August 2006 Archives

Where's Spencer-for-hire when we need him? Seriously, there's nothing illegal about gathering signatures for a candidate you think might pull votes away from your opponent in November, but it's also no wonder that candidates are reluctant to admit to the practice.

“As a party we've never really had any problem getting our signatures,” said Ross, gubernatorial candidate of the left-wing Green-Rainbow Party...

The concern is we have only three and a half weeks (8 weekend days) left to collect signatures. Rain could easily cut petitioning days by 25-50%. A major commitment all around is needed if we are to securely qualify all four candidates for statewide office. The repercussions for the party will be very serious if we do not qualify. If we do not pull out all the stops starting now, we fear there is a real risk we will not...

But did Ross have some outside help?

On Tuesday, 2002 Green Party gubernatorial nominee Jill Stein told us she declined an offer of signature help from the republicans four years ago. And this time around?

Keller: I have been told that the Healey campaign helped you get your signatures, is that true?

Ross: Well, that's fascinating, not that we know of. I mean, all of our volunteers are Green-Rainbow volunteers that I know of.

But Ross acknowledges the Healey camp has been eager to see her involved in the race. “They were in touch with us when I was fighting to get into the media debate, the first one, the only one we've been excluded from, about backing our right to be in that debate.”

News agency Ansa reported the vice-president of the Jewish community in Rome had sharply criticised Tommaso Coletti, president of Italy's southern Chieti province and member of the centre-left "Daisy" party, for using the quote.

Countless photographs have focussed on the "Arbeit macht Frei" sign at Auschwitz to encapsulate the horror of the Nazi death camps.

"Work makes you free. I don't remember where I read this phrase but it was one of those quotes that have an instant impact on you because they tell an immense truth," Coletti wrote in the pamphlet, Ansa reported...

Barak also secretly asked Daniel Reisner, a legal adviser to Arab-Israeli peace talks, to determine whether targeted killings were legal. Reisner agonized for six weeks. "It was a feeling of -- what on Earth has happened?" Reisner recalled. "Instead of two states living amicably side by side, I have to write opinions on how and when we kill each other."

Reisner concluded it was legal, with six conditions: that arrest is impossible; that targets are combatants; that senior cabinet members approve each attack; that civilian casualties are minimized; that operations are limited to areas not under Israeli control; and that targets are identified as a future threat. Unlike prison sentences, targeted killing cannot be meted out as punishment for past behavior, Reisner said. In 2002, a military panel established that targeting cannot be for revenge, but only for deterrence. A panelist said it took six months and 20 meetings to reach that conclusion.

"It's not an eye for an eye," Dichter said. "It's having him for lunch before he has you for dinner."...

Those of us familiar with Amnesty International's nefarious anti-Israel agenda and notoriously "suggestible" investigative methodology wondered how it could possibly match such a breathtaking lie.

But we didn't have to wait long for AI to announce that Israel was guilty of a slew of war crimes for "widespread attacks against public civilian infrastructure, including power plants, bridges, main roads, seaports, and Beirut's international airport."

There are two problems with the Amnesty report and conclusion. First, Amnesty is wrong about the law. Israel committed no war crimes by attacking parts of the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon.

In fact, through restraint, Israel was able to minimize the number of civilian casualties in Lebanon, despite Hizbullah's best efforts to embed itself in population centers and to use civilians as human shields. The total number of innocent Muslim civilians killed by Israeli weapons during a month of ferocious defensive warfare was a fraction of the number of innocent Muslims killed by other Muslims during that same period in Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Algeria, and other areas of Muslim-on-Muslim civil strife. Yet the deaths caused by Muslims received a fraction of the attention devoted to alleged Israeli "crimes."

This lack of concern for Muslims by other Muslims - and the lack of focus by so-called human rights organizations on these deaths - is bigotry, pure and simple...

The following are excerpts from the article:

Hizbullah Recruits Children Barely 10 Years Old

According to Roz Al-Yusuf, "Hizbullah has recruited over 2,000 innocent children aged 10-15 to form armed militias. Before the recent war with Israel, these children appeared only in the annual Jerusalem Day celebrations, and were referred to as the 'December 14 Units,' but today they are called istishhadiyun ['martyrs']..."

"Hizbullah has customarily recruited youths and children and trained them to fight from a very early age. These are children barely 10 years old, who wear camouflage uniforms, cover their faces with black [camouflage] paint, swear to wage jihad, and join the Mahdi Scouts [youth organization]...

"The children are selected by Hizbullah recruitment [officers] based on one criterion only: They must be willing to become martyrs."

The Children Train to Become Martyrs

"The children are educated from an early age to become martyrs in their youth, like their fathers, and their training is carried out by the Mahdi Scouts youth organization... [This organization], which is affiliated with Hizbullah, teaches the children the basic principles of Shi'ite ideology and of Hizbullah's ideology... The first lesson that the children are taught by Hizbullah is 'The Disappearance of Israel,' and it is always an important part of the [training] program...

"The Mahdi Scouts organization was founded in Lebanon on May 5, 1985... According to the organization's website, the number of [scouts] who had undergone training by the end of 2004 was 1,491, and the number of scout groups which had joined [the organization] was 449, with a membership of 41,960. According to the organization's most recent statistics, since 2004, 120 of its members have been ready to become martyrs.

"The organization's goal is to train an exemplary generation of Muslims based on the [principle of] 'the rule of the jurisprudent' [a founding principle of the Islamic Revolution in Iran], and to prepare for the coming of the Imam Mahdi [the Shi'ite messiah]. Its members, including the children, undertake to obey their commanders, to bring honor to the [Muslim] nation, and to prepare themselves for helping the Mahdi [when he comes]."

"A Nation With Child-Martyrs Will Be Victorious"

According to the article, Na'im Qasim, deputy to Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, said in an interview on Radio Canada: "A nation with child-martyrs will be victorious, no matter what difficulties lie in its path. Israel cannot conquer us or violate our territories, because we have martyr sons who will purge the land of the Zionist filth... This will be done through the blood of the martyrs, until we eventually achieve our goals."

And, as you heard on my show, my answer to the ISB both times has been "Kiss My Burkha."...

Would you believe a Soviet Communist Party operative promoting the advantages of Soviet Socialism over the decaying capitalist West?

Just how much do the leaders of ADL know about Islam and Islamism, anyway? What sources do they use? Would you like me to recommend good books and articles on the subject? I hope that ADL offices have good in-house libraries. If you don't, let me know – I'll donate some of my books.

Does the ADL really believe in the much touted but nonetheless untrue "religion-of-peace" inventions with which we are being bombarded from almost every direction, save for a handful conservative media outlets?

Is ADL attempting to replicate the failure of Israel's own "Potemkin village" at Neve Shalom?

Are you familiar with the common concept of the "Prisoner's Dilemma"?

The zionists are very good at this, from AIPAC on down. Their strategy is to keep talking and talking and use a voice that is disproportionate to their numbers inside of anti-racist progressive organizations, in order to waste there time essentially and create a false impression of dissent when in fact the percentages of people against zionism in anti-racist organizations is overwhelming (of course).

Another strategy that the zionists use is to buy out elected officials. They are also very good at this - witness US congressional votes - no further comment needed !

A third strategy is to control the discourse in the media about zionism. They are also very good at this...

Careful about what you add to signature lists!!!! You will make the name invalid UNLESS the actual signer prints his or her own name...

That said, I would strongly discourage further communications on-list regarding this matter. The folks we hit up for signatures should print their very own names, or we will assume unnecessary risk.

Granting former President Khatami a visa at this time, coming on the heels of both Iran’s proxy war in Lebanon and it’s refusal to drop its nuclearization program will be viewed by the mullahs as a reward for their policy of confrontation and hatred toward the United States and her allies.

Then-Iranian President Mohammad Khatami (R) meets with Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, 2003 in Beirut, Lebanon.

There are those who argue that Mr. Khatami is a moderate, but when he said in February 2005, “…if you delve a little deeper and exchange the words of Bush and bin Laden, you will be unable to distinguish between the two,” - those are not the words of a moderate.

When he called Israel, “A parasite in the heart of the Muslim world,” - it was not a voice of moderation speaking.

Khatami has been invited to speak on his “Dialogue of Civilizations” initiative and on his views of the role of the three Abrahamic faiths. Yet, as far as the Jewish people are concerned, he has always denied the validity and centrality of Israel to Judaism, a fact embraced by the overwhelming majority of world Jewry.

So, with whom is he dialoguing?

We know that some argue that it is in the best interest of the United States to open a dialogue with Iran. However, that regime’s refusal to compromise and its continued sponsorship of international terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas are proof positive that now is not the time.

Please use this link to urge United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice not to grant President Khatami a visa.

Forced conversions in Islamic history are not exceptional—they have been the norm, across three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe—for over 13 centuries. Orders for conversion were decreed under all the early Islamic dynasties—Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks. Additional extensive examples of forced conversion were recorded under both Seljuk and Ottoman Turkish rule (the latter until its collapse in the 20th century), the Shi’ite Safavid and Qajar dynasties of Persia/Iran, and during the jihad ravages on the Indian subcontinent, beginning with the early 11th century campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni, and recurring under the Delhi Sultanate, and Moghul dynasty until the collapse of Muslim suzerainty in the 18th century following the British conquest of India...

...Since the war between Israel and Hezbollah ended two weeks ago, angry Lebanese have begun blaming the Shi'ite militant group for reopening the dangerous sectarian rifts.

``Hezbollah made this war and ruined the whole country. We paid in blood, in young men," said Maggie Haddad, 48, a snack bar owner who prominently signals her Christianity with a diamond-encrusted cross hanging over her shirt and by her uncovered head. ``As long as Hezbollah exists, and has weapons, there will be war."

There are as many conflicting views of the war with Israel as there are sects in the tangled ethnic and religious patchwork of Lebanon...

...In the small southern border village of Kfar Chouba, members of the Sunni minority complain in private about Hezbollah's growing power. Kassim al-Kadri, 25, swears angrily about the Hezbollah flags hanging in his village.

``When the Lebanese Army gets here, we'll take down the Hezbollah flags and throw them away," Kadri said, referring to the planned deployment of government forces as part of the UN agreement that halted the war.

But Kadri and his neighbors say they feel trapped and powerless. They are surrounded by Hezbollah villages, and most of their fellow Sunnis who could afford it left for the north long ago.

Members of the dwindling Christian population, concentrated in a handful of Beirut neighborhoods and a few tiny enclaves of the south, voice their anxiety even more vociferously.

``We didn't want war. Only one group wanted war: Hezbollah. They are not fighting for Lebanon; they are fighting for Syria," said Georges Abou Zeid, 31, manager of a clothing boutique in the Christian neighborhood of Matan...

University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer was in town yesterday to elaborate on his view that American Jewish groups are responsible for the war in Iraq, the destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure and many other bad things. As evidence, he cited the influence pro-Israel groups have on "John Boner, the House majority leader."

Actually, Professor, it's "BAY-ner." But Mearsheimer quickly dispensed with Boehner (R-Ohio) and moved on to Jewish groups' nefarious sway over Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who Mearsheimer called " Von Hollen."

Such gaffes would be trivial -- if Mearsheimer weren't claiming to be an authority on Washington and how power is wielded here. But Mearsheimer, with co-author Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School, set off a furious debate this spring when they argued that "the Israel lobby" is exerting undue influence in Washington; opponents called them anti-Semitic.

Yesterday, at the invitation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), they held a forum at the National Press Club to expand on their allegations about the Israel lobby. Blurring the line between academics and activism, they accepted a button proclaiming "Fight the Israel Lobby" and won cheers from the Muslim group for their denunciation of Israel and its friends in the United States.

