750 lashes and 40 months in jail - for praising Jews

He won't make that mistake again!

RIYADH (Reuters) - A court in Saudi Arabia sentenced a teacher to 40 months in jail and 750 lashes for 'mocking religion' after he discussed the Bible and praised Jews, a Saudi newspaper said on Sunday.

Al-Madina newspaper said secondary school teacher Mohammad al-Harbi will be flogged in public after he was taken to court by his colleagues and students.

He was charged with promoting a 'dubious ideology, mocking religion, saying the Jews were right, discussing the gospel and preventing students from leaving class to wash for prayer', the newspaper said. It gave no more details.

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Bill Clinton to Israel: Don't act unilaterally against terror

Ex-president Bill Clinton urged Israelis over the weekend not to overreact to comments by newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recommending that Israel be 'wiped off the map.'

Speaking at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on Saturday, Clinton acknowledged that the remark was 'outrageous,' but he cautioned that the Iranian leader was 'not elected because of his hatred for Israel or the West.'

'He was elected because of the economic distress of ordinary Iranians, and which he promised to relieve by giving them financial assistance,' Clinton explained, according to the Jerusalem Post.

He warned Israel not to act unilaterally when reacting to terrorist threats, saying that 'true peace and security can only come through principled compromise.'

So Clinton says Israel should compromise with those who want to see it destroyed? I wonder if he gives Bush the same advice, not to act unilaterally when dealing with Al-Qaeda. I seem to remember Clinton unilaterally shooting some ineffective rockets towards Afghanistan jihadi training camps - tsk, tsk, how could he react to a terror bombing in such a way?

I hope that this was taken way out of context. I expect such lunacy from Carter, but not Clinton.

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The Independent's Fawning Obituary for a Terrorist

A terrorist gets memorialized in the Independent (UK)'s obituary page, exactly the same as authors and prominent business leaders. Unbelievably, the obituary lists his terror accomplishments in exactly the same way that obituaries mention others' charitable and scientific accomplishments.

Look - he's a published author of a guide on how to make bombs! He became "extremely pious" so he "embraced jihad"! The suicide attacks using his bombs didn't actually kill anyone - but their explosive power "[led] to the deaths of 245 people!"

This is truly one of the sickest examples of relative morality that has ever been published.

Azahari Bin Husin
Terrorist 'Demolition Man'
Published: 14 November 2005

Azahari bin Husin, statistician and bomb-maker: born Malacca, Malaysia 1957; Associate Professor of Statistics and Valuation, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 1991-98; married 1994 Wan Noraini Jusoh (two children); died Batu, Indonesia 9 November 2005.

How and why this mild-mannered Malaysian mathematician transformed himself into "Demolition Man", the most wanted fugitive in South-East Asia, is a puzzle which authorities are hard pressed to solve after his violent death last Wednesday.

Azahari bin Husin eluded capture for three years after allegedly supplying explosives to the Islamist extremist group Jemaah Islamiah which has ideological and financial links to al-Qa'ida. Police say his signature car bombs and explosive backpacks were used in at least four suicide attacks against "soft targets" in Bali and Jakarta, leading to the deaths of 245 people, including 26 British tourists in the 2002 Kuta night-club bombings. Azahari was briefly apprehended in Sumatra, but was unrecognised as the bespectacled militant wanted by Interpol for plotting to bomb the US Embassy in Singapore, and he slipped off. But he struck Jakarta's Australian Embassy in September 2004, personally driving his customised car bomb and parking it 300 metres away. Police suspected him of planting similar bombs in August 2003 at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, where he was seen sketching in the lobby weeks before the explosions.

Fingerprints taken from one of the suspected militants killed in a police raid on a safe house in East Java on 9 November matched Azahari's records. An hour-long gun battle ended dramatically when a militant sheltering inside blew himself up, and police found a stockpile of 30 more explosive devices in the rubble. Documents discovered in a cohort's hideout the plans for a pre-Christmas "bomb party" to be unleashed at Jakarta schools and churches.

Azahari was born in 1957 in Malacca, the cosmopolitan port town 150km south of Kuala Lumpur. At the age of 17, he left home to study in Adelaide, Australia, where he became an avid jogger and a motorcycle aficionado. But the gregarious student dropped his mechanical engineering courses after four years. An Australian classmate, John Cooper, recalls the young Azahari as "bright and cavalier. He seemed to have a healthy disrespect for authority."

When, aged 20, Azahiri returned home, the Iranian revolution was in foment and Islamic students around the world took heed. Asahari did well enough in his statistics coursework in Malaysia to be accepted as a foreign student at Reading University, where he was enrolled in the late 1980s. Contemporaries remember his fondness for women, sport, and fast cars. After submitting his doctoral thesis, he left Britain for employment in Jakarta as a property-market analyst, but found he preferred life in academia. He married a co-lecturer at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia at Skudai, Johor, where he eventually was appointed Associate Professor of Valuation and known for his lively classes.

