July 2005 Archives

1948 Report to the UN Explodes the PLO's Myth of National Liberation
by Jared Israel

Emperor's Clothes here makes available, for the first time on the internet, the Nation's 1948 UN Memorandum on British instigation of anti-Jewish terror. The memorandum is posted in full, in text form, following Jared Israel's comments below, and also as a PDF file, scanned from the original.

Taught to use the language of National Liberation politics at Soviet bloc schools in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, today's Palestinian Arab leaders employ the rhetoric of Third World anti-colonial struggle. This has given us the spectacle of Cuba, which was the passion of leftist intellectuals in the 1960s and '70s, teaching Arabs to blow up Israeli Kibbutzim, which were the passion of leftist intellectuals in the 1950s.

The 1948 Arab-Israeli war plays a key part in the Arab National Liberation tale. The Israeli victory in that war is presented as the defining event, the nakba or catastrophe. In order to claim that the PLO and Fatah are fighting for National Liberation in 2005, their promoters argue that British imperialism, using Jewish proxies, crushed Palestinian Liberation in 1948. The corollary: if the Jews will just grant Arabs the National Liberation they were denied in '48, Arab leaders will deliver on peace with Israel.

Of course, if this story is false, if in 1948 the Arab armies fought for genocide, not National Liberation, and if it was not the Jews but Arab leaders who were agents of imperial Britain, then it certainly suggests that their protégés are not fighting for National Liberation today.

Below is our text transcription of The Nation magazine's 1948 memorandum on Britain's role in the Arab attempt to kill Israel in the cradle. Based on British intelligence documents and written for the United Nations, the memorandum is significant today because it contradicts widely held views about the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including those put forward in today's Nation magazine.

Just for starters, the memorandum proves the falsity of the common perception that the creation of Israel was a project of Western colonialism. The Nation shows that during the half year prior to the all-out Arab invasion on 15 May, Britain incited, micro-managed and did public relations work for a campaign of Arab troop infiltration and terror. And this at a time when Britain was responsible for security in its Palestine Mandate territory.

The intelligence documents cited below show that before the 15 May invasion, British intelligence knew that the Arabs terrorizing the future Israel were being led in part by Nazi advisers. These included Bosnian Muslims from the infamous Handzar Division of the Waffen SS. According to a French intelligence document published by The Nation seven months later, the British sent thousands of Nazi prisoners of war, including top war criminals, to assist the Arab attack. This was after the Arab invasion. [1]...

The European Commission and national governments are to consider measures to tackle ‘radicalisation’ this autumn.

Concern has grown over the potential rise of extremism among young Muslim men after it emerged that London suicide bombers were UK-born or British nationals.

New EU measures could see European-wide action to take action against extremist preachers, websites, or others, sending out a public message condoning or apologising for acts of terror.

“Proposals will include the issue of incitement to terrorism,” said an EU official.

“Questions of broader definitions of incitement such as apology or vindication of terrorism will be on the table.”...

Judge Christine M. McEvoy ruled that the parents of Elizabeth Shin, who committed suicide in 2000, had grounds to continue with their $27 million lawsuit against Massachusetts Institute of Technology psychiatrists and two administrators who are not mental health professionals.

Nonclinicians are not usually considered responsible for preventing suicide, but McEvoy wrote that, in this case, Shin's housemaster and a student life dean had a ''special relationship" with her, requiring them to protect her, because they ''could reasonably foresee that Elizabeth would hurt herself without proper supervision."...

Such Nazi allusions have been sharply condemned. The Anti-Defamation League called them an ''inexcusable perversion of history," and Yad Vashem, Israel's renowned Holocaust research institute, warned that they ''damage the memory of the Shoah." Some of Sharon's allies on the left, oblivious to such niceties as freedom of speech, even proposed making the non-historical use of Holocaust terminology an offense punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Let's be clear: You don't have to support disengagement to agree that the Nazi-talk is grotesque. The Israeli army is not the Gestapo. The peaceful Jewish residents who will be forced from the homes and land they love are not being sent to gas chambers. Sharon's plan may be delusional -- instead of enabling Israelis to ''disengage" from Palestinian violence, it will bring them more of it, and in deadlier forms -- but it isn't the Final Solution.

And yet . . .

And yet there is no getting around the fact that Israel is about to become the first modern, Western nation in more than 60 years to forcibly uproot a whole population -- men, women, children, babies -- solely because they are Jews. There is no getting around the fact that the forthcoming expulsions are rooted in the belief that any future Palestinian state must be Judenrein -- emptied of its Jews. And while it goes without saying that Sharon and every member of his government abominate the Nazis and all they stood for, there is no getting around the fact that disengagement is meant to appease an enemy that has always regarded the genocidal hatred of Jews in a very different light.

Long before there were ''occupied territories," Haj Amin El-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and the leader of Palestine's Arabs, urged Hitler to ''solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries . . . by the same method that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries." When five Arab armies invaded the newborn Israel in 1948, the secretary-general of the Arab League vowed to wage ''a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."...

Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of the city's central mosque, called Tony Blair a "liar" and "unreliable witness" and questioned whether CCTV footage issued of the suspected bombers was of the perpetrators.

He said that Muslims "all over the world have never heard of an organisation called al-Qa'eda".

Mr Naseem, who was speaking after police seized Yasin Hassan Omar in Birmingham, delivered his unprompted outburst when he was invited to a press conference with West Midlands police and Birmingham city council to help calm fears of racial or religious tension after the arrest.

It was held near the police cordon in Heybarnes Road, where Omar was arrested.

His comments shocked senior police officers...

El-Husseini tirelessly used his office to Islamize anti-Zionism and provide a religious rationale for hatred of Jews. Anyone who failed to accept his guidelines would be denounced by name in the mosque during Friday prayers, excluded from the rites of marriage and burial, or physically threatened. The Mufti implemented this policy along with his most prominent Palestinian ally of the time, the Islamic fundamentalist Izz al-Din al-Qassam, whose name is borne by Hamas's suicide-bombing units. Al-Qassam was the first sheikh of modern times who, in 1931 in the Haifa region, set up a movement that united the ideology of a devout return to the original Islam of the seventh century with the practice of militant jihad against the infidels.21

The unrest that began in 1936 and that has gone down in history as the "Arab revolt" was the initial testing ground for the emergent Islamist ideology. Here for the first time terrorist methods were employed that would later be inculcated among Muslims in Algeria, Afghanistan, and Iran...

Many students insist that the Students’ Federation of Cote d’Ivoire (FESCI) is nothing more than a government militia, with what some call a “mafia”-like hold on the university.

The United Nations and national and international human rights groups have accused FESCI, which is aligned to President Laurent Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), of violence against students who support the opposition.

In fact, the fatwa is bogus. Nowhere does it condemn the Islamic extremism ideology that has spawned Islamic terrorism. It does not renounce nor even acknowledge the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world. It does not renounce Jihad let alone admit that it has been used to justify Islamic terrorist acts. It does not condemn by name any Islamic group or leader. In short, it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate. In fact, officials of both organizations have been directly linked to and associated with Islamic terrorist groups and Islamic extremist organizations. One of them is an unindicted co-conspirator in a current terrorist case; another previous member was a financier to Al-Qaeda.

I spoke with Judea Pearl, father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl who told me that the fatwa was “vacuous because it does not name the perpetrators of Islamic terrorist theologies and leaders of Islamic movements like Yousef Al Qaradawi, Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahari, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.” Pearl told me that these groups are “trying to perpetrate a deception on the American public.”...

Islam is a terror organization.

For years, I've been trying to give the world's Muslim community the benefit of the doubt, along with the benefit of my typical-American's complete disinterest in their faith. Before 9/11, I knew nothing about Islam except the greeting "asalaam alaikum," taught to me by a Pakistani friend in Chicago.

Immediately after 9/11, I nodded in ignorant agreement as President Bush assured me that "Islam is a religion of peace."

But nearly four years later, nobody can defend that statement. And I mean "nobody."

Certainly not the group of "moderate" Muslim clerics and imams who gathered in London last week to issue a statement on terrorism and their faith. When asked the question "Are suicide bombings always a violation of Islam," they could not answer "Yes. Always." Instead, these "moderate British Muslims" had to answer "It depends."...

The convert, who for security reasons uses the pseudonym Ramsey Abdullah, and Zakaria Botros, a former Coptic priest, are the two major figures on Questions About Faith. When Botros served as a priest, he drew unwelcome attention by actively seeking to convert Muslims to Christianity, something that the politically feeble Egyptian church shies away from. Sources close to Botros say he retired from the priesthood to avoid placing the Coptic church in danger. Botros now lives in the United States, where he still ministers to believers and engages in theological debate via the Internet.

Abdullah, on the other hand, is a businessman whose family hails from Saudi Arabia. After he converted to Christianity in 1980, he was cut off from the family fortune, lost his business, and had to start over from scratch. He recovered handsomely; he’s now a principal in a flourishing new business and regards his fellow Christians as his true family. But he’s also painfully aware that the controversy generated by Questions About Faith may again force him to make sacrifices...

FMC will convey to Congressman Tancredo that many Muslims share his frustration about the senseless killing of innocent people in the name of our beloved religion. The Free Muslims have said time and time again that the war on terror is more than a military battle, it is also an ideological battle and only Muslims can defeat the cancer of terrorism and extremism that is spreading throughout the Muslim world. The Free Muslims recognize that the Muslim leadership in America and abroad has failed in challenging and discrediting the ideology that leads to extremism and terrorism but we are now trying to reverse our past mistakes by aggressively challenging the terrorists and their evil ideology.

FMC understands that Congressman Tancredo was only speaking hypothetically based on the theory that America must threaten the terrorists with what matters to them most...

"The day I say Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself," she told The Hill newspaper. "All we need is one more liar."...

French Foreign Ministry officials had talked in recent weeks about the possibility of hosting a Middle East summit. Such an event could have boosted France internationally following embarrassing defeats in the 2012 Olympics to London and a key referendum on the European Union constitution. British Prime Minister Tony Blair used a Middle East summit in March to help his re-election campaign.

But an official in Sharon's entourage said the prospects of such a summit would not be raised when the prime minister meets with French president Jacques Chirac on Wednesday because the French know that the idea would be rejected and they want the meeting to be considered a success.

"There will be no international summit until after the first stage of the road map is completed and no one knows when that will be – it could take 15 years," the official said...

