The Middle bEast

How Muslims Defeated the United States - Letter From A Soldier in Iraq

2010-01-30T13:27:00.001-08:00

From the desk of Diana West on Wed, 2010-01-27 10:49

Today, I am posting an extraordinary letter from a soldier currently stationed in Iraq, a sometime penpal of mine to whom I sent my three-part series on the aftermath of the surge to elicit his opinion. Knowing how thoughtful he is, I expected a substantive response. Given his time constraints alone, I did not expect an essay of this scope and I decided, with his permission, to present it here. It is unlike any commentary I have read from Iraq; it is both coolly reasoned and deeply passionate, and certain to challenge and disturb readers across the political spectrum: PC-believing liberals, Iraq-as-success-believing conservatives, Islam-as-a-religion-of-peaceniks of both Left and Right.

So be it.

He writes:

I apologize for the delay in my response. I have been putting in long days ... lately and I hadn’t had the time to put the thought and effort into writing this until now.
Your three-part column series wonderfully analyzes Iraq and reaches the correct strategic assessment that no one in power wants to acknowledge.
I have many things that I want to say but I do not wish to waste your time and I therefore put an executive summary at the beginning of this e-mail so you can skip the expanded version if you wish.
*****
You correctly assessed that we have not gained anything positive from our efforts in Iraq and that the nation is not our ally. (The same is true for Afghanistan.) I will go as far as saying that the Iraqis are our enemies—enemies better equipped to wage jihad against us than they have ever been. We will regret what we have done. We will regret that we created this officially Islamic nation. And we will regret that we created an officially Islamic Afghanistan. We will regret that we have placed ourselves in the service of Islam, waging jihad worldwide as we advance the Religion of Peace and eliminate Christians in the process. (So much for the accusation that the U.S. is on a “Crusade.”) It is a shame that so many people refuse to recognize how horrible Islam is, and that the U.S. made a fatal mistake when it refused to declare war against Afghanistan and Islam—when it refused victory by binding the greatest military force of all time.
*****
The Full Analysis:
Parts 1 and 2 of “The ‘Surge’ and ‘Success’” correctly identify that we have gained nothing positive for our efforts in Iraq while the Iraqis have betrayed us. I do not trust any Iraqi or Middle Easterner. I do not care if anyone calls me a “racist” or “bigot” anymore. Those words have lost their meaning. Do I think that every single Iraqi or Middle Easterner is bad? No. But I think it is difficult to tell. An Iraqi or Middle Easterner will smile to your face or be your best friend one moment, and cut your head off in the next. It is odd that so many people cannot comprehend this. It is even weirder that those who pride themselves on being “culturally aware” cannot grasp that Middle Eastern culture and thought, and Islamic behavior and thought are completely different than ours (than ours on the Right, at least). Perhaps this ignorance partially explains why the U.S. had no reaction when Maliki declared victory over the U.S. when we moved out of the major Iraqi cities. But even if it is a partial explanation it still is no excuse.
The Iranian War in Iraq is a travesty and has been since it started under Bush. I still cannot believe that a nation can war against us and murder Servicemen, and not pay the price of oblivion for it. Our nation sits back and apologizes, and defends itself constantly from accusations of an “illegal” and “unjust” war yet Iranians, other foreign terrorists, and even Iraqis go about murdering American troops without any consequence whatsoever. We should war back against them. But we won’t.
I remember when people said that we had brought on the September 11 attacks because “we created Bin Laden.” I never understood that. In fact, that we had helped the Afghanis defeat the Soviet Union should have been even more reason for us to kill Bin Laden and destroy Afghanistan. We had saved their lives and they repaid us for it by murdering us on our own soil. Yet our government refused its God-given duty to its people to mete out punishment and justice. History repeats with Iraq. The Iraqis lived under oppression for decades and when we liberated their nation they repaid our unimaginable mercy and sacrifice with betrayal. It is sickening.
Part 3 (“Victory” in Iraq? Really?) perfectly summarized where the U.S. is now in our “war” in Iraq. Once we made Iraq an officially Islamic country I knew that it would become among our worst enemies. (The same is true for Afghanistan.) I said years ago that the end result of our efforts will be that Iraq will be a rebuilt nation better prepared than ever to wage jihad against us. You cannot create an officially Islamic nation and expect anything less. Regrettably, our leaders and our nation cannot identify Islam for what it is: evil. And so we continue our suicidal practice. The Iraqi betrayal of the U.S. started sooner than I expected it but I expected it nonetheless. This is outrageous. Yet the situation is even more unjust than this.
Muslims have waged jihad against the West since their insane, pedophiliac founder started their cult; they have waged jihad against the U.S. since our inception. But what is worse about our policy of establishing officially Islamic nations and pouring money, technology, weapons, and training into them is that we have been labeled as “occupiers” being on a “Christian crusade to wipe out Islam.” Think about that. We have been demonized as “occupying Christian crusaders” (if only!) even as we have waged jihad in the service of Islam, helped Muslims spread Islam and wipe out Christians, and died for ungrateful Iraqis even as terrorists from all over the war invaded and occupied Iraq, and slaughtered and oppressed Iraqis. (And don’t even get me started on the fact that we—the United States of America—are truly being invaded and occupied by illegal aliens warring on us!)
I am woefully understating the situation when I say that the U.S. has no clue how to fight wars any longer. We have allowed our enemies to control this war and make it one of media and information—information warfare / information operations . We have chosen not to win by refusing to reject the enemies’ preferred warfare; we have chosen not to wage a kinetic warfare where we could easily defeat our enemies in months if not weeks with our superior technology, tactics, and Servicemen. And through it all we seem not the least bit embarrassed that a “coalition” of dozens of nations cannot beat a primitive bunch of troglodytes. I no longer can express my outrage about this or any of the myriad horrors which plague our once great land. Every day there is something new which is more perverse and inequitable than the last day’s wickedness. I sit here in Iraq and do all I can do to stomach the disastrous excuse that passes for “strategy” in this war—a strategy where our leaders openly say that the lives of our Islamic enemies are worth more than ours; a “strategy” where the Army Chief of Staff openly states that the “death of diversity” would be a larger tragedy than the slaughter of Soldiers (and get away with it with but a whisper of outcry from the American people). I pray that I get out of here alive so I can complete my Army contract and get away from this nonsense and betrayal.
Two final things.
First, I wonder how many people have considered how successful the September 11, 2001 Islamic attacks were. Think about what they accomplished. They thrust Islam to the center of the world; they undoubtedly caused more people to learn about Islam than would have prior to their attacks. And the attacks combined with the near non-response of the U.S. doubtlessly gained them converts. Furthermore, what response the United States did produce resulted in the establishment, enrichment, and training of the officially Islamic nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the enrichment and training of countless other Muslim nations around the globe. Islam now stands better suited than ever to wage jihad across the world. The September 11 attacks also resulted in Muslims being portrayed as victims around the world (thanks to their leftist allies) and helped them (again, with an assist from their leftist allies) advance their jihad even as Muslims and leftists further vilified Christianity, America, and Western values. And finally the crowning achievement of the September 11 Islamic attacks: eight years after them the United States places as its leader a person whom can at best be described as an anti-American, racist, Islamic sympathizer (and who has the same name as an infamous Islamic dictator). This is stunning. It is bizarre. It is incomprehensible. Yet it is our nightmarish reality. The Islamic attacks on September 11, 2001 achieved success beyond the wildest dreams of the Religion of Peace cultists.
Finally, I would like you to know that I am willing to comment on other posts and articles that you publish, including some of your other posts that mention the debate that your three-part column on the Surge started. I am willing to comment for two reasons.
The first reason is that everyone on the Right needs to fight back against the Islamic War on the West and stop the jihad. And one of the ways to fight back is to speak out against it. The second reason is that I want to establish for posterity that I am firmly against this evil and every other evil. I will explain why this matters.
Leftists always rewrite history so as to demonize what is Right and so as to cover their real nature. They abhor the truth as much as the vilest of Muslims. And as a way to enable their rewriting of history they use political correctness to silence opponents; to vilify them so that they have no place in society. We have allowed leftists to use political correctness to emasculate us. In fact, political correctness is the leftist weapon of choice in paralyzing the Right and aiding their Islamic allies who also advance an anti-Christian, anti-Foundational America agenda. Political correctness is what prevents us from fighting back against the left, and what prevents us from fully fighting back against the jihad and ending the Islamic threat. Political correctness makes us acquiesce to the left so as to be “moderate” and “bipartisan.” Our capitulation to the left will doom us physically by allowing the Muslims and left to eliminate the last vestiges of the West and it will doom us historically as our enslaved descendants will look back and ask how we could have allowed the twin insanities of Islam and the left to control and destroy us when we easily could have defeated them both. Our descendants will condemn us for remaining idle in the face of evil . . . and the leftists of the future will use our submission and our descendants’ condemnation to manipulate history and blame us as the originators of the horrific agenda that they instituted. The future left will use our sinful surrender to pave the way for them to control and destroy civilization once more (all in the name of “progressivism” of course).
I do not want leftists to be able to do this. I do not want them to easily rewrite history in the future. I want to be a loud voice (wherever I may be) that opposes everything Islam and the left want. I want there to be no doubt that I, a Right-wing Christian, utterly reject them and their core beliefs. I want to make it all but impossible for future leftists to say that, “It was the Christian Right who enabled and supported the worldwide jihad (not to mention the global warming hoax, the sexual perverts, and the freedom hating communists)! It was the Christian Right who wanted them to take over and destroy the world!” I want to make it all but impossible for future leftists to say that atheists, humanists, and secularists (like Bruce Bawer, Christopher Hitchens, Tammy Bruce, and a few others) tried to oppose the Islamic War on the West but “could not convince the mentally inferior but numerically superior Right-wing Christians to join them!” I want to counteract the in-name-only Christians and conservatives who have bought into the “Religion of Peace” and leftist nonsense, and who will do untold additional amounts of damage to civilization and our good name with their cravenness and rejection of Truth. And that is why I am willing to comment on more of your posts.
I know I am in the minority with my beliefs but I do not care. I want to be like the 300—not just the ones who fought at Thermopylae—but the 300 who fought with Gideon against the Midianites. I want to stand for the Truth.
Keep up the good work.
Sincerely,
A US soldier in Iraq

via brusselsjournal.com

Posted via web from Liberty & Such

Watch the desert blooming! [video]

2010-01-29T23:37:00.001-08:00

In just a few years, Israel has been transformed from desert and swamp-land into a world leader in agriculture! Truly we are seeing the prophecies of Ezekiel 36 being fulfilled. Now that is worth celebrating! As Jews around the world mark TuBishvat, the New Year for Trees...we pause to reflect on God's bounty of blessings to the nation of Israel.

Source: www.maozisrael.org

Posted via email from Liberty & Such

Defining Christian Maturity [audio]

2010-01-29T22:27:00.001-08:00

Download now or listen on posterous

Defining Christian Maturity.m4a (3831 KB)

Take a look at the following Scriptures: 1 Cor. 13:11; Mat. 5:48; Heb. 5:14

Can you define Christian maturity? Do you consider yourself a mature Christian? Do you consider other Christians as mature? What is it that makes you believe that?

If we defined Christian (spiritual) maturity better, will this help us be better disciples of Jesus?

Posted via email from Liberty & Such

Robert Spenser Explains the Islamist Threat

2009-06-15T04:20:00.000-07:00

TFP: Both as a specialist in Islam and as a Catholic, could you explain what are the principal differences between Islamism and Catholicism?

Robert Spencer: Islam and Catholicism differ in their views of Jesus: Islam denies the divinity of Christ and His redemption. Islam regards Him as a Muslim prophet who taught Islam, but whose message was corrupted by His followers to create Christianity. In doing so, according to the Qur’an, they deified Him and began to teach that He was the Son of God and was crucified, when in reality He was a human prophet and was not crucified. (See Qur’an 9:30; 4:157, 5:112-116).

One of the myriad other ways in which Islam and Catholicism also differ fundamentally is in their views of the dignity of the human person. In Islam, there is a sharp dichotomy between believers, “the best of peoples” (Qur’an 3:110) and unbelievers, “the most vile of created beings” (Qur’an 98:6). Traditional Islam also denies the freedom of conscience, mandating death for apostates.

TFP - Nowadays everyone talks about jihad, but few know its precise meaning. What is the correct understanding of the term?

Robert Spencer: Jihad in Arabic means struggle, and there are as many connotations of the word in Arabic as there are of “struggle” in English. However, the traditional, mainstream and primary Islamic understanding of jihad as a theological concept involves warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. This idea is rooted in a cluster of Qur’anic verses that contain general and open-ended commands to fight non-Muslims, including:

• “O ye who believe! Fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him” (9:123).

• “O Prophet! Strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be firm against them. Their abode is Hell, an evil refuge indeed” (9:73). The Arabic word translated here as “strive hard” is jahidi, a verbal form of the noun jihad.

The command applies first to fighting those who worship other gods besides Allah: “Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free.” (9:5). In plain English, this means that “idolaters” are to be killed, unless they convert to Islam and begin following Islamic laws such as paying alms (“the poor-due.”)

However, Muslims must fight Jews and Christians as well, although the Qur’an recognizes that as “People of the Book” they have received genuine revelations from Allah: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya [the special tax on non-Muslims] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9:29).

The words mean what they appear to mean. The noted Qur’an commentator Ibn Juzayy says that Qur’an 9:29 is “a command to fight the People of the Book.” Another respected mainstream Qur’an commentary, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, notes that when 9:29 says that Muslims must fight against those who “follow not the Religion of Truth,” it means those who do not follow Islam, “which is firm and abrogates other deens [religions].”[1]

All four principal Sunni schools of jurisprudence, the Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanafi and Hanbali schools, agree on the importance of jihad warfare against non-Muslims who refuse to convert to Islam. Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (d. 996), a Maliki jurist, declared that “it is preferable not to begin hostilities with the enemy before having invited the latter to embrace the religion of Allah except where the enemy attacks first. They have the alternative of either converting to Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which war will be declared against them.”[2] Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), a Hanbali jurist who is a favorite of bin Laden and other modern-day jihadists, explained that the aim of jihad was “that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”[3]

The other schools echo these teachings. The Hanafi school stipulates, “If the infidels, upon receiving the call [to convert to Islam], neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax, it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them . . . the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.”[4] Likewise, the Shafi’i scholar Abu’l Hasan al-Mawardi (d. 1058) taught that once infidels refuse the invitation to convert to Islam, “war is waged against them and they are treated as those whom the call has reached.”[5]

In other words, “Let me make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

A Hanafi legal manual explains that the fight against unbelievers can sometimes take non-violent forms: “Jihad in the language is exerting effort. In the understanding of the Sharia, it is exerting effort and energy in fighting fi sabeel lillah [in the path of Allah] by nafs [spiritual struggle], finance, tongue or another.”[6] Indeed, in traditional Islam, jihad bil sayf (jihad with the sword) or combat (qitaal) is only one means of jihad. Other forms of jihad include jihad bil mal (waging jihad by means of one’s wealth); jihad bil lisan (waging jihad through persuasion); jihad bil yad (waging jihad by taking action, but not necessarily arms, against injustice).

But all these various forms of jihad – both violent and non-violent – are directed toward the same end: the Islamization of the world and the imposition of Islamic law over unbelieving societies. Majid Khadduri (1909-2007), an internationally renowned Iraqi scholar of Islamic law, explained in his 1955 book War and Peace in the Law of Islam that Islam had embedded within it an expansionist and supremacist imperative:

The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God’s law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world. It refused to recognize the coexistence of non-Muslim communities, except perhaps as subordinate entities, because by its very nature a universal state tolerates the existence of no other state than itself. . . . The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state.[7]

Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari’ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad, quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book . . . is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee concludes, “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.[8]

But if this is so, why hasn’t the worldwide Islamic community been waging jihad on a large scale up until relatively recently? Writing in 1994, before the worldwide jihadist effort had reached the strength it enjoys today, Nyazee said it is only because it has not been able to do so: “The Muslim community may be considered to be passing through a period of truce. In its present state of weakness, there is nothing much it can do about it.”[9]

TFP: In your most recent book Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, you cover a little-known aspect of the Islamist offensive: psychological warfare, which is waged by Islamic pressure groups within our borders. Tell us something about this.

Robert Spencer: One of the most effective tactics employed by Islamic jihadists throughout the world is to intimidate their opponents into silence. Death threats, murders, acts of mass terrorism, beheadings broadcast over the Internet – all these actions are obviously useful to minimize resistance to the jihadists’ agenda. Naturally, the number of people who repudiate them becomes less significant when such dissidents are afraid to express their opposition in any way.

Threats of violence are indeed effective in silencing criticism of jihadists or even simple mockery of any aspect of Islam. Stealth jihadists, however, do not employ this approach. Groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim-American Society (MAS) have learned from the past mistakes of many U.S.-based Islamic leaders that aggressive public pronouncements and threats uttered against Islam’s perceived enemies bring unwelcome attention and undermine their pretensions of being mainstream civil rights organizations. So they’ve adopted a different strategy to silence critics of jihadism and Islamic supremacism: they label them as “bigots,” “hatemongers,” and “Islamophobes.”

In the U.S., playing the race card can in some ways be even more effective than death threats. If a U.S.-based Islamic group announced a death fatwa against an American writer, that group would be denounced in the media as “extremist” and possibly trigger a police investigation. But if the group cries “racism” against the same writer, liberal as well as conservative media figures hop to shun and denounce the accused “racist,” for bigotry and racism are the cardinal sins of the U.S. public square.

Islamic groups in the U.S. skillfully play the race card against those who publicize uncomfortable truths about Islam: criticism of Islamic supremacist impulses or of the organizations themselves is frequently met with indignant cries of “racism.” These groups deliberately conflate race with religion, exploiting the fact that most Muslims in the country are either black or Arab and Pakistani immigrants. The fact that Islam is a religion and not a race is apparently irrelevant, and journalists never challenge these groups on their confusion of the two.

CAIR in particular has become expert at bandying about allegations of bigotry and racism to silence its critics or quash even fictional representations that it deems offensive to Muslims. In 2001, when Tom Clancy’s novel The Sum of All Fears was being made into a movie, CAIR launched a successful campaign to pressure the filmmakers into changing the Islamic terrorists of the story into some other kind of villain. (Ultimately they became neo-Nazis – apparently the Aryan Nations doesn’t have CAIR’s clout.) There can be little doubt that the filmmakers were simply bullied into making the change by the prospect of CAIR publicly denouncing them as racists. Film director Phil Alden Robinson wrote abjectly to CAIR, “I hope you will be reassured that I have no intention of promoting negative images of Muslims or Arabs, and I wish you the best in your continuing efforts to combat discrimination.”[10] America got a dramatic reminder of the fact that there really are Islamic terrorists, and they’re not just the figments of bigoted imaginations, on September 11, 2001, but by then filming on The Sum of All Fears had already been completed.

Islamic groups in the U.S. have employed the race card innumerable times in myriad contexts in order to intimidate and silence their opponents. To give credit where credit is due, it has proven to be an excellent strategy for deflecting attention from the reality of jihadist sentiments and jihadist activity among American Muslims. The stealth jihadists employ this kind of obfuscation to great effect. Their immediate goal is not to overpower America directly through combat, but rather to convince Americans that there is nothing at all to fear from Islamic theology, and that anyone who argues otherwise is an Islamophobe motivated solely by hate. With the population lulled into complacency, they can go about their work of forcing western “accommodation” to Islamic practices. This is meant to set the stage for Islam eventually to emerge supreme.

TFP: How should Catholics react against this insidious Islamist offensive in America?

Robert Spencer: The primary challenge that Catholics who are aware of the jihad threat is to convince their coreligionists that such a threat is indeed real. Many have been blinded to the threat by a widespread misunderstanding of the statements of the Second Vatican Council about Islam, and by the impression that Catholics and Muslims must make common cause on moral issues. While some limited cooperation may indeed be possible in the international arena, this fact should not render us unwilling to admit the facts about Islam’s supremacist agenda, which denies the very legitimacy of Christianity as a faith.

TFP: Is there also an Islamist threat in Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Holland?

Robert Spencer: Yes, and it is far more advanced there than it is in America. The historian Bernard Lewis has said flatly that Europe will be Islamic by the end of this century. The results for Catholic civilization in Europe and its artifacts will be disastrous.

TFP: You are also the author of a book, which deals with the Crusades: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), which was a New York Times bestseller. Since our magazine is honored to be called Crusade, tell us something about the role of the Crusades in the struggle against Islam, particularly what lessons they may provide for the struggle we must wage today.

Robert Spencer: The Crusades were not acts of unprovoked aggression by Europe against the Islamic world, but a delayed response to centuries of Muslim aggression, which grew fiercer than ever in the eleventh century. These were wars for the recapture of Christian lands and the defense of Christians, not religious imperialism. Nor were the Crusades called in order to convert Muslims or anyone else to Christianity by force. The Crusaders did many things that cannot be excused, but in their conception they were defensive actions against an Islamic jihad that had by the time of the First Crusade overwhelmed half of Christendom.

Lessons for today? We need to summon our spiritual and cultural resources as well as our military resources in order to defeat the jihadist challenge.

ROBERT SPENCER is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of eight books on Islam and jihad. Spencer is a weekly columnist for Human Events and FrontPage Magazine, and has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army's Asymmetric Warfare Group, the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community.

Mr. Spencer holds an MA in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has been studying Islamic theology, law, and history in depth since 1980

China: Good Changes Are Coming

2009-05-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

By David Wang

A friend is doing her PhD in a university inside China, studying "Comparative Religions." In her research, she has obtained some documents prepared by highly reputable Chinese scholars and professors reporting on the Christian Church of China. Some were assigned by China's Academy of Social Sciences. Some were actually commissioned by the central government.

The scholars are mostly Western educated and non-Christians. Their research was scientific and extensive. And their findings quite consistent:

- In China, there are three major strands of Christian Church: the Three- Self state sanctioned church, the rural house church and the urban "new-rising" church.

- Around 8% of China's population is adherents of Christianity. Some provinces and regions have as high as 10%.

- Christianity (Protestant) is not only China's fastest growing faith, its followers are also most fervent in comparison.

- Of the three, the Three-Self, although most public, because of its government sanctioned status, is the least vibrant and has the slowest growth.

- Because of rapid urbanization, rural house churches are slowing down in their growth. Her pyramid-style, patriarchal leadership structure is giving way to an independent yet interrelated "local church" system. Thus her leadership crisis is most severe.

- The composition of the rural house church, which was predominantly women, the elderly and semi-illiterate, is changing. Youth and children are joining.

- Previously, 80% if not more of new people joining rural house churches were because of healing miracles. Now they are attracted because of the clean and joyous lifestyle.

- The tension between the Three-Self and rural house church is still acute. This is not due to theological differences but to their status. One is, in Communists' term "Red," the other, "Black."

- The urban "new-rise" churches are made up mostly of white-collars, professional, college students and youth. They are a positive influence in the society, even in economic development.

- They are neither legal nor illegal - therefore "Grey." Theologically they are more tuned to their rural counter parts. In social concern and services as well as evangelism, they are more aggressive than the Three-Self.

- The greatest lack of the Church in China, as expressed by all three, is high-standard, open accreditable training of their pastors, leaders, and workers.

These findings are mostly common knowledge - at least to people who have been on the ground. But the researchers' recommendations are revealing:

- For Beijing to continue its "harmony in the society" drive, and to cut-down conflicts between local government agencies and Christian believers, and to eradicate cults and cultic practices, it is recommended to allow church registration outside the jurisdiction of the Three-Self.

- To ensure higher quality of China's Church as a whole, training of its leaders and workers should not be limited only in Three-Self schools, nor pushed to the underground. China's universities can play a vital role.

- The teaching of Marxism in regard to religions needs to be reinterpreted according to China's current situation.

Another finding actually challenges the root cause of the government restricting and persecuting the house church: "The house church movement, by and large, is an indigenous phenomenon. It is not necessarily instigated or sustained by external factions." For the longest time, China's xenophobic authorities have blamed the West for infiltration through its mission activities.

Local believers are sensing the effect of these top-level findings. "These researchers work for the central higher-ups. Their reports are changing the attitude of Beijing towards us. Even President Hu Jintao in his recent speeches is urging a non-pressure, non-conflict approach towards religious activities," a group of Henan house church leaders told me last month.

But they are not expecting big changes overnight. Particularly this year 2009 being a supersensitive time: 60th anninversary of the New China, 50th anniversary of Tibet Liberation, 20 years after the Tiananmen incident, and the 1st anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake.

In unison Chinese believers are predicting, albeit slowly "Good changes are coming."

Source: Asian Report, May/June 2009. As reported by Dr. Peter Wagner's Global Link Newsletter.

Islam Needs to Prove It's a Religion of Peace

2009-03-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

Muslims can start with a new Quranic scholarship that rejects radicalism.

By TAWFIK HAMID | From the Wall Street Journal Europe.

The film "Fitna" by Dutch parliament member Geert Wilders has created an uproar around the world as it linked violence committed by Islamists to Islam.

Many commentators and politicians -- including the British government, which denied him entry to the country last month -- reflexively accused Mr. Wilders of inciting hatred. The question, however, is whether the blame is with Mr. Wilders, who simply exposed Islamic radicalism, or with those who promote and engage in this religious extremism. In other words, shall we fault Mr. Wilders for showing photos of the hanging of homosexuals, or shall we fault those who actually promote and practice this crime?

There is a certain schizophrenia among many Muslims who seem to believe that it is acceptable to teach hatred and violence in the name of their religion, while at the same time expecting the world to respect Islam as "a religion of peace, love and harmony."
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Scholars in the most prestigious Islamic institutes and universities continue to teach things like Jews are "pigs and monkeys," that women and men must be stoned to death for adultery, or that Muslims must fight the world to spread their religion. Isn't, then, Mr. Wilders's criticism appropriate? Instead of blaming him, we must blame the leading Islamic scholars for having failed to produce an authoritative book on Islamic jurisprudence that is accepted in the Islamic world and unambiguously rejects these violent teachings.

