February 2008 Archives

A senior Israeli politician provoked controversy today when he warned that Palestinians firing rockets from Gaza would be punished with a "bigger holocaust" from Israeli armed forces.

The use of the Hebrew word for holocaust, "shoah", tends to be used exclusively in Israel to describe the Nazi persecution of Jews.

Palestinian activists routinely claim to be suffering a "shoah" at the hands of Israel, but the Jewish state normally denies any moral equivalence between the suffering of Palestinians today and European jewry under the Nazis.

Matan Vilnai, deputy defence minister, broke that taboo when he used the term "shoah" during interview on Army Radio.

"The more qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," he said...

...This was not enough to placate Palestinians who sought to exploit the use of the word...

...'shoah' merely means disaster. In Hebrew, the word 'shoah' is never used to mean 'holocaust' or 'genocide' because of the acute historical resonance. The word 'Hashoah' alone means 'the Holocaust' and 'retzach am' means 'genocide'. The well-known Hebrew construction used by Vilnai used merely means 'bringing disaster on themselves'...

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's prime minister in the Gaza Strip, said: "This is a proof of Israel's pre-planned aggressive intentions against our people. They want the world to condemn what they call the Holocaust and now they are threatening our people with a holocaust."

Wheat flour 50 kg: 205/135
Olive oil 1 Kg: 23.8/27
Rice 1 kg: 4.9/3.3
Veg. oil 1 kg: 8.7/6.8
Chickpeas 1 kg: 5.6/5.7
Refined sugar 1 kg: 3.1/2.6
Milk powder 1 kg: 32.1/29
Basket of 7 items: 283.1/209.4

Palestinians initially featured in terror tape in wake of Dimona bombing imprisoned by Cairo

Mystery solved: The two Palestinians who were initially said to have carried out the recent terror attack in the southern town of Dimona are alive and well in an Egyptian prison, Ynet has learned.

The attack, which occurred about three weeks ago, claimed the life of one woman and wounded 10 people. A short time after the bombing, two groups claimed responsibility for the attack: the Popular Front's Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades and the Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

The two groups also published a videotape featuring the two supposed suicide bombers. In the tape, the two Gaza men indicate that they intend to blow themselves up in Israel.

However, a short while later Israeli security officials raised doubts regarding the bombers' identity, after photographs of the Dimona bombing site failed to match the videotape. A day later, Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack and said that the two bombers came from the West Bank town of Hebron...

...Following the bombing, question marks persisted regarding the fate of the two men featured in the videotape. The Palestinians wondered whether the two were detained or eliminated by Israel or Egypt, or whether they were still at large and planning to carry out another attack.

However, Ynet has learned that Egyptian authorities informed the Popular Front that the two Gazans are in fact imprisoned in Egypt after they were arrested near the border. The Palestinian source who reported the information refused to say whether Egypt was planning to release the two...

ASHKELON, Israel: Israeli defense officials warned on Friday of an approaching invasion of the Gaza Strip after Israel was forced to activate an air raid system to protect a major city from Palestinian rocket barrages.

A Palestinian rocket hit a house in the rocket-scarred Israeli town of Sderot, slightly wounding one person, Israeli rescue officials said. Another rocket that fell short landed on a house in northern Gaza, moderately wounding four civilians.

A spike in violence that began Wednesday with Israel's killing of two rocket masterminds [Note the arbitrary choice of when to mark the beginning of the latest "cycle of violence". -S] has killed 32 Palestinians, including 15 civilians, among them eight children. The youngest was a 6-month-old boy. An Israeli man was killed in a rocket attack on Sderot on Wednesday.

Israel blamed the high Palestinian civilian death toll on rocket squads operating within civilian areas of Gaza, ruled by the Islamic militant Hamas. AP photos showed rockets being launched from densely populated areas.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians took to the streets Friday to bury their dead and protest the Israeli attacks. Some children at the protests wore white clothes stained with red paint to signify blood [So be sure to photograph us from our good sides...]...

...Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai was more explicit, saying Israel had "no other choice" but to invade Gaza, which Israeli troops and settlers evacuated more than two years ago.

"As the rocket fire grows, and the range increases -- and they haven't yet said the last word on this -- they are bringing upon themselves a greater 'shoah' because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate, whether in airstrikes or on the ground," Vilnai told Army Radio. "We're getting close to using our full strength."

The Hebrew word "shoah" is most often associated with the Holocaust but Israelis use it to describe all sorts of disasters. A spokesman for Vilnai, Eitan Ginzburg, said the deputy defense minister never intended it as a reference to the Holocaust but used the word "shoah" in its original sense [This is a remarkable bit of fairness from the AP. This sloppy "shoah" translation (and, let's face it, the ill-advised use of the word in the first place) is something we're going to be seeing a lot of in the future. See Melanie Phillips: The mother of all mistranslations - h/t: Adam]...

...Sderot and nearby communities have taken the overwhelming brunt of the rocket attacks from Gaza, but militants firing longer-range Iranian rockets struck hit the town of Ashkelon several times on Thursday. One sliced through the roof of an apartment building and three floors below, and another landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl...

On the same day in which the Hamas staged its "peaceful" propaganda march of women and children toward Israel's border crossings (26 Feb 2008), the Hamas' official website featured a poster, portraying its gunmen in battle dress, declaring in English and Hebrew "Death is Coming", and depicting Israeli casualties in the background.

Don't allow yourself to be fooled by their media manipulation of woman and children, the Hamas' true message to Israelis is unequivocally clear - "YOU ARE OUR TARGET - WE WANT YOU DEAD!"

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Wednesday that he doesn't rule out armed conflict against Israel. He also said that he was "honored" to have fired the first bullet of the Fatah terror organization in 1965, and to have taught terror tactics around the world, including to such groups as Hizbullah.

In an in-depth interview published today in the Jordanian daily Al-Dustur, Abbas said that the PA is "unable" to pursue armed conflict for now, but said that "in the future stages things may be different."

He rejected Israel as a Jewish state, and said that it was the PA's rejection of Israel's Jewishness that almost aborted the Annapolis Conference last November.

Abbas said that he won't demand that Hamas recognize Israel. In fact, as PMW has reported in the past, he said that the only "recognition" of Israel he demands of a Palestinian unity government is to recognize Israel as its adversary.

Here are some highlights from that interview:

While former president Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid generated many accusations of bias and anti-Semitism, another Jimmy Carter work published last year, three sets of audio CD's of Bible classes he delivered in his hometown church in Georgia, has largely passed under the radar.

And yet these CD's, published by Simon and Schuster in 2007 based on lessons Carter delivered in 1998, 2001 and 2003, feature a disturbing number of subtle and not so subtle anti-Jewish and anti-Israel statements - plus a fair dose of falsehood and ignorance...

...Undoubtedly, some of what Carter says in these CD's derives from the New Testament. Nonetheless, Christian Media Analyst for CAMERA (Committee for Middle East Reporting Accuracy) Dexter Van Zile said, "Most responsible Christians can tell the difference between an affirmation of Christianity's religious truth and the denigration of the Jewish people. And most Christians have learned that they no longer have to go around beating up on the Jewish people to affirm their religious truth. Unfortunately there are times when it looks like Jimmy Carter hasn't learned that lesson."

Also, Van Zile added, Carter "seems to basically think that the New Testament is an accurate description of Judaism even in the 21st century." He makes no effort to restrict his characterization of Jews and Judaism to the Second Temple era.

In his analysis of the CD's, Miller found that at times Carter actually conflates ancient and modern Jewish history by mistakenly calling Israelites Israelis or Judea Israel. In one example, Carter says, "God would save the Israelites, they would sign a firm commitment or contract or covenant. The Israelis would what? Violate the covenant, break their promises to God. They would be punished."...

...When the late 23 year-old Parisian Jew Ilan Halimi was being tortured to death in February 2006, his Muslim torturers, as Nidra Poller wrote in the Wall Street Journal "...phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Qur'ran, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background." In the heart of Western Europe, Ilan Halimi's torturers/murderers did not invoke any non-Islamic sources of anti-Jewish hate, only the Koran.

As a pre-condition to real dialogue--not its miserable simulacrum as represented by the February 25, 2008 letter -- Jews and their leadership -- religious, political, and intellectual -- must demand a mea culpa from their Muslim counterparts for the sacralized Islamic Jew hatred which contributed to Ilan Halimi's death, and countless other similar atrocities across space and time, since the advent of Islam.

Let us demonstrate as Jews that we are no longer living with 12th century expectations of Muslims, otherwise they will oblige us.

A BBC producer failed to give police information that would have helped track down the July 21 bombers, the trial was told.

Don't Panic, I'm Islamic, which featured the group paintballing and an interview with Mohammed Hamid, was shown on BBC2 on June 12, 2005.

Nasreen Suleaman, the producer, told the court that Hamid said he would use his £300 fee to settle the fine he had been given by magistrates for racially abusing two policemen at his Oxford Street stall.

Called as a defence witness, Miss Suleaman admitted that she had spoken to Hamid in the days following the July 21 attacks and found out he knew the wanted men.

She said she thought he was scared the fugitives might try to call him but did not contact the police because she felt under "no obligation" to do so.

Miss Suleaman claimed she told BBC managers of the situation but no one passed on the information to the authorities.

She looked visibly shaken when told that two of the July 21 bombers, had joined Hamid on another paintball trip two weeks before the bombings.

Miss Suleaman saw Hamid a few days after July 21, 2005 and he seemed "very shocked that the men he knew were accused of this".

Duncan Penny, prosecuting, said: "Did you tell him to go to the police?"

Ms Suleaman replied: "I don't think I needed to."

An Australian family whose pet guinea pig, cat and dog were eaten by giant pythons menacing their tropical home fears their children could be next on the predators' menu.

The Peric family watched in horror this week as their much-loved Chihuahua was swallowed by a 16.5 ft long scrub python on the verandah of their home in Kuranda, Queensland.

Despite hurling chairs at the snake, it was undeterred and they were unable to save the family pet.

"Actually watching it unfold before your eyes was pretty gut-wrenching," Daniel Peric told the Cairns Post yesterday. "We'd had the dog about five years, so it was part of the family."

A pet guinea pig and a cat had fallen victim to snakes in recent weeks and he said he was now worried about his two young children, Ethan, 5, and Talia, 7, who witnessed the python eat their pet dog...

Los Angeles to hold benefits for Qassam-battered city featuring host of Hollywood stars including Sylvester Stallone, Paula Abdul, and Jon Voight

Los Angeles is proving to indeed be a "city of angels'". A host of Hollywood stars, including Paula Abdul, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight, will be participating Tuesday in a charity and solidarity concert for the rocket-battered town of Sderot in Beverly Hills.

The concert, entitled "Live for Sderot", which will include a performance by Israeli singer Ninet Tayeb and will be attended by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, will also launch the celebrations of the State of Israel's 60th anniversary in the city.

Guests of honor at this special concert will be a delegation of 10 teenagers from Sderot which were flown to visit Los Angeles and share their experiences of life in Sderot with local American youths...

Dozens of Hollywood stars attended Tuesday the "Live for Sderot" concert, which was held in Los Angeles and dedicated to the children of the Qassam-battered town.

City Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa also participated in the glamorous event, organized by the Israeli consulate as an opening ceremony for Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations, and US presidential hopefuls Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain all sent their warm wishes to Sderot via videotaped messages.

The show was hosted by singer and American Idol judge Paula Abdul, and included performances by Ninet Tayeb, violinist Miri Ben-Ari, Israeli-born American singer Elliot Yamin, Mike Burstein, Aki Avni, Noa Tishby and Oscar-winner actor John Voight.

In Obama's message, which was broadcast during the event, the Democratic candidate said that as a father of two girls, he "could only imagine the terror that these rockets cause." Senator Clinton voiced her sympathy for the people of Sderot, saying she was overwhelmed by the town's residents' courage and sacrifice.

Republican candidate McCain stated that the world must not remain passive in view of the Qassam fire on the Israeli town. "It's an outrage that this violence is claiming innocent victims but is not condemned by world nations. Everybody is entitled to live in peace," he stressed...

