April 2005 Archives

- Noam Chomsky

I say after all because until now I have always resisted the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. I have suffered very little anti-Semitism personally, and don’t find it under every stone. I don’t think Jews, by virtue of their victimization in the past, have any right to expect exemption from the usual rough and tumble of opinion. And I don’t consider it a mark of ill will towards Israel - indeed it might well denote the very opposite - to oppose its policies when they are inhumane.

It is important to hammer in this nail. No, no, and no again, I do not accuse all those who censure Israel of hating Jews. Which nail hammered, it is equally important to drive in another. In the boycott by the Association of University Teachers what has been expressed is not criticism or censure but vilification. Criticism, the more particularly as university teachers should be expected to understand it, implies the free exchange of judgement and idea, the give and take - however harsh - of argument and counter-argument. Anything less is merely the closing of minds. And a boycott - especially a boycott of thinkers, scientists, philosophers, etc, those for whom open-mindedness should be paramount - is an expression of the closing of minds en masse.

There is some fancy abroad that where large numbers of people agree to close their minds together you have democracy in action. You don’t. What you have is mobilized prejudice...

A day after a lawyer representing an Islamic group said William Baker probably would not appear at a gala Saturday night, Mohammad Jawad Al-Qazwini said Wednesday he didn't plan to cancel Baker's speech.

"The decision made on our behalf to bring Mr. Baker was not against the Jewish community," said Al-Qazwini, the imam of the Boca Raton-based Assadiq Islamic Educational Foundation. "He will be strictly speaking about the prophet Mohammed. He will be strictly speaking about the Islamic faith."...

Robert Moss

Here is my response to AUT. I am slated to speak at a symposium at the University of Edinburgh in August. I will take a few moments at the beginning of my presentation to deplore the boycott from the lectern.

"As a chair professor at a major U.S. University, and as a member of the American Association of University Professors, I wish to express my outrage at the one-sided, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic resolution adopted (without debate) by the AUT..

"I will henceforth refuse to review scientific papers originating in the U.K., and will recommend that my colleagues take a similar stance. It is of course unfair to penalize all British academics for the stupidity of some of their colleagues, but until those who claim to speak for them come to their senses (not to say reclaim their integrity) and rescind this racist resolution, I feel that I have no other way to effectively express my protest."

Oaths of political loyalty do not belong to academia. They belong to illiberal minds and repressive regimes. Based on this, the AUT's definition of academic freedom is the freedom to agree with its views only. Given the circumstances, I wish to express in no uncertain terms my unconditional and undivided solidarity with both universities and their faculties. I know many people, both at Haifa University and at Bar Ilan University, of different political persuasion and from different walks of life. The diversity of those faculties reflects the authentic spirit of academia. The AUT invitation to boycott them betrays that spirit because it advocates a uniformity of views, under pain of boycott.

In solidarity with my colleagues and as a symbolic gesture to defend the spirit of a free academia, I wish to be added to the boycott blacklist. Please include me. I hope that other colleagues of all political persuasions will join me.

This week Britain's umbrella academics' union, the Association of University Teachers (AUT) voted to boycott two Israeli universities. It seems that while British physicians still take the Hippocratic oath, doctors in other fields are taking a hypocritical one. As Alan Dershowitz notes elsewhere on this page, the campaign resurrected a more limited version of a motion that failed at the AUT two years ago, which called for a boycott of all Israeli institutions.

Last spring I began a sabbatical year from the University of Toronto, where I teach international law and Canadian constitutional law, by teaching at Haifa University -- one of the two targeted institutions. I can say first hand that the reasons for the boycott seem so off-base it is hard to believe that they are anything but camouflage for a deeper prejudice. Indeed, the moving force behind the AUT motion, Birmingham University lecturer Sue Blackwell, gave away the poorly kept secret when she explained that Israelis, being, well, Israeli, simply "cannot expect to be treated as normal citizens from a normal state." Articulating a falsehood that would astonish anyone who has ever had the bruising experience of arguing a position -- any position -- in an Israeli institution, she declared that, "You cannot talk about academic freedom and free debate in Israel in the same way you can talk about it in the U.K."...

...The journalists were invited to cover Abbas's morning visit to the police headquarters, known as the Yasser Arafat Police Compound. They complained that while they were waiting for Abbas to arrive, some policemen started pushing them in a violent manner and cursing them.

In response, the journalists left the compound, announcing that they would boycott coverage of events related to Abbas's activities. The journalists also refused to cover the weekly meeting of the PA cabinet, which was held in Gaza City.

"The policemen beat us for no reason," a local photographer told The Jerusalem Post. "That's why we left the area. This is not the first time that the police have attacked journalists in the Gaza Strip."...

...Earlier this month, Palestinian journalists called for an end to PA control of the media and threatened to go on strike unless their demand was met. They also demanded that journalists working for the PA-funded media be given higher salaries and better conditions...

...In another development, Abbas issued a decree on Tuesday placing the PA's radio and television station under the jurisdiction of the PA Ministry of Information. The stations and other PA-funded media have been under the direct control of the PLO Executive Committee.

Abbas also decided to unite the Voice of Palestine radio station and Palestine TV under one body called The Palestinian Radio and TV Corporation, which will be under the direct control of Information Minister Nabil Shaath.

Shaath revealed on Wednesday that many Palestinian journalists and media outlets had been on the PA's payroll for years. He said the payments were made on the instructions of Yasser Arafat.

He told Palestinian legislators that several newspapers and magazines published in Jerusalem had been receiving funds from the PA. They include the newspapers al-Quds, al-Manar, al-Shaab, Falasteen, and three magazines: al-Awdah magazine, al-Bayader al-Siyassi and She'er.

Some of the publications were continuing to receive funds although they stopped appearing many years ago...

(Madison, WI- 04/27/05) – The Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals (TAUWP) has adopted a resolution that calls on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to divest from companies that provide the Israeli Army with weapons, equipment, and supporting systems. TAUWP is a statewide local of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin representing faculty and academic staff from 25 University of Wisconsin campuses. The resolution was passed at the TAUWP delegate assembly on April 23rd by a vote of 24 to 2, with four abstentions.

Citing the precedent set by the University of Wisconsin’s elimination of investments in apartheid era South Africa, the resolution urged divestment from Boeing, Caterpillar, General Dynamics, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Northrop-Grumman, and Raytheon ‘based on evidence of the active role these companies play in enabling Israeli forces to engage in practices that violate international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people.’ The University of Wisconsin Trust Fund’s investments in the companies specified by the resolution exceed $3.8 Million.

The resolution is part of The University of Wisconsin Divest from Israel Campaign, a project led by Al-Awda Wisconsin (The Palestine Right to Return Coalition) and Alternative Palestinian Agenda in partnership with several local social justice, student, and community organizations. The campaign gained significant momentum when the Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville passed a similar resolution at it’s regular meeting on January 25th 2005. The UW-Platteville senate became the first University faculty body in the United States to adopt a resolution calling for divestment from companies providing material aid to Israel. A similar resolution was adopted by the Teaching Assistant Association and called on the Board of Regents to divest from weapon manufacturers...

The hoard is among the largest finds in Britain from the late Bronze Age, consisting of 145 items including spear and axe heads, swords and metal working tools.

"This is one of the biggest late Bronze Age hoards ever found in Norfolk and is up there among the major finds in Britain," said Alan West, curator of archaeology at Norwich Museum some 100 miles northeast of London.

"The items are in good condition and this find is another significant piece in the Bronze Age jigsaw adding to our knowledge of the period," he told Reuters.

Included among the items is a Viking brooch, and West said it was unusual to find buried items together dating from different periods...

The panel resurrected the dormant campus debate over Israeli divestment, which flared in 2002 when 75 Harvard faculty members signed a petition calling on the University to sell its $600 million stake in companies that have significant operations in the Jewish state.

The same year, a counter-divestment drive garnered signatures from 439 Harvard faculty members, who objected that Israel had been singled out for criticism.

