[b]A study released by the EU’s racism and xenophobia monitoring centre astounded experts by concluding that the wave of anti-Jewish persecution over the last two years stemmed from neo-Nazi or other racist groups.[/b]
“The largest group of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic activities appears to be young, disaffected white Europeans,” said a summary released to the European Parliament . “A further source of anti-Semitism in some countries was young Muslims of North African or Asian extraction.
”Traditionally, anti-Semitic groups on the extreme Right played a part in stirring opinion,“ it added.
[b]The headline findings contradict the body of the report. This says most of the 193 violent attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher shops, cemeteries and rabbis in France in 2002 - up from 32 in 2001 - were ”ascribed to youth from neighbourhoods sensitive to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, principally of North African descent.[/b]
“The percentage attributable to the extreme Right was only nine per cent in 2002,” it said.
The report on Belgium said most of the fire-bomb and machine-gun attacks on Jewish targets were the result of a spillover from the Palestinian intifada.
[b]The European Jewish Congress accused the EU watchdog of twisting data from the 15 member states to suit its own ideological bias, describing the report as a catalogue of “enormous contradictions, errors and omissions.”[/b]
“We cannot let it be said that the majority of anti-Semitic incidents come from young, disaffected white men. This is in complete contradiction with the facts recorded by the police,” it said.
[b]The EU suppressed a report last year by German academics concluding that Arab gangs were largely responsible for a sudden surge in the anti-Jewish violence, allegedly because the findings were politically unpalatable.[/b]
[b]Victor Weitzel, who wrote a large section of yesterday’s far more detailed study, told The Telegraph that the latest findings had been consistently massaged by the EU watchdog to play down the role of North African youth. “The European Union seems incapable of facing up to the truth on this,” he said. “Everything is being tilted to ensure nice soft conclusions.[/b]
”When I told them that we need to monitor the inflammatory language being used by the Arab press in Europe, this was changed to the ‘minority press’.
“Honestly, it’s incredible,” he said.
EUROPE: "WE ONLY PAID FOR SOME PALESTINIAN TERRORISM"
[b]THE EUROPEAN UNION HAS ADMITTED THAT [i]SOME [/i]OF THE MONEY THEY'VE BEEN FUNNELLING TO THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY JUST [i]MIGHT [/i]HAVE BEEN USED TO MURDER JEWISH CHILDREN.[/b]
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Tens of thousands of euro of EU funds may have been diverted to people linked with Palestinian terrorism, according to a report from the European Parliament, obtained by the EUobserver.
The report cites documentary evidence seen by a Parliamentary working group- set up last year after allegations that EU funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA) had been misused - that between 21,500-39,000 US dollars of EU funds may have been transferred to terrorists.
It is the first time that the EU has judged its own funds to Palestine may not been used for their intended purpose.
The allegations relate to funds given by the EU directly to the Palestinian Authority account from June 2001 until December 2002.
[i]Israel's Hope and Despair by Judy Lash Balint[/i] http://frontpagemag.com/Artic... Life in Leipzig during the 1930s was torture for Jews, and they were hungry and humiliated. But none of them resorted to blowing themselves up in restaurants or night-clubs. How come?
[i]Hamas Planned to Murder Former Foreign Minister David Levy - Meir Suissa (Maarivenglish.com)[/i] http://www.maarivintl.com/ind...
About a month and a half ago, the General Security Service (GSS) and the IDF detained a [b]Hamas activist dispatched to murder former foreign minister David Levy. [/b]Details of the incident were cleared for publication Wednesday.
Majdi abu Hamis, 24, from the Jenin area, who worked at a Beit Shean seafood shop, was arrested following intelligence information warning of the plot.
Whereas in the 1990s I was fairly optimistic that the Palestinians had accepted in their hearts the need for a compromise and for a two-state solution, now I'm very doubtful. I don't think the Palestinians really want to agree to a two-state solution. They want a one-state solution, which means Israel's destruction and the turning of all of Palestine into one Arab majority state.
Ethnic cleansing is a sport long and consistently practiced by the Arabs, from Muhammad, who ethnically cleansed Arabia of its Jewish tribes back in the seventh century, down to the Arab world in the 19th and 20th centuries, which systematically cleansed their communities of Jews. Almost no Jews live in the Arab world today, and, for that matter, there are very few Christian communities in the Arab world. The Arabs between the seventh and the twentieth centuries took care to expel them, massacre them, or forcibly convert them to Islam. (Atlantic Monthly)
[i]CNN’s Terror Coverup by Alex Safian[/i] http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12791" title="http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12791" target="_blank"http://frontpagemag.com/Artic...
When Hussam Abdo, a young Palestinian teenager, was caught at an Israeli checkpoint with a suicide belt hidden under his sweater, the efforts of Israeli soldiers to help him safely cut off the belt were broadcast around the world, thanks to the chance presence of an AP cameraman. The New York Times published on its front page a five photo sequence taken from the video, and many other papers gave the story and photos similar prominence.
CNN also covered the breaking story, and a few days later returned to the incident with a “spotlight” report on Palestinian “children as weapons of war,” (Mar. 27, 2004), seeking to understand, as anchor Carol Lin put it, “... what convinces these children that they should strap a belt of explosives to themselves and risk their lives for whatever cause.” (After clicking on the link scroll down most of the way to find the segment.)
Unfortunately, the segment, reported by CNN’s Cairo Bureau Chief, Ben Wedeman, succeeded only in obscuring the issue by never once mentioning the sustained campaign of hatred and incitement against Jews and Israelis that has been a staple of Palestinian newspapers, television, radio, mosques, summer camps and classrooms. Instead of exploring for viewers the horrifically effective Palestinian brainwashing campaign that has convinced so many Palestinians to kill and be killed, CNN in effect blamed Israel for the suicide bombings.
The BBC employs a "gross double standard to the Jewish state" that smacks of anti-Semitism, Minister-without-Portfoli o Natan Sharansky charged in a letter he sent to the British news service Tuesday morning. He was reacting to its coverage of the IDF's arrest of a 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber last week.
In comparison to other international news organizations, which focused on the use of children by Palestinian terrorist groups, the BBC portrayed the event as "Israel's cynical manipulation of a Palestinian youngster for propaganda purposes," he wrote.
[i]Terrorists try to recruit child as suicide bomber[/i] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pag ename=JPost/JPArticle/Sho wFull&cid=1080626718524" title="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pag ename=JPost/JPArticle/Sho wFull&cid=1080626718524" target="_blank"http://www.jpost.com/servlet/...
Palestinian terrorists tried to recruit a 15-year-old as a suicide bomber, at one point locking him in a dark room, but also [i]luring him with clothes, a cell phone and promises of paradise[/i], his family said Tuesday.
The story of ninth-grader Tamer Khweirah, who was extricated by an alert older brother, underscored the growing use of children by terrorists and stoked Palestinian debate over what is permissible in the fight with Israel.
Tamer is one of four teens arrested by the Israeli military in the West Bank city of Nablus in the past week on suspicion they were recruited by terrorists. One of the four, Hussam Abdo, 16, was caught at an Israeli checkpoint south of Nablus last week with eight kilograms (18 pounds) of explosives strapped to his body.
The boys knew each other, relatives said. Tamer, Hussam and a third youngster attended the same Nablus high school.
The Israeli military said Palestinian militants are increasingly targeting youngsters, in part because they arouse less suspicion at Israeli checkpoints.
[b]AT A MUSLIM MARCH IN SOUTH AFRICA TO PROTEST THE DEATH OF THE HAMAS CHILD-MURDERER YASSIN, A FATHER PARADED HIS 6 YEAR OLD SON AROUND IN AN IMITATION EXPLOSIVE BELT.[/b]
This six-year-old boy, dressed as a Palestinian suicide bomber, complete with a belt of fake explosives strapped to his body, says he wants to go to heaven - and his father says his child wants to be a martyr.
Uzair Dockrat was taken by his father Mohammad to yesterday's march in Pretoria, organised by the Muslim community to voice anger at the killing of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin in Gaza City last week.
Uzair was paraded days after a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, Hossam Abdo, was captured by Israeli soldiers at a Gaza City checkpoint with about 8kg of explosives strapped to his body. He said he had been paid to carry out a suicide mission.
After prompting from his father, Uzair swore revenge on Israel for the killing. According to his father, Uzair expressed a wish to become a martyr. "Martyrs are heroes ... they go to heaven," Uzair said. "They (Israel) kill our people with tanks and helicopters. We can blow them up," he said.
[b]BAD? OH, IT'S WORSE. THE BOY'S FATHER IS A UNIVERSITY LECTURER! HA!! IT GETS BETTER. EVEN AS HIS 6 YEAR OLD SON STANDS THERE WEARING A SUICIDE BELT AND ENCOURAGED TOWARD "MARTYRDOM, THIS "ACADEMIC" CLAIMS THAT THE PALESTINIAN TEENAGER ARRESTED LAST WEEK WEARING A REAL SUICIDE BELT WAS "AN ISRAELI SET UP." [/b]
Dockrat claims the recent case of a Palestinian teenager, wearing a suicide jacket, being arrested at an Israeli checkpoint, was an Israeli set-up. "The Hamas group never uses children in suicide-bomb attacks and it occurs mostly on buses where there is a civilian target.
HERE'S A WEBLOG http://users.lmi.net/zombie/s... WITH PICTURES FROM THE FEBRUARY "ANTI-WAR" RALLY IN SAN FRANCISCO. LOOKS LIKE SOME PEOPLE WERE NOT JUST ANTI-WAR. HERE'S A SAMPLE PICTURE. [image]rsheinfield_247498 503.jpg[/image]
With Hamas vowing revenge against all Israelis in the wake of last week's assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Israel may want to reconsider its recent decision to scale back its security fence in the West Bank. Especially when a number of other countries — fed up with cross-border terrorism, smuggling, and illegal immigration — are doing the exact opposite.
Although their actions have received scant headlines, from South Asia to Western Europe, several countries have built or are in the process of building protective barriers similar to the ones erected by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The border-security problems faced by these countries, while daunting in their own right, are a far cry from those of Israel, which is engaged in a perpetual struggle for its very existence, one that promises only to grow more precarious with Yassin's death.
But while the Israelis are currently awaiting an "advisory opinion" by the United Nation's International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legality of their fence, the U.N. has all but ignored security fences built or being planned by Spain, India, Thailand, Botswana, Uzbekistan, and Saudi Arabia.
Could the U.N.'s singling out of Israel have something to do with its historic hostility towards the Jewish state, exemplified by the more than 400 resolutions the U.N. General Assembly has passed against Israel since 1964?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ASKS THE RETORICAL QUESTION: "WHEN SHOULD THE U.S. STOP SUPPORTING ISRAEL.?" HIS CONCLUSION: WHEN ISRAEL STARTS ACTING LIKE THE P.A. BY TARGETING WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND TURNING INTO A REPRESSIVE FASCIST STATE. THE ARTICLE REALLY BRINGS HOME THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A FREE ISRAEL FIGHTING FOR ITS SURVIVAL AND A MURDEROUS, TOTALITARIAN P.A. BENT ON MURDERING JEWS AND OPPRESSING ITS OWN PEOPLE.
[i]Israel Turns Its Sights on the Terrorists Surrounding Arafat - Toby Harnden (Sunday Telegraph-UK)[/i] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...;$sessionid$N5I5KEN52U13B QFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/ news/2004/03/28/wmid28.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/ 28/ixnewstop.html
Senior Israeli intelligence officials claim they have detailed evidence proving that [b]Arafat's Ramallah headquarters is a refuge for some of the most wanted Palestinian terrorist suspects and a nerve centre for planning suicide bombings and murdering Israelis.[/b]
[b]The evidence that Arafat is at the apex of a terrorist infrastructure is being used by some Israeli ministers to argue that he should be killed as Sheikh Yassin, the leader of the Hamas terror group, was last week.[/b]
An IDF document lists 17 wanted members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and Tanzim militia, both part of Arafat's Fatah movement, said to be sheltering in his compound.
Topping the list is Kamel Ghanem, 27, Ramallah commander of the Al-Aqsa group, accused of planning several suicide bombings and of having taken part in gun attacks. Number two is Khaled Shawish, a senior Tanzim fugitive with links to Iran and Hizballah. Another is Mohammed Damra, the commander of Force 17, Arafat's presidential guard. "He is a commander of terrorist actions, even suicide actions," said an official.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades were behind the last two bus bombings in Jerusalem that killed 19 people and wounded more than 160. One more atrocity could signal the end for Arafat.
A confession by a member of Fatah's armed branch in Nablus has shed new light on the extent of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's involvement in terror. The terror suspect told Shin Bet security service interrogators that money he received from Arafat was used to purchase weapons and to carry out shooting attacks in the West Bank...
Raaf Mansur, who headed an Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades cell in Nablus until his arrest in February, told interrogators that his appeals to Arafat for money to fund armed attacks resulted in a monthly NIS 7,500 payment that continued up to the time of his arrest. The money was delivered via Abed al-Fatah Hameil, who serves as a financial adviser to Arafat.
[b]Former PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has dismissed the notion that it was Sharon's lack of gestures that forced him to resign, hinting that Arafat and his inner circle had "thwarted" his mission. [/b]Abbas, who resigned last year following a fierce power struggle with Arafat, described his experience as "painful and bitter" and said he would never consider taking the job again. Abbas called for implementing security, administrative, and financial reforms in all PA institutions. "The PA must prove its existence, and there's nothing that prevents it from doing so," he said. (Jerusalem Post)
State Attorney Edna Arbel recommended Sunday that charges be brought against Prime Minister Sharon in the so-called Greek Island affair. The prime minister denies the charges. The inquiry involves charges that Israeli businessman David Appel paid one of the prime minister's sons $700,000 in the late '90s to serve as a consultant in the construction of a resort in Greece and the rezoning of land in Tel Aviv in hopes that his father, then foreign minister, would lobby Athens for approval to build the resort. Attorney General Menachem Mazuz now has to decide whether to bring an indictment. (USA Today)
IDF troops on Sunday arrested an Islamic Jihad terrorist in Rafadia near Nablus on the West Bank. The terrorist, Tamr Hawira, [b]16[/b], is suspected of planning to carry out a suicide bombing in Israel in the near future. Hawira was handed over to the General Security Service for questioning, where he told the Shin Bet of his plans to carry out an attack.
THE PALESTINIANS OF NABLUS ARE CLAIMING THAT ISRAELI TROOPS SHOT AND KILLED A 6 YEAR OLD PALESTINIAN BOY. BUT THIS TIME, NON-PALESTINIAN T.V. CAMERAS WERE THERE AND THEY CAUGHT THE TRUTH ON FILM.
[i]Six-Year-Old Palestinian Boy Killed in Nablus[/i] http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/n m/20040327/wl_nm/mideast_ boy_dc" title="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/n m/20040327/wl_nm/mideast_ boy_dc" target="_blank"http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - A six-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead when a Palestinian gunman opened fire at an Israeli military jeep during a raid in a West Bank refugee camp on Saturday, the Israeli army said.
Television footage taken of the incident by foreign television networks showed a gunshot ricocheting off an armored Israeli jeep toward an upper floor of an adjacent building.
Twenty seconds later women’s screams could be heard. Moments later, a Palestinian holding the limp body of a boy with blood on his face and neck is seen outside the building. A Palestinian gunman was filmed in an alley minutes before the incident.
Palestinian residents said the dead boy, Khalil Walwil, was killed either when soldiers on a nearby hill opened fire at the building while he stood by a window or when troops shot at Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli forces in the camp.
An Israeli military commander, who was in the jeep that came under fire, said the boy was killed when a Palestinian gunman in an alley shot at his jeep as forces left Balata camp. The commander said none of his troops returned fire. “I did not fire back at him (the gunman) because his fire was not accurate,” said the commander, who under military regulations could only be identified as Lieutenant Colonel Guy.
WHY CAN'T THE ARAB DICTATORSHIPS REFORM? IS IT THE GREED OF THE RULERS? IS IT A CULTURE WITHOUT DEMOCRATIC TRADITIONS OR FREEDOMS? NO, NO, NO. IT'S ISRAEL!!!
[i]Arab League Ministers Unable to Agree on Political Reforms[/i] http://www.voanews.com/articl...%20League%20Ministers%20U nable%20to%20Agree%20on%2 0Political%20Reforms&db=c urrent
Foreign ministers of Arab League nations have been unable to agree on political reforms in the Middle East. [b]Arab officials say formulating a reform plan for the Middle East is closely linked to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.[/b]
YES. NO VOTING, EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN, OR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS UNTIL ISRAEL SURRENDERS.
LONDON - A new study found that uncircumcised men were nearly seven times more likely to get the AIDS virus...." It is now about the ninth study which followed men who are HIV-negative over a period of months or years. It is the ninth study in a row which has found that the effect (of circumcision) is significant," said Robert C. Bailey, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was not connected with Bollinger's study.
"The fact that they found no behavioral differences between the two groups is all the more compelling, and indicates that there is a biological factor," Bailey said in a telephone interview.
Bailey, like the authors of the Lancet study, believe that cells in the foreskin may be particularly susceptible to infection.
WASHINGTON, March 23 (JTA) -- "This is so hard," fretted Stephanie Grossman after listening to a friendly Jewish debate over the merits of George W. Bush vs. John Kerry as president.
President Bush, for now, appeared to trump Sen. Kerry on Israel, said the Atlanta doctor, who was attending this week's United Jewish Communities young leadership conference.
"I'm a true-blue Democrat and I really see the Republican administration as more supportive of Israel, and I see a lot of Democrats support the Palestinians unfairly, and I don't know what Kerry's stand is," she said. "It even crossed my mind to vote for Bush despite how horrible he is on the other issues."
The Israel Defense Forces is equipping its forces with a new range of spy drones small enough to fit in a soldier's backpack, including one that weighs less than a can of soda, the army said Thursday
The Israel Air Force has frequently used larger unmanned spy planes to track and target Palestinian militants during airstrikes. The new mini-drones would also give army forces in the field on-the-spot access to aerial intelligence.
[b]The European Union said it won’t recognize any unilateral changes to Israel’s pre-1967 borders. [/b]The statement from E.U. foreign ministers is a nod to Palestinian argument that Israel’s West Bank security barrier is in reality a land grab. Israel says the barrier is a temporary measure to block terrorists from infiltrating from the West Bank. The statement also urged the Palestinian Authority to do more to fight terrorism, but reiterated the E.U.’s condemnation of Israel’s “extra-judicial killing” of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
[b]MEANWHILE...[/b]
[i]U.S. may recognize Israeli sovereignty in West Bank [/i] www.jta.org
[b]A Bush administration official said the United States is considering recognizing Israeli sovereignty in parts of the West Bank. [/b]The official told JTA on Thursday that some sort of recognition of Israeli sovereignty over three West Bank settlement blocs could be part of a withdrawal plan in which Israel would pull out from the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank. The Palestinians’ failure to be viable peace partners led the Americans to reconsider their opposition to such recognition, the official said. “In the current environment, anything is possible,” the official noted. The comment followed a Thursday meeting between U.S. officials and Dov Weisglass, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s bureau chief, to discuss the withdrawal. Sharon is due to present President Bush with the final plan by April 14. However, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, citing Israeli diplomatic sources, reported Friday that the U.S. administration had refused to recognize Israeli control over the settlement blocs.
ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CAMP DAVID PEACE ACCORDS BETWEEN ISRAEL AND EGYPT....
[i]Cairo Imam asks God to "strike down the Jews" [/i] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pag ename=JPost/JPArticle/Sho wFull&cid=1080282554273" title="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pag ename=JPost/JPArticle/Sho wFull&cid=1080282554273" target="_blank"http://www.jpost.com/servlet/...
Some 25,000 people crammed into downtown Cairo's Al-Azhar mosque, where its preacher asked God to "make Islam victorious" and "strike down the Jews." Teens wore green bandanas bearing messages that read "All of us are Yassin" in Arabic and English.
Banners hung around the mosque praising Yassin and promising to seek revenge for his death. Leaflets bearing the slain quadriplegic cleric's picture were handed out, with some reading, "We are not afraid of death, for it is life."
Following the somber prayer service, thousands of men and women spilled out of the mosque, shouting "we will fight" and "a salute to jihad, either victory or martyrdom!" Large numbers of police and soldiers surrounded the area and closed off roads leading to the mosque.
A Muslim journalist in Bangladesh has been imprisoned by the government since Nov. 29, 2003, for allegedly spying for Israel, while his supporters and family say his only "crime" is daring to advocate for more understanding between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
Throughout 2003, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of the weekly entertainment magazine Blitz, published articles calling on Bangladesh to recognize Israel as well as condemning terrorism and what he sees as bias in the press against Israel and Jews.
The terrorist organization Hamas invested millions of dollars during the past decade in real-estate projects nationwide, including in suburban Maryland, as part of a scheme to raise cash to fund acts of terrorism, records show.
