Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Zionist Cardinal

After years of hearing pro-Palestinian Vatican rhetoric, this is refreshing.

This speech probably dooms his papal chances, but it is still nice to see.

A cardinal considered a candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II delivered a strong message in favor of Jewish settlement in the Holy Land on Wednesday night, rejecting the claim that European Christians' support for the State of Israel is based on Holocaust guilt and saying that all Christians should affirm Zionism as a biblical imperative for the Jewish people.

Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, part of a visiting Austrian delegation, made the remarks in an address at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the topic of 'God's chosen land.'

After asking, 'What does Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] mean to us,' Schoenborn answered by stressing the doctrinal importance to Christians of not only recognizing Jews' connection to the land, but also ensuring that Christian identification with the Jewish Bible not lead to a 'usurpation' of Jewish uniqueness.

'Only once in human history did God take a country as an inheritance and give it to His chosen people,' Schoenborn said, adding that Pope John Paul II had himself declared the biblical commandment for Jews to live in Israel an everlasting covenant that remained valid today. Christians, Schoenborn said, should rejoice in the return of Jews to the Holy Land as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

A Palestinian priest challenged the cardinal on that point, asking how he could preach to his Palestinian congregation that the establishment of the modern Jewish state was not a 'catastrophe,' as they called it, or the result of European powers' guilty conscience following World War II.

Schoenborn responded by saying that "I am myself a refugee" – at the end of World War II, when he was an infant, Schoenborn's parents fled to Austria from Czechoslovakia – and that he felt pained at the unrecognized injustice that thousands of Czechs had suffered. However, he said, both that case and the Arab-Israeli conflict were matters of international law, whereas the chosenness of the Jewish people and their inheritance in the Holy Land were matters of faith that date back to the Bible itself.

Schoenborn also said he hoped the conflict here would be resolved in accordance with international law, and with respect to justice for the Palestinian people. "We are all longing for that solution," he said. "Yet I am not naive. Conflicts are part of [both sides'] love of the land, and always have been... There is no simple solution."

What are Islamic schools teaching? (Daniel Pipes)

March 29, 2005
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2489

"Shocked" is how Aisha Sherazi, principal of the Abraar Islamic school in Ottawa, described the reaction of the school's administration and board on learning last week that two of its teachers had incited hatred of Jews.
And "shocked" was how Mumtaz Akhtar, president of the Muslim-Community Council of Ottawa-Gatineau, described his own reaction to the front-page news about the Abraar school.

But they may have been the only two persons on the planet to be "shocked" to learn that teachers at an Islamic school are promoting anti-Semitism or other aspects of the Islamist agenda. The fact is, inquiries into Islamic schools repeatedly discover just such a radical Islamic outlook. Some examples:

New York City: An investigation by the New York Daily News in 2003 found that books used in the city's Muslim schools "are rife with inaccuracies, sweeping condemnations of Jews and Christians, and triumphalist declarations of Islam's supremacy."

Los Angeles: The Omar Ibn Khattab Foundation donated 300 Korans (titled The Meaning of the Holy Quran) to the city school district in 2001 that within months had to be pulled from school libraries because of its anti-Semitic commentaries. One footnote reads: "The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts. … Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy."

Ajax, Ontario, 50 kilometers east of Toronto: The Institute of Islamic Learning is a Canadian emulation of the extremist Deobandi madrassahs of Pakistan. It focuses exclusively on religious topics, has students memorize the Koran, demands total segregation from the Canadian milieu, and requires complete gender separation. Former students complained about the school's cult-like devotion to its head, Abdul Majid Khan, and complained that it is a "twisted religion."

Then there are four leading Islamic schools in the Washington, D.C. area:

The Muslim Community School in Potomac, Md., imbues in its students a sense of alienation from their own country. Seventh-grader Miriam told a Washington Post reporter in 2001, "Being American is just being born in this country." Eighth-grader Ibrahim announced that "Being an American means nothing to me."

A textbook used at the Islamic Saudi Academy of Alexandria, Va., in 2004, authored and published by the Saudi Ministry of Education, teaches first graders that "all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews [and] Christians." An ISA class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was recently indicted for plotting to assassinate President Bush.

The U.S. government revoked the visas in 2004 of sixteen people affiliated with the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, of Fairfax, Va. In the words of the Washington Post, "That decision followed accusations that the institute, a satellite campus of al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, was promoting a brand of Islam that critics say is intolerant of other strains of the religion as well as Christianity and Judaism." In addition, the IIASA is under investigation for ties to terrorism.

