January 2009 Archives

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was all smiles in 2006 when he signed into law the toughest anti-global-warming regulations of any state. Mr. Schwarzenegger and his green supporters boasted that the regulations would steer California into a prosperous era of green jobs, renewable energy, and technological leadership. Instead, since 2007 -- in anticipation of the new mandates -- California has led the nation in job losses.

The regulations created a cap-and-trade system, similar to proposed federal global-warming measures, by limiting the CO2 that utilities, trucking companies and other businesses can emit, and imposed steep new taxes on companies that exceed the caps. Since energy is an input in everything that's produced, this will raise the cost of production inside California's borders.

Now, as the Golden State prepares to implement this regulatory scheme, employers are howling. It's become clear to nearly everyone that the plan's backers have underestimated its negative impact and exaggerated the benefits. "We've been sold a false bill of goods," is how Republican Assemblyman Roger Niello, who has been the GOP's point man on environmental issues in the legislature, put it to me...

Kudos to the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) for releasing a recording of SA Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fatima Hajaig's, revolting antisemitic remarks. The recording was played on e-TV last night (and 702 Talk Radio this morning) and the footage has since been uploaded to YouTube. It includes an interview with SAJBD Chairman, Zev Krengel...

...[Hajaig:] "They in fact control [America]. No matter which government comes in to power, whether Republican or Democratic, whether Barack Obama or George Bush. The control of America, just like the control of most Western countries, is in the hands of Jewish money and if Jewish money controls their country then you cannot expect anything else."

It is amazing to me that there is so much confusion over who the terrorists are, who wants war, and who wants peace.

I heard Benjamin Netanyahu, the person who could soon become Israel's new prime minister, speak this week at the Jerusalem Conference. The most pressing point that he talked about was that under no circumstances should Jerusalem be divided. Many believe that if Jerusalem were to divide, the terrorist group Hamas would set up a headquarters here, which would result in Iranian agents -- who also wish to see genocide against the Israelis -- setting up shop within the confines of Jerusalem.

It is amazing to me, as an American who travels the world on a near-constant basis, that there is so much confusion over who the terrorists are. Hamas is a terrorist organization that condones and facilitates suicide bombings and will kill every Jew on the planet if they have the chance. Meanwhile, Israel is an energetic democracy with a vibrant press. I could sit right here in Jerusalem and write bad things about Israel and Jews, and nothing would happen. Maybe I wouldn't get invited somewhere or would be called an anti-Semite, but that would be it. Neither the Jews nor the Israelis would harm me, though they likely would write bad things about me. I came to Israel with no press accreditation and at the airport they knew that I was a writer. Yet they let me in and have allowed me to freely roam the country. Today I was in very close proximity to Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu talked about how, in this very hotel, Rehavam Ze'evi had been murdered just a few floors above our heads. The security seemed incredibly lax by American standards. Bernard Lewis and other extremely smart people were there.

Israel is a free country that abides by the rule of law. By contrast, if a writer were to go to Gaza or Iran, for instance, and start writing bad words, he might wind up on the news, dead. Israel allows Christians and Arab Muslims to worship freely, while Hamas wants to see us all at the bottom of the sea. Hamas, supported by Iran, is clear about their goals: they want to wipe out Israel completely, utterly, with finality. But it's not just Israel that Hamas wants to kill; they want to kill all Jews everywhere. Complete genocide...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has cut off contacts with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) amid mounting concern about the Muslim advocacy group's roots in a Hamas-support network, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned.

The decision to end contacts with CAIR was made quietly last summer as federal prosecutors prepared for a second trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), an Islamic charity accused of providing money and political support to the terrorist group Hamas, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

CAIR and its chairman emeritus, Omar Ahmad, were named un-indicted co-conspirators in the HLF case. Both Ahmad and CAIR's current national executive director, Nihad Awad, were revealed on government wiretaps as having been active participants in early Hamas-related organizational meetings in the United States. During testimony, FBI agent Lara Burns described CAIR as a front organization.

Hamas is a US-designated foreign terrorist organization, and it's been illegal since 1995 to provide support to it within the United States.

The decision to end contacts with CAIR is a significant policy change for the FBI. For years, the FBI worked with the national organization and its state chapters to address Muslim community concerns about the potential for hate crimes and other civil liberty violations in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

But critics said the FBI improperly conferred legitimacy on CAIR by meeting with its officials, even as its own investigative files contained evidence of CAIR leaders' ties to Hamas.

Last autumn, FBI field offices began notifying state CAIR chapters that bureau officials could no longer meet with them until CAIR's national leadership in Washington had addressed issues raised by the HLF trial, according to people with knowledge of the notifications.

A human rights activist living in Australia has apologized to the Jewish community over his high-profile anti-Semitic remarks.

Maqsood Alshams, who had organized a conference on Palestine to be held Thursday at the New South Wales Parliament House, called off the event Wednesday after a furor erupted over his anti-Semitic remarks, including describing Jews as "motherf------ bastards."

Maqsood, a Bangladesh-born asylum seeker who founded the Asia Pacific Human Rights Institute, wrote the remarks in private e-mails.

"I am ashamed to say they were made at a time when I was intoxicated and angry," Alshams said. "Of course, there is no excuse for such remarks."...

Alan Dershowitz calls it "Hamas' CNN strategy." When Palestinians fire a rocket that kills a Jewish child, they win. When the Israelis fire back and inadvertently kill an Arab child, Palestinians win even more. "Look at my dead babies!" they cry to CNN, which eats it up and rings the cash register. Dead Arab children seem to be the life blood of BBC ghouls. Well, certain sorts of dead Arab children.

You see, the stipulated motive for this anti-Israeli outcry on the part of the media and the "human rights" activists -- the "deep concern" for murdered and maimed Arabs -- is a disprovable fraud. Look at the math.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims have been butchered, most of them by Arabs and Muslims. Israel's "contribution," including all the wars and the two Intifadas has been quite small -- in proportion to Arab deaths -- yet it disproportionately fires up the media and the "human rights" establishment.

In Iraq, on average, scores of Arabs are killed, assassinated daily. Every week one reads how a Sunni blew herself up and killed 40 or 60 Shiites. Babies included. Guess what: This is not headline news. Nobody makes posters of these dead Arab babies. CNN cameramen don't get excited over this particular carnage.

Algeria: In 1992, civil war broke out. Psychopathic Islamists with machetes hacked to death 110,000 Algerian civilians. No tears flowed down the cheeks of Western "rights activists." No pictures of these dead Arabs -- babies, children, women and men -- appeared on posters in European or American streets. No marches to protest on behalf of these murdered Arabs. Maybe it would be seen as Politically Incorrect to show a non-Western culture as barbarian. Can that possibly outweigh the souls of the dead Algerians? To "rights groups" -- yes it does.

The Syrian dictatorship killed 10-20,000 civilians in the town of Hama, in 1982. No photographers were allowed of course, but there were images of the dead on the internet. Yet you never saw any of that on a "human rights" poster.

In Darfur, the jihadis are slaughtering and enslaving African Muslims. Darfuris do get some notice, but only because the PC "Save Darfur" movement bends over backwards to hide the war's cause: age-old Arab imperialism. But guess what: the hard anti-Israeli left, with its Islamist allies, defends Khartoum and calls the Save Darfur movement a Zionist plot. (A Zionist plot to cover up Arab imperialism in Africa?)

All this does not begin to account for the millions of non-Arabs and non-Muslims murdered, enslaved, subjugated and/or dispossessed by jihadis -- in this century alone. Christians in Iraq, Sudan, and Egypt murdered and enslaved. Somehow their dead children don't evoke pain in the hearts of the anti-Israel crowd.

This is a fraud: These folks are not deeply concerned about Arab deaths. Their tears flow only when Jews (fighting back) cause these deaths. It's not about human rights. It's not about dead children. It's Western guilt, now focused on Jews.

Having declared themselves "anguished by the events unfolding in Israel and Gaza" and "recognizing the needs of all peoples...for dignity, peace, safety, and security," sixty local religious leaders, professors of theology, peace activists, and assorted luminaries banded together last week to call for "an immediate end to the Israel's military campaign in Gaza." The group of prominent Muslims, Christians, and Jews issued the joint statement to anyone listening, and chided the United States "to intercede to help reestablish a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel." For some balance, they urged Hamas "to end all rocket attacks on Israel."

This ecumenical group, apparently not significantly "anguished" by the preceding six years in which Hamas indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets into Israel, chose this particular time -- at the height of the successful Israeli counterattack on Hamas -- to vent on "the painful history of the Palestinian conflict" and declare that "violence only begets more violence, hatred, and retaliation," thus putting Israel and Hamas in the same category.

Moral equivalency at its worst.

Among the signatories to this declaration of anguish are the leaders of the Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church and the Unitarian Universalists. In other words, the leftist anti-Israel wing of American Christianity.

Reverend Rodney Peterson, executive director of the Boston Theological Institute signed the document. A few years ago Rev. Petersen took to the airwaves to promote his Presbyterian General Assembly's divestment campaign against Israel. At the time both the reverend and his church were very upset that Israel had erected that long security wall to prevent terrorist infiltration.

Reverend Peter Weaver of the United Methodist Church likewise lent his name to the petition. The UMC was also heavily involved in the divestment campaign against Israel. Last year the church published a long list of companies- mostly defense and construction companies -- to boycott because they worked with the Israel Defense Forces. Bishop Thomas Shaw, head of the Episcopal Archdiocese of Massachusetts, is featured prominently in the petition. A few years back the Bishop put on his "loudest, most colorful robes" to stand in protest in front of the Israeli Consulate in Park Square against "Israel's oppression of the Palestinians."

The United Church of Christ is also a signatory. It was just over a year ago that the UCC's Old South Church hosted Archbishop Desmond Tutu's anti-Israel forum, parade, and outdoor rally in Copley Square. Pax Christi, the "activist wing" of the Catholic Church, is prominently featured as well.

The Islamic clergy is well represented. There were about a half dozen directors or trustees of the Islamic Society of Boston Culture Center (ISBCC). Especially Salwa Abd-Allah of the Muslim American Society of Boston and the ISBCC. The ISBCC, otherwise known as the Roxbury Mosque, is the Islamic center that sued The David Project, Boston Herald, FOX News and anyone else that brought attention to its ties to Saudi Arabia, Wahabism or the fact that an ISBCC trustee, Walid Fitahi, called Jews the "murderers of prophets," or that the ISB's founder is in federal prison for operating as a money runner for Al-Qaeda.