It was only when his young Acehnese wife, Noraini, had difficulty conceiving a baby that Azahari turned to religion. Following visits to a Muslim faith healer, she became pregnant and bore two children in quick succession. After she was diagnosed with throat cancer, Azahari became extremely pious. He embraced jihad and was drawn to charismatic leaders such as the Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Baasyir, spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah. With Noordin Mohamad Top, headmaster of a religious boarding school, he promoted a pan-Muslim territory extending from the southern Philippines to southern Thailand and recruited youths to become martyrs for the cause.

Azahari perfected his bomb-making skills at a jihadi camp in Sadaa, Afghanistan, in 1999, after months of training in Mindanao, in the southern Philippines, and went on to design the Jemaah Islaimah bombers' manual with emphasis on backpack explosives. He attended a meeting in Thailand with Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, who was considered Osama bin Laden's point man in South-East Asia. After Hambali's arrest in August 2003, Azahari rose through the organisation's ranks.

Counter-terrorism experts have described Azahari as a master of disguise. But in the past few years, officials said, he invariably wore an explosive belt around his waist to avoid being captured alive.

One of Azahari's former students, Lum Chih Feng, recalled his teacher's enthusiasm for English Premier League football. He preferred close-fitting Western clothes and rarely wore an Islamic skullcap and robe except at the mosque.

Shortly after his second baby was born in 2001, Azahari left home, telling his wife: "I have a greater cause in life. It is to serve God."

Jan McGirk

Hat tip to Little Green Footballs.

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Rabin was more hawkish than Sharon is today

IsraelNN points out:

In fact, however, Rabin was totally against a withdrawal from Gush Katif. In his last Knesset speech, he said:
'We will not return to the lines of June 4, 1967... The security border will be placed in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest interpretation of this concept... [We will] include Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are east of what was the Green Line... and also... settlement blocs like Gush Katif; would it be there were others like them in Judea and Samaria as well.'

Neither was Rabin in favor of a Palestinian state, and stated clearly his envisioned solution of a 'Palestinian entity that is less than a state.'

It is also interesting to remember that Rabin's reaction to the first "intifada" was far more violent than Sharon's reaction to the second one. It is perhaps unfair to compare the two, but the sainthood that the Left confers on Rabin seems more than a little misplaced, and conversely the concessions that Sharon has made to the Palestinian Arabs seem foolhardy compared to those Rabin may have offered.

At any rate, the consistent labeling of "dove" and "hawk" done incessantly by the media reflects more their perceptions and wishful thinking than the reality.

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Senior PA officials explicitly support continued terror

For some reason, the mainstream media completely missed these interviews by the PA national security advisor and the PA minister of civil affairs.

The official PA policy is continued terror, period.

Statements by Jibril Rajoub
	(Photo: Al-Arabiya, November 4, 2005)
		Jibril Rajoub, the PA's national security advisor, and a leader of the second generation of Fatah, was interviewed in Cairo by daily newspaper Al-Zaman on October 30, 2005. He stated that Abu Mazen would not, under any circumstances, ask the PA security apparatuses to disarm Hamas and the PIJ as long as Israel occupied the West Bank .
		As a guest on an Al-Arabiya TV talk show on November 4, 2005, Rajoub was asked about his statement in Al-Zaman regarding the disarmament of Hamas and the PIJ. He replied as follows (Translations from the original Arabic):
	“ The West Bank is one thing, the Gaza Strip is something else . Israel retreated from the Gaza Strip and a dialogue was held to deal with the subjects of weapons [i.e., the PA's attempt to stop armed men from roaming the streets] and security for Palestinian civilians. The West Bank is still occupied and resistance [i.e., terrorist activities] is a legitimate right . However, regarding everything concerning the Gaza Strip, we of the PA have decided that a law will be passed by the legislative council to deal with the carrying of weapons.”
		During the program he stated several times that the matter of the various organizations' weapons was an internal Palestinian issue which would be dealt with by a dialogue between the PA and the organizations “taking into consideration the position of the PA regarding one weapon and one law…”
		He also expressed his determined objection to the launching of missiles from the Gaza Strip but did not take a firm stand (and was in fact ambiguous) about launching them from the West Bank . He stated that: “the residents of the Gaza Strip have a right to live in peace. Will a missile fired from Gaza liberate the West Bank ?” The interviewer said: “I understand from what you say that you are in favor of launching missiles at Israel from the West Bank ,” and Rajoub answered: “ I am not in favor of [launching] missiles, but it is our right to resist, to react and to confront the occupation . However, the resistance must follow an agenda we agree on…”
		He was then asked whether it had been agreed that the lull would end at the end of 2005. He answered: “No. The lull is part of our national program, and therefore whether or not it ends also depends on a national dialogue. The lull is open and changes according to developments in the field . Its main objective is to maintain local and international momentum, which serves Palestinian interests.” The lull's function, according to Jibril Rajoub, is “ to exert pressure on the criminal Israeli government .”
	Statement by Muhammad Dahlan
	Muhammad Dahlan (right) at a press conference dealing with the Rafah crossing point (Photo: Al-Jazeera RV, November 7, 2005)
		Muhammad Dahlan is minister of civil affairs and among the leaders of second-generation Fatah activists . During a visit to the town of Khan Yunis , he called to strengthen national unity, “ to complete what was achieved in the Gaza Strip. To liberate Jerusalem and the West Bank and for the refugees to take by force the right to return to their houses ” (Palestinian News Agency, November 6, 2005).

