September 2007 Archives

It is most troubling, then, that Playboy magazine, the racy but popular men's magazine, has published in its October 2007 issue an article comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa. The article, "Israel shouldn't get a free pass" by Jonathan Tasini, argues that "Jimmy Carter is correct in his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid when he describes the control over Palestinians' movements as similar to South Africa's apartheid system."

The apartheid canard has been repeatedly debunked [for instance, here], and so we won't go over the facts again in this Alert; but it is clearly an extremist, inaccurate accusation, one which is often used in an attempt to delegitimize the very existence of Israel.

In the article, Tasini also

* accuses Israel of violating international standards and supposedly "turning Lebanon into rubble" during the 2006 war with Hezbollah.

In fact, the vast majority of Lebanon - and even most of Beirut - was left untouched by Israel. It's worth noting too that, long before his column ran in Playboy, Tasini had absurdly alleged "80 percent of [Lebanon] has been destroyed" as a result if the war. This laughable falsehood alone should have indicated to Playboy that Tasini is not a fair or honest commentator on the Arab-Israeli conflict;

* criticizes American politicians for "pander[ing] to Jewish votes" (note that Tasini himself is Jewish);

* faults Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton for their "endorsements of Israel's right to defend itself" against Hezbollah aggression; and

* levels the false and cliched accusation that it is "impossible" to be critical of Israel without being called an anti-Semite.

Also striking is what isn't mentioned in the article. While spending the bulk of his article excoriating Israel for its attempts to defend itself, he virtually ignores the reasons why Israel is forced to fight. The only instance of terrorism he mentions - in order to "establish [his] bona fides" as a Jew with relatives in Israel, he explains - is the murder of his step-grandfather in 1994. But even here, he makes sure to note that the attack was in response to Baruch Goldstein's massacre of Palestinians in Hebron. By contrast, Tarisi doesn't even entertain the idea that Israel's security barrier, which he criticizes, might be a response to Palestinian terrorism. In fact, other than this singular attack almost fifteen years ago, there is not even one mention of Palestinian terror. The words "Hamas," "Islamic Jihad," or "al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade" do not exist on the these Playboy pages.

In other words, this is the kind of distorted, one-sided article that one might expect to find on an anti-Israel propaganda site, but not in Playboy...

Pollsters and communications advisers to congressional Republicans are urging lawmakers not to follow President Bush's lead when it comes to talking about terrorists and the threat they pose to the nation.

While Bush has lightened up on using the word "Islamic" in front of terrorists, the advisers said on background that the word should always be used because Americans believe that "Islamics" are those who act on terrorist threats. Words to avoid are "Muslim," "extremist," and "radicals."

One adviser, who was part of two closed-door briefings by the consultants to GOP congressional members and aides over the past two weeks, said most Americans polled are not threatened by "Muslims" and that the words "extremist" and "radical" conjure up an image of people who make threats but don't follow through with them. "People believe terrorists act, so we should be using that instead of extremist or radicals. Calling the threat 'an Islamic terrorist' or 'al Qaeda' works better than 'Muslim radical,'" said the consultant.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today offered moral support to a Virginia physician who is under attack from “Islamophobes who seek to demonize and marginalize the mainstream Muslim community and its leaders.”

Dr. Esam Omeish, national leader of the Muslim American Society (MAS), was forced to resign from a Virginia immigration commission yesterday after being subjected to what he called a “smear campaign” by anti-Islam bloggers and Muslim-bashers like Steven Emerson who distorted past comments he made about Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinian people and about “jihad.”

[Note: “Jihad” is a broad Islamic concept that, despite being abused by some extremists, does not justify terrorism in any form. It includes struggle against evil inclinations within oneself, struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self-defense (e.g., - having a standing army for national defense), or fighting against tyranny or oppression.]...

“The scurrilous smear campaign against Dr. Omeish is only the latest episode in a sustained effort by a vocal minority of Islamophobes who seek to demonize and marginalize the mainstream Muslim community and its leaders.

“These hate-mongers target any Muslim individual or institution seeking to offer an Islamic perspective on issues of importance to our society. It is a dirty political game in which our entire society is the loser.

“Unfortunately, the hysteria that has been created about ‘jihad’ and the fear generated by the domestic lobby in support of Israel’s Apartheid-like polices only serve to preclude reasoned public discussion once this type of smear campaign has been initiated...

On March 17, 1992, a suicide bomber crashed an explosive-filled truck into a building filled with Israelis in Buenos Aires. The bombing was so powerful that the destruction covered several city blocks--29 innocents were killed and hundreds more were injured. This occurred more than 8,000 miles from Tehran. Two years later, on July 18, 1994, Buenos Aires was again hit with a terror attack. This time the target was the Jewish community center in the center of the city--85 were killed.

Argentina was, understandably, rattled. The government launched a full-scale investigation. One of the key officials assigned to it was Miguel Angel Toma (later appointed by then President Eduardo Duhalde as secretary of intelligence from 2002-03). Mr. Toma is not a warmonger. And he did not approach his job with any ideological ax to grind. He concluded not only that Hezbollah carried out the attacks in Argentina, but that at least one of them was planned in Iran at the highest levels of the Iranian government, aided by a sophisticated sleeper-cell network in Latin America. He also concluded that the attacks were strategically aimed at punishing the Argentinean government.

Iran and Argentina had had commercial ties throughout the 1970s and '80s valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, and had entered into agreements to jointly pursue nuclear energy and missile programs. But by 1989, a new civilian government headed by Carlos Menem had come to power and canceled its prior agreements with Iran. As far as Iran was concerned, it was time to punish Argentina for the reversal and send a warning shot to the rest of Latin America. And by focusing on soft targets in Jewish communities, the operations would serve an additional objective: demonstrating to Israel that Hezbollah could hit anywhere at anytime.

Mr. Toma says--based on Argentina's cooperation with intelligence agencies around the world--he's certain of the date, location and participants in the decision by the Iranian government to execute the second Buenos Aires attack. He pinpoints it to a meeting that occurred in the holy Iranian city of Mashhad on Aug. 14, 1993. It was presided over by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then and now the Supreme Leader of Iran; and the Iranian president at the time, Ali-Akbar Rafsanjani. Following this meeting, Mr. Toma believes that Iran began working with Hezbollah in the planning, funding and staffing of the 1994 attack in Argentina. Indeed, Argentina has issued warrants for nine Hezbollah operatives and Iranian leaders, including Mr. Rafsanjani. Nobody has been arrested.

I listened to Dr. Omeish's comments very carefully, and I must say that I find nothing objectionable about them. His remarks about Israel are factually accurate, and our own government's uncritical support of Israel's government, whatever its actions, is unhelpful to say the least. Some listeners may be put off by the passion with which he delivered his very logical comments. That is a matter of style, and should not influence our judgment of what he says. I must admit that I did not hear the phrase "jihad way", but the concept of jihad is very poorly understood in this country. The greater Jihad is the internal struggle within our soul to live up to the teachings of the prophet. It is analogous to the struggles of Christian mystics and has nothing to do with physical combat.

The events in the Gaza Strip over the past two days, in which 12 Palestinians were killed amid dozens of Qassam rocket and mortar attacks, suggest that the logic driving the policies of Israel and Hamas are diametrically opposed.

Only nine days ago, the government declared the Gaza Strip "hostile territory" in an attempt to up the pressure on Hamas to end the rocket attacks. But Hamas' response has been the opposite; the shooting has only intensified.

Terrorist groups in Gaza, including Hamas' military wing, have also increased efforts to carry out attacks inside Israel.

Most of the 54 mortars fired Wednesday landed near the Sufa crossing terminal. The mortars fired Thursday by Hamas militants targeted crossing points at Eretz and Kerem Shalom. There has also been a great deal of intelligence on Hamas' plans to target the crossing points into Gaza.

As such, a paradox has emerged in which the Israeli government, the U.S. and Fatah believe that by exerting greater pressure on the Gaza Strip's residents, the people will overthrow the Hamas regime there, while the Islamic group is doing its best to shut down the crossings - perhaps assuming that if the civilians suffer more, they will side with Hamas.

Senior Hamas officials deny that they intend this. Ismail Haniyeh says Hamas is interested in opening the crossings, but he was hard-pressed to explain the obvious attempt by Hamas militants to destroy the crossings.

"The military wing decides its targets in an effort to bring an end to the siege over the Strip," he told Haaretz.

But how is shooting at the crossings expected to contribute to lifting the siege? Only Hamas seems to know the answer...

UCU announced today that, after seeking legal advice, an academic boycott of Israel would be unlawful and cannot be implemented.

Members of the union's strategy and finance committee unanimously accepted a recommendation from UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, that the union should immediately inform branches and members that:

• A boycott call would be unlawful and cannot be implemented
• UCU members' opinions cannot be tested at local meetings
• The proposed regional tour cannot go ahead under current arrangements and is therefore suspended.

The union had passed a motion at its congress in May calling for the circulation and debate of a call to boycott. Since then UCU has sought extensive legal advice in order to try to implement congress policy while protecting the position of members and of the union itself.

The legal advice makes it clear that making a call to boycott Israeli institutions would run a serious risk of infringing discrimination legislation. The call to boycott is also considered to be outside the aims and objects of the UCU.

The union has been told that while UCU is at liberty to debate the pros and cons of Israeli policies, it cannot spend members' resources on seeking to test opinion on something which is in itself unlawful and cannot be implemented. The union will now explore the best ways to implement the non-boycott elements of the motion passed at congress...

I’m a graphic novelist who's working on a counter-jihad graphic novel titled The Infidel, featuring Pigman, a ruthless, counter-jihad superhero. The Infidel is about American twin brothers from a Muslim background who have absolute opposite responses to 9/11:

One becomes a counter-jihad cartoonist and the other becomes a born-again Muslim who goes jihad, and their choices force them to  come head to head with one another after their break on 9/11. I’m writing this to promote the book, which I will begin releasing in chapters beginning at the end of fall.

HARTFORD - Lawyers for 10 Latino men arrested in Danbury in the past year filed a civil rights lawsuit yesterday, accusing city and federal officials of a plot to harass immigrants through illegal arrests and intimidation.

The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in New Haven, alleges authorities violated the plaintiffs' constitutional rights to due process, equal protection, free speech, free association, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

Nine of the 10 were arrested during a sting targeting day laborers, while the 10th was detained after an unrelated traffic stop.

Professors and students at Yale Law School, who are representing the men, attributed much of the problem to Danbury's mayor, Mark Boughton, who denied the allegations...

...Danbury has been transformed in recent years by waves of new immigrants. The influx has strained schools, created overcrowded housing, and led to other problems such as unlicensed and unregistered drivers, Boughton has said...

...The lawsuit asks the federal court to declare the actions of Danbury and federal immigration officials unconstitutional. It also seeks compensatory and punitive damages.

Filasteen Club is proud to invite you to a evening of solidarity with Palestinian Actor/ Director *Mohammad Bakri *

The event will include a screening of his documentary film *"Jenin Jenin"*

Bakri will be introduced by Arab Israeli Poet/Film maker *Sami Chetrit*

*Time: 8 P.M. Thu 27th*
*Place: 207 Mathematics*
*Columbia University, 116th & Broadway*

Jenin Jenin* which covers the Israeli army's invasion of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank was banned in Israel. Bakri is now facing a trial initiated by 5 Israeli soldiers accusing the film of libel...

WORCESTER— City councilor-at-large candidate Grace Ross, the former Green-Rainbow nominee for governor, has come under criticism from local Jewish leaders for positions she and her party took denying that genocide is occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan and for comparing the Jewish people to the Columbine High School killers.

The criticism could be damaging to her campaign for one of six at-large City Council seats, because Jews have been prominent in the nationwide movement to end the killing in Darfur, which most in the mainstream Darfur movement consider genocide, and because liberal Jews form one of Ms. Ross’ likely constituencies in the city.

“What’s going on in Darfur is clearly genocide and for anyone who believes in justice to question that, when the evidence is so overwhelming, is like, ‘What are they thinking?’ ” said Jordan Millstein, rabbi of Temple Emanuel, a reform Jewish congregation, and an activist in the Save Darfur coalition. “And the reference to Columbine is completely bizarre. It’s absolutely absurd.”

The Green-Rainbow Party’s official statement on Darfur is that it is “a racist mischaracterization” to call the civil war in Sudan genocide and that U.S. military and economic intervention has impoverished and destabilized the northern African country.

Ms. Ross attended a Statehouse rally with other Green-Rainbow Party candidates last October, during her run for governor, and was photographed in front of another party official holding a sign that said, “Divest from Israel not Sudan.”...

...Ms. Ross, who said her parents were Episcopalian but that she grew up in a “Jewish community” in Manhattan, responded that stances of candidates in their political parties are not relevant to local government and that she should not be tied directly to the positions of her party from a year ago.

“I’m not a spokesperson for the Green-Rainbow Party. Deval Patrick is not a spokesperson for the Democratic Party,” she said...

FACT

Israel had nothing to do with the creation of Hamas. The organization grew out of the ideology and practice of the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood movement that arose in Egypt in the 1920s.

Hamas was legally registered in Israel in 1978 as an Islamic Association by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. Initially, the organization engaged primarily in social welfare activities and soon developed a reputation for improving the lives of Palestinians, particularly the refugees in the Gaza Strip.

Though Hamas was committed from the outset to destroying Israel, it took the position that this was a goal for the future, and that the more immediate focus should be on winning the hearts and minds of the people through its charitable and educational activities. Its funding came primarily from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The PLO was convinced that Israel was helping Hamas in the hope of triggering a civil war. Since Hamas did not engage in terror at first, Israel did not see it as a serious short-term threat, and some Israelis believed the rise of fundamentalism in Gaza would have the beneficial impact of weakening the PLO, and this is what ultimately happened.

Hamas certainly didn’t believe it was being supported by Israel. As early as February 1988, the group put out a primer on how its members should behave if confronted by the Shin Bet. Several more instructional documents were distributed by Hamas to teach followers how to confront the Israelis and maintain secrecy.

Israel’s assistance was more passive than active, that is, it did not interfere with Hamas activities or prevent funds from flowing into the organization from abroad. Israel also may have provided some funding to allow its security forces to infiltrate the organization.6 Meanwhile, Jordan was actively helping Hamas, with the aim of undermining the PLO and strengthening Jordanian influence in the territories.

Though some Israelis were very concerned about Hamas before rioting began in December 1987, Israel was reluctant to interfere with an Islamic organization, fearing that it might trigger charges of violating the Palestinians’ freedom of religion. It was not until early in the intifada, when Hamas became actively involved in the violence, that the group began to be viewed as a potentially greater threat than the PLO. The turning point occurred in the summer of 1988 when Israel learned that Hamas was stockpiling arms to build an underground force and Hamas issued its covenant calling for the destruction of Israel. At this point it became clear that Hamas was not going to put off its jihad to liberate Palestine and was shifting its emphasis from charitable and educational activity to terrorism. Israel then began to crack down on Hamas and wiped out its entire command structure. Hamas has been waging a terror war against Israel ever since.

Israel's central bank has proposed using a state-owned institution to supply funds to Gaza banks after private lenders began severing ties to the Strip after Israel declared it "hostile territory," officials said on Wednesday.

The anemic Gaza economy depends on Israeli shekels, long provided by Israeli commercial banks with a green light from the Israeli government, to finance imports, pay Palestinian Authority workers and carry out day-to-day transactions...

...Abbas' government in the West Bank uses shekels to pay salaries to tens of thousands of its employees in the Gaza Strip.

It is unclear whether the Bank of Israel's proposal to have the state-owned Israel Postal Bank take over Gaza transactions for the private banks will win Israeli government approval.

Israel declared the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip an "enemy entity" last Wednesday and said it would reduce its fuel and power supplies to the territory in response to rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.

It has yet to carry out any cuts and pledged to keep humanitarian aid flowing.

"How can you do business with an enemy entity? There are a lot of questions nobody thought about when they made the decision," said a senior Israeli official involved in the matter...

..."We have a common threat," Schaeuble told reporters. "I am totally convinced that we must not unilaterally decide in all these sensitive regards. We should strengthen international institutions wherever possible."

Schaeuble suggested Monday that Europe and the US "discuss international law issues" related to terrorist threats - for instance, at what point wartime laws take over from peacetime laws.

"Also the distinction between combatant and non-combatant seems to be no longer sufficient," Schaeuble, a member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing centre-right Christian Democrats, said in a speech.

"We have to come to solutions," he said Tuesday. "We have to have a public debate."

Schaeuble confirmed German media reports that investigators believe the bomb detonators seized in a foiled terrorist plot in Germany came from Syria.

Germany this month arrested three alleged Islamic militants accused of planning to blow up car bombs at US military sites and elsewhere in a "massive" terror attack. They were part of a group linked to al-Qaeda and had trained in Pakistan, authorities said.

"We know the fuses for these bombs ... they came from Syria via Turkey to Germany. We don't really know more," Schaueble said.

I signed my kids up for Arabic lessons recently and, having lived before in an orthodox Jewish town in New Jersey, I noticed something somewhat interesting. Arab mothers of young children weigh on average 20-30 pounds less than your average Jewish mother of young children and not only that, their posture is astonishingly better. In other words, Arab ladies are so much prettier and more self-confident than Jewish ladies in the same station of life. Not only that but their facial expressions are so much different. Orthodox Jewish women walk around not only slumped over, but scowling with a tense frown on their faces. They seem so discouraged, and seem to give off the vibe of being unloved and unwanted at home. All they do I suppose is wash dishes obsessive-compulsively and spend their Fridays ripping up pieces of toilet paper in preparation for the Sabbath, so life must be pretty dull in comparison to the Arabs who actually enjoy their weekends partying with their families and friends.

The other difference is the men. I was going through a divorce when I was living in New Jersey and although it may sound pathetic, I really enjoyed all the attention I got from the Jewish men. I guess with my 26 inch waist, and my upright posture I was a goddess compared to the orthodox Jewish ladies...

...suppressing all that guilt about Israeli violence against Palestinians must be a constant downer too. I think no one hates themselves as much as Zionist women so no wonder they are the most vicious people on the planet. I tend to blame all the problems in this world on Jewish women, since the men are doormats who obey their wives or at least pretend to obey their wives.  But what’s new. There are more Jewish women marrying hot Arab men in “Israel” than there are marriages between Ashkenazim and Arab Jews. It’s over for the Zionist project.

So anyway, how about President Ahmedinejad’s speech at Columbia University? It was so awesome, what I saw on video, and what astonished me most was the warm, thundering applause after every comment he made. I didn’t know there were that many decent Americans out there. Everyone protesting outside was of course a psychotic Jew brainwashed by the David Project. But the thousands of people cheering for Ahmedinejad, who is like the new Bruce Springsteen, really made me feel better about this country. I would not be surprised if scores of people converted to Shia Islam as a result of his really great responses to the hostile questions (I did). He proved himself to be someone with not only great intelligence and wit but saint-like patience. It seemed to me that the Iranian President has more popular support in this country than our own mentally retarded President Bush...

The decision could deepen economic hardship among Gaza's 1.5 million residents. Israeli currency is used by President Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed government in the West Bank to pay salaries to its employees in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

A Palestinian banking official said Bank Hapoalim's move could force Gaza banks to shut down if other Israeli institutions follow suit and stop transferring shekel notes to them.

"In light of the government's decision to declare the Gaza Strip hostile territory, Bank Hapoalim has decided to terminate its banking activity with banks and branches in the Gaza Strip," the Israeli bank said in a statement.

A Hapoalim spokeswoman said it would take several weeks for the bank to cease completely what she described as "minimal services" to Gaza's financial institutions.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, called the move "a grave decision" that would have a strong impact on life in the Gaza Strip.

Israel Discount Bank, also a main provider of shekels and services to Palestinian banks, said the issue of severing ties with Gaza was under discussion "but we have not reached a decision"...

It was George W. Bush who transformed Ground Zero from a site toward which the world looked with empathy for American pain into a hypernationalistic symbol of a singularly American victimhood. Sept. 11, 2001, became our wound alone, and New York's ravaged precinct became a restricted preserve, as global sympathy for the United States curdled into fear of it.

What if, instead of shunting Ahmadinejad aside as one unworthy to enter the sanctuary of our national trauma, we Americans had said, "Yes - stand here with us. Look at what threatens the universal future if we do not find other ways to relate to each other than with contempt. Relive that horrible September morning with us, when the rank evil of terrorism showed itself with such clarity that the human family, decidedly including the Iranian nation, stood together against it. Let solidarity be the meaning of this place."...

Fares Natzer Hassin Abu Na'eem, 21, was apprehended in the village of Khalil, south of Shechem, after shooting at IDF forces operating in the area. He is a commander in the Tanzim terrorist group, affiliated with the Fatah faction headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, whom Prime Minister Ehud Olmert calls a "moderate."

During his arrest, Abu Na’eem was found to have 10 pipe bombs, an assault rifle and a handgun in the home in which he was hiding out. The bombs were detonated by Border Police sappers.

In August 2007, Abu Na’eem pledged to cease his terrorist activity in return for being taken off Israel’s list of wanted terrorists. The deal was organized by Fatah chief Abbas and Salem Fayyad, who Abbas appointed Prime Minister of the PA following the routing of Fatah from Gaza. The deal was spun by the government of Prime Minister Olmert as a way to strengthen the unpopular Abbas on the PA street...

Soldiers who entered a house in the city where Ahmad Al-Az was believed to be hiding asked the pregnant woman to search under her bed but she refused. The woman was moved aside and Ahmad was found in the cache under her bed.

The belt was found Saturday morning in an apartment near the southern end of Allenby Street by the Shin Bet security service, operating with Yarkon District Police.

The apartment was occupied by Palestinians residing there illegally. It was apparently smuggled in parts from the West Bank City of Nablus.

China's economy is increasingly providing political cover for its suppression of Tibet; it's too big and important to let a little bright light shine on human-rights abuses in a faraway land. The Dalai Lama's cause is especially lonely in Asia, given China's economic rise and its rapidly accruing military clout. "Very few" democracies in the region publicly support Tibet, with the notable exception of India--which comes under pressure frequently from Beijing. The silence is deafening, given that many Asian democracies, including those in Japan and South Korea, are home to large populations of Buddhists.

Even Western democratic nations come under intense pressure from Beijing. Belgium cancelled an official visit with the Dalai Lama before an EU-China meeting in May this year. Australian Prime Minister John Howard hesitated to meet the Buddhist leader in June, but, after intense lobbying from Washington, acquiesced. Germany's Angela Merkel is proving braver--she's hosting the Dalai Lama's first-ever visit to the German chancellery on Sunday...

In 1983, after the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines flight 007, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko canceled a trip to the U.N. after Governor Mario Cuomo of New York and Governor Thomas Kean of New Jersey (not exactly rabid right-wingers) both vowed not to allow a Soviet plane to land in their states.

In 1988, the Reagan Administration denied Arafat a visa to speak to the U.N. because he was a terrorist. The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the United States, and then packed up and moved to Geneva, where Arafat was warmly embraced...

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters
"mt".

Almonds are members of the peach family.

The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.

The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.

Also Friday, the IDF struck Gaza militants who were preparing to fire mortar shells at targets in Israel. The army said the militants belong to a cell that had already fired at Israel. Palestinian sources did not report any casualties.

The wanted Hamas militant, 34-year-old Nihad Shkirat, is believed to have headed a joint Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine cell in the city...

In April 2003, Brian Avery, a 24-year-old American volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement, went outside with other group members to assist Palestinian medics in Jenin. The aid workers came under fire, apparently from an Israeli APC. Avery was hit in the face and spent several weeks in Haifa's Rambam Medical Center undergoing a series of operations to reconstruct his face...

The official Palestinian response is astonishing. Hamas said of the Israeli plan: "It is a declaration of war and continues the criminal, terrorist Zionist actions against our people." Firing rockets at cities is not an act of war? Gaza has been at war with Israel ever since Israel vacated all of its settlements there.

The response from Fatah was no more coherent. A minister in the government of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas stated: "It is collective punishment against the people of Gaza, and discourages serious political discussion." Firing rockets at cities is not "collective punishment"? Are those rockets meant to "encourage serious political discussion"?

The sanctions that Israel is contemplating are a way of trying to stop the flow of rockets without a violent response that would endanger Palestinian lives. Right now Israel is supplying Palestinians with the power they are using to run the metal workshops where they make their rockets. The Palestinians would now be given a choice: Here is your electricity, just enough for your people's needs or for killing Israelis. Which will you choose?...

The defense establishment is also concerned about another Hamas cell, in the West Bank city of Qalqilyah, that is believed to be planning major attacks inside Israel as well.

Four members of the cell, which includes militants from both Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), were apprehended - including the intended suicide bomber...

The military said the suspect, who was not identified, is a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Quds Force.

The U.S. military calls the force "a covert action arm of the Iranian government responsible for aiding lethal attacks against the Iraqi government and coalition forces."

The military said the Quds Force suspect was involved in bringing roadside bombs from Iran into Iraq and in training foreign terrorists in Iraq.

The man, captured in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, is one of several Iranians in U.S. custody in Iraq.

Also on Thursday, an Iraqi National Police intelligence officer was taken into custody for "suspected involvement in illegal militia activities," the U.S. military said.

Col. Thamir Mohammad Sinah al-Husayni, also known as Abu Turab, was arrested by U.S. troops...

[Then Columbia president Nicholas Murray] Butler hosted a reception for the Nazi ambassador, whose remarks were devoted to defending Hitler's "peaceful intentions" toward the rest of Europe. Butler said that as a representative of "the government of a friendly people," Luther was "entitled to be received with the greatest courtesy and respect."

Columbia, like many American universities, continued its program of student exchanges with Germany even after the Nazis came to power.

In 1936, President Butler sent a delegate to take part in anniversary celebrations at the Nazi-controlled University of Heidelberg. He did so even though the university had already fired all of its Jewish instructors, implemented a curriculum based on Nazi ideology, and even was host to a mass book-burning.

Butler defended his decision on the grounds that "academic relationships have no political implications." But Columbia students disputing that claim at the time held a mock book-burning on campus and a peaceful rally in front of Butler's residence...

Hamas, Hamas, Hamas the apple of my eye - Hamas

They destroyed the Merkava [tank]
the apple of my eye - Hamas
Repeated eight times

A bombing every minute
Soldiers are afraid
A bombing every minute
Soldiers are afraid

In black bags
Chunks of flesh of Jews
repeated five times

In retaliation for Yassin we want Sharon's head
We want Sharon's head
we want Sharon's head!

Hamas, Hamas, Hamas the apple of my eye - Hamas

They destroyed the Merkava [tank]
the apple of my eye - Hamas
Repeated five times

the apple of my eye -Hamas
the apple of my eye - Hamas

"Produced by AL-Aqsa TV, 2007"
Dedicates to the Arab and Palestinian community in Sweden

The win came in the wake of a string of political assassinations: On October 1, 2004, a car bomb exploded next to the motorcade of Druze MP Marwan Hamadeh. He was severely injured and his driver was killed.

A massive explosion on February 14, 2005, killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut. This last assassination was considered to be the driving force behind the anti-Syrian camp's victory. It was followed by assassination attempts on several anti-Syrian journalists.

Such assassination attempts have now become expected because of the geopolitical reality, or rather, geopolitical crisis in Lebanon: It's time to elect a new president. According to Article 49 of the Lebanese constitution, the president needs to be elected by a majority of at least 65 parliament members.

Up until Wednesday afternoon, the anti-Syrian camp had 65 MPs solidly affiliated with them, meaning they could determine the next president without consulting other political groups. Now, since they only have 64 assured votes, they will need to negotiate with rival parties, among them, Hizbullah.

According to Lebanese law, an MP who passes away or leaves parliament before his term is up does not cede his seat to another member in his party. Rather, he is replaced by the winner of new elections in his district, creating the possibility for a party change. Clearly, assassinations of anti-Syrian politicians have the potential to erode the bloc's population gradually...

The warning - coauthored by Dr. Jan van der Graaf, who served for 35 years as general secretary within one of the three churches that make up the PCN, and three other prominent church figures - was an open letter against changing the reference to Israel. It was addressed to Minister Henri Veldhuis, a General Synod member who said the clause made the church adopt a biased view that ignored Israeli actions against Palestinians.

At a speech last month in Utrecht for Friends of Sabeel (a Jerusalem-based Palestinian organization), Veldhuis said the church should commit to a bond with Israel "as people of the Torah" instead of the "Jewish people as an ethnic group." Veldhuis also complained that currently, "the church has a stronger bond with a non-believing Alaskan Jewish person than a Palestinian Christian."

The open letter accused Veldhuis of a slanted and hypocritical approach. "We were astonished by your address before a Palestinian liberation organization that pretends to be promoting reconciliation," it read. "You accused Israel but ignored Hamas's Jew-hating ideology. You overlooked the alarming anti-Semitic upsurge in Arab countries."...

Like most of America’s Jews, we’re LFBs – Liberals From Birth. Why? Because Jewish and American values are in almost perfect harmony.

On Israel, we were never uncritical, but loyal to the cause of a Jewish homeland and to the Jews who fought to keep it. Not only because we were Jews, but also because tiny beleaguered Israel is, or should be a, liberal cause.

But it’s not. Not now. Many of our friends disagree with us about Israel, and in increasingly disagreeable ways. They got the story wrong, from the media, from academics, and from clergy. Painfully, we see former allies, even heroes of past struggles, attacking the Jewish state – and its supporters: us.

So what will Boston’s Jews do when Desmond Tutu, the anti-apartheid hero who likens Israeli treatment of Arabs to apartheid, headlines an anti-Israel hate-fest at the Old South Church in October? The “Israel Apartheid” Conference is organized by Sabeel, whose leader says Israelis are “crucifying” Arabs like the Jews did Jesus.

The appeals court judge in Paris ordered France 2 TV to show the court about 25 minutes of raw video footage shot on Sept. 30, 2000 at the Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip, when the 12-year-old Palestinian boy apparently was shot and killed in an exchange of gunfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants.

Al-Dura's shooting death became an instant icon for Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israeli brutality, but the Israeli army, after initially apologizing for the death, concluded after an investigation that the boy could not possibly have been hit by Israeli bullets.

When Philippe Karsenty, director of the media watchdog group Media-Ratings, called France 2's exclusive video of the incident "a hoax," he was found guilty of slander. He appealed the decision, and on Wednesday the appeals judge ordered that the video be released. Karsenty called the court's decision a victory. "This is only the first step in a victory," his lawyer, Marc Levy, corrected him.

France 2, whose cameraman in Gaza, Talal Abu Rahma, shot the exclusive footage that was considered a major scoop at the time, was given until Nov. 14 to hand over the video to the court.

Several French and U.S. journalists who have seen the raw footage have indicated the shooting might have been staged by Palestinians.

A decision on Karsenty's case is expected in February.

Dr. Walid Fitaihi’s departure from and return to the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) were stories worth reporting. After all, the possibly polemical physician’s writings helped ignite the controversy that dogged the ISB from the autumn of 2003 until June 2007, when the opening of the ISB’s new mosque in Roxbury seemed to bring the matter to a close. So why didn’t the Boston press pay attention when Fitaihi quietly left the ISB’s board of trustees earlier this year — or when he returned just four months later, after dueling lawsuits involving the ISB were dropped?

First, a quick refresher. Back in October 2003, as part of a series that explored alleged ISB connections with Islamic extremism, the Boston Herald reported on an article that Fitaihi had written for the London-based Arabic-language daily al-Hayat shortly after 9/11. According to a translation from the pro-Israel Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Fitaihi’s item contained an abundance of incendiary material. In the words of then–Herald reporter Jonathan Wells, Fitaihi “attacked the ‘Zionist lobby’ in America, claiming it has ‘incurred Allah’s wrath’ and would eventually lose the support of the American people.”...

No-news days

But was it? Again, consider the fact that no major Boston media outlet took note of Fitaihi’s departure and return earlier this year. (Only two local conservative blogs, Solomonia and Miss Kelly — solomonia.com and misskelly.typepad.com, respectively — seemed to notice.) What’s more, a conciliatory meeting Fitaihi had with a group of Jewish leaders in April was covered only by the Jewish Advocate...

Later, as the interview wrapped up, Kaleem asked about the gist of this story. I explained that I wanted to report on Fitaihi’s reinstatement, but also to ask a question: had the threat of litigation changed the way the Boston media covered the ISB?

“I hope so,” he said.

Hundreds of armored vehicles and thousands of soldiers participated in the three-day exercise which was scheduled to be completed on Thursday.

The exercise saw the implementation of a wide-range of lessons learned from the failures of the Second Lebanon War and involved infantry units, armored forces, Engineering Corps and the Air Force.

Ahead of the exercise, the IDF Foreign Liaison Office in the Northern Command asked the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) deployed in on both sides of the Israeli-Syrian border to update Damascus about the upcoming exercise. The officials explained that UNDOF was regularly updated about large-scale IDF training exercises in the Golan Heights and asked to relay "claming" messages to the Syrian military.

Lt.-Col. Ronen Morali, deputy commander of the Givati Brigade, told reporters Wednesday that the exercise was the culmination of a long training period which has prepared his soldiers for "any challenge ahead."

The lawmaker, Antoine Ghanem of the Christian Phalange party, was killed by the blast in a Christian district of the Lebanese capital. At least 19 other people were wounded by the bomb in the busy commercial and residential area of Sin el-Fil.

Several cars were set ablaze and rescue workers carried bodies from the scene in eastern Beirut.

Syria, the immediate suspect, rushed to condemn the assassination and deny its involvement in the blast...

The Syrians and their proxies have spoken: they will accept no president they do not appoint.

Should Phalange leader Amin Gemayel be elected president, he will suffer the same fate as his assassinated colleague, as his assassinated brother, and as Lebanese President Rene Muawad, who was assassinated shortly after his election in 1989...

Palestinian eyewitnesses identified the man as 35-year-old Adib Salim, and added that he was disabled, unarmed, and not involved in the fighting. Palestinian sources said Salim was, however, a Hamas member and the brother of Jamal Salim, a top Hamas commander killed by the Israel Defense Forces.

Family members told Reuters that Salim had been disabled in a 2001 Israel Air Force strike in Nablus.

Israel Radio quoted military sources as saying Salim was killed during a firefight between soldiers from the Heruv Battalion and three armed militants...

...On Tuesday, IDF Staff Sergeant Ben-Zion Henman, whose unit was participating in the Nablus operation, was shot and killed by Palestinian gunmen...

The arms were detonated in a controlled explosion.

Karl Höcker, the adjutant to the camp commandant, compiled the scrapbook. The photos, which include the first authenticated images of the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele at the camp, feature Höcker lighting a towering Christmas tree and a singalong of SS men at their Alpine retreat. But perhaps the most shocking depicts members of the SS female auxiliary poised on a wooden fence eating fresh blueberries...

...The Times reports that Holocaust Museum in Washington has no plans, as of now, to exhibit the photos, but you can view them online here.

...The Syrian news agency SANA proudly reported the election on Tuesday, adding that Syria was also successful in including "the Israeli nuclear arsenal as an item on the agenda of the conference."

The agenda for the meeting includes the item "Israeli nuclear capabilities and threat." While Iran will be a focus of the discussions, there is no item on the agenda referring to the Islamic Republic by name...

...But Gerald Steinberg, chairman of Bar-Ilan University's political science department and an authority on nonproliferation, said the election "reflects the absurdity of the political process inside the IAEA."

The deputy chairman has no real power and is merely a symbolic post, similar to a deputy president of the UN General Assembly or a deputy speaker of the Knesset, he said. However, Steinberg added, "this move shows how little these types of international frameworks can really do when some of the main players are also the main violators of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Steinberg said that both Iraq and Iran have held similar positions within the IAEA in the past. He also said there was no connection between the political level and the organization's technological branches under the directorship of Mohamed ElBaradei, which inspect nuclear facilities.

The General Conference, made up of some 144 countries, is the least important of the IAEA's three main bodies. The other two bodies are the Board of Governors and the Secretariat...

The International Atomic Energy Agency "is not in the business of diplomacy," Rice told reporters traveling with her to the Middle East.

The IAEA's role should be limited to carrying out inspections and offering a "clear declaration and clear reporting on what the Iranians are doing; whether and when and if they are living up to the agreements they have signed," she said.

Rice was referring to recent comments made by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, in which he criticized U.S. rhetoric about Iran...

The Festival is about to begin September 29th with 9 days of great films by Palestinian artists. Sadly though, one of our featured actors/directors, Mohammed Bakri, is facing a crisis that requires our community's help. He's being sued by five Israeli soldiers as a result of his work, putting his family and home at risk.

Samia Halaby of the NYC Al-Jisser arts group writes: " I am writing on an important matter that is very painful to watch. Mohammad Bakri is being sued by 5 Israeli soldiers. This puts him and his family and the home, that he worked so hard for, in great danger. There is a small defense committee formed here in New York but not much has been done by us yet. The second day of his trial is on September 18th and he has written to us three times pleading for our help. He needs some money to pay his lawyer. Any amount would help get him going.

We as Arabs are besieged on all sides. The nasty journalism emanating from the New York Post is disturbing. The more endangered Israel feels the more vicious it becomes. I feel sad that one of our great artists -- actor, filmmaker, and story teller Mohammad Bakri --is being pushed to the edge. "

Despite the trial, Mohamed will be in Boston on September 29 at our Opening Party at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. He'll also be present to show his films, PRIVATE (3pm), JENIN,JENIN and SINCE YOU LEFT (5pm) at the Kendall Square Cinema on Sunday Sept 30...

Ofer Ben-Natan, Doron Keidar, Nir Oshri, Adam Arbiv and Yonatan Van-Kaspel sued Israeli Arab actor and director Muhammad Bakri for producing the film Jenin, Jenin, and the cinamatheques in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for screening them, even though the film had been banned at the time by the state censor...

...The movie touched a raw nerve among Israelis. It was released in the middle of the intifada, when Palestinian suicide bombers were murdering many Israelis. Furthermore, the army's incursion into the Jenin refugee camp came in response to a spate of suicide attacks in March 2002, culminating in the attack on the Park Hotel in Netanya on the night of the Pessah Seder on March 27, in which 29 Israelis were killed.

During the fighting in Jenin, Palestinian spokesmen, human rights organizations and foreign journalists accused Israel of conducting a civilian massacre. In the end, it emerged, according to Israeli figures, that 52 Palestinians were killed in the refugee camp, including 38 armed fighters and 14 civilians. Twenty-three IDF soldiers died in the fighting.

Basing itself mainly on interviews with Palestinians in the refugee camp after the fighting ended, but also on film clips, Bakri portrayed Israeli troops as committing a series of war crimes. Although he described the film as a documentary, he did not interview Israeli officials or give them an opportunity to refute the allegations contained in the film.

The lawsuit, which was filed of behalf of the plaintiffs by attorney Amir Tytunovich, provides a long list of alleged examples of these allegations...

The blast occurred while the joint Syrian-Iranian team was trying to mount a chemical warhead on a Scud missile, spreading lethal agents - including deadly Sarin and mustard gas - into the air.

The July 23 accident occurred at a factory in northern Syria, 50 miles from the Turkish border, created for the purpose of adapting ballistic missiles to carry chemical weapons, Jane's Magazine reported.

A fire that started in the missile's engine led to an explosion near a storage facility for chemical substances, the British-based magazine reported on its Web site.

This summer's accident confirms that Iran, which has been trying to develop its own nuclear weapons, is working with its Mideast ally to secure warheads capable of inflicting widespread destruction...

I hope so.

You often talk about being an atheist, but your secular Jewish identity seems to be more on your mind than in the past.

I think circumstances have forced it a little more out in the open. We all know about the Holocaust and that it’s never really gone away. There’s just been an incident here in Canada. A radical Muslim preacher had a regular show on VisionTV, a television network devoted to religion. Every week he’d give his sermon, saying Jews are parasites, the Holocaust was divine retribution, and ultimately all Jews will be annihilated. People started saying we don’t think this should be on the air in Canada, so they pulled him off, and then they were going to put him back on because he’s highly respected. Meanwhile the guy issues a statement saying, “I’m not anti-Semitic. Everything I say is just prophecy. It says in our holy book that the Jews will be annihilated. It’s not that I don’t like Jews.”

So in that short film, it was interesting to think for all these people who would like there to be no Jews. Let’s propose we’re down to the last Jew. What does America think, and what does popular media culture think? I have one of my younger TV commentators saying, “I’m much younger than you so, no, I have no memories whatsoever.” So will this yearning for extermination of Jews really make much of an impression? Or will it be a moment of dancing in the streets in certain cities of the world, and then what? I was alluding to all that without making a big deal of it. I don’t think this is something new for me to be thinking about. I was also thinking of all those nice beheadings you can get on the Internet.

I was thinking about that in Eastern Promises. The current biggest provider of snuff pornography is the Muslim extremist movement. Remember when Al Goldstein from Screw magazine offered $50,000 if someone could bring him a real snuff film, and no one could? Now they’re everywhere, and most involve beheadings and throat slitting, and once again, as in Eastern Promises, it’s very sexual, very intimate. And needless to say, very disturbing.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-203322418336166607

And at Friday noon prayer there are women and young children present also. What shade of Islam allows this?

Did not see this in the Holy Quran. Where did this preacher beam down from?
As a Muslim I am deeply offended and ashamed. Why bring it up? Just to tell this preacher that he should think for a moment what effect this would have had on young minds (if he has any human conscience).I can only pray that God guide this preacher to the path of human decency.....the path of Islam!

"Allah huma
dammer
al yehud
wal nasara.

Allah huma
almaqtal
rejalihim

Wa yatimun
atfalihim .
Ameen. Sum ameen."
"Oh Allah
destroy
the jews
. and the christians.
Oh Alla
the killing should include
their men and their women.

and make orphan their offsprings".

Amen. Sum Amen.
*
While my guitar gently weeps
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AHChc2I7FKk

The sodlier was later identified as Staff Sergeant Ben-Zion Haim Henman, 21, of Moshav Nov in the Galilee.

The IDF operation was launched in response to several intelligence warnings, regarding intended terror attacks on Israelis during the Jewish holidays. During the night, the military ordered a closure of the refugee camp.

Since then, Palestinian gunmen fired on the soldiers in at least 10 separate incidents, leading to repeated gun battles between the two sides. It was during one of these clashes that the soldier was killed and his comrade wounded from shrapnel.

Also during the night, an explosive device was thrown at soldiers, but no one was injured...

...The operation Tuesday was targeting Hamas and PFLP members in the refugee camp, whom the IDF says are working jointly in order to plan terror attacks. Due to the increased terror warnings, forces have raided the camp the past several nights in order to arrest wanted terror operatives. At such times, armed clashes often take place.

"Iran will shoot at Israel 600 missiles if it is attacked," the Iranian news website, Assar Iran, reported. "600 missiles will only be the first reaction."

According to the report, dozens of locations throughout Iraq, which are being used by the US Army, have also been targeted.

The Shihab missile has a range of 1,300 km, and can reach anywhere in Israel.

On Sunday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that the nuclear Iranian crisis forces the world "to prepare for the worst," and said that in this case it "is war."

Kouchner emphasized, however, that negotiations should still be the preferred course of action.

Kouchner, quoted by French daily Le Figaro, added that "Iran does whatever it pleases in Iraq ... one cannot find in the entire world a crisis greater than this one."...

A senior commander of the Revolutionary Guard, the largest component of the Islamic republic's armed forces, chose this moment to outline the capability of his country's ballistic missiles.

The Shahab-3 rocket has a range of 1,250 miles, allowing it to strike an array of Western targets across the Middle East.

"Today the Americans are around our country but this does not mean that they are encircling us. They are encircled themselves and are within our range," said Gen Mohammed Hassan Koussechi.

"If the United States is saying that they have identified 2,000 targets in Iran, then what is certain is that it is the Americans who are all around Iran and are equally our targets," he told the official IRNA news agency...

Massad, some will argue to great effect, has yet to produce a piece of scholarship not loaded with anti-Israel and anti-Zionist rhetoric. Much of his scholarly work, equally at home on an op-ed page as his classroom, must be read to be believed. Once charged with classroom intimidation and violations of academic freedom, Massad has emerged as the poster boy for an increasingly political and activist Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. To many, myself included, the thought of Joseph Massad as a facet of Columbia life for the next several decades is a frightening and wholly untenable proposition. There is no place within the academic establishment for thinly-veiled demagoguery. Individual departments or tenure committees must recognize this and act accordingly. To abandon their responsibilities is to commit a great disservice to the University...

“The problem is that everyone wants someone like her for the diversity of the college, and I agree, she looks great on paper. But then you read the book and you say, ‘No, this isn’t the right person,’” said Segal, who stated he does not believe that Abu El-Haj, a Fulbright Scholar and Palestinian-American, should be granted tenure...

...According to Segal, someone within the University requested that he provide a list of expert archaeologists—who “preferably” were not Jewish—to comment on Abu El-Haj’s tenure. Segal said he could not provide the list and that religion “has nothing to do with what you say as a professional.” Barnard Communications did not respond to a request for comment by press time...

(See below for past visual examples of the way the PA has used cartoon images of the 9-11 terror attacks, published around the anniversary of the event, to celebrate the attacks, mock the U.S., and portray Arabs and Muslims as the true victims of the attack.)

The Palestinian Authority has a long history of celebrating the 9-11 terror. The world was shocked by televised scenes of Palestinians celebrating the attacks in the streets the day they took place. A December 2005 poll found that "65% of Palestinians support(ed) Al Qaeda actions in the USA and Europe.” (Fafo – Institute for Applied International Studies – Norway. Survey Dec. 22, 2005).

Earlier this year, a former Minister from Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party wished Al Qaeda success in its attacks against the U.S., and in its targeting of President George W. Bush. The Fatah leader, Abu Ali Shahin, said in an interview on official PA TV: "Oh [Al-Qaeda] brother, leave us and focus on your business. You have Bush! Do to Bush what you want, and we wish you success with Bush, even more. I, Abu Ali Shahin, wish you success with Bush... We are fighting the Americans and hate the Americans more than you!" [PA TV, Jan. 1, 2007]...

She begged me to call a naval lieutenant Monday morning to start the out-processing forms for my brother. After leaving countless messages for the lieutenant, he finally called me back, at which point he informed me that my brother would have to go through 13 exit-interviews to be dismissed, including an interview with the head of the Navy. When I asked him whether this might intimidate him out of leaving, the lieutenant reminded me that my brother had signed an oath legally binding him to the Navy. When I reminded the lieutenant that he had signed that oath after he had been yelled at all day and that his hair had just been shaven off during his first day there, he comforted me that John was not at all forced to sign the oath.

When I looked at the course catalogue, which boasted seminars about leadership and selflessness, they were in fact seminars about weaponry and leading troops into combat. The reality of sending my brother to the Naval Academy began to set in: this was not a school; this was the military. While they boast a first class education, the main goal of this institution was to get my brother “combat ready.” During the first two “induction days,” the head of the Navy openly admitted that their goal was to transform these boys into men who would willingly die defending our country...

An Israeli on-line data analyst, Ronen Solomon, found an internet trace for the 1,700-tonne cargo ship, Al Hamed, which showed the vessel started to off-load what Syrian officials categorised as "cement" on Sept 3.

This was three days before Israeli jets attacked a site in the north eastern desert of Syria, not far from its border with Iraq.

Since leaving Tartous, one of Syria's main ports on the Mediterranean, the ship's trace has disappeared and it is not known whether western intelligence agencies are tracking the vessel.

"I became suspicious after the first reports from Syria about the attack so I traced all traffic into Syrian ports in the days prior to the incident," Mr Solomon said...

He has referred to Jews as "God-murderers" (θεοκτόνους in Greek). He has asserted that "Hitler was a mere college-boy compared to the Jews". He has called for Greece to "reconquer" Istanbul, which he refers to as Constantinople, from Turkey within 5 years. He has promoted the myth that 4,000 either Jews or Israelis were warned to stay away from the World Trade Center on 9/11, and that, variously, no Jews or Israelis were killed at the World Trade Center. He has also claimed that 9/11 was planned and executed by Israel. He has defended Jean Marie le Pen, against the "Jewish pens that curse him. They are the same pens that curse and accuse us". In 2000, Karatzaferis claimed that the Protocols of Zion were being put into effect and that "the Pope and the Jews are conspiring against Greece". He has claimed at various times that 136 of Greece's 300 MPs are Freemasons, and that 100 MPs are "passive homosexuals with Albanian stallions". He is an ardent opponent of the so-called "New World Order", which is, he says, a plan to make Greece a puppet of the Jews...

Interviewer: My God...

The 30-year-old man fainted at a cyber cafe in the city of Guangzhou Saturday afternoon after he had been playing games online for three days, the Beijing News reported.

Paramedics tried to revive him but failed and he was declared dead at the cafe, it said. The paper said that he may have died from exhaustion brought on by too many hours on the Internet.

The report did not say what the man, whose name was not given, was playing.

The report said that about 100 other Web surfers "left the cafe in fear after witnessing the man's death."

China has 140 million Internet users, second only to the U.S...

On September 10, the deputy commander of the IDF's Spokesman's Office, Col. Shlomi Am-Shalom, submitted a letter to the France 2 television network's permanent correspondent in Israel, Charles Enderlin, regarding Enderlin's story from September 30, 2000, in which he televised 55 seconds of edited footage from the Netzarim junction in the central Gaza Strip purporting to show IDF forces shooting and killing 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura.

After its exclusive broadcast that day, France 2 offered the edited film free of charge to all media outlets. The footage, and the story of the purported IDF killing of al-Dura, was quickly rebroadcast around the world.

Within days, al-Dura became a symbol of the Palestinian war against Israel. His name has been repeatedly invoked by terrorists and their supporters as a justification for killing Israelis, Jews and their Western supporters.

In his letter, Am-Shalom asked for the entire unedited 27-minute film that was shot by France 2's Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu-Rahma that day, as well as the footage filmed by Abu-Rahma on October 1, 2000. Am-Shalom requested that the broadcast-quality films be sent to his office no later than September 15. France 2 has yet to hand over the requested film.

The IDF's move came against the backdrop of French media watchdog Philippe Karsenty's legal battle with France 2 regarding the network's coverage of the al-Dura affair...

The three judges on a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the lawsuit presented foreign policy questions best left to the White House.

Rachel Corrie, of Olympia, Washington, was crushed in 2003 by a 60-ton Israeli bulldozer as she stood before a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip. Her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, sued Peoria, Ill.-based Caterpillar, which manufactured the bulldozer, seeking to hold the company civilly liable for aiding and abetting human rights violations -- the destruction of civilian homes.

Shares of Caterpillar rose $1.15, or 1.6 percent, to $74.31 in Monday trade.

Last week, Obama introduced Zbigniew Brzezinski as "one of our most outstanding thinkers" during a policy speech on the Iraq war...

Zionists are engaged in a “desperate” search for Jewish genetic markers? Who knew?

Zionists like other Jews and, frankly, like most peoples of the world are intrigued by the new data genetics provides about the history of human populations. But “desperate” search undertaken to support an “investment in the racial separateness of the Jews.” I don’t think so.

There may be Jews who believe in “the racial separateness of the Jews,” though it’s hard to understand how. It’s pretty hard to believe in “the racial separateness of the Jews” when Israelis come in more colors than a Benetton commercial.

The person who actually is on a desperate search for Jewish genetic markers seems to be Nadia Abu El Haj. She has been working for the better part of a decade on her projected book about “Genetics, Jewish Origins and Historical Truths,” or, “Bearing the Mark of Israel? Genetics, Genealogy and the Quest for Jewish Origins,” as two of her lecture titles phrase it...

She and other leaders of the council held a news conference in The Hague to launch the Dutch chapter on Sept. 11, the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States. "We are all atheists and nonbelievers, and our goal is not to eradicate Islam from the face of the earth," but to make it a private matter that is not imposed on others, she said...

...Meanwhile, a prominent U.S. expert on the Middle East, who has interviewed Israeli participants in a mysterious raid over Syria last week, reported that the attack appears to have been linked to the arrival three days earlier of a ship carrying material from North Korea labeled as cement.

The expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid compromising his sources, said the target of the attack appears to have been a northern Syrian facility that was labeled an agricultural research center on the Euphrates River, close to the Turkish border. Israel has kept a close eye on the facility, believing that Syria was using it to extract uranium from phosphates.

The expert said it is not clear what the ship was carrying, but the emerging consensus in Israel was that it delivered nuclear equipment. The ship arrived Sept. 3 in the Syrian port of Tartus; the attack occurred Sept. 6 under such strict operational security that the pilots flying air cover for the attack aircraft did not know details of the mission. The pilots who conducted the attack were briefed only after they were in the air, he said.

Israel has imposed heavy censorship on reporters regarding the raid, so few details have leaked. The expert said that Israel appeared to have learned a lesson from its experience in destroying the Osiraq nuclear reactor in Iraq -- that bragging about an operation only makes it easier for the world to condemn it.

Adding to the mystery, Syria has made only muted protests about the raid, and North Korea, which rarely comments on international matters, swiftly condemned it.

Bruce Reidel, a former intelligence official at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center, said, "It was a substantial Israeli operation, but I can't get a good fix on whether the target was a nuclear thing." He said there was "a great deal of skepticism that there's any nuclear angle here" and instead the facility could have been related to chemical or biological weapons...

Reports of such an attack are "ridiculous and not true," Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Ja'afari said. Ja'afari added that "Syria does not have North Korean nuclear facilities." ...

There are a number of Lebanon’s political leaders and officials who reportedly have funds, assets and business concerns in the US, including Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, whose family is said to have extensive American holdings. However, both Lebanese and American political circles agree that the most obvious target of the Executive Order was Michel Aoun’s parliamentary bloc and financial backers in the US.

“It was a warning shot across Aoun’s bow,” says David Schenker, a senior fellow in Arab politics at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy who was previously the top policy aide for the Levant at the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “It is a clarifying statement from the White House,” Schenker says. “Washington wanted to signal their displeasure with Aoun’s role in Lebanon and that there was a price to be paid for trucking with Syria and Hezbollah”...

Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant secretary for nuclear nonproliferation policy, didn't name the suppliers, but said there were North Koreans in Syria and that he couldn't exclude that the network run by disgraced Pakistan nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan was possibly involved.

Semmel was responding to questions about an alleged Israel Air Force airstrike in northern Syria last week. Neither side has explained what exactly happened, but a U.S. government official confirmed that Israeli warplanes were targeting weapons from Iran and destined for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

"There are indicators that they do have something going on there, he said," Semmel said. "We do know that there are a number of foreign technicians that have been in Syria. We do know that there may have been contact between Syria and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment. Whether anything transpired remains to be seen."...

...Asked if the suppliers could have been North Koreans, he said: "There are North Korean people there. There's no question about that. Just as there are a lot of North Koreans in Iraq and Iran."

Asked if the so-called Khan network, which supplied nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, could have been involved, he said he wouldn't exclude it...

...The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said North Korea may be using Syria and Iran as "safe havens" for its nuclear activity, and another U.S. official was quoted as saying Damascus may be building a nuclear facility with North Korean assistance.

Bolton recently told Haaretz that United States President George W. Bush warned North Korea last year against transferring nuclear material to Syria, Iran or a terrorist organization, saying such a move would be perceived as a "grave threat."...

...Syria said Friday that there would be no military response to the incident. Damascus protested Tuesday to the United Nations about the strike...

Brzezinski, 79, stepped into the crossfire this summer when he published an essay in the summer issue of the journal Foreign Policy, defending a controversial new book about the power of the "Israel Lobby" in American politics.

"There are people in the community that question Barack's commitment, but it's not based on anything solid," said the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira Forman.

Still, people involved in Jewish and America-Israel politics across the political spectrum expressed surprise at Brzezinski's high profile in the campaign. Indeed, the former national security adviser has been at odds with elements of the American Jewish community since the Carter administration.

"Brzezinski was a major obstacle to bridging the divisions between the president and the Jewish community," said Mark Siegel, who was Carter's Jewish liaison until resigning in 1978 in a dispute over the sale of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. "I'm very, very surprised that someone would have him directly involved in a presidential campaign."

The shift signals France's impatience with Iran, and its desire that the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany agree quickly on a third round of UN sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program.

France also struck a more hawkish tone than Germany, which diplomats say believes new sanctions may not be necessary if Iran cooperates with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"We wish to have new sanctions adopted, as a priority in the U.N. Security Council," foreign ministry spokesman Frederic Desagneaux told a regular news conference.

"But we remind you that there are already measures taken outside that framework, in the framework of the European Union," he added...

...The United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany have been ratcheting up pressure on Tehran to halt its programme and cooperate more with UN inspectors.

But European diplomats have told Reuters Germany wants to delay any fresh sanctions to give a chance to an Aug. 21 deal between Iran and the IAEA that is meant to bring transparency to Iran's nuclear programme...

Aafia Siddiqui, that name rings a bell......

Oh yes, this former Boston area scientist (she attended Brandeis and MIT) and mother of three, is on the FBI "Seeking Information" list (she was on their Most Wanted List for some time). Vogue Magazine (of all publications!) wrote about this possible "top Al-Quaeda terrorist" in their March 2005 issue. According to the author, Siddiqui was "drawn into the world of terrorism...through the contacts and friendships she made in the early 1990's working for MIT's Muslims Student Association."

No fewer than five Moroccan Jews, three of them women, ran in the elections. None of them ended up winning a seat in Parliament, but they represented a record number of Jewish candidates and they made their presence felt during the campaign.

Over the past month, they took to the streets of Morocco’s largest city and to the airwaves of Al Jazeera to win support, often making their case to veiled women and bearded men. And to hear the candidates tell it, the citizens of this conservative Muslim Arab country gave them a fair hearing.

“I campaigned in the slums where the Islamists are present, and I was very well received and it touched me deeply,” Susan Abittan, a fiery 53-year-old social worker, said two days after the election in an interview at her modest apartment in Casablanca. “They know that I am involved in social issues, and this is what they want.”

Abittan announced her candidacy in late July, when King Mohammed VI publicly called on his countrymen to become involved in the legislative elections. The king’s appeal, according to most observers, was intended to dilute the electoral power of the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party, which was expected to win the most seats in parliament...

...The effects of this campaign have apparently reached far and wide. In a speech that Al Qaeda released last week, Osama bin Laden said that “the Jewish community in Morocco today is one of the largest communities in the world. They are alive with us, and we have not incinerated them.”

Bin Laden had some of his facts wrong: Morocco’s Jewish community is hardly one of the largest — and even the campaign-trail picture of tolerance painted by Abittan differs sharply from the accounts of two Moroccan reporters who followed the race and spoke to the Forward on condition of anonymity. Locals to whom the reporters talked about the candidates consistently asked why foreign candidates had entered Morocco’s elections, or stated that voting for a Jew was against Islam.

Abittan disputes this claim, stating that her 25 years of social work had earned the respect of local Jews and Muslims alike. She noted that an Islamist baker in her neighborhood had offered his support, and that one of the other Jewish candidates, banker Solange Cohen, ran in a well-known Islamist stronghold in Casablanca’s suburbs.

“We didn’t get the votes, because we started too late,” she said, “People, when they heard ‘Cohen,’ did not run away; they were curious.”

The checkered scarf in question was wrapped around the neck of Keith Weissman, the man once recognized as a top analyst at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerhouse pro-Israel lobby. These days, of course, Weissman is better known as defendant No. 2 in United States v. Rosen and Weissman, a case in which he and another former Aipac analyst have been accused of handing over top-secret American documents to foreign officials and journalists. Both have pleaded not guilty...

...Weissman has told friends that, free of the constraints posed by his employment by Aipac, he now sees himself as returning to his roots as a peace activist.

“I decided not to suppress my political views any longer,” Weissman, age 55, told a friend, according to sources close to the situation.

In addition to the keffiyeh, this has meant sporting a longer haircut and the earring that his Aipac superiors asked him not to wear. He has also offered to volunteer with Americans for Peace Now and Human Rights Watch — though he was politely turned down, sources say, presumably because of the difficulty in associating with a person under indictment for espionage charges...

...For Weissman, the first months of the current ordeal were apparently the worst. The firing and the accusations of breaking the espionage law led him to a personal crisis, friends said, causing an emotional breakdown for which he required psychological treatment...

...Weissman...is described by people close to him as having always been to the left of Aipac’s political line. As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, he used to drive around with a bumper sticker calling for a “free Palestine.”...

The new information, particularly images received in the past 30 days, has been restricted to a few senior officials under the instructions of national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, leaving many in the intelligence community unaware of it or uncertain of its significance, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Some cautioned that initial reports of suspicious activity are frequently reevaluated over time and were skeptical that North Korea and Syria, which have cooperated on missile technology, would have a joint venture in the nuclear arena...

...In talks in Beijing in March 2003, a North Korean official pulled aside his American counterpart and threatened to "transfer" nuclear material to other countries. President Bush has said that passing North Korean nuclear technology to other parties would cross the line.

Israel conducted a mysterious raid last week against targets in Syria. The Israeli government has refused to divulge any details, but a former Israeli official said he had been told that it was an attack against a facility capable of making unconventional weapons.

Others have speculated that Israel was testing Syria's air defenses in preparation for a raid on Iran or that Israel was targeting weapons destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon...

"In most of the area, Palestinian traffic is flowing and there is an improvement in the economy," he said, adding that the remaining roadblocks were "critical for security needs."

Israel Radio quoted the officer as saying the IDF was continuing its surveillance of Fatah terrorist suspects who relinquished their weapons in exchange for Israeli amnesty. The officer said that surveillance had shown that many of them had indeed ceased their terrorist activities.

Also, according to the officer, Palestinian Authority security forces are not targeting Hamas terrorists in the West Bank - as per Israel's request - but rather focusing solely on institutions affiliated with the Islamist organization such as charities and summer camps.

The Israel Defense Forces had no comment on the report, and have refused to comment further on the new revelations.

But the sources told CNN the military operation, which happened Wednesday into Thursday, may have also involved Israeli ground forces who directed the airstrike, which "left a big hole in the desert" in Syria.

The strike may have targeted Hezbollah weapons coming into Syria or transiting through the country from Iran -- a pattern that, over the past three or four years, has occurred without any retaliation or other action taken against it -- the sources said.

The Israeli government is very happy with the success of the operation, the sources said.

Sources in the U.S. government and military confirmed to CNN's Barbara Starr that the airstrike did happen, and that they are happy to have Israel carry the message to both Syria and Iran that they can get in and out and strike when necessary...

“The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left,” the official said. He said it was unclear whether the Israeli strike had produced any evidence that might validate that belief...

Scott Michener wrote:

I won’t be passing on your message, but it is going into our database of names/files. Thank you for voicing your concerns. Here at Barnard we take all voices into consideration.

Martin Luther King Room, Brookline High School

(Building with pillars. Go in front door and go straight back to the MLK Room)

115 Greenough St., Brookline Hills T stop, Green D line

Meet Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh
Palestinian-American Activist
Talk and Discussion

[snip]

Join Dr. Qumsiyeh for dinner!
Discuss his ideas for achieving peace
5pm
Fugaku Restaurant, 1280 Beacon St

The cautiously crafted statement, which is being released to coincide with tonight's start of both Rosh Hashana and Ramadan, commits the leaders to "strive to address disagreements and community concerns in ways that promote reconciliation rather than conflict."

That pledge appears to be a response to the mosque dispute, in which the breakdown in relations was so bad that it led to litigation, much of which was dropped in May. The statement also decries "all forms of terrorism, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim prejudice, or any other form of discrimination or stigmatization against any racial, religious, or ethnic group."

The statement includes the signatures of 20 individuals from each faith.

On the Muslim side, it includes the leaders of every prominent local Muslim institution, including five imams. On the Jewish side, where community institutions are under pressure from an Israeli advocacy group called the David Project to be skeptical of the motivations and backgrounds of Muslim leaders, the statement was signed by a number of prominent lay leaders but not by the staff who run mainstream organizations. [Charles Jacobs must be pleased to know he wields such control over the mainstream Jewish world.]...

...David Project president Charles Jacobs, reiterating the assertion that was the central issue in the defamation case, said in an e-mail yesterday: "Regrettably, the evidence that both the leadership of the Islamic Society of Boston and of the Muslim American Society have been supportive of organizations and individuals who themselves support terror, anti-Semitism, and/or hate speech is abundant and continues to grow. We believe that the wiser course is to defer statements of this sort, laudable as they may seem, until the ISB and MAS answers those questions."

But the signers said they thought it was important to start talking now. "The statement calls on leaders and followers in both communities to renounce terrorism and hatred and calls for the building of bridges, and I find it hard to disagree with that," said Rabbi Eric Gurvis, the president of the Board of Rabbis and the rabbi of Temple Shalom in Newton. "Those who point fingers and say, 'You can't trust this one, you can't trust that one,' that's part of why we've got conflict all around the world to start with. At some point, we have to at least start to talk to one another."...

[...]

The liberation of Jerusalem will not be achieved by means of glittering slogans, cheap arrogance, and degrading concessions. It will be achieved by realizing the divine path in the souls of the Muslims, and by raising the generation of the coming victory to lead the battle against the brothers of apes and pigs. By Allah, Jerusalem will be restored only through Jihad. The foundations of the monstrous entity will be shaken only by the love of martyrdom for the sake of Allah. By Allah, even if all Palestinians die for the sake of Jerusalem and Palestine, and if they all attain the honor of martyrdom for the sake of Allah, this would be a small and cheap sacrifice for the sake of Jerusalem.

Late Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed a foreign operations appropriations bill for 2008 with an amendment stating that none of the U.S. contributions to the United Nations would be made available to the council. The House passed an appropriations bill with a similar amendment in June...

...Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who introduced the amendment in the Senate, called the rights council a platform for "shielding human rights-violating regimes from scrutiny," such as Myanmar and North Korea, while "launching spiteful attacks against Israel."

Coleman has acknowledged the amendment is more about symbolism than in halting the council's operations. The U.S. share of the council budget is only around $3 million, and the bill would allow the president to ignore the funding cut if he deemed it wasn't in the national interest.

Assistant Secretary of State Kristen Silverberg told a Senate panel in July that the council is funded out of the U.N.'s general budget and moneys are easily transferrable.

If the U.S. cuts off its contributions, she said, it is "unlikely to actually decrease the amount of resources available to the council."

John Bolton, the outspoken former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that the bill sends a message separate from its financial impact.

"Congress needs to do more of this type of thing. De-funding is a way of showing dissatisfaction" with U.N. policy, he said...

...Critics have said the European Union, with only seven members on the 47-seat council, is outnumbered by the powerful Asian and African blocs, each with 13 members. The Organization of the Islamic Conference, which leads criticism of Israel in the council, has 15 members.

Since its creation last year, the council has only criticized one country — Israel, for its military actions in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon. Although it expressed concern for the situation in Darfur, the council refrained from explicitly criticizing the Sudanese government for its widely documented support of janjaweed militias in the region.

The following video shows this disturbing discrepancy with clips from the CNN documentary. Check back later for additional video revealing the bias and distortions in CNN's series...

Concretebob was told by a National Park Service employee that the damage was done on Friday night. There was no police report taken or written about the vandalism, apparently. And the damage was still very much there today.

Here are a few of the photos that Mrs. Trooprally took this morning...

For the record, the San Diego Women Film Foundation and Festival is NOT boycotting Israeli films. We are hopeful that filmmakers from the Israeli community will continue to submit films. Actions regarding the Festival Director will be dealt with internally. Again, our deepest and most sincere apologies. If you have any comments or questions, please email us at comments@sdwff.org.

- San Diego Women Film Foundation Board of Directors

Now, Australia is being eyed as a potential source of the virus. That could turn out to be an ironic twist, since the Australian imports were meant to bolster, not further damage, U.S. bee populations devastated by another scourge, the varroa mite. Meanwhile, officials are discussing reinstating the ban, said the Agriculture Department's top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis.

No, it does not refer to mankind’s unwillingness to move against Israel.

It refers to a rapidly spreading virus that has already wiped out a quarter of America’s honeybee population...

...QUESTION: is there any connection between the israeli virus and the Ness Ziona facility in israel that produces offensive biological weapons?

If so, would we ever find out about it?

(By the way, 'Ness Ziona' is Hebrew for “Banner / Flag / Standard of zion.”)

The ancient tunnel was recently discovered buried beneath rubble, a monument to one of the great dramatic scenes of the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 A.D.

The channel was dug beneath what would become the main road of Jerusalem, the archaeology dig's directors, Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa and Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said Sunday. Shukron said excavators looking for the road happened upon a small drainage channel that led them to the discovery of the massive tunnel two weeks ago.

"We were looking for the road and suddenly we discovered it," Shukron said. "And the first thing we said was, 'Wow."'

The walls of the tunnel -- made of ashlar stones 3 feet deep -- reach a height of 10 feet in some places and are covered by heavy stone slabs that were the road's paving stones, Shukron said. Several manholes are visible, and portions of the original plastering remain, he said.

Pottery shards, vessel fragments and coins from the end of the Second Temple period were also discovered inside the channel, attesting to its age, Reich said...

After a prolonged siege, Jerusalem was conquered by the Roman general Titus Flavius in the year 70 CE, and the Temple was destroyed. The Roman army placed a siege around Jerusalem by digging a trench around the city's walls, and building an additional wall around that trench. Anyone caught attempting to flee the city was crucified. Tens of thousands of crucified bodies encircled Jerusalem by the end of the siege.

Throughout the siege, many of the Jewish warriors' family members hid out in a drainage canal that carried rainwater from the Temple Mount to the Pool of Shiloach (AKA Siloam). This is the duct that has been exposed by archaeologists. When the city fell, some of the Jews hiding in the duct managed to escape through its southern section...

CRHR is showing it.
Short discussion at 6:30 and the film starts exactly at 6:40 !

Fwd: from Cambridge Residents for Human Rights
www.crhr.org

CRHR is presenting the film "Occupation 101" on Tuesday August 21st at the Pearl St. Public Library in Cambridge. Address is 45 Pearl St.

A thought provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film produced on the conflict, Occupation 101 presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the controversy and dispels many of the longstanding myths and misconceptions.

The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the role of the U.S. in the conflict, and the major obstacles which stand in the way of a peace based on justice. The roots of the conflict are explained with thought provoking commentaries from leading figures in the human rights, academic, religious and journalistic communities.

The Islamic American University opened its Boston branch last year and continues to provide Islamic Higher-Education for Muslims in the Greater Boston Area. In this email, I would like to show you the great potential that lies in this very accessible academic institution.

Are you studying Finance, Economics or Business? Why not take take "Islamic Economic System" or "Fiqh of Transactions" and enhance your academic background? This could easy be a stepping-stone into the flourishing field of Islamic Finance!...[etc...]

• “The Descent of Men: Genetics, Jewish Origins, and Historical Truths,”
• “Jews – Lost and Found: Genetics and the Evidentiary Terrain of Recognition”
• “Bearing the Mark of Israel? Genetics, Geneaology and the Quest for Jewish Origins”

Georgetown and Harvard had no apparent qualms about accepting Prince Alwaleed's money. The director of Georgetown's newly-renamed Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center rejected any suggestion that the Saudi magnate was attempting to use Saudi oil wealth to influence American policy in the Middle East. "There is nothing wrong with [Prince Alwaleed] expressing his opinion on American foreign policy," he said. "Clearly, it was done in a constructive way."...

...Although the aggressive deployment of petrodollars and oil-based influence from foreign sources aimed at advancing a pro-Arab line constitutes "nothing wrong" as far as Israel's critics are concerned, a new political fashion holds that there is something very wrong indeed about American Jews and other American backers of Israel expressing their support for Israel, and urging their political leaders to join them in that support.

Our major newspapers and networks, with correspondents in Israel able to take advantage of an Israeli political system that is a free-for-all and an astonishingly vibrant and self-critical Israeli press, report daily on every twist and turn of the conflict and are very frequently critical of Israel. As for American campuses, most objective observers would have little difficulty concluding that far from being criticism-free, they are in fact dominated by critics of Israel. Clearly, as strangleholds on criticism go, whatever stranglehold the pro-Israel community has on debate in the U.S. is a very loose one indeed.

If the charge that American Jews are able to stifle criticism of Israel is simply silly, the leveling of the charge that there is something nefarious about Jews urging support for the Jewish state raises questions about whether Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer have descended into a certain ugliness. And the tactic of trying to neutralize those questions by loudly predicting that they will be asked, however clever a tactic it may be, does not neutralize them.

It is apparently the authors' position that, even in the face of the overwhelming leverage of an Arab world swimming in petrodollars, with a lock on the U.N. and an unlimited ability to pay for pro-Arab public relations, American Jews are obliged to stay silent. In essence, Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer have repackaged the "the-Jews-run-the-country" stuff which has long been the bread and butter of anti-Semites...

Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, co-author of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" with Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, is scheduled to speak at Columbia's Heyman Center for the Humanities next month on the issue of free speech in academia. The October 30 panel, titled "Freedom and the University," is funded with a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation for research and speaking events related to academic freedom...

..."This people has a glorious history. Gordon Pasha, who humiliated the Chinese - the Sudanese here cut off his head. The Sudanese wiped out much of the British arrogance, to the point that the British wrote that the Sudanese people is like a sleeping dog that should not be awakened. They provoke us and awaken us, but Allah willing, we will show them."...

..."Even though we are opposed to the killing of any human being in Darfur, when they are the ones talking about this, we will not accept it under any circumstance. If it is the Americans and the British who adopt this case - we will never accept it."...

..."Why Darfur? Darfur is situated on top of the largest fresh-water reservoir in Africa and the world. The next war will be a war over water, and Israel cannot engage in war with the countries in which the Nile originates or flows. To compensate for this, Israel wants to control Darfur, thus gaining control of this fresh water."

[...]

"These [foreign] forces will back up the Hebrew forces, which will take over the Nile in order to expand their country. The Torah says: 'Wherever you park your horse caravans, that will be your land.' This means power. For Israel, land is not a geographical or political entity - it is power."z[...] ...

..."The Nifasha agreements and all these disasters, with their clear deceptions and great and deviant evils - the Zionist Satan is behind all this, whether he speaks English, Norwegian, or Italian."...

..."According to the tenets of their belief, in the third millennium they must build Solomon's Temple, and establish the Greater Israel, in order to rule the world for a thousand happy years. We have now entered the seventh year of that third millennium. Therefore, they are pressed for time...

...Infusions of foreign funds into the PA budget from late 2000 through 2002 correlated with increased violence. Only when Israel enforced a near total separation from the Palestinians in 2003-2004 did the level of terrorist killing decline significantly. But this was soon followed by increasing factional violence, which is consistent with the fact that money was still being made available to purchase weapons and pay the salaries of the expanding militias...

Glen S. Lewy, ADL National Chair, and Abraham H. Foxman, National Director, issued the following statement:

"The Council on American-Islamic Relations has once again squandered an opportunity to unequivocally condemn terrorists – such as Hezbollah and Hamas – by name and to address its past affiliation with the Islamic Association for Palestine, whose ideology is rooted in virulent anti-Semitism.

The August 29, 2007, "Open Letter from CAIR to ADL" is yet another weary tactic by CAIR's leadership to divert attention from its troubling roots and disingenuous record. CAIR Chairman Parvez Ahmed and Executive Director Nihad Awad continue to willfully ignore legitimate questions. Attacking ADL will not make the real issues go away.

An organization that purportedly seeks to enter into dialogue with ADL should firmly denounce the anti-Semitic rhetoric and support for terror organizations that regularly occur at rallies, instead of sponsoring and joining them.

ADL's 94-year history supporting the civil rights of all in this country, including Muslims, and our record of teaching respect for all religions through interfaith and diversity education programs is unparalleled. Unfortunately, CAIR has shown that it is not a legitimate partner in this vital work."

In the attached photo released by ADL, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad is shown delivering a speech under a Hezbollah flag during a rally on April 20, 2002 in Washington, DC. To his right stands Imam Abdul Alim Musa, the anti-Semitic head of Masjid Al Islam mosque.

Some of you have been wondering why the Breath of the Beast blog has been quiet for the past few weeks. One of the reasons is that I have had the pleasure and honor of being involved in helping with an initiative of tremendous importance.

Before the Pope's remarks, before Gaza Beach, before the Mohammed Cartoons there was Muhammad al Durah, the 12 year old boy the allegation of whose death was one of the first triumphs of the Islamo-rage-aholic/Pallywood/humiliation-a-thon that has sucked in and manipulated the Western Media.

Richard Landes of Second Draft and Augean Stables who, many of you know, is a pioneer debunker of media complicity in the Arab/Islamist/Palestinian offensive of misrepresented and staged news has refocused attention on this prototypical travesty with a new effort to try to get France2 to release all of their video tapes from that fateful days activities.

Here is what we know:

Israel has been trying for about 20 years to recover the artifact, which marks one of the most important turning points in Hebrew history.

Assyrian forces under King Sennacherib controlled most of the Middle East in the early eighth century B.C. and were about to march on Jerusalem, where a defiant King Hezekiah ruled.

Anticipating a prolonged siege, Hezekiah ordered the construction of a tunnel connecting the city to the Gihon Spring outside its walls, ensuring a source of drinking water. The water collected inside the Judean capital at the Pool of Siloam, where centuries later Jesus is said in the Gospel of John to have cured a man who had been blind since birth.

An inscription inside the tunnel described the dramatic moment when stonecutters working from either end converged in the middle...

A member of the Turkish Embassy's staff in Tel Aviv said the inscription could be deposited in Jerusalem "on a long-term basis" if some kind of reciprocity was made. Otherwise, it may stay at the Israel Museum for as little as three months.

Mr. Barkay suggested that the diplomat was hoping for a loan of items dating from the Ottoman Empire's 400-year-long rule over Palestine. Most of this material is stored in Israel's state archive, he said.

The inscription's text is dramatic and vivid. According to one translation, it states: "While the excavators were still lifting up their picks, each toward his fellow, and while there were yet three cubits to excavate, there was heard the voice of one calling to another, for there was a crevice in the rock, on the right hand. And on the day they completed the boring, the stonecutters struck pick against pick, one against the other, and the water flowed from the spring to the pool."

The tunnel through solid rock — 1,750 feet long, 15 feet high and 29 feet wide — took four years to cut, Mr. Barkay said...

Americans are welcome. Just not aware, I think. You should challenge your readers to go and bring cameras and send you photos from inside the tunnel. Someone should put up a video on Youtube. The walk takes 15 to 45 minutes, single file and sometimes there are halts in the progress of the file. It is about a third of a mile and it is amazing...

Police earlier fired about 20 teargas canisters at Bedouin families who refused to evacuate their houses, which the authorities say were built without licences, they added.

Ali Salman, one of the protesters, told Reuters that a large number of police arrived with bulldozers in the morning to carry out the demolition order, part of a longstanding conflict between the Sinai Bedouin and the Egyptian authorities.

The police sources said the protesters also damaged one vehicle which tried to pass along the road north to the resort of Dahab on the Gulf of Aqaba.

They said a total of 1,500 unlicensed buildings were scheduled for demolition in the Sharm el-Sheikh area and not all of them belonged to Bedouin...

At one point, the French are said to have brought 900 heads of slain insurgents to Cairo in bags and ostentatiously dumped them out before a crowd in one of that city's major squares to instill Cairenes with terror. (Two centuries later, the American public would come to associate decapitations by Muslim terrorists in Iraq with the ultimate in barbarism, but even then hundreds of such beheadings were not carried out at once.)

Right away, there's something unhinged about the part in the parentheses, which seems to plead on behalf of the video decapitators in Iraq. ("Your honor, we only did them one at a time.") But Cole went even further in prepared remarks he delivered at the Washington-based New America Foundation on August 24. Again he told the story of the French dumping heads in a Cairo square, with this addition: "We now associate beheadings with Islamic terrorism. But Bonaparte and the French Republic of course were the great beheaders initially. It was a very modern technique."

It was a very modern technique. If he'd said it in Q&A, I'd let it pass. But he said it in prepared remarks. I won't even begin the litany of historical precedents, stretching back to antiquity. But I will link here to an article by Timothy Furnish, "Beheading in the Name of Islam," which looks at decapitation in Islamic theology and history, and shows that it's been a sanctioned punishment from the very beginning, for criminals, dissidents, rebels, and defeated enemies. Most famously, the Prophet Muhammad ordered 600 to 900 men of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza executed by decapitation. Muhammad and his followers would seem to have had a millennium's head start over Napoleon in the race for the title of initial "great beheaders."

Cole's description of beheading as "very modern" isn't just a mistake. It tells you just how driven he is to blame the West for everything he deplores and relativize even the most revolting acts of Muslim terrorism. Terrorists are cutting off heads in Iraq? The West started the beheading with Napoleon, so we're just reaping what we've sown. They use terror? It's because Bush, like Napoleon, has followed "the strategy of ruling by terror and swift, draconian punishment for acts of resistance." We are guilty not only of our sins. We are guilty of theirs, by our example and our actions. You see, until we came along, everyone got to keep his head...

We get to the house. We take out the three guards with silencers. We enter his bedroom. He is sleeping. Next to his wife. This bothers me. We have this sleeping gas for the wife should she wake up. But I can’t kill him. Sleeping next to his wife. I inject him so he stays asleep: he shakes briefly, then goes limp. We roll him out of bed, his wife still sleeping. I carry him on my back downstairs and we are off. Deliver him to Shabak for questioning. I think this is good, since I think that they got a lot of information from him.

(There is a touch of uncertainty in his voice as he talks about not killing this man.)...

Instead, he read a statement announcing his resignation this morning on the university's main quadrangle before about 120 supporters announcing that he and DePaul had resolved the controversy. But the terms were kept confidential.

Finkelstein had vowed to present himself at his office door today and, if denied entrance, to perform an unspecified act of civil disobedience. He vowed to go on a hunger strike if he were jailed...

...A colorful demonstration for Finkelstein on campus this morning included representatives of the National Lawyers Guild, the Socialist Workers Party, the Revolutionary Communist League and Jewish Voice for Peace...

first they hired me

then they fired me

then by golly I quit, quit, quit

then by golly I quit

Prosecutors spent the past six weeks detailing links between the Palestinian charities, known as zakat committees, and HAMAS, a designated foreign terrorist organization. While much of the money went to humanitarian relief, anything that went to benefit HAMAS violated U.S. law, the government contends.

Jurors heard a much different account from Abington. For example, he described the Al Ghazi hospital in Jenin as "clean" and contrasted that with the Israeli military hospital where he found conditions "abysmal."

The hospital has been linked to HAMAS. In June 2002, Israeli security forces arrested Mustafa Amjad, a doctor at the Al Ghazi hospital, who had been recruited by HAMAS to smuggle suicide bombers from Jenin into Israel.

To Abington, HAMAS is a "radical fundamentalist" group, but not Islamist. He described an Islamist as a "pious Muslim" who follows the five pillars of Islam, including charitable giving (zakat) and undertaking the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca.

Abington also testified that he found information from Shin Bet and other Israeli intelligence agencies to be unreliable and believed the Israelis have an "agenda" to "influence US thinking."

He accused Israel of using documents seized during Operation Defensive Shield, a military offensive launched by Israel in response to terrorist attacks in April 2002, as propaganda material "to undermine the reputation of the Palestinian Authority." Documents from that military operation have been presented as evidence by Israeli security officials who testified anonymously.

During cross examination, prosecutor Barry Jonas noted that Abington earned $750,000 a year during seven years as the chief lobbyist for the PLO, which led the Palestinian Authority, after leaving the State Department. Prior to resigning from the government in 1999, Abington negotiated a $400 million deal between the State Department and Yasser Arafat...

In addition to picking apart the arguments laid out in CAIR's brief piece by piece, the government set an important precedent, officially and definitively linking CAIR to Hamas, writing:

In the instant case, striking CAIR's name from the attachment to the Trial Brief will not prevent its conspiratorial involvement with HLF, and others affiliated with Hamas, from becoming a matter of public record. That has already occurred as a consequence of the presentation of evidence at trial. (emphasis added)...

The seized home belongs to Abu Hureira, one of the leaders of Fatah al-Islam -- an extremist group believed to have links to the al Qaeda terrorist network.

Members of the group have been holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp outside the northern city of Tripoli for more than three months...

The army finally took control of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp on Sunday after more than three months of fierce battles, including air, sea and land bombardment against the entrenched Fatah al-Islam militants.

Defense Minister Elias al-Murr also said 202 militants were captured in the battles and an unknown number were buried in mass graves inside the largely destroyed camp.

"This victory uprooted the biggest threat that faced the Lebanese people because Fatah al-Islam was spreading like cancer cells to target each part of the nation," Murr told a news briefing.

"The organization was aiming to isolate the north from Lebanon to create a terrorist emirate," he said.

At least 42 civilians and 163 soldiers were killed, bringing the death toll to 427 -- Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war...

The findings in the ruins of the city of Rehov include 30 intact hives dating to around 900 B.C.E., archaeologist Amihai Mazar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told The Associated Press. He sad it offers unique evidence that an advanced honey industry existed in the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.

Beekeeping was widely practiced in the ancient world, where honey used for medicinal and religious purposes as well as for food, and beeswax was used to make molds for metal and to create surfaces to write on. While portrayals of bees and beekeeping are known in ancient artwork, nothing similar to the Rehov hives has ever been found before, Mazar said...

Our report showed a pattern of fear among a small number of British citizens -- there are around 300,000 Jews in Britain, of whom about a third are observant -- that is not acceptable in a modern democracy. Synagogues attacked. Jewish schoolboys jostled on public transportation. Rabbis punched and knifed. British Jews feeling compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their weddings and community events. On campuses, militant anti-Jewish students fueled by Islamist or far-left hate seeking to prevent Jewish students from expressing their opinions.

More worrisome was what we described as anti-Jewish discourse, a mood and tone whenever Jews are discussed, whether in the media, at universities, among the liberal media elite or at dinner parties of modish London. To express any support for Israel or any feeling for the right of a Jewish state to exist produces denunciation, even contempt.

Our report sent a shock wave through the British government...

No, this was not a Hamas rally somewhere in the Palestinian territories. This was Brussels, where the European Parliament last week played host to the "United Nations International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace."

If the conference title's inversion of the truth is reminiscent of Communist-style propaganda, this is no coincidence. The meeting was organized by the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, a Soviet-era body founded around the time of the 1975 U.N. "Zionism is racism" resolution. That anti-Semitic resolution was revoked in 1991 but the committee continued its activities in the resolution's original spirit.

Speaker after speaker at the European Parliament on Thursday and Friday presented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from an exclusively Palestinian perspective. Israel was accused of human rights violations while Palestinian terrorism and incitement went unmentioned. The delegates invoked the Israeli occupation as the underlying cause for the conflict without mentioning the Palestinian rejectionism and violence that prevent further Israeli withdrawals...

Preserved land is defined as land in which there is no construction and is used as nature preserves, national parks, agricultural areas and forests. Israel's position as a front-runner on this list attests to its success in allocating significant portions of land to protect nature and the landscape.

The IUCN failed to mention, however, that a major portion of the Israeli open space which was included in the organization's survey is also used in military training exercises. Many nature preserves, and particularly those in the Negev, like the Holot Agur dunes, Tze'elim, Har Hanegev and the Eilat Mountains, are also used as Israel Defense Forces training areas. Military activity in these areas impacts nature, but most of the damage is minimal due to a unique agreement between the IDF and the Israel Nature & National Parks Protection Authority (INNPPA).

The IUCN survey paints a disturbing picture of the state of conservation in Mediterranean nations. The organization cites the accelerated pace of extinction of species, some of which only exist in this part of the world. Despite increased land allocation to nature preservation in the Mediterranean Basin in recent years, the general trend, in which animal and plant species in the region are becoming extinct, has not been halted. Moreover, two-thirds of marine mammal species, a fourth of amphibian species, nearly half of the shark species, more than half of the fresh-water fish species, and more than 10 percent of the reptile species, in the region, appear on the endangered list...

...Oral and physical confrontations between Finkelstein and university officials began shortly after his tenure denial, according to a memo written by university Provost Helmut Epp.

The provost's memo, dated June 26, alleges that Finkelstein "angrily confronted" other faculty and staff and engaged them with "threatening and discourteous behavior" after being denied tenure.

On three such occasions, campus security officers were called to intervene, according to the provost's memo. When a dean attempted to escape a confrontation by ducking into an elevator, Finkelstein physically tried to keep the door from closing, according to the provost's account...

...Finkelstein's support among colleagues, once considerable, had been waning.

On July 10, according to one newly obtained memo, the political science department informed the provost that Finkelstein's actions "constitute unacceptable and unprofessional behavior." It recommended that Finkelstein be granted "non-residential leave" for the 2007-08 academic year by DePaul, a Catholic university founded by the Vincentian order. Traditionally in academia, a faculty member denied tenure is owed a final year in the classroom.

Earlier, the political science department had strongly supported Finkelstein's cause, voting in favor of his application for tenure. Even so, his departmental colleagues had noted Finkelstein's no-holds-barred writing style, saying that in his books, "careful and important scholarly arguments are often sprinkled with ad hominem attacks, invective and unsparing criticism."...

JERUSALEM – Islamic authorities using heavy machinery to dig on the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site – have been caught red-handed destroying Temple-era antiquities and what's believed to be a section of an outer wall of the Second Jewish Temple.

WND today obtained a photograph of a massive trench the Waqf, the Muslim custodians of the Temple Mount, have been blasting around the periphery of the holy site purportedly to replace 40-year-old electrical cables for mosques on the Mount. The Waqf has steadfastly denied they found or destroyed any Jewish antiquities during their dig.

In view in the picture, which was obtained in conjunction with , are concrete slabs broken by Waqf bulldozers and what appears to be a chopped up carved stone from Jewish Temple-era antiquity.

Twelve children suffered from shock after the strike on the southern town, and were evacuated to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon for treatment.

"We view this attack very gravely," said the prime minister. "The IDF has been instructed to destroy every rocket launcher and to strike all those involved in the fire."

Olmert made the comments during a joint press conference with visiting Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer in Jerusalem.

"We will continue to invest in reinforcement of educational institutions along the border with Gaza, and we will do everything necessary in order to create a stronger sense of security for the residents, who are living in an intolerable reality," added Olmert.

Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu called for the international community to prevent Israel from
carrying out harsh reprisals. "We are taking this new threat by Olmert seriously," he said. "We are warning of coming massacres against the people in Gaza."...

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"Puerto Rico to Palestine: Uniting Struggles in Defense of the Land"

Wedesday Sept. 5th 7pm
at the Democracy Center in Harvard Sq. Cambridge
45 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge, MA
http://www.democracycenter.org/

This event represents an effort to strengthen ties between communities that are struggling in defense of the land, environmentally, politically, for survival and for the sake of justice. We will present some of those parallels and examples of inspired resistance that will help cross germinate ideas for nonviolent action that can be shared with all struggles. Emad Bornat's documentary film from Palestine will be shown, including Tito Kayak scaling a tower in Palestine with the Palestinian flag. Sponsored The Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights - BCPR The tour will take place from August 23rd until Sept. 21st, 2007, in Puerto Rico and cities in the US. This tour is made possible With help from Ithaca Catholic Worker Vieques Support Group for more information please go to: http://puertoricotopalestine.org/