I am honored that two of my posts were chosen, and that was (as usual) withotu self-nomination. Although if I had thought about it ahead of time, I probably would have nominated my first post of the week, a rare non-political post.
Check it out!
DUBAI, Sept. 2 (Reuters) — Al Qaeda, in a video posted Saturday on the Internet, called for President Bush and non-Muslims, especially those in the United States, to convert to Islam and abandon their “misguided” ways, or else suffer the consequences.The Counterterrorism Blog has a quick analysis, saying it is a prelude to "Future Jihad."
The main speaker on the tape was identified as Azzam the American, an Islamic convert from California also known as Adam Yahiye Gadahn who is wanted by the F.B.I. for questioning.
In the video, he was introduced by Al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian.
The American, speaking in English, said, “To Americans and the rest of Christendom, we say either repent misguided ways and enter into the light of truth or keep your poison to yourself and suffer the consequences in this world and the next.”
In a Hadith, Muhammad tells his followers to call people to Islam before waging war against them:Perhaps we should look at this video the same way.
Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war…When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them….If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya [the tax on non-Muslims specified in Qur’an 9:29]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim 4294)In light of that, this letter could be -- but is not necessarily -- a prelude to an attack.
[T]he Human Rights Council, among other things, strongly condemns the grave Israeli violations of human rights and breaches of international humanitarian law in Lebanon; also condemns massive bombardments of Lebanese civilian populations, especially the massacres in Qana, Marwaheen, Al Duweir, Al Bayadah, Al Qaa, Chiyah, Ghazieh and other towns of Lebanon and the displacement of one million civilians; further condemns the Israeli bombardment of vital civilian infrastructure resulting in extensive destruction and heavy damage to public and private properties; further condemns the Israeli bombardment of vital civilian infrastructure; calls upon Israel to observe the principle of proportionality and refrain from launching any attack that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life; calls upon Israel to abide immediately and scrupulously by its obligations under human rights law, in particular the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and urges all concerned parties to respect the rules of international humanitarian law, to refrain from violence against the civilian population and to treat under all circumstances all detained combatants and civilians in accordance with the Geneva Conventions; and calls upon Israel to immediately stop military operations against the civilian population and civilian objects resulting in death and destruction and serious violations of human rights.
The Council also decides to urgently establish and immediately dispatch a high-level inquiry commission comprising eminent experts of human rights law and international humanitarian law, including the possibility of inviting the relevant special procedures to be nominated to the commission to, among other things: investigate the systematic targeting and killings of civilians by Israel; examine the types of weapons used by Israel and their conformity with international law; and assess the extent and deadly impact of Israeli attacks on human life, property, critical infrastructure and environment...In other words, "We know that Israel (and Israel alone) is guilty of human rights abuses, genocide, ethnic cleansing, pedophilia, blasphemy, violating the entire Code of Hammurabi and eating non-Halal foods. Now we will launch a full investigation to see exactly how guilty you are."
"If I knew the process of capturing [these soldiers], even with a 1% probability, would lead to a war like this, and then if you asked me would you go and capture them, my answer would be, of course, no — for humanitarian, moral, social and security reasons," said Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of the Shiite Muslim militant group.
"You ask me if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not."
In fact, from the onset, Zionism aimed at the dispossession of the indigenous population so that Israel could become a wholly Jewish state.While there were some Zionists that felt this way, it is clear from contemporaneous accounts that the Zionist leadership did not want the Arabs in their territory to leave. This is a common lie used to create the "Israeli apartheid" fiction of which Kasrils is so fond.
With the illegal Jewish settlements, security road network and the construction of the monstrous wall around the militarily occupied West Bank, the remaining Palestinians are ghettoised within 12% of their original territory. This dispossession is reminiscent of apartheid and its 13% of Bantustan homelands. For many this is the fundamental cause of the conflict.He fails to mention that before 2000, these Palestinian Arabs had jobs, good medical care, prospects for their own state, and a booming economy. Their decision to start a war with Israel, made by Kasrils' friend Arafat, is what made their lives hard. This simple fact is somehow never mentioned by those who like to throw "facts" around.
Lebanon, too, has been a part of Zionist annexation plans. Israel long regarded the Litani river to its north as its natural border, and constantly sought to turn the country into a Christian bulwark against the Muslims. It invaded in 1948, 1978 and 1982 and stayed in the south until 2000, before being driven out by Hizbullah. In that period Israel provoked civil war, connived in massacres, created a proxy army in the south, and still holds on to strategic farmland.More lies than I can count, but briefly: No one ever considered Lebanon a part of modern Israel*, no one of importance ever wanted to annex it, encouraging the Christians of Lebanon to maintain their power is hardly "annexation", and the "strategic farmland" was never Lebanese. This paragraph makes crystal clear that truth is not on Kasrils' agenda.
What lies behind Israel’s latest aggression? Could such a disproportionate response really have been because of the abduction of two soldiers? There have been constant border skirmishes. Israel could have responded with local action or the prisoner exchange sought by Hizbullah. The dogs of war were let loose instead.He follows this with paragraphs of strawmen and then "suggestions" of a pre-planned US/Zionist plot to take on Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. He utterly misses the point, which his friends in the Israeli peace camp understood:
Like Gaarder, we must call baby killers “baby killers” and declare that those using methods reminiscent of the Nazis be told that they are behaving like Nazis.This is almost too obscene to comment on, but when Kasrils sees Israel stripping all Israeli Arabs of their citizenship, when he sees a government-approved Kristallnacht, when he sees Israeli gas chambers and crematoria killing tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs every day - then he might be able to spout such racist and bigoted garbage. Until then, it shows that he is a first-class supporter of terror and genocide against Israeli Jews.
