Thursday, September 01, 2005
Elder of Ziyon
Thursday, September 01, 2005Elder of ZiyonIslamic extremists rejoiced in America's misfortune, giving the storm a military rank and declaring in Internet chatter that ``Private'' Katrina had joined the global jihad. With ``God's help,'' they declared, oil prices would hit US$100 a barrel this year.UPDATE:
Senior Kuwaiti Official: ‘Katrina is a Wind of Torment and Evil from Allah Sent to This American Empire’
Thursday, September 01, 2005Elder of ZiyonLOS ANGELES -- The head of a radical Islamic prison gang and three others were indicted Wednesday on federal charges of planning terrorist attacks against U.S. military facilities, the Israeli Consulate and other Los Angeles-area targets.
The four conspired to wage war against the U.S. government through terrorism, kill armed service members and murder foreign officials, among other charges, according to the indictment.
Named in the indictment were Levar Haley Washington, 25, Gregory Vernon Patterson, 21, Hammad Riaz Samana, 21, and Kevin James, 29.
Washington, Patterson and Samana _ who attended the same Inglewood mosque _ allegedly conducted surveillance of military facilities, the Israeli Consulate and synagogues in the Los Angeles area as well as Internet research on Jewish holidays. Law enforcement officials have previously said that the military facilities included National Guard sites, though the indictment does not specify.
The attacks were to be carried out with firearms and other weapons at synagogues during Jewish holidays "to maximize the number of casualties," authorities said. Patterson allegedly bought a .223-caliber rifle in July.
In Los Angeles, authorities said the suspects could have attacked as soon as the Yom Kippur Jewish holiday in October.
"Make no mistake about it _ we dodged a bullet here, perhaps many bullets," Los Angeles police Chief William Bratton said at a news conference.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005Elder of ZiyonThe old diplomacy is dead
By ZVI MAZEL
You may remember me. I was the Israeli ambassador to Sweden who was confronted with a so-called art installation in Stockholm in January 2004 that glorified suicide bombing. It was a representation of the suicide bomber who murdered 22 innocent people and maimed dozens more gliding serenely on a pool of blood on a little craft labeled "Snow White."
The "art" showed me there are no limits to the lies told against Israel or the hatred of the Jewish people. I also felt we had given up trying to reverse the terrible decline of our image, especially among European public opinion.
And so I decided to damage the display, and shut down the lights illuminating it. Not a very diplomatic step, perhaps, but one that brought the issue into the open and led to a healthy discussion in Sweden and elsewhere. Israel needs a hasbara offensive. While I was an ambassador, I was stunned to discover that many people in Europe - journalists included - are convinced that in 1948 Israel occupied a sovereign Palestinian state in a classic case of colonialism. The generation that witnessed the rebirth of Israel is gradually disappearing and younger people don't know the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So when Arab propaganda speaks about "occupation," it sounds easy to understand why Israel is being asked to terminate this anachronistic situation.
It was not always like that. Until the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel had an information policy that, while not optimal, didn't abandon the field completely to the other side.
But immediately after Oslo, the information department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was shut down; since Israel was presumably on the road to peace, it was not necessary to continue to explain our policies. Unfortunately, the other side had a different idea, and redoubled its propaganda.
It was during the implementation of Oslo that the Arab narrative of the conflict succeeded in flooding campuses, rallying the extreme Left and even capturing the more moderate Left, while Israel was conspicuously absent from the arena. The results were played out in the 2001 Durban conference, when the world ignored Israel's plight and condemned it without considering the facts.
Traditional diplomacy doesn't work anymore. Secret conversations between heads of states and foreign ministers, and the demarches carried out daily by ambassadors and other diplomats are no match for the media's ceaseless torrent of images and information.
One cannot win a war in the media alone, but one can weaken an opponent's messages; one can help change perspectives.
On a governmental level, such efforts are called public diplomacy; the academic world thinks of it as a form of "soft power."