Nine rabbis are featured prominently in this declaration of ecumenical declaration of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, especially Rabbi David Gordis. Yes, that Rabbi Gordis, former president of Hebrew College, Prozdor Academy, etc. So was Rabbi Arthur Green, the Rector of Hebrew College's Rabbinical School.

As an aside, on the many days that I dropped my kids off at Prozdor, I never fathomed that the presiding rabbi was so concerned with "a lasting peace that addresses and promotes the national aspirations of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples." (Emphasis added -- for good reason). Anymore than I could envision a rabbi, whose job it is to train rabbinical students, joining the aforementioned Christian and Muslim personalities to urge "Israel immediately to end its military campaign in Gaza" as well as "a lifting of the blockade on Gaza as to all non-military goods."

As if to rub it in, Alan Solomont, chief Democratic fundraiser for President Barack Hussein Obama, signed the petition. So did Rabbi Barbara Penzer, past president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis.

We shouldn't be surprised by Muslim clergy and leftist Christian ministers for initiating such an egregious misguided petition. But there is something monumentally inappropriate when sixteen self-proclaimed "Members and leaders of the ...Jewish communities of Greater Boston" lend their names, titles, and the prestige of their pulpits to a public declaration equating Hamas terror rocket attacks against Jewish civilians with the Israeli counterattack designed to stop them.

Pilar Rahola is a Spanish politician, journalist and activist. She is a passionate defender of the United States and Israel and an indefatigable fighter against anti-Semitism. All these despite being ideologically from the left. Her articles are published in Spain and throughout some of the most important newspapers in Latin America. She is the recipient of major awards by Jewish organizations.

I came across this speech and felt that it was worthwhile placing it in my blog...

...With Hirsi Ali abroad, the torch passed to Geert Wilders. At times, it seems that he is the last prominent Dutch figure willing to speak bluntly about the perils of fundamentalist Islam. The same people who demonized Fortuyn have done their best to stifle Wilders. In April 2007, intelligence and security officials called him in and demanded that he tone down his rhetoric on Islam. Last February, the Minister of Justice subjected him to what he described as another "hour of intimidation." The announcement that he was making a film about Islam only led his enemies to turn up the heat. Even before Fitna was released early last year, Doekle Terpstra, a leading member of the Dutch establishment, called for mass rallies to protest the movie. Terpstra organized a coalition of political, business, academic, and religious leaders, the sole purpose of which was to try to freeze Wilders out of public debate. Dutch cities are riddled with terrorist cells and crowded with fundamentalist Muslims who cheered 9/11 and idolize Osama bin Laden, but for Terpstra and his political allies, the real problem was the one Member of Parliament who wouldn't shut up. "Geert Wilders is evil," pronounced Terpstra, "and evil has to be stopped." Fortuyn, van Gogh, and Hirsi Ali had been stopped; now it was Wilders's turn.

But Wilders -- who for years now has lived under 24-hour armed guard -- would not be gagged. Thus the disgraceful decision to put him on trial. In Dutch Muslim schools and mosques, incendiary rhetoric about the Netherlands, America, Jews, gays, democracy, and sexual equality is routine; a generation of Dutch Muslims are being brought up with toxic attitudes toward the society in which they live. And no one is ever prosecuted for any of this. Instead, a court in the Netherlands -- a nation once famous for being an oasis of free speech -- has now decided to prosecute a member of the national legislature for speaking his mind. By doing so, it proves exactly what Wilders has argued all along: that fear and "sensitivity" to a religion of submission are destroying Dutch freedom.

John Conyers, D-MI, is likely to become new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Last year, just for practice, he held a mock impeachment hearing of President Bush in anticipation of the real thing.

But Conyers has other plans as well--especially on behalf of his Muslim constituency. Just take a look at his House Resolution 288:..

...Terrorism suspects who have been held but released from Guantánamo Bay are increasingly returning to the fight against the United States and its allies, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Sixty-one detainees released from the U.S. Navy base prison in Cuba are believed to have rejoined the fight, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, citing data from December. That's up from 37 as of March, he said...

...Demi Moore and her boy toy Ashton Kutcher have put together a YouTube video called "The Pledge," in which a cast of celebrities and semi-celebs pledge their service to Obama...

...Yes, yes; helping hungry people and being a better parent are good things. But weren't they just as good a year ago? Eight years ago? Did Eva Longoria really have to wait post-Bush to plant those 500 trees? Had Karl Rove stolen her shovel?

And what happens to these pledges if - Chris Matthews forbid - Obama loses in 2012? Will these celebrities go back to beating their kids, flushing their commodes and drinking their Fiji from a bottle?

America was a nation worthy of our pledges and our passion long before Moore started dating high school kids. And Obama's success didn't make America great. It's a reflection of our nation's greatness.

...Palestinian civilians, meanwhile, have accused Hamas of forcing them to stay in homes from which gunmen shot at Israeli soldiers during the recent hostilities in Gaza, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported Thursday.

The Italian paper also quoted a doctor at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital as disputing the number of Palestinians said to have been killed in the campaign.

"It's possible that the death toll in Gaza was 500 or 600 at the most, mainly youths aged 17 to 23 who were enlisted by Hamas - who sent them to their deaths," he said...

...The Gaza doctor was further quoted as saying: "Perhaps it is like Jenin in 2002. At the beginning they spoke about 1,500 dead, and at the end it turned out to be only 54 - of whom 45 were militants."

He was referring to the Israel Defense Forces battle with Palestinian militants in the West Bank town that took place during Operation Defensive Shield at the height of the second intifada.

...Brig. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg said the civilians were sent by Hamas to transfer weapons to gunmen during the offensive. He also accused the Islamist militant group of booby-trapping many of the civilians' homes.

"Entire families in Gaza lived on top of a barrel of explosives for months without knowing," Eisenberg said...

...A Tal al-Hawa resident told the newspaper's reporter, "Armed Hamas men sought out a good position for provoking the Israelis. There were mostly teenagers, aged 16 or 17, and armed. They couldn't do a thing against a tank or a jet. They knew they are much weaker, but they fired at our houses so that they could blame Israel for war crimes."

The reporter for the Italian newspaper also quoted reporters in the Strip who told of Hamas' exaggerated figures, "We have already said to Hamas commanders -- why do you insist on inflating the number of victims?"...

...Cremonesi interviewed Gazans who echoed Israel's insistence of how Hamas gunmen used civilians as human shields. One Gazan recalled civilians in Gaza shouting at Hamas and Islamic Jihad men, "Go away, go away from here! Do you want the Israelis to kill us all? Do you want our children to die under their bombs? Take your guns and missiles with you."

"Traitors, collaborators with Israel, spies of Fatah, cowards! The soldiers of the holy war will punish you. And in any case you will all die, like us. Fighting the Zionist Jews we are all destined for paradise. Do you not wish to die with us?" the religious fanatics of Hamas reportedly responded.

Other Palestinians told Cremonesi of Hamas operatives donning paramedic uniforms and commandeering ambulances. A woman identified as Um Abdullah, 48, spoke of Hamas using UN buildings as launch pads for rockets.

Cremonesi reported that he had difficultly gathering evidence as the local population was terrified of Hamas.

...Under the Obama-Biden plan, a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel. They will not build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and support the Iraqi security forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away from sectarianism...

...Wow. Man of action. Dramatic shift from the Bush policy of dragging the thing out as long as possible, I guess. Good thing Bush ended the Iraq war and had the exit plans and Afghanistan review in the works. That should make it easier...

At a rally of 10,000 Muslim men in England last week, Lauren Booth called to Israel: "You are the criminals that we detest!"

Booth, sister of the wife of UK Middle East envoy Tony Blair, spoke at an anti-Israel rally held last Sunday, Jan. 11, in the large town of Blackburn, 35 kilometers north of Manchester. An estimated 10,000 people, mostly young Muslim men, were in attendance.

Sources in England report that the rally was totally ignored by national media, including the BBC, despite the fact that it was "probably the largest Islamic protest march in the UK since the Bradford book-burnings against Salman Rushdie and free speech twenty years ago." So writes far-right politician Nick Griffin...

...Griffin later filed a complaint with the local police constable...

...His speech was very revealing. He tried to be large but he kept being petty. He could not move the audience back enough to see the big picture.

Worse, it was also a rambling speech because it had no central theme. And that reflects not a thoughtful man with great vision, but rather a man who is suddenly thrust into power who hasn't a clue. He is clever, but not wise...

...Some stock American History 101, some standard bootstraps and strong America rhetoric, and a string of other platitudes and sniping entirely unsupported by anything he has said or done or said he will do ... because once you get past the vague "hope" and change" promises, everything else has either been put on hold, sent back for reconsideration, or as is the Obamist wont, abandoned in favor of someone else's ideas. Then there was the fact that much of it was also entirely divorced from anything representing the realities of Washington and the world...

The day before Stefan and I arrived I interviewed Kamil Mruwi, a short, energetic, impatient man with a clipped and brittle manner. Mruwi was editor of the Lebanese newspaper, El Hayet.

"Now that the Jews have a State," I said, "how do you propose to defeat it?"

"The Jews' problems have just begun. The Arabs are a patient people. We will not always be in a shooting war with the Jews but we will be in a state of war with them forever. The Jews can be destroyed by a boycott of their trade. Who will buy their products? Not America, and not England. The Jews can only survive through trade and export to the Arab countries -- and Arabs will not deal with the Jews. The Jews will starve. War will come. Maybe not for five or ten years, but when it does, the Jews will be swept into the sea like a tidal wave. They will disappear like Sodom and Gomorrah. You will see."

Stefan [Carlson's Nazi companion. -S] arrived itching to spend the money the Mufti had given him.

"How about meeting those Germans you wrote me about?" I said, after greeting him.

"Yallah!"

We took a tram to the German Hospital on rue George Picot...A group of give men got off the tram and walked toward us. We shook hands. All were originally escapees from various British prisoner-of-war camps who had fought with the Arabs. I was interested in their leader, Gunther Elmar von Hardenberg, once a major in the Wehrmacht. We were soon seated together at lunch while Stefan went off with the other Nazis...

..."What is your association?" I asked.

"The Association for Christian German War Refugees. Whenever a new German comes to Beirut I screen him personally, then register him with the Beirut police as a friend of the Arab cause. The police issue an identity card and all is in order."

Von Hardenberg was in his thirties, a tall, lean, handsome man. He showed me a photograph of himself receiving a second Iron Cross. "I was against Hitler, who wanted to attack Russia at the same time as attacking the West," he said. "We militarists knew Russia better than Hitler." Von Hardenberg had succeeded in escaping to Rumania with a group of anti-Hitler Nazis and eventually was captured by the British. Sent to Palestine as a prisoner, he claimed he was given a free hand to travel among the Arab States. "We Germans have to work with somebody," he said. "We cannot work with the Americans and we do not like the Russians or French. It is possible to work with the English..."