It is published by an institute managed by one of Iran's most conservative and radical clerics, Ayatollah Masbah Yazdi, who has declared his support for Iran's new President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

The advertisement calls for men and women to enlist with the "Martyrdom Lovers' Headquarters".

It says the idea is to achieve "all-out readiness" against the enemies of Islam - and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Those who are picked will be specially trained for their missions in different divisions in every province.

To apply, all that is needed are photographs, a form and a copy of a birth certificate.

Several people have signed up with different organisations to defend the holy shrines in Iraq and the rights of Palestinians.

But in practice, their pledges are merely symbolic and it is highly unlikely that they would actually go on suicide missions...

As many of you know, officials of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, representing some 400,000 constituent families came to Portland in an attempt to provide a Jewish voice against the dangerous and functionally antisemitic "Tear Down the Wall Resolution" (Resolution# 0522). It demands of Israel behavior that is expected of no other nation. Resolution #0522 would place millions of Israeli civilians in immediate physical peril.

Our plea that a survivor of one of the murderous suicide bombings in Jerusalem, Ms. Tzippy Cohen to briefly address all the delegates on the floor of convention prior to the vote was vetoed by President Hobgood. So below in her own words is her personal plea to you. We also respectfully provide the following facts about Israel's anti-terrorism barrier that some people don't want you to know:

***Since 2000, the equivalent of 51,000 Americans- over 1,050 Israelis have been murdered and thousands more maimed by Palestinian suicide terror

***Since construction of the anti-terrorism barrier began the number of terrorist attacks plummeted over 90%. The number of murdered Israelis decreased over 70% and injured decreased by more than 85%

***The security fence cuts off less than 10% of Palestinian territory

***The fence is non-military, non-violent, and envisioned as a temporary measure. When the infrastructure of Palestinian terrorism is dismantled so will this barrier

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 7/27/05) - On Thursday, July 28, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will hold a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to release a fatwa (Islamic religious ruling) against terrorism and extremism. The fatwa is being issued by the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) and endorsed by major U.S. Muslim groups.

Representatives of the Fiqh Council, an association of Islamic legal scholars that interprets Muslim religious law, and leaders of several leading American Muslim organizations will take part in the news conference. (The term "fiqh" refers to Islamic jurisprudence.)

WHAT: Release of Fatwa Against Terror and Extremism/Release of CAIR Radio Anti-Terror PSA
WHEN: Thursday, July 28, 10:30 a.m.
WHERE: National Press Club (13th Floor), Murrow Room, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, D.C.
CONTACT: CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-488-8787 or 202-744-7726, E-Mail: ihooper@cair-net.org

At Thursday's news conference, CAIR will also release radio versions of its 30-second "Not in the Name of Islam" television public service announcement (PSA) in English, Arabic and Urdu. The PSA campaign ties into CAIR's "Not in the Name of Islam" online petition drive designed to disassociate the faith of Islam from the violent acts of a few Muslims. To view the television PSA, go to: http://www.cair-net.org/video/psa.ram

Arafat's failure to conquer Jerusalem did not shatter his conviction that history was moving in his favor: under pressure from within and without, isolated in the world, the State of Israel would eventually crack apart and dissolve, to be replaced by Arab Palestine. "We will continue our struggle until a Palestinian boy or a Palestinian girl waves our flag on the walls, mosques, and churches of Jerusalem, the capital of our independent state, whether some people are happy about it or not," he promised. "He who doesn't like it may drink the water of the Dead Sea." Arafat understood his actions as part of an unfolding within the long duration of historical time rather than as disembodied headlines on CNN. The inability of his diplomatic interlocutors to understand what he was driving at exposed the fatal limits of the Western conception of politics as a way to find a happy medium between competing interests.
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Arafat's given name, Muhammad Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Raouf Arafat al-Kidwa al-Husseini, provides close readers with a biography in brief of the man who created a nation out of the Arab refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The boy Muhammad Abd al-Rahman was born in Cairo on August 24, 1929, and grew up in the city's Sakakini district. Both his parents were Palestinians. His father, Abd al-Raouf, was a merchant from Gaza. In the late 1920s Abd al-Raouf left Gaza to prosecute a claim to a large chunk of Cairo that he believed was the rightful property of his family. The claim was futile, and preoccupied him until the day he died. Arafat seldom mentioned his father and didn't attend his funeral. His mother, Zahwa, for whom he named his only child, was a daughter of the al-Saud family, whose home in the Old City of Jerusalem was part of the neighborhood that was bulldozed by the Israelis after the 1967 war to create a plaza in front of the Western Wall. Although not born in Jerusalem, as he often claimed, Arafat did live in the al-Saud family house for several years with his brother Fathi after his mother died, in 1933. Arafat's grandfather was named Arafat, and his family name was al-Kidwa. His clan was the al-Husseinis of Gaza, not the famous Jerusalem family. "Arafat" was the only part of his given name that he would carry into adulthood; "Yasir" was a childhood nickname related to the word for "wealthy" or "easy." He didn't like school, and showed an early talent for organizing the neighborhood kids. "He formed them into groups and made them march and drill," his sister Inam told a biographer. "He carried a stick to beat those who did not obey his commands. He also liked making camps in the garden of our house."...

MORE: DOC Resolution Crafted By Peter Makari From The UCC Global Ministries

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self proclaimed “terrorism expert” Daniel Pipes, who has in the past called the American Muslim community “a seditious conspiracy aimed at undermining American values” and warned Americans of “the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene,” suggested the possibility of detaining Muslims in internment camps like those used against Japanese Americans in World War II.

There are two remarkable things about this passage. The first is the falsehood of every single assertion.

• I am not a self-proclaimed terrorism expert but a historian of the Middle East and Islam; I have never proclaimed an expertise on terrorism, a quite different field.
• I never uttered the words “a seditious conspiracy aimed at undermining American values,” much less applied them to the American Muslim community. This is rank fabrication.
• I did not warn Americans of “the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene.” This is a half-fabrication; for what I did say, go to “Reply to CAIR's Attack on Daniel Pipes” on my website, www.DanielPipes.org.
• I never suggested detaining Muslims in internment camps but to the contrary have denied this explicitly (see “Department of Corrections (of Others’ Mistakes about Me),” a blog entry on my website) and even won an apology and retraction from someone who wrote this about me (on which see “An Islamist Apology,” also on my website).

I now demand an apology and correction for this passage. If one is not swiftly provided, I will consider legal remedies.

The second remarkable thing about this passage is that The Day would print an article by the chair of the Connecticut chapter of Al-Awda, “the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.” If you are not familiar with it, this organization (as described by Alyssa A. Lappen and Jerry Gordon at FrontPageMag.com) “seeks Israel’s political destruction.” At a Wesleyan University conference last year, the Connecticut Jewish Ledger reports, Al-Awda distributed antisemitic literature bearing swastikas. Fouda wrote for The Day on Dec. 7, 2003 (and available on Al-Awda’s website) the obnoxious statement that “To deny Israel's role in the dispossession of the Palestinians is the moral equivalent of denying the holocaust.”

Mr. Fouda clearly has some problems. I am appalled that you publish this extremist, and do so repeatedly.

Yours sincerely,

Daniel Pipes

I perceived that the Communists were much more firmly embedded in Government than I had supposed, and that any attempt to disclose or dislodge them was enormously complicated by the political situation in which they were parasitic. Every move against the Communists was felt by the liberals as a move against themselves. If only for the sake of their public health record, the liberals, to protect their power, must seek as long as possible to conceal from themselves and everybody else the fact that the Government had been Communist-penetrated. Unlike the liberals, the Communists were fully aware of their superior tactical position, and knew that they had only to shout their innocence and cry: "Witch hunt!" for the liberals to rally in all innocence to their defense. I felt, too, that a persistent effort by any man to expose the Communists in Government was much less likely to lead to their exposure than to reprisals against him. That fact must be borne constantly in mind in understanding what I did and did not do in the next nine years, and indeed throughout the Hiss Case, which was to prove on a vast scale how well-founded my fears had been.

One of my close friends, himself an ardent New Dealer, who knew my story in full detail, summed up the situation tersely. "I see," he said one day, "why it might not pay the Communists to kill you at this point. But I don't see how the Administration dares to leave you alive."

The Palestinian media outlets repeatedly referred to the dead Israelis as “settlers” (even though they were not settlers) while calling the Palestinian gunmen “resisters” [muqawwimin—a positive term in Palestinian Arabic] and “citizens” [muwattinin].

“The holy martyrdom of two citizens in a clash at the Kisufim Junction,” announced Khaled Sukkar, the VOP news bulletin reader at the top of the Sunday morning news...

Mohammed Afroze was sentenced to seven years after he admitted that he had a role in an al-Qaeda plot to attack London, the Rialto Towers building in Melbourne and the Indian Parliament.

His lawyer has claimed, however, that the confession was “forcefully taken” and that Afroze was tortured by Indian police.

Afroze admitted that he and seven al-Qaeda operatives planned to hijack aircraft at Heathrow and fly them into the two London landmarks. The suicide squad included men from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Afroze said. They booked seats on two Manchester-bound flights, but fled just before they were due to board.

Afroze returned to India in October 2001. He was arrested in Bombay and charged with “committing depredation on territories at peace with India”...

Ideal Candidates will have an engaging personality and a commitment to bringing about justice in Palestine based on international conventions and laws...

"In an unfair balance, that's what people use," said Livingstone, who has often been strongly critical of Israel in the past...

...Livingstone said that Israel has "done horrendous things which border on crimes against humanity the way they have indiscriminately slaughtered men, women and children in the West Bank and Gaza for decades."

Livingstone also said that he does not distinguish between members of Likud and Hamas, branding them "two sides of the same coin."

"I think it is the Israelis who are leading the stubborn line," said Livingstone. "The Likud and Hamas members are two sides of the same coin. They need each other in order to attract support."

"Each side emphasizes the extremism of the other in order to attract sympathy," Livingstone said.

Livingstone agreed to the interview in the wake of the media frenzy surrounding the possible visit of controversial Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has voiced support for Palestinian suicide bombers and has been banned from entering the United States...

