April 2007 Archives

ATLAS: Why? What happened to the pressure in Washington?

SANDMONKEY: You know what happened to the pressure in Washington. The Democrats won the Congress. There is no more pressure coming from Bush because he is not able to push people anymore to do those things. He is not able to push the Egyptian government anymore because the American public is suddenly not interested in reforming the Middle East because of what's going on in the Iraq. So suddenly the Egyptian government is not afraid of the American pressure. They are doing whatever they want to do. They are beating up demonstrators, they are cracking down on activists, they are changing the constitution, and eroding civil liberties once and for all and they are using proxies to take down bloggers.

...

Atlas: Where you shocked when Hoyer met with the Muslim Brotherhood?

SANDMONKEY: Let me tell you something. I was in Turkey a couple of weeks ago and I met a couple of Syrian activists. They one thing they told me that was really funny about the Pelosi visit. After Pelosi came to Syria two things happened. People on Syrian TV were saying, "We forced the Americans to knock on the Damascus gate!" Sort of like an admission that we messed things up in Iraq so much that America had to come and beg for their help.

But the day after Pelosi's visits there were immediate arrests of Syrian activists. That was the fruit she yielded. "Oh the Americans came over and they said they have a different foreign policy and they're more interested in placating Bashar's ego." And he went out and got [arrested] everyone he wanted because he knew he had an ally in Washington that wouldn't pressure him as much.

She had her hymen re-sewn, technically making her a virgin again.

"I'm glad I had it done," said the woman, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. "I wanted to reconstruct part of my life, to reconstruct myself so that I could feel better about myself."

This 30-minute outpatient procedure, called "hymenoplasty" and costing between 1,500 and 3,000 euros ($2,000-$4,000), is increasingly popular among young women of North African descent in France.

No exact figures exist to say how many such operations are done, but the woman's surgeon says he gets three to five queries and performs one to three hymenoplasties each week. Demand has been rising for the past three or four years...

They were staggering. I was amazed that in the twenty-first century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son, hosted speakers who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a "fable." (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.

Jimmy Carter was, of course, aware of Harvard's decision, since it was highly publicized. Yet he kept the money. Indeed, this is what he said in accepting the funds: "This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan." Carter's personal friend, it turns out, was an unredeemable anti-Semite and all-around bigot...

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who held talks in Cairo with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal over the weekend, failed to persuade him to declare a unilateral truce, PA officials in Ramallah said.

Mashaal insisted during the talks that any cease-fire be mutual and include the West Bank, according to the officials.

"Mashaal thinks that he's the leader of the Palestinians, and not President Abbas," said one official. "Mashaal is trying to undermine the new government and the president. He wants many things in return for agreeing to a cease-fire." [Just another thug in the thugocracy, another capo in the clan war.]

Also Saturday, the IDF shot and killed three Palestinians who were spotted planting an explosive device next to the Gaza Strip security fence near the Kissufim Crossing.

Another Palestinian was seriously wounded; the four were identified as members of Hamas's military wing.

Sources in the Southern Command said that the bomb was the 60th time Palestinians tried planting bombs along the fence since a cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians went into effect in November...

A. I find it absolutely ridiculous. What kind of contribution can this Iranian regime bring to the dialogue for peace when they made it very clear that for them peace means no more Israel?

It took time for the West to understand that the only way to really force the Soviet Union to cooperate was to make economical and political links to human rights. And that until now hasn't happened with Iran.

Click here to see the video of the call to kill all Americans and Jews

The following is the transcript:

Dr. Ahmad Bahar (acting Speaker, Palestinian Legislative Council):

“This is Islam, that was ahead of its time with regards to human rights in the treatment of prisoners, but our people was afflicted by the cancerous lump, that is the Jews, in the heart of the Arab nation… Be certain that America is on its way to disappear, America is wallowing [in blood] today in Iraq and Afghanistan, America is defeated and Israel is defeated, and was defeated in Lebanon and Palestine… Make us victorious over the infidel people… Allah, take hold of the Jews and their allies, Allah, take hold of the Americans and their allies… Allah, count them and kill them to the last one and don’t leave even one.” [PA TV, April 20, 2007]

Mumtaz Durmush was also apparently involved in the abductions of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston. "Everyone in Gaza knows who is holding Johnston," a Palestinian officer who is a member of Fatah says bitterly. "But no one dares to take action against them. The Sabra neighborhood where the Durmush clan members live looks like a giant army camp. Hamas and Fatah are busy fighting each other rather than preparing a plan to take over Sabra."

On Wednesday, two 12-year-olds were killed in the northern Strip and in Gaza City. One was killed by a bullet accidentally fired from a weapon found in his home; the other was killed in a random shooting near his house. Also a 27-year-old woman was killed in the Bureij refugee camp during a shoot-out between clans. In other incidents, a member of military intelligence and a 12-year-old boy were wounded by gunfire during a confrontation between rival families; two youths were injured in the northern part of Gaza when an explosive device went off; and the car of Ahmed al-Marani, the attorney general in the Gaza Strip, was stolen in an armed robbery.

According to data released by the Ramallah Center for Human Rights, since the start of 2007, 63 Palestinians have been killed and some 400 injured in clashes because of the chaos in the security situation. Most of the casualties were in the Gaza Strip, which is beginning to resemble the Somalian capital of Mogadishu. Tens of thousands of men armed with light weapons and RPGs do whatever they think fit; the Palestinian police are not effective and the courts are not functioning. In armed feuds between clans, the Palestinian security forces do not get involved at all.

Finally, notice the data he provides on suicide attacks: eighty to ninety percent are carried out by foreigners via Syria. Put that together with the knowledge that the most dangerous explosives are coming from Iran. Then ask yourself why so many people keep talking about “insurgency,” which implies a domestic reaction to the presence of coalition forces on Iraqi soil.

And the answer is: because it’s all about Vietnam.

He too faults America’s catch and release program. After months of holding someone without evidence, the Americans inevitably release him. But they do not get the evidence because their interrogation methods make success virtually impossible, he says. He is very clear that the Kurds do not torture.

“Our facilities are up to international standards. The Red Cross visits our prisons. The prisoners get more than their required daily allowance in calories. We follow the Geneva Convention. We videotape all of our interrogations. Our judges are independent. They do not care about religious sects or the party line,” he says. Judges regularly set prisoners free. But the American rules are too restrictive for us, he insists.

“What is wrong with the American rules?”

He answers by telling a story. Once he went to an interrogation in Baghdad run by Americans. He was told that he could not yell at the prisoners or trick them by saying he had evidence he did not have. (The classic lie: Your accomplice confessed and told us what you did.) In other words, he could not act the way most big-city police departments do in the U.S. “If the prisoner says he has a headache [in Baghdad], the interrogation must stop and an ambulance is called. Here we just give him an aspirin” and keep questioning him. No wonder the U.S. releases people for “lack of evidence,” he said.

After that experience in Baghdad, he said: “I am never going back.” It was pointless...

On the basis of archaeological and Biblical evidence, Koenigsberg challenges widely accepted religious and scientific doctrines. Jerusalem, he insists, is not the site of the First Temple of Israel. The first temple of Israel was at Mt. Ebal, built some 200 years before the Jerusalem temple of Solomon.

We have a very special opportunity for educators and young students who have studied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to ask questions of young Palestinians who have come to the US to share their pictures and stories.

Next Wednesday, April 11th, several young Palestinians from Balata Refugee Camp outside of Nablus, West Bank will be at Harvard University for a presentation of their pictures and to answer questions. High school and junior high students are especially encouraged to attend!

[snip]

PICTURE BALATA YOUTH SPECIAL BOSTON EVENT: Wednesday April 11, 2007 7pm-9pm

7pm Slideshow presentation by Picture Balata youth
[snip room info, etc...]

LOCATION:

Harvard University Center for Government and International Studies
Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street

*Photography exhibit will run 9 April - 21 April at Fisher Commons, Center for Government and International Studies Building North

****PRESS RELEASE****

www.picturebalata.net

Picture Balata coming to six US cities in April

Four teenage participants from the Picture Balata workshop are coming to the US the first two weeks of April 2007. Showing their work and speaking about their lives, the photographers will travel to New York City; Washington, DC; Pittsburgh; Boston; Chicago and San Francisco.

These young people, leaving the West Bank for the first time, will be able to educate Americans regarding the reality of the situation in Balata Refugee Camp and occupied Palestine. The tour will also give them the chance to see that people outside Palestine support their work and the Palestinian struggle for justice.

The tour also aims to raise funds to purchase cameras, computers and Internet access so that after further training the workshop participants, nine in total, will be able to do everything from taking the picture, editing it on their own computer and then publishing it on a website for the entire world to see. This self- sustainable project will give these young people the opportunity to further pursue photography and other media as a form of self-expression and resistance.

Background:

Outside the West Bank City of Nablus lies the Balata Refugee Camp. Established in 1951, Balata and the dozens other camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan were supposed to be a temporary solution for the hundreds of thousands of refugees who were driven
from their homes during the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Picture Balata puts the camera into the hands of the children born and raised inside the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Participants ranging from ages 11 to 18 photograph their situation as they live it in Balata Refugee Camp.

...Hadil [one of the participants] said that one day she will return to the land that her grandmother was forced to leave in 1948, and that “the Zionists will be chased out of our land.”...

As a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center, the Center is charged with serving and educating the wider New England community about the Middle East...

The center said MacDonald's trilogy of books on the Jewish people argues that although they are "normally a tiny minority in their host countries, Jews, like viruses, destabilize their host societies to their benefit" by pushing "for liberal policies, like immigration and diversity, with the intent of weakening the power of the majority that rules them."

The center called for the university to check what MacDonald is teaching in the classroom.

"What we would like to know is why the university seems intent on protecting Kevin MacDonald rather than looking at his possible violations of policy in the classroom," center deputy director Heidi Beirich, who wrote the report, told the newspaper. "Our primary intent is not to get rid of Kevin MacDonald but to show the world who he is, what he is doing."

MacDonald told the Times that not all instances of anti-Semitism are "irrational," but added, "I have never talked about Jews in my courses."