The investments - involving the construction of hundreds of new homes - were handled through BMI Inc., a defunct Secaucus, N.J., investment firm founded by Soliman S. Biheiri, an Egyptian and Hamas supporter, according to a newly released sentencing declaration by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In the declaration, ICE senior agent David Kane said Biheiri, sentenced in January to a year in prison on immigration violations, used the firm beginning in 1991 to raise "large amounts of money" through investments and as a front to route cash from more than 100 bogus Hamas charities and businesses, most of which operated in Virginia.
According to the declaration, significant amounts of cash obtained in the real-estate ventures were used "in furtherance of Hamas terrorist operations."
An Oxon Hill, Md., project known as Barnaby Knolls was referred to by ICE agents as "Hamas West." One of the principal BMI investors in the Oxon Hill project was Mousa Mohammad Abu Marzook, the self-proclaimed political leader of Hamas detained by U.S. authorities in 1995 on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities. He later was expelled to Jordan and then deported to Syria for his ties to Hamas.
Marzook has been named by Israeli authorities on charges of murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, and conspiracy in truck and bus bombings in Israel.
Many of the countries now admonishing Israel have themselves targeted their worst enemies for death in time of war or in fighting terrorism.
British security forces often hunted down agents of the IRA during their long years of struggle. 16 years ago this month, the elite Special Air Service anti-terrorism unit shot down three unarmed IRA agents in Gibraltar.
During the Second World War, .... the U.S. shot down the plane carrying Admiral Yamamoto, mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In November, 2002, the U.S. killed a senior al-Qaeda agent in Yemen using missiles fired by a Predator drone aircraft, a targeted killing if there ever was one.
It is clear that the U.S. would kill bin Laden in a blink if it had the chance. It has tried in the past.
While many in the West Bank and Gaza Strip still strongly support suicide bombings as a weapon against Israel, they have become critical of the militants' choice of attackers. On Wednesday, 16-year-old Hussam Abdo was detained wearing an 18-pound suicide vest at an Israeli army checkpoint near Nablus. "We have to carry out serious attacks," said Sadia Abdel Rahman, 42. "This is not a children's game. This is an embarrassment."
In an interview with Yediot Ahronot, Abdo said he wanted to go to paradise. "A river of honey, a river of wine and 72 virgins. Since I have been studying Quran I know about the sweet life that waits there," the boy said. "But when the soldiers stopped me, I didn't press the switch. I changed my mind. I didn't want to die anymore," he said. (AP/San Francisco Chronicle)
[b]SEE ALSO: Asked whether she would have supported her son had he been older, the mother replied: "If he was over 18, that would have been possible, and I might even encourage him to do it." [/b](Jerusalem Post) http://www.jpost.com/servlet/...
UNITED NATIONS — The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution Thursday condemning Israel's assassination of a Hamas (search) leader, calling the measure "one-sided" and saying it ignored the group's bloody record of terrorism....The vote was 11 countries in favor, three countries abstaining, and one country against -- the United States.
HOW DO YOU DEFEND YOURSELF AGAINST PAYING A KID $22 TO STRAP A BOMB TO HIS CHEST AND USE IT TO COMMIT SUICIDE/MURDER? WELL, YOU CAN'T. SO YOU ADOPT THE JOSEF GOEBBELS' "BIG LIE" TECHNIQUE.
Palestinian leaders have accused Israel of fabricating a story about a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who planned to blow himself up. The Israeli army said he was caught wearing an explosive belt at an army roadblock in the northern West Bank. The boy, identified as Husam Abdu from Nablus, was shown on TV screens around the world, with an explosive belt strapped to his waist.
The Israeli army said the boy told interrogators that his dispatchers promised that he would have sex with 72 virgins in heaven soon after his death. "We know for sure this is a fabricated story from A to Z. Would you believe that a 13 or 14-year old would agree to blow up himself in return for a hundred shekels which he would receive after his death?
"It seems to me that the Israelis are bad liars as well," said Yaqub Shahin, a director-general of the Palestinian Authority ministry of information. In an interview with Aljazeera.net, Shahin accused Israel of seeking to justify slaughtering Palestinian children by spreading the false impression that they are used as human bombers.
"Their [Israel’s] goal is to besmirch Palestinian childhood so that when they slaughter the children, the world won’t feel sorry for them," he said. Arab Knesset member Muhammad Baraka has also voiced "serious doubts" about the veracity of the Israeli narrative.
"I have very serious doubts about the whole story. I can't give the Israeli army the benefit of the doubt."....
The armed wing of Fatah, the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, has denied any involvement in the incident, accusing Israel of "concocting the whole story for the purpose of justifying the killing of more Palestinian children".
PICTURES SHOW ALLIES COULD HAVE EASILY BOMBED AUSCHWITZ
[i]Archival photos revive questions about ability to bomb Nazi camps [/i] http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=13909&in tcategoryid=2" title="http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=13909&in tcategoryid=2" target="_blank"http://www.jta.org/page_view_...
LONDON, March 23 (JTA) — Could the Allies have stopped the Nazi death machine by bombing the concentration camps? The 60-year-old debate has been reopened by Britain’s recent move to make more than 5 million World War II aerial reconnaissance photos available online. According to critics of the Allied failure to bomb the camps[b], the pictures show that the United States and Britain had the capability to conduct a bombing campaign. “We now know that they were bombing five miles from Auschwitz,” [/b]said Elan Steinberg, executive vice president of the World Jewish Congress. During the war, the WJC asked both President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to bomb the camps in order to stop the killing, Steinberg said. Churchill and his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, favored the plan, Steinberg said, “but they were overruled by the military.” “I would not go so far as to say it was blatant anti-Semitism” that kept the Allies from bombing the camps, Steinberg said. “It was not an overt hatred, but an indifference to their plight — and the effect is the same.”
Since the current war began on September 29, 2000, Hamas, under Yassin's leadership, has carried out more than 400 attacks, in which it killed 377 Israelis and wounded 2,076 others. (This would be equivalent to killing nearly 19,000 Americans and wounding 100,000 others over 41 months.) Just as the U.S. is determined to kill bin Laden and senior al-Qaeda operatives before they kill more Americans, Israel understands that it must do the same to Hamas' leadership. Mafia boss Al Capone, renowned in certain neighborhoods for helping orphans and the poor, was a thug and a murderer, who destroyed untold lives - just like the properly executed Sheikh Yassin. (Washington Times)
[i]Palestinian Propaganda Dominates San Francisco ''Peace'' Rally - Cinnamon Stillwell (Chronwatch)[/i] http://www.chronwatch.com/con...
On March 20, members of the anti-war movement came out to mark the one-year anniversary of the war in Iraq with a ''global day of action.''
In San Francisco, the rally was endorsed by various Arab and Muslim groups such as Al-Awda (the Palestine Right to Return Coalition), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Muslim Students Association - ties to terrorism being the common denominator among them.
The issue of Iraq seemed almost peripheral to the main thrust of the event, which was virulently anti-Israel. Even some of the peaceniks were a bit perplexed by the dominance of Palestinian groups.
In San Francisco, members of the Russian-Jewish community, joined by others sympathetic to their politics, turned out for a ''March for Israel.'' Around 200 waved American and Israeli flags and held signs that said, ''Stop Glorifying Murder,'' ''Suicide Bombings are Crimes Against Humanity,'' and ''We Mourn Madrid 3/11, New York 9/11, Jerusalem Daily.''
At one point, a large group of Muslim youth wearing keffiyehs, hajibs, and waving Palestinian flags and Arabic banners, confronted the pro-Israel crowd. A woman in a headscarf hurled insults at them only to be answered by sarcastic cries of ''Can you vote?'' and ''Liberate oppressed Arab women!''
Sixty prominent Palestinian officials and intellectuals on Thursday urged the public to refrain from retaliation for Israel's assassination of Hamas' spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin, saying it would ignite a new round of bloodshed that would only hurt Palestinian aspirations for independence.
A half-page advertisement in the PLO's Al-Ayyam newspaper called on Palestinians to lay down their arms and turn to peaceful means of protest to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The ad reflected growing sentiment among many Palestinian leaders and intellectuals that military struggle is not helping the Palestinian cause. Thousands of Palestinians have died during three and a half years of fighting with Israel.
A SPANISH BASKETBALL TEAM, PAMESA VALENCIA, SAYS IT MAY CANCEL A SCHEDULED GAME AGAINST THE ISRAELI TEAM MACCABI TEL AVIV BECAUSE IT FEARS TERRORISM. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/...
Valencia announced yesterday that as a result of the increasing security threats in Israel after the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin on Monday morning, the team does not plan to come to Tel Aviv for the match.
In a statement released on the club's Web site, Valencia said that "the climate of tension and the situation of violence which is only escalating are not conducive to playing basketball and that the team is not prepared to play under these conditions. The team's mental state is not good [because of the situation] and it will only get worse upon entering the warlike atmosphere, for the players as well as their families."
[b]MAYBE THEY SHOULD PLAY IN SPAIN, WHICH IS SAFE FROM TERRORISM.[/b]
THE RULERS OF LIBYA, ALREADY INTIMIDATED INTO GIVING UP THEIR NUCLEAR AMBITIONS TO AVOID SADDAM HUSSEIN'S FATE, ARE MAKING OTHER ENCOURAGING NOISES.......
"Saif al-Islam, a son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, said in remarks published that Tripoli is ready to compensate Jews that [sic] left Libya for Israel and other countries and whose assets were seized":
"We're not thinking now of establishing contacts or relations with Israel because it's not on the agenda and no one has requested it of us. But we can in the future open the file of compensation for Jews for their seized funds or assets," he told Qatari newspapers in an interview during a two-day visit.
OF COURSE, THE LIBYANS CAN'T MAKE ANY STATEMENTS ABOUT JEWS OR ISRAEL WITHOUT PAYING LIP SERVICE TO THE PALESTINIANS.
"It is a responsibility to invite Libyan Jews, including from Israel . . . to return to Libya, their ancestral land, and to abandon the land they acquired from the Palestinians," he added.
GENEVA (AFP) - The UN Human Rights Commission adopted by a large majority a resolution condemning Israel for the assassination of Palestinian Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
[b]Only Australia and the United States voted against the resolution sponsored by Pakistan and other Muslim countries.[/b] It was adopted by a vote of 31 to two with [b]18 abstentions including EU countries[/b].
Ireland, which holds the EU presidency, warned that while the 15-nation European Union condemned the targeted killing of Yassin, it could not support a resolution which failed to condemn attacks that Hamas carried out in Israel.
Yassin was killed in an Israeli air raid on Monday morning.
The resolution “strongly condemns the continuing grave violations of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory in particular the tragic assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.”
The text also “notes with grave concern the implications of such targeted assassinations, liquidation and murder of political leadership by the Israeli occupation forces on the overall situation in Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly the possibility of fresh wave of violence.”
Israel warned Wednesday that the credibility of the UN’s top human rights body was at stake over the resolution.
A respected Czech historian is claiming that Sen. John Kerry may be a descendant of Rabbi Judah Loew, a famous Kabbalist, philosopher and talmudist from Prague -- and creator of the golem legend.
HERE'S A "YOUTH" FILLING A BOTTLE WITH GASOLINE TO BE HURLED BY HIS FRIEND AS A MOLOTOV COCKTAIL. NOTICE THAT THIS GENIUS IS SMOKING A CIGARETTE. BOOM!
[image]rsheinfield_139533 1825.jpg[/image] [i]Palestinian youths prepare and throw Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers in the West Bank town of Hebron.(AFP/Hazem Bader)[/i] http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
(Thanks to Rabbi Yakov Polatsek for sending me this)
Being "spiritual leader" of Hamas is not like being the Archbishop of Canterbury. Ahmed Yassin was a Godfather of Terror, the man who founded the Palestinian killing machine and the inspiration for more than 50 suicide bomb attacks on Israel. Critics of Israel say that country has aborted the peace process. They're wrong. Over the years Palestinian bombers have repeatedly blasted peace hopes to smithereens - taking hundreds of innocent Israeli men, women, and children with them. Why did Foreign Secretary Jack Straw go weak at the knees over Yassin's death? He said Israel's action was "very unlikely to achieve its objectives." Wrong: it has achieved its objective because one more terrorist mastermind is dead. (Sun-UK)
I wouldn't take any lectures from hypocritical Europeans on how to deal with terror. Especially not from the French, who, when faced with the Algerian terror in the 1950s, resorted to wide-spread torture, or from the British, who tried to calm down the Middle East by bombing villages and by hanging people right and left. I would listen to Brigadier Sir Robert Thompson, the legendary expert on counterinsurgency, whose wise advice was to never waste time on chasing just the guerrillas, but rather to target the more important figures: the political instigators, because they are the root of all evil.
What was Israel supposed to do when a man was sitting in Gaza and masterminding the killing of its civilians? Appeal to the High Court of Justice in the Hague and wait until a Dutch policeman knocks on Yassin's door and serves him an arrest warrant? Letting Yassin carry on with his terrorist leadership would have meant the death of many innocent Israelis in suicide attacks, followed by the death of many Palestinians in Israel's subsequent reprisals. The writer is the director of international outreach at the Israel Democracy Institute, Jerusalem. (International Herald Tribune)
[i]Shed No Tears Over the Killing of the Sheikh of Hate - Michael Gove[/i]
On May 27, 1942, the British government pulled off one of its most daring wartime coups in the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe. A team of four agents trained by MI6 succeeded in assassinating Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia whose brutal rule had earned him the title, "the Butcher of Prague." Like Heydrich, Sheikh Yassin was the intellectual organizer of a mass murder campaign directed against Jewish civilians. Hamas, the organization he set up in 1988, has been responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths.
BBC correspondent Zubeida Malik described Sheikh Yassin as "polite, charming and witty, a deeply religious man." Some people in the BBC may consider it witty to call for the elimination of the Jewish people from their homeland. Others might consider it the charming hallmark of a deeply religious man to recruit, incite, and inspire young men to kill civilians. I may risk putting myself out on a limb in the media community saying this, but I'm afraid I find the ambition to wipe Israel off the map repellent, the worship of death indefensible, and efforts made to halt Hamas's uncompromising campaign of terror completely understandable. I can no more mourn Sheikh Yassin's death, in all conscience, than a Briton could have shed an honest tear for Reinhard Heydrich.
What would have been more likely to hearten Heydrich's comrades in arms at his funeral in June 1942? International condemnation of reckless British action and a global demand that Winston Churchill resume talks to tackle Germany's longstanding grievances? Or an implacable commitment to fight democracy's enemies until those bent on genocide laid down their arms? (London Times, 23 Mar 04)
[i]Spare Us the Lecture - Editorial[/i] http://signin.projo.com/reg_s...://www.projo.com/opinion/editorials/co ntent/projo_20040324_24ed pal.1b99a5.html
Sheikh Yassin's expressed mission was to destroy Israel and replace it with a fascist Islamic state - a paradise for those who enjoy stoning people for adultery, where women are discouraged from reading or writing, where there are few political or social liberties, and where the media are largely a propaganda machine, rife with exhortations to kill the Jews. Welcome to the Dark Ages. When one side's aim is the destruction of an entire state, and the other side has the effrontery to try to defend itself, mayhem is inevitable, but appeasement makes matters worse. (Providence Journal)
A young Palestinian boy wearing a suicide bomber belt was captured Wednesday afternoon by IDF troops near the Hawara roadblock near Nablus, the same place an 11-year-old boy was caught with a bomb last week.
According to media reports, the child ran in the direction of IDF soldiers apparently with the intention of exploding the belt. Soldiers stopped the child and discovered the explosives belt.
[b]UPDATE:[/b] http://www.haaretzdaily.com/h... Israel Defense Forces paratroopers caught a Palestinian boy, [b]aged 12[/b], wearing an explosive belt at the Hawara roadblock south of Nablus in the West Bank on Wednesday afternoon. Sappers used a remote-controlled robot to remove the belt from the boy’s body and then safely detonated it in a controlled explosion.
The boy was taken in for questioning. The army believes that the boy was meant to detonate the belt near the soldiers or near the nearby army base. The IDF commander at the roadblock told Army Radio on Wednesday that the youth had run toward the soldiers and intended to blow himself up next to the troops.
Soldiers at the roadblock told Army Radio that [b]the boy was given NIS 100 [$22.20] to carry out a suicide attack[/b].
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - The new Hamas leader in Gaza said on Wednesday the group had no plans to attack American targets, pulling back from retaliatory threats by the group's armed wing after Israel's assassination of the Hamas founder.
At the same time, however, another[b] top Hamas political figure said the militant group would try to kill Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon[/b] in retaliation for the death of Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
The Islamic group had made veiled threats it would retaliate against the United States for Yassin's killing, but it has rarely attacked American targets during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel will continue its efforts to target leaders of terror organizations, including Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told reporters on Tuesday morning during a briefing.
Asked if Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is on the list of terror leaders, Mofaz smiled and answered, "You should ask him (Arafat)."
JERUSALEM - Israel's army chief suggested Tuesday that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah would eventually be assassinated by Israel. The army chief, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, was asked whether, after Israel's killing of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Arafat and Nasrallah would be next.
"I think that their (Arafat's and Nasrallah's) responses yesterday show that they understand that it is nearing them," Yaalon said. "In the long term, I hope that this will be a sign to all those who choose to hurt us that this will be their end," Yaalon said. Arafat's aides said Monday the Palestinian leader was concerned he could now be in Israel's crosshairs.
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel will strike at more Hamas leaders, the Israeli defense minister said Tuesday, a day after the founder of the Islamic militant group, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, was assassinated in a missile attack.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and his security chiefs decided to try to kill the entire Hamas leadership, without waiting for another terror attack, security sources said Tuesday.
STILL NO WORD FROM JOHN KERRY ON THE SLOPES OF ASPEN
"Any country has the right to defend itself from terror. Israel has the right to defend herself from terror. And as she does so, I hope she keeps consequences in mind as to how to make sure we stay on the path to peace," Bush said in his first public comment on Monday's assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin.
Minutes before Bush spoke to reporters, White House spokesman Scott McClellan urged Israel to exercise "maximum restraint" in response to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's order to target all Palestinian militant leaders.
Bush did not repeat a statement by McClellan on Monday that Washington was "deeply troubled" by Yassin's killing.
A JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER IN TOULON, FRANCE, WAS SET ABLAZE LAST NIGHT: [i]Jewish Center in France Set on Fire. [/i] http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
The assailants broke a window at the center in the southwestern city of Toulon and doused the interior with a flammable liquid that was then set on fire, police said. Several walls were blackened by flames, but there were no injuries.
It was not clear who carried out the attack, but officials note that such violence tends to coincide with rising Mideast tensions. A day earlier, Israel assassinated Sheik Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of militant group Hamas.
Yves Haddad, who leads the local Jewish community, expressed “disgust and sadness” at the attack, saying it might be “an importation of what’s happening in the Middle East.” [b]“If they wanted to scare us, they made a mistake,” Haddad said.[/b]
[b]SEE ALSO:[/b] [i]French synagogue damaged[/i] www.jta.org A synagogue in southern France was badly damaged by a gasoline bomb. Congregants discovered the attack when they arrived for prayers early Tuesday morning at the main synagogue in Toulon, Yves Haddad, president of the local Jewish community, told JTA. Haddad said he didn’t know whether the attack was perpetrated by Muslims, possibly enraged by Israel’s killing of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, or by far-right French extremists. In the 1990s, Toulon, a city of about 150,000 people, elected an extremist mayor from the right-wing National Front Party. The city also is part of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region, where the National Front polled some 23 percent of the vote in regional elections Sunday.
FROM ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS, SOMETHING WITH WHICH TO ANSWER THE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOW TRYING TO CAST SHEIKH AHMED YASSIN AS AN ELDERLY, WHEELCHAIR-BOUND, FRAIL, HARMLESS SPIRITUAL LEADER. http://www.israelnationalnews...
[i]Sheikh Yassin’s Mass-Murder Record[/i]
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Moslem Hamas terrorist organization who was killed yesterday in a daring Israeli missile attack, oversaw a total of 425 attacks - including the Park Hotel Seder massacre - that killed 377 Israelis and wounded 2,076.
Among the worst Hamas attacks in the past 3.5 years of the Palestinian Authority-initiated Oslo War were the following ten, which ended the lives of a total of 186 people: June 1, 2001 - Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv, 21 killed - mostly new-immigrant teenagers from the former Soviet Union Aug. 9, 2001 - Sbarro’s Pizzeria in Jerusalem, 15 killed, including the parents and three children of the Schijveschuurder family Dec. 2, 2001 - Haifa bus, 15 killed March 27, 2002 - Park Hotel in the midst of the Passover Seder, 30 killed, including six husband-and-wife couples March 31, 2002 - Matza Restaurant in Haifa, 15 killed, including two sets of a father and two children May 7, 2002 - Rishon Letzion hall, 16 killed June 18, 2002 - #32 bus from Gilo, Jerusalem, 19 killed March 5, 2003 - #37 bus in Haifa, 15 killed June 11, 2003 - #14 bus, Jerusalem, 17 killed Aug. 19, 2003 - #2 bus from Western Wall, 23 killed, including a mother and baby; father and son; and four other children
(UPDATED) MORE OF THE SAME FROM THE UNITED NATIONS
The United States and Algeria could not agree Tuesday on a UN Security Council statement that would have condemned the killing of Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin, paving the way for an open UN Security Council meeting.