Support Ken Livingstone

The Mayor of London, Mr. Ken Livingston, has come under bitter attack from a coalition of anti-Muslim forces in London including Zionists and other Islamophobes. A dossier has been prepared by the leaders of this coalition centred on the recent visit to London by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, one of Islam's most prominent and authoritative contemporary scholars. The authors of the dossier have called for an investigation into the policy of the Mayor that included hosting a conference at the GLA, addressed by Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, in solidarity of the rights of Muslim women including their rights to cover their heads in public should they freely choose to do so.

The Mayor of London has maintained that inviting Sheikh Qaradawi to GLA was entirely appropriate, since he is a figure who happens to be recognised by the Muslims around the world as the most authoritative scholar and a scholar who promotes moderation and communal harmony...

While I very much admire your restraint in meddling in Israel's sovereign affairs - you are severely misinformed about the legitimacy of the expulsion policy.

Ariel Sharon ran on a hard-line platform. Unilateral withdrawal was the Labor party's platform - and they were trounced. By electing Sharon in a landslide, the Israel public decisively rejected the Oslo-era policy of unilateral withdrawal.

Sharon then turned around and implemented the policy Isreali voters rejected.

To get this far, he has trashed the considerable parliamentary majority with which he began, and is now running a government propped up by Arab and far-left parties - hardly the natural allies of his center-right Likud constituency.

He has fired cabinet ministers and completely ignored internal votes of the ruling Likud party - in effect he now rules as a dictator, estranged from his own party and from the Israelis who elected him.

Over the past year, voices have called for a public referendum on the pullout. This has been flatly rejected.

The broadcast media in Israel are run by the government - and they have consistently diffused misinformation, demonizing the settler movement and all who opppose Sharon and the left.

The increasingly blatant curtailing of citizen's rights to protest and dissent - and the heavy-handed use of police force - are taking place against this backdrop. The item I sent you is not just an isolated incident of a hot-headed cop roughing someone up.

Consider: over the past week, a force of 20,000 uniformed corps - enlisted army and police - were brought to bear on a peaceful protest march. That is more personnel than were used in some of Israel's most famous battles - in its capture of Iraq, the US initial force contained just about 20,000 combat troops!

To stop people from participating in the march, police boarded privately chartered buses and confiscated the drivers' licenses. Other bus companies were threatened by police and warned that they would be shut down if they transported protesters.

Despite that, the march drew 80,000 people down to the Negev for the kickoff ceremony, and another 40,000 marched in the desert heat - men, women, and children.

Minors have been arrested for giving out literature at street corners - and are being held in what amounts to solitary confinement, rather than being released on bail.

I would normally hail you for not butting in to Israel's internal affairs, but in this case there is real cause for concern about the democratic nature of our country - and a real need for pressure from American Jews who know what a healthy democracy looks like.

The situation here parallels that in the US - after several decades of socialist hegemony, a leftist minority elite is fighting its democratic loss of power. As in the States, the left is entrenched in the courts, academia, and the media.

Unfortunately, we do not have as open or resilient a democratic structure as the US - and nothing like a culture of democracy.

I recommend that you and your readers check out some of the articles in the weekend edition of ynetnews.com - it's the English website of a major Israeli daily newspaper - which describe some of the government's heavy-handed responses over the last week.

To sum up:
- the expulsion is NOT a policy reflecting the will of the Israeli people.

- those opposing the expulsion are not fanatics or rabblerousers, but Israel's silent majority, which has rejected Oslo's spiral of self-immolation.

- Sharon's efforts to impose this policy have run roughshod over Israeli democracy, and over the rights of its citizens.

- This is part of a larger abuse of power by the socialist elite, which claims it is defending Israeli democracy from religious fanatics - but in reality hasn't a democratic bone in its body.

Ben-David

As conservatives, columnist Charles Krauthammer and blogger-cum-radio host Hugh Hewitt still fight the good fight, but, in these multicultural days, that means sorting through "extremism" and finding nothing too terribly Islamic about it. Mr. Hewitt writes that my arguments of last week were wrong, citing "functioning democracies in Turkey and other predominantly Islamic countries" as evidence of Islamo-Western compatibility. He throws in the loyal host ("millions of loyal British and American citizens") for good measure. Problem is, the extent to which Turkey — where, just incidentally, "Mein Kampf" was a top 10 bestseller this spring — has ever functioned as a democracy is directly related to the efforts of a strong man, Ataturk, to constrain Islam's grip on the country's institutions, replacing religion with a doctrine of Turkish racial and civilizational supremacy. And while it tugs on the heartstrings, the loyalty of individual Muslims fails to neutralize or reform the institutions of jihad and dhimmitude that rise from Islamic teachings. That I even raised the issue, Mr. Hewitt writes, "underscores the almost desperate need for Muslim leaders in the West again and again, to denounce, without argument or sidebar mentions of Israel, etc., the use of terrorism as a weapon." Almost desperate is right.

Having determined that "99 percent" of European Muslims are "peace-loving and not engaged in terror," Charles Krauthammer sounds a similar alarm. "They must actively denounce not just ... the terrorist attacks, but their source: the Islamist ideology and its practitioners. Where are the fatwas against Osama bin Laden? Where are the denunciations of the very idea of suicide bombing? Europeans must demand this of all their Muslim leaders."

Why Europeans? Why not the Krauthammer 99 percent, or the Hewitt millions?...

While not flawless, the game is so exhilarating and addictive it should include a crowbar in the box so your friends and family can pry you away from your computer screen.

Despite having a "2" in its name, "Battlefield 2" is actually the third game in the award-winning series that began with the World War II epic, "Battlefield 1942" (2002) and its two expansion packs, followed by last year's "Battlefield: Vietnam." The new title, however, takes place in the near future with the latest, most technologically advanced weaponry and vehicles.

Players must choose to fight on the side of the United States, China or the fictional Middle East Coalition, each side with its own attributes and arsenal.

Similar to its predecessor, "Battlefield 2" is first and foremost a multiplayer game -- via the Internet or local area network (LAN) -- that supports 16, 32 or 64 players on a single map.

However, "Battlefield 2" also includes a single-player campaign that uses artificial intelligence to let you fight with and against computer-controlled characters so you can practice tactics before going online to tackle human opponents.

Selectable soldier classes include Sniper, Assault, Special Ops and Anti-Tank units, to name a few.

Imagine running through the world's most intense urban and rural hot spots with bullets and grenades whizzing by your head and F-16s and helicopters soaring through the sky.

You can parachute into enemy territory, swim or pilot boats between islands or call in an airstrike to destroy an opponent's radar tower. With the game's real-time VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) feature, you may find yourself yelling into your headset at your teammate to find better cover or to pick you up in a Jeep. And a new mode allows players to become the commander of an army so you can give orders to your troops to attack, defend or destroy.

And there's a payoff for playing well over the Net: "Battlefield 2" includes a new online character ranking system and unlockable rewards, such as medals, new weapons and more...

Arab leaders use courier jets to smuggle al-Qaeida personnel, banned weapons, and contraband falcons to Royal airports devoid of passport and border controls. Month-long Royal falconry hunting camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Morocco are the venue where al-Qaeida meet our Arab allies, to receive support for terrorism abroad. Picture these luxury Royal falconry camps as clandestine Crack-Houses, where Al-Qaeida get their money-fix, weapons, and get-away cars.

U.C.R. launched its website www.SaveTheFalcons.org on March 19, 2004. This site contains an extraordinary collection of Evidentiary Exhibits, publicly disclosed for the first time. These Exhibits and the other information on the site are a result of 14 years of investigatory work in Central Asia and the Middle East, considerable expenditure of resources, and difficult sacrifices by dedicated supporters embedded across ex-Soviet Asia and the Middle East...

Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it's given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.

And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.

Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn't have done that?

When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan?

When Sergio de Mello was murdered in Iraq -- a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, a person immensely respected for his work in the United Nations -- when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that de Mello had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor.

Now I don't know the mind of the terrorists. By definition, you can't put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts, and the objective facts are as I've cited. The objective evidence is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq. And indeed, all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggests to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of principles of the great world religion that, at its root, preaches peace and cooperation. And I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.

PRIME MIN. BLAIR: And I agree 100 percent with that. (Laughter.)

Israeli police said that the cousin said that the assailants were Palestinians, not Israelis, and Palestinian police said the suspect was from a family involved in a feud with the family of the dead boy, Yazan Muhammad Musa, who was stabbed 14 times, according to Dr. Musa Alayan of Rafidiah Hospital in Nablus...

I am talking about daily aspects of normal life.

A 10 year old child enters the bookstore of a Christian. The mother's shift was on. The following conversation took place:
Child: are Christian or Moslem.
Woman: are you here to ask questions to buy something? What do you want to buy?
Child: why are you not wearing the veil?
Woman: this is not of your business. If you don't want to buy anything, get out.

Imagine..., a 10-year old boy is having this conversation. What does this reflect?!

Two christian driving teachers in Bethlehem had to close down their business and work in partnership with Moslems in Hebron. Why? Because the Moslems in Bethlehem would not go to Christian driving schools. They are boycutting Christian businessmen.

These are just a couple of examples. The reality on the ground is horrible.

Are we supposed to hide these dangerous facts and say: all is good, all is fine? Shouldn't we be facing these problems and try to find solutions?!

All is good, all is fine, yet the Christian Community continues to emigrate. STRANGE

...A further complaint was lodged against the commander of the Lachish police district, Effi Mor, in which he is accused of personally hitting demonstrators.

Elad Cohen (18 ), of Netzar Hazani, arrived at the demonstration on Saturday afternoon. According to his testimony, he was struck violently and humiliated by three policemen. A photographer at the scene took pictures of the incident, and the images have been attached to the complaint.

“A number of vehicles were stopped on the way the Kissufim roadblock, and drivers were asked to produce identification,” said Cohen, who has returned to demonstrate at the same spot since the incident...

See, like any progressive, I knew that true people's movements don't, as the terrorists do, boast of their love for death, or target the innocent, or espouse Jewish conspiracy theories, or reject democracy on principle, or enslave women ... especially all at once. I'd seen this foe before, and it's name wasn't America. It was fascism, trading in jackboots for keffiyahs and merging Mein Kampf with Qur'an. In this fight as any other, I knew I had to stand where I'd always stood... with the heretics, the hebes, the homos and the harridans.

Be they the slaughtered mothers of the Sudan, the roasted innocents of Manhattan or the pulverized cosmopolitans of London or Bali or Tel Aviv, I therefore announce my solidarity with the victims against this rising fascist tide. We have met an enemy that is not us, who hates us for our good ideas, not our bad policies. Fighting it requires no apology.