ISRAEL MUST launch a large-scale, proactive campaign of public diplomacy to turn back the tide of anti-Semitic ignorance that is closing in on us. We have to move from our current policy - if you can even call it a policy - of delayed reactions, excuses and apologies to a potent strategy that will challenge the Arabs - taking the battle into their own media and propaganda castles and putting them on the defensive.
We have to face a cluster of factors - from blatant Muslim anti-Semitism, lies and distortion to the new anti-Semitism of European acquiescence, and the negative attitude of the Left with its calls for boycotts and divestment.
We need to tell the truth, publicly and repeatedly: the Arabs themselves are to blame for their underdevelopment, and as long as they ignore basic civil rights their peoples will remain poor and illiterate, a prey to unemployment and illness.
This situation, it needs to be emphasized over and over, has nothing to do with Israel or the conflict in the Middle East.
At the same time, we should ask them to condemn terror and stop calling it resistance. We should demand their apology for calling us pigs and monkeys, for stepping on our flag, for all the lies they write about Israel and the Jews. We should analyze their declarations and writings and lay bare their false contentions. We should remind them of their part in promoting slavery in East Africa.
We should urge governments, clerics and intellectuals in Arab countries to search their souls, and not hide behind lip-service condemnations, as some of them did after the bombing in London.
In Europe and America we should ask the media to forgo the tendency to close their eyes to terror - for instance, not one Western paper condemned the abduction and murder of the Egyptian ambassador in Iraq - and to condemn terrorism unequivocally. The time has come to understand that appeasement will not work, and that membership in the Third World doesn't confer a free pass to murder.
Europe should be reminded of its long history of persecution and suffering inflicted on the Jews - well before the Holocaust. Europeans too have some soul searching to do.
The time has come to switch to a proactive campaign. Israel finds itself dangerously isolated, and that isolation could get worse, since I don't believe many of us think the conflict is going to be resolved any time soon.
Moreover, European silence in the face of Arab pretensions only gives the Arabs more courage and fewer incentives to compromise. Arab hatred for Israel is on the rise in spite of the disengagement and the so-called improvement of relations with Egypt.
Two things need to be done. First, Israeli politicians must realize that there is no time to lose; the government must tackle this issue as part of its strategy to end the cruel terrorist war being waged against us.
Second, we need to set up an Arab television station broadcasting news, commentaries and programs that will deliver our case to Arab homes throughout the region.
The writer was a career diplomat for 38 years, and ambassador to Romania, Egypt and Sweden. He retired last year.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005Elder of ZiyonWASHINGTON -- A Rhode Island lawyer trying to collect a $116 million terrorism judgment against the Palestinian Authority has obtained a court-ordered freeze on all its US-based assets, severely limiting most Palestinian economic and diplomatic activities in the United States at a critical moment for the fledgling government.
The frozen assets include US holdings in a $1.3 billion Palestinian investment fund meant to finance economic development as well as bank accounts used to pay Palestinian representatives in Washington, according to lawyers and court documents filed in Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., and New York. Also frozen are about $30 million in assets from the Palestinian Monetary Authority, the Palestinian equivalent of the US Federal Reserve.
Providence attorney David Strachman, who is representing the orphaned children of a couple killed in Israel by Palestinian militants, has also initiated a court action to seize and sell the Palestinian-owned building in New York that serves as the Palestine Liberation Organization observer mission to the United Nations.
The aggressive collection effort comes as the Palestinian Authority is struggling to create economic opportunity and set up a viable government. Now, Palestinian officials say, the unpaid claim in the Rhode Island court, resulting from a 2004 ruling, threatens to complicate their efforts to become a credible emerging state.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005Elder of Ziyon
Monday, August 29, 2005Elder of Ziyon
A 14-year-old Palestinian boy carrying three pipe bombs was arrested by Israel Defense Forces paratroopers Monday at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus.
Sappers were summoned to the the Hawara roadblock and safely neutralized the bombs.
The boy, Hussain Abu Kalifeh, was placed under arrest.
Monday, August 29, 2005Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, August 28, 2005Elder of ZiyonRAMALLAH, August 28, 2005, (WAFA)- President Mahmoud Abbas denounced Sunday the 'anti civilians terrorist operation' took place in the city of Beir Sheva' this morning.
