Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Palestinian Arab democracy in action!

Let's give these guys a state!!

On Monday, Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip called off primary elections after rival Fatah gangs fought street battles and stormed polling stations, firing into the air and stealing ballot boxes.

Primary elections that were held in five West Bank areas late last week have resulted in a stunning defeat for representatives of Fatah's old guard.

'What happened in the Gaza Strip is a real disaster for Fatah,' said Haitham Salah, a Fatah operative. 'It shows that we are living in a jungle full of gangs and militias.' (Bright guy, this Salah. - EoZ)

Many of the candidates who lost the vote have since complained of irregularities and cheating, urging Abbas to cancel the results and hold new elections. PA officials here said the turmoil in Fatah could force Abbas to postpone parliamentary elections scheduled for January 25.

PA Civil Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan, who is running in the primary elections, called on Abbas to form a commission of inquiry to look into the events that took place in the Gaza Strip on Monday. He accused veteran Fatah leaders of seeking to disrupt the vote to prevent young activists from winning.

Dahlan and many other Fatah activists fear that Abbas is planning to appoint his own candidates to run in the parliamentary vote because of the party's failure to hold free and democratic elections. "The era of appointments is over," Dahlan stressed, referring to times when Yasser Arafat used to appoint Fatah officials. "We insist on elections."

Sources in the Gaza Strip said Dahlan's followers were among the gunmen who raided several polling stations to protest against the fact that the names of thousands of Fatah members had been omitted from voting lists.

I love how the most violent people are the first ones to lecture others on democracy!

The Phantom Arab Moderate (Shmuel Katz)

A theme we've covered before, but well written and thought-out.

It must be emphasized again and again - so-called "moderate" Arabs do not accept the existence of Israel any more than "militants." All the wishful thinking in the world will not change this fact.

And when you look at modern Israeli history through this lens, every action by the Arab world vis-a-vis Israel is entirely consistent with the ultimate destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. This includes Camp David and Oslo.

Hat tip to IRIS blog.

Even those Israelis who claim that peace between sovereign Israel and the Arabs is a practical possibility rest their claim on the bald assumption that there exists a solid body of Arabs who are "moderate."

They do not face the reality, taught by many decades of experience, that the most "moderate" of the Arabs (who might have a hand in setting the policies of their people) do not differ, in their view of what Israel's future should be, from the manifestly immoderate mainstream Arabs. They differ only on the method, or process, by which the elimination of the Jewish state is to be accomplished.

This is true of all the Arab states - members of the Arab League - but most importantly of the states that have launched wars against Israel since 1948.

The outlook of such phantom moderates has not been kept secret. It comes to the surface from time to time from quite authoritative quarters.

In December 1980, shortly after Israel's peace treaty with Egypt was signed, a former prime minister of Egypt, Mustafa Khalil, delivered a guest lecture at Tel Aviv University. There, speaking - as he said - "frankly and scientifically," he pointed out that the Arabs do not "regard the Jews as a nation at all, but as a religion only. "When it come to nationality," he declared, "a Jew can be an Egyptian Jew, a French Jew or a German Jew." Egyptians, he said, wanted to be good neighbors with Israel, but they expected the Jews "to change."

Five years earlier, another leading Egyptian intellectual, Boutros Boutros Ghali, cabinet minister and subsequently secretary-seneral of the United Nations, gave equally cultured utterance to the same idea, but then gave voice also to its underlying threat. He told a Cairo journal that if Israel maintained "its Jewish character" and did not assimilate in the Arab homeland, "then we will have no integration of Israel with this region." Indeed, if Israel defended its right to sovereignty, he added, "I think you can have no peace in this region."

