May 2006 Archives

Sgt. Peter Damon, 33, who strongly supports America's invasion of Iraq, said he never agreed to be in the 2004 movie, which trashes President Bush.

In the 2003 interview, which he did at Walter Reed Army Hospital for NBC News, he discussed only a new painkiller the military was using on wounded vets.

"They took the clip because it was a gut-wrenching scene," Damon said yesterday. "They sandwiched it in. [Moore] was using me as ammunition."

Damon seems to "voice complaint about the war effort" in the movie, according to the lawsuit.

But what the father of two from Middleborough, Mass., was really talking about was the "excruciating" pain he felt after he lost his arms when a Black Hawk helicopter exploded in front of him.

Damon wasn't expressing any opinion about the war, the suit charges, but rather extolling the drug.

"I just want everybody to know what kind of a guy Michael Moore is, and what kind of film this is," said Damon. He has appeared in two films attacking "Fahrenheit" -"Michael Moore Hates America" and "Fahrenhype 9/11."...

...Lawyer Dennis Lynch said he took the case last year and they held off filing the lawsuit in a bid to settle the matter.

"We attempted to resolve the situation amicably with Mr. Moore [for a year] but he refused," he said....

Judge Nudelman believes that DePaul’s actions to discipline Professor Thomas Klocek went to such extreme that their conduct rose to the level of defamation. He noted that DePaul exhibited destructive political correctness when it gave way to its fear of students’ reactions to Prof. Klocek’s challenges to the student groups’ literature and perspective on the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Judge Nudelman also commented that if such limited debate took place when he was a student, it would have resulted in having an inferior educational experience.

Judge Nudelman also stated that DePaul’s public disclosures about Prof. Klocek defamed him in that they denigrated his ability to perform as a professor.

“We have cleared the biggest hurdle before trial. The judge has agreed with us that we have properly stated valid claims for defamation charges against DePaul and individual defendants, including DePaul’s president,” said Andy Norman, Klocek’s attorney with the law firm of Mauck & Baker.

Background of Case:

A defamation suit was filed in Illinois’ Cook County Chancery last June charging that DePaul University and its leadership defamed Professor Thomas Klocek when DePaul publicly characterized arguments he presented to members of Palestinian and Muslim student groups as racist and bigoted. The suit seeks damages against DePaul for maligning Klocek’s integrity and professional competence. The defendants named include: DePaul University; Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, President of DePaul; and Susan Dumbleton, Dean of DePaul’s School for New Learning.

In fact, an online report accuses former President Carter of meeting with 10 of Osama BinLadin's brothers early in 2000. Carter and his wife, Rosalyn followed up their meeting with a breakfast with Bakr BinLadin in September 2000 and secured the first $200,000 towards the more than $1 MILLION that has since been received by the Carter Center...

I do not easily use the latter term, but when you single out the one democratic state in a sea of vile tyrannies – a state that for more than fifty years has sought peace with twenty two hostile, rejectionist neighbors in every manner, shape and form; a state that has granted one million Arabs full citizenship, whereas twenty-two Arab nations are Judenrein; a state that has been under political and military siege from the moment it was born; a state that has traded land for peace – when you single out this state and ignore the genocidal pronouncements of its enemies, and when this state happens to be the world’s only Jewish one, you can no longer hide behind the label of being "merely anti-Zionist." You have crossed the line into classic Jew-hatred.

Let us return to where we began, with the young and innocent martyr Daniel Wultz. May his memory be a blessing. May his family find comfort among the mourners of Zion.

Needless to say, their detention is scaring other opposition bloggers - present company included - into thinking that they may be next. My blog has been receiving more and more hits from Egyptian government Internet provider addresses, but I tell myself I am just being paranoid. So what if the ministry of information visits me about 30 times a day? They must be fans!...

...For all of the aforementioned reasons, I call upon you to boycott Egypt financially.

I am not just asking the US State Department to suspend the $3 billion in annual aid sent to the Egyptian government. I am asking every person who reads this to not visit Egypt, not buy Egyptian products, and not invest in companies that invest in Egypt. I am asking you to completely boycott Egypt and everything Egyptian until this government stops silencing dissent.

Don't get me wrong. I love my country. But the current regime has to be stopped, and the only way that's going to happen is if it is no longer supported.

Currently, there are 20,000 political prisoners in Egypt, held for years without charges, or evidence, and subjected to daily torture. We have increasing unemployment, illiteracy, and poverty rates. Judges who report election fraud get suspended and beaten on the street. Corruption and looting run rampant on every level of the government. The only reason the regime has survived for 25 years and counting is because of foreign aid and tourist dollars. You help it survive.

As an Egyptian-born citizen who lives in Egypt, I ask you to stop "helping," please.

This post-modern approach empowers Abu El Haj to vaporize the positivist notion that the Jewish people lived in Israel in ancient times. Making such a well-documented fact disappear requires an intellectual sleight of hand of monumental proportions. To Abu El Haj, pulling off such a magic trick is apparently worth the effort since denying that Jews are indigenous in Judea enables the redefinition of Israeli Jews as colonizers; foreign settlers with no legitimate right to the land. Or perhaps the post-modern rhetoric Abu El Haj employs with such facility is mere window dressing covering a far older tradition, that of deploying the scholarly paraphernalia of footnotes and arcane language to make a political assertion appear as responsible scholarship. By either interpretation, Abu El Haj’s first book, Facts on the Ground; Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, derived from her doctoral thesis, is part of a wider intellectual effort intended to persuade the world that Israel is illegitimate, a European outpost with no indigenous roots in the Middle East, and, therefore, that the Israelis deserve to be driven out of Israel much as the French were driven from Algeria.

The problem, of course, is that those ancient Jews existed. Almost two millenia before an Arab army conquered and occupied the land of Israel, the place was a sovereign, indigenous Jewish or proto-Jewish state. Unlike Algeria, where there was not much doubt that the French were nineteenth-century arrivals in an ethnically Arab land, the Middle East is contested by two peoples, each with a claim to indigeneity. Unless, of course, the claim of one of these peoples can be delegitimized by the politically targeted use of post-modern scholarship...

...Once their leaders had been exterminated, the Medieval insurgents of Europe disbanded and scattered. Applying high-tempo attrition and nodal targeting to the jihadi apparatus worldwide (by which I emphatically do not mean 'terrorists' alone or even in the first place) seems to me to be a modern equivalent. If I may say in homage to the chain of command that orchestrated his elimination, Sheikh Yasin was not in the habit of wielding pistols - he wielded death. It is those who deploy the undead who must be the priority targets.

This current issue of the Hamas weekly has a cartoon of a Palestinian child urinating on the Statue of Liberty, which is holding a book labelled "Democracy". This expression of utter disdain for the US and its democracy follows other recent slurs in the PA media. For example, the West was condemned in March at a Palestinian rally:

[Al-Risala May 25, 2006, book: "Democracy"]

"for many years of trying to penetrate Islamic youth with dubious things such as the ideas of democracy."

Background Brief: Denigrating the Statue of Liberty in PA Cartoons:

Visual and verbal attacks on US symbols are standard components of Palestinian Authority hate incitement, and the Statue of Liberty is a symbol that has been mocked and denigrated in PA cartoons for years.

Palestinian cartoons of the Statue of Liberty, include [see visuals below] :

Palestinian child urinating on the Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty as a suicide terrorist
The Statue of Liberty's torch igniting the world's fires
The Statue of Liberty as a prostitute
The Statue of Liberty being imprisoned by the FBI and CIA
The Statue of Liberty as an evil Condoleezza Rice, representing Israel
The Statue of Liberty destroyed with Superman at the "Gates of Baghdad"
The Statue of Liberty symbol as a heroic Palestinian woman. However, instead of representing freedom, the defiant Palestinian Statue represents violence and terror, wears a crown of machines guns and holds an infant grasping a stone.

It should be noted that except for this week's Hamas cartoon, all the previous cartoons denigrating the US symbol of freedom were in newspapers controlled by Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party.

The man was shot dead in the main street of a refugee camp, with a large crowd looking on. The woman was later shot to death by her relatives in the courtyard of the West Bank's largest hospital.

The Aksa Martyrs' Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, accused Jafal Abu Tzrur, 24, of having informed the IDF where to find three of its members. The three were killed by IDF troops during a raid on the Balata refugee camp near Nablus earlier this year.

Al Aksa gunmen interrogated Abu Tzrur, claimed he confessed and then dragged him into Balata's main street. As a large crowd looked on, the gunmen threw Abu Tzrur to the ground, witnesses said. When he tried to get up, the gunmen killed him with several shots, the witnesses said.

The movement said it also killed Odad Abu Mustafa, 27, a Nablus woman. Abu Mustafa was married to one of the Aksa men slain by Israel, and was reportedly having an affair with Abu Tzrur.

Abu Mustafa, a mother of four, was shot by gunmen and male relatives on grounds that she shamed her clan. More than 15 people took part in the execution, witnesses said. It took place in the courtyard of Raffidiyeh Hospital, the West Bank's largest.

The mob originally planned to kill her in the street but were swayed by a man who pleaded with them not to carry out the killing in the view of little children could. She was then taken into the courtyard of the hospital, said Yousef Mahmoud, 18, who witnessed the killing.

"One of the gunmen said 'where is her brother?' and when he stepped forward they said to him 'you know what you need to do,"' he said. "The brother took out a gun and shot her in the head with one bullet."

Mahmoud said the brother then emptied the entire clip into the body of his sister, while the surrounding gunmen fired into the air. He said that the woman remained silent throughout and did not resist her captors.

Neighbors of the woman said she had four children; two boys and two girls, ranging in age from 11 to three and a half.

Missing in the 181,000 results is an analysis of the money spent by the PCUSA creating and promoting its Israel Divestment Movement. A volunteer group of Concerned Presbyterians have studied the obvious and hidden costs of our church’s anti-Israel actions.

One finding: “The Middle East resolutions passed by the 216th and prior General Assemblies have created a network run amuck of headquarters staff, GA committees, and outside organizations receiving PCUSA funding.” Our three page report details the major players.

Another finding: “As the estimates show, our leadership has directed 4% of the national budget to staff, committees, and outside organizations dedicated to promoting a propaganda attack on Israel.” Four percent of the PCUSA national budget is $4 million per year.

Our letter rhetorically asked: “Who has paid for this biased and unfounded propaganda against Israel? We have, through our contributions to per capita and special offerings.” Contributions from churches to the denominational offices are voluntary.

Our analysis has been emailed to over 11,000 Presbyterians. While the number is large, it is but 5% of the membership. We are asking for your help to reach the other 95%. As we wrote in our letter to fellow members: “Presbyterians, neither the Israeli Government nor the American Jewish Community can stop this assault on Israel. It is our problem – and our responsibility.” Presbyterians need to contact their commissioners before General Assembly begins June 15.

The actions detailed in our analysis have been reported by many writers. For the first time, the actions have been put into one document with their associated cost.

Thank you for your consideration and help to End Israel Divestment Now.

Larry Rued
One of the Concerned Presbyterians

Delegates to the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario convention in Ottawa voted overwhelmingly Saturday to support the campaign until it sees Israel recognizing the Palestinians' right to self-determination. The Ontario group represents more than 200,000 workers.

The global campaign started last July and has been supported by many North American churches, 20 Quebec organizations, and others, Canadian Press said.

CUPE also condemned what they called Israel's "apartheid wall," saying it is illegal under international law.

"Boycott, divestment and sanction worked to end apartheid in South Africa," said Katherine Nastovski, chairwoman of the CUPE Ontario international solidarity committee.

"We believe the same strategy will work to enforce the rights of Palestinian people, including the right of refugees to return to their homes and properties."

Completing a five-day fact finding mission throughout Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, a group of eleven Presbyterian Church (USA) leaders announced today that the Church’s current policy to divest their $7 billion pension fund against the State of Israel is flawed and called on the PCUSA’s over 500 voting commissioners to rescind the policy at their upcoming General Assembly June 15-22, 2006 in Birmingham, Alabama replacing it with a positive strategy to bring about genuine peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

“While adoption of the divestment policy in 2004 created an important focus on the struggle for achieving a solution to the Middle East conflict, it is now time to put aside this one-sided, negative and counter-productive policy that threatens to cause great harm to both Israel and the Palestinians while creating unnecessary polarization within our own denomination,” stated NCLCI Executive Committee member Dr. John H. Cushman who is Pastor of the Presbyterian Church of the Roses in Santa Rosa, California.

Controversy erupted throughout the PCUSA following its 216th General Assembly, held in 2004, after pushing through a last minute resolution to initiate phased, selective divestment in corporations conducting business in Israel. The Church’s surprise action met with immediate and widespread disapproval from many of the Church’s members, elders, pastors, and virtually every Presbyterian member of the United States Congress.

