Israel Commentary

USA shoots self in foot - pressures an ally

Republicans about to forfeit great progress made in wresting Jewish vote and major contributions from Democrats.

NEW YORK- The Zionist Organization of America is deeply troubled by a report that the Bush administration is pressuring Israel to make more concessions to Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported (Nov.17, 2003) that "the
Americans are exerting more pressure on Israel" in order to help the new Palestinian Authority prime minister, Ahmed Qurei --even though Qurei was hand-picked by Arafat, and the Bush administration has said it will not deal with Arafat because of his continuing sponsorship of terrorism.

The JTA report added: "'If there is any sign that Abu Ala is serious,
we might try to make the Israelis do something to make it worth Abu Ala's while,' a senior American official told JTA, using Qurei's nom de guerre."

The JTA noted that there have been additional recent instances of U.S.
pressure on Israel, concerning the Bush administration's attitude towards the "Geneva Accord" and a related petition drive, both of which call for an Israeli retreat to the pre-1967 borders and the quick establishment of a Palestinian Arab state. "Both initiatives were well received in Washington," the JTA reported, "with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Defense Minister Paul Wolfowitz going out of their way to praise them--and, by implication, implying that Sharon could do more."

The JTA report added that there has been considerable "behind-the-scenes U.S. pressure" on Israel. "For weeks now, the Americans have been pressing Israel to lift closures of Palestinian areas, transfer Palestinian tax funds and dismantle unauthorized West Bank settlement outposts."

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: "The Bush administration
is tragically ignoring the Palestinian Authority's refusal to dismantle terrorist groups and halt anti-American and anti-Jewish incitement--in fact, the administration is trying to appease the terrorist PA regime. The United States should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with its allies against the terrorists, not pressuring our allies to make concessions to terrorists."

The ZOA recently initiated a letter, which was signed by 70 Members of Congress, urging President Bush to stop "discussing further concessions from Israel" and to instead insist that the Palestinian Authority take "concrete, decisive action" against terrorists.

Crestwood School District Succombs to Threat

As anticipated, discretion is the better part of valor - at least the Mayor of Dearborn Heights, MI, Mary A. Canfield and the Crestwood School District Superintendent, Oscar Brown, thought so. They heeded the dire warnings of FBI Award reject, Imad Hamad, Regional Director of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee when he warned them if a school day was not taken off the schedule to celebrate the end of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan,

“ Rushing into decisions that involve such sensitive issues might bring serious ramifications and unexpected unhealthy consequences. This is why, we further urge the school board not to individualize the issue, and jeopardize the position of any of the fine staff of the Dearborn Heights Public Schools.”

And, as has been proven all over the world, terrorism does pay. Victims are afraid and do act to pacify their attackers. Dearborn Heights Mayor Mary A. Canfield had immediately judged, the language was “not a threat” and said, “I think there is a very easy solution to this problem. The School Board is going to vote for days off for the children and that should be the end of the problem.”

And sure enough, November 10, 2003, the Crestwood School District Superintendent, Oscar Brown announced that November 25th would be taken off by the school district because he “ was responding to a few issues” including the risk that not enough students would attend classes to officially qualify as an “instruction day” under state attendance laws. Funny he should say that since at most only 30% of the students in the district are of Muslim descent.

The Understandably Misguided Jew

By Jerome S. Kaufman

Aaron Lerner, below points out an example of why American Jewry remains in a Left Wing uninformed bubble of passivity, misplaced guilt, self-hate, failure to defend Israeli and Jewish rights and in a constant mode of self-destruction. It is without doubt because the American Federations via United Jewish Charities and Jewish Councils continue to sponsor, most often, total Left wing self-hating apologetic writers and speakers like Daniel Kurtzer, Tony Lapid, Shimon Peres, Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, Haim Ramon, Yossi Beilin, Aaron Miller, Michael Melchior - the list is endless. This tragedy is compounded by most Jewish Newspapers who add immeasurably to the destructive process as a result of using as their primary news service the Left Wing Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) and writers such as Leslie Susser, Herb Keinon. Larry Derfner and others as their primary Israel reporters. Unfortunately, the Israelis suffer from the same media mindset.

It is the above scenario that has led Israel and the Jewish people into the disaster of Oslo and the so-called "peace process." It continues, to this very moment, with the latest abominations of the Roadmap and the Geneva Initiative whose end points can only be Israel's destruction. The instructive lessons of Jewish history are again blindly ignored even with the awful consequences upon us. May Hashem again have mercy upon us and save us from our own stupidity.


Only Withdrawal Supporters To Address GA about Israel/Palestinian Diplomacy

Dr. Aaron Lerner 11 November 2003

While there is great concern that American Jewish leaders are ill equipped
to deal with the onslaught of pro-withdrawal propaganda from promoters of
the Road Map and other schemes, it is noteworthy that the organizers of the
Jewish Communities General Assembly in Jerusalem opted to limit coverage of
the topic to a 75 minute session featuring a withdrawal advocate
representing the United States Government and an Israeli staged withdrawal
advocate[see below].

IMRA asked Glen Rosenkrantz, who is acting a spokesman for the GA, why only
withdrawal advocates are addressing the GA on this issue. Rosenkrantz told
IMRA that "all of the sessions were designed with the objective of creating
an objective and informed dialogue and that applies to that session as well."

Mon. Nov. 17, 2003

9:00 A.M. - 10:15 A.M. The Road....and the Map

Where are we now on November 17, 2003; and where are we going over the next 12 to 18 months. Behind-the-scenes politics, security, and personalities.

Speakers:

Amb. Daniel Kurtzer, U.S. Ambassador to Israel
Joseph (Tommy) Lapid, Minister of Justice

Moderator: Nachman Shai, Senior Vice President and Director General, UJC
Israel Chairs: Morton Plant, Baltimore, Chair-Elect of the UJC Executive Comm.

IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

Withdraw from Iraq - Then What?

By Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe Nov. 6, 2003

There is no denying that the news out of Iraq has been brutal lately. US soldiers die in roadside bombings and in brazen attacks like the helicopter downing that killed 16 on Sunday. Terrorists target civilian venues -- Red Cross offices, Muslim shrines, embassies -- for the bloodiest possible carnage. Iraqis are grateful to be free of Saddam Hussein, but many nonetheless inveigh against the American occupiers who toppled him. At the moment, Iraq seems a long, long way from anything resembling the stable and tolerant democracy President Bush says he is determined to see it become.

Not surprisingly, public support for the war is eroding. Only 54 percent of Americans -- down from 70 percent in late April -- still say it was worth fighting, according to the most recent ABC/Washington Post poll. Just 47 percent of the public approves of President Bush's handling of Iraq; a thin majority, 51 percent, actually disapproves. Quagmire fears are deepening: 53 percent are "very" concerned that the United States will get bogged down. A few more horrific attacks, another bloody couple of months in Baghdad and Fallujah, and it isn't hard to imagine even more Americans giving up on Iraq and deciding we should never have gone in to begin with.

Which is exactly what Saddam and his murderer-loyalists and the terror cadres that have joined them are counting on. They expect us to walk away. They are certain that we will do again what we did in Beirut and Mogadishu: lose heart, pull out, and leave the Middle East to them.

Will we?

Make no mistake. We are now in the battle that will decide the course of this war. Either Iraq will be cleansed and democratized, or the war on terror will be lost. There is no middle ground. The Baathist diehards and Islamist car-bombers understand that everything is on the line. They know that if America succeeds in planting freedom and decency in the Arab world, they are finished. That is why they are determined at all costs to drive us out.

To his great credit, Bush has never wavered in his resolve to stay in Iraq until it is governed by a stable constitutional democracy. "The terrorists and the Baathists hope to weaken our will," he said on Nov. 1. "Our will canot be shaken." He and his administration have learned the core lesson of Sept. 11: The terrorist threat to civilization will never be rolled back until the Middle East is torn away from its nightmare of tyranny, cruelty, and religious fanaticism.

If only the Democrats running to replace Bush understood that lesson as well. Except for Senator Joseph Lieberman, none of them seems to grasp the magnitude of the stakes in Iraq. When they spoke of Iraq during their televised debate at Faneuil Hall Tuesday night, for example, all they appeared to care about was genuflecting to the UN and denouncing "sweetheart deals for Halliburton."

On what is by far the most consequential issue of the day, the Democrats repeatedly come across as petty and unserious. The proper goal of the US occupation, the link between Iraq and American national security, the US role in reshaping the Middle East -- if the candidates have thought meaningfully about any of these, it is impossible to tell. Incredibly, the first post-9/11 presidential campaign is being contested by a Democratic lineup that has apparently learned nothing from 9/11.

Like the occupation of Germany in January 1946, America's work in Iraq is only getting underway. A huge amount of effort -- and danger -- still lies ahead. What Americans need now are leaders who can focus on the great work before them -- not sideline snipers carping prematurely that the occupation has been "botched."

FBI Objection Confirmed - Arab American Director Imad Hamad

Imad Hamad, Regional Director of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is once more in the news. This is the same Hamad who was rejected by the FBI for a National Citizenship award just a few weeks ago. Somehow the fact that Hamad was the object of over one dozen open ended FBI investigations relative to possible involvement and support of Arab terrorist organizations had been ignored. Also the fact that the US Immigration Service had unsuccessfully attempted to deport Hamad as an undesirable alien for over 20 years had also been ignored.

Just a few days ago acting as Regional Director of ADC, Hamad sent a letter to Ron Panetta, President of the Crestwood Board of Education, Dearborn, MI. The letter involved the fact that the Muslim holiday of Ramadan would be coming to a close and, what with about 30% of the children of the school district of Arab descent, Hamad likened the holiday to Christmas and wanted equal time asking that a few days be chosen as school holidays to honor the event. Fine.

But, the wording in the letter directed to Mr. Panetta was a little unusual. Hamad warned Panetta that, “ Rushing into decisions that involve such sensitive issues might bring serious ramifications and unexpected unhealthy consequences. This is why, we further urge the school board not to individualize the issue, and jeopardize the position of any of the fine staff of the Dearborn Heights Public Schools.” (!!)

Mr. Panetta understandably felt that he and the school board had been seriously threatened. He immediately had the good sense to contact the Board’s legal advisor and the police. Mr. Hamad was confronted and, of course, said “there was a misunderstanding in language.” Mr. Panetta remains unconvinced.

But, as has been proven all over the world, terrorism does pay. Victims are afraid and do act to pacify their attackers. Dearborn Heights Mayor Mary A. Canfield immediately judged that the language was “not a threat” and said, “I think there is a very easy solution to this problem. The School Board is going to vote for days off for the children and that should be the end of the problem.”

Really! - Just like the problems in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Malaysia, the Philippines, Kosova, Chechnya, etc. etc etc.

Egregious Errors Re: Arab-American Population Claims

By Jerome S. Kaufman

It is beyond understanding to continually read in our newspapers and other media sources that the number of Arab Americans in the Metro Detroit area approximates 400,000 people and the number in the United States is near 3-5 Million! What is the source of these figures? If one is buying into the claims of notorious Arab propagandist James Zogby and his brother suspect polltaker John Zogby, the numbers are understandable.

These outrageously inflated numbers are their calculated attempt at obtaining more political influence and more of the various social benefits the local Arab population obtains from the government of the State of Michigan and ultimately from the U.S. government.

On the other hand, if one is interested in accuracy one might prefer to choose the Arab population figures of the United States Census taken in the year 2000. In that census the following figures are presented:

Metro Detroit = 92,328 up from 59,029 in 1990 (not quite the 400,000 claimed!)

Dearborn, Michigan - Up to 29,344 from 14,000 (not the 200,000 claimed)

Arab population of the USA = 1.25 million up from 940,000 in 1990 (not the 3-5 million claimed)

What makes no sense is why the media continues to perpetuate these lies?

Israel's enemies re-visit USS Liberty

By Jerome S. Kaufman

Periodically, an enemy of Israel surfaces and once again revives the ancient canard of an attack by Israel on the USS Liberty during the 1967 Six Day War that Israel fought against the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon and enthusiastically supported by the former Soviet Union. These powers were resoundingly defeated, undoubtedly due to the good graces, of a higher being.

One cannot wonder why the sudden epiphany. Has yet another US government former official become the recipient of the well-known Saudi Arabian Golden Parachute Retirement Plan that also seems to have graciously fallen upon former Secretaries of State, Senators, Journalists, etc. etc.

Anticipating the recurrence of this gross anti-Israel lie, I kept within my Yahoo Web page and now publish here in www.israel-commentary.org, the correspondence below of A. Jay Cristol, Federal Judge that appeared in the New York Times of April 30, 2001.

USS LIBERTY UPDATE

As a follow-up to our recent communiqué about the USS Liberty, we present
some additional comments:

> From: A. Jay Cristol, Federal Judge, Southern District, Florida

To the Editor of the New York Times: (published April 30, 2001)

Re "Book Says Israel Intended 1967 Attack on U.S. Ship" (news article, April 23): James Bamford's book "Body of Secrets" indicates that the attack on the
United States intelligence ship Liberty by Israel in 1967 was intended.

I researched this matter for 13 years. I analyzed 10 official United States investigations of the incident by the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Navy, the President's Foreign Intelligence Board, the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, plus five Congressional investigations. They all came to the same conclusion, as did three official Israeli investigations: The attack was a tragic mistake and there is no evidence that it was intentional.

Please excuse me Pres. Bush, but ...

Maybe someone can tell me how, after three Americans envoys were deliberately killed in the Gaza Strip by a pre-placed Palestinian Arab car bomb and, nevertheless:

• Bush waives PLO sanctions US President George W. Bush invoked a national security waiver on Wednesday to prevent sanctions from being levied on the PLO for a period of six months.

Under the Foreign Relations Art of 2003, PLO non-compliance with
signed peace accords and continued use of terrorism and violence would force the president to impose at least one of a menu of sanctions unless he invokes a waiver contained in the law.

The Great Arab Refugee Scam

By Schmuel Katz, The International Jerusalem Post, October, 2003

The story of the Arabs who left the coastal areas of Palestine in the spring of 1948 encapsulates one of the great international frauds of the 20th century. The Arabs are the only declared "refugees" who became refugees by the initiative of their own leaders. The concoction of the monstrous charge that it was the Jews who had driven out the Arabs of Palestine was a strategic decision made by the leaders of the Arab League months after the Arabs' flight.

The Arab "refugees" were not driven out by anyone. The vast majority left at the order or exhortation of their leaders - always with the same reassurance - that it would help the Arab states in the war they were about to launch to destroy the State of Israel. The fabrication can most easily be detected by the simple circumstance that at the time the alleged expulsion of the Arabs by Zionists was in progress, nobody noticed it.

Foreign newspapermen abounded in the country, in daily contact with all sides - and they did in fact write about the flight of the Arabs, but even those most hostile to the Jews saw nothing to suggest that the flight was not voluntary. In the three months that the major part of the flight took place, the London Times, a newspaper most notably hostile to Zionism, published 11 leading articles on the situation in Palestine, in addition to extensive news reports. In none was there even a remote hint that the Zionists were driving Arabs from their homes.

Even more pertinent: No Arab spokesman made such a charge. At the height of the flight, the Palestinian Arabs' chief representative at the United Nations, Jamal Husseini, made a long political statement (on April 27) that was not lacking in hostility toward the Zionists; he did not mention refugees. Three weeks later (while the flight was still in progress) the secretary-general of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, made a fiercely worded political statement on Palestine; it contained not a word about refugees.

Why did they leave? Monsignor GeorgeHakim, then Greek Catholic bishop of Galilee, the leading Christian personality in Palestine for many years, told a Beirut newspaper, Soda al-Janub, in the summer of 1948: "The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly, and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."

The initiative for the flight was indeed no secret. One of the famous American newspapermen of the time, Kenneth Bilby, who had covered Palestine for years, explained the Arab leaders' rationale for the flight in his book New Star in the East, published in 1950: "Let the Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab countries to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea."

There is also the piquant report in the files of the British police at Haifa, of how the leaders of the Jewish community pleaded with the leaders of the Arab community not to leave Haifa, and how the Arabs refused. There is too, in the annals of the UN Security Council, a speech by Jamal Husseini heaping praise on the Arabs of Haifa for refusing to stay put and insisting adamantly on leaving their homes. The British police then kindly provided transport and helped the Haifa Arabs across the Lebanese and Transjordanian borders.

When, four months after the invasion, the prospect of those that fled returning "in a few weeks" had faded, there were some recriminations. Emil Ghoury, a member of the Palestinian Arabs' national leadership, said in an interview with the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph: "I don't want to impugn anybody, but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. "The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously, and they must share in the solution of the problem."

The policy adopted inside the country was emphasized by the leaders of the invasion. The prime minister of Iraq, Nuri Said, thundered: "We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down." One of the Arabs who fled later succinctly summarized the story of the refugees in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Difaa: "The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."

Later, after the fighting began, many Arab villagers who believed the false rumors of a massacre at the village of Deir Yassin "panicked and fled ignominiously before they were threatened by the progress of the war." So wrote the British general Sir John Glubb, who commanded the Transjordanian army. Throughout the war there were two incidents - at Ramie and Lod - in which a number of Arab civilians were driven out of their homes by Israeli soldiers. The total number of Arabs, who evacuated, even according to the British Mandate's statistics, could not have been more than 420,000.

This figure conforms roughly also to the figure published from Arab sources, and by the UN. The central, horribly cruel fact is that the Arab states - who had brought about their plight - denied them residence rights; and the idea was born that they should be left in camps and used as a weapon for Israel's destruction. "The return of the refugees," said president Nasser of Egypt years later, "will mean the end of Israel."

It was in the immediate aftermath of the war that the refugee scam was developed into an international operation. As soon as the UN Disaster Relief Organization started providing - food, shelter, clothing and medical attention to the Arabs who had fled Palestine, a mass of needy Arabs descended on the camps from all over the Arab states. The organization had no machinery for identification; so the arrivals simply signed the register as refugees and, received the free aid.
I
Already in December 1948, the director of the Relief Organization, Sir Rafael Cilento, reported he was feeding 750,000 "refugees." By July 1949 the UN reported a round million. The Red Cross International Committee joined the party. It pressed for the recognition of any destitute Arab in Palestine as a refugee. Thus about 100,000 were added to the list. To add a touch of mordant humor, the Red Cross authority wrote about the additional people that: "It would be senseless to force them to abandon their homes to be able to get food as refugees." So these people stayed at home, received their free services there, and were added to the rolls of the refugees
.
Thus - and by other more expectable means of humanistic falsification we have, in the third generation, a large amorphous mass of Arabs, all of them comfortably lumped together in official UN lists as Arab refugees, described as "victims of Israeli aggression" and demanding the right of "return."

While everybody in Israel has rejected the Arab demand for accepting the return of the "refugees," the government has not rejected the idea that if negotiations for a settlement take place the problem of the refugees will be discussed. Moreover, there has been talk of "compensation" by Israel. There have even been voices suggesting the return of a "symbolic few" of the refugees.

Israel must, from the outset and forever, unequivocally reject such ideas.
Once and for all Israel must remind whoever has to be reminded that the responsibility for the displaced Arabs lies wholly and absolutely on the shoulders of the Arab states. Their utterly unprovoked invasion of the territory of Israel in May 1948 was a crime. Its declared intent was a crime. Six thousand Israel citizens were killed in that war, and thousands of others were injured. It was the Arab states that called on the Arab population to evacuate, all in order to facilitate accomplishment of their evil purpose.

It is a chutzpa of historical dimensions and significance to ask Israel to even discuss giving an inch or paying a penny of the price of the refugee problem. And it is dangerous for any Israeli spokesman to even agree to take part in any discussion of the subject - at any forum or in any context whatsoever. Indeed, the Israeli government should long ago have declared - but even now it is not too late: "We shall not participate in any discussion of the so-called refugee problem. This is a problem the Arab nation must solve for itself in its own spacious territories."

The writer, a co-founder with Menachem Begin of the Herut Party and member of the first Knesset, is a biographer and essayist.

Who are the Chaldeans?

The Detroit News, October 13, 2003

• Chaldeans are Iraqi Catholics, descendants of the original inhabitants of Mesopotamia. They trace their culture back to the ancient Sumerians, who built the first civilizations in the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers around 3500 B.C.

• The Chaldean empire ruled the Babylon dynasty, beginning around 600 BC. Ur of the Chaldees is recorded in the Hebrew Bible as the land where Abraham lived before beginning his journey to the promised land of the Jewish people.

• The Chaldeans were among the first Christians, converted by the apostle Thomas in the first century and retaining their faith even after Arab armies invaded the land that would one day be Iraq in the year 634 A.D. As recently as the early 20th century, many Europeans still referred to Iraq as Chaldea.

• Today, Chaldeans make up about 3 percent of Iraq's population. By the community's count, there are as many as 110,000 Chaldeans in Metro Detroit — the U.S. Census Bureau puts the figure at closer to 30,000 Many are descended from immigrants who came in early 20th century to open shops that catered to the early Ford factory workers.

Are We Back to the Blind Hatred of Henry Ford I?

CAMERA Update: More Info on Ford Foundation's Funding of Hate

(Could there now be a Ford or Lincoln in your Future?)

From: Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
www.camera.org

CAMERA Members have been requesting more details about the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic organizations funded by the Ford Foundation. The link below will take you to a website with more details.

http://www.ngo-monitor.org/editions/v1n10/v1n10-1.htm

If this URL does not work, go to the URL listed below and then click on "Ford Foundation Analysis" in the column on the right of the webpage.
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/

Lee Green
Director, National Letter-Writing Group
CAMERA

The Pursuit of Happiness

By Rabbi Irwin Groner, Congregation Shaarey Zedek, Southfield, MI

(While searching through my file for something else, I ran across one of Rabbi Groner’s usual masterpieces. The season is a little off but the message is calendarless)

During the weeks between Pesach and Shavuot, we follow a time-honored Jewish practice of studying Pirke Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, words of wisdom about life and morality, offered by the Sages of old. One of them, Ben Zoma, analyzed the qualities that comprise happiness. His definition speaks to modem people with as much cogency as it did to our forebears some two thousand years ago.

And finally, Ben Zoma refers to honor. One who is the object of scorn and derision cannot be happy. We recognize the deep universal need to be respected, to win the deference of others, the approval of our group, the regard of our peers.

If he said nothing further, we would be in Ben Zoma's debt, for he has outlined the anatomy of happiness and established the fundamental conditions for its existence. He then directs us to a formula by which we can acquire happiness. He does so in a very few words which express profound ideas.

"Who is wealthy? He who is content with his portion, who rejoices in his lot and is grateful for it." Ben Zoma grasped the essential truth about the human heart: our needs are few, our wants without number. If we are tormented by limitless desires, we shall never have contentment. The path to fulfillment lies in controlling our wants and looking upon our blessings with gratitude and appreciation.

"Who is powerful?" The rabbis knew of great conquerors, but they didn't conceive of these tyrants as men of power because they saw how these Emperors were driven by ruthless ambition and consuming lust, self-destructive impulses. The rabbis instead turned the gaze inward, for they taught that true power is in self-mastery. "Who is the strong person? He who can conquer himself." Self-control and self-discipline are the true signs of strength. What the rabbis say to contemporary humanity is "Conquer your fears, your anger, and your despair." The art of self-control is the greatest and most enduring form of strength.

"Who is wise?" The rabbis were generally not people of, wealth and were often devoid of power, but wisdom was their forte, the central quest of their existence. But who is wise? One who has mastered the law, who has probed the mysteries of the universe? Ben Zoma's answer was different. "Who is wise? He who learns from everyone." The truly wise person has an unclosed mind, receptive to new ideas, capable of extracting from human experience a rich core of insight. Wisdom is the ability to respond to the stimulation of life. If we can listen with understanding to the words of children, to the insights of the aged, to the sayings of the common folk, we can acquire new perspectives on a sometimes too familiar world. To be truly educated means to be open to new challenges of thought all the time.

The last component in this formula of happiness should be noted. "Who is honored? He who honors others." If we can respond to another human being with respect, if we can see in him or her unique individuality stamped by that same Divine power that makes life incalculably precious; then we shall create a climate in which honor and respect will flourish and grow. This will make us worthy of honor.

Thus has Ben Zoma given us his guidelines for the acquisition of happiness. They are simply stated, but their implementation requires limitless patience, concern, and understanding. Ben Zoma not only told us what happiness is, he also told us what happiness is not. Happiness is not in a pill, a bottle, a distant land or in some contrived amusement. Happiness, like God's Law, is not far away in heaven, but in your heart. Seek the happiness that lies before you. May your search be crowned with success.

Majority in Iraq say Ousting Saddam was well worth it.

By Jennifer Harper THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October, 2003

The war in Iraq has been worth the hardship, according to those who have lived through both. Despite continued violence and few basic amenities, 62 percent of Baghdad residents believe the ousting of Saddam Hussein justified "any hardships they might have personally suffered," according to a Gallup poll released on Sept. 24. Gallup went to the source, conducting face-to-face, 70-minute private interviews with more than 1,000 eager respondents in their homes in early September. The cooperation rate was more than 97 percent, Galiup said, categorizing the poll as "the first rigorous and scientifically conducted sampling of public sentiment in Iraq."

The numbers also revealed growing hope and confidence among Baghdad residents, though almost all felt their city had become more dangerous in recent months. While one in three says postwar Iraq is better off now, 67 percent believe their country will be far improved in five years. "American effort is only going to work if Iraqis buy into it," Gallup International poll director Richard Burkholder said. "That's why the good faith and optimism of the citizens are so important."

Thirty-six percent had favorable views of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, with 43 percent giving it a "middling" rating, according to the poll. In addition, 50 percent said the authority was doing a better job than it did two months ago. "CPA Administrator L. Paul Bremer is well thought of personally," the poll stated, noting that Mr. Bremer received a 47 percent favorable rating.

The new 25-member Iraqi Governing Council won approval: It was viewed positively by 61 percent of Baghdad's residents, with a quarter saying their impression was "very favorable." The good feelings fade, however, on a more global scale. Only 29 percent of those polled had a positive view of the United States, while 24 percent had a positive view of Britain, "which ruled Iraq as a mandate until the country was granted independence in 1932," the poll noted.

Though France vigorously opposed the Iraq war, it won more Iraqi admirers than the two liberators: 55 percent had a positive view of the French. Resentment of new authority may linger as well: 75 percent of the Baghdadis believe that policies and decisions made by their local governing council are "mostly determined" by the British and Americans.

Americans, meanwhile, have their own ideas about Iraq. A Pew Research survey also released on Sept. 24 found that 63 percent of Americans thought the use of military force in Iraq was the "right decision," while 62 percent said the effort was going "very well" or "fairly well." Fifty-one percent said Mr. Bush took the appropriate action at the right time, and 54 percent said the war helped the fight against terrorism. More than three-quarters — 79 percent — thought the Iraqis "are happy Saddam had been removed," though 47 percent said the Iraqis probably opposed American policies in their country.

Muslim Military Chaplains

Pentagon Jihadis

By Daniel Pipes October, 2003

The news last week, that two U.S. military personnel who are Muslim, James Yee and Ahmad al-Halabi, had been detained on suspicion of aiding Al Qaida prisoners at Guantanamo Bay (with another three Muslim servicemen under watch) seemed to prompt much surprise. It should not have. It has been obvious for months that Islamists who despise the United States have penetrated American prisons, law enforcement and armed forces.

A milestone Wall Street Journal article in February established that imams who consider Osama bin Laden "a hero of Allah" dominate the Islamic chaplainry in the New York state prison system. I documented in March the case of FBI Special Agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, an immigrant whose pattern of pro-Islamist behavior was overlooked and, instead, he was promoted! And at least six prior cases of Islamist servicemen have come to light:

• Ali Mohamed: An Egyptian immigrant who after his discharge from the U.S. Army went to work for Osama bin Laden. Mohamed pleaded guilty to helping plan the 1998 bombing surveillance of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi and now sits in prison serving his sentence.

• Semi Osman: An ethnic Lebanese immigrant and non-U.S. citizen who served in both the Army and the Naval Reserves. Osman was arrested in 2002 and accused of "material support for terrorists." He pleaded guilty to a weapons violation and served his sentence.

• Abdul Raheem Al Arshad Ali: An African-American convert to Islam and former Marine, he awaits trial in prison for allegedly supplying a semiautomatic handgun to Semi Osman.

• Jeffrey Leon Battle. An African-American convert and Army Reservist, Battle awaits trial in prison on charges of "enlisting in the Reserves to receive military training to use against America."

• John Alien Muhammad: An African-American convert and Army veteran, Muhammad is suspected of having thrown a grenade at a fellow soldier in 1991. He awaits trial in prison on charges of leading a 21-day shooting spree in the Washington, D.C area in 2002 that killed 10 and wounded three.

• Hasan Akbar: Another African-American convert, Akbar awaits trial in prison for two counts of premeditated murder and three charges of attempted murder following a March 2003 fragging incident against his fellow soldiers. The Akbar incident prompted Deanne Stillman of Slate magazine to conclude that "Islamists may be infiltrating the military in order to undermine it."

• That infiltration also has a mundane quality, as shown by the example of Nabil Elibiary. He's an Islamist who protests the "defaming" of bin Laden and defends polygamy — and who also led the holiday prayer service at an Air Force base in early 2003. The executive branch's insistence on "terrorism" being the enemy, rather than militant Islam, permits this Islamist penetration. And it continues. The Defense Department responded last week to the chaplain’s arrest by defending its hiring practices.

Only under external pressure, notably from Senators Chuck Schumer and Jon Kyl, did it agree to reassess them. Even then, the Pentagon insisted on reviewing the appointments of all 2,800 military chaplains — rather than the 12 Muslims among them. Political correctness gone amok! Which Christian or Jewish chaplains would be accused, as was their Muslim colleague last week, the Washington Times reports, of "sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage and failure to obey a general order"? By pretending not to see that the enemy emerges from one source, the authorities dilute their focus and render their review nearly meaningless and endangering security.

The U.S. government needs to use common sense and focus on militant Islam. It should consider such steps as:

• Breaking off contact with organizations (like the Islamic Society of North America and the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Council) that place Islamists in government employment.
• Suspending currently employed Muslim personnel who got their jobs through those institutions until their loyalty can be confirmed.
• Finding anti-Islamist organizations to work with, such as the Islamic Supreme Council of America or Sunni Muslims and the American Muslim Congress for Shi'ites.
• Confirming that government-employed Muslims do, as many of them swore under oath, "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." A mechanism is needed to identify employees with an Islamist outlook and expel them from government service.

Ironically, the Defense Department finds it easier to kill Islamists in Afghanistan than to exclude them from its own ranks. But only if the latter is carried out can Americans be confident their government is fully protecting them.

Road Map Rubble

By Arnold Beichman, The Washington Times, September, 2003

"In a recent column, the wise and often erudite essayist William F. Buckley discussed the Israeli-Palestinian crisis on which he pronounced this verdict: "Mr. Bush's road map has evolved as a great fiasco." But I sought in vain an answer to an obvious question: Why has this road map and all other past "road maps" evolve as great fiascoes?

From Richard Nixon to Gerald, Ford, to Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George Bush, father and son, there have been fiascoes galore - Lots of warm handshakes on the White House lawn, broad, triumphant smiles on all sides. Camp David agreements, the 1993 Oslo accords, all great TV ops for American presidents, Israeli prime ministers and the omnipresent, long-lived Yasser Arafat, a Selig with bombs, wearing his black-and-white kaffiyah and the biggest grin of all. And, promises, promises, pledges, guarantees, billions and billions of U.S. dollars.

Hamas and Hezbollah and their subsystems go right on with their suicide bombers, surviving Israeli counterattacks and so-called assassinations. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas arrives on the scene and 100 days later he is an ex-prime minister.

What happened to those hopeful words uttered by President Bush after his meeting July 25, 2003 with Prime Minister Abbas? "We had a good meeting today about the way forward on the road map to Middle Eastern peace. Prime Minister Abbas and I share a common goal: Peace in the Holy Land between two free and secure states, Palestine and Israel[...] "Prime Minister Abbas committed to a complete end to violence and terrorism, and he recognized that terror against Israelis, wherever they might be is a dangerous obstacle to the achievement of a Palestinian State."

What Mr. Buckley doesn’t seem to understand is that no matter what Israel gives or pledges to give, there will be no peace now or in the foreseeable future because neither Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or, most visibly, Osama bin Laden will permit Israel, a democratic, modern state to exist. In other words, "peace negotiations" are not about giving up the Settlements or some other fictitious issue. They are about Israel's existence.

Does Mr. Buckley think Israel is against peace and the Arab states are for peace? Gulf War III now underway in Iraq is an Arab war to prevent another democracy from being created in the Middle East, and worst of all a Muslim democracy. This half-century war, nominally in the cause of a Palestinian state, has poisoned the political atmosphere in this country so we have a new and respectable kind of anti-Semitism using code words like "neo-cons," "Likudniks," or "ex-Trotskyites" as part of the vocabulary.

