French more pro-terror than Abbas?

Ah, the French. I like this latest excuse, using recent problems in Lebanon as an excuse for their decades-old policy of embracing terrorists. C'est la vie.

In the past two weeks, the officials said, France has rebuffed appeals by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, to list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, which would prevent it from raising money in Europe through charity groups. The United States has long called Hezbollah a terrorist organization, but the French, American and European officials said, have opposed doing so, and argue that making such a designation now would be unwise, given the new turbulence in Lebanon.

Israeli and American officials say that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has told them that he, too, regards Hezbollah as a destructive force in the Middle East, one determined to undermine peace talks by supporting militant groups that attack Israelis.

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More moderation from Abbas: Execute "collaborators", reward terrorists

Let's see what we have here:

- Abbas decides that those who helped fight against terror in Gaza should be killed.
- Yesterday, Abbas decided that those who tried to kill Jews should be rewarded with jobs and pay and protection from Israel.
- A death penalty - will the American and European left make a statement condemning this?
- A mufti who decides on who can be killed, with no separation of the "secular" Palestinian government and Islam - will the American and European left condemn this as well?

A story filled with irony, but why should we let this stop us rewarding the Palestinians with more money and land?

In the first decision of its kind since he succeeded Yasser Arafat, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has ratified death sentences against three Palestinians found guilty of 'collaboration' with Israel.

It is not clear when the three men, whose identities were not revealed, will be executed by firing squad.

However, senior PA officials told The Jerusalem Post that the three were Gaza Strip residents who had been convicted of 'high treason' for tipping off Israeli security forces about the whereabouts of wanted gunmen.

Sakher Bsaisso, a senior Fatah official who also serves as PA governor of the northern Gaza Strip, confirmed on Wednesday that Abbas had authorized death sentences against three alleged 'collaborators.'

Bsaisso said the three had been convicted of assisting Israel in the assassination of a number of Palestinian activists in the Gaza Strip over the past four years, but refused to elaborate.

He said Abbas also approved death sentences passed against scores of Palestinians found guilty of criminally motivated murders.
Bsaisso said Abbas's decision to carry out the death sentences came after PA mufti Sheikh Ikrimah Sabri authorized the executions as required by law.

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Hamas terrorists to join PA "police"

OK, let me get this straight. Instead of the PA arresting known and wanted terrorists, named by Israel - they are paying them and giving them guns and protection from Israel. Sounds like a great confidence-building measure to me!

Fugitives to join PA security forces
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

About 350 Palestinian gunmen will be incorporated into the Palestinian Authority security forces soon as part of a deal reached between PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and leaders of all the Palestinian factions, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The militiamen, who are on Israel's list of wanted terrorists, belong to various factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

This is the first time that members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad would serve in the PA security forces.

PA Minister of Agriculture Ibrahim Abu al-Naja revealed that the agreement to recruit the fugitives was achieved with the help of a top Egyptian security delegation that visited the West Bank and Gaza Strip earlier this week. The delegation, led by Gen. Mustafa Buhairi, deputy head of Egyptian Intelligence, held a series of meetings with representatives of all the factions and commanders of the security forces.

"The fugitives who will join the security forces belong to all the Palestinian groups and factions," Naja said. "The move is designed to protect them against Israeli assassination attempts."

"The Palestinian Authority does not distinguish between the wanted men," he said. "They are entitled to join the security forces because of their involvement in the resistance."

"There's no reason why Hamas and Islamic Jihad gunmen can't join the security forces," the official added. "They are part of the Palestinian people. The Israelis and Americans should be happy about this move, because it means that these men will stop all of their activities."

"

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Don't dare say hello to your `infidel' neighbor

WASHINGTON - When a believing Muslim is summoned to the United States due to life's circumstances, Saudi Arabian authorities disseminate through a network of major American mosques, like other religious directives, clear ways as to how one should act in his new surroundings.
Take, for example, a document signed by the cultural attache at the Saudi embassy in Washington that instructs Muslims arriving in the United States not to initiate a greeting when meeting Christians or Jews, and never to convey good wishes marking a Christian or Jewish holiday. In general, the attache recommends that the Muslim believer avoid friendships with the infidels, be careful not to imitate their customs (e.g. not to wear a cap and gown at a graduation ceremony), and try not to remain in the country any longer than required. The Saudis feel that a good Muslim can stay in America only for two reasons: acquiring knowledge and capital to promote the objectives of jihad, and lobbying the infidels to accept Islam.

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US taught Palestinians how to be better terrorists

And now it is happening again.

