March 2006 Archives

A foreigner who becomes naturalized has to declare, on oath, "that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law. and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God." But for a Muslim to declare all of the above in good faith, and especially that he accepts the US Constitution as the source of his highest loyalty, is an act of apostasy par excellence, punishable by death under the Islamic law. The sharia, to a Muslim, is not an addition to the "secular" legal code with which it coexists with "the Constitution and laws of the United States of America"; it is the only true code, the only basis of obligation. To be legitimate, all political power therefore must rest exclusively with those who enjoy Allah's authority on the basis of his revealed will. America is illegitimate...

Not content with support pledged by Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, the ISB sought to purchase the city-owned land at a bargain basement price. And did they ever succeed. The City of Boston obliged the group by selling its 1.9 acre site valued at $2,000,000 for $175,000. Boldly compounding the fraudulent conveyance part of the scam, the city agreed to receive further in-kind payment from the ISB in the form of an Islamic Library and courses in Islamic instruction at a state facility, Roxbury Community College; not a $200 crèche or a menorah made of scrap tubing, but a multi-million dollar enterprise based on defrauding taxpayers and establishing ongoing indoctrination courses on the glories of Islam. Not only did this enterprise represent “inherent religious activity”, but it went far beyond the ACLU’s floor for triggering action by involving explicit and manifold religious activity.

If, as de Rochefoucault had it, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue”, the ACLU has to be first in line at that altar. Carol Rose, Director of the Massachusetts ACLU, told me in 2004, in response to a private lawsuit brought by an individual based on violation of the establishment clause, that her organization favored the ISB’s position insofar as the lawsuit “violated that organization’s right of free speech.” After I put my dropped jaw back into place, I suggested that a $22,000,000 mosque built on giveaway city land along with taxpayer funded Islamic indoctrination amounted to a textbook case of Establishment Clause transgression and made the crèche case look like a minor infraction. At that point she terminated the conversation...

Jeremy Gunn, ACLU’s National Director of the stealthily named, “Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief”, was not aware of the ISB issue, but promised to “put it on his radar screen.” Don’t hold your electrons...

Al-Watan, March 18, 2006
The cartoon's headline: "Bird Flu in Israel."

Al-Yawm, January 13, 2006
The cartoon's headline: "God's Deceitful People." (As opposed to "God's Chosen People")

Hickok was assigned to the light mine layer USS Sicard when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. According to defense officials, many Sicard crewmembers had been dispatched at the time to help the crew of USS Cummings, a destroyer docked nearby. The Cummings got under way and cleared Pearl Harbor after the attack and reported no injuries.

An investigation into those still unaccounted-for determined that Hickok may have been among the Sicard crewmen aboard USS Pennsylvania during the attack. However, he was not among those reported lost, officials said...

''The US has a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East," President John F. Kennedy said in 1962, ''really comparable only to that which it has with Britain." Today, Kennedy's words are truer than ever -- even if the Kennedy School dean has yet to figure it out.

''Their problem is not that a cabal is running US foreign policy," he said. ''It is that they would like to be in the cabal."

The response to the "Lobby" paper, written by the Kennedy School's Stephen Walt and a political science professor at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer, will be penned by a prominent Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz. Yesterday, Mr. Dershowitz told The New York Sun that the rebuttal "devastates" the Walt-Mearsheimer arguments, and challenges the authors to show that they did not cull the paper's quotes from hate Web sites.

“The Palestinian Legislative Council has approved the formation of a Hamas-led government,” stated Minister MacKay. “The stated platform of this government has not addressed the concerns raised by Canada and others concerning non-violence, the recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap for Peace. As a result, Canada will have no contact with the members of the Hamas cabinet and is suspending assistance to the Palestinian Authority,” added the Minister. “A clear commitment by the Hamas government to the principles that we and the international community have outlined remains an essential precondition for Canada to resume any assistance to the Palestinian Authority.”...

If the Canadian government is genuinely committed to ending the funding of terror, aid to UNRWA must likewise be terminated until there is absolute verification that UNRWA is being run in an effective, neutral, and accountable manner, and that UNRWA plays no role, directly or through Hamas, in terror or incitement. Canada must determine its own policy on UNRWA, regardless of requests from foreign governments.

There is a massive body of evidence that links UNRWA to Hamas and to the worsening plight of refugees (see reports below), and unless the Canadian government can refute that evidence and assure Canadians that our tax dollars are used only for humanitarian projects, then all aid to UNRWA must be terminated. Today, funding UNRWA is little different from funding Hamas directly...

In continuing attempts to sabotage the event, Islamic students secured a large number of tickets and then destroyed them...

...You could see these men were stunned by the absence of the cartoons on the podium. They could not ingest the censure by the university, what one was a bastion of free thinking and free speech, campuses across the country have taken on a group think collectivist mentality. The panel answered as many questions from the audience (roughly 125 people) that time would allow. Of all the questions submitted, they answered almost all of the hostile ones.

The Islamic students demanded to know why their side was not represented on the panel to which Kara, the Objectivist club organizer that put this baby together, said "numerous inquiries were made. I contacted at last 15 Islamic societies, professors et al and no one would come."...

...About halfway through the program a group of Islamic students all got up and walked out. Their only contribution was to glare hard at anyone that clapped enthusiastically. The girls in the back wore the full metal jacket - headgear , covered from head to toe...

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday...

"It's blacks and Arabs on one side and Jews on the other," said Sebastian Daranal, a young black man standing in the parking lot of a government-subsidized housing project with two friends.

Eight men beat the son of a rabbi here in March. Another Jew was attacked the next day...

... Schools are the battleground over anti-Semitism, and teachers complain that the government has done little, despite many proposals.

"The minister of education has done nothing," said Jean-Pierre Obin, an inspector general of education in France, who wrote a report in 2004 that called anti-Semitism "ubiquitous" in the 61 schools surveyed. "He prefers not to talk about it."

Mr. Obin wrote in the report of "a stupefying and cruel reality: in France, Jewish children — and they are alone in this case — can no longer be educated in just any school."

Ianis Roder, 34, a history teacher in a middle school northeast of Paris, said he was stunned by what he witnessed after Sept. 11, 2001. The next day, someone spray-painted in a stairwell of the school the image of an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center beside the words "Death to the U.S., Death to Jews."

When he told his class months later that Hitler had killed millions of million Jews, one boy blurted out, "He would have made a good Muslim!" Mr. Roder told of a Muslim teacher who dismissed her class after a shouting match over Nazi propaganda. The students said the offensive images accurately depicted Jews...

In November, Abu Ali was found guilty of all charges in a nine-count indictment, including conspiracy to assassinate Bush, conspiring to support al Qaeda and conspiracy to hijack aircraft.

For purposes of contrast, let us look at two other regional allies of the United States. Both Turkey and Pakistan have been joined to the Pentagon hip since approximately the time of the emergence of the state of Israel, which coincided with the Truman Doctrine. Pakistan was, like Israel, cleaved from a former British territory. Since that time, both states have carried out appalling internal repression and even more appalling external aggression. Pakistan attempted a genocide in Bangladesh, with the support of Nixon and Kissinger, in 1971. It imposed the Taliban as its client in a quasi-occupation of Afghanistan. It continues to arm and train Bin Ladenists to infiltrate Indian-held Kashmir, and its promiscuity with nuclear materials exceeds anything Israel has tried with its stockpile at Dimona. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and continues in illegal occupation of the northern third of the island, which has been forcibly cleansed of its Greek inhabitants. It continues to lie about its massacre of the Armenians. U.N. resolutions have had no impact on these instances of state terror and illegality in which the United States is also partially implicated.

But here's the thing: There is no Turkish or Pakistani ethnic "lobby" in America. And here's the other thing: There is no call for "disinvestment" in Turkey or Pakistan. We are not incessantly told that with these two friends we are partners in crime. Perhaps the Greek Cypriots and Indians are in error in refusing to fly civilian aircraft into skyscrapers...

Olmert, head of Kadima, did not explicity claim victory, dedicating his speech instead to outlining his governing plans. He said he was ready for new peace talks and was prepared to make painful compromises.

"In the coming period, we will move to set the final borders of the state of Israel, a Jewish state with a Jewish majority," he said. "We will try to achieve this in an agreement with the Palestinians."

Addressing Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Olmert said: "We are prepared to compromise, give up parts of our beloved land of Israel, remove, painfully, Jews who live there, to allow you the conditions to achieve your hopes and to live in a state in peace and quiet."

"The time has come for the Palestinians ... to relate to the existence of the state of Israel, to accept only part of their dream, to stop terror, to accept democracy and accept compromise and peace with us. We are prepared for this. We want this," he said.

Olmert said he would not wait for the Palestinians indefinitely. "It is time for the Palestinians to change their ethos, to accept compromise as soon as possible. If they manage to do this soon, we will sit and work out a plan. If not, Israel will take control of its own fate, and in consensus among our people and with the agreement of the world and US President George Bush, we will act. The time has come to act," he said...

The cabinet, headed by Ismail Haniyeh, was ratified by a majority of 71 votes. Thirty-six legislators, all members of Fatah, voted against the cabinet, and another two abstained. Altogether, 109 out of 132 PLC members took part in the vote. The remaining 13 legislators, belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP], Hamas and Fatah, are all in Israeli prison...

...Immediately after the vote, several Hamas legislators began shouting the famous Islamic battle cry of Allahu Akbar, saying this was an historical moment for the Palestinians.

Holding high a copy of the Koran, legislator Hamed Bitawi shouted: "The Koran is our constitution, Mohammed is our prophet, jihad [holy war] is our path and dying for the sake of Allah is our biggest wish." His remark drew a thunderous applause from all his Hamas colleagues.

Addressing the council, Haniyeh said he was "moved to tears" by the vote and defended his cabinet's controversial program, saying it was "born straight from the embryo of resistance."

He was referring to critics who accused him of failing to emphasize the need to pursue the fight against Israel in his speech before the PLC on Monday.

"I mentioned the word resistance more than once in my speech," he said...

It is not only in Tehran and Damascus that the game of "waiting Bush out" is played with determination. In recent visits to several regional capitals, this writer was struck by the popularity of this new game from Islamabad to Rabat. The general assumption is that Mr. Bush's plan to help democratize the heartland of Islam is fading under an avalanche of partisan attacks inside the U.S. The effect of this assumption can be witnessed everywhere.

In Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf has shelved his plan, forged under pressure from Washington, to foster a popular front to fight terrorism by lifting restrictions against the country's major political parties and allowing their exiled leaders to return. There is every indication that next year's elections will be choreographed to prevent the emergence of an effective opposition. In Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, arguably the most pro-American leader in the region, is cautiously shaping his post-Bush strategy by courting Tehran and playing the Pushtun ethnic card against his rivals.

“For the ELCJHL and other churches, it threatens our entire ministry,” the church said in its latest monthly newsletter. “The funds to be withheld would come straight out of the pockets of families trying to pay their child’s tuition or support the church. If our families are not paid, less tuition money will come in to the schools, and the cycle spirals down.”...

Interviewer: "We don't know. Tell us."...

...Saddam Hussein: "The first thing I did when they brought him was to spit in his face."

Interviewer: "Why?"

Saddam Hussein: "I said to him: 'You despicable man, I spit on your owl's face. How do you address these glorious women without me knowing about it?'"...

..."The only one who makes speeches in Iraq is the supreme leader - meaning me.

"At this point 'Izzat Al-Duri pulled out his handkerchief and cried. I said to him: 'Look 'Izzat, this time I forgive you, but I swear by my honor, and the honor of the history of the Arab nation, that if you ever repeat this mistake I will cut your tongue off.'"...

Al-Ahram: Q: How do you deal with the Jews who are besieging al-Aqsa and are scattered around it?

A: I enter the mosque of Al-Aqsa with my head up. . .I have never greeted them when I came near one. I never will.

MEMRI's version: Q: How do you feel about the Jews?

A: I have never greeted a Jew when I came near one. I never will. They cannot even dream that I will. The Jews do not dare to bother me.

It is worthy to note that Carmon has admitted this "translation" mistake. Still, it remains uncorrected on his website...

While Zaru is portrayed as a “peace activist,” the group she belongs to is not committed to peace, but rather to broadcasting a dishonest narrative about the Arab/Israeli conflict that demonizes Israel and whitewashes Palestinian society of the problems that hinder real prospects for peace. Sabeel's founding director, Anglican canon Naim Ateek, has compared Israeli presence in the disputed territories to the stone that blocks Christ's tomb and has written that “the Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull."

This is not the language of a peacemaker, but of someone intent on instilling hostility towards Israel.

Esposito's affidavit for the ISB is quite a piece of work. It includes a nine page self-hagiography in which Esposito informs the court that his writings "are used as authoritative source material for the understanding of Islam worldwide." Esposito also exhaustively details the many honors he has won during his lengthy career, including 1996's World Book Prize awarded by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

"We suspect that the avian flu outbreak in Israel originated in the Palestinian Authority," Agriculture Minister Ze'ev Boim (Kadima) said Thursday, while touring the sites of the outbreak in southern Israel. "There is reason to suspect that the Palestinian Authority tried to conceal the outbreak from Israel."

