Saturday, September 03, 2005
Elder of Ziyon
Friday, September 02, 2005Elder of Ziyon
Friday, September 02, 2005Elder of Ziyon
Friday, September 02, 2005Elder of ZiyonTHERE HAVE BEEN rumblings of late about the developing alliance between Islamic radicals and neo-Nazis. In late May, Israeli president Moshe Katzav gave a speech before the German parliament in which he warned, 'Let's not be surprised if terror organizations use neo-Nazis for carrying out terror attacks.' And on August 5, WorldNetDaily reported, 'Neo-Nazi skinheads are working with radical Islamists in a growing unholy alliance that has European law enforcement officials concerned about a new front in the war on terrorism.'
Such an alliance seems unlikely on its face; after all, neo-Nazis view most Muslims as racially inferior, while Islamic extremists believe that neo-Nazis are just another flavor of infidel. However, a closer examination reveals that many white-supremacist groups have expressed solidarity with Islamic terrorists recently, and in turn some white supremacists and far-right Holocaust deniers have found newfound supporters among the Islamists.
Friday, September 02, 2005Elder of ZiyonDespite establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, India deliberately avoided political visits at the highest levels. It took 11 years for an Israeli premier to visit India.
While the President and PM of Israel have visited India, Delhi has been unwilling so far to schedule return visits by either the PM or the President. Despite the fact that the Palestinians have often sought a greater Indian role in promoting the peace process with Israel, the presumed need for domestic political posturing appears to have overwhelmed the strategic sense of the Indian leadership.
While this ideological compulsion appears stronger within the UPA, the NDA too was paralysed by a presumed need to ‘‘balance’’ its ties with Israel and the Arabs.
If the UPA does not get its act together on Israel, Delhi might find Tel Aviv doing the balancing act between India and Pakistan.
More immediately, if the Indian PM and President do not find time to visit Israel, Musharraf could become the first head of government or state from the sub-continent to be serenaded in Israel.
Thursday, September 01, 2005Elder of ZiyonNew York – Last week Sheikh Muhammad Ali, deputy director of the Palestinian Clerics Association, said in an interview on Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV that “we will enter Palestine as conquerors and liberators, not through negotiations, but through Jihad and the Muslim would kill the Jews...we will wipe out the Zionist enemy.” (Translation courtesy of MEMRI)
The following are excerpts from Sheikh Muhammad Ali’s TV interview: “Any land, any piece of land, over which flies the banner of ‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger,” and which at a certain point belonged to the Muslims...plundering and occupying such land (by non-Muslims) is forbidden, and it is the duty of all Muslims to do what they can to liberate this land, wherever it may be. ...many precious Muslim lands are under occupation today....Andalusia (Spain) is one example....
“When a piece of Muslim land is occupied, the duty of liberating it falls, first of all, upon the local residents. But when they are too few, or they cannot – it is the duty of the next in line to liberate this land.
“...But if they are unable to do it either, it becomes the duty of all Muslims to do what they can to liberate it. According to the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, not only when an entire homeland is occupied, but when ‘even an inch of Muslim land is occupied, Jihad is a personal duty, a religious obligation incumbent upon everyone....’They must liberate this land – and this is when only an inch is occupied, let alone when it is Palestine, Jerusalem, and Al-Aqsa that are occupied.
...”The Prophet Muhammad foretold in a hadith that ‘Judgment Day would come only when the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims would kill the Jews...
...”Allah willing, we will enter [Palestine] as conquerors and liberators, not through negotiations, but through Jihad and resistance, because the Hadith goes: ‘And the Muslims would kill the Jews’ – there is killing involved...
“The Jews acknowledge (that it is only a matter of time that the Muslims will eventually liberate Jerusalem and regain Palestine). They acknowledge this because they find it in their forged torah, in their Talmud.
“Since they believe that the Zionist entity will disappear...They are only trying to stall. They are not trying to establish themselves but to delay the fulfillment of the divine prophecy of the liberation of all of Palestine and the wiping out of the Zionist entity. If the Jews and the Zionist were to leave Palestine now, the war would be over, and the Middle East and the entire world could sigh in relief. But the Jews, these Zionists, are against humanity, not just against Muslims.”
Thursday, September 01, 2005Elder 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.
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