Delegations had been meeting Monday and Tuesday to discuss a proposed text circulated by Algeria, the only Arab nation on the council, that would have had the president of the Security Council condemn the killing. But Algeria later withdrew the statement after the United States insisted on language in the document that would have condemned recent terrorist activities by Hamas, US Ambassador John Negroponte said.
"The essential point here was that the proponents of this statement did not want to refer to terrorism conducted by Hamas and that was the fundamental objection we had," Negroponte said.
[b]UPDATE[/b]: Right on cue, the United Nations will convene to condemn Israel again, on two fronts this time: [i]UN rights group targets Israel. [/i] WWW.JTA.0RG
The U.N. Commission on Human Rights has scheduled a special session to discuss Israel’s assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin. The Geneva-based commission, which meets for six weeks each spring, voted Tuesday to hold the session Wednesday. Jewish groups were crafting a written statement in response to the meeting. “It is another example of where the U.N.’s bias against Israel plays itself out in one of its venues,” Dan Mariaschin, executive vice president of B’nai B’rith International, told JTA by phone from Geneva. Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council also was planning to meet Tuesday afternoon on a resolution condemning Israel’s action against Hamas’ leader.
[b]BRITAIN[/b]: Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary: “It is unacceptable. It is unjustified and it is very unlikely to achieve its objective. A measurable restraint is required and I don’t believe Israel will benefit from the fact that this morning an (elderly man) in a wheelchair has been the target of assassination”
[b]FRANCE[/b]: Herve Ladsous, foreign ministry spokesman: “France condemns the action taken against Sheikh Yassin, just as it has always condemned the principle of any extra-judicial execution as contrary to international law. The attack bears a serious risk of increasing tensions in the whole of the region.”
[b]FRANCE[/b]: Dominique de Villepin, Foreign Minister: “At a time when it is so important to mobilise ourselves to advance the peace process, such acts can only feed the spiral of violence”
[b]RUSSIA[/b]: Alexander Yakovenko, Foreign Ministry spokesman: “Moscow is deeply concerned about the situation. It threatens a new wave of violence which could sabotage efforts to restart negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis by the ‘quartet’ of international mediators and key regional powers.”
[b]GERMANY[/b]: Joschka Fischer, Foreign Minister: “The situation is that everything must be done so that further escalation can be avoided. The government is deeply concerned about this development.”
[b]EU[/b]: Javier Solana, Foreign policy chief: “This type of action does not contribute at all to create the conditions of peace. This is very, very bad news for the peace process. The policy of the European Union has been consistently condemnation of extra-judicial killing”
PA Chairman Yasser [b]Arafat[/b] condemned the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the "Fighting Hero Sheikh," and declared three days of national mourning. He said that this base crime, which crosses a "red line," will only increase Palestinian national unity. (http://www.palestine-info.net...)
The [b]Palestinian National Authority's [/b]official press information center released a statement by Yasser Arafat, saying that: "The Palestinians will not waiver in their legitimate and national rights, and would continue their resistance against the Israeli occupation." (PNA State Information Service, PA, 3/22/04)
The [b]Palestine Ministry of Information [/b]website: "The Palestinian government eulogizes our lofty Palestinian people and our Arab and Islamic nations, on the passing away of the Palestinian martyr Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the prominent political and the spiritual leader and founder of the Islamic Resistance Movement... On the eve of this painful and tragic occasion, the Palestinian government expresses its deep condolences to the Palestinian people, imploring God to forgive our beloved martyr Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and accepts him as a martyr..." (3/22/04)
[b]Iranian Supreme Leader [/b]Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: "The blood of Ahmed Yassin will nourish the Islamic resistance and will further flame Palestinians' anger. His [killing] will hoist the flag of the Palestinians' oppression... The occupying criminals should know that their stupid showdown is the greatest witness to their failure and weakness. The Zionist regime is doomed to annihilation." (IRNA, Iran, 3/22/04)
[b]Egypt's [/b]State Information Service reports that President Hosni Mubarak expressed "Deep sorrow for the death of Sheikh Yassin," and "warned of the dire consequences of the completely meaningless and miscalculated Israeli action." (Egypt State Information Service, 3/22/04)
[b]Saudi King Fahd[/b] has sent his "warmest condolences" to the family of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and to Yasser Arafat. The Saudi Shoura Council condemned the killing of Sheikh Yassin. (Saudi Press Agency, 3/22/04)
[b]Yemen[/b] Parliament Speaker Abdullah Al-Ahmar sent his condolences to the Chairman of the Legislative Council of Palestine Roohi Futooh and the Head of the Political Office of Hamas Khaled Misha'al. Al-Ahmar said this assassination will fuel Palestinian resistance to "wipe out the Zionist terror and make the world safe from it." (Yemen News Agency, 3/22/04)
[b]Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi [/b]has urged Muslims to rally behind the Palestinian resistance: "Only force and Jihad work with those aggressors... He was assassinated by bloodied hands as he was returning from dawn prayers. He met his Creator satisfied and pleased [with his decades of resistance and struggle]. Truly, dying a martyr is the best death a Muslim can get." (IslamOnline.net, 3/22/04)
* The [b]Sheikh of Al-Azhar University[/b], Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, condemned Yassin's killing, saying that the killing "is a despicable crime that shook the entire world," and called on Arabs and Muslims "to punish those who perpetrated this heinous crime." (Egypt State Information Service, 3/22/04)
Following Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin's assassination, [b]Hamas's military wing[/b], the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, declared: "whoever ordered the assassination of Ahmad Yassin ordered thereby the murder of hundreds of Zionists... The Zionists would have never undertaken this operation without the approval of the terrorist American administration that must bear the responsibility for this crime... Not only will all fighting Palestinian factions participate in the response, but Muslims from the entire Muslim world will have the honor of participating in it." (http://www.palestine-nfo.net/...)
[b]Iran's [/b]Expediency Council head Akbar [b]Hashemi Rafsanjani [/b]said that no death could be more fitting for Sheikh Yassin, who had spent his blessed life in a campaign against Israel to restore the rights of the oppressed Palestinian nation, than to be martyred by the most merciless anti-freedom and inhumane criminals. (http://khabarnameh.gooya.com/...) Rafsanjani predicted that the "dastardly" killing will expedite the Palestinian "ultimate victory" over Israel. (IRNA, Iran, 3/22/04)
[b]Iranian President Muhammad Khatami[/b] strongly condemned the assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Khatami said: "The heinous crime reflects cowardly behavior of the occupying Israeli regime... I expect that the international associations [will] react..." (IRNA, Iran, 3/22/04) Khatami further said: "I expect the international community to condemn the criminal Zionist regime and their evil supporters, particularly the U.S." (Mehr News Agency, Iran, 3/22/04)
The [b]PNA [/b]information service released an obituary of Sheikh Yassin, pointing out that he followed "the principles and ideology of the Islamic brotherhood that was established in Egypt in 1928 by the Imam Hassan Al Banna." (PNA State Information Service, PA, 3/22/04)
Sheikh Hamid Al-Bitawi, the [b]Imam of Al-Aqsa mosque [/b]and head of the Palestinian Scholars League, said, "Stop negotiations, all kinds of normalization and fear God... It is your national and religious duty to liberate Palestine." (IslamOnline.net, 3/22/04)
[b]Muslim Brotherhood [/b]leader in Egypt Mahdi Akef said, "They [the Arab and Muslim rulers] should have the guts to expel all Zionists and sever relations with them." (IslamOnline.net, 3/22/04)
The people of Gaza burned a coffin symbolizing the Arab League. (Al-Jazeera TV, Qatar, 3/22/04)
President [b]Bashar Al-Assad [/b]strongly denounced the killing of Palestinian leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, saying that it is Israel that practices terror. (SANA, Syria, 3/22/04)
"[b]The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)[/b] today condemned the assassination of [Sheikh Ahmed Yassin]... We condemn this violation of international law as an act of state terrorism by Ariel Sharon's out-of-control government... The international community must now take concrete steps to help protect the Palestinian people against such wanton Israeli violence... Bland administration statements urging "restraint by all parties" will only be viewed internationally as tacit approval of Israel's actions and will undermine our moral and legal basis for the war on terrorism." (CAIR website, 3/22/04)
The Associated Press http://www.guardian.co.uk/wor...,1280,-3890601,00.html quotes an anonymous Arafat aide as saying of the boss: "He is like a man who was hit on the head because they killed Yassin and now they could kill him. [b]He feels his turn is next and he is sad and worried[/b].
[b]HE SHOULD BE SCARED. ISRAEL'S INTERNAL SECURITY MINISTER TZAHI HANEGBI HAD THIS TO SAY [/b] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... , “PA Chairman Yasser Arafat is not immune; no one is immune anymore. We should stop apologizing for defending ourselves.”
“The time came for someone to close accounts with him [Yassin],” Hanegbi added. [Hamas political leader Abdel Aziz] Rantisi’s time will also come,“ he warned.
Speaking on Channel One’s Politika program, Hanegbi turned to viewers, saying, ”Israelis watching us now know that, perhaps too late, but nevertheless, the founder of Hamas has been destroyed. He was the main inciter against Israel."
[b]UPDATE[/b]: More Minister Henegbi: "Now Yassin and other Hamas leaders understand that we will help them become martyrs." http://www.haaretzdaily.com/h...
[i]Slurring Israel By David Bedein[/i] http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12644" title="http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12644" target="_blank"http://frontpagemag.com/Artic... The State Department prepares its human rights reports on Israel by gathering "evidence" from . . . Israel haters.
THIS YEAR AT THE GRAMMY'S MUSICAL JEWS ARE EVERYWHERE.
[i]Grammy Jews By Nate Bloom [/i] http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0304/grammies2004.php3" title="http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0304/grammies2004.php3" target="_blank"http://www.jewishworldreview....
"I find that the Grammy nominations provide an annual excuse to give readers a sense of the breadth and depth of the Jewish contribution to music. While this article has a certain "laundry list" feel (it was serialized in several Jewish papers) — that depth still comes through. No doubt, many will be surprised at which musicians are Jewish. Without doubt, many more will be surprised that among the most observant Jews are some Jews in the rock categories. "
[i]USA Today reporter lied about Israel [/i] www.jta.org
Among the stories former USA Today reporter Jack Kelley lied about were several concerning Israel. An investigation by the newspaper, which announced recently that it had discovered that the veteran correspondent had fabricated large parts of his work, found that Kelley’s eyewitness account of a suicide bombing in Israel was false. That story helped make Kelley a 2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Kelley also lied about meeting a vigilante Jewish settler named Avi Shapiro in 2001, falsely portrayed a Jerusalem businessman as an undercover Israeli agent, and was not in Israel when he said he was there reporting stories, the paper said. Kelley denied any wrongdoing, saying he felt like he was “set up,” USA Today reported.
GAZA March 22 (Reuters) - Israeli helicopters gunships fired missiles at Hamas’ spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as he left a mosque before dawn on Monday, killing the Hamas leader and several others, witnesses said.
Remnants of Yassin’s blood-soaked wheel-chair were seen outside the mosque. Worshippers said he had been killed in the strike and his body had been evacuated to a different location. Israel has said it would step up operations to track and kill Islamic militants after a suicide bombing at a strategic port last week.
Who was Yassin? Here's his bio: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... He founded Hamas, which rejected the Oslo Accords and responded to them with gruesome violence, most notably by taking the lead in the use of bus bombings. Its highest-profile attack was the Seder night massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya in 2002, the deadliest single terror attack in Israel in three decades.
Here's what Condolezza Rice had to say: "Rice, asked about U.S. reaction to the attack during an interview on NBC television's "Today" show, did say, "Let's remember that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that Sheik Yassin has himself, personally, we believe, been involved in terrorist planning." "
Needless to say, the world's terror apologists condemned Israel's killing of Yassin. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... So did Shimon Peres. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... No doubt that when the U.S. pulls what's left of Osama's body out of a cave, the same crowd will weep and wail.
Of course, the "Arab street" is screaming for revenge and threatening more terror. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... What else is new?
A few things to remember http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... : * Yassin was at important link in international terror, and Hamas had connections with other terror groups around the world.
* Trying to characterize Yassin as a "spiritual leader" is similar to trying to characterize Osama bin Laden in the same vein. Yassin took advantage of his status as a spiritual leader to influence the carrying out of hundreds of murderous attacks, from the Dolphinarium attack in Tel Aviv in 2001 to the Passover eve attack in Netanya in 2002. He personally was responsible for the June 2002 attack on the Number 19 bus in Jerusalem at the Patt Junction, in which 19 people were murdered and 74 wounded.
* Yassin led for years a radical Islamic terror organization that carried out a long list of horrible attacks which killed and wounded hundreds of Israelis.
* Yassin was a chilling example of the cynical use of religion to send women and children to blow themselves up and kill hundreds of Israelis.
* The killing of Yassin is not an act of vengeance, but rather part of a continuous campaign against terrorists who have targeted Israelis, and whose final goal is the destruction of Israel.
* Those who deal in terrorism must know that Israel will not sit quietly and wait for the next suicide bomber to appear on the streets of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Israel's government, like all governments around the world, has a basic responsibility to protect its citizens from terrorists.
* In parallel to the fight against the terror infrastructure and terrorist leaders, Israel will continue to try to reach a diplomatic arrangement with the Palestinians based on the road map. This arrangement will only be reached in the future if the Palestinians will both fight terror and abandon terror as a way of solving diplomatic disagreements.
* Israel offered the Palestinians hope based on reasonable compromise. It extended its hand in peace, but received in exchange a full portion of terror. Even now, Israel is being threatened by an increase in terror, and it will continue to defend itself against these threats.
Here’s a report that a message appeared on an Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades website, soliciting readers to attack the website of Israel’s El Al Airlines: [i]Al-Aqsa Site: “Attack El Al, We’ll Show You How”. [/i] http://www.themedialine.org/n...
A message has appeared on the Al-Aq’sa Martyr’s Brigades website forum, calling for readers to attack the website of El Al Israel Airlines. It was discovered by Yaniv Berman, a journalist with The Media Line Ltd., who reported it to the airline’s security department and asked for comment. El Al did not know of the message at the time and said it would investigate.
The notice offered instruction and assistance to do so. The message called on the “holy warrior brothers” to make contact with the writer of the message. It said that “if any of the fighters did not know how to make the attack or use the computer program,” the writer will set a specific time to explain to the fighters how exactly to attack the site.
This attack is due to occur in cooperation with a few other groups, and the writer of this message said he will later try to make a list of all those who will participate in the attack. A second message called for at least “2000 attackers” to hit the site in synch at two set times: between 4:30 and 6:30pm on March 26th, and between 8:30 and 11:00pm the same day.
DO YOU THINK MEL GIBSON WILL PUT THIS REVIEW IN HIS NEWSPAPER ADS?
[b]Yasser Arafat watched Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ on Saturday, and afterward a top aide compared Jesus' pain during crucifixion to the suffering of Palestinians in the conflict with Israel. [/b]
Nabil Abu Rudeneh, one of Arafat's closest advisers, watched the film along with the veteran Palestinian leader and a group of American and European Christians and Palestinian Muslim clerics.
[b]"The Palestinians are still daily being exposed to the kind of pain Jesus was exposed to during his crucifixion," Abu Rudeneh said in a statement after he viewed the movie. [/b]
[b]Arafat, who watched the film on a small TV set in his Ramallah office, said the movie was "historic and impressive." [/b]
WHAT'S FUNNIER, THAT REUTERS REFERS TO THESE TERRORISTS AS A "MILITIA," THAT THESE THUGS SHOT ONE OF THEIR OWN, THAT REUTERS IS REPORTING THE "APOLOGY" WITHOUT DISGUST, THAT THE TERRORISTS ARE SENDING A LETTER TO THE VICTIMS FAMILY, OR THAT THE MURDERERS ARE GOING TO CONSIDER THIS MAN A "MARTYR" AND A VICTIM OF ISRAELI AGGRESSION??
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - [b]A leader of a Palestinian militant group behind the drive-by killing of an Israeli jogger apologized on Saturday after the dead man was identified as an Israeli-Arab university student. [/b]
[b]“The fighters thought he was a settler jogging in an area full of settlers. It was a mistake and we extend our apology to his family,” a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed group in President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, told Reuters.[/b]
Palestinian gunmen opened fire and killed the man on Friday night as he jogged in Jerusalem’s French Hill district, near the city’s Hebrew University. The al-Aqsa Brigades claimed the shooting in a statement released shortly afterwards.
[b]On Saturday, the victim was identified as George Khoury, the son of prominent Israeli-Arab lawyer Elias Khoury. The 20-year-old was an economics student at Hebrew University.[/b]
[b]“We will consider him as a martyr like hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces,” the al-Aqsa brigades leader said, adding that the group would send a letter of apology to Khoury’s family.[/b]
[image]rsheinfield_332622 589.jpg[/image] [i]A Spanish anti-war protester holds a poster with a caricature of Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar during a rally commemorating the first anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, in Oviedo in March 20, 2004. The poster reads ‘Jack of terror.’ REUTERS/Alonso Gonzalez[/i] http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/04 0320/ids_photos_wl/r26321 48499.jpg" title="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/04 0320/ids_photos_wl/r26321 48499.jpg" target="_blank"http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
Here he is literally holding hands with Arafat and a room full of his goons. http://littlegreenfootbal ls.com/weblog/?entry=6428" title="http://littlegreenfootbal ls.com/weblog/?entry=6428" target="_blank"http://littlegreenfootbal ls.c...
According to Little Green Footballs, http://littlegreenfootbal ls.c... he was actually a ghostwriter for Yasser Arafat’s letter to President Bush, in which “Arafat” denied all responsibility for the Karine-A weapons smuggling incident. That turned out to be a lie.
[i]Death of a myth: The Palestinian issue has never been more than a convenient excuse for the Arab world to avoid dealing with its own backwardness and shortcomings. After a generation and a half, even the State Department gets it, by Jonathan Rosenblum[/i] http://www.maarivintl.com/ind...
So inured are Israelis to bad news that we often fail to note the good. American Undersecretary of State Mark Grossman recently told Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher publicly in Cairo that the democratization of the Middle East is too important to wait for full peace between Israel and the Palestinians. With that statement, Grossman put to sleep, at least for now, the [b]pernicious myth that has guided American Middle East policy for three decades: that the Israel-Palestinian conflict holds the key to reformation of the region[/b]. Now even the State Department is signed on to the Bush administration’s democracy initiative.
[b]The old myth could never bear a minute’s scrutiny. For decades Arabs have murdered one another in numbers that dwarf Palestinian casualties. None of that bloodletting can be remotely connected to Israel. [/b]Saddam Hussein’s decision to invade Iran, at a cost of millions of lives on both sides, and subsequently to invade Kuwait had nothing to do with Israel. And the same is true of Hafez al-Assad’s killing of 25,000 of his subjects in Hama, and the brutal, ongoing civil wars in Algeria, Somalia, and Sudan, which have claimed millions of lives.
[b]Most importantly, Israel’s existence cannot explain the chronic failure of the Arab world to keep pace with the rest of the world, despite its immense natural resources[/b], The 2002 U.N.-sponsored Arab Human Development Report, produced by Arab intellectuals, detailed the backwardness of the Arab world in freedom, knowledge, and the status of women.
[b]The 22 Arab states rank at the bottom of the freedom scale of the world’s seven regions. [/b]Arab despots’ fear of their own people forces them to keep a tight control on all knowledge. Internet connectivity in the Arab world ranks behind sub-Saharan Africa. The entire Arab world translates one-fifth the number of books annually as Greece. From 1980-2000, the Arab states registered 370 patents compared to Israel, with little more than 2% of the population, which registered 7,652. No wonder the total GNP of 22 Arab states, with 280 million people, is less than that of Spain, with 40 million.
[b]That failure has made the Arab world a festering sore producing a pus of hatred. [/b]As the great Orientalist Bernard Lewis notes, Arab loathing for the West is perfectly natural: The poor and the weak will always despise the rich and strong, and particularly if they see the world as “a millennial rivalry between two world religions, and now, from their point of view, the wrong one seems to be winning.”
Arab hatred of Israel is a subspecies of the generalized hatred of the West, only more intense because of Israel’s existence in the middle of the Arab world. [b]Israel is not the cause for the Arab failure to join the modern world, but rather the excuse that Arab leaders require to distract their subjects from their ignorance, poverty, and lack of freedom. [/b]
[b]Should John Kerry replace George Bush as president, however, we can expect to see a full revival of the old myth. [/b]Kerry has mentioned former president Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker as possible Middle East envoys. The latter’s Secretary of State Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski implied recently in the New York Times that the Bush administration’s focus on Arab democracy is a pretext to avoid “any serious American effort to push the Israelis and Palestinians to reach a genuine peace settlement”.