End Divestment Now Executive Director Gary Green describes the current situation, as follows: “Objections have continued to be expressed throughout the US as Presbyterian congregations began questioning the accuracy and fairness of the information upon which the General Assembly based its ill-advised decision. During the past 24 months, some two dozen regional governing bodies within the Church have sent overtures requesting that the next month’s 217th General Assembly in Birmingham, Alabama rescind its divestment policy and replace it with positive, fair and balanced initiatives. I just don’t see how our Church can, in the face of an overwhelming negative response, maintain any credibility whatsoever without correcting this seriously ill-conceived policy. I – and the End Divestment Now- are absolutely committed to seeing the Church’s divestment policy rescinded. We want our Church to pursue legitimate strategies that will contribute to the resolution of the conflict and end the dissention within our Church caused by those promoting divestment.

The United Church of Christ is planning on bringing 10,000 members to our 50th anniversary general synod in June 2007, but because of our concern about the possibility of labor unrest and injustice for the workers, we are exploring other sites. More than 10,000 Muslims are planning to convene in these facilities for the next few summers, and our community is wrestling with the same question.

The only way out of this dilemma - indeed, the only way to ensure that business thrives in downtown Hartford's gleaming new facilities - is for Mayor Perez to enforce the labor peace ordinance...

by Tom Glennon

Another Memorial Day is upon us, and I thought I would share with you a brief encounter I recently had. The first Saturday in May, I spent a beautiful Spring day at our local Boy Scout Reservation, Camp Mitigwa, near Boone Iowa.

As a volunteer with the Scouts since my transfer to Iowa in 1988, I can honestly say that some of the best days I have experienced as a parent and grandparent have been at Scout Camp. This day was no exception.

The Scouts were holding an open house at the camp, with tours and displays showing all of the activities and areas available to Scouts and their families. This particular event was aimed primarily at the families of Cub Scout aged boys, and the tours were set up accordingly.

The reproduction of Lewis and Clarks Fort Clatsop featured pan fried bread for the attendees to sample, and examples of the equipment and clothing used by that expedition for them to try. The blockhouse at Fort Madison fired its cannon every hour. Bug juice and snacks were available at each station, so the children would stay hydrated and energetic during their walk through the extended forest areas. As with all Scout activities, especially Cub Scout events, this was for the entire family, and families are who attended.

My participation was to set up a model campsite, complete with tents, cots, sleeping bags, and the attendant equipment necessary for an outdoor weekend. As part of the demonstration, I laid a small fire in the fire ring, and had long camp forks for the youngsters to make Smores. Marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers are a staple of Scouting, as Smores are the preferred nighttime snack for Scouts of all ages. It was great fun helping the younger visitors make this all American staple, and especially so when I saw 8 year old “big” brothers making a Smore for their younger sisters, and equally “big” sisters helping their younger siblings. Some of the parents had never had one before, and were amazed that their children seemed to instinctively know how to create this treat. We even had an eighty year old grandmother try her first ever Smore, proudly made by her 7 year old grandson.

Among the visitors this day was a young man, in his late twenties, accompanied by his 7 year old son, and 5 year old daughter. There was a lull in my site at the time, so I had a chance to visit with him longer that most. He had the usual questions about Scouting, including training for volunteers. As we talked, it became obvious from his demeanor and appearance that he was either in the military, or had been until recently. The buzz cut, physical fitness and erect posture were certainly clues, but his continually calling me sir was the clincher.

Abdullah is considered one of the most important operational members of Hamas' Izzedine al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades, Hamas' declared "resistance" department. He said his group would not immediately carry out airplane attacks, but that Hamas is preparing for the possibility should a long-term truce it claims to abide by falls apart.

Abdullah's statements come after Palestinian security officials told WND they believe Hamas recently smuggled into the Gaza Strip three small airplanes that can carry explosives and be used to attack Israel. They said information indicates the aircraft were purchased from eastern European dealers and that Hamas members received flight training from professionals in the Sudan, Iran and Syria.

Abdullah refused to confirm the reports, but said his group has the right to acquire aircraft.

"I cannot confirm whether this information is right or not but for sure it is one of our goals to have these airplanes," Abdullah said. "It is part of our legitimate arming in case the enemy [Israel] thinks to launch a big attack against our people."

Abdullah said Hamas would fly the planes into Jewish targets, possibly Tel Aviv skyscrapers.

"The goal is to have these planes carry maximum quantities of explosives and that they will be able to hit the targets that are fixed for its operation at a high level of accuracy. All the Zionist goals in our dear Palestine are legitimate. I estimate that this tool will not be used against regular targets. We will choose precious targets and I do not want to speak about strategic or any other targets. ... We know that the enemy is building new and high buildings in Tel Aviv."

The terror leader listed possible military targets, as well...

TO VIEW THIS CLIP, VISIT: Click here.

Hassan Nasrallah: "This [Zionist] entity, which has many strengths – I don't have time now to list them all – has weaknesses as well. One of its most important weaknesses is the fact that it is an extraneous entity. It is not deeply rooted.

"Another of its weaknesses is the fact that its society is not homogeneous. Some Falasha Ethiopians, some from Russia, and some from I don't know where... They are bound together by a baseless and unfounded myth.

"Another weakness of this entity is that its people came because they were promised security, peace, and a life in the land of milk and honey. But if they encounter something else, they will leave this land.

"Another weakness is that both as individuals and as a collective, they are described by Allah as 'the people who guard their lives most.' Their strong adherence to this world, with all its vanities and pleasures, constitutes a weakness.

"In contrast, our people and our nation's willingness to sacrifice their blood, souls, children, fathers, and families for the sake of the nation's honor, life, and happiness has always been one of our nation's strengths."...

In an interview with GQ magazine, the reporter asked him: "Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber - if there were no other casualties - be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?"

Mr Galloway replied: "Yes, it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it - but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable. And morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq - as Blair did."

The Labour MP Stephen Pound, a persistent critic of Mr Galloway during previous controversies, told The Sun that the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in east London was "disgraceful and truly twisted".

He said: "These comments take my breath away. Every time you think he can't sink any lower he goes and stuns you again. It's reprehensible to say it would be justified for a suicide bomber to assassinate anyone."...

Mr Galloway shocked panellists on a live television discussion show in Havana by emerging on set mid-transmission to offer passionate support for Castro. Looking approvingly into each others' eyes, the pair embraced.

When the article came out, I harbored no illusions that I would be offered the key to the city, have a public school named in my honor, or be invited to be grand marshal of the July 4th parade for the public service I had rendered to our community by exposing this immediate terrorist threat. Thus far, none of that has happened, nor do I expect such to be forthcoming.

What I couldn’t anticipate, however, was that Salah Sultan’s supporters in the Islamic and “interfaith community” here in the Columbus area would enlist the services of the local paper, the Columbus Dispatch, to airbrush Sultan’s record and defend the Islamic school he is associated with, while simultaneously launching an attack on FrontPage Magazine and myself, likening us to neo-Nazis, and accusing me of “inciting violence against the children of the school” and engaging in “hate speech”.

But that’s in fact what happened...

In our struggle to defend our civilization and our freedoms, we must understand our enemy. Those who insist that anti-Semitism be seen exclusively through the lens of Nazism and the Holocaust divert our attention and hobble our understanding of the forces against which we defend ourselves...

You took exception to the paragraph in which he lightly deprecated the vanity of youth. Well, Ms. Rohe, and your fellow graduates's comical self-importance deserves a rebuke far stronger than the gentle suggestions he offered you. So, let me leave you with this. Should you grow up and ever get down to the hard business of making a living and finding a purpose for your lives beyond self-indulgence some of you might then know a happiness far more sublime than the fleeting pleasure of living in an echo chamber. And if you are that fortunate, you might look back on the day of your graduation and your discourtesy to a good and honest man with a little shame and the certain knowledge that it very unlikely any of you will ever posses the one small fraction of the character of John McCain.

WASHINGTON, D.C., 5/23/2006) - A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on the Bush administration to use Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's visit this week to the United States to address urgent issues that are harming America's image and interests in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the current suffering caused by the Israeli and international "siege" imposed on the Palestinian people is a humanitarian disaster that will only deepen divisions and hostility in the region.

In its statement, the Washington-based group said:

"We urge President Bush to tell Mr. Olmert that the American people will not support unilateral actions such as settlement land grabs, Apartheid-style walls or denial of basic humanitarian needs that block progress toward a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Olmert should also be told that he cannot expect American taxpayers to continue financing Israel's illegal and counterproductive actions, which impede the peace process.

"It is in our nation's interest to recognize that the issue of Palestine is a core concern of Muslims worldwide and that our past one-sided approach to the conflict has only served to damage America's image in the international arena...

Two Sundays ago, an e-mail was sent out by CAIR denouncing the website, Little Green Footballs (LGF), for what CAIR said were two threats aimed at Muslims found in the comments section of a blog entry on the site. One of the comments was no doubt a threat. It stated, “The next time someone in a truckstop or a Starbucks or a library or any public place says ANYTHING even resembling support for the Muslim ‘cause’ WILL be sent to either the hospital or worse. . .just waiting to bash someones face in. no more games.” To the website’s credit, the dangerous comment was removed. The other quote, which was a strongly worded statement against the religion of Islam and those the author referred to as “Muslim savages,” was allowed to stay and was later debated.

While CAIR proudly displayed the offending quotes and, at the same time, unjustly and irresponsibly labeled LGF an “internet hate site,” a vital piece of information was missing from the e-mail. The blog entry, from where the quotes came, was an announcement of the death of Daniel Wultz...

"I worked for two presidents who were men of faith, and they did not make their religious views part of American policy," she said, referring to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both Democrats and Christians.

"President Bush's certitude about what he believes in, and the division between good and evil, is, I think, different," said Albright, who has just published a book on religion and world affairs. "The absolute truth is what makes Bush so worrying to some of us."...

Born and raised a Roman Catholic in Czechoslovakia, Britain and then the United States, she converted to Anglicanism when she married and only later in life discovered she had Jewish roots.

It is this legacy which makes her wary of any religion which claims a monopoly on truth, she said.

These days, she describes herself as "an Episcopalian (U.S. Anglican) with a Catholic background", recalling how she used to pray to the Virgin Mary as a child and still does.

"I know I believe in God but I have doubts, and doubt is part of faith," she said.

Bawer: I’ve always thought of myself as a more or less classic Cold War liberal. But never New Left. The New Left always appalled me, and I’ve always been strongly anti-Communist. Yes, I’ve changed political alliances more than once over the years – not because I’ve changed positions, but because the labels started meaning different things.

This business of labels is maddening. In Stealing Jesus I criticized Christian fundamentalism and liberals loved it; in While Europe Slept, I criticize Islamic fundamentalism, which is by any measure a lot worse than Christian fundamentalism, and some of the same people who loved Stealing Jesus are appalled and think I’ve totally changed my politics, when in fact I’m being totally consistent. Anyway, as I explain in While Europe Slept, I moved to Europe in 1998, not long after Stealing Jesus came out, I looked forward to living in what I thought was a secular society. What I found, however, was a society governed according to what I gradually came to recognize as another kind of fundamentalism – namely, big-government, welfare-state social democracy...

...The hostility to America was ubiquitous, and reflexive. Ditto the hostility to Israel, which Europeans have been taught by their elite to see almost exclusively as America’s 51st state, an oppressor of Palestinians and an illegal occupier of Arab and Muslim lands. I had been in many ways a critic of America, but in Europe I increasingly came to appreciate its virtues – and repeatedly found myself in social situations where I was obliged to defend it against people who regurgitated inane anti-American clichés that they’d been fed since infancy...

Nevertheless, the current situation also makes Washington even less enthusiastic about funneling aid to the PA, the senior administration official said.

"If Hamas has money to finance its people, who are riding about in cars and brandishing rifles, it should use it to pay teachers and doctors," he said. "Who's paying for their gas?"

"The Hamas government is the one that ought to take care of its workers," he continued. "We have never paid the salaries of Palestinian Authority employees, and there is no reason for us to do so now."

The official insisted that the U.S. and Europe have identical views of the Hamas government.

"All that is being asked of them [Hamas] is three words - yes, yes and yes," he added, referring to the international community's three demands: that Hamas recognize Israel, abandon terror and honor previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements...

“It was still sold at discount down to $175,000. That’s troubling to taxpayers,” said City Councilor Jerry P. McDermott, who was notified Tuesday that the BRA would not attend. McDermott, who is chairman of the Post Audit & Oversight Committee, scheduled the hearing for tomorrow.

A BRA document released in March shows Muhammad Ali-Salaam, the BRA’s deputy director for planning and a private mosque proponent and fund-raiser, signed a March 2000 letter that referred to an estimated fair market value for the 1.9-acre parcel of more than $2 million.