Khatami reiterated that Iran had a right to a peaceful civilian nuclear energy program and that it did not intend to develop nuclear weapons. "We want to use atomic energy for peaceful purposes only," he claimed...

...Iran's former president also said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was overseeing Iran's nuclear activity, and pointed out that Iran was a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while "other states in the Middle East" were treated differently...

...Nevertheless, despite his calls for "dialogue," Khatami refused to speak to the Israeli reporters present at the talks.

Channel 10 later reported that Khatami, heading for his suite, had cursed them, saying, "Go to hell!"

On Friday, Khatami decided to skip the scheduled panel on Iran's nuclear program because an Israeli representative was slated to speak.

Another ISB attorney, Howard Cooper, told The Boston Globe in December 2005 that it was outrageous to link Alamoudi with his client. "This man has had absolutely no connection with the Islamic Society for 15 or 20 years, yet they try to tie the two together," he said. Cooper also says that only people with "an intolerant attitude toward Muslims" would be asking questions about Alamoudi's ties to the ISB.

Now comes apparent evidence of a November 2000 payment from the Islamic Society of Boston for a speaking engagement by Alamoudi. The cancelled check, made payable to Light Star Travel and signed by former ISB trustee Walid Fitaihi, includes a memo line reading "Travel for speaker Abdurahman Alamoudi -- 11/10/00 - 11/12/00." Light Star Travel is located in Falls Church, Va., where Alamoudi was a resident before going to prison. It is part of the "Safa Group" of Virginia-based businesses that federal agents suspect are involved in "providing material support to terrorists, money laundering, and tax evasion," according to an affidavit by Special Agent David Kane of the Homeland Security Department.

There may, of course, be an innocuous explanation for this payment. Or the Islamic Society of Boston may no longer stand by its claim to have had "absolutely no connection" with Alamoudi for many years. But when I asked ISB spokeswoman Jessica Masse about this and other questions that have surfaced in recent weeks, she replied to my surprise that such questions "do not reflect a position of unbiased fact finding," and would be answered only "by our lawyers in court."...

They are Col. Norman D. Eaton, of Weatherford, Okla., and Lt. Col. Paul E. Getchell, of Portland, Maine, both U.S. Air Force. Eaton will be buried April 25 at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C., and Getchell will be buried later this spring at Arlington.

On Jan. 13, 1969, Eaton and Getchell crewed a B-57B Canberra bomber participating in a nighttime attack on targets in Salavan Province, Laos. The target area was illuminated by flares from a C-130 aircraft; however, the flares dimmed as the B-57 began its third bombing run on the target. The crew was low on fuel, but decided to continue the attack run without illumination. The C-130 crew received a radio transmission indicating that the B-57 was off target and seconds later, the plane crashed. Eaton and Getchell could not be recovered at the time of the incident.

In 1995, a joint U.S.-Lao People’s Democratic Republic (L.P.D.R.) team, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), investigated the incident and interviewed a Laotian citizen who recalled the crash. Another joint U.S.-L.P.D.R. team surveyed the site and found wreckage and crew-related materials consistent with the citizen’s report.

In 2003, a joint U.S.-L.P.D.R. team excavated the crash site and recovered Eaton’s identification tag. The team was unable to complete the recovery and subsequent teams re-visited the site five more times between 2004 and 2005 before the recovery was complete. As a result, the teams found Getchell’s identification tag, human remains and additional crew-related items.

Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial DNA in the identification of the remains.

The cartoons presented the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks in Morocco and Algeria as bloodthirsty murderers destined for hell; the spread of terrorism in the Arab world was characterized as a worrying and threatening phenomenon; terrorism was presented as a distortion of the commandments of the Koran; and there was criticism of the clergy's acquiescence in the face of terrorist acts.

The following is a sample of the cartoons...

I visited Israel for the first time last year to research some articles about tourism there. Within hours of my return I received a call from a journalist acquaintance who asked me with genuine shock: “What’s all this about you going to Israel?” He said that a mutual journalist acquaintance of ours was “absolutely disgusted” with me for going there and that he hoped I was “going to put the boot in” when I wrote my articles.

These were not close acquaintances, I hadn’t even spoken to one of them for nearly nine years and it must have taken them some digging around to find my telephone number. They obviously thought it was worth the trouble to have a dig at a writer who was friendly to Israel. Apparently the “absolutely disgusted” man – a weekly columnist on a high-profile magazine - has since tried to get an article published that claims that Tony Blair murdered Yasser Arafat.

'Those suicide bombers have got guts'

The evening after my return from Israel, I met up with some journalists for some drinks in the West End of London. I was again abused for my trip. Their hatred of Israel was matched only by their adoration of the Palestinians. One of them gushed: “Boy, those suicide bombers have got guts. I wish more people in the world had their courage.” Another of them erupted when I told him that most people in Israel wanted a peaceful settlement to the conflict. “So why,” he asked, “did they murder their most peaceful Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?”

Well, I guess if you’re going to get your facts wrong you might as well get them spectacularly wrong – I wonder if anyone else has ever got Netanyahu confused with Yitzhak Rabin?

I was also warned not to get any ideas about trying to get a positive account of my trip published. In the end I did manage just that but only after an unprecedented, almost sentence-by-sentence dissection of my article by the commissioning editor during the course of which I had to repeatedly remind him that there is such a thing as an Israeli Arab and that not everyone in Israel is an Orthodox Jew. Both facts seemed to come as huge shocks to him. I’ve no doubt that if I had written on "The Hidden Wonders of Tehran" or "The Joy Of Jeddah," I’d have had a much easier ride...

The Hamas statements indicate that they see the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who is still being held hostage, as effective policy, since Israel has already offered to release Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails. However, due to Israel's insistence on releasing only a limited number of terrorists in exchange for the single soldier, Hamas believes that kidnapping more Israeli soldiers is necessary to release the thousands of imprisoned Palestinian terrorists. As Sa’id Siam, former interior minister, explained: “There were suggestions to repeat the kidnapping operations of other Israeli soldiers… the capture of the [single] soldier will not be [enough] cause for the release of over 10,000 prisoners.”

Click here to see Hamas calls to kidnap more Israeli soldiers

The following are the transcripts of the calls to kidnap more Israeli soldiers:

Member of the Legislative Council Um-Nasser Farachat:

“With no connection to my being a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and my involvement in the leadership, as a Palestinian citizen, by God, I don’t believe in any solution other than one: kidnapping Zionist soldiers."

The newscaster:

"The kidnapping of more Zionist soldiers [is required]… 10 Zionist soldiers – maybe less – will guarantee the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners."

Sa’id Siam, Former interior minister:

“There were suggestions to repeat the operations of kidnapping other Israeli soldiers, because we know that the occupation understands no other language. Second, the capture of the [single] soldier will not be enough cause for the release of [the] over 10,000 prisoners… There are many suggestions, but what’s important is what will actually be done.”

Member of the Legislative Council Um-Nasser Farachat:

“We hope that with the help of Allah, praise and extol him, the kidnappers will stick with their demands and will not lower their demands in any way… until they [the Israelis] will surrender to our conditions.”

The newscaster's summation:

“A number of suggestions were brought up during the meeting of the Legislative Council, and the most prominent was the call for further kidnappings of Zionist soldiers as a solution to end the prisoners’ suffering.”

[Al Aqsa TV, Hamas, April 18, 2007]

According to numbers from the French Interior Ministry, Sarkozy earned 30.46 percent of the votes, while Royal won 24.41 percent.

Because of the close margin, they will face a run-off on May 6.

Centrist Francois Bayrou, one of four main contenders, won 18.28 percent of the votes while far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen took 11.46 percent, according to the ministry...

In his lecture, Professor Finkelstein will discuss former President Carter's [Who's now parading around advising voters that their new litmus test for candidates should be that they shouldn't be too pro-Israel -S] newest book, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid." Arguing that what Carter has written corresponds to the historical and diplomatic records, he then asks the crucial question: what accounts for the extensive controversy that swirls around the publication of Carter's book, and by extension, the Israel-Palestine conflict in general? Following the lecture, Professor Finkelstein will answer questions.

Professor Finkelstein will be introduced by Dr. Sara Roy, Senior Research Scholar of Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

[Sponsors include]: Arab Culture Club and World Can't Wait

...“It’s the biggest honor I could ever have,” he says of being seen as a role model. “For one kid to look at me and smile because of what I’ve done is a huge honor and a very big responsibility.” It’s one that he took on from the start, never considering adopting a pseudonym in a sport where it’s the norm. “I said, ‘My name’s Goldberg. Call me Goldberg.’ It was that simple. If I changed my name I’d be hiding something, and I have nothing to hide.”

He became one of wrestling’s most popular stars, embraced by cheering fans raising “Happy Hanukkah” banners from the stands. “An arena full of 20,000 to 40,000 people in the Deep South yelling ‘Goldberg!’ is an accomplishment,” he notes with a laugh, adding that he never once encountered anti-Semitism. Could those prejudiced individuals have been afraid to voice it to his face? “No,” he insists. “They never hesitated to get on my case about other things.”...

"...the Muslim community in the U.S. in general, and in Boston in particular, has begun to trouble the Zionist lobby."

He continued triumphantly, quoting the Koran (3:112/ 2:61 (see also this).

The words of the Koran on this matter are true: "They [the Jews] will be humiliated wherever they are found, unless they are protected under a covenant with Allah, or a covenant with another people. They [the Jews] have incurred Allah's wrath and they have been afflicted with misery. That is because they continuously rejected the Signs of Allah and were after slaying the Prophets without just cause, and this resulted from their disobedience and their habit of transgression." The great Allah spoke words of truth. Their covenant with America is the strongest possible in the U.S., but it is weaker than they think, and one day their covenant with the [American] people will be cut off.