Initial tests conducted on chicken carcasses from Gaza this week indicated the existence of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu there. The virus was found in coops built on the ruins of the former settlement of Netzarim, in the central Strip.

Meanwhile, a Jordanian newspaper said Friday that birds on its border with Israel were found to be infected with avian flu. Israeli and Jordanian authorities are working together to keep the virus from spreading, Israel Radio reported Friday.

Intrigued, I later called her up to get her full story. She left a refugee camp in Pakistan with her mother, Maroofa, and her four younger siblings in 2002. Like Mr. Hashemi she has only a high school equivalency degree, because schooling in the refugee camp was limited. Her mother can't work and knows only basic English, so she and her sister Rona are the only means of support for the family beyond food stamps and $600 a month in housing assistance from the state.

I asked her what her life was like. "It's hard, but certainly better than Pakistan," she told me. "I am very grateful, but I must work 50 hours a week and also go to class. Sometimes, I am so tired I can't attend." She earns $8 an hour as a clerk in a local retail store.

I asked what she thought about Mr. Hashemi attending Yale with the help of a Wyoming foundation and a discount from Yale of 35% to 40% on tuition. "It's like a nightmare that you can't believe when you wake up," she told me. "This is a good country, but I think some people in New Haven are so complacent they don't know what officials like Hashemi did to my people."...

Ehud Olmert's "convergence" plan could affect 20,000 families, or about 90,000 residents of Judea and Samaria. Some will be moved to within the 1967 border; others to "consensus" settlement blocs. What does this massive program mean in economic terms?

If we take the evacuation-compensation model, the State of Israel will be required to pay 20,000 evicted families direct compensation, at a cost of about NIS 66 billion (about USD 14 billion). And if we use Gaza as an example, temporary housing, moving costs and new infrastructure will cost an additional NIS 13 million (about USD 2.7 million).

The Ministry of Defense estimates that a unilateral disengagement from Judea and Samaria will cost the army about NIS 16 billion (about USD 3.4 billion).

And so initial estimates of a second disengagement program stand at about NIS 95 billion, or USD 20 billion. Put differently: 17 percent of the entire output of the State of Israel.

But that's not the whole story. Far from it...

Not only are these charges wildly at variance with what I have personally witnessed in the Oval Office over the years, but they also impugn the loyalty and the unstinting service to America's national security by public figures like Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, and many others. As a Christian, let me add that it is also wrong and unfair to call into question the loyalty of millions of American Jews who have faithfully supported Israel while also working tirelessly and generously to advance America's cause, both at home and abroad. They are among our finest citizens and should be praised, not pilloried...

...Over the course of four tours in the White House, I never once saw a decision in the Oval Office to tilt U.S. foreign policy in favor of Israel at the expense of America's interest. Other than Richard Nixon--who occasionally said terrible things about Jews, despite the number on his team--I can't remember any president even talking about an Israeli lobby. Perhaps I have forgotten, but I can remember plenty of conversations about the power of the American gun lobby, environmentalists, evangelicals, small-business owners, and teachers unions...

Claire Berlinski: Here's another quote from the book: "Traditionally, Britain's anti-American elites have been vocal, but they have generally been marginalized as chattering donkeys: They have never been able to exert sufficient influence to unravel the Anglo-American alliance. There are now, however, some two million Moslem immigrants in Britain, and more worshipers at Britain's mosques each week than at the Church of England. These immigrants form a highly visible and powerful anti-American vanguard and voting bloc, and their sentiments are particularly hostile toward America. According to a December 2002 poll commissioned by The Guardian - a newspaper anything but prone to anti-Islamic hysteria - 13 percent of British Moslems approved of the September 11 attacks. Another fifteen percent declared themselves unsure. More than half refused to believe al Qaeda had been responsible, and more than two-thirds believed the United States had declared war on Islam. Following September 11, British schoolchildren of Pakistani origin cheered and punched the air.

"Anti-Americanism has by this route escaped its circumscribed association with Britain's privileged pseudo-sophisticates, permeated Britain's underclass and its working class, and become inextricably conflated with a raw strain of racial and religious resentment. As a consequence, the Anglo-American alliance is far more vulnerable than most Americans realize."

Anheuser-Busch began the program, called "Here's to the Heroes," in February 2005. The company had planned to end it early this year, said Fred Jacobs, communications director for Anheuser-Busch adventure parks...

The amusement parks participating in the program include:

• "Sea World" parks in Orlando, Fla., San Diego and San Antonio;
• "Busch Gardens" parks in Tampa, Fla., and Williamsburg, Va.;
• "Sesame Place," a children's play and water park, near Philadelphia;
• "Adventure Island" water park in Tampa; and
• "Water Country USA" water park in Williamsburg.

Jacobs said over 900,000 people took advantage of the program in 2005, and awareness is only growing. He expects a total of 2 million participants by this year's end...

The gala awards dinner will be held on April 29, 2006 at the Marriott Downtown Hotel in Los Angeles.

The Academy Award-nominated "Paradise Now" follows two Palestinian childhood friends who have been recruited for a strike on Tel Aviv and focuses on their last days together as they grapple with the moral and political questions facing Palestinians resisting occupation. When they are intercepted at the Israeli border and separated from their handlers, a young woman who discovers their plan causes them to reconsider their actions [sort of -S]...

In a statement obtained by the National Post, the Iraqi embassy called CPT "willfully ignorant" and "outrageous," and accused the Chicago-based group of being on the side of anti-democratic forces in Iraq.

"The Christian Peacemaker Teams practises the kind of politics that automatically nominate them as dupes for jihadism and fascism," the embassy's statement said.

"The statement shows they even share the rhetoric of the jihadists, even if they do it out of naivete. Despite their claimed affinity for 'non-violence,' this is false.

"Politically, they are on the other side of this war. Christian Peacemaker Teams are objectively on the side of the fascists, Saddam Hussein's loyalists and al-Qaida in Iraq.

"It is abundantly clear that Christian Peacemaker Teams are opposed to and, in effect, at war with Iraqi democrats, Americans, the British, and the rest of the multi-national Coalition."

A British-led special forces team on Thursday rescued three CPT members , who were kidnapped in Baghdad on Nov. 26...

...The Daily Telegraph is also reporting today that the Christian activists refused to fully cooperate with an intelligence unit sent to question them...

As a matter of plain economic common sense, the United States has every reason to turn against the Jewish state. What accounts for its refusal to do so? If it isn't an ''Israel Lobby" pulling hidden strings, what on earth can it be?

Something more powerful than economics: the kinship of common values.

An ardent defender of the French tongue, Mr. Chirac said he was stunned to hear English on the lips of the Frenchman in a speech at the two-day European summit.

"I was deeply shocked that a Frenchman would speak at the council table in English," he told journalists, explaining for the first time his abrupt walkout when the summit opened on Thursday.

"That's the reason why the French delegation and myself left, so as not to have to listen to that," he added.

Mr. Chirac's surprise exit was one of the few incidents to spice up an otherwise staid summit focused on agreeing to a joint EU energy strategy and reviving the bloc's economy.

When Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, head of the UNICE employers federation, started his speech to the EU's 25 leaders, Mr. Chirac interrupted and asked why he was speaking in English, according to a French official.

"I'm going to speak in English because that is the language of business," replied Mr. Seilliere, former chief of the French employers' group MEDEF, which has been at odds with the government recently.

Raising eyebrows among his EU counterparts, Mr. Chirac stood up and left the session with Finance Minister Thierry Breton and Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy in tow...

"This is a present from your friends at the Sun," Mr. Lea told the French leader, who first looked puzzled, then smiled as he slipped the little tome into his pocket.

The tabloid waged a provocative campaign against Mr. Chirac in the run-up to the Iraq conflict in 2003, branding him "Le ver" or the worm.

Large chunks of Mr. Putin's mid-1990s economics dissertation on planning in the natural resources sector were lifted straight out of a management text published by two University of Pittsburgh academics nearly 20 years earlier, Washington researchers insisted yesterday...

One of the documents, which purports to be a summary of a letter sent to Saddam Hussein's office by a Russian official, claims that Moscow had ''sources inside the American Central Command in Doha," the US military's headquarters during the war. It said Russia used those sources to convey American plans and troop movements to Baghdad.

Russia had well-known and extensive diplomatic and economic ties to Baghdad prior to the US-led invasion and occasionally clashed with the Bush administration during the international debate over how to deal with Hussein's regime.

But the documents, made public in a study of the Iraqi military's decision-making during the war that was released by the Pentagon yesterday, are the first to assert that Russia actively passed sensitive military intelligence to Baghdad during the war itself.

The disclosures could jeopardize US-Russian relations more than any single event since the end of the Cold War, analysts said. While cautioning that Moscow may have an explanation, the analysts noted that some of the details were so sensitive that they would be difficult for the government of President Vladimir V. Putin to justify...

Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. in Ramat Gan, Israel, formally withdrew its proposal near the conclusion of a rare, full-blown investigation by a US review panel over the company's plans to buy a smaller rival, Sourcefire Inc.

Check Point had been told US officials feared the transaction could endanger some of the government's most sensitive computer systems.

Lawyers for Check Point offered to attach conditions to the sale that executives believed were onerous but were intended to satisfy the concerns expressed by the review panel, the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, said one person familiar with the process. But no agreement could be reached...

The anti-Semitic alliances undertaken by the national church are particularly surprising in light of the well-known open-minded and unbiased attitudes of the overwhelming majority of Presbyterians.

One of the resolutions passed at the 2004 General Assembly included a list of recommended theological “resources.” The most troubling “resource” on the list is the Sabeel Center for Liberation Theology. Presbyterians are familiar with liberation theology, an approach that emerged after the Second Vatican Council, focusing on Jesus as liberator of the poor and oppressed.

As political theory, it is often characterized by opponents as “might makes wrong,” positing, as it does, that the wealthy and the powerful are definitionally unjust, and that any claim made by the poor is necessarily just. Sabeel blends this theology with Replacement Theology, in which God rescinds His covenant with the children of Israel, replacing the Jews with Christians (rather than adding a New and more universal Covenant or Testament between God and the Church to the enduring Covenant between God and the Jewish people)...

"The day will never come when any Palestinian would be arrested because of his political affiliation or because of resisting the occupation," Seyam told Reuters in an interview. "The file of political detention must be closed."...

"Talks with the factions in the future will focus on the mechanisms, the shape and the timing (of any attacks)," he said. "But the right to defend our people and to confront the aggression is granted and is legitimate."

Workers at the station said the attack, which was carried out by several gunmen, took place late at night. They also said the attackers did not give any reason for the raid.

"They threatened one of the workers who was sleeping inside the station with their rifles," said one of the employees. "Then they forced him to stand facing the wall as they started smashing cameras and other electronic equipment, including computers."

Following the pre-dawn attack, the station was forced to suspend its broadcasts until further notice. Palestinian Authority security forces rushed to the scene, but were unable to arrest any of the gunmen.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate strongly condemned the attack and called for holding a demonstration at Manger Square on Friday.

"These attacks are very serious," said syndicate head Naim Toubasi. "We can't remain idle in the face of attacks on our journalists and media organizations. These attacks serve Israel's interests."

The U.S. State Department published foreign investor rankings Wednesday. Israel was first from the Middle East, with $4.1 billion, followed by Kuwait, with $1.2 billion. Those sums were dwarfed, however, by major European nations, which tended to top $100 billion in investment. Britain is the largest single investor, at $252 billion...

...The release noted the minuscule scale of Middle East investment: “Investment in the U.S. from Africa and the Middle East is less than $10 billion, only 0.6 percent of the total foreign investment in the U.S.”

In an interview yesterday, the current president of the New School University, Bob Kerrey, was careful to say that new documents translated last night by ABC News did not prove Saddam Hussein played a role in any way in plotting the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Nonetheless, the former senator from Nebraska said that the new document shows that "Saddam was a significant enemy of the United States." Mr. Kerrey said he believed America's understanding of the deposed tyrant's relationship with Al Qaeda would become much deeper as more captured Iraqi documents and audiotapes are disclosed.

Last night ABC News reported on five recently declassified documents captured in Iraq. One of these was a handwritten account of a February 19, 1995, meeting between an official representative of Iraq and Mr. bin Laden himself, where Mr. bin Laden broached the idea of "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. The document, which has no official stamps or markers, reports that when Saddam was informed of the meeting on March 4, 1995 he agreed to broadcast sermons of a radical imam, Suleiman al Ouda, requested by Mr. bin Laden...

...The new documents suggest that the 9/11 commission's final conclusion in 2004, that there were no "operational" ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, may need to be reexamined in light of the recently captured documents...