Otherwise intelligent American politicians like Howard Dean, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, nonchalantly announces in a Santa Fe coffeehouse: "It's not our place to take sides" in the Middle East conflict. We shouldn't take sides in a war between a democracy, the only real democracy in the Middle East, against a terrorist conspiracy? Later, Mr. Dean told The Washington Post that notwithstanding Israel's "special relationship with the United States," America must "take an evenhanded role," if it is to be "in the middle of the negotiations."

Is Israel to become Czechoslovakia 1938? Are we supposed to chuckle as we recall Abraham Lincoln's fable about the loving wife who, watching her husband locked in deadly embrace with a bear, shouted at both — "Go to it, husband; go to it, bear."

How about not taking sides in Europe when Adolf Hitler threatened Britain so as to have been "in the middle of the negotiations"? Should Franklin Roosevelt have been cheering both sides, "Go to it, Adolf; go to it, Winston"? Not taking sides in favor of the Soviet captive nations in Eastern Europe? Not taking sides in favor of Poland's Solidarity and Lech Walesa against the Kremlin? Not taking sides between democratic Tai wan and Communist China?

Of course, it is our place to take sides. America, historically, has always been a "take sides" country. In the interest of maintaining "an evenhanded role," should America not have taken sides in 1991 when Kuwait was invaded by Iraq? Should America have allowed Saddam Hussein to overrun Kuwait and then become master of the Middle East, including its oil riches?

On Sunday, June 7, 1981, at precisely 6:37 p.m., nine Israeli jets destroyed an almost-completed Iraqi 75-megawatt, $275 million nuclear reactor at Osirak 12 miles east of Baghdad. With that pre-emptive strike Israel helped make possible the U S -U.N. victory in 1991 over Saddam Hussein. Would the U S -U.N. coalition forces have dared go to war against a dictator flushed with weapons of mass destruction? Would the coalition 10 years later have risked mega deaths on behalf of the kingdom of Kuwait? Had Saddam used atomic weapons, would the Bush administration have dared use a retaliatory atomic response against the Iraqi people?

Had Israel adopted the Howard Dean policy of neutralism and allowed Osirak to come on stream, had Israel not taken sides against a dictator, the Middle East might have by now have been Armageddon minus the promised aftermath of 1,000 years of peace and plenty. Remember the 5,000 Kurds gassed to death by Saddam Hussein? And now that it is reported (the Guardian, Sept. 18) that Saudi Arabia is considering acquisition of nuclear weapons from Pakistan, and with global concern over Iran's suspect nuclear program the danger in the Middle East goes far beyond Israeli settlements in Gaza. Does Howard Dean understand this?

Howard Dean may be a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination (and it would serve the Democratic Party right if he did win the nomination) but his declamations in a Santa Fe coffee shop have demonstrated a shallowness, a thoughtlessness that might have qualified him for the Vermont governorship but which surely disqualifies him as a candidate for the American presidency.

Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for The Washington Times.

An Honorary Trustee of the Cranbrook “Peace” Foundation - Imam Hassan Qazwini?

Who's Protecting the President?

By Steven C. Baker

FrontPageMagazine.com | May 6, 2003

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote that "The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer." If this is true, then there should be some serious political reverberations as a result of President Bush's decision to kiss Imam Hassan Qazwini after speaking to an Arab-American community in Dearborn, Michigan on Monday. This continues a well-noted trend of placing the President in the company of purported leaders of the Muslim community who do not share the President's moral clarity on terror.
This supposedly "moderate" Imam from the Detroit, Michigan-based Islamic Center of America (ICA) has some disturbing connections to radical Islamists that cannot be overlooked by a conservative President who has been entrusted by the American people to fight a war on global terrorism.

For starters, Imam Qazwini's Islamic Center once invited Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to be the keynote speaker at a memorial for its deceased founder Imam Mohamad Jawad Chirri. At the time, Arab American News described his address as "dynamic" and "always controversial," and reported that he urged the Muslim community "to become politically active...[and] as powerful as the Zionists."

According to an article in the Detroit Free Press in November 1998, Imam Qazwini downplayed the fact that Louis Farrakhan would be the keynote speaker at Imam Chirri's memorial: "...I always say there are some similarities between us and Mr. Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, and there are some differences. These differences are not so great that we would not give him the podium."

This raises a couple of questions. Can someone be a "moderate" Muslim if they associate with a figure such as Louis Farrakhan? And, what does it say about the nature of the Islamic Center of America if Louis Farrakhan is invited to be the keynote speaker at a memorial to honor its revered founder?

For those who do not recall, Louis Farrakhan is the man who once called Judaism a "gutter religion" and who has been banned - for security reasons -- from entering the United Kingdom since 1986. London's left wing journal The Observer has a profile of Louis Farrakhan that points out his "reliance on anti-Semitic imagery." A few examples: "Jews are 'bloodsuckers'"; "Hitler 'was a great man."

It also notes that "he talks of 'settling the score' with white people" and boasts proudly "that black street gangs are 'born warriors of true liberation.'"
Furthermore, in the lead up to the war that eventually liberated the people of Iraq, the Associated Press reported in October 2002 that Farrakhan believed Saddam Hussein was "making peace with his neighbors" and that the "[Bush] Administration is the greatest threat to world peace." He added, "Only Israel, the United States and Tony Blair...are willing to go along with an attack on Iraq."

Would Imam Qazwini consider these anti-war, anti-Bush viewpoints to be "similarities" or "differences" of opinion?

Imam Qazwini has other troublesome connections to radicals in the United States. He is a board member of the American Muslim Council and shares this position with some notable terror apologists.

For instance, the Conference Chair of AMC's upcoming Imam conference is Abdurahman Alamoudi. According to a January 2002 report by the Associated Press, Alamoudi is a supporter of Hamas and Hizbullah- two groups that are Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. In fact, both candidates Bush and Hillary Clinton returned his campaign donations citing statements he made.

Furthermore, during a Chicago fundraising event for the Islamic Association for Palestine on 29 December 1996, Alamoudi argued: "If we are outside this country, we can say oh, Allah, destroy America, but once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it. There is no way for Muslims to be violent in America, no way. We have other means to do it. You can be violent anywhere else but in America."

Other controversial AMC figures include:
Former Executive Director Eric Vickers. On 27 June 2002, Vickers appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and stated that al-Qaeda was "involved in a resistance movement."

In a written response to the President's State of the Union address, Vickers wrote on 23 January 2003: "In invoking God to be with American soldiers in our apparently imminent war with Iraq, what the president did not say is that he is calling on God to kill innocent Iraqi children."

AMC's Treasurer Ali Khan. Khan has retained Hamas attorney Stanley Cohen to represent him in a lawsuit against Northwest airlines (racial profiling).

Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown). The former president of the Executive Board of the AMC Board of Directors was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown). Brown was twice on the FBI's own Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List and is now serving a life sentence for the 2000 murder of Fulton County, Georgia, Sheriff's Deputy Ricky Kinchen.

Dr. Jamal Barzanji. Dr. Barzanji was involved with seven organizations that were raided by federal agents in connection with terrorist financing: the now-defunct SAAR Foundation; Amana Trust, the International Institute of Islamic Thought, Mar-Jac Investments, Mena Investments, and Reston Investments and SAFA Trust. The seven are part of what has come to be known as "The Wahhabi Lobby."

The American Muslim Council's strong anti-war, anti-Bush activism deserves additional mention due to the fact that AMC has been invited repeatedly to attend events at the White House and to meet with high-level Bush Administration officials.

AMC press releases "saluted" Mahdi Bray, the Executive Director of the MAS Freedom Foundation, for "leading the charge for the Muslim community's role" in the anti-war protests; and touted AMC Treasurer Ali Khan's plan to lead a caravan of anti-war protesters to the Capitol in January 2003. Moreover, AMC acted as a surrogate for International ANSWER - the radical left wing, anti-war organization headed by Ramsey Clark (a man who wants to impeach the President). On 15 January 2003 it forwarded via email one of ANSWER's anti-war messages. That text read in part: “There is no better way than to truly remember the spirit and legacy of Dr. King than to organize a bold, visible protest against war and racism in Washington DC on the anniversary of his birthday. We will not allow the war makers in the Bush administration and on Wall Street to turn Dr. King into a harmless icon, rather than an inspiration for struggle...”

AMC also has a long and consistent history of making common cause with terror groups in the United States that have no relation to Islam or Mideast issues.
AMC is an "active member" of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF), a kind of legal aid for terrorists. Members include, the Puerto Rican FALN and Macheteros, Black Liberation Movement, Weather Underground, and persons on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

As an active member in the NCPPF, the American Muslim Council supports the cause of convicted murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal, who killed Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, and Leonard Peltier, who murdered FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams at Wounded Knee.

The former President and current Vice-President of the NCPPF is Dr. Sami Al-Arian, who was arrested and indicted on 20 February 2003 and stands accused of supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad - a group that Attorney General John Ashcroft described as "one of the most violent terrorist organizations in the world."

It was remarkably easy to uncover Imam Qazwini's relationships to various radical entities. How then was the President put in a situation that permitted him to kiss a man who finds common cause with the likes of Louis Farrakhan, supporters of Hamas and Hizbullah, and in general someone who is not "with" the President politically?

(“How then” the Board of Trustees of the Cranbrook “Peace” Foundation has found common cause with Hassan Qazwini and made him an Honorary Trustee of its Board?)

Who is to be held accountable for this atrocious lapse in judgment?

How Mohammed combined Judaism and Christianity and Invented Islam

By Dr. M. Kedar, Department of Arabic Studies, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

Muhammad, the Prophet, hardly made any innovations when he established Islam. He used the hallowed personages, historic legends and sacred sites of Judaism, Christianity and even paganism, by Islamizing them. Thus, according to Islam, Abraham was the first Moslem and Jesus and St. John (the sons of Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron) were prophets and guardians of the second heaven. Many Biblical legends, which were familiar to the pagan Arabs before the dawn of Islam, underwent an Islamic conversion and the Koran as well as the Hadith (the Islamic oral tradition), are replete with them.

The practice of Islamization was performed on places as well as persons: Mecca and the holy stone - al-Ka'bah - were holy sites of the pre-lslamic pagan Arabs. The Umayyads' Mosque in Damascus and the Great Mosque of Istanbul were built on the sites of Christian-Byzantine churches that were converted into mosques. These are good examples of Islamic treatment of sanctuaries of other faiths.

Jerusalem underwent the same process. At first, Muhammad attempted to convince the Jews near Medina to join his young community, and in order to persuade them he established the direction of prayer (kiblah) to be to the north, towards Jerusalem, like the Jews. But after he failed in this attempt, he fought the Jews, killed many of them and turned the kiblah southward, to Mecca. His abandonment of Jerusalem explains the fact that this city is not mentioned in the Koran even once.

After Palestine was occupied by the Moslems, its capital was in Ramlah, 30 miles to the west of Jerusalem, since Jerusalem meant nothing to them. Islam rediscovered Jerusalem 50 years after Muhammad's death. In 682 CE, Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr rebelled against the Islamic rulers in Damascus, conquered Mecca and prevented pilgrims from reaching Mecca for the Hajj. Abd al-Malik, the Umayyad Caliph, needed an alternative site for the pilgrimage and settled on Jerusalem which was under his control.

In order to justify this choice, a verse from the Koran was chosen (sura 17, verse 1) which states (translation by Majid Fakhri): "Glory to Him who caused His servant to travel by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose precincts we have blessed, in order to show him some of our signs. He is indeed the All-Hearing and All-Seeing.

The meaning ascribed to this verse is that "the furthest mosque" (al-masjid al-aqsa) is in Jerusalem and that Muhammad was conveyed there one night (although at that time the journey took three days by camel), on the back of al-Buraq, his magical horse with the head of a woman, wings of an eagle, the tail of a peacock, and whose hoofs reach to the horizon. He tethered the horse to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount and from there ascended to the seventh heaven together with the angel Gabriel.

On his way he met the prophets of other religions who are the guardians of heaven: Adam, Jesus, St. John, Joseph, Seth, Aaron, Moses and Abraham who accompanied him on his way to the seventh heaven, to Allah, and who accepted him as their master, (see the commentary of AI-Jalalayn on this verse). Thus Islam tries to gain legitimacy over other, older religions, by creating a scene in which the former prophets agree to Muhammad's mastery, thus making him Khatam al-Anbiya" ("the Seal of the Prophets").

The strange thing here is that this fantastic story contradicts a number of the tenets of Islam: How can a man of flesh and blood ascend to heaven? How can a mythical creature carry a mortal to a real destination? Questions such as these have caused orthodox Moslem thinkers to conclude that the whole story of the nocturnal journey was a dream of Muhammad's. Thus Islam tried to "go one better" than the Bible. Moses "only" went up to Mt. Sinai, in the middle of nowhere, and drew close to heaven, whereas Muhammad went all the way up to Allah, and from Jerusalem itself.

So why shouldn't we also believe that the al-Aqsa mosque is in Jerusalem? One good reason is that the people of Mecca, who knew Muhammad well, did not believed this story. Only Abu Bakr, the firs t Calif, believed him and thus was called "al-Siddiq" ("the believer"). The second reason is that Islamic tradition itself tells us that al-Aqsa mosque is near Mecca on the Arabian Peninsula. This was unequivocally stated in "Kitab al maghazi,” a book by the Moslem historian and geographer al-Waqidi (Oxford UP, 1966, vol. 3, pp. 958-9). According to al-Waqidi, there were two "masjeds" (places of prayer) in al-gi'ranah, a village between Mecca and Ta'if. One was the "the closer mosque" (al-masjid al-adana) and the other was "the further mosque" (al-masjid al-aqsa), and Muhammad would pray there when he was out of town.

This description by al-Waqidi was not “convenient” for the Islami propaganda of the 7th century. In order to establish a basis to the awareness of the “holiness” of Jerusalem in Islam, the Califs of the Ummayid Dynasty invented many “traditions” upholding the value of Jerusalem, which would justify pilgrimage to Jerusalem to the faithful Moslems. Thus was the al-kasjid al-aqsa “transported” to Jerusalem. It should be noted that Saladin also adopted the myth of al-Aqsa and those “traditions” in order to recruit and inflame the Moslem warriors against the Crusaders in the 12th Century. Another aim of the Islamization of Jerusalem was to undermine the legitimacy of the older religions, Judaism and Christianity that consider Jerusalem to be a holy city. Thus, Islam is presented as the only legitimate religion, taking the place of the other two because they had changed and distorted the Word of God, each in its turn. (About the alleged forgeries of the Holy Scriptures, made by Jews and Christians, see the third chapter of: M. J. Kister, "haddith U 'an bani isra'll wa-laharaja", IDS 2 (1972), pp. 215-239. Kister quotes dozens of Islamic sources).

Though Judaism and Christianity can exist side by side in Jerusalem, Islam regards both of them as a betrayal of Allah and his teachings, and has done and will do all in its power to expel both of them from the city. It is interesting to note that this expulsion is retroactive: The Islamic announcers of the Palestinian radio stations keep claiming that the Jews never had a temple on the Temple mount and certainly not two temples. Where, according to them, did Jesus preach? Arafat, himself a secular person (ask the Hamas), is doing today exactly what the Califs of the Umayyad dynasty did: he is recruiting the holiness of Jerusalem to serve his political ends. He must not give control of Jerusalem over to the Jews since according to Islam they are impure and the wrath of Allah is upon them (al-maghdhoub 'alayhim, Koran, sura. 1, verse 7, see al-Jalalayn and other commentaries; Note that verse numbers may differ slightly in different editions of the Koran). The Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs (s. 5, v. 60). (For the idea that Jews are related to pigs and monkeys see, for example, Musnad al-lmam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, (Bey rut 1969) vol. 3, p. 241. See also pages 348, 395, 397, 421, and vol. 6, p. 135.)

The Jews are those who distorted the holy writings that were revealed to them (s. 2, v. 73, s. 3, v. 72) and denied God's signs (s. 3, v. 63). Since they violated the covenant with their God (s. 4, v. 154), God cursed them (s. 5, v. 16) and forever they are the inheritors of hell (s. 3, v. 112). So how can Arafat abandon Jerusalem to the Jews?

The Palestinian media these days is full of messages of Jihad calling to broaden the national-political war between Israel and the Palestinians into a religious-Islamic war between the Jews and the Moslems. READ THEIR LIPS: for them Christianity is as good as Judaism, since both of them lost their right to rule over Jerusalem. Only Islam, Din al-Haqq ("the Religion of Truth") has this right, and forever (shaykh 'Ikrima Sabri, the mufti of Jerusalem, in Friday's khutbah 4 weeks ago, Sawt falastin - the PA official radio). Since the holiness of Jerusalem to Islam always was and still is no more than a politically motivated holiness, Arafat is putting his political head on the block should he give it up.

Must the whole world bow down to myths concocted by Islam, long after Jerusalem is, and has been, the true center of Judaism and Christianity? Should UN forces be sent to the Middle East just because Arafat recycles the Umayyads' political problems or even Muhammad's dreams about Jerusalem?

Dr. M. Kedar Dept. of Arabic Bar-llan University 52900 Ramat Gan, Israel

Yasser Arafat’s eulogy of Egyptian Gamal Abdel Nasser

Chairman Arafat on the 33rd Anniversary of the Death of Egyptian President
Gamal Nasser: 'The Warrior-President is With Us in Self-Sacrifice in Battle …

(For those of you that have some question as to where Arab and Islamic nationalism is going, below is the speech of Yasser Arafat extolling the memory of Gamal Nasser, late “President” of Egypt whose claim to fame was nationalizing the Suez Canal from the British and the French and ending foreign colonialism in Egypt. Unfortunately, Nasser invited in another colonial power - the Soviet Union and became its client state. He quickly became totally indebted to the USSR for millions of dollars of armament that proved to be his undoing in the Six Day War with Israel. In the meantime, the Egyptian people continue to live in abject poverty, like the rest of the Arab world, dreaming of some sort of military conquest against the West who they blame for centuries of their own self-induced deprivation.)

Special Dispatch - Palestinian Authority/Egypt October 2, 2003

On September 28, 2003, Wafa, the Palestinian press agency, published a speech made by PA Chairman Yasser Arafat (1) marking the 33rd anniversary of the death of Egyptian president Gamal Abd Al-Nasser. The following are excerpts from the speech:

"The deceased Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, as an Egyptian, pan-Arab, and international commander, leader, and pioneer - it is not easy for me to write about the Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser on the anniversary of his death, because he is not a memory but the soul of the Arab nation, which does not and will never die, and because he is the soul of the Palestinian resistance, about which he said, 'The Palestinian resistance came into being in order to live and to triumph.'

"The Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, through his spirit, courage and creative thought, and through the dream of the greater Arab homeland, is not a memory, nor is he yesterday's cause. He is the present, today's cause, the cause of the shining Arab tomorrow, to which the Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser devoted his whole life and died a martyr, as a pan-Arab nationalist and Egyptian patriot and as a Palestinian resistance fighter on the soil of struggle and confrontation against colonialism, both old and new; against the usurpation of Palestine and its colonization; and against division and fragmentation.

He is glory and dignity. The cause of the Warrior-President Gamal Abd-Al Nasser and his message and struggle is the cause of each and every Arab from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf, whether he be a ruler or an ordinary citizen, because the principles of Abd Al-Nasser are the principles on whose basis our Arab nation is rising up and taking its place in the sun."

"The Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser devoted his life to the glory of the Arab nation and its unity and dignity, and to expelling the forces of colonialism from all regions of the Arab homeland. It is for the sake of wounded Palestine that this young Egyptian officer rose up from besiegement in Faluja(2) in Palestine to besiege and drive out the forces of colonialism from the land of Egypt, the throbbing heart of the Arab homeland. [It is Abd Al-Nasser who proclaimed], 'Colonialism should now pick up its walking staff and leave,' 'from now on, there is no place for colonialists, occupiers, and invaders,' and 'this land is Arab, and no flag but that of the Arab nation shall ever fly above it.'

“ The Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser is alive in his nation and in Arab minds, and in the Arab hands that carry his message about Arab liberation, unity and progress. They will never abandon his principles and never lay down the banner that president Abd Al-Nasser raised - a banner that is a lighthouse shedding a bright light for the whole [Arab] nation.

As for Palestine, Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, as both warrior and president, is its great martyr. He is the soldier, the self-sacrificing fighter, and the resistance fighter [who was] besieged in Faluja, who refused to surrender and showed steadfastness and resistance and carried Palestine in his heart and conscience and thought for all his life. He refused to accept [the idea of] the disappearance and nonexistence of Palestine. He deserves credit for reviving the Palestinian national entity after the catastrophe of 1948, when he decided to establish the Palestinian Legislative Council in the Gaza Strip so it would be the seed for the future Palestine, for which Gamal Abd Al-Nasser was making preparations in Egypt."

"The Palestinian people have not forgotten and shall never forget that the Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser is the martyr of Palestine who ensured the establishment of the PLO to lead the Palestinian people in its war of liberation and reclaiming of the occupied Palestinian territory, and to establish the independent state of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, and for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland and territory.

"And now the Palestinian people stand proudly in its war of national liberation from Palestinian occupation and from colonization by settlement. I say to you with confidence that the Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser is with us in the trenches, with us under siege, with us in self-sacrifice [in battle]. [He is with us] with his thought and his manliness, creative spirit, and stature that neither bow nor retreat, no matter how difficult the struggle and how great the sacrifices."

The Arab Nation... Defeating the Forces of Hegemony and Colonialism

"If we can persevere and sacrifice as the Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser persevered and sacrificed - for life has no value without homeland, without liberty, and without national dignity. From the heart of this brutal war against your people in Palestine, I call on all of you to raise your ambitions and spirit under the banner of the principles and values and struggle of the Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, because the Arab nation has no path - in its history, culture, and holy places - other than that of dignity, liberation, unity, and defeating the forces of hegemony and colonialism, for the Arab nation is strong and glorious and fully deserving of a free, honorable life.

"We therefore have no path other than that of steadfastness and sacrifice for the sake of the homeland, the [Arab] nation, and the future. We salute the Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, the lantern shining before the nation and its [future] generations. The warrior Gamal Abd Al-Nasser - the president, the commander, the leader, the pioneer - is alive in our midst and in our [future] generations. He has not died and shall never die. Peace and God's mercy and blessings be upon you." ##

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent,
non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle
East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070 Fax: (202) 955-9077
E-Mail: memri@memri.org, www.memri.org

Colin Powell, “ A Free Middle East Key to Prosperity.”

Colin Powell finally admits to the heart of the problem in the Arab world with Israel having zero to do with the dynamic. After the speech U.S. Arab audience sits on its hands.

Secretary of state calls for reforms in Arab societies to build peaceful future in region.

By Gregg Krupa, The Detroit News, September 30, 2003

DETROIT — Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday night that "ensuring a prosperous, free Middle East" is a key to a peaceful future, but that it will not
occur until Arab societies reform. Powell further admitted that the Bush administration's plan for peace between Israel and Arab nations — the so-called road map — has stalled.

Speaking to an audience that included hundreds of Arab officials and business people at Cobo Center in Detroit, Michigan on the second day of the U.S.-Arab Economic Forum, Powell said that too often in the Middle East, young people are heard to say, "I am wasted."

" No peace or prosperity is possible, he said, "with so much frustration in every sphere of life. …I have come to ask you to build a new Middle East that is peaceful, and prosperous, and free," ... "This is a struggle that we must contest with every tool at our hands" … "Arab societies must be more open and democratic to generate more trade, attract more business and allow the money that is earned to enrich the masses, he said.

About 900 people originally greeted Powell, with a standing ovation. But, by the end of his speech —in which he defended the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Bush administration's determination to foster democracy in the region —everyone who applauded him remained in their seat

Bush's Politics of Pandering to anti-American Arab Groups

By Frank Gaffney Jr., The Washington Times, September 28, 2003

Every once in a while a highly visible political gambit comes completely a cropper - particularly when it involves — saying nothing of embarrasses — the president of the United States, it generally gets considerable public notice. Often the proverbial head rolls. At the very least, a course correction is usually quickly effected.

What are we to make, then, of the astonishing silence, the utter lack of accountability and the absence of any apparent shift in electoral strategy that has
accompanied the meltdown of the one of the Bush political team's major initiatives: Its effort to recruit Muslim- and Arab-American voters (and donors) by pandering to foreign-funded organizations led by radical leftists and even pro-
"Islamists" — despite the fact that most members of those communities either are radical or subscribe to the virulently intolerant, and often violently anti-American, tenets of those who promote Islamism.

This courting formally got under way back in 2000, when senior advisers to then-Gov. George Bush invited representatives of highly problematic groups like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the American Muslim Council (AMC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations "(CAIR) to Austin. On the presidential campaign trail that year, he met with and received support from an Islamist activist named Sami Al-Arian and embraced Mr. Al-Arian's personal pet project the prohibition of the use of "secret evidence" by federal law
enforcement.

After Mr. Bush gained the White House, ISNA, the AMC, CAIR and like-minded groups and individuals such as Sami Al-Arian were invited to the White
House for meetings there with, among others, political guru Karl Rove. In fact, on September 11,2001, a number of them were scheduled to hold a meeting in the presidential complex for the purpose of cashing in on the promised end to the use of secret evidence — one of law enforcement's few and most important pre-Patriot Act tools for protecting classified information while prosecuting suspected terrorists

Incredible as it may seem, in the wake of the attacks that day organizations with long record of support for radical Islam and sympathy for those who murder Americans and others in its name were afforded increased access to high-level administration officials and myriad federal agencies. Mr. Al-Arian's access only ended when he was indicted and held without bail on some 40 counts, including charges that he ran Palestinian Islamic Jihad for 10 years from his office at the University of South Florida. CAIR's access has continued, even though three of its officials have been arrested in recent months on terrorism-related charges.

Such "outreach" to Muslims was routinely justified by a legitimate, even laudable, desire on Mr. Bush's part to demonstrate that the War on Terror was not a war on Islam. But for some around the president, it had a more crass political impetus: pandering for votes in 2002 and 2004.

Unfortunately, the pro-Islamists and their friends had a very different agenda. They sought to use the access thus afforded to White House officials, Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officers and the FBI to undermine counter-terrorist techniques and initiatives on the grounds they were racially or ethnically motivated. Worse yet, they publicly exploited meetings with the president and his subordinates to shore up their dubious — and highly undesirable — claim to leadership both within and on behalf of their community.

Just how undesirable this phenomenon is became clear in an important hearing on Sept. 10 the Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism headed by Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican. After establishing Saudi funding as a source of revenue for and influence over organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, witnesses and senators on both sides of the aisle condemned CAIR for its "extreme" agenda and its support for terrorist organizations like Hamas.

If any further evidence were needed that the Bush administrations embrace of groups like CAIR was as politically unjustifiable as it is strategically dangerous, it was provided recently in Chicago. Two weeks ago, tens of thousands of immigrant and black Muslims met there in separate conventions. Their inability to assemble in a single venue or to agree on a common agenda offered clear evidence that their communities are hardly monolithic. In fact, the only thing on which there was apparent accord was an announced determination on the part of the radical groups who sponsored these events that they would work to register 1 million Muslim voters to defeat George W. Bush in 2004.

It is clearly time for George Bush to reach out to moderate Muslims, not the radicals and Islamists his team has been romancing — to empower the
former and to diminish, for both compelling strategic and political reasons, the influence of the latter. If any pandering is to be done from here on, let it be lavished on those — Muslim and non-Muslim alike — who are committed to strengthening this country against its enemies, instead of those who sympathize
with them.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.

The Candid Remarks of Reverend Pat Robertson

Redacted from interview by Michael Freund, The International Jerusalem Post, September 19, 2003

(When US televangelist Pat Robertson talks, millions of Americans listen. And what he's telling George W. Bush is to beware of dividing the Land of Israel and creating a Palestinian state.)

While driving along a verdant stretch of road near Virginia's popular beaches, it is hard to imagine anything in this pleasant and tranquil area stirring up nationwide controversy. The pastoral and well-tended lawns of Regent University, home to the Rev. Dr. Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, seem far-removed from the harsh media criticism that, from time to time, follows some of his remarks on his daily television broadcasts. Recently, Robertson found himself at the center of a storm after he called upon his followers to pray that three liberal justices of the US Supreme Court be influenced from Above to retire, thereby clearing the way for US President George W. Bush to appoint social conservatives in their place.

The 73-year-old former Republican presidential candidate and leading Christian televangelist also came under fire for criticizing US policy towards Liberia. But despite the tumult, Robertson and his Christian evangelical operation is still going strong ago. In the past two decades, Robertson's followers have become a prominent force in domestic US politics, pushing an agenda that is unabashedly conservative and self-confident.

Interviewed in his office, Robertson was especially keen to discuss an issue that has been on his mind a lot of late: the US-backed road map and how it will affect the future of Israel. Though a staunch conservative, Robertson does not mince words when it comes to criticizing President Bush over his desire to establish a Palestinian state and divide the Land of Israel. As far as Robertson is concerned, Bush is playing with fire, and making what he considers to be "a terrible mistake."

Following are excerpts from the interview:

Over the past 2,000 years, the Jewish people suffered terribly as a result of persecution by Christians. Yet, nowadays, some of Israel's most vocal supporters, particularly in the US, are Christians. Are we witnessing some kind of change in Jewish-Christian relations?

I am not sure the change is as dramatic as you think; it is just that now it is being noticed. My mother years and years ago always told us to bless the Jews and pray for the peace of Jerusalem. There is a repository of that kind of feeling, of great warmth towards Israel and the Jewish people.

How do you explain that?

The first thing that we have to realize is that evangelical Christians take the Bible very seriously, so the Old Testament figures, who were all Jewish, are to them their heroes in faith. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron. The prophets. David. All these people are preached about, talked about, and discussed and become part of our evangelical culture. The other point that we have to keep in mind is that Jesus was Jewish, and all of the early apostles were Jews.

Some observers have argued that behind this support for Israel lies an ulterior motive, a desire to convert Jews, to entice them to become Christians. Shouldn't Jews be concerned?

I think there is a bond of kinship that has no ulterior motive at all. In fact, it is sometimes costly. It isn't easy for a person like me to be allied with Israel as closely as I am, because I have death threats from certain Muslim extremists, so this kind of thing puts you in risk of your life.

You mentioned the Bible. Now, the Bible states that God gave the Land of Israel to the people of Israel as their eternal inheritance. But George W. Bush is trying to divide the Land of Israel and create a Palestinian state. Do you think he is defying the Divine will?

I don't think there is any question about it. I think he has made a terrible mistake. You know the prophet Joel speaks about those "who divided my land," that there is a curse on them. I think I would walk very, very softly if I were George Bush in this regard. I think he has been talked into this by the US State Department, by the European community, by the Arabs, to take away Judea and Samaria, or what amounts to the Jewish homeland.

If Bush presses ahead with the road map and compels Israel to divide the land, do you think that American Christians in 2004 should take that into consideration when deciding whom to vote for?

I think they will, but the problem is that the election is between two people. It isn't George Bush versus perfection, it is George Bush versus a liberal Democrat and the chances are that the liberal Democrat is as bad or worse on Israel than he is, and will be worse on a whole lot of other issues than he is. But if he moves against Jerusalem, if he tries to partition Jerusalem, then I think Christian leaders across the country will rise up and speak out very forcefully against him, and it could hurt him in a close election.

As a Christian, haw do you feel about the fact that Israel turned over Bethlehem with all of its important Christian shrines to Palestinian control?

I was in Norway when Shimon Peres was there, working on those Oslo Accords. I wasn't aware of the momentous nature of what was being done, but I think Oslo was a tragic mistake. And I think Ehud Barak gave away the farm. He made concessions that were undreamed of, yet Arafat spat in his face and started the intifada. I think it was a terrible thing to give up not only Bethlehem, but also Joseph's Tomb in Shechem [Nablus], Hebron as these areas do play such a large role in the early formation of Israel. To give them up to Yasser Arafat is unthinkable. Barak tried to do it, and I think he did so under the pressure of Bill Clinton and it was a mistake.

In your opinion, is the roadmap merely another reincarnation of Oslo?

I think so. I think this road map is ill conceived, and I don't think it is going to survive. You guys have to go in and take over that territory. Establish martial, law, disband the Palestinian Authority, begin to reeducate the children and take over the television and the radio so the propaganda stops. Then, over a period of years, see if Palestinians of goodwill can be put in office -people who can understand the situation.

Why do you think Israel refrained from dismantling the Palestinian Authority?

The United States has held Israel back from doing what was needed. What is needed is to go in, like we went into Afghanistan. They needed to go in and flush out this nest of terrorists and do the job completely. Not just a few little tanks surrounding Yasser Arafat's headquarters and all that nonsense. That takes force, and it takes resolute courage and it takes the cooperation of the United States. Unfortunately, they don't have that. The US holds them back from doing what-they need to do.

In recent years, there have been reports about the persecution of Christians living in areas under Palestinian control. Are you concerned about that?

Oh, yes. We have interviewed people on our television station, those who have been tortured, those who have gone underground for fear of their lives and for fear of being captured by the Palestinian Authority. There is no question that the Christians have suffered terrible persecution. Bethlehem was essentially a Christian town. To the best of my knowledge, that whole area has been cleansed of its Christian population. So, that is just one example of the type of persecution that has been going on against Christians.

Do you think Israel does a good job making its case to the American public?

'(Laughs) It does a terrible job. They have the worst public relations of anything I can conceive of.

There have been a number of reports in recent months highlighting the Christian Right and its growing influence in the Republican Party and the White House. How much influence do they wield?

I ran for president in 1988, and in the process, I trained up to 300,000 people in precinct politics. When I got through, I organized the Christian Coalition and these people served as the cadre for the organization. I think over the years this group has been extremely effective in having an influence in the Republican Party. But in terms of really influencing the nation, I think the big networks, the big newspapers, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, they are the ones that really have the influence. I think they are probably the dominant voices in our society.

Have you thought of running for president again?

I am too old, too tired and too smart to try something like that again.

What do you think the role of religion and religious leaders should be in a democracy?

I don't think the organized Church should dominate government policy and force a particular point of view onto the lives of individual people. As to the Supreme Court, I regard the capture of our constitution by five non-elected people as being a form of tyranny. We are 270 million people, and five un-elected officials determine our morals and what we are going to do, when our children can pray, whether they can read the Bible, or whether they can read the Ten Commandments... The Constitution never intended the Supreme Court to have this kind of power.

How should the United States deal with Saudi Arabia

I think it is time that the cozy relationship between the leadership of our nation and the banking and oil interests has got to stop. We have got to recognize that the Wahhabis are vicious. We must tell the Saudis we are not going to stand for this anymore. You are exporting tenor, you are funding terror and you cannot do this anymore. We are protecting you, and we are not going to continue protecting you with our military umbrella if you are continuously undermining Israel, undermining other regimes around the world and trying to export this fanatical brand of Islam. You've just got to stop it. They are here operating in the United States, they are operating in Africa, in the Middle East and they are trying to undermine Russia, as the Chechens are connected with that Wahhabi group. I mean, it is a very dangerous thing and I think that we have to deal
with it forcefully, but so far, there is nobody in our government who has got the will to do that.

How can American citizens, particularly American Christians, support Israel in this difficult time? What would you suggest that they do on behalf of Israel?

The best thing is to discuss the | legitimacy of Israel, the legitimacy of Israel's claims to the land on a Biblical basis. I think that for the American Christians, and for Israel itself, the strongest claim to integrity rests strongly in the Bible. | The Land was given by God. It was won by conquest maybe around 1200 BCE. We are talking about a long history. I think we need to emphasize that these people [the Jews] are the Chosen People and that there is a prophetic significance in what is happening. These are our friends and we need to support them, especially Israel, as the only island of democracy in the whole Middle East. I think Christians need to speak out and I am not sure they are. ##

From Time Immemorial: Origins of Arab-Jewish Conflict

By Joan Peters

This monumental and fascinating book, the product of seven years of original research, will forever change the terms of the debate about the conflicting claims of the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East. A Five Star Must Read.

The weight of the comprehensive evidence found and brilliantly analyzed by historian and journalist Joan Peters answers many crucial questions, among them: Why are the Arab refugees from Israel seen in a different light from all the other, far more numerous peoples who were displaced after World War II? Why, indeed, are they seen differently from the Jewish refugees who were forced, in 1948 and after, to leave the Arab countries to find a haven in Israel? Who, in fact, are the Arabs who were living within the borders of present-day Israel, and where did they come from?

Joan Peter's highly readable and moving development of the answers to these and related questions will appear startling, even to those on both sides of the argument who have considered themselves to be in command of the facts. This book is one that has already had a major impact on the policy discussions of one of the most vital and intractable of the world's problems, shrouded until now in a fog of misinformation and ignorance.

"This book, if read, will change the mind of our generation. If understood, it could also affect the history of the future." - New Republic

"Everything in this book reads like hard news. . One woman walks in and scoops them all. . The great service provided here by Mrs. Peters - if only attention is paid - is to lay a groundwork for peace by clearing away the farrago of lies." -National Review

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------------------------------

University of Michigan Diversity Plan Is A Farce

Reprinted from The Detroit Jewish News, September 12, 2003

By Jerome S. Kaufman

It is extremely unlikely that the U.S. Supreme Court, in striking down the University of Michigan's undergraduate point-based admissions program, envisioned the university's latest version of a legitimate system. The new program now demands financial information concerning the applicant s family and four essays — two of which have to be on diversity!

Can you imagine the chances of a student being admitted if he or she has the unmitigated honesty and gall to write that he thinks the whole diversity idea is a phony bit of social engineering, the results of which are at best questionable and reek of reverse discrimination?

How about financial divulgence? Is the child whose parents have been bright enough and hard working enough to obtain some financial success in the world to be punished?

What about the requirement that the student obtain an expanded counselor and teacher recommendation, including the applicant s ability to interact with different groups? Does the student who sucks up to the interviewer and gives him or her the answers that they know is expected suddenly become the best prospect for success in the university academic program?

Then each applicant will get an expanded review by "part-time" readers and a separate review by a U-M admissions counselor. Is there any doubt that those will be picked who will totally conform to this socially engineered prototype that the university has been defending tooth and nail with millions of dollars of taxpayer money and coerced donations from major corporations and foundations afraid of being labeled the bad guy?

Of course, the worst part of the whole scenario is the shocking diminishment of the requirement of plain old merit and the studied avoidance of the previous record of achievement in the whole contrived evaluation. Practically nowhere is it mentioned that the good bright student who has a proven record of brains and accomplishment should be rewarded and trained, especially by a state and federally funded institution, to ultimately represent this country and continue our success in the world. Are we hell-bent on becoming another socialized, underachieving country in order to pacify those insanely jealous of us?

Jerome S. Kaufman, Political Commentator

Race Hustlers continue their Destructive Demagoguery.

What is vital to the interests of black "leaders" and the Democratic Party is to keep blacks paranoid and dependent. For that, everything must be blamed on "racism."

By Thomas Sowell, The Washington Times, September 15, 2003

There is nothing new about organizations and movements beginning with idealism and ending up as cynical rackets. Nevertheless, it was painful to listen to speakers who addressed a scattering of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.

Both the speakers and the small numbers of people gathered to hear them were a sharp contrast with the multitudes that covered the whole area around the Lincoln Memorial 40 years ago. Then, King spoke the immortal words that he dreamed of a time when people would no longer be judged by "the color of their skin" but by "the content of their character."

Yet, the speakers on the 40th anniversary of that occasion clearly rejected the idea of a colorblind society. These were no longer demands for equal treatment but for special benefits, based on skin color. Speakers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson certainly can't afford to be judged by the content of their character. The aging veterans of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s keep fighting the wars of the past with the rhetoric of the past, while the very different problems and opportunities of the present either are not addressed or are given prescriptions that fit an earlier time and a different disease.

Not only have the times changed, so have the demographic realities that translate into political realities. Blacks are no longer the nation's largest minority group. Hispanics have taken over that role. In California, Asians as well as Hispanics outnumber blacks. While some rejoice that whites are now a minority in California, do not expect Asians and Hispanics to have any feelings of guilt about the past that would lead them to pay reparations or make any other atonement for slavery or anything else.

Hispanics and blacks are not allies. They are rivals for everything from government largess to turf in neighborhoods and in prisons. Demographic realities threaten to push blacks more and more toward the periphery of public concerns and political attention. The old, broken-record rhetoric of black "leaders" tends likewise marginalize blacks.

The Democratic Party will still make its symbolic obeisance and even pretend to take race hustlers like Al Sharpton seriously. But the interests of its other constituents increasingly take precedence over the interests of blacks.

Nowhere is this more blatant than in the most vital of all black interests — the education of their children. Poll after poll shows blacks to be the strongest supporters of school choice to give their children a chance for a decent education, but vote after vote in Congress shows Democrats — black as well as white — to be the strongest opponents of such choice.

It is the same story, though not as widely known, when it comes to the environmentalists' restrictions against building, which push housing prices out of sight. These skyrocketing apartment rents and home prices are in turn pushing more and more blacks out of Northern California communities controlled by liberal Democrats.

Politically, green trumps black. Another constituency whose interests trump those of blacks are groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, whose ideology favors the kinds of liberal judges who make it hard to control disruptive students in school.

When push comes to shove, the teachers' unions mean more to Democrats than the future of the next generation of blacks or to keep violent criminals behind bars. A handful of hoodlums can prevent a whole class from learning and a handful of criminals can make a ghetto neighborhood a hell to live in. But what the ACLU wants trumps what blacks need.

In medicine, it has long been recognized that even a quack remedy that is harmless in itself can be fatal when it substitutes for an effective medication or treatment. The time is overdue for that same recognition to apply to politics.

Thomas Sowell is a nationally syndicated columnist.

What Americans really think about Islam

By Daniel Pipes

Americans are increasingly negative about Islam and Muslims - or so reports the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in an important opinion survey published last month. Perhaps the most dramatic change over time has been the jump in Americans who find that Islam, more than other religions, is likely "to encourage violence among its believers."

Other trends concerning Islam are also negative:

• Muslim Americans: In November 2001, 59 percent registered positive views. That number declined to 54 percent in March 2002 and now stands at 51 percent.
• Presidential candidate: Americans are much more disinclined to vote for a Muslim for US president than for a candidate of another religion: 31 percent say no to a Muslim, versus 20 percent negative regarding an Evangelical Christian, 15 percent a Catholic, and 14 percent a Jew.
• Shared values: Asked if "the Muslim religion and your own religion have a lot in common," 31 percent answered affirmatively in November 2001, 27 percent in March 2002, and just 22 percent this year.

What explains this increasingly worried attitude? Clearly, much of it results from the ongoing reality of terrorism, hate-filled statements and other problems connected with militant Islam around the globe. But some of it also results from the problems concerning militant Islam's control of the institutions of American Muslim life. Whether it be the imam at the local mosque, the principal of the Islamic school, the Muslim chaplain in a prison or the armed forces, the editor of an Islamic publishing house, or the spokesman for a national organization, the American scene presents an almost uniform picture of apologetics for terrorism, conspiracy theories about Jews, and demands for Muslim privilege.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, with 17 offices across North America, has emerged as the powerhouse of Muslim organizations and best exemplifies this problem. Consider the sentiments of its leadership:

• Omar M. Ahmad (chairman) says suicide bombers "kill themselves for Islam" and so are not terrorists.
• Nihad Awad (executive director) proclaims his "support" for Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group.
• Ibrahim Hooper (spokesman) declares "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."

Nor does CAIR just excuse violence. Two of its former employees, Bassem Khafagi and Ismail Royer, have recently been arrested on charges related to terrorism. And a member of CAIR's advisory board, Siraj Wahhaj, was named by the US attorney as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators" in an attempted terrorist assault.

Despite this ugly record, the US government widely accepts CAIR as representing Islam. Nationally, the White House invites it to functions, the State Department links to its web-page, and Democratic senators rely on its research. In New York City, the mayor appoints its general counsel to the Human Rights Commission and the police department hosts its "sensitivity training" seminar.

In Florida, public schools invite it to teach "diversity awareness." The national media broadcasts its views. Which Muslim, for example, did the Los Angeles Times quote responding to the Pew report? Why, Ibrahim Hooper, of course.
CAIR, in brief, has established itself as the voice of American Islam, thereby battering Islam's noble reputation among Americans.

Moderate Muslims, of course, reject CAIR's representing them. The late Seifeldin
Ashmawy, publisher of the New Jersey-based Voice of Peace, dismissed CAIR as the champion of "extremists whose views do not represent Islam." Tashbih Sayyed of the Los Angeles-based Council for Democracy and Tolerance accuses CAIR of being a "fifth column" in the United States. Jamal Hasan of the same organization discerns CAIR's goal as spreading "Islamic hegemony the world over by hook or by crook."

Improving Islam's reputation will require two steps: that the great institutions of American life reject all contact with CAIR and like groups, while moderate Muslims build sound organizations, ones that neither apologize for terrorism nor seek "the government of the United States to be Islamic."

The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Militant Islam Reaches America.

Survey finds Vast Majority of College Professors are Democrats

By Ellen Sorokin

THE WASHINGTON TIMES September 9-15 2003

A majority of college professors across the country are registered Democrats, most of whom end up teaching in disciplines where politics matters the most, a new survey released by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the American Enterprise Institute shows.

"You can't get a good education if you only get half the story," said David Horowitz, author and editor of Frontpagemag.com, which has been following the issue of what he calls "one-party campuses" closely for several years. "This is a national outrage. You could understand this taking place in the [former] Soviet Union, but you can't understand why this takes place in the United States. This is McCarthyism in the extreme."

However, some analysts argue that those who end up teaching politics don't like politics. "The problem here is not that these professors are perpetuating liberal political biases, but being anti-politics," said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a liberal research and policy institute. "Many of them teach that politicians are to consumed with being re-elected and forget about what the people want," he said.

The survey found at the University of Colorado at Boulder, 116 of the professors whose party registrations could be established were Democrats and five were Republicans. Out of a sample of 37 professors who teach English, none were Republicans. Out of a sample of 29 history professors, one was Republican. Out of 19 political science professors,
two were Republican.

• At Harvard University, of the 52 professors whose affiliations were found, 50 were registered Democrats and two were Republicans. Of 15 sociology professors, none were Republicans. Out of 16 economics professors, one was Republican. Of 21 political science professors, one was Republican.

• At the University of California at Santa Barbara, a sample of 72 arts and sciences professors were registered Democrats and one was Republican. Out of 29 history professors, one was Republican. Of 21 English professors, none was Republican. Out of 29 history professors, one was Republican. Of 13 political science professors, none was Republican, and out of eight journalism professors, none was Republican.

•At the University of Texas at Austin, of the 109 professors whose political affiliations were found, 94 were Democrats and 15 were Republicans. Out of six philosophy professors, one was Republican. Of 19 political science professors, 15 were Democrats. Out of 14 history professors, two were Republicans. Out of 42 English professors, 35 were Democrats.

"Faculties that won't brook intellectual dissent in their own ranks feel more comfortable indoctrinating students than educating them, because genuine education requires a willingness to examine problems rigorously," said Winfield Myers, an education analyst in Delaware. "Intellectual rigor is the antidote to academic pieties and the key to great teaching, but a professorate afraid of internal debate is intellectually lazy."

David Salisbury, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, said the results reinforce the idea that colleges are now "hostile environments" for economic and cultural conservatives. The country needs more private colleges that still provide traditional curriculums, he said. "You don't want to suppress the opinions of these professors, but this is worrisome," Mr. Salisbury said. "There's no question that people's individually held philosophies influence their teaching. The whole purpose of going to college is for a student to get exposed to a diverse range of ideas, not a single viewpoint."

Perverse Political Correctness

By Robert Bork

"For most of us, airport security checks are the only first-hand experience we have with counter-measures to terrorism, and their intrusiveness and often seeming pointlessness have, not surprisingly, led many people to question such measures in general. But minor vexations are not the same as an assault on fundamental liberties. As for ethnic profiling, that is another matter, and a serious one. It is serious, however, not because it is rampant but because it does not exist. [...]

"Ironically, it is the very randomness of the new security checks that has generated so much skepticism about their efficacy. Old ladies, children, Catholic priests — all have been subject to searches of San Quentin-like thoroughness despite being beyond rational suspicion. According to the authorities, this randomness is itself a virtue, preventing would-be terrorists from easily predicting who or what will draw attention. But it has nothing to do with security and everything to do with political correctness. Frightening as the prospect of terrorism may be, it pales, in the minds of many officials, in comparison with the prospect of being charged with racism."

Robert H. Bork, writing on "Civil Liberties After 9/11," in the July-August issue of Commentary Magazine

Enough of United Nations Perfidy

Enough of contributing 23% or more of the grossly inflated and irresponsible budget of the United Nations, an organization run by the European Union, the Arab nations and the nations of the Third World. The greater part of the time these nations vote against our interests, remain insanely jealous of us and yet we, the American taxpayer, continue to support them.

Recently founded was an independent grassroots, non-profit organization that is asking our support. Below is a petition they designed and which you may elect to send to the President. Also, you may elect to donate to the organization as listed below. Israel Commentary has no financial interest here whatever.

Petition to the President of the United States

Dear Mr. President,

Therefore, I hereby urge you to initiate action with the Congress to officially and permanently withdraw the United States from the United Nations.

Respectfully ________________________________ Date: __________

Optional E-mail address:

Dear Sirs,

Yes, I share your anger over the United Nations never-ending, anti-American actions and rhetoric and agree the sole purpose of this globalist entity seems to be restraining America's military, economic and diplomatic sovereignty. I am also alarmed by their arrogant demands to dictate to us how best to rebuild Iraq and continue the war on terrorism.

Therefore, I believe we must act immediately to reverse the damage caused by eight years of appeasement and surrender by the Clinton White House and State Department. More importantly, I agree that the time has come for the United
States to officially and permanently withdraw from the United Nations.

That's why I am immediately sending my contribution in order that you are able to carry on this work vital to the well being of our nation.

TO:
SELOUS FOUNDATION
325 Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E.
Post Office Box 97207
Washington, D.C. 20090-7207
D $20 D $25 D $35
D $50 D $75 D $100
D $250 D $500 D $1000
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The Selous Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) grassroots organization.
Your donation is tax-deductible and a receipt will be forthcoming

Go Back to the Bagel Business, Please!

Interview with Joe Lieberman’s Campaign Vice Chairman, Marvin Lender of Lender’s Bagels

By Melissa Radler – Redacted from International Jerusalem Post, August 29, 2003

The comments and opinions of Marvin Lender, former President of Lender’s Bagels and now simultaneously Chairman of Israel Policy Forum, a dead Left political organization and the National Vice Chairman for Senator Joe Lieberman’s presidential campaign!

Questions and stated opinions:

As far as Israel – Lender’s “primary goal is garnering support for the Roadmap!”

Asked if he is happy with Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to disarm the terrorist groups he replied, “ I think I understand that he does not have the capacity to do that and we must be patient and cautious and help him establish himself. (Evidently, never mind the number of innocent Israelis killed during Abbas’s break-in period!)

Lender wrote in a June LA Times that the Bush administration should provide the PA with weapons and training and that doing so would protect Israel’s security not harm it!

Lender has met Mahmoud Abbas twice and concludes that Abbas is a very clever, clever man with a nice appearance that makes you want to sit and talk to him! And he is an educated man. (What great reasons to allow the slaughter of Israeli citizens!)

After meeting Arafat several times, Lender was asked, After realizing that Arafat was not a partner for peace did it change your approach to the peace process? "No, it just convinced me that I would have to work harder.”

Where does the responsibility lie for the past three years of violence? Lender replied, “ I cannot assign the fault of the intifada to any one person or situation. All the parties have to bear some responsibility.”

What about incitement and anti-Semitism in the Palestinian Media and educational system? What does Abbas plan to do? “Abbas did not specify what he plans to do. But you have to understand, there is incitement by Right Wing Israelis as well.”

Conclusion: How then could anyone worried about the future of the State of Israel vote for Joe Lieberman when he appoints this guy as a vice chairman for his 2004 campaign? Can Lieberman’s own thinking be far behind? Too bad Lender did not stick with the business he knows – BAGELS.

Arab Political Expediency

By Jerome S. Kaufman

Following the recent attack on the Shia Islam’s holy shrine in Najaf, Iraq, August 29, 2003, I found the statement of imam Sayed Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn Michigan quite revealing. The imam bemoaning the attack by fellow Arabs stated, “After the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, this is the most important shrine for us. This is a big, big blow for millions of Shi’ites around the world.”

Funny, for the last 36 years, (by “coincidence” since Israel in the 1967 Six Day War regained Jerusalem and King Solomon’s Temple Site which, by the way, was built approximately 3000 years ago - 1600 years before Muhammad was even born), I have heard nothing but how the Temple Mount was Islam’s “Third Holiest Site.” I guess, as many observers have suspected right along, claims vary depending upon what is politically expedient and necessary in order to justify whatever the fabrication of the moment.

U.S. Troops in Israel – A Disaster Foretold

By Herbert Zweibon From: Outpost, August 2003

In recent weeks, former U.S. Middle East envoy Martin Indyk and Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, among others, have raised the idea of sending American troops to en- force peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Bush administration, while not yet publicly endorsing the idea, has not ruled it out, either--a sure sign that it has not dismissed it out of hand.

A similar trial balloon was floated in 1994 in an attempt by the Clinton administration to sell the idea of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Stationing U.S. troops on the Golan was a terrible idea, and stationing them in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza is even worse. The Palestinian Authority wants U.S. troops because it knows from experience that such a force would serve as a shield for continued terrorism against Israel.

In Lebanon, groups of terrorists had no trouble penetrating UNIFIL lines to attack Israel, while the Israeli Army repeatedly found itself stymied when approaching UNIFIL's lines in pursuit of terrorists.

Another problem with Israel trading territory for GIs is that there is no way to be sure how long the GIs will stick around. America's hasty withdrawal from Lebanon and Somalia as a result of casualties inflicted by local terrorists is certainly an indication that if things turn ugly on the ground, domestic pressure may result in a sudden change in U.S. policy. Every Gl will be walking around Ramallah and Gaza with a bull’s-eye on his back. Palestinian terrorists will not long resist that temptation. The illusion that "America will protect us" will be shattered when coffins of GIs begin arriving back in the U.S.-but by then, Israel will no longer control the territory it needs to protect itself.

Nor is terrorism the only possible reason for the U.S. to break a promise. The American abandonment of Vietnam was due to casualties, but the U.S. abandonment of Taiwan was due to simple, cold political calculations. In 1956, the Eisenhower administration promised Israel that it would have free passage through the Straits of Tiran if it withdrew from the Sinai, but when that passage was threatened in 1967, Eisenhower was long gone
and the Johnson administration did not consider itself bound by its predecessor's pledge.

Stationing U.S. troops on Israel's borders would be detrimental in other ways, as well. It would involve huge expenditures and therefore introduce new strains on the American budget. It would also involve committing large numbers of American soldiers at a time when the U.S. military is already stretched thin. A recent CATO Institute report found that U.S. forces abroad "were stretched to the breaking point even before the latest
action against Iraq," and Army Times has reported that "the war in Iraq doubly burdened some Army families when soldiers who had returned from a six-month tour in Afghanistan or a year tour in South Korea found themselves quickly deployed to the Persian Gulf."

Furthermore, the relationship between Israel and the United States was always based on the understanding that Israel would fight its own battles, and was asking nothing from the U.S. except weapons with which to defend itself. It would turn Israel into a weak, vassal state that would owe its existence to an outside power. If Israel puts itself in the position of being dependent upon U.S. troops to protect it, the Jewish State will find every one of its policy decisions subject to the yardstick of "What will the Americans say?" Stationing GIs in Judea and Samaria would undermine Israel's national security, endanger the lives of American soldiers and change the U.S.-Israel alliance in ways that would serve neither country.

Herbert Zweibon is chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel.

India-Pakistan Divide Widens

Border fence depicts mistrust, suspicion in dispute over Kashmir.

(So, Israel is not the only one building a fence to protect its citizens from Moslem invasion. India has been creating such a fence for years, defending against a Pakistani Moslem invasion and a claim to the land of Kashmir that historically does not exist. The situation and history parallels in many ways, the fabricated Moslem claim to the territories of Judea and Samaria and Gaza in Israel.

The sensitive reader will also note the slanting of this article developing a moral equivalency between the Indian claim and the Pakistani claim just as the media does with the Arab and Israeli claim, ignoring all historical facts and cleverly presenting the Moslem as the offended party.)

By JulietteTerzieff, San Francisco Chronicle August 25, 2003

NARLWAR, Pakistani-Indian border — From his resting perch under a small clump of trees, Mohammad Khalil casts an eye over the rice paddies he has worked all his life. Forty feet behind him is a line of rocks painted white, signifying where India begins. A few feet beyond is a 10-foot-high set of electrified double fences, replete with 25-foot-tall floodlights and guard posts evenly spaced along the other side.

"We didn't have these things when, I was a kid. That just shows how divided everything has become," muses the 42-year-old Khalil. The fence is part of an Indian initiative, begun in the 1980’s, to seal off its 1800-mile border with Pakistan. More than half the border fence is built, at a cost of more than $300 million. Building continues, despite a peace initiative launched by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee this spring.

The fence vividly depicts the deep mistrust and suspicion that exist after 55 years of troubled bilateral relations between the two nuclear-armed rivals. The Indian Border Security Force is moving ahead this summer with an effort to extend the fortification along a ceasefire line dividing the disputed state of Kashmir. India claims sovereignty over the state, but; Pakistan retains de facto control of the northern part. The two South Asian rivals have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan territory.

India has long accused its smaller neighbor of funding, arming and training Muslim militants who have regularly slipped across Kashmir's poorly demarcated Line of Control to launch deadly attacks on Indian security forces. Pakistan vehemently denies the charge. Officials hope to have the border sealed by the end of next year. "Everyone has to defend themselves but it just seems so... fatalistic, like they expect peace talks to fail," Khalil said.

It wouldn't be the first time. Several times in the past 50 years, talks have broken down over the Kashmir issue — with India insisting on dominion and Pakistan demanding a plebiscite to determine the territory's future. The nations came to the brink of war as recently as last year after a December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament left 14 dead. India blamed Islamic militants and Pakistan's spy agency; Pakistan denied any role in the attack. Pakistani officials decry India's attempts to build a defensive fence in Kashmir. But Pakistanis also have taken precautions along their recognized international border.

In the area near Wagah, the only official land border crossing between the two countries, where Indian tanks penetrated in 1971, Pakistan created a canal with steep sides about 1,000 feet inside the border to prevent motorized infantry from passing. The construction encroached slightly on some Pakistani residents land, but they still work their field right up to its edge.

The Good and the Bad

Fortunately, I did not see my name in today's newspaper obituary column.

It came as no surprise however, to see that my golf game had been listed.

jsk

An Independent Palestinian State?

By FLAME

Would it be a peaceful neighbor of Israel or would it lead to war?

President Bush, prodded by the "international community" and in order to appease the Arabs, who are furious about our war against Iraq, has designed a "Road Map" for the Middle East, aided by the "quartet" of the U.N., the European Union and Russia. At the end of that road, presumably in 2005, an independent Palestinian state would arise as a peaceful neighbor of Israel.

What are the facts?

An aura of inevitability

The concept of a Palestinian state, which has by now acquired an aura of almost inevitability, is a fairly new and, quite unjustified one. It is unjustified because there are no distinct "Palestinian" people—they are the same Arabs as those of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The concept of a Palestinian state came about after the Six-Day War in 1967. It is the product of unrelenting Arab propaganda and insistence. A Palestinian state never occurred to the Ottomans who ruled the area until their defeat in World War I, nor to the British when they had the mandate over Palestine until 1948, nor to the Jordanians who ruled the "West Bank" from 1948 to 1967.

George Bush (father) declared, "...In accordance with U.S. traditional policy, we do not support the creation of an independent Palestinian state." It is therefore difficult to understand why his son, our current president, would declare that it was "...a vision of longstanding U.S. policy to create a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River."

The thought that a Palestinian state next to Israel would be a peaceful neighbor is ludicrous. The stated purpose of the Arabs, endlessly repeated and never excised from their "covenant," is to acquire whatever territory they can, in order to use it as a base for the final assault against the Jewish state and for the hoped-for extinction of the hated "Zionist entity" once and for all.

Even ten years after the ballyhooed Oslo Accord, the Palestinian Arabs still proclaim that "Palestine" would extend "from the river to the sea," which means that Israel would cease to exist, would be destroyed and absorbed by the new "Palestine." The State of Israel does not exist in Palestinian or any other Arab schoolbooks or on their maps. Tel Aviv does not exist. The Jewish holy places do not exist. The "West Bank" and Gaza are only the first step. They want it all!

"Palestine" demilitarized? Many, even those who concede the, unrelenting hostility of the Arabs, contend that Israel would be in no existential danger from a Palestinian state because it could be made a condition of its creation that it be demilitarized, for a number of years or perhaps even forever. But those who propose that know better, of course. Even today, as the Palestinians are under the severe weapons restrictions that they accepted in the Oslo Accord, which allowed only a police force with light weapons, they have artillery, rockets, missiles and all kinds of heavy weaponry that they have
smuggled into their territory.

A ship laden with 50 tons of deadly weapons was intercepted by Israel in the Red Sea. Many shipments of arms have been intercepted in the Mediterranean; and there is a steady influx of arms through secret tunnels from the Sinai, which, in quest of peace, Israel has foolishly ceded to Egypt. But the heavy weapons that "Palestine" would inevitably acquire, despite all solemn covenants to the contrary, aren't really necessary.

With an independent Palestine in control of the Judean ridges, and with Israel only nine miles wide at what would be its narrow waist, heavy weapons would not be required to make life impossible in the truncated and mortally vulnerable Jewish state. Katyusha rockets, one of the Arabs' favorite weapons, would cover virtually all of Israel—impeding civilian life, industry, civil and military aviation, and, in case it came to that, mobilization of troops.

The one million Arabs living in Israel as Israeli citizens would be a convenient and deadly fifth column, ready to spring into action. Israel would, of course, respond to any such attack. That would inevitably result in a major war, a war that would ultimately set the entire region on fire and would undoubtedly involve weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear ones. How can the world, how can the United States possibly promote such a project—a project likely to bring untold disaster to the world?

The Arab world is presently comprised of twenty-two states of nearly five million square miles and of one hundred forty-four million people. The greater Islamic world contains forty-four states with one billion people. Israel, with five million people, is smaller than Lake Michigan, smaller by half than San Bernardino County in California. There seems to be no need for another Moslem/Arab state, especially one that would certainly serve as an advance base for the ultimate destruction of Israel, the state of the Jews. How the President would promote the creation of a terrorist state, a state that without question would become a mortal enemy of the United States, and how he would countenance the inevitable destruction of the Jewish state, the only loyal ally of the United States and its only strategic asset in the area, is incomprehensible.

House majority leader Tom DeLay put it well when he said, "I can't imagine this president supporting a state of terrorists... The peace plan is a road map to destruction."

FLAME - Facts and Logic About the Middle East
P.O. Box 590359 • San Francisco, CA 94159
Gerardo Joffe, President

The Palestinian Arab Refugee (?) Problem

By Daniel Pipes

(The preposterous lie of “Palestinian” Arab Refugees aided and abetted by the near 21000 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) who promote their own cause and cushy jobs feeding off the public trough. Over 90% of these employees are themselves Arabs with 40% of the funding coming from the American taxpayer!) Jsk

Here's a puzzle: How do Palestinian refugees differ from the 20th century's 135 million other refugees? Answer: In every other instance, the pain of dispossession, statelessness and poverty has diminished over time. Refugees either resettled, returned home or died. Their children — whether living in South Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey, Germany or the United States — then shed the refugee status and joined the mainstream. Not so the Palestinians. For them, the refugee status continues from one generation to the next, creating an ever-larger pool of anguish and discontent.

Several factors explain this anomaly, but one key component — of all things is the United Nations' bureaucratic structure. It contains two organizations focused on refugee affairs, each with its own definition of "refugee": The U.N. High Commission for Refugees applies this term worldwide to someone who, "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted is outside the country of his nationality." Being outside the country of his nationality implies that descendants of refugees are refugees. Cubans who flee the Castro regime are refugees, but not their Florida-born children who lack Cuban nationality. Afghans who flee heir homeland are refugees, but not their Iranian-born children. And so on.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, an organization set up uniquely or Palestinian refugees in 1949, defines Palestinian refugees differently from all other refugees. They are persons who lived in Palestine "between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict." Especially important is that UNRWA extends the refugee status to "the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948." It even considers the children of just one Palestinian refugee parent to be refugees.

The High Commission's definition causes refugee populations to vanish over time; UNRWA's causes them to expand without limit. Let's apply each definition to the Palestinian refugees of 1948: By the U.N.'s (inflated) statistics, they numbered 726,000. (Scholarly estimates of the number range between 420,000 and 539,000.) The High Commission definition would restrict the refugee status to those of the 726,000 yet alive.

According to a demographer, about 200,000 of those 1948 refugees remain living today. UNRWA includes the refugees' children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as well as Palestinians who left their homes in 1967, all of whom add up to 4.25 million refugees. The 200,000 refugees by the global definition make up less than 5 percent of the 4.25 million by the UNRWA definition.

By international standards, those other 95 percent are not refugees at all. By falsely attaching a refugee status to these Palestinians who never fled anywhere, UNRWA condemns a creative and entrepreneurial people to lives of exclusion, self-pity and nihilism.