Sunday, August 28, 2005Elder of Ziyon"Muslims ... are not seeking peace. We get peace from Allah. In Palestine, we will stop only at victory, which will be, inshaAllah, in the end, a just implementation of Islamic religion. We have to guard against the Palestine movement being represented primarily by homosexuals and feminists."
"Clearly, there are no moral guidelines in Jewish Law, other than genocide and enslavement, for the treatment of conquered peoples, as one would find in Islamic Law. While Islam views humans as stewards of the earth, and Muslims consider themselves God’s appointed defenders of religious freedom for people of all religions, Judaism neither proclaims respect for other people’s prophets nor guarantees any respect of other people, nor even of the environment, except in so far as they are useful to the Jewish community. "Not surprisingly, she supports US Muslims murdering their fellow soldiers:
This is written in response to Stan Goff’s article "The Case of Hasan Akbar" in which he repeatedly asserted that he did not condone Hasan Akbar’s killing of two US soldiers. I was put off by his obscene moralizing and wrote to him that were I in Akbar’s shoes I would have done the same thing, and when I am president I will put Hasan Akbar on a postage stamp.
Salam alaikum
I am forwarding this to you all just so you can see how even liberals who seem to be on our side will quickly turn on you and attack you. [following is a story about a liberal who she feels attacked her in a letter....]
Live and learn. Don't trust any kaffirs, because if they knew what you really think they will turn on you at the drop of a hat. They only feel sorry for Muslims as long as we are being victimized. But if we ever were to gain domination they would cringe in horror.
Friday, August 26, 2005Elder of Ziyon
self-death
The following are excerpts from a panel discussion at the counter-terrorism conference of religious scholars at Sharm Al-Sheikh, Egypt. The discussion aired on Iqra TV on August 22, 2005. (To view this clip, visit: http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=822.)
Dr. Muhammad Rafat 'Othman, Egyptian professor of Islamic law: "According to another opinion, a person who blows himself up is committing suicide. This opinion is based on sources that categorically forbid self-killing. The Koran says: 'Do not kill yourself, surely Allah is ever merciful to you.' There are also such sources in the Sunna and in the general consensus of scholars. No text in Islamic religious law permits a person to kill himself. Even in the case of Jihad, which is the pinnacle of religious duties, Islam does not permit a person to kill himself.
"What Islamic religious law does permit is for a person to wage Jihad, facing one of two options – victory or martyrdom. He may risk being killed by someone else, but may not kill himself."
[...]
Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: "Dr. Said Ramadhan [Al-Bouti] stressed the legitimacy of defense, saying it is a legitimate right in Palestine and Iraq. I think that saying it is a legitimate right is not enough, because a right is something that can be relinquished. It is a duty. All scholars say that defending an occupied homeland is an individual duty applying to every Muslim. Reducing this duty to a 'right,' which can be relinquished, is a kind of depreciation.
"We must stress this point, and emphasize that it is the rights of those defending their homeland. It is not only a right, but also their duty. I am amazed by what Dr. Muhammad Rafat 'Othman said.
"This has nothing to do with suicide. This man does not want to commit suicide, but rather to cause great damage to the enemy, and this is the only method he can use to cause such damage. Since this method did not exist in the past, we cannot find rulings about it in the ancient jurisprudence. We may find rulings about plunging into the [ranks of the] enemy and risking one's life, even in cases of certain death – so be it. The truth is that we should refrain from raising this issue, because doubting it is like joining the Zionists and Americans in condemning our brothers in Hamas, the Jihad, the Islamic factions, and the resistance factions in Iraq. It is as if we are joining them.
"We all condemn violence or terrorism, although, to tell the truth, I personally don't like the word 'terrorism.' I always say 'violence.' I have written a book called Islam and Violence. But since this word is so widespread, I use it. We all condemn the [terrorist] operations. We condemned them before we came to this conference. We condemned the bombings in London, Madrid, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Egypt. We condemned them as individuals and as institutions. This is something everyone agrees on. We cannot say we pat these misguided boys on the back, but we do want to listen to them. They have gone astray, so we want to treat them in a way that will set them straight, and bring them closer to us. We don't want to be like prosecutors, demanding their execution. We want to treat them the way clerics treat their students, the way fathers treat their sons."