But there may be one other source of worry for Yale. Mr. Hashemi told the New York Times that he will apply next month for sophomore status in Yale's full-degree program starting next fall. An admissions official told me Yale's plan all along was to do just that if his grades were acceptable. But next week, Yale will mail out 19,300 rejection letters to those who applied to be in its class of 2010. "I can't imagine it'll be easy for Yale to convince those it rejects that the Taliban student isn't taking a place they could have had," a former Yale administrator told me...

The group of people from around the world, including four Americans, was welcome in Libya, a special representative of Libyan leader Mohmar Qadaffi told the mission as it stood on Libyan soil just five meters from the formal border crossing. But not the Israelis.

"Israel does not exist as a country, it is Palestine. We don't allow occupiers into our country," the official said. "Now I order you all to leave Libya."

Earlier, the group had decided it would not cross into Libya unless everyone was allowed in.

After being denied, the nine-person group voted to stay the night at the border and see if diplomacy and their message of goodwill to all peoples would gain them admittance Wednesday into the nation which has until now barred Israeli visitors.

As of Wednesday afternoon, it appeared those efforts had failed and the group was considering its options...

..."To all the Muslim peoples wherever they may be, I say: How long will you remain silent? How long will you accept this humiliation and degradation? How long will you continue to be ruled by the law of the tyrants, yet remain silent? Where is your Islam? Where is your worship of Allah? Islam is not a religion in name only - it is a religion of faith and action. The Crusaders, the Hindus, the Zoroastrians, and their apostate helpers rule and control you and your brothers. They are fighting against your religion, and are fighting you in your livelihood. They are violating your honor, yet you remain silent. Have your humiliation and degradation brought you that low? Would you agree to become apostates, Jews, or Christians? Would you agree to abandon the religion of Islam?"...

..."To the Americans, I say: Get out of the peninsula of Muhammad, and all the lands of the Muslims, and stop supporting the Jews in Palestine and the Christians in the lands of the Muslims. Otherwise, you will encounter only death, destruction, and explosions."

They are seeking repeal of the resolution calling for “a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel.” That repeal could occur at the 217th General Assembly this June.

The Committee to End Divestment Now (CEDN) is not a typical Presbyterian affinity group organized along traditional lines, such as conservative/liberal, according to organizers. It also has limited scope and duration. It doesn’t plan to continue once General Assembly concludes. On its website (www.enddivestment.org), CEDN lists three goals:

1. To educate Presbyterians about what took place at the 216th General Assembly (2004), specifically the passage of the resolution calling for actions leading up to divestment of church stock in multinational companies doing business with Israel and the resolution calling for immediate and unconditional removal of the security barrier constructed by the Israelis as a defense against Palestinian suicide bombers and snipers;
2. To educate those commissioners who will be attending the 217th General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala., in June 2006 about the harm caused by these resolutions; and
3. To encourage deliberation over what just and fair actions the church can take in place of the existing resolutions that will help promote peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

“When these three important steps have been taken,” the committee states, “we expect to dissolve in July 2006.”

"I heard with my own ears and saw with my own eyes... the lectures on nationalism and pan-Arabism delivered by 'our officers' during morning classes. Whenever [they] left [Lebanon], these officers piled into buses that returned by night to Damascus and Hims. These buses were [like] markets packed with [loot] – everything needed in the markets [of Damascus and Hims]. I saw the military vehicles carrying away even bathtubs, doors and window frames made of expensive wood that had been torn from [Lebanese] homes after their owners had left or abandoned them.

"I saw with my own eyes how the Lebanese people of the north Al-Matan region begged to be allowed to harvest [the pine nuts from] their pine trees, since this was their source of livelihood, but their pleas were ignored... Our brave soldiers girded their loins and undertook the task [themselves]... The tasty pine nuts were sold in the markets of Damascus...

"I saw Lebanese [people] being publicly humiliated at Syrian military checkpoints, and being 'lectured' by illiterate [Syrian] soldiers on various matters, great and small. I saw a lot of things, but my shame keeps me from speaking out about them.

"Fifteen years after leaving Lebanon as a soldier, I returned there as a civilian, my mind still filled with the sights [that I had witnessed] in places that I had loved, and whose [inhabitants] I had liked. To them and to all the Lebanese I [now] offer my apologies. I am deeply convinced that a civilized people like the Lebanese will [be able to] forgive and forget."

“The debate has been reopened,” La Stampa said. Professor De Mattei noted that the desecration of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by Muslim forces in 1009 had helped to provoke the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, called by Pope Urban II.

He said that the Crusaders were “martyrs” who had “sacrificed their lives for the faith”. He was backed by Jonathan Riley-Smith, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University, who said that those who sought forgiveness for the Crusades “do not know their history”. Professor Riley-Smith has attacked Sir Ridley Scott’s recent film Kingdom of Heaven, starring Orlando Bloom, as “utter nonsense”.

Professor Riley-Smith said that the script, like much writing on the Crusades, was “historically inaccurate. It depicts the Muslims as civilised and the Crusaders as barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality.” It fuels Islamic fundamentalism by propagating “Osama bin Laden’s version of history”.

He said that the Crusaders were sometimes undisciplined and capable of acts of great cruelty. But the same was true of Muslims and of troops in “all ideological wars”. Some of the Crusaders’ worst excesses were against Orthodox Christians or heretics — as in the sack of Constantinople in 1204...

If you can help, please send a care package to:

Lt. Marc J. Bishop, Chaplain
1st BN 25th MAR H&S CO.
Unit 72195
FPO AE 09509-2195

You have to complete a customs declaration form. If you've been wanting to support the troops, here's a very direct way. Can't send bacon, girly mags or cash. Thanks!

The Palestine Liberation Organization mission to Washington is distributing the paper, which also is being hailed by a senior member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization...

...Duke, a former Louisiana state legislator and one-time Ku Klux Klan leader, called the paper "a great step forward," but he said he was "surprised" that the Kennedy School would publish the report.

"I have read about the report and read one summary already, and I am surprised how excellent it is," he said in an e-mail. "It is quite satisfying to see a body in the premier American University essentially come out and validate every major point I have been making since even before the war even started." Duke added that "the task before us is to wrest control of America's foreign policy and critical junctures of media from the Jewish extremist Neocons that seek to lead us into what they expectantly call World War IV."

Mr. Walt said last night, "I have always found Mr. Duke's views reprehensible, and I am sorry he sees this article as consistent with his view of the world."

"I think that the people who wrote that report were working for the interest of the American people," a senior member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's guidance council, Abdulmo'em Abulfotah, said yesterday. "I ask a question here: Is it in the interest of the American people to clash with 1.3 billion people in favor of 5 million people who represent the Zionist project? Not even the Jews, but the Zionists."...

No sooner were the two new paintings unveiled than letters of protest began to be published, in the Jewish press, as well as in the secular and even in the Christian press. Frederick William Coburn, a writer for the Boston Herald, wrote, ''If one were a rabbi or a cantor, it might be a little distasteful to have this middle-age fashion of deprecating his ancient religion revived in a building supported by public taxation.''...

The Advocate asked for a ''more explicit statement,'' but none was forthcoming. Sargent knew he was in trouble-he remembered well the scandal that ensued when his suggestive portrait ''Madame X'' made her debut with a fallen gown strap in 1884-and he retreated to his rooms at the Hotel Vendome on Commonwealth Avenue. Depressed by the events, he abandoned the murals, never returning to ''The Sermon on the Mount.'' [Meant to be the concluding piece. -S]

Who are they that have expressed these concerns? In fact, these are the exact words of terrorists discussing Iraq -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates -- who are describing their own situation and must be watching with fear the progress that Iraq has made over the past three years...

...The rationale for a free and democratic Iraq is as compelling today as it was three years ago. A free and stable Iraq will not attack its neighbors, will not conspire with terrorists, will not pay rewards to the families of suicide bombers and will not seek to kill Americans.

Though there are those who will never be convinced that the cause in Iraq is worth the costs, anyone looking realistically at the world today -- at the terrorist threat we face -- can come to only one conclusion: Now is the time for resolve, not retreat.

Consider that if we retreat now, there is every reason to believe Saddamists and terrorists will fill the vacuum -- and the free world might not have the will to face them again. Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries.

What we need to understand is that the vast majority of the Iraqi people want the coalition to succeed. They want better futures for themselves and their families. They do not want the extremists to win. And they are risking their lives every day to secure their country.

That is well worth remembering on this anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

...It is clear from evidence presented to the inquiry that anti-semitism has not gone away and that its nature is now more varied. Traditional anti-semitism still exists, with fascist leaflets as crude as in the 1930s distributed on the streets of the UK. Attacks on Jews continue...

...When I commissioned this inquiry, one MP commented with surprise: "I didn't realise you were Jewish." Neither did I. Anti-semitism is like all other racism: unacceptable without qualification. I hope that this inquiry will recommend some practical conclusions that can help redraw that line.

...He was invited to Westminster on Tuesday by Lord Ahmed, who met him at Regent’s Park mosque three weeks ago.

The father of five — suspected of being a money man for terror groups — was given a SECURITY sticker for his Parliamentary visit...

...Shadow Home Secretary David Davis last night said Abu Rideh had been able to “walk around one of the UK’s biggest terror targets”.

Lord Ahmed confirmed he invited Abu Rideh, 34, to see him — and said he QUIZZED him over the suspected al Qaeda link...

...“I asked him, ‘Have you ever been linked with al Qaeda?’ and he denied it.”...

...The Palestinian suspect came to Britain in 1995 and was given permission to remain permanently in 1998.

He was detained as a terror suspect in December 2001, accused of fundraising for groups linked to al Qaeda.

David Blunkett directly accused him of the link to Osama bin Laden’s organisation when Home Secretary.

They're right that Palestinians are virtually wailing at "the wall." When I went to see its towering cement slabs in the West Bank town of Abu Dis last year, an Arab man approached me to unload his sadness. "It's no good," he said. "It's hard."

"Why do you think they built it?" I asked.

The man shook his head and repeated, "It's hard." After some silence, he added, "We are not two people. We are one."

"How do you explain that to suicide bombers?" I wondered aloud.

The man smiled. "No understand," he replied. "No English. Thank you. Goodbye."

Was it something I said? Maybe my impolite mention of Palestinian martyrs? Then again, how could I not mention them?

After all, this barrier, although built by Mr. Sharon, was birthed by "shaheeds," suicide bombers whom Palestinian leaders have glorified as martyrs. Qassam missiles can kill two or three people at a time. Suicide bombers lay waste to many more. Since the barrier went up, suicide attacks have plunged, which means innocent Arab lives have been spared along with Jewish ones. Does a concrete effort to save civilian lives justify the hardship posed by this structure? The humanitarian in me bristles, but ultimately answers yes...

...For all the closings, however, Israel is open enough to tolerate lawsuits by civil society groups who despise every mile of the barrier. Mr. Sharon himself agreed to reroute sections of it when the Israel High Court ruled in favor of the complainants. Where else in the Middle East can Arabs and Jews work together so visibly to contest, and change, state policies?

I reflected on this question as I observed an Israeli Army jeep patrol the gap in Abu Dis. The vehicle was crammed with soldiers who, in turn, observed me filming the anti-Israel graffiti scrawled by Western activists — "Scotland hates the blood-sucking Zionists!" I turned my video camera on the soldiers. Nobody ordered me to shut it off or show the tape [Something that happens all the time to those caught filming 'the wrong thing' in the PA. -S]. My Arab taxi driver stood by, unprotected by a diplomatic license plate or press banner...

But while dining on a smorgasboard of black bird, the Times still doesn't get it. This piece, like an earlier unsigned article on the subject, still doesn't acknowledge the distinct possibility -- if not probability -- that nothing this man said was true and, again, obscuring his motive, which was clearly monetary. He is, after all, suing the government.

When the US government on Thursday began publishing captured Iraqi government documents on the Internet, Shahda eagerly began to translate the files into English and publish them on a conservative website.

''I feel a sense of duty," said Shahda, a native of Lebanon who supports President Bush's decision to invade Iraq. ''I think it's a duty for people who know Arabic to translate the documents."

US officials hope that thousands of other Arabic speakers feel the same. Goaded by Congress, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has begun to release millions of pages of captured files online in an unprecedented effort to harness the Internet to disseminate raw intelligence material. There, anybody with a knowledge of Arabic can download the files and translate them for the world...

The Afghan citizen disclosed the IED's location to Afghan National Police officers, who in turn notified coalition forces. With permission from local religious leaders, explosive ordnance specialists entered the mosque and rendered the bomb harmless...

The incident occurred about 25 nautical miles off the central eastern coast of Somalia in international waters.

Cape St. George, a guided missile cruiser, and Gonzalez, a guided missile destroyer, were conducting maritime security operations in the area as part of Combined Task Force 150, officials said.

