| HOME | Featured Stories | October 2006 Blog-Eds List | Background Information | News On the Web |
Opinions And Editorials By Our Readers
|
NEW "SAVE YESHA" MOVEMENT FOUNDED
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, October 31, 2006. |
|
Several of the past Government Administrations of Israel have failed the Israeli people and the Jews of the Diaspora. Those who purported to lead the people of YESHA have also failed their obligations. They turned out to be willing to serve but reverted to weak accommodation. When a government become treacherous, and turns against its own people, the people are obligated to both the nation and their families to defy that Government. Israel has had a series of Prime Ministers who discovered that they can issue diktats to give away the Land of the people - with no permission from the Knesset or votes of the people. Worse yet, the Israeli Courts (especially the Supreme Court) has become what's called an "activist" court, making judgments based upon politically biased interests and they are now exceedingly corrupt. They issue Judgments as if they are a political party and they act like they consider the people their adversaries. Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert temporarily claims he has 'given up' his stated plans to evict the 250,000 Jewish men, women and children from Judea and Samaria, plus an additional 250,000 from that part of Jerusalem controlled by Jordan for 19 years, which includes all the Jewish holy places and many old Jerusalem neighborhoods. He is as driven to do this as when he advised Ariel Sharon to abandon 10,000 Jewish men, women and children from the 25 communities of Gush Katif in Gaza and Northern Samaria. Why must the people of this small but gutsy nation commit national suicide because a politician in temporary power has a misguided, deranged idea that either the Arab Muslims or an American Administration (whose interests lie with the Arab oil sources) will be grateful for their sacrifice? The Europeans have always sucked up to Arab oil and now they pour their Euros into the pockets of Terrorists, hoping they won't blow up the Eiffel Tower, the Sistene Chapel, London Bridge, and so forth. The new group being assembled are the best of the Israeli people because they really care about the Land G-d gave them. You can be certain that this Government will violate their trust - because it has before. This happened under PM Yitzhak Rabin who enlisted the services of a once admired Secret Service, the Shabak, whom he tasked to do political work for the politicians. No doubt, they will try to infiltrate and set up false events so the Leftists and the Leftist Media can slander the new group. Isn't it a shame when the politicians grow greedier by the day? They truly have come to believe that the people exist to service that greed. They never think of themselves as servants of the people. To get what they want, they slowly corrupt all the Institutions that make up the Government - such as the Courts, the Police, the Secret Services, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), et al. From there it is a small jump to a dictatorship once the politicians know they have a choke-hold on the people. Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres secretly created Oslo, surrendering Gaza and Jericho first - then Oslo 2 giving up control of 7 major cities to the Father of modern terrorism, Yassir Arafat. Since then the Prime Minister's Office has become the "Red Light District" of the Jewish State of Israel. Although prior Prime Ministers may have taken a portion, that was petty stuff compared to Oslo 1 and 2, Wye, Gush Katif and any other Peace Accord Surrenders that may have been manipulated in the last 13 years. I guess you have to give the credit for powerful, though evil actions to Shimon Peres and his terrier Yossi Beilin, for arranging things in Oslo, Norway. Once it was discovered that the entire nation could be cheated out of their Biblical heritage which the Jewish people had prayed and longed for over 2 centuries, can the Prime Minister give away what he personally never owned? And yet when there was no investigation, no individuals indicted for treason, no jail time - then the crooked politicians knew they owned the people. >From then on you have PM Ehud Barak ready to give away 97% of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. You saw PM Bibi Netanyahu give away 80% of the holy city of Hebron. Now we have in power the equivalent of a law clerk, Ehud Olmert, ready to give away the Golan Heights, more than half of Jerusalem, the center of the country including Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley. But, what does Olmert care, since he pulled off an apartment sale gaining himself much money for twice its worth from a good "friend" and will live the good life somewhere outside of Israel. Is there a good reason for a Peoples' Revolt and a new representative government - including for the Jews in Judea and Samaria? The Israelis fought and won 7 wars against the joint might of the Arab Muslim countries with internal uprisings from the Arab Muslim Palestinians and sustained terrorist attacks by Arabs against Jews for more than 100 years. If the Israeli people can stand up to that, why can't they stand up to a law clerk who bites his nails (always a sign of weakness and lack of self-control)? This essay was written by Hillel Fendel and broadcast on Arutz-7 today. |
|
"No one is excited about starting yet a new movement, and the Yesha Council has done great things - but it is leading us to defeat." So say founders of the new "Save-Yesha" (Meginei Eretz) organization. The founding session of the new group - named Meginei Eretz, Defenders of the Land - was held in Beit El Monday night, led by Atty. Elyakim HaEtzni of Kiryat Arba, Lt.-Col. (ret.) Yitzik Shadmi of Halamish, and others. Close to 100 people from all over Yesha (Judea and Samaria) were in attendance, including young outpost leaders as well as Dr. Gideon Ehrlich of Bar Ilan University, Kedumim Deputy Mayor Esther Karish, Nadia Matar of Women in Green, Beit El Mayor Moshe Rosenbaum, Rabbi Avraham Shreiber of the former Gush Katif community Kfar Darom. "No one is happy about starting new organizations," said HaEtzni "but this one comes to meet a critical need for our very existence. The Yesha Council [of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria] has done wonderful things, and its leaders have dedicated their lives to Yesha, but they have left the settlement enterprise open and vulnerable at a critically dangerous point that endangers our very existence. By announcing in advance that they accept the 'majority decision,' even if that decision is to do to us what they did to Gush Katif, they have neutralized our ability to defend ourselves." Lt.-Col. Shadmi elaborated on this point: "We refuse to adopt this defeatist policy. If they come to expel us, we will not attack soldiers or police, but neither will we go quietly. They will have to use a lot of force against us, and we will be willing to go to jail... Soldiers must be willing to say openly, on the day they enlist, that they want to serve their country in the best way possible but they will refuse any orders having to do with expelling Jews. If 2,000 soldiers say that, it will cause a change in the whole country." Former Knesset Member HaEtzni continued: "We want to help the Prime Minister tell the U.S. President, 'I would like to evacuate the communities and/or outposts, but I just can't; the army won't cooperate, and the people won't go peacefully, and there are just too many people who say they believe in the Bible. The Meginei Eretz plan is to recruit residents from all over Yesha, have them form task forces in each of their communities, and "organize those who believe that in this war it is permissible to block roads, to resist, to tell soldiers to refuse, and to employ civil disobedience." HaEtzni dismissed as "demagoguery" talk of the army shooting at civilians or vice-versa. Successful Activism Various speakers provided examples of resolute action by Yesha residents that brought positive results. Matanya Ben-Gedalyah of Beit Haggai said that just recently, "Arabs in the area declared war on us by vandalizing the memorial monument to our friend and neighbor Yossi Shok, who was murdered last year by terrorists. I say they 'declared war' because this is how it starts, with attacks on property... "We informed the army that we were going to hold a large march towards the monument, and from there to the neighboring Arab village. The army of course came out in force to 'keep the peace,' but what they didn't know was that another, smaller group of us went around the back way and stood right at the entrance to the Arab village - just singing songs of the Land of Israel and reminding every Arab who passed by that 'we are here.' The message was received..." Another story that was recounted involved Ronen Tzafrir of the Galilee, who came with several of his friends to stand up against left-wingers and Arabs who accused Shomron Jews of cutting down Arab olive trees. Tzafrir later told Arutz-7, "It turned out that in the car of one of the leading trouble-makers there, Yoel Marshak of the Kibbutz movement, I found a large saw - of the type used to cut down olive trees! It was clear that they were simply making a blood libel against the Jews there... We surrounded his car - he didn't know what hit him - and I took the saw, and then the army officially confiscated it... The problem is that they later returned it to him and detained me - but in the end, they forbade him to return to the area..." Finally, Col. (ret.) Moshe Leshem of Givon HaHadashah, just north of Jerusalem, recounted the following: "Six years ago, Arab terrorists shot at a car in which my son was traveling - miraculously, only one passenger was hurt, but it could have been very much worse. That very night, we went to the nearby [hostile - ed.] village of Bidu, and said, 'No more Arab cars will drive past our community,' and we demanded that the road be closed. We refused to budge until finally the army came and almost pleaded with us, saying they couldn't bring the bulldozer to close off the Arab village until the next morning. We said fine, we'll remain here until tomorrow morning. In the end, they closed it off, and has not been opened in six years..." Strength from Within "Our own communities in Judea and Samaria are an asset that we have overlooked," Leshem said. "We must each go back to our communities and widen the circle of activists, simply by starting discussion groups -- people are worried about the future, they want to talk about the current situation. From there, the circle will widen, and people committed to self-sacrifice on behalf of the movement will come forward... Don't look to the coastal plane and Tel Aviv for salvation -- believe in yourselves. We must instill our communities with ideology." Leshem later told IsraelNationalRadio's Yishai Fleisher, "The main mission of this group will be to organize people in their communities on an ideological basis - parlor meetings in homes, and then larger groups. Many of the people have not yet recovered from the expulsion of Gush Katif, and so we hope to create a new flame within them, a hope that things may change... Including those in Jerusalem and the Golan, we have more than a half-million people, and they are the cream of the crop - the most idealistic, the real pioneers, the best soldiers and officers - and they can set the national agenda, just as the Kibbutz movement did in the early days of the State. The problem is that they don't yet know who they are, or the great power they have, and that's what we want to change." Among the many points made by Journalist Boaz HaEtzni of Kiryat Arba, the MC of the evening, was this: "Nashuv l'chol Yishuv - We Will Return to Every [Destroyed] Community - is not just a bumper sticker to decorate our cars, but truly represents the way that we want to lead. The story is not over, and we in fact expect to return to the destroyed communities, and everyone must be aware of that. Especially in the northern Shomron, where Israel is still in control - the area is still Area C, that is, under full Israeli control, and we must have active committees engaged in planning how to return to there." Arutz-7's Ezra HaLevi reports: MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union-NRP), the only Knesset Member to attend the meeting, said that the destruction of outposts could come at any time. "[Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor] Lieberman's entry to the government is liable to bring about an attack on the outposts as part of the internal government power struggles," Eldad warned. "Peretz will seek to prove to his constituency that he still has control over the IDF, despite Lieberman's demands that the outposts be authorized." Eldad also took the opportunity to reiterate his public stance on refusal and civil disobedience, daring Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to prosecute him for it. "I am publicly calling for refusal of orders [having to do with destroying Jewish sovereignty in parts of Judea and Samaria] and for massive civil disobedience to such orders on behalf of the populace," Eldad said. "Now I have said the same thing that people like Bayit Leumi [National Home] activists Shai Malka and Ariel Vangrover are being tried for -- let the Attorney General put me on trial." Former Gush Katif spokesman Eran Sternberg, who is against enlisting in the army and feels that the army cannot be changed from within, spoke about his mixed feelings for the Yesha Council. Decrying the Council's willingness to come to peaceful defeatist agreements in Kfar Maimon [on the eve of a bid by thousands to "crash the gates" of Gush Katif shortly before the Disengagement] and Amona, he said that "later, the Council held a rally in support of the youth in Amona." 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 winstonmedia@comcast.net |