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Got another one

I don't usually post these stories because others do a better job, but since this was not widely reported it is worth mentioning and praising the IDF for yet another job well done.

IDF troops killed Hamas leader in Nablus, Amjad Hinawi, 34, during a gunbattle which erupted before dawn Monday when soldiers attempted to arrest the fugitive.

Overnight Monday, numerous troops operated in Nablus against the city's terrorist infrastructure and arrested eight Hamas fugitives, Army Radio reported.

Among their aims was to arrest Hinawi, but when gunmen opened fire at the soldiers during the operation, troops returned fire, killing Hinawi.

A Kalashnikov rifle, a handgun and two magazines were found on Hinawi's body.

Ha'aretz adds:

Hanawi is believed to have masterminded several suicide bombings in Israel in the 1990s.

Israel has conducted raids against hideouts of commanders of armed groups on nearly a nightly basis since a suicide bombing late last month killed six Israelis in an open-air market in the town of Hadera.

A number of commanders have been killed, prompting vows of vengeance from the targeted groups, in particular the Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

Palestinians have strongly criticized the IDF raids and assassination operations, saying that they have foiled PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' efforts to seek promises of calm from the armed organizations.

Ooooh, not the dreaded "efforts to seek promises of calm"! Abbas must really be serious this time!

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US needing help from the IDF

A fascinating article from Haaretz, excerpted below, shows again how the US needs Israeli expertise to help in Iraq - but does not allow Israel to mention it.

This is a consistent theme through the current relationship of the US and Israel, and it is not one that is good for Israel. If Israel would start acting like a partner rather than a stepchild it would go a long way in justifying the aid that the US gives Israel, showing that it is an investment rather than a bribe or boondoggle as in the billions given to Egypt or millions given to the PA.

The US might not need Israel as much as Israel needs the US but it is not a one-way street by any means.

At the end of last month, Brigadier General Joseph Votel, a boyish-looking, tall and smiling American, made an urgent request to an old friend of his from Washington − also a brigadier general, but in the Golani Brigade rather than the Rangers − Nitzan Nuriel, the chief of the foreign liaison department of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. So urgent was the message that the Pentagon didn't even update their military attache in Tel Aviv. Votel implored Nuriel to send him a top-secret item the IDF has developed that could be useful in combating the improvised explosive devices (IED) used against U.S. forces in Iraq.

Nuriel called the chief of the Engineering Corps, Brigadier General Shimon Daniel, who was the Northern Command chief engineering officer during the war against Hezbollah IEDs before the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon and who has been holding professional contacts with Votel and his aides for the past year and a half. Daniel convened the Israeli experts, Nuriel set off on the obstacle course of coordination and authorization - and within a record time of five days, the items in question and their manuals were on a plane headed overseas.

It may sound exaggerated, unfounded, or at least pretentious, but at the end of 2005, the salvation of U.S. President George W. Bush is in large measure dependent on the military intelligence of Israel: the ability of the IDF, the Defense Ministry and the defense industries to help the Americans thwart the IED attacks in Iraq is becoming the tipping point on which the Bush administration is tottering. This conclusion is the final link in a logical chain, which is known to the decision-makers and those in uniform but has been hidden from others.

