April 2009 Archives

In the first case of its kind, a Palestinian Authority "military court" on Tuesday sentenced a Palestinian man to death by hanging after finding him guilty of selling land to Jews.

The verdict came shortly after the PA's chief Islamic judge, Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi, issued yet another fatwa (religious decree) banning Muslims from selling land or houses to Jews.

The death sentence is seen as an attempt by the PA leadership in Ramallah to deter Palestinians from conducting real estate transactions with Jews. It follows reports according to which Jewish individuals and organizations recently bought land and houses from Arabs in Jerusalem and some areas in the West Bank.

The man sentenced to death is Anwar Brigith, 59, from the village of Bet Umar, north of Hebron.

The three-judge panel found the defendant guilty of violating PA laws that bar Palestinians from selling property to "the enemy."

In its ruling, the court, which convened in Hebron, said that Brigith had acted in violation of a Palestinian "military law" dating back to 1979, which states that it is forbidden for a Palestinian to sell land to Jews.

The accused was also found guilty of violating a law dating back to 1958 that calls for a boycott against Israel, as well as another law from 1953 that bans trade with Israelis...

...The court also decided to confiscate Brigith's money and property.

Although the PA has never executed Palestinians accused of selling land to Jews, several "suspects" have been kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian security personnel or members of armed groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip...

Robley Henry Rex, a World War I-era Army veteran renowned and beloved for his volunteer service to other veterans, died today at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Louisville just four days short of his 108th birthday.

Rex was born May 2, 1901 [This is incorrect according to emailer JT Major. Rex lied about his age when he enlisted and was actually born January 2, 1903. I guess that would make him 106? -S] in Hopkinsville. He credited his longevity to his wife of 69 years, the former Gracie Bivins, who died in 1992 at age 91.

"I married the right woman," Rex always said. He called her "the smartest woman in the world."

The two met at Camp Taylor in Louisville in 1919 before he was sent overseas with the Army. They married in 1922 when he returned to the United States.

Rex was "delightful, bubbly and an energetic, fun guy to be around," retired Brig. Gen. Les Beavers, commissioner the Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs from 1998 until December, told The Courier-Journal a few years ago. Beavers had shared the stage with Rex at many veterans ceremonies.

"Robley not only had a long life, but a quality life. It was an honor to know him," Beavers said....

An air stewardess has been sacked after refusing her airline's demand to wear traditional Islamic dress and walk behind male colleagues in Saudi Arabia.

Lisa Ashton, who worked for BMI, was told that she was expected to wear the abaya, a long black robe that leaves only the face uncovered, when she was out in public in the Gulf state.

She was also told that she should walk behind male colleagues irrespective of their rank, in order to conform with the social codes of the conservative country.

Miss Ashton was instructed to consider the abaya as part of her uniform when flying to Saudi Arabia.

But she told her managers that she considered the requirement discriminatory, and was worried that Saudi Arabia was not safe to travel to because of the danger of terrorist attacks.

"It's not the law that you have to walk behind men in Saudi Arabia, or that you have to wear an abaya, and I'm not going to be treated as a second-class citizen," she said.

"It's outrageous. I'm a proud Englishwoman and I don't want these restrictions placed on myself."...

Following is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' response to remarks made today by Palestinian Chairman Mahmud Abbas relating to recognition of Israel as a Jewish state:

The recognition of Israel as the sovereign state of the Jewish people is an essential and necessary step in the historic process of reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians.

The more the Palestinians assimilate this fundamental and substantive fact, the sooner the peace between the two nations will progress toward fruition.

...This is not the real issue. The real issue is this: much of the world wants Israel to agree in advance to give the Palestinian Authority (PA) what they think it wants without any concessions or demonstration of serious intent on its part.

The first problem is that the demand is totally one-sided. Does the PA truly accept a two-state solution? That isn't what it tells its own people in officials' speeches, documents of the ruling Fatah group, schools, the sermons of PA-appointed clerics, and the PA-controlled media.

The second problem is that PA compliance with its earlier commitments is pretty miserable, though this is a point that almost always goes unmentioned in Western diplomatic declarations and media...

"Christians, Jews, and Muslims have a right to live in equality. But Israel has no more right to exist than the apartheid [had]."

These words were spoken by Mauri' Saalakhan, the author of the book The Palestinians' Holocaust: American Perspectives. Saalakhan was invited to speak at the University of Maryland's Palestinian Solidarity Week last month. Jewish students, supporters of Israel, and rational Americans in general may justifiably find these words inflammatory, hateful, or even morbidly ironic, yet it was not Saalakhan's speech that earned the condemnation of the university administration along with a criminal investigation instigated by the university's president. Rather, it was the fliers posted protesting Saalakhan's appearance that caused such an acute disturbance.

A member of the Muslim Students Association called the posters "Islamophobic" and other students described them as "menacing." The university's Diamondback newspaper characterized students who were unfortunate enough to lay eyes on the "propaganda" posters as "victims," yet this was the scariest description they could muster:

One such flier depicted a woman, wearing a traditional Muslim burqa and holding an AK-47 in one hand and a bomb-toting baby in the other. "What did she teach her child today?" was written above the picture.

Note that no one is disputing the authenticity of the photograph's content. Sadly, images of Palestinian parents grooming their children for resistance and "martyrdom" are widely accessible on the Internet. Apparently, the disturbing aspect of this flier was not the scene itself -- a mother shamelessly using her child as political fodder -- but that this authentic image was allowed to confront the sensitive university students with some of the less noble aspects of the Palestinian resistance during the sacrosanct Palestinian Solidarity Week.

University of Maryland police halted their investigation after determining that no crime had been committed, with a police spokesman calling the fliers "free speech ... plain and simple." Despite this legal exculpation, the fliers were declared to be in violation of the university's free speech policy, with Vice President for Student Affairs Linda Clement saying, "There's such a thing as free speech, but when you post things anonymously and make others feel threatened, that's not free speech."

Yet this university condemnation was not sufficient for the students behind Palestinian Solidarity Week. They said they were shocked by the amount of hate the fliers emitted even if they weren't against the law. One organizer, Sana Javed, promised to keep up the pressure on the university to "make sure it's not put on the back burner."...

...The last few decades in Europe have made three things crystal-clear. First, social-democratic welfare systems work best, to the extent they do work, in ethnically and culturally homogeneous (and preferably small) nations whose citizens, viewing one another as members of an extended family, are loath to exploit government provisions for the needy. Second, the best way to destroy such welfare systems is to take in large numbers of immigrants from poor, oppressive, and corruption-ridden societies, whose rule of the road is to grab everything you can get your hands on. And third, the system will be wiped out even faster if many of those immigrants are fundamentalist Muslims who view bankrupting the West as a contribution to jihad. Add to all this the growing power of an unelected European Union bureaucracy that has encouraged Muslim immigration and taken steps to punish criticism of it -- criminalizing "incitement of racism, xenophobia, or hatred against a racial, ethnic, or religious group" in 2007, for example -- and you can start to understand why Western Europeans who prize their freedoms are resisting the so-called leadership of their see-no-evil elites...

An Iranian vessel loaded with weapons to transfer to Hamas via Sudan was recently sunk in the Red Sea by an unidentified missile ship believed to be Israeli, according to Arab media.

The vessel was attacked by either an Israeli or American ship and destroyed, according to a report Sunday in the Egyptian weekly Al-Usbua.

"The ship was destroyed at sea near the Sudanese coast," sources told the weekly, adding that the cargo was to be taken through the Sudanese and Sinai deserts. They said the incident occurred within the past two weeks.

The unidentified ship that fired missiles at the Iranian boat was "likely an Israeli" one, according to an Egyptian security source quoted on Saturday in the Amman-based weekly Fact International.

The Iranian vessel was completely sunk and all personnel on it were killed, an event "expected to lead to further tension in Israeli-Iranian relations," the paper said.

Last month, Sudan said it believed that Israel carried out air strikes on its soil in February that targeted weapons smugglers.

While Israeli spokespeople did not comment on allegations of the country's involvement, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hinted that Israel carried out the strikes, vowing that it would hit terrorist infrastructure wherever it was.

Sudanese sources said that one of these strikes destroyed an Iranian ship, possibly on its way to Sudan.

...The boy in the additional footage is receiving CPR. He resembles the boy in the France 2 footage and is also dressed similarly.