Whatever motivated the performance, the result wasn't exactly scholarly.

Walt singled out two Jews who worked at the Pentagon for their pro-Israel views. "People like Paul Wolfowitz or Doug Feith . . . advocate policies they think are good for Israel and the United States alike," he said. "We don't think there's anything wrong with that, but we also don't think there's anything wrong for others to point out that these individuals do have attachments that shape how they think about the Middle East."

"Attachments" sounds much better than "dual loyalties." But why single out Wolfowitz and Feith and not their non-Jewish boss, Donald Rumsfeld?

"I could have mentioned non-Jewish people like John Bolton," Walt allowed when the question was put to him...

What I entirely missed, and what Milbank points out, is that listening to an IR specialist explaining the mechanics of political power and public opinion in the United States is akin to listening to a physicist explain the theory of evolution - they may be experts, but they are so far from their area of expertise, it's just absurd.

Exactly and precisely. Patton was one of the least PC military men who ever lived. He was controversial even back in WWII, when political correctness was hardly a gleam in the left's eye. But now even the military is far more PC than it ever was; in recent decades, the military has become more reluctant to make "the other bastard" die for his. Like it or not (and Jacksonians don't like it), the gloves are on when we've fought the wars of this century, at least so far.

One can only conclude that if the Palestinians, Hezbollah, and Iran had the weaponry the US has, they would not hesitate to obliterate anyone they perceive as having wronged them, shamed them, or gotten in their way. Their love of death is not limited to seeking their own deaths; they definitely embrace the death of their enemies.

And in a more Darwinian and less PC world, the Palestinians' love of death, their lack of advanced weaponry, and their aggressiveness towards an enemy who does possess that weaponry would long ago have resulted in their getting their wish: death. Their own deaths, and the death of their society...

Mohamed infiltrated the U.S. despite being on the State Department Terrorist Watch List, married an American, and became a U.S. citizen while training al Qaeda terrorists, including bin Laden himself. He then joined the U.S. Army and trained U.S. soldiers about Middle East politics and culture, while training members of the terror cell that bombed the WTC in 1993.

It's a real life epic that plays like a thriller as it takes you through twists and turns from Brooklyn to Khartoum, Afghanistan to Fort Bragg. "Triple Cross: Bin Laden's Spy In America" is the untold story of an ex-Egyptian Special Forces Major who slipped through every crevice of the U.S. intelligence community while working for bin Laden.

As we neared the mountains that surround Bagram my journey back in time continued. The small villages were replaced by compounds. These compounds appeared to be made of mud brick, and were themselves surrounded by walls of mud. Inside these compounds I could see several buildings, none of which had windows, electricity, or indoor plumbing. But what struck me the most was that inside the compounds there was green foliage, trees, and crops. The different shades of green would jump out at you due to the contrast with all the sand, dirt, and rocks that were outside the walls. When we entered the mountains some of the compounds were built right into the side of them. Every now and again I would see goat herders tending to their animals. As we moved farther into the mountains the compounds were replaced with small groups of tents. Again, every once in a while, I would see people and animals on the sides of the mountains, or in the valleys...

With the Internet, every second of disconnect counts and the embargo is much more powerful and easy to enforce.

The Iranian people are a great consumer of western culture (at home not on the street), Iranian scientists use the internet as a daily tool. Iranian propaganda also make large use of the internet – imagine it would all stop.

None can argue (as they did in Iraq case) that an internet embargo will cause food and medicine not to be available for babies – the Internet is a virtual (yet powerful) commodity that every Iranian would immediately notice when they get disconnected.

Like any embargo, the internet embargo would be able to hold a 100% block for 100% of the time but this is what nice about internet: Even a reduced bandwidth would immediately be felt. Even lack of 24/7 availability would be felt by every Iranian.

How to implement it is also simple:

• Disconnect of all communication links to Iran (any country that would try to keep such communication will be added to the embargo)
• Implementation of code (to be added to internet nodes (routers) ) that would block and discard any Iran bound or Iran originating traffic.
• Constant searches for new links (via another countries and domain names) that end up including Iranian content/ e-mails and adding those to the list of IP addresses that would be blocked.

The former president ripped British Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying his lack of leadership and timid subservience to President Bush lie behind the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the worldwide threat of terrorism.

"I have been surprised and extremely disappointed by Tony Blair's behavior," Carter told Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

"I think that more than any other person in the world, the prime minister could have had a moderating influence on Washington - and he has not. I really thought that Tony Blair, who I know personally to some degree, would be a constraint on President Bush's policies towards Iraq."...

Whatever success the U.N. Security Council would presume to claim, it cannot be said that Resolution 1701 has effectively addressed the direct cause of the fighting--the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser, 31, and Eldad Regev, 26, by Hezbollah, and the earlier abduction of Gilad Shalit, 19, by Hamas. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's call for the unconditional release of these soldiers has been ignored. Moreover, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, the terrorists have not only seized the soldiers as hostages for political blackmail, they have not allowed the Red Cross to visit them. Their families do not know their physical condition; they have no proof they are even alive.

And so now these families of Ehud, Eldad and Gilad are asking to meet with Kofi Annan. They wish to plead with the secretary-general to use the full weight of his moral authority to mobilize and intensify the efforts of the international community he leads--an influential body that has managed to compel two fierce armies to cease hostilities--to address this flagrant violation of humanitarian law.

On that score, these families are correct: The time has come for Mr. Annan to personally and aggressively intervene, and to insist publicly that, at the minimum, the Red Cross, or his personal humanitarian representatives, be given immediate access to these soldiers.

Will he? It seems unlikely...

A lawyer for the Islamic Society of Boston said the subpoena is part of routine evidence gathering for its defamation case against The Boston Herald, WFXT-TV (Fox 25) and advocacy groups that have questioned the mosque, including the David Project, a Jewish group.

Some civil liberties lawyers who reviewed the subpoena, however, expressed concern that it goes too far and could chill free expression.

ISB attorney Howard Cooper said “the appearance for the lawyer of the David Project on the Graham show is directly relevant to the issues before the court in the pending litigation, and this is why a subpoena has been issued simply asking for copies of the broadcast.”

But after reviewing the subpoena, attorney Harvey Silverglate, a Cambridge civil liberties specialist, described it as “extraordinary.” He noted that it also asks for materials used by Graham to support his remarks about the ISB, documents related to David Project lawyer Jeffrey Robbins’ appearance on the show and communications between Graham and other defendants or attorneys involved in the ISB defamation suit.

“Courts have to take seriously their obligation, their duty to protect the First Amendment, because civil litigation can be overwhelming and can really easily turn into harassment,” Silverglate said...

...North Carolina attorney W. Andrew Copenhaver, who is not involved in the defamation suit, said if he was defending WTTK in this matter he would argue the subpoena is a “fishing expedition.”

“They are trying to curtail legitimate public discussion on this matter,” said Copenhaver, who was referring to legal strategy. “They are going to try to punish people for talking about them.”...

Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.

This war was fought on cable television and the Internet, and a lot of official information was available in real time. But the specific military intelligence UNIFIL posted could not be had from any non-U.N. source. The Israeli press--always eager to push the envelope--did not publish the details of troop movements and logistics. Neither the European press nor the rest of the world media, though hardly bastions of concern for the safety of Israeli troops,
provided the IDF intelligence details that UNIFIL did. A search of Israeli government websites failed to turn up the details published to the world each day by the U.N.

Inquiries made of various Israeli military and government representatives and analysts yielded near unanimous agreement that at least some of UNIFIL's postings, in the words of one retired senior military analyst, "could have exposed Israeli soldiers to grave danger." These analysts, including a current high ranking military official, noted that the same intelligence would not have been provided by the U.N. about Israel's enemies.

Sure enough, a review of every single UNIFIL web posting during the war shows that, while UNIFIL was daily revealing the towns where Israeli soldiers were located, the positions from which they were firing, and when and how they had entered Lebanese territory, it never described Hezbollah movements or locations with any specificity whatsoever...

That advertisement was placed in a Melbourne newspaper.

Given that the ad called upon me to explain why I spoke in support of Israel, I am very happy to advise the Senate of why I did. The reason is that Israel is a beacon of hope and liberty in the Middle East. It is a great and robust democracy. At a time when it is being attacked by those who would seek to destroy it, Israel needs its friends. I am proud to say that, with Australia,

Israel has a true friend. The Australian people will always stand by the Israeli nation and the citizens of Israel.

I attended the rally to support freedom. I attended the rally to support the State of Israel and its citizens. I attended the rally to support Israel’s right to live in peace. But how is this peace to be achieved?

I had the privilege of leading a delegation to Israel in 1997, where I met Gideon Ezra. He was then a Likud MK and a former intelligence chief. He is now a member of Kaduna [sic] and is the environment minister.

When I talked to Mr Ezra he was at pains to leave me with one message. The message that he wanted to leave was: first comes security, then comes peace. Those words have really stayed with me since that time. In 2003 I was very fortunate to return to Israel as part of a government delegation and had the great privilege of meeting Prime Minister Sharon, as he was then. His message was the same: first comes security, then comes peace.

According to the Islam Channel, its vision is to present the "Islamic perspective" and act "as an interface between Muslims and non-Muslims to remove the misconceptions people have about Islam." The channel also intends to be "the world's choice among international broadcasters for authoritative and impartial Islamic information" and to target the English-speaking Muslim community in the U.K., which it states is 1.5 million in number.

Mahathir Mohammad: "What enabled the Israelis to do what they are doing now is the United States, so the main culprit is the United States, in particular the present government of the United States. I wouldn't blame all the Americans. A lot of Americans do not like this war, but their leadership advocates war, as a solution - not only to major problems, [but] even [to] minor problems - we have to kill people. These are really war criminals. That is why we think that something has to be done against the United States."

Yvonne Ridley, Interviewer: "What can you do against the United States? It's a very big country, and it has an arsenal of weapons greater than the next 27 collective armies."

Mahathir Mohammad: "Yes, there is of course, to this thing. When you do something to the United States they are going to retaliate. But the United States is not as powerful as it's made out to be. It is, for example, a bankrupt nation. It owes the world $14 trillion, and it is truly able to finance itself and the war and the supply of arms to Israel, through the money that is lent to the United States by rich countries, some of which are Muslim countries. And if you stop using the U.S. dollar... Even if you want to sell oil, you can continue to sell oil, but insist on being paid in euros, or yen, or whatever... If you do that, then the U.S. dollar will not be half the value that it has today, and if it doesn't have the value that it has today, it cannot spend money producing arms and supporting aggressive actions by the Israelis."

Yvonne Ridley: "So do you really think that there are Arab leaders who, if they had the will to change currency, that they could bring America to its knees?"

Mahathir Mohammad: "There may not be anybody who is willing to be high profile in this matter, but they can do this quietly. There are ways of doing this which would be just as effective, not sounding very belligerent."...

Mr. Esposito has long courted controversy — most recently when the Georgetown-based center he founded in 1993 accepted $20 million last year from (and took the name of) a notorious Saudi prince. Yet, the professor has somehow been able to maintain a relatively high reputation in academic and government circles alike.

That Mr. Esposito is still largely respected owes to the subtlety of his apologism. He acknowledges that there is radicalism in Islam, and he generally avoids defending the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah. Even as he argues for engaging Islamists, he does so without overtly endorsing their worldview. But Mr. Esposito skillfully downplays the threat posed by radical Islam, and as demonstrated by his close affiliation with Azzam Tamimi, who told a massive crowd in the UK on Sunday that "dying for your beliefs is just," he willingly associates with avowed cheerleaders of Islamic terrorism...