Members of this maritime coalition task force, currently led by Royal Netherlands Navy Commodore Hank Ort, spotted a suspect vessel towing two smaller skiffs bearing west toward the coast, officials reported. As Gonzalez's boarding teams prepared to conduct a routine boarding of the suspect vessel, the two Norfolk, Va.-based Navy ships noticed the suspected pirates were brandishing what appeared to be rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The suspected pirates then opened fire on the Navy ships. The Cape St. George and Gonzalez returned fire with small arms in self defense, officials said.

Abizaid said Iranian activity in Iraq and Afghanistan is particularly troubling because Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad "is very ideological (and) has made an awful lot of threats" against the United States, Israel, and Europe.

The general said improvised explosive device components manufactured in Iran have made their way into Iraq, but there's no provable connection that the Iranian government is directly providing bomb components to terrorists in Iraq.

"I can't tell you whether or not that happened with the orders of the Iranian government," Abizaid said in response to a senator's question. "But I can tell you that terrorists in northeastern Iraq used the Iranian northwestern border to move back and forth across the border."

Regarding possible Iranian government meddling in Iraq, Abizaid said: "We need to look very, very, clearly and effectively with our own intelligence networks to determine how this flow (of IEDs into Iraq) is moving and who has authorized it, if anybody."

An Iran-IED connection, if true, would constitute "a very serious concern," Abizaid said.

An Iraqi intelligence service document saying that their Afghani informant, who's only identified by a number, told them that the Afghani Consul Ahmed Dahastani claimed the following in front of him:

That OBL and the Taliban are in contact with Iraq and that a group of Taliban and bin Laden group members visited Iraq.

That the U.S. has proof the Iraqi government and "bin Laden's group" agreed to cooperate to attack targets inside America.

That in case the Taliban and bin Laden's group turn out to be involved in "these destructive operations," the U.S. may strike Iraq and Afghanistan.

That the Afghani consul heard about the issue of Iraq's relationship with "bin Laden's group" while he was in Iran.

At the end, the writer recommends informing "the committee of intentions" about the above-mentioned items. The signature on the document is unclear.

Though many thought Washington would quickly fold on this issue, the administration is sticking to its hard line against sending a cent to Hamas. And Congress is poised to enact aid restrictions that may act as a break on any State Department impulse to weaken on the issue.

But along with this comes the bad news. The United States and the European Union (which is also considering an aid cutoff to the P.A.) will be diverting a lot of the money that supported the P.A. kleptocracy to humanitarian aid. That way, it is reasoned, innocent Palestinians won't be forced to suffer from the crimes of their new masters.

That rationale sounds compassionate and logical. The only problem is that the humanitarian group that will receive the lion's share of the aid is one of the most thoroughly politicized and terrorist-infiltrated organizations in the world: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

For 56 years, UNRWA has been the symbol of the world's double standard about the war on Israel by the Arab world...

...What should the United States do about this? Let's start with the fact that the plentiful cash that flows from the United States Treasury to UNRWA (30 percent of the agency's $400 million budget comes courtesy of American taxpayers) is actually a violation of U.S. law. The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act requires UNRWA to assure that American money does not go to terrorists. That is an assurance that UNRWA cannot credibly give.

Superficial reforms of the group won't work. Given the almost complete infiltration of UNRWA's bureaucracy by terrorist supporters, nothing short of a complete overhaul will do...

On Friday, March 10, 2006 the UN Commission on the Status of Women -- the UN's highest body dealing with women's rights -- adopted only one resolution that specifically condemned the abuse of women's rights by any of the 191 UN member states. That state was Israel.

There was no resolution on Saudi Arabia and the million female migrant workers living in slave-like conditions there. There was no mention of Jordan, home to the phenomenon of "honor killings" -- the alleged entitlement to murder female relatives. Nothing on China, land of forced abortions and sterilizations. Nothing on Mali's appalling record on female genital mutilation. No mention of Palestinian women who volunteer to be suicide bombers in order to kill Jews. And of course, no mention of the Israeli women and girls who are their victims.

The Commission on the Status of Women makes it abundantly clear that the victims of the UN's obsession with demonizing the Jewish state go far beyond Israelis. They are the billions of women around the world who cannot garner the attention of this organization because it is otherwise occupied.

It should be noted that the PCUSA MRTI committee supposedly spent a great deal of time combing the church's portfolio for equities of questionable moral value (which is how Caterpillar, ITT, Citigroup and the rest were identified). Given that it took me no more than fifteen minutes to discover the information noted above regarding the five "dirty" investments in the New Covenant Growth portfolio, one wonders just how much effort this group dedicated to such a project...

It's one thing to gamble with the assets of individual investors or the reputation of the church based on the institution's own decisions. But what does it say when this reckless course is pursued due to the urging of those who care less about the return for New Covenant Fund shareholders or the reputation of the Presbyterian Church than they do about their own narrow political agenda?

Which is not to say that the clerics don't believe what they say. This brings us back to Mr. Samadi's unfortunate metaphor. The terminology of disease control has now thoroughly infiltrated anti-Semitic discourse in the Middle East. Four years ago, a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley named Hussein Haj Hassan told me that Jews function "in a way that lets them act as parasites in the nations that give them shelter." The leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad speak in much the same manner.

One worries about overreacting, but such language echoes the passage of "Mein Kampf" in which the Austrian Haman compares the Jew to "a sponger who like a noxious bacillus keeps spreading as soon as a favorable medium invites him."

I still assume that the Jews, and the Jewish state, will survive their encounter with the Iran of Mr. Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei. Iran's leaders don't yet have the bomb, and eschatologically minded though they are, they might not be entirely immune to the charms of rational deterrence theory. And, of course, both parable and history teach that Jews somehow always manage to survive.

Nevertheless, a great many people, in Iran and beyond, believe that the Jewish state is a cancer, and it is foolish to believe that this is an idea without consequences. As one Islamic Jihad leader told me not long ago, "Everyone knows that the cure for cancer is radiation."

''It's too bad this happened, because we immigrants are always blamed," said Ibrahim Ag Ahmalou, a lanky man of West African heritage who shares his girlfriend's apartment in the project. ''But Jews have all the money and power. Everyone knows this and resents them. That's why they have these problems."

Last week there were three more attacks on Jews by Arab and African immigrants in suburban Paris, according to police. None of the latest victims was seriously injured, but the attacks heightened the nervousness of French Jews. There is alarm that the antipathy of French Muslims toward Jews, long based on opposition to Israel, is reverting to the even more sinister prejudices that once pervaded Europe, making Jews the scapegoats for all social ills.

''Anti-Semitism is rising in our country," said legislator Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Halimi, 23, son of Moroccan-born Jews of modest means, sold cellphones at a shop in Paris. He disappeared on Jan. 20, allegedly abducted by a predominantly Muslim youth gang dedicated to crime, street fighting, rap music, and virulent anti-Semitism. The thuggish crew sought a cash ransom of more than $500,000 because they assumed all Jews were rich, according to French authorities. And when Halimi's hard-strapped family could not produce money, they killed their captive because he was a Jew.

In taunting calls to Halimi's family, the abductors addressed his parents with anti-Semitic slurs and told them to get cash ''from your synagogue." They also contacted a French rabbi, boasting, ''We have a Jew." Even more shocking, investigators believe that many inhabitants of the project were aware that the youth gang was holding a Jewish captive, but none called police or urged the abductors to show mercy...

Gaza Strip attacking offices linked to the United States and Europe and torching the British Council building in Gaza City. Palestinian gunmen also kidnapped nine foreigners, including an American university professor, and some aid agencies pulled their foreign staff out of Palestinian areas.

The Palestinians blamed the Jericho raid, which left three Palestinians dead, on Britain and the United States. Britain removed its monitoring mission from the jail just before the soldiers went in, targeting militants wanted for the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister...

...Israeli officials said recent statements by Palestinian officials and Hamas leaders of plans to release the prisoners, combined with the withdrawal of the monitors, forced them to act.

"We couldn't have a situation where murderers would be walking around free instead of being behind lock and key," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

Israel was targeting Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine leader Ahmed Saadat, who ordered the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, and four other militants accused off carrying out the killing. Saadat was elected to the Palestinian legislature in January. A sixth militant also was taken...

...The gray-haired Saadat, wearing a light-colored jacket, looked down as he slowly walked out. He did not raise his arms in surrender as many others did. [Wrote the AP reporter, Sarah El Deeb, proudly. -S]

Israel also seized Fuad Shobaki, the mastermind of an illegal weapons shipment to the Palestinian Authority several years ago, and 15 other militants, said Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, the chief of Israel's central command...

Event to be broadcast into Iran via satellite TV

CAMBRIDGE – On Saturday (March 18) Harvard University will host the Iran Freedom Concert, a rally organized by Harvard students to support their counterparts in Iran.

Prominent Iranian student leader Akbar Atri and Harvard's student body president John Haddock will address the crowd. Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, will be sending a statement of support.

"As tensions rise over nuclear issues, our diverse student coalition wants to spotlight the human side of the Iran crisis," said co-organizer Adam Scheuer, a senior and editor at the Harvard Middle East Review.

"Iranian students are denied basic rights Americans take advantage of every day. But there is a brave student movement in Iran working for change, and we need to support them." Widespread student protests in Iran have broken out in recent years, despite a brutal crackdown by the regime's security forces.

The concert, which begins at 9 p.m. at Leverett House, features leading campus musicians and speakers from campus groups exposing repression in Iran. Nine organizations are co-sponsoring, including an unusual alliance of campus Democrats and Republicans.

The Independent's story is an interesting tour of the history of medieval Muslim science. We learn that Muslims invented the bank check ("In the 9th century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad"), the windmill, the fountain pen, and the brewing of coffee. On closer reading, however, The Independent's coverage is damnation by faint praise...

Today Jews around the world celebrate the holiday of Purim, the respite after the defeat of Haman of Persia, who was the first world figure to plan genocide against the Jews. There are those who are still calling for the murder of Jews, as can be seen today on the web site of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)

Note that the face in the coffin is that of the murdered Israeli Cabinet Minister Rehavam Zeevi.

Text header:
"Our brigades will continue to destroy your project".

Text on picture of murdered Israeli Minister Rechvam Zeevi:
"The fate of your leaders"

According to Palestinian media report the Popular Front is to participate in the upcoming Hamas government. [Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, March 9, 2006]

President George W. Bush has made clear in recent weeks his displeasure with the delays in getting the information out to the American public. On February 16, one day after ABC News broadcast excerpts of recordings featuring Saddam Hussein and his war cabinet, Bush met with congressional Republicans and several senior national security officials and said three times that the documents should be released. "This stuff ought to be out," he told National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley. "Put this stuff out." It seems Bush will soon get his wish.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), who has been steadfast in his resolve to see these documents released, said today that "this is a bold decision in favor of openness that will go a long way towards improving our understanding of prewar Iraq . . . By placing these documents online and allowing the public the opportunity to review them, we can cut years off the time it will take to gain knowledge from this potential treasure trove of information."...

...For months, Negroponte has fought any large-scale release of captured documents, arguing alternately that the documents were only of historical interest and that they contained too much sensitive, "actionable" intelligence to be released publicly...

• Bard College notoriously maintains a chair in social studies named for Alger Hiss, the communist spy, traitor and perjurer. This is perhaps the stupidest honor given anywhere in America. The University of Washington's Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies is named for the late and powerful labor leader, who was a communist, a perjurer and an apologist for Stalin.
• Last year the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York announced a new scholarship named for Ho Chi Minh and another honoring Joanne Chesimard, the former Black Panther and convicted murderer of a New Jersey police officer. Both scholarships were quickly renamed after protests.
• Stanford Law School paid Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who had been indicted for aiding Islamic terrorists, to speak and mentor students at a conference. After loud complaints, the school withdrew the word "mentor" from her conference title, but let her conduct mentoring and deliver her lecture anyway. Since then, she has been convicted on all five counts of conspiring to aid terrorists and lying to the government.

This is censorship of the worst kind. More awful even than that.It is black-listing a dead girl and her diaries.A very brave and exceptional girl who all citizens, whatever their faith or nationality, should be proud and grateful for her existence. They couldn't silence her voice while she lived, so she was killed. Her voice began to speak again as Alan Rickman read her diaries, and Megan Dodds became Rachel Corrie.Now the New York Theatre Workshop have silenced that dear voice...

Among the museums and institutions being pursued by David Strachman is the University of Chicago. He wants the university to surrender a treasure trove of ancient Persian artifacts to survivors of an attack staged by Hamas, the militant group that won the recent Palestinian elections.

The request was recently sustained by a federal magistrate in Chicago.

The reasoning was as straightforward as the implications are far-reaching: Supporters of terrorism should be punished. Hamas is partially financed by Iran. Therefore, Hamas' victims should be compensated by confiscating Iranian property, making Persian artifacts in American museums, such as University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, fair game for federal marshals and a moving truck...

This day-long event is scheduled to take place on Saturday, April 29th, 2006 in the Greater Washington DC Area. Tickets at $119.00 per person (lunch included). Ticketing must be done in advance due to security protocol.