While all three speakers yesterday supported the Presbyterian Church’s decision to divest, Rami R. Sarafa ’07, president of the Society of Arab Students (SAS), said that “at this time, we and our co-sponsoring organizations are not promoting divestment but are promoting discussion and debate about it.” The International Relations Council, the Palestinian Solidarity Committee, and the Woodbridge Society of International Students joined SAS to co-sponsor the event along with several graduate school and alumni groups...

According to the report, the two - aged 15 and 16 years - told interrogators that they had been acting as couriers for terrorists.

The radio said that the two have apparently entered northern Israel from the Jenin area on several previous occasions, each time carrying several packages.

One of the teens, Hammam Daraghmeh, said he was a member of the Islamic Jihad militant group and is ready to die. "I wanted to destroy Israel," he said.

His partner, Mohammed Nasser Daraghmeh, said he had been recruited by another militant group, the Fatah-linked Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and asked to carry a bag with a bomb to the checkpoint. The teens said they are distant relatives.

In recent years, militant groups have increasingly turned to teenagers and women to help carry out attacks, believing that they are less likely to draw attention from IDF troops...

Speaking to reporters in Gaza Abbas disassociated the Palestinian mainstream from the attack and called on those behind it to desist...

The rocket struck as the march filed past the Mouassi, the Palestinian area in the heart of Gush Katif. Minutes later, a mortar shell landed in the central settlement of Neve Dekalim, exploding without injury. A second rocket and two other mortar shells hit Gaza later in the day, causing no casualties...

In Nigeria, where AIDS treatment programs run by Harvard were put on hold, doctors said last week that Harvard's delay meant that some patients died. They criticized Harvard's leaders for not acting more quickly...

Today, they say, there is a Darwinist science and there is a creationist science. What the young pilot of my helicopter meant, by saying there are two theories, was exactly that. This is very serious, because if both of them are scientific then you give to creationism the title of legitimacy. This is a phenomenon which we don't have in France. It might be a little example, but it tells a lot of the dark side of the future of America...

Three decades of my own research lead me to believe that neither of those explanations will stand up under scrutiny of the facts. As one small example, a study published last year indicated that most of the black alumni of Harvard were from either the West Indies or Africa, or were the children of West Indian or African immigrants. These people are the same race as American blacks, who greatly outnumber either or both.

If this disparity is not due to race, it is equally hard to explain by racism. To a racist, one black is pretty much the same as another. But, even if a racist somehow let his racism stop at the water's edge, how could he tell which student was the son or daughter of someone born in the West Indies or in Africa, especially since their American-born offspring probably do not even have a foreign accent?

What then could explain such large disparities in demographic "representation" among these three groups of blacks? Perhaps they have different patterns of behavior and different cultures and values behind their behavior...

"We are informed by the principle that we should seek to win Israelis over to our side, not to win against them," said the university, which is headed by Dr. Sari Nusseibeh.

"Therefore...we believe it is in our interest to build bridges, not walls; to reach out to the Israeli academic institutions, not to impose another restriction or dialogue-block on ourselves."...

"I think that a person who calls to boycott his university should join the boycott and resign immediately from the university," Ben-Ze'ev said. "It is difficult to describe a greater moral injury to academic freedom than the behavior of someone who has been bullying his colleagues and calling to boycott them. It is bizarre that he has chosen to attack the very same university that has exercised such a policy of tolerance towards him."

During the past few years, according to members of the university's faculty and administration, the only measure taken against Pappe was a complaint lodged with the internal faculty disciplinary committee, which focused on Pappe's unethical behavior towards his peers and his efforts to disbar them from international forums for contradicting his views. Contrary to Pappe's claim, the university said it had made no attempt to expel him...

Tariq Ali then spoke and took the conspiracy mania fully over the edge. He sees “what is taking place on the campuses as part of the larger and wider project which was initiated by the Sharon government, soon before they went into Jenin [in March 2002] in the big attempt to crush the intifada.” The decision to persecute the poor academics “was made in Israel,” then “circulated” to Israeli embassies, which somehow made it happen worldwide. The Elders of Zion must be working overtime...

The youth, 17, who was passing through the Beit Farik checkpoint refused to let soldiers open his bag. The soldiers insisted on checking its contents, and found the four explosives, which were ready for use.

Sappers safely detonated the bombs. The youth was arrested and transferred to the Shin Bet security service for questioning...

...According to the IDF, in the past month, Palestinians have tried eight times to smuggle weapons or explosives through checkpoints in the Nablus region.

It was released for publication on Friday that IDF troops arrested wanted Islamic Jihad militant Jilad Duman at a roadblock northwest of Ramallah on Thursday. According to the IDF, the man had expressed a readiness to carry out a suicide bombing, and was involved in shooting attacks against Israelis.

A group of men, women and children were attending the service in the capital Riyadh when police raided the house, Al Jazirah newspaper said.

It said authorities also found Christian tapes and books.

Another Saudi daily, Al Yaum, said the raid took place on Friday while a Pakistani preacher was delivering a sermon. It was not clear what measures might be taken against the group...

In a blitz procedure timed - on the eve of Passover - to exclude Jewish members from the conference, the AUT rushed through two motions to boycott Haifa and Bar Ilan universities, exhibiting an unprecedented escalation of a campaign by British academics to target Israel.

In her allegations against the Israeli institutions, Ms. Blackwell relied heavily on a letter by Ilan Pappe, lecturer in political science at Haifa University. A message from Dr. Pappe was distributed to every executive member at the conference, in which Pappe called on the conference to adopt a boycott of his own university, and alleged he was the victim of "restriction" and "harassment."

The speeches were met with rapturous applause from the audience, before AUT executive president Angela Roger cut short the session and moved to deny a right of reply to opponents of the motions. The session was then directed towards a vote, and a "lack of time" was cited as the reason preventing challenges to the motions from being heard...

Ariel Lab, Simcha Monica [Heh], California, USA: When Jews sit on their hands and make excuses for decades and when the Jewish media prides itself on being liberal enough to criticize their country as if it where just another western democracy, this is the result.

Maybe now British Jews will care less about what is socially appropriate and more about virulent anti-Semitism.

Maybe now the middle left in Israel will comprehend that Jews on the right are better friends than Europeans on the left, but they just don't seem to comprehend the reality.

The initiators of this action are amongst the most prejudiced, most manipulative and most hypocritical examples of the dishonest extremist left.

The executive committee will issue guidance to AUT members on these decisions.

Council delegates also referred a call to boycott the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the executive committee will investigate the background to this and will report in due course.

Council delegates also agreed to circulate to all local associations a statement from Palestinian organisations calling for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.

"The Association of University Teachers has launched a direct assault on academic freedom," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "We condemn this misguided and ill-timed decision to boycott academics from the only country in the Middle East where universities enjoy political independence. It is ironic that the British academics called for an end to dialogue at a time when Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in dialogue seeking a framework for peace...

Miriam, whom I've known for many years, is the former head of Amnesty International in Israel and a well-known peace activist. Baker, by the way, was not the first to call for a boycott of her academic work. Israeli rightwingers had been irked by her signature on some petition and had called upon students at Israeli universities to refrain from attending classes given by her and others of her ilk. Unlike Baker, they at least had a case: they wanted to boycott Miriam because of her views...

...Which brings me back to the question that has bothered me ever since I was a kid. Why did the god of the Hebrews (and for the sake of disclosure, I'm a Hebrew myself) smite the first-born of Egypt? The answer that I've come up with is not very flattering: I think he did it mainly because he was lazy, wrathful and just. Lazy, because instead of trying to work out a reasonable solution and finding out who was really to blame, he opted for the easy way out. Wrathful, because it's no fun discovering that your Chosen People have been dispossessed and oppressed. And just, because he is God, and Gods, like so many academics I've met in my life, are always just - or at least, they're always convinced they are.

The newspaper's April 17 edition ran a cartoon depicting a Palestinian being crucified with a Star of David slashing on his back. The caption accompanying the cartoon translates as "the rights to continue the suppression of the Palestinians still exists."

