Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

The stupidity of the "smarter bombs"

The United States has agreed in principle to provide Israel with better "smart bombs" than those it plans to sell Saudi Arabia under a regional defense package, senior Israeli security sources said on Sunday.
Keen to bolster Middle East allies against an ascendant Iran, the Bush administration last year proposed supplying Gulf Arab states with some $20 billion in new weapons, including Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bomb kits for the Saudis.

The plan has angered Israel's backers in Washington, who say the JDAMs, which give satellite guidance for bombs, may one day be used against the Jewish state or at least blunt its power to deter potential foes. Israel has had JDAMs since 1990 and has used them extensively in a 2006 offensive in Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government dropped its objections to the proposed Saudi deal in July after securing U.S. military aid grants worth $30 billion over the next decade.

Two Israeli security sources said the United States further mollified the Olmert government with an "understanding in principle" that future JDAM sales to Israel would include advanced technologies not on offer to Saudi Arabia.

"We are checking which of the top-of-the-line JDAMs will become available to us. The agreement is that Israel's qualitative edge will be preserved," one source said.

This is idiotic on a number of levels.

First of all, Saudi Arabia can have a trillion dollars' worth of weapons; they are useless in a kingdom that has no decent army, no military expertise, and utterly no ability to deter any Iranian offenses. If Iran would decide for some reason to attack Saudi Arabia, it would be the US that defends it anyway - the Saudis would crumple on their own no matter what advanced weaponry they own (and they already own quite a bit of it.)

The Saudi arsenal is nothing more than a tempting target for terrorists to get their own hands on advanced weaponry for uses that are far from their conventional intent.

Moreover, in a world where asymmetric warfare is the prevailing wisdom, giving Israel a "qualitative edge" in having "smarter" bombs doesn't help Israel's defense a bit. Is there any chance that the Islamists who might end up with Saudi weaponry would care that Israel is somewhat better at hitting back purely military targets? They'll be using this advanced weaponry against population centers in Israel. As Lebanon showed, Geneva no longer applies in the Arab wars against Israel and giving Israel better offensive weapons does not help much against an enemy for whom death is desirable.

Now, if the US would give Israel technology that can defend against the Saudi bombs - if an encrypted backdoor was placed in the JDAM software that could disable the weapons remotely, for example - then this might make sense. But the fact that Israel's theoretical future versions of JDAMs might have an accuracy of 3 meters rather than 6 meters is pretty much meaningless.

None of this makes sense. Iran is not deterred in the least by these moves, on the contrary it gives them even more incentive to build nuclear bombs. This might benefit defense contractors but pretty much no one else.

Muslim bookstore employee refuses to touch "unclean" Bible story book

From the Daily Express:

A MUSLIM store worker refused to serve a customer buying a children’s book on Christianity because she said it was “unclean”.

Shopper Sally Friday felt publicly humiliated at a branch of Marks & Spencer when she tried to pay for First Bible Stories as a gift for her young grandson.

When she put the book on the check-out counter, the young assistant refused to touch it, declared it was unclean and summoned another member of staff to serve instead.

Mrs Friday said her trip to the sales in Reading, Berks, with her daughter had been ruined.

“I went to the till and heard the girl say it was unclean and then she got someone else to serve me,” said Mrs Friday.

“At first I wasn’t sure what was going on and then I realised she was wearing a headdress and I clicked that the title of the book had Bible in it. I felt very humiliated and immediately left the store.”

How could she have felt humiliated? That emotion only applies to one set of people.

HuffPo ordains a rabbi

The Huffington Post has another insufferably self-righteous piece by "Rabbi" Michael Lerner, far-left editor of Tikkun magazine, titled "A Rabbi at a Mosque," where he describes his experience speaking at a mosque in Denver (and why it was "controversial" - because he is too Zionist.)

A little research shows that Lerner was never ordained as a rabbi by any recognized rabbinical school (he was accepted to the conservative Jewish Theological Seminary rabbinical school but never attended). He claims his "ordination" came from Zalman Schachter Shalomi and two other rabbis who he never named. Schachter-Shlomi had broken with his Lubavitch upbringing and created his own Judaic pseudo-cult which includes his own Hebrew translations of Buddhist and Sufi prayers.