The Graduate School of Islamic Social Sciences of Ashburn, Va., referred to as a "purported" educational institution in an affidavit justifying a raid on the school, had its financial records seized in 2002 on suspicions of links to terrorism.

Nor are schools the exception among Islamic institutions in North America. A recent study by Freedom House found a parallel problem of venomous anti-Jewish and anti-Christian materials in U.S. mosques. The most prominent American Muslim organizations, especially the Council on American-Islamic Relations, spew antisemitism and host a neo-Nazi. The same applies in Canada, where the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, Mohamed Elmasry, publicly endorsed the murder of all Israelis over the age of eighteen.

So long as Muslim leaders simply declare themselves, in the spirit of Capt. Renault in the movie Casablanca "shocked, shocked" whenever news of Islamist supremacism leaks out, this cancer will continue unabated. The Islamic schools, the mosques, and other Muslim organizations like CAIR and CIC will continue their cat-and-mouse game so long as it works.

It won't work only when outside pressure is brought to bear on them by politicians, journalists, researchers, moderate Muslims, and others. They must state clearly and frequently the unacceptability of Islamist venom. Only then will today's fraudulent "shocked" reaction finally become sincere.

The word "Allah" in Arabic hewed into the eastern wall of the Temple Mount

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Once again, an egregious example of intolerance from Islam. This story is buried because it only happened to a Jewish holy site - imagine the world outrage if a similar incident happened in Mecca? Wars have been fought over less.

Notice also the absence of any response from the Arab world, the Waqf, and the Palestinian Authority.

The double standard is alive and well, and it is time for Jews to take control over Jewish holy sites. The Waqf has shown itself to be irresponsible time and time again, and Jews will protect Muslim holy sites fat better than any Muslim will protect Jewish holy sites. Some things are more important than the mythical "peace process", and when Jews willingly give up their holiest sites to the control of those who want to destroy them, they are giving up their major claim to the land of Israel.

The word "Allah" in Arabic was found hewn into the eastern wall of Jerusalem's Temple Mount, in one of the worst acts of vandalism at the history-rich site in the last several years, archaeologists and eyewitnesses said Wednesday.

The vandalism was discovered late Tuesday night on a half-meter section of the 2,000 year old wall, which is undergoing repair by a team of Jordanian engineers.

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said that police suspect that one of the Arab workers repairing the wall was behind the vandalism, adding that police had opened an investigation into the incident.

"This vandalism, coupled with Israel's lack of archaeological supervision at Judaism's holiest site is simply lawlessness of the first order on the part of the Government," said Temple Mount expert and Hebrew University archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar.

Mazar's non-partisan 'Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount,' which has been decrying the lack of archaeological supervision at the site for five years now, launched a complaint with police against the vandalism, which
police said would be removed by mid-morning.

Israel's Antiquities Authority had no immediate comment Wednesday.

According to decades-old arrangements in place at the site, Israel maintains overall security control of the Temple Mount while the Wakf or Islamic Trust is in charge of the day-to-day maintenance of the compound.

In the late 1990's, following the construction of an underground mosque at the site, Islamic Wakf officials dumped more than 12,000 tons of earth, with history-rich artifacts, at a garbage dump outside the Old City, an action which Israeli archaeologists called "an unprecedented archaeological crime."

In contravention of the law, Israeli archaeologists from the Antiquities Authority have not been carrying out supervision for more than four years now at the bitterly contested site due to their concern about renewed Palestinian violence.

Condoleezza Clinton? (The New York Sun)

For an administration that bills itself as having a groundbreaking new doctrine when it comes to the Middle East, the Bush administration is starting to look a bit too close for our taste to the Clinton administration, at least on the question of Israel's rights in Jerusalem. Reading Secretary of State Rice's comments in an interview Thursday with the Los Angeles Times, we were hard-pressed to tell if it was Ms. Rice or President Clinton.

Here is Ms. Rice, commenting on Israel's plans to add 3,500 housing units in Maale Adumim, a suburb that is four and a half miles east of Jerusalem: "We've noted our concern to the Israelis," she said. "We will continue to note that this is at odds with the - of American policy." She said of Israel's reply to the concerns: "anything that raises the prospect that you're going to have an expansion of settlements in this way, particularly in a sensitive area, is not really a satisfactory response." And here is President Clinton, answering a question in 1997 about Israel's plans to build in the Har Homa area of Jerusalem: "I would have preferred the decision not have been made, because I don't think it builds confidence, I think it builds mistrust. And I wish that it had not been made."