U.S. Marines screened thousands of applicants Aug. 11-14, 2006, in various regions along the western Euphrates River valley, to include the border city of Al Qa’im, Haditha, and Baghdadi – a small town just miles east of this sprawling U.S. air base.

The three-day event was the most successful recruiting/screening drive for U.S. and Iraqi forces in this region to date, according to Maj. Lowell Rector, officer-in-charge of the police transition team for Regimental Combat Team 7.

Police transition teams are teams of U.S. service members who mentor, train and oversee the establishment of Iraqi police forces throughout the province...

Even after the interviewer reminded you that Israel was the first to get attacked, you charged Israel with lacking “any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon.”

As someone who served in the White House as a spokesman for a President, I am reluctant to criticize another President, but in this instance my conscience compels me to do so.

Mr. President, your words are music to Hezbollah’s ears and your message is a blow to long-term peace...

Al Manar, launched in 1991, features news programming that promotes Hezbollah's positions and shows statements from the terror group and speeches from its leader.

Iqbal was held on $250,000 bail, though he was expected to be freed as early as Friday once he posts his home as collateral, his lawyer Mustapha Ndanusa said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen A. Miller had asked that Iqbal be held without bail, suggesting more charges were imminent.

"The charge lurking in the background is material support for terrorism," Miller told Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein...

Whatever side you take on that debate, the more interesting question is why the question of basing citizenship (in part) of ethnic descent only calls the right of Israel to exist into question.

My correspondent was unaware of any other countries that have an overt ethnic identity, but, judging by immigration laws, there are quite a few, and with a few exceptions (Armenia and Germany), their discriminatory immigration policies exist, unlike Israel's, without any justification resulting from persecution of that group.

For example, according to Wikipedia: "Japanese citizenship is conferred jus sanguinis, and monolingual Japanese-speaking minorities often reside in Japan for generations under permanent residency status without acquiring citizenship in their country of birth." Why does Japan have the right to exist as a Japanese state? Has this question ever been asked?...

...For a hundred years now, the world has been exposed to a dangerous lie accusing us of all humanity's downfalls, a claim that our very existence threatens world peace. This is the famous "Jewish conspiracy" whose objective is world domination, and is documented with great detail in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," published in every language in millions of copies. We haven't read it, or even bothered translating it into Hebrew.

Since World War II, we have not bothered to trace the methodical mind poisoning of hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who are being told that Jews pose an existential threat. The facts are apparent, evident in newspapers, studies and statistics...

The mayor, Jamil, and his sweet wife, were busy cleaning up around the house that was full of shrapnel and blown earth and black smoke. A tank projectile hit the front yard, just in front of the door, and drove its way all under the house into the back yard without exploding.

Word is that these are programmed not to explode until something hits them, such as a tractor or anything else that might come in contact with it. Similar strikes happened in other areas and killed many civilians.

Fayez, Jamal’s brother, and two of his sons and their wives watched the destruction of their houses and wondered why? We spoke with a neighbor, Boutros, who lost his house completely. So did his father.

Asked why anybody would target their houses, they answered, “Soldiers were sitting in their tanks doing nothing. Every now and then they would pick a house, target it ... and there goes that house into a heap of chaos.”...

Also in the "no-spin zone," Mr. Roth said, "With Israel, though, I don't believe that they're deliberately trying to kill civilians as a matter of policy." Yet in a letter to The New York Sun, he accused Israel of "slaughter," writing, "whether by design or callous indifference, Israeli bombing has killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians." In testimony to the U.N. Human Rights Council, his organization said, "In a few cases, the timing and intensity of the attacks, the absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on rescuers, suggest that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians."

Also in the "no-spin zone," Mr. Roth referred to a "20 page report" that he said his organization had put out on Hezbollah's attacks on Israel, blaming a New York Sun editor for missing the report as a result of not having looked at the Human Rights Watch Web site recently. In fact, a Human Rights Watch spokeswoman has since acknowledged that Mr. Roth was mistaken, and no such 20-page report existed.

Mr. Roth bragged on "The O'Reilly Factor," "we know how to cut through lies." It's training that might be useful for Human Rights Watch's board and donors in dealing with Mr. Roth. Some of them are starting to wise up. Mortimer Zuckerman, whose charitable trust is listed in the 2005 Human Rights Watch annual report as having given between $25,000 and $99,999 to Human Rights Watch, told us he thought Human Rights Watch's treatment of Israel's actions in Lebanon was an "outrage." "Human Rights Watch has lost all moral credibility," he said...

This reiterated appeal to the Sub-Commission for an unqualified condemnation – by a resolution or a brief chairman’s statement – of “any call to kill, to terrorize, or to use violence in the name of God or any religion” is unlikely to be heard by this sitting, moribund UN body. Similar calls for such a clear condemnation have been made since 2003 to the defunct Commission on Human Rights and its Sub-Commission by several NGOs: AWE, International Humanist and Ethical Union, Association of World Citizens, and World Union for Progressive Judaism...

"This is a gift from Allah. We wish this young dog will go directly with no transit to hell," Abu Nasser said...

By action. We have performed various tasks that have shown the locals that we do what we say we are going to do. There was a large amount of debris and trash in the streets of a local housing complex. I said my team would set about to finding a solution to get rid of the trash. It was a health issue that we took seriously. What we ended up doing was hiring the people of the complex to pick up their own trash and dispose of it away from the complex in an appropriate manner. It provided a solution to the problem and provided jobs to over 50 local men and financial gain for their families. Actions - they speak volumes in our field.

B5: How did you come to be called "Sheik" and which tribe were you inducted into (and why)?

My best guess is that it is because I care about the locals as I would my own family. Sheiks are leaders of tribes, and tribes are families. The members of my Civil Affairs team have all become members of the local "tribe" and are accepted as family. All of my Marines are constantly looking for ways to improve the locals’ lives while ensuring the solution is an Iraqi one. We want them to help themselves, but sometimes that requires us to show them how...

Abbas had planned to deploy several hundred PA policemen and security officers in an attempt to stop the armed organizations from firing rockets at Israel, the officials said, noting that the proposed move had won the backing of the US and Israel.

"Those who are firing Kassam rockets at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip are acting against the interests of the Palestinian people and are providing Israel with an excuse to continue its aggression in the Gaza Strip," said one official. "President Abbas has a serious plan aimed at stopping the rocket attacks, but the armed groups are refusing to cooperate."

Last week, Abbas announced that the Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip had accepted his call for a unilateral cease-fire with Israel. The announcement came after a series of meetings Abbas held in Gaza City with PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and a number of Hamas officials.

Another PA official told the Post that Hamas was the only group that had accepted Abbas's proposal to halt rocket attacks. "The main problem we have is with Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, and with Islamic Jihad, which have rejected the cease-fire proposal," he said.

According to the official, Abbas and the rest of the Fatah leadership have almost no control over the various Fatah militias operating in the Gaza Strip. "Fatah has at least seven or eight armed groups in the Gaza Strip and some of them are receiving financial aid from Hizbullah, Syria and Iran," he said. "The situation in the Gaza Strip is very problematic."...

Il Mattino newspaper reported that the 'arsenal' was discovered during a search of a ship registered to an unnamed ex-Soviet republic which was travelling from Saudi Arabia to the US east coast.

In addition to 70 AK-47 assault rifles and plastics used in explosives, the shipment also contained launch pads for rockets, it said.

An inquiry is under way with the participation of US secret services, said an AFP report.

The report could not be confirmed.

Said Leo Adler, Director of National Affairs, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, "The fact that investment decisions will now be tied to Israel's right to be a Jewish State is promising; it means that the UCC has recognized the evil that Israel has been struggling against.

"Now we need to help the UCC understand that a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian border issue depends on the cessation of terrorism and the replacement of the Palestinian culture of hate and death with a climate of acceptance of Israel. That is where the Church's investments can best be utilized," he added.

...Mas'oud Shoja'I, exhibition curator: We have received 1,193 works from 61 countries. This proves that people throughout the world, and cartoonists in particular, know how to distinguish between the oppressor and the oppressed.

Reporter: In the time that elapsed between the announcement and the opening of the exhibition, Zionist circles severely attacked the Holocaust exhibition website twice. The exhibition's management received thousands of threatening e-mails and offers to money to prevent the exhibition, but to no avail. Nothing could prevent the exhibition...

...The participation of renowned cartoonists, such as the Australian Louis Pelder (sic), Carlos Latuff from Brazil, and Ekton (sic) from Turkey, shows that the presentation of the Holocaust issue has been very significant and effective...

...Holocaust - the collective burning of people alive - was mentioned twice in the course of history. The first was in Yemen, in the time between the prophecies of Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad. Back then, many Christians were burned alive, at the king's decree, because they refused to renounce Christianity and become Jews. After World War II, claims about a holocaust were raised for the second time in history. This was nothing but a myth - a myth about the killing of six million Jews. Elham Gouran, IRINN.

The party had been told it would be allowed to bury three "martyrs" at the Naqoura town cemetery inside the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) compound, but only if there was no flag-waving or political sloganising.

When the chanting procession, several hundred strong, reached the gates, it found the way barred by cruci-form steel tank traps. Mourners argued with the French guards, but failed to gain entry.

A mob of young men then dragged the barriers away and the UN opened the gates. "They will eat us alive," said a middle-aged official as the throng surged in.

A column of black-shirted men carried the three coffins to the graveyard. They waved yellow Hizbollah banners and portraits of the movement's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and yelled anti-Israeli and anti-American doggerel...

The animal was found near power lines along Route 4 on Saturday, apparently struck by a car while chasing a cat. The carcass was photographed and inspected by several people who live in the area, but nobody is sure exactly what it is.

Michelle O'Donnell of Turner spotted the animal near her yard about a week before it was killed. She called it a "hybrid mutant of something."

"It was evil, evil looking. And it had a horrible stench I will never forget," she told the Sun Journal of Lewiston. "We locked eyes for a few seconds and then it took off. I've lived in Maine my whole life and I've never seen anything like it."

For the past 15 years, residents across Androscoggin County have reported seeing and hearing a mysterious animal with chilling monstrous cries and eyes that glow in the night. The animal has been blamed for attacking and killing a Doberman pinscher and a Rottweiler the past couple of years...

Yavuz Özoguz from Delmenhorst [near Bremen] hosts one of the busiest Internet platforms for Muslims in Germany. He says that Muslim-Markt can boast 50,000 to 70,000 visitors per week. 2005 he had written a prayer in one of his Internet fora, which cursed the author and Islam-critic Hans-Peter Raddatz. The disputed lines go like this: "And if Mr. Raddatz is a hatemonger [literally: Hassprediger=preacher of hate] and liar, then the almighty creator may punish him for his crimes…" [I add the German text for clarity: "Und wenn Herr Raddatz ein Hassprediger und Lügner ist, dann möge der allmächtige Schöpfer ihn für seine Verbrechen bestrafen ..."]

Raddatz understood the item, declared to be a prayer, as a call for murder and took Özoguz to court. The Regional Court Oldenburg refused to proceed with the trial against Özoguz. The "prayer" is, according to the court, no call for killing Hans-Peter Raddatz. Although punishment is mentioned, that implies, so the court, an appeal to God in the afterlife... The judges didn't recognise a call for other Internet surfers to commit a crime...

...His language betrays Özoguz, so Müller, head of the competence team for extremist Islam of the Stuttgart [state of Baden-Württemberg] Office for the Protection of the Constitution. He uses for the German author the same vocabulary ("liar", "criminal") like for the writer Salman Rushdie who is living under the threat of a "death fatwa" or for the Dutch director Theo van Gogh who was murdered by an Islamist… Apparently, reminding of a historical pattern is enough "to inspire potential perpetrators".