Hizbullah Recruits Children Barely 10 Years OldTIME magazine mentioned the Mahdi scouts a few weeks ago. Wow, that salute looks familiar.According to Roz Al-Yusuf, "Hizbullah has recruited over 2,000 innocent children aged 10-15 to form armed militias. Before the recent war with Israel, these children appeared only in the annual Jerusalem Day celebrations, and were referred to as the 'December 14 Units,' but today they are called istishhadiyun ['martyrs']..."
"Hizbullah has customarily recruited youths and children and trained them to fight from a very early age. These are children barely 10 years old, who wear camouflage uniforms, cover their faces with black [camouflage] paint, swear to wage jihad, and join the Mahdi Scouts [youth organization]...
"The children are selected by Hizbullah recruitment [officers] based on one criterion only: They must be willing to become martyrs."
The Children Train to Become Martyrs"The children are educated from an early age to become martyrs in their youth, like their fathers, and their training is carried out by the Mahdi Scouts youth organization... [This organization], which is affiliated with Hizbullah, teaches the children the basic principles of Shi'ite ideology and of Hizbullah's ideology... The first lesson that the children are taught by Hizbullah is 'The Disappearance of Israel,' and it is always an important part of the [training] program...
"The Mahdi Scouts organization was founded in Lebanon on May 5, 1985... According to the organization's website, the number of [scouts] who had undergone training by the end of 2004 was 1,491, and the number of scout groups which had joined [the organization] was 449, with a membership of 41,960. According to the organization's most recent statistics, since 2004, 120 of its members have been ready to become martyrs.
"The organization's goal is to train an exemplary generation of Muslims based on the [principle of] 'the rule of the jurisprudent' [a founding principle of the Islamic Revolution in Iran], and to prepare for the coming of the Imam Mahdi [the Shi'ite messiah]. Its members, including the children, undertake to obey their commanders, to bring honor to the [Muslim] nation, and to prepare themselves for helping the Mahdi [when he comes]."
"A Nation With Child-Martyrs Will Be Victorious"
According to the article, Na'im Qasim, deputy to Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, said in an interview on Radio Canada: "A nation with child-martyrs will be victorious, no matter what difficulties lie in its path. Israel cannot conquer us or violate our territories, because we have martyr sons who will purge the land of the Zionist filth... This will be done through the blood of the martyrs, until we eventually achieve our goals."
Regarding the situation in South Lebanon, the Secreatry-General [sic] said that "both parties have to respect the ceasefire...Parties with complaints on the ground, they should come to General Pellegrini, not take matters into their own hands...It’s a bit like having a football match where one of the teams also attempts to play the referee. You cannot be a team in a football match and the referee at the same time."
On 30 August the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) withdrew from the general area of Bastra and the area south of the Kafr Shuba and Shaba villages along the Blue Line in the Eastern part of South Lebanon. UNIFIL has established checkpoints and will carry out intensive patrolling to confirm that the IDF are no longer present in this area. UNIFIL plans to handover the area to the Lebanese Armed Forces.
Read the whole thing.
In October 2000, Maher Hathout attended a rally in Lafayette Park across from the White House. His speech was captured on video for posterity by the Investigative Project on Terrorism. He told the assembled crowd that he was not surprised by what he called the "atrocities committed by the apartheid brutal state of Israel." After all, he reasoned, "butchers do what butchers do, and ... what is expected from a racist apartheid [state] is what is happening now."Fast forward six years. The Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations announced last Tuesday that Hathout, president of the Islamic Center of Southern California and a senior adviser to the Muslim Public Affairs Council (mpac), would receive its prestigious John Allen Buggs Award in luncheon ceremonies on October 5. The award is given annually for what the commission describes as "outstanding human relations work."
A man who called Israel a nation of butchers (he didn't stop there; he has also accused the United States of committing state terrorism) is about to be honored with a major award for effective practices in human relations work. Is this any different than giving, say, David Duke an award for healing racial relations?
From July 13 to August 13, the Israel Police reported 4,228 rocket impacts inside Israel from rockets fired by Hizballah. No geographical area in the world has sustained such a large quantity of rocket strikes since the Iran-Iraq war in the early 1980s.Here is a small amount of the damage done by just one of those 4,228 rockets (other pictures in the report):
[Hezbollah] raises large sums of money in private homes and public places in Lebanon: Businesses, mosques, education institution, petrol stations, shopping centers, roadblocks and more. It uses thousands of "charity boxes" spread among populations, as well as national fund raising campaigns.Part of the activity is carried out in cooperation with other Hizbullah social-economic institutions.
For example, IDF soldiers captured in Hizbullah members' houses at the village of Aita al-Shaab leaflets distributed in homes, schools and stores, encouraging people to raise funds for the organization.
The leaflets feature a drawing with the message that the donations are aimed at purchasing weapons for the destruction of the State of Israel. The leaflets read: "In order for all of our houses to become part of the resistance (Hizbullah) – this is the resistance box – place it in your home."
The picture shows a charity box designed as the Dome of the Rock with a photo of the former Hizbullah secretary-general. Coins inserted into the box turn into bullets when they emerge from the box and smash a Star of David symbolizing Israel.
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!