December 2008 Archives

Score one for the good guys.

Just back from a very solid showing of 150 - 200 hearty souls braving the cold and standing strong for Israel before the consulate with Israel and American flags. "Hey Hey Ho Ho Hamas Has Go To Go", "No Terror. No Hamas" and "Stop Your Terror. Stop Your Bombs. There'll Be Peace When Hamas Is Gone" rang out from our crowd across the street to the 100 anti-Israel protesters. Not a lot of car traffic but many passing by were supportive of the good guys. I heard Fox News was out as well.

We concluded with Am Yisrael Chai, HaTikva, a wonderful American Star Spangled Banner (causing even more distress among our foes), and Oseh Shalom Bimromav. Just great ruach. And after 1.5 hours it was the other side exited stage left. They started this protest - We finished it. Hamas started this war - and the IDF will finish it (with more care than any other military in the world to prevent civilian losses)

Hats off to Ari and Nancy of JCRC for their hard work and official call to action. As well as other groups and activist making this a success -- Charles Jacobs early efforts, Rabbi Rodkin of Shaloh with some great signs, the "Goats" activists. I also saw Barry Shrage and the CJP email. I know David Project and CAMERA supporters were out as well. Of course y'shar koach to our locals that trekked in. And Boston's finest gets a nod for good ref-ing.

Very important to keep challenging the other side. It is still "Hammer Time" and I like the score since last night: Maccabees 2 : Plishtim 0

A gunman wounded two Israelis working at a packed central Denmark shopping mall Wednesday, Danish police said.

The two wounded men are Israelis in their 20s, police spokesman Lars Thede said. He said it was too early to speculate on whether they were targeted because of their nationality.

One of the wounded was shot in the arm and the other in the leg, police said. Their condition is unclear.

The shooting took place at the Rosengaard mall in Odense, 170 kilometers (105 miles) west of Copenhagen. It occurred around 3:30 p.m. (14:30 GMT), when the mall was filled with people doing last-minute shopping before the New Year's break.

Thede said a video surveillance camera showed a man in his mid-20s pulling out a gun before opening fire...

...we're talking about a country where "Jews are Allah's enemies" is a popular protest chant...

Egyptian cleric Sheikh Muhammad Al-Saghir: "I say to the people of Gaza: Take my heart, which has hardened like a stone. Take it, and use it to stone all the Jews..."

Egyptian cleric Sheikh Muhammad Mustafa: "Where is the [Islamic] nation? If 20 million people can encircle the Earth, then 20 million people could also drown Israel in a sea of blood."

Egyptian cleric Sheikh Muhammad Hassan:...They are blood-suckers. They are shedders of blood. Review the history of the Jews from beginning to end, from the very first moment to the last moment, which is now. They specialize in the shedding of blood, in crime, and in killing - even the killing of prophets...

Egyptian cleric Sheikh Amin Al-Ansari: "It is told that the Israelites killed more than 70,000 prophets in a single day. It's not the people they want to eradicate, but Revelation itself. They do not want there to be any revelation, purity, religion, or religious law. The secret behind the war between the Jews and non-Jews is that they want to have a monopoly on the spiritual and ideological leadership of the world, and eventually, the physical leadership.

Egyptian cleric Dr. Sallah Sultan: The stone which is thrown at the Jews hates these Jews, these Zionists, because Allah foretold, via His Prophet Muhammad, that Judgment Day will not come before the Jew and the Muslim fight. The Jew will hide behind stones and trees, and the stone and the tree will speak, saying: 'Oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' The only exception will be the Gharqad tree...

...According to a recent study published by the Pew Research Center, nearly half of all Spaniards have negative views of Jews, a statistic that marks Spain as one of the most anti-Semitic countries in Europe. According to Pew, 46 percent of Spaniards hold negative opinions of Jews, up more than double from the 21 percent of Spaniards with such views in 2005.

Spain is also the only country in Europe where negative views of Jews outweigh positive views; only 37 percent of Spaniards think favorably about Jews. By comparison, 36 percent of Poles have negative views of Jews while 50 percent have positive views; in Germany, 25 percent negative versus 64 percent positive; in France, 20 percent negative versus 79 percent positive; and in Britain, 9 percent positive versus 73 percent favorable. (According to Pew, 77 percent of Americans have favorable views toward Jews, compared with 7 percent unfavorable.)

Pew's latest research about Spanish anti-Semitism corroborates the findings of other, similar surveys. For example, a report about European anti-Semitism published by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League says that 54 percent of Spaniards believe that "Jews have too much power in international markets." And 51 percent of Spaniards believe that "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country."...

...Hamas knows one big thing, which it labels "resistance" or, for Western audiences, "ending the occupation." Just what that means was made clear by Palestinian cleric Muhsen Abu 'Ita in a televised interview. "The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine," he said, "is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine."

This kind of genocidal incitement is more than idle ranting: Gigantic ambitions sustain political movements through hard times. Hamas is also sustained by the insight that Israel's considerable military capabilities are unlikely to be matched by political will. It believes that whatever attacks come will be tempered by a host of humanitarian and diplomatic considerations. It believes that Israel wants to avoid a public relations debacle (so Hamas will do everything it can to engineer or fabricate one). It believes that the weight of international sympathy will be on its side. It believes, too, that the last thing Israel wants is to reoccupy Gaza, with all the costs and complications that entails.

Hamas believes, in short, that while Israel will do many things, and do them well, it will not do the main thing. And that, in turn, means that as Israel exhausts its target list, as eventually it will, the storm will pass. Then the green flag of the movement will fly defiantly over the tallest building left standing, its prestige hugely boosted -- and Israel's commensurately diminished -- throughout the Muslim world.

Does all this also mean that Israel's attacks amount to a fool's errand? Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert likes to point out that no Hezbollah rockets have fallen on Israeli soil since August 2006 -- never mind that Hezbollah is both politically and militarily more powerful today than it was before the war. A similar outcome in Gaza would be equally disastrous.

This is not a counsel of restraint, of which Israel has shown more than enough through years of provocation. It is merely to point out that no ingenious conceit can disguise the fact that war offers no outcome other than victory or defeat. This is one big thing that Hamas understands, and that Israel must as well. The fox cannot beat the hedgehog. But the bigger hedgehog can -- and in this case must -- defeat the smaller one.

The Navy stopped pro-Arab activists around midnight Monday from reaching Gaza by stopping their "Free Gaza" vessel for the first time after several previous landings in Gaza. Activists claim the Navy rammed their boat, and they charged Israel with "piracy on the high seas."

The movement's spokeswoman Greta Berlin told Israel National News that the incident occurred approximately 50-60 miles off the Gaza coast, in international waters. Any vessel can be legally required to identify itself in order to prevent it from entering prohibited territory although its passengers cannot be arrested in international waters, explained Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.

The Free Gaza boat, dubbed the Dignity, collided with a Navy boat, but Berlin said the activists on board have pictures to prove it was rammed, an allegation that Palmor said is ridiculous. "If we wanted to hit it intentionally, everyone would have drowned," he told Israel National News.

Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy was quoted by a CNN correspondent on board the 60-foot vessel as saying that the collision occurred when a Navy boat tried to turn around. Free Gaza claimed that at least half a dozen Navy boats surrounded the Dignity...

Please join the Jewish community at 5:00PM tomorrow, December 30th, in a peaceful counter-protest against groups who do not support Israel's action in Gaza and will be demonstrating at the Israeli consulate at 20 Park Plaza.

The Muslim Public Affairs Commitee (MPACUK) is appealing to its supporters to track down the Muslim researchers who worked with the think tank Policy Exchange on a project to expose the sale of hate literature in British mosques.

Under the heading "The Hunt for 8 Sufi Zio-Con Frauds", the MPAC website claims that the researchers were members of "Sufi underground cults" who teamed up with the Zionists to discredit Islam...

Disturbing photographs made available to this newspapers by police sources indicate that several of the guests at the Taj Mahal Hotel during the siege November 26 were sexually humiliated by the terrorists and then shot dead.

Police sources confirm that even as the terrorists were engaged in a fierce combat with NSG commandos, they were humiliating their hostages before ending their terrifying ordeal.

Foreign guests were their particular target. Eight of the 31 killed at the Taj were foreign nationals.

Photographs taken by a police forensic team after the hotel was sanitised yield a gruesome picture of some of the guests in the nude.

These bodies were found away from the hotel's swimming pool which makes it clear that they were not those guests who were taken hostage from the poolside.

"Even the Rabbi and his wife at Nariman House were sexually assaulted and their genitalia mutilated," said a senior officer of the investigating team, not wishing to be quoted.

"We have CCTV footage which reveals how these terrorists forced some of the guests who were holed up in restuarants to strip, but there is not evidence of rape," he added.

These pictures, most of which we have refrained from printing, are in the records of the police and are now part of the investigation.

Israeli citizens have been under the threat of daily attack from Gaza for years.

Only this week - hundreds of missiles and mortars shells were fired at Israeli civilian communities including the firing of 80 missiles on a single day.

Until now we have shown restraint. But today there is no other option than a military operation.

We need to protect our citizens from attack through a military response against the terror infrastructure in Gaza.

This is the translation of our basic right to self sefense.

Israel left Gaza in order to create an opportunity for peace.

In return, the Hamas terror organization took control of Gaza and is using its citizens as cover while it deliberately targets Israeli communities and denies any chance for peace.

We have tried everything to reach calm without using force. We agreed to a truce through Egypt that was violated by Hamas, which continued to target Israel, hold Gilad Shalit and build up its arms.

Israel continues to act to prevent humanitarian crisis and to minimize harm to Palestinian civilians.

Unfortunately, Hamas cynically abuses its own civilian population and their suffering for propaganda purposes. The responsibility for harm to civilians lies with Hamas.

Hamas is a terrorist organization, supported by Iran, that does not represent the legitimate national interests of the Palestinian people but a radical Islamist agenda that seeks to deny peace for the peoples of this region.

While confronting Hamas, Israel continues to believe in the two State solution and remains committed to negotiations with the legitimate Palestinian Authority in the context of the peace process, launched at Annapolis.

Israel expects the support and understanding of the international community, as it confronts terror, and advances the interest of all those who wish the forces of peace and co existence to determine the agenda of this region.

..."I have a list that's bigger than Santa Claus, and I know exactly who's been naughty and nice," joked Alan Solomont, a political power broker who was a big Bay State fund-raiser for Obama...

The very liberal use of Judaism

There is a perception that mainstream Jewish organizations, especially those under the umbrella of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, have diverted resources to the pursuit of causes that have little or nothing to do with Jewish issues. Yet it's more than just a perception. It's a fact.

Whenever a mainstream Jewish organization like the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) proclaims that "pursuing social justice" is one of its primary goals, it's generally a given that this has little to do with actual Jewish interests and a lot to do with liberal or even far-left causes. The very term "social justice" has long since become co-opted as part of the lexicon of American Jewish leftists, who use it as a banner to advocate, fundraise, and recruit members for their latest left-wing cause du jour.

Other Jewish organizations have also joined the trend to propagate nonsensical leftist causes, such as the American Jewish Congress, with their odd fixation on fighting Christian Nativity displays on public property, the result of which has only caused to alienate mainstream Christians. Not content with simply aggravating Christians, they've also initiated litigation to ban Chanukah menorahs on public land.

Martin Solomon, the founder and proprietor of the on-line Jewish news and commentary service, Solomonia, recently produced a carefully documented critique of the JCRC. He analyzed the JCRC official notices, called Action Alerts, sent out to their extensive e-mail list over a one year period, from November 2007 through October 2008. Mr. Solomon documented that "37% of Boston of JCRC Action Alerts had nothing to do with Jews or Israel."

Some of the JCRC Action Alerts include:

"Reminder to join us at the State House for the Interfaith Pledge for Climate Action: A Day of Prayer and Advocacy." One of nine Action Alerts dealing with global warming, which the JCRC adamantly believes in. Problem is, a lot of us don't.

"Support is needed for Affordable Housing." Using tax dollars (i.e., your money) to provide housing for those who can't or won't seek gainful employment.

"CARE for Youth: Action Needed on the Health Education Bill." Echoing the call of Planned Parenthood and the AIDS Action Committee for more instruction on condom usage in the public schools.

"Ask your Congressman to vote in favor of the Energy Bill." Again the global warming controversy, this time on a federal level.

None of these issues which the JCRC advocates on behalf of the Jewish community has anything to do with Jews, Israel, or Judaism, but, invariably, the JCRC claims they do. As Mr. Solomon observed, global warming is not a Jewish issue, but rather, a political issue. Yet on this and similar matters, the JCRC seems not to know the difference between Jewish and political issues.

Or as Brian Camenker of the conservative advocacy group Mass Resistance offered, "The JCRC is a hardcore leftwing organization that purports itself to be the voice of the Jewish community." Nowhere was this more evident than on three recent controversial issues: illegal immigration, higher taxes, and gay marriage.

The JCRC disseminated at least five Action Alerts this past year to advocate for tuition discounts and state scholarships for illegal aliens in the state university system. They even sent Governor Patrick a letter urging him to grant these financial subsidies to students "regardless of immigration status." Aside from the obvious fact that the JCRC has trouble understanding the "illegal" part of illegal aliens, what is appalling is that as a Jewish organization it presented the notion that giving illegal aliens taxpayer money is something that the Jewish community is in favor of.

The JCRC came out in favor of keeping the state income tax (Action Alert 9/18/08 -Vote No on Ballot Question 1). Why higher taxes are vital to the interests of Jews, the JCRC did [not] elaborate on. But they did conclude that eliminating the state income tax, (i.e. citizens keeping more of their own money) could adversely affect the middle and working classes already affected by the economic downturn. Got that?