But the Oldenburg court wouldn't even regard epithets like "liar" and "hatemonger" as defamation of Raddatz. After all, hadn't the writer "frequently criticised Islam harshly". The author, who repetitively denounces a pro-Islam cartel in politics and society and who polemises against Islam's "useful animals" ("Islam-Nützlinge") is annoyed: "It's your own fault" seems to sum up the judges opinion.

Raddatz is subject to Personal Security

Since the Internet-threat, Raddatz is living under personal security and has to report any travelling to the police. Funny enough, so he says, since this threat all other threats have ceased...

Is it too much to ask NPR to restrain itself from promoting this anti-Semitic, home-grown religious fascist? Farrakhan's history is so notorious I don't think it necessary to elaborate.. (He distributes the Protocols, and falsified histories blaming Jews for slavery, he promotes bizarre conspiracy theories involving Jews and Israel, promotes violence, homophobia, etc.)

The audio.

The cluelessness of some people with respect to Farrakhan is a shocking analogue to what's going on in Europe. He is so clearly ultra-reactionary, racist, homophobic, sexist, with fascist overtones. Yet there's Cornel West calling him a progressive! Good God...how oblivious can Cornel West and Tavis Smiley be?

What is so frightening is how similar this is to the sounds from the Middle East today. Ahmadinejad — dismissed by "sophisticated" academics as a blowhard — calls the Holocaust a myth. Indeed, there is no Jewish conspiracy theory too outlandish in the Muslim world. Huge numbers of Muslims — even 45 percent of British Muslims — believe that the Jews were behind 9/11. Theories that the Mossad is behind every bad headline, from the Indonesian tsunami to bad soccer performances, are common on the Arab street. According to Herf, this is only the second time the world has seen this sort of radical anti-Semitic paranoia. And, again, too many in the unspotless West are saying, "they can't be serious."

In maps, textbooks, lectures, and other teaching materials used in the instruction of Arabic, Israel didn't exist, and the overarching watan 'Arabi (Arab fatherland) was substituted for the otherwise diverse and multi-faceted "Middle East." Curious and misleading geographical appellations, such as the "Arabian Gulf" in lieu of the time-honored "Persian Gulf," abounded. Syria's borders with its neighbors were marked "provisional," and Lebanon was referred to as a qutr (or "province") of an imagined Arab supra-state...

This mobilizing effort represents a marked contrast with mainstream Jewish agencies that often organize their own Israel solidarity rallies rather than assert themselves as a reactive counter presence...

...These lies have exposed the true and hideous face of the blood-suckers who were described by Filmange in his book The Treasure Hidden in the Talmudic Laws [sic], which tells how [the Jews] planned [to prepare] a matzo [unleavened Passover bread] using human blood. [2] If we follow events, the most important thing [that we discover], in my opinion, is that the war going on [today] plants hatred in the next generations, as though one of its goals is to perpetuate the conflict for many years to come.

A number of questions have been echoing in my mind. I tried to put them out of my mind several times, but they would not let go: Why do these foreigners come from all over the world, [speaking] many different languages, [and settle] in this small and narrow region of Palestine, in order to create so much mayhem and spill innocent blood in such a stupid manner? Why do they so unjustly insist on harming and rejecting the peace process, attacking their neighbors and occupying their lands, [while] constantly hollering that it is they who are threatened and oppressed? [Why do they insist on] destroying property, killing people, keeping the [entire] world busy [with the conflict], and violating all the principles accepted by the human [race]?...

...All the Lebanese victims of the [Israeli] crimes were civilians, while those killed on the enemy's [side] were all soldiers. This is reality that speaks for itself, and not [empty] talk [that comes to] justify [actions], and will later be exposed as lies...

Some 84 senior film industry members signed the statement, published in the Hollywood Reporter newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, and the Variety newspaper.

Among the signatories: Sylvester Stallone, James Woods, Bruce Willis, director Ridley Scott, tennis player Serena Williams, Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Dennis Hopper, William Hurt, Josh Malina, Kelly Preston, Danny DeVito, Don Johnson, and media tycoon Rupert Murdock...

...The statement said that if terror around the world is not stopped, chaos will rule and innocents will continue to die. The statement called for terror to be stopped at any price.

Consul General Danoch is continuing with his PR activities, and on Wednesday night he briefed the heads of the William Morris agency on the recent events in Lebanon.

Actor Adam Sandler was present at one of the many briefings the consul general gave this week. At the end of the briefing, Sandler announced that he would personally donate USD 100,000 to the children of the north and south, and about 400 Playstation games purchased by the actor are expected to be transferred to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem in the coming days.

The following are excerpts from Gen. Gul's statements during the August 8th press conference on Al-Jazeera:

Gen. Hamid Gul: "From Ben Gurion to Netanyahu, every Israeli leader has said that Pakistan is their number one enemy."...

..."Pakistan was established in accordance with the ideology of Al-Madina. This is a widely accepted ideology and theory, because all other ideologies are false. These Israelis know this. When Al-Madina was established, it was established next to [the Jewish city of] Khaybar. Of course, as long as Khaybar was not destroyed, Islam did not spread.

"When Mel Gibson, in one of his movies, played a role that was anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish, the Jews claimed that he was an anti-Semite. That American actor, Mel Gibson, said that the Jews caused all the wars. Now he is being sued. Therefore, all the wars, World War I and II, and others... Even at the advent of Islam, the Jews would incite the polytheists against the Islamic state in Al-Madina.

"The Jews have always caused the wars. Mecca was only conquered after the destruction of Khaybar. Mecca was not captured in battle. This indicates that the war was not against the polytheists. Even today, our war is not against America or Europe. Our basic war is against Israel, or the so-called State of Israel. When Pakistan was established, so was India, but we didn't know that the Jews... [Their state] was established along with ours. It is our main enemy. Pakistan was established in 1947 and Israel was established in 1948. It is either us or them. We cannot live together."

Streaming TV in Arabic - Al Jazeera and Al Manar TV now free online.

[urls removed]

You will require high speed internet connection for good viewing...

The Nazis managed to convince millions and millions of Frenchmen and Poles, Belgians, Norwegians etc. and, yes, Brits and Americans that, since they were fighting a common enemy, the Jews, they weren’t really the mortal enemies of France and Poland and Belgium and Norway and England and the US. Untold millions were eager to believe that Germany wasn’t really threatening them and their countries, that the Germans didn’t really want to conquer, exploit and kill them. Why? Because they either thought that they could make a common cause with the Nazis against the Jews, or remained indifferent, neutral and defenseless because, being indifferent to the fate of the Jews, they believed it was none of their problem. Many of them even turned against those in their own countries who wanted to fight the Nazis and blamed them for putting everyone else in danger just to “protect the Jews”.

In short: if the Jews were used in the beginning as scapegoats, their main use throughout the war was as a tool to “divide and conquer”. Thanks to their sincere or opportunistic ant-Semitism the Germans were able to paralyse important forces in the countries and societies they wanted to defeat and submit...

I would know. For six years I was the literary editor of Tikkun magazine, a leading voice for progressive Jewish politics that never avoided subjecting Israel to moral scrutiny. I also teach human rights at a Jesuit university, imparting the lessons of reciprocal grievances and the moral necessity to regard all people with dignity and mutual respect. And I am deeply sensitive to Palestinian pain, and mortified when innocent civilians are used as human shields and then cynically martyred as casualties of war.

Yet, since 9/11 and the second intifada, in which suicide bombings and beheadings have become the calling cards of Arab diplomacy, and with Hamas and Hezbollah emerging as elected entities that, paradoxically, reject the first principles of liberal democracy, I feel a great deal of moral anguish. Perhaps I have been naive all along...

After UN Security Council resolution 1701 calling for a truce was carried Friday, Aug. 11, the heads of the regime received two separate evaluations of the situation in Lebanon – one from Iran’s foreign ministry and one from its supreme national security council. Both were bleak: their compilers were concerned that Iran had been manipulatively robbed of its primary deterrent asset ahead of a probable nuclear confrontation with the United States and Israel.

While the foreign ministry report highlighted the negative aspects of the UN resolution, the council’s document complained that Hizballah squandered thousands of rockets – either by firing them into Israel or having them destroyed by the Israeli air force.

The writer of this report is furious over the waste of Iran’s most important military investment in Lebanon merely for the sake of a conflict with Israeli over two kidnapped soldiers.

It took Iran two decades to build up Hizballah’s rocket inventory...

In the same way that the Western world sees Iran as a primary force spreading Islamist ideology and views Hezbollah as an arm of Iran, the Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah portray the United States as the leader of world imperialism whereas Israel plays the role of proxy of the United States in the Middle East.

Throughout the war in Lebanon, Hezbollah TV (Al Manar) has been running anti-American hate clips, while the PA media continues its campaign of hatred against the US, focused on portraying the US as the imperialist threat, responsible for wars and international conflicts.

The Al Manar videos show US President George W. Bush – called the “Master of State Terrorism” – holding an ax, along with clips of America dropping the atomic bomb, scenes from the Vietnam War and a B-52 releasing a bomb. They also portray US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton wearing a Nazi armband and a Hitler mustache, as the word “Nazi” is shown on the screen. The US is defined as “the Great Satan”.

The Palestinian media presents the US as the leading imperialist nation. Note that portrayals of the US as "leader of the war against the world” and "harms all of mankind," were not responses to the current war as both were said in the days just prior to the war. This Palestinian Authority 'imperialist' label for the US has been a constant theme in PA ideology for years, and is not dependent on specific international events. In summing up the war, the PA daily wrote yesterday that the Israeli response to the Hezbollah attacks was decided in Washington: “No Zionist politician can doubt who made the decision to attack Lebanon … Since this [attack] is the supreme policy that is organically connected to the direct American interest.”

To see the scenes from Hezbollah hate-USA clips, click here or on the pictures.

The following are the statements from the Palestinian media. Note: the PA media has not been transferred to the Hamas and remains under the control of Mahmoud Abbas.

“Who leads wars...in this world that are meant to destroy the universe and to terrorize? This is America! Who produces means of terror and destruction in this world other than America?.. Who builds prisons and adopts a policy of human rights violations other than America?...Who deprives aid to the poor of the world except America? What weapons were used to murder the family of the girl Ghaliya if not American weapons?...Today, America has become the leader of the war against the world.” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 1, 2006]

“This attack harms all of mankind, because it is barbaric. It is motivated by primitive ethnic motives which are nourished by a dinosaur empire, that is the United States ... which described the current events as self-defense.” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 3, 2006]

“No Zionist politician can doubt who made the decision to attack Lebanon – whether it was the Zionist entity or the administration of tyranny in Washington. Since this [attack] is the supreme policy that is organically connected to the direct American interest.” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 15, 2006]

They have become our ongoing psychoanalysis. There might be a demand for this when we've got the luxury of sitting back and thinking about our feelings, not when we are forced to get up and think about what to do now.

Israelis paid no attention this time to "stop shooting, start talking," because there was no plan behind the slogan, no debate about now-existential problems.

What kind of Middle East will we have after the Hezbollah War? How do we respond to the threat of missile fire at our civilians, weapons that could contain biological or chemical weapons the next time around? What will this war do to Syria's and Iran's standing in the region?

Anyone failing to have constructive proposals for these questions is simply irrelevant...

But, believe it or not, the Other actually exists apart from our own discourse. This may be a real philosophical shock to these new academics, and I don't want to upset anyone, but it now seems that there among those many others out there, some have built missile bases, or so rumor has it, and apparently these missiles have been outragously, outside the boundaries of our Israel-Occidental discourse.