SHORTLY AFTER the Yom Kippur War, the editor of Egypt's leading weekly journal, Al-Mussawar, explained that the English word "peace" can be translated into Arabic by either salaam or sulh, but these words had different meanings. Thus, he wrote, if the Jews returned to the 1949 Armistice Lines (where the Arab states' aggression against newborn Israel had been halted) the Jews could expect no more than "salaam." It was "only by returning to their senses, and dwelling under one roof and under one flag with the Arabs of Palestine," that they could expect "sulh" (real peace, reconciliation).

At that very time reports were circulating in the West that in Egypt (which had launched four wars against Israel since the Jewish state's birth in 1948) a new, moderate, more friendly wind was blowing toward Israel. And so an American writer, Joan Peters, having been sent on a journalistic mission to Egypt, decided to test these reports on the spot.

Her findings were published in an article in Commentary magazine (May 1975) under the title "In search of moderate Egyptians." She started on her project in America by studying the literature attesting to a positive change in Egyptian attitudes toward Israel.

"To my amazement," she wrote, "once in Egypt I found virtually no evidence of such a change." She interviewed as representative a cross-section of Egyptians as she could find. She lists them: government officials, writers, academics, scientists, demographers, doctors, architects, engineers, housewives, shopkeepers, students, soldiers, salesmen, cab drivers, waiters, women's rights activists, secretaries, carpenters, travel agents, communists, leftists, nationalists and right-wing conservatives.

She recorded in detailed quotation a number of her interviews and learned that far from Egyptians being friendly to Israel, there existed a consensus not only of fierce hatred of Israel, but of virulent anti-Semitism - which in sum would deny the Jewish state's right even to exist.
TWENTY-FIVE, 30 years have passed, and one fine day in September we read the report of another search for moderate Arabs. This time it is in Israel itself, and the search is reported by an Israeli writer, Yossi Klein Halevi, who sought common ground - cultural, spiritual and hence, as a Jewish moderate, political - with Muslim Arab counterparts. He too, like Joan Peters three decades years earlier, had "numerous candid conversations with - in his case Palestinian Arabs - "at all levels of society." And he cites "one telling example," with Gen. Nasser Youssef, the Palestinian Authority's interior minister.
Halevi, as he related in The Jerusalem Post of September 28, asked Youssef hypothetically what would happen if Israel withdrew to the 1967 "borders," uprooted the settlements and redivided Jerusalem. Youssef replied that "the refugees would be returning to the area… and then there would be no need for an artificial border between Israel and Palestine."
"But," said Halevi to Youssef, "aren't we negotiating today over a two-state solution?"
"Yes," Youssef replied, "as an interim step. You aren't separate from us, you are part of us. Just as there are Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs, you are Jewish Arabs." He went on to speak of this unified Palestinian state joining with other Arab states.
General Youssef, adds Halevi, "is widely known as a moderate, deeply opposed to terror - because it is counter-productive to the Palestinian cause…."
Youssef is thus fully representative of the supreme hutzpa, precisely of the moderate Arabs. Emboldened by the great success worldwide in disseminating the grotesque claim to a "Palestinian" history that never existed, mainstream Arabs teach their children and make it plain to the world that their intention is to destroy the Jewish state, directly if possible, or by phases, as so often described by their late leader, Yasser Arafat.
Here the moderate Arab steps in and proposes a moderate alternative - the same one suggested in 1980 by former Egyptian Prime Minister Mustafa Khalil: vaporization of the Jewish national identity.
THE ARAB propaganda success has not been achieved without passive Jewish help - the help of unbelievable inaction. The most egregious blunder of successive Israeli governments and Jewish Diaspora leaders has been the complete failure to build a National Information Center (what we call hasbara), having the scope and authority of an Israeli government ministry, to tell the world - but first of all the Jewish people - the truth of their own nation's unique relationship with the Land of Israel, reaching back 3,000 years to its biblical history and resting on the momentous modern international acknowledgement of that relationship in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for the "reconstitution of the Jewish National Home" in Palestine.
That center would, moreover, enlist all possible resources, Christian as well as Jewish, to counter the monstrous fictions of the so-called Palestinian cause - and now the vicious waves of anti-Semitism swirling through the nations of the West.
The writer, who co-founded the Herut Party with Menachem Begin and was a member of the first Knesset, is a biographer and essayist.

