Palestinian Mother: Son's Martyrdom is a Wedding

The hope that the situation in the Palestinian Authority (PA) will improve dramatically with the demise of Yasser Arafat is based on the mistaken assumption that the problems in the PA stemmed mainly from Arafat as an individual and not from the society he created.

But an interview with a Palestinian mother on PATV yesterday indicates the depth of the PA society's worship of Death for Allah (Shahada), and support of suicide terror, which has not changed merely because of a change of leadership. In this program, a Palestinian mother of a suicide terrorist talks about how she and other mothers in her position see their sons Shahada death as a positive event -- like a joyful wedding.

The following is an excerpt from the PATV NOV. 17:

Moderator: "They [Israelis] accuse the Palestinian mother of hating her sons and in encouraging them to die. This is what we hear from Israelis. Is this true?

Mother Um Al-Ajrami: "No, we do not encourage our sons to die. We encourage them to Shahada [martyrdom] for the homeland, for Allah."

[She then talks about a group of women, all mothers of Shahids, who go to other mothers of Shahids during the period of mourning]:
"We don't say to the mothers of the Shahids, 'We have come to comfort you’, but 'We have come to bless you on the wedding of your son, on the Shahada of your son. Congratulations to you on the Shahada . . . ' For us, the mourning is joyous. We give out drinks, we give out sweets. Praise to God -- the mourning is joyous. occasion" [PATV, Nov. 17, 2004]

The "Islam Online" website (www.islamonline.org) points out that this woman, Um Al-Ajrami is quoted as saying, "I brought sweets and biscuits in order to change the day of joy to a new wedding, not mourning. I will sweeten anyone who will come to me to bless me on the occasion of the first holiday of the Shahada of my son."
[www.islamonline.org]

Palestinian Media Watch has frequently documented that the PA political and religious leadership has promoted the interpretation of Islamic tradition, that Shahada -death is not to be feared, but should be aspired and anticipated with great pleasure. Young men are taught by religious leaders and through video clips that if they die as Shahids, they will join 72 beautiful maidens in Paradise. (see sermon and video clip.) The Palestinian mothers' positive, even joyous, responses to their sons' deaths -- and their celebration of their sons' "marriages" to the maidens of Paradise -- is a result of years of PA indoctrination.

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The Suha soap-opera continues

Suha snatches medical dossier before Arafat's nephew gets it, flees to Tunis

Yasser Arafat's widow took possession of his much-sought medical dossier on Friday. She fled with the files after Palestinian TV broadcast a Friday sermon which threatened her life. She reportedly flew to Tunis in Arafat's jet, defying PA orders. Although the French defense ministry decided Nasser al Kidwa could access information on his uncle's mystery illness, Suha's lawyers claim only his widow can.

Suha Arafat obtained the file from the Percy military hospital in suburban Paris in mid-afternoon, attorney Jean-Marie Burguburu told The Associated Press by telephone.

Burguburu declined to give any details about the content of the file, but said the Palestinian leader's widow was considering whether to release the information to the public.

'The decision is in the process of being examined,' he said. 'The problem is, on the one hand, to try to stop all these false ideas about the death of President Arafat - these rumors.'

'Secondly, it's to make sure that there is not any abnormal exploitation of this medical file,' Burguburu said.

Earlier, Palestinian leaders dispatched an emissary to Paris to pick up the records and promised to make public the cause of Arafat's death.

It wasn't immediately clear how the latest development would affect the mission of the emissary -- Nasser al-Kidwa, Arafat's nephew and also the Palestinian representative to the United Nations. He had confirmed to the AP late Thursday that he would be traveling to France.

French officials insist the law prevents them from making Arafat's medical records public -- but they can give them to family members, who can then reveal information if they wish.
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Al-Quds editor: Arafat signed Oslo so Jews would flee "Palestine"

Yasser Arafat agreed to sign the Oslo Accords because he expected that the agreements would lead thousands of Jews to flee Israel.

Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based daily al-Quds al-Arabi, said Arafat said so when they met in Tunis, days before he returned to the Gaza Strip. 'The man told me, 'Listen, Abdel Bari, I know that you are opposed to the Oslo Accords, but you must always remember what I'm going to tell you. The day will come when you will see thousands of Jews fleeing Palestine. I will not live to see this, but you will definitely see it in your lifetime. The Oslo Accords will help bring this about.''

Before Oslo, Atwan regularly met with Arafat but later became a harsh critic of the Accords and corruption in the Palestinian Authority. He repeatedly called on Arafat to resign.

'President Arafat was the one who established the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in response to the attempt to marginalize him after the failure of the Camp David summit,' Atwan added.

'At the summit, he faced immense pressure from Israel, the US and some Arab parties to compromise on Jerusalem. Ironically, some Arab leaders, including Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz, called Arafat demanding that he display flexibility on the issue of Jerusalem.'

Atwan said Arafat rejected Israel's offers at the summit 'because he wasn't prepared to sign a final agreement with the Jewish state. He was well aware that such an agreement would make him go down in history as a traitor because he would have to give up the right of return for the refugees and most of the sovereignty over east Jerusalem.'

Commenting on Arafat's hope that the Oslo Accords would force thousands of Jews to flee Israel, Atwan said: 'The Jews did not flee from Palestine by the thousands as President Arafat predicted. But they have started packing their bags to run away from the Gaza Strip and some settlements in the West Bank. There are also signs of emigration to Europe, the US and Canada following the suicide bombings and the sense of insecurity among Israelis.'

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Anti-Israel Crowd Gets Ugly at San Francisco Counter-Protest

Anti-Israel Crowd Gets Ugly at San Francisco Counter-Protest
Written by Cinnamon Stillwell

For over a year now, an ongoing battle between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel groups has taken place in the streets of San Francisco. Long used to running the show, the anti-Israel crowd is now routinely counter-protested by groups like San Francisco Voice for Israel and ProtestWarrior.com. And judging by the behavior at last weekend’s counter-protest, they’re not too happy about it. The following after-report from San Francisco Voice for Israel provides the details.

They say that when a caged rat is cornered, it lashes out. A perfect example of this was the Justice In Palestine rally on Saturday, November 13, at the 24th and Mission BART station plaza.

It had not been a good couple of weeks for the anti-Israel forces. Their preferred candidate for president of the United States, Ralph Nader, had gone down to humiliating defeat, achieving a mere 0.5% of the vote. Furthering their angst, master terrorist and father of the Palestinian people, Yassir Arafat, had died of a mysterious illness in a French hospital, and no western head of state came to his funeral. Additionally, newspapers were full of reports of Arafat's corruption and how he fleeced the Palestinian people of billions of dollars.