Bush's most severe entanglement is in Iraq; the quagmire has resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 U.S. troops since the start of the war, though a quarter of them died in accidents, from sickness or suicides. The most lethal factor are the IEDs planted along roadways or in booby-trapped vehicles. By the Americans' admission, the most effective aid in their efforts to defeat the IEDs comes from Israel. The ministering angels who are working to extricate Bush from his distress are, thus, Daniel, Nuriel and Rafael. The last-named is not a person but a corporation: the Armament Development Authority. A bit of Rafael's activity to protect U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan was revealed last summer in the form of a report that the U.S. Army was acquiring anti-explosives protection kits manufactured jointly by Rafael and the U.S. firm General Dynamics. Other activity is classified.
...
In one of its recent visits to Israel, a delegation from Votel's task force spent three days touring IDF units, guided by the chief engineering officer of Northern Command and with the emphasis on the Engineering Corps' Yahalom unit, a special-operations force. The U.S. Army maintains frequent and regular contacts with the IDF.

The IDF takes pride in this. The U.S. Army is ashamed, citing outdated and transparent pretexts − what will the Arabs say? − which are unable to conceal professional embarrassment. This is not a matter of joint operational planning or intelligence secrets; it is a matter of saving lives − American lives − an issue that is the epicenter of the concern of politicians in Washington. However, instead of congratulating themselves about know-how that was acquired with the blood of the IDF soldiers who were killed in Lebanon and the territories and which is the property of the entire Israeli public, Israeli politicians − the latest of them was Mofaz in his visit to Washington a week ago − are willing to forgo the status of common-law wife and make do with the appearance of a concealed mistress.

Officially, Centcom (U.S. Central Command) is barred from talking directly to Israel − it is supposed to do so only through Eucom (European Command?) or Washington. The prohibition is usually maintained, but life-and-death issues override it. Centcom despaired of the bureaucracy, while soldiers are being killed every day, and three officers who are serving in Iraq came to Israel to learn from the IDF how to combat IEDs. There are also Israeli combatants in Iraq who were released from the IDF to enlist in the U.S. Army. These are not two-footed warriors but members of Oketz, the IDF's canine unit, whose American trainers came to the unit's base to learn how to work with the dogs.

In the best tradition of official Washington doublespeak, even as Israel was requested to say nothing, the Pentagon decided to mention the Israeli angle, to prove that no stone is being left unturned in the effort to defeat the IEDs. A week ago the Los Angeles Times reported that the lone star worn by Votel is making it difficult for him to move along the corridors of the Pentagon. A more senior officer is needed, a three-star general. This is a peculiar idea: another two pieces of serrated tin on a general's shoulder and the explosive devices will be gone. The navy respects expertise and experience, the army respects ranks, the commander of the navy's bomb disposal unit was quoted as saying in National Defense. Maybe it will be Lieutenant General Russel Honore, who gained glory in commanding his troops in post-Katrina New Orleans. Honore, who commands the reserve units and National Guard forces being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, was outraged that the soldiers' training does not include sufficient preparation to deal with the IEDs.

In a self-defensive press briefing at the Pentagon, Lieutenant General James Conway, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that supreme priority has been assigned to combat the IEDs. "The only remaining effective tool Iraqi insurgency has against coalition forces is the improvised bomb," Conway said, and once U.S. and coalition forces find a way to eliminate IEDs, "it's over." The "it" in question is the campaign in Iraq, but before that happens, Conway confirmed it has been proposed to appoint a three-star general above Votel - like Conway's rank − to oversee IED work.

To prove the Americans are learning from the best and most experienced sources, Conway noted that the British had encountered the problem of explosive devices in Northern Ireland and the Israelis have coped with suicide bombers in Israel and Lebanon. "We've tried to study what their experiences were and learn from that." Dutton, the British
general, added another piece of information which explains why it is vital to draw on the knowledge the IDF gleaned coping with Hezbollah devices: the materials and the technology used in making IEDs are entering Iraq from the same source - Iran.

Votel and his colleagues reviewed in public a range of systems and stratagems in use by the enemies of the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan: detonation by wireless, by tripwire, by remote control of cars and by dog and sheep carcasses. Thousands of disruptive systems have been supplied to the forces, but according to reports these also disrupt the U.S. forces' communication network, so the soldiers tend to shut them off. Another difficulty the U.S. has is collecting accurate data about the attacks perpetrated by the IEDs, such as the time of the detonation, the location of the device and the situation of the force that was attacked. An analysis of this data in southern Lebanon helped the IDF improve its combat tactics against Hezbollah.

The key to the booby-trapped cars, an Israeli officer told his American colleagues, lies in mapping the fleet of vehicles in Iraq and marking them in a way that makes it possible to spot them from a safe distance and to identify suspicious vehicles which were not present along the route earlier. The weak point of the Americans is the movement on the roads, for patrols or in convoys. The U.S. Army also understood it is essential to train all logistics personnel and drivers as riflemen who are liable to encounter an attack aimed at killing or kidnapping them, and just to be on the safe side, a simulator for practicing responses in convoys was upgraded.

