In Puppet Show On Hamas TV, Child Stabs President Bush to Death, Turns White House Into Mosque

Bush: "Who are you? What brings you to my home? How did they let you in, boy? My guards! My soldiers! Get this boy out of here."

Child: "Nobody will take me out of here."

Bush: "Who are you to come here and threaten me?! You are on my own turf, you little child, you! Get out. My dear, bring your father, your grandfather, or your mother, so I can talk to them. Get somebody older and smarter than you. What, you came here on your own?"

Child: "You killed daddy in the Iraq war. It's true, you killed him in the Iraq war. As for my mom – you and the criminal Zionists killed her in Lebanon. You and the criminal Zionists also killed my younger and older brothers in the Gaza holocaust. I'm an orphan, you criminal!" And here is the rest of it.

Obama's Pastor and the Jewish "Ethnic Bomb"

It has been learned that on the "Pastor's Page" of a newsletter published by Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), was an open letter from Palestinian activist Ali Baghdadi calling Israel an "apartheid" regime that was developing an "ethnic bomb" designed to kill "blacks and Arabs." * Longtime pastor and spiritual mentor of Barack Obama
* Considers the U.S. to be a nation rife with racism and disrimination
* Blames American racism for provoking the 9/11 attacks
* “Islam and Christianity are a whole lot closer than you may realize,” he has written. “Islam comes out of Christianity.”
* Embraces liberation theology and socialism
* Strong supporter of Louis Farrakhan
* Likens Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s treatment of blacks during the apartheid era

Wrote Baghdadi: "I must tell you that Israel was the closest ally to the white supremacists of South Africa. In fact, South Africa allowed Israel to test its nuclear weapons in the ocean off South Africa. The Israelis were given a blank check: they could test whenever they desired and did not even have to ask permission. Both worked on an ethnic bomb that kills Blacks and Arabs."

The letter appeared in the June 10, 2007 edition of the TUCC newsletter, which is still available at the church's website. The publication described Baghdadi as someone who "acted as a Middle East advisor to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, as well as Minister Louis Farrakhan."

The son of a Baptist minister, Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. was born in Philadelphia on September 22, 1941. On March 1, 1972, he became the pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), a position he held until February 2008.

After a tour of duty in the U.S. Navy, Wright went on to earn a master’s degree in English from Howard University in 1969. Six years later he earned an additional master’s degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School, and in 1990 he received a Doctor of Ministry Degree from United Theological Seminary.

The writings, public statements, and sermons of Rev. Wright reflect his conviction that America is a nation infested with racism, prejudice, and injustices that make life very difficult for black people. As he declared in one of his sermons: “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!... We [Americans] believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

Wright laments “the social order under which we [blacks] live, under which we suffer, under which we are killed.”[1] Depicting blacks as a politically powerless demographic, he complains that “African Americans don’t run anything in the Capital except elevators.”[2] Similarly, on its website Wright’s church portrays black people as victims who are burdened by the legacy of their “pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism,” and who must pray for “the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people.”

Wright attributes the high unemployment rate of African Americans to “the fact that they are black.”[3] Vis a vis the criminal justice system, he likewise explains that “the brothers are in prison” largely because of their skin color. “Consider the ‘three strikes law,’” he elaborates. “There is a higher jail sentencing for crack than for cocaine because more African Americans get crack than do cocaine.”[4]

In Wright’s calculus, white America’s bigotry is to blame not only for whatever ills continue to plague the black community, but also for anti-U.S. sentiment abroad. “In the 21st century, says Wright, “white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.”

Wright sees no reason to believe that Islam may be incompatible in any way with Western traditions. “Islam and Christianity are a whole lot closer than you may realize,” he has written. “Islam comes out of Christianity.”[5]

Wright detests America’s capitalist economic structure, viewing it as a breeding ground for all manner of injustice. “Capitalism as made manifest in the ‘New World,’” he says, “depended upon slave labor (by African slaves), and it is only maintained by keeping the ‘Two-Thirds World’ under oppression.”[6] Wright’s anti-capitalist perspective is reflected in TUCC’s “10-point vision,” whose ideals include the cultivation of “a congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY.” (Emphasis in original.) The TUCC mission statement plainly declares its goal of helping “the less fortunate to become agents of change for God who is not pleased with America’s economic mal-distribution!”

This view is entirely consistent with Rev. Wright’s devotion to the tenets of liberation theology, which is essentially Marxism dressed up as Christianity. Devised by Cold War-era theologians, it teaches that the New Testament gospels can be understood only as calls for social activism, class struggle, and revolution aimed at overturning the existing capitalist order and installing, in its stead, a socialist utopia where today’s poor will unseat their “oppressors” and become liberated from their material (and, consequently, their spiritual) deprivations. An extension of this paradigm is black liberation theology, which seeks to foment a similar Marxist revolutionary fervor founded on racial rather than class solidarity. Wright’s mentor in this discipline is James Cone, author of the landmark text Black Power and Black Theology. Arguing that Christianity has been used by white society as an opiate of the (black) masses, Cone asserts that the destitute “are made and kept poor by the rich and powerful few,” and that “[n]o one can be a follower of Jesus Christ without a political commitment that expresses one’s solidarity with victims.”

Wright commonly denounces the United States, which he views as a nation infested with racism and evil. In one noteworthy sermon, he paraphrased the assertions of another black preacher (with whose views he agreed entirely) as follows:

Fact #1: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college.

Fact #2: Racism is still alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run.... I don't care how hard you run, Jesse, and no black woman can never be considered for anything outside of what she can give with her body.

Fact #3: America is the #1 killer in the world. We invaded Grenada for no other reason than to get Maurice Bishop. We invaded Panama because Noriega would not dance to our tune anymore. We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional killers. We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Qadaffi.

Fact #4: We put Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority, and believe it more than we believe in God.

Fact #5: We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians, and called anyone that spoke out against it as being Anti-Semitic.

Fact #6: We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. We're just finding out about that. We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means.

Fact #7: We do not care if poor black and brown children cannot read and kill each other senselessly. We abandoned the city back in the 60's back when the riots started. And it really doesn't matter what those "NNNNNNnnnnnnn............... natives" do to each other, we gave up on them and public education of poor people who live in the projects.... We, with VCRs, TVs, CDs, and portable phones have more homeless than any nation in the world.

Fact #8: We started the AIDS virus. And now that it is out of control, we still put more money in the military than in medicine, more money in hate than in humanitar[ian] concerns. Everybody does not have access to health care, I don't care what the rich white boys in the city say, brothers.... Listen up, if you are poor, black and elderly, forget it.

Fact #9: We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty.

Fact #10: We are selfish, self-centered egotists who are arrogant and ignorant and we prayer at church and do not try to make the kingdom that Jesus talks about a reality....

In light of these 10 facts, God has got to be SICK OF THIS SHIT! (emphasis in original) (Click here for video of this sermon.)

Many of Wright’s condemnations of America are echoed in his denunciations of Israel and Zionism, which he has blamed for imposing “injustice and … racism” on the Palestinians. According to Wright, Zionism contains an element of “white racism.” Likening Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s treatment of blacks during the apartheid era, Wright advocates divestment campaigns targeting companies that conduct business in, or with, Israel.

Wright is a great admirer of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. “When Minister Farrakhan speaks, Black America listens,” says Wright. “Everybody may not agree with him, but they listen … His depth on analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest. Minister Farrakhan will be remembered as one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African American religious experience. His integrity and honesty have secured him a place in history as one of the nation’s most powerful critics. His love for Africa and African American people has made him an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose.”

Wright’s praise for Farrakhan was echoed in the November/December issue of TUCC’s bimonthly magazine, the Trumpet, which featured an interview with the NOI “icon” who, according to the publication, “truly epitomized greatness.” “Because of the Minister’s influence in the African American community,” the Trumpet announced that it was honoring him with an “Empowerment Award” as a “fitting tribute for a storied life well lived.”

Wright accompanied Farrakhan on a 1984 trip to meet with Farrakhan’s friend, the Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

Farrakhan’s October 16, 1995 Million Man March ranks among the events about which Rev. Wright has written most extensively and passionately. Wright attended the rally with his son, and has described it as “a once in a lifetime, amazing experience.”[7] When a number of prominent African Americans counseled fellow blacks to boycott the demonstration because of Farrakhan’s history of hateful rhetoric, Wright derided those critics as “‘Negro’ leaders,”[8] “‘colored’ leaders,” “Oreos,” and “house niggras”[9] who were guilty of “Uncle Tomism.”[10] “There are a whole boat load of ‘darkies’ who think in white supremacist terms,” added Wright. “… Some ‘darkies’ think white women are superior to black women…. Some ‘darkies’ think white lawyers are superior to black lawyers. Some ‘darkies’ think white pastors are better than black pastors. There are a whole boatload of ‘darkies’ who think anything white and everyone white is better than whatever it is black people have.”[11]

On its website, Wright’s church describes itself in distinctly racial terms, as being an “Unashamedly Black” congregation of “African people” who are “true to our native land, the mother continent, the cradle of civilization,” and who participate in TUCC’s “Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.”