A Kerry administration would focus again on “progress” on the Israeli-Palestinian front -- progress measured in signed agreements, without regard to whether the conditions for Palestinian adherence exist. Israel, as the party most susceptible to American pressure, would find itself under constant pressure to go along.
Israelis definitely have a dog, as the Americans would say, in the fight between Bush and Kerry.
"Last Friday Columbia University finally released the list of donors to its Edward Said Chair, held by Rashid Khalidi (also director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute). Among the donors is the United Arab Emirates, a nation that appears to have an interest in paying American universities to do its ideological bidding. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan, the UAE’s unelected president since 1971, is also a backer of Georgetown's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the source of a $2.5 million gift http://www.news.harvard.edu/g... to the Harvard Divinity School. Harvard froze that money in August--after the source of the gift became public along with the anti-American, anti-Semitic venom coming from Zayed’s now-defunct think tank http://www.adl.org/Anti_semit... --and is still in deliberations over whether to give it back. Columbia, after keeping its list secret for months, couched the release in a puff-piece about Said in the Columbia Record, the print-only newspaper of the Office of Public Affairs, according to a source. Daniel Pipes’s Campus Watch has issued a press release with the full list of donors here: http://www.campus-watch.org/a... With enough pressure from students, alumni, and the media, Columbia too might be brought to think again about keeping the UAE’s problematic gift--but getting it to go even that far won’t be easy."
WASHINGTON — He may have not been one of the foreign leaders with whom John Kerry spoke about his presidential candidacy, but former Malaysian Prime Minister [b]Mahathir Mohamad endorsed Kerry[/b] anyway on Thursday.
[b]The former prime minister, who made headlines in October for saying at an Islamic Summit Conference that "the Muslims will forever be oppressed and dominated by the Europeans and the Jews," said Kerry would keep the world safer than President Bush.[/b]
"I think Kerry would be much more willing to listen to the voices of people and of the rest of the world," Mahathir, who retired in October after 22 years in power, told The Associated Press in an interview.
"But in the U.S., the Jewish lobby is very strong, and any American who wants to become president cannot change the policy toward Palestine radically," he said.
Kerry said last week that he has talked with several foreign leaders who said they want him to win the presidential election in November in order to introduce "new policies."
Kerry would not name any of the leaders with whom he spoke, but his campaign made clear Thursday that none of them was Mahathir, whom a Kerry spokesman described as not the kind of leader Kerry wants backing him.
[b]Kerry "rejects any association" with Mahathir, "an avowed anti-Semite whose views are totally deplorable," said Kerry foreign policy adviser Rand Beers in a statement.[/b]
An online doctor is prescribing a healthier diet to solve the Middle East conflict. Hugo Mann and his Web site, Organicmd.org are urging people in the Middle East to follow his “Land of Milk and Honey” diet because “diet and behavior are inseparable.” Mann says Middle Easterners live on a “hate diet,” which includes alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, meat, honey and sweets, but they should replace it with “the love diet,” which includes dairy products, eggs, fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds. “Perhaps some of the anger and violence in the Middle East is dietary in origin,” he said.
There is a growing trend in the use of Palestinian children aged 11 to 17 who are recruited by terrorist organizations to perpetrate attacks in Israel.
In addition, terrorist organizations often use children's toys and backpacks to hide bombs they plan to smuggle to activists elsewhere to be used in attacks.
Twenty-nine suicide bombers under the age of 18 have been dispatched by terrorist organizations to perpetrate attacks since the outbreak of violence three and a half years ago.
Prestigious American textbook publishers such as Prentice-Hall, Simon and Schuster, TCI, and others are educating your child to the "Arab point of view" and its aspirations of world domination. Gilbert T. Sewell of the American Textbook Council, a non-profit that reviews history textbooks, recently submitted a report that reviewed the teaching of Islam in most of our children's history textbooks. He discovered that sections concerning Islam in books distributed by the main U.S. publishers have been sanitized. [b]In general, current or past events about Islam are not reported accurately for the sake of "political correctness," while Arab and Palestinian political goals are strongly promoted.[/b]
Teacher's Curriculum Institute's Modern Middle East curriculum unit is [b]blatantly anti-Israeli, with "exercises" pitting some students in roles as advantaged Jews against other students as disadvantaged and unfairly treated Palestinian Arabs. The TCI material turns Middle East history on its head. [/b]It does not present the history of Arab terrorism against Israel, much less outline its extent over the last 55 years. [b]The theme is constantly reiterated that Israel is a foreign entity that stole the Palestinians' "country.[/b]" (FrontPageMag.com)
[i]Millions in Aid for Palestinian Authority, But Where Has It Gone? - David Frankfurter[/i] http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=315932004" title="http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=315932004" target="_blank"http://thescotsman.scotsman.c... The European Union has poured an astonishing 4 billion into Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) since 1993. Together with contributions from the UK, the U.S. and other countries, this, according to a leading World Bank official, is the largest per capita transfer of aid funds ever. But where has the investment gone? Consider: Nabil Shaath, the PA's current foreign minister, was cited back in 1997 for financial mismanagement. Today, he owns a super-luxury villa in the middle of Gaza. Mrs. Arafat lives in ostentatious luxury in Paris with her mother and staff, funded from EU-provided budgets. The IMF, in a September 2003 report, revealed that hundreds of millions have been misappropriated and pointed to major structural deficiencies within the PA's Ministry of Finance.
New villas in Ramallah and Gaza are the few visible signs of donor money having passed through town. The European Commission money managers must be seeing this. Otherwise, how do we explain their recently revised strategy of channeling aid into Palestinian NGOs instead of directly to the PA? Yet most Palestinian NGOs are connected to the PA leadership. Some have been caught engaging in corrupt practices or working outside their stated charters. European money plays a very significant role in the events affecting the Palestinians. The taxpayer deserves to see a better use of the money. (Scotsman-UK)
Hollywood star Mel Gibson is already planning his next foray into the weighty world of religious film-making - he wants to make a movie about the origins of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
According to a report on the Internet Movie Database website, Gibson - who was criticized by many Jewish leaders worldwide for propagating anti-Semitism in his epic The Passion Of The Christ - has hinted he may make a filmed account of the Revolt Of The Maccabees, the story behind Hanukkah, the festival of lights.
CURB TERRORISM? THEY CAN'T EVEN ENFORCE TRAFFIC LAWS
"Fledgling efforts by Palestinian police officers to bring order to Gaza erupted in a raging, back-alley gunbattle Wednesday, when a [b]Hamas militant who ran a red light in an unregistered car threw a grenade at police rather than accept a traffic ticket[/b]," the Associated Press reports from Gaza City.
James Taranto comments: "But who are we to judge, really? We should look at the root causes of such violence: the grinding poverty, the occupation and, not least, the humiliation of being pulled over and given a traffic ticket." http://www.opinionjournal.com...
Security forces revealed Thursday that they foiled terrorist plans to hijack two buses in the Efrat area, and force them to drive to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where the passengers were to be held hostage until Israel succumbed to the terrorists' demand to release Palestinian security prisoners.
The proposed abduction was to have been accomplished by two suicide bombers, who were to have boarded the buses and threatened to blow themselves up if their demands were not met.
According to the plan, if Israel failed to release the prisoners, the church was to be blown up together with its inhabitants.
On Purim eve, officials went on to reveal, Tanzim suicide bombers from Nablus planned a double attack at a Jerusalem nightclub. The second bomb was to have gone off during the rescue operations following the initial attack.
Security forces succeeded in thwarting the plans, apprehending the perpetrator, a 17-year-old from Balata, identified as Jihad abu Mouslem.
According to a report released on Thursday by the security establishment, 15 suicide and shooting attacks have been thwarted since the beginning of this year.
On March 2nd, the Shin Bet, police and IDF thwarted an attempt to carry out a suicide attack in a nightclub in south Tel Aviv.
The bombing was prevented by the arrest of its potential perpetrators, three 16-year-old high school students from Nablus. One was the son of a Palestinian security commander who sits in Bethlehem.
THE [i]JERUSALEM POST [/i] HAS COLLECTED AN INTERESTING SERIES OF ARTICLES REGARDING JOHN KERRY'S POSITIONS ON ISRAEL AND JEWS. IT'S WORTH CHECKING OUT. http://info.jpost.com/C003/Su...
[i]EDITORIAL: Kerry on Israel [/i] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... How would a Kerry administration differ from a second Bush administration in its approach to Israel?..
[i]JANINE ZACHARIA: The Jewish question[/i] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... Can John Kerry, a Democrat whose family was victimized by Hitler, lose the Jews?..
[i]In Kerry's words[/i] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... "Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman, while those whose only object is to disrupt society require no such 'role models.'...
[i]ABRAHAM BEN-ZVI: A tale of two legacies[/i] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... A comparative review of American peace-making strategies in the Middle East indicates that, during the years and decades which followed the Six Day War of June 1967, American policy makers pursued two basic approaches for resolving, mitigating or managing the Arab-Israeli dispute...
[i]MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS: War and remembrance[/i] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... Over the last three decades, polls have indicated that the American public believes Republicans will do a better job of defending the United States against its enemies than Democrats...
[i]L. MARC ZELL: Republicans' nightmare[/i] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... Is John Kerry "good for the Jews?" Aside from self-serving campaign declarations, the Democratic candidate has done little to demonstrate his friendship for Israel or the Jewish people...
[i]SHELDON SCHORER: Democrats' dream[/i] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... For Jewish voters who care about US policy in the Middle East, John Kerry is the better choice for US president...
THE U.S. HAS NOT BEEN PAYING MUCH ATTENTION TO SECURITY AT ITS PORTS. TERRORISTS FREQUENTLY USE ISRAEL AS AN EXPERIMENTAL STAGING GROUND FOR TERRORIST TACTICS.
The mystery surrounding how two suicide bombers succeeded in breaching the tight security at the Ashdod Port on Sunday, carrying out an attack, which killed 10, appeared to be solved Wednesday after a shipping container was found with grenades, a mattress and food, inside the port. Five grenades were discovered in the container and police are investigating the possibility that the bombers arrived at the port while hiding in the container.
[i]Oy Vey!: Could the Jewish vote help George W. Bush recapture the White House in 2004? by Ami Horowitz [/i] http://www.weeklystandard.com...
ALL INDICATIONS point to a close presidential election in 2004, and in such a tight battle every vote and dollar will matter. While the Democrats won 80 percent of the Jewish vote in 2000, 2004 may prove to be a far different story and the Jewish vote may determine the fate of the presidency and congress. While Jews make up only 3 percent of the United States population, Jewish political influence is far greater than that due to their outsized campaign donations, media involvement and electoral presence.
Historically, Jewish voters' primary political concern has been social justice, which has been the key driver of their political affiliations. From the 1850's to the early 20th century, Republicans garnered the majority of the Jewish vote due in no small part to the GOP's role in abolition. Franklin Roosevelt sharply reversed that trend for the Democrats, who ever since have been perceived by Jewish voters as the champions of social justice.
But while social justice is important, today policy towards Israel looms large in the minds of Jewish voters. Ever since the generous Camp David II offer was made--and responded to by the Palestinians with a campaign of unique savagery--Israel has become to many American Jews the most prominent issue in their electoral decisions.
IN 2000, THE JEWISH COMMUNITY viewed George W. Bush with more than a small amount of wariness as he entered office. His father was not considered a friend of Israel and many thought the younger Bush would continue his father's policies towards the Jewish state. Instead, he not only walked away from his father's views, but is perceived by many to be the most ardent supporter of Israel to ever occupy the White House.
How? For starters, Bush moved his administration decisively away from the Clinton doctrine of moral equivalency. His June 24, 2002 speech, in which he placed the blame for the current round of Middle East violence squarely on the shoulders of the Palestinian leadership, was a watershed policy statement. Bush has allowed Israel to take measures in self defense and has taken bold steps to reshape the Middle East towards the goal of democratizing the region. He has also surrounded himself with senior policy advisors who share his desire to support the Jewish state.
In fact, support for Israel in the Republican party goes deeper than the presidency--so much so that it is now an almost institutional belief within the party. (Ironically, this support can be accounted for in no small part due to evangelical Christians, who have an almost zealous support for Israel.) This fact has not been lost on the Jewish community. Polling data has shown a consistent rise in Jewish support for the president and Republicans generally.
THE JEWISH FACTOR in 2004 should not be underestimated; there are a number of key states with significant Jewish populations, any of those states might determine the election. In 2000, Bush lost Pennsylvania by five percentage points. While the Jewish population is only 2.5 percent of the state, they make up 5 percent of the electorate. If Bush could match Reagan's capture of 40 percent of the Jewish vote, it would put that state into a statistical dead heat. Jews make up another 5 percent of the electorate in Florida, where hundreds of votes decided the outcome last time.
The Jewish community could also help Republicans with their prolific ability to fundraise. Jewish voters raise tens of millions of dollars for presidential candidates and tens of millions more for congressional candidates each year. In 2000, over 90 percent of the money raised for the presidential campaign went to the Democrats. Bush is positioned to make a strong push for these dollars at a time when campaign finance reform has left Democrats dangerously short of hard money donations.
A STUNNING REMINDER of Jewish political power came in the 2002 midterm elections, with the ousting of two vehemently anti-Israel legislators, Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard. Both were Democrats and both were career antagonists towards Israel. The Jewish community targeted their reelection efforts. Both lost. (Interestingly, much of McKinney and Hilliard's money came from the Arab-American community.)
Now Jews are beginning to scrutinize the Democratic positions on Israel. The most problematic issue for the Democrats is their inability to come to grips with the failure of the Oslo Accords. It is this refusal to let this chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian saga die that has led them to embrace a notion that can be only described as "solutionism." It is the claim that a solution is near, if only Israel would be more flexible, and if not a solution will be forced. In the face of a steady stream of bus bombings and the mass-murder of civilians that Israel has endured for the last three years, this notion is understandably unpopular with many Jewish voters.
John Kerry has been conspicuously silent on many issues that could affect Israel, but what he has said bodes ill: one harbinger could be his statement that he would consider Jimmy Carter and James Baker--two of the most anti-Israel policy makers of the last 30 years--as envoys to the Middle East.
By supporting the Republicans in the coming election, the Jewish community would send a strong message to the Democratic party that their vote and money is in play and that their needs should no longer be taken for granted.
[i]Friday Sermon on Palestinian Television: The Jews, Descendants of Apes and Pigs, Are Deserving of Death - Meirav Levy[/i] http://www.nfc.co.il/archive/...
Sheikh Ibrahim Mudiris, in a Friday sermon broadcast by Palestinian TV on March 13, told worshippers that the Jews, descendants of apes and pigs, are deserving of death. (NewsFirstClass-Hebrew)
Israeli troops found a 22-pound truck bomb at a West Bank checkpoint Tuesday, apparently planted by Palestinian militants who wanted to get the explosives to an attacker in Israel. When soldiers detonated the bomb, the blast could be heard throughout the West Bank city of Nablus.
ONLY AP COULD CALL SOMEONE TRANSPORTING A 22 POUND BOMB HIDDEN IN A TRUCK ON THE WAY TO KILL CIVILIANS A "MILITANT"
The No. 1 search result for “Jew” on Google is an anti-Semitic Web site. The second listing is for a “messianic Jewish” site. The results could be a “Google bomb” — an organized effort by a group to grab a top spot on the search engine, a Google official told j. magazine.
A radical Irish group instructed Palestinian terrorists in turning cell phones into bombs, a senior Northern Ireland politician said. “Israeli security forces last year learned that a Real IRA suspect was involved in instructing members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in building and using the mobile phone bombs,” David Trimble told the Washington-based Heritage Foundation in a speech Monday. “Bombs very similar to the Real IRA devices were found in Israel and have since been used in several attacks in Iraq.”
A relative of one of the Ashdod bombing victims killed herself. The Israeli army said a 19-year-old soldier shot herself Tuesday after leaving a note that said: “Had I died in a terrorist attack it would have been an easier way of departing this world.” The woman’s cousin, Mazal Marciano, was one of 10 Israelis killed in a double suicide bombing at the Ashdod port Sunday.
[i]Swastikas painted on Toronto homes [/i] www.jta.org
Thirteen Jewish houses in a Toronto suburb were vandalized with racist messages and swastikas. The incidents in Thornhill took place Sunday night. They followed the release of a report by B’nai Brith Canada that found anti-Semitic activity in Canada at its highest level in 20 years.
As the agnostic child of practicing Methodist parents, I have viewed with alarm the dramatic increase in anti-Semitic attacks and asked myself if it is really the case that Jews must denounce the behavior of the Israeli government in order to earn a European commitment to fight anti-Semitism. Of course, criticism of Israel's policy is not, of itself, anti-Semitic. But it can become so when it involves applying double standards, holds all Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, or reveals a demonization of Jews. It is clearly anti-Semitism if it provides an excuse for anti-Jewish hatred. The writer is chairman of the Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism. (Guardian-UK)
AND I THOUGHT THE PROGRAM WAS JUST FOR PEACEFUL RESEARCH
[b]Libya armed itself with weapons of mass destruction for the purposes of a war with Israel, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam told the London-based Al Hayat newspaper.[/b]
[i]Here’s a jolt of pure, unadulterated Jew-hatred, published in an Indonesian journal by W. Scott Thompson, Adjunct Professor of International Politics, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts: [/i] [i] Was Washington snookered?[/i] http://www.thejakartapost.com...
But it is bracing to have a spade called a spade. It is simply not permitted to call attention to the fact of record of Jewish financial influence and ownership of major media in the U.S. — or, far more importantly, American political circles.
For example, it would simply not be permitted in the New York Times or Washington Post to allude to the foremost holder of Middle East weapons of mass destruction (WMD): Apparently, it turns out, not Iraq — though surely there were other decent reasons for going after Saddam. Yet it is a fact that Israel has about 200 nuclear weapons and many other classes of WMD — mostly with the connivance of Washington. If WMD were the problem, apparently we went after the wrong country.
Israel is now the international pariah. My Americana Jewish friends once so rightly proud of relating to a true outpost of democracy now must relate to the successor of apartheid South Africa and East Germany in building a wall and suppressing minorities. Israel is the only country left in the world that legally enshrines suppression of an ethnic group by another.
Now, perceptive and friendly commentators are observing, privately and increasingly publicly, that Israel cannot survive the decade, on demographic grounds alone. If every Israeli politician wishes to expose himself to criminal tribunals at The Hague, then Israel can go on occupying and grabbing more lands they have no right to.
And it can continue to threaten to kill the elected leader of Palestine. But the legal environment is closing in on Israel — right now at the International Court of Justice, for example. Were Washington to turn the tap — even slightly — on weapons supply, Israel would instantly have to stop its occupation of Palestine and attempts to kill its leaders.
You simply can’t understand Israel’s control of American Middle East policy unless you look at the body language between Sharon and Bush. The president, desperate to prove his worth to his father, like any son, has sought to outdo him and win where his father lost. “Arik” showed him the way. Allied with the “moral majority” and its fixation on the Israel of Biblical texts, Bush the younger found someone who could allow him both to differentiate himself from — and stand up to — his father, whose views of the Israelis as president was ever so much less generous. In fact, almost diametrically opposed....
And thus have we sold out the Palestinians against the most central of our own interests: To end the festering sores in the Middle East that led to 9/11 and that will lead to more attacks, until the underlying causes are addressed.
But the argument simply doesn't play in America. A powerful White House official told me, prior to his elevation, that "we (Jewish Americans) have step by step upped our influence in every state. We now have the lieutenant governorships, the state controllers. Now we are everywhere. It has been a quiet and successful move. So we can prevent any diminution of Israel's influence in Washington."
[i]Palestinian Suicide Bombers Kill 10 in Ashdod Port - Roni Singer, Arnon Regular, and Nir Hasson [/i] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/404544.html" title="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/404544.html" target="_blank"http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/...
Two Palestinians from Gaza murdered ten people and injured 16, in two suicide bombings Sunday at Ashdod port. The first terrorist got inside the port and blew himself up close to a group of workers near a machine repair workshop; five workers were killed immediately. A few moments later, the second terrorist detonated on the sidewalk adjacent to the port, destroying a trailer that held an office, killing three office workers inside. The perpetrators, two 18-year-olds from Jabalya in Gaza, apparently slipped through the Gaza perimeter fence - an unprecedented occurrence. (Ha'aretz)
ACCORDING TO THE JERUSALEM POST http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... "[a] militant leader in Gaza said the bombers had intended to blow up fuel storage tanks in Ashdod..."
