon. Again, if the Syrian government thought he would do anything against their interests there he would not have been allowed to go so easily and conveniently. Immediately, Absi "split" his old group and began Fatah al-Islam. The ideology of the group, merging Arab nationalism and Islamism, is very much in line with Syria's current political doctrine.

Within Lebanon today, independent and pro-government newspapers have run detailed articles about Absi, his Syrian credentials, and the motives of Damascus for bashing Lebanon. Since Hariri's murder three years ago, there have been 15 major terrorist attacks, mostly aimed at assassinating critics of Syrian attempts to dominate Lebanon. There is a pattern here.

Meanwhile, Syrian officials have been briefing some Western journalists, who know no Arabic and have no serious background in studying the Middle East. They tell these people that Fatah al-Islam is a front for Lebanon's government and even the United States. There is no evidence that this is true. What is telling is that the articles published use precisely the same phrases employed by Syrian officials about 48 hours earlier.

The situation in Lebanon is complicated. But the majority of Lebanese want their country to be independent. They suffered under 20 years of Syrian occupation which looted the country and repressed its people systematically. The moderate, democratic leadership needs and deserves Western support against a terrorist offensive directed by the neighboring dictatorship. It would be a pity to be fooled, by such transparent schemes as the Fatah al-Islam affair, into supporting the oppressors.

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, has written and edited 50 books on the Middle East. His latest book, The Truth About Syria, has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

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ILLUSIONS AND FICTIONS: MAHMOUD ABBAS IS A FICTION
Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, June 23, 2007.
The truth is evident and quite simple:

It is high time to stop believing in things that never existed, such as "Palestinian Authority" and other such two worded terms that never belonged together: "Palestinian territories" "Illegal settlements" "Occupied territories" to mention the most egregious ones.

This was written by Israel Harel and it appeared June 21, 2007 in Haaretz
(www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=873570).

George W. Bush and Ehud Olmert looked pathetic giving their "full backing" to the broken-down crutch that is Mahmoud Abbas. Contrary to the talk in Washington, nothing has changed to open a new opportunity for negotiations over a final settlement. It is impossible to hold talks with Abbas, just like it was impossible to hold talks in the past on any kind of arrangement, and certainly not on a permanent settlement. The Hamas victory in the Gaza Strip and the establishment of a "moderate" government in Ramallah do not divide the territory into Hamastan in the Gaza Strip and Fatahstan in Judea and Samaria. This is only another illusion in the basket of Israeli illusions -- a fallacy that's part of the same belief that there is an Arab leader (it used to be Yasser Arafat, and now it is Mahmoud Abbas) who wants to sign an agreement with us, and one that entails relinquishing the right of return and recognizing Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and Zionist state.

It is not only the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria and their leadership who do not recognize the right of Israel to exist as a state with a Jewish and Zionist character, but as a number of recently published documents have revealed, it is a view shared by entities representing the Arab citizens of Israel too.

The Palestinian government sworn in earlier this week is a fiction, even if the United States and Israel support it. In Ramallah, where this fictitious government sits, Hamas won a decisive victory in the last elections: four seats in parliament for Hamas, and only one for Fatah. In Nablus, four seats went to Hamas and two to Fatah. In Hebron: nine to Hamas and none for Fatah. In Jerusalem: four to Hamas and two for Fatah. In the cities of Judea and Samaria Hamas won 30 parliamentary seats. Fatah got only 12.

Given the circumstances, the new government does not represent the Palestinians -- only Israeli illusions, and possibly also those of the Americans and the Europeans. The Israel Defense Forces cannot prevent the erosion of Fatah's military power, and it is doubtful whether it is even worth investing efforts in such futility. The experience of recent years proves that our "allies," Mohammad Dahlan among them, are only boisterous characters -- corrupt and lacking any real power. They are certainly no ally of Israel.

In any case, Hamas will defeat them, and Israel should prepare well for the confrontation ahead. And in a confrontation of this nature, the various Dahlans would bring no benefit, only a burden.

Abbas' men lost in the fight not because Hamas militants are more brutal or better trained. If Fatah could, it would have adopted the same methods. Hamas won because the vast majority of the Gaza Strip population supports it, and this is first and foremost support for the religious ideology of the movement, which calls for the destruction of the Zionist entity. And as the elections have shown, this call is shared by the vast majority in Judea and Samaria, the area which Israeli analysts and politicians have designated for a Fatah state.

Certainly since the elections, areas A and B have been controlled by Hamas. As the events in the Gaza Strip show, the fact that many countries around the world have opposed the Hamas regime did not weaken support for the group. While in Judea and Samaria, thanks to the "occupation," Israel is able to prevent, and it is important that it prevent, some of the bloodletting, it is unable to prevent the weakening, and even the disappearence of Fatah as a significant force.

It is therefore time to let the truth out: Abbas is a fiction, and he cannot be saved.

Yuval Zaliouk writes the Truth Provider columns. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il

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SIR SALMON RUSHDIE
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 23, 2007.

Now the 'Rushdie intifada' has begun.

As Mr. Dhume notes in his WSJ op-ed piece below, the 'hair-trigger hysteria' of Islamo-fascists may have gone too far. Rushdie's knighthood (whether deserved or not), like the election of Sarkozy and the election of a French government that supports him, may be the beginning of non-Muslim Europe telling the Islamic extremists that we all have had enough.

It seems to have gradually become clear that the hair-trigger hysteria and the endless potential for eruption of the 'muslim street' (*) are programmed, planned, choreographed, by Muslim leaders whose main purpose is to teach the dhimmi that they must not insult Islam....no matter what.

Insulting islam justifies mass murder, genocide, suicide bombers....nothing is too extreme, no amount of death and destruction is too much, if Islam is dishonored.

And, of course, it is always the Islamo-fascist side which decides what constitutes an insult.

'british spine' and maybe some battle-hardened 'french brie' may lead to a turning point where the islamification of western europe is turned back.

Charles Martel did it with one battle in 732 (or 736?? I forgot the exact date)....and saved Europe from dhimmitude. over the past 1,300 years the Muslim leaders who truly want 'Islam uber Alles' have gotten smarter. What they could not win in the field of war, they are attempting to win in the field of propaganda and demography and exploiting the humanistic and liberal systems of the EU nations.

Maybe EU leaders are finally getting wise to this new strategy to achieve the same old Islamo-fascist goal.

This article appeared today as a Commentary in the Wall Street Journal and was written by Sadanand Dhume, a fellow at the Asia Society in Washington, D.C. My Friend the Fanatic, his book about the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia, will be published next year.

Another Friday in Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi -- and as if on cue, the hoarse, bearded and pyromaniacal pour out of the mosques into the streets armed with Union Jacks and effigies of Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Blair and the newly knighted Sir Salman Rushdie.

Having protested Danish cartoons and popish detours into Byzantine history to the point of exhaustion, the proverbial Muslim street is once again seething. Pakistan's minister of religious affairs said Mr. Rushdie's award justified suicide bombings, while a group of traders in Islamabad banded together to place a $140,000 bounty on his head. Fathi Sorour, the speaker of Egypt's parliament, declared that, "Honoring someone who has offended the Muslim religion is a bigger error than the publication of caricatures attacking Prophet Muhammad." Malaysian protesters besieged the British high commission (embassy) in Kuala Lumpur chanting, "Destroy Britain" and "Crush Salman Rushdie." With the irony perhaps lost in translation, Iran, whose president thinks nothing of threatening to wipe Israel off the map, condemned the award and called it a clear sign of (that mysterious new ailment) "Islamophobia."

For many of us, however, her majesty's conferral is a welcome example of something that has grown exceedingly rare: British backbone. After years of kowtowing to every fundamentalist demand imaginable -- from accommodating the burqa in schools and colleges to re-orienting prison toilets to face away from Mecca -- the British seem to be saying enough is enough. Nobody expects Mr. Rushdie to be awarded the Nishan-e-Pakistan, the Collar of the Nile or Iran's Islamic Republic Medal, but in Britain, as elsewhere in the civilized world, great novelists are honored for their work. A pinched view of the human condition or poorly imagined characters may harm your prospects. Blasphemy does not.

In the larger struggle against Islamism -- the ideology that demands that every aspect of human life be ordered by the seventh-century Arabian precepts enshrined in Shariah law -- the Rushdie affair carries totemic significance. In 1989 the late Ayatollah Khomeini declared a price on Mr. Rushdie's head for the crime of apostasy, after reading about his mockery of the prophet Mohammed in "The Satanic Verses." At the time, few could have predicted that this was merely the first act of a drama that's still unfolding.

Eighteen years after the ayatollah's fatwa, since lifted, but thanks to freelance fanaticism, never quite extinguished, the Bombay-born Mr. Rushdie has managed to lead a full life. He has turned out eight novels and essay collections, married twice (most recently the model and actress Padma Lakshmi), mentored a generation of young Indians writing in English, and spoken out against obscurantism and religious bigotry of every stripe. He has also witnessed -- mirrored in his own predicament -- the consequences of a Europe too paralyzed by deathwish multiculturalism and moral relativism to recognize the danger it faces. It has become a continent where an Islamist stabs a film director in broad daylight in Amsterdam, where bombs go off in Madrid commuter trains and London buses, where writers, directors and cartoonists suddenly find themselves bound by sensitivities imported not merely from alien lands but from another age altogether.

No Western country has done more to accommodate Islamists than Britain, and none better shows the folly of this course. Successive governments feted organizations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, and welcomed as refugees a stable of jihadist clerics, including the Syrian-born Omar Bakri Muhammad and the hook-handed Abu Hamza al-Masri. Rather than moderate Muslim passions, this climate of permissiveness gave us Richard Reid the shoe bomber, Daniel Pearl's murderer, Omar Saeed Sheikh, the quartet behind the 2005 London bombings and the plotters who ensured that we must now worry about carrying moisturizing lotion and baby formula each time we board an airplane. A recent poll by Policy Exchange, a London think tank, shows that 28% of British Muslims would rather live under Shariah than under British law.

But at last it looks like the pendulum has begun to swing the other way. Mr. Rushdie's elevation signals an intention to draw a line between respecting Islam and allowing a small minority of Islamists to impose their hairtrigger hysteria on secular Muslims and non-Muslims. It highlights two of the core values of Western civilization conspicuously absent in most of the Muslim world: freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. It squarely rejects the notion that the fossilized norms of Mecca and Mashhad hold sway over Manchester and Middlesex, and beyond them, over Malmo and Minneapolis. Above all, it honors a brave man who has come to symbolize our turbulent times. A little old-fashioned British spine has never been more welcome.

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

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NEED TO CHANGE COURSE
Posted by Fred Reifenberg, June 23, 2007.
I view our current situation, vis a vis the Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, etc. this way: we're in a war of attrition, against a clever determined enemy. Why are we taking prisoners, and then releasing them, and once again capturing them and going through the same routines? Aren't we busy enough with routing them out to waste the time to imprison then only to release them again? Prisons used to serve a purpose, in the hope of combining punishment, and rehabilitation, where possible. In a war situation it's a fight to the death. We should provide a service by sending these fanatics to their Allah.


My constant reference to inmates running an asylum -- when one reads the current set of news articles...

We're fighting an enemy hell bent on our destruction, yet we're propping them up so that further down the line they'll succeed. We're all mad if we continue down this path.

We allow passage of aid, funds, arms ... you name it, instead of bombing the shit out of them, and completely destroying their infrastructure, so that they cannot cause us and the whole world further grief. WAR of what I view as madness.

The enemy smuggles arms and spends every available penny to build a force to defeat us, and we help them by providing them with basics, from water, and electricity to food, medical aid and allowing leftist anarchist to show them support. Crazy doesn't describe this madness sufficiently.

Contact Fred Reifenberg at freify@gmail.com

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GAZA -- YEAR ZERO
Posted by Jonathan Spyer, June 23, 2007.

Jonathan Spyer is a Senior Fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary university (ICT). This appeared yesterday in The Guardian.

The Hamas coup that took place in Gaza last week is an event of historic importance. For the first time in the region, Islamist fighters took on the internationally recognised forces of a western-subsidised Arab nationalist client -- and beat them hands down. Fatah was revealed to be the empty, corrupted shell that most Palestinians and many observers of Palestinian politics have known it to be for a long time. The implications of the bloody putsch in tiny, crowded Gaza have not yet presented themselves in full. But it is already possible to make a number of observations, and draw some tentative conclusions.

Three observations:

Firstly, the coup is the latest victory to be added to the considerable list of gains made by the Iranian-Syrian alliance in the last four years. Following on from what looks like the successful undermining of western policy in Iraq, the ongoing Syrian attempt at re-encroachment in Lebanon, the electoral triumph of Hamas in 2006, and the holding by Hezbollah of Israel to a bloody stalemate in 2006, the latest events will be a further indication to the Iran-led bloc that their way -- the way of 'muqawama' (resistance) is the road to victory.

Hamas's relationship with Iran is of long-standing, dating back to the mid '90s. And with the region currently polarising into two rival blocs -- the US and its allies and Iran and its clients -- the movement is now conclusively choosing its side. Tens of Hamas fighters have journeyed to Iran for advanced training in Iran in the last months. The movement received pledges of $250 million from Teheran in the last year.

Secondly, Arab political establishments are aware of what is happening, are frightened by it, but have not yet developed a coherent response. Given their track record in responding decisively on other matters of import, optimism would be misplaced.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit in a speech a few days ago asserted that Iranian aid to Hamas activities in Gaza posed a threat to Egyptian national security. Yasser Abd Rabbo, of Fatah, similarly told reporters that "Iran helped Hamas to lead a military coup against the legitimate Palestinian leadership and to control the Gaza Strip...Iran supports those hostile powers in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories in order to serve its regional interests on the expense of the peoples and nations of the region."

So far so good. But take a closer look at Fatah on the West Bank, where we are told the successful alternative to Hamas-stan is to be built. Fatah failed signally to undertake desperately needed reforms after the 2006 election defeat. The result was the debacle of June, 2007. The movement remains disunited, riven by clan and factional interests, and colossally corrupt. The west and the government of Israel now want to shore up and finance this rotten structure. But no-one has explained why the result of this will be any different to last time around, when money disappeared into the labyrinthine corrupt structures established by Fatah, and ended up financing gold taps in PA officials' bathrooms.

Thirdly -- the regime Hamas is creating in Gaza will be one of prayer, poverty and bloody repression. Already, disturbing stories are beginning to filter out of the Strip -- of unhindered attacks by Islamists on Christian sites in the Strip -- such as the armed assault on the Rosary Sisters School and the Latin Church in Gaza City earlier this week. Of attacks on Internet cafes and coffee houses. And of extraordinary cruelties visited upon supporters of the old regime -- Funeral processions attacked by armed Hamas gunmen, wounded men in Shifa hospital shot in the legs by Islamist fighters.

The Erez crossing yesterday was witness to a forlorn procession of former Fatah security men, and Russian citizens -- mostly women whose government was evacuating them -- all seeking a way out of Gaza. One Israeli Arab woman from Ramle, whose Gazan husband remained behind in the Strip, told an Israeli newspaper "I'm very scared...Hamas is cruel. They kill people as if they were birds."

All of which, for Israel, leads to the following conclusion: The siege is drawing in. Iranian client militias are now arrayed to Israel's south and north. Hamas in the south, Hizballah to the north. The mood in the pro-Iranian camp is one of purpose and steady gain. It is engaged in a long war among whose objectives is the destruction of Israel. Its followers feel the wind behind them.

Yet while it can educate a seemingly endless supply of young men willing to die and destroy, this camp is able to create only islands of poverty, repression and the rule of blood -- from which people seek to flee. This remains the contradiction at its heart -- a contradiction which is likely to see the currently ascendant energies of Iran and its allies finally dissipated in pointless destruction and defeat. In the meantime, Israel is watching events in Gaza and further afield carefully. The clash between the forces of the 'muqawama' and its enemies -- the western democracies and their allies -- has not yet reached its height.

Dr. Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya.

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REWARDING FAILURE IS BECOMING THE PREVAILING NORM IN ISRAEL
Posted by Martin Sherman, June 23, 2007.

This was published June 20, 2007 as an Israel Opinion piece in Ynet News "Something Rotten in the State of Israel" discusses the implications of the Israeli political system's tendency to reward failure. It is archived at
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3414803,00.html

A similar piece in Hebrew can be found at:
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3414620,00.html

Something is rotten in State of Israel

Q: What is the difference between the State of Israel and a lunatic asylum?

A: In a lunatic asylum, at least the management is supposed to be sane.
-- Popular Joke

The events of the last week dramatically underscored how close the biting cynicism of popular humor comes to accurately describing the theater of the absurd reflected in the machinations of the ruling elites in the country. Just stop for a moment and consider the Kafkaesque scenes that have unfolded of late before the Israeli public.

- I --

In the latest act in the on-going saga, we saw Shimon Peres being elected as president of Israel exactly on the day that the

Hamas was completing its takeover of Gaza. It is difficult to ignore the bizarre symbolism in this development for it underscores the perverse principle that has emerged so vividly in Israeli public life -- i.e. poor past performance, however dismal, however damaging to the national interest, has no bearing on the prestige, power or position that an individual may attain -- even in the immediate wake of such failure.

For it is difficult to imagine any other occurrence that could demonstrate more clearly just how preposterous were the policies Peres advocated over the last two decades. It is difficult to think of any other individual who bears greater responsibility for the transformation of Gaza into "Hamastan" than the president-elect of Israel. It is difficult to conceive of any outcome that refutes more brusquely the claim that Peres' accession to the highest office in the land is a fitting culmination to his long career in public life.

For not only is he associated perhaps more than anyone -- with the initiation of the process that led to the establishment of an outpost of radical fundamentalism "five minutes from Ashkelon," but he also acquired his international prominence -- which allegedly gives him "presidential stature" -- by sponsoring a policy that exacted a terrible price from his own people, severely undermined the security of his own state, and wrought ruin on the Palestinians.

In spite of all this, on the very day that events of the ground provide incontrovertible proof that all the prestige that he has accumulated was based on nothing but an alluring brew of fanciful follies and falsehoods; on the very day that reality demonstrated beyond all doubt that he possesses neither political wisdom nor historical perspective, that his "grand vision" is nothing but an hallucinatory mirage that brought only calamity and chaos to those it was intended to benefit; on the very day that the utter failure of his alleged "statesmanship" was so starkly and irrevocably exposed to all; on that very day, somehow Peres, through the torturous, convoluted machinations of the Israeli system, found himself elected to represent the State of Israel

- II --

It should be remembered that this scene featuring Peres, was preceded by an early one starring Ehud Barak -- in which the Arab vote decided who was to be the defense minister of the Jewish State. Moreover, this vote brought to office the very man that the Arab sector usually singles out as responsible for the "bloody events of October 2000," in which 13 Arab citizens lost their lives in clashes with the security forces.

But if the Arab support for Barak seems puzzlingly incongruous, his support among the Jews (and particularly among senior members of his party) in nothing short of astounding. Of course, the claim that Barak has expertise and experience in security affairs does have a convincing initial ring to it -- until one remembers that... he was defense minister not too long ago, and was thrown out of office via the ballot box because of his abysmal performance.

Moreover, the major security problems that Barak will be called on to contend with -- as an allegedly competent security expert --- are all the result of his handling when he served as defense minister in the government headed by... Ehud Barak.

His flaccidity in facing the Palestinian gangs and his flight from the Lebanese militia constitute the "original sin" that eventually led to the takeover of the radicals in the south and the enhancement of their prowess in the north. Yet now, though the working of some bizarre inexplicable, illogical process, Barak returns to head the Defense Ministry, without providing the slightest clue of how he intends to improve his performance this time round; without giving the remotest indication of what he understands better now -- after a six-year break in which he was not involved in national security or public life -- than he did previously.

And all this takes place with the active support of his party, which he led to disastrous electoral defeat -- and without any contribution on his part to its rehabilitation.

- III --

Of course, these scenes were played out against the backdrop of another one, played out by another prominent political protagonist -- Ehud Olmert, who attained his position of prime minister not because of his own personal attributes, but rather, because of a quirk of fate. He acquired this office principally because, prior to the elections, he did not manage to erode, with sufficient pace, the public support amassed by his predecessor Ariel Sharon (a phenomenon in itself, worthy of the attention of students of the absurd -- in view of the widespread and well-known corruption and the manifest feebleness of the response to Palestinian violence that characterized his government); and he remains in office despite the miniscule public support he enjoys and the almost universal desire to see him resign.

For Olmert, like Peres and Barak, the defeat of Fatah (which in the perverse terminology of the absurd is dubbed "moderate" -- in spite of its overt commitment to the complete eradication the "Zionist entity") constitutes the ultimate negation of the raison d'etre for the continued existence of his party and the continuation of his incumbency -- i.e. the contention that Israel, by means of unilateral "convergence", can determine its own permanent borders and long-term destiny.

After all, however grave the inquiries into corruption charges against Olmert may be, the man has never been suspected of excess honesty and never made claim to this. Accordingly, this character-attribute was never the basis for his election and thus the lack thereof can at best constitute only a secondary reason for his removal from office.

By contrast, it has become quite clear that he cannot implement the central plank of his party's platform and thus cannot deliver on his pivotal electoral promises to the voter. There is accordingly no justification for his continued stay in power -- at least not without receiving a renewed mandate from the electorate. This is the way matters should be conducted -- if we weren't trapped in the theater of the absurd.

- IV --

No administrative or governmental system can survive the ravages of irrationality that the Israeli system in presently being subjected to. No such system can sustain itself if it operates on the basis of disregarding the facts, ignoring realities -- and bestowing lavish rewards on failures.

No amount of stock market peaks, of scientific advances or of technological advances will be able to fend off eventual collapse and catastrophe if this mode of conduct persists.

So before the final curtain falls on all of us, the Israeli public must be reminded of two things: (a) Unlike the inmates of a lunatic asylum, the Israeli citizen has the opportunity to elect the "management" -- and to "un-elect" it. (b) In a democracy, the major drawback is that there is no dictator to blame for the fate of the nation. When the kratos (power) is in the hands of the demos (people,) it and it alone is responsible for its destiny.

It and it alone will bear the price of the absurd antics it allows its elected leaders to perform.

Dr. Martin Sherman is a political scientist at Tel Aviv University with degrees in geology, physics, finance and political science. He has written extensively on the politics of water in the Middle East and the necessity for Israel to safeguard its water supply. Contact him at ms6747@gmail.com

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THE GOLAN IS ISRAELI
Posted by Avodah, June 22, 2007.

This was published in Haaretz
(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/871980.html).

It is almost politically incorrect, practically heresy, to claim today that the Golan is not Syrian in the least nor a deposit or bargaining chip for negotiations. The Golan is a lot more "Israeli" than "Syrian." It has been Israeli for 40 years, double the time it was in Syria's hands. It has been under Israeli sovereignty for 26 years. It has neither a foreign people nor a demographic problem. The Golan has become a part of Israeli life. It is the most frequently visited part of the country, dotted with dozens of Jewish communities, agricultural fields, industrial areas and tourist resorts, nature reserves and wild landscape.

Whoever talks about "returning" the Golan to Syria is being misleading. The Golan was placed under a French mandate in the colonialist agreement that divided the region; Syria won independence only in 1946. In the brief period it was in the Golan -- 0.5 percent of its territory -- Syria turned the region into a launching pad for its attempt to conquer and decimate Israel. The Syrian army shelled the Israeli communities along the border, attacked the Lake Kinneret fishermen, tried to divert the course of its waters and made life "down below" a Sderot-style hell. The Golan was conquered in a justified defensive war. We paid for it with blood. The Syrians lost it fair and square.

In previous eras as well, the Golan was not considered a part of Syria, and it is replete with findings of Jewish heroism and sovereignty, starting with the reign of Solomon, through the Second Temple period, the heroic battle of the city of Gamla and the Talmudic period. It was no foreign land that we conquered. The results of the Second Lebanon War greatly increased the Syrian appetite and led it to threaten a war against Israel unless the Golan is handed over. This is exactly the time to tell the Israeli story of the Golan Heights. (Ha'aretz)

Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com

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FATAH, OUR `ALLY`
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 22, 2007.

During World War One, Germany concluded that its chief ally, Austria-Hungary, was more of a burden than an asset. As one German official put it, being in that alliance was like being "shackled to a corpse."

And more than a century earlier, it was said of the doomed French dynasty, the Bourbons, that they learned nothing and forgot nothing.

Welcome to the alliance with Fatah, sort of Austria-Hungary and the Bourbons rolled up into one. The group is now ruler of a West Bank-only semi-state after Hamas captured the Gaza Strip from it. The United States is backing Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas with aid and probably military assistance. Israel's government will do everything possible to preserve that regime, too.

This is a completely logical policy decision. It makes perfect sense given the balance of forces and the overall situation. I understand why it is being done. The problem is that it isn't going to work very well, or at least only to a limited extent. And if we know that now, perhaps this fact should shape policy just a bit?

But first, let's sweep the floor of all the debris that belongs in the garbage can. There are those now arguing for backing, or at least parlaying with, Hamas. Reportedly, the European Union is going to keep giving aid to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in order to avoid a humanitarian crisis.

As I recall, in wartime one does not send aid to enemy-ruled states, even to help the civilians there. Putting on pressure is necessary to defeat the enemy. Of course, the United States and Europe are not at war with Hamas, or Hizballah, Syria, or Iran for that matter. The problem is that the West generally doesn't understand that these forces are at war with them.

If you send aid to the Gaza Strip, it will strengthen Hamas's rule. Aid will be diverted to pay terrorists and buy arms. The schoolteachers whose salary you pay will teach children that their highest duty is to become a suicide bomber and that Christians and Jews are sub-human. The salaries paid are used to buy support for Hamas. Those loyal get money; those who oppose Hamas don't. Is all this so hard to understand?

And if one wants to do something humanitarian, take the money that would have gone to the Gaza Strip and give it to poor people in Africa, Asia, South America, Iraq, even the West Bank. Don't finance terrorism, antisemitism, and radical Islamism for goodness sake. Is that so hard to understand?

The second piece of nonsense is that this is some great opportunity for advancing the peace process. Have no doubt. The United States and Israel may give Fatah money, trade some intelligence, and try to get them to stop cross-border terror attacks. But serious negotiations? Forget it.

In understanding the Fatah world view let's try a simple test. You are a Fatah official. You receive money. What do you do with it? Answer: put it into your foreign bank account. Why? Because aside from pure greed and a culture of corruption, you are afraid that Hamas will take over the West Bank too. You will need a bankroll so that you and your family can flee abroad and live comfortably, very comfortably.

As for Abbas, he is a loser and only if he is replaced can one even begin to believe in Fatah's survival. He is the closest thing in the Palestinian movement to a French intellectual, not the kind of person you would like to have by your side in a knife fight.

Consider his first two decisions. Who did Abbas make prime minister? Muhammad Dahlan, who has been warning about the Hamas threat for more than five years, or some other warrior? No, Salam Fayyad, a professional economist. Why? Does Abbas intend to launch a major development and anti-poverty campaign? No, it's because Fayyad, an honest and experienced guy it is true, but certainly no wartime consigliore, is more likely to bring in Western aid money.

In addition, Abbas has refused to outlaw Hamas on the West Bank. Perhaps he hopes for reconciliation? Or wants to avoid a confrontation on his remaining turf? If Abbas is thinking like a European Union bureaucrat he is really doomed.

There is something deeper, too, in the desire by many in the West or Israel to believe in an alliance with Fatah, a group which still carries on terrorist attacks and doesn't believe in Israel's right to exist. This is the obsession with the peace process dream.

Now peace is a very good thing. It is certainly preferable to war. Peace far better serves the interests of average people. But, unfortunately, a comprehensive, formal peace is not going to happen. Get over it. Smell the coffee. Deal with unpleasant reality.

OK, so we have to deal with the cards which have been dealt. But this means a tough policy, showing adversaries that it is costly to be enemies; pressing supposed allies to deliver the goods.

What lesson does Iran draw from Western weakness in opposing its nuclear weapons' program? To paraphrase the words of the Union admiral during the Civil War, "Damn the diplomatic notes! Full speed ahead!"

What lesson does Syria draw from Israel's failure to retaliate against it last summer and the stream of Western suitors bearing gifts and flattering the dictatorship? Escalate the war against Lebanon!

What lesson does Hizballah draw from Western refusal to get tough on arms smuggling and Europeans trembling lest it attack the UNIFIL peacekeeping forces in Lebanon? Rearm, rebuild positions in the south, and start firing rockets against Israel again!

So, all right, work with Fatah but have no illusions or expectations. And don't give something for nothing.

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, has written and edited 50 books on the Middle East. His latest book, The Truth About Syria, has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

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WHY THERE ARE NO GOOD OPTIONS -- EXCEPT THE TECHNION OPTION
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 22, 2007.

I do not support the course of action described in the Jerusalem Post article below. But I do very much empathize with the frustration which drives the writer to his conclusions. The terrible connundrum is that both sides of the argument are both correct and incorrect at the same time.

Israel, and the USA, must make a choice between two very bad options:

a.) do nothing in Gaza and and support Abbas and hope that Fatah prevails and Gaza, with a defeated and repentant Hamas, reverts to some sort of 'moderate' terrorist union with Fatah's west bank, or, absent Fatah's prevailing in Gaza, at least keep Hamas penned up in Gaza where its ability to do damage is limited....

or

b.) invade Gaza and crush Hamas and (God forbid!!) create 1,200,000 new refugees streaming in to Egypt (indeed a casus belli for Egypt and an Israeli war crime and a crime against humanity)

So the question is, which one is the worse option, and which is the lesser of the two evils.

Obviously, Olmert and Bush prefer option #a, while Mr. Freund and many others root for option #b.

Short term, there is the third option:

c.) crush Hamas while it is penned up in Gaza, and support Abbas as long as he continues to use his terror forces to crush the Hamas cells in the West Bank, so that Fatah/PLO prevails in Gaza and in the west bank and no new refugees are created, but the terrorism from Gaza stops....and if/when abbas or his successor in the PA reverts to standard PLO terrorism, then crush those too...

Unfortunately, this is not a long-term solution, because:

1.) Abbas and Fatah are still terrorists who have not changed their tune: ''from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free''.....so eventually they will revert back to terror against israel when they are strong enough to do so (and let's not forget that we have reports from Israeli intelligence dating back to the mid 1990s noting that many Fatah police and 'security forces' moonlight for Hamas)....and they will have the support of other Arab/Muslim nations (see '2') and the support of some significant plurality or small majority of the Palestinian people.

2.) Arabia and Syria and Libya and Hezbollah and Iran are still terrorist states and will work with Hamas refugees, and with some fatah pragmatists, and others in the arab and muslim world who will flock to that banner....and eventually recreate a new and improved Hamas in Syria or Sinai, just as Iran via Syria created Hezbollah to take over when the PLO was driven from Lebanon. this new and improved Hamas will prevail over Fatah and PLO by virtue of its popularity with some large plurality or small majority of Palestinians, and by virtue of the resources at its disposal from Iran and Syria.

3.) Israel still remains the Jew among nations. Arab Muslims in Sudan can genocide 2,000,000 Christian and animist black Africans, and 800,000 Muslim black Africans,...and the world is silent in the face of this blatant brutal racist genocide. But if Israel kills one palestinian civilian accidentaly during hot pursuit of Palestinian terrorists, the UN convenes in special session to condemn Israel's act of inhumanity. So, no matter what Israel may be able to do to prevent '1' or '2', it is sure to run afoul of the UN and EU and those in the USA and UK who are the cheerleaders of Arab terrorism and its goal of the genocide of Israel's Jews...aka 'hitler's little helpers'.

4.) Israel is still very dependent upon the USA for $$ and political support and weaponry. The USA still sees Israel's priorities as secondary or tertiary to USA priorities. USA priorities include keeping Abdullah bin-Saud happy both for support for USA actions in the Arabian Gulf and for support against any Arab/Muslim forces turning off the oil spigot. So, no matter how many Jews may die in terror attacks, and how outrageously irrational it is for Israel to supply electriciy and water and food and medicine to the Gaza Arabs while they are lobbing qassams on Sederoth, and how obscenely hypocritical it is for Bush to demand Israeli restraint, and how counter-productive it is for Bush to micro-manage Israel's defensive actions.....as long as Abdullah demands payment for his loyalty to the USA in the coinage of USA pressure on Israel, Bush and his successors will pressure Israel....and Israel will be susceptible to that pressure.

The above four considerations explain why Professor Michael Oren (Hebrew Univ and Princeton) and Palestinian journalist Khaled abu-Toameh and Israeli government spokespersons Yuval Steinitz and Ra'anan Gissin and I all say that there is no solution to the conflict...there is only management of the conflict.

UNLESS....unless the Technion (or the Weizmann Institute, or Ben Gurion University) were to discover or invent a low-cost, bio-degradable, non-pollutant, renewable, efficient fuel substitute for petroleum.

Then without money to pay their terrorist minions, and to buy political influence, and to coerce media acquiescence, and to endow Jihad-friendly academic positions and think-tanks.....the Saudi and Iranian funders of world-wide terror would shrivel up, and so would the terrorists.

That's why I support the Technion.

The article below -- "Take Back Gaza Now" -- was written by Michael Freund and it appeared June 22, 2007 in The Jerusalem Post
(www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1182409609548&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull/).

Talk about a twist of fate. Watching the frightening scenes on television the other day as the green flag of Hamas was raised triumphantly over Gaza, I couldn't help but think back to the Israeli elections that took place 15 years ago this week.

Still reeling from the brutal terrorist murder of teenager Helena Rapp of Bat Yam, Israelis went to the polls on June 23, 1992, and voted for Yitzhak Rabin, thanks in large part to his promise to "take Gaza out of Tel Aviv."

Now, just a decade and a half later, Gaza is back, and with a vengeance. For far too long, Israel has been trying to run away from the Gaza problem, and that has gotten us nowhere. The time has come to stop fleeing and to face this threat head-on.

Indeed, thanks to the blundering of successive Israeli leaders, what was once just a thorny counterinsurgency problem has now become a full-blown strategic threat, as the rise of Hamastan before our very eyes makes abundantly clear.

The existence of a rogue, Taliban-style terrorist state along Israel's southern border is a recipe for disaster. If allowed to come to pass, the consequences will be felt far beyond the outskirts of Sderot and Ashkelon. Gaza will serve as a regional launching pad for terrorism, trouble and tribulation, and it will tempt the rest of our neighbors to think that the "liberation of Palestine" is near.

And if Hamas were to extend its rule to Judea and Samaria, it would place all of central Israel within striking distance of Muslim fanatics. It is therefore essential that Hamas's "experiment in Islamic rule" be shut down as quickly as possible, before the danger becomes even more pressing.

So let's finally shed our delusions that we can "take Gaza out of Tel Aviv," and let's just "take Gaza," once and for all.

Israel should reassert complete control over the area, topple the Palestinian Authority, arrest and try its leadership, and finally declare that this land is rightfully ours and we shall never again abandon it.

We should methodically uproot the terrorist infrastructure, and rebuild the rubble of Gush Katif and its once-thriving Jewish communities. In other words, take Gaza back, take all of it back, and don't ever give it up again.
 

LET'S BE honest: after 15 years of retreat, it is time to try something else. Those who preached concessions and withdrawal have been proven painfully wrong, again and again, and the people of Israel have suffered terribly for their shortsightedness and frailty.

The government needs to stop worrying about how Condoleezza Rice and Javier Solana will react, and start concerning itself a little more with the safety and security of its citizens. Leaving Gaza in the hands of Hamas and its supporters is simply not an option.

"But there is no military solution," shout the Left and much of the media, as Kassam rockets continue to slam into the Negev. "We must negotiate," they say, as the terror groups recruit Palestinian mothers with young children to serve as suicide bombers.

Pay them no heed. These are the same high priests of appeasement, after all, who got us into this mess in the first place. It was at their behest that Israel pulled out of Gaza nearly two years ago, expelling thousands of Jews from their homes and withdrawing the IDF. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan's famous 1980 query to Americans, "Are Israelis better off now than they were before the Gaza retreat?" It is evident that the answer is a resounding "no."

At the time, proponents of the move said it would wash Israel's hands of Gaza, strengthen Palestinian moderates and pull the rug out from under the extremists.

They were wrong. Dead wrong.

The pullout from Gaza has proven to be a disastrous mistake, one that has claimed numerous Israeli lives -- and Palestinian ones, too.

So when the pundits and the talking heads now try to persuade us of the wisdom of supporting Fatah thugs against Hamas terrorists, or of inviting an international force into the area, let's just remember how effective their previous policy prescriptions turned out to be.

After all, it was the opponents of the pullout who have proven to be prescient. They predicted beforehand that an Israeli withdrawal would lead to a Hamas takeover in Gaza. That, of course, is precisely what has occurred. They warned that pulling the IDF out of Gaza would lead to intensified Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, and that, too, has come to pass.
 

WE NEED not accept the present situation, nor should we. It is not too late to correct the error of withdrawal, and to declare at last an end to the delusions of reaching a false peace with those who seek our demise. So let's hit the collective rewind button, and take back control over the entire Gaza Strip.

Let the Left ridicule the idea of returning to Gaza as much as they please. They were wrong then and they are wrong now, and I'd rather be right and alive, than progressive and on the run.

What about the Palestinian population, you say? Sorry, but the Palestinians had their chance. They blew it. They could have had a state, they could have made a deal with Barak, with Peres, or with Rabin. But instead they chose the path of extremism and bloodshed. They have no one to blame but themselves for the outcome, and there is no reason why innocent Israelis should continue to pay the price for the Palestinians' ongoing obstructionism.

Will there be political and diplomatic fallout from an Israeli move into Gaza? For sure. The Europeans will spill their lattes when they hear the news, and the halls of the United Nations will echo with the drumbeat of outrage as the Jewish state is condemned for defending itself.

But as important as diplomacy is, it pales in comparison with protecting the lives of innocent Jewish men, women and children. When it comes to safeguarding the welfare of its citizens, Israel has no choice but to put aside all other considerations and to act to defend itself.

For no matter what Israel does, or does not do, the blame is inevitably hurled our way. So we might as well do what we must, and proudly raise the blue and white flag once again over the sand dunes of Gaza.

We should never have left in the first place, and the time has now come to return. Like it or not, the choice between Israel or Hamas ruling over the area really doesn't leave us with much choice at all.

So Gaza, here we come!

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

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MORE MIDDLE EAST MADNESS
Posted by Fred Reifenberg, June 22, 2007.

This was written by Victor Davis Hanson and it appeared in Jewish World Review
(http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0607/hanson062107.php3). Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and military historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

"The Palestinian people will never forgive the Hamas gangs for looting the home of the Palestinian people's great leader, Yasser Arafat." So Palestinian Authority spokesman Abdel Rahman recently exclaimed. "This crime will remain a stain of disgrace on the forehead of Hamas and its despicable gangs."

Looting? Crime? Despicable gangs?

Excuse me. For years, Palestinian Authority-sanctioned gangs shot and tortured dissidents, glorified suicide bombing against Israel and in general thwarted any hopes of various "peace processes."

Of course, this kind of behavior isn't limited to the Palestinian territories but is spread across the Middle East. The soon-to-be-nuclear theocracy in Iran is grotesque. Iraqis continue to discover innovative ways to extinguish each other. Syria assassinates democratic reformers in Lebanon. ABC News now reports that new teams of al-Qaida and Taliban suicide bombers have been ordered to the United States and Europe from Afghanistan.

Here's why much of the region is so unhinged -- and it's not because of our policy in the Palestinian territories or our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

First, thanks to Western inventions and Chinese manufactured goods, Middle Easterners can now access the non-Muslim world cheaply and vicariously. To millions of Muslims, the planet appears -- on the Internet, DVDs and satellite television -- to be growing rich as most of their world stays poor.

Second, the Middle East either will not or cannot make the changes necessary to catch up with what they see in the rest of the world. Tribalism -- loyalty only to kin rather than to society at large -- impedes merit and thus progress. So does gender apartheid. Who knows how many would-be Margaret Thatchers or Sandra Day O'Connors remain veiled in the kitchen?

Religious fundamentalism translates into rote prayers in madrassas while those outside the Middle East master science and engineering. Without a transparent capitalist system -- antithetical to both sharia (Muslim law) and state-run economies -- initiative is never rewarded. Corruption is.

Meanwhile, mere discussion in much of the region of what is wrong can mean execution by a militia, government thug or religious vigilante.

So, Middle Easterners are left with the old frustration of wanting the good life of Western society but lacking either the ability or willingness to change the status quo to get it.

Instead, we get monotonous scapegoating. Blaming America or Israel -- "Those sneaky Jews did it!" -- has become a regional pastime.

And after the multifarious failures of Yasser Arafat, the Assads in Syria, Muammar Gaddafi, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saddam Hussein and other corrupt autocrats, many have, predictably, retreated to fundamentalist extremism. Almost daily, some fundamentalist claims that the killing of Westerners is justified -- because of a cartoon, a Papal paragraph or, most recently, British knighthood awarded to novelist Salman Rushdie. The terrorism of Osama bin Laden, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban is as much about nihilist rage as it is about blackmailing Western governments to grant concessions.

Meanwhile, millions of others simply flee the mess, immigrating to either Europe or the United States.

These reactions to failure often lead to circumstances that can defy logic.

The poor terrorists of Arafat's old party, Fatah, seem to shriek that they have been out-terrorized by Hamas, and desperately con more Western aid to make up for what has been squandered or stolen.

Muslims flock to Europe to enjoy a level of freedom and opportunity long denied at home. But no sooner have many arrived than they castigate their adopted continent as decadent. The ungracious prefer intolerant sharia -- denying to their own the very freedom of choice that was given to them by others.

Our response in America to this perennial Middle East temper tantrum?

In the last 20 years, we've sent billions in aid to the Arab world. We've saved Muslims from Bosnia to Kuwait. We've removed dangerous thugs in Afghanistan and Iraq, fostering democracies in their place. We've opened our borders to immigrants from the Middle East. We've paid billions of dollars in inflated oil prices. All the while, many in the West have wrongly blamed themselves for the conditions in the Middle East.

It's past time for Middle Easterners to fix their own self-inflicted mess. In the meantime, the U.S. and its allies should help as we can -- but first protect ourselves from them as we must.

Contact Fred Reifenberg at freify@gmail.com

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THE LEGITIMATE RIGHTS OF THE AMMONITES
Posted by David Ha'Ivri, June 22, 2007.

Shabbat Shalom. This weekly Torah commentary is brought to you by www.kahane.hameir.org This was written in 1992 Rabbi Binyamin Zev Kahane and it has been translated by Lenny Goldberg. It is archived at
http://kahane.hameir.org/index.php/home/
92-the-legitimiate-rights-of-the-ammonites- ?566166564424d62b3c3608660372b956=6fae9d168bdaf868c4a610979cfb70b5

The modern concept of "Jewish occupied territories" rears its ugly head in Parshat Chukat and in our haftarah, Shoftim (Chapter 11). We read in our parasha how Og, the king of Bashan, and, the king of Ammon, try to prevent the Jewish people from passing through their borders to get to the Land of Israel. Both kings decide to wage war against The Chosen Nation and both kings lost. The children of Israel conquer their enemies and inhabit their land. Interestingly enough, no one at the time suggested that the Jewish people return the land that they just conquered to the nations that tried to annihilate them. No, such a proposal was never even considered. But, what if such a proposal was raised? How would a Jewish leader have reacted?

Land For Peace

To answer these questions we move the clock ahead 300 years until we arrive at the haftarah of our parasha. In the time of the Judges, the king of Ammon brazenly demands that Israel return to him the territories that were conquered, and if Israel refuses, there will be war. The king recounts some well-known history: "Because Israel took away my land when they came out of Egypt, from Arnon as far as the Yabok, and the Jordan." (Judges 11:13) Compared to the demands of today's Arabs, this demand is quite "moderate". The king of Ammon, unlike the P.L.O., does not call for the total destruction of the Jewish State. He only wants that which was taken from his people. In words that echo in the U.N. and in Washington, the king concludes his demand in the following manner: "Now, therefore, restore those lands peacefully." Peace -- that magic word. What normal Jewish leader can refuse such an offer? After all, Ammon's claim is not an unreasonable one; the lands were taken from them. Ammon, unlike the P.L.O., once had a sovereign empire with a capital and an army on that land. And most importantly, here was a genuine opportunity for peace -- no more war, no more bloodshed.

Not One Inch

The answer Yiftach returned to to the king of Ammon is far different than what Rabin and Peres told Arafat. Yiftach recounts all the past history, and then concludes: "So now the Lord of Israel has driven out the Amorites from before his people, Israel, and you should possess the land?! Will you not possess what your god, Kemosh, gives you to possess? And all whom the Lord, our G-d, shall drive from before us that we shall possess." (Judges 11:23-24) This is the reaction of a true Jewish leader. A reaction based on emunah -- faith in the word of G-d. The land is ours not because of any historical claim or because we defeated the former inhabitants in battle. Rather, the land is ours because G-d gave it to us and we have no right to give it up...

How To Subdue the Enemy

Ma'ase abot siman labanim -- the deeds of our fathers are signs to the children. One needs only to study our Torah to learn how to deal with our enemies who initiate wars and then cry "Jewish land for peace". The Arabs have attempted to destroy the Jewish State through four wars and much terrorism and when that failed the P.L.O. and the other Arabs went to the negotiating table and demanded Jewish land or else there will be no peace. Unfortunately, there are Jews who have little or no faith in the G-d of Israel who are (mis)leading the country today. These politicians are unfamiliar with the story of Yiftach and do not understand that our true right to the land of Israel is only because G-d gave it to his people as an eternal inheritance. May we, and our leaders, be worthy of having faith in the Al-mighty so that our enemies may be subdued as they were in the days of Yiftach.

Contact David Ha'Ivri at haivri@gmail.com

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ISRAEL STEPS UP HUMANITARIAN AID TO GAZANS
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 22, 2007.

Another one of these great conundra about why Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch etc constantly condemn Israel for putative violations of Palestinian rights....

...even as Hamas slaughters Palestinian non-combatants, women and children,

...and as Israel keeps unnumberable thousands of Palestinians alive in Gaza with free food, water, electricity, and medical supplies.....

...plus treating Palestinian wounded in Israeli hospitals.

It seems as though no matter how brutal and barbaric and genocidal the Palestinan terrorists are, they remain, teflon-like, unsullied by their evil, at least in the eyes of many.

No matter how much good Israel does, even for its enemies, it remains the world's worst perpetrator of crimes against humanity...even in the eyes of its putative friends.

This is both, and at the same time, 1938 Germany and Orwell's 1984.

Orwell's 'NO-THINK' allows many of our brightest and best:

a.) to ignore the fascism of Islamic terrorist jihad, and the religious apartheid of the Islamic concept of dhimmitude, and the Nazi redux of 'Islam uber Alles', and

b.) to pretend that Israel is the perpetrator of unthinkable crimes, even as Hamas terrorists are throwing Fatah people off of 15-story high-rise apartments (which are inside of what are still called 'refugee camps' even though they are indistinguishable from the surrounding suburbs), shooting children, and murdering patients in their hospital beds, and

c.) to discount the humanitarian services that Israel offers to its enemies in the midst of an existential war and daily multiple rocket attacks (I don't recall that anyone expected England to offer free electricity to Germany during the Blitz) as though it is Israel's obligation to take care of the Arabs who seek to destroy her, and

d.) to then turn to the world's leaders and demand that Israel, the UN, the UK, the EU, etc...all recognize that Hamas is a world-class terrorist organization with the blood of thousands on its hands only because of the nasty things that the USA and Israel did....and if only Israel would be nice, then Hamas would settle down.

Now that's NO-THINK.

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

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WHY ARE SOME NGOS ANTI-ISRAEL? BECAUSE ISRAELIS DON'T BLOW UP WHISTLE BLOWERS!
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 22, 2007.

Ms. Farhat-Holzman offers some welcome insight in to the workings of Amnesty International (and, I presume other so-called human rights groups as well), with a reasonable explanation of why they are so skewed against Israel.

I am not sure that her explanation gives us the full gamut of dynamics behind the harsh anti-Israel language from so manyof the world's NGOs against Israel, glaringly unbalanced in light of the almost near absence of any criticism of Arab or Muslim or Palestinian violations of human rights.

But I do think that what she describes below is part of the picture.

It is rational to assume that even if terrorist Arab or Muslim states and Arab or Muslim terrorist organizations did not actually kill 'AI' representatives who made critical or condemning comments about these Arab or Muslim countries, these states could easily deny access to the 'AI' representatives. So, just as Eason Jordan had CNN self-censor so that Saddam Hussein would continue to give CNN reporters preferential access to pre-war Iraq, so too must 'AI' and its compatriots self-censor and do what my mother taught me to do re saying nasty things (if you can't say something nice, don't say anything) about Arab terrorists and terrorist governments, so that 'AI' can continue to function in those areas.

This is called "Why is Demonizing Israel So Easy?" and it was written by Laina Farhat-Holzman. It appears June 24, 2007 in Sunday's Santa Cruz Sentinel. Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author. You may contact her at www.globalthink.net.

The righteous British academics, along with the even more righteous British Journalists' Union, have bravely stepped forth to condemn Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. They propose boycotting Israeli products and scholarly contact with Israeli universities. The stupidity of this position is stunning-but nobody has discussed why they are doing this-except for the obvious new alliance of the political left with the Muslim and leftover Marxist worlds. Anti-Semitism is always in fashion. But there really is another reason, which I discovered by chance.

Two years ago, I was invited to be a speaker at a conference hosted by Amnesty International at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I talked by phone and e-mail with the two young student coordinators, who seemed quite interested in what I was going to say. My paper was about perceptions by many Americans that Amnesty International is not even-handed, which discredits their impartiality. My point was that Amnesty can only report on countries that permit it, such as the US and Israel, both of which are often on Amnesty's bad list. Countries that kill investigators or whistle blowers largely get a pass from Amnesty. This is unfortunate and is not Amnesty's fault-but their reporting becomes quite skewed as a result. One does not get a balanced view of human rights abuses around the world from their reports.

The night before I was to fly out to the conference, I received a call from the student coordinator that the 'Muslim Student Association,' which was co-sponsoring the conference, did not want to hear my paper. I was disinvited.

This insight helps to comprehend how British academics and labor unionists could focus only on Israel while totally ignoring all the other behaviors that should be condemned. It is easy. Not a word out of them about Sudan, which is carrying out major genocide in Darfur; nothing about Syria, which this week found seven pro-democracy activists (students) guilty of 'endangering the state.' Certainly not a word about Iran's recent (and continuous) beating up and arresting students whose sin is wanting to hold a democratic election at the university. Not a word about Pakistanis burning the union jack and threatening suicide bombers to take out Salman Rushdie, the brilliant novelist who wrote a masterpiece: The Satanic Verses.

I have long thought that the Nobel Prize committee were gutless wonders in knuckling under to Muslim intimidation. Rushdie deserves the prize, not only for that work, but for his entire body of original works of imagination. I was surprised-and delighted-that he has just been honored with British knighthood by the Queen. The Pakistanis and Saudis are not as pleased. This is the second time that a bad book review includes a death sentence-so tolerant is the Muslim world. How many of these critics even read?

And what about those poor Palestinians about whom the academics and unions are so protective? Are the Israelis persecuting them now? The poor Palestinians of Gaza do not think so; they are trying desperately to escape from their Palestinian brothers, who are bent upon mayhem, to Israel. Looting seems to be the national pastime in Gaza. When the Israelis pulled out, leaving the Palestinians the infrastructure of a prosperous greenhouse industry, they looted and destroyed what could have been a golden goose. In addition, Hamas has completed looted the home of the late Yassir Arafat, including taking his (undeserved) Nobel Peace Prize medals. Where is the condemnation from the British academics?

It seems that indignation against Israel is chic, exciting, and SAFE. Why should they care that Israeli universities educate and grant advanced degrees to Israeli Arabs? Why should they care about the multitude of scientific patents that come out of Israel to enrich life everywhere? If one of these academics or journalists were ill, would they go to a hospital in Syria or Gaza or Iran, or Israel? And if they ran into difficulties legally, would they be more likely to receive justice from Israel or would they like to try their luck in Saudi Arabia?

I would hope that there are some professors and journalists in Britain, the land that gave us political freedom, who are capable of speaking up and engaging in critical thinking. Their spokesmen get an 'F' from me.

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

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IF ONLY THEY MADE BOMB SHELTERS THIS THICK
Posted by Batya Medad, June 22, 2007.

When will they ever learn?
Will they ever learn?

Throughout recorded history, we've seen that giving into aggressors, bullies, has only brought on more trouble, violence and death.

Did converting to Catholicism during the Inquisition save Spanish Jewry and allow them to live in peace? Certainly not! To this day, the Spanish Church has kept records of those "new Catholics," considering them second class, secret Jews, at best. A neighbor of mine from Majorca, younger than myself, could never understand why as a young child, he was attacked and cursed. His parents never spoke of his father's background, but hundreds of years after the Inquisition the list of "formerly Jewish families" was still common knowledge in the local church.

Did it help the Jews of Germany when the German Jewish leaders cooperated with the Nazis? It certainly didn't. Discriminatory laws against Jews got harsher, and then the systematic murder of 6 million Jews and millions others is fully documented.

* Has life become more peaceful in Israel since Begin's Camp David agreement and subsequent Sinai withdrawal?
* Has life become more peaceful in Israel since Rabin & Peres's Oslo Accords which gave the Arabs rifles and other arms? Against whom were they used?
* Has life become more peaceful in Israel since the Sharon-Olmert Disengagement from Gush Katif and Northern Shomron?

That's a very short list of the numerous Israeli attempts to "bribe" or "sweet talk" the local Arab terrorists into agreeing to "peace." They all ave something in common. They caused the level of violence against Jews to rise.

Thirty years ago when Begin was elected Prime Minister, the first time that a party other than Labor won Israel's elections, Israelis were complaining that the "front" was too far away.

I remember a Jerusalem neighbor who said that it was inconvenient for her husband to do reserve duty in the Sinai. That's why so many Israelis wanted to believe that although Egypt had made war against Israel twice in barely ten years, they could trust the Egyptians. Now the war is more convenient. Terrorism can happen at home -- no need to travel to the front!

There wouldn't be kassams for the Arabs to launch at Sderot if the Egyptians weren't cooperating -- and I don't mean cooperating with us! Is that peace?

Your ordinary Arab does not want peace, certainly not the peace we, Israelis, envision. We've all seen pictures of proud mothers, fathers, family members and friends celebrating the murder of Jews by Arab suicide bombers.

Those Arabs who don't like the violence are lining up for visas in order to live in foreign countries. They're not going to risk their lives fighting terrorists. They'd rather disappear in Europe or some country in North or South America.

Every time a truck bringing food and medicine enters Gaza it strengthens the terrorists' hold on the people. Terrorism pays and pays well.

Even though Israel has been under attack in the north and south, it's planning more "gestures."

When will they ever learn?
Will they ever learn?

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

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BISHOP YOUNAN UNRAVELLING
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 22, 2007.

Dear Christian leaders,

I have been monitoring Bishop Younan's newsletters and other missives for several years. He is a Christian Arab cleric living in Bethlehem, working with Na'im Ateek of Sabeel (a truly vitriolic Jew-hater who travels the world preaching the justification of Arab terrorism and demonizing Israel).

In his newsletters, he routinely presents a regurgitation of Arab propaganda, ignores the context of the terror war being waged against Israel, and calls upon the Christian world, via his readership, to pressure the USA to pressure Israel to make more concessions despite the obvious failure of previous concessions to gain any progress toward peace and reconcilliation.

He is a dhimmi. A shill for the Arab propaganda outlets. And has been such for years if not decades.

His message below is perhaps the most transparent example of pure Arab propaganda rendered with a Christian tone, effective only to an audience ignorant, or ignoring, of the reality of the terror war that Hamas and other terror groups have waged, and of the truly evil purposes of that war.

I have added some clarifying comments, in bold and italics inside square brackets ([]).

Note, too, Rev. Conner's analysis of Bishop Younan, in the letter beneath Bishop Younan's. I suspect that Rev. Conner is correct. Bishop Younan is desperate, devastated, and can do nothing but limply repeat the same tired transparent lies that his Muslim handlers have been feeding him for years....even as he sees all hope for a Palestinian future demolished by the very same terrorist forces that he has been supporting and lauding for decades.

If you, or anyone you know, may be influenced by Bishop Younan's words, please use my critique and Rev. Conner's to achieve some balance and clarity.

David Meir-Levi

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL)

Statement by Bishop Dr. Munib Younan
June 15, 2007

We have been warning for some time now that the situation here in the Occupied Palestinian territories -- especially Gaza -- is untenable and explosive. I fear that unless we take drastic action, we will sink into all-out, protracted civil war that will dramatically fuel the fires of extremism, violence and chaos in the Middle East.

[Hmm.. What has Hamas been doing for the past 20 years, other than fueling the fires of extremism, violence and chaos?]

This could further radicalize the whole Middle East and perhaps tip us over a turning point toward religious fanaticism that would be hard to change. So I speak today to urge leaders, combatants, ordinary people and the international community: for God's sake and the sake of all those suffering here from violence and oppression, stop the internal violence, end the international aid boycott and implement a serious plan to end the illegal, 40-year occupation of the Palestinian people.

[He can be excused for not knowing that Israel's sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza Strip is completely legal. But he cannot not know that Israel transferred sovereignty to the Palestinian Authority in 1994; and Israel's current military presence in the West Bank is a function solely of the terror war that Palestinian terrorists are waging]

The heads of local churches in Jerusalem issued a statement Wednesday, June 13, 2007, calling on all Palestinian brothers to put down their arms against one another and stop the violence immediately. There is no justification for this violence, and it only damages the legitimate cause of the Palestinian people for self-determination, our own state and an end to occupation.

[Interesting to note that during all the years of the Intifada, neither he nor any other Christian leader in the West Bank or Gaza Strip ever issued a call to stop the violence against Israel.]

Sisters and brothers of Palestine, accept your responsibility to end all violence and return to the higher ground and aim of non-violent struggle to this illegal occupation.

[Interesting to note that during all the years of the Intifada, he never urged a non-violent struggle against Israel]

People of the Arab League, please step in and help us regain our balance.

Although a resolution to this conflict seems so unreachable, we already know the solutions: follow international law, UN resolutions and basic human rights law. Implement the two-state solution, based on the 1948 armistice line (the Green Line), which would lead to two equal, viable, sovereign states, each with Jerusalem as its capital, just resolution to the refugee problem, shared resources and ending the policy of settlements.

[He seems unaware of the incredible irony of his words. Israel agreed to that in 1937, 1947 and 1949. The Arab leadership rejected it then and continue to do so today]

So as I sit in Jerusalem trying to analyze what is happening and why, I can't help but wonder. Why, instead of implementing the many relevant UN resolutions supporting these concepts (66 in all), has the international community ignored them all these years and continued to allow the confiscation of Palestinian land and building up almost 500,000 illegal settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

[Confiscation of Palestinian land? I guess he did not notice that Israel ceded the Sinai in exchange for peace. Israel ceded land east of the Jordan river in exchange for peace. Israel ceded the Gaza Strip in the hope of jump-starting the peace process. And Israel offered to cede more West Bank land in exchange for an end to the terror war]

Why, if the West wants to foster democracy, did they reject the outcome of democratic elections held under occupation with little violence and boycott the new government? Why has the international community sat by and watched the longest occupation in history -- 40 years -- and then placed an unprecedented boycott on them, which amounts to sanctions against a captive people. How is this possible? Maybe it is time for deep self-evaluation for Palestinians, Israelis and the international community.

[He cannot not know that Hamas is a fascist, genocidal force committed to the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of its Jews. Yet he wonders why the international community rejects Hamas. It does not seem to occur to him that supporting Hamas means supporting the 2nd genocide of Jews.]

For this reason, from Jerusalem I call on international leaders of the world to wake up and see that some of their policies have had devastating negative effects on this conflict and, in fact, the whole Middle East. Realistically, what can one expect in Gaza when you lock 1.5 million people into a tiny patch of land 20 miles long by 5-10 miles wide, virtually seal the borders except for a small fraction of trade and then completely stop the already meager salaries?

[By now it is clear that he is simply regurgitating Arab propaganda, making excuses for the violence in Gaza, blaming it on Israel and the USA and the international community, exonerating Hamas. He is a quisling for Hamas.]

A recent OxFam study of families in Gaza showed that the average family in Gaza has an average debt of $1750, in a land where a school principle only earns about $6000 per year. And in the West Bank, what can we expect when you herd people into tiny enclaves, take away freedom of movement and allow continued violations of human rights to go on behind walls of concrete and barbed wire fences?

[Indeed what can you expect? So in his opinion Israel never should have built that nasty fence. Never should catch terrorists at road blocks or during curfews. Better they should be allowed to roam freely. If allowed to roam freely, would they stop their terrorism or do more of it? ]

Leaders of the world, your complicity in allowing and supporting the illegal occupation and your unprecedented action in boycotting this occupied people have created a humanitarian, political and economic crisis that now threatens not only the people of Palestine, but also Israel and the whole region. The Arab and Muslim world see this conflict as the litmus test for how the West treats them, and until some justice and improvement on the ground occurs for Palestinians, it will continue to fuel the fires of fanaticism in the whole Middle East.

[Odd that it never seems to occur to him that the endless Arab terrorism against Israel, and the endless refusal of Arab leaders to make peace, and the endless diatribe of annihilation and rhetoric of genocide, and the commitments in foundation documents of terror forces to utterly destroy Israel...all of these are a "litmus test" for how the Arab and Muslim world treat non-Muslims]

If you want to bring an end to the horrific violence in the Middle East and if you are concerned as I am by the rampant growth of religious extremism: please, I urge your from Jerusalem, get serious about implementing the two-state solution, begin immediate serious talks about these issues with all sides and end the illegal and immoral boycott and occupation.

[I presume that here he is talking to the Palestinian leaders. He cannot not know that Israel has offered a two-state solution more than a dozen times since 1937 -- and the Arab side has rejected the offer every time]

If we truly want to end this deadly stalemate and build a modern, democratic civil society in Palestine living side by side in a just peace with Israel, let us use our resources to educate our children and not to buy weapons to oppress them.

[Again, he must be talking to the Palestinian leaders. It is ONLY in the Palestinian schools that the curricula and textbooks and school plays and playground songs and posters and art work and graduation ceremonies teach hatred of Israel, hatred of Jews, hatred of non-Muslims....and the commitment of each and every Arab Muslim child to "Islam uber Alles" or martyrdom.]

We in the ELCJHL continue to be committed to a just solution based on international law and to see education as the key in preparing the future leaders who can lead us from occupation to freedom, from fear to mutual trust and from violence to peace/salaam/shalom.

For more information about the churches, schools and ministries of the ELCJHL, see www.holyland-lutherans.org.

Open letter by Rev. C. J. Conner that is posted on Conner's website and entitled, "Dear Bishop Mounib Younan: Become a Peace Maker."

I found Dr. Younan's statement about the Palestinian civil war. I have also attached a downloadable copy above, and highlighted what I found to be very telling passages. I encourage you to read it as you think about the Christian response to the recent developments in the Middle East.

As a student of forensic theology, it made me sad "reading the tea leaves" in Younan's statement. What you see is a mind beset by emotional chaos and dishevelment, indicative of the personal angst Younan finds himself in the midst of as he sits in Jerusalem. You see a man in a sort of existential crisis as he is being forced to re-evaluate everything he has believed and taught. Here is a man that is discovering that he has no control, and for all the work and organizing he has done all across the globe, he is face to face with his own inadequacies and shortcomings in his quest for his particular vision of a Palestinian State. The humanity that I share with Bishop Younan in Jesus Christ makes me want to reach out and comfort him and use this opportunity to show him a better path than he has taken. I am saddened when I read the entire letter though because Younan doesn't seem ready to turn his life, heart, and ministry over to the mercy and grace of God.

We discover a few things about Younan's long standing agenda for Palestine and Israel, which has been thrust onto American counsciousness by presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, and why his plan will never happen. This is because Dr. Younan today find's himself ideologically isolated with Hamas -- relegated to a place of irrelevance as represented by the tiny Gaza strip where he and his ilk belong.

1) He refers on more than one occasion to the "occupied" Palestinian lands, though Israel has dismantled any (sic! He probably means 'many') settlements it had in the West Bank and completely pulled out of Gaza -- so the information he offers is not accurate or true. The building of the security fence coincided with Israel's withdrawal from Gaza for one very important reason -- it was the Israeli presence in Gaza that kept peace and order and the fence was necessary to ensure Israel's security in the absence of a peacekeeping force. The area we know as Palestine simply is not occupied by any forces outside of Palestine, and hasn't been for quite a while now. Bishop Younan considers all of Israel to be an occupation, and his rhetoric "against the occupation" is language that is well understood by radical Muslims as a call to destroy Israel.

2) We often hear about a two state solution, and the Lutherans over there maintain that their plan is different than that of radical Anglican Cleric Naim Ateek, who calls for one state. Younan's agenda is revealed here more clearly than it ever has been in the last 6 years. During that time he has traveled America talking about a two state solution, but leaving out one very important fact in his discussions. He wants a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as it's capital. This is an untenable solution, especially when radical islamic groups like Hamas and rogues like Ahmadinejad (who has indicated his support of Younan's coalition of Holy Land Churches) want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

3) Younan references 66 UN resolutions, but doesn't condemn the agenda of Hamas -- which is in part to wage a war of terror on Israel. He calls for an end to violence among Palestinians, but cites his reasons why violence against Israel is understandable if not outright justifiable. Rajmahan Gandhi, in his assessment of the situation in the Middle East, rightly said that unless and until the leaders of Palestine repudiate and end all use of violence against Israel, they will never achieve their goals of a Palestinian State -- and rightly so. Nobody in their right mind can blame the tiny state of Israel for protecting her people. On the flip side, the Palestinians unfortunately reap what they sow. God doesn't bless a murderous people, not financially or otherwise.

4) Younan raises the threat of radical Islamic fundamentalism, warning the West that the militants will come after us with a vengeance if his particular vision isn't implemented, and chiding the West for not recognizing "democratic elections" that put Hamas at the helm. I have outlined before how Younan is aligned with Hamas. Younan is not passively stating the facts here. To the middle eastern ear, this is an active call to arms.

Let's pray for Palestine, and give thanks to God that Hamas is being isolated and squeezed out into the Gaza Strip. While Younan is angry that Palestine has careened into civil war, it will ultimately be the best thing for peace in the Middle East. Perhaps it is not the best thing for the islamic militants and folks like Younan who say "peace peace" but in reality work for everything but peace -- but this fact marks the beginning of a new day for the Palestinian people.

I never hear Mounib Younan speak of forgiveness or reconciliation.

He speaks of peace, but always with a list of caveats and the constant subtext of a bitter theology of revenge against Israel. He vows to continue a struggle against Israel, to teach children how to hate Israel (read his statement). This is not a way forward in peace, but rather an unrelenting march towards bloody confrontation if not now, then sometime in the near or distant future.

Israel on the other hand has long exhibited remarkable restraint, genuine concessions, and a commitment to peace with deep respect and regard to the value of human life -- both Jewish and Palestinian. Younan's idea of justice is Church-sponsored strategy and organization for bloody revenge. This will never foster peace.

I believe that Palestine and Israel can live in peace side by side -- but not unless radical Islamic fundamentalists give up their quest to impose Sharia Law and to kill Jews; not unless the religious leaders that have done everything they can to undermine the peace process are neutralized and rendered completely irrelevant; not unless Palestinian leaders do all they can to put an end to suicide bombing, rockets, and mortars. These things seem to be on their way to becoming a reality -- the real building blocks of peace being put into place one by one.

In his statement Younan does quite a bit of putting the cart before the horse in demanding Jerusalem to be the capital of a new Palestinian State. This kind of rhetoric might embolden Hamas to mount a major attack on Israel through Gaza, but it will never foster peace or the establishment of a Palestinian state. No talk of a Palestinian state -- or any state for that matter -- will ever come to fruition without first a demonstrable and sustained commitment to peace. This is not only the case in respect to Israel, but in respect to any people of any time in the world. Without a true commitment to peace first, Younan's vision for Palestine can only be realized through bloody war. Younan regularly cites the economic hardships of the Palestinian people, but fails to see the cause and effect connection between the Islamic terrorism of Hamas and the deep and debilitating poverty the Islamicists have caused through their acts of evil. Younan must begin to embrace and teach among the Palestinian people the timeless Biblical principal -- "seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you."

And as the Rev. Julie Rowe, Younan's public relations person on loan from the ELCA, advises him, let's pray that she convinces him to become a beacon of hope, peace, and reconciliation -- three grand Christian Ideals that have everywhere preceded the stability of autonomous states throughout every era of conflict in human history. Let's pray that Bp. Younan can recognize that the vague sense of exasperation, inadequacy, and failure he feels is God's call to repentance. That still, small voice that nags at him in the depths of his heart and beckons him to reconsider his direction is the reminder that redemption is the Christian's constant companion. Redemption gives us the power and strength of the cross to choose a new way of being and living, a new direction as Christ daily creates in us a new heart. Pray that Bp. Younan listens to God's call to repentance and forges a new direction by the grace of God.

My earnest hope is that this is a new dawning age for the Palestinians -- a time that the world has been waiting for -- a time when the hate mongering of groups like Hamas and religious leaders like Bishop Younan is finally rejected by the collective will of the Palestinian people and their leaders in the West Bank who have long worked for a true, sustainable peace while their counterparts have been stomping around the world raising support for more conflict.

Remember the people of Palestine in your prayers. Peace is at hand!

Rev. CJ Conner
Author of "Jesus and the Culture Wars: Reclaiming the Lord's Prayer."

**** NOTE: WorldNetDaily today: Arabs squat on Jewish property by Temple Mount !!!! Jeanne G

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

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BUSH THROWS IN TOWEL; GAZA WOMEN RETROGRESSING; ISRAELI RULERS LOST ELAN
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 22, 2007.

SAUDIS VEIL FOREIGNERS

S. Arabians hire about two million foreign housemaids. The Saudis compel most of them to wear the Saudi head cover. The Saudis justify it as wearing a symbol of modesty and as a means of avoiding male molestation. An editor thought that the foreign women should have a choice but that the Saudis should "educate" them about the importance of the head cover (IMRA, 6/3).

To the Saudis it may symbolize modesty, but to feminists it symbolizes the insignificance of women in conservative Islamic society. To foreigners it symbolizes Muslim oppression and the arrogance in compelling employees to follow local religious practices. I believe that wearing it does reduce male molestation, but what does that imply about Saudi if not also other Muslim men? That they are sexual criminals without civilized self-restraint? Before they "educate" the foreign maids, why don't the Muslims civilize their own men?

JEWISH SELF-DEFENSE A CRIME IN ISRAEL

Shmuel Cytryn, a shepherd from the Territories, who once ran afoul of the government for exposing their agent of political dirty tricks, is under house arrest for having tried to stop two Arabs who stoned his car, smashing his windshield (Barry Chamish, 6/5). Now Israel is framing his son for self-defense.

It seems as if a Jew's self-defense is illegal in Israel. Actually, in that police state, opposition to illegal governmental anti-Zionism is punished. The stated causes for imprisoning people are pretexts or the people are framed.

The world condemns Israeli self-defense against aggression as violating the Arabs' human rights. Arab aggression is unpunished, except for Saddam's.

BUSH DECIDES NOT TO DEMOLISH IRAN'S NUCLEAR PLANTS

Pres. Bush told our "allies" that since he needs Iran's help in withdrawing from Iraq, he won't attack its nuclear weapons facilities (IMRA, 6/2).

If we withdrew our troops, Iran would take over, and the whole war would have been for nothing. If we had a goal of victory, we wouldn't need help in withdrawing troops. In any case, Iran might or might not cooperate. In the meantime, they would be free to explode an atomic bomb on an American city. Surely that is worse. I think the Administration is playing politics with our lives and foolishly both in what it is letting Iran get away with and in what it thinks it would get from Iran. There should be a national debate on this. Unfortunately, the candidates who are debating are trying more not to say things than to say things. The West is weak, so the Muslims are determined.

WAR IN LEBANON READY TO RE-RUN

The IDF reports that Hizbullah has placed hundreds of operatives and stores of ammunition in bunkers near UNIFIL positions in southern Lebanon. Hizbullah operatives, disguised as civilians, have hampered UNIFIL patrols. UNIFIL has not interfered with Hizbullah's banned preparations for war (IMRA, 6/6).

That was predicted. UNIFIL is worse than useless. It makes the world think it has taken care of the Hizbullah problem, and it is in Israel's way. Those seem to be its goals. The UNO could save a lot of money if it did not engage in phony peacekeeping.

PHONY BOYCOTT

Since Hamas took power in the P.A., and many foreign countries agreed to boycott it, financial aid to the P.A. has tripled. The US and many European countries are pouring in funds, as are the Arabs. They claim it is not going to Hamas. The Dutch asserted that the donation is beneficial for Israel, because it went to the P.A. Police, who, the Dutch claim, calm the terrorists who otherwise attack Israel (Arutz-7, 6/3). Arabs' poverty was blamed on Israel. What excuse is there now? The Arab leaders steal the donations or use them for war.

The Dutch insult Israelis' intelligence. If the police were useful, they would arrest terrorists. Unfortunately, the police are, themselves, mostly terrorists. Terrorism was the chief qualification for recruitment, under Arafat. Why don't the Dutch donate funds to Israel, for defense, if they wish to be humanitarian? Alas, European sympathy is for the aggressors and not their victims. In the name of decency they help the aggressors.

Much of the foreign contribution does get to Hamas, or it goes to gunmen who belong both to another organization and to Hamas, or it saves Hamas funds it would have to divert from another function.

GAZA WOMEN RETROGRESSING

Gaza has an Islamist vice squad. This squad has bombed dozens of Gaza internet cafes, music shops, pool halls, and restaurants. Now it has threatened to slit the throats of female broadcasters who do not wear conservative head scarves. Some already have been telephoned death threats (Arutz-7, 6/3).

One would think that human rights and feminist organizations would make themselves heard against this Islamist crime against women's rights. But they don't. They are too busy slandering Israel. They make molehills out of Islamic mountains and mountains out of Israeli molehills.

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT THE REAL ISRAEL

I have learned a lot about Israel from my newsgroup rivals. I found out that Israel commits or commissions the acts of terrorism against Israel and the US. All along, I had thought that the Muslims, who preach terrorism, perpetrated them. Instead, they are nice people who really want peace with the Jews, despite their constant Islamic indoctrination to the contrary. (How do they resist it?)

I've long known that the Israeli government fails to act in its country's best interest. I was informed that all the billions of dollars it spend on anti-terrorism, and the casualties they sustain, are avoidable, if their secret service would only desist from terrorism. They are doubly foolish to risk antagonizing the US by attacking it, since the US is the only major country somewhat friendly towards it.

I don't understand why Israel does this. My rivals pose as the standard for judging behavior, "look who benefits from it." Nobody benefits from Israel's committing the terrorism instead of making peace. The government spends money, gets its people killed, risks US favor, and antagonizes the neighbors.

I thought the Arab-Israel conflict was based on Islamic jihad, but apparently the Muslims only give lip service to jihad, when it comes to Israel. I thank my rivals for clearing up my great misconception about the Arab-Israel conflict. It is good to have access to their informed and rational views every day.

PRO-ISRAEL COMMENTATORS STILL DON'T GET IT

Shimon Peres eliminated public relations efforts from Israel's Foreign Ministry. IMRA notes the government's neglect to provide its representatives with a common sound-byte demanding a meaningful dismantling of terrorism by the P.A. This misses the point, though the note is more perceptive than most commentaries. Barry Chamish does grasp the point.

The point is that the leftist elite running Israel sympathizes with the terrorists and hate religious and patriotic Jews. It does not want to fight to preserve Israel. It has adopted the European over-estimate of collective security, all the worse in relying upon enemies such as UNIFIL to protect it. The State Dept., geared to appease the Arabs, is perpetually antagonized by Israel's existence. Israel depends upon diplomacy, though diplomacy doesn't stop the jihadist arms race.

Rather than defend Israel and its legitimate territorial and defense claims, the rulers seek secret deals to cede territory. That would make the enemy stronger and more confident. But there's no logic to leftist ideology, which is misinformed and neurotic, the opposite of logical. Half the Israeli politicians are bought out or under control of leftist prosecutors.

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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BUT FOR ARAFAT'S GRACE
Posted by Boris Celser, June 22, 2007.

Some comments on Sarah Honig's article below. It appeared in the Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1182409605870&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Arafat was good for the Jews by rejecting Barak's offer. Just like Peres has been good for the Palestinians by supporting and arming them. But did Arafat regret his mistake? Peres doesn't. Enough of that. It was such a busy week that while reading Sarah's Tack I felt as if I were back in school. My old teacher gave me a book to read, and told me to summarize the book's message in my own words. What exactly is Sarah's message today on last week's events? A complicated one, I think.

She used Arafat and Barak as bait, to see if we can find out. First, Peres became president. He combines the worst attributes of Uncle Joe (Stalin), uncle Ho (Chi Minh), Chairman Mao, and the Great Leader (North Korea's Kim Il Sung). Upon his election I wrote a talkback calling him "Israel's Kurt Waldheim" and voila, Kurt dropped dead the next day. Probably didn't like the comparison. Sorry, Kurt. Second, the two Ehuds are side by side. Barak can give away the farm to Abbas to support Fatah.

The Temple Mount must be contiguous, so he might offer the underground to Abbas. Having screwed up immensely, and being out of the loop for so long, he is DM so that Olmert can survive a little longer. Third, Hamas. It took it six days to conquer Gaza. Coincidence? Is Gaza now occupied or disputed territory? Will there be a Hamas boycott, sanctions, resolutions, road map for peace? Should Gaza City be divided into West and East, the West being the desired one because it is closer to the sea?

Location, location, location. Will Abbas appoint its own Winograd commission to find out what went wrong? Will the Quartet demand military parity between Fatah and Hamas? To achieve it, it's cheaper and faster not to send weapons to Fatah, but to make Peretz Hamas's DM for a few months. Then last comes Tzipi Livni. She doesn't want military action against Hamas, even though now Ashkelon is under attack. It is not good for Israel's image abroad, she says. Israelis voted for Kadima.

Palestinians for Hamas, but at least Hamas is theologically pure. Our FM believes that Rice is to be eaten, Blair is a blast, Sarkozy a type of cancer, and Putin a Latin swearword. But not to worry. Her English is fast improving. She wrote a letter in English to the faithful, reminding them that her motto is C.C.O. Ceriousness, Cerenity, Onesty. Sarah, did I get the gist of your article?

In his younger days Ezer Weizman was wont to repeat at the slightest provocation the Prophet Samuel's assurance that "the Eternity of Israel shall not deceive," but then he always followed it up with: "and the Arabs wouldn't let us down." So far, time after incredible time, they indeed bailed us out.

Yasser Arafat, bum rap that we gave him notwithstanding, certainly rescued us from Ehud Barak's hubris. Envision the ensuing calamity, had the PLO chieftain accepted the deal Barak and Bill Clinton dangled before him at the 2000 Camp David summit.

Had Arafat taken advantage of Barak's foolhardy generosity -- instead of violently rebuffing it and launching his bloody Second Intifada -- he'd have taken possession, besides Gaza, of nearly all of Judea and Samaria, settlement blocks included, as well as east Jerusalem and the Temple Mount (except for ill-defined "subterranean layers" thereof, according to Barak's cockamamie concoction). After Arafat's departure to the netherworld's great terrorist convocation, his PLO cohorts would have inherited his latifundia.

From here on the story is familiar, except for name-place variations. Everything that happened in the Gaza Strip -- which Ariel Sharon ceded unilaterally according to Barak's reckless Lebanese precedent -- would have been replayed in Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, etc. Eventually Hamas would have gained domination over all that Arafat's fat Fatah failed to control.

The pattern is the one revealed before our eyes in Gaza-turned-Hamastan. The outstanding difference is that the Hamastan which brash Barak thoughtlessly almost created along Israel's entire long convoluted eastern flank, directly adjoining this country's densest population centers, would have been incalculably deadlier than anything visited from Gaza on poor suffering Sderot.
 

WHAT DEVASTATION Kassams from Kalkilya could inflict beggars the imagination. Suffice it to note that into the space between Kalkilya and the Mediterranean is wedged the entire width of Israel and that this slender strip is filled by a row of three side-by-side towns -- Kfar Saba, Ra'anana and Herzliya -- in that order, with no vacant gaps between them. It's a single urban sprawl, stretched out before enemy eyes and permanently vulnerable to its predations.

And whoever fires into Kfar Saba can reach Tel Aviv easily enough. Those who retroactively doubt the Six Day War was worth winning omit mention that during said war an old Jordanian WWII-vintage Long Tom cannon, fired from a lowly hill outside Kalkilya, hit an apartment building smack-dab in Kikar Masaryk, Tel Aviv's very heart.

The only reason such feats, and worse, aren't replicated today is because of continued Israeli presence in areas Barak would have put beyond Israeli supervision. Luckily Arafat seven years ago churlishly spurned Barak's inconceivably egregious largesse. Barak literally came within a hairbreadth of destroying Israel's self-preservation potential.
 

NOW EHUD Olmert, whose flunky prime-ministerial record is only rivaled by Barak's, couldn't wait to install the architect of Hizbullah's hegemony in southern Lebanon -- and the inspiration for the subsequent Gaza disengagement -- as defense minister of the state whose deterrence Barak's irresponsibility damaged so grievously. Arrogant Barak, who had done so much harm, is now in position to do more harm.

Expediently hyped as a man of incomparable military expertise, Barak lulls the amnesiac public to overlook his dismal past and believe in futuristic fables he once more cynically peddles.

It's not for nothing that Barak was chucked out of office as quickly as he was, despite the priceless perks he accrued from starting out as the darling of the leftist establishment and its lapdog media. Even our historically-challenged electorate somehow dimly perceived that something was dreadfully awry when the renascent Jewish state's leader proposed to surrender the cradle of Jewish existence without a fight, without crushing coercion, without an extreme existential emergency.

TO DISCERN that, Mr. and Ms. Average Israeli didn't have to realize that it took Titus four whole formidable Roman legions to capture Jerusalem in 70 CE. They intuitively understood that only by unparalleled brute force could the Temple Mount have been wrested from outnumbered Jews, who resisted courageously despite overwhelming odds in one of the most tragic and traumatic struggles even in this nation's sad history.

More recently Jerusalem's defense and ultimate liberation exacted a bitter price as well. Jews hadn't come so far, sacrificed so much, just to give it away because a desperate politician imagined he could translate the concession into temporary electoral advantage.

There must have been something wrong with this picture for too many Israelis even prior to Hamas's current triumph, before a time when the folly of handing Judea and Samaria over to Titus-wannabes had been accentuated by the Gaza debacle. Barak offended something profound in the Israeli psyche and insulted the common sense of folks who're hardly firebrand ideologues or perturbed intellectuals.

In February 2001 he was sent home by Israelis who continued to suspect that Arab schemes to obliterate Israel hadn't been abandoned. They could see no rationale in appeasing would-be annihilators at any cost in order to keep Barak in power at any cost.

Barak was on the verge of relinquishing vital territory in order to outmaneuver all opposition and stun the populace with a fait accompli all-encompassing instant "peace."

Had Arafat not upset Barak's delusional strategy, Kalkilya and Tulkarm would make life in the Sharon and beyond unlivable today. As per Ezer's witty prediction, the Arabs yet again miraculously didn't let us down. The crucially cogent question now is how many Israelis, in a society afflicted by chronic short-term memory-impairment, recall that only barely -- by Arafat's dubious grace -- was central Israel saved from Barak's machinations and a fate worse than Sderot's.

Boris Celser lives in Canada. Contact him at celser@telusplanet.net

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ABBAS IN SPEECH ADMITS THAT THE PALESTINIANS ARE NOT THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
Posted by Barbara Sommer, June 22, 2007.

Mahmoud Abbas says: One of the oldest churches in Palestine, which stood long before our arrival [in the region], was looted."

Years of propaganda that the Palestinians are the original indigenous population of the region down the toilet.

This next is today's MEMRI dispatch -- No. 1632 --, archived at
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD163207

Mahmoud Abbas: No to Dialogue with the Murderers; This is Not a Struggle Between Fatah and Hamas, but Between the National Project and the Emirate of Darkness and Backwardness

In a scathing speech to the PLO Central Council on June 20, 2007, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas harshly condemned the brutal actions of Hamas during its takeover of Gaza, and accused the Hamas leadership of plotting to assassinate him. Ruling out any dialogue with Hamas, he called to restore the situation that had existed before the coup. He also declared that his main objective was to prevent the civil war from spreading to the West Bank, and called to launch final-status negotiations with Israel.

The following are the main points of his speech: [1]

Hamas has Desecrated our National Symbols

"The Palestinian flag was trampled today under the feet of [those] who regard the Palestinian national project -- whose banner we have been carrying generation after generation -- as opposed to their [own] project of darkness. They have replaced [the Palestinian flag] with their own flag, which is a flag of division, detached from our people's history, its struggle and its sacrifice. Next, they persistently set out to desecrate each and every emblem of our national struggle, even in the home of our [late] leader, the martyr Yasser Arafat, and [in the home of Fatah founder] Abu Jihad. In central Gaza, they threw down the statue of the unknown soldier pointing towards Jerusalem -- [a monument] that symbolizes the sacrifice of [our] martyrs, the legacy of the Palestinian fighters, and the unity of Palestinian, Egyptian, and Arab blood."

Hamas Plans to Establish Emirate of Religious Fanaticism

"[Hamas] formulated a plan to split Gaza from the West Bank and to establish an emirate, or a mini-state of one color controlled by a single group of extremists and religious fanatics. [In order to realize] its plan, it made military and political preparations by forming armed militias, controlled exclusively by [Hamas], which were trained to take over the PA in our beloved Gaza Strip... [Meanwhile, Hamas] continued its assassinations of the field commanders and leaders of the security apparatuses and of the Fatah movement in Gaza. We witnessed murders and executions unprecedented in our entire history, based on accusations of apostasy and treason, on the uprooting [of people], on incitement to hatred, and on agitation of raw impulses and emotions."

Crimes Perpetrated By Hamas

"The putschists attacked the headquarters of the National Security [Forces], General Intelligence, the Preventive Security [apparatus], and the Presidential Guard, and perpetrated horrors that are totally alien to our [Palestinian] heritage and tradition -- murdering, executing people on the street, throwing fighters from tall buildings, and looting security headquarters, public facilities and Christian houses of worship.

"[Indeed,] even the churches were not spared. One of the oldest churches in Palestine, which stood long before our arrival [in the region], was looted and set on fire. There are Christians among us, and they are our brothers, and now we discover that [according to Hamas] they are enemies and must leave [Palestine]?!... This is a mark of shame on the Palestinian people, on those who perpetrated these [crimes], on the putschists and murderers. [They attacked] the homes of hundreds of Palestinian Authority civil servants, [who are] peaceful citizens as well as symbols of our national sovereignty like the presidential headquarters, which was taken over by hooligans who destroyed and looted it..."

No Dialogue with the Murderers

"There can be no dialogue with these murderers and putschists, and in our entire history, I cannot think of another force or group [of Palestinians] who murdered their own people, [looted] homes and property, and desecrated our national symbols, like the putschists in Gaza have done during this black week. To what end did they do this, and in the name of what religion? [It cannot have been] in the name of religion, for religion has nothing to do with acts such as these. Islam calls for tolerance and liberty. This is not Islam; it is alien to [the spirit of] Islam... The only purpose of the coup was to realize the sick and reckless fantasy of establishing an emirate of darkness and backwardness that will control, with fire and with an iron [fist], the lives, opinions and future of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza...

"We have reached a new juncture, and there is no point in calling for dialogue as in the past. We must quell the putsch, in all its forms and manifestations, including by dismantling the Executive Force, which carried it out, and which was pronounced illegal by presidential decree. The Hamas leadership must apologize to the Palestinian people and to the PLO for the blood-soaked putsch it has perpetrated, and must hand over all PLO facilities and headquarters to the new legitimate government of united Palestine. It must obey the law and the decisions [of this new government, and stop] the destruction, crimes, assassinations, executions, looting, robbery, and other violations that have been carried out and are still being carried out in the Gaza Strip...

"We are not hostile to anyone, nor do we exclude or distance anyone -- but [Hamas] has betrayed the trust [placed in it] and staged a putsch against the legitimate [government]. They are not worthy [partners] for dialogue. There will be no dialogue with them under any circumstances..."

The Conflict Should Not Be Described as a Struggle Between Fatah and Hamas

"Whoever tries to distort and simplify matters by describing this conflict as a struggle between Fatah and Hamas is wrong. This is a conflict between the national project and the project of the militias; between the project of the single homeland and the project of an Emirate or an ostensible mini-state; between a project that attempts to impose its conditions by force and to establish its closed and private regime, and the project that has embraced democracy, dialogue, and national partnership in resolving conflicts. [This is a conflict] between those who take [the path of] assassinations, murder, killings, and plots in order to achieve their sectarian goals, and those who stand for the law and for the defense of the unity of the homeland and the people."

The Hamas Leadership Tried to Assassinate Me

"One month ago, I learned that the Hamas movement had planted a bomb on Salah Al-Din Street, [meant] to explode as I passed by. The information was definite, and came from the security services, but it did not include the precise location [of the bomb]... I insisted on going to Gaza, and there I received a videotape from an individual in the Hamas movement. In the video I saw six people -- with their faces uncovered and wearing Hamas symbols -- dragging a 250-kilogram bomb. They placed it underground, and one of them said: 'This is for the Israelis; we'll keep it in reserve.' They went on digging until they had [placed] three [bombs]. Some of them said: 'This one [i.e. the first bomb] is for Abu Mazen, this one [i.e. the second] is for Abu Mazen, and this one [i.e. the third] is [also] for Abu Mazen; the next one will be for the Preventive Security [Forces]'. [The video had] picture and sound. These people are known -- their names and their faces are known. Whoever wants to see the video [can see it].

"I sent [the video] to [Hamas leader] Khaled Mash'al in Damascus. He immediately denied [the accusation], before [even] viewing [the film]. [But] I was certain of all of this, since the messenger who brought me the video said that they had sent it to Khaled Mash'al so that he could give them the go time -- when to light the fuse, or when [to set off] the bomb... I sent [the video] to all the Arab countries and to other countries [as well], so that they could see the extent of the crimes of this dark movement, this putschist [movement] that accuses others of apostasy." [2]

The Goal is to Prevent Civil War in the West Bank

"Our main goal is to prevent the civil war [from Gaza] from spreading to the West Bank; to carry out [our] security plans; to [put] an end to the era of the militias, so that there will be [just] one weapon in the field -- the legitimate weapon of the Palestinian Authority; and to stop and prevent all infractions by any side. [Our goal] is to treat the citizens on the basis of respect for the law, and not to settle scores with anyone for belonging to [a certain] group, or for [holding certain] opinions...

"The schools, colleges, and universities will become centers of study and enlightenment, rather than centers of ignorance, darkness, and the propagation of an ideology of hatred that destroys the people's unity and the social fabric. Likewise, the mosques should be supported and developed such that they will remain centers of worship for the glorification of Allah, be He praised and exalted, and not centers of political propaganda that are exploited for the good of a certain group or a certain element and serve as weapons stockpiles and interrogation centers...

"The PLO Central Council is called upon to remain permanently convened, so that it can take part in dealing with the coup and in expelling [its perpetrators] from all circles of the Palestinian people. Likewise, the Council is called upon to support the resolutions of the PA -- especially in the area of dealing with the coup -- and to prevent [Hamas] from achieving its goals of dividing the homeland's unity. The new government should be supported. All of the PLO institutions and Palestinian organizations in the homeland and abroad [should] give the government [their] full trust and support as well as national, popular, and legal backing..."

Launch Final-Status Negotiations

"We call today to launch final-status negotiations, and we believe that current conditions do not at all prevent the opening of negotiations in the context of an international peace conference. As for international protection [in the Palestinian territories], and the arrival of international forces and observers, this is a subject for internal discussion, in all its aspects: political, judicial, and the degree to which this serves the national interest..."

[1] Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), June 21, 2007.
[2] See The MEMRIblog, June 21, 2007, "Footage of Purported Planning of Hamas Assassination Plot Against Mahmoud Abbas,"
http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/1951.htm.

Contact Barbara Sommer at sommer_1_98@yahoo.com

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SANITY AND SURVIVAL: THERE REALLY IS EVIL IN THIS CONFLICT
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 22, 2007.

This essay is two years old. I have updated it a bit, in light of the Hamas carnage and war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

"Silence in the face of evil -- the Middle East conflict"

I am continuously puzzled by the fact that so few commentators on the topic of the Middle East conflict turn their attentionto what I call the great moral divide.

It seems to me that this moral divide should be a really big factor in how westerners look at the dynamics of the conflict. Instead, it is almost never mentioned; and in fact, in my opinion many commentators assiduously avoid dealing with it, intentionally obfuscate it, or even lie about it.

Such obstructionist behavior makes me feel that the great moral divide must be really important....otherwise commentators would not be so reticent to dealwith it.

As I see it, there are two aspects to the moral divide:

1.) What the Arab terrorists (*) do, say they want to do, and boast about what they have done or are going to do.....is all really evil by any standard of western morality.No matter how it is spun by the various pundits and journalists and politicians and clergy and academicians and pseudo-statespersons who serve as cheerleaders for the terrorists, the obvious bottom line behavior and goals, based upon the terrorists' own words and deeds, are:

genocide, attempted genocide, incitement to genocide, diatribe of genocide,

targeting of civilians for murder, attempted murder, mass murder, attempted mass murder,

kidnapping, attempted kidnapping, of Israelis and other non-Muslims

suicide/homicide,

hate speech, hate preach, hate teach,

pressing women and children into terrorist service (sometimes without their knowledge and/or against their will),

theft, embezzlement, re-directing/mis-directing billions of dollars from intended civilian beneficiaries to terrorist activities or to secret private accounts,

routine running of criminal activities, auto theft, extortion, kidnapping their own for ransom,

and international trafficking of weapons and hard drugs for profits to fund terrorism,

impoverishing a whole population so that foreign aid can be embezzled and used for terrorism,

denying a whole population its civil and human rights and its right to political self-determination via the democratic processes promised it by the UN and the USA and Israel...

...all of these are galactic violations of a host of international legislation regarding civil and human rights, international laws of war, international interdictions regarding genocide, international conventions, and internationally canonized rights of women and children and non-combatants.

All of these are just plain evil.

And all of these are the defining characteristics of the Arab terrorists and various Moslem and Arab governmental authorities which support and fund and shelter and train and arm the terrorists.

The Arab Palestinian terrorist cause is the only cause in the world, and across all of world history, for which the sole defining paradigm is terrorism, and the unique and unrelenting goal is the destruction of a sovereign state and the genocide of its people. It is obvious that such a cause cannot be a just cause. But even if it were, its methods are evil, its intentions are evil, its aspirations are evil, its words are evil, and its deeds are evil. The Palestinian terrorist movement is just plain evil(*).

Silence (obfuscation and justification all the more so) in the face of evil is complicity. Complicity with evil is evil.

The Palestinian terrorists and their cheerleaders are evil.(**)

2.) What many of the leaders (*) of many Arab and some non-Arab Moslem states say and do and teach and preach in support of the Palestinian Arab terrorists is evil.

Openly, knowingly, enthusiastically cheering and supporting and harboring and funding and training and deploying evil is evil.

Never before, in all of human history, has there been such massive expenditures of money, resources, human efforts, and energy that many Arab and some Moslem state leaders have been making, for over three-quarters of a century, in order to destroy Israel and exterminate its Jews; either with their own forces, or by support of proxy Arab terrorist forces. Even the Nazi campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe never reached the multi-national dimensions and umpteen billions of dollars of expenditures and endless relentless international propaganda campaigns of Arab leaders and Arab states -- and all for the sole purpose of destroying one small nation and its Jewish citizenry.

Where else in the world, and in all of human history, do we find the leaders ofso many sovereign states endlessly diverting resources, for decades, from their own people, and neglecting their own people's needs, in order to eradicate asovereign state?

Where else in the world, and across all of human history, do we see such enormous energy poured into international collaboration for the propagation of the PR and propaganda and revisionist history and political machinations and mendacious mis-information that have characterized the Arab political and propaganda assaults on Israel? And these assaults have been maintained within the family of nations and at theUN and in the intellectual arenas of the Western world, for decades ... and all with the sole intent to demonize Israel so that it will lose the support of its allies, and thus be easier prey when its Arab enemies are ready to launch their great final jihad?

The sheer obscenity of such a heinous endeavor is beyond description; but no one seems willing to comment on the pure evil of such design.

Consider too the commitment that these state leaders have made to an education system that systematically demonizes Israel and Israelis (and in some cases Jews and Judaism), in order to create in the minds of their youth (today's sophomore is tomorrow's Senator) the cross-generational trajectory that will keep the evil alive far in to the future, and will provide justification for those evil expenditures and evil goals.

Teaching children to hate is child abuse raised to the level of public policy. Child abuse is evil.

And consider the cost of the lost opportunities. What would the MiddleEast look like today if Arab leaders had been willing to cooperate with the Zionists in the application of western agrarian technology, medicine, epidemiology, industrial technology, and science in general, to the Arab wastelands and to the impoverished peasantry who barely eked out a subsistence living on those waste lands? And how much more so, had neighboring Arab states been willing to make peace with, and work with, and build with, both Israel and the state of 'Palestine' which would have come into existence with the UN partition plan of 11/29/1947?

Look at the sand dunes 8 miles north of Jaffa in 1911. Then look at Tel Aviv today, built on those sand dunes. Something similar could have happened in the desert south of Damascus, in the waste land north of Amman, in parts ofthe Sinai desert east of Egypt,on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea, and more, had Arab leaders chosen to work with Zionists rather than try to exterminate them.

The cold, bitter, implacable, brutal, primitive and baseless hatred that so many in the Arab world bear toward Israel, Israelis, Zionism, Jews andJudaism -- that hatred is evil. And those Arab leaders who nurture this hatred, and who use it to run others, for decades -- they are evil. And evil too are their intellectual collaborators in both Arab and western nations, who try to spin for us a new pseudo-reality in which that hatred has "just cause" and that terrorism is spawned by "real grievances".

Baseless brutal hatred is evil. And all the more so when it impels the haters toward violence and war and destruction and terrorism and mass murder and genocide.

But what about Israel? Judging from the level of hysteria in the endless anti-Israel diatribe from the UN and much of the media and mosques in Muslim and western countries, one might conclude that Israel is the world's worst violator of human rights -- far surpassing China or North Korea or Libya or Arabia or Cuba or Venezuela or Iran or Russia or any of the failed states whose misdeeds have been documented but have drawn no ire from the civilized world.

Certainly there are evil people among Jews, Israelis, Zionists, as there are among all groups across the world. Israel as a state, and Zionists as active participants in the creation of that state, have done some bad things, some times, to some people, as have all states at sometime, somewhere.

But there is a radical and substantive difference between a state doing some bad things, making some mistakes, harming some people.....and a state or group whose core intentions and goals and methods and deeds and official policies areevil.

No state is perfect. No society is flawless. And this is certainly true of Israel as a state and as a society. But even if all the lies that Arab PR and propaganda have perpetrated about Israel were true (they are not, but even ifthey were), the fate that the Arab terrorists, and their state enablers, and their mendacious cheerleaders, all avidly seek for Israel would not be justified. The extermination of an entire people cannot be justified, ever, except in the hearts and minds of truly evil people.

No Jewish leader, no Zionist leader, no Israeli leader, ever, during the entirehistory of Zionism and the State of Israel, ever perpetrated the heinous acts which are par for the course in the Palestinian Arab war against Israel: acts which are the hallmarks of the Arab terrorists and their enablers; and which are partof the very core of Arab political and religious ideology.

Yet, almost no one discusses the sheer evil of the Arab anti-Israel (and anti-Jewish) program. It is as though the Arabs get a free pass to be evil, and to do evil and arouse no ire save that of their victims.

Consider the long and discouraging list of utterly evil actions in Victor Davis Hanson's essay ("When should we no longer support Israel?" www.Victorhanson.com, March 30, 2004) which characterize Palestinian terrorism and terrorist government:

"...we should no longer support Israel, WHEN:

Mr. Sharon suspends all elections and plans a decade of unquestioned rule.

Mr. Sharon suspends all investigation about fiscal impropriety as his family members spend millions of Israeli aid money in Paris.

All Israeli television and newspapers are censored by the Likud party.

Israeli hit teams enter the West Bank with the precise intention of targeting and blowing up Arab women and children.

Pre-teen Israeli children are apprehended with bombs under their shirts on their way to the West Bank to murder Palestinian families.

Israeli crowds rush into the street to dip their hands into the blood of their dead and march en masse chanting mass murder to the Palestinians.

Rabbis give public sermons in which they characterize Palestinians as the children of pigs and monkeys.

Israeli school textbooks state that Arabs engage in blood sacrifice and ritual murders.

Mainstream Israeli politicians, without public rebuke, call for the destruction of Palestinians on the West Bank and the end to Arab society there.

Likud party members routinely lynch and execute their opponents without trial.

Jewish fundamentalists execute with impunity women found guilty of adultery on grounds that they are impugning the honor of the family.

Israeli mobs with impunity tear apart Palestinian policemen held in detention.

Israeli television broadcasts to the tune of patriotic music the last taped messages of Jewish suicide bombers who have slaughtered dozens of Arabs.

Jewish marchers parade in the streets with their children dressed up as suicide bombers, replete with plastic suicide-bombing vests.

New Yorkers post $25,000 bounties for every Palestinian blown up by Israeli murderers.

Israeli militants murder a Jew by accident and then apologize on grounds that they thought he was an Arab, to the silence of Israeli society.

Jews enter Arab villages in Israel to machine gun women and children.

Israeli public figures routinely threaten the United States with terror attacks.

Bin Laden is a folk hero in Tel Aviv.

Jewish assassins murder American diplomats and are given de facto sanctuary by Israeli society.

Israeli citizens celebrate on news that 3,000 Americans have been murdered.

Israeli citizens express support for Saddam Hussein's supporters in Iraq in their efforts to kill Americans.

So until then, I think most Americans can see the moral differences in the present struggle.

If the Palestinians wish to hold periodic and open elections, establish an independent judiciary, create a free press, arrest murderers, subject their treasury to public scrutiny, eschew suicide murdering, censure religious leaders who call for mass murder, embrace non-violent dissidents, extend equal rights to women, end honor killings, raise funds in the Arab world earmarked only to build water, sewer, transportation, and education infrastructure, and pledge that any Jews who choose to live in the West Bank will enjoy the same rights as Arabs in Israel...then they might find Americans equally divided over questions of land and peace.

But all that is a lot of ifs. And so for the present, Palestinian leaders should not be too surprised that Americans increasingly find very little in their society that has much appeal to either our values or sympathy. If they continually assure us publicly that they are furious at Americans, then they should at least pause, reflect, and ask themselves why an overwhelming numberof Americans, not Jewish, not residents of New York, not influenced by the media, are growing far more furious with them."

As Dr. Hanson notes, were these atrocities perpetrated byIsraelis, the world would rise up in righteous ire, heaping calumny on Israel. They are typical of the Palestinian terrorist government -- and the world is silent.

And, not surprisingly, the same is true of Arab much ballyhooed and state-supported Holocaust denial.

Virtually alone among peoples of the world, Arabs appear to have won a free pass when it comes to denying or minimizing the Holocaust. Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah has declared to his supporters that 'Jews invented the legend of the Holocaust.' Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recently told an interviewer that he doesn't have 'any clue how [Jews] were killed or how many were killed.' And Hamas's official Web site labels the Nazi effort to exterminate Jews 'an alleged and invented story with no basis.'

Such Arab viewpoints are not exceptional. A respected Holocaust research institution recently reported that Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all promote Holocaust denial and protect Holocaust deniers. The records of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum show that only one Arab leader at or near the highest level of government -- a young prince from a Persian Gulf state -- has ever made an official visit to the museum in its 13-year history. Not a single official textbook or educational program on the Holocaust exists in an Arab country. In Arab media, literature and popular culture, Holocaust denial is pervasive and legitimized. (RobertSatloff, "The Holocaust's Arab Heroes", Washington Post, 10.8.06).

This denial, criminal in some countries in the West, is standard government policy in many Arab and some Moslem countries.

Finally, consider as well the tragic fact that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where anti-government demonstrations can muster up to 400,000 (June, 1982) proclaiming their opposition to a war (in this case it was the Lebanon war), even as the Palestinian Arab terrorists in Lebanon rain terrorist rockets on civilian communities. Has there ever been an anti-war demonstration in any Arab country, anywhere, at any time?

Israel is the only country in the Middle East where anti-war activists can demonstrate outside of the Parliament building against the closure of crossing points in to Gaza (because it makes life harder for the Gazan Arabs), even as Hamas' Qassam rockets from Gaza rain down on Sederoth.

That fact, perhaps more than any other, depicts for us the great moral divide in this conflict.

DavidMeir-Levi

END NOTES

(*) Nota Bene! I'm talking ONLY about Arab terrorists, and the state leaders who support them, and the rank-and-file terrorists who join their terrorist groups, and the broader population throughout the world which supports them.

I am NOT talking about your average Arab/Moslem man-on-the-street, regular person, nice civilian, non-terrorist, non-militant, who (I presume) wants nothing more than to lead a normal life, raise crops and a family, give his kids a good start in life, and leave the world a bit better off than he found it....same as you and I.

(**) And the evil is not limited to the Arab -- Israel conflict. Arab attacks on Arab healthcare workers, misuse of the neutrality of Arab patients and ambulances, destruction and violence and genocide of Moslema gainst Moslem in Sudan (Darfur as well as South Sudan), Iraq, Mauritania, Yemen, Algeria, Somalia, Lebanon, and Gaza, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- this evil abounds throughout the Moslem world and has been a characteristic of the Moslem world since the days of the first Caliphs. And the common thread through all of these calamities is the deep-seated religious and racial intolerance that causes Sunni and Shi'a Iraqis to massacre each other in mosques and markets and funerals and weddings, drives the ethnic cleansing of Darfur that has resulted in deaths and displacement by the hundreds of thousands, and the bona fide genocide in south Sudan which has resulted in the deaths of more than two million black African Christians and animists. And most recently, Hamas' war-crimes against Fatah agents and civilians in the Gaza Strip demonstrate the extremes of brutality that a terrorist group motivated by and acting in the name of Islam can perpetrate against its own.

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

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WOULDN'T IT BE WONDERFUL IF ALL PEOPLE WERE RATIONAL
Posted by John G. Wiggins, June 22, 2007.

I understand how hard it is to think the palestinians would choose living the way they are living over living the way they could be living with the millions of dollars coming in from all over the world. But the cold hard facts are the cold hard facts. These people cannot think rationally. When you've been indoctrinated all of your life the way they have it is near impossible for them to change. It is an evil spirit that controls their minds. Listen to the Leaders who are supposed to be educated people. Do they really think Jews drink Babies blood? Yes, yes, yes!!! With all their heart they believe it and will believe it until Messiah comes. There will be no peace. They hate peace, they love death! they love war! they hate Jews! Make your peace Israel with a strong deterrent. They respect force. They hate people who feel sorry for them and want to help them, but they will use this to con them and kill them. Right now they are doing Satan's bidding and until their eyes are opened by Messiah they will continue to hate.

Contact John Wiggins at johngwiggins@yahoo.com

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IRAN'S FAILED AUSSIE HOSTAGE ATTEMPT
Posted by Avodah, June 22, 2007.

This comes from the Little Green Footballs website:
www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ ?PHPSESSID=68a8ba7f98b3fa2ade57a1f00c9352f5

Apparently, when Iran captured those British sailors it wasn't their first attempt; they went for an Australian Navy boarding team first: Iran 'unable to take Australians'.

Iranian naval forces in the Gulf tried to capture an Australian Navy boarding team but were vigorously repelled, the BBC has learned.

The incident took place before Iran successfully seized 15 British sailors and Marines in March.

The lessons from the earlier attempt do not appear to have been applied in time by British maritime patrols.

The 15 Britons were searching a cargo boat in the Gulf when they were captured over a boundary dispute. When Iranian Revolutionary Guards captured the British sailors and Royal Marines in March, it was not exactly their first attempt.

It turns out that Iranian forces made an earlier concerted attempt to seize a boarding party from the Royal Australian Navy.

The Australians, though, to quote one military source, "were having none of it".

The BBC has been told the Australians re-boarded the vessel they had just searched, aimed their machine guns at the approaching Iranians and warned them to back off, using what was said to be "highly colourful language".

Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com

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BECOME A MIDDLE EAST EXPERT/MAKE BIG BUCKS/ASTOUND YOUR FRIENDS! A SATIRE
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 21, 2007.

Dear Career Counselor:

I am in bad shape. I cannot get a job or support myself. I want to be rich and famous and powerful but I have no idea what to do. Can you suggest a powerful, prestigious, high-paying field where I need do no study or training?

Signed,
Destitute and Dumb

Dear D&D:

I'm so glad you wrote me as I have the perfect solution: become an expert on the Middle East and Islam. It's easy, painless (for you, though many others will pay for it with their lives), and profitable. Just look at these examples:

Stephen Mearsheimer and John Walt. Sure they were tenured professors but they hadn't produced anything of note in years. Then they had an idea. Write a paper attacking the power of the Jewish lobby. Years of study? Intensive research? Nah. A few hours by a grad student on the internet. Result: Fame, a huge book contract, invitations to speak, largely respectful media coverage! Within months.

Or how about Bob Leiken. A washed-up Latin American expert, former Marxist revolutionary. The left hated him because he was an instrument of Oliver North in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras. Even North made fun of him. He had to sell his house and move his family into an apartment. Things looked dim. And then, presto! A grant from Smith-Richardson, another grant from the CIA, two articles in Foreign Affairs, a contract with Oxford University Press. All this within about a year. Invited to brief the State Department. Why? Because he decided to be an instant Middle East expert. Did he take courses, learn languages, spend hours reading texts? Nope. Just sat in a room with some radical Islamists. They told him they were moderates. He wrote it down.

And like the great language expert, the rival of Henry Higgins, who in "My Fair Lady" proclaims that the flowerseller Eliza Doolittle is a Hungarian princess of royal blood, Leiken proclaims that the radical Islamists are really moderates who the United States can engage. Wow says Condi Rice. Do tell, asks the State Department.

Has he read their extremist statements in Arabic? Nope, who needs Arabic. How about the translations and academic papers on the subject? Waste of time. Study of Koranic and Islamic sources? That's for wimps and suckers. All you have to do is talk to them and then you know. Because hardline supporters of terrorism who cheer the murder of people by kidnappers and suicide bombers wouldn't lie to you, would they?

Or how about Mary Habeck? A military historian, lost her job at Yale. Hey, why is everyone else having all the fun! I'll be an expert on the Middle East and on Islam too! So she loaded up the truck and took a brief trip to Iraq. Next thing you know she's got a book, testifies to Congress, is briefing Hilary Clinton, and being consulted by the great and powerful. Does she know anything about Islam? She thinks that jihad is an inner struggle, not having much to do with smiting infidels and conquering lands. But what's the difference? If you don't want to do so you don't have to see the dead bodies produced by your advice.

So what are you waiting for? How could you NOT decide to be a Middle East expert or a sage about Islam? You'd have to be crazy not to do it. Operators are standing by.

By the way, all of the above is completely true -- and other examples could be cited. But if not cast in the form of a satire, who'd believe it?

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, has written and edited 50 books on the Middle East. His latest book, The Truth About Syria, has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

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CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS GET IT
Posted by Michael Travis, June 21, 2007.
Only in the Spirit can this be understood.

This set of items comes from IsraPundit (www.IsraPundit.com).

The very important and incisive first item is a letter sent by us to a former presidential candidate; it should -- we believe -- set alarm bells ringing everywhere.

The second item below was written by Jerry Golden. powerfully addresses the same issue.

1. From: Jan Willem van der Hoeven,
Director, International Christian Zionist Center

Dear Sir

Shalom from Jerusalem, where we have returned after a busy month in the United States. We are so thankful for the time we were able to be with you -- it was definitely the highlight of our week of meetings in and around Washington DC. Thank you again for your courtesy and graciousness in hosting us.

As we prayed in your office, and have prayed since -- including today: May the Lord continue to use you mightily for His purposes for your nation, and may He bind us together as, like you, we seek to stand on His Word concerning this crucial relationship between Israel and the United States.

We would like to share the following points regarding the recent developments in Gaza, and in the light of tomorrow's meeting between Prime Minister Olmert and President Bush. I know you have a great deal of insight into these issues already, but if our perspective from "closer to the ground" can add to yours as you seek to alert your countrymen to what is happening in the Middle East, then we'd certainly want to send you some pointers as critical issues develop.

We believe Israel and America's apparently instinctive reaction to Hamas' coup in Gaza -- to rush to the aid of Abbas and his emergency PA government in order to bolster them against a Hamas takeover in the "West Bank" -- is the wrong move. The following reasons show why it is short-sighted and extremely dangerous for Israel.

The Palestinian Arabs in the PA areas in Judea and Samaria will not have been repulsed by what Hamas did -- they will be impressed. This is the traditional Arab response to those who demonstrate strength, even brutality. This means that Hamas will now enjoy even greater support on the "West Bank" (we believe this will be shown to be true in the coming months), and it is a support base into which the Islamist group will tap when the time is right, in order that Hamas can do in Judea-Samaria precisely what it did in Gaza.

Olmert and Bush may believe they will be bolstering Abbas, but it is Hamas that will finally benefit -- as it did in Gaza -- from the weapons and other equipment that will now be sent to flood the "West Bank."

If this flood of aid to Abbas includes a fast track towards handing him the entire "West Bank" in order to jumpstart the "peace process" because Israel "now has a partner" -- which is how Olmert and US administration officials have indicated they see this -- then that vital territory will soon be lost to Israel, in political terms -- forever. The high ground overlooking Israel's populated coastal plain will be in the hands of the Palestinian Arabs who will then have de facto achieved every goal in this phase of the PLO's multi-stage plan to destroy Israel -- whether "Hamastan" in Gaza and "Fatahstan" in the "West Bank," or "Hamastan" in all those areas.

The United States will then have played an active and direct role in "dividing up God's land" and gravely endangering Israel -- the consequences of which, we know as Bible believers, will be fearful for the nation you -- and we love so much.

As we watched the Gaza Strip implode last week, our thought was that God was fighting for Israel by allowing that situation to unfold. From where we stand, it certainly does seem as if He is giving Israel reason after reason for fully justifying its need to abandon the whole land-for-peace process.

Israeli leaders can already point to the failure of the unilateral withdrawal approach -- last summer's war with "Hizballahstan" in southern Lebanon, and the incessant Kassam attacks from "Hamastan" in Gaza. Now the Hamas coup has provided an extremely sound reason for halting all cooperation with the implementation of President Bush's "two-state solution."

We need to strengthen the hands of Binyamin Netanyahu and any US senators or congressmen who have recognized the bankruptcy of this whole approach and who can see that it is gambling with the very existence of Israel.

May God help us,

Yours for Zion's sake
Stan Goodenough,
Assistant to Jan Willem van der Hoeven,
Director INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN ZIONIST CENTER


2. 'The Golden Report' by Jerry Golden

Only in the Spirit can this be understood.

Many have asked why I've been silent for over a week about the insanity here in Israel. I am still shaking my head in total unbelief. Please keep in mind that what you are about to read is my very simplistic evaluation, knowing that there are many complications not mentioned here.

First we pull out of Gaza under pressure from the Bush White House, knowing that it would become a terrorist stronghold. I like most Israelis sat in total unbelief and watched Ariel Sharon who we all had trusted completely taken over by George W. Bush. We watched Sharon go against his country and even his own party and use words that no other Prime Minister ever used, like occupation, and a Palestinian State to mention a couple. We watched Sharon bring Olmert from the 33rd position in the Likud Party all the way to the position of his number one in the Government. It seems now with 20/20 hind sight that is how far back Sharon had to reach into the Likud ranks to find someone who would continue the planned destruction of Israel. And once again we sat still without protest like sheep being led to the slaughter once again. I have asked God many times if He has placed something in the minds of us Jews that allows us to be intelligent in many ways and yet stupid in others, or how a people who have suffered the horrors of the Holocaust can once again sit still and allow someone like Sharon and Olmert lead us into yet another Holocaust? But like you when I read the prophetic Word of God I find all my answers of what is to come and what will be.

Then we sit still and allow Egypt (our peace partner) to open its border for tons of weapons moving into Gaza preparing Hamas for an all out war. To add insult to injury we allow these same Hamas terrorists to shell our cities and towns in the western Negev, causing death and destruction to our Jewish citizens and we do little to nothing about it, because Bush says we must show restraint to help his efforts in Iraq.

Now Hamas has completely taken over the entire Gaza Strip, turning it into another Taliban state living under Islamic Sharia Law. And as everyone knew would happen all the weapons supplied by the US to Abbas in Gaza are now in the hands of those who have sworn to destroy Israel and kill every Jew. And the weapons continue to flow into Gaza in preparation for all out war.

The world is now being told that the good news is Abbas can now be dealt with in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) that he is a moderate terrorist. When it has only been a few weeks ago when he made the statement that both and Hamas and Fatah should be turning their guns on Israel and not on each other. The fact that he is a Holocaust denier and sworn enemy of Israel seems to be forgotten. Or is it that everyone has forgotten that Fatah is a terrorist organization, and the PLO is headed by Abbas. That the Aksa Martyrs Brigade has killed more Jews with suicide bombers than Hamas has and it too is under the control of Abbas and Fatah. Or that the reason the average "Palestinian" voted for Hamas in their election was they were fed up with all the corruption in the Abbas government. That while the average "Palestinian" lived on a $1,000 or less a year, all of the Government officials lived in mansions and drove new high dollar Mercedes with money giving by the US and EU.

But now we hear Rice say we must now support Abbas and give him millions of dollars to rearm his terrorists with. Front Page Jerusalem Post today says, "Us Resumes Financial And Political Ties With Pa. It's not enough that because of the Bush pressure on Sharon we now have a Taliban State on our southern borders that has sworn to destroy the State of Israel and kill every Jew, he wants to now finish the job and turn the heart land of Israel into a terrorist state as well, and his spin doctors are very quick to start their propaganda to the whole world.

We now have Barak back as our Defense Minister with his eye squarely on the Prime Ministers job; we all know that he will give it all to the Arabs even the Old City and the Temple Mount. We now have Shimon Peres the epitome of total evil as our next President. While Netanyahu who so many believe to be the best man for the job of PM sits still with his mouth shut and seems to have no fight left in him. So to say things look bad here in Israel would be a very fair statement.

As terrible as the above may seem it is pale in comparison to what Iran and Syria have in store for Israel. For months now Iran has been shipping convoys of weapons into Lebanon to rearm Hezbollah with longer range missiles under the ever watchful eye of the UN. Russia, North Korea and China have been arming Syria with Iranian financial backing. And Iran has hundreds of long range missile aimed at Israel of which anyone of them could be carrying a nuclear warhead purchased from any number of the old USSR countries.

While Egypt sits unnoticed allowing Hamas in Gaza to rearm and they too have a very large and dangerous army thanks to the US. Egypt has a long memory and they want revenge for 1967 and 1973 wars.

All this only means that if Israel just sits here and waits it will be destroyed or nearly destroyed and only God can then save her. But then that sounds Scriptural doesn't it!

But don't think it is only Israel that will be destroyed. The United States is the main target and with Israel out of the way look out USA the terrorists cells in the US will begin their planned destruction of that country as well. In the meantime God is showing the US His displeasure of the back stabbing that the US is doing to Israel...

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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BACKING THE WRONG HORSE
Posted by Avodah, June 21, 2007.

This comes from http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2007/06/emuna_news_anal.html and was written by Rabbi Lazer Brody.

Why Olmert and Kadima will never succeed

The Kadima party was founded and based on a non-ideological, opportunistic bolt of both Labor and Likud MKs from the respective parties of their youth. Olmert, Livni, Peres and company all turned their backs on their comrades in a blatant show of disloyalty. Especially pitiful is Othniel's willingness to betray his National Religious comrades from youth, and to serve as Kadima's Uncle-Tom kippa (skullcap) wearer that will have to market Olmert's surrender of Judea and Sammaria to the disenfranchised families, Heaven forbid, all for the price of being "in".

Kadima is the wrong horse to back -- a lame one, as we'll see in the coming elections when they'll most likely be wiped off the political map. A party built and based on disloyalty won't last, just like any other relationship based on treachery and disloyalty won't last.

Poor Man's Viet Nam

Olmert, all smiles about Bushey's arm around his shoulder in DC, won't have the grin on his face for long. He and bumbling George are the blind leading the blind. The Bush-Olmert push to save Abu Mazen and his ultra-corrupt Fatah murderers is ever so remindful of Lyndon Johnson's and Nixon's fruitless efforts to sage the corrupt regime of "democratic" (sic) South Vietnam in the late 60's and early 70's. Ultimately, the USA left Southeast Asia with its tail between its legs, licking the wounds of tens of thousands of Americans killed and wounded, while the ideologically-motivated North Vietnamese reunited the country.

Just as the USA backed the wrong horse back then, they're backing the wrong horse now.

The CIA has suffered a miserable defeat in Gaza, outclassed and outdistanced by the Syrian intelligence, who together with Khaled Meshal in Syria, planned a smoother overthrow of the Fatah in Gaza than anyone could imagine. Most experts were expecting thousands of dead in a Fatah-Hamas intramural bloodbath, yet the whole deal took 48 hours. Most strageically remarkable is the bonanza of CIA and western intelligence secrets that has now fallen into Hamas, Syrian, and Iranian hands. The CIA's Middle East Desk is probably buying Tylenol by the case this week.

Any arms and funds that the USA and Israel have ever given to the Fatah in Gaza is now in Hamas hands, another Olmert-Bush fumble in democracy's endzone.

The CIA is a pitiful match for Syrian and Iranian intelligence, especially on an Islamic home court. Lousy intelligence, poor judgment, a lack of understanding of the local mentality and lack of conviction are bringing Olley and Bush to support not only the wrong horse, but a dying horse. The Hamas are plenty strong in Shechem and in Jenin, and with Syrian (and some say Al Qaida) help, getting stronger by the minute. Ultimately, they'll smash the Fatah in the West Bank too. Academically, even if the slithery Fatah could gain control of the so-called West Bank, they'd bite the Jewish hand that helped them at the very first opportunity. Better the known enemy now; this would be a gift to preserve the sanctity of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, for no one in their right mind would make territorial concessions to the Hamas. Then again, without emuna, there's no sanity anyway. As it is, Olmert would rather surrender the Golan to the Syrians rather than stand up to them. In his eyes, Gush Katif was only the beginning. May Hashem save us from such leaders.

A known enemy is better than a hand seeking a mock peace, that really has a dagger up its sleeve. Personally, Hamastan is better for Israel than an American-supported Fatahland. Israel should have no qualms about smashing a Hamastan that throws the first stone over the border. In the Middle East, restraint means fear, or lack of deterrent power. That leads us to our next item:

Syrian Test of Israeli Nerves

The new renegade Ansar Allah terrorist group in Lebanon is a Syrian creation, brilliantly designed by Syrian intelligence to weaken Siniora's silly government in Lebanon and to test Israel's resolve and nerves in one fell swoop. Only 3 days ago, 3 Katyushas fell in Kiryat Shemona destroying homes but miraculously not injuring anyone, and as predicted, Israel did nothing. In Middle East sports, that's called Syria 1 -- Israel 0. The truth is that the Israeli leadership is deathly afraid of the enemies. Where there's no emuna, there's no deterrence or resolve.

Once more, backing the wrong horse

The only answer to militant, hostile, dark-side radical Islamo-fascists are the type of gung ho emuna soldiers of kedusha that I had the privilege of spending last Shabbat with. Rather than the Israeli government backing the forces of Torah and emuna, it's backing abomination parade scheduled to contaminate the holy city of Jerusalem this Friday. May Hashem help us.

Thank G-d, Hashem runs the world

Despite the scary situation, Hashem does everything for our ultimate good, whether or not our limited human brains comprehend what's happening. Just wait and see. If you want to bet on the right horse, pick emuna, for it's Israel's strongest weapon. Just ask little Nachman Emuna (illustration below by Disney artist Ken [Baruch] Becker, may Hashem bless him always): Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com

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PEACE NOW PROTEST FOR A JEW-FREE HEVRON
Posted by Ezra HaLevi, June 21, 2007.

This appeared today in Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNationalNews.com).

Peace Now, a left-wing group founded to bring about Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, but expanded to work toward a withdrawal from all areas won by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War held a protest in Hevron earlier this month. The protest, in the heart of the tiny Jewish quarter of the city, featured large signs demanding the Jews be barred from living in the city of the Patriarchs.

"The Settlements are an Obstacle to Peace!"

The 200 Peace Now protestors (the group claimed 300 came and state-run radio reported that as well -- though only four 50-seater buses were brought) were ringed by heavy security as they delivered their message that the Jewish community in Hevron is a burden on Israel's security forces. The local community, by and large, chose to ignore the protest, saying the group's aim was to draw them into confrontations it could then use to justify Peace Now's provocations -- but several activist groups from outside Hevron came to counter Peace Now's message.

Women in Green, Tzafrir Ronen's Nahalal Forum and Kumah all turned up with signs and activists to say that Jewish life in Hevron is a positive thing, which should be expanded and allowed to flourish. Peace Now protestors led chants like "We don't want to die in vain, make peace now!" and "Hevron settlers -- a bone in the throat."

"Mom is Buried Here," says the Hebrew sign -- a reference to the matriarchs Sara, Rebbeca and Leah

Women in Green's Nadia Matar pointed out that Peace Now is heavily funded by the same European Union that is soft on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."In any event, we didn't come here to stare at them." she said. "They are here to protest 40 years of 'occupation,' and we are here to celebrate our return to the Land of Israel."

Kim M., a student at a Christian university in Pennsylvania, observed the Peace Now protest from the side. "I've only been in Palestine for a few days," she said. "And I'm still trying to figure everything out." Kim wore a CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) hat; she was part of a tour organized by the radical Christian group. Other CPT members stood aside and opined that the Jewish Peace Now protestors still insist on occupying pre-1967 Israel as well, "stolen from the Palestinians in 1948."

Tzafrir Ronen, out of earshot in the spot designated for the counter-protest -- said that similar protests were in fact heard prior to 1967 by the left, when the government wanted to expand the now-concensus Galilee city of Afula. He also blasted the journalists who had come on armored buses paid for by Peace Now.

The armored buses came in handy, as the left-wing protestors were targeted by Arab stone-throwers while leaving Hevron due to their yellow license plates identifying them as Israeli. Peace Now told reporters that it thought the rocks may have been thrown by "settler youth," not Arabs.

Ezra HaLevi writes for Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNationalNews.com).

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CONTRARIANS
Posted by JINSA, June 21, 2007.

Contrarians. We've been called that before. While much of the American Jewish community approves of President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert's decision to fund and support Abu Mazen as "the President of all the Palestinians," we are disappointed at many levels.

First, Abu Mazen may be the President of all the Palestinians, but he has/had a legislature dominated by the freely elected Hamas. For the U.S. to now say that we accept the results of the Presidential election but not the result of the legislative election is poor policy.

Second, Abu Mazen did nothing to change the culture of corruption he actively helped Yasser Arafat develop during the Oslo years. How could the Palestinians be the world's largest per capita aid recipients -- according to the Wall Street Journal, "the PA has so far received more foreign aid than all of Europe received under the Marshall Plan" -- and still have 30 percent of its people dependent on food aid from outside? For the U.S. to agree to provide more money with less control is poor policy.

Third, two American generals tried their hand at training Palestinian forces to protect themselves -- if not to protect the people they were supposed to serve. We never liked the mission those generals were given, but we had assumed they wouldn't fail. They failed; utterly failed. The Fatah soldiers trained by American officers did not protect the civilians. They did not protect the institutions of the PA. They did not protect their wounded comrades, some of whom Hamas shot in their hospital beds while others were tossed out of buildings. The men our generals trained turned and ran ignominiously. For the U.S. to provide more arms with less control is poor policy.

Fourth, Abu Mazen at the height of his capability (and this is not it) was not a partner in the establishment of a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis. He was willing to discuss day-to-day security and economic policy for the territories, and believed suicide bombings were counterproductive to Palestinian goals (though not necessarily bad in and of themselves). At the same time, he was entirely committed to Arafat's three-point program: an independent Palestinian State with its borders undefined; Jerusalem as the capital; the so-called "right of return" of the original 1948 Palestinian refugees and their descendants to places inside Israel from which they claim to have come. If he couldn't accept the legitimacy of Israeli sovereignty then, for the U.S. to believe he can and will while under siege from people better trained, better armed and more ideologically committed than he, is poor policy.

Fifth, Abu Mazen has already indicated that he wants to talk to Hamas about the future. Since they won and he lost, it is safe to assume that Fatah will move toward the Hamas position rather than assume Hamas will move toward the Fatah position.

America has already lowered the bar of expectations of Fatah responsibility to the ground. As Fatah becomes more like Hamas in order to survive, the only way for the U.S. to lower the bar further would be to dig a hole. For the U.S. to begin digging is poor policy.

The JINSA Reports are published by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (http://www.jinsa.org). To subscribe, email jinsareports-www@lists.jinsa.org This is JINSA Report #676 and was posted yesterday. The list of reports is archived at
http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/browse/ categoryid/650/documentid/650/history/3%2C650

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KURDISTAN FAILING; AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL TOTALLY DEFAMES ISRAEL
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 21, 2007.

FALLACY OF SEEING FATAH AS PEACEMAKER

The theory for favoring Fatah over Hamas and therefore for arming Fatah head Abbas is that Fatah would make peace with Israel. The main fallacy and disproof of that is Fatah's refusal to have made peace with Israel when it could.