Perhaps the most egregious example of the JCRC advocating for an issue that is not and never will be a Jewish issue is the gay marriage controversy. Yet there they were, on the ramparts with gay activists, imploring the state legislature to allow gays to marry. Actually, if the JCRC had any real knowledge of their own religion, they'd know that Judaism does in fact take a stand on gay marriage. The Torah forbids it.

Yet the JCRC is hardly alone in confusing extreme liberalism with Judaism.

The shaky six-month Egypt-brokered truce between Israel and Gaza ended last Friday with exchanges of fire across the border. While diplomats scrambled to negotiate an extension of the ceasefire, Islamic Jihad, a militant organization that Hamas claims it does not control, celebrated the end of the truce by pounding Sderot and the western Negev with 'round the clock barrages of Qassams. They also launched Grad rockets at Ashkelon, which is usually out of Qassam range. The barrages escalated as this week wore on, with 88 landing in Sderot and the surrounding communities over a one-day period on Wednesday. The IDF, meanwhile, killed three Palestinians who were laying explosives on the Gaza-Israel fence.

Confined to their homes and fearful, the residents of Sderot and the western Negev are having a particularly gloomy Hanukkah. For many, the situation has become intolerable. Two out of three children in Sderot suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder...

Israel moved closer to invading the Gaza Strip, saying Thursday that it had wrapped up preparations for a broad offensive after Palestinian fighters fired about 100 rockets and mortar shells across the border in two days...

It took less than a week for Israel's decision makers to change their minds entirely. Exactly the same people - who last week presented convincing reasons to justify continuing the policy of restraint in the Gaza Strip, and expressed the fear that a large-scale military action would result in an expected imbroglio - have now changed their tune completely. It is doubtful whether even Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's lightning visit yesterday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo will lead to a turnabout at this point. Israel is about to retaliate fiercely to Hamas' attacks. The situation will not necessarily develop into an all-out war (at the moment, neither side appears to be interested in that), but the coming days will, so it seems, mark the end to restraint...

Hamas enacts Islamic (Sharia) laws: Hand amputation, crucifixion, lashes and execution
By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza have approved a new bill "to implement Koranic punishments," including hand amputation, crucifixion, corporal punishment and execution. Drinking, owning or producing wine is punished by 40 lashes, while drinking in public adds three months' imprisonment. Several laws are directed against Hamas's Palestinian rivals, including a law intended to inhibit non-Hamas negotiators by sentencing to death anyone who was "appointed to negotiate with a foreign government on a Palestinian issue and negotiated against Palestinians' interest."

...Mr Ahmadinejad's speech will go out at 7.15pm, four hours after the Queen's traditional Christmas Day message is broadcast on the main channels. His message is a spiritual one but includes some more nakedly political elements - including the implicit claim that if Jesus Christ were alive today, he would oppose US hegemony...

...In 2006 a fully-veiled British-born Muslim woman used the message to attack Jack Straw, then Home Secretary, for his criticism of the niqab (face veil) earlier the same year...

...Winters, who died in the 1980s in Florida, was in the airplane business after World War II. He bought up former military cargo planes and used them to transport fruit and other products. He later started helping his Jewish friends who were shipping arms to Jews trying to found their own state in the Middle East.

Winters, a Protestant from Boston, could fly his planes in and out of the region without interference from authorities. In 1948, three of his planes left Miami, picked up weapons in Azores and Czechoslovakia and then left the planes and arms in Palestine.

Winters was convicted of violating the Neutrality Act, fined $5,000 and sentenced to serve 18 months in prison. The act is designed to ensure that financial assistance and arms are not provided to parties in foreign conflicts where the U.S. has not taken sides.

Two others, Herman Greenspun and Al Schwimmer, also were convicted of violating the act, but they did not serve time. President Kennedy pardoned Greenspun in 1961. President Clinton pardoned Schwimmer in 2000...

...In advance of Christmas 2008, several British NGOs have returned to previous theological offensives against Israel by combining emphasis on Bethlehem, stories of Palestinian suffering, and false allegations of Israeli cruelty. Through Christmas cards, carols, and charity fundraising, War on Want, Amos Trust, Pax Christi and others condemn Israel's security barrier and erase the Palestinian terror campaign that necessitates it.  As in previous years when NGOs used Underground  station advertisements and  greeting cards, these campaigns capitalize on holiday sentiment and Christian religious symbols to declare that "the wall must fall" and present  a biased view of the conflict...

My name is Larry Grathwohl and I infiltrated the Weather Underground for the FBI. I had no idea when my journey began in August 1969 that I would see and experience the degree of violence and hatred of our democracy that existed in the Weather Underground. Bernardine Dorhn, Bill Ayers, and the other people I would meet had as their sole purpose the destruction of the United States. The fact that I ultimately became the only source of information regarding the activities of the Weather Underground and the fact that Bill Ayers now claims their goal was only to bring about the end of the war in Vietnam requires me to respond...

Gunmen broke into the house of a women's rights activist in the volatile northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Thursday and beheaded her, police said.

The victim was identified as Nahla Hussain, the leader of the women's league of the Kurdish Communist Party. She was alone in the house at the time of her death...

"Che" film gets thumbs up in Cuba," ran the headline from CNN's Havana Bureau on Dec. 8. Benicio Del Toro, who stars as Che, was in the Cuban capital at the Havana Film Festival this week-end presenting the movie he co-produced. "Che the movie met Che the myth in Cuba this weekend," starts the CNN report, "and the lengthy biopic of the Argentinean revolutionary won acclaim from among those who know his story best. "

Indeed, but the acclaim came because those "who knew his story best" (Castro and his Stalinist henchmen, the film's chief mentors) saw that their directives had been followed slavishly, that Che's (genuine) story was completely absent from the movie...

..."I'm here in Cuba's hills thirsting for blood," Che wrote his abandoned wife in 1957. "Dear Papa, today I discovered I really like killing," he wrote shortly afterwards. Alas, this killing very rarely involved combat; it come from the close-range murder of bound and blindfolded men and boys.

"When you saw the beaming look on Che's face as the victims were tied to the stake and blasted apart," said a former political prisoner to this writer, "you knew there was something seriously, seriously wrong with Che Guevara." In fact the one genuine accomplishment in Che Guevara's life was the mass-murder of defenseless men and boys. Under his own gun dozens died. Under his orders thousands crumpled. At everything else Che Guevara failed abysmally, even comically. Yet Soderbergh and Del Toro skip over these fascinating quotes and Che's one genuine accomplishment as a revolutionary...

The international community has given 1.7 billion dollars (1.18 billion euros) in aid to the Palestinian Authority over the last year, the French foreign ministry said Wednesday.

That was 0.6 billion dollars more than was promised at a major donor conference held last December in Paris, spokesman Frederic Desagneaux said.

At that conference, donors promised to provide 7.4 billion dollars over three years, which was considerably more than the 5.6 billion dollars the Palestinians had requested.

The donors agreed to allocate 1.1 billion dollars in the first year.

"Such payments above the promises made are the concrete sign of the exceptional engagement of the international community," Desagneaux said.