So perhaps it really is a good idea to listen to the other side. And to remember that others are not just representations, nor are they submerged behind our own representations. Not all of these others are oppressed angels. They are human beings, there's good and bad in them, and some of them want peace while others can act with astonishing barbarity.

In the current situation we're facing we would do well to concern ourselves with the barbarians among them, because they pose a very real and non-discursive danger at the moment. And Because a new world has been created around us, a world where the idea that only the West is oppressive looks a little pale in light of the rising wave of Muslim fascism.

Hello? Does anyone on the "radical" discourse-oriented naval gazer left remember that there are actual other people in the world?

You claim that Israel's conduct violates traditional Jewish values, and you celebrate yourselves as the true defenders of these values. Oddly, you invoke them only for the purpose of announcing your abhorrence of Israel and its supporters in the Jewish community. Your deep concern for Jewish principles of justice and compassion do not lead you to step forward as Jews in order to condemn the genocide in Darfur, the blood-letting in the Congo, the massacres in Chechnya or any other cases of massive human rights violation far surpassing the brutality of Israel's occupation of the Palestinians. To us it is clear that you wrap yourself in the flag of Jewish concern solely for the purpose of avoiding the tidal wave of irrational hostility to Israel as a country that has now moved from the fringes of political opinion to the mainstream of public discourse in Britain. You respond to the distortions, half-truths and libels concerning Israel and Jews that are now common currency in large segments of the British media by embracing them rather than subjecting them to critical scrutiny. In this way you seek to retain your membership in fashionable society. The perverse parodies of Jewish ritual that you stage for political effect compound the ugly absurdity of this exercise in self-ingratiation...

The secular mainstream daily Hurriyet reported that the survey results showed anti-Americanism on the rise among Turks. While Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was chosen by 25% of respondents as the most trusted leader, President George W. Bush came last, with only 3%.(1)

Hurriyet's Ertugrul Ozkok warned in his column that Turkey was becoming the most fanatical and hostile country towards Christians in the Islamic world, pointed out that this anti-Western trend was evident among secular ultra-nationalists as much as among Islamists, and opined that Turkey was headed towards catastrophe.(2)

The centrist, secular daily Sabah reported that there was widespread disbelief in Turkey that Arab terror groups were behind the 9/11 attacks.(3)

Since the outbreak of fighting, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's has repeatedly blamed Israel.(4)

Turkey's Islamist media voices the jihadi views of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizbullah in headlines, accuses Israel of using chemical weapons, and calls on the Turkish people to attend mass rallies against Jews, the U.S., and the U.N. The secular media – with the exception of a few columnists – has expressed similarly hostile views.

Some of the Turkish media likens Israel to Hitler and the Nazis, denies or justifies the Holocaust, and blames the Jews for everything wrong in the world. The U.S. is often portrayed as the "Great Satan" and as a bloodthirsty vampire that plans to occupy and divide Turkey, while Hizbullah and Hamas are described as legal organizations fighting to defend their homelands...

To: United Nations

The Hezbollah War was brought on by a terrorist organization that hijacked the sovereign state of Lebanon, a member of the United Nations. Hezbollah, with the assistance of Iran and Syria, defied Security Council Resolution 1559 which, among other things, “Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias”.

Hezbollah launched this war against Israel, a democratic and sovereign state, and a member of the United Nations. Hezbollah is neither a state nor an official body belonging to one. Lebanon was to some degree an accomplice to its own loss of sovereignty by failing to act to protect it and failing to return to the Security Council for help. The UN Security Council failed to discharge its obligation. It allowed Hezbollah to entrench itself in Southern Lebanon and to spread its terror to the people of Lebanon.

Both Israel and Lebanon have suffered great loss of life as well as widespread physical damage as a result of this war started by Hezbollah. It is, therefore, incumbent upon the world community, which stood aside while Hezbollah armed and trained for war, to provide reparations for the damage and destruction brought on by the aggression which sprang from Lebanese territory. We therefore call upon that community to bear the cost of rebuilding Israel in addition to Lebanon. Israel, which had withdrawn from Lebanon some years ago, was forced to engage in a defensive war to save the lives of its citizens. We further call upon the world community, through the United Nations, to seek indemnification for the damages from Iran and Syria the controllers of Hezbollah.

...The latest Muslim encroachment to the Temple Mount is at the “straight joint” and the Ophel road at the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount. The “straight joint” is a masonry seam marking the end of the pre-Herodian Temple Mount and the beginning of Herod’s extension of the wall southward; the masonry in the extension abuts the masonry to the north and is not interlocked with it. This was first excavated by Charles Warren in the 19th century, and then by Kathleen Kenyon, who stopped because of the outbreak of the 1967 war. Two Muslim cemeteries, one located north of the straight joint. The area south of the straight joint has been declared an archaeological park. It has no longstanding history as a cemetery, but new Muslim graves have now been filling this area.

The Israeli government has done nothing to prevent this increasing encroachment on the Temple Mount. The IAA is powerless to interfere because it has been so ordered by the highest levels of government.

The Jerusalem Post called the state of the Temple Mount an “archaeological tragedy,” and Eilat Mazar, one of the members of a group of scholars, archaeologists, jurists and luminaries known as the Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount founded in 2000, said, that the government has to do something: “This is the most important site in Israel, and yet we don’t see the authorities there. We have to wake up and realize that if we don’t take care of it, the vandalism and illegal construction will continue.”7 The committee filed a complaint with the High Court of Justice in May to stop the extension of the Muslim cemeteries...

A cassette blared a recitation of the Koran and every few minutes the nervous men would mutter "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar," as we drove through the darkness.

Then one of them said in Arabic, "What are you? What are you?"

A tiny voice next to me replied, "I'm a Mujahid," a holy warrior.

It was a boy -- I'd learn that his name was Ismael, and he was 5 years old. Just a child, already indoctrinated...

According to intelligence officials, the family checked in at the last minute, and as a result, only a superficial check of the children’s carry-on bags was conducted by airport security personnel.

Following the take off of the airliner, the check-in computer at the airport flashed a warning that a person under observation had boarded the flight. The airline staff informed immigration and security officials, and a background check found that the male adult member of the family was on a suspect list prepared by Scotland Yard subsequent to the 7/7 terror bombings in London. The pilot was ultimately alerted to the situation and after careful consideration, returned to Heathrow airport rather than continuing on to Boston.

Upon landing back at Heathrow, armed marshals boarded the aircraft and took the suspect and his family into custody. It was at that time a search of the children’s carry-on baggage revealed the deadly cargo.

Entire Park!
Entire Day!

There was a shout by someone a while behind me. “Yisrael! Yisrael!” I turned around and saw a woman. She shouted to me — presumably in Hebrew — and stuck her thumb up. I grinned and stuck my thumb up high, before continuing on my way.

A few of my friends said it might be dangerous to wear it in public. So naturally, I decided that I must go back into town some time wearing it. This is England, after all. A free country. Who's going to attack a 17-year-old girl for wearing a flag?...

Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called the term “ill-advised” and “counter-productive,” repeating CAIR’s usual conceit that violence in the name of Islam has, in fact, nothing to do with Islam. Even more preposterously, Awad went on to suggest that we “take advantage of these incidents to make sure that we do not start a religious war against Islam and Muslims.”

CAIR’s board chairman, Parvez Ahmed, sent an open letter to President Bush: “You have on many occasions said Islam is a ‘religion of peace.’ Today you equated the religion of peace with the ugliness of fascism.” Actually, Bush did not do that (he equated just one form of “the religion of peace” with fascism), but Ahmed inadvertently pointed to the evolution in the president’s – and the country’s – thinking away from bromides to real thinking.

Edina Lekovic from the Muslim Public Affairs Council repeated the MPAC argument of the need to cultivate Islamists for counterterrorism: “When the people we need most in the fight against terrorism, American Muslims, feel alienated by the president’s characterization of these supposed terrorists, that does more damage than good.” (Supposed terrorists?) Her case, however, has recently been undercut by the example of Mubin Shaikh and the Toronto 17, in which an Islamist informer has been widely shunned by fellow Muslims. Lekovic did, however, make a valid semantic point: “It would have been far more accurate had he linked the situation to a segment of people rather than an entire faith, along the lines of, say, radical Muslim fascists.”...

Police probing the planned terror outrage are investigating an alleged gruesome plan to use the young baby as a "decoy".

They believe the man may have wanted to take his wife and child on board a flight and she was prepared to sacrifice her baby in the deadly suicide strike.

Cops believe they would have hidden deadly chemicals in the baby's milk. The grim discovery is behind the decision to make all mothers taste their baby's milk before boarding flights to make sure it has not been contaminated.

Detectives are horrified at the prospect the terror suspect could have been prepared to kill his own family.

Last night a high-ranking intelligence source said: "This takes things to a horrifying new level. It is truly horrific that a man may have been ready to blow up his wife and she was prepared to let her child die."...

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's request of Arabs to leave Haifa to facilitate the bombing and killing of Jews in Haifa is the identical call heard by the Arabs of Haifa and other cities by the Arab League attacking the new State of Israel in 1948.

2006 - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah:

"I have a special message to the Arabs of Haifa, to your martyrs and to your wounded. I call you to leave this city. I hope you do this. ... Please leave so we don't shed your blood, which is our blood."

1948 - Palestinian journalist describes Arab leaders action in 1948:

"To the [Arab] Kings and Presidents: Poverty is killing us... yet you are still searching for the way to provide aid... like the armies of your predecessors in the year of 1948, who forced us to leave [Israel], on the pretext of clearing the battlefields of civilians... "
[Fuad Abu Higla, columnist official PA daily Al Hayat Al Jadida, in an article before an Arab Summit, critical of Arab leaders for a series of failures. Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, March 19, 2001]

“Some things, yes,” he said. “We destroyed a lot of their infrastructure. They had more weapons and more underground bunkers and tunnels than we had any idea. People coming out of there say it’s vast.”

“What do you think about the proposal for an international force on the border?” I said.

“The problem with that,” he said, “is that the force could act a shield for Hezbollah. Hezbollah could fire missiles right over the tops of their heads, and it would make it very difficult for us to go in there and stop them. It needs to be a combat force in Lebanon, not a peacekeeping force. It needs to be authorized by UN Article 7, not 6.”

“Hassan Nasrallah declared victory today,” I said. “What do you think about that?”

He laughed...

whatever the case is—lack of training, a personal drive as a photographer to show what is happening to your country in as powerful a way as possible, or all out competitiveness, i think that the onus is on the wire services themselves, because they act as the employer/filter of their photogs work. standards should be in place or else the rest of us end up paying the price. and i’m not against the idea of local wire photographers, but after seeing it over and over for the past month, i think it is something that is worth addressing. while i walk away from a situation like that, one wire shooter sets up a situation, and the rest of them follow…..

...i have been covering beirut, and it was at numerous protest, evacuations as well as the israeli strikes in chiyeh, which unfortunately did not get that much coverage in the media—where i saw this behavior occur. i have also heard from friends of mine in lebanon, respected photographers, that this was not an isolated incident.

unfortunately in each of these cases, it was the lebanese wire photographers that started these situations...

Praising Hizbullah guerrillas, the prime minister said: "The steadfastness of the resistance fighters in the field was very important, as was the steadfastness and unity of the people," he said...

An alert clerk grew suspicious and called Tuscola County central dispatch. The Caro Police Department sent a unit and stopped the rented van on M-81 just east of Caro. The suspects were headed towards Bad Axe on M-81 where there is another Super Wal-Mart.