Robert F. Mason
Los Angeles, CA

• The Little Churchill award for sensitivity. Like the award which we will bestow for original scholarship that rivals Ward Churchill's own trend-setting accomplishments, the contenders for this prize come from a crowded field. Thus, we have a two-way tie for what might be termed the Little Churchill Little Eichmann. The distinguished joint winners of this prize are Hatem Bazian—the University of California at Berkeley professor who called for an Intifada in the United States and… Northeastern University (Illinois) professor Shahid Alam who compared the 9-11 terrorists to America's founding fathers.
• The Little Churchill award for original scholarship came down to another two-way tie between Columbia University Middle East Studies professor Rashid Khalidi and recently-retired Central Connecticut State University president Richard L. Judd. Khalidi, who thinks America's media make too big a deal about suicide bombers, posted an article under his own name on the web that matched up section by section with the work of another author, who was conveniently deceased. Judd offered an opinion column to the Hartford Courant that looked remarkably like an editorial by another writer that had appeared in The New York Times.
• The Little Churchill prize for accuracy. This award also functions as a lifetime achievement award for historian Howard Zinn. If he had written nothing else, and many of us wish that were the case, the grand master of historical fantasy would win the award for his demonstrably unfounded assertion that unemployment grew during the Reagan Years.

Earlier, Palestinian sources had reported that the boy was killed in a brawl that erupted between Palestinian youths and Israeli settlers who had entered the village from the nearby settlement of Shiloh.

However, Palestinian officials soon admitted to IDF officers that the incident was related to an inter-clan dispute.

Palestinian hospital workers identified the dead boy as Yazan Mohammed Mussa, 12, and said he died while being treated for 11 stab wounds.

The incident occurred at around six in the evening, but it took more then three hours before the Palestinians notified Israeli security officials.

Israeli police immediately opened an investigation, and said that the possibility of an inter-Palestinian feud was one of the options being investigated.

A youth who was with Mussa at the time of the incident said the victim was attacked by two strangers.

Although he was sure they were not from their home village of Karir, adjacent to Shiloh, he fled before hearing what language they spoke and therefore could not positively identify them as Israelis.

The boy was taken to Rafidiah Hospital in Nablus, and Dr. Musa Alayan, who examined the body, said he had found 14 stab wounds to the head, chest and abdomen, but initial reports were sketchy.

The boy, identified as Yazan Musa, 12 or 13, was playing with a friend near Qaryout on Wednesday when he was stabbed by Jewish settlers who had marched in the area, Reuters and Israeli radio reported.

The Israeli police had received a report from the Palestinian authorities that the boy had been killed and had begun an investigation, said a spokesman, Shlomi Sagi. He said he could not immediately confirm any circumstances of the killing...

I cite this not to absolve myself of responsibility for my reporting, but to note that this was the only information that was available Wednesday night, and it proved not to be accurate as additional information became available Thursday morning...

...We noted this in the story and stressed that the initial reports were sketchy. I wish we had cast even more skepticism on the Palestinian claim.

As soon as we had additional information on Thursday morning, we updated the story on the Times' web site to note that a Palestinian had been arrested in the case and that the Israeli police had found no evidence to support the Palestinian claim. This is also set to appear in the print edition on Friday...

4. An Iraqi may have more than one nationality as long as the nationality is not Israeli.

In its biased and unjust statement, the Anglican Peace and Justice Network does not speak for the Israel Trust of the Anglican Church (ITAC), the oldest Anglican organisation in Israel, based at Christ Church, Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem. Nor did they afford us the courtesy of including us in their hurried consultation. Yet ITAC began work in Jerusalem in 1823 and is officially recognised by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England.

How can the visitors on the APJN Commission, however well-meaning, hope to be taken seriously when they spend a mere eight days in the country, without proper consultation on the Israeli side, then produce a statement implying they understand the complexities of the conflict and making pronouncements about it? For example, how do they think Israelis and Palestinians, with their strong but conflicting theologies of the land, will respond to such Christian intervention? Also, what right do they have to make demands of either side, let alone only Israel?

The sad thing is, however, that much of the church is predisposed, on the basis of inadequate information, to accept anti-Israel statements such as this one (although many Anglicans throughout the world would reject them)...

"It is global Zionism that stands to gain the most from this.

"Regardless of the logic of conspiracy, I would like to say something. We read history, and we know that since The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Zionism has forged the New Testament – and by now, 60 million in the U.S. alone have left Christianity to become believers in the Torah.

"Global Zionism has tried to forge the Holy Koran, and has printed many copies of this forgery. It has been discovered that many extremist movements were backed by [global Zionism]."

- support our troops by creating an exit strategy to end the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and bring our troops home.
- provide adequate veterans benefits and meet the needs of our veterans for adequate jobs, education, and health care.

The NEA will:

- support NEA members and their families called upon to serve in Iraq by identifying and providing information about resources and services to help meet their special needs, by advocating for their interests, and by protecting their jobs, seniority, and benefits.
- advocate the reordering of national priorities toward peace and the human needs of our people.

---

Last year we could not get an anti--war motion on the floor. It died on a move not to consider. This year, the delegation defeated a move not to consider and attempts to amend the language in order to gut it. Clearly the delegates were ready to dicuss and vote on the issue. This represents a sea change in NEA and is clearly reflective of the erosion of support for the war, especially significant because NEA represents suburban and small town America. It is also significant because it reflects a change in the culture of NEA. In recent years there has been pressure, especially from the states, not to consider anything which is not "directly related to education." Of course, we always make the connections between the war budget and funding for education (Our t-shirts and bumper stickers say "A war budget leaves every child behind.") We also made every effort to disassociate the policy and policy-makers from support for the troops. I think this was also critical in winning support for the motion. While the language may not be as strong as we would like (exit strategy vs. out now), it does represent the first time in memory NEA has taken an anti-war position.

Rhonda Hanson, Chairperson, NEA Peace & Justice Caucus

On September 2, 2004, ARIJ published a story on its partner website for "Monitoring Israeli Colonization Activities in the Palestinian Territories" entitled "Ecocide in Tequ'a Town". It claimed that the IDF had "burned considerable areas of cropped lands and forbid Palestinian farmers to reach their lands using dogs" and then "randomly dispensed flyers on the farmers' lands informing of the Army's intention to clear all trees (mostly olive) existing along the Israeli bypass roads". In fact, a visit to the area demonstrates that no trees have been uprooted from the area around Tekoa, despite their use as a cover for terrorists to shoot at the road.

Similarly, ARIJ's monthly reports include tables which summarize figures in such categories as "uprooted trees", land threatened, land confiscated etc. In the two reports for February and March 2005, in nearly half of the 12 categories featured in each of the tables, there is some incongruity between the text and final numbers. For example, in the Qalqiliya area in the March report, 645 allegedly uprooted trees are mentioned in the summary, while in the detailed text, three separate events are described: a) 45 uprooted trees, b) uprooted olives (with no number) and c) tens of uprooted trees… No explanation is given as to how the figures can add up to 645. For the Hebron district, 30 trees are mentioned concerning one event, and "hundreds of olive trees were uprooted west of Surif town" in a second event. In the summary table however, we find just 30 under "uprooted trees in Hebron" (see report). These unreliable and often false reports are funded by the European Union and often cited by other Palestinian environmental NGOs...

Did I really need to point out that this representation of me is, in the words of a National Post editorial, “a vicious calumny that Ms. Valiante plucked from thin air”? Must I insist that I really do execrate Hitler? Aver my horror of genocide? Protest that I never espoused expelling or murdering Muslim Americans?

I thought not. Rather than take these demeaning and surely futile steps, I took a different route. Backed by the Heenan Blaikie law firm of Toronto and the CanWest Global Communications Corporation, Stan Fisher of Heenan Blaikie sent a libel notice in early May to each of Valiante, the CIC, and CIC chair Mohamed Elmasry.

On June 10, the CIC published an apology and retraction: “The Canadian Islamic Congress and Ms. Valiante apologize without reservation and retract remarks in the column that suggest that Dr. Daniel Pipes is a follower of Hitler or that he uses the tactics of Hitler or that he wants to ethnically cleanse America of its Muslim presence.” The CIC also sent funds for my legal expenses and made a donation in my honor to a Canadian charity.

The CIC’s action is, to the best of my knowledge, without precedent...

I'm writing about the Sunday (July 17) Boston Globe's editorial "Europe's Culture Clash. Many European countries are facing serious issues with their immigrant populations, but I believe that the problem stems from NOT requiring assimilation of the immigrants. In the name of multicultural tolerance, European countries have allowed ghettos of largely Muslim immigrants to form in major cities, and it's been disastrous for the immigrants and natives alike. Of course these countries want immigrants to adopt their European values. Why would any country want people who don't share their values?

Regarding France's ban on veils in public schools, I suggest the editor read the article "Taking the Veil" by Jane Kramer (November 22, 2004 New Yorker). It's a complicated issue and France was trying to maintain a neutral space in its public schools. Is the editor aware that many French Muslim women supported this ban? There are enormous pressures put upon young women by male family members to wear hijab. Young Muslim women have been attacked and gang-raped for going out unveiled.

Finally, I am at a loss to understand why the Globe is so cavalier about Europe needing to "honor the Islamic ideal of religion as a way of life unifying the private and communal realms." The Globe regularly criticizes the "Religious Right" for trying to impose their values on the U.S., but apparently feels that religious Muslims should be encouraged to do so in Europe. Why the double standard here?

Sincerely...

...Fourth, to what extent does anti-semitism play a part in the Middle East dispute? The Israel-Palestinian conflict is not an obstacle to the disappearance of Muslim anti-semitism; Muslim anti-semitism is an obstacle to the resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Sceptics may consult the Hamas charter, available on the web, to satisfy themselves that this is so. It holds the Jews responsible, among other things, for the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, and for the First and Second World Wars...

In other words, belief in basic tenets of faith provides an immutable protection from charges of apostasy; anti-Islamic behavior, including the advocacy of mass murder in the name of religion, cannot remove that protection. Bin Laden, Al Zarqawi, and the murderers of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg will remain bona fide members of the Muslim faith, as long as they do not explicitly renounce it.