I saw von Hardenberg many times. He told me of frequent trips that German officers were making to Beirut, and stated that they were finding positions in various Arab armies. These Germans belonged to a secret group called Deutsches Hilfskomittee for den Nahen Osten, German Aid Committee for the Near East, of which he was chairman, von Hardenberg told me.

"Is it with the Lebanese army that the Germans are finding positions?" I asked.

"No. Lebanon is not militarist."

"Then I would say it was Egypt."

"It is Syria," von Hardenberg answered. "There are already many Germans working with the Syrians as trainers and technicians."

We stopped off in Madrid for 3 days to decompress. On Saturday night, there was a demonstration that can't be described as other than anti-Semitic in the Playa Del Sol, near our hotel. There must have been 10,000 people there, chanting awful stuff about how Jews took the Nazi examples and applied them in Gaza,etc,etc. There was not a single counter-protester to be seen. The crowd was about 50% Arabs, 50% Spaniards. It was organized by the PA, our "peace partners." Ha!

I can tell you that I was scared sh*t, and I don't scare easy, but I felt I just had to experience something like this. Trust me, nothing you see in Boston is anywhere near this stuff.

Hamas militiamen have rounded up hundreds of Fatah activists on suspicion of "collaboration" with Israel during Operation Cast Lead, Fatah members in the Gaza Strip told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

They said the Hamas crackdown on Fatah intensified after the cease-fire went into effect early Sunday morning.

The Fatah members and eyewitnesses said the detainees were being held in school buildings and hospitals that Hamas had turned into make-shift interrogation centers.

Hamas has also renewed house arrest orders that were issued against thousands of Fatah officials and activists in the Gaza Strip shortly after the military operation started.

A Fatah official in Ramallah told the Post that at least 100 of his men had been killed or wounded as a result of the massive Hamas crackdown. Some had been brutally tortured, he added.

The official said that the perpetrators belonged to Hamas's armed wing, Izaddin Kassam, and to the movement's Internal Security Force.

According to the official, at least three of the detainees had their eyes put out by their interrogators, who accused them of providing Israel with wartime information about the location of Hamas militiamen and officials...

Representatives of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission expressed their "distress'" after The Daily Telegraph sent them photographs [Crack investigating there, my British friends! You really know how to 'dig up' a story! -S]of the latest damage at Gaza War cemetery.

The damage is much worse than that caused by Israeli forces in 2006 in an incident that briefly soured British-Israeli relations and led eventually to the Jewish state paying £90,000 in compensation...

...The staff who tend the cemetery, normally an oasis of calm and well-maintained order in the otherwise chaotic Gaza Strip, had to flee for their lives.

"I sent all the others away because the shelling got too heavy," said Ibrahim Jerradeh, 71, who was made MBE after tending the grave since 1958.

"Only when it got really close and started to hit the cemetery did I leave."

"There were no people here, just graves, so why does Israel fire on this place?" he said.

"It is just a graveyard for all people, why cannot Israel respect that?"...

...The following can be attributed to Hina Shamsi, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project:

"There is absolutely no direct evidence that ISNA has any ties to terrorist organizations, including Hamas, and any implication to the contrary is nothing but guilt by association created by the U.S. government through its illegal and false accusations. In fact, after the government made its original public smear, it admitted to ISNA's lawyers in private that the government has no evidence of wrongdoing by the organization...

Hamas children's propaganda film reinforces illusion of war victory

by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

On the first day of its ceasefire with Israel, Hamas has added a new element to its propaganda campaign claiming that it won the war in Gaza. An animated film for children on Hamas TV depicts Israeli soldiers as cowards who are afraid to enter Gaza. They cry, "Mommy, Mommy," as they head into battle, where they are all killed by Hamas gunfire.

The video ends with an Israeli soldier's blood splattered on the screen, accompanied by a caption that reads, "Whoever dares, let him come! Gaza is his certain death."

Observers have reported that hundreds of Hamas fighters were killed in the conflict, while Israel lost 10 soldiers in combat and three civilians in rocket attacks. However, in the attempt to present this war as a victory, Hamas TV reported today that Hamas lost only 48 fighters and killed 80 Israelis, including 49 soldiers.

This film aims to reinforce the victory myth that Hamas is trying to sell to its people.

Dear friends,

we didn't expect what you see now in the picture. This is the square of the Italian Parliament in Rome, Piazza Montecitorio: you can see the Palace on top of the square, and in front a lot of Israeli flags.That was Wednesday night, January 14, from 6,30 to 9,30 pm. What you cannot see here, is the extraordinary number and variety of members of the Parliament, about 100 from all political sides, that took the stage during our marathon: for about three hours we have been speaking about the role of Israel, its right to self defense, its moral height, its fight in name of all of us, of our civilization and values, against the wild hate of the Islamic jihad represented by Hamas. It seems to me that for the first time in the too long history of the arab Israeli conflict, apart from a minority of crazy leftists and fascists that took the street on anti-Semitic slogans, we have obtained a huge consensus about one critical point: this is not an episode of a local conflict, there is nothing in it that reminds the land for peace theme that has characterized the Palestinian issue. This is an episode of the attack agains the western world, and Iran has a lot to do with it.

The Dalai Lama, a lifelong champion of non-violence on Saturday candidly stated that terrorism cannot be tackled by applying the principle of ahimsa because the minds of terrorists are closed.

"It is difficult to deal with terrorism through non-violence," the Tibetan spiritual leader said delivering the Madhavrao Scindia Memorial Lecture here.

He also termed terrorism as the worst kind of violence which is not carried by a few mad people but by those who are very brilliant and educated.

"They (terrorists) are very brilliant and educated...but a strong ill feeling is bred in them. Their minds are closed," the Dalai Lama said.

He said that the only way to tackle terrorism is through prevention. The head of the Tibetan government-in-exile left the audience stunned when he said "I love President George W Bush." He went on to add how he and the US President instantly struck a chord in their first meeting unlike politicians who take a while to develop close ties.

...Called the "Mass Protest Against Israel's Attacks on Gaza," its institutional sponsors included, as indicated at ChicagoIndyMedia, the national offices or local affiliates of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, American Friends Service Committee, Council on American-Islamic Relations, International Solidarity Movement, Muslim American Society, and Muslim Student Association.

And here are some photographs from the event...

Al Arabiya reporter Hannan al-Masri is live on the air in Gaza when she is told that Hamas has just fired rockets from inside the Al Arabiya studio building, news which apparently strikes her as quite humorous.

Here's a video with clips from Hamas TV, featuring children singing a song of praise for Qassam rockets, followed by a visit with creepy child host Saraa and Assud the giant Jew-eating rabbit in his hospital room, shortly before the whiny carnivorous bunny died from his IDF-inflicted injuries.

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), will deliver a prayer at the National Cathedral during the National Prayer Service on January 21st. The event is part of the festivities for the inauguration of Barack Obama, which occurs January 20. A convert to Islam, Mattson directs the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary.

ISNA has close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist group, and was named an un-indicted co-conspirator in U.S. v Holy Land Foundation, a case that uncovered covert financing of the terrorist group Hamas. Since her election as ISNA president in 2006, Mattson's apologias for the radical Wahhabi sect of Islam have gained a much wider audience...

Three massive gas reservoirs have been discovered 80 kilometers off the Haifa coast, at the Tamar prospect, Noble Energy Inc. announced on Sunday.

The Tamar-1 well, located in approximately 5,500 feet of water, was drilled to a total depth of 16,076 feet. The thickness and quality of the reservoirs found were greater than anticipated at the location.

Charles D. Davidson, Noble Energy's chairman, president and CEO, said in an announcement that his company was "extremely excited by the results. This is one of the most significant prospects that we have ever tested and appears to be the largest discovery in the company's history."

Speaking on Army Radio Sunday morning, an exhilarated Yitzhak Tshuva, owner of the Delek Group Ltd, one of the owners of the well, called the discovery "one of the biggest in the world," promising that the find would present a historic land mark in the economic independence of Israel...

MORAL CRIMINALS

About Gideon Levy, Robert Fisk and the far left as the propoganda depatment of HAMAS and AL-KAIDA

Ben Dror Yemini 17/1/2009

On December 28th 2008, a few days after Hamas violated the cease fire agreement with Israel, increased its missile fire on Israel and by doing so forced the Israeli government into the operation we are witnessing, Al Hayat published that the government of Gaza is going to impose Sharia law.

The Israeli operation is postponing the implementation, but very soon new punishment measures ranging from chopping of hands, lashings and executions, will be introduced in Gaza. The Taliban has made a comeback in Gaza. Hamastan is not alone in its desire for Sharia law. The chant heard in demonstrations in London and other locations is "Allah Akbar." This shouldn't come as a surprise. 40% of Muslims in Britain support the implementation of Sharia law in Britain.

The big question is however, what are the likes of Robert Fisk, Naomi Klein and Gideon Levy doing with this crowd. "We are against Sharia law" they will tell us. That's true -- they are against it. "The disagreement with Hamas should have been solved in another way" they will excuse themselves. "Israel should have accepted the results of the Palestinian people's vote" because that is democracy -- accepting the Palestinians' right to elect the own leadership.

They add that "if only Israel wouldn't have blockaded Gaza. If only Israel was generous towards the Palestinians, especially those in the Gaza Strip, and allowed them free passage, work, schooling, medical treatment etc. etc. If only Israel would have done one of the above, this whole conflict would have been avoided. Hamas wouldn't be forced to fire rockets at Israel and all the bloodshed would never happen."

Global opinion seems to think in the same way, the West as a whole and especially the Zionists are the oppressors. Israel massacres Palestinians. Globalization and national statehood exploit the wretched and these oppressed people must retaliate.

These are the main claims of the lie industry and they should be exposed.

A Palestinian Authority Arab who stoned cars in Samaria was killed by one of his own rocks, police have concluded. A Jewish man held in connection with the death has been released.

The Arab teenager hurled heavy stones at Israeli-owned vehicles along a Samaria highway last Tuesday evening. He managed to hit one car, which was driven by a resident of the nearby town of Emmanuel.

Fearing further attacks, the driver fired a single shot in the air to frighten away the stone-thrower. He then contacted local security officers to report both the attack and his own response.

A short time later, Israeli paramedics received a report of an Arab teen found unconscious and badly wounded next to a highway. The teen suffered a serious head injury that appeared to be a bullet wound. Medical personnel rushed to the scene but were unable to save the young Arab, who died a short time later.