Four months later, the ISB signed a term sheet with the BRA that stated the land value was worth a little bit more than $401,000. The ISB purchased the parcel for $175,000 plus a public benefits package. BRA officials have said the city used an appraisal ordered by the United Bank of Kuwait to determine the value of the land. The appraisal states the land is worth $480,000.

The BRA has been advised not to appear because of pending litigation against the agency, said Susan Elsbree, a BRA spokeswoman.

The Christian Left's leading ecumenical organization stated Israel's actions towards the Palestinians "cannot be justified morally, legally or even politically."

The failure "to comply with international law" had "pushed the situation on the ground to a point of no return," they concluded.

The WCC condemned the killing of innocent civilians by "both sides" in the conflict and called for the Palestinians to "maintain the existing one-party cease-fire toward Israel" and asked Israel to base its security on "the equitable negotiation of final borders" with its neighbors.

However, the present disparities between Israel and Palestine were "appalling," the WCC said...

...Evangelicals who support Israel most certainly do want to convert people. Evangelicals who don't support Israel also want to convert people. The mission of sharing the "good news" of Jesus Christ is central to being an evangelical. But it is important to note that this is not about converting just the Jews-Christians want to share their faith with Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and their Christian friends and neighbors who have yet to be born again.

The important question is this: Is evangelical support for Israel merely a tool in the effort to convert the Jews? Is this merely some scheme to soften the Jews up so that they can better sell Jesus to them? And the answer to this question is absolutely not...

For the short term, it's not about the money, it's about the podium.
Divestment resolutions afford pro-Palestinian activists the chance to speak before large audiences that gather at our church-wide assemblies and talk about checkpoints, home demolitions, and the security barrier without having to explain why Israel does what it does. The story offered is one of innocent Palestinian suffering and Israeli intransigence and savagery.

On this score, divestment is a McGuffin, or plot device used to capture our attention before it is directed to Israel's uniquely sinful behavior. After hearing this story, our church-wide assemblies pass judgment on the behavior and defense policies of a people who for the last 58 years, have fended off three attempts to destroy their homeland...

All three governments have publicly denied paying ransom money. But according to the documents, held by security officials in Baghdad who have played a crucial role in hostage negotiations, sums from $2.5 million to $10 million per person have been paid over the past 21 months. Among those said to have received cash ransoms was the gang responsible for seizing British hostages including Kenneth Bigley, the murdered Liverpool engineer.

The list of payments has also been seen by Western diplomats, who are angered at the behaviour of the three governments, arguing that it encourages organised crime gangs to grab more foreign captives.

“In theory we stand together in not rewarding kidnappers, but in practice it seems some administrations have parted with cash and so it puts other foreign nationals at risk from gangs who are confident that some governments do pay,” one senior envoy in the Iraqi capital said...

TO WIN OR TO BELLY-ACHE?

THAT IS THE QUESTION

Jews make it their business to talk about Kristal-Nacht, yet forget about “Joseph-Nacht” when Joseph's Tomb was burned, defecated in it, and while G-d's evil enemies used the Torah Scrolls to wipe their behinds after doing their filthy deeds. How could Jews be silent on this?

If I was a Jew I would be ashamed to call myself one.

This issue alone needs to be vocalized so much, yet instead we only think of the dead and we say "never again" while the "never again" happens right in front of our eyes.

It's a dead heart that thinks only of the dead and forgets the living.

Here are my honest findings after studying Jews for the last two years, and I wish to make this public:

- Most Jews act as they see other Jews react around them. They seem to seek more to be accepted in order to get respect, instead of gaining respect by strength and honor.

They seek Arab love like a farmer who plants seeds on rocks and daily pours water on stones leaving the good soil untouched.

Jewish students at Princeton got scared and blamed the messengers, Jewish students at George Washington University gladly stood up and stated "We the Jewish students stand with our Palestinians friends", and the only Jewish student with guts at San Diego State University got hell from every other Jewish student for bringing me to speak. Yet after the victory in which the turn up was historical (1000 turned up), all his friends sent him cards of “thank you”. Why is it that they objected at first, thanked him later? It’s because as usual, it’s one person who stands against the tide and makes all the difference.

The statement came in response to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's interview to The New York Times on Thursday, in which he said that Israel would use Palestinian tax money to supply Palestinian hospitals with the medical supplies they needed.

Hamas cabinet spokesman Ghazi Hamad said the Palestinian Authority would seek international support to make Israel transfer the tax money to the Palestinians, Israel Radio reported.

Four years ago, at the height of the intifada, 75 percent of the Palestinian population supported suicide bombings, according to polls, and the perpetrators were celebrated in songs and videos that played constantly on Palestinian television. But the mood is different now. Suheib Ajami received the obligatory martyr's funeral in Attil, and local dignitaries paid homage at the gravesite, but there was little glamour attached to his death.

But Ajami says that many parents have pointed to the fates of Suheib and his classmate as cautionary tales. "They are telling their kids that belonging to an armed group guarantees a bad end," he told me. "There are two options, prison or death." What's more, many Palestinians have begun to blame Islamic Jihad for their sorry living conditions. "For normal people, Islamic Jihad is not popular," Ajami told me. "My neighbors tell me, 'Look at our lives now, because of your son.'"...

Israelis are understandably apprehensive about the bellicose statements emanating from Iran's odious president, Mahmoud Ahma dinejad, and it may be that the Ira nian's hateful rhetoric foments anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish senti ment around the Middle East. In military terms, however, Iran presents no credible conventional military threat to Israel.

Let us assume the loudmouthed Ahmadinejad really means what he has been saying about Israel. And let us assume that when he calls for Israel to be wiped off the map he is not offering an abstract concept, as if the parti tion of Palestine in 1948 could be revisited, but that he means it is Iran's duty to do something about it. And let us assume that he has some support in the Iranian armed forces, among the people who would have to deliver any strikes against Israel upon which the Ira nian leadership might agree.

His rhetoric cannot change the balance of military power...

Army Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, defended its use as legal and said the devices were intended to prevent civilians from being shot.

"There have been numerous incidents that tragically have resulted in civilian deaths" in which drivers approaching U.S. military checkpoints have failed to heed warnings from troops, who in some cases have opened fire, he said.

The U.S. military is fitting some M-4 rifles used by U.S. forces in Iraq with a tube-shaped device that is about 10 1/2 inches (27 cm) long that shines a laser beam. Venable stressed that the devices do not cause permanent blindness.

"They don't blind people. It's like shining a big light in your eyes," Venable said. "I think the term is optical incapacitation -- dazzlers as opposed to something that will blind you."...

Having returned their small remnant Jewish community to a state of obsequious dhimmitude—including now, perhaps the full restoration of discriminatory badging —Iran’s current theocratic rulers focus most of their obsessive anti-Jewish bigotry on the free-living Jews of neighboring Israel.

Former Iranian President Rafsanjani’s December 2001 “Al Quds Day” sermon threatened, explicitly, the nuclear annihilation of this largest concentration of autonomous Jews in history. Current President Ahmadinejad has reiterated these threats repeatedly as Iran’s nuclear ambitions near fulfillment. But Ahmadinejad has also reportedly vowed, “To stop Christianity in this country” [i.e., Iran] , and his recent “letter” to President Bush emulates the jihad war precept (originally formulated by the Muslim prophet Muhammad) of calling infidel powers—often Christian powers—to accept Islam, prior to initiating a jihad war against them.

The Iranian regime’s words and deeds are authentic manifestations of the hatred of jihad. Whether directed against internal or external “infidels” this is a potentially genocidal animus which must be understood in its Islamic context without meaningless and distracting invocations to modern Western forms of totalitarianism, like Nazism.

Allah proclaims: “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity [i.e. embrace Islam], then open the way for them: for Allah is oft forgiving, most merciful” (Koran 9:5). This message is repeated continuously in the Koran and Hadith, and most Muslim jurists are agreed that these “Sword Verses” abrogate all earlier verses of tolerance and peaceable co-existence between Muslims and non-Muslims. Furthermore, the commandments of the Koran transcend time and are thus as applicable today as they were in the 7th century.

The historical record of Islam — its rise and spread — is even more illustrative than the words of the Koran. Islam was established by the sword. This is an historical fact, not an accusation. It’s not for nothing that Saudi Arabia, home of the Prophet and Islam, depicts a scimitar with the words “There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is His Prophet” on its national flag. Both Muslim and non-Muslim histories of Islam agree that the Warrior-Prophet personally waged war after war with the express purpose of spreading Islam...

And contradicting those Westerners who still believe the whole crisis is about Palestinian nationalist aspirations, a Sudanese cleric said, “Palestine is a religious issue, not just a political one, and affects all Muslims.” A representative for Hamas agreed: “This meeting has reverted the Palestinian issue to its rightful depth as an Arab and Islamic issue.” The upshot of the declaration is that there will be no “land for peace,” no recognition of Israel’s right to exist, no signing on to “roadmaps” or other desperate Western attempts to avoid facing one simple fact: Israel is the beleaguered Western salient in the frontlines of the war against jihad.

Yet even as Hamas and the religious leadership of Muslim nations tell us their intentions, we Westerners refuse to listen...

...The most absurd response to the cut-off of funds to these terrorists, who want to destroy not just Israel but us as well, is that we are “punishing” the Palestinians for their democratic choice. We forget that the flip side to democratic choice is responsibility for that choice. During our own Civil War, Southerners made a democratic choice to secede from the Union and test their right to do so by force of arms. The Confederate soldiers in the field were sustained in their fight by the moral and material support of their families back home, who wrote them letters of encouragement, held public rallies and celebrations honoring them, and worked on farms and factories providing them with food and weapons.

General Sherman understood this dynamic between soldier and civilian, and conceived his March to the Sea as a psychological as well as military action: “I propose to demonstrate the vulnerability of the South and make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms,” he wrote. So too in a letter to the mayor of Atlanta: “Now that war comes home to you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent carloads of soldiers and ammunition, and molded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of their inheritance.”...

According to his website, Sultan is an elected member of the Shura Board of the recently founded International Association of Muslim Scholars in London (IAMS), and has written over 20 books, including Muslim Participation in the American Elections.

Two years ago, the Presbyterian Church USA passed a resolution calling for “phased, selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel.”

Those who long have followed Jewish-Protestant relations weren’t surprised.

“It was the culmination of decades - not years, but decades - of hostility toward Israel and Zionism, not by the rank-and-file members of these churches, but by some of the leadership,” said Rabbi A. James Rudin, senior interreligious adviser for the American Jewish Committee, where he staffed the interfaith department for 38 years.

The passion ignited by the divestment resolution at the last General Assembly is likely to erupt again at the June 15-22 meeting in Birmingham, Ala...

As the researcher Arlene Kushner pointed out in an article published this week by Ynet those miserable unpaid PA employees include some 4,000 Palestinian terrorists who Abbas placed on the PA payroll. Terrorists sitting in Israeli prisons get $4 million a month. Several million more go to paying the families of dead terrorists. Kushner quoted former PA and Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan admitting that of the $10 billion in international aid that the Palestinians have received over the past 12 years, some $5b. has gone missing.

Abbas, who politely warns against "explosions," himself controls up to $1b. that he prefers not to use to save his people from that "humanitarian disaster" he's so bent out of shape about. As Kushner reminds us, in 2002, Salam Fayyad, who then served as the PA's finance minister, set up the Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF) in an attempt to prevent Arafat from absconding with all the PA's money. At least $700m. should still be deposited in the PIF which had been valued at $1b. in recent months.

Abbas, who bemoans the poor Palestinian doctors and teachers that have not received their March salaries, decided last summer - against the expressed warnings of the International Monetary Fund - to give significant pay increases to the PA's employees. Civil servants were given raises of some 15-20 percent and militia members were given raises of 30%-40%. Kushner notes that at the time of Arafat's death in November 2004, his grieving widow Suha refused to unplug his respirator until Abbas and the PA prime minister Ahmed Qurei agreed to her demands for a significant cut of her husband's personal wealth which was assessed at some $3.1b. Apparently it hasn't occurred to anyone that Arafat might have liked to use that money to avert a "humanitarian disaster" among his beloved people.

EVEN WITHOUT Kushner's data, the Palestinians themselves demonstrated this week their contempt for the West and its "humanitarians" who concern themselves with the Palestinians' dire financial straits. On Wednesday, the PA deployed its newest 3,000-man militia. The militia, comprised mainly of Hamas terror operatives and operatives from the Popular Resistance Committees made up of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah terrorists, made its first appearance in Gaza. Its troops were all decked out in new uniforms and shiny rifles...

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments."

The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.

Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.

"There's no reason to believe they won't pass this," said Rabbi Hier. "It will certainly pass unless there's some sort of international outcry over this."