Moreover, issuing a fatwa will become more regimented. ''No one may issue a fatwa without the requisite personal qualifications which each school of jurisprudence defines. No one may issue a fatwa without adhering to the methodology of the schools of jurisprudence," says the final communique.

True, this edict will prevent bin Laden from issuing fatwas against the West, but it may also discourage fatwas like the one issued by the Spanish Muslim Council which aim at discrediting bin Laden and bringing him to justice.

Because the perpetrators of last week's London bombings will remain forever mute, they cannot offer what Bouyeri's statement did -- a glimpse into the chasm that is opening up between the graying, secular, permissive societies of Europe and the predominantly young, unassimilated children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants. This chasm is becoming a defining challenge for Europe's future. All Europeans, including Muslims who abhor Islamist terrorism and the ideology that spawns it, are affected by clashing expectations about the proper roles of religion and the state, equality between men and women, freedom of expression, and the community to which citizens should give their primary allegiance.

If Europe is to weather the challenge of accommodating an ever greater proportion of Muslims, many of whom do not want to abandon their distinct values and traditions, majorities and minorities will both have to change their ways. European societies will have to abandon a concept of assimilation that requires non-European immigrants and their descendants to replicate the mores and value systems of their French, German, or British neighbors...

Every subway car carries those same two portraits as well, and every adult wears a button depicting the Great Leader. And every home (or village, in rural areas) has an audio speaker, which starts broadcasting propaganda at 6 each morning to tell people how lucky they are.

Children spend long hours in day care centers from the age of 6 months, sometimes returning to their parents only on weekends. Men normally perform seven or more years of military service. Disabled people are sometimes expelled from Pyongyang, a green and well-groomed capital that is one of the prettiest in Asia, because they are considered unsightly.

And although the national ideology is juche, or self-reliance, the U.N. World Food Program feeds 6.5 million North Koreans, almost one-third of the population. Even so, hunger is widespread and has left 37 percent of the children stunted.

Yet North Korea focuses its resources on prestige projects, like an amazing 10-lane highway to Nampo (with no traffic). [That one reminds me of Stalin's White Sea Canal. -Sol]

Many conservatives in and out of the Bush administration assume that North Korea's population must be seething and that the regime must be on its last legs. Indeed, the Bush administration's policy on North Korea, to the extent that it has one, seems to be to wait for it to collapse.

I'm afraid that could be a long, long wait. The central paradox of North Korea is this: No government in the world today is more brutal or has failed its people more abjectly, yet it appears to be in solid control and may even have substantial popular support.

From a brief visit like mine, it's hard to gauge the mood, because anyone who criticizes the government risks immediate arrest. But Chinese and other foreigners I've spoken to who live in North Korea or visit regularly say they believe that most North Koreans buy into the system, just as ordinary Chinese did during the Maoist period...

Instead, we maintain sanctions, isolate North Korea and wait indefinitely for the regime to collapse. I'm afraid we're helping the Dear Leader stay in power.

Edward Said, who was a professor at this university, always used to say that the role of the intellectual is to "speak truth to power." I could never understand what that addition of "to power" meant. It placed an obvious reservation on the truth-speaking obligation of intellectuals: they should tell the truth, but this truth-speaking should be selective. The powerful deserve the truth, and the powerless ... well, what do they get? For Said, the powerful meant the United States, Israel, the West, Arab governments. But the truth is indivisible, and to withhold it from those who have less power, such as the Palestinians, is not only a disservice to them, it places them in jeopardy.

There is one lie that has been told to the Palestinians by a variety of people, and that has done them an immense amount of harm. The failure of intellectuals, and especially of academics supportive of the Palestinians, is that they have become disseminators of this lie. On some campuses, like this one, it has been taught. I would call it the root lie - a lie from which grow many other lies.

It is this: Zionism is a form of colonialism...

Somerville Divestment Project, the group that has called for the city's retirement board to give up Israeli bonds, said they received an e-mail from the city last week stating they would not be allowed to participate in the annual art festival in Davis Square on Friday and Saturday...

The charges were announced by Judge Raed Juhi, chief investigative judge of the tribunal. They are connected with a 1982 series of detentions and executions after an assassination attempt against Saddam in Dujayl.

Charges against five other men were announced in February. The men will not be tried individually.

No trial date was announced, but under Iraqi law Saddam could stand trial as early as September, because of a minimum 45-day period following referral for trial.

On July 8, 1982, a convoy carrying Saddam traveled through the town of Dujayl, a Shiite village north of Baghdad, and was attacked by a small band of residents. A series of detentions and executions in the town followed the incident. According to the tribunal, 15 people were summarily executed and some 1,500 others spent years in prison with no charges and no trial date. Ultimately, another 143 were put on "show trials" and executed, according to the tribunal...

"It's safer than New York here but Americans are fearful of Arabs, they think they are all terrorists. Most of it is prejudice but I wasn't scared," said Kummer, 55, a teacher at a college in Valhalla, New York state, in the shady courtyard of an old Damascus home...

Three Hamas fighters were killed when an Apache helicopter and ground troops fired into a hillside redoubt near Salfit, a town in the northern West Bank. Soon after, an Israeli drone aircraft fired a missile into a van in Gaza City, killing four Hamas members, the group said. More than a dozen bystanders were also killed, according to hospital officials here...

Shortly before 8 p.m. two rockets were fired at the northern Gaza settlement of Nissanit, directly hitting a house. Thirteen people suffered from shock and light wounds, Channel 2 reported. A third rocket reportedly landed outside the house.

Earlier Saturday, Palestinians fired three Kassam rockets at the western Negev town of Sderot, causing no injuries but damaging a house in a city neighborhood. According to Israel Radio, four residents were treated for shock. A fourth Kassam rocket hit the western Negev Saturday causing no injuries or damage.

In addition, dozens of mortar shells were fired at Gaza settlements overnight and Saturday, causing no casualties or damage.

Also overnight, Palestinians fired three anti-tank missile at IDF positions in the southern Gaza Strip...

Mr. Wilson presented himself as a courageous truth-teller who was being attacked by lying partisans, but he himself became a Democratic partisan (working with the John Kerry presidential campaign) who had a problem with facts. He denied that his wife had anything to do with his assignment in Niger, but Senate investigators found a memo in which she recommended him.

Karl Rove's version of events now looks less like a smear and more like the truth: Mr. Wilson's investigation, far from being requested and then suppressed by a White House afraid of its contents, was a low-level report of not much interest to anyone outside the Wilson household.

So what exactly is this scandal about? Why are the villagers still screaming to burn the witch? Well, there's always the chance that the prosecutor will turn up evidence of perjury or obstruction of justice during the investigation, which would just prove once again that the easiest way to uncover corruption in Washington is to create it yourself by investigating nonexistent crimes...

The war against terrorism and, in particular, terrorism committed by Muslims is an ideological battle that cannot be won without the help of Muslims themselves. These Muslim organizations should be focusing their anti-terrorism and anti-extremism efforts towards Muslims in the United States and abroad. They should be organizing rallies, going to mosques, community centers and everywhere Muslims congregate to fight the ideology of hate that is being advocated by the Jihadists terrorists and extremists.

This is what the Muslim leadership has not done or has not done enough. What good does it do to take out ads on TV or news papers which primarily cater to non-Muslim audiences? These ads are a waste of money and are no more than propaganda pieces designed to help certain organizations claim that they are fighting terrorism.

This is not to say that Muslim American leaders support terrorism. However, their response to Islamic terrorism is at a minimum incompetent and ineffective...

LIVE 8, that extraordinary media event that some people of good intentions in the West just orchestrated, would have left us Africans indifferent if we hadn't realized that it was an insult both to us and to common sense.

We have nothing against those who this month, in a stadium, a street, a park, in Berlin, London, Moscow, Philadelphia, gathered crowds and played guitar and talked about global poverty and aid for Africa. But we are troubled to think that they are so misguided about what Africa's real problem is, and dismayed by their willingness to propose solutions on our behalf.

We Africans know what the problem is, and no one else should speak in our name. Africa has men of letters and science, great thinkers and stifled geniuses who at the risk of torture rise up to declare the truth and demand liberty.

Don't insult Africa, this continent so rich yet so badly led. Instead, insult its leaders, who have ruined everything. Our anger is all the greater because despite all the presidents for life, despite all the evidence of genocide, we didn't hear anyone at Live 8 raise a cry for democracy in Africa...

Notice I didn't say "Islamists." Or "Islamofascists." Or "fundamentalist extremists." I've tried out such terms in the past, but I've come to find them artificial and confusing, and maybe purposefully so, because in their imprecision I think they allow us all to give a wide berth to a great problem: the gross incompatibility of Islam — the religious force that shrinks freedom even as it "moderately" enables, or "extremistly" advances jihad — with the West. Am I right? Who's to say? The very topic of Islamization — for that is what is at hand, and very soon in Europe — is verboten.

A leaked British report prepared for Prime Minister Tony Blair last year warned even against "expressions of concern about Islamic fundamentalism" (another one of those amorphous terms) because "many perfectly moderate Muslims follow strict adherence to traditional Islamic teachings and are likely to perceive such expressions as a negative comment on their own approach to their faith." Much better to watch subterranean tunnels fill with charred body parts in silence. As the London Times' Simon Jenkins wrote, "The sane response to urban terrorism is to regard it as an avoidable accident."

In not discussing the roots of terror in Islam itself, in not learning about them, the multicultural clergy that shepherds our elites prevents us from having to do anything about them. This is key, because any serious action — stopping immigration from jiahd-sponsoring nations, shutting down mosques that preach violence, expelling their imams, just for starters — means to renounce the multicultural creed. In the West, that's the greatest apostasy. And while the penalty is not death — as it is for leaving Islam under Islamic law — the existential crisis is to be avoided at all costs. Including extinction...

The aldermen will be considering their request tonight at their regular meeting which will take place at Somerville City Hall from 7-11 PM. We need people, particularly Somerville residents, to show up and show opposition to the SDP, who we assume will turn out in large numbers.

Zubeidi, who heads Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin, has been named by security officials as a key figure in organizing terror attacks on Israeli civilians.

Zubeidi’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have claimed responsibility for more than 300 terror acts in the last five years...

...The screening, which occurred in a Jerusalem restaurant last March, involved the showing of a video during a private party.

"The video's theme was what Israel would be like in 10 years," said an Israeli government official who attended the party and viewed the video.

