November 2009 Archives

Growing up in Kuwait, I had the best of everything. My father owned a successful construction company, and provided us five children with amenities like piano lessons, swimming, calligraphy and trips all over the world. Although we were Muslims like everyone else, we were totally secular and my father always aimed to shield us from religious people whom he described as crazies.

I grew up being told that Israelis and Jews were the lowest type of creature in existence, put on Earth only to kill us Arabs. In math class the teacher would say, "If one rocket killed X number of Jews, how many would six rockets kill?"

My father was rabidly anti-Israel. He was a product of Nasser's school of thought: secular from a Muslim point of view, yet deeply dedicated to the idea of pan-Arab unity. Israel, he believed, was an American proxy in the post-colonial Middle East...

...In an article published on this site at the time, Victor Davis Hanson answered this question very usefully. Thanks to its oil wealth, he explained, "Norway has the leisure to be utopian. ... So Norway loves to give award to all sorts of right-thinking frauds (Menchu), scoundrels (Elbaradei), terrorists (Arafat), Stalinists (Le Doc Tho), Elmer Gantrys (Jimmy Carter) and hucksters (Gore) -- as it sits in judgment of others from Lala land." Other, bigger countries are compelled to be realistic about the world; Norway can afford to serve up sanctimonious, more-virtuous-than-thou abstractions -- and to award "effort and intention, not achievement." Hanson suggested that the reader imagine Norway "as the son or daughter of a movie star, one who grew up in Malibu, and feels so terribly about it that he lectures the U.S. about everything from global warming to George Bush's assorted sins -- confident that he will never have to work at Ace Hardware, and never have to live near South Central L.A. That sums up Norway."

As someone who has lived in Norway for over ten years, I can testify that Hanson is right on the money. As Obama's big day in Oslo approaches, however, I feel compelled to add a footnote or two -- not to contradict Hanson, but rather to support and perhaps amplify his points. One key point, for example, is that it is impossible to underestimate the degree to which Norwegians have it drummed into their heads from infancy on that Norway is "the world's richest country" as well as "the world's best country to live in." There is no doubt in their minds that this is true, because, after all, the UN says so, and in no country on earth (this has, incidentally, been proven by a survey) do the people revere the UN more than they do in Norway...

...Anyway, it seems clear that all of this -- the indifference (and even hostility) to individual achievement in the schoolroom and beyond, the preference for empty peace-and-love rhetoric over tough, intelligent realpolitik, the prioritization of social-democratic communalism over personal responsibility, the readiness to bow and scrape to bullying tyrants in the name of "peace," and the pathetic eagerness to be seen by those bullying tyrants as a pretty little "butterfly" on the world stage -- all this makes far more comprehensible the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to hand one of their medals to a man who has snubbed America's democratic friends and eulogized its autocratic foes, who is all too eager to foist socialist solutions on a republic founded on individual liberty, and whose résumé, while light on real-world accomplishments, is heavy on high-minded yap about peace and dialogue. I suppose one can only be glad that the lepidoptera in Oslo don't also pass out the prizes for chemistry, physics, and medicine.

The Islamic Hamas movement banned girls last month from riding behind men on motor scooters and forbade women from dancing at the opening of a folk museum. Girls in some public schools must wear headscarves and cloaks.

Signs of Hamas's creeping Islamization are everywhere in Gaza, the Mediterranean coastal enclave that Hamas has run by itself since 2007. Gaza is already politically divided from the West Bank, the Palestinian territory administered by the secular Fatah movement.

"Ruling by itself, Hamas can stamp its ideas on everyone," said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Gaza's al-Azhar University. "Islamizing society has always been part of Hamas strategy."...'

What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood?

Here's my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced -- I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled "Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam," and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America -- the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by "The Narrative."

What is scary is that even though he was born, raised and educated in America, The Narrative still got to him.

The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books -- and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes -- this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand "American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy" to keep Muslims down...

Last week, Oliver Miles, Britain's former ambassador to Libya and a pillar of the country's foreign policy establishment, put his thinking cap on, put pen to paper and came up with the following thoughts in a column in the Independent newspaper about the presence of the esteemed historians Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman on the board of the UK's latest Iraq Inquiry:

"Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism," he said. "...if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available. Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced." (My italics)

In other words, Jews are an embarrassment. Ban them...

Swiss voters have approved a move to ban the construction of new minarets in the country.

Final results show that over 57 percent of voters backed the proposal in a referendum that was held today following an initiative by a right wing political party. Turnout was reported at about 55 percent.

Switzerland, home to some 400,000 Muslims, already has four minarets attached to mosques that will remain even after today's referendum.

The Swiss government had urged voters to reject the proposed ban on new minarets, saying it would violate religious freedom and human rights, as well as potentially provoking Islamist radicalism and harming Switzerland's image. But in a statement today, the government said it respects the decision of the voters.

"A majority of the Swiss people and the cantons have adopted the popular initiative against the construction of minarets. The Federal Council respects this decision," the statement said.

The controversial proposal to ban minarets was brought up by the right wing Swiss People's party, which says minarets are symbols of rising Muslim political and religious power that could eventually turn Switzerland into an Islamic nation.

Campaigners demanded the referendum to halt "political Islamization" by amending the Swiss constitution to add a clause stating "the construction of minarets is prohibited."...

The Iranian government approved a plan Sunday to build 10 new uranium enrichment facilities, a dramatic expansion in defiance of U.N. demands it halt the program.

The decision comes only two days after the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency censured Iran, demanding it immediately stop building a newly revealed enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom and freeze all uranium enrichment activities.

A Cabinet meeting headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to begin building five uranium enrichment sites that have already been studied and propose five other locations for future construction within two months.

In Vienna, spokeswoman Gillian Tudor said the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency would have no comment. But the announcement is likely to stoke already high tensions between Iran and the West over its controversial nuclear activities...

April 1918 - Muslim-Christian Societies were established in most major cities to challenge British and Zionist attempts to create sectarian rifts based on religion.

January 1919 - Muslim-Christian societies formed a more centralized organization, paving the way for the first Palestinian Arab Congress, which called for the education of youth, encouraging national development and protecting individual and national rights.

11 March, 1920 - Demonstrations were held in all major Palestinian cities against the Balfour Declaration. As the uprising spread, mass resignations, protests and strikes continued throughout the spring. During the 1920s Palestinians used the simplest and most basic nonviolent methods of protest and persuasion: testaments, declarations, petitions, manifestos, assemblies, delegations, processions, marches and motorcades.

1923 - The Palestine Communist Party was founded on a platform of coexistence and began organizing Arab and Jewish workers t o challenge political Zionism...

Q: What's the difference between BDS and homeopathy?

A: Not much, actually. Both are frauds that are led by scoundrels, attract the naïve, and have yet to produce any verifiable result, much less, the promised benefit for suffering humanity...

...Much of the conference consisted (aside from a few pep-rally-type events) of, well, reports of various local efforts, without, well, any particular effects. It further consisted in promoting a mixture of Quixotic master goals (make universities and monster academic pension fund CREF divest; this, although the effort failed at Hampshire, which has practically no endowment at stake) and (more sub rosa) small-scale guerilla actions that fall somewhere between the juvenile and the illegal: e.g. "de-shelve" Israeli products ([1] [2]) in stores. Not exactly the stuff of which Che Guevara was made...

Evidently I spoke too soon when I gently suggested that the recent BDS conference at Hampshire this past weekend had been a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

When I unsuspectingly arrived on campus on Monday, I was taken aback to see that these signs had sprouted, like dragon's teeth, overnight...

You never lived to see
What you gave to me
One shining dream of hope and love
Life and liberty

With a host of brave unknown Soldiers
For your company, you will live forever
Here in our memory

In fields of sacrifice
Heroes paid the price
Young men who died for old men's wars
Gone to paradise

We are all one great band of brothers
And one day you'll see we can live together
When all the world is free

I wish you'd lived to see
All you gave to me
Your shining dream of hope and love
Life and liberty

We are all one great band of brothers
And one day you'll see - we can live together
When all the world is free

Dubai's debt woes may worsen to become a "major sovereign default" that roils developing nations and cuts off capital flows to emerging markets, Bank of America Corp. said.

"One cannot rule out -- as a tail risk -- a case where this would escalate into a major sovereign default problem, which would then resonate across global emerging markets in the same way that Argentina did in the early 2000s or Russia in the late 1990s," Bank of America strategists Benoit Anne and Daniel Tenengauzer wrote in a report.

A default would lead to a "sudden stop of capital flows into emerging markets" and be a "major step back" in the recovery from the global financial crisis, they wrote.

Emerging-market stocks around the world have slumped for two days on concern a debt restructuring by Dubai World, with $59 billion of liabilities, will add to the $1.72 trillion of losses and writedowns from the global credit freeze. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index fell 1.9 percent to 940.30 as of 1:55 p.m. in New York, extending this week's decline to 2.6 percent.

Dubai, which borrowed $80 billion in a four-year construction boom to transform its economy into a tourism and financial hub, suffered the world's steepest property slump in the recession. Home prices fell 50 percent from their 2008 peak, according to Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG...

The US public will be "outraged" by Citibank's $8 billion loan to Dubai just six weeks after the bank was bailed out, US House of Representatives domestic policy subcommittee chair-man has said. Dennis Kucinich commented on the Dubai loan and other US banking investments as a congressional panel released a report that strongly questioned Citibank's actions. The report, shown to 7DAYS, cites the Dubai loan as the largest of the "questionable transactions" by banks after the US government bailed them out. It notes that the loan to Dubai's public sector came on December 14, just six weeks after the US government gave Citibank a $25 billion bail-out.

The report quotes Win Bischoof, then chairman of Citi, as saying the bank agreed to the Dubai loan because "we continue to place the Gulf region among our globally most significant markets"...

Today's announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.

For over a decade, European governments have been major sources of funding for dozens of Israeli and Palestinian organizations claiming to promote human rights and similar moral causes. While these groups are known as "nongovernmental organizations," or NGOs, they are, in fact, selected and nurtured by foreign governments. And as seen in research to be discussed in a Knesset conference on December 1, their agendas are more political than moral.

This often hidden support helps pay for expensive newspaper advertisements, such as those recently announcing B'Tselem's 20th anniversary; the salaries of lawyers involved in dozens of High Court cases about the security barrier, treatment of Palestinian terrorists, etc.; the Geneva Initiative's conferences and booklets; and a flood of statements submitted to the United Nations condemning Israeli policies. Recipient NGOs have a major influence on many issues in our lives, and on the decisions of our democratically elected government.

Although foreign funding for Israeli NGOs is labeled as support for "civil society," this is false advertising. Organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, B'Tselem, Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual, and many more, cannot claim to be rooted in Israeli civil society when they are funded both directly by the Swedish government, and indirectly through budgets provided by the same government to the Diakonia church organization. This process is repeated by another 15 governments (including Norway and Switzerland), as well as the European Commission, which between them fund more than 50 similar organizations.

