May 2007 Archives

An American research foundation announced on Thursday that following the decision of the British University and College Union (UCU) to consider launching an academic boycott of Israel it has cancelled its plans to open a grant application process for UK researchers.

The $150 million Goldhirsh foundation supports scientists around the world in the quest for a cure for brain cancer funds research.

In a letter to British academic institutions, foundation leader Elizabeth Goldhirsh writes: " As a director of a $150 million foundation that supports scientists around the world in the quest for a cure for brain cancer, I am profoundly disappointed in your union's decision to boycott Israel today.

"This action represents a severe setback for academic freedom and open discourse. Moreover, the decision to single out and demonize Israel above and beyond all other countries - remaining silent over Russia's brutal occupation in Chechnya, for example, or China's ongoing oppression of Tibet - is, at best, troubling. At worst, it points to a far more sinister and tragic motivation.

"Equally disturbing is to do so at a time when Israel's civilians are facing near-daily missile attacks from Gaza and her partner for negotiations is an organization that dispatches suicide bombers and refuses to recognize the Jewish State's right to exist.

"Given this decision, I am deeply saddened to say that while my foundation had been considering opening up our scientific grant process to British researchers we will no longer be able to do so. I urge you to work against this boycott and restore learning's highest ideal of fairness free of prejudice to British academia."

'Freezing Jewish donations to UK institutions'

Meanwhile Immigrant Absorption Minister Ze'ev Boim has suggested that Jewish donors supporting academic institutions in the United Kingdom freeze their donations following the boycott proposal...

I can tell you, our response would look nothing like Israel's restrained and pinpoint reactions to daily missile attacks from Gaza. We would use whatever means necessary to win the war. There would likely be numerous casualties on our enemy's side, but we would rightfully hold those who attacked us responsible...

...The Palestinian strategy is to purposely target and kill Israeli civilians. Then, when Israel goes after those launching the attacks, Palestinians claim to be the victims. If Palestinian civilians aren't hurt in the Israeli attacks, they stage injuries and deaths. Too often, they garner sympathy and support from a gullible or anti-Semitic media in the international community.

Israelis, themselves, are often incapable of facing the damage they inflict in self-defense. Knowing this, Islamic extremists are using their own populations as human shields...

Additionally, while the United States should do what it can to resolve the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, it’s simply not possible for the Israelis to make peace with people who refuse to recognize their existence, kidnap their soldiers, and blow themselves up in crowds of Israeli civilians. So, until the Palestinians renounce terrorism and stop their attacks on the Israeli people, peace will be out of reach. Let me also add that I’ve been to Israel, have seen the importance of regions like the Golan Heights to their security, and believe that Israel should not be asked to give up any more land in order to make peace with the Palestinians...

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WHEN: Thursday, June 7 from 4:30 PM to 6 PM
WHERE: In front of Au Bon Pain and the Holyoke Center in Harvard Square
WHY: It is Harvard’s graduation and the Square will be full of people.

We will be holding banners and distributing flyers publicizing the June 10th Washington DC rally protesting the 40th anniversary of Israel’s Occupation.

Please plan to join us! If your group would like to co-sponsor this event, email numurray@comcast.net.

Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights

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Join the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights (BCPR) for a National March in Washington DC on Sunday, June 10th, 2007...

UNISON representatives who are in contact with the Histadrut labor federation have in recent days presented the Histadrut's international activities director, Avital Shapira, with a copy of the proposal.

According to the proposal, UNISON, which has some 1.4 million members, will urge other British unions to follow its lead and cut off all economic and cultural ties with Israel.

Histadrut sources said the impression they have received is that UNISON will vote in favor of the boycott. The conference will be held June 19-22 in Brighton.

If approved, the boycott would have a significant practical, and not just symbolic, impact, given that the union enjoys large economic influence in Britain.

According to Histadrut Chairman Ofer Eini, "this is a dangerous decision, because it could harm numerous workers in Israel and their employers, specifically in organizations that have commercial ties to Britain."...

The Helsingin Sanomat's [the New York Times of Finland] cultural editor, Hannu Marttila published Matti Rossi's [pictured] oily/smarmy "tongue in cheek" response to Finnish parliamentarian Ben Zyskowicz's outrage over Rossi being awarded a cash prize by the Finnish government for his life time work in translating Shakespeare's classics into Finnish. [The state prize for literature carries with it not only the honor of the award itself, but also 15 000 Euros.]

The reason for Zyskowicz's outrage over the Finnish state's awarding of Matti Rossi with the prize, was for Rossi's role as a snitch for the Hungarian communist government back in 75'...

...This time I won't bother translating the full text, but in a tongue in cheek op-ed, he [Rossi] likens Zyskowicz to the Shakespearean character Shylock the Jew. Ben Zyskowicz happens to be Jewish himself, making the comparison undeniable.

Kirjailija William Shakespeare kuvaa dramaattisesti vastaavaa yritystä Venetsiassa 1500-luvun lopulla. / The writer William Shakespeare dramatically pictured a comparable attempt in Venice in the late 1500's. "

In the short op-ed, Matti Rossi was clearly making fun of Ben Zyskowicz, and characterizing him in a way that mirrored the story of the merchant of Venice, a Shakespearean play. It was totally irresponsible for the paper to print it, and as I said before about other examples of anti-Semitism in the Finnish media, it's becoming kind of trend here...

During May and June, AFSC presents Faces of Hope – Profiles of Peace. Profiles of Peace includes 40 short biographies of Israeli and Palestinian peace builders. A new profile will be added each weekday beginning May 1 and continuing through June 8. Follow the name links on this page to read each profile.

Also, please mark your calendars on June 10 and 11, 2007 for the rally, teach-in, and lobby day in Washington, DC, The World Says No to Israeli Occupation.

There was one counter-protester with a small sign made right there...

Earlier today, the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) dismissed its baseless defamation lawsuit against world-renowned terrorism expert, Steven Emerson, his organization -- The Investigative Project on Terrorism, and various individuals, organizations and media outlets in the Boston area. No money will change hands; Mr. Emerson will not apologize and stands behind everything he said about ISB's associations with Islamic extremists; nor is he limited in anything he may say in the future. Today's events represent a strong, stirring victory for free speech and American values and a repudiation of the tactic of misusing the judicial system to seek to stifle important and legitimate forms of expression.

The lawsuit, initiated by the ISB in October 2005, was a clear attempt to intimidate journalists, researchers and private citizens from engaging in constitutionally protected activities, including informing the public of extremist elements in their midst. Although Mr. Emerson has been fully vindicated and will continue vigorously to unmask radical Islamist organizations and networks in the U.S. and around the world, the ISB's groundless lawsuit has demonstrated that the judicial system can be too easily misused by those seeking to intimidate and harass those who have justly criticized them. Fortunately, today's result demonstrates that those with the truth on their side should never be intimidated or cowed into silence.

Contact: Floyd Abrams of Cahill, Gordon, Reindel - Phone xxx xxx xxxx Or the Investigative Project on Terrorism - Email: stopterror@aol.com

Two questions leap to mind:

* Can Shapiro (or Nadia Abu El Haj) produce evidence to back up this claim?

* Was the threat reported to a law enforcement agency?

There is no excuse for threatening scholars, and I sincerely hope that anyone who does so is arrested and prosecuted. Vigorous debate is the lifeblood of intellectual life, and only intellectual cowards resort to threats. If El Haj received such threats, no legitimate critic of hers will wish for anything other than seeing the person or persons who made the threats swiftly brought to justice...

The motions passed are as follows:

30. Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

Congress notes that Israel's 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective punishment and restriction of movement...[etc]

Congress believes that in these circumstances passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic [Glad that's settled -S].

Congress instructs the NEC to
* circulate the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to all branches/Las for information and discussion;
* encourage members to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions;
* organise a UK wide campus tour for Palestinian academic/educational trade unionists;
* issue guidance to members on appropriate forms of action
* actively encourage and support branches to create direct links with Palestinian educational institutions and to help set up nationally sponsored programmes for teacher exchanges, sabbatical placements, and research

31. European Union and Israel

1. That since the Palestinian elections in January 2006 the Israeli government has suspended revenue payments to the Palestinian Authority, and the EU and US have suspended aid, leaving public sector salaries unpaid and earning the condemnation of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions

2. That Israel is seeking to upgrade its relations with the EU to the same level as Norway and Switzerland, permitting free passage of goods, people and capital, while denying these freedoms to Palestinians.

3. a moratorium on research and cultural collaborations with Israel via EU and European Science Foundation funding until Israel abides by UN resolutions

Congress resolves to campaign for:
* the restoration of all international aid to the PA and al revenues rightfully belonging to it;
* No upgrade of Israel's EU status until it ends the occupation of Palestinian land and fully complies with EU Human Rights law.

Congress instructs the NEC to encourage Branches/associations to

1. raise these campaigns in their Institutions
2. investigate the possibilities of twinning their Institution with a Palestinian University or College.

'Today's motion on boycott means all branches now have a responsibility to consulate all of their members on the issue and I believe that every member should have the opportunity to have their say. The earlier motion means that any future calls for a boycott must pass key tests before a boycott can implemented.'

Not so well known is the name Elie Hobeika, the Lebanese commander in charge of the forces that killed those hundreds of civilians in Sabra and Shatilla. Nor are the months of May, 1985 or February 1987 standard commemorative dates for those that purport to defend Palestinian rights. Those dates mark successive massacres of Palestinians inside the same and other Lebanese refugee camps committed by various Arab sectarian armies. Thanks to the indefatigable work of the anti-Israel lobby, the mainstream media and ideologues like Alexander Cockburn, Norman Finkelstein, Anthony Lewis, and Noam Chomsky, those events remain virtually unknown to the world. Why unknown? Simply because the Jews of Israel cannot be easily linked to the atrocities.

Incidentally, the perpetrator of most of those massacres, Mr. Hobeika, went on to become, absurdly, Lebanon’s Minister for Social Affairs and the Handicapped in 1992.

It would seem that the long-standing practice of exculpating Arab murderers of other Arabs is as staunch as ever with the recent fighting in Lebanon between that country’s army and Fatah al Islam, Al Quaeda allies who have allegedly hijacked the Nahr al Bared Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Tripoli. Reportedly, the remaining residents of the camp, like those in 1987 have resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. Why the residents of Nahr al Bared never reported their “hijacking “ to Lebanese authorities when they “took over” the camp a year ago is never plumbed by reporters or pundits.

Instead, the deplorable events of the past month have been reported as if some natural disaster has befallen the residents of the camp. No emotional expressions of blame surround the onslaught by the Lebanese army, nor have any “peace groups” like the International Solidarity Movement or Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch assigned blame to the attacking forces that have killed dozens of civilians, wounded hundreds and made thousands more homeless. Unlike their carefully crafted omission of Hezbollah militants using Lebanese civilians as human shields during last summer’s war, Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch declared recently that “Fatah al-Islam militants must not hide among civilians, and the Lebanese army must take better precautions to prevent needless civilian deaths.”

A more tepid response to the crisis can hardly be imagined. HRW Director, Kenneth Roth, went to extraordinary and dubious lengths to indict Israel for “indiscriminate bombing” in spite of the photographic evidence of Hezbollah launching rockets from within civilian neighborhoods.
On May 21st of this year, The Boston Globe headlined its story about the battle inside Nahr al Bared:

“Lebanese Soldiers Battle Militants”

A similarly tepid headline, indeed. In 1982, there were hundreds of “militants” within Sabra and Shatilla as well. Can anyone envision a headline back then that might have read:

“Israeli Christian Allies Battle Militants”

Of course not.