During a private meeting with some 25 lay and religious leaders convened at the Workmen's Circle in Brookline, Massachusetts on April 6, 2007-nearly 5 ½ years later-Fitaihi was reported to have offered a belated apology for his November 11, 2001 remarks. The dubious sincerity of this putative act of contrition aside-it occurred as the ISB is embroiled in a bitter and debilitating legal dispute with members of the local Jewish community-did Fitaihi actually apologize for invoking Koran 3:112/2:61, and their virulently antisemitic contents?

As a central anti-Jewish motif, the Koran decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61/ 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah. This motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60 and 5:78 which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), having been "...cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary's son" (5:78)...

The rabbi of Nord-Pas-de-Calais in northern France was violently attacked Thursday morning by a 20-year-old man while walking in the lanes of the Paris North train station.

Rabbi Elie Dahan said, “I arrived from Lille and was walking in the Paris station when the man, who was accompanied by a woman, looked at me and cried: dirty Jew, you are looking at me, I will punch you, dirty Jew," Dahan recounted. "He then punched me before running away.”

“My glasses were broken and my eye started bleeding. Several people try to catch my attacker but he escaped," said Dahan, who added that he was surprised by this attack. "I think the guy wanted to show off to his girlfriend. He saw my beard and hat, and told himself: here is a Jew to beat.”...

"America Will Be Annihilated, While Islam Will Remain"

Ahmad Bahr: "'You will be victorious' on the face of this planet. You are the masters of the world on the face of this planet. Yes, [the Koran says that] 'you will be victorious,' but only 'if you are believers.' Allah willing, 'you will be victorious,' while America and Israel will be annihilated, Allah willing. I guarantee you that the power of belief and faith is greater than the power of America and Israel. They are cowards, as is said in the Book of Allah: 'You shall find them the people most eager to protect their lives.' They are cowards, who are eager for life, while we are eager for death for the sake of Allah. That is why America's nose was rubbed in the mud in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, and everywhere."

[...]

"America will be annihilated, while Islam will remain. The Muslims 'will be victorious, if you are believers.' Oh Muslims, I guarantee you that the power of Allah is greater than America, by whom many are blinded today. Some people are blinded by the power of America. We say to them that with the might of Allah, with the might of His Messenger, and with the power of Allah, we are stronger than America and Israel."

[...]

"I tell you that we will protect the enterprise of the resistance, because the Zionist enemy understands only the language of force. It does not recognize peace or the agreements. It does not recognize anything, and it understands only the language of force. Our jihad-fighting Palestinian people salutes its brother, Sudan." [...]

"Oh Allah... Kill Them All, Down to the Very Last One"

"The Palestinian woman bids her son farewell, and says to him: 'Son, go and don't be a coward. Go, and fight the Jews.' He bids her farewell and carries out a martyrdom operation. What did this Palestinian woman say when she was asked for her opinion, after the martyrdom of her son? She said: 'My son is my own flesh and blood. I love my son, but my love for Allah and His Messenger is greater than my love for my son.' Yes, this is the message of the Palestinian woman, who was over 70 years old - Fatima Al-Najjar. She was over 70 years old, but she blew herself up for the sake of Allah, bringing down many criminal Zionists."

[...]

"Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, vanquish the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one. Oh Allah, show them a day of darkness. Oh Allah, who sent down His Book, the mover of the clouds, who defeated the enemies of the Prophet - defeat the Jews and the Americans, and bring us victory over them."

According to the report’s introduction: “While the U.S. government finally has taken action against some of the groups identified by Judicial Watch, others are still functioning. The federal government is aware of their presence and the danger they pose to our national security. The question is: Why are they still in operation?” (Following the attacks of 9/11, Judicial Watch filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service against non-profit organizations, “reportedly being used as money laundering front organizations for radical Islamic terrorists.”)...

The project is looking for volunteers to come and help them sort through the thousands of years hidden in the dirt. They ask that individuals devote at least three days, and groups at least one day, to help them out. So if you're visiting Jerusalem this summer, stop by an offer a hand to this important project...

I am a member of the NUJ, though at times like this I wonder why. A union battling for better pay and conditions is one thing. But why should my dues be spent on anti-Israel posturing of which I and many other members want no part?...

...The "slaughter of civilians" by Israel is condemned (no mention of suicide bombings or human rights abuses by Palestinian militias, needless to say), as is the "savage, pre-planned attack on Lebanon by Israel" and "continued attacks inside Lebanon following the defeat of its army by Hezbollah".

What kind of language is this? It is tendentious and politically-loaded propaganda that would be rightly edited out of any news story written in a newspaper that had any pretensions of fairness. Israel "defeated" by Hezbollah? That is at best debatable - it's the kind of wording smacks of a juvenile combination of unedifying gloating and wishful thinking.

Israel's "savage, pre-planned attack" on Lebanon? Er, am I missing something or wasn't last summer's conflict sparked by Hezbollah firing rockets and mortars at Israeli border villages and kidnapping two Israeli soldiers (who still have not been released) and killing three other troops?

Much has been written about the media's shortcomings in covering events in Lebanon and Israel in 2006 - check out and Marvin Kalb for starters - but journalistic standards of fairness, professionalism and objectivity seem to be of no concern to the NUJ...

...So what does the NUJ motion do for its members there? It helps smear them all as being biased and anti-Israel. Bravo NUJ for encouraging people to view your members as partisans in a region when charges like that can be damaging to one's health. [Of course the NUJ knows that it's not Israel's supporters they have anything to worry about.]

Propagating biased assertions, endangering the safety of its members, singling Israel out for criticism above all other nations, dictating what we should write. It's high time for the NUJ to take a long, hard look at itself if it wants to avoid being consigned to ridicule and irrelevance.

On Count Two, and if he has been murdered, Alan's death, if it could be blamed on a Palestinian or a pro-Palestinian Arab and/or other Islamist group, would be a huge political setback for the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle and the present leadership of it [Since when has murder ever been a setback for the Palestinian cause?-S]. (The Al Qaeda franchise would not give a damn about harming the Palestinian cause).

There is a case for saying (repeat a case) that the party with most to gain from Alan Johnston's permanent disappearance was Israel. It would not be the first time that Israeli agents had dressed as Arabs to make a hit.

If Alan Johnston is dead, it's my hope that the BBC at executive management level will rise above its fear of offending Zionism too much and allow its reporters (Frank Gardner and Jeremy Bowen are second to none) to make a full, thorough and honest investigation.

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter, who had attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, "but all the students lived - because of him," Virginia Tech student Asael Arad - also an Israeli - told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu's other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he blocked the gunman's way and saved their lives, said the son, Joe.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."...

The number of anti-Semitic acts around the world, especially in Europe, registered a large increase during 2006.

According to a report, 590 acts of vandalism and violence were committed during 2006 against Jewish people, property and institutes such as synagogues and cemeteries.

The number of physical attacks against Jews, including children and adolescents, doubled compared to 2005.

This information was published Sunday morning in a report compiled by the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism in Tel Aviv University together with the World Jewish Congress.

The report was released for the Holocaust Memorial Day, on Monday.

The report stated that the attacks were mostly random, making it very difficult to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice. In reality, many of the attacks were committed by Muslim immigrants and far-right groups.

A total of 324 violent incidents was registered in Europe, higher than in other regions of the world.

The highest number of anti-Semitic acts commited in the UK in the last 20 years was registered. The statistics in France and Belgium also show an increase in anti-Semitism. Germany remained steady but high, holding the record for desecrating cemeteries and Holocaust-memorial monuments...

...Anti-Semitism rears its ugly head not only in Europe. Australia, Canada (especially in the French speaking regions) and South Africa have registered alarming increases in anti-Semitic incitends.

In the US, however, anti-Semitic acts dropped by 12 percent, although some of the cases reported were severe, like premeditated murder...

The newspaper said it had obtained 328 pages of classified documents on Osama bin Laden's terror network that were drawn up by the French foreign intelligence service, the DGSE, between July 2000 and October 2001...

...Le Monde reported that the documents included a note dated January 5, 2001, which said al-Qaida had been working on a hijacking plot for months. The intelligence note reported that bin Laden had attended a meeting in Afghanistan in October 2000, where a final decision to carry out the plot was made, the newspaper said...

Le Monde quoted Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi, a former chief of staff for the intelligence agency's director, as saying, "You have to remember that up until 2001, hijacking an airplane did not have the same meaning as after September 11. At the time, that meant forcing an airplane to land in an airport to carry out negotiations. We were used to handling that."

"The president plays a part in the way in which one presents the national memory. Thus Jacques Chirac had recognized the responsibility for the French state in the deportation of Jews," said Le Pen in an interview with Le Parisien.

Chirac was the first French president to acknowledge the state's responsibility when he made his comments. According to Le Pen, Chirac's remarks are scandalous because they taint the country's image. He added that the subject was a very sensitive one from which presidents and prime ministers alike shied away...

..."To criticize Chirac's courage is not surprising and shows clearly that Le Pen is an anti-Semite," Simon Wiesenthal Director and Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff told The Jerusalem Post. "You have to remember, Le Pen is the one who said the gas chambers were nothing but a detail to minimize the importance of the Holocaust."

In September 1987, Le Pen stated that the gas chambers were "a point of detail of the history of the Second World War," a statement that cost him a €183,200 fine from the French Justice Department...

This year, there is a special emphasis on the few Holocaust survivors still living. Echoing this, is the traditional emphasis of the importance of the Jewish nation to fight against racism, and survive.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a keynote speaker at the ceremony, warned of those who "had not yet learned the lesson the Holocaust. Many gather at respectable academic institutions, with hatred of Israel blinding them."

"Most of the world population is aware of the Holocaust and aware of the evil agenda of Holocaust deniers," he said.

"They withhold from the Jewish people the right to a sovereign state. They are the first to find an excuse for any atrocity committed against Israeli civilians and the loudest in censuring defensive operations of the State of Israel."...

This backlash against the so-called "Israel Lobby" has predictably caused many to wonder whether the assertive voice of contemporary Jewish political activism is too loud, too brash and, most of all, too pushy in making its case.

Those who wonder what the world would be like if only those pushy Jews listened to their critics need not engage in science fiction. All you need is a history lesson about how American Jewish organizations and leaders -- the predecessors of the ones that are today considered the take-no-prisoners cornerstone of "the lobby" -- acted during the Holocaust. And to do that, a visit to an off-Broadway theater this month will do nicely.