Some have suggested that such assertions, coupled with Wright’s own racially loaded statements and his close affiliation with Farrakhan, indicate that Wright is guilty of racism. But Wright dismisses this charge, stating: “I get tickled every time I hear a ‘Negro’ call me a racist. They don’t even understand how to define the word. Racism means controlling the means.”[12]

TUCC promotes a “Black Value System” that encourages African Americans to patronize black-only businesses, support black leaders, and avoid becoming “entrapped” by the pursuit of a “black middle-classness” whose ideals presumably would erode their sense of African identity and render them “captive” to white culture.

Wright and his congregants offered Kwanzaa programs for the TUCC community.[13] Kwanzaa is the holiday founded by Maulana Karenga, a self-identified “African socialist” whose “Seven Principles of Blackness,” which are observed during Kwanzaa, include not only the Marxist precepts of parity and proletariat unity, but are identical to the principles of the 1970s domestic terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army.

When Rev. Wright took over as TUCC pastor, the church’s membership totaled 87. By 2007 it had become the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ, with more than 8,000 members. TUCC’s most well-known congregant is Barack Obama, who sought Wright’s counsel before formally declaring his candidacy for U.S. President in 2007. Obama and his wife had previously selected Wright to perform their wedding ceremony and, later, to baptize their two daughters.

Rev. Wright retired as pastor of TUCC on February 10, 2008.


Notes:

[1] When Black Men Stand up for God (Chicago: African American Images), 1996, p. 17.
[2] Ibid., p. 102.
[3] Ibid., p. 17.
[4] Ibid., p. 17. (Notwithstanding Wright’s implication that the harsh anti-crack penalties were instituted by racist legislators for the purpose of incarcerating as many blacks as possible, the Congressional Record shows that such was not at all the case. In 1986, when the strict, federal anti-crack legislation was being debated, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)—deeply concerned about the degree to which crack was decimating the black community—strongly supported the legislation and actually pressed for even harsher penalties. In fact, a few years earlier CBC members had pushed President Reagan to create the Office of National Drug Control Policy. See John DiIulio, Jr., “My Black Crime Problem, and Ours,” City Journal (Spring 1996), pp. 19-20.)
[5] When Black Men Stand up for God, p. 16.
[6] Blow the Trumpet in Zion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press), 2005, pp. 8-9.
[7] When Black Men Stand up for God, p. 10.
[8] Ibid., pp. 11, 37.
[9] Ibid., p. 80.
[10] Ibid., p. 11.
[11] Ibid., p. 81.
[12] Ibid., p. 102.
[13] Ibid., p. iv.

Thanks Discoverthenetworks.org

What Could Have Been Said

Victor Davis Hanson
The Washington Times
3/31/2008

Had Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, just said the following words last week in his speech on race in America, his problems with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, would probably now be over:

"You have all heard the racist and anti-American outbursts of my pastor, the Rev. Wright. They are all inexcusable. His speeches have forced me to re-examine my long association with Trinity United Church of Christ. And so it is with regret that I must now leave that church.

"I had heard similar extremist language of Rev. Wright in the past, and now apologize that I did not earlier end my attendance and contributions. Had I long ago expressed my strong objections to Rev. Wright's views, such opposition might have suggested to him a more moderate path. "But any good that now might come by remaining steadfast to Rev. Wright in consideration of our long past friendship is outweighed by the damage that would accrue from the sanction of his extremism that my continued attendance at his church might convey.

"I have loyalty aplenty, but it is to the truth, my country and universal tolerance, not to any one friend, however long and close our association.

"Allegations that America helped to cause — and thus deserved — Sept. 11 and that the U.S. government engineered the AIDS epidemic, as well as the pastor's slurs against 'white people' and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, are not reflective of the views of mainstream black America and they have no place in any house of Christian worship.

"It would be easy to claim that Rev. Wright's biases are no different from those voiced on occasion by our own family members, our pastors or political leaders in the public eye and therefore not so injurious to America. That defense of false equivalence, that 'others do it all the time,' is a common one offered by those who offend the public sensibility.

"It would also be easy to excuse my pastor's outbursts by citing the long, tragic history of the African-American experience. After all, every extremist outburst always has a particular and perhaps mitigating context.

"And finally it would be easy to suggest that the special landscape of the black church allows a sort of venting and role-playing unlike other common venues in America. It has often been a refuge from white oppression and a place to make sense of the tragic history of race relations that plague us still. That and the good that Rev. Wright has done could also be an extenuating circumstance.

"But neither Pastor Wright nor I — a candidate for the presidency of the United States — can afford to find refuge in any of these relativist explanations. To do so would not merely exempt the statements of Rev. Wright from proper censure, but also would have the effect of offering endorsement to them. Here is why we must not and will not do that:

"First, today's America has evolved into a multiracial society unlike anytime in our long history. Each of America's groups has unique grievances, based on their own past ordeals.

"So now more than ever in American history, there is need to establish a universal, absolute standard of public discourse in which no individual or group claims extenuating circumstances to demonize other Americans. Otherwise, the bar will have been lowered — and Rev. Wright will be followed by merchants of hate of every sort, each citing his allowance as a pass for his own hate speech.

"Second, we are in our fifth decade since the landmark civil-rights legislation of the 1960s. And while the African-American community has made enormous strides, it still has not achieved parity with either the white majority or some other minorities. The reasons are complex, but they cannot be simply reduced to white racism or the purported pathologies of the United States as Rev. Wright supposed. We African-Americans must be as vigilant in demanding an equality of opportunity for all Americans as in ensuring that crime, illegitimacy, drug use and the failure to finish high school are no higher in the African-American community than in others.

"Third, Americans were appalled, as was I, at my minister cursing the United States. But we must always appreciate the unique nature of America, an experiment that unites a multiplicity of religions, races and ethnicities, and endures only to the degree we all adhere to a common set of values. We must never think that because the United States has sometimes not been perfect, it is not good.

"The hard work of creating and improving the United States required centuries; the easier task of tearing apart America can be done in a generation. But neither you nor I can or will allow that to happen. Thank you, and God bless the United States."
Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of "A War Like No Other" (Random House)..

Escaping Sharia

Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | 3/31/2008
Frontpage Interview's guest today is Rabab Khaja, a visitor from Kuwait who came to the U.S. with her two sons over a year ago. She escaped persecution by Sharia Law.

FP: Rabab Khaja, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Khaja: Thank you Frontpage for having me.

FP: Let's begin with discussing your status here.

Khaja: I'm here on a Tourist Visa. Which means I keep moving between the United States and my country every few months. My two sons go to college here and I am visiting them. I am seeking a lawyer now to solve my situation.

FP: Tell us the trouble you face in your country. Khaja: The last time I came to the United States, I had a fight with my husband two nights before leaving. He threatened to place my name on all the borders so I could never leave Kuwait. And until the last minute before taking off I wasn't sure if he had done that or not. And I don't want to face the same circumstances again where I would be a prisoner in my own country.

I have been separated from my husband for almost eight years now. Two of which I did not leave the marital house, and four in a rented apartment in Kuwait, and the last two years between here and Kuwait.

On the advice of friends and relatives, including my lawyer (they said that so long as my husband does not want to divorce, I do not have a case with Shari'a courts), I did not file a case against him until recently, and resorted to solve the problem peacefully. But he refused and insisted that he'd never divorce me. He mocked me when I told him that I was going to sue him for divorce, saying that Shari'a is a "man". And he was right.

Only three years back, when I lost all hope, I filed a case against him. And guess what? I got convicted with Ta'a.

FP: What is Ta'a exactly?

Khaja: To understand Ta'a, you have to know that in the Islamic Shari'a, (theoretically speaking), the wife has to be obedient to her husband; she should not leave the marital house without his permission. If she does not abide to those rules, the husband could get a court order to imprison her within the confinement of the marital house. And Ta'a is that court order.

Even without the court order of Ta'a, husbands have the right to place their wives' names at the borders, forbidding them from leaving the country. Sometimes it's done officially, other times through the corrupted system that is depleted with connections.

FP: Tell us some more about Sharia Law.

Khaja: I can only speak about the civil cases of Shari'a courts concerning women since I am its victim. Many Islamic countries cannot, and do not, apply the Shari'a laws one hundred percent, simply because it is not possible in the twenty-first century. For an example, Shari'a decrees that punishment of theft is to have a hand amputated. Aside from countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, where these barbaric punishments continue, this is not done in other Muslim nations. But when it comes to civil cases, especially those concerning women, all Islamic countries apply Shari'a.

In Kuwait, there are two courts that deal with these cases, one dedicated to the majorities of the Sunni sect, and the other to the Shiite. There is no difference in the laws that suppress women in both courts; the only difference is in the procedures. And except for the invasion of my country in the year 1990 by Sadam Hussein, I was never humiliated in my life as much as I was in the Shari'a courts. That's why I'm seeking the help of civil courts in the United States to solve my dilemma, when I lost hope with the Shari'a courts of my country.