The policies of Arab governments then make things worse by keeping Palestinians locked in an amber-like refugee status. In Lebanon, for instance, the 400,000 stateless Palestinians are not allowed to attend public school, own property or even improve their housing stock. It's high time to help these generations of non-refugees escape the refugee status so they can become citizens, assume self-responsibility and build for the future. Best for them would be for UNRWA to close its doors and the U.N. High Commission to absorb the dwindling number of true Palestinian refugees. That will only happen if the U.S. government recognizes UNRWAs role in perpetuating Palestinian misery. In a misguided spirit of "deep commitment to the welfare of Palestinian refugees."

Washington currently provides 40 percent of UNRWAs $306 million annual budget; it should be zeroed-out. Fortunately, the U.S. Congress is waking up to this need. Chris Smith, a Republican on the House International Relations Committee, recently called for expanding the General Accounting Office's investigation into U.S. funding for UNRWA Tom Lantos, the ranking Democratic member on that same committee, goes further. Criticizing the "privileged and prolonged manner" of dealing with Palestinian refugees, he calls for shuttering UNRWA and transferring its responsibilities to the High Commission.

Other Western governments should join with Washington to solve the Palestinian refugee problem by withholding authorization for UNRWA when it next comes up for renewal in June 2005. Now is the time to lay the groundwork to eliminate this malignant institution, its mischievous definition and its monstrous works.

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum. His e-mail address is
Pipes@MEForum.org

Farmington High School International Affairs Course Crosses the Line to Propagandizing.

Speech given by Dr. Jerome S. Kaufman at Farmington School Board Meeting, August 12, 2003

First, I would like to thank all of those on the Board for devoting so many hours to what is many times, I am sure, a thankless job. It was also very reassuring to hear the pledge of allegiance recited at the beginning of the meeting. This gesture reminds us of the fact that this is an American school system where American values should be taught and American patriotism should be encouraged.

Which brings me to the subject at hand:
The course on International Affairs.

I was surprised to find when searching the web that the recent action by the Farmington Board starting a course on International affairs has been commented upon nationally.

An organization called The Center for Individual Freedom, which is a non-partisan constitutional advocacy group that protects individual freedoms and rights in the educational arenas, wrote the following article on its web page.

A High School International Affairs Program Crosses the Line to Propagandizing

www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/in_our_opinion/farmington_michigan.htm

“Learn today . . . Lead tomorrow”. That is the public relations campaign motto adopted this year by the Michigan Department of Education. It is a good motto in principle, but a terrible one in practice if the public school students are learning lessons that undermine American values and leadership.

A perfect example comes from the Farmington, Michigan, Public Schools which recently eliminated the requirement for 12th grade American government, replacing it with an International Affairs program that includes on its menu of courses a class on terrorism, with the strong implication that the U.S. is the terrorist.

Yes, you read that right, a course on “terrorism.” Approved course materials for the program will “explore” such ideas as:

· America’s “war against terrorism is a fraud;”
· “The U.S. has turned into a fascist state;”
· “The war against terrorism is “Bush’s Jihad;”
· “ The Taliban are victims of American Terrorism.”

‘Perhaps most astoundingly, one article encourages students to apply this definition to U.S. conduct in the world.’

Unfortunately, what is happening here is not unique. We are not just speaking about one International Affairs course. We are talking about a lethal, anti-American project that is currently overwhelming our entire educational system.

I had a personal experience with this attempted indoctrination. On March 3, 2001, I attended a course given at the Michigan State Library and Historical Center in Lansing, Michigan. The course was co-sponsored by the Michigan Humanities Council, the Arab World and Islamic Resources (AWAIR) and the Middle East Policy Council. Invited to the course were educators from all over the State of Michigan. We were there all day long listening to the political propaganda of Ms. Audrey Shabbas, a paid member of the Arab World and Islamic Resources organization. The Aramco Oil Company, a major oil producer in Saudi Arabia, underwrote the course.

Ms. Shabbas also volunteered to send out completely free, a huge teaching kit to those present. It consisted of tens of books, pamphlets, videos, and periodicals all devoted to extolling the virtues of the nations of the Middle East. From a teacher’s stand point it had to be completely irresistible. Here were all the lesson plans and material one would ever need as long as one went along with the program.

At our last meeting here, one lady in the audience astutely asked why is the International Affairs course dominated by affairs of the Middle East. That is a marvelously intuitive question. She asked, “Why are International Affairs courses not more about England, France, Europe, Australia, Africa, wherever else? The reason is simple. It is because addressing those very worthwhile subjects does not accomplish the public relations goal that is the raison d’etre of most of these International Affairs courses.

There is another illustrious non-profit organization that specializes in examining textbooks used in the public schools. The organization is called the American Textbook Council. Of interest to us are the conclusions that the Council made after analyzing textbooks concerned with the Middle East. Here is a direct quote from the summary of their 35-page article entitled, Islam and the Textbooks. www.historytextbooks.org/islam.htm

The study surveys the content of world history textbooks used across the country in grades seven through twelve. It reviews coverage of jihad, sharia, slavery, status of women, and terrorism, comparing the lesson content to factual material found in prominent histories and recognized sources. This review faults world history textbooks that deal with these most complicated and important subjects.

Its main conclusions include:
(1) world history textbooks hold Islam and other non-Western civilizations to different standards than those that apply to the West,
(2) domestic educational activists, Muslim and non-Muslim, insist at once on harsh perspectives for the West while gilding the record of non-Western civilizations,
(3) Islamic pressure groups and their allies seek to suppress critical analysis of Islam inside and outside classrooms, and distorted textbook content is one symptom of this phenomenon, and
(4) publishers respond to pressure groups on account of political expediency and sales.

As a result, they are giving American children and their teachers a misshapen view of the past and a false view of the future.That result is exactly what we, in the Farmington School District, should be diligently trying to avoid.

It is my understanding that there are over 12000 American students in this district. It would be truly tragic to have them graduate with a perverted understanding of their own great country and its relationship to the rest of the world.

James Baker back, Ugh

Israel’s wobbly ally?

By Caroline B. Glick

The Internet Jerusalem Post, August 15, 2003

(James Baker simultaneously representing the U.S. Government and his trillion dollar law firm client, Saudi Arabia. Are you kidding me?) jsk

Eyebrows were raised on Tuesday when, just hours after Fatah and Hamas bombed civilians in Rosh Ha'ayin and Ariel, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that Palestinian terrorism would have no effect on US Middle East policy. "We will continue to move forward on the road map " he said. "We will not be stopped by bombs, we will not be stopped by this kind of violence."

The question arises: How can the US not reassess its policy of coddling the Palestinian Authority when the policy has already failed so abundantly?
Unfortunately, the Bush administration's policy on the Palestinian issue is part and parcel of an overall inconsistency in the administration's approach to the Middle East that bodes ill not simply for Israel, but for the US and its allies all over the world.

Laying out the foundations of the administration's foreign policy doctrine last week, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice explained that US foreign policy is aimed at making the world a safer and better place. The former, she said, is advanced through military campaigns like those in Afghanistan and Iraq. The latter is done by promoting freedom and democracy abroad.

"There is one region of the world where all the challenges of our time come together, perhaps in their most difficult forms: the Middle East," Rice said.
She's right. After the 9/11 attacks, it is inarguable that the Arab world, whose 22 states have not one democratic government among them and whose clerics daily call for jihad against the US, manifests the most direct threat to US and global security.

Iraq and the PA were Rice's two examples of how the US is advancing its dual agenda in the Middle East. She referred to the recently inaugurated Iraqi Governing Council as the "most promising" advance toward stability and democracy since Saddam Hussein's regime was deposed in April. In her words, "It serves as a first step toward Iraqi self-government and toward a democratic Iraq which can become a linchpin of a very different Middle East in which ideologies of hate will not flourish."

Yet there are indications that the Bush administration will squander much of the good work US forces have done in destroying the Ba'athist regime. Over the past month, reports have surfaced that the White House intends to appoint former secretary of state James Baker to lead the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Proponents of the appointment note Baker's tremendous experience in the region and his close association with regional leaders.

But a Baker-led occupation government is cause for alarm. "Putting Baker in charge of Iraq means the US is handing the country over to the Saudis," one senior diplomatic source told me this week. Baker is one of the Saudi government's chief supporters in the US. His law firm, Baker Botts, is now representing the Saudi government in the $1 trillion law suit filed against Saudi Arabia for its alleged role in the 9/11 attacks by the victims' families. Baker also serves as senior counsel and partner in the Carlyle investment group, which is a financial adviser to the Saudi government.

In view of this, it is not unreasonable to assume that as head of the Iraq occupation authority, Baker would not support the geo-strategically vital idea of keeping liberated Iraq out of the OPEC cartel.

As for the Palestinians, Rice applauded the "reformed" leadership of PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and security chief Muhammad Dahlan. "A new Palestinian leadership is emerging that says, in Arabic and in English, that terror is not a means to Palestinian statehood, but rather the greatest obstacle to statehood," she said. Then she added that "Israel has to fulfill its responsibilities to help that peaceful state emerge."
It is debatable at best whether either leader has made such anti-terrorist declarations. Not debatable is that Dahlan and Abbas refuse to take any action against terror groups.

Far from working toward reconciliation, they, like their boss PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, have used every opportunity to condemn Israel and to undermine the legitimacy of its actions to defend itself against the same terrorist aggression that they are supposed to be combating. In insisting on backing its hand-picked Palestinian leadership, the Bush administration is both rhetorically and effectively embracing a terror regime and abandoning a democratic ally.

Speaking of the US's own fight against terrorism, Rice briefly noted operations by the Homeland Security Department to secure potential targets like airports, power plants, and government buildings against attacks. "But if we in the United States are to preserve the nature of our open society there is only so much of this 'hardening' that we can do. We must also address the source of the problem. We have to go on the offense," she said. So while the Bush administration claims to be going on the offensive, it attacks every move Israel makes - both defensive and offensive - to protect itself against terrorism.

Last week, the administration attacked the newly passed legislation that makes it more difficult for Palestinians who marry Israelis to receive citizenship. This law, whose national security implications are clear, is no more draconian than procedures the US itself enacted in 1986 to protect itself against foreigners who enter into fictitious marriages to receive residency status. The decision to build a fence to protect itself against terrorists is even more strongly condemned. From Bush to Powell to their spokesmen, the entire apparatus of the US government seems to have ratcheted up its rhetoric in placing the IDF's counterterror operations on a moral par with the massacre of Israeli civilians.

The administration has also ordered Israel not to take action against the growing Hizbullah threat from Lebanon, which over the past month has taken the form of direct aggression against civilians and military installations. As for the greatest strategic threat presently emanating from the region, the Iranian nuclear program, the US is now moving steadily toward repeating with Iran the same failed policy of UN weapons inspections it used for 12 years against Iraq.
While Israel estimates that the Iranians are only one year away from nuclear capabilities, the US has moved discussion of the imminent threat to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency.

In a fine imitation of the policy of Iraq's former government, Iran is making a show of cooperating with IAEA officials. Now IAEA officials are apparently set to present a second inconclusive report about Iranian compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at their meeting in September.

The consequences of the Bush administration's policies for Israel can be simply put: We must no longer seek to coordinate our activities with Washington. The US is actively abandoning Israel, while embracing its authoritarian and terrorist enemies and neighbors even as it hollowly claims to be doing just the opposite. The unreformed and unrepentant PA leadership cannot be given control of territory today or statehood tomorrow.

Hizbullah bases in Lebanon must be destroyed. And the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran must not be allowed to materialize as the UN impotently engages the duplicitous Iranian government. The consequences of the administration's policies for US national security are no less apparent. Its current fetish with Israeli-Palestinian engagement has allowed the Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians, and Saudis to continue with their support for terrorism and incitement against the US. Perceiving the US as unwilling to confront its open hostility, the Arab League did not bat an eyelash when it voted to refuse to recognize the Iraqi Governing Council.

As the Egyptians loudly proclaim their support for Israeli-Palestinian peace and blame its nonexistence on Israel, a weapons smuggling tunnel from the Sinai to Gaza unearthed this week was found to have originated in an Egyptian border guard base. On July 30, Egyptian religious authorities reiterated their call for all Muslims including women and old people to attack US and coalition forces in Iraq.

As for Syria, President Bashar Assad is directly arming and enabling Hizbullah as well as the guerrilla fighters in Iraq. He also continues to aid and abet Palestinian terror groups headquartered in his capital city.

For their part, the Saudis have taken no steps to close down the offices of their government supported charities either at home or abroad that have been directly implicated in global terror funding.

The US's abandonment of Israel is also liable to impact its strategic posture in Asia. Why should China be deterred from overrunning Taiwan when the US is abandoning Israel to similar totalitarian forces? Why should South Korea or Japan trust the US's commitment to their security from the North Korean nuclear threat when the US is not taking action against Iran and reportedly reining in Israel from taking action against Iran on its own?

In concluding her remarks, Rice said, "The desire for freedom transcends race, religion, and culture The people of the Middle East are not exempt from this desire. We have an opportunity and an obligation to help them turn this desire into reality. That is the security challenge and the moral mission of our time."

Again, Rice is correct. And yet, with its current Middle East policy of embracing terror regimes like the PA and anti-American tyrannies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, while publicly condemning Israel for trying to advance the administration's own stated policy, the US is failing to meet this challenge. Instead, the Bush administration's policies are damaging America's credibility, moral standing, and national security.

Criticizing Israel’s Protective Fence – Another Bush/Powell Double Standard

Editorial – The Detroit Jewish News, August 15, 2003

Let's be clear about what this fence is and what it is not. It is a security barrier that Israel has had to put up to make it harder for the would-be bombers to cross over from the West Bank and blow up Israeli civilians at markets, pizza parlors and discotheques, and on buses. It is going up as a reaction to a hideous pattern of terror that the Palestinians chose to pursue after rejecting an incredibly generous peace settlement that Israel's Ehud Barak offered them three years ago at Camp David and again at Taba, in Egypt.

It is the same thing as the fence Israel has built around the Gaza Strip and at the borders with Lebanon and Syria. It is no more illegal than the barricades the United States has put up along the Rio Grande to slow the influx of illegally entering immigrants and, perhaps, it will be more effective. Its historic antecedent is the Great Wall of China. In its intent, it is the same as checkpoints at airports or security doors for businesses or a lock on the front door of homes. The point is to keep the bad guys out.
I

It is not a wall to enclose the Palestinians, who are free if they choose to cross over into Jordan — therefore, it is nothing like the ghetto walls that for centuries Jews were required to live behind in European cities. It also bears no comparison with the Berlin Wall that the Soviet Union put up to keep East Germans from seeing the success of Western democracy.

Yes, it is expensive, but what price should we put on the lives of the more than 800 Israelis who have died in terror attacks since the latest Palestinian uprising started 34 months ago? Yes, it interferes with the lives of many Palestinians, just as the Palestinian terrorism has disrupted ordinary life in the Jewish state. When Palestinians started the terror, did they think there would be no consequences or that the consequences would somehow be preferable to what they could have accomplished by continuing the peace talks?

Shouldn't they — and the rest of the world — consider the possibility that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are more responsible for the fence than is the Israeli leadership The security fence may not be completely compatible with the spirit of the road map for peace that the U.S., Russia, the United Nations and the European Union drafted, but nor is it necessarily an impediment to achieving the map's goals of building mutual trust that could lead to a long-range permanent settlement. It is surely easier for Israel to negotiate when the threat of suicide bombing is reduced — the primary goal of the barrier.

Israel should, however, do a great deal more to assure the civilized world that it does not intend to make the path of the current fence a permanent feature of the landscape. Israel should devise a convincing way of committing to a secure but less intrusive barrier that follows negotiated boundaries once the terror stops. (I do not agree with this part. Whose territory was it supposed to be in the first place? Israel’s!! So, any damn fence they put up is on what should have been the Jewish homeland in any case. Let all the Arabs go to Jordan, which was taken from what was to have been the Jewish Homeland in 1923! Let’s start with the basic irrefutable facts! Of course, the Arabs, the American State Department and the immediate world, don’t want to hear about that!) jsk

Of course, it would be wonderful if the fence were not needed, because the Palestinians had truly rejected their hatred of the Jewish state and their incitement against Israeli civilians. But as Tuesday's two suicide bombing attacks showed once again, for now the fence must stand. ##

Whose side are you on?

By Tony Blankley, The Washington Times August 10, 2003

Senator Joe Lieberman has set in motion an important line of discussion concerning post-Iraq War policy and politics. While he made a partisan — but not entirely unfair critique of President Bush's management of prewar preparations and postwar execution of policy, the crux of his speech was a fierce criticism of those Democrats who displayed a "disquieting zeal" questioning the necessity of the war: "By their words, some in my party are sending out a message that they don't know a just war when they see it, and more broadly, they're not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom." After his speech, he named Howard Dean, John Kerry and Richard Gephardt as fitting that description.

Jaded political analysts see his statement as merely an attempt to carve out a distinct position in the Democratic presidential primary contest. But it is more than that. Sen Lieberman is an inept campaigner, but a first-rate and serious statesman. And, he has essentially asked the age-old and crucial question in human affairs: Whose side are you on?

It is the question that many Republicans have been afraid to ask. It is the same question that Ann Coulter has notoriously asked and answered in her current best- selling book,"Treason." Sen. Lieberman has carefully avoided the pungency of the "T" word. But what would one call political leaders who were not prepared to use our military to protect our security and our freedom?

For those of us who believe that America and our way of life is in danger from jihadist terrorists and the WMD rogue states that help them (and that is at least two-thirds of Americans), it has been breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which elements of the media, the Democratic Party and our former allies in Europe have been attempting to turn our military victory in Iraq into a postwar debacle.

If we succeed in bringing order out of the chaos of Iraq, we advance measurably the effort to defeat the will and hope of the terrorists and their supporters. If Iraq becomes peaceful and law-abiding, can Iran, Syria and others be far behind? The dreadful sickness that has had the Middle East by the throat for generations will begin to abate, and we will be able to realistically dream of a more secure life once again. But if we fail, then a hard and grievous future is before us.

There is an old phrase that if you shoot at a king — don't miss. Vastly more so is that true about going after the will of terrorists. If our effort at showing strength reveals only weakness, if we are driven from the field in ignominy, we will surely reap the terrorist whirlwind. As Gen. Douglas Mac Arthur once instructed: "There is no substitute for victory."

And so, we return to Sen. Lieberman's implicit question: Who's side are you on? Of course, it is fair game to criticize the president's handling of any aspect of his administration. Constructive suggestions for how to do a better a job are both fair and needed. Even cheap, vicious, lying accusations against the president's domestic and non-critical foreign policies and politics are (perhaps regret- fully) part of our political tradition. But what are we to conclude about the breathless Washington journalists who incorrectly, but genuinely, think they smell Watergate and Pulitzers as they obsessively try to destroy a president by undercutting public support for his vital Iraq effort?

How are we to judge Democratic presidential aspirants who, half-crazed by their desperate search for votes, don't even address the consequences of their opposition? Undercutting a life-and-death presidential policy without even considering the consequences is like tearing down a dam without first draining the water it contains. Only a flood of death can follow: American death; here, at home.

Democratic Sen. Lieberman has said that Democrats Howard Dean, Richard Gephardt and John Kerry are sending a message that they are "not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom." Would it be unfair for a fearless Washington press corps to ask those men, "Whose side are you on?"

Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times.
He can be reached via email at tonyblankley@erols.com.

The Fate of Arab versus Jewish Refugees in the Middle East

By George Bornstein

The Middle East is rapidly becoming Jewish-free. A look at the reasons why, helps to put into perspective the debate about Palestinian refugees from Israel. The number of Jews in the Muslim Middle East stood at 1.5 million after World War II. Today it stands at 40,000, of which fewer than 5,000 remain in Arab countries.

Throughout the Arab world, Jewish communities have been persecuted and forced to emigrate, often with their property confiscated. From 1948 to 2001, according to "The Atlas of Jewish History" and the textbook, "Myths and Facts”:

· Jews in Morocco declined from 285,000 to 5,700!
· Jews in Tunisia declined from 110,000 to 1,500!
· Jews in Algeria declined from 140,000 to less than 100!
· Jews in Egypt declined from 75,000 to less than 100!
· Jews in Syria from 30,000 to less than 100!
· Jews in Lebanon from 20,000 to less than 100!

Iraq is a vivid example of this trend. The 2,700-year-old Iraqi Jewish community, which dated back to Biblical times and numbered 150,000 in the mid-20th century, has been ethnically cleansed from Iraq during the past half-century. Persecution has reduced the once-vibrant community to less than 100 people today. Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in Iraq as early as 854-859 and again in 1344.

More recently, the pro-Nazi coup of Rashid Ali in 1941 inspired a pogrom in which armed mobs with the complicity of the police and army murdered 180 Iraqi Jews and injured almost 1,000. In the 1940s, the regime declared Zionism a crime and used it as a pretext for hanging Jews.

The nadir of persecution came in 1968, when the Baath regime jailed scores of the remaining Jews and hanged n of them in the public squares of Baghdad. Half a million Iraqis paraded and danced through the streets and past the scaffolds of the bodies where the Jews still dangled, a well-documented display that for once caused public protests outside Iraq.

Most of these refugees fled to Israel. The number of Jewish refugees from the Middle East equals or exceeds the number of Arab refugees from Israel. Exact figures are notoriously problematic, but the number of Jewish refugees is more than 800,000, of which at least 650,000 came from Arab nations and the remainder from non-Arab but still Muslim countries like Iran and Turkey.

The number of Palestinian Arab refugees from Israel is similarly about 650,000, though partisans on both sides make larger claims for their respective groups. To check against inflated numbers, the last British census taken in Palestine indicated 1.2 .million permanent Arab residents in all of then Palestine, which included what is now Israel and the West Bank.

But if the numbers were similar the fates were not. Jewish refugees from Arab countries were resettled immediately by the Israelis into Israel and integrated into the socioeconomic fabric of that tiny democracy, which comprises less than 1 percent of the Middle East. Arab refugees from Palestine were kept in camps by the non-democratic countries to which they fled, even though those nations had more than 100 times the land mass and population of Israel and could have integrated them far more easily. A complex panoply of laws evolved to keep Palestinian refugees from becoming citizens, exercising full legal rights and often even owning land in surrounding Arab countries.

Palestinians living in Lebanon, for example, lack basic rights and cannot become citizens. The treatment of Palestinians was unprecedented globally after World War II. At that time, the world had more than 50 million displaced people, including millions of Germans from Eastern Europe, Jews who had escaped the Holocaust and more than 10 million Hindus and Muslims on the India-Pakistan border alone. All of them, except the Palestinians, were resettled by the countries to which they emigrated.

Ironically, more than half as many Palestinian refugees were expelled from Kuwait alone after the First Gulf War as from Israel in 1948. Although Arab partisans sometimes argue that all anti-Jewish feeling in the Middle East derives from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the facts indicate otherwise. True, Jews were often better treated in the Islamic Middle East than in Christian Europe, but the lack of a Holocaust there hardly testifies to humane treatment. Indeed, an influential Palestinian leader of the times, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, tried to persuade the Nazis to sign a declaration that “they accord to Palestine and to other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries, in accordance with the interest of the Arabs and, by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries” – that is to kill all the Jews.

Jews and Christians suffered grievously in Arab lands for centuries before the mufti's effort. They were barred from public office or armed service, forbidden to ride horses or camels, subjected to forced service and compelled always to defer to Muslims in public and not to testify against them in court. The British vice consul in Mosul, Iraq, noted in 1909 that "The attitude of the Moslems toward the Christians and the Jews ... is that of a master towards slaves, whom he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep their place."

Scholar Bernard Lewis's landmark study "The Jews of Islam" indicates that the same phenomenon occurred regularly throughout the region. The fate of the Jews of Islamic lands reminds us that the history of. the Middle East and Israel-Palestine is more complicated than current simplifications sometimes suggest. Only the strength of Israel and its allies guarantees the survival of the "other refugees" in their native region, from which they have elsewhere already been purged. ##

George Bornstein is a professor of literature at the University of Michigan. This article appeared in the Detroit News, August 5, 2003

Israelis Fence Building Doesn’t Merit U.S. Sanctions

Editorial from The Detroit News, August 11, 2003, Editor – Nolan Finley

Every country has the right to take extraordinary measures to protect against terrorism Critics of Israel would have us believe that it is a fence that blocks the road to peace in the Middle East. It's not the fence. It's the terrorism.

Israel began building the 380-mile security barrier, now partially completed, for no other reason than to stem the flow of terrorists entering the country from the West Bank. It is an extremely costly, last-ditch response to the three-year campaign of terror. Palestinians equate the fence to the Berlin Wall, and accuse Israel of using the barrier to solidify borders that are still in dispute. They are winning support in the U.S. State department, which reportedly is recommending economic sanctions against Israel if the fence building continues. The Bush administration may withhold a portion of U.S. aid to Israel. That's both unfair and unwise.

The Palestinians have the power to stop the fence building by stopping the terrorism. They are unwilling to do that, so Israel must do what it; must to protect itself. While not a perfect solution, the fence construction began because fences have proven to be an effective anti-terrorism tool. A fence separates the Gaza Strip from Israel, and not a single suicide bomber has entered Israel from Gaza. But more than 100 terrorist attacks have been launched from the West Bank, where the border is open.

Palestinians see the fence as walling them off from jobs and economic opportunities in Israel. That is a legitimate concern, and, again, one that the Palestinians can address by stopping the terrorism.

It is hypocritical of the Bush administration to threaten Israel with economic harm for taking positive measures to protect itself, while allowing the Palestinians to flaunt key conditions set down in the president's road map to peace. Specifically, the road map demands as a first step a dismantling of the terrorist organizations. That hasn't happened.

Instead, the peace process was allowed to commence with only the shaky promise of a three-month truce from the Palestinians. The road map also demands democratic reform of the Palestinian Authority. That was initially read to mean the ouster of Yasser Arafat, as chairman of the authority. But Arafat is still in place, and still apparently making most of the decisions. Appointed Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has said emphatically that he clears everything with Arafat.

So why, then, focus on Israel's fence building, when the Palestinians have not met a single condition of the road map to peace? Phase One of the road map asked Israel to start dismantling illegal settlements on the West Bank. It is doing that. But it did not require Israel to halt its fence building.

To punish Israel for taking every possible step to protect itself from terrorists, while allowing the Palestinians to continue harboring and supporting terrorist networks, is poor policy that will jeopardize the security of the Israeli people. The United States should never put itself in the position of discouraging the victims of terror from protecting themselves.

Setting free Palestinian killers would encourage other terrorists

By Nolan Finley

When it comes to posting outrageous demands, grafting clever defenses for terror and making murder sound like a most noble act, nobody beats the Palestinians. They're now skating around the real obstacle to peace in the Middle East — terrorism — by diverting attention to the 6,000 or so Palestinians locked up in Israeli jails.

If Israel truly wants peace, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas says, it will swing open the cell doors and let all the prisoners dance out. Yeah, that'll happen. To its credit, Israel is releasing those detained for minor offenses like rock throwing. Several hundred prisoners are now back home, mostly unrepentant, and many still agitating for violence. But Israel says it won't free those with blood on their hands, a position the United States has to support. Abbas, however, told Newsweek that every prisoner should be freed. "Both sides killed each other," he said. "We must ask the people to forget about the past and to live for the future."

Forget about Shalhevet Pass? She was the 10-month-old Israeli baby shot by a sniper in Hebron in 2001, while out with her father. Mahmud Amru intentionally placed the infant's head in the cross hairs of his rifle and squeezed the trigger. This cold-blooded killer is among the prisoners Abbas would see unchained in the name of peace.

What Abbas is doing is making another back door attempt to legitimize terror as a military tactic. Once again, the Palestinians are floating the defense that terrorist killings are no different than killings by soldiers responding to terror. If the release of baby killers is bartered for as part of the peace deal, their classification changes to combatant from murderer, since no civilized nation would free murderers. And the moral equivalency debate is won.

Israel must be careful how far it moves in this direction. Already, one freed prisoner, Ahmed Jbarra, who served 28 years of a life sentence for killing 14 people, is using his freedom to rally Palestinians to kidnap Israeli soldiers.

Freeing a few rock throwers is one thing. But no one who actively engaged in terrorism, encouraged terrorism or lent support to the terrorist networks should ever see daylight again. To let them go reinforces the message that terrorism is acceptable, as long as the cause is just.

The problem is that every terrorist believes the murders they commit are justified by the righteousness of their cause. The Palestinians are the all-time champs of rationalizing murder. They're so good at the game that they've leveraged a withering campaign of violence to force negotiations that will eventually lead to statehood—and without having to answer for terrorism.

Allowing the peace talks to go forward without first destroying the terrorists was a mistake, abetted by an American administration too eager to show results in the Middle East It would be compounded by freeing those terrorists who have been caught and punished. Try then to convince the world's insurgents, rebels and malcontents that terrorism doesn't work.

Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The Detroit News.

Global Warming – A Legitimate Issue or …

… just a way for the European Union and the Third World to cut down the United States while aided and abetted by a Democratic Liberal Party that would like to get back in power.

By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES, August 8, 2003

Senate Republicans are pushing back on the issue of global warming, with the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee questioning not only the evidence for warming, but also the link between human actions and climate change.
"This research begs an obvious question: If the Earth was warmer during the Middle Ages than the age of coal-fired power plants and SUVs, what role do man-made emissions play in influencing climate?" asked Chairman James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma. " "I think any person with a modicum of common sense would say, 'Not much,' " Sen. Inhofe said.

His July 28 speech and a committee hearing on July 29 in which two scientists discussed their research questioning the human link to climate change were a precursor to a showdown on carbon emissions expected as the Senate debates the energy bill.

Republicans said they expect to defeat amendments that would impose curbs on carbon dioxide emissions, but sources in both parties said some weaker amendments that would require industries to report their carbon emissions to the government are likely to pass. Sen. Inhofe called the amendments "politically driven" and pointed to the sponsors — some of whom are running for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination — as evidence that climate science is being overtaken by politics."

All of the Democrats running for the nomination — the one group that is the most cherished to them in order to get the nomination is the environmental groups," Sen. Inhofe said. Democrats said the evidence for warming is overwhelming and criticized those who pushed for more studies rather than action. "One would have to be madder than a March hare to fail to see the need to act," said Sen. James M. Jeffords, Vermont independent, who Democrats have tapped to be the ranking opposition member on the committee. Sen. Inhofe is chairman of the committee that has direct power over the issue, so a bill that mandates curbs on carbon emissions is not likely to pass the panel. Therefore, those who favor restrictions can best get their way by attaching amendments to the pending energy bill. Burning fossil fuels puts carbon dioxide in the air and, according to some models, the gas then traps the sun's heat inside the atmosphere and changes climate patterns. But, some scientists have argued that there’s no evidence of a link between recent warming and human activity.

In the hearing, called by Senator Inholfe, Willis Soon with the Harvard Astrophysics, said he and his colleagues had catalogued hundreds of studies and concluded that local and regional climate change, which has been detected, matters more than global climate change. Mr. Soon also said there was a "Medieval Warm Period" from 800 to 1300 A.D. and a cooling from 1300 to 1900, and that there exists no proof that current warming trends are out of line with the earlier warming period.

"There is no convincing evidence from each of the individual climate proxies to suggest that higher temperatures occurred in the 20th century than in the Medieval Warm Period," he said. "Nor is there any convincing evidence to suggest that either the rate of increase or the duration of warming during the 20th century were greater than in the Medieval I Warm Period."

Michael E. Mann, a professor at the University of Virginia and one of the authors of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said , that Mr. Soon's study was "unsound." He said most scientists have reached a consensus that warming in the late 20th century "cannot be explained by natural factors but, instead, requires significant human influences during the 20th century."

Still, Sen. Inhofe said, he is convinced by Mr. Soon and his colleagues that "the balance of the evidence offers strong proof that natural variability is the " overwhelming factor influencing climate."

Michael McKenna, a Republican strategist on environmental issues, said Sen. Inhofe's public criticism "makes it easier for Republicans to be where they should be on the issue, and he makes it more difficult for Democrats to create random mischief because they know they have an opponent who has substantive knowledge on the issue."

For the past five years, the debate on climate change has focused on the Kyoto treaty, which most Democrats and some Republicans have urged the United States to ratify in recent years.

The 1997 treaty, which President Clinton signed but did not send to the Senate for ratification after a 95-0 vote warning him against submitting the pact, would require industrial nations to cut emissions of carbon dioxide to slow global warming. But the treaty excludes such developing nations as China and India, and opponents say it would devastate the economies of the affected nations.

When British Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed a joint meeting of Congress on July 17, he made a plea for U.S. leadership on implementing the Kyoto treaty, and supporters of the treaty say it is an important indicator of U.S. standing in the international community. “The climate change issue is important because it reflects whether our country is going to be in the mainstream, “ said Senator Rob Wyden, Oregon Democrat and a member of the environment panel. ("In the mainstream" attempting to pacify nations whose primary goal is to diminish our power?)

