Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu Protest Agenda Aims at Judaism
Yair Lapid, who has formed a party to run in the next Knesset election, bares the truth of the protest agenda: a secular State of Israel
Lapid, whose later father Tommy Lapid headed the anti-religious Shinui party, claimed in an op-ed in the Yediot Aharanot newspaper Sunday that he represents Israel’s “largest minority.”
He claims his “majority,” meaning a plurality, “can now form alliances with other minorities. With the hareidim who happen to want to work, with the religious who don’t think that Judaism is all about a hill in Samaria, and with the Arabs who want to perform national service. “Israel’s secular majority finally fighting back, starting to behave like a minority group.”
His definition of “secular” apparently includes anyone who does not define himself as “religious” but includes what actually may be Israel’s real largest minority – Jews who define themselves as traditional, meaning they keep many Jewish laws and customs but are not strictly observant or secular.
However, Lapid argued that his minority of 42 percent is the largest majority in Israel. It “does not know how to join forces for the sake of its own interests,” according to Lapid.” The majority cannot afford to say ‘to hell with everything’; the majority does not hire lobbyists, does not set up NGOs that would work for its interests, and does not know how to press Knesset members from its sector, because it’s not a sector.”
Without noting left-wing activist groups such as the New Israel Fund, Yesh Din and Peace Now, Lapid moved on to attack nationalists, alleging that “the majority also cannot build an illegal home, on illegal land, and then fight with the police officers who come to evict it, because the majority has a nephew in the police and loves its nephew….
“The majority’s children are already in high school and one even finished his military service, yet his sister-in-law has two children in kindergarten and pays almost $1,000 per month. The majority looks at the minorities and knows that there’s no chance they are paying similar sums, because they wouldn’t be able to afford it. The majority isn’t jealous, but wonders who arranged this for them? Who arranged life so that their sister-in-law doesn’t pay the same as the majority’s sister-in-law?”
In fact, the national-religious community’s sons, proportionately represent the largest sector in the IDF, and the strictly secular community, as noted in statistics from secular high schools in metropolitan Tel Aviv and in secular kibbutzim, have a high rate of draft-dodging.
Lapid also charged that his “majority…is the only one that paid the full price” and that “all the others got some discount arranged…. They decided that G-d has to arrange a home on a hill for them for ideological reasons, with an ideological backyard.” He was referring to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, where the government’s official building freeze two years ago largely remains in effect unofficially.
Lapid, like his father, wants a State of Israel where Judaism is strictly a personal issue, a situation that is considered “secular coercion” by a large number of Israelis, both religious and traditional.
Meanwhile, Israel’s mainstream media continued on Sunday to promote the protest movement. Although even left-wing outlets such as Haaretz, reported that 150,000 people protested nationwide – without noting that nearly twice that number protests six years ago against the expulsions of Jews from Gush Katif – the Jerusalem Post went one step further and headlined that ”hundreds of thousands” people demonstrated.
The media also played down or ignored the appearance of uniformed IDF reservists at the protest against the cost of housing, education, food and just about everything else, blaming the Netanyahu government for the country’s age-old ails.
Previous political appearances by uniformed soldiers against expulsions of Jews and against the demolitions of Jewish homes have been met by harsh punishment, including eviction from combat units.
An attempt is made to share the truth regarding issues concerning Israel and her right to exist as a Jewish nation. This blog has expanded to present information about radical Islam and its potential impact upon Israel and the West. Yes, I do mix in a bit of opinion from time to time.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Chris Hedges, Harper's, and Israel
CAMERA
Chris Hedges’ “A Gaza Diary: Scenes from the Palestinian Uprising,” published in the September/October edition of Harper’s, is severely marred by material errors and grave anti-Israel bias. Despite being an experienced journalist, Mr. Hedges repeatedly offers verbatim Palestinian claims of Israeli misconduct without providing either an Israeli response or independent corroborating information. CAMERA has now fact-checked numerous allegations made by the reporter and has found many to be false. Following are some of the major errors identified.
1). Hedges devoted most of his focus to events and conditions in the Palestinian towns of Khan Younis and nearby Mawasi in the Gaza Strip. He wrote:
In Mawasi many wells have gone completely dry, but the Israelis refuse to allow the villagers to drill new ones.
In fact, since the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994 and Oslo II of 1995, Israel no longer has any civil authority within these camps. Yoram Barak, the spokesman for the Coordinator for Civilian Affairs in Gaza, stated that “Mawasi is completely under Palestinian civil control and Israel therefore has no authority to prevent or permit civilian activity such as the digging of wells there.” Many Israeli water experts have lamented the rampant, unregulated Palestinian well- drilling that began after Israel ended its civil administration of Gaza. Such drilling has severely damaged the aquifers used by the Palestinian population, leading to infiltration of seawater.
2). Hedges wrote:
When I met a few days earlier with Osama al-Farra, the mayor of Khan Younis, he explained to me why the Israelis chose to build a settlement right between Mawasi and Khan Younis. "They have thirty-two wells. They built a pipeline in 1994 to carry the water into Israel. There are probably about 1000 people in the settlement next to the camp, but they consume one third of our water supply, though about 160,000 people live in Khan Younis."
• First - according to Noah Kinarti, chief water adviser to Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and Mekorot, Israel’s National Water Carrier, rather than 32 wells under one settlement, Israel has built a total of 26 wells under all 17 of their settlements in the Gaza Strip. Of those 26 wells, one is no longer in use, and five were given to the Palestinians in the context of the Oslo Accords. Today, Israel operates only 20 wells in the Gaza Strip.
• While Mayor al-Farra claimed the Israelis “built a pipeline in 1994 to carry water into Israel,” the truth is precisely the opposite. The Israeli Kissufim pipeline pumps water from Israel into Gaza; no water from Gaza is pumped into Israel.
Kinarti, who has also served as a water adviser to Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Mordecai, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin, and who negotiated with the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon over water rights in the region, said on October 17: “Israel pumps 5 million cubic meters (MCM) of water annually from underneath the Mawasi/Khan Younis area in the Gaza Strip. Of it, half is supplied to the Jewish communities of Gush Katif, and half is supplied to Khan Younis and Mawasi. Israel pumps an additional 5 MCM from within Israel to Gaza. 2.5 million is supplied to the Palestinians, and 2.5 million is supplied to the Jewish settlers in Gaza.”
Thus - while Israel uses 2.5 MCM for its own settlements from underneath Khan Younis and Mawasi, it returns it by giving the Palestinians an equal amount of water from within Israel.
• CAMERA also contacted the Palestinian Water Commissioner Nabil A-Sharif on October 26 and asked if Israel takes any water from Gaza into Israel. His response: “The pipeline leads from Israel into Gaza. Water is never taken from Gaza and brought into Israel. We sit down with the Israelis to discuss water issues every month, and this has never come up.” Asked specifically about Khan Younis mayor Osama al-Farra’s statement - repeated without qualification by Hedges - that Israel built a pipeline in 1994 to carry water into Israel, he said “let him prove it. This statement [by al-Farra] has no proof.”
In Oslo II, signed on September 28, 1995, Israel and the Palestinians agreed that Israel would supply the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip with an additional 5 MCM of water per year, but to date the Palestinians have not built the infrastructure for storage and distribution of this additional water Israel has agreed to provide them. “The Palestinians have repeatedly told us to wait until they are ready before supplying them with the extra 5 million cm” said Kinarti on October 17.
CAMERA checked this with Nabil a-Sharif as well. Sharif responded that this was true. He added; “We have to build the north-south carrier which will receive the extra 5 MCM, plus some desalinated water. This pipeline will be built with US assistance, and hopefully partially finished - during the year 2002. To be honest, we have asked the Israelis not to start pumping water until we’re ready.”
• Hedges also cited the assertion that:
There are probably about 1,000 people in the settlement next to the camp, but they consume one third of our water supply, though about 160,000 people live in Khan Younis.
This statement is blatantly deceptive; the mayor must know, and Hedges could have easily discovered by checking, that the Palestinians have 100 MCM of their own water pumped to Palestinian communities in the Gaza Strip annually. The water which Israel does use in the Khan Younis/Mawasi area - 2.5 MCM - which is replaced by another 2.5 MCM from within Israel - is not the sole source of the Palestinians’ water. They have their own sources elsewhere within the Gaza Strip. Why does Hedges omit this essential information?
3). Hedges wrote:
The Egyptians, who first controlled Gaza, would not allow the camp to expand, nor would the Israelis, who gained control of Gaza after the war in 1967.
Hedges is right about the first part. It is true the Egyptians did not allow any expansion or new building for the Palestinians during their rule of Gaza (1948-1967).
He is wrong in his second assertion. Many nations – including Israel – have tried to help improve the lot of Palestinian refugees. The PLO has consistently rebuffed these efforts - particularly Israel’s, preferring to keep Palestinians angry and destitute as a way of maintaining and focusing their rage on the state of Israel. Arab states abetted this, regularly introducing resolutions in the United Nations denouncing Israel for seeking to move Palestinians out of squalid refugee camps. UNRWA's Ralph Garroway said in August 1958:
The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.
Hedges himself is well aware of these realities. In correspondence in February 1994 to his deputy editor at The New York Times, Steven R. Weisman, Hedges wrote:
The PLO did resist Israeli attempts to move Palestinians to housing units. And many people do charge the PLO with keeping Palestinians in squalor to prove a political point. (This correspondence came in response to a 1994 CAMERA query about another Hedges article on Gaza.)
If these facts were known to Hedges seven years ago, why did he falsify them in his October story?
Despite the opposition of the PLO and Arab countries toward improving the Palestinians’ lot, Israel did manage some modest improvements and expansion of the Palestinians’ housing needs in Khan Younis. In the Al-Amal “A” neighborhood Israel built 500 apartment units at the beginning of the 1980's. In the Al-Amal “B” neighborhood Israel apportioned over 2000 plots of 250 square meters each for both private and public use, also at the beginning of the 1980's. (Yoram Barak, Spokesman for the Coordinator for Civil Affairs in Gaza).
During the Israeli administration, despite tension, terrorism and war, authorities also did add new infrastructure, including roads, electricity, a sewage system and new schools.
Hedges, while he mentions that Israel “gained control of the camp after 1967,” neglects to mention - purposefully, it appears - that since the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994, Israel no longer has any authority over the camp of Khan Younis. The Palestinian Authority does. If the camp has not been able to expand since 1994, this is solely because of the Palestinian Authority.
4). In an exceptionally incendiary passage, Hedges claims:
Children have been shot in other countries I have covered - death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo - but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.
• First, the sheer malice of this comment speaks for itself; if the Israelis, with the most powerful army in the Middle East enticed “children like mice into a trap and murdered them for sport,” why was only one person killed on June 17 - as tragic as that was - when Hedges wrote his “diary” entry on the events in question?
Moreover, Hedges’ account is at odds with those in other media, including his home publication, the New York Times. Reporting the events of June 17, Times correspondent Douglas Frantz wrote: “The Israeli military said soldiers had been under attack with stones and bottles” when they opened fire on “a crowd trying to tear down surrounding Jewish settlements in Gush Katif.”
Other news agencies reported that the Palestinians began throwing stones at soldiers in an Israeli settlement near Khan Younis after an attempted suicide bombing near Dahaniya in Gaza the same day. Margot Dudkevitch of the Jerusalem Post reported:
Near the entrance to Dahaniya, soldiers became suspicious of a man driving a donkey cart. As he approached the soldiers, the man jumped from the cart and detonated explosives hidden in it...IDF sappers detonated the remaining bombs that failed to explode, among them four gas canisters and two mines.
Soldiers on duty, already on edge, were aware that innocent looking Palestinians had tried to blow up other Israeli soldiers elsewhere in the Gaza Strip the same day. But Hedges did not even bother to report in his “diary” of events the attempted suicide bombing aimed at killing Israelis.
Similarly, an armed Palestinian gang shot and killed a 12 year old Palestinian on June 16 in the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Hedges, who was in Gaza at the time, makes no mention of this either. On June 18 it was reported in The Jerusalem Post:
Yesterday, Palestinians, who had blamed Israel for the death of another 12 year-old boy near Rafah on Saturday, admitted that the boy had been killed by an armed opposition faction operating in Rafah. According to reports, a dispute broke out between Palestinian security officials and an armed gang that shot at soldiers near Rafah Yam. The Palestinian security officials demanded that the armed gang leave, and as they drove off gang members began shooting at random, mortally wounding Suliman Massari, 12, who was in a car, and wounding several other passengers.
• Notably, Thomas L. Friedman, a colleague of Hedges’ at The New York Times, wrote an op-ed (“Saudi Royals and Reality”, October 16, 2001) with what might have been an allusion to Chris Hedges’ falsehoods and deceptions in “A Gaza Diary.”
[T]o suggest that Israel is slaughtering Palestinians for sport, as if a war were not going on there, which Israel did not court, in which civilians on both sides are being killed... - is just a lie.
Friedman added that; “Normally such casual lying doesn’t bother me. It’s a staple of Middle East politics, but this particular version is dangerous, because it masks a deeper lie that can hurt us. I call it “the virgin birth problem.” Friedman was referring to a lack of Arab accountability not only regarding the Palestinian violence plaguing Israel for the past year but the larger problem of Arab hatred for the West which was brought home on September 11.
5) Hedges claims Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian children with guns equipped “with silencers.” According to senior IDF officers, including IDF spokesman Olivier Rafowitz, silencers are used only by special forces troops in close combat situations, not by conventional troops in guard-duty or riot-control circumstances. In addition, these same officers have stated that the attachment used to fire rubber bullets might appear – to a non-expert – to be a silencer. Finally, one might ask, since silencers are employed for stealth operations in which the use of a gun is intended to be concealed, why would Israeli soldiers use them openly where observers could see them?
6). Hedges presents all Palestinian fathers and father-figures as strongly opposed to their children becoming martyrs or suicide bombers. Thus, Faqawi, a Palestinian father of two, tells Hedges on June 16:
I can never say that the way to fight Israelis is to blow ourselves up. I can’t allow my children to think like this.
On June 18, he talks to Murad Abdel Rahman, whose son was killed while confronting Israelis:
‘This is what I worked so hard to prevent,' he says, his voice hoarse and low...'I made him promise he would not go the dunes to throw rocks.'
A Palestinian mother interviewed the same day says:
I tell the boys it is useless, throwing stones and becoming a martyr.
On June 20 a Palestinian man is quoted as telling Hedges:
I can’t stand to see the children get shot...I don’t care about the others. But when the children get shot I cry. I can’t take it.
Finally, Hedges describes and then quotes a Hamas sheikh who opposes children fighting Israeli troops.
[E]ven the sheikh has used his time during Friday prayers to implore the young boys not to go out on the dunes..."I know that every father tries to keep his children away from the fence," he says. "The teachers and the imams tell the children not to go. When I preach in the mosque I tell them to stay away."
Hedges does not quote one Palestinian adult supporting their children becoming “martyrs.” Yet for years not only Hamas but the Palestinian Authority has exhorted children via its media, schools, mosques and political statements to become martyrs - to die for the sake of Palestine. With regard to the extreme expression of martyrdom in the form of suicide bombing, a June 2001 poll – unmentioned by Hedges – found 76% of Palestinians support suicide bombings. (“The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion,” based in the West Bank and directed by Dr. Nabil Kukali. The survey was taken between May 24-26. The margin of error was 4%.)