The conference agreed a package of aid to stabilise the Palestinian economy and try to shore up the faltering peace process with Israel.

Palestinian leaders said the money was needed for direct support to the budget to help develop a viable economy and institutions for a future Palestinian state.

The screening in Tunisia of a French film dealing with Jewish life in Nazi-occupied France has raised a storm of criticism. "Un Secret" ("A Secret"), directed by the French-Jewish director Claude Miller and starring the popular French-Jewish singer Patrick Bruel, was shown at the opening of the 15th annual Festival of European Cinema in Tunis.

Filmgoers Walk Out on Film that is "Too Favorable to the Jews"

Tunisian filmgoers walked out 30 minutes into the film "A Secret," which deals with a Jewish family in Nazi-occupied France, claiming that it was "too favorable to the Jews." Filmgoers told aljazeera.net, the website of the Al-Jazeera satellite TV station, that they wondered why Europe was so favorable to the Jews, and France in particular, whose president they described as the "pro-Jewish Sarkozy."

The Tunisian organizer of the festival, Ibrahim Al-Latif, blamed the European delegation, which was responsible for the choice of films. One young filmgoer told aljazeera.net that the decision to screen "A Secret" led some people "to feel that the European delegation, which oversees the festival, is under Jewish control."...

The Netherlands says it will stay away from a United Nations conference on racism scheduled for next spring unless draft documents disproportionately critical of Israel are amended. The announcement is the latest indication that a boycott campaign may slowly be picking up steam.

The Bush administration has been critical and declined to fund the process leading up to the conference, but it stopped short this year of announcing a final decision on participation...

A British jury Tuesday found a doctor from an Iraqi family guilty of plotting to murder on a mass scale in failed car-bomb attacks last year in London and Glasgow.

Bilal Abdulla, 29, who practiced medicine in Britain, drove a Mercedes sedan packed with gas cylinders and nails into central London in June 2007 with the intent of killing hundreds, the prosecution said. After the homemade car bomb he had parked outside a crowded nightclub failed to detonate, Abdulla joined an attempted suicide attack the next day targeting Glasgow's airport, according to prosecutors.

He faces life in prison in connection with both attacks and is to be sentenced Wednesday.

Born in Britain to Iraqi parents, Abdulla was accused of wanting to take revenge for friends, relatives and other civilians killed in Iraq by British and U.S. troops.

The terrorist case involving medical professionals sworn to save lives has shocked and unnerved many people here...

...Rev. Dr. Ateek's assertion that Israel has perpetrated a "slow and creeping genocide" is libelous, contemptible and chimerical. The population of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has quadrupled over the past 60 years. The modifers "slow and creeping" do not make Ateek's accusation any less dishonest.

To hide the obscene nature of his charge, Rev. Dr. Ateek tucks it in between a terrible and hostile quote from an extremist Jewish group and a description of Israelis using dogs to attack Israelis. The quote, however terrible, does not represent the opinion of all Israelis toward Palestinians, a fact that Rev. Dr. Ateek himself acknowledges with the phrase "some Zionists." He then asserts that this belief was put into practice "over time."

Exactly how? By allowing Palestinians -- even those responsible for violence against Israel -- into its hospitals during times of conflict? By allowing food and medical supplies into the Gaza Strip while rockets land in Sderot? By according Palestinians standing before its Supreme Court?

This is "genocide"?...

..."Producers are afraid to come near me," said Salem, who in 1994 drove his car across Israel and wrote what critics considered a sympathetic book about the journey. "I anticipated there would be a strong reaction, but I didn't expect it would be so mean. It's hard and this is the wound."

Salem, a columnist for Al Hayat newspaper and a co-founder of the Cairo Peace Movement, added: "Peace is the right idea. But Egyptian intellectuals are afraid and can't get rid of their ancient fears. They still think Israel and the U.S. will inflict something bad upon us."

There are degrees of resistance among intellectuals toward rapprochement. Many oppose improving relations until Palestinians have their own state; others support limited peace but are guarded when discussing the passions around the Arab-Israeli conflict; a few have visited Israel to interact with their Jewish counterparts.

And, occasionally, an artist unwittingly becomes the target of screeds and opinion page vitriol. Filmmaker Nadia Kamel's recent documentary about her mother's Jewish roots was attacked as a call to "normalize" relations with Israel. Opera singer Gaber Beltagui had his membership in the musicians union suspended in 2007 when he sang at the 100th anniversary of a Cairo synagogue.

Following are excerpts from speeches by Arab Islamic leaders expressing solidarity with Gaza, which aired on Al-Manar and Al-Aqsa TV, December 3 and 5, 2008.

Sheik Himam Sa'id, Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan: "Oh noble Gaza, raise your head high. You have made the Muslims raise their heads high. And you, people of Hebron - you are now waging a war against the Jews. You are well-versed in this. We saw how, on a day in 1929, you slaughtered the Jews in Hebron. Today, slaughter them on the land of Hebron. Kill them in Palestine. Arise, oh people of Palestine, all the people of Palestine - arise in defense of your Al-Aqsa Mosque, arise in defense of Nablus and Hebron. Arise and face the [PA] Preventive Security forces. Fear them not, for they are rabbits. They are wolves, so fear them not, oh lions...

"Oh young men, what will you say to the Jordanian government? Expel the Jewish ambassador from Amman. Amman is pure, and the Jewish ambassador must not defile its soil. Recall the Jordanian ambassador from Palestine. Only mujahideen should be in Palestine - not ambassadors, not ministers, or any representative of this nation. Do not recognize the ambassador of this nation in Palestine. Palestine is the land of Jihad, of sacrifice, and of preparation. We say to this government: Stop normalization with the Jews. Stop all imports and exports with the Jews. Our markets are full of Jewish vegetables and Jewish fruits. Traders who bring these fruits and vegetables are traitors, collaborators. Tell them this. Make them hear our voice. The position of the religious scholars is that anyone who trades with the Jews is a traitor and collaborator."...

The President of the United Nations General Assembly tried to prevent Israel's ambassador, Professor Gabriela Shalev, from speaking at a special commemorative plenary session marking 60 years since the UN adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, scheduled for Wednesday.

The General Assembly President, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, tried to cancel speeches that were to be given by representatives of the unofficial regional group known as "Western European and others," after he learned that Israel's ambassador was to represent the group as its rotating chairman.

However, European representatives rejected the motion to cancel the meeting, and voiced outrage at his attempt to prevent the address.

In response, Brockmann announced that he would add a representative of the Arab bloc and a representative of unaffiliated nations, two blocs known to be hostile toward Israel, to the list of speakers at the session.

The event is expected to turn into a political debate in light of these changes.

The pilgrimage that brings more than 2 million Muslims to Mecca every year tends to make them more religiously observant and also more tolerant, a huge study of Pakistani pilgrims suggests.

Muslims who undertake the hajj "return with more positive views towards people from other countries," are more likely to say "that people of different religions are equal," and are twice as likely as other religious Muslims to condemn Osama bin Laden, the study found...