"This cartoon is abhorrent for its portrayal of the classic anti-Semitic deicide charge," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "At a time when there is renewed hope in the region, it is unfortunate that the main Palestinian daily chooses to print an offensive anti-Semitic cartoon that is contrary to the process of reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis."

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has called for an end to incitement against Jews in the official Palestinian media and in school textbooks.

Some had their hands cut off, others are headless or burnt. Another was strangled, with his tongue lolling out. He thinks one bloated, slime-covered corpse might be his younger brother.

The shocking images come from Iraq’s new killing fields — the small town of Madain just 20 miles from Baghdad...

...People were too scared to go to market for fear of being seized. At night families stood guard in two-hour shifts. Six weeks ago Abu Qaddum’s brother went to find a doctor for his sick wife and was never seen again.

The guerrillas blew up a mosque and posted notices saying that Shias should leave town or die. The Shia political parties started a press campaign — but it was dismissed by the Interior Ministry, whose officials said that the whole affair was a tribal feud.

When Iraqi troops finally moved in they found no sign of the horror. They asked through loudspeakers for witnesses to show them where the terrorists and their hostages were. The Shias were too terrified to come forward, knowing that the troops could be gone in a week.

The story was dismissed as exaggeration. Then the first bodies were found. Some had broken free of concrete slabs to which they had been tied before they were thrown in the river.

A distraught father looking for his son heard about this and hired a Baghdad diver to investigate. The diver emerged, filled with horror, saying that the riverbed was thick with bodies. So far 57 have been found but Abu Qaddum — now a refugee living in another city under an assumed name — says that local police are too afraid to retrieve any more. Locals want American troops to secure the area and send divers down for the rest. US embassy and Iraqi government spokesmen told The Times that they were investigating the affair.

Sponsored by several groups (the Radius of Arab American Writers, the National Union of Writers, NY, and Alwan for the Arts), the April 14, 2005 event featured tributes to Baraka. Its proceeds will go to support a conference of Arab American writers at Hunter College.

Baraka, born LeRoi Jones, is known for his writings on jazz, but more for his Marxism and anti-Semitism. As the poet laureate of New Jersey Baraka created a firestorm with his poem "Somebody Blew Up America," a diatribe accusing Israelis of having been warned of the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. When Baraka rebuffed calls for his resignation, New Jersey lawmakers responded by abolishing the position of poet laureate...

The Respect candidate, who is fighting Labour’s Oona King for the Bethnal Green and Bow seat in East London, was meeting locals in a tenant association’s room last night with his daughter, Lucy, when a 40-strong group of militants burst in, his spokesman said today.

Locking the door behind them, the mob allegedly held Mr Galloway and his daughter captive for a few minutes and made threats.

"They said he was a false prophet and that was punishable by death," spokesman Ron McKay told Times Online. "They said for him that would be the gallows - that was presumably a play on his name."

Mr Galloway was only rescued by the arrival of two police constables, who escorted him outside to the car of his son-in-law Jay, who had called the police when he saw the gang arrive at the building on Globe Road in Bethnal Green.

Last night's incident was the second of the day involving young Islamic radicals out to disrupt the general election campaign. Earlier, a mob of protesters believed to be followers of the radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed stormed into the Regent's Park mosque in central London and disrupted a press conference by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB)...

At that point, another student took the podium. His name was Khaled, and he began to recount his recent trip to New York City. Khaled and three of his companions had gone to New York for several days in January. He told of how uncomfortable his trip up to NYC had been. He felt like he was being watched, and thought he was the victim of racial profiling.

Khaled and his friends were pretty unhappy about it, and while in New York, they came up with a plan to "teach a lesson" to the passengers and crew. You can imagine the story Khaled told. He described how he and his friends whispered to each other on the flight, made simultaneous visits to the restroom, and generally tried to "spook" the other passengers. He laughed when he described how several women were in tears, and one man sitting near him was praying.

The others in the room thought the story was quite amusing, judging from the laughter. The imam stood up and told the group that this was a kind of peaceful civil disobedience that should be encouraged, and commended Khaled and his friends for their efforts.

He pointed out that it was through this kind of civil disobedience that ethnic profiling would fail.

One of the other men, Ahmed from Kuwait, gave a brief account of his friend Eyad, who had finally gone to Iraq. Ahmed was in e-mail contact with Eyad, and hoped by the following week to be able to bring them more information about the state of the "mujahideen" in Iraq.

As the meeting drew to a close, the imam gave a brief speech calling for the protection of Allah on the mujahideen fighting for Islam throughout the world, and reminded everyone that it was their duty as Muslims to continue in the path of jihad, whether it was simple efforts like those of Khaled and his friends, or the actual physical fighting of men like Eyad.

As the meeting broke up, several women in hijabs came in the room, and two of them sat with me. They were very warm and friendly and welcoming, and appeared to be clearly thrilled that I was there. They asked me questions about who I was, and why I was interested in the session...

Must be just another grassroots group fighting to get Israel out of the West Bank, right? Not exactly. The ads were placed by Sandler-Innocenzi, a political-advertising agency that has done spots for Republican House majority whip Tom DeLay and the Republican National Committee, among others. A Sandler-Innocenzi staffer contacted by the Phoenix acknowledged involvement with the ad and gave a phone number and address for the Alliance of Peace and Justice. The address — 8484 Westpark Drive in McLean, Virginia — is the home of media firm Qorvis Communications. Where does this complicated trail lead? To the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which, according to the federal government’s Foreign Agents Registration Act office, hired Qorvis on March 6. Qorvis did not respond to phone calls requesting comment on the ads.

The Saudis, of course, don’t acknowledge the ads. A woman working in the Saudi embassy’s information office says, "We have nothing to do with those ads. We don’t know who that is." To be sure, just because the Saudis have a financial relationship with Qorvis doesn’t mean they placed them. But the plan of the "League of Arab Nations" described in the ads sounds suspiciously like the one recently floated by Saudi crown prince Abdullah. In addition, those who have looked into the matter say radio-advertising salespeople involved with the buy report that the Saudis were behind them. "Believe it or not the Saudi Arabian Embassy wants to get on 4/8 and 4/15 so I was able to use the new rates," reads a redacted April 4 e-mail made available to the Phoenix by Steve Silberfarb, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Silberfarb, in turn, received the e-mail from a radio executive who wanted to remain anonymous. Mstreet.Net, which covers the radio industry, reported Tuesday that "the Saudi-funded ‘Alliance for Peace and Justice’ bought time on about 100 US stations."...

Local Jewish and civic leaders said Friday they were alarmed that the Assadiq Islamic Education Foundation, whose headquarters are listed at 831 E. Palmetto Park Road in Boca, had invited Baker back to Boca as featured speaker at an April 30 banquet at the Boca Marriott. Invited by Muslim students to speak at Florida Atlantic University in April 2004, Baker's first visit to the city was cancelled amid popular protest.

"I'd like to give [the Assadiq Foundation] the benefit of the doubt and say they got snookered, but this is the second attempt at getting Baker into Boca Raton, so they have to be aware of his reputation," said Bill Gralnick, southeast regional director of the American Jewish Committee...

Luciana Berger, 23, a close friend of Euan Blair, the prime minister’s son, described last week how she had been forced to resign from the executive committee of the National Union of Students (NUS) after being abused and spat at by left-wing undergraduates and Muslim activists because she is Jewish...

...Berger, who comes from a Jewish family in north London and is studying for a master’s degree in government, politics and policy at Birkbeck College, London University, said opposition to Israel was resulting in abuse of Jewish students.

She said she had resigned from the students’ union earlier this month because of its failure to stand up to racism. “It says it is proud of its policy of diversity but it should be ashamed. It has isolated the Jewish student community,” she said.

“The situation cannot be allowed to get worse. I have had e-mails calling me a dirty Zionist pig, but I have never spoken on or talked about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. People have confused the issue.”

She also criticised how prejudice against Jews was seen by some on the left as “second-class racism”.