|
THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD ON ISRAEL
Posted by David Meir-Levi, October 31, 2006. |
|
Below is an review of David Mamet's "Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism,
Self-hatred, and the Jews" that answers the question: how do you tell
the difference between anti-Semitism and honest legitimate criticism
of Israel. It was written by Efraim Karsh and it appeared yesterday in
the New York Sun Mr. Karsh is head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London, and author, most recently, of "Islamic Imperialism: A History," available from Yale University Press. Why is world's preoccupation with Israel is far greater than her size and her influence and global role would in fact merit? It is rather a complex question that has no defined answer but could generally be explained as, the world having inexplicable, diabolical and nefarious anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and racism notion all stem from these words passed on to the Jews by G-d: "From Zion comes Torah and the word of G-d [comes] from Jerusalem." If these words are not the precise explanation of the world's obsession with Israel, than the entire world needs its head read for its insane bias, prejudice, unfairness, preconceived notions, predisposition, preconception and foregone conclusion towards Israel. |
|
Since Israel's establishment in May 1948, the world's preoccupation with the country has been far greater than its size, influence, or global role would merit. For decades now, hardly a day has passed without some mention in the international press of this tiny nation, the size of Vermont, whose seven-million-strong population is smaller than the Middle Eastern cities of Cairo, Tehran, and Istanbul. How many people outside their particular countries know the identity of the Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Brazilian, Spanish, or even German heads of state? How about the premier of Indonesia, who is, after all, the leader of the most populous Muslim country in the world? By contrast, virtually all Israeli prime ministers have been household names throughout the world during the past 60 years, from the state's founding father David Ben-Gurion, to Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and more recently Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ehud Olmert. What is the source of this extraordinary attention? Not empathy with the Palestinians; Israel attracted huge international interest well before it conquered the territories in the June 1967 war, indeed well before the "Palestinian problem" gained international prominence. In fact, there has never been a genuine international interest in the "Palestine question," especially by the Arab states, whose decades of mistreatment of the Palestinians has gone virtually unnoticed. It is only when they interact with Israel, the only Jewish state to exist since biblical times, that the Palestinians win the world's attention -- not on their own merit but as a corollary of the millenarian obsession with the Jews in the Christian and Muslim worlds. On occasion, notably among devout and/or born-again evangelical Christians, this obsession has manifested itself in admiration and support for the national Jewish resurrection in the Holy Land. In most instances, however, anti-Jewish prejudice and animosity, or anti-Semitism as it is commonly known, has served rather to exacerbate distrust and hatred of Israel. Indeed, the international coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the libels of Zionism and Israel (such as the despicable comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa) have invariably reflected a degree of intensity and emotional involvement well beyond the normal level to be expected of impartial observers. Rather than being a response to concrete Israeli activities, it seems a manifestation of longstanding prejudice. In The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred, and the Jews (Schocken, 208 pages, $19.95), the distinguished playwright, filmmaker, essayist, and novelist David Mamet doesn't pull his punches about the direct link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. "The outright denunciation of Israel as 'acquisitionist, bloodthirsty, colonial, et cetera' is to me simply a modern instance of the blood libel," he writes. "The world was told Jews used this blood in the performance of religious ceremonies ... Now, it seems, Jews do not require the blood for baking purposes, they merely delight to spill it on the ground." It has long been a staple of Israel bashers to argue that they have never had anything against Judaism or Jews but only against Zionism and Zionists. Yet for all their protestations to the contrary, opponents of Zionism and Israel have never really distinguished among Zionists, Israelis, and Jews, and often use these terms interchangeably. When, in June 1967, the Israeli government ignored a French warning against breaking the tightening Arab siege by force of arms, President de Gaulle lambasted the Jews -- not the Israelis -- as "an elite people, self-assured and domineering." The truth of the matter is that since Israel is the world's only Jewish state and since Zionism is the Jewish people's national liberation movement, anti-Zionism -- as opposed to criticism of specific Israeli policies or actions ("a salient fact of life in Israel, as abroad" in Mamet's words) -- means denial of the Jewish right to national self-determination. Needless to say, such a discriminatory denial of this basic right to only one nation (and one of the few that can trace its corporate identity and territorial attachment to biblical times) while allowing it to all other groups and communities, however new and tenuous their claim to nationhood, is pure and unadulterated racism. Yet it is precisely because it has been tacitly construed as epitomizing the worst characteristics traditionally associated with Jews that Israel is the only case where one party to a territorial dispute -- Israelis and their supporters across the world -- is collectively stigmatized for government actions and targeted for political, economic, and academic boycotts. "Imagine the anti-Israel propaganda currently engaged in on college campuses and other institutions of enlightenment -- imagine it directed against Canadians," Mamet writes, "not that Canadians are misguided, indeed wrong, but that they are 'bad' -- devoid of the capacity for goodwill, duplicitous, inspired by some nefarious and implacable power to wrong those around them; possessed of a power so diabolical it induces their neighbors to strap bombs on their young and send them into the marketplace to slaughter women and their babies." A saddening thought, indeed. But is there any other explanation for why, 60 years after its establishment, Israel remains the only state in the world whose citizens are presented as the heirs to the Nazi mantle; whose economy faces relentless calls for sanctions, boycotts, and divestment; whose policies and actions year in and year out are condemned by the international community, and whose right to exist is constantly debated and challenged? As the poet Heinrich Heine, himself a convert from Judaism, once wrote, Judaism is "the family curse that lasts a thousand years." No matter how much it has tried, Israel has never been able to escape this disturbing reality. 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 |
|
FATAH ARMING, TOO; MORMONS AIDING TERRORISM:; ANTI-ZIONISTS IN ISRAEL
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, October 31, 2006. |
|
STANDARDS FOR ACADEMIA & FOR DEBATE Catholic League president Bill Donohue criticized a professor at De Paul U. and that Catholic university for employing him, because that professor's gutter tactics of debate shame him and his bigotry shames Catholic education. The professor, Norman G. Finklestein, opposes Prof. Alan Dershowitz' defense of Zionism by suggesting that Dershowitz be assassinated and by publishing a cartoon on his web site suggesting that Dershowitz gets a sexual thrill from watching Israeli troops kill Lebanese. Finklestein repeatedly likens civil libertarian Dershowitz to the Nazis. That breaks all bounds of civility. This is street propaganda, not academic behavior. A liberal arts education is supposed to pursue the truth, and use fact and standards of evidence, not engage in gutter polemics with ad hominem assaults, really character assassination. Responsible Catholic leaders should call a halt to this, not host it (Prof. Steven Plaut, 10/12). Call it "racist" education, but it really is puerile. Finklestein also is a Holocaust denier. All such neurotic behavior goes together. WHAT HAPPENS TO A MODERATE MUSLIM Bangladesh once was moderate about Islam. Then madrassas inculcated the radical version, under protection of corrupt officials. Indoctrination led to terrorism. The people were surprised when bombings started. Salah Choudhoury, journalist and apparently owner of a newspaper there, had warned about the rise of Islamism in his country. He also tried to discuss peace with Israelis. He was arrested for sedition, later released on bail after intervention by the US. A mob, whose leaders had bribed police officials ransacked his office and assaulted an associate and him. Police made a false charge against him for that, and withdrew protection from his home and office. The Arab media accused him of being an agent of Israel (IMRA, 10/11). So it goes in one country after another. Islam is imposed secretly and violently. FATAH ARMING, TOO The US sent Abbas thousands of assault rifles, purportedly to support his official forces. Israel approved of the transaction. Abbas, however, turned the arms over to Fatah, his militia engaged in a struggle with Hamas (IMRA, 10/12). A Fatah officer said that the arms would not be used against Hamas but only in a war with Israel. Fatah is defined by the US as terrorist, so the US is arming terrorists (IMRA, 10/14). Earlier news was that Hamas was arming for war on Israel. The stronger Hamas gets, the more it can dominate the P.A., too. Conversely, the stronger Fatah gets, the more it can vie with Hamas for popularity among their depraved people by fighting against Israel. Fatah has committed much terrorism against Israel, and still rejects Jewish sovereignty anywhere. I think Israeli approval was foolish. Bolstering Abbas confuses the West into thinking Israel should not fight against the P.A.. Abbas never wanted to fight Hamas, and the longer he waited, the weaker his position. Unless his forces immediately wipe out Hamas, he will lose. MORMONS AIDING TERRORISM? "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), the Mormon Church, is the single largest donor to the U.S. branch of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), also known as Islamic Relief. In the past year, it donated $1.6 million to the charity. But Islamic Relief is not just any charity. The Israeli government says it is a front for the Hamas." The Church members are patriotic, so it is odd that they would donate to a terrorist front (Prof. Steven Plaut, 9/3). An Israeli government statement about Ali and IRW: "He also admitted that he worked in Jordan and cooperated with local HAMAS operatives. . . . Incriminating files were found on Ali's computer, including documents that attested to [Islamic Relief's] ties with illegal HAMAS funds abroad--in the UK and in Saudi Arabia--and in Nablus." "IRW activities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip are carried out by social welfare organizations controlled and staffed by HAMAS operatives. The intensive activities of these associations are designed to further HAMAS' ideology among the Palestinian population. These associations' educational and religious institutions incite against the State of Israel and advocate terrorist actions against it and its citizens." In 1999, IRW's British headquarters received $50,000 from a Canadian group that the Treasury Department says is a Bin Laden front, according to the Los Angeles Times. This is a partial corroboration by the US government of Israel's finding. Misbah Shahid, the organization's Detroit representative, announced
that IRW publishes and distributes school textbooks to children in
Palestinian refugee camps. But textbooks distributed in the camps are
riddled with anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-American rhetoric,
according to Molly Resnick of Mothers Against Teaching Children to
Kill and Hate
That website had other accusations that I would not use, because they are about individuals related to involved individuals. Those accusations show tendencies but not conspiracy. I corresponded with LDS, to elicit its point of view. LDS protested that it has no political agenda in this. I take its word on that. I also think LDS quite properly checked with Western governmental agencies about the propriety of the charity in question, IRW. However, European governments have yet to declare Hizbullah, or is it Hamas, a terrorist organization. They are very slow on such matters, governed by politics and bureaucracy. The US government is not swift enough. LDS should have checked with the Israeli government about such an important matter, since Israel is more knowledgeable about it. The Islamists are totalitarian, using every aspect of society to imbue the whole population with their hate-filled drive for conquest. LDS does point out that its aid via IRW takes the form of relief goods, not cash and not military goods that could be misused. However, contributing to any one aspect of their society promotes the overall goal. It takes greater circumspection to try to help ordinary people there, without boosting their ability to make war on us. It may not be possible to separate charity from their whole society being geared to jihad. Donors should take greater pains to avoid contributing to jihad against the US, murder of Israelis, and hatred of Christians, knowing as they should that Islamists make extensive use of charitable fronts to promote murder. I know from various studies that the textbooks are vicious. Since IRW distributes them, surely LDS should have found another charity to help, there or somewhere else. ZIONIST AFFIRMATION & RECLAMATION About 1,500 youths from all over Israel hiked through the Hebron hills outside the security fence and to which few Jews have ventured in recent years. They did so to affirm that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people (Arutz-7, 10/12). ANTI-ZIONIST AFFIRMATION & ABANDONMENT Defense Min. Peretz, head of the Labor Party, has ordered the Army, contrary to its advice, to expedite demolition of "outposts." Israel Radio interpreted his move not as motivated by concerns for legality but as a political maneuver to make it too distasteful for the more right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party to join the governing coalition. Israel Radio did not discuss the impropriety of using the Army for internal politics. CONDITION & REWARD FOR JOINING CABINET PM Olmert is considering creating still another Cabinet post, costing millions of dollars just to set up. This one would be given to the head of Yisrael Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman, for joining the Cabinet. The new post would be for strategic security planning. How suitable is MK Lieberman for that post? His notion of security in Gaza is to let Egypt be responsible for it. His notion of security in Judea-Samaria is to let Jordan be responsible for it. This means bringing Arab armies closer to Israel. That is dangerous for Israel (IMRA, 10/13). (Israel has too many Ministers for efficient governing.) Egypt has allowed extensive smuggling of arms into Gaza, protects the illegal militias, and acts in other ways as Israel's enemy. Both Egypt and Jordan have powerful Islamist movements that may take over the country. It would be better if Lieberman ran strategic planning for Arab countries, and fouled their defenses. ARABS RIOT ON WAY TO TEMPLE MT. For security, Israeli police restricted Muslim worshippers at the Temple Mount to hundreds of thousands over age 40. Hundreds of youths barred from there rioted over it. In the P.A., however, the Arabs bar Jews and even destroy Jewish holy sites. Their complains are hypocritical (Arutz-7, 10/13). The Muslim Arabs create security risks by their intolerant violence. Then they complain about security measures against them. P.A. COMPLAINS ABOUT SETTLERS "STORMING" A MOSQUE The P.A. complained that Israeli soldiers did not stop Jews from entering al-Nabi Yossef Mosque in Nablus, and from praying there for a long time. The mosque is on the site of Joseph's Tomb. First Muslims had stormed the Tomb and destroyed it. Then they built a mosque on the site. Now they have the nerve to complain that Jews went there (IMRA, 10/13). They attacked Jews at Rachel's Tomb, too. Typical Arab Muslim intolerance and hypocrisy! Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
|
WHY IS PRESIDENT BUSH FINANCING PLO'S FORCE 17?
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, October 31, 2006. |
|
Do you remember when Yassir Arafat's PLO elite guard "Force 17" kidnaped and assassinated America's Ambassador to Sudan, Cleo Noel, his aide George Moore, the French Charges d'affaires Guy Eid? Arafat gave the order on March 2, 1973 to execute them. Arafat's voice was intercepted by Israeli Intelligence and it was Ariel Sharon who passed that tape on to America's CIA. Force 17 of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) machine gunned them to death. Nothing was done; Arafat wasn't promptly arrested or assassinated because 'somehow' Arafat became the darling of the pro-Arab U.S. State Department and the other Arabists of high office in the U.S. Government. Therefore, Arafat was designated to be spared retribution - no matter what he did. Apparently, the U.S. State Department (wrongly) thought Arafat was malleable and amenable to "land for peace", so they thought (wrongly) that they needed him to make peace. PLO STRUCTURE & COLLABORATING FACTIONS The organizational structure of the PLO is like a Medusa, multi-headed snake. Yassir Arafat's main 'group' is "Fatah", a reverse acronym from the Arabic name Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini (literally: Palestinian National Liberation Movement). Fatah means "conquest" or opening in Arabic. Fatah is a major Palestinian political party and the largest organization of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) a multi-party confederation. Several of the known groups are: Fatah armed factions; Black September (the group named for the 17 month action begun September 16, 1970 when King Hussein of Jordan attacked and expelled Arafat's PLO to prevent him from seizing the Kingdom); Tanzim (militant 'new guard' young street fighters - both men and women) led by Marwan Barghouti, now in Israeli jail for multiple counts of murder of Israelis, conspiracy to murder and membership in a terrorist organization (Bargouti was also general secretary of Fatah in Judea and Samaria); Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades (suicide bombers, young radical militants); Fatah Hawks; and Force 17, the protective elite guard for the VIPs of the PLO - especially Arafat. Additional and more radical groups are part of the PLO and, therefore, the PLO is responsible for their actions, even if they seem to deny their radical cohorts: Abu Nidal's Fatah-Revolutionary Council; Abu Musa's group, the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine); the PFLP-GC (General Council); Hamas and Fatah's "Young Guard". Some commentators say that some of these factions were considered rebellious and outlawed by the Fatah official bodies but, I believe that is a spurious assertion to hide their collaboration with the most heinous of PLO factions' crimes. Documents found in Arafat's Muqat'ah compound prove Arafat knowingly sponsored all these factions and their attacks against Jews. Force 17 members illegally acquired arms and explosives for Palestinian groups loyal to Arafat, to carry out terror attacks, resist Israeli military or police forces and protect Arafat. Proof of these actions were allegedly found when IDF forces besieged Arafat and Force 17 during Operation Defensive Shield (June 2002) in the Muqat'ah compound in Ram'Allah and broke into PA files. (1) You should know that in many Arab Muslim Palestinian families, each member (usually sons and father) may belong to a different terror organization in order to protect the family from retribution by one or the other terror factions. BUSH, RICE & the SHADOW GOVERNMENT ARMING PLO'S FORCE 17 So, why has this President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condollezza Rice and other cohorts of the American "Shadow Government" directed the arming of the PLO's Force 17. They were the murderers of the American Ambassador, Cleo Noel, and now Bush wants to pay them several million American taxpayers' dollars to arm and train - to fight Israelis - their self-declared enemies: men, women and children, soldiers or civilians. It will be the job of the CIA to train Force 17 in murder, theoretically, to protect the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) was Arafat's earliest and closest associate through all of Arafat's days of murder and chaos as the Father of the modern global Terrorist organizations. MUNICH MASSACRE by FORCE 17 & BLACK SEPTEMBER Abu Mazen was Arafat's chief second-in-command for 40 years. and the PLO fund-master for many Terror operations, including the Olympics Massacre September 4, 1972. Arafat, with Abu Mazen coordinating the funds and the plans, sent the Black September Terrorists, led by Force 17, to the Olympics in Germany, where they committed the Munich Massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. They were led by Ali Hassan Salameh, COMMANDER OF FORCE 17 and Abu Daoud, who still lives in hiding and has said that "the [Munich] operation had the endorsement of Arafat." Daoud writes that "Arafat saw the team off on the mission with the words 'Allah protects you'". (2) Yes indeed, the U.S. is repeating its idiocy. As it protected Arafat, now it protects Abu Mazen by arming and training Force 17 who are on their way to becoming the next world-wide Al Qaeda. Except that within Force 17 there is a mix of Terrorists from the different factions, including the Muslim Brotherhood. When Hamas and the others make their move, they will likely assassinate Abu Mazen and the Americans will say the equivalent of: "Et Tu, Brutus?" Abu Mazen will probably be assassinated by those Force 17 guards closest to him. President Bush, are you getting your advice from your father's buddies, his Secretary of State James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman and that oily gang who represents Saudi interests? You started your Presidential career looking like your own man but, now it appears that you have slid into being a puppet for other interests. Too bad. You were absolutely right to take on the fight against Global Terror because it is surely a "Clear and Present Danger" to America and the rest of the Free World. But somehow, you have been convinced to see the attributes of the Muslim Jihadist nations. What a legacy you have created! Too bad. Funding and training Force 17 who murdered America's Ambassador on orders from Yassir Arafat, father of Global Terrorism, is a great embarrassment for America and all Americans. There is no doubt about whom President Bush is paying and training. Force 17 was Yassir Arafat's elite guard and a terrorist group who went out on assignment to murder, blow up Israelis and all the things that terrorists are known to do. To cast them as merely "guards" of the arch terrorist, Arafat, does not give them the credit they deserve. They were class A killers, as demonstrated by their murder of the American Ambassador in Khartoum and to carry out the Munich massacre. Those were only two of their operations, all known and assisted by Abu Mazen who acted as the Banker for these terrorist actions. Are you pondering how President Bush can consider spending millions on Force 17, training them with American technology, methods and weapons? Some of their spokesmen have already stated they will join Hamas and Hezb'Allah when the fighting against Israel begins again. We should look back briefly to the time when the U.S. armed and trained the Afghanis to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. The result was America was simultaneously training the Taliban, Al Qaeda and equipping Osama bin Laden with a ready-made military force. America achieved the short-term goal of expelling the Soviets who were then under Gen. Alexander Lebed but we reaped a greater terrorism that led to many terror ops against the Free World including 9/11, London commuters, Madrid trains, 2 American embassies in Africa, the USS Cole, the American barracks in Saudi Arabia, the 1993 attack on the Twin Towers, etcetera. Is this then where American tax-dollars go? To build another Al Qaeda called Force 17? I wonder why the Media has so assiduously avoided asking any question about employing, training, arming and doubling Force 17 to approximately 6,000 men? Dubya, what ever made you get in bed with elite killers who, one day will turn on America, (although it already did years ago when they murdered our Ambassadors)? ### 1. "FATAH" http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/fatah1.html 2. "MUNICH MASSACRE" Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Munich_massacre 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 winstonmedia@comcast.net |