...while most spent the day praying and reading Islam's holy book, the Quran, thousands -- mostly Iranians, Lebanese, Iraqis and Bahrainis -- held a rally inside their tents to denounce the United States and Israel.

Called the "disavowal of pagans ceremony," the Iranian-sponsored, anti-U.S. protest is held annually at the hajj, bringing a whiff of politics into what is otherwise an entirely religious event.

Saudi Arabia warned before the start of the pilgrimage that it would not tolerate any anti-U.S. demonstrations, but the rally was apparently permitted because it stayed inside the tents...

BC: Why do we as a society automatically extend empathy and compassion to criminals rather than the victims of their crimes? There's a phrase that you use in this context: "a preference for barbarism." Why do our intellectuals rally to the cause of miscreants rather than that of good, honest citizens?

Dr. Dalrymple: Intellectuals need to say things that are not immediately obvious or do not occur to the man in the street. The man in the street instinctively sympathizes with the victim of crime; therefore, to distinguish himself from the man in the street, the intellectual has to sympathize with the criminal, by turning him into a victim of forces which only he, the intellectual, has sufficient sophistication to see...

BC: In your essay, "The Roads to Serfdom," you refer to a famous quote by George Bernard Shaw, who said, "We are all socialists now." Are we all on the brink of becoming socialists once again? Why do you think, given the oppressive and pernicious nature of this method of governance, it remains politically viable?

Dr. Dalrymple: I think it more likely that there will be an increase in corporatism than in socialism. America will not be socialist, but it might be corporatist (there is always a tendency to this deformation in modern societies). You will find an increase in public spending with an increase in contracts given to businessmen with political contacts or who are politically pliable. Mr. Obama strikes me as a Blair figure rather than, say, a Leninist. This will lead to a swamp of corruption very difficult to eradicate because it will be legalized corruption, which is very hard to eliminate once started. An important thing to look for will be the corruption of statistics; for once they are corrupted, no one can know what is going on in the larger picture, and this gives carte blanche for the looting of the public purse by private interests linked to politicians, all in the name of procuring benefits for the public.

Following are excerpts from an interview with PLO Ambassador to Lebanon Abbas Zaki, which aired on OTV on November 7, 2008.

bbas Zaki: We consider the U.S. to be an enemy because its only strategic alliance is with Israel.

Interviewer: How could you possibly accept your enemy in your land?

Abbas Zaki: What do you mean? We meet even with Israel.

Interviewer: How can you consider Israel to be your enemy, if you signed a peace treaty with it?

Abbas Zaki: Allow me... This enemy... If I had the capabilities of the U.S. - would I be fighting it or negotiating with it?

Interviewer: Israel ceased being an enemy once you signed a peace treaty with it. I don't know how it could be your enemy. Do you talk to the Israelis as if they were your enemies? Do you talk to Israel as a friendly or enemy country?

Abbas Zaki: An enemy country, which owes us certain things. The heroic Vietnamese used to negotiate with the French, while they were slaughtering them.

Interviewer: I can assure you that in his speeches, Abu Mazen says the U.S. is a friendly country.

Abbas Zaki: Well, this isn't true. Perhaps Abu Mazen, in his position, needs to use diplomatic language, but he is the greatest critic of the U.S.

In the interests of scholarship, though, the instructor would feel duty-bound to inform her charges about the nefariousness of the Bush administration -- just as "facts" and background, mind you -- along with the long litany of criminal acts and attitudes of the West, particularly the United States. All that she would say in this vein, whether in the context of history or literature, would be backed up by the "factual" support in textbooks.

So when students participate in the "studies" cited in the New York Times article and are asked on a questionnaire whether their teachers attempt to impose their ideology, they will probably say no. Asked whether they are vulnerable to persuasion by professors' political views, today's college student, steeped in self-esteem and flattery about his abilities as a "critical thinker," is, of course, going to say that he came to his political views on his own, on the strength of the evidence before him and the critical powers of his own mind.

And this is the kind of interviewee a student reporter for the University of South Carolina's Daily Trojan will quote for a concluding salvo to a syndicated article about "the results of studies ... [that] refute the belief held by many conservatives that liberal college professors politically indoctrinate their students." Freshman Christopher James's assertion that "kids are way too smart to let themselves be swayed in one direction or the other" adds to the chorus of self-evident truth from desk seats in campuses across the country...

...As anyone who has dealt with the four-year-old who insists "I know how to do it!" understands, arrogance is inversely proportional to age...

...It was Caroline Lucas who, unlike the Bihari migrant workers, happened on this occasion to be in the right place at the right time. Caroline Lucas, should the name mean nothing to you, is the elfin leader of the Green Party. But she could, as far as attributing the usual culpability is concerned, have been anyone at that end of British politics. Reader, I could have gone on the programme and said what she said for her. To wit, Iraq and Afghanistan prove we can't bring peace at the end of a gun (though it would seem that "understanding" can be found at the end of a terrorist's gun), many people see the "war on terror" as a war on Muslims (a point that fails to distinguish between what people choose to "see" and what is the truth of the matter), and, in her actual words, "if we are to defeat extremism we have to go to the root causes of it - we have to look in particular at countries like Palestine".

We are not unsubtle in this column. We understand that a simmering resentment will not always express itself rationally or fairly. In frustration, the angry often kill the wrong people in the wrong places. But to argue that Palestine fuelled the massacre at Mumbai, that the Hindu waiter shot in the forehead after serving water to a terrorist was paying for the inequities of Gaza, that he wasn't already, in the eyes of that terrorist, expendable enough as an unbeliever, as one who had stolen Kashmir, or simply as a spot of target practice en route to a mad and misguided martyrdom, is not only preposterous, it is irresponsible...

...Whenever terrorist attacks such as these are carried out (such generalizations can be made because they occur so frequently), pundits predictably exclaim that we must not allow hatred for Islam to fester, but rather, we must remind ourselves that terrorists represent a fringe movement and that tolerance should be extended to the rest of the Muslim world. A witch-hunt may not be in order, but there is no question that the attacks in Mumbai were fueled by the Muslim fanaticism that has grown so prevalent. The Wall Street Journal reported that as two gunmen poised to fire at a dozen people in Mumbai's Oberoi Hotel, two hostages screamed out that they were Turkish Muslims. Hearing this, the gunmen spared their lives and killed everyone else.

Islam is not a wholly extremist religion, nor is any religion free of extremists who commit atrocities in the name of faith. American Klan members committed crimes against blacks in the supposed name of Christianity. Harvard is filled with Muslim students with mainstream politics. Yet outside of well-educated communities like ours, this is not the case. Islam has come to possess more extremist members than any other modern religion...

...In Khalidi's opinion, even justifiable Western intervention must be opposed, while all misdeeds on the part of Arab leadership must be whitewashed. Despite the fact that he is a specialist in Palestinian history, Khalidi fails to address the internecine Palestinian conflict between Hamas and Fatah; doing so would break his relentless focus on Israel and the U.S. as the sources of all that ails the Middle East. When cornered on the subject, Khalidi unsurprisingly blames the West.