While many religious texts preach violence, the interpretation, modern usage and implementation of these teachings make all the difference. For example, the stoning of women exists in both the Old Testament and in the Islamic tradition, or "Sunna" -- the recorded deeds and manners of the prophet Muhammad. The difference, though, is that leading Jewish scholars agreed to discontinue these practices centuries ago while Muslim scholars have yet to do so. Hence we do not see the stoning of women practiced or promoted in Israel, the "Jewish" state, but we see it practiced and promoted in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the "Islamic" states!

When the British government banned Geert Wilders from entering the country to present his film in the House of Lords, it made two egregious errors. The first was to suppress free speech, a canon of the civilized Western world. The second mistake was to blame the messenger -- punishing, so to speak, the witness who exposed the crime instead of punishing the criminal. Mr. Wilders did not produce the content of the violent Islamic message he showed in his film -- the Islamic world did that. Until the Islamic clerical establishment takes concrete steps to reject violence in the name of their religion, Mr. Wilders criticism is not only permissible as "controversial" free speech but justified.

So, Islamic scholars and clerics, it is up to you to produce a Shariah book that will be accepted in the Islamic world and that teaches that Jews are not pigs and monkeys, and that declaring war to spread Islam is unacceptable, and killing apostates is a crime. Such a book would prove that Islam is a religion of peace.

Mr. Hamid, a former member of an Islamist terrorist group, is an Islamic reformer and senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

How Europe's Companies Are Feeding Iran's Bomb

2009-03-03T18:00:00.000-08:00

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
Berlin

While the U.S. has ratcheted up its efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear arms, the Islamic Republic is reaping a windfall from European companies. These firms' deals aid a regime that is bent on developing nuclear weapons and which financially supports the terror organizations Hamas and Hezbollah.

The Austrian oil giant OMV is itching to implement a €22 billion agreement signed in April 2007 to produce liquefied natural gas from Iran's South Pars gas field; at last May's annual shareholder meeting, Chief Executive Officer Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer said OMV was only waiting for "political change in the U.S.A." Raiffeisen Zentralbank, Austria's third-largest bank, is active in Iran and, according to a story by the Journal's Glenn Simpson last February, has absorbed the transactions of key European banks that shut down their operations in Iran. And in late January Paolo Scaroni, CEO of Italian energy corporation Eni SpA, told the Associated Press that his firm will continue to fulfill its contractual obligations in Iran and feels no external pressure to sever ties with Iran's energy sector.

Yet because of the sheer volume of its trade with Iran, Germany, the economic engine of Europe, is uniquely positioned to pressure Tehran. Still, the obvious danger of a nuclear-armed Iran has not stopped Germany from rewarding the country with a roughly €4 billion trade relationship in 2008, thereby remaining Iran's most important European trade partner. In the period of January to November 2008, German exports to Iran grew by 10.5% over the same period in 2007. That booming trade last year included 39 "dual-use" contracts with Iran, according to Germany's export-control office. Dual-use equipment and technology can be used for both military and civilian purposes.

One example of Germany's dysfunctional Iran policy is the energy and engineering giant Siemens. The company acknowledged last week at its annual stockholder meeting in Munich, which I attended, that it conducted €438 million in trade with Iran in 2008, and that its 290 Iran-based employees will remain active in the gas, oil, infrastructure and communications sectors.

Concerned stockholders and representatives from the political organization Stop the Bomb, a broad-based coalition in Germany and Austria seeking to...

Read the whole story...

Who looks Jewish?

2009-03-02T20:49:00.000-08:00

And now something a bit . . . different!

"The Hebrew Mamita" - Vanessa Hidary.

Simon Peres defends Israel with passion at the World Economic Forum in Davos

2009-03-01T19:49:00.000-08:00

FBI Cuts Off CAIR Over Hamas Questions

2009-01-30T23:28:00.000-08:00

FBI Cuts Off CAIR Over Hamas Questions

by Mary Jacoby
IPT News
January 29, 2009

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has cut off contacts with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) amid mounting concern about the Muslim advocacy group's roots in a Hamas-support network, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned.

The decision to end contacts with CAIR was made quietly last summer as federal prosecutors prepared for a second trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), an Islamic charity accused of providing money and political support to the terrorist group Hamas, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

CAIR and its chairman emeritus, Omar Ahmad, were named un-indicted co-conspirators in the HLF case. Both Ahmad and CAIR's current national executive director, Nihad Awad, were revealed on government wiretaps as having been active participants in early Hamas-related organizational meetings in the United States. During testimony, FBI agent Lara Burns described CAIR as a front organization.

Hamas is a US-designated foreign terrorist organization, and it's been illegal since 1995 to provide support to it within the United States.

The decision to end contacts with CAIR is a significant policy change for the FBI. For years, the FBI worked with the national organization and its state chapters to address Muslim community concerns about the potential for hate crimes and other civil liberty violations in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

But critics said the FBI improperly conferred legitimacy on CAIR by meeting with its officials, even as its own investigative files contained evidence of CAIR leaders' ties to Hamas.

Last autumn, FBI field offices began notifying state CAIR chapters that bureau officials could no longer meet with them until CAIR's national leadership in Washington had addressed issues raised by the HLF trial, according to people with knowledge of the notifications.

CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper declined to comment Wednesday when the IPT called for comment. Before hanging up, Hooper said "We're more than happy to cooperate with legitimate media. But we don't cooperate with those who promote anti-Muslim bigotry."

In one letter obtained by IPT News, James E. Finch, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Oklahoma City field office, canceled a meeting of the local Muslim Community Outreach Program, a state-federal program designed to enlist Muslims in terrorism prevention and investigate reports of civil liberties violations.

"Regrettably, due to circumstances beyond my control, the meeting will be postponed until further notice as a result of the planned participation by the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations," Finch's Oct. 8, 2008 letter to Muslim groups in the Oklahoma outreach program said.

Finch made clear the Oklahoma office valued its relationship with local Muslims. He said the stumbling block to further outreach was CAIR's national leadership.

"[I]f CAIR wishes to pursue an outreach relationship with the FBI, certain issues must be addressed to the satisfaction of the FBI. Unfortunately, these issues cannot be addressed at the local level and must be addressed by the CAIR National Office in Washington, D.C.," the letter said.

A spokesman for the FBI's Oklahoma City office referred questions about the letter to the FBI's national press office. In Washington, FBI spokesman John Miller said, "We've certainly been in contact with CAIR chapters" about the un-indicted co-conspirator designation. "The letter speaks for itself."

Letters with similar wording were sent in other states, people with knowledge of the matter said. It is not known how many letters were issued, but the FBI has had strong working relationships with CAIR chapters in states including Ohio, Michigan, Arizona and Florida.

Hamas was formed in 1987 as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the global Islamic political movement that aims to spread the rule of Shariah, or Islamic law, throughout the world.

A North American branch of the Brotherhood supervised HLF, CAIR and other organizations to build political, financial and public relations support for Hamas, evidence at the HLF trial showed.

The U.S.-based Brotherhood formed a Palestine Committee, headed by Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzook, in 1988 during the first intifada uprising in Palestinian territories against Israel. Hamas's stated policy is for the destruction of Israel.

CAIR co-founders Ahmad and Awad were early active members of the Palestine Committee, evidence showed. Wiretaps recorded the two CAIR leaders participating in strategy meetings of the committee in the 1990s, and both were also on a phone list of its members, the evidence showed.

The first HLF trial in Texas ended in a mistrial in October 2007. In November 2008, the second trial resulted in convictions of five former HLF officials on all counts of providing material support to Hamas.

It is unclear what changed between the first and second HLF trials to make the FBI rescind its policy of outreach to CAIR. The un-indicted co-conspirator designations were made on May 27, 2007 in connection with the first HLF trial. Moreover, much of the evidence linking the CAIR officials to Hamas was aired in an earlier public trial in 2006.

CAIR, however, vigorously challenged the un-indicted co-conspirator designation as a violation of its First and Fifth Amendment rights, accusing the government of "demonization of all things Muslim" in a brief filed in the summer of 2007 with the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The co-conspirator designation is "particularly insidious and ironic as CAIR is an organization dedicated to fostering acceptance of Muslims in American society and protecting the civil liberties of all Muslim Americans," CAIR's brief read.

The government filed a brief on Sept. 4, 2007 opposing CAIR's filing, arguing the group lacked standing to challenge the co-conspirator designation and that the matter was moot, as the evidence was already entered into the public record. The judge never ruled on CAIR's request.

The HLF trial showed that CAIR was formed to covertly influence US opinions of the Palestinian conflict and Islam, but without revealing its connections to Hamas.

For example, prosecutors introduced transcripts of wiretaps from a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia of the Palestine Committee, called to order by Ahmad (see page 10 of the hyperlink) and attended by Awad. In that meeting, Ahmad and others discussed the need to create a new political organization seemingly unconnected to Hamas or the Brotherhood.

In one excerpt, (see page 4 of the link) an unidentified male said: "We must form a new organization for activism which will be neutral, because we are placed in a corner, we are place in a corner. It is known who we are, we are marked and I believe there should be a new neutral organization which works on both sides."

CAIR was founded a year later, in 1994, by Ahmad and Awad. In March 1994, Awad was taped at Miami's Barry University publicly declaring his support for Hamas: "I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO," Awad said.

A July 30, 1994 agenda for the Palestine Committee, seized by federal agents and introduced at trial, showed that "suggestions to develop the work" of HLF, CAIR and other organizations was on the agenda.

Under the heading "The need for trained resources in the media and political fields," the agenda said: "No doubt America is the ideal location to train the necessary resources to support the Movement worldwide."

By 1995, CAIR was conducting public relations work to counter the US detention of Mousa Abu Marzook, the Hamas official and Palestine Committee member who was also head of the Muslim Brotherhood in the US.

A transcript of an August 1995 phone call intercepted by government investigators showed HLF officials Shukri Abu Baker and Ghassan Elashi talking about CAIR's efforts (see page 12 of the link).

Days before the 2001 terrorist attacks, the FBI raided the offices of Infocom, a Texas internet company connected to HLF. CAIR's Nihad Awad appeared at a press conference outside Infocom headquarters to denounce what he called an "anti-Muslim witch hunt."

CAIR remained a vocal player in the public debate after 9/11. It developed relationships with members of Congress. FBI officials frequently attended CAIR fundraising banquets, and CAIR cited such contacts in its own literature and Web site as evidence of its good standing with the government.

Mary Jacoby is an award winning reporter who has worked for the Wall Street Journal, Salon.com, the St. Petersburg Times, Chicago Tribune and Roll Call. She may be reached at writetomaryjacoby@gmail.com

For more on CAIR's roots and its history of attacking law enforcement investigations and supporting Islamic terrorists, see the IPT's dossier on the group. Check back at the IPT website tomorrow for a report on CAIR's consistent refusal to condemn terrorist organizations and its rationalization of suicide bombings.

A false icon

2009-01-20T11:24:00.000-08:00

by Tomas Sandell

The iconic picture from the current conflict in Gaza has been that of a courageous Norwegian doctor saving Palestinian lives. Here he is, the only westerner in Gaza, who is able to not only save lives but also run his own news agency out of a hospital, informing Western media about what is "really" happening and - here is the catch - who is to be blamed, namely Israel.

Like millions of other people I have seen these images on the evening news, and I have read about his eyewitness reports day after day. After all, there were no other "reliable sources" available in Gaza, it was said. At first I watched this new Bernard Kouchner personality with great admiration. But then it occurred to me. Something was not right. Why did the doctor seem more interested in explaining who was right and who was wrong than in saving lives? Most humanitarian relief workers are there to save lives. Most leave it at this. Explaining who is right and who is wrong is not their call, but to save lives and ease the suffering.

So I googled 'Mads Gilbert.' The profile I discovered on Wikipedia was not one of a humanitarian icon but that of a political activist with a clear Marxist agenda. His convictions were those of the extreme left; he had accused both the US and Israel of war crimes long before the current military operation in Gaza.

IN FACT, the doctor who was trying to alert the world about the human suffering in Gaza had in 2001 the following to say about the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

Question: So do you support this terrorist attack on the US? Answer: "Terror is a bad weapon but my answer is yes" (Wikipedia).

This had to be a scam. I did what every concerned citizen would have done. I called the responsible editor of the evening news and of the main daily where I live. Did they know? No they did not. Were they going to do anything to correct the news reports? Answer: What is there to correct?

We live in a cynical world which is shaped by iconic images. People remember pictures. The first man on the moon, JFK being shot in Dallas and now the courageous Norwegian doctor in Gaza explaining to the world the atrocities of Israel. These are the images that will remain in the collective memory of people for years to come and will shape their perception of the conflict in Gaza. Even a small correction will not do much to change the public opinion which has already been shaped, influenced by the images in the news reports. The false icon will remain.

MADS GILBERT may be a good surgeon, but his values are not those of a humanitarian. When he appears in the news as the "accidental hero," we need to learn about his other credentials as well. How trustworthy are his claims? Was he involved in other missions to help the Palestinian people than simply medical work and public relations? We do not know. What we do know by now is that Mads Gilbert and his friend Erik Fosse did not end up in Gaza by accident. They did not come only to help out in a hospital but with a clear political agenda to sell. And they did it very successfully because in Marxist theory the means justify the end. The truth is secondary.

But this text is not about Mads Gilbert. It is about how helpless most of us are when we are exposed to world events where it is impossible for us to know who is telling the truth and who is not. Gilbert may be multitalented (running a hospital and a press agency at the same time is no small venture), but he does not have multiple personalities. He can not be a humanitarian one minute and a cynical political activist the next. When he puts all the blame on Israel, he probably does so out of the convictions that the US and Israel are legitimate targets for terrorist attacks as he has stated in his native Norway. But Norway is far away from the news desks in Washington, Paris and London.

Nevertheless, I hope they will report the following news item. The Norwegian doctor in Gaza is a false icon.

The writer is the founding director of European Coalition for Israel. He has been an accredited journalist to the European Commission in Brussels and is a former director of the European Network of Humanitarian Relief Agencies.

The writer is the founding director of European Coalition for Israel. He has been an
accredited journalist to the European Commission in Brussels and is a former director of the
European Network of Humanitarian Relief Agencies.

Source: The Jerusalem Post

Bulgaria expels high ranking cleric on national security concerns

2009-01-16T23:00:00.000-08:00

The Bulgarian government has extradited Adem Yerinde from the country. The Bulgarian State Security Agency held and interrogated the Turkish Muslim cleric for three hours last week. The government has said that the reason for the harsh measures was because Yerinde is a “threat to national security”.

The cleric, who was a deputy-dean of the Islamic institute for higher education in the capital Sofia, was also responsible for staff recruitment and financing of three regional Islamic schools in Bulgaria.

The Bulgarian and the Turkish authorities have not given further explanation into the matter, but the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the Embassy of Turkey in Sofia have reportedly attempted to block the extradition.

Information leaked last week that the associate principle in one of the regional Islamic schools in Bulgaria demanded from girls to cover their heads with Islamic headscarfs, which might be connected with the extradition of Adem Yerinde.

Source: http://yesterday.actualno.com/news_214372.html

Hamas terrorists kill innocent Palestinian in Gaza (Rare Video) (Must See)

2009-01-13T09:16:00.001-08:00

1) Hamas is a totalitarian, terrorist, Islamofascist organization

2) Hamas is exploiting the Palestinian Arabs

3) Hamas are murderers and criminals

4) Hamas hate not only Israel, but also the West, yes the same West who is protesting on their behalf

5) Islamism is the SUPREME FORM OF HYPOCRISY

Militant islamists in Copenhagen chant "Heil Hitler" and "Death to Israel"

2009-01-12T20:35:00.001-08:00

00:10:00
Alla-hu Akbar, Alla-hu Akbar
00:32:00
Hitler! Heil Hitler! Hitler! Hitler! Hitler! …
00:40:00
We must just kill all those Jews, man! Then we'd be rid of them, man!
00:45:00
All Jews, man, they will never be loved, never loved.
01:15:00
We are prepared for everything! Prepared for everything! It is you [shouting].
01:28:00
[Interrupting] Give us some Jews!
01:29:00
Now listen up. Now you go home, treading [??] where you want. If you meet some Jews.
01:35:00
[Interrupting] We fuck them, man!
01:38:00
Tell them how many they've killed.
01:40:00
Tell them how all Arabs from Copenhagen, how all Arabs from [??], how all Arabs from Hitler, how their punishment will be, for the blood of the Palestinians.
02:00:00
[Assorted shouting, including:] Fucking Jews, man!
02:08:00
Death to Israel.
02:42:00
Kill the Jews.
02:44:00
Allah-hu Akbar
03:08:00
Israel under my foot, Palestine in my blood!
03:18:00
Muhammad Rasul Allah! [Muhammad prophet of Allah!]
05:20:00
Down, down Israel! Down, down Israel!
05:22:00
Down, down USA! Down, down USA!
05:24:00
Viva, viva Palestine! Viva, viva Palestine!
05:25:00
[The banner reads:] Is this defense?
05:30:00
Viva, viva Palestine! Viva, viva Palestine!
05:50:00
Give us some Jews! Give us some Jews! [Explosion heard]
06:10:00
Israel under my foot, Palestine in my blood! Israel under my foot, Palestine in my blood!
06:25:00
[Arabic – probably a Khaybar reference]

Source: http://www.jihadwatch.org/

Militant islamists chant "Hail Hitler" and

2009-01-12T20:33:00.001-08:00

Gaza war - January 11 Update

2009-01-11T20:53:00.000-08:00

Israel has damaged the Hamas infrastructure, but not enough to bring the terrorists to their knees. U.S. did not veto the UN Security Council resolution demanding Israel to stop its assault on Gaza, but did not even mention Hamas by name! The U.S. abstained, allowing the resolution to pass, a very worrying signal for Israel, who wonders if the U.S. is about to give in to world pressure. Fortunately for Israel, Hamas has refused to observe the UN resolution, which gives Israel the opportunity to continue fighting Hamas. Meanwhile, Egypt is at this moment trying to create a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
If Israel does not have the chance to bring Hamas down, the rockets will continue and Israel will have to fight Hamas again another day. Because they are fanatical Islamists, they will not change their ideology to destroy Israel.

Even though Israel still has a short-term window at this time to bring down Hamas, Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is hesitating to go into his “Phase Three,” sending reserve troops into areas more built up, where Hamas’s central headquarters and operations are. Indeed, Israel’s military is saying that it will be a disaster (like what happened when Israel hesitated in the Lebanese war against Hizbullah) if the IDF does not finish its job.

The goal presented to the Israeli public at the beginning of the war was that Israel had to deal a strong enough blow to Hamas that the terrorist group would no longer launch rockets to Israel (which it has been doing for 8 years) and that all of the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza would be destroyed and not rebuilt, so that Hamas could not rearm itself.

Israel has definitely not achieved these results, while the UN and Europe are breathing down Israel’s back, demanding a cease-fire, and the U.S. is weakening its resolve. In a few days, Barack Obama will be sworn in, and it appears he is bent (from his speech today) on forging a cease-fire as quickly as he can as he assumes presidency.

The good news today is that no Israeli soldiers were killed or hospitalized, and few Palestinians were killed.

Another great miracle that happened today was at a kindergarten in Ashkelon. It was the first day that children had been allowed to come back to school since the war began two weeks ago. The kindergarten received a direct hit, but all the children had gone down to the bomb shelter and were saved.

The world press does not have a lot of pictures of wounded and killed Israeli citizens because the population in the southern part of Israel is very strong and very disciplined. When the sirens go off (which they do many times a day) everyone runs to their shelter, or if they do not have one, to a stairwell.

Please pray that God will be a Help and a Shield to Israel and save her soldiers and her citizens from her enemies that have sworn to destroy her.

Pray that all diplomatic efforts that would cause Israel to lose this war would come to nothing.

Pray that God will guide Israel’s leadership in conducting this war successfully.

Pray for God’s protection on innocent Palestinians, but that the Hamas terrorists would be taken out.

Pray for many opportunities for believers throughout the country to witness to our fellow citizens.

Source: www.maozisrael.com

French network apologizes for Gaza report

2009-01-07T02:47:00.000-08:00

PARIS (JTA) -- A French television network has apologized for erroneously broadcasting a false report on Israel's Gaza operation.

Assisted by an anonymous posting, the French news blogger site Le Post proved a report Monday by France 2 television used an outdated amateur video of Palestinian casualties from an accidental truck explosion as current footage demonstrating the violence in Gaza.

France 2 also was responsible for a September 2000 report, accused of being a fake, of the supposed shooting death of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, by the Israeli army.

In the new video, the truck in question contained bombs belonging to Hamas and exploded on Sept. 23, 2005. Intended to illustrate the extent of Web reports on the Israeli offensive in Gaza, the video shows dead bodies of toddlers being laid out on a white sheet.

By Monday, Etienne Leenhardt, the joint director responsible for investigative reports, apologized to Le Post journalists for "an error on our part."

"The person who prepared the topic went too fast," he said. "It reminds us that we must be very attentive on verifying sources."

Leenhardt told Le Post that the network would apologize on its Tuesday afternoon daily report.

Meanwhile, a committee of independent experts is being formed to decide whether the video of the al-Dura shooting is indeed a fake. That video roused anti-Israel and anti-Semitic feelings across the globe, even fueling the subsequent mob lynching of two Israeli soldiers.

Hamas terrorists hiding behind kids

2009-01-05T21:08:00.001-08:00

Terroristas palestinos de Hamas
Originally uploaded by ajopringue

Every normal person would want kids FAR AWAY from weapons, explosive, danger. Period. Not HAMAS! The cowards would rather abuse kids, hide behind them and endanger their lives.

Palestinian Child Abuse Hamas

2009-01-05T21:03:00.001-08:00

Palestinian Child Abuse Hamas / Abuso infantil niño palestino Hamas
Originally uploaded by ajopringue

How many Jewish children have you EVER seen carrying a rifle? HAMAS is guilty of not only taking lives, but also ruining the lives of kids like this one.

US Postal Service won't send "any matter containing religious materials contrary to Islamic faith" to overseas military post offices

2008-12-23T13:42:00.000-08:00

Want to send your brother-in-law in Iraq a Bible? An ikon? A kippah? Some joss sticks? Forget it. All that is "contrary to Islamic faith." Qur'ans and other Islamic articles only, please.

Sharia Alert from...the United States Postal Service: "Overseas Military Mail," from the U.S. Postal Service:

Mail addressed to military post offices overseas is subject to certain conditions or restrictions of mailing regarding content, preparation, and handling. The APO/FPO table below outlines these conditions by APO/FPO ZIP Codes through the use of footnoted mailing restrictions codes (see the Restrictions page following the table). [...]

RESTRICTIONS

[...]

C. Cigarettes and other tobacco products are prohibited.

C1. Obscene articles, prints, paintings, cards, films, videotapes, etc., and horror comics and matrices are prohibited.

D. Coffee is prohibited.

E1. Medicines or vaccines not conforming to French laws are prohibited.

E2. Any matter containing religious materials contrary to Islamic faith or depicting nude or semi-nude persons, pornographic or sexual items, or nonauthorized political materials is prohibited. [...]

SOURCE: http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/024002.php

Anti-Israel 'celebration' at the U.N.

2008-11-25T09:35:00.000-08:00

The United Nations is currently marking the international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people, on the occasion of the 61st anniversary of the UN's decision to approve the partition plan. For two days, the UN will hold blatantly anti-Israel events, including movies comparing Israel to the Nazis, and exhibits on the Israeli occupation and Palestinian suffering.

The climax will come in the form of a marathon of discussions, which got underway Monday and will culminate with six anti-Israel resolutions. These include ones calling for the Golan's return to Syria and for the division of Jerusalem. Israel normally ignores the annual solidarity day, yet this time officials decided to issue a harsh condemnation in light of the large volume of events and the fact that they are taking place while Israel and the Palestinians are engaged in negotiations. In a speech to be delivered Tuesday evening by Ambassador Gabriella Shalev, she is expected to condemn the UN's one-sided attitude. In the speech, Shalev will be pointing out that the UN does not have a day of solidarity with the rights of Israelis.

as reported by Dateline Israel

CNSNews.com Al-Qaida Insults Obama in New Audio Message

2008-11-19T23:51:00.000-08:00

Cairo, Egypt (AP) - Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites.

The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. policies. Ayman al-Zawahri said in the message, which appeared on militant Web sites, that Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X, the 1960s African-American rights leader.

In al-Qaida's first response to Obama's victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect -- along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice -- "house negroes."

Read the whole story.

Actor Jon Voight speaks out on behalf of Israel: “We’re overwhelmed by propaganda!”

2008-05-31T04:21:00.000-07:00

In an rare interview, posted on YouTube, Academy Award winner - actor Jon Voight, father of actress Angelina Jolie, speaks out on behalf of Israel, the issues related to Sderot and the conflict in the Middle East.

Jon Voight is passionate about supporting Israel for “many reasons”. While not disclosing these reasons in specific terms, Mr. Voight gives us enough material to come to the conclusion that he is indeed for real when it comes to supporting Israel.

When asked by the interviewing journalist what is the reason he switched from being a “lefty to righty”, Voight explains that already after the Vietnam war, he realized the roots of the so called “anti-war” movement are Communist. The actor reiterates that Communists are good at propaganda and “that’s the real danger even today”. Again, Voight emphasizes his firml support for the success of the US-led military operation in Iraq and shares his concern that a premature pull out of the troops may lead to a civil war and a massacre of unheard proportions.