A soldier who is not present is not hurt, and the original sin of the U.S. Army in Iraq, in its mission to protect the emerging regime in Baghdad, is its failure to develop "control without presence" − a swift action, sparing in manpower and focused, that achieves results without banking on large-scale presence that eventually becomes bankruptcy. The IDF learned how to do this, on an impressive albeit not absolute scale, in its activity against Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank. This is a decentralized combat doctrine, on which the copyright belongs, in part, to the former commander of the Israel Navy, Rear Admiral (res.) Yedidya Yaari, now the president of Rafael.

In the area of combating explosive devices, and in other areas as well, the IDF and sophisticated defense corporations in Israeli industry are so far ahead of their American counterparts that self-admiration needs to be cooled with a doze of modesty; it is not that the Israeli ability is small but that the American needs are large. "The new brigade that is equipped with the Striker combat vehicle is responsible for an area of 38,000 square kilometers in Iraq, almost twice the size of Israel," a realistic IDF officer said this week, "and without diminishing the importance of the lessons we learned and taught others from convoys of eight kilometers to the Beaufort and to the Dlaat outpost [in Lebanon], their convoys have to cover 80 and sometimes 180 kilometers. So we, with all respect, are a drop in the ocean.

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Has the Muslim "blame Israel" excuse lost its potency?

When Arab or Muslim regimes or leaders have had domestic or political problems over the past fifty years, there has always been a reliable way out: blame the Jews, blame Israel, blame Zionists. As long as hatred could be redirected to the always reliable Jews, the heat would be off the true source of the problem, whatever it may have been. it was a free and very effective solution to all kinds of problems.

But it seems that nowadays, the "blame Israel" excuse has lost much of its power. Whether it is because of Israeli diplomatic moves or because of overuse, it seems that only Iran is still using it with any regularity, and that appears to be because Iran is increasingly isolated from its fellow Muslim nations. Indeed, Iran's constantIsrael bashing may be making it more difficult for other Muslim nations to follow suit nowadays.

Iran's isolation can be seen in this news story:

Saudi Arabia has agreed to end all economic boycotts of Israel, allowing the World Trade Organization (WTO) yesterday to admit the oil-rich kingdom as its 149th member, diplomats said.

The WTO's ruling general council, which includes the United States and Israel, endorsed the Saudi entry during a special session yesterday.

The kingdom's minister for commerce and industry, Hashim Yamani, signed the protocol of accession, which means that Saudi Arabia will become a full member on Dec. 11, just days before a big WTO meeting in Hong Kong.

To join, Saudi Arabia agreed to scrap all economic boycotts and it pledged not to resort to any future discriminatory trade measures against the Jewish state, diplomats said.

This story is nothing short of amazing, even if it is only an empty paper gesture. Saudi Arabia has always been at the forefront of the Israeli boycott and his shows that the boycott has been a complete failure. And it also shows just how out-of-step Iran has become in the world today. I think it is not surprising that in the face of such a crumbling of the united Muslim voice against Israel, Iran redoubles its efforts to paint Israel as a villain, and the general Arab world is not keeping to the Iranian company line::

Asefi condemned last week's bombings in Amman and hinted at Israel's involvement. "The bombings were suspicious. Reports indicate the Zionist regime has been behind the event," he stated.

It should be mentioned that the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz newspaper has retracted a report that Jordanian security services evacuated Israeli citizens staying in the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman beforethe bomb attack. At least one Israeli was confirmed dead in the blasts.

The second paragraph (not separated in the original story) is most interesting, in that it is a Jordanian news source that is going out of its way to show that Iran's blaming Israel is ridiculous - again, something that would not have been seen a few years ago.

Another indication that the "blame Israel" days may be on the wane among the general Arab population comes from this story about Arab-American comedians:

There are a few simple rules for being a "real Arab man."

Among them: Ignore the first few buttons on your shirt. Wear tremendous amounts of cologne. Oh, and blame every bad thing in the world on a Zionist conspiracy.

It may be a minor and amusing story but when Arabs can joke about how they always blame the Zionists for everything, it does show that the argument is not nearly as powerful as it used to be.

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Our friends the Jordanians

Two factoids from an article about Jordanian reaction to the terror attacks in Amman.

In one, a man had to insult Zarqawi in the strongest possible terms:

Munder Moomeni, a 38-year-old former soldier who lives next to Zarqawi's house, 13 Ramzi St., described his former neighbour as "a bastard."

"By killing Jordanians here in Jordan, civilian Jordanians going to a wedding, they did something that not even a Jew would do," he said.

Yet another sad example of an Arab who didn't read the memo that said "Make sure you never say bad things about Jews to the press - only Zionists!"