Does the omission mean Hedges is unaware of such views among the Palestinians? In fact, we know otherwise from his own writing. Seven months prior to “A Gaza Diary,” in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs, Hedges wrote very differently about the Palestinians. While extremely critical of Israel, he did not spare the Palestinians either.
In an article entitled “The New Palestinian Revolt,” Palestinian parents are quoted by Hedges in support of their children becoming martyrs. The reporter’s interview with a Palestinian woman contained the following:
‘Tell the man what you want to be,’ said Hyam Temraz to her two-year-old son, Abed, as she peeped out of the slit of a black veil.
‘A martyr,’ the child answered.
She said that another son had been talking about liberating Palestine since he was four.
He has always told me that he would be a martyr and that one day I would dig his grave.
Hedges spoke to a Palestinian man, Nezzar Rayan, in that same article:
Today, his three sons - ages 12, 15, and 16 - daily join the youths who throw rocks at Israeli checkpoints. All three, according to their father, strive to be one thing: martyrs for Palestine.
‘I pray only that God will choose them,' he said.
In Harper’s these voices endorsing martyrdom have been eliminated. Hedges has evidently made a conscious choice to omit information damaging to the Palestinian cause.
7). Alleging further murders by Israel, Hedges wrote:
I watch Jihad Abu Mousa, twenty-two, kick at a few pieces of rubble. He is morose and silent...On January 29 his twenty-three-year-old brother was shot dead by Israeli soldiers, while, Jihad says, playing a game of soccer.
• A Nexis search reveals that one Palestinian was killed on January 29, Muhammad Abu Musa, and he was not “playing a game of soccer.” On January 30, Agence France Presse reported: “Hamas’ military wing, Ezzadin al-Qassam, claimed responsibility during the funeral for a Palestinian shot dead by Israeli soldiers the day before at the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Around 10,000 people attended the funeral of Mohammed Abu Musa, 21, many shouting ‘death to Israel’ and praising both Hamas and the militia wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.”
That is, Muhammad Abu Musa, brother of Jihad Abu Musa, was a member of Hamas.
On January 30 The New York Times reported that “a Palestinian was killed in a clash in the Gaza Strip.” The same day, The Chicago Tribune reported “Israeli troops shot dead a 21-year old Palestinian man in a confrontation in the Gaza Strip.” Neither The Times nor The Tribune mentioned that Abu Musa was killed “playing a game of soccer.”
The Jerusalem Post, which generally covers clashes in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip in greater depth than American papers, wrote on January 30: “...violence continued in the Gaza Strip yesterday, with Palestinians claiming that 21-year-old Mohammed Abu Mussa was killed near Khan Younis during an exchange of fire with soldiers. (Note that while Hedges reports the age of Mohammed Abu Mussa as 23, all other media surveyed put it at 21.) The IDF Spokesman said soldiers shot and killed an armed Palestinian who had loaded his gun and aimed at them.”
Even “Adameer,” the Palestinian web site, and B’tselem, the Israeli group highly critical of Israel, do not claim that Muhammad Abu Mussa was shot by Israeli soldiers while playing soccer.
Indeed, no news source reported Muhammad Abu Musa was killed while playing soccer; rather the accounts told of his involvement in violent confrontation with Israelis.
8) Hedges stated: “The latest intifada erupted in September 2000, when Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli opposition leader and now the prime minister, visited the al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam...”
Ariel Sharon did not visit the al-Aqsa Mosque. He walked on the Temple Mount, the plaza where the first and second Jewish Temples stood, the holiest site in Judaism. The al-Aqsa Mosque is located on the large plaza, but Sharon did not enter or visit it. Hedges’ omission of the meaning and sanctity of the Temple Mount to Jews and his inaccurate account of Sharon’s actions falsely suggest Sharon intruded on an exclusively Islamic site.
9) Hedges stated: “From 1987 to 1993, during the first intifada, Hamas targeted only Israeli soldiers and settlements. It began to attack individual Israeli civilians after a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, gunned down twenty-nine Muslim worshipers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.”
Hamas targeted civilians before Goldstein’s shooting of Muslims in February 1994. For example, on July 2, 1993 Hamas terrorists attacked a Jerusalem bus killing two and wounding two others. They used assault rifles and carried bombs concealed in bags. One woman was murdered on the bus and another when the fleeing Hamas members seized a car, then shot the driver and threw her out of the vehicle. Hamas murders of civilians in Israel did not begin, as Hedges seems to imply, as a consequence of Baruch Goldstein's shooting Arab civilians.
In summary, the material errors identified are as follows:
1). “Israel does not allow Palestinian villagers in Mawasi to drill new wells.” Israel, as stated, has no jurisdiction over the matter of well-drilling in Palestinian-controlled territories, of which Mawasi and Khan Younis are a part.
2). “Israel has 32 wells” under one settlement between the Palestinian towns of Mawasi and Khan Younis. In fact, Israel operates only 20 wells, and they are under 17 settlements.
3). Israel “built a pipeline in 1994 to carry water into Israel.” Israel does not take any water from Gaza into Israel - but rather supplies the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip with water.
4). Israel “would not allow the [Khan Younis] camp to expand.” Israel did initiate a modest expansion program in the camp in the 1980's and was consistently thwarted by the PLO, as were other nations, in efforts to do more.
5). Israel entices children like “mice into a trap and murders them for sport.” One Palestinian was killed on June 17, when Hedges was in Gaza reporting this lurid passage. It was the same day that a Palestinian bomber had attacked Israelis nearby in Gaza, an event unmentioned by Hedges. According to The New York Times and other news agencies the Palestinian fatality occurred in the midst of violence - not as “sport.”
6). Israeli “soldiers shoot [Palestinian children] with silencers.” The Israeli military denies this allegation.
7) Hedges quoted only Palestinians who say they oppose their children becoming “martyrs” - and dying for the sake of Palestine. This is a highly misleading characterization, as we know from Hedges’ own writing in the January/ February 2001 issue of Foreign Affairs.
8). “Mohammed [Abu Musa] was shot dead by Israeli soldiers while... playing a game of soccer.” Mohammad Abu Mousa, a Hamas member, was reported in numerous news outlets as having died in a violent confrontation with Israelis.
9) “The latest intifada erupted...when Ariel Sharon ...visited the al-Aqsa Mosque...” Sharon did not visit the al-Aqsa Mosque.
10) “Hamas targeted only Israeli soldiers and settlements” before “Baruch Goldstein gunned own twenty-nine Muslim worshipers...” Hamas targeting of civilians in Israel pre- dated Goldstein.
Chris Hedges’ account was marred by other serious deficiencies, including the gross omission of context with regard to violence against Israelis in Gaza – failing to mention there had been nearly 3000 Palestinian attacks launched between October 2000 and June 2001 – and the total absence of any Israeli voice to challenge specifically the grave accusations against its people and policies.
Chris Hedges’ “A Gaza Diary: Scenes from the Palestinian Uprising,” published in the September/October edition of Harper’s, is severely marred by material errors and grave anti-Israel bias. Despite being an experienced journalist, Mr. Hedges repeatedly offers verbatim Palestinian claims of Israeli misconduct without providing either an Israeli response or independent corroborating information. CAMERA has now fact-checked numerous allegations made by the reporter and has found many to be false. Following are some of the major errors identified.
1). Hedges devoted most of his focus to events and conditions in the Palestinian towns of Khan Younis and nearby Mawasi in the Gaza Strip. He wrote:
In Mawasi many wells have gone completely dry, but the Israelis refuse to allow the villagers to drill new ones.
In fact, since the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994 and Oslo II of 1995, Israel no longer has any civil authority within these camps. Yoram Barak, the spokesman for the Coordinator for Civilian Affairs in Gaza, stated that “Mawasi is completely under Palestinian civil control and Israel therefore has no authority to prevent or permit civilian activity such as the digging of wells there.” Many Israeli water experts have lamented the rampant, unregulated Palestinian well- drilling that began after Israel ended its civil administration of Gaza. Such drilling has severely damaged the aquifers used by the Palestinian population, leading to infiltration of seawater.
2). Hedges wrote:
When I met a few days earlier with Osama al-Farra, the mayor of Khan Younis, he explained to me why the Israelis chose to build a settlement right between Mawasi and Khan Younis. "They have thirty-two wells. They built a pipeline in 1994 to carry the water into Israel. There are probably about 1000 people in the settlement next to the camp, but they consume one third of our water supply, though about 160,000 people live in Khan Younis."
• First - according to Noah Kinarti, chief water adviser to Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and Mekorot, Israel’s National Water Carrier, rather than 32 wells under one settlement, Israel has built a total of 26 wells under all 17 of their settlements in the Gaza Strip. Of those 26 wells, one is no longer in use, and five were given to the Palestinians in the context of the Oslo Accords. Today, Israel operates only 20 wells in the Gaza Strip.
• While Mayor al-Farra claimed the Israelis “built a pipeline in 1994 to carry water into Israel,” the truth is precisely the opposite. The Israeli Kissufim pipeline pumps water from Israel into Gaza; no water from Gaza is pumped into Israel.
Kinarti, who has also served as a water adviser to Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Mordecai, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin, and who negotiated with the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon over water rights in the region, said on October 17: “Israel pumps 5 million cubic meters (MCM) of water annually from underneath the Mawasi/Khan Younis area in the Gaza Strip. Of it, half is supplied to the Jewish communities of Gush Katif, and half is supplied to Khan Younis and Mawasi. Israel pumps an additional 5 MCM from within Israel to Gaza. 2.5 million is supplied to the Palestinians, and 2.5 million is supplied to the Jewish settlers in Gaza.”
Thus - while Israel uses 2.5 MCM for its own settlements from underneath Khan Younis and Mawasi, it returns it by giving the Palestinians an equal amount of water from within Israel.
• CAMERA also contacted the Palestinian Water Commissioner Nabil A-Sharif on October 26 and asked if Israel takes any water from Gaza into Israel. His response: “The pipeline leads from Israel into Gaza. Water is never taken from Gaza and brought into Israel. We sit down with the Israelis to discuss water issues every month, and this has never come up.” Asked specifically about Khan Younis mayor Osama al-Farra’s statement - repeated without qualification by Hedges - that Israel built a pipeline in 1994 to carry water into Israel, he said “let him prove it. This statement [by al-Farra] has no proof.”
In Oslo II, signed on September 28, 1995, Israel and the Palestinians agreed that Israel would supply the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip with an additional 5 MCM of water per year, but to date the Palestinians have not built the infrastructure for storage and distribution of this additional water Israel has agreed to provide them. “The Palestinians have repeatedly told us to wait until they are ready before supplying them with the extra 5 million cm” said Kinarti on October 17.
CAMERA checked this with Nabil a-Sharif as well. Sharif responded that this was true. He added; “We have to build the north-south carrier which will receive the extra 5 MCM, plus some desalinated water. This pipeline will be built with US assistance, and hopefully partially finished - during the year 2002. To be honest, we have asked the Israelis not to start pumping water until we’re ready.”
• Hedges also cited the assertion that:
There are probably about 1,000 people in the settlement next to the camp, but they consume one third of our water supply, though about 160,000 people live in Khan Younis.
This statement is blatantly deceptive; the mayor must know, and Hedges could have easily discovered by checking, that the Palestinians have 100 MCM of their own water pumped to Palestinian communities in the Gaza Strip annually. The water which Israel does use in the Khan Younis/Mawasi area - 2.5 MCM - which is replaced by another 2.5 MCM from within Israel - is not the sole source of the Palestinians’ water. They have their own sources elsewhere within the Gaza Strip. Why does Hedges omit this essential information?
3). Hedges wrote:
The Egyptians, who first controlled Gaza, would not allow the camp to expand, nor would the Israelis, who gained control of Gaza after the war in 1967.
Hedges is right about the first part. It is true the Egyptians did not allow any expansion or new building for the Palestinians during their rule of Gaza (1948-1967).
He is wrong in his second assertion. Many nations – including Israel – have tried to help improve the lot of Palestinian refugees. The PLO has consistently rebuffed these efforts - particularly Israel’s, preferring to keep Palestinians angry and destitute as a way of maintaining and focusing their rage on the state of Israel. Arab states abetted this, regularly introducing resolutions in the United Nations denouncing Israel for seeking to move Palestinians out of squalid refugee camps. UNRWA's Ralph Garroway said in August 1958:
The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.
Hedges himself is well aware of these realities. In correspondence in February 1994 to his deputy editor at The New York Times, Steven R. Weisman, Hedges wrote:
The PLO did resist Israeli attempts to move Palestinians to housing units. And many people do charge the PLO with keeping Palestinians in squalor to prove a political point. (This correspondence came in response to a 1994 CAMERA query about another Hedges article on Gaza.)
If these facts were known to Hedges seven years ago, why did he falsify them in his October story?
Despite the opposition of the PLO and Arab countries toward improving the Palestinians’ lot, Israel did manage some modest improvements and expansion of the Palestinians’ housing needs in Khan Younis. In the Al-Amal “A” neighborhood Israel built 500 apartment units at the beginning of the 1980's. In the Al-Amal “B” neighborhood Israel apportioned over 2000 plots of 250 square meters each for both private and public use, also at the beginning of the 1980's. (Yoram Barak, Spokesman for the Coordinator for Civil Affairs in Gaza).
During the Israeli administration, despite tension, terrorism and war, authorities also did add new infrastructure, including roads, electricity, a sewage system and new schools.
Hedges, while he mentions that Israel “gained control of the camp after 1967,” neglects to mention - purposefully, it appears - that since the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994, Israel no longer has any authority over the camp of Khan Younis. The Palestinian Authority does. If the camp has not been able to expand since 1994, this is solely because of the Palestinian Authority.
4). In an exceptionally incendiary passage, Hedges claims:
Children have been shot in other countries I have covered - death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo - but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.
• First, the sheer malice of this comment speaks for itself; if the Israelis, with the most powerful army in the Middle East enticed “children like mice into a trap and murdered them for sport,” why was only one person killed on June 17 - as tragic as that was - when Hedges wrote his “diary” entry on the events in question?
Moreover, Hedges’ account is at odds with those in other media, including his home publication, the New York Times. Reporting the events of June 17, Times correspondent Douglas Frantz wrote: “The Israeli military said soldiers had been under attack with stones and bottles” when they opened fire on “a crowd trying to tear down surrounding Jewish settlements in Gush Katif.”
Other news agencies reported that the Palestinians began throwing stones at soldiers in an Israeli settlement near Khan Younis after an attempted suicide bombing near Dahaniya in Gaza the same day. Margot Dudkevitch of the Jerusalem Post reported:
Near the entrance to Dahaniya, soldiers became suspicious of a man driving a donkey cart. As he approached the soldiers, the man jumped from the cart and detonated explosives hidden in it...IDF sappers detonated the remaining bombs that failed to explode, among them four gas canisters and two mines.