|
ISRAEL'S ENCIRCLEMENT
Posted by Michael Mgr, October 31, 2006. |
| This was written by Caroline Glick and appeared in the Jerusalem Post yesterday. |
|
Last week Iran began enriching uranium in a second network of centrifuges. Just as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dropped nearly all pretenses about his intention to achieve nuclear weapons, so too he makes it clear daily that he intends to use such weapons to annihilate Israel. The world's reaction to Iran's behavior is depressingly instructive. Russia tells us that we are being paranoid and continues to build the Bushehr nuclear plant. The Europeans cluck disapprovingly and threaten to pass a weak, "reversible" sanctions resolution in the UN Security Council whose main target is American security hawks. For his part, US President George W. Bush continues to adhere to the call for sanctions. And so we have Israel. With Iran speeding up its program, Israel may have as little as six months to launch a strike on its nuclear facilities before they can start churning out atomic bombs. Unfortunately, at this critical moment in Israel's history, we are led by Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz and Tzipi Livni. Although Olmert claims that he is taking every step to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, through his government's actions in recent months, he has steadily undercut the IDF's ability to take decisive action against Iran. Over the past two and a half months, the Olmert government has deliberately and willingly enabled Israel's encirclement by hostile forces. Deployed along Israel's northern and southern borders, these forces constrict Israel's ability to maneuver, and prevent the IDF from taking preventative actions against Iran's proxies in Lebanon and Gaza thus increasing the risks that Israel will face in the event that action is taken against Iran's nuclear facilities and constraining Israel's ability to stealthily launch any attack. Nearly 10,000 French-commanded UNIFIL troops today protect Hizbullah in south Lebanon. And increasingly, they do so while provoking Israel. Last week two incidents took place between German naval forces and the IAF. Last Tuesday and Thursday IAF jets were scrambled when a German naval helicopter entered Israeli airspace after taking off from a German naval ship off Rosh Hanikra without permission or prior coordination. What is most remarkable about the story is its repetition. Last Tuesday the German helicopter elicited a strong Israeli response. Rather than desist from provoking the IAF, the Germans repeated their action on Thursday. So what could have been viewed as a regrettable incident was transformed into a provocation. Germany's hostile behavior is par for the course with UNIFIL. Two weeks ago French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie called the IAF's overflights of Lebanese airspace "extremely dangerous," and threatened that France's forces in Lebanon were liable to fire on the IAF flights "because they may be felt as hostile by forces of the coalition." By word and deed, UNIFIL forces are making clear that they view the IDF, not Hizbullah as their enemy. As they increase their provocations against Israel, UNIFIL forces turn a blind eye to weapons being smuggled daily to Hizbullah from Syria. Were Israel to attempt to take action against Hizbullah or Syria to prevent them from attacking in anticipation of an Israeli strike on Iran, there can be little doubt how UNIFIL would respond. AND THERE is little that Israel today can do about UNIFIL. Olmert and Livni have been UNIFIL's most enthusiastic cheerleaders. They expended Israel's political capital convincing these hostile forces to perch themselves at our border. They then promised the Israeli public that the French would protect us. They are not in a position today to make demands. And then there is Egypt. Over the weekend, Egypt announced that it was deploying 5,000 troops (or "police" forces) along its border with the Gaza Strip in northern Sinai. The deployment was necessary, Egypt announced, to prevent Israel mounting a serious operation against the massive weapons smuggling that is quickly providing Palestinian terrorists with the means to transform Gaza into south Lebanon. The fact that Egypt wishes to prevent Israel from stemming the flow of weapons to Gaza - which Egypt itself is supposed to be cutting off - should tell us all we need to know about Egypt's intentions. But apparently the government and Southern Command weren't listening. Sunday, Defense Minister Amir Peretz denied that Egyptian forces had been deployed along the border. An IDF commander in the Southern Command strangely expressed satisfaction at Egypt's move arguing that with the larger force Egypt would finally take action to prevent the arms transfers. The Foreign Ministry assured the public that the peace treaty with Egypt allows Cairo to deploy an unlimited number of "policemen" in the Sinai. It is hard to decide which is more frightening, Egypt's move or Israel's response to it. As MK Yuval Steinitz, former chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee explains, Egypt's sudden decision to deploy a massive force along the border is a strategic threat of the first order to Israel. "Egypt," he explains, "is taking advantage of the weakness and incompetence of the government." Over the past decade, Egypt has been assiduously preparing its military for war against Israel. From the ideological indoctrination of its forces, to its massive armament programs, to the relocation of its military installations, units and logistical bases to both sides of the Suez Canal, to the training of its troops to fight "an unnamed country on Egypt's northern border," Steinitz warns that Egypt has done more than Iran to ready its forces for war against Israel. Rather than protest Egypt's actions, successive Israeli governments have swallowed whole Egypt's strategic deception. Egypt protests friendship and pretends to combat terrorism and prevent weapons smuggling into the Sinai. Yet under this friendly guise, Egypt has legitimized Palestinian terrorists and stood behind the massive weapons smuggling operations. As Steinitz puts it, "Egypt is to Palestinian terrorism what Syria is to Hizbullah. "The weapons to the Palestinians are brought in through Egyptian ports and El-Arish and are imported by land from Sudan. Those latter imports have to traverse Egypt on their way to Gaza. There is no way that the Egyptian government is not colluding with the weapons shippers." AS STEINITZ notes, over the past eight months the weapons being shipped to Gaza have been sharply upgraded. Egypt today is overseeing the import of sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, as well as upgraded Katyusha rockets to Palestinian terror groups. And now Mubarak is sending 5,000 "policemen to the border." As Steinitz notes, Israel has no way of knowing who these forces are, whether they are police or commandos or infantry or anti-aircraft units. He warns, that "If Israel does nothing to prevent their deployment today, there is no reason to doubt that in a year or two there will be tens of thousands of Egyptian troops along the border with Israel." As Steinitz notes, not only does every single Egyptian soldier deployed along the border have a job to do in time of war, today they are perched along the border with the Negev, where, as the government turns its back on them and the IDF applauds their deployment, they are within striking distance of some of the IDF's most important military bases and strategic installations. Since 1993, Israel's leftist governments have consistently followed a strategy of transferring responsibility for our national security to our enemies. First it was Yasser Arafat who was supposed to fight Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Now it is his deputy Mahmoud Abbas, UNIFIL and Mubarak who are all supposed to fight Israel's enemies. Far from learning from our bloody experience that our enemies have no interest in protecting us, in recent months, the Olmert government has expanded tenfold our reliance on our enemies. As if having hostile Europeans guarding genocidal Iranian proxies in the north, and hostile Egyptians guarding and arming genocidal Palestinians in the south weren't enough, Sunday it was reported that the Olmert government is considering allowing thousands of armed PLO terrorists from the Badr Brigade in Jordan to relocate to Gaza. It doesn't have to be this way. Although barring a major Hizbullah provocation, it isn't clear what Israel can do against the UNIFIL forces now enabling Hizbullah to rearm, Israel can still prevent the Egyptian deployment. If the government loudly protested the move and publicly requested the Bush administration order Egypt to remove its forces, Mubarak would do so. But in light of the Olmert government's mishandling of every military challenge Israel has faced since it came to power just six month ago, it is hard to imagine it will act responsibly. But really, we don't have to worry. Olmert won't let Iran get nuclear weapons. Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
|
AMERICA'S TRAINING TOMORROW'S ARAB TERRORISTS
Posted by David Frankfurter, October 31, 2006. |
|
It's now out that the American security coordinator in the territories, General Keith Dayton, has been giving secret training to the Palestinian Presidential Guard. It's part of his program to provide "support" to the Palestinian Fatah faction in its internal struggle with Hamas. The initial training was conducted by American military instructors in a military camp near Jericho, for some 400 men. And now Dayton has asked the Quartet to put in place a program that will have Egyptian, British and perhaps even Jordanian instructors to train the force loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, helping it to grow to some 6,000 men. Dayton seems to have managed to help his masters to forget the history of the Presidential Guard and its elite Force 17 unit, and is probably hoping that the Quartet will also have a spot of amnesia. He has also sidestepped the conclusions of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that, before the addition of more than 35,000 troops in the last 3 years, the Palestinian Security Services were overstaffed, out of control, and an insurmountable burden on the Palestinian economy. Of greater concern, though, is that Force 17 is well known for its involvement in terror activities.
In this context, the experience of previous US training efforts is of interest. Journalist Mathew Kalman revealed in the San Francisco Chronicle in early 2005 that as far back as 1998, the CIA spent tens of millions of dollars, contracting secret training for hundreds of Palestinian Security Service personnel, including members of Force 17. Kalman managed to get hold of this "graduation picture" of one of those courses. Look at the fellow kneeling fourth from the left in the front row. Kalman identified him as Raafat Bajali -- a member of the terrorist Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who was killed in a "work accident", while making a bomb. Fortunately, he took fellow Al-Aksa terrorist Nedal Zedok with him And standing in the back row, second from the left, is Khaled Abu Nijmeh. He was one of Bethlehem's most-wanted Palestinian militants in the city, suspected of involvement in a string of suicide bombings and shooting attacks against Israelis. In May 2002, he was one of 13 gunmen escorted from the Church of the Nativity siege in Bethlehem, flown to Cyprus and then to exile in Europe. Several of his fellow deportees received their salaries from the Palestinian Security Service payroll. Nijmeh proudly told Kalman of his membership in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades alongside his job as first sergeant in Palestinian General Intelligence. He was very pleased with the CIA training that helped him learn the trade. "I was not alone. Many Palestinian security people were trained by the Americans. We hope they will continue helping us." Well, now that our memories have faded a little, it seems that
Nijmeh's prayers are being answered. The Americans are once again
training tomorrow's terrorists.