But right after that example of tolerance and moderation from the Arab world comes this:

However, religious leaders in the impoverished town suggested the hotel bombings occurred because Jordan had "strayed from Islam."

"Those who care about the country's security and peace should strive to build the umma [Islamic nation]," the local imam said in his sermon without once directly condemning the attacks.

"What befell the umma happened because it strayed from Islam."

Yes, these are shining examples of that most liberal bastion of Islamic tolerance, and America's close ally in the war on terror.

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Al-Qaeda justifies Jordan bombings, says it's just trying to fight Jews and Christians

A couple of points are noteworthy:

1 - Al-Qaeda does seem to be affected by Arab criticism. Which means that if the "moderate" Arabs had shown the same outrage after 9/11 as they are now for 11/9, Al-Qaeda might be severely weakened by now.

Unfortunately, we know that most of the Arab world was not unpleased by 9/11.

2 - Notice that this statement doesn't complain about "Zionists" in "Palestine", but "the presence of Jews." Let's not hold our breath to see Arabs protest against that, and trying to educate Zarqawi about the centuries of peace and tolerance between Jews and Arabs they always try to tell the West.

3 - It is pretty obvious that when Islamofascists say "Crusaders" they mean "Christians."

CAIRO, Egypt — In an apparent response to Jordanians who took to the streets to call for its leader to “burn in hell,” al-Qaida in Iraq took the rare step Thursday of trying to justify the triple suicide bombings that killed 56 people, mostly Arabs.

Earlier Thursday, the group posted a Web statement claiming responsibility for Wednesday’s attacks. Then a second al-Qaida statement appeared on the Internet “to explain for Muslims part of the reason holy warriors targeted these dens.” That statement appeared after Arab-wide expressions of outrage.

“Let all know that we have struck only after becoming confident that they are centers for launching war on Islam and support the crusaders’ presence in Iraq and the Arab peninsula and the presence of the Jews on the land of Palestine,” the group said.

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Abbas finds suicide bombings immoral - if Palestinians die

Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Jordanian suicide bombings on a purely moral basis:

President Abbas expressed his solidarity with the brotherly Jordanian people, renewing his condemnation of such a terror attack, which he described as a crime against humanity.

As far as I can tell, he has never "condemned" any Palestinian suicide bombing attack against Israel on moral grounds, only pragmatic grounds as being against Palestinian interests:

RAMALLAH, October 26, 2005, (WAFA)- President Mahmoud Abbas condemned on Wednesday the suicide operation in Khedera town, north of Israel. Abbas revealed that such operations harm the Palestinian people's interests and could widen the cycle of violence and bloodshed, expressing at the same time his absolute anger over the operation.
He said that the latest missile launching from Gaza Strip (GS) to Israel and this suicide operation are considered a severe breach to the truce agreement reached in Cairo, adding that it is not acceptable for anyone to take the law into his hands.

In other words, he might agree that the Jews deserved to die, but it should be done in a proper war by the PA at the right time.

He's still Arafat in a suit.

Hat tip to IMRA via Iris.

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Wow - he really is irrelevant!

You know that Abbas has no power at all when his own diplomats don't listen to him. Arafat has more power today from the grave than Abbas ever had.

One has to ask the question - why can't he just refuse to pay their salary and housing costs? Does this mean that the PA's financial heads are also no longer working for Abbas? Is Kaddoumi on the PA payroll? For all the talk from the EU about overseeing the PA's finances and making sure that their millions in "aid" don't end up going to terror and corruption - are they following the money trail between the PA and its diplomats?

[S]ome of the PA's ambassadors in different countries are refusing to give up their posts to newly appointed envoys.

The PA Foreign Ministry recently decided to replace most of its ambassadors as part of a comprehensive plan to reform the diplomatic corps. Some of the ambassadors, who were appointed by Arafat, have been serving for nearly two decades.

But the move has been openly challenged by veteran PLO leader Farouk Kaddoumi, who is based in Tunis and who regards himself as the real foreign minister of Palestine.

Until recently, Kaddoumi was in charge of all the embassies around the world in the capacity of his job as director of the PLO's political bureau. Kaddoumi sent a letter to the ambassadors instructing them to ignore the new appointments and to remain in their posts.

'I wish to inform you that [PA Foreign Minister] Nasser al-Kidwa does not represent the PLO and, as such, he does not have the power to make changes in the diplomatic corps,' he wrote.

Two ambassadors have already announced that they would not step down - Tahsin Mikati, ambassador to Qatar, and Abdel Shafi Siam, ambassador to Mauritania. Their decision has seriously embarrassed the PA leadership, which is now trying to persuade the hosting countries to deport the two.