Berger described her shock at experiencing anti-semitism as a student. “Suddenly I was Luciana the Jew rather than Luciana the British citizen,” she said. On one occasion, she claimed, the NUS failed to condemn a comment made at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies that burning down a synagogue was “a rational act”...

...Danny Stone, campaigns director of the Union of Jewish Students, said academics were increasingly upsetting Jewish undergraduates. He claimed lecturers at London, Sussex and Nottingham had refused to give students leave from exams scheduled for the Jewish sabbath. One allegedly told a student: “We can all think of silly religions if we want.”

Douglas Davis, author of a new book, Israel in the World: Changing Lives Through Innovation, said: “Some British universities are reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. Let us not forget that the first place Hitler had Jews banned from was the universities.”

Dr Jennifer Tonge says:
On her proudest achievement in parliament since 2001: "Highlighting the plight of the Palestinians under occupation by Israel, by making a speech expressing empathy for suicide bombers - looking for the cause of terrorism."

Yes, that's 'proudest' and 'empathy' and 'bombers'.

Stop playing with your detached mouse, Professor, and concentrate. I’m afraid you may not use the British Library because it has been computerised by Ex Libris, a Zionist company that was spawned by the odious Hebrew University of Jerusalem. And if, God forbid, you develop problems of the small intestine, you may not pop the Zionist-invented ‘video capsule’, which passes naturally through your body as it monitors this delicate piece of your anatomy. You will, sadly, have to take it up the derrière, Professor. As a matter of principle, of course. But remember: your principle allows your proctologist to keep his hand in...

Artifact? Another time? Rudolph may be put away for all time because he used deadly violence. But there are still many people doing his bidding. After Massachusetts's highest court legalized gay marriage, 11 states passed amendments to ban gay marriage in last November's elections. President Bush supports a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

On abortion, several states and the Bush administration have added restrictions in American domestic and foreign policy, behind the code language of the ''culture of life." As to ''global socialism," which can easily be interpreted as the sharing of Americans' wealth in a multi--cultural world, the signs are pretty obvious that Rudolph's spirit is alive and well there, too...

The five-month old privately-funded project underway at the site, which is being directed by Bar Ilan University archeology professor Dr. Gabriel Barkay, is being called virtually unprecedented since archaeological excavation has never been permitted on the Temple Mount itself.

Six years ago, following the Islamic Wakf's unilateral construction of a mosque at an underground area of the Temple Mount known as Solomon's Stables, Wakf officials discarded more than 10,000 tons of rubble with history-rich artifacts, at a municipal garbage dump in the Kidron Valley and other locations outside the Old City.

The November 1999 destruction and removal of the antiquities in the wake of the mosque construction was later called "an unprecedented archaeological crime" by the head of Israel's Antiquities Authority, the state-run archaeological body nominally charged with supervision at Judaism's holiest site, as well as by Israel's leading archaeologists...

Church leaders in Louisville, Ky., appear determined to single out Israel for corporate “divestment,” and apparently no amount of internal revolt or outside input will dissuade them.

That’s a big problem for mainstream Jewish groups that have always operated on the principle that dialogue is the first step in dealing with intergroup conflict. The plain fact is that the Presbyterian leaders just aren’t listening.

Groups like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, while reporting useful discussions with local Presbyterian groups, are fed up with the national church leadership. For months after the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to begin a process of “selective divestment” against companies that do business in Israel, the Jewish groups continued to believe that a policy of hard-headed dialogue would help church leaders understand the glaring imbalance of their efforts.

Eventually, they believed, logic would prevail, and the Presbyterians would realize that at the very least, the timing of their action — at the precise moment when the region seemed to be moving toward a new peace process — was perverse...

...Jewish groups are beginning to accept the obvious conclusion: The time for dialogue with the hostile, irrational Presbyterian leadership has passed and a more confrontational approach is in order, including publicly challenging their motives and their commitment to a fair peace in the region. At the same time, dialogue with other groups that have proven more sensitive and with local Presbyterian groups needs to be increased.

The point should be emphasized over and over again: It’s not just the knee-jerk defenders of Israel and Likudniks who think divestment is a terrible idea, but Jewish groups from across the ideological spectrum.

Jewish leaders worked hard to get through to the Presbyterians, but church leaders weren’t listening; they have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that dialogue is not their goal, a fair peace not their real interest, and they should be dealt with accordingly.

Our friends at the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies in Israel send along a report on anti-Israel incitement in the Palestinian Authority. Among the items it mentions is an article published in the Hamas newspaper in Gaza, Al-Rissalah, on April 7. The article issued by the Islamic extremist terrorists was an attack on Pope John Paul II for - get this - being a Christian heretic. The pope's "terrific heresy"? He "absolved modern-day Jews from the guilt of having murdered Jesus." According to the Hamas newspaper, modern day Jews are "criminals like their ancestors." Another problem with the pope, according to the Hamas newspaper, was his attitude toward the Holocaust. His call for Christians to ask forgiveness was "a service to the Zionists" and "Pope John Paul II's worst crime," according to the Hamas newspaper. This is the environment in which elements of the American press and State Department focus on the obstacle to peace in the Middle East as being Prime Minister Sharon's decision to build some houses for Jews in an Israeli suburb four and a half miles from Jerusalem.

(PRWEB) April 9, 2005 -- Dr. Cyril Belshaw, Emeritus Professor in the University of British Columbia, has been named the winner of the 2004 World Utopian Championship, SOC Stockholm announced at a gala in that city on 2nd April 2005. His attendance at the gala was supported by the Canadian Embassy to Sweden.

Dr. Belshaw led the field from numerous countries and disciplines with a contribution entitled “From Youth Maturity to Global Government”. In it he suggests changes which he believes can be achieved during this century. They include the replacement of schools by Youth Maturity Institutes which bring together all agencies and interests concerned with the whole life of the child. They would emphasize the development of values such as risk taking, courtesy, lifetime interests outside the classroom and the abhorrence of violence in any form. He then devotes a section to a wide range of other institutional changes which will be elaborated upon in future writing, and finishes his holistic prescription with a detailed proposal to reform Global Government, dependent on attitudes deriving from the Youth Maturity Institutes.. He would re-structure the United Nations to become an organisation of “Peoples” rather than of “States”, equipped with wider powers, a stream-lined parliamentary organisation, and holding a monopoly of armed force. He advocates the use of NGOs, global debate, and the will of the people to bring about the changes.

One of the final Expert Jurors, Professor Tom Boylan, Director of the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies in the University of Limerick writes: “He combines sober and informed utopian realism with the best of imaginative utopian hope...

At 3 p.m. yesterday, the Harvard Office of Career Services hosted a counterterrorism career panel that included representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and two non-partisan security think tanks. Joining the panelists were two distinct groups of Harvard students: one genuinely interested in potential careers in counter-terrorism, and another group consisting of rude, self-proclaimed morally superior, intellectually indoctrinated protestors. Let me be perfectly clear, while a tasteful protest marched on outside the Science Center, I am referring to the disruptive protestors sitting at the event. The propagandists' techniques of disruption varied: their base tactics ranged from coughing incessantly to the point where none of the panelists could be heard, interrupting presentations to ask ludicrous questions such as "Isn't it true you train your employees to torture," staging a mock deportation of an ethnic minority protestor midway through the discussion, clapping obnoxiously to halt the dialogue, and ridiculing students who posed legitimate questions to the panelists. A protestor sitting three rows behind me physically made himself vomit...

The resolution, which the company said at its annual meeting was defeated 97 percent to 3 percent, stated that Israel has used Caterpillar equipment to destroy more than 3,000 homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 2000.

It was introduced by four Roman Catholic orders of nuns and the group Jewish Voice for Peace, who argued that the sale of company equipment for such purposes violates Caterpillar's code of business conduct.

Dozens of protesters lined the sidewalk outside before the meeting, next to a huge banner reading "Caterpillar bulldozers destroy Palestinian homes."