There are other fallacies, such as Fatah's and Abbas' hard line, that besides having their own state, the western Palestinian Arabs should be able to flood and submerge the Jewish state. Fatah competes with Hamas in indoctrinating in hatred and terrorism against Israel. Fatah and Abbas have done nothing to stem the corruption that caused their electoral loss, and they are divided. Abbas is only nominally the head of Fatah, which uses him as a front man to seem to the West as moderate. Its head is Qaddumi, a radical. Fatah never has punished anyone for terrorism. It remains the same organization as under Arafat, not caring how much its people suffer from the diversion of their funds. It never told the people how much Israel offered them; they are told that Israel wants to wipe them out (IMRA, 6/3 from Barry Rubin).

In order to champion Abbas, people have to ignore his record and his organization's. They have to misunderstand Muslim culture. That's easy to do when the schools teach little, the media censors itself, and the real goal is to give Jewish territory to the Muslims. Any excuse will do.

KURDISTAN FAILING

At first, the Kurdish sector in Iraq was prospering and democratic. Then the leaders became more corrupt, abused power, and destabilized the province; there is neither accountability nor a free press. The two leading families, which had collaborated with Saddam, divided up many choice posts among their relatives. They intimidate or bribe other parties. The leading parties control the student unions even in high schools. The students spy on fellow students. Party members get preferences for scholarships, etc. Businesses having to take rulers' relatives as partners. The boom is subsiding, and inflation is impoverishing the masses.

People who demonstrate against corruption are subject to arbitrary arrest, torture, and death. Of the five judiciaries, four are extra-legal. The parties control appointments to them. Criticism of officialdom is considered, under Saddam's continuing law there, as defamation.

Iranian and other intelligence services and Islamist organizations make for insecurity there, sometimes with connivance by the rulers. The US had been popular for saving them, but lost favor for not demanding democracy for them. The US thinks its silence makes for stability, but it doesn't (MEF News, 6/6).

AMNESTY INTL. MEMBERS SHOULD RESIGN

"Amnesty International (AI) today issued a report entitled 'Enduring Occupation: Palestinians under siege in the W. Bank,' which provides more evidence of AI's strong political agenda on Arab-Israeli issues. This report also reinforces the unjustified boycott campaigns that delegitimize Israel and the right of self-defense. By participating in this campaign, the members of Amnesty International undermine the basis of universal human rights."

"Previous NGO Monitor reports have noted the prevalence of one-sided attacks on Israel from AI, and the organization's latest publication confirms this long-standing bias. 'Enduring Occupation' begins by placing full responsibility for the conflict on Israel, with minimal reference to Palestinian (Arab) terror. The emotive language employed in the report is more appropriate for a propaganda communique, such as the highly charged opening implication that Israel deliberately kills Palestinian children, and the coarse abuse of Holocaust terminology, such as 'Wall of Death'. Once again, Amnesty has invented and ignored evidence in order to demonize Israel."

"The report also falsely implies that Israel arbitrarily imposes restrictions on Palestinians, commits 'war crimes,' and calls for Israelis to be prosecuted in the world's courts. AI's report barely acknowledges Palestinian terror and the extensive support it receives from neighboring regimes. Nor is there substantial recognition of Israel's right, according to international law, to defend itself against such terror."

"Furthermore, the report deliberately misrepresents Israel's separation barrier, ignoring the precipitous decline in terror attacks following the barrier's construction. There is no mention of widespread corruption within the Palestinian economic and social systems, the international boycott of Hamas as a terror organization, and the continued mismanagement of funds by the Palestinians. AI's report is explicit in laying the blame squarely on Israel and indicative of a clear political agenda."

"Gerald Steinberg, Executive Director of NGO Monitor, remarked that 'This Amnesty report, following tendentious condemnations of Israel, demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of this organization.' (IMRA, 6/3.)" What "occupation?"

WRONG TIME FOR NEGOTIATION

It makes no sense to work on new accords with destabilizing and radicalizing Arab societies. An accord "would not help, it cannot stop the macabre march, and it would not hold." (Youssef Ibrahim, NY Sun, 6/7, p.7). Besides, even when those regimes are stabile and not Islamist, they don't keep agreements.

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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GAZA: ANOTHER OF ISLAM'S REALITY SHOWS
Posted by Michael Devolin, June 21, 2007.

Islam has no moderates. Islam represents only Muslims, which includes those who are transiting away from that congenital humanity they inherited through nascency-a humanity that, properly motivated, defies the insensate culture bequeathed them from the Koran-and those who have already protruded beyond that humanity, having made the journey to veridical Islam, which now includes the blood-for-blood reality show presently being played out in Gaza by Muslim terrorists belonging to Hamas and Fatah.

I remember that but a few days ago, the media were comparing Hamas and Fatah, describing Fatah as "secular" and "the more moderate" of the two. Fatah, in my opinion, is nothing more than a terrorist group driven by the lure of billions in "foreign aid" currencies, directed by a senior citizen terrorist who now adapts, as an imposed prerequisite to receiving these same billions, the cavil of statecraft. And now Abbas' Fatah gunmen, in a public display of what has evolved as Islam's peculiar avant-garde statecraft, are killing Hamas supporters in the streets. Where is the moderation in that? And how is this behaviour any different from that of Hamas' gunmen who, not to be outdone, are killing Fatah gunmen in the streets? Islam has given a whole new meaning to the term "vicious circle."

And please, can anyone enlighten me as to what is "secularism" in Gaza, because every time I watch TV news casts about either of these two Islamic killing fraternities, whether Hamas or Fatah, I see men with an AK47 in one hand and a Koran in the other? It seems to me that in the context of Gaza and the so-called Palestinians, both secularism and Islam are neither indicative nor portentous of any sort of denouement to the obsession these people seem to have with killing each other whenever they are not busy killing Israeli Jews. These people are ready to govern a "Palestinian state" contiguous to Israel? I don't think so. Such a state, whether governed by Fatah or Hamas, would be, to borrow a phrase from Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "an absurdity, a noble failure, or something in between."

And what relevance does secularism have within the bounds of the so-called Palestinian struggle anyway? After all, this is the same populace that voted in the Muslim zealots of Hamas and rejected "the more moderate" Fatah. What pertinence, therefore, has Fatah's miasmic secularism in a religious setting as autocratic as Islam's? None.

After all is said and done, whether within or without Gaza, the hemorrhaging of whatever frail unity previously existed between Fatah and Hamas is nothing more than the sectarian violence that follows Islam around the globe. Yesterday it was Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia. Today it's Gaza: another of Islam's reality shows.

Michael Devolin is a Noachide and lives in Canada. Contact him at devolin@reach.net This essay was published yesterday in the Magic City Morning Star website.

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NETANYAHU: DEPLOY JORDANIAN TROOPS IN WEST BANK
Posted by Sergio Tessa(Hadar), June 21, 2007.

PIPI ZIGZAGYAHU at his best

This below was written by Yitzhak Benhorin and published today in Ynet News. It is archived at
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3416085,00.html

During visit to Washington, opposition leader says Palestinians cannot impose order in West Bank alone, need Egyptian and Jordanian involvement; talks about Iranian threat with US VP

WASHINGTON -- A Palestinian division of the Jordanian military should be deployed in the West Bank in order to bring law and order to the area, opposition leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu suggested Thursday.

During a visit to Washington, Netanyahu told Israeli reporters that Palestinians will not be able to impose order alone and require international assistance to do so. "We can't build up Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with Palestinian forces alone. We need Egyptian and Jordanian involvement," he said.

"Egypt must block arms smuggling in the Philadelphi corridor, which is has not done to date. Jordan can and must support the effort with a measured security contribution in the West Bank," he elaborated.

"We need to consider a new role for Jordan, one of Jordanian support," he told Ynet. "Depending, of course, on the willingness of Abbas and (Jordanian king) Abdullah, we must begin to coordinate Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian security cooperation."

Netanyahu met with US Vice President Dick Cheney, discussing with him the Iranian threat. He said economic and political action should be taken against the regime, stating that economic sanctions had the potential to be effective.

However, he said, the bottom line was to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The world must not become accustomed to a nuclear Iran, he said.

While in Washington, Netanyahu also met with two presidential hopefuls -- Democratic Senator Hilary Clinton and former Republican senator Fred Thompson, who has yet to declare his candidacy formally.

During previous visits to the US, Netanyahu had convened with Republican primary candidates Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, as well as Democratic Senator Barack Obama. He also spoke with Senator John McCain.

Let's not forget that it was Mr. Pipi Zigzagyahu who gave the PLO terrorists control of the high ground in Hebron and is DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MURDER OF TEN MONTHS OLD SHALHEVETH PASS, ZTUQ"L, HI"D. Peres did not have the guts to do it. HE DID!

Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net.

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MEMORIAL 313
Posted by Paul Lademain, June 21, 2007.

IN MEMORIAM

Recently this week, UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it "offended" the Moslem population which claims it never occurred. This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.

This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the

six million Jews,
20 million Russians,
10 million Christians
and 1,900 Catholic priests

who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russia peoples looking the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be "a myth," it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide!

Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world.

Please send this e-mail to 10 people you know and ask them to continue the memorial chain.

Please don't just delete it. It will only take you a minute to pass this along -- Thanks!

Contact Paul Lademain at lademain@verizon.net

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TERRORISM AWARENESS PROJECT VIDEO: "WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?"
Posted by UCI, June 21, 2007.

In viewing this video clip it's important to remember that previous to the British Mandate there was an area called Palestine, however there was never a Palestinian State. During the time when it was considered a "Palestinian area", the majority of the population was Jews and they were referred to as "the Palestinians".

We know you will find this video clip insightful and informative. It was produced by the Terrorism Awareness Project.

http://www.terrorismawareness.org/what-really-happened/

UCI -- The Unity Coalition for Israel (http://www.israelunitycoalition.org) -- is "the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel."

"Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard!"

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AN UNOFFICIAL OFFER TO HA`ARETZ FROM THE JERUSALEM POST
Posted by Boris Celser, June 21, 2007.

I wrote this next as a comment to "The road to Hell" written by Moshe Arens in today's Haaretz
(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873573.html). Arens' article appears below.

An unofficial offer to Ha`aretz from the Jerusalem Post

This is an offer you can`t miss. Would Ha`aretz be interested in getting three columnists in exchange for just one? Give the Jerusalem Post Moshe Arens, and receive in return MJ Rosenberg, Naomi Chazan, and Gershon Baskin. Ha`aretz satisfaction is guaranteed, or the deal is cancelled. Ha`aretz, please reply in 24 hours, and the JP will include a fourth columnist, David Kimche, a 10-shekel value absolutely free. Please call. Jerusalem Post operators are standing by.

If you want to know what hell looks like just take a look at the recent pictures of the carnage in Gaza. It might be comforting to say that this has nothing to do with us in Israel, but this would only be another of the many escapist delusions that capture Israeli minds so frequently. Not only will the Hamas takeover in Gaza affect us in the years to come, but there is little doubt that Israel's flawed policy in past years bears a good share of the responsibility for what is happening there now. These Israeli policies were no doubt motivated by the best of intentions -- a desire to arrive at peace and do justice to the Palestinians -- but as is well known, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Who likes to be told "I told you so"? Most certainly not those like Yossi Beilin and Avraham (Avrum) Burg and the other politicians of their dovish circle who have for years advocated negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization and concessions to the PLO and who have consistently called for an end to what they keep calling the occupation of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

It all started in Oslo 15 years ago. The arch-terrorist, the man who invented the hijacking of passenger aircraft and who ordered the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic games, was hailed by some Israelis as a freedom-fighter with whom it was said we must negotiate and make peace.

"You make peace with your enemies" was the insane slogan repeated endlessly to justify this foolish course of action. And thus, at the conclusion of the negotiations in Oslo begun by amateur meddlers in international diplomacy, Yasser Arafat and his gang of corrupt terrorists were brought in from Tunis and imposed on the Palestinian population in most of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. (Israel left Gaza then, and not, as the advocates of disengagement have falsely claimed, at the time of the uprooting of the settlers in Gush Katif in August 2005).

A straight line connects Arafat's corrupt rule and his support for acts of terror against Israel's civilian population to the Hamas takeover in Gaza. Just connect the dots. They start with the Oslo Accords and pass through Ehud Barak's decision in 2000 to abandon Israel's security zone in southern Lebanon and betray Israel's long-time allies in the South Lebanon Army. It was not only Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who then saw Israel as no more than a spider web, incapable of putting up resistance to terror. That brought on the Al Aqsa Intifada, orchestrated by Fatah and Hamas, with its terrible toll of civilian deaths.

And just as the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service were about to hand the terrorists a decisive defeat, along came the Sharon government with the nonsensical idea of forcibly uprooting Israeli settlements and retreating to the Israeli-Egyptian armistice line of 1947, an idea marketed under the false slogan that "we were getting out of Gaza."

That was all the encouragement that Hamas needed to claim victory over Israel and win the Palestinian elections against the corrupt Fatah party.

As should have been expected, Israel's unilateral retreat was followed by a continuous barrage of Qassam rockets against Israeli towns and villages. Despite all this, government spokesmen, led by Tzipi Livni, kept repeating that it is Israel's aim and Israel's interest to bring about the establishment of a Palestinian State in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Encouraged by Israel's seeming weakness, Hamas' power grew, it won the Palestinian elections, and now, in a no-holds power struggle, Hamas has taken over the entire Gaza Strip. They don't intend to stop there.

Israeli governments have been mistaken, again and again, in gauging Arab reactions to Israeli moves intended to move toward a relief of tension in the area and bring the Arabs closer to their goals as they are perceived by Israel. But to those whose goals are unlimited -- the destruction of Israel -- coming closer to their goal, as perceived by them, simply encourages them to intensify the struggle against Israel.

Good intentions are not enough. If not combined with a healthy dose of realism they can lead straight to hell. I don't like to say I told you so, but I told you so.

Boris Celser lives in Canada. Contact him at celser@telusplanet.net

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OLMERT'S MAKING IT EASIER FOR PALS TO MURDER JEWS
Posted by Barbara Sommer, June 21, 2007.

Dr. Aaron Lerner of IMRA wrote: "To please Bush, PM Olmert offers to make murdering Israelis easier for Palestinians" is certainly a harsh headline. But it is the truth.

Question: How much time and thought did Mr. Olmert put into the offer before saying this?

Answer: Given his decision making record in the Second Lebanon War, the odds are that Olmert spent as much time thinking as it takes an average reader to read this sentence.

This below was entitled "Olmert: Israel to agree to 'more far-reaching' checkpoint removal in West Bank." It was written by Aluf Benn and Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondents 20/06/2007 and it is archived at
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/872894.html

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday in Washington that Israel would agree to a "more far-reaching" removal of checkpoints in order to increase Palestinian freedom of movement inside the West Bank.

Olmert added that the cabinet would on Sunday approve the release of tax revenues collected by Israel on the behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

Speaking after a series of meetings in the White House, including a two-hour session alone with President George W. Bush, Olmert added that the new Palestinian government should be given assistance and a chance to succeed.

"The new Palestinian government deserves a chance, and also assistance," he said.

Measures will also be taken to bolster the forces loyal to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, he added.

Referring to the Gaza Strip, Olmert said: "We will provide all that is necessary to meet humanitarian needs and we will not be indifferent. This suffering has been caused by Palestinians against their own people."

Regarding the plight of refugees waiting at the Erez crossing, Olmert said that anyone whom security checks prove is not a terrorist will be allowed to pass through.

Prior to their meeting, Bush and Olmert spoke to journalists at the White House. The president praised Olmert for being a strong leader committed to the security and prosperity of his country and to creating the conditions for peace.

He also pointed out that Israel and the United States share the vision of two states living side by side in peace and security. That vision, he said, is important to the moderates in both countries -- "the ordinary Palestinians who need something to look forward to" and Israelis concerned that demographic pressure threatens their state's Jewish character.

Bush linked the Palestinian front in Gaza to other Middle Eastern fronts in which the U.S. is currently involved.

"It is interesting that extremists are assaulting democracies throughout the Middle East, whether this is in Iraq, Lebanon or the potentially democratic Palestine. We are in a monumental ideological confrontation," he said.

Following the Hamas takeover in Gaza, the speech that Bush was planning to make next week to commemorate the launching of his two-state vision has been canceled, and a planned visit to the region by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been postponed.

Also canceled was a meeting of the Quartet that was scheduled to take place in Cairo next week with the participation of Olmert and Abbas.

Olmert reiterated his commitment to meet with Abbas and stressed that he had even been willing to visit Jericho. Nonetheless, he did not say whether there was a schedule for the renewal of meetings between the two leaders.

Bush praised Abbas and the prime minister of the PA's emergency government, Salam Fayad.

On the Syrian front, responding to a reporter's questions about whether he would be willing to mediate between Israel and Syria, Bush said: "If the prime minister wants to negotiate with Syria he doesn't need me to mediate ... It's up to the prime minister."

Contact Barbara Sommer at sommer_1_98@yahoo.com

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT: THREE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
Posted by Boris Celser, June 21, 2007.

This is moving around the internet. Among other sites, it was on the Michael Worth website:
http://www.michaelworth.com/three_things_to_think_about.shtml and posted by Leslie Moris on Chron Watch
http://www.chronwatch-america.com/articles/757/1/ Three-Things-to-Think-About/Page1.html

THREE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT:

1. COWS
2. THE CONSTITUTION
3. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

COWS

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that our government can track a single cow born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.

THE CONSTITUTION

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore.

TEN COMMANDMENTS

The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a Courthouse is this: You cannot post "Thou Shalt Not Steal," "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery", and "Thou Shall Not Lie" in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment

Boris Celser lives in Canada. Contact him at celser@telusplanet.net

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FALSE CLAIM OF 6,000 PALESTINIAN ARAB DEATHS IN SIX DAY WAR
Posted by Joseph M. Hochstein, June 21, 2007.

This was published in
http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000600.htm

A false allegation that 6,000 Palestinians died in the 1967 Six Day War appears at the website of PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service.

The false report originated as an inadvertent error in a Canadian newspaper June 2. It gained more visibility on the internet a few days later when Michael Getler, ombudsman of the 354-station PBS, cited it as if it were fact.

Getler devoted his June 8 column to "Six Days," a documentary film directed by Israeli-born Ilan Ziv. The ombudsman's column, titled "Versions of War," dealt mainly with Getler's discovery that "there were actually several versions of this same basic film being seen in different countries, and that the American, or PBS version, was different in important ways."
 

WHAT FIRST DREW his attention to this, the PBS ombudsman wrote, were viewers' complaints that the film did not mention Israel's aerial and naval attack on the USS Liberty, a U.S. surveillance vessel operating near the Sinai coast. The attack killed 33 sailors and one Arab-language specialist of the National Security Agency.

The PBS ombudsman went on to cite a Toronto Globe and Mail preview which stated June 2 that the film "has been praised by some reviewers for not shying away from the deaths of 6,000 Palestinians during the war, something that's clearly described in every version except the one for PBS. The filmmakers describe the reasoning behind this difference as a mix of concern about American attitudes toward the continuing conflict and what PBS subscribers might make of such an inclusion."

It turns out, though, that the newspaper article was in error and the number 6,000 applied not to deaths but to the population of three Palestinian villages which Israel destroyed during the war. These villagers were deported, not killed. No standard history of the war mentions 6,000 Palestinian deaths, nor have anti-Israel propagandists made such a claim.

The error came to light after a MidEastWeb editor forwarded the PBS ombudsman's article on June 12 to a MidEastWeb e-mail list. There, another editor spotted the reference to "deaths of 6,000 Palestinians" and asked, "Is this the birth of another Jenin myth?"

The question triggered an effort to determine whether such a claim actually appeared in any version of the film.

An e-mail inquiry to the film's Canadian producer, Ina Fichman, failed to produce a response.

An e-mail request to the newspaper where the PBS ombudsman found the assertion of 6,000 Palestinian deaths also drew a blank. The Globe and Mail features editor did not respond to a request for the film critic's e-mail address.

Eventually, MidEastWeb found an e-mail address for the critic, Matthew Hays, and put the question to him.

Hays promptly wrote back to confirm that the reference to 6,000 deaths was an unintended error that crept in when he interviewed the filmmakers. He added that they had been referring to the displacement of 6,000 Palestinians, not to deaths.

The 6,000 displaced Palestinians were residents of three villages -- Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba -- which the Israel army destroyed on June 8, 1967.

The version of the film shown in Israel devotes considerable attention to the destruction of the villages. It interviews a witness who as a member of nearby kibbutz Harel noticed that the villages had been evacuated. He had a camera with him, so he made photographs of the empty houses. Israel knocked the houses down, and later the area became part of the Ayalon Park (known as Canada Park).

The destruction of the villages is not a new disclosure. Amos Kenan, a prominent Israeli writer, took part in the operation as an army reservist, and he wrote about it in the Hebrew press shortly after the war. His account appeared in English in "Israel: A Wasted Victory," a 1970 collection of his newspaper articles. Trish Wood, an investigative journalist, dealt with the subject in "Park without peace," a 1991 television documentary she made for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

A point that does not appear in the current documentary, at least not in the version shown on Israel Channel 10, is that one of the villages, Imwas, was widely thought to be the site of Emmaus of Christian scripture.

The current mistaken mention of deaths that didn't occur is much different from the intentional reporting of a massacre that never happened in Jenin in April 2002. In Jenin, Israel barred reporters from area, and Palestinian and other anti-Israel sources took advantage of this public-relations blunder to spread false stories of blanket bombing, destruction of the entire refugee camp, and as many as 3,000 dead. Some media organizations treated the lies and disinformation with professional skepticism, while others let themselves be carried away in a frenzy of unsubstantiated accusations against Israel. Subsequent investigation eventually found the massacre charges to be false. This finding did not receive sensational media coverage.

UPDATE June 28, 2007 (www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000603.htm):

Michael Getler, ombudsman of the Public Broadcasting System, has published a correction disowning his recent online reference to 6,000 Palestinian deaths in the 1967 Six Day War.

According to the PBS ombudsman, the producers of Ilan Ziv's documentary film "Six Days in June" blame the error on a misunderstanding in an interview between them and a writer for the Toronto Globe and Mail. A June 2 preview in the Toronto newspaper referred erroneously to "the deaths of 6,000 Palestinians during the war." The PBS ombudsman repeated this in his June 8 column, citing it as if it were fact. The false allegation went uncorrected at the PBS site for two weeks, until MidEastWeb called attention to it on June 21. The PBS correction confirms MidEastWEb's finding that, "the newspaper article was in error and the number 6,000 applied not to deaths but to the population of three Palestinian villages which Israel destroyed during the war. These villagers were deported, not killed." Getler published the correction as a parenthetical paragraph at the end of his weekly column for June 22. Here's the entire text of the correction:

"(Correction: In the column about the 'Six Days in June' film, there was a reference to the earlier story in the Globe and Mail that had praised the international version of the film shown in Canada for 'not shying away from the deaths of 6,000 Palestinians during the war, something that's clearly described in every version except the one for PBS.' The Canadian producers of the film say that was a misunderstanding in the interview with the reporter and that the producers were referring to the 6,000 expelled from three of the villages.)"

The villages that Israel destroyed were Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba. They were part of the strategically important Latrun salient, which commanded the Ayalon Valley entrance and controlled the main road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the 1948-49 Israel-Arab war. Gunmen from the villages took part in lethal ambushes of Jewish convoys trying to lift the Arab siege of Jerusalem in that war.

After capturing the villages in 1967, Israel later moved the route of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway. The road now passes through land that once belonged to the village of Imwas.

Imwas is believed to have been the site of ancient Emmaus, a place of historical military importance. It is first mentioned as the camp of a Syrian Seleucid army defeated in 166 BCE by 3,000 Jews commanded by Judah the Maccabee. (lst Maccabees:3-4).

Almost two centuries later, according to the historian Josephus, the legate Quintus Varillus ordered the town burned to the ground in retaliation for a Jewish ambush that killed the centurion Arius and 40 of his soldiers as they were delivering grain and weapons to the legion. This happened a few years before the first century CE. The town was later rebuilt, and Vespasian's Fifth Legion camped there for two years prior to the siege of Jerusalem in the first Jewish-Roman war (66-73 CE). Many centuries later, Crusaders built a fortress there.

Imwas was one of several sites in the vicinity thought to have been the location of Emmaus of Christian scripture (Luke 24:13-35). The exact location of the New Testament Emmaus remains uncertain.

Joseph Hochstein is an American newspaper editor who made aliyah and now lives in Tel Aviv. Contact him at hochjm@netvision.net.il

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WILL BUSH FUND 'EDUCATION FOR WAR' CURRICULUM?
Posted by David Bedein, June 20, 2007.

This was published in The Bulletin (Philadelphia) and is archived at
www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=18497393&BRD= 2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=6

Jerusalem -- Yesterday, President Bush, meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, announced that the U.S. government will renew funding for "humanitarian needs" of the Palestinian Authority, on the assumption, as Bush emphasized, that this aid will bolster the "moderate" elements of the Palestinian Authority.

One of those "humanitarian" needs involved funding the schools of the Palestinian Authority.

The question remains, however, whether the U.S. government should consider schools of the Palestinian Authority as one of those "moderate" elements that should once again be funded by the U.S. government.

Indeed, Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) told this reporter that, following the death of PLO leader and founder Yassir Arafat in November 2004, one of the clear promises made by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was that he would introduce textbooks that would promote peace and tolerance. When Rep. Sherman and 34 other congressmen confronted Abbas during his trip to Washington in May 2005 with the crass anti-Semitic incitement that was then being taught in the Palestinian schools, Abbas' defense was that these school books were published before he was elected leader of the Palestinian Authority in January 2005, and he promised to make improvements.

Now, two years later, new PA textbooks for 11th and 12th grade have been published, and the first books published during Abbas' reign hardly educate for peace with Israel.

Instead they promote the ideal of a violent struggle against Israel.

Dr. Arnon Groiss, who holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at Princeton University, and who serves as a senior researcher for the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, www.edume.org, translated these new schoolbooks and was recently invited to make a presentation for the European Parliament in Brussels, because of the EU member funding for the Palestinian Authority school system.

Dr. Groiss reported that the new PA schoolbooks teach the following values:

* Jews are foreigners and have no rights whatsoever in Palestine.
* The Jews have a dubious and even murderous character.
* Israel is an illegitimate usurper who occupied Palestine in 1948 and 1967.
* Israel is the source of all kinds of evil done to the Palestinians.
* Peace with Israel based on reconciliation is never sought.
* A violent struggle for liberation is encouraged instead.
* The exact area to be liberated is never restricted to the West Bank and Gaza alone.
* Jihad and martyrdom are glorified and terrorist activities against Israel are implicitly encouraged.
* The West is imperialist, aspires to world hegemony, directs a cultural attack against Islam and supports Israel.

Groiss note that the PA schoolbooks teach the students that Palestine and Jerusalem has been Arab since antiquity, on account of the ancient Canaanites and Jebusites who are presented as Arabs. All others, including the Jews, were foreign invaders with no legitimate rights in the country. In these new Palestinian schoolbooks, which were produced by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, not by the Hamas, Jewish holy places in the country are not recognized.

Instead, they are presented as Muslim holy places usurped by the Jews. Groiss points out that the Jewish holy place of Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem is renamed "Bilal bin Rabbah Mosque" in 2001, while in 1996 it was still called "Rachel's Dome" in another textbook. We are witnessing here a new myth in the making. In his presentation, Groiss brought up numerous examples of how the new Palestinian textbooks teach that Israel is solely responsible for the conflict and the Palestinians are Israel's victims. The Arab armed opposition to the U.N. Partition Resolution of 1947 is not mentioned, nor is the invasion of seven Arab armies on the day that Israel declared independence in 1948.

Groiss assembled a list of 25 accusations against Israel that appear in the Palestinian school books, which include the following:

* Israel contributes to Palestinian social ills and family violence
* Israel causes the increase of drug abuse cases in Palestinian society
* Israel pollutes the Palestinian environment
* Israel usurps Muslim and Christian holy places
* Israel strives to obliterate the Palestinian national identity and heritage

The books also glorify those who kill Jews and achieve martyrdom; one book reads: "...The flow of blood gladdens my soul, as well as a body thrown upon the ground, skirmished over by the desert predators." In other cases, martyrdom is described as a wedding party.

These new Palestinian schoolbooks thus obliterate Israel as a sovereign state, present it as an enemy that one should fight to the end.

In other words, in Grioss' words, "they teach war rather than peace."

The question that the Bush administration must now cope with is whether or not to fund the Palestinian war curriculum in the framework of "humanitarian" gestures for "moderate" elements in the Palestinian milieu.

David Bedein is Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency. (http://Israelbehindthenews.com). He is president of Center for Near East Policy Research. Contact him by email at media@actcom.co.il

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PARTNERS...THE ULTIMATE TROJAN HORSE
Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, June 20, 2007.

Caroline Glick's masterpiece, Grounded In Fantasy, appeared in the June 18th edition of the Jerusalem Post. It is must reading for all interested in what's happening in Gaza and beyond these days. [Editor's Note: See below.]

While many of us have been writing about these things, the gal definitely has a way with words. I was almost convinced not to write this piece, since between what I and others penned earlier and Glick's recent column, all bases--for heads not buried ostrich-style in the sand--should have been already covered.

Leave it to the Associated Press and Israel's Prime Minister Olmert, however, to convince me otherwise...

On the same day Glick's editorial appeared, Olmert was quoted in an AP article stating that Israel would be a "genuine partner" of a new Palestinian government and promised to consider releasing millions of dollars in frozen tax funds to it.

As has repeatedly been pointed out, there's no real difference between what our State Department would have us believe to be Abbas's latter day Arafatian good cops and Hamas's bad cops.

There is no doubt that both seek the destruction of the State of the Jews. And both have been honest about this (Hamas more than Fatah). Abbas's boys simply play the game better for Western consumption to gain all kinds of support--and, again, have said so.

Why won't the Foggy Folks listen? And President Bush?

As has been repeated often--but not sinking in to those creating the fiction of Fatah "moderates"--Abbas's folks have called any and all dealings with the Jews merely a Trojan Horse, each unilateral concession gained from Israel since the Oslo fiasco bringing them one step closer in their admitted destruction in stages plans. Pressured by its American friends, Israel's weak leaders have, unfortunately, played along with this dangerous game.

With Hamas now in control in Gaza--and in possession of huge quantities of American military equipment, besides what's being smuggled freely via Egypt from other (especially Iranian) sources--President Bush and the State Department are now pressing for the Jews to allow Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") to be turned into another Gaza.

But, it will be said that Fatah and Abbas are different...

Who's kidding whom here?

Fatah's goals for creating "Palestine" from the River to the Sea have never changed...and won't.

Forcing Israel back to its 1949, 9-mile wide armistice line existence will simply bring most of its population and industry within easy range of Fatah's American weapons. And that, along with the moderate Abbas's pledge that he'll never stop demanding that Israel agree to be swamped by millions of alleged "returning" jihadist refugees, makes any such "deal " a joke. Fatah and its affiliates have as much or more Jewish blood on their hands as Hamas.

What does Israel get for this proposed "partnership?"

A hudna...ceasefire. As the Arafatians--not Hamas--like to point out, the same thing their prophet, Muhammad, granted to his enemies until he was strong enough to conquer them. And this is not to say that an actual treaty with Fatah would be worth the paper it would be written on considering the agreements Abbas's "moderates" have already reneged upon...before the ascendancy of Hamas.

Unfortunately, the same questions need to be repeatedly asked over and over again...

Where is the evidence the Foggy Folks offer for Fatah's alleged moderation and acceptance of a permanent Jewish State as its neighbor?

Are Fatah's web sites, schools, mosques, television and radio stations, press, etc. and so forth spreading this message of "acceptance" around to their own people--whom poll after poll show that, if Israel withdrew from all of the disputed lands, would mostly seek Israel's destruction anyway?

No, they definitely are not.

Webster's New World College Dictionary defines partner as a person who takes part in some activity in common with another...sharing its profits and risks.

Unfortunately, as we saw once again in that AP article, the wrong party once again jumped at the opportunity at "partnership" here.

Olmert still lives the leftist fantasy of Arabs giving up their claim of virtually the entire region as being part of the Dar ul-Islam and/or purely Arab patrimony.

Please, Arabs, what can we do to make you accept us?

Sickening.

With Fatah's chestnuts now at least temporarily being pulled out of the Hamas fire, one might think that Abbas would be seeking a real partnership with Israel himself.

"No! He can't do that," some will say, "it will make him a traitor!"

Precisely...

Israel will be suicidal granting such huge concessions in land, aid, and so forth to folks who still can't reconcile with the right of Jews to have in one, tiny, reborn state what Arabs insist upon having almost two dozen of for themselves. It's bad enough that many others (i.e. America) are now insisting upon this; the Jews, themselves, don't have to be a "partner" in this endeavor. Who will stop, for example, that independent Fatahland from importing all kinds of sophisticated arms and placing them right in Israel's backyard? Don't count on the Foggy Folks or anyone else...

While we're discussing meanings, Arabs must learn what the word "compromise" is all about--especially the territorial variety--if anything more is expected to be handed to them, once again, by the Jews.

And fagetabout millions of alleged Arab refugees "returning" to overwhelm the Jews in a 9-mile wide Israel. Again, this is something the moderate Abbas says he'll never concede. Recall that more Jewish refugees fled Arab/Muslim lands (and left far more property and wealth behind) than Arabs who fled in the opposite direction due to fighting Arabs started themselves.

No more Arab sweet talk in exchange for concrete, Israeli concessions that bare the necks of Jewish kids to those who repeatedly and deliberately target them.

Unfortunately, Abbas's idea of partnership means getting the gift of the ultimate Trojan Horse handed to him: The Jews building up the very folks who will bring about their destruction.

For Fatah, both Jews and Arabs "partner" just for the Arabs' advantage and against the Jews' own interests. Another look at Webster's definition may be in order...

Perhaps that's why it was Olmert obeying Washington by pleading for partnership and not Abbas.

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

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IMPLICATIONS OF SIDEROT; WHY THE BRITISH BOYCOTT; RUSSIANS ANGLING FOR PIECE OF JERUSALEM;
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 20, 2007.

REMEMBER THE CHRISTIAN ARAB ANTI-ZIONISTS?

Years ago, Christian Arabs joined the Muslims in a nationalist movement that was anti-Zionist. The Christians hoped that emphasizing a common nationality would spare them from the Muslims. The Muslims used them, but maintained pressure on them. Upon gaining autonomy in the Territories, the Muslims harassed the Christians and drove most out. Islam supersedes nationalism. The Christians lost their gamble. They caused the Jews needless suffering.

Should the Christian Arabs have been allied themselves with Israel? I don't know. Israel, like the US, lets allies down.

WHY ISLAMISTS DENOUNCE TERRORISM

Terrorists and their organizations sometimes denounce terrorism but do not specify any terrorist or organization.

I used to think that the vague denunciation was just lip service to anti-terrorism. There also may be something else. The Muslims define terrorism as to exempt themselves from the label and pin it on Israel. Therefore, when they denounce terrorism, they are not denouncing themselves. Likewise, if they denounced a specific terrorist organization, they would be denouncing jihad.

IMPLICATIONS OF SIDEROT

Siderot is the town whose residents are fleeing, because the government does not protect them from P.A. rockets. Other towns nearby would be next, and, as the range of the rockets is extended, towns further away.

The government's restraint in fighting back is a vice rather than the virtue it is pretended to be. Governmental appeasement does not bring relief. The sight of a town being abandoned or paralyzed demoralizes the whole country. The government of the Jewish state, threatened with extinction, demoralizes the people. We long are past the point at which decent Zionists could suggest we not call the Prime Minister of Israel a traitor lest we shame the Jewish state. The government acts shamefully. The Prime Ministers act more in behalf of the direct enemy (Muslim Arabs) and the indirect enemy (the State Dept.) than of the Jewish people. Israel's failure to defend itself encourages Syria to war.

TURKS MOVE ARMY TO IRAQ'S KURDISH BORDER

The US dreads a Turkish invasion of Iraq, but long ago it should have eradicated Kurdish terrorism or demanded that the Kurds eliminate Kurdish terrorism. The US knew that otherwise, eventually Turkey would intervene.

ISRAELI POLICE BRUTALITY (against Jews, of course)

Akiva Vitkin blocked a road in protest against the Gaza withdrawal. Police had a right to use reasonable force to arrest him or defend themselves if he had attacked them, but no right to punish him, the judge ruled.

Instead, three police pulled him down, handcuffed him, and sat on the helpless man while one of the officers put his fingers in the victim's nostrils and ripped his flesh, tore his mouth, and jabbed his eyes, until both men were covered in blood. The same cop beat a rabbi who asked the police not to beat girls. Arutz-7 journalist Tuvia Lerner photographed this. He got clear shots, although other police tried to shield their accomplice from view and one threatened to arrest the cameraman. (On what charge?) At the police station, that threatening officer and others beat the handcuffed victim. Then they released him. They did not get him the medical attention he requested.

The two brutal policemen's attorney claimed that ripping noses is a standard police tactic and therefore. (Huh! Where, in N. Korea?) The judge found the evidence against the police compelling and the police statements unconvincing.

Mr. Lerner offered Israel's three TV stations the sensational film that would settle whether Israeli police were guilty of just such nose-ripping brutality against peaceful Zionist demonstrators. They refused. Reporters admitted that their editors would not want such evidence for political reasons (Arutz-7, 6/2).

"Political reasons" means that they, too, are anti-Zionist to the point of condoning police brutality. What a tainted ideology, the Left has! The major Israeli media has been accused of behaving as part of the leftist political parties. Their rejection of the offer of this film helps confirm that accusation.

WHY THE BRITISH BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL?

The British feign moral indignation at Israel over its treatment of the Palestinian Arabs. What humanitarian ethics? They don't boycott Russia for having slain tens of thousands of Chechens high-handedly, to retain control. They don't boycott Syria for repressing Kurds and intellectuals. They don't boycott S. Arabia for repressing women. They don't condemn Sudan's Arab Muslims for genocide against blacks, including Muslim blacks. They don't even have the sense to condemn the Muslim movement to impose Islam upon Britain! They simple-mindedly condemn what they see on TV, which is defamation of Israel. Why pick on Israel? Is it a misguided appeasement to secure oil? (IMRA, 5/31.)

Israel does not mistreat the Arabs, but the Arabs sure mistreat the Israelis! A decent world would boycott the Arabs.

IN PARTIAL EXTENUATION OF THE IDF

Yes, the government of Israel blundered in how it waged war in Lebanon, and the IDF was unprepared. It would have defeated Hizbullah, had the government not pulled it out prematurely. But it did not do as well as anticipated. An extenuating circumstance is that Hizbullah is not just a terrorist organization. It is a professional army that uses all military methods, including terrorism. It is well trained and supplied by Iran. It spent years preparing for war (IMRA, 5/31).

WHO NEGOTIATES FOR ISRAEL

Senior Israeli security officials share much responsibility for Oslo's failure. They let themselves be used for political ends, neglecting security. They got too close with terrorist leaders, and made "decisions based on 'best case scenario' analysis." The results were absurd or criminally negligent security provisions.

Worse, many of them entered business partnerships with their Arab counterparts. In between negotiating with terrorists, supposedly in behalf of Israel, they discussed business with them. They were motivated "to bend over backwards to make things work -- at least on paper." (Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA, 5/31.)

RUSSIA NEGOTIATING FOR PART OF JERUSALEM

The Russian Compound is a justice system complex in Jerusalem that formerly housed Christian Russian pilgrims. Russia has been negotiating for it with the Barak, Sharon, and Olmert regimes. It wants to gain control of that area for $100 million. Israel would claim that it was returning the property to its owners. The negotiations have been kept secret, to avoid public protest (Arutz-7, 5/31).

That's how the governments of Israel work, in a secrecy to de-Zionize. They do not try to recover property stolen from the Jewish people by the Arabs in Hebron. They allow the Arabs to steal public land. They force Jews off their land in the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria. They let the Muslim usurp the Temple Mount and destroy ancient Jewish artifacts and Jewish holy sites. But they claim they are returning the property on the Russian Compound to its owners, as if they have a conscience, but Russia is Israel's enemy. But the news article might have explained what the legal status of the Compound is.

SHOULD ISRAEL REINFORCE HOUSES AGAINST ROCKETS?

"The infection is over there [in Gaza], and they're busy trying to lower the fever over here. I told the government that we've got to cause the people in Gaza to want to reinforce their houses." (IMRA, 5/31.)

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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FATAH ISN'T THE ANSWER
Posted by Daily Alert, June 20, 2007.

These are excerpts from Michael Oren's article today in the Wall Street Journal. He is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center and the author of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (Norton, 2007).

  • The green flags of Hamas are unfurling over Gaza and the Fatah forces trained and financed by the U.S. have ignominiously fled. Fears are rife that Iranian-backed and Syrian-hosted terror will next achieve dominance over the West Bank and proceed to undermine the pro-Western governments of Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf. To avert this catastrophe, the U.S. has joined with the Israelis and the Europeans in resuming the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars in financial aid to the PA under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, and accelerating talks for the establishment of a West Bank Palestinian state.

  • But the policy ignores every lesson of the abortive peace process to date as well as Fatah's monumental corruption, jihadism and militancy. Indeed, the unbridled corruption of the PA and its Fatah headmen served as a principal cause of Hamas' electoral victory in 2006, as well as its takeover of Gaza.

  • Though Fatah originally aspired to replace Israel with a secular state, it refashioned itself in the 1990s as an Islamic movement, embracing the lexicon of jihad. Hundreds of mosques were built with public funds, and imams were hired to spread the message of martyrdom and the hatred of Christians and Jews. These themes became the staple of the official PA media, inciting the suicide bombings that began in 2000 and poisoning an entire generation of Palestinian youth.

  • Fatah has never fulfilled its pledges to crack down on terror. Though Mahmoud Abbas routinely criticizes Palestinian terrorist attacks as "contrary to the Palestinian national interest" -- not an affront to morality and international law -- he has never disavowed the al-Aqsa Brigades, a Fatah affiliate responsible for some of the bloodiest attacks against Israeli civilians.

  • In view of its performance over the past 14 years, the Palestinian Authority under Fatah can be counted on to squander most or all of the vast sums now being given to it by the U.S. and the international community. More gunmen will be hired and better weapons procured, but in the absence of a unified command and a leadership worth fighting for, PA soldiers will perform no more credibly than they did in Gaza. Abbas will continue to denounce terror while ignoring the terrorist units within his own organization, while PA imams will persist in preaching their jihadist sermons.

  • Clearly no progress toward Palestinian statehood can be made before Fatah has reformed itself financially, ideologically and structurally. This process is certain to take many years -- longer if economic aid and political support are provided to the PA unconditionally.

  • The U.S., together with its Quartet partners, can work to establish areas of extensive Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank. Security, however, will be jointly administered by Israel and Jordan. The Jordanian involvement is crucial to convincing Palestinians that the status quo of occupation has ended and they may in the future assume full responsibility for their internal defense. Such an arrangement will benefit Jordan as well, by facilitating its efforts to fight radicalism and stem the flight of Palestinians over its borders.

The Daily Alert is sponsored by Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and prepared by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). To subscribe to their free daily alerts, send an email to daily@www.dailyalert.jcpa.org

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ISRAEL PREPARES FOR MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE TRIALS
Posted by Marilyn Cytryn, June 20, 2007.

JERUSALEM [www.IsraelJustice.com] -- Israel has prepared for the trials of nearly 150 people, most of them minors, charged with resisting the military expulsion of 16,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank in 2005.

The government has prepared virtually identical indictments for the 146 defendants alleged to have resisted the Israeli eviction and demolition of Kfar Darom, one of 16 Jewish communities destroyed in the Gaza Strip.

"I thought it was over," Knesset member Yitzhak Levy of the National Religious Party said. "Now they are beginning to get dates for trials. This is very serious; most of these indictments are political."

All of the defendants, some of them as young as 12 at the time, were charged with assault, with a maximum sentence of seven years. Protesters deemed to have thrown liquids, food or sprayed foam towards the eviction forces were charged with aggravated assault, punishable by up to 20 years in jail.

"Anyone who was on the roof [of the Kfar Darom synagogue] has been charged with assault even if he was a passive demonstrator," Meir Munitz, father of a minor who was indicted, said.

Several Knesset members said the trial marked a double standard that targeted Jewish nationalists. They cited the decision by authorities not to prosecute students who fought police during tuition protests in May 2007.

"There should be equal justice for people who are arrested in a demonstration in the Disengagement as well as for the students," Knesset member Michael Eitan, former chairman of the Law and Constitution Committee, said. "There are close to 1,000 indictments [from the expulsion]."

For 18 months, Israeli authorities gave no indication that the Jewish protesters would be prosecuted. The protesters and their supporters in parliament, citing a government decision not to prosecute those who resisted the Israeli eviction of Jewish residents of the Sinai in 1982, said they thought the Kfar Darom cases had been dismissed.

But in April 2007, authorities notified those indicted that they would stand trial starting July 2. The trials would place take in the juvenile court of the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.

"These cases were prosecuted by the police prosecutions department, [not by the State Prosecutor's office]," Justice Ministry spokesman Tal Vider said. The police spokesman's office refused to comment.

The decision to indict appeared to reflect Justice Ministry guidelines drafted in 2005 to confront massive anti-government protests to stop the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. The guidelines directed prosecutors and police to detain and indict those who participated in civil disobedience, including minors and first-time offenders.

"The idea was that the people [in Kfar Darom] gathered with the aim to harm the security forces," assistant state prosecutor Shai Nitzan told a Knesset committee in December 2005. "And they attacked and people took part in this. And even though there is no evidence, this is a clear legal rule and I can bring proof. But this is not the place. The people who were part of this group are responsible for this thing just like any other crime and that's why they were indicted."

The indictments of the Kfar Darom defendants were nearly identical in their charges and description. In Munitz's case, the police refused to dismiss the indictment despite a determination that a photograph presented as evidence of somebody spraying foam toward officers was not that of his teenage son.

"These described acts of violence were conducted by the mass of people who barricaded themselves on the roof," the indictment read. "Because the defendant was part of the crowd, he gave backing to the violent acts and made them possible with his presence."

Major Israeli civil rights groups have refused to support the defendants in the forthcoming trial. In August 2005, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel demanded an investigation into the treatment of minors arrested at Kfar Darom.

ACRI said many of the minors spent as much as a week in detention in Beersheba while a special court was established. The association said the minors were brought to court in handcuffs and leg irons, were denied an attorney and banned from meeting their parents.

In some cases, ACRI said, judges presided over hearings in which the defendants were prevented from appearing because prison authorities did not have enough leg irons. In other hearings, 60 suspects were arraigned simultaneously.

"In light of these things, you are asked to examine these serious phenomena...and to pledge that they will not recur," ACRI attorney Avner Pinchuk wrote in the Aug. 22, 2005 letter to senior Justice Ministry officials. "These things that have been described and this is just a few of them, raise concerns as to the fairness of the judicial process and the rights of minors to due process."

But ACRI, whose intervention led to the release of the minors and the termination of a special juvenile court, refused to follow through on its demands for an investigation. The association said it would not intervene in the forthcoming trial for the Kfar Darom defendants.

"We have no way to check the indictments," ACRI spokesman Yoav Loeff said. "This is the job of the courts. We only dealt with the extension of the remand."

Parents of the Kfar Darom defendants said ACRI has refused to respond to their appeals for help. They said the association, which receives funding from foreign foundations, wants to focus on Palestinian rights.

"They [ACRI] stopped having any contact with us," Munitz said. "They refused to answer e-mails or phone calls. They had had enough contact with right-wingers."

Despite their plans for the trials, authorities have refused to investigate charges of police brutality during the Kfar Darom eviction. Munitz and other parents provided the police internal unit with photographs of officers clubbing passive minors and sticking their fingers in the nostrils of demonstrators.

"After we have examined your complaint and the investigations material collected until now," Herzl Sbiro, internal affairs bureau head wrote in a letter to Munitz dated Sept, 28, 2005, "I decided that out of concern for the public interest, the general circumstances of the incident are not appropriate for criminal proceedings. And so I decided not to continue with this investigation.

Parliamentarians said they would seek to pressure the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to halt the Kfar Darom trials. At least 20 out of 120 Knesset members have called for the dismissal of the indictments as well as an end to judicial proceedings against other protesters of the government's destruction of Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.

"Last year, we [the Tel Aviv prosecutor's office] destroyed 13,000 criminal files because of lack of storage space," Knesset member Aryeh Eldad said. "They should come to the conclusion that they should take all [1,000] files and put them in one room and destroy them. But since this won't happen, it should come from the Knesset."

Soundbyte:

"We are in the midst of a social and political turmoil, evil winds surround us and there are failings, social gaps are widening, poverty is spreading throughout certain groups and there is a lack of trust in all the institutions that the public needs." -- Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish, 5/6/2007.

Marilyn Cytryn is Shimshon Cytryn's grandmother. Shimshon was accused of beating an Arab into unconsciousness -- when photos show that the photographer who filmed the "unconscious" Arab directed him to get down on the ground and lie still -- an early example of fauxtography. Nevertheless, Shimson was still kept in jail and forced to stand trial. For those who missed the outcome of Shimshon's trial -- He was cleared of "attempted murder" but found guilty of "assault & battery" which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The verdict will be appealed.

Contact Marilyn Cytryn at amcytryn@netvision.net.il.

With the legal costs being very high, and Shimshon about to be married, the Cytryns are very much in need of financial help. If you can help, please send your donations to:

IN ISRAEL, please send checks to:
HONENU
POB 2 Kiryat Arba,
90100,
ISRAEL
(make sure to add a note saying it is for the Cytryn fund)

In the USA, tax deductible checks can be sent to:
HONENU (earmarked "The Cytryn fund")
8204 Lefferts Boulevard, Suite 381
Kew Gardens, NY 11415
Telephone: 718-441-7300

Keep up with these ongoing show trials by visiting
http://www.Israeljustice.com

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CARTER HEARTS HAMAS
Posted by David Haimson, June 20, 2007.

This article was written by Ben Johnson and it appeared today in Front Page Magazine
(http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=28842)

IT'S EITHER AN UNPRECEDENTED LOW IN PARTISAN DISCOURSE OR POLITICAL SURREALISM worthy of André Breton: on Tuesday, former president Jimmy Carter, speaking on foreign soil, denounced the policies of his successor as "criminal" because they fail to subsidize a genocidal Islamic terrorist organization that has killed Americans. Then, he blamed internecine Palestinian warfare on Americans and Israelis.

Speaking in Ireland at the eighth annual Forum on Human Rights -- without an apparent hint of irony -- Carter said the Bush administration had sinned against heaven and earth in its decision to withhold direct aid to Hamas once that group came to power in the Palestinian Authority. "That action was criminal," he said. The Palestinian people had elected Hamas fair-and-square in elections his Center described as "orderly and fair." (Carter said the same of Hugo Chavez's election.) He deemed Hamas "shrewd in selecting candidates."

The world's most famous Sunday School teacher further praised the genocidal terrorist organization, at a human rights conference, by citing its penchant for bloodshed. Hamas, Carter doddered, was more orderly than the rival Fatah organization, which Hamas demonstrated in military clashes that showed its "superior skills and discipline." (The Jerusalem Post reported his argument thus: "Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.") One can only imagine how impressed he would have been by the "efficiency" of the SS.

Sounding like a junior anchor for al-Jazeera, the Nobel Peace Prize winner incredibly blamed the Palestinian civil war on Crusaders and Zionists. "The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine," he said, "and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah." He continued:

This effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples now is a step in the wrong direction. All efforts of the international community should be to reconcile the two, but there's no effort from the outside to bring the two together...I don't see at this point any possibility that public officials in the United States, or in Israel, or the European Union are going to take action to bring about reconciliation (between Fatah and Hamas).

Thus, the Americans and the Jews are to blame for divisions between groups of Palestinians that chuck fellow Palestinians out of windows. Only in the most fevered Islamist media are Muslims so excused from personal responsibility for their brutality toward one another.

Carter does not persuasively explain why Israel would want to "reconcile" terrorist groups bent on jihad. (Few things reconcile Palestinians more than dangling an unarmed Jew in front of them.) The Hamas Charter instructs, "There is no other solution for the Palestinian problem other than jihad." Killing infidels is "an individual duty binding on every Muslim man and woman; a woman must go out and fight the enemy even without her husband's authorization, and a slave without his master's permission." This makes jihad nearly the only thing she can do without her husband's permission. But Carter, who once lectured Pope John Paul II for his "perpetuation of the subservience of women" and blasted "the mandated subservience of women by Christian fundamentalists" wants us to fund this misogynist death cult. You've come a long way, Baby....

Carter skirts the fact that Hamas is not merely a threat to Israelis; the group has claimed the lives of numerous Americans. Its ever-expanding U.S. infrastructure may one day conduct terror strikes on U.S. soil. Authorities nabbed Hamas member Ismail Selim Elbarasse in August 2004 for videotaping Maryland's Bay Bridge in what authorities worried constituted "a potential link between Hamas and al-Qaeda." Last October, a Hamas commander ominously told Time magazine, "We shouldn't stand by idly while the Americans are plotting against us." But Carter has indicated the Bush administration is criminal for not supporting this stouthearted nationalist.

"Criminal" might better describe the workings of any government in the Muslim world, so conspicuously over-represented in the Carter Center's donations -- nations in which, for instance, its elected officials have to consult with and bribe a departed leader's widow to find out where he hid billions of dollars of their people's assets. Nonetheless, the U.S. is sending barrels of greenbacks and weapons to the kleptocratic Fatah, whose membership largely overlaps with that of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the group responsible for the Mickey Mouse Murder Hour. Condoleeza Rice has also announced the U.S. is shipping tens of millions of dollars to the UNRWA, where future terrorists are incubated. Yet Carter denounces his own country for failing to establish a Marshall Plan for totalitarian murderers.

Thus concludes a rational progression for Jimmy Carter: in the 1970s, he blundered into establishing terrorists as Iran's all-powerful theocratic rulers. In the 1980s and '90s, he wrote speeches for Yasser Arafat and defended extremists around the globe. Now, he calls the U.S. president a pariah for refusing to underwrite unrepentant jihadists dedicated to spilling as much infidel blood as possible.

Thus, Man from Plains confirms what many long suspected: the Worst President of the 20th Century does not want the United States to end the War on Terror. He merely wants us to switch sides.

David Haimson sends out a free daily news letter with lists of interesting articles. To subscribe, send him an email at dvhaimson@aol.com

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MORALITY: A CATCH-22?
Posted by BabbaZee, June 20, 2007.

This article was written by Rabbi Levi I. Brackman, who is director of Judaism in the Foothills and the author of numerous articles on issues of the day. It appeared on the Chabad website
(http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=530158).

"Ninety percent of my students," the president of a local university told me, "are moral relativists." Moral Relativism, which is practically the state religion of collegiate America, asserts that there is no such thing as supreme moral standards; rather, each society's morality is relative to its own cultural and historical influences.

According to this view, there is no behavior which could be universally wrong. The moral relativist might personally believe a certain behavior to be wrong, but cannot say that the same would apply for others.

In contrast, Moral Absolutism is the belief that there are universal moral standards by which behaviors can be judged. Indeed, the moral absolutist would argue that the prevalence of moral relativism among our country's educated youth is an existential threat to the civilized society America prides itself to be.

The moment we believe that our own values and morals may be negotiable in other societies and cultures, the imperative to conserve these values in our own society is significantly reduced. Consequently, the very foundations of our society are threatened. But moral absolutism comes with its own set of dangers. We pride ourselves in being a society in which each individual is entitled to make his own decisions on matters of conscience. How would these rights hold up in a society where moral absolutism holds sway? Indeed, the conflict between radical Islam and western liberal democracy falls along similar lines.

Radical Islam would like to impose its moral view on others, and democracies are fighting for individual freedoms. Choosing between moral absolutism and moral relativism seems like having to decide between two evils of equal intensity. If moral relativism leads to chaos and moral absolutism to tyranny, what's left? Judaism's remarkable response to this dilemma is both balanced and instructive.

Judaism sees morality as absolute. Yet, although it has many moral laws and norms by which Jews are expected to live, its universal morality--the laws which Judaism believes should apply equally to all peoples and cultures--are very basic. Called the seven Noahide laws, the first six are prohibitions against murder, stealing, adultery, cruelty to animals, idolatry and blasphemy.

Thus, Judaism is minimalistic rather than imperialistic about the application of Judaic moral standards on others. Instead of presenting the world with a lawbook, it institutes the seventh Noahide law, which states that justice systems must be set up in each civilization. In other words, each society should decide, through its own regulatory system of justice, which additional moral rules, aside from the six fundamental Noahide laws, should be binding upon itself.

By limiting the number of universally absolute moral laws to the basic half dozen, and then mandating each culture to institute others as they see fit, Judaism treads a middle path between moral relativism and moral absolutism.

Clearly, without a minimum few incontrovertible moral principles, a society has no moral foundations upon which to stand. But on that foundation, each society, drawing on its distinct historic and cultural influences, must decide on the moral issues that confront its day-to-day navigation of civil life.

Contact BabbaZee by email at babbazee@cs.com and visit the website The Outraged Spleen of Zion at
http://babbazeesbrain.blogspot.com

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BBC'S ALL-OUT APOLOGY
Posted by Honest Reporting, June 19, 2007.

As many of our subscribers have personally found, getting the BBC to admit to a mistake is extremely rare. This time, however, the BBC has issued a sincere and profound apology for its Israel coverage. As Jonny Paul of the Jerusalem Post reported June 15, 2007:

The BBC apologized this week for referring to Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and promised not to repeat "the mistake," following a complaint by four British organizations.

Arab Media Watch, Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Friends of Al-Aksa and the Institute of Islamic Political Thought sent a joint complaint to the BBC after a presenter on its Football Focus program on March 24 mentioned that Jerusalem was Israel's capital and "historic soul."

The BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit posted a response on its Web site: "The reference was a passing one in a context where the focus was on sport, not politics. While recognizing the sensitivity of the issue of the status of Jerusalem, the ECU took the view that the program-makers had taken sufficient action by acknowledging the error and rectifying the Web site."

The Editorial Complaints Unit's ruling was: "Complaint resolved."

In a letter to the complaining NGOs, Fraser Steel, head of editorial complaints at the BBC, said: "We of course accept that the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and that the BBC should not describe it as such. I was therefore pleased to see that Katherine Tsang [BBC Information adviser], when she wrote to you in April, acknowledged the error and apologized for it. [Presenter] Steve Boulton and other senior managers in BBC Sport told us they very much regret the mistake and apologize for it."

"Senior managers will try to ensure, as you suggest, that the mistake is not repeated. Because it appears on the Web site, there will be a public acknowledgement of the error, and the action taken in consequence."

Steel added: "I'd like to add my apologies for this most regrettable, but I'm sure accidental, factual mistake. I appreciate that the status of Jerusalem is of particular concern to Palestinians, and it is important that it is not misrepresented. I am confident that lessons have already been learned, and they will be emphasized as a result of my decision."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said in response: "Jerusalem is Israel's capital. It is the right of every sovereign state to determine which city will be its capital. If this is not accepted by everyone today, I am confident it will be in the future."

London-based Arab Media Watch told The Jerusalem Post: "Under international law, neither east nor west Jerusalem is considered Israel's capital. Tel Aviv is recognized as Israel's capital, pending a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians."

The Institute of Islamic Political Thought is run by Azzam Tamimi, a Hamas supporter and a member of the Muslim Association of Britain, part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Tamimi spoke at Saturday's anti-Israel rally in London's Trafalgar Square. He blamed the British for their role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and vowed to return to his mother's house in Hebron, which he said could never become a "Zionist place."

To huge applause, Tamimi called Israel "a racist entity that sees us [Palestinians] as subhuman while they see themselves as superhuman."

Tamimi told BBC in an interview in 2004 he did not recognize Israel's right to exist and would be willing to become a suicide bomber. Last year, Merrill Lynch pulled its sponsorship from an event hosted by the London Middle East Institute because of Tamimi's participation.

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee has faced continuing allegations of extremism and anti-Semitism. In 2005, during the last general election in the UK, the group campaigned against pro-Israel and pro-Iraq war MPs, and attempted to slur one MP by claiming she was a Jew. It eventually apologized when they learned the candidate was not Jewish.

Last year, The Observer discovered that the committee's co-founder, Asghar Bukhari, had funded Holocaust denier David Irving.

The Friends of Al-Aksa states on its Web site that the first Jewish commonwealth lasted "only 98 years -- from 1020 BC to 922 BC," and that after the destruction of the First Temple, "all Jews are either killed, exiled or taken prisoners. This marks the end of Israel after 400 years of its inception."

The Leicester-based organization had its bank accounts closed by the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2005.

The Muslim Association of Britain accused the bank of being a tool of the pro-Israeli lobby. "It appears the Royal Bank of Scotland is being used as a tool against those that express sympathy with Israel's victims," a representative of the Muslim Association said. "No bank or institution should be allowed to get away with such anti-Palestinian or anti-Muslim bias."

Honest Reporting monitors the media for inaccuracy and unfairness in how they report the news about Israel. Ther website address is http://www.honestreporting.com. You can help support their research online or by sending contributions to: HonestReporting, 400 South Lake Drive, Lakewood, NJ 08701-3167.

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BROTHERS TO THE BITTER END
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 19, 2007.

Fouad Ajami is known as a vocal supporter of Palestinian self-determination. His stinging OpEd article appeared today in the New York Times. Fouad Ajami, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs and the Iraqis in Iraq."

It's rare that the New York Times will post an OpEd which speaks of Hamas and Fatah as two sides of the same coin. Both are proven terrorist organizations, operating under Yassir Arafat's original Charter for the PLO to eliminate Israel -- whatever style of propaganda they may select for Western eyes.

The current propaganda is that the Arabist State Department with Condoleezza Rice as its talking head, in collusion with the E.U. (European Union) and the U.N. will fill the pockets of the President of the Palestinian Authority and Head of Fatah -- Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen). They will send Abu Mazen millions of American taxpayers' dollars plus shipments of arms because Fatah is "so moderate".

Perhaps everyone has forgotten that in the Oslo Accords Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres turned over to Arafat the seven cities of Gaza, Jericho, Bethlehem, Schehem (Nablus), Qalqilya, Tulkarem and Jenin. Now each city has became a factory to produce missiles and bomb vests as well as educating the children to use those vests as suicide bombers.

Rice, with all those in the U.S. State Department and the Bush Administration for whom she speaks, clearly understands that Fatah and all the PLO's other terrorist organizations will attack Israel once they acquire new firing positions in Judea and Samaria (the "west bank"). Just see what's happening in Gaza today.

Regrettably, Israel's current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his gaggle of defeatists are begging to put the rest of Israel on the chopping block as they did when they evacuated 10,000 Jews from Gush Katif/Gaza and when Ehud Barak, now Defense Minister, ran away from Israel's security belt in South Lebanon. Now Hamas launches hundreds of Kassam rockets into Southern Israel and Hezb'Allah has scorched Northern Israel with Katyusha Missiles from South Lebanon.

The following article by Fouad Ajami tells part of the story but, enough to show that Fatah and Hamas are one and brothers-under-the-skin.

SO the masked men of Fatah have the run of the West Bank while the masked men of Hamas have their dominion in Gaza. Some see this as a tolerable situation, maybe even an improvement, envisioning a secularist Fatah-run state living peacefully alongside Israel and a small, radical Gaza hemmed in by Israeli troops. It's always tempting to look for salvation in disaster, but in this case it's sheer fantasy.

The Palestinian ruin was a long time in coming. No other national movement has had the indulgence granted the Palestinians over the last half-century, and the results can be seen in the bravado and the senseless violence, in the inability of a people to come to terms with their condition and their needs.

The life of a Palestinian is one of squalor and misery, yet his leaders play the international game as though they were powers. An accommodation with Israel is imperative -- if only out of economic self-interest and political necessity -- but the Palestinians, in a democratic experiment some 18 months ago, tipped power to a Hamas movement whose very charter is pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state and the imposition of Islamist rule.

The political maxim that people get the leaders they deserve must be reckoned too cruel to apply to the Palestinians. Before Hamas, for four decades, the vainglorious Yasir Arafat refused to tell his people the basic truths of their political life. Amid the debacles, he remained eerily joyous; he circled the globe, offering his people the false sense that they could be spared the consequences of terrible decisions.

In a rare alignment of the universe, that came Mr. Arafat's way in the late 1990s an American president, Bill Clinton, eager to redeem Palestinian claims and an Israeli soldier-statesman, Ehud Barak, who would offer the Palestinians all that Israeli political traffic could bear and then some.

But it was too much to ask of Mr. Arafat to return to his people with a decent and generous compromise, to bid farewell to the legend that the Palestinians could have it all "from the river to the sea." It was safer for him to stay with the political myths of his people than to settle down for the more difficult work of statehood and political rescue.

For their part, the Arab states have only compounded the Palestinian misery. The Arab cavalry was always on the way, the Arab treasure was always a day away, and there was thus no need for the Palestinians to pay tribute to necessity. In recent years, the choice was starkly posed: it was either statehood or a starring role on Al Jazeera, and the young "boys of the stones" and their leaders opted for the latter.

After Mr. Arafat's death, the mantle passed to a fairly decent man, Mahmoud Abbas, a leader for a post-heroic era. He is free of Mr. Arafat's megalomania, and he seemed keen to cap the volcano; he promised, as he put it, "one law, one authority, one gun" in the Palestinian street. But he has never been a master of his world; by the time he had been given his political stewardship the culture of the Palestinian world had succumbed to a terrifying cult of violence.

It has long been a cherished legend of the Palestinians, and a proud claim, that they would not kill their own, that there would be no fratricide in their world. The cruelty we now see -- in both Gaza and the West Bank -- bears witness that the Palestinians have run through the consolations that had been there for them in a history of adversity.

It isn't a pretty choice, that between Hamas and Fatah. Indeed, it was the reign of plunder and arrogance that Fatah imposed during its years of primacy that gave Hamas its power and room for maneuver. We must not overdo the distinction between the "secularism" of Fatah and the Islamism of Hamas. In the cruel streets and refugee camps of the Palestinians, this is really a distinction without a difference.

It is idle to think that Gaza could be written off as a Hamas dominion while Fatah held its own in the towns of the West Bank. The abdication and the anarchy have damaged both Palestinian realms. Nablus in the West Bank is no more amenable to reason than is Gaza; the writ of the pitiless preachers and gunmen is the norm in both places.

There is no way that a normal world could be had in the West Bank while Gaza goes under. There is no magic wand with which this Palestinian world could be healed and taught the virtues of realism and sobriety. No international peacekeeping force can bring order to the deadly streets and alleyways of Gaza. A population armed to the teeth and long in the throes of disorder can't be pacified by outsiders.

For decades, Arab society granted the Palestinians everything and nothing at the same time. The Arab states built worlds of their own, had their own priorities, dreaded and loathed the Palestinians as outsiders and agitators, but left them to the illusion that Palestine was an all-consuming Arab concern.

Now the Palestinians should know better. The center of Arab politics has shifted from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, a great political windfall has come to the lands of the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, vast new wealth due to the recent rises in oil prices, while misery overwhelms the Palestinians. No Arabs wait for Palestine anymore; they have left the Palestinians to the ruin of their own history.

The rise of Hamas in Gaza should concentrate the minds of the custodians of power in the Arab world. Palestine, their old alibi, the cause with which they diverted the attention of their populations from troubles at home, has become a nightmare in its own right. An Arab debt is owed the Palestinians -- the gift of truth and candor as well as material help.

Arab poets used to write reverential verse in praise of the boys of the stones and the suicide bombers. Now the poetry has subsided, replaced by a silent recognition of the malady that afflicts the Palestinians. Except among the most bigoted and willful of Arabs, there is growing acknowledgment of the depth of the Palestinian crisis. And aside from a handful of the most romantic of Israelis, there is a recognition in that society, as well, of the malignancy of the national movement a stone's throw away.

The mainstream in Israel had made its way to a broad acceptance of Palestinian statehood. In the 1990s, Yitzhak Rabin, the soldier who had led its army into acquisition of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six-Day War of 1967, told his people that it was time to partition the land and to accept Palestinian sovereignty. It was an unsentimental peace, to "get Gaza out of Tel Aviv," as Mr. Rabin put it, but it was peace nonetheless.

In varying degrees, all of Mr. Rabin's successors accepted this legacy. There was even a current in Israel possessed of a deep curiosity about the Palestinians, a romance of sorts about their ways and folk culture and their connection to the sacred land. All this is stilled. Palestinian society has now gone where no "peace processors" or romantic poets dare tread.

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@gwinston.interaccess.com

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A LESSON TOO LATE FOR THE LEARNING?
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 19, 2007.

If you want to understand Arab politics, don't bother with what Western "experts" say, get a feel for what people like to refer to today as the local "narrative." This doesn't mean you accept what is said as true, but that you understand how what is said makes things work (or rather, fail to work).

This is an especially interesting exercise in light of the Hamas seizure of the Gaza Strip. What will Palestinians, Arabs in general, and the West learn -- if anything -- from this experience.

As our text let us take an op-ed by Eyad Sarraj in the Toronto Globe and Mail of June 19, 2007, entitled, "Palestinian Territories: What's Left." There's an irony in the title since Sarraj himself is an activist in the relatively tiny political left of Gaza. He is a physician and has been a human rights' activist. He is one of the most "Westernized" Palestinian intellectuals and political figures. Eyad Sarraj received the 1997 Physicians for Human Rights Award and the 1998 Martin Ennals Award for human-rights defenders. He is director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

In short, Sarraj should be giving us just about the most rational, pragmatic, honest, detached, and accurate analysis we are going to get from the Palestinians. So if he doesn't get it, well, they are in very serious trouble.

(I will present his words below in regular font and my responses or additions in capital letters.)

In this Gaza, nobody wins

WELL, ACTUALLY, HAMAS WINS DOESN'T IT? AND IF YOU DON'T RECOGNIZE THAT YOU ARE HEADING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION. WHAT HE MEANS IS THAT NOBODY WILL BE BETTER OFF. BUT HAMAS WILL BE BETTER OFF, WITH POWER, LOOT, AND THE CHANCE TO IMPLEMENT ITS POLICIES. WHAT HE MEANS, OF COURSE, IS THAT THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE WON'T BE BETTER OFF AS A WHOLE. ALL RIGHT. BUT THAT'S NOT THE ISSUE HERE. HE SHOULD RE-READ KARL MARX'S THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY, THE STORY MAKING FUN OF THE ANARCHIST WHO KEEPS TALKING ABOUT HOW HE REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE THE GOVERNMENT'S POWER EVEN THOUGH IT HAS THROWN HIM INTO PRISON.

Our leaders have only served to further Ariel Sharon's plan, and to de-legitimate our claim to self-government

AHA! AND IT ONLY TOOK UNTIL PARAGRAPH TWO TO GET TO THE FACT THAT THIS IS ALL TO SHARON'S BENEFIT. IF SARRAJ HAD BEEN AN EXTREMIST, HE WOULD HAVE CHARGED THAT SHARON (PERHAPS EVEN IN A COMA, THOUGH MORE PROBABLY ISRAEL) WAS BEHIND THE HAMAS TAKEOVER. SINCE HE IS A MODERATE HE ONLY CLAIMS THAT THE EVENT IS IN ISRAEL'S INTEREST. BUT OF COURSE IT IS IN HAMAS'S INTEREST, ISN'T IT?

Two years ago, the Egyptian security envoy in Gaza told me that if there were a military confrontation, Hamas could easily defeat the predominantly Fatah security forces and take over all of Gaza in three days. "I've seen both sides," he said, "and it is clear that Hamas scores much higher in five areas: leadership, discipline, training, arms and, most important, the motivation." He said the security forces would be hobbled by being stationed in buildings, while Hamas fighters would be able to hit and run. To the shock of the terrified population of Gaza, that's exactly what happened last week. An Israeli military analyst said the Palestinian Authority forces were like a paper tiger.

OK, I AGREE. BUT THEN WHY DIDN'T FATAH UNDERSTAND THIS? WHY DIDN'T IT DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT? THAT IS THE QUESTION HE SHOULD ADDRESS -- WHAT ARE FATAH'S WEAKNESSES AND HOW CAN IT DO BETTER TO DEFEND ITSELF.

I went on a tour Sunday morning. Gaza was wearily quiet and people were bewildered. An old man said to me, "Okay, they destroyed the corrupt. We welcome that. Can they feed us now?" I saw what was left of the looted home of Mohammed Dahlan, commander of Gaza's preventive security service, and of the beach chalets that were used for training his new recruits.

My family and I had spent several traumatic days and sleepless nights, trying to find a safe corner in the house as the shooting and shelling raged around us. My baby son was with his grandparents when the fighting erupted and we could not bring him home or even see him until it subsided. The most alarming thing was the inhuman treatment of those who were captured: One man was tied and thrown from the 10th floor of a building; some injured fighters were killed in their hospital beds; and stories of insane torture were numerous and horrific.

ONE CANNOT HELP BUT SYMPATHIZE WITH THEIR PLIGHT. BUT IF PALESTINIANS LIKE HIM HAD BEEN CAMPAIGNING FOR A COMPROMISE PEACE WITH ISRAEL AND REAL MODERATION FOR YEARS, THIS KIND OF THING MIGHT NOT BE HAPPENING.

It's not easy to explain what has happened here and why. On the surface, it looks like a power struggle that grew out of the U.S.-led blockade of the Hamas government and even to efforts at forging a Hamas-Palestine Liberation Organization unity government.

AHA! SO IT IS THE FAULT OF THE UNITED STATES. IF PALESTINIANS ARE ALWAYS VICTIMS, HOW CAN THEY DO SOMETHING? VICTIMHOOD MIGHT WIN SOME WESTERN HELP (AND MONEY) BUT YOU CANNOT GET SYMPATHY FOR BEING A LOSER ALL THE TIME WITHOUT BEING...A LOSER ALL THE TIME. OF COURSE, HE DID NOT WRITE: ON THE SURFACE, IT LOOKS LIKE A POWER STRUGGLE BETWEEN HAMAS AND FATAH. BUT IF HE CANNOT EVEN UNDERSTAND AND ADMIT SUCH AN OBVIOUS POINT, HOW CAN HE EXPLAIN, UNDERSTAND OR ACHIEVE ANYTHING?

IN OTHER WORDS, IF THE UNITED STATES DID NOTHING TO TRY TO STOP HAMAS FROM TAKING POWER, THEN OF COURSE HAMAS WOULD NOT TAKE POWER. (NOTE BY THE WAY THAT AID TO THE PALESTINIANS DOUBLED DURING THE PERIOD OF SO-CALLED BLOCKADE.) AND EVEN FOR THIS TO BE LOGICAL, HE WOULD HAVE TO ARGUE: THE PALESTINIANS SUFFERED SO MUCH UNDER THE BLOCKADE THAT THEY TURNED TO HAMAS OUT OF PATRIOTIC FURY. BUT HE DOESN'T SAY THAT. HE JUST WANTS TO BLAME AMERICA.

Last year, I was among a small group of Palestinians that met Elliott Abrams, President George Bush's deputy national security adviser. He was blunt that the Hamas government, which was democratically elected, must be pushed out at any cost. We're not Hamas followers, but we tried to persuade him and other officials that engagement, rather than confrontation, is the better choice; but their determination was unshakable. We warned there would be suffering and starvation and even armed conflict, but to no avail.

BUT THERE WASN'T SUFFERING AND STARVATION -- WHICH SARRAJ WOULD ADMIT IF HE WERE HONEST. WHY IS IT THAT THE PALESTINIANS DO SO BADLY EVEN THOUGH THEY GET MORE PER CAPITA AID THAN ANY GROUP IN HISTORY? WHY DID ARAFAT WALK AWAY FROM $23 BILLION IN AID OFFERED IF HE MADE PEACE IN 2000? WHY CANNOT HE SAY: HAMAS TOOK POWER BECAUSE IT WANTED TO TAKE POWER NOT BECAUSE "THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT."

It wouldn't be the fault of the U.S. if that happened, he said.

WELL, I SUPPOSE THAT IS SAID TO PROVE IT IS THE FAULT OF THE U.S.

The siege imposed on the Palestinians has been biting. Poverty has reached unprecedented levels, along with unemployment. According to the World Bank, 60 per cent of Palestinians live on less than $2 a day. Israel, which is in full control of all Gaza borders and its sea coast, intensified the blockade by curtailing Palestinians' movement. At times, even fishing has been prohibited.

WELL, ACTUALLY, IF YOU LOOK AT THE DATA THE PALESTINIANS SITUATION GOT WORSE AFTER 2000 AFTER THEY REJECTED PEACE, LAUNCHED A WAR OF TERRORISM, AND THUS FORFEITED AID. HE DOESN'T ADMIT THAT THE EU CUT OFF AID BECAUSE OF WASTE AND CORRUPTION BEFORE HAMAS WAS ELECTED! AND AS FOR FISHING, HE KNOWS WELL THAT RESTRICTIONS ARE RELATED TO ARMS SMUGGLING. AND HE KNOWS WELL THAT ISRAEL HAS CONTINUED TO PROVIDE ELECTRICITY WHEN THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY DIDN'T PAY ITS BILLS. BUT THE LESSON HERE, BY THE WAY, IS THAT NO MATTER HOW MUCH HUMANITARIAN AID OR OTHER ASSISTANCE ISRAEL PROVIDES IT WILL NEVER GET ANY CREDIT AMONG PALESTINIANS FOR DOING SO.

Already overcrowded, lawlessness became rampant in Gaza. Kidnapping, theft and armed robbery have frightened everyone.

THE DISHONEST IMPLICATION HERE IS THAT EVERYTHING WAS FINE UNTIL JANUARY 2005. THIS IS, OF COURSE, NOT TRUE, AS THIS SITUATION GOES BACK TO 1994 AND HE KNOWS IT.

HOW DO I KNOW HE KNOWS IT. BECAUSE:

Sarraj was arrested in 1995 and 1996 after accusing the PA of corruption.[i] When a visiting American asked about Sarraj's arrest, Arafat replied in Arabic. His translator explained it was a regrettable matter and Arafat was looking into it. Arafat angrily interrupted him to complain the translation was inaccurate. What he really said was that Sarraj had insulted him and would pay for it.[ii] In June, 1996 Sarraj was briefly arrested a third time, beaten, and charged with selling drugs and assaulting his interrogator.[iii]

AND BY THE WAY, HERE'S WHAT HE TOLD THE NY TIMES ON OCTOBER 17, 2005, BEFORE HAMAS WON THE ELECTION:

Sarraj, a prominent psychiatrist here, is not surprised. "Who rules Gaza?" he asked. "It's certainly not the central Palestinian Authority." There is no law or security here, he said, adding, "The reality is that the Gaza Strip is controlled from outside by Israel and from inside by groups intertwined with security forces and tribes."

Last week, my brother's car was taken away at gunpoint. Many people have been forced to surrender their wallets or cellphones. Beggars roam the streets asking for money or bread. For more than 18 months, civil servants did not receive a salary, only parts of it every now and then. Municipal workers were given a bag of bread every day instead of their wages.

PERHAPS THIS SHOWS THAT FATAH AND HAMAS ARE NOT VERY GOOD AT GOVERNING. ANY HINT OF THIS IN HIS WRITING? NOPE. SO HOW CAN ONE PERSUADE PALESTINIANS THAT THEY SHOULD HAVE BETTER LEADERS WHEN THE CURRENT ONES HAVE NO FAULTS? THEY ARE JUST VICTIMS OF THE AMERICANS AND ISRAEL.

The explosion was bound to happen, and the last straw came when the interior minister declared that he could not fulfil his duties and resigned. He blamed the obstructive attitude of Fatah's director of preventive security.

WELL, NOT PRECISELY. HE RESIGNED BECAUSE HE COULD NOT MERGE THE HAMAS AND FATAH FORCES OR FIND JOBS FOR THE VASTLY OVER-MANNED SECURITY FORCES BECAUSE NO ONE WAS WILLING TO COMPROMISE. MOREOVER, THE TWO GROUPS ARE INDIFFERENT TO SUCH THINGS AS BUDGETARY LIMITS OR THE PUBLIC WELFARE. HOW ABOUT SAYING: WE ARE LEAD BY TWO DICTATORIAL, AUTHORITARIAN MOVEMENTS WHICH EMBRACE TERRORISM AND EXTREMISM. WE NEED A MODERATE THIRD FORCE WHICH REJECTS THEIR NONSENSE. IF SARRAJ DOESN'T SAY THIS, NOBODY WELL. WHAT GOOD ARE MODERATES WHO BASICALLY TALK JUST LIKE EXTREMISTS?

Of course, Palestinian affairs are not purely Palestinian. The big players are in Washington, Tehran and Tel Aviv. It seems to us that the U.S. and Iran are fighting their war in Gaza, and in Lebanon and Iraq.

AHA! PALESTINIANS ARE JUST INNOCENT BYSTANDERS, VICTIMS AGAIN. AT LEAST HE INCLUDES IRAN HERE, BUT NOTE THERE ARE NO ARAB BAD GUYS ONLY FOREIGNERS. ISN'T HAMAS A PALESTINIAN GROUP? ISN'T HAMAS IN GAZA THE PRODUCT OF THE EGYPTIAN MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, NOT TEHRAN? I REPEAT: IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PROBLEM THEN YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SOLUTION. SO NO REFORM, NO REVOLUTION, NO RETHINKING IS NEEDED AMONG PALESTINIANS THEMSELVES. AND IT IS THIS KIND OF THINKING THAT HAS GIVEN US AN ENDLESS CONFLICT WITH ISRAEL, TERRORISM, THROWING AWAY A CHANCE TO GET A PALESTINIAN STATE, THE HAMAS VICTORY, AND MUCH ELSE. IT IS THE KIND OF THINKING SARRAJ REPRESENTS -- AND NOT "WASHINGTON, TEHRAN AND TEL AVIV" THAT IS THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM.

But this situation is more than just a power struggle. It stems from the absence in Palestine of a culture of democracy and the rule of law.

OK. SO HERE IS A MODERATE STANDPOINT AT LAST.

Emerging in the mid-1990s from Israel's occupation, we Gazans dreamed of a new era. Instead, our Palestinian Authority continued the culture of the gun. This culture is based on loyalty, secrecy and decisively rooting out opponents. There is no regard for human rights or the rule of law or even human life itself.

HE MIGHT MENTION THAT THE ONLY REASON THERE WAS AN EMERGENCE WAS BECAUSE THE PLO MADE AN AGREEMENT WITH ISRAEL THAT PERSUADED ISRAEL TO MAKE CONCESSIONS, BUT THAT WOULD BE TOO MUCH TO HOPE FOR NO DOUBT.

What began in the name of resistance to the Israeli occupation became worse during Yasser Arafat's years in power. Many times, I was confronted and even jailed by officials of the security forces -- people who had once been in the resistance but showed no understanding of the seriousness of torture and abuse of the law.

The culture of the gun is contagious.

AGREED. BUT WHEN HE SAYS IT IS CONTAGIOUS THIS IMPLIES THAT PERHAPS VIEWING ISRAELIS AS SUB-HUMAN DEMONS EVENTUALLY TRANSLATES INTO TREATING OTHER PALESTINIANS LIKE DIRT.

Armed people exhibit a euphoric and self-confident image as the gun in their hands compensates for inner impotence. In the face of defeat and humiliation against the powerful outside enemy, people look for smaller enemies they can win over. The armed militia leader becomes the new model, the symbol of power who can kill at will and torture others without a hint of remorse.

ABSOLUTELY.

As the dream of an independent Palestine fades -- the result of Israel's continuing grab of West Bank land and the anarchy of Gaza -- we now imagine the nightmares that may come next.

HUH? ISRAEL'S CONTINUING GRAB OF WEST BANK LAND? BUT ISRAEL WAS OFFERING FURTHER WITHDRAWALS WHICH WERE CANCELED BECAUSE OF TERRORIST ATTACKS ON ISRAEL. SO ISRAEL WANTS TO GET RID OF MOST, IN SOME CASES, ALL OF THE WEST BANK. NOTICE HOW THE CRITIQUE OF FATAH DISAPPEARS. BUT THIS IS MANDATORY: TO EARN THE RIGHT TO CRITIQUE PALESTINIAN GROUPS YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE PROPER QUOTA OF ANTI-ISRAEL RHETORIC. BUT OF COURSE AS LONG AS YOU BLAME ISRAEL YOU CANNOT MAKE PEACE WITH ISRAEL. IF YOUR DIAGNOSIS IS THAT THE PROBLEM IS ISRAEL DOESN'T WANT TO GIVE UP ANY TERRITORY, HOW CAN YOU ADVOCATE MAKING AN AGREEMENT WITH ISRAEL IN WHICH TERRITORY IS EXCHANGED FOR PEACE? BUT YOU JUST SAID WE CANNOT TRUST THEM? THUS, THE MODERATES UNDERMINE MODERATION AND CONFIRM RADICAL POLICIES. THIS IS A PRINCIPLE THAT APPLIES WIDELY IN THE ARAB WORLD.

Will there be three states instead of two: Israel, the West Bank and Gaza? Will there only be one? Will Gaza become an even more extreme place than it is now? Palestinians are bitterly divided in politics and in geography, as the emergency cabinet sits and operates in the West Bank, while the Hamas-led government sits and operates in Gaza. Separating our two territories was one of the objectives of Ariel Sharon's plan of unilateral withdrawal. The tragic irony is that Palestinian leaders have only served to further the Sharon plan, and to de-legitimate our claim to self-government.

ACTUALLY THIS IS A LIE. SHARON'S PLAN AND THAT OF OLMERT WAS TO WITHDRAW FROM BOTH. I NEVER HEARD ANYONE IN ISRAEL TALK IN THESE TERMS. NOR WAS THE INTENT TO DELEGITIMATE ANY PALESTINIAN CLAIM TO SELF-GOVERNMENT. THE PALESTINIANS DID THAT, NOT ISRAEL.

BUT READING THE ABOVE MADE ME REMEMBER SOMETHING. LET'S SEE ABOUT MR. SARRAJ'S CONTRIBUTION TO THIS MESS. WHAT IS HIS RECORD?:

In 1999, Sarraj wrote that Palestinians were better off without the peace process. Previously, they had many "winning cards...despite our weaknesses." Refusing to recognize Israel had been a "nuclear weapon" which they had "refused to surrender for 50 years." Now, he claimed, the peace process had taken away armed struggle, national unity, and the sympathy of the world's media. Palestinian refugees abroad were thinking of settling down in their places of exile, "as if everything were over!" Before serious negotiations could really begin, he concluded, the Palestinians "must regain our winning cards."[iv]

And this was precisely what Arafat tried to do. For many, it was unimaginable that he would prefer extremism, violence and suffering to peace and statehood at the price of RELATIVELY SMALL compromises. Arafat, however, was counting on this belief since under THAT ASSUMPTION; Israel would have to be at fault FOR ANY continuing bloodshed and occupation.

SO IN 1999, SARRAJ HIMSELF WAS AGAINST ANY CONCLUSION OF THE PEACE PROCESS IN SUCCESS. SO HE TOO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT HAPPENED.

The only solution is a government that is made up of neutral people of integrity who advocate peace negotiations with Israel but insist on keeping Palestine intact.

OK BUT DO YOU KNOW ANYONE LIKE THAT? EVEN TEN SUCH PEOPLE? DO THEY HAVE POPULAR SUPPORT? AND IF THE CURRENT LEADERS ARE SO BAD WHY DON'T THEY HAVE ANY SUPPORT? WHAT KIND OF THINKING AND IDEOLOGY HAS PREVENTED THEM FROM HAVING ANY MASS SUPPORT?

Footnotes

[i] New York Times, May 6, 22, 27, and 28, 1996. He was released shortly after his family wrote a note saying he had been misquoted. Later, though, Sarraj confirmed that the quotes were correct.
[ii] Interview.
[iii]. New York Times, June 11, 1996; Palestine Report, June 14 and 28, 1996; LAW, press release, June 12, 14, 16, 17, and 27, 1996; Washington Post, June 27, 1996.
[iv] Iyad Sarraj, "Oslo, Democracy and the Return of al-Hakeem," Palestine Report, August 18, 1999.

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, has written and edited 50 books on the Middle East. His latest book, The Truth About Syria, has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

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DESPERATE, HUNGRY ISRAELI CHILDREN NEED YOUR HELP NOW
Posted by Meir Panim Organization, June 19, 2007.
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JEWISH AND ISRAELI SURVIVAL IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Posted by Freeman Center For Strategic Studies, June 19, 2007.

This was written by James Linduff and addressed to Bernard Shapiro, Executive Director of the Freeman Center.
http://www.freeman.org/serendipity/index.php?/archives/ 343-JEWISH-AND-ISRAELI-SURVIVAL-IN-21ST-CENTURY-MUST-READ.html

Mr Shapiro:

As I write this email, Syrian officials are removing government archives from Damascus in their preparations for war with Israel, and Iran has publicly stated that "the destruction of Israel" is almost upon the world. Hamas has established control over the Gaza Strip, and is busy cleansing the area of the last remnants of opposition. Lebanon is in turmoil.

In Venezuela, the government of Hugo Chavez has openly allied with Iran and Syria, and began a pattern of state sponsored political repression on their Jewish population. Venezuelan Press has stated that the expulsion of 25,000 Jews may be considered at some point in the future.

In Argentina, who has the largest Jewish population in South America, the phrase "be patriotic, kill Jews" began appearing in slogan graffiti nationally during the Lebanon War, and anti-semetic incidents are on the rise. There are also documented cases of Islamic radical cells and networks in operation in South America, which could engage in anti-Jewish activities at any time.

In Europe, Jews also face a variety of hostile elements, which is well known and documented and generally known. Anti-semetic incidents are also on the rise, as they have been for several years now. Jews are pouring out of Europe to Israel.

Each of these events is easily recognizable to any person with military experience as the preliminary "battlefield shaping" moves of an impending war of terrible scope. It could easily escalate into a world war. Mr. Shapiro, we stand at the brink of another Holocaust, and everyone knows it. I really don't have to cite facts and figures in academic style and format to make this apparent. All one has to do is listen to the nightly news. The question is, how will modern Zionism confront the issue when the pre-war posturing is over, and the much dreaded conflict to eliminate Israel from the map and exterminate the Jewish people all over the world begins? How will Zionism help the Jewish people to survive in the face of an enemy as determined as Hitler? What will be the role of Zionism in a conflict that threatens Jews wherever they reside in the world?

Any person of Jewish descent knows that Israel is a nation that resides partially in exile, and partially in the land. We also know this war portends to affect the diaspora and the nation of Israel equally.

Will Zionism and its allied elements throughout the world distinguish themselves by taking courageous action to save Jews? Will non-Jewish Zionists prove to be the first real, tangible ally the Jewish people have ever known in their history? Will Zionism prove to be a channel to action for it's adherents to use for action in saving the innocent of Israel from another Holocaust? I certainly hope so, sir. I would hate to think that the support of Israel that has been enthusiastically voiced in the press would evaporate into inaction when the real challenges start.

If this were to happen, modern Zionism would have no choice but to melt into history as an ineffective and toothless ideal who lost when it failed, by inaction, to confront the planned genocide of the Jewish people.

If modern Zionism does become a tangible ally of Israel, however, it would have benchmark historical implications that I need not explain to you. The scope would be enormous.

Herman Wouk once said: "Zionism is a single long action of lifesaving, of snatching great masses of people out of the path of sure extinction." (This is My God, first edition (1959), page 264.)

Mr. Shapiro, this email all boils down to a nothing but questions. When will we, as Zionists, begin to take the necessary actions to snatch the great masses of Jewish people out of the path of sure extinction? Do we even recognize the fact that a train wreck is approaching? How long will we tarry? Are we, as a movement, up to the challenge, or have we ran our course? Will Zionism be able to confront the new challenge of 4GW, and Assymetrical Warfare?

I think we will sir. I think we will have new leaders who have yet to be discovered, and new talent yet to be tapped. At least I hope so.

I urge you, sir, to examine these issues, and incorporate them into the studies produced by the Freeman Center. Especially how Zionism can be an outlet to preserve life in a 4GW warfare conflict of global scope.

Thank you for hearing my comments on this sir;

Regards,

James Linduff
TACTICAL MANAGEMENT

Contact the Center at Freeman Center For Strategic Studies, P.O. Box 35661, Houston, Texas 77235-5661. Phone or Fax at 713-723-6016

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HOW MUCH HUMANITARIANISM DECENT? ISLAMIC LAW INFILTRATING WEST; PEACE NOW GUILTY OF LIBEL
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 19, 2007.

HOW MUCH HUMANITARIANISM IS DECENT?

Hamas is doing in Gaza what Gen. Sharon once did and Israel's recent Prime Ministers should have done again. It is confiscating all unofficial arms. Unfortunately, it is keeping them for war on Israel.

After having lost about 50,000 weapons to Hamas in Gaza, Fatah is asking for more weapons in Judea-Samaria, although Hamas lacks a military organization there and Fatah is arresting Hamas members at will. It is asking, because the US and Israel foolishly are likely to grant it, but they would be turned on Israel.

The chaos is a great opportunity for the old Bedouin tradition of looting. Hamas and the masses loot offices, businesses, and houses of Fatah men in Gaza, and Fatah and the masses loot offices, businesses, and houses of Hamas men in Judea-Samaria. Like Bedouin raiders, what they can't carry away, they burn. They even loot facilities at border crossings, facilities meant to facilitate their employment and movement, but they blame Israel for their poverty.

Some Fatah terrorists, who only recently were fighting Israel physically or by being part of the movement for jihad, have been appealing at the Israeli border to be let into Judea-Samaria. Israel let in a few hundred. In Judea-Samaria, they will consider the Jews stupid (well, aren't they?), and continue the jihad as well as reinforce Fatah's rule. Thousands more would like to enter. The government of Israel is considering that a humanitarian problem. I don't.

I consider that a humanitarian opportunity. It is an opportunity to let the Muslims administer justice to each other. Let Hamas rid Gaza of as many Fatah terrorists as possible. Let the Muslims stew in a juice of their own making. Stop rescuing the enemy! Don't let terrorists survive to attack Jews another day, and consider that humanitarian. Let them be executed and spare innocent lives.

The rivalry between Hamas and Fatah is merely over who shall lead jihad. Neither is any good. Since their people elected them and tell pollsters they favor their platform, the people are no better. The question for Israel is whether to continue to furnish Gaza with water and power. My inclination would be to stop supplying it, but that could arouse a bad foreign reaction and should be discussed with strategists. Perhaps stop until the boycott of Israel stops.

THE ZIONIST BOGEYMAN

Diehard antisemitism is a form of insanity. The theory that "the Zionists" control the world is spreading into supposedly sane people. The irony of that nonsensical notion is that Zionists don't control even Israel. Israel's curriculum, editorials, courts, and foreign policy have become anti-Zionist.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RABIN & OLMERT

When he was Prime Minister, Rabin used to retaliate against Gaza terrorism by having the IDF bomb buildings he had emptied by having the terrorists telephoned a warning.

Now PM Olmert (like Sharon) retaliates against Gaza terrorism by having the IDF bomb empty hills.

The tactic is meant to deceive the Israeli people, not daunt the terrorists. To the contrary, the terrorists become emboldened by the apparent protection and arms and training given them by the Left and the US (Winston Mid East Analysis, 5/25). Is this US and Israeli policy foolish or sinister?

INNOCENCE BY ASSOCIATION?

An Israeli Arab drug dealer was convicted of having passed information to Hizbullah during Israel's war with it. His father, a former Israeli soldier, asked that his own service be taken into account in the sentencing. The judge stated later that he had (IMRA, 5/25).

What does the father's merit have to do with the son's lack of merit?

Sometimes my sources, such as Daniel Pipes, list evidence of certain people being terrorist by citing that their relatives are terrorist. I consider that guilt by association. It is not evidence. In the case of the Muslim Arabs, however, who tend to act collectively, although a relative's guilt is not evidence, it is an indicator for detectives to check out the rest of the family.

SHOULD ISRAEL CUT OFF POWER TO GAZA?

Lebanon cut off the power and water supply to the town from which an Islamist group is shelling the Army (Arutz-7, 5/22).

The Army does not enter the town, comprising descendants of refugees, because Lebanon made an agreement with their ancestors not to invade those towns and to let them keep their arms. Now, however, some people in them use that sanctuary for attacking Lebanese.

Israelis ask what other methods they might use to stop the Islamists from using Gaza as a sanctuary from which to fire at Israel. Some have suggested cutting off their supply of power. Others call that too harsh and too collective a punishment. But the Arabs have a collective jihad, so that with them diplomacy doesn't work and one cannot be too harsh.

U.S. ENVOY TO P.A. REBUKES ISRAEL

Gen. Dayton praised the P.A. forces for having closed two arms smuggling terminals and for finally holding off Hamas recently.

Gen. Dayton criticized Israel for rejecting the US demand to dismantle many checkpoints and roadblocks and allow free passage through Israel, that would make life easier for its Arab enemy and which Abbas could claim credit for having achieved. He ridiculed lsrael's objections that the US made the demand without consulting it. He claimed that Israel knew the US was working on it (true) and that it was just a working paper (not true). He also derided Israel's contention that it would allow terrorists to travel into and even through Israel (IMRA, 5/31).

That is exactly what prior such US demands caused! The US is demanding that Israel sacrifice its people's lives to some terrorists for the benefit of other terrorists. The US is on the wrong side of this jihad. Let us not think that Pres. Bush is a great friend of Israel. That is sentimental nonsense.

REVIEW OF PROPOSED SECURITY PLANS

People have proposed that Israel level a square block of Gaza housing, after warning residents to evacuate, in retaliation for each rocket fired into Israel. They propose that Israel cut off water for Gaza. They propose that Israel bring in foreign peacekeepers.

The politicians proposing those policies call them plans. But they are not plans. They are sound bytes. Plans would be thought out; sound bytes are not.

Residents are likely not to evacuate. The Arabs already have reacted that way. If Israel cut off the water supply without arranging with Egypt for an alternative supply, Israel might face enormous international pressure. Foreign peacekeepers are more likely to become human shields for the terrorists (Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA, 5/31).

What's the point of cutting off water, only to arrange for water from elsewhere?

ISLAMIC LAW INFILTRATING WEST

Britain pays welfare benefits to multiple Muslim wives and tax deductions if the polygamy was contracted where legal. Mayor Bloomberg consoled some Muslim men who lost children in a fire that revealed one of the men practiced polygamy. The Mayor did not enforce the law against polygamy (Pipes #774, 5/31). There are other examples of Western abasement its own values to appease a religion at war with Western society. Better to expel them than Western values.

TERRORISTS HELP RUN MAIN U.S. MUSLIM GROUPS

Two of the main US Muslim organizations are the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

MPAC's Communications Director, Edina Lekovic, was a managing editor of Al-Talib magazine after the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Africa. By July, 1999, bin Laden was known to have been involved in it. The magazine printed, "When we hear someone refer to the great Mujahid ..., Osama bin Laden, as a 'terrorist,' we should defend our brother and refer to him as a freedom fighter."

Interviewing Lekovic on May 23, Steven Emerson on CNBC quoted the statement and referred to her as a managing editor. She denied being the editor, claimed his research was sloppy, and called him a liar and a character assassin. Later in the day, Emerson proved her name was on the masthead. Other officials in MPAC also have been on the masthead.

Lekovic did not give up. She wrote to Emerson claiming that she worked only briefly for the magazine and her name appeared on the masthead by mistake. Emerson found her name on the masthead at least 11 other times, though in varying capacities, during a 5-year period. The magazine had much al-Qaeda sentiment, such as claiming that the sheik convicted of the first World Trade Center bombing was falsely accused and claiming the Holocaust was fake. The magazine had a link to an al-Qaeda organization.

The same July, 1999 masthead offers "special thanks" to the head of CAIR's Southern California office (Daniel Pipes #775, 6/1).

Officials of those organizations often have been found to make Islamist statements or support Islamist causes. But the US and local governments remain ignorant about them and call on them to help deal with the enemy Islamists that they really are, themselves. Emerson is skillful at exposing them, but this time he should have had his proof with him, since Islamists deny truth.

COURT FINDS PEACE NOW GUILTY OF LIBEL

An Israeli court fined Peace Now for libeling a man as a racist, fascist, lawbreaker threatening the peace of Jerusalem by planning to bring some Jews to Jerusalem illegally. What is newsworthy about this is that Israeli courts usually excuse what the Left or Arabs do, and usually punish what the Right or religious Jews do (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/1). He broke no law. Peace Now's libel did.

What is wrong with bringing Jews to Jerusalem? Why does that threaten the peace, unless it is that Muslims are lawlessly violent? Why the name-calling?

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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ANNEXATION OF GAZA MUST BE CONTAINED
Posted by Daily Alert, June 19, 2007.

This was written by Youssef Ibrahim and it appeared yesterday in New York Sun

There are many ways to look at the Hamas victory in the Gaza Strip last week, but the most relevant is that Gaza has joined the expanding Jihadistan terrorist landscape.

Gaza is only the most recent addition to Jihadistan's several cities in Iraq, the tribal regions along the Pakistan- Afghanistan border, much of Somalia, and the Hezbollah-controlled areas of southern Lebanon -- yet another place for terrorist-masters to meet, organize, plan, and operate.

It will be a farce if President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert spend their meeting tomorrow discussing a two-state solution or how many millions of dollars are needed to shore up the non-existent authority of Fatah. What is needed is a plan to stop the addition of Gaza to Jihadistan, to contain it, and to bleed it.

Egypt and Jordan are just as concerned as Israel. It is an established fact that much of Hamas's weaponry in Gaza and the West Bank comes across the Sinai desert from Egypt, from all over the Mediterranean coast controlled by Israel, and from Jordan. The weapons are paid for and shipped with the complicity of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood movements of Egypt and Jordan with the complicity of army and government officials. Sinai bedouins and rogue government officials are part of the problem. That is what any conversation should be about.

The Arabs agree. The dizzying descent of Gaza has alarmed pundits and decision-makers in surrounding countries to the point that they are openly saying: Forget the Palestinian Arab cause, save us:

  • "The emergence of an Islamist 'Emirate of Gaza' is far more critical than that the emergence of the Taliban," the editor in chief of a Saudi newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat, Tarik Al-Homeid, wrote on Saturday.

  • In Cairo this weekend, the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, rejected calls for recognizing a Hamas government in Gaza, saying he could not sanctify splitting the region in the name of Islam.

  • Finally, according to the general manager of the pan-Arab Al-Arabia TV network, Abdelrahman Al Rashed, the region now suffers from splits within its splits. "In Palestine, we have two leaderships; in Lebanon, two governments, with two presidents, and two parliaments; in Iraq, we are looking at three mini-states: one Shiite, one Sunni, and one Kurdish," he said yesterday.

Throwing money at the problem will not do. If the Gaza collapse has proved anything, it is that Western funding ends up either in the hands of Muslim fundamentalists or in the pockets of corrupt Fatah officials, most of whom sat out the turmoil with their wives and mistresses in their sumptuous villas and flats in Cairo, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Paris, London, and the French Riviera. Fatah's top security chief, Muhammed Dahlan, actually watched the sacking of his sumptuous marble villa in Gaza from his other sumptuous villa in a Cairo suburb, a senior Egyptian intelligence source told me yesterday.

The most immediate urgency is to cut off funds and weapons in the places that Hamas's flames are heading next: the Palestinian Arab refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. With Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the scene is set for a serious Islamic fundamentalist insurrection across the Arab world.

The bloody, month-long fight by rogue Islamists for the Palestinian Arab refugee camp in Tripoli, Lebanon -- which so far has cost the Lebanese army 70 soldiers -- is a fine sample of what is in store.

There are many poor and dispossessed Palestinian Arabs, most of whom are cared for with funds from the United Nations and Western charities. This humanitarian aid, unfortunately, has relieved Palestinian Arab terror groups, such as Hamas and Fatah, from the obligation of feeding their own and allows them to use all their money for war. Thus, a related issue for do-gooders confronting the problem is how to stop this seepage of funds.

Palestinian Arabs have been fighting in the name of a state since 1948, but their leaders have reduced their likely mandate to the miserable conundrum of Gaza, and a patch here and there in the West Bank, from what would have been half of today's Israel.

The day may come for an independent Palestinian Arab state. But right now, the humane and decent thing to do is save the Palestinian Arabs from their rogue Islamists and would-be nationalistic heroes.

The Daily Alert is sponsored by Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and prepared by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). To subscribe to their free daily alerts, send an email to daily@www.dailyalert.jcpa.org

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THE MARCH OF FOLLY TOWARDS AN ILLEGITIMATE WAR
Posted by Professors for a Strong Israel, June 19, 2007.

The dust hasn't settled from the war between the Palestinian terror groups, and already the Kadima ministers are returning to their march of folly. Today they are again differentiating between good and bad terrorists, seeing the defeat of "good terrorist" Abu Mazen as an "opportunity" to give him support and to sign agreements with him. Tomorrow they will march onward to give safe passage through Israel to terrorists fleeing their well-deserved fate in Gaza, who will soon launch their attacks from Ramallah. The march continues with the delusion that a multinational force in the Philadelphi Corridor will do better than UNIFIL has done in preventing the rearming of Hezbollah. And of course the ministers put the "humanitarian" needs of the enemy ahead of those of Sderot.

Professors for a Strong Israel rejects any idea of using the soldiers of the IDF to hand the good terrorists a state on a sliver platter; we see this as the essence of an illegitimate war.

Contact Benjamin Svetitsky of Professors for a Strong Israel at bqs@julian.tau.ac.il

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GROUNDED IN FANTASY
Posted by Barbara Sommer, June 19, 2007.

This was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared yesterday in the Jerusalem Post
(www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813065538&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull).

Iran and its client state Syria have a strategic vision for the Middle East. They wish to take over Lebanon. They wish to destroy Israel. They wish to defeat the US in Iraq. They wish to drive the US and NATO from Afghanistan. They wish to dominate the region by driving the rest of the Arab world to its jihad-supporting knees. Then they wish to apply their vision to the rest of the world.

Today, Syria and Iran are ardently advancing their strategic vision for the world through a deliberate strategy of victory by a thousand cuts. Last week's Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip; Sunday's reopening of the Lebanese front against Israel with the Syrian-ordered rocket attacks on Kiryat Shemona; the now five-week old Syrian ordered low-intensity warfare against Lebanon's pro-Western Siniora government; last week's attack on the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra; the recent intensification of terrorism in Afghanistan and Iran's move to further destabilize the country by violently deporting 100,000 Afghan refugees back to the war-torn country -- all of these are moves to advance this clear Iranian-Syrian strategy.

And all these moves have taken place against the backdrop of Syria's refashioning of its military in the image of Hizbullah on steroids and Iran's relentless, unopposed progress in its nuclear weapons program.

For their part, both the US and Israel also have a strategic vision. Unfortunately, it is grounded in fantasy.
 

WASHINGTON AND Jerusalem wish to solve all the problems of the region and the world by establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. While Israel now faces Iranian proxies on two fronts, in their meeting at the White House today US President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will gush about their support for Palestinian statehood. Creepily echoing LSD king Timothy Leary, they will tune out this reality as they drone on about the opportunities that Gaza's transformation into a base for global jihad afford to the notion that promoting the Fatah terrorist organization's control over Judea and Samaria can make the world a better, safer, happier place.

Today Bush and Olmert will announce their full support for Fatah chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas's new government. The US will intensify General Keith Dayton's training and arming of Fatah forces. Israel will give Fatah $700 million. The Europeans and the rest of the international community will give the "moderate, secular" terror group still more money and guns and love. The US will likely also demand that Olmert order the IDF to give Fatah terrorists free reign in Judea and Samaria.

Olmert and Bush claim that by backing Abbas militarily, financially and politically they will be setting up an "alternative Palestine" which will rival Hamas's jihadist Palestine. As this notion has it, envious of the good fortune of their brethren in Judea and Samaria, Gazans will overthrow Hamas and the course will be set for peace -- replete with the ethnic cleansing of Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem of all Jewish presence.
 

FATAH FORCES barely raised a finger to prevent their defeat in Gaza in spite of the massive quantities of US arms they received and the military training they underwent at the hands of US General Keith Dayton. Bush, Olmert and all proponents of the notion of strengthening Fatah in Judea and Samaria refuse to answer one simple question: Why would a handover of Judea and Samaria to Abbas's Fatah produce a better outcome than Israel's 2005 handover of Gaza to Abbas's Fatah?

They refuse to answer this question because they know full well that the answer is that there is absolutely no reason to believe that the outcome can be better. They know full well that since replacing Yasser Arafat as head of the PA in 2004, Abbas refused to take any effective action against Hamas. They know that he refused to take action to prevent Hamas's rise to power in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. They know that the guns the US transferred to Fatah in Gaza were surrendered to Hamas without a fight last week. They know that the billions of dollars of international and Israeli assistance to Fatah over the past 14 years never were used to advance the cause of peace.

They know that that money was diverted into the pockets of Fatah strongmen and utilized to build terror militias in which Hamas members were invited to serve. They know that Fatah built a terror superstructure in Judea, Samaria and Gaza which enabled operational cooperation between Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror cells.

SO WHY embrace the fantasy that things can be different now, in Judea and Samaria? Rather than provide rational arguments to defend their view that Hamas's takeover of Gaza is an opportunity for peace, proponents of peace fantasies as strategic wisdom explain vacuously that peace is the best alternative to jihad. They whine that those who point out that Israel now borders Iran in Lebanon and Gaza have nothing positive to say.

To meet the growing threat in Gaza, they argue that Europeans, or maybe Egyptians and Jordanians can be deployed at the international border with Egypt to stem the weapons and terror personnel flow into Gaza. To meet the growing threat in Lebanon, Olmert pleads for more UN troops.

Both views ignore the obvious: Gaza has been transformed into an Iranian-sponsored base for global jihad because Egypt has allowed it to be so transformed. Assisted by its Syrian-sponsored Palestinian allies, Hizbullah has rebuilt its arsenals and reasserted its control in southern Lebanon because UN forces in southern Lebanon have done nothing to prevent it from doing so.

No country on earth will volunteer to fight Hamas and its jihadist allies in Gaza. No government on earth will voluntarily deploy its forces to counter Hizbullah and Iran in south Lebanon. This is why -- until they fled -- European monitors at the Rafah terminal were a joke. This is why Spanish troops in UNIFIL devote their time in Lebanon to teaching villagers Spanish.

SO WHY are Bush and Olmert set to embrace Fatah and Abbas today? Why are they abjectly refusing to come to terms with the strategic reality of the Iranian-Syrian onslaught? Why are they insisting that the establishment of a Palestinian state is their strategic goal and doing everything they can to pretend that their goal has not been repeatedly proven absurd?

Well, why should they? As far as Bush is concerned, no American politician has ever paid a price for advancing the cause of peace processes that strengthen terrorists and hostile Arab states at Israel's expense. Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton had Arafat over to visit the White House more often than any other foreign leader and ignored global jihad even when its forces bombed US embassies and warships. And today Clinton receives plaudits for his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.

By denying that the war against Israel is related to the war in Iraq; by ignoring the strategic links between all the Iranian and Syrian sponsored theaters of war, Bush views gambling with Israel's security as a win-win situation. He will be applauded as a champion of peace and if the chips go down on Israel, well, it won't be Americans being bombed.
 

OLMERT LOOKS to his left and sees president-elect Shimon Peres. Peres, the architect of the Oslo process which placed Israel's national security in the hands of the PLO, has been rewarded for his role in imperiling his country by his similarly morally challenged political colleagues who just bestowed him with Israel's highest office.

Olmert looks to his left and his sees incoming defense minister Ehud Barak. In 2000, then prime minister Barak withdrew Israeli forces from Lebanon, and enabled Iran's assertion of control over southern Lebanon through its Hizbullah proxy. In so doing, Barak set the conditions for last summer's war, and quite likely, for this summer's war.

By offering Arafat Gaza, 95 percent of Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem at Camp David, Barak showed such enormous weakness that he all but invited the Palestinian terror war which Arafat began planning the day he rejected Barak's offer.

For his failure, Barak has been rewarded by his Labor Party, which elected him its new chairman on the basis of his vast "experience," and by the media which has embraced him as a "professional" defense minister.

Olmert looks to his right and he sees how the media portrays Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu and former IDF Chief of General Staff Moshe Ya'alon as alarmists for claiming that Israel cannot abide by an Iranian-proxy Hamas state on its border. He sees that Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu supported Peres's candidacy as president and have joined their fortunes to Olmert's in a bid to block elections which will bring the Right to power.
 

ISRAEL HAS arguably never faced a more dangerous strategic environment than it faces today. Yet it is not without good options. It can retake control over the Gaza-Sinai border. It can renew its previously successful tactic of killing Hamas terrorists. It can continue its successful campaign of keeping terrorists down in Judea and Samaria, and it can continue preparing for war in the north. All of these options can be sold to the Left.

But today both Bush and Olmert will reject these options in favor of mindless peace process prattle. They will reject reality as they uphold Abbas as a credible leader and shower him with praise, money and arms. Their political fortunes will be utmost in their minds as they do this. And they will be guaranteeing war that will claim the lives of an unknown number of Israeli civilians and soldiers.

Bush and Olmert should know that when the time for reckoning comes they will not be able to claim, along with Peres and Barak that their hands did not shed this blood. Reality has warned them of their folly. But in their low, dishonest opportunism, they have chosen to ignore reality and amuse themselves with fantasies and photo-ops.

Contact Barbara Sommer at sommer_1_98@yahoo.com

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HAMAS CAPTURES PRICELESS PA INTELLIGENCE ARCHIVES IN GAZA PUTSCH
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 18, 2007.

After you read the following, you may agree that Olmert and his gang of incompetents should have been caged years ago. Moreover, keep in mind the politicization and weakening of the Secret Services to serve the personal needs of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert -- rather than protecting the nation. When the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and Intelligence Services (is that an oxymoron?) should have been free to act and destroy the intelligence records that were in the hands of Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) President of the Palestinian Authority and now captured by Hamas, they held back.

Why did they hesitate and await instructions from Olmert -- who was awaiting his instructions from Bush and Rice?

While you cannot hang dumb beasts, you can put them in zoo cages like an orangutan. Olmert, Barak and Peres should have been safely caged as a danger to their nation and themselves. Years of Intelligence Records have been compromised, putting agents at risk, such as recruited Palestinian spies deep inside the terrorist camp, CIA connections, all in the hands of Hamas and from there straight to Iran and Syria. Olmert and Israeli Intelligence should have been smart and quick to destroy the building that held the documents but instead, they dithered. Dumb is curable but, stupid is forever.

Olmert, quintessentially the most stupid of all Ministers in Israel just proclaimed that now Hamas is no longer part of Fatah and therefore somehow this is an opportunity.

That means that Olmert and Rice will continue to arm Abu Mazen and Fatah in order to fulfill his pledge to abandon Judea and Samaria to those "peaceful Fatah Terrorists".

This next is from the DEBKAFile:

DEBKAFile Exclusive: Hamas and its Syrian and Iranian sponsors capture priceless Palestinian Authority intelligence archives in Gaza putsch

June 15, 2007

The Fatah-led general intelligence and security services caved in too fast to shred, wipe or burn documents, computer disks and archives. The entire collection fell into Hamas' hands when they seized Palestinian Preventive Intelligence HQ at Tel Awa (henceforth Tel al-Islam) and the Palestinian General Intelligence center near Gaza port.

DEBKAFile's intelligence sources say: Never before has a bonanza of Western intelligence secrets on this scale ever reached an implacably hostile Islamist terrorist gang. The US, British and Israeli intelligence services may have suffered their greatest debacle in the war on Islamist terror. It will take them many years to recover.

Hamas has taken possession of hundreds of thousands of documents cataloguing the clandestine operations of Western intelligence services in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates. It is now the owner of complete archives of Palestinian undercover links with foreign intelligence services going back decades, with names of spies, political collaborators and double agents. The documentation covers the secret ties Palestinian intelligence maintained from the 1970s, when Yasser Arafat was based in Lebanon, with the Americans, the British, the French, the Israelis and many others.

Most intelligence experts say Israel should have bombed the two buildings and destroyed their contents rather than letting them fall into the hands of an organization and country dedicated to its eclipse.

For Hamas, this booty is priceless -- and not only as the repository of bombs for planting under Mahmoud Abbas and his cohorts. The Palestinian group's Syrian and Iranian sponsors will pay a king's ransom for this unique collection of explosive secrets hidden by many a Western intelligence agency and government. Damascus and Tehran will be hugely empowered with the means to stay a jump ahead of American moves in the region and tools to sabotage US policies at any time. They will have a store of national secrets and compromising information to hold over the heads of Western leaders and officials, lists of undercover agents, and records of covert operations carried out by the Israeli Mossad, Shin Bet and Military Intelligence, CIA, British MI6 and other Western agencies. Iran, Syria and Hamas will know the names of politicians, including Israelis, who worked secretly with Palestinians and their shady deals.

One intelligence expert said that the Gaza hoard left in enemy hands by Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan are the crown jewels compared with the Saddam Hussein's intelligence archives.

In the Palestinian security service building, Hamas found computer hard disks covering years of undercover activity and a complete set of sophisticated wiretapping and surveillance equipment and sensors which the CIA and MI6 gave Mahmoud Abbas and his forces. It was all in perfect condition ready to switch on.

After the Nazi regime was defeated at the end of World War II and Eastern Germany fell in the 1990s, there were officials willing to make a desperate effort to destroy or hide their intelligence treasure. Palestinian intelligence officers did not burn a single page.

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@gwinston.interaccess.com

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FROM GAZA TO IRAN...IT'S ALL OUR FAULT...AND IF WE BELIEVE THAT, WE ARE DOOMED
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 18, 2007.

Bruce Thornton (first article below) and Victor Davis Hanson (2nd article) get it right.

Note especially their mockery of Madame Secretary's failed policies (which are also your policies), and their identification of the real problem in the Palestinian and Islamic cultures of victimhood and violence which have been so successful over the past few decades in shaking down westerners for their pity and their money, and in convincing many in our media, academia, clergy and government that Israel is to blame for the 87-year terror war that the Arab world has waged against her because she has the audacity to exist. As Bruce Thornton writes:

"All these tactics first perfected in the jihad against Israel are being used in the other theaters of the war against the West. Yet we still persist in believing that the assault on Israel is a conflict distinct from jihad, or that jihadist terrorism is created by that conflict and would disappear if it were resolved, or that 'moderates' like Mahmoud Abbas genuinely accept Israel's existence and will peacefully coexist with a nation of despised former dhimmi if only the Palestinians get their own state -- all this despite the absence of any empirical evidence from the last fifty years that could support these fantasies."

Meanwhile the U.S. Secretary of State scampers around the Middle East pursing the chimera of the "two-state" solution via "frameworks" and "road maps," Israel is pressured to show "restraint" in the face of violence, and U.S. tax dollars are sent to Fatah, in the weird belief that it makes sense to help Fatah, who believe Israel should be destroyed in "phases," prevail over Hamas, who believe Israel should be destroyed right now. In other words, we continue to validate the jihadists' estimation of our gullibility and weakness, which in turn convinces them that they can win and so should fight on. Why shouldn't they? After all, they've been fighting Israel for over fifty years, and have been rewarded with the Sinai and Gaza. Why wouldn't they think Al-Andalus is next?'

and as Victor Davis Hanson says:

"The problem is not the acquisition of the final seven percent of the West Bank denied in the offer to them at Camp David, but the pathology of a victim culture, one that has learned, through playing the card of terror with simultaneous appeals to multicultural guilt, how to shake down Westerners for their money, attention, and pity...Never a word about murderers having free will and being responsible for their murdering -- much less recognition that a culture that canonizes suicide bombers forgets that once they banish the rules of civilization there is no reason why such savagery would not be turned on themselves."

If we, as in the 'we' of 'western civilization', cannot find the unity of purpose and strength of conviction to face up to, stare down, and defeat our mutual enemy, then the components of our civilizaiton will fall, one by one, to that mutual enemy: the Islamo-fascist terrorists and their Arab and Muslim supporter states which assault us daily, hourly, from Iran and Iraq to down-town USA.

Bruce Thornton
"Murder in Gaza: Why Israel and not Fatah is demonized"
June 14, 2007
Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers, on the Web

n Gaza the fighting between Fatah and Hamas has escalated to the point of all-out civil war, replete with dead women and children, kneecapping, and handcuffed prisoners thrown from roofs. Meanwhile in Lebanon, the Lebanese army continues to shell a Palestinian refugee camp, with who knows how many civilian deaths. Arab is killing Arab, Muslim is killing Muslim, and the world basically is shrugging its shoulders.

How different from the intense media attention and the U.N.'s hysteria over Israel's attempt to root out terrorists in Lebanon last summer. This obscene double standard that strains out the gnat of Israeli self-defense while swallowing numerous camels of Muslim-on-Muslim violence cries out for explanation.

Certainly the scale of alleged Israeli crimes can't justify fifty years of international hatred and calumny. Since World War II, some 25 million people have died in various conflicts, only 8,000 as a result of Israel's attempts to ward off a chronic existential threat. In the last decade the slaughter in Sudan has claimed 250,000 lives, a brutal war of extermination with a religious and racist subtext that usually sends "progressives" into fits of righteous indignation. And of course the current mayhem in Iraq, where Muslims are blowing up, torturing, and mutilating fellow Muslims, dwarfs even the lurid lies about Israel's behavior regularly circulated among Western liberals and leftists. Yet the supposedly new and improved U.N. Human Rights Council, like its predecessor the discredited Human Right Commission, last year voted to make a review of supposed Israeli "human rights abuses" a permanent activity of every session.

Unsurprisingly, in its first year the Council has issued twelve resolutions: nine condemnations of Israel, and three non-condemnatory resolutions on Sudan.

Objective assessments of Israel's misdeeds, then, cannot explain the double standard that vilifies a tiny country's attempt to survive the attacks of enemies sworn to its destruction. Larger cultural dysfunctions are at work, not least being the corrupt Western media. The major print and television media are filled for the most part with self-styled champions of "social justice," crusaders not for the truth but for "progressive" ideologies in turn based on incoherent ideals and sheer ignorance of history. Their minds shaped by sentimental Third-Worldism, Marxist demonizations of "colonialism" and "imperialism," and arrogance about their own moral superiority, many Western reporters are easily turned into the chumps and shills of corrupt Arab regimes and Muslim jihadists. The Palestinian Arabs in particular have brilliantly exploited the useful idiots of the media to construct the narrative of brutal Israeli "occupation" of the Palestinian "homeland," as documented by Richard Landes and Pierre Rehov, who have exposed the numerous blatant fabrications eagerly swallowed as fact by the media, such as the Jenin "massacre" or the killing of the boy Muhammad Al Durah by Israeli soldiers.

This irrational hatred of Israel on the part of many Westerners is dangerous and short-sighted, as is the failure to understand the true roots of Muslim hatred of the Jewish state. For the modern jihad against the West did not start on 9/11, or even in 1979 with the Iranian revolution. Its first major campaign took place in 1948 when the Arab states ignored a U.N. resolution and attacked a U.N. member state. As significant as this rejection of the Western-crafted international order was, the response of the West -- leaving Israel to sink or swim -- was even more important. By sitting on the sidelines while a Western democracy battled for its life, the West sent a message: that it would not intervene to protect a cultural brother and a legitimate state when attacked by autocracies and religious fanatics.

The failure to destroy Israel militarily two more times led to other tactics -- disinformation, propaganda, phony negotiations, and especially terrorism. And once again, the Western flabby response emboldened the Muslim view of Western decadence and weakness. Suddenly Palestinian "national aspirations" become the rationale for murdering Israelis, even though historically there is no such thing as a distinct Palestinian people. Shrewdly recognizing the West's media-fed obsession with suffering, the Arabs masterfully generate telegenic images that divorce reality from any moral and historical context. Understanding the West's Enlightenment fantasy of conflict resolution through discussion and "agreements," the Palestinian Arabs play that game too, attending conferences and summits, issuing proclamations and "frameworks," and signing various "accords" that they have no intention of honoring. Knowing that the West is infected with cultural self-loathing and guilt, they play the race card, the colonialism card, or the imperialism card as trumps more powerful even than historical fact or responsibility for the conditions they decry. And convinced that a secular West believes in nothing other than material comfort and security, they unleash terrorism as the ultimate demonstration of their own passionate commitment to their ideals, and of the West's spiritual bankruptcy.

All these tactics first perfected in the jihad against Israel are being used in the other theaters of the war against the West. Yet we still persist in believing that the assault on Israel is a conflict distinct from jihad, or that jihadist terrorism is created by that conflict and would disappear if it were resolved, or that "moderates" like Mahmoud Abbas genuinely accept Israel's existence and will peacefully coexist with a nation of despised former dhimmi if only the Palestinians get their own state -- all this despite the absence of any empirical evidence from the last fifty years that could support these fantasies.

Meanwhile the U.S. Secretary of State scampers around the Middle East pursing the chimera of the "two-state" solution via "frameworks" and "road maps," Israel is pressured to show "restraint" in the face of violence, and U.S. tax dollars are sent to Fatah, in the weird belief that it makes sense to help Fatah, who believe Israel should be destroyed in "phases," prevail over Hamas, who believe Israel should be destroyed right now. In other words, we continue to validate the jihadists' estimation of our gullibility and weakness, which in turn convinces them that they can win and so should fight on. Why shouldn't they? After all, they've been fighting Israel for over fifty years, and have been rewarded with the Sinai and Gaza. Why wouldn't they think Al-Andalus is next?


"Gaza -- It's All Our Fault.
Blaming America on CNN is all the rage."
Victor Davis Hanson
June 14, 2007, 0:00 a.m.
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YmNkMmYyNDBiYTYwNjMzZGIwZjQxZ\
DIyZDc1MTRmODE

One of the more depressing things of being stuck in airports during East-Coast June storms is watching CNN and its parade of glib fools that appear hourly blaming (but, of course) the U.S. for the miasma in Gaza and the ongoing creepy Fatah/Hamas killing.

I lost count of the various contortions. One talking head censures the Americans for not recognizing Hamas despite its refusal to disclaim its reason-to-be of undoing the Jewish state.

Another cited the 'culture of violence' unleashed by the U.S. (read Iraq) -- i.e., apparently the West Bank was like Nantucket until 2003.

Yet another lamented our support for elections that ushered in Hamas, as f the generic support for democracy makes us culpable for the odious overnment that the people freely chose to elect. (As if one who voted or such a terrorist clique would expect the United States to keep subsidizing it; as if one would have to keep talking to Hitler because he was once elected).

And then, of course, was the most Orwellian of all -- our failure to support (e.g., send arms to) Fatah! (Is a terrorist organization no longer a terrorist organization when it is one-upped by another terrorist organization?)

An alien from Mars would almost instantly diagnose the problem of the Palestinians from simply listening to their inane apologists: The problem is not the acquisition of the final seven percent of the West Bank denied in the offer to them at Camp David, but the pathology of a victim culture, one that has learned, through playing the card of terror with simultaneous appeals to multicultural guilt, how to shake down Westerners for their money, attention, and pity.

And now for the very life of it, it can't figure out how to quit that lucrative habit -- so much so that, teenager-like, it simultaneously seems to cry 'I don't want anything to do with you' and 'I don't want anything to do with you even more because you don't want anything to do with me.'

Never a word about murderers having free will and being responsible for their murdering -- much less recognition that a culture that canonizes suicide bombers forgets that once they banish the rules of civilization there is no reason why such savagery would not be turned on themselves.

The only interesting comment came from one 'expert' who swore this wasn't a civil war! -- the type of Middle Eastern savant we have heard the last two years swearing that Iraq is torn by?

A full-fledged civil war, of course.

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

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WHAT ARE THE WORLD'S WORST FAILED STATE?
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 18, 2007.

"The Failed States Index 2007" was published in Foreign Policy's July-August 2007 Issue.

The study ranked country instability using these factors: demographic pressure, refugees and displaced persons, group grievance, human flight, uneven development, economy, delegitization of State, public services, human rights, security apparatus, factionalized elites and external intervention.

60 countries are considered highly unstable and were separated into 3 groups from Sudan winning the dubious prize of being considered the most unstable country in the world to Guatemala, which ranked 60th. Country rank depended on the sum of the measured parameters for that country.

The most unstable states ranked from dreadfully unstable to just awful are: Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Chad, Ivory Coast, Dem. Rep of the Congo, Afghanistan, Guinea, Central African Republic, Haiti, Pakistan, North Korea, Burma, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Burundi, Timor-Leste.

In the second set -- just a little unstable that the first group above -- and ranked from bad to a little less bad are: Nepal, Uzbekistan, Sierra Leone, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Lebanon, Malawi, Solomon Islands, Kenya, Niger, Columbia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Rwanda, Guinea-Bissau, Tajikistan and Syria.

In the third set -- unstable but not as bad as the countries listed about and again ranking from bad to slightly better: Equatorial Guinea, Kirgizstan, Turkmenistan, Laos, Mauritania, Togo, Bhutan, Cambodia, Moldova, Eritrea, Belarus, Papua New Guinea, Angola, Bosnia, Indonesia, Philippines, Iran, Georgia, Bolivia and Guatemala.

7 out of the first set of 20 (the world's worst) are Arab or Muslim states; and three more are states that are failed in part because of Muslim efforts (civil war) to take over these states and turn them in to Muslim majority states.

So 50% of the world's 20 most failed states are Muslim or under attack from within by their Muslim population.

Of the 2nd set of 20 (not the worst, but close to it), 5 are Arab or Muslim.

Of the 3rd set of 20, 6 are Arab or Muslim.

Of the four that show the greatest change for the worse over the past year, 2 are Arab or Muslim.

So out of the 60 worst states in the world, 18 are Arab or Muslim states. That's 30%.

Arabs make up about 5% of the world's population. Muslims make up about 20% of the world's population.

Muslim and Arab states are vastly over-represented in the list of failed states.