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Today's Palestinian Police Phunnies XIII - "We should be honorable terrorists, not corrupt policemen"

Sounds like we should redouble our efforts to give ammunition and advice to these guys!

The Palestinian Authority security forces are on the verge of collapse because of rampant corruption and growing anarchy, according to a letter sent by a large group of PA security officers to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

The letter, the first of its kind since Abbas was elected earlier this year, reflects growing resentment among the various branches of the PA security forces. It also contradicts claims by Abbas and senior PA leaders that they have taken practical steps to reform the security forces.
...
But what is perhaps most worrying, as far as Abbas is concerned, is the fact that the officers went on to stress that their weapons would be used only against Israel and suspected "collaborators."

Addressing Abbas, the officers said: "We urge you to get acquainted with what's really happening inside the security forces, which have begun disintegrating because of corruption, mismanagement and placing private interests above the national interests of the people, especially with regard to the state of lawlessness prevalent in the Palestinian territories."

The officers also scoffed at the PA's efforts to consolidate the security forces by reducing their number from more than a dozen to three and retiring veterans.

"These measures have led to dissent among the security forces," they said. "Unless you [Abbas] start paying attention to the situation, the Palestinian security forces will collapse, only to be replaced by armed gangs which the Palestinian Authority won't be able to control."

PA security officials here told The Jerusalem Post that they were not worried by the letter "because it was written by a group of disgruntled officers who had been retired or dismissed."

So the PA "security forces" are saying explicitly that their job is to be an armed terror group, not a police force.

I especially like when they say that they aren't going to fight the lawless armed gangs or else they will become a group of lawless armed gangs.

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Israelis inventing alternatives to oil

I don't know how much of this is strictly accurate and how much is wishful thinking, but one can only hope that serious alternatives to oil come soon - from both the environmental and terror-defense perspectives.

An Israeli inventor and company are trying to use garbage and leftover olive pulp from olive-oil factories, respectively, to replace oil in providing fuel and electricity to the Jewish State.

From one ton of garbage, half a ton of oil, 300 kg of gas or 150 kg of green coal, from which electricity is produced, can be extracted, according to inventor Dr. Sergei Rosenberg.

Dr. Rosenberg spoke with Arutz-7 about the development of his invention that turns garbage into oil. "I turned to the Ministry of Infrastructure with my invention and they told me to build such a machine outside Israel and they would consider bringing it here," Rosenberg described. "I built the machine in Moldova and demonstrated there that it works – with the oil undergoing tests demonstrating that the process is not toxic."

Asked by Arutz-7's Yigal Schok why Israel is not pursuing the invention to wean the Jewish State off of Arab-controlled oil, Dr. Rosenberg said that the state was afraid of implementing the changeover due to concern of taking away the monopoly of the oil tycoons. "To my surprise much of the interest actually came from Arab parties because they have a lot of refuse they want to get rid of in an efficient manner," Rosenberg said.

Dr. Rosenberg gained the experience necessary to come up with his invention from working in Russia before he immigrated to Israel. "In Russia I helped with the building of an artificial reservoir, a number of power stations and I designed the water system for the nuclear core in Chernobyl, but Israel did not hire me for similar work since I don't have any connections. I have other ideas, such as wind turbines that operate on air and exploiting the power of the ocean's waves to produce power."

Another company, Genova Ltd., is also working on alternatives to Arab oil. The company has signed an agreement, according to Globes, with an olive press in the village of Julis, in the Galilee to establish a small facility to produce electricity from the waste from olive pressing.

The facility is slated to produce an estimated 200 kilowatts of power, enough to provide 70 homes with power. It will also provide for the disposing of olive waste formed during oil production, which has until now posed an environmental hazard.

Genova’s method heats the waste to temperatures abover 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, transforming it into a flammable gas. Burning that gas is environmentally-friendly, releases no greenhouse gases and causes no damage to the earth’s ozone layer. The gas operates an electricity-generating turbine.

The company hopes to market the product, which will be small enough to fit on a countertop, to other olive-oil producing countries such as Spain and Italy.

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Saudi-funded hate in US mosques

Yesterday, the leader of the Freedom House, a relifious-freedom organization, testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee about Saudi-funded hate literature that was found in US mosques.

Their initial report came out last January and the specifics in the messages that come straight from our "friends" in the Gulf are chilling. And all of them were published and funded by the Saudi government.

Excerpts:

• Be dissociated from the infidels, hate them for their religion, leave them, never rely on them for support, do not admire them, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.
• There is consensus on this matter, that whoever helps unbelievers against Muslims, regardless of what type of support he lends to them, he is an unbeliever himself.
• Never greet the Christian or Jew first.
  
• Never congratulate the infidel on his holiday.
  