Reasonable sounding liar - Dr. Sam Hamod

According to this site,
"Sam Hamod is a former advisor to the U.S. State Dept; founder of 3rd World News (Wash, DC);Director of The Islamic Center (Wash, DC); Professor at Princeton, Michigan, Howard and Iowa (ret.)." He is a Lebanese-American born in Indiana, according to another biography. He is also president of the American-Islamic Institute.

Dr. Hamod is retiring as main editor of his "Today's Alternative News" site, and he signs off with a somewhat reasonable-sounding defense of what he calls "true" conservatism and a statement of what he believes is best for America:

Since 2000, my site has been dedicated to truth, honesty and the pursuit of justice and democracy. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, I am interested only in America being a moral leader in the world, a nation that aids those in need, a nation that takes care of its own and is interested only in the interests of mankind and follows the moral order of the major religions of the world, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism and Bahai.

During this time, I have been critical of many things that have not measured up to what I thought was good for America or for the world; I have condemned those who called for violence, regardless of their alleged religion (whether they called themselves Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.) when they did evil things. In our time we have seen plenty of hatred being spread by people from all these faiths—there is no need for me to repeat their names—they are known to all of you, and we all know the evil of their deeds, and I have called them on it.

Some thought that because I have been so critical of GW Bush’s war on Iraq that I must have liked Bill Clinton—not so. I thought Clinton betrayed the Palestinians and offered them only a Bantustan existence.
To this day, I have no respect for Clinton or his wife; but I do respect George Bush Sr. for having the courage and insight to know that it was best not to enter and destroy the infrastructure of Iraq (even though he and I, and many others knew that Saddam Hussein was a devil).
America cannot police or control the entire world; just as the Spartans could finally not control the world of their time; nor could Rome when it became too big and wanted to conquer the known world of the time.

...
I liked Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams the first, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Carter and even Nixon ( I still feel that he did more good things than bad in office; but he, like many others made mistakes); I also liked the pre-presidency of Lyndon Johnson and his moves to help integration, and I liked the later John F. Kennedy after Kruschev taught him a lesson in power politics. I have always distrusted Henry Kissinger, I think the truth about him has come out in the long run; he did little for real peace in the Middle East, instead, he was a shill for Israel and still is. Henry, whom I’ve known for years, has always had a hatred for the Arabs and Muslims, even though he tried to cover it with slippery semantics. On the other hand, Zbignew Brezinski. has been a fair man in world affairs and did work for peace wherever he went. This shows you that we can have good men, like Z B, but also men who drag us into immorality, like H K.

Again, my main concern is peace and justice in the world.

You might quibble with his politics, but it sounds patriotic and well-thought out. He is, after all, a professor, and he must have spent many years defining his positions.

But in his conclusion, on the subject of Israel, any pretense of objectivity and reason (and truth) flies out the window before he retreats back into his pseudo-patriotism:

I also think it is high time that Amrericans realize that Sharon’s and Israel’s agendas are not America’s agendas. We must quit supporting Israel in a carte blanche fashion. We must not fund them if they continue this oppressive and inhumane behavior, this illegal behavior, toward the Palestinians. By our support, we are complicitous in this evil that Sharon and Israel perpetrate upon the Palestinian people. If America quit following the Tom Lantos’ , the Grahams, the other Zionist agents in our Congress, we’d be better off. Most Americans don’t realize that every Israeli is subsidized by America to the tune of at least $40,000.00 per person, per year—you show me an American, aside from a Congressperson, who gets that kind of financial assistance. Bah!