"Caterpillar's sale of weaponized bulldozers [Is that like Africanized bees? -Sol] to the Israeli military is tantamount to selling a gun to a person you know is planning to kill someone," [Or to someone you know is a target for murder. -S] said Liat Weingart, co-director of Jewish Voice for Peace. "Though Caterpillar is not actually behind the wheel, they are providing the machinery as well as training and support for the Israeli military to harm civilians."

Other Jewish organizations had opposed the resolution as unfairly singling out Israel for economic pressure without holding Palestinians accountable for acts contributing to unrest in the region.

Caterpillar's board of directors urged defeat of the resolution, saying that the company has "neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use" of its equipment...

Merav Mov is a 23-year-old woman who served in the Israeli National Guard; Shlomit Aylin, also 23, immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia at age three; and Eytan Schwartz, a 30-year-old game show winner. The three spoke on both the major social and political issues in Israel today, as well as what Judaism means to each of them personally.

“We want people to know about the vibrant life in Israel,” Schwartz said. “The hangouts, the sports, the nightlife, the food — people don’t know about it. We want people to understand how much we love living in Israel.”

The feud between Israelis and Palestinians came up later in the conversation. Senior Rania Eltom, president of the Muslim Students Awareness Network, and sophomore Omar Shakir, co-president of the Coalition for Justice in the Middle East, left the event following several comments that they said they found disrespectful.

“I was requested to attend the event by organizers the day before, so I came out of respect for them,” Eltom said. “However, when we entered the event, it was made very obvious that we were outsiders. As soon as the speakers started generalizing Palestinians as wanting to kill all soldiers, it hit a nerve within me, especially [since it was] one day after three Palestinian school kids were shot dead by Israeli soldiers.”...

Klocek’s dismissal is alleged by the administration to be due the fact that, as he walked away from the students in question, he “thumbed his chin” at them. It`s a common Italian expression meaning, “I`m finished, I`m out of here.” But in a special letter to the student newspaper DePaulia, Dean Susanne Dumbleton first apologized for the incident and stated that the instructor was being dealt with in an appropriate manner. The dean then referred to Klocek`s attempt to impose his “erroneous views” on the students. This belied the claim by the university that Klocek’s case is about his supposed attitude, not the content of his statements.

In other words, support for Israel against Arab aggression and terrorism is “erroneous” and not to be tolerated on the DePaul campus...

Teach Kids Peace focuses primarily on the Middle East, long the center of world history and civilization. With a wave of electoral progress in the region -- Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Palestinian areas, and the glimmer of progress toward a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel -- it is now more crucial than ever to ensure that children are educated toward peace...

On April 7, 2005 Neunuebel published a letter in the Presbyterian Layman that went beyond his habitual demonization blind hatred of Israel to stray into overt anti-Semitism.

After the letter to the editor by Susan Pentlin, Ph.D from Warrensburg, Mo. [posted February 15, 2005], I think she may not understand what the G.A. has actually suggested. The G.A. passed an overture to research the idea of divesting our multi-billion dollar investment portfolio of companies who facilitate the illegal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. It's a study. If the study determines that there would be efficacy in bringing a just peace to this conflict, the next step would be to identify those companies who facilitate the occupation. Then we would confront these companies to share our concerns and try to get them to cease their activities in this area. If the companies decline, we would work on organizing a shareholder resolution to force the company to end its work in the occupied territories. The focus is on the illegal occupation, not on the state of Israel. We have consistently supported Israel's right to exist and right to live in security.

Dr. Pentlin's suggestion that we've disregarded the history of the establishment of Israel is uninformed at best. To suggest that the assembly failed to understand that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was an "avid supporter of Adolf Hitler, even visiting him in Berlin," is a bit silly. What does that have to do with the current consistent violation of human rights perpetrated on the Palestinians by Israel? Besides, the Zionists were in bed with the Nazis both in Palestine and in Germany for years during WWII; what would we do with that fact?[...continued with responses in the extended entry.]

DelRey: It's that social element that seems the most prescient to me now. Not just because of the popularity of reality TV, the ubiquity of the Internet, but also--and actually, this does seem political--because the similarity between the situation of the United States in Fahrenheit 451 and the country today. In the book, the U.S. is involved in an ongoing, nebulously defined war. Combat jets are forever streaking overhead. The rest of the world hates us, and we can't understand why.[That's not in the book. -Sol] To some people, this describes the current situation exactly, with an open-ended war against terrorism and armed conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter in the face of widespread protests. Do you think the country is moving closer to the fictional America you wrote about fifty years ago?

Ray Bradbury: Not for a moment. The main problem is education, not politics. The teachers of our country have to be taught to start teaching reading and writing in kindergarten and first grade. By the time children go to the second grade, they should know how to read and write completely, as was the case in other generations. I was in the first grade in 1926, and my teachers were all poor: they made eight hundred dollars a year, but they taught reading and writing completely by the end of the first grade. The government has nothing to do with that. The educational system needs to be corrected.

DR: Teachers still don't make much money--

RB: It has nothing to do with pay. Either you love what you're doing or...Look, I wrote for years, and I wasn't paid. My love carried me through all those years. I sold newspapers on the street corner. When I was twenty-two, I was making ten dollars a week. When I started making twenty dollars a week from selling stories, I stopped selling newspapers. You're either in love with what you do, or you're not in love.

...

DR: What forms of censorship do you regard as the most dangerous today?

RB: There are none in our country. We have too many groups for censorship to be possible. We have Catholics and Jews and Protestants, and Republicans and Democrats, and women's libbers, and lesbians and homosexuals and bisexuals, and young and old...We're all watching each other, so there's no chance for censorship. The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush.

...

DR: Why did you choose the literature to be remembered by the book people in Fahrenheit 451? I was particularly struck that you included the gospel of Luke to be remembered, whereas the movie chose not to do so.[I have not seen the movie. -Sol]

RB: Why Luke? I don't know. I was raised in the Baptist church, and so I knew all those Biblical texts. And, of course, the other ones in the book, too. But I didn't really choose them. My subconscious picked for me.

...

A squad commander and a sharpshooter from Golani shot them. The members of this division are backing up the soldiers: The rules of engagement in Philadelphi are different because of the weapons-smuggling. In about 40 incidents over the last two months along the Green Line, troops have not fired as Palestinians crossed over. The people who have attempted these crossings, nearly all of them looking for a way to make some money, were arrested on the Israeli side.

The commander of the Palestinian forces inside Gaza, Mussa Arafat, reported - both to Israel and the PA leadership - that the youths were smugglers. But the PA announcements on the subject focused on condemning Israel for shooting youths...

"As a guest on the weekly talk show 'Berlin Mitte,' Vollmer seemed to be starting off with the right intentions. She spoke of the 'wonderful image' of President George Bush, his son President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton before the body of the pope in St. Peter's Basilica. But then, out of nowhere, she veered straight off a cliff.

"Her theory? It seems the U.S. had to do something to weaken the influence of the pope, who was an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq. Vollmer finds it all very suspicious that after the war, 'Poland was made a top occupying power in Iraq, naturally to weaken the pope's hinterland. Or how then, of all times, the campaign against the Catholic Church and the pedophilia was started, which was, of course, totally justified, but at this point in time was definitely a tit-for-tat response.' Vollmer found it somehow strange that the US presidents traveled to the Vatican despite the 'tough power struggles'."...

Miss King, 37, the black Jewish Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, was attacked as she joined mourners to commemorate 60 years since the Hughes Mansions Disaster, when 134 people, almost all Jewish, were killed by the last V2 missile to land on London.

The eggs missed her, but one hit a war veteran, Louis Lewis, 89, in the chest and an onion struck Richard Brett, a bugler from the Jewish Lads and Girls Brigade who sounded the Last Post at the ceremony.

Miss King, who enraged many of her Muslim constituents when she openly supported the war in Iraq, told the crowd that the attack was one of the "saddest" things she had ever witnessed.

Clearly angry, she said: "I think they were aimed at me but the sheer ignorance never mind the lack of respect is shocking. They have no idea where their freedom came from and who gave it to them...

