Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Political Islam is Islam

Over the past few years, the term "political Islam" has gained currency as a way to distinguish between Islamic radicals and the more personal, purely religious Islam. There are a number of interesting articles about political Islam from all perspectives.

In general, it is good for the world to be aware that such a thing exists, that at the very least political Islam should be regarded as a political movement and not as a religious movement, and opposing political Islam is not a violation of "freedom of religion" so central to Western thought.

The problem with this formulation is that it is meaningless. While there may be various strains of political Islam that may have useful distinctions between them, in general all of Islam is political Islam, by definition.

If Islamic law itself does not distinguish between religion (deen) and politics (dawla), then any Westerner trying to draw those distinctions themselves is engaging in a sophisticated form of wishful thinking. Certainly there are Islamic points of view that do not stress the political aspects as much as the personal aspects of Islam, but deep down, every believing Muslim must ultimately desire the establishment of Islamic state.

The exception that proves the rule can be seen in the International Coalition Against Political Islam, an umbrella organization of Muslim groups opposed to political Islam. A quick look at these groups show that they are all secularist in nature and do not truly accept Islamic law as binding on them - if they did, they would have a hard time defining exactly how political Islam is not synonymous with Islam itself. (It is telling that none of these Muslim groups have Arabic names.)

The separation of church and state is a Western liberal invention, and while it is useful, it simply does not apply at all to the Muslim world. Any attempts by Westerners to look at Muslim nations through that prism are ultimately doomed.

Hamas threatens to kill thousands of Palestinian Arabs

Yesterday I mentioned that Hamas would rather have the thousands of Palestinian Arabs stranded at the Rafah crossing rot there than allow them to cross at a different crossing where Israel could monitor it.

Israel was going to open the Kerem Shalom crossing anyway but, according to some reports, Hamas started shelling the area.

Now, Hamas has made it very clear that they'd rather kill the stranded Arabs than to let them pass under Israeli and Egyptian supervision:

Hamas's threat to open fire at throngs of Palestinians stranded in Egypt has thwarted Israeli plans to open the Kerem Shalom crossing to southern Gaza on Wednesday to let the travelers return to their homes, defense officials told The Jerusalem Post.

According to the officials, 6,000 Palestinians have been marooned on the Egyptian side of Rafah since Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip three weeks ago and the closure of the Rafah crossing into Egypt. Palestinians shelled the crossing last week, forcing its closure after it had been used as an alternative to the Karni cargo crossing to send food and other supplies into Gaza.

During his meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Sharm e-Sheikh summit last week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would work to relieve the humanitarian crisis on the Egyptian side of Rafah.

In an effort to allow the stranded Palestinians to return home, the IDF recently offered to Egypt to open the Kerem Shalom crossing - which connects Israel, Gaza and Egypt - to pedestrian travel. Egypt contacted Hamas and, according to Israeli officials, was told that if Kerem Shalom was opened they would attack the crossing with mortars and gunfire, even at the price of killing thousands of Palestinians.

Israel immediately canceled the plans and is waiting to see if Egypt succeeds in convincing Hamas to allow Kerem Shalom to be used to help the stranded Palestinians.

Why should Israel have canceled the plans? If Hamas decides to shoot at their fellow PalArabs, it is not Israel's fault, and it would hurt Hamas' popularity more than anything Israel could do directly.

Here's another perfect example where Israel has dropped the ball for hasbara badly. If Hamas threatens to kill Palestinians, shouldn't there be press conferences about that?

AP avoids the M-word

Gateway Pundit notices an AP dispatch about the would-be UK bombers that seems to be missing something:

LONDON - They had diverse backgrounds, coming from countries around the globe, but all shared youth and worked in medicine. They also had a common goal, authorities suspect: to bring havoc and death to the heart of Britain.

Yes, you have to watch out for those youthful doctors, those known terrorists from around the globe.

The eight people held Tuesday in the failed car bombing plot include one doctor from Iraq and two from India. There is a physician from Lebanon and a Jordanian doctor and his medical assistant wife. Another doctor and a medical student are thought to be from the Middle East.

There does certanly seem to be a common thread there. Wait, it's on the tip of my tongue...

All employees of the United Kingdom's National Health Service, some worked together as colleagues at hospitals in England and Scotland, and experts and officials say the evidence points to the plot being hatched after they met in Britain, rather than overseas.

That's it! The NHS naturally incubated terrorism when it imports doctors from various nations!

"To think that these guys were a sleeper cell and somehow were able to plan this operation from the different places they were, and then orchestrate being hired by the NHS so they could get to the UK, then get jobs in the same area — I think that's a planning impossibility," said Bob Ayres, a former U.S. intelligence officer now at London's Chatham House think tank.

"A much more likely scenario is they were here together, they discovered that they shared some common ideology, and then they decided to act on this while here in the UK," he said.

What common ideology might that be? Hatred for socialized medicine?

The third paragraph later parenthetically mentions a possible link to the previous London bombings, but hastily shows that these guys have little in common with those other people:

British-born Muslims behind the bloody 2005 London transit bombings and others in thwarted plots here have been linked to terror training camps and foreign radicals in Pakistan, and the official said Pakistan, India and several other nations were asked to check possible links with the suspects in the latest attacks.

The educational achievements of the suspects in the car bomb attempts is in sharp contrast to the men that carried out the deadly July 7 transit bombings two years ago. The ringleader of that attack, Mohammed Siddique Khan, had a degree in business studies, but with low marks, and his three fellow suicide bombers had little or no higher education.

Damn, and it all looked so promising. But they can't possibly be related - the 2005 bombers, who happened to be Muslims, weren't in the medical field and didn't do well in school. These guys weren't born in Great Britain!

These guys are still a mystery. But with AP reporters on the case, I'm sure we'll figure out exactly what their shared ideology is, one day.
(h/t Boker Tov Boulder)

UPDATE: The Toronto Star is even more puzzled than AP:

LONDON–Were they sent to Britain with malicious intent, or did the will to wreak havoc come later? That is now the central question for Britain's counter-terror command as it works to unravel the botched weekend car bomb attempts in London and Scotland.
With six foreign doctors, one medical student and a former lab technician in custody after a four-day manhunt, investigators are quietly satisfied the "major suspects" in the case are in hand.
The probe now is shifting focus, as Scotland Yard works to pinpoint the genesis of the plot that fell apart bloodlessly in a surreal series of events that began early Friday.
All eight detainees have ties to Britain's National Health Service, overlapping in their duties at two hospitals in England and Scotland. Most also have roots elsewhere, but investigators have thus far found scant few common threads in their respective backgrounds in Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, India and Saudi Arabia....
As the riddle unfolds, British media sources last night added conflicting reports, suggesting that one and possibly more of the suspects were known to police and also Britain's MI5 security service.

A YouTube video experiment

Many have noted in the past that YouTube happily hosts the most vile anti-semitic videos while it will routinely censor videos about Muslims. (I once posted a video showing the Muslim bloodletting ritual and it was also censored.)

This morning I noticed a brand new video by an apparent Ron Paul supporter showing lots of pictures of rabbis together with politicians, as well as politicians in front of Israeli flags, meant as a "proof" that Jews own America. So I whipped up a video response, in essentially the same format (although the production values of mine are far superior).

It will be interesting to see if YouTube treats these videos any differently.

Here's mine:

CNN's Hamas lovefest

I'm watching live coverage of Alan Johnston's release on CNN. The vapidity and ignorance of CNN's talking empty airheads is almost unbelievable. As bad as things are in print, live broadcast journalism really highlights how uninformed these jokers really are.

CNN's Ben Wedeman is the "expert" correspondent that Anderson Cooper was quizzing, while Ismail Haniyeh was making a long, rambling Arabic statement. Cooper, for his part, had no idea who Haniyeh was, and he repeatedly referred to him as a "Palestinian official."

Wedeman kept emphasizing how much calmer things were in Gaza now that Hamas has taken over, and how much safer it is for journalists versus when Fatah was in charge. He even mentioned that the Hamas group that was taking him around showed him that they were taking care of traffic problems. He either purposefully ignored, or was unaware, of the many journalists that have been threatened by Hamas since the fighting.

Wedeman also took pains to contrast Hamas with Al Qaeda. Hamas, you see, only does its terror in that general area, and it is a "political" entity - it is not the worldwide threat that Qaeda is. He didn't quite say "Hamas only targets Jews" but he got close. And at the very end, he broadly implied that Fatah does have some sort of connection with Al Qaeda, since the clan that kidnapped Johnston has been rumored to be close both with Fatah and Al Qaeda at different times.

Johnston, of course, had nothing but praise for Hamas and all Palestinian Arab journalists and politicians who worked so tirelessly for the release of their main spokesman.

At the beginning, Wedeman started translating Haniyeh's statement, but this was way too boring for live TV. Before he stopped, he quoted Haniyeh as saying that Johnston's kidnapping was not good for the Palestinian people - which means, of course, that the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit is indeed in the best interests of the PalArabs.

It was essentially a free 15 minute commercial for Hamas.

Hamas summer camp teaching kids to fight Jews - and Fatah

From the Jerusalem Post:

The Fatah-affiliated Palestine Press Agency reported that the Hamas camps had been established in closed areas in various parts of the Gaza Strip so that the families would not see what's happening inside them.
Some Palestinian parents in the Gaza Strip are up in arms over Hamas summer camps which are being used to train children on the use of weapons and other military equipment.
The families on Tuesday also accused Hamas of inciting their children against Israel and Fatah. Some of the families decided to pull their children out of the camps after discovering the goals of the camp. Most of the children who are participating in the current Hamas summer camps are between the ages of eight and 17.
The agency quoted eyewitnesses as saying that children were being taught how to fire automatic rifles and handle hand grenades.
"The military training is taking place in the early hours; children are being taught how to use Kalashnikov assault rifles and other weapons," said one eyewitness.
"The Hamas supervisors are also giving lectures to the children accusing Fatah of collaboration with Israel and betraying the Palestinians. They are also quoting phrases from the Quran that encourage the children to kill the 'traitors.'"
The children are recruited through advertisements in mosques that only promise to teach children about Islam.
A statement issued by Fatah accused Hamas of "kidnapping" and "brainwashing" the children.
"Hamas is helping create a culture of hatred and vengeance," the statement charged. "They are killing the innocence of children by forcing them to undergo military training and teaching them hatred. They want to use these children to fight their own people in the future.

The original article at Palpress.ps in Arabic is interesting not only for the details, but for the comments that the readers are leaving:

The talk keeps it every Muslim
Educate your children shooting, swimming, and riding horses

Ratified O Prophet of God and how we want to prevail over our enemies without that we train our children and teach them everything good moral courage much literature and no one can do that only ...... Islamic movement Hamas movement.

Why all this silence on this terrorist movement, why is dealing with Hamas as part of the national fabric, no one denies the weight of the Hamas movement within the Palestinian community, but criminal gangs of murderous terrorist and arms dealers blood and hashish justifying everything plea religion, Accordingly, the Palestinian people and all the free world to stand united in the face of this terrorism, which is no different from the Stern terrorist gangs and Alejanah Zionism.

We are not against arms training, but the youth and not children who can not afford report assumes great between what is right and wrong and as long Anu training for the Jews Why is it that they say the overdraft Ibderbohem to fighting the Jews but not training children for the Jews but people who are in their traitors if they claimed to use these weapons for the Jews we are with them, but I think that Hamas stood threw missiles at the settlements if Israel resistance was what stood throwing error Iraqi nor is logical, clear,

From Asharq Alawsat:

Arabsat, a leading satellite service provider in the Arab world, has threatened to suspend a number of satellite channels that it broadcasts stating that these channels promote magic and charlatanism and claim to have knowledge of the unknown.
Khaled bin Ahmed Belkhyour, the CEO of Arabsat who is also an engineer, told Asharq Al Awsat that the satellite operator will take practical steps during the next two weeks to stop such channels being transmitted if they continue to broadcast programs related to charlatanism. He highlighted that the organization had addressed officials responsible for managing these satellite channels four months ago to end what Belkhyour described as “myths, falsehood and charlatanism”. He stressed that Arabsat has taken legal action to suspend these channels as a result of public opinion, pointing out that the objectives of Arabsat are to uphold the pillars of religion, heritage and traditions.
...On June 11, 2007, the global forum for Muslim scholars and intellects in the Muslim World League called for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the League of Arab States to seek to prevent the broadcasting of programs related to witchcraft via Arab satellite operators such as Arabsat and Nilesat. This is owing to the fact that some channels promote sorcery and recruit both male and female charlatans who claim to have knowledge of the unknown and to have capabilities to cure people from disease, to grant opportunities for work, to assist people in finding a spouse, and to read the future.
The global forum concluded that the majority of people who call in to these programs are women and youth. Hamza stated that these charlatans use religious terms in order to delude viewers in to believing them, distorting the image and teachings of religion.
The global forum warned against these channels due to the damage caused to religious beliefs as they drive viewers towards polytheism and to rely on people rather than God to solve their problems. The forum pointed out that it is religiously prohibited [in Islam] for people to contact these charlatans whether via the internet, television or any other means.
The forum further called for protection of Muslim communities against the practices of charlatans and such scams and stated that teachers and educators from all levels should highlight the dangers of these practices to their students. In addition, preachers and Imams should hold talks on the subject.
The popularity of charlatanism and magic has increased amongst Arab satellite channels, which, in turn, has led to an increase in the number of charlatans. These individuals aim to give off an image of a pious sheikh who can solve individual problems. There are others who have a strong sense of persuasion that has been learnt throughout many years of experience. His/her viewers feel compelled to watch and listen as if they have hypnotized the words and become convinced of his/her abilities to solve their problems.

Somehow, I don't think we'll be seeing Harry Potter on Arab satellite channels anytime soon.

Freedom of the press, PalArab style (II)

A nice followup to yesterday's story about PalArab press freedom, from the Jerusalem Post:

A prominent Palestinian journalist from the Gaza Strip has sought political asylum in Norway, Palestinian journalists said Saturday.

Seif al-Din Shahin, the correspondent for the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel network, left the Gaza Strip together with his family, they said, noting that he had received many death threats over the past few months.

Shahin's request has yet to be approved by the Norwegian government. Several other Palestinian journalists are also reported to have fled the Gaza Strip out of fear for their lives.

Earlier this year, masked gunmen set fire to the offices of Al-Arabiya in Gaza City, causing heavy damage to furniture and equipment. Although no group claimed responsibility, Palestinian journalists blamed members of Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

The group was also responsible for beating Shahin in two separate incidents in 2001 and 2004. The second assault followed Shahin's live broadcast of a rally held on Fatah's anniversary. The report angered Fatah leaders who had instructed Shahin and other journalists to report that tens of thousands had participated.

In 2003 he was arrested by the Palestinian Authority security forces because of his reporting. Al-Arabiya's offices in Ramallah have also been attacked by Fatah gunmen on a number of occasions.

I like the fact that Fatah threatens reporters for not lying about the size of their rallies. Which means, of course, that many reporters willingly lie to the world for the Fatah terror thugs. Nice!

Hamas' "honor" trumps human lives

Israel and Egypt came up with an agreement to allow thousands of stranded Palestinian Arabs to enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing. This will solve a humanitarian problem that Palestinian Arabs and their supporters have been complaining about for weeks.

The reason the Rafah crossing was closed is that the agreement that allowed it to open to begin with has been abrogated with Hamas' takeover of Gaza. The agreement was between the PA, the EU, Israel and Egypt, and now that the PA has nothing to do with Hamas and the EU observers cannot be assured of their safety the crossing had to be closed.

Silly Israel and Egypt actually believed that the issue was the 4000 people stuck at Rafah, and tried to come up with a solution for that problem. In fact, the real reason there have been complaints about Rafah was not the poor PalArab people, but because Hamas and the other Gaza terror groups wanted to control a border crossing where they can then smuggle in cash and weapons. The people were a nice cover for terror.

And here's the proof:

Gaza - Ma'an - The deposed government has criticised the decision to open the Kerem Shalom crossing, located on the Israel-Gaza-Egypt border at the southern most point of the Gaza Strip, to allow the thousands of Palestinians stranded in Egypt back to Gaza.

In a statement, the former unity government rejected the use of Kerem Shalom Crossing, stressing that the Rafah crossing, between Gaza and Egypt, should be opened instead. The opening of the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom Crossing represents an outside intervention and a violation of Palestinian rights, the deposed government said.

The deposed Palestinian government said in its statement that forcing the stranded Palestinians to travel through the Israeli-controlled crossing was "a dangerous violation of Palestinian rights", both to their "land and sovereignty."

In the same regard, an official source in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) warned that accepting the transfer of the stranded Palestinians through Kerem Shalom represented an acceptance of a return to occupation of the Gaza Strip.

"In spite of our appreciation for the efforts made by the Egyptian brothers to end the suffering of the Palestinians stranded at the Rafah crossing, we would like to point out that this problem should be brought to an end through the use of the Rafah crossing," the PFLP source said. Furthermore, "We warn that the acceptance of transporting the [stranded] Palestinians through Kerem Shalom is considered as an acceptance of Israeli conditions and the return of the occupation to the strip in order for it to be controlled by the Israeli forces and authorities," the PFLP source warned in a statement.

So let's use thousands of suffering people as pawns to pressure Israel! This is the terrorist calculation, and it has been for decades.

UPDATE: Hamas claims to have shot rockets at the crossing which they call Karam Abu Salem. No confirmation from any other source.

The invisible Reuters photo essay

The gross bias that the media has against Israel is not only the wire services' fault. Yesterday, Reuters released a "photo essay" of something that should be considered at least an interesting human interest story and that, from what I can tell, was not published by a single newspaper - because it doesn't fit the usual Middle East narrative:

Imad Yousef, a 17-year-old Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, enters a special clinic for prosthetics in Tel Aviv November 21, 2006. Yousef is one of three Palestinian youths who lost their legs after an Israeli tank shell targeting militants landed in the northern Gaza village of Beit Lahiya in January 2005. With the aid of various humanitarian organizations, they were transferred in February 2007 to the Reuth Rehabilitation center in the central Israeli city of Tel Aviv. Their medical treatment and rehabilitation were financed by Israel's Defence Ministry. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun (ISRAEL) ATTENTION EDITORS - MOVING A PACKAGE OF TEN PHOTOGRAPHS AS PART OF A PHOTO ESSAY BY RONEN ZVULUN ON PALESTINIAN YOUTHS RECEIVING MEDICAL TREATMENT IN ISRAEL

Ibrahim Fate, a 16-year-old Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, undergoes an initial examination upon his arrival at Reuth Rehabilitation Centre in Tel Aviv February 11, 2007.

Imad Yousef, a 17-year-old Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, undergoes a physical therapy session at Reuth Rehabilitation Centre in Tel Aviv May 7, 2007.

The head nurse of Reuth rehabilitation centre touches the cheek of patient Issa Ramadan (L),a 15-year-old Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, upon Ramadan's release from hospital in Tel Aviv June 28, 2007.

This is one time that Reuters did what it was supposed to do - for once, to show that things are not what they seem, and to report the little-known fact that the Israeli defense establishment is paying to treat these boys.

But it is up to individual newspapers to choose to publish any Reuters pictures or captions - and this one is not considered newsworthy. It is too messy and confusing for their readers to even consider that Israel's evil IDF is anything but the state-sponsored terror organization that fits the usual Reuters meme, and rather than show a story that puts Israel in a good light, it is much safer to decide not to run the story altogether, or even a single photograph from the series.

Especially the last photo. A Palestinian Arab smiling at an Israeli in a Tel Aviv hospital? When there is a choice between showing this or the zillionth picture of old Arab women crying at the funeral of their dead terrorist sons, the choice is quite clear for the majority of photo editors in the world - stick with what they've done before.

Those other Hamas cartoon characters

From Jon Sanders at Town Hall:

He was a children's television hit; a giant, black and white mouse wearing white gloves and singing about world unification in a high-pitched, squeaky voice. Then a Jew killed him on the air.
He was "Hamas Mickey," also known as "Farfour," the mouse that preached Islamic dominance on Palestinian children's television. "You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists," he would tell his tyke viewers, singing "Rafah sings 'Oh, oh,' its answer is the AK-47," "Oh Jerusalem, it is the time of death," and other bomb-strapped kids' classics. Then Allah in his mercy saw fit to martyr the mouse.

On Friday, June 29, Hamas Mickey was martyred on the air by an Israeli who came to steal his land. He is now in the celestial palaces of Allah, engaged in the carnal delights of six dozen virginal vermin. Down here, the struggle continues.
Vowing vengeance for his friend, Don al-Duck intends to pursue Israelis across Palestinian children's networks, along with his nephews Huey, Dewey and Kablooey. They can be seen daily on Drakes and Jihad.
But O viewers, Drakes and Jihad is not the only show in Gaza laying the toddler foundation for a world led by Islamists. Allah forbid we should overlook the glorious Mahmoud bar-Ney and Friends! This week, for example, bar-Ney and his child army use songs, chants and special moments to teach Baby Blowup how to fake rage in the streets when Western camera crews draw nigh. Then the tune to "This Old Man" begins, and everyone joins together to sing bar-Ney's theme, "I Hate Jews."
A similar show features four brothers bringing songs, make-believe and dance in an Islamist world-domination context. And this week on The Wig Outs, Mullah Featherscimitar calls a halt to all soccer games, and the brothers work to convert soccer stadiums for executions. The letters T-N-T are highlighted, and the Wig Outs sing a rousing rendition of "Here Comes the Big Red Car Laced with Explosives."
Another blessed show fills little ones with the know-how of simplified suicide belt-making, roadside bombs, and other IEDs. Inspired by Baba the Bomber, the kids of Gaza confidently proclaim, "Can we bomb it? Yes, we can!"
For older children, Flight 29 Downed follows teenagers stranded in the land of the Great Satan. The teens form their own cell of jihadist operations whose goal is to stage a successful attack against a jet loaded with fat Western infidels bloated with oil and contempt for Allah. The teens must combat teenage angst, personality clashes, and their own budding desires in addition to waging war against their unsuspecting neighbors.
Beloved by children of all ages, the "mystery gang" in Scoo ibn Du, Where Are You? drives across Palestine in a beat-up Red Cross van unmasking the Zionist plots behind seemingly obvious Islamist attacks. The show contains numerous running gags, including Wafiyyah losing her hijab, Sharif's appetite, and talking dog Scoo's irrational fear of "rary Rews!" The gang's van is always filmed by idiot American journalists as proof of Israeli rocket attacks, and the show always closes with the Zionist conspirators cursing "the meddling kids" before being beheaded.
Oh, and may a thousand camels walk across me if I forget the classic animation in The Bugged Looney/Road Bomber Hour. Behold the hapless coyote and his IEDs that never quite work, yet that tireless son of Allah never gives up! Equally inspiring are the explosive rages of Yosem Sami, jihadist in the infidel's Western hinterlands. And who among us could ever forget the lines "Allahu akbar, doc?" "Jew season! Yankee season!" and "I tawt I taw a Dionist pig!"
Let it not be said, then, that the message of jihad and Islamist world domination is being neglected by Palestinian children's TV! O brothers, don't let it be said, or else there will be more riots in the streets and fellow believers trampled.

He forgot to mention the Magic Bullet-ridden School Bus, Jihad Squarepants, al-Dura the Exploder, Mighty 'Splodin' Allah Rangers, and al-Bahb the Bomb Builder.

Did I leave any out?

Freedom of the press, PalArab style

From Ma'an:

A Palestinian reporter for the Lebanese Al Akhbar newspaper in the West Bank has confirmed that he has been receiving threats via his Palestinian 'Jawwal' mobile phone.

In a phone call to Ma'an, the journalist, Sami Said, confirmed that he has received threats, ordering him to stop writing and to keep silent. He said that the threats came after he published news reports on internal Palestinian issues in Al Akhbar newspaper. He refused to name his intimidators.

Sami Said, a journalist from the West Bank city of Ramallah, is married with one child. He has worked as a reporter for many international agencies.

Once again, Palestinian Arab thug tactics have worked to silence criticism. (If they hadn't worked, Mr. Said would have named who he was threatened by.)

One would think that journalists would notice that the people whose cause they champion unabashedly are the same people who continuously threaten their lives. As much as the PalArabs try to paint Alan Johnston as a singular case, the fact is that many journalists in the territories have been threatened, kidnapped and killed over the years.

Yet another indication of what a Palestinian Arab state would look like.

US Defense Dept. analysis of the Muslim world, 1946

This report, part of an Intelligence Review done by the Military Intelligence Division of the U.S. War Department in 1946, is really fascinating:

ISLAM: A THREAT TO WORLD STABILITY
With few exceptions, the states which it includes are marked by poverty, ignorance, and stagnation. It is full of discontent and frustration, yet alive with consciousness of its inferiority and with determination to achieve some kind of general betterment.

Two basic urges meet head-on in this area, and conflict is inherent in this collision of interests. These urges reveal themselves in daily news accounts of killings and terrorism, of pressure groups in opposition, and of raw nationalism and naked expansionism masquerading as diplomatic maneuvers. The urges tie together the tangled threads of power politics which—snarled in the lap of the United Nations Assembly—lead back to the centers of Islamic pressure and to the capitals of the world’s biggest nations.

The first of these urges originates within the Moslems’ own sphere. The Moslems remember the power with which once they not only ruled their own domains but also overpowered half of Europe, yet they are painfully aware of their present economic, cultural, and military impoverishment. Thus a terrific internal pressure is building up in their collective thinking. The Moslems intend, by any means possible, to regain political independence and to reap the profits of their own resources, which in recent times and up to the present have been surrendered to the exploitation of foreigners who could provide capital investments. The area, in short, has an inferiority complex, and its activities are thus as unpredictable as those of any individual so motivated.

The other fundamental urge originates externally. The world’s great and near-great powers cover the economic riches of the Moslem area and are also mindful of the strategic locations of some of the domains. Their actions are also difficult to predict, because each of these powers sees itself in the position of the customer who wants to do his shopping in a hurry because he happens to know the store is going to be robbed.

In an atmosphere so sated with the inflammable gases of distrust and ambition, the slightest spark could lead to an explosion which might implicate every country committed to the maintenance of world peace through the United Nations Organization. An understanding of the Moslem world and of the stresses and forces operative within it is thus an essential part of the basic intelligence framework......
...If the Moslem states were strong and stable, their behavior would be more predictable. They are, however, weak and torn by internal stresses; furthermore, their peoples are insufficiently educated to appraise propaganda or to understand the motives of those who promise a new Heaven and a new Earth.

Because of the strategic position of the Moslem world and the relentlessness of its peoples, the Moslem states constitute a potential threat to world peace. There cannot be permanent world stability, when one-seventh of the earth’s population exists under the economic and political conditions that are imposed upon the Moslems.

The original full PDF is here; the full transcribed text is here.

H/T: The Gathering Storm.

Using religion to promote sexism

Imagine a nation where there is institutionalized racism. Imagine that in the workplace, blacks and whites must sit separately with partitions in between; where black workers can only deal with other blacks and white workers can only have white customers. Imagine that black people had to wear different clothing from whites and had to cover their faces.

Now try to imagine how the West would act towards that nation.

If you substitute sexism for racism, you don't have to imagine very much. As today's Saudi-based Arab News reports, it is happening now:

JEDDAH, 2 July 2007 — There will be stricter measures enforced to segregate men and women from each other at banks’ headquarters, but there is no official written circular yet regarding that.
According to various reports by news agencies that have spoken to bank managers and women bankers, Saudi authorities have ordered banks to separate female and male workers at their headquarters where they used to work together.
...Men and women bank customers have always been separated with their own branches. A manager at the National Commercial Bank said that female and male employees are completely separated even during training courses and at meetings. A partition has been placed at every floor where there are women employees, which was not the situation at the bank’s headquarters in Jeddah until a few months ago.
Another bank also confirmed that there are strict measures now for separating the male and female employees, but neither bank received any circular from SAMA, according to the managers.
The report by Reuters claims that officials from SAMA and the Labor Ministry held a meeting earlier this month with bank managers to inform of the new system and they had until the end of the summer holidays to implement these rules.
The banks are expected to provide separate floors, elevators, entrance and cafeterias for the men and women. The women bankers feel that this will hurt their careers because it will deprive them of the opportunity to exchange experiences, meet clients and compete for positions on equal basis with men.
An official in SAMA denied that there are new rules or directives but admitted that banks are expected to segregate.
“There has been many complaints and written requests from different government agencies to strictly enforce the segregation because some banks continue to have mixed administrations at their headquarters,” he told Arab News.
Some of these government agencies included the Riyadh municipality and the Commission for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue in addition to some civilians voicing their objections to the mixing.
A manager at a bank in Jeddah said that the Ministry of Labor also requires that there is strict separation and that there are inspection teams that visit the branches and headquarters, just as they do with other business and shops, to observe implementation of this rule.

Now, is this a Koranic rule? Does Islamic law state that men and women may not see each other at work? Were the banks that didn't segregate last year violate Shari'a?

Or is it more likely that the perverted men who run the "Commission for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue" are flexing their political muscles?

Now, it would be very easy for the US to put a dent in this institutionalized sexism. But because of the fear of offending the Muslim street, we turn a blind eye to discrimination that is far worse than anything that apartheid South Africa ever contemplated.

I am not saying that Islamic law needs to be violated. I am saying that this clearly has nothing to do with Islamic law, and imposing a bizarre and arbitrary set of sexist standards on a society at large is something that should be fought with the same tenacity that other discrimination is fought.

Left wing paranoia is really, really funny

I've mentioned before the "People's Voice" website, its anti-semitic articles and the fact that it is indexed at Google News. Apparently, for a couple of days in June, Google News stopped indexing them, and then reinstated them. I have no idea whether this has anything to do with complaints or whether it was a glitch in Google's software, but they are crowing about their ability to be indexed again and about the extremists - namely, me - who tried to shut them down:

In November of 2006, a person behind a blog called Elder of Ziyon launched an attack against the site. They couldn't silence us for telling the truth within the confines of our constitutional rights, so they started digging through the over 800 articles on our site searching for any piece of dirt they could use against us. If one were to search through the archive of any newspaper or magazine, one could reasonably expect to find something that offends somebody, particularly when taken out of context.

They found an article entitled 'Judaism is Nobody's Friend' by Mark Glenn written on November 7, 2006. The article is a factual critical examination of the negative aspects of Judaism, the belief system, not the people. At no point does Mark Glenn use insult or racial slur. It is not an attack against the Jewish people (as such), and can't be called racist or prejudice. The Elder of Ziyon web site wrote a very slanted piece about thepeoplesvoice.org branding us with the anti-Semitism label. They added a link back to Google News for people to complain and hopefully get us removed. After a few weeks of hate mail bombardment from the Ziyon site, Google relented, giving in to a lone provocateur with an e-mail link.

So am I a "lone provocateur" or do I have enough readers to bombard Google with hate mail for weeks? Isn't it strange that I looked through some "800 articles" in November and happened to find one also published in November? Did I try to take their website down? Their attempts to reproduce what happened are laughable and borderline paranoid. But I have to thank them for giving this blog publicity, because the only time I've ever been mentioned in Google News is from their site! (Although they wouldn't, of course, link to me - evidently they are afraid that the fragile minds of their readers might explode if they read something outside of their own echo chamber.)

Later on in their paranoid screed they accuse the Daily Kos far-left website of being in on this conspiracy to close them down. Way too funny:

The slander and repression that we had seen at the Daily Kos caused us to reassess our beliefs about the free and open internet. At first, because of the extremist character of the individuals that were attacking Eileen and thepeoplesvoice.org, it seemed as though a group with a Zionist agenda had infiltrated the Daily Kos. But after considering the content of a "My Left Wing" posting, we realized that there might be another twist to this story. The posting alleges that Marcos Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos, is the closest thing to a CIA agent that you'll ever find, short of a real one: one vetted and found worthy but unwilling (?) to seal the lifelong pact with this nefarious organization. For all intents and purposes, we probably would be erring on the safe side if we were to consider him a "real" agent. The fact that the spooks are onboard at Google is old news. It would appear that a possible connection between Kos and Google is likely, and with CIA associations it's not difficult to see why and how Daily Kos and Google are aligned with New World Order philosophy. The two were certainly in agreement when it came to simultaneously censoring thepeoplesvoice.org and Eileen Fleming.

Since the People's voice pretends to be so committed to "free speech," a simple thought experiment will suffice: Would they ever publish an article about Islam similar to the ones they have published about Judaism? And would Google News keep indexing them after such an article is published?