Featured speakers include:

Dr. Andrew Bostom, David Horowitz, Dr. Harvey Kushner, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Dr. Paul Williams, Brigitte Gabriel, Joseph Kaufman, Laura Mansfield, Whalid Shoebat, Dr. Bruce Tefft, And more…

Topics to be discussed:

By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

Introduction

Societies measure their heroes in different ways. Some societies honor athletes or performers. Others celebrate caregivers and humanitarian workers. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have consistently chosen to honor murderers as their national icons.

The Palestinian Authority has announced that it was granting honorary citizenship to two Arab terrorists who killed Israelis – a Lebanese terrorist, Samir Quntar, and Jordanian terrorist, Sultan Al-Ajaluni. Both are serving life sentences in Israeli jails.

In 1979 Lebanese terrorist Samir Quntar murdered Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter, Einat. Danny's daughter Yael, aged two, suffocated while hiding in a crawl space with her mother [This doesn't begin to describe it. As you've discovered by reading that article above, Yael was inadvertantly smothered by her mother as they hid in the crawl space and her mother tried to keep her from making noise and alerting the terrorists. -S]. Quntar is serving multiple life sentences totaling 542 years in prison.

That official--Alexis Surovov, assistant director of giving at Yale Law School--did talk to me. Last Wednesday, Mr. Surovov sent an angry email from a Columbia University account to Clinton Taylor and Debbie Bookstaber, two young Yale grads who are so frustrated at their alma mater's refusal to answer questions about Mr. Rahmatullah that they've launched a protest. Called NailYale, it focuses on the Taliban's barbaric treatment of women, which extended to yanking out the fingernails of those who wore nail polish. In a column on TownHall.com, they urged alumni "not give one red cent this year, but instead send Yale a red press-on fingernail."

Mr. Surovov, a Yale alumnus who has worked in its development office for three years and is on the board of the Yale Club of New Haven, wrote Mr. Taylor and Ms. Bookstaber at their private email addresses with the subject heading: "Y [sic] do you hate Yale." Here is his email in its entirety: "What is wrong with you? Are you retarded? This is the most disgraceful alumni article that I have ever read in my life. You failed to mention that you've never contributed to the Yale Alumni Fund in your life. But to suggest that others follow your negative example is disgusting."

Intrigued that someone had looked up his wife's giving record, David Bookstaber, a Yale computer science graduate, used Columbia's publicly accessible IT account database to trace the anonymous email. The trail led straight to Mr. Surovov's Yale office. On Thursday Mr. Taylor phoned Mr. Suvarov, who told him he was angry because the furor over the Taliban official was hurting fund raising and could lower Yale's rankings in the next U.S. News & World Report college survey. He also accused Mr. Taylor and Ms. Bookstaber of "terrorist tactics," which when challenged he amended to "terror tactics."...

"I have reached the point that doesn't allow any U-turn. I have no choice. I am questioning every single teaching of our holy book."

The working title is, "The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster."

Dr. Sultan grew up in a large traditional Muslim family in Banias, Syria, a small city on the Mediterranean about a two-hour drive north of Beirut. Her father was a grain trader and a devout Muslim, and she followed the faith's strictures into adulthood.

But, she said, her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo, in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim Brotherhood was using terrorism to try to undermine the government of President Hafez al-Assad. Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor as she watched, she said.

"They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, 'God is great!' " she said. "At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god."

She and her husband, who now goes by the Americanized name of David, laid plans to leave for the United States. Their visas finally came in 1989, and the Sultans and their two children (they have since had a third) settled in with friends in Cerritos, Calif., a prosperous bedroom community on the edge of Los Angeles County...

...She was called "Moses" by those she helped escape on the Underground Railroad. She made many trips to Maryland to help other slaves escape. According to her own estimates and those of her close associates, Tubman personally guided around 70 slaves to freedom in about 13 expeditions. She was never captured and, in her own words, "never lost a passenger." She also provided detailed instructions to many more who found their way to freedom on their own...

...During the American Civil War, in addition to working as a cook and a nurse, she served as a spy for the North. Again she was never captured, and she guided hundreds of people trapped in slavery into Union camps during the Civil War.

In 1863, Tubman led a raid at Combahee River Ferry in Colleton County, South Carolina, allowing hundreds of slaves to run to their freedom. This was the first military operation in U.S. history planned and executed by a woman. Tubman, in disguise, had visited plantations in advance of the raid and instructed slaves to prepare to run in to the river where Union ships would be waiting for them. Union troops exchanged fire with Confederate troops in this incident; there were casualties on both sides...

Politically, it's a no-brainer. The national Democratic Party grew alienated from the U.S. military at exactly the time liberal campuses began expelling rotc. A public call for its restoration could help undermine the anti-military stereotype that still plagues the party today...

...Today, ROTC's opponents are no longer politically radical. They're not antimilitary, they insist, they just oppose its "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays and lesbians. They're simply treating the military the same way they treat every other organization that discriminates.

But that's exactly the problem. The military isn't like every other organization: Its members risk their lives to defend the United States. When such an institution discriminates, you can--and should--try to reform it from within. That's what ROTC was designed for. But, when you treat it like a pariah--while still insisting that it protect you--you have broken the contract that binds a democratic military and a democratic people.

In his speech opposing ROTC, Brinkley compared making gays serve under "don't ask, don't tell" to making blacks who serve pass for white. But, of course, Columbia embraced rotc even when the U.S. military did discriminate against blacks. And, more important, blacks themselves enlisted in vast numbers. In so doing, they weren't endorsing racism; they were recognizing that, when a racist institution also defends your country, you have to embrace it and fight to change it at the same time.

Today, the Serviceman's Legal Defense Network--which represents gays and lesbians in the military--understands the same thing. Which is why it does not oppose rotc on campus, even as it struggles heroically against "don't ask, don't tell." It is Bollinger and Brinkley who, by shunning the military, have placed themselves in the oppositional, anti-liberal tradition of the New Left...

The instructors are HAMAS members trained internationally, most likely in Lebanon, Syria and Iran. According to Abu Hufeiza, the HAMAS military production units are diligently developing new weapons, including rockets and advanced explosives. He emphasized that the al-Kassam Brigades will remain as HAMAS’ military arm and will continue its struggle to liberate all Palestinian lands. According to the Dunia al-Watan reporter who accompanied Abu-Hufeiza to these training camps, each camp occupies over five acres, and accommodates dozens of trainees...

I’m now convinced the 9/11 Commission with Able Danger did something far worse than what Richard Nixon did in covering up a third-rate burglary. Back in Watergate, no one was injured, no one was killed, and no money was stolen. With Able Danger, the facts and the details leading up the largest attack in the history of America, including the attack on the USS Cole, were covered up or isolated. On top of that, in October of last year, Louis Freeh, the former FBI Director on national TV, in an answer to Tim Russert, said, “If I’d have had the Able Danger information, Tim, we could have stopped 9/11 from ever happening.”...

The unwavering US position since Dwight Eisenhower’s administration has been that Israel’s borders coincide with those established in 1949, and, since 1967, the universally adopted UN Resolution 242 has mandated Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories. This policy was reconfirmed even by Israel in 1978 and 1993, and emphasised by all American presidents, including George W Bush. As part of the Quartet, including Russia, the UN, and the European Union, he has endorsed a “Road Map” for peace. But Israel has officially rejected its basic premises with patently unacceptable caveats and prerequisites.

With Israel’s approval, The Carter Centre has monitored all three Palestinian elections. Supervised by a blue-ribbon commission of college presidents and distinguished jurists, they have all been honest, fair, and peaceful, with the results accepted by winners and losers...

...In the short run, the best approach is to follow Wolfensohn’s advice, give the dust a chance to settle in Palestine, and await the outcome of Israel’s election later this month. Hamas wishes now to consolidate its political gains, maintain domestic order and stability, and refrain from any contact with Israel. It will be a tragedy — especially for the Palestinians — if they promote or condone terrorism. [Gee. Ya think?-S]

The pre-eminent obstacle to peace is Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. There were just a few hundred settlers in the West Bank and Gaza when I became president, but the Likud government expanded settlement activity after I left office. President Ronald Reagan condemned this policy, and reaffirmed that Resolution 242 remained “the foundation stone of America’s Middle East peace effort.” President George HW Bush even threatened to reduce American aid to Israel...

He is Aviation Cadet Leo Mustonen, 22, of Brainerd, Minn. The family has not set a date for his burial.

Mustonen was one of four men aboard a routine navigation training flight that departed Mather Field, Calif., on Nov. 18, 1942. Their AT-7 Navigator aircraft carried about five hours of fuel, and when the plane did not return to base, a search was initiated. It was suspended about a month later with no results.

In 1947, several hikers on Darwin Glacier in the Sierra Nevada mountain range discovered the aircraft wreckage. Human remains of three of the crew found at the site were buried in the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, Calif.

Several other hikers on Mendel Glacier, which is adjacent to Darwin Glacier, discovered frozen human remains, circumstantial evidence and personal effects in October 2005...

“Yes,” I said. “Did you live here when the village was occupied by Zarqawi?”

“I did,” he said. “Life wasn’t good. We had no freedom. TV was banned. Women couldn’t walk outside without an abaya. There was violence. Anyone not affiliated with them was treated badly. During prayer time everyone was required to go to the mosque. If we didn’t go we were insulted and fined 50 dollars.”...

...“Did anyone here actually like Ansar Al Islam?” I asked.

“There were one or two very young people,” he said. “I am from here. We never had anything like that before. I was joking with my friends in this tea shop. We were arrested, chained, blindfolded, and beaten. Laughing was banned.”...

Hamida: "Islam does not need improvement of its image... But there are some ignorant Muslims who do not understand the tenets of their faith... It is [our] duty to repel any enemy of the Islamic and Arab countries, using 'terrorism' rather than using violence. We need an accurate definition of [the term] 'terrorism' in the negative climate in which we live - a climate that makes no distinction between a criminal and one who is prepared to sacrifice his life or a terrorist. In defining [this term], we must not be influenced by American pressures, but consider the issues in the light of shari'a. They should not tell us to fight terrorism and to fight it as they command us to. The Americans are the ones who perpetrate violence in the Arab countries!..."...

...Question: "What will you do if one of your constituents criticizes you for supporting terrorism and terrorists, and accuses you of saying that the Koran incites to terrorism?!"

Hamida: "I will make an effort to correct his [mis]conceptions and explain the ramifications to him. I support all of bin Laden's and Al-Zawahiri's operations against occupation, but if they [ever] issue a fatwa [that condones operations] against civilians in some Arab or Muslim country, I will be the first to condemn them!"

Question: "Didn't Al-Zawahiri recently [appear on] Al-Jazeera [TV channel] and explicitly call to renew the terrorist operations in Egypt?!"

Hamida: "This was because of his opposition to the American policy and to Washington's meddling in Egypt's domestic affairs. All parties, associations and journalists oppose the American control in the region..."­

More important, Orson Welles had a canny respect for the audience while maintaining a difficult relationship with studio executives, whom he approached as if they were his intellectual and artistic inferiors. George Clooney has a canny respect for the Hollywood establishment, for its executives and agents, and treats his audience as if it were composed of his intellectual and artistic inferiors. (He is not alone in this. He is only this year's example.)

And because they are his inferiors, he must teach them. He must teach them about racial tolerance and speaking truth to power, etc. He must teach them to be brave. And so in his acceptance speech for best supporting actor the other night he instructed the audience about Hollywood's courage in making movies about AIDS, and recognizing the work of Hattie McDaniel with an Oscar...

...But Mr. Clooney's remarks were also part of the tinniness of the age, and of modern Hollywood. I don't think he was being disingenuous in suggesting he was himself somewhat heroic. He doesn't even know he's not heroic. He thinks making a movie in 2005 that said McCarthyism was bad is heroic...

Rumsfeld declined to give details, but his statement marked the first time he's said these forces are in Iraq. When asked if the infiltration is backed by Iran's central government, he said "of course" and added: "The Revolutionary Guard doesn't go milling around willy-nilly."

Iran is "putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. The action is one Iran "will look back on as having been an error in judgment," he said...

While the overtures differ, they fall into two basic categories – those that would rescind the divestment decision, and those that would continue it...

The UN nuclear watchdog took the decision after debating the document - which contains criticism of Iran.

The US says the council will debate Iran's "flagrant threats and phoney negotiations" early next week...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that such measures would be ineffective.

"I don't think sanctions as a means to solve a crisis have ever achieved a goal in the recent history," he told reporters...

“The United States may have the power to cause harm and pain but it is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if the United States wishes to choose that path, let the ball roll,” it said in a statement obtained by Reuters on the sidelines of a U.N. nuclear watchdog board meeting in Vienna...