So then what am I—I am a true Conservative. I wish to conserve our Constitution, our moral leadership, our water, our air, our people’s rights, our honor in the world, our honor in our courts, our opportunity to lead the world and make it a better place. I fear our last two presidents have done just the opposite; neither have served our nation well. Let us hope and pray our future presidents will do better.

Now, if you look at his other writings and the contents of his on-line magazine you will see opinions that are far more way-out and bizarre than this piece quoted here. As we've seen in many other times, the anti-Israel crowd will filter their messages based on their audience, so they can sound reasonable on TV and we have to dig a little bit to see their true agenda.

The essay quoted above is a classic example. In the middle of looking back at his worldview, he makes a claim that he feels all Americans should know - that the US subsidizes Israel to the tune of $40,000 per Israeli, per year.

Really? A quick calculation shows that he is saying that Israel gets $251 billion dollars annually from the US! Such a breathtakingly idiotic statement (a quarter of a trillion dollars annually to Israel!) is hardly what one would expect from an impartial academic.

Not only that, but this article by Matt Welch from 2001 does a nice job at finding out that Dr. Hamod seems to subscribe to the Jewish-owned media worldview, as well, claiming that 90% of reporters are Jewish. Welch also finds a different quote from the professor, praising Palestinian "children" and saying that American children should emulate them - throwing stones at the US Capitol. How patriotic!

Like the other pro-terror propogandists, Sam Hamod is a charlatan, a bigot and a liar who uses his apparent academic credentials to espouse hate and falsehood. He is no patriot; his agenda is indistinguishable from those of Islamist supremacists. It is important to expose the real views of the terror-apologists and anti-semites when they get published in mainstream media opinion columns.

The truth is never far from the surface.

Send pizza to Gush Katif victims

I hadn't sent any pizza to IDF soldiers for a few months and I didn't notice that PizzaIDF.org now also has an option to send pizza to the victims of the Gaza explusion as well.

Great idea before Chanukah!

Quick moderation quiz

For those who consider some Palestinian leaders "moderates" and "peace-loving":

Can you name a single time that the Palestinian political leadership or the PA-controlled press ever criticized Syria, Iran, Saddam's Iraq or indeed any radical Muslim state?

Now, how many times have they criticized the US?

According to the CIA Factbook, there are about 1 million Palestinian Arab men between the ages of 15 and 65. According to yesterday's Phunnies, there are about 52,000 Palestinian "policemen" - more than one in twenty adult men work in "security" and the ratio of police to the general population is about 1 security officer per 67 people.

In contrast, in Canada the ratio of police to the general population is about 1:533.

Which would make the PA-controlled areas by far the safest in the world!

A group of gunmen on Sunday went on a rampage inside the offices of the online newspaper Donia al-Watan in Gaza City, destroying furniture and equipment and threatening to kill the editor-in-chief, Abdallah Issa.
Donia al-Watan is an independent newspaper that has been reporting extensively on corruption and lawlessness in the Palestinian Authority - issues that the PA-controlled media often tend to ignore.
Sources in the newspaper said the attackers were members of one of the Palestinian factions, but refused to elaborate. According to the sources, the gunmen were sent by the secretary-general of the faction to attack the offices and threaten the editor-in-chief following a critical report about him that appeared in the newspaper recently.
The attack came as PA security forces launched a massive campaign in various parts of the Gaza Strip in a bid to restore law and order. The campaign, ordered by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, comes amid growing criticism of the PA's failure to fight crime.
During the campaign, gunmen stole a PA police vehicle in the Nussairat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. PA security officials said the crackdown was directed only against criminal elements and that there would be no attempt to confiscate weapons belonging to various Palestinian militias, including Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
In more scenes of lawlessness, three Palestinians were murdered in Ramallah over the past week. One of them was a 75-year-old woman.

Meanwhile...

Gaza - The outgoing PA justice minister, Nahed Al-Rayes, affirmed that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is responsible for the "mushrooming corruption" rampant in its institutions.