Conference,

I want five minutes, and I need silence.

Some of you still remember five years ago at my first conference when I stood front and centre as a student having to address the floor after being spat at because I was Jewish. I was unanimously supported and applauded. Not one person stayed seated. I mistakenly believed I had a place in my national union.

Some of you may remember five, four, three and two years ago, when Jewish students had to be escorted from the building by the back door for fear of their safety.

Conference, this year, I have seen Jews accused of conspiring to write, submit and debate motions we had no part in, by full time members of the NEC.

This year, I have suffered baseless accusations of NUS being pro-Jewish and therefore biased because I tackled antisemitism where it stood. There was no defence of Jewish students by NEC members who heard those claims. This year, a comment was made in a Student Union meeting saying that burning down a synagogue is a rational act; when asked to comment NEC members could not even bring themselves to condemn that statement.

Over five months ago serious complaints were lodged about antisemitic comments made by an NEC member in a public meeting; there is yet to be any form of official response to these complaints.

When it was rumoured that I, a Jewish student, was standing for the NUS Presidency - whispers of antisemitism were used as a political football. Conference, while I accuse no one of antisemitism, this year NUS has been a bystander to Jew Hatred. In the past three days, at the heart of our democratic union, to my horror, I have seen the events of the year replayed...

Why would Lord Ahmed have hosted such a man in the Lords?...

...If, however, Lord Ahmed does feel that he made a mistake in inviting him, he has yet to demonstrate it. Shamir/Jermas’s speech was made nearly two months ago. On learning of its contents, I wrote to Lord Ahmed, asking him two questions. Did he consider the invitation to have been a mistake? Did he condemn the remarks? He did not reply.

Yesterday, I phoned him. When I told him that I planned to write a piece drawing attention to his actions in hosting Shamir/Jermas and that I wanted to give him every opportunity to respond, he replied: “I am not even going to speak with you.” He then put the phone down...

The conservative government of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis has promised to adapt itself to U.S. policy affecting the area "as far as possible," and Athens has offered to host an international conference to promote peace in the Middle East...[Hopefully Mikis Theodorakis will not be part of the Greek delegation. -Sol]

...When Mr. Molyviatis was in Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described Greece as America's "best friend in the Balkans." In Athens, Mr. Zoellick referred to Greece as "a strategic partner" in efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East and the Balkans.

Greek officials think that an improvement in Greek-American relations and the setting of common goals coincides with what they perceive as a chill in Washington's attitude toward Turkey, a traditional rival of Greece.

Last month, Turkish media bristled over a claim of U.S. support for Kurdish nationalists and Turkey's general opposition to Washington's policies in Iraq. At the same time, a best-seller in Turkey was "Metal Storm," a novel about an imaginary U.S. invasion of Turkey...

I still don't have solid information about the date, but I'd be willing to bet that it was under Zapatero. Why I'm saying this? Well, first because after all Zapatero has been getting cozy with Chavez since day 1, and, actually accused Aznar of supporting the 2002 coup that briefly ousted him...

Doris Pagelkopf, vice president of the World YWCA and the American representative on the World YWCA board, made the inflammatory comment in a "witness report" to the international organization following a Middle East tour last spring.

"I strongly felt the correlation to World War II. During that war Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews and now a group of Israelis... is trying to choke off and rid the land of Palestinians," she wrote.

Although the comment was excluded from the official report, it generated much opposition, both within the movement and without.

In March, Pagelkopf told The Jerusalem Post that she regretted any hurt her report had caused.

At the annual meeting of its national coordinating board over the weekend, YWCA USA made it clear that the comment did not reflect its organizational perspective...

"We commend the YWCA for publicly stating that it does not endorse the outrageous and offensive views expressed in the 2004 report," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "Absolutely no comparison can be made between the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews. This is a charge that is purposefully directed at Jews in an effort to associate the victims of the Nazi's crimes with the Nazi perpetrators, and serves to diminish the significance and uniqueness of the Holocaust."...

Mauck said he decided to take the case after reading an October 8 letter from Dumbleton printed in the school's newspaper, The DePaulia, after Dumbleton advised Klocek not to speak to the press. Mauck took particular umbrage at a passage that focused on the content of Klocek's speech rather than his conduct toward the students:

“No students anywhere should ever have to be concerned they will be verbally attacked for their religious belief or their ethnicity,” Dumbleton wrote. “No one should ever use the role of teacher to demean the ideas of others or insist on the absoluteness of an opinion, much less press erroneous assertions.”

Says Mauck, “That’s what got me going,” he said. “This was about content, not conduct.”...

The two men were in close proximity to one another throughout the procession due to the fact that the Israel and Syrian delegations to the funeral were positioned next to one another.

At the conclusion of funeral services, the Iranian-born Katsav also shook hands with President Mohammad Khatami. The two spoke for almost an hour in Farsi.

Katsav also reportedly embraced Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Also at the Vatican, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom met with his Moroccan counterpart Mohammed Ben-Issa.

Shalom's wife, Judy Shalom-Nir-Mozes, presented Britain's Prince Charles with a talisman from prominent spiritual leader Rabbi Kadouri on the occasion of his upcoming marriage to longtime girlfriend Camilla Parker-Bowles.

The Judeo-Christian Alliance, an initiative of the Boston-based David Project, today released its in-depth critique of the Presbyterian Church(USA)'s decision to divest from Israel. The report, Blind Prophecy, documents the process that led to church to offer a one-sided anti-Israel narrative to Presbyterians in the U.S.

Citing the Barmen Declaration, written by German theologians fighting the Nazi takeover of Christian churches in the 1930's, Dexter Van Zile, the author of the report, says proponents of divestment should have subjected the Palestinian Christian narrative to more scrutiny.

"By broadcasting this narrative, the PC(USA) did not speak in a prophetic voice, but allowed itself to be used as a megaphone for the Palestinian nationalist cause," says Van Zile. "We've seen Christian churches used this way before and the results were catastrophic."

"The Barmen Declaration is included in the PC(USA)'s Book of Confessions," he says. "The warnings are there in black and white, but for some reason, they were ignored by people who knew better."

The report also documents efforts by some of the denomination's leaders to misrepresent the meaning of the resolution after it was passed, says Van Zile.

"After the resolution was passed, the denomination's leaders tried to portray the policy as if it punished both Israelis and Palestinians for acts of violence. The resolution did no such thing," Van Zile says.

The 37-page document is available at the Judeo-Christian Alliance web site: (www.judeo-christianalliance.org). Van Zile hopes the document will alert other denominations in the U.S. to the problems with the Palestinian Christian narrative.

"If churches are going to speak prophetically about the Arab/Israeli conflict, they need to listen to more than a narrative produced by Christians living under the threat of Arab terrorism," Van Zile says.

The Judeo-Christian Alliance is an initiative of the David Project, a group that promotes a fair and honest understanding of conflict in the Middle East. The JCA was founded to give Christians in the U.S. the information they need to act with an informed conscience about the Arab/Israeli conflict.

Yet that is what is now happening in British universities -- and the pariah is, of course, Israel. As the Guardian reported yesterday, the Association of University Teachers is about to debate a proposed boycott of Israeli academics who refuse to denounce their government's policies in the occupied territories. But the motion will 'exclude "conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's colonial and racist policies".' So in true totalitarian tradition, those who denounce their own will be permitted to have a livelihood. Gee, thanks! To survive in the cradle of free expression, Israelis will have to betray their own people. This is a natural development from the implicit -- and sometimes explicitly stated -- assumption that has been coursing through British intellectual circles in the current hate-fest against Israel, that only those British Jews who denounce Israel's policies can be considered to be British; anyone who supports Israel is guilty of 'dual loyalty'.

This requirement to denounce Israel as the price of continued social acceptance is doubly disgusting...

The radar system for tracking incoming rockets and loudspeaker system so that the public can be warned to take cover a few seconds before the rockets slam into the city are already being installed. In addition, the roofs of school buildings are being reinforced.