Terrorism Link in California Governor Davis Recall

(Redacted from original article by Debbie Schlussel)

I’m a proud conservative Republican from Michigan, but I’m appealing to Californians of all political stripes not to support the recall of Gov. Gray Davis. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) — funder of the recall effort and the only announced candidate to replace Davis." Instead of communists, Issa’s allies are radical Islamists and supporters of terrorism against Americans, Israelis, Christians and Jews.

In a short political career, Issa’s statements and actions consistently defend terrorists, terrorist groups and terrorist sponsor states.Saudi Arabia’s longtime lobbyist, James Gallagher, contributed to Issa’s campaign in November 2002, and Issa tried to overturn key classified evidence portions of President Bill Clinton’s 1995 counterterrorism bill. Issa is also credited with "declawing" the Patriot Act.Then, there’s Issa’s dance with Hezbollah, an organization that is on the State Department’s terrorist list and one of the largest components of Al Qaeda.

In the 1980s, Hezbollah — which means "Party of Allah" — murdered more than 260 U.S. Marines while they slept in Beirut and tortured to death Col. Richard Higgins (in 1990) and CIA attache William Buckley. Hezbollah endorses "the use of hostages," "suicide in jihad operations" and "the duty of all Muslims to engage in Islamic jihad if it ensures the ultimate goal [of] inflicting losses on the enemy."

Less than a month after Sept. 11, Issa visited Syrian President Bashar Assad, praising Hezbollah and lauding Assad’s policies (Syria is on the State Department’s terrorist list). The Tehran Times and IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency, the official Iranian news agency) quoted Issa’s statements to Assad in Damascus: "Hezbollah acts legitimately and has never been involved in terrorist activities.... Hezbollah and any other Lebanese group has the right to resist the occupation of its territory.... Hezbollah’s humanitarian and governmental actions were legal.... Such behavior would be customary in any country."

Issa denies the statements, but as a recent Los Angeles Times cover story demonstrates he has a record of stretching the truth — about his military record, his criminal history, his business affairs and his political positions. In November 2001, for instance, Issa told syndicated columnist Debra Saunders he was vehemently against Arabs suing the airlines and government over profiling. At the same time, he told the rest of the press of his plans to introduce legislation to make it easier for Arabs to collect monetary damages for airline and government profiling.And Issa’s other statements and actions corroborate their veracity:·

Less than a month after Sept. 11, in an Oct. 9, 2001, interview with the Beirut Daily Star’s Ibrahim, during a trip to Lebanon, Issa said, "It is Lebanon which will determine whether the party’s [Hezbollah’s] activities constitute terrorism or resistance ... If [Hezbollah] wants the world to understand that its activities are legitimate, they should say it.... Resistance is a legitimate right recognized [by the U.N.].... I have a great deal of sympathy for the work that Hezbollah tries to do." He expressed hope that Hezbollah would "reform" and become a "government" like the P.L.O. ·

On Oct. 31, 2001, the London Arabic newspaper, Al-Hayat, reported, "U.S. Congressman of Lebanese origin Darrell Issa, during his recent visit to Beirut in the mid of October," conveyed a proposal to Hezbollah leadership to remove Hezbollah from the State Department’s terrorist list and "normalize U.S. relations with" the group. Hezbollah refused the offer. ·

Days after Sept. 11, Issa, during his House International Relations Committee’s discussion of fighting terrorism, tried to draw a distinction between "Palestinian groups that are resisting Israeli occupation" and Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. · During his November 2001 trip to the Middle East, Issa told his hometown newspaper, the North County Times, that he was "particularly impressed with Arafat." "He is quite a charismatic individual, despite being a very small man and very old," the congressman said. "He has a wry sense of humor. He gives you food off his plate if you sit next to him." In April 2003, Issa spoke of Arafat’s "charm" (also in the North County Times).

Issa’s softness on Syrian-sponsored terrorism is legendary, too. Syria is home to several fugitives, including Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner, Hamas political director Moussa Abu Marzook, Islamic Jihad chief Ramadan Abdullah Shallah and Jamil Al-Gashey, the only surviving perpetrator of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre — all wanted and/or indicted in the United States. However, Assad refuses their extradition.· Issa vehemently opposes the Syrian Accountability Act, which imposes sanctions on Syria until it stops sponsoring Hezbollah and other terrorists. Issa said Syria is "cooperative." · In June 2003, Issa attended the Beirut signing of a major oil deal between Syria and two U.S. firms. The contract states the companies will spend $29 million in Syria and train the state-run Syrian oil company.

Darrell Issa wants to be governor of California and ultimately president. With a record like this, do you want to help him?

Debbie Schlussel, a Detroit-based attorney, radio talk-show host and conservative political commentator. dschlussel@yahoo.com.

Lest we forget our “Arab ally”, Syria

Back in Damascus …

By Carole B. Glick

The American effort to seed democracy in and uproot violence from postwar Iraq has understandably shifted the world's attention away from the political ailments that plague neighboring countries. However, the despotism and belligerency that characterize the regimes in Teheran and Damascus continue to threaten the Middle East's stability and prosperity. Only the future will tell just how far-sighted and effective the American response to the recent student upheaval in Teheran has been. As for Syria, there are reports that Washington is actually about to make a move. The US reportedly has told Damascus categorically to withdraw from Lebanon, deport terrorist leaders who are headquartered in Damascus, and dismantle Hizbullah.

Under the present circumstances, Damascus, if it has any sense at all, will take such a statement from Washington seriously. Then again, if past performance is any indicator of future behavior, Syrian President Bashar Assad has shown that he can be counted on not to believe the US is serious and not to adhere to Washington's demands. In the past, this behavior has not served Assad badly. After Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to Syria in May, for instance, the US expressed satisfaction that Syria was moving to dismantle terrorist headquarters in Damascus. In fact, Syria dosed down no terrorist headquarters and has reportedly continued to transfer terrorists and supplies to Iraq to aid in the widening guerrilla war being fought against US and British forces there.

Syria's role in the global terrorist war against the US, Israel, and other Western countries is a known quantity. Syria houses terrorist headquarters. Syria has provided Hizbullah with a territorial base in Lebanon. It arms Hizbullah, allows the transfer of Iranian arms to Hizbullah from Damascus's airport, and allows Iranian Revolutionary Guards to operate in Hizbullah bases in the Bekaa Valley.

As Gal Luft, co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security in Washington, points out in an article in the latest issue of Commentary magazine, with its sophisticated armaments, territorial base, state sponsorship by Syria and Iran, and financial resources, Hizbullah has out-stripped al-Qaida as the most dangerous terror organization with global reach.

Whereas al-Qaida is generally viewed today to be in the possession of antiquated Soviet-era anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles and small arms, Hizbullah is armed with modem Iranian missiles and rockets. These munitions render it capable of shooting down planes, destroying tanks, and launching attacks against targets in Israel that cover fully a quarter of the population. In fact, ahead of the US invasion of Iraq, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon claimed that Iraq was moving its weapons of mass destruction through Syria to Lebanon. This view has been repeated since the war by Western intelligence sources.

Well before Operation Iraqi Freedom, key US policymakers and lawmakers were fingering Syria and Hizbullah and arguing that the two pose a greater threat to US national security than Iraq. One of the reasons given behind the scenes for the US aversion to fighting either the Syrians or Hizbullah was that such action would make it impossible for the US to continue differentiating between its war on global terrorism and Israel's. A US operation in Syria or Lebanon would expose the reality that many in Washington desperately wish to ignore - that the US and Israel are fighting the same war.

If the US is finally reaching the conclusion that Syria's sponsorship of global terrorism can no longer be brushed aside and that Hizbullah can no longer be allowed a free pass because its primary target has always been Israel, this is wonderful news for the war on terror. If, on the other hand, the US is unwilling to join forces with Israel in combating this common threat, then there can be little long-term gain from a US operation against either Syria and its proxies have never concealed their enmity to the Jewish state.

If the US decides that it must launch military operations somewhere between Syria and Lebanon, Israel must be a partner. For Israel, being kept at arm's length during such US actions would send a message of weakness and impotence to its neighbors that would only sow the seeds of future aggression. If the US retains its military credibility at the expense of Israel's regional legitimacy, the Middle East will never be stabilized.

From: International Jerusalem Post, July 25, 2003

Middle East Scholar, Pipes Gets Smoked By False Accusations

By Adam Kaplan, Washington D.C. Correspondent, Boycott Watch

Summary: A Congressional nomination is being derailed based upon misquotes and words taken out of context. Boycott Watch uncovered the false accusations and is bringing to your attention so you can see the results of blatantly false information used at the highest levels of government.

Dr. Daniel Pipes (www.danielpipes.org), head of the Middle East Forum, was nominated by President Bush to serve on the U.S. Institute of Peace on April 4.(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/04/20030401-1.html) As the information below will tell you, what has happened since the nomination is that Pipes has been unfairly discredited and made to appear as an intolerant bigot by extremist organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Council), Arab American Institute (AAI), and Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation (MAS). This is despite Pipes' years of publications which distinguish, as President Bush and most Americans agree, the differences between moderate Muslims and militant, fundamentalist Islamists. Pipes has received letters of endorsements from the ZOA, ADL, American Jewish Committee, Pakistan Today, American Mideast Associations (comprised of Muslim moderates, Christians or expats from Iran, Syria, etc.), and a plethora of academics. The letters can be viewed at (www.supportingdanielpipes.org).

At the Senate Health/Education/Labor/Pensions committee nomination vote for Pipes on Wed. 7/23, Sen. Ted Kennedy came out and based his whole anti-Pipes argument on a quote that Pipes wrote in 1990. According to Kennedy (reading straight from CAIR's talking points), Pipes said that "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene…"(11/19/90)-National Review "The Muslims are coming! The Muslims are Coming."

However, if you go back and read this article, the quote is taken out of context. Pipes, in a tongue and cheek manner, is referring to intolerance of Western Europeans towards immigrants, particularly the Turks. In fact, Pipes portrays an optimistic view of Muslim integration to European society, providing that the immigrants practice a moderate, non-militant form of the religion. "If handled properly, the immigrants can even bring much of value, including new energy to their best societies…if they modernize, Muslims have a good chance to become literate, affluent, and politically stable" write Pipes.

What this means that the primary argument of the committee's ranking member is based on propaganda formulated by CAIR and poorly researched by Kennedy's staff. Senators Harkin, Dodd, and Jeffords went along to brand Pipes as a "highly controversial individual who is not qualified for this position." "When [Pipes] talks about Muslims being funny looking, maintaining different standards of hygiene…I don't know why we are even considering this person, Mr. Chairman," said Sen. Harkin. The other Democratic Senators present, Sen. Clinton, Murray, and Reed (RI), remained silent while one Republican, Sen. John Ensign (NV) spoke out in favor of Pipes.

All of the other Republicans besides Chairman Judd Gregg (NH) left the meeting, making a vote on the Pipes nomination impossible due to there not being a quorum present. Also of note is that Sen. John Warner (VA) said after hearing Harkin's pathos-filled speech about how his mother was an immigrant and 'looked and dressed funny too', (which by the way was based on the misquote from National Review), he would look further into his decision on Pipes.

Sen. Gregg then adjourned the meeting and postponed the Pipes nomination until after the recess once members had a chance to "talk to each other." It is clear that the opposition's smear campaign against Pipes is continuing. Yesterday CAIR issued a press release which claims that Pipes in a July 25th speech to a young conservative group compared all Islamic people to Nazis (http://www.cair-net.org/asp/article.asp?id=149&page=AA). This too was a lie. The article that CAIR opportunistically used was based on an article from Cybercast News Service which covered the Pipes 7/25 speech. After I had a conversation with CNS Executive Editor Scott Hogenson who was in the process of issuing a retraction to the article that was so opportunistically used by CAIR, CNS news put out this: http://www.cnsnews.com/ForeignBureaus/archive/200307/FOR20030729f.html

Another one of the alleged Pipes "quotes" which Sens. Kennedy/Harkin were so appalled by had the nominee saying "The Palestinians are a miserable people…and deserve to be" to an audience at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. An article by Ira Stoll from the April 14th New York Sun refutes this allegation profusely.(article can be found on www.supportingdanielpipes.org).

Basically, CAIR/AAI/AADC, etc. ran a campaign of lies and distortions to defame Dr. Pipes. After the hearing, they had an impromptu press conference in the hall of the Dirksen building, where opposition leaders such as Nihad Awad (exec. Dir. Of CAIR), Jean Abi-Nader (Arab American Institute), Mahdi Bray (Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation), and Mary Rose Oaker (AADC) gloated to Al-Jazeera reporters that they considered the postponement a major victory. "The American Muslim and Arab communities will remember who voted which way on Pipes for a long time to come. We are very pleased with the outcome of today's hearing, but the fight is not over," said MPAC spokeswoman Sarah Eltantawi.

Politicians take note!

Beyond Iraq: The Next Move, a book that claims Israel is being used as a pawn to pay the appeasement bill for the US war in Iraq, has reached The New York Times best-sellers list. Published in April by US evangelical author Mike Evans, founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team (www.jerusalemprayerteam.org), the book made news in June by briefly ranking second between Harry Potter and Hillary Clinton on Amazon's best-sellers list. Evans attributed the phenomenon to the fact that America's Bible-believing Christians are voting against the Road Map by buying the book.

"There is no other way in the world that a book that was totally unknown the first week in June could take off like this. These are the same Christians who voted for President George W. Bush," Evans said, "and I think they are attempting to send a signal to him that they are not happy campers and want him to back off."

Bush is greatly admired by Bible believers, Evans noted, "but if he forces us to choose between him and the Bible, he could very well experience the same problem his father did after the '91 Gulf War when he did not get reelected." Christians are very concerned. They believe that God will curse America if America touches prophecy, and they believe that the Bible land is prophecy.

The fact that Jerusalem is part of the road map really worries all Bible-believing Christians, in that the prophecies say that Jerusalem will be in the hands of the
Jewish people when the Messiah returns. "Christians believe that, if Jerusalem is
divided, America will have challenged the word of God and the power of God and
will bring a curse on our nation. This is taken from the Abrahamic covenant 'I
will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee.'"

From the International Jerusalem Post, August 1, 2003

America/Israel Double Standard

(How about a little moral equivalency instead of hypocritical condemnation)

BY LIAT COLLINS AND SARAH HONIG

Israelis understand what America is up against, because we have been suffering casualties, not only among our soldiers and not in a foreign land. We have suffered fatalities at the hands of terrorists in restaurants, town squares, wedding halls, buses and even our homes. We do not begrudge America happiness on this success, (the killing of Saddam Hussein’s sons) but we wish it were matched by similar feelings toward our own fight against terrorism.

Instead, we must constantly contend with international indignation and condemnation - even from Washington - that our own war on terrorism triggers. The international community always requires Israel to meet very restrictive criteria for targeting even the most vicious terrorist chiefs: Did they pose a clear and present danger? Were they "ticking bombs?" Are they "political" leaders who should enjoy some immunity as they commission mass-murders? We can imagine, for example, the reaction if the 14-year-old son of a terrorist kingpin died with his targeted father. Qusai's son, Mustafa, was killed alongside his father and uncle, but the Americans consider him collateral damage – a luxury not afforded the Israelis.

We congratulate America and yet caution against double standards. We face the same enemies and fight the same defensive fight for freedom, justice and enlightenment. The difference is only that the threat against us is far more menacing and existential. We deserve support and not censure if, once again, we need to take steps like those of the US against Saddam's heirs. No one understands America better than we do; no one has earned America's understanding more than we do.

Excerpted From: WEEK IN REVIEW
The International Jerusalem Post, August 1, 2003

President Bush speaks directly to Mahmoud Abbas

(Excerpted from Associated Press report by Barry Schweid, July 30, 2003)

In talks last week with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and then on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the president put anti-terrorism first. This emphasis aligns him closely with Sharon, whose own campaign against Palestinian extremists has guided Israel's approach to peace-making and made concessions difficult for Abbas to extract. And Abbas, despite gaining approval from the White House as a moderate and a reformer, found Bush holding to a steady but slow course.

The president offered little help to the Palestinians, for instance, in rolling back Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Bush said he had spoken out constantly "for the need to end the settlements," but he said security was the central issue in the Palestinian-Israel dispute. Ending terror would mean, "More progress will be made on difficult issues," Bush said.
.
On another Palestinian demand, that Israel release thousands of Palestinian prisoners, Bush appears comfortable with the promised, limited release of 540 of them. "Surely nobody would want to let a cold-blooded killer out of prison. I would never ask anybody in any society to let a prisoner out who would then commit terrorist actions," Bush said.

Turning to Abbas, who stood at Bush's right hand in the sun baked White House Rose Garden, the president said: "I'm going to tell you point- blank that we must make sure that any terrorist activity is rooted out in order for us to be able to deal with these big issues."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay speaking in the Israeli Knesset July 30, 2003

(Redacted from part of his speech)

Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for your invitation and for that warm reception.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the citizens of Israel for their generous welcome and hospitality to my wife, Christine and me over the last three days.
I also look forward to sharing my experiences with President Bush, whose leadership and clarity make peace in the Middle East possible and victory in the war on terror inevitable.

In his comments yesterday, the president reaffirmed America's support for Israel's security and our commitment to fight "terrorism wherever it is found."
He made clear that the prospects for peace are the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority. They must maintain sustained, targeted and effective operations to fight terror and dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure.

The solidarity between the United States and Israel is deeper than the various interests we share. It goes to the very nature of man, to the endowment of our God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is the universal solidarity of freedom. It transcends geography, culture and generations. It is the solidarity of all people — in all times — who dream of and sacrifice for liberty. It is the solidarity of Moses and Lincoln. Of Tiananmen Square and the Prague Spring. Of Andre Sakharov and Anne Frank.

And in its name I come to you — in the midst a great global conflict against evil — with a simple message: "Be Not Afraid." I do not say this as a foreigner, cavalier in my estimation of the dangers that surround you. Instead, I say it as an ally, in spite of the terrifying predators who threaten all free nations, especially Israel. My country is not ignorant, nor are we indifferent to your struggle.

We know our victory in the war on terror depends on Israel's survival. And we know Israel's survival depends on the willingness of free nations — especially our own — to stand by all endangered democracies in their time of need. We hear your voice cry out in the desert, and we will never leave your side. Because freedom and terrorism cannot coexist. Terrorism cannot be negotiated away or pacified. Terrorism will either destroy free nations, or free nations will destroy it.

Freedom and terrorism will struggle — good and evil — until the battle is resolved. These are the terms Providence has put before the United States, Israel and the rest of the civilized world. They are stark, and they are final. Israel's liberation from Palestinian terror is an essential component of that victory. And it's a liberation we are determined to secure — not merely a paper-thin cease-fire. False security is no security, and murderers who take 90-day vacations are still murderers. The violence must stop. An immediate and total end to Palestinian terrorism is not a concession the civilized world asks of the Palestinian Authority to advance the peace process. It is a prerequisite to the Palestinian Authority's invitation to it.

In the United States, we have two chambers in our national legislature: the House of Representatives, where I serve, and the Senate. But the voice of the people resides in the House. And one month ago, the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution — which I was proud to co-author — that states unequivocally the position of that body. That resolution reads in part — "Whereas Israel has no choice but to use its own measures to fight terrorism if the Palestinians are unwilling to do so...Therefore be it resolved that the House of Representatives recognizes and respects Israel's right to fight terrorism and acknowledges Israel's fight against terrorism as part of the global war on terrorism."

This echoes years of continuous support for Israel in Congress, where we remain committed to Israel's strength, security, and qualitative military superiority. This war we fight — this war on terror the United States shares with free nations, like Israel, around the world — we fight for this reason: to establish and secure a community of nations safe to be free, and free to be prosperous.

As President Bush said: "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists." The war on terror is not a misunderstanding. It is not an opportunity for negotiation or dialogue. It's a battle between good and evil, between the Truth of liberty and The Lie of terror. We learned September 11th what Israelis have known for decades: that evil cannot long be ignored or accommodated. The common destiny of the United States and Israel is not an artificial alliance dictated by our leaders. It is a heartfelt friendship between the citizens of two democracies at war, bound by the solidarity of freedom.

Brothers and sisters of Israel: "Be not afraid." The American people stand with you, and so does our President. George W. Bush is a man of integrity and honesty. He is a man committed to the security of Israel and its destiny among the great nations of the earth.

One day, Israel — with the United States by her side — will live in freedom, security and peace. And terrorism will perish from the earth. But until that day to dawns, free men the world over — whether of the cross, the crescent, or the Star of David — will stand with Israel in defiance of evil. Free men will never succumb to the ease or expedience of The Lie because we will never forget that when fighting evil, determination is destiny.

May the God of Abraham continue to bless the United States, Israel, and each and every one of you.'

Alert! For those interested in Weapons of Mass Destruction

Since President Bush decided to take action and eliminate some of our lethal enemies, the United Nations, the European Union and all the misguided peaceniks of the world have attempted to obstruct him in this vital task. The constant challenge to him has been, “where are the weapons of mass destruction?” Of course, never mind the necessity of eliminating these very same enemies for the simple reason that they make no secret of wanting to destroy us. Or, that they make no secret of wanting to eliminate our way of life and replacing it with all the good things of Islamic fundamentalism that we saw so ably administered by the Taliban in Afghanistan, the imams of Iran and millions of other Islamic fundamentalist round the world.

As to the weapons of mass destruction, there is a man who has spent a great portion of his life tracking our enemies and the very weapons of mass destruction in question. His name is Gregory R.Copley, historian, author and strategic analyst and his web site is www.strategicstudies.org. Visit it for some well-hidden information.

Bill O’Reilly recently interviewed Mr. Copley and asked him why this vital information has not been made public. Mr. Copley gave O’Reilly a very straightforward answer – Then the American government would have to deal directly and forcefully with the Syrians, the Saudis, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the Palestinian Arabs and fundamentalist Islam all over the world – a daunting task, indeed. Better to sweep it all under the carpet, ala Bill Clinton. I don’t think so.

Quoting Copley directly:

“…The WMD moved into Syria (and now supposedly sought by the American administration) were not buried, but are in a compound at Hsishi, at al-Qamishli (Kamishli) in Syria.

I would direct you to our open website, www.strategicstudies.org, where you will find, after you open the site, a link to 2003 Iraq War Special Reports. Click on to that. There are many reports which were transferred to this site from our restricted website. The October 28, 2002, report, in particular details the movement of WMD into Syria. That report (and all of the others, plus many more) did go into the US and other countries' intelligence communities.

Most of our work is not published openly, but our monthly journal, Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, is openly available by subscription.”

Gregory Copley,
President, International Strategic Studies Association

Abu Mazen mock's President Bush Requirement

ABU MAZEN AGAIN PLEDGES LOYALTY TO ARAFAT;
MOCKS BUSH'S REQUIREMENT FOR "NON-TERRORIST LEADERS"

NEW YORK- Mocking President Bush's requirement that the Palestinian
Arabs must have leaders who are "not compromised by terror," Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has again pledged his unswerving loyalty to arch-terrorist Yasir Arafat.

Abu Mazen, who co-founded the Fatah terrorist movement with Arafat and
served as his second-in-command for nearly 40 years, was chosen by Arafat to serve as prime minister in April of this year. In his first speech as prime minister, delivered before the Palestinian Legislative Council on April 29, 2003, Mazen turned to Arafat and said "This government, Mr. President, is your government."

In an interview with the Washington Post & Newsweek (July 27, 2003),
Mazen was asked: "Does Arafat have to approve the actions that you take?" Abu Mazen replied: "All the actions, all the actions. He is the leader of the Palestinian people."

The interviewer then asked: "People are hoping you can be an independent actor." Abu Mazen replied: "No, I cannot be independent. I am part of the authority."

To emphasize the point, the PA's official Palestine Media Center issued
a statement on July 27, 2003, headlined: "Arafat 'Is the Leader of the
Palestinian People,' PM Abbas Confirms," and then quoted from his
Washington Post/Newsweek interview.

President Bush, in his June 24, 2002 Mideast speech, called on the
Palestinians to "elect new leaders, not compromised by terror." Likewise, the Road Map plan stipulates that the Palestinians must "have a leadership acting decisively
against terror."

Morton A. Klein National President of the Zionist Organization of
America (ZOA), said: "The Bush administration acknowledges that Arafat is a terrorist and refuses to have any dealings with him. Abu Mazen's pledges of loyalty to Arafat demonstrate that he, too, is still a terrorist. He does not qualify as the kind of non-terrorist leader that President Bush has demanded. He is no more worthy of U.S. support than Saddam Hussein's second-in-command."

Bush bushwhacks Daniel Pipes and the American People

By Caroline Glick – International Jerusalem Post

Wednesday, the US Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee postponed indefinitely its vote on the White House's nomination of Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes to the board of directors of the federally mandated and financed United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. The Senate committee's tabling of the nomination of a scholar to a think tank is in itself a small story. After all, it can be argued, no lives are at stake, and no government contracts large or small hang in the balance.

If it so desired, the White House could override the Senate's inaction by appointing Pipes to the think tank's board while Congress is in summer recess. This would not be unprecedented. President Clinton side-stepped the Senate on a number of occasions during such recesses when he appointed ambassadors and federal judges who would otherwise have had their appointments buried in the Senate. And yet, the White House is not expected to act in this manner. Rather, it is expected to disengage and essentially allow Pipes' nomination to wither on the vine.

Pipes, a renowned scholar of Islam and the Arab world who heads the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, is the bane of the existence of Arab-American terrorism apologists and radically anti-American Middle East scholars. These detractors understand the importance of Pipes' unapologetic and intellectually-anchored attacks on radical Islam and the threat such radicalism manifests both to Islam itself and to the US.

These terrorism apologists, heavily concentrated in high-profile organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Council on Public Affairs, and the Middle East Studies Association among others, launched an intellectual and public relations war against Pipes years ago. This war was intensified after the 9/11 attacks when millions of Americans woke up to the stark reality of the malignant force of radical Islam on US national security.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Pipes, who had been warning of this threat for over a decade, suddenly rose to national prominence. Pipes's detractors rarely debate the actual issues that he raises. Rather, they ignore the inarguable substance of his claims and seek to smear his reputation by resorting to the gutter tactic of launching an unrelenting stream of ad hominem accusations of bigotry and war mongering against him.

In nominating Pipes to the previously obscure US Institute of Peace, the White House was making an important statement. It was saying that it recognizes that in the war on terrorism, no less than in the Cold War, the intellectual foundations and rationales guiding the war effort are in many respects as important, if not more important for eventual victory, than the military battles. If the US is not able to intellectually discredit its enemies then it will not long sustain the will to fight them on the military battlefield.

In backing away from Pipes's nomination when it found itself exposed to baseless Muslim allegations of racism, the Bush administration is following the pattern of policy inconsistency that has marked its path since it entered office. Writing this week of this inconsistency as it relates to the president's domestic agenda, commentator George Will argued that "the administration's principal objective may be to avoid fights about cultural questions."

As if to prove the salience of this inconsistency, last week, The New York Sun published an article about a new advisory group formed by the State Department at the beginning of the month to guide US public diplomacy towards the Arab and Muslim world. The group, which is charged with recommending policy initiatives, "will report its findings and recommendations to the president, the Congress, and the secretary of state." Given its mandate, it should be noted, this new panel is infinitely more influential on US policy than the board of directors of the Institute of Peace.

Disturbingly, the group's members share none of Bush's expressed commitment to bringing freedom to the Arab world but rather have argued for years that Israel is to blame for the instability in the Arab world and the terrorism that emanates from it. The group's chairman, former ambassador to Syria Edward Djerejian, has for over a decade been a firm advocate of appeasing Arab dictatorships, generally at Israel's expense. Djerejian has often issued public apologetics for Arab rejectionism and for Palestinian terrorism, which he claims are a result of Israeli foot-dragging in negotiations. With Secretary of State Colin Powell's approval, Djerejian appointed as members of his group people like John Zogby, Shibley Telhami, and Stephen Cohen who have distinguished themselves as some of Israel's harshest critics among American intellectuals and consistent foes of those who propose democratization of the Arab world.

So, as the White House backs away from Pipes's appointment rather than contend with the political outcry from terror apologists masquerading as civil rights activists, the State Department announces the formation of a policy group filled with appeasement of tyranny specialists masquerading as public diplomacy experts.

But does any of this really matter? In the vast scheme of things, what is the importance of a board of directors here or an advisory group there? Perhaps all that stands in the balance here is a highbrow intellectual debate.
Unfortunately, this is far from the case.

The question of the nature of the war the US is fighting is critical to determining whether or not the US is adopting strategies capable of winning the war. The intellectual split between Pipes and Djerejian and the policies their views prescribe could not be starker. Pipes and his intellectual allies view the war as a cultural battle which pits Arab fascists and Islamic totalitarians against their own people as well as against Western democracies. Djerejian and his fellows view the war as a conflict between helpless and pitiable masses led (happily) by exotic and oil-rich Arab leaders and what they perceive as Western imperialism best manifested in Israel.

In Pipes's formulation of the struggle, the US must be firm and unapologetic in its war against these regimes and their guiding ideologies. In Djerejian's view, the war will end when the US sacrifices Israel and in so doing shows the desert sheikhs and their wretched masses that the US has nothing against them. The view adopted by the White House of the nature of the war then has enormous implications for the strategies adopted in fighting it.

As if on cue to show the consequences of Djerejian's approach, this week Newsweek published an article that exposed an apparent Bush administration cover-up of suspected Saudi governmental collusion with the 9/11 terrorists. Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi agent, met with two of the hijackers in 2000 right after he left the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles. He paid their apartment rent for two months and is suspected of having arranged for them to receive Social Security cards and flight training in Florida. The administration is currently insisting that 29 pages of Congress's 900-page report on intelligence failures that preceded the 9/11 attacks be expunged. These 29 pages deal with Saudi involvement in the attacks. Powell, Djerjian's political patron and close friend, is one of the administration officials most associated with the Bush administration's policy of backing the Saudi government.

The backing continues unabated in spite of the fact that Saudi citizens have provided al-Qaida with the bulk of its funding and soldiers.
As well, Powell and his associates have succeeded in convincing Bush to reverse his policies regarding the Palestinian Authority. Whereas a year ago, Bush conditioned US support for Palestinian statehood on the emergence of a new Palestinian leadership "untainted by terrorism" and on Palestinian democracy, today Bush is meeting with Arafat's deputy of 40 years in the Oval Office. Mahmoud Abbas, the Bush administration's new great white hope for Palestine, has consistently stated that he will not dismantle terrorist organizations. Rather than disavow his leadership in light of his intransigence and extremism, the administration follows in the footsteps of the previous two administrations. Bush embraces this Palestinian thug and his corrupt and terrorist cronies and does so while pressuring Israel, a key and stalwart US ally, to make dangerous concessions to terrorism. Israel is today being pressured to withdraw its troops from Palestinian cities and release murderers from jail in the empty-headed hope that doing so will magically transform Abbas from a terrorist to a peacemaker.

In contrast, in Iraq, where Pipes's belief that tyranny must be defeated has been adopted as policy, the US is making progress in establishing the foundations of democracy and political stability in a land where such notions have never been allowed to take root. This successful, robust, and deeply moral policy was over the past decade firmly and publicly opposed by the members of Powell's advisory group as well as by Powell himself.

As Democrats and Europeans yammer vacuously about the fact that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction have yet to be found, they not surprisingly ignore the real weakness of the Bush administration's strategy of fighting the war on terrorism. The most damaging aspect of the administration's policy is that it is weakening its chance of winning the war by refusing to consistently apply the proper intellectual foundations of the war to its policies.

The longer the Saudi government is allowed to infect the Arab and Islamic world with its totalitarian message and money, the longer US national security will remain at risk. The longer the Palestinians are rewarded for their terrorist war, the longer they and their sponsors will serve as a source of instability and chaos in the region.

The Senate's tabling of Pipes's nomination is a small yet vital test of the administration's resolve. Unfortunately it seems that the administration is intent on failing this test.

Palestinian Arab War Tactics

(Redacted from an article by Cynthia Ozick, The Wall Street Journal, July, 2003)

…The most ingeniously barbarous Palestinian societal invention, surpassing any other in imaginative novelty, is the recruiting of children to blow themselves up with the aim of destroying as many Jews as possible in the most crowded sites accessible. These are not so much acts of anti-history as they are, remarkably, instances of anti-instinct. The drive to live is inherent: The very mite crawling on this sheet as I write hastens to flee the point of my pen. The child who has been taught to die and to kill from kindergarten on via song and slogan in praise of bloodletting represents an inconceivable cultural ideal.

And it is a cultural grotesquerie that Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantissi, a pediatrician entrusted by his vocation with the healing of children, is, in fact, a major recruiter of young suicide bombers. (When his wife was asked by a neighbor why her husband did not outfit his own teenage son in a bomber's vest, the good doctor instantly sent the boy abroad.)

Confronted by this orgiastic deluge of fanaticism and death, there are some who would apply the term psychopathological. But it is metaphysics, not Freud that is at stake: The life force traduced, cultism raised to a "sinister spiritualism — not because the "martyrs" are said to earn paradise, but because extraordinary transformations of humane understanding are hounded into being.