The additional images are especially troubling, because Schapira's and Hafner's documentary in fact confirms and reinforces many of the elements that have been adduced by critics over the years for concluding that the original France 2 report was bogus. For example, on the very day of the episode at Netzarim, Mohammed Al-Dura was supposedly buried. The funeral procession was filmed and one can see the face of the boy whose body is being carried to the grave. Photos also exist of the corpse of what appears to be the same boy with a large wound extending from his stomach to his chest. The pictures were taken at Shifa hospital in Gaza. Schapira and Hafner, however, interview a specialist in biometrics who confirms that the facial features of the boy in question do not match those of the boy in the France 2 footage.

Similarly, Mohammed Al-Dura's father Jamal was supposedly struck by some twelve bullets during the Netzarim incident. In 2004, France 2 would film Jamal Al-Dura displaying his numerous scars. France 2 officials have cited the scars as "proof" of the authenticity of the Al-Dura episode. Schapira and Hafner, however, interview the Israeli surgeon Dr. Yehuda David, who confirms (as he has previously told Israeli media) that the scars displayed by Jamal Al-Dura are in fact the result of an earlier incident. Dr. David himself performed surgery on Jamal in 1994 in an effort to restore mobility to Jamal's right arm. The arm injury and other injuries were the result of an attack with knives and axes that occurred in 1992. The attack was apparently perpetrated by Palestinian militants. As Schapira and Hafner note, it bears all the hallmarks of the sort of punishment that the militants regularly inflict upon suspected "collaborators."...

...But if the France 2 footage was indeed staged and the boy was not shot during the Netzarim incident, then what is the significance of the additional footage that apparently shows the boy wounded? Asked about the images by New Majority, Esther Schapira explained that the footage comes from Palestinian sources. The stomach area, from which the boy appears to be bleeding, has been artificially obscured in the images. According to Schapira, this was already the case when ARD obtained the footage. Schapira remarked that she finds this "strange," since Palestinian media "usually are not so squeamish about showing people who are wounded or dead."...

Survivors of the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur spoke in Geneva this week at the parallel conference on human rights to counter the UN Durban II event. Listening to them describe how they were systematically demonized by the killers made it clear that genocide does not happen in a vacuum. The hate condition of a population willing and anxious to commit genocide needs nurturing. Genocide must be framed positively to get the necessary broad public support.

Common to the framing of all genocide is a very specific kind of demonization. In Rwanda, the Hutus taught that the Tutsis were cockroaches and snakes. Tutsi women were portrayed as cunning seductresses who used beauty and sexual power to conquer the Hutus. In Bosnia, a fictitious news report said Muslims were feeding Serb children to animals at the Sarajevo zoo. Radio Rwanda repeatedly broadcast a warning that Hutus were about to be attacked by Tutsis, to convince the Hutus that they needed to attack first to protect themselves.

This demonization included two specific components. First, the victims had to be perceived as a clear and present threat, so that the killers were convinced they were acting in self-defense. Second, the victims were dehumanized, so that the killers convinced themselves that they were not destroying real human beings.

A decent person will not join in a murder of innocents, but a decent person might join in the killing of a subhuman who is threatening his very existence. Framing genocide as self-defense can turn decent people into killers. Protection of children and family can turn a calm neighbor into a passionate murderer, because self-defense is always justified.

In Darfur and Rwanda, all that was necessary to turn a society of ordinary people into killers was to convince them that they were in danger, and that the people endangering them were less than human...

...A poll after last year's murders of eight teenage yeshiva students found that "84 percent of Palestinians support the terror attack killing eight young students in a Jerusalem yeshiva on March 6, 2008" (Poll by Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, The New York Times, March 19, 2008). How can an entire Palestinian society support the murder of children? Clearly, the framing of Jews and Israelis as mortally dangerous to Palestinians has been totally successful.

Israel now faces a society that is very possibly past the stage of genocide framing and at the point of seeing the killing of Israelis, even teens, as justified. All that would be necessary for the population to go along with the final script, detailed so many times by its leaders, would be the means.

...Josh's read is pretty conventional. Both sides have their crazies, both sides need to make more compromises for peace, and so on. There's certainly some truth to it. But the most important dynamic at work is fundamentally not parallel. 71% of Palestinians say that it's "essential" that their state consist of "Historic Palestine," defined "from the Jordanian River to the sea" -- i.e., all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The same poll showed that only 17% of Israelis thought a "Greater Israel" -- that is a Jewish state encompassing the same territory -- was essential.

That's the nub of the problem right there. The vast majority of Israelis are willing to live alongside the Palestinians in one form or another, and the vast majority of Palestinians are not willing to do the equivalent.

This is where the whole parallel-ist view of the conflict starts to lose touch with reality. It's true that both sides have elements that deny each other's historical legitimacy, that both sides have taken provocative acts, but the heart of the problem is that Palestinians are not willing to live alongside Israel...

...I think the point is crucial because it gets to the heart of my disagreement with many liberals over this question. The mistaken equation between Israeli rejectionism and Palestinian rejectionism produces the frequent mistaken conclusion that Palestinian rejectionism results from various Israeli misdeeds. If Palestinians are hijacking planes or embracing suicide attacks or launching rockets in the random direction of Israeli towns, it must be a response to this or that Israeli action. The reality is that Palestinian rejectionism is a authentic expression of Palestinian belief with a long history that has manifested itself in numerous ways, starting from the Palestinian rejection of the 1947 U.N. partition of Palestine into two states, running through the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964 (before Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza), and continuing through various tactics of killing Israeli civilians as an end in and of itself.

So, for instance, you frequently see it stated that Palestinians turned to Hamas in response to Israel's blockade of the occupied territories. Isn't it more likely that Palestinians turned to Hamas because Fatah ceased to be a credible vehicle for total rejectionism of Israel? Likewise, the energies of many liberals are devoted to the problem of getting to a two-state agreement -- a task I wholeheartedly endorse -- but they assume that such an agreement will stop or come close to stopping Palestinian attacks on Israel, something I hope for but sadly doubt...

Former U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate has joined those seeking to take advantage of the world economic crisis to promote anti-Semitism. McKinney has published a column promoting the conspiracy theories of the far-right anti-Semite Matthias Chang.

McKinney's column (read here), which accuses George Soros and Alan Greenspan of participating in a plot to deliberately destabilize the world economy in order to install a "one-world government", uses Chang's term for this purported conspiracy: "the Shadow Money-Lenders" (not coincidentally, the title of Chang's most recent book). Typical of such conspiracy theories, Chang and McKinney connect this to an ancient plot which took shape under the hidden hand of the Rothschilds...

1. Claims regarding incidents where UN and international facilities were fired upon and damaged during Operation Cast Lead. This investigation was conducted by Col. Itzik Turgeman.
2. Incidents involving shooting at medical facilities, buildings, vehicles and crews. This investigation was conducted by Col.Erez Katz.
3. Claims regarding incidents in which many uninvolved civilians were harmed. This investigation was conducted by Col. Tamir Yedai.
4. The use of weaponry containing phosphorous. This investigation was conducted by Col. Shai Alkalai.
5. Damage to infrastructure and the destruction of buildings by ground forces. This investigation was conducted by Col. Adam Zusman.

As we reported on The Natural Truth last week, the Boston Globe-Democrat is (finally) covering Bill Ayers' upcoming visit to Brandeis University. As usual, they start with a bogus premise ("Ayers to speak at Brandeis despite dispute over his past"--what dispute? He admits he blew stuff up!) and go downhill from there.

The same "free speech" smokescreen Boston College students tried to use is deployed once again. If you're still unable to understand why this isn't a free speech issue, all I can say is you should probably stick to listening to NPR.

What's fascinating about this Ayers visit is the locale: Brandeis.

When Katherine Ann Powers, Susan Saxe and Stanley Bond murdered Boston Police Officer Walter Schroeder, they were all attending... Brandeis University. Brandies is in Waltham, MA, where one of Officer Schroeder's daughters, Clare, serves on the police force.

Last year a mentally-unstable would-be terrorist, Aafia Siddiqui, tried to shoot two FBI agents while shouting "Death to America" slogans. Even after she was shot, she struggled against capture and reiterated that she wanted to kill Americans. Where did Siddiqui go to college? MIT and...Brandeis...

...While I am finally finishing my PhD thesis I am also preparing a new book project, quite ambitious, one that will take about 18 months to finish and deals with the peace process. Right now I try to raise funds for that project. If you happen to be able and willing to help me finance such a project ( or if you know an individual, organization or company that might be interested in sponsoring it ), send me a mail and I can give you more details. I promise you that - if I manage to arrange the financial side of the project - the book will be extremely interesting, and probably very newsworthy. It goes without saying that every sponsor will receive a copy of the book ( or more, depending on the kind and size of the sponsorship ), plus regular updates ( probably in the form of a newsletter, maybe podcasts ) during the research and writing process. Several types of Quid Pro Quo can be discussed.