Bernie Farber, the chief executive of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said he was "stunned" by the measure. "We thought this had gone the way of the dodo bird, but clearly in Iran everything old and bad is new again," he said. "It's state-sponsored religious discrimination."

Ali Behroozian, an Iranian exile living in Toronto, said the law could come into force as early as next year.

It would make religious minorities immediately identifiable and allow Muslims to avoid contact with non-Muslims...

The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear "standard Islamic garments" designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions reflected in clothing, and to eliminate "the influence of the infidel" on the way Iranians, especially, the young dress. It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis (unclean)...

I never met Danny Wultz. I don't know anyone who ever met him. Yet, his death touched me and made me angrier than I have been in a long, long time about what is going on in Israel. I am simply fed up with the bulls--t, false moral equivalency that the morally bankrupt, biased MSM has established with respect to Israel and the Arabs. If I hear one more smug, ill-informed, ignorant talking head (Hello, Chris Matthews! How are YOU today, Pat Buchanan?) drone on about the non-existent "Cycle of Violence", I swear that my head will explode. What "Cycle of Violence"? The Palestinians send homicide bombers to blow up restaurants and Passover Seders, and the Israelis then go after the "people" (I use that term in its most loose sense) who planned the operation. One side has declared war, and the other is fighting back. THAT'S a "Cycle of Violence"? Bull.

Let's do a little math. Over 1000 Israelis have died in terrorist attacks (and yes, BBC, CNN, Agence France Presse, CBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Reuters, Associated Press, these ARE terrorist attacks, even if it was only some of those racist, misogynist, Nazi, colonialist, fascist, imperialist, apartheid--insert your favourite adjective here--Israelis who died) since the second PLANNED Intifadah began in August of 2000. Israel is a nation of about 6,000,000 people, of whom roughly 5,000,000 are Jewish. In the U.S., there are about 300,000,000 people. 2,800 (a rounded-up number) died in the 9-11 terrorist attacks, and we saw how the U.S. rightfully reacted. If my calculations are right, Israel has suffered, proportionately, the equivalent of 60,000 dead. Hmmm. How do YOU suppose that the U.S. government would react to a death toll like that? Remember, on 9-11, LESS than 2,800 people died. Do you think that anyone here would be heeding calls for "restraint", and "dialogue", after a carnage like 60,000 dead? Danny Wultz is the human face of this, but the numbers speak for themselves.

The book's editor, veteran French journalist Chris Kutschera, concludes that while "the American war may not have been the ideal way to put an end to Saddam Hussein's dictatorship," there was no better one, because overthrow was simply no longer possible from within a savagely repressed society. So: No invasion, more Saddam. And that was an outcome these authors--an array of Middle Eastern, European, and American journalists, academics, and activists--could not bear.

This hefty volume includes almost three dozen substantive chapters chronicling the rise and record of Iraq's Baath party, the operations of Saddam's secret police, his cult of personality, his sanguinary wars against Iran and Kuwait, and his international suppliers of arms and diplomatic support. They show that Saddam's quarter-century in power was a virtually uninterrupted exercise in bloodletting in nearly every direction...

More often, crimes committed by non-Westerners are blamed on Westerners. As in: America provided Saddam with chemical weapons; Palestinians mimic Israeli brutality; the Khmer Rouge was driven to madness by U.S. bombing. It was Belgian colonialism that taught Rwandan Hutu génocidaires to be tribal and to kill. And the CIA created Osama bin Laden, while U.S. excesses created his followers.

The soft bigotry here is not of low expectations but of no expectations. This suggests that only Westerners have moral agency. To deny a person the capacity to initiate evil is to deny them the capacity to initiate good, or anything in between...

The dispute is part of a long-running lawsuit filed by relatives of Yaron and Efrat Ungar, who died in a June 1996 attack that their lawyer says was carried out by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization...

...Nabil Abuznaid, deputy chief of the PLO Mission, said Wednesday that lawsuits against the Palestinian groups are becoming more common and causing significant financial strain.

Abuznaid said the $200,000 at issue covers day-to-day operations of the office, including workers' salaries. "We cannot survive these conditions," he said. "There is no money. I don't know what we should do."...

The answer was no -- in America, people don't go to prison for publicly expressing their views, or for encouraging the government to review questionable public transactions. But Mansour had good reason to worry. He had learned the hard way that Muslim reformers who speak out against Islamist fanaticism and religious dictatorship can indeed end up in prison -- or worse. It had happened to him in his native Egypt, which he fled in 2001 after receiving death threats. He was grateful that the United States had granted him asylum, enabling him to go on promoting his vision of a progressive Islam in which human rights and democratic values would be protected. But would he now have to fight in America the same kind of persecution he experienced in Egypt?

Mansour is just one of many people and organizations being sued for defamation by the Islamic Society of Boston, which accuses them all of conspiring to deny freedom of worship to Boston-area Muslims. In fact, the defendants -- who include journalists, a terrorism expert, and the founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group, plus the Episcopalian lay minister and the Jewish attorney who together with Mansour formed the interfaith Citizens for Peace and Tolerance in 2004 -- appear to be guilty of nothing more than voicing concerns about the ISB's construction of a large mosque in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury.

More than a few unsettling questions have been raised about the ISB and its mosque project. For example...

I guess what I want most of all is to be a part of the real world, not an entertainer. I want to have an essential role in the big picture. I want adventure, challenge, danger, and most of all I don’t want to be behind a counter or desk. Maybe when I am a hundred years old I will slow down and relax, till then, I have better things to do.

The Palestinian Authority daily reported this week on an event that was part of a project funded by CIDA - the Canadian International Development Agency - entitled "The role of civilian institutions in protecting the Right of Return."

The Palestinian term "Right of Return" is their claim to the "right" to resettle in Israel millions of Arabs who are now living in refugee camps. In recent years, the term has been commonly used as the politically correct way of packaging the call for Israel's destruction under the guise of a humanitarian issue.

While CIDA and other international donors are trying to support progressive projects in the Palestinian Authority, this is yet another example of money from well-intentioned donor countries being used for projects that are political and that actually prevent reconciliation with Israel. The Palestinian position of never having peace with Israel until Israel accepts the "right of return" is the greatest hindrance to peace, and may very likely prevent a future peace agreement.

The following is the translation of the item in the PA daily:

"The Ta'awon [co-operation] Youth Forum, in co-operation with the "Badil" Center for Refugee Rights, held a discussion in Hebron under the heading "The role of civilian institutions in protecting the Right of Return".

"The convention took place in the framework of the youth inner discussion project, funded by CIDA the Canadian International Development Agency." [Al-Ayam, May 15, 2006]

The International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom (IAB) at Bar Ilan University, established last April to combat the Association of University Teachers-United Kingdom's resolution to boycott Bar-Ilan and Haifa Universities, warns that a silent boycott is already taking place between UK and Israeli academics.

The latest example of this silent boycott began last Friday, May 12, 2006, when Prof. Richard Seaford, an English professor from the University of Exeter, UK, was asked to review a book for the Israeli journal Scripta Classica Israelica. Dr. Daniela Dueck from the Department of Classical Studies at Bar-Ilan University, who serves as the book review editor corresponded with Prof. Seaford, and suggested that he review "The Invention of Coinage and the Monetization of Ancient Greece", by Prof. D.M. Schaps, of Bar-Ilan University's Department of Classics. Dueck received the following response to her email:

Dear Daniela Dueck,
Alas I am unable to accept your kind invitation, for reasons that you may not like. I have, along with many other British academics, signed the academic boycott of Israel, in the face of the brutal and illegal expansionism, and the slow-motion ethnic cleansing, being practised by your government. There is of course nothing personal in this. I am aware of the honest arguments for and against a boycott, and that even some Israeli academics support the boycott and many do not. Whatever your views, I hope you will understand that my view is based on a widely shared moral outrage. You are welcome to report my position (if you wish) to anyone you may like to.
With best wishes,
Richard Seaford

This is not the first case of silent boycotts...

A source close to the four-day conference of the Arab Boycott Bureau convening in Damascus said Tuesday "the majority of Arab countries are evading the boycott, notably the Gulf states and especially Saudi Arabia."

Speaking to United Press International on condition of anonymity, the source said "an important reason for not observing the boycott rules by the Arab countries is the growing U.S. pressures in the direction of normalization with the Jewish state."

Washington backs Israel in its opposition to the Arab boycott on the grounds that it contradicted the basis of the U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace process...

PA TV broadcast yesterday a 15-minute video compilation of bizarre and symbolic scenes, conveying the message that US, British and Israeli missiles are killing Arab children. The children are portrayed by numerous dismembered and partially buried dolls, while US, British and Israeli flags are shaped as missiles. This video was produced in Egypt.

Promoting hatred of the US and Britain along with hatred of Israel remains a common message of PA leadership through its media. The US and Britain are depicted as the driving forces of imperialism in the world. The following are two recent examples among many:

"During the march of solidarity with the Iraqi people and its president Saddam Hussein… pictures of the Martyrs Saddam and his two sons were held next to the picture of the eternal Martyr, Yassir Arafat, to repeated calls condemning the oppressive trial of Saddam Hussein, and calling on the Iraqi people not to be drawn by the schemes of America and Britain, to ignite a civil war…" [Al Hayat Al Jadida, April 5, 2006]

"The murderous American grindstone revolves, grinding our children's bones, and plundering their eyes. Not Israel! There is nothing called Israel. It is America who is recreating on us, the Arabs, the tragedy of the [American] Indians, by which [America] initiated the first racial genocide." [Al Hayat Al Jadida, April 5, 2006]

The gathering was organized by the North American affiliate of the Jerusalem-based Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. This Palestinian Christian group has "Friends of Sabeel" networks in Australia, Scandinavia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.

Co-sponsors of the event included local agencies of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the United Methodist Church, and the United Church of Christ (UCC), as well as the far-left Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) caucus, the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, and several other religious and secular activist groups.

According to Sabeel founder Rev. Naim Ateek, the United States has always been aligned against the Palestinians. (File photo)
Israel, the U.S., and the West were criticized at great length throughout the conference. Rev. Naim Ateek, founder and Director of Sabeel, declared to loud applause, "The United States has never been an honest broker in this conflict; it's always been … against the Palestinians!" Ateek also denounced the Western media as being mainly "against the Palestinians," a charge echoed by other conference speakers...

...Zaru and others blasted as "the greatest deception" the "false symmetry" drawn by some between the Israeli "oppressor" and the Palestinian "victim." Noting the argument that many of the measures she criticized at the conference were necessary for security, she asked if the Israeli security forces, "with all their technological sophistication," could not "see our hearts and minds." American-born Israeli Jeff Halper declared that "Israel's national existence and security concerns have been addressed adequately by the leaders of Muslim nations and the Palestinian people. "Certainly there's no existential threat to Israel today," he claimed, so such measures as home demolitions, restrictions on Palestinian movement, new Jewish settlements, the security barrier, and the occupation were nothing more than "expansionist designs of Israeli nationalists."

The report also included statistical analysis of AI's published material from the beginning of 2005 to May 2006. CRC counted the number of news releases, reports, and urgent actions published by Amnesty International for selected countries and calculated the "reports per million citizens" for these countries. (This statistical approach is similar to the one developed and used in NGO Monitor's analysis of HRW's activities.) The results show that AI focused on the United States at twice the average global rate, and on par with Saudi Arabia. Israel is the subject of the greatest number of AI publications per million people with fifty-six times more reports per million than North Korea and twenty-five times more than Egypt.

The Arab and Islamic countries suffer from severe backwardness, and the Western world wants to make them even more backward. It does not want these countries to progress at all.

[...]

The Muslims are required to remain backward in all fields, not only the nuclear field. All fields of advanced modern technology are closed to the Arabs and Muslims - let alone the nuclear field.

Is it not the duty of all countries to have nuclear technology for peaceful purposes? Even if it is for military purposes... Doesn't America have this? Doesn't Israel have this? Doesn't Europe have this? Are all the countries entitled to this, except for the Arabs and Muslims? Brother, this is illogical, inconceivable, and unjustified.

James Carroll does not bother to confront any of these obvious points in his lengthy diatribe against the "garrison state." An erstwhile Catholic priest turned moralistic writer (of novels, nonfiction books and a Boston Globe column), he simply assumes as his first principle that American power is indefensible and then unspools a long narrative of America's conduct since the 1940s to illustrate the point. His case should be familiar to anyone who has read anything by such far-left luminaries as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Jonathan Schell, or Seymour Hersh. It goes like this:

The bombing of German and Japanese cities, culminating with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a war crime akin to the Holocaust. Thus "America's mid-twentieth century initiation into world power was as much in the state of mortal sin as its birth in slavery had been." America continued sinning by building more atomic bombs and targeting them on the Soviet Union. Good ole Joe Stalin simply wanted to live and let live--if only we had let him. "By portraying Stalin and his system as warmongering monsters," Mr. Carroll writes, early hard-liners like George Kennan and James Forrestal "helped push the Kremlin in that direction."...