Speaking at a political seminar held in Gaza city, Rayes charged that the PA "fostered the corrupt elements notorious for squandering public funds and violating the Palestinian citizens' rights".

Some PA security officers exploited their powers to "embezzle public money" as the relevant authorities remained silent towards such illegal practices, he further charged.

"The PA security elements were setting up gangs inside their apparatuses in order to loot public and private funds let alone terrorizing the citizens", the former minister charged.

Daughter of Ziyon updates her blog!

Sorry, but I forgot to mention this important news last week, when the beautiful and talented DoZ made one of her rare blog appearances.

The news is a little dated now but she is still fun to read. (I'm not biased at all!)

Today's Palestinian Police Phunnies XV

More on Mahmoud Abbas' bizarre way of fighting terror. (Also note al-Haaretz referring to the "Israeli regime".)

Several days ago the Palestinian finance minister, Salam Fayad, resigned. ...

[Some] reports (such as in the Al-Hayat Al-Jadida PA daily, from the end of last week) say Fayad resigned because Interior Minister Nasser Yousef, who is responsible for the security services, added to the Gaza services another 2,500 youths - almost all of them militants from Fatah and other movements. Yousef did this with the approval of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), and plans to add another few thousand young Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists to the security services in the near future. Adding thousands of people to the security services would be a budgetary burden on the Palestinian treasury, and Fayad, according to these reports, would not have been able to stand for it.

Senior Palestinian officials explain that putting thousands of youths into the security services, especially in the Gaza Strip but also in the West Bank, is the only way Abu Mazen can obtain calm, security-wise. Tens of thousands of youths complete Palestinian high schools and universities every year and don't have anything to do. In the past, they came to Israel to work and returned home every evening with full pockets. Now the only way to calm them down is to have them join the PA organization. It doesn't matter where; the important thing is that they be placed in some sort of framework and receive a small salary.

For comparison's sake, at one point, some 20,000 Palestinian workers (mostly teachers) worked for the Israeli regime in the West Bank and Gaza, in addition to an unknown number of security officials. Some 160,000 people are serving in the Palestinian government, about a third of them in the security services.

So this means that the Palestinians have over 50,000 "policemen" of which many are just terrorists and most don't even bother working.

Yeah, this idea of giving Palestinian Arabs control over their own people is working out real well.

I also love the line "the only way to calm them down is to have them join the PA organization." This is stated as a matter of fact - and its implications are large:

It means that, according to the PA:

Criminals must be paid off to stop crime;
Palestinian Arabs have no ability (nor desire) to build their own private industry and to make money by actually selling things that the world might need;
Palestinian Arabs are inherently violent (otherwise, why can't they remain calm on their own?)
Palestinians cannot possibly get out of the mess they are in by themselves and they will demand more and more money from the world to pay off their own terrorists who have no intention of keeping any sort of peace with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority worldview is colored by these assumptions (which are, incidentally, incredibly bigoted against Palestinian Arabs.) And no one on the world scene has the guts to call them on it.

Muslim charity money diverted to terrorists

Gee, ya think?

The real question is whether the donors knew exactly who they were sending money to the entire time.

Charity cash for Palestinian poor was siphoned to suicide bombers
By Eric Silver in Jerusalem
Published: 28 November 2005

Millions of pounds donated by British and other European charities to help the Palestinian poor were unwittingly diverted to fund terror and support the families of suicide bombers, Israeli prosecutors claimed yesterday.

Ahmed Salatna, 43, a Hamas activist from the West Bank town of Jenin, was remanded in custody by a military court charged with distributing €9m (£6.2m) for such purposes over the past nine years. The recipients are alleged to have included the family of a young man who blew himself up at the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem in August 2001, killing 15 people and wounding 107. Hamas and Islamic Jihad acknowledged responsibility.