THE PALESTINIANS WASTED NO TIME IN CELEBRATING THE ISRAELI DEATHS:
Scores of Palestinians took to the streets in Jenin and Jabalya to "celebrate" the attacks. Drivers honked car horns as gunmen fired into the air to express their joy. Others distributed sweets to passersby, hailing the suicide bombers and calling on all Palestinian groups to step up their "resistance operations against the Israeli enemy." The Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed joint responsibility with Hamas for the attack. PA Prime Minister Qurei condemned Sunday's attack, saying such actions provide Israel with an excuse to continue its "aggression" against the Palestinians and build the security fence. (Jerusalem Post)
IT LOOKS AS IF ISRAEL MAY PULL OUT THE STOPS THIS TIME. MAYBE. I DOUBT IT. IF THEY DO, HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE FOR COLIN POWELL TO URGE ISRAELI RESTRAINT?
Israeli defense chiefs proposed the military take "exceptional" action against Palestinian militants in response to the twin suicide bombings in Israel that killed 10 victims, army radio reported.
The defense chiefs, in a meeting with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, called for increased pressure on militant groups, especially the radical Islamic movement Hamas, for an unlimited period of time, the radio said.
A senior security source, quoted by the radio, said the proposed moves would be "exceptional in their scope, their intensity and their duration", and include activities "not seen in the Palestinian territories for a long time". http://www.drudgereport.com/flash4.htm" title="http://www.drudgereport.com/flash4.htm" target="_blank"http://www.drudgereport.com/f... and http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/c...
[i]Fatah tries to use 11-year-old boy as human bomb [/i] http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServ er?pagename=JPost/JPArtic le/ShowFull&cid=107932533 7596" title="http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServ er?pagename=JPost/JPArtic le/ShowFull&cid=107932533 7596" target="_blank"http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/c...
Fatah Tanzim activists in Nablus attempted to use an 11-year-old boy to smuggle a bomb through an IDF roadblock on Monday, and tried to detonate the bomb when soldiers stopped him.
The boy said he was promised a large sum of money for carrying the bag across a checkpoint near Nablus.
At least 140 Palestinians have been arrested in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the intifada on charges of collaborating with Israel, Palestinian Authority security officials disclosed on Monday.
The officials said 11 of the suspected collaborators were brought to trial after being accused of high treason and assisting Israeli security forces in tracking down and killing wanted Palestinian activists. Ten of them were sentenced to death, and four have already been executed.
The remaining six will be executed as soon as PA Chairman Yasser Arafat approves the death sentences against them, the security officials said.
Palestinian officials told The Jerusalem Post last week that the PA has decided to resume executions of suspected collaborators and convicted criminals as part of a crackdown designed to end the state of anarchy and lawlessness in the Gaza Strip.
[i]The Foothills of Hatred by Lee Kaplan [/i] http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12576" title="http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12576" target="_blank"http://frontpagemag.com/Artic...
Dr. Leighton Armitage of Foothill College says the Jews control America, and Israelis are Nazis. Dr. Leighton Armitage is a professor of political science in the Business and Social Sciences Department of Foothill College in Northern California. Foothill prepares more of its students to attend nearby Stanford and other major universities than any other two-year community college in California.
An article last Sunday about attempts to create democracy in Iraq misstated the precedent in the Mideast. Iraq would become the region's second functioning democracy, after Israel, not its first.--correction, New York Times, March 14 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
A leading Arab American civil rights organization has asked Merriam-Webster Inc. to publicly repudiate what the group calls a "false and damaging" definition of anti-Semitism in the unabridged version of Webster's Third New International Dictionary.
That dictionary lists, as one of the meanings of anti-Semitism, "opposition to Zionism: sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel."
In its complaint to Merriam-Webster, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee also asked the company to delete the definition in future reprintings of the 2,662- page dictionary's current edition and to insert a correction sheet into printings already made.
Leaving the definition uncorrected, the committee said in a March 3 letter, "smears and impugns the motives of all those who support the human and political rights of Palestinians; undermines the efforts of Arab and Jewish groups working for Middle East peace [and] stigmatizes legitimate political opinions and activities."
Merriam-Webster spokesman Arthur Bicknell said the company has no plans to immediately change the definition. But he added that because the definition no longer reflects current usage, "it is likely that [it] will be changed or eliminated" in the dictionary's fourth edition, which will be published in seven to 10 years.
Hussein Ibish, director of communications for the anti-discrimination committee, called Merriam-Webster's response "totally unacceptable. . . . It's not good enough to say in 10 years' time they'll deal with it."
Ibish said the committee has no problem with the dictionary's first definition of anti-Semitism, which describes it as "hostility toward Jews as a religious or racial minority group, often accompanied by social, political or economic discrimination." But he called the second definition "absolutely ridiculous."
THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, HOPING THAT THE ATTENTION OF THE U.S. IS ELSEWHERE, HAS QUIETLY RELEASED ALL FOUR SUSPECTS IN THE OCTOBER TERROR ATTACK THAT KILLED THREE AMERICANS IN GAZA: PA RELEASES SUSPECTS OF US-CONVOY ATTACK. [i] Palestinians Held in Deadly Gaza Attack on U.S. Convoy Released (CNN) [/i] http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD...
A judge Sunday ordered the release of four Palestinians detained in connection with an October bombing on a U.S. diplomatic convoy that killed three American security guards, Palestinian security sources said. U.S. Embassy spokesman Paul Patin in Tel Aviv said, "Our interests remain the same....We want this pursued vigorously, and we want those responsible for this crime arrested, convicted, and punished." The U.S. State Department has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information on those responsible for the bombing.
What the world should already know but so often forgets is that Jews are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. Anti-Semitism is like cancer; unchecked, it can metastasize and sicken the entire body. When civilized nations fail to rise up against the Jew-haters in their midst, it is often just a matter of time before the Jew-haters in their midst rise up against them.
When it comes to Israel, tempers sometimes flare, and sometimes we don't even know how to respond. We might hear a new argument or a new perspective, and the limited knowledge we have proves to be insufficient. Especially in the age of sound-bites and knee-jerk politics, we need to have more facts at our fingertips, organize what we know, and be prepared to respond effectively.
Recognizing this, here is a "Four-Point" educational campaign produced by Hasbara Fellowships. Each of the following 10 topics has four bullet-points -- to help deepen our understanding of the major issues of the Mideast conflict.
Settlements
1) Jews can live in Mexico City, Bangkok, St. Louis, and any city in the world (except in Saudi Arabia) -- but the PA wants to forbid Jews from living in the very cradle of Judaism. 2) The only period in the last 3,000 years without a continued Jewish presence in the West Bank was the 19 years between 1948-1967 when the Jordanian government banned Jews from living there. 3) In 1979, Ariel Sharon dismantled Yamit and other settlements in the Sinai when it was absolutely clear that compromise would bring a true peace. 4) Since the disputed territories were never part of a sovereign nation, and were acquired in a defensive war, international law permits the voluntary settlement of the land. Recognizing this, and the Oslo agreements never addressed the issue of Jewish or Arab settlements.
Refugees
1) There would be no refugee problem if seven Arab nations had not attacked Israel upon its inception in 1948. 2) Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries have consciously chosen to isolate refugees as political pawns,rather than integrate them into a normalized life. UN General Assembly Resolution 194 reads that all governments involved must share responsibility. 3)800,000 Jewish refugees were expelled from Arab countries in 1948, but their descendents are normalized today because they were absorbed by Israel and other countries. 4) As opposed to refugees in Arab countries, Israel integrated Arabs within its borders as citizens, and 1.2 million Israeli Arabs now enjoy citizenship, benefits, and governmental representation in Israel.
Compromises for Peace
1) Israel signed independent peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), each time giving away either land, oil, settlements, or strategic military advantage to achieve a peaceful agreement. 2) Israel gave the Palestinian Authority land, money, weapons, training, and intelligence, all in the hope that the PA would reciprocate with an end to terror and incitement. 3) The very formula "Land for Peace" indicates that Arabs compromise for what they want most -- land, while Israel compromises for what it wants most -- peace. 4) In 1917, 1937, 1947, 1956, 1979, and 1993 Israeli leaders established a pattern of accepting the handover of land in exchange for peace agreements with its Arab neighbors.
Waiting for a true Partner
1) The real PLO took the Israeli Olympic delegation hostage in the 1972 Munich Olympic games, and after failing to extort the release of Palestinian prisoners, killed 11 Israeli athletes. 2) The real PLO invented the idea of skyjackings in 1970, and instilled fear in travelers across the world. 3) The real PLO shot and killed the elderly, unarmed, wheelchair-bound, U.S. citizen Leon Klinghoffer on the Achille Lauro cruise liner in 1985. 4) The real PLO continues to incite violence against Jews, promote the armed struggle to "liberate all of Palestine," and indoctrinate Palestinian children into a culture of hatred where death is the ultimate prize.
The 3,000-year Jewish connection
1) The only independent sovereign nations to ever exist in the Land of Israel were the two ancient Jewish commonwealths, the second of which was destroyed in 70 of the common era. 2) For 3,000 years, Jews have expressed the desire to return to their ancestral homeland: at the Passover Seder, the Yom Kippur service, in daily prayer, in the blessing after meals, under the wedding canopy, on the yearly day of national mourning Tisha B'Av, and by placing Israeli soil in the coffin of their deceased. 3) Even after exile, Jews managed to keep a continual presence of Jewish communities in such cities as Jerusalem, Tzfat, Tiberias, Shechem, and Hebron. 4) Centuries before the inception of Islam, Jews were yearning to return to Israel, and the Koran itself records this in many suras (chapters), such as 17:7, 17:104, and 5:21 that tells the Jews to "enter into the Holy Land which Allah has assigned to you."
Holy Sites
1) When Israel gained control and reunified Jerusalem in 1967, rather than forbid Muslim worship or close the mosques, it allowed the Muslim Waqf (religious authority) to administer and control the Temple Mount and maintain the Al-Aqsa mosque. 2) Under Jordanian rule, Jews were forbidden from praying at the Western Wall; the Mount of Olives cemetery and 58 Jewish synagogues were destroyed. However, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim sites are open to all worshippers under Israeli rule -- except for the site of the ancient Jewish Temple, the Temple Mount, where Jews are normally forbidden to pray. 3) When Israel transferred military control to the PA, angry mobs burned and destroyed Jewish holy sites and religious artifacts at Jericho, Hebron, and Joseph's tomb in Nablus. 4) In 2002, Palestinian terrorists took 30 monks hostage in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity because they knew Jewish soldiers would not shoot inside. After the hostages were freed, investigators found the Church profaned and desecrated.
Jerusalem
1) Mecca and Medina are the holiest cities to Muslims; Vatican City is the holiest to Catholics. While Jerusalem has significance to many religions, Jerusalem is supreme and holiest only to the Jews. When it was conquered by Jordan in 1949, no Muslim dignitary or leader visited Jerusalem in any official, public, or religious capacity. 2) Jerusalem has been central to Judaism since biblical times, when it was made the eternal spiritual capital of the Jewish people. 3) Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem since 1840, and there has been a continual Jewish presence in Jerusalem since the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 of the common era. (Paul Johnson, History of the Jews) 4) Jerusalem is for everyone only when it is in Israeli control.
The UN and International Law
1) The 1917 Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations Mandate, the 1947 UN Partition Plan, and Israel's 1949 admission into the UN reaffirmed Israel the international right to exist as the Jewish homeland. 2) UN Security Council Resolution 242 reads that Israel should relinquish land only if it is in the context of a "peaceful and accepted settlement." 3) UN Resolution 242 requires that all states in the area recognize Israel's "right to live in peace with secure and recognized borders free from threats or acts of force." 4) Until 2002, Israel was the only UN member state ineligible to sit on the Security Council, and today that right is still only limited and temporary. Since the 1970s, an Arab-Soviet-Third World Bloc reinforced Israel's outcast status by barring Israel from other key UN bodies and making Israel the object of more investigative committees and special representatives than any other state in the UN.
Israel's Excessive Restraint
1) Israel is facing a serious threat -- Palestinian gunmen have repeatedly fired at civilians and soldiers from hospitals, mosques and schools, using humans as shields and ambulances to transport weaponry. 2) Though the intifada has heaped violence upon Israel, there have been, on average, less than one person injured per Palestinian riot. Israel is currently training 26 other countries in technology it has created to minimize injury in crowd and riot control situations. 3) During "Black September" in Jordan in 1970, 2,500 Palestinian rioters were killed in 10 days by the Jordanian army. In 1993, UN Peacekeeping troops justified the killing of almost 100 Somalis by noting that, "Everyone on the ground in the vicinity was a combatant, because they meant to do us harm." 4) In April 2002, IDF ground forces went door-to-door to target known terrorists in Jenin, rather than use artillery or carpet bomb the city from above. Israel put its own troops at risk and lost 23 of its own soldiers because of this concern to not injure the innocent among its enemies.
Palestinian Lexicon
1) Hudna: strategic ceasefire engineered to rearm for the next battle, in English it is referred to as a "peace agreement." In the West, we tend to think of a "ceasefire" leading to peace - a Hudna is designed to lead to war. 2) Fatwa: Religiously inspired death warrant on the head of an enemy, all Jews living in Israel have a fatwa issued by Hamas leadership. 3) Occupation: Term describing a Jewish presence in any of the Land of Israel, including Israeli cities such as Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Hadera; in Western media it is tailored to refer only to the West Bank and Gaza. 4) Jihad: The religious struggle to eradicate the Jews from Israel and establish an Islamic society in their stead.
DAMASCUS, Syria -- At least five people were killed and more than 100 injured when spectators stampeded during a riot in a soccer stadium Friday, hospital officials and witnesses said.
The official Syrian news agency SANA said [b]fights broke out between fans of the teams Al-Jihad and Al-Fatwa [/b]shortly before their Syrian championship game was to begin in Qameshli, 450 miles from Damascus. . .
One witness, Ibrahim Hussein, said the clashes began when Al-Fatwa supporters began stoning Al-Jihad players and fans in the grandstand before the game.
AS I'M SURE YOU KNOW, A "FATWA" IS AN AUTHORITATIVE RULING ON A RELIGIOUS MATTER (SUCH AS THE FATWAS ISSUED BY OSAMA TO KILL JEWS OR THE FATWA ISSUED BY THE AYATOLLAH KHOMENI FOR THE DEATH OF SALMAN RUSHDIE). JIHAD IS HOLY WAR.
I ASSUME THE REST OF THE LEAGUE IS MADE UP OF THE FOLLOWING TEAMS: "THE SUICIDE BOMBERS," "THE ALLAH AKBARS," AND "THE HONOR KILLINGS."
THERE'S NOTHING ABOUT UNILATERAL WITHDRAW FROM THE DISPUTED TERRITORIES IN THE "ROAD MAP." AS I RECALL, THE P.A. IS SUPPOSED TO STOP TERROR BEFORE ISRAEL DOES ANYTHING. NEVERTHELESS, ISRAEL IS PLANNING TO DO SO FROM GAZA. THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE STATE DEPARTMENT WHICH DEMANDS THAT ISRAEL GIVE THE PALESTINIANS EVERYTHING THEY WANT IN EXCHANGE FOR …….NOTHING. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/...
Sharon is considering restricting his disengagement plan to Gaza only, without a concomitant withdrawal from the West Bank, in light of the growing opposition to the plan among Likud ministers.
Sharon will explore this possibility over the next few days, as well as the alternative of a small, purely symbolic withdrawal from the West Bank.
However, both the United States and Egypt have said they will not support the plan unless it includes a significant withdrawal from the West Bank.
Sharon met Thursday in Jerusalem with three American envoys who came to hear additional details of the disengagement plan and to discuss what the U.S. might give Israel in exchange for the withdrawal. The three - Steve Hadley and Elliot Abrams from the White House and William Burns from the State Department - met Friday morning with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. They are also meeting with National Security Adviser Giora Eiland and Sharon's bureau chief, Dov Weisglass.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East David Satterfield reiterated this position in Washington Thursday. America, he said, has not yet formulated a position regarding the disengagement plan, and will do so only after receiving more answers from Israel. However, he added, one of the biggest questions is the scope of the planned withdrawal in the West Bank, which America views as a necessary complement to the Gaza pullout.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians are demanding that following the disengagement, Israel allow Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to travel freely between Ramallah and Gaza, arguing that this is necessary for the PA security forces to assume control over Gaza once Israel leaves. Israel, however, rejects this demand.
I JUST LOVE THAT LAST PARAGRAPH. ARAFAT WANTS ISRAEL TO GIVE HIM FREEDOM TO MOVE SO HE CAN CONTROL HIS MAFIA IN GAZA SO THAT HE CAN PERPETRATE MORE TERROR ATTACKS.
The Palestinian Authority has recently begun to hint that it will not oppose Israel's planned unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip if Israel allows PA Chairman Yasser Arafat to move freely between his Ramallah headquarters and Gaza.
Senior Palestinian officials have told Sharon's adviser Dov Weisglass recently that this is the way to ensure stability and effective control over Palestinian security forces in the Gaza Strip, in the wake of an Israeli withdrawal.
Arafat's occasional presence in Gaza would be crucial for preventing chaos there, a Palestinian source said. However, Arafat has no plans of settling in Gaza, the source added.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Around 2,000 supporters of a hard-line Shi'ite Muslim group gathered in Baghdad Friday to denounce the country's new interim constitution, in the latest show of strength by Shi'ites demanding greater influence.
The protesters were mostly supporters of the "Group of the Virtuous," a Shi'ite group calling for direct implementation of Islamic law and the establishment of a theocratic political system similar to Iran's. "They want Iraq to split into many countries, and they want us to be their subjects," they chanted. [b]"We will never accept a constitution written by the Jews." [/b]
There were twice as many anti-Semitic incidents in Canada in 2003 as in 2001, according to a new report. According to the Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents for 2003 released by B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights, 584 incidents were reported last year, the highest number in the 21-year history of the audit. Two-thirds of the incidents were classified as harassment, about 30 percent as vandalism, and 2.6 percent — 15 incidents — as violence. While threats of violence have increased steeply, the actual number of violent incidents has decreased, B’nai Brith found. Incidents were reported from coast to coast, but most occurred in Ontario and Quebec, where most Canadian Jews live.
Jordanian officials asked Israeli officials not to refer to Jordan as the real Palestinian state. Michael Ratzon, Israel’s deputy minister of industry, trade and labor, said a Jordanian delegation asked Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Thursday to retract past statements to that effect. Sharon told the delegation that in the future he would stress that he doesn’t view Jordan as a Palestinian state. The Jordanian delegation was in Israel for the opening of a joint Israeli-Jordanian science center.
IN RESPONSE, ISRAEL ASKED JORDAN TO DECLARE THAT ISRAEL IS NOT PALESTINE. JUST KIDDING. I WISH.
OF COURSE THEY'RE HAILED AS HEROES. JUSTIFIABLY SO. HOWEVER, IF ISRAELI CIVILIANS HAD DONE THE SAME, THE WORLD PRESS WOULD CALL THEM..... WELL, YOU KNOW
[i]Palestinians beat terrorists [/i] www.jta.org
Palestinian workers waiting to enter Israel from the Gaza Strip reportedly beat and overpowered two terrorists planning to carry out an attack. An inquiry conducted recently by the Defense Ministry with the help of Palestinian officials found that, a few days after a Jan. 14 suicide bombing at the Erez crossing, Palestinian workers waiting to enter Israel noticed two Palestinian youths carrying weapons under their clothing trying to enter the area. The workers confronted them, overpowered them, beat them and then handed them over to Palestinian Authority policemen. It’s not clear what happened to the youths after that, Ha’aretz reported. Some 5,000-10,000 Palestinians enter Israel for work each day, but attacks at the crossing points sometimes cause Israel to close the border.
YESTERDAY, I POSTED A STORY ABOUT ISRAEL'S OFFER OF HELP TO SPAIN. ISRAEL OFFERED TO SEND A FORENSIC TEAM TO HELP IDENTIFY THE DEAD. UNFORTUNATELY, ISRAEL HAS BECOME QUITE EXPERT AT THIS.
[i]Madrid says no [/i] www.jta.org
The Spanish government declined an Israeli offer of aid after Thursday’s terrorist bombings. Israeli forensic experts had offered to come to Madrid after Spanish rescue services had requested Israeli help in identifying the dead. The Spanish government apparently decided that their help was no longer needed, however. The Knesset plans a minute of silence Monday in memory of the 198 people killed in the attacks.
RED TIGRESS http://redtigress.tblog.com HAS A GREAT POST ON HER BLOG: [i]"A Middle-East guide for the perplexed, or How to respond on your way to class, when your best friend joins an anti-Israel protest."[/i] http://www.us-israel.org/pub/... IT'S A PDF FILE, SO YOU'LL NEED ADOBE ACROBAT TO READ IT.
THIS IS FROM THE INTRODUCTION:
It can happen in a restaurant with friends, at a party, or on your way to class: someone offers a statement, a fact, a position, a logical argument about human suffering in the Middle East, which is, at the same time, a condemnation of the State of Israel.