Hebron resident brought before special Palestinian tribunal discussing sale of lands to Israel. If convicted, he is expected to get death penalty

A special Palestinian tribunal on Tuesday discussed for the first time the sale of lands to Jews by Palestinians, which has made waves in the West since it was first reported by Ynet.

The first person put on trial was a Hebron resident suspected of selling lands to Israelis. The prosecution demanded that he be convicted of treason.

The court hearing lasted more than six hours and included a reading of the indictment filed against the man. The prosecution presented documents including the locations of the lands the suspect allegedly sold to Israelis in the Hebron area.

Sources in the Palestinian Authority said that if the man were to be convicted of treason, he would most likely be sentenced to death.

Ynet reported recently that many Palestinians suspected of selling lands to Jews - including Israeli Arabs living in east Jerusalem - were released following Israeli pressure, and that the investigations against them were closed.

Following the report, members of the Fatah faction in the Jewish area began looking for the person who issued the order to end the investigation against those suspect. At the same time, the Palestinians are conducting a media and political war aimed at preventing Israeli associations from purchasing lands and houses in Jerusalem.

Senior Fatah member Hatem Abdel Kader, who serves as Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's advisor on Jerusalem affairs, clarified Monday that the Palestinian prosecution was continuing its investigations into dozens of land sale affairs...

...Abdel Kader added that the investigations focused on the sale of some 13,000 dunam (3,212 acres) in Jerusalem and its surroundings. He stressed that the PA was working firmly in to combat the sale of land to Israelis, adding that those who are found guilty of selling land to Jews should be executed.

...The states that chose to boycott the Geneva conference, in addition to Israel, are the United States, Germany, Italy, Holland, Poland, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The states whose representatives walked out during President Ahmadinejad's speech are Austria, Ireland, Estonia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Hungary, Greece, Luxemburg, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovenia, Slovakia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Czech Republic, France, Cyprus, Romania, and Sweden.

It's clear now - the Durban Review Conference is not an anti-racism conference; it's a pro-racism conference, sponsored by the UN. But more of that anon. Meanwhile...

I have had enough of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to last me a lifetime. He's gone now, departed from this hotel with his entourage that I was told had taken forty rooms, the men with the machine guns vanished from the corridors and balconies. Earlier this evening there had been a party in the mezzanine for five hundred of his closest friends, which, goaded on by Claudia Rosett (she is more intrepid than I), we tried to crash. We didn't get very far but I suspect Claudia, the only woman in sight without a hijab, had as much chance of getting in as I do of flying a biplane to Jupiter...

Following is an excerpt from an interview with Egyptian-American writer Magdi Khalil, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on April 19, 2009.

Magdi Khalil: First of all, I think it is obvious that the deliberations are focused on Israel, based on what happened in South Africa in 2001. The second thing that is very clear is that the Iranian president is present. This racist president will attend [a conference] against racism. This president calls for the destruction of a state that is a U.N. member. How can this possibly be? How can the Iranian president possibly be invited to a conference that calls for tolerance and combating racism? How can this president possibly be invited?

Let me say very simply that the South African conference focused on the issue of Zionism, and on whether it is tantamount to racism. The truth is that we have a serious problem. Some people may believe that Zionism is tantamount to racism, but many people around the world believe that Islamic religious law, as implemented in Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia, is worse than racism.

We are currently formulating security-diplomatic policy. This process will conclude ahead of my trip to Washington in four weeks. In the framework of these deliberations, we will hold Cabinet and Government discussions. I would like to set one thing straight in advance simply because it has been in the media incorrectly today. We insist that the Palestinians - in any diplomatic settlement with us - will recognize the State of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. The entire international community demands that we recognize the principle of two states for two peoples and we are discovering that this is two states but not for two peoples but two states for one people, or two states for a people-and-a-half. That is to say, there is no doubt that we are being asked to recognize the Palestinian state as the national state for the Palestinian people but there is doubt and not just doubt, it is clear from the quick check that we carried out that the Palestinians have no intention of recognizing the national state of the Jewish People. Of course, this is completely unacceptable. I will not now respond to the question of what will be the nature of the settlement, what will be its components and what authority the Palestinians will have. We reiterate that we have no intention of ruling over the Palestinians. We want for them to rule themselves, except for those powers that could threaten our security and our existence. But there is no doubt that we insist that they recognize the State of Israel as the national state of the Jewish People. We have never conditioned the start and existence of talks on advance agreement about this but neither can we see progress on a future settlement without their agreement to this condition. Therefore, not only have we not backtracked from it, we stand behind it strongly and I think that in this regard, we reflect a very broad consensus, not only around this table but among the entire nation, a great part of the nation, and rightly so.

IAM, the Israel Academia Monitor organization, has set itself the goal of alerting the public to outspokenly anti-Israel professors and others in Israeli universities.

Its top project at the moment: A drive to have the positions of Tel Aviv University doctoral student Omar Barghouti - "clearly an enemy of Israel," IAM says - exposed and publicized.

IAM has initiated a petition against Barghouti, a member of the same clan that includes convicted terrorist murderer and Palestinian Authority leader Marwan Barghouti. The petition is addressed to the Rector, President, and supporters of Tel Aviv University, and states:

"Literally thousands of people all over the world are working very hard to demonize and de-legitimize Israel. An especially strident and persuasive voice is that of Omar Barghouti, whose devastating accusations against Israel can be found on dozens of internet sites, newspapers all over the world and even at international conferences. What makes his work especially repugnant is his wide use of half-truth, selective omission and outright lie. He is clearly an enemy of Israel.

"...Omar Barghouti is a founding member of The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and has personally called, on countless occasions, for an international boycott of all Israeli universities as well as [cutting off] trade and cultural ties.

"...We can't help wondering at the logic of Tel Aviv University [providing] this enemy of Israel with the means to obtain a doctorate in Ethics. Can this indeed be true? Ethics!!! As Israeli citizens we are also deeply dismayed that an academic institution, which gets part of our hard-earned taxes to keep it going, is enabling such a person to use its facilities. We are sure a lot of Jews around the world who donate generously to academic institutions in Israel would be quite devastated to learn how their monies are used..."

Thus far, over 16,000 people have signed the Hebrew petition, including nearly 4,000 in the past 18 hours. The lesser-known English version has been endorsed thus far by more than 300 signatories...

(Gaza City) - Hamas should end its attacks on political opponents and suspected collaborators in Gaza, which have killed at least 32 Palestinians and maimed several dozen more during and since the recent Israeli military offensive, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch called on Hamas authorities in Gaza to hold those responsible accountable.

The 26-page report, "Under Cover of War: Hamas Political Violence in Gaza," documents a pattern since late December 2008 of arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, maimings by shooting, and extrajudicial executions by alleged members of Hamas security forces. The report is based on interviews with victims and witnesses in Gaza and case reports by Palestinian human rights groups...

The three 'clowns' that interrupted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech in Geneva on Monday just as he was taking the podium gave the first cue to an appearance that was punctured by heckle calls. At its (anti-) climax, delegates from 23 EU countries left the hall.

The rainbow-colored wig-wearing youngsters were Rafael Haddad, Jonathan Hayoun and Jeremy Cohen, three Jewish French students from L'Union des Etudiants Juifs de France (UFJ), the union of Jewish French students.

They positioned themselves at opposite ends of the hall when Ahmadinejad took the stage, and as he uttered his first words whipped out the clown wigs from their pockets and yelled 'racist' at the Iranian president.

The students said they wore clown outfits in order to "show that this speech and the entire conference is a circus." One of the students expressed satisfaction that EU delegates left the conference once Ahmadinejad's speech turned to focus on Israel...

After Ahemedinejad finished his speech, he immediately went downstairs to give a press conference. But waiting for him in front of the press conference room, blocking the doors, were hundreds of protesters chanting "Shame! Shame! Shame!" and holding signs like "Respect Bahais and Minorities" and "Iran Funds Hamas and Hezbollah." Standing amidst the protesters were Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel and Iranian dissident (famously pictured on the cover of TIME) Ahmad Batebi...

Creating a European "resistance model" based on Hizbullah and blaming Israeli swimming pools for guzzling water from Palestinian olive groves. These are just two ideas brought up at the pre-Durban II Israel Review Conference hosted by anti-Israeli NGOs Sunday in Geneva.