The charge sheet names two British charities, Human Appeal International and Interpal. Human Appeal is a broadly based fundraising organisation, currently helping victims of the Pakistani earthquake. Interpal describes itself as 'a non-political, non-profit-making charity that focuses solely on the provision of relief and development aid to the poor and needy of Palestine'. No one was available for comment at its London office yesterday. Other charities mentioned were the French CBST, the Italian ABSPT and the Al-Aqsa Foundation, which operates in Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden.

Mr Salatna, who has directed an Islamic charity in Jenin since Israel released him in 1996 after serving three years for Hamas activity, was arrested in September. Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said Mr Salatna directly transferred the European funds to Hamas cells, suicide bombers and their families.

Haveil Havalim #46 released - a twofer for the Elder!

Double, double, double the fun at Israel Perspectives as two of my articles were accepted for inclusion in the latest Haveil Havalim!

My only regret is that I can no longer make fun of different blogs spelling it differently.

It's still the freedom, stupid

The recent Egyptian election fiasco (where the Egyptians tried to forcibly limit the Muslim Brotherhood's chances) and the recent Fatah elections show once again the fundamental problem with promoting "democracy" in the Arab world in the wrong way. As this article I wrote in January describes, we should be promoting freedom first, not democracy:

Elder of Ziyon: It's the freedom, stupid: "The Western world has been falling all over itself, breathlessly praising the Palestinian elections as an example of 'democracy' and saying that it shows that Palestinians are now mature members of the exclusive club of democratic nations. The Palestinian spokespeople like the exerable Ashrawi are also jumping on the bandwagon of 'See? We proved we are democratic!'

Even the more skeptical pundits, those who point out that the election was a foregone conclusion, and that the PA threatened those who wouldn't vote for Abbas, and the fact that many ballots were cast multiple times, seem to think that if the election was truly fair, it would herald the start of a new era in the Arab world.

But almost everyone is missing the point. Elections aren't a magic panacea that turns terrorists into upstanding public citizens. There were sham elections in the old Soviet Union and Iraq as well, and Hitler was 'democratically' elected.

People are mixing up elections and freedom. Freedom is the prerequisite for true democracy.

Only in a society that has true freedoms, of press and religion and freedom to demonstrate, where the marketplace of ideas is available to all, where there is no fear of publicly stating unpopular opinions - only there can one hope to see truly fair elections, true democracy where each person can freely make up his or her mind.

It is a reasonable assumption that people want to be free. It is reasonable to assume that people who enjoy freedom will not be as interested in starting wars with other nations without good reason. But it is by no means guaranteed - it is entirely possible that Egyptians would vote for a state based on Islamic law (and then they would voluntarily take away their own freedoms.)

But if we want to promote democracy, we need to first promote freedom, we need to promote equal rights for women, we need to set the groundwork where true democratic leaders can emerge.

A society where there is no functioning justice system, where the rulers can act with impunity, where the media is controlled tightly and reporters threatened, where the schools are told to teach hate - this is not a free society, and this is not a democratic society.

It is disheartening to see so many people get so excited over something that doesn't exist.

Egypt is the flip side of the same coin. The US, by promoting democracy over freedom and wanting to fight terror, is then put in the hypocritical position of supporting free elections and simultaneously supporting Egypt's attempts at stopping the pro-terror Islamist groups from winning.

Push freedom of the press first. Allow the marketplace of ideas to flourish in the Arab world. That should be the number one priority in reform, not rushing to some sort of magic elections.

"Hitler" does well in Fatah elections

A neat fact buried in the bottom of an AP report of Fatah elections (where convicted and wanted terrorists did extremely well):

Two fugitives from Fatah's violent offshoot, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, also secured high positions. The Jenin winner, Jamal Abu Rob, who gave himself the nickname ``Hitler,'' is wanted for killing several suspected informers with Israel. The Nablus candidate, Jamal Jumaa, is a leader of Al Aqsa in the West Bank's largest city.