It’s as if today’s civilian deaths represent a local squabble unworthy of a “progressive’s” outrage. Needless to say, had a Jew or an Israeli been involved, there would be marches down the main streets of Berkeley, Cambridge, Ann Arbor and Madison on a daily basis. “Teach-ins” would have been convened on hundreds of American campuses, European unions (as if they needed encouragement) would have accelerated their boycotts of Israeli academics and goods and the World Court would have been hastily convened to indict the errant Jews. Countless psychiatrists and counselors would be appearing on NPR and the BBC analyzing the effects of the Lebanese army’s actions on the already battered psyches of Palestinian children.

Meanwhile the killings in the Arab and Muslim world continue and grow with the inevitable involvement of the west at that world’s “bloody borders” as Samuel Huntington presciently put it a decade ago.

And underlying the tragedy in Lebanon are the begging questions: Why are there Palestinian refugee camps in the first place in a country that is often touted as a fledgling democracy? Why are the Palestinians the only refugee population in the world with a UN agency assigned to their designed and permanent refugee condition? Why, in the exchange of populations following the 1948 war of extermination waged by the Arab states against their neighbor when over 800,000 Jews were forced to flee Arab lands and 500,000 Arabs mostly fled Palestine in anticipation of victory, did one state welcome and absorb those refugees while Arab states made the calculated decision to keep their refugees in poverty and permanent misery?

Lebanon does deserve our tears and pity. But finding a solution to its tragedy will not be found by ignoring endemic Arab violence in the hopes of eventually finding a Jewish villain.

Syrian authorities, hoping to disrupt Lebanon so they can reassert control of the country, "have stopped sending [the jihadists] to Iraq and are now sending them here," charged Mohammed Salam, a specialist in Palestinian affairs in Lebanon. "They sent those people to die in Lebanon."...

David Project to Continue Public Records Lawsuit To Force Disclosure of Evidence on Boston Redevelopment Authority-Islamic Society Land Deal

The David Project has announced that the Islamic Society of Boston ("ISB") and its officers have withdrawn all of their claims against all of the citizens who raised concerns about the ISB, its funding and its leadership, as well as all of their claims against the Boston Herald, Fox-TV and the various journalists whose investigative pieces about the ISB in 2003 and 2004 disclosed damaging information about the ISB and its controversial land deal with the Boston Redevelopment Authority ("BRA"). The ISB and its officers have abandoned all of their claims against all of the defendants they sued 2 years ago, without payment to the ISB or to them of any money whatsoever.

The ISB's decision to drop all of its claims against all of the 17 defendants it sued back in 2005 alleging "defamation" and accusing them of conspiring to violate its civil rights comes just months after the defendants--who included a Muslim cleric, a Christian political science professor and the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors, as well as Boston civic leader William Sapers and national terrorism expert Steven Emerson--had begun through their lawyers to conduct discovery into the ISB's financial records, its receipt of millions of dollars in funding from Saudi Arabian and other Middle Eastern sources, its contributions to certain organizations and the records of certain of its officers and directors. The ISB's abandonment of its lawsuits comes only weeks after two of its original Middle Eastern Trustees, Walid Fitaihi of Saudi Arabia and Ali Tobah of Egypt, suddenly resigned as Trustees just before they were required to submit themselves to the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts court hearing the case.

The David Project, whose public records litigation against the BRA forced the public disclosure of evidence regarding the below-fair-market land deal between the BRA and the ISB and the role played in that deal of BRA Deputy Director Muhammed Ali Salaam, will proceed exactly as before with its litigation, seeking the remainder of the documents presently withheld by the BRA. That litigation, The David Project v. Boston Redevelopment Authority, is on file in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston.

"We were determined from the beginning to act the way citizens should, by asking questions about this matter and by refusing to be intimidated into staying silent," said David Project founder and President Charles Jacobs, "and we intend to continue as we have before. Indeed, the evidence that has emerged about the transaction, about the BRA's failure to do due diligence into those whom it chose to subsidize and about the funding and the leadership of the organization that received this public subsidy is of extremely deep concern. That evidence not only vindicates the reporting of the courageous journalists whose investigative work broke the story back in 2003 and 2004, but validates many times over the concerns expressed by the good and decent citizens—Muslims, Christians and Jews- who refused to stay silent."

"Those citizens were vilified by the ISB for having had the courage to speak out", said Jacobs. "The ISB's abandonment of its claims without payment of one dollar to them, coming as it does as the ISB was ordered to turn over evidence, speaks more eloquently than anything else could about the truth of what these citizens said, about the validity of their concerns, and about the lack of merit to the ISB’s allegations that they had been ‘defamed’ and had been financially ‘damaged’. Above all, the ISB’s ultimate abandonment of its lawsuits speaks eloquently about the importance of refusing to be bullied and intimidated into silence."

"This has never been about the right of all people to worship, and to construct houses of worship, which is an important right possessed equally by all people, warranting great respect,” said Jacobs. “What it has been about is specific evidence about specific leaders of a specific organization, and about evidence regarding the funding of that organization and those whom it, in turn, was funding. The threat of Islamic extremism in the United States and elsewhere is a real one. Many of the most courageous and forceful individuals speaking out about this threat are themselves Muslims, and they deserve the support of all of us. The victory we have achieved in this case is a victory for many, but perhaps especially for them, as it bolsters and encourages them, and sends a message on their behalf that intimidation will not work."

In the most poignant and indeed tragic analysis of all, Yossi Klein Halevi suggested that the Six-Day War had brought to light a continuing ambivalence in the attitude to power of the Jewish people themselves. The weeks before that war, when attacks upon Israel and the threat of war were mounting – the ‘waiting period’—reawakened the primal Jewish fear both of a second holocaust and that the Jews would once again be isolated as the world stood by and watched it happen. The principle established by the Six Day War would trigger pre-emptive action by Israel. The consequence of its victory, however, was that Jews felt able for the first time to confront the Holocaust and from that date it became central to the identity of Jews in the diaspora. The other side of the coin was that the same victory enabled the non-Jewish world to slough off its own responsibility for the Holocaust and in turn for the survival of the Jewish people. While Jews saw the Six Day War as a narrow escape from genocide, the non-Jewish world only saw the Jews victorious over another people...

Nirenstein does this, she explains, by dissecting what she calls the “sick words” that have infiltrated the language and consciousness of an increasingly anti-Semitic Europe - terms she and a group of Italian academics plan on collecting for a glossary, “because such word abuse prevents even the possibility of understanding what Israel is all about.”

She comes by her passion for Israel - and familiarity with the conceptual distortions characteristic of “autocratic ideologies” - honestly. The daughter of Holocaust historian and long-time Al Hamishmar correspondent Aharon “Nir” Nirenstein (who came to Palestine in 1936 from Poland, and went to Italy in 1945 with the Jewish Brigade) and Corriere della Sera journalist Wanda Lattes, Nirenstein was an ardent communist in her youth. And, just as Zionism was part and parcel of her upbringing, so too, she says, was she caught up in the “mental corruption” that caused her generation to look to the likes of Che Guevara for inspiration, while attributing the world’s ills to “capitalist imperialism.”...

I am referring to frankly leftist activists who populate such groups and their liberal enablers who fall for their marketing campaigns. The very core of their belief system is fear and disdain for those who wield power in the real world. Their entire identity is that they are the champions of the “under-classes”...

During the presidential campaign, Sarkozy also expressed concern about Iran's close ties to Hezbollah, saying that "there are more than suspicions about the links between Hezbollah and Iran," and he emphasized that he would support aggressive sanctions against Tehran should he win. His new prime minister, Francois Fillon, also criticized Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal during the campaign for meeting with a Hezbollah representative and failing to condemn his criticism of the United States and Israel. "Accepting to speak with a member of Hezbollah, which advocates the destruction of Israel, was already a mistake," Fillon said. "Letting him insult France's allies--whether they are the United States or Israel--without reacting, is another serious mistake." ...

The controversial two-part programme, aired this week, claims that if Rommel had succeeded in driving the Eighth Army, under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, out of North Africa, he would have led his troops into Palestine to begin the round-up, deportation and executions of Jews living there - many of them Germans who had managed to escape Nazism.

The programme - Rommel's War, Rommel's Treasure - claims the plans for the widening of the Holocaust out of Europe were far advanced.

Much of the material for the programme was based on what was found within the last three years in archives in the state of Baden-Württemberg, where Rommel lived. The makers also accessed hitherto sealed foreign ministry files in Berlin.

Jörg Müllner, a historian and co-producer of the programme, said: "The Allied defeat of Rommel at the end of 1942 had prevented the extension of the Holocaust to Palestine. If Rommel had beaten the Allies in the desert and invaded Egypt, a push into Palestine would have followed and the unit would have deployed there...

Robert Trivers said he had been invited to speak at Harvard to celebrate a prestigious international award he recently won. He planned to discuss his research on self-deception, including how self-deception factored in Israel's invasion of Lebanon last year.

His letter in the Journal quoted from a missive he had sent directly to Dershowitz: "Regarding your rationalization of Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians, let me just say that if there is a repeat of Israeli butchery toward Lebanon and if you decide once again to rationalize it publicly, look forward to a visit from me. Nazis -- and Nazi-like apologists such as yourself -- need to be confronted directly."

Dershowitz said in a telephone interview yesterday that he had sent Trivers's letter to Harvard police because he regarded it as a threat, but that he knew nothing about Trivers's talk being canceled.

But Trivers told the Globe on Friday that the letter was not a physical threat.

"Under no circumstances would I have threatened him physically," he said. "I would go see him in person."...

In this latest round of violence, the warring parties have already decided on a cease-fire five times. Each time, within hours, they were back to killing each other and injuring bystanders in the process. If this is how they behave among themselves, why should they be any more scrupulous in abiding by agreements with outside elements such as Israel, Jordan, Lebanon or Egypt? This is an important lesson that Israel must learn from the recent events in Gaza.

The phenomenon did not originate in Gaza. During the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s and '80s, the Palestinians agreed to and signed more than 90 cease-fires. Most were violated with terrible bloodshed...

This is the culmination of a year of press oppression in Venezuela, including fining opposition newspapers for criticism of the government, arresting journalists on charges of 'defamation' for criticizing the government, the shutdown of opposition radio stations, beatings and harassment of journalists and photographers, and most recently, the assassination of an El Mundo photojournalist. Since Chavez was voted sole personal authority over the government and had the Venezuelan constitution rewritten to give the presidency additional powers, it has become increasingly difficult for those opposing him to speak out without placing themselves at considerable risk...

Hamas TV continues active promotion of Shahada (martyrdom) directed at children. The new video clip, broadcast Sunday, follows the growth of a young Palestinian boy from a child into a Hamas Shahid – Martyr for Allah. The video shows the young child going to the mosque, praying and reading from the Quran, and then holding an automatic rifle together with the Quran as he envisions future participation in violent acts.

Click to view video on YouTube or PMW website

[See part 2 below for an overview of the history of this phenomenon including links to numerous videos encouraging children to be Shahid - Martyrs]

The child then matures into a Hamas fighter, is shown participating in battle against Israel, and eventually dying as a Shahid as the choir sings, “The pure blood will produce honor and glory.”

This video directs Palestinian children to aspire to Shahada, reiterating a recurring music video theme of seven years that Shahada is expected of children. “Honor and glory” and "Shahada is sweet" are some of these messages specifically packaged for children on Hamas TV and Fatah controlled PA TV.