One of the major reasons for the failure of states, and especially apparent in the first set of the world's worst 20, and in the four with the greatest change for the worst, is war, especially civil war. Almost all of the Arab and Muslim states on this list are engaged in a civil war or in a war with other states or in support of such a war by terror groups. While not all Muslims are terrorists, almost all terrorists are Muslims.

I cannot help but wonder if there is some correlation between these being Arab and Muslim states, and their status per the FN index.

Below is material from "The Failed States Index 2007."
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3865&page= 0&fpsrc=ealert071505ak2khg The report points out that "[t]he world's weakest states aren't just a danger to themselves. They can threaten the progress and stability of countries half a world away. In the third annual Failed States Index, Foreign Policy and The Fund for Peace rank the countries where the risk of failure is running high."

It is an accepted axiom of the modern age that distance no longer matters. Sectarian carnage can sway stock markets on the other side of the planet. Anarchic cities that host open-air arms bazaars imperil the security of the world's superpower. A hermit leader's erratic behavior not only makes life miserable for the impoverished millions he rules but also upends the world's nuclear nonproliferation regime. The threats of weak states, in other words, ripple far beyond their borders and endanger the development and security of nations that are their political and economic opposites.

Few encouraging signs emerged in 2006 to suggest the world is on a path to greater peace and stability. The year began with violent protests that erupted from Indonesia to Nigeria over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. February brought the destruction of Samarra's golden-domed mosque, one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines, unleashing a convulsion of violence across Iraq that continues unabated. After Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers last July, southern Lebanon was bombarded for a month by air strikes, sending hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing into neighboring states. And in October, the repressive North Korean regime stormed its way into the world's nuclear club.

What makes these alarming headlines all the more troubling is that their origins lie in weak and failing states. World leaders and the heads of multilateral institutions routinely take to lecterns to reiterate their commitment to pulling vulnerable states back from the brink, but it can be difficult to translate damage control into viable, long-term solutions that correct state weaknesses. Aid is often misspent. Reforms are too many or too few. Security needs overwhelm international peacekeepers, or chaos reigns in their absence.

The complex phenomenon of state failure may be much discussed, but it remains little understood. The problems that plague failing states are generally all too similar: rampant corruption, predatory elites who have long monopolized power, an absence of the rule of law, and severe ethnic or religious divisions. But that does not mean that the responses to their problems should be cut from the same cloth. Failing states are a diverse lot. Burma and Haiti are two of the most corrupt countries in the world, according to Transparency International, and yet Burma's repressive junta persecutes ethnic minorities and subjects its population to forced resettlement, while Haiti is wracked by extreme poverty, lawlessness, and urban violence. For a decade, Equatorial Guinea has posted some of the highest economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa, yet its riches have padded the bank accounts of an elite few. And in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the inability of the government to police its borders effectively or manage its vast mineral wealth has left the country dependent on foreign aid.

To provide a clearer picture of the world's weakest states, The Fund for Peace, an independent research organization, and FOREIGN POLICY present the third annual Failed States Index. Using 12 social, economic, political, and military indicators, we ranked 177 states in order of their vulnerability to violent internal conflict and societal deterioration. The index scores are based on data from more than 12,000 publicly available sources collected from May to December 2006. The 60 most vulnerable states are listed in the rankings, and full results are available at www.ForeignPolicy.com and www.fundforpeace.org.

For the second year in a row, Sudan tops the rankings as the state most at risk of failure. The primary cause of its instability, violence in the country's western region of Darfur, is as well known as it is tragic. At least 200,000 people -- and perhaps as many as 400,000 -- have been killed in the past four years by janjaweed militias armed by the government, and 2 to 3 million people have fled their torched villages for squalid camps as the violence has spilled into the Central African Republic and Chad. These countries were hardly pictures of stability prior to the influx of refugees and rebels across their borders; the Central African Republic plays host to a modern-day slave trade, and rebels attacked Chad's capital in April 2006 in a failed coup attempt. But the spillover effects from Sudan have a great deal to do with the countries' tumble in the rankings, demonstrating that the dangers of failing states often bleed across borders. That is especially worrying for a few select regions. This year, eight of the world's 10 most vulnerable states are in sub-Saharan Africa, up from six last year and seven in 2005.

That is not to say that all failing states suffer from international neglect. Iraq and Afghanistan, the two main fronts in the global war on terror, both suffered over the past year. Their experiences show that billions of dollars in development and security aid may be futile unless accompanied by a functioning government, trustworthy leaders, and realistic plans to keep the peace and develop the economy. Just as there are many paths to success, there are many paths to failure for states on the edge.

The year wasn't all bad news, though. Two vulnerable giants, China and Russia, improved their scores sufficiently to move out of the 60 worst states. That is in part due to the fact that 31 additional countries were assessed this year. But some credit must be paid to the countries themselves. China's economic engine continues to propel the country forward at a breakneck pace, but the growing divide between urban and rural, as well as continued protests in the countryside, reveals pockets of frailty that the central government is only just beginning to address. Russia's growing economy and a lull in the violence in Chechnya have had stabilizing effects, despite fresh concerns about the country's democratic future.

The vast majority of the states listed in the index have not yet failed; they exhibit severe weaknesses that leave them vulnerable, especially to shocks such as natural disasters, war, and economic deprivation. The power of such events should not be underestimated. The war in Lebanon last summer helped undo nearly two decades of economic and political progress. But Lebanon was vulnerable because its political and security structures lacked integrity and remained tensely divided by factionalized elites. Those vulnerabilities not only helped turn the clock back on the country's development, but they reverberated across the region -- into Israel, Jordan, and Syria. It shows again that a country's problems are never simply its own.

That conclusion becomes especially worrisome when the weak states in question possess nuclear weapons. Today, two countries among the world's 15 most vulnerable, North Korea and Pakistan, are members of the nuclear club. Their profiles could hardly be less similar: The former faces the very real prospect of economic collapse, followed by massive human flight, while the latter presides over a lawless frontier country and a disenchanted Islamist opposition whose ranks grow by the day.

But while these states' failings may be frequent fodder for headlines around the world, it is obvious that there are few easy answers to their troubles. In highlighting which states are at the greatest risk of failure, we can only hope that more effective and long-term solutions emerge over time as we compare the index from year to year. In that way, positive reversals of fortune can occur for the world's most vulnerable nations and, in the process, improve the security and prosperity of everyone.

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

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IN SAUDI ARABIA, A VIEW FROM BEHIND THE VEIL
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 18, 2007.

This was written by Megan K. Stack and it appeared in the Los Angeles Times
(www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/ la-fg-women6jun06,0,5491632,full.story?coll=la-home-center). Megan Stack reported in Saudi Arabia repeatedly during her tenure as The Times' Cairo Bureau chief from September 2003 until last month.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- THE hem of my heavy Islamic cloak trailed over floors that glistened like ice. I walked faster, my eyes fixed on a familiar, green icon. I hadn't seen a Starbucks in months, but there it was, tucked into a corner of a fancy shopping mall in the Saudi capital. After all those bitter little cups of sludgy Arabic coffee, here at last was an improbable snippet of home -- caffeinated, comforting, American.

I wandered into the shop, filling my lungs with the rich wafts of coffee. The man behind the counter gave me a bemused look; his eyes flickered. I asked for a latte. He shrugged, the milk steamer whined, and he handed over the brimming paper cup. I turned my back on his uneasy face.

Crossing the cafe, I felt the hard stares of Saudi men. A few of them stopped talking as I walked by and watched me pass. Them, too, I ignored. Finally, coffee in hand, I sank into the sumptuous lap of an overstuffed armchair.

"Excuse me," hissed the voice in my ear. "You can't sit here." The man from the counter had appeared at my elbow. He was glaring.

"Excuse me?" I blinked a few times.

"Emmm," he drew his discomfort into a long syllable, his brows knitted. "You cannot stay here."

"What? Uh ... why?"

Then he said it: "Men only."

He didn't tell me what I would learn later: Starbucks had another, unmarked door around back that led to a smaller espresso bar, and a handful of tables smothered by curtains. That was the "family" section. As a woman, that's where I belonged. I had no right to mix with male customers or sit in plain view of passing shoppers. Like the segregated South of a bygone United States, today's Saudi Arabia shunts half the population into separate, inferior and usually invisible spaces.

At that moment, there was only one thing to do. I stood up. From the depths of armchairs, men in their white robes and red-checked kaffiyehs stared impassively over their mugs. I felt blood rushing to my face. I dropped my eyes, and immediately wished I hadn't. Snatching up the skirts of my robe to keep from stumbling, I walked out of the store and into the clatter of the shopping mall.
 

THAT WAS nearly four years ago, a lesson learned on one of my first trips to the kingdom. Until that day, I thought I knew what I was doing: I'd heard about Saudi Arabia, that the sexes are wholly segregated. From museums to university campuses to restaurants, the genders live corralled existences. One young, hip, U.S.-educated Saudi friend told me that he arranges to meet his female friends in other Arab cities. It's easier to fly to Damascus or Dubai, he shrugged, than to chill out coeducationally at home.

I was ready to cope, or so I thought. I arrived with a protective smirk in tow, planning to thicken the walls around myself. I'd report a few stories, and go home. I had no inkling that Saudi Arabia, the experience of being a woman there, would stick to me, follow me home on the plane and shadow me through my days, tainting the way I perceived men and women everywhere.

I'm leaving the Middle East now, closing up years spent covering the fighting and fallout that have swept the region since Sept. 11. Of all the strange, scary and joyful experiences of the past years, my time covering Saudi Arabia remains among the most jarring.

I spent my days in Saudi Arabia struggling unhappily between a lifetime of being taught to respect foreign cultures and the realization that this culture judged me a lesser being. I tried to draw parallels: If I went to South Africa during apartheid, would I feel compelled to be polite?

I would find that I still saw scraps of Saudi Arabia everywhere I went. Back home in Cairo, the usual cacophony of whistles and lewd coos on the streets sent me into blind rage. I slammed doors in the faces of deliverymen; cursed at Egyptian soldiers in a language they didn't speak; kept a resentful mental tally of the Western men, especially fellow reporters, who seemed to condone, even relish, the relegation of women in the Arab world.

In the West, there's a tendency to treat Saudi Arabia as a remote land, utterly removed from our lives. But it's not very far from us, nor are we as different as we might like to think. Saudi Arabia is a center of ideas and commerce, an important ally to the United States, the heartland of a major world religion. It is a highly industrialized, ultramodern home to expatriates from all over the world, including Americans who live in lush gated compounds with swimming pools, drink illegal glasses of bathtub gin and speak glowingly of the glorious desert and the famous hospitality of Saudis.

The rules are different here. The same U.S. government that heightened public outrage against the Taliban by decrying the mistreatment of Afghan women prizes the oil-slicked Saudi friendship and even offers wan praise for Saudi elections in which women are banned from voting. All U.S. fast-food franchises operating here, not just Starbucks, make women stand in separate lines. U.S.-owned hotels don't let women check in without a letter from a company vouching for her ability to pay; women checking into hotels alone have long been regarded as prostitutes.

As I roamed in and out of Saudi Arabia, the abaya, or Islamic robe, eventually became the symbol of those shifting rules.

I always delayed until the last minute. When I felt the plane dip low over Riyadh, I'd reach furtively into my computer bag to fish out the black robe and scarf crumpled inside. I'd slip my arms into the sleeves without standing up. If I caught the eyes of any male passengers as my fingers fumbled with the snaps, I'd glare. Was I imagining the smug looks on their faces?

The sleeves, the length of it, always felt foreign, at first. But it never took long to work its alchemy, to plant the insecurity. After a day or two, the notion of appearing without the robe felt shocking. Stripped of the layers of curve-smothering cloth, my ordinary clothes suddenly felt revealing, even garish. To me, the abaya implied that a woman's body is a distraction and an interruption, a thing that must be hidden from view lest it haul the society into vice and disarray. The simple act of wearing the robe implanted that self-consciousness by osmosis.

In the depths of the robe, my posture suffered. I'd draw myself in and bumble along like those adolescent girls who seem to think they can roll their breasts back into their bodies if they curve their spines far enough. That was why, it hit me one day, I always seemed to come back from Saudi Arabia with a backache.

The kingdom made me slouch.
 

SAUDI MEN often raised the question of women with me; they seemed to hope that I would tell them, either out of courtesy or conviction, that I endorsed their way of life. Some blamed all manner of Western ills, from gun violence to alcoholism, on women's liberation. "Do you think you could ever live here?" many of them asked. It sounded absurd every time, and every time I would repeat the obvious: No.

Early in 2005, I covered the kingdom's much-touted municipal elections, which excluded women not only from running for office, but also from voting. True to their tribal roots, candidates pitched tents in vacant lots and played host to voters for long nights of coffee, bull sessions and poetry recitations. I accepted an invitation to visit one of the tents, but the sight of a woman in their midst so badly ruffled the would-be voters that the campaign manager hustled over and asked me, with lavish apologies, to make myself scarce before I cost his man the election.

A few days later, a female U.S. official, visiting from Washington, gave a press appearance in a hotel lobby in Riyadh. Sporting pearls, a business suit and a bare, blond head, she praised the Saudi elections.

The election "is a departure from their culture and their history," she said. "It offers to the citizens of Saudi Arabia hope... It's modest, but it's dramatic."

The American ambassador, a bespectacled Texan named James C. Oberwetter, also praised the voting from his nearby seat.

"When I got here a year ago, there were no political tents," he said. "It's like a backyard political barbecue in the U.S."

One afternoon, a candidate invited me to meet his daughter. She spoke fluent English and was not much younger than me. I cannot remember whether she was wearing hijab, the Islamic head scarf, inside her home, but I have a memory of pink. I asked her about the elections.

"Very good," she said.

So you really think so, I said gently, even though you can't vote?

"Of course," she said. "Why do I need to vote?"

Her father chimed in. He urged her, speaking English for my benefit, to speak candidly. But she insisted: What good was voting? She looked at me as if she felt sorry for me, a woman cast adrift on the rough seas of the world, no male protector in sight.

"Maybe you don't want to vote," I said. "But wouldn't you like to make that choice yourself?"

"I don't need to," she said calmly, blinking slowly and deliberately. "If I have a father or a husband, why do I need to vote? Why should I need to work? They will take care of everything."

Through the years I have met many Saudi women. Some are rebels; some are proudly defensive of Saudi ways, convinced that any discussion of women's rights is a disguised attack on Islam from a hostile Westerner. There was the young dental student who came home from the university and sat up half the night, writing a groundbreaking novel exploring the internal lives and romances of young Saudi women. The oil expert who scolded me for asking about female drivers, pointing out the pitfalls of divorce and custody laws and snapping: "Driving is the least of our problems." I have met women who work as doctors and business consultants. Many of them seem content.

Whatever their thoughts on the matter, they have been assigned a central, symbolic role in what seems to be one of the greatest existential questions in contemporary Saudi Arabia: Can the country opt to develop in some ways and stay frozen in others? Can the kingdom evolve economically and technologically in a global society without relinquishing its particular culture of extreme religious piety and ancient tribal code?

The men are stuck, too. Over coffee one afternoon, an economist told me wistfully of the days when he and his wife had studied overseas, how she'd hopped behind the wheel and did her own thing. She's an independent, outspoken woman, he said. Coming back home to Riyadh had depressed both of them.

"Here, I got another dependent: my wife," he said. He found himself driving her around, chaperoning her as if she were a child. "When they see a woman walking alone here, it's like a wolf watching a sheep. 'Let me take what's unattended.' " He told me that both he and his wife hoped, desperately, that social and political reform would finally dawn in the kingdom. He thought foreign academics were too easy on Saudi Arabia, that they urged only minor changes instead of all-out democracy because they secretly regarded Saudis as "savages" incapable of handling too much freedom.

"I call them propaganda papers," he said of the foreign analysis. "They come up with all these lame excuses." He and his wife had already lost hope for themselves, he said.

"For ourselves, the train has left the station. We are trapped," he said. "I think about my kids. At least when I look at myself in the mirror I'll say: 'At least I said this. At least I wrote this.'"

 
WHEN SAUDI officials chat with an American reporter, they go to great lengths to depict a moderate, misunderstood kingdom. They complain about stereotypes in the Western press: Women banned from driving? Well, they don't want to drive anyway. They all have drivers, and why would a lady want to mess with parking?

The religious police who stalk the streets and shopping centers, forcing "Islamic values" onto the populace? Oh, Saudi officials say, they really aren't important, or strict, or powerful. You hear stories to the contrary? Mere exaggerations, perpetuated by people who don't understand Saudi Arabia.

I had an interview one afternoon with a relatively high-ranking Saudi official. Since I can't drive anywhere or meet a man in a cafe, I usually end up inviting sources for coffee in the lobby of my hotel, where the staff turns a blind eye to whether those in the "family section" are really family.

As the elevator touched down and the shiny doors swung open onto the lobby, the official rushed toward me.

"Do you think we could talk in your room?" he blurted out.

I stepped back. What was this, some crazy come-on?

"No, why?" I stammered, stepping wide around him. "We can sit right over here." I wanted to get to the coffee shop -- no dice. He swung himself around, blocking my path and my view.

"It's not a good idea," he said. "Let's just go to your room."

"I really don't think ... I mean," I said, stuttering in embarrassment.

Then, peering over his shoulder, I saw them: two beefy men in robes. Great bushes of beards sprang from their chins, they swung canes in their hands and scanned the hotel lobby through squinted eyes.

"Is that the religious police?" I said. "It is!" I was a little mesmerized. I'd always wanted to see them in action.

The ministry official seemed to shrink a little, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

"They're not supposed to be here," he muttered despondently. "What are they doing here?"

"Well, why don't we go to the mall next door?" I said, eyes fixed on the menacing men. "There's a coffee shop there, we could try that."

"No, they will go there next." While he wrung his hands nervously, I stepped back a little and considered the irony of our predicament. To avoid running afoul of what may be the world's most stringent public moral code, I was being asked to entertain a strange, older man in my hotel room, something I would never agree to back home.

I had to do something. He was about to walk away and cancel the meeting, and I couldn't afford to lose it. Then I remembered a couple of armchairs near the elevator, up on my floor. We rode up and ordered room-service coffee. We talked as the elevators chimed up and down the spine of the skyscraper and the roar of vacuum cleaners echoed in the hallway.
 

ONE GLARING spring day, when the hot winds raced in off the plains and the sun blotted everything to white, I stood outside a Riyadh bank, sweating in my black cloak while I waited for a friend. The sidewalk was simmering, but I had nowhere else to go. As a woman, I was forbidden to enter the men's half of the bank to fetch him. Traffic screamed past on a nearby highway. The winds tugged at the layers of black polyester. My sunglasses began to slip down my glistening nose.

The door clattered open, and I looked up hopefully. But no, it was a security guard. And he was stomping straight at me, yelling in Arabic. I knew enough vocabulary to glean his message: He didn't want me standing there. I took off my shades, fixed my blue eyes on him blankly and finally turned away as if puzzled. I think of this as playing possum.

He disappeared again, only to reemerge with another security guard. This man was of indistinct South Asian origin and had an English vocabulary. He looked like a pit bull -- short, stocky and teeth flashing as he barked: "Go! Go! You can't stand here! The men can SEE! The men can SEE!"

I looked down at him and sighed. I was tired. "Where do you want me to go? I have to wait for my friend. He's inside." But he was still snarling and flashing those teeth, arms akimbo. He wasn't interested in discussions.

"Not here. NOT HERE! The men can SEE you!" He flailed one arm toward the bank.

I lost my temper.

"I'm just standing here!" I snapped. "Leave me alone!" This was a slip. I had already learned that if you're a woman in a sexist country, yelling at a man only makes a crisis worse.

The pit bull advanced toward me, making little shooing motions with his hands, lips curled back. Involuntarily, I stepped back a few paces and found myself in the shrubbery. I guess that, from the bushes, I was hidden from the view of the window, thereby protecting the virtue of all those innocent male bankers. At any rate, it satisfied the pit bull, who climbed back onto the sidewalk and stood guard over me. I glared at him. He showed his teeth. The minutes passed. Finally, my friend reemerged.

A liberal, U.S.-educated professor at King Saud University, he was sure to share my outrage, I thought. Maybe he'd even call up the bank -- his friend was the manager -- and get the pit bull in trouble. I told him my story, words hot as the pavement.

He hardly blinked. "Yes," he said. "Oh." He put the car in reverse, and off we drove.
 

DRIVING TO the airport, I felt the kingdom slipping off behind me, the flat emptiness of its deserts, the buildings that rear toward the sky, encased in mirrored glass, blank under a blaring sun. All the hints of a private life I have never seen. Saudis are bred from the desert; they find life in what looks empty to me.

Even if I were Saudi, would I understand it? I remember the government spokesman, Mansour Turki, who said to me: "Being a Saudi doesn't mean you see every face of Saudi society. Saudi men don't understand how Saudi women think. They have no idea, actually. Even my own family, my own mother or sister, she won't talk to me honestly."

I slipped my iPod headphones into my ears. I wanted to hear something thumping and American. It began the way it always does: an itch, an impatience, like a wrinkle in the sock, something that is felt, but not yet registered. The discomfort always starts when I leave.

By the time I boarded the plane, I was in a temper. I yanked at the clasps, shrugged off the abaya like a rejected embrace. I crumpled it up and tossed it childishly into the airplane seat.

Then I was just standing there, feeling stripped in my jeans and blouse. My limbs felt light, and modesty flashed through me. I was aware of the skin of my wrists and forearms, the triangle of naked neck. I scanned the eyes behind me, looking for a challenge. But none came. The Saudi passengers had watched my tantrum impassively.

I sat down, leaned back and breathed. This moment, it seems, is always the same. I take the abaya off, expecting to feel liberated. But somehow, it always feels like defeat.

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

EPISCOPAL CHURCH ACCEPTS OPENLY-MUSLIM AS PRIEST
Posted by Michael Travis, June 18, 2007.

This is called "The disintegrating church, and the disintegrating Western Civilization walk hand in hand, blindly off the cliff," and it comes from Punditarian, at the Astute Bloggers.

The Rev. Ann Holmes Redding kneels during a morning service in May at St. Clement's of Rome Episcopal Church in Seattle. (Steve Ringman/Seattle Times)

Redding prays in April with other members of the Al-Islam Center in Seattle (John Lok/Seattle Times.

An Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Washington, according to the Seattle Times, made the shahada and became an active Muslim 15 months ago. But she is still serving as a Christian priest, and her Bishop sees no problem:

Redding's bishop, the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner, says he accepts Redding as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim, and that he finds the interfaith possibilities exciting. Her announcement, first made through a story in her diocese's newspaper, hasn't caused much controversy yet, he said.

Got that? Accepting another religion that denies the divinity of Jesus, that persecutes Christians and that punishes apostasy to Christianity by death wherever it exerts temporal power "hasn't caused much controversy yet."

I guess not. Once you swallow Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori's statement of sexual confusion that "our mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation and we are his children," and once you accept gay Bishops who are "married" to their male partners, a Muslim priest is no big thing.

Another example of the fact that the leading exponents of intellectual life in the heart of Christendom are more often than not anti-Christian ideologues. And an anti-Christian ideology is now being accepted in the priesthood of The Episcopal Church itself.

It is really no wonder that more than 250 congregations that were in The Episcopal Church are now affiliating with African diocesan authorities, through he Archbishops of Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda.

(Hat tip: Mark Steyn at the Corner
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/ ?q=MjZmMzU4YTBjZDAzNjRhMjg2YTExNTg4NjAwOGIyYWU=.)


"Episcopal Church Appoints First Openly-Muslim Bishop." Today, The Seattle Times brings us this story:

Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill.

On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest.

She does both, she says, because she's Christian and Muslim.

Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she's ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she's also been a Muslim -- drawn to the faith after an introduction to Islamic prayers left her profoundly moved.

Her announcement has provoked surprise and bewilderment in many, raising an obvious question: How can someone be both a Christian and a Muslim..?

She says she felt an inexplicable call to become Muslim, and to surrender to God -- the meaning of the word "Islam."

"It wasn't about intellect," she said. "All I know is the calling of my heart to Islam was very much something about my identity and who I am supposed to be.

"I could not not be a Muslim..." Redding's bishop, the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner, says he accepts Redding as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim, and that he finds the interfaith possibilities exciting.

With the benefit of hindsight, it should have been obvious that the first female imam would be an Episcopalian...


"The Episcopal Church's Anti-Israel Media Campaign"
Dexter Van Zile

September 6, 2006

The Episcopal Church has approximately 2 million members and 7,200 churches in the U.S. and is part of the 77-million member Anglican Communion. Because of its presence in the U.S., the relative wealth of its members, and its connections to Anglicans throughout the world, the Episcopal Church is in a strategic position to influence attitudes toward Israel on both a national and global scale.

Sadly, the Episcopal Church is not a trustworthy observer of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The church's leaders and constitutive bodies routinely issue one-sided statements about the Arab-Israeli conflict, and its publications portray Israel as exclusively responsible for violence in the region. Moreover, the church has provided substantial support for anti-Israel activists in both the U.S. and the West Bank. Its so-called peace activism amounts to an ad hoc anti-Israel media campaign that serves to delegitimize Israel's rightful place amongst the nations of the world.

The Episcopal Church's antipathy toward Israel has not gone unnoticed within the denomination. Concern about the one-sided condemnations issued by church leaders, staffers and constituent bodies was raised at the denomination's General Convention held in Columbus, Ohio in June 2006, when three Bishops put forth a resolution calling on the church to apologize for its "consistently unbalanced approach to the conflict in the Middle East." An explanation accompanying the resolution asserted correctly that "virtually all General Convention resolutions concerning the Middle East -- and all public policy statements by Episcopal agencies -- have relentlessly criticized the state of Israel, portraying the Jewish state as an oppressor nation and the Palestinian people as victims of Israeli oppression."

A careful reading of public statements regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict confirms that, indeed, the Episcopal Church has been relentless and unfair in its criticism of Israel.

Anti-Israel Resolutions

The Episcopal Church is governed by a bicameral General Convention, which meets every three years and is comprised of the approximately 200-member House of Bishops and the approximately 900 member House of Deputies. Both clergy and lay members of the church serve in the House of Deputies. When the General Convention is not in session, the church is governed by an Executive Council comprised of bishops, clergy and lay members.

Both the General Convention and the Executive Council have exhibited a marked tendency to issue one-sided statements about the Arab-Israeli conflict that hold Israel to a utopian standard of conduct and its adversaries to no standard at all. Some examples include:

  • In November 1994, the Executive Council approved a resolution asking Motorola to "establish a policy to prohibit the sale of products or provision of services to any settlement, including persons residing in those settlements, located in the Occupied Territories." This resolution, passed one month after two Hamas suicide bombings had killed 13 Israelis and wounded 80, did not offer any condemnation of Palestinian violence or call on companies to ensure that equipment they sell to the Palestinians is not used for terror attacks.

  • In June 1995, the Executive Council passed a resolution asserting that Jerusalem should be a shared city (ignoring decades of Arab aggression against Israel that make such an arrangement untenable) and condemning the construction of settlements in the West Bank including East Jerusalem.

  • In July 2000, the General Convention approved a resolution affirming the "right of return for every Palestinian, as well as restitution/compensation for their loss as called for by the United Nations." In fact, under international law there is no such collective "right of return." Moreover, were such a "right" exercised, the result would be the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. Finally, the resolution offered no acknowledgment of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries who came to Israel after its rebirth in 1948.

  • In August 2003, the General Convention approved resolutions condemning the construction of the security barrier and home demolitions without explicitly condemning or calling for an end to Palestinian suicide bombings, drive-by-shootings and other violence.

  • In June 2006, so-called peace and justice activists within the Episcopal Church presented draft resolutions to the General Convention condemning the security barrier without asking the Palestinians to stop the terror attacks that prompted its construction.

Other problems with the resolutions as submitted by the denomination's peace and justice community to the most recent General Convention include:

  • Another call for Jerusalem to be a shared city, which denies 58 years of persistent Arab violence and aggression against Israel. It should be noted as well there is no evidence the church ever called for Jerusalem to be a shared city when its eastern half -- containing Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount -- was illegally occupied by Jordan from 1948 to 1967.

  • A condemnation of unilateral action -- a clear reference to the withdrawal from Gaza and the security barrier.

  • A failure to call upon Israel's adversaries to acknowledge Israel's right to exist.

  • Silence about Palestinian suicide bombing.

  • A failure to call upon Hamas to dismantle terrorist infrastructure.

  • Silence about anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate-mongering in mosques, media and children's textbooks.

After pressure from Christians for Fair Witness in the Middle East, amendments that called for Palestinian leaders to accept Israel's right to exist, greater fiscal transparency in the Palestinian Authority and condemnations of Palestinian terrorism were added to the resolutions. Because of a clerical error, the resolutions were not approved by the General Convention. One question which needs to be asked is why so-called peace and justice activists needed to be reminded of the need to include these changes.

Statements from Clergy

Bishops and Priests of the Episcopal Church have also weighed in on the Arab-Israeli conflict in a partisan manner.

  • On June 30, 2006, Rev. Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, signed a letter to President Bush asking him to restrain the Israeli government's response to the kidnaping of an Israeli soldier, but did not similarly ask the President to pressure the Palestinians to release the soldier in question or to stop their Qassam rocket attacks emanating from Gaza. This letter, which was also signed by Rev. Mark S. Hanson, Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, failed to acknowledge other violent acts of war perpetrated by the Palestinians, including other kidnapings and hundreds of rocket attacks from Gaza.

  • On July 12, 2006, the Boston Globe reported that Bishop M. Thomas Shaw of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts would protest the Israeli incursion into Gaza in front of the Israeli Consulate in Boston. At this protest, held on the same day Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel and kidnapped two soldiers, so-called peace and justice activists accused Israel of "genocide." The presence of Bishop Shaw in clerical garb at this protest lent unwarranted credence to these false accusations.

Anti-Israel Church publications

The Episcopal Church's publicity about the Arab-Israeli conflict offers a distorted historical and moral narrative that downplays Israel's attempts to achieve peace and ignores the role Palestinian leaders have played in prolonging the war. Articles published by the Episcopal Church offer little, if any, acknowledgment of Arab rejectionism of Israel's right to exist, Muslim anti-Semitism or Palestinian terrorism.

For example, on July 31, 2001 the Episcopal Church's "Peace and Justice Ministries" published a patently dishonest portrayal of the Camp David offer of 2000 which repeats many of the lies and distortions put forth by Palestinian leaders at the beginning of the Second Intifada.

This document states:

Israel's proposal divided Palestine into four separate cantons surrounded by Israel: the Northern West Bank, the Central West Bank, the Southern West Bank and Gaza. Going from any one area to another would require crossing Israeli sovereign territory and consequently subject movement of Palestinians within their own country to Israeli control. Not only would such restrictions apply to the movement of people, but also to the movement of goods, in effect subjecting the Palestinian economy to Israeli control. Lastly, the Camp David proposal would have left Israel in control over all Palestinian borders thereby allowing Israel to control not only internal movement of people and goods but international movement as well. Such a Palestinian state would have had less sovereignty and viability than the Bantustans created by the South African apartheid government.

What the document does not acknowledge is that by the end of negotiations brokered by the Clinton Administration, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to a settlement that would have ceded all of Gaza, approximately 95 percent of the West Bank, and an additional 1-3 percent of Israeli territory from its pre-1967 border to the Palestinians. Dennis Ross, U.S. Envoy to the Middle East from 1988 to 2000 who presided over the Camp David/Taba negotiations, describes the final offer to the Palestinians as follows:

[Ehud] Barak's government had now formally accepted ideas that would effectively divide east Jerusalem, end the IDF's presence in the Jordan Valley, and produce a Palestinian State in roughly 97 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of Gaza. (Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, page 755).

The claim about "bantustans" or cantons is also contradicted by Ross, who told Fox News on April 21, 2002 that:

... the Palestinians would have in the West Bank an area that was contiguous. Those who say there were cantons, completely untrue. It was contiguous... And to connect Gaza with the West Bank, there would have been an elevated highway, an elevated railroad, to ensure that there would be not just safe passage for the Palestinians, but free passage. (Fox News, April 21, 2002)

The Episcopal Church's statement regarding the Camp David negotiations also asserts "there is no evidence that the PA or the majority of Palestinians have abandoned the two-state solution" when in fact, Yasir Arafat routinely spoke of the destruction of Israel to his followers while talking peace with Israel and the Clinton Administration.

Moreover, a distorted timeline on the church's Web site deceptively omits key aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. For example, the timeline uses the word terrorism once -- in reference to Jewish violence against Great Britain in 1946 -- while making no mention of the suicide attacks against Israeli civilians that began in 1994. And while omitting any direct reference to Palestinian terrorism, the timeline emphasizes that Israeli-Arabs were shot during the Second Intifada.

The chronology describes the Six Day War as follows: "Israel conquers the Sinai, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem, which it annexed." What the chronology omits is that Egypt provoked the war by closing the Straits of Tiran and blockading the Israeli port of Eilat, an act of war under international law, that Egypt expelled UN peacekeeping troops from the Sinai Peninsula, and that Egypt issued bellicose statements promising the imminent destruction of Israel. And while referencing UN Security Council Resolution 242, which established the "land-for-peace" principle, it does not mention the Arab response to that resolution: the Three No's of Khartoum issued by the Arab League in 1967 -- no recognition, no negotiation and no peace with Israel. Israel gained territory in a defensive war, tried to negotiate and was rebuffed. The chronology conveys none of this.

The chronology reports that Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 without describing the attacks by the PLO that prompted these invasions.

The chronology states that the Camp David negotiations broke down, without acknowledging that Yasir Arafat walked away from negotiations -- without making a counteroffer -- after Israel made far-reaching land for peace offers.

Moreover, the chronology places responsibility for the Second Intifada on Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000, even as Palestinian officials have admitted preparing for the Second Intifada immediately after Yasir Arafat returned from the failed negotiations at Camp David in July.

The chronology also fails to report that Sharon's visit was coordinated with the Palestinian Authority's security chief.

The chronology states that in 2002, "[r]eoccupation of Palestinian areas begins" without reporting that the return of Israeli troops to the West Bank was precipitated by an unprecedented campaign of violence that killed hundreds of Israelis. Operation Defensive Shield began one day after the March 27 bombing at a Passover Seder in a Netanya hotel that killed 30 Israelis and injured 140. In that month of March alone 128 Israelis were murdered in Palestinian terror attacks. To place this number in context, consider that as a percentage of the Israeli population this would be comparable to the killing of 6400 Americans, or more than two 9/11's in one month. What possible justification could the church have for keeping such crucial information from its readers?

The chronology ends in 2003, and as a result omits any reference to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and to the hundreds of Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel that followed.

Episcopal News Service

A search of the archives of the Episcopal News Service (ENS) reveals a similar bias against Israel. As with their timeline, resolutions and public statements about the Arab-Israeli conflict, this bias manifests itself through generally ignoring violence against Israeli civilians, presenting detailed coverage of anti-Israel criticism, omitting any response from Israeli officials and a tendency to repeat without scrutiny allegations issued by Anglican Archbishop Riah Abu al-Assal of Jerusalem. (The antipathy expressed by Bishop Riah and Sabeel is discussed below.) Articles covering the ongoing violence perpetrated against Israelis, however, are few and far between, while articles dedicated to detailing the suffering of the Palestinians are routine fare for the ENS.

Of the more than 200 articles in the ENS archives, the headlines of four are readily identifiable as sympathetic to Israel's security concerns. Two of these articles were written in response to comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who in October 2005 called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

The other two articles with headlines readily identifiable as sympathetic to Israel's security concerns include a description of efforts by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews to provide bomb detectors to public buses in Israel. (It should be noted that this article was initially published by the Ecumenical News Service). The other article describes the creation of a pro-Israel group -- the Episcopal-Jewish Alliance, founded in response to anti-Israel activism by Bishop Thomas Shaw in 2002.

Notwithstanding these two articles, the Episcopal Church's coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict fails to provide any real description of the threats faced by the Israelis as a result of Palestinian terror. Emblematic of this bias is an article about the impact of the security barrier Israel is building to stop terror attacks from the West Bank. The article offers virtually no explanation as to why the barrier is constructed, even in a section ostensibly devoted to "Security issues." The paragraphs and the heading follow:

Security issues

In a visit to Bethlehem, the group passed through a part of Israel's separation barrier, built inside the pre-1967 border (the "Green Line"), a nine-meter-high wall around the city, and noted that Rachel's Tomb, another venerated holy site, has been placed on the Jerusalem side of the barrier, cutting off access from Bethlehem where it is located. The Israeli government maintains the barrier is built to provide security to Israel. (emphasis added)

"What the commission members found the most shocking of all was that the Wall or Separation Barrier or Fence, as it is variously called, is perceived by all parties as being almost entirely underwritten by the American taxpayer," said Michele Spike, another member of the commission. "The Wall invades Palestinian fields, dividing grazing lands -- including the valley of the shepherds at Bethlehem -- and, at times, encircling Palestinian cities."

The delegation observed that some parts of the separation barrier cut off Palestinians from one another and often makes a two-minute walk into a journey of a mile or more. Family members or friends often find it difficult to see each other, which has hugely negative effects on Palestinian society, the group learned.

This article devotes one sentence to describe why the barrier was built and goes into extensive detail about its impact on Palestinians. While this impact is undeniable, so is the impact of Palestinian terrorism on Israeli civilians -- which the article entirely omits. The decision to build the barrier was precipitated by an unprecedented campaign of suicide bombings that killed Israeli civilians in markets, movie theaters and bus stations. Offering readers such key facts would provide context for Israel's actions, but the author of the article, Brian Grieves, director of the Episcopal Church's Office of Peace and Justice Ministries, did not see fit to include them.

The Episcopal News Service has also devoted substantial coverage to Mordechai Vanunu, who served 18 years in prison for revealing secrets about Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press. Vanunu, who is regarded by Israelis as a traitor, is portrayed by the ENS and the Episcopal Peace Fellowship (which named an award after him in the 1990s) as a "whistleblower." While the Episcopal Church and its constituent bodies have used the court rulings regarding Vanunu's status in Israel as an opportunity to once more direct harsh criticism towards Israel, the church has remained relatively silent about Iran's nuclear weapons program. A search of the Episcopal Church's website (episcopalchurch.org) reveals almost 50 entries about Vanunu, but fewer than five entries about the threat posed by Iran's nuclear weapons program. Clearly, the Episcopal Church seems more concerned about the nuclear weapons held by a representative democracy trying to defend itself than it is about a nuclear weapons program pursued by a repressive dictatorship whose leaders have, on numerous occasions, called for Israel's destruction.

Support for Sabeel

Another salient aspect of the Episcopal Church's anti-Israel stance is the pattern of links between it and Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center headquartered in Jerusalem (Sabeel) and its sister organization, Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA).

These two organizations demonize Israel and wrap Palestinian violence against Israelis in the mantle of innocent suffering.

(For more background please see Sabeel's Teachings of Contempt ("A Judeo-Christian Alliance Report" by Dexter Van Zile, June 2005)and "Sabeel's One State Agenda.")

Sabeel is itself a creature of the Anglican Communion and has received substantial institutional support from the Episcopal Church and substantial financial support from Episcopalians in the U.S. When Sabeel's sister organization, FOSNA was founded in 1996 the Episcopal Church was one of its primary sources of support. In the intervening years, both Sabeel and FOSNA have been able to reach out to other denominations for financial and logistical support, but the Episcopal Church remains a significant backer. Mainline churches such as the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Disciples of Christ and the United Methodist Church routinely send missionaries who work in Sabeel's office in Jerusalem. Upon returning to the United States, these missionaries play an important role in the passage of anti-Israel resolutions by their denominations.

As a result of the Episcopal Church's financial and institutional support to Sabeel and FOSNA, anti-Israel activists have had the resources and credibility necessary to convince other mainline Protestant churches in the U.S. to approve resolutions that condemn Israel while giving short- shrift to the motive and impact of Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians.

For example, three denominations that have asked Israel to take down the security barrier on the West Bank without asking the Palestinians to stop the terror attacks that prompted its construction --the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ -- have been subject to sustained lobbying by Sabeel and FOSNA activists.

Links between the Episcopal Church and Sabeel and FOSNA include the following:

  • Sabeel's Founder is Anglican Priest Naim Ateek, who before his retirement served as Canon at St. George's Cathedral in Jerusalem.

  • Edmond Browning, former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church is currently listed as the President of FOSNA, and as having donated $10,000 to the organization (January 2006 Sabeel newsletter).

  • Rev. Canon Dick Toll, an Episcopal priest from Milwaukie, Oregon is national chair for FOSNA.

  • The group's IRS disclosure form (990) for 1998 states that its primary founders and board members are from the Episcopal Church.

In short, the three most prominent members of Sabeel's leadership in Jerusalem and the United States are members of the Anglican communion, one of them a former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church.

The Episcopal Church provides a substantial amount of publicity and institutional support for Sabeel's activities in the U.S.:

  • In June 2006, the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, an affiliate of the Episcopal Church awarded Rev. Naim Ateek its John Nevin Sayre Award for peacemaking. At the dinner where this award was bestowed, Rev. Canon Brian Grieves, director of the Episcopal Church's Office of Peace and Justice Ministries introduced Rev. Ateek and defended him from so-called "?slander and demonizing' tactics" and said the award serves as "a rebuke to those voices who would silence Naim's own strong voice as a Palestinian and a Christian living under occupation." (Grieves was responding to call issued by Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East for Rev. Ateek to apologize for his anti-Semitic language in reference to Israel.)

  • Former Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning was a prominent participant in a Sabeel Conference in 2004, sharing the stage with Yasser Arafat and Naim Ateek. Photos of Bishop Browning -- distributed by the Episcopal News Service -- sitting next to Arafat helped to legitimize Arafat in the minds of Episcopalians.

Bishop Riah's Anti-Israel Ministry

It should also be noted that the Episcopal Church provides a substantial amount of support to Bishop Riah El-Assal, the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, a well-known apologist for Palestinian terrorism.

For example, at a luncheon sponsored by the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese in Jerusalem, where Bishop Riah was introduced by Phoebe Griswold, wife of the current Presiding Bishop, he stated that Americans did not have an accurate view of Yasser Arafat. After explaining that he first met Arafat in the 1980s, Bishop Riah said he found Arafat "to be charming." This luncheon took place during the denomination's 2006 General Convention in Columbus, Ohio.

Bishop Riah has also worked to incite hostility toward Israel during its recent conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas. On July 26, he posted a letter on his diocesan website that read: "For the past forty years we have been largely alone on this desert fighting a predator that not only has robbed us of all but a small piece of our historic homeland, but threatens the traditions and holy sites of Christianity."

Bishop Riah ignores Israel's efforts to negotiate with those who actively seek its destruction, and blames Israel for the decline of the Christian community in the West Bank. Contrary to Bishop Riah, the emigration of Christians is largely the consequence of Muslim extremists who, in addition to promoting chaos in the region, routinely target and mistreat Christians.

In this letter Bishop Riah also accuses Israel of racism, hate crimes, terror, violence, murder and ethnic cleansing in the disputed territories. In reference to the conflict with Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Bishop Riah portrays Israeli government's response to provocation as a "disproportionate reaction ... consistent with their opportunistic responses in which they destroy their perceived enemy."

In short, Bishop Riah exaggerates Israeli misdeeds and whitewashes its adversaries of their undeniably malign motives. In Bishop Riah's mind, Israel is a marauding murdering nation overreacting to Arab aggression he does not see fit to acknowledge.

Bishop Riah's tendency to exaggerate Israeli misdeeds was evident when he appeared on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on April 23, 2002. During his appearance, Bishop Riah repeated Palestinian claims that 500 people were killed during the battle at Jenin:

Many of them were of the aged, still staying in their homes, buried under the rubble.

Previous CAMERA analysis reveals that Palestinian assertions of 500 deaths at Jenin had been demonstrated as gross exaggerations on April 16, 2002 -- one week before Bishop Riah's appearance on PBS, yet the Bishop felt entitled to repeat this false statement as fact.

For more information about Bishop Riah's anti-Israel ministry, please see Arab Christians Vilify Israel previously published by CAMERA.

Conclusion

The Episcopal Church's public pronouncements regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict exhibit a troubling antipathy toward the Jewish State. Through its support for Sabeel and FOSNA, and its efforts to broadcast a distorted anti-Israel message to its members and the general public, the Episcopal Church has helped delegitimize Israel as a country with a rightful place amongst the nations of the world.


"Perplexing many, Episcopal priest announces she's a Muslim, too"
Janet I. Tu
The Seattle Times
June 18, 2007
Tacoma, WA

Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill.

On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest.

She does both, she says, because she's Christian and Muslim.

Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she's ready to tell people that, for the past 15 months, she's also been a Muslim -- drawn to the faith after an introduction to Islamic prayers left her profoundly moved.

Her announcement has provoked surprise and bewilderment in many, raising an obvious question: How can someone be both a Christian and a Muslim?

But it has drawn other reactions too. Friends generally say they support her, while religious scholars are mixed: Some say that, depending on how one interprets the tenets of the two faiths, it is, indeed, possible to be both. Others consider the two faiths mutually exclusive.

"There are tenets of the faiths that are very, very different," said Kurt Fredrickson, director of the doctor of ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. "The most basic would be: What do you do with Jesus?"

Christianity has historically regarded Jesus as the son of God and God incarnate, both fully human and fully divine. Muslims, though they regard Jesus as a great prophet, do not see him as divine and do not consider him the son of God.

"I don't think it's possible" to be both, Fredrickson said, just like "you can't be a Republican and a Democrat."

Redding, who will begin teaching the New Testament as a visiting assistant professor at Seattle University this fall, has a different analogy: "I am both Muslim and Christian, just like I'm both an American of African descent and a woman. I'm 100 percent both."

Redding doesn't feel she has to resolve all the contradictions. People within one religion can't even agree on all the details, she said. "So why would I spend time to try to reconcile all of Christian belief with all of Islam?

She says she felt an inexplicable call to become Muslim, and to surrender to God -- the meaning of the word "Islam."

"It wasn't about intellect," she said. "All I know is the calling of my heart to Islam was very much something about my identity and who I am supposed to be.

Redding's situation is highly unusual. Officials at the national Episcopal Church headquarters said they are not aware of any other instance in which a priest has also been a believer in another faith. They said it's up to the local bishop to decide if a priest could continue in that role.

Redding's bishop, the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner, says he accepts Redding as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim, and that he finds the interfaith possibilities exciting. Her announcement, made through a story in her diocese's newspaper, hasn't caused much controversy yet.

Some Muslim leaders are perplexed.

Being both Muslim and Christian -- "I don't know how that works," said Hisham Farajallah, president of the Islamic Center of Washington.

But Redding, 55, has been embraced by leaders at the Al-Islam Center of Seattle, the Muslim group she prays with.

"Islam doesn't say if you're a Christian, you're not a Muslim," said programming director Ayesha Anderson. "Islam doesn't lay it out like that."

Redding believes telling her story can help ease religious tensions, and she hopes it can be a step toward her dream of creating an institute to study Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

"I think this thing that's happened to me can be a sign of hope," she said.

As much as she loves her church, she has always challenged it. She calls Christianity the "world religion of privilege." She has never believed in original sin. And for years she struggled with the nature of Jesus' divinity.

Ironically, it was at St. Mark's that she first became drawn to Islam.

In fall 2005, a local Muslim leader gave a talk at the cathedral, then prayed before those attending. Redding was moved.

Then in the spring, at a St. Mark's interfaith class, another Muslim leader taught a chanted prayer and led a meditation on opening one's heart. The chanting appealed to the singer in Redding; the meditation spoke to her heart.

Around that time, her mother died, and then "I was in a situation that I could not handle by any other means, other than a total surrender to God," she said.

She still doesn't know why that meant she had to become a Muslim. All she knows is "when God gives you an invitation, you don't turn it down."

Aside from the established sets of prayers she recites in Arabic five times each day, Redding says her prayers are neither uniquely Islamic nor Christian. They're simply her private talks with God or Allah -- she uses both names interchangeably. "It's the same person, praying to the same God."

Some scholars are skeptical.

"The theological beliefs are irreconcilable," said Mahmoud Ayoub, professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at Temple University in Philadelphia. Islam holds that God is one, unique, indivisible. "For Muslims to say Jesus is God would be blasphemy."

Redding knows there are many Christians and Muslims who will not accept her as both.

"I don't care," she says. "They can't take away my baptism." And as she understands it, once she's made her profession of faith to become a Muslim, no one can say she isn't that, either.

While she doesn't rule out that one day she may choose one or the other, it's more likely "that I'm going to be 100 percent Christian and 100 percent Muslim when I die."


And from our friends at the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Cedar Rapids Iowa) who have spent millions of dollars proselytising for Islam and Middle-Eastern dictators on their "Mosaic" Television channel
(http://www.elca.org/mosaic/summer03.html).

Understanding Islam
Summer 2003 MOSAIC
http://www.elca.org/youth/helpsheets/muslim.html

What do Muslims believe? Who was the Prophet Mohammed? How does Islam relate to the Christian faith? This DVD helps members of your congregation understanding of Islam.

Islam is among the world's fastest-growing religions. Since September 11, interest in Islam and the growing number of Muslim neighbors in the United States has skyrocketed. MOSAIC visits the oldest mosque in America--located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, since 1935--and spends time in the largest Muslim community in the U.S., Dearborn, Mich. The video includes interviews with Islamic scholars and Christian theologians, as well as people on the street. MOSAIC comes with a helpful user's guide that makes this resource ideal for adult forums, confirmation classes and youth ministry

MOVING BEYOND MUSLIM MEDIA IMAGES

By the turn of the century, Islam will be the second largest religion... -- Muslim Friends: Their Faith and Feeling, An Introduction to Islam
http://www.elca.org/youth/helpsheets/muslim.html

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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HAMAS IS A WOLF IN MODERATE CLOTHING
Posted by Daily Alert, June 18, 2007.

This is by Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel.

In a press conference in Damascus on Friday, Hamas political chief Khaled Meshal looked like an abusive husband trying to convince his wife to return home.

"We have no plans to control Gaza," Meshal claimed. "We were forced to take over as an emergency measure." He explained that "Hamas plans to cooperate with Mahmoud Abbas for the good of the Palestinian people."

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, for his part, claimed that his organization is still committed to Palestinian unity.

The statements sound less than honest less than 24 hours after Hamas militants conducted a murderous political purge of the Gaza Strip. The past three days have included the arrests of dozens of senior Fatah officials, the looting of the Presidential Palace, and the robbing of homes of anyone ever associated with Fatah.

Not only Yasser Arafat's residence, but the home of businessman Ihab Al-Askhar who hasn't been active in Fatah for 13 years and that of Mohammed Dahlan's mother.

Hamas is trying to bring routine back to Gaza's streets. Once again, Hamas is wrapping itself in moderate garb and explaining that it didn't act against Fatah, only against Dahlan's branch.

Hamas even promises the imminent release of abducted BBC journalist Alan Johnston as part of law and order measures.

But despite efforts to create the appearance of business as usual, Hamas leaders face a complex task.

Meshal, Haniyeh and particularly the leaders of the military wing green-lighted not only the civil war, but also atrocities like the execution of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade militant Samiah Al-Madhoun.

Hamas militants who abused corpses, threw fellow Palestinians off high-rises, burned and looted, will have trouble getting up the next day looking like a law-abiding public.

And it is not just the street Hamas will have trouble controlling. The organization's supposed mainstream also has a prominent extremist group that sees Fatah as a gang of heretics.

Fatah officials, too, are trying to create the impression of business as usual. Salam Fayad was appointed to head a Palestinian emergency government that probably no one understands how will function and may only emphasize the rift between the West Bank and Gaza. Many in Fatah believe their last hope after the serious blow to Dahlan is in an Israeli prison.

However, it seems restoring Fatah to its former glory in Gaza will be too big a job, even for a freed Marwan Barghouti.

The Israeli defense establishment had two approaches to the situation over the weekend: one viewed the events gravely and claimed that Fatah's defeat would lead to a serious deterioration of Israel-PA relations. The second sought a ray of light. They said it comes from the fact everything is clearer now in Gaza. There are no more "bad" and "good" Palestinians. There is one address in Gaza; Hamas, with which it is possible to speak only with force.

Either way, the defense establishment assumes Hamas will be interested in the short term in calm with Israel to stabilize its hold on the strip. The central dilemma for Israel is opening the border crossings. In a few days, reports will appear in the media about the suffering of Gaza residents. It is unlikely it will be possible to dump the problem on Egypt's doorstep, since that country is not enthusiastic to let most of the goods into Gaza from its territory via the Rafah crossing.

The Daily Alert is sponsored by Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and prepared by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). To subscribe to their free daily alerts, send an email to daily@www.dailyalert.jcpa.org

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TWO STATES FOR TWO TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS?
Posted by Fred Reifenberg, June 18, 2007.

Professor Steven Plaut hits the nail on the head again...
(http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/1#2195).

Hear oh Israel, this land was ours, this land should be ours again!"

1. So let's see if we understand the set of "solutions" being bandied about for resolving the Arab war against Israel and Jewish self-determination.

First there was the "Two-States for Two Peoples" solution, Part A. That was the one adopted in 1921, when the eastern part of Mandatory Palestine was separated from the western part, with the west earmarked to become a Jewish homeland and the eastern part an Arab state, Transjordan. Then came the "Two States for Two Peoples" solution, Part B, in 1947 when the UN proposed created yet another Arab state and a Jewish state out of Western Palestine. It should have been called three states for two peoples (the Jewish and Arab peoples), or -- better yet -- 23 states for two peoples (22 states for the Arab people and one state for the Jewish people), two of those Arab states in Palestine.

Then there is the "one state solution" currently being promoted by the Israeli self-hating Left and the Jews for a Second Holocaust, also known as the Rwanda Solution, where western Palestine would become a single Islamofascist terrorist state with an Arab majority and a Jewish minority, and the Jewish minority would face a Rwanda style fate. Naturally, every Neo-Nazi and anti-Semite on earth likes THAT solution.

Then in recent weeks the Israeli Moonbatocracy has come up with a new idea. TWO different states for the imaginary "Palestinian people," one for the Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the second in the West Bank for the Fat'h.

I kid you not.

The Israeli media are filled with people raising that as a serious suggestion. The idea arose after the Hamas turned Gaza into a killing field for Fat'h members. This weeks thousands of Fat'h members are begging to be allowed to enter the genocidal Zionist entity in order to take asylum there from the Hamas, even inside Israeli prisons, so that their lives may be saved. (Those prisons are not so bad, by the way, with three square meals a day and nice DVDs.) And not even a smirk of embarrassment from all those Israel bashers long claiming that the "Palestinians" are victims of ISRAELI brutality!

So to solve the "problems" of these po' Palestinians, the newest peace proposal being debated should be called "Two States for two Terrorist Organizations." There is one example of such a proposal here in Hebrew:
http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/596/496.html You know, the newest version of Good Terrorist Bad Terrorist. Israel would make peace with the Fat'h good terrorists in the West Bank and later this would embarrass Hamastan into joining the peace.

Now I know what you are thinking and that is that this proposal does not go nearly far enough. After all, if each "Palestinian" terrorist organization is entitled to self-determination in the Lands of Israel, then why limit things to Hamastan in Gaza, and Fat'h-land in the West Bank?

What about the terrorists of Islamic Jihad? Aren't they also in desperate need of national self-determination? Don't they need their own state? So I propose turning Ramat Aviv over to them, including and especially the Tel Aviv University campus. I mean, it is not like there will have to be a lot of changes made on campus after they take over! As for Al-Qaida, clearly Ben Gurion University should be converted into their new nation-state. The Hezbollah will have to settle for the University of Haifa. The Taliban can take the Hebrew University.

Oh, there is one other conceivable alternative to all the above "solutions", but it is not one any Israeli political leader is considering or proposing. It is R&D = Re-Occupation and De-Nazification.

As it turns out, THAT is the only proposal that could work, and the only one not based upon endless Oslo-style self-delusion and make-pretend.

[Editor's Note: Israel Zwick
(www.cnpublications.net) adds: "You forgot to mention the current movement by Haaretz and the other Israeli lefties to make the Arab and Christian citizens more comfortable as Israeli citizens. So Hatikvah should be changed from "nefesh yehudi" to "Nefesh Yisraeli" Then maybe the flag should also include a crescent and cross. After that we should also recognize Muslim and Christian holidays as national holidays. As an additional measure of goodwill, some of the street names should be named after Muslim and Christian heros. Then Jews will lose their identification with Israel as a Jewish state and Israel will become another international cosmoplitan state like Belgium or Netherlands. Jewish travel and immigration to Israel will become negligible. Jews will become a minority in the State and will live in the State of Israpalestine as a minority the way Jews lived in Muslim states for over 1000 years.

We must insist that Israel retain it's identity as a Jewish state. There is plenty of room in the world to set aside 25,000 sq. km as a distinctly Jewish state. If Jews can live as a free minority group in 70 other states, then Arabs and Christians should be able to live as a minority group in a Jewish state. If they don't like that, the Arabs have 22 states to go to where they can be the majority and the Christians have even more choices.

Israel must insist on maintaining an identity as a Jewish state with a Jewish anthem, flag, holidays, schools, street names etc. Of course, there should be no discrimination against the minority population, but they should not get anymore recognition than Jews get as a minority population in the USA, France, Britain, South Africa, Australia, Canada or anywhere else where Jews live."]

Contact Fred Reifenberg at freify@gmail.com

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LAND FOR PEACE -- OR LAND IN PIECES?
Posted by David Haimson, June 18, 2007.

This was written by Seth Leibsohn, a fellow of the Claremont Institute.

The news out of Gaza is actually not the latest history lesson that Munich-type land-for-peace propositions require us to restudy. What we need is an update to Baruch Spinoza. While nature may still very well abhor a vacuum, we now know beyond speculation that terrorism will thrive in one. Where once a democratic state "occupied" Gaza, a terrorist Fatah took over under the watchful eyes of the U.N. In less than two years, the even-more-radical Hamas blasted Fatah out of power and took over from there -- in one of the bloodiest coups of the past decade. Now Hamas, with support from Iran, runs a mini-state on the border of Egypt and Israel.

And yet, too much of the world -- and too many at home -- maintain a dangerous, if not fatal, post-9/11 foreign-policy strategy. The fatal thinking is twofold: 1) The U.S. must withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible and 2) the U.S. must reengage the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The Iraq Study Group, made up of the "wise" men and women of our political establishment, encouraged this policy by stating that "The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict." As if Israel had anything to do with Iraq. As if, perhaps, Israel withdrawing from Gaza might be a model for the U.S. in Iraq. As if, perhaps, Israel should be further encouraged to fully withdraw from the West Bank as it did in Gaza. But there is no Israeli-Palestinian peace process right now, not when the ruling Palestinian government of Hamas adheres to a covenant that believes Israel will exist only up until "Islam will obliterate it," and was founded to consummate that goal.

Now is the time to take a history lesson about democracies withdrawing from lands tyrants lick their lips over. Again. The lesson no longer need be from the 1930s, or even the 1970s -- when a forced U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia resulted in killing fields and slaughter. The lesson can easily enough be 2005, when Israel left Gaza. The world wanted Israel out of Gaza, just as so many now want us out of Iraq. Israel left Gaza, and the void was filled -- but not by the laying of tracks for the Peace Train. Within two years, Iranian Hamas took over from Arafatian Fatah. Where many of us once warned that Fatah's rule of Gaza would create another Libya in the Middle East, our warnings went unheeded, and, at the same time, the warnings were not alarmist enough: A new Iranian state in the Middle East is now in charge. Nice work. At long last, might we now absorb the lesson?

A democracy showing weakness where terrorists thrive is a sure recipe for disaster if only one condition is met: Cede land to the terrorists and encourage the democracy to withdraw. The Middle East is now in the balance between forces of composition and forces of decomposition. Just as the world community, and many in America, did not want Israel in Gaza, and now it has Iran and Hamas there, the world community, and many in America, no longer want the U.S. in Iraq. But what would be left as Sunni Baathists, al Qaeda, and Iranian militias have staked their claims to that country? We can leave, that is the easy thing to do. But look at Gaza once more, and ask: What will come next? In the end, no history or philosophy degrees are required to answer that question -- just two eyes to read the newspaper, and a memory that can reach back two years.

David Haimson sends out a free daily news letter with lists of interesting articles. To subscribe, send him an email at dvhaimson@aol.com

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LIBERAL GROUPTHINK CAUSES CONSERVATIVES TO SELF-CENSOR
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 18, 2007.

This was written by Chuck Devore and it appeared in Daily_Pilot of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, California
(www.dailypilot.com/articles/2007/06/18/politics/dpt-polposition18.txt). Chuck Devore represents Assembly Dist. 70, which includes Newport Beach.

The ideal academic environment on a college campus is one that encourages vigorous debate and builds reasoning skills, all while the student is learning in his or her area of study.

Unfortunately, universities too often fall short in the first two categories.

For at least six years now, the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine has made a habit of inviting inflammatory speakers on campus. One speaker declared, "We will bury you in the sand," while implying death to either a nation (Israel) or a group of people (Jews). While another said, "You can take the Jew out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the Jew," when explaining why he believes Jews have a social pathology that makes it impossible for them to live in peace with anyone else.

Such comments elicited not a peep from a university faculty presumably too concerned with tolerance to criticize speech that crossed the line from commentary to hate. What might make the professionals at UCI reluctant to speak up against hate speech? Imagine the uproar if former klansman David Duke showed up at UCI and said, "You can take the Jew out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the Jew" or if Duke referred to African Americans when saying, "We will bury you?"

A study of almost 1,300 academics from more than 700 colleges and universities by Gary A. Tobin, Ph.D., and Aryeh K. Weinberg show an American faculty that is overwhelmingly liberal in the key areas of the humanities and the social sciences -- two fields with tremendous influence, as all students, even science and business students, have to take some liberal arts courses to graduate. Further, professors from the humanities and the social sciences are those whose area of expertise is politics and social commentary.

Tobin and Weinberg's 2006 survey, "Political Beliefs and Behavior of College Faculty," showed that 58% of humanities faculty believe that U.S. policies in the Middle East have created the problems we face in the region. Similarly, 56% of humanities professors see the U.S. and Israel as the greatest threat to world peace, while only 41% name China, Russia, and Iran combined.

Further, social science faculty voted for John Kerry over President Bush in 2004 by more than a four-to-one ratio while five times as many humanities professors preferred Kerry over Bush. This has led to liberal groupthink, causing the few conservative professors to engage in self-censorship as a survival mechanism.

For these reasons, condemning hate speech by Muslim Student Union speakers may be too much to expect from a faculty who likely sees Middle Eastern Arabs as victims of the West. Rather, a modest step would be to prohibit the student union and any other group from banning the audio or video recording of events so that all campus speech can be heard and commented on freely. Knowing that their words may come back to haunt them may even make a few hate speakers think twice before spewing.

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

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PRETEND A SILENT PA MAJORITY; THE "MILITARY WING"; S. AFRICA AGAIN ROGUE STATE?; A DEFEAT FOR AL-QAEDA
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 18, 2007.

MY SOLUTION

People are joking about the failed "two-state solution." Some say it means one state in Gaza and another in Judea-Samaria. My joke is that the Arabs mean for the Muslims to live above ground and for the Jews to reside six feet under.

Nevertheless, people's minds remain in a rut. They acknowledge the futility of hoping for peace with these Muslims. Then they contradict themselves in a way, suggesting that Israel wait until the Arabs reform themselves, and then Israel should give away parts of its homeland.

I say that the Muslims have amply proved themselves both undeserving and a menace. My conclusion (which I admit I have held from the beginning) is for Israel gradually to annex the Territories, starting with areas that are populated by Jews or are almost entirely vacant, offer no services to the Arabs so that they leave, and annex the areas they vacate. A stronger Israel would less attract invaders and more easily repel them.

THE "MILITARY WING"

The State Dept. still is making a false distinction between a "military wing" and the rest of Hamas. Why doesn't the State Dept. tell the large part of the world that detests the US for fighting in Iraq to distinguish between the "military wing" of the US and the rest of the government. Silly, wouldn't it be? Yet comparable enough.

Like all complicated organizations, Hamas is a single, tightly controlled organism with specialized components. One specialty is its armed forces, which enforce policy.

Why is the false distinction made? I think that most people don't think for themselves, and accept myths from the media and officials who seek pretenses for continuing to tolerate an anti-Zionist movement.

PRETENSE OF A SILENT MAJORITY

Arab newspapers lament the Arab propensity for internecine warfare in general, and in particular assert that the western Palestinian Arabs don't deserve the chaos and that their armed factions disgrace their cause.

They have no cause. Almost all are jihadist imperialists. They deserve what they are getting -- they share the goals and approve the means, when they work. Can't glorify Islamic "purity," intolerance, and violence and then expect gangs to behave well. Nor is it just internecine warfare. The Arabs fight everyone.

INADVERTENTLY AMUSING NY TIMES

The headline of 6/13 was "Palestinian Attacks Grow, As Do Fears of Civil War." "Fears of Civil War?" The war was almost over in Gaza. Hamas has taken over northern Gaza and battered central Gaza. It killed what Fatah leadership didn't flee, destroyed Fatah forts, and captured ammunition that Israel let the US provide Fatah. Hamas imposed a curfew on Gaza and is methodically mopping up remnants of Fatah. Yes, members of Fatah fight on, but to no particular purpose. Hamas is an army, Fatah is a mob. Fatah may prevail in Samaria.

"Strongman" Dahlan had fled to Egypt. He was strong only when his gunmen faced civilians. Remember when he was recommended as having good relations with Hamas? What a mistaken assessment that was! Hamas recently tried to assassinate him. They had merely bided their time with him. They don't mind targeted assassination and assassination not so targeted. They object only when they are the targets. So much for their principles!

The savagery of these people is best seen by their executing families and exchanging executions by throwing enemies out of windows.

When Gaza verged on civil war, commentators thought it might help Israel. The media talks about dozens of casualties as if that were a lot for a war, but that is not much. Hamas won the war so swiftly, and captured so much ammunition, that it will soon organize Gaza into a formidable war zone against Israel.

NEW ROGUE STATE, S. AFRICA?

South Africa cooperates with Russia and China in thwarting US-led sanctions against Sudan and other rogue states. It seems to think that this ingratiates it with other African governments, who value unity, i.e., protecting the rotten apples in their barrel. Meanwhile, Sudan continues ethnic cleansing, after having gotten hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced (Mark Y. Rosenberg, NY Sun, 6/12, Op.-Ed.) Grow up Africa, and reject your rotten apples!

AL-QAEDA DEFEATED IN S. ARABIA

When al-Qaeda turned on S. Arabia, attacked it repeatedly, and tried to decimate the region's oil producing and distribution industry, S. Arabia eliminated the veteran al-Qaeda leaders and rounded up many of the followers. The terrorist organization is out of operation, there, though some members survive (IMRA, 6/13).

Americans sometimes talk about bombing an enemy back into the stone age, but our enemy may do it to us, by depriving us of energy for our industry.

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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ONE OR FOUR STATES SOLUTION
Posted by Steven Shamrak, June 18, 2007.

After the WW1, following the collapse of Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations, in order to facilitate the transition to independent states, created many mandate governed areas in the Middle East and the Central Asia. As a result the countries such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon and others were created. The same principle was intended for the creation of a Jewish state when the United Kingdom (UK) was given a guardianship of the Palestinian Mandate.

Almost immediately, the UK made a deal with the Arabs and Egypt, and as a result, 77% of the land that was designated for the Jewish state was illegally cut off to create Jordan and additional 5% to Syria from the Golan Heights. That is when the modern Arab-Israel conflict actually began!

Recently, a new Islamist order has been emerging in the Gaza Strip. Not long ago the Hamas Executive Force took control over Gaza. As a result the two-state solution, which was so eagerly promoted by 'friends' of Jews and by self-hating Jews lately, became a totally discredited fantasy! As a result, there are only two options remaining viable at the moment:

1. Creation of four states on Jewish land: Israel, Jordan, Fatahstan in Judea and Samaria and Hamastan in Gaza.

2. Establishment of one Jewish state on all Jewish ancestral land. (The non-Jewish population residing in the land of the Palestinian Mandate can be easily integrated by the neighbouring Muslim countries or a new state can be formed in Sinai Peninsula later.) This option has never been given a chance!

There is another one-state solution. Enemies of the Jews, not just Arabs, have been working on it before and since creation of the Palestinian Mandate and definitely since the declaration of independence by Israel. It is One Muslim State without Jews! Would you prefer this option? Many Jew-hates do!

Many Jewish publications have been eagerly promoting opinions about a Two-state solution or the Transfer control of Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza to Jordan, as the only alternatives to Arab-Israel conflict.

The limited autonomy of the Arab population in Gaza and the West bank, the original intention of the Olso Agreement has completely forgotten. They absolutely ignore, block and discredit as extremist views the original plan of the League of Nations -- the creation of a Jewish homeland in the Palestinian Mandate, including the Trans-Jordan.

Why is the idea of giving up Jewish land to enemies, whose goal is complete destruction of the state of Israel, not considered radical, but advocating the rights of Jewish people to the land of their ancestors is?

No wonder that with this type of coverage by the Jewish press, in addition to the global anti-Israel propaganda by main-stream press, Jews have started to believe that we have no other choice!

Jews and the public in general are deprived of correct information and facts. They are brainwashed by, politically motivated, often leftist self-hating traitors who have infested the Jewish press and other Jewish organizations! The absence of true Zionist leadership in Israel and the Diaspora is the major contributor to our problems!

For some sinister reason international press guided by hypocritical international political and business interests are portraying Fatah as a moderate alternative to Hamas. People forgot the killing of Israelis athletes during Munich Olympic games and string of airplanes and ship hijackings perpetrated by Fatah in the past. The existing endless suicided bombings, barrage of Kassam rocket and shells send toward Israel by military wing of Fatah are ignored or played down.

In reality there is no difference between Hamas, Fatah or any so-called Palestinian organization. For quite a while the Palestinian National Charter -- the official PLO doctrine have not been checked. Make a decision yourself if this is a "moderate" organization which accepts a two state solution, recognizes Israel and rejects violence and terrorism.

Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit. -- This is in line with the League of Nations resolution for Palestinian mandate as the land was allocated for the Jewish state and it did include Jordan!

Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. Thus it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase...

Article 10: Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war...

During the last 56 years, all peace options, but Jewish one, have been tried many times! They produce only escalation of violence and terror, not just for Jews but for Arabs as well. One solution -- the Jewish state, as it was designated by League of Nations, on the Jewish ancestral land is the only option that can bring the peace and end the conflict. Why is it systematically ignored? Why creation of Eretz-Israel is considered as extreme, but facilitation of Israel's destruction, through giving up Jewish land to enemies, is not?

Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. For the last 3 years, he has been publishing 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@mail2world.com

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IS THERE SUCH A THING AS MODERATE TERROR?
Posted by UCI, June 18, 2007.

This was written by Arlene Bridges-Samuels and it appeared Jun 15, 2007 in Israpundit
(www.israpundit.com).

A Hamas spokesman declared yesterday, "The era of justice and Islamic rule has arrived." Yes, indeed. The era of Islamic rule and its form of justice has washed over Gaza in a tsunami of executions, terror, mayhem, and chaos. Yet, the White House and the US State Department still insist on beating their dead horse named, "Abbas and his moderate Palestinians," thinking their horse is going to resurrect and race in the Kentucky Derby of democratic reform and non-violence. The US premise was wrong from the very beginning. All Abbas has done is play "follow the leader."

An Arafat crony for forty years, Abbas morphed into a leader just like his mentor in terror. Abbas has donned himself in the same wolf in sheep's clothing, declaring he seeks peace while all the while allowing terror and the hate-filled Palestinian media to overwhelm the Palestinian culture with the brainwashing victimization Arafat planted when he moved to Ramallah in 1993. If the US thinks Abbas is a moderate, then I ask, "Is there such a thing as moderate terror?"

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow explained yesterday, "We want to get back to the situation where the Palestinians can get something that they've been robbed of too many times, which is peace in their streets, democracy in their government, and the ability to move toward what everybody in the region ought to hope for, which is two nations, sovereign, living peacefully and side by side."

Tony, peace never had an inkling of a chance to reign in the Palestinian Occupied Territories (POT), at the Al Aksa Mosque on the Jewish Temple Mount, or the offices of Mahmoud Abbas.

Sean McCormack, US State Department Spokesman threw in his two cents worth saying, "We have called on others in the region to express their support for President Abbas and those Palestinian moderate political elements who have foresworn the use of violence and who have an interest in reaching a political settlement with Israel via the negotiating table and.we're going to continue to support President Abbas."

Wow! Did something happen while I wasn't looking? Exactly when did Abbas and his gang "forswear" violence? Absolutely no action on their part has sustained this idea. That's why it's called propaganda. All talk and no action. And the White House and the US State Department continue to show their ignorance and their denial in a futile effort to change Abbas into someone they-and Israel-are supposed to negotiate with.

I'd suggest President Bush and the US State Department revisit a few facts. The terror group, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is part of Abbas' Fatah party. They are on the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations.

And let's take a little review of the Palestinian Charter:

Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine

Article 15: The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national (qawmi) duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine.

Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

As far as I know, Arafat, Abbas, and cronies "said" they were amending the charter, but it has not happened. And again, even if they change the words of the charter for international consumption, the evil heart and soul of the charter has not changed: the destruction of Israel.

So, spare us all of the histrionics about Abbas and his "moderates," about Fatah possibly holding on to Judea and Samaria and running it any better than they did prior to Israel's total withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005. Abbas and his Fatah/Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades have done NOTHING to deserve any support...from the US, Israel, the EU, even the other Arabs.

Allowing any concessions to Palestinians concerning Judea and Samaria is like giving a bank robber an early out and setting him up as the chief of the bank's security. It's outrageous. But that's what the US is hoping to do, thinking Abbas didn't make it in Gaza, maybe he'll do better in Judea and Samaria. Like I said earlier, it's like expecting a dead horse to resurrect.

Again, I ask...Is there such a thing as moderate terror?

UCI -- The Unity Coalition for Israel (http://www.israelunitycoalition.org) -- is "the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel."

"Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard!"

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CONDOLEEZZA RICE USES THE "N" WORD!
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 17, 2007.

Negotiate -- Negotiate -- Negotiate and "N"ever recognize that your negotiating partner is an irredentist, irreversible, irrevocable terrorist. Presently, Rice refuses to confront Iran until Iran is fully capable of responding with nuclear missiles which, of course, will be too late for everyone.

No doubt, after she and Bush are out of Washington, the "N" lady will deny her Chamberlain role when those nukes begin to explode. Of course, the lady who preaches "Negotiate" is no longer able to negotiate "Peace in our time" ad nauseam, she and the Bush family will have to find a super deep bomb shelter while all else must suffer the radioactivity of her negotiating.

Iran under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs have time and again showed their contempt for negotiations. Negotiations for Islamists are there only to gain time to develop the nuclear bomb and spread terror across the planet in the name of Allah.

For the "N" lady this is unimportant compared to the need to leave George Bush an historic heritage as a great thinker. Regrettably, the articulate lady "N"egotiator is pathetically inept at projecting reality in real time and is actually "N"egotiating "N"othing.

Chamberlain saved Hitler's dream by bleating that he had achieved "Peace in Our Time" by surrendering the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia -- even as Hitler was building tanks, Stuka bombers, V-2 buzz bombs to rain down on England and had a project in the works to make an atomic bomb. Hitler would have, of course, succeeded had he not worked to death many Jewish physicists after he captured them. Fortunately, some of the best scientists -- like Albert Einstein -- escaped to America.

Chamberlain was too easily deceived by Hitler. On his death bed, Chamberlain said: "Everything would have been all right, if only Hitler had not lied to me."

So what does the "N"egotiating lady Rice have in mind for the Jews of Israel. Well, at the low end, she has also armed Arafat's legacy, Fatah. Rice refused to see the many groups of terrorists taking shelter under Fatah. Rice portrayed Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen -- his terror name) as a moderate. The only difference between Abbas and Arafat was he did not have that repulsive rat face. Abu Mazen was Arafat's companion, assistant and financier for 40 years.

Whenever Arafat promised peace in English, he promised War in Arabic. Even the dense State Department has some translators who deciphered Arafat's speeches in Arabic, promising to follow Mohammed's example, lie to the world and then massacre your opponents -- as when Mohammed signed the Hudaybiya Treaty promising peace to the Qaraish tribe of Jews for 10 years. But, Mohammed came back in 2 years when his forces were stronger, massacred the men, selling the women and children into slavery.

Rice had all this information -- as did Colin Powell before her but, as State Department apparatchniks, they continued to pay Arafat Billions of American taxpayers' dollars and then continued the cash flow to Abbas when Arafat died.

The Abbas contingent of terrorists demanded salaries paid by the U.S. and E.U. and they demanded weapons. They are still demanding after failing to defeat Hamas despite having more men and weapons then Hamas. When Hamas attacked Abbas, Fatah didn't put up much of a fight -- despite having U.S. arms, CIA training and an army three times as large as Hamas. Now we are informed that huge weapons caches of U.S. arms were taken by Hamas, adding to their weapons smuggled in from Syria and Iran. Hamas also confiscated Fatah's immense collection of Intelligence documents, including computers with hard drives very full of vital information.

All of this weapons' and security accumulation has set Rice and her collaborators into a tizzy and back to hounding Israel to give up Judea and Samaria to Abu Mazen. (Keep in mind that Rabin, Peres and Beilin had already given up the seven cities on the high ridge areas to Yassir Arafat through the Oslo fiasco.) Now Bush, Rice and Baker, are pressing Olmert, Barak and Peres to fulfill their role as traitors and try to evacuate 450,000 Jewish men, women and children from the rest of Judea and Samaria to make it "Judenrein" and present it to those "moderate" Muslim Palestinians in Oslo territory.

You do recall them dancing on the roofs as Saddam sent 39 SCUD missiles into Israel? Do you also recall the street dancing in Jenin, Nablus, etc. when there were particularly successful suicide bombings in the Subarro Pizza Restaurant, the Dolphin Disco, Mike's Place, the Moment Café, the Hebrew University cafeteria and so on and on -- which killed and gravely wounded so many Israeli teens, young children and elder citizens? These murdering terrorists are what Rice calls "moderates" much the same as her "moderates" in Gaza who were supposed to take over the Jewish farms, grow crops and lead a peaceful life. Instead, they trashed the innovative greenhouses which Israel had left them.

That was another bite of Rice's poisoned apple she gave to Israel. Granted she had Sharon, Olmert and Peres working as insiders to complete her Chamberlain fantasy.

Do you have any idea how many terrorists sheltered under Abu Mazen's umbrella. This information has been shared by first Powell and now Rice. The PLO (founded in 1964), Force 17 (Elite unit of the PLO), Hamas, Abu Nidal Organization -- aka Fatah (founded by Arafat in 1959) (Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigade -- Fatah's military wing), Fatah Hawks, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Armed wing in The Al-Quds brigades), Tanzim, PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and PFLP-General Command, DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and the Abu Nidal Organization. (1)

These were all loosely unified under Yassir Arafat who founded the and kept funded by American and European taxpayers' as the donor nations fed the terror machine, despite the irrefutable fact that the Intelligence Agencies of all the donor nations knew this virtual army of terrorists was all intertwined -- including Al Qaeda. Perhaps Condi was out-to-lunch making empty intelligent speeches of how "Abbas is a moderate" and "Iran could be negotiated with."

She didn't seem as anti-Israel and ignorant of Middle Eastern Muslim history as President Bush's National Security Advisor. Her change must have something to do with those who work in the State Department -- or the air in that building.

Surely, Chamberlain's Ghost must have morphed into Rice.

Now that Gaza has become a fully fledged operational global terror state, with terrorists from all over the world, presumably they will move on to the Olso cities in Judea and Samaria -- of Schehem (Nablus), Bethlehem, Qalqilya, Jenin and Jericho who already operate as terrorist bases.

Next, valuable territory Olmert, Barak and Peres intend to surrender is the Golan Heights to Syria.

But, not to worry. Olmert is visiting Washington next Tuesday, June 19th, to be dressed down by Bush, Rice and Baker. Olmert will be told to allow in weapons to Abbas (Abu Mazen) from Jordan and Egypt -- with Israel's army trucks making the delivery. They will be under the command and guidance of Olmert's new Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Collaborating with the enemy in time of war is called High Treason and is considered worthy of hanging.

So what can Israel do to save herself and her people?

First, she can get rid of the plague before all are killed. This is "apropos" as we read the Parasha Shavua (Portion of Torah for this coming week). Korach and his traitors challenge Moses for leadership of the Hebrews who have just escaped from slavery in Egypt and who are enduring a hard trek in the desert. G-d opens the ground and swallows Korach and his key followers. Then a virulent plague starts to kill those who agreed with Korach, killing off over 15,000 before Moses orders the High Priest Aaron who is also Moses' brother, to intercede and stop G-d's plague. I personally would have no objection to see Olmert and his crowd swallowed up and his cohorts in the Knesset killed by a plague but, of course, this is wishful thinking.

As for Rice, the Bush family and the oil boys that is G-d's province but, like the plagues of Korach, the American people will, sadly, suffer the consequences -- although they are not at fault. But, I fear both the Israeli people and the American people will suffer greatly for not removing those who would destroy their nations. ###

1. "Palestinian Political Violence" from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_terrorism

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@gwinston.interaccess.com

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THERE IS NO LEADERSHIP CRISIS, BUT RATHER, CRISIS AMONG THE PEOPLE
Posted by Avodah, June 17, 2007.
This essay was written by Professor Israel Aumann and it was published today in Ynet News
(http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3413759,00.html). Prof. Israel Aumann is an economics Nobel Prize laureate.

The question is not whether to enter the Gaza Strip or not. Before discussing Gaza we must first enter Israel and mend the deep crises created among the people.

What is happening today in the Gaza Strip is the direct result of Israel's failed and defeatist policies over the past 15 years. Since my opinion has been sought, I say that this is a policy destined to bring about the demise of the State of Israel. It's not just the policies. It's also the defeatist state of mind. All day long people are screaming "Peace, peace, and gestures, gestures!" Concessions and disengagements were made and settlers expelled. All this has ultimately achieved the opposite result.

We have to stop the empty slogans such as "Peace is made with enemies and not with friends." In order to achieve peace we must first and foremost be prepared for war. We have to change this state of mind at the core. It wasn't only the Romans who said that those who seek peace should prepare for war. Even in game theory, for which I received the Nobel Prize, says so. We have to be emotionally prepared to bear and to inflict casualties -- and not to scream "peace, peace," all day long. Only if we are prepared to kill and be killed -- we shall not be killed. This is the paradox of war.

We have to extract ourselves from the bubble in which we are living and to understand that we are under a great existential threat.

I hear the arguments saying that everything stems from a leadership crisis. There is no leadership crisis -- the crisis is entirely among the people. We elected our leadership knowing full well who these leaders are and what they are capable of. We elected this leadership six months after the expulsion from Gush Katif -- and thus we endorsed the expulsion with our own hands. So don't say there is a leadership crisis, the crisis is entirely among the people.

Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com

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UN'S UNMISTAKABLE CUPABILITY BEGAN IN 1967: REVIEW OF NATIONS UNITED
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 17, 2007.

This is an excerpt from Alex Grobman's book, Nations United.

Nations United
ISBN-13: 978-0-89221-674-1
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2006935625 638
published by Balfour Books, Green Forest, AR, 2006

Nations United traces the transformation of the United Nations (UN) from an organization that voted to partition the former British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states -- making Israel a nation state -- and then passed a Zionism=Racism (Z=R) resolution to delegitimize and dehumanize that nation.

Anti-Zionism Becomes International In Scope

For more than 20 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, anti-Zionism was a regional phenomenon -- a clash between Arab and Jewish national movements in the Middle East. In the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, the Soviets exploited antisemitism for political purposes, but it was rarely part of international debate until after the Six-Day War in 1967. By the end of the 1960s, and since 1975, anti-Zionism became international in scope. It first appeared in the universities in the West where the New Left, in cooperation with Arab student associations, attacked Israeli policy.[19]

When the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 on November 10, 1975, and declared "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination," it significantly expanded anti-Zionism into the sphere of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and therefore into Third World countries. This was accomplished in a collaboration between the Arabs and the Soviet Union that endowed anti-Zionism with legitimacy and official recognition.[20]

After the First World War, the Arabs expected Greater Syria -- which included Palestine and Lebanon -- to become a vast, united, and sovereign Arab empire. Instead, the French and the British divided the area into what the Arabs considered "irrationally carved out" entities that became the present-day states of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Trans-Jordan (later Jordan), Iraq, and Israel. The Arabs were outraged that a "non-Arab embryo state in Palestine" had been inserted into an area where it would never be accepted. They claimed that this shattered their dreams of unification and impeded their search for a common identity.[21]

The fight against a Jewish homeland became an integral part of their struggle "for dignity and independence." Israel's existence, they claimed, "implied that not only a part of the Arab patrimony, but also parts of Islam, had been stolen. For a Moslem, there was no greater shame than for that to happen." The only way to eliminate this deeply felt affront -- this "symbol of everything that had dominated them in the past" -- was to rid the area of "imperialist domination."[22]

Zionism has been branded as the official enemy of the Arab national movement, but Arab governments have long been accused of using the Arab-Israeli confrontation to divert attention from their own critical domestic social and economic problems. When confronted, they respond that if this were not a real concern, it would not resonate so strongly among the Arab masses.[23]

Bernard Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton University, the dean of Middle Eastern scholars in the West, says Arab fixation with Israel "is the licensed grievance. In countries where people are becoming increasingly angry and frustrated at all the difficulties under which they live -- the poverty, unemployment, oppression -- having a grievance which they can express freely is an enormous psychological advantage."[24]

The Israeli-Arab conflict is the only local political grievance that can be openly discussed. If the population were permitted freedom of speech, Lewis believes that the obsession with Israel would become far less important. Like most people, Arabs are concerned about their own priorities. For the Palestinian Arabs, who view themselves as the permanent victims, the main issue is their struggle with Israel. If Arabs in other countries were permitted to focus on their own problems, they would do so.[25]

For Arabs, the attempt to blame Western imperialism is nothing more than an excuse to attack Israel, as another historian asserted: "For decades the Arabs have been obsessed by memories of past glories and prophecies of future greatness, mocked by the injury and shame of having an alien and despised race injected into the nerve center of their promised pan-Arab empire, between its Asian and African halves, just at a time when the colonial powers had started their great retreat from their colonial possessions in Asia and Africa."[26]

To lessen their feelings of shame for losing every war against Israel, the Arabs attributed the success of Jewish settlement in Palestine and the Israeli military triumphs of 1948 and 1956 to Western imperialism. As the representative of the Great Powers, Israel became the Arabs' scapegoat whenever they became frustrated in their attempt to transcend "centuries of social, economic, and cultural development, and catch up" with the West. This anti-Israel fixation precipitated a methodical "Manichean metaphysic, the focus of an entire philosophy of history, with the Jew as the devil incarnate from the days of patriarch Abraham himself till his assumption of the role of the linchpin of an American-Imperialist-Zionist world-plot against the Arab world, the Socialist Commonwealth and all colonial peoples."[27]

Anti-Zionism entered the international scene when Israel and Egypt reached political rapprochement after the Yom Kippur War by signing an interim agreement on September 1, 1975. That agreement emphasized, "The conflict between them and in the Middle East shall not be resolved by military force but by peaceful means."[33]

Concerned that this might lead to peace, the Soviets, Syria, and the PLO tried to exclude Israel from international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), like UNESCO, "for having transgressed the United Nations Charter, and having failed to adopt its resolutions." When this strategy failed, they began to question Israel's legitimacy and discredit and condemn Zionism in the UN, and to internationalize their propaganda against her.[34]

Political Antisemitism

Irwin Cotler, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, wrote:

Traditional anti-Semitism was the denial of the right of individual Jews to live as equal members in a society. The new anti-Jewishness is the denial of the right of Jewish people to live as equal members in the family of nations... All that has happened is that we've moved from discrimination against the Jews as individuals to the discrimination against the Jews as a people.[35]

Demonizing Israel has turned it into a physical target for terrorist organizations, and into a political target for left wing and reactionary forces. Whether there are fatwas (legal rulings by Muslim clerics that routinely legitimize suicide terrorism) or there are organizations demanding divestment from Israeli corporations, destruction of Israel -- physical, spiritual, or economic -- is one of the mantras of the day. This is what Cotler calls political antisemitism.[36]

For the majority of the member states in the UN, Israel is a locus of evil, deserving international condemnation -- unlike many countries in the UN that practice ethnic cleansing, offer no rights to women or the poor, starve their own people for political reasons, and commit genocide.

These same nations, in the halls of an institution that was designed to prevent exactly this from happening, deny Israel her rights even in the courts of international law. Israel is the target of the majority of UN sanctions, is vilified by the International Court of Justice at the Hague for defending herself, and is singled out by the Geneva Convention as the utmost violator of human rights.[37]

It has been suggested that this deliberate delegitimization leads to gradual erosion of Israel's stature and ultimately her right to exist. Those targeted are the last to recognize the transformation until the consequences of ostracism become evident. This occurs when remarks by the country's spokesman are seen as irrelevant, and when the leadership is no longer regarded as worthy of engaging in legitimate discourse with other countries.[38]

Branding Israel as racist portrays her as a country that harms civilian populations, oppresses minorities, and establishes restrictive immigration laws and religious statutes as part of its ideological raison d'etre. Thus, Israel's wars -- its military response to terror and laws passed by the Knesset -- are racist. A significant danger to Israel is that if this charge becomes a new stereotype through popular culture, the media, literature, and daily speech, it will taint the Jewish state and become a part of the legacy of the West.[39]

How does one respond to such charges? No logical argument ever succeeded in disputing the blood libels or any other spurious allegation leveled against the Jews. Yet, limited response to Z=R ensured that anti-Zionist resolutions continued to be passed. To counter the process of delegitimization, the charges have to be seen as a "corruption of language and thought," a threat to freedom, and a campaign of disinformation orchestrated by the Arab states and the Soviet Union.[40]

Nations United examines the initial reactions to the Z=R resolution by the United States, Israel, and others, the political and cultural environment at the UN, and the provocative roles played by Arab states, the Former Soviet Union (FSU), African nations, and NGOs in the new war against the Jews.

Endnotes

19. Yohanan Manor, "Anti-Zionism," (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1984), p. 8.
20. Ibid.
21. Saul Friedlander and Mahmoud Hussein, Arabs and Israelis: A Dialogue (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1975), p. 6, 18, 21.
22. Ibid., p. 9, 34.
23. Ibid.
24. "Islam's Interpreter," The Atlantic Online (April 4, 2004), Online.
25. Ibid; Friedlander and Hussein, Arabs and Israelis: A Dialogue, p. 32-33, 36.
26. Talmon, Israel Among the Nations, p. 169-170.
27. Ibid., p. 170.
33. Manor, "Anti-Zionism," p. 9-10.
34. Ibid., p. 10.
35. Irwin Cotler, "Why Is Israel Singled Out?" The Jerusalem Post (January 16, 2002), Online.
36. Ibid; see also Irwin Cotler, "Human Rights and the New Anti-Jewishness," The Jerusalem Post (February 5, 2004), Online; Irwin Cotler, "Durban's Troubling Legacy One Year Later: Twisting the Cause of International Human Rights Against the Jewish People," Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs, Volume 2, Number 5 (August 20, 2002), Online.
37. Ibid.
38. Ehud Sprinzak, "Anti-Zionism: From Delegitimation to Dehumanization," Forum-53 (Fall 1984), p. 3-5.
39. Ibid., p. 7-8.
40. Ibid., p. 9-10.

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STOP ISLAMISATION OF EUROPE
Posted by Nurit Greenger, June 17, 2007.

To: Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, Pax Europa e.V.
E-mail: udo@ulfkotte.de

To: Stephen Gash, SIOE England
E-mail: sioe.nsh@btinternet.com

Gentlemen,

I think that we, here in the USA, MUST concentrate on stopping Islamification of the United States. But there are many of us who still wish, hope, want to see European charm, without the rampant antisemitism, return to the continent...STOP ISLAMISATION OF EUROPE (SIOE) is a fantastic beginning...

How, do we, in the USA, can help you to help ourselves? It boils down to: we must FIGHT for our lives!

Good Luck and all the best,

Nurit Greenger
Los Angeles, California

p.s. try broadcasting in English too!

This article is called "SIOE -- Stop the Islamisation of Europe" and is archived at
www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1352

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

NO SHARIA HERE!

DEMOCRACY NOT THEOCRACY!

These are the rallying cries that people all over Europe are shouting far and wide to Islamists both within Europe and in other countries who seek to impose Sharia law upon European citizens.

It is not only to Muslims, who seek to expand Islam across the whole of Europe, that Europeans are saying "Enough" it is also to our politicians who connive with Islamists to establish Sharia law by stealth.

From building regulations to burial rights, the majority of Europe's population is increasingly expected to adhere to Sharia law.

"Hate" laws now make it a crime to speak out against Islam even though it is just another totalitarian political system.

Our free speech, which has been gained over many centuries by defeating tyrannical regimes through many bloody wars, is now being removed solely to protect Muslims from being offended. Nobody has the right to not be offended.

SIOE is a Pan-European movement determined to not merely stopping the surreptitious Islamisation of Europe, but reversing it.

The first step in this reversal is a march comprising people, from many European countries, all demanding that all non-Islamic European nations remain non-Islamic and a halt to encroachment of Sharia law.

Anders Gravers (Founder of SIOE Denmark and leader of the political party SIAD) said: "We do not believe in the concept of 'moderate Muslims'. The evidence points to Islam being the opposite of moderate. The heart of Sunni Islam is Saudi Arabia and the centre of Shia Islam is Iran. No rational person can describe these two countries as 'moderate'; at least not when compared to European values. We now have children in Danish schools being forced to eat Halal meat so that Muslim pupils are not offended. What next? Are Danish women to be stoned to death for being raped as they are in Iran? Or are people to be beheaded for leaving Islam as they are in Saudi Arabia? No! We will not allow Europe to become a huge Saudi Arabia or Iran"

Dr. Udo Ulfkotte (Founder and president of the non-profit charity "Pax Europa") said: "We clearly feel the pressure of Islamisation in Germany. German police and courts are more tolerant to Muslims than to non-Muslims. One of the highest German courts (Bundesgerichtshof) has just downgraded the punishment for Islamists who publicly declare and ask for violent Jihad in Europe. Unacceptably, some judges have quoted the Quran and not German law in court cases. Polygamy, once illegal in Germany, is now permitted only for Muslim men, who may even claim state benefits for their wives.

German life is changing to appease Muslims. For example, Christian crosses in our public institutions are being removed and there are separate swimming times for Muslims in supposedly public pools (which non-Muslims' taxes pay for).

German Muslims demand a quota for "positive reports" from the German media, but they kick out the religious group Bahai from an inter-religious conference because they refuse to accept them within the "dialogue".

All this was once described as hypocrisy, but is now actually promoted by our feeble politicians.

Stephen Gash (Founder of SIOE England) said: "Appeasement of Islamists has become ridiculous. Non-Muslims are expected to be buried facing Mecca and to sit on toilets facing away from Mecca because cemeteries and new homes have to conform to Muslim sensitivities. Toy pigs are banned from offices and Christmas lights must now be called 'Winter Festival lights' so as not to offend Muslims. None of these oppressive measures were even contemplated when Jews were the only ones who could possibly be offended by pigs and 'Merry Christmas'.

Absurdly, to criticise Islam results in accusations of 'racism'. Well, I've always considered racism as being the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia to be the height of common sense." Charlotte Westergaard (SIAD board member) said: "The biggest danger comes from our own politicians who promote Islamic values at the expense of our own values. The way things are going all European non-Muslim citizens will be paying the Jizzya tax to Muslims as they did during the days of the Ottoman Empire. Of course the politicians believe they will be exempt -- until the local Imam knocks on their door."

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com. Visit her blog:
http://ngthinker.typepad.com

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TODAY GAZA, TOMORROW LEBANON?
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 17, 2007.

The world was shocked by Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip, and the damage done to any hope for peace or regional stability is generally recognized. But a second, even more serious, extremist takeover is in the works for which Western inaction would bear far more responsibility.

This time the victim would be Lebanon and the perpetrator is Hizballah, backed by Syria and Iran.

Today, Lebanon is ruled by a Christian-Sunni Muslim-Druze coalition determined to maintain a moderate and independent Lebanon. This partnership arose after Syria assassinated former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005, coming out of a mass movement which successfully demanded the Syrian withdrawal after two decades in which Lebanon was looted as a satellite state by its next-door neighbor.

Syria is determined to end this period of freedom and in doing so it is aided by its client Hizballah and many smaller groups including Fatah al-Islam along with pro-Syrian politicians. Fifteen major terrorist attacks, mostly assassination attempts, and many smaller ones have taken place in the last two years by Syrian agents. Notably, two of these have killed coalition members of parliament, the first Christian, the most recent a Sunni Muslim.

These attacks are not just blind efforts at revenge or mayhem. Syria is literally murdering the Lebanese government out of existence. A few more successes and the coalition will lose its majority. Also, however, the term of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, extended by Syrian demand, ends in November, making Damascus eager to get control of parliament before then to ensure its own choice will triumph.

While the violence falls well short of all-out fighting, Lebanon is engaged in a type of civil war. Hizballah walked out of the government and Syrian clients have paralyzed parliament in a so-far failed attempt to keep Lebanon from endorsing an international tribunal to investigate Hariri's death. Everyone knows that the evidence points to the Syrian government at the highest levels for responsibility. Blocking this tribunal is priority one on the Syrian regime's list.

As a result, coalition supporters are showing exemplary courage. Any politician or journalist who stands against Syria, Iran, and Hizballah faces the daily threat of assassination. In contrast, of course, the extremists endure no such risk since the coalition does not use terrorism against them.

In comparison with Fatah on the Palestinian scene--an incompetently led, deeply corrupt, extremist and terrorist group in its own right--or an Iraqi regime that wants American soldiers to fight for it, the Lebanese majority is a well-organized, reliable ally ready to defend itself.

The situation in Lebanon, then, is one of stark choice: a moderate, multi-communal majority is trying to protect the country's independence against a coalition of radical foreign states and extremist Islamist domestic groups. Can one imagine a clearer case of the current conflict that shakes the world today? Is there anyone more on the front line against the forces of terrorism?

Lebanon today is the equivalent of Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s, a small democratic country which must not be sacrificed to totalitarian forces, both due to Western interests and to moral values.

What is the Western record on this issue? There are certainly signs of hope. The United States, with indispensable support from France and others, has pushed forward on the tribunal plan. Military aid was provided to Lebanon to defeat the Fatah al-Islam revolt in Palestinian refugee camps. The UN expanded its UNIFIL force, supposedly to stop arms smuggling from Syria and Hizballah's return to dominate southern Lebanon.

Yet to a serious extent, these efforts have been subverted by Western governments. UNIFIL is a joke, uninterested and unable to stop weapons' smuggling; standing by and pretending all is well as Hizballah has rebuilt its fortifications and refurbished its arsenals. Western governments may issue condemnations of terror and intimidation within Lebanon but they do nothing about it.

And thus a confident Hizballah knows it can depend on Syria and Iran; the Lebanese coalition does not have the same assurance of help from those who should be supporting it. The impression is being given--and don't think it escapes Syria and Hizballah--that the West is afraid of them. They kill people, they blow up things. And just as the Islamists claim, these tactics often--should one say, usually?--work at intimidating the West.

A stream of high-level visitors, most recently Italy's foreign minister, make the pilgrimage to Damascus, where they proclaim Syria to be reasonable and genuinely desirous of rapprochement. They beg Syria's help to stop the smuggling and believe false Syrian assurances that it is trying to do so. Too many journalists echo Syrian disinformation about Lebanon, for example blaming Fatah al-Islam on the Lebanese coalition rather than Syria.

There is a great danger either that Lebanon will be betrayed or that Western timidity will inspire an aggressive over-confidence on the extremists' part. Don't be surprised if some time next year Hizballah becomes a full partner, with veto power, in the Lebanese government, as Hamas did in the Palestinian Authority in 2006. Or even if Hizballah seizes control of Lebanon altogether, as Hamas did to the Gaza Strip.

The foundation for this radical victory is being laid now, not only by Syria, Hizballah, and Iran, but also by spineless Europeans and indifferent, or otherwise preoccupied, Americans. Have no doubt about it, a failure to act will bring an inevitable, terrible result. Nobody can say that they weren't warned.

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, has written and edited 50 books on the Middle East. His latest book, The Truth About Syria, has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

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INTERVIEW WITH JOHN BOLTON ON GAZA, IRAN; ISRAEL UNDER SEIGE
Posted by Michael Travis, June 17, 2007.

Hannity and Colmes
June 14, 2007
www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/interview_with_john_bolton_on_1.html

COLMES: [....] Meanwhile, we're following breaking developments tonight in the Middle East, where once again the region seems on the brink of war. Fighting in the Gaza Strip escalated today, as Hamas gunmen took control of the Fatah security headquarters and reportedly executed people in the street. President Mahmoud Abbas has declared a state of emergency tonight. He has dissolved the government and says he will form a new one. And late tonight, there's word that Abbas' presidential compound has fallen to Hamas militants.

The Arab world fears that this conflict could spread and engulf the entire region in war. The head of the Arab League is asking for a cease- fire tonight and warns of disaster if the fighting spreads to the West Bank and beyond.

Joining us now with the very latest on this developing situation, former ambassador to the United Nations and FOX News contributor, John Bolton. Ambassador, welcome back. What happens here? Where does this go?

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Well, I think the greatest probability is that the fighting spreads to the West Bank. I don't think Hamas will be satisfied simply ruling the Gaza Strip. And if that's the case, then, given the number of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, the likelihood of Israel being drawn in militarily will grow.

COLMES: And if Israel is drawn in militarily, what does that say for the United States?

BOLTON: Well, I think we will obviously be supplying Israel, but I don't think that implies any military participation by the United States. The real question is whether the violence can be contained just on the West Bank or whether, for example, Hezbollah and Lebanon takes action there, as well.

COLMES: Hamas has said they have no interest in staying. They just want to ward off a coup, which they say is favored by a faction within Fatah that is not letting them govern as they say they were duly elected to do.

BOLTON: Well, if you watched what happened in Gaza over the past several days, this was a very systematic, sustained, well-thought-out campaign. I think this is a coup d'etat. I think Mahmoud Abbas is right about that, and I think it will continue. The real issue is, did Hamas decide to do this on its own or did some outside force, like Iran, have something to do with it?

COLMES: And we got into that -- a couple of nights ago, you were on the show. We talked about that. You believe Iran is complicit here. And what evidence, if you believe that, do you have of that?

BOLTON: There's no doubt that Iran funds and supply Hamas with weapons. The issue -- and I put it in the form of a question -- is whether Iran has something more in mind, whether they're responsible here, and whether Iran might fire up Hezbollah to try and overthrow the government in Lebanon.

COLMES: All right. If you believe that is true, and if you believe this will spread to Israel, and we don't actually fight but supply Israel, and Iran is supplying Hamas, are we then in a de facto war with Iran as a result of going -- well, you just a few moments ago said where you think this could go?

BOLTON: As I said to the other night, I think we're in a de facto war with Iran now in Iraq, because of the actions they're taking against our coalition forces there. But I think what this shows is that Iran is on a roll in the region. They're pushing out. They're not getting any pushback. If Hamas succeeds in taking over all of the West Bank and Gaza, and if Hezbollah moves in Lebanon, then I think you're going to see an Iran with more influence in the region than ever before.

COLMES: You say no push back, and I got the sense -- we've talked a number of times about this. You favor pushback. You want the United States to get involved with Iran militarily, or you think it's inevitable. And I don't see how we do that. I don't know where the personnel comes from. I don't where the money comes from. We're mired in Iraq. We have people repeating tour after tour after tour. How do we do that?

BOLTON: Well, I think, with respect to the nuclear program, that the military option is an important one. I think, with respect to the support for terrorism around the region, that there are a number of steps we can take well short of military force, but would show Iran that we're simply not going to tolerate this. For example, in the case of Lebanon, a dramatic increase in support for the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Siniora.

SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: Ambassador, welcome back to the program. I want to stay on the issue of Iran, if I can here. It was also revealed that they are supplying weaponry on the Taliban. We know they're supplying weaponry to the insurgency in Iraq. They're funding Hezbollah to the tune of $100 million a year. You confirm this supporting and funding Hamas here. We know the IAEA says they may have a nuclear weapon in three years. It almost seems imperative that we act at some point or we will regret that we missed this opportunity.

BOLTON: I think what we really need is to convince the Europeans that Iran represents a serious threat, both through its pursuit of nuclear weapons and its support of terrorist groups. And I regret to say that, to date, the Europeans simply do not see the Iranian threat the way we do.

HANNITY: Where do we see any support from the European community, with Tony Blair exiting? We do have, I guess, a little bit of hope with Sarkozy in France. There seems to be a shift in attitude there. But where will the support come from, if they don't see the nature of the threat at this point?

BOLTON: Well, I think, on Iran's nuclear weapons program, at some point somebody in Europe has to say, "You know, we've been trying this for four years. We've tried this behavioral approach," which is what they call trying to change Iran's behavior, and Iran's behavior isn't changed. After four years of failure, I think it's time to call it quits. And it may well be, with Sarkozy assuming the presidency in France, there's a chance of that.

HANNITY: Well, we see more than that. We see the pursuit of nuclear weapons escalating more and more every day. The incendiary rhetoric continues towards Israel in particular. As we're watching these events unfold here, my great fear is Israel will be drawn in, and that could end up being Israel versus Iran by proxy in some way. Is that possible?

BOLTON: Well, I think it is Israel versus Iran by proxy already with respect to Hamas. It was last summer with respect to Hezbollah. The question is whether there is a grand plan here by Iran or these are simply local conflicts that have gotten out of control. I don't think we have the evidence one way or the other at this point.

HANNITY: This, though, has the potential of really getting out of control, no?

BOLTON: Well, if it escalates in several different places at the same time. But I think on Iran's mind is the fact they've pushed against the United States. We have not pushed back. They took British hostages, and they got a softly, softly response from Britain.

HANNITY: Let me ask this last question. If Israel is drawn into this conflict, we have to support Israel, do we not?

BOLTON: There's no doubt about it. And if Israeli settlers on the West Bank are threatened by a Hamas-Fatah civil war, there's no doubt the Israelis will take strong action to defend their own citizens.

COLMES: If you're Iran, and you hear this incendiary rhetoric toward Iran from certain people in the United States about how we have to take military action, what would you do if you're Iran?

BOLTON: Well, I wish they worried that much about me anymore, but I don't think that's really what motivates...

COLMES: But you're not the only one saying this. Does Iran respond to this incendiary rhetoric?

BOLTON: You know, Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons for close...

(CROSSTALK)

BOLTON: That has nothing to do with incendiary...

(CROSSTALK)

COLMES: But they're going to feel they've got to defend themselves if they think an attack is imminent and people...

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: Stop saying you're going to wipe Israel off the map.

BOLTON: I think that they went well beyond that over a period of decades by supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Condi Rice calls them the world's central banker of terrorism.

COLMES: She's also negotiating with them. But we...

BOLTON: Actually she's not yet.

(CROSSTALK)

COLMES: Thank you, Ambassador, we've got to run. We thank you very much.


Recapture of the Philadelphi Route Is Proposed to stop the Hamas Horror Show from Moving forward
June 17, 2007
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1283

More and more Israeli commentators are frankly admitting that Israel's pull-out from Gaza in the summer of 2005 was an open invitation to the forces of radical Islam to set up house in the defenseless territory. Now, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, foreign minister Tzipi Livni and the rest of their Kadima party who presided over that withdrawal are building new castles in the sky to vindicate that error.

Hamas has not triumphed, they say, but offered Israel the chance of a fresh start to separate Gaza, a mere "terrorist entity," from the West Bank. There, a Hamas-free regime led by Abbas is a fit partner for peace diplomacy.

With this fallacious thesis, Olmert is on his way to a three-day visit to the United States including talks with President George W. Bush as the White House Tuesday, June 17.

It was this thinking that led him to heed the advice, which DEBKAFile's military sources report came from chief of staff Lt. Gen Gaby Ashkenazi -- and was opposed by the OC Southern Command Brig. Gen Yoav Galant -- to refrain from interfering in the Hamas takeover. His predecessor, Dan Halutz, likewise played down the Hizballah threat from Lebanon until it was too late.

Rather than getting to grips with the Gaza crisis, Olmert shored up his cabinet and political strength by designating the newly-elected Labor leader Ehud Barak defense minister to mind the store in his absence. The onus is now on the new minister, a former prime minister, to come up with an ingenious remedy for restoring Israel's security initiative and deterrence, however belatedly.

A former Israeli national security adviser Gen (ret.) Giora Eiland argues now that the influx of tons of smuggled weapons and explosives into Gaza Strip must be halted at any price. There is a real danger of Hamas importing reinforcements from Syria and Lebanon for its next offensive. Egypt will, as usual, stand aside.

Eiland was the only defense official at the time to oppose disengagement as a recipe for bringing Iran and al Qaeda to Israel's borders. Having been proved correct, he now proposes to limit the damage by recapturing the Philadelphi route and the southern outskirts of Palestinian Rafah, flatten the houses there and evict 15,000-20,000 people.

Gaza must be cut off from Israel to block Hamas and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors' path to a second victory on the West Bank.

The cutoff would apply to humanitarian aid. Let the Arab world deal this time with Gaza's distress and pump aid to the Rafah crossing via Egypt.

Eiland allows for an international outcry, argues Israel is left with no choice at this late date but to break some eggs. This option would give Israel the chance to start combating Hamas at a point from which the IDF enjoys a position of strength. The Philadelphi route offers that point.

Olmert is meanwhile pursuing other plans.

One is for an international force to police Gaza's Philadelphi border route with. Egypt must play its part by halting arms smuggling. This is a non-starter. No sane government would expose its soldiers to the unbridled violence in the Gaza Strip, even if Hamas agreed. And Egypt has never lifted a finger to stop arms smuggling through Sinai and is not about to change its spots.

Still, Olmert will discuss this and other knee-jerk remedies with President Bush, including the tightening of the financial squeeze by Western powers and Arab governments on Hamas and placing Gaza under siege. Olmert can expect a sympathetic hearing from a president who is grappling with his own reverses in Iraq and now in Lebanon. He will no doubt follow Washington's lead in releasing frozen funds withheld from the Hamas-led Palestinian government in the past to Abbas and his No. 2, Mohammed Dahlan, who made sure of arriving in Ramallah only after the Gaza debacle was over.

But that does not mean the makeshift strategy Olmert & Co. have cooked up can be made to work any better than their previous, largely passive, policies.

DEBKAFile's Middle East analysts point to six fallacies in their thinking:

1. Hamas is not short of cash. The people of Gaza are in deep distress because that cash is not spent on feeding them or creating jobs but on the tools of war for Hamas' Executive Force. The Islamist group is subsidized by Iran, Damascus and other Arab and Muslim states. Suitcases full of banknotes pass through the Rafah crossing. The Islamist lords of Gaza will no more be starved into submission than Iran is cowed by sanctions to give up its nuclear ambitions (another item on Olmert's White House agenda).

Hamas' masked gunmen can be seen every day smartly outfitted in clean black uniforms, brandishing new weapons with no shortage of ammunition and carrying personal gear in top condition. These sinister fighters are professional and disciplined. None look underfed.

2. Pouring US and Israeli hopes and investments into the Abbas-Dahlan outfit ended in disaster in Gaza. The Fatah-forces built and trained under the supervision of an American general were utterly humiliated in Gaza. Any hope of their coming up to scratch in a second round on the West Bank, which is bound to follow, is a pipe dream.

3. Not only Iran and Syria, but six Arab governments, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, refuse to cut their ties with the Hamas regime or hold back funds. So forget about an Arab boycott of Hamas. Forget also about a siege; it never works.

For Abbas, the unkindest cut of all was Qatar's announcement at the Arab League foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo Friday, that it would not recognize the emergency government Mahmoud Abbas is installing in Ramallah with Salim Fayyad at its head. Abbas' main base of residence and personal business is located in Doha.

The Arab League's resolution carried Friday contained another painful barb: The Palestinians were called on to respect the legitimacy of Abbas' leadership but also of the Legislative Council where Hamas holds a majority. This cut the ground from under Abbas' emergency administration. To gain legitimacy and Arab recognition, Ismail Haniyeh's Gaza government needs only to wield its majority in the Legislative Council.

4. The premise that Fatah forces are strong on the West Bank compared with their weakness in Gaza is another illusion floated to corroborate Olmert's reading of the Palestinian crisis. After losing the Gaza Strip, masked Fatah gunmen seized several hundred Hamas officials and stormed Hamas-controlled parliament, government and local council premises across the West Bank. But they do not have the popular leverage for purging Hamas' influence in the key West Bank towns of Greater Nablus, Tulkarm, Qaiqilya, Ramallah, Hebron and East Jerusalem. There, Hamas is not only popular, but works hand in glove with radical factions of Abbas' own Fatah al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, who like Hamas are in the pay of Iran, Syria and Hizballah.

One Israeli parliamentarian said Abbas had been reduced to being "mayor of Ramallah."

5. Neither Hamas nor its generous sponsors in Tehran and Damascus intend to stop at the Gazan border. When the moment is opportune, they will go for the West Bank too and unite both under fundamentalist Islamic rule which will then be armed for its next target, Israel.

6. Mahmoud Abbas faces criticism in his own party for spurning hardline Hamas politburo leader Khaled Meshaal's overtures. The influential terrorist lifer, Marwan Barghouti, and the former Preventive Intelligence chief, Jibril Rajoub, urge him to reach an understanding with Hamas leaders in Gaza and Damascus.

Abbas was never one for a clear course of action and is therefore unpredictable. But both he and his Hamas rival Meshaal seem to be saying in the last 24 hours that a straight divorce of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is undesirable. Therefore some give and take is on the cards.

By the time the Israeli prime minister reaches the White House, therefore, he may have been overtaken by events and the separation of Palestinian territories he hailed as a fresh start may have evaporated as a working hypothesis.


N. Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona comes under sudden Katyusha rocket attack from Lebanon. No casualties
June 17, 2007
http://www.debka.com/

Three 107mm rockets were suddenly fired Sunday afternoon from a point between Al Adisa and Taiba villages inside Lebanon, apparently by a Palestinian group. Residents on the Israeli side of the border rushed for bomb shelters for the first time since the Lebanon War ended eleven months ago.

Two rockets damaged a factory and a parked vehicle in separate parts of Kiryat Shemona. One landed near a UNIFIL position inside Lebanon. Hizballah claims IDF artillery positions opened fire from Mt. Dov in the eastern sector. Northern Galilee is on the alert for further attacks.


Lebanese army helicopters fire four guided air-to-ground missiles at radical positions in northern refugee camp
June 17, 2007
DEBKAFile -- We start where the media stop

Lebanese army helicopters fire four guided air-to-ground missiles at radical positions in northern refugee camp Sunday

It was the second time guided missiles had been used against Fatah al-Islam and their pro-Damascus allies in the Nahr al-Bared camp under siege for a month.

The two French-made Gazelle helicopters were provided by the United Arab Emirates.


Moscow Releases Nuclear Fuel for Iran's Bushehr Reactor
June 12, 2007
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1281

Russian president Vladimir Putin put teeth in his threats and his cynically helpful alternative suggestions regarding the deployment of US missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly 304 disclosed on June 8 that the week before the G8 opened in Germany, Moscow released the long-withheld nuclear fuel for Iran's atomic reactor in Bushehr. It was delivered 24 hours before Israel launched its new military imaging satellite Ofeq-7, bringing forward the Iranian threat to Israel, according to DEBKAFile's military sources. One immediate result has been the stiffening of Tehran's negative posture, sparking what nuclear watchdog director Mohammed ElBaradei called Monday, June 11, a confrontation that needs to be urgently defused.

As DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported, special nuclear containers were loaded on a train in the yard of the manufacturers JSC Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant on June 2-3. They contained two types of nuclear fuel, WER-440 and WER-1000.

The special train then headed out of Novosibirsk to Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea, 2,000 km away. There, the containers awaited loading aboard a Russian ship destined for Bandar Anzili, the Iranian military port on the Caspian shore. According to our Iranian sources, a fleet of Iranian trucks was waiting at the other end outside Bandar Anzili port to transport the nuclear fuel and drive it slowly and carefully to Bushehr, a distance of 850km, arriving June 10 or 11.

But DEBKAFile's sources added the journey was interrupted by holdups ordered by the Kremlin in an episode which also laid bare the interdependence of Iran's nuclear industry and Tehran's program for arming Syria for war with Israel with the latest Russian munitions.

Arguments over payments due from Tehran have dogged relations with Moscow before and Putin is far from trusting.

A few days before the nuclear fuel left the Siberian factory, Tehran delivered the sum of $327m for a fresh delivery of Russian missiles to Syria. Iran pledged another $438m for further arms consignments before the fuel cargo was allowed to go forward. Putin then ordered the cargo to be loaded at Astrakhan, but await delivery in port until payment was made.

DEBKAFile picks up the story Tuesday, June 12, and reports that Iran duly deposited the money and the ship was permitted to set sail and cross the Caspian Sea to Iran.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly went on to report that Putin never promised Bush that Russia would deny Iran the nuclear fuel for its Bushehr reactor in perpetuity, as some administration circles in Washington have claimed in the last two years. He did assure Washington, mainly in conversations with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, that he would postpone delivery as long as he could, despite Moscow's contractual commitments to Tehran.

The Bush administration's plan to deploy missiles in East Europe made the Russian president mad enough to set this assurance aside.

His move hits the US where it hurts most: The UN Security Council meets at the end of June to approve harsher sanctions against Iran for continuing to enrich uranium in defiance of previous resolutions. The Russian fuel delivery will substantially dilute the effect of such penalties, especially when the Islamic Republic is about to clinch a deal for the acquisition of long-range ballistic missiles from North Korea (as DEBKA-Net-Weekly 300 revealed on May 11).

Putin developed a complex and well thought out retaliation strategy for America's missile deployment in East Europe.

1. A second consignment of nuclear fuel went out to India from the same Russian factory which supplied Bushehr. This was a swipe by Putin at US-Indian nuclear cooperation which it is also under attack in the US Congress. It was also meant to place Moscow at dead center of the Russian-American-Israeli contest over domination of the Indian arms market. This contest also pertains to the developing military ties between New Delhi and Tehran, which Moscow is working hard to turn to its benefit. The Kremliln has not said the last word on this contest.

2. Monday, June 4, the Russian president sent the director of the Russian Nuclear Energy Commission, Sergei Kirienko, to the Russian Interfax news agency with an announcement: "I have just visited the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant; fuel for Iran and India is ready," he said. "It will be delivered six months before the physical launch."

This statement has granted the Russian president six months' leeway for jumping whichever way he finds expedient.

It is time enough for Moscow and Washington to reach terms on the Iran issue as well as the East Europe missile deployments. If the Bush administration digs its heels in on the missile defense shield, Russian engineers employed at Bushehr will be told to go ahead and activate the reactor even before December 2007. But if Washington relents, Russian personnel can always be told to go back to dragging their feet, as Moscow did on the nuclear fuel.


Espionage Galore under a Middle East Nuclear Cloud
April 17, 2007
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1267

It sounded like a contest.

On Tuesday, April 17, the Shin Bet intelligence service reported Iranian intelligence had intensified its efforts to recruit Israelis as spies, targeting former Iranians applying for visas to visit their families. One young man had been snared and paid "expenses" for enlisting a friend in security and collecting information. The Shin Bet detained him on landing home, before he did any harm.

Two hours later, in Cairo, a nuclear engineer Mohammed Gaber, was accused by Prosecutor-General Abdul-Maquid Mahmoud of spying on Egypt's nuclear program on behalf of the Mossad, which was said to have paid him $17,000. An Irishman and Japanese were sought in connection with the affair. Israel dismissed the charge as another of Cairo's unfounded spy myths, whose dissemination was not conducive to good relations.

Neither case is isolated. Two days earlier, the Israeli-Arab parliamentarian Azmi Beshara admitted from a safe distance to the Qatar-based al Jazeera TV channel that he was under suspicion of spying for Hizballah during its war with Israel and would not be returning home any time soon.

Add on the US defense secretary Robert Gates' visits to Jordan, Israel and Egypt this week reportedly to coordinate and oversee preparations connected to a potential military operation against Iran and, in the view of DEBKAFile's intelligence sources, these espionage rumbles denote a far greater upheaval boililng up below ground.

Most can be traced one way or another to the mysterious disappearance of the Iranian general Ali Reza Asgari from Istanbul in February. Tehran's job description of the missing general -- a former deputy defense minister, who also worked with the Lebanese Hizballah in the 1980 -- is correct as far as it goes. But the failure to bring it up to date is an attempt to obfuscate the fact that, at the time of his disappearance, he headed Iran's Middle East spy networks.

The cases disclosed Tuesday may be just the tip of the iceberg, with more spy dramas on the way. But even at this early stage of a potential intelligence earthquake, certain conclusions are indicated.

Firstly, Israeli will soon have no choice but to declare Iran an enemy state and ban Israeli travel to the Islamic Republic for the first time in the 28 years since Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution. Surprisingly, Israelis are still legally permitted to visit Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran.

The Shin Bet did not need to publicize Iran's intense hunt for Israeli spies in order to stop those visits; there are other ways. The espionage case would not have been brought out in the open without the knowledge of the relevant ministers -- certainly not a graphic account of how the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, whence Gen. Asgari vanished, doubles as the distribution center for visas to Iran and a recruiting center for spies. Israelis applying for visas are obliged to deposit their Israeli passports there and issued with travel documents which gain them entry to Tehran. This process is drawn out to enable Iranian intelligence agents to make their first pitch to the targeted Israeli. It is followed up after he enters Iran.

The Shin Bet's sudden outburst of transparency indicates that the scene is being set for a major diplomatic, military or intelligence step in the summer. This time, the Israeli government will not repeat at least one of the mistakes committed in July 2006, when it refused to declare that Israel was at war and the Hizballah an enemy, even after its forces crossed in to northern Israel, kidnapped two soldiers and let loose with a Katyusha barrage.

Israel is now putting the horse before the cart and declaring Iran an enemy country before the event.

It is therefore vital to deter Israeli nationals from visiting Iran in advance of potential Middle East hostilities. If Iran is involved, even through its allies or the Hizballah, Israelis in the Islamic Republic would be in danger of being taken captive or hostage.

Israel's latest posture and precautions are likely to have the dual effect of raising Middle East tensions and placing Iran's ancient Jewish community, reduced now to 25,000, in jeopardy. "Israeli spy rings" may soon be "uncovered" by Iranian security agents.

Second, the Middle East has embarked on a nuclear arms race. It is no secret that at last month's Arab summit in Riyadh, the Saudi ruler strongly urged his fellows to unite their national nuclear programs under a single roof. Though played down, this was the summit's most important decision -- not the so-called Saudi peace plan, although it made the most waves. It was a step intended to produce an Arab nuclear option versus the Iranian weapons program.

Every aspect of the unified Arab nuclear program is therefore extraordinarily sensitive and hemmed in with exceptional security measures. Each has become a prime intelligence target -- and not only for Israel. Hence the song and dance the Egyptian prosecutor general made Tuesday of an alleged Israeli spy network said to operate out of Hong Kong, with an Irish and a Japanese agent charged with planting Israeli espionage software in Egyptian nuclear program's computers, together with an Egyptian engineer. Egyptian intelligence was making sure to warn off any Egyptian tempted to work for Israeli intelligence, just as the Shin Bet was cautioning Israelis to beware of falling into Iranian intelligence traps.

The events of a single day brought Iran and its nuclear threat into sharp relief as the most pressing issues for Israel. Relations with the Palestinians and Syria, on which so many words are poured day by day, pale in comparison.

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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BRIT BOYCOTT RINGLEADERS
Posted by Israel Academia Monitor, June 17, 2007.

This was written by Bernard Josephs and Nicole Hazan and it appeared June 14, 2007 in the Jewish Chronicle
(www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11s18&SecId=18&AId=53190&ATypeId=1).

The Jewish Chronicle (JC) identifies the key players in the escalating British campaign to boycott Israel.

The JC today identifies the key players in the escalating British campaign to boycott Israel. Our investigation shows that many are Jewish or Israeli, and that they justify their stance as part of the struggle for Palestinian rights and ending Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.

A high proportion are deeply involved in UCU, the University and College Union, which last month sparked an international outcry by voting to facilitate a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

Anti-boycott figures suggest that the campaign has been fuelled by a well-organised mix of far-left activists and Islamic organisations. In reality, the main proponents are a loosely knit collection of academics and trade unionists linked to groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for the Boycotting of Israeli Goods, and Bricup, the British Committee for Universities of Palestine.

Israeli Haim Bresheeth, professor of media and culture at the University of East London, seconded the UCU motion, which called for consideration of the morality of ties with Israeli academia and for discussions on boycotting.

Prof Bresheeth told the JC that a boycott was not an easy decision. "I am Jewish and an Israeli, and I don't wish harm on either side. But how long can this occupation go on?"

Characterising opposition to a boycott as insincere, he added: "What we are asking for is not violent. It is civil action against a military occupation."

The proposer of the UCU motion was Brighton University philosophy lecturer Tom Hickey, who stressed that should the boycott go ahead, its target would be Israeli universities rather than individual academics. Another speaker for the UCU motion was Richard Seaford, professor of classics and ancient history at Exeter University, whose former pupils include JK Rowling. In 1990, he was a signatory to a campaign against Israel's law of return. Last year, he refused to review a book for an Israeli journal because of "outrage" at Israel's "brutal and illegal expansionism."

Bricup has a large number of Jewish supporters, among them husband and wife Hilary and Steven Rose. Hilary, a professor of social policy at Bradford University, is Bricup's co-convenor alongside Prof Jonathan Rosenhead. Her husband, an Open University biology professor, is the organisation's secretary. They have been active in the boycott movement since 2002. [Editor's Note: To read more on Steven Rose, click here.

In an online article, Steven Rose wrote: "It really isn't good enough to attack the messenger as antisemitic or a self-hating Jew rather than deal with the message that Israel's conduct is unacceptable."

Prof Rosenhead, of the London School of Economics, hails from a "solid Zionist and Jewish background". Bricup, he said, had been involved in the discussions about the writing of the UCU motion. "The reaction from the community was what you would expect, but we are looking forward to the debate. It was a triumph that Israel came into existence -- but not this Israel."

Birmingham University lecturer Sue Blackwell, the figurehead of an unsuccessful attempt by UCU's predecessor, the Association of University Teachers, to force a boycott, pushed through a UCU motion calling for a moratorium on European Union research grants to Israel. In her view, the UCU had put the boycott "back on the agenda".

For more information on Anti-Israel Israeli academics, go to
http://israel-academia-monitor.com/; contact the organization by email at e-mail@israel-academia-monitor.com

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GAZA -- WHAT A SURPRISE!
Posted by Fred Reifenberg, June 16, 2007.

This article was written by Joseph Farah and it was published today on World Net Daily. It is archived at
(http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56203). Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. His latest book is Stop The Presses: The Inside Story of the New Media Revolution. He also edits the online intelligence newsletter Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, in which he utilizes his sources developed over 30 years in the news business.

Don't express myself nearly as well, nor am I anywhere as influential, BUT, I've been spouting the same things for a decade and longer. As Joseph has learned ... it's like talking to a wall.

Be sure to click on..."I've repeatedly warned..."

The U.S. State Department and the Israeli government appeasers are wringing their hands today because Hamas has consolidated its power in the Gaza Strip, executing members of the opposition and, effectively, declared all-out war on the state of Israel.

It didn't have to be this way.

It turned out this way because, under international pressure, Israel caved, capitulated and appeased these Islamo-fascist terrorist monsters, presumably thinking an act of goodwill would win the favor of a population that has been bred on hatred of Jews, Christians and the West.

It was a stupid, counter-productive decision to evacuate Jews from Gaza and turn it over to the Palestinian Authority. It showed weakness. It encouraged more terrorism, more murder, more unprovoked attacks.

It was predictable. I saw it coming. I repeatedly warned of the consequences of the action.

The only question left on the table is whether Israel and the U.S. will learn from this debacle. Will people who advocated the ethnic cleansing of Gaza see the seriousness of the miscalculation?

Weapons and financial aid provided to the Palestinian Authority by the U.S. and Israel will now be used against Israelis -- and likely against the U.S. in the form of international terrorism as well.

Al-Qaida allies now have a bona fide beachhead in the Mediterranean. They have a mini-state of their own, and they will use it as a base to win more territory. First on their agenda will be a Hamas government in the West Bank, still held by the Mahmoud Abbas Palestinian Authority.

What should be done now?

  • Israel and the U.S. should cancel all plans for moving closer to establishing a Palestinian state -- anywhere, any time.
  • Israel and the U.S. should cut off all aid to the Palestinian Authority, which has demonstrated its inability to rein in those who will never live in peace with their neighbors.
  • Israel and the U.S. should reverse all plans for disengagement in Judea and Samaria. No more Jews and Christians leave -- not now, not ever!
  • The first attack on Israel from Gaza should be greeted as an act of war and Gaza should be reconquered and reoccupied.

These will seem like harsh recommendations to some in the U.S. State Department -- even now suggesting further negotiations as a means of solving the crisis.

Gaza demonstrates vividly why you cannot compromise with evil.

Gaza demonstrates vividly what happens when the West runs up the white flag of surrender and appeasement.

Gaza demonstrates the seriousness of the stakes in the battle against Islamo-fascism in the Middle East and around the world.

Gaza should also demonstrate to all Americans it is no time to consider withdrawals under pressure in Iraq.

There is no alternative to military victory over the Islamo-fascists of al-Qaida and Hamas and Hezbollah and the Iranian regime that supports all of these groups to one extent or another.

Not another square inch of territory should be allowed to fall to them. It's time for a major counteroffensive. It's time to begin fighting to win. The enemy must be destroyed, vanquished, beaten, killed. Halfway measures will never work.