[...]
Professor 'Abla Kahlawi, Al-Azhar University, Egypt: "We must be united in condemning this behavior, this terrorism or violence – call it what you will. We must declare loud and clear that resisting the aggression, and resisting the enemy is a legitimate right, and that a fighter who risks his life has that right. When he perishes along with his enemy, this is a resounding cry of truth, through which the martyr declares: 'This was mine and it has been plundered – let the whole world see.' This is how a Muslim should act when he defends what is his, and I don't accept anything else."
[...]
Iraqi Cleric Ahmad Al-Qubeisi: "Does any Islamic government have the right to prevent individuals from resisting the occupiers? This is what happens. There are young people who thought it was bad that the Americans were occupying the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on. So they started the resistance, which might have been exaggerated, but this was an operational error. In principle, these are people who are trying to drive out the occupier, which is deemed legitimate by all earthly and divine laws. People are in dispute over the methods. Listen to what happens worldwide – things you may have forgotten: The officer who killed 400 children in the Bahr Al-Baqr elementary school in Egypt many years ago – they said he was depressed, and pardoned him.
[...]
"The arch-killer who murdered, at the Al-Aqsa Mosque many years ago in the days of [Israeli prime minister] Yitzhak Rabin, 38 people in the middle of prayer – they said he was depressed, and was pardoned.
[...]
"The pilot who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and killed 700,000 got a medal. Rustum and the Americans killed 700 prisoners in an Afghan prison – no one demanded they be held accountable. My question is: Why can't you show some mercy and say that these mujahideen are depressed, and pardon them? Thank you."
Sudanese Minister of Religious Endowments 'Issam Ahmad Al-Bashir: "The mujahideen are not depressed. Their faces shine."
Al-Qubeisi: " But you are accusing them of heresy, here. If you had to choose between depression and heresy, which would you choose?"
[...]
Saudi scholar Abd Al-Muhsen Al-'Abikan: "The suicide operations that are called 'martyrdom operations' are forbidden by Islamic law. Those who carry them out, committing suicide, cannot be called martyrs, and their actions cannot be called martyrdom. It was forbidden even in cases of Jihad by a number of prominent Muslim scholars."
[...]
Al-Bashir: "We have agreed that resisting the occupier is a sacred right and an obligatory duty, approved by Islamic religious law and by [international] conventions. It has nothing to do with forbidden terrorism. Moreover, it is legitimate. As proposed by Sheikh Al-Bouti, we emphasize this point in this concluding statement."
Participant: "And one cannot call their deaths suicide."
Al-Bashir: "Yes."
Participant: "It is an obligatory duty."
Al-Bashir: "Yes. I've already said that. It is an obligatory duty and a legitimate right. Someone who carries out this duty cannot be said to have committed suicide."
Friday, August 26, 2005Elder of Ziyon
Thursday, August 25, 2005Elder of ZiyonRepresentatives of various Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday accused Israel of burying 'toxic materials' under the rubble of dismantled settlements to prevent Palestinians from exploiting the land.This joins a long line of notable Palestinian flights of fancy:
The allegations were made during a press conference in Khan Yunis that was organized by the Popular Committee for Defending Palestinian Lands.
Committee coordinator Abdel Aziz Qadih claimed that the IDF and the settlers had buried the toxic materials six meters under the rubble of the settlements that were evacuated last week. He did not specify the type of toxins, but claimed that they were placed in large barrels underground.
'They want to destroy the land to prevent the Palestinians from using it after it's handed over to the Palestinian Authority,' he said. 'We call on all those who support our people to expose this matter and to help us deal with it.'"