We knew the anti-Israel crowd was particularly on edge because the week before a Palestinian student group (GUPS) at San Francisco State University violently attacked members of a Republican student organization. Not just with words, but also by throwing food, attempting to destroy the table, and even physical attacks.

With this in mind, we were not surprised when the intimidation started almost immediately as we were setting up at the BART station plaza. We were instantly surrounded by Palestinian flags to the front, and the ''Jews for a Free Palestine'' sign to the back. Undeterred, we raised our Israeli and American flags, put out flyers, and even offered Israeli chocolates, cookies, and tea to anyone who wanted them, from whatever political perspective.

As we prepared to fire up some music, one of their people came over and boasted of the volume capabilities of their own sound system and if we even tried to play music, they would ''shut us down.'' We subsequently discovered that they had even taken the precaution of obtaining an exclusive sound permit to forbid any other type of amplified sound in the plaza!

There were about one hundred of them in total. They comprised the usual collection of Stalinists and other factions from the far left, along with their Arab supporters. Conspicuously absent were the anti-Semitic signs and statements we have come to expect at these events. We numbered roughly 25, with many teenagers, and a handful of Israelis.

Soon it was time for them to bring out their speakers. As this was the ''Targets of the Empire'' rally, they spoke on everything from the San Francisco Hotel Union strike, Cuba, Venezuela, and Haiti, but always tying it back to ''Palestine.'' Unintended irony appeared when a striking hotel worker spoke, but failed to mention that the American Israeli Policy Advisory Committee (AIPAC) had moved their banquet so as not to cross picket lines. A representative of Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT) tried to claim that it was the Israeli ''occupation of Palestine'' that caused the Palestinian Authority to oppress gays, and that once Israeli control ends, the P.A. will no longer harass, murder, and torture Palestinian gays.

The highlight of the lineup was Dick Becker, head of the local chapter of A.N.S.W.E.R. He railed against us for ''admiring'' Ariel Sharon, despite not a single pro-Sharon sign being present and not a single pro-Sharon statement having been issued. He then went on to praise the al-Qaeda led terrorists in Fallujah and compared them to the Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during the Holocaust.

Given the statements made by Becker and the other speakers, it was no surprise that the anti-Israel protestors did not want these speeches made public, and so went about attempting to block our filming of the speakers. They waved flags directly in front of the cameras and then when they finally realized the flags were translucent, held up signs. As they doggedly attempted to block filming of the talks, they displayed the very same fascist policies that, at least in principle, they claim to oppose!

The harassment did not stop there, however. As our cameraman attempted to film a polite exchange between an anti-Israel Israeli and a pro-Israel Palestinian, members of QUIT put a flag in front of the camera. They persisted even when the anti-Israel Israeli said she did not mind being filmed! As the cameraman attempted to push the fabric of the flag aside, the anti-Israel activists started shouting, ''You're provoking us! You're provoking us!'' repeatedly.

They were clearly itching for a fight, and when we would not take the bait, they tried to initiate violence themselves. Twice they tried to assault us, but the nearby San Francisco police were ready. They had heard about the SFSU attacks and swooped in as soon as the anti-Israel activists got violent.

The distinct ugliness of this rally – the harassment, the intimidation, and the thwarted attempts at physical violence – represents an acceleration of the continued moral decline of the anti-Israel activists. No longer content to merely lie about the situation and to glorify al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other terrorists, they are resorting to puffing up their chests and lashing out at us, while trying to suppress public dissemination of their ideas and their agenda.

They failed.

They failed to intimidate any of us. They failed to hurt any of us physically. They failed to suppress the truth.

They now know that we will not back down.

They know we are tracking them, and they are running scared. As a result, they lash out.

We know that with the truth, morality, and justice on our side, we will prevail.

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Israeli Reality TV: "The Ambassador"

A new TV series called 'The Ambassador' features 14 Israelis trying to outdo each other battling Israel's global image problem in the face of a 4-year-old Palestinian uprising.

Devised by an American-Jewish benefactor, the series begins airing next week with contestants in business suits plying their propaganda skills at various foreign locales, a Channel Two advertisement said on Thursday.

In a format recalling the U.S. reality show 'The Apprentice,' where participants vie for a management post under magnate Donald Trump, an Israeli panel including an ex-security chief and a former army spokesman will weed out the winner.

The prize: an all-expenses-paid year working as an Israeli public relations liaison in New York.

Israeli crackdowns on a Palestinian revolt raging in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since September 2000 have drawn censure internationally, and many Israelis say their politicians lack the personality or language skills to offset the bad press.

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Egyptian intellectual criticizes Arab mentality

The progressive Egyptian intellectual Dr. Amr Isma'il whose articles are regularly published on the secular Arab website www.rezgar.com, wrote an article condemning the Arabs' lack of self-criticism and the Islamists' abuse of the term "democracy." The following are excerpts from the article, which appeared on the progressive Arabic website www.elaph.com: [1]

'Why Do We Talk by Means of Bullets, and Hasten to Make Sweeping Accusations of Unbelief?'

"Why can't we see things as the rest of the world sees them? Why do we always feel that someone is conspiring against us, and that he is the cause of our problems and our cultural and economic backwardness?… Why are we not able to criticize ourselves and [why do] we view anyone who tries to do so as an enemy of the nation and of its principles, and other things of this kind that make some people afraid to think?…

"Why do we talk among ourselves by means of bullets, bombs, and car bombs, and when we disagree we hasten to accuse [our interlocutor] of unbelief and of being dragged after the West and the East? Why don't we recognize that nobody among us has the answer to all the questions and whoever pretends to have the absolute truth is nothing but a pretender? Have we heard that in any respectable country the parties and political streams talk by means of bullets, as sometimes happens between the various factions in Gaza and as is happening now in Iraq?…"

'We Kill, Blow Up Cars, and Slit Throats in the Name of Allah, Yet Protest When Others Depict Muslims as Terrorists'

"Why are we the only nations in the world that still use religion, Islam, and the name of Allah in everything – in politics, economics, science, art, and literature. We kill in the name of Allah, blow up cars in the name of Allah, and slit throats in the name of Allah and Islam, and then we protest when others depict the Muslims as terrorists. We indiscriminately kill doctors who went to provide medical care to Afghans, and then we protest when the world describes these acts as acts of terror. We blow up embassies and trains [and consequently] children, women, and citizens with no connection to our cause are killed, and then we protest when the world describes these extremists, who view themselves as Muslims, as terrorists.