PA schoolbooks likewise promote Shahada death among children. One example:

"O heroes... Do not talk yourselves into flight. Your enemies seek life while you seek death. These drops of blood that gush from your bodies will be transformed tomorrow into blazing red meteors that will fall down upon the heads of your enemies." [Reading and Texts Part II, Grade 8 (2002), p. 16]...

This is a sobering glimpse of what the MSA is up to on college campuses. More frightening is that according to the MSA itself, there are 600 MSA chapters in universities in America and Canada, 150 of which are affiliated with the national MSA. The College Democrats of America reportedly at their height have had 500 active chapters. It is disturbing that a group with political and financial ties to hostile foreign governments has a sufficiently significant number of chapters on college campuses to rival one of our major political parties. If it were simply a religious group promoting Islam, I wouldn’t be so worried. But as you can see, MSA associates with all the wrong folks.

There were more than four hundred people in the audience. An additional twenty or so protestors were silent and exited quickly without incident.

The four who overstepped the program's protocol were removed quickly and handled appropriately by university administrators and police.

We are committed to providing a secure environment for civil discourse. We believe this momentary interruption did not constitute a significant interference with your presentation or ensuing discussion...

Most recently, the Islamic Society of Baltimore landed a $15,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to upgrade security at its Maryland mosque.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations since April has been urging leaders of mosques and Islamic schools across the nation to apply for the DHS grants, even though the agency's program was set up to help protect nonprofit facilities that are at high risk for attacks by Islamic terrorists.

In a recent "Action Alert" posted on its website, CAIR encouraged its Muslim members to take advantage of $24 million in federal funds DHS has made available – specifically, DHS says, for nonprofit organizations "deemed high-risk for a potential international terrorist attack."...

...U.S. officials who spoke to WND on condition of anonymity expressed dismay that CAIR would drain limited federal funds away from higher risk targets for terrorism. They argue mosques are among the lowest risk for such attacks.

In fact, a number of mosques across the nation actually have promoted Islamic terrorism and have been tied to Islamic terrorists, including the large Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Washington, where some of the 9/11 hijackers received spiritual guidance, as well as help obtaining housing and IDs.

Terrorism experts note some 80 percent of U.S. mosques are funded and controlled through the Saudi Arabian government.

"Mosques have tended to serve as safe havens and meeting points for Islamic terrorist groups," said terror expert Steve Emerson. "Of course, we are not referring to all mosques, but there are at least 40 episodes of extremists and terrorists being connected to mosques in the past decade." ...

On Wednesday, representatives of the new British University and College Union (UCU) will be meeting in Bournemouth. On the agenda is another proposal to boycott Israel's academic institutions. These proposals have become as regular and as predictable as Qassam attacks on Sderot. The fact that studies at the Sapir Academic College in Sderot are not taking place because of the constant rocket fire from Gaza, even though the college is not in occupied territory and Gaza is no longer occupied, apparently does not bother British academia. The fact that Hamas, which controls the Palestinian Authority, does not recognize even pre-1967 Israel, and commits acts of terror against civilians, does not matter either. These nuances did not stop one boycott initiator from saying last week that justice in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is entirely on one side...

...On the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, British academia should look realistically at peace efforts in the Middle East: Over the past decade, Israel has elected governments that have expressed the desire of a majority of Israelis for a bilateral solution of two states for two peoples and a withdrawal from most of the settlements. The withdrawal from Gaza was to have been the first stage. The victory of Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, cut off the process.

The anti-Zionist winds blowing in Europe, mainly in academia and in Britain, strengthen the position that the very birth of the Jewish state was a mistake. The European hard left regards the Law of Return as the root of all evil; however, without acknowledging the Jewish character of the State of Israel, there is not even a basis for dialogue. British academia is in fact demanding that Israel democratically cease to exist as a Zionist entity, and that it be swallowed up in the non-democratic region in order to pander to the latest trend.

Indeed, The American Muslim provides a snapshot of where MAS really stands on terrorism. The March 2002 issue includes a fatwa endorsing suicide bombings against Israelis, which states that "martyr operations are not suicide and should not be deemed as unjustifiable means of endangering one's life." The fatwa goes on to say that in suicide bombings, "the Muslim sacrifices his own life for the sake of performing a religious duty, which is jihad against the enemy."

But in his published defense of his organization, Mahdi Bray categorically denied that such a fatwa endorsing suicide attacks in Israel even existed:

Additionally, Mr. Ross asserts that a fatwa (religious opinion) in our March 2002 American Muslim magazine supports suicide bombing. There is absolutely no such fatwa in the March 2002 edition of the American Muslim magazine.

Just weeks after this exchange, the American Muslim website went dark, or more appropriately, white. A common practice for those who want to eliminate items from the web cache of search engines, such as Google, is to remove the page and replace it with a blank white screen to clear the information out of web cache. This is what happened to the American Muslim magazine website.

But one area that website owners cannot control is the various Internet archive sites that regularly catalogue the contents of the World Wide Web. It is here that the evidence supporting Mr. Gartenstein-Ross’ claims about the missing MAS martyrdom fatwa resides. In fact, the Internet Archive houses the past issues of American Muslim, and preserves intact a copy of the missing fatwa that Mahdi Bray vigorously denied existed...

Now, it is a fact that the Palestinians were not over time truly made welcome. This shows something of the sham of the one Arab nation. The sham of the fraternity of their Arab brothers. But the Palestinians--many thinking themselves South Syrians, others Jordanians, and still others in some way Egyptians--were not exactly thankful guests. In Iraq, they aligned themselves with the tyrant. In Jordan, they stirred up a revolution that brought "Black September" on their heads. In Kuwait, they cheered when Saddam invaded. In Lebanon or, to be more precise, in southern Lebanon they set up a brutal mini-state run by Yassir Arafat and his minions that over-lorded their hosts. The Saudis were canny: they did not allow them in in the first place.

Sixty years on the international dole, with additional cash from the always so-loving Scandinavians, has actually castrated them. I use this masculine metaphor because it seems to illumine the contrast between the bravado of the Palestinians in Lebanon (but not just in Lebanon) and their powerlessness in any other way but to wreak havoc. This is not exactly power...

The architects, including Will Alsop, Terry Farrell, Richard MacCormac, Royal Institute of British Architects president Jack Pringle and president-elect Sunand Prasad, have signed a petition organized by the group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine.

"APJP asserts that the actions of our fellow professionals working with these enterprises are clearly unethical, immoral and contravene universally recognized professional codes of conduct," a spokesman said. "We ask the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA) to meet their professional obligations to declare their opposition to this inhuman occupation."...

The accused woman, Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, and her husband, Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, were being held in jail on Friday, a day after the new charges arose at their arraignment.

The millionaire couple _ who operate a worldwide perfume business out of their Long Island home _ pleaded not guilty to federal slavery charges.

They were arrested last week after one of the servants, wearing only pants and a towel, was found wandering outside a doughnut shop in Syosset, on the region's so-called Gold Coast. Authorities concluded she escaped the Sabhnanis' nearby Muttontown home when she took out the trash.

Unable to speak English fluently, she showed her wounds and Indonesian passport to a shop worker and said, "Mister, mister, I want to go home _ Indonesia," said Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Kristiarto Legowo.

Prosecutors said Thursday that Varsha Sabhnani's mother, who lives in Indonesia, tried to make the case go away by bribing a son-in-law of one of the servants with the equivalent of $2,500. They also said Varsha Sabhnani had earlier told the other victim that her husband, who still lives in Indonesia, would be arrested unless she followed orders.

"The defendants operated a torture house," federal prosecutor Mark Lesko said. "They are capable of acts of violence."...

...Legowo said the two women came from Indonesia's West Java province and were brought to the New York area in 2002 by Varsha Sabhnani, who was born in Indonesia and speaks Indonesian...

...Prosecutors said the women were beaten, scalded and forced to climb stairs repeatedly and take as many as 30 showers in three hours _ all as punishment for perceived misdeeds. They said one was forced to eat 25 hot chili peppers at one time.

They have since been cared for by Catholic Charities, according to a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement...

The steep decline in CAIR membership is directly correlated in membership receipts (line 3 of the Form 990), which dropped off from $119,029 in 2004 to $65,377 – a decrease of $53,652, or almost half (45 percent) of the previous year’s membership revenues. If this trend continues at the same pace, their 2006 Form 990 numbers will show $29,419 in membership revenues, representing only 1,177 members, roughly comparable to the membership of the Genealogical Society of Rockingham County, Virginia and the Garden Club of Tacoma, Washington – neither of which has a Washington DC lobbying office...

Israel supporters came out in droves to the home of the New England Patriots on Sunday to participate in the revamped New England Celebrates Israel event. Held at the Dana-Farber Field House at Gillette Stadium, the event – known formerly as Boston Celebrates Israel – was an all-day bazaar, showcasing the best of what both the Jewish state and the local Jewish community have to offer.

Presented by Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston and Gillette Stadium, the event kicked off at 1 p.m. And while an early rainstorm dampened many attendees on their way from the security tent to the indoor facility, the mood inside the complex was festive.

“I’ve been in this field house many times,” said Myra Kraft, chairwoman of the board at CJP, “and I can honestly say that I’ve never seen … a better example of a community – or a team – coming together for a purpose.”

The Dana-Farber Field House, the Patriots’ practice facility, was donated for use at the event by Pats owner Robert Kraft, who – along with his wife, Myra – welcomed the crowd of more than 9,000 from the main stage...

Demonstrators' plans include a street theater performance about Card's efforts to manage the White House's unwarranted and probably illegal wire-tapping program, as well as his active role in the White House Iraq Group (along with Karl Rove, Conoleeza Rice and Scooter Libby) in promoting the U.S. invasion of Iraq on the basis of information known to be false.

Students dressed as a "wire-tapping intelligence team" will attempt to wire-tap University of Massachusetts president Jack Wilson's office (225 Franklin Street). Others will stage a "die-in" as a reminder of Andrew Card's participation in selling a war that has taken the lives of 650,000 Iraqis and 3400 Americans so far, not to mention more than 25,000 wounded U.S. soldiers and
contractors.

The demonstration will begin on Wednesday, May 23, at 12:30 p.m. at the State House. Protesters will march to 225 Franklin Street through the financial district. The wiretapping, die-in and other protests at President Wilson's office will begin at 1 p.m.

Please, Boston residents!! join us at an event supported by umass students, faculty and staff and local and statewide anti-war coalitions and community members. This is the largest collaboration and campaign to come from the umass campus and community in years. There is just too much wrong with the proposal to honor someone like Card.

Katherine Mallory
STPEC Internship Advisor
E-27 Machmer Hall, UMass
stpecinternship (at) sbs.umass.edu
office: 413-545-0043

Where are the promised performers? Where are the puppets? Whom do I complaint? Well, they did seem to have couple small drum-like objects when they started walking down the street.

"Students dressed as a "wire-tapping intelligence team" Aahh, that's why they were in cheap black suits...

Steven Weinberg, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, had been invited to Imperial College in July to speak in honour of a Pakistani physicist, Abdus Salam, and to deliver a talk at a conference on particle physics.

But today in a letter to his host at Imperial, Michael Duff, Prof Weinberg said he was withdrawing from the trip.

In the letter, the professor said his decision was triggered by an agreement by the National Union of Journalists at its national conference to boycott Israeli products.

He wrote: "I know that some will say that these boycotts are directed only against Israel, rather than generally against Jews.

"But given the history of the attacks on Israel and the oppressiveness and aggressiveness of other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, boycotting Israel indicated a moral blindness for which it is hard to find any explanation other than anti-semitism."

A spokeswoman for Imperial said it was "very sad" about the professor's decision.

Prof Weinberg said the only other reason he could imagine for the boycott was the NUJ's "desire to pander to the growing Muslim minority in Britain".