Shari'a considers women as properties of men. Marriage contracts are not different than any other business contract between the husband and the woman's father or brother, or any other male-relative. In this contract the ownership of the woman is transferred from the father to the husband. Of which the husband is given the right of divorce whenever he's not satisfied with the merchandise, even without mentioning this in the contract. It is true (theoretically speaking) that a woman can add a condition to her marriage contract to give her the liability of the divorce.

However, this condition does not outdo the man's right to divorce. Moreover, it is considered a taboo in the Islamic communities to include this condition. On the other hand; a man can divorce his wife in her absence with just a court notification sent to the wife by mail. The only time that the judge has the authority to terminate a marriage is when a woman can prove that her husband has physically injured her, and that living under one roof is hazardous to her health (Beating women is permitted in Islam, as long as it does not leave a mark on the body).

While physical assaults can be proven, psychological damages are overlooked and underestimated. And the irony is that a father who gave way to his daughter cannot even be a witness in court.

FP: Are you a Muslim? Tell us about your religious journey and where it stands now.

Khaja: Just like any child born in an Islamic community, I was born a Muslim believing that Islam is the final, conclusive Abrahamic religion sent by God for human salvation. Not anymore though, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 started my quest in search of God, and it made me more pious thinking that what happened to us Kuwaitis was a punishment from God. My mind could not accept the fact that in twenty-four hours my whole life would change from having almost everything one could possibly hope for in life, to having nothing at all.

I vowed to pay a visit to Mecca for a Haj pilgrimage as soon as Kuwait was freed. I did fulfill my promise; I even wore the hijab (veil) for more than three years. But unfortunately; the more I researched into my religion, the more I was convinced that it couldn't be dictated from God. A religion that categorizes people into groups, each believing that it is on the path of correct and the rest are doomed, can't be a religion from a single God. The very utterance of the Shahada (witness) of "I witness that there is no God but God, and Muhammad is His messenger" that is repeated five times a day in the prayer is a call for the annihilation of all other ethnic groups. It wasn't my personal problems with Shari'a courts that made me denounce my religion, although they confirmed my conviction. It was a long, tiresome journey, and I am planning to write a book about my case, as well as my journey with the Islamic faith one day.

FP: Why do you think Islam is rising in the West? And while it is rising in the West, how is it doing from within?

Khaja: First I do not think that Islam is the fastest growing religion on earth regardless of the statistics. Mark Twain is reputed to have said: "There are lies, damned lies and statistics." And when you are talking about the Islamic regions, lying is second to nature.

Research says that Islam is rising in the West because of the high percentage of birthrates among Muslim immigrants. In his book" Letter to a Christian Nation" Sam Harris said: "Islam is now the fastest-growing religion in Europe. The birthrate among European Muslims is three times that of their non-Muslim neighbors. If current trends continue, France will be a majority-Muslim country in twenty-five years". And he is right, the majority would eventually lead to Islamic systems with Shari'a courts.

But this is not the whole story. The West adapted the veterans of Afghan war and gave them homes and amnesty when they were kicked out of their own homelands. Petrodollar countries build Islamic centers, mosques and madrasas (Islamic schools) to be led by some who were convicted in their own countries, while their Islamic institutions in the oil-rich countries equipped them with the charity money of the ignorant families, who had no idea where their Zakat (alms) money was being spent.

Those are the same people today who channeled the grievances of immigrants and used them to fulfill their own political agendas. It's a huge Islamic network consisting of many networks all around the world. They may differ in trivialities, but they all abide to Koran and Muhammad who said that he was sent to fight all, until the last person on earth says that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is His messenger.

Harris also said in the same source: "The earth is now home to about 1.4 billion Muslims, many of whom believe that one day you and I will either convert to Islam, live in subjugation to a Muslim caliphate, or be put to death for our unbelief." And to me, this is a warning that I hope many pay attention to, and not be swept in the tide of civil mentalities. If the West cares for its national security, it should deal with Islam in its own mentality. Not with soft politics, not with imposing democracy, democracy can only bring justice in a secular society, in an egalitarian society that believes in personal rights of its people, the one that respects the rights of the minorities as much as it does the majority. Democracy without secularism can only give birth to the likes of Hammas.

FP: So there is an issue here in terms of a new generation of Muslims who are living in the West and not under Islam, right?

Khaja: Yes, a new generation of Muslim immigrants in the West are subject to civil laws that respects human rights, they have not been directly subjugated to Shari'a laws. They think of Islam as the utopian world that puts an end to their grievances. Unlike Muslimsliving in the Islamic countries, the adverse consequences of Islamic control in the Islamic countries has generated a new generation of Muslims who do not share this ideology, especially, amongst the educated young generation, who realized that "Islam is the solution" is just a political slogan. Although most don't dare voice their opinion publicly, because they fear being extradited from their societies or even being put to death.

And lately, thanks to the Internet, many started to protest against their subjugation under anonymous names. Even those anonymous voices are fought against by the politico-Islamic networks that have found new generation of institutions, like Islam-on-line and Ya-Muslim groups, who found their ways to publish lies on the Net and bombard e-mails with their fraudulent claims. Some even became experts in hacking non-believer's sites.

And it's not hard at all to find hackers amongst Muslims, every pious person considers it a duty, following the footsteps of the prophet who said; "On the authority of Abu Saeed (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: Anybody amongst you who notices something evil should correct it with his own hands. If he is unable to do so he should correct it with his tongue. If he is unable even to do this he should at least consider it as bad in his heart for this is the lowest degree of faith. (Muslim).", not to mention other verses of Koran that built militancy among regular people, and gave legitimacy to unethical actions.

And not to mention the role of governments that help in axing Web sites and subjecting their owners to trials in courts. Or even imprisonment, like the case with the Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil who was sentenced last year to four years in prison for voicing his opinion.

As I see it, Islam is deteriorating from within, and Muslims have never been confused as they are today.

FP: Can you talk a bit about the control of the clerics on Arab governments?

Khaja: Each Arab government has its own circumstances with politico-Islamism. They may differ in the way they handle their relationship, but it remains to be a two-way channel, profitable to both sides. Islamic countries share the slow surge of political Islam through organizations and networks. These networks penetrated into the education system, controlled the media, and possessed even the biggest financial institutions in Kuwait.

When I came to the states to pursue my college education in Electrical Engineering in the beginning of the seventies, Kuwait was much more open to the world. A small society, in which everyone knew every one else and respected their differences. After all, Kuwait was, and still is, a land for more than one ethnic group. And although the sectarianism existed since the outset of Islam, sectarianism was never a serious issue in Kuwait, especially between the citizens. I remember my Sunni neighbor who sacrificed each year a sheep to Ashoora (Shiite sermon to celebrate the death of Imam Hussein-whom Shiite of the Twelve Imams consider the righteous heir of the throne of Islam), although this is a Shiite ritual.

But the more pious is a society, the more it tends to be intolerant. In general, Kuwaitis were more tolerant, and less abiding to the Islamic dogmas. The Pan-Arabism of the sixties had its affects on Kuwaitis, and with the surge of oil, education, especially among females, increased. I remember even Darwin's theory was included in my high school biology book, be it with a note that this is just a "theory". Today, it does not even exist.

But with the beginning of the seventies, when leaders of Kuwait government changed the human demography of Kuwait society, by recruiting nomads of the surrounding deserts, things changed. The tribal nomads became the majority. Those people were the remnant of the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia, who call themselves Salafis now. Backed by a huge Islamic institution that the government aided in building for the Muslim Brethren ideology that started in Egypt, and sent its missionaries to Kuwait in early sixties, they high-jacked the whole country. Now they are the majorities in the Parliament, as well as government ministers or holding other leading governmental positions.

And ever since, we Kuwaitis are paying a dear price, starting from the law of gender segregation in Kuwait University, to the Anti-Gay Act decrees, as well as issuing laws to forbid women working after 10PM. It was because of this type of Islamic insurgencies that my country has depleted in its backwardness ever since. Today, unfortunately, tolerance became a fantasy of the past.

FP: Shed some light for us on sectarianism and how it is spreading in the region.

Khaja: Sectarianism started right after Muhammad's death. One look at the Islamic history can tell us that much. But it was in Iraq that sectarianism took legitimacy for the first time. Sectarianism has always existed; it only needed more logs to feed its fire. The conflict in Iraq was not that log though. It was the Shiite revolution of Iran in the late seventies that raised phoenix from the ashes. It was right after that when I first noticed the difference in Shiite and Sunni veils of women in my country, each proudly symbolizing its identity to the public. The conflict in Iraq did not start sectarianism; it only gave it a fertile soil to spring. And lately, the incident of eulogizing Mugania (one of Hisb Allah's terrorist who was killed in Syria a few months back) by some Shiite Members of the Kuwaiti parliament, has been the wind that cast the dust off the ember, and started a fire between Shiite and Sunni's in Kuwait. The conflict and its damage can be seen and felt so clearly across the Net, with the new generation that was raised on hatred from both parties.

FP: What advice would you have for the West in terms of how free peoples' can confront the threat of Sharia? And how can we best help free those who are enslaved by Sharia?