Suddenly, where once you felt comfortable with your sense of justice, you find it difficult to respond. Is it true? Where you once thought Israel stood for justice and democracy, is it possible that Israel has now emerged as a Goliathan oppressor of a defenseless, downtrodden people, who are struggling for their human rights?
How do you respond? Are you quiet because you do not want to reveal your own confusion? Do you feel an instinct that makes you want to argue a point you are not equipped to make? Do you suddenly feel like an outsider, perhaps even unwelcome, among those with whom you thought you shared common values?
The purpose of this book is to present accessible and balanced information to help you respond to complex, competing and often emotional statements about Israel. These discussions can be the most difficult when held with friends, family, even parts of your own inner dialogue, as you attempt to find justice within the events you see in the media every day. It is a difficult task; there is tremendous pain on all sides. This book is a limited reference tool. We encourage you to do more research. Read all you can on every side of the issues and draw your own conclusions.
The name of this book is drawn from the famous Talmudic story of Hillel the Elder (end of 1st century BCE), who is confronted by a man demanding to learn Torah. The man wants the knowledge, wants it fast, and demands to have it while "standing on one foot." Hillel responds, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the entire Torah, all of it; the rest is commentary."
In our hyperspeed world, we too need to get some fast learning, often while we are on one foot, struggling for balance, seeking the truth.
[i][b]As Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, neatly put it, "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." [/b]The first choice of Islamists is to kill Americans and Jews, or best of all an American Jew - like Daniel Pearl, the late Wall Street Journal reporter. Failing that, they're happy to kill Australians, Britons, Canadians, Swedes, Germans, as they did in Bali. We are all infidels.[/i] http://www.steynonline.com/in...
YOU'VE GOT TO BE POWERFUL TO KILL "THE SON OF G-D"
According to [i]Jewsweek[/i], last week marked the 10th anniversary of the death of stand up comedian Bill Hicks. Hicks, who was notorious for his scathing commentary on evangelical Christianity would have had a field day with all this Passion business, thus making this yahrzeit a particularly relevant one. To quote one Hick's routine[b], "If I thought the Jews killed Jesus, I'd worship the Jews. Those are some pretty powerful people right there." [/b] http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=BlankPage&enDi splay=view&enDispWhat=obj ect&enDispWho=Article" title="http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=BlankPage&enDi splay=view&enDispWhat=obj ect&enDispWho=Article" target="_blank"http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/e...%5El1085&enZone=Articles& enVersion=0&
LET'S SEE, AN ETHNIC GROUP CLAIMING THEIR LAND IS OCCUPIED AND RESORTING TO THE MURDER OF CIVILIANS DURING THEIR COMMUTES SETS OFF BOMBS KILLING HUNDREDS AND WOUNDING A THOUSAND. THE ALLEGED OCCUPIER THREATENS HARSH REPRISALS AND REFUSES TO NEGOTIATE WITH THE MURDERERS. THE WORLD APPROVES OF THE RESPONSE, CONDEMNING THE PERPETRATORS AS TERRORISTS. THE MEDIA SCREAMS OF THE HORROR. ISRAEL? NO. SPAIN. MAYBE THE WORLD WILL CHANGE ITS TUNE IF IT FINDS OUT THAT SOME JEWS HAPPENED TO DIE IN THE ATTACK.
MADRID, Spain — At least 190 people were killed and 1,240 wounded Thursday after 10 bombs rocked three Madrid train stations during the height of the morning rush hour, just three days before Spain's general elections.
"This is mass murder," said a somber Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar (search) after an emergency Cabinet meeting, at which he vowed to hunt down the attackers and said he would not negotiate with the ETA (search) Basque separatist terror group, which is suspected of being behind the attacks.
"No negotiation is possible or desirable with these assassins who so many times have sown death all around Spain," Aznar said.
AT A SPANISH DEMONSTRATION PROTESTING TODAY'S TERRORISTS ATTACKS, THERE WAS AN EXAMPLE OF THE HYPOCRISY THAT IS POISONING EUROPE. CHECK OUT THE GUY IN THE KNIT CAP AND KAFFIYEH PROUDLY ALIGNING HIMSELF WITH THE SYMBOL OF PALESTINIAN TERRORISM:
[image]rsheinfield_220164 465.jpg[/image]
[i]Demonstrators hold up their hands as a signal to stop, during a demonstration in Seville, southern Spain, Thursday March 11, 2004, after ten bombs exploded in Madrid during the morning rush hour, Thursday March 11, 2004, killing at least 170 people and injuring hundreds more. (AP Photo/EFE, Eduardo Abad) [/i] http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/04 0311/481/xmad81903111405" title="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/04 0311/481/xmad81903111405" target="_blank"http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
AS CHARLES AT LGF http://www.littlegreenfootbal... POINTS OUT: "I’ve always believed the signal to “stop” was a single hand held up. Holding both hands up in the air is a symbol of something else altogether."
NEEDLESS TO SAY, ISRAEL HAS ALREADY OFFERED SPAIN HELP. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... LET'S SEE HOW THE SPANISH REACT TO THE NEXT BUS BOMB IN JERUSALEM.
[b]UPDATE: [/b] IT'S QUITE POSSIBLE THAT AL QAEDA AND NOT THE ETA CARRIED OUT THESE ATTACKS. AFTER ALL, SPAIN IS PART OF THE U.S. COALITION FIGHTING TERROR. http://story.news.yahoo.com/n... AND http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?S... BUT THAT WOULDN'T CHANGE THE HYPOCRITICAL NATURE OF THE REACTIONS OF THE WORLD OR THE MEDIA WHEN IT WAS REPORTED THAT THE ETA CARRIED OUT THE ATTACKS.
Ahmed Rami wanted to buy his six-year-old son alphabet blocks to help him read, but little Rami wanted a sleek black M-16 plastic rifle instead. [b]Palestinian toy stores are packed with plastic arsenals of rifles, miniature tanks, missiles, and artillery pieces.[/b]
Toy seller Midhat al-Mallah had toy cars and stuffed animals on offer, but said weapons were more popular. "Even girls want a toy gun," he said.
[b]A recent study of 12-year-old Palestinian children found that nearly a quarter wanted to die as suicide bombers in the fight against Israel. [/b]
NOT EVEN THE PALESTINIANS WANT TO LIVE IN ARAFATSTAN
In a reversal of norms for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel recently has contemplated giving up slices of Arab-populated land, while the Palestinian Arabs living on them have demanded to stay under Israeli governance. Israeli Arabs feel more secure under Israel's democracy than under a Palestinian state they expect will be authoritarian and corrupt. Umm al-Fahm's people prefer to be called Palestinians, but for reasons of jobs and political freedoms, they insist on living in Israel. "The democracy and justice in Israel is better than the democracy and justice in Arab and Islamic countries," said Hashem Abdel Rahman, who is Umm al-Fahm's mayor and local head of the Islamic Movement. A poll of Arabs in towns near here last month found that 90% preferred to remain in Israel. (Newsday)
[b]See also[/b] [i]Umm el-Fahm, Palestine - Matti Golan[/i] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... The terribly intriguing question is why a Palestinian nationalist should be so opposed to having Palestinian citizenship. I try to imagine what would happen if it were the other way around, if I lived in a Palestinian state and were offered to move over to Israeli sovereignty without even having to leave my home. What more could I ask for?
Why do the Palestinians have no problem openly demanding that there be no Jews in their state, demanding that the settlers be returned to sovereign Israel, which does involve evicting people from their homes? The writer is former editor-in-chief of Ha'aretz. (Jerusalem Post)
Abu Abbas’s gang of terrorist thugs hijacked the Achille Lauro, shot an old man in a wheelchair and dumped him overboard. The Associated Press calls them commandos. http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
"[b]After Klinghoffer was killed[/b], the other passengers were released after a two-day ordeal and the [u][b]commandos [/b][/u]surrendered to Egyptian authorities, who put them on a flight to PLO headquarters in Tunisia."
NOTE ALSO THE USE OF THE PASSIVE VOICE REGARDING LEON KLINGHOFFER'S MURDER. HE "WAS KILLED." NO. THE PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS KILLED HIM.
AS YOU'LL RECALL, LAST WEEKEND ROSS VACHON SENT ME THE FOLLOWING EMAIL FROM HIS HOTMAIL ACCOUNT:
[i]Shit-for-brains,
Why would an anti-American, Anti-Christ, parasite like yourself not move to your shitty little Neo-Nazi homeland? There's millions of goyim you can crucify over there. Get going, before we have to drag your dumb ass out.
Captain R.C. Vachon
U.S.M.C.
Camp Pendleton, CA[/i]
HOTMAIL INFORMED ME THAT THEY HAVE CANCELED "CAPTAIN" VACHON'S EMAIL ACCOUNT, AS HE VIOLATED THEIR USER AGREEMENT. I'M STILL WAITING TO HEAR BACK FROM THE MARINES ABOUT THE RESULTS OF THEIR INVESTIGATION. AS YOU'LL RECALL, CAMP PENDLETON HAD NO RECORD OF A "CAPTAIN" VACHON. MAYBE THEY SHOULD LOOK FOR HIM UNDER THE TITLE, "REICHFUEHRER"?
NEW YORK, March 8 (JTA) — An old tradition is being revived at the United Nations: challenging Israel’s credentials.
The Palestinians’ U.N. representative, Nasser Al-Kidwa, plans to introduce a U.N. General Assembly resolution later this month that would limit Israel’s U.N. credentials to its pre-1967 borders and give Palestinians the right to represent the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem.
“We uncovered this scheme about a week ago,” said Arye Mekel, Israel’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations. “This is another effort by the Palestinians, part of their ongoing campaign against the state of Israel.”
Challenging Israel’s U.N. credentials was common practice in pre-Oslo days but resurfaced recently only in a failed attempt last year. Palestinians introduced the resolution in December but decided against bringing it to a vote due to weak support.
Israel recently foiled a terrorist plot to slam a radio-controlled model airplane loaded with explosives into Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip. The Shin Bet said Wednesday it had arrested a Palestinian who confessed to planning the attack on instructions from Hezbollah. The Palestinian said he joined the Lebanese militia after seeing a recruitment ad on its satellite television channel Al-Manar.
James Taranto of [i]The Wall Street Journal[/i] http://www.opinionjournal.com... has a piece entitled, [i]"Rocky: The Jews Made Me Do It!"[/i]
He points out that Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, now the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, in 2002 cast a vote in favor of liberating Iraq. Once Iraq was liberated, Rockefeller switched to the pro-Saddam side of the debate, and now he seems to be suggesting he was the victim of a Jewish conspiracy. Taranto says that [i]The New York Sun[/i] reports on a letter Rockefeller wrote to Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith:
"In a section of the October 1 letter to Mr. Feith headed "Coordination with the Israeli Government," Mr. Rockefeller writes, "Have you or anyone in OSD received, in writing or orally, any terrorist-related assessments or intelligence from Prime Minister Sharon's office or other elements of the Israeli government?" http://daily.nysun.com/Reposi...:ArticleToMail&Type=text/ html&Path=NYS/2004/03/10& ID=Ar00101
Preceding this question, the senator cites an article by Robert Dreyfuss in the July 7, 2003, issue of the Nation magazine that "indicated that elements of your staff have been coordinating their terrorism assessments with a 'rump unit established last year in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.' "
Taranto points out that [i]The Nation[/i], of course, is a far-left magazine that is often virulently hostile to the Jewish state. Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat, tells the [i]Sun[/i]: "The language in the Nation article was very charged and implies sinister motives on the part of the Israelis. I think the senator probably regrets using that same language in his letter of investigation."
Settles In as Justice Minister of Canada - Leonard Stern On October 21, 2002, after an Islamic Jihad terrorist detonated a car bomb next to an Israeli bus, incinerating 14 passengers, Irwin Cotler stood in the House of Commons in Ottawa and criticized the Canadian government, led by his own Liberal party, for refusing to designate Islamic Jihad and Hamas as terror organizations. Two weeks after the bus attack, Cotler again rose from the backbench and urged his Liberal colleagues "to do the right thing" and blacklist Palestinian terror groups. Twenty days later the government relented and named Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist "entities." By that time it was assumed that Cotler was a troublemaker and was finished politically. A year later he became minister of justice and attorney general of Canada. (Jerusalem Report)
GAZA (Reuters) - Followers of Mohammed Abbas, the Palestinian mastermind of the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking in 1985, blamed the United States and Israel on Wednesday for his death in U.S. custody in Iraq.
Captured by American forces in Iraq nearly a year ago, the U.S. military in Baghdad confirmed the death of Abbas, 56. One U.S. official said the burly former guerrilla died of a heart attack Tuesday.
"We hold the Americans responsible for his death, for his assassination," said Omar Shebli, number two to Abbas in the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF).
"They put him to die slowly in a prison cell, deprived of his freedom. His detention was illegal and his conditions in jail were bad," Shebli told Reuters in the Gaza Strip.
He also accused Israel's Mossad intelligence agency of helping U.S. forces "torture" Abbas, saying that Abbas had sent word to supporters that: "Mossad officers, Jewish officers, participated in the interrogation." ...
Calling Abbas a "martyr," [Yasser] Arafat mourned the PLF leader who renounced violence when the Palestinians signed accords with Israel in 1993 and last returned to Palestinian-run territories for a brief visit four years ago.
"President Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leadership, the PLO and the Palestinian National Authority mourn the death of martyr Abbas," a statement issued in Ramallah said.
[b]I DOUBT VERY MUCH THAT THE U.S. OR ISRAEL HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH HASTENING THE DEATH OF THIS EVIL MURDERER. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? I HOPE THEY DID. THIS GUY DESERVED TO DIE A PAINFUL DEATH. WHEN YOU SHOOT AN OLD MAN IN A WHEEL CHAIR - JUST BECAUSE HE'S JEWISH - AND THEN THROW HIM INTO THE OCEAN, YOU DESERVE TO DIE. EVEN IF IT TAKES ALMOST 20 YEARS FOR JUSTICE.[/b]
IF THE PALESTINIANS LAID DOWN THEIR ARMS TOMORROW, THEY WOULD HAVE A STATE AND PEACE. IF THE ISRAELIS LAID DOWN THEIR ARMS TOMORROW, THEY WOULD BE MASSACRED.
[i]The Problem Isn’t Palestine [/i] http://israpundit.com/archives/005179.html#more" title="http://israpundit.com/archives/005179.html#more" target="_blank"http://israpundit.com/archive...
Every time a European or American leader declares that the problem here in Israel and the Palestinian territories needs to be resolved peacefully with negotiations according to the “Road Map”, they are doing a disservice to both the Palestinian and Israeli people. Every time a reporter highlights Israel and Palestine as the most important problem to be solved in the Middle East and the world today, he or she is not helping towards finding a solution, but is part of the problem.
The fact is there is only one solution to the bloodshed here in the Middle East and it has nothing to do with settlements, road maps, occupation or fences. The only problem that needs to be addressed here is terror. Once terror ends there will be no reason for occupation. There will be no reason for building fences. There will be no reason for a separation of populations in Israel or the territories. There will be no reason for additional settlements. There will be no reason for transfers of people from their current addresses across artificial borders. Once terror ends, and all people in Israel and the territories return to civilization, peace will be a cakewalk. By highlighting the false point that an “evenhanded” solution needs to be imposed upon us with pressure by the United States or Europe, the tyrants, thugs, terrorists and dictators are given their scapegoat and an excuse to hold onto power and oppress their own people further.
If Palestinians took to the streets peacefully without violence they would soon be met in the streets by hundreds of thousands of Israelis, and Jews from the Diaspora, ready to take up their cause. If the violence against us ends tomorrow it will take less than a year to finish this conflict for the foreseeable future. The vast majority of Israelis want peace even if it means giving up the majority of land over the green line. It has been said repeatedly that the majority of Palestinians want peace as well, but the definition of “peace” on the Palestinian street may have a different meaning than that of their Israeli neighbors. For the sake of argument, lets call “peace” an end to all hostilities amongst our populations. Israeli forces can withdraw out of 99% of the Palestinian population centers tomorrow as it had done under the Oslo Accords. The Palestinians however must end terror by disarming the various terrorist groups. So how do we end terror?
[i]The Chicken Or The Egg? by Gerald A. Honigman [/i] http://israpundit.com/archives/005184.html#more" title="http://israpundit.com/archives/005184.html#more" target="_blank"http://israpundit.com/archive...
It's become routine by now.
Jewish civilians get deliberately blown up by Arabs on buses or in restaurants, and this next becomes morally equated with Arab non-combatants who die because their heroes used them as human shields. We're then told that all of this starts in the first place because of Israeli "oppression"... aka measures Jews take to try to stop Arabs from butchering their kids. Consider the following sequence of events...
A while back, Molly Moore of the Washington Post reported on progress in talks between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the PA's Mahmoud Abbas. In the passing, she quoted from Hamas spokesman, Abdul Aziz Rantisi, who held out the possibility of halting terror against Israelis. This, "of course," was contingent on Israel first stopping all actions it has been forced to take to stop the murder itself.
NEW YORK- The official web site of the Palestinian Authority's representative in Argentina is displaying a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon, in which U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is shown performing in front of a hooked-nose Jew with bags of money. (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 8, 2004)
The cartoon is just the latest example of the constant torrent of anti-Semitic incitement in the PA's official media.
Palestinian Media Watch recently reported that on February 6, 2004, PA Television broadcast an interview with Ahmad Nasser, Secretary of the Palestinian Authority's Legislative Council, in which he said "Israel, the State of Israel, is the Satan's offspring, a Satanic offspring ... and cannot exist among human beings..." Nasser and the interviewer also discussed how Israel's recent release of Arab terrorist prisoners was part of the Jewish conspiracy described in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
[i]A Saudi Looks at Israel's Values - Amnon Rubinstein[/i] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/402103.html" title="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/402103.html" target="_blank"http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/...
Commenting on the prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hizballah, Khaled Jalabi wrote in Saudi Arabia's Al-Watan: "At first glance, it appears that Israel endured the humiliation of conducting negotiations with a faction and not a state, with the aim of freeing one individual in exchange for hundreds of prisoners. But only a child would miss the point: On a pure arithmetic reckoning, the meaning is that Israel viewed the three corpses and the one living man as being equivalent to any number of people, even if that total reached hundreds or thousands. In terms of moral logic, the moral is that, in Israel's view, the life of an Israeli, even one of Arab origin, is considered invaluable. In contrast, an Arab citizen can be thrown in prison for having surfed on the opposition's Web site...that shows how much a citizen's life is worth in the eyes of Arab regimes." (Ha'aretz)
[i]Plan to Disguise Female Bomber as Israeli Ambulance Volunteer Foiled - Meir Suissa and Amit Cohen (Maarivenglish.com)[/i] http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&ar ticleID=4282" title="http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&ar ticleID=4282" target="_blank"http://www.maarivintl.com/ind...
The General Security Service (GSS) recently foiled a triple suicide bombing planned by the military wing of Fatah, which was to feature a female suicide bomber dressed up as a volunteer of Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel's emergency ambulance service.
The would-be female bomber, who gave herself up to security forces, revealed that two other members of her cell in Nablus were planning to board a bus in central Israel and blow themselves up.
The would-be female bomber was to wait, dressed in a MDA uniform, for the arrival of rescue forces and set off her explosive belt among them.
[i]84% of Jewish Israelis Support Security Fence - Efraim Yaar and Tamar Herman (Ha'aretz-Hebrew)[/i] http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=402724&contr assID=2&subContrassID=2&s bSubContrassID=0" title="http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=402724&contr assID=2&subContrassID=2&s bSubContrassID=0" target="_blank"http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasi...
84% of Jewish Israelis support construction of the security fence, according to the March "Peace Index" survey of the Tammy Steinmetz Center for Peace Studies at Tel Aviv University. Two-thirds of Jewish respondents believe the fence route should be set according to security considerations and not according to the "green line."
70% support the policy of targeted killings, even if innocents are hurt. 60% support the removal of all settlements in Gaza and small, isolated settlements in the West Bank.
When asked about the possibility of a peace agreement with the Palestinians as an alternative to unilateral disengagement, 51% prefer quick disengagement compared with 36% who favor an extended effort to reach an agreement.
A clear majority of 60% oppose the removal of all settlements in the West Bank, including the large settlement blocs, compared with 30% who favor such a step.
Only 32% of the general public and 26% of the Jewish public still support the Oslo agreements.
Palestinian terrorist mastermind Abu Abbas has died while in U.S. custody in Iraq, officials at the Pentagon told Fox News Tuesday.
Abbas, who led the deadly hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985, was captured April 15 by U.S. commandos during a raid on the southern outskirts of Baghdad — 18 years after his crime.
He had been convicted in absentia in an Italian court for the 1985 hijacking and sentenced to life in prison in 1986, but never served any time. Abbas' exact age was not available but was believed to range from 56 to 63.
Abbas, whose real name is Mohammed Abbas, garnered international attention when the Achille Lauro was seized off Port Said, Egypt, by members of a PLO splinter group called the Palestine Liberation Front.