This is the second time Prof Weinberg, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 1979, has cancelled a visit to a UK university because of Israeli boycotts...

MAY 24--In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images, which you'll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. Photos of those items can be seen here. The images, which were just declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an "al-Qaeda torture chamber." It was there, during an April 24 raid, that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain. According to the military, he had been abducted from his job and was being beaten daily by his captors. In a raid earlier this week, Coalition Forces freed five Iraqis who were found in a padlocked room in Karmah. The group, which included a boy, were reportedly beaten with chains, cables, and hoses. Photos showing injuries sustained by those captives can be found here.

Hamas ideology, as expressed in the Hamas Charter, sees Hamas as part of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood (Article 2) that seeks world Islamic domination. Israel is said to exist on territory that is Islamic Waqf (Article 11) and therefore Islam demands that Israel be destroyed. Accepting Israel's existence is a violation of Islamic law (Article 13).

The Hamas charter presents the killing of Jews as God's will, and the inevitable extermination of Jews as coinciding with the "Hour of Resurrection" (Article 7). The charter expresses eagerness to participate in and promote this killing of Jews: "Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah's promise [killing Jews] whatever time it might take" (Article 7). Finally, violence and terror (called "resistance") are presented as legitimate tools.

All of these principles continue to be stated regularly by Hamas leadership and in the official Hamas media throughout May 2007.

Part 1: Islamic supremacy over the world
Part 2: Destruction of Israel
Part 3: Demonization and extermination of Jews
Part 4: Promoting terror, suicide terror, and violence...

The CBS Corporation Web site states that CBS is "committed to the highest standards of ethics and integrity in all that we do..." If that's the case, there should be no question about CBS urging its important publishing subsidiary to institute ethical standards that assure accuracy in the production of non-fiction books.

S&S VP of Corporate Communications Adam Rothberg is quoted by the Sun on the controversy saying the publishing company "recognizes and accepts that readers may disagree with the facts and opinions as presented by its authors." What Rothberg doesn't evidently recognize and accept is that Simon and Schuster bears any responsibility for the factual integrity of "non-fiction" books it prints, promotes and profits from. S&S continues to cast itself as immune from accountability.

After a long career at Pakistan Television, Tashbih's differences with the Zia ul-Haq regime in Pakistan (which gave the Islamization of Pakistan its first great boost) led him to come to the United States, where he founded two newspapers, Pakistan Today and Muslim World Today, and wrote eight books, including Mohammad – A Secularist's View. He appeared in documentaries including Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. He was the President and founder of The Council for Democracy and Tolerance, an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute, and a member of the Jihad Watch Board.

Tashbih was insightful, humorous, and above all, fearless in his opposition to the jihad ideology of Islamic supremacism. Despite numerous threats and a relentless barrage of insults and personal attacks, he kept on trying to awaken the world to the magnitude of the threat we face, never trimming his truth-telling to fit current fashion.

He was a dear friend, and he will be greatly missed.

May his memory be eternal.

Is it possible that the young ended up looking more radical simply because they are naturally less concerned with how their community may be perceived and therefore more truthful?...

You just have to see this to believe it, so here's a screen shot. It's from the Web site of Amnesty International USA, a group we thought wanted to be taken seriously:

It's for real. Click the image above to see the full screen shot, or on the headline atop this item to see the original page (assuming some adult hasn't stepped in and taken it down).

"When you are banned from many of the opportunities given to others, like studying, working, and the basics of living in dignity, just because you do not make hypocritical displays [of loyalty] to corrupt high officials and do not flatter the clerics who enjoy the favors of the regime - beware not to think that this is a Western conspiracy that has been hatched against you; this is a product of your own country.

"When all the years of your life are stolen from you… and your vitality, your mind, and your soul are wrested away, all in the name of religion, customs, traditions… and an outmoded heritage - and you know that this has usurped your right to life - don't weep and don't cry, and don't imagine that this is a Western conspiracy against you; these are actions and behaviors that are a product of your own country.

"When everything around you, around the clock, reminds you that you are a worthless human being in the view of the political or religious powers, and that you and the soil on which your shoe treads are equals, for the sole reason of your being the citizen of an Arab land - this is the height of arbitrary [rule]. But know that this is not a Western conspiracy that has been hatched against you; this is a product of your own country…

As we all know, prayer for Christian minorities throughout the world is appropriate every day of the year, especially for those Christians who are being persecuted or are forced to live as second class citizens in countries governed by Islamic law.

In this regard, however, some of us believe that the selected week for the PCUSA sponsored Week of Prayer and Witness with Christians in the Middle East may possibly reflect the desire on the part of pro-Palestine activists within the PCUSA to project an attitude of "solidarity" with all Palestinians since the PCUSA week of prayer was timed to precede shortly before the secular Palestinian plans for "Six Days of Action against the Occupation of Palestine" from June 6-12, 2007 to "mark forty years since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Six Day War". Some PCUSA pro-Palestine activists have even used the Arabic term " Nakba" meaning “catastrophe” to describe the results of the 1967 "Six Day War".

For those who want to access reference materials as a supplement to and/or as an alternative to the reference materials produced by the PCUSA for this week of prayer for Christians in the Middle East, please refer to the resource materials developed and produced by Rev. James Berkley, Director of Presbyterian Action for Faith and Freedom at the Institute on Religion and Democracy [here].

"The number of publications devoted to Israel (excluding urgent actions) (48 documents) is significantly higher than other countries in the region, such as Hizbullah (17 documents), the Palestinian Authority (10 documents), Saudi Arabia (2 documents). The number of documents (excluding urgent actions related to Israel) (48) is even higher than the number of significant publications by Amnesty on Sudan (37)," the report said.

NGO Monitor also examined Amnesty's record during the Second Lebanon War, and concluded that the human rights organization was guilty of double standards in its treatment of Hizbullah and Israel.

Amnesty accused "Israel of targeting residential areas without mentioning Hizbullah's systematic practice of operating from within civilian areas," the report said, adding: "Many of Amnesty's claims regarding the Lebanon War were false or severely lacking in credibility."

In addition, "no statements or documents of any type were issued condemning Hizbullah for abducting two Israeli soldiers, despite Amnesty's core mission of promoting freedom for political prisoners," the NGO Monitor report said...

In debate, it can become easy to lose the focus of the argument when resorting to criticism based on identity rather than on ideology. For example, so many Islamists locally and nationally resort to attempting to demonize me as an individual rather than deal with my anti-Islamist ideas as a Muslim and as an American. Our Islamist enemy dreams about uniting all Muslims under one nation—the transnational Muslim ummah. To declare our ideological battle against Islam is to hand them the easiest tool toward that unification (ummah-tization) strategy for which they dream and to dismiss our most potent weapon against the jihadists—anti-Islamist Muslims who can lead a counter-jihad from within the Islamic community. Only anti-Islamists Muslims can de-ummahtize the Muslim community and articulate an Islam, which inspires morality but leaves national politics to the governments of our nations...

With civil war raging in Gaza, an Associated Press dispatch includes this interesting observation:

Hamas mounted accusations on its Web sites, radio and TV that Abbas-linked forces were working with Israel--a charge dismissed as "absurd" by a Fatah spokesman.

Yasser Arafat is in stable condition after dying at a Paris hospital, and Mahmoud Abbas is his successor as head of the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah political/terrorist movement. Fatah says it's "absurd" that it would be working with Israel against the terrorists of Hamas--but that of course was the entire point of the Oslo accords. It's a sad little postscript to President Clinton's peace efforts.

“It’s such an honor for Barnes and Noble to provide books, games, and toys to members of the military community as a way to say thank you for all their services,” Marie Toulantis, chief executive officer of BarnesandNoble.com, said at a news conference during the Joint Services Open House here. “We’re very thankful to … all those involved in the America Supports You program for helping us get our gift to military members.”

The donation totaled $3.4 million and has benefited nine America Supports You home-front groups and military-affiliated nonprofit organizations.

America Supports You is a Defense Department program connecting citizens and corporations with military personnel and their families serving at home and abroad.

The journey that actually moved about 22 tractor-trailer loads of goods from Barnes and Noble to the various groups wouldn’t have happened without the network America Supports You has established, said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense for internal communication and public liaison, the architect of the America Supports You program...

CAIR-NY has contacted Barnes & Noble about this issue. A news release issued today by the author’s agent stated:

“The previously announced book reading and signing of THE SCAR OF DAVID by Susan Abulhawa originally scheduled for Thursday, May 24, 2007, at 7:30 p.m. at the Bayside, N.Y., Barnes & Noble has been reduced to a "book signing" with no reading to occur.

“In explaining its reasoning, Barnes & Noble expressed several concerns including ‘sensitivity’ to the Jewish Community, space limitations of the store and the author's safety. Prior to the event at Barnes & Noble, Ms. Abulhawa is also expected to appear at Kingsboro Community College (Brooklyn - 4:15-5PM) where THE SCAR OF DAVID was required reading in a literature course this semester.

“The Scar of David is a work of historic fiction which reveals the untold brutal history of Israel's Occupation of a nation as also depicted by the recently released PALESTINE, Peace Not Apartheid by former USA President Jimmy Carter. Set in the lap of one of the 20th century’s most intractable political conflicts, through the course of this story, a Palestinian boy grows up as a Jewish Israeli, tangled in a truth he cannot reconcile, a would-be suicide bomber is given a name, a face, and life of a man pushed to grave limits, an Arab girl of pious and humble beginnings lives the 'American Dream,' and a nation of destitute refugees is forced to live under the general label of 'terrorists.'...

In another poll recently, respondents were asked whether they personally wanted Bush's new security strategy in Iraq to succeed -- not whether they expected it to, but whether they wanted it to. Among Democrats, a stunning 49 percent either hoped that the US plan would fail or couldn't make up their minds...

...PS: In his research for this essay, Berman unearthed a fascinating exchange on the stoning of women in Islam between Ramadan and Nicolas Sarkozy. You will certainly want to read this.

He said that the Egyptian government is at a loss regarding the future of the Gaza Strip. However, he also proclaimed that Egypt is making great efforts to end the Hamas government and support Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

"With Hamas no way," he reportedly said.

Mubarak painted a dark picture of the situation with Hamas and said there was no chance for peace with the organization. "Hamas will never sign a peace agreement with Israel if it stays in power," the Egyptian president said.

Mubarak also said that Egypt did not accept Hamas in power, especially in light of its growing ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, which leads the opposition in Egypt. Mubarak sees the Brotherhood, which gained considerable power in Egypt's last parliamentary elections, as a threat to secular power...

1. Hamas has won every confrontation since fighting started Sunday. Its military dominance and supremacy are clear. Nearly all the fatalities have been from Hamas attacks. Even the five Hamas militants killed Wednesday died in an assault by their comrades against a Fatah force that took them hostage. Hamas is conducting itself like a military organization: It moves its forces, positions snipers, uses light artillery (mortars, for example), sets up ambushes in strategic locations, and systematically targets Fatah's leadership in the Gaza Strip, based on hit lists it has drafted.

2a. Fatah's leadership vacuum is the main reason for the group's defeat in the current round. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is still not showing signs of leadership. He is still afraid to take definitive action against Hamas, even though Hamas is harming the symbols of his authority. Last night he issued a statement, again, ordering a cease-fire, even though most of his men have been on the defensive since the fighting began and have not initiated action...

Mazab Bashir, 25, from the Deir el-Balah refugee camp in Gaza, began working for Doctors Without Borders five years ago and received a permit from the IDF to travel to Jerusalem for work...