Israel is planning to build houses in a suburb of its capital, a capital that, according to the Jerusalem Embassy Act passed by Congress in 1995 by a vote of 93 to 5 in the Senate and 347 to 37 in the House, "should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel" and "should remain an undivided city." This decision to build houses in a suburb of the capital is deemed not satisfactory by Ms. Rice. It is deemed by the editorialists of the New York Times to be "a slap in the face of the new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas" and evidence that "Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel doesn't quite get it yet." The Washington Post used an entire editorial of its own over the weekend to call on President Bush to press Mr. Sharon to freeze the plan.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Arabs engage in genuine outrage after genuine outrage with hardly a peep out of Ms. Rice or the liberal editorial writers. Mr. Abbas has failed in his obligation to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure. Abu Musab, a leader of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, a Palestinian Arab terrorist group, told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, "What's happening now isn't considered a calm. It's merely a warrior's rest." The Palestinians were recently caught smuggling anti-aircraft missiles into Gaza.

Mr. Abbas has announced plans to release from prison Ahmed Saadat and Fuad Shubaki. Mr. Saadat is the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which our State Department lists as a terrorist group responsible for the assassination in 2001 of Israel's tourism minister and for airline hijackings that have killed at least 20 American citizens. Mr. Shubaki is an aide to Yasser Arafat who documents show made the deal to buy the arms from Iran that Arafat was smuggling in aboard the ship the Karine-A. Mr. Abbas's response when asked by Time magazine who was responsible for the February 25 suicide bombing that killed five Israelis in Tel Aviv: "If you ask me who is responsible, the Israelis are responsible." The Palestinian Authority-controlled press praised the suicide bomber as a martyr.

It is nothing less than warped to look at this situation and see Israeli home-building as the unsatisfactory part of it. There is no question where the logic leads. As Norman Podhoretz writes in the April number of Commentary, the whole world "takes as axiomatic the Arab position that a Palestinian state must be judenrein." Therefore, the 30,000 current residents of Maale Adumim "face the prospect of being dragged out of their homes by the Israeli army and packed off to 'Israel proper.' " As Mr. Podhoretz paraphrases his Israeli daughter telling him indignantly, if any such thing "were to be done to Palestinians, or to anyone else, it would be called 'transfer' or 'ethnic cleansing' and would be condemned as a crime against humanity. But with Jews as the victims, it is being transmuted by a malignant political alchemy into nothing less than an act of justice." Such is the Arab position. Alas, the Bush administration and Ms. Rice, like the Democratic administration that preceded them, do not yet appear to have fully broken free of it.

Our friends the Saudis

Waiting for the loud denunciations of the Saudis from Human Rights Watch, the UN, the New York Times editorialists....

Saudi religious police have destroyed a clandestine makeshift Hindu temple in an old district of Riyadh and deported three worshippers found there, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or religious police, on Thursday stumbled across a room converted into a temple while raiding a number of apartments suspected of being used to manufacture alcohol and distribute pornographic videos, pan-Arab Al-Hayat said.
"They were surprised to find that one room had been converted into a Hindu temple," the newspaper said.
A caretaker who was found in the worshiping area ignored the religious police orders to stop performing his religious rituals, the paper added.
He was deported along with two other men who arrived on the scene to worship.
All forms of non-Muslim worship are banned in ultraconservative Saudi Arabia, which is home to Islam's holiest shrines.

Fatah: 'Don’t believe the Jews’

Notice this isn't Hamas or Islamic Jihad talking - it is a member of Abbas' own party, openly advocating terror and Jew-hatred.

But we know that Abbas will crack down on the terrorists in his own organization, right? If we close our eyes and wish real hard, Palestinians will be very happy about disengagement and quietly build a new Hong Kong in Gaza, asking the Israelis to move in and help them build an infrastructure. Everything will be great as long as Israel keeps acting like she needs to give Palestinian terrorists more and more and more to appease them.

And remember, when right-wing Israelis say that the current calm is false, they are hate-mongering; when Palestinians say it; they are just posturing. At no point must you believe it. And when fighting breaks out again, it will be because of an Israeli provocation, and have nothing to do with people like Abu Musab.

GAZA - The current lull in fighting is a false calm, used by terrorists to gather strength ahead of the next round of violence, senior al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades figure Abu-Musab told Ynet Saturday.