Soldiers on duty, already on edge, were aware that innocent looking Palestinians had tried to blow up other Israeli soldiers elsewhere in the Gaza Strip the same day. But Hedges did not even bother to report in his “diary” of events the attempted suicide bombing aimed at killing Israelis.
Similarly, an armed Palestinian gang shot and killed a 12 year old Palestinian on June 16 in the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Hedges, who was in Gaza at the time, makes no mention of this either. On June 18 it was reported in The Jerusalem Post:
Yesterday, Palestinians, who had blamed Israel for the death of another 12 year-old boy near Rafah on Saturday, admitted that the boy had been killed by an armed opposition faction operating in Rafah. According to reports, a dispute broke out between Palestinian security officials and an armed gang that shot at soldiers near Rafah Yam. The Palestinian security officials demanded that the armed gang leave, and as they drove off gang members began shooting at random, mortally wounding Suliman Massari, 12, who was in a car, and wounding several other passengers.
• Notably, Thomas L. Friedman, a colleague of Hedges’ at The New York Times, wrote an op-ed (“Saudi Royals and Reality”, October 16, 2001) with what might have been an allusion to Chris Hedges’ falsehoods and deceptions in “A Gaza Diary.”
[T]o suggest that Israel is slaughtering Palestinians for sport, as if a war were not going on there, which Israel did not court, in which civilians on both sides are being killed... - is just a lie.
Friedman added that; “Normally such casual lying doesn’t bother me. It’s a staple of Middle East politics, but this particular version is dangerous, because it masks a deeper lie that can hurt us. I call it “the virgin birth problem.” Friedman was referring to a lack of Arab accountability not only regarding the Palestinian violence plaguing Israel for the past year but the larger problem of Arab hatred for the West which was brought home on September 11.
5) Hedges claims Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian children with guns equipped “with silencers.” According to senior IDF officers, including IDF spokesman Olivier Rafowitz, silencers are used only by special forces troops in close combat situations, not by conventional troops in guard-duty or riot-control circumstances. In addition, these same officers have stated that the attachment used to fire rubber bullets might appear – to a non-expert – to be a silencer. Finally, one might ask, since silencers are employed for stealth operations in which the use of a gun is intended to be concealed, why would Israeli soldiers use them openly where observers could see them?
6). Hedges presents all Palestinian fathers and father-figures as strongly opposed to their children becoming martyrs or suicide bombers. Thus, Faqawi, a Palestinian father of two, tells Hedges on June 16:
I can never say that the way to fight Israelis is to blow ourselves up. I can’t allow my children to think like this.
On June 18, he talks to Murad Abdel Rahman, whose son was killed while confronting Israelis:
‘This is what I worked so hard to prevent,' he says, his voice hoarse and low...'I made him promise he would not go the dunes to throw rocks.'
A Palestinian mother interviewed the same day says:
I tell the boys it is useless, throwing stones and becoming a martyr.
On June 20 a Palestinian man is quoted as telling Hedges:
I can’t stand to see the children get shot...I don’t care about the others. But when the children get shot I cry. I can’t take it.
Finally, Hedges describes and then quotes a Hamas sheikh who opposes children fighting Israeli troops.
[E]ven the sheikh has used his time during Friday prayers to implore the young boys not to go out on the dunes..."I know that every father tries to keep his children away from the fence," he says. "The teachers and the imams tell the children not to go. When I preach in the mosque I tell them to stay away."
Hedges does not quote one Palestinian adult supporting their children becoming “martyrs.” Yet for years not only Hamas but the Palestinian Authority has exhorted children via its media, schools, mosques and political statements to become martyrs - to die for the sake of Palestine. With regard to the extreme expression of martyrdom in the form of suicide bombing, a June 2001 poll – unmentioned by Hedges – found 76% of Palestinians support suicide bombings. (“The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion,” based in the West Bank and directed by Dr. Nabil Kukali. The survey was taken between May 24-26. The margin of error was 4%.)
Does the omission mean Hedges is unaware of such views among the Palestinians? In fact, we know otherwise from his own writing. Seven months prior to “A Gaza Diary,” in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs, Hedges wrote very differently about the Palestinians. While extremely critical of Israel, he did not spare the Palestinians either.
In an article entitled “The New Palestinian Revolt,” Palestinian parents are quoted by Hedges in support of their children becoming martyrs. The reporter’s interview with a Palestinian woman contained the following:
‘Tell the man what you want to be,’ said Hyam Temraz to her two-year-old son, Abed, as she peeped out of the slit of a black veil.
‘A martyr,’ the child answered.
She said that another son had been talking about liberating Palestine since he was four.
He has always told me that he would be a martyr and that one day I would dig his grave.
Hedges spoke to a Palestinian man, Nezzar Rayan, in that same article:
Today, his three sons - ages 12, 15, and 16 - daily join the youths who throw rocks at Israeli checkpoints. All three, according to their father, strive to be one thing: martyrs for Palestine.
‘I pray only that God will choose them,' he said.
In Harper’s these voices endorsing martyrdom have been eliminated. Hedges has evidently made a conscious choice to omit information damaging to the Palestinian cause.
7). Alleging further murders by Israel, Hedges wrote:
I watch Jihad Abu Mousa, twenty-two, kick at a few pieces of rubble. He is morose and silent...On January 29 his twenty-three-year-old brother was shot dead by Israeli soldiers, while, Jihad says, playing a game of soccer.
• A Nexis search reveals that one Palestinian was killed on January 29, Muhammad Abu Musa, and he was not “playing a game of soccer.” On January 30, Agence France Presse reported: “Hamas’ military wing, Ezzadin al-Qassam, claimed responsibility during the funeral for a Palestinian shot dead by Israeli soldiers the day before at the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Around 10,000 people attended the funeral of Mohammed Abu Musa, 21, many shouting ‘death to Israel’ and praising both Hamas and the militia wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.”
That is, Muhammad Abu Musa, brother of Jihad Abu Musa, was a member of Hamas.
On January 30 The New York Times reported that “a Palestinian was killed in a clash in the Gaza Strip.” The same day, The Chicago Tribune reported “Israeli troops shot dead a 21-year old Palestinian man in a confrontation in the Gaza Strip.” Neither The Times nor The Tribune mentioned that Abu Musa was killed “playing a game of soccer.”
The Jerusalem Post, which generally covers clashes in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip in greater depth than American papers, wrote on January 30: “...violence continued in the Gaza Strip yesterday, with Palestinians claiming that 21-year-old Mohammed Abu Mussa was killed near Khan Younis during an exchange of fire with soldiers. (Note that while Hedges reports the age of Mohammed Abu Mussa as 23, all other media surveyed put it at 21.) The IDF Spokesman said soldiers shot and killed an armed Palestinian who had loaded his gun and aimed at them.”
Even “Adameer,” the Palestinian web site, and B’tselem, the Israeli group highly critical of Israel, do not claim that Muhammad Abu Mussa was shot by Israeli soldiers while playing soccer.
Indeed, no news source reported Muhammad Abu Musa was killed while playing soccer; rather the accounts told of his involvement in violent confrontation with Israelis.
8) Hedges stated: “The latest intifada erupted in September 2000, when Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli opposition leader and now the prime minister, visited the al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam...”
Ariel Sharon did not visit the al-Aqsa Mosque. He walked on the Temple Mount, the plaza where the first and second Jewish Temples stood, the holiest site in Judaism. The al-Aqsa Mosque is located on the large plaza, but Sharon did not enter or visit it. Hedges’ omission of the meaning and sanctity of the Temple Mount to Jews and his inaccurate account of Sharon’s actions falsely suggest Sharon intruded on an exclusively Islamic site.
9) Hedges stated: “From 1987 to 1993, during the first intifada, Hamas targeted only Israeli soldiers and settlements. It began to attack individual Israeli civilians after a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, gunned down twenty-nine Muslim worshipers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.”
Hamas targeted civilians before Goldstein’s shooting of Muslims in February 1994. For example, on July 2, 1993 Hamas terrorists attacked a Jerusalem bus killing two and wounding two others. They used assault rifles and carried bombs concealed in bags. One woman was murdered on the bus and another when the fleeing Hamas members seized a car, then shot the driver and threw her out of the vehicle. Hamas murders of civilians in Israel did not begin, as Hedges seems to imply, as a consequence of Baruch Goldstein's shooting Arab civilians.
In summary, the material errors identified are as follows:
1). “Israel does not allow Palestinian villagers in Mawasi to drill new wells.” Israel, as stated, has no jurisdiction over the matter of well-drilling in Palestinian-controlled territories, of which Mawasi and Khan Younis are a part.
2). “Israel has 32 wells” under one settlement between the Palestinian towns of Mawasi and Khan Younis. In fact, Israel operates only 20 wells, and they are under 17 settlements.
3). Israel “built a pipeline in 1994 to carry water into Israel.” Israel does not take any water from Gaza into Israel - but rather supplies the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip with water.
4). Israel “would not allow the [Khan Younis] camp to expand.” Israel did initiate a modest expansion program in the camp in the 1980's and was consistently thwarted by the PLO, as were other nations, in efforts to do more.
5). Israel entices children like “mice into a trap and murders them for sport.” One Palestinian was killed on June 17, when Hedges was in Gaza reporting this lurid passage. It was the same day that a Palestinian bomber had attacked Israelis nearby in Gaza, an event unmentioned by Hedges. According to The New York Times and other news agencies the Palestinian fatality occurred in the midst of violence - not as “sport.”
6). Israeli “soldiers shoot [Palestinian children] with silencers.” The Israeli military denies this allegation.
7) Hedges quoted only Palestinians who say they oppose their children becoming “martyrs” - and dying for the sake of Palestine. This is a highly misleading characterization, as we know from Hedges’ own writing in the January/ February 2001 issue of Foreign Affairs.
8). “Mohammed [Abu Musa] was shot dead by Israeli soldiers while... playing a game of soccer.” Mohammad Abu Mousa, a Hamas member, was reported in numerous news outlets as having died in a violent confrontation with Israelis.
9) “The latest intifada erupted...when Ariel Sharon ...visited the al-Aqsa Mosque...” Sharon did not visit the al-Aqsa Mosque.
10) “Hamas targeted only Israeli soldiers and settlements” before “Baruch Goldstein gunned own twenty-nine Muslim worshipers...” Hamas targeting of civilians in Israel pre- dated Goldstein.
Chris Hedges’ account was marred by other serious deficiencies, including the gross omission of context with regard to violence against Israelis in Gaza – failing to mention there had been nearly 3000 Palestinian attacks launched between October 2000 and June 2001 – and the total absence of any Israeli voice to challenge specifically the grave accusations against its people and policies.
The "Oslo Syndrome" and the Terror Attacks in Norway
Barry Rubin
One of the most sensitive aspects of the very sensitive subject of the murderous terrorist attack in Norway by a right-wing gunman is this irony: The youth political camp he attacked was at the time engaged in what was essentially (though the campers didn’t see it that way, no doubt) a pro-terrorist program.
The camp, run by Norway’s left-wing party, was lobbying for breaking the blockade of the terrorist Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip and for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state without that entity needing do anything that would prevent it from being a terrorist base against Israel. They were backing and justifying forces that had committed terrorism against Israelis and killing thousands of people like themselves. Even to mention this irony is dangerous since it might be taken to imply that the victims “had it coming.” The victims never deserve to be murdered by terrorists, even any victims who think that other victims of terrorists “had it coming.” This is in no way a justification of that horrendous terrorist act. It’s the exact opposite: a vital but forgotten lesson arising from it that can and should save lives in future.
Call it the Oslo Syndrome.
The Stockholm Syndrome is named after an incident in which hostages taken by a terrorist group then quickly became supporters of that group. A combination of intimidation (persuade these people that we’re friends or they’ll kill us); human psychology (get to know someone and hear their sad—whether or not true—story and sympathy arises); and ideology (having—or thinking you have—common ideas and interests with the terrorist movement).
Then there was the Oslo Process, the 1993-2000 effort to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In retrospect, it can be read as an attempt to solve a conflict by offering a great deal to those who instead rejected the offers, believing they could total victory through tactics including terrorism. Many in the West—especially Norway--think it only failed because not enough was offered and exculpating the terrorist side and strategy.
The Oslo Syndrome encompasses all of these things but goes a step further, for the most dangerous things you can do about terrorism is to make it appear politically successful and hence a great thing to do. For terrorism is not an ideology or a movement but merely a tactic: to murder noncombatants systematically and deliberately for political ends.
If you do this, will others, including the victims, be so terrorized as to give you whatever you want? Will they ignore the moral implications and support you nonetheless? Can you successfully make the argument that you are so oppressed as to justify terrorism, as the ambassador of Norway implied is true against Israel after the killings in the summer camp? Is it possible to engage in terrorism yet convince much of the world that your victims are the real terrorists?
And if you can answer any of these questions with a “yes” then terrorism may be for you. Of course, not every worldview or movement would use it but for those who do it is a very practical issue whether using terrorism is likely to result in being reviled and killed yourself or being celebrated internationally and receiving large amounts of money.
The Oslo Syndrome can be defined the opposite of the Stockholm Syndrome. Instead of being a target of terrorism and then changing views to support the terrorists’ side, it means—individually, as part of a movement, or as an entire country—supporting the terrorists’ side then being victims of terrorism.
Here are four cases of terrorism being perceived as failures and itself dying out:
--The idea that terrorism works originated with Gracchus Babeuf, a French revolutionary journalist who coined the word in 1793. A few months later, his comrade, Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard, called terrorism, “The only way to arouse the people and force them to save themselves,” exactly what today’s terrorists think.Babeuf was executed, though, and that idea became out of fashion for decades.
--Late nineteenth, early twentieth century leftist or nationalist terrorism engaging in bombings and murders in Europe and a bit in North America.
--Latin American terrorism of the 1960s and 1970s failing to achieve revolution and being repressed.
--European terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s mobilizing little sympathy.
In contrast, Middle Eastern terrorism (Palestinian, radical nationalist, Islamist) enjoyed much local support and political success even in the West. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, an aide to Usama bin Ladin, Abu Ubeid al-Qurashi, recalled how Palestinian terrorism inspired the assault on America: millions of people around the world heard Palestinian claims and demands; “thousands of young Palestinians” joined the PLO.
Yasir Arafat spent decades as a terrorist, was applauded at the UN—after a speech in which he threatened more murder—then spent decades more as a terrorist, afterward becoming a virtual head of state and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Why should others not dream that the road to victory is paved with the corpses of deliberately murdered civilians?
If terrorist murders by Hamas and Islamists did not stop well-intentioned future leaders of Norway from enthusiastically considering them heroic underdogs, a local evil man could think his act of terrorism would gain sympathy and change Europe’s politics. After all, it has already changed the Middle East and even been sanctified by Western media, intellectuals, and governments.
When Norway’s ambassador to Israel distinguishes between “bad” terrorism in Norway and “understandable” terrorism against Israelis that opens the door to a man in Norway who thinks his country is “occupied” by leftists and Muslims?
In this sense, the most important thing about the terrorist in Norway is not that he is right-wing or anti-Islam, The most important thing is that he believed terrorism would work on behalf of his cause. After all, if he had held all of the same beliefs but didn’t think murder was a good tactic, nobody would be dead from his actions.