We are dealing with an uncompromising force of pure evil. That's what the coup in Gaza demonstrates.

What is the definition of insanity?

It's has been suggested it's doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

I say it's time to change course.

It's time to fight fire with fire.

Contact Fred Reifenberg at freify@gmail.com

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HAMAS MUST BE CRUSHED!
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 16, 2007.

Hamas slices through Fatah's security forces in Gaza like a knife through butter. Why does that Islamic fundamentalist militant organization act with such swagger, riding an adrenalin rush in pursuit of its unholy grail, believing itself to be invincible thus capable of redefining the nature of any Palestinian state, forcing it to conform to its own religious anti-secular misogynist mandate? Might Hamas' confidence thus strength be bolstered because Israel refuses to aggressively pursue the muscle flexing Islamic zealots, allowing them to launch deadly Qassam missiles into Sderot and neighboring Israeli enclaves, allowing frightened Israeli citizens to suffer, allowing the terrorist cadre to in effect humiliate the Jewish state with relative impunity? That is why Hamas surrenders to its ominous objective, pursues its perilous dream, a potential nightmare for Israel and indeed the civilized world! Israeli leaders in charge refuse to comprehend that a consequentially emboldened Hamas, brandishing weapons, terrorizing the perceived weakened Jewish neighbor it so despises, will only grow in strength, secure more weaponry from Iran and Syria, wreck more havoc, further morph Gaza into a bastion of Islamic fundamentalism and a safe haven for jihadists. Israel's weak reaction to an aggressive murderous terrorist organization, bent on the Jewish state's annihilation, is indeed the antithesis of a prescient strategy, the exact opposite of what Israel should be doing. Furthermore, a pusillanimous Bush Administration perhaps will huddle with Olmert, believing if Israel dismantles her towns in Judea and Samaria, ceding Israeli territory to Arabs, those ordinary so-called Palestinians will gravitate in allegiance toward Mahmoud Abbas, crediting him with that land grab, thus weaken Hamas. Nonsense! Hamas would find a way to take credit for any surrender of land, just like it took credit when Sharon abandoned Gaza. As (God forbid) Israeli citizens are forcibly evicted by an Olmert controlled IDF, itself collectively in tears, Hamas will shoot off more Qassams, wave weaponry defiantly, convince now elated Arabs that the road to success is lined with militant mosques, women and girls shrouded in burkas, suicide martyrs with more opportunities to enter Israel, thus morphing an unstable condition into one that is unbearable, indeed threatening the very existence of Israel. Furthermore, many so-called Palestinians in the so-called West Bank believe Israel to be the real power within that enclave. They suggest if Israel leaves, Fatah will not be able to maintain control, eventually ceding power to Hamas. When will Olmert and the Bush Administration realize the only way to stop Hamas from totally usurping a secular Arab social structure, now disintegrating in Gaza, potentially at risk in all lands justifiably secured by Israel in 1967, is to allow Israeli citizens and troops to remain in those lands; indeed declare them to be part of sovereign Israel in time.

Hamas' long term strength lies in its ability to raise the self-esteem of young Arabs with inferiority complexes, demonstrating it can sock it to Israel, sock it to Fatah, and someday sock it to somnambulistic pro-Palestinian anti-Israeli European nations, stupidly allowing fundamentalist Islamic creeps to metastasize through rundown neighborhoods, build Wahhabi mosques, and craft jihadist war plans. Hamas needs to be crushed now! Olmert and his Kadima party must extricate their foolish heads from the sand, comprehend the nature of jihad junkies, and stop contemplating in effect appeasement. Are they waiting for Iran to build then ship a nuke directly to Hamas? Being in denial will lead to catastrophe! A weakened Bush Administration, now obsessed with salvaging a tattered legacy, is more concerned with diplomacy, less concerned with reality. It is up to Israeli leaders to exhibit courage, take the initiative, truly represent their nation' s best interests. It is absolutely unthinkable to let Hamas continue to gain in stature, recruit more and more jihadists, become an even greater threat to regional perhaps world stability. If outer world popinjays castigate Israel, if and when the Jewish state awakens from a self-imposed stupor, invading Gaza with troops and air power, so what! No nation today is blessed with a Winston Churchill prototype. No presumably civilized nation today maintains an ounce of credibility, even allowing Islamic savages to continue committing genocide in the Darfur region of oil rich Sudan, reacting with hardly more than lip service, offering false hope with no real substance to hapless Black Muslim Africans attempting to survive under conditions no human being should suffer. If such a world is vexed by the Jewish state acting with courage, crushing a contemptible out of control stone age enemy possessing no clue concerning socially acceptable modern behavior, then so be it. Israel must do the right thing for the sake of future generations no matter what! It is an obligation that transcends all dysfunction now grimly raping mankind's sane existence. Israel must seize its own day, perhaps lighting a spark for the rest of mankind to someday follow! We can only hope!

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 larose@snip.net

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JIHAD NEWS
Posted by Michael Travis, June 16, 2007.

DEBKAFile Exclusive: Fatah activists are settling scores with Hamas in Lebanon as well as West Bank. Hamas threatens a wave of terror
June 16, 2007
Fatah lines up for revenge on West Bank

Rampaging Fatah gunmen took revenge for their defeat in Gaza on Hamas activists on the West Bank in a rampage Sat. June 16 through the Hamas-held parliament, government and local council offices on the West Bank. Hundreds of Hamas officials were detained.

Saturday night, Fatah gunmen also hurled themselves against Hamas bases and offices in Lebanese refugee camps. Serious clashes erupted near the southern port of Sidon.

DEBKAFile's military sources report that the IDF is quietly allowing Fatah intelligence officers and al Aqsa Brigades activists freedom of movement across the West Bank. They are not stopped at Israeli checkpoints and allowed to pass without the usual searches for weapons or explosives.

Hamas has warned Fatah to call off its purges in the West Bank and Lebanon or else face deadly terrorist attacks including suicide bombings, shooting attacks and car bombs. Mahmoud Abbas' government headquarters and the homes of Fatah political and military leaders will be singled out.

According to our Palestinian sources, Mohammed Dahlan, Abbas' No 2, who has just arrived secretly in Ramallah, is a prime Hamas target.

They add that Sami Abu Zuhairi, who issued the threat to Fatah, headed a group of Hamas intelligence and terrorist officers who trained near Khartoum especially for the Gaza coup under Iranian Revolutionary Guards instructors.

Abu Zuhairi now heads the intelligence team urgently sifting through the archives captured in the offices of Palestinian Authority security services, as DEBKAFile revealed on June 15. He also led the looting of Yasser Arafat's villa in Gaza Saturday in search of incriminating materials against Fatah and Israeli leaders in the records of the 12 years Arafat and top PLO leaders spent in Tunis from 1982-1994.


Looters raid Arafat's home, steal his Nobel Peace Prize
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813047962&pagename=
JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Enraged Fatah leaders on Saturday accused Hamas militiamen of looting the home of former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat in Gaza City.

A Palestinian Hamas gunman stands over pictures of Abbas and Yasser Arafat inside Abbas' personal office after it was taken over by Hamas in fighting in Gaza City. (Photo: AP)

"They stole almost everything inside the house, including Arafat's Nobel Peace Prize medal," said Ramallah-based Fatah spokesman Ahmed Abdel Rahman. "Hamas militiamen and gangsters blew up the main entrance to the house before storming it. They stole many of Arafat's documents and files, gifts he had received from world leaders and even his military outfits."

Abdel Rahman said the attackers also raided the second floor of the house and stole the personal belongings of his widow, Suha, and daughter, Zahwa. "They stole all the widow's clothes and shoes," he added. "They also took Arafat's pictures with his daughter."

Eyewitnesses told The Jerusalem Post that dozens of Palestinians participated in the raid, which took place late Friday.

"Most of the looters were just ordinary citizens," they said. "They stole almost everything, including furniture, tiles, water pipes, closets and beds."

According to the Fatah spokesman, the raid on Arafat's house, which has been empty since 2001, occurred despite promises from Syria-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal to prevent such an attack.

"The Palestinian people will never forgive the Hamas gangs for looting the home of the Palestinian people's great leader, Yasser Arafat," Abdel Rahman said. "This crime will remain a stain of disgrace on the forehead of Hamas and its despicable gangs."

The homes of several other Fatah leaders have also been looted over the past few days, Palestinian reporters in Gaza City said over the weekend. Among them are the homes of Muhammad Dahlan and Intisar al-Wazir (Um Jihad).

Wazir complained that looters stole her jewelry, furniture, clothes and family albums and the personal belongings of her husband, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), a top PLO leader who was assassinated by Israel in 1988 in Tunis.

She said the looting occurred in broad daylight and under the watchful eye of Hamas militiamen. "We don't feel secure any more," she said. "We fear for our lives and property."

The Popular Resistance Committees, an alliance of various armed groups, announced over the weekend that its men stormed Dahlan's house and confiscated a suitcase full of gold, forged US and Pakistani passports and an ID card belonging to Nissim Toledano, an Israeli Border Police officer from Lod who was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in December 1992.

Following the raid, hundreds of Palestinians rampaged the house and stole all of Dahlan's furniture and clothes.

Dahlan and some 80 top Fatah officials are now staying in hotels in Ramallah. On Friday night, a group of 15 senior Fatah security commanders arrived in the city after Israel gave them permission to leave the Gaza Strip. At least 150 other Fatah security commanders and activists have fled to Egypt aboard fishing boats.

The Fatah officials who fled to Ramallah had been abducted by Hamas militiamen late Thursday night and released a few hours later. They include Jamal Kayed, commander of the PA's National Security Force; Musbah al-Buhaisi, commander of Abbas's Presidential Guard, and his deputy, Hamoudeh al-Sheikh; Tawfik Abu Khoussa, Fatah's spokesman in the Gaza Strip; and Majed Abu Shamalah, a Fatah legislator.

"What's happening in the Gaza Strip these days reminds me of the first days after the US invasion of Baghdad," said Omar al-Ghul, a columnist from Gaza City. "In Baghdad, the Iraqis stole everything they could get their hands on inside Iraqi ministries and institutions. And in Gaza City the Palestinians stormed security installations and stole everything, including windows, doors and food."

[Editor's Note: Little Green Footballs pointed out "That will save the Nobel Committee the trouble of awarding Hamas the prize; they already have one!"]

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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ISRAEL AS A DEMOCRACY-FOR-HIRE
Posted by Nurit Greenger, June 16, 2007.

No matter how painful things are in Israel, Moledet Party MK, Arieh Eldad MD, always tells it as it is. Eldad posts a weekly Hebrew column in one of the Israeli newspapers. English translation, such as this one, is available upon request. The article below was published June 14, 2007

MK Arieh Eldad word must be heard by as many!

Reading this article tears one more nerve in my body...Israel, Israel, Israel, what is happening to you!?

There are all kinds of democracies in the world -- some are republics, some are liberal, some have kings; and there are different electoral systems -- some based on regional elections, some based on proportional representation, some based on a simple majority vote. Unlike all these, Israel seems to be unique: It is a democracy-for-hire.

In October 2000, thousands of Arabs rioted in the north of the country. The Israeli police used clubs, horses, tear gas, and live ammunition to put down this attempt at rebellion. When the clouds cleared, there were thirteen dead; then Prime Minister Ehud Barak was forced to squirm when he testified before the Ohr Commission charged with investigating the behavior of the police and its snipers. Without waiting for the commission's conclusions, Barak was proclaimed an "enemy of the people" by Israel's Arab sector.

Seven years later, it was thousands of Arabs on the Labor Party membership rolls who tilted the scales to determine that Barak will be the next defense minister of Israel. The choice was between Barak, a former commander of Sayeret Matkal (the army's elite General Staff Reconnaissance unit) and Ami Ayalon, a former commander of the Navy Commandos, and it was obviously not an easy choice for the Arabs of Majd-al-Krum. They knew that if there was a building that had to be broken into, and if that building had a door and a window, it was said of Barak that he would go in through the airconditioner; while Ami Ayalon would try to go in through the pipes riding a miniature submarine. Faced with these two approaches to military doctrine, the Arabs of Majd-al-Krum chose Barak's military doctrine, by a vote of 210 -- 0. It is comforting to see that the Arab hatred for Barak has been transformed to love, and the Arab's have apparently belatedly acknowledged the benficial role played by police snipers in the Israeli democracy. It is sad to say, but the rhetorical talents of Fuad ben Eliezer undoubtedly played their role in winning over the Arab sector for Barak; 2,650 votes -- less than the number of Arab rioters at the Um el Fahm Junction, whether or not you count the dead -- was the gap between Ayalon and Barak. The wonders of Israeli democracy! A few talented party hacks hired to collect the votes in the Arab sector essentially determined who the next Israeli defense minister would be.

A few hours after the Labor Party primary results were broadcast, I had the privilege of participating in electing the president of the country. The cliches bandied about concerning this being a celebration of Israeli democracy just don't fly. We have had too much of presidents like Ezer Weizmann and Moshe Katzav in the last few years, and now we got Shimon Peres, who in order to finance his last campaign -- for a different job -- received hundreds of thousands of dollars of debatable legitimacy, the stench of which could be smelled at a distance. Nonetheless, one might think it a bit of a consolation that 120 members of Knesset elected by millions of Israeli citizens voted for the president. This even looks like a personal vote in a direct election without those hired to collect votes; and the secrecy of the vote was maintained despite Peres' scandalous attempt to enact a special law to lift the veil of secrecy. And only because the voting booth's curtain concealed my vote, is it still secret that I voted for Member of Knesset Ruby Rivlin.

But a careful consideration of the situation reveals the truth: Nothing was celebratory or clean here. Sixty-five out of 120 members of Knesset were not chosen by the people. In parties like Kadima, Israel Beitenu, Shas, the Pensioners, Agudat Israel, and in some of the parties which are members of the National Union, there was no canvassing of party members enabling them to elect party officials or determine who would run on the party slate. These slates were put together by a party leader, a rabbi, or a small appointments committee in a closed smoke-filled room. In other words, a form of the hack hired to bring in the voters; in which case, someone who can be hired or bought in support of this or that candidate. And only the booth's curtain still separates the democracy of Israel from a labor union of these hired vote collectors.

I heard the Nobel Prize winner Professor Israel Aumann speaking at a conference of the Movement for the Quality of Government in Jerusalem say, "There is no crisis of leadership in Israel. The blame is not with the leadership but with our people who chose these leaders." And the people chose its leaders, most of them failures, some of them quite crooked. The majority of the Israeli people today want to replace the Olmert Administration, but now those hired to collect the votes in the Arab Sector have determined that Barak will be the minister of defense, and he will join the Cabinet to strengthen Olmert's hand. Based on Barak's ambiguous declarations during the Labor primaries, no one knows if he intends to withdraw his party from the government and bring about new elections. Once he is minister of defense, he is unlikely to move very quickly in that direction. Thus, a few thousand Israeli Arabs, members of the Labor party, essentially decided this week that the Olmert government will stay in power. This certainly represents the Arab interest.

Among the unique contributions of the people of Israel to the world: Monotheism, the Book of Books, the Kibbutz, medicine for Multiple Scelorsis, and the trust-me-it'll-be-alright syndrome -- we now give a place of honor to a new form of democracy, the democracy-for hire.

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com. Visit her blog:
http://ngthinker.typepad.com

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PALESTINIAN ARABS FLEE TO ISRAEL
Posted by Michael Travis, June 16, 2007.

This comes from today's Little Green Footballs website
(littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=25874_Palestinians_Flee_to_Israel&only).

According to the international left and the paleo-right, Israel is a fascist apartheid state, a brutal occupier, universally despised by the oppressed Palestinian people.

So where do the oppressed Palestinians look for sanctuary, when the terrorist government they elected begins the inevitable slaughter?

Palestinians run as they try to cross to the Israel side at the Erez Crossing, in the northern Gaza Strip, Saturday, June 16, 2007. Dozens of Palestinians converged on the Erez crossing with Israel on Saturday, trying to leave the Gaza Strip following Hamas' takeover. At the same time, hundreds of people looted police positions on the Palestinian side of Erez, and at one point Israeli troops fired in the air to keep the crowd at bay. The looters walked off with furniture and scrap metal. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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WHAT PRESIDENT BUSH SHOULD SAY ABOUT AND TO THE PALESTINIAN ARABS
Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, June 16, 2007.

Dear friends,

These days, one recalls Abba Eban's wise observation that "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

It also makes a rivetting reading to return to President Bush's vision, outlined in his 2002 speech, as he launched the (in)famous Road Map. Road Map to oblivion one might add.

Even more bizare is the fact that despite all the glaring evidence, some lefty loonatics (some of which serve in the Israeli government) continue to believe in negotiated peace with those whose only goal has ALWAYS been the complete destruction of the State of Israel. These self destructing crazy people managed to fulfill part of their agenda to unilaterally abandon Jewish territories and hand them over to the enemy. ONLY IN ISRAEL, we should say...

Look at the carnage the "Palestinians" (and for that matter the Iraqis) inflict upon themselves and try to imagine what would happen if God forbid they ever managed to defeat Israel.

Here is Caroline Glick's latest article, entitled "The President Speaks." It appeared June 14, 2007 in the Jerusalem Post
(www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813034775&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull). Some of us continue to be proven right day after day after day.

Within her superb article, Ms. Glick suggest a text for a speech President Bush should carry today, five years after his Road Map speech that we, who understood, feared so much at the time...I colored it in blue. Would President Bush have the vision and the courage to carry such a speech while PM Olmert is standing next to him next week?

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's meeting with US President George W. Bush next week is supposed to serve as a preparatory stage ahead of a planned presidential address on the Palestinian conflict with Israel. According to media reports, Bush believes that five years after his last speech on the subject on June 24, 2002, the time has come for an updated assessment of the situation.

A lot has happened in the last five years both in Israel and in Palestinian society. A good way to understand our present circumstances is to recall that last speech, where Bush laid out his "vision" to bring peace to the Middle East by establishing an independent, democratic Palestinian state next to Israel on the west bank of the Jordan River on land that the League of Nations mandated in 1922 was to be reserved for the Jewish homeland.

Indeed, the president's words speak for themselves. Addressing the Palestinians, Bush said: "Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born.

"I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty."

"A Palestinian state will never be created by terror -- it will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change, or veiled attempts to preserve the status quo."

"The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure."

Addressing the Arab states and the Palestinians, Bush said: "To be counted on the side of peace, nations must act. Every leader actually committed to peace will end incitement to violence in official media, and publicly denounce homicide bombings. Every nation actually committed to peace will stop the flow of money, equipment and recruits to terrorist groups seeking the destruction of Israel -- including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah. Every nation actually committed to peace must block the shipment of Iranian supplies to these groups, and oppose regimes that promote terror, like Iraq. And Syria must choose the right side in the war on terror by closing terrorist camps and expelling terrorist organizations."

Addressing Israel, the president said, "Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop."

Bush concluded, "This moment is both an opportunity and a test for all parties in the Middle East: an opportunity to lay the foundations for future peace; a test to show who is serious about peace and who is not."
 

ISRAEL RESPONDED enthusiastically to the president's challenge. Successive governments froze expansion of Jewish communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines. The limitations placed on Jewish building are so draconian that even in cities like Ariel and Ma'aleh Adumim, people cannot receive building permits.

Not only did Israel freeze building in Judea and Samaria, Israel expelled all Israeli residents of Gaza and northern Samaria in order to render the areas Jew-free to the Palestinians. The people of Israel elected leaders who endorsed Bush's vision of denying the rights of of Jews to live in the territories he has set aside for a prospective Palestinian state.

For their part, the Palestinians held open and free elections in January 2006. They chose to deny parliamentary representation to non-terrorists, and placed Hamas at the head of the Palestinian Authority. They turned newly Jew-free Gush Katif, which Israel surrendered unconditionally, into terror training camps. They turned the ruins of the communities of northern Gaza into launch pads for missile and rocket attacks against Ashkelon and Sderot. They turned the abandoned international border between Gaza and the Sinai into a global jihadist highway through which terrorists from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hizbullah, Hamas and al-Qaida, as well as massive quantities of armaments have flooded into Gaza.

For the residents of Gaza, who overwhelmingly support Hamas, the situation has become particularly dire. Since foreign correspondents have abandoned the area, no one seems to notice or care about the fact that in Gaza today, children are murdered in front of their parents, passengers are removed from cars and shot in the streets, and doctors are murdered in hospitals as patients are violently removed from life support systems and taken out of operating rooms. No one bats a lash as jihadists bomb pubs and Internet cafes. No one hears as Gazans pray for a return of the so-called "occupation."

Egypt serves as a principal support base for the Palestinian terror networks by enabling the flow of terrorists and arms into Gaza and by acting as a central hub of annihilationist anti-Semitic propaganda. Saudi Arabia oversaw the establishment of the Palestinian unity government, which transformed Fatah into a junior partner in the Hamas government that carries out terrorism and enjoys the financial support of the Saudis and the Iranians (and Norwegians).

Iran and its client state Syria call the shots for the Palestinians today. As last summer's war demonstrated, in the wake of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, the Iranians were able to unify the Palestinian and Lebanese fronts in the global jihad. Iran manages both fronts while it proceeds unfettered in its quest for atomic bombs. Syria daily issues threats of war. And both countries oversee the insurgency in Iraq.

So of all the components of Bush's vision for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the only one that has been implemented is his demand that Israel freeze building activities in Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines.
 

WERE OLMERT to devote his meeting with Bush to reciting a summary of these cold, hard facts, he would be doing an important, even vital service to the country.

Were the president to receive and accept a credible report on the situation on the ground from Israel's prime minister, Bush's next speech would have to look something like this:

Five years ago, I set out my vision for peace between the Arab world, and particularly the Palestinian people and Israel. I still believe in my vision of a new democratic, antiterrorist state of Palestine committed to the rule of law and human rights and living side by side in peace with the existing democratic, antiterrorist, human-rights respecting, law-abiding State of Israel.

Tragically, developments over the past five years demonstrate that today, it is impossible to realize this vision and, therefore, the time has come to set it aside.

Although the Palestinians have received more foreign aid per capital than the nations of Europe under the Marshall Plan, rather than use the international community's support to embrace liberty and build a working democracy, the Palestinians have built legions of terror.

With US support, the Palestinians held free elections in January 2006. Rather than choose leaders not compromised by terror, the Palestinians preferred to choose the Hamas and other terrorist organizations to lead them. By so choosing, the Palestinians showed the world that they reject peace and have chosen the path of terror and war.

While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has publicly condemned acts of terror and murder, in spite of the generous support he has received from the United States and Israel, to date he has opted not to effectively combat terror. Rather than educate his nation to embrace peace and tolerance, Abbas has overseen the Palestinian Authority school system, which teaches the children of Palestine to choose death over life and to seek Israel's destruction rather than the establishment of a free, democratic state that would live at peace with Israel.

This past June, Abbas decided to form a unity government with Hamas. By doing so, Abbas effectively abandoned peace as a strategy.

Five years ago I said, "The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure."

Since none of the Palestinian leaders are engaging in a sustained fight against terrorists, the United States recognizes that today Israel has no partner for peace. I am left with no choice but to withdraw American support for Palestinian statehood at this time.

Since Israel has no peace partner, it is clear that the Israelis must take the necessary steps to protect themselves. Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Gaza's international border with Egypt has turned into a thoroughfare for global terror with arms and personnel coming in from Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and beyond. I am disappointed with the fact that to date, Egypt has taken no effective action to block the terror traffic from its territory into the Palestinian Authority.

The United States looks with worry on the emerging situation in Gaza. I view the transformation of Gaza into a base for global terror not simply as a threat to Israel, but as a threat to international security. As a result, the United States will understand and support an Israeli operation aimed at restoring Israeli control over the international border.

Furthermore, Israelis have the right to live free of fear of missile and rocket attacks on their towns and villages. Today's situation, where Israeli communities bordering Gaza are exposed to daily barrages of mortars and rockets launched by terrorists in Gaza, is unacceptable and intolerable.

Over the past two years since Israel withdrew from Gaza, I have come to recognize a flaw in the two-state model. Until now, one of the guiding assumptions of the two-state model is that the Israeli settlements located beyond the 1949 armistice lines constitute an obstacle to peace. But we see that the evacuation of the settlements in Gaza and the northern West Bank only caused a further radicalization of Palestinian society.

Aside from that, it is time to recognize that the Palestinian demand to establish a state on land emptied of all Jewish presence is an immoral demand. It is impossible to expect that the Palestinians will conduct internal reforms when the international community gives them the legitimacy to base their nationalism on ethnic cleansing and the rejection of the humanity and moral rights of the Jewish nation. As a result, and without prejudicing future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, today the United States recognizes the right of Israelis and Palestinians to build their communities in a manner that provides for the natural growth of their populations.

The forces in the Palestinian Authority who fight Israel, and who educate their children to seek death by terror, are supported by the same states that support Hizbullah in Lebanon and the insurgents in Iraq. Iran and Syria cannot expect that their support for terror in Israel, Lebanon and Iraq will go unnoticed. While Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issues near daily threats to wipe Israel off the map, and Syria threatens Israel with war, they both must understand that Israel is an ally and a friend of the United States. We support Israel and its right to defend itself.

We hope that the day will finally come when the Palestinian people reject terror and hatred and embrace democracy and peace. On that day, the American people will be proud to look to the Palestinians to join the people of Israel and so many other nations of the world as our allies and friends.

Yuval Zaliouk writes the Truth Provider columns. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il

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ARAB IMAM: ROOT CAUSE OF ARAB TERRORISM: CULTURE OF HATRED IN ARAB WORLD
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 15, 2007.

Below are excerpts from "The Root Cause of Terrorism is The Culture of Hate," written by a Qatari Reformist, Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari. The text is archived at MEMRI
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD162507

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Contact them by email at memri@memri.org and visit the website at www.memri.org

Admittedly, Dr. Abd-el-Hamed al-Ansari is a reformist, and even in modern and moderate Qatar (home of el-Jazeera), Arab/Muslim reformists do not make friends, influence people, or live long and prosper.

None the less, I love validation, and his validation, based on his understanding of Islam and his perception of the reality of the modern Arab and Muslim world, is very important.

For those of you foolish enough to have neglected to memorize my earlier essay on this topic, click here.

Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of the shari'a and law faculty at Qatar University, has recently published several articles in Gulf papers about terrorism and its root cause. According to Al-Ansari, terrorism is the outcome of a culture of hatred in the Arab countries, and in order to eliminate it, the culture of hate must be eliminated.

The following are excerpts from the articles:

Baseless Excuses for Terrorism

In an article titled 'How the Arabs Explain the Terror Phenomenon' in the Qatari daily Al-Raya, Al-Ansari criticized the ways in which the Arab world denies and ignores the phenomenon of terrorism, and refuted the political and socio-economic arguments justifying it:

'...I don't understand the personality split in some people; they depict the terrorist in Iraq as a martyr and a resistance fighter...How can we term someone a martyr when he blows up schools and hospitals, does not respect the sanctity of religious sites, and, worse, blows himself up in restaurants and bus stations full of workers?!...

'Why has the terrorist violence increased? And why has it reached a level of such madness and barbarism? Why aren't we managing to deal with it and handle it? Why is there a rise in terror operations targeting innocents?!

'In my view, the [answer] lies in our inability to explain the phenomenon of terrorism, and to break it down into its structural internal causes and into the environmental elements that support its existence. [This inability] emanates from the following three main causes that are common in the Arab arena as explanations for terrorism:

'The first is the discourse of denial... that is, exonerating Muslims from [any] accusation of [perpetrating] terror operations, and [instead] accusing their enemies -- usually the Mossad and U.S. intelligence. An extensive sector of prominent clerics, intellectual elites, and the masses are still convinced that 9/11 was a Mossad or U.S. intelligence operation... Likewise, many deny that Al-Zarqawi [ever] existed, and blame Israel and the U.S. for what is going on in Iraq.

'The second cause is the discourse of defensiveness, as manifested in repeated statements that terrorism has no religion, homeland or nationality, but is a transient virus that is alien [to the Arab world] -- or that Islam is innocent [of terrorism].

'The third cause is the discourse of justification, which is extremely common in the religious and media outlets. This discourse tries to link terrorism with political factors, international conflicts or internal socio-economic factors -- saying that terrorism is the outcome of political repression by some regimes that strangle freedoms and are hostile to democracy or that terrorism is a response to American and Western injustices, to the policy of discrimination [against Muslims], to the blind pro-Israel bias, and to the global conspiracy against the Muslims...

'There are also those who excuse terrorism because of unemployment and poverty, or use as an excuse the spread of corruption, permissiveness, women's adorning themselves in public, [and women's] attaining political rights and being appointed to senior positions, which is considered perverse in the eyes of those [who excuse terrorism].

'All these excuses are baseless. First, we are not the only nation that suffers from injustice -- after all, nations and peoples in Africa, America, and Asia suffer from graver injustice than we.

'Second, throughout Muslim history -- from the days of the Righteous Caliphs to our own time -- injustice on the part of Muslims against other Muslims is greater than the injustices on the part of the enemies [of the Muslims] against them.

'Third, throughout history it has not been proven that any terrorist operation has [ever] restored what was plundered or achieved any political goal.

With regard to [the claim that] the lack of democracy and freedoms causes terrorism, [the fact is that] nothing in any of Al-Qaeda's publications includes any demands for democracy -- and furthermore, Al-Qaeda hates democracy and sees it as heresy.

'With regard to the [excuse of] unemployment, this claim is contradicted by the good [financial] situation of Al-Qaeda's leaders and members, as well as of [other terrorists] who possess funds, ammunition, weapons, and equipment.

'Likewise, many peoples, past and present, have suffered from difficult situations -- yet they have not pushed their sons to blow themselves up among innocents as we do. I am certain that if the American occupation were to disappear tomorrow, terrorism in Iraq would not stop -- indeed, it would become even more violent and barbaric.

'With regard to the Palestinian problem, none of the plans and publications of the terrorist groups include any demand connected in any way to Palestine. And as to women's leaving their homes and adorning themselves in public -- how can this possibly explain why terrorism has invaded Saudi Arabia?...

'As long as we do not adopt a self[-critical] approach, the malady [of terrorism] will remain, and will even get worse...'(1)

Terrorism -- The Outcome of a Culture of Hatred

In an article titled 'How to Make Our Young People Love Life' in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa, Dr. Al-Ansari stated that it is the culture of hatred and extremism in the Arab countries that causes terrorism:

'Terrorism is the fruit of hatred -- hatred of life, hatred of civilization and the [modern] era, hatred of society and state, hatred of living people. The young people who have become tools of murder and human bombs are the sons of the culture of hatred, and the outcome of a fanatical culture and extremist ideology that sees life, its pleasures, and its beauty as unimportant. Ultimately the political, economic, social, and religious motives that push [the young people] to blow themselves up lie in a single main cause -- and that is the culture of hatred.

'These young people, at the age of flowering, have become the enemies of their society, avenging, hating, and exploding. They are our terrorist sons, raised in our bosoms, suckled by our culture, taught in our schools, and taught religious law from our religious pulpits and by the fatwas of our clerics.

'What, then, has made them prefer death to life? I have no answer except the fact that we have not managed to make them love life. We have taught them to die for the sake of Allah, but we have not taught them to love, to build, to create, and to help society for the sake of Allah. We have taught them that nationalism [means] attacking America and opposing imperialism, but we have not taught them that nationalism is love, loyalty, and belonging to the homeland...

'How can this miserable creature called the Arab and Muslim individual not turn to extremism, when he is surrounded by an overall atmosphere of extremism, bound by the shackles of repression and prohibitions, and girded by the ideas of intimidation and terrorization, and of almost endless torment? These accompany this creature from birth to death, beginning with dire warnings about the torments of the grave and enemy plots lying in wait for Islam and the Muslims, [as well as] the long list of prohibitions that has made blessed life -- the gift of the Creator -- into a prison of pain, from which the individual seeks to escape to Paradise and to the lovely maidens in it.

'As if all this were not enough, we even employ religious police to follow the people, to restrict their freedoms, to spy on them, and to interfere in their personal affairs. So how can there not be widespread phenomena of tension and worry in the souls [of the people]?...

'Go to hear a Friday sermon, and you will find a preacher who is enraged at the world, angry at civilization, spreading the poison of hatred and enmity. Then you will leave [the mosque] tense and angry!...

'The world's young people engage in music, art, and enjoyment of the pleasures of life. They create, discover, and participate in building the strength and the culture of their society -- while we engage our young people in religious law disputes on the veil, the beard, how long garments should be, and how to greet Christians -- or we engage our young people in adults' political and ideological disputes, or push them to go to Iraq and Afghanistan to commit suicide!

'Hatred is a culture of prohibitions, and the result of our viewing the world as an enemy lying in wait [for us.] Many factors have played a part [in shaping this world view], including the religious messages anchored in fears of plots [against us], the educational messages that have produced in young people alienation from the [modern] era, and a great number of publications by the Muslim Brotherhood and by the nationalists, which have, for the past 50 years, spread hatred of the other and conspiracy theories [against the Muslims].

'We need a culture that will restore the importance of life and the value of the individual, and will make young people love the arts and the humanities...'(2)

The Values of Tolerance Should Be Implemented

In an article titled 'Our Sons and the Culture of Tolerance' in the UAE daily Al-Ittihad, Al-Ansari called for Arab societies to abandon the culture of fanaticism and to adopt the principle of tolerance in order to destroy extremism and terrorism:

'...What is it that has turned some of our sons into prey?... What is it that has made them love perdition and death?... It is the heritage of fanaticism that comes to us from the dawn of history, that was founded and consolidated, and spread and based itself, in the social infrastructure, throughout Muslim history, in the shadow of the tyrannical regimes that suppressed, discriminated, and marginalized [both] Muslims and non-Muslims.

'Unfortunately, inhuman religious commentaries have supported them... The fanatical and discriminatory tradition -- which contradicts Muslim principles -- is the one from which some of our sons have drunk...

'In this current era in which we live, we do not need everything that is in the books of our forefathers. Rather, we [need] religious laws that will embrace the individual as an individual, and will bring our young people to love life, culture, and the advanced arts.

'Second, we must stop praising and priding ourselves on 'tolerance,' when we continue to live without tolerance. If we are truthful, and if we are faithful to our principles, we must translate [the principles of tolerance] into actual behavior...

'In my opinion, education is the key and the true beginning for reinforcing the values of tolerance: [education] at home, [education] in the family, by parents' tolerance towards each other and towards their neighbors, by family [members'] mutual tolerance, and by their tolerance towards the servants in the home -- tolerance that spreads to the educational institutions and to the rest of the institutions of civil society and of the government, in all its political, cultural, and religious aspects.

'In this way, the religious and cultural elite will implement the culture of tolerance, and will uproot the accusations of treason, of heresy, and of espionage [that Muslims level at one other]. Thus, society will be ruled by a system of laws that are just towards ethnic groups, and there will be a political regime that will ensure equal rights and freedoms for all.'(3)

Endnotes:

(1) Al-Raya (Qatar), April 23, 2007.
(2) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), May 15, 2007.
(3) Al-Ittihad (UAE), May 18, 2007.

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

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GERSHON BASKIN'S PEACE PLAN: C+ IS A BIG IMPROVEMENT
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 15, 2007.
The fall of Gaza and the rise of Palestine
Gershon Baskin
June 15, 2007
pcri-news views@googlegroups.com
on behalf of Gershon Baskin (Gershon@ipcri.org)
Gershon Baskin is the Israeli Co-CEO of IPCRI -- the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. (www.ipcri.org).

Gershon Baskin writes

The fall of Gaza to Hamas has thrown the Palestinian people into its worst crisis since 1967. With every crisis there are usually new opportunities and those must be investigated and pursued, if possible. Gaza is lost, for the time being and there is little that the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah can do to immediately change the course of events. The present focus must now be on the West Bank and on saving the Palestinian people from additional unnecessary disasters and nightmares. There is now an opportunity to contrast the horrors of Gaza with a new reality in the West Bank that could serve as an example and focal point for positive Palestinian energies.

The Palestinian leadership in Ramallah should detach itself from Gaza (for the time being). If, at the same time, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and East Jerusalem would issue the following ten-point plan, a new future of promise and hope could be turned into a reality that would be the best possible way to serve the interests of the Palestinian people. The following is the proposed ten point plan:

1. The Palestinian leadership of the West Bank and East Jerusalem's should declare that it is their intention is to establish an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that will live in peace with all of its neighbors.

2. The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and East Jerusalem recognizes Israel's right to exist, adheres to all of the agreements that have been signed between the PLO and the State of Israel and renounces all forms of violence.

3. The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and East Jerusalem calls for the Government of Israel to renew permanent status negotiations immediately that will convene with the assistance of the Quartet and will proceed without interruption until agreements are reached and ratified by both sides.

4. The Palestinian leadership calls on the Government of Israel to immediately release all of the tax revenues which are being held by Israel and to transfer them to the Palestinian treasury account in Ramallah. The leadership calls on Israel to also release Palestinian prisoners to the West Bank, especially those who were arrested prior to the establishment of the Palestinian authority in 1994 and other prisoners who state their agreement to live under the new realities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and are willing to live in peace with all of their neighbors.

5. The Palestinian leadership calls on the governments of the world to renew their diplomatic relations and financial support for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

6. The Palestinian leadership calls on the governments of the world to provide humanitarian support for the people of Gaza through various international aid agencies and calls on the Government of Israel to allow food and medical aid that will reach the people of Gaza directly to enter Gaza.

7. The Palestinian leadership will make preparations for new elections in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that will be held within three months. In those elections, only political parties that accept the recognition of Israel, adhere to previous international agreements and commitments, support democracy and renounce violence will be allow to participate in the elections.

8. Recognizing the mistakes of the past, the Palestinian leadership is immediately implementing a plan to unite all Palestinian security forces into one singular force under the direct command of the political echelon. The number of troops will be greatly reduced so that the new government will focus its attention on development, building the new state, education, health and welfare. The law of holding unauthorized arms will be strictly enforced and the first task of the Palestinian security force will be to collect unauthorized arms. The Palestinian government, with the assistance of foreign governments will engage in an aggressive public campaign to collect arms, through public media and education and through the enforcement of the law.

9. In accordance with the peace directive of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, all forms of incitement against peace and against Israel will be prohibited. The government of Palestine will immediately advance programs of educational reform that will introduce education for peace with Israel at all grade levels and in all schools. This campaign will include the public owned media as well and will prove without any doubt that the people of Palestine are determined to make peace.

10. The actions of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and East Jerusalem will seek to create a new reality in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that will serve as the primary inspiration to the Palestinian people of Gaza to overthrow the Hamas government in Gaza and to once again unite the Palestinian people and lands so that eventually the Palestinian state to be established in the West Bank and East Jerusalem will include Gaza as well.

With such a platform placed on the table by the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel should immediately respond in accordance with the Palestinian requests: release tax revenues, release prisoners, reopen full diplomatic relations including permanent status negotiations, assist in the creation of a new security reality by removing checkpoints and road closures throughout the West Bank and even declare that Israel will freeze the further construction of the security barrier pending future assessment. Israel should make all efforts to assist in the creation of new promise and hopes for the people of Palestine and for the people of Israel.

Public opinion research on the Israeli public recently conducted by IPCRI has clearly demonstrated that if the Israeli public truly believed that the Palestinians were sincerely interested in peace, they would be willing to make the concessions necessary to secure a peace agreement with the Palestinians. The most convincing action that Palestinians could take that would convince the Israelis, according to the research, is the adoption of peace education in schools and in the media.

For Israelis, that is a true reflection of the values of the society and such a program would demonstrate to the Israeli people and to the international community that the Palestinian people are ready for peace. Israel would have to respond swiftly and with sincere intent that would strengthen the commitment for peace amongst Israelis and Palestinians alike.

The alternative to the above proposal is only more disasters and suffering for all Palestinians and for all Israelis. The recent events are far from the best scenario and from a Palestinian perspective represent a colossal tragedy. The Palestinian leadership has reached a new crossroad -- and they must make a choice in which direction to lead. There are always more than two alternatives, but those alternatives lead either in the direction of hope and peace or towards more despair and suffering. Leadership is about making tough decisions. Crises provide opportunities for real change and this is the time for change.

In light of the lack of confidence in peace on both sides of the conflict, we asked Israelis and Palestinians what would convince them that the other side was really interested in peace, the #1 answer was: when they begin teaching peace in their classrooms

David Meir-Levi writes

Dr. Baskin is still mired in the misleading mindset of moral equivalence (note his final sentence at the very bottom, and my third criticism, below), and his former calls for action on the part of the Israeli government or society to achieve peace have been marred by that mindset, and rendered harmful by the obvious errors that arise when one de-contextualizes the conflict and pretends that Arab Jew-hatred will disappear if only Israel would act nice.

But, in the essay below, Dr. Baskin finally gets at least a passing grade: he gets eight out of eleven right. A 'C+' is a significant improvement over the resounding 'F' that I have given every one of his former essays.

Per my own 10-point plan to our President (my 2 emails yesterday), the crisis in Gaza presents an opportunity for Israel, for the USA, and for the west. While Dr. Baskin's 10-point plan plus his end paragraph (#11 in my enumeration) below bears only slight resemblence to my own, it still has much to offer as concrete suggestions for decisive action that Israel and the surviving Palestinian Authority's Fatah/PLO leadership can do to create a peaceful, cooperative Palestinian state on most of the West Bank.

He does, however, make three surprizing and disastrous suggestions: surprizing for their incongruousness with his other 7, and disastrous for the obviously deliterious impact they would have on whatever peace process may emerge between Israel and West Bank PLO/Fatah leadership.

His #4.) The Palestinian leadership calls on the Government of Israel to ... also release Palestinian prisoners to the West Bank, ... who state their agreement to live under the new realities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and are willing to live in peace with all of their neighbors.

Now why would Israel want to do that?

And why would the West Bank Palestinian leadership want Israel to do that?

Which dynamic would be strengthened by the infusion of thousands of Hamas prisoners in to the West Bank? -- the consolidation of a PLO/Fatah power that, contrite after its defeat in Gaza and aware of its weakness and vulnerability, seeks peace with Israel so as to enjoy Israel's protection...or the rise of Hamas in the West Bank and the resurgence of civil war with the probable result that Hamas will emerge victorious there too, and thus put an end to any hope for peace?

But beyond that, why should any prisoners be released at all? One might argue (Baskin does not, but others have) that such 'gestures of peace and concilliation' on Israel's part will strengthen Abbas' hand. But what we have seen instead is the released terrorists' recidivism and more Jews killed by the recidivists...and it is beyond obvious that nothing that Israel does in any way strengthens Abbas; because every interaction between him and Israel is 'collusion' and 'collaboration,' and he is weakened in the eyes of most of his constituency.

Moreover, any PA leadership that is seriously interested in peace with Israel (never mind at this point whether or not their motives are pure) will be apalled at the prospect of thousands of criminals of any nationality or religion released to the streets of Ramallah and Nablus and Qalqilya. Some may be petty thieves who may or may not go straight but who will do little harm. But many (c. 8,000 Hamas terrorists with blood on their hands, including most of the Hamas West Bank leadership) pose a very serious threat not only to law and order but to the very existence of Abbas, the PLO/Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel.

But perhaps most disturbing of all is Dr. Baskin's final sentence in this #4: '...who state their agreement to live under the new realities...and are willing to live in peace with all of their neighbors.'

So if they promise to be good, Dr. Baskin wants us to take them at their word?

Have terrorists released in the past made statements, and even signed official Israeli documents, to the effect that they will live in peace and refrain from violence once released from Israeli jails?

YES! many times. And then they rejoined the cadres of the terrorists and killed more Jews.

Does Islam teach the need to lie in order to fulfill the will of Allah?

YES! It teaches that lying is righteous if it leads to Muslim victory -- this is called 'taqiyeh' (deceit). It teaches that tricking the enemy in to thinking that you do not pose a threat is just and good if it leads to Muslim victory -- this is called 'kitman' (dissimulation).

Are Hamas activists religious Muslims who are likely to follow these teachings of Islam? YES! very much so.

So we know that they have lied, and we know that they are taught that lying to get out of an Israeli jail and back in to their terror ranks is not just OK, it is actually a mitzvah. So are they likely to lie again in order to get out of Israel's jails and back in to the ranks?

Dr. Baskin lives in Israel. He has a Ph.D. He writes about the conflict from a position of knowledge and experience. So, clearly, he is not ignorant, nor is he an idiot. Why then does he make a statement that he must know is utterly indefensible for its irrationality and unreality?

Is he merely indulging in a flight of fancy in to the la-la land of the world the way he wishes it were; or is his hidden purpose in this essay to make a case for the release of Hamas prisoners who will bring the blessings of Allah and Shari'a to the West Bank, at the expense of Abbas, the PA, Palestinian statehood, and Israel?

The next most disturbing suggestion is his #6: '... The Palestinian leadership calls on the governments of the world to provide humanitarian support for the people of Gaza through various international aid agencies and calls on the Government of Israel to allow food and medical aid that will reach the people of Gaza directly to enter Gaza.'

Condoleeza Rice is under obligation to the President. The President is under obligation to Abdullah of Arabia. So for Rice and Bush to make such demands is perfectly understandable. They know that aid to Gaza will end up in the hands of Hamas, as has much of the money, food, and weapons that the USA has given in order to strengthen Abbas and weaken Hamas. They know the folly of the suggestion that the aid will 'reach the people of Gaza directly'. But they have no choice. They must satisfy those to whom they have obligations, even if it means making galacticly stupid statements that are glaringly, obviously, contradicted by history and reality.

But Dr. Baskin is under no such obligation. Why then does he urge the world to give Hamas support, indirectly via the fiction of '..aid that will reach the people of Gaza directly'?

The final very disturbing aspect of this essay is his end paragraph: 'In light of the lack of confidence in peace on both sides of the conflict, we asked Israelis and Palestinians what would convince them that the other side was really interested in peace, the #1 answer was: when they begin teaching peace in their classrooms.'

The last sentence is correct. But notice the moral equivalence. The paragraph makes it sound as though both sides fail to teach peace in their classrooms. This is not true. While there may be some teachers and some classrooms in Israel where peace is not taught, the Israeli government and the Israeli Department of Education and the official text books and the official curricula and the overwhelming majority of public schools in Israel do indeed teach peace and the need for a resolution to the conflict which involves a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It is ONLY the Palestinian side whose official government policy is the teaching of hate and incitement to violence and commitment to destruction and even idealization of the suicide bomber...such that textbooks and classroom decorations and curricula and school plays and graduation ceremonies all demonstrate the teaching of hatred for Israel, and the lionization of terrorism and the idealization of violence against Israel.

So it is ONLY the Palestinian side which needs to demonstrate its vision of peace in the future by teaching peace to its children today...because the Israeli side is already doing that.

Can Dr. Baskin not know that?

David ML

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

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ISRAELI CIVIL DEFENSE OBSOLETE
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 15, 2007.

Benjamin Netanyahu explained the Left's theory of how to end Arab terrorist attacks. Israel would retreat from territory claimed by the Arabs, leaving the Arabs no excuse for terrorism. They would be satisfied and end terrorism.

But they would not be not satisfied, he explained, because the Muslims claim the whole of Israel. Muslims perceive Israeli retreats as a sign of weakness. The retreats leave them a stronger base from which to commit terrorism and conventional war (Prof. Steven Plaut, 5/28).

Israeli retreats are a sign of weakness. They signify the rot in the Left's moral fiber. Note how reluctant PM Olmert is to defend Israel.

The problem is that the Left refuses to study and understand Islam, lest it have to drop its policy of appeasement. Its notion of what motivates Muslims not only is ignorant, it is childish. Arabs don't need real pretexts for terrorism, they make them up. The Left should not cede Jewish territory.

THE ARABS DIDN'T BLAME THIS ON ISRAEL

More than half the Saudis are obese, and 30% of the population has diabetes. One of the causes is heredity (IMRA, 5/28). Wow!

ISRAELI DEFENSE OBSOLETE

Many buildings near Gaza were reinforced to withstand attacks by the rockets that the Gaza terrorists were using. Now the terrorists have doubled the explosive charge, and the reinforcement does not hold (IMRA, 5/28).

The terrorists also are doubling the range. It is foolish to spend more and more on temporary defenses, instead of smashing the assailants where they are.

For months, it seemed miraculous how few casualties the Gaza rockets caused. Now they are killing and wounding Israelis. Orthodox Jews who called it a miracle before might suggest that God has tired of Israel's failure to use the respite to beat down the Jewish people's vicious enemies. Secular Jews would say that the Arabs simply improved their rockets, during the respite that Olmert gave them.

ABBAS' 'MODERATE' FORCES ARREST 'COLLABORATORS'

His Preventive Security forces made the arrest. Israel was helping forces loyal to Abbas, under the misimpression that he is just against Hamas (IMRA, 5/26).

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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"MODERATE" ABBAS EXECUTES MAN WITHOUT TRIAL AND ATTACKS OTHERS
Posted by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, June 15, 2007.

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas unleashed his party's Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades terrorist militia Friday, executing one person without trial and wounding and arresting dozens of others. Al Aksa said it murdered a 32-year-old Hamas loyalist from Shechem in retaliation to Hamas assassinations of Fatah terrorists in Gaza.

The bloodshed spread to Tulkarm, east of Netanya, where masked Fatah terrorists sprayed fire indiscriminately and torched a Hamas office, according to the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency.

Abbas' terrorists also kidnapped a grocery store owner in Tulkarm, shot at two buses, set fire to a Hamas charity office and to stores and raided homes.

The US State Department said it will continue to train Abbas' elite Presidential Guard militia. American Middle East military envoy Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton said last week that reports of Hamas forces being superior to those of American-trained Fatah were incorrect. He and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently convinced American Congressmen to approve more than $60 million to help equip the Fatah militia despite the danger that Hamas might confiscate its weapons.

Hamas confiscated on Thursday and Friday a huge arsenal of rifles, grenades, ammunition and American armored personnel vehicles in Gaza. Hamas terrorists paraded in the streets of Gaza and showed off the weapons while hundreds of Fatah fighters fled to Egypt.

The State Department hurried to Abbas' side after Hamas devastated Fatah in Gaza. Secretary of State Rice said: "President Abbas has exercised his lawful authority ... We fully support him."

She telephoned Abbas to "underline the United States support for [him and] for the Palestinian moderates who have made the commitment to work with the Israeli government," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

McCormack referred to Abbas and his supporters as "advocates...with whom we are going to work... Make no mistake about it, that the way to achieve a Palestinian state, is via the negotiating table. It is never going to be achieved via the use of violence, threats, intimidation or terrorism... The strategy is to help build up functioning, effective, legitimate institutions of a future Palestinian state." McCormack deflected reporters' doubts about the extent of Abbas's power.

David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, stated: "The people who are moderate are not effective, and the people who are effective are not moderate."

Local commentators note little difference between Fatah and Hamas with regards to their designs to perpetrate attacks against Israel. It was Fatah under Yasser Arafat which signed the Oslo Accords. In the framework of the agreement, Israel authorized the transfer of thousands of rifles to Fatah, but the Israeli government documented their use in fatal terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.

Both Fatah and Hamas demand the right of more than five million Arabs to immigrate to Israel as descendants of half a million Arabs who fled Israel in 1948.

One major difference between the two groups is that Fatah is a secular party. The Arabic meaning of its name is "conquest," and the word "Fatah" is also a reverse acronym for the Arabic term for the Palestinian Liberation Movement.

Another apparent difference is that Abbas outwardly accepts a two-state solution including Israel. But in practice, PA schools under his authority teach children that all of Israel is "Palestine."

The State Department has maintained that Abbas' statements are only a prelude to negotiations, but the Hamas takeover in Gaza and Hamas claims that Fatah leaders are linked with the United States will make it harder for him to live up to his "moderate" image.

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu writes for Arutz Sheva
(www.IsraelNationalNews.com).

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A NON-JEW BECOMES PRESIDENT OF ISRAEL
Posted by Fred Reifenberg, June 15, 2007.
This article further confirms my past comments and thinking... the Peres Plague is upon our nation. It was written by Prof. Eidelberg, a political scientist, author and lecturer; co-founder and president of The Foundation For Constitutional Democracy and is the President of the Yamin Israel movement. He can be reached by mail at 244 Madison Avenue, Suite 427, New York, NY 10016, Tel: 212-372-3752, and by email at Constitution@usa.net

Does the title of this article appear outlandish to you? If so, you don't know Shimon Peres.

First of all, Peres has long advocated the transformation of Israel from a Jewish state to "a state of its citizens." Second, consider this excerpt from Mr. Peres's interview with Ha'aretz following his defeat by Benjamin Netanyahu in the May 1996 prime ministerial election:

Interviewer: What happened in this election?
Peres: "We lost."

Interviewer: Who is we?
Peres: "We, that is the Israelis."

Interviewer: And who won?
Peres: "All those who do not have an Israeli mentality."

Interviewer: And who are they?
Peres: "Call it the Jews."

Based on his own words, it is not outlandish to call Shimon Peres a non-Jew. Indeed, when Peres was Israel's foreign minister in the 1991-1995 Rabin government, he applied for Israel's membership in the Arab League. Any sensible person would have deemed Peres a jackass. But such has been the decline of sense or sensibility in Israel that this jackass is deemed Israel's "elder statesman."

Third, this "elder statesman" was the architect of the disastrous Oslo Accords, or the Israel-PLO Agreement of 1993. Since it was he, more than anyone, who rehabilitated PLO chief Yasser Arafat and brought that villain to Israel, Peres must be deemed complicit in the murder of more than 1,500 Jews.

How fitting, therefore, are the words of Moshe Sharett, a former Israeli prime minister, who said of Peres: "I have stated that I totally and utterly reject Peres and consider his rise to prominence a malignant, immoral disgrace. I will rend my clothes in mourning for the State if I see him become a minister in the Israeli government." (Personal Memoirs, 1957)

But now let us pause and ask: Can we benefit at all from the "malignant, immoral disgrace" resulting from Shimon Peres's rise to prominence as Israel's president?

Yes, if this galvanizes thoughtful and patriotic Jews to work together to render his costly office unnecessary, by advocating an executive presidential system of government to replace Israel's divisive and corrupting system of multi-party cabinet government. This has been one of the objectives of the Yamin Israel party. However, an executive presidency must be balanced by a strong legislature, one whose members are individually accountable to the voters rather than to party oligarchs.

It is the lack of accountability that has enabled Peres to remain in the Knesset for some six decades. This impossible politician has never had to compete against a rival candidate in a district election, a rival candidate that would expose Peres's record of duplicity and incompetence, of political sabotage and collaboration with the enemy.

If we do not purge Israel of this "malignant, immoral disgrace" -- perpetrated by a Knesset whose members do not really represent the voters, indeed, who are despised by a vast majority of the public -- the so-called Jewish State will surely, if not deservedly, perish.

Contact Fred Reifenberg at freify@gmail.com This article appeared in Arutz-Sheva
(http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7201).

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A REVIEW OF   CO-OPTING THE PLO: A CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE OSLO ACCORDS
Posted by Gerald M. Steinberg, June 15, 2007.

Co-opting the PLO: A Critical Reconstruction of the Oslo Accords
1993-1995
by Peter Ezra Weinberger 
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006.

Claiming to examine the failure of the Oslo process in order to draw broad lessons for conflict resolution, this volume is an example of social science theory that goes far beyond what the empirical traffic will bear. The theory, in this case, focuses on relative power distribution, and the author's thesis is that Israeli dominance produced a policy based on "complex co-optation" of the Palestinians, and which, in turn, was responsible for the catastrophic end to the negotiation efforts. In this framework, the government of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, which initiated (or was pushed into) the negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that led to the 1993 Declaration of Principles (DoP), is portrayed as innately similar to its "predecessor and successor" (p vii), uninterested in the transformation from confrontation to cooperation. According to Weinberger "at a deeper level the Oslo Accords represent a continuation of past Israeli positions toward Palestinians," served to "consolidate Israel's post-1967 settlement presence in the West Bank and Gaza strip" (p. x), and reflect the continuation of the "nee-colonial arrangement" (p. 17).

This argument will convince those whose view of this conflict is based on the simplistic division between dominant Israelis and perennial Palestinian victims, or, in the jargon of the literature, a rejection of "hegemonic perspectives" and a "master's or colonialist discourse" (p. xi). Rabin and his successor, Shimon Peres, are portrayed as calculating and cunning, manipulating the Oslo process in order to "preserve Israel's guiding nationalist vision" (p. 47).

Following the standard narrative of this genre, history begins in 1967 with "the Occupation," rather than seeing the 1967 War and its outcome as a consequence of the protracted ethno-national conflict that began four decades earlier. The impact of that history, including the Arab rejection of the 1947 partition plan. followed by the 1948 war, in which one percent of the Jewish population was killed, has been erased from the context.

Selecting the outcome of his research from the beginning, Weinberger then presents selective evidence to make the case credible. The brief overview of the process that led to the secret negotiations and DoP relies heavily on Aharon Klieman's analysis (pp. 6-12). But he differs from Klieman's explanation, and contends that "the Israeli preference for constructive ambiguity was deliberate, and served a complex tactical objective." And Weinberger largely omits discussion of Jerusalem's complexities and Palestinian refugee claims, tacitly acknowledging that these central dimensions of the conflict cannot be encompassed in his analytical framework.

The core of the case is presented in the chapter on "A Changing Economy of Power" (pp. 29-52), based on subjective definitions in which Israel is always dominant, and a map in which Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq (before 2003), and other regional actors have been erased. In contrast to the asymmetric Israeli hegemony that is highlighted in this publication, a different "discourse of power" that includes Arab oil wealth, the political impact of the Muslim bloc in international organizations such as the United Nations, non-governmental organization (NGO) superpowers that reflect an anti-Israel ideology, and other dimensions, would reach entirely different conclusions.

Confined to this subjective and highly ideological framework, Weinberg focuses on Israel, devoting only a few pages to analyzing the Palestinian side of the equation, in a chapter entitled "An Extra-Dialectical Condition." Citing a few secondary sources, Yasir 'Arafat's "diplomatically uncouth style" (p. 108), continuing terror, and the "cavalier attitude to the letter of the Oslo Accords" are attributed to the need to consolidate his "tenuous authority vis-a-vis the Islamic opposition" (p. 108). In contrast, Dennis Ross, the American negotiator whose analysis of the negotiations is the most detailed and credible to date, concludes that the outcome was the result primarily of the continued strength of anti-Israel rejectionism.'

As the debate continues on the causes of the catastrophic failure of Oslo, the situation on the ground has changed fundamentally. In the post-Arafat era, Palestinians are divided into factions (primarily Fatah and Hamas) fighting for control of resources from international donors, and the Palestinian Authority is under de facto international trusteeship. The lip service paid to the "Roadmap" notwithstanding, the focus has shifted from formal conflict resolution to conflict management based on short-term unilateralism. This is also part of the legacy of Oslo, but beyond the scope of theory mired in "colonial discourse."

Footnote

1. Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace (New York; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004).

Gerald M. Steinberg is editor of NGO Monitor and director of the Program on Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University. This article appeared in Middle East Journal 61:2 Spring 2007.

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ANALYSIS: A DECISION NEEDED ON SYRIA
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 15, 2007.

We have watched in horror a series of blunders that have weakened Israel's deterrence and her ability to defend the nation. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and (newly elected) President Shimon Peres with Yossi Beilin gave us the failed Oslo and deliberately built up the military capability of the PLO, known as Fatah. We watched the miserable judgement of then Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000 at Camp David, begging Yassir Arafat to accept Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Jordan Valley and that part of Jerusalem which was controlled by Jordan from 1948 to 1967. In 2004 we watched Ehud Olmert advise then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to abandon Gush Katif/Gaza.

We also watched Sharon surrender Gush Katif/Gaza in August 2005 and knowingly open the door wide for the Muslim Arab Palestinians to establish a global terror base. First, Sharon evicted 10,000 Jewish men, women and children after which he destroyed their homes, synagogues, schools, farms, industries and cemeteries. The bribe didn't work as hordes of Arab Muslim Palestinians swarmed into Gaza, looted and destroyed the innovative greenhouses which had been left for the Palestinians to utilize for their livelihoods.

Now the Hamas and Fatah Muslim Arab Palestinians are tearing each other apart. Their civil war has destroyed what was left of a Palestinian society that had done very well with the Israelis governing, building education, health care and industries that provided excellent employment by the Israeli farmers' innovative bug-free agricultural industries. Later, as Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert pledged to abandon all the territory vital to Israel's defense and especially the heart of Judaism's ancient historical holy sites. We watched Olmert ship weapons and ammunition to Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority (aka Abu Mazen) and his Force 17 Presidential Guard. Abu Mazen had inherited the leadership of Fatah -- whose "militant" wing is the Al Aksa Brigades of Abu Mazen's regime. Forty percent (40%) of Fatah and joined the more terroristic Hamas, bringing with them all their arms which were delivered to them by Ehud Olmert at the insistence of the State Department.

Now the Hamas Muslim Arab Palestinians have beaten the Fatah and are in full control and they are murdering each other with a delight only seen among Islamists. As of June 15th Hamas has taken over Gaza completely, capturing all the weapons, ammunition, trucks, etc. supplied to Fatah by the U.S. and Israel.

All of these former leaders, who led the Jewish nation of Israel into existential danger by their inept, corrupt, weak, cowardly, craven, pretend leaders should be indicted, brought to trial and, if found guilty of treason, should be executed or imprisoned for life.

Presently Olmert and his Kadima gang of defeatists are in seemingly secret negotiations with Bashar Assad of Syria to abandon the Golan Heights down to the shores of Lake Kinneret, the best security from attack by Syria. For 40 years Syria has not been able to attack Israel because from the Heights -- especially from Mt. Hermon, Mt. Dov and the Sheba'a Farms observation posts, Israel can see if Syria begins military or terrorist movements toward Israel as soon as Syria moves one tank from storage.

This pathetically stupid failure of nerve and resolve is telling Israelis that he will sign a surrender paper with Syria's weak President, Bashar Assad, who could be overthrown in a year with another ruthless dictator taking his place and, of course, abrogating prior agreements -- as do all Muslim leaders. None of the hundreds of treaties or agreements made by the Arab Muslim countries have been kept, even those they've contracted with each other...according to Shimon Peres.

Arab Muslim leaders -- under Koranic law -- can make and break a treaty with the Jewish State of Israel, given the Koranic Mandate that all territory once held by Islam must be re-taken by force. IF the Israeli people accept the judgement and decisions of the inept Olmert, along with Barak and Peres, in conjunction with the Labor Left, they will be responsible for the missiles that will inevitably follow.

This article was written by Anshel Pfeffer and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post June 4, 2007.

On one matter there is a consensus within the defense establishment and intelligence community: Very soon the government will have to make a decision on Syria.

Years of immobility are about to come to an end and an historic junction is near. Will Israel enter controversial talks with the Assad regime, or will a military confrontation become almost inevitable?

All information now indicates that Bashar Assad has decided that regaining the Golan Heights is his immediate concern, now that the tribunal over the murder of former Lebanese president Rafik Hariri is endangering his survival.

Assad has only two alternatives: negotiations or conflict. The arguments between the Mossad and the IDF's intelligence directorate and the Foreign Ministry are over which course Assad prefers. But both sides agree the decades-old standoff is not long for this world.

Both options are laden with liabilities. A new diplomatic process could put Israel on a collision course with the US, which is interested in isolating Assad with the aim of toppling him. And of course, the eventual price of a deal would be pulling back from most, if not all of the Golan -- a price that a politically weak government such as this one can ill afford.

Meanwhile, the military option, however limited at first, could very easily get out of hand and evolve into a full-scale war, at a time when the IDF is still in the middle of its rehabilitation process. Simultaneously, warfare might also break out on three other fronts -- against Hizbullah, in Gaza, and against Iran's nuclear program. The Syrian situation is one of the reasons that there is a reluctance to launch a wide-scale offensive in Gaza against the Kassam launchers.

Assad might leave us no choice. As an admirer of Hassan Nasrallah and an avid student of his methods, the president might be tempted to imitate him with a limited ground attack at a weak point on the border, snatching a small parcel of the Golan, coupled with missile attacks on Israel's soft civilian underbelly. Syria's armed forces are run-down and ill-equipped, but some of its units seem to be prepared for this tactic.

Syria has no chance of beating Israel, but it could deal it a painful blow with a surprise attack, buying Assad much needed popularity among the masses of the Arab world. To prevent this, Assad either has to be offered serious negotiations or else the IDF will have to brace for conflict.

The IDF is preparing itself for just such an eventuality. This summer, the IDF isn't going to be caught unprepared.

This leaves the political echelon. With Amir Peretz measuring the time left to him in the Defense Ministry in days, it's obvious that the cabinet awaits a new defense minister. So do the military and intelligence chiefs, who are all closely watching the runoff between Ehud Barak and Ami Ayalon in the Labor's primaries.

But it's not only the identity of the new minister that is worrying the generals; they are all aware that the shadow of the Winograd Committee still lies heavily over Olmert and his colleagues and are concerned that a leadership fearful for its survival won't be capable of making the right decision when the crunch comes.

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@gwinston.interaccess.com

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ISRAEL CHOOSES HER OWN EXECUTIONERS
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 15, 2007.

The entire nation of Israel is fast acquiring the reputation of the imaginary town of fools called: Chelm. As the nation spirals down the majority insist on electing and re-electing the greatest of fools as their leaders. Presently, those in their Knesset (Parliament) who owe their continued employment to keeping Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in office refuse to close down the government despite keeping a government who can and has cause the death of their own families, children and grandchildren, through their unbelievable incompetence.

June 13th these Chelmites and the Knesset at large voted Shimon Peres into office as President of the State of Israel, despite his failures at most everything his confused mind evolved as an idea (see Oslo, etc.)

This same week the Labor Party elected Ehud Barak as its leader after Ruby Rivlin and inexplicably dropped out. Now Ehud Barak is Defense Minister. Incredible. This is the Barak who ran like a rodent from Israel's security zone in South Lebanon, opening a huge vacuum for Hezb'Allah to fill. The war in July 2006 with Hezb'Allah out of Lebanon was entirely Barak's fault but, the Labor Leftists brought him back anyway -- and now his incompetence has been rewarded by the incompetent PM Olmert appointing Barak as Defense Minister.

Think about it: Israel now has a troika of three men -- all of whom have the ideology of abandoning large segments of Israel as they supported in Gaza to a savage enemy. Clearly, the people of Israel are not stupid and not suicidal. Then, why do they continue to elect leaders who make it appear as if they are both stupid and suicidal?

(Note! I exclude those who know that there have been a succession of leaders who should not have been elected and re-elected and instead, imprisoned. Regrettably, those who know are in the minority and become saddled with the incompetents chosen by the majority.)

We Jews have more than our share of the aberrant and twisted as we see such people as Olmert, Barak, Shimon Peres float to the surface.

Today, on CNN Aaron David Miller was being interviewed on the matter of the Palestinians going wild in Gaza and, somehow, he was able to work in the idea that Israel is 'somehow' connected to the internecine civil war and the U.S. should 'somehow' push Israel as his solution. That would be in sync with Miller's years in the State Department as one of James Baker's staff (Jew boys as they came to be known), namely, Dennis Ross, Miller and Daniel Kurtzer -- later followed by Martin Indyk.

So now we have PM Olmert, DM Barak and President Peres -- all back in power and all having a previous record of working to surrender vital territory to their Arab Muslim friends. Given that the Leftist Chelm-like Israelis seem not to care if these creatures give up Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Jordan Valley, the Golan Heights and all of Jerusalem that was occupied and desecrated by Jordan from 1948 to 1967. These liberated territories cover more than two-thirds of Israel's dwindling fresh water resources. There is much speculation that the delusional Peres with use his new Presidential powers to pardon the terrorist Marwan Bargouti now in prison serving 5 consecutive life sentences for at least 5 murders.

I cannot understand why the entire nation has not marched on Jerusalem to drive this horribly suicidal government out of power. I also wonder why Binyamin Netanyahu has been rather casual about calling for election -- unless he shares the abandoning the Land G-d gave to the Jewish people in perpetuity but would rather have Olmert do the dirty work and then he steps in to save whatever is left -- perhaps Tel Aviv.

The three Stooges, Olmert, Barak and Peres, among others, have each in their time, taken their marching orders from the Arabist State Department and a confused Bush. Rice demanded Olmert arm Fatah and those weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition are now in the hands of Hamas.

Recall that it was Rice and Olmert who facilitated the election of Hamas, not that Fatah under Abu Mazen (head of Fatah), was any less a terrorist gang than Hamas.

Recall that for 40 years Abu Mazen was Yassir Arafat's companion, advisor and financier for the PLO. Recall that Fatah's terrorist wing (what the media calls "militants") is the Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigade, plus Force 17 (Fatah's Presidential Guard) and Tanzim. But, Condi Rice continues to insist that Abu Mazen is a moderate and that Israel must surrender Judea and Samaria for her vision of "peace". That would evict as many as 450,000 Jewish men, women and children, destroy their homes, farms, industries, schools, universities. Israel hasn't re-settled the 10,000 Jewish men, women and children Sharon evacuated from Gush Katif/Gaza. Israel can't afford to re-build their homes and infrastructure for 10,000 -- how in the world would Israel ever be able to pay for destroying and re-building for almost half a million people?

Of course, it was Rice and the State Department who insisted that Israel restrain her army from attacking Gaza to stop their launching of Kassam Rockets into civilian towns and kibbutzim. It was the same group who decided to fund Fatah with $83 million to arm Arafat's Force 17, now in the employ of Abu Mazen (unless they are part of the 40% of Fatah who abdicated Fatah and went over to Hamas -- which is now in control of Gaza).

It was the same group who, for second time, tasked the CIA to train the Fatah terrorists, including Force 17 (which killed the American Ambassador in Khartoum Cleo Noel, his charges des affaires and the Belgian George Moore.) Recall that America trained Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan who then turned against us.

Presently, we are watching Gaza implode, all the work of the comatose Ariel Sharon, Olmert, Dov Weisglass, (Sharon's chief factotum) and, no doubt, Peres leading the group from the rear, with the prodding of Rice.

Once again, the State Department, the President and his advisors showed their ignorance of Arab Muslims and their tendency to break all agreements and slaughter their opponents.

The American CIA screwed up in Afghanistan when we trained Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban to become terrorists.

America screwed up again when President Clinton convinced Ehud Barak to abandon Lebanon and leave that vacuum for Hezb'Allah to occupy with 20,000 Katyusha Missiles -- aimed at Israel.

America screwed up again by convincing Sharon and Olmert to abandon Gush Katif/Gaza which enabled the Fatah and now the Hamas terrorists to establish a global terrorist state (which we see daily on TV).

America screwed up again when she forced the Israeli military to 'restrain' itself and NOT attack Hamas decisively.

Then, of course, America and Europe worked with Shimon Peres to force the Jews out of the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley, Judea, Samaria and all the areas of Jerusalem occupied and desecrated by Jordan from 1948 to 1967. The U.S. and E.U. were certain they could bribe the Islamists with the evacuation and surrender of Gaza and all the areas liberated by Israel in 1967. They thought they could buy peace this way. The Muslim Arab Palestinians would have their state and then forgive Israel, America and all other non-Muslims.

But, the irredeemably ignorant U.S. State Department, with their oil magnates in control, were so anxious to please Saudi Arabia that they were blind to the Islamic way of doing things. The Bush family was covering up for the Saudis. James Baker and his crew were protecting Syria and Iran was given a second, third, and dozens more chances to stand down their ongoing nuclear development which, of course, they never intended to do.

In other words, the diplomacy boys were again demonstrating they couldn't tell the dictators from the democrats -- at least in the Middle East.

What have we? We have three suicidal Chelmites: Olmert, Barak and Peres -- in linkage with Bush, Baker and Rice ready to accept Islamic dominance in the Middle East and, possibly, the world.

Is there any solution? Yes. (Partially.)

Because they are the epi-center of world terrorism, excommunicate (read: eliminate) Syria and Iran from all world bodies where they may have any influence at all -- first and foremost, bar them from the U.N. and any U.N. organizations.

Cut off any and all arms shipments to them and from them to Hezb'Allah, Hamas, Al Qaeda and other terror organizations in the Middle East and Europe. In other words, spare nothing in the free world's attack against their illegitimate, terrorist governments.

Release Israel's IDF (Israel Defense Forces) to resume fighting terror in their proven successful strategies and tactics -- without the Leftists' and State Department restraints.

There are more techniques, but this would be a good beginning to save the planet Earth from the Islamists' goal of world domination by Islam with a world caliphate under Sharia laws (strict Muslim laws).

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@gwinston.interaccess.com

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AFI: LUDICROUS FOR LECTURERS TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL
Posted by Simon McIlwaine, June 15, 2007.

Lecturers are boycotting Israeli universities over treatment of the Palestinians. Michael Horesh argues it will do more harm than good.

Michael Horesh provides strategic development services for Israeli companies. He is currently co-organising a seminar on behalf of small and medium sized Israeli enterprises, seeking UK business partners.

The British University and College Union describes itself as the largest national association of lecturers and academic related staff.

And of all the burning education issues -- budgets, standards and more -- discussed at its recent conference, I am astounded to see which one has been assigned as the 'top story' on the union's website. The answer: An academic boycott of Israel, due to continuing violation of Palestinian rights.

As an economics lecturer might say, assume that Israel is a pariah state and that Palestinians had not bombed the Hebrew University in Jerusalem nor the Sapir campus near Ashkelon. And accept that all those who voted for the resolution still believe that Israel has a right to exist in some guise. Even then, the intellectual logic of such a proposal will tax the most senior of professors.

The proponents of the boycott are academics, dedicated to the purity of fact and of research. Yet when it comes to Israel, they have ignored the most elementary of boring and inconvenient statistics.

For example, a Jerusalem scholar pointed out recently that when Israel controlled the Palestinian territories, it founded seven Palestinian universities. Until then, there were none. And since 1994, when the Palestinian Authority assumed responsibility for education, no other pluralistic centres have been established.

Under the new ruling, British universities will not be allowed to accept this material, as it was obtained from an Israeli institute of higher learning.

Grasp the importance of this statement, and you realise how much the UK academics have just shot an enormous hole in their great big feet, all in the name of supporting peace. Academia thrives and depends on the exchange of materials, ideas and study papers.

For example, a recent survey conducted by the Milken Institute showed that of over 400 universities examined, Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University were ranked 12th and 21st respectively for registering biotech patents. Only one British establishment, London University, could beat those placings. Aside from deliberately sabotaging one of the potential areas of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, UK academia will now deprive itself of much valuable input.

A business colleague of mine confirmed the problem. He is working with an Israeli start up on a unique technology in the field of homeland security. The company wishes to complete the research in the UK. He confined in me that "the software development is essential to prevent repeat bombings of the kind seen on the London underground. This latest development -- political correctness taken over by extremists -- will jeopardise the venture and place people's freedom in danger."

Israel's software achievements in the past two decades have been extensive. They reach to numerous areas of daily lives of all peoples. A classic example is the very technology used to drum up support for the boycott, the Pentium NMX Chip. It was designed at Intel in Israel. Both the Pentium 4 microprocessor and the Centrum processor were designed, developed, and produced in Israel, as well as voice mail and the ICQ technology. Much of the groundwork for all these ideas came from whiz kids at Israel's universities.

The absurdity of the issue rapidly stretches in to areas of Israeli bio and nanotech. To quote three examples, which mask thousands more: Medinol's stents, used in cardiac surgery, are arguably the best in the world.

Protalix is developing a system to produce complex human therapeutic proteins, which will help fight genetic disorders. Professor Aaron Ciechanover, recent Nobel laureate, has developed a series of cures for specific cancers.

All these projects emerged from research at Israel's various universities. And not only is the UCU is asking its members to disassociate itself from such works. It is thus asking them and others not to use such breakthroughs, although they will improve the lives of millions.

Ludicrous? Maybe even wicked? Consider the Wolfson Medical Centre, south of Tel Aviv. It is famed for its 'Save A Child's Heart' programme, which has treated about1,500 children from around the world. Approximately 50 per cent of the patients have been Palestinians. Much of the work is subsidised via the European Union and is supported by visiting doctors, including from the UK. Time to shut down the wards?

As a businessman, I meet with many Israeli companies developing new technologies. I recently visited Atlantium. Located outside Jerusalem, it targets the water protection and purification market in Scotland, where many rivers are losing fish due to a rare virus. Another CEO has made a presentation to the UK National Health Service, using Israeli medical trials that show he has discovered a way to contain the spread of contagious diseases in hospitals.

The delegates to the UCU conference are also asking for these projects to become taboo to its members and the consumer.

When I studied in Britain, new ideas were actively sought after. In the words of Dr Sari Nusseibah, president of the Palestinian AlQuds University: "The free flow of science and information... constitutes a powerful force against war... Of all possible bridges to burn as a form of 'well-intentioned' political pressure, the boycott of academic co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians should be excluded..."

If the UCU represents the best tradition of British academia, which has taken pride in its openness and progressiveness, the elected delegates of the members have taken a major step backwards towards selective teaching and predetermined research.

Their decision will bring scorn upon itself and the community at large. It will damage those people they are supposedly seeking to help.

If that is the result of the union's actions, the time has arrived to question seriously the true motives that have brought its members to such a segregationist position.

Contact Simon McIlwaine at Simon.McIlwaine@ormerods.co.uk and visit the website: www.anglicansforisrael.com

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U.S. TO USE HAMAS UPHEAVAL TO SQUEEZE ISRAEL FOR CONCESSIONS
Posted by Avodah, June 15, 2007.

This was written by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu and it appeared in Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNationalNews.com).

(IsraelNN.com) American President George W. Bush will press visiting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert next week to fork over to the Palestinian Authority (PA) hundreds of millions of dollars in tax money to prop up the standing of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Israel collects the money from taxes on Arabs working in Israel and other tariffs.

"We want to get back to the situation where the Palestinians can get something that they've been robbed of too many times, which is peace in their streets, democracy in their government, and the ability to move toward what everybody in the region ought to hope for, which is two nations, sovereign, living peacefully and side by side," White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters Thursday.

However, Edward G. Abington Jr., a former State Department official and advisor to Abbas, flatly stated Friday, "The two-state vision is dead. It really is," according to the liberal-leaning Washington Post.

The Hamas coup in Gaza buried the ruins of the dreams of the administration of former American President Bill Clinton for a "New Middle East"," which literally blew up with the outbreak of the Oslo War in 2000.

However, both the White House and the State Department made it clear Thursday that they are determined to use the Hamas overthrow for the benefit of Abbas. One of its arguments is that Israel has no fear of the money reaching Hamas because Abbas has dissolved the Fatah-Hamas unity government, although Hamas leader Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has rejected the move as illegal.

Washington also will argue that propping up Abbas will prevent Hamas from staging in Judea and Samaria a repeat performance of its Gaza coup, officials told news agencies.

Abbas last week said he would refuse to meet Prime Minister Olmert again until he releases the funds, which have grown to more than $700 million. The Bush administration pressured him several months ago to free about $100 million to bail out the PA, although Israel failed to receive in return a halt to incitement or terrorism, as promised by Abbas two years ago.

Criticism is beginning to mount against America's 15-year campaign to forge a PA-Israeli peace agreement. Robert Malley, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the International Crisis Group, told the Post, "The less we try to intervene and shape Palestinian politics, the better off we will be. Almost every decision the United States has made to interfere with Palestinian politics has boomeranged."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters this week, "We have called on others in the region to express their support for President Abbas and those Palestinian moderate political elements who have foresworn the use of violence and who have an interest in reaching a political settlement with Israel via the negotiating table and...we're going to continue to support President Abbas."

Reporters covering the State Department have become increasingly skeptical of United States policy and asked McCormack if Abbas' authority is threatened. McCormack answered, "Thus far you have not seen any spread of the violence to the West Bank. You know, certainly everybody welcomes that. You want to see an end to the violence in Gaza. It's an attack upon those legitimate Palestinian institutions that are struggling to provide some law -- some semblance of law and order in the Palestinian areas, who are trying to come up to international standards of behavior."

The last major agreement between the PA and Israel was signed in Sharm el-Sheikh two years ago. Israel promptly began to carry out its side of the bargain and turned over to the PA complete authority over Tulkarm and Jericho, where the murderers of former Minister Rehavam Ze'evi were being held along with other convicted terrorists. After Hamas swept to victory in the PA legislative elections in January of 2006, Israel raided the jail in Jericho because of information that Hamas would free the suspected assassins.

Within a month, the first of a half a dozen suicide bombing attacks originated from the same area that the IDF vacated.

As Kassam rocket attacks continued to rain on Sderot, American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice several times pressured former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his successor Olmert to ease travel restrictions on Arabs in Judea and Samaria. These measures often were followed by fatal sniping attacks, mainly on teenagers waiting for a bus or ride on major highways.

Unknown Fate of Shalit and Johnston

Prime Minister Olmert has said in the past he would not make any concessions to Abbas until the PA frees the ID soldier who was kidnapped a year ago next week.

Abbas has said that he is alive and healthy but there has been no communication between him and the International Red Cross, despite Israel's honoring international law and allowing the organization to meet with three Hizbullah terrorists arrested in the Second Lebanon War.

The Prime Minister already has reversed his stand that he never would release any terrorists in return for Corporal Gilad Shalit, and the Hamas assault on Gaza may give Abbas more leverage for the United States to pressure Israel to free convicted terrorists "with blood on their hands."

Another kidnap victim is British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) journalist Alan Johnston, who was abducted in Gaza more than three months ago.

On the assumption that both men still are alive and in the custody of Hamas or aligned terrorists, Abbas will have to defer to Hamas demands in order to win the kidnapped victims' release.

Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com

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THE WEST IS LOSING BECAUSE IT THINKS ITSELF THE ENEMY
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 14, 2007.

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, has written and edited 50 books on the Middle East. His latest book, The Truth About Syria, has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

His essay below is excellent; but it needs a few footnotes to explain some obscure parts.

The West is Losing Because It Thinks Itself the Enemy[1]

Why is the West losing the battle against radical Islamist and other forces in the Middle East? Simple, because it has people like Alvaro de Soto running things. De Soto, if you hadn't notices, was a veteran UN official whose last job was as the organization's top Middle East envoy.

De Soto wrote a 52-page secret report on retiring and, duly leaked, it now explains to us that the fault for Hamas's victory in the Gaza Strip -- and no doubt just about everything else in the region -- lies with the United States and Israel. It is people like de Soto--dare I say over-dressed, over-paid ignoramuses? -- who had no idea what they are doing and no understanding of who they are dealing with.[2]

And of course his arguments are published prominently in the mainstream media thus poisoning yet more minds, published for example uncritically in the June 14 Washington Post for an audience ready to believe anything bad about the current administration.

What does de Soto say? That the UN, United States, and Israel "radicalized" Hamas by trying to isolate it. This, de Soto explains, "hampered" peace efforts.

Let us summarize. According to de Soto:

--Hamas needs external forces to radicalize it. Thus, it is presumably already moderate.

--If Hamas had been given large-scale aid and diplomatic coddling it would have been content to go along.

--That the Quartet which runs Middle East negotiations is too biased toward Israel. In other words, its mistake was not to be "evenhanded" between Hamas and Israel.

Where to begin? How about with Paul Berman's analysis in his 2003 book Terror and Liberalism. Berman explains that there are two basic arguments that make people blind to the realities of the struggle between liberal democracies and totalitarian forces today.

The first is that the claim about there being a radical, intransigent other side is phony. As Berman characterized the argument: the threat is exaggerated by those who have an interest in doing so. This is why the reaction against dealing with reality has been so anti-Jewish and anti-American. Because these are the two groups that want people to think that they are endangered by radical Islamism, Iran, Syria, Hizballah, Hamas, and so on.[3]

The second is to suggest that these movements are not motivated by an extreme doctrine, a thirst for power, and a desire for loot but by "unspeakable social conditions" through which "small groups of exploiters or imperialists, through their terrible deeds, have driven...millions of people out of their minds. Perhaps a population has been humiliated beyond human endurance."[4]

De Soto in effect embraces both arguments. No doubt he would have negotiated Middle East peace now Hamas leaders had only been feted in Western capitals and given lots of money to run classrooms in which they taught children that their highest ambition should be to be suicide bombers.

Of course, de Soto didn't even get the basic facts right. Despite "sanctions" the amount of money that went into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was higher last year than the previous one. And to accept Hamas unconditionally would have showed the movement that it could get everything it wanted without changing anything.

The fact that it was trying to carry out terror attacks against Israel daily and broke every agreement it made counts little for this great diplomat. If Hamas had been given more money it would have used those funds to entrench itself deeper as a permanent regime and to reshape Palestinian society in its image.

And, of course, if anyone deserves blame it is Fatah, a terror-advocating, corrupt, and utterly incompetent group. Here is a simple point of fact: since losing the elections of January 2006 due to its own divisions and poor leadership, Fatah made not a single internal reform and made no leadership or doctrinal changes.

Yet there is still another sin of the de Soto school of diplomacy and statecraft: it robs its supposed social work clients of any identity of their own. According to this world view, Hamas is a blank slate and violence is the result of the United States and Israel scraping their fingers across it.

The real problem here is not that de Soto himself is biased but that he is evidently a fool who knows nothing about the region with which he is playing games. That such a person would be entrusted with a delicate mission of this nature is horrifying.

Hernan de Soto was a great sixteenth-century Spanish adventurer who explored the southeastern United States and discovered uncharted lands. Alvaro de Soto has discovered nothing.

Footnotes

1. Once you have read the whole article, you may wonder how the title fits. Rubin does not explicitly explain this; but the idea, I think, is that all too many of us in the west have come accept the argument that western imperialism is to blame for Arab terrorism; and that western imperialist exploitation created the "unspeakable social conditions" which humiliated a "whole population" beyond human endurance. So, like the victim of rape who blames herself for the assailant's crime, far too many of us in the west blame our own culture, our own history, our own political activities...instead of looking for the real root causes which emerge easily from the 1,375 years of endless relentless barbaric and brutal Muslim terrorism against the entire non-Muslim world.

2. What Rubin does not mention, and perhaps does not know, is that the UN was hijacked by the Arab bloc back in 1973, and has been the Arab playground for anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda and resolutions since then. It is likely (no proof, sorry, just indirect evidence) that poor Mr. de Soto would not have had a snowball's chance in hell of getting his long awaited pension for retirement had he written anything other than that the entire world's problems with terrorism and violence are all the fault of the USA and Israel. The problem is not Mr. de Soto's ignorance. It is Mr. de Soto's cowardice in the face of the heinous pressures applied to him and others in the UN by the Arab bloc.

3. I think that what Rubin means in this somewhat convoluted sentence is:

A.) it is false to claim that the real Hamas is the Hamas which runs orphanages and well-baby clinics, and that the radical terrorist side is somehow not connected to this nice humanitarian side.

B.) It is likewise false to claim that the threat of terrorism is exaggerated by the USA and Israel.

C.) Those who claim that the threat is exaggerated by the USA and Israel make that claim because they want to be able to hide from us the reality of the magnitude of the threat, and

D.) Those who make that claim are precisely the ones who create the threat (Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas), so

E.) By making this claim, the real terrorists can both hide the magnitude of the threat and thus reduce the chances that we will be able to muster the clarity of vision and the fortitude to defeat the terrorist threat; and they get to shift blame from themselves to their victims (the USA and Israel).

4. the sentence in bold is the standard boiler-plate propaganda broadcast to us from the very sources of the terrorism (Syria, Iran, Arabia, Hamas, Hezbollah, el-Qaeda) in order to buttress the claims described in footnote #3. It is the essence of the "root cause" argument. Claiming that the root cause of terrorism against the USA and Israel is the "unspeakable social conditions" that the evil "imperialists" have foisted upon the poor, helpless, hapless, hopeless, powerless indigenous is the epitome of hypocrisy and mendacity. It creates for rthe terrorists a wonderful deal. You do the killing, then you blame the people you killed by saying that they drove you to it and are thus to blame for their own demise at your hands. Just as the rapist blames his victim ("look at the provocative clothing she is wearing"), and the spouse murderer blames the dead spouse ("she drove me to it with her nagging"), so too does the Islamofascist terrorist blame the West, Christianity, Judaism, America, Israel, the Jews.

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

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IT'S HARD TO BE AN ARAB
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 14, 2007.

Once, many years ago, I stood outside the door of a Middle East Studies Association meeting addressed by the late Edward Said as he thundered against those he deemed 'the enemies of the Arabs.' He even provided a list of names. Strange it was to think this was supposedly an academic meeting, not a rally of some extremist totalitarian political party.

Supposedly, there are those who love the Arabs and their cause, and those who hate them. It is common to see the 'supporters' as those who extol or apologize for the dictatorships that oppress Arab peoples; the 'resistance' which blows them up; steals their children to be suicide bombers or fighters in futile battles; radicals who urge them to fight to the death; and journalists who make good livings by lying to them.

Pretty ironic, isn't it?

While many experiences have prompted these observations, the two latest ones are the brutal fighting between Fatah and Hamas (they throw each other's supporters off buildings and shoot directly at hospitals, schools, and mosques) and a statement by Kuwaiti parliament speaker Jassem al-Kharafi explaining that his and other Arab countries, 'have no fear' about Iran having nuclear capabilities, adding that Iran was obviously seeking nuclear technology for solely peaceful purposes.

Imagine his situation. The Kuwaitis went through a terrible invasion and looting by Iraq in 1990-1991 and are no doubt quaking at what could happen to them if Iran has the bomb. Not that Tehran would drop it on them but because they would do anything to save themselves from being obliterated, hopping to Iran 's every demand.

Come to think of it, though, they tirelessly appeased Iraq before the invasion. Poets wrote odes to Saddam Hussein's greatness, Kuwaitis strained to prove their Arab nationalism, and of course the money flowed freely. It's a tough, stressful life. You cannot even speak up in your own self-defense.

A few years ago, a Lebanese friend of mine living abroad was invited to come home by the son of his country's president. When he told his aunt of the planned visit, she told him in no uncertain terms that he dare not set foot in the country. 'Even if the president himself is your host, any Syrian sergeant can throw you into prison',' she said. Last week, I heard the same story from a Lebanese journalist, except now the threat isn't a Syrian prison but a Syrian assassination team.

At best, you have to keep your mouth shut; at worst you have to sing the praise of your dictators, those leading you to disaster. What if you are a Palestinian or Lebanese and terrorists chose to use the roof of your house to fire rockets at Israelis? Do you run upstairs and tell these desperate armed men to stop shooting and go away? Can you even dare criticize them publicly after your home gets blown up in an attack?

It must be funny if it were not so tragic to see the Western leaders, diplomats, academics, and journalists who come and praise the corrupt and the tyrants, supposedly thinking that they are helping you.

Not long ago, Seymour Hersh, a highly-paid, highly praised American journalist who has made himself the tool of the Syrian regime and others of that ilk, spreading their lies, visited Cairo. Hersh gave a talk sponsored by an Egyptian writer whose career embodies that of the well-rewarded regime propagandist, and began of course by praising him for his contribution to truth and exemplary journalism.

When dealing with the most thoughtful, and idealistic Arab intellectuals, I have a repetitive sadly amusing experience. In private, they speak honestly about the need for peace with Israel, their own leaders' shortcomings, and their hope for change. Then, the microphones and cameras turn on and they recite, parrot-like the official line.

Sometimes they get caught up in the discussion and suddenly realize near the end that they have forgotten to insert the appropriate anti- Israel and anti-American remarks. They have to rush to put them in, lest they get in trouble. And, of course, much of the audience thinks that this is what they really believe.

Then there is the constant temptation to sell out and join the crowd, shout the slogans along with everyone else, become not only a phony hero but a well-rewarded scoundrel. And isn't it sad enough that they know all these laurels will be given them for selling out without their also knowing that it will win them respect in the West as well?

Periodically, people think they have scored some point when they tell me that polls show ordinary Palestinians want peace with Israel and an end to the fighting. That may well be true, I respond, but do their leaders and all those gunmen care at all for how these people feel? And these are the forces ensuring that there be no two-state solution and end to the endless violence from which they benefit.

Years ago, when Saddam Hussein was still in office, I was asked to address a visiting delegation of Arab journalists. The other American speakers gave the standard blah-blah. We felt their pain, we were working to resolve the Israel-Palestinian issue, we were sensitive to their Arab nationalist sentiments.

Having no ambition to hold high political office, I decided to introduce a dose of reality. Let's face it, I explained, we know that your real enemy isn't Israel or the United States but the regimes in Libya, Iraq, Syria, Iran, as well as Yasir Arafat and others. They are the ones who take away your rights, wreck your societies, destroy your dreams. Afterward I was mobbed -- in the friendliest sense possible -- by the audience who all wanted to thank me and say that they agreed.

It is heart-breaking. What do you say to a Syrian dissident who is facing prison and quite possibly torture? Can you tell him that the West will support him, that journalists will condemn the regime that beats him, Middle East experts will give papers at conferences praising his work, U.S. congressional delegations won't visit unless he is freed, or European governments will demand his release?

How can one not feel the misery of the Arab peoples, intoxicated as many are by the opiate of Arab nationalism and Islamism, the false promises of impending triumphs and the horror stories of satanic foes?

How can one not sympathize with the frustration of real moderates who live in societies where they are treated as madmen and traitors.

And how can one not feel the utmost disgust at those living comfortably in the West who celebrate or advocate their own countries' surrender to all the evil forces holding them down and back?

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, has written and edited 50 books on the Middle East. His latest book, The Truth About Syria, has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

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TERRORISTS CLAIM CIA FILES SEIZED; "PALESTINE'S" TRUE COLORS
Posted by Michael Travis, June 14, 2007.
Well folks...it's all over 'cept for the lynchings, dis-disembowelments and other [charming] barbaric Islamic customs. I was holding my breath for the inevitable "Blame Israel" chorus...Desmond Tutu wasted no time on that one. He calls events in Gaza "Natural Consequence of [Israeli] Occupation." Huh?

This article is called "Terrorists claim CIA files seized" and it was written by Aaron Klein. It appeared today in World Net Daily
(www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56174).

JERUSALEM -- Terrorist groups, including Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees, have seized large quantities of CIA security files stored at major compounds of militias associated with the U.S.-backed Fatah organization of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, terror leaders told WND today.

The terror leaders claimed the files contain, among other information, details of CIA networks in the Middle East.

"The CIA files we seized, which include documents, CDs, taped conversations and videos, are more important than all the American weapons we obtained the last two days as we took over the traitor Fatah's positions," said Muhammad Abdel-El, spokesman for the Hamas-allied Popular Resistance Committees terror group.

The Committees has been accused of carrying out anti-U.S. attacks, including a 2003 bombing of an American convoy in Gaza that killed three U.S. contractors.

Hamas has the past few days taken near-complete control of the Gaza Strip, advancing on the vast majority of Fatah security buildings and positions in the northern, southern and central sections of the territory.

Hamas gunmen today captured the second of four major Fatah command centers in central Gaza City, planting the group's green flag on the roof of the intelligence services building. Also today, Hamas seized the Palestinian Preventive Security headquarters in Gaza, a major Fatah compound, reportedly executing witnesses and several defeated Fatah members.

According to Hamas sources, the terror group will soon advance on Gaza City's Ansar Compound, one of the most important Fatah security establishments and the site at which American weapons have been delivered to Fatah the past few years. Security sources say Ansar contains large quantities of weaponry the U.S. provided to Fatah.

Hamas and Popular Resistance Committees leaders told WND upon taking over Gaza City's Fatah compounds, particularly the Preventative Security Services building and intelligence compound, they seized large quantities of what they said were CIA files concerning the Middle East.

They said prior to Hamas' advances, Fatah officials attempted to destroy the CIA files but only succeeded in eliminating some.

U.S. security coordinators the past few years maintained a presence at Fatah's Gaza headquarters. The U.S. regularly trains and arms Fatah militias.

Abu Abdullah, a member of Hamas' so-called military wing, said, "Now our job is to study these files, which are already showing that they are crucial for our fight against the Zionists and anyone who collaborates with them, including the Americans."

Abdullah said the CIA documents they browsed so far contain "information about the collaboration between Fatah and the Israeli and American security organizations; CIA methods on how to prevent attacks, chase and follow after cells of Hamas and the Committees; plans about Fatah assassinations of members of Hamas and other organizations; and American studies on the security situation in Gaza."

Abdullah claimed the documents also detailed CIA networks in other Arab countries and "how to help beat Islamic allies of Hamas in other Arab countries, including Egypt and Jordan."

"We will use these documents and make portions public to prove the collaboration between America and traitor Arab countries," Abdullah said.

Committees Spokesman Abdel El told WND he was sitting in a Gaza mosque today pouring through some of the files on the Committees when he found his name mentioned in the documents four times.

"I am amazed by the material and the context of the documents," he said.

Hamas seized U.S. weapons

The U.S. in the past year has given large quantities of weapons to bolster Fatah in clashes against Hamas. Hamas officials repeatedly told WND they would seize any American weaponry provided to Fatah in Gaza.

Hamas' Al Aqsa Television yesterday and today broadcast footage of Hamas gunmen brandishing American assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, rocket launchers and ammunition the U.S. reportedly provided to Fatah over the past few months. Hamas fighters also showed what they said were 10 American-provided armored personnel carriers the terror group said it seized from Fatah security compounds it took over Tuesday.

WND broke the story Tuesday that Hamas took control of large caches of U.S. weapons, including armored personnel carriers provided to Abbas' Fatah party.

Hamas Abu Abdullah commented, "We informed you many times we would obtain all American arms brought to Gaza in the conspiracy against our government."

Abu Abdullah said once Hamas takes over Gaza City's Ansar Compound his group would be "swimming" in American weaponry.

The last confirmed U.S. weapons transfer to Force 17 took place in May 2006 and consisted of 3,000 assault rifles, but WND reported multiple other transfers later were delivered to Fatah, including a cache of 7,000 rifles in January and about 8,000 assault rifles in February.

Many members of Force 17 are openly members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, Fatah's declared "military wing" which took responsibility for every suicide bombing in Israel the past two years. The Jewish state regularly arrests Force 17 members accused of carrying out shooting attacks against Israelis.

WND reported last week PA President Abbas petitioned Israel to allow more weapons and munitions -- including assault rifles provided by the U.S. -- to reach his fighters in the Gaza Strip to bolster them against Hamas, according to diplomatic sources.

'Gaza has fallen'

Earlier yesterday, Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas agreed on the need to bring an end to the fighting between their respective parties, but a truce wasn't reached. Officials on both sides don't expect any momentum in dialogue between Hamas and Fatah until Hamas has taken over the entire Gaza Strip, which security sources say could happen within 24 hours.

A senior Palestinian Authority official from the Fatah party told WND today, "Gaza has fallen. It's now Hamas land. We (Fatah) have lost."

The official said Hamas seeks to create an "Islamic caliphate" in Gaza and that it is expected to put former Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahar in control of the terror group's reign in Gaza.

Israeli security officials said they were "gravely concerned" about Iran's influence over the territory Hamas now controls.


"Palestine's" True Colors Andrew L. Jaffee http://netwmd.com/blog/

...A witness, who identified himself only as Amjad, said [Fatah] men were killed as their wives and children watched.

"They [Hamas] are executing them one by one," said Amjad, who lives in a building that overlooks the Preventive Security complex. "They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting," he said by telephone.

The killers ignored appeals from residents to spare the men's lives, said Amjad, who declined to give his full name, fearing reprisal...

So here we have it: Israel unilaterally withdraws from Gaza, answering the call of the "international community," and what do Palestinians do with their new-found freedom? Rampant violence. Civilians murdered. Summary executions. "Mass looting." Torching synagogues. Many criticized Ariel Sharon for his Gaza disengagement plan, but he was in fact crazy like a fox. He made sacrifices to expose Palestinian society for what it is. Israel has been out of Gaza since September 12, 2005. Who to blame?

For years we've heard calls for an independent Palestinian state, even though Palestinians have yet to prove they are ready for their own state. They sure have created a lot of terrorist chaos. They've been kicked out of Jordan, destroyed Lebanon, were kicked out of Kuwait, and have watched their leaders steal foreign aid money. Now we see them fighting a civil war and battling the Lebanese army, yet some still continue to call for the founding of "Palestine." On what logical basis would such a state be established? With the current blood-feud raging between the Palestinian factions of Hamas and Fatah, the former taking control of Gaza, the later controlling the West Bank, will we start hearing calls for two independent (terrorist) states instead of one? This turf battle had been confined to Gaza, but is spreading to the West Bank, making it more likely that these territories will become two separate de facto states. A "two-state" solution?

By disengaging from Gaza, Israel has proven its good faith. It has given the "world community" precisely what it had been demanding for 38 years: a withdrawal from Gaza. Israel's pullout was peaceful and governed by the rule of democratic law. Conversely, the Palestinian reaction has been an orgy of chaos.

Palestinians have much to learn about freedom, and are now squandering their new-found "liberty," if one can call it that. Instead of working towards an independent state, Palestinians have spent the last hundred years teaching their children to hate Jews, building weapons to kill Jews, and using those weapons to kill Jews. They have not built social institutions or a vibrant economy. Note that little Israel Israel has built a true democracy and vibrant economy ($120.9 billion GDP), all while defending itself from ceaseless attacks by Fatah and Hamas. Witness now how the Palestinian culture of hatred is bearing fruit in Gaza.

What you sow, so shall you reap.

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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THE BIRTH OF "HAMASTAN"
Posted by Fern Sidman, June 14, 2007.

June 14 -- According to breaking new reports from Gaza, the escalation of infighting between Hamas and Fatah forces has reached a zenith, with Hamas claiming victory after conducting a series of execution style killings of Fatah members. Over 80 Palestinian terrorists have been killed in Hamas-Fatah factional fighting since Sunday. Hamas declared that it had taken control of the town of Rafiah in southern Gaza after blowing up the Fatah headquarters there. All of northern Gaza is already under Hamas control. According to an Arutz Sheva report of 6/14/07, "Fatah was beaten so badly that Egyptian reports said 40 PA officers broke through the Gaza-Egypt border fence and fled to Sinai for safety. The Hamas-affiliated Popular Resistance Committee announced Thursday that it had taken control of the border to prevent weapons smuggling (to Fatah) and mass emigration by local Gazans."

The report went on to say that; "hundreds of Fatah terrorists were seen surrendering to Hamas in Gaza Wednesday ahead of an ultimatum set by Hamas that ends Friday night. Hundreds of members of a mercenary local clan fighting for Fatah surrendered, ending a pitched two-day battle. The Bakr clan members were led to a local mosque. Hamas blew up one of the clan's homes and women were shot dead when they tried to transport a sick girl to the hospital, according to PA reports. During a protest by hundreds of Gazans against infighting and for uniting to fight Israel, a man was killed when Hamas terrorists opened fire on the protesters. The protest, billed as "peaceful," was organized by Egyptian intelligence and attended by armed Islamic Jihad terrorists."

On Thursday night, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the head of Fatah, announced that he is dissolving the government of the PA. By dismissing the PA's legislative head, Ismail Haniyeh, and other Hamas officials, Abbas formally ended the power-sharing agreement between Hamas and Fatah. The agreement had been in effect for just a few months and was marked by intermittent violence between the two groups from the start.

Media sources have speculated that the Hamas-Fatah civil war could spill over to the West Bank. According to an Arutz Sheva report of 6/14/07 it stated, "The Executive Committee of the PLO recommended that Abbas ask for international protection against Hamas. In Jenin, Fatah terrorists seized a Hamas school, hospital and offices on Wednesday, and 200 Fatah activists marched in Jenin streets and shot in the air, after having burned down a Hamas club center. Al-Aqsa Brigades terror chief Zakhariya Zubeidi announced a ban on all Hamas activity in the city until further notice. In Ramallah and nearby Bituniyah, Fatah is engaged in rounding up and arresting Hamas commanders from their homes. Hamas reported that armed Fatah men had kidnapped a Ramallah city councilman and burned his office. Two prominent Hamas officials in the araea were shot at in separate incidents, but no one was hurt in those attempts.

South of Ariel, in Salfit, Fatah men burned a Hamas office and raided other offices in the region. In Tul Karem, as well, east of Netanya, a Hamas office was shot at, and two Hamas cars were burnt. Fatah-Hamas gun battles were reported in Shechem and Bethlehem as well. With Fatah on the run in Gaza, it has now called on Hamas members in Judea and Samaria to renounce their allegiance to Hamas if they do not wish to be harmed. Fatah has begun mass-arrests of Hamas leaders, and Fatah chief Abu Mazen has reportedly ordered a counter-attack in Judea and Samaria."

It appears that the Hamas victory over Fatah forces in Gaza was due in no small measure to the extensive funding and support of the Iranian government. Iran has thrown its support behind Hamas in its quest to control Gaza. Meanwhile, back in Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice called PA President Abbas and expressed her government's support for the forces of Fatah, which she defined as "moderate." Hamas gunmen claimed to have found documents proving strong ties between Fatah and the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Spokesmen for Hamas said they would show the documents on local television on Thursday night.

While the bloody conflict between Hamas and Fatah continues, the Jerusalem Post reports that the US is more than willing to conduct direct negotiations with Iran if Iran agrees to suspend its uranium enrichment program. The report of June 12th states, "Washington remains interested in joining any direct nuclear talks with Iran if it heeds UN Security Council demands, a US envoy said Tuesday, even as Tehran warned that America will regret detaining five Iranian officials in Iraq."

Both political and military analysts have aired their views in the media and many blame the US for the current conflict by not recognizing and legitimizing Hamas when they won the PA elections in January of 2006. Others assign blame to the US for lending their support to Israel and for not being an "honest broker" in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

The bottom line is quite clear. The United States is flagrantly abrogating its own policy of isolating and punishing terrorists of all stripes. If the US can support an organization such as Fatah, which clearly and openly conducts terrorist operations against both Israel and its rival factions and has called for the annihilation of the State of Israel, then something is gravely amiss in US foreign policy as it pertains to the Middle East. If the US can seriously entertain the notion of conducting negotiations with the terrorist government of Iran who is bankrolling the arch terrorist group Hamas, (which is listed on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations) and who has called for the destruction of both Israel and America, then some re-evaluation of US policy is in order.

There is no doubt about it. The terrorists in the Middle East are winning the war on terror. Whether they are the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq or Hezbollah and Hamas in Israel, the forces of evil, death and destruction are prevailing. The United States has lost its credibility by not standing behind the bombastic rhetoric on how to succeed in the war on terror that once emanated from the Bush administration.

The forces of terror have brought the giant to its knees. The world's great superpower, the United States now stands in a position to negotiate with those who make no secret about calling for it's destruction.

And for the Jewish people and the land of Israel? With Hamas clearly in power in both northern and southern Gaza, we can expect that the amount of Kassam rockets directed at Sderot and other Jewish communities in the western Negev to continue unabated. We can expect more attempted kidnappings of Israeli soldiers and the wanton murder of Israeli civilians. Was it only two years ago, back in the summer of 2005 that the Jewish people in Israel were promised peace on its southern border by evacuating the settlements of Gush Katif and handing over the land to the Palestinian Authority. The world watched as Israeli soldiers forcibly removed thousands of Jewish inhabitants of the Gush Katif region. Prosperous businesses, schools, homes, synagogues and yeshivas were burned to the ground in the name of "peace" with our "Arab neighbors".

"Let's give the Palestinians in Gaza their independence and full autonomy," the forces of "peace" declared. They insisted in their arrogance that this move will insure peace in that region and will expedite the process of long term harmony between Israelis and Palestinians. So much for that fallacy and for those who peddled that canard.

Today we have witnessed the birth of a new Arab state. Today the world stayed glued to their television screens as they watched the launching of a new state in Gaza called "Hamastan". A state predicated on the most heinous forms of terrorism. A state that was conceived by those who promulgate bloodshed, torture, and capricious murder. A state that nurses on the mother's milk of those who called for the eradication of Israel, and who, fueled by religious fanaticism and dogma will not rest until it achieves it ultimate goal.

This state of "Hamastan" was helped through the birth canal by a Jewish state that has lost its sense of purpose, vision and clarity. The state of "Hamastan" exists today because of empty and vapid Jewish leaders of Israel who did everything in their power, directly and indirectly to create this entity. And so today, if we see a multitude of Kassam rockets being launched by Hamas into Israel, rest assured that this will be nothing compared to what lies ahead. Let us not remain myopic in our perspective on the extent to which the Jewish State is in danger. Today, Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank has been transformed into "Fatahstan" as well. The violence is Gaza is just a harbinger of things to come in the liberated territories of Judea and Samaria. While the US may tout the line that Fatah is a "moderate" Palestinian force, we know the opposite to be true. Their rhetoric is on par with their rival Hamas as far as Israel is concerned and they make no bones about it. They too are terrorists of the worst kind and are dedicated to shedding the blood of all Jews. Their bloodlust is not more "moderate" than Hamas.

So there we have it. "Hamastan" and "Fatahstan". Two new terrorist Arab states, living side by side with Israel. Today, we must raise our voices to the heavens and cry out to the Almighty G-d of Israel. Today we must beseech the Master of the Universe to provide us with authentic Jewish leaders. Today the State of Israel and the Jewish people stand on a dangerous precipice. Life and death is before us. It is up to us to choose life. It is up to us to summon up the internal strength to rededicate our lives to G-d and to Torah. It is up to us to fear no man, no government, and no new Arab terrorist states. It is time to stand with strength and power in the face of adversity and destruction. It is time to fear only G-d and to offer our heartfelt prayers, for in the end, it is only through the hand of G-d that the Jewish people and the State of Israel will survive.

Contact Fern Sidman at AriellaH@aol.com

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THERE IS MORE TO DEMOCRACY THAN ELECTIONS AND THE FINGERS OF VOTERS COVERED WITH INK
Posted by Nurit Greenger, June 14, 2007.

There is more to democracy than elections and the fingers of voters covered with ink.

The USA is totally blind to the reality of the Middle East. The USA has been catering to the Saudis and the other Arabs and Muslim countries without any regard for checks and balances.

US presidents have accepted hefty donations from Arabs and Muslims for things such as their libraries, and they have chosen to look the other way in return for this blood money. Jimmy Carter has been receiving so much Arab money that he has put on blinders. He has overlooked the fact that for "democratic" elections to be meaningful they must be followed by free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the right to assemble, and the right to change the government. All of these freedoms must be permitted without the use of force or violence.

Gaza under Hamas control is what we in the USA helped create. Madam Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the latest US politician to do harm to Israel and her Palestinian Arab foes. Rice demanded and forced Israel to abandon the southern security border -- the Philadelphi Corridor and Rafah -- which opened the opened the door for smuggling tons of heavy weapons, similar to the one used against Israel in last summer's Lebanon war.

Let us remember some facts:

1. The US administration (and even Israel) praised the PA elections as "democratic," although the winner is a terrorist organization. Hamas, in turn, melded into the PA government vying for statehood.

2. Israel was compelled to strengthen Abbas (a terrorist in his own right) and his terror agents disguised as a Fatah security force in order to win an internal struggle with Hamas terrorists. This was a terrible mistake. The weapons provided quickly fell into the hands of both Fatah and Hamas terrorists determined to murder Israelis. The USA and Israel came out looking like fools, and now Israel will suffer for it.

3. The excruciating folly of disengaging from Gaza and northern Samaria -- the forceful expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif and Chomesh in the summer of 2005 -- has turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes in modern Israel's short history.

4. Gaza has become a haven for terrorists from all types of terror organizations. They walked into the territory and began operating without opposition. While Rice and Olmert were hobnobbing with Abbas time and again, Gaza was warping into a terrorist training camp and weapons depot. Attacks on Israel continued without interruption. Thankfully, Israel learned how to preempt many of them. All the while, the world repeatedly decried the security wall built to protect Israel at an astronomical price as the "apartheid wall." Why? Because they asserted it isolated the Palestinian Arabs rather than recognizing that the fence has succeeded in keeping most of the slimy murderers away from their would-be victims.

5. If the new UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon thinks that a UN presence in Gaza will solve the problem, he is in for a rude awakening. The UN should let Israel clean up the mess, because UN forces are useless. They are not trained to cope with the terror tactics of Hamas. UN troops, moreover, lack the motivation to tangle with savage, murderous lunatics.

6. History is shaped more by miscalculation and false confidence than by benevolence. The mistakes of Israel and her allies have brought us to this point: Gaza is now Hamastan.

Olmert is still deluded in believing that he can bring peace to Israel via his buddy Abbas in Gaza, if not from his next cohort Assad of Syria. I sincerely hope that Israelis will not permit this demented "leader" down such a tragic path.

As for the west, especially the United States, I hope people finally get the big picture. The Islamists plan to take over the entire Middle East, which is just the beginning. Then, they will turn their attention Europe, where they already have a strong foothold. After which, they will steamroll whatever is left, which includes the west. The violent invasion is well underway, and the free world needs to decide what it wants to leave for its future generations. Otherwise, there will be nothing to leave at all. If we do not stem this evil tide now with strength and determination, we will not get another opportunity!

All the best,
Nurit

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com. Visit her blog:
http://ngthinker.typepad.com

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AN AUTHENTIC, 3,300-YEAR-OLD REGARDS FROM JOSHUA
Posted by Moshe Feiglin, June 14, 2007.

This appeared in Arutz-Sheva
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7191

For Israel's scientific community, the Bible is not a historical source. Most Israeli professors prefer to think of it as a collection of national fables. According to Israel's academia, the exodus from Egypt never happened and the Jews are nothing more than descendants of the Canaanites. Just like other nations, they also created national legends. That is also what Professor Adam Zertal thought. At least until he made a momentous discovery on Mount Eval in the Shomron.

Zertal unearthed nothing special as he laboriously climbed the mountain on the crutches that have served as his walking aids ever since he was injured in fighting along the Suez Canal. He reached the top of the mountain exhausted and sweating, with nothing in particular to show for his efforts. He began to descend at the opposite end of the mountain when a huge pile of rocks caught his trained eye. These rocks were going to change his life.

"I wasn't looking for Joshua's altar on Mount Eval," explained Professor Zertal in a lecture last month at Karnei Shomron. "I simply didn't believe that it existed." Zertal was in Karnei Shomron to lecture at the memorial service for murdered Shomron Security Chief, Gilad Zar, may G-d avenge his blood. Gilad had done much to help Zertal during his archaeological work in the Shomron.

"I am an acceptable witness," Zertal joked. "I am completely secular and I came to Mount Eval with no preconceptions.

The Dig

Countless pottery shards peek out from between the rocks. They are from the Settlement Era. In other words, they are approximately 3,300 years old. Somebody intentionally buried something very big here. What is it?

Slowly but surely, the rocks are removed. Seals from the time of Ramses II -- the famous Pharaoh from the exodus from Egypt -- are revealed. Golden earrings from the same era are unearthed. How did these 3,300-year-old Egyptian items fly across the Nile and land specifically here, at the peak of Mount Eval? Zertal and his team continue to dig. They carefully remove the floor of the structure and another surprise awaits them. A huge store of ashes and ancient animal bones fills the entire inner cavity. The ancient bones are sent for zoological analysis and the results are unequivocal: They are not the bones of dogs, donkeys, chickens or other animals that may just have happened by. All the bones belong to year-old sheep and rams. In other words, these are the bones of animals that the Torah instructs the Jewish People to use as sacrifices.

The picture quickly clears. From every possible angle -- archaeological, topographical, zoological and architectural -- the altar fits the descriptions of the altar in Deuteronomy and the book of Joshua. Nobody from the scientific community seriously attempts to differ with the clear-cut findings. There is no doubt; this is the place to which our ancestors came when they entered the Land of Israel. This is the altar described in Deuteronomy and Joshua. This is the site of the famous blessing and curse ceremony, in which a group of Hebrew wanderers became a nation.

"And when you cross over the Jordan, you shall erect these stones that I command you today, on Mount Eval. Listen and hear, Israel, today you have become a nation of G-d, your G-d." (Deuteronomy 27)

I took my children to see the ancient boat at Lake Kinneret. Hats off to the people who coordinated the project; they built an entire museum around this not-necessarily-Jewish archaeological find. A half-hour from my home, though, Professor Zertal has discovered the place at which we became a nation. It is the place that we can go to get an authentic, 3,300-year-old regards from Joshua and our ancestors. Forty years prior to that, the people who built that altar had received the Torah at Sinai.

Sadly, Joshua's altar is abandoned. "A conspiracy of silence shrouds this place," Professor Zertal ends his lecture, and carefully wobbles out to the taxi that will drive him home.

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.

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PRESS IGNORES OLMERT'S CLUELESSNESS OVER GAZA SITUATION
Posted by Barbara Sommer, June 14, 2007.

This was written by Dr. Aaron Lerner December 24, 2003. It was redistributed on 14 June 2007 as Hamas forces were capturing the last Fatah strongholds in Gaza. Dr. Aaron Lerner is Director of Independent Media Review and Analsis (IMRA). Its website address is http://www.imra.org.il

For several weeks Deputy Minister Ehud Olmert has been promoting his retreat "plan", carefully declining to direct questions to him that would indicate that the "plan" is actually a "slogan" bereft of any content.

  • When Olmert first revealed his slogan in an interview in Haaretz in the middle of November, he explained that "these are my own personal contemplations not yet evolved into a full strategy."

  • In Olmert's follow-up interview in Yediot Ahronot on Friday December 5, Olmert said that "ultimately there will be a state there, without neglecting our rights to insure the elements of our security. ...we will not allow, for example, the entry of tanks." On December 7, Olmert's media advisor, Hagai Elias, explained to IMRA that Olmert hasn't yet developed a plan that would actually insure that this could be achieved.

  • During the December 16 question and answer session at the Herzliya Conference, Former US Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, asked Min. Ehud Olmert what would happen in the vacuum created under Olmert's proposal for unilateral withdrawal. Olmert responded that he is talking about unilateral withdrawal with "no Israeli control or presence" in the area vacated and no understanding with the Palestinians with regard to what they do in the area. Olmert went on to explain that he expected that there would be terror even if an agreement was reached and that "we will have to deal with the terror" after a unilateral withdrawal. Olmert noted that he has no idea who would end up controlling the area vacated by Israel but asserted that even if Hamas controlled the area that this would not increase the level of danger to Israel.

Simply put: Olmert has a retreat slogan but apparently is not only clueless as to how such a retreat would play out -- even worse he does not care to think about it.

Rather than address this very serious issue, interviews with Olmert focus exclusively on the impact of his retreat slogan on his political prospects.

This morning, for example, Israel Radio interviewed others prior to Olmert who raised substantive concerns about Olmert's retreat slogan, but Olmert was only asked if he thought he would succeed in positioning himself to take Prime Minister Sharon's place at the helm of the Likud. Olmert's interview was in two parts, breaking for the 7:30 news headlines. The headlines included a report of Qassam rockets that hit Sderot within the Green Line.

The item was a natural basis for asking Olmert about how Israel would deal with a post retreat situation when the Palestinians would be able to deploy thousands of Qassam rockets in the evacuated West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Contact Barbara Sommer at sommer_1_98@yahoo.com

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FATAH-HAMAS VIOLENCE MOVES TO JUDEA AND SAMARIA
Posted by Hillel Fendel, June 14, 2007.

(IsraelNN.com) Fears of a spillover of violence from Gaza into Judea and Samaria are apparently coming true.

Coming off three days in which some 80 Arabs were killed in Fatah-Hamas warring in Gaza, Wednesday night saw shootings, arsons, mass arrests and building takeovers in Ramallah, Jenin, Shechem and elsewhere in Judea and Samaria.

In Jenin, Fatah terrorists seized a Hamas school, hospital and offices on Wednesday, and 200 Fatah activists marched in Jenin streets and shot in the air, after having burned down a Hamas club center. Al-Aqsa Brigades terror chief Zakhariya Zubeidi announced a ban on all Hamas activity in the city until further notice.

In Ramallah and nearby Bituniyah, Fatah is engaged in rounding up and arresting Hamas commanders from their homes. Hamas reported that armed Fatah men had kidnapped a Ramallah city councilman and burned his office. Two prominent Hamas officials in the araea were shot at in separate incidents, but no one was hurt in those attempts.

South of Ariel, in Salfit, Fatah men burned a Hamas office and raided other offices in the region. In Tul Karem, as well, east of Netanya, a Hamas office was shot at, and two Hamas cars were burnt. Fatah-Hamas gun battles were reported in Shechem and Bethlehem as well.

With Fatah on the run in Gaza, it has now called on Hamas members in Judea and Samaria to renounce their allegiance to Hamas if they do not wish to be harmed. Fatah has begun mass-arrests of Hamas leaders, and Fatah chief Abu Mazen has reportedly ordered a counter-attack in Judea and Samaria.

[Addendum: Charles Levinson, "Don't Shoot, We're Not Jews," in Telegraph-UK: "The Fatah security services ruled Gaza City for 15 years but are now holed up in fortified bunkers awaiting a fully-fledged assault by Hamas. "They're firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We're not Jews," the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station. Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets."]

Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Israel National News.

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A BETTER FUTURE BEGINS TODAY: A LOOK AT ONE OF ISRAEL'S FINER LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, June 14, 2007.

Israeli mothers must unite to declare that the continued sacrifice of their sons and daughters is no longer a viable option. In the meantime, much work must be done to overcome the Jewish nation's many obstacles, such as defending against its many foes.

Rabbi Eli Sadan, the Dean of Bnei (Sons Of) David, Eli Military Yeshiva Academy, a unique concept in higher learning in Israel, is single-handedly contributing to this vital effort. Through a variety of programs, the institute offers rigorous Judaic studies as well as leadership development training. The goal is for religious male youths to embark on an intellectually, spiritually, and physically challenging journey that will shape their character and values before and after their army service.

Israel is the only country in the world that has been at war since its inception. During sixty years of existence, she has been embroiled in an endless struggle for survival with no end in sight. The country has already endured five major wars. Though the fighting spirit persists, the nation is weary, and motivation has consequently suffered. Israel cannot afford such a lag knowing that her political and existential future will continue to be challenged. Clearly, the country will suffer through more difficulties, and preparations must be made for them.

The country must adopt a fundamental solution that involves political change. An immediate need exists for a generation of idealists who value the importance of Israel's future as a Jewish State. This requires the development of individuals who will take responsibility for preserving the country and its Jewish character.

In 1988, Rav Eli Sadan and Rav Yigal Levinstein established the Bnei David pre-army preparatory program at Eli. The two pioneering Rabbis created Bnei David's pre-army preparatory framework that provided a religious and spiritual basis for addressing the inevitable questions of faith that Israelis face during their military service. While students come from allover Israel and from many different backgrounds, they are all united by their motivation to develop strong leadership skills.

What makes Bnei David unique is its integration of Jewish observance and commitment to full army service, which may include military careers. Prior to Bnei David's program, the only option offered to young religious men was shortened army service interrupted by periods of religious study. Such an arrangement did not enable participants to become IDF officers.

The academy's curriculum includes Talmudic and Bible studies, Jewish history, law and philosophy. A special emphasis is placed on how these studies relate to their army service. Additionally, guest lecturers from all walks of Israeli life discuss social and public issues with the students. The pre-army training program consists of physical fitness and endurance training, navigation skills, and visits from guest lecturers from the various branches of the military.

If the future generations of Israel are not taught to embrace Judaism, patriotism, and leadership, the country's future is bleak. The nation of Israel was dismantled not by the Romans but by its own bickering citizens. Regardless of individual political and religious beliefs, Medinat Yisrael -- the State of Israel -- will only endure if the nation unites as one and work in unison.

The Bnei David academy teaches its students how to live together despite differences. A Bnei David academy graduate finishes the pre-army preparatory program as a proud soldier-scholar aware of his responsibility to the Jewish state.

As of late, unfortunately, Israeli education minister, Yuli Tamir, decided that investing in Israeli Arab education was more pertinent. She drastically cut the academy's annual budget by NIS 2 million or $500,000. The Prime Minister's office objected to the excessive cut, but Tamir adhered to her decision.

Because the Bnei David Academy offers a potential cure for the lack of Israeli leadership, we must overcome the academy's budgetary shortfall. In fact, we must grow the budget to $10 million in order to accommodate the many candidates who must be turned away each year due to budgetary constraints.

The future of Israel is in our hands.

Please send tax-deductible contributions to Bnei David as follows:
Friends of Bnei David
P.E.F. Israel Endowments Funds
Suite 607
317 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10017 USA

OR

32 Wigmore St. London, W1U 2RP
United Kingdom

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HAMAS VANQUISHES THE PLO IN GAZA -- PURE EVIL ON ISRAEL'S DOORSTEP
Posted by Michael Travis, June 14, 2007.

The creation of our newest terror state, the Hamas/Iranian puppet regime in the Gaza strip, will be announced at Friday prayers.

"I believe that there could be no greater legacy for America than to help bring into being a Palestinian state for a people who 'suffer the "daily humiliation.' of living under the so-called Israeli occupation." U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Two years ago, before the expulsion of Jews from the Gaza Strip.

The horror that has beset the Palestinian people in Gaza...courtesy of the UN, EU, and others that promote the establishment of Terror States.

"Key security HQ in Gaza City, last Fatah stronghold, falls."
Jerusalem Post Staff and Khaled Abu Toameh
June 14, 2007
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181570271436&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Hamas fighters overran Fatah-allied Preventive Security headquarters in Gaza City on Thursday, a key target in their battle to control the entire Gaza Strip, witnesses and a security agency official said.

One witness, Jihad Abu Ayad, said Hamas gunmen were bringing Preventive Security men out of the building and executing them in the street.

Moments after the key security command was taken over, aides said that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas gave his first order to his elite presidential guard to strike back against Hamas rivals.

However, PA officials told the Jerusalem Post that no decision had yet been made and that a meeting between Abbas and his security officials had not yet reached its conclusion.

Nevertheless, the PA officials said that Abbas was expected to officially pull Fatah out of the PA unity government.

The coup de grace to Fatah sovereignty occurred a day after 35 Palestinians were killed in factional fighting in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier, Fatah operatives called on Abbas to order a move from defense to offense, "even at the price of thousands of dead Palestinians," to avoid losing the Gaza Strip to Hamas.

The call to Abbas Thursday morning came after Fatah officials urged Abbas to resign Wednesday night. Fatah members have grown increasingly angry at what they termed Abbas's failure to order a strong counter-attack to Hamas and a lack of clear-cut orders.

More than 70 people, most of them militants, have been killed in the three days since Gaza slid into civil war. Early Thursday, five more casualties were added to the tally.

"There will be no dialogue with Fatah, only the sword and the rifle," Nezar Rayyan, a top Hamas leader, told Hamas radio on Thursday.

"This is a battle between Muslims and non-believers, and God willing, we will lead the Friday prayer in the president's office, and transform the [Fatah-controlled] security complex into a big mosque."

During the morning's fighting, retreating Fatah forces tried to prevent further Hamas entrenchment by blowing up their abandoned positions in central Gaza. However, Hamas said it had seized from Fatah thousands of M-16 and Kalashnikov rifles and pistols, communication equipment, armored vehicles, trucks, binoculars, military outfits, tents, sleeping bags, hand grenades, mortars and documents.

Hamas gunmen were seen driving some of the confiscated vehicles that have been decorated with Hamas flags and signs.

Pictures of the weapons were posted on a number of Hamas-linked Web sites. "Most of the weapons came from Egypt and Jordan over the past few years," a senior Fatah official told The Jerusalem Post. "They did not come directly from the US, although the Americans had initiated the supply of weapons and ammunition."

Meanwhile, Palestinian security forces arrested eight Hamas members in the West Bank, in the first sign that Abbas is trying to assert his control in the territory, a security official said.

Among those arrested was a mosque preacher from a West Bank village, the official said. He said security forces had a list of 47 names of Hamas activists they were told to arrest.

Concurrently, hundreds of Fatah men asked Israel to help them flee the Gaza Strip through Gaza seaport, one of the last locations in the Strip still held by Fatah Thursday morning, for fear they would be executed by Hamas gunmen if they remained in Gaza.

According to Israel Radio, Egypt was busy preparing plans to absorb thousands of Palestinians attempting to flee the clashes in Gaza.

In Israel, defense officials said talking with Hamas might become unavoidable, as closing all crossings from the Gaza Strip into Israel to avoid intra-Palestinian violence leaking into Israel would soon cause an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.

Israeli sources were quoted as saying that following the developments in the strip, Israel was now viewing the Gaza Strip as a "separate enemy state."


"High Priestess of the Palestinian State"
by Don Feder
FrontPageMagazine.com
October 23, 2006

If the State Department has a religion, it's Palestinian statehood. On its altar, diplomats are eager to sacrifice the security of America's only reliable Middle East ally and, ultimately, our own security as well.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become the high priestess of this cult -- muttering mystic incantations about Palestinian suffering under the brutal Israeli occupation and how a Palestinian state would be the crowning achievement of American foreign policy, much the way the Munich pact was the Olympic gold of British diplomacy.

Her recent address to the American Palestine Task Force was modestly described by the Zionist Organization of America as the "most pro-Palestinian Arab, anti-Israel speech in memory by a major U.S. administration official."

In her remarks, Rice confessed, "I believe that there could be no greater legacy for America than to help bring into being a Palestinian state for a people who suffer the 'daily humiliation.' of living under the so-called Israeli occupation."

This is the way our secretary of state chooses to characterize the nation that has been our steadfast friend for 60 years (brutal occupying power), to demonstrate her devotion for a people who celebrated the slaughter of 3,000 Americans on 9/11 by dancing in the streets of Ramallah.

As a student of history, Rice observed, I know that "there are so many things that once seemed impossible that, after they happened, simply seemed inevitable." She wasn't talking about the improbable rise of Nazism in Germany, which would be an apt comparison here.

Scholar that she is, Rice had another political movement in mind, "By all rights, America, the United States of America (in case her audience thought she was referring to another America), should never have come into being," the lady declared.

To compare Washington, Adams and Jefferson to Arafat, Abbas and the mad bombers of Hamas is kinky, to say the least. Our Founding Fathers were men of learning, achievement and discernment, not a gang of Allah-intoxicated savages. They demonstrated their courage by pledging their lives, fortunes and sacred honor, not by turning mothers and children into smoldering lumps of mangled flesh.

"The Palestinian people deserve a better life, a life that is rooted in liberty, democracy, uncompromised by violence and terrorism," Rice inanely proclaimed.

What the French are to cuisine and collaboration, the Palestinians are to violence and terrorism.

In January of this year, the Palestinians gave Hamas control of their legislature. It's not that the rival gang (Fatah) isn't also a terrorist entity. It's just that Hamas is more bloodthirsty and fanatical -- good things in the eyes of the worthy Palestinian people. Gary Bauer summarized the election's outcome with the observation, "Faced with a choice, the Palestinian voters picked the most ardent and committed Jew-haters and America-haters."

In recent opinion polls, 61 percent of Palestinians supported suicide bombings and terrorism, 56 percent favored rocket attacks on civilian targets, 75 percent endorsed the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers (which sparked a mini-war on Israel's northern border in July and August), and 97 percent were pro-Hezbollah.

Palestinian tastes run to Protocols-of-Elders-of-Zion-type anti-Semitism, "honor killing" of women suspected of adultery, the brutal murder of Israeli civilians, and the sectarian-cleansing of Nazareth and Bethlehem, once overwhelmingly Christian cities.

In the aftermath of Pope Benedict XVI's speech at a Bavarian university, which included a quote by a 14th century Byzantine emperor, the state-run television station of the Palestinian Authority described the pontiff as "arrogant," "stupid," and "criminal." The pope will be judged by Allah on the day "when eyes stare in terror," the jihad network predicted.

Hey, the Palestinians need a symbol for their state, right -- like Uncle Sam for the U.S. or John Bull for the Brits? How about the mother of a suicide bomber decked out in fashionable black robes describing her pride and pleasure that her martyr son did Allah's will by detonating himself along with as many innocents as possible?

Rice could look far and wide and not find worse candidates for creating a nation where democracy, tolerance, and pluralism will reign than the Palestinians.

But Condi is more than a ditzy cheerleader for Palestinian nationalism. She's also a facilitator par excellence. A year ago, Ms. Rice brokered the deal to hand Gaza over to the terrorists, which entailed 7,500 Jews being driven from their homes.

It wasn't long before the Minutemen of the Middle East were expressing their gratitude for this by rocket attacks on Israel's southern settlements (45 in September alone).

Rice pressured Israel into turning over checkpoints on the Gaza/Sinai border to a joint force of Palestinians and Egyptians. Since then, Palestinian terrorists (excuse the redundancy) have smuggled 15 tons of explosives over the border, as well as quantities of rifles, ammunition, rockets and other weapons and munitions. Condi must be very popular with Israelis just a rocket's shot from Gaza.

Now she wants the U.S. to fund an expansion of Abbas's Presidential Guard from 2,500 to 6,000 troops. She also wants Israel to approve the transfer of additional weapons to the ironically misnamed Palestinian security forces. Toys for Terrorists?

If Condoleezza Rice has a favorite Palestinian, it's Mahmoud Abbas, president of the "Palestinian Authority."

In the fantasy realm Rice has constructed, Abbas is the moderate working feverishly for democracy and human rights in Jihadistan, as well as for an enduring peace with Israel. Good Abbas and his noble Fatah party are contrasted with the terrorist black hats of Hamas.

On her Middle East trip earlier this month, Rice told reporters she had "great admiration" for the president of the Palestinians, and praised his "willingness" to restart negotiations with the Israelis (so gracious of him).

"You have the strong commitment of the United States to that cause and the personal commitment of me," the secretary of state simpered.

Palestine's George Washington was Arafat's chief deputy for 40 years and helped him to found Fatah. Abbas was paymaster for the Munich Olympics assassins. His Ph.D. thesis on why the Holocaust never happened reads like David Duke's memoirs.

Abbas's party, Fatah, was the undisputed master of the Palestinian Authority until January, when it lost the aforementioned legislative elections to Hamas. (It still controls the presidency.) Fatah and Hamas are rival gangs -- like the Capone mob and Bugs Moran's boys -- engaged in a turf war. One is more religious, the other more ideological. Otherwise, there's no difference..

Both are anti-American. Both seek the destruction of Israel. Both are willing to wade through a river of blood to reach their goals. Both envision a Palestinian state which will resemble a hybrid of Syria and Iran -- without the amenities.

  • There's an assiduously cultivated myth that unlike Hamas, Abbas recognizes Israel. Abbas has made it quite clear that he recognizes his Israeli counterparts for purposes of negotiations (when he thinks he can get something) -- not Israel's legitimacy or claim to any territory.

  • The charter of Abbas' party calls for the annihilation of Israel. Maps of the Palestinian Authority show Palestine from the Jordan to the sea. In a 2004 interview on Iranian television, then PA Foreign Minister Farouk Kaddoumi said Fatah's embrace of a two-state solution was a feint. "At this stage, there will be two states. Many years from now, there will be one state."

  • Abu Ahmed, a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades (Fatah's terrorist auxiliary) is frank: "The base of our Fatah movement keeps dreaming of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa and Aco. There has been no change in our position (vis a vis the Zionist entity). Abbas recognizes Israel because of the pressure that the Zionists and the Americans are exercising on him. We understand this is part of his obligations and political calculations." It's an act to get the dumb Americans to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the Palestinian Authority and pressure Jerusalem into giving in to his latest demand.

  • The Brigades are responsible for every suicide bombing inside Israel in the last two years. Rice's State Department considers the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades a terrorist group. Members of the Brigades are members of Fatah. It was started by Arafat. When they overran Fatah headquarters in 2003, the Israelis discovered documentation that the party had recently transferred $50,000 to the Brigades. With the Brigades, Abbas can have it both ways -- playing the sober, business-suited diplomat for the West, while acting as the terrorist chieftain for his own people.

  • Abbas has authorized the payment of annuities to the families of suicide bombers. Of both Hamas and the Brigades, Rice's favorite Palestinian politician says, "Israel calls them terrorists, we call them strugglers." Also, "Allah loves the martyr." Suicide bombers should be recognized as "heroes fighting for freedom." He's also praised the Islamic lunatics of Hezbollah as a shining example of what he calls the "Arab resistance."

  • A year ago, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began raving about wiping Israel off the face of the earth, Abbas's party in Gaza distributed flyers proclaiming, "We affirm our support and backing for the positions of the Iranian president toward the Zionist state which, by God's will, will cease to exist."

By the will of Allah -- and with the unwitting support of Condoleezza Rice.

In her speech to the American Palestinian Task Force, Rice described Palestinian statehood as the impossible dream that we must dare to dream nonetheless.

It's more like the inevitable nightmare. Everyone wants it. Its boosters include Tony Blair, the European Union, the UN, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, the Saudis, the Arab League, the Conference of Islamic Organizations, al Qaeda, Iranian mullahs, Bashar Assad, etc., etc. At least half of Israel, including the Olmert government, is willing to go along with it.

The two-state solution is a one-state solution in disguise.

With a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, Israel will lose strategic depth. It will be 9 miles wide at its narrow waist. It will lose the high ground of Judea and Samaria. Most of its population and industry will be within mortar- and rocket- range. Instead of a 40-mile eastern border, its new border with the State of Palestine will be over 400 miles long.

For their future security, Israelis will have to trust in the good will of Mahmoud Abbas, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Hamas and al-Qaeda (which is already operating in Gaza). Apologies to the M*A*S*H theme song, but this suicide will not be painless.

Who knows, perhaps Abbas and company will erect a statue of Secretary Rice (their Marquis de Lafayette) in the future Palestinian state -- just after they demolish the Knesset and Western wall, turn Yad Vashem into a mosque and drive the Jews into the sea.

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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RESULT OF U.S./ISRAEL MYOPIA
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 14, 2007.

UNFAIR TO ISRAEL

British unions plan to boycott Israel but not major human rights violators such as Sudan, China, Russia, Burma. The UNO Human Rights Commission spent a year denouncing Israel and no other country (Benny Avni, NY Sun, 6/1, p.7).

It was wrong about Israel. It doesn't care about human rights, just about harassing Israel.

WHAT DID OLMERT LEARN FROM LEBANON?

Speaking to the Knesset, PM Olmert admitted having made mistakes in Lebanon, but did not identify them. (Therefore, it is not clear that he knows what they were or could act differently, given similar situations and temptations.)

Although most Israelis realize that Hizbullah has rearmed and is better prepared for another war than for the prior one, Olmert claims to have gained an advantage for Israel from the war. He quotes NY Times correspondent Thomas Friedman to the effect that Hizbullah troops are further north of Israel, now. (But Mr. Friedman is anti-Israel and Hizbullah easily can move south when it wishes. But it doesn't need to, it can fire longer-range missiles.) He quotes the UNIFIL commander (but the quotation can be seen as self-serving). Olmert's overly optimistic assessment of the war's outcome "serves as perhaps the most convincing proof that his judgment is so warped and crippled by the need to justify his past failures that he cannot effectively address the challenges Israel faces today." (IMRA, 5/29.)

In fact, he is repeating those mistakes. He brought in UNIFIL, but UNIFIL and the terrorists have the usual tacit understanding. UNIFIL leaves the terrorists alone, and the terrorists leave UNIFIL alone. Hizbullah keeps a lower profile at the border, until it is ready to strike.

RESULT OF U.S. & ISRAELI MYOPIA

"A 40% breakaway faction of M. Abbas's Fatah militant wing of Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigade has just announced that they are joining Hamas. No doubt, they will take with them the arms and ammunition given them by Olmert and Bush, including the CIA training in how to kill."

Bush has financial ties to our enemies. "Role models like Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin, Ehud Barak, Arik Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, et al, have demonstrated they have little or no use for being Jewish and that the Jewish Land is just a place they happen to live (in) until they move out." Israel's leaders are role models for defeat. They should be put on trial (Winston Mid East Analysis, 5/29).

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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PERES: ISRAEL`S KURT WALDHEIM
Posted by Boris Celser, June 14, 2007.

Israel has elected its own Kurt Waldheim. While the Austrian Nazi was certainly not anti-Austrian, the Israeli one is anti-Jew, and responsible for crimes against humanity -- against his own people. The dead and maimed Israelis, called "sacrifices for peace" by the new president, deserved a bit more respect. Instead, they are likely to get more company.

It is of little consolation that he is still a loser, having been elected not by the people, but by a very corrupt Knesset.

Let the living come out of their homes. Let the Oslo dead come out of their graves. And together protest against the aberration and abomination that has occurred.

Only in Israel.

The Diaspora watches in horror. The terrorists are licking their lips in anticipation. Moshe Katsav a rapist? We`ve seen nothing yet.

Boris Celser lives in Canada. Contact him at celser@telusplanet.net

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LET'S HEAR IT FOR HAMASTAN!
Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, June 13, 2007.

As Arab infighting expands in Gaza and much of the world bemoans Mahmoud Abbas and his fellow latter day Arafatians' setbacks, Israel has reason to be glad.

While I get no pleasure from anyone dying, the fact is that it makes no difference whether it's Hamas or Fatah's affiliates murdering Jews. Both have no intention of living peacefully with a permanent Jewish State as their neighbor ... whatever their assorted whitewashers say, including the Foggy Folks. And Abbas himself ran on a platform for Israel's destruction. He and his folks are simply willing to sing the right tune to Western ears to gain support so the international squeeze can be put on the Jews. To its credit, Hamas is more honest about its murderous intent.

Dozens have been killed and wounded as Gaza implodes. If Israel was doing this, imagine the international outcry.

The good news is that even syndicated New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, finally seems to get it.

While usually throwing a zinger in regarding alleged moral equivalency regarding Israeli responses to Arab barbarism, in one of his latest pieces he had his aha moment and stated that the Arabs could forget about the Jews handing over the West Bank as they did with Gaza.

Gaza was a test, as many of us have noted, and the Arabs flunked it with flying colors.

And as Friedman finally acknowledged--after years of lecturing Israel about the need for withdrawal from virtually all the disputed territories--it just takes one Arab rocket fired from the West Bank to close down Israel's main airport. Hundreds have been fired into Israel proper since its withdrawal from Gaza two years ago.

Keep in mind that America has been pressing the Jews to arm or allow arms to reach the sweet-talking Arafatians. Latest reports state that Hamas has confiscated much of these arms and equipment already delivered from Fatah (which has also used them themselves against Jews).The Foggy Folks are just loaded with such shaft the Jews ideas.

Any Israeli leader who continues to cave in on these issues needs to be exiled or tried for treason.

The fight Abbas & Co. have with Hamas is basically over who gets control of the money which is and will be pouring in. Arafat made zillions this way. And it is about, of course, which group will be calling the shots--really and figuratively speaking.

So, guess what?

I'm backing a Hamas victory.

No more bull manure.

Let the Arabs fight it out. They had their chance at state building and blew it big time. They chose what the late professor, Richard Cottam (Nationalism In Iran), George Orwell (Notes On Nationalism), and others have called negative nationalism over the more tedious responsibilities of positive nationalism.

Israel got nothing in return for its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza--land used repeatedly to launch warfare and terror against it--except what most of us expected ... more terror, but this time launched closer to home. As even the alleged "moderate" Arafatians repeatedly said, any dealings with the Jews would just serve as a Trojan Horse, bringing them one step closer each time in their post-'67 destruction in stages plans for the Jews.

Given all that has transpired--including the recent resurrected fiasco of the Saudi Peace (of the grave) Initiative and the Mecca Accord which insist on flooding Israel with allegedly "returning" jihadists dedicated to its destruction.--Israel must continue to act unilaterally.

It must draw its lines in the sand in disputed lands in Judea (as in Jew) and Samaria--the "West Bank"--which allow it reasonable defense against its millions of murderous enemies. The days of Israel's 1949 U.N.-imposed microscopic armistice line existence must be gone forever--as U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 specified in the wake of the Six Day War. Judea and Samaria were non-apportioned areas of the original Palestinian Mandate received by Britain after World War I and were open to settlement by all the Mandate's inhabitants ... not just Arabs--most of whom were settlers themselves who came in from elsewhere.

Absent a true peace partner willing to come up with a real compromise and modus vivendi, Israel must declare that henceforth any aggression from Arab lands will be dealt with the way America's Colin Powell instructs for America itself ... massive retaliation.

A Hamas win in Gaza and perhaps beyond will make this easier for Israel to carry out ... no façade of equally murderous, phony Arafatian peace partners to deal with.

But Hamas has been playing Lebanon's Hizbullah game, learning the latter's lessons against Israel last summer well.

So, Israel must not be lured once again to fight according to the Arabs' game plan.

Hamas' "win" must turn into its own destruction ... and as President George W. Bush has said, those who support terrorists will suffer their fate.

When America warred with Germany and Japan, it didn't worry much about civilians killed along the way during the fire bombings and so forth.

And, unlike the above conflict, the war the Jews have been continuously forced to fight is about the very existence of their sole, tiny, reborn nation. Poll after poll has shown that if Israel withdrew from every inch of disputed territory, most Arabs would still refuse its right to exist.

So, again, cut the manure.

When the Arabs create Hamastan, Israel must deal with it as any other country would which faced an enemy dedicated to its destruction. To do this, it must first hold new elections and get rid of the pusillanimous, inept crew currently running the show. It must elect leaders who will tell Israel's best friends that what they're asking is not very friendly. And I'm being nice in describing such behavior this way.

This war is not about Arabs wanting their 22nd state (and second, not first, one in "Palestine"). They could have had that decades ago. Honorable plans were repeatedly offered and turned down by the Arabs themselves over the past century. It's about the Arabs wanting the destruction of the only state the Jews have ... and the conflict has always been about this. Negative nationalism par excellence ...

While the inter-Arab conflict plays out in the territories and before the dust settles, Israel must create plans to leave the Arabs gasping for air when the time is ripe ... a la June 1967. It must leave them afraid of retaliation because of what the next Israeli response will bring. This can be done...Israel must just have the will to act for its survival.

The hypocrites elsewhere will yell and scream about "Nazi" Jews and such.

Israel must ignore them and take the cuts in aid or whatever if need be.

Hamastan will give Israel a chance to face its mortal, genocidal, rejectionist enemies head on with gloves removed.

And it must do it this time in a way which will remove the smirk Arabs have been wearing since Lebanon last year.

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

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PEACE THRU PSYCHO-BABBLE; HOW BARAK WON
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 13, 2007.

1. Peace through Psycho-babble:
(from Middle East Quarterly)
Fratricide in the Holy Land. By Avner Falk.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. 271 pp. $35.

A biblical commandment tells Jews to remember what the Amalek desert tribe did to the Israelites, when Amalek attacked them for no rational reason -- the Jews held no territory and Amalek had no real grievances against them. The rabbis explain this biblical commandment on the grounds that it reminds us all how blind hatred needs no rationale. In modern terms, it is pointless to seek "root causes." The world contains pure evil, and not just misunderstood people whose feelings and self-esteem have been pricked.

In recent years a small but growing literature has attempted to analyze the Middle East conflict and derive new approaches to settling it based on psychoanalysis, including Ofer Grosbard's Israel on the Couch: The Psychology of the Peace Process.[1] Falk returns to the same well. Would that such people recalled the commandment about Amalek. Falk and other post-modernists have a problem understanding that conflicts like the Arab-Israeli one generally are rooted in real differences, and have little or nothing at all to do with personal psychology.

Falk calls himself a "political psychologist" and "psychohistorian," and has been associated with the Hebrew University School of Medicine.[2] Although he has written serious articles about the psychology of racism and anti-Semitism,[3] his attempt to offer a psychological analysis of Osama bin Laden, a patient we assume never graced Falk's sofa,[4] is less serious, as are his "psycho-biographies" of Theodore Herzl, Napoleon, and Moshe Dayan.[5] Evidently Falk has no need actually to meet a subject of his analysis. He continues in the same vein in Fratricide in the Holy Land, with its pop-psychology evaluations of Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat.

Falk's fundamental assumption is that there could not possibly be any rational basis for the violence in the Middle East conflict, and so one needs to go hunting for understanding by applying pop psychology to it. In some places, he attributes the conflict to the individual psychic disorders of political leaders such as Menachem Begin's supposed obsessions with security and the Holocaust. The psychic roots of the conflict began in World War I, insists Falk.

The book also has a political agenda. Falk sympathizes with the post-Zionist outlook, with references aplenty to Uri Avnery, Ilan Pappe, Baruch Kimmerling, Michael Lerner, and Benny Morris, whom he praises as "more open-minded." In this spirit, Falk offers moral relativism in which suicide bombers are only murderers in the Israeli view -- otherwise they are martyrs. Israel's very creation was more a naqba (Arabic: catastrophe) than a reason for celebration. Falk reduces the entire conflict to a Semitic rashomon (his term for the conflict). Suicide bombing he innocuously deems is an "unconscious fusion with one's mother." The conflict stems from pathological psychic need to have enemies.

While everything is relative, the two things Falk is quite sure about is that the whole mess stems from: 1) the fact that the Jews 'denied the existence of Arabs in Palestine. (although Falk does not name any Jew who ever did this); and 2) the Zionists were and are so insensitive to delicate Arab feelings' Falk sees Zionism itself as a great anachronism, a form of group narcissism, trying to reverse the course of history.

Evidence collecting is not Falk's strong card. He opines at length on supposed anti-Oriental snootiness in Israel, never offering a single datum. Numbers and empiricism do not interest him.

Footnotes

[1] "Brief Reviews," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004, pp. 87-8.

[2] Avner Falk's Home Page, accessed Nov. 2, 2006.

[3] See, for example, Avner Falk, "Collective Psychological Processes in Anti-Semitism," Jewish Political Studies Review, Spring 2006.

[4] Avner Falk, "Osama bin Laden: A Psychobiographical Study," Mind and Human Interaction, vol. 12, 2001, p. 161-72.

[5] Moshe Dayan, haIsh vehaAgadah: Biographia Psychoanalytit (Jerusalem: Ma'ariv Library, 1985); Herzl, King of the Jews: A Psychoanalytic Biography of Theodor Herzl (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993).
 

2. Ehud Barak has now stolen the Labor Party primaries election fair and square. With oodles of forged ballots, especially among Israeli Arabs. Gosh, I wonder why so many Israelis Arabs voted for him.
(http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/122735)

As noted in an earlier posting, having Barak at head of the Labor Party is a great advantage for Israel. The reason is that every Israeli knows that Barak personally dropped 4000 katyusha rockets onto northern Israel this past summer, so under him the Labor Party should drop to about the same electoral strength as the pro-hashish Green Leaf Party.

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. Or write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

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BANGLADESHI CLERGY CONDEMNS AHMEDINEJAD
Posted by Salah Choudhury, June 13, 2007.

This appeared June 13, 2007 in Weekly Blitz
www.weeklyblitz.net

Eminent Islamic scholar and former Chief Teacher of one of the leading madrassas in Bangladesh, Allama Sobhan criticized Iranian President Ahmedinejad saying that not only Islam but Judaism and Christianity are also two holy religions duly endorsed by Qur'an. He said Iranian president's Israel policy is simply heinous. Allah has declared the nation of Israel as the best in the world and they (the Jews and Israelis) have been accorded high status amongst all people of all religious beliefs in the world. How Ahmedinejad wants to destroy such divine blessed nation, Sobhan questioned. He said Ahmedinejad's destructive statements against Israel are direct violation of Qur'anic ethics.

Allama Sobhan termed Iranian president as a notorious criminal, terrorists and war monger. "No good Muslim will ever think of eliminating Jews or Israel, as those are precisely endorsed in Qur'an as blessed religion and nation' he said.

He called upon all Muslim nations to stand against Ahmedinejad and his nasty policy.

Sobhan was speaking as a guest speaker at a seminar organized by the Islamic think tanks in Dhaka.

The writer is a journalist, columnist, author, amd editor of "Weekly Blitz". Email him at salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com

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A FEW COMMENTS ON THE SITUATION
Posted by Michael Travis, June 13, 2007.

Friends,

I have just spent several hours on the phone to Israel gathering informed opinions and projections regarding the dramatic events of the last few days. I conferred with Intelligence and Security professionals with specific backgrounds in analyzing Middle-Eastern conflicts and the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the West. Opinions varied somewhat regarding the current situation and the threat to Israel and the West but there was clear agreement on these points:

  1. The Islamists view their social and legislative victories in Israel, Western Europe, and North America as proof of the power of the Ummah (Islamic Nation) and the fulfillment of their quest to establish a new Caliphate in the [Judeo-Christian] areas currently known as Dar al-Harb ("house of war").

  2. Confident of their impending rule over previously non-Muslim populations, Islam's power-hungry factions are now engaged in a bloody, no-holds barred battle for the primacy of a world re-defined as Dar al-Islam (literally: "house of submission").

    Saudi Arabia, (representing the brutal Wahhabist sect and most of the world's [Sunni] Muslims) Iran (whose Sh'a Mullahs rule with an iron fist over the second largest Islamic group) and Egypt, (whose Muslim Brotherhood forms a shadow government of Islamist radicals opposed to the seemingly secular Mubarak regime.) all believe it is their destiny to rule over Islam's version of the "New World Order".

  3. The destruction of the al-Askari mosque in Samarra (Iraq) has upped the ante considerably, with the Iranians blaming Saudi Arabia and their Western backers (The United States) for the attack. There is also a danger of the conflict spilling over to Muslim communities in Europe and North America. With internecine tensions already high in Detroit and other areas within the USA, security personnel would be well advised to operate on a heightened state of alert.

  4. Western overtures to the most unrepentant of terrorist regimes (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria etc.) are regarded as a sign of weakness by the Islamic Nation. Encouraged by Western non-action we can expect more audacious operations to be carried out by Islamic regimes and their sleeper-cells in the West.

Michael Travis

DEBKAFile Exclusive: Thousands of Palestinian security officers loyal to Fatah are under Hamas siege at their last bastion -- Gaza City's presidential compound
June 13, 2007

They are running out of food, water and ammunition. Hamas and its Executive Force have overrun some 80 percent of the Gaza Strip, while loyalists of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah, including complete clans, are surrendering and turning in their weapons. Hamas has set up large prisoner camps, some in the rubble of the Gush Katif villages. Wednesday afternoon, a desperate Abbas appealed to Israel to permit arms and ammunition to be transferred from the West Bank. Israeli officers said it was too late. Fatah is a lost case and any arms crossing into Gaza will be seized at once by Hamas.


The anti-Syrian Lebanese MP Walid Eido and his son were assassinated Wednesday by a massive explosion in their car which killed 10 people
June 13, 2007

The blast which ripped through Beirut's waterfront Manara district also killed Eido's two bodyguards and injured scores of civilians. Eido belonged to the ruling party headed by Saad Hariri, whose father, former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, was murdered in similar circumstances in 2005. An international tribunal has been set up to prosecute the crime's suspected perpetrators, including members of the Syrian Assad regime.


DEBKAFile's Military sources: Iran and Syria are the winners of Hamas' military coup against Fatah in Gaza Strip
June 12, 2007

It was the second triumph in a week for a Palestinian force backed by Iran and Syria, after the Lebanese army failed in four weeks' combat to crush the pro-Syrian factions' barricaded in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian camp near Tripoli in four weeks of combat.

Tuesday, Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Palestinian Authority forces faced disaster. Their inevitable ejection from the Gaza Strip effectively severs Palestinian rule between Ramallah, where Fatah will have to fight to retain control of the West Bank and Gaza, dominated now by an Islamist Palestinian force manipulated from Tehran and Damascus More...


Calm urged amid Iraq shrine bombs
BBC News

Chris Hondros/Getty Images, left, and Hameed Rasheed/Associated Press
Left, a file photo from Dec. 2003 shows intact the two minarets and the Golden Dome of the al-Askari mosque in Samarra.
At right, the mosque today after the attack on the minarets. The dome was destroyed in the 2006 attack

Political and religious leaders in Iraq have appealed for calm after an attack on one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, the al-Askari shrine in Samarra. Blasts destroyed two minarets of the shrine, which houses one of two tombs in the city for revered Shia imams.

Iraq's most prominent Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, condemned the attack but urged people not to respond with violence. The bombing of the shrine's dome in 2006 was followed by a wave of attacks. That incident is widely believed to have set off a continuing spiral of sectarian violence in which many thousands have died.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says there are obvious fears this latest attack might give it yet further impetus.

The head of the Shia endowment foundation said the minarets had been blown up by "extremists".

"It is a terrorist attack aimed at sparking sectarian violence," Sheikh Saleh al-Haidari told AFP news agency.

Ayatollah Sistani condemned the attack as a "heinous crime" and urged people "not to follow the path of sectarianism", his office said.

Angry protests

Almost immediately after the explosions, a curfew was imposed on Samarra as Iraqi security forces and US troops rushed to the area.

Meanwhile, police in the shrine's compound reportedly fired into the air to keep away angry Shia demonstrating outside.

AL-ASKARI SHRINE FACTS

One of the four major Shia shrines in Iraq
Contains tombs of two of the 12 revered Shia imams -- Ali al-Hadi and al-Hassan al-Askari
First developed during the 10th and 11th Centuries
Two 36m-high golden minarets destroyed in June 2007
68m-high golden dome blown up in February 2006

A team of explosives experts from the Iraqi police was also sent to the shrine to ascertain the cause of the blasts.

In the capital, Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki held emergency meetings with US and Iraqi security chiefs, as well as with the US ambassador.

His office then announced an open-ended curfew in Baghdad too, fearing a possible upsurge in sectarian violence.

Extra troops flooded into the streets, but angry Shia militiamen were ahead of them.

Iraqi police said a Sunni mosque in the east of the city was demolished by explosives.

In a speech on state TV, Mr Maliki called on Iraqis to "stand together against those who want to stir strife".

He blamed al-Qaeda in Iraq and supporters of former president Saddam Hussein for the blasts, but added that he had ordered the arrest of all the security forces responsible for protecting the shrine.

A state of emergency has also been declared in Najaf, site of another important Shia shrine, where the radical Shia cleric, Moqtada Sadr, has declared a three-day period of mourning.

"What did the government do to protect the tombs?" he asked in a statement.

Mr Sadr also called for peaceful demonstrations to demand an end to the US-led occupation.

Later, the political bloc loyal Mr Sadr suspended participation in parliament, demanding that the government takes "realistic measures" to rebuild Shia and Sunni mosques.

Pilgrimage centre

Samarra, a Sunni Muslim stronghold 100km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, has long been a centre of the armed insurgency against US troops and the Shia-dominated Iraqi administration.

The al-Askari shrine is of immense spiritual importance for Shia Muslims throughout the world and has attracted millions of pilgrims over the centuries.

Part of the Imam Ali al-Hadi mausoleum, the shrine contains the remains of the 10th and 11th imams, reputed to be direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.

Imam Ali al-Hadi died in 868 AD and his son, al-Hassan al-Askari, died in 874 AD.

The mosque's two minarets had escaped damage when its famous golden dome was destroyed by a huge explosion in February last year.

That attack was widely believed to be the work of Sunni militants from the al-Qaeda movement, some of whom were later arrested.

Our correspondent says there are bound to be questions about how such an obvious and significant target could have been attacked again.


Iraq on alert after shrine attack
By Jim Muir
BBC News, Baghdad
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6748723.stm

The latest attack on the al-Askari shrine in Samarra, one of the most revered sites in Shia Islam, has sent Iraq into an instant state of national alert.

Iraqi police reinforcements and US troops were rushed to Samarra itself, where a curfew was imposed almost as soon as the dust had settled over the battered shrine.

In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki held emergency meetings with his top security chiefs and conferred with the US ambassador and multinational forces commander.

The prime minister's office then announced that an open-ended curfew was also being ordered in the capital from 1500 local time.

A state of emergency was also reported at another major Shia centre, Najaf, to the south of Baghdad.

Calls for restraint

Shia militiamen, blamed for a wave of sectarian reprisals after the 22 February attack at Samarra in 2006, were reported to be out on the streets in force in many parts of Baghdad.

Loudspeakers at mosques in Sadr City, the teeming east Baghdad suburb where the Mehdi Army militia is strong, began broadcasting chants of "Allahu Akbar!" -- "God is Great".

The movement's leader, the maverick young cleric Moqtada Sadr, called for three days of mourning and issued an appeal for calm and restraint.

So too did Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the religious eminence who is usually regarded as the most senior clerical figure among Iraq's Shia Muslims.

But similar appeals in the wake of the Samarra attack last year did not stop the wave of sectarian revenge killings against the Sunni community, for which the Mehdi Army has largely been blamed.

Watershed

The first Samarra bombing was a watershed moment in the Iraqi crisis, triggering a spiral of violence that has taken thousands of lives among both Sunnis and Shia, and has proven almost impossible to stifle.

There are many unresolved flashpoints between the Sunni and Shia communities in Baghdad and elsewhere.

Despite all the precautions and the calls for restraint, there were predictions that the latest attack might add further fuel to the flames.

"Even if Moqtada Sadr appears waving a copy of the Koran, it is 90% cent sure there will be violence," said one Baghdad Shia gloomily.

The fallout will clearly be a major challenge to the current security "surge" by thousands of US and Iraqi troops.

The level of US forces in Iraq is expected to reach its peak in the coming days, with the aim of stabilising the capital and other troubled areas in advance of an eventual coalition withdrawal.

In the hours after Wednesday's Samarra explosions there were unconfirmed reports that a Sunni mosque in east Baghdad had been burned, and a Sunni neighbourhood in the western part of the capital attacked by Shia militiamen.

There are many unresolved flashpoints between the Sunni and Shia communities in Baghdad and elsewhere, despite a process of sectarian separation that has seen hundreds of families from both sides displaced by campaigns of threats and violence.

Even if Moqtada Sadr is sincere in his calls for his Shia followers not to fall into the trap of launching sectarian reprisals, there has been a growing question over the extent to which he is really in control of the Mehdi Army.

It is widely reported to have split into several factions and fragments.

Whoever was responsible for the latest attack at Samarra -- already blamed on radical Sunni insurgents -- clearly knew exactly what they were doing and what the likely response would be.


Shin Bet: Double suicide bombing foiled,
The Jerusalem Post,
Jun. 13, 2007

Photos taken by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) of the two female suicide bombers.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) announced Wednesday that it had arrested two Palestinian women who were planning a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in late May.

One of the women was a 39-year-old mother of eight in her ninth month of pregnancy, and the other was a 30-year-old mother of four. Both were arrested at Erez Crossing.

The suspects were apprehended following detailed intelligence pinpointing their location. During an interrogation following their arrest, the two women admitted that they were Islamic Jihad operatives, and said that they exploited Israel's humanitarian policy in order to gain false entrance papers on a medical pretext.

Fatma Yonas Hasan Zak, the older of the two, had been in charge of the women's Gaza labor office -- representing Islamic Jihad -- over the past four years. Part of her job was to remain in contact with armed members of the organization. In addition, she served as a go-between for women who expressed a desire to perpetrate suicide attacks.

Approximately three months ago, her niece, Roda Ibrahim Yonas Habib, asked Zak to help her commit a suicide attack. Zak, who decided to join her niece, turned to her contacts in the organization for backing.

According to their confessions, the two women were to detonate their bombs either in a restaurant, an event hall, or near a large group of soldiers.

The 19-year-old son of one of the women was present while the two were being filmed before leaving to perpetrate their attack.

David Frankfurter writes,

"Claiming the Israeli Defence Force has 'systematically flouted the fourth Geneva convention guaranteeing a civilian population unfettered access to medical services and immunity for medical staff', 130 UK Doctors have called for a boycott of the Israeli Medical Association and its expulsion from the WMA. As you ponder this, you may recall the way an employee of the Israel-bashing Medecins Sans Frontieres was caught planning to assassinate the Israeli Prime Minister. Certainly makes you wonder what motivates these good doctors to press Israel to give immunity to medical staff. And as for "guaranteeing a civilian population unfettered access to medical services", yesterday's Prime Minister's Office press release sure gives the game away -- and runs a chill up my spine.

"In the wake of precise intelligence information, the ISA, on May 20, 2007, at the Erez crossing, arrested two Palestinian women [Zak and Habib], who admitted to planning to perpetrate a double suicide bombing in crowded places (restaurants, events halls or any locality with a large concentration of soldiers) in Tel Aviv and Netanya. They further admitted that they were guided by Islamic Jihad, which exploited Israel's humanitarian policy; the two had received medical entry permits into Israel under false pretenses."

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Posted by Michael Travis, June 13, 2007.

This was written by Debbie Hamilton and it appeared yesterday on the Right Truth website
http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2007/06/ive_discussed_t.html The original article contains live links to additional material.

I've discussed the "intimidation, infiltration and disinformation tactics" used by Islamic groups and individuals. W.C. wrote an entire book on the subject, The Gathering Storm. Many Americans have not had the bad luck to experience this intimidation. Michael Devolin in the Magic City Morning Star wonders where the funds are coming from that Muslim groups are using to sue people who dare to speak out ... like Dr. Paul Williams, "who is being sued by McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario for the mere sin of questioning the level of security maintained at their nuclear reactor facility located on campus." Mr. Devolin shares his personal experience with Muslim intimidation and the McMaster University nuclear reactor.

One of my Jewish friends warns me continually that political correctness is going to kill us all. The West, that is. There is no such thing as political correctness in the Middle East. If you hate Jews, you kill Jews. Like the Jews of Sderot, Israel. The Palestinian Muslims hate Jews, as do most Muslims, whether secretly or otherwise, and so, without a word, they fire Kassam rockets into the tops of Jewish houses and schools in Sderot. But that's ok. They're Muslims, and Muslims of this world are not required to be politically correct. All the West requires of these religiously inspired murderers is that they inform the media of exactly what militant group was responsible for this or that atrocity. [snip]

I was subject to a very angry glare given me by a Mr. Abdul Alwani, the senior Project Officer for the Processing and Research Division at McMaster University's Nuclear Reactor site. I had just finished giving my oral presentation at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Hearing regarding McMaster University's license renewal to operate a nuclear reactor. In my oral presentation I stated that I felt extremely anxious about the real possibility of many of the Muslim students and faculty involved with McMaster's nuclear research harbouring extremist views or objectives. As an average Canadian citizen, I thought this fear very rational, considering that the West is actually fighting a war against Muslim terrorists. But Mr. Alwani, apparently, did not. His steady and malevolent stare I averted only by my turning my face toward the police officer sitting at the back of the room. Only then, before I could motion to the police officer that I felt threatened by Mr. Alwani's common example of Islam, did Mr. Alwani desist. The bad news for Mr. Alwani is that this whole episode was witnessed by others who might have hoped prior to this incident that educated and cultured Muslims are not given to savage impulses. (more)

In a letter to Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Michael Devolin writes:

I strongly object to McMaster University being granted license for a seven year extension of its nuclear research program precisely because of the fact that many of its staff are not only Muslims, but also, and more importantly, because these same Muslims originate from countries where the generally desired efficacy of Islam as a religion is hatred and acts of violence, not only against Muslims of opposing sects and doctrines, but also against all non-Muslims, and especially Jews. These Muslims I'm referring to -- Muslims involved in McMaster Univerity's nuclear research program-were surely inculcated by what is known most commonly by now as Islam's culture of violence and hatred during their years living in those countries where this same malefic violence and hatred [of the West] is regarded as unremarkable. (read it all)

Michael Freund with the Jerusalem Post:

Harping on Israel's myriad alleged sins, and repeating them ad nauseam, does not make them so, and we cannot allow those who distort history, or who choose to forget it, to cloud our perspective any longer.

The truth of the matter is that the core of the Middle East conflict is not the Israeli "occupation" of territory, but the Palestinian "preoccupation" with destroying the Jewish state.

Israel is the target of a slanted MSM, political correctness gone awry to the point that they are afraid to defend themselves to the extent necessary -- because they, rather than their enemies, will be marked as the bad guys. As Mr. Freund says, "Hogwash!" Emphasis on the "hog".

On other political correctness gone wrong, W.C. says, "Civil Rights Is A Form of Critizing Islam", you should read the examples he quotes.

And then there's these:

Al-Qaeda suspect Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri may soon be leaving the military prison in America where he has been held as an enemy combatant. He was held on American soil rather than Guantanamo Bay Cuba and called an 'enemy combatant' rather than an 'illegal enemy combatant'.

The court ruled the US military cannot seize and imprison civilians. However al-Marri, a US resident born in Qatar, who moved to the US with his family just a day before 9/11, could now be transferred to the civil authorities to face charges, or be deported, or be held as a witness in a grand jury trial, or be imprisoned under the anti-terrorist Patriot act. (EuroNews)

Honor killings are becoming numerous in the UK. Today a father, Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and son were found guilty of murdering Banaz Mahmod, 20, for falling in love with the wrong man. Banaz Mahmod was "strangled with a boot lace, stuffed into a suitcase and buried in a back garden." Over 100 homicides are under investigation for being potential "honor killings." (ABC) I'm actually surprised the Muslims didn't demand this be tried in a sharia court rather than the British court system.

Trust me, these are just a few examples of the pressure put on honest citizens of freedom loving countries. Western media is monitored, blogs are monitored, attacked and shut down by folks who don't like what is being written. Trust me, there is no political correctness here at Right Truth.

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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ISRAELI RESTRAINT
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 13, 2007.

DOES THE P.A. WANT A WAR NOW?

Fatah is losing popularity. It and Hamas are unable to stop their infighting. They may be provoking a war with Israel, by keeping on firing rockets at it. If Israel sends in its forces, Fatah and Hamas would unite against it. Israel might destroy the Hamas forces. Abbas would launch his US-armed and trained army against the IDF, to regain prestige and to end up without Hamas being left as a rival.

Unifying its enemies would be to Israel's disadvantage, but it can't let its cities be destroyed by rockets (Winston Mid East Analysis, 5/22).

Perhaps that is why Israel is increasing its attacks on Hamas, without sending in major forces. But the rockets keep coming. The Arabs are not worried about losing much in a war, because the US always saves them from thorough defeat.

SEN. EDWARDS & CHINA

It was quite a scandal. Google and perhaps another US company provided China with the software to censor what its people can obtain from the Internet. Sen. Edwards was unaware of that when he approved of Google's decision to deal with China despite China's human rights violations.

Sen. Edwards retorted, let the US criticize China when it finds such violations! He did not say what the US would do about it, if China ignored the criticism (Josh Gerstein, NY Sun, 5/31, p.5). Unaware, but wants the presidency?

It's a pretense at ethics to suggest that Americans do business with the greatest human rights violator ever, but rebuke it now and then. We need to draw a line. Is it at all sales, sales of anything but tools of aggression or oppression, or what? Why is the US giving China a free pass into the World Trade Organization?

ISRAELI RESTRAINT

Israel fights according to civilized rules. It also fights with restraint against the Islamists, whose people fully support them. The Islamists don't fight according to civilized rules. They specialize in attacking civilians. That gives its enemy a great advantage in being allowed to generate more terrorists.

The Israelis think the world will admire their restraint. But the world either doesn't care or hates Jews. It's time for the Jews to stop craving gentile admiration. Besides, gentiles more likely admire Jews who defend themselves courageously and firmly than ones who accept attacks.

Perhaps Israel should stop considering Muslim civilians as non-combatants, and simply bombard the cities that produce the terrorists. Why must civilized societies take more casualties by following rules that the enemy doesn't, letting the enemy keep coming and building nuclear weapons. Muslim mosques the world over are not holy places but schools to teach hate, murder and recruit Islamists for Terror (Winston Mid East Analysis, 5/27)?

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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WORRY ABOUT SDEROT FIRST
Posted by Michael Travis, June 12, 2007.

Media should show more concern for Israeli children than for Gaza residents.

Israeli children targeted by the PLO and Hamas

This next is by Uzi Landau. It was published yesterday as an Opinion piece in Ynet News
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3411564,00.html

At 7:30 this morning you were busy making sandwiches for your children. You were making sure they ate their morning cereal and perhaps drank their chocolate milk. You hugged them and told them not to walk on the road, cross only at the crosswalk, and the kids left while you rushed to work.

At the same time, in a completely different country, other parents asked themselves, should we send our children to school? And what if the anti-rocket siren goes off? Who would take my kid by the hand and make sure to take him to a protected site? And truth be told, the kids didn't really want to go to school. They're scared. And by the way, there was no cereal this morning. Mom is no longer working because of the worries, and dad's store is empty of shoppers.

In the evening, many of you will likely head to PTA meetings ahead of the upcoming end-of-year ceremonies at school. At the same time, in that other country, the parents will sit with the principal in order to examine school preparations for the coming days -- which kids will be studying in fortified classrooms, and which ones will travel to study elsewhere, and what to do in case of escalation. An end-of-year ceremony? Who are you kidding. They have to worry about Qassam rockets now.

A few weeks ago I heard a woman on the radio, who is a resident of that same obscure country, recounting how while a siren was being sounded there and everyone held their breath until the rocket landed, in our country too, many people held their breath: The Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer team scored a goal against Ashkelon in the National Cup final.

And on the day one of those "flying objects," to use the disdainful expression uttered by attorney and advisor Dov Weisglass from central Israel, landed in Sderot and killed Shirel Friedman, one of the commentators on national television recounted the military options available to Israel, when newscaster Geula Even asked him with concern: But what will happen if, as a result, innocent Palestinians will be hurt?

Educating children to hate us

These people, who Geula Even shows so much concern for, elected Hamas' terror government to lead them. They did it in democratic elections, out of their own free will, with clear minds and clear intentions. They allow Qassam launchers to fire from their backyards and they allow the producers of explosive belts to produce them in apartments at their buildings.

In their schools they educate their children to hate us to death. Day and night they repeatedly tell them that Jews are the enemies of mankind, pigs and monkeys who poison wells, and therefore Israel must be exterminated. They also refer to their sons, the suicide bombers who blow up at the heart of civilian populations, as saints.

I'm certain that there are different people among them who wish to live in peace. I wouldn't want them to be hurt. I propose that they move to a different apartment, far away. Yet in any case, when the time comes to choose between the lives of Sderot children and the lives of innocents-or-not-so-innocent people in Gaza, I choose the lives of the former.

"We offered biased news coverage in order to promote the agenda of withdrawal from Lebanon that at the time was facing public debate," former Israel Radio news editor Chanan Naveh admitted last week during a radio convention in Haifa. "We pushed in every possible way for the removal of the IDF from southern Lebanon in 2000. We viewed it as a mission. In our newsroom, three editors had sons serving in Lebanon."

Now we can understand why the media hasn't really dealt with the Qassam rockets that have been landing in Sderot for seven years, and particularly in the last two years since the Gaza withdrawal. Dr. Naveh's and his colleagues' children were simply not serving there. Would he, Geula Even, and their colleagues conduct themselves the same way had Qassams landed in Tel Aviv?

Two years ago, in the framework of the attractive marketing campaign regarding the wonders of "disengagement," Sharon and Olmert promised us, with the support of most media commentators, that the moment we leave Gaza it will be easier to fight terrorism, and that if only one Qassam rocket lands here, "Gaza will be shaken up" and "the world will understand." Well...?

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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ENLIGHTENMENT ON WIFE-BEATING IN ISLAM FROM THE WORLD'S LEADING AUTHORITY
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 12, 2007.

In case anyone was deceived or mis-informed or has misunderstood the true nature of the husband-wife relationship in islam, we have some straight talk from the President of al=Azhar university (Cairo). Al-Azhar is the world's leading islamic institution of higher learning and the beacon of interpretation and ajudication in the Muslim world. The president, Prof. Ahmad et-Tayyeb, is, therefore, the world's foremost and most authoritative opinion on all matters relating to Islamic law. In addition, he was the mufti of Egypt: Mufti = supreme religious leader. so...he is a good authority.

Subject: Wife-beating in Islam? No, it's only punching
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:57:07 -0700
From: MEMRI TV

President of Al-Azhar and former Mufti of Egypt explains wife-beating in Islam: 'It's not really beating, it's more like punching'

The following is an interview with President of Al-Azhar University and former Mufti of Egypt, Dr. Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, which aired on Nile News TV on May 25, 2007. Ahmad Al-Tayyeb: With regard to wife beating... In a nutshell, it appeared as part of a program to reform the wife. [According to the Koran], first 'admonish them,' [then] 'sleep in separate beds, and beat them.'

That's Qur'an 4:34.

Interviewer: I think we must stress that this pertains to a rebellious woman...

Ahmad Al-Tayyeb: Of course. It's not that anybody can start beating as he sees fit. [Westerners] who claim this talk about an Islam which is a figment of their imagination. They are villains because they know there's no such thing in Islam, and they want to pin this interpretation on it.

Why?

Because Islamic culture is the only culture that is spreading, and is viewed with fear by people of other cultures. In any case... This method appeared as part of the treatment of a rebellious wife. I am faced with two options -- either the family will be destroyed by divorce, or I can use means that may bring my wife, the mother of my children, back to her senses. The first means is admonishment.

[...]

The second means of treatment is 'sleeping in separate beds.' Why? Because this targets the honor... A lot could be said about this. The strength of a woman lies in her ability to seduce the man.

The man is strong and can do whatever he wants, but the woman has a weapon of her own. This weapon can be targeted. Many women will come back to their senses, when they realize that this is what's involved.

[...]

By Allah, even if only one woman out of a million can be reformed by light beatings... It's not really beating, it's more like punching... It's like shoving or poking her. That's what it is.

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

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MODIFYING A BAD PEACE PLAN -- PROBABLY IT STILL WON'T WORK
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 12, 2007.

Below is an essay called "The Independent State of West Palestine" written by Dan Gordon. It is archived at
http://jewishworldreview.com/0607/gordon061107.php3. Dan Gordon was a captain in the reserves in the IDF during the Lebanon war last summer. He is the writer of such films as 'The Hurricane' which starred Denzel Washington; 'Murder in the First,' with Kevin Bacon and Christian Slater; 'Wyatt Earp' which starred Kevin Costner; and 'The Assignment' which starred Ben Kingsley, Donald Sutherland and Aidan Quinn. The article is interspersed with my comments in CAPS. This is the letter I wrote him:

DEAR MR. GORDON,

THANK YOU FOR PUBLISHING THIS WONDERFUL IDEA. I THINK IT WOULD WORK IF THERE WERE ANY SUBSTANTIVE ARAB LEADERSHIP ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WHICH REALLY WANTED PEACE.

HOWEVER, OVER THE LAST 70 YEARS OF THE ARAB-ISRAEL CONFLICT, ARAB LEADERSHIP HAS DEMONSTRATED OVER AND OVER THAT THEY DO NOT WANT PEACE. AS FORMER HEZBOLLAH LEADER ABBAS MASSAWI TOLD FUAD AJAMI IN 1993, "TELL ISRAEL, WE ARE NOT FIGHTING YOU BECAUSE WE WANT SOMETHING FROM YOU. WE ARE FIGHTING YOU BECAUSE WE WANT TO DESTROY YOU."

THE IDEA OF ISOLATING HAMAS IN THE GAZA STRIP IS A GOOD ONE. TOO BAD THAT ISRAEL WAS UNABLE TO DO THAT BEFORE HAMAS AND HEZBOLLAH STRENGTHENED THEIR HOLD ON THE WEST BANK. NOW THAT THERE ARE MANY HAMAS CELLS IN THE WEST BANK, ISOLATION IN GAZA IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT MY 10-STEP PLAN (SEE BELOW).

NOW IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT I AM REFERING THROUGHOUT TO ARAB LEADERS. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT GOES ON IN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE RANK-AND-FILE, THE PALESTINIAN-IN-THE-STREET. SO I ASSUME THAT SOME WANT PEACE, AND SOME DO NOT. THE ONES WHO DO NOT ARE NUMEROUS ENOUGH TO PUT HAMAS IN TO POWER AND TO STAFF THE RANKS OF THE TERROR GANGS AND THE SUICIDE BOMBER SCHOOL IN GAZA CITY... SO THE WAR-MONGERS RULE.

THERE ARE NO LEADERS WITHOUT FOLLOWERS.

AND WE ARE NOT TALKING MERELY OF THE EXTREMISTS. THE SAUDIS AND IRAN AND SYRIA AND EGYPT AND LIBYA MOST ASSUREDLY DO NOT WANT PEACE. THEY NEED THE CONFLICT. THE CONFLICT ALLOWS THEM TO DIVERT THEIR POPULACE'S ATTENTION FROM THE MISDEEDS AND MISMANAGEMENT AND TOTALITARIANISM AND TYRANNY AND TREACHERY OF THE LEADERS THEMSELVES. EGYPT'S CONSTITUTION IS QUITE LIBERAL, WITH MANY GUARANTEES OF FREEDOM AND LIBERTY. BUT IN TIME OF EMERGENCY, THE PRESIDENT CAN SUSPEND THE CONSTITUTION. BECAUSE OF THE ARAB-ISRAEL CONFLICT EGYPT HAS BEEN IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY SINCE 1952. WITHOUT THE CONFLICT, THERE WOULD BE NO JUSTIFICATION FOR MUBARAK'S TYRANNY, NOR THE ASSURANCE THAT HIS SON WILL FOLLOW AFTER HIM... AS PRESIDENT FOR LIFE.

THE SIMPLE BUT TRAGIC FACT THAT EMERGES FROM THE HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT IS THAT IT IS NOT A CONFLICT ABOUT CIRCUMSTANCES (LAND, BORDERS, TERRITORIES, SETTLEMENTS, CAPITOLS, WATER RESOURCES, WHATEVER). IT IS A CONFLICT DRIVEN BY A RELIGIOUSLY INSPIRED HATRED WHICH BROOKS NO COMPROMISE, SEEKS NO RESOLUTION, PERMITS NO GIVE AND TAKE, REJECTS ALL TREATIES, AND DEMANDS WAR UNTIL VICTORY OR MARTYRDOM. SO, NO MATTER HOW ELEGANT AND EFFICIENT AND LOGICAL AND COMPREHENSIVE ANY SUGGESTED SOLUTION MAY BE, IF THE SIMPLE FACTS OF ...

A.) 1,375 YEARS OF RELIGIOUSLY INSPIRED ARAB JEW-HATRED, AND

B.) 1,300 YEARS OF ISLAMIC LAW DEMANDING JEWISH DHIMMITUDE, AND

C.) 1,300 YEARS OF MUSLIM SUPREMICIST TRIUMPHALIST THEOCRATIC IIMPERIALIST TOTALITARIAN JIHADIST FASCISM...

ARE NOT TAKEN IN TO CONSIDERATION, THE PLAN HAS NO CHANCE OF SUCCESS; BECAUSE THE PALESTINIAN LEADERSHIP THAT WOULD SUPPORT THE PLAN WILL BE ASSASSINATED BY THE CURRENT LEADERSHIP.

BUT THERE IS A WAY IN WHICH YOUR IDEA MAY WORK.

KEEPING IN MIND THE ABOVE COMMENTS, AND MY INTERLINEAR COMMENTARY IN CAPS/BOLD BELOW, THERE IS ONE WAY BY MEANS OF WHICH YOUR SUGGESTIONS COULD BE PUT IN TO PRACTISE AND HAVE A REASONABLE CHANCE OF SUCCESS:
 

THIS IS MY 10 STEP PLAN:

1.) THE USA MUST GUARANTEE TO ISRAEL ITS FULL AND UNSTINTING SUPPORT, POLITICALLY AND MILITARILY, FOR AN ALL-OUT IDF WAR AGAINST ALL THE TERRORIST ARMIES IN THE GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK AND INSIDE OF PRE-67 ISRAEL

2.) THE IDF MUST KILL ALL THE TERRORIST LEADERS

3.) THE IDF MUST DEFEAT THE TERRORIST FORCES TO THE POINT OF 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER' EVEN THOUGH THIS MAY MEAN SIGNIFICANT CIVILIAN CASUALTIES (HENCE NEED FOR USA SUPPORT POLITICALLY IN UN AND OTHER VENUES WHERE BIGOTTED WORLD OPINION EXCORIATES ISRAEL)

4.) THEN ISRAEL MUST DISARM AND DISBAND THE TERROR GROUPS

5.) THEN ISRAEL MUST KILL OR JAIL (FOR DECADES) THOSE TERRORISTS WHO TRY TO MAINTAIN ARMED RESISTENCE, REFUSE TO DISBAND, AND/OR TRY TO RE-IGNITE THE TERROR WAR

6.) THEN ISRAEL MUST FORCE THE PA TO OUTLAW TERRORISM AND INCITEMENT AND HATE SPEECH AND HATE TEACH AND HATE PREACH SUCH THAT FUTURE TERRORISM IS STOPPED, JUST AS NAZISM WAS STOPPED AFTER WORLD WAR 2 AND GERMANY'S UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

7.) THEN PA LEADERS WHO ARE MODERATE AND WHO ARE WILLING TO SET ASIDE 1,375 YEARS OF MUSLIM HATE-TEACH ANDHATE-PREACH, AND WILLING TO IGNORE THE HADITH OF THE TREE AND THE STONE, AND WILLING TO STAND UP TO AND DEFY THE EXTERNAL TERROR FORCES (HEZBOLLAH, EL-QAEDA, PFLP AND DFLP AND PFLP-GC LOCATED IN DAMASCUS OR TEHERAN OR THE SINAI), AND IGNORE OR STAND UP TO AND CONFRONT AND STARE DOWN THE OTHER MUSLIM NATIONS WHICH WANT THE CONFLICT TO CONTINUE (ARABIA, IRAN, SYRIA)...THESE LEADERS CAN THEN COME TO THE FORE AND NOT BE ASSASSINATED.

8.) THESE LEADERS THEN IMPLEMENT #6.

9.) OR ELSE THE IDF WILL RE-OCCUPY 'PALESTINE' AND DECLARE MARSHALL LAW AND DO #3-6 BY FORCE OF ARMS

10.) THEN THESE MODERATE PALESTINIAN LEADERS CAN SIT DOWN WITH ISRAEL AND NEGOTIATE SOME FORM OF CO-OPERATIVE CO-EXISTENCE ALONG THE LINES OF YOUR PLAN.

MEANWHILE, IT MAY BE NECESSARY FOR ISRAEL TO FIND A WAY TO ELIMINATE THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR THREAT, AND THE FOUR EL-QAEDA BASES IN THE SINAI, AND HEZBOLLAH IN LEBANON AND SYRIA...BECAUSE OTHEREWISE, HAMAS ET AL WILL KNOW THAT THEY HAVE THE BACKING OF THESE TERROR STATES AND TERROR GROUPS. WITH THAT BACKING THEY WILL BE ABLE TO FLEE TO SAFETY IN SYRIA OR SINAI OR ARABIA, AND REGROUP AND RE-ARM AND RE-RECRUIT AND RELOAD AND RE-DEPLOY FOR THE NEXT ROUND.

SORRY TO SOUND SO PESSIMISTIC...BUT YOU ASKED FOR INPUT.

David Meir-Levi

Dan Gordon's Plan

The single most hopeful occurrence in the history of the Middle East conflict?

The writer, who thinks so, wants your input

In a recent article, former ambassador Dennis Ross, reported on several days of discussions he recently held in Ramallah and Jerusalem. He states: 'I was struck by the nature of the debate I witnessed in both places. To my surprise it wasn't about the stalemate in the peace process or the Arab Peace Initiative. It was about...whether Gaza was in fact already lost to the Islamists'. Both Israelis and Palestinians were wondering about the consequences of Gaza becoming in their word 'Hamisistan.'

For the Palestinians the most striking conclusion was that it was essential that Hamas not succeed in the West Bank the way it is succeeding in Gaza...among some, I heard an interesting proposal. Let's make the West Bank work; socially, economically and intuitionally. Then let's hold up our model of success in contrast with the failure of Gaza where functional unemployment is close to 70 percent. Let's create understandings with Jordan and Israel for at least economic confederation and security. And if Hamas still hangs on in Gaza perhaps there can be a 'three state solution.''

Ross, a little too blithely, dismisses the notion by saying that 'no matter how sensible confederation between the Palestinian State and Jordan might be, at least economically, a failed State in Gaza would be a constant source of instability.' That point of view, however, both ignores and misrepresents the notion voiced, not by Israelis, but by Palestinians, of creating 'understandings with Jordan and Israel for at least economic consideration and security.' That idea is not, however, the most daring part of the proposal. The following sentence is:

'And if Hamas still hangs on in Gaza perhaps there can be a three state solution.'

The fact that this proposal is being voiced by Palestinians is perhaps the single most hopeful turn of events since the failed Oslo Accords. It implies recognition by factions within Fatah, in the Palestinian Authority, of the fact that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict has in essence ended. A political solution to that conflict is at hand for those who wish it. What is left after that is not a political conflict between Palestinian and Israeli, but an Islamist conflict that is today making its presence felt throughout the Middle East between Jihadi movements and governments, and non-Jihadi movements and governments, be they Moslem, Christian, or Jewish.

RE: "...it implies recognition"

SUCH ASSUMPTIONS, IN MY OPINION, ARE WISHFUL THINKING. THEY ARE THE THINKING OF GOOD-HEARTED, RIGHT-MINDED, LIBERAL, LOGICAL HUMANISTIC, HUMANITARIAN, HONEST, WELL-MEANING WESTERNERS WHO ARE IGNORANT OF, OR WHO CHOOSE TO IGNORE, THE HISTORY OF ISLAMIC JEW-HATRED AND THE INTRACTABILITY OF ARAB AND PALESTINIAN LEADERSHIP'S COMMITMENT TO THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL AND GENOCIDE OF ITS JEWS -- IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, SINCE THE TIME OF THE HAJJ AMIN EL-HUSSEINI.

Whether one looks at Hezbollah (a Shiite Jihadi movement in Southern Lebanon) or Al-Qaeda (a Suni Jihadi movement making its presence felt most notably in Afghanistan and Iraq) or at the attacks of Hamas (an Iranian and Syrian backed Jihadi movement) in Gaza, or Fatah Al-Islam (a Jihadi movement currently battling the Lebanese Army) in Northern Lebanon while hiding behind trapped Palestinian civilians, one sees the same pattern recurring over and over again. It is the struggle of Islamist movements against non-Islamist movements and governments. It is also instructive to note that none of those conflicts listed above have Israel as a participant. What is hopeful is that those factions in Ramallah with whom Dennis Ross spoke have recognized that the conflict has morphed. It is no longer a question of Palestinians struggling for their independence in order to implement a two state solution. Indeed, there is no bigger proponent today of a two state solution than the government of Israel. Today the battle raging across the Middle East is not Moslem versus Jew but Jihadi Islamist versus everyone else; Moslem, Christian, and Jew alike.

RE: "...none of those conflicts listed above have Israel as a participant"

THIS IS AN INCORRECT STATEMENT. THE ERROR IS THE RESULT OF THE ROSE-COLORED GLASSES WORN BY THE LIBERAL GOOD-HEARTED PERSON DESCRIBED ABOVE. ISRAEL IS VERY MUCH A PART OF THE CONFLICT. THE HAMAS ROCKET ATTACKS EVEN AS HAMAS AND FATAH ARE KILLING ONE ANOTHER ARE ESCALATED ON SEDEROTH AND OTHER LOCALITIES FOR THREE PURPOSES.

1.) JUST KEEP KILLING JEWS. THAT IS WHAT HAMAS IS HERE TO DO...JUST KEEP KILLING JEWS. CHECK OUT THEIR CONVENANT. THE CONFLICT IS APOCALYPTIC (NOT POLITICAL, NOT TERRITORIAL): FOR ALLAH TO BE SUPREME ON THE ENTIRE WORLD, "HAMAS UBER ALLES", THE JEWS MUST BE ANNIHILATED. KILL A JEW, GO TO HEAVEN.

2.) DRAW ISRAEL IN TO THE CONFLICT AND THUS COMPROMISE FATAH BY PUTTING FATAH IN THE LOSE-LOSE POSITION OF DOING NOTHING AND NOT GETTING ATTACKED BY ISRAEL BUT LOSING FACE WITH THE BROADER PALESTINIAN PUBLIC, OR HELPING HAMAS AND GETTING ATTACKED BY ISRAEL. EITHER WAY HAMAS WINS

3.) MAINTAIN THE FAITH, KEEP THE PROMISE, KEEP UP THE CONSTANT BARAGE AGIANST ISRAEL SO THAT IRANIAN AND SAUDI MONEY WILL KEEP POURING IN.

ISRAEL IS VERY MUCH A PART OF THIS CONFLICT.

Could the proposed confederation which these Palestinians discussed with Dennis Ross be viable? The answer is absolutely. From an economic point of view there is no question that each one of the members of this proposed Benelux-like economic and security confederation would benefit from its existence. Indeed, such an arrangement could become one of the greatest economic success stories in the history of the region.

Moreover, the four thorniest issues could be dealt with quickly and easily within such a framework. Those four issues are: the Palestinian Right of Return; the future of the settlements; East Jerusalem as the capital for a proposed Palestinian state; and Al-Aqsa and the Mosque of Omar.

YOU ERR AS HAVE ALMOST ALL WHO EVALUATE THE SITUATION FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF WESTERN LOGIC AND COST-EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS AND WIN-WIN COMPROMISES. YOU THINK THAT THEY THINK THE WAY YOU THINK. THEY DO NOT.

READ THE QUR'AN.

WERE THEY AMENABLE TO SUCH A SOLUTION, THEY COULD HAVE HAD IT A DOZEN TIMES OVER SINCE 1937 (1937, 1947, 1949, 1967, 1979, 1993, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006) WHEN SOME COMBINATION OF THE UK, UN, USA, AND ISRAEL OFFERED THEM THEIR STATE ON A SILVER PLATTER, FROM THE PEEL PARTITION PLAN TO THE ROAD MAP TO THE UNILATERAL WITHDRAWAL FROM GAZA TO THE KADIMA VICTORY AND OFFER OF MORE LAND FOR PEACE. EVERY TIME THEY CHOSE INSTEAD TO GO TO WAR OR TURN ON THE TERRORISM OR PREPARE FOR THE NEXT BATTLE.

EVEN THE MOST SUPERFICIAL REVIEW OF THE HISTORY RENDERS A CLEAR PICTURE. THEY DO NOT WANT THEIR STATE. THEY WANT ISRAEL GONE AND ITS JEWS GENOCIDED.

AS HAMAS SAYS, ALL TREATIES ARE WORTHLESS, ALL NEGOTIATIONS A WASTE OF TIME. THERE IS NO END TO THE BATTLE EXCEPT VICTORY OR MARTYRDOM.

AND WHILE ABBAS MAY TALK WITH OLMERT AND/OR ROSS ABOUT VIABLE OPPORTUNITIES, HAMAS IS IN CHARGE, HAMAS WILLWIN THE NEXT ELECTION, HAMAS WILL WIN THE CIVIL WAR. HAMAS AND HEZBOLLAH AND SYRIA AND IRAN WILL KEEP ON TRYING, UNTIL THEY GET IT RIGHT.

PALESTINIAN RIGHT OF RETURN

There would be a two pronged approach. First, a mutual recognition, on the part of the Independent State of West Palestine and the Independent State of Israel, of the Right of Return of both the Palestinian and Jewish peoples to areas within the borders of British Mandatory Palestine. It will be remembered that British Mandatory Palestine was partitioned by the UN in 1948 into one Jewish and one Palestinian Arab state. Literally, at the stroke of midnight, after the British mandate ended the Jewish people declared the independence of the State of Israel.

The Palestinian people however, did not. During the years of conflict leading up to and immediately after the establishment of the State of Israel both Jewish and Palestinian populations were uprooted and displaced. Both parties would now agree that both peoples have a right to return to find their national homelands within the borders of Mandatory Palestine. This would mean that Palestinians have a right to return to areas which are now in Israel; and Jews have a right to return to areas now part of the Independent State of West Palestine. However, both sides would recognize that the way in which those rights would be implemented would not be through a physical return of Palestinians or Israelis to homes they occupied prior to the Armistice Agreement of 1949. They would have a right to physically return to the Independent states of their own peoples (Palestinians to West Palestine and Jews to Israel) however those who lost property in the years of hostilities dating from the start of the British mandate over Palestine through the Armistice of 1949 would be allowed to seek compensation. That compensation could come from a fund contributed to by the member states of the confederation and third interested parties, such as the EU, U.S., UN, etc. Thus, the Palestinian whose home was lost to him or her in Jaffa would be able to receive compensation for their lost property. In addition, the Jew whose home was lost in Hebron, Jerusalem, Gush Etzion, etc. would be able to receive similar compensation. This compensation as a form of implementing the Right of Return would apply only to the Palestinians of West Palestine or to those other Palestinians who wished to once and for all settle their claims, regardless of their geographic location. This for the first time would put a real incentive in place for individuals to opt out of the conflict.

IF THERE WERE ANY FORCES IN POSITIONS OF POWER IN THE ARAB WORLD WHO AGREED WITH YOUR LOGICAL SCENARIO, THE PROBLEM WOULD BE SOLVED IN A FEW WEEKS OF NEGOTIATIONS. THOSE WHO HAVE SPOKEN OUT IN FAVOR OF RESOLUTION HAVE GUARANTEED FOR THEMSELVES A VERY SHORT LIFE-SPAN.

THE FUTURE OF THE SETTLEMENTS

The majority of the settlements in the West Bank would be disbanded. Those larger settlements which Israel wishes to retain would become part of Israel proper IN EXCHANGE FOR a like sized territory of pre '67 Israel. This is an arrangement which has already worked under the terms of the peace agreement between Jordan and Israel. With Jordan being a part of the confederation, there would be no reason for the Palestinians not to be able to accept such a solution. This would not be land for peace.

This would quite literally be land for land, with peace as the byproduct and sine qua non.

SINE QUA NON...AH, THERE'S THE RUB. ONCE YOU FINALLY GET IT THAT THEY DO NOT WANT PEACE, THEN THE SINE QUA NON IS THE ULTIMATE STUMBLING BLOCK, THE DEAL BREAKER.

RECALL NATHAN BROWN'S EXCELLENT BOOK (VERY ANTI-ISRAEL BUT EXCELLENT IN THAT IT INADVERTANTLY PROVIDES US WITH THE DOCUMENTATION FOR THE FOLLOWING ASSERTION) WHICH DEMONSTRATES HOW ARAFAT USED TERRORISM TO TORPEDO EVERY (I DO MEAN EVERY) PEACE TALK WHICH LOOKED LIKE IT MIGHT SUCCEED. HE DID THE SAME WHEN HE WAS PRESSURED BY HIS OWN FORCES, IN THE PA GOVERNMENT, TO USE DEMOCRATIC MEASURES IN GOVERNANCE. IF THINGS GET TOO CLOSE TO RESOLUTION, GIVE HAMAS THE GREEN LIGHT TO LAUNCH ANOTHER ATTACK...THAT WILL DERAIL THE TALKS. ELECTIONS GETTING CLOSE, TOO CLOSE, START THE 2ND INTIFADA AND DECLARE AN EMERGENCY SO NO ELECTIONS ARE POSSIBLE (AND BLAME IT ON ISRAEL).

ARAFAT NEVER WANTED PEACE. ABBAS IS ARAFAT IN A SUIT AND TIE. HAMAS IS HONEST...THEY WANT ALL THE JEWS IN THE ENTIRE WORLD DEAD...OR MOSLEM.

EAST JERUSALEM AS THE CAPITAL FOR A PROPOSED PALESTINIAN STATE

Just as Jerusalem has grown to the West, so could Jerusalem grow to the East under the terms of this agreement. Thus, greater Eastern Jerusalem would stretch in that direction and Northward and in that new greater Eastern Jerusalem would be the capital of the Independent State of Palestine. Moreover, provisions could be made that after forty years of peace, the borders of the East Jerusalem capital would be those of the Clinton proposal at Camp David. In the mean time, Arab residents of what is currently municipal Jerusalem could opt immediately for Palestinian citizenship and choose to pay their federal taxes to the Palestinian state instead of Israel. Thus, they would have both political representation and would be able to direct the federal portion of their tax to the state which claimed their loyalty.

GREAT IDEA. BUT, WAIT A MINUTE, ...DIDN'T BARAQ OFFER THIS AT CAMP DAVID 2? WASN'T THIS IMPLICIT IN THE 'ROAD MAP'? DID ANY PALESTINIAN LEADER EVER SUGGEST THAT RESOLVING THIS ISSUE WOULD BRING PEACE? ARAFAT DID, AND ROSS DEMONSTRATED THAT ARAFAT LIED ABOUT WHAT HE SAID AT CAMP DAVID 2 AND WHY THOSE TALKS FAILED.

IF THEY WANTED PEACE, THEY COULD HAVE HAD THIS 7 YEARS AGO. THEY DON'T WANT PEACE. THEY WANT US ALL DEAD. JUST AS THE HADITH OF THE ROCK AND THE STONE COMMAND.

AL-AQSA AND THE MOSQUE OF OMAR

The current cry of the Jihadi throughout the Moslem world is to liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Mosque of Omar from the hands of the infidels, namely the Jews. Currently both mosques as well as the Temple Mount area as a whole are administered, not by Jews nor the State of Israel, but by the Waqf or Islamic trust. Under the proposed confederation however there would be an opportunity to diffuse that situation once and for all. The interiors of both mosques from the surface of the tiles on the floor to the top of the ceilings of the mosques themselves could be placed under the protectorship of the Arab League, under the direct supervision of the Sharif of Mecca, who is none other than the current King of Jordan, King Abdullah. This would mean granting an almost consular status to the interior of the mosques.

Thus when anyone entered those mosques they would be entering the protectorate of the Arab League. In this way, Jews would not be losing sovereignty over their Holy places which exist beneath the surface of the tiles of the mosques; while Moslems would once and for all be able to declare that the mosques themselves were within Moslem and Arab sovereignty.

Moreover, with West Palestine having declared independence and shown the way to a political solution, with the Arab League serving as a protector for the third holiest shrines in Islam, a Hamas led Gaza state would rightly be viewed as rejectionist and a pariah within the non-Jihadi Moslem world. Western Palestine could be a shining example of economic and political success which the Gazans had only to embrace while simultaneously rejecting Jihadism.

Should the Gazans choose not to do so, and should they present a military problem, there would be a military solution. The single most hopeful occurrence in the history of the Middle East conflict may well have had its beginnings in those initial exchanges between Palestinian leaders in Ramallah and Ambassador Ross. That glowing ember must now be nurtured and fanned both by the United States, Israel, and non-Jihadi Palestinians and Arabs throughout the Middle East. If that is accomplished, it will ignite, not a conflagration of war, but a torch of independence, prosperity, and peace.

YOUR MOUTH TO GOD'S EARS, AS MY GRANDMOTHER OF BLESSED MEMORY USED TO SAY. BUT, AS I POINTED OUT ABOVE. THIS ALL ASSUMES THAT THEY WANT A SOLUTION. SINCE THEY HAVE TOLD US OVER AND OVER THAT THEY DO NOT WANT A SOLUTION, WE CAN SAFELY PREDICT THAT THEY WILL USE THIS COMPROMISE AS A WAY TO GAIN TIME AND ENJOY A "WARRIOR'S REST" WHILE GEARING UP FOR THE NEXT ROUND, AND THE NEXT, AND THE NEXT...JUST AS IRAN HAS DONE WITH ITS MISSED DEADLINES AND THEN 'REPENTANCE'...SO THAT IT BUYS TIME TO BETTER DEVELOP ITS WMDs.

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 NEFARIOUS "USS LIBERTY LOBBY" GROUPS
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 12, 2007.

In the middle of the Six Day War, Israeli air force planes mistakenly attacked a ship that turned out to be an American navy surveillance (spy) ship. It was where it should not have been in the middle of a war. Israel apologized and paid reparations. Google lists almost a million web pages that dscuss the "attack on the USS Liberty". Previous pieces attempting to put the matter to rest include http://azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=143 "The 'USS Liberty': Case Closed" by Michael B. Oren and this: http://www.adl.org/Israel/uss.asp

Ever since, the USS Liberty has been the rallying cry for anti-Semites and Neo-Nazis. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of web sites urging Americans to avenge the Israeli "attack" on the Liberty. Many are by Neo-Nazis pretending to be survivors from the ship. Recently the far leftist anti-Semitic web magazine Counterpunch joined the barking (http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair06082007.html). Counterpunch earlier ran a dozen similar pieces. Other anti-Semites inciting against Israel for the USS Liberty incident include (from the ADL web site):

Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, "Remembering the Liberty," The Washington Post, November 6, 1991. (Much of the article is based on the testimony of Seth Mintz, who claims to have been inside the Israeli war room during the attack. Mintz responded to the Post in a November 9 letter in which he denies the quotes related to him. Many details about Mintz's story seem questionable.)

Paul Findley, They Dare Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, 1985 (The book does not deal specifically with the Liberty incident, but it includes a discussion of the incident in which Findley mentions some of the conspiracy theories.)

Liberty News, newsletter of the USS Liberty Veterans Association. The association was formed following a reunion of Liberty survivors in 1982. In 2002, Philip Tourney, the group's president, spoke at a conference held by the Institute for Historical Review, a California-based organization dedicated to promoting Holocaust denial. Major Web sites implicating Israel: The USS Liberty Memorial Web Site If Americans Knew USS Liberty Court of Inquiry

The very same people who cheer the al-Qaeda attackers of America and every other act of anti-American terrorism on earth are curiously obsessed with an accidental Israeli attack on an American navy ship 40 years ago. The USS Liberty "lobby" is today little more than a front for neo-nazis and anti-Semites. When Islamist terrorists attacked the USS Cole in 2000, most of these same people applauded teh terrorists and denounced US actions to target the terrorist leaders.

Please read the following article entitled "Why You Shouldn't Pay Attention to the Claims that Israel Attacked the USS Liberty Deliberately." It is by Judge A. Jay Cristol, who is the author of the Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U. S. Navy Spy Ship. It is archived at
http://hnn.us/articles/39936.html

On June 8, 2007, the San Diego Union Tribune published an article titled "Time for the Truth About the Liberty," with a byline, Ward Boston, Jr.

Ward Boston, Jr. served his country as a naval aviator during World War II. He completed law school and then, after a stint with the FBI, he returned to the Navy as a legal specialist in the days prior to creation of the Judge Advocate Generals Corp. By 1967, he had been promoted to the rank of Captain and established a fine reputation as a legal officer. When the Liberty incident occurred, he was selected by then Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, Jr. as counsel to the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry, convened by order of Admiral John McCain (the father of Senator John McCain) Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe.

When Boston reentered the Navy, he took an oath to faithfully perform his duties as a United States Naval Officer and upon the opening of the Court of Inquiry, on the record at page 106, he took another oath to faithfully perform his duties as counsel to the Court. Also sworn to faithfully perform their duties on the Court were Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, Jr. As President, Captain Bernard J. Lauff, a highly respected veteran of Wake Island, and Captain Bert M. Atkinson, Jr., a Naval Academy Graduate, as members, Lieutenant Commander Allen Feingersch, as associate counsel and YNC Joeray Spencer, as court reporter.

The Court convened at forty-six minutes before midnight on June 10, 1967, in London, moved to the USS Liberty to take sworn testimony of the crew, and then back to London where it closed for deliberations at 16:45 London time on June 16 and filed its report on or about June 18, 1967 with Admiral McCain, who endorsed it. "The foregoing comments by the convening authority lead to an overall conclusion that the attack was in fact a mistake." It was sent immediately to Washington to the Chief of Naval Operation Admiral David McDonald, being carried personally by Admiral Kidd in a brief case chained to this wrist.

The Boston article goes on to recite some hearsay, "I know from personal conversations with the late Adm. Isaac C. Kidd -- President of the Court of Inquiry -- that President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of mistaken identity." The article fails to explain how or when President Johnson or Secretary McNamara transmitted the orders.

Prior to the publication of the June 8, 2007 article, Ward Boston signed an affidavit which was released on October 22, 2003, making similar allegations and later supplemented the affidavit by declaration making additional allegations. So, Boston, who signed the Court of Inquiry findings under an oath in 1967, now says under oath in 2003 that he participated in a lie in 1967. If he is telling the truth now, he confirms lying in 1967, or if he was truthful in 1967, then obviously he is lying now. So how does one decide when Ward Boston was lying? Then or now?

Perhaps an analysis of the June 8, 2007 San Diego Times Union's article, Boston's affidavit, and the supplemental declaration will help determine when, not if, but when, Ward Boston lied.

First, a look at the article raises a question of whether it was written by Ward Boston or written by someone else for him. The first paragraph talks of the "bombing" of the ship. Boston was aware and the record is clear, the ship was not bombed. It was attacked with 30MM cannons by the aircraft and then by 20MM cannon, 50 caliber machine guns and torpedoes by the torpedo boats. The second paragraph says 34 American sailors died. In fact, 33 sailors and one NSA civilian died. It says 172 were wounded. The official records show 171 were wounded. Next. the article says the cover-up has haunted us for 40 years. If the Johnson administration had engaged in a "cover-up," why did the next seven administrations, five Republican and two Democrat, continue the "cover-up"?

The next paragraph is a repetition of the demand of various conspiracy theorists requesting a congressional hearing and suggesting the survivors be allowed to testify. One hundred and fifty four pages of sworn testimony of the Liberty's Captain, William McGonagle, the ship's officers and key crew members was taken on June 13 and June 14, 1967 and is available for review by any member of the public. Not one shred of additional evidence has been produced or disclosed by the conspiracy theory supporters since 1967. What is being requested is a platform to make allegations and charges before TV cameras without any prior showing that there is new or credible evidence to support he allegations. In our system of justice, first there must be the presentation of some credible evidence of probable cause to support the charges. To date, neither Boston nor anyone else has produced such evidence.

The article confirms that "we," Boston and Admiral Kidd, boarded the Liberty and interviewed the survivors and states that "the evidence was clear" but does not state what that evidence was. What evidence was clear? This is the point where Boston makes a leap of faith. He says "we both believed with certainty that the attack was deliberate."

Boston, the lawyer, if he wrote those words, knows better. He could say "I believed" but when he attributes that belief to Admiral Kidd, he violated the hearsay rule and the Dead Man Statute which forbids quotation of a dead man because the dead man can neither confirm nor deny the statement. The article says "I heard testimony that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivor." What testimony did Boston hear? A careful reading of the 154 pages of sworn testimony does not even suggest it. Who testified about what? Since no Israelis participated in the Court of Inquiry, who was able to testify about he intent of the Israelis and where is that testimony?

And an even better question, if the Israelis intended to sink the Liberty, then why didn't the Israeli Armed Forces, which had destroyed the entire Egyptian Air Force in minutes, had destroyed thousands of Egyptian tanks and artillery in a few days, had captured the Sinai, the Suez Canal, the Old City of Jerusalem, the West Bank and a day later destroyed the Syrian army and its armor and captured the Golan Heights, all in six days, why didn't they sink the ship, if that is what they intended?

The myth Boston repeats about Israel committing a war crime by machine gunning three life rafts was initiated by Lloyd Painter about ten years after the event. The sworn testimony of Lloyd Painter taken June 13, 1967 does not mention machine gunning the three life rafts, nor does the testimony of the Captain or any of the crew, who were there on the bridge and on the deck with Lloyd Painter at the time on June 8, 1967.

Boston states "I am outraged at the efforts of Israel's apologists to claim this attack was a case of 'mistaken identity'" This outrage, coming in 2003 -- 36 to 40 years after Boston signed the Court of Inquiry findings under oath raises a number of questions.

QUESTIONS:

Why was Boston not outraged on June 18, 1967 by the report of the Court of Inquiry signed by, according to his definition apparent apologists for Israel, Admiral Kidd, Captain Atkinson, Captain Lauff and Captain Boston?

Why was Boston not outraged on June 18, 1967 when apologist for Israel, Admiral John C. McCain, in Boston's presence, endorsed the Court of Inquiry with the comment: "15. The foregoing comments by the convening authority lead to an overall conclusion that the attack was in fact a mistake"?

Why was Boston not outraged in July 1967 when apologist for Israel, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee stated, "In the case of the attack on the Liberty, it was the conclusion of the investigatory body headed by an Admiral of the Navy [Isaac C. Kidd, Jr.] in whom we have great confidence that the attack was not intentional. I read the record of investigation and I support that conclusion, and I think ... it was not a conscious decision on the part of either the government of Israel ... [t]o attack a U.S. vessel." (Released by U.S. Government printing office: 1967.)

Why was Boston not outraged on September 15, 1967, when distinguished journalist and, by Boston's definition "apologist for Israel," James L. Kilpatrick wrote in an article published in the National Review, on page 958, "... that the Israeli government was heavily dependent upon the goodwill of the united States; it would have been utterly irrational for the Israeli Navy knowingly to have launched an attack on the U.S. ship; and that the only reasonable explanation is that the incident was mistake arising from the natural tensions and fallible judgments of a hot war."

Why was Boston not outraged on February 27, 1978 when "apologist for Israel," the CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner, stated in a letter to Senator Abourezk, "It remains our best judgment that the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was not made in malice toward the United States and was a mistake."

Why was Boston not outraged on September 19, 1978 when the Director of Central Intelligence, Admiral Stansfield Turner, stated publicly on ABC television in a discussion about the Liberty incident: "...we released an evaluated over-all document which said very clearly that it was our considered opinion that the Israeli Government had no such knowledge at that time."

Why was Boston not outraged on July 11, 1983 when "apologist for Israel," the National Security Agency released in its partially declassified 1981 report "Liberty was mistaken for an Egyptian ship as a result of miscalculations and egregious errors"?

Why was Boston not outraged on September 5, 1991 when "apologist for Israel," President George H.W. Bush's (41) White House, wrote "... A thorough investigation into the USS Liberty incident was conducted and the conclusion was that it was a tragic case of mistaken identity."

Why was Boston not outraged on May 10, 1995 when "apologist for Israel," President William Clinton's White House, wrote, "There is no information available that demonstrates that the attack was deliberate."

Why was Boston not outraged on August 30, 1995 when Clark Clifford's July 18, 1967 report was declassified revealing the conclusion, "The weight of the evidence is that the Israeli attacking forces originally believed their target was Egyptian ... 2. The information thus far available does not reflect that the Israeli high command made a premeditated attack on a ship known to be American."

Why was Boston not outraged on October 2, 2002, when President George W. Bush's White House, wrote "The results of the investigations ... were considered satisfactory ...there is no precedent to reinvestigate this case."

Why was Boston not outraged on July 2, 2003 when the "apologist for Israel" National Security Agency further declassified a portion of page 64 of its 1981 Report, which stated, "While these reports revealed some confusion concerning the nationality of the ship, they tended to rule out any thesis that the Israeli Navy and Air Force deliberately attacked a ship they knew to be American."

Boston says "Let former intelligence officers testify that they received real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their pilots to sink the American ship. This myth is perhaps the easiest of all to debunk. Although the conspiracy theorists have claimed for years that there exist NSA audio intercepts between Israeli pilots and their controllers which prove the attack was deliberate, no such tapes have ever been produced. What has been produced on July 2, 2004, as a result of this author's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, are audio tapes and translations of communications between Israeli pilots and their controllers which clearly establish that the Israelis believed the target ship was hostile, most likely Egyptian, until 3:12 PM, approximately 44 minutes after the attack was concluded. The National Security Agency confirms that there are no other tapes.

Dr. Marvin Nowicki, the U.S. Navy/NSA person who recorded and initially translated the intercepts has stated clearly that they show the attack to be a mistake. See letter of the Dr. Nowicki to Editor of the Wall Street Journal published May 16, 2001 at page A23.

Richard Hickman, the NSA Hebrew linguist at headquarters, who made the final translations of the intercepts and briefed NSA Director Marshal Carter on the tapes, also confirmed that the tapes make it clear the attack was a mistake.

The reader may hear the tape recordings in Hebrew and read the official transcripts of English translation on the National Security Agency's NSA website, www.nsa.gov.

So who told Ward Boston about the former intelligence officers receiving "real-time Hebrew translations"? Could it have been Ron Gotcher who helped Boston with his initial affidavit and declaration and very likely wrote or assisted in the preparation of the June 8, 2007 article, bylined Ward Boston, Jr., published in the San Diego Union Tribune. Ron Gotcher has long made claims of the existence of the alleged incriminating tapes on his website. Gotcher also claimed to have worked for the National Security Agency; however, reference the "Documents" page of www.libertyincident.com and go to "Gotcher Debunked." There the viewer will see the actual letter from the National Security Agency, in response to a FOIA request, confirming that Gotcher never worked for NSA.

What or who is behind these continuing false charges that have induced Boston, a naval officer with a distinguished career, to dishonor himself by admitting to have violated his oath, either in 1967 or more recently. Ron Gotcher is only a bit player in a much broader propaganda effort.

The propaganda emanates from a small but well-funded and very vocal group of people and organizations principally supported by Saudi Arabian money. The groups include the American Educational Trust (AET) operated in Washington, DC by former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Andrew I. Kilgore, and a circle of others whose agenda is to attack the present excellent symbiotic relationship between the United States and Israel. It includes: the Americans for Mideast Understanding (AMEU) which was reportedly founded with money from Arabian American Oil Company, ARAMCO, and has former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins, who was dismissed by the U.S. State Department in 1975 "for being too compliant to Saudi demands" and former congressman Paul Findley serving on its National Council; and the Liberty Alliance operated by Tito De Nagy Howard, who is described as "a man at war with the Israelis" by Anthony Pearson. Howard met Pearson in Dubai and upon learning that Pearson was considered by the PLO to be pro-Palestinian, gave him "an idea to resurrect the Liberty incident as a whole new story."

It all started with former Illinois congressman Paul Findley (who was defeated for re-election after he announced his support for the terrorist organization, the PLO) and former California congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey, who speaks regularly at meetings of Holocaust denial organizations in California and Washington and was defeated for re-election. Findley and McCloskey were the moving force in founding the Liberty Veterans Association. Findley served as its advisor and McCloskey incorporated the association and served as its attorney. They continue to manipulate and distress Liberty survivors and their families by prodding this old wound and preventing its healing. all for their own political agenda. And what is that agenda? Findley and McCloskey are also the founders of the Council for the National Interest (CNI), whose publicly announced purpose is to be the anti-Israel lobby.

Distorted explanations of events obfuscate the picture and destroy the ability to learn real lessons for the future. Multiple official investigation reports and endorsements have all concluded the incident was the result of a tragic mistake or that there is no evidence that the attack was deliberate. Nevertheless, dozens of conspiracy stories, in addition to Ward Boston's sad confession that he dishonored his oath taken in 1967 and remained silent about it for 36 years, have become part of the literature through the actions of persons and organizations with their own political agenda. The conspiracy stories continue to multiply and become more extreme. They detract from the possibility to learn from the tragedy. They also inflict pain and suffering upon the victims and their families creating an additional tragedy by provoking, goading and torturing the victims with inaccurate, false and even absurd theories about that sad day, not with the goal of bringing closure and peace but for political objectives.

As for the victims, they should be left to believe whatever brings them peace. As for historians seeking the truth, it is respectfully suggested that a review of all evidence, now declassified and available, will confirm the official conclusion that the Liberty incident was a tragic case of mistaken identity as a result of numerous mistakes by both the United States and Israel, and will explain the conflicting recollection of Ward Boston, who boasts he is now in his eighties. Perhaps the quotation from a recent speech by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer explains. Breyer said "I am now at the age where I remember quite clearly and with great detail, many things that never actually happened."

After forty years, it is time to close the book. Let those who lost their lives rest in peace and be honored in treasured memory. Let the survivors be honored and respected and let them and their families have peace and closure.

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. Or write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

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PERES'S BIG DAY
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 12, 2007.

After you read the following by Caroline Glick, you may agree that Shimon Peres should be investigated for high treason. It has often been speculated that Peres had a back door relationship with the then Soviet Union -- which makes one wonder for whom Peres really works and where his loyalty really lies. Read On! Caroline Glick is, as usual, superb. The article appeared yesterday in the Jerusalem Post.

Tomorrow Israel's parliamentarians will convene to elect the next president of Israel. After Shas's council of elders decided last week to throw the party's support behind Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres's candidacy, Peres's election seems to be a foregone conclusion.

That this is the case is a troubling demonstration of the corruption of Israeli politics. Indeed, more than anything, Peres's frontrunner status in the three-way race is a testament to his success in undermining the honor and honesty of Israeli politics. Peres is a dishonorable man.

Notwithstanding his contributions to the state in his younger years, Peres's behavior over the past quarter-century, both in and out of office, has redounded to the diminution of Israel's standing in the region and the world and to the endangerment of the lives of Israeli citizens.

In 1981 Peres, then opposition leader, nearly placed Israel in danger of nuclear annihilation by working to undercut then prime minister Menachem Begin's plan to attack the French and Italian-built Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak.

Begin was forced to delay the air strike which denied Saddam Hussein the wherewithal to obliterate the Jewish state for a number of months after Peres, who had been leaked knowledge of the planned attack, confronted Begin and implicitly threatened to leak the ultra-secret operation to others.

One of the factors that weighed on Begin's decision to attack was the fear that were Peres to win the then approaching 1981 Knesset elections and replace him as premier, Peres would enable Iraq to acquire the means to wipe Israel off the map and assert its hegemony over the global oil market.
 

IN 1986, as prime minister, Peres likely became the the first leader in history to willfully incriminate and abandon an agent of his government who had endangered his own life to defend his country's national security. Jonathan Pollard is today serving the 22nd year of a life sentence in US Federal prison. Pollard has been subject to discriminatory treatment by the US justice system.

No agent in the employ of a state allied with the US ever received a comparable, or even similar sentence for his offense. But then, no country has ever treated its agent as wretchedly as Israel has treated Pollard.

Two weeks ago Pollard's representatives sent a letter to all members of Knesset entreating them not to support Peres's candidacy. Pollard outlined how, when confronted on the Pollard affair by then US secretary of state George Schultz, Peres mendaciously claimed to have had no knowledge of Pollard's service. It was Peres, Pollard alleges, who spread the lie that Pollard was a soldier of fortune. At Schultz's request, Peres ordered the Defense Ministry to return to US authorities all the documents that Pollard had transferred to Israel.

In so doing, Peres actively aided the US in incriminating his agent. Peres later lied to the Eban Committee, formed in 1987 by the Knesset to investigate the Pollard affair. Peres justified his unseemly action by mendaciously claiming that he had received the US's agreement that the documents would not be used against Pollard. Those documents formed the basis of the prosecution's case against Pollard.

As Pollard wrote: "My case is the first and only case in the history of modern espionage in which a prime minister actively assisted in the indictment and prosecution of his own country's agent."
 

THEN THERE is Peres's stewardship of the 1993 Oslo accord with the PLO and the "peace process" with the PLO which followed. As foreign minister in Yitzhak Rabin's government, Peres knowingly subverted Rabin's policy of not negotiating with the PLO by sending his own emissaries to Oslo behind the back of the prime minister to negotiate with senior PLO terrorists. Peres then rammed the accord down Rabin's throat, dragging along an unwilling public.

It is difficult to summarize the devastating impact that Peres's notion of gaining peace by empowering Yasser Arafat, the godfather of modern terrorism, arming his terror armies and deploying them on the outskirts of Israel's major cities has had on the country. In human cost, it can be easily argued that some 1,500 Israelis who have been killed in terror attacks and battles with terror militias since 1993 would likely be alive today had it not been for Peres's decision to "take risks for peace."

Beyond the massive human cost of Oslo, Peres's decision to embrace the PLO corrupted the the political system, the legal system, the IDF General Staff, the media and Israeli culture.

Politicians were openly bribed for their support of the agreement. Politicians who did not support the agreement found themselves under criminal scrutiny on charges that rarely brought convictions.

IDF officers soon discovered that their chances of promotion were directly related to the enthusiasm with which they embraced terrorists as partners and accepted the notion that Israel should appease rather than fight its enemies. Several IDF generals began lucrative business partnerships with senior Palestinian security bosses immediately after retiring from the military.
 

OPPONENTS OF the Oslo process were systematically denied their civil rights as the government sought to criminalize and demonize them. Referring to those who opposed the strategy of placing the Jewish state on a par with a terrorist organization as "enemies of peace," Peres sought to link these responsible citizens to terrorists murdering Israeli civilians in suicide bombings.

The Israeli media corrupted public debate by silencing and demonizing voices of opposition. The education system of Israel was corrupted when schoolchildren were provided with new "peace friendly" textbooks which taught a revisionist history of the state that called into question the morality and legality of the establishment of Israel.

With Peres at the helm of the Foreign Ministry, Israel's public diplomacy arm was summarily cancelled. Peres explained that Israel didn't need to engage in public diplomacy because everyone would support Israel now it had embarked on a path to peace.

Peres's move was logical. For Israel to defend itself in the realm of ideas it would be necessary to explain why we have rights to our land and why our enemies, among them the PLO, are wrong to attack those rights. Pointing out this glaring truth would call into question the entire rationale of the Oslo process. So, at Peres's direction, Israel surrendered not just territory to the PLO. It surrendered its right to historical truth.

Peres' transformation of the Foreign Ministry into a public relations organ for Fatah and other PLO terrorists, meanwhile, has seriously and perhaps permanently damaged Israel's international diplomatic position.
 

THROUGHOUT the years that have passed since Rabin's disastrous handshake with Arafat on the White House lawn, Peres has built his international standing by courting European and American politicians and donors who oppose Israel.

Oftentimes Peres's loyalty to his friends and benefactors came dangerously close to undercutting Israel's national security. In April 2002 for instance, Peres, as foreign minister in Ariel Sharon's government, gave a lone defense of Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process.

In the wake of the brutal battle between Palestinian terrorists and IDF soldiers in Jenin refugee camp during the course of Operation Defensive Shield, Larsen played a key role in disseminating the libel that Israel had committed a massacre in the camp. Standing in the UN-managed terror camp, Larsen said "Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict."

A week later Makor Rishon revealed that in 1999 the Shimon Peres Center for Peace had given Larsen and his wife, Norwegian ambassador Mona Juul, a cash payment of $100,000. Larsen was then a board member of the Peres Center and the Norwegian government was one of the center's major donors.

Investigative reporter Yoav Yitzhak at the time reported statements by Labor party members claiming that the payment to Larsen and Juul was a kickback for their intervention on Peres's behalf with the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in 1994.

In one of Peres's many bids to block all criticism of Arafat, he strenuously refused to press the terror leader for information, or even politely inquire, about the fates of Israeli soldiers Zachary Baumel, Tzvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, who went missing in Lebanon on June 11, 1982 during the battle at Sultan Yakoub. In December 1993 Arafat had given Rabin half of Baumel's dogtag, but then refused to give any more information about the fate of Baumel and his comrades.
 

LAST WEEK, a representative of the Baumel, Feldman and Katz families sent a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert demanding that he withdraw his support for Peres's candidacy for president. The families asserted that for the past 25 years Peres has refused to raise the issue of their sons' whereabouts in his negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians. Peres's refusal to demand information on their whereabouts, they argued, renders him unworthy of the office of head of state.

It has been argued that since the office of president is largely ceremonial, a President Peres will be able to do little damage to the country.

But this assertion ignores the fact that Peres has never seen himself bound by the formalities of office. As foreign minister under Rabin he overstepped his authority when he directed illegal negotiations with the PLO in Norway. As foreign minister under Sharon, Peres used his office to undermine President George W. Bush's call for a reform and democratization of Palestinian society.

As head of the Peres Center and international conference circuit star, he worked to undermine the international credibility of the Netanyahu government. It beggars belief to say that as president, Peres would limit his actions to accrediting ambassadors and signing pardons for criminals.

Yet for all that, if current assessments of the balance of support among the candidates for president are correct, then Peres will tomorrow be elected to head the country. And if this does come to pass, all that can be said is that we reap what we sow.

See Also:

Anyone but Peres! -- Jonathan Pollard's Statement about Peres' Candidacy
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2007/060507.htm

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@gwinston.interaccess.com

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HOGWASH HISTORY
Posted by Michael Freund, June 12, 2007.

As Israel marks 40 years since the 1967 Six-Day War, the media and the Jewish state's critics would like us to believe that nothing good came from the war. But as I argue in the column below from the Jerusalem Post, that is far from being the case -- in nearly every field, the war yielded tremendous benefits for Israel.

And while the critics harp on the "occupation" because they want to pressure Israel into making more concessions -- they ignore one fundamental truth: the core of the Middle East conflict is not the Israeli "occupation" of territory, but the Palestinian "preoccupation" with destroying the Jewish state.

This appeared in today's Jerusalem Post.
(www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181570256819&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull).

It's that time of year again. Summer is here, the temperature outside is rising, and Israel's irresponsible critics are busy turning up the heat.

Deploying a potent mix of selective amnesia combined with some good ol' fashioned obfuscation, these "amnesiacs," as I call them, would have us all believe that nothing good ever came from the 1967 Six Day War.

Seizing upon this month's 40th anniversary of that heroic triumph, they are trying to rewrite the historical narrative, injecting as much gloom and doom as possible in order to push Israel into making still more concessions to the Arabs.

Occupation, occupation, occupation -- that is all the "amnesiacs" seem capable of talking about. How bad it is, how damaging it has been, and how we must bring it all to an end. What a bunch of hogwash.

Harping on Israel's myriad alleged sins, and repeating them ad nauseam, does not make them so, and we cannot allow those who distort history, or who choose to forget it, to cloud our perspective any longer.

The truth of the matter is that the core of the Middle East conflict is not the Israeli "occupation" of territory, but the Palestinian "preoccupation" with destroying the Jewish state.

It is that, and that alone, which has fueled this conflict since the start.

As the late Golda Meir once put it, "When Arab statesmen insist that Israel withdraw to the pre-June 1967 lines, one can only ask: if those lines are so sacred to the Arabs, why was the Six Day War launched to destroy them?"

Israel's survival was a miracle, and the Six Day War was a blessing from Heaven. Its outcome made this country safer, stronger and more secure, and we should be celebrating it effusively with each passing year.

Al Gore may disagree, but I am convinced that if there is global warming in the world today, it is because of all the hot air being released into the atmosphere by the media pundits and left-wing activists who bash the Jewish state with unrelenting ferocity.

Take, for example, Uri Avnery of the far-Left Gush Shalom organization: "40 bad years" is how he summed up in a recent article the intervening period since Israel was saved from annihilation.

With a seemingly endless supply of vitriol at his disposal, Avnery denounces the "rot" that has set in, blaming "the occupation" that resulted from the war for everything from "destroying the Israeli Army" to poisoning the Jewish religion.

Then there is the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, who posted an article last week on the broadcaster's Web site that could easily have been ghost-written by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas himself. Entitled "How 1967 Defined the Middle East," Bowen's screed asserts the legacy of the war to have been one thing, and one thing only: "Israel became an occupier."

Such third-grade level analysis, of course, ignores the various fruits of the 1967 conflict, many of which Israel continues to enjoy until today. It is not only bad history, but bad journalism, too, to provide such a biased and single-minded interpretation of such a momentous and noteworthy historical event.

Indeed, in just about every field imaginable, from economics to immigration to a national sense of purpose, the Six Day War yielded tremendous benefits for the Jewish state.

In the five years following the conflict, Israel's per capita GDP soared by more than 50 percent, exports nearly tripled, unemployment fell and the economy emerged from the painful recession of the mid-1960s. We surged past our neighbors, and Israel now finds itself on a par economically with various European countries.

The 1967 war also sparked a renewed wave of aliya from both East and West, igniting the Soviet Jewry movement and bringing a massive influx of Russian Jews to Israel.

As former refusenik Natan Sharansky wrote in his autobiography, Fear No Evil, "the Six Day War had made an indelible impression on me as it did on most Soviet Jews, for, in addition to fighting for her life, Israel was defending our dignity." This, he said, sparked Russian Jewry to embrace the "basic, eternal truth" that personal freedom "wasn't something you could achieve through assimilation. It was available only by reclaiming your historical roots."

As a result, over 1 million Jews from the former Soviet Union have moved to Israel in the past four decades since the war, jump-starting the economy and fueling unprecedented growth in areas such as computer science and biotechnology.

The war inspired many thousands of Western Jews to make aliya too, with the number of North American migrants soaring from just 739 in 1967 to more than 8,000 in 1971.

Israel's defeat of its foes also brought a renewed sense of pride to Jews everywhere, as they watched the tiny, vulnerable state emerge triumphant against its enemies.

And for the first time in 1,900 years, thanks to the Six Day War, we were once again able to caress the stones of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and bathe them in our tears, as a free and sovereign people in our own land.

If that's not something to celebrate, then what is?

So to those who continue to carp on incessantly about the "disastrous results of the war" and the need to "end the occupation," all I can say is: Spare us your faulty hindsight.

If you really want to end the dispute with our neighbors, then tackle the Palestinian preoccupation with destroying Israel, and peace may just eventually come to pass.

Contact Michael Freund at msfreund@netvision.net.il

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ANTI-ROCKET DEFENSE FEASIBLE?; BUSH'S CONTRADICTIONS MISUNDERSTOOD
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 12, 2007.

IS ANTI-ROCKET DEFENSE FEASIBLE?

An anti-rocket defense may become effective against individual rockets, but can be overwhelmed by salvos. The interceptor costs many times as much as the incoming rocket. The P.A. could build many cheap rockets, so Israel would have to spend a huge sum on many interceptors.

It would be more practical to compare the cost of interceptors to the resulting reduction in damage. Factored in should be the stimulation to industry and military technology and the benefit of working with the US military and industry. If Israel doesn't invest in the new technology, its government could be accused of not having tried to protect the people (IMRA, 5/30).

The author's economic argument is weak. To prevent expensive damage, Israel still has to spend several times as much as the Arabs, without ending the threat.

I find specious the argument for investing in a technology for by-product benefits. There is enough to invest in, that would produce those by-products but at the same time directly produce a useful main product. Investing in a poor defense is inefficient and falsely assuring, leading to worse accusations, later. The enemy can continue his build-up and remain a menace.

The answer is to end the menace. One way is by sending in large ground forces, with air support, to disarm and arrest all the terrorists. Another way would be the WWII way of bombarding enemy cities, in retaliation. Some Israelis, known to be doves, are coming around to this view. It isn't humane, but since the P.A. Arabs aren't either, it has its advantages. It surely would discourage the enemy and could drive out the enemy. It also would incur international condemnation, but then, so would any Israeli defense. Israel has to pick the best defense.

Another answer is to get away from the leftist policy of appeasement. If the jihadists knew that their use of force and diplomacy would not gain concessions, they would lose much of their enthusiasm. Israel should avoid diplomacy. One almost should suggest that diplomacy should be the last resort.

BLOCKING ARMS INTO GAZA

Israel admits that it cannot have security from Gaza until arms no longer are smuggled from Sinai into Gaza. It praises Egypt but has given up on having it intercept the arms. Foreign Min. Livni is proposing an international force to do so. Unfortunately, such a force more likely would shield terrorists and smugglers. Why doesn't Israel propose that Egypt bulldoze a sterile zone on its side of the border, to block smuggling (IMRA, 5/20).

THE ROLES OF DIPLOMACY & OF WAR

In the Mideast, violence backs up politics. Violence is not the result of poor communication (as Bush critics imagine).

Syria is an example. When Lebanese strove for independence, Syrian officials had their leaders assassinated. When the UNO demanded a tribunal to try the suspects, Syria had more assassinated and made one uprising by Hizbullah, another by Palestinian Arabs. That violence bolsters Syrian political goals.

Syria is an oppressive dictatorship with a depressive economy. Coming from a minority sect, not really Muslim, Syria's rulers retain power through violence by sponsoring radical Islamist terrorism. They distract their people with the Arab-Israel conflict and anti-Americanism. Syria staves off reformers by citing the emergency with Israel. If Syria made peace with Israel, the regime would lose its excuse for dictatorship and poverty.

Syria negotiates with the US, so it can tell its people that the US concessions vindicate the regime. When Members of Congress traipse to Damascus, the regime loses its fear of the US and imprisons its reformers.

Being nice to Syria is counter-productive. Syria is an adversary, regardless of who is US President. It should be treated as such (Barry Rubin, IMRA, 5/23).

Isn't it a dreadful human trait that the love for power gets masses of their countrymen killed and impoverished, not to mention foreigners?

A BUSH CONTRADICTION MISUNDERSTOOD

Contributing Editor David Twersky notes an apparent contradiction in US foreign policy. Pres. Bush rejects benchmarks for the war in Iraq, but proposes them for Israel and the P.A.. The implied moral is that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander (NY Sun, 5/30, Op. Ed.).

I think the contradiction is misunderstood. The two conflicts are so different, that benchmarks have a different purpose in each. Benchmarks over Iraq would be stages in defeat. In the Arab-Israel conflict, they supposedly would be stages in making peace, but they are states in Israel's defeat. Actually, the US is not proposing benchmarks for the P.A.. It may say it is, but it requires only words on paper by the Arabs, whereas it demands dangerous concessions of the Jews. That is hypocritical! Some commentator excused the inconsistency on the grounds that the P.A. could not be expected to keep its commitments. It never has kept them. Then what basis for peace?

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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DURBAN RENEWAL: ISRAEL-BASHING IS TAKING PLACE UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE PERES CENTER FOR PEACE
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 12, 2007.

Should Israel have the bad luck to vote in Shimon Peres as replacement President of the country, be assured that every radical Leftists and the hostile European Union will celebrate. In the past, the presidential post in Israel was primarily ceremonial. Under Peres, he will force that post into a "shadow government," with the help of the Europeans with whom he has been working -- to the detriment of the Jewish nation and people.

If you thought that the Oslo Accords and their successive agreements were bad, just wait until a man like Peres has his hands on the levers of power. We already are experiencing that sort of disaster as we observe Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and friends refuse to give up their power in spite of his failure in all areas of governance.

Shimon Peres, as a gross manipulator over his past 80 some odd years, will be far worse in subverting Israel's ability to resist what Europe and the U.S. State Department want of the Jewish State, namely surrender to the radical Islamic Jihadi Arabs. Peres must be voted down.

David Bedein wrote the article below. He serves as bureau chief of the Israel Resource News Agency

This week's gathering of anti-Israel NGO's in Tuscany is nothing new. Only this time the Israel-bashing is taking place under the auspices of the Peres Center for Peace.

As Israel reels from the British academic boycott against it, the gathering of NGO's under the UN banner in 2001 in Durban, South Africa has not been forgotten. At that precedent-setting conference prominent Israeli, Palestinian and international NGO's first gathered to rally behind the specious idea that Israel represents a racist apartheid entity. This week Florence, Italy is hosting yet another mass meeting of NGO's who all concur that Israel is an illegal and oppressive occupying power.

An NGO gathering in a European country with EU delegates in attendance where they will bash Israel is nothing new.

Indeed the EU, in coordination with the leading NGO's, has just completed two weeks of intense public forums, demonstrations and activities around the world, denigrating Israel for its victory in the Six-Day War.

In "EU-Funded NGOs Lead Anti-Israel Events on Anniversary of 1967 War" Dr. Gerald Steinberg, head of NGO Monitor, writes, "Many politicized and EU-funded NGOs that contribute to the demonization of Israel are holding activities and publishing reports coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 War. These activities portray a one-sided view of events, repeating the Palestinian narrative and providing a distorted history of the war..." In its report on EU funding of NGOs, NGO Monitor provides details regarding how a number of EU-funded Palestinian and Israeli NGOs persistently campaign against Israel in international forums, employ biased rhetoric aimed at delegitimizing Israeli security policies and are fundamentally politicized organizations.

What is unique about the three-day gathering of NGO's in Florence ending Wednesday is that this international NGO conference is being organized under the umbrella of the Peres Center for Peace, the day before the Israeli presidential elections.

The center's namesake, Shimon Peres, is the leading candidate for that largely ceremonial post of Israeli president, which is supposed to be a non-partisan position that represents a consensus of Israeli public opinion.

The keynote speech at this week's NGO event is being given by Avram Burg, described by the conference program as an "Israeli political personality," despite Burg's revealing interview with Haaretz (June 1) in which he calls for Israel to cease being a Jewish entity.

Each of the Israeli organizations invited -- Betselem. Combatants for Peace, Israeli Coalition Against Home Demolitions, Machsom Watch, Parents' Circle, Rabbis for Human Rights and Yesh Din -- carries a uniquely venomous message which describes Israel's very presence in Judea and Samaria as a criminal violation of international law. One of those groups, the Israel Committee for Home Demolitions (ICHAD), goes so far as to compare Israeli law with Nazi law. In a presentation in March 2000 on a Boston affiliate of National Public Radio, ICHAD head Jeff Halper alleged that Israel's zoning and building regulations are not ordinary laws, and that Israel's legal system resembles the Nazi Nuremberg Laws. Halper has never retracted that comparison.

Arab speakers at the conference include Fatah leaders Yassir Abed Rabo and Jibril Rajub, who are unlikely to mention that Fatah continues to conduct terror operations against Israelis. No one at the conference will remind participants that Fatah's Al Aksa Brigades is defined by the US, the EU and Israel as a terrorist organization that has not renounced its ways.

"There are 120 organizations...and occasionally we bring the two sides [i.e. Israeli and Palestinian] together in order to present activities, think together and look forward," said Peres Center Director Ron Pundak, who organized the conference. "This is the first time we have ever organized such a large conference and we want to see how we can get Europe as a community to help us with the peace process."

Pundak acknowledged that the provincial government of Tuscany, noted as a stronghold for the Italian neo-communist party, organized the event. Praising Shimon Peres, Pundak said Peres was the pioneer of the Peres Center, his legacy influences all Peres Center activities and he was the figure who initiated the conference. Asked if Peres becoming president would advance the Peres Center for Peace, Pundak nodded his head, saying "I believe so, since the Peres Center represents the realization of Peres' strategic thinking."

In reaction to the conference the Israeli Foreign Ministry said, "The Durban conference did not advance the cause of peace for Palestinians or for Israelis and neither will those who continue to conduct such events in the future." But later the Ministry Spokesman said he would not have made such a statement had he known the conference was organized under the banner of the Peres Center for Peace.

The question remains: In the vote for president of Israel, will the Knesset note the legacy of Shimon Peres, the man who conceived "the new Middle East?"

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@gwinston.interaccess.com

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ABOUT SHIMON PERES
Posted by Paul Lademain, June 12, 2007.

Yes, indeed--Jews who are afraid to fight with all their arms and firepower and might against a corrupt, devious, selfish, and quite possibly manic and thus insane old man will be destroyed by him just as Rome was destroyed by a similarly afflicted tyrant: Nero.

If the Romans can rise up and destroy their home-grown tyrants, then Israel can rise up and destroy this ugly Polish usurper. By the way, you failed to mention Peres' tax haven canoodling with his belly-rubbing-dearest-friend Arafat in the Cayman Islands.

This is a sad thing to have to say, but If Jews are so timid and lacking in verve and virility and dignity such that they are passively willing to tolerate this trashy old con man, then perhaps the Arabs are right to destroy Israel. And if the arabs succeed, then it will come to pass that Jews, who thought they were shedding their semitic skins by destroying Israel, will find that they will still be spat upon by non-Jews, and, without a country to retreat to, Jews will once again be treated as dishonorable untrustworthy tramps and once again vilified as dirty Jews and tramps. If this is what the old Jews want, then you either let them destroy your nation, or else you must destroy them. Just talking and complaining about Peres and his crooked camp followers won't do the job. Alas.

On Jun 11, 2007, at 11:20 PM, imra-owner@imra.org.il wrote:

As head of the Peres Center and international conference circuit star, he worked to undermine the international credibility of the Netanyahu government. It beggars belief to say that as president, Peres would limit his actions to accrediting ambassadors and signing pardons for criminals.

Yet for all that, if current assessments of the balance of support among the candidates for president are correct, then Peres will tomorrow be elected to head the country. And if this does come to pass, all that can be said is that we reap what we sow.

Contact Paul Lademain at lademain@verizon.net

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WAHHABISM AND ISLAM IN THE U.S.
Posted by Barbara Sommer, June 11, 2007.

This is the Testimony by Stephen Schwartz, Director, Islam and Democracy Program Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security on Thursday, June 26, 2003:

Things have not gotten better.

Members of the Senate, witnesses, spectators, ladies and gentlemen.

I come before this body today to describe how adherents of Wahhabism, the most extreme, separatist, and violent form of Islam, and the official sect in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, have come to dominate Islam in the U.S.

Islam is a fairly new participant at the "big table" of American religions. The Muslim community only became a significant element in our country's life in the 1980s. Most "born Muslims," as opposed to those who "converted" -- a term Muslims avoid, preferring "new Muslims" -- had historically been immigrants from Pakistan and India who followed traditional, peaceful, mainstream Islam.

With the growth of the Islamic community in America, it was clear that there was no "Islamic establishment" in the U.S. -- in contrast with Britain, France, and Germany, the main Western countries with significant Islamic minorities. The Wahhabi ideological structure in Saudi Arabia perceived this as an opportunity to fill a gap -- to gain extraordinary influence over an Islamic community in the West that itself had immense potential for political and social influence.

This operation, which was largely successful, had multiple goals.

First, to gain control over a significant group of Muslim believers. Second, to use the Muslim community in the U.S. to influence U.S. government and media, in the formulation of policy and in perceptions, about Islam. This has included liaison meetings, "sensitivity" sessions and other public activities with high-level Administration officials, including the FBI Director, that we have seen since September 11th.

Third, to advance the overall Wahhabi agenda of "jihad against the world" -- an extremist campaign to impose the Wahhabi dispensation on the global Islamic community, as well as to confront the other religions. This effort has included the establishment in the U.S. of a base for funding, recruitment and strategic/tactical support of terror operations in the U.S. and abroad.

Wahhabi-Saudi policy has always been two-faced: that while Wahhabis preach hostility and violence against non-Wahhabi Muslims, they simultaneously maintain a policy of alliance with Western military powers -- first Britain, then the U.S. and France -- to assure their control over the Arabian Peninsula.

At the present time, Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslim community leaders estimate that 80 percent of American mosques -- out of a total ranging between an official estimate of 1,200 and an unofficial figure of 4-6,000 -- are under Wahhabi control. This does not mean 80 percent of American Muslims support Wahhabism, although the main Wahhabi ideological agency in America, the so-called Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has claimed that some 70 percent of American Muslims want Wahhabi teaching in their mosques. This is, by the way, a claim I consider unfounded.

Rather, Wahhabi control over mosques means control of property, buildings, appointment of imams, training of imams, content of preaching -- including faxing of Friday sermons from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- and of literature distributed in mosques and mosque bookstores, notices on bulletin boards, and organizational and charitable solicitation. Similar influence includes prison and military chaplaincies, campus activity, endowment of academic chairs and programs in Middle East studies, and most notoriously, to charities ostensibly helping Muslims abroad, many of which have been linked to or designated as sponsors of terrorism.

The main organizations that have carried out this campaign are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which originated in the Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Support activities have been provided by the American Muslim Council (AMC), the American Muslim Alliance (AMA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, its sister body the International Institute of Islamic Thought, and a number of related groups that I have called "the Wahhabi lobby."

Both ISNA and CAIR, in particular, maintain open and close relations with the Saudi government -- a unique situation, in that no other foreign government directly uses religion as a cover for its political activities in the U.S. For example, notwithstanding support by the American Jewish community for the state of Israel, the government of Israel does not intervene in synagogue life or the activities of rabbinical or related religious bodies in America.

According to saudiembassy.net, the official website of the Saudi government, CAIR received $250,000 from the Islamic Development Bank, an official Saudi financial institution, in 1999, for the purchase of land in Washington, DC, to construct a headquarters facility.

ISNA operates at least 324 mosques in the U.S. through the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).

In a particularly disturbing case, the Islamic Development bank also granted US$295,000 to the Masjid Bilal Islamic Center, USA, for the construction of Bilal Islamic Primary and Secondary School in California. Hassan Akbar, the American Muslim presently charged with the fatal attack on his fellow-soldiers in Kuwait during the Iraq War, was affiliated with this institution.

In addition, the previously-mentioned official website of the Saudi government has reported donations in 1995 of $4 million for the construction of a mosque complex in Los Angeles, named for Ibn Taymiyyah, a historic Islamic figure considered the forerunner of Wahhabism. It should be noted that Ibn Taymiyyah is considered a marginal, extremist, ideological personality by many traditional Muslims. The same website reported a donation of $6 million, also in 1995, for a mosque in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The website stated in 2000, "In the United States, the Kingdom has contributed to the establishment of the Islamic Center in Washington DC; the Omer Bin Al-Khattab Mosque in western Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Islamic Center, and the Fresno Mosque in California; the Islamic Center in Denver, Colorado; the Islamic center in Harrison, New York City; and the Islamic Center in Northern Virginia." (Direct quote)

How much money, in total, is involved in this effort?

If we accept the low figure of control, i.e. NAIT ownership of 27 percent of 1,200 mosques, as stated by CAIR and cited by Mary Jacoby and Graham Brink in the St. Petersburg Times, 3/11/2003, we have some 324 mosques.

If we assume a relatively low average of expenses, e.g. $.5m per mosque, we arrive at $162m.

But given that Saudi official sources show $6m in Cincinnati and $4m in Los Angeles, we should probably raise the average to $1m per mosque, resulting in $324m as a minimum.

A radical critic of Wahhabism stated some years ago that $25m had been spent on Islamic Centers in the U.S. by the Saudi authorities. This now seems a low figure.

Our view is that the number of mosques under Wahhabi control, number at least 600 out of 1,200. Shia community leaders endorse the figure of 80 percent Wahhabi control. CAIR itself claims that approximately 70 percent of Muslims want "Salafism" in their mosques. [We reject this claim.] But we also offer a number of 4-6,000 mosques overall, including small and diverse congregations of many kinds.

It should also be noted that these mosques work in close coordination with the Muslim World League (MWL) and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), Saudi state entities identified as participants in the funding of al-Qaida.

Wahhabi ideological control within Saudi Arabia is based on the historic compact of intermarriage between the family of the sect's originator, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and the family of the founding ruler, Ibn Sa'ud. To this day, these families divide governance of the kingdom, with the descendants of Ibn al-Wahhab, known as ahl al-Shaykh, responsible for religious life and the Saudi royal family, or ahl al-Sa'ud, running the state. The two families continue to marry their descendants to one another. The supreme religious leader of Saudi Arabia is a member of the family of Ibn al-Wahhab. The state appoints a minister of religious affairs who controls such bodies as the MWL and WAMY, and upon leaving his ministerial post becomes head of MWL.

The official Saudi embassy website reported exactly one year ago, on June 26, 2002, "The delegation of the Muslim World League (MWL) that is on a world tour promoting goodwill arrived in New York yesterday, and visited the Islamic Center there." The same website later reported, on July 8, 2002 "During a visit on Friday evening to the headquarters of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) [the Secretary General of the MWL] advocated coordination among Muslim organizations in the United States. Expressing MWL's readiness to offer assistance in the promotion and coordination of Islamic works, he announced plans to set up a commission for this purpose. The MWL delegation also visited the Islamic Center in Washington DC and was briefed on its activities by its director Dr. Abdullah bin Mohammad Fowaj."

In a related matter, on June 22, 2003, in a letter to the New York Post, James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a civic lobbying organization, stated that his attendance at a press conference of WAMY in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, had been organized by the U.S. Embassy in the kingdom As documented by FDD and the Saudi Institute, WAMY teaches that Shia Muslims, including the followers of Khomeini, are Jewish agents. This is comparable to Nazi claims that Jewish employers were agents of the Communists or Milosevic's charge that Tito was an agent of the Vatican. The aim is to derange people, to separate them from reality completely, in preparation for massacres.

There is clearly a problem of Wahhabi/Saudi extremist influence in American Islam. Now is the time to face this problem squarely and find ways to enable and support traditional, mainstream American Muslims in taking their community back from these extremists, while employing law enforcement to interdict the growth of Wahhabism and its financial support by the Saudis. If we fail to do this, Wahhabi extremism continues to endanger the world -- Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Thank you for your attention.

Contact Barbara Sommer at sommer_1_98@yahoo.com

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AN OPEN LETTER TO AN EDUCATED LIBERAL
Posted by Alex Maistrovoy, June 11, 2007.

"And for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen in the Underworld might be. These careless Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon" -- The Time Machine of Herbert George Wells

My dear brainy friend!

The communist slogan in the former Soviet Union was: "We say Lenin, we mean the Party, we say the Party, we mean Lenin". For you it could sound like this: "We say multiculturalism, we mean Islam, we say Islam, we mean multiculturalism". The Muslim world is the last and sole barrier on the way to your dream about cultural pluralistic society. In despair you are ready to fasten on a kaffiyeh on yourself and a yashmak on your wife in order to drag a Muslim into your Cloud Castle.

Francois Mitterrand said, "To be French today means to be not only ethnic French, but Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Jew, Arab and even Spanish." But an Arab cannot.

It's your fixed idea, your choice. I will only remind you, my starry-eyed friend, what a role of a "true believer" is in the multicultural society, when he comes there invited or uninvited. For hundreds of years the Middle East was the embodiment of real multicultural ideal, the thesaurus of spiritual and philosophical knowledge. Antique mystery religions and Zoroastrism; the Ebonites and the first Christian sects; Gnosticism and Kabbalistic teachings; the Neoplatonics and the Manichees, the Arians and the Nestorians -- all of them had co-existed in harmony. They conveyed their ideas and viewing of the world from one to another in this gigantic melting-pot of human spirit. Whether you know about it or not, it was from this fathomless source, that European philosophy, theology and learning got strength which paved the way to freedom and liberal values.

But things started to change with the coming of Islam. One of the first acts of triumphant Islam was the burning of the famous Alexandrine library. But at that time Islam was relatively tolerant and noble. And what is more, it joined this melting-pot. Islam showed the world the mysticism of Sufis with their poetry of Life and attenuation of material benefits, expressed in Druze religion. Much later, the most humanistic religion of the present times (the Bahá'í Faith) arose from Islam. It also gave birth to the Ahmadiyya movement, which believed in the improvement of the world through love. Unfortunately, as Islam took over, obsession and obscurantism intensified. First, Sunnis in Saudi Arabia found themselves under the dogmatic and obscure Wahhabite rule, then the Salafies and Muslim brothers appeared. Formerly latent Utopias in Shi'a Islam turned into paranoia before our eyes.

Even in the time of medieval inquisition in Europe fresh ideas existed. There were different philosophic schools: from Albert the Great to Thomas Aquinas to Meister Eckhart to Roger Bacon. There was Italian Proto-Renaissance with Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Pisano and Giotto. There was craving for freedom, personified in the Katars, Waldenses, Czech Hussites, and Lollards. And now tell me, my clever friend, what kinds of philosophic, spiritual schools do you know in the modern Islamic world? Enlighten me, I will be happy! There are few courageous people who denounce dogmatic Wahhabites, like Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi and Dr. Taufik Hamid from Egypt. But they are social outcasts of the Muslim world and they live beyond its bounds.

Let me ask you: what has remained from the multicultural world of the Middle East? Do the Zoroastrians and Bahá'ís stay in Iran, their homeland? It will be easer to find them in a cemetery in that country, than living there. Those who could escape flew to India and the West. Have the Sufis remained in Saudi Arabia? No, they were annihilated by the regime as the enemies of "true Islam". Can you find a branch of Ahmadiyya movement at least in one of the countries of the Middle East? You can do it only in one place so hated by you -- Israel -- the "state-of-racism-apartheid-and-coercion". Their centre is in Haifa. So is the famous Bahá'í sanctuary. The Sufis are free in Israel, and the Druzes are enjoying full civic rights in Israel.

Not long ago the Arabian East was a palette of ancient and unique Christian sects. Waves of Islamic fanaticism swept away all of them. The Christians of Iraq and the West Bank escaped to the USA and Canada. Copts left Egypt. It may happen to the Maronites in Lebanon: the country is on the verge of the "Green revolt". Iraqi Gnostics-Mandaeans are exposed to genocide and on the on the verge of annihilation. Not mentioning Darfur. And you don't see it! Because the Mandaeans are not the beloved Palestinians, who claim your special attention! In 20-30 years the Middle East will turn into a multicultural cemetery with an oasis in the form of Israel. If only you, my brainy friend, do not do your best to help the desert swallow up this oasis. But you will, I have no doubt.

One more step, and instead of the cradle of humanity only a scorched desert of hatred will be left here. And this desert will spread to the North and South, to the East and West. It will enter the open doors of your house; devour you and your family, your clubs, cafes, libraries, theaters, and galleries. You have got used to freedom; you don't know what the world without freedom is. I know because I grew up in communist Moscow. But I also know the Middle East. And believe me, in comparison to the new Caliphate the Soviet empire of the 60's and 70's would seem a paradise. The new rulers of the world will not only shut your mouth, but turn your soul inside out.

I pity you.

Alex Maistrovoy is a journalist with the Russian-language Israeli newspaper Novosty nedely. Contact him at amaist@lycos.com

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R&D: REPRESSION AND DEFENESTRATION
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 11, 2007.

When Israel adopted the "Oslo" strategy for achieving peace by means of pretending that war does not exist, it attempted to appease the terrorists into making peace, including via endless unilateral "goodwill gestures" and capitulations. We know what happened.

Among the countless victims of the mega-stupidity of those Israeli leaders who opted for the Oslo route is poor Mohammed Sawirki.

Let me explain.

Mohammed Sawirki was a member of the "Palestinian presidential guard", a small militia that guards the Palestinian Authority "president" Abu Mazen. Not guarding him from Israelis but from the Hamas and Jihad peace partners.

Israel's Yediot Ahronot reports that Sawirki was kidnapped by the Hamas and yesterday was tossed out live from an 18th story window in Gaza. Unlike many members of Peace Now he could not fly. Two other Fat'h militia men were murdered by the Hamas, which carved Jewish stars into their corpses. (The Hamas claims that the Fat'h are Israeli collaborators.) In retaliation, the Fat'h killed an Imam at a Gaza mosque, one associated with the Hamas. All of this is a direct consequence of Israel turning the Gaza Strip over to the barbarians and evicting all the Jews there.

I have long argued that there is no solution to the situation other than R&D and that everything else is a delusion. By R&D I mean Re-Occupation and De-Nazification. But now the Gaza savages have given the term a new meaning: Repression and Defenestration.

Sawirki paid the ultimate price for the inane foolishness of the Oslo "process". He will not be the last.

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. Or write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

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YA'ALON: 'CORRUPTION WORSE THAN IRANIAN THREAT'
Posted by Avodah, June 11, 2007.

This was written by Etgar Lefkovits and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post
(www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181559477193&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull).

The corruption manifest in Israeli leadership and the society as a whole is more worrisome than the Iranian nuclear threat, former chief of General Staff Lt. Gen (Res.) Moshe Ya'alon said Monday.

"I lose more sleep over the corruption in the country than from the Iranian bomb," Ya'alon said at a conference on the leadership crisis in the country organized by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, a government watchdog group.

He added that while the Iranian nuclear program was an external threat that was being dealt with by the international community and by Israel, corruption was an internal threat that threatened to "spread like cancer and kill" unless one exposes it.

The former IDF chief, who is considered to be a top contender in the political arena in the future, said that Israel was facing an unquestionable "leadership crisis" as a result of moral and professional failings of the political and military leadership.

Ya'alon, who has repeatedly called on the government's wartime leadership to step down following last year's inconclusive war in Lebanon, said that responsibility starts with the country's leaders, but also was representative of a public political culture which lacks basic norms and values.

In his address, Ya'alon also cited four 'centers of power' which had a secondary role in the corruption of society as a whole including those who try to influence and buy power and the media with money, the Israeli media, (which he said was "mostly shallow superficial, manipulative, and not credible") the 'spin-masters' (who he said have become experts in media manipulations) as well as the Supreme Court, which, he said, has, in some cases, overstepped itself by taking authority in areas were it has no responsibility.

Ya'alon's tenure as Israel's top military officer was marked by both a successful military crackdown on Palestinian terrorism, and his very overt falling out with then prime minister Ariel Sharon over his opposition to the premier's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip

He slammed the phenomenon of quick-fixes and instantaneous solutions, noting that the demand for "peace now" -- like the demand for 'messiah now' -- was unrealistic and foolhardy at best and dangerous at worst, adding that what was needed was a change in moral cultures, and education of youth that will bring about such a required change in culture.

"This is a war of light on darkness," he concluded.

Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com

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THE ANTI-JEWISH JEWISH STATE SIDES WITH ARAB VANDALS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 11, 2007.

The headline might make one think of pre-war Poland, but the locale is Judea-Samaria and the offending government is Israel's. This year, Arabs were suspected of burglarizing Jews' houses in Bat Ayin, south of Jerusalem. Police refused to arrest them. Residents say that the murderers of a resident, Erez Lebanon, were those non-arrested burglars. At her funeral, the police finally came out in force, but only to surround the Jewish mourners, allegedly to prevent them from retaliating. Complainants were raided, searched, and received summonses.

When residents of Sde Boker complained that 30 Arabs and foreigners had uprooted 1,500 saplings, the police summoned all the adult Jewish males and accused them of having attacked the Arabs, and ignored the Arab trespassers and vandals. The police searched the Jews' houses looking for hoes that could damage the olive trees that the Arabs planted over the Jews' vineyards. Not only weren't the police interested in the Arabs' vandalism, but they declared the vineyards a closed zone, so that the Jews could not tend them.

A Jewish farmer has been harassed repeatedly by Arabs and Israeli leftists. He complained to police about their incitement, provocations, obscenities, trespassing, illegal ploughing on the Sabbath without Civil Administration supervision, disturbing the public order, etc.. One of the Arabs was photographed exposing himself in front of the farmer's wife, but the police dismissed all charges for 'lack of evidence.' (Police don't come when called, and then contend there is no evidence.)

"Arab and Israeli agitators often spend Saturdays vandalizing Jewish settlements south of Hebron. In some cases, the Arabs vandalized or steal property and livestock from such fully-recognized communities as Maon, Beit Yatir and Susya. Police and army troops arrived but made no arrests."

The injustice against Jews is not only over land disputes. Two community security officers attempted to defend against Bedouin infiltrators, but were sentenced to 8 months in prison for "aggravated assault."

Obviously, the police and government are in collusion with the Arab and leftist criminals against Jews. Some officers told residents that the Civil Administration was ordered by the government to side with the Arabs in all land disputes, so it would be easier for the government to eject the Jews (IMRA, 5/17).

The police usually believe the Arabs and doubt the settlers, but the settlers' crops usually are ruined. Shame on Israel, the anti-Jewish state!

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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AL-JAZEERA CRITICIZED FOR ACTING AS OFFICIAL SPOKESMAN FOR FUNDAMENTALIST GROUPS
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 11, 2007.

This article comes from the MEMRI organization blogsite.
TO VIEW THE LATEST ISLAMIST WEBSITES MONITOR: http://www.memri.org/iwmp.html
*TO VIEW THE MEMRI BLOG VISIT: www.thememriblog.org  

Below is Special Dispatch-Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project, June 12, 2007, No. 1617

Al-Jazeera Criticized for Once Again Acting as 'Official Spokesman for Fundamentalist Groups... As It Did in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine'

In a recent column titled "Al-Jazeera to The Rescue of Fath Al-Islam," in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Egyptian columnist Diana Muqallid harshly criticized the Al-Jazeera network's coverage of the clashes between the Lebanese army and Fath Al-Islam for its lack of objectivity, and for its disregard of the latter's aggressive actions. She wrote that Al-Jazeera was playing the same role it had played in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine -- that of spokesman for fundamentalist groups.

An example of Al-Jazeera's bias towards Fath Al-Islam is an article by senior Al-Jazeera presenter Dr. Faisal Al-Qassem, that was published in the London daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi -- a paper known to support Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. In it, he attacked the way the Lebanese army was waging the clashes, and the harm it was doing to the residents of the refugee camps where the clashes were taking place, while disregarding the part that Fath Al-Islam was playing in the violence.

The following are excerpts from both articles.

1.  Egyptian Columnist: Al-Jazeera Extols Fatah Al-Islam

Columnist Diana Muqallid wrote: "On the fourth day of the battles around the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, the Al-Jazeera network opened its evening news with a preface, in which the announcer said that the story that was about to be broadcast included exclusive photos from inside the Palestinian refugee camp showing the scope of the killing and the extent of the 'human suffering' of the camp residents.

"The footage that followed showed Fath Al-Islam fighters in their positions, firing at targets that clearly belonged to the Lebanese army. The footage showed not one sight reflecting the suffering of the Palestinian residents; the focus was on the armed fighters, who repeated over and over... statements such as 'satanic tyrants' and 'infidels,' as they exchanged information on the positions of their fighting 'brothers.'

"Yet again, Al-Jazeera has not hesitated to play the role it played in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine -- that of official spokesman and activist for fundamentalist groups. It seems obvious that the Fath Al-Islam fighters were dealing with a 'friendly' camera, not with a journalistic camera. [This friendly coverage of Fath Al-Islam] quickly created a connection between [Fath Al-Islam] -- which accuses [others] of heresy and regularly carries out massacres and indiscriminate killing, and whose members blow themselves up -- and the [Al-Jazeera] channel, which from its outset has ignited Islamic populism and whose influence is growing...

"[Al-Jazeera] did not mention the fact that [this] group had slaughtered [Lebanese] soldiers in their sleep. [But] the most important point is that the [special] news flashes and news headlines about the ongoing shelling [of the refugee camp] by the [Lebanese] army never referred to the ongoing entrenchment of the Fath Al-Islam fighters among the residents, and to their shelling of aid and rescue convoys.

"Concealing or ignoring the suffering of the Palestinian residents would be a black stain on any [political] body or media outlet, whether it be Lebanese or Arab. But extolling the Fath Al-Islam murderers, and making efforts to associate them with civilians, is first and foremost a crime against the Palestinian residents [of the camp], even more than it is a crime against Lebanon..." [1]

2. Senior Al-Jazeera Presenter: The Lebanese Army is Harming Innocents

In an article in the pro-Saddam and pro-bin Laden London daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Dr. Faisal Al-Qassem, well-known presenter of the Al-Jazeera talk show The Opposite Direction, harshly criticized the operations of the Lebanese army in the Nahr Al-Bared camp, accusing it of aggression against the helpless refugees:

"Oh Allah, how strong are our Arab armies, and how brave they are, against anyone who raises his hand or his voice against them in the country!... I have seen the 'heroism' of the 'great' Lebanese army against the children, the women, the elderly, and the wretched in the Nahr Al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon.

"I never imagined that Lebanon [even] had tanks, armored vehicles and a military until it [i.e. the Lebanese army] showed us its 'heroism' against the unarmed Palestinians in Lebanon. I am ashamed to say that I thought that Lebanon's armed forces were [merely] a name that does not stand for anything concrete -- as proved by the fact that they have not intervened in any significant armed conflict with Israel, despite Israel's daily attacks [on Lebanon] since the 1970s. [This is what] caused Israel to demand from the U.N., more than once, that the submissive Lebanese army be posted along the border with the Hebrew state -- instead of the men of the strong Lebanese resistance [i.e. Hizbullah] who gave the [residents of] Tel Aviv no respite, day or night...

"We never heard any mention of the Lebanese regime's armed forces in the recent war [in July 2006]... All we saw were the destroyed Lebanese vehicles, wounded soldiers, and [other] sorrowful sights among the regime's forces. But we never saw the smoke emerging from their cannon and their missile launchers, [and we never saw them] in the skies [fighting] against the Israeli airplanes -- as they are now deployed in the skies over Nahr Al-Bared during the 'victorious' attack on the residents of that wretched camp...

"The Lebanese army justifies its 'heroism' against the unarmed in the Nahr Al-Bared camp by [saying that] it wants to preserve its prestige and honor as a national army -- particularly after being accused, more than once, of not being an army at all. But the question is whether it should act in this way -- killing, terrorizing, and expelling thousands of innocent [people], and turning a region crammed with wretched refugees into the scene of a war of destruction...?" [2]

Footnotes

[1] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), May 27, 2007.
[2] Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), May 26, 2007.

Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com

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ISRAEL FRUSTRATED OVER EGYPT AND ARMS SMUGGLING
Posted by David Bedein, June 11, 2007.

This article appeared June 8, 2007 in the Bulletin (Philadelphia) and is archived at
www.thebulletin.us/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=2737&dept_id=576361&newsid=18449055

Jerusalem -- The Israel Defense Ministry is growing increasingly frustrated with Egypt's active role in the refusal to find a solution for the continued arms smuggling into Gaza, leading some senior officials to estimate that Cairo might just be interested in "seeing Israeli blood spill."

Last month, the Egyptian government informed the Israel Ministry of Defense that it would consider digging a moat along the Philadelphi Route separating the Gaza Strip from the Sinai Desert and home to dozens of tunnels used to smuggle weaponry into the Gaza Strip.

Since then, however, Israel has not received an answer and according to officials, despite multiple requests and visits to Egypt by high-ranking government and defense officials, the Egyptians have not changed their conduct along the border; 750 Egyptian border policemen are stationed along the border with the sole task of stopping the smuggling.

"If the Egyptians wanted to, they could already a long time ago have stopped the smuggling," said an Israeli government official involved in the talks with Cairo said.

"It could be that they just want to see Israeli blood spilt."

The official said that it was highly unlikely that Egypt would in the end agree to construct a moat along the border with Gaza. He predicted that the border policemen would continue to demonstrate ineffectiveness, and that the Egyptians would use their incapability as an excuse to demand that Israel allow the deployment of additional troops along the border. The border area is a demilitarized zone according to the 1979 Camp David peace accord.

Israel Addresses Northern Threats

The Israel security cabinet convened and dedicated most of its attention to the state of affairs on Israel's northern front. Some of these threats were laid out in greater detail by Israel's former IDF Chief of Staff and former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who met with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in his capacity as the head of the Israeli delegation that is holding semi-annual strategic dialogue meetings with the U.S. in Washington. According to that report, Iran and Syria have smuggled large amounts of long-range and powerful weaponry into Lebanon for Hezbollah's use, such as the Iranian Fatah-1 missile, which has a 250-km range and a half-ton warhead.

Relating to the Iranian threat, Mofaz said there was no change in Iran's determination to continue with its nuclear program: the Iranians ignore the U.N. Security Council resolutions, and therefore the sanctions must be stepped up. "We have to reach a situation in which the diplomatic channels bring results by the end of 2007," Mofaz said.

He called for intensifying the economic sanctions on Iran: "This will be effective against the Iranian leadership and will trickle down." On the situation in Lebanon, Mofaz said that the embargo isn't working. "The arms embargo isn't felt. As we sit here, the weapons are getting through."

He said that Hezbollah has never left southern Lebanon. "It is not on the border, but its men are in the nature reserves and in underground structures not far from the border."

Mofaz asked Rice to increase American efforts to help bring the kidnapped soldiers back.

On the Palestinian subject, he said: "I believe that Hamas' hostile takeover of the Palestinian Authority is an obstacle to holding further peace negotiations. They want to take control over all of the PA through their organizations."

The meeting also addressed Syria. Mofaz told Rice that there is tension in the north and that the Syrians are on the defensive. He said that there can be a secret track in which it will be possible to exchange messages of calm and to examine their intentions.

Arms Going To Hezbollah

The Lebanese police on Wednesday discovered a shipment of Grad missiles, ammunition and rifles sent from Syria to Hezbollah. The shipment, found on a truck going through the Lebanese Bekaa Valley, was taken to the Lebanese army. The truck was stopped two evenings ago at a police roadblock in the area of the town of Duris near Baalbek. In the truck were six Hezbollah members. The six tried at first to flee from the police roadblock, but the police chased them and blocked their path. After a short examination, the Hezbollah activists were let go, but the driver was arrested.

This is the second time in four months that Lebanese security forces managed to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah. The last time was in February this year, when at the entrance to Beirut, a truck was stopped that was carrying more than 200 rockets. Hezbollah demanded that the cargo be released and even accused the Lebanese government of collaboration with Israel. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 -- which led to the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah -- states that there must be no arms smuggling to Lebanon. Thousands of UNIFIL soldiers in southern Lebanon are meant to supervise the ban, yet Hezbollah continues to fill its warehouses with arms.

David Bedein is Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency. (http://Israelbehindthenews.com). He is president of Center for Near East Policy Research. Contact him by email at media@actcom.co.il

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REPORT: TEL AVIV WITHIN HIZBULLAH RANGE
Posted by Avodah, June 11, 2007.

This account was written by Jerusalem Post Staff. Yaakov Katz contributed to this report.

Hizbullah has amassed an undisclosed number of Fatah-110 rockets, which could theoretically be fired at Tel Aviv, according to a report in Britain's Sunday Times. The projectile, an upgraded Chinese assault rocket, has a 500-lb warhead and a range of 200 kilometers.

According to the report, close to the Israel-Lebanon border, under the noses of United Nations peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, the guerrilla group has built a network of underground military bunkers that can withstand air strikes.

The Times said that Hizbullah had replenished its weaponry and cited IDF intelligence estimates that it had stockpiled a total of 20,000 rockets.

"Since the Israeli forces left, Hizbullah has been building formidable military underground posts under the noses of the UN," the Times quoted an IDF intelligence officer as saying.

Modern equipment was being used to sink the shafts, sometimes as deep as 21 meters, the Times said, adding that some bunkers were as wide as a football field, while others could hold fewer than 10 fighters.

The IDF has already discovered a number of Hizbullah bunkers since the end of the Second Lebanon War last summer.

In January, Lt.-Col. Eren Pukar, commander of Engineering Battalion 603, said his battalion had used 300 kilograms of explosives to destroy two bunkers discovered on the Israeli side of the border near Biranit.

Each of the bunkers measured five-by-seven meters and contained stockpiles of food and clothing.

"The bunkers were most probably part of a larger system that we have yet to completely discover," said Pukar. "They were in the middle of construction and were used to observe IDF deployment along the border."

Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com

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FATAH-PALESTINIAN ISLAMIC JIHAD TERRORISTS USE TV VAN TO ATTACK IDF FORCE
Posted by Reuven Erlich, June 11, 2007.

These are excerpts from "A Fatah-Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist squad infiltrated Israel near the Kissufim Crossing to attack an IDF force." The full account can be read at
www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/pij_e100607.htm See also:
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/pij_110607e.htm

The jeep as it appeared in a clip broadcast by Al-Jazeera TV and originating with Fatah and the PIJ (Al-Jazeera TV, June 10). The jeep was photographed before the Press and TV signs were added, and thus do not appear in the picture. [This picture was later used to deny that the jeep was a media van. "Abu Ahmad, a PIJ spokesman, also made a deliberate attempt to mislead the public, when after the attack he described the jeep as a 'white armored vehicle similar to that used by the Zionist command.' He made no mention of its having been camouflaged as a media vehicle." --
from www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/pij_110607e.htm]

Jeep bearing TV and Press signs used by the squad in the attack
(Photo courtesy of Yediot HaAharonot and Meir Azoulai)

In the early afternoon on June 9 a terrorist squad attacked an IDF patrol and post near the Kissufim Crossing in the central region of the Gaza Strip. The four-man terrorist squad may have planned to abduct an IDF soldier, should the opportunity present itself. The terrorists arrived in a jeep camouflaged as a media vehicle, broke through the gate and entered Israeli territory. They then attempted to attack an IDF post near the fence; the post was unmanned at the time. IDF forces arrived and exchanged fire with the terrorists, one of whom was killed, while the others escaped.

During the incident, PIJ and Fatah operatives (who gave the terrorists covering fire) launched mortars from the Gaza Strip at the IDF forces in the Kissufim area. There were no casualties.

Use of press passes and vehicles to carry out terrorist attacks

The purpose of press passes and vehicles is to grant protection to correspondents working in areas where there is fighting and to enable them do their jobs. The use of press passes and vehicles to carry out terrorist attacks is liable to endanger correspondents' safety. For that reason the Israeli Foreign Press Association and the Association of Palestinian Journalists issued statements condemning the use made by the terrorists of a vehicle with media markings in their attack at the Kissufim Crossing (June 9).

The June 9 attack was not the first time the Palestinian terrorist organizations had used press documents and vehicles:

A. On November 1, 2004, a Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine suicide bomber blew himself up in the Carmel market in central Tel Aviv. He had been escorted to the site by a student from the media department of Al-Najah University in Nablus, who used the press pass given to him as part of his studies to sail through the military roadblocks.

B. On May 22, 2002, the Israeli security forces in the central Gaza Strip detained a terrorist named Khader Abu Sakran, who was riding in a press vehicle with other terrorists. He had planned to use a grenade in his possession to carry out an attack.

[Editor's Note:  About the dog in the picture. The fleeing Arabs were detected, with the help of "Britney", an IDF attack dog, as she searched for and detected one of the terrorists, waiting in ambush in a large sewage pipe. Britney was killed in the line of duty, but saved countless Jewish lives by revealing the position of the terrorist. When the terrorist shot Britney, his position was revealed to the IDF troops who killed him without sustaining any injuries to our soldiers.

In Israel there exists a unique civilian defense canine unit that breeds and trains these attack dogs and makes them available to volunteer handlers and to Israeli security personnel. It is a complex yet vital task to ready these dogs for service. These dogs and handlers are dedicated to saving Jewish lives by patroling to prevent terrorist invasions and by responding to similar terrorist attacks in progress. To view some footage taken at a recent training exercise, click http://www.voiceofjudea.com/eng/dogtraining.asp. Volunteers who wish to learn how to operate such dogs and who are willing to volunteer in Israel or others who wish to sponsor such dogs and training are welcome to email JewishLegion@aol.com for more information. Send your donations to Klavim LHaganat Yisrael, POBox 6592, Jerusalem, Israel.]

Dr. Reuven Erlich is Director of The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC)

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PA PAYING SCHALIT CAPTORS' FAMILIES
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 11, 2007.

This article was written by Khaled Abu Toameh and it appeared today in the Jerusalem Post. the
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181228589882&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Some of the Palestinian gunmen who participated in the kidnapping of IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Schalit last year have long been on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian sources revealed Sunday.

The sources named two of the suspected kidnappers as Muhammad Azmi Farawneh and Majdi Tayseer Hammad. The two were killed by Israel in separate attacks over the past year.

Farawneh is believed to have played a key role in the abduction of Schalit. Hammad was the commander of the Nasser Salah Eddin Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees -- one of the groups that claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

The two were killed a few weeks after the abduction in air strikes launched by the IAF in the Gaza Strip.

The fact that they have been on the payroll of the PA was disclosed after their families protested against the low pension that the PA has decided to allocate them. Farawneh's family is now receiving a monthly payment of NIS 38 (less than $10), while Hammad's family is getting only NIS 79 (just under $20).

A Palestinian pension law approved in 2005 grants the families of PA pensioners and the deceased monthly salaries constituting 7.5% of the basic salary.

The families have sought the assistance of a Palestinian legal group in exerting pressure on the PA to change the pension law so that they would receive larger sums of money.

The group wrote over the weekend to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas protesting against the "injustice" done to the families of Palestinian "martyrs" and pensioners.

The group, called the Association Center for Palestinian Right, also wrote to members of the Palestinian Legislative Council asking them to change the law immediately, saying it was inconceivable that the families of "martyrs" should receive such ridiculous payments.

Almost all Palestinians who are killed in clashes with the IDF are entitled to a salary from the PA to support their families.

The PA has also been paying salaries to thousands of Fatah gunmen belonging to the faction's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades. The majority of these gunmen are registered as members of various branches of the PA security forces, particularly the General Intelligence, Force 17 and the Preventive Security Service. But until now it was not common knowledge that members of the Popular Resistance Committees had also been receiving salaries from the PA.

The Popular Resistance Committees is an alliance of various armed factions in the Gaza Strip, including Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The group was also behind the roadside bomb attack that killed three US security guards in the northern Gaza Strip in 2003. Gilad Shalit with two friends. Photo: Courtesy photo

Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com

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ARAB ETIQUETTE: THE GUIDEBOOK FOR TAKING A LIFE
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 11, 2007.

This article was written by Michael Moss and Souad Mekhennet and it appeared yesterday in the New York Times Week in Review. This version is entitled "A look at the playbook for Islamic Militants" and is from the International Herald Tribune
(http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/10/asia/jihad.php).

We were in a small house in Zarqa, Jordan, trying to interview two heavily bearded Islamic militants about their distribution of recruitment videos when one of us asked one too many questions.

"He's American?" one of the militants growled. "Let's kidnap and kill him."

The room fell silent. But before anyone could act on this impulse, the rules of jihadi etiquette kicked in. You can't just slaughter a visitor, militants are taught by sympathetic Islamic scholars. You need permission from whoever arranges the meeting. And in this case, the arranger who helped us to meet this pair declined to sign off.

"He's my guest," Marwan Shehadeh, a Jordanian researcher, told the militants.

With Islamist violence brewing in various parts of the world, the set of rules to guide and justify the killing that militants do is growing more complex.

This jihad etiquette is not written down, and for good reason. It varies as much in interpretation and practice as extremist groups vary in their goals. But the rules have some general themes that underlie actions ranging from the recent rash of suicide bombings in Algeria and Somalia, to the surge in beheadings and bombings by separatist Muslims in Thailand.

Some of these rules have deep roots in the Middle East, where, for example, the Egyptian Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi has argued it is fine to kill Israeli citizens because their compulsory military service means they are not truly civilians.

The war in Iraq is reshaping the etiquette, too. Suicide bombers from radical Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups have long been called martyrs, a locution that avoids the Koran's ban on killing oneself in favor of the honor it accords death in battle against infidels. Now some Sunni militants are urging the killing of Shiites, alleging that they are not true Muslims.

If there seems to be no published playbook, there are informal rules, and these were gathered by interviewing militants and their leaders, Islamic clerics and scholars in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and England, along with government intelligence officials in the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

Islamic militants who embrace violence may account for a minuscule fraction of Muslims in the world, but they lay claim to the breadth of Islamic teachings in their efforts to justify their actions.

Here are six of the more striking jihadi tenets, as militant Islamists describe them:

Rule No. 1: You can kill bystanders without feeling a lot of guilt.

The Koran, as translated by the University of Southern California Muslim Student Association's Compendium of Muslim Texts, generally prohibits the slaying of innocents, as in Verse 33 in Chapter 17 (Isra', The Night Journey, Children of Israel): "Nor take life, which Allah has made sacred, except for just cause."

But the Koran also orders Muslims to resist oppression, as Verses 190 and 191 of Chapter 2 (The Cow) instruct: "Fight in the cause of Allah with those who fight with you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors. And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out, for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter."

In the typical car bombing, some Islamists say, God will identify those who deserved to die -- for example, anyone helping the enemy -- and send them to hell. The other victims will go to paradise.

Rule No. 2: You can kill children, too, without needing to feel distress.

Islamic texts say it is unlawful to kill children, women, the old and the infirm. In the Sahih Bukhari, a respected collection of sermons and sayings of the prophet Muhammad, Verse 4:52:257 refers to Ghazawat, a battle in which Muhammad took part. "Narrated Abdullah: During some of the Ghazawat of the Prophet a woman was found killed.

Allah's Apostle disapproved the killing of women and children."

But militant Islamists, including extremists in Jordan who embrace Al Qaeda's ideology, teach recruits that children receive special consideration in death. They are not held accountable for any sins until puberty, and if they are killed in a jihad operation, they will go straight to heaven. There, they will instantly age to their late 20s and enjoy the same access to virgins and other benefits that martyrs receive.

Islamic militants are hardly alone in seeking to rationalize innocent deaths, says John Voll, a professor of Islamic history at Georgetown University. "Whether you are talking about leftist radicals here in the 1960s, or the apologies for civilian collateral damage in Iraq that you get from the Pentagon, the argument is that if the action is just, the collateral damage is justifiable," he said.

Rule No. 3: Sometimes, you can single out civilians for killing; bankers are an example.

Nick Berg Beheaded

In principle, nonfighters cannot be targeted in a militant operation, Islamist scholars say. But the list of exceptions is long and growing.

Civilians can be killed in retribution for an enemy attack on Muslim civilians, argue some scholars, like Abdullah bin Nasser al-Rashid, a Saudi cleric whose writings and those of other prominent Islamic scholars have been analyzed by the Combating Terrorism Center, a research group at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

Shakir al-Abssi, whose Qaeda-minded group, Fatah Al Islam, is fighting in Lebanon, says some government officials are fair game. He was sentenced to death in Jordan for helping to organize the slaying of the U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in 2002, and said in an interview that while he did not specifically choose Foley to be killed, "Any person that comes to our region with a military, security or political aim, then he is a legitimate target."

Others, like Atilla Ahmet, 42, a Briton of Cypriot descent who is awaiting trial in England on terrorism charges, take a broader view. "It would be legitimate to attack banks because they charge interest, and this is in violation of Islamic law," Ahmet said last year.

Rule No. 4: You cannot kill in the country where you reside unless you were born there.

Militants living in a country that respects the rights of Muslims have something like a peace contract with the country, says Omar Bakri, a radical sheik who moved from London to Lebanon two years ago under pressure from the British authorities.

Militants who go to Iraq get a pass as expeditionary warriors. And the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did not violate this rule, since the hijackers came from outside the United States, Bakri says.

Bakri says he does not condone violence against innocent people anywhere. But some of the several hundred young men who studied Islam with him say they have no such qualms.

"We have a voting system here in Britain, so anyone who is voting for Tony Blair is not a civilian and therefore would be a legitimate target," said Khalid Kelly, an Irish-born Islamic convert who says he studied with Bakri in London.

Rule No. 5: You can lie or hide your religion if you do this for jihad.

Muslims are instructed by the Koran to be true to their religion.

"Therefore stand firm (in the straight Path) as thou art commanded, thou and those who with thee turn (unto Allah), and transgress not (from the Path), for He seeth well all that you do," says Verse 112 of Chapter 11 (Hud).

Lying is allowed only when it is deemed a necessity -- for example, when being tortured, or when an innocuous deception serves a good purpose, scholars say.

But some militants appear to shirk this rule to blend in with non-Muslim surroundings or deflect suspicion, says Major General Achraf Rifi, the general director of Lebanon's internal security force.

Rifi recalled that the Sept. 11 hijacker who came from Lebanon frequented discos in Beirut.

Voll takes a different view of the playboy-turned-militant phenomenon. He says that the Sept. 11 hijackers might simply have been "guys who enjoyed a good drink" and that militant leaders may be seeking to do a "post facto scrubbing up of their image" by portraying sins as a ruse.

Rule No. 6. You may need to ask your parents for their consent.

Militant Islamists interpret the Koran and the separate teachings of Muhammad that are known as the Sunna as laying out five criteria to be met by people wanting to be jihadis. They must be Muslim, at least 15 years of age and mature, of sound mind and debt-free, and they must have parental permission.

The parental rule is currently waived inside Iraq, where Islamists say it is every Muslim's duty to fight the Americans, says Dr. Mohammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident who runs a leading jihad Internet forum, Tajdeed.net, in London, where he now lives. The rule is optional for residents of nearby countries, like Jordan.

Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com

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ANTI-ISRAEL AND CHRISTIAN PRO-ISRAEL DEMONSTRATION IN THE UK
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 10, 2007.

below is a letter from a Christian supporter of Israel, describing his experiences at a counter-rally in the UK. Interesting to see what Christian supporters of Israel are doing to combat the Israel-hatred, and to see the depths of the Israel-hatred in the UK. He entitles it "Dayenu -- It is enough."

It seems to me that the open, frank, and unabashed expression of the Israel-haters' intent to destroy Israel renders any thought of a 'two-state solution' nearly suicidal for Israel.

[Note from Boris Celser: Go to http://www.tanya-n.com for excellent photos and commentary from the demonstration and counter demonstration.]

Dayenu -- It is enough.

I organised about 30 Christians to join the pro Israel stand at the anti Israel demonstration in central London on June 9th. I found myself on one end of a banner reading 'Enough rockets on Sedorot' as the 2-3000 marchers passed by. Many were shouting abuse at us and I must have got my face on a good number of photos by the marchers. We were wearing banners saying 'Israel you are not alone' on one side and 'He that keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps' on the other. Many of the Jewish people there were encouraged that we stood with them against the hatred which is easy to feel from the anti-Israel lobby.

Afterwards some of us went down to Trafalgar Square where the rally was taking place and speakers were denouncing Israel from the platform. We gave out Christian leaflets and talked to people who were interested. Some of the responses gave me an opportunity to witness the depths of prejudice and ignorance on the other side.

A young Muslim man said to me that Israel should get out of the occupied territory. I asked him whether he meant Nablus and Hebron or Haifa and Tel Aviv. He said, 'Haifa and Tel Aviv.' Clearly those who advocate a 'two state solution' have not quite woken up to the fact that what is now on offer from Hamas and its supporters is a one state solution in which Muslims rule from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. In fact if you dig a bit deeper you might find that they want a one world state from Japan to America, Canada to Argentina, Russia to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand and anywhere else I may have left out.

From radical Muslims to far left Communists. A man was selling a paper with Russian writing on it so I started chatting to him. He turned out to be a supporter of a Russian Communist party wanting to bring back Stalinist rule and the Soviet Union. He also favoured Maoism in China. When I asked about his views on the millions killed by Stalin and Mao he said that was all propaganda. He then expressed the view that North Korea was an ideal state to live in. As I had my Korean friend with me I turned this one over to him. I don't think he was terribly impressed with this man's arguments.

An English woman draped in a Palestinian flag was screaming at us 'What is Israel doing in the West Bank?' I began to explain to her how the Arab armies sought to destroy Israel in 1967 and as a result of Israel's victory which saved them from a holocaust they gained control of the territories. She did not want to know any of the facts and I had no opportunity to develop my explanation from a historical point of view as she kept ranting on about what she thought Israel has done in the West Bank. None so blind as those who will not see.

I then talked to a couple of Jewish socialists who think Israel is a racist state (unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan and one or two other nice Middle Eastern countries one could mention). Plus some assorted people who did not think we had a right to be there because we did not support the aim of the demonstration (so much for free speech).

Apart from that we enjoyed handing out our leaflets and feeling all the love and peace around us. In the strange alliance of radical leftists and Muslims I couldn't help wondering this. Supposing (God forbid) one side or the other actually succeeded in turning Britain (or the world) into the Muslim or Marxist paradise they hope for -- how long before the Muslims would be killing the leftists or the leftists would be killing the Muslims? And when they have done this (after killing the Jews and the Christians of course) they get on with the serious business of killing each other. Dayenu.

June 9th 2007.

Light for the Last Days
enquiries@lightforthelastdays.co.uk

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

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PATRICK POOLE: AP WRITER MANUFACTURES LIE IN STORY ON PEW MUSLIM STUDY
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 10, 2007.

This was posted by Robert Spencer on Jihad Watch
(http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/016841.php)

Patrick Poole uncovers more problems with the AP story by Eric Gorski that I [Robert Spencer] discussed on Jihad Watch June 8, 2007
(http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/016810.php).

Gorski says:

A December 2006 survey by the University of Maryland's Program on International Attitudes found 24 percent of Americans believe "bombings and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are often or sometimes justified. The poll found no significant variance based on age.

His statement on this poll is only two sentences long, but there are several misrepresentations here in addition to one outright lie.

The first problem is that they December 2006 wasn't done by the "University of Maryland's Program on International Attitudes", but the Program on International Policy Attitudes (does the AP have any factcheckers?), which is not part of the U of Maryland at all, but is a joint project between the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA) and the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), University of Maryland. It is an independently-funded organization with loose ties to UofM, but both Al-Akhras and Gorski have stretched PIPA's relationship with the university to try to give it more clout. The poll was not conducted by the university, however, as they claim.

[...]

But the absolutely categorical lie Gorski engages in is when he says, "The poll found no significant variance based on age." But when you look at the PIPA study, the responses are not broken down by age -- Gorski conjures this fact completely out of thin air! In fact, the American respondents aren't even broken down by age anywhere in the study or the questionnaire. He has to manufacture it himself.

[...]

Like a dog returning to its vomit, there is a reason why the Islamists and their media establishment apologists keep returning to this PIPA study: they have been successful thus far at twisting and manipulating the poll results to try to divert attention from the shocking findings of the Pew study. And as I stated in my previous article, they have to engage in an equivalence between conventional and internationally recognized warfare (the subject of the PIPA poll) with terrorism (the Pew study asked specifically about suicide bombings) to even try to bring the PIPA study into play. This equivalence between conventional warfare and terrorism is precisely the same that Islamists constantly tell us that they don't make (equating the bombing of factories in Germany during WWII and the HAMAS suicide bombing of Israeli pizza parlors filled with Jewish teenagers).

But not even the Islamists are reading from the same script when it comes to this PIPA study. While Ahmad Al-Akhras of CAIR cites "24 percent of Americans, reported in the Maryland study, who believe these attacks are "often or sometimes justified", Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society of North America, cites this exact same PIPA study and says:

"And what am I to make of the fact that according to the University of Maryland, 51% of Americans believe that "bombings and other types of attacks against civilians are sometimes justified?"

Citing the exact same poll, CAIR and ISNA come up with two entirely different results for this same question -- 24 percent and 51 percent! Can't these clowns get it right? You would think the Islamists would at least collaborate a little more closely so they can tell the same lies....

Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com

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WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE? JEW HATERS NEED TO KNOW WE HAVE PASSION TO DEFEND OURSELVES
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 10, 2007.

This was written by David Suissa. It appeared today on the Aish website:
http://www.aish.com/search/article_search_results.asp? article_author=David+Suissa&title_text=&date_amount=&date_option=year. This article originally appeared in the LA Jewish Journal.

I took a break from the hood the other night to speak to a large synagogue in Palos Verdes called Congregation Ner Tamid -- and I used a word that got me in trouble. The occasion was a showing of "Obsession" -- a documentary on the rise of radical Islam and the worldwide terror that has accompanied it -- and it was sponsored by CAMERA, an organization that counteracts anti-Israel bias in the mainstream media.

"Obsession" assaults you with the hatred that fuels the fire of radical Islam.

The film points out that the majority of Muslims are not radical Islamists, but when it hones in on the radicals, the words and images make your skin crawl.

You see an old sheik, speaking to what looks like 100,000 people, pulling out a sword and exhorting his screaming flock to kill every Jew they can find. One radical Muslim after another is shown giving motivational speeches on the fine art of Jew-hatred. And Jew-killing. Lots and lots of Jew-killing.

The Jew-haters are honest: they want Jews dead. All Jews. Roadblocks or no roadblocks. West Bank or no West Bank.

But here's the crazy part: There's not a word from the Jew-haters about the dreaded Occupation. Not a peep about roadblocks or fences or the oppressive policies of the Zionist occupier, which, as we are so often reminded, lie "at the heart" of our enemies' discontent. The Jew-haters are honest: they want Jews dead. All Jews. Roadblocks or no roadblocks. West Bank or no West Bank.

Talk about an inconvenient truth.

When you see all this Jew-hatred, it's tempting to be dismissive and say "These are only the radicals; there are many more moderates." Or to get all cynical because "The radicals will always want to kill us. So what's new?" These are great coping mechanisms that help us maintain our composure. But here's what's new: The radicals aren't just getting bigger and bolder on the battlefield, they're also, amazingly, winning the PR war.

Who would have figured that two years after our heart-wrenching evacuation of Gaza -- two years of continued relentless attacks from an enemy that brazenly calls for our destruction -- we'd be the target of a boycott from British professors? Again, it's tempting to get all blase and say "Been there, done that."

But this blase attitude is a reason why we are losing the PR battle: We assume that getting all worked up about stuff doesn't really make a difference, or that it's not very becoming of Jews. The practical thing to do is to stay composed and look for solutions.

Well, here's a practical idea: Let's all take a time-out from "solutions" and get a little worked up. Let's stop being so composed and start being outraged.

Because if we continue like this, the whole world, except for America and Micronesia, will be boycotting Israel.

Israel needs the Diaspora to get more emotional right now -- because emotional outrage wins PR battles. Our enemy understands that a lot better than we do.

The most effective TV interview I ever saw happened about five years ago on a major network, while Israel was in the midst of numerous suicide bombings. The anchorman asked Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, a very composed and sophisticated man, why Israel could not arrest these suicide bombers. Well, you should have seen the outrage on Mr. Burg's face.

With clenched fists and an almost growling voice, he said something like: "But how do you expect us to do that when they can blow up in one second?"

It was visceral, it was sincere and it didn't come from talking points. It came from his heart, and I guarantee you it played well in Wisconsin.

After seeing the Jew-hatred in "Obsession," it was hard not to get worked up when I spoke at the Palos Verdes synagogue. I wanted the Jew-haters of the world to know that we have as much passion to defend Jewish lives as they have passion to destroy us.

But I got a little carried away. I said that we need to have our own Jihad -- a Jihad for life -- and to show the enemy that we believe in it as much as they believe in their "Jihad for death."

A fellow Jew rose up in indignation. My clever twist did not amuse him. No matter how much I tried to explain the subtleties of turning our enemy's word on its head to convey our own "noble struggle," the word went too far for him.

I understood his discomfort, but maybe that's precisely why we need to go there.

Our PR timidity has backfired on us. I'm not saying we should emulate "Wrestlemania" announcers (how sincere do they look?), but I am saying that we need to get bolder and more emotional. It makes us more human.

For example, when the bombs fall on Sderot, instead of empty cliches like "no terrorist is immune" and "this is unacceptable" and so forth, we should have the guts to run ads all over the world and get on CNN and the BBC and say things like: "We gave them land, and they gave us war." "This proves that the occupation was never the key problem," and "How would England respond if the same amount of bombs fell on Manchester?"

These are not think-tank words, they're real words. If we can deliver them with the same intensity Mr. Burg used five years ago, the world will better understand the justness of our cause.

The amazing thing about the PR battle is that it's probably the only area right now where we can win. The political, military and diplomatic landscapes are a mess, but the PR landscape is wide open. Especially post-disengagement, there are numerous PR victories that are ours for the taking.

In a brilliant article in Haaretz, Moshe Arens explains why you can't deter terrorists, you can only fight them. It's time for Jews of all stripes to get their mojo back, and join the PR fight.

Even if your only weapon is your PC, and your mouth.

Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com

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OUR LESSONS
Posted by Arlene Kushner, June 10, 2007.

The Torah reading for Shabbat yesterday included the incident of the spies. Moses sent one man from each tribe to check out the land of Canaan, given to the children of Israel. The spies returned -- and with the exceptions of Joshua and Caleb -- reported negatively. They told the people, "...it is too strong for us!...it is a land that devours its inhabitants." And the people became afraid to proceed.

Joshua and Caleb implored them: "...The land is very very good! If Hashem desires us, He will bring us to this Land and give it to us, a Land that flows with milk and honey...you should not fear the people of this land."

But it made no difference and the people remained afraid.

What they did was counted by Hashem as a sin.

~~~~~~~~~~

As I read this, it spoke loudly to me of what is happening now: Our people are afraid. They have not the courage to stand up for what is ours. I think of those within "leadership" positions in our government ready to consider negotiations with Syria -- and give them the Golan! -- because Assad is making war-like gestures.

Were we to do that (in the final analysis I believe we will not), it would be disastrous for Israel. Not simply because this is strategic property, but because the Arab world would know we are afraid. This we cannot afford.

~~~~~~~~~~

And the same principles must be applied in other places if the Western world is to remain free. Recently I wrote about the thinking within the American government that Iran should not be attacked -- even though it is on the verge of going nuclear -- because Iran might help stabilize matters and allow the US to leave Iraq. Fear of Iran is in the air, with a statement such as this. This the US cannot afford.

Now Senator Joe Lieberman (bless him!) on Face the Nation (TV) has said that the US should bomb Iran:

"...if there's any hope of the Iranians living according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can't just talk to them.

"If they don't play by the rules, we've got to use our force, and to me, that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they're doing.

"...they can't believe that they have immunity for training and equipping people to come in and kill Americans, We cannot let them get away with it. If we do, they'll take that as a sign of weakness on our part and we will pay for it in Iraq and throughout the region and ultimately right here at home."

Thank Heaven someone gets it.

Arlene Kushner is Senior Research Associate, Center for Near East Policy Research, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem, Israel. Contact her at akushner@netvision.net.il

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GOLDILOCKS
Posted by David Frankfurter, June 9, 2007.

Dear Friends,

On June 6, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas announced a last-minute cancellation of the next day's meeting with Ehud Olmert. In a confidence building measure, supposed to bolster Abbas' prestige in this very 'face conscious' Middle East, Olmert was going to take a significant risk to his personal safety and hold the discussions on Palestinian territory -- in the biblical town of Jericho.

The meeting was cancelled by Abbas because -- depending on who you believe -- the civil war in the Palestinian territories meant that Abbas would not get enough political mileage (Israel's version), or (according to the Palestinians) because Israel still won't release tax money to the Palestinians without proper safeguards to make sure it doesn't finance the murder of more Israelis. Either way, the diplomatic walls aren't tumbling down.

Refusal to meet Olmert did not, however, stop new Palestinian demands. On the day of the cancelled meeting, Abbas' troops asked Israel to open the borders, allowing Fatah to breach its signed agreements and import all sorts of illegal light weapons, tanks and rockets, so that they can rearm in their civil war against Hamas. Israeli reluctance is influenced by speculation as to how long it will take until the weapons are once again turned against Jewish civilians.

Ironically, the Fatah leadership of Arafat and then Abbas used internationally financed budgets to fund and encourage large-scale arms smuggling through the desert, via the sea, and by digging a myriad of underground tunnels. Nourishing the murder of Israeli civilians, Palestinian security forces were ordered at the time to turn a blind eye when Hamas, other radical Islamic terrorists and various gangs joined in. Hamas were just better at it, and eventually took control of the smuggling operations. And now Abbas finds himself out gunned.

And for those who wonder what the story of the three bears has to do with the chaos in Gaza? Well, the Hebrew version of the idiom "You made your bed, now you'll have to lie in it" is "You cooked the porridge, you have to eat it".

David Frankfurter is a business consultant, corporate executive and writer who frequently comments on the Middle East. To subscribe to his 'Letter from Israel', email him at david.frankfurter@iname.com. Or go to
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dfrankfurter/

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RESPONSE TO EINAT WILF: MY CANDIDACY FOR WJC PRESIDENT
Posted by Boris Celser, June 9, 2007.

Background: Einat Wilf wrote a piece today in the Jerusalem Post on why she should be president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), arguing the usual profundities
(www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181228580506&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull). This was my response to her:

Dear Eilat, we've exchanged a few e-mails up to a year or so ago. I know you've been a Shimon Peres policy advisor, and to my mind this should disqualify you for any job involving the future of the Jewish people. I had the opportunity to point out at an earlier JP talkback that after Hitler and Arafat, the person mostly responsible for Jewish deaths is Shimon Peres. Policywise, of course. I don't think any of the three ever killed a Jew with their own hands. You're an expert in nanotechnology.

You support your former boss in his plans to set up technology factories along Gaza and the West Bank. The miniaturization of madness. I hope when you find the love of your life he will not read Das Kapital as he proposes, like Peres did to poor Sonia. A woman deserves more. If you become president of the WJC, Israel is finished. Pereism will demoralize whatever is left of the Diaspora. I'm worried about something you wrote here. As you know, the president of Israel has no real political power. However, you said if elected you will work with the president of Israel to find solutions to the challenges of Jewish education. Your meaning is clear. You expect Peres to win the election, and with him, Olmert, and yourself at the helm, whatever is left of Judaism and Zionism will be replaced by the madness that has afflicted your former boss throughout his life. I am thankful to you for having read my long article on system change, and I know you disagree with everything I said.

But Proportional Representation is destroying Israel. We, humans, carry many feelings inside ourselves, including hatred. In society, there are laws and regulations and punishments that force us to keep hatred in check, although it doesn't always work this way. But not in Israel. There, PR failed the people. Your former boss is full of hatred towards Jews, for having always rejected him and his ideas. But this crooked system allows him to return over and over again.

Plotting, sabotaging, and betraying the nation. You're a creature of the man who created Oslo, and that's why you can not be president of the WJC, not that I have much respect for it, anyway. You see, I was kicked out of the Canadian Jewish Congress's distribution list because I criticized their support for the Red Crystal sign instead of the Magen David. I bet you disagree with me here, too. Anyway, hatred is in the heart of Ehud #1, who has accounts to settle with the Israeli people.

Hatred is in the heart of Ehud #2, who will prove to all of us he can destroy Israel as well as any other politician. Hatred comes hand in hand with corruption and cowardice, when it comes to prop. representation. We need more than Jewish Book Month and Social Action Month. We need Jerusalem, the Golan, Judea and Samaria. We need to to change the system in Israel, to liberate the brainwashed Israelis from so many years of madness. Before it is too late. Remember, Pereism only works in Israel.

Boris Celser lives in Canada. Contact him at celser@telusplanet.net

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IRAQ INSURGENTS STEPS UP ITS CAMPAIGN AGAINST BAGHDAD'S CHRISTIANS
Posted by Michael Travers, June 9, 2007.

This article was written by Hannah Allam and Leila Fadel June 7, 2007 for McClatchy Newspapers. Fadel reported from Baghdad, Allam from Damascus.

Madeline Shukr Yusuf, a 74-year-old Iraqi Christian, grabbed her rosary and prayer book before fleeing Baghdad four days ago. Now living with other Christian refugees in the Syrian capital of Damascus, Yusuf didn't want her face shown because her daughters still live under constant insurgent threat in their Baghdad neighborhood of Doura.

Told to convert to Islam, marry daughters to Muslim fighters ... or leave

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- An al-Qaida-affiliated insurgent group is giving Christians in Baghdad a stark set of options: Convert to Islam, marry your daughters to our fighters, pay an Islamic tax or leave with only the clothes on your back.

A U.S. military official said American forces became aware of the threats only last month and now have erected barriers around the largest Christian enclave in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood in an effort to protect its residents.

Christians in Baghdad refuse to discuss the threats for fear of retribution. But in Syria, where thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled, tales abound of families that were killed or driven from their homes because they either refused or couldn't afford to pay the jizya, a tax usually levied on non-Muslim men of military age that's been part of Islam for more than 1,000 years.

"Two or three months ago, we heard we were going to be forcibly removed from Dora," said Rafah Elia Daoud, 53, who fled to Damascus, Syria's capital, on May 24. "Not everyone got a paper with the threat, but we knew. The choice was to convert, pay the jizya or get out."

"My brother was threatened; my sister was threatened. All of them had to pay the jizya," added her husband, Jamal Antone Karoumy, 66. "One of my brothers got a note and a single bullet under his door. The note said, `If you don't pay the jizya to the resistance, you'll be killed.'"

Madeline Shukr Yusuf, 74, is still shaken by her recent escape to Damascus. She said she didn't have enough money to pay a monthly jizya of 250,000 Iraqis dinars, about $200. The insurgents were determined to collect their tax, she said.

"They wanted to kill me and take my gold bracelets," she said, tears filling her eyes at the memory. "They tell us pay or give a daughter in marriage to a fighter."

Iraq long had been home to thriving Christian communities, primarily Assyrians and Chaldean Catholics, who trace their roots to ancient Mesopotamia. Some of Saddam Hussein's closest confidants were Christian, including his foreign minister, Tarik Aziz. Christian communities were prominent in many major Iraqi cities, including Mosul in the north and Basra in the south.

Baghdad had major Christian enclaves in the central neighborhood of Karada, the eastern mostly Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad and nearby al-Ghadir and the notorious Sunni-dominated Doura in the capital's south.

As Iraq has descended into chaos, however, many Christians have fled, joining an estimated 2.2 million exiles, including 1.4 million Iraqis now estimated to be living in Syria. At least 19,000 Iraqi Christians have registered in Damascus with the United Nations refugee agency, and thousands more are thought to have sought shelter there, but have yet to register.

A Christian Iraqi legislator estimated Tuesday that a half-million Christians have fled Iraq since 2004.

"What is happening today in Iraq against Christians is shameful," Ablahad Afram Sawa said in an impassioned statement read to Iraq's parliament by its speaker. He said Christians hadn't faced such oppression in nearly 2,000 years. "Most of the churches in Baghdad have closed their doors," he added.

Iraqi officials said others have left their homes but remained in the country. At least 1,050 Christians from Baghdad and Mosul have taken up residence in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq in the past month, according to Nowrooz Khan, spokesman for the Ministry of Migration and Displacement.

The relationship between Christians and Muslims has been a complex one. In the Middle Ages, Christian crusaders tried to capture Jerusalem from Muslim rule at least 10 times, and modern-day extremists still invoke those efforts in calling for jihad -- holy war -- to defend their faith.

Al-Qaida, which has killed thousands of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, also has targeted Christians, whom Iraqis widely consider to be pacifists.

Still, early Muslims considered Christians, along with Jews, to be "people of the book," as Muslims refer to followers of other monotheistic religions, and believed they were entitled to protection under Islamic rule, in exchange for jizya, as the tax was called. It was considered a substitute for the tax for the poor, zakat, which Muslims pay annually.

In some cases, Christians who fought alongside Muslims were exempted from the jizya and shared in the spoils of war equally with Muslims.

Sawa, in his statement to the Iraqi parliament, recalled how some Christians fought against European crusaders. The first general said to have entered Jerusalem after Salahaddin repulsed the crusaders was a Christian.

In Iraq today, however, fear is palpable among Christians. On Sunday, a priest was gunned down in Mosul with three companions after afternoon prayers. His body lay in the streets for hours. Another priest was kidnapped on Wednesday in New Baghdad.

Christians in the capital refuse to talk. At a church in Karada, a priest shooed away a McClatchy correspondent. Nearby, five black funeral banners graced with yellow crosses fluttered in the wind.

Rumors abound. Residents said a priest and an altar boy were killed on Wednesday and their church was burned, but they refused to say more. "We are afraid of retribution," one said. The U.S. military denied that the incident occurred.

It's unclear when the Islamic State of Iraq, an insurgent umbrella group that's dominated by al-Qaida in Iraq, began demanding that Christians either leave their neighborhoods or pay the tax.

A U.S. military spokesman said American troops had been aware that some Christians were being forced from their homes, but realized only recently that it was a wide-scale campaign.

"We're aware that some Christians have left the area," Maj. Kirk Luedeke, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the Army's 1st Infantry Division, said in an e-mail. "But we weren't aware until last month how widespread the situation was, after initially being led to believe it was a few isolated incidents of intimidation."

Since then, Luedeke said, the U.S. military has erected barriers around Dora's largest Christian enclave and begun a census to identify Christian residents so they can be checked on regularly.

Such efforts, however, are too late for thousands of Iraqi Christians who've flooded Jaramana, an industrial area on the southeast outskirts of Damascus and a popular destination for Iraqi Christian refugees.

In apartment after ramshackle apartment, Iraqi Christians this week recounted the horror of being forced from their homes after demands for jizya -- or worse.

Yusuf, the 74-year-old who arrived there days ago, said her family couldn't afford the tax the insurgents demanded -- but they also couldn't afford for all the members to flee. So they bundled Yusuf into a rented car headed for the Syrian border. She packed only a few clothes, her delicate white rosary and a tiny prayer book with a portrait of the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ on the cover.

She left behind her two daughters and her grandchildren.

"We can't pay, and my daughters are beautiful, so ..." she said. Then, too upset to continue, she clutched her rosary, turned her gaze heavenward and mouthed a prayer.

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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ISRAEL: IT'S PAYBACK TIME
Posted by Amil Imani, June 9, 2007.

Once again, the unelected, illegitimate clown puppet of the thugs of the Iranian Islamic regime, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "The Monkey" to Iranians, has spewed some outrageous statements against the State of Israel.

In a fiery speech delivered on Sunday, on the 18th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Islamic terrorism, The Monkey said that "Allah willing, in the future we will witness the destruction" of Israel.

No sooner did President Ahmadinejad emerge from obscurity and assume his new role as the head of the Executive Branch of the Islamic regime in Iran than he unleashed a torrent of venomous rhetoric against the United States and Israel. This is contrary to the sentiments of the majority of Iranians.

Ahmadinejad does not represent the Iranian people any more than his turbaned-colleagues presently ruling Iran do. What needs to be understood is that in fact Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs, above all else, are true Muslims and despise anything "Iranian" and its ancient "pre-Islamic" heritage.

Iranians are proud of their historical friendship with the Jewish people. The bond of friendship goes back to the landmark action of King Cyrus the Great of Persia. In 537 B.C., having conquered Babylon, the benevolent King Cyrus freed the Jews from captivity and empowered them to return to the Promised Land and build their temple.

Most Iranians nowadays want to distance themselves from the Islamic Regime in Iran and the likes of Ahmadinejad. Iranians wish the world to make a distinction between Iranian People and the despicable Islamic regime, its wicked followers and traitorous lobbyists.

"The Monkey" sees Jews as the sworn enemies of Islam. The hostility dates back to the time of Muhammad's own treatment of the Jews in Medina. At first, expediently, Muhammad called the Jews "people of the book," and accorded them a measure of tolerance until he gained enough power to unleash his devastating wrath on them.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was "shocked and dismayed" at a report that Iran's hard-line president said the world would soon witness the destruction of Israel, the United Nations said Thursday.

It is time for the world to see Ahmadinejad and his handlers for what they are. These end-of-the-worlders are not interested in any negotiation, any compromise or live-and-let-live. They are determined to be the soldiers of Mahdi come-what-may. They have no problem with the total destruction of the world. They are headed for a life of eternal bliss in Allah's paradise. They hardly care, they would even rejoice, if the rest of humanity is subjected to a tragic death in the nuclear, biological and chemical wasteland of planet earth.

What make matters terribly dangerous are the modern instruments of force and the willingness to use them. Centuries ago, the sword in the hand of the Islamists carved a huge empire. Now, with the weapons of mass destruction, the entire world is at peril.

Iranian Muslims are victims of the Islamic virus that has destroyed in them their traditional respect for diversity. It is the Iranian ancient fundamental belief in the validity and value of diversity that has held the nation together over the millennia.

There exists such duplicity within the Iranian culture. Originally, Iranians were forced to accept Islam to save their lives from the Arab invaders, but deep inside the heart of every single Iranian alive to this date, the burning sensation and resentment of the Arab-Islamic invasion to their culture is forever enflaming. Most Iranians may actually confess of being Muslims; yet, the overwhelming Iranians have never read Quran or understand its language. The events in history have toughened Iranians gravely. They have become great pretenders

The greatest celebration in Iran is the Persian New Year or better known as Nowruz, not the birth of the Prophet Mohammad (like in most Muslim countries) in whose name Iran was conquered and millions of Persians were perished. Iranians have not forgotten that, and they never will.

Throughout history, Iranians have been known for their tolerance of other creeds and religions. This was particularly notable in their associations and contacts with the Jews. Having been oppressed by the Seleucids and the Romans, the Jews had come to believe that Iran was the only super power capable of saving them from a fanatical foreign yoke, as it had done once before in the Achaemenid period.

The Parthian dynasty role in the liberation of the Jews gave rise to the well-known saying: "When you see a Parthian charger tied up to a tomb-stone in the land of Israel, the hour of the Messiah will be near". This shows the love of the Jews for the Persians as their savoir. Unlike what the clergies are preaching today, the majority of Iranians have enjoyed being a good host to their fellow countrymen, the Jewish population. "In the continuous struggles between the Parthians and the Romans, the Jews had every reason to hate the Romans, the destroyers of their sanctuary, and to side with the Persians: their protectors."

True Iranians have remained friends of the Jews by both belief as well as deeds. During the shameful Hitlerian campaign of exterminating the Jews, for instance, Iranian missions in Europe, notably the one in France, issued Iranian passports to facilitate the flight of French and other European Jews from the claws of Nazis and their gas chambers -- the very gas chambers that the true Muslim, disgracing Iranians, Ahmadinejad, denies ever existed.

Iranians stand for the rights of the Jews as well as the equal rights under the law for any and all religious and secular people. "A friend in need is the friend in-deed," is an apt saying. It is time for Israel to reciprocate the historical assistance of the Iranians at the hour of their needs. It is payback time now. Israel should give the Iranian people a helping hand by supporting the freedom-loving Iranians. It is the Iranian people who can best end the tyrannical and menacing mullahcracy that is posing a deadly threat to all concerned.

Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist, who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He maintains a website at www.AmilImani.com

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SAD, BAD, MAD MAD WORLD...!
Posted by Fred Reifenberg, June 9, 2007.

1967

2006

Contact Fred Reifenberg at freify@gmail.com

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UNDERSTANDING MUHAMMAD
Posted by Ali Sina, June 9, 2007.

Announcements

My book, Understanding Muhammad: The Psychobiography of Allah's Prophet, is ready for purchase.
(ISBN: 978-1-4303-2992-3).
Book and Review: http://www.lulu.com/content/787599

The book was originally named Understanding Islam and the Muslim Mind. It became too large and I decided to divide it in two books. The first book is about Muhammad and the second that is not yet published will be about Understanding Muslims.

Introduction:

After the 9/11 attack on America, a distraught American mother told me that her son, aged 23, had converted to Islam at 14.

He had married a Muslim woman whom he had never seen before in an arranged marriage by his Imam (Islamic cleric), and now, with a baby, he wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban killing American soldiers and become a "martyr."

She also said that a few years earlier he told her that once Islam takes over America, he would not hesitate to behead her, should the order come to slay the unbelievers.

****

Samaira Nazir, a bright and well educated 25 year old British national of Pakistani descent was stabbed to death.

Her throat was slashed by her 30 year old brother and her 17 year old cousin at her parents' home.

Samaira had dishonored her family by falling in love with an Afghan man they thought was of lower caste and had rejected suitors lined up to meet her in Pakistan. In April 2005 she was summoned to the family home and ambushed by everyone.

A neighbor witnessed seeing her trying to escape while her father grabbed her by the hair, pulled her back into the house and slammed the door. She was heard screaming, "you are not my mother anymore," which indicates that her mother was also involved in her cold-blooded murder.

Her nieces, aged 2 and 4 were made to watch the whole proceeding as the neighbors heard them screaming. The amount of blood on the children suggested that they were only feet from the attack. The family was educated and well to do.

****

Muhammad Ali al-Ayed, a 23 year old Saudi millionaire's son living in America, one August evening, in 2003, called Sellouk, his old Jewish Moroccan friend and suggested they get together. The two had drinks at a bar before going to Al-Ayed's apartment about midnight. There he took a knife, stabbed and nearly decapitated his friend. Al-Ayed's roommate told police the two "were not arguing before Al-Ayed killed Sellouk." The reason for this cold blooded murder was "religions differences," said Ayed's attorney.

****

Mohammad Taheri-azar was a 25 year old Iranian graduate from the University of North Carolina. One day, in March 2006, he rented a SUV and drove it slowly onto the campus. Then he suddenly accelerated into the college crowd with the intent to kill as many people as he could. He hit nine people and injured six of them.

****

Sanao Menghwar and his wife, a Hindu couple residing in Karachi, Pakistan, were traumatized one November evening in 2005, when upon returning from work they discovered that all their three daughters were missing. After two days of futile searching, they found out that their daughters had been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam. The police arrested three Muslim youths in connection with the crime, who were later granted bail by a court because they were minors. The girls remain missing.

"Kidnapping Hindu girls like this has become a normal practice. The girls are then forced to sign stamped papers stating that they've become Muslims," says Laljee, a Hindu resident of Karachi. "Hindus here are too frightened to vent their anger -- they fear victimization," he added.

Many Hindu girls meet similar fates in Pakistan. They are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and forced to marry a Muslim man while their parents are denied the right to see or talk to them. "How can a Muslim girl live and maintain contact with kafirs (infidels)?" remarked Maulvi Aziz, the cleric representing a Muslim kidnapper in another case that was taken to the court.

When a Hindu girl is converted to Islam, hundreds of Muslims take to the streets and chant religious slogans. The cries of the parents fall on deaf ears of the authorities. The unfortunate girls are then threatened that if they recant Islam they would be executed as apostates. Often lawyers avoid taking up these cases, fearing a backlash from the extremists.

****

In October 2005, three girls were walking through a Cocoa plantation near the city of Poso in Indonesia. The girls attended a private Christian school. They were attacked and beheaded by a group of Muslims.

Police said the heads were found some distance from the bodies and one of the heads was left outside a church. The Muslim militants have targeted central Sulawesi Province and believe that it could be turned into the foundation stone of an Islamic state. In 2001 and 2002, Muslims attacked the Christians in that province. The fighting drew Islamic militants from all over Indonesia and resulted in the death of more than 1,000 Christians.

****

Muriel Degauque was a 38 year old Belgian woman who, according to a neighbor who knew her since childhood, was an "absolutely normal" little girl who liked to go for sled rides when it snowed. She converted to Islam when she married a Muslim man. Later she traveled with her husband through Syria to Iraq, where she blew herself up in an attack on an Iraqi police patrol on November 9, 2005. Five policemen were killed outright and a sixth officer and four civilians were seriously injured.

These acts are insane, but the irony is that none of the perpetrators were insane.

They were "absolutely normal" people. What motivated them to commit these heinous crimes? The answer is Islam. Such occurrences are daily events in the Islamic world. Everywhere Muslims are busy killing people for what they believe.

Why?

What makes sane people commit such evil? Why are Muslims, as a lot, so angry with others, so at war with the world that they are often quick to resort to violence? Millions of Muslims riot, protest, and kill completely innocent people anytime, anywhere, says something about Muhammad. This kind of behavior is not rational. Yet the perpetrators are completely sane people. How can we explain this paradox?

To understand this we must understand that Muslims are expected to be, and to think like their prophet.

As such, their attitudes, beliefs, thoughts and actions come to reflect his personality and mind. Since Muhammad is the model for all that is righteous in Islam, it is expected that they emulate him in every way, to do what he did and to think the way he thought.

The result of this is that Muslims, as a whole, by virtue of taking on the life of Muhammad, leave behind their own, forsaking their humanity and to a large degree, their individuality.

As they come to inhabit the narcissistic bubble universe of their prophet, and to the extent that they follow his examples, they become extensions of him. Muslims are twigs from the tree of Islam and the root of that tree is Muhammad. They share his character, his attitude and his mindset. You could say each Muslim is a mini Muhammad of a sort. Therefore, to understand Muslims, individually as well as collectively, we must first come to know and understand Muhammad.

As a subject, Muhammad is one very few like to engage. Muslims get offended if anyone slights their prophet. Any comment, no matter how innocuous can elicit opprobrium. Though they may allow you to criticize his followers, they do not tolerate any criticism of the prophet himself.

It is not possible to make a thorough evaluation of the psychological profile of someone centuries after his death.

However, there is a wealth of information about the details of the life of Muhammad and his sayings that are recorded meticulously.

Many of these accounts are embellished by exaggeration and are full of hyperbole. It is to be expected that believers would elevate the status of their prophet, falsely attribute miracles to him and make him look saintly.

In the biography of Muhammad, however, we also find thousands of accounts that do not portray him as a holy man, but rather, depict him as vile, ruthless, cunning, and even as a sexual pervert.

There is no reason to believe these stories are fabrications.

It would not be characteristic of believers to portray their prophet as a villain. So if such stories exist, narrated by his companions, those who believed in him and loved him, in such a large numbers, it is likely that they are true.

Traditions that are diffusely recurrent are called mutawattir. These traditions have come down to later generations through a large number of chains of narrations, involving diverse transmitters. It is virtually impossible that all these people, living in different localities and espousing (at times radically) different views, would come together, to fabricate the exact same lie and attribute it to their prophet.

Availing ourselves of these stories, called hadith, and the Qur'an, a book believed by every Muslim to be the verbatim word of God, we shall peer into Muhammad's mind, as we try to understand him and to figure out why he did what he did.

I will quote the opinions and theories of various psychologists and psychiatrists, and compare what Muhammad did with what these experts of the mind say. The sources that I quote are all experts in psychopathology. What they say is accepted as commonsense and is shared by the majority of professionals in their field.

This book is not so much intended to be a psychoanalysis of a man who lived 1400 years ago as it is an attempt to unravel his mystique.

Muhammad is an enigma to many and particularly to his followers who accept the myth, and embrace the image, while refusing to see past it.

His conduct was ungodly, yet he gave all indications that he truly believed in his cause. How could such a man, so vengeful, so ruthless, and so depraved, have such charisma as to leave spellbound not only his companions, but billions of people for so many centuries?

Michael Hart, in his book, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, places Muhammad at the very top of his list, followed by Isaac Newton, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Confucius and St. Paul. Hart's list does not take into consideration whether the influences these people exerted were positive or negative.

In his list are also other tyrants, such as Adolph Hitler, Mao Ze Dong and Joseph Stalin. The list even includes Niccolò Machiavelli. How could a man like Muhammad, so devoid of humanity, become the most influential person in history? As this book attempts to show, the answer to this question has more to do with human psyche than it does with Muhammad the person.

There is no other cause for which more blood has been shed than Islam.

According to some historians, in India alone, more than 80 million people were massacred by the sword of Islam.

Millions were killed in Persia, Egypt and in all other countries that were attacked by marauding Muslims, both during their conquests and in the centuries that followed. It continues today.

Muslims often brag, "We love death more than you love life."

They have proven it in thousands of terrorist attacks in recent years.

How can one man have so much influence over so many people, even to cheerfully die for him and not hesitate to sacrifice their own children in his cause? Why is it that 25 out of 28 of the on-going conflicts worldwide involve Muslims, who comprise only one fifth of humanity? Taken as a statistical average, this means that Muslims, as a group, are a whopping 33 times more likely to resort to violence for conflict resolution than the rest of humanity. How can this be?

Islam is the brainchild of Muhammad.

Muslims read his words in the Qur'an and hadith and follow his examples in every detail of their lives.

To them, he is the best part of creation, the most perfect human being and the example to follow.

They believe that if he did something, no matter how egregious, that must be the right thing.

No question is asked and no value judgment allowed.

This book presents two theses.

The first is that Muhammad suffered from narcissistic personality disorder.
The second is that he was affected by temporal lobe epilepsy.

He may have had other mental disorders as well but these two conditions of personality and brain disorder explain the entire phenomenon known as Muhammad.

This book proves with overwhelming evidence that Muhammad was disturbed.

Though he believed in his cause and was sincere in his claim, yet he could not differentiate the imaginary from the real.

His contemporaries and those who knew him better, called him majnoon (lunatic, crazy, possessed by jinns).

They unfortunately succumbed to his brute force and their voices of sanity were silenced.

New discoveries of the human brain have finally vindicated them. But we should keep in mind, that despite psychological disorder, a narcissist is fully aware he is lying and he is the first to believe in his own lies.

Although this book is not addressed to Muslims, it is mainly for them I have written it.

As a Persian proverb says, I spoke to the door so the wall can hear.

Enough has been said about Muhammad being a looter, a mass murderer, a marauding gangster, a pedophile, an assassin, a lustful womanizer, etc. Muslims hear all that, and continue believing in him without blinking.

Oddly, some of them even claim that after they read my articles on the Internet, their "faith in Islam grew."

They have accepted Muhammad as a superior being and the "Mercy of God among mankind." They do not judge their prophet by the standards of human morality and conscience. On the contrary, they believe that it was he who set the standards.

For them, right and wrong, good and bad are not determined by the Golden Rule, a concept that is alien to the Muslim psyche, but by halal (permitted) and haram (forbidden), religious values that have no basis in logic, ethics, or morality.

You can order this book through Lulu.com, Amazon.com or any other online store.

However, it is preferable that you order it through your local bookstore such as Chapters, Barnes & Noble, etc. It will not only cost you less, if there are several orders to the same bookstore, the manager may want to order a few extra books and display them on the shelves. This would be a great way to promote the book. Also please do not forget to write a review once you read the book and kindly advertise it in other sites. A link to it in other sites will be highly appreciated.

This book spells the beginning of the end of Islam. Once you read it, you will not be able to think of Islam in the same way.

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CHANGE THE NAME RUSSIA TO ISLAM AND YOU WILL UNDERSTAND WHERE WE ARE FACING
Posted by Nurit Greenger, June 9, 2007.

Then it was Russia, now it is Islam but you will understand where we are at when we see the Dhimmicratization on American campuses. ONLY two generation away from America to be NO MORE! This may well explain to any clear minded, frustrated reader WHY American society, as a whole, to include the leadership, acts so foolishly illogical!

GET SICK at your leisure!

This is from www.wewintheylose.com

Yuri Bezmenov is a former KGB agent. In 5 video clips he explains how Marxist leaders use informers to make lists of anti-Communist and other politically incorrect people who they want to execute once they -- actually a Jewish oligarchy -- come to power. The oligarch's secret lists include "civil rights" activists and idealistically-minded "useful idiot" leftists as well. Bezmenov provides several real world examples of how Marxist leaders even execute and/or imprison each other.

On demoralization:

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE8MCSu_K-A

The KGB was not in the espionage business. It was in the very slow process of ideological subversion or active measures both mean psychological warfare.

What it means is to change the perception of reality or every American to such extent that despite the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their communities, their country.

The process has four stages: (i) demoralization -- takes 15-20 years to demoralize a nation; why so many years? These are the minimum years require educating one generation of students in the country of your enemy; exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxism, Leninism ideology is pumped in to the soft head of at least three generation of American students without being challenged or contra balanced by the basic values of Americanism -- American patriotism.

Most of the people who graduated in the 60s -- drop outs or half bait intellectuals -- are now occupying the position of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, and educational system. You are stuck with them and cannot get rid of them! They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black you still cannot change their basic perception and the logical behavior. In these people, the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible.

For society to get rid of such people we need 15-to-20 years to educate a new generation of patriotically minded and common sense people who will be active in favor and in the interest of the United States society.

The demoralization of American society is basically completed already; actually it is over fulfilled. Demoralization reached such success beyond experts' imagination, mostly done by Americans to Americans THANKS to LACK of MORAL STANDARDS!

Exposure to true information does not matter any more! A demoralized person is unable to assess true information; facts tell him nothing. Even if we shower him with information with authentic proof, with documents, pictures; even if we take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him concentration camps he will refuse to believe it until he is gets a kick in his fat bottom. When a military boot crashes his bottom then he will understand, but not before then. This is the tragedy of the situation of demoralization!

Bezmenov continues on demoralization in America:

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqd-x0omd_o&mode=related&search=

America is stuck with demoralization UNLESS we start right now, this minute, educating new generation of Americans it will take 15-to-20 years to turn the tide of ideological perception of reality; back to normalcy and patriotism.

(ii) The next stage is -- destabilization. This time the subverted does not care about your ideas, pattern of your consumption, whether you eat junk food and get fat and flabby. It does not matter. This process takes 2-to-5 years to destabilize a nation. What matters are essentials: Economy, foreign relations, defense systems. You can see clear that in the sensitive areas of defense and economy the influence of Marxism-Leninism ideas in United States are absolutely fantastic.

(iii) Crisis -- which takes up to 6-weeks to bring a country to a state of crisis (In Central America). After crises, with the violent change of power structure and economy, the period of (iv) normalization -- that will last indefinitely!

"Normalization" is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda. "Normalization" will happen in the United States if we allow all the "SHMUCKS" to bring the country to crisis; to promise people all kind of goodies and the paradise on earth, to destabilize our economy, to eliminate the principles of free market completion and to put a big brother government in Washington DC with benevolent "dictator" like Walter Mondale, who promised a lot of things, never mind if the promises were fulfilled or not. He will go to Moscow to kiss the bottoms of new generation of Soviet assassins. He will crate false illusion that the situation is under control when the situation is disgustingly out of control. Most of the American politicians, media and the educational system trains another generation of people who think they are living in peace times. FALSE! The United States is in a state of war! It is an undeclared total war against the basic principles and the foundations of the system.

The initiator of this war is the world communist system, however ridiculous it may sound. If you think it is conspiracy and you are not scared by now...I do not care. But do not be paranoid about it. What actually happens now, the United States has several years to live on UNLESS, it WAKES UP! The time bomb is ticking with every second! The disaster is coming closer and closer. Unlike myself, you will have NO WHERE TO DEFECT TO! UNLESS you want to live in Antarctica with he penguins! THIS IS IT! This is the LAST COUNTRY OF FREEDOM and POSSIBILITIES!

What the American people have to do?

The immediate thing, have a VERY STRONG national effort to educate people in the spirit of REAL PATRIOTISM, AND explain all Americans the real danger of socialism communism and the like. The real danger of welfare state and BIG BROTHER GOVERNMENT! If people will fail to grasp the impending danger of that development, nothing ever can help the United States and we may as well kiss goodbye to our freedom including the freedom for homosexuals, to prison inmates; the freedom will vanish and evaporate in 5-seconds including all American precious lives. At least half of the United States population is convinced that the DANGER is REAL! The Americans HAVE TO FORCE the government and I do not mean sending letters, signing petitions, and all this beautiful noble activity! We are talking about FORCING the United States government to STOP aiding Communism!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqd-x0omd_o&mode=related&search=

Most interesting are his views on American media:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCDFmaJyB0Q&mode=related&search=

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com. Visit her blog:
http://ngthinker.typepad.com

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A MESSAGE FOR TWO FRIENDS
Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, June 8, 2007.

Recent reports tell of Turkey crossing the Iraqi border in pursuit of Kurdish terrorists tied to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

I will call them terrorists, even though I have misgivings doing so.

Since their victims have included innocents, in addition to military targets, I will do this.

I have misgivings because Arabs who deliberately target Jewish innocents are routinely called "militants" by the same folks who are quick to call Kurds terrorists. And even the Kurds' terrorists don't seek the destruction of Turkey...just justice for their people. Now think about what Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, Abbas and his sweet-talking Fatah Arafatians, and so forth have planned for Israel--with or without the disputed territories.

While I don't advocate violence against the Turkish military either, the latter has been, after all, the tool by which the subjugation of about one fifth of Turkey's seventy million people who are Kurds has been carried out.

Over the past century in particular, after the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire in the wake of World War I, the Kurds were renamed Mountain Turks, had their language and culture outlawed, etc. and so forth to insure that the new, constricted Turkey which arose with Mustafa Kemal--Ataturk--would suffer no further geographical losses.

I applaud the Turks for many reasons.

When Spain was holding inquisitions and exiling some of my own relatives, the Turks took them in.

Turkey has been a valuable ally of America and has resisted Islamic extremism better than any other Muslim country.

Turkey has relatively good relations with Israel...especially when its relations with neighboring Syria take a dive.

So, I truly wish nothing but good for our Turkish friends.

But friends should be able to disagree and remain friends.

Not long ago, when Israel went after Hamas terror masters, Turkey was quick to criticize Israel and lecture her about the need to create the Arabs' 22nd state and second, not first, one in "Palestine" -- Jordan having surfaced on some 80% of the original April 25, 1920 territory over the past century.

Turkey knows full well what the Arabs' plans are for the Jewish State, yet makes these demands anyway.

As I've pointed out before, Turkey is almost forty times as large as Israel geographically and eleven times as large in population. Despite this, it sees nothing wrong, after demanding the creation of the Arabs' 22nd state, with telling thirty million truly stateless Kurds--who have been massacred and subjugated in all the lands where they have lived in the new nationalist era--that they must remain forever in that stateless condition because of the potential threat independence in Iraqi Kurdistan might have to Turkey. The Turks fear the effect this will have on their own large, adjacent Kurdish population.

The fear is well founded, and I understand it.

A look at what is now happening in Kosovo/Kosova is a case in point.

The Turks defeated the Serbs there in 1389. What would later be named Albania became Muslim with continuing Turkish conquests of the region.

Turn the clock ahead six centuries, and ethnic Muslim Albanians have spread outside of their independent state of Albania into an ethnically fractured Yugoslavia held together only by the glue of Marshal Tito. When he died, all knew that Yugoslavia's days were numbered.

Indeed...America led the dismemberment.

Some say that America needed to show that it was supporting Muslims elsewhere since it was also in conflict with them in so many other places.

And now, there is a drive to create an independent Muslim Albanian Kosova in traditional Serb lands...in addition to the already existing Muslim state of Albania.

So, such things do happen.

But if a Turkey which dwarfs Israel in size and population has reason to fear this, then what is Israel to say?

One fifth of Israel is Arab...like the fifth of Turkey which is Kurd. Yet the Jews are told by virtually all--including Turks--that they must allow yet another Arab state, dedicated to their destruction, to be set up in their backyard.

Keep in mind that even the PKK doesn't seek Turkey's destruction. Despite the potential for problems, justice does not demand that Kurds should remain forever stateless in the nationalist age. Kurds lived in the area for millennia before imperialist Turks arrived there from Central Asia or imperialist Arabs arrived after bursting out of the Arabian Peninsula. Both would occupy and settle Kurdish lands. An independent Kurdistan was promised after World War I in Mesopotamia before it was aborted on behalf of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism. If expansionist Albanians can lay claim to Kosovo, then what are Kurds due in lands they have lived in since biblical days?

So, what's to be done?

There is no doubt that the Kurds must do what the Arabs refuse to do...

They must show their Turkish neighbors that an independent or highly autonomous

Iraqi federal Kurdish region will not be a threat. They must have serious discussions with the PKK about what the greater good for Kurdistan will require. That means Kurdish leaders must get their own acts together as well...beyond protecting their own virtual fiefdoms. And, if need be, they must use military force to subdue their own extremists.

Hopefully, it will not come to this. And nothing will be expected in this regard if the Turks don't show that they will be willing to grant Kurds the same right to have in one of which they expect Israel to allow Arabs to have almost two dozen of.

Notice, please, while we're on the subject, the absence of voices in academia and elsewhere...the same ones demanding that 22nd Arab state, knowing full well its murderous intentions regarding Israel.

In the late '70s, the only time my tenured professor at Ohio State University even mentioned Kurds is when he mocked their aspirations while telling of his travels through Turkey. Like many others, he knew who buttered his bread and who and who not to put under the high power lens of moral scrutiny. This was the same guy who lionized the Arab quest for state # 22 and Hitler's good buddy, the Mufti of Jerusalem.

There is room for coexistence and cooperation if both peoples can get beyond their fears. Besides real problems with the PKK (for which Turkey shares part of the blame), there already are real benefits materializing for Turks in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Turkey can establish good, working ties with Kurds who, like Turks, can also hold their own heads up high as a free and proud people. Both have a history of opposing Islamic extremism, though some are to be counted amongst both populations...more with the Turks than with the Kurds.

Kurds from Turkey, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere wanting to live in an independent Kurdish state can have in Iraqi Kurdistan what Jews have in a reborn Israel.

Like formerly truly stateless Jews, Kurds have suffered greatly because of this statelessness. Renaming Arabs "Palestinians" does not change the fact that Arabs have almost two dozen states--conquered from mostly non-Arab peoples. If there is a rough analogy to the Jews, it is the Kurds, not the Arabs.

Both Turks and Kurds must examine each others needs and fears.

The future can be a promising one for both peoples.

While Arabs of different stripes blow each other apart, Turks and Kurds have mostly shown that they want no part of this sort of thing.

Think of the possibilities which can arise if both peoples can get themselves to grant each other the humanity and respect both deserve.

The realm of the Turks will not see itself geographically split again. The Kurds must understand this. But this does not mean that Kurds should be suppressed in Turkey. To insure Turkey's integrity, the Turks have demanded Turkification of all who live there. This needs to be moderated. Imagine the outcry if Israel was doing this sort of thing to its Arabs.

Ironically, Kurdish autonomy or independence in Iraqi Kurdistan has the potential to ease these very problems...under the right conditions.

Having the potential to live in a Kurdish-ruled area will give Kurds everywhere less grievance and reason to resort to violence.

Will there be risks and problems?

Of course. There is much that will be needed to be worked out. And all thirty million Kurds will not fit into Iraqi Kurdistan.

But reasonable people can come up with reasonable solutions.

My advice to my Turkish friends...

Invade Iraqi Kurdistan?

Don't do it!

There is a better way...

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

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THE VIEW THAT EGYPT IS A MODERATE, PEACE-SEEKING COUNTRY IS AN OPTICAL ILLUSION
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 8, 2007.

The view that Egypt is a moderate, peace-seeking country is an optical illusion -- Egypt most advanced and powerful military also the most hostile to Israel

Dr. Aaron Lerner -- from Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA) said: "Egypt -- the largest Arab state, with the most advanced and powerful military -- is also the most hostile to Israel" One shudders to consider the possibility that one day historians will point to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty not for its contribution to regional stability but instead as the event that made possible the transformation of the defeated Egyptian army into an "advanced and powerful military" thanks to free advanced weapons from Uncle Sam. Weapons given to Egypt for generously agreeing to receive every grain of the Sinai on a silver platter.

This article is called "When the lid is afraid of the pot" and it was written by Amir Oren. It appeared today in Haaretz
(www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/867515.html).

The year 2007 does not only include the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War; it also contains the 30th anniversary of Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem.

Israel's most glorious military achievement, the defeat of three states and the occupation of major segments of their territory, is set against an even greater diplomatic achievement, breaking through the wall of Arab hostility. In both cases, the enthusiasm gradually turned to disappointment and the promise held out by the short-term results never came to fruition.

The view that Egypt is a moderate, peace-seeking country is an optical illusion. Cairo, which purchased its ticket to Washington through Jerusalem, is once again not thrilled to be part of the camp affiliated with the Americans. The Egyptian people, who are not eager to get involved directly in a war, are instead encouraging war from the sidelines.

Israel's awakening from the illusion of Egyptian influence over the Palestinians has been taking place for seven straight years, from the Camp David summit in 2000 to the anarchy on the Egypt-Gaza border under Hamas rule. Even during its 19 years of military rule over the Gaza Strip, Egypt was more concerned about Palestine than the Palestinians. Contrary to the Hashemite Kingdom, which annexed the West Bank and undertook a process of "Jordanizing" the Palestinians, Egypt avoided adding the refugees from Jaffa and the residents of Khan Yunis to its own tens of millions of poor.

In the prisoner exchange that followed the Six-Day War, the Israel Defense Forces released thousands of soldiers who served in the Palestinian brigades of the Egyptian army and sought to transfer them to the western bank of the Suez Canal. But Egypt refused to accept the released Palestinians and demanded that they be returned to the Gaza Strip.

The promising idea of an exchange of territory involving Sinai, the Negev, Gaza and the West Bank might have had a chance of succeeding in the Sadat era, or at the height of the Oslo process, but has since fizzled. Egypt will not contribute a grain of sand, a drop of sweat, or a drop of blood in order to further peace. In the best-case scenario, it will continue treading water in the current impasse. The more realistic scenario is that after Hosni Mubarak, the repressed hostility will become open and active.

Ironically, the reason for this is democracy -- not the American model (since efforts to instill that in Cairo failed exactly as they did in Damascus, Riyadh and every other Arab capital), but the popular version found in political cultures where an authoritarian and rigid regime refuses to relinquish its exclusivity and privileges, but also will not challenge public opinion unnecessarily. That the regime, or parts of it, has come to terms with Israel is a diplomatic fact that the Egyptian public cannot erase. However, this public has great power to keep the relationship cool, limited to air-conditioned rooms where diplomats meet.

Opinion polls show that Egypt -- the largest Arab state, with the most advanced and powerful military -- is also the most hostile to Israel, the United States and the West. This is not a matter of hairsplitting interpretation or passing trends: The data are unequivocal, and as frightening as a storm of religious fanaticism and prejudice.

Last month, the American House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs received the results of an international survey conducted by the University of Maryland.

The survey examined public opinion in four Muslim countries: Morocco, Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan. On every questions, Egypt led -- in opposing an American presence in the Middle East, in supporting attacks against it (more than 93 percent), and in accusing the U.S. of aggression against Islam in its entirety, as opposed to just the fight against Al-Qaida, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Even those who expressed reservations about Al-Qaida's activities, particularly its targeting of civilians, supported the audacity of global jihad in confronting America and raising the flag of protecting "Muslim honor." Many doubt the American version of what happened on 9/11 and attribute what they saw with their own eyes, and what was described in tapes by Osama Bin Laden and his aides, to Hollywood special effects. Israel, of course, is derided as a collaborator and a protectorate.

The pot boiling under the regime is threatening -- if it boils over -- to throw the lid off, and with it, also the peace with Israel.

The resulting security tensions will not immediately escalate or lead to a new war, a sixth war, between the two countries. But there will be no deeper, broader peace than the one that currently reigns on our southwestern border.

Contact IMRA at its website: www.imra.org.il

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DEMOGRAPHY -- A STRATEGIC ASSET, NOT A LIABILITY
Posted by American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG), June 8, 2007.

This comes from "Kinoonim Chadashim ("New Directions"), July 2007, semi-annual intellectual Hebrew publication of the Jewish Agency). It is by Bennett Zimmerman, Yoram Ettinger, Mike Wise and Roberta Seid, The American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG)

THE BOTTOM LINE

Critical policy decisions are based on the assumption that Jews are doomed to be a minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. But, what if demographic fatalism is based on grossly erroneous numbers? What if the grossly erroneous numbers have been accepted by Israel's establishment without examination? What if demography is an asset and not a liability?

An examination of documented births, deaths and migration demonstrates a robust, long-term Jewish majority of 67% without Gaza and 60% with Gaza since the 1960s, compared with an 8% Jewish minority in 1900 and 33% Jewish minority in 1947 between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. The number of Arabs in Judea & Samaria is 70% inflated (1.5MN and not 2.5MN) and the number of Arabs in J&S and Gaza is inflated by over 50% (2.6MN and not 4MN). There is a demographic problem, but there is no demographic machete at Israel's throat. The Jewish majority benefits from a demographic momentum, as evidenced by a 36% increase in the number of annual Jewish births since 1995, while the number of Arab births within the "Green Line" has stagnated during the same period. The population growth rate of Judea & Samaria Arabs has been lower than that of Green Line Jewish rate, primarily as a result of net Arab emigration: over 10,000 annual average since 1950, compared with an annual Jewish Aliya since 1882.

Demographic doom's day prophecies have been systematically crashed against the rocks of reality, because they have been based on dramatically mistaken numbers and baseless projections.

ISRAEL'S DEMOGRAPHIC ESTABLISHMENT -- ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH

Dr. Nicolas Eberstadt, a leading demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, stated that "Israel's demographers have been caught asleep at the switch." The American-Israel Demographic Research Group (www.aidrg.com ) discovered that Israel's demographic establishment has embraced the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) census and projections without scrutiny. Therefore, the establishment was unaware that the PCBS numbers have been refuted annually by the documentation of births, deaths, migration and eligible voters, as performed by the Palestinian Ministries of Health and Education, by the Palestinian Election Commission, by Israel's Border Police, by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) and by Jordan's Central Bureau of Statistics. Israel's demographic establishment was oblivious of the fact that PCBS data were projections -- and not documented numbers -- based on a 1997 census. If the establishment was cognizant of these facts, but did not report to the public and to policy-makers, then it was not mistaken, but rather misleading.

The demographic establishment did not question the addition of some 650,000 Palestinians (30%!) as a result of the 1997 census. If the establishment would base its projections on the ICBS (2.1 million Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza in January, 1997), it would be mathematically impossible to reach -- as the establishment does -- 3.5 million or 4 million in 2006. It would have required a population growth rate twice as high as the four fastest growing populations in the world, Afghanistan, Somalia, Eritrea and Niger. Israel's establishment did not raise an eyebrow when the PCBS contended a 170% population growth in 14 years, from 1.5 million in 1990 to 3.8 million in Judea, Samaria and Gaza in 2004, which would be higher than the all-time-record 1967-1993 rate of growth (Gaza -- 92%, Judea & Samaria -- 82%).

The establishment was either ignorant of the massive net-immigration assumption made by the PCBS -- 50,000 annually into Judea, Samaria and Gaza beginning 2001 -- or recklessly accepted it at face value, in spite of the eruption of Intifadah II at the end of 2000, which precluded any potential net-immigration. They did not examine, and therefore did not know and did not report.

The American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG), whose groundbreaking study was published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/MSPS65.pdf), has uncovered a number of significant flaws in the PCBS numbers, which were unnoticed and therefore not reported by Israel's demographic establishment. AIDRG has shed light on the reckless use of such flawed information by Israel's demographic, media and political establishments, which has gravely impacted the national state of (fatalistic) mind and morale as well as critical policy decisions. For example:

1. PCBS data are perceived, by Israel, as real numbers, while in fact they are mere projections, which have been refuted annually. The projections have been made on the basis of a 1997 census, which has been accepted -- by the Israeli and global establishments -- at face value without examination.

2. 325,000 overseas Palestinians were included the 1997 census, as documented by Hassan Abu-Libdeh, then head of the PCBS (Feb. 26, 1998) and by the PCBS website. The inclusion of these overseas residents departs from globally acceptable demographic standards, which include only de-facto residents and those who are away for less than a year. Thus, Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics does not count Israelis, who have been away for over a year. The number of overseas residents, which are unduly counted by the PCBS is increasing by the day, since overseas Palestinians who are counted, as if they were de-facto residents, give birth to overseas babies who are counted as well.

3. Over 200,000 Jerusalem Arabs -- within Israel controlled boundaries -- are doubly-counted as Israeli Arabs (by the ICBS) and as West Bank Arabs (by the PCBS). Independent demographers, international bureau of statistics, the UN, the State Department and other organizations, add the PCBS and ICBS figures, in order to find out the number of Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, hence the double-count. Such an error grows exponentially with each additional birth.

4. 113,000 Persons should be deleted due to a discrepancy between the number of eligible voters (18 and older) in the PA as projected by the PCBS and documented by the PA Election Commission during the January 2005 election.

5. Over 300,000 babies who were projected to be born (according to PCBS projections), but were never born (according to Palestinian Ministry of Health documentation) should be subtracted from the total. The Ministry of Health has documented babies down to the level of village midwives, with no incentive to under-document. In addition, over 90% of deliveries occur in clinics and hospitals, which has facilitated documentation.

6. Over 350,000 should be deducted as a result of non-realized projected-immigration (50,000 annually since 2001) and realized non-projected-emigration since 1997 (when census was conducted and projections made). The scope of average annual net-emigration has been over 10,000 since 1950, some 12,000 in 2004, 16,000 in 2005 and 15,000 in 2006. Since 2000 most of the emigrants have been Moslems.

7. 105,000 should be removed from the total due to 105,000 Palestinians, who married Israeli Arabs, received Israeli ID cards (since 1997), and double-counted as Israeli Arabs (by the ICBS) and West Bank Arabs (by the PCBS).

In contrast to Israel's demographic establishment, the American-Israel Demographic Research Group (www.aidrg.com) documents a robust long-term Jewish majority of 67% west of the Jordan River without Gaza and 60% with Gaza since the 1960s. The Jewish majority in the 1960s was relatively soft, due to the 1967 initiation of unprecedented increase in Palestinian population growth: A poor agrarian society interacted with Israel's advanced medicine, job market and education system, which dramatically reduced Palestinian infant mortality and extended life expectancy, and substantially decreased the number of emigrants seeking jobs and higher education abroad. Today's Jewish majority is relatively solid as a result of a sustained decline in Palestinian population growth rate, mostly due to emigration. In addition, the Palestinian Ministry of Health documents an all time high UNRWA-supervised family planning, a hike in divorce rate and in the median marriage-age, expanded education system and career mentality (among women), and a rapid transformation from a rural to (mostly poor) urban society. The systematic decline in total fertility rate (number of children per woman) in recent years has been characteristic of Moslem, Arab and other Third World societies. For instance, Iran declined in 25 years from 10 to 1.98 children per woman and Egypt and Jordan followed suit with 2.5 and 3 children respectively. In fact, the UN Population Division had to reassess its 2050 global population projection from 12 billion to 9 billion.

THE SYSTEMATIC FAILURE OF ISRAEL'S DEMOGRAPHIC ESTABLISHMENT PROJECTIONS

In March 1898, Shimon Dubnov, a leading Jewish historian-demographer harnessed demographic fatalism, in order to deter Herzl, who launched the campaign to establish the Jewish State. Dubnov projected that by 2000 there would be, at most, 500,000 Jews west of the Jordan River, about the size of the Jewish community in Kiev. However, in 2000 there were 5 million Jews west of the Jordan River!

Since the founding of Israel in 1948, Israel's demographic establishment has tended to under-project Jewish fertility, over-project Arab fertility, ignore the scope of Arab emigration and minimize the scope of potential of Jewish Aliya (immigration). It has also miscomprehended the various phases in Arab demography, which has reached its peak in the 1960s ("Green Line") and in the early 1990s (J & S and Gaza), and since than it is declining toward Jewish demography. Projections have missed the unpredictable nature of demographic trends and global and regional developments, which impact the Jewish-Arab demographic balance. For instance, war, terrorism and a rise in oil prices have accelerated Arab emigration, decline in oil prices has slowed down emigration, expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait produced a rare phenomenon of Arab net-immigration, the rise of Hamas has fueled emigration, while a change of regime in Moscow, intensified Anti-Semitism in Argentina and France and expanding Jewish education in the USA expand the potential of Aliya.

In 1948, Prof. Bacchi attempted to persuade Ben Gurion to postpone declaration of independence until Jewish demography (600,000) improves, lest there be a Jewish minority in 1967 within the mini-1947 borders. But, in 1967 there was a 14% Arab minority within the expanded-1949 borders! In 1967 and in 1973, the demographic establishment pressured Prime Ministers Levy Eshkol and Golda Meir to retreat from Judea & Samaria and Gaza, in order to avoid an Arab majority west of the Jordan River by 1987/90. But, in 1987 there was a 62.4% Jewish majority, compared with a 63.35% majority in 1967, during the peak of Arab population growth rate. In 1949, Prof. Bacchi contended that there would be no Aliya to the poor, conflict-ridden Jewish State. But, about 1 million Olim (immigrants) arrived.

Professor Sergio DellaPergola, a senior member of Israel's demographic establishment, has followed in the footsteps of his mentor, Prof. Bacchi. In the mid-1980s, he stated that there would be no substantial Aliya from the USSR for economic, cultural, technological and security reasons. He also estimated the number of Soviet Jews at 50% of their actual number. But, one million Jews arrived from the USSR! Today, Prof. DellaPergola employs refuted-PCBS 1997 projections as a basis for his own projections, as evidenced by his essay in the "American Jewish Yearbook, 2003", published by the American Jewish Committee. If Prof. DellaPergola would have employed ICBS data (2.1 million in Judea & Samaria and Gaza in 1997), as a basis for his numbers, he would not have been able -- mathematically -- to reach 3.4 million in 2004, as claimed by his presentations. Moreover, he applies ICBS projections, from 2000, to his PCBS-driven numbers, in spite of the fact that the ICBS admitted, in September 2006, that its own projections have been wrong.

Professor Arnon Sofer, another member of the establishment, stated in a closed-door April 2004 lecture, at Israel's military academy, that 2.8 million Palestinians resided in Judea & Samaria and Gaza. However, that number catapulted to 3.8 million, in October 2004, in a booklet he published at Haifa University ("Israel and Demography 2000-2004 in view of Disengagement"), which aimed at promoting "Disengagement." In a February 21, 2005 closed-door document, which he submitted to the Knesset Government Reforms (Bikoret Hamedina) Committee, Prof. Sofer reverted to 2.8 million. However, during a May 18, 2005 public debate at Haifa University he resorted to 3 million and 3.4 million, and in Ynet OpEds, published on January 24, 2006 (lobbying for further retreats from Judea & Samaria) and on September 14, 2006 Professor Sofer contended 3.7 million and 4 million respectively.

THE DEMOGRAPHIC MOMENTUM IS JEWISH

The demographic momentum is Jewish, in contrast to demographic fatalism, which has instilled faintheartedness into Israel's public, political, media and academic state of mind. Since 1882 (the launching of annual Aliya), the Jewish population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean has grown 238 fold, while the Arab population grew 6 fold. Since 1948 the Jewish population increased 9 fold and the Arab population expanded 3 fold.

According to ICBS data, the annual number of Arab births within the "Green Line" has stagnated during 1995-2006 around 39,000, while the annual number of Jewish births rose by 36% from 80,400 in 1995 to 109,183 in 2006. The proportion of Jewish births has increased from 69% (of total birth within the "Green Line") in 1995 to 74% in 2006. In 2005, total fertility rate of Jewish and Arab women, in Jerusalem, have converged at 3.9 children per woman. The Arab-Jewish fertility gap shrunk from 6 children during the 1960s to 0.9 child in 2006! Secular, religious, ultra orthodox (Hareidi) and especially Russian Olim fertility rate increased also in 2006, with the religious/Hareidi rate higher than the Arabs'. In fact, Jewish fertility rate in Israel is the highest in the industrialized world, while the decline in Arab fertility rate has been 20 year faster than projected by the ICBS. Due to the substantial Arab emigration from Judea & Samaria, the Jewish population growth rate has been higher -- since 1997 -- than the Arab growth rate in Judea & Samaria (2.1%:1.8% during 1997-2004). The Jewish demographic momentum is bolstered when one adds the net-migration factor (Aliya less Jewish emigration plus Jewish returnees), which totaled 99,400 during 2001-2005, according to the ICBS' 2006 Annual Statistical Abstract.

Notwithstanding its serial blunders, Israel's demographic establishment convinced Israeli movers and shakers that demography was supposedly a liability, while in fact it has been a strategic asset. It impressed upon Israel's policy-makers that the demographic threat was lethal and more significant than historical and security considerations, in determining the future of Judea & Samaria.

Paradoxically, Zionist leaders rejected demographic fatalism when Jews constituted a mere 8% minority (Herzl -- 1900) and a 33% minority (Ben Gurion -- 1947). However, the current Israeli political establishment has succumbed to Demographobia, at a time when the Jewish State has acquired critical mass demographically, militarily, economically and technologically.

Demographic reality has vindicated early Zionist leaders, who persisted in their drive to establish a Jewish State, in defiance of horrific security, financial, political and demographic odds. They did not shape strategy, in accordance with demography; they shaped demography, in accordance with strategic requirements. The current leadership subscribes to flawed assumptions, and therefore it is doomed to formulate flawed national security policy, which jeopardizes the survival of the Jewish State.

To contact AIDRG, call Bennett Zimmerman (In USA) 310-617-4180, Yoram Ettinger (In Israel) 972-54-467-1828

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JAMES BAKER'S DISCIPLES
Posted by Michael Travis, June 8, 2007.

This was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared yesterday in the Jerusalem Post.

Ahead of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's trip to the White House on June 19, the Bush administration is pressuring Israel to endanger itself on at least two fronts.

First, the Americans are pressuring the Olmert government to agree to Palestinian Authority and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas's request to bring millions of bullets, thousands of Kalashnikov assault rifles, RPGs, antitank missiles and armored personnel carriers into Gaza from Egypt.

The government has yet to respond to the request. Those who oppose it argue that Fatah forces in Gaza are too weak and incompetent to battle Hamas, and so any weaponry transferred to Fatah militias will likely end up in Hamas's hands.

This logic is correct, but incomplete. It is true that Fatah forces are unwilling and presumably unable to defeat Hamas forces. But it is also true that Fatah forces use their arms to attack Israel. So even if there was no chance of Hamas laying its hands on the weapons, allowing Fatah to receive them would still endanger Israel.

The same limited logic informs Israel's strenuous objection to the Pentagon's intention to sell Saudi Arabia Joint Direct Attack Munition satellite-guided "smart bombs," or JDAMS. The government claims that while it has no quarrel with the Saudis, it fears for the stability of the regime. If the House of Saud falls, Osama bin Laden would get the bombs.

Yet like Fatah, the Saudis aren't simply vulnerable. They are culpable. In addition to being the creators of al-Qaida and Hamas's largest financial backers, the Saudis themselves directly threaten Israel.

In direct contravention of their commitment to the US (and the US's commitment to Israel), the Saudis have deployed F-15 fighter jets at Tabuk air base, located 150 km. from Eilat. On May 13, the Saudi Air Force held an air show at Tabuk for the benefit of King Abdullah and senior princes where the F-15s where ostentatiously displayed.

The timing of the show was interesting. It took place the day before Abdullah hosted US Vice President Richard Cheney at Tabuk.

The Bush administration is not just asking Israel to facilitate the arming of its enemies. It is also placing restrictions on Israel's ability to arm itself. As The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday, the Pentagon has yet to respond to Israel's request to purchase the F-22 stealth bomber. Moreover, the US seems to be torpedoing Israel's acquisition of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Pentagon recently voiced its objection to Israel's plan to install Israeli technology in the jets that are to be supplied starting in 2014. Israel's installation of its own electronic warfare systems in its F-16s and F-15s is what has allowed the IAF to maintain its qualitative edge over Arab states that have also purchased the aircraft.
 

THE ADMINISTRATION'S display of hostility toward Israel is unfortunately not an aberration. It is the result of a policy shift that occurred immediately after the Republican Party's defeat in the Congressional elections in November.

After the defeat, the administration embraced former secretary of state James Baker's foreign policy paradigm, which is based on the belief that it is possible and desirable to reach a stable balance of power in the Middle East.

As Baker sees it, this balance can be reached by forcing Israel to shrink to its "natural" proportions and assisting supposedly moderate and stable states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to grow into their "natural" proportions. Once the states of the region (including Syria and Iran, which Baker wishes to appease) have settled into their proper proportions, stability will be ensured.

Baker fleshed on his view in the Iraq Study Group's recommendations that were published immediately after the elections. Although President George W. Bush rejected the ISG's recommendations, the day after the elections he sacked defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and replaced him with Robert Gates, who served on the ISG. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a disciple of Baker's ally, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft.

The problem with the Baker paradigm is that it has never been borne out by reality. It collapsed during the Cold War, both as the Soviet Union worked tirelessly to destabilize countries allied with the US and when the states of East-Central Europe revolted against the teetering empire and gained their freedom with its collapse.

In the 1990s, Baker's stability paradigm failed to foresee the post-nationalist movements that swept through Western Europe and the Muslim world, and embraced the Soviet goal of weakening the US. Baker still denies the phenomenon and ignores its policy implications.

Today, the notion that stability is a realistic aim is even more far-fetched. Specifically, the willingness of Muslim secularists to form strategic relations with jihadists and the willingness of Shi'ites to form strategic partnerships with Sunnis was unimaginable 20 years ago. Aside from that, the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran throws a monkey wrench into any thought of regional stability. A look around the region shows just how absurd Baker's notions truly are.

In Lebanon today, Fatah al-Islam, which is apparently allied with al-Qaida, is fighting the Lebanese army in a bid to bring down the Saniora government at the behest of its sponsor -- the secular Ba'athist regime in Damascus. Fatah al-Islam is also aligned with Hizbullah, which shares its goal of bringing down the Lebanese government, and with Iran, which gives the Syrians their marching orders.

This state of affairs is also the name of the game in Iraq, where Iran and Syria support both Muqtada al-Sadr's Shi'ite Mehdi army and al-Qaida's Sunni death squads. It repeats itself in Afghanistan, where Iran is arming the Taliban, and in the Palestinian Authority.

Furthermore, the paragons of moderation and stability in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that Baker and his followers are so keen to strengthen are neither stable nor moderate. Both Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Saudi King Abdullah are old men of uncertain health. To "stabilize" their regimes, they wrought unholy alliances with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahabis, the only forces in Egyptian and Saudi societies that have not been flattened under their jackboots.

This week, Channel 10 reported that the Bush administration recently informed Israel and the Gulf states that it has no intention of launching military strikes against Iran's nuclear installations. The Americans explained that they need Iranian assistance in stabilizing Iraq to pave the way for an American withdrawal from the country before Bush leaves office. Under Baker's regency, the administration apparently now subscribes to the belief that they will be better off out of Iraq and with a nuclear-armed Iran, than in Iraq without a nuclear-armed Iran.

For their part, the Arabs have demonstrated clearly that they do not share the administration's newfound faith that a nuclear-armed Iran will reach a stable equilibrium in a Bakeresque Middle Eastern balance of powers. Their stated aim to build nuclear reactors is a clear sign that they recognize the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran. The administration's support for the Arabs' quest for nuclear reactors makes clear that it is now willing to have a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race.
 

THIS BRINGS us back to Israel, which is situated smack in the middle of the regional chaos. How is Israel contending with this threatening state of affairs?

The IDF seems to be contending fairly well, at least with regard to Syria and Lebanon. The IDF's decision to have television crews film Israeli soldiers fighting in mock Syrian villages this week, like Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi's announcement that the IDF is prepared to fight on two fronts simultaneously, are signs that the IDF recognizes that its only safe bet is to prepare for all contingencies. Were the IDF to complement these actions with warnings to Iran and operational plans to attack Iran's nuclear installations and distribute gas masks to the public, the General Staff would go a long way toward proving that it is adopting the only reasonable strategic posture available, given the cards Israel has been dealt.

Yet not only is the IDF not warning Iran, the Olmert government is undermining the army's correct posture toward Syria and Lebanon. Indeed, on every front, including toward Israel itself, Olmert has himself adopted Baker's failed paradigm.

Rather than publicly explain that in light of Syria's position as an Iranian client state with regards to Lebanon, Iraq and Israel, there is nothing for Israel to talk to Syria about, Olmert announced Wednesday that he wishes to open negotiations on an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights to the Syrians.

The Syrians, for their part, cornered Olmert on Thursday by agreeing to his offer. As Karl Moor and David Rivkin explained in Thursday's Post, it is not true, as Olmert and his minions claim, that Israel has nothing to lose by negotiating with Syria. Given Israel's perceived weakness in the wake of last summer's war and Syria's perceived strength, speaking to Damascus about an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights will only encourage Syrian belligerence.

And as with the Syrians, so too with the Palestinians, the Olmert government acts as Baker's water boy. Rather than waging a rational military campaign to defeat the jihadist front that has seeded itself in Gaza, Olmert issues near daily statements telling the Palestinians that Israel will cause them no harm. He defends this policy by declaiming on the importance of strengthening the "stability" of the Palestinian Authority.

Then there is the daily brown-nosing Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni engage in toward the Egyptians and Saudis. Israel praises both as "moderates" while Egypt vows publicly not to act to stop the transfer of weapons from Sinai to Gaza and the Saudis bankroll Hamas and demand that Israel implement their "peace plan" that calls for Israel's destruction.

Yet all of this incompetent bumbling pales in comparison to Israel's weakness toward Iran. Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz's assertion this week to the Post that he does not "think it is right today to talk about military options" toward Iran because he thinks that sanctions can still convince the mullahs to give up their nuclear ambitions comes dangerously close to an Israeli collapse in the face of an existential threat. The fact that Mofaz made this statement the same week that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Teheran had crossed the nuclear threshold only exacerbates the perception of Israeli strategic disarray.

Sooner or later the US will pay a price for the Bush administration's decision to embrace the delusion of stability as its strategic goal. With jihadist forces growing stronger around the globe, if the Americans leave Iraq without victory, there is no doubt that Iraq (and Iran and Syria) will come to them.

But whatever the consequences of America's behavior for America, the price that Israel will pay for embracing Baker's myths of stability will be unspeakable

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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CASUALTIES IN PERSPECTIVE
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 8, 2007.

NY TIMES PROVIDES COVER FOR HAMAS

"Hamas had largely kept the cease-fire, but did nothing to prevent other groups like Islamic Jihad and the Aksa Martyrs Brigades from firing them (rockets)." So wrote the Times' main Israeli correspondent, Steven Erlanger. He is misleading. Hamas gave rockets to Islamic Jihad, so that they would fire them while Hamas pretended it was engaged in a ceasefire that it could expect Israel to reciprocate.

Abbas said the rockets "are pointless and needless." As Dr. Aaron Lerner points out in IMRA, Abbas does not recognize the firing of rockets at Israeli civilians as a war crime, which it is. That is a background fact that the Times should insert once in a while. It also is a fact that Israel should assert, too, but doesn't.

"While both the EU and the US consider Hamas a terrorist organization," (NY Times, 5/27, p.16.)

By definition, Hamas is terrorist. It's not a matter of EU and US opinion. Where the EU and US are remiss is in not declaring Fatah terrorist, too.

RESTRAINT GIVING WAY TO "SEVERE & HARSH" RESPONSE

Israel can't restrain itself forever. So say PM Olmert et al, ad nauseum. What is "severe and harsh?" Just targeting the leadership of Hamas (IMRA, 5/16)?

Restraint against a genocidal enemy is self-defeating and not a virtue. Israel mistakes virtue for suffering needlessly, it is so worried about criticism from bigoted foreigners who, themselves, warrant criticism. The genocidal enemy deserves to be smashed beyond its ability to regenerate warfare.

Picking off the leadership of Hamas will not reduce the number of terrorists faster than the mosques and schools generate them. Targeted assassination is not severe. It cannot defeat the enemy, though it can slow him down.

CASUALTIES IN PERSPECTIVE

Casualties from wars within the Muslim world are many times those from the Arab-Israel conflict. Mentally emancipated Muslim politicians in Europe are rising to object to Islam's intolerance and excesses. They seek to reform it or to get people free from its oppression (Daniel Johnson, NY Sun, 5/24, Op.-Ed.).

Will they grow in number, boldness, and effectiveness in time to halt jihad against us? Or will they get intimidated, as some are? Why the lopsided concern about the Arab-Israel conflict? I suspect it is because the West hates Jews and not Muslims.

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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FATAH AND IRAN
Posted by Arlene Kushner, June 8, 2007.

Please see my most recent article, which addresses the issue of Iranian support for Fatah -- putting the lie absolutely and equivocally to the notion that Fatah is moderate, and exposing the lunacy of attempting to "strengthen" Fatah by providing it with further weapons.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=28658

~~~~~~~~~~

And this is hardly the last of the lunacy, Heaven help us. Word is that Olmert is ready to consider negotiating with Syria and to give back the Golan in return for real peace.

And how is "real peace" measured with this man who is currently inciting the overthrow of the legitimate Lebanese gov't via the radical Fatah al-Islam and promoting Hezbollah via smuggling of weapons? We'll give back the Golan if Assad promises to stop all this and to cut ties with Iran. And if we give back the Golan and Assad promises and reneges on that promise and keeps doing his thing? And we've given away a strategic asset -- a high place from which our enemies can shoot down on us?

I try to maintain equanimity in the face of this. But it's close to impossible.

~~~~~~~~~~

According to Yediot Achronot today Olmert reportedly has already informed Syria, via a third party, that he is aware that a peace agreement with Syria "means returning the Golan to Syrian sovereignty." He would be willing to do so, but wants to know if Syria, in return, will "dismantle, in stages, its alliance with Iran, Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist organizations."

This is breathtaking. That he informs Syria that he "knows" we would have to give them the Golan. This is a way to negotiate, by agreeing up front? Bad, bad, bad. Why the hell are we so quick to concede and give away points??? Not the way to do it! If there are benefits to Syria in making peace with Israel in terms of its position in the world, let Syria make the concessions. Stand tough.

How about: "I know you'd like the Golan, but we are attached to it for strategic and other reasons and would like to offer a number of other benefits that would make Syrian's position inestimably better than it currently is: We will work to bring you a warm welcome in the western world, with economic support and substantial diplomatic gains, so that your position will be stronger than it could possibly be otherwise. Yours will no longer be a pariah nation and the international pressure will be removed from you. That pressure remains a risk to your regime at present. It can be eliminated via your good faith. What we ask in return is that you separate from Iran and from promotion of Hezbollah and Hamas. If you find this is worth your while, I will be happy to hear from you."

This, my friends, would mean "peace for peace" -- the only way to go, instead of "land for peace" -- which doesn't work.

~~~~~~~~~~

In today's Jerusalem Post is a report that "a senior Western diplomat, stationed in Israel" says that Israel is in a position to pull Damascus out of the Iranian orbit, if Israel has the "political will and courage" to negotiate.

This infuriates me. I don't know what country this diplomat represents -- my understanding that it a European nation -- but for sure his nation, whatever it is, is not being asked to relinquish territory vital to security. How easy it is to say what we should do. Israel, the sacrificial lamb.

~~~~~~~~~~

The best news I have is that in a poll commissioned by Maariv, 84% of Israelis are opposed to giving up all of the Golan. And reaction in the Knesset on the right is strong against this.

There are calls from Likud and National Union to Shas and Yisrael Beitenu to quit the coalition now and bring down the government. "Olmert has no public legitimacy for a withdrawal from the Golan," said Gideon Saar (Likud). "Far from our eyes, processes are taking place that will be hard to stop in the future. The responsibility for this lies upon all the members of the government and coalition."

~~~~~~~~~~

Olmert will be meeting with Bush very soon. I ask all of you good people reading this who are US citizens to contact the president without delay.

Remind him, please, that a strong Israel is absolutely in the best interest of the US and that ultimately US will be badly served if Israel is pressured and subsequently weakened. Tell him that Abbas is not moderate and that Fatah fails to take out Hamas because of failure of will. Say that Israel should not be expected to relinquish territory or to permit more weapons into the area, as these actions are counterproductive to long-term US goals.

President George Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500
Fax: 202-456-2461
White House Comment line: 202-456-1111
TTY/TDD Comment line: 202-456-6213.
e-mail: comments@whitehouse.gov

I remind you that a letter is most effective -- snail mail or faxed, and e-mail least effective. Act to the best of your ability.

~~~~~~~~~~

I'm picking up information from a number of sources (though other sources contradict these) that the Bush administration has decided not to bomb Iran and has informed Israel and the Gulf States of this. The logic is that the US wants Iran -- can you believe this??? -- to help stabilize the situation with Iraq so US troops can pull out. As Caroline Glick puts it, the US seems to have decided that it's better to be out of Iraq and have a nuclear Iran, than to stop Iran and stay in Iraq.

So, please, in communicating with the president, urge him to be tough on Iran for the sake of the entire world, very much including the US. Remind him that preventing a nuclear Iran would be his greatest legacy.

Arlene Kushner is Senior Research Associate, Center for Near East Policy Research, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem, Israel. Contact her at akushner@netvision.net.il

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JUST HOW MANY ARAB STATES ARE THERE?
Posted by Dr. Steve Carol, June 7, 2007.

In recent days there has been a flurry of articles dealing with the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War -- both factual and revisionist. Many of these articles speak of the Arab states and state there are "22" or even "23" Arab states. Just today, I was asked, yet again, how many Arab States are there? And why the confusion?

To set the record straight, below please find my chart of the League of Arab States. News media (who should know better) and pundits have not done their "homework." The confusion comes from two sources.

First, the Arab League claims 22 members -- for they count "Palestine" as a real country -- which it is not, despite the fact that the Arabs have had control of Gaza and Judea-Samaria (what the Arabs call the "West Bank") from 1948-1967, and again, in the case of Gaza, since 2005. They have yet to proclaim an independent "Palestine" -- nor do they want to.

Secondly, some pundits, and news media people are still counting both the Yemen Arab Republic and the Peoples' Democratic Republic of (South) Yemen as two separate nations. The fact is that the two Yemens united in May 1990 and Arab League membership went down one.

Much of the world, including some in the U.S. and even Israel, has bought into the Arab propaganda line (yet again) to use the figure "22" as they use the terminology "West Bank," "occupied territory," "Arabian Gulf," "Arabistan," and "creation."

THE LEAGUE OF ARAB STATES

Formed: Mar. 22, 1945 Headquarters: Cairo, Egypt [1]

Charter members: Egypt v, Iraq, Jordan (originally Trans-Jordan), Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, & Yemen [2]

Additional Members:

Libya [3] Mar. 28, 1953 Oman Sept. 29, 1971
Sudan Jan. 9, 1956 United Arab Emirates Dec. 6, 1971
Morocco &
Tunisia
Oct. 1, 1958 Mauritania Nov. 28, 1973
Kuwait July 20, 1961 Somalia Feb. 14, 1974
Algeria Aug. 16, 1962 “Palestine” (PLO) Sept. 6, 1976
P.D.R. Yemen [2] Dec. 12, 1967 Djibouti Sept. 4, 1977
Bahrain & Qatar Sept. 11, 1971 Comoros Nov. 20, 1993

Eritrea was given observer status at the Arab League -- Jan. 2003

[1] In Mar. 1979, Egypt was suspended from the Arab League.
The headquarters was moved to Tunis, Tunisia.
In Mar. 1989, Egypt was re-admitted to the Arab League and the headquartrs was returned to Cairo.

[2] May 22, 1990 -- Yemen and P.D.R. Yemen unified into the Republic of Yemen.

[3] Oct. 25,2002, Libya withdrew from the Arab League. This would have been effective one year later; however Libya cancelled (January 16, 2003), reaffirmed (April 3, 2003), and again cancelled (May 25, 2003) the decision to withdraw.

Dr. Steve Carol is Prof. of History (retired), Middle East Consultant tp Salem Radio News Network and Official Historian Middle East Radio Forum
(www.middleeastradioforum.org). Contact him at drhistory@cox.net

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ARAB MP: ALL AGREEMENTS WITH THE ZIONISTS ARE NULL AND VOID, FORBIDDEN BY ISLAM
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 7, 2007.

From: david_meirlevi@hotmail.com
To: president@whitehouse.gov

Dear Mr. President,

Isn't it time for you and Secretary Rice to step back in to reality after your years-long sojourn in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of 'if only Israel would make the right offer, Hamas would become moderate'.

They do not want their state alongside of Israel. They want their state instead of Israel...and on the corpses of 6,000,000 Jews. They tell us, over and over, in their own words to their own people...in Arabic.

Stop pressuring Olmert to make more initiatives, make more concessions, show more restraint...whatever!

Your pressure on the Arab and Muslim and European countries which are supplying and supporting and funding Hamas is long overdue.

From: memritv@memri.org
To: david_meirlevi@hotmail.com
Subject: Palestinian MP: All Agreements with the Zionists Are Null and Void
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 12:39:07 -0400

VISIT THE MEMRI BLOG AT www.thememriblog.org

Clip # 1472 -- Palestinian MP and Head of the Palestinian Islamic Scholars Association Hamed Al-Bitawi: All Agreements with the Zionists Are Null and Void

TO VIEW THIS CLIP: click here.

The following is an interview with Palestinian MP Hamed Al-Bitawi, head of the Palestinian Islamic Scholars Association, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on May 15, 2007:

Interviewer: What is the religious legal position of the Palestinian Scholars Association regarding those who signed agreements with the Zionist occupation, giving them the right... or rather, depriving the Palestinian people of the Right of the Return?

Hamed Al-Bitawi: Any agreement between the Zionists and the Palestinians in the previous government, or the PLO, or any Arab country that gave the Jews the right to Palestine... Such agreements are null and void from the religious and legal point of view, and are rejected. They will be swept into the garbage dumps of history. What about those who sign such agreements? Nobody whatsoever has the right to do this.

Interviewer: What is the ruling...

Hamed Al-Bitawi: Could you repeat the question?

Interviewer: What is the Shari'a ruling regarding those who sign such documents?

Hamed Al-Bitawi: They are sinners and criminals. Nobody whatsoever has the right to give up on the Al-Aqsa mosque, on Jerusalem, and on Palestine, on Haifa, and on Jaffa. The soil of these cities was seeped in the blood of the mujahideen. The companions of the Prophet are buried in them. Thousands of mujahideen have been buried over the course of history. Nobody -- no organization or anything else -- is allowed to give the Jews the right to Palestine. The Jews have no rights in Palestine. Palestine is an Arab and Islamic land, and nobody is allowed to forsake any part of Palestine. Any agreement or negotiations that grant the Jews any rights in Palestine are null and void from the perspective of Islamic law. Our religion does not accept such an agreement, and nor do our national interest or the interest of humanity.

Contact MEMRI TV Project by email at memritv@memri.org, or visit their website: www.memritv.org. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

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

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WE HAVE COME TO THE END OF THE ROAD
Posted by Michael Travis, June 7, 2007.

This was posted on the Atlas Shrugged website yesterday. Pamela Geller Oshry of Atlas Shrugged wrote:

"Naked. Brutal. Cale Hahn, an American Gentile living in Texas, pens the most powerful straight painful glimpse of the low state of the world. I had to run the whole thing. I had to. It's called "The War's Upon Us."

We have come to the end of the road.

"We hoped for peace, but no good has come. A time of healing, but there was only terror." (Yirmiyahu 8:15)

We have come to the end of the road. No more initiatives. No more recycling under different names the same failed formula for Middle East peace. The end of the road is conflagration, not coexistence.

The peace process is dead. The time of wars has begun. Israel has been sufficiently weakened for the Muslim world to once again attempt annihilation of the Jewish state. The facade of Muslim desires for peace is lowered, and behind the curtain looms a violent and murderous religion that brooks no opposition.

The peace process is dead. The time of wars has begun.

Islamic peace is: no god on earth but Allah. Islamic honor may only be restored by the destruction of the Jewish nation. Hence, their nakba is the "catastrophe" of Israel's birth.

The Muslim nations are actively preparing for war; to declare there is hope for peace given the mountains of evidence to the contrary is manic delusion. Unfortunately, those who say these things are currently running the country.

This is precisely the reason the Muslims will soon attack. Israel is led by a coalition of political hacks who exhibit colossal incompetence and cinematic buffoonery. They possess no will to fight beyond a staged photo op. They are hollow men, empty shells without convictions and without courage beyond self-preservation.

As Ehud Olmert confessed, "We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies."

In previous wars, Israel was armed with superior US weapons systems, while the Muslim armies fielded inferior Soviet-bloc material. Though significantly outnumbered, Israel possessed enough of a qualitative advantage to overcome significant quantitative disparities.

Not so anymore. The Muslim nations are armed with the latest Western weapons platforms and, for the first time, possess not only numerical superiority, but qualitative parity with Israel in many areas. Under the auspices of enlisting Muslim support in participating in its "War on Terror," the US has armed Israel's enemies with its latest weapons systems. Examples include Harpoon anti-ship missiles, F-16 fighters, Apache helicopters, Abrams main battle tanks, JDAM bombs, AWACS radar planes and Avenger Air Defense Systems.

Israel has voiced deep alarm to Washington at Muslim weapons parity vis-a-vis the Jewish state, but to no avail. Washington continues arming Israel's enemies, knowing these systems may soon be employed against the Jewish state.

Along with Western weapons, the Muslim armies possess advanced Russian, Chinese, Iranian and North Korean rockets. These will target Israel from the Golan to Eilat, employing the successful strategies garnered from the Second Lebanon War. Utilization of chemical, biological or nuclear munitions cannot be ruled out.

The most likely casus belli is an Iranian terror proxy launching attacks against Israel's borders, forcing Israel to respond in kind. The situation will quickly deteriorate to include rocketing from Syria, Lebanon, Hizbullah, Iran, Gaza and other Palestinian enclaves. These attacks will dwarf the Second Lebanon War in terms of intensity and accuracy.

The Muslim nations will then follow the rocket blitz with conventional forces to rid the Jews from Palestine. Dar-Al-Islaam, at last.

Indeed, this is precisely the reason the US has restrained Israel from responding to the rocket barrages on its southern border. The US is deeply concerned an Israeli invasion of Gaza will trigger a regional war or possibly World War III.

Knock one domino down and it is connected by a tripwire to others, which will blow from Gaza to Afghanistan in a quick succession of cataclysmic explosions. Islamic war planners deliberately engineered the structure as such.

America is feverishly working to keep this from happening. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack cautioned, "We've urged them [Israel] to consider the consequences of defending themselves."

But global war is precisely the goal of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is the prerequisite for the Islamic Messiah (the Mahdi) coming upon the world stage to lead the Islamic ummah ("nation") to global victory. Ahmadinejad believes he is the one chosen to usher the Mahdi's coming.

The whole of the Middle East is a mountain of munitions atop a rumbling, ash-belching volcano. Late summer or fall appears to be the intended point of detonation. When it erupts, it will blow the US from the Middle East and propel Israel to the brink of destruction.

These are heady days for the ummah. They are drunk on the power their oil wealth brings. They sense a moment of historic tectonic shift is soon to occur, an imminent glorious triumph over the infidel.

Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons and is restoring Islamic honor by standing up to America. Every Muslim nation is undertaking a massive armament campaign, ironically provided in large measure by America. The US fatally misidentified their enemy as terrorism, when in actuality the enemy is Islam, from which terror springs.

The Muslim nations haven't made the same mistake. They know America's veneration of its economy, and they intend to bring it down in a ruinous, smoldering heap. They intend to drive the US from the region and shut the oil taps to its markets. The OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s is returning, only this time it will be utilized to a much greater effect, intended to destroy the US economy.

America should prepare for numerous terror attacks using conventional and non-conventional munitions. A Department of Homeland Security agent said Al-Qaeda has several South American training camps to instruct terrorists in Spanish and the Hispanic culture and infiltrate them across the US-Mexico border as illegal immigrants. He stated there are several thousands of terrorists who have successfully infiltrated the US and who are awaiting orders to strike.

The coming conflagration in the Middle East may be the trigger to activate these cells; almost certainly, should a shooting war develop between America and either Syria or Iran.

Since the Rabin-Arafat handshake fourteen years ago, 2,000 Israelis have been killed, 14,000 wounded and unnumbered hundreds of thousands psychologically scarred. Israel was willing to pay the price for peace. Time and again, Israel gave faith. Time and again, faith was violated. Time and again, Israel hoped. Time and again, Israel was targeted.

Israel will learn its lessons. After the war, all of Jerusalem will be free from Islamic domination. No area will be off-limits to Jewish worship.

After the war, all of Jerusalem will be free from Islamic domination.

Israel will not fall. He who keeps her will neither slumber nor sleep. HaShem is faithful to His promises and His people: "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." (Psalms 46:10-11)

In a break with protocol, I would like to make a personal appeal. I would like to bring my wife and little girl to Israel to live and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel during this difficult period. I'll need work, and a place to live until we get situated. I lived a year in Israel in 1999 and am well acquainted with the difficulties of living there. But what an amazing country! If there is a place for us, we would come. Please e-mail Texaswatcher@yahoo.com with any suggestions in this regard.

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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LAND FOR PEACE -- L-F-P
Posted by Arlene Kushner, June 7, 2007.

L-F-P is the acronym that Yoram Ettinger -- former Israeli consul and consultant to governments -- uses for "Land for Peace." The notion that if Israel will surrender land, she will get peace from the Arabs.

This is what he says: "Israel constitutes 0.2% (11,000 sqm) of the Arab League members (5.56MN sqm), which are 150% and 130% larger than the US and Europe respectively (and that does not include the 643,800 sqm of Iran). The L-F-P formula assumes that Israel should concede its scarcest asset -- territory -- while the Arabs are expected to accord Israel that which they have not shared with one another since the 7th century -- compliance and peaceful co-existence."

Hmm... A useful statistic this: Israel's land constitutes 0.2% of the collective land of the members of the Arab League. And to give some sense of the size of the Arab League land: it's 150% larger than the US.

Gives pause, does it not, when you think about demands that Israel surrender land?

Ettinger says more: "L-F-P assumes that Israel -- while located in the most conflict-ridden, violent, unpredictable region of the world -- should cede its most security-significant real estate to its sworn enemies, who have yet to establish inter-Arab comprehensive peace and compliance with agreements."

http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il/Front/NewsNet/reports.asp?reportId=37068

~~~~~~~~~~

This is really really dumb. This is breathtakingly stupid. The plan of Gen. Keith Dayton, US security coordinator to Israel and the Gaza Strip, includes supplying "Fatah forces loyal to Abbas" with more weapons so that they can fight Hamas. It conveniently leaves out such factors as the unwillingness of some factions of Fatah to fight Hamas, which is not a matter of lack of weapons at all, and the likelihood that such weapons will end up in the wrong hands and be turned against Israel (as has been the case in the past). In the violent world of the PA, there's no telling where weapons will end up or who is loyal to whom.

Seems the security officials in Abbas's office passed Dayton a "weapons shopping list" and Dayton has approved it in principle: Thousands of Kalashnikov rifles, thousands of rifle magazines, hand grenades, and millions of bullets. Can you believe it? With what's going on in Gaza now -- with the wholesale killing, it's being deemed a smart idea to send in thousands more rifles and millions of bullets? Will they guarantee that not a single one of those bullets will end up aimed at a Jew?

But there's more. Dayton passed the list on to the Egyptians, who would actually supply the weapons, and to Israel, which would have to approve the bringing in of more weapons. And the Olmert gov't is "considering" the authorization of this transfer. Under duress, subtle or overt, you can be sure.

This doesn't mean that everyone in the Israeli gov't is on board with this. Some are convinced the weapons would eventually find their way to Hamas. (They would.) And one official closely involved (but unnamed) was quoted as saying "The last thing needed are more weapons in the Gaza Strip."

Truer words were never spoken, so some people are thinking clearly. I suppose there's hope this won't happen.

~~~~~~~~~~

Fact is, the Israeli government is currently very uneasy that Abbas is too weak to make good on any commitment. Which would maker it dumber than dumb to allow more weapons in ostensibly to support Abbas. Olmert intends to discuss his concern about Abbas's weakness with Bush when he visits Washington soon.

Earlier in the year Olmert approved the release of some frozen tax funds to Abbas, but ended up not satisfied with the mechanism put in place to assure none of it got to Hamas. "Not satisfied with the mechanism" means some money passed by Israel ended up with Hamas. Surely Olmert knows it would happen with the rifles too?

~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile the off-again, on-again civil war in the PA is heating up once more: One man was killed in the last day, and 17 have been wounded as the result of shoot-outs -- and propelling of grenades and lobbing of rockets -- near Rafah.

~~~~~~~~~~

MK Aryeh Eldad (NU) is proposing legislation to revoke certain parts of the "disengagement," and permit settlement again in the northern Shomron. Four communities there were dismantled at the same time as those of Gush Katif, but the difference is that the army still maintains a presence in Shomron so that civilian residents could be allowed back in. It is this goal that demonstrators have had in mind of late with regard to Homesh, which was one of the communities evacuated.

Quite frankly, if were possible, I would like to see the same thing happen in Gush Katif. Not quite the time.

~~~~~~~~~~

Israel is growing increasingly frustrated by Egypt's unwillingness to stop the smuggling of weapons from the Sinai into Gaza. There are 750 Egyptian police stationed there, charged with just this task, and yet the smuggling goes on.

Said one Israeli involved in talks with Egypt on the subject: "If the Egyptians wanted to they could already a long time ago have stopped the smuggling. It could be that they just want to see Israeli blood spilt."

He just figured this out?

Arlene Kushner is Senior Research Associate, Center for Near East Policy Research, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem, Israel. Contact her at akushner@netvision.net.il

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OPEN LETTER TO THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
Posted by Arlene Peck, June 7, 2007.