• Never befriend an infidel unless it is to convert him.
  
• Never imitate the infidel.
  
• Never work for an infidel.
  
• Do not wear a graduation gown because this imitates the infidel.
• If relations between Muslims and non-Muslims were harmonious, "there would be “no loyalty and enmity, no more jihad and fighting to raise Allah’s work on earth.”
• Freedom of thinking requires permitting the denial of faith and attacking what is sacred, glorifying falsehood and defending the heretics, finding fault in religion and letting loose the ideas and pens to write of disbelief as one likes, and to put ornaments on sin as one likes.
• As for a Muslim who fails to uphold Wahhabi sexual mores through homosexual activity or heterosexual activity outside of marriage, the edicts found in American mosques advise, “it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money.”
• Regarding those who convert out of Islam, it is explicitly asserted, they “should be killed.”
• A book for third-year high school students published by the Saudi Ministry of Education that was collected from the Islamic Center of Oakland in California, teaches students, including even now some American Muslims, to prepare for jihad in the sense of war against Islam’s enemies, and to strive to attain military self-sufficiency: “To be true Muslims, we must prepare and be ready for jihad in Allah’s way. It is the duty of the citizen and the government. The military education is glued to faith and its meaning, and the duty to follow it.”
• [I]t is basic Islam to believe that everyone who does not embrace Islam is an unbeliever, and must be called an unbeliever, and that they are enemies to Allah, his Prophet and believers.
• Residing among the unbelievers continuously is also forbidden because it is dangerous for the belief of the Muslim. That is why Allah made it obligatory to emigrate from the land of disbelief to the land of Islam.
  The message is that the peaceful coexistence of Muslim and non-Muslim in a multi-cultural state is not simply unachievable, but is undesirable and even punishable: If a Muslim “thinks it is permissible to be under their control, and he is pleased with the way they are, then there is no doubt that he is no longer a Muslim.”
• (Keep this in mind when people castugate the French for not assimilating the Muslims into French culture - the Muslims are more against assimilation than the French. - EoZ)
• A Saudi government textbook for eleventh grade students, copies of which were collected at the King Fahd-supported Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., tackles the issue of atheism. It analyzes atheism’s causes and motives, and describes what the author, Mohammad Qutub, terms “the role of the Jews in the corruption of the European way of life.” He writes that the Jews have seized every available opportunity to attack Christianity, and have done so from every conceivable angle, including by such innocuous-sounding themes as “progress and civilization” or “individual freedom.” First, there is Karl Marx, “and he is a Jew,” who called people to embrace communism and atheism. It adds that he is the one who wrote the famous statement “religion is the opiate of the masses.” Second, there is Freud, “and he is a Jew,” whose theories about sex call people “to free themselves from religion, from morality, and from traditions, claiming that these cause psychological and nervous-system problems.” Third, the Jews guided and controlled the industrial-capitalist movement in Europe and invested their money in usury and so were able to dominate all aspects of European life, thereby causing great corruption.
  “They lured women to go to work in the factories, and when the number of working women increased they lured them into wearing makeup and revealing clothes, to corrupt their morals, and to corrupt young men with them.”
  The Saudi textbook also teaches that Jews destroyed the family when they enticed women away from the duties of motherhood and raising children by convincing them that these imposed “silly restrictions limiting their freedom and growth.” Generations of children have been raised “without families, because the mother is busy at her job,” and the result has been the proliferation of groups “like the hippies, punks, and others.” Lastly, under the banner of “freedom, brotherhood, and equality” the Jews spread atheism and moral corruption by using “individual freedom” as a blanket protection for every form of vice.
• A Saudi government text for seventh-graders, copies of which were collected at the King Fahd-supported Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., maintains that the Jews only memorized the Torah without understanding it, and did not live by its teachings. For this reason, Washington mosque-goers are told that Jews “are worse than donkeys.”
• A more vicious narration can be found in a fourth-grade Saudi state textbook [Document No. 34], copies of which were collected from the Islamic Center of America in East Orange, New Jersey. Titled For Reading and Memorization, this Saudi state publication gives a conspiratorial reading of the history of Palestine. Again, it was the “sinful conspiracy” of imperialism that allowed the Jews “to steal this dear Arab land and to establish a large Zionist state big enough for the largest number of Jews in the world.” This state was intended as,“a thorn in the back of the Muslim nations, and a window through which colonialism can sneak up among the ranks of the Muslims to work, on dividing them and light the fire of hatred between them.”
  The account ends ominously by vowing that,
  “the Muslims will not rest until they cut off this disease and purify the land of Palestine from the plague of Zionism, and until its rightful owners reclaim it….Victory comes from Allah alone.”
  

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