In Bernard Weinraub's new play "The Accomplices" at the New Group's Acorn Theater on Manhattan's 42nd Street, the eminent Rabbi Stephen Wise is confronted by an obnoxious young foreigner. The young man who goes by the name of Peter Bergson is frustrated by the unwillingness of the most influential American Jew of his era to use his power to speak up to save European Jews slated for death by Hitler's Nazis...

No one was hurt and no group claimed responsibility for the blasts, which took place around 3 a.m. local time, Palestinian security officials said.

But heavy external damage was visible at the three stores. At the bookstore, which is funded by American Protestants and known as the Bible Society, a number of books were also burned in the explosion.

Several similar attacks on Internet cafes and music stores in recent months have been claimed by a little-known extremist Islamic organization calling itself the Swords of Truth...

...In recent months, about three dozen Internet cafes and shops selling pop music have been attacked in the Gaza Strip, with assailants detonating small bombs outside businesses at night, causing damage but no injuries. Palestinian security officials have said they suspect a secret vice squad of Muslim militants.

While attacks against Christian sites in the territory are rare, at least 40 Internet cafes and video cassette shops have been blown up in the past several months [define "good"]. Many of these bombings were claimed by a previously unknown group, "The Righteous Swords of Islam".

Local residents said an explosion, shortly before dawn, at the Protestant Holy Bible Society in Gaza City, blew out windows and ignited a fire that burned shelves of books. Police said a bomb caused the blast.

Elsewhere in Gaza City, a bomb destroyed an Internet cafe, police said.

At least 3,000 Christians live among the 1.5 million Palestinians in the conservatively Muslim Gaza Strip. Relations between Muslims and Christians in the territory have been good [except for those malcontents who have been trying to emigrate as fast as possible]...

Today's vote was carried 66 to 54 - a result that met with gasps and a small amount of applause from the union delegates present.

The vote came during a series of motions on international affairs and reads: "This ADM [annual delegate meeting] calls for a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa led by trade unions and the TUC [Trades Union Congress] to demand sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British government and the United Nations."

The motion was originally brought by the union's South Yorkshire branch and opposed by the Cumberland branch, which said it was too political and was not tied closely enough to journalistic matters.

After a show of hands twice failed to give a clear result, union scrutineers were called in and the doors to the conference room closed.

The vote on the motion was taken after it was split from a larger motion that condemned the "savage, pre-planned attack on Lebanon by Israel" last year.

This motion, known as Composite B in Order Paper 4, was carried by a large majority and also condemned the "slaughter of civilians by Israeli troops in Gaza and the IDF's [Israeli Defense Forces] continued attacks inside Lebanon following the defeat of its army by Hezbollah".

The motion called for the end of Israeli aggression in Gaza and other occupied territories.

The union's national executive committee has been instructed to support organisations including the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Jews for Justice in Palestine and the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding.

The decision to remain involved in the 2008 campaign on any level could prove contentious for Fox, given the tradition that ambassadors leave politics at the water’s edge, and could further inflame the debate over his selection. Senate Democrats, furious over the Missouri mogul’s 2004 donation to the GOP-allied group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, have vowed to fight Bush’s decision to appoint Fox as ambassador during Congress’s spring recess. The appointment came after Bush’s earlier withdrawal of Fox’s nomination in the face of certain defeat.

Given the stakes, Fox’s vow to continue his campaign-giving — the activity that landed him in hot water — might seem risky. But for those who know him best, it is hard not to bet that Fox, 77, ultimately will prevail. First, there is the matter of his seeming constitutional predisposition for success: Raised by poor immigrant Jews in rural Missouri during the Depression, Fox has, by his own estimation, “lived the American dream.” He can point to financial assets reportedly in excess of $500 million, accolades as a major philanthropist in his hometown of St. Louis and beyond, a place in the country’s innermost Republican circle and a joyful 53-year marriage that has brought five children and 14 grandchildren...

...At Fox’s February confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, his parade of supporters included both Missouri senators, Republican Christopher “Kit” Bond and Democrat Claire McCaskill, as well as Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. Now famously an independent, Lieberman quipped that his backing gave Fox “tri-partisan” support.

The hearing’s fireworks were supplied by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who excoriated Fox for his 2004 support of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The organization — one of the so-called 527 groups that operates independently of political parties and candidates — is now infamous for its damaging television advertisements alleging that Kerry, then a presidential candidate, had exaggerated claims about his military service during the Vietnam War.

At his Senate hearing, Fox called Kerry a “hero” and insisted that he was and always had been opposed to 527 groups, which he characterized as “mean and destructive.” But he did not dwell on the apparent contradiction between such sentiments and his 2004 contribution. When Kerry asked him who had requested the Swift Boat donation, Fox said he could not remember. He has flatly refused to apologize.

“It was a matter of politics,” Fox told the Forward. “What I did was absolutely in accordance with the law, and in accordance with the way politics are in America. I did nothing wrong and nobody ever said I did, and therefore I have nothing to apologize for.”...

"Beware of Israeli melons infected with AIDS arriving in Saudi Arabia!" is the latest rumor being spread throughout Saudi Arabia like a wildfire.

An SMS message being sent around the country this week said, "The Saudi Interior Ministry warns its citizens of a truck loaded with AIDS infected melons that Israel brought into the country via a 'ground corridor.'"

The Interior Minister's spokesman General Mansour al Turki responded to news of the message and made it clear to a-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper that the Ministry "did not issue any such announcement. This is just a rumor."

This is not the first rumor to spread through the country recently. Just last month another rumor had it that sweets containing carcinogenic flour were being sold in many stores.

Al Turki urged the public to ignore such passing rumors, and said that the authorities were doing everything in their power to ensure the citizens' wellbeing...

...The rumor, despite being denied several times, has gained so much steam in the Arab world that it made it to the front page of one of the most important Arabi language newspapers.

Many received an SMS supposedly from the Saudi Interior Ministry saying, "Please forward quickly."

...How at this point -- with only about half of the additional surge troops yet deployed -- can Democrats be trying to force the United States to give up? The Democrats say they are carrying out their electoral mandate from the November election. But winning a single-vote Senate majority as a result of razor-thin victories in Montana and Virginia is hardly a landslide.

Second, if the electorate was sending an unconflicted message about withdrawal, how did the most uncompromising supporter of the war, Sen. Joe Lieberman, win handily in one of the most liberal states in the country?

And third, where was the mandate for withdrawal? Almost no Democratic candidates campaigned on that. They campaigned for changing the course the administration was on last November.

Which the president has done. He changed the civilian leadership at the Defense Department, replaced the head of Central Command and, most critically, replaced the Iraq commander with Petraeus -- unanimously approved by the Democratic Senate -- to implement a new counterinsurgency strategy...

Some may have known about von Verschuer’s wartime work, where what he termed “anthropological investigations” were carried out by one of his assistants, Dr. Josef Mengele. But despite the fact that he was found to be a Nazi collaborator and despite the evidence of his participation in the horrific experiments that took place at Auschwitz, von Verschuer continued his academic career virtually unblemished and untainted till his death in an automobile accident in 1969...

...When one thinks of the anti-Semites of the Nazi period, images of black-booted storm troopers come to mind. But among the worst of the Nazi anti-Semites were people called “Professor” and “Doctor” who sipped red wine while listening to classical music, mingled with their students and then went off to work to support the Reich’s cleansing of the Jewish problem.

So when Columbia’s professor Joseph Massad says that Israel “does not have a right to exist” and when Yale geneticist Dr. Mazim [Mazin] Qumsiyeh calls the claim that Jews share a common ancestry a “misuse of genetics,” is the objective to further scholarship and science, or rather to move politically toward a time when removing Israel from the community of nations of the Middle East would be possible? And as researchers Edward Kaplan and Charles Small have demonstrated in Europe, anti-Israel sentiment “consistently predicts” the probability that an individual is also anti-Semitic...

"It was all going very well but then there was a sense something bad was about to happen as we noticed children starting to speak into their mobile phones and point at us," the commander said. "At this stage it became clear that the militia was massing for some kind of attack."...

As Hamas seeks international recognition by softening its tone in English, in Arabic it continues the calls for genocide of Jews. In a recent sermon on PA TV, Hamas spokesman Dr. Ismail Radwan made it clear that the classical Hamas ideology had not changed, including its continued incorporation of extremist Islamic beliefs into Hamas ideology and policy. He reiterated:

1. The Hour – the Islamic Resurrection and End of Time– is literally dependent on the killing of Jews by Muslims.
2. The remaining Jews will unsuccessfully attempt to hide, as the rocks and trees will expose them, calling out "there is a Jew behind me, kill him!"
3. "Palestine… will be liberated through the rifle," a euphemism meaning that Israel will be destroyed through violence.

The Hamas spokesman ended with prayers to Allah to "take" Israel and the USA.

The following is the text of the Hamas spokesman's call for genocide of Jews:

The Hamas spokesman, Dr. Ismail Radwan, PA TV, March 30, 2007 -

The Hour [Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: "Oh, Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!"

We must remind our Arab and Muslim nation, its leaders and people, its scholars and students, remind them that Palestine and the Al Aqsa mosque will not be liberated through summits nor by international resolutions, but it will be liberated through the rifle. It will not be liberated through negotiations, but through the rifle, since this occupation knows no language but the language of force… O Allah, strengthen Islam and Muslims, and bring victory to your Jihad-fighting worshipers, in Palestine and everywhere… Allah take the oppressor Jews and Americans and their supporters!

Click here to see the video

Thomas Cushman
Professor, Wellesley College
Wellesley

Reporter: A natural, common, beautiful site. How great! Shake it like a goose! Belly dancer - shake your silky hips. But what would you say if things were turned upside down?