Khaja: A friend once told me that Koran is like the magician's hat, tap it with a wand and you can get whatever you want to back your ideology. Shari'a is just one part of the whole picture, what free people should fight is, what I call Islamic-neology. Islamic-neology bears the radical ideologies of Alafagani, Hassan Al-bana, Sayid Qutob, Almoudoodi, Muhammad Abdelwahab, Ibn Taimiya, as well as Khumani. A strange combination in different packages. It's the seeds that produced the radical views of today's Ben laden and Hassan Nasrulla in the cosmic war of God vs. "evil". Or God vs the "West"

This same ideology gave way to thousands of freelance terrorists of the 21st century, of which most were Afghan veterans who returned home to the same corrupted systems, to apply their military expertise on civilians of their own countries and abroad, and giving their actions divine legitimacy. Mothers of the martyrs ululated for winning tickets to heaven, to meet their sons and their seventy-two virgin wives. Freedom fighters should not underestimate the dangers of this mentality.

A thought should be fought with a thought. Free speech should be encourages, artists should be free to express their arts as they please, criticism of Islam should not be controlled by fear, but by logic. Movies like Geert Wilders' "Fitna" should be spread. And, most importantly; the West should protect its secularism by not allowing Shari'a courts to spring in the West and subjugate part of its citizens to laws different than that of the state.

Advocates of free thought should also encourage those beacons of light, shining among contemporary Muslim writers and Internet generation of the Islamic countries. There are some contemporary writers and activists who have come out of their anonymous shells.

Muslims have been isolated far too long to understand the mechanism on which a civil society is built, and the importance of their civil rights. They need re-engineering. And the more information available, the better is the chance to fight this ideology.

As for the hysteria that grips Muslim masses with each criticism, I think it will eventually subside, Muslims will start getting used to criticism. Muslims should learn how to treat others, as they want others to treat them. When they allow Sheikhs and Mullahs to mock Christians and Jews and dub them as apes and pigs on their pulpits before every Friday prayer, and no one dares to protest, then they should expect to see pictures of Muhammad with a bomb turbine, because this is the world image of Muslims today, whether we like it or not. And if they care to change this image they should start first by changing themselves.

FP: Rabab Khaja, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Khaja: Thank you Frontpage for giving me the chance to speak up.

Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.

The Muslim Students Association and the Jihad Network

FrontPageMagazine.com
3/31/2008

The following essay, adapted from the Introduction to this booklet, shows how, as early as the 1980s, operatives from the Muslim Brotherhood, parent group for al Qaeda and Hamas, formulated a blueprint for a "jihadist process" that would ultimately sabotage the "miserable house" of the United States. These Muslim Brotherhood operatives saw that the work of undermining the U.S. could be best accomplished by the use of front groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Students Association. But while CAIR was designed to work in the legal-cultural realm, posturing as another of the minority rights groups functioning in the public square, the MSA's role was to be restricted to college campuses, where it would advance the cause of radical Islam and lead the effort to stigmatize Israel.

Over the next several days, Front Page will publish profiles of individual chapters of the MSA on a variety of campuses around the country, showing how specifically they achieve the broad goals of the organization. – The Editors

As revealed in documents seized by the FBI and entered as evidence in a Texas court, the Muslim Students Association is a legacy project of the Muslim Brotherhood.[1] The Brotherhood is an organization formed by a Hitler-admiring Muslim named Hasan al-Bannain Egypt in 1928.[2] It was designed to function as the spearpoint of the Islamo-fascist movement and its crusade against the West.

The Brotherhood spawned al-Qaeda and Hamas.[3] Its doctrines make up the core of the terrorist jihad conducted by organizations such as Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Hamas and the government of Iran.[4] Its agendas have been clear since its creation: infiltration, subversion and global terror with world conquest as the goal. To establish one Islamic state of united Islamic countries, one nation under one leadership whose mission will be to reinforce adherence to the law of Allah...and the strengthening of the Islamic presence in the world arena....The goal...is the establishment of a world Islamic state.[5]

The first target was the “near enemy” – the Arab states that al-Banna and his followers felt had betrayed Islam. The United States – the “far enemy” – would not become a specific focus of the Brotherhood until many years later.

The organization’s aspirations for world dominion seemed like a fantasy until the Iranian revolution of 1979. But that event showed the jihadists that they could conquer and govern a state and use it as a base for Islamic revolution elsewhere. There was no doubt who the enemy was. The Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeni coined the phrase “Great Satan” and “Little Satan” to demonize the United States and Israel and mark them for destruction.

“Destroying Western Civilization From Within”

A formal plan for targeting America was devised three years after the Iranian revolution, in 1982.[6]. The plan was summarized in a 1991 memorandum written by Mohamed Akram, an operative of the Muslim Brotherhood. “The process of settlement” of Muslims in America, Akram explained, “is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process.’” This means that members of the Brotherhood “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”[7]

This memo surfaced in a Texas courtroom in the fall of 2007 after prosecutors introduced it as evidence in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, once the largest Islamic charity in the United States.[8] The HLF was charged with funneling charitable donations to the jihad terrorists of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, a Brotherhood organization that now controls the Gaza Strip. But the implications of this document go far beyond the Holy Land Foundation.

It is actually a blueprint for the subversion of American society, and the eventual imposition of Islamic law in the United States. This would mean an institutionalized oppression of women, homosexuals, and religious minorities; the end of freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience; and the replacement of democracy by theocracy.

U.S. authorities had been keeping an eye on Brotherhood operatives even before the memo surfaced. In 2001, U.S. officials accused Youssef Nada, a member of the organization, of funding terrorism.[9] Two years later, American investigators described Soliman Biheiri, a businessman in Virginia, as the Brotherhood’s U.S. “financial toehold.”

Surveying the Islamic organizations that existed in the U.S. in 1991, Mohamed Akram declared in his memo: “The big challenge that is ahead of us is how to turn these seeds or ‘scattered’ elements into comprehensive, stable, ‘settled’ organizations that are connected with our Movement and which fly in our orbit and take orders from our guidance.”

At the end of the document, Akram provided “a list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends” – apparently, those whom he believed were likewise dedicated to this great project of sabotaging the “miserable house” of American society. Surveying all these groups filled him with enthusiasm: “Imagine if they all march according to one plan!!!”[10]

Akram contemplated a network of many overlapping groups, with personnel that move from one to the other and hold positions in different organizations simultaneously—an arrangement that resembles the Communist Party’s creation of interlocking front groups during the Cold War and complicates the task of understanding and tracking the pattern of their activities.

The organizations Akram saw as advancing the Islamo-Fascist movement in America included, among many others, the Islamic Society of North America, the North American Islamic Trust, the Islamic Circle of North America, the International Institute for Islamic Thought, and the Islamic Association for Palestine – from which came the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) three years later. But perhaps the most important of these groups in terms of the long term infiltration and conquest the Brotherhood envisioned was The Muslim Students Association (MSA).

The Stealth Jihad of the MSA

Established in January 1963 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada, or MSA (also known as MSA National) currently has chapters on nearly 600 college campuses across North America.)[11] The relationship between MSA National and the individual university chapters is not a fixed hierarchy, but rather a loose connection. Thus the policies and views of the national organization may differ from those of some of the local chapters.) Stating that its mission is “to serve the best interest of Islam and Muslims in the United States and Canada so as to enable them to practice Islam as a complete way of life,”MSA is by far the most influential Islamic student organization in North America.[12]

Founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, MSA was named in Mohammed Akram’s 1991 memorandum as one of the Brotherhood’s likeminded “organizations of our friends” who shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation. These “friends” were described by the Brotherhood as groups that could help teach Muslims “that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands ... so that ... God’s religion Islam is made victorious over all other religions.”[13]

From its inception, MSA had close links with the extremist Muslim World League, whose chapters’ websites have featured not only Osama bin Laden’s propaganda, but also publicity-recruiting campaigns for Wahhabi involvement with the Chechen insurgents in Russia. According to author and Islam expert Stephen Schwartz, MSA is a key lobbying organization for the Wahhabi sect of Islam.[14]

MSA solicited donations for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, whose assets the U.S. government seized in December 2001 because that organization was giving financial support to the terrorist group Hamas. MSA also has strong ties to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.[15]

Charging that U.S. foreign policy is driven by militaristic imperialism, MSA steadfastly opposes the American military incursions into both Afghanistan and Iraq.[16] The organization also follows the Arab propaganda line in the Middle East conflict and has condemned the anti-terrorist security fence that Israel has built in the West Bank as an illegal “apartheid wall” that violates the civil and human rights of Palestinians.

An influential member of the International ANSWER steering committee, MSA maintains a large presence at ANSWER-sponsored anti-war demonstrations.[17] The pro-North Korea, pro-Saddam Hussein ANSWER is a front organization of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party.[18]

Local chapters of MSA signed a February 20, 2002 document, composed by the radical group Refuse & Resist (a creation of the Revolutionary Communist Party’s) condemning military tribunals and the detention of immigrants apprehended in connection with post-9/11 terrorism investigations.[19] The document read, in part: “They the U.S. government are coming for the Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrants. … The recent ‘disappearances,’ indefinite detention, the round-ups, the secret military tribunals, the denial of legal representation, evidence kept a secret from the accused, the denial of any due process for Arab, Muslim, South Asians and others, have chilling similarities to a police state.”[20]

MSA has strongly opposed the Patriot Act, which it describes as an “infamous” piece of legislation. The organization’s chapters across the United States have similarly denounced virtually every other national security initiative implemented by the U.S. government since the 9/11 attacks.