As the Times ran out its series, we waited for some mention of this fact. We were interested to read that the Imam at the center of the reporter's story, Sheik Reda Shata, "is," as the Times reporter wrote, "neither a firebrand nor a ready advocate of progressive Islam. Some of his views would offend conservative Muslims; other beliefs would repel American liberals. He is in many ways a work in progress, mapping his own middle ground between two different worlds."

The second installment of the Times series related that "Imams like Mr. Shata - men who embrace American freedom and condemn the radicals they feel have tainted their faith - rarely make the news." Yet the Times also reported: "When Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed by Israelis in March 2004, Mr. Shata told hundreds who gathered at a memorial service in Brooklyn that the 'lion of Palestine has been martyred.'" Further, the Times notes, "in another sermon, the imam exalted a young Palestinian mother, Reem Al-Reyashi, who blew herself up in 2004 at a crossing point between Gaza and Israel, killing four Israelis. Mr. Shata described the woman as a martyr." An aide to Mr. Shata told us that the Imam was unavailable for comment by our deadline.

In the third and last installment of the Times series, we searched yet again - but in vain - for a mention of Rashid Baz and the fact that on March 1, in 1994, Baz opened fire on a white van carrying rabbinical students, including Halberstam, onto the Brooklyn Bridge and that on March 5 Halberstam died from the shots. It was an act of terrorism that shocked the city as few events have. Baz was convicted of Halberstam's murder in December 1994, and the circumstances deserve to be remembered...

Of particular note are the American Muslims who reject CAIR’s claim to speak on their behalf. The late Seifeldin Ashmawy, publisher of the New Jersey-based Voice of Peace, called CAIR the champion of “extremists whose views do not represent Islam.”[4] Jamal Hasan of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance explains that CAIR’s goal is to spread “Islamic hegemony the world over by hook or by crook.”[5] Kamal Nawash, head of Free Muslims Against Terrorism, finds that CAIR and similar groups condemn terrorism on the surface while endorsing an ideology that helps foster extremism, adding that “almost all of their members are theocratic Muslims who reject secularism and want to establish Islamic states.” Tashbih Sayyed of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance calls CAIR “the most accomplished fifth column” in the United States. And Stephen Schwartz of the Center on Islamic Pluralism writes that “CAIR should be considered a foreign-based subversive organization, comparable in the Islamist field to the Soviet-controlled Communist Party, USA.”...

The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists urged Jewish and Muslim leaders to help make peace Israelis and Palestinians, even if it means talking to their bitterest enemies.

“Any noble work is bound to have obstacles,” the Dalai Lama told religious leaders in a Feb. 19 meeting. “We need determination to pursue justice and truth.”

The exiled Tibetan leader, whose five-day visit ended on Feb. 20, intended to travel to the West Bank city of Bethlehem to meet with Palestinian Muslim and Christian leaders and to see the Church of the Nativity, but the Palestinian Authority cancelled the visit because of pressure from China, Palestinian sources said.

The Chinese consul in Tel Aviv has sent Israeli officials a letter protesting the Dalai Lama’s visit, comparing the Tibetan to the head of the Hamas, Israel Radio reported. “If China would let the head of Hamas visit, Israel would be angry,” the Chinese said in the letter, according to the radio report...

The head of advertising answers and immediately launches into a quiet yet resolute political diatribe upon hearing where the company is based. I'm thinking: WTF? Why is a dance magazine guy talking politics to me? And never mind my interjections on artistic director Sally-Anne's behalf...that she broke away from apartheid South Africa, that her most recent creation Borders expresses boundary breakdowns both personal and political ....

He tells me that because of the occupation the magazine doesn't run stories on dance companies based in Israel. He also assures that he is in no way, shape or form racist because he's a Sikh from Northern India...

Mokhles Tharwat was arrested by Egyptian state security agency two weeks ago and has been detained ever since.
Mr Mokhles suffers from heart disease. The conditions he faces in detainment, especially that he faces no official accusation, may be life threatening.
A Muslim neighbor of Mr Mokhles is believed to be behind the arrest...

The screams must have been loud because the torture was especially atrocious: the thugs cut bits off the flesh of the young man, they cut his fingers and ears, they burned him with acid, and in the end poured flammable liquid on him and set him on fire.

The head of the gang, Fofana, was arrested in a brothel in Abijan, Ivory Coast. He had been able to leave France freely, without being stopped at the border. He spoke to a French TV channel while in Abijan. He was smiling at the camera and eating a good lunch. He said he was not anti-Semitic; he just wanted money (and, he added, "Jews have money.") He insisted that he had not killed anyone; to torture and to burn is not to kill. Had he any remorse? No. He was only disappointed: he had not been successful and he had not gotten any money. The future? "If the guillotine were still in use,” he smiled, “somebody would suggest that for me."...

The kidnappers "were just too happy to have a little Jew on their hands," Didier Halimi said in an interview, his first, with the French daily, Le Monde, appearing in Wednesday's edition...

...Halimi defended the police, who have come under fire from his ex-wife and two daughters, saying, "It's always easy to criticize after the fact," and that officers on the case "worked like crazy."

Critics have accused police of initially ignoring anti-Semitic motives in the crime, which captured the attention of top government officials and has revived fears of anti-Semitism in France.

The Post also found that the kingdom continues to prohibit entry to products made in Israel or to foreign-made goods containing Israeli components, in violation of pledges made by senior Saudi officials to the Bush administration last year.

"Next week, we will hold the ninth annual meeting for the boycott of Israel here in Jidda," Ambassador Salem el-Honi, high commissioner of the Organization for the Islamic Conference's (OIC) Islamic Office for the Boycott of Israel, said in a telephone interview.

"All 57 OIC member states will attend, and we will discuss coordination among the various offices to strengthen the boycott," he said, noting that the meeting is held every March.

The OIC, consisting of 57 Muslim countries, is based in Jidda, as is its boycott office...

...The Saudi decision to host the parley appears to run counter to assurances that Riyadh gave the Bush administration when Saudi Arabia was seeking entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

On November 11, the WTO's ruling general council voted to grant Saudi Arabia entry into the prestigious group, which aims to promote international free trade, after it agreed to scrap restrictions on doing business with Israel.

Christin Baker, the assistant US trade representative for public and media affairs, told the Post via e-mail that the US had "ensured that Saudi Arabia in its recent accession to the WTO has taken on all rights and obligations with respect to all WTO members, including Israel."

"Saudi Arabia," she said, "did not invoke the non-application provisions of the WTO agreement with respect to any member," meaning that it must treat all members equally, "including Israel."...

She is speaking out publicly for Freedom in the Arab World and in support of Israel, but not as an official spokesperson for the Walid Shoebat Foundation.

Wafa asked us to make this clear and we respect her wishes.

Lord Richard Rogers has been criticized for his relationship with Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, a group of 60 prominent architects who have called on Israel to stop building the fence and settlements in the West Bank.

Last month, the organization issued a statement calling for a boycott of Israel and compared West Bank building firms to those that worked in South Africa during apartheid...

...Last week, The New York Sun reported that Rogers had been quoted in an Israeli newspaper saying he supported "targeted activities" against Israel - a claim Rogers denies. "I call upon Hamas to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel's right to exist," Rogers said Monday in a statement.

Rogers has acknowledged that he let the architects' group hold a meeting at his London office as a favor to a friend. He said in Monday's statement that he left after 10 minutes and did not vote for the boycott.

The Ethical Investment Advisory Group [EIAG] voted unanimously on March 7 not to divest from Caterpillar, and said it would review the issue "if there are new sales of Caterpillar equipment to the Israeli Defense Forces for use in the demolition of Palestinian houses".

The recommendation repudiates a February 6 vote by the General Synod, the Church's parliament, to divest from Caterpillar and other companies whose products are used by the Israeli government in the territories. The vote sparked widespread opprobrium from Jewish and Christian leaders led by the Chief Rabbi of Britain, Jonathan Sacks, and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, who denounced the divestment vote as feckless and ill-considered...

Germany is bankrupt. NATO dissolved.

The leaders of a new European Union, led by France and Russia, are obsessed with "the American problem," that Europe still plays a global #2 to the U.S. Even in space, the frontier of the 21st Century, the Pentagon will deploy a space shield to deny this high ground to adversaries.

But a European spy agency has developed a technology solution to the American problem. It will destroy the U.S. military by turning it into a fighting force that will have to fight with its fists...

But there is something disingenuous here. In an apparent effort to camouflage Corrie's radicalism and broaden the play's appeal, its creators elided phrases that suggested her more contentious view of things — cutting, for example, her reference to the "chronic, insidious genocide" she says she is witnessing, or her justification of the "somewhat violent means" used by Palestinians.

They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.

What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures — certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.

"The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production," says explosives expert Kevin Barry. "So it's the same make and model."

U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and Iran-produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.

"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."

'Very Lethal'

U.S. intelligence officials say Iran is using the bombs as a way to drive up U.S. casualties in Iraq but without provoking a direct confrontation.

John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Februrary 2, saying, "Tehran's intention to inflict pain on the United States and Iraq has been constrained by its caution to avoid giving Washington an excuse to attack it."...

"According to Al-Bouni, 'the Syrian authorities began to use the weapon of the official religion as a new tool to oppress society... It is no longer enough for them to arrest activists, to terrorize them, and to prevent them from traveling, but now they recruit against them the pulpits of takfir [accusing other Muslims of heresy] and takhwin [accusing Muslims of treachery].' He described this policy as dangerous and destructive." [1]

The following are excerpts from an interview with Wafa Sultan that aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 21, 2006. It is followed by excerpts from a debate in which she participated, in a talk show that aired on Al-Jazeera TV on July 26, 2005.

In the past, MEMRI has reported on Islamist threats to reformists, see for example:

Saudi Doctorate Encourages the Murder of Arab Intellectuals, January 12, 2006, Special Dispatch Series - No. 1070

Arab Intellectuals: Under Threat by Islamists, November, 23, 2005, Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 254

Accusing Muslim Intellectuals of Apostasy, February 18, 2005, Inquiry and Analysis - No. 208

That's not surprising. CIA Director George Tenet in October 2002 told Congress of "growing indications of a relationship with al-Qaida." And of course evidence of contacts between al-Qaida and Saddam's regime went back to the 1990s and were cited, without murmur of dissent, by President Bill Clinton.

So why do these Democrats and these government professionals seem to have such a conviction that there must have been no collaboration between al-Qaida and Saddam? The Democrats fear that more Americans would support Bush and the war effort if they believed there was. The career professionals, with their many years of training in the subtleties of the Middle East, have developed a vested interest in the notion that religious Wahhabis like al-Qaida could never collaborate with a secular tyrant like Saddam. If alliances could be formed across religious lines, what use would all their learning be?

The Minnesota Democrats cite the 9-11 commission's report that it found no evidence of "operational" cooperation between al-Qaida and Iraq, although it did find evidence of many contacts...

The high court upheld as constitutional a federal law dating back to 1994 that allows the government to withhold money from universities that deny military recruiters the same access to campuses given to other employers.

This is not normal politics. This is not even the normal excess of normal politics. Imagine what European and American commentators would say if tens of thousands of Americans, Britons, Germans, or Israelis marched with calls for the murder of Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians, or Muslims in response to a few anti-American, anti-European, or anti-Semitic cartoons appearing in one, or a few, Arab or Islamic newspapers. Yet Western politicians and commentators have mostly indulged this outpouring of violent hatred. Even when decrying it, they blame the cartoons' publishers and express pious regret that the cartoons insulted the Prophet Mohammed and Muslims, as if there is any normal political cause and effect (let alone a proportionate one) operating here. This Western indulgence is extremely wrongheaded and self-injurious. It cloaks the political Islamic proto-intifada in a measure of legitimacy. It emboldens its instigators and its shock troops in the street, revealing the West's unwillingness to respond resolutely to these verbal and physical assaults with moral, rhetorical, and political clarity, and to convey the unapologetic message that the West's people and polities refuse to be attacked, intimidated, and cowed...

Ziba Ayeen, a Afghan-American who fled her native land with her family in the 1980s, isn't amused by such thinking. "The irony of Yale educating an official in a regime that barred women from going to school is too much," she told me.

When I asked several people at Yale if the reaction to Mr. Rahmatullah would be different if he were, say, a former official of the apartheid regime of South Africa, the reaction was universal: Of course he would be barred. When I asked why, I was told I had no idea how liberal a place Yale was. "But what is liberal about the Taliban, then or now?" I innocently asked. Eric White, a senior, told me that many students believe that regimes run by whites, such as apartheid South Africa or Nazi Germany, come out of Western traditions and are judged differently than non-Western regimes. "There's a real feeling that we don't have the right or understanding to be able to hold those regimes to the same standards."

When I asked Prof. Vivek Sharma, who briefly had Mr. Rahmatullah in one of his seminars, about this double standard, he explained, "There's a belief among many at Yale that we really have to specifically understand the Middle East because of the American occupation there and that we must understand our enemies as deeply as we can."...