...she discussed the famous case of the video clip of 12-year-old Muhammed Al-Dura, broadcast around the world by France-2 television. France-2's narration and selected clips led the entire world to believe that the IDF was responsible for killing an innocent boy as his father tried desperately to protect him.

Why did Israel not defend herself? Why did a top IDF general immediately accept responsibility for the boy's death? Why did Israel not take a more offensive posture against this onslaught? "Because of Oslo!," Glick answered. "It was because Ehud Barak was in the middle of trying to conclude a deal over the Temple Mount with Arafat - so how could he come out against the PLO? How could he blacken the name of those to whom he wanted to give away Gaza?"...

A new Gallup poll is being touted as a "challenge" to western misperceptions of Islam. The survey was done on three continents and took six years to complete, and as the French news agency AFP reports, we've all been a little alarmist over here: "About 93 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are moderates and only seven percent are politically radical, according to the poll, based on more than 50,000 interviews."

Seven percent of 1.3 billion leaves us with . . . 91 million radical Islamists. And to think we were concerned! That piddling handful is nothing that can't be taken care of with a little dialogue, a few billion in American aid, and some proper education. I'm feeling audaciously hopeful.

But, wait, what's this? "The radicals are better educated, have better jobs, and are more hopeful with regard to the future than mainstream Muslims," said John Esposito, who authored the book Who Speaks for Islam.

Oh well...

Here's an official plan submitted to invigorate tourism in Saudi Arabia: Marry four women, domicile them in corners of the kingdom, travel to visit each during the year, and -- boom -- you've stimulated airline business, hotel occupancy, and car rentals. This was submitted by none less than Hassan Alomair, director of self-development in Saudi Arabia, at a Jeddah conference for the development of internal tourism.

The project combines piety with efficacy by uniting Sharia's entitlements to multiple wives with economic stimulus, Mr. Alomair argued. Sharing the dais was the female dean of the school of literature at King Faisal University, Dr. Feryal al-Hajeri, who remained silent as he prescribed his harem-induced economic scheming.

Not so with the readers and bloggers on the Saudi daily Al Watan's website, which lit up on February 12 with commentary. "Why not make it four cows? He can fly around to milk them," one said. "If that is the mentality of our director of self-development," another asked, "how are the others in that department?" There was plenty of accord with Mr. Alomair too. Some saw his idea as a "pillar" for building a true Islamic society, a "refuge" for unmarried Saudi women, and a "cure" for a widening spinster phenomena...

On the Temple Mount there is a delicate relationship between the Waqf and other groups, on the one hand, and the State of Israel, on the other. It is a give and take situation, carrot and stick. As far as the Antiquities Law is concerned, sometimes we prefer to settle things quietly with Islamic groups through private arrangements that remain private. We pay a price for that, sometimes a high one. It is a known fact that antiquities are being damaged on the Temple Mount. The alternative is a riot every other day. Those in authority have to decide what they prefer, and we prefer quiet because, with all due respect to the antiquities, the top priority of the State of Israel on the Temple Mount is quiet, not riots, even if the antiquities pay the price. In theory, the laws of Israel govern the Temple Mount, but in reality, the various authorities are careful in their enforcement because religiously it is a very sensitive location.

Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) spearheaded a bipartisan letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice voicing opposition to any administration interference with the legal rights of victims of terrorism.

The Antiterrorism Act of 1990 (ATA) gives victims of terrorism and their families an avenue through which to seek redress against terrorists through the American court system. The Palestinian Authority is currently seeking to nullify monetary damages awarded under the ATA to Leslye Knox, a Georgian woman whose husband was killed in a 2002 Palestinian terrorist attack. The Palestinian Authority has requested the United States to file a "Statement of Interest" in the case; the administration is expected to decide by February 29, 2008 whether to do so...

On the morning of February 26, 1993, Islamic militants steered a nondescript Ryder van through the winding darkness of the parking garage under the World Trade Center. They had spent years planning this moment in secret meetings at mosques and jailhouses, in rural outposts that served as paramilitary camps, and in safehouses where explosive compounds were mixed in makeshift labs.

Loaded into the van's rear compartment was a 1,400-pound chemical bomb...

...It had been the intention of the World Trade Center bombers to annihilate tens of thousands of Americans, in addition to rendering the world's most significant financial district uninhabitable. Detonation was consciously timed for maximum carnage: high noon on a Friday, when as many as 120,000 business professionals, laborers, diners, tourists, and area residents typically swarmed the Twin Towers and their immediate Wall Street environs.

More diabolically [Note: He did not say innovatively], not content with their sophisticated, powerfully combustible urea-nitrate mixture, the jihadists laced the compound with deadly sodium cyanide and attempted to boost the explosion with hydrogen tanks. The aim was a horror virtually unimaginable back then (though it is, today, an omnipresent fear): wide dispersal of a lethal, aerated chemical, killing the thousands too distant to be obliterated by the sheer force of the blast...

... That they would learn from their errors faster than we from ours is now clear. In truth, it was clear then. On the hard drive of Nidal Ayyad, one of the bombers arrested in early March 1993, the FBI recovered a claim-of-responsibility letter. It is even more chilling today than it was all those years ago:

We are, the Liberation Army fifth battalion, again. Unfortunately, our calculations were not very accurate this time. However, we promise you that next time it will be very precise and World Trade Center will continue to be one [of] our targets unless our demands have been met.

And so it was.

...Avid readers of this blog will recall that Lee Bollinger, back in 2005, tried to calm the raging waters by announcing the establishment of a chair of Israel studies. Four trustees quickly anted up $3 million. The university then appointed a search committee that included Palestinian agitprofs Rashid Khalidi and Lila Abu-Lughod. At the time, I wrote this:

The inclusion of Khalidi and Abu-Lughod on the search committee is perverse. Edward Said used to complain that the Palestinians needed "permission to narrate" their story. At Columbia, the situation is reversed: Israel can't be narrated without the permission of the great Palestinian mandarins. They must be appeased, satisfied, propitiated.

So were they? The chair has been filled by Yinon Cohen, a former Tel Aviv University sociologist who works mostly on labor markets and migration. Cohen isn't a hard-left post-Zionist, but he's far enough left to have signed a May 2002 open letter by some Israeli faculty. At the time, Israel was wrapping up Operation Defensive Shield, its response to the wave of suicide bombings inside Israel that had killed Israelis in the hundreds. The letter's signatories announced their "wish to express our appreciation and support for those of our students and lecturers who refuse to serve as soldiers in the occupied territories... [T]he present war is not being fought for our home but for the settlements beyond the green line and for the continued oppression of another people."

I don't think Khalidi and Abu-Lughod have much to worry about.

In the February 22, 2008 episode of the Hamas children's show "The Pioneers of Tomorrow," on Al-Aqsa TV, program host Saraa Barhoum and bunny character Assud urge viewers to boycott Danish products and to avenge the insult of the Muhammad cartoons reprinted by Danish newspapers. They also express their hope that "all the borders will be opened" between Arab countries, and discuss their own "martyrdom."

...Amani [child caller]: "Our brothers, the Americans, have affronted the Prophet Muhammad..."

Assud: "They are not our brothers, they are criminals."

Amani: "What?"

Assud: "They are infidels, not our brothers."

Amani: "They are enemies of Allah, and they have affronted the Prophet Muhammad."...

...Saraa: "It's because the West has seen that we've moved away from the religion of Allah, and from the Sunna of our Prophet Muhammad. They have also seen that we have forsaken the religion of Allah, and therefore, they could affront the Prophet, because... We have done nothing to redeem the Prophet Muhammad. But I say to them: You haven't seen anything yet. Allah willing, the soldiers of the 'Pioneers of Tomorrow' will redeem the Prophet Muhammad with all that they possess, and even with their blood, Assud. They will not allow them to do this again."

Assud: "If they do it again, Saraa, we will kill them, right?"

Saraa: "Allah willing."

Assud: "I will bite them and eat them up."

Saraa: "Yes...

...Assud: "Allah willing, when I am martyred, a tiger will take my place... Allah willing, I will be the one to fix things, and there won't be any tiger. The "Pioneers of Tomorrow" and I will make this dream come true. [...]

"Allah Willing, There Are Thousands of Soldiers of the 'Pioneers of Tomorrow'"

"Who will host this show if you are martyred? Will 100,000 Saraas take your place?"

Saraa: "Allah willing, Assud."

Assud: "We'll take them from among the 'Pioneers of Tomorrow,' Allah willing."

Saraa: "Allah willing, there are thousands of soldiers of the 'Pioneers of Tomorrow.'"

Assud: "Martyrdom for the sake of Allah is what we hope for, right?"

Saraa: "Right, Assud."..

Thousands of Palestinians have formed a "human chain" in Gaza in protest at Israel's blockade of the territory.

Organisers had hoped up to 50,000 people would make a 40km (25-mile) chain from Rafah to Beit Hanoun, but turnout was below expectation...

Stones thrown

Thousands of women and children from all around the Gaza Strip travelled to the main north-south road for Monday's peaceful demonstration...

The protest's organisers, the pro-Hamas Popular Anti-Siege Committee, had planned to place a person every metre along the 40km-long road from the Rafah crossing on the southern border to the Erez crossing near the northern town of Beit Hanoun, but reports say only around 5,000 took part.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A disabled, wheelchair-bound man blew himself up on Monday in a northern Iraqi police station, killing a top police official and wounding six police officers, police told CNN.

The attack, which occurred in Samarra in Salaheddin province, reflects official concern over the innovative tactics employed by insurgents in Iraq. Bombs, have been placed inside dead animals and hidden in carts. And in recent days, vagrants have been involved in bombings.

A high-ranking official with Samarra police said that the man came to meet with Brig. Gen. Abdul Jabbar Rabei Muttar, the deputy commander of security, at the security operations building in the city. The pair met last week as well.

The man was searched when he entered the building, but police didn't look under his wheelchair seat, where the explosives had been placed. The man detonated the explosives when Muttar approached him.

Also Monday, a roadside bomb exploded in the middle of a crowd of Shiite Muslims in southeastern Baghdad on Monday, killing three and wounding 15, an Interior Ministry official told CNN.

The strike, in the Zafaraniya district, is the latest in a flurry of attacks against pilgrims trekking to Karbala for al-Arbaeen, one of the holiest days of the Shiite religious calendar. It falls on Wednesday this year...

barbaric, barbarous, bestial, brutal, cannibalistic, cold-blooded, cruel, devilish, diabolical, fell, ferocious, fiendish, fierce, grim, hateful, heartless, implacable, inhumane, malicious, malign, malignant, mean, merciless, pitiless, relentless, remorseless, ruthless, savage, truculent, uncompassionate, unfeeling, unkind, unrelenting, unsympathetic, vicious, wolfish

abhorrent, abominable, beastly, bitchy*, creepy, deplorable, detestable, disgusting, execrable, funky, grody, gross, hideous, horrible, invidious, lousy, nasty, nauseating, obnoxious, odious, offensive, pesky, pestiferous, repellent, repugnant, repulsive, revolting, sleazeball, sleazy*, slimy*, spastic, stinking, uncool*, vile

Despite the fact that almost all her knowledge of Jews and Jewish culture comes from a couple of books and the film "Schindler's List," Renu Chopra, a slight Hindu woman raised in the north Indian state of Punjab, plays a surprisingly convincing Yente, the nosy shtetl matchmaker in "Fiddler on the Roof."

"I've never met a Jew, never," Chopra said while wrapping a black shawl around a sparkling gold-and-red kurta during a recent rehearsal. "People [in India] don't know about Jews. They have no idea about Jews."

That's not surprising, considering that there are only about 5,000 Jews in this country of 1.1 billion people, and only about 40 Jews in the capital city of New Delhi. But that didn't stop an amateur theater company here from staging a Hindi "Fiddler" that's played five times since this past December, with four more shows scheduled for April. The play, a recent performance of which drew an audience of about 1,000, has enjoyed considerable success in a city where Bollywood blockbusters are a far bigger draw than the slim theatrical pickings...

"Israel Apartheid Week" went global this year, with anti-Israel events scheduled in England, Norway, Canada, major South African cities, and in cities across America. In most places, the "week" consisted of only one event, but in New York, there were five.

In the Big Apple however, IAW promoters ran into major opposition as organized pro-Israel students put them squarely on the defensive - all week long. The David Project (full disclosure: I am its president) along with other groups spearheaded an effort to prepare pro-Israel students to counter these events.

Last week's column reported the first NYC event at a church in Greenwich Village a bust: only 50 anti-Zionists showed up along with five courageous supporters of Israel, who spoiled the party with hard, challenging questions.

The second event, at The Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, and Transgender Center brought only 12 hard core haters. The third event, at the UN, was also a bit of a flop. The organizers' video didn't work and there were only a dozen or so attendees.

But the fourth and largest event, the only one on a campus (NYU), was more interesting, and shows what Israel's supporters can accomplish when they're organized. The IAW session featured the 2004 film "Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict."

Madam, - Israel-haters are fond of citing - and more often, mis-citing - my work in support of their arguments. Let me offer some corrections.

The Palestinian Arabs were not responsible "in some bizarre way" (David Norris, January 31st) for what befell them in 1948. Their responsibility was very direct and simple.

In defiance of the will of the international community, as embodied in the UN General Assembly Resolution of November 29th, 1947 (No. 181), they launched hostilities against the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of aborting the emergence of the Jewish state and perhaps destroying that community. But they lost; and one of the results was the displacement of 700,000 of them from their homes.

It is true, as Erskine Childers pointed out long ago, that there were no Arab radio broadcasts urging the Arabs to flee en masse; indeed, there were broadcasts by several Arab radio stations urging them to stay put. But, on the local level, in dozens of localities around Palestine, Arab leaders advised or ordered the evacuation of women and children or whole communities, as occurred in Haifa in late April, 1948. And Haifa's Jewish mayor, Shabtai Levy, did, on April 22nd, plead with them to stay, to no avail.

Michael Lucas, the activist and gay porn actor behind Lucas Entertainment, addressed about 50 students at Stanford earlier this month--and then ended up writing an editorial defending himself in the school's paper, an article that drew hundreds of comments from readers...

...Others were turned off by Lucas' comments about Islam, which had preceded him to the campus, with criticism about Lucas already being voiced before he arrived.

When the issue came up in the Q&A, Lucas said, "What's the point to respect their culture, or supposed culture, when they have a strong contempt for mine?"

Added Lucas, "I have a problem with people separating terrorists from the world that breeds them, from the world that originates them, which is the world of Islam."

further, reported The Stanford Daily, Lucas protested the idea that statements of his might be racist or prejudiced.

Said the actor, "I don't generalize--a fact is a fact."

Continued Lucas, "I am definitely not a racist if I'm telling you the truth."

In his view, the truth included the observation that, "The Muslim community is much more homophobic than the black community, the black community is much more homophobic than the white community, and there are reasons for that."...

...Lucas continued, "Speaking of racism in relation to religion, not to a race, is a big disservice to language and to intelligence. I never in my life said or wrote a bad word about Arabs--go read any of my articles."

Rather, wrote Lucas, "My criticism was always addressed towards the religion and ideology of Islam. So I would like to ask Stanford students not to exploit the word 'racism' at their own convenience."

..."some of my role models are Arabs for whom I have tremendous admiration. I'm talking about the likes of Wafa Sultan, who has confronted and condemned Islam on many occasions... and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose book 'Infidel' also helped me to shape my opinions."

Lucas noted, "Both of these women secularized, as Islam in their opinion is the ideology of backwardness and hate. They rightly point out that Islam hasn't changed, or evolved, for 1,400 years; it has always suppressed every progressive thought. Needless to say, these women were forced to live in exile in the United States and live with hired security 24 hours a day."

..."As I hope you know, Islam does not forgive. It forbids any criticism. Think Salman Rushdie. Think Theo Van Gogh, for his portrayal of the misery of women in Muslim countries. Think of the Danish cartoonists who are hiding in safe houses. The list is long."...

Professor Madonna Constantine has been sanctioned by Teachers College for plagiarism, according to a memo obtained by Spectator Tuesday evening. The memo, dated Feb. 18, was hand-delivered to professors on the Office of the President's stationery.

TC confirmed in a statement later Tuesday evening that after an internal investigation TC had "found numerous instances in which she [Constantine] used others' work without attribution in papers she published in academic journals over the past five years."

The statement specifies that "the investigation, which began in 2006, was prompted by complaints from students and one former faculty member who said language from materials they wrote was included without attribution in the articles."...

..."Is this where our tuition dollars are going? Toward the investigation of a woman whose words of insight and provocative thoughts have progressed the academic battle toward social justice?" said Amanda Luterman, a TC student in counseling and clinical psychology. "I honestly don't understand the priorities here anymore when I see the good guys under siege."...

When it comes to attacking Israel's legitimacy, the Mennonite Central Committee hits way above its weight class. The MCC bills itself as a relief development and peace agency for adherents of the Anabaptist tradition, and is supported by North American churches and congregations totaling only 150,000 members, but its output of anti-Israel propaganda exceeds the volume of disinformation produced by much larger church groups.

For example, at the height of the Second Intifada, the MCC produced three videos - more than an hour's worth of imagery and sound - devoted to the Middle East, all of which portrayed Israel as the primary source of suffering in the region.

Meanwhile the MCC has produced no videos whatsoever about violence in Central Africa which has killed several million. Apparently, for MCC , the deaths of a few thousand inhabitants of the Middle East is worthy of more attention than the deaths of several million black Africans. This disparity cannot be blamed on the MCC's ignorance about African violence. According to MCC's annual reports, the organization has just over 50 volunteers in the Middle East, and three times that many in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, the scene of extensive bloodshed.

What really sets the MCC apart from other American church organizations is its avowedly anti-Zionist agenda. While most church groups in the United States offer pro-forma acknowledgements of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, activists and writers affiliated with the MCC explicitly deny the right of the Jewish people to a sovereign homeland. In the minds of these MCC representatives, the force used to defend Jewish sovereignty - and not the violence used to undermine it - is the primary cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict...

A prestigious Islamic school in London was forced to shred 2,000 textbooks used to poison pupils' minds with lessons of hate, a former teacher claimed yesterday.

Colin Cook, who taught English at the King Fahad Academy for 18 years, told a tribunal how "incompetent" Ofsted inspectors reported that the school's teaching of Islamic studies was "mostly good".

But their report was wildly inaccurate, he said, because pupils as young as five were being taught by rote from Arabic textbooks describing Jews as "monkeys" and Christians as "pigs".

Mr Cook said that when he exposed the racist teaching, the school's head Dr Sumaya Alyusuf lied on television, insisting that hateful passages had never been taught.

Under public pressure the Academy eventually agreed to destroy 2,000 books but photocopied them first for future use, he told the tribunal.

The school, in Acton, West London, opened in 1985 for the children of Saudi diplomats and is funded and controlled by the Saudi government.

Its 1,250 pupils have included the five children of jailed claw-handed cleric Abu Hamza and those of Abu Qatada, who was said to be Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe...

A network of land-, air-, sea- and spaced-based sensors confirms that the U.S. military intercepted a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite which was in its final orbits before entering the earth's atmosphere.

At approximately 10:26 p.m. EST today, a U.S. Navy AEGIS warship, the USS Lake Erie (CG-70), fired a single modified tactical Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) hitting the satellite approximately 247 kilometers (133 nautical miles) over the Pacific Ocean as it traveled in space at more than 17,000 mph. USS Decatur (DDG-73) and USS Russell (DDG-59) were also part of the task force.

The objective was to rupture the fuel tank to dissipate the approximately 1,000 pounds (453 kg) of hydrazine, a hazardous fuel which could pose a danger to people on earth, before it entered into earth's atmosphere. Confirmation that the fuel tank has been fragmented should be available within 24 hours.

Due to the relatively low altitude of the satellite at the time of the engagement, debris will begin to re-enter the earth's atmosphere immediately. Nearly all of the debris will burn up on reentry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is at it again: Speaking in the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas, Ahmadinejad launched yet another verbal attack on Israel, calling it "a dirty microbe," "a wild animal" and "the West's scarecrow".

"World powers have created a dirty microbe, called the Zionist regime, which they have unleashed on the region's nations," said Ahmadinejad in his speech, which was broadcast on Iranian National Television...

...There are only some 3,500 Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox, in Gaza. Over the past two years, al-Qaeda-affiliated groups have claimed responsibility for attacks against Christian figures and institutions with the stated goal of driving Christians out of Gaza.

If indeed the attack on the YMCA was motivated by the latest wave of violence in Denmark over the cartoon controversy, it shows how precarious the Christian position is. The Young Men's Christian Association in Gaza is open to Muslims and includes a school, sports club and community hall. It is not a centre of Christian proselytism. But if events in Denmark which have nothing to do with Christianity can produce anti-Christian violence in Gaza, then it is clear that there is nothing Christians can do to avoid such violence.

The problem is not their behaviour but, in the eyes of the violent Islamist jihadists, their very presence. They must simply live in hope that some faraway event does not inflame the anti-Christian wrath of their neighbours. Is it any wonder that Christians in such situations desire to emigrate? Could anyone judge harshly the few thousand Christians in Gaza if they were to leave entirely?

A second noteworthy dimension of the Gaza YMCA bombing is, well, how un-noteworthy it was...

BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi Interior Ministry ordered police yesterday to begin rounding up beggars, homeless and mentally disabled people from the streets of Baghdad and other cities to prevent insurgents from using them as suicide bombers.

The decision, which elicited concern from advocates for the mentally disabled, came nearly three weeks after twin suicide bombings against pet markets. Officials said those blasts were carried out by mentally disabled women who may have been unwitting attackers. The American military and the Iraqi government have claimed that Sunni insurgents led by Al Qaeda in Iraq are increasingly trying to use Iraq's most vulnerable populations as suicide bombers to avoid raising suspicions or being searched at checkpoints that guard access to many markets, neighborhoods, and bridges in the capital...

..."Militant groups, like Al Qaeda in Iraq, have started exploiting these people in the worst way to kill innocent victims because they do not raise suspicions," General Khalaf said. "These groups are either luring those who are desperate for money to help them in their attacks or making use of their poor mental condition to use them as suicide bombers."

It isn't clear such people would be safe in psychiatric hospitals. American and Iraqi troops recently detained the acting director of al-Rashad psychiatric hospital in eastern Baghdad on suspicion of helping supply patient information to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Following are excerpts from an address delivered by Palestinian MP Fathi Hammad, Director of Al-Aqsa TV, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on January 22, 2008.

Fathi Hammad: The wounded men have sacrificed themselves in defense of the honor of the Arab and Islamic nation, and in defense of the holy places. They have sacrificed parts of their bodies in order to stop the advance of the Jews, who want to uproot you. As you know, the Israeli flag has a star between two blue lines. They want to establish the state of Israel between the Euphrates and the Nile. The Jews want to invade Egypt and Iraq, to destroy Saudi Arabia, and to return to Khaybar...

On 02/02/08, Cynthia McKinney, the 2008 Green Party presidential nominee, speaks at a fund raiser of the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA).

She describes the hostile takeover of American politics by pro-Israeli groups, aided by congress on both sides of the aisle.

She details the resulting corrosion of American society, a corrosion that represents a particular threat to Muslims and their civil liberties.

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of three U.S. servicemen, missing from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.

They are 2nd Lt. John F. Lubben, of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.; Sgt. Albert A. Forgue, of North Providence, R.I.; and Sgt. Charles L. Spiegel, of Chicago, Ill.; all U.S. Army Air Forces. They will be buried on April 18 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.

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

On Dec. 12, 1944, these men crewed an A-20J Havoc aircraft departing from Coullomiers, France, to bomb enemy targets near Wollseifen, Germany. The aircraft was last seen entering a steep dive near Cologne, Germany. Several searches and investigations of this area and reviews of wartime documents failed to provide information concerning the incident.

In 1975, a German company clearing wartime mines and unexploded ordnance near Simmerath, Germany, reported the discovery of a gravesite northeast of Simmerath where American servicemembers were buried. U.S. officials evaluated the remains and determined they represented three individuals, but they could not make identifications at that time. The remains were subsequently buried as unknowns in the Ardennes American Military Cemetery in Neupre, Belgium...

With the news of the death of Harry Richard Landis on February 4, thus leaving in the U.S., one American veteran of WWI (Frank Buckles), one Canadian veteran of WWI (John Babcock), and two "WWI-era" veterans, we decided to go see one of the latter.

Robley Rex is doing well, thank you, and hopes to be around for some time to come. HE IS A BIT DEAF so speak clearly, or write (as another relative who visited him did).

...Teachers are asked to tell the children how the pass system for Palestinians resembles the pass system under Apartheid South Africa. "Apartheid is similar to the pass system that exists for Palestinians," the teacher's guide asserts. Then the children are to sample the injustice of the pass system themselves in a game in which some children are denied juice and grapes if they don't have the right pass. Such fun! And such learning! The teachers are admonished: "Remind the children that when people are denied things that they believe everyone should have, they feel bad and sometimes they become angry."...

JCPA Dismayed by Methodist Church's "Outrageous" anti-Israel Educational Materials

New York - Expressing "shock" and "dismay" the JCPA today called for the United Methodist Church to give serious consideration to retracting several troublesome publications that "demonize" Israel, distort facts, and threaten to "turn the clock back on Christian-Jewish relations." The Methodist materials include a 225 page Mission Study for adults, a children's book, and a teachers guide.

"It is a sad day when friends speak of one another in these terms," said Steve Gutow, JCPA Executive Director. "I was particularly distressed to see the conditions created by the birth of Israel called "original sin" and to see Israelis characterized as 'hysterical' and 'paranoiac.' The quest for peace is not helped by those who demonize and distort."

...Another troubling aspect of the Mission Study is how closely Rev. Goldstein's portrayal of modern Israel parallels with his description of the Jewish culture and religion he experienced while growing up in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The similarities between those aspects of Jewishness and Judaism which he found repellent as a youth and the Israel he relentlessly and unfairly condemns indicate that his complaints about Israel are rooted not in concern over its policies but in his disappointment over Judaism's inability to meet his spiritual and emotional needs as a youth. The fact that Rev. Goldstein was not happy with the faith community of his youth is not remarkable. Such dissatisfaction is a fact of life for people of all faiths, and is often motivating factor behind the decision to convert from one religion to another. What is remarkable (and troubling) is that the UMC, one of the largest, credible and influential mainline Protestant denominations in the U.S., would publish Rev. Goldstein's self-indulgent and self-serving polemic under the rubric of peacemaking...

...On this score, Rev. Goldstein's narrative is in many ways, similar to the intra-Jewish polemic in the New Testament which includes condemnations of Jews who did not accept Christ, written by those who did. The tragedy and the danger came not when Jews disagreed over the nature of Jesus Christ, but when these condemnations fell into the hands of non-Jews who had no ties to the Jewish community and used them to demonize an entire group of people. It is one thing for Rev. Goldstein, who was raised as a Jew, to project his unhappiness over the Jewishness he experienced as a youth onto the modern state of Israel; it is another thing altogether for a Christian institution to offer such a polemic as a peacemaking document...

Muslims worldwide should bomb Denmark's embassies and kill it diplomats following last week's republication of caricatures of Muslim prophet Muhammad, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip said on Monday.

Israel Radio reported that the spokesman, speaking to demonstrators burning Danish flags, said anyone involved the drawing, printing, or publication of the caricatures should be "slaughtered."

Danish newspapers reproduced the drawing on Wednesday to show their commitment to free speech after police foiled an alleged plot to kill the cartoonist who created it.

...The lionizing of Che, a sociopath who relished killing and acclaimed "the pedagogy of the firing squad," is not just "inappropriate." It is vile. No American in his right mind would be caught dead wearing a David Duke T-shirt or displaying a poster of Pol Pot. A celebrity who was spotted with a swastika-festooned cap or an actress who revealed that she had gotten a tattoo depicting Timothy McVeigh would inspire only repugnance. No presidential campaign would need more than 30 seconds to sever its ties to anyone, paid staffer or volunteer, whose office was adorned with a Ku Klux Klan banner. Yet Che's likeness, which ought to be as loathed as any of those, is instead a trendy bestseller and a cult favorite.

A few years ago the New York Public Library gift shop sold Che wristwatches. These it described as "featuring the classic romantic image of Che Guevara, around which the word 'revolution' revolves." But Che's idea of revolution was anything but romantic. What he cherished was hatred and murder: "Hatred as an element of struggle," he wrote in 1967, "unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine." It was a sentiment he expressed repeatedly - and lived up to...

A Virginia congressman has asked Georgetown University to explain how it used a $20 million donation from a Saudi prince for its academic center on Muslim and Christian relations.

Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R) sent a letter yesterday to university President John J. DeGioia expressing concern about the donation and asking whether the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding has ever produced any reports critical of Saudi Arabia...

Georgetown professor John Esposito, director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding has a reputation as an apologist for radical Islam. And it's one he lived up to with a Stanford University speech last week titled, "Dying for God? Suicide Terrorism and Militant Islam."

Esposito claimed that Islamic terrorism grows primarily out of a sense of political and economic grievance and, of course, "occupation" on the part of "neo-colonial powers." This spin allowed him to deflect responsibility for Islamic terrorism to the West while negating the need for self-reflection among Muslims.

When an attendee asked him why no other impoverished or oppressed group around the world resorts to suicide bombings, Esposito stonewalled for several minutes before giving one of the few straight answers of the night: "I don't know."...

President Nicolas Sarkozy dropped an intellectual bombshell this week, surprising the nation and touching off waves of protest with his revision of the school curriculum: beginning next fall, he said, every fifth grader will have to learn the life story of one of the 11,000 French children killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

"Nothing is more moving, for a child, than the story of a child his own age, who has the same games, the same joys and the same hopes as he, but who, in the dawn of the 1940s, had the bad fortune to be defined as a Jew," Mr. Sarkozy said at the end of a dinner speech to France's Jewish community on Wednesday night. He added that every French child should be "entrusted with the memory of a French child-victim of the Holocaust."

Adding to the national fracas over the announcement, Mr. Sarkozy wrapped his plan in the cloak of religion, placing blame for the wars and violence of the last century on an "absence of God" and calling the Nazi belief in a hierarchy of races "radically incompatible with Judeo-Christian monotheism."...

...When Mr. Sarkozy was made an Honorary Canon of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome last December, he proposed a "positive secularism" that "does not consider religions a danger, but an asset." He was even more provocative in declaring that "the schoolteacher will never be able to replace the priest or the pastor" in teaching the difference between good and evil...

...Kissinger: The major events in European history were conducted by nation-states which developed over several hundred years. There was never a question in the mind of European populations that the state was authorized to ask for sacrifices and that the citizens had a duty to carry it out. Now the structure of the nation-state has been given up to some considerable extent in Europe. And the capacity of governments to ask for sacrifices has diminished correspondingly.

SPIEGEL: Thirty years ago, you asked for one phone number that could be used to call Europe.

Kissinger: ... and it happened. The problem now is: Nation-states have not just given up part of their sovereignty to the European Union but also part of their vision for their own future. Their future is now tied to the European Union, and the EU has not yet achieved a vision and loyalty comparable to the nation-state. So, there is a vacuum between Europe's past and Europe's future....

...SPIEGEL: For example in Afghanistan. Does NATO need more German troops in the southern part of the country?

Kissinger: I think it is obvious that the United States cannot permanently do all the fighting for Western interests by itself. So, two conclusions are possible: Either there are no Western interests in the region and we don't fight. Or there are vital Western interests in the region and we have to fight. That means we need more German and NATO troops (more...) in Afghanistan. What I am not comfortable with is that some NATO members send troops primarily for non-combat missions. That cannot be a healthy situation in the long term....

...SPIEGEL: Isn't German and European opposition to a greater military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq also a result of deep distrust of American power?

Kissinger: By this time next year, we will see the beginning of a new administration. We will then discover to what extent the Bush administration was the cause or the alibi for European-American disagreements. Right now, many Europeans hide behind the unpopularity of President Bush...

Whereas genocide - the murder, or plan to murder, an entire people - is a crime against all humanity;

Whereas genocide is a crime that has metastasized in the modern era, leading to the murders of millions of Armenians, Cambodians, Tutsis, Sudanese, Bosnian Muslims and others;

Whereas the largest and most devastating genocide on record is the Holocaust of European Jews;

Whereas a new genocide of the Jews is being called for by Islamic leaders in the Middle East;

Whereas global forces are being mobilized by the Iranian regime to eliminate the Jewish state;

[USMC] Sergeant Dehaan was comfortable with his mission in Iraq and the flaws of the Iraqi Police he was tasked with training and molding.

"I prefer these small and morally ambiguous wars to the big morally black-and-white wars," he said to me later. "It would be nice if we had more support back home like we did during World War II. But look at how many people were killed in World War II. If a bunch of unpopular small wars prevent another popular big war, I'll take 'em."...

"The cancerous growth Israel will soon disappear," Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Muhammad Ali Jafari wrote to Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the FARS news agency reported Monday.

In a letter of condolences following last week's assassination of Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh, Jafari said: "I am convinced that with every passing day Hizbullah's might is increasing and in the near future, we will witness the disappearance of this cancerous growth Israel by means of the Hizbullah fighters' radiation [therapy]."

In the letter, in which Jafari consoled Nasrallah over the death of the "martyr," he continued: "There's no doubt that the death of this loyal fighter will strengthen the resolve of all revolutionary Muslims and fighters in the struggle against the Zionist regime, particularly the resolve of those who fought by this martyr's side."

Mughniyeh was considered to be closely affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards and the Quds Brigades. Together, the two organizations trained Hizbullah fighters in Lebanon and Iran and planned terror attacks the world over...

These are Great In-flight Photos of the F/A-22 as the first Aircraft Delivery was being made to Langley AFB in VA. Langley is to be first Operational AFB for the F/A-22. It is a very Beautiful AFB, located in a picturesque location, as you can see in these photos, near Norfolk and Hampton , Va.

The Aircraft flying along with the F/A-22 in the last of these photos is the F-15, which will be replaced by the F/A-22 which is several times better than the F-15. In Actual In-flight (simulated) Combat Operations against the F-15, two F/A-22's were able to operate without detection while it went Head to Head against (8) F-15's. The F/A-22's scored Missile Hits (Kills) against all the F-15 Aircraft and the F/A-22's were never Detected by either the F-15's or Ground Based Radar.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lewis said: "The Raptor Operated Against All Adversaries with Virtual Impunity; Ground Based Systems Couldn't Engage and NO Adversary Aircraft Survived"!!! F/A-22-- America 's Most Advanced Fighter Aircraft for the 21st Century!!!! They're a titanium and carbon fiber dagger. They're so advanced that if their on-board locator is switched off even our own satellites can lose track of them. They're the first military aircraft ever built that is equipped with a "black-out button". What that means is this ... The best conditioned fighter pilots are capable of maintaining consciousness up to in the vicinity of 15+ G. The Raptor is capable of making 22+ G. turns. If some day an adversary builds a missile that is capable of catching up to one of these airplanes and a Raptor pilot sees that a strike is imminent, he hits the "b.o.b." and the airplane makes a virtual U-turn, leaving the missile to pass right on by. They know that in the process he'll temporarily lose consciousness, so the Raptor then automatically comes back to straight and level flight until he wakes back up.

Enjoy the Photos

...The astonishing career of A People's History is an object lesson in how little criticism matters, or perhaps we should say it is an object lesson in how certain sentimental narratives can utterly overwhelm criticism, be it ever so accurate and eloquent. Zinn's story--noble savages oppressed by nasty capitalists--was calculated to appeal to the politically correct, anti-American spirit that has been regnant among the country's elites since the late 1960s. But its flaws were early on pointed out with devastating precision by the Harvard historian Oscar Handlin. Handlin's brief is--or should have been--fatal. Writing in The American Scholar in 1980, he noted:

It simply is not true that "what Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortez did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots." It simply is not true that the farmers of the Chesapeake colonies in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries avidly desired the importation of black slaves, or that the gap between rich and poor widened in the eighteenth-century colonies. Zinn gulps down as literally true the proven hoax of Polly Baker and the improbable Plough Jogger, and he repeats uncritically the old charge that President Lincoln altered his views to suit his audience. The Geneva assembly of 1954 did not agree on elections in a unified Vietnam; that was simply the hope expressed by the British chairman when the parties concerned could not agree. The United States did not back Batista in 1959; it had ended aid to Cuba and washed its hands of him well before then. "Tet" was not evidence of the unpopularity of the Saigon government, but a resounding rejection of the northern invaders...

...Hollywood stars involved in the project include Josh Brolin, Viggo Mortensen, Marisa Tomei, David Straithairn and Danny Glover. Zinn himself will host the four-part miniseries...

Former leader of the Democratic Alliance Tony Leon, who now speaks for the party on foreign affairs, has launched a scathing attack on South Africa's plan to host a second World Conference against Racism in Durban next year.

Leon told a meeting of the Women's International Zionist Organisation in Cape Town on Wednesday that last Friday President Thabo Mbeki announced that Durban would be the site for a review conference to evaluate the implementation of the decisions of the World Conference against Racism held there in 2001.

"Quite what good will come of this exercise remains open to serious question," Leon said...

...America and Canada have already announced that they will be boycotting Durban 2 because they claim the event is likely to descend into 'regrettable anti-Semitism'. Libya has been elected as chair for the next gathering and Cuba as vice-chair, while Iran is a member of the organizing committee.

Although Durban 2 is by its nature a conference to review the implementation of resolutions taken at the original conference, the African and Islamic bloc has sought to introduce a litany of new charges of racism against Israel and the West that were not covered at Durban 1...

The U.S. Department of State has awarded a grant worth $494,368 to University of Delaware political scientist, Brookings Institution fellow, and Pentagon consultant Muqtedar Khan, who last fall objected to serving on a panel with a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces. According to a UD press release, the grant is to be used, "to initiate a dialogue on religion and politics between key members of religious and community organizations in the Middle East and the United States."

The press release continued:

Under the grant, participants from Egypt and Saudi Arabia will be on campus this summer for a brief period before traveling to other locations, including New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Later a group of American scholars will travel to Egypt and Saudi Arabia to take part in similar activities in those countries. A documentary film is planned of the visit to the U.S.

The choice of Khan to oversee a program dedicated to expanding dialogue between religious communities is beyond parody, as Khan himself has a record of thwarting dialogue, at least with Israeli veterans. Moreover, his award is part of a larger pattern of coddling Islamists within the bureaucracies of the State Department and Pentagon...

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Two days ago Israeli forces killed two Palestinians, believed to be part of a commando cell, on the border with Egypt, credible sources told Ma'an.

The men are alleged to have been part of a group of fighters that came from Gaza to the Israeli-Egyptian borders through the Sinai desert and were caught in an Israeli army ambush.

The sources added that the premature announcement of the identities of the alleged Dimona bombers alerted Israeli security forces to the existence of another cell that was on its way from Gaza. After this information was revealed, the Israeli security forces on the border with Egypt went on high alert and were able to detect the armed men and to ambush them.

Ma'an also learned that their bodies were left at the scene of the ambush, on the Egyptian side of the border after the Israeli special force refused to bring them into the Israeli territories, according to the rules of engagement in these cases.

If you thought race was an uncomfortable issue in the Democratic presidential primary, wait 'til you get a load of what's going on in the Democratic primary in the Memphis area's 9th District of Tennessee, where a shockingly worded flier paints Jewish Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) as a Jesus hater.

"Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen and the JEWS HATE Jesus," blares the flier, which Cohen himself received in the mail -- inducing gasps -- last week.

Circulated by an African-American minister from Murfreesboro Tenn., which isn't even in Cohen's district, the literature encourages other black leaders in Memphis to "see to it that one and ONLY one black Christian faces this opponent of Christ and Christianity in the 2008 election."

Cohen's main opponent in the August 5 Democratic primary in his predominantly African-American district is Nikki Tinker, who is black. The Commercial Appeal wrote an editorial in Wednesday's paper condemning Tinker for not speaking out against the anti-Semitic literature.

"What does Nikki Tinker think about anti-Semitic literature being circulated that might help her unseat 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen in the Democratic primary next August?" the editorial asked. "The question goes to the character of the woman who wants to represent the 9th District, and 9th District voters deserve an answer. But Tinker declined to return a phone call about the flier."

The editorial also noted that last summer Cohen came under attack from black ministers who challenged the congressman's support for federal hate crimes legislation to protect gay rights. The paper wrote that the "real motive" behind the ministers' attacks was revealed later by Rev. Robert Poindexter who, according to the Commercial Appeal, said of Cohen: "He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line."...

...The cops were openly hostile toward the people who showed up at 5:00 a.m., never stepping in to protect the patriots from the assaults that took place against elderly folks, Gold Star parents, Blue Star families and Joe and Jane Citizen who were waving the flags and showing their pride in the Marines. The police allowed hundreds of Berkeley High School kids (accompanied by their teachers) to gather with CodePink, receive their mandatory face masks and F--k Bush t-shirts, and allowed them to mill around our PA where they tried to cut the power cords to the system.

Berkeley police repeatedly allowed CodePink to violate our permits, and never lifted a finger to stop their crowd from interfering with our activities until the very end, after we screamed blue bloody hell.

When Catherine Moy, the Executive Director of MAF called the police to tell them a riot was erupting in the early hours -THEY HUNG UP ON HER.

Cat called the Highway Patrol, who referred her back to the Berkeley police -WHO HUNG UP ON HER...

Gulf states believe Israel will destroy Iran's nuclear programme rather than allow it to acquire an atomic bomb, an adviser to the Kuwaiti government and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) said on Tuesday.

If Iran did build the bomb, said adviser Sami Alfaraj, then the Jewish state might be one of the countries -- along with the United States and Pakistan -- Gulf Arab nations would ask to provide a "nuclear umbrella" to guarantee their security.

Alfaraj, president of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies, said Israel might bomb Iranian nuclear facilities in the same way it destroyed Iraq's main atomic reactor at Osirak with a military strike in 1981.

"I believe in something on the same Iraqi model...We are assuming in the Gulf that Israel will take it out. We are not saying that, but Israel would," Alfaraj told Reuters at the start of an analyst 'roadshow' organised by Realite-EU, an independent body which tracks Middle East security developments...

The State Department is considering supporting the Palestinian Authority in its quest to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments won by American victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel, according to Palestinian officials and defense lawyers involved in the cases.

U.S. officials insist that no decision has been made regarding the complex litigation, which could force the Bush administration to choose between supporting compensation for victims of terrorism and bolstering the Palestinian government as the United States presses for a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks...

The European Commission will propose tomorrow that all foreign travelers entering and leaving Europe, including U.S. citizens, should be fingerprinted. If approved by the European Parliament, the measure would mean that precisely identifying information on tens of millions of citizens will be added in coming years to databases that could be shared by friendly governments around the world.

The United States already requires that foreigners be fingerprinted and photographed before they enter the country. So does Japan. Now top European security officials want to follow suit, with travelers being fingerprinted and some also having their facial images stored in a Europe-wide database, according to a copy of the proposal obtained by The Washington Post...

The head of Hizbullah's military wing, Imad Mughniyeh - considered the organization's second in command - was killed in a car bombing in Damascus late Tuesday night, Hizbullah's Al-Manar television reported Wednesday.

Mughniyeh was reportedly very close to Hizbullah head Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and also served as Hizbullah's liaison with Iran.

He was held responsible by Israel for numerous terror attacks, as well as for masterminding a 1994 bombing at a Buenos Aires Jewish community center that killed 85. In addition, he is believed to be responsible for hijacking a TWA flight in 1985.

He has also targeted US citizens - the United States holds him responsible for an attack on the US embassy in Beirut and another on a marine base there that left over 200 soldiers dead. Wanted in at least 40 countries, he has been on the FBI's top-20 terrorist list for years...

...The explosion occurred at about 10:45 p.m. in the Syrian capital's upscale Kafar Soussa neighborhood. Security forces quickly sealed off the area and removed the destroyed car, which had its driver's seat and the rear seat blown away by the force of the blast...

...An unconfirmed report by Iranian sources said Hajj Hussein Halil, politburo director and deputy to Hizbullah chief terrorist Hassan Nasrallah, also was killed in Tuesday night's car bombing. Hizbullah has not commented.

Mughniyeh was involved in numerous terror attacks on Israel's border with Lebanon, including the kidnapping of IDF soldiers Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Souad. He was also apparently behind the abduction of IDF reservists Elad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser in July 2006, the cross-border raid that ignited the Second lebanon War.

He was indicted in the US for the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, in which the airliner's passengers were held hostage for six days at the Beirut airport. The Hizbullah terrorists severely beat US Navy diver Robert Stethem, a passenger on the June 24 flight, before killing him and dumping his body onto the tarmac.

The dead terrorist was on the US government's Most Wanted List for having organized an attack on a US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. The October 23 car bombing killed 241 American military personnel who were stationed in Beirut as part of a peace-keeping force...

WARSAW - This was not a pogrom, but it was close. Sunday's incident in Krakow at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was rife with overtones of hatred. "The Jews are attacking us! We need to defend ourselves," shouted Prof. Bogoslav Wolniewicz, to stormy applause.

About 1,000 people gathered for special services Sunday at the church, organized by the Committee Against Defamation of the Church and For Polishness, along with the anti-Semitic Radio Maryja. Local residents were informed of the service by posters that proclaimed: "The kikes will not continue to spit on us."

The huge church was packed. People sat on the stairs and stood in the aisles. The service opened, as usual, with prayer and song, but after about half an hour, the 91-year-old bishop of Krakow, Albin Malysiak, began inflaming the crowd with his sermon. "A man who does not love his homeland, but some sort of international entity, apparently also does not love his nearest and dearest," he said.

Afterward, Radio Maryja staffers ascended the dais, headed by Jerzy Robert Nowak, the station's expert on Jewish affairs. He spoke about the new and controversial book by Jan Gross, "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz." Nowak, who was less ambiguous than the bishop, said to applause from the crowd: "It's important that we carry our fight to its conclusion, because Gross and his supporters are marginal, and we will not permit anyone to punish Poland. Leave us in peace. Leave us alone."

The speakers directed their anger at Gross, at Jews in general, at Jews from Brooklyn in particular, at Poles who are willing to sell them anything for money, at Righteous Among the Nations Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, at a minister in the Prime Minister's Office responsible for Jewish-Polish affairs; and at the newspaper that, in their eyes, represents the Polish left, Gazeta Wyborcza, and its editor, Adam Michnik...

...More studies have been carried out on the genetic history of the Jews than on most ethnic groups, perhaps because there are so many Jewish doctors to take advantage of the fabled willingness of Jews to participate in research. These studies not only show that almost all Jewish populations have origins in the Middle East, but that the DNA of Jews from almost every corner of the Diaspora is more similar to that of other Jews than to any other population. When compared with non-Jewish groups, the closest match is with the Muslims of Kurdistan, not with the European peoples alongside whom Ashkenazi Jews lived for centuries or the Arab neighbors of many Sephardi populations.

Other groups with histories of ancient migrations do not have the same degree of continuity. Hungarians are known to have originated on the Eurasian steppe and moved westward in a migration many centuries long, arriving in the Carpathian basin about 995 CE. They speak a language from the steppe, take pride in their history of migration and military conquest and expected that genetic research would demonstrate their central Asian origins. The evidence to date, however, has shown a varying but quite small element of central Asian ancestry in Hungarian populations, along with great similarities between Hungarians and their Slavic and German neighbors. This does not mean that the Hungarians with Slavic ancestry are not real Hungarians. Rather, Hungarian culture has been so powerfully attractive that for many centuries people of Slavic, Germanic and other ancestry elected to join the Hungarian people. Ironically, the genetic distinctiveness of the Jews in part may reflect the unattractiveness of joining a religious minority that was oppressed and impoverished through much of its history...

What genetic data cannot tell us is who is a Jew. The answers to that question are, variously, halachic, political and cultural. On a purely technical level, there is no genetic screen that can sort Jews from non-Jews. Population differences do not translate into reliable tests of individual lineage. What genetics can tell us is something about where our ancestors came from - no more. It cannot tell us who we are. Nor can it tell us who we want to become, as individual Jews or as a Jewish people. As new data emerge from genetics laboratories, though, we are likely to learn a great deal more about the history of our people.

It's a long and awful trip from Trenton to Toronto in a limousine or a hearse carrying a loved one or a comrade-in-arms. But this is what those who make that terrible trip see out the windows of their vehicles...

...The Marines are not imposing American values per se on the Iraqis. They're grounded in international law, and they're deadly serious about it. Lieutenant Montgomery didn't give a lecture on the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, or anything else that is particular of or exclusive to the United States. Instead, he taught the U.N. Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials...

...that the Director of the Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center in the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem will be visiting Cambridge February 27th through March 1st 2008. The Cambridge to Bethlehem: People-to-People project will host his visit. During his visit Abdelfattah Abusrour will meet with civic leaders and members of the Cambridge community who are interested in his work. If you want to learn more about Al-Rowwad, there will be presentations, dates to be announced. There will also be a fundraiser for the Al-Rowwad Cultural Center featuring Jimmy Tingle and Scott Ritter.

Abdelfattah Abusrour (Ashoka Fellow, Palestine) founded Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center in the Aida Refugee Camp (4000 people, 650 families) to combat violence among children, teaching them to be promoters of peace. Abed works with the children through programs offering sports, arts, and theatre to teach them alternate means of expression, acceptance of others and non-violent communication...

...The Saturday evening show was attended mostly by the local Palestinian and Arab community, including many children; the audience cheered and clapped throughout the performance, at images of resistance and the young actors' portrayal of Palestinian courage, strength and dedication to return...

...The play itself, "We are the Children of the Camps," is a 75-minute tale of dispossession and resistance...

...in the next moment they become the generation of the Intifada, courageously resisting the occupier, demonstrating and throwing stones until most of them are martyred...the actors queue up for a checkpoint manned by sadistic guards who steal a woman's glasses, beat a man trying to cross the checkpoint, and humiliate others, before their practices cause the death of a Palestinian baby...Four women then emerge, speaking as the sisters, wives, daughters and mothers of prisoners, exiles, martyrs and fighters, declaring "La salam" (No peace) until there is justice for the refugees, the prisoners and the martyred...

...The performance closes with a satirical commentary on the so-called "peace process"...

...their final performance, on Wednesday, June 22, sponsored by Al-Awda New York, brought Al-Rowwad to Brooklyn's Al-Noor School. The evening performance was greeted by a large and enthusiastic crowd in the Islamic school's auditorium, who again contributed generously to Al-Rowwad's fundraising to expand their center in Aida camp...

...Muhammad Isa Halil Abeda commanded several Islamic Jihad terror cells and was involved in planning and funding terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers, the army said. Abeda was arrested after being holed up for several hours in his house...

...The wanted man, Salem Abiaat, a Tanzim operative, was held for questioning by security forces. Abiaat was involved in activities against Israeli security forces and citizens.

A U.S. professor who was born in Auschwitz just before the concentration camp's liberation in 1945 said he was kicked out of a restaurant in the Belgian city of Bruges two weeks ago because he was a Jew, according to European news reports.

Marcel Kalmann said that a waiter at the Le Panier d'Or, a renowned café-restaurant located on the main city square, saw his skullcap under his hat and shouted at him "We are not serving Jews, out of here," according to the reports.

Kalmann told the Antwerp Jewish magazine Joods Actueel that when he went down to the police station to file a report, the officers did not believe him at first and heckled him throughout the complaint.

An officer told him that the complaint had to be filed in Flemish, not English, and then told him that the incident would not be considered an anti-Semitic offense, according to a report in the European Jewish Press (EJP).

The owner of the restaurant told Joods Actueel that Kalmann was indeed kicked out of the restaurant due to "strange behavior." He said he was ready to apologize for the incident, according to the report.

Kalmann said he would file a complaint against both the police and the restaurant, according to the magazine...

Assud: "Do you know what the original name of our city ... Tel Aviv!"
Hostess: "It's our city: Tel-Rabia... but the Zionists today call it Tel Aviv, but it will stay ours... and we will return with Allah's will".
Assud: "How will we go to our city if the Jews took it?"
Hostess: "We will continue the resistance (terror)."

The program ends with singing:

"We will never recognize Israel"

And the hostess emphasizes:

"until we liberate our homeland from the Zionist filth".

[Palestinian Television, Al-Aksa channel (Hamas), Feb 8 2008].

The Defense Department announced today that charges have been sworn against six detainees at Guantanamo, alleged to be responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks upon the United States of America which occurred on Sept. 11, 2001. Those attacks resulted in the death of nearly 3,000 people. The charges allege a long term, highly sophisticated, organized plan by al Qaeda to attack the United States.

The accused are: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek Bin 'Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, and Mohamed al Kahtani.

Each of the defendants is charged with conspiracy and the separate, substantive offenses of: murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism.

The first four defendants, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek Bin 'Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali are also charged with the substantive offense of hijacking or hazarding a vessel.

All of the charges are alleged to have been in support of the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001...

The leaders of the two main Arab family clans in Hevron and of the Jewish community in the city met on Sunday to renew the friendly Jewish-Moslem ties that once existed there.

Sheikh Abu Hader Jaabri and Haj Abu Akram Abu Sneineh, who together represent the majority of the population of Hevron, met with Kiryat Arba Mayor Tzvi Katzover, Hevron Jewish Community spokesman Noam Arnon, IDF Hevron Commander Yehuda Fuchs and others. Arnon later described the meeting, held in Sheikh Jaabri's large and luxurious home, as "warm and hearty, during which the participants declared their wish for peace and security in the City of Patriarchs." Each side granted the other a certificate of appreciation.

A few hours afterwards, Sheikh Jaabri was summoned by Palestinian Authority officials for a "discussion" of clarification. Posters were also hung throughout the city against the Sheikh for his meeting with the Jews...

...The meeting was the outgrowth of an incident that occurred five months ago, on the night of Rosh HaShanah. A radical group of left-wing anarchists planned to destroy a makeshift synagogue named Hazon David, just outside Kiryat Arba. It was originally established in mid-2001 following the terrorist murders of Kiryat Arba residents David Cohen and Chezi Mualem nearby.

The "peace" activists, however, did not take one factor into account in their attempt to destroy the synagogue: Sheikh Jaabri, on whose property it was built. He told them that he refused to sanction the destruction of a house of prayer on his property - and the act of Rosh HaShanah vandalism was thus avoided...

An Israeli child, 8, was seriously wounded Saturday when a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel, police and medics said. One other person was lightly injured, they said.

The rocket fell near the children in the center of the town of Sderot, they said. It was not clear if a house was hit.

The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip had vowed to persist in their attacks despite an Israeli cutback in power supply to the coastal territory that was meant to pressure Gazans to stop the launchings.

The Israeli army and government have been reluctant to launch a large military campaign in Gaza against the rocket operation for fear both soldiers and Palestinian civilians would suffer a great number of casualties. But analysts have said that any serious rocket attacks will put great pressure on the political echelon to approve such a broad operation.

Rocket Ranges (click to enlarge - IICC Map)

An eight-year-old boy and his 19-year-old brother were seriously wounded Saturday evening in a Kassam rocket attack on Sderot. The barrage sent 11 people into emotional shock in addition to the casualties.

Both boys were wounded in the lower limbs and were rushed into surgery after they were evacuated by Magen David Adom paramedics to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon. The youngster reportedly lost part of his leg in the blast, according to media sources. His older brother suffered shrapnel wounds as well. The boys' 15-year-old brother and their mother were also sent to the hospital to be treated for emotional shock.

The family was running for cover when one of the enemy rockets landed about two meters from them. Another rocket landed close to a residential building...

The jihadists of the Hamas regime proudly claimed last night that 154 of their Qassam rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel since Tuesday, including what the BBC calls "around a dozen" yesterday (Haaretz says 40; see the headline at right [In the Roth post -S]). Important to recall that the terrorists have no interest in who or what is hit or damaged or injured or killed - never claimed to care, and don't care. The full extent of their aim: just hit some Jews...

Since the Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in mid-June 2007 until the end of January 2008, 697 missiles (of which 241 in January alone) and 822 mortar bombs have been fired at Sderot and the western Negev.

...My discussion introduces a doctrinally and historically relevant context if the currently much abused term "Islamofascism" is to be understood and employed appropriately, acknowledging the direct nexus between Islam, pre-modern despotism, and modern totalitarian ideologies...

The Muslim Council of Britain criticized the decision, saying al-Qaradawi is a widely respected scholar throughout the Muslim world.

The Home Office issued a brief statement confirming it had denied al-Qaradawi a visa and saying: "The UK will not tolerate the presence of those who seek to justify any acts of terrorist violence or express views that could foster inter-community violence."

It declined to say when the decision was reached or why al-Qaradawi had sought to enter Britain. The Egyptian-born preacher was reportedly seeking to come to the UK for medical treatment.

Former terrorists Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zak Anani addressed cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, during their annual political forum. They shared their experiences as terrorists and helped cadets understand the Islamic fundamentalist mind set.

During the event a Jordanian college student, identified as Omar Khalifa of Metro International, approached Kamal Saleem and spoke to him in Arabic, "you are an enemy of Islam and you must die." The incident was reported to Military Police, who investigated Khalifa's threat.

"The men receive threats of this nature all of time and we take each one very seriously," said Keith Davies, Executive Director of the Shoebat Foundation. "That is why each of the men live in seclusion."

Numerous media outlets (New York Times, the Associated Press, The Colorado Springs Gazette, the Rocky Mountain News) did not report on the former terrorists' message, but instead focused on the [inaccurate] media statements distributed by CAIR (Council for American Islamic Relations), in an all-out campaign to discredit the speakers credentials and background [To be honest, Anani's background is quite...remarkable... -S]...

...According to the Air Force Academy's public affairs office CAIR spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, contacted them numerous times criticizing the scheduling of the three men, and requesting an opportunity to have a CAIR representative share with cadets information about the Islamic faith. The Academy informed Hooper that the event was not about religion, but about terrorism, and he denied CAIR's request....

...The use of a polemical turn of phrase to "defin[e] the enemy we face" can also limit the audience that one reaches. If I'm reading a work that employs the phraseology "Bushitler" or "Zionazi," that's usually a strong sign that reading further could only possibly lower my IQ. While "Islamofascism" is not as false as either of those polemical terms, people associate it with a certain political viewpoint about the war against radical Islam. If they do not agree with the viewpoint, the term causes many people to stop listening--and to disregard otherwise legitimate arguments...

HIV-positive Egyptian men are tortured and chained to hospital beds while awaiting unfair homosexuality trials, a human rights group has claimed.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) decried the "ignorance and injustice" of a case in which a group of arrested men were given HIV tests without their consent.

They were also subjected to anal tests to "prove" their homosexual conduct.

Two of the men tested HIV-positive and are now handcuffed to hospital beds for 23 hours a day, HRW said.

"These men have been subjected to anal examination without their consent which amounts to torture," Gasser Abdel-Razek, HRW's acting director of regional relations in the Middle East, told the BBC on Wednesday.

"Egypt should release the men unconditionally and put a system in place that does not deal with HIV-positive individuals as criminals but as patients who require medical care and attention."

Egypt's Interior Ministry had no immediate comment on the case...

...Those four men were sentenced to one year in jail in January having been convicted of "habitual debauchery", which Human Rights Watch says is a euphemism used to penalise consensual homosexual acts.

Their lawyers claimed the prosecution had produced no evidence against the defendants, who pleaded not guilty.

While not explicitly referred to in Egypt's legal code, homosexuality can be punished under several different laws covering obscenity, prostitution and debauchery...

The lights have gone out in most of Tajikistan, the poorest republic in the former Soviet Union.

The country is facing an energy crisis in the midst of the coldest winter in more than 25 years.

With millions of people left without electricity, heat or running water, aid organizations are warning of a growing humanitarian crisis.

For the past 15 days, there has been no heat, electricity or running water in the freezing maternity ward of a small country hospital in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.

In that time, Adolat Shoreva and her small team of nurses have helped deliver 13 babies -- by candlelight.

"In my 40 years as a nurse, I've never seen it this bad," Shoreva says. "I sit in the dark at night and cry."

The unusually cold winter has overwhelmed the country's aging Soviet-era infrastructure, leaving millions of people cold, in the dark, without access to clean water.

Aid workers say that even before this crisis, more than 60 percent of the population was living below the poverty line...

When I decided to study abroad at Oxford, I had many expectations. Studying at the most prestigious academic institution in the world, I anticipated the greatest education possible in an environment dedicated to augmenting my knowledge. However, with my expectations also came concerns. Not only am I American, but also a Jew who spends much of her time advocating the importance of the State of Israel, an unpopular subject almost anywhere, but especially in Europe.

Before I came here, I decided to leave anything that designated me as a Jew behind: my Hamsa, my Boston University Students for Israel T-shirt, and my books on the Arab-Israeli conflict. I figured that leaving these visible indicators of who I am behind, I could blend in with the crowd and protect myself, especially from anti-Israel rhetoric.

Oxford had other plans for me. On Jan. 24, the reputable Oxford Union held a debate with the motion: "This House Believes that the State of Israel Has the Right to Exist." While it baffles me that this topic still requires discussion after 60 years, the motion was benign compared to the rest of the night. Of course, you can imagine that the opposition was well chosen to argue for a one-state solution and subsequent dissolution of the Jewish state, and also to point out that Israel targets Palestinian babies, is undemocratic, and the most racist entity in the world.

Unfortunately, fallacies and hostility are to be expected from the opposition. More disturbing was whom Oxford chose for its proposition. First, Norman Finkelstein, a Holocaust denier and vehement anti-Zionist, informed us that his feelings aside, under international law Israel exists, but added the essential caveat that America and Israel are at complete fault for the Palestinians' suffering and should be held accountable. Even worse, the nominal proponent Ted Honderich told everyone that the Palestinians' use of terrorism is moral and even sat with the opposition mid-debate, while Finkelstein remained calm and simply walked out the "Noes" door to assert his true sentiments on Israel's right to exist.

Anti-Israel activists have been conducting a surge of their own - across the Western world, and lately, in Boston. American support for Israel is at a high point, but for radical leftists, the "Revolution" has morphed into an "Anti-Zionist International."

In Brookline, on Jan. 22, Joel Kovel of Bard College came to the Coolidge Corner Theater to lecture on his charmingly titled book, "Overcoming Zionism," published in England by Pluto Press - the former printing arm of the Socialist Workers Party - and in the U.S. by the University of Michigan. Fortunately, an outcry in Michigan is causing the university to reconsider the arrangement whereby they distribute agitprop in the U.S.

As reported by Boston's intrepid Hillel Stavis and the Hub's invaluable blog, Solomonia, Kovel explained that Israel is a "racist, imperialist, colonialist-settler state that practices apartheid." Therefore, it must be destroyed and replaced by a democratic, preferably socialist state, where the Jews would be the minority. Socialists, it seems, saw the "workers of the world" go lusting after capitalist goods, so they invented a new proletariat: Voila, the Palestinians!

The Popular Resistance Committees called on the residents of Israel's south to evacuate their families from the line of fire on Friday afternoon. In all more than 20 Qassam rockets have been launched towards Israel from northern Gaza on Friday. Abu Mujihad, a spokesman for the Salah al-Din Brigades (the military wing of the PRC) claimed responsibility for the barrages and told Ynet the attacks were in retaliation for the killing of one of the organization's senior commanders, Abu al-Sa'ad.

A senior PRC official, Abu Abir, warned the attacks would only increase and urged the evacuation of Sderot and its neighboring communities. "What was up until now is nothing compared to what will be. We call on them (the Israelis) to evacuate for their safety and the safety of their children," he said...

...Meanwhile on Thursday IDF forces operating in northern Gaza uncovered, for the first time, two rocket launchers concealed in underground firing positions.

The new tactic is considered a sophisticated method aimed at enabling terror groups to fire at Israel while evading IDF counterattacks immediately following the launching of rockets. The two launching positions were uncovered at the outskirts of the Gaza town of Jabalya.

The positions detected in the operation were concealed and highly reminiscent of Hizbullah's modus operandi in southern Lebanon - from where Katyusha rockets were launched towards Israel from launchers buried underground in thickly wooded areas.

Policemen from Hamas halted 14 trucks filled with food and medicine at a checkpoint after it crossed an Israeli checkpoint into Gaza on Thursday, said employees of the Palestinian Red Crescent, who declined to be named, fearing reprisals from ruling group Hamas.
A Hamas official said the aid was seized because the organization was distributing aid to former Fatah fighters and not to impoverished Palestinians...

...Employees from the Red Crescent said they were meant to distribute the aid to some 8,000 needy Gaza residents from lists of people the organization keeps. The aid came from the organization's regional headquarters in Jordan, an employee said.

An employee said policemen halted the aid convoy and checked the trucks' contents. "They then insisted to drive one car in front us and another behind us, and led us to police compound in Gaza City," he said by telephone from the police station where he was held.

Later, the food aid was unloaded in the warehouses of the Hamas Ministry of Social Affairs, and two trucks of medicine were taken to a nearby Hamas-run hospital, he said.

The employee said that it was the second time Hamas policemen seized aid meant for the Red Crescent. Last month the organization received a shipment for different Gaza governates, which Hamas does not recognize. The militant group seized the aid from warehouses...

...Virtually the only organisation to have come out on Dr Williams's side of the debate was the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which said that the media response to the Archbishop's speech could "only be described as a fanatical and emotional outpouring of exaggeration, misrepresentative statements, untruths and sometimes vitriolic hatred"...

...On balance, immigration is not only good, but critical, for this country and this economy. But like most things in life, it creates winners and losers. And the preponderance of evidence indicates that the flood of illegal immigrants has hurt those on the bottom of the economic ladder most, blacks in particular and probably even American-born Hispanics.

George Borjas, an economist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is one of the leading scholars in the field. His research, drawn from 40 years of census data, has found "a strong correlation between immigration and black wages, black employment, and black incarceration rates." In an interview yesterday, Borjas was careful to say that the majority of the huge job losses in the black community would have occurred even if a single immigrant had never crossed the border. But he attributed somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the job losses among low-skilled blacks to immigration...

...Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum has come to much the same conclusion. In the years 2000 to 2005, Sum found, 85 of every 100 net new workers in the country was a new immigrant. Among just men - native-born Americans and immigrants here more than five years - the net employment growth was "less than zero," Sum reported. Less than zero is a very small number.

While the job gains have overwhelmingly gone to new immigrants, Sum found that African-Americans and American-born Hispanics were big losers. The employment rates among black men ages 16 to 19 dropped 20 percent over five years and 24 percent among Hispanic male teenagers. In almost every category, the young and undereducated, whites included, lost ground...

We have created a culture of violence (and Israel and the Jews are the prime instigators) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity.

"You cannot make these arguments in the US without incurring the wrath of the Israel lobby, which is a remarkably powerful interest group," Mearsheimer told Outlook. "In short, Gandhi would have gotten into serious trouble with the lobby even if he had chosen his words carefully, simply because he criticised Israel and its American supporters, which one does at his or her own peril."

...As well as the "culture of violence" remark noted above, Gandhi's piece lambasted Jewish attitudes towards the Holocaust ("It is a very good example of how a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends.") It was, by turns, astonishingly crass ("The holocaust - sic - was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful") and crackling with resentment ("The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger.")

None of this can be remotely construed as criticism of Israel, its government, or its policies. This is an article which accuses Jews of morally blackmailing the world with a narrative of victimhood. Why people write such disturbing, patently untrue things is the real question which should occupy all of us.

A landmark ruling about the death of the boy Mohammed al-Dura is about to be handed down by a French court. If many are unaware of this, it is no accident. Recent developments regarding the accuracy of that story have received no coverage by any of the major networks. The growing suspicions about the official, tragic version - that the boy was shot by Israeli soldiers - have been reported almost exclusively by the Jewish media. The global news networks were eager consumers and purveyors of the iconic image of that child when it emerged in 2000. But they are studiously avoiding the matter now that it is looking more and more like a hoax. Expressing mea culpa is probably not something they relish.

Of course, their correspondents could have followed Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy's example. A noted apologist for the Palestinians, he has conceded that al-Dura may not have been killed by Israelis after all, yet wrote in November, 2007: The "question of who killed al-Dura is not important" and the quest for the truth about it is "an eccentric obsession."

But there are some Israelis to whom the truth does still matter. For them, the shameful role of one of the key players in the affair is probably not well known: that of their own government. Israel's role in perpetuating the al-Dura myth has been baffling...

Over $2 million was secretly tucked away for Berkeley earmarks in the 2008 Omnibus Appropriations bill, projects that were never voted on or debated.

I do not believe a city that has turned its back on our country's finest deserves $2 million worth of pork-barrel projects. So, I will introduce legislation to revoke the funding.

Included in the $2 million worth of pork are some particularly wasteful projects.

One earmark provides gourmet organic lunches to schools in the Berkeley School District. While our Marines are making due with MREs of Sloppy Joe and Chili with Beans, the organization Chez Panisse is getting federal tax dollars to design meals that promote "environmental harmony." Chez Panisse's menu features "Comté cheese soufflé with mâche salad," "Meyer lemon éclairs with huckleberry coulis" and "Chicory salad with creamy anchovy vinaigrette and olive toast."

Are we to understand that the city that has been home to many of the country's most rich and famous cannot afford to pay for its own designer school lunches?...

...For those old enough to remember: Where were you in 1967? For those now: Where will you be February 12, 2008?

I'm in England. Today's big story - dominating all networks here - is that Rowan Williams has called the (limited) recognition of sharia in Britain quot;inevitable" to avoid forcong people to choose from loyalty to their "culture" and loyalty to the "state". The British public is outraged. The BBC is flooded by its own listeners eager to denounce Rowan and shaaria.

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

He says Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty"...

...First, a few facts about Pathways. Pathways is part of a federally funded initiative whose aim is to create opportunities for dialogue on college campuses amongst students of different faith backgrounds to promote tolerance and inter-religious understanding...

Edina Lekovic serves as the communications director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and has been featured on various media outlets, including CNN, BBC, the History Channel, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. She has also spoken at the United Nations as part of a seminar called "Confronting Islamophobia."...

...the Al-Talib piece to which Halper refers, which called Bin Laden a "freedom fighter," was published after Lekovic graduated from UCLA and cannot even remotely be construed as representative of her political views. Lekovic publicly stated that she "abhor[s] the sentiments expressed in the article" and was not involved in its authorship. Lekovic and MPAC have repeatedly condemned the actions of violent extremists - including Bin Laden - and publicly stated their support of the use of non-violence in political disputes.

Unfortunately, those who have chosen to make a career out of defaming and discrediting prominent Muslim activists have succeeded in linking Edina's name to extremist viewpoints, thereby implying that her entire life's work and perspectives are somehow suspect or covertly anti-American. This represents nothing but a return to a McCarthy-esque era, which promotes fear, mistrust and censorship in the American public sphere...

Notice anything strange? The answer is, of course, that these are photos of the murderers when they were just young boys, and not the 20+ year olds at the time of their exploitation.

I have been following the media coverage of the conflict - as well as the palestinian propaganda ploys - long enough to know that this is no accident. The palestinian relatives, either on their own or encouraged by the more media savvy of their people, chose to show the pictures of the murderers as young boys as if to say "Look, how we lost our young sons!" and "They were just boys driven by despair!" And of course AP was there to lap it up and publish the propaganda.

And if you think I am being overly cynical, ask yourself this: when was the last time the foreign press photographers published photos of the adult victims as children?

Yeah, I thought so.

...The Migration Board has not alleged that [Lennart] Eriksson's personal beliefs have in any way affected the quality of his work, nor is it alleged that he has behaved in any way inappropriately while at work, acknowledging that he manages his website entirely in his own private time. It is for his political beliefs that he is being persecuted. Eriksson is a Conservative.

Lennart Eriksson, 51, has worked at the Swedish Migration Board in Göteborg in western Sweden in a variety of positions for almost 20 years. He is a Conservative in his personal political affiliations and has for many years managed his own Internet website where he has expressed his personal opinions on a variety of subjects. On this website Lennart Eriksson has voiced support for Israel and the USA as pillars of democracy. His employers have known about the website for many years...

...Over the past five years, up to September 2007, Lennart Eriksson served as manager of an asylum assessment unit. On his return from a year-long leave of absence during which he completed his doctoral thesis, he was immediately called to a meeting with the newly appointed operational manager. The manager informed Eriksson that he had seen his website and that Lennart Eriksson's Conservative views were both "unusual" and controversial. The manager was particularly opposed to Lennart Eriksson's support for Israel and the USA and his online description of WW2 US general George Patton as one of the heroes of the Second World War. Lennart Eriksson was then summarily informed that he had been demoted....

Three people were wounded and several suffered from shock early Tuesday evening as ten Kassam rockets hit Sderot.

One of the rockets hit a house, moderately wounding a woman and lightly wounding two other people. The house itself was also reported to be heavily damaged.

Power outages were also reported in some parts of the city, apparently a result of one of the rockets hitting electricity infrastructure.

The latest barrage came shortly after six Hamas operatives were killed in an IAF strike on a Hamas post in the Gaza Strip...

A prominent Israeli archeologist said Monday that she has revised her reading of an inscription on ancient seal uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David after various scholars around the world critiqued her original interpretation of the name on the seal...

...[Dr. Eilat] Mazar had originally read the name on the seal as "Temech," and suggested that it belonged to the family of that name mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah.

But after the find was first reported in The Jerusalem Post, various epigraphers around the world said Mazar had erred by reading the inscription on the seal straight on (from right to left) rather than backwards (from left to right), as a result of the fact that a seal creates a mirror image when used to inscribe a piece of clay.

The critics, including the European scholar Peter van der Veen, as well as the epigrapher Ryan Byrne, co-director of the Tel Dan excavations, suggested in Internet blogs that the correct reading of the seal is actually "Shlomit," also a biblical name.

Mazar said Monday that she accepted the reading of "Shlomit" on the ancient seal, and added that she appreciated the scholarly research on the issue...

LONDON - Jewish leaders have welcomed Pope Benedict XVI's decision to reformulate the Catholic Church's traditional Good Friday prayers.

The removal of references to the "darkness" and "blindness" of the Jews for their refusal to recognize Jesus as the messiah was a sign the pope was "deeply committed to advancing the relationship with the Jewish Community," Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, told The Jerusalem Post.

The new text will drop all reference to the "blindness" of the Jews, Milan's Il Giornale newspaper reported on January 18. The pope has prepared a draft version of the new prayer, which will be released in time for Holy Week celebrations in March, the report said.

In July, Benedict issued a "Motu Proprio" edict permitting the use of the 1962 Latin Tridentine missal during prayers.

The Latin prayers for Good Friday ask Catholics to "pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge Our Lord Jesus Christ," and ask God not to "refuse your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness."...

...Rosen said last week that his "sources" in the Vatican "indicate that the new text composed by Pope Benedict does not call for the Jew to accept the Christian faith but is in keeping with the 1970 prayer commonly used by the Church in the vernacular that prays for the physical and spiritual well being of the Jews."

This pope has done more than just talk about improving relations between the two faiths, he said. "He invited many of us to his predecessor's funeral; to his own coronation; and he received our IJCIC [International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations] delegation before he even received Protestant groups, let alone groups from other faiths. All this is unprecedented."

The Vatican would not confirm the Il Giornale report, and has declined comment.

..."I swear I don't mean to sound like I'm selling something," Sergeant Stephen Deboard said when I first arrived in the city. "But what the Marines are doing out there in the city is amazing. They are so integrated in the community. The first time I stayed at one of the stations I awoke to the sound of an Iraqi baby crying and the smell of the neighbor's eggs cooking. They're living right there with the Iraqis."

"I never thought I'd walk around a place like Fallujah and see people I know," Sergeant Clarence Foster said and laughed...

DIMONA, Israel (Reuters) - A Palestinian suicide bomber killed a woman in a desert town in southern Israel on Monday, the first such attack in the country in a year, but Israeli officials said peace talks would not be derailed.

Police said they prevented a second blast in the shopping centre of Dimona by shooting dead an accomplice before he could detonate an explosives belt.

"It was like a war. People were running like crazy. I saw a piece of a human being right there, next to my leg," witness Rosa Enberg told Israel's Channel Two television...

...A Gaza-based source in President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction said the "Army of Palestine" wing of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades launched the attack along with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

A Fatah official in the West Bank denied al-Aqsa involvement. The conflicting statements reflected divisions in Fatah as Abbas pursues U.S.-backed peace talks with Israel, the first in seven years.

"Abu Mazen (Abbas) is a moderate who wants peace. We will continue to negotiate with him," an Israeli official said.

Two other militant groups, [Sami Al-Arian's] Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, praised the bombing as a blow against "Israeli occupation" and retaliation for Israeli attacks.

Young supporters of Fatah handed out flowers and candy to passing cars in the southern Gaza city of Rafah to celebrate.

[Speaking out of both sides of his mouth,] Abbas condemned the Dimona bombing but also criticized an earlier military raid by Israel in the occupied West Bank.

Police said the suicide bomber blew himself up in Dimona's busy commercial centre, killing himself and the Israeli woman, who was not immediately identified.

"The second terrorist was shot in the head as he tried to set off his bomb belt," said Yossi Porianta, the police chief in Israel's southern Negev region. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said 10 people were wounded...

As word of the suicide bombing in Dimona spread Monday, Gaza residents were treated to celebratory wreaths of flowers as well as sweets that were handed to drivers and passers-by.

Gaza motorists receiving the treats and sweets also honked their horns in triumph and celebration...

About two hours after suicide bombing in Dimona, Palestinians report booby-trapped car exploded near northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya; attack targets Salah al-Din Brigades commander Abu Sa'ad. IDF, Shin Bet confirm assassination

Israel will ask the Palestinian Authority to repair Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, it was announced Sunday.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that he had instructed Defense Minister Ehud Barak to act toward the reconstruction and restoration of the tomb and that the issue would be brought up in an upcoming meeting between Olmert and PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad.

Olmert made the announcement in a letter to a Samaria residents' committee that asked the prime minister to act on the issue in light of the poor conditions of the tomb and its compound.

Olmert wrote that "Joseph the Righteous symbolizes coping with crises out of faith and the ability to turn every situation into a tool which enables us to progress."

Near the start of the Second Intifada, in October 2000, seventeen Palestinians and one IDF soldier were killed in fighting around the tomb.

On October 7, 2000 the IDF withdrew from the site leaving it in the hands of the Palestinians.

Soon afterward, a turbulent mob of Palestinians assaulted the tomb, demolishing the millennial-old holy site in a matter of hours...

...And Egypt is not exactly loved by Palestinians either, especially after decades of visa and movement restrictions that make them feel far worse treated than any other of Egypt's Arab brothers.

Ismail is far from impressed with some aspects of Egyptian hospitality: traders have pushed up their prices for the throng of Gazans, and the shwarma sandwich he has bought is, he says, "disgusting".

Gaza is much more technologically advanced too, he opines. And the much-needed Egyptian petrol is of inferior quality...

...While the festival is meant to be a cultural festival - the French Community [of Belgium] has sponsored similar seasonal events showcasing the cultures of Congo and Benin - some observers of Belgium in the Jewish world are worried it will become politicized.

As part of the festival, an official Web site of the French Community, www.agenda.be, lists the clown performance with the title "Circus Behind the Wall." The Web site describes the visit as "a clown, acrobats and a circus as a means of resistance and struggle." According to French Community Minister of International Relations Marie-Dominique Simonet, the festival focuses on Palestinian culture separate from Israel because Israel is a "rich country" - outside the "north-south" framework of the festivals, which try to showcase a poorer southern nation. At the same time, the minister added, Israel already enjoys cultural and scientific cooperation with Belgium's French Community.

Meanwhile, the French-speaking Belgian newspaper La Libre quotes Palestinian representative in Brussels Leila Shaid as saying that, in the paper's words, "we should not always talk of Israel when we talk about Palestine and... it should be possible to show 'simply' artists of a country."...

THE Holocaust Memorial Day marking the genocides of the 20th century was marred on Sunday when a gang of youths stoned Jewish tourists on a guided tour of London's East End.

A group of 96 visitors looking at sites of Jewish interest were attacked by youths hiding behind a fence in a back street in Whitechapel.

Two were struck by the missiles, an American woman just starting a new post at London's Metropolitan University and a Canadian lecturer.

The woman had blood pouring from her head and needed hospital treatment.

The tour was organised by leading local historian Clive Bettington, who was later asked by police if he wanted officers to accompany him in future, but declined.

"That would be admitting there are 'no go' areas," he said.

"I won't be intimidated. We have a right to walk our streets unmolested."

He has now written to Tower Hamlets chief executive Martin Smith for an urgent meeting.

Sunday's incident was outside a former Jewish maternity home in Underwood Road, now used as social services offices, which was on his tour as a place of interest where playwright Arnold Whesker and showbiz comedian Lionel Bart were born.

YOBS LAUGHED

An eye-witness said: "Stones started to come down on us and some in the group were scared and ducked.

"I looked over the fence and saw four Asian youths throwing stones. They were laughing, then ran away."...

Senator DeMint's staff is reporting that they have been contacted by many other Senators to co-author legislation to strip Berkeley of pork barrel spending totalling over $2 million for the City Council's outrageous attempts to run the USMC Recruiting office from it's Shattuck Avenue location.

Senator DeMint's office is just a few hours away from completing the final legislative draft.

On the Congressional side, Republican lawmakers are hearing from thousands of constituents about the efforts to silence the free speech rights of our troops by running the Marine Recruiting office out of town, and they are rushing to complete their own companion legislation. Move America Forward is urging people to contact Congressional representatives to keep the pressure on...

Please join the Palestinian & Arab Community at Widdi Catering Hall to commemorate and honor the life and work of Al Hakim, Dr. George Habash.

*Sunday Feb 3rd, 2008 2:00 p.m.*

Widdi Catering Hall
5602 6th Ave (Corner of 56th & 6th Ave)
Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY
Subway - N/R to 59th Street

*Al-Awda NY & NYCDP Statement in Memory of Dr. George Habash*

We admirers of Dr. George Habash in New York celebrate the life of this Palestinian revolutionary, who died of a heart attack on January 26, 2008, at age 82. Born in 1925 in al Lydd, George Habash experienced the Nakbe. He studied medicine yet devoted himself to the necessary task of organizing Arab resistance to the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Thus, he cofounded the Arab Nationalist Movement in 1951.

Journalists are taught never to "bury the lead." Yet it looks as if that's precisely what CBS's "60 Minutes" did in reporter Scott Pelley's fascinating interview Sunday with George Piro, the FBI agent who debriefed Saddam Hussein following his capture in December 2003.

The Lebanese-born Mr. Piro, one of only a handful of agents at the bureau who speaks Arabic, was able to wheedle information from Saddam over a matter of months through a combination of flattery and ego-deflation that worked wonders with the former despot. But as Bruce Chapman of the Discovery Institute first noticed, the most important news in the segment comes when Mr. Piro describes his conversations with Saddam about weapons of mass destruction. The FBI interrogator says that, while Saddam said he no longer had active WMD programs in 2003, the dictator admitted that he intended to resume those programs as soon as he possibly could.

Two women thought to suffer from Down's syndrome may have been unwilling suicide bombers in twin blasts that killed up to 73 people at pet markets in Baghdad today.

The first bomber instantly killed 45 people at a packed pet market in Baghdad in the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital in six months.

A separate attack shortly after killed 20 people and wounded scores at a bird market in southern Baghdad.

The death toll from the two bombings increased throughout the day to at least 73.

The chief Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Brigadier General Qassim al-Moussawi, claimed the female bombers apparently had Down's syndrome and the explosives were detonated by remote control, indicating the women may not have been willing attackers, according to his office.

Bolstering that claim, local police said the woman in the first attack sold cream in the morning at the market and was known to locals as "the crazy lady".

Police initially said the bomb at al-Ghazil market was hidden in a box of birds but determined it was a suicide attack after finding the woman's head...

Yesterday, Iraqi government figures showed that 466 Iraqi civilians had died violently in January, more than 76 percent lower than the 1,971 killed in January 2007.