It was not clear from the report as to what measures will protect the strategic targets located in Ashkelon (tank farms, etc.).

It should be noted that the expectation of rocket attacks against Ashkelon after the withdrawal was presented in the same tone as a report on preparations for bad weather (inevitable).

The book, "History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond," was being used on a trial basis at Scottsdale's Mohave Middle School.

The removal came shortly after angry e-mails to the school district and entries on conservative Web logs...

Support pro-democracy demonstrators in Beirut’s “tent city” and keep attention on Lebanon’s struggle for freedom.

Lebanon is at an historic crossroads. It has been under foreign occupation for more than a generation. But, as the result of pro-democracy demonstrations in Beirut, free elections and independence are now within Lebanon’s reach. The focal point of these demonstrations is a “tent city” where pro-democracy demonstrators representing many different religions and political groups have united to form a permanent presence until Lebanon wins its independence.

The tent city demonstrators keep the pressure on for political change, and they maintain world attention on the struggle for Lebanese independence. Your donation will support a new free and democratic Lebanon.

What does your donation buy?
Your donation will support the tent city demonstrators by supplying food, water, shelter and other basic needs. For example:
$1,000 pays for 200 blankets.
$300 pays for 200 meals.
$80 pays for 200 red & white scarves.

Use of funds
We are a 501c3 nonprofit and your donation is tax deductible. 100% of all donations to this project (net of bank transaction processing fees) will be provided to Lebanese organizations in Lebanon for the local purchase of food, water, shelter and other items to support the pro-democracy demonstrators in the "tent city" at Martyrs' Square in Beirut.

We do not deduct fees or expenses for organization overhead. Those expenses are funded separately...

Since neither Hiester nor the syndicated columnist he cites in his piece called DePaul University to check their facts, the author erroneously characterized the incident involving DePaul instructor Thomas Klocek as a matter of academic freedom...

None of that this time. In fact we noted that not a few of her erstwhile supporters walked out mid speech because, as you will see in [someone else's] observations below-no sturm and drang was present.

In fact Ashwari admitted that her correligionists, Chrisitians in the PA have fled-reducing their proportion from 20 to 2% and she wouldn't like to see the Chrisitian presence turn"churches into Museums." The reality is as she inferred in her remarks was that Islamization in the PA was taking it's toll on the Chrsitian presence. She was also candid about internal threats like fractionalism, terrorists being politicized and seeking control of the Palestinian legislative council and the weakness of the Abbas leadership in wrassling the 14 security services into a unifed one. Given the comment in the Jersualem Post below by a Muslim Arab, Ashwari had every reason to be subdued and not triumphant. Because even she had to admit that Sharon had trumped her and her fellow Palestinian peaceniks with the April 14, 2004 letter from Bush about certain realities on the ground. She also admitted as much that the US wants to see evidence of security, de-militiarization of the terror groups in the PA and eradication of the corruption by the kleptos-including Abbas, I would imagine, but maybe not.

Ashwari deflated the left radical secularists in the Levinson auditorium by not supporting a bi-national state solution: two states is okay as long as the 1967 "Auschwitz" borders are adhered to, the settement outposts are rolled back and Res. 191- dealing with rights of Palestinian refugee return are adhered to. But even she held out the fig leaf of a choice between return and "compensation," after Israel recognizes its role in "al Naqbah." Never happen...

Rihab Rashid Taha could try to lower the heat by finally telling U.N.inspectors what happened to Iraq's "missing" anthrax.

Or she could remain silent, rather than risk Saddam Hussein's wrath.

The microbiologist's dilemma, she has told U.S. interrogators, was that her team 12 years earlier had destroyed the lethal bacteria by dumping it practically at the gates of one of Saddam's main palaces, and the feared Iraqi despot might grow enraged at news of anthrax on his doorstep.

Taha chose silence in 2003, thus stoking suspicions of those who contended Iraq still harbored biological weapons. Soon thereafter, two years ago this month, the United States invaded.

"Whether those involved understood the significance and disastrous consequences of their actions is unclear," the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group says of Taha and colleagues in its final report on Iraq weapons-hunting.

"These efforts demonstrate the problems that existed on both sides in establishing the truth."...

The second, also received last month, again says the author won't review the proposal. "I support the academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions, as a means of registering my protest against Israelis' lack of respect for human rights and continuing illegal occupation of Palestinian land."

Almost three years ago to the day, moves towards an academic boycott of Israel began in earnest when a moratorium on European funding for Israeli research was suggested by Steven and Hilary Rose and 120 other academics, in a letter to the Guardian. The issue has burst on to the front pages intermittently: when Umist's Mona Baker sacked two Israeli linguists from a translation journal she edited; when Oxford's Andrew Wilkie refused a place to an Israeli PhD student; and last year, when the School of Oriental and African Studies hosted a conference on the subject entitled Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Strategies and Principles...

...Blackwell says that over the past three years the boycott has been as active as ever, but on a quiet and individual level - "a covert boycott where people are quietly getting on with it. It's a passive boycott that dares not speak its name"...

We believe, moreover, that the Bush Administration's stances on such treaties reflect a clear-eyed assessment of the real limits of diplomacy with nations that do not honor their commitments, that deliberately conceal their activities so as to defeat verification and that seek to use bilateral and multilateral agreements as instruments of asymmetric warfare against nations like the United States that abide by their treaty obligations. Far from being a disqualifier, this view is an eminently sensible and responsible one in light of past experience.

In short, Secretary Bolton's formidable grasp of the issues of the day, his exemplary previous service to our country and the confidence President Bush reposes in him will make him an outstanding and highly effective representative to the United Nations...

Abbas, who took office Jan. 15 after the death last year of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, has been under pressure from Israel and Washington to impose law and order in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel and the United States have demanded that the Palestinians streamline their corruption-plagued security forces, which under Arafat ballooned into nearly a dozen branches with often overlapping authorities and rivalries. The Palestinian Authority has 45,000 to 50,000 security officers on its payroll.

"We will not allow anyone to take the law into his own hands and sabotage our situation," Abbas said, criticizing the security services.

"I want to distinguish between nationalists and criminals," Abbas said in remarks broadcast on Palestinian television. "The security apparatus did not perform its duty, so it was crucial to take a stand," he added, in his most blunt criticism yet of the forces...

Jaber, a longtime ally of Yasser Arafat, was sacked after he refused carry out Abbas's order to arrest the Fatah gunmen who rioted in the city last week, shooting at the Mukata compound and damaging several restaurants and shops. During a meeting with Abbas, Jaber warned that were he to have intervened, this would have triggered street battles between his men and the gunmen, with many casualties.

Both Abbas and the ousted security chief are aware that the use of drastic measures against the gunmen, most of whom are wanted by Israel, would play into the hands of their rivals, who would depict them as "collaborators." ...

The attackers apparently did not penetrate the prison grounds, although some inmates were reported to have been seriously wounded. The second of two car bombs exploded as troops were trying to evacuate the injured after the first, the Reuters news agency said.

Meanwhile, the possibility of defusing Iraq's Sunni Muslim-led insurgency by drawing the Sunni minority into the country's government and military appeared more remote...

BAGHDAD, April 3 -- An American-educated Sunni Muslim won the first-to-be-filled post of parliament speaker in Iraq's new government on Sunday, breaking a serious impasse and launching a Shiite, Kurd and Sunni unity government more than two months after historic national elections.

Hachim Hasani's election by fellow members of the new parliament began the formation of Iraq's first democratic government in a half-century. Selection followed more than a month of negotiations, and a final week of rancorous finger-pointing, as lawmakers elected on Jan. 30 went about the unfamiliar process of finding a way to share power.

Filling of the first post represented compromises by all sides. Shiites and Sunnis withdrew their own, rival candidates for speaker, and Hasani gave up his hopes of a top Cabinet job to end an impasse over the speakership.

"The Iraqi people have been able to survive many attempts by their enemies to divide the people,'' Hasani told the assembly, invoking a "'free, democratic, federated and pluralistic'' future for Iraq...