Direct link to the YouTube video: http://tinyurl.com/4fr73c

Islamic wahhabi radicals continue to peneterate the territory of Bulgaria

2008-05-22T08:58:00.001-07:00

SOFIA, Bulgaria - May 22, 2008 - The Bulgarian State Agency on National Security (DANS) has announced that the Islamic organization "Faith" is preaching Wahhabism in Bulgaria. Bulgarian information sources report that the organization is not officially registered, but in fact it this is a conflicts with another report that says that the organization was indeed found in the registers of Sofia City Court. It was registered in 2002 as a foundation under the name "Faith". The agents working on the case discovered that activities of the foundation do not correspond with the purposes laid out in the registration with the court. The founders of the foundation are three Bulgarian citizens who have graduated Islamic theological education in Saudi Arabia.

The activists of the organization were mostly targeting areas around Smolyan, a key city in the southern part of Bulgaria, traditionally populated with "pomaks" - ethnic Bulgarians who had been converted to Islam since the time of the Ottoman Empire controlled Bulgaria's territory between the 14th and the 19th centuries.

Bulgarian information outlets who report the news also mention the fact that Wahhabism is the most radical form of militant Islam and its agenda is the islamization of the world.

The Bulgarian Agency for National Security has also made a statement that the spread of this Islamic ideology among Bulgarian muslims has led to inner conflicts and it could also lead to radical conversions and social unrest, threatening the ethnic-religious peace in this small Balkan nation.

On February 20th last year the Bulgarian authorities arrested in Sofia another cell related to Al-Qaeda and led by a Bulgarian mufti. The activity of the cell was mainly in recruiting muslims to go and fight in Chechnya. When asked by the media, Ahmed Hussein, member of Turkish party DPS in the Bulgarian parliament, dismissed the information as a rumor and played down the threat of radical islamist organizations advancing their agenda in Bulgaria.

It's not a secret that the Bulgarian society in general has watched the conflict in the Middle East as a passive observer, while powerful political lobbies associated with the former Communist party and members of drug dealing criminal groups have taken part in arming radical groups such as the Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

Roubaix: the first occupied French city

2008-04-28T14:21:00.001-07:00

Interview with Mohamed Sab'awi - a young sociologist from the catholic
university in Lille, Algerian by birth French by naturalization.

"Our peaceful invasion of European has not yet been completed. We
intend to act in all countries simultaneously. Because you give us
more and more space, it would be foolish of us not to take advantage
of this… We will be your Trojan horse. You've become hostages to the
very human rights which you are claiming. For example, if you were to
speak to me in Algeria or in Saudi Arabia, as I speak to you now,
you'd be most likely arrested on the spot.

You French are not able to impose respect from our youth toward
yourselves. Why they would respect a country that has surrendered to
them? One only respects whom it fears. When we have power, you will
not see a single Arab set fire to a car or a store… The Arabs know
that the inexorable thief deserves the amputation of his hand".

Mohamed Sab'awi continues during a recent interview:

"The laws of your Republic (France) do not conform to those of the
Koran and should not be imposed on Muslims, who can only be governed
by Sharia law. We will therefore work to take this power that we are
due. We will begin by Roubaix, who is now a Muslim city by more than
60%.

In future elections, we will mobilize our workforce, and the next
mayor will be Muslim. After negotiating with the state and the region,
we will declare Roubaix as a Muslim stronghold, independent (from
France,) and we will impose Sharia (law of God) to all inhabitants (of
Roubaix).

The Christian minority will have the status of Dhimmis. This will be a
special category that could redeem its freedoms and rights by a
special tax. This means, we will do what it takes to lead by
persuasion into our community. Tens of thousands of French have
already embraced Islam voluntarily, why not the Christians of Roubaix?
Currently at the University of Lille, we are setting up brigades of
faith, charged to "convert" the ungovernable Christians or Jews of
Roubaix, to have them to come to our religion, because God wills it!
If we are the strongest, it is God that wanted this. We do not have
the constraints of Christian obligation to provide assistance to
orphans, the poor and disabled. We can and must, on the contrary,
crush them if they constitute an obstacle and especially if they are
infidels ".

Article from: Le National Radical # 11, page 8
Translation: Erik Linawood

Minnesotans Pay for Muslim School

2008-04-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Minnesota taxpayers are footing the bill for a charter school that
reportedly violates the law by promoting religion — Islam.
Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) in Inver Grove Heights regularly holds
prayer sessions and includes study of the Koran in its curriculum,
even though charter schools are public schools and must not endorse or
promote religion, according to columnist Katherine Kersten of the
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune.

She writes: "TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious
school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American
Society of Minnesota, whose mission is 'establishing Islam in
Minnesota.' The building also houses a mosque. TIZA's executive
director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its
sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief."

Zaman maintains that TIZA is not a religious school, and that prayer
is voluntary.

But Kersten says a substitute teacher who worked at the school told
her that students were taken to the bathroom to perform "ritual
washing," then were led into the gym where a man dressed in white with
a white cap led them in prayer.

"The prayer I saw was not voluntary," the teacher told Kersten, adding
that students were studying the Koran, "which gave me the impression
that Islamic Studies was a subject like any other."

The ACLU of Minnesota has begun an investigation of TIZA, and the
Minnesota Department of Education has also launched a review,
according to Kersten, who concludes:

"TIZA is skirting the law by operating what is essentially an Islamic
school at taxpayer expense…

"There's a double standard at work here — if TIZA were a Christian
school, it would likely be gone in a heartbeat."

as reported by newsmax.com

Palestinian Christians live in constant fear

2008-02-20T18:34:00.000-08:00

You think only Israelis suffer from the terror of Hamas and other jihadists? Think again.

Presenting the "silent sufferers" - the Palestinian Christian minority.

There is no free press in Gaza. Outside reporters, whether Israeli or foreign, cannot move about freely and pursue such stories. Foreign reporters in particular need extensive handlers, as they do not know the local language, the local geography or the local leaders. It is much easier to stay in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and rewrite press statements about the visit of the latest foreign dignitary.

Even if the reporters came, what would they be told? It is well known that Christian Palestinians who have been subject to firebombings, seizures of homes and businesses, assaults and death threats still tell foreign visitors that they have excellent relations with their Muslim neighbours. After the foreigners go home, these Christians must remain, and are loath to give any reason for jihadist extremists to think that they are stirring up trouble.

And so it goes -- news trickles out about one outrage or another, but it gets lost if it gets noticed at all. Meanwhile, Christians in Gaza and the West Bank try to live quietly, never knowing whether a newspaper in Denmark or a papal speech in Germany or nothing in particular might be the pretext for violence coming to their doors.

It is an awful way to live. It is more awful still that so few know, or care about it.

Read the full piece here.

Palestinians - the second largest importer of Israeli goods after U.S.

2008-02-09T18:37:00.001-08:00

Here are some economic implications for both Israel and Palestinians if total blockade on Gaza becomes a fact:

* In 2006, total Israeli exports to the 60 million or so residents of France stood at slightly more than $1 billion. Israeli exports to the same amount of people in Italy stood at just below $1 billion.

* But total exports to both of these countries, which rank among the eight richest countries in the world, are equal to Israel's exports to the 3.5 million people of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. This is more than 6 percent of all Israeli exports, excluding diamonds. Despite all the intifadas, the Palestinian Authority is the second biggest customer of Israeli exports, after the United States.

If the blockade becomes permanent policy, Israel will lose a large part of its "captive market" - a stock phrase which in this case literally describes Gaza. "Israel benefited from its relations with the Palestinians," says Dan Catarivas, head of the foreign commerce branch of the Manufacturers Association and a former senior official in the finance and industry ministries. "And at the end of the day, it will lose if these ties are cut."

Whatever the 1.5 million people in Gaza need to live comes to them from Israel - from milk products to diapers, from medicine to cement. Even the humanitarian aid from international organizations is bought almost entirely from Israeli companies. Israeli firms also earn money as middlemen. Gas for cars is bought in Gaza via an Israeli intermediary at a tidy fee. About 5 percent of all freight that passes through the Ashdod port is earmarked for Gaza. This is to say nothing of the customs fees Israel is supposed to collect for the Palestinian Authority as part of the Paris Agreement signed in the 1990s, when everyone believed in a future of cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians. This money represents hundreds of millions of dollars that Israel put aside so it could eventually serve as a whip against the Palestinians.

An estimate by the Palestine International Business Forum shows that cutting off economic ties between Israel and the Palestinians would bring down the standard of living in the PA by one-third. Income per capita would fall to $500, the lowest in the Arab world, even lower than Sudan or Yemen.

Israel, according to this research, would lose around $2 billion per year. Some 76,000 jobs would be lost. Catarivas does not know whether these data are correct, but it is clear to him that Israel will be hurt. To his regret, he does not think that anyone really cares about this damage. "The system will adapt in the long run," Catarivas says. "Economic considerations will not have the upper hand over diplomatic considerations."

based on a report by Meron Rapoprt, Haaretz Correspondent

British Archbishop says sharia law unavoidable

2008-02-07T16:01:00.000-08:00

The Archbishop of Canterbury has today said that the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the
UK is "unavoidable" and that it would help maintain social cohesion.

Rowan Williams told BBC Radio 4's World At One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that
some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

He says that Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with
in a Sharia court. He added Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark
alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".

Dr Williams said there was a place for finding a "constructive accommodation" in areas such
as marriage - allowing Muslim women to avoid Western divorce proceedings.

Other religions enjoyed such tolerance of their own laws, he pointed out, but stressed that
it could never be allowed to take precedence over an individual's rights as a citizen.

He said it would also require a change in perception of what Sharia involved beyond the
"inhumanity" of extreme punishments and attitudes to women seen in some Islamic states.

Dr Williams said: "It seems unavoidable and, as a matter of fact, certain conditions of
Sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law, so it is not as if we are
bringing in an alien and rival system.

"We already have in this country a number of situations in which the internal law of
religious communities is recognised by the law of the land as justifying conscientious
objections in certain circumstances."

He added: "There is a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some
aspects of Muslim law as we already do with aspects of other kinds of religious law.

"It would be quite wrong to say that we could ever license a system of law for some
community which gave people no right of appeal, no way of exercising the rights that are
guaranteed to them as citizens in general.

"But there are ways of looking at marital disputes, for example, which provide an
alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them.

"In some cultural and religious settings, they would seem more appropriate."

But his views were condemned today by senior Tory MP Peter Luff, who said: "This is a very
dangerous route which we should not go down. You can't be a little bit pregnant. You can't
have a little bit of sharia law.

"We should not start introducing new different legal systems alongside ours."

But the Archbishop defended his position saying people needed to look at Islamic law "with a
clear eye."

"They should not imagine, either, that we know exactly what we mean by Sharia and just
associate it with ... Saudi Arabia, or whatever," he continued.

"Nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that
has sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states: the
extreme punishments, the attitudes to women."

There were questions about how it interacted with human rights, he said.

"But I do not think we should instantly spring to the conclusion that the whole of that
world of jurisprudence and practice is somehow monstrously incompatible with human rights
just because it doesn't immediately fit with how we understand it."

Dr Williams said Orthodox Jewish courts already operated in the UK, and anti-abortion views
of Catholics and other Christians were "accommodated within the law".

"The whole idea that there are perfectly proper ways the law of the land pays respect to
custom and community, that's already there."

He said the issue of whether Catholic adoption agencies would be forced under equality laws
to accept gay parents showed there was confusion on the matter.

"That principle that there is only one law for everybody is an important pillar of our
social identity as a Western democracy.

"But I think it is a misunderstanding to suppose that means people don't have other
affiliations, other loyalties which shape and dictate how they behave in society and that
the law needs to take some account of that."

He said he accepted people might be surprised by his call but urged them to consider the
wider question.

"What we don't want is a stand-off where the law squares up to people's religious
consciences, on something like abortion or indeed by forcing a vote on some aspects of the
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in the Commons ... we don't either want a situation
where, because there's no legal way of monitoring what communities do, making them part of
the public process, people do what they like in private in such a way that that becomes
another way of intensifying oppression within a community."

Sharia law was originally more enlightened in its attitude to women than other legal
systems, he pointed out, but did now have to be brought up to date.

"But you have to translate that into a setting where that whole area of the rights and
liberties of women has moved on.

"The principle and the vision which animates the whole Islamic legal provision needs
broadening because of that."

Responding to comments by one of his senior bishops that Islamic extremism was creating
communities with "no-go areas" for non-Muslims, he said it was "not at all the case that we
have absolute social exclusion.

"But we do have a lot of social suspicion, a lot of distance and we just have to go on
working at how that shared citizenship comes through."

The Bishop of Rochester, The Rt Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, said last month that non-Muslims
faced a hostile reception in places dominated by the ideology of Islamic radicals.

Dr Williams said the use of the phrase "no-go areas" had sparked controversy because it
reminded people of Northern Ireland.

"I don't think that was at all what was intended; I think it was meant to point to the silo
problem, the sense of communities not communicating with each other.

"Many Muslims would say that they feel bits of British society are no-go areas for them."

Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Ramadhan Foundation, welcomed the comments.

"These comments further underline the attempts by both our great faiths to build respect and
tolerance.

"Sharia law for civil matters is something which has been introduced in some Western
countries with much success; I believe that Muslims would take huge comfort from the
Government allowing civil matters being resolved according to their faith.

"We are however disappointed that the Archbishop of Canterbury was silent when Mr Nazir-Ali
was promoting intolerance and lying about no-go areas for Christians in the UK by Muslim
extremists.

"Unless he speaks out against this intolerance, Muslims will take his silence as
authorisation and support for such comments.

"The Ramadhan Foundation will continue to work with the Church of England to build
understanding and respect for our two communities."

Dr Williams's comments are likely to fuel the debate over multiculturalism in the UK.

But he insists that Sharia law needs to be better understood.

At the moment, he says "sensational reporting of opinion polls" clouds the issue.

THE EVENING STANDARD

Obama: Dhimmi Democratic candidate reveals his Muslim Summit Agenda

2008-02-01T16:07:00.000-08:00

comment by Jerry Gordon
http://www.actforamerica.org

Senator Barack Obama, who appears to be sprinting in the pre Super Tuesday polls appears to have pulled off a real shocker. He revealed that he is a dhimmi Democrat. In a Paris Match interview yesterday, he indicated that one of the first things that he would do if elected would be to convene a summit with the leaders of the world's Muslim nations and enlist their aid in the war on terrorism.

Here is what Obama said in the Paris Match interview as translated by Reuters.

"Once I'm elected, I want to organize a summit in the Muslim world, with all the heads of state, to have an honest discussion about ways to bridge the gap that grows every day between Muslims and the West," Thursday's edition of Paris Match quoted Obama as saying,

"I want to ask them to join our fight against terrorism. We must also listen to their concerns."

Really. Sounds like appeasement to us. That amounts to letting all of the Islamic camel into the tent to eat our lunch. It's bad enough that we have Cultural Jihad and Sharia finance breaking on these shores, big time. Now, we have a possible presumptive Presidential candidate who doesn't realize that it is not the war of terrorism. It is the war against Political Islam that we are engaged in: the long war. Whether it is Jihad, the tag line from GOP contender Governor Romney,or,the war against radical Islamic extremism of Sen. McCain, at least they 'get it'.

Here's what Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition said in a news release, today:

"We are deeply troubled by Senator Obama's desire to 'hold a summit in the Muslim world, with all heads of state' -- many of whom have yet to renounce terrorism or refrain from anti-Semitic incitement," said Brooks. "Nowhere in the Paris Match article does Senator Obama affirm Israel's right to exist. Nor does he condemn the repeated terrorist strikes against Israel -- the only stable democracy in the region."

"Further in his interview, Senator Obama said he wanted to listen to the 'concerns' of these nations. For many, their biggest concern is Israel's existence. It's worrisome that Senator Obama wants to 'listen' to those calling for Israel's destruction. It's also worrisome that he didn't use this interview to call on Muslims to stop teaching hateful anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda in their schools and textbooks."

"By asking Muslim nations, some of whom actively train and fund Hezbollah and Hamas, to 'join our fight against terrorism,' Senator Obama once again demonstrates his shaky foreign policy judgment and raises questions about his commitment to Israel's security. For all those who care about Israel, Senator Obama's Muslim nations summit is a cause for alarm and concern," said Brooks.

So where is Obama getting the idea that he should be engaged in dialogue with Muslims, who hold him and us in contempt, as kaffirs-"unbelievers"? Is it his half brother, a Luo tribesman in Kenya? Or his commiseration with Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga who cut a deal with the National Muslim Leaders Forum in Kenya to abet sharia?

At any Summit with leaders of the Organization of Islamic Conference, all they will do is spew out is nothing but taqiyyah-religiously sanctioned dissimilitude and suggest that a 'hudna' or cease fire, is all that is needed. A cease fire so they can regroup and attack us when we least expect it.

Many think that Obama has been listening to his racist and anti-Semitic pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ who has sucked up to Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan and Libya's crazed Muammar Gaddafi.

Perhaps, Obama has been taking advise from foreign policy advisers like the father Zbigniew Brzezinski and son Mark, former President 'Jimma' Carter and Tony Lake, former, Clinton aide. Or perhaps it is the eminence grise financier, hedge fund mogul and anti-US hegemon advocate, George Soros.

As Muslims consider Obama a murtadd or apostate, I wouldn't advise his attending any Muslim summit. They might have Imams, Mullahs and Ayatollahs issue a fatwa against him.

Lights out - more anti-Israel propaganda

2008-01-22T05:48:00.000-08:00

Today's headlines include the LA Times's "Gaza dark amid Israeli blockade" and The Guardian's "Gaza plunged into darkness as Israeli fuel blockade takes effect". Similar headlines appear in many media outlets. You could be forgiven for thinking that Israel has cut off the entire electricity supply to the Gaza Strip.

Despite ongoing Qassam attacks from the territory, Israel has not switched off the electricity. In fact, Hamas itself shut down Gaza's only power station after inviting the media to watch it do so.

The mainstream media ultimately assisted Hamas in creating the impression of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The fact is Israel has restricted fuel supplies in response to the terrorism emanating from Gaza but continues to provide the Palestinians with electricity.

The Times of London omits this vital fact altogether in a story headlined "Darkness falls on Gaza as Israel takes revenge for rocket attacks". AFP, while quoting Israeli officials, also omitted the facts leaving readers with the impression that Israel is simply denying responsibility.

While Gazans are undoubtedly suffering, the dark picture painted by the mainstream media is different from the reality. As the Israel's Foreign Ministry notes, the supply of electricity to Gaza from the Israel and the Egyptian power grids (124 Megawatts and 17 Megawatts respectively) has continued uninterrupted. These 141 Megawatts of power represents about three quarters of Gaza's electricity needs.

Israel Electric Company workers' committee chairman Miko Zarfati goes further:

"This is Palestinian spin. No one has stopped the supply of electricity to the Strip," Zarfati told Ynet. He claimed that his employees worked day and night in a power plant in Ashkelon while putting themselves in danger of being hit by Qassam rockets falling in the area.

The Gaza power plant only produces 30% of the electricity consumed in the Strip while Israel supplies the rest.

"It is simply offensive and arrogant for them to claim that there is shortage," Zarfati said....

"The situation is totally absurd. We're continuing to supply them electricity despite the (demand) overload for electricity in Israel and despite the fact that Israeli residents and Electric Company workers that are being sent to Gaza Vicinity communities are under threat from Qassam rockets," Zarfati railed.

Ha'aretz also reports that despite the blackout in Gaza City, southern and central Gaza - which receive electricity from Israel and Egypt directly - were not affected by the shutdown.

Hamas manipulation of the media is evident in an AP story that reported "Children marched through dark streets holding candles, an angry Hamas TV announcer shouted at the camera "We are being killed, we are starving!"

Once again, the mainstream media has wittingly or unwittingly fallen into the Hamas trap. By plunging Gaza into darkness, the terrorist organization has managed to shift the story away from its own responsibility for the Qassams and terror on Sderot. Instead, Israel's image is taking a beating for a perceived humanitarian crisis of Hamas's own making.

Please correct the stories from The Times and AFP by writing to letters@thetimes.co.uk and http://www.afp.com/english/afp/?pid=contact respectively.

Also write to your local media outlets if you feel that they are not giving sufficient context and information to this story. Full contact details for many media can be found on HonestReporting's website.

Source: www.honestreporting.com

Golden Rule Islam

2008-01-10T14:43:00.000-08:00

by Bill Warner

Islam's apologists say that Islam just needs a reform. After all, Christianity and Judaism have been reformed. But the apologists never get around to saying what the reform would be.

There are many kinds of reform possible to Islam, but does anyone care if they reformed prayer by praying towards LA rather than Mecca? No. The only thing that kafirs care about is how Islam treats us. We want our treatment changed. We want political Islam reformed.

Islam's treatment of us can be found in one word--kafir. The Koran says that a kafir (unbeliever) can be robbed, killed, tortured, mocked, insulted, beheaded, raped, crucified and on and on. The Hadith and the Sira agree with the Koran. Every single reference to the kafirs is negative, offensive and hateful.

The word "kafir" illustrates both of political Islam's principles--submission and duality. The Trilogy (Koran, Sira and Hadith) says that every kafir in the world must submit to political Islam.

The Koran also establishes dualism with its ethical system. A Muslim is not to kill another Muslim; a kafir may be killed, or not. A Muslim is not to lie to another Muslim; a kafir may be deceived or not. And so on. Islam has one set of ethics for Muslims and another set of ethics for the kafir--dualistic ethics.

The later political Koran written in Medina frequently contradicts the early religious Koran written in Mecca. The Koran gives a rule for removing the contradiction by saying that the later Koran "abrogates" the early Koran. But the earlier Koran is still true; it was given by Allah. So in Islam both sides of a contradiction can be true. This gives Islam its dualistic logic. Our unitary logic says that if two things contradict, then one of them is false

This dualism accounts for the two types of Muslims--the good Muslim at work and the Taliban Muslim. Both Muslims are "real" Muslims. Dualism gives the "good" Muslim plausible deniability when they say that jihadists are not "real" Islam. Dualism means the "good" Muslims and the jihadists are just two ends of the same stick.

The Koran, Sira and Hadith are filled with demands for all kafirs to submit to Islam. Kafirs can submit by joining the religion or submit by being a dhimmi (an apoligist). Either way, the Koran constantly demands that all kafirs submit to Islam.

So what kafirs want to reform about Islam is its principles of political submission and duality. What principle can be used to reform Islam? The key is how Islam treats the "other"--the kafir. The Golden Rule tells us how the "other" is to be treated. Every culture in the world has the Golden Rule as part of its heritage. But not Islam.

So what happens if we apply--treat others, as you want to be treated--to political Islam? All of the hurtful, hateful and harmful duality and submission disappear. What is amazing is how much of the Islamic doctrine goes away. About 61% of the Koran disappears. The Sira loses 75% of its words and 20% of the Hadith vanishes.

And those figures are low. All of the abusive words about women would go away as well. So the above reductions would be even bigger.

The Golden Rule even changes Hell. Islamic Hell is primarily political. Hell is mentioned 146 times in the Koran. Only 9 references are for moral failings--greed, lack of charity, love of worldly success. The other 137 references to Hell involve eternal torture for not agreeing that Mohammed is right. That is a political charge, not a morals failure. Thus 94% of the references to Hell are as a political prison for dissenters. The Golden Rule would empty the political prison.

Think how wonderful a Golden Rule Islam would be. No arguments, demands, accusations, law suits, threats, pressure, hateful speech, killings, or bombings. A Muslim could even be a true friend to a kafir. Islam would develop a sense of shame and admit to the terrible suffering of the 270,000,000 kafirs killed in jihad. A Golden Rule Islam would ask forgiveness about all the suffering of the dhimmis. A Golden Rule Islam would also admit to running the slave trade in Africa by killing and capturing the slaves they sold to the white slave traders.

Women would not have to be beaten and wear the hijab or burka. Honor killings would stop. Muslims could join us in the human race.

But all of those wonderful thoughts vanish when you realize what else it would mean to Islam. Mohammed had only 150 followers in Mecca after preaching the religion for 13 years. But when he went to Medina and became a politician and warlord, he conquered all of Arabia in 9 years by averaging a violent event every 6 weeks.

Duality and political submission were the principles that gave Islam its victory. Why would Islam drop the only principles that yielded success? Duality and political submission have crushed the world that believes in the Golden Rule.

CSPI (Center for the Study of Political Islam) could produce a Koran, Sira and Hadith that would use the Golden Rule. It would be a thin volume, but what Muslim would buy it?

OVER 60% OF GAZA CITIZENS BELOW THE POVERTY LINE

2007-10-24T23:30:00.001-07:00

"The average wage in the Gaza Strip is NIS 1,690 ($419) a month for a
full time position (NIS 76 per day) (roughly $18.85), compared to an
average wage of NIS 7,920 (roughly $1,964) paid in Israel (NIS 360 -
roughly $89 - per day, including part time workers)." (Ynet News,
10/17/07) The data was collected in the Palestinian Authority by the
New Family organization.

The data also showed, that the average monthly wage among
Palestinians in the West Bank is NIS 1,720 (roughly $426) a month.
206,000 Palestinians are unemployed - a total of 23.6% of
Palestinians from the territories who are part of the workforce
(workers and job seekers). According to the study, 63.1% of Gaza
residents live below the UN poverty line.

The question that arises is, "Where do the hundreds of millions of
dollars in international support to the Palestinians go?" Surely if
they went to the poor, the situation would be different! But we all
know where the money goes... it's just that no one wants to say it
out loud for the fear it will then have to be acknowledged and acted
on. Interestingly enough, yesterday, the trial of the Holy Land
Foundation ended in a mistrial, as the jurors were not able to reach
a unanimous verdict for the members of this organization, suspected
of financing terrorist organizations.