To push this false narrative, Khalidi has at times erred grievously. "Solomonia" blogger Martin Solomon pointed to a 2006 appearance on PBS's "NewsHour with Margaret Warner" in which Khalidi claimed that neither Hezbollah nor Hamas is a "direct threat to the United States." He tried to explain away Hezbollah's 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 American military personnel, claiming that U.S. peacekeeping forces were an invading army that could be opposed justifiably.

Khalidi also claimed that, "Hamas, as far as I know, and as far as I've seen, has never attacked America, the United States, or Americans." In fact, as Solomon noted, there have been scores of American victims of Palestinian terrorism, both before and after the founding of Hamas, evidenced by numerous lawsuits stemming from such incidents...

Following are excerpts from a program about Iranian children in the "Jerusalem Day" parade. The program aired on Jaam-e Jam 1 TV on September 25, 2008.

...Interviewer: What's your boy's name, and how old is he?

Father: Soheil is one year old.

Interviewer: Why did you bring him along?

Father: In order to inject into his blood loathing for Israel from an early age.

Interviewer: Well done. Well done. What do you think is the greatest desire of the honorable people who gathered to join the parade marking International Jerusalem Day?

Father: Their greatest desires are the annihilation of Israel and the appearance of the Mahdi....

...Interviewer: What's your name, my boy?

Mohammad: Mohammad.

Interviewer: [Your sign says]: "Death to Israel." Why did you come here today?

Mohammad: In order to...

Interviewer: To say "Death to Israel"? Go ahead.

Mohammad: "Death to Israel."

Interviewer: Well done. It's very interesting that little children, like this girl and this boy, are already experiencing the culture of unity and solidarity, alongside their parents and fellow citizens....

...Interviewer: I found it very nice to meet a six-year-old girl called Rihaneh, who drew a picture about Jerusalem and the Palestinian people, and about how the defenseless Palestinian people defends itself. In it, we see a Palestinian soldier... or actually, a Palestinian youth, holding a weapon in his hands and firing at a tank of the plundering Israel. The Israeli tank is firing toward the young Palestinian. Rest assured that the blood of the martyrs, the efforts of the young Palestinians, and the support of the Muslims worldwide for the Palestinian people will not be in vain.

...First, while racism usually makes people "small" in order to enslave, exploit or expel them, anti-Semitism makes the Jews delusionally "big." The most important characteristic of anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory that holds the Jews responsible for both capitalism and communism, for AIDS, revolutions and financial crises -- in short, for every "inexplicable" catastrophe of modernity.

The concept of "redemptive anti-Semitism," coined by Holocaust scholar Saul Friedländer, describes this phenomenon: If one assumes the Jews are responsible for all the world's misery, only their extermination can "redeem" the world. This paradigm of Jew hatred does not apply to racism. Muslims are not accused of pulling the strings behind all revolutions and wars.

Second, while we must reject any general suspicion of Muslims, it is impossible to ignore the fact that reservations about Muslims are based on real mass murder committed by some Muslims in the name of Islam. Events such as 9/11 or the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh have no counterpart in Jewish tradition.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often used to explain Muslim hatred of Jews. But Israel's policies are not causing anti-Semitism. Rather, the way those policies are distorted and demonized in the Muslim world, and increasingly in Europe, is a new expression of this old hatred.

Third, one need not play down the extent of discrimination against Muslims in Europe to recognize that the effects of the "concept of the Muslim enemy" and the "concept of the Jewish enemy" are qualitatively different. No one wants to erase a Muslim country from the map the way some people threaten to do with the Jewish state. Islamic centers and houses of prayer need no permanent police protection in Europe, unlike Jewish sites. No satellite stations call for the extermination of Muslims, whereas Hezbollah and Hamas TV, for example, broadcast via Arab satellites into European living rooms, regularly call for the destruction of the Jews -- even on children's programs.

In taking up the fashionable vocabulary of Islamophobia and equating hostility to Muslims with hostility to Jews, the center also risks undermining the most important current task in dealing with anti-Semitism: studying and fighting hostility to Jews in the Islamic world, where anti-Semitism has reached an unprecedented level...

For purposes of self-justification, Azam Amir Kasab, the only terrorist taken alive in last week's Mumbai massacre, offered that the murder of Jews in the city's Chabad House was undertaken to avenge Israeli atrocities on Palestinians. Two other terrorists cited instances of anti-Muslim Hindu violence as the answer to the question, "Why are you doing this to us?" before mowing down 14 unarmed people at the Oberoi Hotel. And if dead terrorists could talk, we would surely hear Abu Ghraib mentioned as among their reasons for singling out U.S. and British hostages.

One suspects the terrorists spent far too much time listening to the BBC World Service.

Let's hasten to add that by no means should the BBC alone be singled out. When it comes to terrorists and their grievances, nearly all the Western media have provided them with a rich diet on which to feed.

In the spring of 2005, Newsweek ran with a thinly sourced item about the Quran being flushed down a Guantanamo toilet. Result: At least 15 people were killed in Afghan riots.

Newsweek later retracted the story, which was the right thing to do but also, in its way, exceptional. Compare that to the refusal of French reporter Charles Enderlin and his station, France 2, to retract or even express doubt about his September 2000 report on Mohammed al-Durrah, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly killed by Israeli soldiers during an exchange of gunfire in the Gaza Strip -- an exchange Mr. Enderlin did not witness.

In an exhaustive piece in the June 2003 issue of the Atlantic, James Fallows observed that the evidence that the boy could not have been shot by an Israeli bullet is overwhelming, while the evidence that the entire incident was staged is, at the very least, impressive. In France, the story has been the subject of various lawsuits. In Israel, however, and throughout the Muslim world, Durrah became the poster child for a five-year intifada that took several thousand lives...

Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., has hired six students whose jobs as "dialogue facilitators" will involve intervening in conversations among students in dining halls and common rooms to encourage discussion of such social justice issues as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability and social class.

"If there's a teachable moment, we'll take it," said assistant dean of student affairs Arig Girgrah, who runs the program. "A lot of community building happens around food and dining."

She gave the example of a conversation about a gay character on television as a good example of such a moment...

CHICAGO (AP) -- A federal appeals court upheld a $156 million judgment Wednesday against three U.S.-based Islamic groups accused of bankrolling terrorism in a landmark civil case.

The U.S. charities must be held liable if they gave money to groups that engage in terrorist acts, even if they designated the funds were for humanitarian purposes, the decision by the 10 judges on the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.

The suit was filed in 2000 by the parents of American-born David Boim, who was a 17-year-old yeshiva student when he was killed by Hamas terrorists in a 1996 drive-by shooting at a bus stop on Israel's West Bank. The Boims' lawsuit claimed the groups that gave to Palestinian charities ultimately helped fund terrorism.