Of course, he was mentally unbalanced but did have a material basis for his imaginings. What he didn’t understand is that many Europeans will accept terrorism against Israelis or even Americans; very few will applaud terrorism against fellow Europeans.
Nevertheless, many people gave him the idea that terrorism would change minds, gain support, and bring victory. They weren’t those whose blogs he quoted a few times in a 1500-page manifesto and who explicitly rejected violence. They merely gave him programmatic ideas. It was the successful terrorists and their Western enablers who gave him the tactic he implemented.
One of the most sensitive aspects of the very sensitive subject of the murderous terrorist attack in Norway by a right-wing gunman is this irony: The youth political camp he attacked was at the time engaged in what was essentially (though the campers didn’t see it that way, no doubt) a pro-terrorist program.
The camp, run by Norway’s left-wing party, was lobbying for breaking the blockade of the terrorist Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip and for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state without that entity needing do anything that would prevent it from being a terrorist base against Israel. They were backing and justifying forces that had committed terrorism against Israelis and killing thousands of people like themselves. Even to mention this irony is dangerous since it might be taken to imply that the victims “had it coming.” The victims never deserve to be murdered by terrorists, even any victims who think that other victims of terrorists “had it coming.” This is in no way a justification of that horrendous terrorist act. It’s the exact opposite: a vital but forgotten lesson arising from it that can and should save lives in future.
Call it the Oslo Syndrome.
The Stockholm Syndrome is named after an incident in which hostages taken by a terrorist group then quickly became supporters of that group. A combination of intimidation (persuade these people that we’re friends or they’ll kill us); human psychology (get to know someone and hear their sad—whether or not true—story and sympathy arises); and ideology (having—or thinking you have—common ideas and interests with the terrorist movement).
Then there was the Oslo Process, the 1993-2000 effort to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In retrospect, it can be read as an attempt to solve a conflict by offering a great deal to those who instead rejected the offers, believing they could total victory through tactics including terrorism. Many in the West—especially Norway--think it only failed because not enough was offered and exculpating the terrorist side and strategy.
The Oslo Syndrome encompasses all of these things but goes a step further, for the most dangerous things you can do about terrorism is to make it appear politically successful and hence a great thing to do. For terrorism is not an ideology or a movement but merely a tactic: to murder noncombatants systematically and deliberately for political ends.
If you do this, will others, including the victims, be so terrorized as to give you whatever you want? Will they ignore the moral implications and support you nonetheless? Can you successfully make the argument that you are so oppressed as to justify terrorism, as the ambassador of Norway implied is true against Israel after the killings in the summer camp? Is it possible to engage in terrorism yet convince much of the world that your victims are the real terrorists?
And if you can answer any of these questions with a “yes” then terrorism may be for you. Of course, not every worldview or movement would use it but for those who do it is a very practical issue whether using terrorism is likely to result in being reviled and killed yourself or being celebrated internationally and receiving large amounts of money.
The Oslo Syndrome can be defined the opposite of the Stockholm Syndrome. Instead of being a target of terrorism and then changing views to support the terrorists’ side, it means—individually, as part of a movement, or as an entire country—supporting the terrorists’ side then being victims of terrorism.
Here are four cases of terrorism being perceived as failures and itself dying out:
--The idea that terrorism works originated with Gracchus Babeuf, a French revolutionary journalist who coined the word in 1793. A few months later, his comrade, Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard, called terrorism, “The only way to arouse the people and force them to save themselves,” exactly what today’s terrorists think.Babeuf was executed, though, and that idea became out of fashion for decades.
--Late nineteenth, early twentieth century leftist or nationalist terrorism engaging in bombings and murders in Europe and a bit in North America.
--Latin American terrorism of the 1960s and 1970s failing to achieve revolution and being repressed.
--European terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s mobilizing little sympathy.
In contrast, Middle Eastern terrorism (Palestinian, radical nationalist, Islamist) enjoyed much local support and political success even in the West. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, an aide to Usama bin Ladin, Abu Ubeid al-Qurashi, recalled how Palestinian terrorism inspired the assault on America: millions of people around the world heard Palestinian claims and demands; “thousands of young Palestinians” joined the PLO.
Yasir Arafat spent decades as a terrorist, was applauded at the UN—after a speech in which he threatened more murder—then spent decades more as a terrorist, afterward becoming a virtual head of state and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Why should others not dream that the road to victory is paved with the corpses of deliberately murdered civilians?
If terrorist murders by Hamas and Islamists did not stop well-intentioned future leaders of Norway from enthusiastically considering them heroic underdogs, a local evil man could think his act of terrorism would gain sympathy and change Europe’s politics. After all, it has already changed the Middle East and even been sanctified by Western media, intellectuals, and governments.
When Norway’s ambassador to Israel distinguishes between “bad” terrorism in Norway and “understandable” terrorism against Israelis that opens the door to a man in Norway who thinks his country is “occupied” by leftists and Muslims?
In this sense, the most important thing about the terrorist in Norway is not that he is right-wing or anti-Islam, The most important thing is that he believed terrorism would work on behalf of his cause. After all, if he had held all of the same beliefs but didn’t think murder was a good tactic, nobody would be dead from his actions.
Of course, he was mentally unbalanced but did have a material basis for his imaginings. What he didn’t understand is that many Europeans will accept terrorism against Israelis or even Americans; very few will applaud terrorism against fellow Europeans.
Nevertheless, many people gave him the idea that terrorism would change minds, gain support, and bring victory. They weren’t those whose blogs he quoted a few times in a 1500-page manifesto and who explicitly rejected violence. They merely gave him programmatic ideas. It was the successful terrorists and their Western enablers who gave him the tactic he implemented.
Is There a US Boycott Promoted By Its Jerusalem Consulate-General?
My Right Word
Did you know that the Consulate-General of the United States in Jerusalem cares for the Quality of Life of its employees through its Community Liason Office and it was reported that the Consulate General Jerusalem’s Community Liaison Office (CLO) activities
...range from sports days that bring together youth from the consulate general with youth from the West Bank, to beer festivals showcasing local breweries, to Thanksgiving meals for unaccompanied post personnel. Whenever possible, CLO partners events with the community association, which has funds at its disposal, so that activities are often free to the participants. Because it is attentive to all sectors of the consulate general’s community, the CLO has a positive impact on post morale.
That's on page 53 of the report. The mission of the C-G is defined on p. 1, thus:
• The U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem deals primarily with the Palestinian Authority, whereas the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv deals with the Government of Israel. Inherent conflicts of perspective have inhibited coordination in some areas, but cooperation is significantly better than it has been in the past. The two missions should adopt a written clarification of their relations to prevent backsliding. Combining some administrative functions could save resources at both missions.
Moreover, on pages 17-18, in the section entitled "Public Diplomacy", we read that there are many activities and even physical locations of the C-G but that all are directed solely to Arab residents of the geographical area under the purview of the C-G, such as these:
...The consulate has opened a new program space, “America House”, in East Jerusalem, which is used for meetings, student briefings, film showings, and other events. American officers may not travel to Gaza because of security concerns, but Consulate General Jerusalem maintains a full program of exchanges, English classes, and speaker programs there, coordinated through creative use of digital videoconferencing...The PD section conducts outreach to the West Bank through a program space in Ramallah and American Corners in Salfeet and Jericho...The PD and management sections collaborated to open an America House program space in June 2010 in East Jerusalem. This facility does not have a resident director or wide array of publications but is instead a library space and multipurpose room in a facility operated by AMIDEAST, an American nongovernment organization that conducts Department-sponsored student advising and English classes for students. The location in East Jerusalem is an attractive venue for Palestinians. The PD section...also use the space as a convenient place to meet with contacts from East Jerusalem.
Similarly, the consulate general leases a program space in Ramallah to reach West Bank Palestinians who cannot come to Jerusalem without a permit. PD officers work closely in Ramallah with AMIDEAST, which is also active in the West Bank, facilitating an array of official U.S. Government exchange programs...The consulate’s two other West Bank American Corners, in Salfit and Jericho, also make good use of outreach programs...Greater use of social media would be an effective tool in communicating with Palestinian audiences in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. A thriving environment for social media flourishes among Palestinians. Most Palestinians under 30 have Facebook accounts...The PD section plans to expand its use of social media to activate contacts...
There's more but the point has been made and that is:
There are almost 350,000 Jewish residents in the communities located in the territory for which the C-G is responsible (the almost 300,000 Jews in the newer Jerusalem neighborhoods and within the Old City is another matter). They do not benefit from any of these cultural, social or funding outreach activities and other programs and monies. Jews don't count, other than deserving consular needs like birth registration, visas, etc. In some instances they may even have been harmed (and here too; here; and here, as examples).
I think that is discriminatory.
I think that no matter what the diplomatic or political outcome of the negotiations, any boycotting of the Jews of YESHA first of all is illegal, it prejudges the outcome and worse, it assumes that Jews cannot and should not live there as it encourages the local Arabs to think that their apartheid approach has been adopted, in a practical sense, by the US State Department with full backing of the Administration. Jews are to be separated and considered by different, lower standards.
I think it is time Congress should be apprised of the situation.
Did you know that the Consulate-General of the United States in Jerusalem cares for the Quality of Life of its employees through its Community Liason Office and it was reported that the Consulate General Jerusalem’s Community Liaison Office (CLO) activities
...range from sports days that bring together youth from the consulate general with youth from the West Bank, to beer festivals showcasing local breweries, to Thanksgiving meals for unaccompanied post personnel. Whenever possible, CLO partners events with the community association, which has funds at its disposal, so that activities are often free to the participants. Because it is attentive to all sectors of the consulate general’s community, the CLO has a positive impact on post morale.
That's on page 53 of the report. The mission of the C-G is defined on p. 1, thus:
• The U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem deals primarily with the Palestinian Authority, whereas the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv deals with the Government of Israel. Inherent conflicts of perspective have inhibited coordination in some areas, but cooperation is significantly better than it has been in the past. The two missions should adopt a written clarification of their relations to prevent backsliding. Combining some administrative functions could save resources at both missions.
Moreover, on pages 17-18, in the section entitled "Public Diplomacy", we read that there are many activities and even physical locations of the C-G but that all are directed solely to Arab residents of the geographical area under the purview of the C-G, such as these:
...The consulate has opened a new program space, “America House”, in East Jerusalem, which is used for meetings, student briefings, film showings, and other events. American officers may not travel to Gaza because of security concerns, but Consulate General Jerusalem maintains a full program of exchanges, English classes, and speaker programs there, coordinated through creative use of digital videoconferencing...The PD section conducts outreach to the West Bank through a program space in Ramallah and American Corners in Salfeet and Jericho...The PD and management sections collaborated to open an America House program space in June 2010 in East Jerusalem. This facility does not have a resident director or wide array of publications but is instead a library space and multipurpose room in a facility operated by AMIDEAST, an American nongovernment organization that conducts Department-sponsored student advising and English classes for students. The location in East Jerusalem is an attractive venue for Palestinians. The PD section...also use the space as a convenient place to meet with contacts from East Jerusalem.
Similarly, the consulate general leases a program space in Ramallah to reach West Bank Palestinians who cannot come to Jerusalem without a permit. PD officers work closely in Ramallah with AMIDEAST, which is also active in the West Bank, facilitating an array of official U.S. Government exchange programs...The consulate’s two other West Bank American Corners, in Salfit and Jericho, also make good use of outreach programs...Greater use of social media would be an effective tool in communicating with Palestinian audiences in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. A thriving environment for social media flourishes among Palestinians. Most Palestinians under 30 have Facebook accounts...The PD section plans to expand its use of social media to activate contacts...
There's more but the point has been made and that is:
There are almost 350,000 Jewish residents in the communities located in the territory for which the C-G is responsible (the almost 300,000 Jews in the newer Jerusalem neighborhoods and within the Old City is another matter). They do not benefit from any of these cultural, social or funding outreach activities and other programs and monies. Jews don't count, other than deserving consular needs like birth registration, visas, etc. In some instances they may even have been harmed (and here too; here; and here, as examples).
I think that is discriminatory.
I think that no matter what the diplomatic or political outcome of the negotiations, any boycotting of the Jews of YESHA first of all is illegal, it prejudges the outcome and worse, it assumes that Jews cannot and should not live there as it encourages the local Arabs to think that their apartheid approach has been adopted, in a practical sense, by the US State Department with full backing of the Administration. Jews are to be separated and considered by different, lower standards.
I think it is time Congress should be apprised of the situation.
Lynching Herman Cain
Sultan Knish
Herman Cain is being lynched for taking a stand. And the people doing it are Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives. Commentators who complain about the "race card" are eagerly laying down the "bigot card" because Cain did what few candidates are ready to do. He clearly spelled out the problem with Islamic involvement in American public life.
If as some insist, Cain's campaign was brought down by his statements about Islam-- then Republicans have accepted the Dhimmi Principle that the viability of a candidate depends on taking a moderate position on Islam. A moderate position being skeptical, but not particularly confrontational. A position that easily leads back to that old "Handful of Extremists" saw.
All this comes down to is an Islamic vetting of presidential candidates. And everyone attacking Cain over it has given CAIR their victory.
All the little condescending pieces on how Cain was a good candidate until he went a little too far off the reservation deserve a head pat from a black gloved hand. What better victory for the Islamists than to have conservative pundits falsely attribute Cain's campaign problems to his opposition to Islam? What did Cain say that was so wrong? He questioned how Muslims could reconcile a theocracy with participation in American public life. And he came out on the side of communities fighting back against mosque projects. And that's bigotry. Don't ask why it's bigotry. It is. And if you don't believe me, go ask CNN or the Washington Post.
Playing the bigot card is cheap and easy. It's free. And value free.
The real question we should be asking, is it permissible to question the bona fides of members of an ideology that has murdered millions around the world and thousands in America? Can we actually ask whether a theology that calls for the subjugation of the world disqualifies you from taking an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States?
There are two obligations here and they are incompatible with one another. We cannot look into the soul of another person, but the contradiction between the two must be asked and answered. And if we cannot do that, then we have already given up freedom of speech and thought, and exchanged it for the conformity of political correctness. So we say that after a Muslim kills he may be criticized, but not before the fact. And close our eyes to the origin of the act.
Is there a "Good Islam" and a "Bad Islam". The Islam of decent people and of evil terrorists. But where do we find this "Good Islam"?
Not in Pakistan, Iran or Saudi Arabia. What about Indonesia, with its genocides, Malaysia with its church burnings or Egypt with its persecution of the Copts? Forget Muslim countries then, what about countries with Muslim minorities. Nigeria, Thailand and the Philippines. How many heads would you like to see.
Why must we ask is the Muslim world less pluralistic, less free and more intolerant than the countries where they are demanding the right to impose their theocratic legal system on others. And what exactly will happen when they gain that power?
Can you imagine that America will retain its freedoms under a president who believes that the Koran is the writ of heaven, that non-Muslims are inferior, that women are subhuman and that only laws based on the Koran are just?
Can you imagine that police chiefs who believe that women cause their own rapes will protect rape victims? Why even bother asking, when cabbies who believe that seeing eye dogs drive away angels refuse to carry the blind.