A parallel meeting to Durban II, held in a Geneva hotel, which was organized by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the International Coordinating Network on Palestine and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Committee, kicked off Sunday, one day ahead of the UN's conference on racism...

Switzerland is situated in the heart of Europe, surrounded by Germany, France, Austria and Italy. But unlike these EU-member countries, the Swiss are neutral in international affairs.

And under cover of neutrality, Swiss President Hans Rudolf Merz, who is both chief of state and head of government, was scheduled to meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last night over dinner in Geneva. The Iranian leader is in town to attend the Durban II "anti-racism conference," which opens today.

Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told Army Radio that the Merz-Ahmadinejad meeting "caught us by surprise." It shouldn't have.

The Swiss have their interests...

Thank you, Madame Chair.

I don't know if you recognize me. I am the Palestinian medical intern who was scapegoated by your country, Libya, in the HIV case in the Benghazi hospital, together with five Bulgarian nurses.

Section 1 of the draft declaration for this conference speaks about victims of racism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance. Based on my own suffering, I wish to offer some proposals...

A Hamas cleric who once participated in an international conference of "Imams and Rabbis for Peace" -- whose delegates vowed to "condemn any negative representation" of each other's religions -- has wholeheartedly espoused Hamas's racist ideology in a recent Friday sermon on Hamas TV.

...This imam, who is preaching the genocide of Jews, participated in the Second World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace in 2006, which also featured many prominent rabbis from Israel. The final statement from the Seville conference included the pronouncement, ". . . We condemn any negative representation of these [religious beliefs and symbols], let alone any desecration, Heaven forbid. Similarly, we condemn any incitement against a faith or people, let alone any call for their elimination, and we urge authorities to do likewise."...

On Tuesday night, Frank Gaffney appeared on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews. After a discussion with Mother Jones' David Corn about the Spanish judge who was poised to prosecute six Bush Administration officials, Matthews egged-on the rabid fringe of the left by saying the following:

We've crossed that line at that West Point speech by President Bush, George W. Bush, up there in 2002 when he said 'we're going into countries and we're going to kick ass because they don't have democracy in those countries.' That's when he said 'we're going to kill people internationally because we don't like their form of government...

He said 'we're going to fight for democracy in the world and kill people who get in our way,' and that's what he said... That's the problem; he was going to do mass killing...

In this clip, Frank Gaffney responds.

Toronto, April 19, 2009...   HonestReporting Canada (HRC) denounced cartoons printed in the YU Free Press, York University's "alternative" campus newspaper this month as "grossly anti-Semitic" because of their portrayal of Israel using Nazi-like imagery, while urging York administrators to carry out a formal investigation and to remove this newspaper from the school's grounds.

Created by anti-Israel cartoonist Carlos Latuff, the odious cartoons were appended to a Q & A between Latuff and YUFP's Ali Mustafa who described having the "privilege of meeting" Latuff in person, while mentioning that his views were "very provocative." The first cartoon portrays menacing S.S. troopers summarily executing innocent Palestinians in open-air graves marked "Gaza," all while figures symbolizing the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and the world stand idly by. The second cartoon depicts an emaciated Palestinian dressed in a pinstriped uniform similar to those warn during the Holocaust, lying on the ground next to Israel's security barrier which eerily looks like the barbed wire fence of a concentration camp. The dangerous implication promoted by these cartoons is of an Israeli policy to perpetrate a Holocaust against the Palestinians...

The Obama administration will boycott "with regret" a U.N. conference on racism next week over objectionable language in the meeting's final document that could single out Israel for criticism and restrict free speech, the State Department said Saturday.

The decision follows weeks of furious internal debate and will likely please Israel and Jewish groups that lobbied against U.S. participation. But the move upset human rights advocates and some in the African-American community who had hoped that President Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, would send an official delegation...

A U.S. journalist in Iran was sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage, her father, lawyer and news reports said Saturday -- a sentence that prompted denunciation from the United States.

Reports in Iranian media, including an Iranian judiciary source quoted Saturday by the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency, confirmed the sentence of Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old Iranian-American from North Dakota.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was "deeply disappointed" by the news. "We are working closely with the Swiss Protecting Presence to obtain details about the court's decision, and to ensure her well-being," Clinton said in a statement...

...The case has unfolded as the Obama administration has signaled an inclination to engage diplomatically with Iran, America's long-term adversary. The countries have been at odds for years over Iran's nuclear program and Iranian actions and stances in the Middle East, such as the regime's links to Hamas and Hezbollah and its alleged support of insurgents in Iraq...

... Earlier this month, at a conference on Afghanistan in Netherlands, Clinton sent a letter to the Iranian delegation asking for information on and the safe release of Saberi Esha Momeni, an Iranian-American student arrested in Iran last October.

Clinton also inquired about Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in March 2007.

One U.S. senator suggested earlier this year that Iran may be holding Levinson in a bid to exchange him for Iranian officials seized by U.S. troops in Iraq in 2007.

"On several diplomatic occasions when Bob Levinson's name has been brought up to Iranian officials, the standard answer is, 'We don't know anything about that.' But the next thing out of the Iranian officials' mouths are to discuss the matter of the Iranians held by the Americans in Irbil, Iraq," Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, told reporters in February.

,p>"You can draw your own conclusions," he said.

Emblazoned on a long, tall, concrete barrier in the midst of a rocky Middle Eastern landscape is this spray-painted message: "Mirror, mirror on the wall. When will this senseless object fall?"

It's one of more than 900 graffiti messages that have been spray-painted by Palestinians on the controversial wall that separates Israel and the West Bank.

The painters take orders through a Web site that lets customers get a message on the wall. For the equivalent of $40, a Palestinian will spray paint the message and send three digital photos of it.

Anything goes -- marriage proposals, jokes, notes to friends -- as long as it isn't extremist, hate-filled, or pornographic, said Faris Arouri, one of the founders of the site...

... Nieuwenhuis said he heard about the site through van Oel, a friend, and liked the idea right away.

"I thought it was a brilliant idea to have something beautiful written on an ugly wall," he told CNN...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman each met with American Special Middle East Envoy George Mitchell on Thursday. Netanyahu threw Mitchell a curveball: He said that Israel would be willing to talk about a two-state solution after the 'Palestinians' accept Israel as a Jewish state. That's a step that the 'Palestinians' are thus far unwilling to take.

Some of you may recall that Ehud Olmert made the same demand at Annapolis (albeit not as a precondition to discussing a 'two-state solution'), but the 'Palestinians' rejected it, because it would mean giving up their hopes of either recovering all of the land 'from the River to the Sea' and of flooding what remains of Israel after a 'two-state solution' with 'refugees' who would overwhelm Israel demographically...

A group of Afghan women who braved an enraged mob yesterday to protest against an "abhorrent" new Afghan law had to be rescued by police from a hail of stones and abuse.

The protest by about 200 women, unprecedented in recent Afghanistan history, was directed at the Shia Family Law passed last month by the Afghan parliament which appears to legalise marital rape and child marriage.

The rally, staged by mostly young women with their faces exposed, was a highly inflammatory act of defiance in a country as conservative as Afghanistan. It provoked a furious reaction from local men and a rapidly expanding mob threatened to swamp the demonstrators as they tried to approach the Afghan parliament.

"Go home if your mothers and fathers are Muslims," one Shia cleric shouted at the protesters, who were pressed into an ever-tighter huddle as the crowd surrounded them." These people will beat you if you stay."

Some of the women appeared cowed by the aggression, staring blankly at the ground, but one shouted back: "If you were Muslims, you wouldn't pass this law." As the protesters continued to chant slogans they were often drowned out by counter chants of Allahu akbar (God is greatest). "I am not afraid. Women have always been oppressed throughout history," Zara, an 18-year-old student, told The Times as men in the crowd lunged forward and screamed abuse.

"This law is against the dignity of women and all the international community opposes it. The US President calls it abhorrent. Don't you see that actually we are the majority?"...

The baying mob tore down banners, spat on demonstrators and hurled stones. As police struggled to maintain order, at one point the women appeared to be in danger of disappearing under a sea of shaking fists...

...the people who lived in Israel and around the area when the Jews were exiting slavery in Egypt were the Canaanites. They're extinct. They warred with the Jews, and they lost. And even though any historian with any credibility and any archeologist of any worth will acknowledge that the ancient Canaanites are long gone (as in, for centuries), some Palestinians claim they are the Canaanites. It's blatant propaganda and fodder for a good laugh, considering that Arabs were not anywhere near the area at that time. Not even close.