Police originally believed that the resident of Emmanuel who reported firing in the air had in fact fired at his attacker, killing him. The man was arrested and questioned. However, an initial forensic report showed that the attacker had not been killed by a bullet, and the detainee was released.

A final forensic report, released over the weekend, showed that the attacker was killed when a stone he threw hit the car driven by the man from Emmanuel. The stone hit the car's tire and bounced back at high speed, hitting the attacker and leaving him with a fatal head injury.

At 12:40 I left Tel Aviv and drove, at high speed, in the direction of Beer Sheva. I entered the city, turned to the right. I reached a T-junction just before the square with the aircraft at its center. I was waiting for the red light to change when I heard on radio 2 network "A warning siren in Beer Sheva" [He had been informed by forum posters about the radio station to tune to for warnings in the area. -S]. I got out of the car. I looked around and saw no one getting out of their cars and heard no siren. As I got back into my car, the siren went off. There was a 6 second delay between the time I heard the announcement on the radio and the time I heard the actual alarm. I killed the engine and dashed off like crazy towards a row of houses nearby. I entered into a courtyard, saw a door and went in. Inside a man was standing. I said: "Sorry to barge in like that. May I?" He said: "Yes, of course, get into the fortified room (Mamad), hurry up, fast."

I went into the shelter with a family of complete strangers, a grandfather, a grandmother, a young man and his crying little daughter. A few seconds later we heard a very loud boom that shook the entire house. The child started crying frantically.

Three minutes later we left the room. Into the home a man burst in, holding his 16 year old daughter who was hysterical. They had been outside, lying on the ground, and heard the very loud explosion very close. The family managed to quiet down the girl. We gradually settled down in this man's house, a man I don't know at all.

Amid all that mayhem, I forgot to ask the family's name. I just thanked them. If one of them happens to read this forum, a huge thank you.

It is a miserable sort of existence they get to live, these people in the south of Israel. Hearing about it is hugely different from experiencing it first hand. It is a feeling of utter powerlessness waiting for a rocket that no one knows where or when it will get you. Some people just lay down in the middle of the intersection. If the rocket had fallen there, nothing could protect them.

When the father of the family where I had taken shelter heard I was from Tel Aviv, and that it was my first time in the city, he said: "You see now what is like? Tell them, tell your friends, your friends in Tel Aviv, tell them so they'll have an idea what it is like for us, down here."

I want to thank this family, into whose home I barged, where I lived a fraction of the nightmare they have to live with, day in day out. It only toughens my opinion; let them flatten Gaza. There is no way, simply no way these terrorists can be allowed to continue to possess these missiles.

On January 10, the war between Israel and Hamas became a global conflict. No longer confined to the Gaza Strip, the fighting spread to cities around the world: what were billed as "anti-war" demonstrations from Los Angeles to Copenhagen and beyond were in fact overtly pro-Hamas demonstrations, and on Saturday, January 10 there was a unprecedented eruption of violence and extremism in dozens of European and American cities, surpassing anything seen at anti-war rallies in recent years...

Concerns raised about potential Hamas fundraising event in Boston

Boston, Mass - 01/15/2009

Dennis Hale, President of the Boston based Citizens for Peace and Tolerance (CPT) - an interfaith group of Christians, Muslims and Jews - warned today that an upcoming Muslim American Society of Boston (MAS Boston) fundraising event advertised to donors as humanitarian aid to Gaza may instead channel funds to the terror group, Hamas.

"The January 17th fundraiser is collecting money for the Gaza operations of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), a group previously accused of transferring funds to Hamas," Hale said.

Hamas is an Islamic supremacist organization that belongs to the Palestine branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is considered to be the origin for most of the modern jihad movements. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and uses terrorism and murder to achieve its goals. It is an openly genocidal organization that has explicitly and continuously called for the murder of all Jews worldwide. The founding charter of Hamas proclaims that peace will come to Earth only when all the Jews are killed:

" ... as long as Islam does not take its rightful place on the world arena everything will continue to change for the worst...The Last Hour [redemption] won't come until the Muslims fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them..."

"Virtually the entire civilized world, from Barack Obama to the government of Egypt, agrees that Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce terrorism against Israeli civilians is the root cause of the horrible violence in Gaza and Israel," said Hale. "For the Muslim American Society to raise funds for a Hamas-linked charity in the heart of Boston is an affront to the traditions of liberty and tolerance on which this city was built."

Hale pointed to two clear financial connections between the IRW charity and Hamas:

• Islamic Relief Worldwide is a founding member of the Union of Good - designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a terrorist entity. The Union of Good functions as an umbrella coalition for a network of Islamic charities led by the radical cleric Yusuf al Qaradawi. Treasury documents state: "The leadership of Hamas created the Union of Good in 2000 in order to facilitate the transfer of funds to Hamas."
• In 2006, IRW's Project Director in Gaza, Iyaz Ali, was arrested by the Israeli Security Agency and confessed to providing material support for Hamas as part of his work with IRW. The Israeli Prime Minister's Office asserts that "The IRW's activities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip are carried out by social welfare organizations controlled and staffed by Hamas operatives."

"This is not the first time that MAS Boston, which has become the public face of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), has generated controversy over its ties to Hamas fundraising," said Hale. Several MAS/ISB leaders, past and present, helped raise funds for the Holy Land Foundation - a recently convicted Hamas charity founded in the U.S. by Hamas second-in-command Mousa Abou Marzouq.

• MAS National founder Jamal Badawi, who is also a Trustee of the controversial Roxbury mosque, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against the Holy Land Foundation. Joining him on the co-conspirator list is Abdurrahman Alamoudi, founder of the ISB, presently in jail on terrorism charges.
• The current president of MAS Boston, Hossam al Jabri, is listed in FBI trial evidence as a large donor to the HLF.
• Since 2000, ISB/MAS have transferred thousands of dollars to the Holy Land Foundation and at least $168,000 to Islamic Relief Worldwide.

Citizens for Peace and Tolerance first raised concerns about the ISB and MAS in 2004, predicting that the organization's massive new building in Roxbury would be used to radicalize Boston's historically moderate Muslim community and to give aid to radical causes worldwide. "It gives us no pleasure to be proven correct in this matter," said Hale.

PRESS RELEASE 01/15/2009 Boston, Mass.

For Immediate Release
Citizens for Peace and Tolerance (CPT)
Contact: Dennis Hale
(781) 799-7245
cpt@hatefreeamerica.org

The government of Yemen will relocate a Jewish community for safety reasons.

A Jewish man from Yemen's Amran province was murdered last month, and members of the 266-person community have been the victim of verbal and stone-throwing assaults since the Israeli invasion of Gaza began, according to Yemeni press reports.

The Yemeni government has allocated buildings to house the Jews in the capital of Sana'a, and also will give each of the approximately 50 families being relocated two million riyals, the equivalent of about $10,000. The relocation is scheduled to take place Sunday.

The government said the houses and other property of the relocated Jews in Amran will remain theirs, and they can sell it if they wish.

The Amran Jews will join the 66 Jews who moved to Sana'a in 2006 after a Shi'ite rebel leader in the northern portion of the country evicted them from his province. The two communities are the only Jews remaining in the African [sic] country. About 50,000 Yemeni Jews immigrated to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet in 1949 and 1950

Following are excerpts from a Friday sermon delivered by Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on January 9, 2009...

Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi: "I address my first message to the aggressor Jews, those arrogant plunderers, who act arrogantly toward the servants of Allah in the land of Allah...

"In the past, the Jews spread corruption in the land twice, and Allah punished them both times, by setting as masters upon them people who tormented them, humiliated them, and made them bow their heads. This is what they did in history, and it is well known that Allah set as master upon them the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, who took them into captivity. He destroyed their homes, razed their temples, and burned their Torah, and took them into captivity in Babylon for 70 years. Then they repeated their deeds, so He set the Romans as masters upon them...

"The Jews have lived as dhimmis in our land for a long time, and no Muslim violated the covenant with them...

..."We Wait for the Revenge of Allah to Descend Upon Them [i.e. the Jews] -- And, Allah Willing, It Will Be By Our Own Hands"...

..."It Is America That Supports Israel, Whether Right Or Wrong... We Say to the West, And Especially To America, That Allah Will Not Let You Support... Inequity Against Justice"; "The USSR Collapsed Before [The West and America's] Eyes... According to the Law of Allah, They Should Collapse As Well, Unless They Pull Themselves Together"...

..."My Message to the Muslim Rulers In General, And to the Arab Rulers in Particular, Is That They Should Be God-Fearing With Regard to Their Nation -- The Peoples Have Spoken, But the Rulers Have Closed Their Ears"...

..."Marks and Spencer... Regularly Dedicates its Saturday Revenue To Israel... Starbucks Is Zionist.... My Brothers, Put the Boycott Against The Nation's Enemies Into Action"...

..."Oh Allah, Take This Oppressive, Jewish, Zionist Band Of People; Oh Allah, Do Not Spare A Single One Of Them; Oh Allah, Count Their Numbers, And Kill Them, Down To The Very Last One"...

...The US has been on its trail for some time now, but could not do much because the JuD had sprouted roots in almost all areas of Pakistani life. The Mumbai attacks resurrected US security agencies' interest in this outfit.

And the reason for that, sources said, was that Saeed's family had been making determined tracks to the US -- to live there as imams and preach and raise funds for jihad.

The evidence for that came in bits and pieces. The first to land in the US was Muhammad Masood, Saeed's brother, who arrived in 1987 on a J-1 exchange visitor visa. He lived in the Boston area, working odd jobs until he started teaching at the Islamic Academy of New England at the Islamic Center of New England in Sharon, Massachusetts. Masood was arrested in November 2006 and charged with visa fraud and other unnamed crimes.

The second family member to arrive was Abdul Hannan, Saeed's brother-in-law (married to Masood's sister). Hannan arrived in the late-1990s, coming to the US through another member of their organisation, Muhammad Khalil, who is serving time currently in a US jail. By 1998, Hannan himself was in jail, also in Massachusetts.

He was out by 2002, and for the next couple of years floated around another US state, Rhode Island, also as an imam, before returning, as imam to Massachusetts. Hannan was again arrested in November 2006 with his brother-in-law Masood. So far, there were two members of Saeed's family in US jails.

The third member, another brother of Saeed named Hamid arrived in the US in 2001 for a programme at Harvard University. He returned to the US later in the year and became an imam at the Islamic Society of Greater Worcester. In October 2007, Hamid was deported to Pakistan, on visa irregularities. But one of the reasons, said sources, was that the US discovered that he used to run a safe house for LeT terrorists in Moon Chowk, Lahore, and that his imam activities in the US were all about teaching jihad to youngsters there...