MSA chose not to endorse or participate in the May 14, 2005 “Free Muslims March Against Terror,” an event whose stated purpose was to “send a message to the terrorists and extremists that their days are numbered ... and to send a message to the people of the Middle East, the Muslim world and all people who seek freedom, democracy and peaceful coexistence that we support them.”[21]

But while it is possible to understand its political orientation from some of the positions it has taken on large national issues, the Muslim Students Association comes into sharper focus in the actions of the individual chapters that do its work every day on campuses across America. The following analysis of 18 separate campus chapters of MSA will make this clear.

NOTES:

1 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6386

2 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualprofile.asp?indid=1368

3 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6204

4 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6957

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6256

5 http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&TMI

D=111&LNGID=1&FID=379&PID=0&IID=1920

6 http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/

Readaspx?GUID=%7b61829F93-7A81-4654-A2E8-

F0A5E6DD3DC4%7d

7 http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/20.pdf

8 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6181

9 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-

0409190261sep19,1,6654807,full.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

10 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6178

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6380

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6180

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6215

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6176

11 http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/31.pdf

12 http://www3.ipl.org/div/aon/browse/hum80.10.50/

13 http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/20.pdf

14 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7347

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individual Profile.asp?indid=690

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?

GUID=A4883334-B150-4E33-8602-942B118C6DD5

15 http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/commentschwartz031003.asp

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6425

16 http://www.meforum.org/article/603

17 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6147

18 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6603

19 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6165

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6197

20 http://www.refuseandresist.org/imm/012502ndsami.html

21 http://old.thedeadhand.com/blogs/jscroft/archive /2005/04/18/1356.aspx

Ruthie Blum interviews Richard Landes

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206446110850&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Richard Landes calls up a film clip onto the screen of his laptop to give an example of "Pallywood" - a term he invented as a take-off on "Bollywood."
The difference between the two, however, couldn't be greater. Whereas the latter is the name now used for the Indian movie industry, the former refers to what Landes asserts are pernicious productions staged by the Palestinians, in front of (and often with cooperation from) Western camera crews, for the purpose of promoting anti-Israel propaganda by disguising it as news.

It's a pretty harsh claim, and one that has earned the associate professor at Boston University - and co-founder and director of the Center for Millennial Studies - the reputation in certain circles as a right-wing conspiracy theorist. This perception of the French-born American, who divides his time between the United States and Israel, completely contradicts how he describes himself.

"I consider myself on the Left," says Landes, during an hour-long interview earlier this month in Jerusalem. "I've always been a liberal. I've always been in favor of progressive projects." But, according to Landes, in the current global climate, a dangerous meeting of forces is taking place that must be fought: the blood-libels of pre-modernism and the post-modernist constructs of reality that allow for them. "It's like a wedding of pre-modern sadists to post-modern masochists," insists Landes. "It's a match made in hell."

Discussing breakthroughs in mass communications - comparing the advent of the printing press to that of cyberspace - Landes believes that there is an opportunity to combat misinformation on a large scale through the Internet. Indeed, Landes himself maintains two Web sites, Second Draft and Augean Stables.

Scientific discourse, he is convinced, is no longer exclusive to the universities. On the contrary, he says, "Academia is stuck." It is the blogosphere, he concludes, where the real war of ideas can be won.

Define "Pallywood."

Pallywood is a term I coined - when I was looking into the Muhammad al-Dura case in October 2003 [the famous case of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy shot in the crossfire at the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, broadcast by France 2 TV] - to describe staged material disguised as news. The Palestinians regularly fabricate scenes for TV cameras, which, when sent to Western media outlets, are cut down to the believable three-second sight bite. And what makes it to the evening news is a stringing together of these staged scenes.

How do you know that these kind of scenes are staged?

By watching the rushes [raw footage]. So, for example, in one scene in the rushes - a scene we call "Molotov cocktail kid" - there is a Palestinian with red "blood" on his forehead, indicating he's got a head wound. And he's running along with no sign of pain whatsoever, then hands over what looks like a Molotov cocktail to a friend and runs into a crowd. Then, in the next frame, all of sudden he's being picked up and carried into an ambulance, all the while holding his head up high in spite of his supposed serious injury. It's really obvious that it's fake.

How do you have access to these rushes?

Getting it was connected to the al-Dura investigation [spear-headed by Israeli physicist Nahum Shahaf], which I started looking into partly as a medievalist. Even before I thought the footage might have been staged, I knew that it was being used as a blood libel. In other words, one Jew allegedly kills a gentile child in cold blood, and all Jews everywhere are responsible. That's the beginning of the wave of anti-Semitism that literally has marked the 21st century, and we have not seen the end of it. This is where cyberspace can play a crucial role.

How?

I made a documentary film called Pallywood, and tried to shop it around. I figured [the network] ABC would be interested in it as rivals of CBS whom we criticized [for bad coverage]. I was wrong. The guy at ABC said, "I don't know how much appetite there is for something like this."

Then I ran it by somebody else, who said, "We couldn't broadcast this unless it were balanced."

When I asked him what he meant by that, he said, "We'd have to have something showing how the Israelis also fake it."

So, I gave up. Remembering the outcome of the Dan Rather affair [involving a 60 Minutes II report - broadcast on September 8, 2004 - on George W. Bush's National Guard service, which was exposed by bloggers to have been bogus. The incident ended in Rather's resignation from CBS.], I decided to post Pallywood on the Web.

That was in the fall of 2005. By the summer of 2006, it had already been seen by a good 50,000-100,000 people.

Then, when the [June 9, 2006] Gaza beach incident occurred [in which a blast - killing eight Palestinians, seven from the same family - was attributed to IDF artillery shelling; a subsequent investigation proved this to be false], I immediately started getting letters asking me whether I thought this was an example of "Pallywood."

We've since done a movie on it, which is up on the site.

Now, the Gaza beach incident... is not Pallywood in the sense that these people are not faking injury. They're really dead. But the overwhelming evidence is that they were killed by a Palestinian land mine. It was a terrible human tragedy. But the Palestinians just blamed Israel, and the press ate it up. And herein lies another real tragedy: The eagerness with which the media seize upon anything negative about Israel, and the reluctance with which they reveal anything negative about the Palestinians, have radically skewed the world's view of what's going on here.

If that's the case - if the media are biased in that way - then why would the Palestinians need to stage anything?

Because it gives the press the tools with which to tell the Palestinians' story. Their story in the intifada was, "We poor Palestinians were all of a sudden aggressed against by the Israelis who started shooting at us madly."

And in the West, people are indignant over the disproportion in the casualties. I mean, you've got editorials saying that the Palestinians have lost six times as many people as the Israelis. So what are they saying? That the Israelis have to lose as many as the Palestinians in order for the world to think it's balanced?

You've got Palestinians who want to get out a story about Israeli aggression. You have media that want to tell that story. And you have Pallywood that makes it possible for the media to tell the story of the Palestinian David against the Israeli Goliath.

We've been hearing about how poor Israel's hasbara is in countering this phenomenon. But, if what you say about blood libels is true, does public diplomacy really make any difference?

If the Israelis are failing at hasbara, it's not simply because they can't explain themselves; it's because nobody's listening to them, or when anybody does listen, he listens with hostility.

The instinct on the part of Israelis now - which probably dates back to the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon - is to apologize.

As a medievalist, surely you can't say that everything was hunky-dory until Sabra and Shatila. What period in Jewish history most resembles the current one?

I would say probably around 1900, when there were a lot of blood libels - the Dreyfus case and so on. What you have then is a series of blood libels that take on even more strength once the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are published in 1903-1905. But already in 1892, [Zionist thinker] Ahad Ha'am, in an essay on blood libels, wrote, "Is it possible that the whole world is wrong and that the Jews are right?"

Now, that's exactly what [former UN secretary general] Kofi Annan said after Jenin: "Is it possible that the whole world is wrong and that the Israelis are right?"

You're dealing with the circulation of these nasty stories about Jews, and there's this astonishing appetite for it. That's the depressing thing: how eager people are for these stories.

Still, the situation in 2008 is very different from that of 2000, when Europeans did not know that their continent was threatened by Muslims. They didn't know about the demographics, nor had they had any riots yet. At that time, viewing the Arab-Israeli conflict as a nationalist struggle between the poor Palestinians and the wicked Israelis had a great deal of appeal. At that time, the Arabs were bombarding the international media with photos and footage reinforcing that image. And what they were doing was bringing jihadi propaganda into France and other countries. Osama bin Laden immediately used the al-Dura image for recruitment. In fact, jihadis in French prisons have told interviewers that such TV images were critical in their decision to become jihadis. So, there was this astonishing porousness in Europe to a jihadist message, which came via anti-Zionism. And anyone who tried to resist it was accused of Islamophobia. This is how a kind of Islamist triumphalism has been spreading.

We're in a situation now in Europe where the elites - the media and academia - are still completely committed to this paradigm of "anti-Zionism is good and Islamophobia is bad." These are interesting moments in history, when an elite becomes so out of touch with the populace.

Isn't it common for elites to be out of touch with the rest of the population?

Historically it's been the norm, but democracies are not supposed to work that way. Democracies have responsiveness between elites and the rest of the populace. This, incidentally, brings me to the larger question I ask about what it is that makes for a civil society, and whether Europe still fits into that category.

The point is, though, that this is a moment in which you have two things: an awakening population and the blogosphere. Now, the Internet existed in 2000, but the blogosphere did not. There were blogs, but it was really only after 9/11 that the political blogosphere was born. So, now you're in a situation where there is an alternative means by which to communicate to the public. And the public has a reason to want to know, because it is now aware that there's a serious problem.

But doesn't the blogosphere also work in favor of the radical anti-Zionists and anti-Americans? Aren't they cranking it our faster than the West can refute it?

Well, yes, they are cranking it out faster than we can refute it - on every front - but there are certain significant fronts on which we are fighting back effectively. Take Wikipedia, for example. There's a fight going on right now at Wikipedia about the nature of information accuracy, truth, history, etc. These are all crucial issues for the 21st century. And Jews and non-Jews who are aware of historical events need to be weighing in at sites like that.

Now, there's a very close parallel - I teach a course on this - between the printing press and cyberspace. Both dramatically transformed the nature of reading, writing and communicating. One of the things that happened initially with the advent of the printing press is the Protestant Reformation and with it the proliferation of new religions, most of which were apocalyptic when they began, and a proliferation of "prophecies" - reports from around the world of wondrous things, etc. At that time, the fight between the Lutherans and the Papacy was vicious. The cartoons we have today are around that same level of viciousness. The Pope was depicted as the anti-Christ or as an animal and other such images.

But printing also had another effect: the emergence of scientific discourse. Over time, the scientific discourse won. So, the question for today is how do we help people in touch with empirical reality win in the blogosphere?

And what is the answer?

Detective work and vigilance. The interesting thing about the Dan Rather affair was that though there were lots of blogs defending Rather, the empirical evidence was overwhelmingly on the side of the people who said that he put up a fake.

It's a kind of post-modern problem here - you know, as if all reality is constructed. But it is not reality that is constructed; it is we who construct narratives about reality. And not all narratives are equal. Some are better than others. Some can coexist with others. Some contradict others. We have to make judgements. The idea that we should open ourselves up and let any narrative in is dangerous.

One of the problems with the Israeli post-Zionists is that they're post-modernists. They say Israel has this myth about itself. OK, fine. But then they want replace it with the Palestinian myth, that is 100 times more fantastic and unconnected to historical events than Israel's. In other words, the post-modernists would toss out something that needs correcting, and replace it with something that needs replacing!

So, what we have are the pre-modern blood libelists, on the one hand, and the post-modernists on the other - who say that it doesn't even matter whether this or that specific fact is true, when they believe the general direction that the fact is telling them.

It's like a wedding of pre-modern sadists to post-modern masochists. It's a match made in hell.

The point of pushing for scientific discourse is that with each new case of Pallywood - such as the recent Hamas "production" in Gaza showing residents holding up candles, as though they are in the dark due to Israeli electricity cuts, when one can actually see that they are doing it during daylight hours - the Israelis are going to start looking for other examples.

Ideally, what I would like to see happen is to have forensic, medical, ballistics, munitions, language, sound and culture experts ready to examine whatever tape comes out of these areas.

Aside from that, we have to utilize the blogosphere. That is where the conversation that is independent of - not unattached to, but independent of - academia is taking place. And as an academic, I can tell you that right now academia is stuck. The kinds of things that people can and can't say are so politicized and in such impoverishing ways that the next set of really important ideas is not going to come out of academia. And if it does, it will be nothing short of a miracle.

If radical Islamists can contribute to the blogosphere by writing in English, can the West counter them by writing in Arabic?

Oh yes! This is one of the enormous lost opportunities that the Israelis could lead in - though people would probably say that Arabs won't listen to them. But the fact is that there are plenty of Arabs who know perfectly well that the Israelis are effective modernizers; that they themselves desperately have to learn how to modernize; and that there's lots they can learn from the Israelis. The idea that no Arab is going to listen to an Israeli is actually a form of prejudice that says you think the Arabs are so primitive that they can't even listen to a good argument when it's made by somebody they might mistrust. We constantly hear that 99 percent of the Muslim world is moderate. Well, if they really believed that, they'd be trying to talk to these people on the Internet. The Israelis should be putting out hasbara to the Muslims and saying: "You are the first and worst victims of anti-Zionism. You are the targets. Your leaders want to get rid of us, because as long as we're around, it makes it harder for them to keep you enslaved. And they continue to enslave you by saying they have to enslave you because the Israelis exist. They put all of your energy - miserable as you are - into getting rid of the Israelis, when in fact it's the people blaming the Israelis who are screwing you."

I research apocalyptic expectations. And in apocalyptic expectations, what you have is cognitive dissonance. You believe in something so much that when it's disproved, you're in an unbelievable cognitive quandary. On the one hand, you're emotionally attached to a truth that's been disconfirmed by reality. You have this enormous hope, and it's taken away. What do you do? Well, one of the things you do is redouble your efforts. And one of the ways that you go about it is trying to convince others. So, one second-stage apocalyptic activity is increased proselytizing, which among other things, explains what happened in Christianity and in Islam.

In the West, you have a phenomenon where people are so attached to the politically correct paradigm: "If we're nice to them, they'll be nice to us." This means that if only Israel would make concessions, then we could get things on the right track. And the way to do this is through negotiations. Then you get all sorts of saying like, "War never solved anything."

The Romans had a great expression: "Si vis pacem para bellum" - if you want peace, prepare for war. Now, I consider myself on the Left. I've always been a liberal. I've always been in favor of progressive projects. But the problem for the Left is because we like to be nice, we can't imagine preparing for war. We don't want to imagine preparing for war. And we can't believe that others may have a different view of things. It's what can be called "cognitive egocentrism" - projecting onto others what you believe.

But guess what? Democracy was not established peacefully. The fear of picking up weapons is that once you do, you won't know when to stop. But the whole point about democracy is knowing when to stop. And the whole problem with pre-modern cultures is they do not know when to stop. This is why we have to beat them.

ALGERIA: OFFICIALS ORDER CLOSURE OF 19 PROTESTANT CONGREGATIONS

ISTANBUL (Compass Direct News) – Police issued written orders for three Algerian churches to cease activity this week, bringing to 19 the number of congregations told to shut down since November, an Algerian Protestant leader said.

In addition to the three churches, registered under the Protestant Church of Algeria (EPA), two independent congregations were verbally ordered to close their doors, EPA President Mustapha Krim said.

The church closures come amid a flurry of antagonistic media articles warning of campaigns by Protestants to “Christianize” Algeria.

“Muslims do not accept seeing their holy symbols attacked,” Religious Affairs Minister Bu’Abdallah Ghoulamullah said this week in reference to a “Christianization campaign” targeting the country. Ghoulamullah called on Christian groups in Algeria to re-register according to Algeria’s associations’ law, the March 25 article in Arabic daily El Khabar reported.

But some critics have responded that Algeria’s Christians, not its Muslim majority, are the ones being attacked.

“The repression of evangelist proselytism has turned into the harassment of Christians,” columnist Mustapha Hammouche wrote in Liberte on Tuesday (March 25).

Indeed, Algerian Christians have claimed that the government has blocked them from carrying out the required re-registration of their churches.

“The administration offices in Tizi-Ouzou did not want to or could not say which measures to take in order to obtain the famous ‘certificate of conformity,’” church leaders wrote on March 26. They said the certificate was required to show that they were in line with a new March 2006 law governing non-Muslim places of worship.

“[The] result: the churches are closed, services forbidden, and nothing can change the situation!” reported the Algerian Christian website collectifalgerie.free.fr on March 26.

In addition to restrictions on church building and worship locations, the 2006 religion law also bans evangelistic material and attempts to convert Muslims to other religions. As most Algerian Christians are converts from Islam, the law could be interpreted to make nearly all Christian churches in the country illegal.

Police detained two Algerian Christians traveling by public bus from Tizi Ouzou to Bejaia the evening of March 21 for carrying 11 Bibles.

Authorities held the two men for “proselytism” after finding the Bibles while searching their bags at a routine check-point in Beni Ksila, collectifalgerie.free.fr website reported. One Christian was carrying a personal Bible, while the other, a church council member in Bejaia, was carrying 10 Bibles.

Both men, who requested anonymity for security reasons, were released the following evening after spending a night and a day in police custody.

“It would be more logical that roadblocks catch terrorists,” columnist Chawki Amari wrote in El Watan on March 24. “[If] two Algerians were arrested at a roadblock in England and placed in custody because they carry a dozen specimen of the Quran, one could imagine the consequences: Demonstrations from Nouakchott as far as Islamabad, the burning of flags, unanimous condemnation, the anger of [Religious Affairs Minister] Ghoulamullah […]”

Equating Evangelism with ‘Terrorism’

Ironic particularly in light of Amari’s comment, Algerian authorities have begun comparing evangelization with terrorism in recent months.

“I equate evangelism with terrorism,” Religious Affairs Minister Ghoulamullah said in an article in L’Expression on February 12.

“I’ve asked the imams to remind the people that pastors don’t come to Algeria because they love the country, or because they love Christianity,” news service France24 reported Ghoulamullah as saying. “They come here to create minorities, which would give foreign countries a pretext to interfere in our internal affairs.”

An official report on Protestant activities in Algeria submitted to the Home Affairs Ministry warned of a “fierce attack” targeting the religion and unity of the country, according to local media.

The report recommended supporting Quran schools and mosques to counter Christian evangelization, a March 24 article in El Khabar reported.

According to the report, former EPA president and U.S. citizen Hugh Johnson, 74, was the leader of evangelization in Algeria. Johnson, a 45-year resident, left the country Wednesday (March 26) after having temporarily postponed a February 25 deportation order, collectifalgerie.free.fr reported.

“We are sorry that Algeria could not find another solution to this matter and is depriving itself of citizens like Hugh Johnson,” an article on the Algerian Christian website said.

Ranging in size from several dozen to more than 1,000 members, 32 congregations in Algeria belong to the EPA, while another 20 small fellowships exist independently.

Krim of the EPA said that five independent congregations and 14 EPA fellowships have been ordered to shut down.

He said that 11 of these received written orders from the police, two were told to close on a judge’s order, and six were given verbal warning by police and gendarmerie.

Congregations in Ait Amar, Ait Djemaa, Bachloul, Boughni, Ouargla, Tiaret and Tizi Ouzou are among those told to cease activity, according to Christian advocacy group Middle East Concern.

Despite increased church closures in recent weeks, Krim said that he had felt the support of prayers from Christians around the world.

“I feel the effectiveness of prayers for me from our greater family everywhere,” the pastor said.

END

PA: US Undermines Arab Summit

Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

The Palestinian Authority continues to accuse the United States of intentionally undermining and destabilizing the Arab world.

A cartoon in the official PA daily newspaper, Al Hayat-Al Jadida, shows the U.S. pulling away the crutch from an amputee struggling trying to walk towards the Arab Summit in Damascus. The message is that the U.S. continues to prevent the already weak Arab world from coming together and gaining strength.

The PA joins Syria in blaming the U.S. for the fact that the leaders of Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan boycotted the weekend summit.

CAIR Portrays "War on Terrorism" as Malicious "War on Islam"

Steven Emerson
IPT News
March 31, 2008
http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/632

(Note: To read today's full installment, click here: http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/117.pdf)

"The new perception is that the United States has entered a war with Islam itself," CAIR Chairman Parvez Ahmed declared at Washington's National Press Club in July 2007.

But, in fact, CAIR officials and spokesmen have been peddling that same "new perception" ever since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. They have portrayed virtually every intervening prosecution of an alleged terrorist who is Muslim and every investigation of an alleged terrorist front group as an insidious attack on their religion.

Today's sixth installment in IPT's detailed analysis of the self-proclaimed civil rights group focuses on its protestations that the war on terrorism amounts to a war on Islam. - CAIR and other Muslim groups issued a joint statement after the U.S. government froze the assets of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) in December 2001, warning that the action "could create the impression that there has been a shift from a war on terrorism to an attack on Islam." A CAIR press release issued the same month warned of "a drumbeat of anti-Muslim rhetoric from those who are taking advantage of the 9-11 tragedy to carry out their agenda of silencing our community and its leadership."

- When authorities arrested CAIR-Texas founding board member Ghassan Elashi and others charged with illegally sending computer equipment to Libya and Syria and engaging in financial transactions with a Specially Designated Terrorist, a CAIR-Dallas press release expressed concern that "these charges result from what appears to be a ‘war on Islam and Muslims' rather than a ‘war on terror.'" The group worried, "We, as American Muslims are facing an uphill battle in defending our own government's foreign policy, as well as the, so-called, war on terrorism, while being targeted by our own law enforcement agencies."

- Responding in June 2002 to a Department of Justice initiative to weed out suspected terrorists, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad asked, "What is next? Forcing American Muslims to wear a star and crescent as a means of identification for law enforcement authorities?"

- In a February 2003 press release, Awad complained of alleged religious and ethnic profiling by the FBI; that same month he remarked in an IslamOnline.net live dialogue, "Now we see extremists, including the Christian Right and the pro-Israel lobby, carrying out a coordinated campaign against Islam and Muslims. The result of this is clearly apparent from the racist policies and practices being carried out by some branches of the U.S. government influenced by these groups."

- At a January 2006 rally in Tampa in support of accused Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami Al-Arian, the Orlando Sentinel reported, "Awad said Al-Arian was the victim of a politically charged environment three years ago that resulted in the persecution of Muslims. ‘Is this about what we did or what we are?' said Awad.... ‘Most of these cases are done for political reasons…. I think the government is abusing the system.'"

Al-Arian was to plead guilty three months later to his PIJ involvement, and to admit he was "aware that the PIJ achieved its objectives by, among other means, acts of violence."

- Also on the Islam-under-attack bandwagon was Omar Ahmad, chairman emeritus of CAIR National. Speaking at a CAIR fundraiser in October 2002, Ahmad said, "These people hated Islam…before September 11. They are using the opportunity of September 11 to detain Islam Muslims or find the problem and attack the foundations of Islam…We are under attack."

- At another fundraiser in December 2003, Ahmad said, "Many of our civil liberties have been taken away since September 11 in the name of fighting terrorism. The process of marginalizing our community…is ongoing. A lot of media outlets, especially the right-wing outlets, are having a field day attacking Islam, attacking Muslims…"

- Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for CAIR National, is quoted in a December 2001 Denver Post article as saying, "There has been a demonization of Islam." In a July 2003 Chicago Tribune article, he is reported as charging the Department of Justice with pursuing a "general policy of targeting Muslims because they are Muslims." Again, in a May 2004 New York Times article, Hooper is quoted, "I'd be surprised if there's a mosque in the country that hasn't come under scrutiny these days. It becomes the whole Kevin Bacon game -- no Muslim is more than six degrees away from terrorism."

- When FBI Director Robert Mueller asked citizens in 2004 to be on the lookout for seven Muslim terrorism suspects, Hooper termed Mueller's call "part of the ‘round up the usual suspects' mentality," adding, "When you don't have any other leads, you gather up the Muslims."

- Interviewed for a 2003 CNSNews.com story on hearings that Senators Charles Schumer and Jon Kyl had held on Wahhabi influence in America, Hooper commented, "elected representatives like Senator Schumer and Senator Kyl…are jumping on this issue in order to demonize all Muslim groups and all Muslims in America."

- Other CAIR officials around the country -- heads of local groups from Ohio, to Florida, to Arizona, to California, as well as regional and national leaders -- have consistently made pointed charges of anti-Muslim bias. For example, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR-Southern California, was quoted by the Associated Press in May 2004 as asserting that the United States had become the "new Saddam" and should "end this hypocrisy, this hypocrisy that we are better than the other dictator."

Again, to see today's full installment, click on this link: http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/117.pdf

This is why Condi wins:Can Condi's three generals help her out-maneuver Barak in the West Bank?

alev Ben-David
THE JERUSALEM POST
Mar. 31, 2008

Score this one for Condi.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice certainly wasn't going to fly here for a lightning visit and then leave without gaining at least one headline-worthy concession from Israel on easing conditions for the Palestinians in the West Bank.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak had already made pre-emptive moves last week, when he signed off on the deployment of 700 Palestinian policemen currently being trained in Jordan into the Jenin area, as well as PA security forces being equipped with 25 armored personnel carriers.

But Rice wanted more, and got it with the announcement yesterday that the IDF would soon take down 50 roadblocks and dirt barriers throughout Judea and Samaria. Though Barak has publicly resisted easing such travel impediments for the Palestinians, on the grounds it might increase the odds of a terror attack, the most politically opportune time to make such an announcement was surely during a visit by a US secretary of state so heavily invested in the peace process here that she has made it the policy centerpiece of her final year in office.

Even so, it can't be easy for Rice to sit opposite the most decorated soldier in Israeli military history, and counter his arguments that the concessions she is demanding risk endangering the security of this nation's citizens. Perhaps that helps explain why she has enlisted some heavy brass to help her in that mission, a trio of top US military officials: Gen. James Jones, Lt.-Gen. William Fraser and Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton.

Why the three - and what exactly does each one do? Jones is the senior of the trio, a combat-decorated former commandant of the Marine Corps, "which means people in Washington think of him not as a guy who can walk on water, but ten feet above it," says one Washington insider.

Jones, who officially retired from active duty last year after serving as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, was appointed by Rice at the Annapolis conference as US Special Envoy for Middle East Security. Befitting his title, he is described by one source as "the big-picture guy," advising and helping Rice to place the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a larger regional context, a responsibility that includes engaging other Arab leaders.