"All of a sudden, at the end, there is Zakaria Zubeidi, playing the head of Reuters. Zubeidi was sitting in Reuters' Jenin office, saying he was Reuters’ chief,” the official said.

'They thought video was hilarious'

The party included guests from the BBC, ITN, the Independent newspaper, and French journalists.

"They all thought the video was hilarious," the official said. He added that only a few individuals did not seem amused during the screening.

"They were laughing; they thought it was very funny, he said.”...

"There's no denying it's payback for what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. "You've been bombing people for the last two to four years, so you are going to get a backlash."

"England is a great country and we love it to bits but do we love this government? No," Mr. Qazi said. "There were 24 Muslims killed in Iraq today; there will be more tonight and more tomorrow."...

For more than 20 years the terrible triumvirate of Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, and Alexander Cockburn have been falsely accusing pro-Israel writers of plagiarism and related academic offenses.[2] I have been the most recent target of the selective vitriol. They have accused me of plagiarism for quoting Mark Twain and other well-known figures­whose quotes appear in my book within quotation marks and properly cited to their original source. Their absurd accusation is that I should have cited these quotes not to their original source but rather to the secondary source in which ­they erroneously claim ­I first came across them. No one but anti-Israel zealots takes these biased charges seriously, as evidenced by the fact that not only was I cleared of all such charges by Harvard (after I brought them to the attention of the dean and president), but recently the dean awarded me a prize for "exceptional scholarship" for my current book Rights from Wrongs.

Now, a serious charge of real plagiarism has been leveled at one of the triumvirate’s favorite anti-Israel professors­ Rashid Khalidi. According to Solomonia, a website,[3] the offending article is an online essay entitled, "Jerusalem, A Concise History," by Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi’s essay was copied from a nearly identical essay by K.J. Asali without attribution or quotation marks. For example, here is what Khalidi purported to author...

Iraq and Israel are arguably the two major victims of Islamic terrorism. Yet they did not come to Blair's mind. Or maybe they did, and maybe there was a reason they were omitted.

In the growing recent literature about Great Britain's appeasement of Islamic terrorists over the past decade and more, we've come to understand that London was, in many ways, the epicenter of the terror network. Terrorists wanted in other countries were given safe haven in the United Kingdom, and the most amazingly hateful language was spewed out, openly and proudly, by various sheikhs and imams, all left to incite the faithful to terrible acts against innocent people the world over. For all this, her majesty's government had its reasons. There was a reluctance to offend "the Arabs," the richest of whom had long used London as a home away from the sand, and as their financial and banking center of choice. Moreover, there was a traditional disdain of the Arabs, born out of long experience and expressed in open doubt that "those people" would ever constitute a serious threat, or indeed anything serious. Further, there was a long tradition of open and boisterous political speech, which reflexively protected even terrorist preachers from official rebuke or punishment. To these traditions, there was the usual deadly overlay of political correctness, what Mark Steyn calls the multiculti view, according to which people with traditions different from ours should be respected and certainly not silenced. To do that would not only be non-multiculti, it would risk the advantages of the special relationship with the Arab world.

Those of us who have had the frustrating experience of speaking with British diplomats (or journalists, especially those elegantly speaking fellows from the BBC) about the Middle East have invariably encountered a dismissive, slightly bemused, and firm conviction that anyone who worries greatly about "the Arabs" is at least ignorant and at worst malignant. And those of us who had the gall to argue — publicly, even — that the terror war is indeed serious and that appeasement of Saudis, Syrians, and Iranians would only lead to more and more terrible actions against us all, were relegated to the category of misguided souls, at best...

2. http://www.ucc.org/faith/barmen.htm

3. 2 Peter, Chapter 2 verse 22

If the pension fund managers of the main line churches that are considering divestment were to sell all the shares of a company targeted for divestment because it does business in Israel, they would be selling some of the most valuable holdings in their portfolios. A bad move financially. Moreover, given that the companies that do business in Israel are for the most part multi-national corporations belonging to the elite Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 groups, it is immediately obvious that other investors (individuals and institutions) would rapidly buy up the recently sold stock. Especially if the church pension fund sales depressed the price of the stock, these stocks would be purchased all the more quickly at bargain prices, and the stock would rapidly regain its value. The end result would be absolutely no negative impact on the multi-national corporations, nor on Israel.

If I know this, the pension fund managers must know this too. And one can be sure that the managers told the church leaders who are lobbying for divestment...

"What we want is not actual economic divestment from Israel. Everyone knows that the US will never pull investments out of Israel like that. Instead, we are looking to shift the dialogue to whether or not to divest from Israel, without extraneous discussion of the basics. We hope that in 10, 20 years the public will just take for granted the premises that Israel is an apartheid state, and then we can move from there." (1)

This revealing statement is indicative of the divestment movement's long-term goals. They have nothing to do with peace, dialogue, or education; and nothing to do with the real, factual, nature of the state of Israel and its society. The divestment campaign is meant to alter the US society's perception of Israel over a long period of time so that later, 20 years from now, the anti-Israel forces can lobby for divestment in an atmosphere in which it is .."taken for granted…that Israel is an apartheid state.”...

...Why the Arab propagandists at the Sabeel Institute encourage churches to join in the movement is clear. Having churches of any denomination participate in this effort to de-legitimize Israel lends great moral sway to the divestment movement and further undermines the image of Israel as a legitimate member of the family of nations.

But the church leaders are presumably honest, intelligent, fair-minded, unbigoted, humanitarian people who truly seek truth and work for justice in the world. Why are they so easily duped by the Arab propaganda?...

Two soldiers were lightly wounded in the raid, and paramedics have evacuated them to Beilinson hospital in Petah Tikva. Another militant was also wounded in the shootout.

Two Islamic Jihad militants have already been apprehended as a result of the operation, and some arms and explosives were seized by the forces raiding the town.

The IDF entered the city in a predawn operation hours after an Islamic Jihad militant from the area blew himself up in the nearby town of Netanya, killing three women.

Witnesses said some 20 military vehicles swept into Tul Karm, which had been formally under Palestinian Authority security control as part of a ceasefire declared by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in February...

...According to military sources the PA is not doing anything to thwart terror attacks. The sources said Tul Karm has become a refuge for the Islamic Jihad, and thus Israel will act with full force against the terror infrastructure in the town.

Islamic Jihad militants in and around Tul Karm have been responsible for the deaths of ten Israelis in attacks in the past six months, since a major attack at the Stage club in Tel Aviv...

The blast killed at least seven children and a U.S. soldier, according to a U.S. military statement. Three U.S. soldiers were wounded and a nearby house caught fire.

Police said the car pulled up to a U.S. Army Humvee troop carrier and exploded. The soldiers apparently were handing out treats to the children when the bomb went off around 10:50 a.m. (2:50 a.m. ET).

"The car bomber made a deliberate decision to attack one of our vehicles as the soldiers were engaged in a peaceful operation with Iraqi citizens," Maj. Russ Goemaere said in the statement. "The terrorist undoubtedly saw the children around the Humvee as he attacked. The complete disregard for civilian life in this attack is absolutely abhorrent."...

No matter that in the Arab world, there are just traces now of France's onetime conceit that it held a special place of influence among Western countries. The French are totally removed from the Israel-Palestinian peace process, and in Lebanon, they follow the U.S. lead. As for Africa, Blair has left Chirac in the dust to become the embodiment of the industrial world's concern for its well-being.

Say all this in a gulp, pronounce the forbidden d-word for decline, and if you're French, you can be labeled a defeatist or an agent of the awful Anglo-Saxons. Still, the situation has become so obviously loopy that Nicolas Sarkozy, a politician never troubled before by French pretensions but who wants to be the next president, seems to think it worth the risk of pointing out.

He said on Sunday: "I can't get around the idea of France piling up the disappointments without stopping to ask if, just by chance, it's not us who are wrong and the rest of the world that's right. If everything the world does is bad and unfair and that everything we do carries the seal of total genius? I'm calling for a tiny little critical examination that won't hurt France's image at all."

Should that approach, like stillness, be beyond reach or official imagination on Bastille Day, a little general humbleness, call it modesty, just might do for starters.

Al-Matroudi: There is an American definition of "terrorism", which differs from the definition used by the U.N. There are different definitions in the world. The definition of terrorism that concerns us is that it is any act or statement that contradicts the Koran or Sunna, whether in thought or action. If it is a thought, then it is the first step toward action, and thus, it is also terrorism, since it goes against the nature with which Man was created.

If you are strong enough to defend yourself, you must do so...

Al-Matroudi: And if you have no such strength, you should do whatever you can to get what you want in peaceful and diplomatic ways.

British-based terrorists have carried out operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Russia, Spain, and America. Many governments - Jordanian, Egyptian, Moroccan, Spanish, French, and American - have protested London's refusal to shut down its Islamist terrorist infrastructure or extradite wanted operatives. In frustration, Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak publicly denounced Britain for "protecting killers." One American security group has called for Britain to be listed as a terrorism-sponsoring state.

Counterterrorism specialists disdain the British. Roger Cressey calls London "easily the most important jihadist hub in Western Europe." Steven Simon dismisses the British capital as "the Star Wars bar scene" of Islamic radicals. More brutally, an intelligence official said of last week's attacks: "The terrorists have come home. It is payback time for … an irresponsible policy."

While London hosts terrorists, Paris hosts a top-secret counterterrorism center, code-named Alliance Base, the existence of which was recently reported by the Washington Post. At Alliance Base, six major Western governments have since 2002 shared intelligence and run counterterrorism operations - the latter makes the operation unique.

More broadly, President Chirac instructed French intelligence agencies just days after September 11, 2001, to share terrorism data with their American counterparts "as if they were your own service." The cooperation is working: A former acting CIA director, John E. McLaughlin, called the bilateral intelligence tie "one of the best in the world." The British may have a "special relationship" with Washington on Iraq, but the French have one with it in the war on terror...

The Racial and Religious Hatred Bill passed its third reading by a 301-229 vote, just hours after Prime Minister Tony Blair's press secretary declined to rule out using the measure, if it becomes law, against Muslim figures who may incite violence against Christians and Jews.

Spokesman Tom Kelly told a Downing Street press conference he would not get into hypothetical speculation about individuals, but the law would be there and it would be applied correctly.

Last Thursday's terrorist bombings in London have focused renewed attention on controversial Muslim figures based in the capital who have long advocated jihad against the West.