Recently, reports have been accumulating saying that Hamas elements are confiscating food donations sent into Gaza during the current operation. The reports point in particular to the confiscation of flour and its sale, often at outrageous prices.

Today (11 Jan.), in a Hamas internet forum, surfers complained about the confiscations of flour donations in Dir-al'Balech by Hamas elements. There is also a description of how Hamas transfers the donations to its own warehouses, and distributes them to only two bakeries in the city - Albana Bakery and Al-Tzalah Union Bakery - both of which belong to Hamas. (See following screen capture)

IMAGINE A MUSIC VIDEO teaching kids that bombs are more precious than children. This is not fantasy - this is the message of an actual Hamas TV music video. After a five-year-old finds out that her mother wore a bomb belt to a suicide terror attack, she sings: "Now I know what was more precious than us." She then swears to follow in her mother's footsteps, as a suicide bomber.

This is just one example of the wide range of hateful and abusive messages on Hamas TV, designed to indoctrinate children to Hamas values. Children are taught to value violence, hatred and Islamic supremacy, and that seeking Martyrdom for Allah is the highest value, bringing "honor and glory."

PMW has created a five-minute compilation of key representative segments from Hamas TV that document this indoctrination of children.

In addition to the video featuring the daughter of a suicide bomber, this collection includes a music video depicting a boy's transition from childhood to adulthood, climaxing in his heroic Martyrdom death; a puppet show promising world Islamic supremacy, death of infidels and the conversion of the White House into a mosque; and a talk show segment featuring kindergarten kids marching in military formation, brandishing weapons and calling for Jihad and Martyrdom.

Also included are statements by Hillary Clinton from her news conference with PMW in the US Senate, where she criticized Palestinian schoolbooks and television that "profoundly poison the minds of these children."

This is the second in a series of PMW background briefings on Hamas ideology.

Click to see PMW's Background Brief #1: Extermination of Jews

WAR CRIMES AND THE FAILURE OF TRUTH

Israel will never kill as many innocent people as Europe has. So who are they to preach to us?

Ben Dror Yemini. Jan 10th 2009.

"Very soon. Allah willing. Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam -- this capital of theirs will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquests which will spread through Europe in its entirety and then will be turned to the two Americas, and even Eastern Europe."

The speaker proclaiming the need for such large swaths of territories then went on to say that all Jews must be exterminated.

Talks like Hitler, sounds like Hitler, he is Hitler compatible. These words were uttered by Dr. Yunis al-Astal, cleric, and member of the Palestinian parliament. The clear and direct rhetoric regarding Jewish extermination and world domination of radical Islam world, enunciated by Dr. al-Astal and other senior Hamas leaders are not done surreptitiously. They are recorded as they appear on Hamas TV broadcasts, and are available through MEMRI or PMW websites in Hebrew, English and other languages to anyone who is interested in learning about the true nature of Hamas.

Only in official Israel and its elaborate public relations apparatus, no one found it necessary to lay bare this message, along with many other well-documented pronouncements pertaining to Hamas' ideology. This is hardly an isolated failure. There are many more like this.

NATO also makes mistakes

The refugees believed they found safe haven. They were wrong. The air strike didn't spare their lives. Over 100 were killed. This is not an account of the tragic bombing of the UN school in Gaza. This is the story of the bombing of Korisa in the former Yugoslavia, the strikes carried out by NATO planes, which took place nearly 10 years ago on May 13th 1999. There are other accounts of this type of catastrophe. On April 12th NATO planes killed, accidentally of course, 12 civilians. April 14th saw the death of 70 refugees. On April 27, 16 civilians were killed. On May 1st, 23 civilians were killed when a bus was bombed. On May 6th, 16 were killed by a cluster bomb. On May 19th, a Belgrade hospital was bombed, 3 dead. May 30th saw 11 die when a bridge was bombed. On the very same day an old age home was hit and 20 residents were killed. The next day 11 more died. About the same time, the Chinese embassy was bombed, and a misdirected missile flew 30 miles off course and hit the Bulgarian Capital of Sofia. "It was a mistake, sorry" was the NATO spokesperson's standard response.

This is what happens during war. It is sad and lamentable. Europeans are not called upon to cast their memory all the way back to the bombing of Dresden; all they need is to look back to events that happened less than a decade ago, ere they start wagging their admonitory finger at Israel. Because Israel has not killed, nor will it kill, even a tenth of the number of innocent deaths incurred by European democracies in just wars.

FIRST GAZA, THEN THE WORLD

The confrontation in the Gaza Strip is not between Hamas and Israel, but rather between Al Qaeda, Iran and radical Islam, and the free world

Ben Dror Yemini (originally was published in Hebrew Maariv)

Some of Israel's most blatant critics have written that for every Israeli killed, about a hundred Palestinians were killed. A half-truth is worse than a lie, but this is not even a half truth. This is deception. Because months and years of rockets fired at a civilian population are not a matter for bloody accounts. It is a nuisance that no country, neither Syria nor Sweden, would tolerate. It is a provocation that requires a tough response. And if we are already going for bloody accounts, we should do the overall math. We can suffice with just the accounting in the Arab-Muslim world.

So, since the establishment of the State of Israel, close to 12 million Arabs and Muslims have been butchered, most of them by Arabs and Muslims. Israel's "contribution," since its establishment, is 60,000, and that includes all the wars and the two Intifadas. In other words, half a percent.

And more importantly, the confrontation is not between Hamas with its rockets and Israel. The confrontation is between Hamas, as one of the entities that compose radical Islam, and the free world. Its declared goal is to establish a world Islamic caliphate as part of an anti Semitic ideology that also calls for the annihilation of the Jews. Explanations will follow. And since political Islam has already annihilated millions without any announcement, we should take it seriously when there is an announcement about annihilation.

...The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a world organization, the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era. It is characterized by a profound understanding, by precise notions and by a complete comprehensiveness of all concepts of Islam in all domains of life: views and beliefs, politics and economics, education and society, jurisprudence and rule, indoctrination and teaching, the arts and publications, the hidden and the evident, and all the other domains of life...

...The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinct Palestinian Movement which owes its loyalty to Allah, derives from Islam its way of life and strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine. Only under the shadow of Islam could the members of all regions coexist in safety and security for their lives, properties and rights. In the absence of Islam, conflict arises, oppression reigns, corruption is rampant and struggles and wars prevail...

By virtue of the distribution of Muslims, who pursue the cause of the Hamas, all over the globe, and strive for its victory, for the reinforcement of its positions and for the encouragement of its Jihad, the Movement is a universal one...

Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion. It links up with the setting out of the Martyr Izz a-din al-Qassam and his brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood who fought the Holy War in 1936...

...the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah's promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim).

Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model, the Qur'an its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for the case of Allah its most sublime belief.

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it. No Arab country nor the aggregate of all Arab countries, and no Arab King or President nor all of them in the aggregate, have that right, nor has that right any organization or the aggregate of all organizations, be they Palestinian or Arab, because Palestine is an Islamic Waqf throughout all generations and to the Day of Resurrection. Who can presume to speak for all Islamic Generations to the Day of Resurrection?...

ISRAEL Needs YOU!

RALLY FOR ISRAEL!

Wed Jan 14
5:30--7PM

Copley Square, Boston (at the side of the public library)

Bring Flags (American and Israeli) and Posters

Sponsors (in formation): the Boston Israel Action Committee, Christians & Jews United for Israel, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, CJP, The David Project, CAMERA, Young Israel of Brookline, Congregation Beth El-Atereth Israel, Congregation Shaarei Tefillah, Temple Reyim, Combined Israel Education Committee of 8 synagogues in Newton/Needham and surrounding areas.

Walid has been invited to speak at one of the Oldest and most prestigious debating societies in the world The Oxford Union at Oxford University.

The Debate will be held on the evening of Feb 5th in Oxford in the UK.

The title of the debate is "This House believes Islam is incombatible with Western Liberalism"

Opposing the motion are

Baroness Warsi a Muslim women who is the youngest member of the House of Lords, her bio is on www.sayeedawarsi.com

Shaykh Faiz-Ul-Aqtab Siddiqi a leading Islamic scholar, General Secretary of the International Muslim Organization, principal of the Hijaz College and National covenor of the Muslim Action Committee. He is also a Barrister at law (trial lawyer in USA).

The third key note speaker will be an Oxford University undergraduate.

Supporting the motion will be

Homa Arjomand an Iranian political activist and co-ordinator of the international campaign against the Sharia courts. Won a major case to defeat Sharia law from being introduced to Ontario in the Canadian courts. She won an award for being "Humanist of the year" from the Humanist Association of Canada"

Nonie Darwish friend of Walid and leader of Arabs for Israel. Author of best seller "Now they call me infidel" website is www.arabsforisrael.com

Final speaker is Walid Shoebat resume not needed as friends you know what we do.

Our friends who live in UK and near enough to Oxford we welcome your support and attendance.

The unspoken truth about the fighting in Gaza, which began on December 19 2008 when Hamas rockets broke a voluntary truce, is that this is the frontline of a much larger war. This war began thirty years ago with the Islamic Revolution in Iran and is now global in scope. Its agenda is the extermination of the Jews and the destruction of the West...

...Forget, for the moment, Gaza. Forget that the Palestinian people are the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth. For the past sixty years they have been entrusted to the care of the United Nations, the Arab League, the PLO, Hamas and the "global community" -- and the results are pretty much what you'd expect. You would have to be very hardhearted not to weep at the sight of dead Palestinian children, but you would also have to accord a measure of blame to the Hamas officials who choose to use grade schools as launch pads for Israeli-bound rockets, and to the UN refugee agency that turns a blind eye to it. And, even if you don't deplore Fatah and Hamas for marinating their infants in a sick death cult in which martyrdom in the course of Jew-killing is the greatest goal to which a citizen can aspire, any fair-minded visitor to the West Bank or Gaza in the decade and a half in which the "Palestinian Authority" has exercised sovereign powers roughly equivalent to those of the nascent Irish Free State in 1922 would have to concede that the Palestinian "nationalist movement" has a profound shortage of nationalists interested in running a nation, or indeed capable of doing so. There is fault on both sides, of course, and Israel has few good long-term options. But, if this was a conventional ethno-nationalist dispute, it would have been over long ago...

...We come across a local family in one of the buildings. Grandparents, a few young parents, some children and a few toddlers. Sitting on a rug, their legs are covered in blankets and two soldiers are standing guard nearby. "What about them?" I ask. "They're free to go if they want to, but they don't want to," said Eilon Perry, Givati's operations officer. "They informed us they would be staying in the house and we have no choice but to accept that."