The Hizbullah television station, Al-Manar, hosted a discussion between Dr. Ghazi Rabab'a, Professor of Political Science at Jordan University, and Dr. Muhsen Al-‘Awaj from Saudi Arabia, Spokesman for the World Campaign for Resisting Aggression, in which they discussed the right of the Jews to reside in the Jerusalem. Dr. Rabab'a mentioned an alleged declaration by President Jefferson calling on the American people to expel the Jews. This false declaration is commonly attributed in the Arab media to "President" Banjamin Franklin. Following is a verbatim translation of excerpts from their discussion, broadcasted on May 27, 2004.

Dr. Ghazi Rabab’a: ...when we appeal to Christian public opinion, we should say that we must revive the Pact of Omar and stand shoulder to shoulder in the face of this Jewish attack, which claims that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel. There is an Islamic-Christian agreement that no Jew will live in Jerusalem.

Dr. Muhsen Al-‘Awaji: (Today, we face) a group of people, a gang, which gathered, or more accurately, which were purged from all the countries of the world. They have become loathsome in European eyes and that is why the Europeans vomited them onto our occupied land. They have become loathsome in the eyes of America and a moment ago the Doctor reminded us of the American president who advised the American nation to rid itself of the Jews so they will not enslave them.

So did the English and French who purged society – Excuse me for saying this but it's their documented world view...

Dr. Ghazi Rabab’a: Yes, the Ghettos.

Dr. Muhsen Al-‘Awaji:…Saving their societies from the quote unquote Jewish "plague" amidst them. Our brothers from all over the Islamic world know that a Jew or a Christian from their country has the right to live there, just like the Arab Muslim has the right to live there. But, gathering those from Poland, Holland, Russia, the North Pole, the South Pole…gathering them here and forcing them like a cancerous tumor into the center of the Arab Islamic body…

They have no common language with those who surround them, nor do they share their political platform with their surroundings… And then they come with this arrogance and enslave the entire world in order to allow them to violate these rights and commit these official assassinations, approved by their highest ranking officials, and after all this we are told we must discuss their legitimacy? No!

Dr. Ghazi Rabab’a: Our brothers, the Christians in these countries, are being persecuted by the Western Christians, whose Christian faith has Judaized them. 200 years ago, -President Jefferson told the American people in an official speech, "If you do not expel the Jews from your land, they will enslave you and turn you into slaves in your own lands."…

A recent interview with a child musician on Palestinian Authority Television features a performance by the child that illustrates the hateful and distorted values that Palestinian children have learned and internalized.

The child, who appears to be about 13, is interviewed about a CD he has produced, and sings one of the songs from the CD. The short song repeats hate motifs that have appeared repeatedly in formal and informal education in Palestinian society for many years, such as the liberation of Palestine, which is the Palestinian Authority term for Israel's destruction, the "return" of the "refugees" to the liberated land, and finally the aspiration to die as a shahid (martyr).

It is also noteworthy that the adults in the studio clap and cheer "Bravo!" after the song, which concludes with the words: "Allah Akbar, we will die as martyrs!" Aspiring to die for Allah continues to be presented as a high value to children in Palestinian society.

A Palestinian child, Mahmoud Marish, singing a song from his CD, PA TV February 28, 2006

"I am your mother, I am Palestine
I have been calling you for years
This is our day, this is our holiday
Your liberation day, O our country
The return of the refugees to their homes safe and sound
Allah Akbar, (God is Great) how sweet is the self-sacrifice!
Allah Akbar, (God is Great) we will die as shahids (martyrs)!
Allah Akbar, (God is Great) how sweet is the self-sacrifice!
Allah Akbar, (God is Great) we will die as shahids (martyrs)!"

Moderators: "Bravo! Applause!"
[PA TV, February 28, 2006]

To view the clip, click here

Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills.

And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis.

Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops...

They're safe in their enclaves, protected by hired guns, complaining that it's too dangerous out on the streets. They're only in Baghdad for the byline, and they might as well let their Iraqi employees phone it in to the States. Whenever you see a column filed from Baghdad by a semi-celeb journalist with a "contribution" by a local Iraqi, it means this: The Iraqi went out and got the story, while the journalist stayed in his or her room.

And the Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don't pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad.

And some of them have agendas of their own...

I believed this when I submitted a plan to Ariel Sharon in April 2002 for a political process that would culminate in the creation of a peaceful, democratic Palestinian state alongside Israel. At the time, no one was thinking seriously about peace because, after the worst month of terror attacks in Israel's history, we had launched a large-scale military operation to root out the infrastructure of terrorism in the West Bank.

I believed, however, that the crisis presented an opportunity to begin a different kind of political process, one that would link the peace process to the development of a free society for Palestinians. I had argued for many years that peace and security could be achieved only by linking international legitimacy, territorial concessions and financial assistance for a new Palestinian regime to its commitment to building a free society.

Despite my faith in "democracy," I was under no illusion that elections should be held immediately. Over the previous decade, Palestinian society had become one of the most poisoned and fanatical on Earth. Day after day, on television and radio, in newspapers and schools, a generation of Palestinians had been subjected to the most vicious incitement by their own leaders. The only "right" that seemed to be upheld within Palestinian areas was the right of everyone to bear arms.

In such conditions of fear, intimidation and indoctrination, holding snap elections would have been an act of the utmost irresponsibility. That is why I proposed a plan calling for elections to be held no earlier than three years after the implementation of a series of democratic reforms. Three years, I believed, was the absolute minimum for democratic reforms to begin to change the atmosphere in which free elections could be held. Unfortunately, the plan was never implemented...

Throughout the Arab world, the Muslim Brotherhood is regarded as the common wellspring of all modern jihadi terrorism. Its spiritual leader, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, has been one of the pivotal figures in the globalization of the Danish cartoon rage as well as a supporter of fighting against U.S. forces in Iraq. Much of the al Qaeda leadership -- from bin Laden's mentor, Abdullah Azzam, to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of Sept. 11 -- started out with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamas and al Qaeda [and the Muslim American Society, and the Council for American Islamic Relations through Hamas -S], as Muslim Brotherhood offshoots, have had a number of notable links.

Bin Laden sent emissaries to Hamas in September 2000 and January 2001; Israel arrested three Hamas militants in 2003 after they had returned from an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda operations chief Abu Zubaydah entered the world of terrorism through Hamas. And according to a 2004 FBI affidavit, al Qaeda recruited Hamas members to conduct surveillance against potential targets in the United States.

Hamas poses a unique danger in the world of global terrorism, because besides its past ties to the Sunni Islamic extremism of al Qaeda, Hamas is now erecting a strategic partnership with Shiite Iran. For years, Iran has funded Hamas, but now that relationship is about to be seriously upgraded...

"When we were negotiating with the Europeans in Tehran, we were still installing some of the equipment at the Isfahan site. There was plenty of work to be done to complete the site and finish the work there. In reality, by creating a tame situation, we could finish Isfahan," said Hassan Rowhani, who headed talks with Britain, France and Germany until last year.

"From the outset, the Americans kept telling the Europeans, 'The Iranians are lying and deceiving you, and they have not told you everything.' The Europeans used to respond, 'We trust them,'" Mr. Rowhani said in a speech to the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution.

The speech, which lays out Iran's policy of nuclear deception in unprecedented detail, was published in an Iranian journal that circulates among the nation's ruling elite.

He described the regime's quandary in September 2003 when the International Atomic Energy Agency demanded a "complete picture" of its nuclear activities.

"The dilemma was if we offered a complete picture, the picture itself could lead us to the U.N. Security Council," he said. "And not providing a complete picture would also be a violation of the resolution, and we could have been referred to the Security Council for not implementing the resolution."

Iran successfully hid a vast nuclear-weapons research effort for nearly two decades.

Mr. Rowhani's remarks were disclosed at an awkward moment for the Iranian government, ahead of a meeting tomorrow of the United Nations' atomic watchdog, which must make a fresh assessment of Iran's banned nuclear operations...

An unprecedented US government review of aid to Palestinians has frozen all US-funded projects in the West Bank and Gaza, as officials in Washington weigh whether and how they can deliver humanitarian aid without channeling funding through Hamas, the militant group that won January's parliamentary election, or the government Hamas will soon appoint.

International aid groups, many with years of experience carrying out US-funded projects, have expressed alarm at the US policy. They say that trying to deliver humanitarian assistance without any involvement from the Palestinian government is unrealistic on a practical level and could undo years of work building Palestinian health and education systems and other institutions.

The United States Agency for International Development spent $275 million in the West Bank and Gaza last year. For the past decade, the United States has channeled aid to Palestinians through dozens of nonprofit organizations and contractors that build courthouses, schools, roads, and water systems; promote the rule of law and democracy; train health workers, teachers, and judges; award micro-loans to small businesses; and carry out other projects that entail varying degrees of cooperation with Palestinian ministries...

The great danger, though, is that, as we are doing now, we will persist in our faith that traditional conventional conflict is the dominant mode of warfare and assume that buying the thirty-eighth iteration of manned-precision-destruction-from-the-air capabilities will answer our security needs. Increasingly, it will not. One implication of this revised view of conflict could be crudely summarized as follows: We ought to shift $50 billion to $70 billion from the U.S. defense budget into a wider array of instruments of national power more attuned to the needs of conflict against alienation. These would include strengthened and expanded institutions of diplomacy, scholarship programs, a vastly reenergized Peace Corps, direct foreign aid, debt forgiveness, a restored and expanded public diplomacy program, and much else...

The official, Mohammad Ali-Salaam, the BRA's deputy director for planning, also raised funds for the project when he traveled to Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates as a representative of the city in 2000. The BRA board gave him permission to make the trip, which was paid for by the Islamic Society, but the BRA spokeswoman, Susan Elsbree, said yesterday that Ali-Salaam was not given permission to raise funds for the project while there.

Elsbree would not comment on the propriety of the fund-raising, but said that ''the Boston Redevelopment Authority firmly believes that Muhammad Ali-Salaam is in full compliance with conflict-of-interest law and state ethics standards as they relate to the Islamic Society of Boston's mosque development."

The documents, which were provided to the Globe, show that Ali-Salaam played an integral role at key points inside the BRA as the agency gave its approval to the Islamic Society for development of the land. They are among hundreds of pages of BRA and Islamic Society records and correspondence that are being examined by lawyers in two lawsuits...

...The records provided to the Globe show that Ali-Salaam estimated the value of the land at more than $2 million in March 2000 and later presented the BRA board with a complete development proposal that called for selling the land for $175,000.

Police assessed that the motive for the church attack was the decision by a Jerusalem social welfare agency to remove the couple's third daughter from their home because they were deemed unfit to be parents, while Havivi's daughter, Leila, admitted to police that, "the motive behind our actions was economic."

She added that her father specifically chose a church so as to shock the world and to bring attention to the family's economic distress...

Police said the couple had previously threatened to attack churches, and also spent time in the Palestinian territories, including a visit to the late Yasser Arafat's headquarters. Israeli media reported that the young woman with them was a daughter, though it was not known how many children they have...

It might seem like a nit, but actually, the wife was Christian, which makes their daughter also likely Christian.

This is an important detail it would be easy to overlook in the twisted and labored reporting that you so correctly point out has been happening since the story broke -- the AP's has been particularly bad. There are a lot of interesting factors here, among them the lengths to which the press goes to hammer events into precast molds as well as the lack of agency women are given for their own actions in Middle Eastern affairs, even by the reporters who tell their stories.

Still, there is no turning back India's nuclear-power status. Nor would it have been smart for the Administration to deny India's fast-growing economy an American source of energy supplies when one alternative would be a gas pipeline linking New Delhi with Iran. The U.S. is India's largest trading and investment partner; U.S. merchandise exports to India have more than doubled since 2001, and vice versa. This is a relationship that could blossom by removing every trade and regulatory barrier to it...

It happened around noon Friday in front of Lenoir Hall on the campus, in a common area known as the Pit. Paramedics took six people - - five students and a visiting scholar - - were treated for minor injuries and released from UNC Hospitals. Three refused treatment at the scene.

Police say they arrested the suspect, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, of Chapel Hill, shortly after the incident. He reportedly called police shortly after the incident and surrendered a few miles from campus.

Police said they would charge Taheri-azar with nine counts of attempted murder.

Link to terrorism?

Sources say Taheri-azar told police he was seeking retribution for the treatment of Muslims around the world, according to ABC News justice correspondent Pierre Thomas. Taheri-azar apparently told police he tried to rent the biggest SUV he could find to use in the attack...

The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking...

Hamas political chief Khaled Mashaal welcomed the outcome of the meetings with Russian officials including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, telling a news conference they were "good, constructive and open." He did not give details.

But a statement from the Foreign Ministry after the meeting said that the Russian side had urged Hamas to endorse the "rejection of violence as a means of obtaining political goals," existing Israeli-Palestinian agreements and "recognition of Israel's right to exist."