"This is the most significant judicial opinion on liability for terrorist financing ever decided by a United States court," said Chicago attorney Stephen Landes, who represented Boim's parents.

The decision upheld a lower-court judgment against the American Muslim Society, the Islamic Association for Palestine-National and the Quranic Literacy Institute.

The appeals court also sent civil allegations against a fourth charity -- the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development -- back to U.S. District Court for a decision on whether it should have to pay part of the $156 million...

The Jewish victims from the Mumbai Chabad House siege showed no indications of torture, a Mumbai doctor said.

Dr. Ganjanan Chawan saw the bodies when they arrived at JJ Hospital in Mumbai.

His statements in Wednesday's edition of the Jerusalem Post contradicted an interview with a morgue employee of the hospital printed the previous day by the newspaper. The morgue employee had said the Jewish victims had more injuries than the other victims in last week's terrorist attacks on the Indian city. More than 180 people were killed...

Boston, Mass.

Texas Terrorism Trial Ties Boston mosque leaders to Extremist Network

Dennis Hale, President of Citizens for Peace and Tolerance, called today for a public investigation of the Boston Redevelopment Authority's sale of land to the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) for the construction of New England's largest mosque.

Hale noted that officers of the largest Muslim charity in America, The Holy Land Foundation (HLF), convicted in Texas last week of funding Middle East terrorism, have ties to the ISB and its close affiliate, the Muslim American Society. "The convictions in Texas are a victory in the government's efforts to prevent charities from being used to support terrorism," said Hale. The Holy Land Foundation and five of its organizers were convicted for sending more than $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. "It is shocking to discover the ties between the HLF and the leadership of the Islamic Society of Boston," said Hale.

Hale enumerated the ties:

• "Hossam Al Jabri, President of the Muslim American Society's Boston branch (MAS Boston), which now controls the ISB Cultural Center, personally donated money to the HLF while they were sending funds to Hamas," Hale said. "And the Islamic Society of Boston as an organization sent thousands of dollars to the HLF as well."
• "Jamal Badawi, an ISB Trustee, was a frequent speaker at HLF fundraising events, and was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF prosecution."
• "Osama Kandil, the ISB Board Chairman, founded the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), which provided venues for HLF fundraising events where Hamas members made explicit calls to murder Israelis." For its role in Hamas fundraising, MAYA was also listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial.

"Now," Hale continued, "the mosque, which was built by the Islamic Society of Boston, has been taken over by the Muslim American Society (MAS). MAS was founded by top Muslim Brotherhood leaders and states that it is guided by Muslim Brotherhood ideology. The Brotherhood inspires and provides the justification for the anti-West Jihad." Hale cited a document from the HLF investigation, which describes the Muslim Brotherhood's goal in America as a "Grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying Western Civilization from within." Hale noted that "this same document praises the contribution of ISB Trustee Jamal Badawi to the Muslim Brotherhood's efforts."

"And finally," Hale said, "the Boston Phoenix published last week an expose, 'Menino's Mosque,' which shows that the BRA did not perform due diligence when it approved the sale to the ISB of public property at a steep discount for the construction of a mosque financed mostly by Saudi Arabia. The Mayor intended to help a group of local African American Muslims build a house of worship. Instead, he wound up giving the mosque to a group controlled and financed by the Saudis,Boston Phoenix Hale said. Boston PhoenixThe BRA role is further complicated,Boston Phoenix according to Hale, Boston Phoenixby the role of Muhammad Ali-Salaam, an official of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), who was also an ISB member and fundraiser for the mosque. The BRA recently told a judge that their records on the ISB matter have 'disappeared.' Today we call upon the FinCom's chairman, Paul Minihane, and its Executive Director, Jeff Conley, to initiate a long overdue investigation into the conduct of the BRA."

CPT is an interfaith citizens group. It was sued by the ISB for "defamation" after asking questions about the radical leadership of the ISB in 2004, based on news reports that the founder of the ISB, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, was serving a 23-year prison term for a terrorist conspiracy and fund-raising for Al-Qaeda, and that an original ISB Trustee, Yusuf al Qaradawi, was calling for the wholesale murder of Jews and homosexuals, and is now barred from entering the U.S. Also sued were the Boston Herald, Fox 25, and over a dozen individuals and organizations. The ISB dropped its lawsuit in 2007.

A grieving Mumbai mourns the dead. At least 179 Indians and foreign nationals were gunned down in cold blood in a terrorist attack that has raised controversy and several questions.

And now questions are being raised over the fate of those nine men who unleashed the carnage and were gunned by the security forces.

Muslim organisations in Mumbai have decided that Muslim cemeteries in Mumbai, where unclaimed bodies are usually buried, will not open its doors for the last rites of these urban jehadis.

"The killing of innocents is against Islam. They are bringing shame to 25
crore Muslims of India. These men are not Muslims. Why should we give them place anywhere? There is no place for them in our hearts and in our cemeteries," said Hamid Abdul Razzak, president, Dawat-e-islami.

Unprecedented events demand an unprecedented response. And this time the community has gone beyond merely condemning terrorism. It's shutting its doors on those who claim to act in their name.

Determined to deny the terrorists the martyrdom they seek, Muslim organisations have written to senior Mumbai police officials as well.

"The cemetery should not allow the police to bury the nine dead terrorists in their premises," said Ibrahim Tai, president, Muslim Council Trust...

... Why would a terrorist group of Islamists from Pakistan whose primary goal is to have Pakistan gain control of the third of Kashmir that belongs to India and therefore aimed to destabilize Indias major city devote so much of its efforts -- 20 percent of its force of 10 gunmen whose stated goal was to kill 5,000 -- to killing a rabbi and any Jews with him?

The question echoes one from World War II: Why did Hitler devote so much time, money, and manpower in order to murder every Jewish man, woman, and child in every country the Nazis occupied? Why did Hitler -- as documented by the late historian Lucy Dawidowicz in her aptly named book The War against the Jews -- weaken the Nazi war effort by diverting money, troops, and military vehicles from fighting the Allies to rounding up Jews and shipping them to death camps?

From the perspective of political scientists, historians, and contemporary journalists, the answer to these questions is not rational. But the non-rationality of an answer is not synonymous with its non-validity.

For the Islamists, as for the Nazis, the destruction of the Jews -- and since 1948, the Jewish state -- is central to their worldview...

... To reinforce my point, imagine a Basque separatist terrorist organization attacking Madrid. Would the terrorists take time out to murder all those in the Madrid Chabad House? The idea is ludicrous. But no one seems to find it odd that that Pakistani Muslim terrorists who hate India and want it to give up control of Indian Kashmir would send two of its 10 terrorists to kill perhaps the only rabbi in Mumbai. As Newsweek reported during the siege, Given that Orthodox Jews were being held at gunpoint by mujahideen (sic), it seemed unlikely there would be survivors. Newsweek, like just about everyone else, simply assumes Islamists will murder Jews whenever and wherever possible.

They are right.