In May, Arutz Sheva reported that Fox News interviewed "Hitler":

Another terrorist candidate is wanted Al-Aqsa Brigade chief Jamal Abu Roub, who goes by the nickname “Hitler.”

“Hitler” told Fox News reporter Jeniffer Griffin [sic] that he expects to win a seat because he gives his people “dignity and safety.” Fox News screened footage of Abu Roub publicly executing an Arab accused of helping Israel. He has been running from Israeli security forces, but appeared in public to campaign - with the reporter - assuming Israeli forces would not apprehend him while he spoke with a Western reporter.

Asked whether he thought the nickname “Hitler” would affect his election chances, Roub said, “I got this name because of my personality. I am a guy that has a strong personality and uses violence, if needed, to respond.”
I guess that for Palestinians, publicly identifying with a genocidal mass murderer who killed millions of Jews is a good career move. Just don't call them anti-semitic - they hate that.

al-Guardian promotes Muslim Brotherhood agenda

Apparently, the AP's dhimmitude towards the source of all of today's terror organizations is also alive and well at al-Guardian, which published an op-ed from the Muslim Brotherhood's "vice president", complete with his claims to be pro-democratic, pro free-speech and a follower of all liberal Western tenets:

No need to be afraid of us

The Muslim Brotherhood believes that democratic reforms could trigger a renaissance in Egypt

Khairat el-Shatir
Wednesday November 23, 2005
The Guardian

The violence that has erupted across Egypt in recent days is the result of government panic at the success of the Muslim Brotherhood - even in the rigged polls that pass for elections in the Arab world's most populous country. As the second round of voting opened on Sunday in Egypt's tightly restricted parliamentary contest, around 500 of our members were arrested at dawn and machete-wielding thugs attacked our supporters at polling stations. But the provocations of a corrupt, oppressive government - backed by the most powerful countries in the world - will not intimidate either our organisation, which has survived for 77 years, or the Egyptian people, who have increasingly come to trust us.
...We are committed to democracy and to respect fair election results, whatever the outcome.
...What we want to do instead is trigger a renaissance in Egypt, rooted in the religious values upon which Egyptian culture and society is built; for we believe these values can effectively deal with the obstacles that have hindered reform and development. At present, political life in Egypt is plagued by apathy; only a few parties with puny followings are officially allowed to join the political process. The priority is therefore to revitalise political life so that citizens can join a real debate about the solutions to Egypt's chronic problems and the sort of future we want for our country. We believe that the domination of political life by a single political party or group, whether the ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood or any other, is not desirable: the only result of such a monopoly is the alienation of the majority of the people.

Our aim in seeking to win a limited number of seats in parliament is to create an effective parliamentary bloc that, in conjunction with others, can energise an inclusive debate about the priorities of reform and development. Not a single political, religious, social or cultural group should be excluded from Egypt's political life. The objective must be to end the monopoly of government by a single party and boost popular engagement in political activity.

Second, we would hope to contribute to achieving significant political and constitutional reforms: in particular, to remove restrictions imposed by the regime on political activity and give the parliament a much bigger say than it has now. Without real powers to question the executive, parliament will remain a mere facade. Third, we would hope to contribute to greatly needed social, cultural and economic reforms. Such reforms can take place only once the grip of the state executive is regulated by an independent legislature and independent judiciary.

The success of the Muslim Brotherhood should not frighten anybody: we respect the rights of all religious and political groups. So much damage has been inflicted on the country over the past century because of despotism and corruption that it would be impossible to embark on wider political reform and economic development without first repairing the damage to our basic institutions. Free and fair democratic elections are the first step along the path of reform toward a better future for Egypt and the entire region. We simply have no choice today but to reform.

Has there ever been such a transparent attempt to fool liberals into believing that the terror-supporting Muslim Brotherhood is just a bunch of liberal activists?