Now, Palestinians are pushing this myth again, along with the "fair trade" concept. Only, their "fair trade" is slightly different. You see, they want special treatment for growers who basically all support Islamic terrorists. And--this is key--they want special treatment in the marketplace against more competitive Israeli and Arab products. Welcome to "Canaan Fair Trade," products made by terrorism supporters in the shadow of the "evil Zionists." And for that, you should pay a premium.

Their biggest, newest product is Canaan Fair Trade Olive Oil. Its label re-asserts the myth of the Palestinians as Canaanites and also asserts that "Palestine" is a country. And proceeds from the sale of the olive oil funds scholarships for study at anti-Semitic, pro-HAMAS universities, including An-Najah in Nablus and the Arab American University in Jenin.

An Najah's student council is controlled by HAMAS, and it openly endorsed homicide bombings on Israeli civilians. The school staged a re-enactment of the blowing up of the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem, as well as staged mock explosions of Israeli soldiers, to the laughing and cheering delight of students.

Sadly, Whole Foods markets are selling this pan-terrorist olive oil. If you are a patron of Whole Foods, you should ask the store why it is selling olive oil made by terrorism supporters, which funds study at anti-Semitic universities, and why Whole Foods is tacitly taking a political stand by featuring products with labels claiming Palestine is a country and that Canaan is there...

When the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported that the Boston Globe-Democrat hadn't run a single story on the national "Boston Tea Party" movement (key word: Boston), I'll admit I was surprised. Their blatant political bias is obvious, and every rational reader knows their "news" coverage is driven by their politics. But not one story? From a journalistic standpoint, it's utterly indefensible.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when I picked up the BG-D this morning--the day after thousands of BOSTON-are citizens gathered at BOSTON Harbor for a BOSTON Tea Party to protest (in part) the taxpayer abuse by our BOSTON-based state government...and found a single local story in the BOSTON paper. Buried on page A16 there was a small AP story with the dateline "Frankfort, KY."

I guess the Boston Globe-Democrat staff just couldn't resist a "KY" reference.

To add ignorance to incompetence, the AP story spreads the canard that our Tea Party was part of some national Republican effort. They link it to FreedomWorks and the GOP--neither of whom had anything to do whatsoever with our event...though I'd be happy to send them the invoice for our expenses.

Here's the Boston Globe-Democrat's model for journalistic success:

1. Ignore a national story inspired by local Boston history for as long as possible;
2. Refuse to cover the story when it becomes local;
3. Misreport the story with a wire report from Kentucky;
4. Then wonder why you're losing $1 million a week.

You know, when you do something really stupid late at night, like read Henry Rollins' Dispatches section on his website, and you come across his characterization of the tea parties happening around the country as "Small groups of grouchy white people acting out and being ridiculous," not only do you realize that Rollins is a self-hating grouchy white person, but also that we have entered a whole new era of Rock 'n Roll: The Ass-Kissing Years...

Harvard Islamic chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser '96 has recently come under fire for controversial statements in which he allegedly endorsed death as a punishment for Islamic apostates.

In a private e-mail to a student last week, Abdul-Basser wrote that there was "great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment [for apostates]) and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand."

The e-mail was forwarded over Muslim student e-mail lists and later picked up by the blogosphere, sparking debate and, in many cases, criticism of Abdul-Basser from those who have interpreted his statement as supporting the execution of those who leave the Islamic religion.

"I believe he doesn't belong as the official chaplain," said one Islamic student, who asked that he not be named to avoid conflicts with Muslim religious authorities. "If the Christian ministers said that people who converted from Christianity should be killed, don't you think the University should do something?"...

The Vilna Shul, Boston's enter or Jewish Culture (vilnashul.org) is one of 25 contestants in a Boston area competition sponsored by American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. If the Vilna Shul can get the most people to visit the site http://www.partnersinpreservation.com/boston and vote for the Vilna Shul between April 14th and May 17th, the Vilna will win $100,000 to restore a full wall of murals in the sanctuary. The Vilna was featured in the Boston.com article http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2009/04/american_expres_1.html. So go vote right now and vote everyday until May 17. Please send this to all of your friends, and if you have ideas about how to get the word out, let us know.

Steven M. Greenberg Executive Director, The Vilna Shul 617-523-2324

...The BBC has determined that its Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, had violated the broadcaster's ethical guidelines calling for impartiality and accuracy. The finding is likely to amplify concerns that BBC news coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict is largely biased against Israel.

The March 31, 2009 decision by the Editorial Standards Committee (ESC), a unit of the BBC's top decision-making body, the BBC Trust, comes in response to a formal complaint filed by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), and a similar complaint filed independently by a member of the U.K.-based Zionist Federation.

CAMERA's complaint charged that Bowen's June 4, 2007 article about the Six-Day War and its aftermath was marred by "serious omissions, exaggerations and outright anti-Israel bias." The detailed complaint came before the ESC after the BBC News Web site and Editorial Complaints Unit defended Bowen's article...

Could you help Gift of Life in our efforts to find a life-saving bone marrow donor for the little girl pictured on the attached flyer, and for many other patients whose lives depend on a transplant from a healthy donor?

I know that most of the entries on Solomonia are political, but, as you have seen from my correspondence with various fans, there is an important historical and demographic dimension to our work. You know the numbers: We are 13 million on a planet which numbers its population in the Billions. The six million slaughtered during the Holocaust translates into one third of our gene pool. They were killed before they could have children, grandchildren, all the generations that might have come after them. As a result, we need each other perhaps more than any other group on Earth.

It would be wonderful if you could post the flyer on Solomonia and encourage your friends and contacts to come to Harvard Street to sign up and maybe someday save a life.

Thanks so much,
Louise

PS In these days of intermarriage outnumbering in-marriage, the task of finding matches is even more complicated. Jewish haplotypes (dna markers) show up in patients who may never even have thought of themselves as Jewish, and we have had many patients whose family escaped murder in Europe by converting or pretending to convert to other religions. You never know who might be a match, and we welcome prospective donors of any ethnic background. We are also happy to help patients of any background to find their miracle matches!

The Jews of Yemen who preferred to stay in their country are guaranteed a decent life in line with all legal, constitutional, and religious rights. They are entitled to enjoy these rights in the same manner that other people in society do, regardless of their religious affiliations.

The land, history, and soil of this country have intertwined with their lives and made them who they are today. Their ordeals should be considered ordeals for all Yemenis and not just for Jewish citizens.

Aggression against Jews

The aggression and intimidation practiced against the Jewish population during the recent period brings to light a number of questions. Where is the role of the government and its security and judicial apparatuses? And why does the government relinquish its commitments toward its citizens?...

...While U.S. and European policy makers draw distinctions between reformers and hard-liners in the Islamic Republic, the difference between the two is style, not substance. Both remain committed to Iran's nuclear program. Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, for example, called for a Dialogue of Civilizations. The European Union (EU) took the bait and, between 2000 and 2005, nearly tripled trade with Iran.

It was a ruse. Iranian officials were as insincere as European diplomats were greedy, gullible or both. Iranian officials now acknowledge that Tehran invested the benefits reaped into its nuclear program.

On June 14, 2008, for example, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Mr. Khatami's spokesman, debated advisers to current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the University of Gila in northern Iran. Mr. Ramezanzadeh criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad for his defiant rhetoric, and counseled him to accept the Khatami approach: "We should prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities," Mr. Ramezanzadeh said. The purpose of dialogue, he argued further, was not to compromise, but to build confidence and avoid sanctions. "We had an overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of the activities," he said.

The strategy was successful. While today U.S. and European officials laud Mr. Khatami as a peacemaker, it was on his watch that Iran built and operated covertly its Natanz nuclear enrichment plant and, at least until 2003, a nuclear weapons program as well...

...Today's MSMers may be a lost cause. But what about journalism school professors? What do they think of Goldberg's books? Do they take his criticisms to heart? Or can they successfully poke holes in his arguments? These professors are molding the minds of tomorrow's media gatekeepers. What could be better than for them to engage their students with Goldberg's thesis? Even if they disagree with Goldberg, they could spark the kind of healthy debate all budding journalists should consider.

So I decided to ask some journalism professors myself. I spent the last month directly reaching out to more than 20 professors from across the country, as well as several university PR divisions, to get their take on Goldberg's critiques. I even turned to my Facebook and Twitter accounts to seek out anyone who might comment for this article. I should have expected the result.