“What’s happening now isn’t considered a calm. It’s merely a warrior’s rest,” he says. “When the confrontation renews, we’ll be back with methods and tools never before seen.”

Moreover, the current lull in violence does not signal a genuine chance for peace, as Jews should not be believed, Abu-Musab says.

“In our religion, in the Koran, it says you should not believe the Jews,” he says. “The Jews won’t accept us until we join them, their religion, and until we stop demanding our rights.”

Abu-Musab, who is the Brigades commander in the northern Gaza Strip, also warns that talk by Jewish far right activists regarding attacks on the al-Aqsa mosque, as well settlement expansion, ensure the current lull would not last long.

“It must be clear, every attack or attempt to target al-Aqsa means not only the end of the calm, but a renewed, much more serious eruption (of violence,)” he says."

Palestinians smuggling anti-aircraft missiles from Egypt

It's beginning to sound alot like Oslo!

Israel's defense minister said Sunday that Palestinian security agents recently smuggled anti-aircraft missiles into the Gaza Strip from Egypt, according to officials a development that would threaten a recent cease-fire between the two sides.

Defense Minister Shaul told a closed Cabinet meeting that Palestinian intelligence agents were involved in bringing the Strella missiles into Gaza through smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border, participants in the meeting said.

'Last week, several Strellas were smuggled in by Palestinian military intelligence. If the Palestinians don't get a hold of the Strellas, we will,' Mofaz was quoted as saying.

Hamas pays for ads on Google

Who says that terrorists are against capitalism?

Terror organizations are advancing their recruitment and public relations methods: Internet surfers who enter the word “Hamas” in Arabic in the Google search engine, will view, in addition to the search results, an AdWord message that links directly to the website of the organization’s military faction Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
The link also appears in a search of several other words, such as the “Gaza,” “Palestine,” “Jihad.”
This indicates that a Hamas source has paid Google, the most popular search engine on the web, for the advertisement.
The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades website holds updated and diverse information: Along with news updates stories from the news agencies, the site also publishes interviews with the organization’s leaders.
In one such interview, Hamas member Said Badarna, who is imprisoned in Israel, says, “abductions are the only way to release prisoners being held in Israel.”

Terror Museum planned

Once again, beyond parody.

Hamas terrorist leaders have said they intend to make a museum out of the house of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas leader whom Israel killed last year.

The museum will consist of five rooms, including the room where Yassin received guests and a waiting room where he sat with guards. The focus of the museum will be some of his writings, gifts that he received and parts of his wheelchair.

Human Rights Watch hires Israel-basher

Thanks to the excellent NGO Monitor organization.

Ken Roth and Human Rights Watch have employed Lucy Mair as a researcher in Israel/Occupied Territories. Ms. Mair's qualifications include writing for the "Electronic Intifada" and work with Grassroots International, a radical pro-Palestinian political organization. (Since HRW's employment process is secret, and not subject to independent review, we are unable to compare her credentials and expertise on universal human rights issues with the other candidates.) Her descriptions of Life in Palestine, and articles for "Palestine Now" etc., focus exclusively on Palestinian "fear and the loss and the humiliation and the despair", with no mention of terror, suicide bombings, and the human rights of Israelis. References to Israeli soldiers "protected by arrogance and hatred" are hostile stereotypes, and she echoes the false massacre claims in referring to Palestinians "killed in their homes in Jenin when the tanks and the bulldozers ate up their camp". In this extreme biased approach to Israel that extends far beyond legitimate criticism, she joins the other members of HRW's Middle East team, including Sarah Leah Whitson (from MADRE) and Joe Stork (from MERIP).

[...]
Thus, HRW has hired someone whose experience in 'human rights' is based upon a history of promoting the Palestinian cause with absolutely no regard for the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the rights of Israelis to defend themselves from Palestinian terror. Kenneth Roth has once again demonstrated his policy of filling HRW's Middle East department with like-minded politicized individuals whose priorities are not in keeping with the promotion of universal human rights values.

Chag Purim Same'akh!

To my legions, um, dozens, um, couple of readers!

חג שמח

Sports news!

When was the last time you heard of a "human rights" group boycotting any Palestinian event because of child abuse, suicide bombing, honor killings, incitement to hate, support for terror....

Human rights groups in Ireland are calling on Irish national soccer team supporters to boycott a World Cup qualifying match against the Israeli national team.