Thursday, August 25, 2005Elder of ZiyonIn a trial with more important national security implications than any since the Rosenbergs’, Sami Al-Arian now begins his third month in the dock. The defense claims that Al-Arian is a peaceful Muslim with unpopular political views. But according to prosecutors, while Al-Arian was a professor at the University of South Florida, and Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times was affectionately characterizing him as a “rumpled academic with a salt-and-pepper beard,” he was actually the head of the American wing of the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), held a key position in the group’s worldwide leadership, and even established a cell of the terrorist group at his university.
A great deal of information about Al-Arian’s activities on behalf of Palestinian Islamic Jihad has come to light at the trial – much of which was hitherto unknown or only sketchily reconstructed by intelligence officials. The trial has become the occasion for the professor, whose case has for years been a minor cause celebre among Leftists, to be confronted with the fruit of his labors for the first time. Israeli policeman Yuval Avargil was on the scene at Beit Lid in Israel on January 22, 1995, when a PIJ suicide bomber exploded a bomb that killed twenty-two people. “I opened my eyes,” Avergil recounted at the trial, “I heard something rolling near me, I saw a head of a soldier with his eyes open on the side.”
What did the Rumpled Academic think of this attack? He wrote about the bombing enthusiastically almost three weeks later in a letter to Kuwaiti politician Ismail al- Shatti: “The latest operation, carried out by the two mujahideen who were martyred for the sake of God, is the best guide and witness to what the believing few can do in the face of Arab and Islamic collapse at the heels of the Zionist enemy and in keeping the flame of faith, steadfastness and defiance glowing.” He also asked for donations so that “operations such as these can continue.” Key to the defense’s case at this point is Al-Shatti’s contention that he never received this letter; prosecutors are hoping that Abdurraham Alamoudi, once the leading “moderate Muslim” and now serving a 23-year prison sentence on other charges, will corroborate their claim that the letter was hand-delivered to Al-Shatti.
Al-Arian, meanwhile, has consistently denied any involvement with the leadership of PIJ or any other “political organization.” In fact, when in early 1995 Tampa Tribune reporter Michael Fechter probed his ties to the jihad group, Al-Arian attributed it all to the sinister hand that jihadists so often see behind their misfortunes, no matter how farfetched the connection: “This,” he intoned to another PIJ member, “is an Israeli job, my brother.”
Is Sami Al-Arian actually caught in the middle of terrorist activities by others who are linked to him, but with which he has had nothing to do? A clue may come from a 1989 conference of the Islamic Committee for Palestine. Held in Chicago, the conference featured a panel discussion moderated by Al-Arian. As the Rumpled Academic looked on, one panelist addressed a question about how to solve the Israel/Palestinian conflict by inviting him to talk with him later about weapons smuggling techniques. Another, Imam Fawaz Damra of Cleveland, a former high-profile “moderate” who has recently been deported for failing to disclose his ties to terrorist groups on his visa application, declared: “The first principle is that terrorism, and terrorism alone, is the path to liberation.”
Damra, incidentally, was one of the signers of the recent fatwa condemning terrorism issued by the Fiqh Council of North America under the auspices of the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Damra’s name among the signatories lends credence to the view that this fatwa, despite the enthusiastic praise it has received from the mainstream media, is in fact another exercise in the deception that Damra and others so skillfully practiced in America for so long, while continuing behind closed doors to support terror. Just how well Sami Al-Arian played this game is now coming to light.
Thursday, August 25, 2005Elder of ZiyonIsrael Military Industries won a tender Tuesday for around $300 million to supply the U.S. army with ammunition. IMI said this is their biggest ammunition deal with the U.S. army to date.
IMI will supply light ammunition for rifles and machine guns, which will be produced in its 'Yitzhak' factory in Upper Nazareth. The deal will double the factory's scope of activity. It currently employs 350 workers, and has a revenue today of over $60 million a year.
The Yitzhak factory produces light ammunition principally for American forces operating in Iraq, the Israel Defense Forces, the police and the Israeli defense establishment, as well as various western European clients.
IMI Chairman Ovadia Eli said the success is a significant achievement for the company and represents an important stage in its growth, and that is likely enable it to win additional international tenders. According to Eli, the deal establishes the standing of IMI as an essential supplier for the U.S. army.
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PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