"Kill the apostates wherever you find them..."

2007-09-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

You know them. The kind of folks who get saved, talk the talk for a period of time (sometime for many years) and then all of a sudden bam - they're gone. I don't like to label people, but in the church world they're known as "backsliders".

Anyhow, so what do we do when people backslide from the Lord? Well, at most we don't associate with them. This is what the New Testament teaches.

Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and
offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid
them. Rom. 16:17

How does Mohammed teach backsliders should be treated? Read this:

"Ali was raised by Mohammed from the age of ten and became the fourth
caliph. Ali pronounced the following on lies and deception.

B9,84,64 When I relate to you the words of Mohammed, by Allah, I would
rather die than bear false witness to his teachings. However, if I
should say something unrelated to the prophet, then it might very well be a lie
so that I might deceive my enemy. Without question, I heard Mohammed say,
"In the final days before Redemption there will emerge groups of foolish
youths who will say all the right things but their faith will go no
further than their mouths and will flee from their religion like an arrow.

So, kill the apostates wherever you find them, because whoever does
so will be rewarded on Judgment Day."

And while you're at it, check these one out, too:

A Muslim can swear a false oath by any other god and not be accountable.

B8,73,73 Mohammed: "A Muslim who swears a false oath by the god of
another religion is not obligated to fulfill that promise because he
cannot be bound by a faith he does not hold."

In Islam something that is not true is not always a lie.
B3,49,857 Mohammed: "A man who brings peace to the people by making
up good words or by saying nice things, though untrue, does not lie."
An oath by a Muslim is flexible.

B8,78,618 Abu Bakr faithfully kept his oaths until Allah revealed to Mo-
hammed the atonement for breaking them. Afterwards he said, "If I make
a pledge and later discover a more worthy pledge, then I will take
the better action and make amends for my earlier promise."
When deception advances Islam, the deception is not a sin.

B5,59,369 Mohammed asked, "Who will kill Ka'b, the enemy of Allah and Mohammed?"

Bin Maslama rose and responded, "O Mohammed! Would it please you if I killed him?"

Mohammed answered, "Yes."

Bin Maslama then said, "Give me permission to deceive him with lies so that my plot will succeed."

Mohammed replied, "You may speak falsely to him."

Facts Underground

2007-07-20T23:37:00.000-07:00

by DAVID HAZONY

The field of biblical archaeology has been rocked, so to speak, by dramatic new finds in the heart of ancient Jerusalem. For the last few years, a number of respected archaeologists have posited that the biblical accounts of Jerusalem as the seat of a powerful, unified monarchy under the rule of David and Solomon are essentially false. The most prominent of these is Israel Finkelstein, the chairman of Tel Aviv University’s archaeology department, whose 2001 book The Bible Unearthed, written together with Neal Asher Silberman, became an international best seller. The lynchpin of his argument was the absence of clear evidence from the archaeological excavations carried out in Jerusalem over the last century. “Not only was any sign of monumental architecture missing,” he wrote, “but so were even simple pottery shards.” If David and Solomon existed at all, he concluded, they were no more than “hill-country chieftains,” and Jerusalem, as he told the New York Times, was “no more than a poor village at the time.”

But now comes word of a most unusual find: The remains of a massive structure, in the heart of biblical Jerusalem, dating to the time of King David. Eilat Mazar, the archaeologist leading the expedition, suggests that it may be none other than the palace built by David and used by the Judaean kings for over four centuries. If she is right, this would mean a reconsideration of the archaeological record with regard to the early First-Temple period. It would also deal a death-blow to the revisionist camp, whose entire theory is predicated on the absence of evidence in Jerusalem from this period. But is she right?

According to the book of Samuel, when David conquered the Jebusite city of Jerusalem around the year 1000 b.c.e., he did not destroy it, but instead left it standing, including its great citadel to defend the city along its northern approach. In this city, today known as the City of David, a neighborhood just to the south of Jerusalem’s Old City, he added a few things as well–most notably a palace, built by master craftsmen sent by the Phoenician king Hiram of Tyre, who had concluded an alliance with David against their mutual enemy, the Philistines. According to archaeological evidence, Jerusalem was already an ancient city, founded some two thousand years before David arrived, and fortified with walls as much as one thousand years before. Because of its unique topography–a high hill nestled between two deep valleys that converge at its southern point, graced with abundant water from the Gihon spring, and exposed to attack only along a ridge from the north–the location was ideal for the capital of David’s kingdom.

Based on this evidence, coupled with textual clues as to the topography–as described in the book of II Samuel (5:17), when the Philistines mustered in Emek Refaim, David “descended to the citadel,” implying that the palace was higher up on the mountain than the citadel itself–Mazar formulated her proposal as to the location of the palace in a 1997 article in Biblical Archaeology Review. “If some regard as too speculative the hypothesis I shall put forth in this article,” she wrote, “my reply is simply this: Let us put it to the test in the way archaeologists always try to test their theories–by excavation.”

Few living archaeologists were better suited for this mission, as Mazar has extensive experience both in excavations at the City of David and at the Phoenician town of Achziv along the coast north of Haifa. Indicators for the palace would include monumental structures dating to the late-eleventh or early-tenth centuries b.c.e.; distinctive Phoenician-style building, which would have been out of place in the Judean mountains; and a new building created just to the north of the borders of the older Jebusite city–resting on new land, rather than on destruction layers. Of course, any additional archaeological markers, such as inscriptions, pottery shards, or interior architecture, would further confirm such a find. In early 2005, after securing the necessary permits and the support of the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center (which also publishes Azure), the Hebrew University, and the City of David Foundation, Mazar began digging.

The evidence is remarkable. It includes a section of massive wall running about 100 feet from west to east along the length of the excavation, and ending with a right-angle corner that turns south and implies a very large building. Within the dirt fill between the stones of the great wall were found pottery shards dating to the eleventh century b.c.e.; this is the earliest possible date for the walls’ construction. Two additional walls, also large, running perpendicular to the first, contain pottery dating to the tenth century b.c.e.–meaning that further additions were made after the time of David and Solomon or during their reign, suggesting that the building continued to be used and improved over a period of centuries. The structure is built directly on bedrock along the city’s northern edge, with no archaeological layers beneath it–a sign that this structure, built two millennia after the city’s founding, constituted a new, northward expansion of the city’s northern limit. And it is located at what was then the very summit of the mountain–a reasonable place indeed for the palace from which David “descended.”

This immediate evidence fits well with other archaeological finds from the site, as well. In 1963, the renowned archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon reported finding a Phoenician “proto-Aeolic capital,” or decorative stone column head dating to the same period, at the bottom of the cliff atop which the new excavation has taken place. Kenyon wrote that this capital, along with other cut stones she found there, were “typical of the best period of Israelite building, during which the use of Phoenician craftsman was responsible for an exotic flowering of Palestinian architecture. It would seem, therefore, that during the period of monarchic Jerusalem, a building of some considerable pretensions stood on top of the scarp.” In the early 1980s, Hebrew University’s Yigael Shiloh uncovered the enormous “stepped-stone” support structure which now appears to be part of the same complex of buildings. And in the new excavation, Mazar has discovered a remarkable clay bulla, or signet impression, bearing the name of Yehuchal Ben Shelemiah, a noble of Judea from the time of King Zedekiah who is mentioned by name in Jeremiah 37:3–evidence suggesting that four centuries after David, the site was still an important seat of Judean royalty. This matches the biblical account according to which the palace was in more or less continuous use from its construction until the destruction of Judea by the Babylonians in 586 b.c.e.

So, is it David’s palace? It is extremely difficult to say with certainty; indeed, no plaque has been found that says on it, “David’s Palace”; nor is it likely that such definitive evidence will ever be found. And yet, the evidence seems to fit surprisingly well with the claim, and there are no finds that suggest the contrary, such as the idolatrous statuettes or ritual crematoria found in contemporary Phoenician settlements. The location, size, style, and dating are all right, and it appears in a part of the ancient world where such constructions were extremely rare and represented the greatest sort of public works. Could it be something else? Of course. Has a better explanation been offered to match the data–data which includes not only archaeological finds, but the text itself? No.

There will be no shortage of well-meaning skeptics, including serious archaeologists, who, having been trained in a scholarly world weary of exuberant romantics and religious enthusiasts prone to making sensational, irresponsible claims about having found Noah’s Ark, will be extremely reluctant to identify any new archaeological find with particulars found in the Bible. Others, driven by a concatenation of interests, ideologies, or political agendas, will seize on any shred of uncertainty in the building’s identification to distract attention from the momentousness of the find. Both groups will invoke professionalism and objectivity to pooh-pooh the proposition that this is David’s palace. They will raise the bar of what kind of proofs are required to say what it was to a standard that no archaeological find could ever meet. Or they will simply dismiss it all as wishful thinking in the service of religious or Zionist motives.

There are two good reasons not to be swayed by such claims. The first is that even if this is not in fact David’s palace, there is no doubt that we are still talking about an archaeological find of enormous moment. Whether it is a citadel, someone else’s palace, or a temple, it is the first-ever discovery of a major construction from the early Israelite period in Jerusalem to date. This alone is enough to overturn the hypothesis of Finkelstein and others that Jerusalem at the time of David was a “poor village” incapable of being the capital of an Israelite kingdom. No longer is it reasonable to claim, as did Tel Aviv University’s Ze’ev Herzog writing in Ha’aretz in 1999, basing his claim entirely on the absence of just this kind of evidence, that “the great unified monarchy was an imaginary historiosophic creation, invented at the end of the Judean period, at the very earliest.” On the contrary: Now we have a major Israelite compound dating to the time of the unified monarchy, firmly establishing Jerusalem as a major city of its time.

For this reason, important voices in the archaeological world have already begun declaring the find to be of great importance, even as they reserve judgment as to its identification as David’s palace. “Due to all the possible historical implications, we need to look carefully at the pottery and to further excavate the area,” Seymour Gitin, the director of archaeology of the W.F. Albright Institute in Jerusalem, told the Jerusalem Post. Yet he adds, “this is an extremely impressive find, and the first of its kind which can be associated with the tenth century [b.c.e.].” The normally reserved Amihai Mazar of Hebrew University, one of the most esteemed scholars in the field of biblical archaeology and author of the standard textbook Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 b.c.e., has described the discovery as “something of a miracle.”

Yet beyond this, there also are good reasons to identify this building, at least provisionally, as the very palace described in the book of Samuel. This is methodologically sound, so long as we are willing to admit that future evidence could emerge, or a better theory be proposed, that might prompt a different conclusion. Right now we have before us two things: We have a biblical text describing in detail the creation of a Phoenician-style palace by David high up on a particular mountain, around the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the tenth century b.c.e. And we have a grand structure of the Phoenician style dating from the same time, on the summit of that very mountain, located with assistance from the text and previous archaeological discoveries. This was not stumbled upon, moreover, but carefully hypothesized, and the current dig was proposed as the test. The likelihood of this happening by chance is extremely small.

Is this absolute proof? No. But it is enough to shift the burden of proof. “You can never be sure about this sort of thing,” Mazar says. “But it seems that the theory that suggests this to be the very palace described in the book of Samuel as having been built by David is thus far the best explanation for the data. Anyone who wants to say otherwise ought to come up with a better theory.” This is neither wishful thinking nor an imagined past, but good science.

David Hazony

September 1, 2005
origininally published at www.azure.com

The Economic Theory of Anti-Semitism

2007-04-15T19:54:00.000-07:00

Many people have claimed that Jews as a group possess far too much wealth and power.

We call this the Economic Theory of Anti-Semitism. It postulates that Jewish wealth and power arouses the envy of other groups, and this in turn leads to anti-Semitism.

This theory has surfaced in different guises throughout history. One of the ways it became popularized was through "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is a viciously anti-Semitic book. It is the second most widely published book in history.

The book is a complete fabrication, created by the Russian secret police. It is an alleged record of the minutes of a secret meeting held by Jewish leaders. These influential Jews, says the book, were plotting to take over the entire world.
This fictional account provided an excellent excuse for the Russians to intensify their campaign of oppression against the Jews. It also strongly influenced the masses and bolstered the credibility of the myth that Jews control governments.

If we use the Economic Theory to explain the phenomenon of anti-Semitism, then anti-Semitism becomes purely a class struggle: the poor versus the rich, the less fortunate versus those with unlimited financial and organizational backing.

How can we test this explanation?

First, consider universal attitudes towards the rich. Have anti-Semites persecuted wealthy non-Jews as well?

As soon as the persecution is in any way limited to Jews it is no longer based upon economics, because at no time in history were Jews the only wealthy people. As soon as the hater decides to single out wealthy Jews and ignore wealthy non-Jews, economics no longer can be the cause for his hatred.

Second, if we remove the element of wealth and power from the Jews, does the anti-Semitism vanish?

Case Study: The Warsaw Ghetto

The Jews who lived in the shtetels of Poland and Russia between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries were poor and powerless, utterly lacking any form of influence whatsoever. Yet they were hated. Often they were persecuted and subjected to unspeakable torments. On many occasions entire villages were ransacked and their Jewish inhabitants massacred in cold blood. Under those circumstances, anti-Semitism did not distinguish between rich and poor, between strong and weak, between powerful and powerless.

Likewise, anti-Semites in the middle ages initiated countless pogroms against Jews without first investigating their bank accounts or investment portfolios.

When the Nazis liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto there were no Jewish businesses to destroy. In fact, the impoverished conditions under which the Jews there lived were appalling. The Jews in the ghetto could not have been thought of as "rich" by anyone’s standards, and yet the Nazis felt they had to be eliminated.

Poor Jews have always been hated just as rich Jews have been. When a Jew meets with financial success, it may set the anti-Semite’s teeth on edge, but the Jew’s success clearly is not what created the anti-Semite. Money therefore cannot be the cause of anti-Semitism.

How about power? Can it be the cause of anti-Semitism?

The Fugu Plan

If someone who is rich and powerful comes to you for a favor, you don’t persecute him – you help him. Having such a person indebted to you is a great insurance policy.

There was one nation that did treat the Jews as if they were powerful and rich. The Japanese never had much exposure toThe Fugu Plan Jews, and knew very little about them. In 1919 Japan fought alongside the anti-Semitic White Russians against the Communists. At that time the White Russians introduced the Japanese to the book, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

The Japanese studied the book and, according to all accounts, naively believed its propaganda. Their reaction was immediate and forceful -- they formulated a plan to encourage Jewish settlement and investment into Manchuria. People with such wealth and power as the Jews possess, the Japanese determined, are exactly the type of people with whom we want to do business!

The Japanese called their plan for Jewish settlement "The Fugu Plan." The "fugu" is a highly poisonous blowfish. After the toxin-containing organs are painstakingly removed, it is used as a food in Japan, and is considered an exquisite delicacy. If it is not prepared carefully, however, its poison can kill a person.

The Japanese saw the Jews as a nation with highly valuable potential, but, as with the fugu, in order to take advantage of that potential, they had to be extremely careful. Otherwise, the Japanese thought, the plan would backfire and the Jews would annihilate Japan with their awesome power. Meeting with the Japanese

The Japanese were allies of the Nazis, yet they allowed thousands of European refugees – including the entire Mirrer Yeshivah – to enter Shanghai and Kobe during World War II. They welcomed these Jews into their country, not because they bore any great love for the Jews, but because they believed that Jews had access to enormous resources and amazingly influential power which could greatly benefit Japan. This is all detailed in the book, " The Fugu Plan " by Marvin Tokayer.

If anti-Semites truly believe that Jews rule the world, why don’t they all relate to Jews like the Japanese did?

The fact that Jews are generally treated as outcasts proves that people do not really believe that Jews are anywhere near as wealthy or powerful as they claim. It proves that anti-Semites do not take their own propaganda seriously.

Whatever Happened to Jewish Power?

If there is any truth to the notion that Jews control governments, why couldn’t the Jews get even one country to accept the refugees who were struggling to escape the European inferno during the Holocaust?Voyage I If "World Jewry" is so powerful and wields such political influence, surely at least one government would have agreed to take them in as refugees and allowed them to stay until the end of the war...

The film "Voyage of the Damned" dramatically brings home the point that when government after government buries its head in the sand while the wholesale slaughter of Jews goes unchecked, the claim that Jews control governments rings hollow and becomes painfully absurd.

Is Black Gold Thicker Than Milk and Honey?

Those who speak of Jewish power as a world problem have never acted as if they really believed Jews had any power.

Anyone who really believes someone is rich and powerful treats that person All-powerful Jew to be fearedwith kid gloves. As a case in point, the Arab countries initially did not find favor in the eyes of the Twentieth-Century world at large. However, because the world needed Arab oil, the world appeased the Arabs. Think about it -- when is the last time the United Nations issued a proclamation condemning a member of OPEC other than Iraq?

If anyone really believes that the Jews are the possessors of tremendous power and wealth, why do they not treat Jews in accordance with this belief? They should treat Jews with at least as much respect as the Japanese once did...

Economic 'excuse' shot down

So money and power are not the cause of anti-Semitism. Jewish financial success may make an anti-Semite gnash his teeth, but that’s not what made him an anti-Semite in the first place. Poor Jews have been just as hated as rich Jews.

Obviously, the economic reason for anti-Semitism is really an excuse.

The Holocaust Studies

Former chief mufti arrested in Bulgaria on charges of pro-terrorist activity

2007-02-20T09:38:00.000-08:00

CALLING FOR JIHAD IN BULGARIA

The publishers of two web sites preaching radical Islam in Bulgaria have been arrested in a special operation of the National Security Service and the anti-mafia unit of the Bulgarian police. According to the report of the Bulgarian news web site www.news.bg , four people have been arrested.

51 year old Ali Haierdin is the leader and the main organizer of the illegal group. The man is a former senior mufti of Sofia and is known to have been connected with the Jordanian Ahmad Mussa, who was expelled from Bulgaria in the year 2000, after the authorities uncovered his plans to form a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Bulgaria.

The other person arrested is a female, also 51 year old, who is described in the report as the wife of Ali Haierdin. Her assignment was to gather information from Chechen web sites, to translate them into Bulgarian and publish them on the web site the couple operated. Among the arrested are also the two administrators of the web sites, 27 year old male M.A. and 37 year old female M.G. The latter has converted to Islam under the influence of the main leader, 51 year old A.H., later on publishing her own web site dedicated to spreading Wahhabi teachings. The Wahhabi style teachings provide the ideological foundation of radical terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.

The two web sites published materials calling for Jihad against all who haven't accepted Islam. The four will be initially be under arrest for 72 hours. The Sofia Investigative Service has started an official investigation. The National Security Services announced that they will continue to work towards uncovering all other suspects related to the four already arrested.

THE SAUDI ARABIA CONNECTION

Bulgaria was accepted as a full fledged member state into the European Union on January 1 of 2007. Experts agree that more and more Islamic radical groups will seek to establish their presence in the country, seeing it as a doorway into Europe.

Most Bulgarians feel detached from the problems of the Middle East and follow the events reported by the international media with a neutral mindset. Today's sting operation comes as a wake up call for many ordinary people who have somehow believed that radical Islam will bypass the country. Inspite of the rise of nationalistic parties in recent years, most Bulgarians have not exhibited strong anti-Muslm feelings. Due to the internal political maneuvering of the representatives of Muslims on the political scene, Bulgaria managed to avoid religious conflicts typical of the Balkans in the 90's.

Some sources estimate over 12% of Bulgaria's 7,4 million population are Muslims. Until now the majority of the Muslim population has been considered of the moderate Sunni brand of Islam.

The secretary of the office of the Chief Mufti has denied any ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.

However, in the last several years more and more evidence has surfaced of increased activity of Saudi Arabia radicals in Bulgaria.

The links of radicals to the chief mufti have been reported for years. One investigation, conducted in August 2004 by Yana Buhrer Tavanier, who is an editor with the Bulgarian weekly Kapital, uncovered a shadowy network that finances mosques and schools that promote the radical teachings of Wahhabi Islam and similar tendencies, and a network that has links to the chief mufti’s office.*

She tracked down some information that leaked through an Islamic web site, announcing the opening of new Islamic Schools in Bulgaria.

"One organization came up wherever we looked for radical Islam in Bulgaria: Al Waqf-Al Islami, a foundation that promotes Wahhabism in Europe.

The charity has built several mosques in Bulgaria ... and organized and financed a trip by Chief Mufti Fikri Sali to Saudi Arabia in July last year. While no Al Waqf involvement in terrorist activities has ever been proven, its Dutch branch--which invited Sali to Saudi Arabia--has come under suspicion after it was revealed that six of the 9/11 hijackers had attended a seminar it organized. (Al Waqf is among several organizations that are being sued by families of 9/11 victims.)

The Dutch intelligence service has recently compiled a report detailing the activities of
Al Waqf’s Dutch branch, based in the town of Eindhoven. The report described the Al
Waqf mosques there as a recruiting ground for a “holy war,” or jihad. Could something similar be happening in Bulgaria?

In our trip around Razgrad, in north-eastern Bulgaria, we found four mosques that had been built or financed by Al Waqf-Al Islami in 1993 and 1994, when the foundation was legally registered in Bulgaria. (Fikri Sali was also the chief mufti at that time.) The registration was revoked in the summer of 1994, and in 1999 its representative Abdulrahim Taha was expelled from the country.

But our report also indicates that Al Waqf never pulled out of Bulgaria. In fact, its
activities seem to be expanding. "

The report goes on to uncover more of the activities of Saudi Arabia sponsored radicals:

"...The Al Waqf foundation was registered in Bulgaria in 1993-1994, when the chief mufti was Fikri Sali. Among the founders was Abdullah al Huseini, brother of the Hamad al Huseini whose name showed up on a document discovered during a NATO raid in Bosnia detailing the “golden chain” of Saudi businessmen funding Al Qaeda.

There are at least four mosques in Bulgaria that have been built or supported by Al Waqf- Al Islami. All the mosques were built during the period when Fikri Sali was chief mufti and Mehmed Alya regional mufti of Razgrad--in 1993 and 1994. And Muafak was remembered as one of the benefactors in two of the villages with Al Waqf-Al Islami mosques.

Late 1993 was also the time when the chief mufti’s office concluded an agreement with
Al Waqf--a copy of which we obtained--for joint educational activities. The document
talks about “the opening of schools or training centers of a new kind” and support for
difficult, ill, or socially disadvantaged children.

The foundation promised to fund these educational institutions and, in return, received the right to control--“independently or jointly with the chief mufti’s office”--their operations and expenditure, and also the teachers’ work and the curricula.

In the summer of 1994, the Directorate on Denominations of the Council of Ministers
refused to re-register the foundation and, in 1999, its representative Abdulrahim Taha was expelled from Bulgaria..."

----
* "Bulgaria: Mysterious Mosques and Schools"
report by Yana Buhrer Tavanier, 27 January 2005

British undercover journalists expose American Islamist preaching hate

2007-01-16T13:14:00.000-08:00

Abu Usama, an American convert to Islam, is preaching hate at London's "Green Lane" mosque. Filmed by undercover British journalists in London, the Muslim extremist declares: "We love the people of Islam, we hate the kuffaar."

Kuffaar is an arabic term for un-believers in Islam. Whether they are British, American or any other nationality, to these radicals the "kuffaar" are only good for one thing: to be dominated or killed!

Also in this video you will hear several comments about these Muslim's hate for homosexuals. Channel 4, obviously coming from a secular-humanist perspective, bundles the rights of homosexuals as part of the pro-democracy agrument. On this point we can't agree. But I can also say wholeheartedly that as much as I oppose the homosexual agenda, I've had, have and will always have nothing but love and compassion for homosexual people. It's so important for us who claim to be born-again through the Holy Spirit, the people who truly know the living God, to have nothing in common with the hate toward homosexuls, coming from Islamofascists. We may condemn the gay agenda, we may condemn the sin that homosexuality is, we may have to confront and fight ("spiritually and through legal means") for the protection of the family, but we must be a true representation of God in actually loving homosexual people with the love of God, unlike islamists, who clearly hate them.

C'mon Church, let's remove all hypocricy, self-righteousness and religiousity when it comes to this issue and realize that we cannot possibly in any way allow ourselves to share the disgusting hate coming from these extremeists.

Visit our YouTube group: http://www.youtube.com/group/exposeIslam

Watch part of UK's Channel 4 documentary now:

The Qur'an according to Elisson

2007-01-10T23:14:00.000-08:00

This is a follow-up of my first article on the Keith Ellison's asking to swear over Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an.

I also encourage you to watch/listen to the ENHANCED podcast I published on www.kingdomfirst.tv including the interview with Dr. William Welty, who is very knowledgeable on all things Islam. With enhanced podcasts, you can click on the links you watch. Try it out, I think you'll like it.

In this posting I just want to give you the scoop of what appears to be a growing awareness over the Ellison swearing over the Qur'an story.

I want to highlight some things for you, in case you don't find the time to listen to the whole 30 minutes of the podcast.

1) ANOTHER REVISIONIST CAMP ON THE SCENE

We know there are have secular progressives and liberals who will do anything to eradicate and explain away the Christian foundations of the United States. We know they are revisionists.

Well, we have a new kid on the block - the Muslim camp!

Why am I saying this?

In my first January 7th posting, I told you that what Ellison is aiming at confusing the masses and somehow sneak into their minds the idea that may be, just may be the founding fathers of the United States were somehow influenced by Islam and considered the Qur'an as a divine book.

After all, the saying goes that he who controls the past, controls the future, right?

Now, at the time I wrote what I wrote, I HAD NO IDEA that Ellison had already actually said all of this HIMSELF! Openly and blatantly!

How do we know this?