Hundreds of passengers, including American Leon Klinghoffer and his wife, were taken hostage. The hijackers demanded that Israel release 50 imprisoned Palestinians.
Militants shot Klinghoffer in his wheelchair and tossed him overboard.
The other passengers were released after a two-day ordeal and the commandos surrendered to Egyptian authorities, who put them on a flight to PLO headquarters in Tunisia.
U.S. Navy fighters forced the flight down in Sicily. The Italians, to the Americans' dismay, allowed Abbas to flee to Yugoslavia before a U.S. warrant for piracy and hostage-taking could be served.
Abbas disappeared, and international manhunts and a price on his head failed to flush him out. His faction relocated to Iraq after the attack.
Democratic presidential nominee-to-be [b]John Kerry called Yasser Arafat a "statesman" and a "role model" [/b]in a 1997 book that Kerry cites as proof of his own foresight about foreign policy.
Kerry expressed the opposite view eight days ago, when he told Jewish leaders in New York that he shares President Bush's belief that Arafat must be isolated because he's not a "partner for peace" - much less a statesman.
The revelation of Kerry's comments in his 1997 book "The New War" comes on the heels of his contradictory remarks about Israel's security fence and whether or not he'd rely on Jimmy Carter as a Mideast envoy.
"Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman," Kerry wrote in "The New War," now out of print.
Kerry added that terrorists "whose only object is to disrupt society require no such 'role models [as Arafat].' "
[b]Kerry's remarks came as he was dismissing noted historian Paul Johnson as out of date for saying the Palestinian Liberation Organization is "the quintessential terrorist movement" but has achieved nothing for its people. [/b]
Just last month, Kerry pointed to his book and told Fox News that it shows he'd be "a president who does see ahead."
1) Jesus did not fulfill the messianic prophecies.
2) Jesus did not embody the personal qualifications of the Messiah.
3) Biblical verses "referring" to Jesus are mistranslations.
4) Jewish belief is based on national revelation.
[b]AN INTERESTING ARTICLE ON THE NATURE OF "THE MESSIAH" IN JUDIASM AND WHY WE DON'T THINK JESUS FITS THE BILL. [i]LARRY BIRD ON THE OTHER HAND.....[/i][/b]
ALAN DERSHOWITZ ENCOUNTERS ANTI-SEMITISM IN BOSTON
The other day, I experienced violent anti-Semitism for the first time in my adult life. It took place in front of Faneuil Hall, the birthplace of American independence and liberty.
I was receiving a justice award from the Jewish Council on Public Affairs and delivering a talk on "Civil Liberties in the Age of Terrorism" from the podium of that historic hall. When I left, award in hand, I was accosted by a group of screaming, angry young men and women carrying virulently anti-Israel signs. The protest was denominated a peace event and was sponsored by a group calling themselves by the vague name ACT-MA. Their website describes them as promoting peace and justice and associated with larger solidarity organizations, but there was nothing peaceful or just about this protest.
Although the signs they were carrying were not anti-Semitic, the sign carriers were shouting epithets at me that crossed the line from civility to bigotry. "Dershowitz and Hitler, just the same, the only difference is the name." The sin that, in the opinion of the screamers, warranted this comparison between me and the man who murdered dozens of my family members was my support for Israel. It was irrelevant to these chanters that I also support a Palestinian state, the end of the Israeli occupation and the dismantling of most of the settlements. They also shouted "Dershowitz and Gibbels [sic], just the same, the only difference is the name" - not even knowing how to pronounce the name of the anti-Semitic Nazi propagandist.
One sign carrier shouted that Jews who support Israel are worse than Nazis. Another demanded that I be tortured and killed. It wasn't only their words; it was the hatred in their eyes. If a dozen Boston police were not protecting me, I have little doubt I would have been physically attacked. Their eyes were ablaze with fanatical zeal.
The feminist writer Phyllis Chesler aptly described the hatred often directed against Israel and supporters of the Jewish state by some young people as eroticized. That is what I saw: passionate hatred, ecstatic hatred, orgasmic hatred. It was beyond mere differences of opinion. When I looked into their faces, I could imagine young Nazis in the 1930s in Hitler's Germany. They had no doubt that they were right and that I was pure evil for my support of the Jewish state, despite my public disagreement with some of Israel's policies and despite my support for Palestinian statehood. There was no place for nuance here. It was black and white, good versus evil, and any Jew who supported Israel was pure evil, deserving of torture, violence, and whatever fate Hitler and Goebbels deserved.
[i]Hamas Setting Up Army in Gaza Strip - Amit Cohen (Maarivenglish.com)[/i] http://www.maarivintl.com/dev...%7Bts%20%272004%2D03%2D08 %2010%3A48%3A42%27%7D&art icleID=4156
Hamas is establishing an army in the Gaza Strip, with the intention of taking over the region following the expected Israeli withdrawal. Hundreds of activists have been recruited to the "popular army," and the militia's leaders are amassing weapons, training warriors, and have decided on a command structure. Army members maintain a constant presence in Gaza streets, emphasizing their intention to fill the vacuum left by the PA.
The question of who will obtain the keys to the Gaza settlements that will be evacuated has heightened tensions. Each of the more than 10 security branches in Gaza is involved in power struggles, in addition to dozens of armed groups in Fatah.
PALESTINIAN THREATS CANCEL IDF FUNDRAISER IN PARIS
An IDF fundraising event in Paris to raise money for education scholarships for soldiers, featuring Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and scheduled to take place on Monday, was postponed after organizers and owners of the Palais Des Congress, one of Paris' largest halls, received death threats from local Palestinians.
[b]SATURDAY, I RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING UNSOLICITED HATE MAIL FROM ROSS VACHON. HE PROBABLY FOUND MY EMAIL ADDRESS ON THE BLOG. (HE MAY BE READING THIS NOW).[/b]
[i]"Shit-for-brains,
Why would an anti-American, Anti-Christ, parasite like yourself not move to your shitty little Neo-Nazi homeland? There's millions of goyim you can crucify over there. Get going, before we have to drag your dumb ass out.
Captain R.C. Vachon
U.S.M.C.
Camp Pendleton, CA
cc: MarinePride@yahoo.com
SemperFi@aol.com"[/i]
[b]ROSS VACHON'S RETURN EMAIL ADDRESS IS: blueblood10@hotmail.com[/b]
[b]I CONTACTED HOTMAIL REGARDING HIS ABUSE OF THEIR EMAIL SYSTEM AND VIOLATION OF HIS USER AGREEMENT. LET'S SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
I ALSO CONTACTED CAMP PENDLETON. IT SEEMS VACHON IS NOT CURRENTLY AFFILIATED WITH THE CAMP. THEY ARE CHECKING INTO IT.[/b]
[b]SO WHO IS ROSS VACHON? WELL, A LITTLE SEARCHING ON THE WEB TURNED UP THE FOLLOWING: THE NEO-NAZI, MUSLIM EXTREMIST PRESS IS FULL OF HIS ARTICLES. HERE ARE SOME LINKS: [/b] http://www.counterpunch.org/vachon05192003.html" title="http://www.counterpunch.org/vachon05192003.html" target="_blank"http://www.counterpunch.org/v... and this http://www.counterpunch.org/v... and this (for al Jazeera) http://www.aljazeerah.info/Op...%20editorials/2004%20opin ions/Feb/16o/The%20Psycho pathology%20Of%20Neo-Cons ervatism%20A%20Clinical%2 0History%20by%20Ross%20Va chon.htm and this http://www.williambowles.info...
[b]ACCORDING TO THE AUTHOR DESCRIPTIONS ON SOME OF THESE ARTICLES, [/b]
[i]"Ross Vachon is an American Patriot who can trace his French ancestry to Lafayette. The Publisher of Jouissance, a new mens magazine slated to debut [fall 2003], he may be contacted at: blueblood10@hotmail.com"
"Ross Vachon is an actor-producer based in Los Angeles. Pleased about the new call for cinematic French villians, his email is: ROSVAC@msn.com "[/i]
[i]Is European-Style Anti-Semitism Coming Our Way? By Gabriel Schoenfeld [/i] http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/schoenfeld200 403050942.asp" title="http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/schoenfeld200 403050942.asp" target="_blank"http://www.nationalreview.com...
We are now witnessing a worldwide resurgence of anti-Semitism: Can the dangerous malady spread to the United States? To a surprising extent the ancient hatred has already arrived on our doorstep. And the new anti-Semitism in this country is coming not primarily from the Right — and especially not from the Christian Right — but from other novel sources: American Muslims and segments of the American Left.
CHECK OUT GABRIEL SCHOENFELD'S NEW BOOK, "THE RETURN OF ANTI-SEMITISM" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1893 554899/ref" title="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1893 554899/ref" target="_blank"http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob...%3Dnosim/nationalreviewon /104-6476267-8357511
HERE'S AN INTERVIEW WITH HUTTON GIBSON, MEL'S PAPA. HE DENIES/MINIMIZES THE HOLOCAUST, SPITS ABOUT JEWISH CONSPIRACIES AND THE JEWISH QUEST FOR WORLD DOMINATION. I WON'T SULLY THE BLOG WITH QUOTES. YOU'LL HAVE TO GO TO THE LINK, HERE: http://www.baltimoresun.com/e...,0,3272471.story?coll=bal-entertainm ent-headlines
DOES THAT MAKE MEL AND ANTI-SEMITE? NOT IN AND OF ITSELF. BUT I AM CONCERNED ABOUT THE FOLLOWING QUOTE FROM MEL: "My dad taught me my faith and I believe what he taught me. The man never lied to me in his life," he said, when asked about Hutton's controversial comments. http://www.ananova.com/entert...
Police lowered a heightened terror alert in Jerusalem Saturday night following an IDF operation in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which reportedly thwarted a suicide attack planned for the capital.
During the day, IDF troops, deployed in Ramallah, arrested two Tanzim fugitives near the Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Muqata complex in the West Bank city. Several other Palestinians were arrested by Israeli security forces.
Using jeeps disguised to look like IDF vehicles and rigged with explosives, Palestinians launched an attack on Israeli positions around the Erez Crossing at Gaza on Saturday. No Israelis were injured, but six Palestinians were killed and at least 15 wounded.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah's Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it a joint "self-sacrifice operation" in a message posted on the Hamas Web site.
At about 10am Saturday morning, a Palestinian taxi rigged with explosives blew up near an IDF post located at the edge of the entrance to the Erez industrial zone and opposite a Palestinian police position, causing extensive damage to the Palestinian police station and also to the IDF Magen 12 outpost. It is not clear whether the explosives blew up prematurely or as a result of Palestinian policemen attempting to stop the attackers from proceeding. The taxi did not explode because of IDF gunfire, as some reports suggested.
Shortly after, IDF reservists spotted two jeeps disguised to look like they were IDF military vehicles. A gunman wearing a tiger-striped uniform got out of one of the jeeps and shot at the reservists, who shot back but failed to hit him. The terrorist then re-entered the jeep and the two jeeps headed towards the Erez crossing. One of the jeeps blew up at the entrance to the corridor used by Palestinian workers entering Israel, where a Palestinian police position is also located.
The second jeep, which contained two passengers, continued heading towards the position used by VIP's entering and leaving the Gaza Strip and attempted to break through the gate and the IDF roadblock. One of the terrorists, wearing an IDF uniform, exited the jeep and shot at soldiers, who shot and killed both him and the second attacker in the jeep. IDF sappers checked the jeep to see if it was also rigged with explosives.
The reservists were from same batallion in which reservist Sgt.Maj. Amir Zimmerman was killed a week ago. In all, four attackers killed.
Security officials said it is unclear whether the first car to explode was due to Palestinian police shooting or whether it blew up prematurely. The officials said the aim of the attack was either to launch a major terror attack inside the terminal near IDF soldiers and civilians working inside the industrial zone, or whether they had planned to enter Israel and launch an attack against civilians.
According to the official website of the ATHENS 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Israel doesn’t have a capital city. http://mideasttruth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=503" title="http://mideasttruth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=503" target="_blank"http://mideasttruth.com/forum...
There were 57 anti-Semitic incidents, primarily consisting of spray-painted swastikas and anti-Jewish slurs, from October to December - the highest number of anti-Semitic crimes since 2000, according to a study by Rep. Anthony Weiner to be released today.
There were 31 incidents in the same period in 2002.
“Like any other crime trend, we need to acknowledge the problem and take steps to stamp it out,” Weiner said.
Aides to Weiner said they did not have an explanation for the rise.
Israeli Struggle Inspires the U.S. - Joey Tartakovsky http://www.dailynexus.com/opinion/2004/6800.html" title="http://www.dailynexus.com/opinion/2004/6800.html" target="_blank"http://www.dailynexus.com/opi...
Ten times as many Chechens and nearly 1,000 times as many Congolese have died than in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip combined. Strange then, that so many know the basics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet so few can even point out on a map where the Chechens live or say why militias are warring at present in the Congo. This betrays the fact [b]that the fixation with Israel has little to do with humble concerns about human rights and peace - as many claim it does - for if that were the case, urgency and moral responsibility would direct their gaze elsewhere. …[/b]
[b]One explanation [/b]holds that since Arabs are being killed, it is only natural that this would provoke the lasting enmity of the 22 Arab nations. [b]But [/b]Saddam Hussein was the greatest mass murderer of Arabs in the 20th century - killing more in some blood-soaked weeks than Israel has in three decades of war and occupation - yet Arabs marched in support of him last winter.
[b]Could it be [/b]a Muslim issue, the concern of 1.2 billion Muslims ensuring a steady spotlight on Israel? In October 2003, the anti-Semitic former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed spoke to the 57 Muslim-majority nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, calling for solidarity in the struggle against the Jews. [b]But [/b]Muslims are now clashing in a dozen places with nearly every religious group - with Catholics in Nigeria and the Philippines; African animists in Sudan; Orthodox Christians in Russia and Serbia; Confucians in Xinjiang, China; Buddhists in Thailand; Hindus in India and Bangladesh - and often with far bloodier results. So why single out Israel?
[b]The [/b]outcry over Jenin in April 2002 - based on a massacre that never even happened - was [b]more [/b]furious than the perfunctory censure of the Hindu pogroms that butchered hundreds of Indian Muslims in February 2002, the rampaging Russian army that has caused the death and displacement of tens of thousands of Muslim Chechens since the mid-1990s or the brutal Serbian ethnic cleansing of Muslim Albanians in 1999. [b]No [/b]one can point to boisterous riots in Arab capitals against India's leaders, Syrian-sponsored resolutions condemning Russia in the United Nations or a single suicide bombing in Belgrade in revenge against the Serbs.
[b]On the other hand[/b], you can again point to rallies in support of Hussein or against the United States, a country that has saved more Muslims that any other in recent history, having rescued them in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, Afghanistan and northern and southern Iraq. Americans recognize that Israel's behavior epitomizes extraordinary restraint in the face of trials no people should be subjected to. Americans support Israel not just because we watched Palestinians dancing in the streets on 9/11, not just because we see a mirror of our own society in Israel and not just because we refuse to equate terrorism with fighting terrorism. Americans watch with admiration that a tiny country - its population the size of the Bay area's - which has been the victim of five decades of terrorism and is surrounded by tens of millions of malcontents in unstable societies, still retains its democratic character and its hope.
From March 1938 until May 1940, Dr. Feng Shan Ho, the Chinese consul general in Vienna, issued thousands of visas to Shanghai to Jews desperate to escape the ever-tightening Nazi death vise. One of the first (and very few) diplomats to come to the aid of the Jewish people in Nazi Europe, Ho acted against the instructions of his direct superior, the Chinese ambassador to Berlin, and without the backing of his own government. And he paid for these actions with his career. (Jerusalem Post)
A federal judge in New York shot down the Palestinian Authority's legal defense strategy in a $500 million terrorism lawsuit. "The court is not prepared to find sovereign immunity where none exists," wrote Judge Victor Marrero in a decision denying a motion to dismiss the suit brought by the family of Aharon Ellis against the PA, PLO, and a slew of top Palestinian officials accused of terrorist ties. Ellis, 31, was one of six people murdered on January 17, 2002, when former PA policeman Abdel Salam Sadek Hassuna opened fire at a bat mitzvah party in Hadera.
Marrero's March 1 decision found that the PA failed two of four basic criteria for statehood: the Palestinian leadership does not control its own population and territory, nor does it have the capacity to engage in foreign relations. The claim of Palestinian statehood, he wrote, "reduces to an intense, enduring aspiration that, however devoutly wished, apparently still seems more boosted by impassioned protestations and pretensions than affirmed by the juridically recognized ensigns of a sovereign state." (Jerusalem Post) .
[i]Poll: Majority of Israelis Want Sharon to Quit (Reuters)[/i] http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/389280 " title="http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/389280 " target="_blank"http://news.myway.com/top/art...|top|03-05-2004::01:46|re uters.html
JERUSALEM - Battered by multiple scandals, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a fresh blow on Friday when an opinion poll in Israel's biggest newspaper showed that for the first time a majority of Israelis want him to quit.
The former general has vowed to weather the storms kicked up by allegations of corruption and misconduct that he denies. But much will depend on whether prosecutors now weighing criminal charges against Sharon decide to indict him.
The poll in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily found that 53 percent of those surveyed believe Sharon should resign as a result of the scandals, while 43 percent wanted him to stay on. Already under investigation in two separate corruption scandals, Sharon came under another cloud this week when the Maariv newspaper alleged misconduct in a prisoner swap with Hizbollah guerrillas. It reported that Sharon once had a business relationship with the father-in-law of Elhanan Tannenbaum, an Israeli businessman freed by the Lebanese group on January 29 in exchange for about 400 Arab prisoners. The report suggested those links, dating to the 1970s, influenced Sharon's decision to push for the one-sided prisoner deal. Sharon denied any ulterior motive in winning freedom for Tannenbaum, who is under investigation for possible illegal business dealings at the time he was abducted in 2000.
The Yedioth Ahronoth poll also found that 57 percent of the Israeli public believes Sharon is not a trustworthy leader, up from 41 percent last summer. The poll surveyed 501 Israelis and has a margin of error of 4.5 percent.
I HAVE NO DOUBT THAT REUTERS TOOK GREAT GLEE IN THE RESULTS OF THE POLL. A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS, WHY DO THEY NEED TO IDENTIFY SHARON AS "THE FORMER GENERAL…"? WHY DOES REUTERS ASSUME THAT IT'S THE SCANDALS THAT ARE CAUSING ISRAELI DOUBTS ABOUT SHARON? MAYBE IT'S HIS UNILATERAL PULL OUT FROM GAZA OR HIS DISMANTLING OF COMMUNITIES IN THE WEST BANK? MAYBE IT'S HIS INABILITY TO STOP THE UNREMITTING TERROR? [b]MAYBE IT'S THE FACT THAT HE HASN'T KILLED ARAFAT![/b]
Last month, I posted an article about how Britain was paying the P.A.'s expenses at the Hague for the security fence hearing. It's worse than I thought.
Britain and other European Union states gave the Palestinians [b]more than 20 million euros [/b]to pay for legal and information consultation, the European Institute for Research on the Middle East reports.
[b]Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Norway paid the funds to the PLO[/b] negotiations aid department (NAD) and negotiations support unit (NSU), which in recent months have been busy mustering international support for the hearing on the separation fence in the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The institute had asked several states for details of the aid they gave the PA for information consultancy. The institute's research editor, Dr. Nick Lambert, told Haaretz: "Various states piled obstacles in our path and some refused to cooperate, although they claim a policy of transparency."
Sweden [b]at first banned publication of the funds [/b]it gave the PA, but a few weeks ago said it transferred 1.85 million euros and had [b]recently decided to renew its aid [/b]to the NSU.
The Danish foreign ministry said it transferred about 2 million euros to the PA as part of the "plan for democracy, proper conduct, rule of law and human rights." The Dutch foreign ministry refused to give details, and Norway confirmed a 1.25 million-euro transfer to the PA.
Britain announced last week it had transferred to the NSU more than 9 million pounds sterling (13.7 million euros) since 1999.
I'M SURE A.P. AND REUTERS WILL BE ALL OVER THIS....NOT
[i]PA Minister Saeb Erekat's Duplicity: Glorify Suicide Terrorism in Arabic, Condemn it in English[/i] http://www.pmw.org.il/new/
The Palestinian Authority's (PA) chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, is the latest PA official to demonstrate that PA leaders send one message to their people in Arabic and an entirely different message to the world media in English.
This week's news includes a striking example of this duplicity. Upon hearing that three Palestinian children, aged 13, 14 and 16, were caught by Israel on the way to a suicide mission, Erekat was quick to create the impression for the English media that the PA opposes such actions.
"That´s absolutely unacceptable," Erekat told the Associated Press. "Our children should have hope and a future and should not be suicide bombers. We want them to be doctors and engineers."