When cartoonists go into hiding and Muslim soldiers open fire on their fellow troops, there is no serious debate to be had over what happens when the Koran and the laws of the United States intersect with one another. And the results are bloody.
If religious and ethnic minorities are persecuted in the Muslim world, and if even religious and ethnic majorities are set on by Muslim minorities in the non-Muslim world, then how hard is to figure out what comes next for America? Do we really need a map or a diagram. Should we go once again to the Ground Zero Mosque to understand how much contempt and how much deception is woven into the campaign to subjugate us. To wipe away our laws and freedoms and replace them with the ravings of a 7th century bandit who murdered and raped his way across the desert, turning a multicultural society into a fanatical wasteland.
It is easier not to deal with these uncomfortable questions. To assent to CNN and the WaPo and all the other outlets of the manufactured consensus. To nod your head and say, "Cain went too far. There may be some bad eggs out of Mecca, but we shouldn't be bigots."
So let's talk about bigotry. Talk to the Copts of Egypt, the Christians of Pakistan and Malaysia, or the Jews of Iran. Learn about bigotry from them and what happens when political power is vested in the hands of members of a cult that preaches the absolute political dominance of their theocracy.
Do you want bigotry? The cemeteries of the world are filled with the victims of the Koran. And their number grows year by year. Go the graves of the murdered and the dead, and mumble to them about bigotry. Tell them that singling out Muslims isn't nice. It's not proper. It's not the American Way-- or that flavor of the American Way cooked up by liberals around 1965.
When Orwell wrote 1984, few Americans imagined being too afraid to speak their minds. Now it's 2011 and we are learning to be afraid. And when someone stands up to speak what we know is the truth, then we shiver and bring out the rope. We lynch him as a sacrifice. The way that Europeans denounce Israel, and prosecute Koran burning. An offering for the Dhimmi altar.
This isn't about Cain, who has backtracked his earlier comments. This is about cowardice. Not physical cowardice, but the cowardice of the mind. The timidity of stepping beyond a reasonably safe opinion and following it to its logical conclusion. Of even raising the subject. And the glee of destroying the man who steps slightly to the right of you. Who dares to say what you do not.
Should we be banning Muslims from public office or keeping mosques out of communities? Certainly we should be able to have that question, without cries of "bigot" coming from people who should know better.
If nothing else, the butcher's bill we have paid in the last decade gives us the right to ask those questions. The dead on our side and the killers on theirs means that we have paid for the right to ask those questions in blood. And we go on paying for it with unrecognized sacrifices and unspoken terror. A conspiracy unmasked there, a bomb plot exposed here. An assault there, a rape here.
But will we ask those questions? The Constitution won for us Freedom of Speech, but what worth is it if isn't used. It won for us Freedom of Religion, but what use is it if we allow that freedom to be taken away from us by a theocracy that does not recognize the existence of such a thing. There is no need to take a red pencil and X out any parts of the Bill of Rights. By allowing them to fall into disuse, by destroying the reputations of anyone who makes use of them, we will have accomplished the same thing.
It is startling to me sometimes to see how much bolder the Europeans are than us. What would the condemners of Cain make of Geert Wilders and Oriana Fallaci, or Brits like Pat Condell. Europe may be under siege, but it still has men and women who rise up and speak the truth. And we who have Freedom of Speech enshrined in the Constitution are prisoners of politically correct timidity.
Maybe your back has to be up against the wall to be able to speak out that way. And maybe we must wait for our own No Go Zones, and our own Islamic Councils. To see firsthand that we are losing the country. Maybe when that day comes it will be the shushers of Cain who will be shushed and the ridiculers of a man who dared to speak the truth who will be humbled . When speaking out in the face of terror is no longer a crime and when challenging theocracy is no longer out of sorts.
I would hope and pray that it doesn't take that. That we need not be schooled to desperation before we are allowed to ask whether we can retain our freedom under the rule of a creed that calls every man a slave.
Minorities in the IDF
Aryeh Tepper
Christian Arab soldiers decorate a Christmas tree (2005).
Recently, while driving by the Israeli settlement of Nokdim (where Avigdor Lieberman lives), I picked up a hitchhiking soldier. We started chatting, and I asked the soldier his name. "Mustafa," he said. "You're a Muslim?" I asked. "Yes," he answered, "from Haifa." As our conversation progressed, I asked him his thoughts about Lieberman's criticism of Arab-Israeli society, saying that I thought the foreign minister wouldn't have any problem with an Arab-Israeli who serves in the army. Mustafa demurred: "Lieberman only loves me so long as I'm in uniform." When most people think of the conflict in the Middle East, they naturally enough imagine Israeli Jews fighting Middle Eastern Arabs and Muslims. But non-Jews from the Muslim, Druse, and Christian communities in Israel serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) alongside their Jewish peers. After completing their basic training, these soldiers swear fealty to the state of Israel on a copy of the Quran or the New Testament instead of the standard Hebrew Bible.
But soldiers like Mustafa are still very rare. For various reasons (including security concerns), Israeli Arabs are not drafted—though some still do serve voluntarily. A recent documentary film, Ameer Got His Gun, explores the decision of one eighteen-year-old Arab-Israeli Muslim to voluntarily enlist in the IDF. The film is a bit saccharine, following the trajectory of Ameer's untested idealism, but the (Jewish) producer and director thankfully refuse easy moralizing, and let the characters speak for themselves. The film's most touching scene follows the intense preparations of Ameer's family for what turns out to be a sparsely-attended enlistment party. Why throw a party? "To show everyone that you're not ashamed," says Ameer. After all, in the eyes of many Arab Israelis—Palestinians, according to their own self-definition—Ameer and his fellow Muslim soldiers in the IDF are nothing less than traitors.
Obviously, this attitude is not held among all minority groups. The Druse, for one, offer a radical counter-example. An offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, Israeli Druse number approximately 115,000, and aside from the Golan Druse who maintain their loyalty to the Syrian regime, the overwhelming majority of men proudly serve in the IDF. This has been so since 1949, when the Druse leadership requested that military service be obligatory.
Not only do they serve, but they serve with distinction. When the second Lebanon war broke out in 2006, an all-Druse battalion was the first unit to enter Hizballah country (on the first day of the war), and the last to leave. After a month of combat, the battalion took down 15 Hizballah terrorists, with no casualties of its own.
Like the Druse, the Sunni Muslim Circassians (of whom around 4,500 live in Israel) also loyally serve in the IDF. The Circassians, who practice a moderate, consciously non-nationalistic Islam, established good relations with the Jews in Israel at the end of the 19th century, thanks in large part to the language and culture they shared with Jewish immigrants from Russia. Since 1958, again at the request of their leadership, all Circassian men have been conscripted into the Israeli military.
The Israeli Bedouins pose a more complicated case. Also Sunni Muslims, the Bedouins distinguish themselves from mainstream Arab society by their more rural (and sometimes desert-dwelling) ways. While not obligated to serve in the IDF, it's estimated that between 5 and 10 percent of draft-age Bedouin youth volunteer for army service, often as trackers. Amos Yarkoni, one of the most celebrated trackers in the history of the IDF, was actually a Bedouin named Abd el-Majid Hidr. In recent years, enlistment has fluctuated wildly, likely because of the increased influence of the Islamic movement among Bedouin communities.
Which brings us back to the larger Israeli-Arab communities. Each year, only a few dozen Arab Christians volunteer to serve in the IDF. The army, which believes that the number could be much higher, has been redoubling its recruitment efforts in the community. One sign that the policy might be bearing fruit is the career of Cpl. Elinor Joseph, the first Arab woman to become a combat soldier in the IDF. But among Arab Muslims, while there are families like Ameer's, some boasting three generations of IDF fighters, voluntary enlistment remains low.
What drives minorities to volunteer their service? On the individual level, some are motivated by a sense of duty to defend their country, an idea that permeates the air of Israeli society. Druse and Circassian Israelis often identify deeply with the state. Others make a pragmatic calculation that serving in the IDF will ease their social and economic integration into Israeli society (as Mustafa's complaint demonstrates, this expectation is sometimes frustrated). On the communal level, groups who send their sons to serve in the IDF gain a greater hearing in their demand for government resources.
In many respects, the IDF's efforts among minority groups resemble the efforts under way with the ultra-Orthodox. While also exempt from military conscription, many in this group are increasingly sending their boys to units specially designed to meet their religious needs. In both cases, the army is reaching out to communities located along the margins of Israeli society in order to fill in the gaps created by a general shortage of manpower. It's intriguing to imagine the day when both the ultra-Orthodox and, as Efraim Karsh has speculated about, all of Israel's Arabs are drafted into the IDF. But that day won't be arriving in the foreseeable future, and so, for now, young soldiers like Mustafa remain few and far between.
MK Ahmed Tibi: World should boycott Israeli companies
Haaretz
In New York Times op-ed, Israeli Arab MK calls for external pressure to end the 'Israeli occupation', grant full equality to Palestinians and Jews, and implement right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Arab MK Ahmed Tibi (Balad) has called on the world to boycott all Israeli companies that help perpetuate the “injustices” of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, in an op-ed published in the New York Times earlier this week.
Tibi wrote the op-ed as a direct response to the Knesset's recent approval of the boycott law forbidding individuals or organizations from publicly calling for a boycott against Israel or the settlements under its control. In the op-ed, Tibi declared that his support for the right to boycott stems from his belief in ending the “Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory”, in granting “equal rights for Palestinians and Jews”, and implementing the right of return “for Palestinian refugees forced from their homes and lands in 1948”.
According to Tibi, MK Alex Miller (of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party) has threatened to sue him overhis calls to “boycott the illegal Jewish settlement of Ariel”, a protest he posits would be “unremarkable in a proper democracy with untrammeled free speech”.
The boycott law will have the opposite of its intended effect, wrote Tibi in his op-ed. Instead of deflecting criticism from Israel, he wrote, the law will merely draw attention to Israel’s military control of the West Bank and “routine violations of international law”.
According to the Tibi, Israel's government will not change its policies without external pressure, despite the hopes of American politicians.
It is thus up to the world to exert pressure on Israel in order to force the Israeli government to change, Tibi wrote, adding and that until that change arrives more “discriminatory and undemocratic legislation” is to be expected from the Knesset.
Comment: Any questions what should hapen to a standing MK who supports BDS?
In New York Times op-ed, Israeli Arab MK calls for external pressure to end the 'Israeli occupation', grant full equality to Palestinians and Jews, and implement right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Arab MK Ahmed Tibi (Balad) has called on the world to boycott all Israeli companies that help perpetuate the “injustices” of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, in an op-ed published in the New York Times earlier this week.
Tibi wrote the op-ed as a direct response to the Knesset's recent approval of the boycott law forbidding individuals or organizations from publicly calling for a boycott against Israel or the settlements under its control. In the op-ed, Tibi declared that his support for the right to boycott stems from his belief in ending the “Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory”, in granting “equal rights for Palestinians and Jews”, and implementing the right of return “for Palestinian refugees forced from their homes and lands in 1948”.
According to Tibi, MK Alex Miller (of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party) has threatened to sue him overhis calls to “boycott the illegal Jewish settlement of Ariel”, a protest he posits would be “unremarkable in a proper democracy with untrammeled free speech”.
The boycott law will have the opposite of its intended effect, wrote Tibi in his op-ed. Instead of deflecting criticism from Israel, he wrote, the law will merely draw attention to Israel’s military control of the West Bank and “routine violations of international law”.
According to the Tibi, Israel's government will not change its policies without external pressure, despite the hopes of American politicians.
It is thus up to the world to exert pressure on Israel in order to force the Israeli government to change, Tibi wrote, adding and that until that change arrives more “discriminatory and undemocratic legislation” is to be expected from the Knesset.
Comment: Any questions what should hapen to a standing MK who supports BDS?
Egypt 'unity' rally turns into Islamist show of strength
Mohannad Sabry | McClatchy Newspapers
CAIRO — A demonstration Friday intended to show unity among Egypt's many opposition political movements instead turned into a show of strength for the country's Islamists, underscoring jitters here that elections in the fall will lead to rising influence for conservative Muslim adherents.
Tens of thousands of bearded men and women with their faces fully covered, followers of Islam's Salafi tradition, poured into Cairo's Tahrir Square, where their chants of "The people demand the laws of Allah" drowned out any competing ideology.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/29/118770/egypt-unity-rally-turns-into-islamist.html#ixzz1Td0ExAh7
AHard-line Muslim clerics called for an Islamic state from several stages that had been erected by the Muslim Brotherhood and other conservative Islamist movements, while thousands of followers marched around Tahrir Square repeating the clerics' call: "Islamic, Islamic, not socialist, and not communist."
Others displayed banners with Islamic slogans "Allah is Great," and "No god but Allah."
By Friday afternoon, many of the secular political followers who also had gathered for the demonstration had abandoned the square.
"We agreed with the Brotherhood and the Salafis over the past week to come to Tahrir Square today, unite, and pressure the government to work on reform. They lied to us and came down to promote themselves and show off their power," said Youssef Adel, a 23-year-old member of the liberal Youth for Justice and Freedom group.
Earlier in the day, a crowd of Salafi men hurled rocks and bottles at the stage Youth for Justice and Freedom had set up.
"The Salafis attacked us because we were calling for the demands of the revolution," Adel said.
Later, 34 political parties and youth movements, among them some of the principal groups that spurred the original demonstrations that led to the toppling in February of President Hosni Mubarak, announced their withdrawal from the demonstration to protest the Islamist takeover. Among the groups were the April 6 Movement, Kefaya, the Egyptian Labor Party, the Egyptian Socialist Party and the Revolution Youth Coalition.
"The Islamist movements ignored the agreement between all political and community currents to unite against the attempts of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to divide us and tarnish the reputation of the revolutionaries," the groups said in a signed statement.
Adel, an agricultural engineer who has been protesting on Tahrir Square for months, said that his group decided to pull out of the square to avoid clashing with the Islamists. "We did not come here to confront anyone," Adel said.
What role conservative Islam will have in a future Egyptian government has been a major subject of discussion in Egypt in the months since Mubarak was toppled. Under Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood was officially outlawed, and Islamists were the frequent targets of police raids and long jail sentences.
In the months since Mubarak's fall, however, fundamentalists have shown themselves increasingly interested in flexing their political muscles. At least one Islamist party has been registered with the government, and Salafis, who had long eschewed political involvement, now openly discuss electoral alliances. Salafi groups also are providing services in poor neighborhoods in an effort to improve their reputation after years of being condemned by the Mubarak government as violent extremists.
Clashes between the secular groups and the Islamists were all but certain.
Earlier this week, Egypt's Islamic movements expressed concerns that Egypt's current ruling body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, was considering changes to the country's constitution, whose second article defines Egypt as an Islamic state and specifies Islam as the main source of legislation.
"I came down to express my rejection of any change to the second article of the constitution or the passage of any laws that would allow the writing of a new constitution," said Ahmed Effat, 28. "Such laws should be put to a public referendum or passed by the coming elected parliament."
Effat, a Web designer who wears the long beard of a Salafi, arrived in Tahrir Square at 6 a.m. and said he planned to spend his day taking part in the protests.
"The government thinks that we are weak because we don't come out and sit in for weeks blocking traffic in main squares," he said. "We came down in hundreds of thousands to show them our power."