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/
|
|
ARABS WITHOUT JEWS: ROOTS OF A TRAGEDY
Posted by Tsila, October 31, 2006. |
|
This was written by Magdi Allam and translated from the Italian by Lyn and Lawrence Julius. The original appeared in Corriere della Sera online. |
|
Israel is the keeper of a mutilated Arab identity, the repository for the guilty consciences of the Arab peoples, the living witness to a true history of the Arab countries, continuously denied, falsified and ignored. Seeing Pierre Rehov's documentary film 'The Silent Exodus' about the expulsion and flight of a million Sephardi Jews helped me gain a better understanding of the tragedy of a community that was integral and fundamental to Arab society. Above all it has revealed to me the very essence of the catastrophe that befell it, a catastrophe which the mythical Arab nation has never once called into question. In a flash of insight I could see that the tragedy of the Jews and the catastrophe of the Arabs are two facets of the same coin. By expelling the Jews who were settled on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean centuries before they were arabised and islamised, the Arabs have in fact begun the lethal process of mutilating their own identity and despoiling their own history. By losing their Jews the Arabs have lost their roots and have ended up by losing themselves. As has often happened in history, the Jews were the first victims of hatred and intolerance. All the "others" had their turn soon enough, specifically the Christians and other religious minorities, heretical and secular Muslims and finally, those Muslims who do not fit exactly into the ideological framework of the extreme nationalists and Islamists. There has not been a single instance in this murky period of our history when the Arab states have been ready to condemn the steady exodus of Christians, ethnic-religious minorities, enlightened and ordinary Muslims, while Muslims plain and simple have become the primary victims of Islamic terror. Underlying the Arab 'malaise' is an identity crisis that neither Nasserist nor Ba'athist pan-Arabism, nor the Islamism of the Saudi Wahabis, the Muslim Brotherhood, Khomeini and Bin Laden has been able to solve. It's a contagious identity crisis, spreading to and taking hold of the Arab and Muslim communities in the West. I remember that around the mid-1970s the Arab exam in civic education taken in both state and public schools in Egypt defined Arab identity thus: "the Arabs are a nation united by race, blood, history, geography, religion and destiny." This was a falsification of an historical truth based on ethno-religious pluralism, an ideological deception aimed at erasing all differences and promoting the theory of one race overlapping with a phantom Arab nation in thrall to unchallengeable leaders. It was directly inspired by Nazi and fascist theories of racial purity and supremacy which appealed to the leadership and ideologues of pan-Arabism and Islamism. It is no wonder that in this context Manichean Israel is perceived as a foreign body to be rejected, a cancer produced by American imperialism to divide and subjugate the Arab world. The historical truth is that the Middle Eastern peoples, in spite of their arabisation and islamisation from the 7th century onward, continued to maintain a specific identity reflecting their indigenous and millenarian ethnic roots - cultural, linguistic, religious and national. The Berbers, for example, who constitute half the population of Morocco and a third of that of Algeria, have nothing or very little in common with the Bedouin tribes at the heart of Saudi or Jordanian society. When in 1979 Egypt was sidelined from the Arab League for signing a peace treaty with Israel President Sadat restored its Pharaonic Egyptian identity which he proudly contrasted with its Arabness. Here was an isolated but significant attempt to recapture an indigenous identity - advertising historical honesty and political liberation while saying 'enough is enough' to rampant lies and demagogy. Before the screening of the 'Silent Exodus' in the Congress Hall in Milan, a gentleman in his Seventies came up to me and said, in perfect Egyptian dialect: "I am a Jew from Alexandria. I have recently been in Tunisia and Algeria. I have to say that people there are not like us, they don't have the sense of irony that distinguishes us Egyptians." I smiled and replied that indeed, the Egyptians have a reputation as jokers. They are capable of laughing at anything, including themselves. What struck me was the "us" - "us Egyptians": even if we were both Italian citizens, he a Jew and I a Muslim. It reminded me that just after the 1967 defeat, I discovered by complete accident that the girl I was in love with - we both were 15 - was Jewish. For me she was a girl like any other. But for the police who submitted me to intensive interrogation she was a 'spy for Israel' and I was her accomplice. In fact 'the Silent Exodus' testifies that anti-Semitism and the pogroms against the Jews of the Middle East preceded the birth of the state of Israel and the advent of ideological pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism. It infers that hatred and violence against the Jews could originate in an ideological interpretation of the Koran and the life of the prophet Muhammed taken out of context. It would be a mistake to generalise and not to take into account that for long periods coexistence was possible between the Muslims, Christians and Jews of the Middle East, at a time when in Europe the Catholic Inquisition was repressing the Jews and when the Nazi Holocaust was trying to exterminate them. In the same way, one cannot ignore Israel's responsibility together with Arab leaders in the emergence of the drama of millions of Palestinian refugees and the unresolved question of a Palestinian state. The fact remains that of the million Jews who at the end of 1945 were an integral part of the Arab population, only 5,000 remain. These Arab Jews, expelled or who fled at a moment's notice, have become an integral part of the Israeli population. They continue to represent a human injustice and an historical tragedy. Above all, they are indicative of an Arab civil and identity catastrophe. That is why to recognise the wrongs committed towards the Arab Jews - as the maverick Libyan leader colonel Gaddafi has recently done - by objectively rediscovering their past and millenarian roots, by finding again their tolerant and plural history and by totally and sincerely reconciling themselves with themselves, the Arabs could free themselves from the ideological obscurantism which has relegated them to the most basic level of human development and has changed the region into the most problematic and confict-ridden on earth. Contact Tsila at tsilagroup@yahoo.com |
|
NEW YORK TIMES: 601,027 IRAQI DEAD SINCE 2003; ACTUAL: 49,760 MAX
Posted by David Meir-Levi, October 31, 2006. |
|
More on politics and the treason of the NY Times. An unbelievable "estimate" of 601,027 was published this month (Oct., 2006) in the NY Times, repeated by e.g. the BBC and Guardian in UK. This speculative conjecture about the total number of Iraqi deaths since 2003 followed a similar speculative conjecture by the UK Medical journal, the "Lancet". All of these 'estimates' are so far beyond the count that arises from a perusal of hard evidence that one cannot even call them 'speculatve'. They are fiction. Both the NY Times and the Lancet "estimates" were based on interviews with a very limited number of homes, in the middle of savage sectarian war, primarily in the areas of Baghdad and Anbar, reflecting an almost microscopic percentage of the population, and having no methodology for correcting unreliable information. The narrowness of the sample, the very small number of households interviewed, and the credulity of the interviewers (who unquestioningly accepted the respondents' assertions that MOST of the deaths were caused by allied forces, even as Sunni terrorists were blowing up Shi'ite mosques full of worshipers), all clearly undermine any scrap of veracity that the NY Times numbers might have been able to claim. According to Tom Carew (below are selections of his article.), there are 3 serious estimates available. 1. The [strongly anti-war] Iraq Body Count (IBC) keeps a runing total on its web-site, based on published media reports, and it provides a range of estimates, since there are different figures for some incidents. Their total [from 2003 onwards] is now 49,760 - at the maximum. Their minimum estimate is over 44,803. 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 |
|
THE MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE IN LEBANON - ASSET OR LIABILITY?
Posted by Yoram Ettinger, October 31, 2006. |
|
The stationing of a Multi-National Force (MNF) in Southern Lebanon constitutes a liability, and not an asset. It has been demonstrated by a recent confrontation between Israel's air force and a German battleship off the coast of Lebanon, by the French threat to hit Israeli aircraft on intelligence missions over Lebanon, and by UNIFIL's refusal to disarm Hizballah. The MNF would create a short-term false sense of stability, while weakening Israel's long-term national security. It is destined to fail, to undermine Israel's war on terrorism, to strain Israel's ties with member nations and to erode Israel's strategic and deterrence posture in the US and in the Mideast. A PREDETERMINED FAILURE In 1993, the US military evacuated Somalia following the lynching of US soldiers in the streets of Mogadishu. In 1984, the US and the French military retreated from Lebanon following the blowing up of the US embassy and Marines headquarters in Beirut, by Syria and PLO-assisted Moslem terrorists. On the other hand, UNIFIL has refrained from any confrontation with Hizballah, hence sparing itself the wrath of terrorists. The MNF is expected to follow in the footsteps of UNIFIL, since its soldiers do not intend to sacrifice their lives on the altar of Lebanon's stability and Israel's security. In 1967, the UNEF aborted its presence in the Sinai Peninsula, as a result of Egyptian pressure, thus paving the road to the Six Day War. UNDOF has been stationed in the Syrian side of the Golan Heights since 1974, and will stay there as long as it serves Syrian interests. It will evaporate from the scene as soon as Syria changes its mind. Contrary to the precedents of Sinai (where the MFO has been stationed since the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty), Kosovo and Bosnia, there is no agreement, on the role of the MNF, among the key parties to the conflict. Iran, Syria and Hizballah tolerate MNF's presence as along as it facilitates the reconstruction of Hizballah's capabilities, the weakening of Israel and the undermining of US interests in the Mideast. The inherent disagreement among the key parties is a prescription for failure, which would result in an unpredictably unilateral withdrawal by the MNF, suiting the timetable of terror organizations and regimes and adrenalizing their veins. ASSET TO TERRORISTS, LIABILITY TO ISRAEL UN Security Council Resolution 1701 has facilitated the continued flow of missiles, other weapon systems, ammunition and personnel to Hizballah through the Syria-Lebanon border and via the Mediterranean. The interpretation of 1701 is not in accordance with Israel's understanding; it is dominated by the UN and to by the nations comprising the MNF. It is much closer to Hizballah's interpretation, and much farther from Israel's interpretation. Therefore, the MNF does not consider the disarming of Hizballah and the enhancement of Israel's security to be among its duties. On the other hand, the MNF focuses on the safeguarding of its own soldiers -- hence no confrontation with Hizballah -- and observing Lebanese sovereignty. Hence, the MNF is not equipped with military hardware and intelligence, required to combat terrorism. It does not intend to arrest terrorists, to confiscate illegal weaponry or to seize missile launchers without the specific approval by the Lebanese authorities, which would not dare agitate Hizballah or Syria. Just as the presence of UNIFIL in Southern Lebanon advanced the fortification of Hizballah since the 2000 withdrawal by Israel, so has the presence of MNF and UNIFIL facilitated the reconstruction of Hizballah capabilities since the 2006 evacuation by Israel. The international military presence serves as a human shield for terrorists and a human obstacle for the IDF, which is reluctant to hot pursue terrorists through MNF lines and to bomb terrorists bases cushioned by thousands of MNF and UNIFIL personnel, which is stationed around them. EROSION OF ISRAEL'S STRATEGIC POSTURE Finger-pointing, tension