For years, I've been a working member of the press. There was a time when I looked with pride at my life's accomplishments. Of course, those were the days when such men as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Morrow were the role models. In recent years, I've become increasingly alarmed with the trend that I've seen among those who consider themselves 'reporters' as well as those talking heads on the television's nightly news programs We listen to dumbed-down, usually attractive post-puberty 'experts' who can only speak in sound bites before they're interrupted by their co-anchor in the box. They talk about the Middle-East, but I'll bet if you put a map in front of them and asked them where that is, they wouldn't have a clue.

The CEOs of these companies wonder why their newspapers are going out of business. It's simple: it's the same as with the airlines. Lack of service.

When the newspapers began to invent the news instead of reporting the news, the public had nowhere to go but to the call in to talk stations where there was at least a chance of hearing the truth.

The worst so-called" journalism" I believe, is practiced by the LA Times. For years, I've held on to my subscription if only because I am a columnist and felt that reading the morning paper was the only way to keep up with what was happening in the world so I might give my opinion on it; which is what a columnist does.

A recent edition of the Los Angeles Times was the last straw! That Sunday's front page was covered with a picture of Jerusalem entitled, "The Struggle For Jerusalem." I'm surprised that they didn't use their resident anti -Semite to write the biased column against the Jewish state, but nevertheless it was pretty awful.

I'm not surprised when I see that the sympathetic slant of their series is for "the plight of the poor Palestinians." After all, that's what they do best. Everything, in my opinion, that they write has always been against Israel. For example when they write that Arab families are being "cut off for good from the city of birth" because of the "Israel barrier" which Israel "insists" is aimed at keeping out suicide bombers from entering. The concept that suicide bombers are homicidal mass murderers is foreign to the Times.

Their dumbing-down the issue is working. Israel was forced to build a fence to keep out the murderers that constantly came into Israeli cities to bomb their schools, pizza restaurants, buses and neighborhood markets at will.

Prior to the barricade, we were reading in that same biased paper about how many Jews were being killed on an almost daily basis. Of course, why should I be surprised?: This is the same paper that instead of writing about how the open borders from Mexico have turned California into Mexifornia and our cities into places resembling third world countries. This same paper was also writing multi-page series about how the poor illegal immigrant families are being separated and forced to live in poverty. I wish our government had had the foresight that Israel is now showing before our country got so out of hand.

Meanwhile the L.A.Times reporter sat in their safe comfortable office, sipped lattes, and wrote about Jews and Arabs living bitterly apart. They wrote about how "Their schism is one of the key obstacles to peace" and how the Palestinians have been "hemmed in by Israeli rule over their East Jerusalem neighborhoods."

Well gol-ly, this pampered bunch of so-called journalists write that "the status of Jerusalem remains one of the biggest obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement" and the issue was a major stumbling block at the Camp David talks of 2,000." I wonder how they might feel if any of the wonderful illegal aliens who have come across our border from Mexico were to build an un-permitted shack without permits next door to their Starbucks. Would they write a column about how unfairly Gonzalez and his eight children were being treated when forced to tear it down? Actually, with the leftist, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attitude that I've learned to expect from this bunch, they would probably write the same treasonous trash.

In addition to relating to poor Kamil Saou, and his five children, they elaborated how "scores of Israeli police officers converged on a bluff in East Jerusalem, surrounded his modest home and escorted a bulldozer to the door." They went on to lament that since Kamil had neglected to get a permit, "That gave the government the legal right to demolish the home." As well it should! Try that in Beverly Hills and see how fast the bull dozers come!

I wonder while the Los Angeles Times is publishing these four day, three page spreads that they noticed that virtually every other page in their paper was filled with the violence and terror caused by Islamic terrorists elsewhere? Or, is it just the "question" of Jerusalem that is causing the problems from Iraq to Dakar? This is a culture that doesn't give a damn about living in peace, side-by-side as the non-informed columnists write. I wonder if in the effort to be fair and balanced these reporters have spoken to non-Muslims from areas now controlled by the same Islamic fundamentalists who want to control Jerusalem.

I'm sure that they don't remember, but I'd like to remind them that the town of Bethlehem was once about 86% Christian. That was until pressure from front page stories and an incompetent State Department caused that holy city to be turned over to Arab control. Since then, the city has become a wasteland of roaming terrorists who have brutalized, murdered and mutilated the Christians who had been living there for generations. They've done such a good job that Bethlehem's Christian population is now less than 5%. Maybe they might want to pay more attention to the promise that once the Muslims are finished with the Saturday people, they will implement their plans for the Sunday people.

Call me silly. Call me a tad old-fashioned, but, I take offense that this beacon of understanding writes to the masses of how, "In the absence of peace, Israel and the Palestinians jostle for advantage, reshaping the holy city and further diminishing changes for an agreement." I do want to tell them though, that the Jews maintaining control of the Jewish State, for which the deed was given to them 3,500 years ago is not the reason for discord.

It's because we are dealing with a barbaric mind-set intent on killing all who are not them! The Times doesn't get it. None of the liberal press seems to get it. But, giving these savages a hug or more land isn't going to bring peace. They understand death and destruction, and want a martyr's death. I'm all for giving it to them!

Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. She can be reached at: bestredhead@earthlink.net and www.arlenepeck.com

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IS LONDON'S FUTURE ISLAMIC? (LET'S HOPE THIS IS A SPOOF)
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 7, 2007.

This was written by Michael Hodges and appeared today in Time Out London (http://www.timeout.com/london/features/2993.html)

It's the capital's fastest growing religion, based on noble traditions and compassionate principles, yet Islam can still be tainted by mistrust and misunderstanding. Here Time Out argues that an Islamic London would be a better place

The noise from the expectant crowd hushed to a murmur as an open-backed lorry that had driven slowly up the Mall -- known since the Islamic revolution of 2021 as The Way of the Martyrs -- nudged its way through the thousands gathered in Mohammad Sidique Khan Square. On the lorry, two masked guards held a young man, black hood over his head; a quiver running through the material suggested he knew what was coming.

The lorry halted by the plinth that had once held Marc Quinn's sculpture 'Alison Lapper Pregnant' -- long since removed as an insult to decency -- and was now the place of public execution. A rope noose attached to a wire cable hung from a mechanised hoist. The main doors of what had been the National Gallery flung open and an Imam walked down the steps of the new Institute of Islamic Jurisprudence, opened only a week before by Sultan Charles, Prince of Islam and protector of the faithful in England.

The official executioner placed a stepladder against the plinth. The lorry pulled up and the young man was pushed out, then forced up the ladder. The noose was forced over the condemned man's head. The crowd chanted 'Allahu akbar' (God is greater than everything).The hoist driver put his finger on a green button ... Okay, not really -- that's a hysterical, right-wing nightmare of a future Muslim London: where an cruel alien creed is forced on a liberal city. A society where women are second-class citizens, same sex relationships a crime and Sharia law enforces terrible public disfigurement and death. But the reality is a long, long way from this dark vision.

For a start, Islam is not an alien religion to London. At the end of World War I the city sat at the heart of an Empire that had 160 million Muslim subjects, 80 million in India alone. London was the largest Islamic capital in the world. Forty years later and the end of the Empire, unrest and war and poverty in south Asia had lead to mass immigration to the mother country and London became a Muslim capital in another sense.

According to the 2001 census there are 607,083 Muslims living in London (310,477 men and 296,606 women). The majority of Muslims live in the east of the city and, by 2012, the Muslim Council of Britain estimates that the Muslim population of Tower Hamlets, Newham, Waltham Forest and Hackney will be 250,000. There are plans afoot (though no formal application has yet been submitted) to build the UKs biggest mosque -- capable of welcoming 40,000 worshippers -- near the 2012 Olympic site, a move which has prompted predictable outrage from some quarters. Consequently, Muslim disillionment with a reactionary and often ill-informed press is at an all time high.

But rather than fear the inevitable changes this will bring to London, or buy in to a racist representation of all Muslims as terrorists, we should recognise both what Islam has given this city already, and the advantages it would bring across a wide range of areas in the future.

Public health

On the surface, Islamic health doesn't look good: the 2001 census showed that 24 per cent of Muslim women and 21 per cent of Muslim men suffered long-term illness and disability. But these are factors of social conditions rather than religion. In fact, Islam offers Londoners potential health benefits: the Muslim act of prayer is designed to keep worshippers fit, their joints supple and, at five times a day, their stomachs trim. The regular washing of the feet and hands required before prayers promotes public hygiene and would reduce the transmission of superbugs in London's hospitals.

Alcohol is haram, or forbidden, to Muslims. As London is above the national average for alcohol-related deaths in males, with 17.6 per 100,000 people (Camden has 31.6 per 100,000 males), turning all the city's pubs into juice bars would have a massive positive effect on public health. Forbid alcohol throughout the country, and you'd avoid many of the 22,000 alcohol-related deaths and the £7.3 billion national bill for alcohol-related crime and disorder each year.

Ecology

'The world is green and beautiful,' said the prophet Muhammad, 'and Allah has appointed you his guardian over it.' The Islamic concept of halifa or trusteeship obliges Muslims to look after the natural world and Muhammad was one of the first ever environmentalists, advocating hima -- areas where wildlife and forestry are protected. So we could expect more public parks under Islam, but halifa also applies to recycling: in 2006, 12,000 Muslims attended a series of sermons at the East London Mosque explaining the theological evidence for a link between behaving in an environmentally sustainable way and the Islamic faith.

Education

Presently, Muslim students perform less well than non-Muslim students. In inner London, 37 per cent of 16 to 24-year-old Muslims have no qualifications (the figure for the general population of the same age and location is 25 per cent). When it comes to university education the picture is equally gloomy: 16 to 24-year-old Muslims are half as likely to have degree level or above qualification than other inner London young people.

Again, social factors rather than religion have led to this state of affairs. Young Muslims in London are often of south Asian origin and therefore more likely to live in households where English is not the first language, more likely to encounter racism (both intentional and unintentional) during their education, and more likely to suffer from poverty and bad housing conditions.

But Tahir Alam, education spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, claims Muslim children do better in their own faith schools than in the mainstream state sector: 'Muslim schools have their own distinct ethos. They use the children's faith and heritage as primary motivators to provide the backdrop for their education and behaviour. This ethos is consistent with the messages that children are getting at home, so it is a very coherent operation between the home and the school.'

If Islam became the dominant religion in London the same ethos could be applied to schooling across swathes of underprivileged and deprived areas of the city. This could have a revolutionary effect on educational achievement and, perhaps just as importantly, general levels of discipline and self-respect among London's young people. While controversy rages over faith schools, there are 37 Muslim schools in London. As of 2004, only five were state schools, but there is growing pressure to bring more into the state sector which, according to Alam, will 'help raise achievement for many sectors of the Muslim community. Many private Muslim schools are under-resourced and if they can be brought into the state sector this valuable experience can be extended to more children.'

Food

Application of halal (Arabic for 'permissable') dietary laws across London would free us at a stroke from our addiction to junk food, and the general adoption of a south Asian diet rich in fruit juice, rice and vegetables with occasional mutton or chicken would have a drastic effect on obesity, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorders and associated public health problems. As curry is already Londoners' and the nation's favourite food (see our Brick Lane food feature), it would be a relatively easy process to encourage the adoption of such a diet. Not eating would be important as well. The annual fasting month of Ramadan instils self-discipline, courtesy and social cohesion. And Londoners would benefit philosophically and physically from even a short period when we weren't constantly ramming food into our mouths.

Inter-faith relations

In an Islamic London, Christians and Jews -- with their allegiance to the Bible and the Talmud -- would be protected as 'peoples of the book'. Hindus and Sikhs manage to live alongside a large Muslim population in India, so why not here? Although England has a long tradition of religious bigotry against, for instance, Roman Catholics, it is reasonable to assume that under the guiding hand of Islam a civilised accommodation could be made among faith groups in London. This welcoming stance already exists in the capital in the form of the City Circle (see Yahya Birt interview), which encourages inter-faith dialogue and open discussion.

Arts

Some of the finest art in London is already Islamic. The Jameel Gallery at the V&A houses 'ceramics, textiles, carpets, metalwork, glass and woodwork, which date from the great days of the Islamic caliphate of the eighth and ninth century' up until the turn of the last century. Or take a free daily tour of the Addis Gallery of Islamic art (at the British Museum). London-based Nasser David Khalili, an Iranian-born Jew, has amassed what is considered to be the world's largest private collection of Islamic art. Islamic influences have also flourished in other areas of the arts, with novelists, comedians (Birmingham-born Shazia Mirza was an instant hit on the London circuit), and music (from rappers Mecca2Medina on, to the less in-your-face Yusuf Islam).

Social justice

Each Muslim is obliged to pay zakat, a welfare tax of 2.5 per cent of annual income, that is distributed to the poor and the needy. If the working population of London, 5.2 million, was predominantly Muslim this would produce approximately £3.2bn each year. More importantly, everyone would be obliged to consider those Londoners who haven't shared their good fortune. London would become a little less cruel.

Race relations

Under Islam all ethnicities are equal. Once you have submitted to Allah you are a Muslim -- it doesn't matter what colour you are. End of story.

Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com

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MAYOR'S SCHOOL LOOKING LIKE MADRASS; THE IRONY OF PROSECUTING AIPAC
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 7, 2007.

ISRAEL'S GOVERNMENT CARES MORE ABOUT ARABS

Foreign Min. Livni briefed the diplomatic corps. She sought their favor by citing Israeli withdrawals and other concessions, and then this reference to the conflict:

'But I would like you to understand that the way to stop it is not only by embracing the moderates; it is not only by demanding that Israel ease the lives of the Palestinians; it is not only about passages. Sometimes, there is the need to show determination, to put pressure on the extremists, to put pressure on these terrorists -- in order that they and the Palestinian people will understand that this is something which is not tolerable. This is something that also affects their lives.'

Dr. Aaron Lerner remarks that she accepts the notion of foreign pressure upon Israel and only pressure upon terrorists (IMRA, 5/20).

She does not identify 'moderates' or show them having influence warranting their being considered a faction to be 'embraced.' Her tenor is defensive, attempting to show how nice Israel is to the Arabs, as if Israel is in the wrong and the Muslims angelic. She should be asserting that the terrorists are beyond the pale of humanity and must be eradicated. She should add, how dare foreign governments impede Israel's struggle against genocide! They have no legitimate right to demand that Israel dismantle roadblocks and build free passages through Israel that terrorists would exploit. Instead of complimenting the P.A. Arabs as having moderates, she should describe them as pro-jihad.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG'S PROPOSED MADRASSA

Mayor Bloomberg wants to set up in a lower grade school a new high school, specializing in Arab language and culture. The main objections were overcrowding the existing school and intimidating its young students and that inevitably it would indoctrinate in Islamism. Journalists brought up the last reason. Parents are afraid to, so they stress the other reasons.

The City implicitly validates the concerns by promising heightened security. All 12 members of the school's advisory board are connected to religious institutions. How would such a school not be a religious one? That board has three Muslim members, all having Islamist (not 'moderate') connections. One threatened NYU that if an NYU student event displayed the Danish cartoons, the Muslims might riot ('the potential of what might happen after they are shown,' instead of demanding that his flock behave). Another belongs to a committee to free a convicted cop killer who is a Muslim. The third runs a madrassa that practically ignores state-mandated subjects for memorization of the Koran (Daniel Pipes, NY Sun, 5/22, p.5).

WHAT IS HAARETZ  LIKE?

Haaretz is an Israeli daily of imagined high quality and decidedly low circulation. Although considered the standard-bearer of Israel's supposed 'vibrant' press, it has a single point of view: Far Leftist, anti-Zionist, and increasingly antisemitic.

The paper ignores Muslim murders of Jews for their religion, perhaps because of its frequency. When a mentally imbalanced Jew picks on an Arab, the newspaper expresses indignation against the whole Jewish people.

A psychiatric patient who recently immigrated from France killed an Arab for his ethnicity. Haaretz generalized about the whole Jewish people and insisted that Israel's Chief Rabbi and political officials apologize in the name of the Jewish people to the Muslims and in the main mosque in France. Journalist Goel Pinto declared French Jewry racist because most of them voted for Sarkozy (as did most French people). He said that their bigotry provoked Muslim antipathy (as if that were why Muslims attack French Jews every day and as if that excuses violence, rather than the motive being the hatred that Islam preaches).

The newspaper, as do many in the West, calls the errant Jews who attack Arabs, 'terrorists.' It calls the mainstream Muslims who attack Jews, 'activists' and 'militants.' Double standard, double dealing (Prof. Steven Plaut, 5/16).

Are our newspapers afraid for readers to grasp what we are confronted with?

THE IRONY OF PROSECUTION

The US government is prosecuting two former employees of AIPAC for discussing classified information with an employee of Israel, although that information was public knowledge. In its zeal for indignant prosecution, the government has declassified 'a large volume of classified information' (Josh Gerstein, NY Sun, 5/24, p.5).

U.S. RELATIONS WITH CHINA & RUSSIA

Although the US has been bringing China and Russia into the World Trade Organization and assisting them in other ways, they obstruct American efforts to build collective security. 'But what is the point of our trying to integrate these nations into an international community that they are in fact destabilizing?' (Norman Podhoretz, Commentary, 6/2007, p.29.)

This is the kind of engagement that Democrats claim Pres. Bush does not do, don't credit him for doing, and don't work.

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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ISLAMISTS IN THE COURTROOM
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 7, 2007.

The article below is by Daniel Pipes and is called Islamists in the Courtroom. It appeared June 5, 2007 in the New York Sun and is archived at http://www.nysun.com/comments/25849. Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of Funding Evil commented:

"Mr. Pipes' work to expose the many Islamist tactics to silence their critics is exceedingly important, as is this article. However, it is important to correct the implication concerning Khalid bin Mahfouz' UK suit against me, that I apologized and paid a fine for facts in my book Funding Evil. First, the fine was not £30,000, as Mr. Pipes wrote, but more than £87,000 and, with interest, has since more than doubled, to over $180,000. More importantly, I neither paid a fine nor apologized, and do not intend to do either. I did not even acknowledge the British court or its jurisdiction, since I wrote and published the book in the U.S. I commend Mr. Pipes for choosing bin Mahfouz' lawsuit against me as an example, since bin Mahfouz has sued more than 30 other writers and publishers, including many U.S. citizens and publications, all of whom apologized and paid fines. That important details strengthens Mr. Pipes' argument. Finally, in his conciseness, Mr. Pipes neglected to mention that I have sued bin Mahfouz in U.S. Federal Court to protect my First Amendment rights. Winning this case could discourage further Islamists lawsuits against the press."

The decision by the Islamic Society of Boston to drop its lawsuit against 17 defendants, including counterterrorism specialist Steven Emerson, gives reason to step back to consider radical Islam's legal ambitions.

The lawsuit came about because, soon after ground was broken in November 2002 for the ISB's $22 million Islamic center, the press and several nonprofits began asking questions about three main topics: why the ISB paid the city of Boston less than half the appraised value of the land it acquired; why a city of Boston employee, who is also an ISB board member, fund raised on the Boston taxpayers' tab for the center while traveling in the Middle East, and the ISB's connections to radical Islam.

Under this barrage of criticism, the ISB in May 2005 turned the tables on its critics with a lawsuit accusing them of defamation and conspiring to violate its civil rights through "a concerted, well-coordinated effort to deprive the Plaintiffs ... of their basic rights of free association and the free exercise of religion."

For two long years, the lawsuit roiled Bostonians, and Jewish-Muslim relations in particular. The discovery process, while disclosing that the defendants had engaged in routine newsgathering and political disputation, and had nothing to hide, uncovered the plaintiff 's record of extremism and deception. Newly aware of its own vulnerabilities, the ISB on May 29 withdrew its lawsuit with its many complaints about "false statements," and it did so without getting a dime.

Why should this dispute matter to anyone beyond the litigants?

The Islamist movement has two wings, one violent and one lawful, which operate apart but often reinforce each other. Their effective coordination was on display in Britain last August, when the Islamist establishment seized on the Heathrow airport plot to destroy planes over the Atlantic Ocean as an opening for it to press the Blair government for changes in policy.

A similar one-two punch stifles the open discussion of Muhammad, the Koran, Islam, and Muslims. Violence causing hundreds of deaths erupted against The Satanic Verses, the Danish cartoons, and Pope Benedict XVI, creating a climate of fear that adds muscle to lawsuits such as the ISB's. As Mr. Emerson noted when the Muslim Public Affairs Council recently threatened to sue him for supposed false statements, "Legal action has become a mainstay of radical Islamist organizations seeking to intimidate and silence their critics." Such lawsuits, including the ISB's, are often predatory, filed without serious expectations of winning but initiated to bankrupt, distract, intimidate, and demoralize defendants. Such plaintiffs seek less to win than to wear down the researchers and analysts who, even when they win, pay heavily in time and money. Two examples:

  • Khalid bin Mahfouz v. Rachel Ehrenfeld: Ms. Ehrenfeld wrote that Mr. bin Mahfouz had financial links to Al Qaeda and Hamas. He sued her in January 2004 in a plaintiff-friendly British court. He won by default and was awarded £30,000 (nearly $60,000 today) and an apology.

  • Iqbal Unus v. Rita Katz: After Mr. Unus's house was searched in the course of an American government operation, code-named Green Quest, he sued Ms. Katz, a nongovernmental counterterrorist expert, charging in March 2004 that she was responsible for the raid. Mr. Unus lost and had to pay Ms. Katz's court costs.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations began a burst of litigiousness in 2003 and announced ambitious fund-raising goals for this effort. But the collapse of three lawsuits, in particular the one against Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR, seems by April 2006 to have prompted a reconsideration. Frustrated in the courtroom, one CAIR staffer consoled himself that "education is superior to litigation."

This retreat notwithstanding, Islamists clearly hope, as Douglas Farah notes, that lawsuits will cause researchers and analysts to "get tired of the cost and the hassle and simply shut up." Just last month, KinderUSA sued a specialist on terrorist funding, Matthew Levitt, and two organizations for his assertion that KinderUSA funds Hamas. One must assume that Islamists are planning future legal ordeals for their critics.

Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com

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WHY WON'T US JEWISH FEDERATIONS INVEST IN ISRAEL?
Posted by Judy Lash Balint, June 7, 2007.

This article was written by Laura Goldman, an independent commentator. It was published by Globes [online], Israel business news -- www.globes.co.il -- on June 6, 2007.

I was stunned to read in Alpha Magazine
(http://www.alphamagazine.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=1328490&PositionID=25418), an Institutional Investor publication, that the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago had lost more than $4 million of their contributor's money due to the fraud at Bayou hedge fund. According to Associated Press, the founder Simon Israel and the chief financial officer Dan Marino of Bayou hedge fund plead guilty to conspiracy and fraud charged for their role in a scandal that cost investors millions of dollars. Before reading this article, I had never thought about how my and my family's donations to Federation were invested and what kind of returns that they received.

According to Cliff Goldstein, president of the Amidex Israel 35 fund, "there is $22 billion controlled by Jewish Federation. In addition, there is one billion in the Reform Rabbis pension plan and another billion in the American Friends of the Technion. None of this money is intentionally invested in Israeli stocks. They might have $25,000 invested in Israeli stocks by accident. Even worse, the Federations are investing in the stocks markets of countries that are enemies of Israel like Egypt, Malaysia and Indonesia."

Joel Demby, an official with the Investment Institute of the UJC, says, "The annual survey of the Federation Endowments is not finished yet for 2006. But I estimate the amount of money in Federation endowments will be close to $13 billion. For 2005, there was $10 billion."

The UJC sends out a four page questionnaire to each of the 155 Federations under its umbrella. I asked if there was a question about investments in Israel. Mr. Demby said no. "It is hard enough to get the endowments to answer a four page questionnaire. At the biannual investment conference for the endowments, we do have one panel on investing in Israel. One year, Jonathan Medved from Israel Seed Partners came."

This year the panel on investing in Israel included no Israelis. It consisted of representatives from Hamilton Advisors, Northern Trust Global, and Amidex 35 Israel.

It seemed unbelievable to me that Jewish charities would not actively seek out Israeli stocks and bonds. I asked Cliff Goldstein to explain the reasoning behind the refusal of Jewish Federations to invest in Israel. He said, "If the investment did not work out, the people choosing the investment at Federation did not want to be accused of being Zionistic."

At first, I thought that there would be a simple explanation for Federation's boycott of Israeli stocks. Maybe Federations were not allowed to invest in stocks, or if they did invest in stocks not in non-US stocks. But in fact, the majority of Federation endowment assets are invested in stocks. At the UJC, it is 60%. At the Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, it is 80%. 20% of that is in non-US stocks.

Demby stressed the fiduciary responsibility of the mostly volunteer investment committees. "Would you have us invest contributor's donations in high risk projects in Israel?" Someone needs to tell him that Forbes named the Israeli pharmaceuticals company Teva a global superstar.

David Brief, the investment officer for the Federation of Metropolitan Chicago and the man in charge of the Federation's investment in the fraudulent Bayou hedge fund, said, "If I was going to invest in a single country like Israel, I would also have to consider other countries like Argentina, Russia etc." In our heated phone conversation, he refused to even consider the possibility of investing in Israel for Zionism's sake. He took great pride in the fact that he was an investment professional who did not allow sentimentality to enter his investment decisions.

He did not care that the Israeli stock market has appreciated 250% in dollar terms in the last five years and Israel bonds returned 100%. Wanting to believe in the goodness of people, I figured that his arrogance was due to the superior returns that he was achieving. I was wrong. In 2006, the endowment of the Federation of Chicago returned 15%, for the last five years, 11.3%. The UJC endowment of $30 million returned 12% last year, according to Demby.

For too many Jews, Israel is a place is only a place for Jews to donate money. Most do not even visit here. To take Israel-American relationship to the next level, Israel has to be a country that the Jewish community profits from and partners with. With the daily turnover of the Tel Aviv exchange being $500 million, this influx of money will give the Israeli economy a boost.

Itzick Sharir, former CEO of IT company Sapiens, said, "Invite them to Israel and let me and other meet with them so they can experience first hand the professionalism of Israeli managers."

Demby demurred. "This would be new mission for the UJC and I am not sure that we have the manpower and budget to take on this job."

Someone or some organization needs to make this priority. We need to create a fund of funds with the help of an advisor that offers check and balances on the fund itself and enough diversification within the funds to pass muster with these endowments. With friends like the investment committees of the Federation endowments, the Israeli economy does not need any more enemies.

Judy Lash Balint is an award-winner investigative journalist and author of "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" (Gefen). It is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com

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THE JIHAD OF AVRAHAM BURG
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 7, 2007.

1. Joseph Haim Brenner was an early Zionist writer and journalist. He moved to the Land of Israel in 1909 at the age of 20. He worked as a teacher, writer and translator. He was murdered by Arab terrorists in the riots of 1921 (after the Balfour Declaration). Givat Brenner, the largest kibbutz in Israel, is named after him.

Brenner once challenged the traditional definition of a Jew. The Rabbinic definition of a Jew is one who has a Jewish mother (or who converts). Not so, said Brenner. A Jew is not one who has a Jewish mother but rather one who has Jewish grandchildren.

The point he was making, and making it a century ago, was that the real test of Jewish roots is whether one's grandchildren remain Jewish. Under that test, outside the Orthodox communities there are very few Jews left in America.

Fast forward to the twentieth century and the Burg family. The late Dr. Yosef Burg was one of the most prominent politicians in Israel. He was born in 1909, the same year that Brenner came to the Land of Israel, and died in 1999. He was a Rabbi and a scholar, holding a PhD in philosophy from the University of Leipzig. He served for many years in the Knesset as a representative of the National Religious Party and also was often a cabinet minister. He served in so many Knessets that there were jokes about him (his having first been elected by the slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the like).

As committed as Yosef Burg was to building Israel and defending it, so his son Avraham Burg has long been committed to destroying it. Avraham Burg is a far-leftist who used to be a Knesset member from the Israeli Labor Party, although his views are to the left of Yossi Beilin's. Pretending to be religious but never too much so, he always wore a yarmulke the size of a Canadian quarter. He was active in Peace Now and in fringe far-leftist groups. In 1995, his friends in the Labor Left got him selected to head the Jewish Agency, a bit of a joke given his hostility to Zionism. He later served as speaker of the Knesset, although he actually represented Palestinians there more so than Israelis. As speaker, he defied Israeli law and illegally went to speak before the PLO's "parliament" in Ramallah in 2002.

Since then he has morphed into one of Israel's most extremist "Post-Zionists" (http://www.arabworldbooks.com/arab/avraham.htm). He denounced Zionism in the anti-Israel Guardian
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1042071,00.html). The anti-Semite Pat Buchanan applauded him
(http://goliath.ecnext.com/comsite5/bin/pdinventory.pl?pdlanding= 1&referid=2750&item_id=0199-1403773). He denounced Israel as an evil entity
(http://www.haaretz.com/GA/pages/ShArtGA.jhtml?itemNo=360539) The journal Azure reports (http://azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=117&search_text=) that Burg: 'declared Yeshayahu Leibowitz (of "Judeo-Nazis" fame) to be his "moral compass." Burg's advisers Haim Ben-Shachar and Arik Carmon have developed a plan whereby the Zionist movement would drop its focus on Jewish immigration and concern itself with distributing "pluralistic" Jewish material over the Internet.' He has teamed up with Yossi Beilin to promote the latter's "Geneva Misunderstandings" to dismember Israel
(http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=36&x_article=599).

This past year the media reported that Burg junior had left Israel altogether to do "business" in France. But nothing Burg did in the past prepared anyone for his speech, reported in the press today, essentially calling for Israel to be destroyed. Burg demands that Israel desist altogether from defining itself as a "Jewish state".

Since nothing I do to paraphrase or summarize his statements can do them justice, they are reprinted here in full from "Burg: Defining Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end" by Ari Shavit, Haaretz Correspondent
(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/868215.html).

Avraham Burg, former Knesset speaker and former head of the Jewish Agency says "to define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's dynamite." In an interview in Haaretz Weekend Magazine, he said that he is in favor of abrogating the Law of Return and calls on everyone who can to obtain a foreign passport.

Burg, who was interviewed on the occasion of the publication of his book "Defeating Hitler" said "the strategic mistake of Zionism was to annul the alternatives. Israeliness has only body; it doesn't have soul."

"Judaism always prepared alternatives," says Burg, who three years after leaving Israeli politics is now a citizen of France and a successful businessman.

"Just as there was something astonishing about German Jewry, in America, too, they created the potential for something astonishing. They created a situation in which the goy can be my father and my mother and my son and my partner," Burg says.

His book ruminates about Israel and Zionism, compares Israel and Germany, harshly criticizes Eichmann's hanging, reflects on Judaism in the age of globalization and remembers his father's house.

Burg said he started his book in mourning for the loss of Israel. "During most of the writing the book's title was 'Hitler Won.' But slowly I discovered the layer of not everything being lost. And I discovered my father as a representative of German Jewry that was ahead of its time. These two themes nourished the book from beginning to end."

Burg probably illustrates better than anyone else in Israel the truth of Brenner's observations.

2. The Fat'h of the PLO has asked Israel to allow armored personnel carriers and anti-tank missiles to be delivered to it, to use against the Hamas. Olmert is considering agreeing. After all, no chance at all that THESE could be used to murder Jews. After all, when did the Fat'h ever use weapons it got from Israel in the past to murder Jews?

3. Now that the Minister of Justice in Israel is standing up to the judicial tyrants and courtroom practitioners of anti-democratic "judicial activism", a number of initiatives are ongoing to bypass and neuter the imperious kibitzers in Israel's Supreme Court. After the Court had unconstitutionally revoked a Knesset law that had prohibited Palestinians from submitting damage suits against the Israeli government in Israeli courts, the Knesset is preparing to pass the law all over again, thumbing its nose at the Supreme Court, and doing so with the Minister of Justice's approval (Prof. Daniel Friedmann).

The Knesset is also planning to pull the rug out from under the Supreme-Court-coddled radical homosexual movement in Israel. Yesterday the Knesset passed in first reading a bill that would prohibit "Gay Pride" parades from being held in Jerusalem.

4. For years we have been predicting that the terrorists from the "Palestinian Authority" would eventually endanger Israeli planes landing and taking off from Ben Gurion airport, because they would be within shoulder-missile range of the planes. But we were much too optimistic. The Palestinians do not need shoulder missiles. The can knock down Israeli planes with pirate radio broadcasts. Recently a series of near mid-air collisions have taken place at the airport because a pirate Palestinian radio station in Ramallah broadcasts on the same frequencies as the air traffic controllers. Finally, yesterday the air traffic controllers had enough and shut down the airport for a few hours as an act of protest against the safety hazards and the indifference of the Olmertocracy.

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. Or write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

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REPRISE
Posted by Arlene Kushner, June 6, 2007.

With all I have already written on the subject of the Six Day War and Israel's rights, I would like to return to the subject just briefly here:

The accusation is made by Palestinians and other Arabs (and those who sympathize with them) that the current situation is Israel's fault because of "the occupation." Setting aside the point I made yesterday, viz. that we are not occupiers, there is still this: If our "occupation" of Judea and Samaria were the problem, things would have been quiet when we were only within the Green Line. On the face of it, this was not so -- for there would not have been a Six Day War, had it been so. We have been contending with threats to our existence and terrorism since our founding as a modern state. For all the pretense, the issue is not that we are in control of Judea and Samaria. The issue is that we continue to exist. Do not be fooled.

As Resolution 242 makes imminently clear, Israel has a right to secure borders. Were we to (G-d forbid!) return to the pre-'67 lines, we would have boundaries that are not defensible. This has to do with two major factors. Geographic width, first. Within the Green Line, Israel was only nine miles wide at its narrowest. Do you realize how quickly forces coming from the east -- from the Palestinian Authority, or Jordan, or even Iraq -- could move across that width in order to reach population centers on the Mediterranean coast? We need strategic depth. And then, height. High places represent an obvious strategic asset, as well. There is critical height in the Golan, and in the Judean Hills to the east near Jordan. We must retain these places; were our enemies to acquire them, they would utilize them for shelling us and launching rockets and missiles.

Because of these factors alone -- and Israel's RIGHT to live in security -- returning to the pre-'67 situation is not to be contemplated. And yet much of the world seems to have adopted this notion as a given. People get bent all out of shape expressing heart-felt concern about what's "fair" to the Palestinians, but give not a moment's thought to what is fair to Israel. That's because the Palestinians have been so successful in framing themselves as helpless victims and us as the aggressor.

~~~~~~~~~~

All of the discussion regarding Israel's right to live in security doesn't even touch on Israel's other rights:

How about our right to access our holy places? Guaranteed, our access to the Kotel would be denied if it were under Arab control; this was made clear during the 19 years of Jordanian occupation.

Or our right to preserve our archeological ruins, which are systematically destroyed in Arab hands.

Or our right to retain areas that are part of our heritage going back 2,000 to 3,000 years: in Hebron, Shilo, Beit El, etc.

Israel has rights!

~~~~~~~~~~

Ismail Haniyeh, member of Hamas and PA prime minister, wrote a piece on the Six Day War for The Guardian in London. This is what he said:

"...in the 1967 war, Israel conquered the land of Palestine but it did not conquer the people. And in its attempt to debase and dehumanize my people, Israel has debased and degraded itself before the family of nations.

"...If Israel is serious about peace, it has to recognize these basic rights of our people [the establishment of an independent state on all the Palestinian land occupied by Israel in 1967, the dismantling of all the settlements in the West Bank, the release of all 11,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the recognition of the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes].

"The 1967 war remains an unfinished chapter. Nothing will stop our struggle for freedom and to have all our children reunited in a fully sovereign state of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital."

Reminder: There has never been a sovereign state of Palestine, and most certainly not one with Jerusalem as its capital.

Another reminder: When Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria and Egypt controlled Gaza, no one spoke of a Palestinian state. In fact, the PLO, which was founded in 1964 -- to "liberate" Israel within the Green Line, you should note, specifically put a clause into its constitution saying there were no demands on Jordan or Egypt. They only decided they wanted a state in these areas after Israel had them.

~~~~~~~~~~

Haniyeh spoke in his Guardian article about establishing a state on all land occupied by Israel in 1967. But that is not what the Hamas website says. Yesterday this went up:

"...accepting [a] state on the borders of '67 does not mean forfeiting any inch of our occupied territories."

Hamas will "liberate" the Land of Israel and isolate "the Zionist occupation in order to establish the independent state on the entire Palestinian soil... [Hamas will] keep the flame burning...until the Palestinian flag flies again over the walls of Jerusalem and on the shores of Haifa and Jaffa."

~~~~~~~~~~

Last Friday Egypt criticized the Quartet for statements it had made. In particular, a spokesman for the Egyptian foreign ministry said that the call for "the immediate and unconditional release of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit" was "unbalanced" and "unrealistic" and did not help Egypt's mediation efforts, which involve seeking release of Palestinian prisoners in return for Shalit.

This from the nation that has a peace treaty with us.

~~~~~~~~~~

Noting the anniversary of the Six Day War, PA president Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday, "Regarding our internal situation, what concerns us all is the chaos, and more specifically, being on the verge of civil war...what is equal to or even worse than occupation is internal fighting."

That's more honest than one usually gets from the Palestinians. It's a step towards acknowledging that they are responsible for their own misery.

Abbas was supposed to meet Olmert in Jericho tomorrow, but has requested that the meeting be cancelled. My guess is that this is because he knew that what he would seek -- a truce in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria -- would be refused.

~~~~~~~~~~

And if Abbas was refused, it would not go down well with Hamas. They need time to regroup and strengthen.

This is what Military Intelligence chief Major General Amos Yadlin had to say about the situation yesterday at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee:

"Hamas in Gaza, is interested in a cease-fire because right now Hamas is losing. Half its military force has been hurt in the last two and half weeks. Hamas is demanding open passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip because it is interested in exporting the knowledge it has gained in Gaza to the West Bank.

"Hamas is turning from a terrorist organization into a semi-military force, modeled after Hezbollah, which is organized into units and battalions and intends to fight guerilla warfare in residential areas,"

~~~~~~~~~~

It was only a matter of time. A growing number of EU parliamentarians are pushing for withdrawal of sanctions on Hamas, saying this causes unrest and just makes the situation worse.

~~~~~~~~~~

Transportation Minister and former defense minister Shaul Mofaz is in the States for strategic meetings with the US. High on the agenda is Iran. There will also be a request that limits be placed on US sales of state-of-the-art military equipment to Saudi Arabia.

~~~~~~~~~~

The schizoid situation with regard to Syria continues, with reports that we may be at war with Syria by the summer and reports that we may start talks with Syria vying for space in the news. Apparently a growing number of gov't officials are in favor of discretely talking to Syria. Aside from the fact that -- because I absolutely don't trust Assad -- it makes me uneasy altogether, I have the sense that at least some of these officials are opting for talks out of fear that Assad is likely to resort to violence if spurned. That is not a reason to enter negotiations. Head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, remains adamant that Assad's intention is to take pressure off, not to genuinely seek peace, and that we should stay away.

We don't need a "peace treaty" with Syria, certainly not now. There is de facto peace, in that there is quiet on that border. And even if we signed a treaty, you can be sure that Assad would foment trouble via Hezbollah if it were in his interest to do so. To expect otherwise is to expect him to change his stripes.

If there were a signed peace treaty, it would mean relinquishing all of the Golan Heights, and I'd be very hard put to imagine a scenario in which this would be a wise move.

See Uzi Arad on this: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3409431,00.html

The Security Cabinet discussed this situation at length today, and Olmert decided to appoint a forum to investigate the situation and Assad's intentions.

~~~~~~~~~~

Peretz has thrown his weight behind Ayalon, who is currently running a bit ahead in the polls, with the run-off election for head of the Labor Party next week. Barak is spitting mad and has come out fighting.

Arlene Kushner is Senior Research Associate, Center for Near East Policy Research, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem, Israel. Contact her at akushner@netvision.net.il

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SUGAR DADDIES; BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SUE FOR
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 6, 2007.

1. Sugar Daddies

Want to know WHY al-Kassam rockets are falling on Sderot every day? I mean -- besides the obvious cause, namely, the mega-stupidity of the Israeli government ordering the eviction of all the Jews from the Gaza Strip and turning it over to the genocidal terrorists of the Hamas.

Want to know the OTHER reason why the rockets keep falling?

It is because Israel's government does not have the courage to prevent sugar from being imported into the Gaza Strip.

Huh? -- you say?

Yes, the root problem is sugar. Why sugar? Well, Kassam rockets are primitive little devices thrown together in the basements and underground tunnels of the Gaza Strip. They use a primitive fuel that is mainly a mix of sugar and fertilizer. If you think I am kidding, take a look at
http://www.me-monitor.com/files/The%20Growing%20Threat%20of%20the%20Kassam.htm
or http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0507/HowStuffWorks.php3?printer_friendly
or http://www.israelnetdaily.com/feed_content.php?feed=27641. These are NOT the Katyusha rockets of the Hizbollah, although a few katyushas have also been fired out of Gaza by the savages.

This has been known for years. If Israel had simply announced that no sugar at all (better yet -- no fertilizer either) can be brought into the Gaza Strip, the residents of Sderot would be strolling about in tranquility, enjoying the evening Negev breezes and listening to the birds. Instead, Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz prefer to be the Sugar Daddies for the Gaza Strip.

The problem is that the same state of Israel that clobbered the Arab aggressors in six days in 1967 and then rescued the Entebbe hostages in 1976 is today too afraid of its own shadow to stop the imports into Gaza of sugar and fertilizer.

Sure, the academic moonbats in Israel would have a fit if the sugar shipments were stopped and Gaza were placed under a sugar embargo. They of course would oppose anything short of unconditional surrender by Israel to stop the rocket barrages on Sderot. Their anti-Semitic friends abroad would also chime in their outrage.

So to keep a lid on things, I hereby propose that Israel announce a new dental health program of preventive dental medicine for Gaza. To help prospective suicide bombers and rocket shooters from developing painful problems of tooth decay, Israel will do the humanitarian thing and stop all sugar imports! Any leftist protesting this would be seen as an anti-dentite.

And then to offset any damages to Gaza from a halt in imports of fertilizer, Israel can also shut off the water supply to Gaza and let the locals fertilize their fields with human organic substances that cannot be used to produce Kassam rockets.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/1#2179
 

2. SLAPP Shenanigans
"Be Careful What You Sue For"
by Floyd Abrams
Wall St Journal
June 6, 2007
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118109777647426054.html

Pursuing a libel or slander suit has long been a dangerous enterprise. Oscar Wilde sued the father of his young lover Alfred Douglas for having referred to him as a "posing Somdomite" and wound up not only dropping his case but being tried, convicted and jailed for violating England's repressive laws banning homosexual conduct. Alger Hiss sued Wittaker Chambers for slander for accusing Hiss of being a member of the Communist Party with Chambers, and of illegally passing secret government documents to him for transmission to the Soviet Union. In the end, Hiss was jailed for perjury for having denied Chambers' claims before a grand jury.

More recently, British historian David Irving sued American scholar Deborah Lipstadt in England for having characterized him as a Holocaust denier and was ultimately so discredited in court that an English judge not only determined that he was indeed a Holocaust denier but an "antisemite" and "racist" as well.

On May 29 of this year, the potential vulnerability of a plaintiff that misuses the courts to sue for libel once again surfaced when the Islamic Society of Boston abandoned a libel action it had commenced against a number of Boston residents, a Boston newspaper and television station, and Steven Emerson, a recognized expert on terrorism and, in particular, extremist Islamic groups. In all, 17 defendants were named.

Those accused had publicly raised questions about a real estate transaction entered into between the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Islamic Society, which transferred to the latter a plot of land in Boston, at a price well below market value, for the construction of a mosque and other facilities. The critics urged the Boston authorities to reconsider their decision to provide the land on such favorable terms (which included promised contributions to the community by the Islamic Society, such as holding lectures and offering other teaching about Islam) to an organization whose present or former leaders had close connections with or who had otherwise supported terrorist organizations.

On the face of it, the Islamic Society was a surprising entry into the legal arena. Its founder, Abdurahman Alamoudi, had been indicted in 2003 for his role in a terrorism financing scheme, pled guilty and had been sentenced to a 23-year prison term. Another individual, Yusef Al-Qaradawi, who had been repeatedly identified by the Islamic Society as a member of its board of Trustees, had been described by a U.S. Treasury Department official as a senior Muslim Brotherhood member and had endorsed the killing of Americans in Iraq and Jews everywhere. One director of the Islamic Society, Walid Fitaihi, had written that the Jews would be "scourged" because of their "oppression, murder and rape of the worshipers of Allah," and that they had "perpetrated the worst of evils and brought the worst corruption to the earth."

The Islamic Society nonetheless sued, claiming both libel and civil-rights violations. Motions to dismiss the case were denied, and the litigants began to compel third parties to turn over documents bearing on the case. In short order, one after another of the allegations made by the Islamic Society collapsed.

Their complaint asserted that the defendants had falsely stated that monies had been sent to the Islamic Society from "Saudi/Middle Eastern sources," and that such statements and others had devastated its fund-raising efforts. But documents obtained in discovery demonstrated without ambiguity that fund-raising was (as one representative of the Islamic Society had put it) "robust," with at least $7.2 million having been wired to the Islamic Society from Middle Eastern sources, mostly from Saudi Arabia.

The Islamic Society claimed it had been libeled by a variety of expressions of concern by the defendants that it, the Society, had provided support for extremist organizations. But bank records obtained by the defendants showed that the Islamic Society had served as funder both of the Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas-controlled organization that the U.S. Treasury Department had said "exists to raise money in the United States to promote terror," and of the Benevolence International Foundation, which was identified by the 9/11 Commission as an al Qaeda fund-raising arm.

The complaint maintained that any reference to recent connections between the Islamic Society and the now-imprisoned Abdurahman Alamoudi was false since it "had had no connection with him for years." But an Islamic Society check written in November 2000, two months after Alamoudi publicly proclaimed his support for Hamas and Hezbollah, was uncovered in discovery which directed money to pay for Alamoudi's travel expenses.

To top it all off, documents obtained from the Boston Redevelopment Authority itself revealed serious, almost incomprehensible, conflicts of interest in the real-estate deal. It turned out that the city agency employee in charge of negotiating the deal with the Islamic Society was at the same time a member of that group and secretly advising it about how to obtain the land at the cheapest possible price.

So the case was dropped. No money was paid by the defendants, no apologies offered, and no limits on their future speech imposed. But it is not at all as if nothing happened. The case offers two enduring lessons. The first is that those who think about suing for libel should think again before doing so. And then again once more. While all the ultimate consequences to the Islamic Society for bringing the lawsuit remain uncertain, any adverse consequences could have been avoided by not suing in the first place.

The second lesson is that in one way (and perhaps no other) we should learn from the English system and award counsel fees to the winning side in cases like this, which are brought to inhibit speech on matters of serious public import. Because all the defendants in this case were steadfast and refused to settle, they were eventually vindicated. But the real way to avoid meritless cases such as this is to have a body of law that makes clear that plaintiffs who bring them will be held financially responsible for doing so.

Mr. Abrams, a partner in the law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP, represented Steven Emerson in the case discussed in this op-ed.

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. Or write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

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NAZI MASS GRAVE OF JEWS FOUND
Posted by Avodah, June 6, 2007.

This is an Associated Press news item from yesterday.

A mass grave believed to contain the remains of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis has been found in southern Ukraine, a Jewish community representative said Tuesday.

The grave was found by chance last month when workers were digging to lay gas pipelines in the village of Gvozdavka-1, near Odessa, said Roman Shvartsman, a spokesman for the regional Jewish community.

The Nazis established two ghettos during World War II near the village and brought Jews there from what is now the nearby nation of Moldova as well as Ukrainian regions including Odessa, Shvartsman said. In November 1941, they set up a concentration camp in the area and killed about 5,000 Jews there, he said.

"Several thousand Jews executed by the Nazis lie there," Shvartsman told The Associated Press.

Shvartsman said the Jewish community had known about the mass killing in the area, but had not known exactly where the bodies were left.

Yitzhak Arad, a Holocaust scholar and a former director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, said he was not surprised by the discovery because the village was a known site of mass executions of Jews during the Holocaust.

He said some 28,000 Jews were brought to the area from surrounding towns in November 1941, and put the death toll at 10,000, with 500 people dying every day.

Holocaust expert Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said he did not recall Gvozdavka-1 specifically, but was not surprised by the reported finding.

"I'm not surprised that, even in these days, there are discoveries such as these. It underscores the enormous scope of the plans of annihilation of the Nazis and their collaborators in Eastern Europe," Zuroff said.

Hundreds of mass graves exist in Ukraine, likely with many yet to be uncovered, Zuroff said. "Ukraine was an enormous killing field, hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered," he said.

Anatoly Podolsky, director of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, said there are believed to be some 250-350 mass grave sites from the Nazi occupation, during which some 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews are believed to have been killed -- including those massacred near their homes and those deported to camps elsewhere.

Podolsky said most of the sites had been discovered, many since the 1991 Soviet collapse, but that there were still some left to find.

Ilia Levitas, the head of Ukraine's Jewish Council, put the number of mass Jewish graves in the country at more than 700.

According to Shvartsman, the names of 93 Jews killed at the Gvozsdavka-1 site have been established. He said Jewish community members planned to conduct studies at the newly found site to identify victims.

"We must figure out their names. It is our debt before victims and survivors," he said.

Odessa's chief rabbi, Shlomo Baksht, has voiced plans to put a fence around the site and erect a monument to the victims this year.

Ukraine's Jewish population was devastated during the Holocaust. Babi Yar, a ravine outside the capital, Kiev, where the Nazis slaughtered some 34,000 Jews over two days in September 1941, is a powerful symbol of the tragedy.

About 240,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis in the Odessa region, according to Shvartsman. He said a mass grave with remains of about 3,500 Jews was found in the region last year.

Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com

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ARABS & JEWS VS. JEWS; STATISTICS TO DECEIVE
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 6, 2007.

RUSSIAN ROLE IN MIDEAST

Russia is selling air defense systems to Syria and Iran, both aggressor states and sponsors of terrorism. This violates a Security Council resolution. It is not consistent with Russia's plea for sympathy as a victim of terrorism from Chechnyans (NY Sun, 5/23).

Russia's sales to barbarians make it an enemy of the US and Israel.

ARABS & JEWS VS. JEWS IN ISRAEL

Some Arab Israelis sued the Jewish National Fund (JNF) for refusing to sell them some land and apartments. The Attorney-General ruled that the JNF may not refuse them; it must adhere to 'the principle of equality' (IMRA, 5/20).

The news brief did not cite law. Both the Attorney-General and the Israeli Supreme Court often rule on the basis not of law but of 'principle,' meaning their principle. What 'principle?' Israel is not governed by law.

Israel has no constitution. It's Declaration of Independence, which has no binding status, offered the Arabs citizenship for peace. This Declaration contradicted the purpose of re-establishing Jewish sovereignty. In any case, the Arabs rejected the offer, choosing instead superiority and attempted genocide. They lost. Israel should have withdrawn the offer and Arab citizenship and residency. Instead, the meek and liberal Jews let a significant number of Arabs stay, others enter, and all to multiply under a welfare system that had the effect of paying them to reproduce. The result is that the Arabs of Israel are making a new bid for dominance. They steal land in Israel and in the Territories, but the Attorney-General, Supreme Court, and government do almost nothing about it.

Instead, the establishment does what it can to uproot Jewish title to land. It is a strange 'principle' that lets the Arabs buy land held in trust for the Jewish people while the Waqf holds land in trust for the Muslims, as the Israel Arabs strive to take over the country and the foreign Arabs strive to conquer it. The 'principle' is fraudulent, especially since the JNF collected money from the Jewish people to buy land for the Jewish people, often against the rulers' orders. Jews are barred from most of the Jewish homeland (Jordan, comprising at least 75% of it, and much of the P.A.). Let the Israeli Arabs go to Jordan and leave the Jewish people in uncontested control of at least the Israeli and Territories part of their own homeland. What temerity of Israeli Arabs, suing for land owned collectively for the Jewish people in the Jewish state! But they are egged on by leftist Jews and know that the establishment is antisemitic.

I expect to be changing my will, soon. JNF was an heir. It won't be.

WHAT DOES 'ENGAGE' MEAN?

Norway was among the first Western countries to recognize the Hamas-led government of the P.A.. It is about to subsidize the P.A.. Its Foreign Min. Stoere said, 'We need to demonstrate that we are ready to engage politically and financially' with the P.A. government (Carolynne Wheeler, NY Sun, 5/23, p.7).

Why does it 'need to?' What does it mean, 'engage?' Does it demand that Hamas take care of its people instead of spending on war and propaganda? No. Does it condition its aid on an end to indoctrination in bigotry and violence? No. Does it calibrate its aid on how much Hamas reduces terrorism? No. 'Engage' seems to be one of those weasel words that hide appeasement of Islamo-fascism. It enables Norway to pretend that it is accomplishing something while actually being an accomplice to murder. That seems to be the 'progressive' position, these days. 'Progressive,' another euphemism.

'Negotiation' is a weasel word for letting evil grow instead of stamping it out.

AL-QAEDA IN GAZA

Al-Qaeda flourishes where government is too weak to stop it. Anarchic Gaza is one such place. In addition, the Hamas regime invited al-Qaeda. Foreign representatives entered and recruited locals. Hamas admits it cooperates with al-Qaeda militarily (IMRA, 5/17).

Iran and al-Qaeda probably provide ample funds for its proxies, whereas Fatah leaders skimp so they can skim. Hamas fighters are better trained and armed than Fatah fighters, as well as better paid. Hence, Hamas can defeat Fatah in Gaza, unless perhaps the P.A. police joined with Fatah.

GOVERNMENT STATISTICS

Mayor Bloomberg keeps boasting of educational success on the basis of statistical legerdemain. His latest scam is to claim an increase in high school graduation from 51% to 60%. The State still computes the level at 50%. This time, the City excluded special education students, of whom hardly any graduate. Omit a large group of failures from the tally, and the tally soars (Elizabeth Weiss Green, NY Sun, 5/22, p4). Such lies may propel him into higher office.

Mayor Daley claimed a one-year improvement for Chicago in passing the 8th grade math test, from 33% to 66%. How was it done? The State lowered the passing score from 67th to 38th percentile! (NY Sun, 5/24, Ed..)

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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PROFESSOR CALLS FOR ISRAEL TO "APOLOGIZE," ACCEPT PALESTINIAN "RETURN"
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 6, 2007.

Carlo Strenger is a psychology professor at Tel Aviv University. The department of psychology at Tel Aviv University is home to quite a few leftist extremists and runs anti-Israel one-sided indoctrination courses as part of its curriculum (see this for details). Strenger is moderate in comparison to some of the ultras at Tel Aviv University. He has published papers claiming that Israel is a racist bigoted anti-Sephardic place and, more generally, that Israeli "prejudice" is what drives the Arab-Israeli war.

He also claims that "historians of all sorts" agree that Israel "expelled 750,000 Palestinians during 1948-49." Yeah, anti-Semitic revisionist historians all agree about that lie.

He claims to be an expert on terror, at least its psychological aspects, and is part of a panel on terror of the World Federation of Scientists (WFS). Not surprisingly, these are people who think that terror is caused by "grievances" and can be contained by redressing those grievances. "A purely military cure only exacerbates the illness," they write. Tell that to Winston Churchill.

Today Strenger has a guest op-ed in Haaretz, unfortunately not on its English website, titled "The Deepest Fear." Basically it calls for Israel to accept the Palestinian claim to a "right of return." Strenger writes that Israel's recognizing such a "right" is part of the Saudi initiative, which he applauds, and that it will be part of any other Arab diplomatic initiative. While noting that Israelis generally see the "right of return" as a plan to annihilate Israel by flooding it with millions of (make-pretend) Arab "refugees," he asks why Israelis are REALLY afraid of accepting the "right of return." His answer is that accepting it would force Israel to acknowledge its moral responsibility for the Palestinian "Naqba" of 1948-49. The "Naqba" (Arabic for catastrophe) is the new nonsense word of the Israeli Far Left, used to refer to the fact that the Arabs lost the war of 1948-49 that they launched against the Jews and that a few hundred thousand "Palestinians" became "refugees" as a result of that Arab aggression.

Strenger's call for accepting the right of return as a psychological palliative for the poor Palestinians appears in Hebrew here.

Strenger argues that Israel's "fear" of admitting that it was an ultra-evil villain that "caused" the "plight" of the "Palestinians" is what prevents peace from breaking out. Curiously, the Arab "fear" of admitting to 60 years of terror, murder and genocidal aggression plays no role at all! Israelis think that if they acknowledge their moral cussedness and their ethical responsibility for the "Naqba," this will undermine their very legitimacy as a state, says Strenger. Strenger's solution? Israelis must dress in black, beat their breasts, and moan how awful we are, how sorry we are that we were mean and evil and caused pain to the Palestinians.

Now, if Israelis need to mourn and repent for being the victims of Arab aggression in 1948-49, just think about all the other historical injustices for which Jews need to apologize and repent and offer reparations. Perhaps Jews need to apologize for the suffering of German civilians during World War II. How about all those Germans who were shot by Jewish partisans in the forests of Eastern Europe? Who will help salve the psychic pains of THEIR grandchildren? Isn't it time the Jews acknowledge their role in German tribulations and offer reparations for their part in the massive sufferings that were World War II?

Think of where it could lead! China and Malaysia could apologize to Japan for being attacked by Japan. Kuwait could apologize to Iraq. The Czechs could apologize to both Germany and Russia. Ethiopia could apologize to Italy. The mind boggles!

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. Or write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

This article appeared today on The Jewish Press Blog page
(http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2007/06/ profesor-calls-for-israel-to-apologize.html).

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"LAND FOR PEACE" IS A FAILED STRATEGY
Posted by Ted Belman, June 6, 2007.

Nothing should be taken for granted. Resolution 242 didn't have to be, nor did the "land for peace" trade off have to be.

On June 5th 1967, Israel, under great threat of an imminent attack, had no choice but to defend itself. And defend itself, it did. Six days later Israel found itself in possession of what was left of the British Mandate after Jordan was removed from it.

Israel made two fateful policy decisions;

1. Rather than annex the lands pursuant to its rights under the British Mandate, Israel offered to return much of the land for peace.

2. Rather than to obliterate the al Aksa Mosque which sits on the Temple Mount, to take down the flag of Israel and to turn its management over to the Muslim Wakf.

To no avail. The Arabs, meeting three months later at Khartoum, decided on no negotiations, no recognition and no peace.

Israel clearly wanted peace not land and the Arabs wanted land (Israel's destruction), not peace.

Had Israel decided otherwise on both accounts, history would have been rewritten in Israel's favour. There may not have been a formal peace but a de facto peace.

Pursuant to Article 33 of Chapter VI of the UN Charter which provided

1. The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.

the Security Council deliberated on the terms for ending the dispute and finally in November of '67 passed Resolution 242. (Maurice Ostroff details its meaning at http://maurice-ostroff.tripod.com/id127.html)

It should be remembered that such a Chapter VI resolution is only a recommendation and to become mandatory must be followed by a Chapter VII resolution which never happened.

Obviously the Security Council could have passed anything it wanted, from demanding full retreat to recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the conquered lands.

In the end, it accepted the principal that Israel was to remain in occupation until it had negotiated "secure and recognized borders." It articulated two principals,

Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

In other words, land (but not all land) for peace. Considering that the US/Israel alliance and not yet been consummated, this was quite an accomplishment.

For forty years, the Arabs have not been willing to offer peace for land. True, Egypt entered a peace agreement for the return of "every inch" of the Sinai but Israel never received the promised peace.

Even now, pursuant to the Arab Peace Initiative, the Arabs are demanding every inch of land for vague promises of "normalization". They are further threatening the ostensible peace they are offering by demanding the "right of return".

There was no need for the peace process beginning with the Madrid Conference, then Oslo Accords, then Mitchell, then Tenent, then Zinni, then the Roadmap, then Rafah Agreement then this, then that.

All that was/is needed is for the Arabs to negotiate peace. Instead, the Arabs choose, intransigence, incitement, terrorism and war. The West responds with pressure on Israel to yield rather than pressure on the Arabs to compromise.

These remarks by Dean Rusk from The birth of the US/Israel alliance is telling,

"Your big problem is how two-and-a-half million Jews [Israel's population at the time] can live in a sea of Arabs" and."If the Arabs see an Israel they cannot live with, one that is intolerable to them, they won't back away from an arms race"

In The Conspiracy to Shrink Israel, I quote Henry Kissinger's remarks to an Iraqi diplomat in '75,

On the contrary, Israel does us more harm than good in the Arab world [..]

We can't negotiate about the existence of Israel but we can reduce its size to historical proportions.

I don't agree Israel is a permanent threat. How can a nation of three million be a permanent threat? They have a technical advantage now. But it is inconceivable that peoples with wealth and skill and the tradition of the Arabs won't develop the capacity that is needed. So I think in ten to fifteen years Israel will be like Lebanon -- struggling for existence, with no influence in the Arab world.

And that's the problem. Implicit in these quotes is the belief that the size not the existence of Israel that is the issue. Furthermore there is an acknowledgment if not a commitment to a reduced Israel to please the Arabs.

Both Israel and the US have been proven wrong. They have been attempting for the last forty years to trade land for peace and have gotten war not peace for their pains.

To the contrary, Israel should adopt another strategy. Israel should keep land for peace.

Ted Belman is a Canadian lawyer and editor of the IsraPundit.com website, an activist pro-Israel website. Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com

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THE LIE ABOUT "OCCUPATION"
Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, June 5, 2007.

Dear friends,

Today, 40 years ago, on June 5th, began one of the most miraculous wars in military history. Six days later Israel liberated large parts of its historical homeland which were until then illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt respectively.

As brilliant as the Israeli military victory was, so is the "Palestinian" propaganda victory that followed. With a single word "occupation" they managed to reverse Israel's battlefield victory with one of their own in the arena of public opinion.

The only trouble is that there has never been any "occupation," legally or otherwise. Here are some of the reasons:

1) People cannot "occupy" what is lawfully theirs to begin with.

2) Judea, Samaria and Gaza were illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt from 1948 until 1967. Israel liberated these territories from those unlawful occupiers.

3) Both Jordan and Egypt relinquished all claims to the territories when they signed peace with Israel.

4) The territories are therefore NOT occupied. They are liberated, captured or held until their fate is determined in negotiations, as decreed by UN Resolution 242. Until then the territories are possibly disputed, certainly NOT "occupied."

5) The PLO was formed in 1964. By 1967 the "Palestinians" did not yet define themselves as a separate nation from the rest of the Arab world.

6) Until 1967 there had never been any claim by "Palestinians" for a separate state, neither from Jordan nor from Egypt. The claim arose only after Israel liberated the territories.

7) Israeli communities in Judea & Samaria are not built on "Palestinian lands." That is a lie. They are built mostly on public lands. Some are partially built on lands purchased lawfully from their Arab owners.

It is amazing that despite the above facts, and other important ones not listed, the term "illegal occupation" is accepted by many as truth and constantly used by the media. In fact, the "occupation" lie is so blatant that those who repeat it either prove themselves clueless fools, or worse, they participate in the most sinister anti Israel/Jewish propaganda cabal since Nazi Germany.

This article is called "40 Years Of 'Occupation' Myths" and was written by Gerald M. Steinberg, Professor at Bar Ilan University and Executive Director, NGO Monitor. It appeared in Jewish News (UK) June 1, 2007. It is archived at
http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~steing/occupation_myths.pdf

While Israel celebrates 40 years of a reunited Jerusalem and what many still see as a miraculous victory that reversed Nasser's threat to "push the Jews into the sea", the Palestinians are celebrating 40 years of "occupation" slogans. This rhetoric has provided them with a political victory that has significantly offset the defeat of the Arab armies on the battlefield. And by erasing everything that came before the 1967 war, including the years of warfare, terror following the violent Arab rejection of the 1947 UN partition resolution, Israel's enemies have managed to rewrite history.

This "victory" on the battlefront of narratives and public relations that fuels the various boycott campaigns that are being conducted, particularly by British trade unions. The obsessive anti-Israel and often anti-semitic leaders of this movement would have no doubt found other reasons to wave war against Israel, even if there were no occupation. But the distorted images of myths have also convinced uninformed journalists, academics, diplomats, etc. that Israel is to blame. And this is where the real damage is done.

The myth that the "occupation" is the cause of the conflict, rather than a symptom and consequence, is also spread by powerful political organizations that exploit the rhetoric of humanitarian assistance and human rights. As documented by NGO Monitor, the radicals that control Christian Aid, War on Want, Human Rights Watch, etc., have worked closely with their Palestinian counterparts to promote the false claim that the "occupation" is the cause of the conflict, rather than a symptom. Just last week, Amnesty International issued its annual report covering 2006, in which the biased and often false claims regarding Israel were repeated. Despite the rocket attacks from Gaza, the continuing terror, and the warfare between Hamas and Fatah, Palestinians are patronizingly portrayed as victims of Israel.

Furthermore, this political warfare is often justified through use of a small group of Israeli who also promote the myth that "if only we were better to the Palestinians, and ended the occupation, we would have peace". Funded generously by European taxpayers and churches, various political and quasi-academic nongovernmental groups are sponsoring one-sided conferences and symposia on these topics.

But for the vast majority of Israeli, the era of simplistic slogans and wishful thinking ended with the catastrophic collapse to the "Oslo peace process", and the terror campaign in which over 1000 people were murdered. Until the Palestinians and the world accept Israel as a Jewish state, with the "secure and recognized borders" pledged in UN Resolution 242 that followed the 1967 war, the options are limited.

Yuval Zaliouk writes the Truth Provider columns. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il

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NO PYRRHIC VICTORY
Posted by Mrla, June 5, 2007.

Most of the conventional wisdom about the Six Day War is wrong. Read this article by Bret Stephens, who is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.

On the morning of June 5, 1967, a fleet of low-flying Israeli jets surprised the Egyptian air force on the ground and destroyed it. This act of military pre-emption helped save Israel from what Iraq's then-President Abdul Rahman Aref had called, only several days earlier, "our opportunity ... to wipe Israel off the map." Yet 40 years later Israel's victory is widely seen as a Pyrrhic one--"a calamity for the Jewish state no less than for its neighbors," according to a recent editorial in The Economist.

And the alternative was?

The Six Day War is supposed to be the great pivot on which the modern history of the Middle East hinges, the moment the Palestinian question came into focus and Israel went from being the David to the Goliath of the conflict. It's a reading of history that has the convenience of offering a political prescription: Rewind to the status quo ante June 5, arrange a peace deal, and the problems that have arisen since more or less go away. Or so the thinking goes.

Yet the striking fact is that all of Israel's peace agreements--with Egypt in 1979, with the Palestinians in 1993, with Jordan and Morocco in 1994--were achieved in the wake of the war. The Jewish state had gained territory; the Arab states wanted it back. Whatever else might be said for the land-for-peace formula, it's odd that the people who are its strongest advocates are usually the same ones who bemoan the apparent completeness of Israel's victory in 1967.

Great events have a way not only of reshaping the outlook for the future but also our understanding of the past, usually in the service of clarity. "Why England Slept" was an apt question to ask of Britain in the mid-1930s, but it made sense only after Sept. 1, 1939. By contrast, the Six Day War laid a thick fog over what came before. Today, the pre-1967 period is remembered (not least by many Israelis) as a time when the country's conscience was clear and respectable world opinion admired "plucky little Israel." Yet these were the same years when Israel lived within what Abba Eban, its dovish foreign minister, called "Auschwitz borders," with only nine miles separating the westernmost part of the West Bank from the Mediterranean Sea.

It is also often said today that the Six Day War humiliated the Arabs and propelled the region into future rounds of fighting. Yet President Aref of Iraq had prefaced his call to destroy Israel by describing the war as the Arabs' chance "to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948." It is said that the war inaugurated the era of modern terrorism, as the Arab world switched from a strategy of conventional confrontation with Israel to one of "unconventional" attacks. Yet hundreds of Israelis had already been killed in fedayeen raids in Israel's first 19 years of existence.

It is said that the Palestinian movement was born from Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Yet the Palestine Liberation Organization was already in its third year of operations when the war began. It is said that Israel enjoyed international legitimacy so long as it lived behind recognized frontiers. Yet those frontiers were no less provisional before 1967 than they were after. Only after the Six Day War did the Green Line come to be seen as the "real" border.

Fog also surrounds memories of the immediate aftermath of the war. To read some recent accounts, a more sagacious Israel could have followed up its historic victory with peace overtures that would have spared everyone the bloody entanglements of its occupation of the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Or, failing that, it could have resisted the lure of building settlements in the territories in order not to complicate a land-for-peace transaction.

In fact, the Israeli cabinet agreed on June 19 to offer the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan to Syria in exchange for peace deals. In Khartoum that September, the Arab League declared "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it." As for Jewish settlements, hardly any were built for years after the war: In 1972, for instance, only about 800 settlers had moved to the West Bank.

It's true that the war caused Israel to lose friends abroad. "Le peuple juif, sûr de lui meme et dominateur" ("the Jewish people, sure of themselves and domineering") was Charles de Gaulle's memorable line in announcing, in November 1967, that France would no longer supply Israel militarily. Such were the Jewish state's former friends.

On the other hand, Israel gained new friends. The U.S., whose declared policy during the war was to be "neutral in thought, word and deed," would never again pretend such indifference, something that made all the difference to Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Tens of thousands of American and European Jews immigrated to Israel after 1967, sensing it was a country not on the brink of extinction. Christian evangelicals also became Israel's firm friends, expanding the political base of American support beyond its traditionally narrow, Jewish-Democratic core.

None of this is to say that the Six Day War was an unalloyed (or unironic) blessing for Israel. By gaining control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israel swapped its old territorial insecurities for new demographic ones. As Palestinian numbers grew, Israel's efforts to find a new strategic equilibrium--first through negotiations with the PLO, later through unilateral withdrawals--became increasingly frenetic. Who knows whether they will succeed.

Then again, when the sun rose on June 5, 1967, Israel was a poor, desperately vulnerable country, which threw the dice on its own survival in the most audacious military strike of the 20th century. It is infinitely richer and more powerful today, sure in its alliance with the U.S. and capable of making concessions inconceivable 40 years ago. If these are the fruits of Israel's "Pyrrhic victory," it needs more such of them.

Contact Mrla at mrla26@aol.com

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THANK YOU, BNP
Posted by BNP Organization, June 5, 2007.

This letter was sent to letters@bnp.org.uk by Eric Gen.

As a British Jew, I'd like to say "thank you" to the BNP!

Okay -- that's probably the weirdest thing I've ever said. I grew up regarding white nationalist groups as the enemy. Probably something to do with all the swastikas, antisemitism and weird conspiracy theories (if us Jews are running the world, where's my cut?!).

Firstly, I'm glad to see you've ditched a lot of that nonsense.

Aside from the religious freaks, British Jews are pretty much indistinguishable from British Christians. We're white, we speak perfect English, we listen to the same music and eat pretty much the same food (although I've observed Jews are less keen on curry than most Christian Brits!).

We have a distinct culture, but that usually stays at home where it should be. We go to synagogue on holidays and celebrations, but we're largely secular. We have a distinct sense of humour, but that's no loss to British society. We may even "look Jewish", but then again we don't have the monopoly on big noses (have you seen Neil Warnock?!)

I'm torn between wanting to be accepted as an ordinary Brit and being proud of my distinct Jewish heritage (of which I'm equally proud).

I'm still worried about some aspects of the BNP -- some of the less "inclusive" members and some of the dodgier books on sale, but I'm glad you are here.

I can't see you ever taking power, but you serve as a vital barometer of public opinion. As the BNP gets more popular, politicians such as David Cameron might decide there's less mileage in pretending to care about the environment and kissing up to islamists. They might see it as in their interests to do something about immigration, sedition and loopy religious extremism. They might start batting for OUR SIDE.

So good luck and keep on doing what you are doing.

The British National Party (BNP) strongly advocates strengthening the British character of England and resisting the islamization of Great Britain by curtailing Muslim immigration. Early on, they were anti-semitic, but there's been a sea change, particularly since Nick Griffin became Chairman of the Party. Contact them by email at letters@bnp.org.uk or go to their website: www.bnp.org.uk

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SYRIA'S SECRET SURROGATE: THE TRUTH ABOUT FATAH AL-ISLAM'S UPRISING IN LEBANON
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 5, 2007.

Fatah al-Islam, a Palestinian Islamist group, has been waging an uprising in Lebanon which has attracted huge media coverage. Most journalists identify this group with al-Qaida or are just plain confused as to its identity. In fact, what is happening is a major deception operation by Syria, a rather typical case of how radical forces in the region fool the West, score against their adversaries, and avoid any retaliation for their deeds.

Let's first describe the story briefly, then explain the motives and proof behind it. An outline goes like this:

Step 1: Syria wants to sponsor violence and terrorism in Lebanon to bring that country back under its control and intimidate the Lebanese from supporting an international tribunal to investigate and punish those responsible for murdering Lebanon's most popular politician, former prime minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 bystanders on February 14, 2005. Since all the evidence points at Syria's leaders as the murderers, killing the investigation is their highest priority. The timing of this uprising came at the very moment that the UN Security Council was voting to hold the tribunal

Step 2: Organize and order a shadowy group of terrorists, called Fatah al-Islam, to disrupt Lebanon.

Step 3: And this is the scheme's most clever part, blame the terrorism on your victim, Lebanon's own government, and your enemy, the United States. Get some gullible or ideologically inclined journalists to talk to Syrian officials, be fed this line, and then spread it throughout the world.

So how do we know that the uprising in the Palestinian camp of Nahr al-Bared in northern Lebanon, which killed well over 100 people and led the Lebanese army to shell the camp, was a Syrian operation?

Well, first, the group itself Fatah al-Islam, is merely part of an older group, Fatah al-Intifada which has been a Syrian front group for almost 25 years. That is a rather strong hint of whose these people are and from where their pay and arms come. But there is much more.

The leader of this group is a man by the name of Colonel Abu Khaled al-Amleh. And he lives and operates out of Damascus, Syria. The Syrians do not let terrorist groups function in the country unless the regime likes them and finds them useful. That is also a major piece of evidence. But we are just getting started.

The field commander of the group is a man named Shaker al-Absi. He has been working as a Syrian agent since 1983. In 2003, Absi joined the insurgency in Iraq against the Western forces there. Of course, Syria is the insurgency's main sponsor. Hundreds of fighters cross the Syria-Iraq border, reportedly there is a special government bus that takes them to a good jumping-off point. This record reinforces the idea that Absi is working for Syria.

In Iraq, Absi worked with Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaida -- Usama bin Ladin's group -- there. There is no inconsistency here. After all, when Syria helps the insurgency, most of the forces they assist are led by al-Qaida. While al-Qaida is by no means controlled by Syria, the radical duo has some common interests.

Mr. Absi was involved in the murder of a U.S. diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Jordan on October 28, 2003. Naturally, the Jordanians wanted Syria to extradite him so he could be questioned and punished. Syria refused, clearly because its regime would not benefit from having Absi tell what he knew, especially about Syria's own role in his activities. In 2004, Jordan sentenced Absi to death in absentia.

So instead of turning him over to Jordan, the Syrian authorities announced that they were going to punish Absi themselves. Accordingly, they claimed Absi was sentenced to three years imprisonment for his violent actions in their own country. Three years is a joke. Terrorists who attack the Syrian regime are put to death or given very long sentences. Often, they happen to die conveniently in a manner that used to be described as "shot while trying to escape."

And of course there is no evidence that Absi was ever in prison and certainly not for three years since only two years later he is back in business as a terrorist. For all we know during this period in between he was living very nicely and engaged in training himself and others.

On being "released," in November 2005, Absi comes back to Syria and goes to Lebanon. Again, if the Syrian government thought he would do anything against their interests there he would not have been allowed to go so easily and conveniently. Immediately, Absi "split" his old group and began Fatah al-Islam. The ideology of the group, merging Arab nationalism and Islamism, is very much in line with Syria's current political doctrine.

Within Lebanon today, independent and pro-government newspapers have run detailed articles about Absi, his Syrian credentials, and the motives of Damascus for bashing Lebanon. Since Hariri's murder three years ago, there have been 15 major terrorist attacks, mostly aimed at assassinating critics of Syrian attempts to dominate Lebanon. There is a pattern here. Meanwhile, Syrian officials have been briefing some Western journalists, who know no Arabic and have no serious background in studying the Middle East. They tell these people that Fatah al-Islam is a front for Lebanon's government and even the United States. There is no evidence that this is true. What is telling is that the articles published use precisely the same phrases employed by Syrian officials about 48 hours earlier.

The situation in Lebanon is complicated. But the majority of Lebanese want their country to be independent. They suffered under 20 years of Syrian occupation which looted the country and repressed its people systematically. The moderate, democratic leadership needs and deserves Western support against a terrorist offensive directed by the neighboring dictatorship. It would be a pity to be fooled, by such transparent schemes as the Fatah al-Islam affair, into supporting the oppressors.

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, has written and edited 50 books on the Middle East. His latest book, The Truth About Syria, has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

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NPR -- WELL-KNOWN AS NATIONAL PALESTINIAN RADIO
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 5, 2007.

Today, June 5th on the 40th Anniversary of the Six Day War. NPR, officially National Public Radio, speaks or rants about it. Most of NPR's broadcasting on June 5 was slanted with usually only the pro-Palestinian person interviewed or slant given.

One exception was the excellent interview on WBEZ- 91.5 FM (Chicago's version of NPR) with Dr. Michael Oren whose excellent interview will unfortunately be cancelled out in peoples' minds by a similar interview tomorrow June 6th with Norm Finkelstein. Dr. Oren researched and revealed that during the weeks before June 5, 1967 Egypt, Syria and Jordan had mobilized their forces to attack Israel, broadcast inflammatory propaganda for weeks that they would destroy Israel and the push the Jews into the sea -- a dire threat which was proven when actual Arab countries' official secret documents were revealed. (1) Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened to close the Straits of Tiran, a vital passageway that could cut off Israel's southern water link to the outside world. Nasser used a bogus Soviet tip that Israel was about to invade Syria as a pre-text to kick out UN peacekeepers from Gaza and the Sinai Desert Peninsula.

I recall that the rabbinic burial societies were digging graves in the parks of Tel Aviv for the expected casualties. "Luckily" there were only 700 Israelis killed during this miracle victory.

Egypt's promised threat was so great that Ezer Weizmann, (who had taken over from Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin after he suffered a nervous breakdown in May) launched a pre-emptive air strike at dawn on June 5th. The Israeli pilots destroyed the Air Forces of Egypt and Syria -- mostly on the ground. Israel then controlled the skies which enabled her to survive the planned Arab Muslim onslaught with superior numbers and equipment. Israel was able to win a huge victory -- called a miracle -- recovering the Jewish sites in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem as well as securing the Golan Heights and the Sinai Desert. This victory gave Israel her ancient Jewish sacred sites and provided Israel with defensible borders in a dangerous neighborhood.

But, that's not the "spin" NPR is giving their listeners. Eric Westervelt of NPR interviews one family and builds a misleading case of how Israel is somehow at fault for their personal misery, ignoring the reality of converging Arab Armies intent on eliminating Israel. Despite Israel's pleas with Jordan's King Hussein to not join the fighting, Hussein listened to Egypt's President Mubarak's lies that Egypt was winning and his tanks were approaching Tel Aviv. Hussein's snipers had been shooting from those parts of Jerusalem controlled by Jordan into West Jewish Jerusalem with75mm shells. 900 buildings were destroyed and 20 Israelis killed in a relentless barrage. Jordanian jets attacked the coastal cities of Hadera and Netanya. Jordanian long-range guns shelled the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Throughout this, the Israeli orders held firm: Israel did not return fire. (3)

However, when Hussein began to move infantry from North and South toward Jerusalem, Israel began to respond. Jordan was pushed out of Jerusalem which they had illegally occupied for 19 years from 1949 to 1967. Until then of all the world's countries, only Great Britain recognized Jordan's legitimacy of control over Jerusalem.

During its 19 years of occupation, Jordan ejected all Jews who lived there while desecrating 58 synagogues and cemeteries -- using the gravestones of the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives for urinals and roads. To say that "East"Jerusalem was Arab is false. Arab Muslims and Arab Christians dominated and controlled "East" Jerusalem only because the Jews who had lived there were either murdered or deported.

NPR also ignores the fact that Arabs who live in Jerusalem are allowed their civil rights to vote for city offices -- a right not granted to Jews who live (or lived) in Arab countries for 2 millennium. Arab Muslims who lived in Israel under Jewish government, had a much better standard of living than those Arabs living under Yassir Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas and in Arab countries in terms of longevity, lower child mortality, better education, greater employment and higher standards of living.

NPR will continue the "World View Harangue According to Jerome McDonnell" tomorrow, June 6th, with Norman Finkelstein, who has been completely repudiated by most educated observers as a known anti-Israel, anti-Jewish professor at DePaul University, Chicago. Finkelstein is currently fighting against losing his own tenure for "cause" of biased teaching.

Jerome McDonnell is known to be an apologist and spokesman for the Arab Muslim Palestinians. His interviews are invariably with either slick Arabs, Muslims or Leftist Jews who hate either their own Jewishness or the Land of Israel. If he happens to have a more balanced match of Arab/Jew speakers, you will note that the Jew usually is not as good a speaker as the Arab and comes across less literate or less convincing. (3)

McDonnell replaced Sondra Gair upon her death and changed Sondra's excellent format of not only interviewing all sides fairly but usually having two opposing speakers at the same time. McDonnell has held a biased agenda against the nation of Israel from his earliest broadcasts.

You can still download McDonnell's noon hour of June 5th today with Dr. Michael Oren and a 20 minute double interview "Out of the Melting Pot and Into the Fire" by Jessica Partnow, Alex Stonehill (Palestinian in Ram'Allah) and Sarah Stuteville (Jew in Beit El) on a Pod cast at http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/program_wv.aspx

Or call WBEZ-91.5 FM: Chicago Public Radio (Chicago's version of NPR) at Ph# of WBEZ Chicago NPR is 312-832-9150 President & General Manager is Torey Malatia.

And you can listen June 6th to the stunningly repudiated Norm Finkelstein.

###

1. "Six Days of War: June 1967: & the Making of the Modern Middle East" by Dr. Michael Oren, senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at Jerusalem's Shalem Center, Jerusalem Post, June 5, 2007.

2. "Six Day War: Shaping the Modern Middle East" by Eric Westervelt, First Report in a five-part series, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10619929

3. "6 Days of War Day 1" June 5, 2007 Chicago Public Radio with Jerome McDonnell, Worldview Host with Dr. Michael Oren ibid & Jessica Partnow, interview of Arab & Jews
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/program_wv.aspx (Available as Podcast or your computer).

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@gwinston.interaccess.com

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AMAZING DUBAI! LAND OF OPULANCE AND CHILD SLAVERY
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 5, 2007.

The amazing land of Dubai.

But recall, our gasoline dollars are paying for all this.

Note too the article below. While the world's obscenely wealthy can luxuriate at Burj el-Arab, 6-9 year-old asian and african boys live as indentured servants or slaves to Dubai's wealthy, trained to be 'camel jockeys' so these same Dubai wealthy can enjoy their traditional sport, even as the under-aged jockeys suffer injury and death in the races. The camel racers like to use little boys as jockeys to reduce the weight that the racing camel must bear.

and note that we are not talking about Dubai children. No, the Emir imports them from impoverished Muslim countries in Africa and East Asia to feed his lust for this sport.

Now that's child abuse, and the emir of Dubai is black-mailing president Bush to stop the lawsuit against this form of Arab child abuse...lest Dubai use its oil clout in a manner adverse to USA interests.

Obviously, this sport is very very important to the Emir...more important, it would seem, than his participation in the 'war on terror.' (otherwise, why threaten to pull out of the war?)

I wonder why none of the NGOs that constantly publish unfounded or exagerated anti-Israel diatribes about fictitious abuses, or about legitimate self-defense mis-represented as abuse, cannot find time on their agendas to investigate this barbaric hold-out of real child slavery and institutionalized child abuse.

But..wait...let's not be to hasty. Dubai is our ally in the 'war on terror'.

This comes from Gulf News -- Gulf in the Media: news of the Arab gulf states
(www.gulfinthemedia.com/index.php?id=316592&news_type=Top&lang=en). It is entitled "UAE's Dubai leader asks Bush to help dismiss slavery lawsuit."

Agence France-Presse -- 05 June, 2007

The Emir of Dubai has sought President George W. Bush's help in getting US courts to dismiss a child-slavery lawsuit against him, according to court papers filed Monday.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktum, ruler of Dubai and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates nation of which the city is part, wrote Bush in February about the lawsuit.

The suit was filed in December by a group of parents charging the Emir of enslaving thousands of children to breed, train and ride camels for the racing circuit.

Warning that the lawsuit was 'causing an unnecessary interference' in US-UAE relations, and recalling that the UAE is 'a key partner in the global war against terrorism,' the Sheikh asked for Bush to get involved in the case.

'I would therefore appreciate your personal attention to ensuring the United States government's support for dismissal of the entire case,' wrote the Emir of Dubai in a two-page letter that his defense lawyers presented in court.

He said the lawsuit 'may complicate our ongoing and already effective efforts to resolve the issues addressed in the litigation.'

The UAE in 2005 banned child labor in the camel racing business and signed an agreement with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to repatriate thousands of children and compensate their parents, defense lawyers said.

UNICEF has put the UAE cost of the repatriation scheme at nine million dollars and said 1,000 children so far have been returned to their homes.

Other court documents shown Monday include a December letter from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telling the UAE foreign minister that Washington was 'carefully' considering the request for dismissal 'and will take appropriate action.'

'We appreciate the efforts made by the United Arab Emirates to regulate the treatment of camel jockeys,' Rice added in her letter.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that from the 1970s, up to 30,000 children, some as young as two, were taken from their families from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sudan and Mauritania and sold into virtual slavery in the UAE's camel racing business.

The Emir of Dubai's brother, Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al-Maktum, is also a defendant in the lawsuit.

[Editor's Note: Back in 2005, we were assured that the Arabs had paid for the development of robots that would substitute for the young boys as camel jockeys. See, for example, Mordechai Ben-Menachem, "I don't know whether we should laugh or cry at this one,"
http://www.think-israel.org/nov05bloged.html#nov05.246. So which is it? High tech or lowdown slavery?]

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

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POLISH GIRL'S HOLOCAUST DIARY UNVEILED
Posted by Shaul and Aviva Ceder, June 5, 2007.

This was written by Aron Heller, writer for the Associated Press.

The diary of a 14-year-old Jewish girl dubbed the "Polish Anne Frank" was unveiled on Monday, chronicling the horrors she witnessed in a Jewish ghetto -- at one point watching a Nazi soldier tear a Jewish baby away from his mother and kill him with his bare hands.

The diary, written by Rutka Laskier in 1943 shortly before she was deported to Auschwitz, was released by Israel's Holocaust museum more than 60 years after she recorded what is both a daily account of the horrors of the Holocaust in Bedzin, Poland and a memoir of the life of a teenager in extraordinary circumstances.

"The rope around us is getting tighter and tighter," the teenager wrote in 1943, shortly before she was deported to Auschwitz. "I'm turning into an animal waiting to die."

Within a few months Rutka was dead and, it seemed, her diary lost. But last year, a Polish friend who had saved the notebook finally came forth, exposing a riveting historical document.

"Rutka's Notebook." The 60-page memoir includes innocent adolescent banter, concerns and first loves -- combined with a cold analysis of the fate of European Jewry.

Some 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II, after European Jews were herded into ghettos, banned from most jobs and forced to wear yellow stars to identify them.

"I simply can't believe that one day I will be allowed to leave this house without the yellow star. Or even that this war will end one day. If this happens I will probably lose my mind from joy," she wrote on Feb. 5, 1943.

"The little faith I used to have has been completely shattered. If God existed, He would have certainly not permitted that human beings be thrown alive into furnaces, and the heads of little toddlers be smashed with gun butts or shoved into sacks and gassed to death."

Reports of the gassing of Jews, which were not common knowledge in the West by then, apparently had filtered into the Bedzin ghetto, which was near Auschwitz, Yad Vashem experts said.

The following day she opened her entry with a heated description of her hatred toward her Nazi tormentors. But then, in an effortless transition, she described her crush on a boy named Janek and the anticipation of a first kiss.

"I think my womanhood has awoken in me. That means, yesterday when I was taking a bath and the water stroked my body, I longed for someone's hands to stroke me," she wrote. "I didn't know what it was, I have never had such sensations until now."

Later that day, she shifted back to her harsh reality, describing how she watched as a Nazi soldier tore a Jewish baby away from his mother and killed him with his bare hands.

The diary chronicles Rutka's life from January to April 1943. She shared it with her friend Stanislawa Sapinska, who she met after Rutka's family moved into a home owned by Sapinska's family, which had been confiscated by the Nazis to be included in the Bedzin ghetto. Sapinska came to inspect the house and the girls -- one Jewish, one Christian -- formed a deep bond.

When Rutka feared she would not survive, she told her friend about the diary. Sapinska offered to hide it in the basement under the floorboards. After the war, she returned to reclaim it.

"She wanted me to save the diary," Sapinska, now in her 80s, recalled Monday. "She said 'I don't know if I will survive, but I want the diary to live on, so that everyone will know what happened to the Jews.'"

Sapinska stashed the diary in her home library for more than 60 years. She said it was a precious memento and thought it to be too private to share with others. Only at the behest of her young nephew did she agree to hand it over last year.

"He convinced me that it was an important historical artifact," she said in Polish.

In 1943, Rutka was the same age as Anne Frank, the Dutch teenager whose Holocaust diary has become one of the most widely read books in the world. Yad Vashem said Rutka's newly discovered diary was authenticated by experts and Holocaust survivors.

Rutka's father, Yaakov, was the family's only survivor. He died in 1986. But unlike Anne Frank's father, he kept his painful past inside. After the war, he moved to Israel, where he started a new family. His Israeli daughter, Zahava Sherz, said her father never spoke of his other children, and the diary introduced her to the long-lost family she never knew.

"I was struck by this deep connection to Rutka," said Sherz, 57. "I was an only child, and now I suddenly have an older sister. This black hole was suddenly filled, and I immediately fell in love with her."

"I have a feeling that I am writing for the last time," Rutka wrote on Feb. 20, 1943, as Nazi soldiers began gathering Jews outside her home for deportation.

"I wish it would end already! This torment; this is hell. I try to escape from these thoughts of the next day, but they keep haunting me like nagging flies. If only I could say, it's over, you only die once ... but I can't, because despite all these atrocities, I want to live, and wait for the following day."

However, Rutka would write again. Her last entry was dated April 24, 1943, and her last written words were: "I'm very bored. The entire day I'm walking around the room. I have nothing to do."

In August, she and her family were sent to Auschwitz, where she is believed to have been killed upon arrival.

Contact the Ceders at ceder@netvision.net.il

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NEWS FROM HEBRON ON THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SIX DAYS WAR
Posted by Sergio Tessa, June 5, 2007.

Providence wanted that today my physiotherapist was ill, so I had the "day off".

Today is the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Six Days War.

The terrorist supporters "Peace Now" and ISM, which are just ideological fascists who want to clean Hebron, the first Jewish City, from all Jewish presence, chose this day to declare a "large demonstration" for a Judenrein Hebron (less than 200 of them arrived in Hebron! See picture).

So, I decide to walk a few minutes and take pictures of them for the "Ronkowsky" Museum of Collaboration With The Enemies and Exterminators of The Jews, to be built the day we'll really have a JEWISH State.

The police did not allow me to get close to that pathetic yet dangerous small crowd, financed by all the enemies of Israel, by the European Union and the Arab countries. So I had to take pictures from far away.

Here's a picture of the extreme leftist weasels There were about ten times more police and army than Peace Now and ISM foreigners (on the left with red caps)

This next is a picture of a counter demonstrator from our side (Nadia Matar) with a placard that says it all.

The Italians rightly and proudly say that "In Rome we were writing poetry while in England they were still painting their faces in blue", but Jews have one even better...: "Hebron was already a Jewish City when Europe was still a swamp" :-)

Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net.

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HISTORIAN FINDS PROOF OF ARAB ARMIES INTENT TO DESTROY ISRAEL
Posted by Barbara Sommer, June 5, 2007.

This was written by Steve Linde and it appeared today in the Jerusalem Post
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1180960609020&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull.

Those who call the Six Day War a disaster or a Pyrrhic victory are grossly mistaken, because they overlook the fact that Israel wasn't destroyed, historian Michael Oren told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

In an interview on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of war on June 5, 1967, Oren said his research of documents in Arab countries had revealed clearly that the Arabs had planned to destroy Israel.

Although this seems obvious to Israel sympathizers who hold to the traditional story of the Arabs' responsibility for the outbreak of war, the intervening decades have seen the promulgation of a myth that Israel was not really in danger.

"The biggest myth going is that somehow there was not a real and immediate Arab threat, that somehow Israel could have negotiated itself outside the crisis of 1967, and that it wasn't facing an existential threat, or facing any threat at all," said Oren, who is a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at Jerusalem's Shalem Center and author of Six Days of War: June 1967. He noted that this was the premise of Tom Segev's book, 1967: Israel, the War and the Year That Transformed the Middle East. "What's remarkable is that all the people alleging this -- not one of them is working from Arabic sources. It's quite extraordinary when you think about it. It's almost as if Israel were living in a universe by itself. It's a deeply solipsistic approach to Middle East history."

What's behind the myth, Oren argued, is "a more pervasive, ongoing effort to show that Israel bears the bulk, if not the sole responsibility, for decades of conflict in the Arab world, and that the Arabs are the aggrieved party.

"It's an attempt to show that Israel basically planned the Six Day War in advance, knowing that it was going to expand territorially. My position is that it was just the opposite. Israel was taken aback by the crisis, unprepared for it and panicked, believing it faced a true existential threat, and did not plan to expand territory.

"It did everything it could to keep Jordan and Syria out of the war. My reading of the Arabic documents show that the Arabs had real plans to attack and destroy the State of Israel."

Oren said Israel's strategic relationship with the US began with the war.

"The United States, which previously regarded Israel as a friendly country but one that impaired its relations with the Arab world, suddenly realized that the Jewish state was in fact a regional superpower," he said. "The US subsequently forged an alliance with Israel that has remained ever since."

The first person to recognize that the war had dramatically changed the geopolitical balance in the Middle East, according to Oren, was US president Lyndon Johnson, who initiated a peace plan later embodied in UN Security Council Resolution 242.

"You can actually see 242 coming out of Johnson's head on June 5, 1967, including the notion that Israel would not have to return to the 1967 borders," Oren said. "Johnson is saying that particularly the West Bank border is not a defensible border; it's only eight miles across to the sea, and Israel should not have to go back to that border."

The war, Oren said, marked "the emergence for the first time of a US-Israel strategic relationship, as the Johnson administration wakes up on June 12, 1967, and says, 'Oh my God, we've got a regional superpower on our hands. We can't afford not to have it as an ally.'"

Oren acknowledged that the Six Day War also led to the establishment of "controversial settlements" in the West Bank and Gaza, to the ongoing conflict over Jerusalem and the relentless debate over Palestinian statehood.

"And yet it was also the 1967 war that inaugurated the peace process," he said. "UN Resolution 242, enacted in its wake, remains the cornerstone of all negotiations and created the conditions for Palestinian self-rule. The current Arab League peace plan calls for 'full Israeli withdrawal' to the June 4, 1967, lines, and the 'road map' plan endorsed by the United States and much of the international community provides for the emergence of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

"None of this would be possible if the West Bank and Gaza were still occupied by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, as they were in 1967, and if the Arab world were still consumed with how best to make war, rather than peace, with Israel."

The war also "vastly enhanced" Israel's relationship with Jewish communities abroad, Oren said.

"Before the war, some of the leading Jewish organizations in the US were reserved, if not distant, in their relationship with Israel," he said. "But as Arab armies massed on Israel's borders, Diaspora Jews confronted the possibility of witnessing a second Holocaust within a single generation, and later reveled in the joy of Israel's success.

"Many were inspired by the reunification of the State of Israel with the biblical Land of Israel, with Bethlehem, Hebron and above all, Jerusalem.

"Contributions poured into Israel, enabling it to strengthen its economy and its ability to absorb new immigrants, and American Jewish organizations lobbied for its defense."

In the war itself, Oren said, Israel had high casualty rates, losing more than 700 soldiers, and "what is widely unknown is that we lost about 20 percent of our planes.

"It was not in any way a picnic, not a walkover, particularly not on the Jordanian-Syrian front," he said. "The territorial outcomes of the war were dramatic in the extreme; Israel almost quadrupled its territorial size."

Arab casualty rates are difficult to gauge, Oren said, but there were probably more than 15,000 dead and 10,000 captured, with about $2 billion of Soviet equipment destroyed on the field of battle.

As a quirky aside, Oren also noted that the Six Day War actually lasted seven days. "Mount Hermon was actually taken on the seventh day of the Six Day War," he said.

Contact Barbara Sommer at sommer_1_98@yahoo.com

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TWO MURDEROUS COVENANTS
Posted by Smooth Stone, June 5, 2007.

Folks, for quite a while I have been trying to recreate the brilliant Two Murderous Covenants reprinted from The Canadian Jewish Herald in October 1980 originally in a bitmap, and tonite I was finally blessed to be able to do it and convert it to an HTML table. With many thanks to Karl who has sent it to me in the first place and as a bitmap more than once because it is just so damn important.

Folks, if you are so inclined, please plaster this superb comparative on your blogs (with a link back to Smooth Stone which would be appreciated.)

With love of Israel,

Smooth


THE PLO COVENANTTHE NAZI COVENANT

Palestine is an INDIVISIBLE part of the homeLAND of the ARABS and the Palestinians are an INTEGRAL part of the ARAB NATION

We demand the UNION of all GERMANS to form a GREAT GERMANY
Palestine is the home LAND of the Palestinian PEOPLEWe demand LAND and TERRITORY for our PEOPLE
The Palestinians are those ARABS born of a Palestinian FATHER

The Palestine CHARACTERISTIC is TRANSMITTED from PARENTS to children
None but those of GERMAN BLOOD whatever their creed, may be MEMBERS of the NATION or CITIZENS of the STATE
JEWS who had resided in Palestine UNTIL the BEGINNING of the invasion of the ZIONIST invasion (Aliyah 1882) will be considered PalestiniansJEWS therefore, may not be a member of the RACE
NON GERMANS are forthwith required to DEPART from the REICH
and requires ALL States to consider ZIONISM illegitimate and to OUTLAW its EXISTENCEWe demand the DEATH of the CRIMINALS against the nation
The Balfour Declaration the Mandate and Partition of Palestine are illegal and deemed NULL and VOIDWe demand the ABOLITION of the PEACE TREATIES (Versailles)
The Palestine Liberation Organization is responsible for the struggle and will perform its ROLE in the realization of the GOALS of this CharterThe LEADERS of the NAZI Party demand unquestioned AUTHORITY and swear to go on to secure fulfillment of the POINTS of this Programme
The COVENANT shall NOT BE AMENDEDThis Covenant is declared to be UNALTERABLE
CAIRO 1968MUNICH 1920

Article 2 Defines Palestine as an indivisible territorial unit with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate 1920 including Trans Jordan

THE ARTICLES ARE ABSTRACTED FROM THE PALESTINIAN NATIONAL COVENANT ENGLISH RENDITION PUBLISHED BY THE PLO RESEARCH CENTRE BEIRUT 1969

THE POINTS ARE ABSTRACTED FROM NATIONAL SOCIALISM BY ROBERT MURPHY -- DOCUMENT THE PROGRAMME OF THE PARTY OF HITLER ENGLISH RENDITION BY E.T.S. DUGDALE MUNICH (NACHFOLGER) 1932

YOU  BE  THE  JUDGE

From the CANADIAN JEWISH HERALD TISHRI 5741 -- OCT. 1980 INTERIM PEACE EDITION, page 126

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF HEBREW U.
Posted by Angela Bertz, June 5, 2007.

Maria Bennet was only 24 in July 2002. In May of that same year she wrote a column for a newspaper in her hometown of San Diego, in which she spoke of her friends and families concerns for her safety while she was in Israel; "I appreciate their concern. But there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be right now. "I have a front-row seat for the history of the Jewish people. I am a part of the struggle for Israel's survival."

I wonder if anyone at the University and College Union UCU has ever taken a moment to look up some rather interesting statistics. For instance did they know that all seven universities in Israel feature in the top 500 of best universities around the world? The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is actually in the top 100. Maria Bennet was doing a masters program in Judaic Studies there, and was in her second year.

Benjamin Blustein was 25 and in Israel on a two year study program. He was doing a two year course in Jewish studies, which he later planned on teaching. He was also doing a Hebrew language course at the Hebrew University. By some cruel twist of fate, on that sunny day in July he was to have flown home later that day to visit his family in Pennsylvania. He never made it.

I wonder if the members of the UCU remember where they were eating their lunch on the 31st July 2002. Maybe it was in the cafeteria of one of there campuses. On the night before, Mohammed Oudeh, a Palestinian Arab and a resident of East Jerusalem, which enabled him to move freely around Jerusalem, scaled the wall of the Hebrew University and hid some very macabre contents under a bush. At that point nine innocent people, including Maria and Benjamin, had less than 24 hours to live.

The next morning, Mohammed used his position as a contract painter to enter the Hebrew U campus. He attracted no undue attention as he showed his card to the security at the University gate. Proceeding to where he had planted a yet to be detonated bomb the previous evening, he took the contents, which included shrapnel, to maximize the devastating effects of the ensuing explosion, to the cafeteria.

Janis Coulter, 36 had been raised as an Episcopalian, but had a Jewish grandmother. She sought spiritual fulfillment by converting to Judaism. Her Rabbi would say of her "She saw it as going back to her roots. Intellectually, Judaism appealed to her -- it made sense to her and that she found it beautiful". Janis worked at the Hebrew University foreign student department in New York and on the day she was destined to die she had been accompanying a group of students, who had arrived to study at the University.

Shortly after 13.30, as the Frank Sinatra cafeteria was packed with students, many of them foreigners, the bomb was detonated by the use of a cell phone, set off by a remote control. The cafeteria was gutted, killing nine innocent people and wounding 85 more.

Dina Carter, 37, described as a special person by one of her work colleagues, had also converted to Judaism. In 1990 she moved to Israel where she worked as a librarian and archivist at the Hebrew University Campus. As part of her ongoing studies for starting a library science course she was at the University that day to take a Hebrew Language exam. She stopped at the cafeteria before the exam.

Later that day Hamas held a rally in the streets of Gaza, drawing a crowd of some 10,000 supporters, many of them children, who jubilantly waved Hamas flags to celebrate the attack on the University.

David Gritz 24 was his parent's only child, and a dual citizen of the USA and France. He had arrived in Jerusalem only two weeks prior to the bombing, with the help of a $12,000 scholarship, to start a course in Jewish studies. His parents always feared for his safety, and their worst fears were realized as they stood over his grave, as he was buried in Paris.

The rally drew some sobering comment from masked Hamas speakers "This operation today is a part of a series of operations we will launch from everywhere in Palestine", and just in case this left any doubt, many people at the rally knelt to the announcement that they "would succeed against the enemy of G-d."

David (Diego) Ladowski 29 was originally from Argentina and had joined the Foreign Ministry in 2001. On the day of the bombing he was less than two weeks away from taking up a position at the Israeli Embassy in Peru. He went to the University that day to submit his final paper for an M.A he was pursuing in public administration.

A few days later Mohammed Oudeh was arrested, along with four other people from East Jerusalem. Ten more were picked up in the Palestinian city of Ramallah. The group all admitted their affiliation, to the now "democratically elected" Hamas government, who were not only responsible for the attack at the university, but for eight more attacks, which claimed the lives of 35 innocent Israelis, including 11 at a café in Jerusalem in March of that year.

Levnina Spruch 61 was head of the university's student body and had worked there since she left the army 33 years before. That day she came to the cafeteria with her co-worker Daphna Spruch 61, who had once been a student at the university and now worked as the systems coordinator. Levina was killed instantly and Daphna suffered serious head wounds, which despite an initial improvement in her condition she later died of her injuries.

Prof. Menahem Magidor, president of the Hebrew University had the following to say in an issued editorial "the sons of evil perhaps killed men and women who were dear to us, but they will not kill our dream and our determination to continue to build a civilized society here, one based on reason".

Revital Barashi 30 came from a family of 13 children. For the past seven years she had worked in the Law Faculty as a student adviser. In 2000 she had been named as the University's most outstanding worker. Described by her colleagues as "talented, cheerful, and always willing to help others", she survived for two weeks, remaining in a coma until succumbing to serious head injuries.

The UCU recently fell short of calling for an all-out boycott of Israel, resorting instead to passing a motion and circualating a call from Palestinians for an academic boycott, to all its branches. The ridiculous and completely one sided motion presented by this supposedly "academic organization" was nothing short of banal trite, better suited to a third grade Palestinian history book. Its reasons ranged from the absurd, to something resembling twilight zone rationality. It deplored Israeli checkpoints, curfews, invasions and closures, yet completely ignored Palestinian policies, which have for years preached intolerance and hatred, demonized their youth and more lately, thrust an already almost lawless society into the brink of civil war through internal fighting, as if they were void of any culpability.

Part of the motion called for a UK wide campus tour for Palestinian academics. Maybe on the basis of fair-mindedness the members of the UCU should spend a day at the cafeteria of the Hebrew University and try to come to grips with what it must be like to live under the constant threat of Palestinian terrorism, which not only ended nine lives that day, but has killed over 1000 Israelis in more than 25,000 attacks. It seems almost unbelievable that people who claim to be "academics" can totally ignore these indesputable facts and at the same time belittle themselves, by revering people who have made terrorism a way of life.

Still it's not all bad news. On another survey of world university ratings The Al Quds, a Palestinian University in East Jerusalem was voted in at number 6,459. Maybe if the Palestinians put as much effort into achieving academic excellence as they do in Israel, instead of using their university campuses as breeding and recruiting grounds for terrorism, they could leap up in the ratings and even create a better future for their children.

Contact Angela Bertz at angela03@netvision.net.il

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WINNING AGAINST ISRAEL'S ACADEMIC FIFTH COLUMN
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 5, 2007.

The campaign by Israel Academia Monitor and others against Israel's academic fifth column reached a new level of success this evening. The prime time political debate show "Politics" on Channel One television devoted about a half hour to the behavior of Israel's leftwing extremist anti-Israel professors and to their seditious promotion of international boycotts of Israel. The two stars of the debate were Prof. Gerald Steinberg, who operates NGO Monitor (a web site somewhat similar to Israel Academia Monitor but focused on anti-Israel Non-Governmental Organizations), and Nadav Haetzni, an eloquent lawyer and columnist for Maariv who is on the Israeli political Right. They explained at length that the Israeli professors running to Britain and elsewhere to promote the boycott of Israel are anti-democratic and treasonous, people who are incapable of persuading the Israeli public democratically to adopt their agenda and so then team up with enemies of Israel overseas to impose their agenda against the will of Israelis.

They were joined by three people from the left, the director of Peace Now, a representative (the son of Amira Hass) of the "Yesh Gvul" extremist group that promotes insurrection among Israeli soldiers, and a left-leaning ex-general. All three of these denounced the behavior of those who go abroad to incite boycotts against Israel (even the Yesh Gvul guy!). Finally the panel featured Prof. Rachel Giora, one of the most extremist and battiest Israel-haters at Tel Aviv University. Giora, whose discourse on the show was so amazingly arrogant and irrational, went on at length about why she supports the boycott and how the anti-Semites in Britain calling for the boycott are the true friends of Israel -- the proof being that many of the leftists there boycotting Israel are themselves British Jews. Some proof.

Part of the TV debate wandered off topic and developed into an argument of Right vs. Left in Israel. But other than the ultra-extremist Giora, all accepted the proposition that debate over Israeli defense and national policy is properly conducted among Israelis and that it is anti-democratic to drag in hostile foreign organizations. Steinberg and Haetzni scored many points by pointing out how all the radical anti-Israel groups of the Left in Israel are maintained and funded by hostile foreign interests. The entire debate was clearly won by the Right. The most effective factor determining the outcome of the debate and the perception was the fact that Giora came in with her hair dyed purple, making scowling facial expressions, and she quite seriously looked like a circus clown. No doubt thus she was perceived by the public. (The TV show has huge viewership!) Before IAM's activities, the mainstream media were unaware of these seditious academics.

In a different part of the show, a series of lefties ranted on about how terrible Israel's victory in 1967 in the Six Day War was because it meant Israel became an occupier. Clearly being annihilated and thrown into the sea would have been a better alternative in the minds of these people. Uzi Landau from the Likud rebutted them well. Then the show called in a pollster who had just asked the Israeli public whether the Six Day War victory was an achievement for Israel or a problem. 90% said an achievement and 2/3 of THOSE said a fantastic achievement. So the Left's latest assault on Israeli survival, painting the Six Day War victory as another catastrophe (like the 1948 'Naqba'), just is not working.

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. Or write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

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FALLACIES ABOUT DIPLOMACY; AGGRESSOR'S "PEACE PLAN"
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 5, 2007.

ISRAELI P.R.

The government of Israel approved a proposal to set up an office for P.R., to coordinate, clarify, and instruct in public relations. Dr. Aaron Lerner wonders what good is clarifying the message, when the policy behind it is muddled. For example, would the P.R. policy call Egypt a cooperator or a failure in blocking arms smuggling into Gaza? Would the P.R. policy call Abbas a moderate force for peace or an adversary or useless for not deploying his large forces against Hamas terrorism? What does Israel want, regarding Gaza, that the Arabs suspend terrorism or that a ceasefire merely gives terrorists time to arm and instead they must disband terrorist organizations? (IMRA, 5/23).

Ron Ben-Yishai of Yediot Ahronot thinks that Hamas would win a civil war in Gaza. He advises that Israel would not gain by letting the two groups of terrorists exhaust themselves against each other. They continue to fight against Israel, too (IMRA, 5/16). The victor usually gains military experience and armaments.

Deftly enunciated, a poor policy does more harm than good. So much for P.R..

LESS THAN TRUTHFUL

Noam Chomsky was the guest on the Israeli, radio-TV show, "Democracy Now." Prompted by host Amy Goodman, he rebuked Prof. Steven Plaut for exposing the falsity and vulgar insinuations of Holocaust-denier Prof. Norman Finkelstein. Prof. Plaut asked for time on the show to defend himself. The show's representative stated that it does not let people appear by themselves, for that would not be balanced. Plaut would have to debate his attacker. Plaut likes debate, but says that Finkelstein doesn't debate, he just calls names. Plaut got no opportunity to defend himself on their show. Subsequently, the show's guests twice criticized Plaut, and no time was given to an alternative view.

The show is not honest nor balanced (Prof. Plaut, 5/16). It is difficult to respect the establishment media when it plays such tricks.

ISRAEL WARNS THE P.A., AGAIN

Defense Min. Peretz said, "Israel cannot tolerate attacks on its citizens. We will do whatever is necessary to protect our sovereignty and to ensure the safety of our citizens. Israel will not be a party to an internal Palestinian power struggle. We will respond vigorously." (IMRA, 5/16). By firing into more empty hills?

He and the other top leaders must have said likewise at least a hundred times. Finding no consequences, the Arabs probably stopped worrying.

AGGRESSORS' "PEACE PLAN"

The world is preparing to sucker Israel into another phony peace deal. You'll know when it offers Israel 'friendly' recommendations for appeasing the Arabs.

That effort was promoted by Lebanese PM Siniora. His recommendations are standard propaganda, as if written by the State Dept. (or S. Arabia). His premise is that Israeli military action doesn't provide security. It might have, if he kept his part of the bargain (or if Israel used more force). He was supposed to bar Hizbullah forces from certain areas. Although Hizbullah is in his government, he pretends to be giving Israel friendly advice.

He declares that to resolve the Arab-Israel conflict, Israel must come to terms with the western Palestinian Arabs. (That's just what the State Dept. and Saudi agent James Baker say.) Unfortunately, the conflict is broader than implied (and the key is to defeat jihad worldwide). PM Siniora assures Israel that the Arab world would make peace (but not how it would reverse its record of violating agreements and not now it would curb the Islamic intolerance that launches war). Actually, the Saudi plan doesn't promise peace but only that the Arab League would consider 'normalizing relations' not recognizing Israel.

Pro-Arab commentators have claimed falsely that the Arab-Israel conflict is the basis for Islamic attacks all over the world. They also make that claim about the Iraq war. But such attacks preceded the Iraq war, and some of the places, such as the Philippines, have no connection with the Arab-Israel conflict.

Siniora goes on to claim that the key to an agreement is for Israel to give up all of Judea-Samaria and Gaza. That would push Israeli back within very weak borders, just what the Arab aggressors want for attacking Israel after it carries out such an agreement. This is the Muslim model for dealing with infidels. Trick them into a truce in the name of a peace agreement, demand militarily advantageous terms, and then pounce on the victim.

The agreement would bring Israel security, he, a proven liar assures it. Under his terms, however, millions of Jew-hating Arabs would settle in Israel. That's insecurity! He complains of Arab insecurity, but the Arabs are the aggressors! Against such aggression, he complains that Israel defends itself.

'Siniora uses the buzz words of disinformation such as "injustice, oppression, illegal occupation of Arab lands". He speaks of extremism (meaning terror) as a reluctant response to Israel, ignoring of over 50 years of uninterrupted aggression through war and terror -- all with the intent of eliminating Israel and her people. He forgot the illegal occupation and illegal building by Arabs on Jewish-owned land and Arab Muslim desecration of Jewish holy places whenever the Muslims were in control.' (Winston Mid East Analysis, 5/16). Injustice would be for the Arab aggressors to set the terms of agreement.

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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THEY REALLY WANT TO DESTROY US
Posted by Batya Medad, June 5, 2007.

On the Jewish Calendar, the 40th anniversary of the Six Days War was a few weeks ago, but on the Christian Calendar it's now.

People of my generation and older have very clear and distinct memories of it and the horribly tense and frightening month before. The Arab countries were very proudly and clearly stating that they wanted Israel destroyed and the Jews thrown into the sea to drown. Pharaoh had failed at it thousands of years before when G-d opened the sea and the Children of Israel marched safely through. It closed up on the Egyptians, and they drowned.

The United Nations cooperated with all of the Arab requests and hastily withdrew its troops to facilitate the Arab war aim. The United States stood by passively. Not a single country offered aid or threatened serious sanctions against the Arab threats and plans.

At a press conference on May 28, Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser said, "The existence of Israel is in itself an aggression... We will not accept any...coexistence with Israel... Today the issue is not the establishment of peace between the Arab states and Israel... The war with Israel is in effect since 1948."

On May 31 the Egyptian newspaper Al Akhbar reported, "Under the terms of the military agreement signed with Jordan, Jordanian artillery, coordinated with the forces of Egypt and Syria, is in a position to cut Israel in two at Kalkilya, where Israeli territory between the Jordan armistice line and the Mediterranean Sea is only 12 kilometers wide."

On June 1, Ahmed Shukairy, the PLO representative in Jordanian Jerusalem, responded as follows when asked what would happen to Israelis if there was a war: "Those who survive will remain in Palestine. I estimate that none of them will survive." To read the complete article, see "The War that Didn't End," June 4, 2007 in the Jerusalem Post
(www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1180960607871&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull).

Remember that this was just over twenty years after Nazi Germany was defeated and skeletal Jewish survivors were paraded on newsreels as the warm-up for post-war comedies. The United States had joined the war against Germany to save Britain and protect its own interests, not to stop the murder of Jews. Six million Jews had been murdered by the time the war was over.

Too many Israelis insist on believing that they're invincible and that the Arabs haven't really changed since the miraculously easy victory of 1967. That's the tragic flaw of Israel's Left Wing, which, contrary to the standard political labels, is truly reactionary, worshipping a past, which had a precarious, at best, security. The past they worship is the early days of the State of Israel, the time of the tzena, rationing, financial deprivation, frequent terrorism and sniper attacks on innocent Jewish civilians.

Instead of welcoming the Six Days War victory, the left-wing, and the psychological illness has spread to the "middle," all we hear from the media and most politicians is that it's "evil to rule over others." Shtuyot, as we say in Hebrew. That's not true at all. What's evil is the attempt to destroy a nation, and the Arabs still want us all dead, just like the Nazis did. The Nazis wanted Germany, and all of Europe, Judenrein, clean of Jews, and that's what the Arabs want for Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. And... that's what the UN, the US and even some Jews want for Eretz Yisrael.

That's evil.

Why can't we Jews live in our HISTORIC HOMELAND? I'd like a good answer. Honestly, I'm sick and tired of hearing that I can't live in my home. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to live in Shiloh, Israel. Why not? Would I be thrown out of Shiloh, Tennessee?

Remember; instead of being destroyed in 1967, Israel was victorious and liberated historical Jewish Land. There's nothing wrong with that. And that land must stay in our possession for the use and benefit of Jews.

We don't have to be sorry for winning and surviving.

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 article is archived at
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2007/06/they-really-want-to-destroy-us.html

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PLEASE ACCEPT THIS EXCLUSIVE INVITATION TO MEET A TRUE JEWISH HEROINE
Posted by Buddy Macy, June 4, 2007.

Please read the following email from a good friend and passionate Jewish activist, and then let me know if you would like to accept her wonderful offer.

This invitation comes from Aliza Karp.

Dear Buddy,

We have some team work to do.

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Ace Greenberg (of Bear Stearns). It was wonderful speaking with someone as remarkable and accomplished as he, but it was also frustrating. We were speaking about Hevron. He was under the impression that many soldiers are in Hevron to protect but a few settlers. I explained that the soldiers were there because of the terrorists: The easy proof of this is that the army still has to operate in Gaza, and one can no longer say they are there to protect the settlers. I also pointed out that the burial place of Yosef -- promised Jewish access in the Oslo Accords -- did not have settlers living nearby, was therefore an easy target for terrorists and, predictably, has since fallen into their hands. Having settlers actually makes the job of the soldiers easier and safer.

The frustrating part of our conversation was that when I suggested he visit Hevron, his wife shlepped him away!

A lot of people do not want to come face to face with 'settlers.'

I had a similar experience a few years ago when having lunch with Andy (of blessed memory) and Charles Bronfman in their garden in Yerushalaim. Charles described his experiences meeting with some of the top Palestinian Authority personalities. He was particularly fascinated with the rifle carrying guards clad in black who were protecting him. When he finished his account, I offered to arrange for him to meet some of the leaders of the settler movement. No way! To me it is beyond understanding, but there is something barring the communication between Jews.

Buddy, I know you are in contact with a lot of prominent people in the Jewish community here in the New York area. I wonder if they have had an occasion to meet with settlers.

Here is where I need your help. I would like you to email this letter to your contacts. I would like to offer an opportunity for each of them to meet with a most exceptional settler.

Everyone has heard of Hevron. Most people consider it a hot spot. Many Jews consider Hevron to be an Arab city and resent that Jews live there. The person who carries the most responsibility for the Jewish community residing in Hevron, the one who engineered the brave move into Hevron and managed to lay the foundation that has lasted until today, is currently in New York. Her name is Sarah Nachshon.

In his book, "Memos from the Chairman," Ace Greenberg says, "The only things that can stop our truly fabulous future are arrogance, ego and conceit." We all want a fabulous future for Jews living in Eretz Yisroel. I am taking the liberty of assuming that Greenberg's concerns do not apply to your contacts, and that they will be open to dialogue with a settler -- a dialogue which can only lead to deeper understanding and cooperation between Jews, and a brighter future for Am Yisroel.

Our forefather Abraham bought a burial place in Hevron for his wife, Sarah. That was four thousand years ago. It is the first recorded real estate transaction in history. Sarah Nachshon, together with nine other women and thirty-five children, reclaimed that land that Abraham had purchased -- land that had been in Jewish hands throughout history until the massacre of 1929. Sarah's fascinating story takes place when the land came back to us thirty-eight years later, during the Six Day War. Sarah is here to tell you her story first hand and to answer your questions, as challenging as they may be.

Thanking you in advance and hoping some of your friends and colleagues will take advantage of this privilege to meet an exceptional woman in Jewish history.

Aliza Karp

Contact Buddy Macy at vegibud@gmail.com

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U.N. RESOLUTION 242
Posted by Arlene Kushner, June 4, 2007.

Today I attended a conference -- "Israel's Right to Secure Boundaries: 40 Years for UN Security Council Resolution 242," sponsored by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, headed by Dore Gold, and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.

This was an opportunity to hear international lawyers and diplomats -- some associated directly with the historical time period or the drafting of 242 -- share solid information and background.

The issue of what 242 says is critically important today because its intent has been radically distorted by the Arabs. I will be writing extensively on this in weeks ahead, but here wanted to share some highlights. You may find this information useful in clarifying your own thinking on the matter and in refuting distortions where you find them.

~~~~~~~~~~

In brief, Resolution 242 provides a preamble which emphasizes the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security.

It then affirms the need for a just and lasting peace which should include "the application of both principles: withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict, and termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."

It further affirms the need to guarantee freedom of navigation of international waters in the area, and to achieve a just settlement of the refugee problem.

~~~~~~~~~~

What 242 does NOT mention:

-- Palestinian people or a Palestinian state. This document addresses relations between states: Israel and surrounding Arab states.
-- Jerusalem.
-- "Right of return." Allusion to a just settlement of the refugee problem is vague and does not even refer specifically to Palestinian Arab refugees, for there were Jewish refugees from Arab lands as well.
-- Direct negotiations. This was anathema to the Arab states. The Arab states met in Khartoum after this passed and declared the three "no's": no recognition of Israel, no peace, no negotiations.
-- Peace treaties. It dealt with de facto peace, not de jure. Termination of belligerency.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Arabs use Resolution 242 like a mantra, stating over and over that it requires Israel to return to the pre-'67 lines and that Israel is in non-compliance with the resolution until it does so.

This is simply not the case. First, the resolution speaks of withdrawal from "territories" and not from "the territories" or "all territories." This was intentional on the part of the framers of the resolution. It was never intended that Israel would return to the pre-'67 lines (known as the Green Line), which was just an armistice line and not a final border. We heard Alan Dershowitz speak today; he was working with Arthur Goldberg, US ambassador to the UN and one of the drafters of the resolution. Dershowitz addressed this matter of intent clearly.

Second, and very significantly, the intent of the resolution must be taken as a whole: withdrawal from whatever territories would not, in any event, take place until Israel was also provided with respect for her sovereignty and territorial integrity, and her right to live in peace within secure borders was acknowledged. This was all to be accomplished concurrently. Under no conditions was Israeli withdrawal conceived of as a precondition, something to be done absent the other stipulations of the resolution.

Israel is absolutely not in non-compliance with the resolution because she hasn't withdrawn from territories. It was not expected that Israel would move from one inch until secure boundaries for Israel were accepted by all belligerents.

The issue of secure borders for Israel is critical, and was uppermost in the minds of the drafters. Lyndon Johnson, who was president during the drafting of this resolution, was quoted as saying, "We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines for greatest security."

~~~~~~~~~~

As to the issue of military occupation, there are several significant factors:

There are substantial legal opinions that say military conquest does not confer sovereignty, but that Israel is not a military occupier in the normative sense of this term. That is because of the Mandate for Palestine, which has never been superseded by other international law. Israel was the only country that was to be established within the borders of Palestine according to the Mandate. (Israel is the only nation that could reach Judea and Samaria without crossing an international border and Israel would be able to institute civil law in Judea and Samaria without formal annexation.) There is solid opinion that Israel is maintaining a legitimate military occupation, and that Israel has a right to remain in Judea and Samaria until negotiations (and as determined thereafter).

Richard Holbroooke, former US ambassador to the UN, who spoke, made a further comment with regard to this. Resolution 242 has no enforcement mechanism -- in legal terms it was set up under chapter 6 and not chapter 7. There is no enforcement because Israel was not seen as an aggressor. (Enforcement would mean sanctioning of force to make Israel withdraw.)

Dershowitz quoted Goldberg with regard to the expectation of Israeli withdrawal, saying that Goldberg saw it as unprecedented for a victor to return all lands acquired in a war. Routinely at the end of wars land is retained by victors in order to ensure that there is no recurrence of an original belligerency, and that this happens without international objection.

Put simply, were Israel to return to pre-'67 lines (called Auschwitz borders by Abba Eban) she would be vulnerable to attack from Arab states again -- retention of land is necessary to provide Israel with security. There is the issue of strategic depth, so that an enemy cannot move to population centers too quickly, and the issue of retention of heights, in Judea and Samaria, as well as the Golan.

Binyamin Netanyahu, who also spoke, made the specific point in this context that we are not occupying Palestinian population centers -- we move in for operations necessary for security, but they control their own infrastructure, schools, press, etc. Nor does he envision a situation in which we would occupy them in that sense again.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Arab League (Saudi) initiative distorts resolution 242 and reverses its intent. It cites the resolution but claims that it requires that Israel to withdraw from all lands acquired in 1967. Further, it sets up a sequence that contradicts 242 -- demanding Israeli compliance first and making this a pre-condition.