Silence...

MINNEAPOLIS -- Dave Arneson, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy game and a pioneer of role-playing entertainment, died after a two-year battle with cancer, his family said Thursday. He was 61 years old.

Mr. Arneson's daughter, Malia Weinhagen of Maplewood, said her father died peacefully Tuesday in hospice care in St. Paul. He is survived by Ms. Weinhagen and two grandchildren.

Mr. Arneson and Gary Gygax developed Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 using medieval characters and mythical creatures. The game known for its oddly shaped dice became a hit, particularly among teenage boys. It eventually was turned into video games, books and movies...

A planned Toronto exhibit of ancient Middle Eastern manuscripts is threatening to plunge Canada, along with the Royal Ontario Museum, into the thick of the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Beginning in June, the ROM will host a six-month exhibit of the famed Dead Sea Scrolls, organized in co-operation with the Israel Antiquities Authority.

But top Palestinian officials this week declared the exhibit a violation of international law and called on Canada to cancel the show.

In letters to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and top executives at the ROM, senior Palestinian officials argue the scrolls - widely regarded as among the great archaeological discoveries of the 20th century - were acquired illegally by Israel when the Jewish state annexed East Jerusalem in 1967.

"The exhibition would entail exhibiting or displaying artifacts removed from the Palestinian territories," said Hamdan Taha, director-general of the archaeological department in the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities...

So, basically, the Jordanians, in partnership with the French and Americans, took precious Jewish artifacts away from the Jews to whom they belong. I do believe that Egypt just got back an ancient mummy from a museum in America, and I also believe that museums all over the world are negotiating the return of artifacts taken during the days of colonialism. So the Palestinians can just STFU, because those scrolls don't belong to the people who were on the land at the time of the discovery. They belong to the people who wrote the scrolls.

Clark University canceled a campus talk scheduled for later this month by controversial Holocaust scholar Norman Finkelstein, saying his presence "would invite controversy and not dialogue or understanding," and would conflict with a similar event scheduled around the same time.

The Clark University Students for Palestinian Rights, a student-run group on the Worcester campus, had arranged for Finkelstein to speak on April 21, said Tom MacMillan, the group's president. School administrators, however, contend the topic and the timing conflict with a similar university-sponsored event.

In a letter to the university's campus newspaper, Clark's president, John Bassett, wrote: "The university remains committed to inviting a wide range of speakers to encourage diversity of opinions on controversial topics. My decision was predicated on its untimely and unfortunate scheduling."

Finkelstein's address would conflict with a similar conference hosted by the university's Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, scheduled for April 23-26, two days after Finkelstein's speech, Bassett said in his letter. That conference could draw Holocaust scholars who MacMillan said may disagree with Finkelstein...

A memorable line from a memorably funny movie called The Hot Rock with Robert Redford and Zero Mostel is delivered by a diplomat from a make-believe African country who has hired a band of bungling crooks to recover an enormous diamond stolen by the unscrupulous Mostel. After tripping over themselves time after time in vain attempts to procure the gem, the gang that couldn't steal straight is admonished by the frustrated African who has sunk too much money in what has become a fruitless enterprise: "I've heard of the habitual criminal, but never the habitual crime."

The Oslo so-called peace process could be the 21st century's leading candidate for the "habitual crime." Now approaching 16 years (takes your breath away, doesn't it?), unlike the proved process that produces American cheese, the Oslo process has produced nothing edible, but rather, it would seem, lots of poison.

One of the chief negotiators for Israel present at the destruction and a veteran legal expert for the Foreign Ministry, Daniel Taub admitted as much during a recent address to the elite of Harvard's Project on Negotiation (PON). He is currently on a North American tour promoting an initiative called "The Culture of Peace," launched by the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, an initiative that, judging from his laments over a failed peace process, should probably have been the horse which preceded the cart back in 1993...

Today is Holy Thursday for Christians and the start of Passover for Jews. This week was an opportune time for President Barack Obama to visit Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, which has been both a Byzantine church and Islamic mosque. In Turkey he spoke of seeking engagement with Islam based on "mutual respect."

The subject of this column is the status of minority faith groups, mostly Christian, living inside Islamic countries. That status is poor. In some cases it verges on extinction, after centuries of coexistence with Islam...

...In reality, the experience of Arab Christians living now amid majority Islamic populations is often repression, arrest, imprisonment and death.

Coptic Christians in Egypt have been singled out for discrimination and persecution. Muslim rioters often burn or vandalize their churches and shops.

In Turkey, the Syriac Orthodox Church (its 3,000 members speak Aramaic, the language of Christ) is battling with Turkish authorities over the lands around the Mor Gabriel monastery, built in 397.

Pakistan's recent peace deal with the Taliban in the Swat Valley puts at risk the 500 Christians still trying to live there. Many fled after Islamic extremists bombed a girls' school late last year. Pakistan has never let them buy land to build a church...

...In short, the "respect" Mr. Obama promised to give Islam is going only in one direction. And he knows that...

WASHINGTON, DC - President Obama will host the first White House seder. Party organizers state, "Why is this night different from any other? 'Cause it's gonna be fierce!"

President Obama will make history yet again tonight as the first President to hold an official White House seder on tonight the second night of Passover. After a much publicized Easter celebration, plans for this seder were made at the last minute and announced only a few days ago.

The President wishes to reaffirm to Americans and the international community that all faiths will be respected by an Obama White House.

A team of Rabbis, Jewish Scholars, and Project Runway winner Christian Siriano were brought in to design the event.

At the beginning of the service a plate of traditional and symbolic foods will be at the head of the table. Fresh organic horseradish root will provide the bitter herbs symbolizing the bitterness of slavery, handmade adzuki paste will symbolize the mortar slaves worked with, along with three matzos symbolizing "slaves bread" made by Mario Battali and each costing $400...

EYEontheUN has learned that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced his intention to attend the Durban II "anti-racism" conference. Durban II is billed by the UN as an occasion to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. But Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, has advocated genocide and openly seeks the annihilation of the state of Israel. In providing a hatemonger with a global platform - under the banner of an anti-racism conference - the United Nations has become an enabler of genocide.

Anne Bayefsky, Editor of EYEontheUN urged: "It is time for every decent self-respecting democratic state to withdraw immediately from Durban II - the platform for genocide."

The Iranian President had every reason to expect a warm reception from the UN. The UN Human Rights Council elected Iran as a Vice-Chair of the Preparatory Committee of Durban II. Iran has been the single most active participant in this week's preparatory sessions going on in Geneva. Iran has succeeded in denying a Jewish non-governmental organization accreditation to preparations for Durban II. At yesterday's negotiating sessions for a final document to be adopted formally at Durban II, the Iranian representative proposed sweeping limitations on freedom of expression and protection for "cultural diversity" as a vehicle for justifying Iranian laws that permit the stoning of women, the murder of homosexuals, and the torture of dissidents...

...As Bayefsky points out, "it can be expected that Ahmadinejad will use the opportunity of the UN Durban II global megaphone to continue his genocidal campaign. After all, the current draft text of the Durban II final declaration continues to single out Israel and condemn it as racist by reaffirming the words of the 2001 Durban Declaration."

Will the European Union, Australia, and the United States sit in their seats at Durban II and listen to the hatemongering and anticipated applause?

"Democratic states, having delayed a decision about participation until the final hour," said Bayefsky, "have encouraged Ahmadinejad to believe he has one more opportunity to spread antisemitism and demonize the Jewish state. It is long past the deadline for democracies to pull the plug on Durban II and stop legitimizing a racist anti-racism conference."

Israel's current government is composed of persons whose worldview is more sober than that of their predecessors. They recognize the futility of the "peace process" (clueless European statesmen are enamoured with the term "process", but peace has not been advanced by it). Conversely, the clear-headed Right realizes that we must back away from dominating another people forever.

Netanyahu and Lieberman are holding in their hands the possibility of reversing the status quo. If Obama and the Europeans are so intent on the two-state solution, then, go ahead. Hamastan in Gaza can be regarded as a pilot scheme for a Palestinian state. Can it comply with the requisite conditions that would qualify it for gaining international recognition?

Israel can no longer afford to be perceived by the world at large as a peace rejectionist. Calls for economic boycotting of Israel gain momentum every day and in Europe many bodies implement a silent boycott. The one-state solution is being pushed by radical factions as the alternative to the two-state solution, which includes a no-win situation for Israel: allowing the vote to millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories, combined with the demographic increase of Israeli-Arabs, Israel will soon become a bi-national state.

This problem lead to Sharon's disengagement plan and turned him from one of the most hated leaders in the world to the darling of world leaders. Netanyahu and Lieberman can take the disengagement idea to its logical conclusion.

Israel should treat Gaza as a fully independent sovereign state, while putting to it and its neighbour to south (Egypt) clearly delineated conditions.

The Washoe County School District in the Reno area will give Egyptian former student Jana Elhifny $350,000 and her non-Muslim friend and supporter Stephanie Hart $50,000 as part of the civil settlement.

Elhifny and her family came to Reno from Egypt in 2003, and the girl enrolled as a freshman at North Valleys High School.

She didn't finish the year after she told teachers and administrators that someone had threatened to kill her in the stairwell because of her Muslim hijab or head scarf, the district's independent attorney in the case, Robert Cox, told FOXNews.com.

Shortly afterwards, Cox said, Elhifny filed the lawsuit and returned to Egypt, where she married her fiancé....

The lawsuit, handled by U.S. District Court in Reno, alleges that Elhifny faced death threats and harassment and school administrators did nothing to stop the abuse.

Cox said that wasn't true, and the teen was unable to give any description of her tormenter -- including his or her gender, size and tone of voice...

...Cox said school officials couldn't confirm the stairwell death threat story.

"They tried to prove that, tried to track down who it was, but without a description ... that couldn't be done," he said. "The district did watch her constantly and had people in the hallway."

He said the settlement was agreed upon to end lengthy and "expensive litigation." The case has been fought in the courts for the past four years, according to Cox...

..."Ms. Elhifny and Ms. Hart had the courage to stand up for themselves and defend their right to a safe education," said Peter Obstler, a San Francisco attorney who handled the young women's lawsuits with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.

Hart, a non-Muslim who says she was ostracized when she befriended Elhifny at North Valleys High School and also dropped out, will receive $50,000. Cox said she was a supporter of Elhifny's rather than a victim and never complained to school officials before getting involved in the lawsuit.

The settlement was announced early Wednesday. The monetary award will be paid by the district's insurance carrier.

I have a message to all the Zionist hoodlums out there: for all of you who campaigned and harassed and intimidated and who treated academic life like an aspect of Zionist thuggery, Joseph Massad has received tenure. He called me yesterday from Cairo to break the great news to me and I could not wait to report it to his enemies and mine. It is with great pleasure and gratification that I break the news to all of you. No matter what dirty tricks you (i.e. Zionist hoodlums) have resorted to, and no matter what sleazy methods you have employed and no matter what sinister propaganda you have resorted to, dear Joseph Massad deservedly received his tenure. I am looking forward to Joseph's contribution to Middle East studies at Columbia and elsewhere. And as 'Abdun-Nasser told the colonial power back in 1956, I say: if you don't like this news please feel free to go and drink from the Mediterrenean sea.

COLUMBIA CENTER FOR ARCHAEOLOGY BROWN BAG RESEARCH SEMINAR

Prof. Nadia Abu El-Haj (Barnard/Columbia):

"The Politics of Geneaology: from race science to genetic anthropology

FRIDAY APRIL 10, 12-1pm.

951 Schermerhorn Ext.

All welcome, bring your lunch.

The Obama administration is again invoking government secrecy in defending the Bush administration's wiretapping program, this time against a lawsuit by AT&T customers who claim federal agents illegally intercepted their phone calls and gained access to their records.

Disclosure of the information sought by the customers, "which concerns how the United States seeks to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security," Justice Department lawyers said in papers filed Friday in San Francisco.

Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a lawyer for the customers, said Monday the filing was disappointing in light of the Obama presidential campaign's "unceasing criticism of Bush-era secrecy and promise for more transparency."...

TORONTO -- A boycott against Israeli wine organized by Not In Our Name: Jewish Voices Opposing Zionism backfired on Sunday when hundreds of consumers staged a counter-boycott and bought up the Summerhill LCBO's entire stock of Israeli wine in a matter of hours...

I wasn't 30 hours off the plane from Israel to give a presentation at Chicago's DePaul University on March 16, before I was greeted with the kind of direct anti-Semitism that legitimizes Kassam rockets fired at Sderot.

Several anti-Israel posters draped the entrance to the building in which I began my presentation to a small audience of around 20. Then the room began filling with people not merely against Israel's political policies and action but in clear support of the Hamas terrorist organization.

When I invited a question-and-answer session following my presentation, the very right of free speech which I offered the audience - now numbering more than 100 - was denied me. One audience member verbally attacked me, declared his support for the firing of rockets into Israel and ended his anti-Semitic rant with a question irrelevant to anything in my presentation. I pointed out that the questioner was not simply criticizing Israel but was clearly expressing his support for Hamas.

Before I could finish answering, I was interrupted and silenced by the Hamas supporters. Then a student rose up in the front of the room and called me a "dirty whore" in Arabic. He then grabbed his crotch and screamed, "Here's your Kassam!" - in Arabic.

I wasn't able to utter a word, so the event was shut down. After I'd collected my belongings, the local police - teamed with university security - escorted me to my car. The combination of unceasing anti-Semitic chants, personal harassment and solidarity with a terrorist organization hijacked the event...

Hamas Blood Libel: Jews drink Muslim blood
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

Jews drink the blood of Muslims and believe that God wants Jews to hate Muslims, according to a Hamas TV skit. Performed before a live audience at the Islamic University in Gaza, the segment features actors playing a father and son, in traditional Hasidic Jewish garb, discussing their God mandated hatred of Muslims.

The skit opens as the father instructs: "We Jews hate the Muslims, we want to kill the Muslims, we Jews want to drink the blood of Muslims." It is later explained that Jews wash their hands before prayer, not with water, but with Muslims' blood: "We have to wash our hands with the blood of Muslims."

Blood libels were a tragic part of Jewish history, as Jews were accused of using the blood of non-Jews for ritual purposes, especially the baking of Matzah for Passover. Blood libels created deep hatred and were an effective trigger for numerous pogroms and the murder of thousands. The Hamas accusation that Jews drink Muslim blood comes the week before Passover, the anniversary of many horrific blood libels.

Monday, April 6, 2009 Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis:

Nabil Abuznaid

Charge d'affairs, PLO Mission, Washington, DC

4:30 PM, 041 Haldeman (Overflow in 031 Haldeman)

Co-sponsored by Hillel and Students Concerned for Palestine.

...talks are exactly where North Korea wants to be. From them ever greater material and political benefits will flow to Pyongyang, in exchange for ever more hollow promises to dismantle its nuclear program.

So far, therefore, the missile launch is an unambiguous win for North Korea. (Although not orbiting a satellite, all three rocket stages apparently fired, achieving Pyongyang's longest missile flight yet.) But the negative repercussions will extend far beyond Northeast Asia.

Iran has carefully scrutinized the Obama administration's every action, and Tehran's only conclusion can be: It is past time to torque up the pressure on this new crowd in Washington. Not only is Iran's back now covered by its friends Russia, China and others on the U.N. Security Council, but it sees an American president so ready to bend his knee for public favor in Europe that the mullahs' wish list for U.S. concessions will grow by the minute.

Israel must also be carefully considering how the U.S. watched North Korea rip through "the international community." The most important lesson the new government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should draw is: Look out for No. 1. If Israel isn't prepared to protect itself, including using military force, against Iran's nuclear weapons program, it certainly shouldn't be holding its breath for Mr. Obama to do anything.

Russia and China must also be relishing this outcome. They will have faced down Mr. Obama in his first real crisis, having provided Security Council cover for a criminal regime, and emerged unscathed. They will conclude that achieving their large agendas with the new administration can't be too hard. That conclusion may be unfair to the new American president; but it will surely color how Moscow and Beijing structure their policies and their diplomacy until proven otherwise. That alone is bad news for Washington and its allies.

...Perhaps the world would more clearly understand the nature of Israel's adversary if the media weren't forever fanning moral outrage at the Mideast's only bulwark of freedom and democracy.

In recent weeks, the Palestinian Authority has warned Arabs that it is "high treason" punishable by death to sell homes or property to Jews in Jerusalem; shut down a Palestinian youth orchestra and arrested its founder because the ensemble played for a group of elderly Israeli Holocaust survivors; and celebrated the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel's history -- a PLO bus hijacking that left 38 civilians dead -- with a TV special extolling the massacre. On Thursday, after a Palestinian terrorist used an axe to murder a 13-year-old Jewish boy, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- a wing of the supposedly "moderate" Fatah party -- issued a statement claiming responsibility. [All of which we covered here at Solomonia, so see, you're a step ahead of being taken advantage of by the media by reading the blogs. -S]

There is no appeasing such hatred, and demonizing those who say so will not change that fact. "If you want peace, prepare for war." How refreshing, at last, to hear an Israeli leader say so.

The Arab peace initiative will be part of the Obama administration's policy toward the Middle East, the United States special envoy to the region said.

The 2002 initiative offers to normalize relations between the entire Arab region and Israel, in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories including East Jerusalem, the establishment of a Palestinian State and a "just settlement" for Palestinian refugees.

The envoy, George Mitchell, said the U.S. intends to "incorporate" the initiative into its Middle East policy. He made the statement at a meeting with Israeli, Arab American and European senior diplomats and officials in Washington a few weeks ago...

...The Arab representatives were reportedly satisfied with Mitchell's statement, but added that the initiative is a package deal and cannot be modified. Israel has yet to express a formal position on the Arab initiative.

The organizers of the workshop, which began March 17 and lasted three days, were former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk and Danny Abraham, a Jewish-American businessman and peace activist. Indyk, who was a consultant for former U.S. president Bill Clinton, is considered a close associate of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The workshop dealt with the U.S. attitude toward Benjamin Netanyahu's new government.

Senior Palestinian sources told Haaretz that the U.S. State Department is preparing a plan to market the Arab initiative to Israelis, and will release a document highlighting the gestures that Arab nations have agreed to take under the initiative...

In another coup for Brandeis film studies chairwoman Alice Kelikian, adult film star Sasha Grey is set to visit the Waltham campus this month. The 21-year-old porn star is coming to screen Steven Soderbergh's new film, "The Girlfriend Experience," in which Grey plays - wait for it - a prostitute. The film, which won raves at a test screening at the Sundance Film Festival, is having its world premiere April 29 at the Tribeca Film Festival. Grey will be at Brandeis the very next night, and will do a Q&A with film industry analyst and Brandeis alum Scott Feinberg. Grey is just the latest high-profile actor or director or writer to screen their work at Brandeis. In the past year, Kelikian has hosted Richard Jenkins, Melissa Leo, Michael Shannon, Kate Beckinsale, Alan Alda, Brian Goodman, Mark Ruffalo, Errol Morris, Werner Herzog, Barbet Schroeder, and "Friends" creator Marta Kauffman, who, we're told, will be coming to Brandeis soon to teach.

Hamas to kids: Death is honor and victory
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

Hamas continues its compelling message to children that death, not life, is the prime value. The following lyrics have been appearing regularly in a song on the children's program Tomorrow's Pioneers on Hamas TV:

"Teach the children that death is honor and victory.
Through death, we seek to bring the dawn and the day."
[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), March 20, 2009]

While the words are being sung, a young girl throws darts shaped like missiles at a target shaped like the Star of David, promoting another repeating Hamas message - violence against Israel. When the target is hit and the Star of David falls, the young girl raises her hands in victory.

The Palestinian Authority has issued yet another warning to Palestinians against selling their homes or properties to Jews, saying those who violate the order would be accused of "high treason" - a charge that carries the death penalty.

The latest warning was issued on Wednesday by the Chief [Islamic] Judge of the Palestinian Authority, Sheikh Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, who reminded the Palestinians of an existing fatwa [religious decree] than bans them from selling property to Jews.

Sheikh Tamimi's warning came in response to reports that Jewish businessmen from the US had purchased 20 dunams of land from Palestinians on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Warning the Palestinians against engaging in "suspicious real estate deeds," the religious leader said that according to Islamic teachings it was a "grave sin" to sell houses and lands to Jews.

He said that the ban also applies to real estate agents or middlemen who are involved in such transactions.

He warned that anyone who ignores the warning would be punished in accordance with Islamic teachings and would also be ostracized by his community and family.

Sheikh Tamimi also issued a ban on renting out property to Jewish individuals and organizations under the pretext that they would spread moral, political and security corruption there...

Loren Jenkins, foreign editor since 1996 at National Public Radio, ordinarily works behind the scenes where his extreme anti-Israel views aren't on public display. He does sometimes dispense bromides via the NPR Ombudsman's column about the network's devotion to getting the full story on the Middle East and not judging "who is right or who is wrong."

But an audience in Aspen, Colorado on February 17, 2009 got a full dose of his bias -- and "who is wrong" -- during a revealing extemporaneous discussion held under the auspices of Aspen public radio at the Given Insitute.

How extreme are the NPR official's views? In the past, Jenkins has depicted Israelis as imperialists and interlopers in the Middle East and even linked Jews to Nazis in his writing. In a 1983 Rolling Stone article entitled "Palestine, Exiled" he wrote, for example, that an Israeli-administered south Lebanon prison was, in the words of a nameless Red Cross official, "a concentration camp. There is nothing else to call it." PLO leaders, in contrast, were characterized admiringly as freedom-fighters, as "modest" people, speaking in "soft and warm" voices. Of Yasir Arafat he said: "it is his liquid brown eyes that impress one the most." PLO terrorism, while "abhorrent," was primarily deplored as a tactical blunder that caused "image" problems...

Avigdor Lieberman became foreign minister of Israel yesterday. He celebrated his inauguration with a maiden speech that news reports indicate left his listeners grimacing, squirming, and aghast. The BBC, for example, informs us that his words prompted "his predecessor Tzipi Livni to interrupt and diplomats to shift uncomfortably."

Too bad for them - the speech leaves me elated. Here are some of the topics Lieberman covered in his 1,100-word stem-winder...

This seminar is designed to prepare students for a study/immersion trip to Israel/Palestine during winter break. We hope that the curriculum will accomplish three major tasks:

• The readings will present a variety of descriptive materials about a part of the world that is little known to most Americans. The selection of readings reflects the paradox that Israelis and Palestinians are equally stakeholders in a just peace and that relations between them are highly unequal - the relations of an occupier and the occupied.

• The class discussions and written assignments will provide an analytic framework to help students ask and answer such basic questions as: what happened to set Israel/Palestine on a collision course? How could this long-standing conflict be transformed to produce a just peace? What would a healthy economy and a healthy state in Israel/Palestine look like? How do religious narratives create models of right living and responsibility toward others in the context of Israel/Palestine?
• The project that students are asked to design (in the seminar) and to implement (upon their return) should allow students to test their capacity for using their education to do good in the world.

...On the trip, the primary form of service is bearing witness - to the sufferings and strengths of occupied communities and the courage and wisdom of dissidents...

...While reading both Palestinians (Karmi, Khalidi, Jawad, Masalha, Said) and Israelis (Rogan and Shlaim, Morris, Kimmerling and Migdal, Segev) narratives, students should be asking themselves: "What happened here?" remembering not only that narratives trump facts, but that these narratives operate within a field of unequal power...

A sustained, just peace in Israel/Palestine depends also on the development of a robust economy or economies. To study past and possible future economies in the region, we will be looking at the historic work of Alexander Scholch who documents an industrious and prosperous 19th century Palestine. From there we will look at trajectories of de-development (Roy), labor policy (Farsakh) and business development (Bahour). On the Israeli side, we will consider Friedman's analysis of Israeli capitalism and the alternative views of Klein and Halper, who emphasize the degree to which Israeli capitalism relies on militarism as its engine of growth.

...Please be sure to use the reading materials in constructing your answer...

...still others argue that there is no "real" history, only competing narratives, in which power, not truth, determines the outcome. Drawing on our readings and discussion, how does the Israeli-Palestinian history illustrate each of these perspectives? Based on this, how do you now view the uses and abuses of history, using specific examples from our work...

...(1) We have examined three images of the Israeli occupation of Palestine: genocide, apartheid, and sociocide. Which of these organizing concepts, if any, do you find most persuasive and why?...

(2)...Please bear in mind, that your peace plan should reflect Rouhana's ideas (namely that reconciliation requires a sense of history, a sense of justice, and a sense of power) as well as Lederach's (that states, NGOs, and grass roots movements must all be involved and their actions aligned) .
(3) If you were advising the European Union or the Quartet, what would you urge them to do?

Please be sure to draw on the reading materials in constructing your answer...

What's a little odd about this class is that the professor, Eve Spangler, is a sociologist whose main area of research is workplace safety. A while ago she started getting interested in anti-Israel activities, and eventually, being an academic, she decided to teach a class about her latest fascination.