and crises between Israel on one hand and the UN and countries comprising the MNF on the other hand will become a daily routine, especially if the MNF will be stationed also in Gaza and Judea & Samaria. Further deterioration would be caused by possible MNF casualties, which could be blamed on Israel. Does Israel need headlines about French, German, British or US soldiers killed on Israel's borders?! Does Israel wish to forfeit its classic image as a country, which seeks foreign military systems, but rejects the employment of foreign soldiers for its own defense? What a celebration would that be for Anti Semites, who have blossomed during displays of Jewish weakness and receded during displays of Jewish daring? Turkey and India do not request/allow international troops on their borders with Syria and Pakistan, in their battle against Kurdish and Islamic terrorism. They realize that the presence of such forces on their borders would constrain their sovereignty and their military maneuverability. They understand that the willingness to pay a heavy price on the altar of sovereignty constitutes a prerequisite for sovereignty, and therefore they have earned strategic respect, while targeted for diplomatic criticism. On the other hand, Israel's reliance on counter-terrorism subcontractors, in order to combat Lebanese terrorism (MNF) and Palestinian terrorism (Palestinian Authority), has frustrated Israel's solid friends in Washington, who have also been disappointed by the results of the recent war in Lebanon. They are concerned that the defiant Israel -- of Entebbe and Ozirak -- is gradually transformed from a producer of national security, which extends US military arm, into a consumer of national security, which needs the US helping hand. Israel should reassess the presence of the MNF in Southern Lebanon and examine why did pre-1993 Israeli Prime Ministers consider the presence of international forces on Israel's borders a liability and not an asset. Ambassador Yoram Ettinger is a consultant on US-Israel relations as well as the Chairman of Special Projects at the Ariel Center for Policy Research. Formerly the Minister for Congressional Affairs to Israel's Embassy in Washington, DC, Ettinger also served as Consul General of Israel to the Southwestern US. He is a former editor of Contemporary Mideast Backgrounder, and is the author of the Jerusalem Cloakroom series of reports. Contact him at yoramtex@netvision.net.il |
|
THE USUAL OUTRIGHT, PURPOSEFUL LIES BLAMING ISRAEL FOR WHATEVER
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, October 31, 2006. |
|
This was written by Joseph Farah. He is founder, editor and CEO of World Net Daily. His latest book is Taking America Back. |
|
A tenured professor at the University of Chicago recently claimed Israel was to blame for the September 11 attacks and for the U.S. war in Iraq. The assertions by John Mearsheimer were met with an amen chorus from colleagues at New York University and Columbia. "The Israel lobby was one of the principal driving forces behind the Iraq war, and in its absence we probably would not have had a war," he explained. Later, he said Al Qaeda's "animus to the United States stemmed from U.S. foreign policy toward Israel. "Imagine what a peaceful world in which we would live if we could only rid ourselves of that annoying little Israel. That is the essence of what we hear throughout much of academia. That is the essence of what we hear at the United Nations. That is the essence of what we hear from the so- called international community. That is the essence of what we hear from a vast segment of the world press. While it is an undeniable truth that Israel is on the front lines of the global Islamic Jihad, surrounded as it is by hostile neighbors and active terrorist organizations sworn to its destruction, I would love to hear one of these anti-Israel twits explain what the Jewish state has to do with the following conflicts:
Maybe political science professors can tie Islamic terrorist acts against Egypt's government and inside Lebanon and targeting the Saudi kingdom to Israel -- because it's in the neighborhood. Maybe they can persuade some people that the U.S. invasion of Iraq had something to do with Israel, though Saddam Hussein posed little real threat to the Jewish state. But, how, I wonder, do these geniuses discount the raging Islamic Jihad on the march from the Eastern to the Western edge of the globe? PS (One can't help but wonder how much Saudi Arabia, Iran, et al are paying these "professors" for promoting this obvious destructive propaganda, attempting to effect are own will to continue the inevitable war against militant Islam) -- jsk Jerome S. Kaufman is National Secretary of the Zionist Organization of America. and host the Israel Commentary website (http://www.israel-commentary.org). |
|
ABOUT TIME
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, October 31, 2006. |
|
It is about time these people woke up and began to organize. However, if all they intend is to replace the Yeshah Council with their own, not much will change. In order to save the Jews of Yeshah and the State of Israel from disaster, a fundament change in direction must happen. This is called "Activists Meet to Establish Yesha Council Alternative
to Thwart Future Withdrawals," and appeared in Arutz-Sheva
|
|
IsraelNN.com) Several extra-parliamentary right-wing groups came together for a meeting Monday night in Beit El, attended by representatives of the bulk of Judea and Samaria's towns and outpost hilltop communities. The attendees agreed to establish a new umbrella group called Maginei Eretz, Defenders of the Land, in order to "restore the Israeli prime minister's ability to tell the world that he simply is unable to destroy Jewish communities because there is a large number of people who believe the Bible to be true," said Kiryat Arba attorney Elyakim HaEtzni. HaEtzni lamented that the stance of the Yesha Council that the State of Israel has the mandate to relinquish parts of the Land of Israel "has left us dangerously exposed. What is even more dangerous is that they have convinced the government that they have control over the half-million Jews living over the Green Line -- that they can ensure any withdrawal goes smoothly if such a government decision is made." |
|
EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT HOSNI MUBARAK TO VISIT RUSSIA
Posted by Mordechai Ben-Menachem, October 31, 2006. |
| From today's Statfor Report. |
|
EGYPT: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will visit Russia on Nov. 1-3, Egyptian Ambassador to Russia Izzad al-Seyed said. Mubarak will discuss the situation in the Middle East and Egyptian-Russian relations, including cooperation in the energy industry and the civilian use of nuclear power, al-Seyed added. This is a very significant report. Egypt has seen that the West's counter-measures concerning Iran's nuclear programme has been totally ineffective. They cannot, in their estimation, allow Shia to "out gun" Sunni, and Egypt always claims to lead Sunni (as opposed to Saudi Arabia). So they are now going to Russia, the sponsors of Iran's programme, to get their own. Russia, of course, sees no reason to not grant their request -- after all, the US taxpayer is going to pay for it! [mbm] Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben-Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org |
|
THE EU'S JEWS ARE DOOMED, JUST AS IS THE EU
Posted by David Meir-Levi, October 30, 2006. |
|
The article below summarizes what I have been writing about the EU....it is on the verge (next few years, next ten years, next twenty years) of submitting to the Islamic take-over being engineered by the European Arab League (EAL) and its proxy fighting arm in the banlieux of various EU cities....even as current EU leaders cooperate with the EAL and sign the secret treaties that give the EAL ascendency in determining EU foriegn policy (cf. Bat Ye'or for details: Eurabia). But Mr. Belein adds an insight that would never have occured to me: " (The Dutch author quoted by Belein)... is overwhelmed by a 'feeling of sadness.' 'I am not a warrior," (the author) ... says, "but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.'" When faced with the destruction of his civilization, his culture, his religion, his language, his whole way of life, all he feels is sadness. No outrage, no anger, no sense of need to stand up and defend what is his, and what should be his children's and grand-children's. He has succumbed. He cannot muster the strength and the courage to fight for his people, for his family, for himself, for his future and the future of his people. With too many like him, Europe is doomed....And so are its Jews: "....(it is true)...that anti-Semitism is also on the rise among non-immigrant Europeans. The latter hate people with a fighting spirit. Contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe (at least when coming from native Europeans) is related to anti-Americanism. People who are not prepared to resist and are eager to submit, hate others who do not want to submit and are prepared to fight. They hate them because they are afraid that the latter will endanger their lives as well. In their view everyone must submit...This is why they have come to hate Israel and America so much, and the small band of European "islamophobes" who dare to talk about what they see happening around them. West Europeans have to choose between submission (islam) or death. I fear, like Broder, that they have chosen submission -- just like in former days when they preferred to be red rather than dead." In other words, the Jewish minorities in Europe will have no majority population defending them or sheltering them against the brutal Jew-hatred of many European Moslems. The Jews of Europe will be forced to either emmigrate, convert to Islam, or be killed.....thanks to the submissive EU leadership that would rather kiss their future goodbye than resist the lure of mega-petro-dollars and stand up to the threat of the Islamofascist take-over. The Dutch author says he is not a warrior, and then almost rhetorically asks: "but who is?". Obviously, his self-excusing question refers only to Europeans. He knows that Americans are warriors. They fought and died for European freedom twice in the last 65 years, and once in South Korea, and in Kuwait (and never asked for any more land in return than what they needed to bury their dead: so much for American "Imperialism"!). He must also know that Israelis are warriors. They have been fighting and dying for their very existence for the past 75 years. So he has from whom to draw inspiration. But he chooses not to. He chooses instead to submit, and to hate those who do not submit. When Europe is gone, in which direction will the iIlamofacists turn their WMD gun-sights? This is called "The Rape of Europe" and was written by Paul Belien and it appeared October 25, 2006 in the Brussels Journal. |
|