A Palestinian ethos of figment and fantasy has successfully infiltrated the West,
particularly among intellectuals, who arc always seduced by novelty. We live now with an anti-history wherein cause and effect are reversed. Protection against attack is equated with the brutality of attack. Existential issues are demoted or ignored — "cycle of violence" obfuscations all zealously embraced by the State Department and the European Union.

The road map permits no contradiction to the Palestinians' emerging nationhood. But if it is teachings and usages that characterize a nation, then what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches out of Bethlehem to be born?

The Supposed Arab Vote

By Jerome S. Kaufman

According to an article in the Detroit News, both political parties, including the President of the United States are coming to Michigan intent upon obtaining the Arab vote in this area. Of course, every vote and every ethnic group is important – either because of their numbers or the amount of funds they contribute to the political party.

Evidently, some of the political strategists mentioned have been mislead by notoriously inflated numbers as to the number of Arabs there are in the country and specifically in the Metro Detroit area. Larry Witham in the Washington Times reported on the results of an independent, extremely reliable survey conducted by the Religious Congregations and Membership of 2000. The every-decade survey, a project since 1966 of the Glenmary Home Missioners, a Catholic organization in Cincinnati, is considered the most reliable database on religious affiliation at the county level. Its findings were based on the number of Muslims affiliated with America’s more than 1000 mosques. The number came to 1.6 million, far below the estimates of 7 million put out by Islamic groups.

Understandably, the pro-Arab Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) took great exception to these numbers since their supposed political influence would wane accordingly. In fact, Mr. Witham reported that other national surveys have also argued that the U.S. Muslim population is below 2 million.

In Dearborn Michigan there was a similar problem with a serious inflation of numbers. The Detroit Free Press in May 2001 reported on an Arab American, Abed Hammoud possibly running for Mayor of Dearborn – the area where we have been told repeated that is the home to 200-300,000 Arabs. The article surprisingly reported that the area has approximately 59,000 Arab residents and only 17% are registered voters. That comes down to about 10,000 votes if they all showed up!

Finally, there is the question of the authenticity of polls. Has the pollster a political agenda of his own. Zogby International polling mentioned in the News article estimates 450,000 Arabs live in Michigan and that 150,000 – 160,000 are registered voters. John Zogby, who runs Zogby International, also happens to be the brother of James Zogby, the most well known Arab propagandist in the United States. Furthermore, the results of John Zogby’s polls relative to Arab Americans and issues that affect them have been questioned in the past. It would seem only prudent to have less politically attached pollsters run surveys before various politicians run to Michigan to start making ill-advised promises to a non-existent plurality.

Heartbeat Away from Jihad Nukes

(Redacted from an article by Arnaud De Borchgrave, The Washington Times July 27, 2003)

While Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was in the U.S. last month to reassure his interlocutors about his pro-American bona fides, his own chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Committee, Gen. Mohammed Aziz Khan, said, at a public meeting, "America is the No. 1 enemy of the Muslim world and is conspiring against Muslim nations all over the world."

As the Army Chief of Staff, Mr. Musharraf outranks Gen. Aziz Khan. Backed as he is by other Islamist generals in the army, Gen. Aziz Khan must have felt sufficiently secure to, in effect, challenge the president for his pro-American policies. Clearly referring to his chief of army staff, Gen. Aziz Khan said politics should not be practiced while in "uniform." Sensing that Mr. Musharraf, with President Bush's financial sweetener, is looking for a way out of the Kashmir morass, he added that even with a solution to the long-running dispute, India and Pakistan could never be friends.

Following September 11, 2001,and the abrupt about-turn of Pakistan's foreign policy, when Mr. Musharraf— after hearing Mr. Bush telling him, "either you're with us or against us," — ditched Taliban in Afghanistan and backed me U.S. unconditionally, Gen. Aziz Khan and his following, among politico-extremist groups, became security risks. So, Mr. Musharraf kicked him upstairs where he was neutralized. At least so Mr. Musharraf thought. Khan has used his ceremonial job —and loyal following among field-grade officers in the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) -to organize army opposition to Mr. Musharraf.

This demonstrates yet again that Pakistan is still a heartbeat away from becoming the world's first Islamist nuclear power. Pakistan's arsenal is variously estimated at between 35 and 60 nuclear weapons.

Mr. Musharraf has survived at least six assassination plots. His support for the U.S. war against terrorism is unpopular in many segments of society. Some 500 al Qaeda suspects have been arrested in Pakistan and most have been handed to the U.S., according to the government. Mr. Musharraf also put the squeeze on the army's support for the anti-Indian guerrillas in Kashmir. For Pakistan, they're "freedom fighters"; for the Islamist clergy, "jihadis (holy warriors); and for India, "terrorists." Fact is many of them are terrorists who were trained in al Qaeda's Afghan camps. They switched to the Kashmir front after Taliban's defeat in November 2001. ISI organized their transfer from Afghanistan to Kashmir. Kashmir is the Pakistan army's principal raison d'etre, as a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. put it.
"Demonstrate that your support for the liberation of Kashmir is waning, and you automatically curry disfavor among senior officers," the ex-envoy explained. And Mr. Musharraf has done just that. Infiltrations from Pakistan-held Kashmir into the Indian side continue, but are much reduced.

Mr. Musharraf also is preparing his public opinion for Pakistan's recognition of Israel if the Bush peace plan becomes reality. "If Arab nations can recognize Israel, why not Pakistan?" he asked. By acquiescing to U.S. wishes and sending troops into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) for the first time since independence half a century ago, where they are not allowed to go by treaty commitment, Mr. Musharraf triggered much grumbling in the ranks.

Some tribal leaders in FATA-land have told government troops to butt out. They like Taliban and admire al Qaeda. The recent sectarian carnage in a Shi'ite mosque in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, killed 50 and wounded more than 300, and was immediately exploited by another redoubtable Musharraf opponent. In a July 9 interview with Nawa-e-Waqt, anUrdu daily, retired Gen. Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief and now "strategic adviser" to politico-religious leaders, said: "America is directly involved in all terrorist attacks in Pakistan, including the Quetta bloodbath."

Gen. Gul's calcinatory rhetoric accused the U.S., India and Israel— the three arch-villains in the Islamist lexicon — of establishing "more than 20 base camps in Afghanistan from where these powers foment civil unrest in Pakistan. Their aim is to crush jihad."

The Pakistani president's fight to stay in power does not necessarily conjugate with America's war on terror. Broken so many times in the past, no one trusts U.S. pledges and promises. Mr. Musharraf can still dissolve parliament and declare martial law or call new elections. The billing and cooing between the two presidents at the Camp David Summit in June is already a faint warble in July.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.

From: Zen Golf - Mastering the Mental Game

By Dr. Joseph Parent

What with my golf game going to pot, I reached out in sheer desperation and bought a book on the mental aspects of the game. After reading the opening paragraph, quoted below, it dawned upon me that the recommendations listed applied to just about anything one might try to do!

Preparation is the first stage of the PAR Approach to playing better golf. The key factors in preparation are the three Cs: clarity, commitment and composure.

Clarity is having a vivid image of the shot you intend, both the target and the path the ball will take to get there.

Commitment is being free from second-guessing, doubt or hesitation.

Composure is being calm and focused, poised and at ease.

These are what you need to be properly prepared to play a shot. The material in the book progresses through these concepts, helping you make the three Cs part of your game. When you do, they'll add up to the most Important C of all - Confidence.

How About an Honest Media Source? Not likely

From: The Washington Times, July 13, 2003 By Arnold Beichman

(BBC joins NY Times in Deliberate Lies)

The British Broadcasting Co., the BBC, in May premiered a four-part television documentary, titled the "Cambridge Spies." The film's episodes, each an hour long, purport to be the true story of the four British traitors, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald MacLean and Anthony Blunt. All four betrayed their country to Josef Stalin. The docudrama, which cost the British taxpayer $10 million, is a combination of lies and whitewash. So reports John Gross, the distinguished British critic in the June issue of the New Criterion.

His judgment is irrefutable. The miniseries has yet to be shown in the United States but undoubtedly some PBS station somewhere is negotiating with the BBC for the privilege of showing this film monstrosity in this country. The BBC depends on PBS' "Masterpiece Theater" to help meet the expenses on BBC productions. And if PBS does plan to show it, I would hope Russell Baker, the "Masterpiece" host, would in this instance decline the honor of introducing it. Actually, PBS should reject buying this miniseries, as it would reject a miniseries glorifying fascism or apartheid. The BBC has transformed treason on behalf of communism into an act of nobility.

American public television should not be complicit in BBC's conspiracy against decency. The most important count in the John Gross indictment is that the documentary gives "no idea of the nature of the regime which Philby and the others chose to serve." Why the cover-up? These so-called idealists were betraying their own democratic country to a Gulagian dictatorship headed by a mass murderer. Would BBC show a documentary about Nazi Germany and glorifying four British spies who sold out to the Nazis without indicating what the Hitler regime was like?
|
The docudrama portrays these traitors as loving innocents, misunderstood idealists "who were animated by their detestation of fascism," writes Mr. Gross. At some point in the film, one of the characters says, "To fight fascism, you have to be a communist." In other words, you couldn't trust the British government, the snobbish upper classes or the British Trades Union Congress to fight the fascist beast. You could only trust the Soviet Union, which, it will be recalled, signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, thus betraying the fight against fascism.

Two incidents in the so-called documentary are shown in order to underline why the Cambridge Four became communist spies. In one of them, a drink in the hand of Philby's Jewish girl friend is knocked over by some Cambridge right-wing lout who refuses to apologize for his fascist behavior. That never happened. In the other, right-wing undergraduates are shown beating up striking college waiters at Cambridge. C'mon now, how can you blame Philby for turning traitor? An even more dramatic incident that never happened shows a KGB plot to assassinate Generalissimo Francisco Franco that fails because Philby, writes Mr.Gross, "decent and humane fellow that he is, can't bring himself to pull the trigger." Mr. Gross calls these nonevents "fabrications." I prefer a simple word "lies."

How does BBC explain the inexplicable? Listen to Janet Tranter, the BBC executive who commissioned the miniseries: "It would be a very boring drama indeed if it didn't provoke a divided opinion. Otherwise, we are going to have a drama saying, 'What ho. These chaps are traitors and we hate them.' It is much more complicated than that. [...] We are trying to put their treachery into perspective."

Oleg Gordievsky, the former KGB colonel who spied for Britain while he was the KGB station chief in London, was commissioned by the London Daily Telegraph to vet the docu-drama. His conclusion was that the BBC film "resembled an official KGB textbook." He told the Telegraph, "The films present so distorted a version of the history they claim to portray that they do not tell the story of the Cambridge spies. What they portray is more akin to a piece of propaganda. In true KGB fashion, the programs treat the Cambridge spies as heroes. [...] Most of the dramati- cally powerful moments are not based on fact. They are fictional." In defending the BBC, a spokesman said, "the truth is elusive."

Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institute research fellow, is a columnist for the Washington Times.

Secretary of State Colin Powell Certifies Red Cross Efforts

(But, his certification is wrong!)

New York/Jewish Telegraph Agency, July 18, 2003

Secretary of State Colin Powell has certified that Israel's emergency relief agency is fully participating in the functions of the International Red Cross. Powell's designation allows the U.S. government to give $ 11 million in aid to the international movement. Last week's decision comes even though the Red Cross movement has not allowed Magen David Adorn to formally join because it does not utilize a cross or crescent as its emblem, and Arab groups have prevented the movement from accepting the star of David, (and this double standard directed against Israel is one of the main reasons the previous lady director of the American Red Cross resigned!).

Earlier this year, the Red Cross and Magen David Adorn agreed to international committee support for the Israeli agency in emergency medical preparation, disaster management and tracing of missing persons.

Islam invades naïve American Educational System

From: American Textbook Council

(Please view their site for some frightening information as to how our children are being educated)

Islam and the Textbooks surveys content in seven widely adopted world history textbooks used across the country in grades seven through twelve. It reviews coverage of jihad, sharia, slavery, status of omen, and terrorism, comparing lesson content to prominent histories and recognized sources. It focuses on the high school textbooks adopted in Texas in 2002.

This review faults world history textbooks on one of the most complicated and important subjects teachers face in classrooms today, hat may seem on the surface to be a minor curriculum controversy as far-reaching implications for civic education and the promotion of American institutional values. Its main conclusions include: (1) world history textbooks hold Islam and other non-Western civilizations to different standards than those that apply to the West, (2) domestic educational activists, Muslim and non-Muslim, insist at once on harsh perspectives for the West while gilding the record of non-Western civilizations, (3) Islamic pressure groups and their allies seek to suppress critical analysis of Islam inside and outside classrooms, and distorted textbook content is one symptom of this phenomenon, and (4) publishers respond to pressure groups on account of political expediency and sales. As a result, they are giving American children and their teachers a misshapen view of the past and a false view of the future.

3.9 Billion per month to sustain 145K U.S. troops to police Iraq!

U.S. total will stay steady until leaders can run country. (Good luck!)

Detroit News wire services, July 14, 2003

WASHINGTON — The U.S. force size in Iraq likely will remain at about 145,000 for "the foreseeable future," possibly scaled back only by several thousand as foreign troops, rotate in this summer, the war's top two commanders said Wednesday. The assessment was one of the most precise descriptions" so far of the U.S. military plan for postwar Iraq, where U.S. troops are dying at a rate of almost one a day in either hit-and-run raids or accidents.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and recently retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the military commander in Iraq, told a Senate panel that NATO is being consulted on possibly contributing troops. But they said U.S. forces would remain in Iraq in large numbers until Iraqis can police themselves and begin to install a stable government.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, said 1,044 American troops have been injured since the war in Iraq began March 20. Rumsfeld also said the United States expects to spend an average $3.9 billion per month on Iraq from January through September this year.

(I guess my wife is right. I am a one-trick pony. I read with chagrin the number of American boys being killed and the amount of money we are spending in trying to obtain a civilized society in Iraq. And I have no problem with the original need. Saddam Hussein had to be taken out. He was a threat to our own well-being. What are responsibilities are after that is another story. I do know that it is not our job to keep peace in the world all by ourselves. Such a project is impossible.

The number that really shocked me was the 3.9 Billion dollars a month that we are spending in Iraq. I think of the haters that criticize our aid to Israel. The amount is all of 2.7 billion per year and the biggest part of that comes back to the United States in mutually beneficial arms contracts and domestic purchases. This relatively small sum helps to sustain our staunchest ally in the Middle East. No American troops are ever required or demanded. No American lives are at risk. In the meantime, we are helping ourselves tremendously. We are maintaining a true military partner and a genuine representative democracy - the perfect example of what we are supposed to be trying to achieve all over the world. Sounds like a damn good deal to me)

Our Saudi Arabian “Allies?”

Dore Gold: "Saudi provides most of Hamas funding"

By Janine Zacharia Jul. 15, 2003 The Jerusalem Post

More than 50 percent of Hamas's current funding comes from Saudi Arabia and is increasing despite US President George W. Bush's call to the kingdom to halt aid to Palestinian terrorist groups, Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN and a researcher of terrorist financing, said Tuesday in Washington.

"The Saudi share of Hamas funding is growing, not declining. We're getting no change in Saudi behavior," Gold said at a roundtable on Saudi terrorist financing and September 11 organized by Reps. Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R-Florida), chair of the House International Relations Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia, and Gary Ackerman (D-New York), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee.

Gold, author of "Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism," said the percentages were according to an Israeli national assessment. Saudi Arabia, he said, continues to directly fund Hamas's military wing, provide funding for civilian, terrorist-front organizations, and writes checks to families of suicide bombers.

Gold said Saudi funding of Hamas would undermine any peace process the US
tries to push forward and called for the US and Israel to jointly "stop the channels" of funding by Saudi Arabia to terrorists.

President Bush repeatedly urged Saudi Arabia to stop funding Hamas during and after the early June summits in Egypt and Jordan. And phase one of the US-sponsored road map for a two-state solution calls for Arab states to "cut off public and private funding and all other forms of support for groups supporting and engaging in violence and terror." Last month, Adel al-Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, denied accusations that the Saudi government systematically supports Palestinian terrorist groups.

"I hear reports constantly or charges about Saudi funding Hamas. We've said no, that's not the case. Could it be that some Saudi individuals are funding Hamas? Very likely. Hamas raises a lot of money in the United States. But in terms of as a government or a policy, we have taken a position that we condemn terrorism in all its forms, and regardless of where it occurs, and we do not fund terrorists."

During his presentation, Gold outlined contents of documents discovered by Israeli troops in Palestinian offices during a sweep of the West Bank last year, which he said proved that Saudi Arabia sends money to Hamas. Among them, was a hand-written letter by now Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, from December 2000, complaining to the Saudis about their support for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, he said.

Rep. Ros-Lehtinen said the State Department "continues to treat the Saudis far too gingerly," and announced she would convene a hearing in September to examine the alliance between Saudi Arabia and al Qaeda.

IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis Website: www.imra.org.il

A Litany of Torture, Rape and Murder of Christians by “Moderate Islamists"

By Julia Duin, The Washington Times, July 13, 2003

The photos from Pakistan were anything but travel brochure material. One showed a 9-year-old girl with dark eyes, large black burns on her legs and a heavily bandaged right arm. Another showed a 14-year-old girl with a face partly melted away like candle wax. The right side was a mass of charred skin after an assailant threw acid into her eyes. Their attackers said the girls' injuries are payback for the American invasion of Iraq. Americans may not have seen much retaliation on their own soil because, several human rights groups say, Christians in Pakistan are taking the brunt of it. The 9-year-old, Razia Masih, was beaten and raped on April 26 in the town of Faisalabad, near Lahore, ending up in the hospital with multiple burns, a lacerated left eye, a broken right arm and rope marks around her hands and mouth. "She was working as a maid in a Muslim house," said Shabazz Bhatti, chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance.

"When the Iraq war happened, it was on the TV," he said. "The family [that she worked for] would call her into the TV room and start torturing her. Her skin was burned bythe irons, her body wounded by a cricket bat and a medical report showed 15 wounds on her body. She was told by them, 'You are Christian and infidel, and we will take revenge on you for the killings of Iraqi children.' "The case has been registered [with police], but the culprits have not been arrested. Meanwhile, the girl's family has fled elsewhere, just to save their lives. The government authorities are not giving them protection."

According to International Christian Concern (ICC), a religious-persecution watchdog group, the girl's family had unsuccessfully tried to get her out of her employers' home several times. After beating and burning her for a final time, the family sent her home to die. The All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, representing Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Balmeek, Bheel, Maingwal, Zoroastrian, Bahai and Kelash communities, has compiled a "catalog of terror" on attacks
against female Christians, beginning with the May 3, 2000, gang rape of eight Christian girls by militant Muslims near Lahore.

A series of either gang rapes or acid-in-the-face attacks happened in July 2000, twice in 2001, twice in 2002 and three times so far in 2003. On March 31, Natasha Emmanuel, 10, from a town near Rawalpindi, was raped by a Muslim neighbor linked with extremist Islamic organizations. The girl ended up in a hospital intensive care unit for three days, the ICC says, "Christians in Pakistan are increasingly vulnerable to religiously motivated hate crimes, and Christian girls and women seem to be specially targeted," said Stuart Windsor, director of Christian Solidarity Worldwide in London. "We are outraged by the unwillingness of the police to investigate the complaints as this only emboldens extremists to continue to victimize Christians and other non-Muslims."

Fearing such reprisals, the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom wrote Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on March 19, asking him to remind foreign governments of their responsibility to protect religious minorities. "The commission is concerned that extremists have tried ID portray military action against Iraq as part of an alleged U.S. attack on Islam," they wrote, "and that retribution will be sought against Christians, Jews and others throughout the Islamic world [...]."

The commission also asked President Bush to bring up the matter with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf during their meeting on June 24 at Camp David, Md. "Since the U.S. military action began in Afghanistan," they wrote two weeks ago, "Christian institutions in Pakistan repeatedly have been targeted by religious extremists, resulting in over 50 deaths." But neither Mr. Bush nor Gen. Musharraf mentioned religious minorities at a June 24 press conference to announce a $3 billion U.S. military and economic aid package for Pakistan.

"The Bush administration has with this package applauded Pakistan for carrying out egregious human rights abuses and religious- freedom violations," said Joseph Grieboski, president of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. "President Bush told the world that the United States will turn a blind eye to universal values and fundamental freedoms in exchange for political expediency and convenience." |

There are only about 3 million Christians among Pakistan's 140 million citizens. Gen. Musharraf said on June 25 that he knew nothing of the recent attacks on Christian women and denied there is an ongoing problem. "All the people involved in attacks have been eliminated or put behind bars," he said at a meeting sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace. "There has not been an
attack in the last year against a Christian minority."

Mr. Grieboski said Gen. Musharraf was either uninformed or lying. "He gives a speech about Islam being a moderate religion every time he panders to the West," Mr. Grieboski said, "But there's an ongoing targeting of Christians in general, with women being raped and men beaten and arrested.

The government has yet to do anything to protect the rights of minority religious believers, whether they be Christian, Ahmadi Muslim, Hindu or any other faith."

The plight of Christian women is entangled with the politics of rape in Pakistan, which has engaged human rights and women's groups for years. There is no category for rape in Pakistani law; only for "zina," which is either adultery or fornication. Unless four male Muslim witnesses can be found to back the woman's story or if the attacker denies the charges, the woman is
blamed and usually jailed on charges of illicit sex. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a woman in that country is raped every six hours and another is gang-raped every fourth day. Since women often do not report rape in the country, the actual numbers are likely to be far higher.

Since September 11, Pakistan's government has stepped up its security measures for Christians, providing extra armed guards for churches and other Christian buildings after a series of bomb and grenade attacks on churches, foreign tourists and western embassies killed 40 persons and injured dozens more. On Sept. 29,2002, two gunmen broke into the offices of a Christian charity in Karachi, killing seven Christians and seriously wounding two others. On Christmas Day 2002, three girls were killed and 17 persons injured when masked terrorists threw hand grenades into their Presbyterian church in Punjab province.

Christians are being accused of transgressing Pakistan's blasphemy law, where to criticize the Prophet Muhammad by word, deed or imputation is a capital crime. However, Gen. Musharraf said the law has not targeted Christians in particular. "Under this blasphemy law, more Muslims have been acted against than non-Muslims," he said. "Secondly, no capital punishment at all
till now has been given on the basis of blasphemy." But there are long jail sentences on trumped-up charges. One Christian, Aslam Masih, imprisoned since 1998 on blasphemy charges, was recently acquitted. Mr. Masih,a local pronunciation of Messiah, is a common family name among Christians in Pakistan, which recently required people to have a given and family name; until then, many rural villagers went through life with a single name. Two other Christians, brothers Saleem and Rasheed Masih, were acquitted in March 1999 of blasphemy charges stemming from a dispute with an ice cream vendor in the Pasrur region in northeast Pakistan. But while Saleem Masih was in prison, his wife was raped in July 2000.

"The police refused to investigate it," said Ann Buwalda, director of the Jubilee Campaign in Fairfax, Va. "Most people feel it was connected to the case of her husband." She is trying to get all three men and their families out of the country. "As long as they stay there," she said, "it's open season on them by any radical Muslim."

The “Roadmap” = Peace or War?

Will it lead to peace or to devastating war?

The United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia - labeled, collectively, the "Quartet" - have devised a plan called the "Road Map." The Road Map attempts to bring about peace in Israel/Palestine over a three-year period. At the end of that period, the emergence of a Palestinian state is envisioned, a state that is expected to live alongside of Israel in "peace and security."

What are the facts?

Unfriendly promoters: Of the four promoters of the Road Map, only one - the United States - can be considered friendly to and supportive of Israel. In the European Union, the centuries-old virus of anti-Semitism has again reared its ugly head, now disguised as anti Israelism or anti-Zionism. Russia has always been hostile to Israel and has been an enthusiastic supplier of weapons to the enemies of the Jewish State since its creation. The UN seems to take up most of its time in condemnation of Israel and in discriminating against it, to such an extent that Israel is the only country that is ineligible to become a member of the Security Council. It is likely, therefore, that the interests of three of the four designers of the Road Map are not in promoting peace, but, hypocritically, rather in the destruction of Israel or at least in its not surviving as a Jewish State.

Palestinian State: a new and unwarranted idea. The idea that the so-called "Palestinians" should have their own state has now been accepted as a just and desirable goal by most of the world. Sad to say, our own president has bought into this concept. One must regretfully assume that he did so mostly in order to appease our "Arab friends," who are outraged about our waging war against Iraq.

It buys into the myth that the Israeli-Arab dispute is at the heart of the endemic conflicts in the area and that forcing Israel to "take risks for peace" is a means of assuaging Arab humiliation. But should the safety of Israel, America's only true and reliable ally in that part of the world, be jeopardized or sacrificed on the illusive altar of "Arab friendship?"

A Palestinian state did not occur to anybody (even to the "Palestinians" themselves), when the Ottomans were the rulers in the land, when Great Britain had the Palestine Mandate, or when Jordan was in occupation of the "West Bank" for nineteen years after Israel's War of Independence in 1948. The concept of a Palestinian state did not arise until after the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Israel was victorious, regained the "West Bank" from Jordan, the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and has been in administration of those territories since.

Israel js a tiny country, a sliver on the Mediterranean coast. It is even now in a strategically almost impossible position. Without the "depth" of Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank") and without full control of the Jordan Valley it would be utterly indefensible. Israeli generals know that and American generals know that. And, of course, Arab generals know that also.

But Israel needs to be able to defend itself, because all of its immediate neighbors - Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon - no matter what they may be saying for public consumption, have only one primary military and foreign policy objective and that is to destroy Israel, to drive the hated Jews into the sea, and to finish what they call the "Zionist Enterprise" once and for all. To believe that the "Palestinians," once they had their own state, would be peaceful neighbors of a truncated and mortally vulnerable Israel or that the other Arabs states and Iran would turn from wolves to lambs is to either engage in wishful thinking or quite deliberately be co-conspirators in the eventual destruction of the Jewish State.

The Road Map will inevitably go the way that other previous "peace plans" have gone - all of which demanded "sacrifices for peace" from Israel, yielding large chunks of territory for only empty words from the Arabs. But even if Israel, tired from decades of bloodletting and under unbearable pressure from the "international community," would acquiesce to such a suicidal path, the "Palestinians" would not allow it to happen. Their hatred of the Jews and the inculcation of their children to die as martyrs are such that they would be unable and unwilling to stop the terror that they have visited upon the Holy Land. Another bloody war, rather than peace, is the likely outcome of the Road Map.

What is the "solution" that so far has eluded everybody? It is what Israel has always been willing to grant: total autonomy for its Arab minority within Israel, the Jewish State. It is a reward to which so many minorities in the world have aspired, but which has been granted to only a very few.

FLAME
Facts and Logic About the Middle East, P.O. Box 590359 • San Francisco.CA 94159, Gerardo Joffe, President

So, You think your rent is high.

How’s $3750 per square foot?

$45 million condo a record for New York

Offer for 12,000 square feet atop AOL's new headquarters by an unnamed
British financier could revive demand for luxury apartments. Price doesn't include interior work (like walls?).

By Thor Valdmanis
USA TODAY – July 11-13, 2003, excerpted

NEW YORK - A publicity-shy British financier plans to pay $45 million in cash for a 12,000-square-foot perch in AOL Time Warner's intended new home at the edge of Central Park, the most expensive apartment sale in Manhattan history.
The mystery banker has put down a non-refundable $5 million deposit for the entire 76th floor of the south tower at the two-tower structure soaring 80 stories above Columbus Circle at the park's southwest corner. "It's great for the economy and shows how strong New York is," says veteran developer Donald Trump.

(Yeah, but what about us pore folk?)

What don't you know about Middle Eastern terminology? What are they really saying?

JERUSALEM CENTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND ADVOCACY TRAINING

By David Olesker, Director

The events of September 11th, 2001 thrust the complex world of Islam into the forefront of the Western mind. I wanted to -write a short article to explain the ideological roots of Islamism, but gave up the job when I reached six pages... and it wasn't long enough! So I'm contenting myself with a "pop quiz" to try and demonstrate the lack of knowledge on the basic issues of the ideology of Islamism, and how it selects concepts from the complex theology of Islam to create its political program.

If you can't answer the following basic questions, then you are missing the point of what is happening in the Middle East If you would like to learn more, see the recommended book list at the end.

1. What does the word "Islam mean?
2. What was the majority religion in the Middle East before the rise of Islam?
3. What does the word "jihad" mean?
4. What are the "Dar al Islam" and the-'Dara/Warb"?
5. What does the word "fatah" mean?
6. What does the word "dhimmi" mean?

1. Although entomologically related to the same root as "peace", Islam is generally viewed as meaning "submission" to the will of God. This will was revealed in 'Scriptures that have been successively given to mankind by various prophets. Therefore, according to Muslim thought, Adam was a Muslim, as was Abraham, King David, and Jesus Christ. Muhammad was the last and final prophet, whose revelation was meant for all mankind. Islam, like Christianity therefore sees itself as a universal religion, and seeks to evangelize the world.

2. Almost the whole Middle East was Christian before the rise of Islam. Muslim armies evangelized the region by force, and Arabized much of the local populations.

3. Although Jihad can mean all of the above - just as a westerner might talk of a "war on drugs" or a "war on overeating", without changing the root meaning of "war" as armed conflict - so to a Muslim might use the word in any number of settings. However it's root meaning was, and remains, armed struggle to defend Muslims, and extend their rule. It was via jihad that the Muslim empires were built

4. Dar al Islam means '"the home of Islam", an area that is, or ever was, under Muslim rule. For the Islamist, if part of this area falls under non-Muslim rule, it must be redeemed. Osama bin Laden and his ilk seek the redemption of Saudi Arabia, since it is ruled by allies of non-Muslims, and the non- Muslims have their troops there. They seek the "defense" of Iraq, since it is under attack by non-Muslims. They seek the re-conquest of Israel, since it is ruled by dhimmis (see below). Dor al Harb is the "home of war"; those countries that are not yet Muslim, and await - as far as the Islamist is concerned -jihad.

5. When jihad is successful, the area conquered becomes part of the Dar al Islam, and its inhabitants must convert to Islam, or (if Jews or Christians) submit to dhimitude.

6. In traditional Muslim societies only Muslims can be full citizens; "un-believers" cannot live in such a society at all. Jews and Christians, as monotheists can be tolerated, but only as second class citizens, forced to pay a special tax, and subject to restrictions on their religious and other rights. Islamists have the goal of subjecting Jews and Christians to this quasi-apartheid status in the Middle-East, and ideally, in the whole world.

In short, the Islamists see themselves as the heirs to the soldiers of Muhammad. The are striving to first 'liberate" their own, Muslim majority states from western domination, and -what they see as corruption. They are then seeking to establish a -world Muslim state, under a reconstituted Khalifa (theocratic monarchy). Not all Muslims are Islamists, and some principles of Islamic doctrine oppose those listed above, but the fact that Islamism draws (selectively) on the Islamic tradition makes it attractive to many Muslims, and
difficult to oppose for many more.

For more information on these basic concepts, and how they affect the contemporary Middle East, read the following books:

In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power by Daniel Pipes, Basic Books, 1985
Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam by Bat Ye’or, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998

FOB 2534, Jerusalem 91024, Israel • TeL +572-2-651-2610 • Fax +972-2-652-4968 • e-mail: jccat@inarne.com

Gary L. Bauer, in Support of Israel – Asks your help

And G-d spoke, “He who blesses Israel I will bless, he who curses Israel, I will curse.”

Dear Friend,

My name is Gary Bauer and I am President of American Values. Perhaps you know me. I am working hard to build a coalition of Jewish and Christian communities to defend Israel. Over the past two years, I have met with Prime Minister Sharon, I have traveled to Israel and I have worked at educating the American public about the importance of total support for Israel.

In recent weeks, I have debated Israel's opponents on dozens of television shows on FOX, CNN and every major network. I have spoken at synagogues, churches, civic clubs and other groups. I have spent hours on Capitol Hill urging our Senators and Congressmen to stand with Israel and I promise you that I will not abandon the Jewish people.

But to ensure our success, I need your help. Will you join me and sign the enclosed Open Letter of Support for Israel to President George W. Bush.

This Open Letter of Support for Israel to President Bush will let him know that you want him to stand with Israel and protect the covenant land from being stolen by Yasser Arafat and the terrorists who every day try to kill innocent women and children in Israel. As people of faith, it is our duty to stand up for Israel and show our support to our leaders who are on the frontlines fighting the battle on our behalf.

That's why I am sending you the enclosed Letter to President George W. Bush.
Please read and sign the enclosed letter and return it to me today at our

American Values •A 2800 Shirlington Road, Suite 610 • Arlington, VA 22206

A few weeks ago, President Bush shocked many of us when he was publicly
critical of Israel for going after the head of Hamas. Fortunately, when Christians and Jews spoke up the White House retracted and reaffirmed that Israel has the same right to defend itself against terrorism as the United States does. Especially with extreme elements of militant Islam and other, anti-Semitic forces
constantly trying to destroy the state of Israel.