The family suddenly notices the cameras, and immediately, the expression on their faces changes. "We have no food," they say in Arabic, as one of the youngsters suggests we interview him in English about their plight. Givati troops are extremely concerned about being portrayed as abusing innocent civilians. Perry points to a stack of canned goods, water bottles and other provisions. "We provided some of that and they cook and eat quite well," he said. The Palestinians seem to understand him and one of them smiles. It's a war -- they had to try...

...It is illustrative to browse through the relevant pages of history to know the real history of the Jews in Germany. You would then come to know why Hitler had taken harsh measures against them. The entire economy of Germany, including banks, publishing houses, jewellery stores, light and heavy industries and almost all economic organisations of consequence, was under the total control of the Jews.

They muddied every aspect of the economy by perpetrating fraud after fraud on common people. This unprepossessing situation annoyed the German citizens no end and impelled Hitler to punish the Jews for their bad deeds...

...Less focus has been given to explaining that one of the main reasons that the death toll is relatively low on the Israeli side is that Israel goes to great lengths to protect its own civilians. Every building in Israel must be equipped with a bomb shelter and they have developed an alert system to warn civilians about incoming rocket fire. The IDF has a Homefront Command branch specifically dedicated to coordinating civil defense and educating the public about what to do in the event of a given attack. Furthermore, if any Israelis are injured, the nation has developed among the best emergency response medical services in the world. So, putting this together, if you have one side that puts its energy into protecting its own civilians and another side that tries to keep its civilians in harm's way -- even putting aside the variable that one party has a more powerful military -- it isn't surprising to see more casualties among the Palestinians than the Israelis.

...Then there is the constituency comprised of those groups who are so wedded to the embrace of victims -- real and imaginary -- that the most despicable violence is not an act of evil, but a cause for investigation; a statement written in desperate measures by desperate people. Once a group such as Hamas has been defined as a victim, then its acts have to be explored, dissected, explained, rationalized, put into a context, but never condemned. Victims are, by such groups' definitions, incapable of evil.

For four decades I have been attending forums on the Middle East conducted by liberal church congregations, colleges and universities, self-anointed peace and justice groups, and the usual gaggle of what are referred to as "the good people." These people and their groups are intrinsic to the terrorists' strategy. Their rationales for terrorist violence are vital to the continued use of violence. These so-called "good people" are the conduit to evil, and they are invariably self-proclaimed "progressives" or "liberals."

All terrorist groups want people who will ask, "Why?" They want people who have long ago forsaken moral judgments for moral relativism. They want the guy who will stand up at the PTA meeting and say, "9/11 is the result of our foreign policy," and not conceive of the possibility that he is uttering a cliché he could not intellectually defend, but think he is being profound.

It is not just that such people, by justifying violence, contribute to the continued perpetuation of violence, but also by being partisans for evil, they have given up the claim to be honest brokers for peace. In the case of liberal church groups, they have become so supportive of Palestinian terrorism that they would be incapable of being a broker for serious engagements or dialogues for peace. Does anyone think that the leadership of the Presbyterian Church, for example, exudes any moral authority when it comes to the Middle East? They are simply another militia, albeit one that justifies other people doing the killing they tacitly support...

...the Bush administration warned in the budget it issued in April 2001 that Fannie and Freddie were too large and overleveraged. Their failure "could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity" well beyond housing.

Mr. Bush wanted to limit systemic risk by raising the GSEs' capital requirements, compelling preapproval of new activities, and limiting the size of their portfolios. Why should government regulate banks, credit unions and savings and loans, but not GSEs? Mr. Bush wanted the GSEs to be treated just like their private-sector competitors.

But the GSEs fought back. They didn't want to see the Bush reforms enacted, because that would level the playing field for their competitors. Congress finally did pass the Bush reforms, but in 2008, after Fannie and Freddie collapsed.

The largely unreported story is that to fend off regulation, the GSEs engaged in a lobbying frenzy. They hired high-profile Democrats and Republicans and spent $170 million on lobbying over the past decade. They also constructed an elaborate network of state and local lobbyists to pressure members of Congress.

When Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama, then chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed for comprehensive GSE reform in 2005, Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut successfully threatened a filibuster. Later, after Fannie and Freddie collapsed, Mr. Dodd asked, "Why weren't we doing more?" He then voted for the Bush reforms that he once called "ill-advised."

But Mr. Dodd wasn't the only Democrat to heap abuse on the Bush reforms. Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts defended Fannie and Freddie as "fundamentally sound" and labeled the president's proposals as "inane." He later voted for the reforms. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York dismissed Mr. Bush's "safety and soundness concerns" as "a straw man." "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," was the helpful advice of both Sen. Thomas Carper of Delaware and Rep. Maxine Waters of California. Rep. Kendrick Meeks of Florida berated a Bush official at a hearing, saying, "I am just pissed off" at the administration for raising the issue...

The following excerpt was broadcast on the Hamas Al-Aqsa TV on January 7, 2009 at three in the morning. Presumably, the Hamas technician on duty got bored with the live image of Gaza at night, and decided to check out other satellite channels, focusing on the Polish erotic channel Patio TV,not realizing that the images were being aired live on Al-Aqsa TV. This lasted for about 6 minutes, until the image of Gaza at night was restored.

WARNING: This clip contains nudity.

Residents of a Gaza neighborhood are confirming Israel's claim that Hamas militants had opened fire from the cover of a U.N. school where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge.

Israeli forces fired back with mortars, and hospital officials says three dozen Palestinians were killed.

Two residents say a group of militants had fired their mortars from a street near the school, then fled into a crowd of people in the streets. The Israeli army says two of the dead were militants. It accuses Gaza's Hamas rulers of "cynically" using civilians as human shields...

Demonstrators chanted "Nuke, nuke Israel!" and carried placards accusing Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and bearing such messages as: "Did Israel take notes during the Holocaust? Happy Hanukkah." To the dozen or so supporters of Israel gathered across the street, one demonstrator shouted: "Murderers! Go back to the ovens! You need a big oven."

The Arab-Israeli conflict induces strong passions, and the line that separates legitimate disapproval of Israel from anti-Semitism may not always be obvious. But it's safe to assume the line has been crossed when you hear someone urging Jews "back to the ovens."...

Reformist Blogger Linked to Boston Mosque Controversy "Disappears" in Cairo

Egyptian Moderate Punished for Fight Against Radical Islam in Hub

Boston, Mass - 01/06/2009

Dennis Hale, President of the Boston-based Citizens for Peace and Tolerance (CPT) - an interfaith group of Christians, Muslims and Jews - called on the American State Department and the international community to come to the aid of Reda Abdelarahman Ali, who was abducted by Egyptian authorities from his home in Sharkeya, Egypt last October.

Reda [pictured here] is an Egyptian follower of renowned Muslim reformer, Dr. Ahmed Mansour, who, as a member of CPT in Boston, protested against radical Islamist literature in an area mosque affiliated with the Muslim American Society's Boston branch, also known as the Islamic Society of Boston.

Reda, himself an Islamic reformist scholar and blogger, "has not been located since he was abducted in October," said Hale. His family and international human rights groups fear that he is being tortured and may be executed to cover up the case. Reporters Without Borders has taken up Reda's case, as has the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. The Egyptian High National Security Court ordered Reda's release two weeks ago, on the grounds that "arresting people solely on the basis of their religious beliefs is not acceptable." But Mr. Abdelarahman remains in custody at an undisclosed location, and his family has been denied access to him. His arrest appears to have been demanded by the religious authorities in charge of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the center of Sunni orthodoxy in the Middle East.

Dr. Mansour, founder of the "Quranists" - an Islamic reform movement which supports democratic reform inside Egypt and advocates a progressive interpretation of Islam - fled to the United States where he established the International Quranic Center (IQC), to articulate a vision of Islam as inclusive and peaceful. In 2004, Dr. Mansour, while a fellow at Harvard's "Scholars at Risk" program, found Islamist hate literature in a Cambridge mosque and through CPT made the matter public, sparking a controversy which has not ended.

"The Quranists in Egypt may be paying the price for their leader's struggle against radical Islam in America," said Hale. "Dr. Mansour's family members say that during the latest wave of arrests and torture of Quranists, Egyptian interrogators demanded information on Dr. Mansour's work with Citizens for Peace and Tolerance. After Dr. Mansour went public with his concerns, the Islamic Society of Boston retaliated with a defamation lawsuit against him and his colleagues, which they fought and defeated. His followers in Egypt were not so lucky."

The Quranists, who see themselves as waging a "war of ideas" against radical Islam have been persecuted since 1985, including three waves of arrest and torture in 1987, 2000, and 2007.

Hale said, "we call on the human rights community in the Boston area to take up Reda's plight."

PRESS RELEASE
01/06/2009
Boston, Mass.

For Immediate Release
Citizens for Peace and Tolerance (CPT)
Contact: Dennis Hale
(781) 799-7245
cpt@hatefreeamerica.org

I think U.S. and Israeli interests are perfectly aligned on this one. Remember bin Laden's refrain about "the strong horse and the weak horse" -- the fact that people (particularly those targeted for jihadi recruitment) are always drawn to the strong one. That's the language jihadis understand, and no other.

One can always say a robust response to radical Islam's atrocities helps Hamas, al Qaeda, etc., to recruit. But recruiting is aided at least as much by successful terrorist attacks to which the response is too meek. The people sitting on the fence -- the ones who are sympathetic to jihadi aims but ambivalent about jihadi methods -- are attracted most of all by the prospect of being with a winner. Sure, a robust response that communicates the resolve to keep fighting until the jihadists are crushed may bring in a lot of new recruits; but it also scares off a lot of prospective recruits while killing off the experienced ranks of a terrorist organization -- making the organization, on the whole, a less dangerous killing machine. That's why it remains the right thing to do.

Some conflicts are deep ones, pitting survival against an incorrigible evil. Those conflicts cannot be resolved until one side wins and one side loses...

...How does the West respond to the obvious exploitation of Palestinian refugees? Soon after my meeting with Mr. Abbas's chief of staff, I met with the ambassador of one of the West's most enlightened countries. I asked: Why are the Palestinians not willing to help their own refugees? "I can understand them," he answered. "After all, they don't want the refugee problem to be taken off the agenda."