I'm not the type of person who likes to make predictions, but it is so blindingly obvious that the current "peace" initiative is at best a temporary cease-fire. It is a repeat of Oslo, full of optimism and wishful thinking and very short on long-term responsibility on the part of the Palestinians. As I pointed out before, all of Israel's concessions have long-term effects and are hard to reverse; all of the Palestinians' moves can be reversed in an instant.

Let Israel say right now - here are our red lines. No negotiations over Jerusalem. No negotiations over Jewish access to Rachel's tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs. The West Bank must not be Judenrein. The Green Line will never be returned to. No "right of return." And for all of these, war is preferable to crossing these lines.

Put it on the table. If it is clear that these contradict the Palestinian "red-lines" then why go through the charade of "peace" negotiations that are doomed to fail and that will inevitably put Israel at a disadvantage in the next Oslo war?

Israel is gambling with the lives of its citizens again. It is possible for a right-wing government to make peace - look at Begin - but Sharon is no Begin. And now in the Israeli government and media, the enemy is no longer the Palestinians who dream to destroy Israel...it is the "settlers" who are willing to defend Israel. This is craziness, and worse, it is suicidal.

Bethlehem, West Bank -- In June 1998, somewhere near CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., two rows of men in military fatigues posed for their graduation photo.

All of them were officers in Palestinian General Intelligence Service, charged with hunting down terrorists and preventing attacks on Israel. They had just completed a training course, paid for by the U.S. government, in which they learned firearms and counterterrorist tactics.

But the graduation photo holds a stark warning for the Bush administration as it gets more involved in Middle East peacemaking. Some of the men in the picture later swapped sides and began using the skills they learned in Virginia against the Israelis.

Such training courses, which were suspended with the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000, will be an integral part of Washington's aid package for the new government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"There will need to be some international effort, and the United States is prepared to play a major role in that, to help in the training of the Palestinian security forces and in making sure that they are security forces that are part of the solution, not part of the problem," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier this month on the London stop of her European tour.

Lt. Gen. William Ward, Rice's newly named Mideast security coordinator, will visit the region this month to "start looking at how to build Palestinian security forces," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday.

"What we're really all talking about is helping the Palestinian security forces get organized, get equipped, get trained and get the command structure that allows them to take care of security problems," Boucher said.

The men in the 1998 photo came from Bethlehem, Jericho and Nablus, which all became flash points in the four-year uprising, called the intifada. Kneeling fourth from the left in the front row is Raafat Bajali. In December 2001, Bajali was killed when a bomb he was making blew up in his face. He had become a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the militant wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, said some of his comrades in the General Intelligence unit.

Bajali died in a fourth-floor apartment near Bethlehem's Manger Square, the home of Nedal Zedok, a colleague in the Palestinian security forces who also was moonlighting for Al-Aqsa. Zedok, too, was killed in the explosion.

Standing in the back row, second from the left, is Khaled Abu Nijmeh, from Deheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, according to two of his colleagues who are also pictured.

By 2001, he had become one of the most-wanted Palestinian militants in the city, suspected of involvement in a string of suicide bombings and shooting attacks against Israelis. In May 2002, he was one of 13 gunmen escorted from the Church of the Nativity siege in Bethlehem, flown to Cyprus and then to exile in Europe. Three of the group, including Abu Nijmeh, were given asylum in Italy.

"I am a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and a first sergeant in Palestinian General Intelligence," Abu Nijmeh, now 36, told The Chronicle from his temporary home in Rome. "I personally received a course in antiterrorism and VIP protection.

"I was not alone. Many Palestinian security people were trained by the Americans. We hope they will continue helping us."

Abu Nijmeh and his 12 comrades will be allowed to return to Bethlehem under the cease-fire agreement reached last week between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli warnings

As Israeli commentators had been warning for years, the CIA inadvertently helped train future adversaries -- as it has done in other countries, including the anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan who ended up as Taliban and al Qaeda militants.

"This has proven to be a very risky undertaking," said Israeli political analyst Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University. "Both the CIA and British efforts to train Palestinians during the Oslo process helped strengthen terrorist capabilities."

A U.S. official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said that if previous U.S. aid went to train would-be militants, "obviously steps will be taken so that any future training does not lead to a similar outcome."

The Palestinian security forces were created in the aftermath of the 1993 Oslo accords by Arafat to maintain order in newly autonomous Palestinian territories. The recruits were supposed to serve as the police force for the Palestinian Authority and to prevent terrorist attacks against Israel. The CIA and British intelligence services helped provide training and equipment.

But Arafat also used the new police forces to keep himself in power. Based on longtime loyalties within his Fatah political faction, he created 14 separate, often overlapping, security services -- including a naval intelligence unit in the landlocked West Bank.