The German author Henryk M. Broder recently told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant (12 October) that young Europeans who love freedom, better emigrate. Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. Whilst sitting on a terrace in Berlin, Broder pointed to the other customers and the passers-by and said melancholically: "We are watching the world of yesterday." Europe is turning Muslim. As Broder is sixty years old he is not going to emigrate himself. "I am too old," he said. However, he urged young people to get out and "move to Australia or New Zealand. That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable." Many Germans and Dutch, apparently, did not wait for Broder's advice. The number of emigrants leaving the Netherlands and Germany has already surpassed the number of immigrants moving in. One does not have to be prophetic to predict, like Henryk Broder, that Europe is becoming Islamic. Just consider the demographics. The number of Muslims in contemporary Europe is estimated to be 50 million. It is expected to double in twenty years. By 2025, one third of all European children will be born to Muslim families. Today Mohammed is already the most popular name for new-born boys in Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and other major European cities. Broder is convinced that the Europeans are not willing to oppose islamization. "The dominant ethos," he told De Volkskrant, "is perfectly voiced by the stupid blonde woman author with whom I recently debated. She said that it is sometimes better to let yourself be raped than to risk serious injuries while resisting. She said it is sometimes better to avoid fighting than run the risk of death." In a recent op-ed piece in the Brussels newspaper De Standaard (23 October) the Dutch (gay and self-declared "humanist") author Oscar Van den Boogaard refers to Broder's interview. Van den Boogaard says that to him coping with the islamization of Europe is like "a process of mourning." He is overwhelmed by a "feeling of sadness." "I am not a warrior," he says, "but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." As Tom Bethell wrote in this month's American Spectator: "Just at the most basic level of demography the secular-humanist option is not working." But there is more to it than the fact that non-religious people tend not to have as many children as religious people, because many of them prefer to "enjoy" freedom rather than renounce it for the sake of children. Secularists, it seems to me, are also less keen on fighting. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, this life is the only thing they have to lose. Hence they will rather accept submission than fight. Like the German feminist Broder referred to, they prefer to be raped than to resist. "If faith collapses, civilization goes with it," says Bethell. That is the real cause of the closing of civilization in Europe. Islamization is simply the consequence. The very word Islam means "submission" and the secularists have submitted already. Many Europeans have already become Muslims, though they do not realize it or do not want to admit it. Some of the people I meet in the U.S. are particularly worried about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. They are correct when they fear that anti-Semitism is also on the rise among non-immigrant Europeans. The latter hate people with a fighting spirit. Contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe (at least when coming from native Europeans) is related to anti-Americanism. People who are not prepared to resist and are eager to submit, hate others who do not want to submit and are prepared to fight. They hate them because they are afraid that the latter will endanger their lives as well. In their view everyone must submit. This is why they have come to hate Israel and America so much, and the small band of European "islamophobes" who dare to talk about what they see happening around them. West Europeans have to choose between submission (islam) or death. I fear, like Broder, that they have chosen submission -- just like in former days when they preferred to be red rather than dead. 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 |
|
JEWCENTRICITY - JEWS IN THE GLOBAL-HISTORICAL EVENTS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, October 30, 2006. |
|
My mother uses to say, "it is difficult being a Jew" It is difficult to be "the chosen ones," especially when you were chosen and still are, to be the target of every singly thing go wrong, and every atrocity jnown to mankind. Was my mother right? Unfortunately, she was! As the result of the Holocaust, Germany's Jewcentricity and any negative slur against Jews does not go unanswered in the law courts or in the court of public opinion; however it does not stop Germans and the rest of the world from carrying on their Jewcentricity case-in-point endeavor. Why don't the world begins building up a strong case on the Islamo-Fascism [NO]-conspiracy --- rather reality theorists? In other words go pick on those one should pick on and for once and for all LEAVE the [convenient] Jewish scapegoats alone! This article is called "When Jews is News" and it was written by Suzanne Fields and it appeared in Jewish World Review today. |
|
"Jewcentricity" is a word that sounds like it was coined by an embittered anti-Semite. But it's actually the inspiration of Adam Garfinkle, a Jew, writing in The American Interest magazine to call attention to a phenomenon that has roots in anti-Semitism and runs from the silly to the sublime: " . . . the idea, or the intimation, or the subconscious presumption . . . that Jews are somehow necessarily to be found at the very center of global-historical events." "Jewcentricity" is most evident in the recycling of "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," a fictitious text commissioned by the czar's secret police for a Russian audience at the end of the 19th century, describing a fanciful cabal of Jews who plan to take over the world. Some critics of the neoconservatives, some of whom are Jewish, cite the protocols, so called, in their accusations that Jews have hijacked American foreign policy. Others, critical of Israel, hyperventilate over the power of the "Israel lobby." "The Protocols" have naturally become a best seller in several Muslim countries, including Turkey and Egypt, where they were turned into a television series. ("Semitic Sex in the City," however, it was not.) "The Protocols" were featured on the Iranian stands at last year's book fair in Frankfurt "to expose the real visage of this Satanic-enemy," along with an abridged edition of Henry Ford's literary thriller, The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem (which never made it to the screen). "The grip of the Jewish parasitic influence," asserts the preface of the new edition, "has been growing stronger and stronger ever since [Henry Ford's time]." Serious examples of "Jewcentricity" are reflected in the media obsession with Sen. George Allen's Jewish mother, who was born in Tunisia and barely escaped the Holocaust, and before that, with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's Jewish roots in Czechoslovakia. The national newspapers and television networks spent considerably more time investigating the senator's "blood" parentage and its likely effect on his re-election campaign than the blood being spilled in Darfur. "Why?" asks Adam Garfinkle. "Because . . . Jews is news and there are no Jews in Darfur." That doesn't slow down the conspiracy theorists in other countries, with or without Jews, from obsessing over the myth of sinister Jewish power. Germany's Jewcentricity is of a completely different order. No negative slur against Jews goes unanswered in the law courts or in the court of public opinion. This has hardly eliminated prejudice against Jews. In an anti-Semitic prank with echoes of the Third Reich, a high-school student in eastern Germany was forced by bullies not long ago to wear a sign around his neck in the school yard: "In this town I'm the biggest swine because of the Jewish friends of mine." The teacher reported it, the chief of police was firm in his outrage, and the state minister of the interior promised an investigation. Germany does not tolerate public exhibition of Nazi symbols. But the strain of anti-Semitism that many thought would vanish after the horror of the Holocaust has again risen again in the Middle East and among European fellow travelers of the Islamists, whose rhetoric targets Israel in a way that Hitler would readily recognize. Israel is the euphemism for the demonized Jew. The Jews become, as Jonathan Rosen observed in The New York Times, "interchangeable emblems of cosmic evil." It's not simply an empty gesture that maps available in Middle Eastern countries show Israel erased. Hezbollah demonstrated its capacity to send rockets into Israel, and the Iranian nuclear threat is aimed first at Israel. Jews remain convenient scapegoats as they continue to haunt the fantasies of rationalizers and haters who want to avoid responsibility for their own culpability. In the 1930s, Jews were blamed for everything that went wrong in Germany (and later in Eastern Europe). Today they're perceived as the seminal cause of Islamic terrorism, subject to the same old media stereotypes that thrived in Nazi newspapers. Getting rid of the Jews in Europe wasn't enough. "Jewcentricity" serves a specific purpose both in the Middle East and in Europe. It unites the Muslims against a common enemy and conceals their own divisions and discontents, which would be there even if there were not an Israel to hate. Increasing Muslim populations in Europe threaten the peace in ways that absent Jews do not. But we can blame the Jews, anyway. The Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian novelist Imre Kertesz observes that Europeans mask their criticism of Israel in mournful tones about the Holocaust but use the language that led to Auschwitz. "Because Auschwitz really happened, it has permeated our imagination, become a permanent part of us," he says. "What we are able to imagine -- because it really happened -- can happen again Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
|
WHO IS OMAR BARGHOUTI?
Posted by Naomi Ragen, October 30, 2006. |
|
My interest in Omar Barghouti was sparked by a letter sent by listmember Dr. Charlotte Berkowitz, who wrote me: "In the October issue of the widely read journal _PMLA_ (Publications of the Modern Language Association of America) is an article by Omar Barghouti, a doctoral candidate at Tel Aviv University, accusing Israel not only of specific outrageous crimes against Palestinians, but of finding authority for those excesses in the Halakhah and in the Torah. I will be grateful if you will encourage professors and graduate students who are members of MLA to write letters addressing this irresponsible, unbalanced and dangerous essay from a variety of perspectives. " I admit, Dr. Berkowitz aroused my curiosity. So, I did a web-search for Mr.. Barghouti and was shocked by what I found. First, Mr. Barghouti identifies himself as a Palestinian. This, despite the fact that he was born in Qatar and grew up in Egypt. His claim to being a Palestinian stems, like other Palestinian wannabees (the late Edward Said most prominent among them) from his parents, who he says fled a West Bank village to which they always "longed to return." Their longing, however, has not actually prompted them to do so. They live in Jordan. They were, in fact, shocked when their son decided to leave the U.S. behind and move with his wife to Ramallah. The first time he touched down in "Palestine" was in 1993, in his thirties. By then, he had finished a degree in Columbia University in Electrical Engineering, something which apparently has not hampered his claim of academic expertise in philosophy. He is now allegedly a Ph.D candidate in philosophy (ethics, no less) at none other than Tel Aviv University. . For unknown reasons, this Israeli university has taken him in (thus allowing the Jewish State and Zionists all over the world to subsidize his education) and supplied him with the academic credentials he is now using to head organizations calling for the boycott of Israeli institutions of higher learning, Israel's cultural exports, such as dance, and which call into question the very legitimacy of the Jewish State to exist at all. Mr. Barghouti is in favor of a one-state solution: "Good
riddance! The two-state solution for the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict is finally dead. But someone has to issue an
official death certificate before the rotting corpse is
given a proper burial and we can all move on and explore the
more just, moral and therefore enduring alternative for
peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Mandate
Palestine: the one-state solution.
He is a leading proponent of an academic boycott of Israel: "The most urgent type of support the international community can provide to the Palestinian academy is to adopt various forms of boycott against Israel's academic institutions...some argue that... it is still necessary for Palestinian academics and intellectuals of all people to maintain and foster open communication channels with their Israeli counterparts, to debate, to share, to convince, to learn, to overcome the "psychological barriers" and ultimately to reach a common vision and a common struggle for peace. I beg to differ. Those who imagine they can wish away the conflict by suggesting some forums for rapprochement, détenté, or "dialogue" -- which they hope can lead to authentic processes of reconciliation and eventually peace -- are either clinically delusional or dangerously deceptive." He delivered this gem at a conference at London University entitled:"Resisting Israeli Apartheid." peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2004/12/omar-barghouti-why-boycott-israel.html Mr.Barghouti makes clear: "It is not the occupation of the
West Bank that is the problem, but the existence of Israel
itself: " ..what seems to escape the mainstream opinion
makers is that during the current intifada, the Israeli army
has crossed many of its former red lines, committing crimes
that are reminiscent in form -- though certainly not in
scale -- of Nazi crimes against European Jews." As for the
Israeli Left? "What left? Those in Israel who officially
call themselves "the left" -- the Zionist left, more
accurately -- easily make the far-right parties in Europe
look as moral as Mother Teresa... - on the JFJFP website....