This reflexive "understanding" for the Palestinian leaders' abuse of their own people is the heart of the problem. For decades, the international community has actively assisted in building the terrorists' unique system of control -- over where Palestinians live and in what conditions, and over what they think -- by allowing terrorists to turn the refugee camps into the center of the Palestinian war machine. Instead of working to relieve the refugees' misery, the United Nations has dedicated an entire agency, UNRWA, to perpetuating it. For the rest of the world's refugees, the U.N. works tirelessly to improve their conditions, to relocate them, and to help them rebuild their lives as quickly as possible. With the Palestinians, the U.N. does exactly the opposite, granting refugee status to the great-grandchildren of people displaced in 1948, doing nothing to dismantle the camps, and acting as facilitators for the terrorists' goal of grinding an entire civilian population under their thumb. Nowhere on earth do terrorists get so much help from the Free World.

It is not only the refugee camps that the West has helped sustain. For years, Hamas in Gaza -- like Hezbollah in Lebanon, and like the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat -- has been amassing huge stockpiles of weaponry, most of it under the noses of Western observers who are meant to prevent the import of such weapons. It's as if we are telling the terrorists: Go on, build your armies, prepare for war. We understand.

The same can be said about the use of children as human shields. Where was the West when Palestinian leaders were actively transforming their children's classrooms into indoctrination centers for martyrdom?...

Following are excerpts from a speech by Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on December 31, 2008.

Safwat Higazi: "Being killed is nothing new to us. It is what we desire and hope for. It is martyrdom, by Allah. This is Allah's victory coming to us. It is Paradise with the first drop of blood of the martyr...

I refuse to accept condolences or consolation over a martyr...We always see the mothers and wives of the martyrs in Palestine wailing for joy, and preparing another martyr, another man, to raise the banner...

"Being killed is nothing new to us. Martyrdom is nothing new to us. You threaten to kill us?! By Allah, you are threatening us with what we desire more than anything. You are threatening us with what our souls yearn for...

..."You [in Hamas] are the ones upon whom Jesus, son of Mary, will descend, preaching the religion of the Prophet Muhammad in your land. You are paving the way for the war foretold by the Prophet Muhammad: 'Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind stones and trees, but the stones and trees will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' You are the ones preparing the ground for this, preparing the ground for the return of the Caliphate in the path of the prophets."...

..."Allah is with us, and there is nobody with them. Allah is our God, and there is nobody with them. We say to them: We are not equal. Our dead go to Paradise, while your dead go to the Hellfire. We say to them: The Qassam rockets will serve as Ababil birds. [1] Indeed, they are Ababil birds. We say to them that while our martyrs celebrate in Paradise, your dead find themselves in the Hellfire. We say to you: Dispatch those sons of apes and pigs to the Hellfire, on the wings of the Qassam rockets."...

..."Jihad is our path - jihad for the sake of Allah, in all its forms. This is our strategic option, and not peace. Even 'if they incline toward peace...' Yes, in that case, we will incline toward peace. If peace is made with us - yes, we will make peace as well, out of strength and honor. However, jihad and resistance will remain our strategic option. Why? Because the Prophet Muhammad told us this. It makes no difference what kind of peace it is - they will never reconcile with us. They will ostensibly reconcile with us, but will they make real peace? Never."...

..."The [Jews], who are as smooth as a viper, and who lick their lips as [does] a speckled snake, will never live with us in peace and harmony. They deserve to be killed. They deserve to die. They are the ones at whom the Qassam rockets should be fired. You should not care if you hit a man, a woman, or a child. Just like they killed your children - kill their children. Just like they killed your women - kill their women. Just like they destroyed your mosques - destroy their places of worship. Destroy... everything over there."

Following are excerpts from a speech by Egyptian cleric Muhammad Hussein Ya'qub, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on January 2, 2009.

Muhammad Hussein Ya'qub: Our hatred, animosity, and rage toward the Jews grow. Our hatred of the Jews grows when we see them destroying our brothers. Rage boils within us...If only we could strangle the Muslims... [corrects himself] If only we could strangle the criminal Jews... If only we could strangle the Jews with our bare hands, and bite their heads off with our teeth, not with weapons. If only we could - but who would get us to them?

At least 30 people were reportedly killed and 53 wounded in an explosion in a UN-run school in the town of Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip, according to Palestinians. The IDF issued a statement saying the school grounds were used by terrorists to fire mortar shells at the troops. According to the IDF, among the dead were members of a Hamas launching cell, including operatives Immad Abu Askar and Hassan Abu Askar.

The infantrymen returned mortar shell fire into the school grounds, the army said. Defense officials told The Associated Press that booby-trapped bombs in the school triggered the secondary explosions which killed scores of Palestinians on the site...

My youngest children went to school today. Thousands of children in Israel did not. Some of their schools are protected, reinforced against missiles. That's the result of more than 8 years of ongoing missile attacks. Though my children's school isn't protected from a potential missile attack, it does have a bomb shelter; it does have a high fence circling it to prevent terrorists from entering (even more, perhaps than preventing children from straying off), and it has a guard that watches as children enter and exit.

In the last few days, the police must have decided that all this was not enough, and so they have stationed police near each of the schools, armed and watching. Our children are our lives, our most precious treasures. Whatever it takes to keep them safe, will be done. That is the message Israel has sent to its citizens...

...It's not a moral question so much as an objective fact that without justice for Palestinians and with the continued existence of Israel, there will be no peace

...Israel should not exist...

THE number of anti-Semitic attacks in London has risen sharply following Israel's land assault on Gaza, Jewish community groups said today.

Their leaders have compiled a dossier of attacks against Jews which will be handed to seniors officers in the Metropolitan police.

The attacks include claims of:

● An attempt to burn down a synagogue in north-west London.

● An assault on a Jewish motorist who was pulled from his car and punched.

● A gang of youths chanting anti-Semitic slogans as they tried to enter restaurants and shops in Golders Green.

The Community Security Trust, which is responsible for the safety of Jews in Britain, has also noted the emergence of anti-Semitic graffiti in Jewish areas across London. Slogans sprayed on walls include: "Kill Jews" and "Jews are scumbags."

The trust has now logged 24 anti-Semitic incidents - most of them in London - in the past week. Police are said to be stepping up patrols in Jewish areas...

...The sources also said that senior Hamas officials have been spotted more than once wandering around the maternity ward of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital and even using the hospital to hold press conferences, on the theory that it offers a safe haven from Israeli fire. For the same reason, Hamas forces have taken refuge near buildings that serve as headquarters for various international organizations, such as the Red Cross and the United Nations.

Hamas has set up an independent hospital in the Gaza Strip to treat its operatives wounded in fighting with the IDF - and, according to Israeli estimates, it is pilfering a significant portion of the medicine allowed into the Strip, senior defense officials told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Despite this estimate, the Defense Ministry said Monday that it would continue facilitating the transfer of food and medical supplies into Gaza. The humanitarian convoys, defense officials said, played a key role in garnering international legitimacy for the IDF's operations in Gaza since it showed the world that Israel distinguished between Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilians.

On Sunday, Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the cabinet that Hamas was using mosques, public institutions and private houses as ammunition stores.

On Monday, the Defense Ministry facilitated the transfer of 49 trucks carrying basic foods into the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing. Since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, the IDF has allowed some 450 trucks into the Gaza Strip...

Transportation Security Administration officials and JetBlue Airways are paying $240,000 to settle (.pdf) a discrimination lawsuit against a District of Columbia man who, as a condition of boarding a domestic flight, was forced to cover his shirt that displayed Arabic writing.

According to a civil rights lawsuit, TSA and JetBlue demanded Raed Jarrar to sit at the back of a 2006 flight from New York to Oakland because his shirt read "We Will Not Be Silent" in English and Arabic...

A burning car was rammed into a synagogue door in southwest France as the interior minister convened Muslims, Jews and police in Paris to warn against contagion from the Gaza conflict.

Damage to the synagogue in a Toulouse neighborhood was limited to a blackened door, and there were no injuries even though a rabbi was giving a course to adults inside, said an official of the regional prefecture, Anne-Gaelle Baudouin.

Police called to the scene found remnants of a Molotov cocktail in the car and a car nearby with three unlighted Molotov cocktails, Baudouin said...

Hamas must not be allowed to win its conflict with the IDF, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday told a delegation of European foreign ministers in a closed conversation.

The comment occurred even as Hamas, for the first time since the fighting began, sent representatives to Cairo to discuss a cease-fire. Following a meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials, Hamas officials said they had received an Egyptian proposal and would consider it...

...The European foreign ministers, headed by Karel Schwarzenberg of the Czech Republic, whose country currently holds the European Union's rotating presidency, came to Jerusalem after visiting Cairo, and briefed Livni on their meeting with Mubarak. Inter alia, they reportedly told her that Mubarak had said Hamas "must not be allowed to emerge from the fighting with the upper hand."

Regarding Israel's demand that Egypt halt arms smuggling from its territory into Gaza as part of any cease-fire agreement, the ministers said Mubarak denied that any such smuggling takes place. He insisted that the weapons arrive not via tunnels from Sinai, but in barrels thrown overboard from ships passing near Gaza's coast...

...how does CNN deal with articles like this one from the Associated Press published on June 25, just after the truce started, and headlined Palestinian rockets threaten truce? The AP article in its lead paragraphs reported that:

Palestinian militants fired three homemade rockets into southern Israel yesterday, threatening to unravel a cease-fire days after it began, and Israel responded by closing vital border crossings into Gaza.

Despite what it called a "gross violation" of the truce, Israel refrained from military action and said it would send an envoy soon to Egypt to work on the next stage of a broader cease-fire agreement: a prisoner swap that would bring home an Israeli soldier held by Hamas for more than two years.

The answer is CNN deals with such articles and facts by ignoring them.

And Rick Sanchez, his co-anchor Jim Clancy, and the CNN fact-checkers ignored much more - there were many such violations, including dozens of rockets and mortars fired into Israel during the so-called ceasefire. And there was also sniper fire against Israeli farmers, anti-tank rockets and rifle shots fired at soldiers in Israel, and not one but two attempts to abduct Israeli soldiers and bring them into Gaza. Here are some of the details:...

...There was no flexibility with Rayyan. This is what he said when I asked him if he could envision a 50-year hudna (or cease-fire) with Israel: "The only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle. We don't need 50 years to prepare ourselves for the final battle with Israel." There is no chance, he said, that true Islam would ever allow a Jewish state to survive in the Muslim Middle East. "Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God."...

Rally to Support Israel
7:30PM on Thursday January 8th
at Congregation Mishkan Tefilah

300 Hammond Pond Parkway, Chestnut Hill
Join with the entire community to stand in support of Israel. click here for directions

Sponsored by JCRC, CJP, ADL, AJC, AIPAC, BIAC, The David Project, Hadassah, The Hillel Council of New England, SAIAT and others.