"We do not ask ourselves why no other religious group perpetrates these acts of atrocity, and when a terrorist country like Israel does so, it does not say it is killing in the name of the Lord or in the name of Allah, but claims it is doing so out of self-defense. Why Allah is [held responsible] for our bad deeds and for our desire for revenge... Why don't we act like [Israel] and say that these acts are for self-defense or for defense of the homeland, without bringing Allah and Islam into it? Why don't we ever ask ourselves what are the roots of extremist thinking and why don't we try to deal with it? When other countries demand that we deal with these roots and reconsider them, we scream that they are intervening in our internal affairs and that they are the enemies of Islam. Why don't we ask ourselves whether anyone had demanded that we reconsider our curricula before we blew up the [World] Trade towers and killed thousands, and before we blew up the trains in Madrid and killed hundreds, and before we kidnapped hostages and slaughtered them on the TV screens, so that the entire world would see our ugly face?"

'Democracy is the Best Regime, and has Brought Progress and Prosperity to Those Countries that Have Adopted It'

"Why can our brain not understand that democracy has proven itself to be the best regime and that it has brought progress and prosperity to those countries that have adopted it? Why can our brain not understand that democracy is not just the election ballots, but is an entire framework, the most important [aspect] of which is freedom of choice, in religion, in belief, in attire, and in the freedom to express political and cultural opinions, even if they differ from what is accepted, as long as they do not incite to violence. Why don't we understand that democracy is complete equality between people, regardless of sex, color, or religion…

"We have reached a crossroads. If we want Islam as a political solution, not as a religion … we must be strong and admit honestly that Islam – according to the belief of groups of political Islam that follow bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri's organization – stands in utter contradiction to democracy in its true meaning… Let all the political Islamic groups, and first and foremost the 'Muslim Brotherhood,' cease their policy of concealing [their real opinions] and show their true faces [and reveal] that they are trying [to bring] an Islamic rule that at best will be no different from Iran, and at worst, [no different] from the Taliban…

"However, if we want a democracy, we cannot avoid agreeing that religion must not [be mixed up] with politics, which is the expression of the people. Since most of our peoples are Muslims, they will not legislate laws that contradict the principles and spirit of Islam, and they do not need parties that claim to speak in the name of religion, [while in actual fact] they are appropriating it in the name of their political and mundane interests.

"Democracy has only one meaning: No party or political trend has [the right] to claim that it absolutely and everlastingly represents the people. Governing is a ball that we pass between ourselves… Citizenship, and its attendant rights and obligations, belongs to all those who live in the homeland, regardless of sex, color, or religion. The most basic civil right is the right to vote and the right to present candidacy to any public office, including the presidential office, whether man or woman, Muslim or non-Muslim, as long as they uphold the constitution and pledge not to change it, except through the means of change determined in the constitution itself, and to which the people have agreed.

"This is democracy. If we want a different regime, let us call it by any other name except democracy. Otherwise we will be using the tools of democracy in order to destroy it, just as those who conceal [their true opinions] in our world – and these are, regretfully, many."

[1] http://www.elaph.com/elaphweb/AsdaElaph/2004/10/19110.htm, October 31, 2004.

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Al-Ahram Weekly : Arab diplomats relieved at Arafat's death

Relief is perhaps the best way to describe the private reaction of most Arab officials to the sudden and somewhat ambiguous death of Yasser Arafat, the icon of the Palestinian struggle for the past 40 years.

In public, before their own constituencies, these same officials laid on what they felt obliged to provide: a red carpet funeral. Most major Arab leaders and senior representatives were on hand in Cairo to pay their last, and somewhat belated respects to a man they had largely forgotten during his nearly three-year siege in Ramallah.

But beyond the honours of a brief state funeral, Arafat received very little recognition from his fellow Arab leaders. Official statements eulogising the Palestinian leader sounded more like a simple notification of another death, rather than any genuine outpouring of grief at the loss of a revolutionary hero.

At the Cairo headquarters of the Arab League, a two-hour ceremony was held to collectively eulogise Arafat, in response to a request circulated by the Palestinian permanent mission in Cairo and strongly supported by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa.

But once the ceremonies had ended, there was hardly any further mention of him. Instead, Arab capitals began talking about the need to 'capture the moment' and 'seize the opportunity' to get the US to start moving on the Palestinian-Israeli front. In addition, papers are already being drafted in at least a couple of Arab capitals to be presented at a Barcelona process foreign ministers' meeting in The Netherlands, the current rotating chair of the European Union, in the hope of instilling new momentum into the peace process.

In a syndicated article, 'Arafat left, leaving the Palestinians with an ever vivid dream of independence', run by the Saudi-owned, London-based Asharq Al-Awsat, King Abdullah of Jordan, who was known to have an uneasy relationship with Arafat, as did his late father King Hussein, described the death of the PLO leader as 'a new chance for peace'.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, certain Arab diplomats, in particular those from countries with direct borders with the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel, were explicit in expressing their relief at the death of Arafat. For them, his passing marks the end to the presumptuous obstacles that the Palestinian leader had thrown up on the road to a settlement with Israel, largely for the sake of his own glory. Some see his death as heralding an end to the oppressive control that he had exercised over the Palestinian resistance movements, including Hamas and Jihad. Other diplomats are breathing a sigh of relief at the demise of a leader they considered too self-centred to really care about the misfortunes of his own people.

In six interviews conducted by Al-Ahram Weekly since Arafat's death, there was not a single word of sorrow expressed by any Arab diplomatic source. Indeed, for many, Arafat's death would seem to mark not an end, but a new beginning. This sentiment was also expressed by some Palestinians, who were known for their opposition to Arafat's authoritarian style of rule.

'It is understandable, in a way, that Arab leaders work in a totalitarian manner,' one Palestinian source said. 'They are leaders with states. But Arafat was not a leader with a state; he was the leader of an independence movement.' According to the source, at one point Arafat seemed even to wish to fool himself, claiming that he was a true 'Arab president' in order to be received at the White House.

Given the dominance of such perceptions in diplomatic circles, it is hardly surprising that Arafat's passing has been an occasion for a general sigh of relief. 'He thought he could keep on playing his games of saying 'yes' to one person and 'no' to another over the same offer,' one diplomatic source said. 'He thought he could be the leader of the Intifada and the leader of the peace treaties at the same time. That was impossible. That was the reason that in the end, nobody was willing to burn his fingers for him, because we all knew his real game.'