Mashaal in turn struck an uncompromising stance, saying the Jewish state must first withdraw from territories occupied in 1967 and allow the return of Palestinian refugees among other conditions if it wants peace. That statement -- while sticking to Hamas' tradition of ambiguity -- could be significant, because Hamas in the past has called for Israel's elimination altogether. [CNN are boobs.]

"If Israel officially announces its readiness to withdraw from all territories occupied in 1967, the return of Palestinian refugees, the closure of settlements, the dismantling of the dividing wall, the release of all prisoners, then our movement will take a big step toward peace," he told a news conference. "There can be no peace if the occupation continues."

He also ruled out any negotiations with the current Israeli government. "Yasser Arafat sat at negotiations with Israel for 10 years. The result is that Israel killed Yasser Arafat," he said, referring to the late Palestinian leader...

The Islamic Society of Boston made the offer to the plaintiffs attorneys on the same day it filed a lengthy response to a motion to dismiss the suit.

The society also sent a letter to several leaders in the Jewish and Christian community, as well as local politicians, informing them of the court filing, but also a desire to settle their differences out of court.

"We are far more interested in peace and harmony than in winning a lawsuit," said the letter from Yousef Abou-Allaban, chairman of the society's board of directors...

...In his letter to opposing attorneys Friday, Islamic Society attorney Howard Cooper said people on both sides were "heartfelt in their belief that they have been seriously wronged," but proposed a formal stay of pending litigation to pursue private, non-binding mediation talks.

Cooper referred to the ongoing global conflict between Eastern and Western cultures.

"My clients firmly believe that how communities here in Boston are able to deal with, understand and respect each other in this country can be an example to others," Cooper wrote. "It is in that spirit that they again extend their hand."...

Palestinian and Israeli children speak about suicide bombings, anti-Semitism, guns and soldiers in “Three Wishes,” by Deborah Ellis.

“In our eyes, the book is perfectly good and we stand by our selection committee and the rights of children to read this book,” said Larry Moore, the association’s executive director. The Canadian Jewish Congress asked for the book to be removed from a list of recommend[ed] reading for 8-11 year-olds, saying it does not provide young readers with enough context.

“They speak about suicide bombing and killing Israelis as suitable choices to make and as acts worthy of emulating,” said Len Rudner, the CJC’s national director of community relations. A Palestinian girl discusses her sister, a suicide bomber, as a martyr in paradise and suggests she will follow in her footsteps.

A Palestinian boy says, “Killing an Israeli will make me feel glad. It will make me feel strong.”

Only one school board, the York District board just north of Toronto, has pulled the book from the list, while many others have declined to do so.

"We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews."

"My dear mother ... wipe your tears... Don't let me see you sad on my wedding day with the Maidens of Paradise."

"Escort our souls to Heaven after we fulfill this duty of crushing the descendents of monkeys and pigs."

"I hoped that the shredded limbs of my body would be shrapnel, tearing the Zionists to pieces, knocking on Heavens door with the skulls of Zionists... My blood shall be my path to march to Heaven."...

Paradise Now, a film about two friends from the West Bank who decide to carry out a joint suicide attack in Israel, will compete in the best foreign language category at Sunday's Academy Awards.

Sunday is also the third anniversary of a attack by terrorists on a bus in the northern Israeli town of Haifa, which killed 17 people and wounded 53 others.

Among the dead were Yuval Mendelvitch, a 13-year-old boy whose parents yesterday sent a petition to Sid Gains, the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures, calling for Paradise Now's nomination to be withdrawn.

They are supported by the parents of Tal Kehrmann, a 17-year-old girl, and Assaf Tzur, a 17-year-old boy, who were among the dead...

The first time this pattern became clear was in the case of Muhammad al Durah: the French news stations ran his picture repeatedly because this tasty truffle so pleased the French palate — a get-out-of-holocaust-guilt-free card. But they played them at the same time to their Arab and Muslim populations for whom it was a much more powerful drug — a call to global Jihad in which the French were as much the target, as worthy of death, as the Israelis.

It continues apace, replicated in the self-accusatory response to the riots, to the Danish Cartoons, to every aggression from a religious and social movement whose scale and menace the Europeans systematically underestimate, systematically dismiss. “Il faut pas dramatiser,” say some French academics. After all, it might seem unseemly, or still worse, it might let Israel off the hook. Sooner die than that.

Let it be known that as representatives of free speech, we do not wish to censor him. His asinine comments are sure to embarrass and humiliate far beyond our capacity to do so. Rather, we seek to inform the Columbia community of this blatant hate-mongering.

A Facebook page, organized by those bringing Finkelstein to Columbia, was a self-described “invisible group.” “Make sure,” it read, “not to invite anyone who might tip those opposed to Finky. He’s pretty controversial.” That, by any standard, is an understatement. The comments have since been removed; screenshots, however, last.

Those who assume that Finkelstein is just another “controversial” speaker, one of many in Columbia’s recent past, fail to grasp the absurdity that is Finkelstein. Taking a job at DePaul University after being fired by New York University for his ludicrous and factually inaccurate book, The Holocaust Industry, this “scholar” makes his living off of absurd statements that garner comfortable speaking engagements. At a recent speech delivered at Yale University, Finkelstein equated the Jewish concern over Holocaust denial with a “level of mental hysteria.” Clearly, we must first question his very “professorship.” Anyone who so blatantly disregards facts and vehemently supports the murder of innocent children is worthy neither of academia nor of the title of professor...

Hashemi did not merely hold the "view" that the "ideology" of the Taliban was praiseworthy. He was a highly placed official in one of the vilest regimes of the twentieth century. The Taliban, for those who have forgotten the horror of it, not only supported al Qaida, it beheaded Afghans for such "crimes" as apostasy and teaching females.

In America, we do not "police political orthodoxy" by beheading people for apostasy. The question is whether admission to Yale is the proper reward for an individual who enabled such a government by serving it as second foreign secretary.

In a terse statement issued yesterday, Richard Rogers said, "My convictions on peace and justice have always been clear. But in view of the published aims of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, and particularly in view of the suggested boycott by some members, I am dissociating myself from this organization."

The London headquarters of Lord Rogers's architectural firm hosted the group's inaugural meeting on February 2, and according to a report last month in the London Independent hosted two subsequent meetings. Until yesterday, the renowned architect said through spokespeople that he was withholding for now his support for the boycott.

The organization Lord Rogers hosted, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, issued a statement last month comparing the activities of building firms in the West Bank to those construction companies that helped Apartheid South Africa...

...observers in New York were less impressed with the architect's contrition. Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat of New York who on Tuesday suggested the development corporation find another architect for the Javits Center job, said he was still uneasy with Lord Rogers's involvement in the project.

"This is someone who hosts a meeting of an organization that takes a view that I find abhorrent, and might be in violation of U.S. anti-boycott laws. Then when it's reported in the Sun, in a statement that seems too clever by half, he says he disassociates himself from the organization," the congressman said. "I am uneasy about his participation in this deal. I would be eager to hear him clarify what some of his earlier statements have meant."

Last month Lord Rogers was quoted in the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, as saying he supported "targeted activities" against the Jewish state.

The executive director of the Anti-Defamation League had similar concerns."I welcome that statement, there is something else I would like to hear him say, though," Abraham Foxman said yesterday.

"I would like to hear Mr. Rogers add one sentence, not only does he disassociate himself form this organization, but he disassociates himself from using creativity, art and architecture as a weapon for people's views."...

• History shows us that we can't export democracy to the Middle East (Is democracy only for Westerners?)
• The Iraq War was a mistake and will likely be a failure (lots of Iraquis beg to differ, as does Victor David Hanson)
• The U.S. can't just use military means in the Middle East (we're not!)
• The U.S. economy is in poor shape, the middle class is declining (neither remotely true )
• Yes, terrorists fly planes into our buildings, but we bombard their countries with Coke and MTV (Ouch! the dissonance is hurting me!)

Richard J. Mouw
President and Professor of Christian Philosophy
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena, California

Gonzalez's bridge team first spotted the crippled dhow while conducting maritime security operations in the Central Arabian Gulf. Once the destroyer's watchstanders identified the distressed vessel, the ship immediately changed its course to render assistance, officials said. The Iranians explained that their dhow's engine and rudder failed Feb. 18...

...Gonzalez's boarding party gave the Iranian crewmembers food and water, as they had exhausted their supplies during the 10 days adrift. In addition, the U.S. sailors inspected the dhow's engineering plant and determined the engine was beyond repair. Gonzalez then coordinated the mariners' repatriation with other coalition members conducting operations in the area and Iranian authorities. "It felt good to assist," Randall said...

Hurriyya “freedom” is – as Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) the lionized “Greatest Sufi Master”, expressed it - “being perfect slavery.” And this conception is not merely confined to the Sufis’ perhaps metaphorical understanding of the relationship between Allah the “master” and his human “slaves.”

The late American scholar of Islam, Franz Rosenthal (d. 2003) analyzed the larger context of hurriyya in Muslim society. He notes the historical absence of hurriyya as “…a fundamental political concept that could have served as a rallying cry for great causes”. An individual Muslim

“…was expected to consider subordination of his own freedom to the beliefs, morality and customs of the group as the only proper course of behavior…”.

Thus politically, Rosenthal concludes,

“…the individual was not expected to exercise any free choice as to how he wished to be governed…In general, …governmental authority admitted of no participation of the individual as such, who therefore did not possess any real freedom vis-à-vis it.”

The Presbytery of Great Rivers has submitted an overture asking the commissioners to remove Caterpillar from the denomination's hit list of corporations targeted for divestment because they do business with Israel. Furthermore, the overture asks the commissioners "to recognize Caterpillar for its responsible actions as a global corporate citizen."

The divestment resolution "was perceived by many as an attempt to damage corporate reputations. The action has, instead, damaged the reputation of the PCUSA," Great Rivers says.

The presbytery's office is in Peoria, Ill., which is the site of Caterpillar's world headquarters.

But Great Rivers is not alone in its opposition to the divestment resolution – which targeted only corporations doing business with Israel and included no sanctions against Palestinian terrorists. The Great Rivers overture is one of 14 sent to the 217th General Assembly calling for rejection of the one-sided economic policy in the Middle East. Only one overture supported the 2004 divestment resolution...

• 14 - Number of overtures calling on changes to 216th General Assembly's divestment resolution.
• 1 - Number of overtures affirming the divestment resolution.
• $2.5 million - Increased value of PCUSA holdings in Caterpillar stock since General Assembly adopted divestment resolution in 2004.

Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, whose members include Richard Rogers and the architectural critic Charles Jenckes, met for the first time last week in secret at the London headquarters of Lord Rogers' practice. He introduced the meeting, and the 60 attendees went on to condemn the illegal annexation of Palestinian land and the construction of the vast fence and concrete separation barrier running through the West Bank and Jerusalem...

...The meeting discussed a boycott of Israel - targeting Israeli-made construction materials and Israeli architects and construction companies - as well as possibly calling for the expulsion of Israeli architects from the International Union of Architects...

On February 2, Richard Rogers gave his office space for the inaugural meeting of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine in his London headquarters...

A spokeswoman for Lord Rogers's firm said yesterday that he has not yet lent his personal support to the boycott. However, she said he may endorse the idea at a future date.

"It's something he could not rule out in the future, but it's very early days for the organization," Jennifer Stephens said. In a later e-mail, she said Lord Rogers's association with the group was his personal business and did not reflect the opinions of his architectural firm.

The fact that Lord Rogers will be redesigning a building named for the late Republican Senator Jacob Javits has caused some concern among the American pro-Israel community.

Javits was one of the Jewish state's staunchest defenders in the Senate, where he served from 1956 to 1981. In particular, he was one of the toughest voices to oppose the Arab boycott of Israel in the 1970s. In 1986 President Reagan singled out the Jewish lawmaker's support for Israel in a statement marking his death.

In an interview yesterday, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein, said: "Senator Javits was known for his adamant opposition to the boycott. He would have been no doubt distressed to know that an architect engaged to redesign a building bearing his name would be associated with such an anti-Israel effort. Not only does this appear to violate anti-boycott laws, it certainly violates the legacy of Senator Javits."...

We too interfere. The Gulf countries interfere in other countries' affairs. We criticize America for its actions and policies.

[...]

The Arab countries interfere in Iraq's affairs, and so do the other countries in the region. This interference assumes various forms such as encouraging those rebels, whom they refer to as "the resistance," providing moral support and the support of the media. As you know, the Gulf media refers to what happens in Iraq as "resistance" and "Jihad." If, for example, someone blows himself up in a mosque, in a mourners' gathering, in a hospital, or at a bus station, the media calls it martyrdom-seeking and Jihad.

This kind of incitement and influence... I believe that if these [rebels] lost the moral support of the Gulf countries, terrorist operations would decline.

Wafa Sultan: These are personal matters that do not concern you...

...Wafa Sultan: Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people's beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs...

....Wafa Sultan: The Jews have came from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.