WorldNetDaily just published an article in which they quote the Detroit FreePress article which quotes Ellison as saying that the Qur'an is: "definitely an important historical document in our national history and demonstrates that Jefferson was a broad visionary thinker who not only possessed a Quran, but read it...It would have been something that contributed to his own thinking."

This is what I say in my previous posting BEFORE I knew of this statement:

"Ellison can't change history. But what Ellison has attempted to achieve by asking to swear over Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an is to confuse the masses by simply giving publicity to the fact president Jefferson did have indeed a copy of the Qur'an. Taken out of context, this information can be confusing. Most people's lives are too busy and they get the bulk of their information about world events from 15 minutes of the evening news or a local newspaper whose lead story is on obesity among pets. Cheap populism thrives on and benefits from the ignorance of the masses. This is what Keith Ellison counts on.

It seems to me that Keith Ellison, shamelessly ignoring the historic context of Jefferson's owning the Qur'an, tried to further the Muslim agenda in the US and possibly try to introduce some revisionist version of US history in which Islam was part of the belief system of the founding fathers...."

The FreePress goes on to say: "But Ellison said Friday that Jefferson's Quran "shows that from the earliest times of this republic, the Koran was in the consciousness of people who brought about democracy."

I hate to say it, but this is clearly one of those..."I told you so" moments.

2) ALLAHU BARBAR!

WorldNetDaily BACKS THE BARBARY PIRATES EXPLANATION!

That's a good step forward. It's important we give voice to this story. The media must be educated of the TRUE history behind the Qur'an. WorldNetDaily backs up this interpretation of the origins of Jefferson's Qur'an. It's out duty to inform others and fight ignorance at all levels.

History can't be changed, but people's perception of it can be. The holocaust deniers know this and it gives them hope that they too can succeed in promoting their revisionist ideas.

In other words, it's our turn to raise our voices and shot: ALLAHU BARBAR!

Let's inform the world who were the Barbary Pirates, what they did (murder and enslave people) and how Jefferson had to fight with them.

3) THE ELECTION NIGHT EPISODE

It was interesting also to read in this WDN article how they quote another blogger who had also noticed with horror how the Ellison camp was cheering Allahu Akbar on election night.

This was a significant episode. If anyone happened to have recorded this on their VCR, DVD or TiVO, let me know and I'll personally assist you to see to it that this material be liberated to fly free on the web. Or if someone has already seen it online, forward it so we can start distributing it. One picture is worth thousand pictures. And if people get to hear also the shouts to Allah in the background, it will be a HUGE eye-opener to a lot of people.

And lastly, some of you actually wrote letters to Keith Ellison's office at the email address I provided. Way 2 go, folks!

Jefferson's Qur'an: the facts and the lessons behind the story

2007-01-07T11:40:00.000-08:00

Keith Ellison is the first American Muslim to become a member of the US Congress. A native of Detroit, he was able to land in US Congress with the support of the voters of the fifth district in Minnesota. In spite of scandals and controversy surrounding his candidacy, my information is that Ellison was able to muster the support of traditional Muslim minorities and African-American Christians in his district. (I wonder how the Christians who voted for him feel about their choice now that the whole world has heard about Ellison's demonstrative swearing in ceremony over the Qur'an?)

It made me sick to my stomach when I watched the TV coverage of Ellison's announcement of his victory on the election night and hear his cheering supporters shout "Allahu Akbar!" in the background. This is the same ecstatic religious shouting that was on the lips of the 9/11 hijackers. Watch some of the Islamic propaganda viral videos on the Internet and you'll hear it coming from Islamic insurgents in Iraq, who blow up US Army tanks and sniper shooters who kill unsuspecting soldiers in broad daylight.

We can only hope next time around American Christian voters, whether white or black, will have a bit more discernment when they step up to the voting booth.

From a Christian perspective, there are some bad and some good sides to the Ellison election to Congress.

What's bad is that this is a definite breakthrough for American and world Muslims. It's a victory for Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, with whom Keith Ellison has associated for many years. Farrakhan is known for his radical racist and anti-semitic stances. Undoubtedly, Ellison is a disciple of sort. He has written in defense of Farrakhan and has never retracted from his political affiliations with anti-semitic Nation of Islam. For a detailed report on Ellison's past, visit PowerLine.

In a clever (and I'm sure premeditated) move, Ellison asked the Library of Congress to loan him the historic copy of Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an for the swearing in ceremony. Even though symbolic, the ceremony has a significance. It sends a signal of victory to Muslims in America and around the world. It will encourage a whole new generation of ambitious Islamic functionaries who live in Western democratic countries to consider expanding their campaign for worldwide dominion to the political process as well. In other words, if they can't win by the power of the sword, they'll try to beat the Western world at their own game and exploit the vulnerabilities of the democratic society and system. Hamas in Palestine is another example of a Islamic radicals who have taken their agenda to the political arena, gaining a whole new leverage on the world scene.

On the good side, I sure hope the election of Keith Ellison and his consequent actions will be yet another wake up call for the sleeping giant that the Church is. Leaders and ordinary Christians must realize that unless we get politically informed, educated and involved on a practical level in the political process, we are offering this hard-earned democracy and it's mechanism of governance to those who desire to destroy Western civilization and it's legacy.

Enough talk about separation of church and state. When do we begin to talk about separation of Islam and state?

on the picture: Nancy Pelosi (left), Keith Ellison (right) and his wife Kim (middle) in the swearing in ceremony

ABOUT JEFFERSON'S QUR'AN

As scandalous as Ellison's demand to swear over the Qur'an was, very few people have asked why did the third president of the United States possess the Muslims' religious book. One person who did the asking was Dr. William P. Welty, Ph.D., publisher of the blog The Islam Commentaries.

In his article, he explains that Jefferson decided to study the book of Islam for himself because he wanted to understand better the enemy he was dealing with at that time. That's right, folks, you heard me right - the enemy.

I had a wonderful conversation with Dr. Welty the other day and with his permission I'm reprinting a portion of the excellent article he has put out on his blog. I highly encourage you to go there and read this one and many other resources he has.

"Jefferson needed that copy of the Qur'an because he was desperate to learn something about Islam from that religion's written de facto standard of all things Muslim.

Why? Because the United States was going to war way in the early 1800’s against conservative, Wahhabi-type, radical Muslims.

As only the third president of the United States, Jefferson had no CIA to feed intelligence data to him and to his national security advisor.

Come to think it, Jefferson had no national security officer.

Following the British, the second foreign enemy to come on the scene against nascent America was a bunch of conservative, Wahhabi-type, radical Muslims who were threatening our national security.

They were called the Barbary Pirates. They were from the Barbary Coast of North Africa. Allusion to the affair can be found in the words “to the shores of Tripoli" mentioned in the Marine Hymn.

During the early formative years of the United States, our forefathers fought an international group of terrorists who, like today's conservative, Wahhabi-type, radical Muslims, made no distinction between geopolitical nation states. Like their 21st century counterparts, the Barbary Coast pirates were equal opportunity terrorists.

So Jefferson figured that the best way to learn about the political, military, social, economic, and religious agendas of America’s enemies was to read the best text book on all things Muslim.

So he read the Qur’an. In what for his day was a state-of-the-art translation into English directly from the Arabic. Talk about flash traffic. Jefferson’s copy of the Qur’an equipped him with everything he needed to know how to respond to threats from the caliphates of the early 1800’s.

Thomas Jefferson opposed appeasement.

He opposed compromising.

He opposed supporting their regimes by paying tribute.

So in response to a declaration of war on the nascent United States of America by the Barbary Coast caliphates, Thomas Jefferson sent the USS Constitution to the Mediterranean in 1803...."

It's hard to imagine Ellison doesn't know why Jefferson possessed the book. It's a fact that the president sent the USS Constitution to the Mediterranean in 1803 in a response to a declaration of war on the United States by the Barbary Coast caliphates.

Ellison can't change history. But what he knows is that he can change the way people perceive history. He has attempted to achieve this by asking to swear over Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an. This aims at confusing the masses by giving publicity to the isolated fact that president Jefferson did have indeed a copy of the Qur'an. Taken out of context, this information can be misleading. "Oh, so Jefferson owned a Qur'an?", people will think. "I didn't know that. I wonder why he did. May be he was considering becoming a Muslim?"

Impossible? Hardly.

Most people's lives are too busy and they get the bulk of their information about world events from 15 minutes of the evening news or a local newspaper whose lead story is on obesity among pets. Cheap populism thrives on and benefits from the ignorance of the masses. This is what Keith Ellison counts on.

The best way to combat such sinister actions is to educate and enlighten as many as possible. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister said this: "Propaganda has only one object - to conquer the masses. Every means that furthers this aim is good; every means that hinders it is bad."

It seems to me that Keith Ellison, shamelessly ignoring the historic context of Jefferson's owning the Qur'an, tried to further the Muslim agenda in the US and possibly try to introduce some revisionist version of US history in which Islam was part of the belief system of the founding fathers.

The truth is that Jefferson had to send USS Constitution to battle radical Muslims on the Barbary Islands of the Mediterranean. Now what you and I can do is send an email to Mr. Ellison, letting him know we are aware of his agenda.

Email Keith Ellison at: info@keithellison.org

Below is the email I sent to Mr. Ellison. You can use it as a template or you can write your own.

Mr. Ellison,

I'm fully aware that the reason president Jefferson possessed a copy of the Qur'an was not because he considered Islam in his pursuit of spirituality. Rather, it was for educational purpose and in relation to Jefferson sending USS Constitution to the Mediterranean to fight with Muslim radicals and pirates known as the Barbary Pirates.

Mr. Ellison, we will be following and covering closely your every political movement, while educating as many as possible of the cheap populist techniques you use in order to advance your Muslim agenda.

In conclusion, I would like to remind you that beyond serving the interests of the electorate of Minnesota's 5th district, you have attained a position in US Congress, which mandates you to seek the interests of all American people, which includes Christian, Jews and people from other religious groups. Any involvement with radical Islamic groups is of direct conflict with the very purpose of your being in Congress.

George P. Bakalov
Apple Valley, MN
Editor
www.middlebeast.org

“The Economist”: Israel in top 5 emerging markets

2006-12-23T20:43:00.000-08:00

Israel has risen 12 places to become the world 36th largest economy.
by Zeev Klein

In its latest emerging markets survey, “The Economist” notes that Israel has been one of the five fastest growing emerging markets in the past 20 years. Israel has risen 12 spaces from the world’s 48th biggest economy in 1980-84 to 36th biggest economy in 2001-05. “The Economist” ranked economies by size on the basis of their five-year average GDP in current dollars, and compared the rankings of 1980-84 with 2001-05.

“The Economist’s” report is a shot in the arm for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Minister of Finance Abraham Hirchson, and Governor of the Bank of Israel Prof. Stanley Fischer, given that, since 1980, the country has undergone two intifadas, the effects of two wars in Iraq and two wars in Lebanon - the only one of the 28 emerging economies to have such an experience.

The four fastest climbing countries are in Asia: Singapore rose 20 places from the world’s 59th largest economy in 1980-84 to 39th in 2001-05; Taiwan rose 14 places from 32nd place to 18; South Korea rose 12 places from 23rd place to 11th; and Hong Kong also rose 12 places from 42nd place to 30th. Israel climb matched those of South Korea and Hong Kong.

“The Economist” notes that China has risen only four notches to become the world’s sixth largest economy - but even in the early 1980s it was already the world's tenth-biggest economy in current dollars. India, perhaps surprisingly, has barely budged as the world’s 12th largest economy. Several oil producers have fallen down the rankings, despite the increase in oil prices towards the end of the period covered: Venezuela has fallen 12 place from 25th place in 1980-84 to 37th place in 2001-05; Iran has fallen 16 place from 17th place to 33rd; Nigeria has fallen 16 places from 33rd place to 49th, and Saudi Arabia has fallen to 15th place from 22nd.

Why is the guy who is gunning for a new Holocaust belittling the last one?

2006-12-15T09:37:00.000-08:00

By Caroline B. Glick
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

There is something terribly confusing about Iran's penchant for denying the Holocaust. Given Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's stated desire to see Israel wiped off the map, it would seem more reasonable for Iran to be celebrating the Holocaust than denying it.

But Ahmadinejad is slicker than that. He embraces not the Holocaust but the nation that pulled it off. In his August missive to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he referred to the German nation as "a great contributor to progress in science, philosophy, literature, the arts and politics who have had a "positive influence in international relations and the promotion of peace." These lines of course are open to interpretation. He could be referring to Goethe and Schiller and he could be referring to Heidegger and Goebbels.
So why is the guy who is gunning for a new Holocaust belittling the last one? First of all, by doing so he empowers those Germans and friends of Germany who carried it out. By denying the Holocaust Ahmadinejad turns the Nazis into victims and so provides a space for them to express themselves after a sixty year silence. Indeed, in Germany neo-Nazism is a burgeoning political and social force that proudly parades its links to Iran.

The German fascist party NPD's followers demonstrated in support of Iran at the World Cup in Germany last spring. This week, Der Spiegel reported that attacks against Jewish children have increased markedly in recent years. Jewish children and their non-Jewish friends have been humiliated in anti-Semitic rituals unheard of since the Nazi era. "Jew" has become one of the most prevalent derogatory terms in use in Germany today.

Iran's adoption of Holocaust denial as an official, defiant policy gives legitimacy to this striking phenomenon. This is especially the case since Iran is blaming the Jews for silencing these poor fascists. In his same letter to Merkel Ahmadinejad wrote, "The perpetual claimants against the great people of Germany are the bullying Zionists that funded the Al Quds Occupying Regime with the force of bayonets in the Middle East."Ahmadinejad of course does not limit his efforts to the Nazis. He is also setting the cognitive conditions for the annihilation of Israel for the international Left by presenting Israel's existence as a direct result of the Holocaust. As Iran's Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said this week, "If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt."

In short, Iran views Holocaust denial as a strategic propaganda tool. By downgrading the Holocaust, Iran mobilizes supporters and paralyzes potential opponents. Its coupling of the last Holocaust with the one it signals daily it intends to carry out, wins it support among the Nazis and the Sunnis alike. Its presentation of the Holocaust as a myth used to exploit Muslims wins its support in the international Left which increasingly views Israel as an illegitimate state. So by denying the Holocaust Iran raises its leadership profile both regionally and globally. Indeed, even if the Left doesn't buy into Holocaust denial, it can still agree with Iran's conclusion that Israel has no right to exist. As Mottaki explained, "If during this [Holocaust denial conference] it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?"

So from Mottaki's perspective, Israel is illegitimate whether the Holocaust happened or not. In making this point, Mottaki closed the gap between Iran and a loud chorus of voices in both Europe and the US who claim that Israel was established only because of European guilt over the Holocaust and consequently the Jewish state has no inherent legitimacy. This is a view that even Jewish leftists like Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen and New York University Professor Tony Judt have expressed.
Inevitably, those who hold this view come to believe that Israel has no right to defend itself. After all, if Israel is but an illegal European colony on stolen Arab lands, then any act of self-defense that Israel takes is by definition an act of aggression. So from this perspective, all Israel can do is give away land an accept that it must pay for all the pathologies of the Arab world.

The view that every problem in the region is somehow or another bound up in Israel's stubborn refusal to disappear is clearly reflected also in the policy prescriptions of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, in former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Semitic attacks against Israel and in the position paper authored by professors Steve Walt and John Mearshimer about the so-called "Israel Lobby," (which is due to be published as a full-length book ahead of the 2008 presidential elections).
And so, by framing its Holocaust denial around an interpretation of the Arab world's war against Israel propounded by radical leftists and foreign policy "realists" of the soft-Right, the Iranians enable them to find a comfort level with what Iran is doing today. This comfort was displayed by the new US Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his Senate confirmation hearing where he justified Iran's nuclear weapons program by claiming that it was a deterrent measure in response to the fact that Pakistan, Russia, the US, and Israel all have nuclear weapons. Gates of course served on the Baker-Hamilton commission and no doubt supports its recommendation that Israel be forced to give the Golan Heights to Syria and Judea and Samaria to Hamas.

Not only does Iran's Holocaust denial attract potential supporters, it also confuses and so neutralizes potential opponents who neither like nor dislike Jews and are too confused to understand the threat Iran poses to the US.
Although it has not for a moment desisted from its calls of "Death to America," its vision of a world without America or its threats to attack Europe, Iran has made Israel the focus of its propaganda. In so doing it has provided cover for "realists" like Mearshimer, Walt and James Baker who claim that the war is really just between Israel and the Muslims and that the only reason that the US finds itself caught in the middle is because of its support for Israel. That support, in turn, is the result of Jewish subversion of Washington through the so-called all powerful "Israel lobby," which Carter claims as he sells his latest screed no politician will risk bucking up against.

This view, now emerging into the mainstream political debate in the US has already won the debate in most of Europe. There the view is that European Muslims are only attacking their non-Muslim countrymen because states like the US and Micronesia have yet to abandon Israel.
For Merkel, the centerpiece of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's trip to Germany Tuesday was her furious denunciation of the Iranian conference. "I would like to make it clear that we reject with all our strength the conference taking place in Iran….Germany will never accept this and will act against [Holocaust denial] with all the means that we have." The Germans even organized a conference of their own in Berlin this week where everyone indignantly expressed their indignation at Iran. Merkel's breathless furor is an example of the final problem that Ahmadinejad has created for his opponents by adopting Holocaust denial as a central plank of Iran's foreign policy. Bluntly stated, he gives people a way to be perceived as being against Iran without actually doing anything to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

Merkel and her fellow Germans have spent an inordinate amount of time over the past three years condemning the Nazi Holocaust. This week they even organized a special Holocaust condemning conference in response to the Iranian Holocaust denying conference.
Yet over the same time period, they have conducted negotiations with Teheran as part of the EU-3 that have enabled Iran to continue its nuclear progress; obstructed US efforts to levy sanctions on Iran; and maintained active trade relations with Iran. Merkel's government has continued the practice of providing loan guarantees to German firms doing business with Iran. In 2005, German-Iranian trade stood at about $5 billion. Now, after three years of disastrous negotiations with the mullahs, Germany has finally come around to supporting the European draft sanctions resolution against Iran being debated in the UN Security Council. The problem is that the proposed sanctions are so weak that they will have no impact on Iran's ability to move on with its nuclear bomb program.

The obvious fact that the sanctions will have no impact on Iran has not made a dent in Merkel's refusal to support military action against Iran under any circumstances - a refusal she reiterated while standing next to Israel's Prime Minister on Tuesday.
Olmert was apparently too busy admitting that Israel has nuclear weapons only to take back his admission hours later, absurdly praising Russian President Vladimir for his opposition to the "nuclearlization of Iran" which Putin is actively promoting, and promising to give Judea and Samaria to Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas to take issue with Merkel's statement. And that is a pity, because by taking issue with it, he would have gone far towards destroying the effectiveness of Iran's Holocaust denial strategy. Were Israel to base its diplomatic, military, informational, and economic policies on a single-minded commitment to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities, it would succeed. Unfortunately, under the Olmert government Israel is doing nothing of the kind on any level.

On the public diplomacy level, were Israel to take concerted action against Iran's Holocaust denial program, it could destroy the program and so enact a positive change in the public discourse on Iran. Merkel's stated refusal to support military action against Iran's nuclear facilities was an ideal opportunity to launch such action. If Olmert had reacted in disgust to Merkel's statement and announced that it was unacceptable, he would have stood the Iranians' propaganda on its head.
Imagine what the impact would have been if Olmert had rejoined, "Excuse me, but it is quite possible that at the end of the day a military strike against Iran will be the only way to prevent Iran from acquiring atomic bombs and so committing another Holocaust. Given this, your blanket opposition to the notion of military strikes constitutes Germany's effective acceptance of another Holocaust. Shame on you Angie. Shame on Germany."
Such a statement would have changed the entire dynamic of the international discourse on Iran.

If we are willing to do what is necessary, Israel can prevent the next Holocaust. It is unforgivable that Olmert and his ministers are not doing what needs to be done.

Jimmy Carter: “I oppose a Palestinian State”

2006-12-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

Jimmy Carter: “I oppose a Palestinian State”
By Jeff Ballabon

This was Carter, THEN:

"… I am opposed to an independent Palestinian state, because in my
own judgement and in the judgement of many leaders in the Middle
East, including Arab leaders, this would be a destabilizing factor in
the Middle East and would certainly not serve the United States
interests. (Jimmy Carter at the United Jewish Appeal National Young
Leadership Conference, February 25, 1980)."

"…we oppose the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The
United States, as all of you know, has a warm and unique relationship
of friendship with Israel that is morally right. It is compatible
with our deepest religious convictions, and it is right in terms of
America’s own strategic interests. We are committed to Israel’s
security, prosperity, and future as a land that has so much to offer
to the world. A strong Israel and a strong Egypt serve our own
security interests.We are committed to Israel’s right to live in
peace with all its neighbors, within secure and recognized borders,
free from terrorism. We are committed to a Jerusalem that will
forever remain undivided with free access to all faiths to the holy
places. Nothing will deflect us from these fundamental principles and
committments. (Source: First anniversary of the Egyptian-Israeli
Peace Treaty / White House joint conference, March 23, 1980)."

What has changed in the last 25 years? Not Israel’s 1948
independence. Not the 1967 war. Not the cynical, ignominous treatment
of Arab refugees by the Arab world.

So why, 25 years later, is Israel’s right to exist a matter of
debate, while Palestine’s right to exist is presumed by everyone from
the United Nations to Jimmy Carter to George Bush to Ehud Olmert?

Why, when the Palestinian leaderships - PA and Hamas - the first
imposed and the second popularly elected, demonstrate that their
chief characteristics are, respectively, corrupt thuggery and bloody
holy war, why then is endless-concession-making, negotiating,
retreating, disengaging, humanitarian-aid-giving, appeasing Israel
viewed as the “destabilizing factor?”

Did a massive land-grab by Israel precede Carter’s new book? On the
contrary: a massive land-surrender preceded the book. And, in fact,
when it retreats, morally, intellectually, politically, physically,
Israel does become the destabilizing factor - or at least surrenders
its role as the stabilizer of the world’s most volatile region.

What has changed is Israel’s own resolve. Why should anyone else
fight to support a nation whose political elite takes every
opportunity and advantage we give it and squanders it? Why should
anyone else fight for a nation which sacrifices its soldiers rather
than vanquishes its enemy? Why should anyone else fight for a nation
which has ceased believing in itself? Which cravenly begs forgiveness
on the rare occasions it actually defends its citizens? Why should
anyone fight for a Jewish homeland which seems bent on denying its
Jewishness? Why should anyone care about a state which retreats from
its victories? Which sheds its democratic veneer to brutalize and
displace its most patriotic and committed citizens, its idealists,
its pioneers? Why should anyone care for an Israel that is willing,
even eager, in its quest for a “secular revolution” to declare that
the Jewish heritage is an albatross, that Judea and Samaria are a
burden, and that Jerusalem is negotiable? That the State of Israel
is, in fact, seeking to disengage from the Holy Land?

The turning point, perhaps the catalyst, was Oslo; the Bill Clinton/
Ehud Barak plan to (in Clinton negotiator Dennis Ross’ terminology)
dispense with the “mythologies” in order to negotiate. How very
modern and enlightened and liberal and civilized. And how very
destructive and foolish and deadly. The ideas, the principles, the
vision, the morals, the truths which they disdain as mythologies were
and are the very heart of Israel’s national aspiration. It was the
vision that kept Jews alive through millenia of diaspora and
dispersion, crusade, expulsion, forced conversion, blood libel and
pogrom, and, finally, Holocaust And the heart may be romanticized as
the seat of emotion, but only the hopelessly deluded excises it and
thinks the body will survive. Only the deluded excises the heart. Or
the suicidal.

What has changed, in consequence, is the resolve of Israel’s enemies
as well. And, because they are not burdened by the selfish inanity of
modern liberalism, they have not lost their willingness to suffer and
to sacrifice. The suicides they are committing are anything but
deluded; their terror is a winning strategy. Rather than eliciting
disgust and fury, rather than being condemned as unutterably
barbaric, the use of civilians as targets, children as bombs and
grandmothers as bunkers has even brought them the sympathies of the
deluded West. Not only in the corridors of the UN or the salons of
Europe - but even in those enlightened liberal precincts in Israel
where the stubborn, unruly Jewish “mythologies” have long since been
relegated, surrendered, sublimated to an oh-so-superior modern
Israeli multicultural consciousness.

[UPDATE: New ending added on December 4]

In the end, what is most frustrating is also that which is the
greatest cause for hope. Israel, but for its recent governments’
moral blindness and appetite for appeasement, really is in a position
of strength. Its military still is excellent, its weapons still
superior, its citizens still doughty.

It lacks just one element to recapture the momentum in its struggle
against its enemies and that is resolve. And, as we witnessed this
summer, even that resolve is just a moment away, waiting for the
right leadership with a bold message.

This summer, Olmert hampered and ultimately reined in the IDF. But
before he did so, when Israel first seemed poised to respond with
force, Israeli morale skyrocketed.

Was it a successful “peace” negotiation? Diplomatic recognition by a
heretofor implacable enemy? A truce with Hamas? Quite the contrary:
it was an uninstigated assault by Hizballah. Israeli soldiers were
kidnapped. Rockets came raining down on major population centers. 1
million Israelis had to live in bomb shelters. A war was being waged
in the North and the South and terror activity was up in the West.

But morale was higher than at any time since before Oslo. The
knowledge that it was embarking on a mission, no matter how perilous,
to defend the homeland, unified and electrified the nation.
“Finally!” declared pundits on the Israeli Right and Left. Record
numbers of citizen-reservists showed up to fight, far more than the
IDF had even called. It was a return to moral clarity.

But it was short-lived. Within days, hope was turned to despair as
Israel’s apologetic, retreat-oriented, pretentiously post-
ideological, post-moral government, defeated the Israeli people and
the IDF. And today, Israeli morale is at an all time low.