It breaks my heart everyday when I hear about another innocent Jewish life being brutally taken because of hatred for people of the Jewish faith.
No child should be scared to walk home from school or from the market because
of constant death threats and anti-Semitic intimidation.
No one deserves to have one of their children murdered by radical Islamic thugs. But, that is exactly what is happening in Israel and throughout Europe.
And that is why your letter to President Bush is so critical at this juncture in this
historic fight.

Will you join me and let President George W. Bush know where you stand?
The President needs to hear from millions of Americans who believe that
terrorism should never be rewarded. We must remind him that Israel is America's only reliable friend and ally. We must make it clear that appeasement never works.

I believe with all my heart that the land of Israel is Covenant Land that G-d
promised to you and your people. I am shocked that some are arguing that Jews must be forcibly removed from Judah and Samaria, land that Jews have lived in for thousands of years.

I know you do not want Israel to be divided just so some shortsighted world
leaders can look good on television. America and Israel have been partners — joined at the hip and the heart — for many years because both of our nations understand the disastrous consequences of breaking up Israel.
Now is not the time to back down and let the terrorists destroy Israel.
G-d has spoken and the Word of G-d cannot be altered by anyone, especially an
anti-Semitic terrorist like Yasser Arafat.

As recorded in the Old Testament and in the Torah "He who blesses Israel I will bless, he who curses Israel, I will curse." The time has come for Christians and Jews to unite in this historical battle to preserve the land G-d deeded to Israel.

In order for President Bush to know where you stand on this important issue, I
need you to sign and return your Letter of Support to me today at American Values. Once I receive your signed letter I will then forward it to President Bush, along with hopefully thousands of other similar letters, so that he knows where you stand. I am counting on your reply.

Make no mistake, as a supporter of Israel, there is no greater action you can take. than by returning your signed Open Letter of Support and returning it to me today. But, your signed letter of support is not enough. I also must ask you to send a generous gift of $1,000, $750, $500, $250, $100 or $25 to American Values so we can reach other Pro-Israel supporters.
Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Gary Bauer

Yes, you can count on my support. To help you educate the public about the on-
going crisis in Israel and rally support for defending Israel, I am returning my signed Open Letter to President George W. Bush and my most generous gift to help American Values.
- $1000 - $500 - $200 - $100 - $50 - $25 Other $______

Your gift to American Values is tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by
law.

Please make checks payable to: American Values
2800 Shirlington Road, Suite 610 • Arlington, VA 22206

President George W. Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,
As an American citizen and a concerned supporter of Israel, I am joining Gary Bauer to demand that you not abandon Israel during the current international crisis. Right now, the radical Palestinians are using violence and anti-Semitic intimidation to force Israel to leave land, which has been its home for thousands of years.

Over the past several months, Palestinian led terrorist attacks have resulted in the taking of hundreds of innocent lives. In many cases, women and children are the target of these barbaric thugs. Groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad have proven to be cowardly terrorists with only hate in their hearts and must not be negotiated with by you or anyone else within your Administration.

I am asking you to stand with Israel, our only reliable friend and ally in the Middle East. Remember what the scriptures say in both the Torah and the Holy Bible, "He who blesses Israel I will bless, he who curses Israel, I will curse".
I hope and pray that you will continue to support a strong and secure nation of Israel.

Sincerely,

Your name and address

Iran's New French Connection

(Quite a combination – Iran, The French and the usual irrational priorities of the American State Department.)

By Arnold Beichman, The Washington Times, July 2003

It is 1942; France has been overrun by the Germans who have installed a puppet regime in Vichy. Out of a clear sky, conies a thunderclap report: Great Britain has made a deal with Vichy. Since the fall of France in June 1940, Charles de Gaulle has been living legally in Britain as he organized the democratic resistance to Fascism. Suddenly it is announced that the British have agreed to extradite de Gaulle to Nazi-occupied France and to certain death.

Living legally in France as a political refugee and granted round-the-clock French police protection, Maryam Rajavi, 51, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), was suddenly jailed on fictitious grounds along with 163 other Iranian exiles. Some 1,300 French police on June 17 raided the NCRI offices located for 22 years at Auvers-sur-Oise, a village 18 miles northwest of Paris (where Vincent Van Gogh in a 10-week stay in 1890 produced 70 of his greatest canvases).

To this day, the French government has offered no evidence of criminal acts committed by the arrestees, according to Liberation, the French daily.

Mrs. Rajavi leads a democratic resistance movement seeking overthrow of the theocratic tyranny that now dominates the Iranian people. These disgraceful French arrests, made no doubt at the request of Iran's theocrats, take place at a time when the streets of Tehran are jammed day after day, night after night with courageous students and their elders who won't take it anymore; at a time when the Bush administration has designated the fundamentalist regime as the most important sponsor of terrorism in the world and at a time when Iran is rushing to build nuclear weapons with Russian help and ignoring legal demands for inspections of its nuclear program.

What Jacques Chirac has obviously done is to bring France into a strange alliance with Iran, in hope of winning over Islamists in the Middle East and especially the swelling Muslim population in France itself. Mr. Chirac is determined to replace the U.S. and Britain as the dominant power in the Middle East. In fashioning this history-making Franco-Iranian affiance, Mr. Chirac is aided by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is strengthening Russiasties with Iran while protesting his friendship with President Bush.

The French crackdown on the anti-ayatollah forces in exile has aroused uproar in Congress and in other parliaments in Europe.

In Washington, Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, Reps. Ed Towns, New York Democrat, William Lacy Clay, Missouri Democrat, Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas Democrat, have sent written protests against the arrests to the French government. They are among 28 senators and more than 200 representatives who have called the Mujahedeen "a legitimate resistance movement."

The NCRI, a victim of French despotism, has been endorsed by huge parliamentary majorities in Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Luxemburg and as the topper; it was even endorsed last year by 150 French deputies. What does Jacques Chirac know that these parliamentarians in Europe don't know?

And what does the State Department, which lists NCRI as a terrorist organization, know that some 200 members of Congress don't know? As it stands now, the NCRI is a casualty not only of French foreign policy but it seems also to be a casualty of American tacit consent.

It is time for an end to secret diplomacy as far as American foreign policy toward Iran is concerned, especially since Iran remains an implacable foe of President Bush's "road map" for peace in the Middle East. And it is time, now that France has become Iran's ally, to recognize the NCRI as a legitimate force for democracy and regime change in the Middle East.

Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for The Washington Times.

India's fate and Israel's in the Balance - Negative

The result of deluded or perfidious “friends” and clever, dedicated enemies.

(A fantastic article analyzing how the United States treats its friends, its fellow democracies as if they were instead, the so-called “Islamic militants” - as if there were some other variety.)

BY M.D. NALAPAT, The International Jerusalem Post, July 5, 2003

On August 15, 1947, India became free. But the day before, nearly a third of the country had been cut away from it to form Pakistan. Since 1948 Pakistan has conducted a continuous war with India, from overt conventional assault as in 1948, 1965 and 1971, to the covert war that has engulfed Kashmir since 1989. The bigger neighbor has exhibited all the hesitation and restraint typical of a democracy, while Pakistan, where the army has been in effective control since the first declaration of martial law in 1958, has shrewdly played its limited cards to great effect, combining with the United States "against communism," and with Communist China against India, getting repaid with weapons for use against one of the only three consistently democratic countries in Asia, together with Israel and Japan.

After India's first nuclear test in 1974 China began funneling technology to Pakistan which, by the end of the 1980s, made it the, only Muslim country with a nuclear device, together with missiles that could hit large parts of India. The US, which after the Soviet collapse had bought the Saudi argument that Pakistan could be a bridge into Muslim Central, Asia, looked the other way while this cross-border proliferation took place, while putting a virtual technological quarantine on India.

By creating a state with an ideology totally opposed to that of its neighbor, Britain condemned India to a constant state of external conflict and internal insecurity. Looking at the present meltdown in Pakistan, it does not seem likely that peace will break out anytime soon.

The constant chatter about an "imminent" India-Pakistan conflict has resulted in a flow of foreign investment to India that is less than 10 percent of that going to China. Most of the diplomatic interaction between New Delhi and the European Union or the US is an endless rehash of formulae for "resolving" differences between the two countries. For that to happen, either Pakistan or India would have to give up its core ideology, for Pakistan is an Islamic republic where jihad is the official motto of the army, while India is a democracy.

Were an independent state of Palestine to be established alongside Israel, the latter would be condemned to the same fate that India has faced for the past 55 years - a permanent state of insecurity. Just as Pakistan believes it is the successor to the Mughal Empire and that therefore historical justice demands it reestablish Muslim rule over the whole subcontinent, almost every Palestinian believes that the entire territory "from the river to the sea" belongs to him by right.

Yet just as the "Pakistani" identity was a fiction brought to life by the colonial power, so was the "Palestinian" identity. In reality, there is no "Palestinian people" with features distinct from the other Arabs of the region.

Were an independent state of Palestine to be created, Arab Israelis might suffer from dual loyalty. Just as Pakistan tries to establish its influence over India's 156 million Muslims by posing as their champion, elements within the proposed Palestinian state would try to create an allegiance between Arab Israelis and
the new country.

In brief, the creation of an independent Palestinian state on the lines laid out in the road map would not bring peace. Instead, it would condemn Israel to decades of conflict with its new neighbor. If Israel tries to please the US, the UK, the rest of the EU, and assorted busybodies around the world by failing to ensure that it has defensible borders, and if it agrees to the creation of an entity that by its very nature will be hostile to it, its present leaders are creating a monster that will certainly emaciate and may even devour, their nation.

What needs to be done is for Israel to annex the territory required to be secure, while ensuring that the residue gets formed, not into a single state but into several entities such as a city-state of Gaza, on the Singapore model. Some of the territory abandoned by Israel could get absorbed into Jordan, where One Person, One Vote would then become the norm, as it is in India or Israel.
India and its people are still suffering from the "unwisdom" of its leaders in permitting the creation of a country that has become an ulcer on its flank. Will Israel's leaders learn from this example, or will they too condemn their people to the kind of hell Pakistan has created for its neighbor?

They must not allow Israel's borders to be militarily indefensible nor welcome the creation of a state whose people find their identity solely in the quest for Israel's destruction.

The writer is director of the School of Geopolitics, the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India.

U.S. State Dept. Surrenders Israel to Terror

July 7, 2003

NEW YORK - A senior Israeli cabinet minister, meeting with Jewish leaders in New York, called the Bush administration's Road Map plan is "a great victory for terrorists" and said that the Israeli government accepted the plan "only because of the tremendous pressure that the Bush administration put on Israel."

Efraim Eitam, Israel's Minister of Infrastructure and former Brigadier General in the Israel Defense Forces, made his remarks at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in New York City on Monday afternoon, July 7.

The "Hudna" cease-fire allows the terrorists to rebuild: The so-called "Hudna," or temporary cease-fire by some of the terrorist groups, "simply gives the terrorist time to repair their damaged infrastructure." He added: "Under the cover of this so-called cease-fire, the terrorist groups are already greatly accelerating their production of rockets and preparing for the next round in their war to destroy Israel."

The Road Map was formulated without consulting Israel: "The Road Map was invented by the State Department to bring about the creation of a Palestinian state. It was designed without the U.S. consulting a single important Israeli leader."

As to Sen. Joe Lieberman's Orthodox Kippa

(Excerpted from article by Audrey Hudson, the Washington Times, July 6, 2003)

Democratic candidates who support civil unions for homosexuals include Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, according to the Boston Globe, which surveyed candidates on the issue.

Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut said the decision should be left to the states. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida said the issue should be studied further.

According to the survey published in May, all Democratic candidates support homosexual couples' eligibility for domestic partner benefits, including health care and pension plans. The Vermont law was not proposed by Mr. Dean, but by the state courts. "But it helped make a name for the then-unknown governor, who has been capitalizing on his status as a gay-rights path breaker to raise money from the gay community”, the Globe said.

President Bush does not support civil unions or same-sex "marriage."

U-M ruling shows no end to racial preferences

(Justice Sandra Day O’Conner demonstrates preference for Social Engineering over Constitutional Law)

There was some talk recently about upcoming vacancies on the Supreme Court because some retirements were expected. However, the high court's decision on affirmative action suggests that there are already vacancies, even though no one has resigned. We can only hope that, when President George W. Bush gets a chance to nominate replacements, he does not fill an existing vacancy with another vacancy.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's majority decision upholding affirmative action in admissions to the University of Michigan Law School was her classic split-the-baby formula, making a mockery of the law. This decision provoked not only dissent from four other justices, but sarcasm and disgust — as it should have.

Justice O'Connor's argument is hard to summarize because it consists largely of repeating unsubstantiated claims about the "educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body" and the need for a "critical mass" of minority students for their own educational needs and those of other students. She uses the phrase "compelling interest" to get around the 14th Amendment's requirement of equal treatment, much as earlier generations of justices used the phrase "interstate commerce" to evade constitutional limits on the powers of Congress.

This exercise in verbal dexterity included the pronouncement that "race conscious admissions policies must be limited in time," that "all government use of race must have a logical end point." But, having uttered these pieties, Justice O'Connor imposed no time limit nor defined any criterion for an end point.

Justice Antonio Scalia's response was that the "mystical 'critical mass' justification" for racial preferences "challenges even the most gullible mind”. He pointed out how academics who talk about multi-culturalism and diversity in the courts have "tribalism and racial segregation" on their own campuses, including "minority-only student organizations, separate minority housing opportunities, separate minority student centers, even separate minority-only graduation ceremonies."

Verbal pieties and cynical realities have corrupted affirmative action from the beginning. A quarter of a century ago, the Bakke case brought a great outpouring of noble rhetoric from the Supreme Court, but the bottom line was that you could continue to have racial quotas, so long as you don't call them racial quotas.

Today's Supreme Court has not only reaffirmed that principal by what Justice Clarence Thomas' dissent called "the know-it-all elites”. It has become a badge of their identity and what its actual consequences are for others in the real world is of no real interest to them. Justice Thomas is unimpressed by the endlessly repeated mantra of "diversity”, which to him is just "a fashionable catch-phrase”. Far from buying, Justice O'Connor's many reiterations of claims for its educational benefits. Justice Thomas cited empirical studies indicating that the much-vaunted diversity "actually impairs learning among black students”.

No one epitomizes the know-it-all elites more than the New York Times, whose front-page story referred to "the broad societal consensus in favor of affirmative action in higher education”, despite polls that have repeatedly shown the public's grave misgivings about racial quotas and preferences.
Justice Thomas' devastating dissent is deftly evaded by the Times, which says he "took as his text not the briefs but his own life story”. If you want to find out whether you can rely on what the New York Times says, now that Jayson Blair is gone, read Justice Thomas' dissent for yourself and see if you can find anything there that would lead you to believe it was about his own life story.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. 94305 and writes for Creators Syndicate

One Thing Hitler liked about America

By Rafael Medoff, Ph.D.

(Re-printed from an article in the Detroit Jewish News, July 4, 2003)

A GENERALLY unknown sequel to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf will soon be published in English, according to a recent article in the New York Times. Written in 1928, Hitler's Second book as it is known, includes revelations about Hitler's global strategy, including his determination to wage war against the United States.

Yet the book also reveals that there was something about the United States that Hitler liked — America's then newly adopted, race-based restrictions on immigration. "The American nation appears as a young, racially select people," Hitler wrote. "By making an immigrants ability to set foot on American soil dependent on specific racial requirements on the one hand as well as a certain level of physical health of the individual himself, the bleeding of Europe of its best people has become regulated in a manner that is almost bound by law."

Hitler was referring to the National Origins immigration bills of 1921 and 1924, which virtually shut America’s doors to immigrants. The ideas that led to America's immigration restrictions in the 1920s actual formed the basis of Hitler's ideology.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s Americans and Europeans alike came under the sway of anthropologists and eugenicists on both continents who amended that Anglo-Saxons were biologically superior to other peoples This race-dominated view of human society played a key role in shaping Americans' attitudes toward immigration in the years following World War I. It gained prominence at he same time that Americans' anxiety about Communism was growing as a result of the establishment of the Soviet Union.

The combination of racism, fear of communism and general resentment of foreigners provided the background of public support for immigration restriction.

The law passed in 1921, known as the Johnson Immigration Act, stipulated that the number of immigrants from any one country during a given year could not exceed 3 percent of the number of immigrants from that country who had been living in the United States at the time of the 1910 national census.
In other words, if there were 10,000 individuals of Irish origin living in the United States in 1910, the number of immigrants permitted from Ireland in any year would be a maximum of 300. In 1924, the immigration regulations were tightened even further: the percentage was reduced from 3 percent to 2 percent, and instead of the 1910 census, the quota numbers would be based on an earlier census, the one taken in 1890.

The reason for tightening the restrictions was obvious: It would reduce the number of Jews and Italian Americans, since the bulk of Jewish and Italian immigrants in the United States had not arrived until after 1890. Indeed, the original version of the Johnson Act had been submitted to Congress with a report by the chief of the United States Consular Service, Wilbur Carr. That report characterized would-be Jewish immigrants from Poland as "filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits ... lacking any conception of patriotism or national spirit." No wonder Hitler admired the spirit behind the movement to restrict immigration to America.

As the Nazi persecution of Jews intensified during the middle and late 1930s, the U.S. quota system functioned precisely as its creators had intended: It kept out all but a handful of Jews. The annual quota for Germany and Austria, for example, was 27,370, and for Poland, just 6,542. Even those meager quota allotments were almost always under-filled, as zealous consular officials implemented the bureaucratic method proposed by senior State Department official Breckinridge Long — in his words, to "postpone and postpone and post-Road Blocks.

A deliberately designed bureaucratic maze — a series of "paper walls," to borrow the title of Prof. David S. Wyman's 1968 book — ensured most Jewish refugees would remain far from America's shores. Therefore, during the period of the Nazi genocide, from late 1941 until early 1945, only 10 percent of the already miniscule quotas from Axis- controlled European countries were actually used. That means almost 190,000 quota places were unused almost 190,000 lives that could have been saved even under the existing immigration restrictions.

Thus, Jews desperately seeking to escape Hitler found no haven in the United States. The nation with the tradition of welcoming "the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free" chose to turn a blind eye in Jewry's most dire hour of need. More than two decades would pass before the quota system that Hitler so admired was finally abandoned. The passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 "lifted the shadow of racism from American immigration policy”, as Prof. John Higham put it. Tragically, it came 25 years too late for the millions of Jews trapped in Hitler's inferno. ##

Rafael Medoff, Ph.D., is director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which focuses on issues related to America's response to the Holocaust. His e-mail address is Rafaelmedoff@aol.com Dr. Medoff's most recent book, coauthored with David S. Wyman,
is 'A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust', published
by The New Press, which may be ordered by calling 1-800-233-4830 or through
www.thenewpress.com

On the Way to the Re-sale Shop

By Jerome S. Kaufman

(redacted from original article appearing in the Detroit Jewish News, July 4, 2003)

How about a human-interest story? A friend from synagogue name Jack Ginsberg, shule gabbai first class and former elegant haberdasher, was in the process of opening a non-profit, all encompassing re-sale shop called Knightsbridge Charities. People brought in all kinds of stuff. Someone evidently left, in error, a thick brown folder with old documents. Jack decided to seek help finding the rightful owner and called his Zionist friend, Jerry Kaufman.

Jerry was intrigued both as a Zionist and a minor Jewish people historian. He opened the brown folder and saw many old family pictures of bar mitzvahs, weddings, birth certificates and German passports dating to 1938 – a true treasure of mementos.

How to find the rightful owner? On one of the envelopes was the name of Max Rothschild, West Bloomfield and telephone information was called. “Sorry, this number has been disconnected.” What else? There was the draft of a master’s thesis written at the University of Michigan all about the early history of the Jewish Community in Detroit – Alfred Street, Watson Street, names my mother used to eulogize. The date of the paper was October 28, 1974 and the author was Stephen B. Rothschild. Well, how many Stephen B. Rothschilds can there be? The name was looked up on the Internet, several with that name were found and a letter was written to the most likely candidate, a lawyer in Spring Valley, New York. No response.

It was then determined that the University could help. The department that finds former students, looked up the name, Stephen B. Rothschild, circa students 1974 and found one, but no direct contact was allowed. They said however, that a message could be written and placed in an envelope with their ID number. They would then forward the letter.

Two weeks later, a call came in from Stephen B. “ How nice of you to search us out. Yes, that is my Dad, Max Rothschild, who just moved to Coconut Creek, Florida. I’ll have my Dad call you.” Fine. Max called a short time later; a great conversation ensued and the documents were mailed out. He was delighted to receive the documents and mailed back two videos portraying his life and his experiences in Germany.

Who is Max Rothschild? Max happens to be a survivor from Adolph Hitler. He was 11 years old in 1938. His Dad was a very successful businessman in the idyllic German town of Bruchsal, Germany. There were 162 established, relatively wealthy Jewish families in a population of 16,000 Germans. They were very well integrated, participated in all the sports leagues, all the various government and private schools and had many German friends.

Then the denouement: Adolph Hitler was appointed Vice Chancellor of Germany on Jan. 30, 1933. That very night, the Rothschilds heard Nazi Brown Shirts beating up all the Jews they could find on the streets. Events moved fairly slowly until Hitler passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. These laws deliberately targeted the Jews, removing all their civil rights and created a class of untermenchen.

Fortunately, Max’s father had the good sense and means to get his family out in time. They left in September 1938, with their lives intact, leaving only their business, their property and all their money - confiscated without recourse by the Germans. Max came here at age 11, penniless but quickly became assimilated and has had a marvelous, typically American Jewish life with pew, pew, pew 21 grandchildren to prove it. He, in later life, became a speaker at the West Bloomfield, MI., Holocaust Memorial Center. It was there, in an effort to preserve as much evidence as possible of the period, that the Center created the tapes that Max sent to Jerry and which can still be viewed at the Center.

Finally to the point of the story: Max is asked at the end of his personal video interview, “What have you learned after all this and what would you tell other Jews?” Max said that we should not sit still for intolerance against any group of people. Well, we all know that and have been perhaps, over responsive in our zealous defense of others, many times to the neglect of our own issues. What else did he say? “ Beware of complacency!”

What happened to Max Rothschild’s family in this idyllic German town and in a country in which his ancestors had lived for centuries proved it can happen anywhere. “Beware complacency.” Be quick to protect Jewish interests and do so as part of your life’s work. As the centuries have proven time and again, the “Jewish Problem” is a Jewish problem. ##

Civil Liberties After 9/11

by Robert H. Bork

(Final paragraphs from excellent article in Commentary July-August, 2003)

What Remains to be Done?

THE FACT that opponents of the Bush administration’s efforts to protect American security have resorted to often-shameless misrepresentation and outright scare mongering does not mean those efforts are invulnerable to criticism. They are indeed vulnerable—for not going far enough. In addition to the lack of properly targeted security procedures at airports, and the failure to resist the gutting of TIA, a truly gaping deficiency in our arrangements is the openness of our northern and southern borders to illegal entrants.

In the south, reportedly, as many as 1,000 illegal aliens a day enter through Arizona's Organ Pipe National Monument park, where they have become so brazen that they have cleared their own private roads. In the north, there are plenty of easily accessible and unmanned entry points from Canada. So far, Washington has not adequately responded to calls for more park-ranger staffing and military assistance, let alone addressed the lamentable condition of our immigration procedures in general.

There is, in short, plenty of work to go around. The war we are in, like no other we have ever faced, may last for decades rather than years. The enemy blends into our population and those of other nations around the world, attacks without warning, and consists of men who are quite willing to die in order to kill us and destroy our civilization. Never before has it been possible to imagine one suicidal individual, inspired by the promise of paradise and armed with a nuclear device, able to murder tens or even hundreds of thousands of Americans in a single attack.

Those facts justify what the administration has already done, and urgently require more. Of course, to say this, or to question the arguments of critics, is to risk being accused of censorship, actual or preemptive, or even McCarthyism. Here is an article in the New York Times raising the alarm about statements by Attorney General John Ashcroft: In the past, Mr. Ashcroft has gone so far as to question the loyalty of those who challenge the constitutionality of his tactics, in a defining moment in December 2001 at a Senate hearing, Mr. Ashcroft declared: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends."

As it happens, "phantoms of lost liberty" is a perfectly apt description for much of the commentary that has been offered on the administration's initiatives. It is demonstrably true, moreover, that people who recklessly exaggerate the threat to our liberties in the fight against terrorism do give ammunition, moral and otherwise, to our enemies. Asserting as much does not impugn the loyalty of such people. They are perfectly free to say what they think, and as loudly as they please. But neither should they themselves be immune from criticism, even by a government official.

Robert H. Bork is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Tad and Dianne Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institute.

(He is also the unfairly maligned former candidate to the United States Supreme Court)

Iraqi Rebels Targeted

(How about Palestinian Arab terrorists?)

By Borzou Daragahi Associated Press, June 29, 2003

Hurray for US Armed Forces – “crush the resistance of your enemy and stem the wave of deadly attacks on American troops” …And the troops go in with “overwhelming combat power” so as to diminish the loss of American lives.
But, how is it that President Bush, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice criticize Israel for doing exactly the same thing? Especially when, with the Israelis, it is their own citizens that are being killed by terrorists in their own homes, schools, market places, city buses and not in a foreign country thousands of miles away?

CAMP BOOM, Iraq — U.S. forces kicked off a massive sweep Sunday, raiding more than 20 towns across a wide swath of Iraq and netting at least 60 suspects in a show of air and infantry power designed to crush resistance and stem a wave of deadly attacks on American troops. The raids by the 4th Infantry Division and Task Force Iron-horse troops came as the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq said American forces must kill or capture Saddam Hussein so he no longer can be a rallying point for anti-coalition attacks.

The latest operation, dubbed "Sidewinder”, began at 10 a.m. EST, across an area of central Iraq stretching from the Iranian border to the areas north of Baghdad. It's expected to last for several days, according to military officials in Camp Boom, near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. The region has become "the nexus of paramilitary activity in central Iraq”, the military said in a statement. There were no reports of U.S. casualties, the military said. "We go in with such over-whelming combat power that they won't even think about shooting us," Lt. Col. Mark Young said before the start of the operation.

The raids targeted loyalists from Saddam's former Baath Party, "terrorists suspected of perpetrating attacks against U.S. forces and former Iraqi military leaders," the military said. At least 63 American soldiers have died in Iraq since major combat was declared over May close to one-third of them killed in attacks, raising the total U.S. death toll to more than 200 since the March 20 start of the war.

Insurgents have stepped up their attacks against U.S. troops in recent days, carrying out ambushes against military convoys, shooting soldiers and lobbying grenades. The top U.S. official in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, stressed the need to capture Saddam, although there is no evidence the former Iraqi leader is behind the violence.

"I think it is important that we either catch him or kill him," Bremer told the British Broadcasting Corp. "There is no doubt that the fact that we have not been able to show his fate allows the remnants on the Baath regime to go around the bazaars and villages and say Saddam will come back, so do not cooperate with the coalition."

Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi said Sunday he believes Saddam had issued a written plan to foment postwar chaos in case of his defeat, including attacks on U.S. forces and the sabotaging of oil pipelines, electricity and water...."I think that Saddam had this plan done, and it's being implemented by the remnants of his regime," Chalabi said on CNN's "Late Edition”.

How Politically Correct – the “War Against Terrorism".

But what sort of double talk is that? Is terrorism some sort of rootless boogieman?

Worldwide Islamic Terrorism (excerpted from article by FLAME)

Are the U.S., Israel and other nations fighting the same enemy?

The world is being victimized by an epidemic of terrorism—from the September II attacks, the USS Cole bombing in Yemen and suicide bombers in Israel, to murderous kidnappings in the Philippines, a nightclub bombing in Bali, the deadly guerrilla takeover of a Moscow opera house, and the fatal hotel bombing in Kenya. Is there a connection among these far-flung terrorist acts?

What are the facts?

Radical Islam is the common denominator.
Four Al Qaeda conspirators were recently convicted of the deadly bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Suspects linked to Osama bin Laden bombed the USS Cole in 2001. That same year, the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines kidnapped and beheaded Christian missionaries. A group called Jamaah Islamiah committed the Bali nightclub massacre in October 2002, which killed more than 200 innocent victims. In late 2002, an Islamic Chechen guerrilla group seized a packed Moscow opera house, causing the deaths of more than 100 people.

But clearly, Israelis and Jews are primary targets of these terrorists. Last November, Muslims bombed an Israeli hotel in Kenya, killing 13. In Israel itself, the Islamic groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hizbollah have murdered more than 800 civilians and injured over 4,000 in the last two years—a devastation in that tiny country equal to having more than 35,000 U.S. citizens killed and 230,000 wounded.

These worldwide terrorist acts have two glaring elements in common. First, all were committed by radical Islamists - groups that advocate overthrowing Western democratic governments and replacing them with fundamentalist Islamic regimes. Second, all these groups believe that killing innocent people in terrorist acts is a legitimate way to achieve their goals.

What does radical Islam really want? Despite the nationalistic focus or some of these terrorist groups, they all share dedication to a common purpose: carrying out a jihad, or holy war, to rid the world of "infidels," such as Christians, Jews and Hindus, and the establishment of a world- wide Islamic order. Of course, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden makes no secret of his murderous global design: To create worldwide Islamic rule by killing or subjugating non-Muslims, especially Jews and Christians.

Why does radical Islam use terrorism? To most of the world, the idea of purposeful killing innocent people—even for a noble cause—is unthinkable.

Likewise, the notion of suicide bombers: Most of the world s religions consider human life to be God s most precious gift, not to be sacrificed, except to save others. The jihadis believe otherwise. They justify heartless, cold-blooded killing of innocent women and children on behalf of Allah. They entice youngsters to commit suicide, to become "martyrs”, with the promise of sensual pleasures in the hereafter.

What can be done?
When our leaders tell us we are threatened by terrorism, they only tell half the story. Terrorism is clearly dangerous to our people and anathema to our social, religious and democratic values. Yet terrorism is not a goal in itself—it is a vicious tactic of warfare, used to achieve totalitarian ends. Indeed, if we declare our enemy to be terrorism, we fail to see our real enemy. The enemy is militant Islam, which uses terrorism to destroy democratic institutions and deny our basic freedoms. It is a tool being used ruthlessly to supplant our civilization with religious fundamentalism—to impose upon us a world order based on orthodox Islam, with its harsh rules of behavior, intolerance of diversity, subjugation of women and totalitarian political rule.

It s time we speak out: Radical Islam-not just the tactic of terrorism-threatens our country, the state of Israel and other democratic nations. It is also time for moderate Muslims and their imams to raise their voices ... and unequivocally condemn he violent aims of their brethren.

Finally, it’s time to fight back: We cannot pretend that we don’t know who is responsible for today’s deadly terrorist attacks, and we cannot suffer them passively. Just as the U.S. is responding aggressively to the threat of terrorism so must Israel respond, since its people are being killed and maimed by terror attacks on a daily basis. Above all and for everyone s good, militant Islam must be fought and defeated through a united effort by all civilized nations.

FLAME Facts and Logic About the Middle East
P.O. Box 590359, San Francisco, CA 94159

Gary Bauer, the Israelites and the Bible

Ambassador Bauer brought tears to the eyes of 350 participants, from all over the U.S., in the Zionist Organization of American lobbying mission in Washington D.C. June 18, 2003:

Quoting from the Jewish Bible: the Book of The Prophet, Joel, Chapter 4

The Judgment of the Nations

“For in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I am going to gather all the nations and take them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; there I intend to put them on trial for all they have done to Israel, my people and my heritage. For they have scattered them among the nations and have divided up my land among themselves. They have cast lots for my people; they have bartered the boys for prostitutes, have sold the girls for wine and drunk it." …

The days of Yahweh

Sun and moon grow dark. The stars lose their brilliance. Yahweh roars from Zion, makes his voice heard from Jerusalem. Heaven and earth tremble.
But Yahweh will be a shelter for his people, a stronghold for the sons of Israel.

“You will learn then that I am Yahweh your God, dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain. Jerusalem will be a holy place, no alien will ever pass through it again.”

Gary Bauer, President of American Values and Republican Party contender for the U.S. Presidential nomination year 2000.

Exaggerated Arab U.S. Population Claims

(Once again, the facts get in the way of Arab propagandist Jim Zogby and his pollster brother, John. Their numbers are grossly inflated, as might have been anticipated; in their attempt to exaggerate the importance of the Arab vote to American politicians and other decision makers. The American Arab population is, in fact, about 1/3 Arab claims.)

More Arabs move to area

The Detroit News June 14, 2002 by David Shepardson

DEARBORN — Metro Detroit is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans and Arab immigrants, newly released U.S. Census figures show. Dearborn's Arab population more than doubled by 2002 to become 30 percent of the city's population. Home to more Arab Americans than any other Michigan City, Dearborn saw its population of Arab Americans, as well as Arab residents who aren't American citizens, jump from 14,000 to 29,344.