Statement by Boston Community Leaders
In Support of Israel's Right to Self-Defense and a Lasting Peace for Palestinians and Israelis

In the last several years, Israel, one of America's most reliable friends in the world, has seen its civilians subjected to some 10,000 rockets and mortar bombs launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip. Neither the United States nor any other responsible country could afford to stand by idly while its citizens were subjected to such assault; neither the United States nor any other country would do so.

Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, can testify to the menace: "Having been in Sderot when missiles were landing, I know the terror those families feel, but I can't imagine the fear and anxiety of wondering daily where or when the next fatal missile will drop. Israelis have been terrorized every day since they left Gaza. They have a right to defend themselves and respond to such violent provocations. Even if you know nothing about the specifics of this conflict, you can understand the very basic desire of a people to ensure safety and security for their families. We should support them in their efforts to attain that safety and security, which will ultimately come at too high a price."

Our community is united in supporting Israel's right to self-defense against Hamas's attacks on its civilians, and to act to stop those attacks. Our community and all friends of Israel share a deep concern for the tragic civilian suffering in Israel and in the Gaza Strip alike. But there should be no doubt that the responsibility for this suffering falls squarely on the shoulders of Hamas, a terrorist organization that has placed its avowed goal of obliterating Israel ahead of the welfare of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.

We hope and pray that Hamas will cease its assault on Israel, and will agree to permit Israel to live in peace in the region. We hope and pray that those in the Middle East who seem committed to a path of violence will choose a different path, one that leads to two states living peacefully side-by-side. Until that occurs, we firmly support Israel in its effort to halt the cruel and incessant attacks against its people, attacks that are an impediment to the cause of peace that we hold dear.

For more information, resources and ways to support Israel vist the Israel Action Center Website

If you missed my conversation with Israel-bashing, Muslim American Society pal Nancy Murray (at podium, above), you can hear it on our "On Demand" page at 969wtkk.com. My favorite part is when she defends Hamas by pointing out that "they're not firing missiles, Michael. They're firing rockets."

Oh, ROCKETS. Well, that's completely different, Nancy. I'm ready to push Israel into the sea now, too.

No more US Tax Dollars for Israeli War Crimes!
End the Genocide in Palestine!
End the Israeli siege of Gaza!
End the 60 Year Occupation of Palestine! [How many years? -S]
We support the right of Palestinians to resist!

speakers confirmed:

Deema Faisal, poet, Palestine Cultural Center for Peace
Ian Lavallee, an Iraqi Veteran Against the War
Representative of Somerville Divestment Project [Ended up being John Spritzler who made it clear in his speech that they support armed "resistence" -S]
Salma Abu Ayyash, Palestinian Activist
Gabe Camacho, AFSC
Jeff Klein, Dorchester People for Peace (prefers not to be introduced as Jewish because he is not.) [That's in the original announcement and is not my edit. -S]
Hannah Nesbit Allen, Hampshire College Divestment Project
Representative of UMass Boston Antiwar Coalition

...At one point a small altercation broke out, but it was quickly quelled. Later, as some Muslims in the crowd quietly stepped aside to pray Asr, one leader of the group took it upon himself to yell "Allah Akbar." A Muslimah near me, sensing the rift his words might cause, picked up her megaphone and shouted even louder: "Hey hey ho ho, aid to Israel's gotta go!" The crowd quickly joined in and drowned out the polarizing cries...

What is stronger than hate and bloodshed?

While Israel and Hamas engage in "all-out war" in the Gaza Strip, a FOX News documentary tells an extraordinary story of faith, courage, violence, betrayal and conversion.

Correspondent Jonathan Hunt's investigation goes deep inside Hamas, through a series of stunning exclusive interviews with the son of a founding member of the Islamic terrorist group. Mosab Hassan himself became the leader of the radical Islamic Youth Movement, fought Israeli tanks and troops in the streets, celebrated suicide bombings and recruited young men to the cause.

But that all changed when Mossab says he realized the true nature of Hamas and radical Islam, during a stint in an Israeli prison. He converted to Christianity and now -- despite an Al Qaeda death sentence hanging over him -- he speaks out for the first time about Hamas, an organization he says betrays the Palestinian cause, tortures its own members and will never honor any ceasefire with Israel.

A gang of pro-Palestinian demonstrators rampaged through the heart of the Jewish community on Wednesday evening, attacking businesses and assaulting a motorist.

Police and the CST have increased patrols and security following the incidents in Golders Green, North-West London, amid concerns of further trouble during Shabbat.

The group of around 15 men had been demonstrating in support of Palestinians in Gaza but then made their way along Golders Green Road, attacking the man as he got into his car.

They attempted to gain access to a number of kosher restaurants and Jewish businesses, and at one point entered Solly's restaurant, but were thrown out by staff and diners.

Despite officers arriving in the area quickly, the gang was able to escape on the Tube...

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) released a statement today in response to a Rasmussen poll of American opinions of the Israel-Hamas conflict, which showed a majority of Democrats opposed to Israel's defensive actions in Gaza while nearly two-thirds of Republicans supported Israel's actions. RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said:

The latest Rasmussen poll (conducted December 30, 2008*) highlights the continuing deep division between rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans regarding support for Israel's right to defend herself. As Israel takes military action to defend herself from the continuous assault of rockets and mortars coming from Hamas-controlled Gaza, that divide is especially note-worthy.

The Rasmussen poll shows that there is a huge split between Democrats and Republicans on whether Israel should have undertaken the current military action against Hamas. Democrats opposed the Israeli action 31%-55% and Republicans supported Israel's course of action 62%-27%.

This is not an isolated instance. We saw a similar split between Democrats and Republicans when Israel fought Hezbollah forces in Lebanon in the summer of 2006...

So this is what the world community has wrought. This is where "peace and justice" have left us. No Jew is safe, anywhere...

...if some Jewish hawks are devoid of sympathy for Palestinian suffering, not a few Jewish doves have demonstrated an utter lack of empathy for Israel's predicament. J Street, a new Washington lobbying group and a major voice of the dovish pro-Israel community, has spoken out sharply against Israel's actions in Gaza. While it claims to represent the moderate American Jewish majority, in this case it has misread the issues and misjudged the views of American Jews.

It is not easy for me to write these words. I welcomed the founding of J Street and know many of those involved in its leadership. Furthermore, I am a dove myself. I support a two-state solution, believe that military action by Israel should be a last resort and welcome an active American role in promoting peace between Israel and her neighbors. But I know a mistake when I see one, and this time J Street got it very wrong...[snip]

...A second J Street statement was worse by far. It could find no moral difference between the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian militants, who have launched more than 5,000 rockets and mortar shells at Israeli civilians in the past three years, and the long-delayed response of Israel, which finally lost patience and responded to the pleas of its battered citizens in the south. "Neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right or wrong," it said, and it suggested that there was no reason and no way to judge between them: "While there is nothing 'right' in raining rockets on Israeli families or dispatching suicide bombers, there is nothing 'right' in punishing a million and a half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them."

These words are deeply distressing because they are morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve. A cease-fire instituted by Hamas would be welcome, and Israel would be quick to respond. A cease-fire imposed on Israel would allow Hamas to escape the consequences of its actions yet again and would lead in short order to the renewal of its campaign of terror. Hamas, it should be noted, is not a government; it is a terrorist gang. And as long as the thugs of Hamas can act with impunity, no Israeli government of the right or the left will agree to a two-state solution or any other kind of peace. Doves take note: To be a dove of influence, you must be a realist, firm in your principles but shorn of all illusions...

Direct dispatches from the Israeli Defense Forces, Israel Police, Border Police, PM Office and FM Office. The news as it happens - directly from the source - no middleman.

Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons. -- Associated Press, Dec. 27

WASHINGTON -- Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis -- 6,464 launched from Gaza in the last three years -- deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people...

There is no question -- none -- that Israel's attack on Hamas in Gaza is justified. No nation can tolerate a portion of its people living in the conditions of the London Blitz -- listening for sirens, sleeping in bomb shelters and separated from death only by the randomness of a Qassam missile's flight. And no group aspiring to nationhood, such as Hamas, can be exempt from the rules of sovereignty, morality and civilization, which, at the very least, forbid routine murder attempts against your neighbors...

...Rayyan wasn't just "one" of Hamas's military leaders. He was the head of weapons production and the leader of Hamas's suicide brigades. He was also as mad as a hatter...

...Army Radio reported that according to Palestinian sources, his family was warned before the attack but did not leave the building...

Hamas has been attacked in a manner in which it has never been attacked before, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Yuval Diskin told the security cabinet Wednesday, a week after the same forum approved Operation Cast Lead.

According to Diskin, Hamas's ability to govern has been seriously harmed, and the organization's leaders are in hiding. He said that some are hiding in hospitals, disguised as doctors or nurses, while others are hiding in mosques.

Diskin said that Hamas has turned some of Gaza's mosques into command and control centers, assuming that Israel would not bomb them. He also said Hamas has stockpiled weapons in mosques...

...The cabinet was also told that the IDF has made some 100,000 phone calls to Gaza residents since the beginning of the operation, warning them to leave their apartments or homes before an impending attack.

TV host: "Tell me, children, you are all wearing kaffiyeh scarves. What are you trying to show? That you are friends of the Palestinian children, and that you are all worried because of what is going on...We all loathe those enemies. We all loathe them. We are furious at them. We identify with the Palestinian children...I am willing to sacrifice myself. I am willing to sacrifice my arms, my legs, and all my limbs, my family, and my property, in order to achieve my goals...

Along with today's TV propaganda in which Hamas depicts itself as a victim, Hamas continues to portray itself as the heroic killer of Israelis.

A video on Hamas TV this morning blended pictures of Hamas fighters shooting at Israel with pictures of injured Israelis and medical evacuation scenes.

In addition, the visuals include pictures of skulls dripping with blood, captioned: "Let them taste violent death".

Other narrations and texts include: "Send them to Hell! Tear them to pieces!" "Send them to Hell, Qassam missile!"

A Palestinian journalist has complained that the media and others are manipulating the images going out to the world:

"A mother of one of the martyrs stood by the door of the intensive care unit while crying... relatives and those around her were telling her what she should say to the television cameras: 'Say your son [before he died] prayed and went out.' Another tells her: 'Curse the Arab leaders'... The journalists [in the hospitals] are going overboard in their insensitivity and taking advantage of the [difficult] moments, with the explanation that they are showing this to the world. One cameraman told a mourning mother: 'Hit your face, cry, do some action.'" [Al-Ayyam, December 29, 2008]