Alaa' is a man in the full sense of the word, but he dances better than the female belly dancers. This is what he says, and this is what others say about him. On top of that, he teaches belly dancing. Surely there were no men like Alaa; in 1000 BCE, when belly dancing began in the temples as a religious ritual, practiced only by women. Today, more than 2,000 years after Christ, male belly dancers were born from the womb of female dancers, and they can teach girls a thing or two about dancing.

Alaa' is not scantily clad, but since he is a guy, he attracts more attention than many female dancers who wear nothing...

On Monday, Judge Allan van Gestel rejected the agency's arguments that a public records lawsuit brought by The David Project be thrown out and ruled that the BRA had to produce records related to the sale of land to the Islamic Society of Boston.

The BRA has already provided The David Project several hundred pages of documents about the sale, some of which showed an agency employee involved with the deal was also raising money for the Islamic Society in Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 2000. They also showed the agency had valued the land at more than $2 million in March 2000 and later sold it to the Islamic Society for $175,000.

The judge's order on Monday compels the agency to turn over additional records. BRA spokeswoman Susan Elsbree said the agency had not given the David Project the additional documents because the agency was waiting for the judge's ruling. She also expressed fear that The David Project would stir up negative media attention about the documents' contents.

"Every time they breathe, they make a press release out of nothing," Elsbree said in an interview yesterday. "We think this is a good project."...

Dr. Ilan Pappe, of Haifa University, has been instrumental in organizing previous, failed attempts to boycott Israeli institutions in Britain, and is now set to leave Israel and take up a chair of history at the University of Exeter in south west England, where he hopes to set up a "center for Palestinian studies." [One could be forgiven thinking that that more or less describes the entire higher-education system these days. -S]

An article in the British Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), entitled 'Historian hits out at Jewish student lobby,' extensively quoted Pappe as complaining that UK Jewish students have formed a "lobby" aimed at quashing open debate on the Middle East.

"…Professor Pappe may find that Britain is not the haven of peace and tolerance he seeks. Jewish students' groups have already complained about his appointment, saying he is anti-Zionist," the article said.

"Jewish student organizations have ceased to care for the interests and concerns of Jewish students but have become a front for the Zionist point of view. They act as an arm of the Israeli embassy," Pappe was quoted as saying...

Ilan Pappe has published numerous books and essays accusing Israel of “ethnically cleansing” the Palestinians.

"Zionism is far more dangerous to the safety of the Middle East than Islam," Pappe said in one interview recently and two years ago he was a major supporter of the Association of University Teachers’ proposals for an academic boycott of Israel...

We Urge DePaul University not to grant tenure to Dr. Norman Finkelstein.

Academics across the political spectrum have demonstrated that Dr. Finkelstein’s work does not meet even elementary academic standards.

His “assertions are pure invention… No facts alleged by Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no quotation in his book should be assumed to be accurate, without taking the time to carefully compare his claims with the sources he cites.” [University of Chicago historian Peter Novick, ‘Offene Fenster und Tueren,’ Sueddeutsche Zeitung, February 7, 2001]

“Finkelstein’s work is, from beginning to end, a tendentious series of inventions…” [Historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, at www.goldhagen.com/csiz2.html.]

Instead of engaging in reasonable and respectful debate, Dr. Finkelstein defames and demonizes scholars and others who disagree with him. He called Holocaust survivor, Nobel Prize winner Ellie Wiesel a ’resident clown of the Holocaust circus” and “a ridiculous character.”

In our opinion, Finkelstein’s association with DePaul University will damage DePaul’s reputation. DePaul will be seen as a school that fosters irresponsible scholarship, extremism and childish, hateful debate.

We will be very troubled if Dr. Finkelstein’s coterie of supporters intimidates DePaul into granting an undeserved tenure.

We trust that DePaul will reach an informed decision.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

NewsCenter 5's Amalia Barreda reported that Noam Chomsky is scheduled to speak at Newton South High School on Wednesday.

There were police at the school and protesters lined up across the street from the school.

Holocaust survivor Stephan Ross was not allowed into the school to hear Chomsky speak.

"We would like him to apologize for the people that he tried to protect that deny the Holocaust," Ross said.

"We are not worried specifically about the capability of the students to handle someone like Mr. Noam Chomsky -- they can. What we are concerned about is the symbolism of bringing a man, who, in the late '70s, early '80s, publicly advocated for well-known French Holocaust deniers," said parent Tom Mountain.

"I think it is horrible that Mr. Chomsky would be invited to speak unopposed. And I find it also horrible that he is a huge proponent of the freedom of the press and speech and his speech to is taking place behind closed doors. This is horrible. This is hypocritical," said Student Senate President Dan Groob.

About 130 students and parents were allowed to enter the lecture hall where Chomsky was speaking.

Cheetah, a movie star in 30s and 40s, is the world’s oldest chimp, outliving his co-stars.

Johnny “Tarzan” Weismuller died in 1984, aged 79, while Maureen O’Sullivan, who played Jane, died in 1998, at 87.

Yesterday Cheetah tucked into cake and pop at his Californian sanctuary. Guess he’s still jung at heart.

A central figure in the ongoing controversy between the Islamic Society of Boston and members of the Jewish community spoke to Jewish leaders on April 6 to apologize for statements he made that many alleged were anti-Semitic.

In a meeting closed to the media, about 25 religious and lay leaders from the Boston area gathered at the Workmen’s Circle building on Beacon Street in Brookline, according to Attorney and Vice President of the Workmen’s Circle Michael Felsen, to listen and respond to comments by Dr. Walid Ahmad Fitaihi.

The event was organized by the Workmen’s Circle and the Interreligious Center for Public Life, the public policy center at Andover Newton Theological School and Hebrew College of Newton...

...And though Fitaihi, now the chairman of the board and chief executive officer at the International Medical Center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, left the country Sunday, Felsen said that Fitaihi “recognized that there were wounds in both directions, to both the Jewish and Muslim communities, and he came with the stated desire to begin to heal the wounds caused by some of his words.”

Felsen added: “I think it was a powerful gesture of reaching out to the Jewish community. There was a sense that this was an important meeting and an important step towards potential broad reconciliation of our communities.”

Speaking from Damascus by telephone, Meshaal addressed thousands of Hamas supporters who had gathered in the West Bank city of Ramallah to mark the third anniversary of the deaths of former Hamas leaders Abdel Aziz Rantissi and Ahmed Yassin, who were killed by Israel within weeks of each other in 2004.

"Hamas will not back down. We will not give up on a single metre of our homeland," Meshaal said to thunderous applause.

"We will and we must continue in the path of resistance," he added...

Emboldened as Iran now is, and ironically for engagement advocates, it is even less likely there will be a negotiated solution to the nuclear weapons issue, not that there was ever much chance of one. Iran, sensing weakness, has every incentive to ratchet up its nuclear weapons programme, increase its support to Hamas, Hizbollah and others and perpetrate even more serious terrorism in Iraq. The world will be a more dangerous place as a result. Evidence may already be at hand in the deaths of four British soldiers in Basra on Friday.

Quite possibly, the Iranians were divided internally and may well have stumbled into success at the end. This has already inspired the media's commentariat to conclude that the Foreign Office's "softly softly" approach worked. The Captain Ahabs of British and US diplomacy, obsessed by their search for Iranian "moderates", those great white whales, are proclaiming yet another "moderate" victory in this outcome. Surely, the "moderates" prevailed; how else to explain the hostages' release?

Indisputably the winners in Iran were the hardliners. It was Mr Ahmadi-Nejad who stood in the international spotlight for hours on end, who awarded medals to the Revolutionary Guards who captured the hostages, who announced the hostages' release and accepted their thanks. Even if the moderates concurred in the outcome, divergent motives can lead to the same conclusion. The question is, who increased relative to others in the Iranian calculus of power? The evidence unmistakably points to Mr Ahmadi-Nejad. If strengthening his hand within the Tehran leadership amounts to success for British diplomacy and Iranian moderates, one hesitates to ask what would constitute failure...

The captors of the Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, have handed over the names of the hundreds of Palestinian prisoners they want released to Israel several days ago, through Egyptian mediators.

Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, the most senior Palestinian held by Israel, is among the hundreds of inmates the Hamas organization wants in exchange for the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti said Monday. The information minister and the prisoner are distant relatives.

Marwan Barghouti, seen as a potential successor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is serving five consecutive life terms for his involvement in the murders of four Israelis and a Greek monk, and the demand for his release could complicate the swap as Barghouti's release would require a pardon by Israel's president since he was tried in a civilian, not a military court...

...Additional Palestinian prisoners on Hamas' list include Ahmed Saadat, who headed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a small PLO faction. In 2001, gunmen from Saadat's faction assassinated an Israeli Cabinet minister, Rehavam Zeevi, in a Jerusalem hotel...

...The list includes, among others, the names of prisoners convicted for their involvement in dozens of suicide bombings inside Israel. The most prominent of these is Abdullah Barghouti, a Hamas leader in the West Bank who is serving out 67 consecutive life terms. Barghouti pleaded guilty to building the bombs that murdered 66 people and wounded more than 500 in a series of suicide bombings.

Hamas is also demanding the release of Hassan Salama, a Hamas leader who in the mid-90's led a wave of suicide bombings. Salama was convicted of murdering 67 Israeli citizens and was sentenced to several dozen consecutive life terms.

Another name on the list likely to cause outrage is Fouad al-Shoubaki. In his capacity as former chief of military financial affairs for the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat, al-Shoubaki orchestrated the arrival of the Karin A weapons ship which was intercepted by the IDF in 2002 while en route from Iran to Gaza. Al-Shoubaki was arrested in March 2006 during Israel's raid on the Jericho prison...

2) Should George Bush ask Alberto Gonzales to resign?

4) If the only way to stop the Iranians from acquiring nuclear missiles was through air strikes, would you support that course of action or do you think we should allow the Iranians to get nuclear weapons instead?

5) Which side do you believe is more responsible for the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians?

6) Do you believe the theory of evolution is correct?

7) Would you support an immigration bill that allowed illegal aliens to become American citizens?

8) Do you think abortion should either be banned or alternately banned with exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother?