The great hypocrisy of Erekat's statement is that he and the PA leadership have been the driving force indoctrinating PA children to aspire to Shahada - Death for Allah. As Palestinian Media Watch has reported, it was only a few months ago that Erekat and other top PA leaders, including Yasser Arafat, sponsored a soccer tournament honoring 24 Shahids ("Islamic Martyrs"), including such arch-terrorists as Yechya Ayash, the first Hamas suicide-bomb maker, who masterminded the Palestinian suicide bombings; Adin Al Kassam, the name of the suicide terrorist wing of the Hamas; Raid Carmi, a regional head of a suicide terrorist unit; Jamal Mansour of Hamas; and Salah Drowza of Hamas.
As a sponsor, Saeb Erekat was present at the tournament honoring the terrorists, and personally distributed the trophies. [Al Ayyam, Sept. 21, 2003, Al Quds, Sept. 29, 2003]
The coverage by the PA media of the foiled suicide mission is also telling. Although all three PA dailies -- Al Hayat Al Jadida, Al Ayyam and Al Quds -- covered the capture of the teenagers, there were no reports in these papers or in other PA Arabic media of any comments by Erekat opposing the idea of teenagers as suicide bombers.
So while in English, Erekat's diversion for the media is, "We want them to be doctors and engineers," in their real world, Palestinian children see suicide terrorists as the role models created for them by Erekat and the PA leadership. We have yet to read that Erekat or the PA has sponsored a tournament named for doctors and engineers.
On March 3, Bob Englehart of the Hartford Courant penned the above editorial cartoon. What was Englehart's intention here?
Honestreporting's www.honestreporting.com take: Englehart is encouraging the viewer to identify with the idea that the recent rise in anti-Semitism is attributable to Israeli policy. What's particularly odd about this is that Israel critics have long claimed that castigating Israel is not tied to anti-Semitism: 'You can be anti-Israel, and not anti-Semitic.' But now Englehart, through his Jewish characters, makes that connection himself, suggesting that Jewish fear of anti-Semitism could be lessened by adjusting Israeli policy.
Despite continuing United States and Western European support for Palestinian political aspirations, the tightly-controlled official Palestinian Authority (PA) media relentlessly incites hatred and violence against the US and the West. READ ON....
Three Hamas terrorists were killed in an IAF missile attack on their car near Netzarim in Gaza Wednesday. Security officials said the three were involved in numerous attacks in and around the Netzarim area and were planning to launch an attack in the near future. Palestinian reports said they were on their way to fire a rocket at Netzarim when they were hit. (Jerusalem Post)
A relative of Palestinian militant Ibrahim Al Dary fires his machine gun into the air as women shout while the body leaves the family home during his funeral in Gaza City, Thursday, March 4, 2004. Al Dary and two other members from the militant group Hamas were killed in Israeli helicopter attack on a car travelling near Gaza City Wednesday. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
A female Israeli motorist was lightly wounded Wednesday by a [b]roadside bomb [/b]near Beit Omar between Bethlehem and Hebron. Also Wednesday, an Arab assailant [b]hurled a firebomb at a Jewish home [/b]in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. Police were able to apprehend the suspect shortly after the attack, as he was filmed by a surveillance camera. (Jerusalem Post)
A Kassam [b]rocket landed near a kindergarten [/b]in Netzarim in Gaza Thursday, lightly wounding a passerby. The kindergarten was slightly damaged and was not occupied at the time of the blast. (Yediot Ahronot-Hebrew)
Awani Kaloub, a member of the Popular Resistance Committee, was killed Thursday in an explosion in his house in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian security officials said he was apparently [b]preparing a bomb that exploded prematurely[/b]. Seven of his relatives in the house were injured. (Ha'aretz)
The British government is ready to fund the unification of Palestinian security forces if the Palestinian Authority fulfils a pledge to bring them under a central command, diplomats said Wednesday. The British initiative would help the PA fulfill one of its key commitments under the international "road map." Previous attempts to bring the disparate forces under central command have foundered because of disputes within the leadership. (Financial Times-UK)
[i]At the Jerusalem Post, Ruhama Shattan offers a ‘tribute’ to ISM terror enabler Rachel Corrie on the anniversary of her death. [/i] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/...%26cid=1078113575924 [i]As you may recall, Rachel is the American who was killed by a bulldozer while defending tunnels the Palestinians used to smuggle weapons into Israel. She belonged to ISM, an organization that shelters and supports the murderers of Israeli children.[/i]
March 16 is the first anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death. I want to thank Corrie for the explosives that flow freely from Egypt to Gaza, via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza homes that she died defending.
Perhaps it was these explosives that in the year since her martyrdom – oops, death – have been strapped around suicide bombers to blow up city buses and restaurants in Israeli cities, particularly in Jerusalem, killing men, women, and schoolchildren (two of them classmates of my daughter and her friend in the February 22, 2004 bombing), and leaving hundreds more widows, orphans, and bereaved parents.
On the first anniversary of her death, I want to thank Rachel Corrie for showing Palestinian children how to despise America as she snarled, burned an American flag, and led them in chanting slogans, and as she gave “evidence” at a Young Palestinian Parliament mock trial finding President Bush guilty of crimes against humanity.
Perhaps her help in fanning the flames of violent anti-American sentiment led to the October 2003 bombing of the Fulbright delegation to Gaza to interview scholarship candidates, killing three. There will be no new crop of Palestinian Fulbright scholars this fall.
Sir, – I want to pass on the US Embassy's reaction to the article "A 'tribute' to Rachel Corrie" (March 2). This article is nothing less than hateful incitement. The author's disgusting abuse of the anniversary of the death of this American citizen is inexcusable. The article reflects a level of discourse unbefitting any serious newspaper.
We're disappointed that you chose to publish this article.
This is a http://www.nyuinvestinpeace.c... to a petition started on NYU campus. There is a pro-Palestinian group on campus that is trying to force NYU to withdraw all funds from pro-Israel companies.
Take a look and sign the petition if you'd like. It reads as follows:
[i]Petition to Encourage Discussion and Debate at NYU
We, the undersigned, support peace in the Middle East and oppose the misguided petition calling for New York University to divest from companies conducting business in the State of Israel.
We have diverse opinions on how peace in the Middle East can be achieved and widely differing views of the Israeli government's policies. We are unanimous, however, in our condemnation of the divestment campaign as a partisan attack attempting to suppress, rather than encourage discussion of the issues.
The divestment petition makes no mention of the widespread desire within Israel for a long-term and honorable solution. It also fails to include previous attempts to achieve a peaceful resolution with the country's Arab neighbors and the Palestinian Authority. Instead, it pours scorn on Israel and calls for abandonment and disengagement. To place blame solely on Israel for the state of affairs in the Middle East is unjust and demonstrates an unwillingness to engage in dialogue.
We denounce campaigns filled with rhetoric long discredited by its use among extremists as code for the destruction of Israel. Rather, we encourage individuals to work towards peaceful solutions through honest discussion.
We therefore denounce the divestment petition and appeal to those who signed it to reconsider. Please join us in our campaign to encourage discussion and debate at NYU.[/i]
BERN, Switzerland - The Swiss government on Wednesday pardoned a 79-year-old woman who was convicted of smuggling Jewish refugees into Switzerland during World War II.
Aimee Stitelmann is the first person to benefit from a new law that pardons anyone imprisoned or fined for helping Jews get into Switzerland during the war. The law does not allow for compensation to be paid.
Between 1942 and 1945, Stitelmann helped 15 refugees cross the border secretly from France to Switzerland to escape the Nazis. She would slip into France and return the refugees to Switzerland across an unguarded stretch of the border or by train with false papers.
Stitelmann was sentenced to 15 days imprisonment in 1945 for violating Switzerland’s border laws.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's wish to be buried on the Temple Mount is stirring an emotional debate among Palestinians. Leaflets distributed in Jerusalem on Wednesday by the Muslim Liberation Party called for thwarting Arafat's plan.
Sources close to Arafat confirmed that the PA chairman has asked his supporters in Jerusalem to check the possibility of burying him near the Aksa Mosque. . .
Palestinians said some of Jerusalem's prominent Arab families are opposed to Arafat being buried on the Temple Mount. The last Palestinian to be buried on the Temple Mount was Faisal Husseini, the former PLO representative in Jerusalem, who died of a heart attack in 2001.
Husseini was buried at the site despite fierce opposition from some Palestinians, who said the privilege should be reserved only to devout Muslim figures. The Liberation Party, a tiny Muslim faction with a strong presence on the Temple Mount, spearheaded the opposition, but Husseini's aides managed to enforce their will.
A leaflet distributed in Jerusalem by the party said its members are also strongly opposed to plans to bury Arafat on the Temple Mount. Referring to Arafat, the leaflet said: "We warn this wicked infidel, who married a Christian infidel, against contemplating desecrating the holy Aksa Mosque."
[i]Last week, I posted a story about a church in Denver that posted a billboard accusing the Jews (they didn't mention anyone by name) of killing Jesus. Yesterday, the church pastor apologized. Then told us to get over the Holocaust.[/i]
A pastor in Denver apologized for a roadside sign saying Jews killed Jesus. The Rev. Maurice Gordon’s new sign reads, “I am deeply sorry for offending the Jewish people, whom I love.” The earlier message was inspired by Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” Gordon said. Gordon, who has long put up signs condemning homosexuality and abortion, also caused controversy when he said Tuesday that Jews need to forgive Germans for the Holocaust. www.jta.org
Al-Qaida terrorists are focusing on Jewish sites among their top three targets, Britain’s finance minister said. Speaking this week at the annual dinner of the Jewish community’s security body, the Community Security Trust, Gordon Brown warned that the international terror network was focusing on Jewish interests alongside U.S. and British targets. Brown also assured the audience that the Labor government would work closely alongside bodies like the Security Trust to protect Britain’s 300,000-strong Jewish community from a recent upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks. “My message to you is clear — in the name of this government, in the name of the British people, we will not leave the Jewish community to fight anti-Semitism alone.”
A recent Jewish Chronicle survey revealed a troubling rise in anti-Jewish prejudice in Britain. Nearly one in five people polled believed the Holocaust was "exaggerated." A similar number believed Jews have too much influence and do not want a Jewish prime minister. . .
Anti-Semitism and loathing for Israel is no longer merely a phenomenon of marginal British extremists. When the defamation of Zionism claims to be progressive or is Palestinian in origin, a strange schizophrenia emerges in which almost everything is permitted under the mask of criticizing Israel. The new Israelophobes insist that they are true humanists and some even claim to love the Jews, but their compassion appears to be highly selective. Perhaps the time has come to bring a bombed-out Jerusalem bus to the streets of London to jolt the sleeping British conscience. (Jerusalem Post)
With the Passover celebration just weeks away, a locust plague of biblical proportions could threaten parts of the Middle East and Africa, according to a United Nations agency.
An outbreak that potentially could darken the sky and consume everything in its path is "in progress on the Red Sea coast in Saudi Arabia where swarms are forming," the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said.
Despite intensive control operations, swarms are expected to move into the country's interior where a further generation of breeding could occur in the spring. Some could reach areas in Jordan, southern Iraq and Western Iran later in the spring, the agency said, according to the JTA news service.
The U.N. agency is appealing for $9 million to stave off outbreaks in desert parts of northern and western Africa, including Mali, Chad and Mauritania.
"If control operations have to slow down or be interrupted, more locusts added to those already there could contribute to eventually transforming the current situation into a plague," the organization warned.
According to the book of Exodus, a locust outbreak was one of the 10 plagues inflicted on the Egyptians prior to Israel's flight from captivity, commemorated by Jews and many Christians in the Passover celebration.
"The Bible and talmudic literature describe the plague of locusts as one of the worst visitations to come upon the country," the Encyclopedia Judaica says. "Its gravity and extent varies from time to time."
Another plague of locusts in the Bible was recounted by the prophet Joel, who said they made the fig tree "clean bare; the branches thereof are made white," JTA notes.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says the desert locust, a form of grasshopper, can quickly multiply into massive swarms capable of moving hundreds or even thousands of miles.
"When the locusts find ideal conditions in a sequence of seasonal breeding areas, upsurges can develop and lead to rapid multiplication and increasingly large swarms," said the U.N. organization, which has a special Locust Group to coordinate operations against any threat.
"If an upsurge is not controlled, a plague can occur in which swarms invade countries outside the traditional breeding areas," the agency said, according to JTA. "Crop damage by swarms can be devastating."
[i]Poll: Palestinian children favor discriminating against women and minorities[/i]
http://www.pmw.org.il/new/" title="http://www.pmw.org.il/new/" target="_blank"http://www.pmw.org.il/new/ or http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhi...
A poll of Palestinian high school students' attitudes towards women and minorities has revealed "alarming" opinions, according to the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam.The poll revealed a strong rejection of equality for women in society, with as many as 73 per cent of the students feeling that women should be limited to "traditional occupations."Opinions regarding political involvement are also problematic. A full 52 per cent reject a woman's right to "have position on a Municipal Local Council," while 23 per cent would deny women the right to vote in elections.Limiting women's freedom is likewise seen as acceptable by significant numbers of children. A third of Palestinian children surveyed believe that hitting a woman is "permissible under specified circumstances," and 23 per cent reject a woman's right to chose a husband "freely."Attitudes to minorities are also discriminatory. Sixty per cent of the students polled are unwilling to have a friend from a different religion, while 24 per cent do not want a friend with a different skin color.The poll was conducted by the ALPHA Institute for Research and Statistics, and was distributed by the Center for Women's Affairs in Gaza.
[i]Europeans Reaffirm Support for Arafat [/i] http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=5 40&ncid=1312&e=1&u=/ap/20 040301/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_ mideast_1" title="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=5 40&ncid=1312&e=1&u=/ap/20 040301/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_ mideast_1" target="_blank"http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
WASHINGTON - Europe's disagreement with the Bush administration over shunning Yasser Arafat persisted Monday as the Europeans urgently appealed for direct talks between the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers.
Brian Cowen, the Irish foreign minister who represented the 15-nation European Union (news - web sites) in a conference with Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites), said the stalled Middle East peace process "remains of deep concern to all of us."
Speaking for the Europeans, Cowen said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should meet promptly with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.
In a session with reporters, Cowen said the Europeans had not changed their position on Arafat, which recognizes him as the rightful leader of the Palestinian people. The Bush administration has ruled out dealing with the veteran Palestinian activist because they say he is tainted with terror against Israel. The Americans have dealt only with the prime minister and other senior Palestinian officials appointed by Arafat.
[i]Arafat Adviser Murdered in Gaza City - Amos Harel[/i] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/399832.html" title="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/399832.html" target="_blank"http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/...
Gunmen in Gaza City Tuesday shot and killed Khalil al-Zaben, 59, a well-known Arafat adviser, in what appears to be growing internal violence and power struggles. Al-Zaben returned to Gaza with Arafat in 1994, and published a weekly magazine. (Ha'aretz)
Tel Aviv District Court Monday placed a temporary lien on the approximately NIS 40 million in funding for terrorist organizations seized by security officials from Ramallah banks last week, as requested by the family of two terrorism victims. The children, parents, and siblings of Yaron and Efrat Unger, killed by Hamas gunmen near Moshav Gefen on June 9, 1996, won a $113 million verdict against the organization in a U.S. federal court in January. They believe the seized money should be contributed toward this judgment. (Jerusalem Post)
A secret Israeli intelligence unit, known as Unit 8200, broke a sophisticated Iranian code a number of years ago, enabling Israel to monitor communications, including contacts with Pakistan regarding the development of Iranian nuclear weapons, Seymour M. Hersh wrote in the New Yorker magazine Tuesday.
The investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into Iran's nuclear capability was spurred by Israeli intelligence findings, which were also shared with U.S. intelligence services.
Hersh said he was told by a senior Israeli intelligence officer that Israel remains convinced that "the Iranians do not intend to give up the bomb. What Iran did was report to the IAEA the information that was already out in the open and which they cannot protect. There is much that is not exposed."
JERUSALEM -- An Israeli fashion house plans to shoot its summer catalog at Israel's West Bank security barrier this week, the company said Monday, less than a week after troops shot dead two Palestinians protesting the network of walls, wire and ditches.
A statement from the fashion house, Comme-il-faut, said the one-day shoot Wednesday would take place at a section of the barrier on the edge of Jerusalem "for the purpose of creating a dialogue around boundaries."
The statement said the event would contrast beauty, femininity and fashion with a "concrete wall of insult, ugliness and humiliation."
[i]Russia likely to get a Jewish prime minister [/i] www.jta.org
Russian President Vladimir Putin named a little-known Jewish politician as prime minister. Putin’s pick is Mikhail Fradkov, currently Russia’s envoy to the European Union and an unknown figure in Russian politics. Putin dismissed his entire Cabinet last week, just weeks before the country’s March 14 vote. Fradkov’s appointment needs to be endorsed by the Russian Parliament, but the pro-Putin majority in the Duma is expected to back Fradkov in a vote Friday. Russian Jewish leaders said Fradkov has had no interaction with the organized Jewish community.
[i]End Sleaze or Lose Aid, World Bank Tells Arafat[/i] http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=238542004" title="http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=238542004" target="_blank"http://news.scotsman.com/inte...
The World Bank has issued the Palestinian Authority with an ultimatum to put an end to rampant corruption or lose hundreds of millions of pounds of vital foreign aid. The Bank's top official in the region, Nigel Roberts, said Yasser Arafat had to stop the handing of large cash payments to his security commanders - used to keep them loyal to Arafat personally. Roberts said the Palestinians were receiving the largest amount of money per capita in the history of foreign aid. At a conference of foreign donors in Rome last year, the PA asked for $1.2bn to alleviate its current financial crisis. Roberts said: "To get that money will require a very forceful program of continued commitment to reform by the PA and by the Palestinian Ministry of Finance. Without evident commitment and progress towards tightening these systems and improving accountability, the PA will not get the money it needs." (Scotsman-UK)
[b]See also[/b][i]Palestinian Authority Broke and In Disarray (Washington Post) [/i] http://www.washingtonpost.com...://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1753 6-2004Feb29.html
[i]Fury as Labour Party Chairman Calls Jewish MP "Fagin"[/i] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/2 9/nlab29.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/0 2/29/ixportaltop.html" title="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/2 9/nlab29.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/0 2/29/ixportaltop.html" target="_blank"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...
Ian McCartney, the Labour Party chairman, caused outrage by describing Jewish MP Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, as a "21st century Fagin," comparing him to the loathed villain in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, during a speech to Scottish Labour MPs Saturday. Jewish leaders said that the slur was the height of irresponsibility when there were growing fears over a rise of anti-Semitism in Britain, which has 280,000 Jews. Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Romain, a spokesman for Reform Synagogues, said: "Consciously or otherwise, [the remark] is a reference to Mr. Letwin's face rather than his politics." (Telegraph-UK)
[b]SEE ALSO: [/b] [i]Return of the Old Hatred By Melanie Phillips[/i] Anti-Semitism is on the increase and its roots are in the Sharon-hating Left. http://frontpagemag.com/Artic... THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS A DEPRESSING SUMMARY OF ANTI-SEMITISM IN BRITAIN.
[i]Fatah Rejects Proposal to End Attacks in Israel - Arnon Regular (Ha'aretz-Hebrew; 29 Feb 04)[/i]
The Fatah Revolutionary Council, continuing its deliberations in Ramallah on the policy of attacks by its military wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, rejected a formal proposal to forbid Fatah attacks in Israel.
"Fatah does not have the means to disarm the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and only the Palestinian Authority can absorb them and force them to heed discipline," former security minister Mohammed Dahlan said after four days of meetings of Fatah's revolutionary council that ended Saturday.
The council discussed a demand from many Fatah leaders to dismantle all militant groups which operate under the name "Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades."
By the end of the meetings it was clear that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades would not be dismantled.
Since Sen. John Kerry discovered a year ago that [b]his father's father was Jewish-born[/b], he has struggled over whether and how to talk about his Jewish background.
The roots are surprising for a Massachusetts politician with an Irish name and Catholic upbringing. Kerry did not know the extent of his Jewish roots until a year ago when a genealogist in Vienna, hired by The Boston Globe, discovered that Kerry's paternal grandfather, Frederick Kerry, a converted Catholic, was actually born Fritz Kohn to Jewish parents in what was Austria-Hungary, now part of the Czech Republic. Kerry, 60, has known for about 16 years that [b]his paternal grandmother was born Jewish[/b] as Ida Lowe and converted to Catholicism.
Sunday, the Vienna genealogist, Felix Gundacker, posted new findings on his Web site that [b]the Nazis killed two of Ida Lowe's siblings -- a sister in the Treblinka concentration camp, and a brother in Theresienstadt, a Czechoslovakian ghetto that held Jews before they were taken to camps.[/b]
[b]"I'm very touched by the knowledge that one of my relatives was in the Holocaust," [/b]Kerry said in an interview last night. "It gives an even greater personal sense of connection [to the Holocaust] that is very real and very touching. It makes you wonder how horrible their lives must have been."