Thousands of the Islamists from outside Cairo arrived at the demonstration by bus, taking advantage of a $4 fare that the Muslim Brotherhood announced Thursday on its website.
"Today is a proof to everyone that Egypt is an Islamic state and will remain Islamic," said Mohamed al Iraqi, a 22-year-old Muslim Brotherhood member. "No one forced those thousands to come down and protest. They came down to assure that their country will remain Islamic."
Iraqi, a pharmacy student who carried a flag emblazoned with "Allah is Great," said members of other religions should have no concerns about the primacy of Islam.
"Muslim minorities live under Christian constitutions all over the world," he said. "Why does the Christian minority refuse to live under a fair Muslim constitution in Egypt, and why is the world supporting them?"
Members of Salafi movements took over the security at some of the entrances to the square, checking the IDs and frisking anyone crossing security barriers.
One bearded Salafi who wore a tag identifying him as a member of the "Square Organization Committee" refused to talk to a reporter once he learned the reporter worked for a U.S.-based news organization.
"If you worked for the most hated Egyptian newspaper I would have talked to you, but American media, I don't speak with your kind," he said. Then he walked away.
(Sabry is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/29/118770/egypt-unity-rally-turns-into-islamist.html#ixzz1Td0O6Id9
CAIRO — A demonstration Friday intended to show unity among Egypt's many opposition political movements instead turned into a show of strength for the country's Islamists, underscoring jitters here that elections in the fall will lead to rising influence for conservative Muslim adherents.
Tens of thousands of bearded men and women with their faces fully covered, followers of Islam's Salafi tradition, poured into Cairo's Tahrir Square, where their chants of "The people demand the laws of Allah" drowned out any competing ideology.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/29/118770/egypt-unity-rally-turns-into-islamist.html#ixzz1Td0ExAh7
AHard-line Muslim clerics called for an Islamic state from several stages that had been erected by the Muslim Brotherhood and other conservative Islamist movements, while thousands of followers marched around Tahrir Square repeating the clerics' call: "Islamic, Islamic, not socialist, and not communist."
Others displayed banners with Islamic slogans "Allah is Great," and "No god but Allah."
By Friday afternoon, many of the secular political followers who also had gathered for the demonstration had abandoned the square.
"We agreed with the Brotherhood and the Salafis over the past week to come to Tahrir Square today, unite, and pressure the government to work on reform. They lied to us and came down to promote themselves and show off their power," said Youssef Adel, a 23-year-old member of the liberal Youth for Justice and Freedom group.
Earlier in the day, a crowd of Salafi men hurled rocks and bottles at the stage Youth for Justice and Freedom had set up.
"The Salafis attacked us because we were calling for the demands of the revolution," Adel said.
Later, 34 political parties and youth movements, among them some of the principal groups that spurred the original demonstrations that led to the toppling in February of President Hosni Mubarak, announced their withdrawal from the demonstration to protest the Islamist takeover. Among the groups were the April 6 Movement, Kefaya, the Egyptian Labor Party, the Egyptian Socialist Party and the Revolution Youth Coalition.
"The Islamist movements ignored the agreement between all political and community currents to unite against the attempts of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to divide us and tarnish the reputation of the revolutionaries," the groups said in a signed statement.
Adel, an agricultural engineer who has been protesting on Tahrir Square for months, said that his group decided to pull out of the square to avoid clashing with the Islamists. "We did not come here to confront anyone," Adel said.
What role conservative Islam will have in a future Egyptian government has been a major subject of discussion in Egypt in the months since Mubarak was toppled. Under Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood was officially outlawed, and Islamists were the frequent targets of police raids and long jail sentences.
In the months since Mubarak's fall, however, fundamentalists have shown themselves increasingly interested in flexing their political muscles. At least one Islamist party has been registered with the government, and Salafis, who had long eschewed political involvement, now openly discuss electoral alliances. Salafi groups also are providing services in poor neighborhoods in an effort to improve their reputation after years of being condemned by the Mubarak government as violent extremists.
Clashes between the secular groups and the Islamists were all but certain.
Earlier this week, Egypt's Islamic movements expressed concerns that Egypt's current ruling body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, was considering changes to the country's constitution, whose second article defines Egypt as an Islamic state and specifies Islam as the main source of legislation.
"I came down to express my rejection of any change to the second article of the constitution or the passage of any laws that would allow the writing of a new constitution," said Ahmed Effat, 28. "Such laws should be put to a public referendum or passed by the coming elected parliament."
Effat, a Web designer who wears the long beard of a Salafi, arrived in Tahrir Square at 6 a.m. and said he planned to spend his day taking part in the protests.
"The government thinks that we are weak because we don't come out and sit in for weeks blocking traffic in main squares," he said. "We came down in hundreds of thousands to show them our power."
Thousands of the Islamists from outside Cairo arrived at the demonstration by bus, taking advantage of a $4 fare that the Muslim Brotherhood announced Thursday on its website.
"Today is a proof to everyone that Egypt is an Islamic state and will remain Islamic," said Mohamed al Iraqi, a 22-year-old Muslim Brotherhood member. "No one forced those thousands to come down and protest. They came down to assure that their country will remain Islamic."
Iraqi, a pharmacy student who carried a flag emblazoned with "Allah is Great," said members of other religions should have no concerns about the primacy of Islam.
"Muslim minorities live under Christian constitutions all over the world," he said. "Why does the Christian minority refuse to live under a fair Muslim constitution in Egypt, and why is the world supporting them?"
Members of Salafi movements took over the security at some of the entrances to the square, checking the IDs and frisking anyone crossing security barriers.
One bearded Salafi who wore a tag identifying him as a member of the "Square Organization Committee" refused to talk to a reporter once he learned the reporter worked for a U.S.-based news organization.
"If you worked for the most hated Egyptian newspaper I would have talked to you, but American media, I don't speak with your kind," he said. Then he walked away.
(Sabry is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/29/118770/egypt-unity-rally-turns-into-islamist.html#ixzz1Td0O6Id9
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Fatah Youth condemns Norway attacks, over 90 killed
Ma'an News Agency
Fatah Youth condemns Norway attacks, over 90 killed
Published Saturday 23/07/2011 (updated) first posted in Arab news
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Fatah Youth released a statement on Saturday condemning attacks in Norway which have reportedly killed over 90 people.
"It is with consternation that we have received the dramatic news of an awful terrorist attack against a summer camp ran by our comrades of Norwegian Labor Youth 'AUF,'" the statement said. The Fatah Youth group had taken part in the summer camp in the past on the Island of Utoya, near Oslo, where over 90 people were reportedly killed in a shooting spree on the Island and a bomb attack in Oslo on Friday, news reports said.
"Fatah Youth declares its consternation about the terror attack. There are no words to describe an attack against people that have been our comrades in our struggle for freedom and independence. Very few people have stood by our side as much as the Norwegian people, and particularly our AUF comrades."
"We know those who have been cowardly assassinated. Those are people that have stood for the human and national rights of the Palestinian people both in Europe and while visiting Palestine.
"Fatah Youth has participated for almost 15 years in the same summer camp and our youth has benefited by learning and sharing experiences on democracy and advocacy for peace and justice.
"We hope that those responsible for this criminal terror attack will be brought to justice. Such sick minds should not have a place in any society.
"As a people that has been victim of state terror for the last 64 years, the Palestinian people and particularly Fatah Youth presents its condolences to the families of those killed and sends a strong message of support to our comrades from the Norwegian AUF as well as from other sister parties that were participating in this summer camp," the statement concluded.
Comment: This is a most curious story. I post only to demonstrate nature of the linkage between Fatah and political group in the international community. Interesting indeed1 Response from you?
Fatah Youth condemns Norway attacks, over 90 killed
Published Saturday 23/07/2011 (updated) first posted in Arab news
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Fatah Youth released a statement on Saturday condemning attacks in Norway which have reportedly killed over 90 people.
"It is with consternation that we have received the dramatic news of an awful terrorist attack against a summer camp ran by our comrades of Norwegian Labor Youth 'AUF,'" the statement said. The Fatah Youth group had taken part in the summer camp in the past on the Island of Utoya, near Oslo, where over 90 people were reportedly killed in a shooting spree on the Island and a bomb attack in Oslo on Friday, news reports said.
"Fatah Youth declares its consternation about the terror attack. There are no words to describe an attack against people that have been our comrades in our struggle for freedom and independence. Very few people have stood by our side as much as the Norwegian people, and particularly our AUF comrades."
"We know those who have been cowardly assassinated. Those are people that have stood for the human and national rights of the Palestinian people both in Europe and while visiting Palestine.
"Fatah Youth has participated for almost 15 years in the same summer camp and our youth has benefited by learning and sharing experiences on democracy and advocacy for peace and justice.
"We hope that those responsible for this criminal terror attack will be brought to justice. Such sick minds should not have a place in any society.
"As a people that has been victim of state terror for the last 64 years, the Palestinian people and particularly Fatah Youth presents its condolences to the families of those killed and sends a strong message of support to our comrades from the Norwegian AUF as well as from other sister parties that were participating in this summer camp," the statement concluded.
Comment: This is a most curious story. I post only to demonstrate nature of the linkage between Fatah and political group in the international community. Interesting indeed1 Response from you?
Massacre aftermath: Hateful Norway debate
Op-ed: Massacre debate offers important insights into mindsets of Western societies
Manfred Gerstenfeld
The despicable massacres perpetrated by Anders Breivik in Oslo and on the island of Utoya have prompted a chaotic and often ferocious international debate. It covers a considerable number of issues and simultaneously offers important insights into the various mindsets of Western societies. To better follow this debate in the future, one has to identify its main initial threads. One is the massive mainstream media attention focusing on Breivik’s writings. Psychiatrists believe that such extensive dissemination of his manifesto could lead to copycat attacks. A second issue is the opinions of psychiatrists and psychologists struggling to comprehend the pathways from political radicalism to murder.
A major part of the debate focuses on who bears responsibility for Breivik’s acts, besides himself. Rational arguments only play a minor role here. The debate mainly consists of mudslinging and striving to outshout one’s opponents.
The attackers in the debate mainly belong to the Left. One of their major themes is that while initially Muslims were accused, the bullets came from the Right. They therefore conclude that the radical and populist Right quoted in Breivik’s writings is partly responsible for his actions.
Almost all those quoted, however, have strongly condemned Breivik. Populist parties such as Geert Wilders’ PVV in the Netherlands and extreme Right parties such as the Front National in France denounced the murders. Very few figures in parliamentarian parties identified with him.
Italian Europarliamentarian Mario Borghezio of the separatist Northern League said Breivik’s ideas were very good and Christian Europe must defend itself against Muslim immigration. Minister Calderoli from his party clarified that Borghezio spoke only for himself. A local French politician from the National Front, Jacques Coutela, called Breivik a visionary confronting the rise of Islam in Europe. Coutela was thereafter suspended by his party. Erik Hellsborn, a local politician of the extreme Right Sweden Democrats, blamed multiculturalism for the murders. He removed his blog after he was criticized by the party leader Jimmie Ǻkesson.
The loudest shout so far comes from US broadcaster Glenn Beck. He stated on his syndicated radio show: “There was a shooting at a political camp which sounds a little like you know, the Hitler youth. I mean who does a camp for youth that’s all about politics?”
Anti-Semitic elements
The debate on who shares blame for the acts by the loner Breivik is largely futile. No other violent hatred can compete with the worldview of al-Qaeda, which is shared globally by at least 150 million Muslims. Furthermore, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yussuf Al-Qaradawi, supports suicide bombing. And in a number of Muslim countries, political and religious murders are ongoing and numerous. And yet, they do not receive similar attention to the attacks in Norway.
It would indeed be beneficial if the populist Right were more specific in its claims against Islamic movements, rather than generalizing and exaggerating accusations. The same goes for the Left. If one points a finger at others for Breivik’s acts, why are those who recognize Hamas not considered accessories to Hamas’ genocidal plans?
Anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli elements are also appearing as secondary threads in this debate. Hezbollah condemned the attack and called it “proof of the racism of Zionist culture.” Khaled Mouammar, the outgoing President of the Canadian Arab Federation, wrote that it looks increasingly that Mossad’s finger prints are all over the Norway killings.” There are also the classic anti-Israel hate bloggers who are promoting conspiracy theories against Israel.
Meanwhile, Norwegian society is reacting differently than nations elsewhere. There is major confusion, questions about how “one of their own” could be capable of such horrific, “un-Norwegian” acts, as well as observations that Norway will never be the same again. What changes will take place in the Norwegian self-perception and worldview remains unclear.
One person who already put his foot in his mouth was Norway’s ambassador to Israel. He found it necessary to explain the similarities and differences between the terror attacks executed by Palestinians and Breivik’s acts. This is another Norwegian provocation. The Israeli government has shown great empathy with Norway and so have many Israelis. I would guess that those with Norwegian friends have expressed their condolences to them, as I did.
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The ambassador’s inappropriate statements will not alter the Israeli opinion that terror must be totally condemned. On a radically different level, his words remind us that the AUF, the youth movement of the ruling Labor Party, is an organization of anti-Israeli hate mongers. Their youth camp at Utoya was indoctrinating against Israel. Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere spoke there and said that Israel should demolish the “security barrier.” It was an indirect pro-terror remark.
Stoere knows well that the fence was erected in response to the many murderous Palestinian attacks against civilians. Pictures of AUF youngsters playing Gaza flotilla “games” on Utoya, and of the poster there calling to boycott Israel, will be reprinted many times in the future.
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld has published 20 books. Two of these address Norwegian anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism
The Jewish Community of Hebron
Re: Christians and Jews United for Israel
Israpundit
This has been festering in me for the past week or so. I couldn’t decide whether to write it or not; I know it will bother some people. But I have to get it out – and probably post. Whoever is upset, well, that’s their problem.
Last week I attended, for the second time, CUFI, that is, Christians United for Israel, in Washington, DC. My friend Mike, from Amarillo, Texas, invited me to join him, and I took him up on the offer. As it was two years ago, so too this year. An amazing experience. Somewhere in the vicinity of 5,500 people, including a group of Jews, mostly orthodox, as well as a contingent from Israel, congregated at the Washington Convention Center for three days. People from all over the world. That’s a lot of people. And a lot of money. The personal investment, paying for registration, hotels, food, for three days. Many of those attending are couples.
They come from all denominations of Christianity. In other circumstances, you would be hard-pressed to find all of them sitting together. Their beliefs and traditions differ, from person to person, from church to church, from institution to institution. This, not my invention, but as expressed (in my words) by Pastor John Hagee, founder and executive director of CUFI. However, they all have a nucleus binding then together, unifying them, and that, in one word, is Israel.
At an event as this, so much is impressive. The number of people, the speakers, (the best of the best, Christian and Jewish). But one emotion overshadows everything else, and that, in one word, is love.
I know there are many reading this, (and who will refuse to read it) who will be skeptical. Or perhaps suspicious is a better word. After all, in the eyes of many, all Christians are suspect. After 2,000 years of persecution and anti-Semitism, after holocaust following holocaust, (and in reality, there were many of them), while dealing with continued missionary activity, whereby Christian organizations attempt to steal Jewish souls, how can any of them be trusted?