Even in his extracurricular activities, he is consistent. While continuing his engineering work, he became interested in a folkloric dance group that strove to revive Palestinian music and dance. The El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe "has no specific political agenda," he told an ABC News journalist when the troupe toured the U.S. But, surprise-: 'A number of the dances illustrate beatings and rebellion with a drumlike beat that symbolizes pain and mourning.' In one piece, a barefoot dancer vanquishes his repression by kicking aside a military boot that sits in the middle of the stage. Barghouti said that because of the Israeli military occupation, politics had crept into all aspects of Palestinian life." Now a dance expert, in addition to an expert on ethics, Mr.Barghouti wrote letters to respected magazines like Dance Insider, nothing to do with dance, of course; he has only one agenda: "I read your article in the Dance Insider with interest. As to your question regarding whether Israeli dance companies should be boycotted 'until Israel stops bombing Lebanon,' my answer is yes, but for far longer, until Israel fully abides by international law and fundamental human rights, ending its occupation of Palestinian land, recognizing the right of Palestinian refugees to return and ending its system of racial discrimination against Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel." Mr. Barghouti, far from being a humanist and an intellectual, is a red-neck propagandist of the worst order, hatred oozing out of every pore, given legitimacy and support by the very institutions and people whom he wishes, and at every turn, attempts, to destroy. Those who pretend not to understand this, who publish his work and invite him to academic conferences would do well to become more familiar with this man and his work, rather than to continue to be complicit. In the meantime, he continues to milk his Tel Aviv University connection to the humanities, in which as far as I can see, he has so far earned no degrees. In 2005, he was invited - the sole member of an Israeli university - to the Conference on Human Rights and the Humanities, held at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York. He was also invited by the Rockefeller Foundation to meet in Bellagio, Italy to discuss --academic boycotts! He is a man invited in the name of academic discourse, the very discourse he rejects. He accepts the largess of an Israeli University, which incredibly bestows legitimacy upon his hate-filled, bigoted rantings, a university he wishes to destroy. He does the same to the United States, which took him in and gave him the opportunity to learn in one of its top universities. In his article:"9/11, Putting the moment on human terms" he says:"Plainly put, your ancestors are responsible for the genocide of Native Americans and for the wicked slavery enterprise. Your democratically elected governments are accountable for unspeakable crimes worldwide, from Hiroshima and Vietnam to Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. This is why your national flag is the most popular combustible item in rallies around the world. It has nothing to do with hating you as a people, or even envying your "way of life." It has everything to do with the fact that your representatives have systematically plundered other nations' wealth, destroyed their ways of life - killing and injuring masses in the process." Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, and others to whom he will no doubt be applying for Post-Doc grants in the event he actually earns a Ph.D (being a doctoral student can last forever) should therefore beware. Mr. Barghouti has proven time again in article after article that his only true expertise is being a "professional Palestinian." The biggest danger he poses is that of allowing inferior minds such as his to take over the discussion about intellectual freedom and democracy and the Middle East conflict, because people like him are such expert manipulators. Israel has been condemned recently for refusing to let in other West Bank students to its institutions of higher learning. The case of Sawsan Salameh from Anata in the West Bank who wanted to learn chemical engineering at Hebrew U comes to mind. Mr. Barghouti makes it eminently clear that the refusal to allow such students into Israeli universities is an understandable decision, akin to America refusing visas to Muslims wishing to take flight instruction. I cannot conclude before putting the following matter before you. Barghouti is the name of a rather well-known family. Marwan Barghouti headed the Al Aksa Martyrs brigade, responsible for such terrorist attacks such as the May 27 murder of Ruth Peled and her fourteen month old granddaughter ,Sinai Keinan, as the baby sat in her carriage outside an ice cream parlor in Petach Tikva. And the April 12th bombing of Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem, which killed Nissan Cohen, 57, Rivka Fink, 75, Suheila Hushi, 48; Yelena Konrab, 43, Ling Chang Mai, 34, and Chai Siang Yang, 32, and injured 103.; as well as many more despicable terrorists attacks for which he is currently serving five consecutive life sentences in Israeli jails. I wrote to Omar Barghouti and asked him if this was a relative of his. I did this because in light of his blanket condemnation of Israel and his defense of Palestinians,I think that - ethically and morally - his relationship with Mr. Marwan Barghouti, is relevant. His response:"Please do not contact me again." I am delighted to accede to that request. 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. |
|
14 YEAR OLD CHRISTIAN BOY DECAPITATED BY MUSLIM GROUP IN IRAQ
Posted by Avodah 15, October 30, 2006. |
|
This comes from AINA
|
|
(AINA) -- According to the Assyrian website www.ankawa.com, a 14 year old Christian Assyrian boy, Ayad Tariq, from Baqouba, Iraq was decapitated at his work place on October 21. Ayad Tariq was working his 12 hour shift, maintaining an electric generator, when a group of disguised Muslim insurgents walked in at the beginning of his shift shortly after 6 a.m. and asked him for his ID. According to another employee who witnessed the events, and who hid when he saw the insurgents approach, the insurgents questioned Ayad after seeing that his ID stated "Christian", asking if he was truly a "Christian sinner." Ayad replied "yes, I am Christian but I am not a sinner." The insurgents quickly said this is a "dirty Christian sinner!" Then they proceeded to each hold one limb, shouting "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" while beheading the boy. The poster can be contacted at avodah15@aol.com |
|
THE [JACK] STRAW THAT BROKE THE MULTI-CULTI BACK IN THE UK
Posted by , October , 2006. |
|
Oy Vey Britain! They lost is with their Islamists! One case is the British veiled teacher, who unhinged MP Jack Straw, admits that when she was interviewed for the job by the school male governor, she did not wear the veil. Later, she insisted that she must wear it in the classroom! Also listen to the way she speaks and determine for yourself whether this woman should be teaching English, teaching anything! Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNTNWf5Q2Zo OR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNTNWf5Q2Zo&mode=related&search= and view / listen to the entire interview. Listen all the way toward the end. This woman should be a teacher? Ha! she maybe qualified for a supermarket checker job... This article was written by Val MacQueen
and it appeared October 27, 2006 on TCSDaily
|
|
In the last few days in Britain, three events have caused what was already a small crack in the paper-thin edifice of "multiculturalism" in Britain to widen to a noticeable fissure. First, 14-year old British schoolgirl Codie Stott was arrested for trying to get a good grade in her group science project. She had been placed with a group of students only one of whom spoke any English. When they began talking what she deduced was Urdu among themselves, she realized she had no hope of completing the project. She went to her teacher, and prefacing her request with a diplomatic, "I'm not trying to be funny, but ..." she asked to be moved to an English-speaking team. The teacher reacted violently, raising her voice in the classroom to shout, "It's racist! You're going to get done by the police!" The 14-year old was reported to a police officer on the school premises and the next day she was arrested, taken to the police station and told to take the laces out of her shoes and take off her jewelry. She then had her fingerprints taken and she was formally questioned. "It was awful," she said later, when she'd been released, the police having shown more sense than her teacher. This news item created a storm of anger in Britain. But, the incident was quickly followed by another. Aishah Azmi, a teacher's assistant in an Episcopalian school who was tasked with helping recently arrived Urdu-speaking children to learn English, was asked to remove her niqab (full facial veil) in the classroom. She refused. She was told that the children needed to see her lips and mouth as she pronounced the English words they were supposed to be learning. She refused on religious grounds. The school, conciliatory for fear of being accused of racism, told her she was free to wear the veil in corridors and the staff room, but she should remove it when teaching foreign children English. She refused again, saying that as there was a male colleague in the classroom, she could not remove her veil in his presence. Ms Azmi was sent home and her salary suspended. There is a broad school of thought in Islam that wearing the veil is not a religious requirement. Indeed the full facial veil is banned in public by the governments of both Turkey and Tunisia. In Tunisia, a woman may not enter a public [government] building wearing even a headscarf. Ms Azmi was interviewed on British television by seasoned newsman Peter Sissons, who did not give her any breaks. For those who find it difficult to understand her accent, her final sentence is, "Yes, but only for five minutes." Liberal London Times columnist David Aaronovitch described her as a black belt in passive aggression. As night follows day, she took the school to an employment tribunal, which came to an atypically swift conclusion that her religious rights had not been abused, although they awarded her around £1,100 (around $2,000) for "hurt feelings". She is now requesting taxpayer-funded legal aid to fight her case all the way up. However, the local Labour MP, a Muslim, has backed the school. The third incident that has shaken the wafer-thin facade of multiculturalism was the case of a Christian worker at a British Airways' check-in counter. She wore a small cross, barely the size of her thumbnail, to work and was sent home for refusing to remove it. British Airways cited their rule of no jewelry and no religious symbolism except if it is hidden under the uniform. Ms Nadia Eweida claims that the BA rule clearly means "no Christian symbolism" as Sikh male employees are allowed to wear their much larger steel bangles with their livery, unhidden. Indeed, they are allowed to wear their turbans to work if they wish. And Muslim women can wear headscarves. Ms Eweida has announced her intention to defend her right to wear her miniature cross by taking BA to court. Meanwhile, she has been suspended without pay by an unrelenting British Airways, which also publicly reprimanded her for calling attention to the incident. These three incidents, coming over a space of a few days, have torn wide open a fissure which became visible for the first time, when Member of Parliament Jack Straw, until last month a stout devotee of multiculturalism suddenly wrote an article in his local paper. Jaws dropped all over Britain when Straw wrote his defense of the reasons he has begun asking Pakistani women constituents who visit his office to discuss problems to remove their veils. His point, of course, is that it is difficult to talk to someone whose facial expressions one cannot judge. Tony Blair has also now admitted that the veil makes him uneasy. With the bandwagon gathering pace, London mayor and keen adherent of multiculturalism "Red" Ken Livingstone, knocked the population of London over with a feather when he said on BBC's Radio 4 that he would like to see Muslims giving up the veil, although he didn't think this should be imposed "from the outside". Wearing the veil accords the wearer what British columnist Melanie Phillips refers to as a "radical imbalance of power" in that it gives the veil-wearer the advantage of reading the facial expressions of others, while keeping her own reactions hidden. It is beginning to be viewed in Britain not as a symbol of female subjugation, but as a weapon of aggression and radical Islam. The British-born mothers of these young Pakistani-heritage veil-wearing women did not wear the veil. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |