July 2008 Archives

It was dusk when we decided to call it a day. Arabs usually retired from fighting after sundown, and expected the Jews to do the same. The Jews, however, did the opposite. The Haganah did its best work under cover of darkness. Sneaking unseen upon the enemy, it combined daring with the element of total surprise and usually succeeded in terrifying the Arabs. Another advantage of night attack was that the darkness hid the numbers of the wosefully small -- though superbly trained -- Jewish units. Under these conditions events proved that one inspired Haganah Commando was easily worth ten average Arabs.

This was true here too. For by nightfall the Jews had captured the strategic heights of Katamon and our Holy Warriors had clambered into trucks and rolled back to Deir Aboutor in the silence and gloom of defeat. Later, from Deir Aboutor, we heard the muffled blasting of Jewish sappers as they moved forward consolidating their positions. In the Monastery of St. Simeon, Jews found instructions in German as well as Arabic, a wholly reasonable discovery in view of Iraq's history during World War II. (See Chapter XXII).

The following morning Moustafa took me aside.

"Artour," he said, "You remember Hamid Sharkaf?"

I remembered Hamid Sharkaf. I knew him as John Kenny, a twenty-one-year-old boy from Glasgow, with red cheeks and an ever present smile. Before he deserted from the British army on the Arab promise of £15 a month, he had been attached to the Royal Engineers. His specialty was mine-laying and demolition-bomb-making; he also taught the Arabs how to use their British machine-guns. "Hamid Sharkaf" was the name he had taken among the Arabs, after the fashion of many of the British deserters.

"He is dead," Moustafa said, genuinely sorry.

"How did he die?"

"At Katamon. We killed him last night by mistake. He wouldn't retreat with the rest of our boys, so when the Jews chased him to our lines, we took him for a Jew and killed him."

"He was Catholic," I said, "Who buried him?"

"The Arab soldiers. They dug a grave in the Moslem cemetery by the Dome of the Rock, and the imam said a prayer."

So died -- and so was buried -- many a British soldier!

Palestinian children on annual vacation can choose between Hamas or Islamic Jihad summer camps, both of which boast militia-style training, Koran classes, lessons on political prisoners

In the Gaza Strip, as in Israel, children are currently in the midst of summer vacation, and the Hamas and Islamic Jihad's "summer camps" are in full gear. In the past few weeks, the Palestinian groups have been holding camps throughout the strip, some of them proudly displaying rockets and other weaponry.

Hamas alone is currently conducting no less than 300 summer camps for tens of thousands of children, and the focus is on familiarizing kids with the Palestinian towns and cities destroyed in 1948, as well as instilling religious fervor in them. The camps also feature sports and military-type trainings such as crawling under barbed-wire.

Islamic Jihad has also launched its own summer camps, offering some 10,000 children activities similar to those of Hamas. The kids study passages from the Koran and participate in quizzes on religious matters, with emphasis on the required commitment to political prisoners and Palestinian land. They also learn how to hold a Qassam rocket-launcher.

An Islamic Jihad operative told Ynet that the students were not exposed to real rockets but to ones made of plastic. "In the camps we emphasize the need to unite and put an end to the internal struggles. We called them 'unity and principle maintaining camps.'"...

RAWALPINDI: Would-be suicide bombers could be using explosives "underwear briefs" rather than explosives jackets to evade "conservative" body searches, sources said on Wednesday.

Sihala Police College forensic lab sources told Daily Times that the study of recent suicide attacks showed that suicide bombers used "explosives-laden" under-garments, briefs in particular, to carry out the attacks.

The sources said that the explosives could weigh between five kilogrammes to seven kilogrammes, made deadly by adding glass splinters, metal ball bearings and bullets. The law enforcers normally search upper body parts sparing the "privates", the sources said, hence assailants are increasingly using the lower body parts to dodge the searches...

A moment before beginning his supper, Masab, son of West Bank Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef, glances at the friend who has accompanied him to the restaurant where we met. They whisper a few words and then say grace, thanking God and Jesus for putting food on their plates.

It takes a few seconds to digest this sight: The son of a Hamas MP who is also the most popular figure in that extremist Islamic organization, a young man who assisted his father for years in his political activities, has become a rank-and-file Christian. "I'm now called Joseph," he says at the outset.

Masab knows that he has little hope of returning to visit the Holy Land in this lifetime.

"I know that I'm endangering my life and am even liable to lose my father, but I hope that he'll understand this and that God will give him and my family patience and willingness to open their eyes to Jesus and to Christianity. Maybe one day I'll be able to return to Palestine and to Ramallah with Jesus, in the Kingdom of God."

Nor does he attempt to hide his affection for Israel, or his abhorrence of everything representing the surroundings in which he grew up: the nation, the religion, the organization.

"Send regards to Israel, I miss it. I respect Israel and admire it as a country," he says.

"You Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas. Islam, as the ideology that guides them, will not allow them to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews. They believe that tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed fought against the Jews and that therefore they must continue to fight them to the death."

Is that the justification for the suicide attacks?

"More than that. An entire society sanctifies death and the suicide terrorists. In Palestinian culture a suicide terrorist becomes a hero, a martyr. Sheikhs tell their students about the 'heroism of the shaheeds.'"...

...It would be a mistake to see this as some sort of watershed moments. But it is a prime example of the power of religion, both for good and evil. We are so moved philosophically by He whom we place our faith in. And history offers testimony to how different visions of one God can produce a lot, a lot of bloodshed...

If Israel releases Hamas members of the Palestinian parliament as part of a deal for the return of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, PA President Mahmoud Abbas will dismantle the Palestinian Authority, Abbas warned Israel last week.

Abbas sent the warning to GOC Central Command Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni via Hussein al-Sheikh, head of the PA's civil affairs department, who is responsible for coordinating with Israel on anything involving the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Al-Sheikh, who told Shamni that this was a "personal message" from Abbas, stressed that the Palestinian leader did not speak merely of "resigning," but of "dismantling the PA."

Israel arrested dozens of Hamas politicians, including ministers and parliament members, shortly after Hamas kidnapped Shalit on June 25, 2006. Many have since been released by order of a military court, but about 40 remain in Israeli jails.

The message from Abbas was highly unusual, since publicly, he tries to portray himself as the leader of all the Palestinians - for instance, by repeatedly demanding that Israel release all its Palestinian prisoners.

However, after Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007, Abbas dismantled the Fatah-Hamas unity government and began waging a political and military battle against Hamas in the West Bank...

...Abbas evidently fears that the release of senior Hamas politicians in exchange for Shalit would strengthen the Islamic organization's civilian infrastructure in the West Bank.

According to an Israeli source well-versed in what is happening in the PA, publication of Abbas' threat to dismantle the PA if Israel releases the Hamas parliamentarians is liable to discredit him massively in the eyes of many Palestinians...

Police officers stop vehicle on routine check only to find 10-passenger car filled with 38 children who come to Israel as illegal workers, return to territories on weekend

Southern Border Guard officers who stopped a car Thursday on a routine check at the Bedouin city of Rahat were surprised to discover the 10-passenger GMC vehicle filled with 39 people - one driver and 38 children from the West Bank village of Yata.

Police investigations revealed that the driver was taking the children from the Rahat to the Palestinian territories. Thirty-eight children between the ages of 10 and13 stepped out of the car, one by one.

The police said they could not believe their eyes. "It simply didn't end," said one of the officers.

These children are believed to enter Israel illegally on a regular basis in order to work in the south and return home on the weekends.

The driver, a territory resident himself, was arrested and taken in for questioning by the police. "Truth is much stranger than fiction here," one of the traffic police officers told Ynet...

Following are excerpts from a report on a Lebanese celebration of the "wedding-funeral" of the first ever female suicide bomber, Sana Mehaidli, known as "The Bride of the South," who detonated a car bomb near an Israeli military convoy in southern Lebanon in 1985. The report aired on Al-Jadid/New TV on July 26, 2008.

Reporter: It all began in the Sin Al-Fil [neighborhood of Beirut]. Sana was present, and her comrades saluted her. For the last time, she breathed the air of Beirut and strolled through its streets, reaching the headquarters of her party [the Syrian Social Nationalist Party], where she met people she had left without bidding farewell.

The convoy of "the bride" set out on the Al-Ouzai road to Khalde, where SSNP members were waiting to see her. From there, the pioneer of female self-sacrificing fighters left for the south, escorted by hundreds of cars, bearing flags of the party and of the National Resistance Front.

In Maghdouche, the town of the martyr Milad Saliba, Sana was wedded in a great ceremony. The band was playing in her honor, and the crowd was dancing. A bride, in her wedding dress, raised her gun above her head. The procession was showered with rice and roses, and sprayed with rose water. The church bells chimed in her honor.

In 'Anqoun, there was a crowded reception from balconies, from the rooftops, in the streets, and in cars. The Shiite seminary was packed when Sana arrived. The party chairman could not complete his address, because somebody decided to raise a flag of the Amal party from the podium, and a group of vandals began to destroy the place, leading some fo the participants to leave the premises. SSNP members protected Sana's coffin and the guests, whlie gunfire could be heard outside the seminary. After things calmed down, the SSNP members accompanied their heroic martyr to the village cemetery, where she was buried, amid continuous disturbances by the village youth, who were the only ones who did not appreciate the honor that Sana bestowed upon the village from which she came.

Captive Miranda, Lord knows I have not given a thought to the paperwork you sent me.

Let me tell you, Captive, that our release is not in the hands of the lawyers or the hands of America. Our release is in the hands of He who created us.

The poem, "To My Captive Lawyer, Miranda," was written by Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi while he was a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No doubt, it would have given the former detainee, who was released in 2005, immense satisfaction to know that his last earthly deed was referenced in Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion in Boumediene v. Bush. That's the recent Supreme Court decision that gave Guantanamo detainees the constitutional right to challenge, in habeas corpus proceedings, whether they were properly classified by the military as enemy combatants.

Al-Ajmi, a 29-year-old Kuwaiti, blew himself up in one of several coordinated suicide attacks on Iraqi security forces in Mosul this year. Originally reported to have participated in an April attack that killed six Iraqi policemen, a recent martyrdom video published on a password-protected al Qaeda Web site indicates that Al-Ajmi carried out the March 23 attack on an Iraqi army compound in Mosul. In that attack, an armored truck loaded with an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of explosives rammed through a fortified gate, overturned vehicles in its path and exploded in the center of the compound. The huge blast ripped the façade off three apartment buildings being used as barracks, killing 13 soldiers from the 2nd Iraqi Army division and seriously wounding 42 others.

Using the name "Abu Juheiman al-Kuwaiti," Al-Ajmi is seen on the video brandishing an automatic rifle, singing militant songs and exhorting his fellow Muslims to pledge their allegiance to the "Commander of the Faithful" in Iraq. Later, Al-Ajmi's face is superimposed over the army compound, followed by footage of the massive explosion and still shots of several dead bodies lying next to the 25-foot crater left by the blast.

In 2006, Al-Ajmi's "Miranda" poem was included in a recitation of detainee poetry at a "Guantanamo teach-in" sponsored by Seton Hall Law School. The all-day event was Webcast live to 400 colleges and law schools across the country and abroad...

Ali looked at me intently, with a savage glint in his eyes which made me uncomfortable. We were along; he was armed, and I knew that I was no match for a man whom I felt instinctively was a killer...Ali opened up gradually, first by confessing that as a boy he had beaten a playmate to death because he caught him stealing. Growing up in a Cairo slum -- with no schooling or formal training -- Ali had developed a fanatic sense of right and wrong. All wrong was to be punished by death in order to end the progeny of wrongdoers and eliminate evil from the world.

"Who will determine what is right and wrong?" I asked.

"I make the judgment," Ali said. He had been jailed. "It was my own fault. I was careless," he explained, then told me this story. He had been delegated to do away with an Egyptian official in Cairo. Planning the attack carefully, Ali had made a sketch of the official's itinerary and marked with an X the spot from which he was to fire his revolver. In his excitement Ali had lost the diagram.

"I didn't need the paper. I remembered everything," he said. "I was at the place an hour early. I had the gun in my coat pocket, with my hand always on the trigger. I was afraid I would shoot myself, so I went into a doorway to change the position of my gun. Four men followed me. They beat me on the head, and took me to the karakol. They had found my diagram on the street. In my house the police found another sketch. They beat me again, and once again in the karakol. I confessed because I did not want to be beaten any more. I was in jail two years." Ali's appetite had been merely whetted. "I want revenge. I failed in my duty once. I must clear myself before Allah. I must kill Jews, many Jews. I must kill till my arm is tired. I must not stop killing Jews till the bodies are this high..." The wild Arab brought one hand to his chin. "I must do one more thing...For this I need your help Artour."

"Your wish is my command, Ali."

"I want you to come with me the next time we fight the Yahood. When I catch a Jew alive I want you to be with me -- with your camera."

"Why do you want me with my camera?" I asked curiously.

"I want you to take one picture of me holding the living Jew by the throat. I want you to take another picture while I stab the Jew in the neck. Then I want pictures as I stab him again and again in the neck, in the face, in the heart, in his belly...with this knife!" Ali whipped out a vicious blade. "After I have killed the Jew I want you to photograph me drinking his blood."

"While it is still warm, I suppose."

"Yes, while it is running warm from his body," Ali affirmed.

"Okay, I'll take the pictures!"

What else could I say?

ATHENS, Greece -- A group of U.S.-based activists said Tuesday it will challenge Israel's blockade of the Palestinian territory by sailing boats from Cyprus to Gaza next week.

The Free Gaza group said it will make the trip in two Greek-flagged boats, after raising most of the $300,000 needed for the voyage from private donations.

Paul Larudee, one of the event's organizers, said the group will deliver 100 hearing aids to a Palestinian charity as a form of humanitarian aid.

"Israel says it's pulled out its soldiers from Gaza so they should have no objection to us going there," said Larudee, whose group is based in El Cerrito, Calif.

"We have been in contact with the authorities in Greece, in Cyprus and with the Palestinians ... There is no reason to contact the Israeli authorities because we will not be using their territory."

About 40 people from 16 countries, including Israelis and Palestinians, would take part in the event, he said during a news conference in Athens, adding that private boats were also invited to join the activists...

...Free Gaza organizer Greta Berlin said the group had bought two wooden sailboats that had been renamed for the voyage: The 21-metre Free Gaza and 18-metre Liberty.

The boats will sail from the Cypriot port of Larnaca to Gaza on Aug. 6 or 7, Berlin said.

"Our primary reason is for human rights but we will also carry a small amount of aid - 100 hearing aids that will be given to Palestinian children."

She said one aim was to create a permanent maritime link between Cyprus and Gaza. The activists have prepared publicity events if the trip to Gaza is blocked by Israel, Berlin said, including the release of 5,000 balloons from the boats...

After a five-year battle, the defense establishment has finally given in: It agreed to dismantle a 2.4-kilometer stretch of the separation fence north of Qalqilyah. The move will return 2,600 dunams of agricultural land to its Palestinian owners.

The dismantled stretch will be replaced by 4.9 kilometers of fencing closer to the Green Line, at a cost of more than NIS 50 million. The new route largely follows the one proposed years ago by the Council for Peace and Security.

The change apparently stemmed in part from the views of new Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who believes the government, not the IDF, should determine the precise route of the fence.

The fence in this area was built in 2003, and residents of several nearby Palestinian villages promptly petitioned the High Court of Justice against it. They won several legal victories over the years: The court ordered the fence be moved closer to the Green Line around Bil'in, Alfei Menashe and Tzufin...

...the Illinois senator rejected John McCain's proposal to eject Russia and exclude China from the Group of Eight (G-8). Mr. Obama's response during a July 13 interview on CNN -- "We have to engage and get them involved" -- suggests that it is impossible to work with Russia and China on economic and nuclear nonproliferation issues while also standing up for democracy and human rights.

It has repeatedly been shown that the exact opposite is true.

The U.S. does not cede leverage with authoritarian governments when it confronts them about their crimes. Instead, the U.S. increases its credibility and influence with foes and friends alike. Placating regimes like those in Russia and China today only entrenches hostile, antidemocratic forces.

Commercial agreements, arms control and other mutually beneficial projects can be pursued without endorsing dictatorship. During the same interview, Sen. Obama spoke of enlisting China to help write the "international rules of the road." This is the same logic that led the United Nations to place China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia on its current Human Rights Council. Do we really want to live under rules created with the approval of such regimes?

While Mr. Obama talked about the importance of receiving Russia's help in containing Iran's nuclear ambitions, Reuters reported that Tehran is acquiring advanced S-300 surface-to-air missiles from the Kremlin. This is the cooperation the West has earned by including Russia in the G-8...

Following are excerpts from statements by released Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV and Al-Jadid/New TV on July 26, 2008.

Al-Jazeera TV

Samir Kuntar: To be honest, our operation had both civilian and military targets. Today, tomorrow, and the next day - our targets are always... There are no civilian targets - it's "civilian" in quotation marks. The Zionists themselves define the Israeli as a soldier who is on leave for 11 months every year...

...Interviewer: How did you and your fellow prisoners view the Sadat assassination?

Samir Kuntar: That was a most wonderful operation - to the point that all the prisoners cheered together when Sadat was assassinated. This man symbolized treason and apostasy. Ever since Camp David... Look at the history - Camp David, the 1982 invasion, and then the strike against Iraq... All the catastrophes that befell the Arab world began with Camp David. It was a wonderful historical moment, which I hope will recur in similar cases...

Al-Jadid TV

A country that has sacrificed such a long convoy of martyrs cannot stop at the gates of the Shab'a Farms, and say: The conflict is over...

...This country will never be a playing ground for that ugly woman, the U.S. ambassador. One day, it will be written on the gates of this country: "No entry for stray dogs and the people of the American administration."

Palestinian officials from the Gaza Strip have distributed a set of carefully-staged photographs they say are evidence that the smuggling tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border are for milk and other essential goods, not weapons.

The photographs show masked Palestinian militants lifting jugs of milk and sacks of baby food from the entrance to one of the tunnels on the Gaza side of the border.

Israel insists that the tunnels, of which intelligence estimates indicate there are hundreds, are used to import small arms and advanced weapons like heavy mortar shells, anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft missiles. The tunnels are also said to be the conduit via which the Palestinians receive the material used to build their Kassam rockets.

Hamas has acknowledged Israel's position by insisting during ceasefire negotiations last month that it would not agree to halt smuggling efforts as part of the truce.

"We cannot talk about stopping smuggling because it is something beyond our ability as a government and we did not give a commitment in this regard," Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told worshippers at a Gaza City mosque on June 25 as the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire was being finalized.

Egypt, too, has never tried to claim the tunnels were for anything other than arms smuggling, and has even made a show of closing a handful of tunnels and confiscating the weapons found inside for public consumption...

•  The French court’s dismissal of the libel case brought by France 2 TV, in response to evidence that the death of Muhammad al-Dura was staged, has increased the examination of the NGO campaigns that propelled this issue.
• The unquestioned repetition of claims by Palestinian “eyewitnesses” without further investigation reflects the standard pattern used by Amnesty International and HRW in condemning Israel for alleged human rights violations.


• Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report that labeled al Dura’s alleged death as “a case of indiscriminate and illegal use of force.” HRW’s lengthy report based on “the accounts of eyewitnesses” simply repeated the claims of the Palestinian cameraman for France 2, without any independent verification.
• HRW’s press release (November 21 2000) ostensibly condemned a Palestinian bombing attack on an Israeli school bus, in which a number of teachers and children were killed and injured. But most of this document refers to the “indiscriminate or excessive use of force by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF),” citing the al Dura allegations, and anonymous witnesses.


• Amnesty International claimed that al Dura was deliberately targeted, and repeated Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) claims, with no supporting evidence.


• Amnesty also used this unverified case as evidence of “long-standing patterns of human rights violation suffered almost exclusively by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli forces.”
• The image of al-Dura was a central icon at the NGO Forum of the 2001 Durban Conference, in which both NGO superpowers played a central role. The father, Jamal, was a featured speaker in Durban.

...While Moustafa indulged in blind-alley flirtation with two Armenian nurses, I strolled through the wards. One of the patients introduced himself to me as Nazar Chalawitch, a former captain in Yugoslav quisling Pavelich's army, now an Arab fighter who was convalescing. I told him I was Gerhard's friend.

"How did you get hurt?" I asked.

"Fighting with the most stupid, the most cowardly, the most inefficient soldiers I have ever seen," Nazar exploded. "The Germans and I gave the Arabs many good ideas to destroy the Jewish villages. They are afraid of anything new. They say it will cost them too much money. They are waiting for Allah to help them!"

Deeply embittered, he went on: "If those Arabs had followed orders we'd have cleaned out the Jews long ago. Take this village outside Gaza [Kibbutz Kfar Daron]. We made a perfect plan to attack it with three columns: 34 Germans and eight Yugoslavs in one column, 210 Ikhwan in another; a hundred Followers of Truth making the third column. We were to assemble exactly at midnight and march from three sides. The Germans were on time. Ikhwan came three hours late. The others -- just before sunrise! We couldn't surprise the Jews. We attacked anyway -- lost about forty men. A bullet went through my hip."

The Palestine Post ran a daily column listing casualities. By May 1, 1948, 5,104 had died (189 English, 1,236 Jews, 3,569 Arabs) and 6,632 had been wounded.

I strolled over to the Public Information Office and wandered into the small canteen operated there for the correspondents. Jewish and Arab newspapermen still mixed: coolly, suspiciously. The Jewish boys came mainly to get a beer, potatoes, and coffee, and had cigarettes for sale -- all rare in the New City. When Jews tried to buy food to take home, Ahmed would say: "If I sold it to you the Arabs would cut my body into small pieces." I met an Arab here, named Nassib Boulos, working for the British as a string correspondent for Life magazine. Boulos always hovered around the American newsmen,. trying to get a line on each one. He came over to my table.

"I hear you're a Zionist."

"I don't know what Zionism is. I haven't seen enough of the Jews."

I had a premonition that Boulos would cross my path later on, and make trouble. In the days that followed, a series of nasty anti-Jewish booklets and leaflets began to circulate among correspondents, anonymously signed "AMO" -- the Arab Military Organization, and adjunct of the Mufti's Arab Higher Committee. Addressed to "British Soldiers! British Policemen! British Civilians!" they sought to incite non-Arabs against the Jews. One of the leaflets was in doggerel:

Put a bomb in the [Jewish] Agency Buildings
Wipe the Synagogues all off the earth,
And make every damned son of ZION
Regret the day of his birth.
From the lampposts hang all the RABBIS
But hang HERTZOG¹ highest of all
And when you have hung all the Jew-boys
Then blow up their damned WAILING WALL...
You will find you are down as the Heroes
Of the Last and the greatest Crusade,
And then you will all go to HEAVEN
And I WILL BE THERE AS WELL.
And we all charge our glasses,
AND DRINK tO JEWS THERE IN HELL.

¹Dr. Isaac Halevy Herzong, then Chief Rabbi of Palestine, later Rabbi of Israel.

That the Cambridge Peace Commission is an anti-Israel organization should come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with the radical left-wing mindset of a city that serves as one of the last bastions of Marxist lunacy in the United States.

Cambridge is to the east coast what Berkeley is to the left coast, a breeding ground for some of the wackiest radicals north of Havana; a mecca for the disgruntled, angry-at-the-world, smash-the-system leftists that reminisce about Timothy Leary and yearn for the day when Lenin will be required reading in public schools. The intelligentsia that permeates this city can usually be seen in Harvard Square coffee houses in their Che Guevara T-shirts and Parisian berets, pining for the demise of corporate America while sipping herbal tea under the watchful gaze of those old Andy Warhol portraits of Chairman Mao.

Since these people are hardcore leftists, they’re naturally fixated on Third World movements that seek to violently overthrow powerful Western nations, which means they are inclined to tender whatever ideological support possible to their latest oppressed-victims-of-the-month. And this particular month, like last month, and last year, and the last decade, and the decade before that, the Left has rallied to the Palestinians.
And thus, the Cambridge Peace Commission has targeted Israel.

Israel is viewed by the left as an extension of modern Western imperialism in the Middle East, foreign invaders in a land populated by indigenous peoples whom this American-sponsored Zionist entity oppresses. And their victims are the Palestinians, who only want to live in peace and harmony in a free state of Palestine beside the Zionist entity, or better still, in a multicultural haven where all peoples, Moslem and Jew, Palestinian and Israeli, can live together in one united country.

To accomplish this, the Palestinians must use whatever means necessary to overthrow the Israeli usurpers -a defenseless oppressed people must always use homemade bombs against tanks, after all. They also need a lot of moral support from the West.

And that is why the CPC sponsored a peace pilgrimage to Bethlehem. Simply talking about the need to help their ideological brethren the Palestinians from the comfort of their safe Cambridge commune wasn’t enough. They had to see for themselves. So off they went, Jew and Christian alike, kindred spirits in their quest to validate their support for the oppressed Palestinians against the hawkish American-backed Israel.

They even issued important guidelines for their members to follow when entering the turf of their Palestinian brethren:

“Being openly gay or lesbian is outside the norms of Palestinian life…” (Translation: they kill gays and lesbians.)

“It is best that you not raise the issue of being gay or lesbian with Palestinians.” (Or they might kill you too.)

“It is best not to practice your Hebrew with Palestinians even if someone uses it with you.” (They might think you’re Israeli and kill you).

“It is better not to wear a kippah or yarmulke in Palestinian communities.” (This will clearly identify you as a Jew, and they kill Jews.)

“There are eyes and ears watching for collaborators.” (If Palestinians are seen chumming around with Jews they can be killed along with the Jews.)

“If you are given a kuffeya (traditional Palestinian headdress) to wear, put it on. It will help you blend in with the community.” (Then you won’t be killed for being perceived as a Jew.)

“(The kuffeya) communicates that you belong.” (And the Palestinians won’t kill you even if they know you’re a Jew.)

These guidelines were deemed necessary because these leftist pilgrims tend to be that which is loathed in the Arab-Muslim world that the Palestinians are an integral part of. The CPC members may be radical leftists, but they still emanate from the Jeffersonian democracy that is the United States. These American leftists are Western progressive ideologues, ACLU civil libertarians, socialists, egalitarians and Democrats.

They are Jews and Christians. They’re tolerant of other religions. Their members drink, engage in sex without marriage, and maybe even experimented with illicit drugs sometime in their youth. Some are gay and lesbian. Citizens of traditional Arab countries who engage in any of the above tend to end up in prison, exiled or dead.

All of which means that matter how hard the CPC crowd tries to show some ideological kinship with the Palestinians, it can never work. Which is why the Palestinians terror elite view them less as kindred brethren, and more as useful idiots.

Can you assure the people of Israel, and beyond, that as president you will prevent Iran attaining nuclear weapons?

What I can do is assure that I will do everything in my power as president to prevent Iran attaining nuclear weapons. And I think that begins with engaging in tough, direct talks with Iran, sending a clear message to Iran that they shouldn't wait for the next administration but should start engaging in the P5 process [involving the five permanent members of the UN Security Council] that's taking place right now, and elevating this to the top of our national security priorities, so that we are mobilizing the entire international community, including Russia and China, on this issue...

One of the failures, I think, of our approach in the past has been to use a lot of strong rhetoric but not follow through with the kinds of both carrots and sticks that might change the calculus of the Iranian regime. But I have also said that I would not take any options off the table, including military.

This thrilling new novel that offers a suspenseful, engaging and timely story poses the questions: Can moderate Muslims beat back extremists of their own faith? Can a modern Islam offer a new direction away from terror?

With decades of professional and personal experience in the intelligence arena and exposure to Israel and the Middle East, author John Errett is uniquely qualified to write about the plague of fundamentalist Muslim terrorism. He is motivated by a belief that the most critical issue peace-loving democracies face today is the horrifying possibility of defeat at their hands. Although he is not Jewish, Errett is a dedicated and passionate friend of Israel and holds a strong conviction that the United States and the State of Israel both share common values and a common enemy.

Dear friends,

The Obama campaign has promised to have a private meeting with Iranian Americans if we as a group can raise $250,000 for this coming Sunday's event.

If we can get close to achieving this goal, there are two individuals in San Jose who have shown a willingness to donate $28,500 each and two friends in NYC who are going to donate $28,500 each, I will also donate an additional $28,500 to the DNC for this purpose. I understand that there are already 21 Iranians who have made a $2,300 donation to the Obama campaign to attend the meeting on this Sunday. These combined donations bring our total to $190,800, so we are much closer than everyone originally thought...

...Even though the allotted time for this meeting is very short and we might not be able to have a substantive discussion with Senator Obama, our ability to raise this amount of money in such a short period of time will show the Obama campaign that we as a group matter.

LA/OC is home to one of the wealthiest Iranian communities in the U.S. and we should care who our next president is and what his policies are going to be and more importantly our political leaders should care about what we think.

I am asking for your help in making this private meeting happen, I would appreciate it if you can help find a way to raise the remaining $59,200, either by increasing your own donations or by asking your concerned friends to also get involved. I would ultimately like to raise enough money so we don't have to have our Iranian friends from outside of this area help us to get to this goal or to at least be able to minimize the burden on them.
If we are able to succeed, we will inform all of the Iranians who have signed up for this event to gather in a different room either before or after the general meeting to privately meet with Senator Obama...

Hamas is a violent and ruthless offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Rejection and destruction of Israel is a core element of its rock hard ideology. In its twenty years of existence it has established a menacing track record in carrying out terrorist atrocities. It also provides cover for groups like Islamic Jihad to carry out their own attacks, especially at times when Hamas agrees to a ceasefire.

It was a Hamas crew that pulled off the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit in June 2006 (still being held) which precipitated another round of fighting between Israel and Palestinians that summer. Unsurprisingly, Hamas receives hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the Iranian government - some of which is used to fund a programme of ‘hate education’ among Palestinian children...

...Previous back-channel communications with Hamas have actually achieved very little. Ceasefires, like the one brokered recently by Egypt, have never amounted to anything more than a breather in the cycle of violence and bloodshed. The space gained is for re-arming, re-training and fundraising, not to engage in a process that might just deliver peaceful statehood for the Palestinians. If this one delivers more then it will not have been as a result of a softening of the Quartet principles...

Editorial cartoonists in the Arab world are using direct or borderline anti-Semitism in their portrayal of the presumptive U.S. presidential candidates as lackeys of the Jews and Israel. The American elections have provided an excuse for the Arab media to promulgate perverse, bigoted and age-old conspiracy theories that portray Israelis and Jews as controlling the candidates, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued today.

The U.S. Presidential Candidates: Cartoons in the Arab Media cites numerous examples appearing in newspapers across the Middle East. The cartoons ignore the issues of the campaign and instead engage in hate-filled characterizations of Jews and overt racist stereotypes.

"From Gaza to Ramallah, from Bahrain to Damascus, from Cairo to Riyadh, the press has unleashed a fusillade of virulent anti-Jewish images accusing Senators Barack Obama and John McCain as handmaidens of the Jews or the Israel lobby," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "Once again, the Arab media does not miss an opportunity to promote classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Jewish control over Washington, the media and the democratic process."...

...The new JTA investigation, which examined a large cross-section of Ford grantees that speak out on the Middle East conflict, finds that several signed a major 2005 boycott and divestment petition against "Apartheid Israel.”

Signatories agreed they were “inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression.”

As Ford was announcing its decision not to support the 2009 anti-racism forum, its Web site touted a 2008-09 grant for $305,000 to the Arab NGO Network for Development, which features a map on its Web site that fails to note the existence of Israel. One of the two Palestinian members on its coordination committee is the pro-boycott Palestinian NGO Network, or PNGO, a key organizer at Durban.

Although PNGO is no longer receiving grants from Ford, which has assets above $13 billion and gives away more than $500 million annually, the network works closely with at least three Ford grantee organizations...

During the run-up to the primaries, Senator Obama did not appear in the Senate to vote on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment calling on the government to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist entity and thus suffer the imposition of sanctions. On the day of the vote on the amendment, however, Obama issued a statement announcing that he would have voted against it. In the statement, the closest he came to addressing the merits of the amendment was his assertion that "he does not think that now is the time for saber-rattling towards Iran." The amendment passed the Senate 76-22 on September 26, 2007, with many Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Richard Durbin, and Chuck Schumer voting in its favor.

Obama subsequently advanced three explanations for his opposition to the amendment. The McCain campaign usefully compiled them here. Obama mercilessly attacked Hillary Clinton for her vote in favor of the amendment...

"Moustafa, you aren't taking me to Abdul's prayer house?"

"You are too impatient Artour. Wait."

Finally we came to a high wall, followed it for a block, and then turned to find ourselves before a high wide gate topped with iron spikes. We banged on it. We heard the shuffling of feet, and a voice, echoing sharply in the deathly stillness, challenged us in Arabic. Moustafa answered; one of the doors was swung open by an Arab, and we found ourselves in a large courtyard. At the farther end was a house with lights shining from the first- and second-story windows.

"Is it all right to speak English?"

"Yes. You can also talk German if you wish."

That put me on guard. The Arab gateman now opened an inner door and motioned us into a large room lighted by two kerosene lamps, which cast a flickering light on a group of men standing near a large table covered with food.

DINNER WITH NAZI HERRENVOLK

MY GAZE swept past a well-dressed Arab in flowing robes, who was apparently the host, and fell upon seven men, six of them in uniform. The seventh was a brown-haired non-German, apparently a Slav. His right sleeve hung empty from the shoulder of his dark-green American officer's coat. All seven stared at us stiffly.

"Guten Abend, Kameraden! Good evening comrades. Heil!" I said, giving the short-arm Nazi salute as I had done innumerable times at Bund meetings.

A jet steam appeared to have struck them: the faces melted instantly and burst into smiles. The six snapped their heels, heiled back in unison, and all began talking at once in German.

"Ach, meine Freunde, meine Kunde der deutschen Sprache ist unglucklicherweise nicht so gross wie meine Liebe fur das deutsche Volk. Ah, my friends. Unfortunately my knowledge of German is not so strong as my love for the German people." Over and again I had used that at Bund meetings.

One of the Nazis translated my effusion into Arabic, much to the delight of our host. Seeing me so well received, Moustafa added his praise of the manly, bold, loyal Armenian who had been living with the Arabs. As usual, my American citizenship was an incidental detail. Our host, beside himself, kept repeating: "Ahlan wa sahlen, mit ahlan wa sahlen! Sharraftuna! Hallet el-baraka! Welcome and welcome again! What an honor! What a pleasure! What a blessing from Allah!"

The only one to speak English among the Germans was introduced to me as Gerhard. He had a long face, dark hair, and sideburns, and had perfected his English at a British prisoner-of-war camp. As we sat down to a lavish dinner, I asked him:

"How did you escape?"

"Through the Mufti's help. Twenty of us crossed the Canal in a boat one night. Cars were waiting for us on the other side."

"Only twenty have escaped?"

"Oh, no., More, hundreds more -- some by hiding under merchandise in trucks. Others are disguising themselves as Arabs and carrying false papers, and others get through by bribing. Customs officials at Ismailia are friendly. Der Gross-mufti makes all the arrangements. In a few days we expect twenty-five more comrades here. They will come with guns."

"English guns?"

"Naturlich. Stolen from camp or sold by English soldiers. The Arabs get much equipment that way."

"Who is our host?"

"He is a relative of the Mufti. Many of the Mufti's cousins and nephews are in Gaza and rule the city. In a few weeks Gaza will become the capital of the Mufti's Palestine government. The Egyptian army will also make its headquarters here."

"How many Germans in the Suez camps?" I asked.

"Many thousands. Perhaps 12,500 or more of the Afrika Korps. There are also many high officers, even some generals. Sitting at this table are a captain and two lieutenants. I was a lieutenant with Rommel," Gerhard said. After a moment he shook his head. "These Arabs make big talk but do not fight like an army. They are not trained,. They do not know discipline. We fought with them against the Jewish villages. We know. That man," he said pointing to the amputee, "is a Yugoslav Moslem. He lost his arm in Haifa. There's another Yugoslav recuperating at the Civilian Hospital here in Gaza. If you want to know about the Arabs as fighter, go see him. He has been with them longer than I have."...

...It was eleven o'clock as Moustafa and I rose to leave. There was much salaaming and hand shaking back and forth. The Nazis...pumped our hands. Our host said, "Sharrifna tani, marra, insh'allah. Come again when Allah wills it...

The Israeli Pride Parade

Israel is one of the leading countries in agriculture, high-tech, medicine and science. Maybe the world needs to be reminded of this.

Anyone who reads newspapers could be forgiven for thinking that Israel is a dangerous place ruled by violence and corruption. The celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary provides an opportunity to take stock of our achievements. The facts speak for themselves.

The Contribution to Humanity Index

There are quite a few measures by which countries are rated: national product, life expectancy, education, etc. There is no index measuring a specific country's contribution to humanity. That kind of index is long overdue. Whoever gets confused by facts is in for some surprises. Here is a partial list:

Agriculture: Israel leads the world in developing strains resistant to natural hazards and special crops to withstand harsh weather conditions. Israel invented the drip irrigation system, which saves tremendous amounts of water. Milk yield in Israel is the highest in the world, even double the European average. In Israel, a palm tree produces an average of 182 kg of fruit, compared to 17 kg in the rest of the Middle East.

Since the establishment of the state, the area of agricultural land has increased threefold, but output has increased by a factor of 16. Ashkelon boasts the world's largest desalination facility - unless Hamas's rockets manage to hit it, so that they can complain about a water crisis in the Gaza Strip.

High-tech: A significant part of the leading high-tech developments in the world are Israeli inventions. The first disk-on-key was an Israeli innovation. The ICQ instant messaging program, which has become an integral part of every computer the world over, was developed in Israel. The best security software in the world comes from Israel.

Most of the Windows XP operating system that is used in almost every computer worldwide was developed in Israel. VOIP technology (Voice over Internet Protocol, the basis for programs like Skype), making international telephone calls simple, inexpensive and readily available, was developed in Israel. It is no coincidence that every other day we hear about yet another Israeli company being acquired by a conglomerate.

Israel is in second place in the world, after Japan and ahead of the United States, in the number of patents per capita. If you check the effectiveness of the inventions, we actually take the lead. Out of the one hundred most important start-ups selected in Europe last year, ten were Israeli.

Science: Israel is in third place in the world in scientific publications per capita. And, when considering the importance of the publications as opposed to relative quantity, Israel is in 14th place in the world. This includes realms that benefit all of humanity - research in medicine, physics, mathematics and others.

Israel reached fifth place in the number of recipients of special grants for young researchers from the ERC (European Research Council). But, relative to its size, it actually takes first place in the number of winning researchers.

Medicine: Teva is the largest company in the world for generic medicines. There are probably few homes worldwide without some "Made in Israel" medication. Teva and other companies also develop new drugs. Teva developed a drug to treat Parkinson's disease. Israel participated in developing a treatment to reduce relapses of multiple sclerosis.

Just two years ago, Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, purchased an Israel company’s product that can prevent blindness. Israel leads in the field integrating nanorobotics and medicine.

And this is only a partial list.

Human potential

Not everything is wonderful in Israel. Many people have been left behind. The gaps in Israeli society are among the largest in democratic countries. Too few have control over too much of the capital. Therefore, developing and expanding human potential has to be the national mission of the next decade. The per capita product in resource-scarce Israel is 40% greater than in rich Saudi Arabia. The reason is simple: human resources produce much more than oil resources. And, despite its accomplishments, Israel is still far from fully utilizing its potential.

The Lie Industry

Here we arrive at the biggest paradox of all: even though Israel could be number one in the world in contributing to humanity, were there such an index, it also occupies first place in the hostility index. Israel is perceived, according to many polls (the last of which was a worldwide BBC survey) as the country most dangerous to world peace.

Leading newspapers throughout the world - The New York Times; The Washington Post; Le Monde; and The Guardian - when mentioning Israel's 60th anniversary, chose to completely disregard Israel’s contribution to human development and to emphasize instead "ethnic cleansing and the Palestinian Nakba." Here as well, they do not let the facts confuse them (see And the World is Lying - the Plight of the Refugees).

The paradox between Israel's contribution to the world and its image indicates only one thing: the lie industry is winning out over the facts. In fact, the Israel-Arab conflict has wrought the lowest number of victims in the annals of all conflicts. That does not keep the lie industry from spreading the libel that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians - even though there is no genocide and never was (see And the World is Silent).

Criticizing Israel is permissible. Not all its actions are praiseworthy. Yet every intellectual and liberal who is still influenced by facts and not by fashion has to admit that the anti-Zionist vogue will go down in history as one of humankind’s lowest trends, matched only by phenomena such as racism and antisemitism. So, it is time to introduce the real Israel - an Israel that can proudly observe its 60th year, due mainly to its enormous contribution to humanity.

Israel does not need a military parade. It needs a parade of its achievements. We could call it a Pride Parade.

Like most of what Israel Shamir writes about Israel, this article reflects a perspective that has far too little sympathy for the fate of those killed and wounded when the Palestinian named Hosam charged his huge tractor into a bus in the center of Jerusalem. We publish it here nevertheless because of our commitment to provide our readers with perspectives that they are unlikely to hear in the mainstream media and which present ideas with which we must grapple. In this case, the attempt to humanize the Palestinian is part of our discourse--a Tikkun commitment to see the spirit of God in every human being, even those who do hurtful or muderous acts. We only wish Shamir could do the same thing for Israelis as he does so well here for Palestinians. And his hatred of Judaism itself might have been grounds to simply dismiss the article, except that it represents a growing sentiment among many Israeli secularists.

...A few days ago, a young Jerusalemite got aboard his Caterpillar tractor, ran amok on the main street, hitting buses and cars and was finally shot dead by a vigilante...

An e-mail sent by Frankfort Township assessor Paul Ruff to many in the Frankfort/Mokena area is filled with anti-Muslim sentiments.

The e-mail, circulated in June, said America should follow the lead of Australia's former prime minister John Howard, who said Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law should get out of Australia.

"Once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about our flag, our pledge, our Christian beliefs or our way of life, I highly encourage you to take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, the right to leave," the e-mail said, supposedly quoting Howard.

The e-mail actually was based on a column by Georgia state lawmaker Barry Loudermilk.

"Maybe if we circulate this amongst ourselves, American citizens will find the back bone to start speaking and voicing the same truths," the e-mail continued. "If you agree, please send this on."

Numerous calls to Ruff to discuss the e-mail were not returned...

Following are excerpts from a birthday party organized by Al-Jazeera TV for released Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar. Al-Jazeera TV aired this segment on July 19, 2008.

Interviewer: Brother Samir, we would like to celebrate your birthday with you. You deserve even more than this. I think that 11,000 prisoners - if they can see this program now - are celebrating your birthday with you. Happy birthday, brother Samir.

Samir Kuntar: Thank you.

Interviewer: Go ahead... There is a picture here... If the camera can show this... Let's cut it... Does the camera show this clearly or not? We have a picture here... This is the sword of the Arabs, Samir. Don't cut the picture, cut on the side.

Samir Kuntar: Here's Abu Qassam [Marwan Barghouti].

Interviewer: Marwan is here.

Samir Kuntar: Abu Qassam is here with Ahmad Sa'dat. That's our prison warden...

Interviewer: This one?

Samir Kuntar: Yes.

Interviewer: What is the warden's name?

Samir Kuntar: His name is... Never mind.

Interviewer: This is when you were released. Here you are with Wafiq Safa.

Samir Kuntar: Yes, this is Wafiq Safa. This is the most beautiful picture - with Hassan Nasrallah. This is the most beautiful picture. There cannot be anything more beautiful. Me and the secretary-general - the most beautiful picture of me ever taken.

For the second time this year, Israel has decided to act against Al-Jazeera, after the influential TV station held a party for released Lebanese child-killer Samir Kuntar, The Jerusalem Post has learned...

...The Government Press Office said it would impose sanctions on Al-Jazeera and demand an explanation from the station.

Al-Jazeera's bureau chief in Beirut, Ghassan bin Jeddo, has long been known for his close ties to Hizbullah...

...Daniel Seaman, director of the GPO, expressed outrage over the event.

On Tuesday, Seaman phoned Walid Omari, the Al-Jazeera bureau chief in Israel, and summoned him to an urgent meeting to inform him of the GPO's decision to suspend ties with the station.

Omari, who is currently abroad, is scheduled to report to the GPO on his return, a source at Al-Jazeera said, adding that the station had still not been informed of the new measures against it.

Seaman said he also planned to write to the Foreign Press Association in Israel to explain his decision.

"We will suspend all handling of Al-Jazeera requests," Seaman told the Post. "For now, we won't provide them with any of our services, which include issuing press credentials and assistance with bureaucracy and applications for visas."...

...Earlier this year, Israel decided to boycott Al-Jazeera after accusing the station of supporting Hamas.

The boycott, initiated by the Foreign Ministry, included a ban on interviews by government officials and refusal to issue visas for the station's employees.

The move had come after Al-Jazeera correspondents allegedly staged a candlelight protest following a government decision to reduce electric and fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip in response to continued rocket attacks on Israeli towns.

The ban was lifted after Al-Jazeera editors in Doha agreed to discuss its coverage of the Israeli-Arab conflict with Israeli government officials.

Sammy and his lover couldn't seem to have enough of each other. They were promenading arm in arm on the beach, or with arms around each other's waists, giggling and carrying on like teen-age sweethearts. In this they were by no means alone. The beach was filled with amorous though less demonstrative men, both young and old, the young often with the old, sitting close together, or back to back, or stretched out full length on the sand.

"Take my picture," the English-speaking Arab asked. "Make me look like a soldier." He whipped out his pistol and, aiming it toward Tel Aviv, assumed a fierce look.

"Hold that pose," I said. "You look like Allah's messenger."

This gave me an opening for photographing everyone on the beach -- mementos of an all-male beach party. After I had taken a dozen photographs, one of the groups introduced himself to me as a member of the Gaza City Council. We chatted for a few moments and I asked:

"How does the war look?"

"See that water?" He pointed with his narghileh. "One month from now it will be black as far as the horizon with the nude bodies of floating Jews."

"Insh'allah, Insh'allah."

Just then Moustafa emerged from a clump of bushes to the left -- from a dark-shaded nook into which I had noticed Sammy and Ismail disappear. The two did not reappear until almost an hour later, arm in arm. The mystery deepened when two more members of the party vanished in the same direction -- and didn't return. As the afternoon wore on, one by one the trucks and cars, the lovers old and young, left the beach. "Let's go look for them," Moustafa said. We all rose. I deliberately fell in with the effeminate Arab whose photograph I'd taken.

"Our Bible says that Samson used to come to Gaza for his pleasure. Are the two friends for whom we are looking at a place where one may find public women for one's pleasure?" I inquired teasingly.

The Arab wheeled around, shocked, momentarily speechless. "We are very strict in Gaza," he gasped. "If we found any such places we would burn them. If we found any such women we would hang them." Quite upset, he left my company and did not talk to me again.

We walked to the clump of bushes, which thickened as we went through them, and emerged into a narrow, dusty, street. Ahead was an angular, three-storied, gray stone house, set off by itself, which appeared to be a hotel. Moustafa was on the verge of entering when the two men we were seeking stepped out. One of them was Abdul, a Green Shirt member. His companion, also a youth in his early twenties, was from Gaza.

"We were praying," Abdul explained, smiling.

For the second time in three weeks, an Arab commandeered a bulldozer to commit a terrorist attack in Jerusalem. He wounded several people before being shot and killed.

The terrorist began his attempt to murder Jews on King David St. near the Yemin Moshe neighborhood. He took a tractor from a construction site, and began plowing into vehicles along the street, hitting at least three cars - one of which he completely overturned - and a bus. One driver was able to escape from his car even though the tractor plowed it into a bus stop. When the terrorist reached the intersection of Keren HaYesod St., a citizen and Border Guard policeman shot and killed him. The entire incident was over very quickly, eyewitnesses said.

Less than three weeks ago, an Arab from eastern Jerusalem killed three people in a similar attack before he was himself killed by a heroic yeshiva student/soldier. The tractor used in today's attack was smaller than the one used in the previous one.

Of the 23 injured, one is reported in moderate condition - apparently with an amputated leg - and the others have light injuries or are suffering from trauma. Among them are a woman and her nine-month-old baby son...

...A BBC correspondent says it is thought the 2 July attacker was simply a disturbed man without political motivation - but Israelis will worry Tuesday's incident was a copycat attack and that this could now be a new tactic.

Police identified the perpetrator as 22-year-old East Jerusalem resident Ghassan Abu Tir. It is not known if he was connected to any militant group...

Palestinian sources in Jerusalem reported that the terrorist who carried Tuesday’s bulldozer attack on Jerusalem’s center is 22-year-old Ghasam Abu-Tir from the Arab neighborhood Umm-Tuba in east Jerusalem.

Abu-Tir is a relative of Hamas lawmaker Muhammad Abu Tir, who is held in Israeli prison.

...The Court declines to give the Defendants yet another opportunity merely to change their intentionally-selected litigation strategy seven years after suit was filed because new counsel have been retained. The PA and PLO chose to litigate only whether the PA should be recognized as a sovereign entity among the nations of the world. The Court vacated an early default to allow them the opportunity to do so, as the sole defense they offered...After a ruling against them, the Court granted their motion for reconsideration and allowed the issues to be re-briefed...Again, the Court ruled against the Defendants...New counsel arrived on the scene in 2007 and again argued the jurisdictional issues. Again, the Court ruled against the Defendants and concluded that it had jurisdiction...Only after these rulings have Defendants now asserted an intention to defend on the merits.

Defendants urge the Court to vacate the second default because the PA is a foreign
entity and a failure to allow them to proceed will injure the foreign relations of the United States. To the contrary, the interests of the United States are determined by its State Department, not foreign entities, and the State Department has filed no Statement of Interest here. The fact that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice might have encouraged the Palestinian Authority "to respond to U.S. legal proceedings in good faith and a timely manner," in a letter dated January 12, 2007...Ex. B, speaks nothing to these Defendants’ much earlier deliberate choices, leading to the second default in November 2005.

...The Defendants actively participated in this litigation, represented by able counsel, for years...

...The Court recognizes that Judge Marrero of the Southern District of New York has come to a different conclusion on a similar, although even more advanced, record. See Knox v. Palestinian Liberation Org., 248 F.R.D. 420 (S.D.N.Y. 2008). This Court declines to follow suit...

Moustafa, Faris, and the others returned to Deir Aboutor late in the afternoon, grimy but exalted. I listened to their tales of triumph. One would think these two alone had captured Castel. Mohammed, one of the fighters, had a wrist watch and field glasses he did not have the day before.

"Where did you get them?"

"From the Jews."

"You told me once that Arabs buried dead Jews with their rings and watches."

Everybody laughed...Toward evening they were laughing no longer, but on the contrary were as glum as if their mothers had died. The Castel victory had been costly. Abdul Kader el Husseini, hero of the counterattack, and the only man with a personal following in the Jerusalem area, had been killed in the action. There was no one else to take his place. The funeral would be held tomorrow morning...

...I sensed the tenseness as Moustafa and a half dozen of us walked through the Old City to the Moslem quarter, where the dead chief's bier rested in his home. The crowd was heavily armed, and so thick that there was hardly elbow room. Not a single woman was visible.

We followed the mourners, walking in silence. When the crowd turned a corner to Husseini's house, I climbed aboard an armored car to take pictures. At that moment a volley of rifle shots suddenly crackled into the air. I head shouts: "Yahood! Yahood!" Mourning gave way to panic, as practically every Arab in the teeming mob of thousands simultaneously let go with pistol or rifle. The bullets hit live electric wires, which broke and swung on the road as Arabs tried to scramble out of their way. My position atop the car was, to say the least, highly untenable. I remember now that a bullet whistled past just as I jumped, crawling on all fours toward a space between two cars. Everyone was scrambling for safety. Within sixty seconds, the streets were completely cleared. Arabs were flat against anything that was handy: earth, streets, doors, walls. Some were still jumping over fences. It was all very undignified for a people who claimed that if they chose to spit, they could drown the Jews. Crouching between two cars, I managed to take a few pictures. Under each car were three Arabs, with others trying to crawl under. Of all the bizarre scenes I saw in the Arab world, perhaps this one of utter panic, hysteria, and fear was the most comic -- and significant.

What we had all thought was a Haganah attack turned out to be a rifle salute in honor of the dead commander. When they began shouting this intelligence, I saw Moustafa crawling from under the armored car dusting himself with an air of embarrassment. I showed him my scraped shinbone...

...Husseini's coffin, covered with a red, black, and green flag, was carried to the square below the Dome of the Rock, where Arab chiefs spoke their eulogies. All this took place within sight of the Wailing Wall...

...I was now before the entrance to the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam's holiest shrines. Standing near by was a short, plump, round-faced man with a magnificent spade-shaped white beard and an enormous white turban, who was the custodian, Sheikh Ismail el Ansary...

...Historically the rock was actually a jagged slice of Mount Moriah, the hill on which Abraham offered to sacrifice Isaac. The Jews prayed on it long before the Moslem dome covered it.

Solomon built his magnificent Temple here and housed in it the Jewish holy of holies, the Ark of the Covenant. The entire area of the mosque, and the spacious stone courtyard surrounding it, were built on the site of the ancient Israel courts, where Christ preached and drove away the money-changers. Hardly a square inch here was without some direct connection to ancient Hebraic or Christian history.

None of these Hebraic-Christian origins, however, could be mentioned to Sheikh Ansary...

...After I had gained his confidence, El Ansary proved unusually outspoken. "Look here" -- these were the only English words he knew -- "whenever I pray, I pray to Allah to destroy the Jews. I pray to Allah to punish President Truman because he has been on the Zionist side. I used to pray against President Roosevelt, a very bad man. Now I pray to Allah that he destroy Mrs. Roosevelt because she is behaving very badly toward the Arabs."

"You sound like a Moslem Republican," I said.

"Look here, I pray against them for different reasons. Against Balfour and his family I pray that Allah confine them all to hell. The English are like sarratan [cancer]. May Balfour and Roosevelt take first place in hell. Allah, Allah, may this be done."

Propriety demanded that I say: "Insh'allah."

Despite his sixty-eight years, the man was as vigorous as an ox. "Look here, I will fight for Palestine to the last minute of my life," he said, with eyes blazing. "No Moslem is afraid of death. If he dies for Palestine that is a satisfying way to die. His parents are happy he fell in the Jehad. If we cannot win any other way, all the sheikhs in all the mosques in all the Arab countries over all the world will climb the minarets, and call on every Moslem to join the Jehad against the Jew in Palestine."

I turned the conversation to the Mufti.

"Look here," said El Ansary, "he is of the same blood as Mohammed. He is respected for his many good deeds. I pray for the Mufti in all my prayers to Allah."

I thanked Sheikh el Ansary for his courtesy and according to decorum, wished him long life and the blessings of Allah on him, his family, and his heirs. Bowing, I salaamed by placing my fingertips first to my heart, then to my lips, my forehead. He did the same in token of his respect toward me. "I shall remember you in my prayers to Allah," he said.

Stepping to the plate in 2008

Imam Mahdi Bray*

*a long time civil and human rights activist. Executive Director of the Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation (MAS Freedom), and former President of the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations (CCMO).

At: The Islamic Society of Boston
204 Prospect St
Cambridge, MA

Date: Friday, July 25th
Time: 8:30pm

A lecture and a fundraiser to benefit MAS Freedom

THESE are the seven graphs that should make the Rudd Government feel sick.

These are the seven graphs that should make you ask: What? Has global warming now stopped?

Look for yourself. They show that the world hasn’t warmed for a decade, and has even cooled for several years.

Sea ice now isn’t melting, but spreading. The seas have not just stopped rising, but started to fall.

Nor is the weather getting wilder. Cyclones, as well as tornadoes and hurricanes, aren’t increasing and the rain in Australia hasn’t stopped falling.

What’s more, the slight warming we saw over the century until 1998 still makes the world no hotter today than it was 1000 years ago.

In fact, it’s even a bit cooler. So, dude, where’s my global warming?...

JAWS CLENCHED, blood pressures spiked, and radio talk-show hosts spontaneously combusted when the Globe reported last week that the $15 billion Big Dig - formerly known as the $12.2 billion Big Dig, and more formerly as the $7.7 billion Big Dig, and even, once upon a time, as the $2.5 billion Big Dig - will in fact cost a staggering $22 billion and not be paid off until 2038.

The Page 1 story was filled with infuriating details, such as the revelation that 80 percent of Massachusetts Highway Department employees are being paid with borrowed money. Bay State politicians originally sold voters on the Big Dig in part by assuring them that Washington would pick up 90 percent of the cost...

It will never end - not until the suckers get riled up enough to fight back. Not until they start throwing incumbents out of office, instead of blindly reelecting them. Not until they stop letting themselves be treated as ATMs for politicians and doormats for public-employee unions. Not until they force their public "servants" to defer to them, instead of the other way around.

...we waited for Sheik Salaam, a Bedouin tribal chief. He was a short, wizened man with a face the color of burnt copper. He had tiny, cunning eyes and a tight and narrow mouth from which the words came sparingly. He was draped in a flowing black burnous, gold-braided at the neck. Around his waist was a cartridge belt, revolver, and a curved dagger, standard Bedouin equipment. He took Moustafa inside with him.

I learned the sheikh's record. Already wealthy through border traffic, he had bought land cheaply from Bedouins, and later sold it at extravagant prices to Jews, amassing even greater wealth. The vengeful Bedouins demanded an accounting. The sheikh promptly turned against the Jews, and emerged a top Arab patriot.

Moustafa came away empty-handed from the sheikh. "He is rich but he does not give baksheesh. He is not patriotic," Moustafa complained bitterly. "His enemies will kill him very soon."

...Moustafa and I were ushered into the presence of Captain Fadhil Rashid Bey, Arab military commander of Jerusalem. He was soft-spoken in contrast to the braggarts I had met so far. An Iraqi, he had been trained by Germans and, as he told me, had participated in the pro-Nazi revolt of 1941 in Iraq, which for two desperate months threatened to turn the entire Middle East into a Nazi camp. Moustafa gave me a flattering introduction as a correspondent and a German sympathizer, so that Rashid Bey and I got along famously from the outset. I took his photograph and he was pleased. I asked him deferentially how well he knew the Mufti.

"I am commander of Jerusalem because of the Mufti. I knew him in Iraq."

RUFFIANS ALL

Rashid Bey's job was not enviable. He had no regular army, but a vast rabble of largely unemployed, impoverished, loot-hungry Arab hooligans, whom even the respectable Moslems feared and avoided. There was no dearth of experienced fighters. Many were veterans of the Mufti's 1929 and 1936-9 revolts. Some had spent the war years in Germany, had been thoroughly indoctrinated, and were now excellent propagandists. Others had served in the Axis-sponsored Moslem Legions organized under the Mufti's guidance. There was also the Mufti's Youth Corps -- Futuwas -- reorganized by Jamal Bey el Husseini, the Mufti's cousin and chairman of the Arab Higher Committee. There were, too, a strong representation of Ikhwan el Muslimin thugs, select ruffians from Hebron, and thousands of other shiftless semiliterate marauders. They were undisciplined and outlaw fighters all, inept at teamwork, but dangerous when fighting individually or in small bands as guerrillas, with loot -- in any form -- as the primary objective.

These were the Arab gangs that, with the aid of technically skilled deserters from the British army, in recent months had blown up the Palestine Post and the Jewish Agency Building, bombed Ben Yehuda street, the principal Jewish business thoroughfare, and laid mines. As I strolled about I could see that they were in an extremely cocky and festive mood. They had made this last week in March a black week for the Jews. With foolhardy courage, the Haganah had sent a large convoy to supply Kfar Etzion -- a chain of four kibbutzim -- perched on a strategic hilltop commanding the road to Jerusalem from the South. The convoy had successfully charged through a fifteen mile gauntlet of Arab villages and numerous roadblocks, mines, and snipers' posts.

On its way back, however, the story was different. The Jews met Arabs under Abdul Kader el Husseini, a relative of the Mufti, who had served him the Iraq-Nazi revolt and was now commander of Arab forces in the Jerusalem area. At Nebi Daniel (site of a small Arab village named for the prophet Daniel) huge roadblocks halted the returning convoy. A fierce battle began. Cornered, the Haganah commander regrouped his vehicles on three sides of a square, with a ruined wall forming the fourth side. The battle raged for thirty-six hours between some two hundred Jews and more than three thousand Arabs who had surrounded them and cut them off from all help.

British forces were still responsible for "law and order." They were in Palestine to prevent precisely such battles as this. But when the British finally intervened, it was to strike a bargain with the Arabs. In return for the safety of the surviving Jews, the Arabs were to take all the Haganah arms and equipment. To prolong a hopeless struggle against odds of fifteen to one would have meant the eventual destruction of the Jewish fighting force as well as the loss of vehicles. The Haganah commander capitulated. The English escorted his men to Jerusalem. To the Jews it meant the loss of almost their entire fleet of armored trucks in Jerusalem. They also lost twelve men. The Arab toll in this "Battle of the Roads" was 135 dead.

The next day on sale everywhere in the Holy City were gruesome photographs of the battle: the burnt and mutilated bodies of Haganah men, which for some perverse Arab reason, had been stripped of clothing and photographed in the nude. These naked shots hit "Holy" City markets afresh after every battle, and sold rapidly. Arabs carried them in their wallets and displayed them frequently, getting the same weird, abnormal "kick" that our perverts derive from nude photographs of women.

We headed toward a shanty town on the outskirts of Rafa, headquarters at the gates of the Negev, the great southern desert of Palestine, Rafa itself had boomed in the last few months, and served as an outpost for volunteer fighters, gun-runners, and Arab refugees already fleeing from Palestine. As early as the end of March 1948, Cairo was crowded with wealthy Palestinian refugees, both Moslem and Christian, who had left their homes voluntarily, even though widespread fighting had not yet broken out. By ten o'clock Moustafa and Zaki had located a gun-running truck leaving for Beersheba.

Yallah! We climbed into the truck and rode until we reached the Palestine border. There we were halted by British soldiers. Two tanks stood near by. Beyond was a large British camp. The Green Shirts had now hidden their own guns and insignia, and posed as native Palestinians. The English went through the formality of asking: "Any guns on the truck?" We said: "No," laughing. The soldiers smiled back, took down our license number and, lifting the wooden barrier, let us through. We were in Palestine!

Not far from Beersheba I saw my first Jewish communal settlement, Kibbutz Beit Eshel. With its well-tended orchards and green trees, Beit Eshel rose like an oasis from the bleak, dust-packed Negev desert around it. A kibbutz was always conspicuous by its water tower, silo and modern farm buildings, and contrasted sharply with the squalor of Arab villages.

Moustafa pointed at Beit Eshel with awe. "We have attacked it, but the Jews are well armed. They have built a Maginot Line around their place and fight you from under the ground. They are cowards." Later, I was to see astonishing examples of Jewish ingenuity -- and understand exactly what Moustafa meant. "After May 15 Beit Eshel will be ours. The Egyptian army will make it one with the desert."

"Insh'alla! Insh'alla! With God's help," I said.

Surrounded by Arabs and desert, a lone sentry in the wilderness, I could not imagine how Beit Eshel could ever hold out against massed troops and heavy artillery¹ (¹ But it did. On one occasion the settlement's armory consisted of twelve rifles and two machine-guns. The Egyptian army attacked in battalion strength with heavy artillery, and was repeatedly beaten back.) Inquiring discreetly, I learned that the kibbutz had already taken a toll of attacking Arabs. It was supplied by a daring airlift and sometimes by food and ammunition convoys that boldly ran the gauntlet of Arab soldiers all the way from coastal Tel Aviv, seventy miles across the desert.

Emadeddin Z. Muntasser, former president of Care International, gets a one year jail sentence, which apparently keeps open the option to detain and possibly deport Muntasser after he serves his sentence. This is a welcome outcome after Saylor overturned the jury's guilty verdict last month and dropped a number of charges against other Care International officers. Not too shabby an outcome, all in all.

"The founder of a Muslim charity was sentenced yesterday in U.S. District Court to a year in prison and fined $10,000 for lying to an FBI agent when he denied traveling to Afghanistan in 1994-1995."

"In sentencing Emadeddin Z. Muntasser, former president of Care International Inc., a defunct Boston charity, Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV doubled the maximum amount of prison time and the fine called for under the federal advisory sentencing guidelines. Mr. Muntasser, 43, is a former Worcester resident and Worcester Polytechnic Institute graduate living in Braintree. He must report for his prison sentence within four weeks."...

The judge also commented that while Muntasser showed "many charitable and other worthy attributes," Saylor had difficulty reconciling that with what he read in Care International's newsletter Al Hussam, which supported violence and called for "rivers of blood to flow." Welcome to the fight against jihadism and extremism, Judge Saylor. That's what it looks like, there's the public side and there's the underside. The public side masks the underside, where the real action is. The public side is so good, that people who raise questions about the underside get branded as Islamophobes or racists. It's an effective cover.

...beyond all tactical and political considerations, there is something morally repulsive in the hero's welcome given the most famous - or notorious - of the Lebanese prisoners released by Israel. Samir Kuntar had been sentenced to 542 years in prison for killing four people during a raid in 1979. Kuntar executed a father, Danny Haran, in front of his 4-year-old daughter. Then he killed the little girl by smashing her head against a rock with a rifle butt.

This is the creature Nasrallah hailed as a resistance hero, the figure Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called a "huge hero who sacrificed 30 years of his life for the Palestinian issue," the celebrity that Lebanon's president and prime minister saluted as a liberated freedom fighter.

All wars are inhumane. But not all warriors lose their humanity.

Gaza - Ma'an - The best course of action to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners is the kidnapping of more Israeli soldiers, Abu Yousef, the military spokesman for An-Nasser Brigades, the Military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, said in a statement on Thursday.

He said that the prisoner swap between Israel and Hizbullah has shown that kidnap can be a useful bargaining tool in brokering deals to release prisoners and that it is possible to defeat the Israeli army. This goes some way to confirming several analysts predictions that the deal, executed on Wednesday, would embolden both Palestinian and Lebanese resistance fighters.

He added that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped in 2006 by militants from the Gaza Strip, should not be released until it was possible to arrange a deal that satisfies the needs of the Palestinian people.

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"...

It was about this time that I found plastered on the walls of Cairo buildings huge, luridly colored posters, violently anti-Jewish. One of them, showing a bloodstained dagger with the Star of David on its handle, and blood dripping from it, exhorted: "Arm Arabism!" Other posters read: "Don't talk to the Jews...Don't do business with them...Kill their business and they die...Consider them as our deepest enemies."

A large colored placard, printed in English. Arabic, Spanish, French and Italian, showed a sketch that purported to be the desecration of a holy relic in Jerusalem by the Jews, and read:

ZIONISTS' NEW YEAR PRESENT TO CHRISTENDOM

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in a recent letter to the Times, said he would not entrust the Holy Land to the Zionists because he was sure they would lose no time in desecrating every relic of the Christ or the Prophet Muhammad to be found in the Holy Places.

The photo of the statue of the Virgin Mary in Ratisbonne Church, Jerusalem, battered beyond recognition and thrown on the floor of the church, shows that the Archbishop's apprehensions were well-founded. His prophecy has come true.

I was told that this poster was put up by the Arab League.

Certain committees, posing as "patriotic," either mortgaged or bought land from Palestinian Arabs, ostensibly to keep it from Jewish settlers. Arabs who refused to sell at low prices were branded tools of the Jews, and often murdered. Actually, the purpose of these committees was to extend the feudal powers of the landowner. I was told: "The Arab who sold his land to the Jews against our advice was killed at once. Anyone could kill him. No one would know who. The Arab's family and the families of other Arabs would know why he had been killed."

Cairo's mood, the hour before our departure, was one of excitement or terror -- depending on your religion. Jews were imprisoned because they were Zionists, and beaten on streets because they were Jews. They huddled in their homes, afraid to leave, afraid to worship on the Sabbath because the Ikhwan had spread rumors that synagogues were used for "plotting." Newspapers daily whipped up new excitement with news from Palestine: FIERCE BATTLE IN HOLY CITY'S NO-MAN'S LAND...HAIFA EXPRESS BLOWN UP AGAIN...MARTIAL LAW PROCLAIMED...There were celebrations as news of the dynamiting of the Jewish Agency building in Jerusalem, by a car carrying TNT and "flying an American flag," was announced, and later when Arabs ambushed a large convoy near Bethlehem, seized scores of vehicles, and killed many Jews. Under Arab League sponsorship, Fawzy Bey el Kawoukjy (who had spent the war years in Germany, marrying there) had begun to attack with his Yarmuk Army of Liberation.

Arabs everywhere were confident of victory. They gloated over their arms, their money, their numbers. "If we Moslems choose to spit on the Jews we could drown them," one said contemptuously. From another: "We are like a ball of snow. We have just begun to roll. We will crush the microbe of Zionism forever."

The Arab Goliath of eight States and forty-five million people would win over a tiny, sausage-shaped, "militarily indefensible" area, encircled by Arabs, and containing 650,000 poorly armed Jews and a fifth column of at least as many Arabs. There was no doubt that the Arabs would win easily. They said so.

...Let there be no mistake. METI is a very different thing than passively sifting for signals from the outer space. Carl Sagan, one of the greatest SETI supporters and a deep believer in the notion of altruistic alien civilizations, called such a move deeply unwise and immature. (Even Frank Drake, who famously sent the "Arecibo Message" toward the Andromeda Galaxy in 1974, considered "Active SETI" to be, at best, a stunt and generally a waste of time.)

Sagan -- along with early SETI pioneer Philip Morrison -- recommended that the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.

Alas. To date, groups that plan to engage in METI have done the opposite, keeping a low profile and avoiding discussion with experts in near-related fields like exobiology, bioastronomy, or evolutionary biology... or even historians who are knowledgeable about human "first-contact". Especially biologists and historians. (For reasons that will become clear.)

(In The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond offers an essay on the risks of attempting to contact ETIs, based on the history of what happened on Earth whenever more advanced civilizations encountered less advanced ones... or indeed, when the same thing happens during contact between species that evolved in differing ecosystems. The results are often not good: in inter-human relations slavery, colonialism, etc. Among contacting species: extinction.)...In Russia, the pro-METI consensus is apparently founded upon a quaint doctrine from the 1930s maintaining that all advanced civilizations must naturally and automatically be both altruistic and socialist. This Soviet Era dogma — now stripped of socialist or Lysenkoist imagery — still insists that technologically adept aliens can only be motivated by Universal Altruism (UA). The Russian METI group, among the most eager to broadcast into space, dismisses any other concept as childishly apprehensive "science fiction".

(Ironically Dr. Alexander Zaitsev has modified this doctrine to suggest that advanced aliens are not only altruistic but also cowardly — thus explaining their failure (so far) to create beacons or beam messages at Earth. He reasons that the youngest and most ignorant technological race (humanity) is behooved to overcome this universal cowardice by boldly announcing ourselves.)

(This is not the place to analyze the logical faults of this assumption. I have a whack at it in a different article: Let me just offer one thought here. If aliens are so advanced and altruistic... and yet are choosing to remain silent... should we not consider following their example and doing likewise? At least for a little while? Is it possible that they are silent because they know something we don't know?)...

"Earth civilization is already glaringly visible in radio, so it's too late to stay silent."

This widely-held supposition was, in fact, decisively disproved years ago, in a paper written by Dr. Shostak himself! In fact, even military radars and television signals appear to dissipate below interstellar noise levels within just a few light years. Certainly they are far less visible — by many orders of magnitude — than a directed beam from any of Earth's large, or even intermediate, radio telescopes.

Moreover, this reasoning is illogical, since METI's whole purpose is to draw attention to Earth by dramatically increasing our visibility over whatever baseline value it currently has. If it's already "too late", then what are they aiming to achieve?

Following are excerpts from a Hamas children's show, titled "The Pioneers of Tomorrow," which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on July 11, 2008.

Assud the bunny: In the name of Allah, I hope my dad doesn't see me. God, make him go on sleeping, while I take one or two bills. There's his stash of money... Man, there is so much money here... No, I must put it back. Stealing is forbidden.

Satan: No, no... What are you doing, Assud? No, Assud, I promised you that nobody would see you or know about this. Take one or two bills. Don't be afraid, Assud.

Assud: Okay, I'll just take one... Actually, I'll take two.

Satan: No, take three...

...Voice of girl: Assud, you were wrong to follow Satan, who is the source of all problems. In addition, you caused problems between your parents. You have no right to cause such a great problem. Don't you know that stealing leads to Hell. The Prophet Muhammad said: "If my daughter Fatima had stolen, I would have chopped off her hand." If you were in Saudi Arabia now, they would chop off your hand. Allah said in the Koran: "As for a thief, male or female, cut off their hands: A punishment by example, for their crime."...

...Child TV host Saraa: What do you think about what Assud did?

Asmaa: It was wrong, because "as for a thief, male or female, cut of their hands."

Assud: Oh my God! You say that my hand should be chopped off, Asmaa?

Asmaa: Yes.

Assud: You think my hand should be chopped off?

Asmaa: What?

Assud: You want my hand to be chopped off?

Asmaa: Yes...

...Nur: The Prophet Muhammad said: "If my daughter Fatima had stolen, I would have chopped off her hand.

Assud: So if Saraa were to steal, her hand should be chopped off, right?

Nur: No.

Assud: When you were little, didn't you ever steal a shekel or something?

Nur: No, because Allah is watching me.

Saraa: Nur, do you think we should go ahead and chop off Assud's hand now?

Assud: No, no. Saraa, I'm begging you...

Nur: Saraa, he has repented and promised never to do it again, then that's it.

Saraa: Well, if we don't chop off his hand, maybe we should chop off his ear?

Assud: No, please, no, I'm begging you...

...I would like to point out a few uncomfortable facts for Mr. Obama. As he speaks of "success" and even "victory" in Iraq, his own party has already given in to defeat as both the speaker of the House and Senate majority leader pronounced the war "lost" months ago. The overwhelming majority of Democrats see this war as lost and a failure. Obama himself saw the war as "a complete failure" last summer at the exact same time he was calling the surge a "failure" and agitating for an "immediate withdrawal" from Iraq. He made no mention of consulting with our generals, or the Iraqi government, or anyone else:

"Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was," Obama said in excerpts of the speech provided to the Associated Press.

"The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year -- now," the Illinois senator says.

Sounds pretty clear to me...

All that I had learned about Hassan el Banna and the unquestioned loyalty he inspired in his cutthroats only whetted my desire to meet him. It proved more difficult than I expected, because of his deep hatred of "Europeans." Finally one day, accompanied by my friend Gamal, I walked into Ikhwan headquarters for my audience with the Supreme Guide.

He approached us -- a short, squat ratty-faced man with puffed cheeks and fleshy nose. He was dressed in European clothes -- a black pinpoint double-breasted suit -- and wore an extra tall tarboosh, which gave him the illusion of added height. His thin beard, running from ear to ear, crawled up, then down his upper lip like an ugly black hirsute vine. His manner was mousy and furtive. His eyes, beadlike and deepset, were like two dark slits across his face. We sat in the shade under the shield showing the Koran above a pair of crossed swords.

The Moorshid spoke with a pious look on his face, his head bent slightly to the right, hands folded meekly in his lap. I disliked him instantly and thoroughly. He was the most loathsome man I had yet met in Cairo. Gamal sat next to us and faithfully interpreted.

"The Koran should be Egypt's constitution, for there is no law higher than Koranic law," the Moorshid began. "We seek to fulfill the lofty, human message of Islam which has brought happiness and fulfillment to mankind in centuries past., Ours is the highest ideal, the holiest cause and the purest way. Those who criticize us have fed from the tables of Europe. They want to live as Europe has taught them -- to dance, to drink, to revel, to mix the sexes openly and ion public."

I asked his views on establishing the Caliphate, the complete merger of Church and State -- the Moslem equivalent of religious totalitarianism, as in Spain.

"We want an Arabian United States with a Caliphate at its head and every Arab state subscribing wholeheartedly to the laws of the Koran. We must return to the Koran, which preaches the good life, which forbids us to take bribes, to cheat, to kill one's brother. The laws of the Koran are suitable for all men at all times to the end of the world. This is the day and this is the time when the world needs Islam most."

I could not help making a mental note that the word "Christian" has been similarly used and with similar fanaticism among Western exponents of authoritarianism.

"We are not eager to have a parliament of the representatives of the people," the Supreme Guide continued, "or a cabinet of ministers, unless such representatives and ministers are Koranic Moslems. If we do not find them, then we must ourselves serve as the parliament. Allah and the religious councils will limit our authority so that no one has to hear dictatorship. We aim to smash modernism in government and society. In Palestine our first duty as Moslems is to crush Zionism, which is Jewish modernism. It is our patriotic duty. The Koran commands it."

He was silent, and then nodded, to indicate the interview was over. And with this Gamal and I took leave of Ikhwan's Moorshid and Egypt's Rasputin.

"What do you think of our Moorshid?" Gamal asked.

"He is a holy man," I said.

Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday said he wants to rid the world of nuclear weapons and pledged to fight emerging threats posed by biological and cyber-terrorism.

"It's time to send a clear message to the world: America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons," the White House hopeful said.

"As long as nuclear weapons exist, we'll retain a strong deterrent. But we'll make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy."...

...In a fact sheet distributed to reporters, Obama's campaign said he will work to eliminate all nuclear weapons, but will not commit the United States to giving them up while other states retain them...

Going after one of John McCain's signature issues, the war in Iraq, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said invading the country after the September 11, 2001, attacks has allowed other emerging threats to develop.

"Instead of taking aggressive steps to secure the world's most dangerous technology, we have spent almost a trillion dollars to occupy a country in the heart of the Middle East that no longer had any weapons of mass destruction," he said.

"It's time to update our national security strategy to stay one step ahead of the terrorists...

A York County native who traveled to the war-torn Middle East to work with Palestinians will be sentenced in federal court this month for aiding a terrorist organization.

Richard David Hupper, 32, was charged with giving about $20,000 to a group he knew supported Hamas, the Palestinian military and political organization, according to court documents and his defense lawyer.

It is a crime to give money to Hamas, or to groups that support it, because it is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. Hupper pleaded guilty in May.

The Leader Heights, York Township, native likely will be sentenced to about five years, his lawyer said.

Hupper's defense attorney, Neal R. Lewis, a Reading native who works in Florida, said the charges stem from Hupper's donations to a nonprofit agency that, in turn, supports Hamas.

He saw his mission as a humanitarian cause and wanted his donations to support the families of Palestinians who had been detained or killed, Lewis said...

...The charges against Hupper came more than a year after he pleaded guilty to attempting to obtain a passport using false information, a case that is related to his work with the Palestinians, Lewis said.

Hupper had been in Israel working with Palestinians, but the Israeli government kicked him out.

He wanted to go back, so he tried to get a passport using someone else's name, Social Security number and a forged birth certificate, and he was arrested, according to court documents...

...Hupper, who last lived in York County about six years ago, decided to involve himself in the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis while he was in Alabama working as a machinist, Lewis said.

While in Alabama, Hupper was injured at work, and he spent much of his time off watching TV, including international news, Lewis said. Hupper decided he wanted to travel to the Gaza Strip with the goal to help the Palestinian people...

...Hupper traveled to Israel, where he actively worked with a non-governmental agency to aid Palestinians impacted by the Middle East conflict, Lewis said. He was eventually ordered to leave Israel and returned to Florida after a stop in Jordan.

After spending some time in Florida, he decided he wanted to return to his work with Palestinians, and that's when he applied for the passport with false information.

Prosecutors agreed to recommend a light sentence on the passport charges, according to court documents. Hupper, who is in a Miami federal prison, was sentenced to serve a total of 24 months for those charges. His release date is set for November.

With the latest charges, Hupper faces more time in prison -- a maximum of 15 years -- and $250,000 in fines. But because he has admitted to his crime and pleaded guilty, it's likely he will be sentenced to about five years, Lewis said.

• It has become fashionable to look to the lessons of the peace process in Northern Ireland as holding insights for other areas of conflict in the world. However, this has been done in an uncritical way, often more focused on contemporary agendas than on the core realities unique to the region, which do not necessarily translate elsewhere.
• In some instances, the willingness of a state to negotiate might encourage the terrorists to believe that their opponents are ready to concede - even when this is not the case. In June-July 1972, for example, top IRA operatives were flown to London in order to meet senior British politicians, leading the IRA to believe its violent campaign had forced the British to the negotiating table. After the talks failed, on 21 July 1972, the IRA exploded 22 bombs in Belfast in the space of 75 minutes - killing 9 and injuring another 130 on what became known as “Bloody Friday.”
• By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Republic of Ireland had become a force for stability and peace in Northern Ireland and worked in close cooperation with the British government in the search for a settlement. The same cannot be said of Israel’s neighbors. On the contrary, Iran and Syria continue to support Hamas and encourage its violent campaign, offering it arms, funding, training, and sanctuary.
• For the British government, formal negotiations with the IRA could only occur in a context in which republican violence had been brought to an end. With the IRA in a position of declining military and political fortunes, it sought to extricate itself via the peace process. The perception of the republican leadership had become - rightly - that IRA violence had held back the political prospects of Sinn Fein.
• The aims of the IRA posed no existential threat to the British. This is not the case where Israel and Hamas are concerned, however. The objectives of Hamas require the destruction of the State of Israel. Moreover, whereas the political goals of the IRA were confined locally to the future of the island of Ireland, Hamas, by its own admission, is part of a global Islamist movement, known as the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus, diplomatic engagement with Hamas has broader international implications.

...Of all the misconceptions that have appeared in regard to the Northern Ireland conflict, one stands out above all others. The notion of talking to one’s enemies - no matter how intransigent or unreasonable they may seem - has been fetish-ized by many from across the political spectrum. The argument is often made, however, in a way that sees talking as a self-contained and ameliorative activity on its own terms - removed from the many other, rather less palatable, ingredients that make up a violent conflict. What really matters is not the act of talking to terrorists itself, but a whole range of other variables relating to the context in which that act occurs: When does it take place? What are the motives behind it, on both sides? Does it fit into a wider strategy? When does the act of establishing lines of communication become an officially sanctioned process of negotiation?

Most importantly, there is a crucial qualitative difference between talking to terrorists who are on the crest of a wave - in terms of propaganda, confidence and momentum - and talking to terrorists who have been made to realize that their aims are unattainable by violent means. More broadly, it is clear that the whole notion that there exists a model of conflict resolution that can successfully be applied elsewhere in the world is a highly questionable one.

• 82 percent of headlines that introduced articles describing Israeli military operations were written in a direct style in which the words "Israel" or "Israeli Forces" (or a similar phrase) were the subject. In the majority of these cases, no details were given as to whether the casualties were combatants or civilians. An example of this type of headline ran in the Times on January 4, 2008: "Israeli Forces Kill 9 in Gaza."
• Only 20 percent of headlines that introduced articles describing Palestinian attacks named the group responsible. Most of these headlines were written in a passive, less direct style that removes responsibility of the attack from those who caused it. An example of this type of headline ran on May 13, 2008: "Rocket Fired from Gaza Kills Woman in Southern Israel."
• 75 percent of the photographs that could be objectively determined as drawing sympathy for one side or the other in the conflict favored the Palestinians. Palestinian casualties of Israeli military operations and pictures of civilians dealing with shortages in Gaza dominated Times coverage during the time period studied.

CAIR today joined Jewish Voice for Peace and other people of conscience in urging concerned citizens to contact three members of Congress who are scheduled to speak at the upcoming conference of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the organization of controversial pastor John Hagee.

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Representative Elliot Engel (D-NY) and Representative Mark Pence (R-IN), are scheduled to speak next week at the CUFI conference in Washington, D.C. According to Jewish Voice for Peace, Hagee’s organization is "dedicated to preventing a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ensuring ongoing bloodshed for years to come."...

Overwhelming Support for Aggressive American Peace Efforts; Strong Opposition to Alliances with Pastor Hagee; Seeking Diplomatic Solution on Iran

I liked this big shaggy soldier the minute I saw him. Though his hand played tricks, it was never with my possessions. Basically his character was honest and simple, uncorrupted by the greed and venality about him. Moustafa never professed to be religious: I never saw him kneel in prayer. A one-time captain in the Egyptian army, he had been born into a farming family of small landowners. They had given him a good elementary-school education, and in addition he could read and write English -- rare among Egyptians. But he was a natural-born fighter and detested farm work. When I met him he had just returned from an expedition: his next assignment -- due to come within a few weeks -- was to lead the Green Shirt contingents and Followers of Truth into Palestine and make guerrilla attacks on Jewish outposts.

I had planned to go later to Palestine by myself; but when I heard this news, I made a quick decision. How much better to go with Moustafa and his men! How much better to be an intimate part of the Arab guerrilla movement, than to go as the typical reporter, always the outsider and stranger. I broached the subject to Moustafa. "I will come along as your photographer," I suggested. A few days later, after we found we hit it off well together, he agreed. When he and his men would leave for Palestine, I would go with them.

"I will arrange it with Ahmed Hussein," Moustafa said.

I quizzed him on his views on Zionism.

"We are fighting because Palestine is our land and we want to die there. Even if all the world helps the Jews we know we will win because our God is the strongest. We are not afraid to die. The Jews are cowards because they want to live. The Arab would rather lose ten men than one gun. The Jews are the opposite. They want to save their lives and lose their guns. That is one difference between us. Besides, we have plenty of money," Moustafa went on. "Plenty of ammunition. Plenty of men, We even have a Tiger tank we stole from the British."

"How did you manage that?"

"We paid £500 to English soldiers who were riding in the tank. They stopped and went into the bushes where we paid them money. When they came out the tank was gone. Don't think we are without friends," Moustafa continued. "We have English deserters and Germans fighting with us. They make some of our bombs. We also have Czechs and Yugoslavs spying for us. They go right into Tel Aviv and tell us how things are. They are fine spies."

At Green Shirt headquarters, Moustafa introduced me to a fiery Egyptian who was training the volunteers. His name was Izzed-een Abdul Kader...Moustafa said dolefully, while Izzed-een watched me with his little, suspicious, red-rimmed eyes. "He is willing to kill anybody who is an enemy of Misr el Fattat. He is a very strong patriot."

"Will he kill me if he thinks I'm your enemy?" I asked curiously.

Moustafa spoke to him, then turned to me and translated his reply with a smile: "If he knows you to be a Jew or a spy, he will not only kill you, but he will drink your blood."

With this comforting thought I left Misr el Fattat headquarters for a long night of note-making...There were thousands of these volunteers and adventurers from all the Arab countries, armed and financed by pashas, sheiks, or the Arab League, trained on Egyptian army grounds by regular army officers on leave. Their role was to harass the Jew, cut off his communications, isolate settlements, strip and weaken him for the moment, now only a few weeks off, when the British would leave Palestine and the entire Arab world would declare a bloody, open season on the Jew. Then the regular Arab armies would invade Palestine and settle once and for all the impudent and fantastic Zionist dream of a Jewish state on Arab soil.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) recently asked U.S. federal courts to reopen cases it lost after refusing to defend itself against terror-funding charges.

Judgments would come from U.S. and international aid, the PA argues.

In both cases, Palestinian terrorists murdered American citizens. In New York, Aharon Ellis' widow sued the PA for the lethal 2002 shooting of her husband and the father of their six children, during an Al Aqsa Martyr Brigade attack of a Bat Mitzvah, in Israel. The court awarded Leslye Knox $193 million, including interest, but the PA refuses to pay.

A Rhode Island case centers on the June 1996 double murders of U.S. citizens Yaron Ungar and his pregnant wife Efrat, both 25. Three Palestinian terrorists shot them to death in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem. The PA was ordered to pay their families $116 million, which the PA also refuses to do.

Neither award was "by default," as the PA now argues. Several law firms represented the defendants in New York making hundreds of procedural motions and appealing twice, all while the PA refused to answer to the charges. However, they never denied their guilt...

A dust cloud became visible in the distance. A welcoming shout went up. It turned out to be a column of soldiers, marching with their banners in the wind -- a contingent of about two hundred volunteers bound for Palestine under Misr el Fattat auspices. They were dressed in war-surplus khaki and the Arab headpiece...Their faces were bronzed by the Nile sun, their hands bony from toil. They were fellaheen -- those lowest in the social scale, usually tenant-slave farmers or unskilled workers. They joined the Green Shirt columns, and together marched past a guard of honor of Green Shirt officials. I began to photograph the scene with one policeman behind me, the other at my side. Suddenly, as the massed banners and flags passed by, a dozen Green Shirt arms shot out in the old-fashioned Fascist salute. To snap or not to snap! What would the police say? Nervously, I took two photographs of the saluting soldiers. Nothing happened...

..."Take a picture of my daughters," Hussein said. "I have named them Faith and Liberty." Hussein's wife was nowhere in evidence, faithful to the Moslem tradition that no decent woman ever shows her face to strangers. In his military dress and cap, hands on hips, jaw stuck out, Hussein on the balcony of his home imitated Il Duce. Hussein had neither the girth, the stature, the jaw, nor the snarl of the Italian Fascist whom he admired and tried to emulate...

...As we watched from the balcony, the Followers of Truth marched across the bridge in long thin columns, their khaffiyas flowing in the wind, their banners proclaiming in huge Arabic letter: GO AND FIGHT THE JEWS...THE ARMY OF ALLAH GOING TO FREE PALESTINE...I WANT TO COME WITH YOU. While the two feuhrers stood side by side with me, waving from the balcony, the columns marched to Misr el Fattat headquarters.

That St. Patrick's night, I witnessed the weirdest briefing session any American could hope to see. Green Shirts and Followers of Truth filled the courtyard, so that not even a crow could find a resting-place. On the iron fence was a banner, reading: THE ARMY OF MOHAMMEDAN GOD. FOR THE LIBERATION OF PALESTINE...

...From eight o'clock on,. for two hours, speaker after speaker mesmerized them with the most extraordinary supercharged emotional oratory I have heard in ten years of hearing the best among our worst Americans...It seemed to me the words were like savage thrusts into the night. They were like flying stilettos jabbing at my senses. I understood on ly a few words -- Allah, Yahood, Falastine (Palestine) attl, attl (kill, kill), Mujahed (Holy Warrior), Jehad (Holy War) -- but I felt the impact of every word, and the crackling thunder of every sentence as it ripped and lashed out into the night.

One speaker was a true firebrand. He was a thin wisp of a man, with a small, thin, pointed beard. His long deep-copper-colored face glowed with religious frenzy...He mixed pure fire with his words, and as he spoke he swayed slightly with the fluid rhythm of his words, as a cobra sways, at times speaking in a kind of hypnotic singsong -- half prayer, half chant -- then suddenly, his voice as brutal as a mailed fist, he exhorted, demanded, beat with the hammer of his eloquence on the ears of his men to fight for Allah and His Prophet. His words were like the thunder of a savage symphony, piercing the listeners and the darkness beyond...

As he finished, the bowels of the earth seemed to explode. The roar that came from the frenzied listeners is utterly undescribable to American ears. The least I can say is that it was like the snarling of volcanic monsters, bloodcurdling, awesome. The white-turbaned faces, roasted under the Nile sun, burned with the zealous fire of Islam; wherever I looked men stood screaming, shouting, eyes bloodshot, ready at the moment to tear the hearts of their foe with bare hands in the name of Allah and the Holy War...

...Hussein was an intense speaker. With powerful gestures and deep emotion he reinflamed the religious frenzy of his listeners.

"Death to Palestine's Jews!" he bellowed.

"Death to Palestine's Jews!" the mob roared back.

He exhorted them against British occupation of the Suez and the Sudan. The mob thundered its approval. As Hussein ended with the familiar words, Jehad, attl! attl! the same vibrant voice in the rear called out in Arabic:

"Hussein, our leader; Hussein, our savior; Hussein, protector of Egypt!"

Once again the monsters thundered into the night, the echoes reverberating from Cairo's moon-bathed rooftops.

The briefing was over. The Holy War was launched. The emotional crescendo on which this rally had ended found everyone perspiring, ecstatic, savage, ready to dismember any Jew, or burn his home. I could understand now how it was possible, after such meetings, for inflamed mobs to pour into Cairo's Jewish quarter, and smash and destroy Jewish shops. Hussein himself had incited a number of such riots on Friday, the Moslem Sunday, after his prayers. Cairo police with black shields and long black whips stopped such riotings -- after the "patriotic" fury had spent itself.

Eighty five American, Israeli and Canadian victims of Hizbollah terror attacks have filed an historic civil action in the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan against American Express Bank Ltd. ("AMEX Bank") and the Lebanese-Canadian Bank SAL ("LCB"). The suit, Licci v. American Express Bank, requests $650 million in compensatory damages and an unspecified sum of punitive damages.

Amex Bank, headquartered in New York, serves as one of LCB's correspondent banks the United States, and in that capacity processes LCB's dollar transactions. LCB's main office is in Beirut, and it has branches throughout Lebanon and a branch in Canada.

The plaintiffs, whose family members were killed or who were themselves injured by rocket attacks fired at northern Israel by Hizbollah in the summer of 2006, allege that AMEX Bank and LCB unlawfully executed millions of dollars in wire transfers for Hizbollah between 2004 and 2006. The plaintiffs assert that Hizbollah used the funds transferred by Amex Bank and LCB to prepare and carry out the rocket attacks which the terrorist organization rained on Israeli cities between July 12 and August 14, 2006...

As with Darfur and Burma, the depredations of Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe have become a target of the world's moral outrage. Also like those two countries, the chances of anyone doing something about Zimbabwe are falling into the diplomatic abyss that is the United Nations.

The Bush Administration has been prodding the Security Council to impose an arms embargo and pass financial and travel sanctions that would pressure the Mugabe regime to sponsor honest elections and stop killing democratic opponents. The U.S. persuaded Burkina Faso, currently an African representative on the Council, to sign on.

But at the moment of truth on Friday, Russia and China vetoed the sanctions on grounds that they amounted to interference in Zimbabwe's internal affairs. Libya and Vietnam joined Russia and China, no doubt as fellow dictatorships that don't want outside attention on their domestic practices. And in a display of bizarre solidarity with Mr. Mugabe, South Africa also voted against the sanctions. (South Africa has long ago forfeited whatever moral authority it had on world affairs from the Nelson Mandela era.)

As in Darfur and Burma, the pattern is the same: The world's media report on a marauding regime terrorizing its neighbors or its own people. The world's foreign policy elite express their dismay, with liberal internationalists and European nations urging President Bush to "show some leadership" and "do something" through the U.N. The Bush Administration does precisely that. Yet in the event, China and Russia veto and nothing happens.

In essence, the U.N. has become a dictator protection racket...

For almost 30 years the Samir Kuntar file has sat in the district courthouse archives in Haifa. Its contents were never authorized for publication. Until yesterday. Right before his expected release in two days' time, the court acceded to Yediot Aharonot's request and allowed Kuntar's testimony, copies of the copious evidence and other testimonies in the file, the indictment and the judges' verdict, to be perused...

Besides the Pardons Department, no one has ever read the file - which was considered top secret by court administrators. On the few occasions that it was removed from the archives, it was accompanied by an armed security officer. Being a classified security file, the contents of File No. 578/79 had never been released for publication. Due to the obvious public interest, Justice Ron Shapira has permitted publication of everything in the file except one person's testimony. The judge also asked not to publish the pathological reports or any other detail that could harm the memory of the victims.

Evidence from the pathologist's report showing Einat Haran's brain tissue on the butt of Kuntar's rifle

"I saw no reason to restrict access to the indictment and the sentence [as demanded by the prosecutors' office - N.G.]," explained the judge. "No one disputes that the matter of Kuntar's release and therefore the circumstances of his detention are subjects of public interest. I'm certain that the newspaper's request is justified."

Kuntar, a Lebanese Druze, was 17 when he commanded the terrorist cell of the Popular Front for the National Liberation of Palestine. He has never expressed remorse for killing Einat (age 4) and Danny (age 32) Haran and the police officer Eliyahu Shahar (age 24). He and the other surviving cell member, Ahmed Assad Abras, were sentenced to five life terms and another 47 years of imprisonment. In the Nahariya terror attack on April 22, 1979, Yael Haran (age 2) was also killed while hiding from the terrorists with her mother Smadar Haran...

Following are excerpts from an Iranian TV documentary series on Zionist themes in Hollywood cinema. The program, which focused on the film "Fiddler on the Roof," aired on IRINN on May 22, 2008.

Narrator: For two decades, during the 1960s and 1970s, the Zionist regime and its imperialist supporters faced many crises of legitimacy. Some of these crises were the result of the exposure of the terrifying image of this regime, when it used its war machine in the Six-Day War. Other crises were due to the fact that the struggle of the Muslims in the occupied lands and against Zionist strongholds in Europe focused the attention of the world on Palestinian suffering. So the cinematic propaganda machine of the Zionists focused on falsifying history, and on portraying the Jewish minorities as oppressed, for the benefit of the bloodthirsty, aggressive Zionists...

...Iranian film critic Majid Shah-Hosseini: [The messages] in a film like "Fiddler on the Roof" are hidden deeper, and it is more sentimental and romantic [than other films], but it strongly defends the Jews and the view that they are oppressed. By the way, this film was directed by Norman Jewison, a Jew...

...Narrator: The film "Fiddler on the Roof" tries to conceal one of the reasons for European and American hatred of Zionism, which was their control of the resources of wealth and power. The film depicts the Zionist immigrants' forefathers as kind and poor people, who immigrated out of poverty, and not out of a desire to occupy [Palestine].

I participated in a forum on Kashmir last night [July 9] at MIT in Boston, as this Muslim supremacist, jihad-inspired conflict -- really a tragic ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Hindus by Muslim jihadists which began in earnest during the 14th century -- re-emerged in the news recently when the Indian government had the "temerity" to want to transfer 99 acres of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, a trust running the popular Hindu shrine (including the cave that houses a large ice stalagmite itself, revered by Hindus as an incarnation of Siva, the god of destruction and reproduction).

Hundreds of thousands of Hindus visit the area as part of an annual pilgrimage to the cave.

Please watch the video linked below, which chronicles in gory detail the brutal ethnic cleansing of some 350,000 indigenous Hindus from Kashmir during early 1990, orchestrated by Pakistan and it’s "moderate" Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto...

...Now, settled into his Brooklyn life, Finkelstein is preparing for what may be his biggest fight, albeit one he doesn’t relish. He plans to go to the Israeli Consulate in New York in September to seek an assurance that he will be admitted in December. Such assurance, he said, would allow all concerned to “avoid the spectacle of me applying under the Law of Return [which gives every Jew the automatic right to acquire Israeli citizenship]. ... It’s hard to see which side will find that more ridiculous.

“I don’t incite riots,” he continued. “I’m just going to see a friend in the occupied Palestinian territories. I’m not there to see Israel. I do not need for every facet of my life to be politicized. If Israeli authorities would just grant me a visa, I’ll move on.”

Finkelstein said he hopes to visit a Palestinian, Musa Abu Hashhash, who lives with his wife and children near Hebron. They first met in 1988 when Finkelstein went to Israel with a delegation from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee and Finkelstein dedicated one of his books to the man, who works for B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. He stressed that his visit to Israel would be a “private” affair and that he had “no interest in turning this into a political issue. ... I don’t think they can deny me, and I don’t want to turn it into a test case for the Israeli High Court.”

As things stand now, however, Norman Finkelstein, the grand provocateur, waits in limbo for a shot at returning to the Promised Land, a land he has made a career of reviling.

Half of my day in Cairo was spent keeping out of jail. I began the morning determined to photograph a near-by mosque, magnificent with its slender stately minaret silhouetted against a breathtakingly blue sky.

I focused my camera but hadn't even pressed the shutter when I became aware that someone was watching me. A short distance away stood a policeman, dressed in a shapeless black wool uniform and the ever present red fez. I closed my camera and nonchalantly moved on. Glancing in a showcase, I saw him nearing me. A moment later a heavy hand plummeted down on my shoulder, and another grabbed my camera, nearly ripping the shoulder strap. He pulled me over to a traffic officer and the two jabbered excitedly. A surly crowd gathered. It was decided that my fate should be sealed in the Karakol Abdin Kism -- the Abdin District Police Station.

Flanked by the two policemen, and followed by a crowd yelling "Yahoodi" -- Jew -- we walked on. Once I turned around, and beating my breast like and outraged patriot, I shouted: "I am an American!"

"Then you are worse than a Jew!" someone yelled in perfect English.

Those in front rushed up, tried to jab me with their sticks, and threatened me with the whips. Most Egyptians apparently carried one or the other, handy for warding off flies, urchins, or would-be thugs. Had not the police flailed back savagely, I might easily have been mauled. A few months later an American, Stephen A. Haas of Philadelphia, sight-seeing with his wife and an Arab guide, was fatally beaten while police looked the other way.

...One peddler who came to my table was particularly insistent, although I repeatedly waved him away. He was a keen-faced young man.

"You will maybe like this!" the Arab demonstrated. What seemed to be an ordinary whip suddenly became a vicious, four-sided, ten-inch dagger tapering to a fine point. "This knife for Yahood. But maybe you Amerikans like Yahood, yes?"

I took no chances. "No, I hate Jews. Allah's curse on them."

"Ah," he grinned triumphantly. "Then you buy knife to kill Yahood?"

"No. I have one bigger, a Turkish knife. I kill Armenians and Jews with it."

I have written this book with the hope that it will bring both Arabs and Jews into truer focus for the reader; that it will help reveal what they are and what they are not, what may be expected of them and what is impossible. I pray that these ancient Semitic peoples will reconcile their differences, that Palestine refugees who, in the main, left their homes because Arab leaders urged them to do so--expecting a short war and a quick victory--will be resettled. The only alternative to peace is disaster for Arab, Jew, and Christian, for none may hope to prosper alone. Together they may ultimately build a prosperous and democratic Middle East. To remain apart, at dagger's point, means only that Communism and anarchy can be the ultimate victors.

I was delighted. I hurried to the address Canning [a British fascist] gave me. It was a small, quiet apartment house of dark brownstone at 76 Eaton Square, in the exclusive West End section of London. I found myself in a dark, narrow hallway...

...I was ushered into a semidarkened room. Swarthy young Arabs prowled about, escorting athletic young Englishmen into side rooms in an atmosphere of almost melodramatic conspiracy. Suddenly a door opened and an intense man in his thirties, with piercing black eyes and short black mustache, stepped out -- instinctively I knew it must be Shawa Bey -- accompanied by a tall, blond Englishman. The two shook hands briskly and the Englishman left. Shawa Bey turned to me.

"Come with me," he said curtly. I followed him into an office and he closed the door carefully after me...

...I looked at Shawa Bey. How many British mercenaries was he hiring? And on what conditions? When were they to enter Palestine? By what route? It was too risky to ask...

...Shawa Bey began to talk more freely. "The Jews think America is going to help them in Palestine but she won't because there's too much feeling against the Jews in the States. The Arabs are well armed and well equipped. Many have been infiltrating into Jewish territory. We are confident of winning."

"I plan to go to Palestine myself," I said. "I want to be there for the Arab victory."

"I wouldn't go now," Shawa Bey remarked. "I'd go a little later. Once the war starts, it won't take us long." We discussed some of the persons I'd met so far. "I've known Captain Canning for a long time," he said. "He has helped the Arab cause. Another good friend of the Arabs is Miss Frances Newton. She has been of great assistance."

I asked about the Mufti.

"He's in good health. He's in Cairo now. He goes back and forth between Cairo and Damascus. He has headquarter everywhere in the Middle East." Shawa Bey paused." These next months are very important. The Jews will learn that quickly."

I rose to go. In the outer room, young British veterans of World War II in civilian dress were waiting to be interviewed. Within a few months I was to see them fighting and dying for the Arab cause under Arab names. I was to see them buried in unknown graves, in Moslem cemeteries, unhonored and unsung. I was to see them as prisoners of war in Israel. Izzed-een Shawa Bey rose to his feet.

"Good-bye," he said." We might meet again in Egypt or Palestine."

If we did, I hoped he wouldn't recognize me!

The Palestinian Authority has asked Israel to hand over the remains of Dalal Mughrabi, the Palestinian woman who led the March 11, 1978 coastal road attack in which 36 people were murdered and 71 wounded.

Israel is planning to deliver Mughrabi's remains, together with those of scores of Palestinians and Lebanese, to Hizbullah in the context of the new prisoner exchange between the two sides.

The PA said in its request that it wanted to "honor" Mughrabi by holding a big funeral for her in Ramallah.

Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, described Mughrabi, whose family originally came from Jaffa, as a "the first Palestinian woman to carry out one of the most courageous operations in Israel." He claimed that in her will, Mughrabi, who belonged to Fatah, had asked her family to see to it that she was buried in "Palestine."

"We want to turn Dalal's funeral into a national wedding, a major celebration," the Fatah official said. "The operation she carried out off the shores of her hometown of Jaffa was heroic and exemplary. She will always be remembered as a symbol for the Palestinian women's struggle."

Even if Israel refuses to deliver her remains to the PA in Ramallah, Fatah officials said they were planning to hold big celebrations throughout the West Bank to coincide with her funeral in Lebanon.

Ahmed also praised Lebanese prisoner Samir Kuntar for carrying out another terror attack in Israel one year after the 1978 carnage. He described Kuntar as a "stubborn and firm fighter in the ranks of the Lebanese resistance who led a very courageous operation."

Since its inception, the PA has honored Mughrabi by naming many schools and various institutions after her.

An article published in Thursday's edition of the PA-funded Al-Hayat Al-Jadedda newspaper hailed Mughrabi as a "living legend and a wonderful example for all women."

The article criticized Hizbullah for agreeing to bury Mughrabi in Lebanon and not in the Palestinian territories. It said that someone like her deserved to be buried next to Yasser Arafat's grave in Ramallah.

Cambridge is well known as a bastion of liberal politics and activism. And since 1982, the Cambridge Peace Commission has symbolized the city’s progressive, leftist values. But the commission recently came under fire after a series of e-mails revealed what some critics are calling an anti-Israel agenda.

“As a Cambridge resident, I am well aware of the Cambridge Peace Commission’s intense anti-Israel activities,” said Hillel Stavis, a local freelance writer and pro-Israel activist. “For 25 years, they have hosted nothing but anti-Israel speakers. This is their pattern.”

Stavis posted an e-mail exchange on the pro-Israel blog, Solomonia, on June 27, in which the commission’s former director, Cathy Hoffman, expressed her disappointment with Boston Globe correspondent Victoria Cheng. The e-mails were written in January and referenced an article Cheng wrote about the Cambridge-Bethlehem People to People project, a local organization that supports Palestinians affected by Israel’s security wall. The project is not officially affiliated with the CPC, although the commission provided the group with meeting space and the two organizations share several members, including Hoffman...

...CPC Executive Director Brian Corr, who took over when Hoffman resigned in March, said he has never heard allegations of anti-Israel activity from anyone except Stavis. He would not comment on his predecessor’s decisions to take up one cause or another, but said any charges that the commission is targeting Israel were “unfair and unreasonable.”

“I can’t speak to the details of what happened before I started here, but at our last meeting we had representatives of the Save Darfur Coalition and discussed possibly working together in the future,” Corr said. “As a city department we are devoted to peace and social justice and supporting fully the rights of all people. And we don’t advocate violence in any way, shape or form.”

The commission also counts many Jews among its members, including Martin Federman, co-chair of the Boston Chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.

“The way that this is being framed by certain people is terribly inaccurate,” said Federman. “I don’t know anyone on the Cambridge Peace Commission that is anti-Israel. And I would contend that I advocate for Israel and that much of what I do is based on what I think is best for Israel, [though] not necessarily for the government of Israel.”...

...Indeed the protection of a single settlement of 800 people in Hebron has paralyzed a once bustling multi-ethnic city of 160,000, and the wall/fence has altered the landscape and caused a severe decline in the quality of life for thousands of everyday citizens. But while the settlement and the wall cause great financial and human hardship, it is a barrier against what was once an unprotected region from which numerous terror attacks were planned and carried out...

...The Middle East is a region rife with petit geopolitics. Since the failure of the Ottoman Empire, the region has not hosted an indigenous grand player. Instead, the region serves as a battleground for extra-regional grand powers, all attempting to grind down the local (petit) players to better achieve their own aims. Normally, Stratfor looks at the region in that light: an endless parade of small players and local noise in an environment where most trends worth watching are those implanted and shaped by outside forces. No peace deals are easy, but in the Middle East they require agreement not just from local powers, but also from those grand players beyond the region. The result is, well, the Middle East we all know.

All the more notable, then, that a peace deal — and a locally crafted one at that — has moved from the realm of the improbable to not merely the possible, but perhaps even the imminent.

Israel and Syria are looking to bury the hatchet, somewhere in the Golan Heights most likely, and they are doing so for their own reasons. Israel has secured deals with Egypt and Jordan already, and the Palestinians — by splitting internally — have defeated themselves as a strategic threat. A deal with Syria would make Israel the most secure it has been in millennia...

Syria, poor and ruled by its insecure Alawite minority, needs a basis of legitimacy that resonates with the dominant Sunni population better than its current game plan: issuing a shrill shriek whenever the name “Israel” is mentioned.

...When a county commissioner in Texas complained about how a county office was a "black hole" for tickets, two of his fellow commissioners--both black--complained about his offensive remarks and demanded an apology. (The must-see video of this story is here.)

Seriously. I'm not making that up.

OK, actually, I did make it up. When I did stand up, I had a bit about stupid people being offended by phrases like "black hole," "nip in the air," "spic and span" and "red alert," which could be offensive to both American Indians or Chinese communists.

The most frightening part of this story is that, even after confronted with the fact that "black hole" has nothing to do with race and everything to do with cosmology, the county commissioners STILL demanded an apology. Why? "It doesn't matter if what he said was racist. What matters is that I'm offended."...

Following are excerpts from an Iranian TV documentary series on Hollywood cinema. The program, which focused on the film "American History X," aired on IRINN on June 2, 2008.

Narrator: One of the propaganda tools used by the Zionists in order to legitimize their occupying regime is the spreading of the belief that the world's Jews are still in danger...

...Iranian documentary filmmaker Mohammad-Reza Khosravi-Far: As we see, the Zionists work on the visual memory of people around the world. They shape these concepts in such a way that whenever Nazi Germany is discussed or whenever we see Nazi or Fascist symbols, we have no choice but to remember the Nazi crimes, and acknowledge the enormity of the catastrophe [that] befell [the Jews] in World War II. This is the lie used by the Zionists to display their oppression...

...Iranian film critic Dr. Majid Shah-Hosseini: The Zionist viewpoint in cinematic history refers to a sort of "good guy," who is a white Western man. When they talk about globalization, they mean Westernization. This is not globalization but Westernization. But we are not talking about the entire West. This Westernization is actually Americanization - anything that can be described as part of the American lifestyle. Which America is this? An America that is run by the Zionist companies...

...Narrator: In one of the key scenes in this film, we see a physical and verbal conflict between the young man and his mother's Jewish colleague. This scene and dialogue were structured in a way that the viewer, like the mother of this young man, is profoundly ashamed, and even disgusted, by his actions...

...Iranian documentary filmmaker Mohammad-Reza Khosravi-Far: After watching "American History X," we realize one thing. A novice actor called Edward Norton plays the leading role in this film. If we examine this actor's recent filmography, we realize how much he was rewarded by the Zionists [who] paid him for acting in this film and serving them so well. We see that after Edward Norton participated in this film in the role of an antisemitic fascist, who realizes his mistake at the end of the film, and dedicates himself to the Zionist community, while expressing his remorse for opposing the Jews, [the Zionists] cast him in his second film with Brad Pitt in a first class move ["Fight Club"].

...The dream of a world without Israel is the fuel that drives the Arab war against the Jews in the Middle East. This dream long pre-dates the security barrier, the checkpoints, the house demolitions, the settlements, and the occupation. It long pre-dates even the birth of the state of Israel, and has been around for as long as Jews have talked seriously about Jewish self-government in the Middle East. It therefore makes no difference where Israeli borders are, or whether Palestinians have a capital in Jerusalem, or whether there is or is not a security barrier. It is the very existence of Israel as a nation that is so offensive to Arab and Muslim radicals; and it is their absolute unwillingness to accept a Jewish state, of any size or shape, that has continued to inspire the rejectionists. It is said that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. This is why the Arabs said no to a Palestinian state in 1948, and why they have said no ever since, most recently when the government of Ehud Barak offered the possibility of an Arab Palestine on over 90% of the West Bank and 100% of Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem and financial compensation for the refugees from 1948. In the face of that offer, Yasser Arafat walked out of the Camp David talks in 2000, and gave the order to commence the Second Intifada. Two years later, after hundreds of Israeli dead and thousands more wounded, Israel began construction of the security barrier. By the time the security barrier had been substantially completed, over 1100 Israelis had been killed and over 8000 wounded. And life for Palestinian Arabs became, necessarily, more restricted and more unpleasant.

It would therefore seem obvious that anyone interested in peace between Israel and the Arabs would be eager to disabuse Arabs of the notion that Israel might someday cease to exist. It would not even be necessary for liberal Christians to like this idea. They could merely use their influence (and their abundant financial resources) to promote the idea that Palestinian Arabs, for their own good, should abandon the idea of destroying Israel and push their leaders to seek some kind of comprehensive settlement.

Yet liberal Christians have chosen to do just the opposite. In one denomination after another, we hear slightly different versions of the same story: the very existence of Israel is offensive; Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their homes (though Jewish refugees from Arab states have no rights even to compensation for lost property); Jews must move out of the West Bank; and Israel must return to its borders before 1967 (which were utterly indefensible)...

...If Dr. Ahmed had cited disagreement with the Islamist ideology of his co-directors at CAIR I would have taken note. If Dr. Ahmed had cited CAIR's inability to name terrorist organizations like AL Qaeda, HAMAS, Hizbullah, and others by name, I would have taken note. If Dr. Ahmed had cited CAIR's ultimate goal to implement sharia through requests for accommodation as a minority while pushing sharia law in other nations where Musilms are a majority I would have taken note. If Dr. Ahmed had cited his desire to join anti-Islamist movements and dissidents against the Islamist organizations which exist which are mainly Muslim Brotherhood front-groups, I would have taken note. But he did not.

Time will tell, what he and his fellow CAIR-departee, Ahmed Bedier in Florida do next. But from where I sit, looking at the comments he left with the Florida Times-Union, it appears to simply be a manifestation of a software upgrade for Islamists in the U.S. who are finding that their divisive agenda is failing miserably and they are looking for a way to re-tool their Islamist platform in a way which can more cunningly decieve the masses as being less divisive...

...Simply put, some Islamists are growing unhappy with the current intransigence of the "old guard" and are upgrading to Islamism 2.0 which will be even harder for the untrained citizen to notice. But in the end. Islamism 2.0 can become 9.0 and it will still advocate for the Islamic state and not believe in secular constitutions like our US Constitution as being central in guiding government for society in Muslim majority nations...

Palestinian Authority Libel: Prisoners are used for Nazi-like medical experiments

By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

Introduction:

The Palestinian Authority is intensifying its longstanding blood libel campaign against Israel, falsely accusing Israel of conducting horrific Nazi-like medical experiments on Palestinian prisoners. These fabrications have been featured repeatedly in the Palestinian Authority's official newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, which is under the direct authority of Mahmoud Abbas.

In the past week alone there were three new examples of this libel:

"The method employed by the Israeli Occupation in which they [are] instigating slow death ... doctors in Israeli prison clinics use the prisoners as guinea pigs for clinical drug testing under the pretense of 'treatment.'" [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 6, 2008]

"Many of the male and female inmates received injections from needles they had not seen before, and which caused their hair and facial hair to fall out permanently ... others lost their sanity, or their mental condition is constantly deteriorating... and some are suffering from infertility." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 4, 2008]

"The doctors in these prison clinics are using the prisoners as guinea pigs for clinical testing of drugs and treatment-methods." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 3, 2008]

Giving voice to blood libels and slandering Israel are essential tools used by the Palestinian Authority to demonize Israel and to inflame hatred against Israel, especially on the highly sensitive subject of Palestinian prisoners. It is therefore not surprising that the Palestinian public places the release of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons as a national cause, and justifies all means -- including the abduction of Israeli soldiers - to free the prisoners from their supposed mistreatment.

First the estimable Ahmed Bedier jumped ship. And there are rumors that others have been deep-sixed also, but I haven't been able to get confirmation. And now this. What on earth does Parvez Ahmed mean, that CAIR hasn't been proactive or open and transparent enough? What would Muqtedar Khan have preferred that CAIR do rather than whine about anti-terror efforts?

We may soon see the development of a new Muslim advocacy group, with a more sophisticated, less clumsy, less ham-handed approach than CAIR has taken to the stealth jihad...

A gag order was lifted Tuesday on the arrest of four Hamas militants in the West Bank city of Nablus in May, as a result of joint Israel Defense Forces-Shin Bet operations.

Israel claims the detainees were planning terrorist attacks against its citizens. The ring allegedly assembled an explosive belt that was intercepted in Tel Aviv in September last year.

Following information provided by Shin Bet security service, IDF troops arrested Nablus residents Usama Halaweh, Tarek Taher, and Majdi Abu-Yassin, as well as Aiman Awad, 29, who had previously served time in Israeli prison for terrorist activity.

It emerges from a preliminary interrogation of the detainees that they had set up a makeshift explosives laboratory in a Nablus apartment and were using a videotape of Mahaned Taher, a Hamas explosive expert who was killed by IDF troops in 2002, to improve their knowledge of mixing chemicals.

Three policemen and three gunmen have been killed in an armed attack near the US consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul, its governor has said.

The identity of the attackers is still unclear, but they began shooting at 1100 (0800 GMT). The police are looking for a fourth man seen with them.

Another policeman and the driver of a police tow-truck were injured in the ensuing gun battle, the governor added.

There are no reports of any injuries to staff working in the consulate itself.

After the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the consulate was moved from the centre of Istanbul to a hill on the outskirts in the north-eastern Istinye district...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Following is a filler presented on June 30, 2008 by an Iraqi TV channel, Al-Furat, which is affiliated with Abd Al-Aziz Al-Hakim's Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. MEMRI has inserted visual and sound effects in order to highlight the subliminal visual messages incorporated in the footage by Al-Furat TV...

...Take the surveillance of foreign terrorists. Last October, while running with the Democratic pack, the Illinois Senator vowed to "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies" that assisted in such eavesdropping after 9/11. As recently as February, still running as the liberal favorite against Hillary Clinton, he was one of 29 Democrats who voted against allowing a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee reform of surveillance rules even to come to the floor.

Two weeks ago, however, the House passed a bill that is essentially the same as that Senate version, and Mr. Obama now says he supports it. Apparently legal immunity for the telcos is vital for U.S. national security, just as Mr. Bush has claimed. Apparently, too, the legislation isn't an attempt by Dick Cheney to gut the Constitution. Perhaps it is dawning on Mr. Obama that, if he does become President, he'll be responsible for preventing any new terrorist attack. So now he's happy to throw the New York Times under the bus.

Next up for Mr. Obama's political blessing will be Mr. Bush's Iraq policy. Only weeks ago, the Democrat was calling for an immediate and rapid U.S. withdrawal. When General David Petraeus first testified about the surge in September 2007, Mr. Obama was dismissive and skeptical. But with the surge having worked wonders in Iraq, this week Mr. Obama went out of his way to defend General Petraeus against MoveOn.org's attacks in 2007 that he was "General Betray Us." Perhaps he had a late epiphany.

Look for Mr. Obama to use his forthcoming visit to Iraq as an excuse to drop those withdrawal plans faster than he can say Jeremiah Wright "was not the person that I met 20 years ago." The Senator will learn - as John McCain has been saying - that withdrawal would squander the gains from the surge, set back Iraqi political progress, and weaken America's strategic position against Iran. Our guess is that he'll spin this switcheroo as some kind of conditional commitment, saying he'll stay in Iraq as long as Iraqis are making progress on political reconciliation, and so on. As things improve in Iraq, this would be Mr. Bush's policy too...

The Zionist terrorist state admitted today the annihilation of at least 4 Israelis, and the injury of 45 others in the occupied Islamic city of Bait ol-Moqaddas. The state radio of the illegal regime said that in a martyrdom-seeking operation a Palestinian activist drove his bulldozer into several Israeli vehicles on the Yafa Street of Bait ol-Moqaddas, as a result of which at least 4 Zionists were killed and 45 others incurred severe injuries.

The radio also announced that before Zionists forces martyred the Palestinian, he managed to destroy 2 Israeli buses and many vehicles, in an act to show his deep hatred towards the atrocities committed by the usurpers of his homeland.

Israeli military choppers and ambulances rushed to the area following the incident. The report indicated that the death toll is on the rise because some of the injured Zionists are in critical conditions.

Following are excerpts from "The Secret of Armageddon," an Iranian television series. In it, Iranian scholars, historians, researchers, academicians, and scholars criticize Christian Zionists, affirm the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, promote various conspiracy theories, discuss the Jews' "genocidal plan for the genocide of humanity," claim that Iranian Jewish and Baha'i communities are plotting to take over Iran, and more.

The series aired on the Iranian news channel IRINN in May and June 2008...

Among his innocent victims is an infant, who was injured in the attack and taken to hospital. Eyewitnesses told police that the murdered mother saved her baby, by throwing the child out the car window, just before the bulldozer crushed her to death.

Three people [I've heard it's four now] were killed and 57 were wounded - one seriously, one moderately and the rest lightly - on Wednesday afternoon when a bulldozer driver went on a rampage in downtown Jerusalem.

The attack, at the junction of Jaffa Road and Sarei Yisrael St., set off a panic in the area and left a large swath of damage in the heart of the capital. Traffic was halted, and hundreds of people fled through the streets in panic as medics treated the wounded.

A car was dragged several meters by the bulldozer before being crushed under the vehicle. A baby was treated in Sha'arei Tzedek Hospital and his parents were yet to be tracked down. The indication was that the baby was thrown out of the car by one of his parents before the vehicle was crushed.

Three Palestinian terror groups took responsibility for the attack, but police referred to the attacker as a "terrorist" acting on his own. The attack took place in front of a building housing the offices of several media outlets.

An off-duty soldier took a gun from an elite policeman at the scene and shot the terrorist dead. The soldier, Moshe Klessner, 18, is the brother-in-law of IDF officer David Shapira, who killed the terrorist in the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva attack on March 6.

Klessner was assisted in neutralizing the attacker by another elite policeman.

A third policeman was lightly wounded by gunfire, indicating that the terrorist was armed.

Police said the incident was definitely a terror attack, but stressed that they had no specific warning.

Police added that the terrorist, Jabr Duwait, a 32-year-old father of two from Jebl Mukaber, was carrying an Israeli identity card. The Mercaz Harav attacker was from the very same east Jerusalem town...

Late in the fall of 1942, I interviewed Edward Atwell, an important official of the America First Committee who was "on the inside" at the New York offices. He answered the question which had been repeatedly put to me: "Is the America First movement dead?"

Atwell was having supper with his wife and daughter when I visited him. A powerfully built man, with pink and white complexion, Atwell impressed me as sincere even though he had spoken four times with Nazi agent Laura Ingalls, written numerous speeches, worked sixteen hours a day for the America First cause and shared the innermost secrets of the A.F.C. Atwell impressed me as a sincere, anti-fascist isolationist...

...I asked the blunt and outspoken Atwell whether leadership by America First would have been a good thing for the nation.

"I'm not sure. It may have turned out okay, then again, it may have become a Frankenstein of our own creation. That office I worked in was a madhouse. There were Bundists and Silver Shirters and Christian Mobilizers..."

"Don't forget the German secret service men," Mrs. Atwell put in, She had worked in the A.F.C. office with her husband, and I turned to her for information when Atwell seemed hesitant.

"To tell you the truth," she said, "I never thought that Laura Ingalls was the only German agent we had. You can call Germany anything you want, but you can't call her dumb. If she had one agent in such a biog organization, she might have had a hundred. There was a fellow named Riepel whose brother was arrested by the F.B.I. as a spy. We always thought Riepel was a Nazi agent."

"There were also the White Russians," Atwell put in.

"Yes, that Czarist woman, the Countess. She told me she supported the Committee and wanted to keep America out of war in order to give Hitler a chance to clean up Russia so she could get back her property," Mrs. Atwell said.

"The office was full of men and women with selfish motives," Atwell resumed. "The Committee grew too fast. It took in everybody. It had no time to check up. It could have got out of control easily. There were many sincere ones, but there were a lot of people who had an axe to grind. Like the Bund fellows."

"What interest could the Bund have?" I asked naively.

"Plenty!" Atwell burst out. "It was to Germany's advantage to have us stay out of war. It was perfectly possible that in due time German agents might have got control of the whole thing by working in the background and using other people to front for them! A strong, well-knit minority can always put it over on the unorganized majority. And I wouldn't be surprised," Atwell said softly, "if some of the money we got in was German money."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"I know that a lot of money came in anonymously. You just opened the sealed envelope and the money dropped out. I wouldn't be surprised if some of that money was German money. Yep, the Committee might have become a very dangerous thing."

Atwell looked me over speculatively.

"I did a lot of talking for the Committee. A tour of eleven states was mapped out for me, and I was all set to go when I got the notion to look at the Bundists and Christian Front-ers about me. I asked myself 'Where am I going! Where is this Committee going with all these guys on board?'" Atwell resumed, "I'm loyal to my country and I didn't go on that speaking tour."...

[snip discussion of Lindbergh]

..."Then you don't think America First is through forever?"

"Hell, no!" Atwell said spiritedly. "Lindbergh will come back and America First will come back whenever the time is ripe. All you have to do is to call a meeting, bring the old faces together again, give them a hero they can look up to, and they'll start over.

"There are a lot of neurotics and frustrated people in the world. Old maids, missionary types, people who have to get a release for their hates, neglected people," Atwell continued, "they all want to become somebody by joining a movement. They'll all come back as soon as they get the signal."

My talk with Atwell late in 1942 was one of the most enlightening I had had, I quizzed Atwell on his personal anti-Semitism and found that the little he had was of the "harmless" type; social, rather than the sinister political anti-Semitism -- the spearhead against Democracy. Atwell feared mass anti-Semitism as a revolutionary device. He feared the "mob element" and he dreaded the consequences.

"I've seen the mob in action. Back in 1939 it was the Christian Front that went around beating up people. First it's the fist, then clubs, then knives, then firearms, then...I don't want to see innocent people killed. Mass anti-Semitism is bad business. It can end up in revolution as sure as you're sitting there."

...They did get pretty much what they wanted -- a portrayal of the security barrier as an unreasonable hardship on Palestinians, very little acknowledgement of why the barrier was built, and a complete whitewash of the people with whom the delegation met. And Eva Moseley, a delegate who offered to "do [her] I escaped from Nazi Vienna and am unhappy with what Israel does' schtick, if you think that would help" after the delegation returned to Cambridge, was able to use her "schtick" in the Globe article. Cheng wrote about Moseley as follows:

As a Jewish member of the delegation and as someone who had escaped from the Nazis in Vienna, Eva Moseley, 76, said the trip left her with "complicated feelings about the Holocaust," because "on top of the usual outrage and horror at what it was, I feel another layer of outrage at the way it is used to punish the Palestinians, who had nothing to do with it."

As to the assertion the Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem sided with the Nazis and successfully derailed deals to divert Jewish children away from death camps in the 1940s...

A postcard featuring a cute puppy sitting in a policeman's hat advertising a Scottish police force's new telephone number has sparked outrage from Muslims.

Tayside Police's new non-emergency phone number has prompted complaints from members of the Islamic community.

The choice of image on the Tayside Police cards - a black dog sitting in a police officer's hat - has now been raised with Chief Constable John Vine.

The advert has upset Muslims because dogs are considered ritually unclean and has sparked such anger that some shopkeepers in Dundee have refused to display the advert.

Dundee councillor Mohammed Asif said: 'My concern was that it's not welcomed by all communities, with the dog on the cards.

'It was probably a waste of resources going to these communities.

'They (the police) should have understood. Since then, the police have explained that it was an oversight on their part, and that if they'd seen it was going to cause upset they wouldn't have done it.'

Councillor Asif, who is a member of the Tayside Joint Police Board, said that the force had a diversity adviser and was generally very aware of such issues...

POLICE sniffer dogs trained to spot terrorists at railway stations may no longer come into contact with Muslim passengers-- after complaints that it is against the suspects' religion.

A report for the Transport Department has raised the prospect that the animals should only touch passengers' luggage because it is considered "more acceptable"...