“in Iraq, the US and its British dependency continue the same old fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy in the Middle East…in the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble - and that is Jewish supremacy drive”

“The Jews like an Empire…This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance…Simple minds call it ‘treacherous behaviour’, but it is actually love of Empire per se…”

The General Assembly Council got right to the brink of discussing that on March 31 – and then went into closed session.

Earlier, the chairperson of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP), Nile Harper, had presented a report which said in part that when the PC(USA) dismissed Peter Sulyok, who had been the advisory committee’s coordinator, that dismissal “was carried out without a just cause or appropriate due process.”

Kathy Lueckert, the council’s deputy executive director, also lost her job in the fallout from the Hezbollah meeting.

The advisory committee encouraged the council to reconsider its personnel policies, which allowed the council’s executive director, John Detterick, to end Lueckert and Sulyok’s employment by “unilateral action,” according to the report...

Amina Wadud sparked international controversy recently when she led an Islamic prayer service that was attended by both men and women.

Islamic tradition calls for men and women to pray separately. Many Islamic clerics condemned her participation in the service, which was conducted in New York.

A VCU spokeswoman indicated that the decision to move Wadud out of the classroom came after a security review.

Amina Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, has succeeded in breaking the taboo of the male-dominated mosque, said Nasr Abu Zaid, who fled his home country in 1995. Abu Zaid now teaches at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

"As you break the taboo, you try to bring some new insights to the established tradition. In the eyes of some, when you bring new insights, you are establishing a new tradition," said Abu Zaid, who is Muslim...

...The VCU name on the speaker's lectern was covered with black cloth for the lecture. A VCU spokeswoman said: "We were advised to cover it for security reasons. I'm not able to go into more detail than that." She also said she was not aware of any specific threats.

Plainclothes security officers also were at the lecture. Immediately afterward, VCU security personnel escorted Abu Zaid and his wife to their hotel...

...Abu Zaid identifies with Wadud's plight.

Abu Zaid came under fire in Egypt after suggesting that Islam's holy texts should be interpreted in the historical and linguistic context of their time and that new interpretations should account for social change. Fundamentalists were enraged by his controversial claim that the Quran be interpreted metaphorically rather than literally.

He was charged with heresy and forced from Cairo University, his alma mater, where he was a professor. In 1995, the Cairo Court of Appeals ruled that Abu Zaid had abandoned his Muslim faith and therefore was no longer a Muslim. His life was threatened, and the couple fled from Egypt to the Netherlands.

"Looking at the Quran as a historical text is taken as denying the validity of the Quran, which it does not do. What we need in the Muslim world is to construct a scientific approach to the study of religion," Abu Zaid said.

"Religion is taken as a subject to be believed, not to be studied."

In his tenure as Pope, John Paul II revolutionized Catholic-Jewish relations. It is safe to say that more change for the better took place in his 27 year Papacy than in the nearly 2000 years before.

One small indicator of the change is an ADL program called Bearing Witness, in which Catholic school teachers from around the country spend a week in Washington with ADL, the Archdiocese of Washington and the Holocaust Museum staff to learn about Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Israel. This and so many other wonderful interfaith activities could never have happened without the remarkable contributions of the Pope who opened so many Catholics to a whole new way of looking at Jews.

The Pope did this by the way he wrote and spoke about the evil of anti-Semitism. He did this by visiting the Rome synagogue, the first Pope to do so. He did it by the opening ten years ago of full relations with the State of Israel and then capped it off with his historic visit to Israel, including a moving stop at the Western wall. He did it by issuing a report on the Holocaust and by raising questions of Christian responsibility.

And in some ways most important, he rejected the destructive concept of supersessionism, the word describing the delegitimization of Judaism which had been superseded by Christianity. This historic delegitimization of Israel, based on the Jewish rejection of Jesus, became the basis of the milennia-old demonization of the Jewish people and the concomitant anti-Semitism. Now, said the Pope, Judaism is recognized as a sister religion of Christianity with intrinsic and eternal value of its own.

The consequences of this remarkable revolution from the top of the Catholic Church have been significant. It doesn't mean that all problems are resolved, far from it. Issues arise all the time, whether it is the baptized Jewish children during World War II who were never returned to their Jewish roots; or the beatification of Pope Pius XII; or Vatican positions on Israeli policy.

But because of the vision, because of the understanding of the suffering associated with Catholic doctrine toward Jews, that the Pope possessed, the prism through which problems are seen is completely different.

For all of us who appreciate the Pope's contributions the challenge is to make sure that his vision will continue to resonate and to deepen. That would be the best tribute to this exceptional religious leader.

Berger's plea agreement, which was described yesterday by his advisers and was confirmed by Justice Department officials, will have one of former president Bill Clinton's most influential advisers and one of the Democratic Party's leading foreign policy advisers in a federal court this afternoon.

The deal's terms make clear that Berger spoke falsely last summer in public claims that in 2003 he twice inadvertently walked off with copies of a classified document during visits to the National Archives, then later lost them...

...Under terms negotiated by Berger's attorneys and the Justice Department, he has agreed to pay a $10,000 fine and accept a three-year suspension of his national security clearance...

Despite vows by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas to remove incitement to hatred and violence against Israel from official Palestinian television, the incitement to hatred continues with new programming on PA TV. A cultural program broadcast this week features a song laced with hatred of Israel, accusing Israel of torturing, mutilating and killing Palestinians in the name of God.

As PMW has reported in the past, PA TV has for years used songs and music videos as a vehicle to impart educational messages, and has even mandated the killing of Jews as a religious necessity for Muslims.

To view the report, Kill a Jew - Go To Heaven, click here

So now, more than ever, Beijing needs to feel outside pressure if we are to ensure that talks continue. Europe and Washington's most substantial means for pressure is certainly the weapons embargo, which they imposed on China after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989. Yet the EU is now seriously considering lifting the embargo--it should not. Sixteen years later, China still has not substantively addressed the human rights abuses that led to the embargo, and, in fact, many of those involved in the 1989 demonstrations continue to linger in prison. In Tibet itself, severe restrictions on freedom of expression, association and religion remain in place. This record should not be rewarded with weapons exports...

The Free Muslims Against Terrorism are proud to announce that on May 14th 2005, Muslims and Middle Easterners of all backgrounds will converge on our nations Capital for a rally against terrorism and to support freedom and democracy in the Middle East and the Muslim world. This will be the first rally of its kind in Washington DC that is lead by Muslims and Middle Easterners.

Join us in sending a message to the extremists and supporters of terrorism that we reject them and that we will do all we can to defeat them.

We also want to send a message of hope to the people of the Muslim world and the Middle East who seek freedom, democracy and who reject authoritarianism and the use of violence that we are with them and that we will do all we can to support them.

This rally is NOT limited to Muslims and Middle Easterners. All people are welcome to join us. We request anyone and everyone who supports our message to join us at the rally. We want to send a message to the extremists and terrorists that American Muslims, Christians, Jews and people of all faiths are united against terrorism and extremism.

We welcome all endorsers and we ask that you circulate and publish this message to as many groups and people as possible. Help us make history.

To sponsor this rally, please send the name of your group to the Free Muslims Against Terrorism.

In contrast, on every occasion that we have temporized -- abject withdrawal from Lebanon, appeasement of Arafat at Oslo, a decade of inaction in the Balkans, paralysis in Rwanda, sloth in the face of terrorist attacks, not going to Baghdad in 1991 -- corpses pile up and the United States became either less secure or less respected or both.

(03/18/2005) Charles Krauthammer, Syndicated Columnist

While the report in its language tries to present itself as balanced, the bottom line is that the students who felt intimidated before this inquiry are not better off now than they were before. Rather than focusing on the concerns of students, the report tries to balance the blame and create an equivalency between the professors and the students. The report concludes that some professors in the Middle Eastern and Asian Language and Cultures Department crossed the line, but there are no recommendations for how the university should deal with that conduct, now or in the future...