Even before Iran’s nuclear threat, the question more and more of
Israel’s friends have been asking is “Will Israel still exist in ten
years?”

If Israel’s leaders continue to travel the path of Oslo, of phony
peace processes, of concession and retreat and halfhearted military
objectives, surely not. For Israel will never appease its enemies. It
will vanquish them or it will die.

“If you will it,” said Herzl, “it is no dream.”

“If you will it…” today, as then, it remains the only question.

Beware of 57-year old grandma terrorists

2006-11-24T21:11:00.000-08:00

It seems that the terrorist era has entered a new phase. A 57-year old Palestenian woman has blown herself up in an attempt to kill Israeli soldiers. You can read the original story here.

Reuters reports: "The armed wing of the governing Hamas movement took responsibility for the attempted suicide bombing and identified the woman as Fatima al-Nejar. Her family said she had nine children and nearly 30 grandchildren. She is the first known Palestinian grandmother to attempt a suicide bombing against Israelis.

"I'm very proud of what she did. Allahu akbar (God is great)," said one of her sons, Fuad, 31.

On a Hamas-released video, the woman read a statement saying she wanted to dedicate her death to Palestinians held in Israeli jails and to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

She wore a black suicide belt and had an M-16 assault rifle slung over her neck. "I offer myself as a sacrifice to God and to the homeland," she said.""

In the past terrorists have used children and older people simply as human shields.
But now it seems the game has changed. The shields are no longer shields only, they are now being trained to be assault weapons in the arsenals of Islamofascist's war against Israel and humanity.

Islamic children are trained to hate and kill Jews from the time they are young. Watch this disturbing video:

Now, with the suicide death of Fatima al-Nejar, older people take their own place in the terrorist hall of shame.

Politicians continue to use the term radical Islam. I have been using it myself. But I'm beginning to wonder: are there any other forms of Islam? Where are the "moderate" Islamic teachers who denounce the suicide bombings and fascist propaganda coming out of the Middle East? When you see a grandmother of 30 children becoming a suicide bomber, what will cross your mind next time you find yourself at a busy mall or an airport with some older Arab lady nearby.

Now, the amazing thing is this: when we warn others of the dangers of Islamofascists, they act like their feelings are so hurt by our warnings.

Enough games, I say! These perverts laugh at the civilized world when we talk about everyone having the right to speak and worship. They have become such professional manipulators of our democratic system and way of life.

Now hear this: beware of older Islamic ladies! We already know what they may be up to.

Georg P. Bakalov

‘Inspector Borat’ looking for Jew hatred in all the wrong places

2006-11-24T06:30:00.000-08:00

by Charles Krauthammer

"Borat" is many things: a sidesplitting triumph of slapstick and scatology, a runaway moneymaker and budding franchise, the worst thing to happen to Kazakhstan since the Mongol hordes, and, as columnist David Brooks astutely points out, a supreme display of elite snobbery reveling in the humiliation of the hoaxed hillbilly.

But it is one thing more, something Brooks alluded to in passing but that requires at least one elaboration: an unintentionally revealing demonstration of the unfortunate attitude many have toward working-class American Christians, especially evangelicals.

You know the shtick. Borat goes around America making anti-Semitic remarks in order to elicit a nodding anti-Semitic response. And with enough liquor and cajoling, he succeeds. In the most notorious such scene (on "Da Ali G Show," where the character was born), Borat sings "Throw the Jew Down the Well" in an Arizona bar as the local rubes join in.

Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of Borat, revealed his purpose for doing that in a rare out-of-character interview he granted Rolling Stone in part to counter charges that he was promoting anti-Semitism. On the face of it, this would be odd, given that Cohen is himself a Sabbath-observing Jew. His defense is that he is using Borat's anti-Semitism as a "tool" to expose it in others. And that his Arizona bar stunt revealed, if not anti-Semitism, then "indifference" to anti-Semitism. And that, he maintains, was the path to the Holocaust.

Whoaaaa. Does he really believe such rubbish? Can a man that smart (Cambridge, investment banker and now brilliant filmmaker) really believe that indifference to anti-Semitism and the road to the Holocaust are to be found in a country-and-western bar in Tucson?

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world.

With anti-Semitism reemerging in Europe and rampant in the Islamic world; with Iran acquiring the ultimate weapon of genocide and proclaiming its intention to wipe out the world's largest Jewish community (Israel); with America and, in particular, its Christian evangelicals the only remaining Gentile constituency anywhere willing to defend that besieged Jewish outpost — is the American heartland really the locus of anti-Semitism? Is this the one place to go to find it?

In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez says that the "descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ" have "taken possession of all the wealth in the world." Just this month, Tehran hosted an international festival of Holocaust cartoons featuring enough hooked noses and horns to give Goebbels a posthumous smile. Throughout the Islamic world, newspapers and television, schoolbooks and sermons are filled with the most vile anti-Semitism.

Baron Cohen could easily have found what he seeks closer to home. He is, after all, from Europe, where synagogues are torched and cemeteries desecrated in a revival of anti-Semitism — not "indifference" to but active — unseen since the Holocaust. Where a Jew is singled out for torture and death by French-African thugs. Where a leading Norwegian intellectual — et tu, Norway? — mocks "God's Chosen People" ("We laugh at this people's capriciousness and weep at its misdeeds") and calls for the destruction of Israel, the "state founded . . . on the ruins of an archaic national and warlike religion."

Yet, amid this gathering darkness, an alarming number of liberal Jews are seized with the notion that the real threat lurks deep in the hearts of American Protestants, most specifically Southern evangelicals. Some fear that their children are going to be converted; others, that below the surface lies a pogrom waiting to happen; still others, that the evangelicals will take power in Washington and enact their own sharia law.

This is all quite crazy. America is the most welcoming, religiously tolerant, philo-Semitic country in the world. No nation since Cyrus the Great's Persia has done more for the Jews. And its reward is to be exposed as latently anti-Semitic by an itinerant Jew looking for laughs and, he solemnly assures us, for the path to the Holocaust?

Look. Harry Truman used to tell derisive Jewish jokes. Richard Nixon said nasty things about Jews in government and elsewhere. Who cares? Truman and Nixon were the two greatest friends of the Jews in the entire postwar period: Truman secured them a refuge in the state of Israel, and Nixon saved it from extinction during the Yom Kippur War.

It is very hard to be a Jew today, particularly in Baron Cohen's Europe, where Jew-baiting is once again becoming acceptable. But it is a sign of the disorientation of a distressed and confused people that we should find it so difficult to distinguish our friends from our enemies.

original article published at: http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer112406.php3

Against all odds: Iraqi women's participation in the nation building process

2006-11-01T01:13:00.000-08:00

This is an incredible report by Manal Omar, the Regional Director for Women for Women International (www.womenforwomen.org). Ms. Omar speaks about the many challenges and victories of Iraqi women in securing their rights, highlighting the clear decline in the status of women's rights since 2003. She based her talk on the findings of a household survery conducted in May 2004 and observation and fieldwork in Iraq since July 2003, including direct contact with the female leadership and women's organizations in Iraq.

Has Condi Rice not seen videos like this?

2006-10-28T22:39:00.000-07:00

MY TAKE: Condi Rise is one sharp lady. She has been a lifelong
student of Russia, which is of course great. However, I'm a little
concerned that she compares the USSR and the Communist ideology to
the modern Islamofascists. I also think we have to be positive and
work to offer a better future to the Arabs, whether the Palestinian
Arabs or any other Arab people. But let's not forget some of the
radicals who flew those plane on 9/11 were university students!

I've always said it: a hungry evil man, when he gets his belly full,
is a full evil man. Likewise, an uneducated Islamofascist, when he
gets educated (a very stretchy idea in and of itself), simply becomes
an educated Islamofascist. Cal Thomas points out well the level of
indoctrination the Palestinians take their kids through. Watch this
YouTube video from my "Islam" playlist on YouTube:

Condi comes clean on her Middle East views
By Cal Thomas

QUESTION: You're all over the conservative Jewish blogs for remarks you made recently on the Palestinian state, your commitment to it, living side by side with Israel, and that's been the policy of the Administration since day one.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: I'd like to know what evidence you have — I read, and I know you do and a lot more than I do, the sermons, the editorials in the Middle East, the right of return idea, which a lot of people think is just basically overwhelming for a Jewish population with millions and millions of Arabs in the so-called Diaspora. What evidence do you have that teaching their schoolchildren at the ages of four and five to be martyrs, to show up in their little uniforms with plastic guns and their headbands, textbooks one grenade plus two grenades equals, you know, three grenades — what evidence do you have out there that if they had an independent state that they would lay down their arms and not complete the mission of killing the Jews and throwing them out?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, you can look at any opinion poll in the Palestinian territories and 70 percent of the people will say they're perfectly ready to live side by side with Israel because they just want to live in peace. And when it comes right down to it, yeah, there are plenty of extremists in the Palestinian territories who are not going to be easily dealt with. They have to be dealt with — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories — they're terrorists and they have to be dealt with as terrorists.

But the great majority of Palestinian people — this is — I've been with these people. The great majority of people, they just want a better life. This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don't believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that's what people are going to do.

QUESTION: Do you think this or do you know this?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think I know it.

QUESTION: You think you know it?

SECRETARY RICE: I think I know it.

QUESTION: Is it because — do you think you know it because you want to believe it or do you think you know it because of conversations with tens, scores, hundreds

SECRETARY RICE: Well, lots of conversations with Palestinians. But also it's — look, if human beings don't want a better future, don't want their children to grow up in peace and have opportunities, then none of this is going to work anyway. But I really believe that the people of the Middle East — not the extremists — want the same things that everyone else wants. I haven't seen a society yet where it wasn't true. Let me put it that way. I haven't seen a society yet where ordinary people, given an opportunity, wouldn't opt for a better life and for peace.

QUESTION: But then you have this incredible religious component which says, you know, your guarantee for heaven is if you blow somebody up.

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, except for those leaders who don't seem to be so anxious to lead the surge and go to paradise.

QUESTION: Oh, of course they don't. No, they have plenty of recruits.

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, they do have plenty of recruits. But the ideology, that kind of ideology of hatred and hopelessness does not have a chance against an ideology of hope and a better future. We just have to realize that because of the way that the politics of the Middle East has developed for the last 60 years, that ideology of hope and a better future has not been there.

I don't believe that most people in the Middle East really want to blow themselves up and believe in this ideology any more than most Russians actually wanted to believe in international communism. There are always extremists who are going to do that. There are always ideologues who are going to believe and they are always going to recruit from a pool of disaffected people. So you both have to lessen the pool of disaffected people, give them alternatives, and people choose other paths. I just don't see a society yet where that hasn't been the case.

The Dark Ages — live from the Middle East!

2006-10-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

The Dark Ages — live from the Middle East!

By Victor Davis Hanson

The most frightening aspect of the present war is how easily our pre-modern enemies from the Middle East have brought a stunned postmodern world back into the Dark Ages.Students of history are sickened when they read of the long-ago, gruesome practice of beheading. How brutal were those societies that chopped off the heads of Cicero, Sir Thomas More and Marie Antoinette. And how lucky we thought we were to have evolved from such elemental barbarity.

Twenty-four hundred years ago, Socrates was executed for unpopular speech. The 18th-century European Enlightenment gave people freedom to express views formerly censored by clerics and the state. Just imagine what life was like once upon a time when no one could write music, compose fiction or paint without court or church approval? Ancient Greek literary characters, from Lysistrata to Antigone, reflected the struggle for sexual equality. The subsequent notion that women could vote, divorce, dress or marry as they pleased was a millennia-long struggle.

It is almost surreal now to read about the elemental hatred of Jews in the Spanish Inquisition, 19th-century Russian pogroms or the Holocaust. Yet here we are revisiting the old horrors of the savage past.

Beheading? As we saw with Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, our Neanderthal enemies in the Middle East have resurrected that ancient barbarity — and married it with 21st-century technology to beam the resulting gore instantaneously onto our computer screens. Xerxes and Attila, who stuck their victims' heads on poles for public display, would've been thrilled by such a gruesome show.

Who would have thought centuries after the Enlightenment that sophisticated Europeans — in fear of radical Islamists — would be afraid to write a novel, put on an opera, draw a cartoon, film a documentary or have their pope discuss comparative theology? The astonishing fact is not just that millions of women worldwide in 2006 are still veiled from head-to-toe, trapped in arranged marriages, subject to polygamy, honor killings and forced circumcision, or are without the right to vote or appear alone in public. What is more baffling is that in the West, liberal Europeans are often wary of protecting female citizens from the excesses of Sharia law — sometimes even fearful of asking women to unveil their faces for purposes of simple identification and official conversation.

Who these days is shocked that Israel is hated by Arab nations and threatened with annihilation by radical Iran? Instead, the surprise is that even in places like Paris or Seattle, Jews are singled out and killed for the apparent crime of being Jewish. Since Sept. 11, the West has fought enemies who are determined to bring back the nightmarish world that we thought was long past. And there are lessons Westerners can learn from radical Islamists' ghastly efforts.

First, the Western liberal tradition is fragile and can still disappear. Just because we have sophisticated cell phones, CAT scanners and jets does not ensure that we are permanently civilized or safe. Technology used by the civilized for positive purposes can easily be manipulated by barbarians for destruction.

Second, the Enlightenment is not always lost on the battlefield. It can be surrendered through either fear or indifference as well. Westerners fearful of terrorist reprisals themselves shut down a production of a Mozart opera in Berlin deemed offensive to Muslims. Few came to the aid of a Salman Rushdie or Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh when their unpopular expression earned death threats from Islamists. Van Gogh, of course, was ultimately killed.

The Goths and Vandals did not sack Rome solely through the power of their hordes; they also relied on the paralysis of Roman elites who no longer knew what it was to be Roman — much less whether it was any better than the alternative.

Third, civilization is forfeited with a whimper, not a bang. Insidiously, we have allowed radical Islamists to redefine the primordial into the not-so-bad. Perhaps women in head-to-toe burkas in Europe prefer them? Maybe that crass German opera was just too over the top after all? Aren't both parties equally to blame in the Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan wars?

To grasp the flavor of our own Civil War, impersonators now don period dress and reconstruct the battles of Shiloh or Gettysburg. But we need no so such historical reenactment of the Dark Ages. You see, they are back with us — live almost daily from the Middle East.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and military historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University

originally published by http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

George Soros takes aim at Israel

2006-10-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

MY TAKE:

Did you know that at the time of the Inquisition, one of the greatest, most cruel persecutors of the Jews was in fact a man with Jewish bloodline. Call it perversion, hating yourself, whatever, the fact is that there are people who will come out against well being of the very people they came from. It all depends on where is your identity really. Some of the greatest America haters are brainwashed socialist, ultra-liberal Americans.

Say a prayer for Soros! Wth all the money he has, he could be doing good instead of mad things.

* * * * * *

George Soros Takes Aim at Israel

Billionaire investor George Soros is leading a move to stitch together an American Jewish political lobby that is "anti-Israel,” according to a column in the Jerusalem Post.

Soros, who spent millions attempting to defeat President Bush in 2004, is one of a "tiny minority of American Jews” who have played a role in undermining support for Israel in the Democratic Party, and they now seek "to undermine Israel’s position in the U.S. in general,” Caroline Glick writes in the Post.

Soros has invited another American Jewish billionaire, Peter Lewis, along with "North American Jewish plutocrats” like Charles and Edgar Bronfman, to join forces with him and leftist Jewish American organizations – including American Friends of Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom – to construct a political lobby that will weaken the influence of the pro-Israel lobby.

"Many of the individuals and organizations associated with the initiative have actively worked to undermine Israel,” Glick writes.

"Soros caused a storm in 2003 when, during a fund-raising conference for Israel, he alleged that Israel was partially responsible for the rise in anti-Semitic violence in Europe because of its harsh response to Palestinian terrorism.”

Glick also points out that in November 2005, the leaders of the Israel Policy Forum met with Condoleezza Rice and urged her to dismiss Israel's security concerns regarding two of the Gaza Strip's border crossing points. As a result, Rice pressured Israel to make dangerous concessions to the Palestinians.

And after Hamas' electoral victory in January, American Friends of Peace Now, Israel Policy Forum and Brit Tzedek v'Shalom worked to shield the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority from Congressional sanctions.

Together they worked to torpedo the Palestinian Anti-Terror Act, which enjoyed overwhelming support in the Congress and was designed to update American policy toward the Palestinian Authority in the wake of Hamas' ascendance to power.

Among its provisions, the bill called for an immediate end to U.S. assistance to nongovernmental and U.N. organizations operating in the PA that had connections to terrorist organizations.

Due to the lobbying efforts of the "Jewish leftists,” the Palestinian Anti-Terror Act was eventually scuttled, Glick notes, adding:

"Soros would like to institutionalize the ad-hoc coalition's success in undermining the Palestinian Anti-Terror Act in a new lobby.

"While its Jewish founders insist that they are pro-Israel, the fact of the matter is that they are about to establish an American Jewish anti-Israel lobby.”

this was originally published at foxnews.com, sorry I forgot to copy the url

The U.S. administration funding Abbas and his army...again?

2006-10-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Lord, are you all hearing this? What's going on? The U.S.
administration funding Abbas and his army...again?

As reported by Caroline B. Glick

History's dangerous repetition

By Caroline B. Glick

It would seem that Karl Marx got things backwards. History does not
repeat itself first as tragedy and then as farce. Rather, it repeats
itself first as farce and second as tragedy. This, perhaps more than
anything else is the conclusion one should reach from North Korea's
nuclear test on Columbus Day.

It was the Clinton administration, which back in the Roaring '90s
began the policy of appeasing North Korea. Throughout the decade the
US wined and dined the North Korean Stalinists who always responded
by pocketing US concessions and escalating their nuclear and
ballistic missile activities and threats against the US and its Asian
allies.

The farce was then US secretary of state Madeleine Albright's visit
to Pyongyang in late October 2000, two weeks before the US
presidential elections. There, after the North Koreans tested the
Taepo-Dong 1 ballistic missile off the coast of Japan in 1998 and
refused to end either their missile programs or missile exports to
Iran, Albright tripped the night fantastic with Kim Jong-Il. Her
buffoonery was a perfect capstone to eight years of the Clinton
administration's addiction to ceremony over substance.

While America's tone towards North Korea chilled under the Bush
administration, there was little substantive change in its policies.

Secretary of state Colin Powell met with his North Korean counterpart
Pak Nam Sun and to this day US attempts to strike a deal with
Pyongyang have not ended. And now, Pyongyang, with its medium- and
long-range ballistic missiles, has tested a nuclear bomb.

THERE IS of course also North Korea's ally Iran. Toward Iran, too,
the substance of the Bush administration policies is little different
from that of his predecessor. Like North Korea, the Iranians respond
to US attempts at appeasement by escalating their rhetoric and
redoubling their offensive military build-ups of missiles and nuclear
capabilities.

The great shift, then which occurred under the Bush administration, a
shift for which President George W. Bush has been pilloried by his
political rivals, has been rhetorical.

While hypocritical, the division between rhetoric and substance has
something to recommend it. The benefit of the current US position
toward North Korea and Iran is that the rhetoric has left open the
possibility that the policy itself will finally be suited to reality.
Today, unlike the situation in the 1990s, the American public is at
least aware that these states are a threat to US national security
interests.

In the aftermath of North Korea's nuclear bomb test, the US can
support military actions by Japan and South Korea against North
Korea; build up its missile shield; and perhaps end its 14 year self-
imposed moratorium on nuclear testing and so revamp its nuclear arsenal.

Were the Bush administration to change its policy tomorrow regarding
Iran — begin shaming Europe into ending its appeasement, and
threatening Russia with trade sanctions if Moscow continues
supporting Iran, Syria and Hizbullah, while building up its military
options to strike at Iran's nuclear installations — the American
public would understand why the policy change was necessary. Indeed,
such a move could even help the Republican Party in the upcoming
elections.

DISTURBINGLY, WHILE Bush has paved the way rhetorically for a shift
in policy toward North Korea and Iran, he has done no such thing in
the US's relations with the terror-ruled Palestinian Authority. And
as is the case with Iran and North Korea, the stubborn and ill-
considered continuation of the Clinton administration's appeasement
policy toward the PA during the Bush years has only exacerbated and
escalated the threat posed by the PA to US national security
interests and to the national security of US allies — first and
foremost, of Israel.

In the 1990s, the father of modern terrorism, Yasser Arafat, was the
most frequent foreign visitor at the White House. The head of the PLO
was the object of adoration by the Clintonites. It didn't matter to
them that Arafat never revoked the PLO Charter calling for Israel's
destruction. It didn't matter that he indoctrinated a generation of
Palestinian children to become suicide bombers in jihad against the
Jews. It didn't matter that he used billions of dollars of American
and European taxpayer money to build the largest terror army in the
world. Arafat showed up at signing ceremonies. He was the poster
child of appeasement.

The Clinton administration tied itself to a policy toward the
Palestinians which, like its policies toward North Korea and Iran,
opened it to ever escalating blackmail. As the terror threat
emanating from the PA-ruled areas rose, empowering Arafat became the
obsession of the Clinton White House. He was showered with money,
guns and love. No Israeli security consideration could hold a candle
to the need to strengthen Arafat.

From bombing to bombing, Arafat was enriched and empowered. Israel's
security became the main obstacle to the signing ceremonies.

After seven years, the myth of Arafat the peacemaker exploded in the
faces of more than a thousand Israelis who would be killed over the
next six years of the Palestinian jihad. But the myth of the PA endured.

For the past six years, each bombing, every clear indication that the
PA itself is a terrorist entity is met by more breathless US
protestations of support for Palestinian empowerment and statehood.
The fact that the last six years have left the State Department
unfazed was made absolutely clear during Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice's visit last week.

Since Arafat appointed Mahmoud Abbas, his deputy of 40 years, PA
prime minister in 2003, the US has upheld Abbas as a man of peace, a
moderate and a respectable leader that the Bush administration wishes
to strengthen. To this end, the Bush administration has overlooked
Abbas's clear support for terrorism. It has excused his constant
appeals to merge his Fatah terror group with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
It has ignored the fact that his Fatah terror group has committed
more acts of terror than Hamas and that Fatah's involvement in terror
and the sophistication of its attacks has only increased since Abbas
replaced Arafat after the latter's death in November 2004.

During her visit last week, at Abbas's request, Rice was scheduled to
meet with Fatah commander Hussein a-Sheikh in the American Consulate-
General in Jerusalem. The meeting was cancelled at the last minute
when Israeli activists demanded that Sheikh, who was directly
responsible for the murder of dozens of Israelis and several American
nationals, be arrested by Israel police upon arrival at the
consulate. Yet, Rice still met with other Fatah leaders, like
Muhammad Dahlan who has been directly implicated in the murder of
Israelis in terror attacks perpetrated by men under his command.

EVEN MORE disturbingly, Rice has officially sanctioned a policy put
together by US Army Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton to expand by up to 70
percent Abbas's presidential guard and personal army, Force 17. The
administration wishes to raise some $20 million to fund the training
and arming and expansion of Abbas's army from 3,500 to 6,000
soldiers. This move comes after the US transferred 3,000 rifles and 1
million bullets to Force 17 in June. Yet Force 17 is a terrorist army
led by terrorists.

Right after he received the weapons shipment, Abbas appointed Mahmoud
Damra commander of the force. Damra, who like many of the Force 17
officers and soldiers, doubles as a Fatah terrorist, was wanted by
Israel due to his direct involvement in the terrorist murder of at
least 15 Israelis. One of his deputies claimed that the US rifles
were immediately used to attack a bus carrying Israeli school girls
in Judea.

Israel arrested Damra at a checkpoint shortly after he received
Abbas's appointment. The US immediately began pressuring Israel to
release him.

In addition to Damra's direct involvement in Fatah terror, he also
has close ties with Iran and Hizbullah. In 2002, Arafat reportedly
appointed him Force 17's liaison officer to Iran and Hizbullah
forces. The fact that Abbas appointed Damra Force 17's overall
commander just weeks before Fatah and Hamas began Iran's proxy war
against Israel by attacking the IDF position at Kerem Shalom and
kidnapping Cpl. Gilad Shalit, should say something about Abbas's
intentions. Yet, last week, Rice couldn't praise Abbas enough.

North Korea's nuclear test and Iran's nuclear intimidation show us
what happens when failed policies are not abandoned. Due in part to
its continued US-backed legitimacy, the PA is used by Pakistan as an
excuse for terror sponsorship and nuclear proliferation and by
jihadists throughout the world as justification for attacks on
Western and Jewish targets.

No doubt the North Korean nuclear test is a turning point in this
world war.

The question is whether it will force the US to finally part with
appeasement, or whether Rice will convince President Bush to take his
chances by repeating history a third and fourth time.

***

Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for
Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of
The Jerusalem Post.

Islamofascisim in your face!

2006-10-08T20:19:00.000-07:00

Click here to watch islamofascism in action!

Today I discovered this video at Glenn Beck's web site. It's hard to believe there are people who can be so deceived, so full of hate and so narrow minded. It's hard for us who live in developed democracies to even comprehend such fundamentalistic, hateful worldview.

Seems like these radical Muslim ideologists are so brainwashed, they can never be part of a reasonable dialogue or seeking solutions for peaceful coexistence.

Seeing this video may help people understand little better Bono's appeal to coexist. I believe what the man is trying to say is: "Look, you may never embrace my faith and I may never embrace yours, but can we please not KILL EACH OTHER at least!"

I mean honestly, when you hear this preacher endorsing anti-semitism and the persecution of the Jews throughout history, how can you not see this is indeed an "islamofascist" agenda?! When president Bush used the term recently, people were going nuts, and yet, just listen and watch to this video.