The three men were described as being of Pakistani descent but live in Texas. Police say the three, ages 19, 22, and 23 appear to be naturalized citizens. One man was driving while the other two were in the back opening the phone packages with box cutters throwing the phones in one box, batteries in another and the packaging and phone charger in another container. The suspects had 1000 other cell phones in the van. There was also a bag of receipts showing that someone was in Wisconsin the day before...

...The men have been "cooperative, upfront, not hiding" anything according to police. They also told officers they get stopped frequently and say they buy the phones for $20 and sell them elsewhere for $38. They sell them without the packaging or charger...

Never before or since in world history has a tyrannical regime sought to murder all of the members of a particular racial, religious, ethnic or cultural group, regardless of where they live--not until now. Hezbollah's aim is not to "end the occupation of Palestine," or even to "liberate all of Palestine." Its goal is to kill the world's Jews. Listen to the words of its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah: "If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." (NY Times, May 23, 2004, p. 15, section 2, column 1.) Nasrallah is one of the most admired men in the Muslim and Arab world today. Hitler made similar threats in Mein Kampf but they were largely ignored. Nasrallah has a reputation for keeping his promises.

His genocidal goals--to kill all Jews--were proven by two recent statements. He has warned the Arabs and Muslims to leave Haifa so that his rockets can kill only Jews. And he apologized for causing the deaths of three Israeli-Arabs in Nazareth, when a Katuysha struck that religiously mixed Israeli city. Hezbollah also worked hand-in-hand with Argentine neo-Nazis to blow up a Jewish community center, murdering dozens of Jews.

Nasrallah is a modern day Hitler, who currently lacks the capacity to carry out his genocide...

I wish we all ( " Leaders" or not )be on point like this man.

This story was rapidly disseminated to websites and newspapers all over the world. There were at least fifteen pages of links to it on the Google search engine.

Also shown was a small sign in support of Hizbollah, held by David Rolde, whom Brodsky pointedly identified as "a key member of the Green-Rainbow party."

Hannity commented sternly, "I can only hope that our government identified those people holding up their pro-terrorist signs that are in the United States of America."

Rolde, who also works on this newspaper, is pleased with his appearance on Fox TV. "Hizbollah are defending the people of Lebanon and Palestine against US-sponsored Israeli aggression. It is good for TV viewers to see that some Americans praise Hizbollah just like millions of people all over the world are doing."...

In fact Brodsky was identified by legal observers as one of a pair of "professional provocateurs" at the rally, "trained in inciting violence, with the intention of getting members of our communities in trouble with the police." ...

...Last Thursday, the CERD suspended its normal work to address "the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon."

Not only is this topic entirely outside CERD's mandate, but it was framed in a lopsided manner, so that the humanitarian suffering of Israeli civilians would be entirely ignored.

Since July 12, when Hizbullah ignited the crisis by crossing the international border to murder and kidnap Israeli soldiers, the Iran-sponsored terrorist organization has fired more than 3,000 rockets into Israel. A million Israelis are either displaced or living in and out of bomb shelters, dozens have been killed, while a further 2,000 have been injured or required hospital treatment. Yet one would not know any of this from the CERD's presentation of the issue...

...The special CERD session was the initiative of a few panel members led by Mahmoud Aboul-Nasr, a former Egyptian diplomat and Arab League official.

Aboul-Nasr is notorious for his 1998 support of convicted Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, which was roundly criticized at the time by his colleague (now CERD Chairman) Regis de Gouttes. Aboul-Nasr had stated before the panel that the Holocaust was "not sacrosanct" and that it was justified to question the number of Jews killed.

To his credit, Chairman de Gouttes began Thursday's debate by listing the other UN entities already dealing with the crisis, and by warning his colleagues that "the trust and legitimacy of the Committee is at stake."

In response, Aboul-Nasr objected to being "lectured on our competence and what we can't do," and demanded that the members "condemn Israel in the strongest terms."

Some of his colleagues were all too happy to oblige.

Brazilian expert Jos Augusto Lindgren Alves accused Israel of "blatant racism," which, he added, was "at the root of its disproportionality" in Lebanon. He asked if Israel "would react the same way to exterminate an entire population if Hizbullah launched the same attacks from a non-Arab country." Jos Francisco Cali Tzay of Guatemala suggested that Israel's actions were close to "mass genocide." The South African, Patricia January-Bardhill, said that Israel's response reflected "institutionalized racism." Pakistani member Agha Shahi justified Hizbullah's attacks on Israel as an exercise of "the right of resistance against occupation."

Aboul-Nasr similarly asserted that Hizbullah is not a terrorist group but "a resistance movement," like the French resistance in World War II. Never mind that the UN in 2000 certified Israel's complete withdrawal from southern Lebanon to the international border, or that, in the words of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "Hizbullah's provocative attack on July 12 was the trigger of this particular crisis."

A FEW lonely voices disagreed with the decision to tackle the Israel-Lebanon issue and the utter disregard of Hizbullah's role in provoking the crisis and attacking Israeli civilians, but they had little impact.

The Danish and American experts both argued that the issue was beyond the panel's mandate, but to no avail. The American expert - Ralph F. Boyd, Jr., former Civil Rights Division chief at the US Department of Justice - also strongly criticized his colleagues for giving Hizbullah, and its Syrian and Iranian sponsors, a free pass. As Boyd spoke, Aboul-Nasr, in a shocking display of disrespect, kept laughing in response...

As Israel counts more than 100 dead in its war against the Hezbollah terror organization, numerous Israeli Arabs, including Arab Knesset members, have come out in support of the enemy. A number of demonstrations and marches in support of Hezbollah have likewise been held by Israel's Arabs.

One Member of the Knesset, Azmi Bishara, even refers to the members of Hezbollah as “heroes.” He calls for Hezbollah to fight Israeli soldiers, saying, “One must settle accounts with their murderers and resist [fight] its aggression.”

The following are 15 statements by Israeli Arab leaders and victims of Hezbollah terror in support of Hezbollah, all said during the war:

Ra’oda Att’allah, Director of the Arab Culture Society in Haifa:
"The popularity of Hezbollah has grown substantially among the Arabs in Israel… the first time there is a feeling of returning the honor, and that the people are feeling for the first time that there is a group which resists [fights-ed.] and stands firm against the Israeli army."[Al-Ayyam, August 8, 2006]

Ali Mana, relative of 2 Israeli Arabs killed by Hezbollah missile:
“Hezbollah raised our heads and lifted our spirit.” [Al-Ayyam, August 8, 2006]

Wasil Taha, Arab Knesset Member:
“Resistance [Hezbollah attacks] is not terror but it is a moral value. As for terror, the state [Israel] carries it out." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 6, 2006]

Arab Knesset Member, Chairman of Balad Party, Azmi Bishara:
"Solidarity with these heroes [Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorists] is the least [we can do]." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 16, 2006]...

Even while suffering a disproportionately high number of casualties in Hezbollah rocket attacks, Dr Azmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab Knesset member and leader of the Balad political party, says that most Arab-Israelis empathise with the Lebanese.

"The division between us and the Lebanese is artificial," he says. "They are Arabs, they look like us, laugh like us, and eat the same food."...

"We are proud of Israel, and its just struggle," the letter reads, "and are prepared to carry out any mission that the IDF gives us."

This enables us to trace his exploits in print, as well as on film. The photos, it turns out, are the least of Mr. Daher’s contributions to the propaganda war. I am sure that you and your readers will be shocked to learn that Mr. Daher is apparently responsible for the inflated death tolls broadcast around the world after the tragic bombing of a building in Qana. (Details below.) It’s also worth bearing in mind that he is not an obscure figure. He has been repeatedly interviewed by major news agencies, both at the scenes of bombings and in Tyre. When he appears in pictures, it is unlikely that photographers are unaware of his identity or his role. The omission of his name and position from photo captions is likely deliberate - after all, why would the head of civil defense personally ferry corpses to the ambulances?

In addition to these two zones, Tsahal has exploded a nine-storied building that housed Hezbollah's command, in Beirut's city center, above and slightly to the left (to the north west) of Haret Hreik on the map. It was Nasrallah's "perch" inside the city, whereby he asserted his presence and domination over us. A depot of Syrian arms in the port, two army radars that the Shiite officers had put at the Hezb's disposal, and a truck suspected of transporting arms, in the Christian quarter of Ashrafieh.

Moreover the road and airport infrastructures were put out of working order : they served to provide Hezbollah with arms and munitions. Apart from that, Tsahal has neither hit nor deteriorated anything, and all those who speak of the "destruction of Beirut" are either liars, Iranians, anti-Semites or absent. Even the houses situated one alley's distance from the targets I mentioned have not been hit, they have not even suffered a scratch; on contemplating these results of this work you understand the meaning of the concept "surgical strikes" and you can admire the dexterity of the Jewish pilots.

Satellite map of Beirut (Google Earth)
Circled in red, the razed area, in blue, area where the dwellings belonging to the terrorist organization's top brass have been destroyed (Michael Béhé)

Beirut, all the rest of Beirut, 95% of Beirut, lives and breathes better than a fortnight ago. All those who have not sided with terrorism know they have strictly nothing to fear from the Israeli planes, on the contrary! One example: last night the restaurant where I went to eat was jammed full and I had to wait until 9:30 pm to get a table. Everyone was smiling, relaxed, but no one filmed them: a strange destruction of Beirut, is it not?...

Deputies stopped Osama Sabhi Abulhassan, 20, and Ali Houssaiky, 20, both of Dearborn, Mich., on a traffic violation Tuesday. They found the flight documents along with $11,000 cash and 12 phones in the car, said Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks.

Prosecutor Susan Vessels declined to say how the phones, cash or flight information involved terrorism.

Abulhassan and Houssaiky admitted buying about 600 phones in recent months at stores in southeast Ohio, said sheriff's Maj. John Winstanley. The men said they sold the phones to someone in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb.

Investigators going through the car after the pair were pulled over in Marietta, about 90 miles southeast of Columbus, also found a map that showed locations of Wal-Mart stores from Ohio through Kentucky, Tennessee and into North and South Carolina, Vessels said...

The extreme measures at one of the major international aviation hub sent ripple effects throughout the world. Officials at Heathrow airport cancelled most flights from Europe.

The U.S. government responded by raising its threat assessment to its highest level for commercial flights from Britain to the United States amid fears the plot had not been completely crushed.

Police are confident they have disrupted a plot against aircraft which was "intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale," Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson said Thursday.

Stephenson said 21 people had been arrested in London, its suburbs and in Birmingham, and that searches continued in a number of locations.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, vacationing in the Caribbean, briefed U.S. President George W. Bush on the situation overnight, Blair's office said.

Britain's Home Secretary John Reid said the alleged plot was significant and that terrorists aimed to "bring down a number of aircraft through mid-flight explosions, causing a considerable loss of life."

"We believe that these arrests (in London) have significantly disrupted the threat, but we cannot be sure that the threat has been entirely eliminated or the plot completely thwarted," said U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Passengers faced delays as tighter security was hastily enforced at the country's airports and additional measures were put in place for all flights, and British Airways said some flights were likely to be cancelled. Laptop computers, mobile phones, IPods, and remote controls were among the items banned from being carried on board...

The authorities did not say how many aircraft had been identified for attack. Sky News put the number at six, while other reports said between three and 10...

And nearly half of those polled, or 45 per cent, believe the 9/11 attacks on New York were a conspiracy between the United States and Israel. The survey, for a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary to be screened tonight, found Muslims under 24 were twice as likely to justify the 7/7 attacks as those aged over 45. It found 24 per cent either agreed or tended to agree that the 7/7 bombings were justified, although 48 per cent said they "strongly disagreed".

A third of those questioned said they would rather live under Sharia law in the UK than British law...