~~~~~~~~~~

It is time for representatives of Israel and all who support her to speak out forcefully about Israeli rights. We cannot afford to be on the defensive, always accused of being required to do more. There is vast legal ammunition for us to draw on with regard to resolution 242 in order to protect our rights. As Netanyahu reminded us today, if we don't claim our rights they will dissipate.

~~~~~~~~~~

This overview addresses the issue of secure borders, the subject of the conference, and says nothing about our rights with regard to our heritage and ancient presence in the land.

Arlene Kushner is Senior Research Associate, Center for Near East Policy Research, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem, Israel. Contact her at akushner@netvision.net.il

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STATE DEPT. PROMOTES TERRORISM AGAINST ISRAEL
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 25, 2007.

WHAT DO ISRAELIS WANT?

Foreign Min. Livni claims that Israelis want withdrawal. The (appeasement-minded) Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies took a poll in March. By more than 2:1, Israelis doubt peace can be made with the Palestinian Arabs, oppose 'land for peace' and especially unilateral withdrawal from 'settlements,' and don't think the government can make the right decisions about security (IMRA, 5/18).

HAMAS VS. FATAH

More Fatah forces are throwing down their weapons. Both sides blame Israel for their own violence or exhort the other side to join against Israel. The P.A. seems to be disintegrating (IMRA, 5/18 from Michael Widlanski).

STATE DEPT. PROMOTING TERRORISM

Dr. Aaron Lerner explains that a State Dept. briefing misrepresented and sided with certain terrorists against Israel. Thus Mr. McCormick doesn't say 'terror is immoral -- instead he argues it is not effective' in attaining statehood.

'Before Mahmoud Abbas has lifted a finger to act against terror, McCormack proclaims that he is "doing everything he can" -- the implication being that he will have an automatic pass when subject to any benchmark test.' (So far, the US has set no firm conditions for the Arabs, only for Israel.)

McCormack makes the chilling remark that "we've also urged them [Israel] to consider the consequences of their actions in defending themselves...on the prospects for moving forward the political process..." (Thus he puts Israel's divesting itself of secure borders ahead of ending the insecurity from active terrorism.) "Simply put: Abbas is praised for doing nothing while Israel is warned it should think twice before defending itself." (IMRA, 5/17.)

The briefer and the briefed keep alleging a commitment to peace and against terrorism by Abbas, and McCormack even claims that Abbas always has opposed terrorism. No, Abbas spent 40 years as Arafat's second in terrorism. He, too, never denounces terrorism as evil but only as less effective than diplomacy. It is telling that the briefer cites no step by Abbas against terrorism, just his occasional English exhortations against it and not his Arabic praise for it. Abbas and the State Dept. want concessions that weaken Israel. The goal of his Fatah organization is, same as Hamas, to take over Israel. In making Israel defend itself less against that evil, the State Dept. shares culpability with terrorism. The State Dept. states that Hamas violence doesn't further the cause of peace, but does Fatah violence? The violence shows there is no peace process. Jihad does not seek peace, can't the State Dept. learn?

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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RECRUITED TO DIE
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 4, 2007.

This was written by Heather Robinson and it appeared June 1, 2007 in the New York Sun
(http://www.nysun.com/article/55653?page_no=1)

Like many people, Brooke Goldstein couldn't understand why Palestinian Arab terrorists recruited children to become murderers, so she went to the West Bank and asked them

In 2004, 24-year-old Brooke Goldstein spent her summer in the West Bank filming more than five hours of in-person interviews with terrorists -- all of which she conducted without a bodyguard and without a weapon. A Cardozo Law student with a fashion model's high cheekbones and long blond hair, Ms. Goldstein came face-to-face with Zacaria Zubeidah, a notorious recruiter of child suicide bombers. She interviewed suicide bombers' families and children, who aspire to "martyrdom." The resulting film, "The Making of a Martyr," will screen as part of the Brooklyn International Film Festival on Saturday and Tuesday.

Ms. Goldstein only appears in the film from the back; the focus is on Palestinian Arabs. Shots of refugee camps in Nablus, Jenin, and other towns show children playing, sometimes amid remains of buildings and the detritus of gunfights.

In the interviews, parents of suicide bombers sit in living rooms adorned with posters of their dead, and teenage terrorists sit with their hands tensely gripping machine guns that rest against their knees as they answer Ms. Goldstein's questions.

Ms. Goldstein was inspired to do the project after reading a news story in 2004 about Hussam Abdu, a 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber who had a sudden change of heart and surrendered at an Israeli checkpoint. The image of the boy, with his hands above his head as frightened Israeli soldiers shouted orders, haunted her. She approached the problem like the aspiring lawyer she was.

"I was thinking, 'You know, there's a legal argument here that no one is making, which is that the suicide bomber himself -- 18 and under -- is as much a victim as the Israeli civilians being killed,'" she said. "These kids are not doing this of their own accord."

After resolving to gather evidence to prosecute those who recruit child terrorists, Ms. Goldstein traveled to Israel to interview experts on brainwashing and recruitment. She teamed up with her college pal Alistair Leyland, who taped the interviews and served as co-producer. But that summer, while interviewing a prominent Israeli psychiatrist, she decided she needed to delve deeper.

"When I asked [the psychiatrist], 'When was the last time you've been to the West Bank?' she said, 'Oh, I've never been to the West Bank.' 'When was the last time you sat with Palestinian children to analyze their behavior?' 'Oh, I've never done that.' I think that interview made me aware that I couldn't release anything publicly about people I had never met."

Because reporters typically don't go to the Palestinian Arab territories alone, Ms. Goldstein and Mr. Leyland employed a "fixer" who introduced them to sources, translated, and served as a guide. After working on previous projects with the BBC and CNN, he took on the job eagerly but wishes to remain anonymous.

"He liked that we were young," Ms. Goldstein said. "He liked that our motive was to expose the crimes being committed against these children."

The night before her first foray into the West Bank, she was terrified. "I called my sister and said, 'You should know where I'll be in case I don't come back in 24 hours.' I thought of the lynching of those Israeli reservists. A million horrible things were going through my mind."

Her arrival didn't allay her fears. "There are gallows in Ramallah -- they practice public hanging. There are pictures of dead children brandishing weapons -- 'martyr posters' -- everywhere you look ... with captions like 'Our hero.'"

As the group walked through the town, they spoke to Palestinian Arab children in schools and on the street. "Our fixer was encouraging us to speak with the children. I think I'd always, deep down, had a hard time thinking the problem was really that bad. I thought maybe it was a lunatic fringe," she said.

In fact, the fanaticism was worse than she ever imagined. "The most shocking thing was reconciling the normal appearance of these kids and what was coming out of their mouths," she said. "I was holding these beautiful children in my lap, and my translator was translating words of hate."

The story was always the same. "No child ever said, 'I don't want to be a martyr.' They talked about fame, paradise, virgins, and Ferris wheels [after death]. They were happy to tell me they hated Jews," she said.

The children were more fanatical than their parents. "When we interviewed Hussam's family for the film, his parents were distraught. They don't believe in this whole child suicide bomber concept," Ms. Goldstein said. "Then I interviewed his sister, who was like, 'I'm so proud of my brother. Hamas says he's a hero.' At one point she had a loser, dwarf, mentally handicapped brother. Now she's the coolest girl in class, and very proud."

In addition to the children, Ms. Goldstein interviewed Mr. Zubeidah, commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Jenin. At the time, the Israel Defense Forces had made five attempts to assassinate him. In person, Mr. Zubeidah was not the harsh figure she had expected. "It was like talking to any other kid, about 27 years old," she said. "He was smiling. My translator told me, 'He's talking about killing Jews.'"

Ms. Goldstein didn't say she was Jewish, but she asked if she were on the streets of Tel Aviv, could she be murdered in a suicide attack? His response was chilling: "He said, 'Indeed you could. Right here you are my friend. I'm protecting you. But when you are in Israeli territory, I'm no longer protecting you.'"

Now 26, Ms. Goldstein, who finished law school in 2005, is setting up an international think tank of attorneys, psychiatrists, and policy makers to address the problem of recruiting children for terror. "It's a problem everyone should be concerned about," she said. "There are child suicide bombers now in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's being orchestrated by adults."

It is a point her film makes with honesty and compassion in presenting Hussam and other impressionable children at the mercy of a predatory society, as well as in presenting the adults, some of whom seem to participate in these children's exploitation more due to intimidation than venality.

Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com

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SOFT TARGETS, AL QAEDA'S NEW STRATEGY
Posted by Olivier Guitta, June 3, 2007.

WHILE THE April 11 suicide bombings in Algiers struck at hard targets -- the government palace and a police station -- soft targets are most likely the preferred point of attack for terrorists in the region.

Just a few weeks earlier, the U.S. Department of State had issued an updated travel warning for Algeria. It urged American citizens there to evaluate carefully the risk posed to their personal safety due to the increased frequency of small-scale terrorist attacks, including bombings, false roadblocks, kidnappings, ambushes, and assassinations. This warning is just the latest sign of a troublesome trend: terrorist groups now seem intent on striking at Western nationals.

Since the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) officially changed its name to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb late last year, it has made clear its intention to attack foreigners. The group's first such attack targeted a bus transporting Halliburton employees in December, killing one and injuring nine more. On March 3, the group staged another attack, this one targeting Russian contractors.

The CIA recently beefed up its presence in both Algeria and Morocco. And, most likely, it was CIA intelligence data that spurred U.S. embassy officials in Algiers to issue a specific warning on March 12 of a threat to aircraft transporting Western workers to Algeria. Incidentally, the two suicide attacks "foiled" (only the bombers died) in Casablanca on April 14 were aimed at the U.S. consulate and the American language Center.

Numerous Western governments have recently warned their citizens of potential attacks, and, according to a recent article in the Moroccan Al Bayane, partially translated by The Croissant, Spanish officials in the Maghreb no longer allow visitors to carry their cell phones onto consular property. But Algeria and Morocco are not the only dangerous places for foreigners.

On February 26, al Qaeda murdered four French nationals in Medina, Saudi Arabia. This attack came on the heels of a February 8 message put online at the Sawt Al Jihad (The Voice of Jihad) website calling for "cleaning up the Arabic peninsula of the presence of the Crusaders." Sawt Al Jihad also posted a text in June 2006 entitled "How to kill a Westerner."

Since 2003, Saudi authorities have drastically increased security around public buildings and vital infrastructure making it much more difficult for al Qaeda to attack government targets. On March 7, Saudi authorities warned all embassies in that country of the likelihood of further attacks against Western targets in yet another indication that al Qaeda has changed its strategy in response to those new security measures. The group may also be focusing on soft targets, such as foreigners, in order to create panic in the Western community. This shift could have a great effect. Indeed, by pushing Westerners to leave, al Qaeda achieves two objectives, crippling the Saudi economy and purging the peninsula of infidels.

Still, al Qaeda remains popular among Saudis. Even Prince Nayef, the minister responsible for fighting terrorism, recently acknowledged: "We are facing 10,000 people potentially ready to commit a terrorist act and behind them one million sympathizers ready to help them."

The Saudi military, too, seems to be at the very least sympathetic to al Qaeda's hatred of foreigners. According to Le Figaro, the military will exempt from training with U.S. instructors those officers who are unable to bear the presence of "infidels."

The Muslim World League condemned the February 26 attack against those four French citizens on the basis that one should not kill Muslims -- the French nationals were indeed Muslims. But issuing such a statement obviously implies that it is okay to kill infidels.

The New York Sun recently revealed that the Saudi Ministry of Education's website states as one of primary goals "to arouse the spirit of Islamic jihad in order to fight our enemies." And how could it be any other way when the minister of education once headed the Muslim World League.

In this environment, from the Maghreb to the Gulf, attacks against Western targets are only likely to increase in frequency.

Olivier Guitta is the founder of The Croissant, a foreign affairs and counterterrorism newsletter.

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MARK STEYN EXPLAINS THE DANGER OF THE LOONINESS OF THE LIBERAL LEMMING LEFT
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 3, 2007.

After...

world-wide Muslim demands for capitol punishment for the Pope,

street riots in Muslim capitols demanding for genocide of Denmark,

murder and arson and threats of more in response to these cartoon spoofs and Papal comments,

riots in the streets of Muslim countries that kill scores of their own,

tens of thousands of terror attacks in Kashmir and Gujarat and across Europe and the USA

tens of thousands more against Israel

innumerable attempted attacks threatening tens or hundreds of thousands of American lives (JFK attempt yesterday could have killed a hundred thousand),

a seemingly endless array of intifadas and suicide attacks and mass murder and arson and gang rape and torture and kidnapping...and the constant threat of more,

the constant vitriol of Muslim preachers and teachers demanding the destruction of Israel and/or America,

and Akhmedi-Nejad's promise to nuke Israel and take down the USA after that,

and the constant vitriol of Muslim terrorist leaders promising the end of western civilization and the mass destruction of western states,

and the amazingly irrational Muslim insistence that Islam is a religion of peace and if you say otherwise we will kidnap you, torture you, kill you, behead you, and mutilate your corpse...to make sure that no one dare say that Islam is anything other than a religion of peace,

after all that...

we still have some spokespersons of the loony liberal lemming left (which I call the 4xL club) worried about Islamophobia and insisting that we need to be considerate of Muslims' delicate sensibilities, to reach out with kindness and understanding to the terrorists, and to beware of insulting them lest their ire be roused against us.

'Islamist rage and our determination never to see it...' will lead us to defeat in this war.

The article below is called "Don't Get Even, Get Mad" and it was written by Mark Steyn. It appeared May 1, 2007 in the National Review.

On the day the Royal Navy's hostages were released, I chanced to be
reading a poem from Reflections On Islam, a terrific collection of
essays by George Jonas. The verse is by Nizar Qabbani, and it is his
ode to the intifada:

O mad people of Gaza,
a thousand greetings to the mad
The age of political reason
has long departed
so teach us madness

Or as the larky motto you used to find on the wall of the typing pool put it: You don't have to be crazy to work here but it helps. For the
madness of the intifada and the jihad and Islamist imperialism is
calculated, and highly effective. There is, as Jonas sees it,
method in their madness.

Do you remember that little difficulty a few months back over the
Pope's indelicate quotation of Manuel II? Many Muslims were very
upset about his speech (or his speech as reported on the BBC et al),
so they protested outside Westminster Cathedral in London demanding
'capital punishment' for the Pope, and they issued a fatwa in
Pakistan calling on Muslims to kill His Holiness, and they firebombed
a Greek Orthodox Church and an Anglican Church in Nablus, and they
murdered a nun in Somalia and a couple of Christians in Iraq. As
Tasnim Aslam of the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad helpfully
clarified, 'Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant
encourages violence.' So don't say we're violent or we'll kill you.
As I wrote in National Review at the time, quod erat demonstrandum.

But that's a debating society line. Islam isn't interested in winning the debate, it's interested in winning the real fight -- the clash of
civilizations, the war, society, culture, the whole magilla.
That's why it doesn't care about the inherent contradictions of the argument: in the Middle East early in 2002, I lost count of the
number of Muslims I met who believed simultaneously (a) that 9/11 was
pulled off by the Mossad and (b) that it was a great victory for
Islam. Likewise, it's no stretch to feel affronted at the implication
that you're violently irrational and to threaten to murder anyone who
says so. Western societies value logic because we value talk, and
talks, and talking, on and on and on: that's pretty much all we do,
to the point where, faced with any challenge from Darfur to the
Iranian nuclear program, our objective is to reduce the issue to just
something else to talk about interminably. But, if you don't prize
debate and you merely want to win, getting hung up on logic is only
going to get in your way. Take the most devastating rapier wit you
know -- Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward -- and put him on a late-night subway
train up against a psycho with a baseball bat. The withering putdown,
the devastating aphorism will avail him nought.

The quality of your argument is only important if you want to win by persuasion. But it's irrelevant if you want to win by intimidation. I'm personally very happy to defend my columns in robust debate, but after five years I'm a bit bored by having to respond to Muslim groups' demands (in America) that I be fired and (in Canada) that I be brought before the totalitarian-lite kangaroo courts of the country's ghastly 'human rights commissions'. Publishers like hate-mail; they're less keen on running up legal bills defending nuisance suits. So it's easier just to avoid the subject -- as an Australian novelist recently discovered when his book on a, ah, certain topical theme was mysteriously canceled.

That's the advantage of madness as a strategy. If one party to the dispute forswears sanity, then the obligation is on the other to be sane for both of them. Thus, if a bunch of Iranian pirates kidnap some British seamen in Iraqi waters, it is the British whom the world calls on to show restraint and to defuse the situation. If an obscure Danish newspaper prints some offensive cartoons and in reaction Muslims murder people around the planet, well, that just shows we all need to be more sensitive about Islamophobia. But, if Muslims blow up dozens of commuters on the London Underground and in reaction a minor talk-show host ventures some tentative remarks about whether Islam really is a religion of peace, well, that also shows we all need to be more sensitive about Islamophobia. Do this long enough and eventually you'll achieve the exquisite sensitivity of the European Union's Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. In 2003, their report on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe found that 'many anti-Semitic incidents were carried out by Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups', and so (according to The Daily Telegraph) a 'political decision' was taken not to publish it because of 'fears that it would increase hostility towards Muslims'.

Got that? The EU's principal 'fear' about an actual ongoing epidemic of hate crimes against Jews is that it could hypothetically provoke an epidemic of hate crimes against Muslims.

And so the more the enemies of free society step on our feet the more we tiptoe around. After the release of the Royal Navy hostages, the Right Reverend Tom Burns, Roman Catholic Bishop of the Armed Forces, praised the Iranians for their 'forgiveness'. 'Over the past two weeks,' said the Bishop, 'there has been a unity of purpose between Britain and Iran, whereby everyone has sought justice and forgiveness.'

Really? In what alternative universe is that? Maybe the insanity is contagious. As the columnist Jack Kelly wrote, 'The infidels Allah wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.' And so these twin psychoses -- Islamist rage and our determination never to see it -- continue their valse macabre on the brink of catastrophe.

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

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SHIMSHON CYTRYN CLEARED OF ATTEMPTED MURDER, GUILTY OF BATTERY
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), June 3, 2007.

Why wouldn't such a regime arrest a proud Jew who doesn't accept to be treated like a pig or a dog (in Islam stones are thrown to pigs and dogs) and reacted when an Arab smashed his car window? Let's not forget that this is the same regime that arms terrorists and disarms Jews and does not defend its civilian population under rockets attacks, that deports Jews from their homes, beats-up and TEARS THE FLESH of young Jews who sit-in to protest the deportation (see the policeman condemned Thursday for having ripped-open the nostrils of a 15 year old kid), jails young Jewish girls for months on end without trial, sends patriots in exile from their homes.

This regime of collaborators has the same forma mentis of the Judenrat: no tolerance for "Hadar Israel", Jewish Pride. Just like the Judenrat of Vilna gave the 19 year old Yitzchak Wittemberg, ZTUQ"L, HI"D, into the hands of the nazis for being a leader of the ghetto's partizans, so today they want us not to react to the arabic speaking nazis!

This article was written by Hillel Fendel and appeared today in Arutz Sheva
(http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/122637).

(IsraelNN.com) Shmuel Cytryn, a shepherd from Nachliel in the central Binyamin region, was not present as his son Shimshon's verdict was read aloud Sunday in the Be'er Sheva District courthouse. Instead, Cytryn-the-father is under house arrest for having tried to stop two Arabs who stoned his car and smashed his windshield.

The verdict handed down today concerned a rock-throwing incident in Gush Katif, and found Shimshon guilty of aggravated assault, but innocent of attempted murder. It was to have been handed down this past Wednesday, but was postponed until today (Sunday) because of the incident that landed Shimshon's father under arrest.

Sentencing is expected only three months from now, after the Testing Service presents its reports. The challenge now for the family and legal experts is to put and end to the house arrest under which Shimshon-the-son is placed, and to enable him to be married to his intended, to whom he became engaged in the past month.

The story began nearly two years ago, several weeks before the Disengagement/expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Shomron. In protest of the withdrawal, well over 150 Jewish youths had taken over an abandoned seashore building not far from Shirat HaYam -- one of the 21 Jewish Gaza communities later destroyed in the Disengagement. The youths took over the building after the IDF destroyed ten other abandoned structures nearby, into which it feared anti-expulsion protestors would move in and impede the expulsion from Gush Katif.

When army and police forces moved in to throw them out, nearby Arabs living in a building across the road joined in the fray, throwing rocks and injuring one Israeli; the Jews threw rocks back as well. Several Jews were arrested in the ensuing melee. It was reported that an Arab had been "mortally wounded," and the situation was widely described by media, political and military sources as a Jewish "lynching" of Arabs.

Manhunt Begins

Amidst this charged atmosphere, a manhunt was launched for two Israeli youths filmed throwing rocks from close range at an Arab. When 18-year-old Shimshon Cytryn was finally arrested a few days later, it was widely assumed that he would receive up to 20 years in prison for his role.

However, as Arutz-7 reported at the time, most of reports did not mention that the injured Arab had been throwing rocks at Israelis for 15 minutes beforehand -- and that he was up and about even while media reports continued to describe him as "mortally wounded." In addition, the purported victim, Hilal Ziad Al-Majaydeh, told Voice of Israel Radio the next day that he had not been attacked by a civilian, but rather by an IDF soldier.

One person on the scene, known as A.D., told Arutz-7 shortly afterwards about this alleged "lynching." He said that the television footage of an Arab lying on the ground and then two Jewish boys running towards him and throwing rocks at him was a distortion of what actually happened. "That's not the story!" he said. "I saw this same Arab get hit in the head with a rock -- and yet he continued to throw rocks, like a tiger, for the next 15 minutes! And then I saw some reporters go over to him and tell him to lie down and act as if he was unconscious. Later on, he was taken out walking on his own, holding on to a soldier..."

District Court Ignores Testing Service Reports

The injustice continued after Shimshon's arrest and during his incarceration. After two months, he requested to be released to house arrest, bringing no fewer than three Testing Service reports attesting that he did not present a public danger. Despite this, District Court Judge Binyamin Azulai turned him down four times. Finally, in November 2005, 4.5 months after Shimshon's arrest, Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy released him to the care of a rabbi in Shaalvim, with sharp criticism of the lower court judge for not doing it sooner.

On the Way to the Courthouse

Shimshon and his father Shmuel were on their way to hear the verdict this past Wednesday when two Arabs in a small truck tried to cut them off, threw rocks at their car, and broke their windshield. The father, speaking from his neighbor's house where he is being held under house arrest, said that he was treated by the police as if he were the attacker.

Shmuel said, "A policeman later told me that he respected what I did -- but I should never have called the police..."

He added, " The judge told me that even if I was right, I should have just written down their license number and called the police, and not tried to take the law into my own hands. When I said that there is such a thing as a citizen's arrest, she said that a normal person wouldn't do that. I said that when I killed three terrorists in battle and dragged out the body of my dead commander and received an award for it -- that also wasn't normal; and just a few weeks ago, when a civilian caught an escaped rapist and held him until the police came [sic], this also wasn't normal... There are those who are normal and never do anything for anyone, but there are also those who aren't normal and who can't sit idly by and watch bad things happen not only to their own children, but to everyone else's children and who care enough about the Jewish People to be a little bit abnormal..."

Shimshon Cytryn, a yeshiva student known for his dedication to his studies and who has recently become engaged to be married, was represented at first by the Honenu Civil Rights organization, and later by an attorney in Tel Aviv.

"I accept those who are normal," Shmuel Cytryn said; "maybe those who are normal can also accept me a little, and help us... If you can try to contact Honenu [legal civil rights organization] or similar organizations, it would be very much appreciated."

For more information on the case and how to help defray the family's legal expenses, send email to amcytryn@netvision.net.il.

Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net.

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JIHAD AMONG JUNIPERS AND MINT JULEPS
Posted by Michael Travis, June 3, 2007.

This article, "Jihad Among Junipers And Mint Juleps: Radical Islam Comes To Full Bloom In Southern Virginia" was written by Paul L. Williams, Ph.D. (author of The Day of Islam) with the able assistance of Shawn Michaels, Jamal Babour and Dr. Hugh Cort/

Paul L. Williams, author of this article, wrote Day Of Islam, a Must-Read about the JFK PLOT. RevereRidesAgain wrote the following about Day of Islam in
http://mavericknewsnetwork.typepad.com/my_weblog/books/archives/oldindex.html

Background information relating to the just-busted plot to destroy JFK airport and part of Queens is covered extensively in Paul L. Williams new book "The Day of Islam". Particularly alarming is the strong liklihood that the plotters are linked to Adnan Gulshair el-Shukrijumah, a.k.a., "Jafar the Pilot", the al Qaeda mega-operative assigned to command the next 9/11: bin Laden's plan for simultaneous nuclear attacks on 7 American cities, a.k.a. "The American Hiroshima".
FBI agents feared but never confirmed the three men accused of plotting to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York were linked to one of the most wanted al Qaeda leaders, Adnan Shukrijumah, known to have operated out of Guyana and Trinidad. Officials [reported] that they heard repeated references to "Adnan" during the extensive wiretaps conducted on the suspects' telephone conversations, including calls to Guyana and Trinidad.

The JFK plot was shut down at a relatively early stage, and I suspect the authorities have learned more than they are letting on and have much bigger fish to fry. According to Williams, the FBI now considers Adnan el-Shukrijumah "the most dangerous person in the Western World," yet few Americans have ever even heard of him. They need a fast course of wake-up on the menace represented by this individual and how it relates to the insanity of our wide-open borders, both south and north.

Other authors, including Steve Emerson, cover this information, but "Day of Islam" presents it in a very compact and accessible form. If you haven't read this book yet, please do so and urge everyone who will listen to read it. Badger every bookstore you can find to order this book and keep it on the shelves. (The one I work at ordered only two -- 2 !! -- copies. One of them is now sitting on my desk and the other is on "hold" for a customer.) If you don't find a copy, hit the customer service desk and make noise. People need to know that they need to read this book, the sooner the better.

Entrance to the Jamaat ul-Fuqra Compound at Red House Va.

The Islamic practice of taqiyya, meaning "deception" or "concealment," has been refined into an art-form at a jihad training compound for African American converts near the small town of Red House in Charlotte County, Virginia.

The fifty-acre compound is easy to find since the main road leading to it has been named Sheikh Gilani Lane in honor of the guru and founder of a terrorist organization with close ties to Osama bin Laden. The Board of Supervisors of Charlotte County are either oblivious to the threat of radical Islam on American soil or clandestine advocates of the great jihad.

At the end Sheikh Gilani Lane is a sign -- barely visible through the overgrown brush -- that reads, "The Muslims of the Americas." The sign serves to make the place appear as an innocuous religious settlement, until one realizes that The Muslims of the Americas is, in reality, an outgrowth of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, an alleged sister agency to al-Qaeda.

Several weeks before 9/11, a guard house and a gate had been erected at the entrance to the Red House compound.

But the guard house and the gate are now gone, and no sentries -- armed or otherwise -- are in sight, that is until you get well inside the complex of old trailers and pre-fab shanties. The only person to be seen in the the compound is an African American crone in a full black burqa sans the face cover known as a hijab. The day is hot and humid and the burqa serves to give the wizened old woman the appearance of a wayside witch from a Grimm's fairy tale.

"The men are all gone," the crone says from a park bench. "No one is here."

Road and observation tower

The Red House compound certainly appears deserted. A few mobile homes, several rusty old trailers, and a few mounds of debris among waist-high weeds remain along an old dirt road that runs through the Islamic village, but there appears to be little of interest, let alone concern.

As soon as the investigators park their car and trek into compound, the old woman removes a mobile phone from a sachet and dials a number.

In a matter of minutes, a pick-up truck appears at the entranceway. Two young African Americans dressed in skull caps and jalabiyahs emerge from the vehicle. "What are you doing here?" they ask.

Jamal, an Egyptian journalist, says in Arabic, "I'm here to see the Imam. Where does he live?"

One of the young men, whose Arabic name translates as "Slave of God", indicates that the Imam is not in and he should knock on the door of a ramshackle blue structure where he was told "Ahmed", one of the Elders may be found.

Jamal proceeds to the structure and rings the bell, but no one answers. Another member of our investigative team knocks at the doors of the trailers and mobile homes but there is no response. Some of the windows to the homes have been holed up with bricks save for openings that are ideal for assault rifles.

The young African Americans, who have shown up on the scene, are becoming agitated. They begin to make calls on their cell phones.

Then something miraculous happens.

At the Imam's residence, Muslim men begin to emerge in droves from a small storage shed attached to the house. It seems like a scene from a Marx Brothers movie in which dozens of people pour out of a closet. The investigators are suddenly surrounded by forty or fifty members of the complex in Islamic gowns and white skullcaps.

"What brings you here?" they ask.

Imam's residence at Red House compound

"We heard about the village," Jamal says, "and wanted to pay a visit. I thought I could stop by for evening prayers."

"The evening prayers are over," says one of the newly materialized men, who could be a professional body builder.

In the blink of an eye, another wondrous thing occurs.

Hundreds of more African Americans in Islamic garb materialize from the dense forests, the high grass of the open meadows, and the rusty trailers that just seconds ago appeared to be deserted.

A covey of late model cars and SUV's converge on the compound from a network of dirt roads. The Muslims who emerge from the vehicles appear more affluent than the others. The men wear white halabiyahs with matching head coverings. The women are dressed in colorful caftans and flowing abayas. They seem to be models from the Crescent Moon boutique.

"Are you the police?" a female villager asks through the shaded window of the Imam's residence.

"No," Jamal answers. "We just stopped by to join in prayer."

"This is not a place for tourists," screeches the woman in the Imam's house, "and we don't like you taking pictures of our houses and automobiles."

By this time, the Red House compound is swarming with hundreds of Muslim men, women, and children -- and several appear to be deeply agitated by the intruders.

Jamal produces a card from a radical imam he had met the day before at the radical Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church. It serves as a ticket out of the place.

"Ahmed's" residence at Red House

What is taking place in the Red House complex? Is the complex amidst the rolling hills of southern Virginia a peaceful Islamic village where devout Muslims have gathered to retreat from the hustle and bustle of contemporary American life in order to pray, meditate, and to live in strict accordance with the traditions of their faith? Or is it something more sinister -- something that should alarm every American who is concerned about the threat of radical Islam?

These factors are clear:

(1). There is an underground bunker at the complex that may be used for paramilitary training and possibly to harbor deadly weapons for use in the great jihad against Christians and Jews. Twenty-four members of this Jamaat ul-Fuqra complex already have been arrested for trafficking in illegal firearms, including the ammunition for AK-47s.

(2). Members of the compound have been sent to Pakistan and Afghanistan for specialized training in guerilla warfare -- a fact confirmed by Thomas P. Gallagher, a Special Agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

(3). The Red House compound regularly receives visits from suspicious guests from Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

(4). The Red House cell of ul-Fuqra has metastasized so that similar Islamic compounds have popped up in neighboring Prince George and Campbell Counties. The 25 acre facility in Prince George County is situated on Mahareen Road, a name selected by the Muslim newcomers and duly approved by the local ordinance officials. Mahareen is the plural of the Arabic mahar, meaning "clever one." The facility in Campbell County is considerably larger, occupying more than 100 acres. An additional compound reportedly has materialized in Bedford County near the city of Roanoke.

(5). Several Virginia compounds appear to possess obstacle courses, and firing ranges.

(6). Members of the compounds have been known to refer to themselves as "soldiers of Allah" and "Mohammad's commandos."

(7) What happens in the Red House compound stays in the Red House compound. The members of the radical Islamic community rarely appear in the nearby town; conduct little business with local merchants; and stay to themselves.

Mosque and Learning Center

The Muslims of the Americas, the tax-exempt corporation which owns and operates the Red House compound, was formed in 1980 by Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani. It is, according to an official report, a "front organization" for terrorist activities. A 2005 Homeland Security report predicts that the Muslims of the Americas will sponsor a major terrorist attack on American soil.

The parent organization of The Muslims of the Americas is Jamaat ul-Fuqra or "community of the impoverished" which retains headquarters in Lahore, Pakistan. The purpose of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, as established by Sheikh Gilani, is not to serve some beneficent good for the cause of the impoverished but rather to "purify" Islam through violence.

A quack practitioner of something called "Quranic psychiatry, Sheikh Gilani refers to himself as "the sixth Sultan ul Faqr." The Sheikh claims to have supernatural powers and to receive regular visits from "non-human beings." In 1979, Gilani came to believe that he could begin the processing of purifying Islam through violence with the aid of socially disgruntled and economically disenfranchised blacks within the inner cities of New York and New Jersey. The basis of this belief was Gilani conviction that a sizeable number of African Americans fostered an innate hatred of the United States and could be easily convinced to further the cause of global jihad. Many may have viewed Gilano's mission as a cockamamie scheme that smacked of racism, but it worked like a hypnotic charm from Scheherazade.

At the al-Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, a dingy establishment at 554 Atlantic Avenue, Gilani, sporting ammunition belts, spoke of Islam as the cure for all societal ills and called upon the young men in attendance to take up arms in the holy war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Hundreds answered the call and headed off to a training camp in Abbotabad, Pakistan that had been established by Osama bin Laden and other members of the mujahadeen.

Knowing the need for new recruits, Gilani turned to the penal system and focused his attention on converting incarcerated blacks to his radical Islamic doctrine. Imams and religious instructors were dispatched to local, state, and federal prison facilities to accomplish this objective. The results were mind-boggling. Thousands converted on a weekly basis, drawn to the offers of protection, special meals, and release from work detail for daily prayers and the entire month of Ramadan.

Gilani soon came to the realization that it would be financially advantageous to train new recruits for the holy war on American soil rather than to pay the freight of sending them to Pakistan, and the sites of his other training camps throughout the world. And so, Islamberg in Hancock, New York came into being. Soon other hamaats were established in such places as Hyattsville, Maryland; Falls Church, Virginia; Macon, Georgia; York, South Carolina; Dover, Tennessee; Buena Vista, Colorado; Talihina, Oklahoma; Tulane Country, California; Commerce, California; and Onalaska, Washington. The Red House compound cropped up in 1993. Others are under construction, including an expansive facility in Sherman, Pennsylvania. How many hamaats are now in place throughout the United States is anyone's guess. A low-ball figure is 38.

Before becoming a citizen of the Red House compound or any of the other Fuqra communities, the recruits -- primarily inner city black men who became converts in prison -- are compelled to sign an oath that reads: "I shall always hear and obey, and whenever given the command, I shall readily fight for Allah's sake." They are also obliged to contribute 70% of their welfare checks and other sources of income to Muslims of the Americas, Inc.

Mission accomplished among the African Americans, Sheikh Gilani returned to his native Lahore circa 1990. In December 1993, he was an honored guest at an international gathering of jihadis at the residence of Hassan al-Turabi in Khartoum. At the gathering, attended by members of al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular and Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine, Sheikh Gilani, Osama bin Laden, and other prominent terrorist leaders were caught on film chanting, "Down, down with the USA!" "Down, down with the CIA," and "Death to the Jews."
 

OVER THE YEARS, numerous members of Jamaat ul-Fuqra have been convicted in US courts of such crimes as conspiracy to commit murder, firebombing, gun smuggling, and workers' compensation fraud. Others remain leading suspects in criminal cases throughout the country, including ten unsolved assassinations and seventeen fire-bombings between 1979 and 1990. Associates of the group were also instrumental in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

The criminal charges against the group and the criminal convictions are not things of the past. In 2001, a 19 year-old former resident of the Red House compound was charged with the first-degree murder in the shooting of a sheriff's deputy in California. By 2004 federal investigators uncovered evidence that linked both the DC "sniper killer" John Allen Muhammed and "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid to the group and reports surfaced that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded in the process of attempting to obtain an interview with Sheikh Gilani in Pakistan.

Even though Jamaat ul-Fuqra has been involved in bloody bombings and sundry criminal activities, recruited thousands of members from federal and state penal systems, and appears to be operating paramilitary facilities for militant Muslims, the terror organization remains to be placed on the official US Terror Watch List, and The Muslims of the Americas continue to operate, flourish, and expand as a legitimate nonprofit, tax-deductible charity.

Meanwhile, the hills of rural Virginia are alive with the sound of jihad.

But few are listening.

Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com

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SEVEN NOACHIDE LAWS FOR NON-JEWS
Posted by Yirmeyahu Bindman, June 3, 2007.

As the author of the standard teaching guide to the Seven Noachide Laws of the Jewish Torah for all non-Jews, 'The Seven Colors of the Rainbow', Resource Publications Inc. S. Jose CA, I am glad to send you below (see Appendix) and attached information on the Laws, endorsed by the US Congress in 1991 and subsequently as the true universal morality (House Judiciary Resolution 104, Public Law 102-14).

The Talmudic sage Rabbi Akiva was asked by a Roman lady -- not Jewish -- 'what has your God been doing since He made the world?' and answered, 'He sits and arranges marriages'.

Behind all the individual commandments is the general concept of the motive of the Creator, expressed in the verse, 'He formed it (the world) to be settled' (Isaiah 45:18). This means that the 'settlement' of the affairs of the world is a general Noachide priority, and that anything conducive to this ethos of kindness, equity and understanding amounts to a Noachide obligation. It is also apparent that the Noachide Laws are not merely a means to happiness, even true happiness, but relate to the actual reasons why the world itself was created.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe originally introduced the Noachide concept to the non-Jewish society through the example of Maimonides (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, 1138-1204, or 'Rambam' for short), since the 850th anniversary of his birth fell during the 1980s and was commemorated by many nations in addition to the Spain of his birth, with ceremonies and stamp issues. Maimonides was the greatest Jewish philosophical writer, and an advanced medical doctor, and his compendium of Torah law, the only complete one, includes the Noachide Laws as a part of that completeness, reflected likewise in his career and personality.

The Noachide Law has no war of religion, no imperative to conquer unbelievers in the name of the Noachide Laws, and non-Jews are not commanded to fight. Non-Jewish warfare is conducted only to maintain functioning legality under the terms of the Commandment of Laws.

Non-Jews are enjoined under the Commandment of Laws to give charitable donations to each other, not necessarily to the other party in any dispute, so as to promote peace and reconciliation in society generally, and avoid intensifying friction which can lead to lawbreaking, or hinder settlement and thus compel people to take their disputes to court.

The history of the emergence of the Noachide Laws to consciousness took a particular form during the Counter Reformation with the inception of business corporations, which are Noachide-law entities, devised in their present form during the period of collaboration between the Dutch state and its Jewish community during the 17th century. The Jewish Bet Din cannot create corporations, nor can any Jewish lay body, but rather they are halachically held in being by the non-Jewish government, under a specific Rabbinic ruling in the Noachide Commandment of Laws, and this government with its duty of corporate regulation is responsible for all moral factors affecting the public welfare. The medieval non-Jewish prohibition on interest-bearing loans was likewise abandoned at the Reformation when notification came, in the same locality, that the Noachide Law permitted it, and this is the only reason why we have capital market, or independent banking sector, as we do today.

The Noachide law gives such a high status to judges that they or those who wish to influence them are presented with very great temptations to take the law into their own domain. The Noachide civil law is constructed around the concept of 'nimuseihem', meaning 'their (non-Jewish) customs', and this is the autonomy of non-Jewish peoples to decide their own civil pathways and procedures.

There are however elements of Noachide law that can only be decided by the Rabbinic level, such as the law allowing limited-liability corporations as explained, and also guiding principles that cannot be transgressed. It may not be assumed for example that the corporate formulation can claim a higher social priority and thus alter the laws of human relations because the corporation is not itself a human being. Many people likewise falsely assume that since the law often allows individuals to contract to exclude legal provisions, this is also applicable to the basic spiritual laws of human relations.

For more information please see:

http://www.rb.org.il/noahide/noahinstitute.htm

and many other sites are available.

Sincerely,

Rabbi Yirmeyahu Bindman

APPENDIX: THE SEVEN NOACHIDE LAWS

It is well known that the Jewish faith does not seek to make converts, and so it is generally supposed that since the Jewish people do not want to make other people into Jews, they are happy just to be left alone. The world is often very surprised to discover that the Jewish faith includes a complete provision for all non-Jews, regardless of race, social class or national origin, perfectly attuned to their needs, and deriving from the same source in Divine revelation through the prophecy of Moses, without any intermediary whatsoever. Only the true universal faith of the Jews regularly offers something to those who are not its members, and this is its sign of authenticity.

This provision is known as the Noachide Laws. Though the first man and his wife, Adam and Eve, were commanded to observe them, they emerged fully only after Noah had survived the flood that wiped away violent sinners whose wrongdoings had engulfed the world in his time. The ancestors of the Jewish people were also commanded in them until they were given the whole Torah at Mount Sinai, and they were then reaffirmed through Moses for all the other nations.

The laws are all prohibitions, unlike those of the Jewish people who have affirmative commandments, but they are not intended to make life dull or restricted. They point out what the good and true path should be, and with this path all moral necessities for the non-Jews are established, without need for any other philosophy, scientific discovery or change in government. All relationships between Jews and non-Jews are likewise explained, both in Israel and in other countries.

Sexual transgression.

All people originate from sexual relations, and so the laws that govern them are our most basic 'constitution', testifying to the Divine origin of humankind. Non-Jews are not commanded to marry, but they are encouraged to do so, and they are forbidden to have relations with the wife of another man. Male homosexuality, incest and bestial relations are also forbidden under the same heading, even though the desires for them are very different. Jews and non-Jews are forbidden to each other, because of the different origin of their respective commandments. When these laws are observed, then human relations of all kinds are enhanced by the Divine sanction, and love increases throughout the world.

Murder.

Though the reasons for sexual prohibitions may be mysterious, most people if asked what laws they would make to govern the world would immediately say that on no account must illegal bloodshed be allowed to go unpunished. Human life is a sacred trust, and can only be taken with legal sanction. The murderer is executed by decapitation, at the sentence of the duly authorized sovereign court only. Protection is extended to the unborn, and the details of any abortion case must be closely studied according to the law. War action is subject to strict security standards, at the order of a lawful regime. It is rare for any person to take life in truly wanton circumstances, because of instinctive recognition of its value, and this recognition must be taken up to the level of reckoning that the spiritual law requires.

Theft.

The first man and woman transgressed the Noachide prohibition of theft by eating the fruit which had been forbidden to them, and this is still a Divine provision for non-Jews regarding all property in the hands of others. Property ownership is underwritten by Divine law for all humanity, and is not just a matter for an aggrieved individual to settle for himself. Respect for property rights is the basis for generosity with possessions, and for business dealings that lead the world through its use and traffic of goods to its final destiny. This brings moral satisfaction in the workplace, and the fostering of ethics in this area is a prime need for our society.

Idolatry.

If the worship of entities other than the Creator had not been forbidden by His express command, then people would be free to choose what to worship, just as they choose their own personal friends. However the whole area of relations between humanity and its Creator has been placed under specific requirements, namely that only His truth and unity should be the subject of belief, worship and philosophy. His revelation has two levels, the one in nature for ordinary reckoning, and the other through prophecy on Mount Sinai for the moral law. All non-Jews derive their true religious fulfillment from this latter source, and any reference to an intermediary causes error and loss of morality. There is no need for non-Jews to form associations for Noachide observance and prayer, but they may do so if they wish.

Cursing the Name.

The power of speech distinguishes humanity from all other species, and this distinction leads to the specific human prohibition not to use speech for cursing the Creator, because it shows ingratitude for his kindness. This commandment pairs with the previous one, showing that the Divine rulership and the Divine love go together at all times and places, no matter how great the difficulties may seem. Jews and non-Jews are commanded in the same verse in this respect, showing how in the Messianic times all of humankind will join together in voicing praise for the Creator. All other misuses of speech, such as gossip, obscenity and lies, are indicated in this commandment as something to avoid, just as prayer and words of Torah are desirable so that speech will become truly Divine.

Eating the limb of a living animal.

Though it may seem far-fetched to think of eating meat from a living creature, the intent behind this prohibition is to safeguard the human sexual integrity. The connection between eating and sexuality is well known, and it is the sexual drive for consumption of the 'heat of life' that leads to the kind of greed that damages reproduction. The Noachide Law teaches us that this is rectified by being careful to eat only meat from an animal that is fully dead, and this is by no means always the case in our factory society where slaughterhouses handle meat animals quickly and carelessly, sometimes only stunning them before cutting them up for sale. Care in this observance fosters all requirements for the love of nature and the preservation of the environment, and safeguards the passage of souls as manifested in the life and consumption of food animals until the ultimate destiny of the world.

System of justice.

The non-Jewish nations of the world are commanded to avoid the state of anarchy by assuming and exercising the sovereign jurisdiction, to maintain courts that punish offenders by due process of law, and that provide civil redress in society. The Noachide Laws themselves form the basis of the criminal code, but each nation may make civil laws as it sees fit within the general guidelines. This provision does not apply within the Land of Israel, where the sovereign power is in the hands of the Jewish people, and they judge non-Jews of any nationality living or visiting there under these same Noachide Laws.

Corporations are held in being by the sovereign power through the enactment of corporate law, which is empowered by this commandment. The sovereign power is responsible for regulating these corporations in the public interest, and ensuring their conformity with all aspects of the law. Thus Communism and Fascism are in breach of the spiritual law because of their lack of this regulation. Non-Jews are obligated to seek reconciliation rather than take their disputes straight to court, and this in turn obligates them to give charitable donations to the needy so as to foster reconciliation in general.

The Rabbis of the Talmud say, 'War comes to the world through the delay of justice, the perversion of justice, and the teaching of Torah out of accordance with its legal meaning.' When all processes of law are rectified in this way, with good government applied to sustain them, functioning in Divine integrity, then grievances are properly handled and true peace emerges into the light of day. This is among the recognitions of the United States Congress in its Declaration endorsing the Noachide Laws (H.J. Res. 104, Public Law 102-14, March 1990 and subsequently), based on long historic understanding of the Jewish people and the Torah.

Book explanation by Rabbi Bindman:
'The Seven Colors of the Rainbow'
Resource Publications Inc., S. Jose CA

Contact Yirmeyahu Bindman at raayon@netvision.net.il

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GAZA KINDERGARTEN KIDS GET 'A" FOR JIHAD
Posted by Hana Levi Julian, June 3, 2007.

Palestinian Authority kindergarten children demonstrated in a graduation ceremony how well they had learned their lessons this year.

A video clip of the ceremony, televised on Hamas' Al-Aksa TV, was distributed Friday by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
See http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1468

The little boys in the video march in formation and then drop to the floor, crawl on their bellies and vow to become terrorists when they grow up.

In the last minute of the clip, the boys in the televised ceremony shout "Allah Hu Akbar!" (Allah is great!).

"Who is your role model?" they are asked. "The Prophet," they chant.

"What is your path?" demands the leader. "Jihad!" they cry, in their little camouflage uniforms and black masks, brandishing toy guns and waving green Hamas flags.

"What is your most lofty aspiration?"

"Death for the sake of Allah!"

The kindergarten is run by the same group that spawned the Hamas terrorist organization -- the Islamic Association in Gaza.

This is not the first time that the Hamas terrorist entity has used little children as bait, indoctrinating them to hate Israel, Israelis and Jews and train them from infancy to become suicide bombers.

A significant number of suicide bombings have been carried out by PA adolescents and young adults.

Hamas recently used a look-alike of the Disney character, Mickey Mouse, in a television program promoting Islamic conquest of the world.

Known as a benevolent social services organization among the PA's poor, Hamas continues to call for the destruction of the State of Israel.

Teaching the children to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel is a direct violation of the the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement in 2005. The Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by Fatah leader and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, agreed to halt incitement against Israel.

Hamas has said it is not bound by the pact, but the European Union (EU) and United States have declared it will not recognize the new Hamas-Fatah unity agreement if both factions do not accept previous agreements.

Hana Levi Julian writes for Arutz-Sheva
(www.IsraelNationalNews.com). This story appeared today.

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GAZA FEMALE TELECASTERS MUST DRESS APPROPRIATELY OR DIE
Posted by Hana Levi Julian, June 3, 2007.

The "Swords of Truth", an Islamist vice squad responsible for bombing dozens of internet cafes, music shops, pool halls and at least two restaurants in Gaza, has now turned its attention to female TV broadcasters.

The group warned in a statement e-mailed to worldwide media Friday that it would behead female TV broadcasters in the Palestinian Authority who do not dress in strict accordance with religious Islamic standards.

"We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation," said the statement, which also called declared that female broadcasters are "without any...shame or morals."

Female TV broadcasters in many Muslim countries wear headscarves and modest clothing. In some Arab countries, women are not allowed to broadcast at all.

This is the first time the Gaza terrorist organization has targeted a specific population. Until now, the Swords of Truth group has confined its activities to the destruction of places they consider to be venues of "immoral" activity.

Female broadcasters who were interviewed by the Associated Press (AP) said they had received death threats in calls to their cell phones. Many were frightened.

One PA anchorwoman said she did not go to work on Saturday as a result. "It's a dangerous precedent in our society," she said. "It will target all working women." The journalist, who does not wear a headscarf, requested anonymity, fearing retribution.

The Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), which is funded by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction, said it was taking the threat seriously and had implemented security measures. PBC head Basem Abu Sumaya said, however, the company, which runs PA TV, could not protect broadcasters on their way to and from work.

Foreign Journalists Avoid On-site Coverage in Gaza

Gaza has become an increasingly hazardous place for journalists to ply their trade, with the Foreign Press Association warning its members several months ago to avoid entering Gaza when at all possible.

The last foreign journalist to maintain a full-time bureau office in Gaza City was British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) reporter Alan Johnston, who was kidnapped at gunpoint March 12. Mr. Johnston had not been seen or heard from until last week, when he appeared in a video clip on an internet website frequently used by Muslim terrorists. The 45-year-old Scottish national appeared on the Islamist al-Ekhlaas website in a video clip bearing the Army of Islam logo. There is no way to know when the tape was made, however. Hundreds of journalists in and outside the Palestinian Authority have held demonstrations to protest the BBC reporter's abduction.

A number of other network news reporters have also been kidnapped within the past year.

Sixty-year-old American Steve Centanni and his 36-year-old cameraman Olaf Wiig of New Zealand were held for two weeks by a Hamas-linked group called the Holy Jihad Brigades. In an interview an hour after being freed, the two Fox News journalists said they had been forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam and also to tape a video they did not want to tape.

Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti, an Italian national, was kidnapped in October 2006, also in Gaza City and released unharmed 15 hours later.

Prior to Alan Johnston's abduction, a 50-year-old Peruvian photographer with the French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP) was abducted by masked gunmen in January. The hostage, Jaime Razuri, was released a week later.

Hana Levi Julian writes for Arutz-Sheva
(www.IsraelNationalNews.com). This story appeared today.

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WHAT IS THE REAL ISRAEL FACTOR?
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 3, 2007.

One of the Middle East's biggest, least-discussed mysteries has been how to understand Israelis. This is a long, complex subject. But so many, including Arab friends, have asked me to explain about this issue that there is an obvious need for clarification here.

Here we go. From 1967 on, Israelis had a great debate. Both sides agreed the Palestinians and most Arab states weren't ready for peace. But the left thought big concessions could bring a permanent political deal once the other side began to change. The right doubted this would happen, and settlements in the captured territories would consolidate control there. Only a small minority saw permanent retention of the territories as a religious obligation. Most Israelis supported holding that land and building settlements as a strategic tactic.

By the end of the 1980s, signs of a real shift in Palestinian positions were still limited. But in the early 1990s, Iraq's defeat by a U.S.-led coalition and the PLO's low point seemed to offer a true opportunity. Rather than try to crush the Palestinian movement forever--something that would have fit the demonization of Israel stereotype--the country offered confidence-building measures and concessions in exchange for real peace. The result: the 1993 "Oslo" agreement and the ensuing peace process.

With the long-awaited moment perhaps at hand, debate within Israel shifted. The left claimed that Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat would make and implement a compromise peace. The right claimed he would do so and then break it. Hardly anyone believed Arafat would turn down even a good deal.

The test came with the Camp David meeting in mid-2000 and the offer by President Bill Clinton, with the agreement of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, at the end of 2000. The final offer--and even this was only the minimal proposal for starting negotiations--was a West Bank-Gaza Strip Palestinian state with the equivalent of all the pre-1967 land (with small swaps to make up for Israeli annexation of a few areas) plus a capital in east Jerusalem and massive reparations payments. Arafat turned it down and instead turned to renewed violence and terrorism.

At this point, Israeli perceptions were turned upside down. The high hopes of the 1990s (even my conservative friends, while balking at turning over east Jerusalem, had accepted large concessions and a Palestinian state in exchange for peace) crashed.

Internationally, Israelis had suffered two betrayals. First, there was the Palestinian leadership's use of concessions to strike against Israel directly and undermine its position internationally. After all, Israel's own government had dismantled the negative image of the PLO as a movement whose goals were Israel's destruction and whose means was terrorism. (On one memorable occasion, some American Jewish leaders rewrote a speech for Arafat to make it sound more moderate.)

The other betrayal came from the West, especially Europe. For years, Israel had been told that if it made concessions and took risks for peace, it would have international backing if anything went wrong. Now, subjected to a terrorist assault whose bloodiness was made possible by Israel's own admission of so many returning Palestinians, sponsorship for aid to them, and turning over of territory to their control, Israel also faced the most hostile Western policies and image, too.

Within the country, a new consensus emerged, taking one idea from the left and one idea from the right. >From the left, most Israelis accepted the idea of giving up the territories and agreeing to a Palestinian state in exchange for real peace. From the right, the majority concluded that there was not going to be a Palestinian partner for peace or a negotiated resolution for many years to come. Of course, not everyone took this conclusion but most did. On this basis, friends of mine who habitually voted for Meretz on the left now cast their votes for Ariel Sharon to be prime minister.

After a half-century of warfare, in which everyone knows someone or has relatives who have died in war or terrorism, most Israelis are still eager for peace. They are not motivated because they think Israel weak or are afraid, but simply from feeling strongly that peace is preferable to war.

Digging in for the long run, they backed withdrawal from southern Lebanon and from the Gaza Strip. They were ready to pull out of much of the West Bank as well. Whether these withdrawals were a good or bad idea is another column; yet, they were certainly an attempt to show Israel's desire to not be "occupying" another people. At that point, it was up to the Palestinians to show what they would do with the opportunity. The election of Hamas and the continuation of terrorism was the result.

After all this political talk, it should be added that no country in the world--perhaps in history--has so many rapid psychological ups, downs, and dramatic changes as Israel. Yet, public opinion polls show a remarkably high level of personal satisfaction. The economy has boomed; progress continued. Whatever problems the country has--also another column--there is a strong sense of optimism and willingness to examine faults to repair them.

Which reminds me of how one day I took a U.S. newspaper, walked down Shenkin street in Tel Aviv jammed with people, finally found an empty chair in a cafe, and read the front-page article, which explained how Israelis were so fearful of terrorism that nobody went out any more. Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and co-author of "Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography" and "Hating America: A History" (Oxford University Press, August 2007). His latest book is The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). Prof. Rubin's columns can be read online at http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. Contact him at profbarryrubin@yahoo.com

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WHAT IF ISRAELIS HAD ABDUCTED BBC MAN?
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 3 2007.

This was written by Charles Moore and it appeared in the Telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/06/02/do0201.xml

Watching the horrible video of Alan Johnston of the BBC broadcasting Palestinian propaganda under orders from his kidnappers, I found myself asking what it would have been like had he been kidnapped by Israelis, and made to do the same thing the other way round.

The first point is that it would never happen. There are no Israeli organisations -- governmental or freelance -- that would contemplate such a thing. That fact is itself significant.

But just suppose that some fanatical Jews had grabbed Mr Johnston and forced him to spout their message, abusing his own country as he did so. What would the world have said?

There would have been none of the caution which has characterised the response of the BBC and of the Government since Mr Johnston was abducted on March 12. The Israeli government would immediately have been condemned for its readiness to harbour terrorists or its failure to track them down.

Loud would have been the denunciations of the extremist doctrines of Zionism which had given rise to this vile act. The world isolation of Israel, if it failed to get Mr Johnston freed, would have been complete.

If Mr Johnston had been forced to broadcast saying, for example, that Israel was entitled to all the territories held since the Six-Day War, and calling on the release of all Israeli soldiers held by Arab powers in return for his own release, his words would have been scorned. The cause of Israel in the world would have been irreparably damaged by thus torturing him on television. No one would have been shy of saying so.

But of course in real life it is Arabs holding Mr Johnston, and so everyone treads on tip-toe. Bridget Kendall of the BBC opined that Mr Johnston had been "asked" to say what he said in his video. Asked! If it were merely an "ask", why did he not say no?

Throughout Mr Johnston's captivity, the BBC has continually emphasised that he gave "a voice" to the Palestinian people, the implication being that he supported their cause, and should therefore be let out. One cannot imagine the equivalent being said if he had been held by Israelis.

Well, he is certainly giving a voice to the Palestinian people now. And the truth is that, although it is under horrible duress, what he says is not all that different from what the BBC says every day through the mouths of reporters who are not kidnapped and threatened, but are merely collecting their wages.

The language is more lurid in the Johnston video, but the narrative is essentially the same as we have heard over the years from Orla Guerin and Jeremy Bowen and virtually the whole pack of them.

It is that everything that is wrong in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world is the result of aggression or "heavy-handedness" (have you noticed how all actions by American or Israeli troops are "heavy-handed", just as surely as all racism is "unacceptable"?) by America or Israel or Britain.

Alan Johnston, under terrorist orders, spoke of the "absolute despair" of the Palestinians and attributed it to 40 years of Israeli occupation, "supported by the West". That is how it is presented, night after night, by the BBC.

The other side is almost unexamined. There is little to explain the internecine strife in the Arab world, particularly in Gaza, or the cynical motivations of Arab leaders for whom Palestinian miseries are politically convenient.

You get precious little investigation of the networks and mentalities of Islamist extremism -- the methods and money of Hamas or Hizbollah and comparable groups -- which produce acts of pure evil like that in which Mr Johnston is involuntarily complicit.

The spotlight is not shone on how the "militants" (the BBC does not even permit the word "terrorist" in the Middle East context) and the warlords maintain their corruption and rule of fear, persecuting, among others, the Palestinians.

Instead it shines pitilessly on Blair and Bush and on Israel.

From the hellish to the ridiculous, the pattern is the same. Back at home, the Universities and Colleges Union has just voted for its members to "consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions".

Well, they could consider how work by scientists at the Technion in Haifa has led to the production of the drug Velcade, which treats multiple myeloma. Or they could look at the professor at Ben-Gurion University who discovered a bacteria that fights malaria and river blindness by killing mosquitoes and black fly.

Or they could study the co-operation between researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who have isolated the protein that triggers stress in order to try to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and their equivalents at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

The main universities of Israel are, in fact, everything that we in the West would recognise as proper universities. They have intellectual freedom. They do not require an ethnic or religious qualification for entry. They are not controlled by the government. They have world-class standards of research, often producing discoveries which benefit all humanity. In all this, they are virtually unique in the Middle East.

The silly dons are not alone. The National Union of Journalists, of which I am proud never to have been a member, has recently passed a comparable motion, brilliantly singling out the only country in the region with a free press for pariah treatment. Unison, which is a big, serious union, is being pressed to support a boycott of Israeli goods, products of the only country in the region with a free trade union movement.

The doctrine is that Israel practises "apartheid" and that it must therefore be boycotted.

All this is moral madness. It is not mad, of course, to criticise Israeli policy. In some respects, indeed, it would be mad not to. It is not mad -- though I think it is mistaken -- to see the presence of Israel as the main reason for the lack of peace in the region.

But it is mad or, perhaps one should rather say, bad to try to raid Western culture's reserves of moral indignation and expend them on a country that is part of that culture in favour of surrounding countries that aren't. How can we have got ourselves into a situation in which we half-excuse turbaned torturers for kidnapping our fellow-citizens while trying to exclude Jewish biochemists from lecturing to our students?

Nobody yet knows the precise motivations of Mr Johnston's captors, but it is surely not a coincidence that they held him in silence until the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War approached, and only then made him speak. They wanted him to give the world their historical explanation -- Israeli oppression -- for their cause.

Yet that war took place because President Nasser of Egypt led his country and his allies declaring "...our basic aim will be to destroy Israel".

He failed, abjectly, and Egypt and Jordan later gave up the aspiration. But many others maintain it to this day, now with a pseudo-religious gloss added.

We keep giving sympathetic air-time to their death cult. In a way, Mr Johnston is paying the price: his captors are high on the oxygen of his corporation's publicity.

As for Israel, many sins can be laid to its charge. But it is morally serious in a way that we are not, because it has to be. Forty years after its greatest victory, it has to work out each morning how it can survive.

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. Or write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

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"BRITAIN'S CULTURAL AND SPIRITUAL HERITAGE ARE UNDER THREAT." WAKE UP UK!!
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 2, 2007.

As a Double National (Swiss-British) I am concerned; The question is, will enough people wake up in time to save Britain?

The demographic jihad is far along and the bootlicking dhimmi fools running the government, news media, and schools are still living in their fantasyland.

The hour is very late!!

As Baroness Cox said, "...It's difficult to have a fail proof way to stop them."

...Britain can start by tightening up the immigration laws, by banning Muslim Immigration, deporting any Muslim convicted of any crime (sending his family back with him), banning the construction of any new mosques, banning the employment of any Muslim in the police or military...banning Muslims from any position in the acadamies, banning Muslims from security positions at train stations, bus stations, or airports, banning Muslims from any seaport authority positions, banning travel to Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Qatar, Kuwait, or Algeria...etc...outlawing the sale or distribution of the Qur'an, outlawing the burka and the habib...

...Start treating Muslims in much the same way as Muslims treat Christians who are (for whatever reason) stuck in Muslim held lands...

...Throw off the gloves and prepare to get down and dirty before it's too late [or is it already too late ?]... Britain's heritage and The home country are being destroyed, for crying out loud!

This article is from Jihad Watch and is called "Britain's cultural and spiritual heritage are under threat." It was posted by Marisol yesterday. It is archived at
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/016708.php

Anti-dhimmitude from a senior member of the House of Lords. "'UK jihadis threaten Israel'," from YNet News

Radicalized British Muslims continue to pose a security threat to Israel, a senior member of the House of Lords told Ynetnews on Thursday.

Baroness Caroline Cox, former deputy speaker of the House of Lords for 20 years, and author of "The West, Islam, and Islamism," and Dr. John Marks, co-author of the book, are in Israel for a BESA Center conference on radical Islam being held at Bar-Ilan University.

Cox told Ynet News Israel "does need to be concerned" about another attempt by al-Qaeda affiliated British Muslims to attack the country, a precedent set in 2003 by the suicide bombing carried out by two British Muslims on the Mike's Place pub in Tel Aviv, killing three Israelis and injuring dozens.

Cox added that the possibility of another terrorist attack on Britain was a constant looming shadow. "Terrorists only have to get it right once. It's difficult to have a fail proof way to stop them," she said.

The good news is that there is so much more that can be done. The bad news is that there is so much that hasn't yet been done.

"Britain has become a base for training and teaching militant Islam," Cox declared, adding that moderate Muslims who opposed extremism faced threats and a harsh campaign to silence them. Dr Marks warned that "radical groups are multiplying and continuing to recruit."

[...]

Marks said Britain's Jewish community was also under threat. "I wish they would do more to inform the rest of society of the threat they face," he added.

[...]

Muslims schools in Britain 'like Hamas schools'

Textbooks being used in Saudi-funded Muslim schools in Britain contained the "same anti-Semitic texts based on the Koran that you find in Palestinian Hamas schools," Marks noted.

Cox quoted a senior British bishop as saying that "most of our educational institutions have been infiltrated," and said university campuses were prime recruitment grounds for Islamist groups. "

"They are using our institutions to recruit young people, and preventing any critical analysis of Islam. I recently visited a theology college in Wales. The first thing you see when you walk in is a giant plaque thanking a wealthy sheikh for his contribution. I thought, is there any way that a realistic assessment of Islam can take place at this college?" she said.

[...]

"The feeling is that we are all the time putting out fires," Cox said. She discussed proposals to construct a gigantic mosque in east London which would house 70,000 people in prayer. "The symbolism of the mosque is clear, it dominates over its surroundings, which submit to it," Cox said.

[...]

"We need to wake up, draw a line in the sand, and say enough is enough," she said, adding that "Britain's cultural and spiritual heritage are under threat."

Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com

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MY NARROW-MINDED ATTITUDE
Posted by Steven Shamrak, June 2, 2007.

My comments are in () parentheses.

I am sometimes criticised for covering only one subject in my editorial letters, namely the Middle East conflict in general, and the right of the Jews to live in peace on their ancestral land in particular. My critics are quite right! I can't help it. I am passionate about the rights of my people.

I could write about colonialism and the effect it had on the lives of millions of Indians who were shipped throughout the British Empire as cheap slave labour, plus the adverse social and cultural impact it brought to the indigenous nations. The devastation of environment, due to colonial exploitation, would also make a big and interesting subject to explore.

I could write about the Church, its persecution of not only Jews, but millions of Christians who had stepped out of the official line or tried to be a good G-d-respecting human being. Nobody wants to seriously and systematically contest the devastation and destruction to other cultures and religions brought by the Church to many nations around the world. Then there's always the systematic child abuse by priests, monks and nuns, and efficient cover-up by the Church's official and legal system to write about. Cultural genocide of many nations and legalization of the slavery was also done in the name of Christ and the superiority of the Church-led nations!

Political hypocrisy and stupidity could be another favourite subject of mine. A lot could be written about forging of the state of Panama by and for the economic benefit of the United States; Creating political minefields by dividing Africa and the Middle East along colonial control lines, with no consideration for tribal interests and historical information; How about the betrayal of Tibet and Czechoslovakia! Most people don't even know that the war in Vietnam could have easily been avoided if not for the arrogance and stupidity of the French and US governments. What about occupation of West Papua by Indonesia; the Basque region by Spain and France; Northern Cyprus by Turkey; Western Sahara by Algiers, as well as the misfortune of the people of Kurdistan and Kashmir.

Yes, there are hundreds of issues I care about and could easily write about. I have chosen only one -- Eretz-Israel, the land of Israel! Please, choose the one that you are truly passionate about. If all of us start to care, it will make the life of corrupt political systems intolerable, and the lazy and hypocritical journalists might start to do their jobs properly and honestly. And G-d forbid if in the process we are able to change the world into a better place!

The US House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on Tuesday of next week on a resolution to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to the capital of Israel, Jerusalem, in accordance with the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. -- Will it be another hypocritical 6 months delay?

Food for Thought. by Steven Shamrak

Hypocrisy of International Aid: No international aid or moral support has been offered by any country or non-Jewish organization to the residents of Israeli town Sderot, victims of Arab terrorists' rocket attacks, during the past two years!

Sderot takes 310 Qassam missiles from Gaza 16 days in a row. -- While Israeli government continues the pretence of current military tactic -- INACTION! Fake Regrets for Disengagement. The Yesha Council of the Judea, Samaria and Gaza communities has published a collection of statements by public figures who supported or helped implement the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria and have since expressed regret: 1) Maj.-Gen (ret.) Yiftah Ron-Tal, IDF ground forces commander at the time of the Disengagement. 2) Ilana Dayan, Journalist, Host of Popular 'Uvda'(Fact) Program. 3) Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, Chairman of the National Security Council and one of the Disengagement's chief architects. 4) Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a major backer of the Disengagement. (It is just a fake PR work of political parasites. They must start actively supporting a Jewish Gaza! How often must true Zionists say: "I told you so"?) http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/122599

Still Sitting on the Fence. Former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon stated that the Disengagement is what led to the Second Lebanon War and brought southern Israel under fire from Gaza. Ya'alon was replaced as Chief of Staff just before the 2005 Disengagement due to his semi-public disapproval of the plan. "The unilateral approach that drove the Disengagement Plan has failed and Israel must abandon it," he said. (But he is still sitting on the fence, as in 2005, and is not advocating re-establishment of a Jewish Gaza.)

Peres to Run for President. Shimon Peres, 83, confirmed he would stand for election to be the country's next president. "I have occupied almost every senior position in the land," Mr Peres said. "I have known failures but have also had successes that I hope have contributed to building (more like destroying) the nation." During five decades in Israeli politics he has never won a national election. (In fear of persecution for corruption, Israeli political self-hating dinosaurs do not retire! The sick, corrupt and traitorous immorality of governance must be stopped!)

Control of Gaza Only Solution. Former General Security Service head Yaakov Perry stated that the only way Israel would be able to stop the incessant bombing of the south by Gaza terrorist was to control Gaza. Perry said, however, that a temporary Israeli entrance into Gaza to "clean house" would end up backfiring... (Just control of Gaza with Arabs remaining there is not enough! It is not the solution, but postponing the problem. Gaza must be completely cleared from enemies and reunited with Israel!)

Quote of the Week:

"[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat." -- Yitzhak Rabin, Quoted by David Shipler in the New York Times, 04/04/1983. -- It was good but naïve idea, thinking that in order to clear the Land of Israel of a hostile Arab population, Israel needs to rely only on someone's blessing and Arabs' good will.

Change without Change. Palestinian Fatah-al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades group splits, with 40 percent defecting to Hamas. The breakaway Fatah rebel group based in the West Bank has turned its back on PA leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and established a separate suicide terrorist militia. Called the Martyr Abu Amar (Yasser Arafat) Brigades. (The name of the well-known child molester who, most likely, died from AIDS is symbolic! Is it because so-called Palestinians are the virus, which Israel must get rid off?) -- The Bush administration is still telling a skeptical US Congress that training moderate Palestinian troops is a key to Israel's security and hopes for peace. (There are no "moderate Palestinian troops"! What hypocrisy!)

'Misguided' Focus. American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters: "I don't...see my role as negotiating a ceasefire between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority." but to facilitate "...a political framework, a political horizon for those who want to pursue a two-state solution." (She is only interested in facilitation of Israel's surrender!)

PA 'Honor killings' Up. Violence against women in Palestinian society is on the rise. At least 48 women have been killed in the last three years in the West Bank and the Gaza as a result of domestic violence. Most of the victims were murdered for allegedly bringing "shame" on male members of their families. Seventeen of the women had been murdered by their brothers, while five were slain by their fathers. (A society that is ugly outside and inside!)

Bishara: War Was Great Victory for Arab World. In an interview with Hizbullah media outlet Al-Manar, former Arab-Israeli MK Azmi Bishara said that the Arab world should "celebrate the Hizbullah victory over Israel. "It was the antidote to the '67 syndrome Arabs have suffered for many years," (This is the call of Israeli Arabs, if there is such a thing, for the destruction of Israel! The war exposed the moral and military bankruptcy of any non-Zionist and non-Jewish solution of the conflict. All of them have been tried and failed many times!)

No One is Stopping Iran! "The international community must concentrate on preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. The report shows that the time element is critical..." Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said. The report reveals that instead of freezing the uranium enrichment program, Iran has widened its scope, with 1,300 centrifuges in operation in various nuclear facilities throughout the country.

Hamas: Islam Will Rule the World. The Hamas charter specifically mandates the murder of Jews. "We will liberate Palestine, all of Palestine... Palestine will not be liberated by negotiations, committees and decisions. It will only be liberated by the rifle and the al-Kassam. Therefore, prepare yourselves," declared Hamas spokesman Dr. Ismail Radwan. Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahhar said (March 25, 2007): "The prophetic foundation is the message of the prophet Muhammad, that Islam will enter every house and will spread over the entire world." (Western friends of Arabs and Jews-haters, beware! After Israel you will be next on the hit list!)

Here We Go Again. Jerusalem Police Chief Ilan Franco sent a letter granting his initial approval to a gay pride parade in Jerusalem. Last year, the parade was replaced by a demonstration on Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus due to fears of violence. (Country under attack! People are suffering. But, self-hating Jews of all denominations are only concerned with destroying the fabric of Israel's Jewishness.)

Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. For the last 3 years, he has been publishing 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@mail2world.com

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ISRAEL'S DEADLY STUPOR
Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, June 2, 2007.

Dear friends,

This article was written by Jeff Jacoby and it appeared in Arutz-Sheva
(www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7119). It first appeared in the Boston Globe on Wednesday, May 9, 2007.

Without further comments!
Your Truth Provider,
Yuval.

If Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had been as adroit and resolute in defending his nation from its enemies as he is in defending his grip on power, Hizbullah today would be a disgraced relic of its former self, while Olmert would be esteemed from Dan to Beersheba. Instead, the terrorist organization is hailed throughout the Arab world for its attack on Israel last summer, while Olmert -- despite surviving no-confidence motions in the Knesset on Monday -- is so reviled by his countrymen that, according to the latest poll, 0 percent of Israelis (that is not a misprint) would vote for him today.

The poll follows the release of the interim report of the Winograd Commission, a blue-ribbon panel appointed last September to investigate Israel's failings in its second Lebanon War. The report is scathing. It documents in damning detail the bungling, the willful blindness, and the almost criminal ill-preparedness that pervaded the highest levels of Israel's government during the war and the years leading up to it.

The commission blasts Olmert for making rash and uninformed decisions, and pronounces him guilty of "a serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility, and prudence." It is equally critical of the inept Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, whose incompetence crippled Israel's ability to defend itself from Hizbullah's attacks, and of former military Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who never warned his clueless superiors that the armed forces were unprepared for a ground offensive in southern Lebanon.

For anyone used to associating Israel with military brilliance and nerve, the Winograd report makes excruciating reading.

The immediate trigger for the war was Hizbullah's July 12 incursion across the Lebanon-Israel border, in which three soldiers were killed and two others kidnapped. But Hizbullah had been openly preparing for war for six years, ever since Israel's unilateral retreat from southern Lebanon in May 2000. Making no attempt to disguise its intentions, Hizbullah swept into the territory Israel had abandoned, creating a network of fortified bunkers and launch sites and deploying thousands of missiles and rockets along the border. All the while, Israel looked on, doing nothing about the mounting threat.

"Every alarm bell should have been ringing," Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz writes. "But many of the warning systems had, literally or figuratively, long since been disconnected. And those who did try to stress the unmistakable imminent dangers were often ignored."

How could Israel have been so complacent? What accounts for such lethargy in the face of a deadly menace that was growing more dangerous by the day?

The answer, says the Winograd Commission, is that too many of "the political and military elites in Israel have reached the conclusion that Israel is beyond the era of wars." Unlike their forebears, who understood that the Jewish state would never have peace until its enemies decided to lay down their arms, today's Israeli leadership imagines that it can achieve peace by means of restraint and retreat.

"Since Israel did not intend to initiate a war," the report concludes, senior officials decided that Israel "did not need to be prepared for 'real' war." And that being the case, "there was also no urgent need to update in a systematic and sophisticated way Israel's overall security strategy and to consider how to mobilize... all its resources -- political, economic, social, military, spiritual, cultural, and scientific -- to address the totality of the challenges it faces."

Fed up with fighting, aching to live normally, Israelis lulled themselves into a stupor. They shook hands with Yasser Arafat and ran away from Lebanon and expelled the Jews from Gaza. They blamed themselves for their enemies' hatred and turned the other cheek to suicide bombings and Kassam rocket attacks. They tried to be Athens, one Israeli commentator wrote last year. But to survive in the Middle East, even Athens must sometimes act like Sparta.

"We are tired of fighting," Olmert moaned in a 2005 speech. "We are tired of defeating our enemies." Unfortunately, those who grow tired of defeating their enemies generally end up being defeated by them.

As America's beleaguered ally searches for new leadership, one voice worth heeding is that of Hebrew University game theorist Robert Aumann, a Nobel laureate in economics.

"We are like a mountain climber who gets caught in a snowstorm," Aumann said at this year's Herzliya Conference in January. "He is cold and tired, and he wants to sleep. If he falls asleep, he will freeze to death. We are in terminal danger because we are tired. I will allow myself to say a few unpopular, unfashionable words: our panicked lunging for peace is working against us. It brings us farther away from peace, and endangers our very existence.

"Roadmaps, capitulation, gestures, disengagements, convergences, deportations, and so forth do not bring peace. On the contrary, they bring war, just as we saw last summer."

With enemies like Hizbullah, weariness is a luxury Israel cannot afford. And lest we forget, Hizbullah is our enemy, too.

Yuval Zaliouk writes the Truth Provider columns. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il

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AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PEOPLE KNOWN AS MEMBERS OF BRITAIN'S UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE UNION
Posted by Doris Wise Montrose, June 1, 2007.

This letter was written by Eli E. Hertz. It is archived at
http://www.mythsandfacts.com/article_view.asp?articleID=89

Writing this letter is a good way for me to discuss your horrible denial of facts and the disrespect that you bestow on your parents, grandparents and your British people's history.

Did you know that your government was the leading force among the fifty-one member countries -- the entire League of Nations -- that unanimously declared on July 24, 1922:

"Recognition Has Been Given to the Historical Connection of the Jewish People with Palestine and to the Grounds for Reconstructing their National Home in that Country."

Did you know that your country's hero Sir Winston Churchill had that to say about Jewish "Occupation" of Palestine:

"When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride."

My friend -- the British world of academia: It is not "The Occupation" Arabs reject; they reject the right of Israel to exist as a legitimate, secure, Jewish political entity, and you choose to collaborate with this call to genocide.

Palestinian Arabs have underscored their rejectionism with wave after wave of terrorism at every juncture -- that is, before the 1967 Six-Day War and even prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and this too is being ignored by you.

If we talk academically, you would be most interested in how your people described Jewish academic's achievement in a visit to Jewish Palestine in 1937:

"The Daniel Sieff Research Institute [today part of the Weitzman Institute of Science] at Rehovot is equipped with the most delicate modern instruments; the experiments conducted there are watched by chemists all over the world: yet from its windows can be seen the hills inhabited by a backward peasantry [Palestinian Arabs] who regard it only as the demonstration of a power they hate and fear and who would like, no doubt, when their blood is up, to destroy it."

You should ask yourself: What kind of a society do you support? -- A society that consciously and purposely sacrifices its own youth for political gain and tactical advantage. Today the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs nurture a blind hatred of Israel. They created a cultural milieu of vengeance, violence and death -- preparing their children to be sacrifices in a death cult -- your silence is noticed.

I suggest you tell your Palestinian friends to invest in Biotech, not bombs. Build computer chips, not Kasam rockets. Teach medicine, not hate. Look to the future, not the past. Stop blaming Americans and Jews for all their problems, and take responsibility for their own actions.

My British academic: Do you fully comprehend what you are doing? If you are indeed aware that the path you have embarked on leads to hate and destruction, and if you have freely chosen to walk in that direction, then you and your Arab friends are truly beyond hope.

Before you continue to dishonor your own history, think it over.

Eli E. Hertz, New York.

Doris Wise Montrose is President, Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Los Angeles. Contact her at doriswise@sbcglobal.net

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UNFAIR TO CHELM
Posted by Boris Celser, June 1, 2007.

During a party Churchill, not quite sober, annoyed a lady sitting next to him, who said: "Mr. Churchill, you're drunk". Winston replied at once: "And you, Madam, you are ugly. But tomorrow I shall wake up sober, while you will still be ugly". There was really not a lot the poor woman could do to deal with the cause of this statement, even if in bad taste. The best she could do was to try and hide the symptoms -- if she cared.

But in Sderot it is different. First it is deadly, second the cause must be dealt with, or, as Sarah said, it is going to expand, not only because of longer ranges of Kassams, but by groups stationed elsewhere along Israel's borders. Dealing with the symptom only is not cosmetic surgery, nor does it save lives. Why shouldn't British unions and academia boycott Israel? Israelis are being neglected by their own government, and that's a lot worse.

Concretely speaking, throwing concrete around is not a concrete way to solve this problem, unless...Olmert, Peretz, or their friends are in the concrete business and will profit from any reconstruction needed. Of course, cutting off water and electricity to Gaza would look awful in Israel's leaders' resumes, all proud of sending money and weapons to the enemy. The problem is organic in nature, endemic to Sderot, eventually pandemic to Israel, systemic to the government, and polemic to us all.

Hemingway, under these circumstances, would have advised the elders of Chelm to do when sober what they say they would do while drunk, so they would learn how to keep their mouth shut. But even the Chelmians never had to deal with proportional representation.

This article was written by Sarah Honig and published yesterday in the Jerusalem Post
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1180527972791&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Most murders-by-Kassam in Sderot occurred outdoors: a three-year-old taken by his mother to kindergarten, a grown-up resting on a park bench, an Ethiopian-immigrant tot and his baby sister playing on the sidewalk, a schoolgirl returning with her younger brother from after-class activities, a worker in the factory yard, a middle-aged pedestrian on her way to work, a woman driving to visit her mother, a technician on his computer-servicing route.

None of the above would have been saved even had millions been frittered away on concrete reinforcements for Sderot residences and public buildings. Nevertheless, fortifications are popular. It's comforting to believe in facile solutions which entail no awful choices or painful risks.

The additional perks of collectively indulging in delusional deliverance-from-danger fantasies are the incomparable opportunities they offer for lusty recriminations. Political hotshots already pass the buck to their predecessors for not having shielded Sderot from rocket fire. Projecting blame onto others constitutes the ultimate cop-out and diversionary tactic, as abundantly evident by all the printed and broadcast verbiage devoted to the non-buttressing of Sderot.

Granted, homes with sound shelters are better than homes with none. But would even the sturdiest structures protect Sderot? Only if its residents recede tortoise-like into their shells and suspend all animation indefinitely; any telltale hints of vitality might cost lives. Venturing beyond secure spaces means heightened vulnerability for Sderot's 24,000 inhabitants. Safety rules out grocery shopping, taking kids to school or staying gainfully employed.

The town whose folk must cower behind battlements 24/7 is for all intents and purposes dead. Its lifelessness bestows victory on Gaza's terror fiefdom no less than a desperate exodus. Infallible anti-Kassam insulation could only be provided by a giant impenetrable steel umbrella constructed to envelop all of Sderot, neighboring farm communities and even Ashkelon up the highway, with its sizable population, power station, oil pipeline, fuel depot and desalination plant. Indeed for truly foolproof results, the entire western Negev should be creatively cocooned.

Failing that, however, we're left with the abject humiliation and admission of impotence inherent in the very readiness of a sovereign state to contemplate dotting ordinary streets with concrete cubes to offer cover for ordinary civilians going about the ordinary tasks of their ordinary lives. No normal country would stand for this.
 

A DEFENSIVE posture makes no sense in this situation -- especially reliance on yet-to-be-devised super-tech anti-Kassam missile wizardry. The Kassam, we need recall, costs a pittance to manufacture. To go after each such flying pipe-bomb with exorbitantly expensive, ultrasophisticated guided gimmickry is about as practical as the tortoise-armor approach.

Rising expectations for superficial fix-ups inculcate in once-resolute Israelis the subliminal perception of terror as a natural disaster to which we must somehow grow accustomed and which cannot be combated. From here it's an insignificant distance to quasi-legitimizing the daily bombardment of a sleepy backwater town. Subsequently this all but invites derivative international censuring of sporadic "disproportionate" responses to such routine attrition.

Leaders or would-be leaders who promote the premise that nothing can extricate Israel from the bloody bind, jeopardize not only Sderot but undermine the very Zionist endeavor and the Jewish state's self-preservation. If Israel concedes that orderly life cannot continue in Sderot, then -- as Hamas honchos gleefully crow in our faces -- tolerable existence would eventually become impossible anywhere else in the country. If the Sderot domino falls, it's only a matter of time before Ashkelon goes under, followed by all the dominoes along the road to the last debilitated bastion of Tel Aviv.

Contrary to defeatist propaganda, offensive options are numerous -- beginning with cutting off electricity and water supplies to the Gaza that targets the very Israeli power and pumping stations that charitably sustain it. Let Hamas, which liberally obtains weaponry and explosives via Egypt, import utilities from there as well. For starters we can stop being willing suckers.

But it's no coincidence that those who resist rooting out Gaza's pernicious potential are the identical headliners who cheered 1993's Oslo, 2000's midnight flight from Lebanon and 2005's disastrous disengagement from Gush Katif. Sderot's agonies today -- and who knows what calamities tomorrow -- are direct and explicitly predicted byproducts of the loser mentality of the false prophets who foolishly fathered the Oslo, unilateral Lebanon withdrawal and disengagement fiascos.

Any moves to undo the incalculable damage they wrought would perforce underscore their unforgivable recklessness. Refusing to acknowledge failure, they insist there's no other way -- terror cannot be overcome. They advocate more of the same disabling deployment of international forces which now constrict IDF freedom of action in the north. Having emotionally disengaged from stretches of homeland, they propose the surrender of yet more strategically vital patrimony to genocidal enemies.

The latter would thereby be further emboldened, unleash greater aggression, which would elicit more Israeli concessions, which would be just as effective as anything those mythic problem-solvers of Chelm could concoct. Recidivist pseudopragmatic appeasement of Islamofascists is every bit as logical as the Chelm sages' repeated ingenuity in clearing away bothersome heaps of earth piled up during the digging of synagogue foundations.

Not to be stumped, dispensers of Chelm wisdom quickly proceeded to excavate a deep pit into which all excess soil would be dumped. That of course soon raised the issue of what to do with the mounds that towered over the mouth of the new pit, whereupon it was cleverly decided to shovel them into another pit that would be dug for the expressed purpose of eliminating the predicament created by the earlier pit...

But the comparison is unfair to Chelm. Its screwy brainstorming, while futile, harmed no one.

Boris Celser lives in Canada. Contact him at celser@telusplanet.net

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ISRAEL MUST STOP HAMAS' MISSILE BARRAGE!
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 1, 2007.

Sderot continues to be pummeled by Qassam rockets, launched by Hamas murderers, while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refuses to launch an intensive ground force, demanded by IDF commanders, into Gaza to vanquish Israel's sworn enemy. 310 missiles launched over 16 day, citizens of the besieged enclave flee in droves, and still Israel's so-called head of state will not alter his tactics, relying on ineffective air raids against Hamas operatives to quell the beast. Does Uncle Sam control Olmert and his Kadima party with a leash? What the hell are they waiting for? How many kicks in the groin is Israel willing to take? When Uncle got rocks', observing his own agenda, says jump, does Olmert yell how high'? If Olmert is his own man, is he just plain stupid? Does he not realize that Hamas and kindred spirit terrorists are emboldened each day Israel does not respond convincingly? Already, Hamas believes it is responsible for Israel's abandonment of Gaza. Furthermore, the Jewish State's sworn enemy will not cease attacking Israel unless and until a muscular retaliation is effectuated, forcing Hamas to readjust its mindset, coming to the realization that for every missile launched, a tenfold, if not stronger, more powerful response by Israel will follow. That could mean giving all civilian residents of Gaza formal notice that within 24 hours, IDF troops, protected by airpower, will begin an all out offensive against Hamas. In other words, civilians will be given an opportunity to flee into neighboring Arab lands as Israel's attempt to crush Hamas will not be deterred by human shields as it was in Lebanon. The Jewish State must not be expected to tolerate what no other nation on Earth would tolerate. If the outer world is appalled, so what! Condi Rice and her boss, for example, are more than willing to ally with Holocaust trivializer Mahmoud Abbas, expecting Israel to put up with Hamas' deadly rockets while making nice nice with the Palestinian smoothie', indeed ceding all lands justifiably secured during the Jewish State's 1967 war of survival', including the eastern sector of Jerusalem if need be, for the sake of Bush and Condi' s legacy, currently in tatters.

Olmert and his party, now stewarding the beleaguered State of Israel, must not be allowed to morph that nation into a U.S. protectorate, in effect dependent on the kindness of strangers', much like Tennessee William's Blanche DuBois, willing to sell her anatomy and self-respect for favors, or in the case of the Jewish State, cede her land and self-respect for favors, perhaps donated by an overbearing Uncle. If Israel is perceived by wily Arabs as so dependent and too weak to stop Hamas missile launchings, alas, she is also perceived as too weak to resist extortionist efforts to take her land. So-called Palestinian authorities, merged into a coalition of Hamas and Fatah blatant Jew haters, including Abbas, have no intention of stopping the missile launchings. United States negotiators, merged into a quartet with Europe, Russia, and United Nations subtle Jew haters, have no intention of stopping the missile launchings. The International Court of Justice at The Hague, displaying anti-Semitic tendencies, presumably seething as an uppity' Israel maintains its security wall of life', stopping homicide/suicide bombers at the terrible' cost of inconveniencing Arabs, has no intention of issuing an edict condemning the missile launchings. Hmmm! Does that mean Israel should take matters into her own hands, shed any perception of weakness, do whatever it takes to stop missile launchings into her territories and regain self-respect; in other words crush Hamas while concurrently declaring Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights, and all of Jerusalem to be evermore parts of the sovereign State of Israel (alas, if only Gaza were so included, Sderot and proximate towns would not be imperiled). Only a foolish nation, led by foolish leaders, would balk at that idea.

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 larose@snip.net

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COURT RULES AGAINST PEACE NOW LIBELS
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 7, 2007.

Finally, Israeli Courts Issue a Verdict against Libel in a Case in which Libel really took place, as opposed to the mere expression of non-treasonous or non-leftist political opinion:

This is called "Court Orders 'Peace Now' Fined For Slander" and comes from today's Arutz Sheva
(www.israelnationalnews.com/SendMail.aspx?print=print&type=0&item=122620), 15 Sivan 5767. It was written by Maayana Miskin.

A Jerusalem judge ruled Wednesday that Peace Now must pay 58,000 shekels ($14,336) to Aryeh King after slandering him on the left-wing Peace Now website.

The group had claimed that King, a well-known activist for Jewish settlement in eastern Jerusalem, had announced that he planned to break the law by bringing 40 Jewish families to live in an area that lacked building approvals. The site called King a racist and a fascist, and accused him of threatening the peace of Jerusalem and leading to its "Hevronization."

The judge found that Peace Now's allegations were false and slanderous, and ordered the group to pay the full penalty required by law.

The group still has the right to appeal the court's decision, and King's lawyer, Gili Israeli, said after the ruling that the affair may be far from over.

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. Or write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

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NATIONAL INSECURITY
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 1, 2007.

RICE DOESN'T 'TALK TURKEY'

Although Turkey's Islamist regime is subverting Turkey's secular status, Sec. Rice praised its civil liberties reform for 'pulling Turkey west toward Europe.' The 'reform' she praises hobbles military intervention against Islamist subversion. The Islamist party has been applying Islamic law by criminalizing adultery, banning alcohol in some areas, giving Islamic courts more authority than secular ones, persecuting political opponents, accepting 'dirty money,' and by bias against religious minorities. (It has done other such things, too.)

Turning Turkey towards the West? No, the Islamist party agitates against the US (Daniel Pipes, NY Sun, 5/15) and works more with other Islamist regimes.

NATIONAL INSECURITY

'Half the jurisdictions in the US issue picture ID to people who shouldn't even be in the country.' This thwarts the huge bureaucracy set up to provide homeland security and helped the 9/11 bombers. 'American politicians and bureaucrats create a parallel system of education and welfare and health care entitlements by contriving in the maintenance and expansion of a vast network of fraudulent identity that corrupts the integrity of almost all state databases.' Supposed immigration reform would grant those frauds swift citizenship.

The youths who set out to attack personnel at Ft. Dix were stopped for 19 traffic violations, but were in 'sanctuary cities' which do not permit police to report illegal aliens to immigration authorities. The youths were infected by Sudden Islamist Syndrome, as are other young, supposedly moderate Western Muslims. They de-assimilate and radicalize. S. Arabia built and staffed mosques for moderate Albanians that radicalized them (Mark Steyn, NY Sun, 5/14, Op.-Ed).

Idealistic and ignorant youths are but putty in the hands of skilled Islamist recruiters. Idealistic American bureaucrats endanger us by protecting outlaws.

OLMERT REGIME CONTINUES BLUNDERING

Israel approved Egypt's sending 500 trained Fatah men into Gaza, but many Fatah men also belong to Hamas and carry out joint terrorist missions with Hamas. Fatah committed more terrorism than Hamas.

The regime also wants Egypt to monitor its border with Gaza, although Egypt supports the terrorists and a similar arrangement in Lebanon put Israel within range of terrorists. Lebanon is an enemy of Israel and a partner of Hizbullah. Foreign forces don't keep terrorists from Israel! (Caroline Glick, IMRA, 5/22.)

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 richardshulman5verizon.net

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MUNICH: OPERATION BAYONET DVD
Posted by Nurit Greenger, June 1, 2007.

For the first time, the real story of the Israeli Mossad's "Bayonet" unit responsible for Israel's retaliation against the Palestinian Black September terrorist organization, following the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

The real Munich (In German: München) For the first time, the real story of the Israeli Mossad's "Bayonet" unit responsible for Israel's retaliation against the Palestinian Black September terrorist organization, following the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

Many accounts exist of the Mossad's operations throughout the Middle East and West Europe, and yet MUNICH: OPERATION BAYONET revisits the scenes of the operations with the Mossad agents responsible, as well as presenting the personal accounts of CIA operatives and the surviving Black September members.

MUNICH: OPERATION BAYONET gives an unrivalled and compelling account of Israel's unprecedented actions, told first-hand by the people involved.

Director: Ron Maiberg
Script: Ron Maiberg & David H. Halevy
Research: David H. Halevy
Producer: Noam Shalev
For further information contract: info@highlight.co.il
http://www.israel-catalog.com/product.asp?Product=11401)

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com. Visit her blog:
http://ngthinker.typepad.com

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ENGLAND AS 1933 GERMANY
Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, June 1, 2007.

Dear friends,

When your media is full of lies and replete with poison (see BBC, The Guardian, The Independent and others), what you get is a libelous boycot.

Thus, the victims are blamed and the murderers are justified.

England has shamed itself by transforming into Germany of the 1930s. For some curious reason I am not at all surprised.

This is Caroline Glick's Column, "As Europe self-destructs," which was published May 31, 2007 in the Jerusalem Post.
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1180527976961&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Wednesday's decision by Britain's University and College Union to call for a boycott of Israeli universities and colleges was not only hypocritical. It was suicidal.

It is not simply that the British prefer to boycott Israeli universities than say, Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iranian, Saudi and Jordanian universities where students are indoctrinated to seek the annihilation of the Jewish people and the subjugation of Christianity through the destruction of Western civilization.

It is not merely that they ignored the poor, brave Iranian students who just three weeks ago were brutally attacked by regime forces as they sought to hold elections for their pro-democracy campus organizations.

By calling for a boycott of Israeli universities, Britain's academic establishment is turning its back not only on Israel, but on Britain. When Britain's professoriate rejects Israel's right to exist as a Jewish, democratic nation-state and glorifies Palestinian society which supports global jihad and the destruction of Western civilization, it is rejecting the British state.

They are embracing a culture founded on a rejection of the culture and traditions that have formed Britain since the Magna Carta was issued in 1215. For the past 800 years, Britain has stood for individual liberty and freedom of inquiry -- at least for the British themselves. In universities like Oxford and Cambridge, it was this humanist spirit and the justified national and cultural pride it nurtured which facilitated Britain's rise to international power. By boycotting Israel, which itself embodies these British ideals, the British are abrogating their own traditions of openness. Consequently, they are destroying themselves.
 

AND BRITAIN is not alone in its self-destruction. Britain's rush to oblivion is part of a wider trend overtaking all of Western Europe. Take Sweden for example.

Sweden is upheld by leaders of the Israeli left like former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami (who now devotes himself to attacking the US and Israel from his academic perch in Toledo, Spain), Education Minister Yuli Tamir, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, Meretz chief Yossi Beilin and former Labor chairman Avrum Burg. They extol Sweden as a social democratic wonderland which Israel must emulate.

Some 12.5 percent of Swedes are immigrants and around half of Sweden's immigrants are Muslims. Muslims will soon comprise the majority in many of Sweden's cities.

The intrepid Scandinavian blogger 'Fjordman' recently penned an essay, "Jihad and the collapse of the Swedish model" in the on-line Brussels Journal. In it he relates the significance of Sweden's Integration Act of 1997 to Sweden's national self-destruction. The act officially proclaimed Sweden "a multicultural society."

Notes to the act stated, "Since a large group of people have their origins in another country, the Swedish population lacks a common history. The relationship to Sweden and the support given to the fundamental values of society thus carry greater significance for integration than a common historical origin."

As 'Fjordman' explains, the act was nothing less than national suicide. "Native Swedes have... been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Kurds or the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. The political authorities of the country have erased their own people's history and culture."

Fjordman cites authors Jonathan Friedman, Ingrid Bjorkman, Jan Elfverson and Ake Wedin who explained in their 2005 book Exit the People's Home of Sweden -- The Downfall of a Model of Society, that multiculturalism, as the "dominant ideology in Sweden, which has been made dominant by powerful methods of silencing and repression, is a totalitarian ideology, where the elites oppose the national aspect of the nation state."

The authors explained that "the problem is that the ethnic group... described as Swedes implicitly are considered to be nationalists, and thereby are viewed as racists."

Like the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century, multiculturalism identifies the Jews and the Americans as its chief enemies. Both must be defeated for their refusal to destroy themselves and merge into the post-national thought stream. And like their 20th century predecessors, the multiculturalists of today embrace radical Muslims who share their rejection of Judaism and Americanism.

The multiculturalists convince their societies to accept their own destruction by indoctrinating their fellow citizens through their education systems and media. A recent poll of Swedes between the ages of 15-20 showed that 90% had never heard of the Soviet gulag.
 

NEEDLESS TO say, the consequences of this state of affairs are not localized to Europe. As they do towards their own people, the European elites work tirelessly to subvert American and Israeli cultural confidence and to undermine every action the two nations take to combat the forces of global jihad. Whether by condemning the US incarceration of jihadists at Guantanamo Bay, claiming that Zionism is racism, attacking the US campaign in Iraq, financing Israeli anti-Zionist pressure groups and the Palestinian Authority, or insisting that Iran should be negotiated with, the EU works to compel the US and Israel to stand down rather than defend themselves and to convince American and Israeli societies that we are unworthy of being defended.

Disturbingly, rather than face up to Europe's self-destruction and give it a wide berth, led by our own post-national elites, Israel and the US are adopting the European model of cultural collapse.

The most recent example of the Israeli elites' subversion of their country is Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz's assault on the Jewish National Fund.

Since it was chartered by Theodor Herzl in 1901, financed by donations from Jews throughout the world, the JNF has purchased land to promote settlement of the land by the Jewish people. The JNF owns some 2.5 million hectares of land.

In 1961, the JNF signed an agreement with the Israel Lands Authority which authorized the ILA to manage JNF lands in accordance with the JNF charter. In 2004, the anti-Jewish Arab Israeli pressure group Adalah petitioned the Supreme Court demanding that the ILA enable non-Jews to settle on JNF lands. Adalah alleged that by acting in accordance with the JNF charter, the ILA discriminates against Arabs.

Rather than reject Adalah's claim on its face, or at a minimum cancel the 1961 agreement and enable JNF to manage its own lands, Mazuz sided with Adalah. Last week he ordered the JNF to stop operating in accordance with its charter. That is, Mazuz effectively and with no legal authority expropriated the property of the Jewish people.

In so doing, the attorney-general of the Jewish state essentially decided that Zionism is a form of racism and that the Jewish people have no special rights to the Land of Israel. No doubt the Swedes are proud of him.

The Olmert government has likewise embraced the European model of national collapse. Rather than defend Israel's citizens from our enemies and cultivate the Jewish character of the state, the government seeks to appease the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Egyptians and the Europeans at the expense of Israel's citizenry.

At the invitation of successive Israeli governments, Europeans forces are deployed today in Hebron, in Gaza and along Israel's northern border with Lebanon. These European forces have done nothing to prevent the Palestinians from arming, training and attacking Israel. Along the Lebanese border, since last summer's war, the Europeans have similarly done nothing to prevent Hizbullah from rebuilding its arsenals and reasserting its control over southern Lebanon.

And this is to be expected. As Europeans perceive their interests, they are better off appeasing the Arabs and the Iranians and condemning Israel and the US for every step we take to combat the forces of global jihad committed to our destruction.

Rather than acknowledge this reality and work to remove the Europeans from our midst, the Olmert government is exacerbating the problem. In recent weeks, the government has asked the Europeans to increase the size of their forces along the Gaza-Egypt border. Thursday, Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman recommended that NATO forces be deployed in Gaza. Similarly, Minister Rafi Eitan and far-left Meretz MKs Zehava Gal-On and Avshalom Vilan are calling for Arab League forces to be deployed to Gaza. Gal-On and Vilan envision the Arabs and the Europeans jointly take control over Gaza. For his part, Eitan is recommending that Arab armies deploy to Judea and Samaria as well.

IN THE US, the situation is depressingly similar. At leading universities, professors and students who openly support Israel and the US campaign in Iraq are hounded and isolated. In keeping with the general anti-American and anti-Israel gestalt on college campuses, last year Harvard University invited former Iranian president Muhammad Khatami to speak on campus. Harvard ignored Khatami's stewardship of the Iranian nuclear program during his tenure. His role in violently quelling the student democracy movement in 1999 and 2003 was similarly overlooked.

The Bush administration's foreign policy has likewise been Europeanized. Five years after President George W. Bush placed Iran and North Korea firmly in the axis of evil, the State Department is working overtime to appease them both. In line with this policy, on Tuesday, Iran's announcement that it had arrested five US citizens and is charging them with espionage was greeted by embarrassment and paralysis in Washington. Just the day before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had dispatched the US ambassador in Baghdad to meet with his Iranian counterpart.

The US's treatment of North Korea is perhaps even more dramatic. Rather than abandon its appeasement policy towards Pyongyang after the North Koreans breached their commitment to close their nuclear facility at Yongbyon in April, the Bush administration has redoubled its efforts to placate the Stalinist dictatorship. Not only did the US have little to say about the North Korean short-range missile tests over Japan last week. It sent its emissaries to Beijing this week to attempt to buy North Korean compliance with its breached commitment by unfreezing Pyongyangs's bank accounts in Macau. The US treasury froze those accounts when it discovered that they were being used to launder profits from counterfeit US currency and drug deals.

Then there is the US's refusal to abandon pressure on Israel to appease the Palestinians. At a time when jihadists from Iraq have panned out to Lebanon and Algeria and are actively working to overthrow those countries' governments, Tuesday Rice claimed that the Palestinian conflict with Israel is "at the core of a lot of problems in the region."

During the Cold War, protected by the US military, Europeans could embrace cultural and national suicide without fearing the consequences of their actions. Now faced with those consequences, the Europeans have embraced their own destruction rather than abandon their multicultural model and its concomitant anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism.

Israel and the US do not have anyone else to defend them. And in spite of the rantings of their cultural, media and academic elites, the Israeli and American people have no interest in committing national suicide. In light of this, both countries must move swiftly to end the Europeanization of their cultures and policies.

Yuval Zaliouk writes the Truth Provider columns. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il

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OUR ENEMIES ARE WELL-FUNDED, WELL-ORGANIZED & SHAMELESS LIARS...
Posted by Buddy Macy, June 1, 2007.

This past December, a contingent of us met with John Ruskay, Executive Vice President and CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York to discuss the huge needs of the expellees from Gush Katif, 16 months after their expulsion from their homes in Gaza.

While awaiting the start of the meeting, I spoke with a man attending a seminar at the Federation offices dealing with the "human rights situation" in Israel. He told me that the Israeli military is destroying the homes of "Palestinians," even though they hadn't done anything to deserve it. Without mentioning to him that, most likely, these homes had been owned by the families of suicide bombers, I asked him if the seminar had included a discussion of the terrorist activities perpetrated against Israel's civilian population. He said that they had talked about that as well. (Apparently, though, that aspect of the conflict had not been emphasized by the leaders of the seminar!)

It is shocking that this type of propaganda is being "taught" within the hallowed offices of Federation. The Jewish State is at the brink of extinction, and some of our fellow Jews are embracing and disseminating the lies of our enemies. It is up to the Jewish leaders to end this sickness immediately, for our enemies will certainly not end theirs...

The "International Solidarity Movement" is working tirelessly to promote its agenda of lies. The anti-Israel forces are extremely focused, organized and media savvy; and, they will say anything and everything, regardless of how far it is from the truth, to weaken and ultimately destroy Israel (see article below). The future of The Jewish State would be in great question even if all Jews were united in the battle against Israel's enemies. Think how perilous it is in the current reality, in which many of our brethren are aiding her enemies! Without the will to survive, Israel and the Jewish People will perish. Malcolm, Howard, John, Ronald, Russell: It is up to you to supply this essential ingredient for Jewish survival. Another rally at the UN -- after the fact -- just won't cut it!!

ISM's Current Campaign of Lies:
Freedom Summer 2007: Confronting Apartheid
April 17th, 2007
Posted in Press Releases, International Actions, En Español,
Arabic Translations, ISM Media Alerts, Action Alert

This comes from ISM's Freedom Summer 2007, "Confronting Apartheid" In English, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, Greek, Swedish, French, more translations to come...

Why Palestine?

For over 40 years the people of Palestine have endured a brutal military occupation.

Apartheid and military occupation make every day life almost impossible, whether it's tending crops and livestock, passing through an Israeli military checkpoint, or going to school when illegal Israeli settlers attack.

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and U.S. President Jimmy Carter described Israel's Apartheid policies as "worse than South Africa's."

There's always plenty of argument and hot-air generated about Palestine, but the ISM gives you the chance to act. Palestinians ask international volunteers to support their non-violent demonstrations, to confront policies of land theft and destruction, and to intervene whenever necessary.

Why Now?

This June marks the 40th anniversary of the military Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. Now, more than ever there is a need for an international presence in Palestine.

International volunteers help reveal to the world the truth on the ground from Occupied Palestine--a truth that the mainstream media disguises or simply ignores. The world needs to understand that when the Israeli government says they are going to "starve" the Palestinian government into making concessions, the ordinary people do the starving and no political progress is made.

The world may believe that the Israeli occupation ended with the Gaza pullout, but volunteers who witness settlement expansion on Palestinian land know that the occupation in the West Bank gets worse.

Volunteers with ISM's Freedom Summer 2007 will stand side by side with villagers in Bil'in as they continue their two-year struggle to save their land from Israel's Apartheid Wall. They will also join demonstrations in the village of Um Salamuna, where a large amount of village land has been confiscated for the construction of the Apartheid Wall and expansion of nearby illegal settlements. Volunteers will also protest the demolition of Palestinian homes in the Jordan Valley and South Hebron, where Israeli forces are currently demolishing homes.

When international volunteers are absent, the Israeli army use lethal tactics of repression, such as live ammunition on unarmed protesters. Your presence means Palestinians can peacefully protest without being threatened with death.

ISM volunteers also serve as human rights monitors in the Hebron neighborhood of Tel Rumeida, where Israeli settlers harass and often attack children and teachers. Israeli soldiers in Hebron sometimes detain Palestinians for hours at checkpoints and arbitrarily invade Palestinian homes.

You can make a difference, as our volunteers have in the past, to help hold Israeli soldiers and settlers accountable for their actions.

In addition to the important field work, there are many other tasks that must be done. You may be able to join Palestinian communities in providing emergency medical services, help to disassemble restrictive roadblocks, or assist in the ISM Media Office.

One of our most important and undervalued skills as internationals is listening to and witnessing what Palestinians have to say about their current situations and how their lives have been ruined by the illegal occupation of their land.

There is plenty of room to share your creative skills with the Palestinian and international community, whether you can help run an art workshop for children or utilize your circus talents to de-escalate military harassment, both of which are current projects in Tel Rumeida.

Join the ISM for Freedom Summer 2007 and encounter first-hand the courage and the generosity of the Palestinian people as they continue to exist and survive under Israeli Apartheid and occupation.

On the day of the Summer Solstice, let us join Palestinians in non-violent struggle to end the Israeli Occupation. Let the whole world come together here in Palestine to confront Apartheid and to sustain the solidarity which remains unbroken.

Your presence in Palestine this summer, for a week or for three months, is an important part of maintaining the bridges that have been built with the Palestinians, and for new ones to come.

Freedom Summer 2007 kicks off June 21 and ends August 15. Volunteer training sessions are held every Thursday and Friday.

In addition, there are two ISM-related projects, Art Under Apartheid and the Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians for those interested in developing creative workshops with children or non-violent resistance through circus performance. See www.artunderapartheid.ps and trcdp.livejournal.com.

Further details to come...

Contact Buddy Macy at vegibud@gmail.com

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BRITISH HYPOCRITES (The Boycott of Israel)
Posted by Avodah, June 1, 2007.

This was written by Ben-Dror Yemini and it appeared May 31, 2007 in Ma'ariv. English translation provided by Israel Government Press Office

Why are we witnessing a recurrent historical phenomenon, a different law for Jews -- a unique and racist law -- as opposed to all others? It is not morality. Because, if human rights and human lives were what interested the British, they would devote much greater energy to what is happening in Darfur than to what is happening in the West Bank.

The British lecturers know the truth. They are at least supposed to know. They know that in Chechnya, for example, Putin's Russia wiped out tens of thousands of Muslims; some say hundreds of thousands, in order to regain control of the rebellious region. They know that the Israeli army is the epitome of humanity compared to the Russian army. They know that in Central Europe, in Srebrenica, more Muslims were slaughtered in one week than have been killed in 40 years of Israeli occupation. They know that British soldiers, who control the Basra area in Iraq, and US soldiers in Baghdad and in other areas, behave much less humanly than do the Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria. They know that the Syrian regime brutally suppresses the Kurdish minority, and jails any intellectual who dares to open his mouth against the regime. And, given this, they have not decided to boycott Russia, Britain, the USA or Syria. A partial list. They have decided to boycott only Israel.

Why? How is it that, once again, the Jews -- excuse me, citizens of the Jewish collective -- are again deserving of boycotts even though they did not perpetrate any crime against humanity then, seventy or eighty years ago, or now, if we compare what other countries have done, including Britain, to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Why? Why are we witnessing an astounding, recurrent and disturbing historical phenomenon of a different law for Jews -- a unique and racist law -- than for all others?

It is not morality. Stupid is the person who thinks that the British morality glands are working overtime. Hypocrisy does not go hand in hand with morality. Because boycotting Israel and not Syria or Russia, leads the British hypocrisy, and not the British morality, to new records. Because if human rights and human lives were what interested the British, they would devote much greater energy to what is happening in Darfur than to what is happening in the West Bank. The answer, hard to believe, is petrol. The conflict here shakes the stability of the world oil markets. British lecturers are deluding themselves that sacrificing Israel will appease the Muslim tiger. They, at least, want to ingratiate themselves with the nations that control most of the petroleum market. They are not boycotting the Saudis whose repression of women is much greater than the repression of the Palestinians. And not the miserable dictatorships of other oil nations. Are you kidding? They wouldn't dare. True, the main reason is brainwashing. The blue screen transmits to the British -- and not just to them -- many more pictures from Beit Hanun in Gaza then from Chechnya or Basra. About Darfur there is not much to say. Arab Muslims are massacring black Muslims, a real massacre. Genocide. Hundreds of thousands have already been murdered. Millions of refugees. And that's alright. Because the hypocrisy of the British academics is not easily excited about anything unless it is portrayed on the television screen. And what is on the screen is mainly what is easy to attack. Not what needs to be attacked.

The good news is that things must be put into perspective. Two months ago I was present at some lectures in the framework of "Apartheid Week" that called, for example, for the destruction of Israel. Some well poisoners from here were present, such as Yitzhak Lior and Eyal Sivan, Israelis who abhor the Jews' right to their own country. And -- lo and behold -- the lecture halls were nearly empty. Those present were mostly Palestinian students, a few Jewish Israel-hating activists and a marginal smattering of somnambulant left-wing radicals. Most British know that the problem is not occupied Palestine. The problem is Londonstan, which is being overrun by Islamists who declare vociferously: We want to raise the green flag over London. And therefore, the lecturers' decision is, for the most part, proof of the decline and miserable state of its academia.

I only wish that it were possible to say that it is only happening there. This disease is here as well.

Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com

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WE ARE THE SILVER PLATTER UPON WHICH THE JEWISH STATE WAS SERVED TO YOU
Posted by Nurit Greenger, June 1, 2007.

Natan Alterman was born 1910, Warsaw -- died 1970, in Israel. He was an Israeli poet, journalist, and translator.

He moved to Tel Aviv in 1925, where he continued his studies at the
Gymnasium. His first published book of poetry was Kokhavim Bahutz ("Stars Outside"), published in 1938. In 1942, Alterman wrote an angry poem in which Jewish children who have been murdered in the Holocaust give sarcastic thanks to God for choosing them.

Alterman translated Shakespeare, Moliere and Racine into Hebrew, as well as Yiddish and Russian writers.

A famous Israeli song of which the lyrics were written by Nathan Alterman, is Kalaniyot.

Alterman criticized David Ben Gurion for being too willing to give up the area known as Judea and Samaria or the West Bank after the 1967 War, in return for a peace agreement.

So, it can be said that Memorial Day is the cause for Independence Day, as independence was partly a result of the sacrifice of the lives of the many thousands of soldiers who died for their country. It was they who made it possible for a Jewish State to be declared, to be freely re-built, and to be lived in, in relative safety, despite the actions of surrounding enemies. It was these soldiers and fighters who, as the poet Natan Alterman put it, were the "silver platter" on which the Jewish State was handed to the Jewish people.

The Silver Platter (Magash Akessef) -- by Natan Alterman

The earth grows still.

The lurid sky slowly pales over smoking borders.

Heartsick but still living, a people stand by

To greet the uniqueness

Of the miracle. Readied, they wait beneath the moon,

Wrapped in awesome joy before the light. -- Then soon,

A girl and boy step forward,

And slowly walk before the waiting nation;

In work clothes and heavy-shod

They climb

In stillness.

Wearing still the dress of battle, the grime

Of aching day and fired night

Unwashed, weary until death, not knowing rest,

But wearing youth like dewdrops in their hair.

-- Silently the two approach

And stand.

Are they of the quick or of the dead?

Through wondering tears, the people stare.

"Who are you, the silent two?"

And they reply: "We are the silver platter

Upon which the Jewish State was served to you."

And speaking, fall in shadow at the nation's feet.

Let the rest in Israel's chronicles be told.

Birthday Celebrations

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com. Visit her blog:
http://ngthinker.typepad.com

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EUROPEAN NGOS ARE UNITED IN ANOTHER GRAND GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION AGAINST ISRAEL
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 1, 2007.

notice the long long list of signatories.

Christian charities, peace and justice movements, Jewish progressive unions, world-famous NGOs like Oxfam and War on Want...all lined up like a herd of useful idiots...gleefully joining in the irrational anti-Israel rant.

We are again facing 'a failure of civilization' (Will Durant's pithy analysis of the European response to the Holocaust)...but this time, civilization's failure to stand up and stare down the Islamofascist threat is very likely to end in the demise of European civilization...or worse.

But can they all be useful idiots, or are some the fronts or shills or puppets of the European Arab League?

Anyone have any ideas about how one could find out?

This next article is called The World says NO to Israeli Occupation!
http://www.tni.org/detail_event.phtml?act_id=16868&banner=banner2&keywords=

It was sent by Marcia Leal, who wrote: "If any good comes out of these anti-Israel campaigns, it will be to know who the signatories 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

Israel prevents the practice of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people which has to be implemented in the Palestinian Territories occupied by Israel since June 1967, comprising the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip and delimitated by the 1949 cease-fire border (the Green line). But Palestinian suffering dates back further to 1948, since nearly 60 years.

Israel has for the last 40 years methodically undertaken the dismantling and the fragmentation of the occupied Palestinian territories. If Israel achieves this policy of annexation and colonization of the Palestinian Territories, what will be left will soon represents only 40% of the occupied territories.

Israel has 40 years ago illegally annexed East Jerusalem in order to integrate it officially into the Israeli territory and has been multiplying unilateral measures aiming to modify the demographic characteristics and the city's status.

For 40 years Israel has confiscated and seized Palestinian land to install settlements. More than 460 000 Israeli settlers have settled down in the occupied Palestinian territories (260 000 in the West Bank and 200 000 in East Jerusalem) and have gained advantage from road networks and infrastructures constructed in the Palestinian territories for the exclusive use of settlers.

The Israeli policy of colonization has been strengthened with the construction of the Wall. 80% of the Wall's layout finds itself inside the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Its objective is to reinforce and finalize the annexation measures of Israeli settlements and of East Jerusalem, which is cut off from the West Bank and which Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza cannot access.

In spite e resumption of negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis through an international conference on the Middle East which will aim the creation of a viable and independent Palestinian State within the 1967 'borders' with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side with Israel and the settlement of the unresolved questions.

On June 9, 2007 all together to say NO to Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories!

List of Signatories:

EUROPE

- European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine -- ECCP
-- European Jews for a Just Peace -- EJJP

AUSTRIA

- Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
-- Frauen in Schwarz (Wien)
-- Jüdische Stimme für Gerechten Frieden in Nahost (Österreich)
-- Steirische Friedensplattform, Graz, Austria
-- Solidaritätskomitee für Palästina, Graz, Austria
-- Verein fuer Antirassistische und Friedenspolitische Initiative/Dar al Janub
-- Society for Austro-Arab relations (SAAR)
-- Pax Christi Österreich

BELGIUM

- Association Belgo-Palestinienne
-- Centre National de Coopération au Développement (CNCD-11.11.11)
-- Actie Platform Palestina
-- Artistes contre le Mur
-- AWSA Belgique
-- Broederlijk Delen
-- Cgé
-- CNAPD
-- CNCD -- 11.11.11
-- Codip
-- Comité pour les Relations internationales de Jeunesse
-- Comission Justice et Paix
-- Composantes de la Communauté Arabe de Belgique pour le soutien au peuple palestinien
-- Coordination des Femmes citoyennes
-- CSC-ACV
-- ECOLO
-- Femmes prévoyantes socialistes
-- FGTB-ABVV
-- FOS
-- Intal
-- Islamic Relief Belgique
-- Magasins du Monde-OXFAM
-- Mouvement Ouvrier Chrétien (MOC)
-- Mouvement Chrétien pour la Paix (MCP)
-- Mouvement des Jeunes socialistes
-- MIR -- IRG
-- OXFAM Solidarité/Solidariteit
-- OXFAM Wxereld Winkels
-- Parti Communiste
-- Parti Socialiste
-- Pax Christi Vlanderen
-- Pax Christi Wallonie-Bruxelles
-- PTB
-- Quinoa
-- Secours populaire Wallonie-Bruxelles
-- Service Civil International (SCI)
-- Solidarité Mondiale
-- Solidarité socialiste
-- Stop USA
-- LCR-SAP
-- Union des Femmes palestiniennes de Belgique
-- Union des Progressistes Juifs de Belgique (UPJB)
-- Vie Féminine
-- Vlaams Palestina Komitee
-- VREDE vzw

FRANCE

- Arab Commission for Human Rights (ACHR) -- Paris
-- Human Rights Defenders in the Arab World -- Paris
-- CCIPPP
-- Collectif Judéo-Arabe et Citoyen pour la Paix -- Strasbourg
-- Association Pour Jérusalem
-- Plateforme des ONG françaises pour la Palestine: 40 members among them:
-- AFPS (Association France Palestine Solidarité)
-- CCFD (Comité catholique contre la faim et pour le développement)
-- CEDETIM
-- CEMEA
-- Cimade
-- EMDH
-- ERM
-- GREF
-- Ligue des Droits de l'Homme
-- Secours Catholique-Caritas France

GERMANY

- Juedische Stimme fuer gerechten Frieden in Nahost (Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in Middle East) -- EJJP Germany
-- German Coordination Group Stop-The-Wall
-- Arbeitskreis Nahost (Middle East Dialogue Group)- Berlin
-- Aktionsbündnis für einen gerechten Frieden in Palästina
-- Deutsch-Palästinensischer Frauenverein e.V. (Union of German and Palestinian Women)
-- Association Germano-Palestinienne
-- Deutscher Freidenker-Verband (German Association of Freethinkers / Association Allemand des Libres Penseurs)
-- Vereinigung für Interantionale Solidarität (VIS) (Association for International Solidarity)

GREECE
-- Greek Committee for International Democratic Solidarity (EEDDA)

ITALY

-- Rete-ECO (Rete degli Ebrei contro l'Occupazione)
-- Action for Peace:
-- ARCI,
-- CGIL,
-- Donne in Nero,
-- Associazione per la Pace,
-- FIOM-Cgil,
-- Pax Christi
-- COCIS (Coordinamento delle ONG per la Cooperazione Internazionale allo Sviluppo)
-- GUS (Gruppo Umana Solidarieta'),
-- Peace Games Uisp,
-- N:EA (Napoli: Europa Africa)
-- COSPE
-- ACS -- Associazione di Cooperazione allo Sviluppo
-- RE.TE. ONG

LUXEMBOURG

- Comité pour une paix juste au Proche-Orient -- Luxembourg
-- Iwerliewen fir Bedreete Volleker
-- Action Solidarité Tiers Monde

NETHERLANDS

- De Gemeenschap
-- Een Ander Joods Geluid
-- Humanistische Partij
-- Nederland Palestina Komitee
-- Stichting Talliq
-- United Civilians for Peace:
-- YWCA Nederland
-- Stichting SIVMO (Steuncomité Israelische Vredes- en Mensenrechtenorganisaties)
-- Task Group Turning Point
-- Internationale Socialisten (IS)
-- Coalitie Stop de oorlog
-- Vrijwillige Internationale Aktie (VIA)
-- Socialistische Alternatieve Politiek (SAP)
-- Stichting Hope
-- Vrije Academie Den Haag
-- Transnational Institute
-- Stichting Stop de Bezetting

SPAIN

- Paz con Dignidad
-- Grupo de ONG por Palestina-Spain (formed by the Federación de Asociaciones de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos and Plataforma 2015 y más)
-- Red Solidaria contra la Ocupación de Palestina:
-- Plataforma Solidaridad con Palestina (Sevilla)
-- Derechos Humanos de Andalucía
-- Asociación Hispano Palestina Jerusalén (Madrid)
-- ISM Cataluña / Valencia
-- Asociación Paz Ahora (Madrid, Euzkadi)
-- CSCA (Madrid, Asturias)
-- MP Acción solidaria con Palestina, Canarias
-- Palestinarekin Elkartasuna komite Internazionalistak (Euzkadi)
-- Sodepaz
-- Ecologistas en Acción (Madrid, Valladolid)
-- Xarxa d'enllaÇ amb Palestina (Barcelona)
-- Boicot. Preventiu (Barcelona)
-- Xarxa Solidaridad Palestina (Valencia)
-- Asociación Paz con Dignidad
-- Interpueblos (Cantabria)
-- Asociación Al Quds, (Málaga) y ASPA (Asociación Andaluza por la Solidaridad y Paz)
-- PCE (Madrid)
-- MEWANDO (Euzkadi)

SWITZERLAND*

- Arbeitskreis für Zeitfragen Biel,
-- Arbeitsstelle Kirche im Dialog (OeME) der Evang.-ref. Kirche des Kantons St. Gallen,
-- Association Suisse-Palestine (ASP),
-- BastA! Basels starke Alternative,
-- Berner Mahnwache für einen gerechten Frieden in Israel/Palästina,
-- Bildungsstelle der kath. Kirche Biel/Bienne,
-- cfd -- l'ONG féministe pour la paix,
-- participant-e-s CH du programme d'accompagnement Oecuménique en Palestine et Israël,
-- Collectif Urgence Palestine Genève, Nyon, Vaud,
-- Comité de la Pétition Palestine,
-- Conseil suisse pour la paix,
-- Fachstelle Ökumene,
-- Mission und Entwicklungszusammenarbeit der Ref. Kirchen Bern-Jura-Solothrun,
-- Femmes pour la paix Suisse et Bienne,
-- GSsA Groupe pour une Suisse sans armée,
-- FriedenJetzt.ch,
-- Parti Humaniste,
-- Humanrights.ch /MERS,
-- Jüdische Stimme für einen gerechten Frieden zwischen Israel und Palästina,
-- Jeunes Verts Suisse,
-- Katholische Pfarrei Bruder Klaus Biel,
-- Kinderhilfe Bethlehem Luzern,
-- Medico international schweiz vormals Cenrtale Sanitaire Suisse CSS Zürich,
-- OeME-Kommission der Evangelisch-reformierten Gesamtkirchgemeinde Bern,
-- Palästina-Solidarität Region Basel,
-- Parti Suisse du Travail PoP/PdT,
-- Peacemaker Gemeinschaft CH + Zen Peacemaker Kreis CH,
-- Steuerungsgruppe der Dekade zur Überwindung von Gewalt der Reformierten Kirchen Bern-Jura-Solothurn,
-- Les Verts Suisses,
-- WILPF Women's International League for Peace and Freedom,
-- Zürcher Mahnwache für einen gerechten Frieden zwischen Israel und Palästina
-- Committee for the right of return
-- Union of Arab Jurists
-- Communauté des Palestiniens en Suisse

* Swiss organizations listed here are signatories of a similar call 40 years of occupation -- enough!

UNITED KINGDOM

- Palestine Solidarity Campaign
-- War on Want
-- UNISON

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

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FROM ISRAEL: WRITE LETTERS AGAINST THE BRIT "ACADEMICS"
Posted by Arlene Kushner, June 1, 2007.

Israel is deeply concerned about the academic boycott recommended by the British Union of Colleges and Universities (UCU) -- uneasy that this will spread to other places, as we've already seen with the labor union I mentioned yesterday.

Please open this link to StandWithUs, an excellent CA-based organization, which provides information on sending letters of protest to the leadership of UCU. And please, follow through by writing an e-mail or sending a fax. The goal is to get a referendum of the whole membership in this issue, because it is felt it would be defeated.

The UCU recommendation is not just to boycott Israeli academic institutions, it also calls on the EU to stop all funding for research at our institutions. Considering the quality of research done here and how this benefits the world, this is incredibly shortsighted and foolish. It is also anti-Semitic.

http://www.standwithus.com/website/index.asp

Arlene Kushner is Senior Research Associate, Center for Near East Policy Research, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem, Israel. Contact her at akushner@netvision.net.il

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THE BENEFICIAL ASPECTS OF THE BRITISH BOYCOTT OF ISRAELI ACADEMIA; SYRIA'S USEFUL IDIOTS
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 1, 2007.
1. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/blogs/blog.aspx/1#2169 (See web page for links and references:)

Well the British tenured anti-Semites and the pseudo-scholars have decided to boycott Israeli universities. It remains to be seen if the mediocre British institutions of higher learning will survive this.

In any case, having thought about it a bit, I think that the British boycott of Israeli universities and academics has its POSITIVE aspects. In fact, I think we should ENCOURAGE the Brits to boycott Israeli academics, or at least SOME academics.

So tell help these British boycotters, I have prepared a list of Israeli academics whom they should immediately begin boycotting:

Ilan Pappe (University of Haifa), Neve Gordon (Ben Gurion University), Oren Yiftachel (Ben Gurion University), David Newman (Ben Gurion University), Avraham Oz (University of Haifa), Anat Matar (Tel Aviv University), Anat Biletzki (Tel Aviv University), Ran HaCohen (Tel Aviv University), Moshe Zimmerman (Hebrew University), Yuval Yonay (University of Haifa), Yoav Peled (Tel Aviv University), Shlomo Sand (Tel Aviv University), Lev Grinberg (Ben Gurion University), Colman Altman (Technion, emeritus), Jacob Katriel (Technion), Ron Kuzar (University of Haifa), Yehuda Shenhav (Tel Aviv University), Kobi Snitz (Bar Ilan University), Menachem Klein (Bar Ilan University), Dan Rabinowitz (Tel Aviv University), Uri Ram (Ben Gurion University)

You can find many more names of Israeli academics who should be boycotted by the British at the web site of www.israel-academia-monitor.com!!

2. "Syria's Useful Idiots"
By Michael Young
June 1, 2007; Page A13
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118066765721021127.html

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- On Wednesday, the United Nations Security Council voted to set up a tribunal that will try suspects in the February 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Syria is the leading suspect in the case, so the establishment of the tribunal serves as a step toward creating a stable Lebanon. It also poses a clarifying question to the United States: What will engaging Syria mean for building a liberal future for Lebanon?

At the moment, it is clear that Syria hasn't stopped meddling in Lebanon's internal affairs. The Security Council only created its tribunal after efforts to establish a similar tribunal within Lebanon were stymied by Syrian allies. Indeed, to understand what is at stake in the Lebanese crisis today, flip through the report released last April by the U.N. commission investigating the Hariri assassination.

The commission, led by Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz, now assumes that Hariri's assassination was tied to his political activities, particularly his preparations for the summer 2005 legislative elections. This sets up a key passage in the report: "[A] working hypothesis is that the initial decision to kill Hariri was taken before the later attempts at rapprochement got underway and most likely before early January 2005. This leads to a possible situation in the last weeks before his murder in which two tracks, not necessarily linked, were running in parallel. On one track, Hariri was engaged in rapprochement initiatives and on the other, preparations for his assassination were underway."

Lebanese citizens celebrate Wednesday's establishment of a U.N. tribunal for the Rafiq Hariri murder. For anyone who followed Lebanese politics at the time, this deceptively anodyne passage says a lot. Hariri was hoping to score a victory against Syria and its Lebanese allies during the elections, after Syria had extended the mandate of his bitter rival, President Emile Lahoud. The Syrians felt that such a victory would jeopardize their position in Lebanon and, although there was mediation to patch up Hariri's differences with the Syrians, the plot to eliminate him continued. It is plain from Mr. Brammertz's phrasing that those who were planning the former prime minister's elimination are the same ones with whom the intermediaries were trying to reconcile him.

Mr. Brammertz is building a case that, from the information provided to date, can only point the finger at Syria and its Lebanese supplicants. The Hariri tribunal, now that it has been formally established, poses an existential threat to the Syrian regime, and it is in Lebanon that the Syrians have and will continue to hit back to save themselves.

The outbreak of violence in northern Lebanon between the Lebanese army and a group calling itself Fatah al-Islam is the latest stage in such an endeavor. In a BBC interview last week, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora openly linked Fatah al-Islam to Syrian intelligence. The group has claimed to be an al Qaeda affiliate, but observers in Lebanon, including Palestinian sources usually critical of the Siniora government, qualify this, saying that Fatah al-Islam is acting on Syria's behalf. The daily Al-Hayat has reported that the group's weapons come from caches belonging to Palestinian organizations under Syrian control, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and Fatah al-Intifada, from which Fatah al-Islam allegedly broke off.

Meanwhile, a more subtle battle is taking place over interpretation of what is happening in Lebanon. This is especially important because there are those in Washington who still insist that something can be gained from dealing with Syria. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi thought so in April when she visited Damascus, did the Gertrude Bell tour of the Hamadiyyeh souq, and capped it all with a visit to President Bashar Assad, all for precisely nothing in return.

The Iraq Study Group also thought Syria could be a useful partner in Iraq, even as all the signs suggest that Damascus has little real influence there and is sowing dissension to compensate. That's why understanding what is going on in Lebanon is vital for a sense of what can be gained from Syria elsewhere. Yet something is amiss when the most obvious truths are those the pundits won't consider.

For example, what did the former CIA agent Robert Baer mean in Time magazine, when he wrote that the Lebanese government should "know better" than to believe that Fatah al-Islam is a Syrian creation, because "at the end of the day Fatah Islam is the Syrian regime's mortal enemy"? Mr. Baer's point was that a Lebanese civil war might undermine Syrian stability, but also that Sunni Islamists oppose the minority Alawite Syrian regime. He reminded us that "the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood used northern Lebanon as a rear base to seize the Syrian city of Hama in 1982."

It is Mr. Baer who should know better. Syria has fueled a sectarian war in neighboring Iraq by funneling Sunni al Qaeda fighters into the country, without worrying about what this might mean for its own stability. Syria's vulnerabilities have not prevented it from hosting Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. And Syria's anxieties notwithstanding, throughout its years in Lebanon it developed ties with many Sunni Islamist groups and recently welcomed to Damascus a prominent Lebanese Islamist it has co-opted, Fathi Yakan.

The point is that Syria will have no qualms about provoking sectarian discord in Lebanon to ward away the menace of the Hariri tribunal.

And what are we to make of the journalist Seymour Hersh, now considered an authority on Lebanese Sunni Islamist groups on the basis of a flawed article he wrote for the New Yorker last March? In that article, and in a recent CNN interview, he indirectly suggested that Fatah al-Islam had received weapons not from Syria but from the Siniora government.

The only source Mr. Hersh cited in his article for the Fatah al-Islam story was Alistair Crooke, a former MI6 agent who co-directs Conflicts Forum, an institution advocating dialogue with Islamist movements. Mr. Crooke did not have direct knowledge of what he was claiming, as he "was told" that weapons and money were offered to the group, "presumably to take on Hezbollah."

Mr. Hersh is wading into very muddy waters with very simple ideas. The relationship of the Lebanese government and the Hariri camp with Sunni Islamists is byzantine, but there is no evidence to date that the government or the Hariris had any strategy to use al Qaeda against Hezbollah. In fact most Lebanese Sunni Islamists are not linked to al Qaeda. And Mr. Hersh has provided no proof that Fatah al-Islam received government assistance. Still, the Syrian regime's media has repeatedly used Mr. Hersh's charges to discredit the Lebanese government.

Then there are those with little patience for Lebanese independence. Arguing that Syria is worth more to the U.S. than Lebanon, they advocate Washington's ceding Lebanon to Syria as a price for constructive dialogue. For example, Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council staffer now at the New America Foundation, recently told National Public Radio, where he appears regularly, that the Bush administration had "romanticized" the 2005 "Cedar Revolution." This was his way of implying that the latter was worth discarding. For Mr. Leverett and others, a Lebanon free of Syria is inherently unstable, even as they disregard Syrian responsibility for that instability.

In a March 2005 op-ed in the New York Times, as Lebanese took to the streets demanding a Syrian pullout, Mr. Leverett urged the U.S. to abandon efforts to establish a "pro-Western government" in Beirut. Instead, he proposed that "the most promising (if gradual) course for promoting reform in Syria is to engage and empower [President] Assad, not to isolate and overthrow him."

This makes for restorative reading today, as Mr. Assad's regime pursues its destabilization of Lebanon, Iraq and Palestinian areas, ignores domestic reform and continues to detain thousands of political opponents in its prisons.

There is nothing wrong with keeping an open mind on Syria. However, an "open mind" can be shorthand for blindness or bad faith. Given the evidence, it makes no sense to dismiss Syrian involvement in the Lebanese crisis, or to blame the crisis on an al Qaeda affiliate allegedly financed by the Lebanese government. Nor does it make sense to assume that Lebanon is a burden that the U.S. should jettison in favor of a stabilizing Syria, considering the fact that al Qaeda materialized from across the Syrian border. We're asked to believe that a group, said to be financed by the Siniora government, picked a fight with that very government, and somehow innocently did so just as the U.N. prepared to establish a tribunal the Syrians fear.

When Syria is systematically exporting instability throughout the region, you have to wonder whether its regime can be a credible partner to the U.S.

Mr. Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star in Beirut and a contributing editor at Reason magazine.

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. Or write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

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