They are 2nd Lt. Raymond A. Cooley, of Leary, Texas; 2nd Lt. Dudley R. Ives, of Ingleside, Texas; 2nd Lt. George E. Archer, of Cushing, Okla.; 2nd Lt. Donald F. Grady, of Harrisburg, Pa.; Tech. Sgt. Richard R. Sargent, of North Girard, Pa.; Tech. Sgt. Steve Zayac, of Cleveland, Ohio; Staff Sgt. Joseph M. King, of Detroit, Mich.; Staff Sgt. Thomas G. Knight, of Brookfield, Ill.; Staff Sgt. Norman L. Nell, of Tarkio, Mo.; and Staff Sgt. Blair W. Smith, of Nu Mine, Pa.; all U.S. Army Air Forces. The dates and locations of the funerals are being set by their families.

Representatives from the Army met with the next-of-kin of these men in their hometowns to explain the recovery and identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the secretary of the Army.

On April 16, 1944, a B-24 Liberator crewed by these airmen was returning to the aerodrome at Nadzab, New Guinea, after bombing enemy targets near Hollandia. The aircraft was altering course due to bad weather and was proceeding to the aerodrome at Saidor, but it never returned to friendly lines.

In late 2001, the U.S. Embassy in Papua New Guinea notified the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command that wreckage of a World War II bomber had been found in Morobe Province. Early the next year, a JPAC team surveyed the site and found aircraft wreckage and remains. They also collected more remains and Grady’s identification tag from local villagers who had found the items at the crash site...

What may be the most ironic about his crying 'censorship' is that his website explicitly endorses groups such as Hamas which wish to impose Islamic law. Groups which would impose state sanctions on any who would dare criticize Mohammed or who would make it illegal for a Muslim to convert to Buddhism.

They suppport the First Amendment as long as it protects their incitements to violence, but wish to ditch its principles the moment they come to power...

Demonstrators needed to show a significant presence in opposition to Noam Chomsky speaking to students at Newton South High School. He is speaking during lunchtime. Details of the exact time and location will be sent as soon as information is received...

It is critical to us, to the students and to the school authorities that we stand up in opposition to the outrageous choice of a well known anti-Israel, anti-American basher that allows him to come into our neighborhood schools to present twisted information to our young people.

For further information e-mail CJUI-Mass@hotmail.com

What goes on in Chomsky’s mind would baffle the psychiatrist, let alone the columnist. The volume of information indicting him is so acute it leaves one to gasp in astonishment that any intelligent responsible school administrator would invite him to address an auditorium of high school students. There is no viable excuse other than the underlying probability that a cabal of extremist Newton educators is so virulently anti-American, so viciously anti-Israel, they would gleefully invite one of the most notorious propagandists of the last 40 years to complement their dirty work...

10:00--11:00AM Media, parents, and some pro-Israel activists arrive.

11:00 Am -12:15 Speaker addresses students in auditorium. Parents may listen from another area. No videos etc.

2:40 PM Students leave school. ( A good time from them to see a large group of anti-Chomsky demonstrators with signs. Activists should hand out literature for students to bring home.)

Directions: Going East toward Boston take right onto Parker St off Rt.9 About three blocks up see signs on left to Newton South High School. Brandeis Rd. is close to entrance to High School. Look for Melissa from Christians and Jews United for Israel with signs and literature.

The MAS has also initiated a petition in support of Masood, which begins: "We the undersigned people of conscience, from multi-ethnic, multi-religious communities, implore the immigration judge in the case of Imam Muhammad Masood to approve his continued presence in this country for the good of our greater Boston community and its next generations." Bilal Kaleem of the MAS lobbied the Sharon Interfaith, Inc. group to sign the petition, and he sent them a summary document about Imam Masood. Some of the interfaith clergy members recognized that the summary information contained distortions and misinformation, and they declined to sign the petition...

All these options were presented at a real ‘Emigration Fair’ in Amsterdam earlier this month which drew record crowds. Whatever pessimism there is in and about Europe and no matter how commentators try to figure out if this exodus is real, the market has smelled the opportunity and knows how to respond.

As opposed to “Give me your tired, your poor” many jurisdictions in the new world have discovered that the disgruntled Dutch are anything but tired and poor. They’re young, affluent, well-educated, entrepreneurial, fluent in English and smart enough to have figured that the time has come to get out as the future can no longer be found at home.

The numbers corroborate this trend. In the first nine months of last year a record number of Dutch packed their bags with some 100,000 leaving the country, an increase of 12% on the previous year. For this year another increase is expected and, according to some research bureaus the overall attitudes about leaving are changing as well.

This year some 32% are seriously considering a move as opposed to 26% last year according to the ‘Emigration Monitor’. What is even more revealing is that the 20 to 30 age group constitutes the largest group of leavers, a trend that got further momentum when one polling group figured out that about half of the nation’s adolescents would, given the chance, prefer to pack up and go...

For our troubles we were isolated, thumped, went through two mock executions, starved, threatened, and had to put up with useful idiots from Amnesty International showing up just to let the world know how humane we were being treated...

When I try to counter the idea that ‘they knock down doors unnecessarily, steal jewelry and treat people bad’ by saying that there must be a good reason why the troops sometimes act rough and that ‘for every reaction there must have been an action’, I often get the response of “what do you know about that? The Americans never searched your home.”

Well, last night they did.”...

Three weeks ago, some of them turned up to form a campaign to raise money for “humanitarian assistance” to the beleaguered imam, according to the Friday issue of the newspaper, The Jewish Advocate.

Imam Masood is the former “spiritual director” of the Islamic Centre of New England at Sharon, Massachusetts. He and his son were arrested in November 2006 along with 33 other individuals who were questioned about the immigration ploy, which allegedly helped large numbers of illegal aliens fraudulently obtain religious worker visas to enter or remain in the United States, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Imam Masood is living in a house situated over an estate of 52 acres with free gas and electricity. Daily Times has learnt that on March 24, there was a fund-raiser for him at which he collected $40,000 in Burlington, Massachusetts, from the Muslim community. Quipped one disgruntled Boston Muslim, “How much in grocery supplies does the holy family need, unless he is feeding jinns? And how can one forget that a couple of adults in Masood’s family are earning members?”

Two of the clerics, Rabbi Barry Starr and Rev Deborah Cayer, will not say how much money they have raised for Masood. They have appealed to their congregations to make tax-deductible donations to the rabbi’s discretionary fund at Temple Israel. The two consider Masood a good man and they say they are concerned about him and his family, as well as his “spiritual community”...

He recalled that although most Western nations, such as the US, Britain, and even France, praised Israel’s actions, most countries were not supportive. “There was harsh criticism of Israel throughout the non-Western world – from the Communist Bloc, from Uganda’s allies in Africa, from most of Asia – because of those countries’ political leanings,” said Iddo.

“But while the vast majority of governments came out against Israel, their populations obviously felt differently. It was a tremendous boost for the Jewish community in the Soviet Union; Natan Sharansky said he had a photo of Yoni in his jail cell. And there were many brave men in Uganda who were fighting Idi Amin and were inspired by the Entebbe rescue because it showed them this man could be defeated.”...

“This man did not deserve to live a quiet, uneventful life after being deposed, so the big question is why he lived in comfort for so many years. The answer is that he was being sheltered by people who considered him a great hero. From their point of view, what he did was good – he assisted in threatening Jewish hostages with death. They would never have given him up to any court for justice.”...

Yet, within another decade, the overseas ventures had been scrapped by high officials in Beijing, anxious not to divert resources away from meeting the Manchu landward threat in the north and about how a seaward-bound open-market society might undermine their authority...

...While China's great fleets were being dismantled by imperial order, Western Europe was beginning to move into "new" worlds, full of ancient peoples and cultures in the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Any place vulnerable to Western naval and military power was at risk. Above all, as the American naval captain A. T. Mahan taught us over a century ago in his classic book, "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History" (1890), the West valued navies as the key to global influence...

...let us return to the European scene. Here the trend seems to be in the opposite direction, with naval budgets being held down and (given the inexorable rise in the cost of weapons systems and personnel) actual fleet sizes being reduced. The most publicized case here is the news that the Royal Navy may be planning to "mothball" many of its fleet of destroyers and frigates (which, being only 25 in number, is now less than half of Japan's total).

Angry Conservative members of Parliament are demanding a debate on the fact that defense expenditures represent a smaller percentage of GDP than at any time since the 1930s - and we all know what that implies. Those critics appear even more outraged that the French Navy now possesses more major surface combatants than Britain for the first time in 250 years...

In a poll to be published next month which was exclusively leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, nearly half of all Maronites, the largest Christian denomination in the country, said they were considering emigrating. Of these, more than 100,000 have submitted visa applications to foreign embassies. Their exodus could have a devastating effect on the country, robbing it of an influential minority which has acted as an important counter-balance to the forces of Islamic extremism.

About 60,000 Christians have already left since last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah. Many who remain fear that a violent showdown between rival Sunni and Shia factions is looming...

...Christine, another Christian woman, said that all of her family's younger generation had left the country, adding that Tripoli had become increasingly Islamised in recent years. There is a rising number of veiled women and religiously bearded men on the streets - although she blamed economic and political instability for much of the emigration. Christians...

..."Lebanon has always been a bastion of religious tolerance, but now it is moving towards the model of Islamisation seen in Iraq and Egypt," said Fr Samir Samir, a Jesuit teacher of Islamic studies at Beirut's Université Saint-Joseph...

But, in January, that peace was shattered when Mr. Mousa was confronted by masked gunmen from a Shiite sect that accused him of spreading vice and corruption. He and his neighbors were told to leave their homes in the northern province of Saada or lose their lives...

Then other girls of the same age began fainting in other villages on the West Bank, in Bethlehem, and afterwards in Hebron and Halhul, Tulkarem and Nablus. Over a period of a few days approximately 1,000 girls ended up in hospital at the same time, seemingly victims of an epidemic.

Since all this occurred just before Pesach, the motif of blood libel and mass poisoning was raised. The rumors began that it was the Israelis who had poisoned the girls...