Palestinian security forces were doubling as militants in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and in Hamas, an Islamic group that has claimed credit for many anti-Israel attacks. Zedok, who was killed by Bajali's bomb, was among those dismissed from the security force after their connections were exposed by Israel. Others, including the Al-Aqsa founder and commander in Ramallah, Khaled al-Shawish, found refuge in Arafat's West Bank headquarters.

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More Palestinian ingenuity on how to kill Jews

They're like the Hong Kong of murder!

(Except that Hong Kong has a higher population density.)

Even as it announced it would maintain the current relative calm, Hamas was using the lull in Israel's offensive actions to stock up on Kassam rockets, mines and mortar shells in the Gaza Strip, defense sources said Sunday.

To overcome a lack of raw materials, Kassam rocket makers have begun using pipes that held up street signs. Because of this there is a dearth of signposts in Gaza, military sources said.

'Their efforts to replenish their stocks of weapons have never stopped,' said an IDF officer monitoring Hamas and other groups. 'Not only that, but they are continuing to operate their smuggling rings during this period to bring in weapons and other materiel.' This, despite reported actions by Palestinian Authority forces to uncover tunnels from Egypt into the Gaza Strip.

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Whining, Lying Palestinian Complains

An amazing fact: every time the Palestinians accuse Israel of something, you can always translate it is "You are not letting us kill you as easily as we want to!"

This one is classic. Israel opens the crossings as it promised, and he is saying because Palestinian terrorists can't walk into Israel without being checked, Israel is violating its agreements!

Ya gotta love the accusation about the x-ray machine "used to check metal objects." Those wily Jews are always inventing something, aren't they?

Palestinian officials Sunday accused Israel of tightening security instead of easing it at the Erez crossing point between Gaza and the Jewish state.

Palestinian Chief of Passages Salim Abu Safiya told reporters that while Israel tells the media it had opened the Erez crossing and allowed Palestinian workers to enter Israel, it was tightening security checks and making the crossing terminal a nightmare for those workers.

Israel had said it was easing its security measures on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, allowng 207 workers and 95 businessmen to enter Israel Sunday.

But Abu Safiya described the Israeli security measures as arbitrary and tough, forcing the workers to go through very complicated security measures by forcing them into x-ray machines that are only used to check metal objects, not human beings.

He warned the x-ray machines cause serious diseases if humans pass through them.

The Palestinian official accused Israel of not showing any signs of commitment to the cease-fire agreement reached in Sharm el-Sheikh last week, which included an Israeli declaration to open the border crossings and remove check-points.

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A short break

I probably won't be able to post anything until Monday.

But feel free to carry on without me, with comments, voting on the poll, and tagboard messages!

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PA TV: Goal is Israel's Destruction (IMRA)

Something to keep in mind during all of the optimism. But I suppose that a promise that "Our kids will destroy your kids" is considered "moderate."

The Palestinian Authority, in its Arabic messages to its people, has always
denied Israel's right to exist and has often presented the peace process as
a tactic leading to Israel's destruction.

This goal was repeated Friday, on the Palestinian Authority television, in
the official sermon. Senior religious figure, Ibrahim Mudyris, explained
that the limitation of the diplomatic process is that it can only achieve
the 1967 borders, and that at a latest stage the Palestinian Authority will
achieve its goal, the destruction of Israel: "the way Muhammad returned
there as a conqueror".

The following is the text of the Friday sermon, February 4, 2005:

Preacher- Ibrahim Mudyris:

"We do not love any land more than the land of Palestine. Had the Jews not
expelled us from it with their plains, their tanks, their weapons, their
treachery around us, we would never leave you, Oh Palestine". (Quotes
Muhammad who promised he would return to Mecca as a conqueror).
"We tell you Palestine, we shall return to you, by Allah's will, We shall
return to every village, every town, and every grain of earth which was
quenched by the blood of our grandparents and the sweat of our fathers and
mothers. We shall return, we shall return. Our willingness to return to the
1967 borders does not mean that we have given up on the land of Palestine.
No! We ask you: Do we have the right to the 1967 borders? We have the
right. Therefore, we shall realize this right with any mean it takes. We
might be able to use diplomacy in order to return to the 1967 borders, but
we shall not be able to use diplomacy in order to return to the 1948
borders. No one on this earth recognizes [our right to] the 1948 borders
[before Israel's existence]. Therefore, we shall return to the 1967
borders, but it does not mean that we have given up on Jerusalem and Haifa,
Jaffa, Lod, Ramla, Natanyah [Al-Zuhour] and Tel Aviv [Tel Al-Rabia]. Never.