Metro Detroit's Arab-American population jumped 56 percent in the last decade, according to newly released figures by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2000, 92,328 people reported primary Arab ancestry, up from 59,029 in 1990. But the new figures, which come from the long-form census questionnaire that went to one in six households in 2000, only furthers the debate between demographers and community leaders on the accuracy of the count.

Arab-American leaders and some demographers argue the census still far undercounts Arabs, especially recent immigrants. "These numbers are bizarre. They are so low," said James Zogby, president of the American Arab Institute in Washington. John Zogby, a New York pollster, attributes what he calls an undercount to confusion by immigrants and their suspicion of government. But he noted that the new census numbers reinforce his belief that although southern California has a larger number of Arabs and Arab Americans,
Metro Detroit has a higher percentage.

"There is no doubt that Metro Detroit has the highest- density community of Arab
Americans in the country, "said John Zogby, who estimates there are more than
400,000 Arabs in Michigan. James Zogby and the Arab American Institute estimate the Arab population in the United States is at least 3 million. But, the United States Census Department puts the Arab population at 1.25 million, up from 940,000 in 1990.

A Day in the Life of your U.S. Senator

Just in case you wonder what your Senator does all day long – below is a statement sheet I stumbled upon for those involved in an appeal in one of the Russell Senate Office Bldg. Conference Rooms.

STATEMENT PROVIDED BY STEVE BRADY, SR., HEADSMAN OF THE
NORTHERN CHEYENNE CRAZY DOG SOCIETY, BOARD MEMBER OF THE
MEDICINE WHEEL COALITION FOR SACRED SITES OF NORTH AMERICA,
CO-CHAIR OF NORTHERN CHEYENNE SAND CREEK MASSACRE SITE
COMMITTEE, MEMBER OF NATIVE AMERICAN CHURCH, AND BOARD
MEMBER OF NORTHERN CHEYENNE CULTURAL COMMISSSION BEFORE
THE U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS ON JUNE 18™, 2003,
REGARDING NATIVE AMERICAN SACRED PLACES, SPECIFICALLY ON THE
ISSUE OF CONSULTATION ON USE AND MAINTENANCE OF NATIVE
AMERICAN SACRED PLACES.

First of all I would like to thank the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs for allowing me to provide testimony this morning on the issue of consultation on use and maintenance of Native American sacred places. I have been directly involved in the protection of several sacred sites for the purpose of perpetual ceremonial access and use by traditional Native American practitioner and spiritual leaders and they include the Medicine Wheel and Medicine Mountain in the Bighorn National Forest in north central Wyoming, the Bear Lodge (commonly referred to as Devils Tower), a National Monument under the National Park Service in northeastern Wyoming, and Noah vose' (commonly referred to as Bear Butte) in western South Dakota, among others.

Hillary vs. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Hillary Clinton’s book may be flying off the bookseller’s shelve. But it will never match the still extremely popular, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, especially among the Arabs and bigots of the world.

The Protocols Come to America

Compiled by American Jewish Historical Society

At the turn of the century, the Russian Czar's secret police forged a
document, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to
outline a plan for Jewish world domination. The Russians claimed that the
radical Jewish intelligentsia gathered in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress
in Seal, Switzerland, wrote the Protocols. The document "showed" how a Jewish
cabal was fomenting terror, causing famine and promoting war. Publication
of the Protocols sparked anti-Jewish pogroms in Kiev and Kishineff.

While the Protocols were whispered about in anti-Semitic circles in
the United States, they did not reach American shores in English
translation until 1917. A Russian monarchist émigré, Boris Brasol, translated the
Protocols into English and passed a copy to the State Department,
hoping to persuade the United States government to withhold recognition of the
Soviet regime. He was convinced that the Bolsheviks were in the pay of
American Jewish bankers of German background - Jacob Schiff and Felix Warburg in particular - who had financed the Czar's overthrow to advance German interests in World War I.

An American Army Intelligence officer in Brooklyn, Hams Ayres Houghton, MD,
obtained Brasol's translation of the Protocols and became convinced of their
authenticity. An ardent anti-Semite and anticommunist, Houghton had the
authority to act on his fantasies. According to historian Robert Singerman,
writing in the journal of the American Jewish Historical Society, Houghton "ordered one of his subordinates to investigate any Jew as long as he
was prominent" for signs at subversion.

In 1918, Houghton passed a copy of the Protocols to Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, chair of a government committee investigating a scandal in American wartime aircraft manufacture. Houghton was certain that "Jewish International Bankers" had caused the manufacturing problems, but Justice Hughes scoffed at the idea and denied the authenticity of the Protocols.

At first, the American Jewish community made no formal response to
the typescript versions of the Protocols in circulation. They believed it
best not to give them publicity. In 1920, however, a version was published
in England and both Brasol and Houghton planned to bring out annotated
versions in the United States. Brasol found a respectable company named Small, Maynard to publish his version. Putnam and Son publishers agreed to publish Houghton's.

When the American Jewish Committee learned of Putnam's plans, its
president, Louis Marshall, contacted General George H. Putnam directly to
discuss the publication project. Putnam defended it on the grounds of free
speech, but Marshall countered that free speech is only protected if it is not
libelous.

Since there was ample proof that the Protocols were forgeries written
to stir up violence against Jews, it would be irresponsible for Putnam to
publish it without clearly labeling it a fraud. Putnam agreed, and withdrew from
the project.

Undaunted. Houghton found a financial sponsor purchased the plates from
Putnam's, and published the work privately under the pseudonym of Peter
Beckwith. The book sold poorly, however when Small, Maynard published
Brasol's edition, bookstores refused to carry it. Sales were robust by mall
order, but Brasol's hopes of reaching masses of Americans to convince
them that communism was an outgrowth of Zionism were dashed, at least
temporarily.

Resilient in his efforts, Brasol sent a copy of the Protocols to automobile
manufacturer Henry Ford, who was convinced that they were authentic. For the next two years, Ford gave the Protocols wide circulation in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. Nothing did more to poison the atmosphere against American Jewry in the years between 1920 and 1922 than Ford's publication of the Protocols.

Apparently, at Ford’s urging, the editor of the Dearborn independent, William
Cameron, reworked the Protocols into a series of articles, "The International
Jew” Cameron described the Protocols as "the most comprehensive program
for world subjugation that has ever come to public knowledge. Cameron believed the Protocols probably did not originate with the Basle Congress, but "may have come to them as part of their ancient Jewish inheritance" The Zionists probably reported to a modem Sanhedrin presided over by a direct descendant of King David. Cameron believed that, at that point, the United States was "very largely in the hands of, or under the influence of, Jewish interests!

Liberalism, jazz and the decline in Christian virtue were all signs, for Cameron that the Jewish conspiracy was on its way to success. According to the blueprint, Jews would cause more wars, famines and revolutions - of which the Bolshevik was only the first - as a means to world domination.

The "International Jew" series stopped running in 1922, but it was widely quoted. It was not until 1927, after a libel suit and Jewish boycott of Ford products that Henry Ford recanted. In a letter to Louis Marshall, Ford claimed not to have paid any personal attention to the series. Ford professed to being "deeply mortified" to learn that the Protocols were forgeries and that his newspaper had offended Jewish sensibilities.

Nazi Germany adopted the Protocols as a pretext for its war to exterminate European Jewry. The Protocols still circulate in print and on the Internet, inspiring radical fringe groups in their deranged beliefs in Jewish conspiracies. Sadly, each generation must relearn that the Protocols are one of the grossest and most damaging libels in history.

Compiled by American Jewish Historical Society
Kenneth J, Bialkin, President *
Michael Feldberg. PhD, Director and Series Editor
2 Thorton Road, Waltham. MA 02453

Muslims in Canada

Internation Jeruslem Post June, 2003

Maybe this population growth plus similar ones all over Europe is why the Canadian government and many in Europe have taken on so many anti-Israel, anti-Semitic and yes, anti-American stances.

But … I think it deeper than that – perhaps something called resentment, envy but also fear of violence from these dedicated, relentless zealots. “Maybe if we just leave them alone, they will go away?” Good luck! Woe to those that surrender to the pressure of the bully and his terrorism. His demands become endless. Each surrender begets another demand.

More Muslims than Jews in Canada, International Jerusalem Post, June 8, 2003

Canada's Jewish population rose 3.1 percent over the past decade, from 318,000 in 1991 to 330,000, and now accounts for 1.1 percent of the overall population, according to new census data released by the Canadian government last week. The study also showed that Muslims have now surpassed Jews as the second-largest religious group in the country, climbing by 129 percent from 253,000 to 579,600, with Muslims now accounting for 2 percent of Canada’s population.

Belgium Complicity – The International Jerusalem Post, June 6, 2003

(Item below for the critics of Goldhagen’s “Willing Executioners” which described in detail how Hitler had no shortage of willing killers of Jews throughout the nations of Europe. Is it not ironic that it is these same nations that are the sponsors of the so-call Roadmap to peace with the Arabs? Perhaps the Israelis and the USA should beware of allowing their enemies to dictate the terms of anything.)

Belgian complicity Belgian historians are to be given unprecedented access to private and public archives to investigate the complicity of Belgium's authorities in the deportation and death of the country's Jews during World War II.

Official figures show that 30,544 Jews of mixed European nationalities were deported from Belgium to death camps between 1942 and 1944. Only 1,524 survived and at least one-fifth of those who died were children.

Now the government has commissioned historians to "establish the eventual responsibility of the Belgian authorities for the deportation and persecution of the Jews," according— to a report in the London daily, The Guardian. The historians will consider the veracity of claims that the local authorities and police actively collaborated in rounding up Jews for deportation, compiled a national register of Jews which was handed over to the Nazis, enforced the wearing of the yellow Star of David, and scrupulously followed German orders relating to Belgium's Jewish community.

Jewish groups are also said to be pressing for an investigation into the role of the Catholic Church, which stayed silent throughout the deportations, and clarification of the role of certain Jewish by groups, which, they believe, collaborated with the Nazis.

As in France, the Belgian authorities have been reluctant to investigate the role of their officials, many of whom enthusiastically complied with the occupying Nazis and then went on to hold senior positions within the political and bureaucratic classes after the war.

The subject was taboo," says Jose Gotovitch, director of the Study and Documentation Center on War and Contemporary Society, the institute charged with carrying out the inquiry. “We needed the example of France to act. Pressure [to ignore the past] was very strong. Belgium's image during the war was even angelic."

Individuals in Belgium were tried for crimes, but an inquiry that was held
after the war did not examine the issue of deportations. More recently, an official
inquiry confined itself to the question financial compensation for Belgian
Jews whose property was confiscated. But Gotovitch noted that many of the officials accused of complicity in the deportation of Jews are dead when such an inquiry is finally possible. ##

George W. becomes Slick Willy

by Michael Freund The Jerusalem Post, June 11, 2003

There is a story making its way around the Internet, as such stories
inevitably do, about a recent encounter which took place between US
President George W. Bush and one of his former Yale university classmates on
the eve of the president's much-publicized visit to the Auschwitz death camp
in Poland.In tones alternating between respect and outright veneration, the author tells us to have no fear, because the president assured him personally that he would not harm Israel's security.

"There he was--the most powerful man in the world--telling me once, then
reassuring me again, that Israel's security is of utmost importance to him",
notes the e-mail's author. And, lest we doubt the president's commitment, our faithful correspondent nforms us that Bush's pledge "was sealed with two firm hugs".

Not one, you see, but two.
Well, that certainly makes me feel better.

After all, it has barely been a week since Bush flew in to the Middle East
and forced Israel into submission, compelling the Jewish people to agree to
divide their land, create a terrorist state next door and forego the right
to defend themselves against those who seek their destruction.

Bush also embraced Palestinian prime minister and renowned Holocaust-denier
Abu Mazen as a man of peace, refused to compel the Arab states to normalize
relations with Israel, and effectively demanded that thousands of Jews be
thrown out of their homes in Judea, Samaria and Gaza against their will.

So, I guess it's a good thing that Israel's security is "of utmost importance" to him. Otherwise, we might really have reason to be worried. But worry we should, because by all indications, Bush has now decided to adopt the approach of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who continued to court the Palestinians even as they violated their commitments and carried out acts of terror against the Jewish state, all the while twisting Israel's arm to refrain from protecting its national interests.

It is interesting to note that before he was elected, Bush was singing a very different tune. He went to great lengths to differentiate himself from Clinton's policy on the Middle East peace process, which often seemed to stress speed over substance.

On May 22, 2000, in an address to AIPAC, Bush took a swipe at the
Clinton-Gore team, saying, "In recent times, Washington has tried to make
Israel conform to its own plans and timetables. This is not the path to
peace."

Subsequently, in October 2000, in his third presidential debate with Al
Gore, Bush again attacked Clinton, stressing that "the next leader needs to
be patient. We can't put the Middle East peace process on our timetable.
It's got to be on the timetable of the people that we're trying to bring to
the peace table. We can't dictate the terms of peace."

Yet now, just two-and-a-half years later, that is exactly what Bush is
attempting to do. In laying out the road map leading to the creation of a
Palestinian state, Bush has sought both to impose a series of timetables as
well as to dictate the outcome of the process.

In other words, he's become George W. Clinton, only without the intern.

And so, we now find ourselves once again confronting an awfully similar
scenario, one in which Israel is forced to make concessions even as the
Palestinians persist in killing Jews.
Indeed, in the first three days following Bush's June 4 summit in Aqaba,
there were a total of 24 Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis,
including shootings, bombings and rocket attacks.
Then, this past Sunday, five Israelis were murdered in yet another
post-Aqaba measure of the Palestinian commitment to peace.

And so how did the Bush team react to this new spasm of Palestinian
violence? Why, by turning up the pressure on Israel, of course.

The Sharon government's sudden decision on Monday to start dismantling
Jewish outposts in the territories reportedly came about only after America
demanded immediate action on the issue. Within hours, the bulldozers were
unleashed, and Jewish homes were under assault.

It is safe to assume that the lack of an Israeli military response to the
recent spate of Palestinian attacks is also the result of Washington's
diktat, since the Jewish right to self-defense was apparently not considered
worthy of inclusion in the road map.

At first glance, it is difficult to comprehend the Bush team's infatuation
with the new Palestinian premier. Since assuming his post, Mahmoud Abbas
(a.k.a. Abu Mazen) hasn't shut down a single terrorist training camp, he has
not confiscated any illegal weapons, and he has failed to halt anti-US and
anti-Israel incitement in the Palestinian media.

Not one terrorist group has been disarmed or disbanded, and no Palestinian
terrorists have been arrested or detained by the security forces under Abbas' control. And, in a press conference held Monday in Ramallah, Abbas openly ruled out the possibility of confrontation with terrorist groups such as Hamas andIslamic Jihad, saying only that he would use "dialogue" in his dealings with them. Nevertheless, despite Abbas' dismal record, Bush and his aides continue to deny reality, overlooking the Palestinian leader's failure to do more than just offer up a few platitudes about peace.

Nowhere was this willful obfuscation more on display than in US Secretary of
State Colin Powell's interview on Fox News Sunday, where he said, "We've
made our choice. We are going to be supporting Prime Minister Abbas."
And so, it doesn't really seem to matter whether or not Abbas lives up to
his end of the bargain. Either way, the Bush team will not hold him
accountable, because, as Powell so clearly stated, "We've made our choice."

This, too, is a throwback to the Clinton era, when Washington purposefully
made a choice to overlook PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's complicity in terror,
just because it conflicted with their vision for resolving the
Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

But as the decade since the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords so amply
demonstrated, such an approach is not only short-sighted, it can be deadly
too, for it sends the Palestinians a dangerous message, leading them to
believe that they can murder Israelis with impunity.

On a flight to South America this past Monday, Colin Powell told reporters
that regardless of the recent attacks on Israel, "we can't let the
terrorists win." What he fails to realize is that by following in Clinton's footsteps, and pressing for the establishment of a Palestinian state, that is precisely
what he and his boss in the White House are doing.

The writer served as Deputy Director of Communications & Policy Planning in
the Israeli Prime Minister's Office.
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

The Myth of Anti-Muslim Backlash and Hate Crimes

Do you believe that a "post-September 11 backlash" has resulted in a nationwide wave of violence and bigotry against Muslims in the United States? The hype artists and book-cookers at the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) want you to think so. The group's new report purports to document "a massive increase" of hate crimes targeting Arab-Americans. But in order to concoct a Muslim hate-crime epidemic, the ADC report lumps together faulty citations, dubious anecdotes and grossly over inflated claims.

As an example of a typical post-September 11 campuses hate crime, the ADC report highlights an alleged incident in Tempe, Ariz., where "a Muslim student was pelted with eggs at Arizona State University." From where did the information about the incident come? The ADC refers to a student op-ed piece in the Sept. 17, 2001, edition of the Arizona Daily Wildcat, which attributes the egg-pelting incident to a "National Public Radio report." What the ADC is not telling you: Of two egg-pelting incidents involving ASU students logged by campus police, one was a complete hoax and the other was a non-racial, nonreligious} juvenile prank.

As I reported in a column back in October 2001, ASU student Ahmad Saad Nasim lied to cops about being assaulted and pelted with eggs in a parking lot while assailants screamed "Die, Muslim die." Mr. Nasim confessed to fabricating the attack when cops interviewed him after he attempted a second hate-crime hoax in which he locked himself in a library restroom with the word "Die" written on his forehead, a plastic bag tied over his head and a racist note stuffed in his mouth.

Bin Fitzgerald, spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, told me two weeks ago that Mr. Nasim recently pled guilty to two counts of providing false information to police. His punishment? A measly one year's probation, 50 hours of community service and an order to seek psychological counseling.
The other egg-pelting incident at ASU involved two 18-year-olds and two juveniles who threw an egg at an unidentified, 31-year- old ASU student. University spokeswoman Nancy Neff told me police never classified it as a hate crime. No racial or ethnic slurs were allegedly uttered, according to a police account. "It was a bunch of guys on a joy ride," Ms. Neff said.

The ADC researchers' approach to creating the myth of the Muslim hate-crime epidemic is simple: throw in everything plus the kitchen sink. The ADC report trivializes a few truly heinous, violent attacks — such as the post-September 11 murder of Sikh gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi in Mesa, Ariz. — by mixing in unverified reports by schoolchildren who say classmates made fun of their Arabic names, gave them "dirty looks" or pulled off their head coverings. Obnoxious behavior, for sure. But "hate crimes"? The report cites a female student complaining that someone told her to "go back to wherever she came from." I get one or two idiotic e-mails expressing the same sentiment every week. Small-mindedness can sting. But should it be a reportable physical offense?

To further pad the hate crimes report, the ADC decries the "hostile commentary" of Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, terrorism expert Steven Emerson, syndicated columnists Mona Charen, Jonah Goldberg and Ann Coulter, Washington Post columnists Richard Cohen and Charles Krauthammer, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Weekly Standard, National Review and jewishworidreview.com, not to mention talk radio and the entertainment industry as part of an orchestrated "campaign of racism."

The ADC report suggests that every expression of support for law-enforcement profiling, every analysis of how the Muslim terrorist network has infiltrated American universities, mosques, prisons and charities, and every condemnation of radical Islam, qualifies as "defamation" that leads to widespread anti-Muslim crimes.

Herein lies the real agenda of the ADC and other apologists for Islamic extremism: to liken out-spoken critics to murderers, to equate speech with violence and to exploit victim hood status in a cynical attempt to distract attention from the true sources of terrorism in the United States.

Michelle Malkin is a nationally syndicated columnist

Secular Judgments

By Bill O’Reilly, Washington Times June 8, 2003

If personal perfection was the standard for making moral pronouncements no one would be able to make any. And that is the goal of the secularists, a judgment-free society. They believe there is no place in American society for standards of conduct based on moral principles. The secularists want a behavioral free-fire zone, and God, pardon the spiritual reference, help you if you disagree with that.

Bill O'Reilly is a nationally syndicated columnist and talk show host

Diversity, Black Power and White Guilt

Slaves to a New System

By Lucas Morel

"We've come a long way from the glory days of the civil rights movement, which culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act. These were to
guarantee the full participation of black Americans in the social and political life of a nation that long treated them as strangers in a strange land.

"Unfortunately, the desire for quick results transformed affirmative action from a policy of equal treatment under the law —and punishment for its violation —to a system mandating racial representation. Pressured by calls for 'Black Power!' and white guilt for the sins of the past, government began treating citizens not as individuals with rights but as subjects to whom benefits or burdens were granted according to racial categories. This misplaced priority has masked a quota-driven admissions policy that simply accepts students according to racial percentages in society. [...]

"When asked what the black man wanted, Frederick Douglass consistently replied: 'Give him fair play, and let him alone.' Americans black, white, and in between, should ask no more and no less of their common government."

Lucas Morel, writing on "Equality, Liberty and American Diversity," in the May issue of On Principle

Jews and Catholics after John Paul II?

Cardinal Keeler says church committed to its friendship with Jews

By Tracy Early, Catholic News Service

FAIRFIELD, Conn. (CNS) -- Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore told an interreligious group of seminarians that the commitment of the Catholic Church to friendship with Jews would continue regardless of who the next popes may be.
Pope John Paul II has taken notable steps to advance relations, but the new approach of the church is now firmly embedded in its teaching and does not depend on which individual may later be chosen for the papacy, the cardinal said.

The church's teaching on Catholic-Jewish relations is now set forth "at all levels," he said, and has the affirmation of the Second Vatican Council's 1965 declaration "Nostra Aetate," which repudiated all forms of anti-Semitism and called on Catholics to build mutual respect and understanding with Jews.
Cardinal Keeler was the concluding speaker of a June 2-4 institute at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield for Catholic, Protestant and Jewish seminarians.
About 20 male and female seminarians from a dozen institutions, including four men from St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore, attended what was the fourth annual institute sponsored by the university's Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding.
Rabbi Joseph H. Ehrenkranz, center director, called Cardinal Keeler, an adviser to the center, "a great leader of the Catholic people and a great leader of the dialogue."
For the seminarians, the cardinal did not present a formal lecture, but recounted some of his experiences in Jewish relations and responded to questions.
He had each student introduce himself or herself at the beginning, and heard that some were studying to become teachers but not planning to seek ordination. When he finished his session with them, he went around to shake hands and speak with each one individually.
In the presentation, the seminarians got a view of important events in Catholic-Jewish relations, over the past two decades particularly, from someone who has played a key role at national and international levels.
Cardinal Keeler told how he as former chairman of the bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs had worked with top Jewish leaders and Catholics such as the late Cardinal John J. O'Connor of New York and the former president of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, Cardinal Johannes Willebrands.
Their ability to work cooperatively with mutual respect, Cardinal Keeler said, enabled them to defuse controversies such as one in 1987 over the pope giving an audience to Kurt Waldheim, then the president of Austria, who was accused of participating in Nazi crimes.
There was "not much understanding" in the Catholic community of why that would be a problem, but it was a major issue for Jews, he said. However, he said that he also pointed out that many Catholics suffered from the Nazis, and Jewish charges about the alleged silence of the church during the Holocaust were "offensive to us."
Recounting other top-level discussions, he said that in the years when the Vatican had not yet entered into diplomatic relations with Israel, Jews were assured that the reservations were not theological but based on human rights concerns. After Israel and the Palestinians entered into the Oslo peace process, the Vatican saw ways those concerns could be addressed, he said.
But, he said, he pointed out that Jewish organizations had been among the strongest opponents of the Vatican having diplomatic relations with the United States.
Adding flavor, Cardinal Keeler gave the seminarians sidebar stories such as one about a Catholic-Jewish group eating lunch at a Rome hotel owned by the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher -- one of very few occasions, he speculated, when a kosher meal was served on plates bearing crusader crosses.
Asked by a Jewish seminarian what he would like the Jewish community to be told about the Catholic Church, Cardinal Keeler said the first thing would be "what the church really teaches about Jewish relations."
Although not every individual Catholic expresses the church's outlook perfectly, the message of "Nostra Aetate" has set the church's official direction, and this is what is taught to future priests in Catholic seminaries, he said.
Cardinal Keeler said that during a recent appearance at a synagogue he talked about "Nostra Aetate," and found its message was "new to the rabbi." So there is still a need to tell people about it, he added.
The cardinal said in response to another question, however, that the theological implications of the "Nostra Aetate" statements about Jews have not been fully worked out.
The relationship of the church to the Jews "transcends our understanding, but we're now trying to explicate it," he said.
But Catholics do not make Jews special targets for conversion in the way some other Christian groups do, he noted.
Cardinal Keeler also asked that Jewish congregations be told about the Catholic Church's commitment to religious freedom. ##

(Let's Lighten Up - Bob Hope)

Thanks Ski-Nose, for the Memories

Redacted from Pruden on Politics, The Washington Times, June 8, 2003

Like so many typical Americans, Leslie Townes ( Bob) Hope was an American by choice, coming with his family to Cleveland when he was 4. ("I left England as soon as I found out I wasn't eligible to become king.") He joined a vaudeville troupe as a teenager, once working "third billing to Siamese twins" and sometimes as warm-up for Fatty Arbuckle. He even worked for a while as a newspaper reporter before going to Hollywood just as the movies were entering their golden era.

He and his pal Bing Crosby (who coined the mock insult "Ol' Ski-nose") invented the road movie. Critics panned their slapstick humor decorated with gorgeous babes like Dorothy Lamour and Jane Russell, but the movies earned millions.

After another disappointing night at the Hollywood Academy Awards, Hope once said, "I would have won the Academy Award if not for one thing: my pictures. Academy Award night at my house was called Passover.”

Who is the leader of the Palestinian Authority - Arafat or Abbas?

By Itamar Marcus, Director PALESTINIAN MEDIA WATCH
http://www.pmw.org.il

The world's optimism about the peace process is largely a function of seeing
PM Mahmoud Abbas, as the new accepted leader of the PA. But how do the
Palestinians see things? A quick look at the front page of the PA's official
daily, Al Hayat al Jadida, gives an interesting perspective.

Since June 19th, the front page of the PA daily has had 17 pictures of
Yassir Arafat and only 6 pictures of the Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu
Mazen). Most of the Arafat pictures are large and appear at the very top of
the page, while Abbas' face is always small, the size of a coin. Arafat's
face is often the entire picture while Abbas is always with other people in
meetings. In one picture Arafat is kissing a little girl.

Even today, the day after the Aqaba Summit, Arafat's close up picture
appears on the top of the page, while Abbas appears from a distance and
lower down. An article on the front pages reports that Arafat called the
Palestinian delegation to give them instructions.

One of the few days when a picture of Abbas appeared without Arafat, the
headline of the front page was: "Abu Mazen: Arafat is the legitimate chosen
leader." [May 21, 2003] This message also appears today in the PA daily Al
Ayyam: "Abu Mazen attacks the attempts to distance Arafat, who is the symbol
and the chosen President. his relations with Arafat are good and he coordinates his steps with him."

There is a great difference between the world's perception of the leadership
roles in the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian's perception. Within
the PA today Arafat is still the supreme leader and the one who will make
all the decisions regarding the future relations with Israel.

Compiled by IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

Can the Jews Ever Shake the Myth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Jewish Cognitive Dissonance

BY IRWIN SAVODNIK in the International Jerusalem Post, May 30, 2003

One evening in 1996 my wife and I were sitting in a French bistro with a physician and his wife we had known for years. I told them that I was entering the Republican congressional primary, and, since we were both doctors and concerned about health care, they might have some interest in the campaign. We were greeted with a tirade. My friend's face reddened as he screamed that he would do everything he could to see that I was trounced at the polls. My wife and I were stunned. "You're a Jew and a Republican," he proclaimed to the entire restaurant. "That is despicable."

We have not spoken since. I'd like to say this was a singular experience - I'd like to, but I can't. When I mentioned to one woman at our synagogue that I was running for Congress she refused to talk to me, and to this day has snubbed us during High Holy Day services. One internist who had been to our home and had just opened her practice slammed down the phone when my wife called her. "It's impossible to be Jewish and Republican," one expert on Jewish life exclaimed after services. "Ifs a shanda [scandal]." Anyone who has read the edict of excommunication against Spinoza would have a good idea of the chill that surrounded us every time we entered the synagogue.

Today however there is a quiet, if seismic, realignment beginning to take shape. Consider the signs: It should be obvious that most of Israel's unflinching friends are on the Right - from Reagan-era ideologues to George W. Bush neo-conservatives to the growing chorus of evangelicals whose religious interests intersect with Israel's geopolitical goals.

More recently a one-term Jewish congressman from Virginia - the only Jewish Republican member of the House - Eric I. Cantor, has leapfrogged into the majority leadership, becoming chief deputy whip. Cantor is a fervent defender of Israel and, unlike his Jewish compatriot in the Senate, Arlen Specter, a self-confident conservative who speaks openly about his Jewishness and his politics in the same breath.

The Republican Jewish Coalition, once a diminutive political presence whose members could barely eke out a minyan in 1985 (the year it was founded), now has 15 chapters around the country, including Birmingham, Alabama, Kansas City and Palm Springs.

Perhaps most importantly, Jews have been willing and able to topple politicians deemed hostile to the Jewish state. Most notably, Atlanta's Cynthia McKinney and Birmingham's Earl Hilliard learned last year that sympathizing with Palestinian terrorists cost them at the polls. That these were Democratic primaries should not obscure their significance to both parties.

As a psychiatrist and former liberal I can empathize with the struggle inside the
Jewish psyche. The values at stake are at the heart of Jewish identity in America, and represent a long and noble collectivist tradition. But that tradition - rooted in the struggle of organized labor to win basic rights for workers - has become an anachronism in the post-industrial, hyper-digital 21st century.

Relinquishing this tradition, and all its parental-cultural trappings, is nearly unimaginable. Turning your back on this fight feels like rejecting your family, your community and your whole worldview. All of which leads me to infer that US Jews are in the midst of an identity crisis not unlike adolescence. The dynamics of this loosening up of old belief systems can be summed up in a single phrase: cognitive dissonance.

When a person finds his or her long-held beliefs - that the Left is the fountain of social progress - in conflict with a reality in which the most vocal anti-Semites in America are left-wing, from black Jew-haters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to anti-Zionist academics like Noam Chomsky and Edward Said, that individual feels destabilized, even hurt, and may try to explain away the dissonant belief.

Such explanation usually amounts to little more than a rationalization that denies
reality. Examples of this denial when it comes to Israel fall into three roughly construed camps:

First, debase and attack the Jewish state by claiming it has been taken over by a bunch of right-wing thugs personified by Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Third, with nearly psychotic chutzpa, refuse to acknowledge that the Left is anti-Israel at all.

The result of this noxious state of mind is an identity crisis. Now, though, Jews are faced with surrendering their prevailing ideology and transcending long-established myths about both political parties. Can they do it? Yes, but for American Jews, changing political parties is akin to religious conversion. As for my friend, were he to approach me, I would say: "Judaism is not politics. One can't supplant the other. You're free to choose without relinquishing your spiritual inclinations."

The writer is a psychiatrist based in California.

More Arab "Peace" Gestures

(And this is before yet another Arab terrorist state called "Palestinian" even exists! Just what we Americans need.)

As PA PM Abu Mazen meets with PM Sharon and Pres. Bush: Bloody Anti-American and Anti-Israeli cartoons featured on official PA website

The following are descriptions of cartoons appearing on the website of the
Palestinian National Authority State Information Service - International
Press Centre

#1 Uncle Sam in death mask recruiting poster: "I want you for the "Iraqi
Freedom" Join our forces and massacre the Iraqis"
www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_e/ipc_e-1/e_Carcature/ipc-e_car7.html

#2 Ariel Sharon with whip and Palestinian citizen tied to a post. Sharon:
"You must stop the violence"
www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_e/ipc_e-1/e_Carcature/ipc-e_car1.html

#3 Ariel Sharon in bloody shirt holding a bloody butcher knife over a
bleeding baby on a butcher block in a butcher shop with two bodies hanging
on meat hooks with a sign "Palestinian Blood" and another sign "sale".
www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_e/ipc_e-1/e_Carcature/ipc-e_car2.html

#4 Sharon in army uniform holding a list and a pencil. Next to him is a
soldier holding binoculars asking "We've killed 80 Palestinian, is that
enough". Sharon replies "Just 19 more..."
www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_e/ipc_e-1/e_Carcature/ipc-e_car3.html

#5 A Palestinian women holding a Palestinian flag in one hand throws a rock
that bounces off of the helmet of one of two Israeli soldiers in a tank. One
Israeli soldier is telling the other "I told you before all of them are
terrorists"
www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_e/ipc_e-1/e_Carcature/ipc-e_car4.html

#6 Ariel Sharon with blood dripping all over him holds a knife dripping
blood. Shimon Peres holds a mop to clean up the blood on the floor.
www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_e/ipc_e-1/e_Carcature/ipc-e_car5.html

--------------------------------------------
Compiled by IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

The Saudi Charade

Saudis will have to prove just what side they are on