For years I have warned that great evils often begin with the murder of Jews, and therefore non-Jews who dismiss Jew-hatred (aka anti-Semitism, aka anti-Zionism), will learn too late that Jew- and Israel-haters only begin with Jews but never end with them. When Israeli Jews were almost the only targets of Muslim terrorists, the world dismissed it as a Jewish or Israeli problem. Then it became an American and European and Filipino and Thai and Indonesian and Hindu problem...

Word is out that President-elect Obama will nominate his close adviser, Susan Rice, as ambassador to the UN, and dignify both the institution and Rice by exalting the post to cabinet rank.

This is a trainwreck waiting to happen -- the main question being whether, when the train goes off the rails, Rice will be trying to drive the UN engine, or hanging on for dear life to the caboose. Oh -- and the other big question being just how much a bigger role for the UN will cost the average American, not only in terms of money tossed down the UN spiderholes, but also in terms of lives endangered, damage to the American economy, freedom curtailed, and support to those who would inflict on the U.S. the kind of carnage we have just witnessed in Bombay.

Multiple reports say that Rice is haunted by the Rwanda genocide, which took place in 1994 while she was handling the Africa portfolio for the Clinton administration National Security Council. In concert with the UN, where Kofi Annan was then head of peacekeeping, the U.S. sat it out. Hundreds of thousands were slaughtered. Since then, Rice has vowed "If I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required."...

Following is an excerpt from a TV report on Syrian President Bashar Al-Assas honoring released terrorist Samir Al-Kuntar, which aired on Syrian TV on November 24, 2008:

Anchor: President Bashar Al-Assad awarded released Lebanese prisoner Samir Al-Kuntar the Syrian decoration of the highest degree, out of appreciation for his record in the struggle, for his steadfastness, and for his patriotic and pan-Arab positions. President Al-Assad, who met with Samir Al-Kuntar and his brother Bassam, said that Al-Kuntar was not only the leader of the prisoners, but was also the leader among honorable free men, and that his adherence to Arab rights, despite all that he has been through, has made him a symbol of the struggle and freedom in Arab countries and throughout the world.

Al-Kuntar said he was happy and honored to meet the president and to be decorated by him. He added that the brave positions of Syria, under the leadership of President Al-Assad, and Al-Assad's constant support for the honorable resistance and his rejection of any unjust settlement constitutes a pillar of support for the people of the resistance and free men. This helps the prisoners to remain steadfast, despite their plight in the prisons of the Israeli occupation.

...Doctors working in a hospital where all the bodies, including that of the terrorists, were taken said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.

"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.

Corroborating the doctors' claims about torture was the information that the Intelligence Bureau had about the terror plan. "During his interrogation, Ajmal Kamal said they were specifically asked to target the foreigners, especially the Israelis," an IB source said...

...These examples are especially notable because they have nothing to do with Israel or Zionism. They expose the falsehood -- popular with prominent scholars like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of last year's best-selling book "The Israel Lobby" -- that hatred of Jews is not one of the great motivating factors in the Arab world's overall objections to Israel.

But these examples also raise a serious question about what passes for liberalism in the Arab world. Why bother listening to these voices on matters of economics -- much less politics, democracy or human rights -- if they also propagate hateful conspiracy theories?

There's another question: Over the past eight years, the United States has invested huge resources in attempting to bring democracy to the Middle East. But it's not clear whether that project will succeed as long as America's natural allies in the region remain themselves so profoundly irrational and illiberal.

What can be done? Here's a modest suggestion. The Egyptian state and the country's newspapers go out of their way to make a leper of any author who expresses even remote sympathy with Israel. Perhaps Western institutions could adopt a similar practice, refusing to invite to their various functions any editors who allow their pages to become Jew-hatred platforms. The cold shoulder alone might get these lunch-eaters to change their tune.

...Soon enough, there was Deepak Chopra, healer, New Age philosopher and digestion guru, advocate of aromatherapy and regular enemas, holding forth on CNN on the meaning of the attacks.

How the ebullient Dr. Chopra had come to be chosen as an authority on terror remains something of a mystery, though the answer may have something to do with his emergence in the recent presidential campaign as a thinker of advanced political views. Also commending him, perhaps, is his well known capacity to cut through all sorts of complexities to make matters simple. No one can fail to grasp the wisdom of a man who has informed us that "If you have happy thoughts, then you make happy molecules."

In his CNN interview, he was no less clear. What happened in Mumbai, he told the interviewer, was a product of the U.S. war on terrorism, that "our policies, our foreign policies" had alienated the Muslim population, that we had "gone after the wrong people" and inflamed moderates. And "that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay."...

This was the title of the Boston Phoenix's lead story last week, featuring on the cover an image of Mayor Menino serving up a new mosque on a silver platter to --- the story argues -- exactly the wrong people.

The Phoenix report is the first public account of how a well intentioned Mayor tried to help local African-American Muslims in Roxbury build a mosque, but wound up subsidizing what many in Boston worry is a Saudi-funded and controlled center with connections to radical Islam --- a mile from downtown.

Phoenix reporter David Bernstein sketches a complex tale of good intentions gone awry. At the center of Bernstein's account is Muhammad Ali-Salaam, who played a double role: as promoter and fundraiser for the mosque, while being paid as a city official to guard Boston's interests.

Twenty years ago, Bernstein says, the Muslim Council of Boston (MCB), a consortium of Sunni congregations in Roxbury, proposed to build a mosque on land held by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). Mayor Ray Flynn was supportive. He had worked as a probation officer years before and came to know people at Roxbury's Intervale Street mosque who he thought "could do good for their community."

But in 1996, when it became clear that the MCB could not raise enough money, the BRA's Ali-Salaam put forward another group -- the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) --- as the designated developers and helped the ISB get the $2 million dollar parcel for $175K.

Did the BRA ever vet the ISB? Bernstein describes ISB members as "largely of Saudi Arabian heritage." Simple due diligence would have found that Yusef al Quaradawi, then a registered ISB Trustee, called for the killing of Jews and homosexuals, that the ISB's website featured instructions on wife-beating, and that ISB Trustee Walid Fitahi called Jews the "murderers of prophets." Today, the ISB's founder is in prison as an al-Queda money runner. Even the BRA should know that a mosque that gets millions from the Saudis is unlikely to be an enthusiastic promoter of moderate Islam.

Now, Bernstein says, the Mayor hides from the issue in a "zone of silence," and doesn't show up at mosque events. The BRA, which is being sued to open its public records, seems to want the silence permanent: BRA officials recently told the judge that all relevant e-mails have disappeared.

At the height of the controversy over the leadership of the mosque, the ISB claimed that it had cleansed itself of objectionable characters. Fitahi actually resigned from the ISB board. But now, Bernstein tells us, Fitahi is back.

And Bernstein reports that the ISB recently turned the mosque over to the Muslim American Society (MAS). This is a group thought by some to be the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, sparked and now may guide the anti-West jihad.

Has the BRA put the mayor in an untenable position? Has the time come for a FinCom investigation of the BRA/ISB/MAS deal?