We are the dream that other people dream.
The land where other people land
When late at night
They think on flight
And, flying, here arrive
Where we fools dumbly thrive ourselves.

Refuse to see
We be what all the world would like to be.
Because we hive within this scheme
The obvious dream is blind to us.
We do not mind the miracle we are,
So stop our mouths with curses.
While all the world rehearses
Coming here to stay.
We busily make plans to go away.

How dumb! newcomers cry, arrived from Chad.
You're mad! Iraqis shout,
We'd sell our souls if we could be you.
How come you cannot see the way we see you?
You tread a freedom forest as you please.
But, damn! you miss the forest for the trees.
Ten thousand wanderers a week
Engulf your shore,
You wonder what their shouting's for,
And why so glad?

Run warm those souls: America is bad?
Sit down, stare in their faces, see!
You be the hoped-for thing a hopeless world would be.
In tides of immigrants that this year flow
You still remain the beckoning hearth they'd know.
In midnight beds with blueprint, plan and scheme
You are the dream that other people dream.

The threat, the first of its kind, came as PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was scheduled to hold talks in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin on the severe financial crisis in the PA territories. Moreover, the threat by Abbas's Fatah party came as Palestinians marked the 58th anniversary of the nakba, or catastrophe (the secular anniversary of Israel's independence).

"We won't remain idle in the face of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people by Israel, the US and other countries," said a leaflet issued by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip. "We will strike at the economic and civilian interests of these countries, here and abroad."

The leaflet added: "Let the entire world know that we won't succumb in the face of the policy of blackmail, siege and starvation. In the past we did not capitulate in the face of the policy of assassinations, detentions and air raids."...

"We will plan and carry out more martyrdom attacks inside the Green Line regardless of the price and effort," he warned. "Those who are imposing the sanctions on the Palestinians will soon regret their decision."...

While the panel was unanimous in its findings about Churchill’s conduct, it was divided about whether he should lose his tenured position as professor — as politicians and many others have been demanding for more than a year. Three of the panel’s five members believe that the violations of academic standards are severe enough to make dismissal “not an inappropriate sanction.” But only one of those three members believes that dismissal is the “most appropriate sanction.” Two others favor suspension without pay for five years.

Two other members of the panel said that they did not believe that the violations were serious enough to merit dismissal. They recommend a suspension of two years without pay and say that they fear dismissal would “have an adverse effect on other scholars’ ability to conduct their research with due freedom.”

Among the violations that the committee found Churchill had committed were falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, failure to comply with established standard regarding author names on publications, and a “serious deviation from accepted practices in reporting results from research.” The committee also found that Churchill “was disrespectful of Indian oral traditions” in his writings about an 1837 smallpox epidemic...

I've not commented deeply on the whole Abu Ghraib /torture issue because there's been a lot more smoke than light everywhere I looked, and picking between the competing plausible narratives (I'm skipping the "U.S. military are bloodthirsty murders and torturers" one) require more knowledge than I have. I'm opposed to torture, for a variety of reasons, including lack of proof that it works, and think that the only moral position is one that requires the torturer to run the legal risk and moral hazard. But I'll also suggest that there are a lot of aggressive techniques - most of what is done to our own troops in SERE training - that I would hesitate to classify as torture...

PUTTING AN END TO THE MYTH THAT THE 'CUBAN REVOLUTION' WAS AN UPRISING OF THE POOR AGAINST THE RICH

They're currently working on validating these documents with experts at the University of Miami, who are taking them very seriously. If they're legit, they put a whole new spin on Fidel and Che--mostly as liars...

But she knows that if Presbyterian churches in the Lower Hudson Valley are going to play to their strengths — and stop losing members — they have to become known for something other than warbling old hymns and opening their doors to the local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

"The Presbyterian Church has not done a good job telling our story," she said. "We can offer spirituality as something other than a Pentecostal, born-again experience or rigid Catholic doctrine or right-wing, pro-life stuff. It's about an imaginative, metaphorical approach to faith, not a doctrinaire, rigid, biblically literal approach."

Andrews will soon have a chance to create a Presbyterian laboratory in New York. She has been chosen as the new leader of the Hudson River Presbytery, a regional, diocese-like body of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that includes 92 congregations in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and five northern counties...

Rev. Andrews favors both divestment and the resolution demanding that Israel dismantle the security fence that has saved so many lives, calling those stances "bold and courageous stances related to peace in the Middle East, and particularly for the rights of Palestinian people... it has put us putting our money where our mouth is in terms of our very strong commitment to speaking up for justice for the Palestinian people."

Following a meeting with Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese terrorist group’s “secretary general,” Chomsky announced his support for Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm. Then, in an echo of Nasrallah’s recent declaration that President Bush is the world’s top “terrorist,” Chomsky pronounced his own fatwa on the United States, calling it one of the “leading terrorist states.” It was a meeting of murderous radical minds.

In many ways, Chomsky’s newly forged friendship with Hezbollah -- the most recent entry in a lifetime befriending America’s most deadly enemies -- is the logical continuation of the professor’s longstanding admiration for global terrorists and Jew-haters. In fact, Chomsky devoted most of the nineties to touting Hezbollah as a “resistance” movement (which occasionally committed misguided acts against civilians) while singing its praises as a crusader for peace and social justice...

The Palestinian Company for Economic Development, which is in charge of thousands of greenhouses that used to belong to Morag and other settlements in Gush Katif, said the attack, which took place on Friday, was the latest in a series that began almost immediately after the settlements were evacuated.

The company revealed that hundreds of greenhouses and other agricultural installations have been sabotaged over the past few months, expressing its outrage over the recurring phenomenon. The company issued an urgent appeal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Interior Minister Said Siam to intervene to halt the attacks on the lands belonging to the former settlements.

"These greenhouses and other installations and projects provide a source of income for over 4,500 families," company officials said. "We are very disturbed by the recurring attacks and thefts. Such actions jeopardize the largest agricultural project carried by the Palestinian Authority after the Israeli withdrawal."...

The boat contained about 450 kilograms (992 pounds) of TNT and parts of mines, and additional bags of explosives had been thrown overboard as the naval boat approached, Col. Yoram Lachs told Channel 2 TV. The military said it was an attempt to smuggle weapons-grade explosives into the Gaza Strip, the second such attempt this month.

The Palestinian boat was sailing along the coast of the southern Gaza Strip, had entered Egyptian waters and was returning to Gaza when the naval ship ordered it to stop and fired warning shots, the army said. When the boat did not stop, the soldiers fired toward it, Lachs said. No injuries were reported.

The Palestinian crew of the boat were detained for questioning, the army said.

On May 3, the navy thwarted a similar shipment of TNT on a Palestinian boat in Gaza waters. Naval divers uncovered 13 bags of 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of TNT that had been dumped overboard when the boat was captured...

Al-Ashkar was behind suicide attacks that killed nearly 30 people. IDF Menashe Brigade Commander Colonel Hertzi Halevi said Monday that the decision to launch the operation was taken after security forces received information on his hiding place, and because he was planning a terror attack in the coming days.

"There was a focused alert over his intention to send out a terror attacker," Halevi told Army Radio...

1) Do they believe that the peaceful suras of the Koran are abrogated by the verses of the sword? (see here, pp. 67-75)

2) Is the program of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad’s death Muslim armies reached Spain and India) to be resumed when possible?

3) Do they believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe would impose Shari’a (Islamic religious) law? (see here)

4) Can we discuss Islamic history (here and here) -- even the hermeneutical problems around the origins of the Koran (see here, here, here, and here) -- without threats of violence?

Media attention was focused almost exclusively on the Cardinal’s statement that, “In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages”—an unassailable observation, given, for example that sura (chapter) 9 alone comprises in its entirety a series of timeless war proclamations against Jews, Christians, and pagans (i.e., the latter being Hindus, Buddhists, and Animists)—recording, as per believing Muslims, the “uncreated word” of Allah himself...

Every year, as the date of Israel's Independence (May 15) approaches, Palestinian Authority TV broadcasts numerous programs and video clips to mourn Israel's creation -- what they call the "Nakba," the catastrophe. The recurring themes are the denial of Israel's right to exist and the call for the undoing of "the catastrophe" - a euphemism for Israel's destruction.

This year's recurring clip shows the map of Israel -- entitled "Palestine" - scrolling slowly down the screen. The date 1948 - the year of Israel's establishment - repeatedly appears on the screen, behind bars.

At the end of the clip an old woman is shown, while the words on the screen read: "Palestine is the land of my forefathers.LEAVE IT."

It is important to note that this clip, calling for Israel's destruction, has been broadcast almost daily in recent weeks on PA TV - which is still run and totally controlled by the office of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, not by Hamas.

Non-recognition of Israel's right to exist has been a cornerstone of PA ideology, shared by both the PLO-Fatah faction and by Hamas, and expressed in Arabic by both groups. The only substantive difference between the two groups on this issue has been the fact that Fatah has professed to recognize Israel in its English messages, while Hamas has refused to accept Israel in either its English or its Arabic statements.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will make a formal announcement Monday.

After decades of thumbing his nose at the West, which made him an international pariah, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi made an abrupt about-face after the fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, renouncing support for terrorism and agreeing to give up Libya's missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

The next year, the United States ended a 18-year trade embargo against Libya and lifted a ban on Americans traveling there...

Wultz, 16, was one of over 60 people injured in the attack in which a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded section of Tel Aviv as Israelis celebrated the fifth day of the Passover holiday on April 17. The blast ripped through a falafel restaurant just outside the city's old central bus station, killing nine. The same restaurant was hit by a suicide attack in January, wounding 20. A tenth Israeli victim passed away yesterday. Wultz's demise today brings to 11 the total number of deaths from the suicide blast so far.

Wultz was a resident of Weston, Fla. He was on Passover vacation in Israel along with his family. The teenager was seated with his father, Yekutiel, at an outside table of the targeted restaurant when the bomb was detonated.

Described as an avid basketball player, Wultz lost his spleen, a leg and a kidney in the attack. Doctors at Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital had reportedly been fighting to save his other leg, which was suffering from severely reduced blood flow. Wultz's father suffered a fractured leg in the attack...

This trip would not be so smooth. Word of trouble began to percolate in the morning of the first lecture. A local antiwar activist was demanding my arrest as a war criminal. My crimes were multifold: Writing an article blaming Saddam Hussein—not United Nations sanctions—for Iraqi deaths, and then advocating for Iraqi liberation. This made me responsible for "war-crimes and violating international law by indirectly causing the invasion of Iraq." Like thousands of others, I had also worked at the Pentagon and volunteered for duty in Iraq. At each university lecture, protesters worked to disrupt my speech. Some were young students, and others were older retirees, members of a group calling itself, "The Movement for Active Democracy." I was even accused of complicity in a cover-up of the 9/11 attacks. Among my crimes, the protesters pointed out, "[Rubin] is a Jew and a big supporter of Israel." Guilty as charged. I do not apologize for my religion, and I am also a big supporter of India, Turkey, Taiwan, Mali, and other democracies. Iceland is a small country. Rather than ignore the incidents, both newspapers and television reported it. I was already in Finland when I got an e-mail informing me that the police commissioner dismissed the lawsuit.

The incident would be laughable if it did not foreshadow a growing phenomenon seeking to criminalize debate that is sweeping progressive, libertarian, and antiwar groups at home and abroad. Blogger Juan Cole, for example, a popular anti-Bush pundit, demanded the FBI investigate how Walid Phares "became the ‘terrorism analyst' at MSNBC." On June 1, 2004, blogger Laura Rozen lamented that someone she disagreed with was not the subject of an FBI investigation. On September 20, 2004, libertarian Justin Raimondo urged the FBI to "indict the Neocon War Party for treason." Perhaps hyperbole, but it is dangerous to smear political opponents with death-penalty offenses...

Still, on an international level, Rice may want to smooth ruffled feathers. Career State-department officers may tell her it's the right thing to do; they have immunity. Offered a choice between mitigating opposition to the International Criminal Court or keeping debate free, the U.S. decision should be clear. Let's just hope Rice takes the right rather than the diplomatic option; then again, if she doesn't, her retirement could be in an Icelandic prison.

Several Western diplomats said there were signs Iran continued to pursue uranium enrichment research in secret and fear the goal is to acquire the capability to produce enriched-uranium fuel for weapons -- a charge Iran denies.

In its April report to the UN Security Council, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it took samples from equipment that had been acquired by a former research center at Lavizan-Shiyan. The center was razed in 2004 before IAEA inspectors could examine it.