... After the mass fainting epidemic in 1983, the girls claimed that they had been poisoned, although the doctors who checked them found no evidence of this. Then the Arabs began to make charges that maybe, and then certainly, it was Israelis who had poisoned the girls. They also presented the reason -- the fantastic story that the Jews have an interest in countering the high Palestinian birthrate so they specifically targeted young girls approaching the age of marriage. The poisoning was done to harm this most fertile age group in order to limit Arab demographic growth. They even said they had found medical proof, claiming that urine tests showed a high protein level, which means that something is abnormal in the fertility system.

They began to build all kinds of theories and enlisted statements from Arab doctors. Then, amazingly, the Israeli newspapers began asking why the Jews, who were killed in the gas chambers, would do something like this, and there were calls for an investigation of the actions of the then-Likud government of Menachem Begin. The Arabs saw the Israelis themselves accusing their own government and raised the tone of their accusations even higher.

Baruch Modan, the director-general of the Health Ministry and one of the leading epidemiologists in Israel, headed an investigation team and, of course, found nothing. At a press conference he announced that there was no evidence of poisoning and that this was nothing more than a case of mass hysteria. But in this case the foreign journalists refused to accept the professional opinion of a well-respected doctor.

The Palestinians became bolder and offered still more proof. Yellow powder was found on the window sills. Dr. Modan and his team had checked the powder and found it to be from nearby pine trees, but this did not convince the foreign journalists who kept on saying that the Israelis were guilty.

However, the Israeli media started to backtrack because Dr. Modan is indeed a respected authority. Suddenly a spate of articles began appearing on the history of blood libels and protesting that here, too, on the eve of Pesach, they are acting toward us just as they did in the Middle Ages, with accusations of poisoning the wells. It was amazing -- within ten days the Israeli press went from self-accusation to massive self-defense...

A Foreign Office spokesman said that the meeting with Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian prime minister, was authorised as a humanitarian emergency, and stressed that a European Union ban on all other contact with Hamas representatives remained.

However, this did not stop the newly formed Palestinian unity government claiming that it marked the beginning of the end of the boycott.

Mustafa Barghouti, the Palestinian information minister, called the meeting a "good development".

He said: "It doesn't matter what the topic is. I think they [the British] are developing the position of the EU in a positive way."...

On April 4, members of PRIM agreed to invest $15 million in SCP Vitalife II, a $150 million venture fund that pursues early-state investments in companies seeking therapeutic and diagnostic medical devices. The fund has offices in Savyon, Israel, and Wayne, Penn.

“The SCP Vitalife team is highly experienced in the medical device field and well positioned to execute attractive investment opportunities,” said State Treasurer Tim Cahill, chair of the PRIM Board, in a statement. “I am pleased to make this investment in Israel – our first country-specific investment outside of the United States and Europe.”

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Department of the State Treasurer reported that
Israel is the third largest source of venture capital funding in the world, following Massachusetts and California...

Darfur divestment is a red herring that Israel advocacy organizations have cooked up as a distraction. Militant Zionists have used this sort of tactic for decades. In the 30s the most extreme Americans Zionists invariably opposed discrimination against African Americans in order to obscure the key racist principle of Zionism...

While Iraqi lawmakers struggle to pass an agreement on exactly who will award the contracts and how the revenue will be shared, experts say a draft version that passed the cabinet earlier this year will likely uphold agreements previously signed by those countries under Saddam Hussein's government.

"The Chinese could announce something within the next few months" if all goes well with the oil law, said James Placke, a senior associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates who specializes in the Middle East.

The Asian firms are at an advantage for several reasons.

First, less constrained by Western sanctions during the Hussein regime, they've been operating in Iraq and know the country's oilfields, said Falah Aljibury, an energy analyst who has advised several Iraqi oil ministers as well as other OPEC nations.

Aljibury said the first contracts likely awarded will be to the Chinese in the south central part of Iraq, the Vietnamese in the south, the Indians along the Kuwaiti border, and the Indonesians in the western desert...

Nevertheless, the recent discovery that the British Embassy in Tel Aviv is funding an Israeli non-governmental organization (NGO) known as "Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights" - is not surprising. The ostensible focus of the "research" is on the impact of the security barrier on Palestinian villages caught in the middle, and since Bimkom is a political organization, the outcome is a forgone conclusion.

In this way, the British government will receive an analysis from an Israeli group that supports London's position against the route of the barrier. The same information could have been obtained through official government channels, (i.e., intelligence) but without the important political dimension. (The Danish government provided Bimkom with $200,000 for a project on "Palestinian neighborhoods.")

For years, European governments have used the same approach by providing funding to well-known Israeli domestic political groups, such as Peace Now, B'Tselem, and the Peres Center. The Swiss Foreign Ministry and the European Union, among others, supported the failed public relations campaign to sell the Israel public the Geneva Initiative - a track-two peace proposal led by Yossi Beilin and his Palestinian counterparts.

And under the misleading label of "partners for peace," the EU Delegation in Tel Aviv is funding a group known as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, which promotes anti-Israel boycotts and divestment. It also funds Israeli-Arab groups, such as Mossawa and Adallah, which ostensibly advocate for social and economic justice for the Arabs of Israel, but have done their fair share to demonize the Jewish state...

You would think maintaining international order means, at least, challenging acts of piracy. No challenge here. Instead, a quiet capitulation...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Syria Wednesday – in which she called for dialogue with Damascus – was "brave" and "very appreciated" and could bring about "important changes" to America's foreign policy, including talks with "Middle East resistance groups," according to members of Palestinian terror organizations whose top leaders live in Syria.

One terror leader, Khaled Al-Batch, a militant and spokesman for Islamic Jihad, expressed hope Pelosi would continue winning elections, explaining the House speaker's Damascus visit demonstrated she understands the Middle East.

Pelosi's visit was opposed by President Bush, who called Syria a "state sponsor of terror."

"Nancy Pelosi understands the area (Middle East) well, more than Bush and Dr. (Condoleezza) Rice," said Al-Batch, speaking to WND from Gaza. "If the Democrats want to make negotiations with Syria, Hamas, and Hizbullah, this means the Democratic Party understands well what happens in this area and I think Pelosi will succeed. ... I hope she wins the next elections."...

...Al-Batch expressed hope Pelosi and the Democratic Party will pressure Bush to create dialogue with Syria and Middle East "resistance movements" and prompt an American withdrawal from Iraq...

..."Pelosi's visit to Syria was very brave. She is a brave woman," Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, told WND.

"I think it's very nice and I think it's much better when you sit face to face and talk to (Syrian President Bashar) Assad. It's a very good idea. I think she is brave and hope all the people will support her. All the American people must make peace with Syria and Iran and with Hamas. Why not?" Jaara said...

As a Muslim, I fully understand respect of our religion by visiting US officials and I applaud that respect. Had Speaker Pelosi worn the Hijab inside a Mosque, this would have indicated respect but for Pelosi to wear it on the streets of Damascus all the while she is sitting with the self-imposed Baschar al-Assad who has come to symbolize oppression and one of the reasons why women are forced to wear the Hijab as they turn to religion to express their freedom is a statement of submittal not only to oppression but also to lack of women's rights in the Middle East. Pelosi just reversed the work of the Syrian civil society and those who aspire for women's freedom in the Muslim countries many years back with her visual statement. Her lack of experience of the Middle East is showing.

Assad could not have been happier because Syrian women, seeing a US official confirming what their husbands, the Imams in the Mosques tell them, and the society at large imposes on them through peer pressure will see in her wearing a Hijab as a confirmation of the societal pressures they are constantly under. No one will ever know how many women took the Hijab on after seeing Pelosi wearing it. The damage Speaker Pelosi is causing with her visit to Syria will be felt for many years to come.

An Israeli government official said that was not the message Olmert had asked Pelosi earlier this week to convey to Assad, who seeks the return of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

“The prime minister said Israel is interested in peace with Syria, but Syria would first have to abandon the path of terror and providing support for terrorist groups,” the official said, in reference to Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Oh yeah, that.

The threat was made with the condition of Jews continuing to "invade" the Al Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem during this week's Passover holiday.

These groups are allowed to visit the Temple Mount grounds in small groups, although Jews are not allowed by the Israeli police to pray there, in accordance with the rules issued by the Islamic religious authority known as the WAKF.

The statement stated that "The Zionist conqueror bears full responsibility for this invasion and all Zionist targets are legitimate."

Although the Al Aksa remains on the active list of organizations defined by the United States government as a terrorist organization, the Clinton administration and now the Bush administration have issued a waiver every half year for the past 13 years to allow the Fatah to maintain a Washington office, which is represented by Edward Abington, former U.S. consul in Jerusalem...

Archaeologists are frantically working to unearth the nameless settlement that lies beneath the bustling streets of the Shuafat neighbourhood before they have to bury it again in order to lay tracks for a long-planned light rail line.

The newly discovered settlement dates back to the period of the second Jewish temple.

Although some archaeologists have argued that this is the site of the biblical city of Nob, a refuge for ancient priests where Saul was anointed King of Israel, the find has excited scholars.

"No one knew of a city of this importance just a few kilometres (miles) north of Jerusalem, and its name remains unknown," said Rachel Bar Nathan, one of the three archaeologists from Israel's National Antiquities Authority working on the site.

The city is believed to have been built after Roman legions sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the second temple of Herod in the year 70 AD, Bar Nathan said.

It was abandoned in the year 130, at the time of the last Jewish revolt against Rome, during the reign of Hardian...

After hearing that Noam Chomsky has been invited to speak, I wonder whether there is a bias at Newton South, at the administrative level, against Israel. It would be different if Chomsky, friend of the ruthless Iranian dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had to debate the issues. Unfortunately, just like Carter’s anti-Israel speech at Brandeis, he will be able to rant about Israel without opposition. I find it very disingenuous that Newton South, the pride of liberal Newton, favors every cause, minority, women’s issue, endangered specie and sexual preference, allows a controversial, self-hating Jew to speak. The Jewish Student Union was not even permitted to have a representative of the Israeli government lecture during school hours without a counterpoint, let alone, someone like Noam Chomsky, who is vilified for his views...

Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.

The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.

Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine's formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession.

Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America's enemies...

The target for his outrage .... are Jews. This is not the first time in recent history that a Finnish newspaper has published anti-Semitical articles, and one more example of some in the Finnish news media that have lost their sense of propriety and common sense...

A few of the media in the US I'll mention, is Time Warner, cable TV and news channel, CNN and Disney, whose leader and CEO is Michael Eisner, who is a Jew...

According to witnesses in the gallery and on the floor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi displayed a classic deer-in-the headlights look as the Democratic leadership went into a huddle - plainly eager, not to embrace this common-sense measure, but to sidetrack it.

Meanwhile, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, took the floor to oppose King's motion - and to defend the lawsuit against John Does. "We should be tolerant," he argued; people shouldn't be singled out because they "look different."

In fact, the flying imams triggered concerns by a variety of unusual actions, as well as words that roused the concern of another Arabic-speaking passenger. Witnesses say that House members started booing Thompson.

Finally, a member of the leadership realized how this would look to Americans watching on C-SPAN: Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) was seen staring at Thompson and repeatedly drawing his hand across his throat - an urgent signal to get off the floor.

With Democrats realizing they couldn't argue against King's measure, it went to a vote, and passed, 304 to 121

Every one of those 121 votes aimed at defeating protection for "John Does" was a Democrat - indeed, more than half of all Democrats present voted "nay."...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will certainly push for that. After all, the radical "civil rights" group - which supports the terrorists of Hamas and has received millions in funding from Saudi Arabia - is paying the lawyers in the "Flying Imams" lawsuit...

For that matter, why would Iran have chosen this moment to seize 15 British sailors and marines? One of the hostages was forced to write a letter urging the British government "to start withdrawing our forces from Iraq and let them determine their own future." But Britain has been withdrawing its forces from Iraq, reducing troop levels from 40,000 in 2003 to just 7,100 as of February. Prime Minister Tony Blair recently announced that 1,600 more troops will be pulled out this spring. So what was the point of Iran's unprovoked ambush?

The answer in both cases is that this is how totalitarian aggressors react to faintheartedness.

"In Middle Eastern warfare," writes retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters in the New York Post, "a classic tactic has been to retreat in the face of strength, but to attack when your enemy withdraws or shows signs of weakness." British troop pullouts and congressional cut-and-run votes prompt not fewer outrages and less mayhem, but more. The smell of irresolution doesn't satiate the totalitarians' appetite; it makes it keener...

The Sunday Telegraph has learnt of plans to send a Royal Navy captain or commodore to Teheran, as a special envoy of the Government, to deliver a public assurance that officials hope will end the diplomatic standoff.

The move, which was discussed at a meeting of Whitehall's Cobra crisis committee yesterday, came as Downing Street officials explicitly cautioned against hopes of a speedy outcome and said that families of the hostages should prepare for the "long haul".

The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, have been warned that the impasse may develop into a long-term stand-off. Privately, officials are speculating that the crisis could continue for months.

The renewed search for a solution was given greater urgency when a senior Iranian official said that moves had begun to put the 15 British captives on trial...

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.

The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.

It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.

The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.

The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'...

One of the suspects is being held in Jordan, and the other in the West Bank town of Jericho. Palestinian laws call for a death sentence for anyone found guilty of selling land to Jews.

Hebron's Jewish Committee condemned the arrest, saying, "The arrest exposes once again the anti-Semitic nature of the PA. We call upon the government to accept the racial hatred prevalent in the PA."

MK Uri Ariel (National Union-National Religious Party) called on the government to act for the release of the arrested Palestinians. Orit Struk of the committee said the arrest is proof the house legally belongs to the Jewish community.

Committee members told Haaretz that police and army officials said off the record the house purchase was legitimate, adding: "Despite this, Defense Minister Amir Peretz has instructed the Military Advocate General to come up with a pretext for our eviction."

Meanwhile, several well-known leftist academics have called on Peretz to issue an order to evict the settlers from the building. "The decision not to evict the settlers is not only asinine and wrong, but also a violation of international law and public order," they wrote...

There is particular concern about the growth of anti-semitic incidents on college campuses.

Phil Woolas, the minister for communities and local government, said the government took very seriously recent manifestations of anti-semitism and "current rhetoric about Israel and Zionism from the far right, the far left and Islamist extremists alike".

He said the Crown Prosecution Service had agreed to review whether there should be more prosecutions related to such incidents.

"Apart from what may be criminal acts, there is also concern about the tone of the general discourse," he said while responding to the all-party parliamentary inquiry into anti-semitism which reported last year. "Open and public debate is one thing, but rhetoric with an undercurrent of hate and racism is quite another."

What was worrying was that many incidents took place on university campuses. "There is increasing evidence of activities well beyond what could be labelled freedom of speech or normal youthful behaviour," he said.

The government has pledged £1.5m to the Holocaust Education Trust to take 6,000 students to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp...

Click here to see the Hamas video

The following are the lyrics of the new video:

"These are the acts of the Martyrdom-Seekers
Ahmad [Yassin] did not die
Do not mourn.
These are the acts of Martyrdom-Seekers
Palestine – one of its leader is Ahmad Yassin
Its children carry the knife.
Palestine – among its leaders is Ayyash [Hamas bombmaker]
Its children carry machine guns.
The land is filled with furious lions
Even though they killed our Yassin
The land will grow a thousand Ahmad!”
[Al-Aqsa TV, March 25, 2007]

This was the second Hamas TV video in less than a week to promote children's involvement in terror. The first was the video dramatization of the four-year old daughter of female suicide bomber Reem Riyashi, singing to her dead mother and vowing to follow in her footsteps. After the PMW report, this video received widespread media coverage around the world, including more than 100,000 viewings on a YouTube posting in just four days...

Recently, at the annual session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, a body charged with observing the status of all the world’s women, Israel, and only Israel, was accused of violating the rights of women.

This comes, as the invaluable U.N. watchdog Anne Bayefsky points out, in a world where women are raped and murdered in untold numbers in Sudan, imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, stoned in Iran and forcibly undergo abortions in China.

All of which went un-remarked by the august body.

The vote was 40-2, with the U.S. and Canada voting “no.” Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Korea and the BBC-poisoned England voted “yes.”

The U.N. demonizes Israel and ignores the real evil in its midst in part because of oil and money. The world needs Arab oil. And Arabian petro-dollars buy consumer goods and weapons systems that keep world export industries humming. But even more sinister, I believe, is the Arab Lobby, which makes the “Israel Lobby” look like amateurs.

Saudi and the Gulf states spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying influence. In the U.S., they pay lobbyists, run full-page ads, support think tanks that produce reams of studies and hold news conferences – all condemning Israel. They create centers and departments for Middle East and Islamic studies and stock them with scholars, who teach that Israel is the root of all evil. And they also, by the way – Ahem! – fund mosques that, according to Freedom House, spread crude anti-Semitic propaganda.

Arab Lobby achievements at the U.N. are clear: Every single U.N. organization and committee dutifully condemns Israel for something.

So we can’t expect the oil-bought U.N. to act differently. But could the Jewish community and other honest actors convince the real human rights community – Amnesty and Human Rights Watch for example – to protest Arab hijacking of the human rights cause?

Perhaps. Principled rights advocates might be embarrassed by the use of human rights abuse claims as propaganda weapons. On the more practical level, they won’t want Jewish and pro-Israel members and donors to drop out of the human rights community.

Further, rights activists might be brought to see that “human rights anti-Semitism,” in addition to being an Israel- bash, functions as an effective cover-up of horrific abuse of women, gays, lesbians, dissidents, apostates, atheists, racial and religious minorities and labor leaders in the Arab/Muslim realm and beyond. These are precisely the people who look to Western rights groups for help. They are the classical clients of human rights advocacy, pushed aside to smack Israel. All these things ought to be laid at the feet of Amnesty and HRW. They should be challenged to protest human rights anti-Semitism.

This challenge will also enable us to see whether these organizations have a conscience, or whether we should abandon them in the same way we should give up on the U.N.

Command of the Hebrew Language

El-Haj has undertaken to write an anthropology of Israeli attitudes towards archaeology and their role in “self-fashioning in Israeli society,” yet there is no indication in the text that she either explored these topics in conversation with Israelis in a systematic way (she cites only conversations with tour guides) or by reading materials published in the national language. Indeed, there are indications in the text that she was not capable of doing so due to her apparent unfamiliarity with Hebrew. Even when following a source (p. 95), El-Haj repeatedly mistakes neve (settlement) for nahal (stream), misnaming, for example, Nahal Patish as Neve Patish (writing, roughly, the town of Patish in place of Patish Creek, a stream valley named for its hammer [patish]-shaped rock formation.)

The new find, made by Dr. Eilat Mazar, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center's Institute for the Archeology of the Jewish People, comes less than two years after she said she had discovered the palace's location at the site just outside the walls of the Old City.

The monumental 10th century BCE building found by Mazar in 2005 following a six month dig has ignited debate among archaeologists about whether it is indeed the palace built for the victorious David by King Hiram of Tyre as recounted in Samuel II:5.

A 20-meter-long section of the 7-meter-thick wall has now been uncovered. It indicates that the City of David once served as a major government center, Mazar said.

Mazar estimates less than a quarter of the entire wall has been uncovered so far, and says that it is the largest site from King David's time ever to have been discovered.

The dig is sponsored by the capital's Shalem Center, with academic backing from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

This story was first presented to FrontPage readers in "Hometown Jihad," where I recounted my finding a Muslim Brotherhood operative, Dr. Salah Sultan, living right around the corner from me and teaching out of the Islamic school, Sunrise Academy, which had set up shop during my absence in the city’s former library building. Sultan is a protégé of Yousef Al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who the Anti-Defamation League has described as "The Theologian of Terror" for his advocacy of HAMAS suicide bombings against Israel and giving religious edicts for Muslims to fight and kill American troops overseas...

As one pundit [I wish I knew who he was] said: Some people's minds are so open, their brains fell out. So it is with Mark Cuban...