This celebrating of attacks on Israeli civilians by the PA corresponds to a poll released yesterday, which found that "97% of Palestinians support Hezbollah's position towards Israel." [Near East Consulting, Ramallah]

To see the Palestinian video "Where will you run" CLICK HERE.

This figure of 97% support for Hezbollah attacks is even higher than the approximately 70% of Palestinians who consistently supported suicide terror against Israeli civilians during the four-year terror war. (This year, Palestinian support for suicide terror has stood around 55%.)...

...Resist, oh Lebanon.

Fill their eyes with shock and awe, slaughter them right, left, and center.

Fill their eyes with shock and awe, slaughter them right, left, and center -

Israel and the Americans...

...Crowd: Resist, resist, resist, resist, oh Lebanon.

Singer: Attack Haifa and Tel Aviv, dear Nasrallah.

Crowd: Attack Haifa and Tel Aviv, dear Nasrallah.

Singer: Attack Haifa and Tel Aviv, dear Nasrallah...

...Singer, together with crowd: If the martyrs of Palestine are terrorists, if Hizbullah are terrorists,

if the martyrs of Palestine are terrorists, if Hizbullah are terrorists,

if any resistance is terrorism,

I scream at the top of my lungs, I scream at the top of my lungs:

I'm a terrorist. I'm a terrorist.

[...]

The camp of resistance is not only in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq. It is in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Yes, we support Iran, we support Iran, we support Iran, we support Iran. We will not be shaken, and there will be no division among us. We are in the camp of resistance, wherever the resistance may be. We are all men of the resistance, regardless of our political or religious affiliation. We are all men of the resistance, who reject surrender and subordination, who protect the national and religious honor, who reject the Zionist presence on our Palestinian lands, and who call for the unity of our Arab and Islamic nation. We are all in the same camp, we are united and we will be victorious, Allah willing. As for those traitors, if they think they are [safe] on their thrones, they should remember what happened in 1981. Do they remember what happened in 1981? The Egyptian people will never forget its blood vengeance.

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement...

A group of snipers hailing from states that had fought in battles in Chechnya and Afghanistan the joined the battalion as it entered Bint Jbeil for the second time after it suffered a serious blow two weeks ago when eight of its soldiers, including the deputy battalion commander, were killed. The snipers were called up in an emergency draft to the war.

The snipers, between 35 and 40 years old, immigrated to Israel at the beginning of the 90s and in the past few years have been considered excellent fighters. They were active in the past in operational activity in the Gaza division, but at a certain point finished their service in the division once the impression was created that they were "trigger happy."

The snipers were stationed Tuesday at one of the entrance points to Lebanon alongside Golani fighters. They displayed high motivation. They are soon expected to join the operations of the brigade inside Lebanon.

The Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party has dis-endorsed your event and must advise party members not to attend your event.

Though we applaud efforts aimed at equality for people of all sexual orientations, including our support for equal marraige rights here in Massachusetts in which we refuse to endorse candidates for public office here in MA unless they support equal marriage rights, we cannot support your event.

The reason is that your event advertises activities in Tel-Aviv which is a city that cannot be frequented by Palestinians who have been denied for 5 decades the fundamental right of return to their lands of origin. This is against international law and not consistent with the 10 Key Values of the Green-Rainbow Party of MA. Palestinians are regularly denied entrance to, and human rights (right to return) in their land of origin. Palestinians living inside the Green line also suffer from overt and institutional racism in the land today called Israel, in a legal manner that meets the definition of aprtheid.

Your event is thus discriminatory in that Palestinians will not be able to attend some of the indicated activities. This is not acceptable and indicates support for the concept of a Jewish state formed based on the forced displacement of Palestinians based solely on ethnicity - a fundamentally racist construct.

We support you in your "World" Pride efforts to end discrimination against people of certain sexual orientations, and to promote GLBT lifestyle, however we would encourage you to pick cities for your events that can actually be visited by the whole World.

Ron Francis
Green-Rainbow Party co-chairperson

"Near Lebanon"? Thomas is unable to face facts and join with the United States, the United Nations, the G8 nations, China, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait -- all of which have recognized that Hezbollah -- branded a terrorist organization by much of the world community -- violated a nation's sovereignty by crossing the internationally recognized Lebanon-Israel border.

Thomas writes: "Making this situation even more burdensome is ... that there are many in the United States, including many Christians, who see only Israel's need for security, who focus only on a few terrorist acts ..."

"A few terrorist acts"? For the past two decades, and especially after the July 12 attacks, thousands of deadly missiles -- not a "few" -- have hit Israel, randomly killing both Jews and Muslims.

I doubt Thomas would be so blase if, God forbid, terrorists fired "a few" missiles at Cleveland (home to UCC headquarters) from launchers in Canada, just across Lake Erie.

Thomas complains that "Many in our own churches are subject to intense lobbying by Jewish groups ..."

"Intense lobbying"? After 35 years of active participation in the interreligious encounter, I do not believe it is "intense lobbying" when Jews talk to their Christian neighbors about deeply felt concerns, or when rabbis speak to UCC ministers about important issues of mutual interest...

The woman is Lebanon/Palestine.
The first man is Israel.
The second is the West.
The third is the Arab world that stood by and did nothing.

The template set forth by the roadmap for peace currently provides the best outline for achieving a two-state solution to bringing about a lasting settlement. Right now Hamas represents the greatest obstacle to this path, and until Hamas denounces terrorism, recognizes the absolute right of Israel to exist peacefully and honors past agreements, it cannot be considered legitimate partners in this process. Sensible and moderate elements in Palestinian society could possibly provide credible negotiating partners. The United States should encourage dialogue with peaceful Palestinian leaders that recognize Israel, condemn terrorism, and honor past accords.

Terrorism is the greatest impediment to peace. At this point the Palestinian Authority (PA) has yet to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank. The United States cannot support any government that condones or embraces terrorism. However, the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people cannot be neglected, and the United States should respect these needs through the use of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The obligation to help the Palestinian people is also a political necessity. It is important not to play into the hands of terrorist organizations by allowing them to credibly argue that the US and Israel are denying food and medicine to women and children.

The other serious threat to the security of the region is Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. This must be stopped...

Navy Diver Chief Petty Officer Mark Schleef dangles from the hoist as he launches for a certification dive in the atmospheric diving system aboard the special mission charter ship M/V Kellie Chouest off the coast of La Jolla, Calif., on Aug. 1, 2006.

The quantity of our lack of care for the Arabs of the Middle East on display:

U.S. Navy sailors from the High Speed Vessel Two Swift (HSV 2) move more than 100 tons of humanitarian aid to the pier at Beirut, Lebanon, on Aug. 4, 2006. Over two million dollars worth of humanitarian aid was donated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and in coordination with the Islamic Relief Organization, will be disbursed immediately to Lebanese citizens.

Leftist activist Abraham Tsarfati, author Amran al-Malich and human rights group official Zion Asidon claim Peretz may be tried in their country due to his Moroccan citizenship.

"The criminal terrorist, Zionist Amir Peretz, has retained his Moroccan citizenship and is still registered in Morocco's census," the three told reporters during a press conference. "Moroccan law allows the trial of any Moroccan national who has committed war crimes in or out of the country."...

Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action is the third book on the subject by David Ray Griffin, a professor emeritus of theology at Claremont School of Theology who is also a well-published and prominent process theologian.

His previous work has influenced Kevin Barrett, a Muslim lecturer for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has received recent national attention for espousing the theory. Of the 133 members in Wisconsin's legislature, 61 signed a letter to university officials and Gov. James Doyle demanding that Barrett be fired before the fall term begins. He is scheduled to teach about some of the conspiracy theories surrounding September 11 during his 15-week fall course, "Islam: Religion and Culture."

"Without David, I would not just lose my faith in Christianity," Barrett said in an interview with CT. "I would almost lose my faith in the humanity of Christians."...

James Berkley, the director of Presbyterian Action for Faith and Freedom, said that Westminster's decision to publish Griffin's book "is both laughable and pathetic" and that the publishing company is not ideologically in line with most Presbyterians.

"Their choice to print this seems to be pretty idiosyncratic and kooky," Berkeley said. "What a waste of pages and ink that could have been promoting the Christian gospel and contributing to the health and vitality of the Presbyterian church."

..."European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket...

..."I'm not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: Don't preach to us about the treatment of civilians."...

He told reporters after arriving in Yemen that the Hizbullah war has re-wakened the Arab world with honor and is an example for others to follow.

So Tomeh is found to be the controversial Presbyterian link time and again to Hezbollah. Does that inspire you? Does it seem a good idea to send money to the very guy who appears to be in Hezbollah’s back pocket?

“Safe passage for aid convoys remains a major problem,” says another spokesperson for the Middle East Council of Churches. Could it be that the MECC is at all compromised by their coziness with Hezbollah itself and thus not trusted? Could it be that Hezbollah has a habit of operating right in among vulnerable civilians, thus causing the security problem for aid convoys? Using civilians as human sand bags for their military operations does not particularly ennoble the Hezbollah as warriors!

Hezbollah caused the current war. Hezbollah is responsible for causing civilian deaths and suffering by operating their war from the midst of populated centers. Hezbollah is proudly hurtling unaimable rockets at just any old civilian population in Israel, hoping to knock off whoever happens to be under the rockets’ arc when they drop. And Hezbollah is the close buddy of “our man” in Lebanon.

Somehow, that doesn’t inspire my confidence. It's a sad thing, because the need truly is there.

(And where’s the aid appeal for the Israelis, who likewise are being killed and displaced by Hezbollah aggression? Not a word about that. Why am I not surprised?)

The Middle East Council of Churches brings together Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic Christians across the region, engaged together in ministries of compassion, peacemaking, and witness. The MECC includes Presbyterian brothers and sisters; it includes believers in both Lebanon and Israel.

It is this body which Berkeley slanders, all but saying that money given to the Middle East Council of Churches is money given to Hezbollah, effectively painting all the churches in the Middle East as terrorists.

Berkley’s ecclesiology (or lack thereof) has abandoned these precious brothers and sisters. Whither the Church?

We don't believe in the illusion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's conceits and cry over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.

Limits for tolerance

Our patience has its limits, and so does our tolerance. We don't believe in divine promises as a basis for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind us. We are embarrassed by those who believe that the god of plants, animals and galaxies has appointed one particular people as its favorites and given them funny stone tablets, burning bushes and a license to kill...

...Gaarder's op-ed is a new line in the sand. If the Norwegian cultural and political elite allow it to stand, they are complicit in condoning the reintroduction of antisemitism in Norwegian life. A trend that is already well underway, thanks to rampant new antisemitism...

Incident A involved a guy spewing crude anti-Semitic slurs when he was arrested for drunk driving; after sobering up, he publicly and profusely apologized. Incident B involved a Muslim gunman's premeditated assault on a prominent Jewish institution; his attack left one woman dead and sent five to the hospital, three of them in critical condition.

Which would you say was the bigger story?...

...But if previous behavior and religious belief explain the burst of interest in the Gibson story, they only deepen the question of why the Seattle bloodshed was played down. After all, Haq is not the first example of what scholar Daniel Pipes has called ``Sudden Jihad Syndrome," in which a seemingly nonviolent Muslim erupts in a murderous rampage.

Just this year, for example, Mohammed Taheri-azar, a philosophy major at the University of North Carolina, deliberately rammed a car into a crowd of students, saying he wanted to ``avenge the death of Muslims around the world." Michael Julius Ford opened fire in a Denver warehouse, killing one person and injuring five. ``I don't know what happened to him yesterday," his sister Khali told the press. ``He told me that Allah was going to make a choice and it was going to be good and told me people at his job was making fun of his religion."