Jones, who also holds a senior position in the US Chamber of Commerce and sits on the corporate boards of Boeing and Chevron, is a real heavyweight, not only for his storied military past, but his possible future prospects. Last year the Wall Street Journal described him as one of "Washington's hottest political commodities," courted equally by both Republicans and Democrats. Hillary Clinton has talked of putting him in her cabinet, Barack Obama has consulted with him, and John McCain described Jones as one of his "closest and longtime friends."

All that gives him the credentials to play the role of Rice's four-star, 300-pound gorilla-in-the-room. Not surprising, then, that it was Jones, as The Jerusalem Post reported last week, who leaned on Barak to make security concessions ahead of the secretary's visit.

Fraser, the second of Rice's generals, was appointed during President Bush's visit here in January specifically to monitor the implementation by Israel and the Palestinian Authority of their road map obligations, and chair the tripartite meetings with Israeli and Palestinian representatives to assess their progress.

Although a three-star former top US Air Force commander, Washington sources say his real authority stems from his current role as assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well serving as Rice's chief military adviser. "No one gets more face-time with the secretary than he does," says one source.

Barak would do well then not to undervalue Fraser - which is why both US and Israeli sources say it was a real mistake for the defense minister to have sent adviser Amos Gilad in his stead to the last tripartite meeting held two weeks ago with Fraser and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad.

Rice's inserting Jones and Fraser into the picture here has reportedly meant a less prominent role for Dayton, US security coordinator to Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Dayton's job is to help rebuild the PA security establishment and make it an effective and accountable force. In practical terms, this means helping oversee the training of Palestinian security personnel being conducted in Jordan, such as that of the policemen who are now heading for Jenin. Although no US military personnel are directly involved in that training, private American security contractors of the type now operating in Iraq are taking part.

Dayton also consults with the Palestinian Authority Strategic Planning Directorate, a national security council-type body recently set up in Ramallah to try and create longer-term security policy for the Palestinians. And he is advising on the reconstruction of the PA security infrastructure in Jericho that was destroyed by Israel during the second intifada - an effort reportedly behind schedule because the contractors involved now insist on being paid in shekels, instead of dollars.

Israeli security sources say that when Ephraim Sneh served as deputy defense minister under Amir Peretz, he met regularly with Dayton to discuss larger strategic issues, but that practice has largely stopped since Sneh was succeeded in that position by Matan Vilna'i. Those sources say this is mainly due to Dayton being overshadowed by the involvement of Jones and Fraser; it may also involve rumored tensions between Dayton and Barak, the latter reportedly bristling at criticism the general has made of the defense minister's unwillingness to approve giving the PA security forces more operational latitude and higher-level military equipment.

Barak's team may feel Dayton's authority has diminished with Jones and Fraser on the scene; but for the latter two, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very much a part-time gig, while it's Dayton who is on the ground here full-time, and is specifically tasked with the job - creating a viable PA security force - on which any future real political progress is likely to depend.

Barak has good reasons to be cautious, both for the safety of the Israeli people, as well as his own prime ministerial prospects if security concessions on the West Bank lead to renewed terror attacks (or the nightmare scenario of an those weapons and APCs being given to the PA eventually falling into the hands of Hamas).

But as 2008 winds on and the Bush administration presses for more progress on the Israeli-Palestinian peace front, it will be Rice's generals who will be leading the secretary's charge for Israel to make ever more concessions on the West Bank - and Israel's own general of generals who will have to find the right balance to both keeping Washington happy, and Israelis secure.

Calev@jpost.com

You can’t ‘tame’ Israeli Arabs

When inflammatory statements against Israeli Arabs abound, Land Day is more than relevant
Abir Kopty-an Arab perspective

Land Day is perpetual proof of Israel’s failures and shortcoming vis-à-vis its Arab population. From the days of Ben-Gurion who wanted to make us (Israeli Arabs) into “woodchoppers and water bearers”, to the present day when blatant incitement against us abounds, and calls for transfer are rampant and have become part of the mainstream. Many believed that we could be domesticated, house broken, the national consciousness seared out of us. They were wrong, and they mislead others into seeing us as a problem, an enemy. This prevents many people from listening to our national narrative, our tale, and acknowledging our legitimate needs and concern.

Land Day this year sees a growing trend of blatant racism towards Israeli Arabs, as well as a growing delegitimatization of our right to live in the Negev, the Galilee, and in Israel’s ethnically mixed cities and towns. The active participation in Land Day events, even 32 years later, clearly shows that the struggle is far from over, and that young Israeli Arabs, especially, do not passively accept the question marks cast on their lives.

The advent of Land Day came when Israeli Arabs, led by the Communist Party, held a general strike for the first time since 1948. This, in protest of the Israeli government ‘s decision to seize thousands of acres of land in the Galilee from what is today the Arab village of Natufa in order to bring “Jewish blood” to the Galilee and to establish settlements in the region for Jews alone. Six Arab residents of Sakhnin, Kfar Kana and Arabeh were killed at the hands of police that fateful day.

Land Day happened nearly as many years ago as I was born, but it left an indelible mark even on those Israeli Arabs that did not experience it first hand. Thousands of my Israeli-Arab cohorts are today marking Land Day in events across Israel, from the Negev to the Galilee. Commemorating this day also serves to unite all segments of the Palestinian populace, as the day is marked even by Palestinians who live in the occupied territories and in refugee camps. The day is also firmly seared into international consciousness, being acknowledged by Arab nations and solidarity movements worldwide.

The day, aside from its astute symbolic significance, also hold several other important meanings, one of which relates to the importance of land to the Arab citizens of Israel. Since 1948, Israel’s Arab citizens were denied hundreds of acres of land. Today, after 60 years of supposed citizenship, hundreds of Arabs villages, towns and cities still do not have clearly designated boundaries, and thousands of Arab homes face grazing and demolition. Moreover, the State of Israel denies some 50 unrecognized Arab villages basic services such as water, electricity, schools and health services. Even within ethnically mixed cities and towns, Israeli Arabs are faced with racially motivated eviction schemes.

On the political front, Land Day represents the collective consciousness of the Arab population as minority struggling to define its national identity, and as citizens struggling for equal rights. This is the national day of that small minority who chose to remain behind after Israeli Independence, and who, in 1976, stood up and demanded their equal rights as citizens; the right to live and subsist in dignity foremost among them.

Israel says no to Rice demand for free Palestinian passage from Jenin to Mt. Hebron

This demand, according to DEBKAfile’s military sources, would amount to lifting Israeli restrictions on Palestinian travel from the northern West Bank terrorist stronghold of Jenin all the way through Jerusalem’s outskirts to the southern West Bank Tarkumiyeh terminal, the Palestinian entry point from the Gaza Strip.

Our exclusive sources report that US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice put this stipulation to prime minister Ehud Olmert, defense minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Tzipi Livni, Sunday, March 30. It was one of three she wanted implemented in the five weeks before President George W. Bush’s attendance of Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations. Rice explained she was not asking for free Palestinian passage on all the West Bank’s roads - only one or two, where they could travel without running into Israeli checkpoints.

Israel’s top military commanders warned government leaders in the strongest possible terms that the US secretary’s demands if met would spell the end of their war on terror and expose Jerusalem and other Israeli cities to the waves of suicide killers their systematic efforts had been holding back. The checkpoints were a vital element of their operations to keep Israel’s heartland safe from terrorists.

The Jenin-Tarkumiyeh route, they said, was already targeted by terrorists led by Hamas for two-way smuggling between Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Removing all existing controls would present the Gaza and Jenin terror networks with the gift of a direct, unmonitored link.

The military warning covered Condoleezza Rice’s second stipulation for free Palestinian travel between the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli commanders dismissed this as an invitation to import Gaza’s smuggling machinery of terrorists, explosives and disassembled rockets to the West Bank.

Rice’s third demand was for Israel to let 12,000 Palestinian security officers to train in Jordan for duty in all the West Bank’s towns. This is twenty times the number Israel proposed to allow.

It was not clear if Bush’s visit is predicated on Israel meeting the secretary of state’s demands.

They were the reason Olmert decided to relocate Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting from Jerusalem to the caves of Beit Shearim, the renowned second century center of Jewish learning in northern Israel’s Jezreel Valley.

The ministers decided to expand inter-city cycling routes and strongly objected to Rice’s demands as unacceptably hazardous to national security.
Barak offered instead the removal of 50 dirt roadblocks and the checkpoint outside Jericho, as well as repeating the offer to allow 600 security officers trained in Jordan to deploy in Jenin.

Rice responded skeptically that US General William Fraser would personally monitor the implementation of these steps and see for himself if the removal of the 50 roadblocks in the Jenin, Ramallah, Tulkarm and Qaliqaliya regions did indeed ease Palestinian lives.

To bring home to the American visitor the perils facing Israel close at hand, wide publicity was given Sunday night to a national emergency exercise called for two weeks’ time to prepare the country for non-conventional missile attack. It will encompass all branches of government, the defense community, local councils, schools and the home defense command. Medical services, fire brigades and other emergency services will practice large-scale evacuations of dead and wounded.