The organizations asked fans to refrain from making the trip to Israel for the May 26 match, and have also asked the Irish Football Association
to boycott the game entirely due to the political situation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

And another progressive brain surgeon/father weighs in:

France's national soccer team top goalie slammed Israel on Thursday, saying he refused to travel with his teammates to a planned match with Israel’s national team next week because of the the Israeli army's actions against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

“When I see all the suffering in the world, I don’t understand why they would want to play in Israel,” Fabien Barthez told a news conference in Paris.

The French goalie also slammed Israel’s operations in the Palestinian territories, saying: “I don’t like it at all. I am speaking as a father and not as a soccer player.”

Should Barthez not arrive in Israel with the rest of the French squad for the planned match on Wednesday, Coach Raymond Domenech would need to use his second-string goalie.

Apparently, Jewish kids blown up by bombs or from Kassam rockets do not have any fathers.
Hat tip to Hatshepsut.

Child Abuse: The New Islamic Cult of Martyrdom

A lengthy report from the South Asia Terrorism Portal site, trying to see if India can learn the lessons of Israel.

This disturbing practice of deadly child abuse is on the rise in Muslim societies all over the world, most notably in the Palestinian areas and in Pakistan as also in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). While the average Israeli or Indian citizen does not usually make the connection, there are striking similarities between the threats that face their two countries. Muslim terrorist organizations that recruit – sometimes forcibly – these teenagers, justify this illegal and immoral practice by noting that children, much like females, are less likely to be intercepted by security forces before they carry out their missions of death. In both conflicts, the value of a child’s life (not to mention the lives of those unfortunates who find themselves within the radius of death and destruction when the bomb is detonated) has become subordinate to the aspirations of militant Islam and militant nationalism. And while the recruitment and indoctrination of Muslim children to engage in terrorism and armed conflict in Indian Kashmir has not reached the unprecedented levels of the current Intifada that targets Israel; concerned Indian citizens (indeed persons living in any region where militant Islam has declared a Jihad) should be aware of the threat that the cult of martyrdom directs at democracies worldwide.8

Many of this Journal’s readers live in India and the surrounding region. While generally familiar with the problems emanating from Jammu and Kashmir, they remain largely unaware of the highly troubling direction taken by wide-scale Palestinian recruitment and training of children to engage in terrorist violence. This paper attempts to address the following vexing questions, in the hope that the lessons learned will be relevant to those facing similar threats in South Asia and elsewhere: How pervasive is this form of child abuse in the present Israeli–Palestinian conflict? How is it inspired?

Arab nations buy Israeli medical equipment

Perhaps their leadership should be regarded as collaborators and lynched.

Arab countries, including Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf emirates are among the recipients of medical equipment exported by 24 Israeli companies in 2004, Globes reported. Israeli exports of medical equipment rose by 7.2% in 2004 to $1.09 billion. The Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute predicts that medical equipment exports will rise by another 5-7% this year. Export Institute director Yechiel Assia said medical equipment exports to Europe rose by 10% to $318 million, and exports to North America rose by 17% to $471 million. 400 companies currently export medical equipment to the US, 212 to Germany, 150 to France, 100 to Australia, 135 to Italy, 70 to Hong Kong, and 185 to the UK. This year, the Export Institute plans to send three delegations of medical equipment companies to the UK, France, and Turkey, and to participate in national pavilions in two exhibitions in Germany.

A new version of a biomolecular computer developed at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology - composed entirely of DNA molecules and enzymes - outdoes even the fastest of its kind, performing as many as a billion different programs simultaneously.

Previous biomolecular computers, such as the one built by a joint team from the Technion and the Weizmann Institute of Science three years ago, were limited to just 765 simultaneous programs.

Current computers consist of metal, plastic, wires and transistors. The manner in which they process information is called linear because they conduct one computation at a time. In the latest generation of computers, biological molecules replace all the components. One advantage of these biomolecular computers over linear computers is their ability to simultaneously carry out an enormous number of complex operations.

This new biological computer is also autonomous; it processes calculations from beginning to end without any human assistance. Other biomolecular computers require humans to analyze and decipher results and perform intermediate tasks at different points in the process before the computer can complete the operation.

'A final innovation is the incorporation of a gold-coated chip, which allows simple, real-time readout of the results,' said lead researcher Professor Ehud Keinan of the Technion Faculty of Chemistry. He explained that results produced by current biomolecular computers can only be
analyzed by using elaborate techniques that include separating and sorting molecules according to size and the use of radioactive materials.

The development of the Technion's biomolecular computer is reported in the March 2005 Journal of the American Chemical Society.