Modern Religious Discourse is Different from the Religious Discourse of the Prophet

Interviewer: "Do you think that modern religious discourse differs from the religious discourse of the Prophet?"

Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari: "Of course. The proof is in the pudding. Today, there is a lot of extremism, a wave of extremism. This religious discourse has not managed to improve the youth, and this crisis proves it."

[...]

"This discourse does not address human beings as human beings. We lack what I call the 'culture of humanity.' We want to make our youth love human beings as human beings, before they love them for being Muslim or non-Muslim, Shi'ite or Sunni."

[...]

"The purpose of jihad is to respond to aggression and to eliminate injustice. The greater Jihad is the Jihad of the soul, of development, of education - so we can live - not just die - for the sake of Allah. Can what is happening in Algeria, Morocco, and Iraq be called jihad? A youth in the prime of life puts on an explosive belt, and blows himself up among innocent people, and you call this jihad and martyrdom?"

[...]

"The religious discourse generates a crisis. You go to a mosque, listen to the Friday prayer, and you return a bundle of nerves, feeling hostile toward civilization and society, because the sermons focus on the negative aspects of society, and inflate them."

Interviewer: "So what needs to be done?"

Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari: "We need to focus on the beautiful aspects of life and society. Not everything in life is tragic. You should make people love life. I would like the religious scholars, through their religious discourse, to make our youth love life, and not death."

Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari: "At least I’d feel free. I said that this does not diminish the respect I feel for Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi, even though I disagree with him on certain political and ideological issues. Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi supports the view that the West is our enemy, that America is an enemy, and that we should place a ban on... I don’t agree. This does not serve our interests. I have said so in all my articles. For example, he said that dialogue with the Jews should only take place by means of human bombs. I object to this. I support dialogue even with the Jews, even with the enemy. The Prophet conducted a dialogue with his most bitter enemies. How can one say that dialogue should be conducted by means of human bombs?"

Interviewer: "But Yusra has a negative attitude towards the Jews too."

Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari: "Holding a negative view is one thing, and encouraging my children to turn into bombs is another. I criticize Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi for his support of the conspiracy theory whereby the entire world is conspiring against us. I criticize him for his claim that the West and America are enemies, and that we should ban them. When he organized a campaign to ban American products, I disagreed with him."

...The archaeology of ancient Israel is hotly contested terrain, with pitched battles currently raging over such issues as whether a centralized Israelite kingdom emerges in the tenth century or the ninth, and weather or not Eilat Mazar has uncovered a tenth-century royal Judean building. I am not, however, aware of a single archaeologist or historian who would support Abu El Haj’s contention that the Israelite kingdoms are mere fiction constructs, the Jewish “nation’s origin myth,” comparable, that is, to the Aeneid, or the founding of Japan by the sun goddess.

This sort of silliness would ordinarily be dismissed as mere crank writing – heaven knows no academic discipline is subject to a greater output of crank scholarship than archaeology – except for the fact that this book is published by the University of Chicago Press and based on a PhD dissertation accepted by Duke University. We are forced to conclude that theories historians and archaeologists regard as daft are actually seen as plausible by at least some anthropologists.

Amusingly, Abu El Haj is something of a positivist when it comes to the myths of Palestinian nationhood. All Israelis are part of a definitionally illegitimate “settler colonial society;” strident nationalism drives Israelis to commit every kind of crime including the destruction of non-Jewish artifacts; this contrasts with the ethical archaeological stewardship displayed by Palestinians, especially the Waqf, held up here as the embodiment of best practice; and when Palestinians do deliberately venerable sites - “looting (Joseph’s Tomb) and setting it alight” – their actions are to be “understood” and excused...

Soon afterward, Mayer lost her job and her home in Indiana. She was out of work for nearly three years. And when she complained to federal courts that her free-speech rights had been violated, the courts replied, essentially, that as a public school teacher she didn't have any.

As a federal appeals court in Chicago put it in January, a teacher's speech is "the commodity she sells to an employer in exchange for her salary." The Bloomington, Ind., school district had just as much right to fire Mayer, the court said, as it would have if she were a creationist who refused to teach evolution.

The ruling was legally significant. Eight months earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had decided in a case involving the Los Angeles district attorney's office that government employees were not protected by the First Amendment when they faced discipline for speaking at work about controversies related to their jobs. The Chicago appeals court was the first to apply the same rationale to the classroom, an issue that the Supreme Court expressly left unresolved.

But legal analysts said the Mayer ruling was probably less important as a precedent than as a stark reminder that the law provides little protection for schoolteachers who express their beliefs.

As far as the courts are concerned, "public education is inherently a situation where the government is the speaker, and ... its employees are the mouthpieces of the government," said Vikram Amar, a professor at UC's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Whatever academic freedom exists for college teachers is "much, much less" in public schools, he said...

...The Mayer ruling was disappointing but not surprising, said Michael Simpson, assistant general counsel of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union. For the last decade, he said, federal courts "have not been receptive to arguments that teachers, both K-12 and higher education, have free-speech rights in the classroom."...

..."Teachers bring their creativity, their energy, their skill in teaching the curriculum, but ... a teacher in K-12 is really not at liberty to design a curriculum," said Negrón, who filed arguments with the court in Mayer's case supporting the Bloomington school district. "That's the function of the school board."...

..."Teachers hire out their own speech and must provide the service for which employers are willing to pay," a three-judge panel of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Jan. 24. "The Constitution does not entitle teachers to present personal views to captive audiences against the instructions of elected officials."

Mayer, the court said, was told by her bosses that she could teach about the war "as long as she kept her opinions to herself." Like the Los Angeles district attorney's employee whose demotion led to the Supreme Court's 2006 ruling, the appellate panel said, Mayer had no constitutional right to say anything on the job that conflicted with her employer's policy...

If passed, the bill, known commonly as the 'John Doe' protection legislation, would grant immunity to anyone who alerted transportation security to actions believed to be threatening or to any personnel that "takes reasonable action to mitigate such activity."

"We cannot have Americans thinking twice when it comes matters of national security," said Congressman Pearce. "If a passenger sees something threatening, they should report it immediately and do so without the specter of potential prosecution hanging over their head."

"Alert Americans are often our first and last line of defense in protecting the country from terrorist attacks. They should not face potential prosecution for doing the right thing and coming forward to report suspicious activity.

"It is a sad commentary that this kind of common sense has to be written into law, but we must make it clear to America's enemies that they can not exploit our system of justice."...

The lawmaker in question is Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He thinks that granting tipsters immunity amounts to racial and religious profiling. Yes, that's the Democrats' "homeland security" pointman in the House speaking.

For two months, Mr. Thompson has deployed the profiling argument against this measure, tucked into the House transportation-security bill. The good news is that a bipartisan House majority already passed it 304-121 seven weeks ago. But sadly, Mr. Thompson is expected to strip it from the bill. He is expected to be the lead House negotiator in the coming weeks when the bill reaches conference committee, and if he is, he will have considerable sway over the final product...

The 67-year-old, a member of the opposition Socialist Party, was approached by Mr Sarkozy over the last few days and "is ready to enter the government", they said.

According to Le Monde newspaper, he was to see Mr Sarkozy overnight for talks based on a future minister's range of responsibilities...

...Mr Kouchner is famous for developing the theory of "humanitarian intervention" to justify international action against dictators who flout human rights.

In the run-up to the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he was strongly critical of French policy which he said had encouraged the US and Britain to go to war without UN backing.

The progress is very real. But the potential for a disaster is also real. During the last mission I went on with the Brits, we lost two soldiers to IEDs. There were civilians around who clearly knew what happened: 48 IEDs had been put out for us and killed the guys that came behind the vehicle I was riding in. (The enemy let us pass, then hit a convoy.) The potential was there for reprisal, but the British leadership was strong and the soldiers were very professional...

In view of this, I was concerned by the results of a recently released survey conducted last fall in Iraq that revealed an apparent unwillingness on the part of some US personnel to report illegal actions taken by fellow members of their units. The study also indicated that a small percentage of those surveyed may have mistreated noncombatants. This survey should spur reflection on our conduct in combat...

..."Don't you feel ashamed that out of the 500 leading universities worldwide, there isn't a single Arab university? What are you people doing about this? Among the 500 leading universities in the world, there is no Arab university, no Arab institute."...

..."These are not universities. In the words of my friend Faysal, these are taming cages, corrals in which you confine people and teach them some slogans, and they clap their hands, and that's it."...

...Faysal Al-Qassem, host: "Isn't it unfair to describe the distinguished Arab universities as cages, pounds, and corrals?"

Nidhal Naisa: "What have they produced, Faysal? Have they produced a bomb with which to fight those 'infidels' and 'Crusaders'?"

Faysal Al-Qassem: "You mean in inverted commas..."

Nidhal Naisa: "Of course. Have you produced anything? What have you produced? Even an aspirin pill you import from the West, to this day. Even bread and medicine you import. What have you been doing at these universities? This indicates that these universities are not centers of production, but cages and corrals." [...]

Faysal Al-Qassem: "Is it conceivable to say that the Arab environment is a terrorist environment?"

Nidhal Naisa: "Of course. If these people had been brought up in an environment supporting human rights and love for the 'other,' an environment that glorifies love and brotherhood, rather than killing, we wouldn't be seeing these... People have turned into time bombs. Why? Because the horizons of these people are blocked."...

..."Dr. Faysal, the ruling authorities, the current dictatorships, have a monopoly on power, on politics, on natural resources, and on everything. There are no sports clubs, no Internet cafes, or places people can go to. There is nothing but hell on earth, so a person goes and throws himself in this hell. If there was a proper sports club where he could release his youthful energy, he wouldn't go to Afghanistan, brother. It is the nature of human beings to love life, but the blocked horizons, the persecution, the oppression, and the exploitation turn a human being into a time bomb, and make him blow himself up [in order to kill] the 'other.' The culture of hostility towards the 'other' is what has caused this."...

Vedrine is a well-known and not-much-beloved personage in Jerusalem, having served as foreign minister under prime minister Lionel Jospin from 1997-2002.

During the height of the Palestinian violence that began in September 2000, Vedrine advocated economic sanctions against Israel within the EU...

...in a January interview with the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper, Vedrine said that "Palestinians... endure misfortune and utter chaos, viewed as the outcome of a policy suggested by the US and Israeli right-wing parties."

While Sarkozy has repeatedly said that he would not legitimize Hamas or Hizbullah by entering into dialogue with them, and that the Iranian threat must be met with unity and firmness by European leaders, Vedrine voiced another approach.

"With respect to France, I always call for keeping dialogue channels open with Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas. I would not be the least be stunned should France follow this path," he said. ..

Farfur, star of the Al Aqsa TV children’s show Tomorrow’s Pioneers, was joined on the broadcast by his regular co-host, a little girl named Saraa. The program also featured an adult, Hazim, who delivered most of the show’s messages about Islamic supremacy...

Hazem: "Why did you cheat?"

Farfur: "It was against my will, uncle Hazem, because the Jews destroyed our home, and when the Jews destroyed our home I couldn’t find my notebooks."

Hazem: "By Allah's will, we will promote through Islam good, love and justice. Ask history, and ask the Jews, did they ever live in a time period better than the one they live under Islam. And ask the Christians how their security was assured in the churches and monasteries...Once we were! Do you remember Andalus [Spain and Portugal]? This dear Andalus will return one day.

Sara: We remind you dear kids, that the glory and the civilization of the [Islamic] nation, you shall restore!

In a long interview on Hamas TV, Hazim Al-Sha’arawi, Deputy Director of Al-Aqsa TV and one of the creators of the Hamas children’s TV show Tomorrow’s Pioneers, said that using the program to promote Islamic rule over other religions is actually promoting “justice, goodness and world love.”...

Al-Sha’arawi said in yesterday’s interview that he wants to raise Palestinian children so that they can achieve "Islam's natural place" of world rule – in essence saying that although the Christians and Jews do not understand this yet, Islamic world rule is really best for them as well.

From interview of Hazem Al-Sha’arawi, Deputy Director of Al-Aqsa [Hamas] TV:

"What is being asked, so that the Americans and Zionists will be satisfied with you, is to follow their lead … We [on this program] have a message, and we understood from the beginning that it is a difficult path... But we were sure that we had to go this way, because this [young] generation needs someone to direct it …and this generation is the most worthy of the position of leadership…

Let’s ask history: …which time period was good to all communities? The Jews lived in the time of Islam [under Islamic rule] and were happy. The Christians lived in the time of Islam [under Islamic rule] and were happy. Look at the history, the prophet [Muhammad]… ordered the army: ‘Do not kill a monk in his prayer room.’ Even the Caliph Umar Bin Al-Khattab, [Islamic conqueror of Jerusalem in 638] when he came into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, he secured the churches and the prayer rooms. Therefore, when we talk [on the program] about the mission of the restoration of Islam to its natural place [of world rule], we [are] calling for justice, and for goodness, and for world love… so that the Christians will live in peace, and that even the Jews will live in peace and security.”

"There's nothing unusual about the latest discovery, which is no different from previous ones," a senior official in the ministry said.

The official claimed that the discovery was lacking in "scientific credibility" and showed that there were ideological motives behind the dramatic announcement earlier this week...

For two years in Independence, a Jewish family called the Viners lived next door to Truman's family. As Sarah Viner much later recalled, her brother Abe was "very close friends" with the future president: "Harry was always over at our house ... I think this was his first contact with Jewish people." On the Sabbath, when observant Jews could not do household chores, Harry served as the Viners' "Shabbos goy."

While a 16-year-old student at Independence High School, young Truman was assigned to write about Shylock, Shakespeare's Jewish villain in "The Merchant of Venice," in an essay discovered in 2000. Given vast potential for indulging in anti-Semitism when writing of Shylock, Truman viewed the Jewish people with unexpected sympathy: "We cannot blame Shylock for getting money as a means for revenge upon those who persecuted him. He was not a miser, and if one of his own nation had been in trouble, he would have helped him as quickly as a Christian would help a Christian ... I never saw Jew, Christian or any other man who, if he had the chance, wouldn't take revenge."

Truman went on to insist that no one "except the Hebrews" had "ruled" the world, then "when they fell," remained "a distinct people." He wrote that after 2,000 years, the Jews were "a nation apart from nations ... persecuted for their religion," still "waiting for a leader" to gather their "scattered people."...

The poet and grammarian Philetas of Cos reportedly wasted away and died of insomnia while brooding about the Liar paradox.

George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence reportedly was executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine[9] at his own request.

Tailor Franz Reichelt fell to his death off the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, the coat parachute. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute and he'd told the authorities in advance he would test it first with a dummy.

After researching information contained in U.S. wartime records, specialists from DPMO’s Joint Commission Support Directorate (JCSD) in 2005 interviewed residents from Dubrovnik and Mihanici village who had information related to WWII aircraft losses in the area. One resident recalled a crash in which one of the crewmen landed on a pile of rocks on Mt. Snijeznica after his parachute failed to open. He said locals buried the individual. Based on witness descriptions of the burial location, the team searched the mountaintop, but was unable to locate the burial site.

Additional JCSD archival research in Croatia confirmed the earlier information found in U.S. records. In June 2006, the Dubrovnik resident reported to JCSD that he had continued the search and found the grave site of the American serviceman. He sent pictures of both the site and the remains to DPMO. In September 2006, a Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) team excavated the burial site, confirming with local villagers that it was the same site photographed by the Dubrovnik resident. The team recovered human remains at the site...

Sultan, president of the Columbus, Ohio-based American Center for Islamic Research and protégé of Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Youssef Al-Qaradawi (described by the Anti-Defamation League as the “Theologian of Terror” and designated by the US Government as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist), whipped up the crowd by condemning the Israeli response to the HAMAS kidnappings and calling for a boycott of Israel, as reported by Qaradawi’s own mouthpiece, Islamonline.net...

Nearly every anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi website denounces Zionists and Israelis as "Khazars." Web chat lists in which Jews defending Israel are dismissed as "Khazar usurpers" are too numerous to count.

The racialism once again in vogue holds that Jews would only have legitimate claims to the right of self-determination in their homeland if they were appropriately Semitic from a racial point of view. Palestine is part of the Semitic racial lebensraum and those who do not possess the correct pure racial markings have no business being there. Racial purity is suddenly the new basis for national rights...

It would be hard to exaggerate how widespread the misuse of the Khazar myth is among those seeking to delegitimize Israel and Jews today. A recent investigation showed nearly 30,000 websites using the Khazar "theory" as a bludgeon against Israel and Zionism.

Some two hundred websites claim to describe a cabal known as the Khazarian Zionist Bolsheviks (KZV). Neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial organizations and websites are particularly fond of the Khazar myth. It is also growing in popularity among left-wing anti-Zionists...

1- structures and semantics: "Yatukkhuna l-Yahuud" is syntactically MSA [Modern Standard Arabic -- "literary Arabic" -S] but semantically Palestinian vernacular par excellence; the verb "yatukh" (to kill) is used almost exclusively by Palestinians to connote the MSA "Yaqtul" (to kill). In any case, whichever way the sentence is translated, the verb "yatukh" means "to kill", NOT "to annihilate". Now, in terms of diction, you can use this one sentence "Yatukhkhuuna l-Yahuud" and mean both "the Jews are killing us" and "they are killing the Jews." But, more important than that is the context: the vermin is definitely inciting hatred and violence against the Jews; s/he exudes this sort venom not only semantically but also in terms of intonation and voice pitch; I'm sure a forensic linguist would spot that out without much effort. We mustn't get hung up on this one sentence; the larger picture is much more frightening than "the Jews are killing us" or "they are killing the Jews." The "beauty" of the Palestinians' "Principles of Hatred" is that they are being normalized and internalized by way of a seemingly anodyne Disney knock off.

2- the show not only promotes "Muslim supremacy" but also "MSA imperialism". It addresses young viewers in (and coaxes them to use) MSA rather than their spoken dialects. This not only infuses the young with the language of Koran, but probably also creates a barrier between toddlers and pre-schoolers (who naturally speak their parents' language, i.e. the dialects, NOT MSA), and their parents whom I suspect are largely illiterate in the rigors of MSA and, consequently, unable to challenge the venom spewed in it on the airwaves (because they lack understanding of its language and are unable to limit their children's exposure to it.)

I hope i haven't complicated things further.

Nadia Abu El Haj, has announced her intention to write what her colleague Joseph Massad describes as “a book about the "Zionist movement('s)…desperate contemporary search for Jewish 'genetic markers' " to support "its continued investment in the racial separateness of the Jews." Following are some details about Nadia's use – and misuse – of genetic research by nationalists...

...Someone recently attended a Brown Bag luncheon last spring to hear Abu El Haj speak on “Jews and Arabs: The Shifting Boundaries of Kinship and Difference.” What this person heard was simply chilling...

...She chose to focus on what she called the “Jewish Racial Science” as practiced by Jewish physicians in Mandatory Palestine. Eugenics was fashionable and more than respectable in that era. Today, we look back with horror at a time when respectable people advocated selective breeding and Justices of the United States Supreme Court now recalled with the greatest respect for other decisions they signed, endorsed forced sterilization of the genetically inferior...

...She gave descriptions of these Jewish physicians that made them sound like Joseph Mengele, although the Nazi scientists were not actually discussed, and these eugenist physicians did not sterilize anyone – they merely talked, mostly about who should breed and who should not. No context of the international eugenics movement was discussed, only what was made to appear as the appalling racialism of the Jewish professional class in Mandatory Palestine. The vile racialism and eugenic proposals of that group were alone held up for revulsion. During the discussion period, all questioners appeared to accept that early twentieth century Jewish racial science was a unique phenomenon...

I visited the Harabati Tekke in March for the Central Asian pre-Islamic holiday of Nevruz, a springtime observance that is favored by Sufis. Because the Bektashis have no friends in the Macedonian government who might rescue them from their tormenters, the Wahhabis, whose Kalashnikovs are never far out of sight, have proceeded to occupy more structures in the Harabati Tekke. Bektashis do not perform the normal daily prayers prescribed for Muslims, but the Wahhabis do, and they have taken over a guest house and dubbed it a mosque, broadcasting a tape of the call to prayer in a thick and indistinct voice. They have also seized a central building with glass windows and covered the panes with black paper, on the pretext that women praying inside do not want to be observed. And they have cut down some ancient trees, to the Sufis' disgust.

Thus, the Albanian lands are witnessing three of the tactics commonly employed by Saudi-financed radicals seeking to export bloody terror. In Kosovo, they mainly burrow deep undercover, like moles. Where they can, as in Albania, they preach and recruit; thus, the stunning Ethem Bey mosque in the capital, Tirana, purely a cultural monument until recently, is now the scene of Wahhabi missionizing. And where government is indifferent and the extremists' chosen enemies appear vulnerable, as in Macedonia, they invade, occupy, and threaten.

In long discussions with the Bektashis in Tetovo, I was repeatedly assured of their willingness to assist the United States and other democratic nations in rooting out Islamist radicalism in any way they can, from providing intelligence to encouraging greater Albanian involvement in Iraq, where 120 elite noncombat Albanian troops are serving with Coalition forces...

Nadia Abu El-Haj’s distorted picture of Israeli archaeological practice is not simply a matter of confusion over technical terms, but a conscious strategy of ideologically-motivated misrepresentation. The essential point is that Abu El-Haj’s target is not Israeli archaeology at all, but the existence of Israel itself. She describes the main purpose of her book as ‘analyz[ing] the significance of archaeology to the Israeli state and society and the role it played in the formation and enactment of its colonial-national historical imagination and in the substantiation of its territorial claims’, and exploring the contribution of archaeology to shaping ‘the contours of the so-called “new Hebrew” nation and citizenry’ in Palestine.[22] Israel, for Abu El-Haj, is an invention, an artificial colonial enterprise driven by an ideology, Zionism, within which colonialism and nationalism are intrinsically linked. Facts on the Ground is devoted to her argument that the nationalist archaeological tradition of the Jewish State since 1948 has played a fundamental role in inventing and sustaining the interrelated fictions of ancient and modern Israel. It is as a symbolic epitome of that claim, rather than for itself, that her notion of ‘bulldozer archaeology’ is important to her argument; and on those grounds the archaeological bulldozers of her imagination must be dismissed as an ideologically-driven fiction themselves.

Al-Aqsa TV, April 6-13, 2007:

Host Saraa, a young girl: "Sanabel, what will you do for the sake of the Al-Aqsa Mosque? How will you sacrifice your soul for the sake of Al-Aqsa? What will you do?"

Sanabel, young girl on phone: "I will shoot."

Farfour, a Mickey Mouse character in a tuxedo: "Sanabel, what should we do if we want to liberate..."

Sanable: "We want to fight."

Farfour: "We got that. What else?"

Saraa: "We want to..."

Sanabel: "We will annihilate the Jews."

Saraa: "We are defending Al-Aqsa with our souls and our blood, aren't we, Sanabel?"

Sanabel: "I will commit martyrdom."...

Since there is no evidence for Arab/Muslim national-cultural continuity in the Land of Israel dating to before the Arab conquest of the seventh century, this young woman demands that we level the playing field by pretending that evidence of Jewish national-cultural continuity does not exist either. The modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins" becomes a "pure political fabrication," to be understood as an "ideological assertion comparable to Arab claims of Canaanite or other ancient tribal roots." This eliminates the "hierarchy of credibility" (here she follows Cooper and Stoller, 1997, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World) in which "facticity" is conferred only upon the former.

Unfortunately, Ms. Abu El Haj's approach also eliminates the standards of evidence upon which scholarly work is based...

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced Monday night that it has uncovered the grave and tomb of Herod, who ruled Judea for the Roman empire from circa 37 BCE.

Professor Ehud Netzer of the university's Institute of Archaeology told reporters Tuesday that the tomb was discovered when a team of researchers found pieces of a limestone sarcophagus believed to belong to the ancient king...

The two groups, UN Watch and Freedom House, released reports charging that rights violators such as Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China have shielded themselves — and countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe — from criticism as members of the new group.

The groups said the UN General Assembly is also expected to select several other countries with poor rights records to become new members of the body this month. The groups named Angola, Belarus, Egypt and Qatar as candidate nations that were unqualified for membership because of their poor rights records.

UN Watch, based in Geneva, described the council's first year as "profoundly disappointing."

"Members are supposed to be elected based on their human rights records, yet the council includes persistent violators, and after the upcoming elections is expected to include several more," the UN Watch report said. "The council's record so far is profoundly disappointing."...

Instead, critics say, it has been dominated by African and Muslim countries that have sided with China, Cuba and other countries in preventing criticism of any government but Israel. The United States has also not sought a seat on the council, accusing it of anti-Israel bias.

According to UN Watch, the council has issued 12 country-specific resolutions: nine censures of Israel and three "non-condemnatory" resolutions on Sudan.

Religious fundamentalism is on the rise in Bosnia-Herzegovina. There had not previously been any mass demonstration of this size. But the local media have for some time now noted a marked increase in the activities of the Wahhabi sect, which counts al-Qaida founder Osama Bin Laden among its adherents. Barcic's funeral in Tuzla on March 31 was yet another sign that Wahhabism in Bosnia had ceased to be a marginal phenomenon. According to Resid Hafizovic, a Professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo, the sect represents a "potentially deadly virus" for Bosnian Muslims.

An episode in February caused a particular stir. Jusuf Barcic and a group of his followers wanted to enter the venerable Careva mosque in downtown Sarajevo, in order to perform the Wahhabi prayer rites. For the first time in the over 500 year history of the mosque, the Imam had to lock the doors. Only the arrival of the police could prevent clashes between Barcic's followers and followers of the indigenous Bosnian form of Islam. Already last year, there had been a massive brawl in the town of Kalesija after the Wahhabis occupied the local mosque there and chased off the Imam.

Such incidents remain relatively isolated. But the Islamists are increasingly brazen about their presence. In Sarajevo, for instance, one sees more and more people who respect the fundamentalists' prescripts: men with shaved heads and long beards wearing shin-length pants and women covered from head to foot in long black robes. Wahhabi "vice squads" have already been known sometimes to beat young couples whose public displays of affection violate the Wahhabis' strict moral code. According to a recent survey conducted by Prism Research, nearly 70 percent of the two million Bosnian Muslims reject Wahhabi doctrine. Thirteen percent, however, subscribe to it...

Osama Hamdan: We in the Hamas movement will not accept any solution that would deny us our rights or detract from our principles. In other words, I will not accept a agreement saying that at the end of the day, Haifa, Jaffa, and Acre are Israeli cities, and part of the Israeli land. It should, at the very least, say that these cities cannot be liberated or regained today, but I will not accept any solution that prevents any future Palestinian generation from acting to liberate and regain the rest of the Palestinian land, if the current generation is incapable of accomplishing this...

...This [Zionist] entity is incapable of making peace. This entity is based on plundering and aggression. Seeking peace with it is a waste of time. What should be sought is a true solution, which will restore all the Palestinian rights, and will lead to an end to the existence of this entity in the region.

The squeaky-voiced Mickey Mouse lookalike, named Farfur, is the star of a weekly children’s program called Tomorrow’s Pioneers on the official Hamas TV station (Al-Aqsa TV). Farfur and his co-host, a young girl named Saraa’, teach children about such things as the importance of the daily prayers and drinking milk, while taking every opportunity to indoctrinate young viewers with teachings of Islamic supremacy, hatred of Israel and the US and support of "resistance" – the Palestinian euphemism for terror.

Farfur tells children that they must pray in the mosque five times a day until there is “world leadership under Islamic leadership.” The earnest and soft-spoken Saraa’ explains that the nucleus of this world Islamic leadership will be from “all of Palestine,” i.e., including Israel. Farfur refers to Israel as “the oppressive invading Zionist occupation,” which the children must "resist."

In a religious warning that is striking, considering the young age of the target audience, Saraa’ announces that after death, the children will have to answer to Allah for what they did or did not do for the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and for Palestinian prisoners:

“I remind you that Al-Aqsa and the prisoners are a responsibility on our shoulders, and Allah will ask us on Resurrection Day what we gave for their sake.”

The writing in this show is quite sophisticated. Farfur's performance is unquestionably funny and entertaining, as is the character’s comic timing. For example, as he rhymes off a list of world figures, he chirps: “We will win, Bush! We will win, Condoleezza! We will win, Sharon!” Then, without missing a beat, he quips, “Ah, Sharon is dead” (sic), reinforcing his message that the plan for world domination is progressing.

Using a character based on an appealing, world famous and beloved icon like Mickey Mouse to teach Islamic supremacy and resistance as Islamic duty is a powerful and effective way to indoctrinate children.

The effectiveness of this program is heightened by including child viewers, who phone in to the show and recite poems with images of hate and violence; for example, “We will destroy the chair of the despots, so they will taste the flame of death;” and, "Rafah sings ‘Oh, oh.’ Its answer is an AK-47. We who do not know fear, we are the predators of the forest."

It is unclear what screening process, if any, is used in the selection of the poems to be recited. Either the themes are selected by the screeners, which reinforces the hate orientation of the program, or they are the initiative of the children and parents, which demonstrates the great success of the show's hate messages.

Click here to see selections of Farfur – the Mickey Mouse clone...

Saraa’: “Yes, they are children occupied by the Jews, but with the will of Allah, we will resist and protect against the Zionist occupation.”

...The meeting was pleasant and informative enough, with the courteous British hosts going out of their way to accommodate both sides, yet I was left with a nagging sense of foreboding. I was particularly taken aback when Mr. Nusseibeh, even then widely considered the epitome of Palestinian moderation and a staunch proponent of Arab-Jewish coexistence, turned out to be the most extreme member of the group. Dismissing out of hand the two-state solution — Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — he instead sang the praise of the "one-state paradigm" — a standard catchphrase for Israel's destruction — demanding the incorporation of the West Bank and Gaza population into the Jewish state as full-fledged citizens, to be followed by the refugees from the neighboring Arab states and beyond...

Roosevelt and the United States had enraged Hitler from the beginning of the war, well before the United States had entered it. He was convinced that if Roosevelt had not supported Churchill, Britain would have agreed to a negotiated settlement following the German victories of 1939 and 1940. In the summer of 1941, Roosevelt's decision to offer assistance to the Soviet Union thwarted German hopes for a quick victory on the eastern front. By December 1941, Hitler, who had invaded and occupied most of the countries on the Continent, with the exception of neutral states and his own allies, blamed the war on the president of a country on the other side of the Atlantic. He and his propagandists presented Nazi Germany as the innocent victim of the aggression of others. Hitler never accepted any responsibility for the war that he, and he alone, had initiated and expanded.

Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy, pp.131-132

"They (police) told us not to leave the plane and are not even allowing us to get up from our seats. They have acted in a provocative manner," Palestinian Youth and Sports Minister Basim Naeem told Al Jazeera television by cellphone.

Naeem said police showed him and his bodyguard documents which said he would be denied entry to the Netherlands, where he was due to attend a conference on the Palestinians and Europe in Rotterdam on Saturday.

A Belgian interior ministry spokesperson confirmed he had been turned back.

"We acted on a request from the Dutch," he said. "They were sent back (to Cairo) this afternoon as the Dutch issued the visas by mistake, not knowing they were Hamas members."

Naeem said the Dutch Foreign Ministry had told him his visa was valid, and blamed the incident on what he called the Dutch "Jewish lobby" which supports Israel...

"What happened on the flight was the humiliation of the Palestinian people," Al-Zeer told The Associated Press. "He was not even allowed to go to the toilet."...

Mr. Finkelstein does not do "scholarship" in any meaningful sense. Although his writings center on Israel (which he compares to Nazi Germany) and the Holocaust, he has never visited Israel and cannot read or speak German -- precluding the possibility of original scholarship.

Prof. Bartov characterized his work as an irrational Jewish "conspiracy theory." The conspirators include Steven Spielberg, NBC and Leon Uris. The film "Schindler's List," Mr. Finkelstein argues, was designed to divert attention from our Mideast policy. "Give me a better reason! . . . Who profits? Basically, there are two beneficiaries from the dogmas [of Schindler's List]: American Jews and American administration." NBC, he says, broadcast "Holocaust" to strengthen Israel's position: "In 1978, NBC produced the series Holocaust. Do you believe, it was a coincidence, 1978? Just at this time, when peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt took place in Camp David?" He argues that Leon Uris, the author of "Exodus," named his character "Ari" in order to promote Israel's "Nazi" ideology: "[B]ecause Ari is the diminutive for Aryan. It is the whole admiration for this blond haired, blue eyed type." (Ari is a traditional name dating back to the Bible.) He has blamed Sept. 11 on the U.S., claiming that we "deserve the problem on our hands because some things Bin Laden says are true.") He says that most alleged Holocaust survivors -- including Elie Wiesel -- have fabricated their past.

Like other anti-Semites, Mr. Finkelstein generalizes about "the Jews"; for example: "Just as Israelis . . . courageously put unruly Palestinians in their place, so American Jews courageously put unruly Blacks in their place." He says "the main fomenters of anti-Semitism "are 'American Jewish elites' who need to be stopped." Normally, no one would take such claims seriously, but he boasts that he "can get away with things which nobody else can" because his parents were Holocaust survivors.

And then, of course, there is me. In a recent article, "Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination?" Mr. Finkelstein commissioned a cartoon by a man who placed second in the Iranian Holocaust-denial cartoon contest. The Hustler-type cartoon portrayed me as masturbating in joy while viewing images of dead Lebanese on a TV set labeled "Israel peep show," with a Star of David prominently featured...

We know well that extremist academics have been systematically at work for decades hiring clones of themselves and replicating their ranks. But there has been little public naming and scrutiny of the backgrounds of exactly who has served on the committees responsible for the one-sided cloning and replication.

Learning more about the scholarship and activism of McCloud, for example, strikes me as a worthy enterprise. And, how about similarly checking into who exactly committed the dastardly deed of hiring the disgraced Ward Churchill?...

In recent weeks attacks on Western and Christian targets in the West Bank have also become common. Members of terror cells identified with Al-Qaida-type organizations - compared to whom Hamas people look like boy scouts - are blowing up and destroying institutions linked to Western culture such as the American School, a church library and dozens of Internet cafes...

...Even more obvious is the silence of the human rights organizations that publish reports on the roadblocks and the movement restrictions in the territories, while in the Gaza Strip crimes against women are being committed. Cases of women being beaten happen all the time and do not make headlines; worse than this are the cases of killings for "family honor." In recent months, the corpses of four women who were murdered for this reason have been brought to Gaza hospitals, but the number is higher. Women who are murdered are buried by members of their family in secret, and their deaths are not reported to any official body. The Palestinian media also refrain from reporting on this, for the sake of "family honor."...

The greatness of modern, western-style universities – the thing that separates them from all the academies that went before them – is that facts and theories asserted in universities must be supported by verifiable evidence. At the old academies, an appeal to Aristotle, Confucius, or the Bible was enough to support an idea. In the modern university, theories are judged by Occam’s razor, explanatory value, and verifiability of the supporting facts...

...In her introduction, El-Haj explains that she works by “rejecting a positivist commitment to scientific method,” writing, instead, within a scholarly tradition of “post structuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism and critical theory and … in response to specific postcolonial political movements.” And the particular theory that El-Haj puts forward is that the “ancient Israelite origins” of the Jews is a “pure political fabrication” – a machination she proceeds to blame on “Israeli archaeologists” who were called upon to “produce … evidence of ancient Israelite and Jewish presence in the land of Israel, thereby supplying the very foundation, embodied in empirical form, of the modern nation’s origin myth.”

Deplorably, in the rarified air of Morningside Heights, some Columbia faculty appear to celebrate this sort of “liberation” of scholarship from any necessity to encounter verifiable facts. For example, Keith Moxey, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor Professor of Art History at Barnard College and one of five members of the committee that will vote on El-Haj’s tenure bid, lauds “The abandonment of an epistemological foundation for … history and the acknowledgment that historical arguments will be evaluated according to how well they coincide with our political convictions and cultural attitudes collapses the traditional distinction between history and theory.” (See Moxey’s The Practice of Theory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History.) In other words, evidence, verifiability, probability and explanatory power become irrelevant, for what counts is that an argument “coincide with our political convictions.”...

...In the highly politicized, post-modern world of El-Haj, however, facts are not facts; instead, as she asserts in her book, they are “produced” as part of “the ongoing practice of colonial nationhood … through which historical-national claims, territorial transformations, heritage objects and historicities ‘happen.’” To acknowledge the mass of archaeological evidence and scholarship that establishes the existence of the ancient Israelite kingdoms would be to participate in a scholarly “hierarchy of credibility” in which “facticity is conferred.” Establishing such a hierarchy “privileges a particular kind of evidence.”

Indeed it does. The kind of evidence it privileges is of the old-fashioned kind that used to be known as verifiable fact...

When Dutch citizens returned to their homes in Arnhem the next year, they recovered remains from the Skytrain’s wreckage and buried them in a nearby cemetery. A U.S. Army graves registration team later disinterred the remains which were reburied as group remains in 1950 at the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Kentucky.

In 1994, a Dutch citizen located more human remains and other crew-related materials at a site associated with this C-47 crash. They were eventually turned over to U.S. officials...

In 2001, a joint U.S.-North Korean team, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), excavated a burial site in Kujang County, south of Unsan County. A North Korean citizen living near the site told the team that the remains were relocated to Kujang after they were discovered elsewhere during a construction project. The battle area was about one kilometer north of the secondary burial site...

Following the Armistice, the Chinese Army exhumed remains from several POW camp cemeteries and repatriated them in 1954 to the United Nations forces during Operation Glory. Becker’s remains could not be identified at the time and were subsequently buried as unknown remains at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific—the Punch Bowl—in Hawaii...

The killing of innocent Jews by terrorist attacks is portrayed as Allah’s plan for the benefit of humanity.

It should be noted that Hamas’s justification for the extermination of Jews, both as God's will and for the benefit of humanity, echoes Hitler's words in Mein Kampf:

“In this case the only salvation remaining was war… If the Jew with the help of his Marxist creed is victorious over the peoples of this world, then his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity… Thus I believe today that I am acting according to the will of the almighty Creator: when I defend myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” (Mein Kampf)

In another parallel to the Nazi genocide of Jews, the writer says he wants to be sure that “everyone will know” that these murderous actions are “not of [Hamas’s] own accord” – an echo of the Nazi war criminals’ repeated justification of their actions with the defense that they were only following orders.

The fact that these orders are said to be divine in nature makes Hamas’s justification for the murder of Jews even more ominous.

Following is the excerpt from the Hamas article:

"We find more than once condemnation and denunciation to the resistance operations and bombings [suicide attacks], carried out by Hamas and the Palestinian resistance branches. There is no other choice but to use restraint regarding the condemnation, the attaching of the label of terror [to "resistance"], and the assembling of conferences [for] condemnation [of the attacks]. [This] so that everyone will know, that we did this only because our lord commanded so, “I did it not of my own accord” [*] and so that people will know that the extermination of Jews is good for the inhabitants of the worlds on a land, to which Allah gave his blessing for the sake of the inhabitants of the worlds.” [Al-Risalah, April 23, 2007]

[*] Translation of Quranic verse taken from USC Compendium of Muslim Texts.

Such groundwork proved its value after Israel's historic victory in the Six Day War of 1967, a humiliating defeat for both the Soviet Union and its Arab allies. The subsequent Soviet-Arab propaganda campaign denied Israel the right to defend itself and inverted reality by relentlessly accusing it of aggression. Precisely as Hitler had analyzed in Mein Kampf, if these impudent claims were at first thought insane, in the end they were believed.

Today's political madness, in other words, is directly linked to yesterday's. Might some of today's anti-Zionists be ashamed to realize that their thinking is, however repackaged, but an elaboration of the genocidal deceptions espoused by Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler? Might they then abandon these views?

Al-Hurra was intended to cut through the anti-West and anti-U.S. propaganda that permeates even mainstream Arab media. Stories in that vein no longer see significant airtime, and nowhere is this more apparent than Al-Hurra's new approach to the Holocaust--the treatment of which in Arab society embodies so much that is wrong in that critical region of the Muslim world.

It is precisely because of Arab society's persistent refusal to accept the existence of such a defining--and indisputable--event in modern history that Al-Hurra dared to do things Al-Jazeera would never fathom, such as interviewing Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and airing the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. But that was under Mr. Register's predecessor, a Lebanese-born Muslim named Mouafac Harb.

Under Mr. Register, Al-Hurra covered the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran last December. But in a stark break from Mr. Harb's era, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the attendees at his conference were treated with unmistakable deference.

Al-Hurra's Dec. 12 report on the gathering included David Duke's praise for Mr. Ahmadinejad, and it took at face value the organizers' demand for Israel "to provide proof and evidence that certifies the occurrence" of the Holocaust. An official running the event was afforded the opportunity to show the open-mindedness of Holocaust deniers: "If we actually conclude with our experts through this meeting that the Holocaust is a real incident we will at that time admit its presence." (Transcript provided by a fluent Arabic-speaking U.S. government employee.)...

Come ride a camel! Enjoy an Israeli music festival with Ziv Eitan, Smadar Levi and ESTA. Sample some fine Israeli wine. Eat a few falafel. Watch a professional Israeli Flag Football game.

This free event has something for everyone – archaeological digs and a mini-Maccabi for kids, opportunities for teens to learn the new self-defense craze Krav Maga, a great Shop Israel, and Israeli dancing for all.

Celebrate the best that Israel has to offer, from technology to tourism.

Not sure how to get to Gillette? Visit www.celebrateisrael.org for directions (parking is free), to sign up for free bus service (rsvp’s are required), and to check out the day’s activities.

I look forward to seeing you there.

AND…. PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL ON TO YOUR FRIENDS! HELP SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THIS FABULOUS EVENT!

CJP welcomes those who would like to connect with the Jewish community and encourages the participation of interfaith families, couples and significant others in all its activities. Dietary laws observed. Kosher food prepared and sold by Gillette in cooperation with Catering By Andrew under the supervision of the VAAD

Presented by
Combined Jewish Philanthropies
Gillette Stadium

“Dissent is tied to justice, justice tied to dignity,” said Harvard Professor Sarah Roy, who introduced Finkelstein. “Today, there is a war against dissent… our right to oppose has been stigmatized and devalued.” She also claimed that Finkelstein cut through “the artificial web of complexity” surrounding the Middle East Conflict...

Ironically, it is the very goal of open discourse and academic freedom that has led organizations such as Campus Watch (a "concerned citizen group" for which I work) to criticize the preponderance of politicized professors in Middle East studies. The Brown University workshop only reflects the one-sided approach to Middle East studies that exists in departments across the country.

The viewpoints represented at this event are far from excluded anywhere in academia. The spin that the dominant voices in the field face repression is positively Orwellian. It is normally pro-American and pro-Israel speakers who are left out of the equation. Proving the point, Blogger Omri Ceren of Mere Rhetoric quotes a member of a campus group at Brown on the workshop:

"There are no pro-Israel speakers, and neither Hillel nor Brown Students for Israel were even asked for input on a conference about the future of Middle East Studies."

The two workshop organizers hardly inspire confidence in a fair and impartial inquiry. Elliott Colla is associate professor of comparative literature and director of Middle East studies at Brown, and Marsha Pripstein Posusney is professor of political science at Bryant University and an adjunct professor of international relations at Brown. Colla was a signatory to a conspiracist open letter, penned in 2002 and signed by a number of academics, claiming that Israel would use the war in Iraq to commit "ethnic cleansing" against the Palestinians. Colla was one of the speakers at an event following an anti-war rally earlier this year in Rhode Island, where he maintained that Iran "doesn't pose a threat to the United States." He also took part in a 2004 panel discussion on "Censoring Campuses" at Columbia in which he made the predictable claim that academic freedom was "being attacked," no doubt in reference to the perceived threat of outside criticism...

Muhammad Ali-Salaam, the BRA's deputy director for special projects, wrote to Esam Mudeer shortly after the Saudi television executive had met with Menino in Boston in 1998 to discuss the mosque project.

On BRA letterhead, Ali-Salaam wrote that after Mudeer's meeting with Menino, the mayor "demonstrated his support for our efforts" and that Dr. Walid Al-Fitaihi, then trustee of the Islamic Society, suggested to BRA director Thomas O'Brien that he "visit the Kingdom."

O'Brien agreed, according to Ali-Salaam's letter, and the BRA staff recommended that the mayor, three of his aides, and two political allies also be included on the trip. "The necessary protocol and planning for such a venture is beyond my capacity, and I request your assistance," Ali-Salaam wrote.

He said the people who would participate in the trip -- in addition to Ali-Salaam, Menino, and O'Brien -- would include BRA chairman Clarence Jones, BRA board member Joseph Nigro, and two state legislators he identified as political allies of the mayor, Senator Dianne Wilkerson and Representative Gloria Fox. "Wouldn't this be a fitting way to express our gratitude for their support and encouragement?" Ali-Salaam wrote...

In one memorandum, marked "confidential" dated Sept. 22, 1989, Ali-Salaam tells Islamic Society trustees that the BRA sold a Roxbury parcel to the US Postal Service several years earlier for $16 per square foot, but he advised the trustees that a Bank of Kuwait appraisal of the potential society land put the value at $6.50 per square foot. He advised the society that the lower figure could be used when negotiating a purchase and said the purchase price could be reduced further by adding community benefits to the project.

Another piece of correspondence in the documents sheds more light on Ali-Salaam's fund-raising for the project and suggests he was aware of the potential for a conflict between his interests as a public official and as a representative of the Islamic Society. In a fax to an Islamic Society trustee in 1998, Ali-Salaam said he had contacted the United Bank of Kuwait about financing for the project and had obtained a letter of interest but had to have the bank official, David Shlosh, rewrite the letter because Ali-Salaam was concerned about violating the state conflict of interest law...