Islamic organizations have lobbied hardest for the legislation, saying their community needed protection, given an increase in anti-Muslim sentiment after 9/11...

In his work as an emergency surgeon and consultant at the Tel Aviv Medical Center, he has worked saving lives from terror attacks across Israel – and he wanted some peaceful, reflective time with his wife Libby, away from the trauma of treating victims of violence...

...When the bomb went off in the deep underground tunnel, visitors at the hotel felt the tremor and heard the rumbling bang that signalled London's worst-ever terrorist attack.

Meilik did not waste time, and his speedy response saved lives.

"I have heard enough explosions to know what they sound like, and when I heard the boom I sprung into action," he said later.

Leaving his wife and children at the hotel, which was evacuated moments later by the police, he dashed outside to find out what had happened.

"People were pointing at the tube station and I so I went in." he said. "There was carnage, smoke everywhere, and suddenly paramedics rushed in after me."

It was the start of a tough morning for the doctor, who has treated over 100 victims of the conflict in Israel and is used to seeing the sorts of injuries that greeted him on the platforms of Russell Square...

At this point, many readers will be indignantly protesting that this is all the fault of Israeli "occupation", but how does that explain suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where there's not a Zionist oppressor for hundreds of miles? Islam has become the world's pre-eminent incubator of terrorism at its most depraved. Indeed, so far London has experienced only the lighter items on the bill of fare - random bombing of public transport rather than decapitation, child sacrifice and schoolhouse massacres.

Most of us instinctively understand that when a senior Metropolitan Police figure says bullishly that "Islam and terrorism don't go together", he's talking drivel...

Some of the wounded were reported to be in serious condition.

The bomber apparently failed in his attempts to enter the shopping mall.

Palestinian media sources reported that the bomber came from the West Bank and managed to evade Israeli checkpoints.

The Netanya shopping mall was already the scene of a terror bombing that killed five and wounded 74 in May 2001. In that bombing as well, the suicide bomber was prevented from entering the mall, and detonated by the outside security checks.

Netanya, the site of many deadly terror attacks in the past, is located minutes away from the West Bank city of Tulkarm.

The first installation of the security barrier was designed to defend Netanya from such attacks.

Maccabiah events are underway nearby at the Windgate Sports Center, near Netanya.

Such weapons are now nearing fruition. But logistical issues have delayed their battlefield debut -- even as soldiers in Iraq encounter tense urban situations in which the nonlethal capabilities of directed energy could be put to the test...

Military investigators say decades of research have shown that the effect ends the moment a person is out of the beam, and no lasting damage is done as long as the stream does not exceed a certain duration. How long? That answer is classified, but it apparently is in the realm of seconds, not minutes. The range of the beam also is secret, though it is said to be further than small arms fire, so an attacker could be repelled before he could pull a trigger...

Basically, it fires a bolt of lightning. It can be tuned to blow up explosives, possibly to stop vehicles and certainly to buzz people. The strike can be made to feel as gentle as "broom bristles" or cranked up to deliver a paralyzing jolt that "takes a few minutes to wear off."

Bitar, who is of Arab descent, believes StunStrike would be particularly intimidating in the Middle East because, he contends, people there are especially afraid of lightning.

At present, StunStrike is a 20-foot tower that can zap things up to 28 feet away. The next step is to shrink it so it could be wielded by troops and used in civilian locales like airplane cabins or building entrances...

...Aside from factual errors, something else is afoot in books on the Arab-Israeli conflict: the acceptance of creeping historical revisionism promulgated by Palestinian media sources. The most common untruths are the assertions that the Palestinian Arabs are the inheritors of the ancient Canaanites (or the Philistines) and that Jews and Arabs (now reborn as "Canaanites") have been at war with each other for millennia--both fictions seeking to show that Arab ties to the land are deeper than those of the Jews...

A particularly important Palestinian Authority heroine is Wafa Idris, who in January 2002 became the first Palestinian woman suicide terrorist. Although the PA issued condemnations in English at the time of the bombing, it has since turned Idris into a valued heroine in Palestinian society. The Union of Palestinian Women presented Idris' murderous act as a role model for Palestinian feminism, a parade for young girls was held in her honor, summer camps for children, university courses, and Fatah programs have been named for her, and a concert honoring Idris has been broadcast numerous times on PA TV.

This week yet another PA program was named in her honor, the "Shahida (Martyr for Allah) Wafa Idris course for Fatah women cadres." The following is a partial listing of these events starting with the most recent example:

"The Public Action Commission in the Political and National Guidance Section of the General Security Forces held a graduation ceremony for the 'Shahida Wafa Idris course', for training Fatah women cadres, organized by the Commission in cooperation with the General Union of Women and the Public Relations Department in the Jenin District.

"The graduation ceremony for the course of 46 women, was organized in the District's hall, in the presence of Abd Al-Razeq Abu Al-Hayjaa, the Deputy Governor, Mahdi al-Ahmad, the Director General of the Ministry of the Interior in the district, Ata Abu Armila, Secretary of the Fatah movement in the area and Hasan al-Aaraj, from the Administration of the Interior...

"The Ceremony ended with the distribution of diplomas to the female graduates, and diplomas and awards of appreciation to the mothers of the Shahids (Martyrs for Allah)." [Al Ayyam, July 4, 2005]

University courses

"The Shabiba student movement, 'the Shahida Wafa Idris cell' in the Al-Quds Open University, celebrated the completion of a course in democracy and human rights." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 11, 2002]

Summer camps

"Yesterday, activities ended in the camp named after the Shahida Wafa Idris, for girls in the city of Kalkiliya. The camp was founded by the Scout general administration in the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The camp was under the supervision of the Scouts in the Kalkiliya Administration and about 100 girls from the organizing committee of the city's Scouts participated. [At the closing ceremony, gratitude was expressed] to UNICEF for its support of the camps." [Al-Ayyam, July 18, 2003]

PMW note: After this PMW report was brought to the UN's attention, the UN ensured that summer camps it funded in 2004 were not named for terrorists...

Ateek's influence has been further amplified in the US and Canada by the Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) network of chapters that disseminate Ateek's rhetoric. It is also assisted by a broader and looser network of supporters in mainstream Protestant churches across America, who in turn reach the broader public audience through their own considerable individual and collective influence.

The result, as is now clear, is displayed in the divestment campaign, which is the latest form of political warfare against Israel and the Jewish people, and as far removed as possible from the claimed ecumenical objective.

Why would a Palestinian Christian group agree to post such a venomous vile propaganda against Sabeel and the Rev Naim Ateek? I can only respond by quoting Arabic sayings such as the sole of Rev Ateek's dirtiest shoe is more dignified than the filth spewing from the mouth of Dexter van Zile. Also an attack from a lowly source on a person of superior intelligence can only be interpreted as testimony to near perfection of the latter.

-SJ

I agree with you!

Too bad that we are still fighting each others while Moslems are eating us alive (as we say in Arabic)

I can't imagine that we are so stupid as to continue fighting when everything around us calls for us to unite and work together to preserve ourselves in the midst of the jungle

Best regards

The findings are as follows:

...

• The Jews are hardly mentioned in historical contexts either in antiquity or in modern times (except in a special section on Zionism). Their strong historical ties to Palestine are virtually ignored - even in Christian Education textbooks that speak of Old and New Testament events. At the same time, the Canaanites, and all other ancient nations in the region, are presented as Arab nations, the forebears of the Arabs, including the Palestinians, of today.


• Although a seemingly objective quotation from the late Zionist and Israeli leader David Ben Gurion is given and an attempt is made to present Zionism's history objectively, Zionism is depicted as a racist movement with a strong connection to Western Imperialism. Moreover, the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are treated as a historical document, said to constitute an integral part of Zionism, and described as the confidential resolutions of the first Zionist congress.


• As in earlier school books published by the PA, there is no recognition of any Jewish holy place as such.


• Similarly, Israel is not recognized as a sovereign state. Its name does not appear on any of the maps where, in some cases, the name "Palestine" appears instead. There is one sentence in which the phrase "the State of Israel" appears within quotation marks. Israel's pre-1967 territory is never mentioned as such and phrases like "the 1948 areas" are used instead. There are cases in which Palestine replaces Israel as the sovereign state in the region. Regions, sites and cities within pre-1967 Israel are described as Palestinian and once or twice the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are implicitly described as part of a larger Palestine. On the other hand, there is a sole reference to Israel as a sovereign state in an official document issued by Christian religious leaders, which is quoted in a Christian Education textbook.


• Israel's image is wholly negative: It has been an occupying entity since 1948, exclusively responsible for the Palestinian Catastrophe of that year and the source of violence. Israel shells schools, arrests and tortures people, demolishes Palestinian houses, blocks roads, oppresses the Palestinians - including by means of the "racist annexation and separation wall", steals Palestinian land and water, strives to destroy Muslim and Christian holy places, tries to impoverish the Palestinians and destroy their agriculture and economy, maltreats its own Palestinian citizens, etc. On the other hand there is one piece of literature that presents a dead enemy soldier as a human being...

Whether he personally believes in evolution: "I don't discuss personal opinions. ... I'm familiar with what's obviously true about it as well as what's problematic. ... I'm not a scientist. ... It's like me asking you whether you believe in the Big Bang."

How evolution should be taught in public schools: "I managed to have my children go through the Fairfax, Virginia schools without ever looking at one of their science textbooks."

Whether he personally believes in evolution: "Of course."

What he thinks of intelligent design: "At most, interesting."

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: "The idea that [intelligent design] should be taught as a competing theory to evolution is ridiculous. ... The entire structure of modern biology, and every branch of it [is] built around evolution and to teach anything but evolution would be a tremendous disservice to scientific education. If you wanna have one lecture at the end of your year on evolutionary biology, on intelligent design as a way to understand evolution, that's fine. But the idea that there are these two competing scientific schools is ridiculous."

Among the study’s findings:

• In 2002, 23 percent of all births in the United States were to immigrant mothers (legal or illegal), compared to 15 percent in 1990, 9 percent in 1980, and 6 percent in 1970.

• Even at the peak of the last great wave of immigration in 1910, births to immigrant mothers accounted for a slightly smaller share than today. After 1910 immigration was reduced, but current immigration continues at record levels, thus births to immigrants will continue to increase.