The IAEA inspectors took swabs from vacuum pumps earlier this year which were subjected to microscopic particle analysis, diplomats said. Vacuum pumps are dual-use but are needed when enriching uranium with a cascade of interconnected centrifuges.

"Preliminary analysis by the IAEA showed traces of highly enriched uranium in the (pump) samples," a Western diplomat accredited to the IAEA told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The former physics center at Lavizan, which advised the defense ministry, acquired some dual-use machinery useable for uranium enrichment, including vacuum pumps.

A diplomat in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, confirmed the new finding but warned against exaggerating its significance: "It's no smoking gun. There could be many explanations. But it increases pressure on Iran to come clean about Lavizan."...

“The New York Times continues to ignore America’s economic progress,” blared the headline of an e-mail sent to reporters Wednesday by the White House press office.

Minutes earlier, another e-mail blasted CBS News, which has had an unusually rocky relationship with the White House since 2004, when CBS aired what turned out to be forged documents in a failed effort to question the president’s military service.

“CBS News misleadingly reports that only 8 million seniors have signed up for Medicare prescription drug coverage,” Wednesday’s missive said. “But 37 million seniors have coverage.” On Tuesday, the White House railed against “USA Today’s misleading Medicare story.”...

Palestinian author 'Adnan Kanafani: "I think martyrdom is the most noble sacrifice one can make for the cause - a cause pertaining to the essence of being, to life and death. This great people - the Arab people as a whole - has managed to shape a new culture from these ideas - the culture of martyrdom. The opponents try to bring us down from this honor, with claims about suicide bombers, terrorists, and so on. But we don't care about that, because we have rights, and we sacrifice our souls in order to attain these rights. Therefore, the martyrs are the vanguard of this nation. Because of the blood they have sacrificed, the very least we owe them is to always remain optimistic that victory will be ours one day."

[...]

"The Mother in Our Arab and Islamic History Has Always Sacrificed Her Children and Prepared Them for Martyrdom"

Ibrahim Za'rour, history professor at the Damascus University: "Martyrdom is the value that surpasses all values. The most exalted level in the elevation of mankind is when a person sacrifices his soul for the sake of something more precious - his homeland. Hence, when a person embarks upon martyrdom, he does so because he wants to protect the homeland, its identity, its culture, its continuity, and its future.

US Ambassador John Bolton derided the inclusion of Cuba to the council and said it proved that Washington's concerns about the new panel, which it voted against, were justified.

"What a joy," Bolton said sarcastically of Havana's election. "That simply says that the deficiencies from the previous commission may well now still be carried over, as we sadly predicted when we voted against this resolution."...

This produced mocking guffaws in my own newsroom, where some of the BBC’s greatest hits — or perhaps misses — remain fresh in the memory. There was the hagiographic send-off for Yassir Arafat by a BBC reporter with tears in her eyes and that half-hour profile of Arafat in 2002 which called him a “hero” and “an icon” and concluded that the corrupt old brute was “the stuff of legends”.

There was Orla Guerin’s unforgettably inventive spin on the story of a Palestinian child being deployed as a suicide bomber, which most journalists saw as a sickening example of child abuse in the pursuit of terrorism. Guerin had it as “Israel’s cynical manipulation of a Palestinian youngster for propaganda purposes”.

There was the disturbing case of Fayad Abu Shamala, the BBC Arabic Service correspondent, who addressed a Hamas rally on May 6, 2001, and was recorded declaring that journalists in Gaza, apparently including the BBC, were “waging the campaign shoulder to shoulder together with the Palestinian people”. Pressed for an explanation, the subsequent BBC statement said: “Fayad’s remarks were made in a private capacity. His reports have always matched the best standards of balance required by the BBC.”

There was the extraordinarily naive coverage of the London visit of Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al-Sudais, the predominant imam of Mecca, to open London’s largest new mosque. He was described as a widely respected religious figure who works for “community cohesion”, and a video on the BBC website was captioned “The BBC’s Mark Easton: ‘Events like today offer grounds for optimism’.”

The BBC must have missed his sermon of February 1, 2004, that said “the Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring, infidels . . . calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers . . . the scum of the human race whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs . . . These are the Jews, a continuous lineage of meanness, cunning, obstinacy, tyranny, licentiousness, evil, and corruption . . .”

These are isolated examples, but they stick longer in the memory because they are reinforced by a broader pattern of coverage that seems to play down that Israel is a democracy that elects Israeli Arabs to the Knesset and which does not engage in systematic terrorism and suicide bombing of civilians...

"We ask all the people in surrounding Arab countries, the Muslim world and everyone who wants to support us to send weapons, money and men," Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal said in a speech at a pro-Palestinian event in Qatar.

"You should not shy away from of this. This is resistance, not terrorism," said Meshaal whose group -- sworn to the destruction of Israel -- leads the Palestinian government.

Prominent Muslim cleric Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi told the event Muslims should boycott banks refusing to transfer funds to the Palestinians after Washington said it could penalize banks that help provide money to the Hamas-led government.

"We call on Muslims to boycott banks that do not transfer money to the Palestinians. The boycott would force them to cooperate," he told participants, referring to banks in Jordan and Egypt which he did not identify...

This wariness was expressed yesterday by the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, during a meeting with visiting Israel Defense Forces officers from the National Security College in Israel.

Echoing his boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bolton expressed concern that the international mechanism was meant primarily to transfer salary payments to more than 165,000 Palestinian civil servants. Among these are some 75,000 security personnel, who have not received regular payments in recent months and have been exacerbating the unrest in Palestinian society.

At a press conference with her counterparts in the Quartet on Tuesday, Rice said that "no country in the world, including poor African countries, relies on foreign sources in order to make payments to its employees."...

Moreover, a British, American, French, Russian, Lebanese or Cuban professor need not declare his or her opposition to Israeli policy in the territories. The political test seems only to apply to Israeli professors. It is difficult to see how this is not, on its face, racist.

Don't agree? Then do a simple "thought experiment." Suppose American professors organized a boycott of any professor from any Muslim country who does not sign a statement repudiating the policies of the government of Iran toward the nuclear fuel cycle. No Europeans, East Asians, sub-Saharan Africans from non-Muslim countries, or Latin Americans would be boycotted no matter how fervently they supported Iran and how devoutly Muslim they might be. What are the odds that the entire world wouldn't view that policy as unreconstructed racism of the worst sort? Exactly zero...

The EPF statement of award noted, “Canon Naim Ateek’s voice is heard around the world as a strong voice of faith and nonviolence. His message of nonviolence states, ‘as a Christian, I know that the way of Christ is the way of nonviolence and, therefore, I condemn all forms of violence and terrorism whether coming from the government (of Israel) or from militant (Palestinian) groups.’”...

By not demanding "absolute justice," he said, Palestinians are making a significant concession. They are seeking only "justice connected with mercy." For most Palestinians, he asserted, it means that they do not "seek destruction of the state of Israel and 100% of the land. They are only seeking the approximately 22% of the land that was in Arab control until the 1967 war: the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem."...

The attempt was thwarted on Independence Day when naval troops south of Ashdod became suspicious of three Palestinian fishing boats. The three boats fled after throwing a number of bags containing explosive devices into the sea.

A gag order on the incident was lifted Tuesday.

In an inspection of the area Sunday, navy divers pulled 11 bags from the water, which contained of total of 550 kilograms of standard explosive devices.

The damage such a high amount of explosives could have caused is immeasurable.

The explosives were smuggled in from Egypt, Navy sources believe...

According to the Saudi channel Iqra TV, Isma'il is the son of former Egyptian MP Sheikh Sallah Abu Isma'il, and spent some time in the U.S. with his mother Dr. Nawwal Nur, who lives in Los Angeles, with whom he preached and taught Islam there. In a July 15, 2004 interview with Iqra TV on the subject of 9/11, Isma'il stated that he believed that "these events [i.e. 9/11] were fabricated from the outset as part of the global groundwork for the distortion of Islam's image [...] a comprehensive global plan that includes a media aspect," and that "the authorities there [i.e. in the U.S.] don't want to conduct an investigation."...

..."The Jews are determined to own the media, in order to control the ears and eyes of the youth. Do you know that all those songs that appear in movies... The percentage of Jewish-produced video clips worldwide, according to statistics from 2003... Jews produce more than 82% of the video clips in the world. The Jews! These are not Islamic statistics, but statistics by the U.N. organization for media, culture, and science. Eighty-two percent of all attempts to corrupt humanity originate from the Jews. You must know this so that we can know what should be done...

The report said the problem was widespread throughout Liberia, a small country struggling to get back on its feet after a long and bloody civil war.

Save the Children based its findings on interviews with more than 300 people in camps for displaced people and in neighborhoods whose residents have returned after being driven away by war. They said men in positions of authority — aid workers and soldiers, government employees and officials in the camps — were abusing girls...

...Save the Children said Liberia and the United Nations should set up an office to investigate cases of the sexual exploitation and to work to ensure that the behavior stops, prosecuting the offenders, among other steps.

It also said United Nations workers accused of sexual exploitation should "go through judicial proceedings," and if found guilty, should not be sent elsewhere as peacekeepers.

Like other self-styled "mainline" Protestant churches that followed its lead, the PCUSA did not merely speak of divestment from doing business with Israel. Its resolution also added a pro forma call for divestment from organizations that profit from Palestinian terrorism. This was done, presumably, as an insignificant gesture toward "evenhandedness."

What the PCUSA leadership did not foresee was that the Palestinians would elect to power a terrorist organization openly devoted to the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel quickly cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority and called upon other governments to do the same. The USA, Canada and the European Union responded to Israel's appeal.

The Palestinians look to lose up to $2 billion a year and there could be no better moral justification for it than the PCUSA resolution...

The boycott motion, which was drafted by the southeast region of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE), will be brought to a vote at its annual national conference, which will be held May 27-29. It comes about a year after the last boycott by British lecturers.

In April 2005, the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) decided to impose an academic boycott on Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities, but subsequently reversed the decision. The two lecturers organizations are slated to merge at the beginning of June.

Unlike the previous boycott, which targeted two specific institutions, the current motion relates to all lecturers and academic institutions in Israel. Now that the University of Haifa has threatened the AUT with a lawsuit, the NATFHE motion is more cautious: instead of recommending the lecturers union boycott Israeli institutions, it calls on the union to suggest its members carry out the boycott...

In short, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt charted a bold course in defending the nation's security in 1940, when he did all of these things...

...As with so many issues central to the global war on terror in which the need for security must be balanced against individual liberties, there is no fool-proof answer to the questions raised by the NSA's surveillance program. Yet broad sections of the left have personalized this debate around President Bush. Their hatred and distrust of Bush drives them to see the administration's actions in the worst light possible. To that extent, it's important to understand how President Roosevelt -- a paragon of the left -- dealt with similar problems...

The resulting dissonance has had baleful implications. Today, in the querulous reactions of many European and American Christians to Israel’s unblinking refusal to submit to Arab terrorism, we have seen all too clearly the distorted moral priorities of a world prepared to welcome Jews only when they follow an ancient script, achieving tragic nobility through impotence and passivity—through sacrifice. Any Holocaust curriculum that does not move beyond Elie Wiesel’s Night will fail to teach mainstream American Christians the falsity and dangerous arrogance of that stereotype...

Salam Kusideh is one of a growing number of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship who have moved across the highway from Arab neighborhoods of Beit Hanineh and Shuafat in search of cheaper housing and a better quality of life in the Jewish suburb of Pisgat Ze'ev.

After eight months in his five-bedroom duplex, Mr. Kusideh is encouraging other Palestinians to follow...

..."I tell them the conditions are excellent here," the 38-year-old carpenter said without hesitation. "Everything is orderly."...

The economics of the Jerusalem housing market are making the move to Pisgat Ze'ev increasingly attractive for Palestinians. The two-bedroom apartment that the Kusideh family once rented for $400 a month in Beit Hanineh is going for more than $600.

Israeli banks, meanwhile, are willing to offer mortgage financing for home purchases in Pisgat Ze'ev, but not in Beit Hanineh, and Pisgat Ze'ev offers a much higher level of planning and services...

...Mr. Kusideh said he enjoys good relations with his Jewish neighbors, exchanging greetings and honoring holidays, such as by observing the socially imposed ban on vehicle traffic during Yom Kippur...

Despite the coverage of the protest, pro-Israel students are winning the battle for Israel at UC Berkeley and on campuses around this country. This does not mean that anti-Israel sentiment has completely disappeared or that Israel's detractors have given up. Our work to promote a safe Israel and a strong U.S.-Israel alliance will never be finished, particularly at a place like Berkeley. But I and countless other Berkeley students take pride in the quiet, effective and convincing work that we do to ensure that Israel will never stand alone.