We shall return to every village we had been expelled from, by Allah's
will. Why? All the international laws deny the Palestinians their real
borders. We might agree, but in the name of Allah, our grandfathers' blood
demands that we return to them [the borders]. Your father's blood was shed
there, at the villages, at Ashqelon, at Ashdod, at Hirbia [a village
between Gaza and Ashqelon, where Kibbutz Zikim is located today] and at
others places, hundreds of villages and towns. [Their blood] demands it
from us, and it shall curse anyone who will concede a grain of earth of
those villages. Our approval to return to the 1967 borders is not a
concession for our other rights. No!... this generation might not achieve
this stage, but generations will come, and the land of Palestine... will
demand that the Palestinians will return the way Muhammad returned there,
as a conqueror".

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Denying Terrorism, by Daniel Pipes

Denying Terrorism By Daniel Pipes, February 8, 2005

New York Sun*

February 8, 2005
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2396
* Cross-posted with permission

Editor's note: Readers may also be interested in New Jersey: An Islamic Murder of Coptic Christians?.

Anyone following the investigation into the mid-January slaughter of the Armanious family (husband, wife, two young daughters), Copts living in Jersey City, N.J., knows who the presumptive suspects are: Islamists furious at a Christian Egyptian immigrant who dares engage in Internet polemics against Islam and who attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity.

The authorities, however, have blinded themselves to the extensive circumstantial evidence, insisting that "no facts at this point" substantiate a religious motive for the murders.

Somehow, the prosecutor missed that all four members of this quiet family were savagely executed in the ritualistic Islamist way (multiple knife attacks and near-beheading); that Jersey City has a record of Islamist activism and jihadi violence, and that an Islamist Web site, carried multiple threats against Hossam Armanious with postings such as: "We are going to track you down like a chicken and kill you."

Law enforcement seems more concerned to avoid an anti-Muslim backlash than to find the culprits.

This attitude of denial fits an all-too-common pattern. I previously documented a reluctance in nearby New York City to see as terrorism the 1994 Brooklyn Bridge ("road rage" was the FBI's preferred description) and the 1997 Empire State Building shootings ("many, many enemies in his mind," said Rudolph Giuliani). And the July 2002 LAX murders were initially dismissed as "a work dispute" and the October 2002 rampage of the Beltway snipers went unexplained, leaving the press to ascribe it to such factors as a "stormy [family] relationship."

These instances are part of a yet-larger pattern.

• The 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane by the Islamist El Sayyid Nosair was initially ascribed by the police to "a prescription drug for or consistent with depression."

• The 1999 crash of EgyptAir 990, killing 217 - by a co-pilot not supposed to be near the aircraft's controls at that time who repeated 11 times "I rely on God" as he wrenched the plane down - went unexplained by the National Transportation Safety Board.

• The 2002 purposeful crash of a small plane into a Tampa high-rise by bin Laden-sympathizer Charles Bishara Bishop went unexplained; the family chimed in by blaming the acne drug Accutane.

• The 2003 murder and near-decapitation in Houston of an Israeli by a former Saudi friend who had newly become an Islamist found the police unable to discern "any evidence" that the crime had anything to do with religion.

Nor is this a problem unique to American authorities.

• The 1993 attack on foreign guests dining at the Semiramis Hotel in Cairo, killing five, accompanied by the Islamist cry "Allahu Akbar," inspired the Egyptian government to dismiss the killer as insane.

• The 2000 attack on a bus of visibly Jewish schoolchildren near Paris by a hammer-wielding North African yelling "You're not in Tel-Aviv!" prompted police to describe the assault as the result of a traffic incident.

• The 2003 fire that gutted the Merkaz HaTorah Jewish secondary school in a Paris suburb, requiring 100 firefighters to douse the flames, was described by the French minister of the interior as being merely of "criminal origin."

• The 2004 murder of a Hasidic Jew with no criminal record as he walked an Antwerp street near a predominantly Muslim area left the Belgian authorities stumped: "There are no signs that racism was involved."

I have cited 13 cases here and provide information on further incidents on my weblog. Why this repeated unease acknowledging Islamist terrorism by the authorities, why the shameful denial?

And for that matter, why a similar unwillingness to face facts about right-wing extremists, as in the 2002 murder by a cursing skinhead of a Hasidic Jew outside a kosher pizzeria in Toronto, which the police did not find to rate as a hate crime? Because terrorism has much greater implications than prescription drugs going awry, road rage, lunatics acting berserk, or freak industrial accidents. Those can be shrugged off. Islamist terrorism, in contrast, requires an analysis of jihadi motives and a focus on Muslims, steps highly unwelcome to authorities.

And so, police, prosecutors, and politicians shy away from stark realities in favor of soothing and inaccurate bromides. This ostrich-like behavior carries heavy costs; those who refuse to recognize the enemy cannot defeat him. To pretend terrorism is not occurring nearly guarantees that it will recur.