• Our best estimate is that 383,000 or 42 percent of births to immigrants are to illegal alien mothers. Births to illegals now account for nearly one out of every 10 births in the United States.

• The large number of births to illegals shows that the longer illegal immigration is allowed to persist, the harder the problem is to solve. Because as U.S. citizens these children can stay permanently, their citizenship can prevent a parent’s deportation, and once adults they can sponsor their parents for permanent residence.

• The large number of children born to illegals also shows that a “temporary” worker program is unrealistic because it would result in hundreds of thousands of permanent additions to the U.S. population each year, exactly what such a program is suppose to avoid.

• Overall, immigrant mothers are much less educated than native mothers. In 2002, 39 percent of immigrant mothers lacked a high school education, compared to 17 percent of native mothers. And immigrants now account for 41 percent of births to mothers without a high school degree.

• The dramatic growth in births to immigrants has been accompanied by a decline in diversity. In 1970, the top country for immigrant births — Mexico — accounted for 24 percent of births to immigrants, by 2002 it was 45 percent...

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid...

The kidnappers held 52 people from hostage for 444 days.

Bani Sadr, who was president during part of that time and is now in exile in Paris, told a Yediot Aharonot reporter Ahmadinejad in the embassy throughout the hostage crisis.

"Ayatollah Khomeini's deputy, Ayatollah Khamenai, demanded of him a constant report on what is happening in the embassy," said Bani Sadr.

Bani Sadr laughed when he was told that Ahmadinejad denies it.

"What do you want? That he should not deny it?," he said. "I was president and I know the details and I am telling you for sure that he was there, though his role was not organizational. He was the chief reporter to Khamenai."...

Or perhaps you forgot about them. That was by design. We have rightfully mourned the loss of nearly 3,000 people on 9/11. We have begun mourning the loss of about 40 people in London. We have mourned the loss of 1,751 US soldiers, who, bless them, were following orders of their commander in chief. But to this day, there has been no major acknowledgement, let alone apology, by Bush or Blair for the massive amounts of carnage we created in a war waged over what turned out to be a lie, the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction...

...The propaganda of an invasion with invisible innocents surely allowed Bush to seamlessly switch his stated reason from the unique horrors of WMD to liberating an oppressed people. It is a lot easier to tell the world you are their great liberator if you do not have to own up to the thousands of dead people who will never get the chance to vote in that free election. It sounds a little bit like people who say African-Americans should be thankful for slavery because they are no longer in Africa.

[And this year's award for most uses of the word "innocent" in a single paragraph goes to...]

Worse, this denial of death, in a war that did not have to happen, is sure to fuel the very terrorism we say we will defeat. The innocents in the so-called war on terror are always ''our" citizens or the citizens of our allies. The only innocent Iraqis are those killed by ''insurgents." Our soldiers clearly did not intend to kill innocents. But this posturing of America as the great innocent, when everyone knows we kill innocents ourselves, is likely only to make us look more like the devil in the eyes of a suicide bomber.

No one can condone acts of violence aimed at working people going about their daily lives. They have not been a party to, nor are they responsible for, the decisions of their government. They are entirely innocent and we condemn those who have killed or injured them...

Prof. Riad al-Agha, president of the Gaza-based National Institute of Strategic Studies, was invited on Sunday by Palestine TV to participate in a live program on the growing state of lawlessness and anarchy in PA-controlled areas...

...Prof. Agha criticized the PA's Preventative Security Force for refusing to obey orders issued by the PA Interior Ministry, which is in charge of all Palestinian security forces.

He claimed that the Preventative Security Force, which is headed by Gen. Rashid Abu Shabak, was operating on instructions from the "higher echelon" of the PA – a reference to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his top aides.

Immediately after the program ended, members of the Preventative Security Force arrested Agha on charges of "incitement." ...

...Prof. Agha was released from prison only after he agreed to publish a statement in which he apologized for making "offensive remarks" against the security forces and their commanders.

In the apology, he said the Preventative Security Force was led by "nationalistic figures whom I highly appreciate and respect and who have a known history of struggling [against Israel]." ...

Today is a sad day in the history of the United Church of Christ. Today, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ has voted in support of divestment over the wishes of the committee assigned to discern the issue. The committee, which spent hours reviewing three different resolutions, drafted their own resolution titled "Resolution concerning use of economic leverage in promoting peace in the Middle-east" and clearly and intentionally removed any reference to the term 'divestment'. Members of the United Church of Christ National Office drafted an alternative resolution overnight without the input of the committee studying the issue and without consulting the Pension Boards whose funds this issue concerns. Specifically, Curtis Rueter, chair of the Wider Church Ministries board of directors, with assistance from Peter Makari, Area Executive for the Middle East and Europe of the Common Global Ministries Board, presented the General Synod with the last minute resolution that was voted on with less than an hour of discussion on the floor of the General Synod.

With this action, the United Church of Christ has effectively placed a wedge between itself and the Jewish community. The process of developing the divestment proposal essentially hijacked the discernment process and was done with the noted objection from committee members. The simple fact that National Office staff manufactured the resolution reflects a lack of leadership of John Thomas who refused to speak directly to the issue of divestment before General Synod and ignoring the concerns raised by our Jewish brothers and sisters.

On a personal level, I want to apologize to our Jewish brothers and sisters who will be most affected by this resolution. It is my hope that the UCC will understand the pain that it has caused and change direction.

James Hutchins

...In any event, both of these armed doctrines tried hard to delude their followers with the lure of high ideals, some rooted in one or another version of the Christian ethic. But what vision of a good society do the ideologists of Palestine proffer to their boosters all over the world? Really nothing, except another miserable state like the others in the Arab Middle East. The new fellow-travelers lack even the feeble extenuations of the old ones.

Indeed, anyone who envisions a future Palestinian polity must wrestle with the grim and ongoing realities of a stagnant class structure, unproductive economic habits, an uncurious and increasingly reactionary culture, deeply cruel relationships between the sexes and toward gays, no notion of an independent judiciary, and a primitive religious mentality that gains prestige in society even as it emphasizes the promise of sexual rewards in paradise for martyrs--a crude myth that has served successfully as an incentive for suicide bombings not only in Israel but also in Iraq and throughout the Arab world. And no real challenge to any of these backward actualities has arisen in all of the turmoil the movement has sown.

Which takes us back to the church deleriants for Palestine. What kindles the fire in their hearts for Palestine? There is little or nothing in Palestinian society that would fill a progressive with enthusiasm. And these churches do not generally exult in the promise of yet one more nation-state. In fact, these churches are against the nation-state, especially the U.S. nation-state. (In Nottingham last week, the Anglicans demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.) And, even if you take to the harshest reading of Israeli behavior in their ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, dozens and dozens of other peoples in the world, some of whom have a much sounder claim to be a real nation than those for whom the official Anglicans and Presbyterians shed so many tears, suffer infinitely more deprivation and indignity than they do. But tears are not shed for those people at Canterbury Cathedral in England or, for that matter, at Christ Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose rectors have for years been virtual street agitators against Israel. So I come to an unavoidable conclusion. The obsession here is not positive, for one side, but rather negative, against the other side. The clerics and the lay leaders on this indefensible crusade are so fixated on Palestine because their obsession, which can be buttressed by various Christian sources and traditions, is really with the Jews. A close look at this morbid passion makes one realize that its roots include an ancient hostility for the House of Israel, an ugly survival of a hoary intolerance into some of the allegedly enlightened precincts of modern Christendom.

Moving quickly to enforce a resignation Imam Eid claimed isn't valid, the center's board of directors barred him from the pulpit Friday and sent a board member to act as imam in his place.

‘‘He is a beloved imam, but he has resigned, and that's it,'' board vice president Tanweer Zaidi of Sharon said before the service.

The center's religious director since 1982, Imam Eid joined scores of other men in the prayer service but didn't speak, according to others who attended.

Zaidi didn't allow a Patriot Ledger reporter to enter the mosque.

Board member Rajab Aboubakr of Franklin acted as imam - only this one time, Zaidi later said. Board president Mohiuddin Khan of Sharon was also on hand to enforce the resignation...

...Imam Eid's supporters, most of whom are affiliated with the Quincy mosque, say critics have hounded him for years for being too moderate and too involved with interfaith programs. Zaidi and other board officers deny that's the case.

In recent weeks, Imam Eid said his resignation wasn't official, since the full board and general membership hadn't endorsed it, as called for by the center's bylaws. But the board's executive committee said his action was final.

The dispute has plunged New England's oldest, most diverse Muslim community into the worst crisis of its 41-year history, with charges that conservatives are maneuvering to take control and counter-charges that Imam Eid's supporters are being bad Muslims for airing the dispute in public.

Those divisions were in evidence Friday. As Zaidi and others criticized published comments by Imam Eid's supporters, board member Jamina Hassan of Canton and numerous others spoke of the turn of events in anger and disappointment.

As board member Aboubakr preached in the upstairs prayer room about Abraham's faithfulness and why Muslims should ‘‘leave matters to Allah,'' several mosque members stayed outside.

‘‘I'm not going to pray behind this guy,'' one longtime member said, referring to Aboubakr.

Meanwhile, one of Imam Eid's daughters sat on the sidewalk steps outside the mosque, silently weeping. Hassan saw her and sat with her, a consoling arm around the young woman's shoulders...

Ahmadinejad, however, represents the “usuli” current. He has no inferiority complex toward the West and is sincerely convinced that Islam alone offers a blueprint for the perfect society.

He says that men and women can never be equal although this does not mean that women should not have rights or be respected. He does not hide behind labels such as “Islamic democracy”. Instead, he states that Islam, which represents perfection, is incompatible with democracy that is, by definition, imperfect.

Rafsanjani and Khatami claim that Ahmadinejad wants to create a Taleban-style system in Iran. Nothing is further from the truth. Ahmadinejad is no mulla Muhammad Omar and Iran is not Afghanistan. What Ahmadinejad shares with Mulla Omar is the belief that a non-Western, largely Islamic, method of organizing society is possible. Omar built his version and Ahmadinejad, if given a chance, would try to build his.

Ahmadinejad ‘s election is good news for all concerned, if only it clarifies the situation. Having tried to dodge the inevitable duel between Islamism and democracy, the Khomeinist regime, by propelling Ahmadinejad into the presidency, declares its intention to take the modern, Western-dominated, and “utterly corrupt” world head on.

We shall see which side wins.