With the mountainside cisterns contaminated, the nearest water was in an abandoned orchard a mile away. To get to it we had to run a snipers' gauntlet, up a steep zigzag path to the crest of the mountain, and then sprint down to the orchard on the other side. There, in the shade of the trees, was the well, its water murky but cool. We hauled it back in jerry cans, two to a man. And the only way to drink it was through a handkerchief so as not to swallow the bugs.

Clambering up the zigzag path on that late Friday afternoon, a sniper's bullet whistled past Mahler's face and sliced clean through a tree branch as thick as salami, just above his head. With a brittle crack, the severed bough struck his violin case so sharply it forced him to his knees. He looked up at me dazed. "My violin," he gulped. "It's shattered. I'm finished."

I GRABBED him by the shoulders and exhorted him to pull himself together. But he pushed me off, raised himself onto a rock, unstrapped the knapsack, and very gently pulled out his wooden violin case. It was cracked. Cautiously, he opened the lid and lifted out the instrument, turning it this way and that, sliding his eyes very slowly over every inch of it. To me, it looked as exquisite and delicate as a butterfly.

Mahler pursed his lips to blow off the grime, took the violin under his chin and, with closed eyes, meticulously tuned each string. Delicately he replaced the instrument, and returned the cracked case to the knapsack and strapped it onto his back. While so doing he said, "My violin is perfect. If I don't survive, give it to the Philharmonic."...

That’s why Brandeis’ hiring of Shikaki, honoring of Kushner, and displaying of Palestinian war propaganda are all in service of victory not only for the Palestinians, but for the global jihad. Brandeis has betrayed the principles on which it was founded; it is also abetting those whose ultimate goals involve the imposition of a draconian system that would deny equality of rights to women and religious minorities, and would dismiss the cultural monuments and intellectual achievements of the Judeo-Christian West as jahiliyya -- so much ignorance and trash. In that respect, Brandeis officials have not only betrayed its Jewish and American identity, but even its status as a University.

No one who loves genuine freedom, and who respects Judeo-Christian values, should hesitate to call them on these betrayals.

- This is the most radical resolution from a governing student body in 30 years, the satisfied leader of Venstrealliansen, Benjamin Jonsrud, says...

...The original proposal from Sosialdemokratene applied only to a boycott of Israel [Of course!]. Later, Øystein R. Sundelin from Moderat Gruppe made amendments that were supposed to include all occupying nations of the world. It was resolved with a meager majority of votes from MG, mainly comprised of members from The Conservative Party of Norway (H) and The Liberal Party of Norway (V), as well as from Venstrealliansen with members from The Socialist Left Party of Norway (SV) and Rød Valgallianse (RV), a far-left political party.

Sundelin is now concerned about the effects of the resolution:

- Why, then, did you go ahead with the proposal?

- My intention was to demonstrate the inconsistency of the Student Parliament. What is more, I do not have the capacity to look after the other representatives...

Israel given priority [Of course!]

Current leader of the Student Parliament Maria Veie Sandvik strongly denounces Kristian Meisingset's stern statements.

- Group leader Meisingset has to be responsible for the way MG votes and not blame others, she says.

She feels that the resolution is so wide-ranging that parts of it need to be given priority, primarily Israel [Shocking!].

- Judging from the debate in the Student Parliament, a priority of Israel is natural, Veie Sandvik, who is seeking an unambiguous stand from the Rector, says...

When word of the amendment leaked out, environmentalists were appalled. The wind farm proposal is supported by the leading environmental organizations, and they never expected to be sandbagged by one of their legislative heroes. Even if Kennedy would prefer to see Cape Wind plant its windmills in somebody else's sailing grounds, he has always claimed to support the development of wind power (''I strongly support renewable energy, including wind energy, as a means of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and protecting the environment" -- Cape Cod Times, Aug. 8, 2003). And what happened to all those righteous words about not throwing out the rulebook in the middle of the game?

If ever a project and its promoters have ''played by the rules," Cape Wind has -- and in spades. Its plans have undergone more than four years of scrutiny by federal, state, and regional regulators, with another year or more of evaluations, hearings, and studies to come. At least 18 government bodies -- from the Army Corps of Engineers to the Environmental Protection Agency to the Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management Office -- have been involved in reviewing the wind farm proposal. Cape Wind has had to surmount an astonishing variety of regulatory and due-diligence hurdles. So far it has successfully met every one...

...Cape Wind has invested millions of dollars in this project, and no small part of that cost has gone to dotting every legal ''i" and crossing every regulatory ''t." But if Kennedy gets his way, all of Cape Wind's time, money, and effort will have been for naught -- crushed in a naked abuse of political power. And it isn't only a Nantucket wind farm that will be dead, but a little more of the public's faith that the men and women it elects to office can be trusted to do the right thing.

For the first time since he became director of the Ramallah Hospital in 1998, Dr. Husni Atari said, the facility is running out of medicines, sterile dressings, and other disposables. None of his 346 doctors, nurses, and ancillary staff has received salaries from the Palestinian Ministry of Finance since February, he added in an interview...

To dedicate the act of murdering a stewardess, pilot or passenger to Allah in the course of committing such an act, as United 93's hijackers did, is to engage in behavior that is quite wide of the daily life of America and many other nations. Whether the Khobar Tower bombing, the USS Cole, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the bombings in Madrid and London, Bali, Jerusalem, the murder of Theo van Gogh, a great many people are being murdered in the service of Allah. In this respect, watching what takes place inside the confines of United Flight 93--and surely this movie is as close to the reality as one can imagine--is food for thought. Maybe just saying that you "know" Islamic terror exists out there isn't quite enough. If in 2006 we think that if Iraq would go away the world would not be too different than the world before September 11, then Moussaoui may in time prove right: "America you lost. I won!"...

Younan asked rhetorically, "What does the Middle East want? Democracy or justice?"...

...After the Bishop spoke, conference participants gathered in groups of eight for discussion. This was an intentionally different configuration from the presbytery teams. The groups were asked to consider: a question they have been pondering, a new insight they have gained, and the best idea they had heard for how to implement their learnings from the trip. Comments made during their reports back to the full group included:

• Bring Palestinians to the United States to share their culture [Like this?]
• Visit your congressman urging their support of Palestine
• Email or write to commissioners of the 217th General Assembly (2006) urging support of divestment
• Start an olive oil cooperative
• De-bunk the myth that the region is dangerous
• When presenting material be intentional not to talk to like-minded people. In other words, challenge yourself not to "preach to the choir."

But in a cruel historical irony, doing so required concentration -- putting all the eggs back in one basket, a tiny territory hard by the Mediterranean, eight miles wide at its waist. A tempting target for those who would finish Hitler's work.

His successors now reside in Tehran. The world has paid ample attention to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declaration that Israel must be destroyed. Less attention has been paid to Iranian leaders' pronouncements on exactly how Israel would be "eliminated by one storm," as Ahmadinejad has promised...

… that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Thus as Joshua London’s Victory in Tripoli elaborates in lucid prose, an aggressive jihad was already being waged against the United States almost 200 years prior to America becoming a dominant international power in the Middle East. Moreover, these jihad depredations targeting America antedated the earliest vestiges of the Zionist movement by a century, and the formal creation of Israel by 162 years—exploding the ahistorical canard that American support for the modern Jewish state is a prerequisite for jihadist attacks on the United States...

"Our enemies ... don't understand that a suicide operation ... is a natural right," the exiled leader told students in Damascus, adding that Palestinians live "under Israeli occupation and have the right to fight and defend themselves"...

No.

You would not demand that Israel disarm?

Since when has Israel been a threat to anyone? Israel just wants to be left alone and live in peace side by side with its neighbors. As far as I’m concerned, Israel never had any ambition to territorially go and invade, I don’t know, Spain or Morocco or anywhere else. And let me tell something else about Iran: Unlike the rest of the Islamic or Arab world, the relationship between Persia and the Jews goes back to the days of Cyrus the Great. We take pride as Iranians of having a history where Cyrus was the most quoted figure in the Torah, as a liberator of Jewish slaves, who went to Babylon and gave them true freedom for them to worship and in fact helped them build a temple. We have a biblical relation with Jews, and we have no problem with modern day Israel. As far as regional politics, I believe, I think many Iranians believe so, that as much as Israel has a right to exist, so should the Palestinians. They have to work the problem between each other. And we have no business interfering, and we need to help get as much stability in the region.

A democratic regime in Iran would be doing that, but a clerical regime in Tehran that sends money to Hamas and to Hizballah and to all the terrorists around the globe obviously is not promoting stability and peace, it is doing the reverse...

...In your Iran, Mahmoud Abdullah, the Afghan who converted to Christianity, would have every right to do that and the state would protect him from retaliation by radical clerics?

God, I hope so. I hope so. Because if we are basing our constitution on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that’s one of the most fundamental rights that any human being should have. I’m sick and tired of hypocrisy and all this dubious attitude that is so typical of our region. If you believe in something you say it, you don’t fool around. I mean, that’s where I’m coming from. I haven’t lived 45 years of my life to fool around with these things. If I’m willing to lose my life for it, hell I’m going to fight for these rights, otherwise it’s not worth it. Frankly it’s not worth it! I might as well forget about Iran and become a citizen and live my life in this country. No. I want to have the same rights you have over here over there. That’s what I’m fighting for! Otherwise why bother?...

Nasrallah did not name the groups in an extensive interview with the daily As-Safir, but Hizbullah is known to have close ties to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

"They (the Palestinians) have fighters and expertise. They can produce a missile by logging on to the Internet," Nasrallah said.

"What they need is financial, political and media support. And we do not deny that we help them on those fronts," he said.

It was the first time that the Hizbullah leader, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, publicly acknowledged funding Palestinian terrorist groups, an accusation made by Israeli officials.

Nasrallah said his group used to channel weapons to Palestinian militants but stopped in December 2001 after Jordanian authorities arrested three Hizbullah members carrying Katyusha rockets from Syria, bound for the West Bank...

The device consists of an array of up to five armour-piercing "explosively formed projectiles" or EFPs, also known as shaped charges. They are fired at different angles at coalition vehicles, resulting in almost certain death for at least some of the soldiers inside...

The nine men and three women returned their verdict on the seventh day of deliberations after reliving the September 11 attacks through weeks of harrowing testimony and evidence.

Jurors were stone-faced as the lengthy verdict form was read in court. Spectators, including some 9/11 family members, fell silent and Moussaoui showed no immediate reaction.

"America, you lost," Moussaoui stated, clapping his hands as he left the courtroom. "I won."...

• Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse.
• Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights.
• Immigrants are denied equal employment rights.
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens.
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service.
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.
• Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants) and hand them to the authorities.
• Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.

• On immigration generally, Americans want less, not more, immigration. Only 26 percent said immigrants were assimilating fine and that immigration should continue at current levels, compared to 67 percent who said immigration should be reduced so we can assimilate those already here.
• While the Senate is considering various bills that would increase legal immigration from 1 million to 2 million a year, 2 percent of Americans believe current immigration is too low. This was true for virtually every grouping in the survey by ethnicity, income, age, religion, region, party, or ideology thought immigration was too low.
• When offered by itself, there is strong support for the House bill: 69 percent said it was a good or very good idea when told it tries to make illegals go home by fortifying the border, forcing employer verification, and encouraging greater cooperation with local law enforcement while not increasing legal immigration; 27 percent said it was a bad or very bad idea.
• Support for the House approach was widespread, with 81 percent of Republicans, 72 percent of independents, 57 percent of Democrats, and 53 percent of Hispanics saying it was good or very good idea.
• When offered by itself, there is also some support for the Senate approach, thought not as much as for the House bill: 42 percent said the Senate approach was a good or very good idea when told it would allow illegal immigrants to apply for legal status provided they met certain criteria, and it would significantly increase legal immigration and increase enforcement of immigration laws; 50 percent said it was a bad or very bad idea.
• There were few groups in which a majority supported the Senate plan, even when presented by itself, exceptions included Hispanics 62 percent of whom said it was a good or very good idea and the most liberal voters (progressives) 54 percent of whom approved of it.
• When given three choices (House approach, Senate approach, or mass deportation), the public tends to reject both the Senate plan and a policy of mass deportations in favor of the House bill; 28 percent want the Senate plan, 12 percent want mass deportations; while 56 percent want the House approach.
• But when given a choice between just the House and Senate approaches, without the choice of mass deportations, the public prefers the House approach 64 percent version to 30 percent...

It began, I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty. This idea had organized the entire world, divided up its resources, imposed the nation-state system across the globe, and delivered the majority of the world's population into servitude and oppression. After World War II, revolutions across the globe, from India to Algeria and from Indonesia to the American civil rights revolution, defeated the authority inherent in white supremacy, if not the idea itself. And this defeat exacted a price: the West was left stigmatized by its sins. Today, the white West--like Germany after the Nazi defeat--lives in a kind of secular penitence in which the slightest echo of past sins brings down withering condemnation. There is now a cloud over white skin where there once was unquestioned authority.