Other cases in recent years include Hasan Akbar , a sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division, who attacked his fellow soldiers at an American command center in Kuwait with grenades and rifle fire, killing one and wounding 15; Hesham Mohamed Ali Hadayet, who killed two people when he shot up the El Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles airport in 2002; and Ali Hasan Abu Kamal, who was carrying a note denouncing ``Zionists" and others who ``must be annihilated & exterminated" when he opened fire on the observation deck of the Empire State building.

If the Catholic Gibson's nonviolent bigotry is a legitimate subject of media scrutiny, all the more so is the animus that spurs Muslims like Haq and the others to jihadist murder. As The New York Sun asked the other day, how many more Haqs must erupt in a homicidal rage before we open our eyes ``to the possibility that they are part of a war in which understanding the enemy is a prerequisite for victory?"

“Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. ”Nothing can justify this assault on the most fundamental standards for sparing civilians the hazards of war.”

Hezbollah claims that some of its attacks are aimed at military bases inside Israel, which are legitimate targets. But most of the attacks appear to have been directed at civilian areas and have hit pedestrians, hospitals, schools, homes and businesses.

Since July 12, when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight, Human Rights Watch researchers have been documenting the war’s impact on civilians in Israel and Lebanon, interviewing the witnesses and survivors of attacks, as well as doctors, emergency workers, police, military and government officials...

...Northern Israel, an area populated by about one 1 million people, has come to a virtual standstill because of Hezbollah’s rockets, which are exacting an enormous human and economic toll. Authorities believe that up to half the population has left the area, while the rest are living in constant fear of the air raid sirens that warn of attacks.

Human Rights Watch said many of those who remain in northern Israel are unable to leave because they don’t have relatives elsewhere in the country or the resources to pay for alternative accommodation. Some stay behind to care for relatives who are disabled or infirm, or because they work as emergency and medical personnel.

“Who is left here in Kiryat Shmona; the weakest part of the population,” Shimon Kamari, the deputy mayor of Kiryat Shmona, only a few kilometers from the northern border, told Human Rights Watch. “The elderly and those who can’t afford hotels, because to stay for such a long time is very expensive.”...

...Some of the rockets, such as those that killed eight rail workers in Haifa on July 16 and two young brothers in Nazareth on July 19, have warheads packed with thousands of metal ball bearings that spray out from the blast. Launched on civilian areas, the ball bearings are intended to inflict maximum harm...

The funding is, in this sense, no different from the travel bursaries provided by Unifrance, for French filmmakers, or the Goethe Institute, for German ones. It is not in the strict sense "sponsorship" (we are no more "sponsored" by the government of Israel, than we are "sponsored" by the French, the Germans, et al), though I understand that it may appear as such to outsiders.

However, this funding was secured some three months ago, well before the commencement of current hostilities in Lebanon. Of course we acknowledge that the situation has altered dramatically since then, and with this in mind, took the decision early yesterday to decline any funding from the Israelis.

Should the Israeli director choose to attend the festival, then the festival shall pay for his visit out of its own budget. But regardless of whether he attends or not, the film screening will go ahead as planned. Please allow us to explain why...

What struck me about the recent pro-Israel demonstration in London was the number of Union flags in the crowd. These are our people.

I didn't notice any Union flags at the Stop The War rally, though there were plenty of 'We Are All Hezbollah Now' banners. It doesn't seem to dawn on them that if you want to stop the war you've got to stop Hezbollah.

But what drives most of these 'peace campaigners' is not so much a desire for peace as a hatred of Israel.

Every time something goes off in Iraq we're told it will radicalise young Muslims back in Britain. We hear that Tony Blair's failure to call for an immediate halt to the Israeli offensive has put us at imminent risk of another Islamist homicide attack on our streets.

Despite the Hezbollah war on Israel and the mounting casualties - and the widespread condemnation of Israel in this country - I've yet to hear anyone warn that young British Jews are queueing to blow up themselves and hundreds of others at Brent Cross shopping centre.

I repeat, this war is awful. The civilian deaths are a tragedy.

But there won't be peace in the Middle East until the likes of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas recognise Israel's right to exist.

And, I'm afraid, this side of kingdom come, that just ain't gonna happen.

Israel may be losing the propaganda war, but it isn't fighting a propaganda war - it's fighting a real war for its very existence.

• Stand with the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance!
• End the Occupation of IRAQ, PALESTINE and LEBANON
• Support the Palestinian People's Right to Return
• U.S./Israeli Troops Out Now
• No More Fighting and Dying for Oil Profits
• STOP U.S. Aid to Israel

All I have seen in terms of "bad press" are the occasional rantings of zionists and even if there were a groundswell of bad publicity about supporting resistance, we should still do it.

There was a time in this country when it was "bad press" to oppose slavery. If our movement is to mean anything we have to support the resistance of the people that our own tax dollars are murdering en masse, first and foremost before we say anything else about any other issue, period.

Commuters met the mock dead with looks of curiosity, annoyance and anger, rushing past the "Die In" staged by local Jewish youth to protest civilian deaths in Lebanon from Israeli airstrikes.

"People need to see these images and have these conversations about what large scale civilian death looks like, and what we can do to make it end," said Liz Jackson, a 27-year-old protest organizer.

Protesters wore black shirts reading "Not all U.S. Jews support Israel's actions." They moved from South Station to the plaza in front of One Financial Center as hundreds of people hustled to work...

Details: On Monday August 1, 2006, at 8:10 am while walking from the commuter train through the South Station on my way to work, I witnessed an obscene protest by about 20 anti-Israel protesters, some holding signs or passing out leaflets, others "playing dead" on the floor and blocking an entrance to Red line. The police stood around without trying to remove them or helping to facilitate the passage of commuters. I literally almost had to step on these protesters prostrated on the floor in order to get to my destination.

As a commuter, I strongly object and want to register my complaint with the MBTA for allowing this disruption of the morning commute by a fringe political group. These people endangered the safety of the passengers.

I request to know whether this demonstration inside the South Station had a permit and was legally authorized. I urge you to ban this group from your premises.

Sincerely...

Thank you Seva. I would like to hold Israeli flag and display my feelings toward the country on every occasion of this sort. If it is only one lady at a time, it still worth it for me personally.

A casually dressed working man in his late 50 approached me right at the corner the closest to the public library. He read my poster, and, after short pause, told me: "Those Islamic terrorists are the monsters, they want to destroy us, our civilization and replace it with world-wide Muslim Caliphate. Look at them - he pointed his finger to the protesters - they are using our free-speech to destroy us from within. This is absurd allowing them to do it. Look, I'm not a Jew, I'm a Christian... but I'm naturally pro-Israel: together, we must crash them until they'll destroy us."

To tell you the truth, I was surprised to hear such straight-talking from this random ordinary-looking working man in downtown Boston. I told him about this, he smiled and replied: "Hey, this is so obvious". We chatted for a least 5 more minutes: basically, about largely missing wake-up calls: 9/11 in the USA and last-year atrocities in London, what would United States' reaction if Mexican army violated our south border and killed/kidnapped a few American solders...

I was deeply impressed how close our worldviews are: a typical working-class Irishman and a still-heavy-accented Russian-born engineer. Then, I thought: don't be silly, this is that mean to be the Americans. Finally, we shake the hands. I told him my name is Igor, he introduced himself as Mike, we smiled and went apart. He was short, partially bold, good fit... (his right hand was handicapped as a result of some injury and couple fingers were missing).

Thank You, Mr. Mike!!

How We Fight Terrorists

America launched air and ground assaults on Afghanistan, aimed at destroying not only the al Qaeda safe havens but toppling the Taliban regime. We damaged or destroyed critical Afghan infrastructure so as to deny its use to the enemy. Civilian casualties occurred, as did refugee flows. At one point, the U.N. declared the resulting dislocation a humanitarian crisis.

Once the campaign to eliminate al Qaeda was launched, there was no consideration given to negotiating with the terrorists or the government that afforded them protection. The United States would not have contemplated a U.N.-mandated ceasefire, let alone the insertion of an international peacekeeping force under a Chapter 7 mandate from the Security Council--whose purpose, inevitably, would have been to protect the terrorists from our military, not the other way around.

And most especially, it would have been inconceivable that the U.S. could accede to one of its enemy's central demands--for example, the removal of all American forces from the Mideast--as part of a negotiated ceasefire brokered by the U.N. and approved by the Taliban at the direction of al Qaeda.

How We Expect Israel to Fight Terrorists

It is therefore stunning, not to say depressing, to see how the Bush administration's early, strong support for Israel's response to the murderous attacks on its territory by the terrorist group, Hezbollah, has morphed in recent days...

Impressed by this point of view that I haven't considerd before, I asked him what he would've thought, if a Hezbollah rocket had attacked a building in Israel, killing 55 civillians, of which 30 were children. He responded immeidtely "I would've thought it was great! A7san!".

So I repeated the same question to 8 other co-workers, and the responses so far have been as follows: 7 said they would celebrate, and 2 said that such an attack would've been bad, but justified! Yeah! Not a single person said that the death of any civllian, on either side, is an equal tragedy...

The three nations, at emergency EU foreign ministers' talks, offered an alternative draft calling for an eventual "cessation of hostilities" - with no time frame given.

A warning in the original EU draft, drawn up by the EU presidency, said that disregard for precautions to avoid loss of civilian life in Lebanon "constitutes a severe breach of international humanitarian law."

This was altered by Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic to an appeal to all parties "do everything possible to protect populations and to refrain from actions in violation of international law."

"We're inching closer to finding common language. There must be a compromise acceptable for both camps," said Diana Strofova, Slovak secretary for foreign affairs.

Yes, Hezbollah was happy that an Israeli rocket had killed Lebanese children. The children were now in paradise, martyrs to Hezbollah’s cause. Israel was being condemned throughout the world for “killing” children—“massacre” was the most common word used in the Arab media. The Israelis apologized, but that was not enough to put out the flames of anger or to quiet the shrill calls for revenge.

Israel produced evidence proving that it was largely Hezbollah’s fault. Hezbollah was using Lebanese children as involuntary human shields—surely a war crime. Hezbollah was preventing civilians—who had been repeatedly warned by Israel to leave the battle zone—from moving out of harm’s way. Hezbollah sympathizers were shown on TV defiantly tearing up the Israeli leaflets, as if to say “we’re staying” Hezbollah had refused to build bomb shelters for ordinary civilians—only for their own leaders. Hezbollah knew (and Israel didn’t) that children were in the so-called safe house. That is why it deliberately used the safe house as a shield behind which to five rockets at Israel. Hezbollah used its rocket launchers as “bait” to induce Israel to fire at them in order to increase the chances that Israel’s rocket would misfire and hit the “safe house”. It was a perfect plan. Leaders of Hezbollah knew it could count on the international community to finish its dirty work by condemning Israel, rather than Hezbollah for the deaths caused deliberately by Hezbollah. Israel has, of course, rightly apologized for the deaths caused by its rocket. Hezbollah never apologizes for deliberately causing civilian deaths, except when the deaths are of Arab children, as was the case in Nazareth...

'Disabled children placed inside building'

"We have it from a credible source that Hizbullah, alarmed by Siniora's plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations.

Knowing full well that Israel will not hesitate to bombard civilian targets, Hizbullah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the negotiation initiative," the site stated.

The site's editors also claimed that not only did Hizbullah stage the event, but that it also chose Qana for a specific reason: "They used Qana because the village had already turned into a symbol for massacring innocent civilians, and so they set up 'Qana 2'." Notably, the incident has indeed been dubbed "The second Qana massacre" by the Arab media.