Transparent or not, it obviously works at least in the UK's liberal newspapers. As Scott Burgess points out, the president of the Brotherhood has said that suicide bombs against civilians is legitimate, America is Satan and Islam will invade America and Europe. A slightly different message than they present to al-Guardian, but then again - isn't this part of the invasion of Islam to Europe?

The Muslim government that they are working tirelessly toward will have no tolerance for minorities, free speech or dissent. But hypocritically using these issues to get support from the West is a whole different ballgame.

Security at Rafah officially a joke

The border between Egypt and Gaza is now completely irrelevant, thanks to Palestinian Authority terror-supporters, apathetic Egyptians and Europeans, and Condi Rice.

Rafik al-Hasanat, a senior member of Hamas who has been wanted by Israel for more than a decade, on Wednesday night returned to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing.

The terminal was opened for a few hours on Wednesday to allow hundreds of Palestinians stranded on the Egyptian side to return home to the Gaza Strip. Hasanat is one of several Hamas fugitives who have returned to Gaza after Israel relinquished control over the Rafah border crossing.

A senior member of the armed wing of Hamas, Izzaddin Kassam, Hasanat fled to Egypt in 1993 after he learned that the IDF was searching for him because of his involvement in terror attacks. Since then he has been hiding in Sudan, Yemen, Libya and Jordan.

Hundreds of Hamas activists chanting slogans in support of the Islamic movement welcomed Hasanat home.

Sources close to Hamas said many of its activists, including top leaders, have managed to return to the Gaza Strip since the Israeli pullout. Last month one of the founders of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed al-Milh, returned to the Gaza Strip after spending 20 years in different Arab countries.

Shortly after the Israeli withdrawal, three top Hamas fugitives infiltrated into the Gaza Strip. One of them, Nihro Masoud of the Jabalya refugee camp, was one of the founders of Izzaddin Kassam. He fled to Egypt 14 years ago and spent most of the intervening time in Sudan.

The Rafah border crossing is expected to reopen on Friday following an agreement that was reached between the Palestinian Authority and Egypt.

The deal, brokered by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier this month, calls for the stationing European Union monitors at the terminal.

Under the terms of the agreement, Palestinians below the age of 18 and over 40 will be able to travel through the border crossing without a visa. The terminal will also remain open 24 hours a day.

A ceremony scheduled for Friday will formally re-open the border crossing. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas is expected to attend the ceremony together with Egyptian and United Nations officials.

PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rudaineh said on Thursday that the 70 European monitors would be present at the border crossing only in the first week or ten days after its reopening.

Stressing that there would be no Israeli presence at the terminal, Abu Rudaineh said, "The European presence at the terminal is not an alternative to the Palestinian presence there. Nor do they represent Israel. The Palestinians will have the upper hand."

AP backgrounder on the Muslim Brotherhood misses a few facts

The AP helpfully published a background piece on the Muslim Brotherhood after the group made gains in Egyptian elections. Here is what it wrote:

Some facts about the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but popular Egyptian group that has inspired Islamic movements across the Arab world:

_Founded in 1928 by Hassan el-Banna, who advocated Islamic law and faith in God to rectify a society adrift and dependent on the West.

_Banned in 1954, but tolerated at various levels. It fields its candidates as independents under the slogan 'Islam is the solution,' but their affiliation is known to voters.

_Renounced violence in the 1970s, but the government continues to treat it with suspicion.

_Its welfare and charity work, done with efficiency and dedication, endears it to many, especially the poor.

_Holds 15 seats in the outgoing 454-member parliament. In voting so far it has won 47 seats and is expected to gain more in runoffs and a third round of voting.

Somehow AP improbably missed the fact that the "Islamic movements" it helped inspire include Al Qaeda, Hizbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. For some odd reason, the AP forgot to mention terror altogether in its list of "useful information."

To learn a little more about the origins of the Muslim Brotherhood, check out a Palestine Post article from October 19. 1948 that I had found a couple of months ago: