Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Hot time in "Palestine" this weekend!

You'll need a scorecard for this one, but it ended up with 29 injuries and one death on Saturday:

PCHR's preliminary investigation indicates that at approximately 20:00 on Saturday, 2 September 2006, a member of the Abu Nahia clan took refuge in "Diwan" of Sowali clan after he was beaten by members of the Barbakh clan. The incident was instigated by a dispute in the crowded Sea Street in Khan Yunis. Members of Barbakh clan gathered around the diwan, located in Jamal Abdel Naser Street, and threw stones at it requesting that Abu Nahia is handed to them.

Members of the Ministry of Interior Executive Force arrived at the scene to break up the dispute. A confrontation developed between the force members and Barbakh clan members. The confrontation developed into hand fights and rocks and empty bottles were thrown. The situation escalated into an armed clash that spread to the vicinity of Naser Hospital in Sea Street, and continued for 3 hours. During the clash, members of Barbakh clan burned a jeep belonging to the Executive Force that was parked in the hospital yard. The Executive Force brought the situation under control. Barbakh clan gunmen withdrew after the Executive Force detained two members of the clan.

The armed clashes resulted in the death of a member of the Executive Force called Khayri Abdel Aziz Abed Soboh, a 23-year old resident of Khan Yunis. He was killed by a bullet in the neck. Twenty-nine others were injured, including 5 children and 3 members of the Executive Force.[1] The injured were taken for treatment in Naser Hospital and the European Hospital in Khan Yunis. The injuries were light to moderate.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, a teachers' strike ended up with those peaceful PalArab bullets again:

NABLUS, West Bank - Masked militants trying to keep students away from school during a politically charged Palestinian teachers' strike on Sunday shot and wounded a 12-year-old boy.

Palestinian teachers began striking Saturday, the start of the school year, to demand full back pay and regular salaries from the Hamas-led government, which has been financially crippled by six months of international sanctions.

Most schools throughout the West Bank remained closed, some by force, as the strike continued.

At least three masked militants stood outside a school in the northern West Bank city of Nablus and fired in the air to keep children away, witnesses said.

Stray fire hit a 12-year-old boy, Issam Ghannam, in the abdomen, witnesses said.

Well, what do you expect? It was an accident! How often does firing in the air result in children getting hit, anyway? Besides all those weddings and funeral celebrations, that is. (And of course they were firing in the air - we have witnesses!)

We also have this incident I missed last week, where those renowned Palestinian Arab police decided to kill someone they suspected of stealing a car, so the PalArab self-death count since late June, that I am aware of, is now at 66.

Sounds like these guys are more than ready to build a state of their own! They obviously care about education, gun control and ties to their clans. What more can you ask?

HH85 is here!

Daled Amos hosts this week's Haveil Havalim #85, and it is another great collection of the week's best posts in the JBlogosphere.

I am honored that two of my posts were chosen, and that was (as usual) withotu self-nomination. Although if I had thought about it ahead of time, I probably would have nominated my first post of the week, a rare non-political post.

Check it out!

DUBAI, Sept. 2 (Reuters) — Al Qaeda, in a video posted Saturday on the Internet, called for President Bush and non-Muslims, especially those in the United States, to convert to Islam and abandon their “misguided” ways, or else suffer the consequences.

The main speaker on the tape was identified as Azzam the American, an Islamic convert from California also known as Adam Yahiye Gadahn who is wanted by the F.B.I. for questioning.

In the video, he was introduced by Al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian.

The American, speaking in English, said, “To Americans and the rest of Christendom, we say either repent misguided ways and enter into the light of truth or keep your poison to yourself and suffer the consequences in this world and the next.”

The Counterterrorism Blog has a quick analysis, saying it is a prelude to "Future Jihad."

This is somewhat reminiscent of Ahmadinejad's letter to President Bush, in which he called on Bush and Americans to convert to Islam, although not as explicitly. Nevertheless, as Jihad Watch mentioned at the time,

In a Hadith, Muhammad tells his followers to call people to Islam before waging war against them:

Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war…When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them….If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya [the tax on non-Muslims specified in Qur’an 9:29]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim 4294)
In light of that, this letter could be -- but is not necessarily -- a prelude to an attack.

Perhaps we should look at this video the same way.

UN to Israel: Guilty until proven innocent

Today the UN named a panel to investigate Israel for human rights abuses in Lebanon. But you need to check out the resolution of the UN "Human Rights Council" commission on Lebanon that started this panel to begin with:

[T]he Human Rights Council, among other things, strongly condemns the grave Israeli violations of human rights and breaches of international humanitarian law in Lebanon; also condemns massive bombardments of Lebanese civilian populations, especially the massacres in Qana, Marwaheen, Al Duweir, Al Bayadah, Al Qaa, Chiyah, Ghazieh and other towns of Lebanon and the displacement of one million civilians; further condemns the Israeli bombardment of vital civilian infrastructure resulting in extensive destruction and heavy damage to public and private properties; further condemns the Israeli bombardment of vital civilian infrastructure; calls upon Israel to observe the principle of proportionality and refrain from launching any attack that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life; calls upon Israel to abide immediately and scrupulously by its obligations under human rights law, in particular the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and urges all concerned parties to respect the rules of international humanitarian law, to refrain from violence against the civilian population and to treat under all circumstances all detained combatants and civilians in accordance with the Geneva Conventions; and calls upon Israel to immediately stop military operations against the civilian population and civilian objects resulting in death and destruction and serious violations of human rights.

So far, this is a typical one-sided anti-Israel resolution. As can be expected from the joke that is the UN, the word "Hezbollah" is not mentioned in this resolution (although the press release contains what may be a Freudian slip: Lebanon told the meeting that the Government of Lebanon did it endorse the operations carried out by Hezbollah." Presumably they meant "didn't endorse.")

Also, notice that this Council goes way beyond the Geneva Conventions in saying that Israel, and only Israel, may never attack any other country if there is the slightest chance that an innocent person may be killed even accidentally. Even for the UN, this is breathtakingly bigoted.

But look at how this august Council created the panel announced today:

The Council also decides to urgently establish and immediately dispatch a high-level inquiry commission comprising eminent experts of human rights law and international humanitarian law, including the possibility of inviting the relevant special procedures to be nominated to the commission to, among other things: investigate the systematic targeting and killings of civilians by Israel; examine the types of weapons used by Israel and their conformity with international law; and assess the extent and deadly impact of Israeli attacks on human life, property, critical infrastructure and environment...

In other words, "We know that Israel (and Israel alone) is guilty of human rights abuses, genocide, ethnic cleansing, pedophilia, blasphemy, violating the entire Code of Hammurabi and eating non-Halal foods. Now we will launch a full investigation to see exactly how guilty you are."

And this is the organization that promises that it can be objective in its expanded role in Lebanon.

UPDATE: Maybe the UN really does believe that no one is allowed to defend themselves. (Hat tip Soccer Dad.)

Nasrallah's "regret" rings hollow

Something does not add up.

"If I knew the process of capturing [these soldiers], even with a 1% probability, would lead to a war like this, and then if you asked me would you go and capture them, my answer would be, of course, no — for humanitarian, moral, social and security reasons," said Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of the Shiite Muslim militant group.

"You ask me if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not."

What the MSM's forgets in the glare of the Lebanon conflict is that only two weeks earlier, Israel invaded Gaza for the exact same reason - a kidnapping of an Israeli soldier in Israeli territory.

Nasrallah knew this on July 11, of course. And it is hard to believe that his kidnapping was not in some way a reaction to the Gaza kidnapping - perhaps to humiliate Israel when the IDF couldn't find Gilad Shalit, perhaps one-upmanship towards the Sunnis in Gaza.

Many people are guessing what Nasrallah's speech means - it seems clear that it is at least partially a reaction to the Lebanese backlash against Hezbollah, as its claims of victory ring hollow to those hurt by the war - but what is certain is that, given the context of how this war started, he is lying now.

The intelligence minister with no intelligence

The "Intelligence Minister" of South Africa, Ronnie Kasrils, has written another anti-Israel screed filled with half-truths and falsehoods.

Sometimes one can read these articles from respected government figures and conclude that they are just mislead or uninformed. This is clearly not one of those cases. From this and other articles, Kasrils takes at face value any wild Arab claims and dismisses any Israeli statements.

Some of his falsehoods:

In fact, from the onset, Zionism aimed at the dispossession of the indigenous population so that Israel could become a wholly Jewish state.

While there were some Zionists that felt this way, it is clear from contemporaneous accounts that the Zionist leadership did not want the Arabs in their territory to leave. This is a common lie used to create the "Israeli apartheid" fiction of which Kasrils is so fond.

With the illegal Jewish settlements, security road network and the construction of the monstrous wall around the militarily occupied West Bank, the remaining Palestinians are ghettoised within 12% of their original territory. This dispossession is reminiscent of apartheid and its 13% of Bantustan homelands. For many this is the fundamental cause of the conflict.

He fails to mention that before 2000, these Palestinian Arabs had jobs, good medical care, prospects for their own state, and a booming economy. Their decision to start a war with Israel, made by Kasrils' friend Arafat, is what made their lives hard. This simple fact is somehow never mentioned by those who like to throw "facts" around.

Lebanon, too, has been a part of Zionist annexation plans. Israel long regarded the Litani river to its north as its natural border, and constantly sought to turn the country into a Christian bulwark against the Muslims. It invaded in 1948, 1978 and 1982 and stayed in the south until 2000, before being driven out by Hizbullah. In that period Israel provoked civil war, connived in massacres, created a proxy army in the south, and still holds on to strategic farmland.

More lies than I can count, but briefly: No one ever considered Lebanon a part of modern Israel*, no one of importance ever wanted to annex it, encouraging the Christians of Lebanon to maintain their power is hardly "annexation", and the "strategic farmland" was never Lebanese. This paragraph makes crystal clear that truth is not on Kasrils' agenda.

What lies behind Israel’s latest aggression? Could such a disproportionate response really have been because of the abduction of two soldiers? There have been constant border skirmishes. Israel could have responded with local action or the prisoner exchange sought by Hizbullah. The dogs of war were let loose instead.

He follows this with paragraphs of strawmen and then "suggestions" of a pre-planned US/Zionist plot to take on Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. He utterly misses the point, which his friends in the Israeli peace camp understood:

When Israel did what the world asked, and withdrew to a UN-drawn border, that was still not enough for the Hezbollah terrorists. Their attacks proved that territory is not their incentive - it is the destruction of Israel. Those who advocate Israeli withdrawal from territories will always emphasize that if attacks continue, Israel would be justified in fighting back. Kasrils' paragraph above proves that this is just a lie - that no matter what Israel does to defend itself, it will be criticized.

Then comes the obligatory Nazi analogy, couched in terms to protect Kasrils from saying that he believes it himself:

Like Gaarder, we must call baby killers “baby killers” and declare that those using methods reminiscent of the Nazis be told that they are behaving like Nazis.

This is almost too obscene to comment on, but when Kasrils sees Israel stripping all Israeli Arabs of their citizenship, when he sees a government-approved Kristallnacht, when he sees Israeli gas chambers and crematoria killing tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs every day - then he might be able to spout such racist and bigoted garbage. Until then, it shows that he is a first-class supporter of terror and genocide against Israeli Jews.

(*Hat tip to Elie for correcting a mistake. See comments.)

Hezbollah child abuse - recruiting 10 year olds as martyrs

MEMRI translated an article from an Egyptian newspaper that shows the sickening depths to which Hezbollah goes.

Don't hold your breath for Amnesty International to call it a war crime, or for the UN to call it immoral. They save such words for people they don't like.

Hizbullah Recruits Children Barely 10 Years Old
According to Roz Al-Yusuf, "Hizbullah has recruited over 2,000 innocent children aged 10-15 to form armed militias. Before the recent war with Israel, these children appeared only in the annual Jerusalem Day celebrations, and were referred to as the 'December 14 Units,' but today they are called istishhadiyun ['martyrs']..."
"Hizbullah has customarily recruited youths and children and trained them to fight from a very early age. These are children barely 10 years old, who wear camouflage uniforms, cover their faces with black [camouflage] paint, swear to wage jihad, and join the Mahdi Scouts [youth organization]...
"The children are selected by Hizbullah recruitment [officers] based on one criterion only: They must be willing to become martyrs."
The Children Train to Become Martyrs
"The children are educated from an early age to become martyrs in their youth, like their fathers, and their training is carried out by the Mahdi Scouts youth organization... [This organization], which is affiliated with Hizbullah, teaches the children the basic principles of Shi'ite ideology and of Hizbullah's ideology... The first lesson that the children are taught by Hizbullah is 'The Disappearance of Israel,' and it is always an important part of the [training] program...
"The Mahdi Scouts organization was founded in Lebanon on May 5, 1985... According to the organization's website, the number of [scouts] who had undergone training by the end of 2004 was 1,491, and the number of scout groups which had joined [the organization] was 449, with a membership of 41,960. According to the organization's most recent statistics, since 2004, 120 of its members have been ready to become martyrs.
"The organization's goal is to train an exemplary generation of Muslims based on the [principle of] 'the rule of the jurisprudent' [a founding principle of the Islamic Revolution in Iran], and to prepare for the coming of the Imam Mahdi [the Shi'ite messiah]. Its members, including the children, undertake to obey their commanders, to bring honor to the [Muslim] nation, and to prepare themselves for helping the Mahdi [when he comes]."

"A Nation With Child-Martyrs Will Be Victorious"
According to the article, Na'im Qasim, deputy to Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, said in an interview on Radio Canada: "A nation with child-martyrs will be victorious, no matter what difficulties lie in its path. Israel cannot conquer us or violate our territories, because we have martyr sons who will purge the land of the Zionist filth... This will be done through the blood of the martyrs, until we eventually achieve our goals."

TIME magazine mentioned the Mahdi scouts a few weeks ago. Wow, that salute looks familiar.

Extrajudicial Killing of PRC leader

Early this morning, Ra'ed Mohammad El-Nahhal was killed. El-Nahhal was a leader in the "Naser Salah El-Deen Brigades," which is the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees.

While he was driving his car at the time, it was not a Zionist helicopter or drone that sent a missile down his throat, but some other PalArab pumped several bullets into his head.

Which means that the unfortunate El-Nahhal will not get a huge funeral with people waving terror flags; Reuters will not be sending any cameramen to photograph his remains; there will be no car swarm; his family will not get thousands of dollars from Iran or Saudi Arabia; no posters of El-Nahhal will be printed up and plastered all over "refugee camps"; he will have no streets or stadiums named after him; no international human rights organizations will scream about "extrajudicial killings" in their self-congratulatory press releases, no one will protest his killers. People who want to Google him will only find mention at the PCHR site and a Zionist blog.

Poor guy had the misfortune to be murdered by a Palestinian Arab. And no one cares when that happens - it is a dog-bites-man story.

We are now at 64 PalArabs killed by their own people (that I know of) in the two months since the Israeli incursion began.

UPDATE: The PRC is blaming the death on hitmen hired by Israel. So if any PalArab is stupid enough to believe that (is it even a question?) he still has a shot at fame and martyrdom!

Allah be praised!

Kofi's latest idiotic statement

From recent UN press releases:

Regarding the situation in South Lebanon, the Secreatry-General [sic] said that "both parties have to respect the ceasefire...Parties with complaints on the ground, they should come to General Pellegrini, not take matters into their own hands...It’s a bit like having a football match where one of the teams also attempts to play the referee. You cannot be a team in a football match and the referee at the same time."

Kofi Annan is a complete idiot, and his analogy is not only false but offensive.

When one is dealing with issues of life and death, you do not rely on a third party - you rely on yourself. To say that a war is like a football match is breathtaking in its naivete.

When the "referee" has a history of favoring one side over the other, he is no longer a referee - at best he is an ineffectual bystander, at worst he is an enemy.

Which is proven by the next day's press release:

On 30 August the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) withdrew from the general area of Bastra and the area south of the Kafr Shuba and Shaba villages along the Blue Line in the Eastern part of South Lebanon. UNIFIL has established checkpoints and will carry out intensive patrolling to confirm that the IDF are no longer present in this area. UNIFIL plans to handover the area to the Lebanese Armed Forces.

Notice how UNIFIL defines its role - not to catch weapons smuggling from Syria, not to ensure that Hezbollah does not re-establish itself in the vacuum - but only to see if Israel is really gone. Which will require "intensive patrolling," as if the IDF is trying to hide.

After all of the sound and fury about 1701 and the Israeli hostages and the need to disarm Hezbollah and how important it is to stop illegal arms imports into Lebanon, in the end the UN is only concerned with one thing - getting Israel out of the way so that Hezbollah can be safely re-armed with no interference from the "referee."

Hezbollah apologist wins LA human relations award

From TNR:

In October 2000, Maher Hathout attended a rally in Lafayette Park across from the White House. His speech was captured on video for posterity by the Investigative Project on Terrorism. He told the assembled crowd that he was not surprised by what he called the "atrocities committed by the apartheid brutal state of Israel." After all, he reasoned, "butchers do what butchers do, and ... what is expected from a racist apartheid [state] is what is happening now."
Fast forward six years. The Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations announced last Tuesday that Hathout, president of the Islamic Center of Southern California and a senior adviser to the Muslim Public Affairs Council (mpac), would receive its prestigious John Allen Buggs Award in luncheon ceremonies on October 5. The award is given annually for what the commission describes as "outstanding human relations work."

A man who called Israel a nation of butchers (he didn't stop there; he has also accused the United States of committing state terrorism) is about to be honored with a major award for effective practices in human relations work. Is this any different than giving, say, David Duke an award for healing racial relations?

Read the whole thing.

UN hypocrisy shines through

The UN has no problem loudly condemning Israel over their use of cluster bombs as being "completely immoral."

I can't claim to know when or where Israel used those munitions, nor in what context. I am troubled that there are apparently some unexploded bombs still dotting Lebanon that can injure or kill innocents.

But the use of such bombs do have a place in war, and without the UN knowing the exact circumstances, their self-righteous posturing about morality comes off as more than hypocritical.

Especially since UNIFIL consistently supported Hezbollah during the war. Especially since the UN press releases would reveal Israeli troop movements and never discuss Hezbollah's. Especially since the UN would ignore some Hezbollah violations while highlighting Israel's.

But most hypocritical of all is that the UN is silent on the thousands of anti-personnel rockets that were built in Syria and shot by Hezbollah; built to maximize damage and aimed at the general population of Israel. To use the words "completely immoral" to describe Israel's activities aimed at Hezbollah when the UN itself turns a blind eye to what can only be described as attempted genocide against Jewish men, women and children shows once again that morality is not something that Kofi Annan is qualified in the least to speak about.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs just came out with a preliminary report on the Hezbollah rocket war against Israeli civilians. A simple fact that the UN does not seem to be interested in is:

From July 13 to August 13, the Israel Police reported 4,228 rocket impacts inside Israel from rockets fired by Hizballah. No geographical area in the world has sustained such a large quantity of rocket strikes since the Iran-Iraq war in the early 1980s.

Here is a small amount of the damage done by just one of those 4,228 rockets (other pictures in the report):

When the UN finds in itself the ability to describe Hezbollah as "completely immoral," it will go a tiny way towards being able to be taken seriously when it condemns a nation that agonizes over every action that may kill an innocent human being.

Until then, at least in the context of Israel, it is simply a terrorist tool.

New template

I use Firefox, and I had not noticed that IE seems to get thoroughly hosed when viewing my page. I had been playing around a little with a three-column template that seems to be somewhat better behaved under IE so I am changing the blog to use that one. There are still some tweaks I wanted to do to this template but at least it seems to work for all users again.

Please let me know when and if you have problems viewing my blog so I can crank up IE and see if I can figure it out.

Hezbollah "charity box"

In Lebanon, the IDF found Hezbollah pamphlets aimed at children, as well as leaflets showing this lovely image:

[Hezbollah] raises large sums of money in private homes and public places in Lebanon: Businesses, mosques, education institution, petrol stations, shopping centers, roadblocks and more. It uses thousands of "charity boxes" spread among populations, as well as national fund raising campaigns.

Part of the activity is carried out in cooperation with other Hizbullah social-economic institutions.
For example, IDF soldiers captured in Hizbullah members' houses at the village of Aita al-Shaab leaflets distributed in homes, schools and stores, encouraging people to raise funds for the organization.
The leaflets feature a drawing with the message that the donations are aimed at purchasing weapons for the destruction of the State of Israel. The leaflets read: "In order for all of our houses to become part of the resistance (Hizbullah) – this is the resistance box – place it in your home."

The picture shows a charity box designed as the Dome of the Rock with a photo of the former Hizbullah secretary-general. Coins inserted into the box turn into bullets when they emerge from the box and smash a Star of David symbolizing Israel.

Islamic passion

The Times of London mentions:

MARTYRDOM videos found by police investigating the alleged airline terrorist plot contain chilling statements made by young men who are apparently willing to die as suicide bombers.

In one of the films, recorded shortly before a spate of arrests on August 10, a man is seen talking to the camera and stating: “As you bomb, you will be bombed; as you kill, you will be killed.”
The would-be martyr said he hoped that Allah would be “pleased with us and accept our deed”. He continued, reading from a script, citing verses from the Koran and listing his reasons for “action that I am going to undertake”.
In another search, police found a last will and testament that concluded: “What should I worry when I die a Muslim in the manner in which I am to die? I go to my death for the sake of my maker, whom if wishes can bless limbs torn away.”

I've seen people argue that Islam is inherently evil, and I've seen people argue that we shouldn't blame an entire group based on their fanatics and that Islam is a religion of peace. I've read opinions and articles from the gamut of opinion from the pro-jihadists to the most right-wingers. As a pure religion (as opposed to a political ideology), I admire Islam in many ways. I try very hard to give all people the benefit of the doubt, even as I read about polls where a large percentage of ordinary Muslims condone terror.

But the quotes above crystallized for me what has been bothering me since 9/11.

We have not yet seen a visceral, passionate outrage from the Muslim world against terror.

We have seen many examples of Islamic passion over the past five years. We've seen deadly riots and peaceful demonstrations over cartoons they deem blasphemous. Muslims pour into the streets over any perceived slight to their faith.

Their faith itself inspires passion, and in general this is an admirable thing. I wish that Jews would become much more passionate in the defense of their people and religion.

But, if Islam is truly as it represents itself to the Western world, how come there are not spontaneous demonstrations happening right now as a reaction to the quotes above? If Islam is a peaceful religion, Muslims should be far more insulted at the perversity shown above than Westerners.

Why is a cartoon comparing Mohammed to terrorists more objectionable than terrorists invoking Mohammed and Allah to justify mass murder?

By any reasonable standard, assuming that the peaceful definition of Islam is accurate, the terrorists are treating Islam far more insultingly than any non-Muslim could. They are quoting the Koran to justify what can only be termed a gross perversion of the faith. How can a people who are so keenly attuned to any slight be suddenly so deaf?

Since 9/11, every condemnation of terror that I've seen from the Muslim world has been devoid of passion. The words might be there but the feeling of true outrage at the hijacking of their very faith has been absent.

It just doesn't jive that a people so emotional in their defense of their faith from blasphemy can become so rational when condemning those who are supposedly hijacking that same faith to justify murder. Where is the visceral condemnation of terror?

I can think of two possible reasons:

Muslims are so paranoid and perceive themselves as so embattled that they will close ranks around their own against the outside world, no matter how disgusting the terrorists are.
The Islamic faith itself is not really nearly as peaceful as it pretends to be. (In this case, I mean the reality of Islam today, not the theoretical academic version. I am not qualified to critique Islam purely as a religion.)

I am reluctant to believe the latter one, but either option does not bode well for a true solution to Islamic terror. Daniel Pipes likes to say that "Radical Islam is the problem; moderate Islam is the solution." I would like to believe that, but if moderate Islam truly exists - and if it is truly Islam - its adherents need to show at least the same passion for life that the Islamists do regularly for death.

The lack of the visceral disgust of terror in the name of Islam, the failure of the "Muslim street" to rise up against those who are supposedly perverting their faith, means that these moderates do not exist in any meaningful way.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Wednesday that he refused to have any direct contact with Israel, and that Lebanon would be the last Arab country to ever sign a peace deal with it.