I can't believe how this preacher actually endorses the Holocaust, saying it was because of the Jewish people and then he says "what they did to them was wrong".

Hello there, Mr. Palestinian islamofascist ideologist! Do you think we're so STUPID! You can talk this trash to you brainwashed flock, but do you think we can't see through your cheap populist maneuvering. The guy knows that for political reasons he can't say the Holocaust was good, so he throws is one totally fake "what the Germans did to them was wrong" and then shortly thereafter repudiates his one statement by saying the Jews deserved all this. What a wicked weasel!

And if it wasn't for the fact he's preaching to a bunch of dysfunctional, hateful losers, who obviously are full of hate just like him, then I suppose their agenda wouldn't have much advancement.

But yes, indeed! Just like the Communists and every other tyranny, they always succeed because the majority of people are just like what Jesus called them: sheep. The majority of those people are stupid like sheep and they are methodically brainwashed every Sunday or Friday, or whenever they have their services, listening to little Adolf Hitlers just like this one.

Still not clear where is the "Beast" in the Middle East?

A voice of reason to the Muslim world?

2006-09-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

Dr. Wafa Sultan is a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.

Thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.
In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.
She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.

Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.
In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private.
"I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings," she said in an interview this week in her home in a Los Angeles suburb.

Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater and skirt, with fleece-lined slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes and hair are jet black and her modest manner belies her intense words: "Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."
Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."
She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."
She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

Her views caught the ear of the American Jewish Congress, which has invited her to speak in May at a conference in Israel. "We have been discussing with her the importance of her message and trying to devise the right venue for her to address Jewish leaders," said Neil B. Goldstein, executive director of the organization.
She is probably more welcome in Tel Aviv than she would be in Damascus. Shortly after the broadcast, clerics in Syria denounced her as an infidel. One said she had done Islam more damage than the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, a wire service reported.

DR. SULTAN is "working on a book that — if it is published — it's going to turn the Islamic world upside down."
"I have reached the point that doesn't allow any U-turn. I have no choice. I am questioning every single teaching of our holy book."

The working title is, "The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster."

Dr. Sultan grew up in a large traditional Muslim family in Banias, Syria, a small city on the Mediterranean about a two-hour drive north of Beirut. Her father was a grain trader and a devout Muslim, and she followed the faith's strictures into adulthood.

But, she said, her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo, in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim Brotherhood was using terrorism to try to undermine the government of President Hafez al-Assad . Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor as she watched, she said.
"They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, 'God is great!' " she said. "At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god."

She and her husband, who now goes by the Americanized name of David, laid plans to leave for the United States. Their visas finally came in 1989, and the Sultans and their two children (they have since had a third) settled in with friends in Cerritos, Calif., a prosperous bedroom community on the edge of Los Angeles County.
After a succession of jobs and struggles with language, Dr. Sultan has completed her American medical licensing, with the exception of a hospital residency program, which she hopes to do within a year. David operates an automotive-smog-check station. They bought a home in the Los Angeles area and put their children through local public schools. All are now American citizens.

BUT even as she settled into a comfortable middle-class American life, Dr. Sultan's anger burned within. She took to writing, first for herself, then for an Islamic reform Web site called Annaqed (The Critic), run by a Syrian expatriate in Phoenix.
An angry essay on that site by Dr. Sultan about the Muslim Brotherhood caught the attention of Al Jazeera, which invited her to debate an Algerian cleric on the air last July.

In the debate, she questioned the religious teachings that prompt young people to commit suicide in the name of God. "Why does a young Muslim man, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up?" she asked. "In our countries, religion is the sole source of education and is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched."
Her remarks set off debates around the globe and her name began appearing in Arabic newspapers and Web sites. But her fame grew exponentially when she appeared on Al Jazeera again on Feb. 21, an appearance that was translated and widely distributed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, known as Memri.

Memri said the clip of her February appearance had been viewed more than a million times.

"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations," Dr. Sultan said. "It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality."

She said she no longer practiced Islam. "I am a secular human being," she said.
The other guest on the program, identified as an Egyptian professor of religious studies, Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli, asked, "Are you a heretic?" He then said there was no point in rebuking or debating her, because she had blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran.

Dr. Sultan said she took those words as a formal fatwa, a religious condemnation. Since then, she said, she has received numerous death threats on her answering machine and by e-mail.
One message said: "Oh, you are still alive? Wait and see." She received an e-mail message the other day, in Arabic, that said, "If someone were to kill you, it would be me."

Dr. Sultan said her mother, who still lives in Syria, is afraid to contact her directly, speaking only through a sister who lives in Qatar. She said she worried more about the safety of family members here and in Syria than she did for her own.
"I have no fear," she said. "I believe in my message. It is like a million-mile journey, and I believe I have walked the first and hardest 10 miles."

article reprint from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/international/middleeast/11sultan.html?ei=5090&en=d13886daba5e586f&ex=1299733200&partner=rssus&pagewanted=print

On 9/11, an ecumenical reality check

2006-09-11T05:02:00.000-07:00

Ira Rifkin is a Baltimore Jewish Times columnist.

In January 1985, the Los Angeles newspaper I worked for assigned me to the religion beat. My first story was a feature on what was then a new phenomenon in Southern California, a fully licensed Muslim parochial school.

About 35 youngsters attended South Pasadena's New Horizon Preschool and Kindergarten. It was the first of its kind in Los Angeles County and it operated under the auspices of the Islamic Center of Southern California, then as now one of this nation's preeminent Muslim institutions. New Horizon's purpose, I was told, was "to teach the values of Islam to the new generation."

New Horizon, which now has grown considerably over the past two decades and now has several branches, was my introduction to Islam and to Muslims. Since then I've spent considerable professional time exploring the American Muslim community. I've also sought out participation in Jewish-Muslim interfaith activities; I've broken bread with Muslims at their homes and at mine, and at the White House at official presidential Ramadan break-the-fast events.

I fully embraced, even relished, these opportunities. Information and dialogue, I believed, could lower if not eliminate the barriers of suspicion that kept Muslims and Jews from understanding each others' hopes and fears. We live in the United States, not the Middle East, I told myself. Here, reason might prevail.

Sadly, I no longer have much faith in that coming to pass. Five years after the Twin Towers crashed and the Pentagon burned I find myself profoundly soured on the idea that the two communities can ever work together to defuse the disharmony between them. Certainly not for the foreseeable future. Perhaps never.

Jews are certainly not without blame. We have our hotheads and hardheads, Islamophobes and uncompromising irredentists. The difference between us and them, however, is that the majority in our camp, both in America and Israel, have long been willing to compromise.

That is not the case among the majority of Muslims, whose leading mainstream organizations, in the United States as well, insist that all Palestinians living outside the Jewish state's 1948 borders have a right to return to resettle in Israel. That's a recipe for Israel's demographic eradication and they know it.

The more time I spend with Muslims, the more I must conclude that, as a group, their worldview and that of most Jews are in such profound conflict as to render real dialogue virtually meaningless at this time. This is most true for Muslims from Middle East nations. But it extends as well to Muslims from south and east Asia, from elsewhere, and for African-American Muslims.

That's because a prime tenet of Islam is the uumah, the notion that there is an essential unity among all believers, regardless of where they live, and that it transcends nationality, race and ethnicity. Religious solidarity comes first. Islam is the primary social identity. This helps explain why American Caucasian converts to Islam with no direct link to Middle East tensions tend to adopt anti-Israel and even anti-Jewish attitudes.

There is no dialogue today; there is only contentious debate. Certainly, great differences divided Jews and Muslims prior to 9/11. But the events of that day, and of the years since, up to and including the Hezbollah-Israel conflict, have only deepened the mistrust and anger between us and them.

Jews are equated with Israel, Israel is equated with the United States; the absurdly mismanaged war in Iraq and the global conflict against "terrorism" are conflated in Muslim minds. Somehow, Jews — described in the Qur'an, Islam's scriptural text, as the "descendants of apes and pigs" — are deemed to stand behind it all, to have instigated a war against all of Islam that America is perceived to be fighting on behalf of Zionism; the Jews.

The question of Israel is no longer one of conflicting national narratives standing in the way of compromise. Islamists — those Muslims whose politics flow directly from their theology — have made this a religious war.

This Muslim animosity has gone beyond anti-Zionism. Anti-Semitism festers within the Muslim community like no other. For Islamists, the fight against Israel has become part of what the writer Yossi Klein Halevi calls the "theology of genocide." Jews must be eliminated solely because they are Jews. To call this Islamofascism, as President George W. Bush has done, is to underscore the ideology's extremist religious core.

The charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas, states the conflict's religious nature in no uncertain terms: "…The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [endowment] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up."

This religious anti-Semitism may be seen in America as well.

At a pro-Hezbollah August rally in Washington sponsored by leading American Muslim activist groups, the crowd, extolling Hezbollah's leader, chanted: "Nasrallah, Nasrallah; the martyr is the beloved of Allah; the Zionists are the enemy of Allah." Across the continent in San Francisco, at another pro-Hezbollah demonstration that same day, participants carried signs reading: "Nazi kikes out of Lebanon."

Osama bin Laden paid little lip service to Israel and the Palestinian cause prior to 9/11. His main beef then was against "crusader" troops — meaning the American military — stationed in Saudi Arabia — and Washington's propping up of the corrupt monarchy in Riyadh. Sure, he mentioned lands once ruled by Muslims lost to non-Muslim rule as being an affront to Muslim pride. But it was Andalusia — the Arab term for Spain when it was under Muslim rule — that he lamented over.

Only later did he add the Palestinian cause to his list of grievances against the West. What better way to rally Muslims made nervous by his audacious attack to his side? In doing so, he made war against Israel in the name of Islam, jihad, a top priority. Today, Iran, a nation in which Islamist ideology holds sway and that appears hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, competes with Al Qaeda for the honor of murdering Jews.

In 1999, Salam al-Marayati, the Iraqi-born executive director of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council, was bounced from a Clinton-era White House anti-terrorism panel after Jewish groups claimed he was sympathetic to terrorists; he had justified Palestinian attacks by saying Israel's "brutal occupation" was the root cause of the violence.

Mr. al-Marayati, one of America's leading Muslim political activists, was someone I met through my connection with New Horizons. I had come, I thought, to know him well, and had even edited some of his earliest opinion columns written for U.S. newspapers that urged understanding and acceptance of the American Muslim community.

In response to his dismissal from the terrorism panel, I published an op-ed in the New York Jewish Week and elsewhere arguing that it was preposterous for Jews to expect Arab- or Muslim-Americans to espouse a pro-Israel line and still retain the respect of their community. American Jews, I wrote, were better off building bridges to up-and-coming Arab and Muslim activists. Help Muslims gain a political toehold in America and they will not soon forget the favor, I said.

I would never write that column today, certainly not after Mr. al-Marayati suggested immediately after 9/11 that Israel was behind the attack in an effort to turn America against the Arab world. If anything, today I'd weigh in against helping Muslims navigate the American political system.

Yet despite all I've said here, I continue to second guess myself. I fear being blinded by anger. I mourn the loss of compassion for dead children no matter whom their parents were. I question whether I have adopted simplistic and even bigoted thinking.

Or worse, that I might stereotype all Muslims as ordinary Germans came to stereotype Jews, and in doing so lose all touch with my reason and humanity.

Is it an accident that 9/11 coincides with the Jewish calendar's most intense period? From Tisha b'Av, when we mourn the multitude of Jewish tragedies, we move to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, to repentance and forgiveness for ourselves and for others. What timing!

Stripped of all theology, Judaism for me comes down to a simple article of faith: What is today need not be tomorrow; the possibility of a better day is always there. This is the messianic principle at its most basic, a heartfelt prayer of hope that the process is indeed intelligently designed.

Five years after the Twin Towers crashed and the Pentagon burned, I struggle to remember this simple formula in the face of building evidence that a better day may be a long way off. It gets harder by the day.

Original source: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0906/911_reality_check.php3

Al-Jazeera Airs 'Previously Unshown' Bin Laden Tape

2006-09-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

Video Shows Bin Laden Meeting 9/11 Hijackers

CAIRO, Egypt — Al-Jazeera aired on Thursday what it called previously unshown footage in which Al Qaeda chief Usama bin Laden is seen meeting with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

The station did not say how it obtained the video, which was produced by As-Sahab, Al Qaeda's media branch.

The video showed bin Laden sitting with his former lieutenant Mohammed Atef and Ramzi Binalshibh, another suspected planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.

Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan in 2001. Binalshibh was captured four years ago in Pakistan and is currently in U.S. custody, and this week U.S. President George W. Bush announced plans to put him on military trial.

In the video, Bin Laden was wearing a dark robe and white head gear walking outdoors in a mountainous area. He smiled as he received several of what the tape said was several of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

The "Peaceful" Muslim demonstration in London

2006-08-24T23:07:00.000-07:00

Radical Muslims are very outspoken as to what drives them in their fanatical religioius ideology. Here are some recent photos from London, forwarded from pastor Nikolai Stefanov's friend.

When was the last time Western TV networks allowed you to see THIS on your screen?

And before any of you jumps, let me say this: no, I don't think ALL Muslims are like that. However, why is it so hard for so many people in the West to reazlize there are MANY Muslims who are JUST LIKE THAT. And these are not good news for any normal person.

Click on the pictures for bigger size. For the full photoset, please visit this Flickr address and View as slideshow

Israel protests against India's "Hitler" eatery

2006-08-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

The restaurant, which opened last week, was promoted with posters of the Fuehrer and Nazi swastikas, infuriating India's small Jewish population and sparking outrage in the community around the world.

"We hope the Indian authorities will ensure that Hitler being such a mass murderer did not get any rehabilitation," Daniel Zohar Zonshine, Israel's consul-general in Mumbai, told Reuters.

The multi-cuisine restaurant, which also has a lounge to smoke the exotic Indian water pipe or the "hookah", used publicity material on billboards featuring a red swastika carved in the name of the eatery.

Its owners, who removed a huge poster of Hitler initially installed at the entrance, have said they chose the German leader's name to stand out among hundreds of restaurants.

But India's remaining Jews -- most migrated to Israel and the West over the years -- say they could consider legal action.

Zonshine said he hoped the restaurant's owners would realise the hurt their action had caused to Jews.

"There is a limit to a gimmick. In India, we believe, if something like this hurts the sentiments of a community, it can be treated as a criminal offence," he said.

Authorities in Navi Mumbai, a Mumbai suburb, were not available for comment.

Navi Mumbai police chief Ramrao Wagh said he was yet to receive any complaint against the restaurant.

"In any case, I don't think any action is legally feasible," he told Reuters.

The restaurant's owners have said they were neither promoting Hitler nor the Nazi ideology, but would not change the restaurant's name.

They have said they would open two more branches in Mumbai with the same name by October.

original source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060823/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_india_israel_hitler

Who are Hezbollah?

2006-08-22T02:58:00.000-07:00

By Kathryn Westcott
BBC News Online

Hezbollah - or Party of God - emerged in Lebanon in the early 1980s and became the region's leading radical Islamic movement, determined to drive Israeli troops from Lebanon.

In May 2000 - due partly to the success of the party's military arm - one of its main aims was achieved. Israel's battered and bruised army was forced to end its two-decade occupation of the south.

Hezbollah now serves as an inspiration to Palestinian factions fighting to liberate occupied territory.

Palestinian demonstrators
Hezbollah has embraced the Palestinian cause
The party, in turn, has embraced the Palestinian cause and has said publicly that it is ready to open a second front against Israel in support of the intifada.

Hezbollah was conceived in 1982 by a group of clerics after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It was formed primarily to offer resistance to the Israeli occupation.

Inspired by the success of the Iranian Revolution, the party also dreamt of transforming Lebanon's multi-confessional state into an Iranian-style Islamic state. Although this idea was abandoned and the party today is a well-structured political organisation with members of parliament.

Terror

Hezbollah's political rhetoric has centred on calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. Its definition of Israeli occupation has also encompassed the idea that the whole of Palestine is occupied Muslim land and it has argued that Israel has no right to exist.

Hezbollah's spiritual head Sheikh Fadlallah is close to Iran

The party was long supported by Iran, which provided it with arms and money.

In its early days, Hezbollah was close to a contingent of some 2000 Iranian Revolutionary guards, based in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, which had been sent to Lebanon in 1982 to aid the resistance against Israel.

As Hezbollah escalated its guerrilla attacks on Israeli targets in southern Lebanon, its military aid from Iran increased.

The movement also adopted the tactic of taking Western hostages, through a number of freelance hostage taking cells: The Revolutionary Justice Organisation and the Organisation of the Oppressed Earth, which seized Terry Waite.

For many years, Hezbollah was synonymous with terror, suicide bombings and kidnappings. In 1983, militants who went on to join Hezbollah ranks carried out a suicide bombing attack that killed 241 US marines in Beirut.

Passionate and demanding

The party has operated with neighbouring Syria's blessing - with the guerrilla war against being a card for Damascus to play in its own confrontation with Israel over the occupation of the Golan Heights.

Over the two decades, Hezbollah evolved into a movement with thousands of trained guerrillas, members of parliament and a dynamic welfare programme benefiting thousands of Lebanese.

Hezbollah fighters
Hezbollah proved to be a formidable fighting force
It was passionate, demanding of its members and devoted to furthering an Islamic way of life.

In the early days, its leaders imposed strict codes of Islamic behaviour on towns and villages in the south - a move that was not universally popular with the region's citizens.

But, despite the early history of coercion, the party emphasises that its Islamic vision should not be interpreted as an intention to impose an Islamic society on the Lebanese.

Political moves

In recent years, Hezbollah has won considerable backing within Lebanon. Its social services programme was popular with the Shia community.

The group's successful hit-and-run guerrilla war on Israel's much-vaunted army assured it some support and a lot or respect from other religious communities.

While, the US listed the group as a terrorist organisation, the government in Beirut declared it a national resistance movement.

Its popularity with the Shia community - which makes up almost 40% of Lebanon's three million people - was confirmed in the 1992 parliamentary elections when Hezbollah led a successful campaign and won eight seats in parliament.

But it is not popular with all of Lebanon's different communities - the Christians, for example, have accuse it of trying to destabilise the country.

Was Saddam Regime a Broker for Terror Alliances?

2006-08-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

by Ray Robison

Newly declassified documents captured by U.S. forces indicate that Saddam Hussein's inner circle not only actively reached out to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan and terror-based jihadists in the region, but also hosted discussions with a known Al Qaeda operative about creating jihad training "centers," possibly in Baghdad.

Ray Robison, a former member of the CIA-directed Iraq Survey Group (ISG), supervised a group of linguists to analyze, archive and exploit the hundreds of captured documents and materials of Saddam's regime.

This is the final installment in a three-part series concerning a notebook kept by an Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) agent called Khaled Abd El Majid, and covers events taking place in 1999. The translation is provided by Robison's associate, known here as “Sammi.”

The first two translations from this notebook detailed an agreement between members of the Saddam regime and the Taliban to establish diplomatic and intelligence based cooperation. This final translation further advances the link between the Saddam regime and world-wide Islamic Jihad terrorism.

The relationship between the Taliban and Saddam appears to have been mediated by a Pakistani named Maulana Fazlur Rahman. Another document captured in Afghanistan and written by an Al Qaeda operative confirms the relationship between the Maulana and Saddam. The translation provided here includes an early 1999 meeting between the director of the IIS and the Maulana.

Another notebook entry records a meeting with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghani Islamic Jihadist and leader of the Islamic Party in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar made news recently with the BBC article Afghan Rebel’s pledge to al-Qaeda that reports on a video statement from Hekmatyar in which he states he will fight alongside A Qaeda. In this translation, Hekmatyar makes specific requests for a “center” in Baghdad and/or Tajikistan.

A third meeting involves an Islamist representing Bangladesh that we believe to be Fazlur Rahman Khalil. Another page of the notebook indicates Khalil is coming or came to Iraq. Khalil is a Taliban/Al Qaeda associate who signed the 1998 fatwa from Usama bin Laden declaring war on the United States.

Editor's notes: "Sammi" puts translation clarifications in parenthesis. Robison (RR) uses parenthesis for clarification and bold-face type for emphasis.

Translation:

Translation for ISGP-2003-0001412 follows (PDF):

Page 70, Left Side:

Saturday 3/20 at 11:45

Met with him Mr. MS4 (translator’s note: MS4 is the code name for the high ranking IIS official).

1. Intelligence and security cooperation.

2. Mr. MS4 informed him that the Iraqi president and Iraqi leadership are interested in him.

3. “We are ready to help you in any country and against your enemies”. (translator’s note: most probably this is MS4)

4. Fadlul Haq - The governor of Peshawar that was assassinated.

(translator’s note: points 5 and 6 are direct quotes from the Afghani)

5. “We are facing a vicious international plot against the Islamic Party and cannot find any country to help us at the time being”.

6. “Iran helped us at the beginning and we brought 2,000 fighters but things changed at the time being. Also the Russians called to help but we do not trust them. Moscow and Iran want the war to drag on.” (RR: this is probably the Taliban vs. Northern Alliance conflict). This is why he is coming to Baghdad for help. Asked Baghdad to help open a center in Tajikistan or in Baghdad and they will bring them (translator’s note: not clear what them refers to) in through Iran or Northern Iraq.

He asked for help in printing Afghani money in Baghdad or help in printing it in Moscow.

Page 69, Right Side:

Stinger missiles have a range of 5 kilometers. (translator’s note: there is only this one sentence on this page)

Page 69, Left Side:

Meeting of MS4 with 6951 on 4/10 at 8 p.m. in room 710.

He (6951) inquired about our relation with Usama (bin Laden).

(translator’s note: The Iraqi answer is not reported.).

He (6951) proposed to the Taliban to form a front with Iraq, Libya and Sudan.

He met some of them in Hajj (Translator’s note: Pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, it is one of the five pillars of Islam) and he came to the conclusion that they do not know anything about Foreign Relations.

The Taliban defense minister is Abdul Razzak (unclear) Association of Muslim Clerics.

They openly claim that they are against America.

He said that he was ready to build relations between the Taliban and Iraq.

(translator’s note: meeting continues on both sides of page 68/76, with questions about Pakistani politics and the other Islamic parties.) The Iraqi official says, “I suggest that the parties come closer together because that means power to Islam against the American and Zionist policies”.

Page 39, Left Side:

Meeting with an Islamist leader from Bangladesh. He promises support to Iraq. He says: “Let them know that I made Bangladesh a second country to Mr. President and we have 125 million (people).” (RR: Although no name is given for this meeting, it is important to note Fazlur Rahman Khalil, noted for meeting with Iraqi officials in the previous article, signed the 1998 fatwa as “Fazlur Rahman, Amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh”. This is a strong indication that this meeting is with Khalil or his representative.)

Page 27, Left side:

(translator’s note: contains notes with information on prior meetings recorded in the notebook.)

The mentioned person (Translator’s note: Fazlur Rahman) arrived to the country on 11/27/1999 and he was hosted in Al Rachid Hotel suite number 526. He will leave on 12/1/1999.

(translator’s comment: note No. 1 in a list of notes.)

He visited Iraq on the beginning of April 1999 and the ex-director of the intelligence, may God rest his soul, instructed him to mediate between the Taliban and the leader of the Afghani Islamic party, Hekmatyar following the request for mediation done by Hekmatyar to the leadership of Iraq during a visit when they met us on 3/19/1999.

End Translation

Analysis:

Because Arabic writing is right to left, the pages in this notebook go in reverse chronological order. The note on page 27 indicates that Hekmatyar met with the IIS on March 19, 1999. The translation of page 70 is dated March 20 and it refers to someone from the Islamic Party, which is Hekmatyar’s group. Therefore it makes sense that the meeting on page 70 is with Hekmatyar.

The note on page 27 also says the meeting was with the director if the IIS, so we believe MS4 is his code-name. It appears that Hekmatyar, a jihadist leader warring with the Taliban for control of Afghanistan at the time, asked Baghdad “to help open a center in Tajikistan or in Baghdad and they will bring them (translator’s note: not clear what them refers to) in through Iran or Northern Iraq.” There is a strong indication that this requested “center” is a jihadist training camp.

From a US Department of State report Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1996:

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar … maintained training and indoctrination facilities in Afghanistan, mainly for non-Afghans. They continue to provide logistic support and training facilities to Islamic extremists despite military losses in the past year. Individuals who trained in these camps were involved in insurgencies in … Tajikistan…

It looks very much like Hekmatyar, a long-time jihad leader and recently self-identified Al Qaeda associate, is asking the Saddam regime for a jihad training camp in Tajikistan and/or Baghdad.

Page 27 tells us that the Maulana Fazlur Rahman was meeting with the IIS Director in early April. The meeting on page 69 fits the time frame, has the code for the IIS director, and the guest speaks for the Taliban indicating that “6951” is the Maulana. According to these notes, the Maulana “proposed to the Taliban to form a front with Iraq, Libya and Sudan.” He also enquires about the IIS relationship to Usama bin Laden.

In researching the Maulana, a third document has been found that demonstrated the relationship between Saddam and the Maulana. The document which appears to be an IIS memo also mentions a relationship with Hekmatyar. There is no government authentication of the document. Because this document matches closely with what we find in the IIS agent notebook we will reference it so that the reader may decide.

The article entitled Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD’s, Had Extensive Terror Ties states:

A senior government official who is not a political appointee provided CNSNews.com with copies of the 42 pages of Iraqi Intelligence Service documents. The originals, some of which were hand-written and others typed, are in Arabic. CNSNews.com had the papers translated into English by two individuals separately and independent of each other.

The CNS report includes a translation of a memo from the IIS to Saddam. The memo is dated January 25, 1993. The subject is IIS influence with two groups: the JUI, led by Maulana Fazlur Rahman; and, the Afghani Islamic Party led by Hekmatyar. These are the same two men meeting with the IIS in Baghdad in 1999, according to the notebook.

