Following are excerpts from a discussion on Palestinian terrorist Dalal Al-Mughrabi, who led the March 11, 1978 coastal road massacre in Israel, in which 35 people were murdered and 71 wounded. The show aired on Al-Jazeera TV on July 5, 2008.

"For The First Time in the History of Revolutions, a Passenger Bus Became a Fully Sovereign Independent Republic... [And] Its First President Was Dalal Al-Mughrabi"

TV host Ghassan bin Jiddo: "Twelve men, led by a woman called Dalal Al-Mughrabi, managed to establish the State of Palestine, after the whole world had denied them their right to do so. They turned a bus en route from Haifa to Tel Aviv, into a temporary capital of the State of Palestine. They raised the white, red, and black flag at the front of the bus, singing, shouting, and dancing like children on a school trip. When the Zionist forces surrounded them - with the help of helicopters - and wanted to storm the bus, they blew up the bus with themselves inside.

"For the first time in the history of revolutions, a passenger bus became a fully sovereign independent republic for four hours. It does not matter how long this Palestinian republic lasted. The only thing that matters is that this republic was established, and that its first president was Dalal Al-Mughrabi.

"Heroism Transcends the Gender Divide... [A Woman] Can Die More Magnificently Than [Men]"

Ghassan bin Jiddo: "Heroism transcends the gender divide. Arab men should realize that they do not have a monopoly over the glory of either life or death. A woman can love much more nobly than they, and she can die more magnificently than they.

"When Dalal Al-Mughrabi decided to realize her true maternal nature, she went to Palestine, just like Maryam, daughter of Omran. There, on the land that gave rise to wheat, olives, and prophets, she reclined against a palm tree, letting ripe dates fall on her. She ate and drank, and she was content. She dreamed of the birds of the Upper Galilee flying above her as she went into labor.

"Five hundred years later, the Palestinians will still visit their mother's grave, on which orange blossoms will be scattered. In a thousand years, Arab children will read the following story: On March 11, 1978, twelve men and one woman managed to establish a Palestinian republic in a bus. Their republic lasted four hours. It does not matter how long this republic survived. The only thing that matters is that it was established. This is what the great poet Nizar Qabbani said about the great fidaai, the martyr Dalal Al-Mughrabi. We have nothing to add." [...]

"I Want To Salute Husam Dweidat, Hero of the Jerusalem Bulldozer Operation"

Ghassan bin Jiddo: "What made Dalal Al-Mughrabi ready to carry out this operation? Let me ask you outright: Did she realize that this was a suicide operation? Did she go there knowing that she would die, in what we call martyrdom-seeking and others call suicide, or did she go there hoping that she would return?"

PLA Colonel Rashida Al-Mughrabi, sister of Dalal Al-Mughrabi: "We belong to the Islamic nation, which does not accept the killing of oneself. The human soul is precious, and we do not accept killing ourselves. Suicide is unacceptable. This is a matter of principle. However, defending our rights to the point of martyrdom is something we should do."...

...Former Fatah commander Anis Naqqash: "Let the Arabs know that they should prepare themselves for a new Middle East without Israel or Zionism. Let all the free people in the world know that the decisive battle with Zionism is approaching, and that its sign is this prisoner exchange."...

...Rashida Al-Mughrabi: "I want to salute all the martyrs, and send a very special salutation - and whoever wants to be mad at me is free... I want to salute Husam Dweidat, the hero of the Jerusalem bulldozer operation. I salute his soul."

The organized Jewish community in France is publicly calling on President Nicolas Sarkozy to launch an investigation into the controversial television broadcast of an alleged Israeli shooting of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy.

Last week’s call by CRIF, the umbrella Jewish organization, increased the pressure on the French government to intervene in the 8-year-old debate over the authenticity of the September 2000 video report by France 2 TV and its Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin.

The call for a probe lent new legitimacy to concerns that the broadcast was staged and sparked a new debate in the French media over the issue...

June 16, 2008: A UN report to the Human Rights Council by Special Rapporteur John Dugard disregards international legal standards against terrorism and excuses the killing of innocents. We call upon the United Nations to withdraw this discreditable report from circulation.

In addition to the cost of the car, one must consider the cost of the fueling infrastructure needed to make hydrogen vehicles a viable replacement. British Petroleum’s chief scientist noted in 2003 that for hydrogen to succeed as a transportation fuel “it has to be available in 30 to 50% of the retail network from the day the first mass manufactured cars hit the showrooms.” Joseph J. Romm, who served in a number of high-level positions in the Clinton administration’s Department of Energy, writes in his definitive 2005 book The Hype About Hydrogen that “a hydrogen fueling infrastructure alone based on current commercial or near-commercial technology could cost more than a half trillion dollars.”

A fueling infrastructure would cost more for hydrogen than for other alternatives to petroleum, such as biofuels. Standard liquid fuel tanks are insufficient for hydrogen distribution since hydrogen can only be converted to liquid form at -423 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees from absolute zero). Thus, Brookings Institution energy and environment scholar David Sandalow notes in his 2008 book Freedom from Oil that in order to carry hydrogen, fuel service stations would require new varieties of tanks “capable of handling pressurized gaseous material or supercooled liquid.” The cost to these stations would be high...

The innovative lawsuit, filed in Montreal this month, says properties of the plaintiffs were hit by rockets during the 2006 Middle East conflict. The claim argues the plaintiffs should be compensated because LCB was "grossly negligent" by allowing Hezbollah to bank.

Tina al-Hattouni, the bank's Montreal-based representative, told CTV.ca that the lawsuit's allegations are false...

...The Canadian-Israeli plaintiffs say that their homes were destroyed as Hezbollah rockets rained down. Today, they say they suffer lingering "traumatic episodes and psychological stress." One woman claims she nearly lost her baby during the attacks.

The LCB, "was originally the Lebanese branch of the Royal Bank of Canada, which transformed into the LCB in 1988," the claim says. The suit contends the bank's Montreal branch, its sole office outside of Lebanon, is an "integral part," of the bank and subject to all federal Canadian laws.

The lawsuit claims the rocket assaults were "terrorist attacks as defined in section 83.01 of the Criminal Code" of Canada. (The 2001 Anti-Terrorism act allows prosecutions for acts of terrorism that take place outside of Canada.)...

... Enter Obama, who tells them in all kinds of inspiring fashion that this isn't necessarily true, that the world isn't really dangerous and that all we need to do is to talk to another, and then all will be well in the world and we will all sing Kumbaya together. So, desperate and clinging to anything, they believe him, because the alternative is so scary, so stressful and depressing, that they may have to up their Zoloft dosage , and anti-depressants are really expensive nowadays.

Not to mention, Americans really want the world to like them, which is a silly desire shared by no other nation on earth. You don't see the Russians worrying about the world liking them, or the Chinese. Ok, you want a democracy? How about the French? Do you see the French worrying about whether or not the world likes them? Do you know of any other nation in the world who actually has this stupid girl-with-low-self-esteem-in- junior-high fixation? Hell, even the Israelis, arguably the current most hated country in the world (and who would like a nation of militaristic Jews who refuse to be wiped out? Those Damn Jooz!), are not as fixated on getting the world to like them the way the Americans do, because most of them have resigned themselves that the world really never will like them. So yeah, the Americans stand alone when it comes to that silly desire, and they have constructed a notion why the world dislikes them: It's because the world thinks that they are a racist nation that is also prejudiced against Islam. So, in order to remedy that, they vote and nominate a Black man with an arab middle-name who comes from a Muslim Background, as if saying, "Here! This is how far we all willing to go. Do you like us now?"

And the world will answer: Ehh, no, not really!...

JERUSALEM - A 3-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing reevaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, because it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet - probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan, according to some scholars who have studied it - is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era - in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate. Still, its authenticity has faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to grow...

On Tuesday, France’s leading Jewish organization, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), held a press conference in Paris to publicize its call for the establishment of an “independent investigative commission” on the al-Dura affair. The event was held at Paris’s posh Hilton Arc de Triomphe and in the presence of numerous representatives of the mainstream, or "institutional," French media, including the state-sponsored Agence France-Presse (AFP) wire service. A camera crew from French public television France 2 filmed the entire proceedings. France 2 is the very television network whose contested September 2000 report allegedly showing the killing of the Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura would form the object of the commission. Further reflecting the excellent coordination between the CRIF and France’s established "media of reference," on the same day the daily Le Figaro featured a full-page article on the CRIF initiative and the al-Dura controversy more generally on page 2. A large blow-up of the iconic video frame showing Jamal al-Dura supposedly protecting his screaming child from Israeli fire covers nearly half the page...

...Since Sept. 11, 2001, the number of Americans studying Arabic has more than doubled. Nearly 24,000 U.S. students enrolled in Arabic classes in the fall of 2006, the Modern Language Association reported in November. In 2002, 264 colleges offered Arabic; as of the 2006-07 academic year, 466 did.

Young, ambitious Americans are responding constructively to our country's new challenges by demanding Arabic classes. But there are not enough teachers to meet this demand, and the available textbooks are suffused with the stale prejudices and preoccupations of the pre-Sept. 11 Middle East.

To study Arabic in America today is to be inducted into a world of longing, abandonment and regret. And that's before you even touch the political issues.

Most maps of the Middle East in "Al-Kitaab" [the TV drama used for Arabic language instruction] do not include Israel, though a substantial minority of Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, are native Arabic speakers. Alongside simple Arabic poems, students read about anti-Western heroes such as Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The DVD that comes with "Al-Kitaab" includes footage of Nasser's mass rallies in Cairo -- including slogans in Arabic and French such as "Brother Nations in Struggle, We Are By Your Side." These scenes of totalitarian rage are fondly described by the narrator as "dreams of his youth."

The accompanying lesson describes the highlights of Nasser's career, including the nationalization of the Suez Canal and the formation of the United Arab Republic. No mention is made of Egypt's defeat in the Six-Day War or of Nasser's brutal, repressive rule. In my class, we were asked to recite a passage about Nasser to practice our vocalization. (I refused.)

The last lesson in the book -- which we skipped -- features Maha's mother speaking wistfully of her childhood in Palestine: "My childhood was taken from me!" Over mournful music on the DVD, she talks about returning to Jerusalem, as if she were a refugee, but the images suggest that she left voluntarily after the Six-Day War, when Israel offered citizenship to the Arab residents of East Jerusalem. The fact that Israel also claims Jerusalem as its capital is ignored...

So you see, fascism in America is not dead. It has been pretending sleep. And I wish I could say that the America First spirit, and the threat of an American Fascist Third Party movement were over. I recall the evening I spent with James Banahan at the German-American Athletic Club. Hunched over a glass of beer he finished telling me how the Nazi consulate had helped finance the Phalanx, and added:

"Y'know, George, there aren't many of us right now, but we can sure raise plenty of hell. A pinch of salt isn't much, but throw it in your coffee and regardless of how much sugar you put in you'll still taste the salt. We are that salt and we're here to sour up this Democracy. We are the salt of American nationalism!"

I have indicated the salts which threaten to overflow at the "right time" at the peace table after we have won the military war. For if America's fascists who are psychologically courting America's defeat and fear most a democratic victory, cannot "win the war" their way -- the fascist way -- they are determined to "win the peace" at any cost.

At the same time they are determined to prolong the conflict in order to intensify their work of dissension and distrust and justify their proposed leadership at the peace conference. I am convinced that American Fascists do not want to see, and are sabotaging with every means at their command, a quick Allied victory. Such a decisive victory would completely shatter their time table and give Democracy a permanent victory. The keynote of the fascist strategy was set by Father Coughlin only a few weeks after Pearl Harbor in Social Justice:

First things come first. It is necessary, first in time, to win the war. But, first in importance, it is necessary to win the peace which follows the war...To win the war and lose the peace would be a worse defeat for us [Coughlinites] than if we fought the war to a draw...Americans, Social Justice advises you to get into every patriotic organization in America. Join up. Be neither a slacker for war nor a slacker for peace.

On the table of [Congressman] Dewer Short's reception desk were copies of Kullgren's America Speaks and the Reverend Harvey H. Springer's (who was a staunch Winrod-Fundamentalist) Western Voice. Both publications shrieked the "Jewish Gestapo" theme used in smearing the Department of Justice. Short, whom I had already heard at a Brooklyn America First meeting, proved to be a chubby fellow with twinkling blue eyes and a disarming smile. But he was an America First nationalist to the core.

"The America First spirit is not dead," he said. "Lindbergh is still the hero. Every once in a while," Short confessed, "some of us with the America First viewpoint still meet to talk things over -- Congressmen, Senators, and men like William R. Castle and Samuel Pettengil," who was spokesman for Rumely's Committee for Constitutional Government...

..."I don't think we had to get into this war," Short continued, "and we wouldn't have if we had not called everybody dirty names and insulted them, if we had built our home defenses and minded our own business."

Short summed up all the deceptive arguments advanced by the ignorant sector of the so-called isolationists. In the first place, Short had voted against all twelve national defense measures introduced in the House by the Administration, including the bill to arm the Guam Naval Base, and he also voted "Nay" on the Military Appropriation Act and Conscription Bill.