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PA police rescue 3 attempted smugglers from collapsed tunnel

Palestinian Authority policemen rescued three Palestinians from a collapsed tunnel through which they were attempting to smuggle weapons a few hundred meters from the Egypt-Israel border in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday.
The three were arrested by Palestinian security forces and transfered to Israel for medical treatment. The Israel Defense Forces made their rescue possible on condition that they be transfered to the army afterward.

The three, all from the same family, were trapped in rubble after the tunnel collapsed due to heavy rain in the area overnight. The family is from the Yabna refugee camp in Gaza.

Military sources said the tunnel collapsed while an unknown number of Palestinians were digging toward an IDF outpost near Rafah in southern Gaza.

The sources said the army had permitted two Palestinian bulldozers to enter the area to help dig out the people.

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The Enforcer (for Shin Bet)

Isralert.com source: New Scientist.com

Michael Koubi worked for Shin Bet, Israel's security service, for 21 years and was its chief interrogator from 1987 to 1993. He interrogated hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including renowned militants such as Sheikh Yassin, the former leader of the Palestinian group Hamas, who was killed in an Israeli attack this year. He claims that intelligence gained in interrogation has been crucial to protecting Israel from terrorism. He tells Michael Bond that, given enough time, he could make almost anyone talk


What cut you out to become an interrogator?
It was in my character. It was natural for me. Also I spoke Arabic very well.

What was it about your character?
Being an interrogator is 70 per cent character, 30 per cent learned. You have to know how to use intonation when you speak to a prisoner. You have to let him feel you are the boss, always. Not many interrogators can do that, because they don't have the self-assurance. I was born with that. You have to know instinctively the exact time when to shout, when to speak loudly, when to speak quietly, or when not to speak at all and just sit and look at him - for hours if necessary. These things are instinctive.

How good are you at Arabic and why is that important? At school I learned Arabic better than other students, even the small nuances. I spoke it with my grandmother, with my parents. I can speak Arabic better than most Arabs. I learned the Egyptian, Lebanese and Jordanian dialects as well as Palestinian. This is very important because many Palestinians have worked all over the Arab world and they might speak, say, Egyptian Arabic better than they speak Palestinian. So when I'm interrogating someone who lived in Egypt they'll think I was actually there. They'll think I know everything about their world. Language is the key.

How does that help you in interrogation?
It's about making them think they cannot hide anything from you. If they live in a certain neighbourhood in Cairo, I will learn everything about that neighbourhood. I will know it like the back of my hand. I will learn the details, the houses, even the trees, everything about it. I will give the prisoner the feeling that I followed him there.You have to learn everything about him and his background. You have to know about his family, his wife, his children, his friends, his neighbourhood, his city. You have to be better than him, wiser than him. If I interrogate Sheikh Yassin, I have to know about the Koran. If I interrogate a maths teacher, I have to know maths. If you feel your detainee is wiser than you and you cannot stand head to head then you must change interrogators. That has never happened with me.

How do people behave when they are interrogated for the first time?
Every detainee behaves differently. It depends whether he's from the city or the village, or a Bedouin from the desert. It depends whether he's educated or not. Prison is unimaginably different to normal life. People behave in unexpected ways. People who talk tough in public often submit in interrogation.I once interrogated a Bedouin who said nothing at all for a few days. He was a very tough man. During one session I was playing with a stick, and this idea came to me: I said to him, do you realise there's a snake hidden in the stick? And suddenly he became very afraid. He said he'd tell me anything. This man was used to dealing with snakes in the open, but in a cell it was a different matter.

What's the first thing you do when faced with a new detainee?
It depends on the person. I have a thousand different systems for a thousand detainees. I always have to start alone in the room with him. Sometimes, to make a show, I get other, cooperative detainees to shout outside the door, and when he hears them yelling he gets fearful. Many detainees are young, between 18 and 24. It's their first time in jail and being interrogated, and most of them are likely to do what I tell them. Of course they won't talk about everything at the beginning. Sometimes I'll come in and give him a slap - but only with permission from higher authority.

What do you do when faced with someone who won't talk?
That is my speciality. I know how to do that. It has happened a lot.

How do you do it?
I have many systems. But I do it without using any kind of physical pressure.

Can you tell me about these systems?
No, I cannot.

Can you give me an example of when you've used them?
Once I interrogated a Palestinian man who belonged to Hamas and who I believed knew about the murder of two Israeli soldiers. I had interrogated him once before, when he had said nothing. This time he behaved differently. I looked in his eyes, at his hands, his legs, and he was reacting differently. I assembled my other interrogators, more than 20, in the room, and told them to remain silent. I told them, I am going to show you how to interrogate someone. Of course he was scared with 20 interrogators there. Then I did a few actions, without physical pressure. I showed him how I knew that he was involved. Suddenly he asked for a cigarette. When a Hamas terrorist asks for a cigarette during interrogation, you know he is going to admit something. I gave him one immediately, before he changed his mind. He asked for another. He smoked 10. Then he said, look I'm going to tell you things you don't know. He told me about all the leaders of Hamas, and about hundreds of others who were involved in Hamas that we didn't know about. He opened the way for us to get at Sheikh Yassin and other Hamas leaders who have been killed by our forces.

How physical are you allowed to get during interrogations, with permission?
Very low levels. It could be two slaps in one interrogation, or to shake him, but not very strongly, or to put a cover on his head to scare him. We have never insulted a person's religion or humiliated them. There is no torture in the security services.

What do you make of the torture and abuse that took place in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq?
I don't want to judge the Americans. In Gaza we have one security person for every 1000 people. In Iraq they have one for every 100,000. They have no information or intelligence on their detainees. Information is the beginning of interrogation, and if there is none, if there is no language between you and the detainee, sometimes you will use more power. That I presume is what happened in Abu Ghraib.

Have those techniques ever been used in Israel?
Sometimes it has happened, but very seldom, and in these cases the interrogators were thrown out of the organisation. I have no need for those methods. I use only psychology, head to head.

But there have been many accusations.
I know. But these accusations come from detainees who heard screams and shouts coming from neighbouring cells and believed it was really happening, when it was just theatre. The yelling was from other detainees who were cooperating with us.

Did you ever have a detainee you couldn't break?
It has happened, but very seldom. I could count them on one hand.

Why were they so difficult?
They were very primitive people, not literate and not well educated.

Why does that make it harder?
Because I cannot use some of my systems. For example, I cannot show him written papers because he does not know how to read or write. They behave differently. I cannot speak about it. I cannot teach you all my tricks.

Tell me about Sheikh Yassin. How did you interrogate him?
I interrogated him twice, in 1984 and 1989. At the beginning he was totally silent. He didn't answer any questions. Then I said to him, I know you are a religious man, let's speak about religious knowledge. Now, to prepare for this interrogation I had learned the Koran almost by heart. I said to him, let's have a competition. I'll ask you a question about the Koran, and if I win I can ask you another about any subject and you have to answer. He was sure he would know it better than me. But I started asking complicated questions, and he didn't know the answers. When you are in prison, you forget things. For example, I asked him to tell me the name of the only sura out of the 114 in the Koran that did not contain the letter mim. He didn't know. I asked him how many verses there were in the Baqarah sura, the longest in the Koran. He had forgotten. So I won, and I sat with him for hundreds of hours while he talked about the ideology of Hamas. He even told other detainees to cooperate with me, because he respected me. If he could he would have killed me, but he respected me.

How would you interrogate someone like Saddam Hussein?
The Americans asked me about him. I said I couldn't help them. I don't want to say I can break him, but I'm sure I can. I'm sure I can achieve better results with Saddam than the Americans have, because of my experience.

How would you do it?
He was a leader, he has a lot of experience. He was an interrogator himself, and he killed hundreds of people himself, so it would be very difficult to interrogate him. But there is a way. I have heard rumours that he hasn't said anything.

Did you ever feel sympathy for the people you interrogated because of what you put them through?
Sometimes you can be sitting before someone who is 24 years old and he looks like a nice man. Then he admits to you what he's done and you can change 180 degrees in what you feel about him. It has happened a lot. Sometimes when I'm interrogating someone I feel that I could kill him because of what he's done. But if you want to achieve a result you have to keep your cool.The point is we are acting against terrorists. If I thought someone was innocent or knew nothing I would release them immediately.

Interrogation can leave people traumatised for years. Can you always justify it?
You can be sure that we never use physical or psychological methods that damage prisoners.

Do you think you could be broken if you were interrogated?
No. I would use the same methods I use when interrogating someone, only the opposite. I would give nothing away. Nothing.

Don't you have any weaknesses?
None. None in interrogation.

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In Their Own Words: Comparing the Rhetoric of Jihadism and Nazism

by Joseph D'Hippolito
Private Papers

In the twentieth century, genocidal, imperialist totalitarians wore swastika armbands, herded members of supposedly inferior races into concentration camps and shouted, "Heil Hitler!" In the twenty-first century, they wear black coveralls and hoods, decapitate civilian contractors, shoot children in the back, plow hijacked airplanes into buildings and shout, "Allahu Akbar!"

Jihadism is this century's equivalent of Nazism in more than just barbarity. The Osama bin Ladens and Abu Musab al-Zarqawis are the violent face of a coherent, ruthless ideology that imitates the Nazi method of winning popular support. Jihadists—whether terrorists, imams or intellectuals—exploit collective frustration by converting it into a pervasive sense of victimization, then offer the solution: embrace an inherent superiority, seize entitled power and destroy all opponents.

Just as the Nazis described Germans as victimized by a decadent West—as represented by democracy, jazz, "degenerate art" and the Versailles treaty—so do jihadist intellectuals describe Muslims. Consider the words of Mohammed al-Asi, a fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, an advisor to the Islamic Human Rights Commission and the imam of the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.:

Muslims are living in a kafir (unbelievers') domain; they are virtually adrift and homeless. The inherent condition of today's Muslims who have lost sight of a Prophet as commander is a religious community of people who are beholden to the forces and powers of kufr (apostasy): secular kufr and religious kufr, mental kufr and military kufr, as well as kufr by choice and kufr by force.

Or consider this editorial in Crescent International magazine published immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon:

We know from past experience that people who feel themselves and their peoples to be under sustained and unrelenting attack can react in the most unbelievable ways.

The problem is that none of these [Americans] seem to realize that America has long been at war with numerous peoples all over the world. This is not the opening salvo of a new war; it is probably likely a stunningly successful attempt by one of America's many victims to hit back—very, very hard.

[The] argument is that democracy, freedom and civilization are under attack and must be forcefully defended; such words ring hollow from Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Colin Powell and Tony Blair, each of whom has been responsible for far, far more death and suffering than seen in the US yesterday.

These excerpts explain that Muslims, victimized by the West, have an inherent right to avenge themselves by obliterating non-combatants. Like with the Nazis, in their view there is no such thing as innocent bystanders.

The chilling words of Magdi Ahmad Hussein, the secretary general of the Egyptian Labor Party, broadcast by al-Jazeera television are yet more direct:

We are the weak ones. They make demands on us that don't exist in international law. There must be reciprocity. Those who bomb Fallujah cannot prevent me from bombing Los Angeles. Why Fallujah? Why do we always feel inferior to them? If we had missiles, we should have bombed Los Angeles or any other city until they stopped bombing Fallujah, Samarra and Ramadi.

Just as the Nazis regarded Jews as the fundamental nemeses of humanity, so do jihadist intellectuals. Al-Asi, who often speaks at American universities at the behest of Muslim student groups, said the following at the University of California, Irvine in 2001:

The Zionist-Israeli lobby is taking the United States to the abyss. We have a psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and brotherly with other human beings. You can take the Jew out of the ghetto but you cannot take the ghetto out of the Jew.

Just as the Nazis believed that oppression prevented Germans from fulfilling a destiny mandated by their unparalleled superiority, so do jihadist intellectuals who view Muslim superiority as spiritual, not racial.

"Only Islam can achieve the synthesis between Christianity and humanism, and fill the spiritual void that afflicts the West," says Tariq Ramadan, a popular Muslim scholar who teaches in Switzerland and Germany, and who was appointed a post at Notre Dame's Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies before being barred from entering the United States. He is also the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who in Egypt in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood, the spiritual precursor to groups like Hamas and al-Qaeda.

Al-Asi rejects Western values and asserts Muslim superiority more emphatically. "Obviously, all of this spells out an 'agenda' of Islamic political activity, not in the Western definition of politics, which is sullied and corrupt, but in the Islamic definition of politics, which is clean and healthy," he says. He criticizes his co-religionists for being seduced by "a cunning materialism that decays the Muslim will and causes the Muslims to join the 'modern and developed' world!"

Just as the Nazis regarded Blitzkrieg as critical in the fight against an oppressive West, so do sympathetic intellectuals regard jihad, as Ramadan himself implies:

Today the Muslims who live in the West must unite themselves to the revolution of the anti-establishment groups from the moment when the neoliberal capitalist system becomes, for Islam, a theater of war.

Hamid Algar, professor of Persian and Islamic Studies at UC Berkeley, was more blunt when he praised Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1994:

Let us remember the comprehensive Jihad that should also embrace our communal and political lives and if necessary go to the point of taking weapons in our hands to defeat the enemies of Islam.

Let us remember the clear analysis of the West that the Imam [Khomeini] gave us—as a collection of international bandits—which has consolidated itself since Imam's death. Let us also remember his insistence that the abominable genocide state of Israel completely disappear from the face of the globe.

Just as the Nazis believed that war provided the primary means for the Volk (racial community) to acquire its rightful Lebensraum (living space), so do Islamic fanatics believe that jihad is fundamental for the ummah (Muslim community) to re-establish the worldwide caliphate, Islam's ultimate geopolitical goal.

Explains Mohammed al-Asi:

The contemporary Muslim mind has to become "preoccupied" with how the Prophet went about putting together an Islamic state. Therefore the information about this state-building has to occupy center stage in our discussions, in our lectures, in our khutbahs (public sermons), in our studies and in our research. Islamic institutions and resources have to be committed to this urgent task.

We should not be studying hair-splitting fiqhi (legalistic) issues in halaqat (study sessions and circles). We should be learning how to consolidate our social will-power and how to form active and status-quo-challenging units throughout our African and Asian lands to reclaim them for Islam.

In the constitution of Iran, Article II, it is written: "All Muslims are one nation, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is duty bound to rest its general policy on the unity of Islamic nations and undertake efforts to realize the political, economic and cultural unity of the Islamic world."

What about potential opponents? Consider the fate of Theo van Gogh, an independent Dutch filmmaker and the great-grandnephew of Vincent van Gogh who made a controversial documentary entitled Submission, which depicted violence against women in Muslim societies. Jihadists saw Theo van Gogh as a blasphemer who deserved death. A Muslim website in the Netherlands published a picture of van Gogh with a red target over his chest. The caption read, "When is it Theo's turn?"

On November 2, van Gogh was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam. His assailants shot him with an automatic gun, then slit his throat and pinned to his corpse with a knife a note bearing threats to Netherlanders and quotations from the Koran. Police arrested a man of Moroccan descent whom authorities say is affiliated with terrorists.

Finally, listen to Algar's views on Palestinian suicide bombers, made in California Monthly, Berkeley's alumni magazine:

That term, an invention of the West, does not represent the perspective of those who engage in such action and is not very helpful. [It] seems to me that a greater degree of moral condemnation should be reserved for those who continue, daily, with impunity, to kill and to humiliate the Palestinian people.

In other words, there is definitely a cause-and-effect relationship here, and to criticize or condemn an effect while overlooking the cause is not very helpful.

Algar is no hypocrite in his defense of terrorism and murder. In 1998, he verbally harassed and spat on members of Berkeley's Armenian Student Association, who were commemorating the genocide of Armenians by the Turks.

"It was not a genocide, but I wish it were, you lying pigs," said Algar, quoted by Shake Hovsepian in Usanogh: Periodical of Armenian Students. "You are distorting the truth about history. You stupid Armenians; you deserve to be massacred!" The students filed a grievance and Berkeley's Associated Students demanded that the administration force Algar to issue a written public apology or censure him.

It should surprise nobody that scholars promote such opinions. During the 1920s, German professors despised the Weimar Republic and longed for the return of authoritarian government. But those professors did not expect the Nazis' brand of totalitarianism. Today's Islamic scholars in the West not only expect it. They welcome it.

Nearly six decades after defeating the Nazis, civilization confronts a distressingly similar—and equally ruthless—ideological enemy that deserves the same fate. It's all there, in their own words.

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UN blames Jews for anti-semitism

Your Tax Dollars at Work
The U.N. discovers the cause of anti-Semitism: Jews.

BY ANNE BAYEFSKY

Yesterday the House International Relations Committee revealed that money from the United Nations Oil for Food program, which was supposed to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, helped pay the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. This shouldn't come as a surprise. The U.N. has a problem with anti-Semitism: It doesn't know what it is.

In order to figure it out, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and Unesco invited a group of experts to Barcelona last week. Their mission: to provide the U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diéne, with advice on anti-Semitism as well as "Christianophobia and Islamophobia."

From whom did the U.N. get advice? There was Tariq Ramadan of Switzerland's Fribourg University, who was denied entry to the U.S. in August on the basis of a law concerning aliens who have used a "position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity" or are considered a "public safety risk or a national security threat." But apparently the U.N. thought it was worth listening to the views on racism of someone who said on Sept. 25, 2001, that "[Osama] Bin Laden is perhaps a useful straw man, like Saddam Hussein, whose diabolical representation perhaps serves other geo-strategic, economic or political designs."

Then there was anti-Semitism expert Esther Benbassa from the Sorbonne. She wrote in September 2000, "Today, especially in the United States, Jewish philanthropy is exerted in the name of the perennization of the memory of the Shoah [Holocaust]. The money flows to create pulpits on anti-Semitism and the genocide, to finance museums, and research. As if nothing else were significant or had ever existed."

In her written contribution to the meeting, she artfully refers to "merging the image of the extermination with the might of Israel against the Palestinians, the one image reducing the significance of the other, and the Jew as both victim and executioner." Maybe the U.N. tapped her for her expertise at encouraging anti-Semitism?

Also in Barcelona were two Israelis who sit on the board of the same nongovernmental organization, the Alternative Information Center, a perennial U.N. favorite though it is on the fringes of Israeli society. The Center's co-chairman Michael Warshawski wrote in a 1996 newsletter: "Ethnic cleansing is a basic Zionist principle and policy." Fellow board member and Tel Aviv University professor Yossi Schwartz presented a paper at the center's workshop this past May "with the support of the Basque Government" entitled "Anti-Zionism Not Anti-Semitism." Calling for the elimination of the Jewish state is not new to Mr. Schwartz, who has written--after quoting from Trotsky's "epoch": "The solution of the working class to the national question in Israel/Palestine is not one or two or three capitalist states but a socialist federation of the Middle East."

Some invited Jews canceled their participation in the Barcelona conference, though some did attend, including another Israeli. They were compelled to spend their time taking exception to contributions from experts such as "superimposing the Jewish symbol of the Magen David on the Nazi swastika is not anti-Semitism."

At the end of the meeting a draft report, prepared with the assistance of U.N. staffers, was shared with participants, who now have a few days to confirm the outcome. The report will become a U.N. document, and it will be disseminated around the world. Here are some excerpts from the U.N.'s contribution to combating anti-Semitsm:

In practice, it is often difficult for an anti-Zionist type of expression not to be seen as simultaneously anti-Semitic. Nevertheless, several participants maintain that it is necessary to conserve the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, whilst defending the right to be anti-Zionist without being branded an anti-Semite and also bearing in mind that most Jews were anti-Zionists before 1935. . . .

The genuine Zionism of many Jews helps to explain the fact that many people wrongly feel that most Jews lend their unconditional support to Israeli policies. That is why we have seen attacks on synagogues, arson attacks on schools, desecration of cemeteries, for reasons that have nothing to do either with religion, or education, or the peaceful rest of the deceased, but that have a great deal to do with a political and a territorial conflict. . . .

In the past, anti-Semitism as a phenomenon was absent from the Arab-Muslim world. Here, the Arab-Israeli conflict plays an essential role, but another important element is the perception of the State of Israel as the "Trojan horse" of the West in the Middle East. Anti-Semitism would therefore be a particular manifestation of the hatred felt for the West, partly for financial reasons. . . .

Recommentations:

. . . The leaders of Jewish communities should also act to distinguish defence of the State of Israel from the fight against anti-Semitism. . . .

Contextualising the memory of the Holocaust with that of other genocides and serious events in contemporary history in order to make sure that at the end of the day everyone can feel the Holocaust as their own tragedy, both Jews and non-Jews.

In other words, according to the U.N. experts' draft report, discrimination against individual Jews is bad, while "anti-Zionism"--the denial to the Jewish people of an equal right to self-determination--is not. Since it is the perception of unconditional Jewish support for Israel that leads people to attack a Jewish cemetery, and anti-Semitism was absent from the Muslim world prior to the Arab-Israeli conflict (the mufti of Jerusalem and his friend Hitler notwithstanding), the way to defeat anti-Semitism is for Jews to cut loose defense of the state of Israel. And by the way, anti-Semitism will diminish if only we stop emphasizing the unique horror of the Holocaust.

It may not be surprising to learn that Mr. Diéne seems to have had pretty fixed ideas about anti-Semitism before the meeting even began. In his October 2004 report to the General Assembly, he wrote: "The cycle of extreme violence triggered by the dynamics of occupation . . . has fuelled profound ethnic antagonism and hatred. . . . The Palestinian population . . . is . . . suffering discrimination. Even if Israel has the right to defend itself . . . a security wall . . . constitutes a jarring symbol of seclusion, erected by a people . . . marked by the rejection of the ghetto. One . . . effect of this conflict is its . . . contribution to the rise of . . . anti-Semitism."

Simply put, Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism. Or, if it weren't for Israel's annoying insistence on defending itself, on the same terms as would be applied to any other state faced with five decades of wars and terrorism aimed at its obliteration, Jews would be better off.

It is interesting to compare the U.N. expert's incisive analysis of the underlying hatred in Sudan. After noting in the same report that two million Sudanese have died and four million have been displaced, he muses that "massacres, allegedly ethnically motivated, are continuing to claim victims in the Darfur region. . . . The Special Rapporteur therefore proposes to give greater priority to this region with a view to conducting . . . an investigation . . . of the ethnic dimension of the conflicts ravaging it."

Another day, another U.N. meeting, another UN report, and another serious step backward in combating anti-Semitism.

And don't forget, another American taxpayer dollar.

Ms. Bayefsky is an international lawyer and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

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Orthodox Jew shot in head and killed in Belgium, probably by Muslims

Moshe Yitzhak Na'eh, who was shot in the head overnight Wednesday in Antwerp in what seems to be an anti-Semitic attack, died of his wounds late Thursday afternoon, Belgium's Prosecutors office announced.

Prosecutor's spokeswoman Dominique Reniers said, "We do not exclude any motive, but so far there are no indications that the motive was racist or extremist," she said.

Reniers called the victim a "devout young man" who was shot from close range. He slumped on to the road, where he was discovered by passers-by who initially thought he was a road accident victim.

There were no witnesses to the shooting.

Na'eh, 24, an ultra-Orthodox Jew and a father of five – the oldest five years old, the youngest an 18-months-old baby - was shot at about 2:20 a.m. on Lange Kievitstraat, near a Muslim neighborhood in Antwerp, Belgium, home to large Jewish and Muslim communities.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post from Na'eh's bedside in an Antwerp hospital before he passed away, Na'eh's sister, who asked that her name not be published, said the family was praying her brother will survive the attack. "As long as there is life there is hope," she said, adding that all the Jewish schools in Antwerp are saying Tehillim (Psalms) for her brother's recovery.

Belgian federal police are investigating the incident, which seems to be a hate crime, as Na'eh's money was not stolen and he was not involved in any criminal deeds.

Louis Davids, Editor-in-Chief of the Belgian Jewish Weekly, told The Jerusalem Post that the shooting in Antwerp made headline news on all TV and radio stations Thursday. "Belgian Jews are worried about the escalating violence in their neighborhood. The young man was an integral part of the close knit Jewish community, for that reason many are distraught and shocked," Davids said. Davids added that police have increased their patrols of the Jewish areas to reassure citizens. The local police have also assigned a large team on this case in order to uncover the facts as soon as possible.

Both Na'eh and his father serve as gabays (custodians) of the Pshevorski Rebbe in Antwerp, where Na'eh grew up. He finished work at the house of the rebbe, located in the same building of the community's synagogue, at 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, according to Yehuda Ceitlin, a correspondent of the European Jewish Press.

The rebbe's house is located near a bridge separating the Muslim and Jewish neighborhoods of Antwerp. Na'eh was walking along the bridge on his way home when he was shot in the head from close range.

He was quickly rushed to hospital, where doctors struggled to keep him alive.

"If this is indeed an anti-Semitic act," Ceitlin said, "this is a big change in Belgium. There have been anti-Semitic stabbings here, punches – but never shooting."

"The Jewish community here is very worried," Ceitlin told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

He added that he was informed that at the time of the shooting Na'eh was carrying in his pockets 1,300 Euro, which the attackers did not attempt to steal.

"This is further evidence that the attack might have been an anti-Semitic incident," Ceitlin said.

Representatives of Antwerp Police and the Belgium Justice Ministry held a press conference on Thursday to officially address the incident. "They didn't give away any new information," Ceitlin said. "They did, however, call Belgium Jewish leaders prior to the meeting and asked them not to participate in it, so as not to turn the press conference into a 'Jewish happening'," he said.

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A voice of sanity among Yahoo Message Board morons

(In response to a post entitled "Israelis don't want peace.") - EoZ - by: Macaroniguy

How moronic you are. How ignorant of history you are.

Israel has ALREADY made concessions, more than any other country has ever made (willingly). And, in this conflict, Israel is the ONLY one making concessions.

Do you know that Israel, even with the 'extra' territories, still only comprises 22% of the Territory of Palestine that was given over by the British? Israel was originally bequeathed, in the Balfour Declaration, 100%. While the Israelis went through the proper channels and sought the approval of the League of Nations in order to legitimize its nation, the Arabs simply grabbed 78%, most of that going to make the country of Jordan. Israel could have easily fought, but they did not, as A CONCESSION TO PEACE.

Then, Israel was attacked in 5 separate wars of pan-Arab military aggression. In the 1967 war, in particular, Israel defended itself, fighting off the invaders, and actually gained a huge swathe of land. Did Israel keep this land? No. It gave back 90% AS A CONCESSION TO PEACE.

Only a small amount was kept, as a buffer between itself and its hostile enemies. Whom did this land belong to? Answer: the Jordanians. Did the Jordanians make a claim to recover this land? Answer: No.

Finally, as A CONCESSION TO PEACE, Israel allowed Egyptian born and raised Arafat to bring in his fellow Arabs, calling themselves 'palestinians' (though most have no roots in the region preceding the 1900s) to live in this region. They did so on the Arab promise that they would peacefully co-exist. Question: Did the 'palestinians' do as they promised, did they behave according to the condition of their occupation of Israeli land? Answer: No. They have conducted a 30 year long guerrila war against the Israelis, slaughtering innocent Israelis unmercifully.

Nevertheless, AS A CONCESSION TO PEACE, Israel offered *NINE* times peace treaties to the 'palestinians', and all nine were rejected, the 'palestinians' not willing to bend even modestly, though the Israelis were willing to give away nearly everything.

This war is costing Israel preciously. It costs Israel, most importantly, in the lives of its people, both mortally and emotionally. It costs Israel economically, draining away a huge percentage of its revenues in fighting a never-ending war. It also costs Israel economically in that the Arabs have spent trillions of oil dollars in a large PR campaign to smear Israel and villainize her for defending herself, to the point that other nations balk at trade with her.

The U.S. tax dollars sent to Israel are a pittance, in point of fact. Compared to the $2.0 billion yearly military aid to Israel, the U.S. contributes more than $130 billion(!) every year to the defense of Europe and more than $30 billion to the defense of Japan, Korea, and the Far East. Over 300,000 U.S. troops are stationed with NATO and over 30,000 U.S. troops in the Far East. In contrast, not one single U.S. soldier needs to be stationed and put at risk in Israel. U.S. military analysts estimate that the U.S. would have to spend the equivalent of $150 billion a year in the Middle East to maintain a force equivalent to Israel's. Finally, Israel provides the U.S. with invaluable intelligence and testing of its weapons.

To sum up: Israel has done everything in the name of peace, has made untold concessions for peace, has toed the line in every way possible, while the Arab/Muslim terrorists and militants have done everything possible to ethnically cleanse her, to genocidally destroy her, in the name of hatred and war.

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Why Theo Van Gogh Was Murdered

by Theodore Dalrymple

The slaughter of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam, in broad daylight, by a young man of Moroccan origin bent on jihad, has at last dented Dutch confidence that unconditional tolerance can be on its own the unifying principle of a viable society. For tolerance to work, it must be reciprocal; tolerance appears to the intolerant jihadist mere weakness and lack of belief in anything. Unilateral tolerance in a world of intolerance is like unilateral disarmament in a world of armed camps: it regards hope as a better basis for policy than reality.

Like most people in Western democracies, Van Gogh, by all accounts a brash and combative man, took his freedom of expression for granted. Most of us most of the time do not reflect much on the fact that such freedom is an historical exception rather than an historical rule, a reversible achievement rather than a free gift of God. There are still many who would rather kill than brook any contradiction of their opinions or beliefs, even while they live in the most tolerant of societies.

But why kill Theo Van Gogh, of all the people who have expressed hostility to radical Islam? Perhaps it was mere chance, but more likely it resulted from his work’s exposure of a very raw nerve of Muslim identity in Western Europe: the abuse of women. This abuse is now essential for people of Muslim descent for maintaining any sense of separate cultural identity in the homogenizing solution of modern mass society.

In fact, Islam is as vulnerable in Europe to the forces of secularization as Christianity has proved to be. The majority of Muslims in Europe, particularly the young, have a weak and tenuous connection to their ancestral religion. Their level and intensity of belief is low; pop music interests them more. Far from being fanatics, they are lukewarm believers at best. Were it not for the abuse of women, Islam would go the way of the Church of England.

The abuse of women has often, if not always, appealed to men, because it gives them a sense of power, however humiliated they may feel in other spheres of their life. And the oppression of women by Muslim men in Western Europe gives those men at the same time a sexual partner, a domestic servant, and a gratifying sense of power, while allowing them also to live an otherwise westernized life. For the men, it is convenient; interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, almost the only openly hostile expressions toward Islam from British-born Muslims that I hear come from young women, some of whom loathe it passionately because they blame it for their servitude.

Religious sanction for the oppression of women (whether theologically justified or not) is hence the main attraction of Islam to young men in an increasingly secular world. This explains why a divide often opens between brothers and sisters in the same European Muslim family; the sisters want liberty, but the brothers enforce the old rules. They have to, or the whole gratifying system breaks down.

This, I suspect, is the source of the rage against Theo Van Gogh.

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Arafat TV tribute angers Kuwaitis

The late Palestinian leader is despised by many Kuwaitis for supporting Iraq's invasion of their country in 1990.

The documentary, which describes Arafat as a great freedom fighter, was shown a day before his death was made official.

Information Minister Mohammad Abdulhassan has come under fire over the issue, in particular from conservative MPs.

Kuwaitis remember only too well how Arafat very publicly supported former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the invasion of their country.

Some Kuwaitis are also disappointed that their government sent a high-level delegation to Arafat's funeral in Cairo.

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