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MEMRI: Saudi TV continues to demonize Christians, Jews

MEMRI emphasizes that this broadcast came a couple of days before Saudi Arabia's "anti-terrorism" conference. But calls to kill Jews and Christians via Jihad isn't terror - it is only a religious obligation, that should be protected by Freedom of Religion!

Saudi Preacher Musa Al-Qarni: 'The Jews and Christians are Allah's Enemies... We Ask Allah to Strengthen the Jihad Fighters in Iraq'

'The Jews and Christians are Allah's Enemies'

Al-Qarni: "The uproar and the chaos that we see today in the human race – the killing, the acts of aggression, the rape, the robbery, and the disgrace of honor – what causes this is that the banners which are hoisted high are those of the Jews, the Christians, and other religions and faiths, and not the banner of 'There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is Allah's Messenger.'

"Let's have a look at what is written in the Koran. What position must we adopt towards Allah's enemies? Is it the position we have adopted? First of all, we must be aware of the fact that at present we see that [the West] doesn't want us even to say the words 'Allah's enemies.' They don't want us to say that the Jews and the Christians are Allah's enemies. They don't want us to say that the Jews and the Christians are the enemies of the Muslims and the enemies of Islam.

"This is fixed and established in the Koran and in the tradition…

"If this is so, if this is something fixed, how is it that we find in the things that we say, among our children, our own flesh and blood, among Muslims, people who are in denial of these things, who deny that there is a great enmity between Muslims and non-Muslims? It is true that we say that Islam's fundamental approach is that of mercy, and that the fundamental principle of Islam is [that it is a] mercy for human beings. But [it is for] he who submits to Allah's religion and extends his hand to allow Allah's religion to spread all over the earth and to make Allah's word supreme – it is toward him that religion is merciful. However, whoever fights against Allah's religion, and fights those who love Allah, distorts the image of Islam and the Muslims and does so much to weaken Islam…

"Let's take a real-life example. Today, the Jews are occupying the Muslims' lands, raping their women, killing their children, and destroying their houses – are these acts being perpetrated by the Muslims or by the Jews?"

Interviewer: "By the Jews, as anyone with eyes can see. This is clear to the entire world…"

Al-Qarni: "OK, and we see that at present anyone who speaks about the Jews is accused of antisemitism, and people are brought to trial for this. OK. Are the Jews not making great efforts to make us quote the Koranic verses proving that they are enemies of the revelation and showing their base character, their lowly character traits, [relating] what they did to the prophets and messengers and their long history of acts of treachery, deceit, conspiracy and treason? They are making great efforts in this…"

'The Terrorists are These Jews and Christians'

Interviewer: "You shouldn't blame them for this. We are the ones to blame if we agree to change the Koran and the tradition to suit them."

Al-Qarni: "The terrorists are these Jews and Christians who implement these policies through the use of force, repression, and tyranny, and to this end make use of planes, tanks, and all manner of deadly weapons."

Interviewer: "Aisha's second question [is about whether] Islam spread by the sword. They always say that Islam spread by the sword. How should we respond to them?"

Al-Qarni: "First of all, we ask by what means is the freedom that the U.S. wants spread? The freedom that it wants now to market?"

Interviewer: "Through missiles and bombs…"

Al-Qarni: "Through B-50s, bombs that the international community has forbidden, hundred of thousands of armed soldiers – this is how freedom has spread."

Interviewer: "And we don't see any freedom. All we see afterwards is subjugation…"

Al-Qarni: "At any rate, if we return to our discussion of the heart of the matter… First of all, we must realize that Allah obligated us to disseminate this religion all over the globe. And first, it should be spread through outreach and calling people to Allah's word, through pleasing words, gently, and through good deeds. Through letting people hear Allah's words and showing them Islam. However, if we run up against someone who opposes this path and attempts to obstruct the spread of the upright religion and the light, and to obstruct their reaching others – in this case it is a duty to fight such a person. And Allah said: 'Fight them until there is no more strife and Allah's religion reigns supreme.'

"We don't agree with those who disavow this completely and say that the religion [of Islam] doesn't use the sword. No. Islam uses the sword when there is no other alternative. Therefore wisdom, as the religious authorities say, consists in utilizing each thing in its proper place. If there is need for the sword, then it is wise to use the sword, and if the occasion requires kind words and outreach, then it is wise to utilize them."

'We Ask Allah to Strengthen … the Jihad Fighters in Iraq … Against Their Enemies the Jews and the Christians'

"We ask Allah to strengthen the spirits of the Jihad fighters in Iraq, and to help them against their enemies, the Jews and the Christians.