The document states that the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) depended upon Pakistani support as well as foreign help from Iraq and Libya. It also mentions that the secretary general of the JUI has had a good relationship with the IIS since 1981, and that he is “ready for any mission”.

The IIS document reported on by CNS News also states that the Islamic Party of Hekmatyar relies on Iraqi funding. It says the relationship has existed since 1989 and has improved under Hekmatyar’s leadership. Although this document has not yet been validated by the U.S, government, we can see very specific information, not publicly available before 2004, that matches what we find in the IIS notebook. It indicates a long history of Saddam regime support to Islamic jihad groups, and that the IIS considers them organizations that will take on missions for Iraq’s interests.

Epilogue:

Let’s review what we have learned from the IIS notebook.

• We learned that in 1999 the IIS met with three significant leaders of Islamic jhad from Afghanistan: a warlord and Islamic jihadist; an Al Qaeda leader; and, a man known as the “Father of the Taliban.”

• The Saddam regime and Taliban leadership agreed to diplomatic ties and a secret intelligence service relationship. They discussed security cooperation with Hekmatyar’s Islamic Jihad group. The Taliban representative also agreed to support the Saddam regime in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier, a region sympathetic to and actively involved with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the world-wide Islamic jihad movement. An Islamist, most likely the Al Qaeda and Taliban affiliated Fazlur Rahman Khalil, promised the support of Bangladesh.

• We see a request to the Saddam regime for a training center in Baghdad or Tajikistan from a jihad leader accused by the U.S. State Department during the Clinton Administration of running Islamic extremist training camps.

• There is a discussion about transporting something into these centers, including a discussion that appears to mention surface-to-air missiles.

• And, we have numerous statements of Islamic fidelity between Afghani jihad leaders and the Saddam regime, with many statements of mutual animosity towards the United States and intent to cooperate.

This notebook thus provides significant evidence that the Saddam regime collaborated with and supported Islamic jihad elements in Afghanistan at a time when the Taliban and Al Qaeda were attacking United States citizens and their interests and plotting the 9/11 attacks.

In this notebook, we see a Saddam Hussein actively seeking to expand his sphere of influence in a region at the heart of the world-wide Islamic jihad movement.

This now-public relationship between Maulana Fazlur Rahman and Saddam Hussein deserves great scrutiny.

As we researched the Maulana, a picture came into focus that our team was not looking to find: The Maulana is a senior leader of an affiliation of Pakistani groups supportive of Islamic jihad. These groups include the JUI and the Jamaat Islami (JI). The JUI provided direct support to both the planner and paymaster of the 9/11 attacks. The Pakistani government accused the JI of working with Al Qaeda. The Maulana mediated an intelligence pact between the IIS and the Taliban.

Clearly, this evidence indicates that the Maulana was in a position to procure assistance from Iraq for the 9/11 attacks.

Dr. Laurie Mylroie, an expert on Iraq, testified in front of the 9/11 commission in 2003:

After al Qaeda moved to Afghanistan, Iraqi intelligence became deeply involved with it, probably, with the full agreement of Usama bin Ladin. Al Qaeda provided the ideology, foot soldiers, and a cover for the terrorist attacks; Iraqi intelligence provided the direction, training, and expertise…

This notebook demonstrates that Islamic jihad leaders in Afghanistan were seeking IIS assistance and Saddam was giving them that assistance.

The author welcomes your comment on the translation and analysis of this document. You can contact Ray Robison by emailing him at: saddamdossier@gmail.com.

Documents Support Saddam-Taliban Connection

2006-08-21T15:36:00.000-07:00

By Ray Robison

Did Saddam Hussein's inner circle and the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan actively court each other in hopes of forging an anti-American alliance in the region?

Ray Robison, a former member of the CIA-directed Iraq Survey Group (ISG), examined efforts by Saddam Hussein to build and hide weapons of mass destruction, and supervised a group of linguists to analyze, archive and exploit documents and materials of Saddam's regime.

In this second of a three-part examination of a newly-released document captured in Iraq, Robison offers further evidence that in 1999 the Taliban welcomed "Islamic relations with Iraq" to mediate among the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and Russia, and that the Taliban reciprocated with an invitation to Iraqi officials to visit Afghanistan.

The document appears to be a notebook kept by an Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) agent, and apparently captured in 2003. The translation is provided by Robison's associate, known here as “Sammi.” The notebook deals extensively with the meetings between a prominent Taliban supporter and former Saddam regime officials.

It is highly probable that the man in this meeting is Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani cleric described in an article from the BBC Profile: Maulana Fazlur Rahman as “A pro-Taliban cleric in Pakistan... one of the two main contenders for the post of the country's prime minister.” The BBC also said “Maulana Fazlur Rahman… is known for his close ties to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime.”

Part One of the Saddam Dossier appeared to chronicle Rahman's meeting with Taha Yassin Ramadan, the then-vice president of Iraq and Saddam's chief enforcer. Part Two describes a meeting with an unidentified Iraqi official referred to as “M.O.M.,” who possibly is Tahir Jalil Habbush al Tikriti, the director of the IIS. This translation refers to the previous meeting of Maulana Fazlur Rahman and Ramadan. It also mentions a future meeting between the Maulana and Saddam Hussein. A second document captured in Afghanistan seems to confirm that a relationship existed between Saddam and the Maulana. The document is posted under the identifying Harmony number AFGP-2002-601693 at the West Point Terrorism Center.

Part One's translation from this notebook indicated that the Taliban under the leadership of Mullah Omar was seeking Iraq's support in mediating with Russia and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. This translation reveals that the Saddam regime had expectations of assistance from the Taliban, and that the two agreed to a secret intelligence relationship. The Iraqi official tells the Maulana that they want the Taliban to support Iraq against U.S. actions. They also discuss their common enemy: the United States.

Also mentioned in the notebook is Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a Pakistani Taliban leader and Al Qaeda associate, who does not appear to be present at this meeting. The notebook mentions Rahman Khalil on page 72, at the bottom of a list of Islamic clerics coming to Iraq: “Very important: Fazlur Rahman Khalil: Leader of the Ansar Movement. Does not have a position inside Pakistan but inside Afghanistan and Kashmir.” Khalil was a co-signatory of the infamous Usama bin Laden 1998 fatwa against the U.S.

Sammi adds notes for clarity in parenthesis.

▪ Translator’s notes: The notebook is 76 pages. The notebook belongs to someone called Khaled Abd El Majid, and covers events taking place in 1999.

▪ The second meeting occurs on Nov. 28, 1999. This is the translation of the second meeting.

Translation:

Translation for ISGP-2003-0001412 follows (PDF):

Meeting of Mr. M.O.M. with Sheikh Maulana Fazlur Rahman on Sunday, 11/28, 7:45 PM

Words of welcoming.

Probably M.O.M.: We are aiming to arrange a meeting between you and Mr. President Leader (translator’s note: this is how Iraqi officials refer to Saddam). But in the beginning we were instructed that Mr. Vice-President will meet you. I personally met Hekmatyar (translator’s note: an Afghani warlord fighting the Taliban) and he asked us to interfere for the possibility of closer relations with the Taliban. And he sent us emissaries concerning this issue.

Fazlur Rahman: I am the one who started with this issue, the relation between Taliban and Iraq, and it is our idea. The brothers in Afghanistan are facing the pressure of America, and are struggling against America and aim to have some connections between Afghanistan and Iraq, and it is a good start to establish the relations with Iraq and Libya and our association has taken this responsibility upon her. I already met with Mr. the Vice-President and the previous head of the directorate, may God rest his soul (translator’s note: apparently the head of the directorate passed away) and both proposed that Hekmatyar and the Taliban should get to an agreement. I spoke with the Taliban about this issue and they started meeting with delegations from the Islamic Party, and I met Mullah Omar and his reply was positive.

As a party, our stand is that there should be an agreement between the Taliban and the rest of the opposition, Shah Ahmad Massoud and Rabbani. And Mullah Omar said that we are looking towards this and that (not clear) and (not clear) and Ahmad Al Kilani and Jalal Al Din Hakkani do not oppose us. Therefore, Hekmatyar is on the positive way but we are in a war situation and that needs a lot of trust, and there are hurdles to this because he fought us and killed us and he has problems with the opposition in the North and with us. After repeated contacts we will reach an agreement, but in the form of steps. Concerning the relations with Iraq, he said that they are our brothers and Muslims and are facing pressures from America, like us and like Sudan and Libya. And he (Mullah Omar) desires to get closer relations with Iraq and that Iraq may help us in reducing our problems. Now we are facing America and Russia. He requested the possibility of Iraq intervening to build a friendship with Russia since Russia is no more the number one enemy. And we request Iraq’s help from a brotherly point of view. They are ready for this matter and they prefer that the relation between Iraq and Taliban be an independent relation from Hekmatyar’s relation with the Taliban. We want practical steps concerning this issue and especially the relationship with the Taliban and (not clear, but could be Iraq).

An Iraqi, most probably M.O.M.: I want to discuss three points.

The first is the relation with Taliban. It should be understood that this issue is completely independent from the mediation requested by Hekmatyar to get to an agreement with the Taliban. Developing the relation with Taliban is essential and this development requires meetings to create a common ground of understanding. We already believe that there are no points of disagreement between us and the Taliban because we are both in one trench facing the world’s oppression. But the details of the relation and its management are linked to the facts of the international situation. I find that by simply meeting with you (Fazlur Rahman) is a step forward in the relation with Taliban because we know well how much they trust you and what you represent for them. And when you relay our point of view for them they will understand it. For the future we think that we will arrange relations between us, as an intelligence service, and them in a secret way to establish the strong base of this relation. In the meeting (translator’s note: future meeting) and after reviewing the Taliban’s point of view, we would discuss the possibility of us making an effort to stabilize the situation between Taliban and Russia. We could discuss the subject through the intelligence channel. We look forward to security and stability in Afghanistan, the control of the Taliban and the construction of a political system according to the political and ideological choices of the Taliban. We look forward to assure the Russians that Afghanistan does not constitute a threat to Russia. Afghanistan is a country that wants to live in independence and by dialogue it is possible to reach common grounds to finally get to the result hoped for.

The second point is the subject of the agreement between Hekmatyar and the Taliban.

We proposed it for a single reason related to our psychological stand concerning Taliban. We hope that they will win and control. We felt that Hekmatyar hopes that Taliban will control the situation and his intentions are true. Because when he sees the different political and military parties in Afghanistan he knows that the best choice is Taliban.

(translator’s note: the Iraqi continues to expand his view on how all parties should come together through trust and negotiations.)

The third point which is important for us is outside Afghanistan. It is the spiritual relation which ties us with the Association of Islamic Scholars and we know your role in supporting the Iraqi cause and the effect you have on the Pakistani street. In the coming two weeks we are going to a confrontation with America because the U.S. has put all its weight in the Security Council to publish the Dutch-British resolution. We refuse this resolution and view it as a life-long embargo. We look to our Muslim brothers in particular to support us and especially our brothers in the Association of Islamic Scholars to organize protests in Pakistan against the resolution when it is made official. We ask our Muslim brothers in Pakistan to do this effort. We are trying and we have contacts with Muslims all over Asia and especially in Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and India. We hope that during the two coming weeks you will ask our friends in those associations to demonstrate.

Fazlur Rahman: Concerning the relations between the Taliban and Iraq I was informed that they are going to start those relations in a secret manner and they are waiting for the answer and I will inform them that you will answer them through the embassy (translator’s note: could be through the Iraqi embassy of Kabul, if they had one, or Islamabad in Pakistan). Concerning the agreement with Hekmatyar, we are going to proceed with this issue. Concerning the third point, the Association of Islamic Scholars has a popular voice in Pakistan and we will always side with Iraq and we hope that the new government will have a positive stand with Iraq.

Last July we received information that America wants to attack Afghanistan because of Usama bin Laden so we did a (not clear) and agreed to contact the Taliban to be sure and they said it was true. We received information about CIA and U.S. commandos reaching the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and they started dropping bombs on Afghanistan and they used the Pakistani airfields to bomb important positions in Kandahar. We as a Muslim people do not accept the American presence on our soil. A representative from the U.S. embassy came and told me, “You said that America was your enemy, how can you say that we are your enemy and the enemy of Islam?” So I told them that you took Russia’s role in bombing Afghanistan and you are bombing Muslims. Then they said that they wanted Usama so I told them that Usama is in Sudan and that he was in Afghanistan during the rule of Rabbani and I added that they do not have a treaty to hand over criminals, as they pretend, with Afghanistan.

End Translation

Analysis:

Note the Iraqi official says, “We hope that they will win and control,” referring to the Taliban. According to this notebook, Iraq has clearly thrown its support to the Taliban, the epicenter of Islamic Jihad. This is a clear indication that Saddam had no problem working with Jihadists outside of Iraq.

According to the notebook, the Iraqi official also tells the Maulana: “The third point which is important for us is outside Afghanistan. It is the spiritual relation which ties us with the Association of Islamic Scholars and we know your role in supporting the Iraqi cause and the effect you have on the Pakistani street.” This statement may indicate that a previous relationship was in place before this meeting between the Saddam Regime and the Maulana.

This excerpt from the notebook indicates that both the Taliban and Saddam Regime agreed to a secret relationship involving intelligence services. We do not know the scope or extent of that operational relationship, but this notebook and other documents give us further clues. It might well be noted that if Saddam Hussein was merely looking for an Islamic voice to take up his cause, there are plenty of Arab and Muslim organizations that do not depend on violence and terrorism directed at the United States. This point is illustrated in the BBC article Anger and Dismay in South Asia:

"Saddam Hussein is a hero of Muslims," a protester cried at a rally in the northwestern city of Peshawar, AFP reports."We want the government to give us permission to go to Iraq to fight against the U.S. forces," another protester told hundreds of supporters.Supporters of the Islamic Jamaat-i-Islami party assembled in the eastern city of Lahore, chanting "Bush is a dog," and "Save Iraqi children," AFP reports."America has signed its own death warrant," Islamist leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman said.

Since the Iraqi official in this meeting is not named, we can not be certain with whom the Maulana is meeting. But there are clues. First, it is clear Rahman has high level access and would most likely be meeting with a senior member of the government, a department head. This official talks about an intelligence based relationship indicating this might be the chief of the IIS, the former Iraq Intelligence Service. The Maulana says, “I already met with Mr. the Vice President and the previous head of the directorate, may God rest his soul”. This may indicate he is speaking to the current head of the directorate. An excerpt from the website Global Security provides insight:

One killing believed to be politically motivated included that of Intelligence Chief Rafa Daham Mujawwal Al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's second cousin and the former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey. Rafa died Oct. 11, 1999, three days after he was removed from his post. Government explanations for his death included both that he had died in a car crash and that he had suffered a heart attack

So it seems possible the IIS Chief died just prior to this meeting and the Maulana is meeting with the new IIS chief. The new IIS chief would have been Tahir Jalil Habbush al Tikriti, who according to the Multi-National Forces' Iraq Web site as of January, 2006 is still listed as “at large.” Of course, if he has not been captured, it is reasonable to assume he has not been interrogated.

Tahir Jalil Habbush al Tikriti came to public attention in December, 2003 when the Telegraph UK reported Terrorist Behind September 11th Strike was Trained by Saddam.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in U.S. history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".

Atta, of course, led the 9/11 attacks. It is interesting to note in this new context of an intelligence based relationship between the Taliban and Saddam regime, orchestrated by Pakistani contacts, specifically Maulana Rahman, that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Pakistani passport holder arrested in Pakistan in 2003. It also is worth noting that Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi, who officials say sent cash to lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, also was arrested in Pakistan with Khalid. Both of these men were arrested in the home of a member of Pakistan's largest religious political party, Jamaat Islami, of which Maulana Fazlur Rahman is a leader. A further translation from this notebook indicates that in another meeting, again believed to be with the Maulana, joint military training between the Taliban and the Iraqi military is proposed.

Due to the information provided in this notebook, we see a possible secret, intelligence based, operational relationship between the Taliban and the Saddam regime via Maulana Fazlur Rahman. We can discern that the Maulana most likely is meeting with Habbush al Tikriti, implicated in documents published by the Telegraph newspaper in reference to the training of Atta in Iraq. We also have an annotation that indicates Pakistani Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a known bin Laden associate, Al Qaeda terrorist and a 1998 fatwa co-signatory, also was traveling to Iraq in 1999. A further translation from this notebook indicates that in another meeting, again with the Maulana, the Taliban proposes joint military training with the Iraqi military.

Documenting Saddam's Link to Terror

2006-08-21T15:31:00.000-07:00

by Ray Robison

Was Saddam Hussein a security threat to the United States? Did the Iraqi dictator have connections to Al Qaeda or other terrorist ties? What happened to the weapons of mass destruction everyone believed were in his possession? Did Saddam move them? Did they ever exist?

All of those questions have been dogging President George W. Bush and his administration since the start of the Iraq war. Politicians and respected U.S. military and intelligence officials have weighed in publicly on both sides of the debate, but until recently the general public has had little of the information necessary to make a fully informed decision on its own.
But that is changing.

The U.S. government seized thousands of classified Iraqi government papers when Saddam's regime was toppled, and Washington recently released a trove of these documents on the Pentagon's Foreign Military Studies Office Web site.
The documents, many in Arabic and with no accompanying translation, provide multiple insights into events inside pre-war Iraq. The dossier, however, is huge and disorganized. Digging out its secrets is a laborious task — one that the U.S. government decided to leave to others.

One of those who has taken up the challenge is Ray Robison, currently a military operations research analyst specializing in aviation and missile research in Huntsville, Ala. Robison served on active duty as a fire support officer for the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Wash. and as a Battalion Signal Officer with the 101st Airborne. His 10 years of active service include duty in the Gulf War and on peacekeeping assignment in Kosovo.

Robison also served in Qatar as a contractor for the Defense Intelligence Agency, working as part of the CIA -directed Iraq Survey Group (ISG) that examined efforts by Saddam Hussein to build and hide weapons of mass destruction, among other objectives. (The ISG's conclusion: Saddam had substantial WMD capability, but destroyed or otherwise disposed of much of it, though he retained the capability of restoring much of it should sanctions against him be lifted.)

Robison supervised a group of linguists to analyze, archive and exploit documents and materials of Saddam's regime. He has seen thousands of these documents and translations previously, having worked with them for a year in Iraq. He was involved with briefing his group's findings to senior U.S. military and political leaders. Robison was awarded for his efforts by the Iraq Survey Group as a media shift supervisor.

With a small cadre of independent translators to support his efforts, Robison will now translate and analyze scores of the unexplored trove of documents from Saddam's regime in a FOXNews.com exclusive series: The Saddam Dossier.
In addition to translation, Robison will provide analysis based upon his work for the Iraq Survey Group and his military operations research experience. On occasion, he or a translator will remark in the translation itself for clarity, but will maintain the integrity of the document. All of their work will be linked online to the original Arabic texts, stored on the Foreign Military Studies Office Web site. Robison's analysis, however, is based on his own opinions.

"It is my belief," Robison says, "that those who just want to know the truth will find new and shocking information in these documents and may even change their beliefs about the reasons for the war." "However, these documents may not answer every valid question, and conclusions may change based on new documentation."

Jews, Christians and the Stumbling Block

2006-08-21T13:45:00.000-07:00

by J. Lee Grady
Editor of Charisma Magazine

As Hezbollah rockets are falling on northern Israel and Iran’s president is vowing to wipe the Jewish state off the map, Israeli leaders have been surprised to learn that evangelical Christians in the United States are their best friends. We are expressing solidarity with the nation of Israel like never before.
That’s a good thing—because Christians in previous times have been guilty of harboring anti-Semitism. Thankfully we are adjusting our attitudes and our nation is siding with democracy and against terrorists.

''Yet our coziness with Israel has created an awkward theological dilemma. Although we feel a biblical obligation to protect Jews from ethnic hatred (and we should), we also have been given a mandate to share the gospel with Jew and gentile alike. After all, the apostle Paul himself—the most celebrated Jewish convert to Christianity ever—told us that the message of Christ was sent “to the Jew first” (Rom. 1:16, NASB).''

To complicate things, some Jews believe that Christian evangelism is a form of anti-Semitism—as if converting a person to faith in Jesus strips them of their Jewishness. For that reason, some Christians who have become involved in pro-Israel activism actually have stopped sharing the gospel with Jews altogether. Some have even developed strange doctrines that suggest that Jews, because of God’s Old Covenant promises, are granted special tickets to heaven as if they don’t need Jesus to save them from their sins.

I realize I am sticking my neck out to say this, but let’s use some logic here. Do we believe the Bible or not? If the Christians in the book of Acts—most of whom were Jews who converted to Christ—aggressively shared Jesus throughout Israel and beyond, why should we back off from that assignment?

I am grateful that Susan Perlman and my other friends at the Jews for Jesus (JFJ) ministry in San Francisco have not backed down. Throughout the month of July, 150 JFJ staff and volunteers descended upon the greater New York City area including Long Island and northern New Jersey. They distributed 1.8 million gospel pamphlets on the streets, sent 450,000 brochures through the mail and showed a movie about Jesus to 80,000 Yiddish-speaking Chasidic Jews.

And JFJ was happy to announce that 241 Jewish people prayed to receive Christ as their Messiah during their Behold Your God campaign. Besides that, 13 television stations ran reports on JFJ and every major newspaper ran articles, including the Jewish press.

Of course the critics came out in full force. JFJ has come to expect this every time they share their faith with the Jewish community. But one JFJ staffer responded: “If they knew what we knew about Jesus, they would be joining us in the proclamation of the gospel, not opposing it.”

God is not schizophrenic. Yet He calls us not only to love the state of Israel but also to proclaim the message of Christ to the Jewish people. One responsibility does not cancel the other.

And while we are on the subject of Israel and controversy, let me stick my neck out further to say that God also expects us to care about our Arab neighbors—and to share Christ with them as well. Arab Christians living in places such as Bethlehem, Beirut and Baghdad often are sidelined and forgotten in the midst of Middle East violence. They know, perhaps better than anyone, that Jesus is the only hope for reconciliation in that war-torn region.

It is especially discouraging to our Arab Christian brothers when they see us supporting Israeli military actions yet withholding the message of Christ from Jews. To them, it appears we are putting our trust in guns and smart bombs rather than in the power of the gospel.

How do we respond to this complicated crisis? We must defend Israel’s right to exist and support every effort to stop terrorism, whether it is hatched by Hezbollah, al-Qaida or the Iranian government. We must pray for the peace of Jerusalem, which includes praying for the 1.3 million Arabs who live in the state of Israel.

And we must, above all, agree with the apostle Paul’s prayer: ''“So all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:26)''. Any pro-Israel work we do cannot be truly biblical if we compromise our mandate to share the love of Christ with those He first came to save.

MY TAKE:

"Even though the article is not dealing directly with the Middle East tensions, I think it's a good and thought provoking piece. What's your take? Use the comments feature below."

Why this blog?

2006-05-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

I realize that people may ask the question: "Why this blog, George?"

Thanks for asking.

I'll be brief and to the point. Many Christians have become friends with Israel and have supported the Jewish right to the land as a result of a their eschatological convictions. While I respect everyone's spiritual convictions and am grateful for every person who supports Israel, my stance is a little different. My conviction is also rooted in Biblical worldview but it has nothing to do with apocalyptic eschatology. To me the it's a justice issue. The credibility of the Church in standing for Israel and exposing radical Islam is much greater when we take a stand for justice. This is where we can find common ground with most people in this world. Addressing the problems of the Middle East, anti-semitism, terrorism and radical Islam from the standpoint of justice doesn't diminish anybody's spirituality. In fact, the Church is just waking up to the fact that God is a God of Justice. He speaks through he prophet Isaiah: "Keep justice and do righteousness for my salvation is near to come and my righteousness to be revealed." (Is. 56:1)

Simply put, the fear of the Lord is the ultimate form of accountability. To live your life fully aware that one day each and every one of us will stand before Him to answer for our deeds in life. This means we must know the truth about the world around us and we must do, each one of us our part in working with God to bring forth justice in this world.

Islamofascism, terrorism and anti-semitism deny justice to the Jews and Israel, to the Arabs living in Israel and to everyone in this world who becomes a target of its monstrous agenda.

This blog is my humble effort to inform, educate and propel to action as many people as possible to counter successfully Islamofascism, Islamic terrorism, propaganda and anti-semitism by providing news, commentaries and other facts exposing the true beast in the Middle East.

On a purely human level I have nothing against Arabs and Muslims per se. In fact, to label all Arabs as Muslims is an injustice in itself. To say that all Muslims are murders is an injustice, too. The true clash is between the spirit of anti-semitism and those who have identified with it on one side and with humanity on the other.

Our investigative team will strive to provide:

- facts and evidence exposing the true nature of the players involved.
- analysis and information helping the readers to understand the complex nature of the Middle East conflict.
- reference to trustworthy media materials and studies that can be used by media professionals, bloggers, web site editors, students and practically anyone who is working with information and media

There are so many people today who have grown weary with the war on terror. Many people see the United States as the aggressor and refuse to see the bigger picture, both in scope and in time. Many people in the West refuse to understand how fundamentally evil is militant/radical Islam. They refuse to accept the fact that Islamic radicals have an agenda for world domination, fueled by anti-semitism.

Anti-semitism fueled Hitler's fascism. Anti-semitism today fuels Islamic radicals and terrorists. This is not only a religious issue and a conflict of religious interpretation. It's a justice issue and it concerns every free thinking person. It's a life and death issue. Life as in Jews and Israel having the right to live, just as any other person and nation in the world and death as in radical Islamists being willing to die and murder everyone who doesn't submit to their idea for peace.