I know, they believe things that I don’t. Each sect has its own set of rules and beliefs. There are those who wear crosses and others who reject it. Some churches are full of pictures, icons and crucifixes. Others have bare walls, without any of the above. Just about all of them maintain a basic belief, one way or the other, in Jesus. Jews don’t. Jews don’t believe in any of the above. According to major Jewish scholars, over the centuries, for a Jew, this is idol worship, as is forbidden in the Torah. However, they also rule that for non-Jews, much of this is (according to Jewish law) acceptable. Our theologies are different; each to his own. Of course, what is unacceptable are attempts by other religions to try and ‘convert Jews.’
So, the big question is, do these people have an agenda? I have friends who have repeatedly told me, ‘we don’t want you to act like Christians; we want you to act like Jews. That’s who you are, that’s who you should be.’ Are there those who think we should believe like them? Probably. Why don’t they do anything about it? I’ve heard it with my own two ears. Some say, ‘that’s not our problem. When he comes back, he’ll deal with it.’ Of course, they are talking about their belief in what they call the ‘second coming.’
But so what! If that’s what they want to believe, let them. (We know better.) But what they don’t believe in is ‘replacement theology,’ that being a theory that G-d replaced the Jewish people with another. They believe, as is written in the Bible, that Jews are the apples of G-d’s eye, and whoever blesses them will be blessed, and whoever curses them will be cursed. There is full belief in the Tanach – the Bible, as they call it, ‘The Old Testament.’ They believe it, (and many know it) with all their hearts. Pastor John Hagee repeated, as he is wont to do, a most remarkable phrase: “There’s the Torah way, and there’s the wrong way!” (Let’s hear some more Jews say that!)
And their love for Israel, for the Jewish people, for the Land of Israel and the people of Israel, is overwhelming. I cannot say, 100% that there aren’t any agendas amongst any of them; I cannot read people’s hearts and minds. But the outpouring of love is much too much to be a superficial show, with all sorts of shadowy background schemes. It’s real – it’s genuine – it’s authentic. And to be blind to it, in my humble opinion, is a huge error of judgement.
I have a wonderful picture together with a Pastor named Sam Whaley from Spindale, North Carolina. He, together with his wife Jane, and other family members, came to Washington with their entire congregation, several hundred people. They set up a Holocaust memorial and exhibit honoring Israel at the entrance to the conference hall. It included models of the ‘Mishkan’ – the Tabernacle built by Moses in the desert, and Beit HaMikdash, the Temple. As featured guest speaker Glenn Beck walked through the exhibit, he wept. So did many others.
Another remarkable facet of CUFI is involvement of youth. The organization offers 500 scholarships a year for students, who were also present at the conference. These kids work on college campuses around America, countering the huge Arab propaganda machine, making major efforts to speak for Israel. In my opinion, even though I’m sure this will be considered somewhat controversial in certain circles, Jewish campus organizations should work together with CUFI students. They have the same goals, and a unified effort would certainly have positive results.
The last day of the conference, the entire group, over 5,000 people, ‘invaded’ Capitol Hill, with representatives of 46 states visiting their congressmen and senators. There were three talking points, all dealing with American policy concerning the state of Israel, and the Iranian plans to develop nuclear weapons. CUFI executive director, David Brog, together with Pastor Hagee’s wife Diana, made it very clear, speaking to the thousands that, despite other important issues on the table, the only subjects to be broached were Israel, US policy towards Israel, and Iran.
Left to right - Mike Isley, David HaIvri, Pastor Roman Asbill, Congressman Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, myself, Jeremy Gimpel, Ari Abramowitz
Many people, seeing me there, a Jew with a ‘Kippa’ (Yarmulke) on, came over to talk to me. I also approached many people, introducing myself and speaking with them. That’s the way it was, like a big family affair.
On the second day, during one of the sessions, I rose to ask a question. I introduced myself, citing my residence as Hebron, Israel. Within seconds thousands were on their feet, treating me to a standing ovation. It wasn’t me, as David Wilder, rather as a Jewish person, from Hebron, in Israel, at their conference. It was quite amazing and extremely toucing.
CUFI is probably the largest pro-Israel lobby in the United States, if not in the world. They have over half a million ‘likes’ on their Facebook page, and I’ve been told they have over 700,000 ‘friends.’ The statistics speak for themselves.
I thought to myself, and mentioned to some of my friends at the conference, how ironic that the most powerful Israel lobby group in the US is Christian. What would happen if we tried to form a similar Jewish organization, with only one goal – that being the good of the State of Israel. Could we get 5,500 people together for three days to speak about G-d’s chosen people, their security, their future, in the holy land? Not a bad idea. JUFI – Jews United for Israel. When we had our own 700,000 people on Facebook we could combine, forming CJUFI – Christians and Jews United for Israel. (Dream on, my friends, dream on….)
With friends, David HaIvri (Samaria Regional Council), Tommy Waller (HaYovel), James Mucklestone
Until that happens, I can only offer my fervent thanks and blessings to the thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands of people, of whatever religion, who are standing up and being counted, working for Israel, in the name of G-d, the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the one and only, G-d of Israel. May He bless all of us, Amen!
Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel
972 (0)54 441 3252
Murder As Political Strategy: Islamists Eliminate Rival Leader in Libya
Annie Hall: “Sometimes I ask myself how I’d stand up under torture.”
Alvie Singer: “You kiddin’? If the Gestapo would take away your Bloomingdale’s charge card you’d tell ‘em everything.”
–”Annie Hall”
By Barry Rubin
Abdel Fattah Younes, the top military commander of the Libyan rebels and a former Libyan government official, has been assassinated by–according to opposition officials–an Islamist militia. That’s a problem with Islamists: they murder people and intimidate with threats and violence. Consequently, they often get their way. Reformers can’t compete with that kind of thing. That’s why prospects in Libya or Egypt are not good. That’s the kind of thing that Westerners tend to forget since, despite what the mass media might say, Sarah Palin for example doesn’t have an armed militia dedicated to wiping out her enemies by decapitation. In a few weeks or months, the Salafists in Egypt will probably start killing (or at least trying to do so) outspoken secularists. The Muslim Brotherhood won’t be involved directly but will point its finger and denounce people who are then targeted by other Islamist groups. The Western media will then remind us constantly that the Brotherhood has “renounced” violence and even that the Brotherhood is “protecting” Egypt from the “real” hardliners. Of course, for every person shot at, wounded, or killed (10, or is it 100 or 1000?) are thus intimidated.
This is the tactic used by Hizballah and Syria in Lebanon. The leader of the opposition, Rafik Hariri, was killed by them along with several parliamentarians, journalists, and judges. Others were threatened or attempts were made on their lives. The West stood by and did nothing. Naturally, some people became silent; others fled the country, while still others changed sides. Today, Hizballah and Syria are running Lebanon.
Similar things are happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places. One reason there are no real Palestinian moderates is due to intimidation, delegitimization, and some murders over the years of those who wouldn’t shut up or toe the line. This is a tactic the West isn’t going to be able to counter. It is not prepared to kill those on the other side (with the rare exception of al-Qaida leaders) and it isn’t able (or, under the current U.S. government, doesn’t even try) to defend those on its own side.
So who is more likely to win? Reformers can promise a better life but their opponents can promise both a better life and a better afterlife plus a much shorter life for those who dare dispute them.
Western intellectuals like to talk as if they are courageous–especially when repeating what all their compatriots say. But the Salman Rushdie and “Danish cartoon” controversies showed that they aren’t very brave at all if there’s the slightest possibility of being called names (“racist,” “Islamophobic”), much less being murdered. Imagine if you lived in the Muslim-majority world and anything on the following list would probably lead to your becoming a pariah or being killed: supporting equality for women; proposing to reform Islam; advocating good relations with the United States; backing peace with Israel; etc. How many would speak up?
Alvie Singer: “You kiddin’? If the Gestapo would take away your Bloomingdale’s charge card you’d tell ‘em everything.”
–”Annie Hall”
By Barry Rubin
Abdel Fattah Younes, the top military commander of the Libyan rebels and a former Libyan government official, has been assassinated by–according to opposition officials–an Islamist militia. That’s a problem with Islamists: they murder people and intimidate with threats and violence. Consequently, they often get their way. Reformers can’t compete with that kind of thing. That’s why prospects in Libya or Egypt are not good. That’s the kind of thing that Westerners tend to forget since, despite what the mass media might say, Sarah Palin for example doesn’t have an armed militia dedicated to wiping out her enemies by decapitation. In a few weeks or months, the Salafists in Egypt will probably start killing (or at least trying to do so) outspoken secularists. The Muslim Brotherhood won’t be involved directly but will point its finger and denounce people who are then targeted by other Islamist groups. The Western media will then remind us constantly that the Brotherhood has “renounced” violence and even that the Brotherhood is “protecting” Egypt from the “real” hardliners. Of course, for every person shot at, wounded, or killed (10, or is it 100 or 1000?) are thus intimidated.
This is the tactic used by Hizballah and Syria in Lebanon. The leader of the opposition, Rafik Hariri, was killed by them along with several parliamentarians, journalists, and judges. Others were threatened or attempts were made on their lives. The West stood by and did nothing. Naturally, some people became silent; others fled the country, while still others changed sides. Today, Hizballah and Syria are running Lebanon.
Similar things are happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places. One reason there are no real Palestinian moderates is due to intimidation, delegitimization, and some murders over the years of those who wouldn’t shut up or toe the line. This is a tactic the West isn’t going to be able to counter. It is not prepared to kill those on the other side (with the rare exception of al-Qaida leaders) and it isn’t able (or, under the current U.S. government, doesn’t even try) to defend those on its own side.
So who is more likely to win? Reformers can promise a better life but their opponents can promise both a better life and a better afterlife plus a much shorter life for those who dare dispute them.
Western intellectuals like to talk as if they are courageous–especially when repeating what all their compatriots say. But the Salman Rushdie and “Danish cartoon” controversies showed that they aren’t very brave at all if there’s the slightest possibility of being called names (“racist,” “Islamophobic”), much less being murdered. Imagine if you lived in the Muslim-majority world and anything on the following list would probably lead to your becoming a pariah or being killed: supporting equality for women; proposing to reform Islam; advocating good relations with the United States; backing peace with Israel; etc. How many would speak up?
Obama Wins the Budget Battle
Daniel Greenfield
THE TAO OF STUPID
Sheila Jackson-Lee might be the dumbest person in congress. She might even be the dumbest person outside congress. If there were ever a global championship for idiots, the country could send her there. And leave her there; because unlike Lassie, she wouldn’t be able find her way back on her own.
When Enron wanted someone to use as a puppet, they picked Sheila Jackson-Lee. They wanted a woman who didn’t have a mind of her own. Enron executives described her as “agreeable”, which was a polite way of saying, “dumber than a bunch of rocks caught in the hubcaps of a slow bus going the wrong way on a one way street in the middle of a flood.”
That's from my Front Page Magazine article, Sheila Jackson Lee: Racist and Moron. That was the polite title. Unfortunately congressional Republicans aren't exactly outscoring her right now. The amount of friendly fire by a circular firing squad is what you would expect after losing an election. And the blogs that specialize in shouting, "Fight, Fight" and then standing by and racking up hit counts by pushing more fights aren't exactly helping.
After spending two months kicking around Newt Gingrich, the GOP 2011 has mishandled the budget standoff while learning no lessons from his tenure. Obama's goals were fairly simple and so far he's achieved most of them.
1. Pin the blame for the impasse on Republicans
2. Divide the Republican leadership from the grass roots
3. Force through a "compromise" budget that gives him everything he wants and leaves the other side with nothing of substance that he can't bypass.
The media covered the first part, with the aid of a GOP in communication breakdown mode. The GOP is now deep in circular firing squad mode which covers the second part. And the third is likely still to come.
A budget battle against a media entrenched Oval Office occupant, with only the House, but not the Senate was always a dicey proposition. It would take a strong negotiator with a powerful public presence to hold up the GOP side.
The goal on the Democratic side isn't to pass a budget, but to create a crisis, pin the blame on the GOP, and particularly the Tea Party, wait for the opposition to fracture, and collect the winnings of a frantic compromise budget. And here we are.
Obama's plan was to leave the mess in the House, have the Senate veto anything sent up, and give regular press conferences warning of imminent disaster. And it's worked out fairly well. It's irresponsible and there are Democrats in the know who are disgusted by it. But the same holds true for his entire tenure. It looks increasingly like he was able to bluff the Republican party, then divide and conquer.
This won't destroy the Tea Party or give Obama a second term. But it sets a dangerous precedent in an election year. If the Republican party can be outmaneuvered on this, how good does the election really look?
Boehner is not the problem, but he is "a" problem. He seems to have been chosen for his inoffensive qualities. No one wanted a repeat of Gingrich vs Clinton. Fair enough. But there were better choices. The Republican party has no public face, and while that avoids the danger of being Gingriched, it lets the media put its own face on the party. With no real response.
The GOP does need a public face. A great communicator who's telegenic and articulate, charming and able to be on every news program at the same time. Those aren't impossible requirements. But in a party that puts forward the likes of Boehner, Pawlenty, Paul Ryan and wonders why they won't connect, that is a challenge. More of one than it should be.
The larger problem though is strategic. Going into the budget fight, the only ammunition on the GOP side was an expectation that the Democrats would want to work toward a deal. And that was a mistaken assumption. The Dems had nothing to gain from a deal, and everything to lose.
The Democratic party lost badly in 2010. Obama's polling is equally disastrous. Even if the left wing gang that controls the party now was interested in being good citizens, their only shot is to sabotage the GOP. And that's what they're doing. They're not prepared to take real damage to do it, but they were betting that the Republican party wouldn't either. Because the GOP is rising, and when you're rising, then you have more to lose.
The challenge here wasn't impossible, but it wasn't easy either. And the Republican party blew it. But losing a battle is also valuable. It's a wake up call before losing the war.
MURDER HE WROTE
I've written extensively about an unhinged Norwegian who went on a shooting spree, and I'll write about it some more in the coming week, but I think it's important to note that unlike a Norwegian killing people, Muslim violence remains the norm. Not an aberration.
A Norwegian killing spree is still man bites dog. A Muslim killing spree is dog bites man.
Stop by Religion of Peace or Jihad Watch and look at the latest tolls. Or Fort Hood II, yet another terrorist plot by Muslims in the military, just now.
What is really devastating about Breivik is that despite his video game derived posturing and his grandiose plans to seize power-- he was fairly competent. His journal records multiple setbacks, failed bomb making attempts and a ridiculous trip to Prague to try and buy weapons, but his act of terror succeeded. Those of Muslims tend to fail.
The difference here is First World vs Third World. If even half the Muslim Breiviks successfully pulled off their planned operations, America and Europe would be terror zones. Even 9/11 might have failed a dozen different ways because of the sloppiness of those involved. But they got lucky and 3,000 people died.
But that's the real lesson. The Islamic side only needs to get lucky once to kill a few people or a few thousand. Stack enough terror plots together and they add up to a body count.
While the media is still pursuing their Islamophobia bugaboo, the violence goes on. And it's not Norwegian violence-- it's Muslim violence.