"Likewise, I emphasize that the Jihad that the Muslims are fighting in Iraq in order to repel the enemy aggressor, the Jews and the Christians, who are attacking land and honor – I emphasize that this Jihad is legitimate Jihad, Jihad for Allah's sake, and it is considered defense of Muslim countries, their lands and their honor. The doubts that are raised against this Jihad are not correct and are out of place." [5]

---

[1] http://www.ctic.org.sa/

[2] http://www.ctic.org.sa/thems.asp

[3] http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ClipMediaID=50067&ak=null

[4] To view another clip on Musa Al-Qarni, visit http://memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=339

[5] Iqra TV (Saudi Arabia), February 3, 2005.

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Accusers of IDF captain: We lied - he didn't shoot the Arab girl point blank

The soldiers who slimed the IDF captain did more damage to the IDF reputation than anybody. Shame on these losers.

Accuser of 'Confirmed Kill' IDF Captain: We Lied

Captain "R." is on his way to aquittal following a major breakthrough in the trial of the IDF commander accused of intentionally killing an Arab girl.

The prosecution's key witness admitted Sunday to having lied during the investigation.

Two soldiers in R.'s unit had testified that he carried out a point-blank "confirmed-kill" of 13-year-old Arab girl Iman al Hams, who had entered a closed military zone adjacent to the Girit IDF position last October. R. testified that though he and his soldiers had opened fire on someone they assumed to be a terrorist based on intelligence information and the fact that the girl threw a bag toward them - he denied confirming the kill at close range.

Three weeks ago, one of the accusing soldiers admitted that he had not actually seen the shooting, contradicting previous testimony he had given. Now, Lieutenant S., who had been on lookout duty during the incident and subsequently accused R. of shooting the girl at close range admitted during his cross-examination by defense attorney Elad Eisenberg, that he and his fellow soldiers had been lying all along.

Eisenberg asked S. whether it was accurate that following R.'s suspension, S. had bragged to his fellow soldiers, saying, "We managed to get rid of the company commander."

S. answered: "Not exactly. I said it humorously. Most of the soldiers in the company didn't care about the girl who was killed. Many people did it in order ... to get rid of the company commander."

Eisenberg said: "Did what?"

S. answered: "Lied during the investigations."

Eisenberg then accused S. of lying to investigators when he told them that he saw R. confirm the kill by firing two individual bullets, followed by a burst of fire toward the girl.

Repeating the question of whether or not he told the truth, S. said his words were not "intentionally," false, then argued that they were not meant "maliciously" and finally admitted: "I didn't exactly lie ... I said an untruth."

Following the development, the defense requested that the prosecution withdraw the indictment altogether, but the request has been declined so far.

The judge, Lt.-Col. Aharon Mishnayot ordered R., who has been confined to his army base - released, that his weapons be returned to him, and that he be reinstated into the Givati Brigade. "It is an inarguable fact that the dramatic development with regard to the testimony of Lieutenant S., who admitted flat-out that he did not tell the truth during the military police investigation, significantly undermines at least the value of this witness's testimony," Mishnayot said.

R. was in good spirits upon his release. "I have missed my job and my unit, and am happy that in the end justice is being brought to light - what you saw today speaks for itself." R.

Though the story was reported widely in the world press, including headlines such as "IDF Captain Shoots 13-year-old 20 Times," the fact that the facts of the case have been increasingly challenged has been virtually ignored. Already in October, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon told the cabinet that the girl had been dispatched by terrorists as a decoy in order to draw out soldiers and turn them into targets for terrorist snipers. Yaalon also explained that the girl was in a closed military area. In addition, the girl reportedly threw a bag at the soldiers - a suspicious move, under the circumstances, even though the bag was later found to contain only schoolbooks and no explosives.

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More on Columbia professor's anti-Israel bias

Kudos the the New York Sun for bringing Massad's teachings to light outside his insular world where he can bully his students.

Bias of Massad Is Being Noted in His Classes
Crisis At Columbia

BY JACOB GERSHMAN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 7, 2005

Here's a quiz.

Israel is: a) a Jewish supremacist state, b) the worst human-rights abuser in the Middle East, c) a major factor preventing the democratization of the Arab region, or d) all of the above.

If you answered "d," you would fit right in at a core-curriculum course at Columbia University taught by an assistant professor of modern Arab politics, Joseph Massad, who is a rising star of the university's Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures.

Mr. Massad, author of the forthcoming book "The Persistence of the Palestinian Question," is best known as one of the Columbia scholars whose alleged mistreatment of Jewish students is at the center of a campus controversy that has attracted national attention from Jewish and academic leaders.

Though the dispute has focused on allegations of intimidation and harassment of students, the more common criticism brought up by students of Mr. Massad has to do not with the appropriateness of his conduct, but with the quality and content of his teaching.

Students of his say he is relentless in his condemnations of Israel and America, even in a course he taught in the fall called Topics in Asian Civilization, in which Israel, at least according to the syllabus, plays only a minor role.

Mr. Massad is not without his admirers. For some Columbia undergraduates, Mr. Massad's political convictions are his primary appeal.

"Many students take offense at the very quality that makes Massad such a brilliant academic and honest, effective teacher," one anonymous student posted on a Web site that collects reviews of Columbia professors and courses. "He neither claims nor supports purported academic 'objectivity.' He holds an intellectual conviction and offers rational, clear, and cogent arguments."

For other students, like sophomore Bari Weiss, taking one of his courses can be "suffocating."

In the fall semester, she was a student in Topics in Asian Civilization. Mr. Massad taught the second half and was responsible for covering a history of the Middle East from the beginnings of Islam to 20th-century Arab nationalism.

"The course was supposed to be all about the Middle East," Ms. Weiss said. "The amount of time he spent talking about Zionism or the Jewish nation or Jewish culture was inappropriate."

In previous semesters, Mr. Massad taught a seminar course on the Middle East conflict, but "under the duress of coercion and intimidation" he chose not to teach it this academic year, he wrote on his university Web site. One student who took the course in 2002, Deena Shanker, said Mr. Massad told her to leave the class if she persisted in denying that Israel committed atrocities against Palestinians. Mr. Massad, who refuses to speak to The New York Sun, has denied mistreating any students and has accused his critics of trying to censor his political views.

According to three students' course notes from Topics in Asian Civilization, including ones Ms. Weiss took, Mr. Massad in his lectures repeatedly likened Israel to apartheid South Africa, dismissed its legitimacy as a Jewish state, and almost never addressed human rights abuses in countries such as Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The other two students whose notes were obtained by the Sun did not want their names to be used in this article.

"I was shocked knowing what was going on in the Middle East and the egregious human-rights violations that the professor either glossed over them or ignored them completely," Ms. Weiss, 20, said. She is one of the students who have pressed Columbia to investigate the conduct of professors in the Middle East studies department.

"In nearly all of his lectures, professor Massad found a way to denounce Israel and the West," Ms. Weiss, who received an "A" for the course, said.

"We were not presented with any material that argued that Zionism is not racist," she said.

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Excusing Terror

I happened upon this essay, written in the month after 9/11, by what appears to be a fairly liberal professor (I saw other articles by Walzer highly critical of the current administration.) The Left needs far more voices like this one.

What is sad is that all of the arguments he brings here used to justify terror are applied, successfully, to Palestinian terror. After all, the only reason why Palestinians remain front and center on the world stage is because of the success of their terror campaigns over the decades - otherwise, far more deserving but quieter peoples would be getting their own states.

Excusing Terror
The Politics of Ideological Apology
By Michael Walzer
Issue Date: 10.22.01

Even before September 11, hardly anyone was advocating terrorism--not even those who regularly practice and support it. The practice is indefensible now that it has been recognized, like rape or murder, as an attack upon the innocent. The victims of a terrorist attack are ordinary men and women, eternal bystanders. There is no special reason for targeting them. The attack is launched indiscriminately against the entire class. Terrorists are like killers on a rampage, except that their rampage is purposeful and programmatic. It aims at a general vulnerability. Kill these people in order to terrify those. A relatively small number of dead victims makes for a very large number of living and frightened hostages.

This is the ramifying evil of terrorism: not just the killing of innocent people but also the intrusion of fear into everyday life, the violation of private purposes, the insecurity of public spaces, the endless coerciveness of precaution. A crime wave might produce similar effects, but no one plans a crime wave; it is the work of a thousand decision makers, each one independent of the others, brought together only by the invisible hand. Terrorism is the work of visible hands--an organizational project, a strategic choice, a conspiracy to murder and intimidate. No wonder the conspirators have difficulty justifying in public the strategy that they have chosen.

But when moral justification is ruled out, the way is opened for ideological apology. In parts of the European and American left, there has long existed a political culture of excuses focused defensively on one or another of the older terrorist organizations: the IRA, FLN, PLO, and so on. The arguments are familiar enough, and their repetition in the days since September 11 is no surprise. Still, it is important to look at them closely and reject them explicitly.

The first excuse is that terror is a last resort. The image is of oppressed and embittered people who have run out of options. They have tried every legitimate form of political action, exhausted every possibility, failed everywhere, until no alternative remains but the evil of terrorism. They must be terrorists or do nothing at all. The easy response is that, given this description, they should do nothing at all. But that doesn't engage the excuse.

It is not so easy to reach the last resort. To get there, one must indeed try everything (which is a lot of things)--and not just once, as if a political party or movement might organize a single demonstration, fail to win immediate victory, and claim that it is now justified in moving on to murder. Politics is an art of repetition. Activists learn by doing the same thing over and over again. It is by no means clear when they run out of options. The same argument applies to state officials who claim that they have tried everything and are now compelled to kill hostages or bomb peasant villages. What exactly did they try when they were trying everything?

Could anyone come up with a plausible list? "Last resort" has only a notional finality. The resort to terror is not last in an actual series of actions; it islast only for the sake of the excuse. Actually, most terrorists recommend terror as a first resort; they are for it from the beginning.

The second excuse is that they are weak and can't do anything else. But two different kinds of weakness are commonly confused here: the weakness of the terrorist organization vis-à-vis its enemy and its weakness vis-à-vis its own people. It is the second type--the inability of the organization to mobilize its own people--that makes terrorism the option and effectively rules out all the others: political action, nonviolent resistance, general strikes, mass demonstrations. The terrorists are weak not because they represent the weak but precisely because they don't--because they have been unable to draw the weak into a sustained oppositional politics. They act without the organized political support of their own people. They may express the anger and resentment of some of those people, even a lot of them. But they have not been authorized to do that, and they have made no attempt to win any such authorization. They act tyrannically and, if they win, will rule in the same way.

The third excuse holds that terrorism is neither the last resort nor the only possible resort, but the universal resort. Everybody does it; that's what politics (or state politics) really is; it's the only thing that works. This argument has the same logic as the maxim "All's fair in love and war." Love is always fraudulent, war is always murderous, and politics always requires terror. In fact, the world the terrorists create has its entrances and exits; we don't always live there. If we want to understand the choice of terror, we have to imagine what must often occur (although we have no satisfactory record of this): A group of men and women, officials or activists, sits around a table and argues about whether or not to adopt a terrorist strategy. Later on, the litany of excuses obscures the argument. But at the time, around the table, it would have been of no use for defenders of terrorism to say, "Everybody does it," because they were face-to-face with people proposing to do something else. Terrorism commonly has its origins in arguments of this sort. Its first victims are the terrorists' former colleagues, the ones who said no to terrorism. What reason can we have for equating these two groups?

The fourth excuse plays on the notion of innocence. Of course, it is wrong to kill the innocent, but these victims aren't entirely innocent. They are the beneficiaries of oppression; they enjoy its tainted fruits. And so, while their murder isn't justifiable, it is ... understandable. What else could they expect? Well, the children among them, and even the adults, have every right to expect a long life like anyone else who isn't actively engaged in war or enslavement or ethnic cleansing or brutal political repression. This is called noncombatant immunity, the crucial principle not only of war but of any decent politics. Those who give it up for a moment of schadenfreude are not simply making excuses for terrorism; they have joined the ranks of terror's supporters.

The last excuse is the claim that all the obvious and conventionally endorsed responses to terror are somehow worse than terrorism itself. Any coercive political or military action is denounced as revenge, the end of civil liberty, the beginning of fascism. The only morally permitted response is to reconsider the policies that the terrorists claim to be attacking. Here, terrorism is viewed from the side of the victims as a kind of moral prompting: Oh, we should have thought of that!

I have heard all these excuses in the past few days--often expressed along with great indignation at the chorus of national unity and determination. But the last two have been the most common. We bomb Iraq, we support the Israelis, and we are the allies of repressive Arab regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What else can we expect? Leave aside the exaggerated and distorted descriptions of American wickedness that underpin these excuses. There is a lot to criticize in our country's foreign policy over the past decades. Many of us on the American liberal-left have spent the bulk of our political lives opposing the use of violence by the U.S. government (though I and most of my friends supported the Gulf War, which ranks high in the standard version of the fourth excuse). As Americans, we have our own brutalities to answer for--as well as the brutalities of other states that we have armed and funded. None of this, however, excuses terrorism; none of it even makes terrorism morally understandable. Maybe psychologists have something to say on behalf of understanding. But the only political response to ideological fanatics and suicidal holy warriors is implacable opposition.

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The Revolving Door Returns

Israeli security officials said on Saturday that it appears the Palestinian Authority is continuing with the same 'revolving door' policy from the past when it would arrest suspects involved in terror against Israel but release them shortly after.

'It is a shame that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has not yet acted on the ground to disarm terror organizations and crackdown on terror,' a security official said.

Palestinian security forces on Saturday briefly arrested three leaders of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which claimed responsibility for a recent attack that lightly wounded two Israeli soldiers.

The arrests marked the first such detentions since Mahmoud Abbas was elected Palestinian Authority chairman last month; however, the three were released five hours after they were arrested, party members said.

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