I call this white guilt not because it is a guilt of conscience but because people stigmatized with moral crimes--here racism and imperialism--lack moral authority and so act guiltily whether they feel guilt or not...

Mr. Bowden subtitles his book "The First Battle in America's War With Militant Islam"--and he is certainly right in underscoring the entire saga as a formative moment for contemporary Islamic militancy. Sunni fundamentalism, as an ideology inclined to see terrorism as a legitimate activity, predated the rise of the Shiite Khomeini. But the ayatollah's triumph over the shah and over his primary foreign backer--the U.S.--globally supercharged Islamic radicalism...

A recent report by "Global Exchange" and "Code Pink" entitled "Iraqi Women Under Siege" concluded that "the occupation of Iraq has not resulted in greater equality and freedom for women" than they had under Saddam Hussein. Published by two radical feminist anti-war groups whose primary activities include protesting military recruiting stations, organizing anti-WTO protests and sympathizing with the regimes in North Korea and Cuba, this report echoes a long line of blatant pronouncements. Hillary Clinton who once said that after liberation there were "pullbacks in the rights that [women] were given under Saddam Hussein" and Howard Dean's infamous remark that "Iraqi women were better off under Saddam Hussein."

Anti-war revisionist liberals and radical feminists alike are trying their best to come up with comparisons of the Saddamist and post-Saddamist eras in Iraq with the aim of discrediting the historic liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein in 2003. With Iraqi women they think they have found a seemingly incontrovertible argument since Saddam, according to his apologists, was a "secular" ruler who gave liberal rights to women...

... Much of the anti-war propagandists' defense of Saddam as a champion of women's rights rests on his willingness to allow women to vote (for him), drive cars, own property, get an education and work. What they choose to ignore, however, is the systematic rapes, torture, beheadings, honor killings, forced fertility programs, and declining literacy rates that also characterized Saddam's regime. A few examples can only begin to illustrate the cruelty and suffering endured by thousands of Iraqi women.

One torture technique favored by Saddam's henchman and his sons involved raping a detainee's mother or sister in front of him until he talked. In Saddam's torture chambers women, when not tortured and raped, spent years in dark jails. If lucky, their suckling children were allowed to be with them. In most cases, however, these children were considered a nuisance to be disposed of; mass graves currently being uncovered contain many corpses of children buried alive with their mothers...

I am a Presbyterian, and I consider it neither good nor wise for a church to take such an activist stand. But I have also been puzzled by an unexpected development in our discussion of Presbyterian Middle East policy statements: the offices and committees of the PC(USA), mission co-workers, numerous Presbyterian spokespersons, and even the 216th General Assembly evidently felt the need to confront Christian supporters of Israel. It is a given that one would attempt to address potential arguments against one’s desired political position and, with luck, preemptively disarm them. The fact that these Presbyterian critics of Israel endeavored to do so was unsurprising. What was surprising, however, was their choice to identify as an enemy a philosophy virtually no one actually holds. The PC(USA) has apparently overtly tied our Middle East policy decisions to our opposition to what they identify as Christian Zionism...

A group of more than 100 Presbyterians left on Wednesday (April 26) and is expected to return to the United States on May 5.

The event is the culmination of three years of planning by the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, the PC(USA)'s Office of the Middle East and Europe, and the International Center in Bethlehem.

The purpose of the trip, which will involve teams from PC(USA) presbyteries, is to give participants a first-hand understanding of the situation in the region. It will include meetings with a variety of Israeli and Palestinian individuals and organizations and invite participants to plan ministries to be implemented upon the group's return to the United States.

Ninety-five participants represent 27 of the church's 173 presbyteries, in three- to seven-person teams...

The United States says it wants Iran's nuclear standoff with the West solved diplomatically but has refused to rule out military action.

"We have announced that wherever America does something evil, the first place that we target will be Israel," Revolutionary Guards Rear Admiral Mohammad-Ebrahim Dehqani was quoted as saying by Iran's student news agency ISNA.

The Islamic Republic has never recognized Israel and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map."

Dehqani said naval wargames held in the Gulf last month "carried the warning to those countries that threaten Iran, including America and the Zionist regime"...

The container's importers said their shipment includes sewing notions, hats and clocks. Customs officers however confiscated 300 telescopes, some of which have sights and infrared markers for long-range targets.

Security officials said the items are of good quality and had they reached the Gaza Strip they would have certainly improved terror groups' ability to hit IDF targets.

"We are speaking of a quantity that could upgrade the fighting capability of a whole brigade in the Palestinian Authority security forces. A telescope of this kind, fitted on an M-16 rifle, for example, improves the death ability of the weapon," customs officials said.

The Palestinian Journalists' Union said seven journalists in the Gaza Strip, mostly sympathetic to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, had received threats by e-mail, phone or fax -- made in Hamas's name -- to harm or kill them for their coverage...

...In recent years, some Palestinian reporters have been beaten over coverage, and a journalist who ran a government-funded magazine was killed in 2004. Victims of the violence said attackers came from various factions, including Fatah, and in one case, from Hamas. Members of the security services were also involved in some of the incidents, journalists said...

...Rather than face a retrial, the two sides agreed last month to a plea bargain in which Mr. Al-Arian pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of aiding members of the militant Palestinian group and agreed to be deported.

But any hope Mr. Al-Arian might have had of being deported quickly evaporated on Monday in the courtroom of Judge James S. Moody Jr. of Federal District Court. In a surprise move, Judge Moody sentenced Mr. Al-Arian to the maximum allowed under the sentencing guidelines, more than even the prosecution requested, and chided him for acts even the jury had rejected as Mr. Al-Arian's. The government had asked for the low end of the guidelines.

The judge continued to upbraid Mr. Al-Arian, whom he called a "master manipulator" for his connections to the Palestinian group, leading Mr. Al-Arian's wife to leave in tears.

Describing horrific bombings in Israel, Judge Moody said: "Anyone with even the slightest bit of human compassion would be sickened. Not you. You saw it as an opportunity to solicit more money to carry out more bombings."

He added, "The only connection to widows and orphans is that you create them."...

...After the sentencing, Mr. Al-Arian's supporters, who had lined up for a space in the courtroom, denounced the judge's action. They included clergy members from Christian and Muslim groups, family members and advocates for Islamic causes.

"I have been visiting with Sami Al-Arian every week in the jail for the last 14 months," said the Rev. Warren Clark, the pastor of the First United Church of Tampa [UCC!]. "I will tell you that the Sami Al-Arian that I know is very different from the Sami Al-Arian the judge described."...

I am writing in response to your communication expressing your views on H.R. 4681, the Palestinian Anti-terrorism Act.

To begin, my position is that I believe that we should not only provide no American aid to the Hamas-led government in the Palestinian territories, but should also actively oppose aid coming from anybody else. I am enclosing a copy of a letter I organized and had signed by 40 other Members of the House at a time when we thought the European Union might be prepared to give aid to Hamas. When, as we were about to send this, the EU announced that it would not do so, I sent them a letter thanking them for that.
The point I articulated in that letter is one that I will continue to argue strongly: namely, that giving into the notion that aid should be given to the Hamas government for humanitarian grounds will be, in fact, counterproductive on those very grounds. Perpetuating Hamas in power can only add to the misery of the people in the Middle East, particularly the Palestinians, who will be the major victims of their continuation in office because it will make impossible the achievement of a peace agreement that might otherwise have happened.

I have compared the argument for giving aid to Hamas to the argument we encountered 20 years ago against tough economic sanctions on South Africa. When I and many others supported those sanctions, conservatives, defenders of apartheid, and indeed Ronald Reagan, argued that this was unfair to the black people of South Africa because the sanctions would hurt them more than anyone else. Our answer was that short-term pain for those people was regrettable, but if it hastened the overthrow of apartheid, it would be in their interest. We were of course pleased to hear Nelson Mandela a few years later tell us that it was those sanctions that we voted for over Ronald Reagan's veto that played a major role in ending apartheid.

Hilou became the first female Christian-Arab MK when she was sworn in on April 17.

"I am particularly conscious of my position and the significance it carries because of my background," Hilou told The Jerusalem Post after her first week in office. "I am already involved on a number of issues and bills."

While most new MKs struggled to find their offices, only to discover that most of the electronic equipment didn't work, Hilou set up shop in the Interior Committee room, where she has already established herself as a regular for committees on women and family issues...

...It was only the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin that convinced her to leave social work and enter politics.

"I was in the square with my two youngest daughters the night Rabin was killed," she said. "It was so emotional... it provided the final push that convinced me that I had to become active to push change and work for peace."...

...Ufford-Chase's 1,500-word draft would ask the General Assembly to answer more than two dozen overtures on the 2004 resolution by taking divestment off the table – for the time being. The original resolution has been widely criticized by Jewish groups and Christians who believe that the PCUSA is unfairly singling out Israel for condemnation in its ongoing confrontations with Islamic Palestinians.

The gist of Ufford-Chase's proposal is that a task force, appointed by himself and the moderator of the 217th General Assembly, begin monitoring the fast-changing events in the Middle East.

That task force would work in conjunction with the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy. Ufford-Chase did not take note of the fact that ACSWP helped contribute to the worldwide denunciation of the PCUSA divestment policy by sponsoring a trip to the Middle East and having some of its members meet with terrorist leaders and praise them for their work....

There are more than two dozen overtures on divestment (ranging from endorsement to revocation), providing an opportunity for General Assembly commissioners to actually do their jobs and deliberate on the issue, perhaps, God forbid, even requiring complete and fair information. (Yes, I know this would be a departure from time honored tradition when it comes to Middle East issues . . . but it might be time for a change). Instead of encouraging commissioners to fulfill their responsibilities, the GAC has decided to recommend yet another task force. (What shall we call this one? Perhaps The Juden Hass Task Force?)

At best one could regard this as a delaying tactic – at least until one finds the devil in the details. First, and most importantly:

"The moderator’s proposal will not stall the work of the PC(USA)’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI), which is already meeting with executives of some of the targeted companies, including Motorola, which provides cell-phone service to settlers and to the Israeli military."

What a relief to know that such a task force would in no way interfere with the work of the MRTI in pressuring companies that do business with Israel. In other words, the divestment process (as laid out in Presbyterian polity) will continue apace. Since the very great harm of divestment is far more rhetorical than financial, this recommendation from the GAC would mean that the PC(USA)’s anti-Israel activism would remain in place...

In an April 25 letter to Israeli ambassador Aviv Shir-On, the director of the WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, Peter Weiderud, requested action by Israeli authorities and law-enforcement agencies to stop “abusive, unlawful and violent behavior by settlers toward Palestinians and internationals.”

On April 1, Silvana Hogg, a Swiss lawyer, was stoned by a young Israeli settler in the Tel Rumeida district of Hebron; he needed seven stitches for a head wound as a result. On April 20, in the same neighborhood, Karin Laier, a German social worker and Tore Ottesen, a Norwegian sociologist, were attacked by about 15 young settlers. They were bruised but weren’t seriously injured...

...Stressing that the root of the problem is “the practice of establishing, protecting and expanding settlements,” Weiderud also requested “concrete steps that lead to the complete withdrawal of all settlers from Hebron and return of settler-occupied properties to their Palestinian owners.”...

• If we trace the line between the West and the rest, Israel is on the same side as Europe, the U.S., Japan, and Australia. We defend the same values against the same enemies.
• Now it is imperative to defend our values and way of life against a new threat: Islamic extremism and terrorism. The new mission of NATO should be clear: to combat jihadism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
• If the Allies want to prevail collectively over the gathering threats, NATO must refocus itself on fighting terror, the major threat today. Indeed, this is an existential threat, if we bear in mind what Islamic terrorism plans for outsiders - "the crusaders and infidels" - and for Zionism, as well.
• If defending our own values against the radical Islamists is the future of NATO, we must change the way the Alliance is conceived geographically and open its doors to those nations that share our values, that defend them on the ground, and that are willing to join in the fight against jihadism. Thus, NATO should invite Japan, Australia, and Israel to become full members.
• Treating Israel as if it were not an integral part of the Western world is a big mistake that will affect our ability to prevail in this long war against jihadism. I think it is in our mutual interests to have Israel as a formal ally. The West cannot fight this radical tide without Israel.

The shells landed near the Iraqi village of Haj Omran, which is about five kilometers (three miles) inside the Iraqi-Iranian border, Iraq's Ministry of Defense said.

No casualties were reported.

Iran launched a similar attack on Kurdish rebel positions in the same area on April 21, also causing no casualties or damage, Kurdish officials said.

Kurdish rebels fighting Iranian forces operate from Iraqi territory and have been active recently, mounting attacks against Iranian army and Revolutionary Guard posts.