The nature and scale of European influence is unique - in no other case do democratic countries use taxpayer money to support opposition groups in other democracies. Imagine the French response to U.S. government financing for radical NGO anti-abortion campaigns in Paris, or for promoting Corsican separatists under the guise of human rights. Would Spain tolerate foreign government funding of NGO campaigns involving the violent Basque conflict? But here, as in other areas, Israel is singled out and subject to different rules.

Taken together, the large sums provided to NGOS by European governments through secret processes constitute a major effort to manipulate the Israeli marketplace of ideas. This is inherently colonialistic, undermining the goals of Zionism and Jewish sovereign equality...

ARAFAT, Saudi Arabia (AFP) - Iranian hajj pilgrims carried out a peaceful protest without incident on Thursday as millions of Muslims amassed for the peak of the world's largest annual pilgrimage.

Ignoring Saudi warnings against political activity, the Iranians chanted for Muslim unity and against the "enemies" of the faith in their camp at Arafat outside of Mecca.

"Death to America, death to Israel," thousands of Iranians chanted inside a huge tent on the Arafat plain.

No Saudi security forces were evident as Ayatollah Muhammed Rishari, the representative of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led the Iranian delegation.

"We need to be purified from our wrongdoings in this hajj," he said in a statement...

The director general of the United Nations nuclear watchdog declared in unusually blunt language on Thursday that Iran had stonewalled investigators about evidence that the country had worked on nuclear weapons design, and that his efforts to reveal the truth had "effectively reached a dead end."

The comments by the official, Mohamed ElBaradei, came four days before he is to leave office after 12 years at the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. His remarks refocus attention on Iran's alleged work on weapons design at the moment that the West is debating how to respond after Tehran backed away from a commitment it made in early October to temporarily send much of its nuclear fuel abroad...

The UN nuclear watchdog's governing body has passed a resolution condemning Iran for developing a uranium enrichment site in secret.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also demanded that Iran freeze the project immediately.

The resolution, the first against Iran in nearly four years, was passed by a 25-3 margin with six abstentions...

I wonder how many times a day Britons hear something nasty said about them on American radio and television or written about them in the American press, and how many expatriate Britons living abroad are confronted by aggressive Brit-haters.

In the past month I have been making careful note of incidents I feel are anti-American; why, you may ask, am I "at it" yet again and why is this being published in Pajamas Media? I feel it is important for Americans to understand what they might encounter on a 2009 Christmas trip abroad in order to avoid what the former CNN London bureau chief Walt Rodgers describes in his excellent October 15 editorial in the Christian Science Monitor. He recounts an incident in which an American accent roused someone's ire and violence ensued. Also, it is important for Americans who do business abroad to appreciate that the accent is not a ticket to happiness or success even in the milieu of Euro-Obama euphoria. Furthermore, the extremely influential BBC television and radio programs Any Questions (I have been a panelist on this show several times and have tried to defend the honor of the United States of America) and Question Time often promulgate misconceptions about the United States and Israel that go uncorrected.

So what? Well, in order for people like myself who live here and who wish to avoid a heart attack, it is unfortunate that so much rubbish about America and Americans is stated as fact in the media and then one is relentlessly assaulted by an enraged Briton or European.

This happened in early November at London Mayor Boris Johnson's all-day conference on Olympics 2012 and the arts. At the end of the day I went to the reception and a tousle-haired young man came over to me and started asking me questions peppered with "Yeh?" His name is Tom and he is a cultural affairs aide to Mayor Johnson. I have no idea why, but he really laid into me...

The latest Benny Morris thread provided a veritable collection of comments that underscore just why "Comment is Free" is a cesspit of antisemitic discourse...

Some North Andover residents say The Board of Selectmen have hijacked the "Town Common" after a vote Monday night that sent shock waves through the town.

Each year Rabbi Bronstein of Chabad House in Andover requests permission from the Town of North Andover to display a Menorah on the Town Common for the eight days of Chanukah.

And each year, the Board of Selectmen in North Andover routinely approve the request without any problems or controversies.

But, when Rabbi Bronstein submitted the same request this year the Selectmen refused, saying a new policy passed by the board last month restricts the use of the common to one day only...

...Selectman Bill Grodon did make a motion to support the Rabbi and asked the board to make an exception to allow the menorah for eight days, but not one member of the board would even second the motion for a vote...

...Selectmen said that the new policy was enacted because they wanted to preserve the integrity of the common and avoid unnecessary damage to the green space with multi-day events and fairs.

However, one selectman said she doesn't believe having a menorah or Christmas tree on the common for eight days would damage the common and is not relevant to the intent of the policy and flies in the face of the founding fathers of the town...

President Barack Obama gets an "F" for his initial effort to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel said Tuesday.

Martin Indyk, ambassador to Israel under President Bill Clinton, told an Omaha audience the current president is trying hard to re-ignite diplomacy in the Middle East -- trying, in fact, much harder than former President George W. Bush did.

But, he said, the growing mistrust between Israelis and Palestinians, the meddling influence of Iran, the Bush administration's neglect and the Obama administration's missteps have worsened the situation in the past year.

"It's clear that things are not going as he planned," Indyk said...

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq -- the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment -- called an admiral's mast -- and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors -- and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers...

Just hours after Sen. Charles Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa released a report Friday on their investigation into the abrupt firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin, the Obama White House gave the lawmakers a trove of new, previously-withheld documents on the affair. It was a twist on the now-familiar White House late-Friday release of bad news; this time, the new evidence was put out not only at the start of a weekend but also hours too late for inclusion in the report.

The new documents support the Republican investigators' conclusion that the White House's explanation for Walpin's dismissal -- that it came after the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, unanimously decided that Walpin must go -- was in fact a public story cobbled together after Walpin was fired, not before...

...Pressed for the reason Walpin was fired, Eisen told House and Senate aides that the White House conducted an "extensive review" of complaints about Walpin's performance before deciding to dismiss him. According to the new report, Eisen told Congress that "his investigation into the merits of removing Gerald Walpin involved contacting members of the Corporation for National and Community Service [CNCS] board to confirm the existence of a 'consensus' in favor of removal." But Republican investigators later discovered that during that "extensive review," the White House did not even seek the views of the corporation's board -- the very people whose "consensus" purportedly led to Walpin's firing.

Other than board chairman Alan Solomont, the Democratic mega-donor and Obama supporter who originally told the White House of his dissatisfaction with Walpin, "no member of the CNCS board had any substantive input about whether the removal of Gerald Walpin was appropriate," according to the report...

...The new documents show the White House scrambling, in the days after the controversy erupted, to put together a public explanation for the firing. On June 11, less than 24 hours after Walpin received the call from Eisen, the board held a conference call...

Recent messages on an anti-Israel listserve run by Al-Awda have included expressions of anti-Semitism, denials of the Holocaust and wild conspiracy theories about Israel and Jews.

Supporters of Al-Awda, a Palestinian-American grassroots organization, use its various national and regional listserves to condemn Israel and organize events expressing opposition to Israel's policies. In recent weeks, several e-mails distributed to the listserve have featured particularly egregious comments alleging that Israel secretly orchestrates Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, that Jews are guilty of engaging in organ trafficking and that it is sensible to "doubt" the veracity of the Holocaust.

Al-Awda's listserve has on occasion featured messages demonstrating support for terrorist groups, including the distribution of communiqués from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). But several of the recent messages, some of which appear below, reflect previously unseen expressions of anti-Semitism, slander about Jews and ludicrous conspiracy theories...

I'm more than a little angry right now. Yes, I'm irate that some sh-tbag Major ("sh-tbag" is often used as a technical term in the Army) opened fire on a group of his fellow Soldiers killing 12 and wounding 30. But that's not even what is under my skin right now. What is bothering me is the general reaction of our media and those stupid enough to think this was not an act of terrorism, but was caused by supposed PTSD caused at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

You want to know what PTSD is like? I'll tell you...

Earlier today, we sent a letter to the cabinet members of the government of Israel. The following is an English translation of what we wrote to them.

Like the rest of the Jewish nation, we yearn to see Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit back home with his long-suffering parents as soon as possible [and we have written about this in the past.]

But it is with indescribable pain that we read about the impending mass release of the convicted murderers of Israeli civilians and soldiers. Those of us who still personally feel the agony of the terror attacks of the last few years have failed to motivate our leaders to free Gilad Shilat via alternative means.

Among the prisoners to be released will be the convicted mass murderer Ahlam Tamimi.

And among the victims whose sacrifices will be denigrated is our precious child, Malki.

Tamimi is unique in several ways. As such, she should be treated differently from other convicted murderers.

While she is a woman, and for this reason accorded relatively compassionate coverage by the media, Tamimi is a far more prolific murderer than most of the men she will accompany. She slaughtered seven men and women and eight babies and children in cold blood. Tamimi personally led the suicide-bomber, Al-Masri, right up to entrance of the target she herself selected, Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant, made a hasty getaway to save her own skin, and then, in effect, "fired her weapon". Few of the prisoners on Hamas' demand list were so intimately involved in the terror attacks for which they were convicted and sentenced. Those who were, usually died in the attack.

Tamimi was sentenced to 16 consecutive life sentences, and has been in prison for five years. Few of the murderers Israel has agreed to release have spent so brief a period behind bars.

She has enjoyed the notoriously comfortable conditions that Israel lavishes on female Palestinian prisoners, including: the freedom to dress in clothes of her choice - she swapped her secular garb for Muslim fundamentalist scarf and robe; the opportunity to grant interviews to writers and to a documentary film-maker, thereby gaining widespread international media coverage and air-time for her hateful values; the unfettered opportunity to practice her religion to the fullest extent; the option of higher education - she was a university student and part-time journalist at the time of the murders; the time to socialize and politicize with her fellow terrorist-prisoners. Few male Palestinian murderers enjoy conditions as generous as Tamimi's.

Tamimi has declared unequivocally that she has no regrets about what she did. In one of her media interviews, permitted by the Israel Prison Service, she is quoted saying: "I am not sorry for what I did. I will get out of prison and I refuse to recognize Israel's existence... Discussions will only take place after Israel recognizes that this is Islamic land".

Several years ago, Tamimi spoke with Barbara Victor, author of "Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers" (London; Constable & Robinson, 2004). In her book, Victor writes that Tamimi "didn't regret the deaths of all these children" and said "They should have returned to Poland, Russia or the United States, to the countries their parents came from".

Of the other convicted terrorists to be freed, none - as far as we know - has made such egregious and documented statements of un-repentance.

Abdullah Barghouti, another mass murderer who prepared the bomb that slaughtered the Sbarro victims and who is also slated to be released in the Gilad Shalit exchange, publicized his lack of regret as well. But he qualified this by saying: "I do not accept responsibility for their deaths. I feel pain, of course. They are little children. But the government of Israel is solely responsible."

When, during the filming of a documentary, Tamimi was informed that the number of children she had murdered was higher than she had herself presumed, she smiled with pleasure into the camera.

The Sbarro bombing remains one of the most horrific acts of terrorism that Israel has ever known. It decimated an entire family, the Schijveschuurders; the father, mother and three of their young children died instantly, leaving behind four orphans. It robbed a couple of their only child, pregnant with her first baby when Tamimi murdered her. It sent a young mother into a coma from which she has never emerged; her ravaged life is never included in the tally of Tamimi's victims.

The evil that Tamimi embodies is special, and deserves treatment distinct from that of the other terrorists.

We recognize, as many observers have pointed out, that Israel has probably bungled the handling of Shalit's return. The damage has been done and there is no turning back the clock. We are resigned to the fact that releasing terrorists for Gilad Shalit's return means that Hamas will commit fresh kidnappings.

We also fear that Israeli soldiers, sent by their commanders to risk their lives in the pursuit of suspected terrorists, will now wonder whether they should die just so that another name is added to the next prisoner-release list.

Removing Tamimi's name from the list will enable Israel to demonstrate some vestige of strength, conviction and morality. This is a message which needs to be heard by its citizens, its enemies and the world. Please support our efforts to bring this about.

Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem

Anti-Israel, pro-Iran university professors are being funded by a shadowy multimillion-dollar Islamic charity based in Manhattan that the feds charge is an illegal front for the repressive Iranian regime.

The deep-pocketed Alavi Foundation has aggressively given away hundreds of thousands of dollars to Columbia University and Rutgers University for Middle Eastern and Persian studies programs that employ professors sympathetic to the Iranian dictatorship.

"We found evidence that the government of Iran really controlled everything about the foundation," said Adam Kaufmann, investigations chief at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office...

... In one of the biggest handouts, the controversial charity donated $100,000 to Columbia University after the Ivy League school agreed to host Iranian leader and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to the foundation's 2007 tax filings obtained by The Post.

Rutgers professor Hooshang Amirahmadi, former head of the school's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and president of the American-Iranian Council, a nonprofit advocacy group, unabashedly has touted Hezbollah and Hamas as legitimate organizations and not terrorists.

Between 2005 and 2007, the Alavi Foundation donated $351,600 to the Rutgers Persian language program, a spokesman for the school acknowledged. The university would not comment further...

...The Alavi Foundation -- a charity that law-enforcement officials believe is a front for the Iranian government -- has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund professorships at Columbia and Rutgers universities. These professors have been apologists for the Iranian government...

The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but "would explain what happened and why they did it."

The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center.

Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain "their assessment of American foreign policy," Fenstermaker said.

"Their assessment is negative," he said...

When Sarah Palin offered her unqualified support for the Israeli government's policy of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the self-described "pro-Israel, pro-peace" J Street blasted her for "pandering to her right-wing base comes at the expense of the security of the State of Israel." The group added that "the majority of Israelis and pro-Israel Americans who view the growing settlement enterprise as a threat to Israel's very future as a Jewish democracy." So according to J Street, Palin's support for the official policy of the Israeli government raised questions about Palin's pro-Israel bona fides.

Anti-Defamation League chief Abe Foxman sees things differently...

...J Street has explicitly worked to change the definition of what it means to be pro-Israel by pushing people like Palin out of the tent and letting self-described anti-Zionists in -- so is Ben-Ami the only one who gets to decide who is and who is not pro-Israel based on whether they agree with his views? Palin is without a doubt pro-Israel, and yet Ben-Ami blasted her -- why? Because she doesn't agree with his views, and because J Street is not a pro-Israel group but a partisan political organization that, in Ben-Ami's own words, seeks only to be Obama's "blocking back" in Congress...

Young female athletes from Israel's fencing team swept top medals at a 28-nation European tournament held in Mödling, Austria last week - but faced an additional challenge when they stood on the winners' podium to receive their medals: the organizers did not play the recording of the Israeli national anthem, and the Israeli winners had to sing the anthem on their own, a capella style. The Israeli team's staff has no doubt that the incident was intentional.

Israel's Dana Strelnikov, 14, won the gold medal and Alona Kamarov won the bronze at the tournament, which hosted 120 fencers aged up to 17. Both Israeli medalists hail from the northern Israeli town of Ma'alot, whose fencing club has produced many of Israel's best young fencers. But as they stood on the podium and awaited the opening sounds of national anthem HaTikvah - they heard only silence. The girls and their trainers quickly understood what was happening and proceeded to sing the entire anthem on their own, with some scattered support from voices in the spectators' bleachers.

The Israeli national team's coach, Yaakov Friedman, told Arutz Sheva that the Israeli team faces constant political challenges on the international circuit. At a tournament in Göteborg, Sweden, in January this year, Israel won the silver medal and when the medalists were already on the podium the organizers informed Friedman that they do not have a recording of the Israeli anthem. The team sang the anthem without the help of the recording. It was understood by everyone, Friedman said, that the reason was Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, which had just ended...

In the Mödling incident, Friedman said, the organizers approached him when the winners were on the podium and told him that "we do not have a recording of the new Israeli anthem, just the old one." Friedman informed them that to the best of his knowledge, Israel has only had one anthem - HaTikvah - since it was founded...

...I was in the prison van yesterday on my way back from court and struck up a conversation with a guy next to me who was losing it. So, I calmed him down, and told him to stay positive, and use his time here to clean his heart and mind, get stronger, and learn more about himself and his purpose in life, and that way he could gain more from prison than he ever would outside. he just looked at me and said: "That's the first time anyone has said something like that to me since I got here," and my words were quite simply and easy...

British media and society are gripped by lies about a "secret" Israel lobby controlling foreign policy.

Here is a small selection of events that have taken place in Britain since the end of Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year.

The government has imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel and failed to vote against the Goldstone report in the U.N . The charities War on Want and Amnesty International U.K. have both promoted a book by the anti-Israeli firebrand Ben White, tellingly called "Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide." The Trades Union Congress at its annual conference has called for boycotts of Israeli products as well as a total arms embargo.

In the media, the Guardian newspaper has stepped up its already obsessive campaign against the Jewish state to the extent that the paper's flagship Comment is Free Web site frequently features two anti-Israeli polemics on one and the same day. The BBC continues to use its enormous influence over British public opinion to whitewash anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Middle East. Its Web site, for example, features a profile of Hamas that makes no mention of the group's virulent hatred of Jews or its adherence to a "Protocols of Zion"-style belief in world-wide Jewish conspiracies.

Readers may be surprised to learn, therefore, that the British media and political establishment is apparently cowering under the sway of a secretive cabal of Zionist lobbyists who have all but extinguished critical opinions of Israel from the public domain...

...This time, Nonie, who is the founder of Arabs for Israel, was invited to speak at both Columbia and Princeton. The official invitation at Columbia came from the very distinguished CAMERA, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), and from a new student organization there: Campus Media Watch, a group which is not yet quite up and running. Darwish flew from the West Coast, and was already all dressed up and ready to travel to Columbia when she got word that she'd been canceled...

A Gaza charity linked to the ruling Hamas militant group is offering $1.4 million to anybody who captures an Israeli soldier.

The Waad group sent an e-mail on Wednesday calling on people living in Israel to try take soldiers hostage.

The organization, which supports Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, is headed by Hamas' Interior Minister Fathi Hamad. He did not return calls seeking comment.

Waad's director, Usama Kahlout, says the offer is in response to an Israeli group's offer to pay Gazans for information on the whereabouts of Gilad Shalit, who has been held in captivity by Hamas for more than three years...

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We have removed the video "I am Israel" as it was not the message we wanted to send about peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians. We regret posting it in the first place as its message was not one of reconciliation. The comments that were posted about it confirmed that it was offensive to our members as well as other readers. We regret this mistake.

Sara Roy, who holds a non-tenured "research" position at Harvard's Center for Middle East Studies (CMES), claims to be a "political economist," although she apparently has no training in economics or political science. She also claims to be an expert in Middle East Studies, but has no degree in that either. Her PhD is in Education.

Roy claims to be an expert on the political economy of the Gaza Strip, but her real expertise is in anti-Israel leftist political propaganda. She worked on her doctoral dissertation in education part of the time while living for a while in the Gaza Strip, and got paid as a a research assistant by the West Bank Data Base Project, a propaganda project directed by anti-Israel radical Israeli non-academic leftists.

Roy's Middle East studies publications are by and large propaganda diatribes, and many appear in non-academic anti-Israel propaganda magazines, some of which appear in openly anti-Semitic web magazines, at least one having intimate ties to the PLO. Phyllis Chessler calls her one of "the most savage critics--of America and Israel." Roy is a prolific writer of newspaper op-eds and spends much of her time giving "expert" lectures about the Arab-Israel conflict.

Sara Roy was born Jewish, and she uses this circumstance as a lever to better support Israel's enemies. She refers frequently to something she calls a "Jewish ethical perspective" whenever bashing Israel and cites her "Jewish roots" when promoting the Hamas on anti-Semitic web sites such as the Neo-Stalinist Counterpunch.

Roy is, in fact, arguably the leading apologist for Hamas in American academia today...

In recent years there has been a significant rise in the number of non-Palestinians who describe themselves as "pro-Palestinian" activists. These people can be found mostly on university campuses in North America and Europe.

What is striking is that many of these "pro-Palestinian" activists have never been to the Middle East, let alone the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. In most cases, they are not even Arabs or Muslims.

What makes them "pro-Palestinian"?

In their view, inciting against Israel on a university campus or publishing "anti-Zionist" material on the Internet is sufficient to earn them the title of "pro-Palestinian." But what these folks have not realized is that their actions and words often do little to advance the interests of the Palestinians. In some instances, these actions and words are even counterproductive.

It is hard to see how organizing events such as "Israel Apartheid Week" on a university campus could help the cause of the Palestinians. Isn't there already enough anti-Israel incitement that is being spewed out of Arab and Islamic media outlets?

If anyone is entitled to be called "pro-Palestinian," it is those who are publicly campaigning against financial corruption and abuse of human rights by Fatah and Hamas. Those who are trying to change the system from within belong to the real "pro-Palestinian" camp.

These are the brave people who are standing up to both Fatah and Hamas and calling on them to stop killing each other and start doing something that would improve the living conditions of their constituents...

...The show producers also sent an e-mail to Simon Plosker, managing editor of media monitoring organization Honest Reporting, asking him to justify his work.

"We would like to ask you in an interview about your role as managing editor of Honest Reporting and its part in 'the battle for public opinion.' We would like to ask you about its targeting of the British media, in particular e-mail campaigns against the Guardian and BBC. We would also like to ask you about your previous roles at BICOM, NGO Monitor and your work for the IDF Spokesperson's Unit," the letter read.

"We will be in Jerusalem on Monday and hope you will welcome the opportunity to explain your role as managing editor of Honest Reporting," it concluded.

The e-mail was sent over Shabbat. The following Monday, the producers stormed into Honest Reporting's Jerusalem offices with cameras rolling, demanding to know where Plosker was.

"It was as if in an attempt to catch some sort of criminal activity. They demanded to know where I was, claimed that I was a 'major player in the UK' and asked whether I had something to hide," Plosker, who is currently in London, told the Post.

"Channel 4 has still failed to make clear why my professional background is of such interest to them," he went on. "I have nothing to hide, and aggressive actions such as bursting into my office with cameras rolling, pursuing me, can do nothing to dispel the suspicion that this documentary is nothing more than a cynical hatchet job aimed at the Anglo-Jewish community and supporters of Israel."

The letter was sent by the program's producer Ed Harriman, who also writes for the London Review of Books and was the first to review Walt and Mearsheimer's book The Israel Lobby in March 2006...

A televised memorial ceremony for Yasser Arafat included a video clip of Palestinian children delivering messages in honor of Arafat. It is noteworthy that even though this clip was prerecorded and edited, the organizers of the PA's official ceremony chose to include hate speech and libels that demonized Jews and glorified violence and Martyrdom.

Several of the chosen messages featured children repeating the ongoing Palestinian Authority libel that Arafat was poisoned by Jews. None of the children spoke about peace; in fact, the opposite was the case. One boy praised Arafat because he was a "fighter" who "did things through [violent] struggle," and who "did not make peace." The Martyrdom (Shahada) ideal was also selected as a message for the ceremony, with one boy quoting Arafat: "They want me dead, they want me prisoner but I say: Martyr, Martyr, Martyr!"

This children's section in the special memorial indicates the PA's success in transmitting to the next generation of Palestinian children hate libels that demonize Jews. Including these hate messages in the ceremony also shows that the PA approves of, and wants to publicize, the values of hatred, violence and Martyrdom that the children have adopted...

At the debate, you mentioned the damage to a flour mill in Gaza (the al Bader flour mill) as one of the incidents that convinced you that civilians were intentionally targeted. The Report is more specific, stating that the mill was attacked "for the purposes of denying sustenance to the civilian population" - which it charges may constitute "a war crime."

    A) How can you reconcile this imputed motive with Israel's act of transferring 14,208 tons of flour into Gaza during the war - an average of 618 tons/day which is not only significantly more flour than the 220 metric tons the Al Bader mill could have produced in a day; but well over the 450 tons/day that the UN and the World Food Programme says Gaza needs?

Clearly if Israel's intention was to deny flour to Palestinian civilians, it would not have facilitated the import of almost triple the amount produced by the mill that was damaged.

    B) And more broadly, how can you reconcile the imputed motive of purposefully denying sustenance to the civilian population with Israel's implementation of a daily humanitarian recess during the war in order to facilitate the transfer of humanitarian supplies?

     C) Why did the mission fail to investigate or mention the fact that Hamas repeatedly seized shipments of humanitarian goods that were sent into Gaza from Israel and interfered with their distribution to the point where UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon issued a demand to Hamas to release the goods? Why did the Mission avoid charging Hamas with "denying sustenance to the cvilian population"?...

Thank you for your inquiry about this issue. The improper use of the American Red Cross name was brought to my attention early last week and we have been working to correct the issue. The Red Cross Club at Stanford University was asked to sponsorship an event on human rights. When the Club said no, the organizers ask if they could list the Red Cross as an organization that supports human rights in order to give the Red Cross Club some visibility on campus. You can see there was some "miscommunication." We have already asked the producer to remove our name from all materials. We received this email confirmation:

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "Michael Vang" mvang@stanford.edu
Sent: Monday, November 9, 2009 11:28:10 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: My Name is Rachel Corrie: Bio deadline tonight!

Greetings,

For all promotional material henceforward, American Red Cross will not be included in the cosponsorship list. We have contacted the person who is creating our programs to remove your name before it goes to press and I have contacted the Drama Department's media contact who has access to the events.stanford.edu site to remove your name from the co-sponsorship list. Your name has been removed from the facebook event and the eflyer as well. I hope this is satsifactory and I'm sorry that we weren't able to make a cosponsorship work.

Best,

Michael Vang
Producer, My Name is Rachel Corrie

The department website has already remove our name from their listing. See: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/drama/0910_events/rachel-corrie.html We are working all get all the other departments and clubs promoting the reading to update their listings as well.

Best Regards,
Cynthia
Cynthia Shaw | Director of Communication, Marketing & Government Relations
American Red Cross Silicon Valley Chapter

The American Red Cross is not. They were and then pulled out. The printed posters had been printed so they still appear. Amnesty international at Stanford is the sponsor.

Patrice O'Dwyer
Stanford University
Department Administrator of Drama
Division of Dance

In retelling his experience of living through the Velvet Revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the lifting of the Iron Curtain, Czech Republic president Václav Klaus offers his views on what students today need to understand about life under communism.

He also defends his opposition to the idea of a European superstate--"I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for the Czech Republic"--and compares the ideology of environmentalism and global warming alarmism with the ideology of communism. Finally, he ponders the question of what lessons from history his grandchildren are learning.

Richard Goldstone seems to use interviews to chip away at the legitimacy of his own work. He told the Forward that nothing he uncovered in Gaza is credible enough to be admissible in court. And now he has admitted this to Haaretz...

...Einstein's decision reflected a major transformation in his life. Until the completion of his general theory of relativity, he had dedicated himself almost totally to science. But the anti-Semitism that was oozing up around him in Berlin led him to reassert his identity as a Jew and to feel more committed to defending the culture and community of his people. "I am not keen on going to America, but am just doing it on behalf of the Zionists," he wrote to his French publisher. "I must serve as famed bigwig and decoy-bird ... I am doing whatever I can for my tribal brethren, who are being treated so vilely everywhere."...

...Thousands of spectators, along with the fife-and-drum corps of the Jewish Legion, were waiting in Battery Park when the mayor and other dignitaries brought Einstein ashore on a police tugboat. The crowd, waving blue-and-white flags, sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" and then the Zionist anthem, "Hatikvah." The Einsteins and the Weizmanns intended to head directly for the Hotel Commodore, in Midtown. Instead, their motorcade wound through the Jewish neighborhoods of the Lower East Side late into the evening. "Every car had its horn, and every horn was put in action," Weizmann recalled. "We reached the Commodore at about 11:30, tired, hungry, thirsty, and completely dazed."

One group was missing at most of the subsequent welcoming ceremonies and celebrations: the leaders of the Zionist Organization of America. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who was its honorary president, did not even send pro forma official greetings or congratulations. Brandeis had traveled with Weizmann to Palestine in 1919, and the following year had gone to London to be with him at a Zionist convention. But shortly afterward they began to feud. Their fight partly stemmed from a few differences over policy; Brandeis wanted the Zionist organizations to focus on sending money to Jewish settlers in Palestine and not on agitating politically. It was also partly an old-fashioned power struggle; Brandeis wanted to install efficient managers and take power from Weizmann and his more ardent eastern European followers. But above all, it was a clash of personalities. Weizmann was born in Russia, emigrated to England, and shared Einstein's disdain for Jews who tried too hard to assimilate. Brandeis was born in Louisville, Kentucky, graduated from Harvard Law School, prospered as a prominent Boston lawyer, and was appointed by President Wilson to be the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court. His crowd tended to look down on unrefined and unassimilated Jews from Russia and eastern Europe...

...two of Brandeis's closest associates expressed misgivings. His protégé Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School, and Judge Julian Mack, the person Brandeis had tapped to be president of the Zionist Organization of America, argued that it would be better if Einstein's visit were cast primarily as a trip to lecture on physics, rather than one to raise money for Palestine...

The resistance to Einstein's mission came not only from the Brandeis camp of cautious and restrained American Zionists, but also from successful New York Reform Jews of German heritage, many of whom were opposed to Zionism. When Einstein invited 50 or so of New York's most prominent Jews to a private meeting in his hotel, many of them declined. Paul Warburg, who had served as his agent soliciting lecture fees, wrote:

My presence would be of no use; on the contrary, I fear that, if at all, its effect would be rather to cool things down. As I already told you on another occasion, I personally have the greatest doubts relating to the Zionist plans and anticipate their consequences with genuine consternation.

Other rejections came from Arthur Hays Sulzberger of The New York Times; the politically connected financier Bernard Baruch; the lawyer Irving Lehman; the first Jewish Cabinet secretary, Oscar Straus; the philanthropist Daniel Guggenheim; and the former Congressman Jefferson Levy.

On the other hand, Einstein and Weizmann were wildly embraced by less assimilated and more enthusiastic Jews, the ones who tended to live in Brooklyn or on the Lower East Side rather than on Park Avenue...

...Red and green tissue paper to wrap presents was also crossed off the list because it looked too "Christmasy," McMillan said.

"One of the parents said, 'If we allow Santa, what do we say if a child brings in a swastika? Do we allow that too?' " McMillan said. "All I could think of was, are you kidding? You're comparing a Christmas ornament to a swastika? It seems as if reason is lost somewhere and I just hope we can find it again."...

When introducing Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) at a recent lecture, Professor Michael Cox said the school invites such guests to critically engage and debate the perspectives of the speaker. And as a university in a democratic society, he said, the LSE must uphold the principles of free speech, tolerance, and pluralism.

However, the school's administration and student newspaper, the LSE Beaver, have collectively provided an environment that validates extreme, hateful views of Israel while failing to provide a competing perspective. This has provoked not a thoughtful debate on the Arab-Israeli conflict but instead a race to the bottom -- of who can slur Israel the most.

The LSE hosts hundreds of speakers every year from all political leanings and dispositions, but recently its record is questionable with regard to censorship. Last winter it uninvited conservative author Douglas Murray from chairing a debate on the grounds of security concerns, while in 2006 the school hosted members of al-Muhajiroun (who were later banned under the British Terrorism Act of 2006). And according to the Telegraph, in 1995 the school's Freshers' Fair featured extremist groups promoting an Islamic state in Britain.

But in this debate the school has not stifled freedom of expression. After all, it did not submit to the demands of professors who wrote to the Beaver saying they were "shocked" and "appalled" by the mere invitation of the deputy foreign minister to campus. The letter, signed by over two dozen LSE academics, scorns the university for giving "extraordinary prominence" to Mr. Ayalon by alerting members of the university community to the event via email. Another professor went so far as to call for an investigation to uncover who invited Mr. Ayalon. Fortunately, the school's commitment to free speech is greater than that of some of its distinguished professors...

The American government refuses to acknowledge the medieval abuses of Christians at the hands of the Palestinian Authority.

Rev. Bill Harter is a charismatic and well-respected Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor who has taken forty church missions to Israel and the Palestinian Authority territories. On various occasions at meetings with State Department officials, Rev. Harter revealed to them that Christian Palestinians say one thing in public and the opposite in private.

He requested that the State Department appoint a human rights officer and station him at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem in order to monitor, record, and redress the abuses that Christian Palestinians are undergoing at the hands of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas-sponsored gangs.

Rev. Harter was told in whispers, in the privacy of Christian Palestinian families' homes, about the fears they have of remaining in their towns and living there under the control of a Palestinian state. During his earlier trips, members of the Arab Christian community had expressed great fear for their safety as Israel withdrew from the Bethlehem area and handed it over to Arafat and the Palestinian Authority (PA). According to Harter, Christians under PA control are intimidated into speaking out against Israel and are abused if they seem to accuse the PA of any wrongdoing...

...Article 5 of the draft constitution of the Palestinian Authority unequivocally declares: "In the State of Palestine Islam will be the official religion. ... Sharia Islamic law will be the primary source of legislation." Although that same article also "guarantees that monotheistic religions (Christianity and Judaism) will be respected and that the state will provide for freedom of worship," the best that Christians (Jews do not live under PA control) can expect from the PA is dhimmitude -- the discriminatory social and legal status "provided" to the Peoples of the Book...

..."Obama's handshake/forward lurch was so jarring and inappropriate it recalls Bush's back-rub of Merkel.

"Kyodo News is running his appropriate and reciprocated nod and shake with the Empress, certainly to show the president as dignified, and not in the form of a first year English teacher trying to impress with Karate Kid-level knowledge of Japanese customs.

"The bow as he performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms....The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part...

Human Rights Watch denies having political agenda or seeking funds from Saudi Arabia

America's leading human rights organisation has accused Israel and its supporters of an "organised campaign" of false allegations and misinformation, including "extremely personal attacks" on its staff, in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) ties the campaign - which has included accusations that the group's reports on the Jewish state are written by "anti-Israel ideologues" and that it has sought funds from Saudi Arabia - to a statement by a senior official in the Israeli prime minister's office in June pledging to "dedicate time and manpower to combating" human rights organisations.

The criticism began with Israeli pressure groups and rightwing blogs, but in recent weeks it has drawn the support of influential individuals such as Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel peace prize winner, and HRW's own founder, Robert Bernstein, who said the organisation's reports were "helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state". He called on HRW to focus more on abuses by Arab governments.

Iain Levine, HRW's programme director, said that while the organisation had long attracted criticism, in recent months there had been significant attempts to intimidate and discredit it.

"I really hesitate to use words like conspiracy, but there is a feeling that there is an organised campaign, and we're seeing from different places what would appear to be co-ordinated attacks ... from some of the language and arguments used it would seem as if there has been discussion," he said."We are having to spend a lot of time repudiating the lies, the falsehoods, the misinformation."...

...NGO Monitor accused Whitson of attempting to raise money from Saudi officials by highlighting HRW's criticism of Israel, a charge also made in a comment piece for the Wall Street Journal online that was subsequently widely distributed by the most powerful of the pro-Israel lobby groups, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). Shortly afterwards, the director of policy planning in the Israeli prime minister's office, Ron Dermer, denounced Human Rights Watch...

Took my 14 month old son to the clinic held at Burlington, MA's high school today. I got there a half hour before it opened, after sitting in a half hour of traffic on Rt 3A to get there. Police blocked the driveway, sending people to park at Simmons Park, about a half mile up the street.

I parked there and took my son in his stroller back through the pouring rain. When I got about half way up the school driveway, the woman whom I parked next to was coming back towards me with her infant. She said there wasn't enough vaccine of either seasonal or H1N1 for the number of people in line. She said 3800 people were already there, pushing and shoving. (I had heard that there were 500 H1N1, and 1500 season vaccinations planned for the clinic.)

The woman said there was little organization to the line. Another woman walking away was told she could stay but it would be like playing the lottery...

The Stanford Department of Drama and the Stanford Theatre Activist Mobilization Project (STAMP) are proud to announce a staged reading - the San Francisco Bay Area premiere - of the thought-provoking play, My Name is Rachel Corrie.

The performances feature an impressive line-up of post-show discussion speakers including Rabbi Michael Lerner, Professor Joel Beinin, and Professor Tom Sheehan.

This event is Free & Open to the public. Please email stanfordrachelcorrie@gmail.com to reserve tickets.

My Name is Rachel Corrie is Co-Sponsored by: American Red Cross, Amnesty International, Coalition for Justice in the Middle East, Emma Goldman Society for Queer Liberation, Jewish Voice for Peace, Muslim Student Awareness Network, Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Physicians for Human Rights, Stanford Says No to War, Stanford University Students for UNICEF, and Students Confronting Apartheid by Israel.

The following video entitled I Am Israel is a powerful and tragically beautiful presentation of the triumphs of Israel as it emerged to become a powerful Middle Eastern state in the modern world of today; an emergence of a people from the tragedy of World War II. But it is also a powerful presentation of the tragedy of the Palestinian people on whose land powerful Israel now resides. It reminds us of the tragedy of two people, one living in Europe before the founding of Israel and the other in Palestine. When will the tragedy of these two people end and they become reconciled to each other and to their respective histories? Could it be when we of the West act on behalf of the well being of both peoples?

A federal prosecutor argued today that a Sudbury man should not be released on bail while awaiting trial on terrorism charges because "he has radicalized himself'' and there are no conditions that would "short-circuit'' his thinking and prevent him from being a danger if he's freed from jail.

While other young people were getting together to watch "American Idol,'' Tarek Mehanna, 27, who is charged with providing material support to terrorists, gathered with his radical friends to watch videos of Americans being beheaded overseas, said Assistant US Attorney Aloke S. Chakravarty.

But Mehanna's lawyer, J. W. Carney Jr. argued that Mehanna, who earned a doctorate degree last year from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, is being prosecuted for unpopular views and statements that are protected by the First Amendment. He noted that some of the videos that the FBI says Mehanna had downloaded to his computer came from reports on major media outlets, including CNN and FOX TV.

"Listening to the prosecutors makes me afraid about where the First Amendment stands in the eyes of this government,'' Carney said...

...Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and wearing shackles, Mehanna was led into US District Court in Boston under heavy security. About 150 supporters gathered at the courthouse, but only about 20 of them, including Mehanna's family, were able to get into the small courtroom. He blew kisses to his parents and held one finger in the air as he nodded to supporters...

A jailed Sudbury terror suspect fighting to be put under house arrest yesterday drew more than 100 outraged supporters to federal court, where his lawyer disclosed the trained pharmacist was charged only after he refused to become an FBI informant.

As prosecutors argued Tarek Mehanna, 27, is too "radicalized" to be sprung from Plymouth County Correctional Center, his supporters, including children wearing "Justice for Tarek" T-shirts, insisted outside the packed courtroom that he did nothing wrong.

"We believe he's innocent and that the government is trying to create this Islamophobia," said Abdullah Tawheed, 27, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who was among those keeping vigil outside the packed courtroom during the hearing...

Supporter David Rolde of Weston said he attended a session Sunday at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland where people discussed Mehanna's case and discrimination against Muslims.

Journalist Donald Bostrom, whose August article in the Swedish publication Aftonbladet accused the IDF of harvesting the organs of Palestinians during Operation Cast Lead, has had an apparent change of heart, Army Radio reported on Thursday.

Sources close to Bostrom related that his visit to Israel and the fair dialogues he was involved in caused him to think twice about the whole story, according to the report.

While in Israel for the Dimona media conference, Bostrom was interviewed by multiple Israeli media outlets and heard serious criticism of his article andthe accounts of IDF organ theft. It was quickly revealed that Bostrom's account lacked hard facts and relied on accounts from bereaved Palestinian families.

Upon his return to Sweden, Bostrom decided to cancel his participation in the Beirut conference, the goal of which was to slander Israel, the radio station said...

...Ze'ev Feiner, head of the group that initiated Bostrom's visit, was pleased with the journalist's apparent change of opinion.

"It is no secret that many thought it was not right to invite Bostrom to the Dimona media conference last week. But we now see that the decision to bring him was right and an excellent one from a public relations perspective. It is just a shame that we did not bring him two weeks prior,"the radio station quoted Feiner as saying.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and four other men accused in the plot will be prosecuted in federal court in New York City, a federal law enforcement official said early on Friday.

But the administration will prosecute another set of high-profile detainees -- Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, and four other detainees -- at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba before a military commission, the official said...

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to announce those decisions 11 a.m. on Friday. The arrangements would mean that civilian prosecutors would handle those detainees accused of the 2001 terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, northern Virginia, and Pennsylvania, while the 2000 attack against the Cole would remain within the military system. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the press conference has not yet taken place.

No detainee is being moved right away. Under a law Congress enacted earlier this year, lawmakers must be given 45 days notice before the executive branch moves any Guantanamo Bay detainee onto United States soil.

The decision marks a milestone in the administration's efforts to close the Guantanamo prison, something that President Obama announced shortly after taking office he would do within a year, but which has proven difficult to achieve because of uncertainty about what to do with the detainees housed there...

Ask yourself this question: suppose that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's trial results in an acquittal or a hung jury. Would the Obama administration really let him go? If so, they are crazy. If not, why are they holding the trial?

...Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses -- intelligence sources -- must expose themselves and their secrets...

...KSM has no defense. He was under American indictment for terrorism for years before there ever was a 9/11, and he can't help himself but brag about the atrocities he and his fellow barbarians have carried out.

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and -- depending on what judge catches the case -- they are likely to be given a lot of it...

"Returning some of the Guantanamo detainees to New York City for trial, specifically Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, has now brought us full circle - we have regressed to a pre-9/11 mentality with respect to Islamic extremist terrorism. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed should be treated like the war criminal he is and tried in a military court. He is not just another murderer, or even a mass murderer. He murdered as part of a declared war against us - America.

"This is the same mistake we made with the 1993 terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center. We treated them like domestic criminals, when in fact they were terrorists. In the dangerous world we live in today, a nation unable to identify and properly define its enemies is a nation in danger."

Federal prosecutors took steps Thursday to seize four U.S. mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper owned by a nonprofit Muslim organization long suspected of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government.

In what could prove to be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, prosecutors filed a civil complaint in federal court against the Alavi Foundation, seeking the forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets.

The assets include bank accounts; Islamic centers consisting of schools and mosques in New York City, Maryland, California and Houston; more than 100 acres in Virginia; and a 36-story glass office tower in New York.

Confiscating the properties would be a sharp blow against Iran, which has been accused by the U.S. government of bankrolling terrorism and trying to build a nuclear bomb.

A telephone call and e-mail to Iran's U.N. Mission seeking comment were not immediately answered.

John D. Winter, the Alavi Foundation's lawyer, said it intends to litigate the case and prevail. He said the foundation has been cooperating with the government's investigation for the better part of a year.

"Obviously the foundation is disappointed that the government has decided to bring this action," Winter told The Associated Press.

It is extremely rare for U.S. law enforcement authorities to seize a house of worship, a step fraught with questions about the First Amendment right to freedom of religion...

..."Whatever the details of the government's case against the owners of the mosques, as a civil rights organization we are concerned that the seizure of American houses of worship could have a chilling effect on the religious freedom of citizens of all faiths and may send a negative message to Muslims worldwide," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations...

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) unanimously voted against an academic boycott of Israel at a meeting on Thursday.

Had the proposal passed, NTNU would have been the first Western university to sever ties with Israeli universities.

"As an academic institution, NTNU's mission is to stimulate the study of the causes of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and how it can be resolved. This means that the university is also dependent on being able to cooperate with Israeli academics and hear their views on the conflict," the 12 board members said in a statement released bythe university.

The meeting was attended by almost 50 members of the university community, a rare departure from the usual five attendees of board of governors meetings. The journalists, mostly from Norwegian publications, outnumbered the board members.

Each voting member made a statement explaining their position during a discussion prior to the vote. While many statements were critical of Israel, they concluded that an academic boycott would not be appropriate.

The discussion took less than half an hour, since no one argued in favor of the proposal...

One might think that the UK arm of Amnesty International does not take kindly to anything to do with the CIA.

After all, Amnesty UK has participated in many events with Cage Prisoners, the Islamist agitation outfit of Moazzam Begg. Cage Prisoners supports al Qaeda preacher Anwar al Awlaki, calling him "inspirational", but hey, there's nothing worse than Guantanamo, right? So of course Cage Prisoners is an appropriate partner for human rights campaigners.

Still, some intelligence officers are better than others. Here's an Amnesty UK event scheduled for next month...

(Jerusalem) - In the face of intense criticism of its Middle East activities, Human Rights Watch has expanded its Middle East and North Africa (MENA) advisory board with the addition of ten members, largely based in the Middle East. While some are human rights activists in their own countries, (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc.), including women's rights, many also contribute significantly to targeting Israel through the language of human rights.

In particular, the addition of Ms. Asli Bali, and Aeyal Gross, who is known as an opponent of Israeli policies, will reinforce the political agenda of MENA heads Sara Leah Whitson and Joe Stork, as documented in NGO Monitor's detailed analysis, "Experts or Ideologues?". These changes reflect and strengthen what founder Robert Bernstein criticized as HRW's role in "turning Israel into a pariah state", as well as HRW's role in 'lawfare', including the intensive promotion of the Goldstone Report.  (Goldstone is closely linked to HRW, and was a member of the board until after his appointment to head the UNHRC's "fact finding mission".)

Another point of interest is the inclusion of Ahmad Zuaiter, who is a portfolio manager at Soros Fund Management. Soros' Open Society Institute has become a major source of funding for HRW and for a number of other organizations that promote anti-Israel boycotts...

NGO Monitor's President Gerald Steinberg commented: "These additions to HRW's board serve different and contradictory goals. On the one hand, by including some Arab human rights activists, Kenneth Roth and Sarah Leah Whitson acknowledge Robert Bernstein's powerful criticism of having neglected campaigns against the despotic regimes in the Middle East. But a number of the individuals also add to HRW's agenda of 'turning Israel into a pariah state', as recognized by Bernstein. Like Whitson and Stork, and other board members such as Helena Cobban, the addition of Asli Bali, Aeyal Gross and others reflect the anti-Israel obsession that is incompatible with universal human rights. These appointments again demonstrate the need for a full and independent review if HRW is to recover relevance in the realm of human rights."

Oxford University's Queen's College announced the establishment of "two generous gifts" in the form of graduate scholarships in philosophy, in the name of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young Iranian woman who was shot during the post-election protests in Iran and whose death was witnessed via the internet across the globe. The scholarships will cover the college tuition fees for the recipient. Though the scholarship is open for all applicants, preference will be given to students of Iranian ethnicity...

Join us as we host Laura Bialis, filmmaker of "Sderot: Rock In The Red Zone". This documentary tells the story of the people and the music of Sderot -- a town in Southern Israel that for eight years has been under almost daily attack by Qassam rockets launched from Gaza.

Though thousands of rockets have been fired into Sderot, the town's suffering is largely unknown to the international community. But the voice of Sderot resonates through Israeli culture, as its years of anguish have bred a vibrant music scene that profoundly articulates the despair of a town in the crosshairs.

Told through the eyes of Sderot's talented and diverse young musicians, this documentary explores daily life in Sderot and the effects of living under the long-term stress of constant bombings.

The 12-minute trailer will be shown along with Bialis speaking about her journey in creating the film.

* Space for this event are limited and an RSVP to mattl@cjp.org is required *

...I was contacted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry about a photo I had blogged about on July 15, 2007, regarding a Shiite rocket attack on U.S. forces in Iraq.

The rockets recovered by the Israeli Navy last week, bound for terrorists in Lebanon, are identical to those Iran provided to Shiite militias targeting American soldiers in Iraq. There are numerous similar reports of Iranian weapons being shipped to the Taliban in Afghanistan, including one cache uncovered just two months ago.

During the summer of 2007, the escalation of violence from Shiite militias peaked in Iraq, and the government of Iran was implicated for supplying late-model weapons directly to these groups. Some of the most damning evidence came in July 2007, when 34 Iranian rockets were recovered by elements of the U.S. Army's 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team on July 12 after an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) discovered 46 launchers. Twelve rockets from that location had been fired at Forward Operating Base Hammer one day before.

I asked for and obtained photos of the rockets and launchers from Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) Public Affairs, and subsequently published a post to my personal blog.

Among the photos published on Confederate Yankee was this close-up photo of an Iranian 107mm rocket on a crude launcher, its markings plainly visible...

When I visited Israel in late October, not long before the latest visits of U.S. envoy George Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israelis of all political hues confessed that they were amazed, perplexed, and confused by the policy those two diplomats and President Obama are following.

First came an instant attitude of hostility on the part of the Obama administration toward Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, even before he had taken office on March 31 and despite his efforts to create a centrist coalition. Second came its obsession with a "settlement freeze," which in fact was a demand for something that no Israeli prime minister of any party could possibly agree to -- a complete and immediate freeze on construction not only in every settlement (including those Israel will obviously keep in any final-status agreement) but also in Israel's capital, Jerusalem. Third came the demand that Arab states reach out to Israel, a demand that the president himself delivered to the king of Saudi Arabia in a visit there in June and that, predictably, was rejected immediately...

Although the details of Monday night's talks between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama continued to be shrouded in secrecy, speaking to reporters before boarding the plane to Paris from Washington on Tuesday night, the prime minister dismissed suggestions of a tense meeting and said the "importance of the visit will become clear in the future."

"Reports about a bad atmosphere are garbage," he said. "To put it mildly, they are grossly inaccurate and don't reflect the truth."

Netanyahu the atmosphere "was very open and very warm."

"The discussions dealt with the complex of issues vital for Israel's security and our joint efforts to advance the peace process. We discussed these issues in detail, in a practical way and out of friendship. I really appreciated the professional and positive approach I discovered," he said...

...The shababs [young rioters] soon noticed me, and while other press were in the area, I could tell that a few of them had begun looking at me strangely. Suddenly, one of them ran up to me, his face shrouded in a t-shirt, and he grabbed me by the straps of my backpack.

"You're an undercover cop!" he screamed in Arabic, a rock in his right hand as he grabbed onto me with his left.

"No, I'm a journalist!" I answered back, caught off guard at by the sudden jolt.

"No you're not- you're an undercover cop!" he screamed back. "Prove to me that you're not an undercover cop!"

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my government-issued press card, thinking at the same moment that he would see the name of my publication, realize that it was an Israeli one, and my troubles would only grow.

But as he was scanning the card, another journalist, an Arab photographer, approached the both of us, and told the young man in Arabic that I was in fact a journalist.

"Enough, let him go," he told him. And the young man did as he said.

But as the shababs made their way past me - onward towards the officers - another Arab photographer, from an Arab news outlet, told me, "You should get out of here."...

... last weekend I duly RSVP'd to a guests-only invitation to the Al-Quds Underground, touted as an unconventional festival with more than 150 small shows in private spaces in the Old City. Performances included music, storytelling, dancing, short acts and food. Locations were living rooms, a library, courtyards, gardens and more unique places. My expectation of a celebration of Jerusalem's diversity was dashed, however, when I arrived late Saturday afternoon at the Damascus Gate meeting point. Politely asked in English by Jamal Goseh, the director of the a-Nuzha Hakawati Theater near the American Colony Hotel, "Where do you live?" I responded in Arabic that I live in Jerusalem. From my accent and appearance, he discerned that I am an Israeli.

Al-Quds Underground's artistic director Merlijn Twaalfhoven of Amsterdam then told me, along with some Israeli peace activists who had arrived, that we were not welcome. My reply that I had been invited was to no avail, nor was my guarded threat to pen an expose of their racism.

And so here it is.

For the sake of fairness, I met Twaalfhoven the next day to allow him an opportunity to explain... or dig himself a deeper hole. (Goseh declined my request for an interview.) "We want to bring art to the world," he began. "I sometimes break through the boundaries between art and life. That is the core of my work."

A visionary creator of art happenings such as a dance performance at the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah and the Long Distance Call concert on the rooftops of the Turkish half of the divided Cypriot city of Nicosia, Twaalfhoven said he had vaguely heard that the Arab League had chosen Jerusalem as Al-Quds 2009 Capital of Arab Culture and that the Israeli government had banned the festival as a political event forbidden under the Oslo Accords. "I don't know the details. I thought it was a good idea to bring people together."

Twaalfhoven then added, "The local people told me months ago that Israelis cannot go. Our team [of 12 Dutch activists and eight artists] had to promise that we would not allow peaceful Israelis to come."

Apologetic over what had happened, he then spilled the beans. The €50,000 project was funded by the European Union through the Dutch charity Cordaid and the Alexandria-based Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures. To have said no to racism would have meant to scuttle the budget.

Al-Quds Underground's no-Israelis rule is part of a larger policy set by the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee. This BDS movement, founded in 2005, can take credit for the cancellation of Leonard Cohen's September concert at the Ramallah Cultural Palace...

...ON the other side of the divide is a growing group so insistent on dialogue that it's no longer clear to what they are most fundamentally committed. When a group of American rabbis visited Jerusalem last week, one of them remarked that it was unfortunate that Ramallah wasn't on the itinerary. "Why visit Ramallah?" another member of the group asked. "Because Ramallah is also part of our story," was the response. "More than Holon? Are you distressed that we're not visiting Holon?" was the question that followed. To that, the first rabbi had no response.

Why, indeed, should Ramallah matter to us more than Holon? And why hide our pro-Israel position (if that's really what we are) simply to appeal to more college students? Had Theodor Herzl adopted that stance with the sultan, or had Chaim Weizmann been bashful in London, would we have a state? Had Golda Meir been self-conscious about her convictions in the face of an American community not entirely certain that a Jewish state was a good idea, where would we be? One shudders to imagine.

Have we become so utterly addicted to dialogue with our enemies that we would rather visit their cities than our own? Have we lost the ability to say, "If you breathe new life into the age-old blood libel, we will shun you"? Would we invite Alfred Dreyfus's accusers here for dialogue, were they alive today? We have real enemies. Have we so lost sight of that that we forget that anything we say, to paraphrase Miranda, "can and will be used against us"?

If those who insist on silencing any critique of Israel fail us because their passion threatens to squelch the debate we desperately need, those passionately committed to open debate suffer from the opposite problem - they do not recognize that they are unwittingly playing right into the hands of those determined to destroy us...

For many in the GDR, the fall of the Berlin Wall and unification meant the loss of jobs, homes, security and equality...

...Since the demise of the GDR, many have come to recognise and regret that the genuine "social achievements" they enjoyed were dismantled: social and gender equality, full employment and lack of existential fears, as well as subsidised rents, public transport, culture and sports facilities. Unfortunately, the collapse of the GDR and "state socialism" came shortly before the collapse of the "free market" system in the west.

...The northern rebels, known as Hawthis, have been battling Yemeni government forces the past few months in the latest flare-up of a sporadic five-year conflict. They claim their needs are ignored by a Yemeni government that is increasingly allied with hard-line Sunni fundamentalists, who consider Shiites heretics.

The rebels said the Saudi airstrikes hit five areas in their northern stronghold Thursday but it was not possible to independently verify the reports. They said there were dead and wounded, and that homes were destroyed. The rebels' spokesman said people were afraid to get near the areas being bombed, making it difficult to count the casualties.

"Saudi jets dropped bombs on a crowded areas including a local market in the northern province of Saada," Hawthi spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Salam told The Associated Press. "They claim they are targeting al-Hawthis, but regrettably they are killing civilians like the government does."

He said the attacks were followed by hundreds of artillery shells from the border.

"So far, three killed have been pulled out of the rubble, including a woman and a child who perished when their houses were bombed and burned down," said Abdel-Salam...

IN TIMES of national tragedy, Americans expect their president to capture the mood and moment with the right blend of emotion, empathy, and urgency. It's a delicate act of timing and tone. And President Obama, despite his eloquence and dignity, has yet to master it, as illustrated by his awkward response to the deadly shootings at the Fort Hood Army Base in Texas.

Obama's initial remarks came shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday, while Americans were struggling to come to grips with the shocking rampage and its chaotic aftermath. The stage was set for the president to quickly and somberly address the tragedy. Instead, a serene-looking Obama offered light introductory comments, keyed to those attending a Tribal Nations Conference that was hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs. His introduction included a convivial "shout-out'' to one of the conference attendees.

Several minutes in, Obama finally called the Fort Hood shootings "a horrific outburst of violence.'' The words he spoke next were respectful and appropriate. But it took him too long to get to the point of delivering them...

John Limbert will be the senior Iran official at the State Department, replacing Dennis Ross who has moved to the National Security Council (and who has not been heard of publicly since). Should America be concerned? Yes. Limbert is not a neutral arbiter; he serves on the advisory board of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), widely considered to be the de facto lobby for the Iranian regime in America.

What is the National Iranian American Council?

The Council serves as the blocking back for the Iranian regime in America, opposes sanctions on Iran, soft-peddles any controversial events in Iran, and counsels "patience" regarding Iran's stance towards its nuclear program; the NIAC has been at the forefront of lobbying against continued Congressional funding of the Voice of America Persia service; Radio Farad; and grants for Iranian civil society; the NIAC adamantly opposes any military attacks on Iran; and to top it off, the NIAC has reportedly received funding from anti-Israel advocate George Soros who, at the very least, was an honored guest and speaker at one its symposiums (he called for a more equitable Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and called for America to renounce regime change as a goal).

The NIAC adamantly opposes any military attacks on Iran. In other words, it all but serves as Iran's Embassy in Washington-though the NIAC vociferously dispute this characterization. However, there is very little sunlight between the views of the regime and the NIAC.

The NIAC is also headed by the controversial Trita Parsi. Who is Trita Parsi?...

...One curious fact is that board members of the NIAC contribute to J Street, the anti-Israel lobby that tries to pass itself off as a "pro-peace" lobby that supports Israel (just as the NIAC tries to palm itself off as being pro-American and pro-peace). Not so co-incidentally, Trita Parsi himself was on a panel at the recent J Street conference. ..

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You can't display an image of the crucified Christ in Saudi Arabia, but if you are ghoulish enough to want to see a genuine crucifixion, then the Kingdom is planning to stage one soon.

Saudi's Court of Cassation has confirmed that it will crucify 22-year-old kidnapper and rapist Muhammad Basheer al-Ramaly, though it won't be following biblical precedent to the letter: he will be beheaded first, and his head will be stuck on a pole separately from his crucified torso...

By saying he wants to step down as president, Mahmoud Abbas has highlighted a deep Palestinian despair rooted in decades of failed peace initiatives and fruitless violence.

Neither strategy has yielded a Palestinian state, and Israeli settlements still encroach on lands that would make up their would-be nation.

Facing a hawkish Israeli government and an Obama administration reluctant to put muscle behind its demands on Israel, many Palestinians say they see no hope at all.

I was at the debate tonight too. The students who stood up were wearing signs with quotes from Spinoza, Chomsky, and a few others. Their black t-shirts were from Democracy Now.

Whenever anybody where I was sitting (front right) clapped for Dore Gold, the leftists began making hissing sounds as loud as they could. This stopped after one of the police officers came over and cursed out the middle-aged man behind me for doing it.

The minute I walked up and got in line, some schmuck named Alan looked at my kipah, asked if I supported Israel, and then informed me that "Hitler taught you Jews well about the master race.

Two weeks after a Sudbury man was arrested in an alleged terror plot to kill Americans in the US and overseas, federal authorities announced today an indictment of him and a former Mansfield man they say fled to Syria.

Tarek Mehanna, 27, of Sudbury, and Ahmad Abousamra, 28, who last lived in Mansfield, were charged in a 10-count indictment with providing and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, and other charges.

Federal prosecutors in Boston also released two undated photographs of a Mehanna smiling at Ground Zero in New York City with friends, as well as excerpts of conversations he allegedly had with friends online in which he expressd his admiration for Al Qaeda, the 19 hijackers who participated in the 9/11 attacks, and Osama bin Laden.

"I look to him ... as being my real father, in a sense," he allegedly wrote in an online chat on April 28, 2006.

Home-grown terrorists?

Two weeks ago, a Sudbury resident, Tarek Mehanna was arrested on terrorism charges. According to the FBI, he and his friends had sought terrorist training in places like Pakistan, and together they plotted to machine gun random shoppers at a local shopping mall here in New England.

The images these reports evoke (blood, panic, screams at a mall near you) bring to mind scenes from last year's Mumbai massacre in India where other young men, trained and sent by the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group, gunned down innocents with automatic weapons in public places.

Apart from the method of murder, and the request for Pakistani training, could there possibly be any other connection between an arrest in Sudbury and the massacre in Mumbai? Why would a seemingly successful American teenager seek terrorist training in Pakistan?

The various weapons on board the intercepted ship 'Francop' include 20,000 fragmentary grenades, 9000 mortar shells, 3000 106 millimeter artillery shells,‎ ‎2000 122 and 107 millimeter rockets and 600,000 7.62 millimeter rounds for AK47 assault rifles

Pictures Linking Weaponry Found on 'Francop' and Terrorism in Southern Lebanon

Following denials from Hezbollah, the Syrian government and others, regarding the destination of the weapons cargo onboard the 'Francop,' the IDF is releasing photos (attached) which prove this relationship. The photographs were taken during a rocket launching from Southern Lebanon at the Israeli Galilee region on Tuesday, 27 October 2009. The pictures clearly show that the rocket fired was a 107 millimeter rocket, the same types that were found on the 'Francop'.

The pictures also explicitly show that the rocket was fired from a residential property, placing the local civilians in danger and using them as human shields.

Only one rocket was fired during the incident, exploding in an open area of the Ezba Hagalil region in Northern Israel. The pictures show other rockets which have yet to be launched.

...In an interview with the Guardian, Professor Chomsky paid me the kind compliment of calling me a good journalist, but added that on this occasion (the camps) I had "got it wrong". Got what wrong?!?! Got wrong what we saw that day, August 5th 1992 (I didn't see him there)? Got wrong the hundreds of thousands of families left bereaved, deported and scattered asunder? Got wrong the hundreds of testimonies I have gathered on murderous brutality? Got wrong the thousands whom I meet when I return to the commemorations? If I am making all this up, what are all the human remains found in mass graves around the camps and so painstakingly re-assembled by the International Commission for Missing Persons?

These people pretend neutrality over Bosnia, but are actually apologists for the Milosevic/Karadzic/Mladic plan, only too pathetic to admit it. And the one thing they never consider from their armchairs is the ghastly, searing, devastating impact of their game on the survivors and the bereaved. The pain they cause is immeasurable. This, along with the historical record, is my main concern. It is one thing to survive the camps, to lose one's family and friends - quite another to be told by a bunch of academics with a didactic agenda in support of the pogrom that those camps never existed. The LM/Novo/Chomsky argument that the story of the camps was somehow fake has been used in countless (unsuccessful) attempts to defend mass murderers in The Hague.

For decades I have lived under the impression that Amnesty International was opposed to everything these people stand for, and existed to defend exactly the kind of people who lost their lives, family and friends in the camps and at Srebrenica three years later, a massacre on which Chomsky has also cast doubt. I have clearly been deluded about Amnesty. For Amnesty International, of all people, to honour this man is to tear up whatever credibility they have estimably and admirably won over the decades, and to reduce all they say hitherto to didactic nonsense...

Dear Colleague:

At its meeting during the 2008 convention in San Francisco, the Delegate Assembly took two actions that are subject to ratification by the MLA membership. First, it elected the Chinese novelist Mo Yan to honorary fellowship in the association. Second, the assembly approved the following resolution:

Whereas Palestinian literature and culture are legitimate subjects of study;

Whereas the conditions in the occupied territories have been critical in shaping modern Arabic literature generally;

Whereas those teaching and writing about the occupation and about Middle East culture have regularly come under fire from anti-Palestinian groups on extra-academic grounds;

Whereas education at all levels in the occupied territories is being stifled by the occupation;

Be it resolved that the MLA endorse teaching and scholarship about Palestinian culture, support members who come under attack for pursuing such work, and express solidarity with scholars of Palestinian culture.

Members were asked to comment on this resolution during the month of October; you may review these comments before you cast your vote. Please note that the ratification ballot, which is now available in the members-only area of the MLA Web site, also contains a link to the comments...

...you will find links to the ratification ballot on the MLA's home page. The deadline for submitting the ratification ballot is 12:00 midnight (EST) on 10 December.

To request a paper ratification ballot, please contact me at the MLA office. The last day for requesting a paper ballot is Friday, 20 November 2009.

Sincerely,

Carol Zuses, Coordinator of Governance

Massive Arms Shipment Intended for Hezbollah Intercepted by Israel Navy

Roughly 500 tons of weapons, rockets, and missiles was uncovered aboard the cargo vessel "Francop" flying an Antiguan flag, which was intercepted and brought to the Ashdod port. The Israel Navy force which intercepted the ship included naval commandos, missile boats, intelligence and explosive experts.

36 shipping containers with 500 tons of weaponry were found on the ship disguised as civilian cargo, and hidden among hundreds of other containers onboard.

Israel Naval and Engineering Corps forces are currently unloading the containers and are sorting through the various types of weaponry found aboard.

The naval commando force boarded the vessel and conducted an initial search. The search was conducted in accordance with the usual search protocols as dictated by International Law.

Following the initial search and after it became clear that the vessel was carrying weapons, the vessel was directed by the Israel Navy to dock at the Israeli Ashdod Naval base for additional searches and a detailed inspection of the hull's cargo. It should be emphasized that the captain of the ship agreed to the search. The Israel Navy conducted all activity without any force.

The weapons found onboard the ship originate from Iran, and were intended for the Hezbollah terror organization, for use against the State of Israel and its citizens. The weapons uncovered at sea last night constitute a harsh violation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1747 and 1701 that strictly forbid Iran from exporting or trading any form of weapons.

This is a well-known Iranian technique, taking advantage of cargo ships flying different flags in order to smuggle containers loaded with large amounts of highly volatile weaponry to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah.

Following the necessary inspections of the boat, it is expected to be released...

What will Obama say about all this? Being that evidence of Iranian-Syrian hostile intent complicates the administration's desire for "engagement," whatever that means anymore, the answer is: probably nothing.

What will the human-rights hustlers say? Where is Judge Goldstone? Where is the flurry of outraged press releases from Human Rights Watch? These weapons are intended for one purpose only -- to terrorize Israeli civilians and drag the region into war. Isn't this the kind of thing that should outrage peace-loving human-rights activists? HRW has condemned Israel for violating international law over the way it funds public schools. I would bet a large sum that HRW will say nothing about the 500 tons of arms Iran just tried to send to Hezbollah. Priorities, you see.

And where is the UN Security Council? The arms ship violates numerous UNSC resolutions banning Iran from exporting weapons and forbidding the arming of Hezbollah. Don't expect any leadership from the Obama administration on this score, either; to make a big deal out of Iranian bad faith would be tantamount to admitting that the engagement policy is the stuff of fantasy.

Dear Sir:

I was recently surprised, and I must add, embarrassed, to learn that you were one forty-four members of Congress who attended the recent "J-Street" extravaganza. "J-Street" claims to be a pro-Israel, pro-peace lobbying group that represents the interests of the majority of American Jews. In point of fact, it is none of these things.

"J-Street" is not pro-Israel It openly opposes taking any action to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, which is why Iranian lobbyists in the United States support "J-Street." Iran has declared its intention to "wipe Israel off the map;" one leader speculated that even one nuclear bomb would be enough to achieve that goal. But a nuclear Iran isn't just a threat to Israel, it is also a threat to the United States. Iran is known to be considering using nuclear weapons in an electromagnetic pulse attack, which might enable that country to destroy the United States as a functioning society with as few as three or four weapons.

Nor do "J-Street's" policies promote peace. They advocate applying American pressure on Israel to accept the "two-state" solution and the Clinton parameters proposed in 2000. But when President Clinton offered them, Israel accepted them and the Palestinians rejected them, preferring instead to raise the level of violence. How will pressure on Israel change this in any way? "J-Street" doesn't say because establishing a viable peace isn't its objective.

"J-Street" has endorsed the notion of "tough love" for Israel, basically bullying that country to fulfill the demands of Arab leaders in exchange for nothing, thereby raising the likelihood of a major and devastating war. President Obama may already have learned that this approach is counter-productive; by beginning his quest for peace with a demand for a total settlement freeze, he appears to have set back the peace talks by anywhere from two to four years. Let's hope the delay isn't a lot longer.

American Jews haven't been fooled. They overwhelmingly support the "two-state" solution, but according to a recent poll, 94% realize that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians continues because the Palestinians refuse to accept a viable Jewish state as a neighbor. How can "J-Street" claim to represent the interests of American Jews when at least 94% of them reject "J-Street's" understanding of the conflict?

Lastly, "J-Street" isn't a lobby as is commonly understood. Lobbies represent the interests of constituency groups to governmental entities, the Congress or the Executive Branch. "J-Street" appears to function in exactly the opposite way, to present government policies to the targeted constituency. In doing so, it functions as a front group, enabling the Obama Administration to claim support for its policies that really doesn't exist.

The use of front groups has a long and dangerous history; they are a dependable presence in a dictatorship.

In your capacity as a member of the Judiciary Committee, perhaps you could undertake hearings to determine the extent to which "J-Street" is the creation of the Obama Administration's political personnel and/or financial backers. If it is, then there may be more serious issues the House will need to consider.

Yale Zussman
Weymouth, MA

Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's ever-popular Daily Show, has won a wide audience for his skillful use of satiric comedy to cut to the essence of serious political issues. But on October 27, 2009, he waded into a deeply contentious issue and got in over his head. In a segment dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Stewart hosted Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti and anti-Israel agitator Anna Baltzer. Barghouti presented a familiar narrative of Palestinian grievances of the kind often heard. But it was the pairing with Baltzer that sparked indignation among many viewers. Fortunately, the segment's producers edited out much of Baltzer's misinformation about Israel, making the version actually broadcast substantially less objectionable...

Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom was given a cold greeting in Dimona, where he attended the city's annual International Conference on Communications on Monday.

Bostrom, who has been severely criticized for an article he wrote in the Swedish daily Aftonbladet alleging that Israeli soldiers had stolen body parts from dead Palestinians during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, was greeted by a throng of protesters upon his entrance to the hall where the conference was held, and his keynote address was disrupted by catcalls from the audience.

During an interview with journalist and talk show host Yair Lapid, Bostrom defended his article, claiming everything he wrote was backed by evidence. He also said that he understood the anger Israelis felt towards him, but that he thought people had blown the article out of proportion. Bostrom told Lapid that he thought the allegations, passed on to him by Palestinian families, should be seriously investigated...

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, which absorbed most of these Jewish refugees, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people. This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what they once were. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.

(Iran: once an ally of Israel, Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)

A Palestinian historian and a senior PLO official have denied that the Jewish nation has any historical connection to the Land of Israel, thus continuing the Palestinian Authority's ongoing historical revision.

In an interview on official PA television, historian Nabil Alqam first denied thousands of years of documented Jewish history in Israel, then replaced it with "4,000 to 5,000 years" of fictitious Palestinian history.

Israel has publicized many archeological finds in recent years, including coins with Hebrew writing and even stamps [bullas] with names of biblical figures. It is possible that Alqam was responding to these numerous finds when he went on to accuse Israel of creating "artificial Israeli symbols."...

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a document authored by Judge Richard Goldstone that is now being circulated on Capitol Hill. The document was written in response to HR 867 -- the resolution sponsored by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman condemning Goldstone's report on Israeli war crimes in Operation Cast Lead. Goldstone explains in the document that he sends his "comments on this resolution in an effort to correct factual errors."

Spencer Ackerman reported today that J Street would oppose the resolution in the House, but J Street chief Jeremy Ben-Ami has also said his organization "refuses to embrace" the Goldstone report. But it seems that certain elements of J Street have indeed embraced Goldstone and his report. Upon further inspection of the Goldstone letter, the actual author seems to be Morton H. Halperin, who serves on the J Street advisory council and is a senior adviser at George Soros's Open Society Institute. The original document can be downloaded here. (A check of the file's "properties" reveals the author as Morton H. Halperin.)

Individuals with official ties to J Street are not just embracing the Goldstone report, they are involved in efforts on behalf of Goldstone himself to scuttle opposition to the report in Congress. It's just another example of the disconnect between J Street's official positions and the actions of those who are connected to the organization.

Producer Barrie Osborne cast Keanu Reeves as the messiah in The Matrix and helped defeat the dark lord Sauron in his record-breaking Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now the Oscar-winning American film-maker is set to embark on his most perilous quest to date: making a big-screen biopic of the prophet Muhammad.

Budgeted at around $150m (£91.5m), the film will chart Muhammad's life and examine his teachings. Osborne told Reuters that he envisages it as "an international epic production aimed at bridging cultures. The film will educate people about the true meaning of Islam".

Osborne's production will reportedly feature English-speaking Muslim actors. It is backed by the Qatar-based production company Alnoor Holdings, who have installed the Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to oversee all aspects of the shoot. In accordance with Islamic law, the prophet will not actually be depicted on screen.

"The film will shed light on the Prophet's life since before his birth to his death," Ahmed Abdullah Al-Mustafa, Alnoor's chairman, told al-Jazeera. "It will highlight the humanity of Prophet Muhammad."

The as-yet-untitled picture is due to go before the cameras in 2011. It remains to be seen, however, whether it will be beaten to cinemas by another Muhammad-themed drama. Late last year, producer Oscar Zoghbi announced plans to remake The Message, his controversial 1976 drama that sparked a fatal siege by protesters in Washington DC. The new version, entitled The Messenger of Peace, is currently still in development.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.

Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level--for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity...

...All of this is intentional, even if it isn't explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama's own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back "public option" entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.

As Congress's balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can't regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable--especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.

Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of "change," but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi's handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR's National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.

...To deal with dummies who submitted dopey photos for the formal section of the yearbook, Merrimack High put some basic rules in place. Among the rules: You can't cover your head. Except when you can...

...We ALL know what "the difference" is. One student joined an organization known for its discipline and professionalism, the US military. The other is a member of a group whose members have been declared a protected minority by American liberals. Is the soon-to-be-deployed soldier going to file a lawsuit? Probably not? But the gang at CAIR (Council for Angry Islamic Radicals American Islamic Relations)? They've got the lawyers standing by...