In my defense of Robert Spencer at FPM, I asked a simple question
As Robert Spencer commented, “What exactly is ‘hate speech’ about quoting Qur’an verses and then showing Muslim preachers using those verses to exhort people to commit acts of violence, as well as violent acts committed by Muslims inspired by those verses and others?”
Tellingly, this citation is absent from the New York Times piece and other articles. While Spencer and other researchers have painstakingly shown the connection between incitement to violence and violence — no similar effort has been made by those attacking him.
There's no response, because there can't be a response.
Pointing out that Islam is violent, bigoted and misogynistic is not an act of violence. It is not a call for violence. It is a call for sanity.
WHAT DHIMMI JUSTICE LOOKS LIKE
Let's compare two cases side by side for a moment to understand that the real danger here is not as simple as a subway bombing. It is the implementation of a theocracy which considers non-Muslims to be subhuman.
In England, a 63 year old British man, is being kept on jail for putting pork products outside a mosque.
In Indonesia, the ringleaders of a Muslim mob who lynched three members of a minority sect got three months in jail.
In England, a judge called leaving pork products outside a mosque, "very disturbing offenses". Not because there is anything bad about pork-- but because anything that offends Muslims, whether it is pork, the state of Israel or a cartoon has become a "very disturbing offense".
Meanwhile in Indonesia, a Muslim lynch mob will probably end up serving less time in jail than John White, a 63 year old Englishman, did for littering.
This isn't what's coming. This is already here.
In Jamie Glazov's United in Hate, he draws the connections between the totalitarianism of Islam and that the totalitarianism of the left. The gap between Cap and Trade and Sharia is not great at all. The system to apply Sharia law is already in place. A public ready to consent to the deprivation of their freedoms is also already here.
The left has paved the way for Islam. It has destroyed reason, demolished justice and torn down civil rights. The next logical step after Marx is Mohammed. Destroy the economy and the republic, and replace it with a bigoted medieval theocracy.
THE WORLD THAT DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL
Egypt is descending into Islamism. So is Algeria. Probably the only thing keeping the Islamists from taking Libya is that Cameron has dismantled the RAF and Obama doesn't understand how wars work.
Meanwhile in Turkey, the army is finished, whatever Erdogan recreates out of the ruins will look more like Iran, and be personally loyal to the AKP. Which means that whatever Turkish democracy ever existed is done. And it all happened under the approving eye of the EU.
J.E. Dyer's take
More than 40 military officers are currently being held on charges of being involved in the conspiracy. It’s hard to pinpoint what the generals’ intentions are with their mass resignation. They are too old and experienced to believe that they would be currying popular support by perpetrating a dramatic action. They can’t expect their resignation to put popular pressure on Erdogan, who just won reelection with a healthy majority of the seats in Turkey’s parliament.
The alternative possibilities are that they have simply given up, and decided to spend their golden years doing something else (perhaps outside of Turkey), or that they are organizing to confront Erdogan.
The likeliest possibility is that they are giving up, or rather getting out of the way.
Erdogan has the backing of everyone from the EU and the US to Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not to mention the bigoted and racist Turkish public. He has shown himself to be a strong leader. And he is throwing in enough neo-Ottomanism to sweeten the pot.
The adamant secularism that seemed to mean so much is over. The idea that you can't be a powerful Muslim state has been drowned in gallons of oil money and Western terror appeasement. The process took longer than it did in Egypt, where Islamic mores dominated long before Tahrir Square got around to toppling the last military officers and secularism was a distant memory outside of the circles of the rich. But it's still done.
Ataturk is dead. Turkish Islamists will remember Erdogan as the Islamic Ataturk, who did for Turkish Islamism what Ataturk did for Turkish secularism.
The real threat on the horizon for the Islamists isn't the military, which exists only as a punching bag and a scapegoat for European Turkish experts. It's Kurdish nationalism, which is still the ticking time bomb.
Tensions in Syria and Iraq are feeding Kurdish nationalistic dreams. And while the US and EU continue to look away from Erdogan's racist brutalization of the Kurds, the dismantling of the Turkish military makes a civil war more likely. Not less.
The loss of the upper ranks of the Turkish military and their replacement by Islamist cronies, combined with the growing shift away from the United States, means a weaker and less competent military. A military that's sufficient to murder a few Kurdish teenage girls, but might not fare as well against a full uprising. Or a full scale invasion of Kurdistan.
THE ROUNDUP
What happens to a Lebanese belly dancer who appears on stage with Israelis? Permanent exile.
Breivik's attack already promoting fears of a bigoted backlash among Norwegian Muslims Jews.
What if America had national health care just like the UK? Death panels would delay until patients pay for their own treatment or die.
Ted Belman at Israpundit is fundraising to keep the site going. So is Right Side News which is short of their total.
Zilla is holding Operation United Front in support of counterjihadi writers libeled by terrorism apologists over the Oslo massacres.
Utoya camp hit by terrorist attack... hosted terrorists. Has Norway's left learned a lesson from this about rejecting terrorism? Doubtful. See Debbie Schlussel.
Elder of Ziyon takes down Jeffrey Goldberg on Twitter
What could possibly make auto union members vote Republican? Efficiency standards.
Women are the biggest Islamophobes. Just ask the New York Times.
THE TAO OF STUPID
Sheila Jackson-Lee might be the dumbest person in congress. She might even be the dumbest person outside congress. If there were ever a global championship for idiots, the country could send her there. And leave her there; because unlike Lassie, she wouldn’t be able find her way back on her own.
When Enron wanted someone to use as a puppet, they picked Sheila Jackson-Lee. They wanted a woman who didn’t have a mind of her own. Enron executives described her as “agreeable”, which was a polite way of saying, “dumber than a bunch of rocks caught in the hubcaps of a slow bus going the wrong way on a one way street in the middle of a flood.”
That's from my Front Page Magazine article, Sheila Jackson Lee: Racist and Moron. That was the polite title. Unfortunately congressional Republicans aren't exactly outscoring her right now. The amount of friendly fire by a circular firing squad is what you would expect after losing an election. And the blogs that specialize in shouting, "Fight, Fight" and then standing by and racking up hit counts by pushing more fights aren't exactly helping.
After spending two months kicking around Newt Gingrich, the GOP 2011 has mishandled the budget standoff while learning no lessons from his tenure. Obama's goals were fairly simple and so far he's achieved most of them.
1. Pin the blame for the impasse on Republicans
2. Divide the Republican leadership from the grass roots
3. Force through a "compromise" budget that gives him everything he wants and leaves the other side with nothing of substance that he can't bypass.
The media covered the first part, with the aid of a GOP in communication breakdown mode. The GOP is now deep in circular firing squad mode which covers the second part. And the third is likely still to come.
A budget battle against a media entrenched Oval Office occupant, with only the House, but not the Senate was always a dicey proposition. It would take a strong negotiator with a powerful public presence to hold up the GOP side.
The goal on the Democratic side isn't to pass a budget, but to create a crisis, pin the blame on the GOP, and particularly the Tea Party, wait for the opposition to fracture, and collect the winnings of a frantic compromise budget. And here we are.
Obama's plan was to leave the mess in the House, have the Senate veto anything sent up, and give regular press conferences warning of imminent disaster. And it's worked out fairly well. It's irresponsible and there are Democrats in the know who are disgusted by it. But the same holds true for his entire tenure. It looks increasingly like he was able to bluff the Republican party, then divide and conquer.
This won't destroy the Tea Party or give Obama a second term. But it sets a dangerous precedent in an election year. If the Republican party can be outmaneuvered on this, how good does the election really look?
Boehner is not the problem, but he is "a" problem. He seems to have been chosen for his inoffensive qualities. No one wanted a repeat of Gingrich vs Clinton. Fair enough. But there were better choices. The Republican party has no public face, and while that avoids the danger of being Gingriched, it lets the media put its own face on the party. With no real response.
The GOP does need a public face. A great communicator who's telegenic and articulate, charming and able to be on every news program at the same time. Those aren't impossible requirements. But in a party that puts forward the likes of Boehner, Pawlenty, Paul Ryan and wonders why they won't connect, that is a challenge. More of one than it should be.
The larger problem though is strategic. Going into the budget fight, the only ammunition on the GOP side was an expectation that the Democrats would want to work toward a deal. And that was a mistaken assumption. The Dems had nothing to gain from a deal, and everything to lose.
The Democratic party lost badly in 2010. Obama's polling is equally disastrous. Even if the left wing gang that controls the party now was interested in being good citizens, their only shot is to sabotage the GOP. And that's what they're doing. They're not prepared to take real damage to do it, but they were betting that the Republican party wouldn't either. Because the GOP is rising, and when you're rising, then you have more to lose.
The challenge here wasn't impossible, but it wasn't easy either. And the Republican party blew it. But losing a battle is also valuable. It's a wake up call before losing the war.
MURDER HE WROTE
I've written extensively about an unhinged Norwegian who went on a shooting spree, and I'll write about it some more in the coming week, but I think it's important to note that unlike a Norwegian killing people, Muslim violence remains the norm. Not an aberration.
A Norwegian killing spree is still man bites dog. A Muslim killing spree is dog bites man.
Stop by Religion of Peace or Jihad Watch and look at the latest tolls. Or Fort Hood II, yet another terrorist plot by Muslims in the military, just now.
What is really devastating about Breivik is that despite his video game derived posturing and his grandiose plans to seize power-- he was fairly competent. His journal records multiple setbacks, failed bomb making attempts and a ridiculous trip to Prague to try and buy weapons, but his act of terror succeeded. Those of Muslims tend to fail.
The difference here is First World vs Third World. If even half the Muslim Breiviks successfully pulled off their planned operations, America and Europe would be terror zones. Even 9/11 might have failed a dozen different ways because of the sloppiness of those involved. But they got lucky and 3,000 people died.
But that's the real lesson. The Islamic side only needs to get lucky once to kill a few people or a few thousand. Stack enough terror plots together and they add up to a body count.
While the media is still pursuing their Islamophobia bugaboo, the violence goes on. And it's not Norwegian violence-- it's Muslim violence.
In my defense of Robert Spencer at FPM, I asked a simple question
As Robert Spencer commented, “What exactly is ‘hate speech’ about quoting Qur’an verses and then showing Muslim preachers using those verses to exhort people to commit acts of violence, as well as violent acts committed by Muslims inspired by those verses and others?”
Tellingly, this citation is absent from the New York Times piece and other articles. While Spencer and other researchers have painstakingly shown the connection between incitement to violence and violence — no similar effort has been made by those attacking him.
There's no response, because there can't be a response.
Pointing out that Islam is violent, bigoted and misogynistic is not an act of violence. It is not a call for violence. It is a call for sanity.
WHAT DHIMMI JUSTICE LOOKS LIKE
Let's compare two cases side by side for a moment to understand that the real danger here is not as simple as a subway bombing. It is the implementation of a theocracy which considers non-Muslims to be subhuman.
In England, a 63 year old British man, is being kept on jail for putting pork products outside a mosque.
In Indonesia, the ringleaders of a Muslim mob who lynched three members of a minority sect got three months in jail.
In England, a judge called leaving pork products outside a mosque, "very disturbing offenses". Not because there is anything bad about pork-- but because anything that offends Muslims, whether it is pork, the state of Israel or a cartoon has become a "very disturbing offense".
Meanwhile in Indonesia, a Muslim lynch mob will probably end up serving less time in jail than John White, a 63 year old Englishman, did for littering.
This isn't what's coming. This is already here.
In Jamie Glazov's United in Hate, he draws the connections between the totalitarianism of Islam and that the totalitarianism of the left. The gap between Cap and Trade and Sharia is not great at all. The system to apply Sharia law is already in place. A public ready to consent to the deprivation of their freedoms is also already here.
The left has paved the way for Islam. It has destroyed reason, demolished justice and torn down civil rights. The next logical step after Marx is Mohammed. Destroy the economy and the republic, and replace it with a bigoted medieval theocracy.
THE WORLD THAT DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL
Egypt is descending into Islamism. So is Algeria. Probably the only thing keeping the Islamists from taking Libya is that Cameron has dismantled the RAF and Obama doesn't understand how wars work.
Meanwhile in Turkey, the army is finished, whatever Erdogan recreates out of the ruins will look more like Iran, and be personally loyal to the AKP. Which means that whatever Turkish democracy ever existed is done. And it all happened under the approving eye of the EU.
J.E. Dyer's take
More than 40 military officers are currently being held on charges of being involved in the conspiracy. It’s hard to pinpoint what the generals’ intentions are with their mass resignation. They are too old and experienced to believe that they would be currying popular support by perpetrating a dramatic action. They can’t expect their resignation to put popular pressure on Erdogan, who just won reelection with a healthy majority of the seats in Turkey’s parliament.
The alternative possibilities are that they have simply given up, and decided to spend their golden years doing something else (perhaps outside of Turkey), or that they are organizing to confront Erdogan.
The likeliest possibility is that they are giving up, or rather getting out of the way.
Erdogan has the backing of everyone from the EU and the US to Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not to mention the bigoted and racist Turkish public. He has shown himself to be a strong leader. And he is throwing in enough neo-Ottomanism to sweeten the pot.
The adamant secularism that seemed to mean so much is over. The idea that you can't be a powerful Muslim state has been drowned in gallons of oil money and Western terror appeasement. The process took longer than it did in Egypt, where Islamic mores dominated long before Tahrir Square got around to toppling the last military officers and secularism was a distant memory outside of the circles of the rich. But it's still done.
Ataturk is dead. Turkish Islamists will remember Erdogan as the Islamic Ataturk, who did for Turkish Islamism what Ataturk did for Turkish secularism.
The real threat on the horizon for the Islamists isn't the military, which exists only as a punching bag and a scapegoat for European Turkish experts. It's Kurdish nationalism, which is still the ticking time bomb.
Tensions in Syria and Iraq are feeding Kurdish nationalistic dreams. And while the US and EU continue to look away from Erdogan's racist brutalization of the Kurds, the dismantling of the Turkish military makes a civil war more likely. Not less.
The loss of the upper ranks of the Turkish military and their replacement by Islamist cronies, combined with the growing shift away from the United States, means a weaker and less competent military. A military that's sufficient to murder a few Kurdish teenage girls, but might not fare as well against a full uprising. Or a full scale invasion of Kurdistan.
THE ROUNDUP
What happens to a Lebanese belly dancer who appears on stage with Israelis? Permanent exile.
Breivik's attack already promoting fears of a bigoted backlash among Norwegian Muslims Jews.
What if America had national health care just like the UK? Death panels would delay until patients pay for their own treatment or die.
Ted Belman at Israpundit is fundraising to keep the site going. So is Right Side News which is short of their total.
Zilla is holding Operation United Front in support of counterjihadi writers libeled by terrorism apologists over the Oslo massacres.
Utoya camp hit by terrorist attack... hosted terrorists. Has Norway's left learned a lesson from this about rejecting terrorism? Doubtful. See Debbie Schlussel.
Elder of Ziyon takes down Jeffrey Goldberg on Twitter
What could possibly make auto union members vote Republican? Efficiency standards.
Women are the biggest Islamophobes. Just ask the New York Times.
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