I guess calling the article "A Leftist Jew who Pretends to Be a Rabbi at a Mosque" doesn't have the same zing.

See also Judeopundit's takedown of one of the incredibly stupid things Lerner actually wrote in the article.

How Mecca became a holy city

Some history that I was unaware of:

Mecca: 1st - 6th century AD

The town of Mecca, in a rocky valley with no agricultural resources, develops into a place of considerable prosperity. There are two good reasons. It is a trading post on the caravan route from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. And it is Arabia's most important place of pilgrimage.

During the centuries before Islam, large numbers of pilgrims arrive in Mecca to perform a ritual act of walking seven times round a small square building known as the Kaaba (Arabic for 'cube'). The building is full of idols, which are the objects of worship. It also includes a sacred black stone, possibly in origin a meteorite.

The Muslims and Mecca: AD 624-630

Relations with Mecca deteriorate to the point of pitched battles between the two sides, with Muhammad leading his troops in the field. But in the end it is his diplomacy which wins the day.

He persuades the Meccans to allow his followers back into the city, in 629, to make a pilgrimage to the Kaaba and the Black Stone.

On this first Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Muhammad's followers impress the local citizens both by their show of strength and by their self-control, departing peacefully after the agreed three days. But the following year the Meccans break a truce, provoking the Muslims to march on the city.

They take Mecca almost without resistance. The inhabitants accept Islam. And Muhammad sweeps the idols out of the Kaaba, leaving only the sacred Black Stone.

An important element in Mecca's peaceful acceptance of the change has been Muhammad's promise that pilgrimage to the Kaaba will remain a central feature of the new religion.

So Mecca becomes, as it has remained ever since, the holy city of Islam.

Mecca was a holy city for idolators, and Mohammed used its status - and its pre-existing customs - to help grow his new religion.

New weapon against Gaza rocket terrorists

From Israel's Channel 2 (I converted it for use in all browsers):

I don't understand all the Hebrew, and saw the link originally in a Palestinian Arabic site which I couldn't decipher completely. Here is the English description from the PalArab site:

The southern leadership of the Israeli army revealed for the first time a new weapon said to be for use against rockets fired from Gaza strip.

UPDATE: Commenter Annie translates:

A rough outline of what was said: At the beginning of the clip you hear a female soldier reporting in coded language what she is seeing. Then the missile is shot at the terrorist. Afterwards the narrator reports that the latest method to combat the kassam and other terrorists is by anti-tank units shooting anti-tank missiles which are much more efficient in hitting their targets. The terrorists are spotted by a combination of ground checkpoints, and balloons and drones operated by the IAF. Their findings are sent straight to a computerized intelligence centre who send out the anti-tank brigades with pinpoint information.

Channel two of the Israeli TV. broadcasted a video tape im which Israeli air and land units are using anti missile grenades against Palestinian activists in Gaza strip specially those who fire rockets at Israel.

The video tape shows a Palestinian activist trying to fire a rocket in direction of the Israeli towns, the activist was being monitored ever since he walked out , then an Israeli rocket targets him directly and when his friend approached to rescue him another Israeli rocket was being fired leaving both of them dead.

More humanitarian explosives

From YNet:

Security workers of the Israel Airport Authority uncovered 2 tons of material used for the manufacturing of Qassam rockets and explosives inside a truck attempting to enter the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

This is the second time in the past week in which such materials are brought into Gaza under the disguise of humanitarian equipment.

Meanwhile, Egypt also found some of those much-needed explosives on their way to the starving people of Gaza:

Egyptian security forces have found a smuggling tunnel linking Egypt with the Gaza Strip and containing explosives, security sources said on Monday.
The sources said the tunnel, north of the Rafah crossing, contained four artillery shells and 20 bombs, as well as electrical circuits.

But in the peaceful West Bank, in contrast:

The Palestinian intelligence service said on Monday that they discovered a bag containing 16 kilograms of explosives and a homemade projectile ready to be launched in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Director of Nablus intelligence, Abu Al-Abbas, told Ma'an that the bag was found inside a bigger bag with three detonators in the old city of Nablus.

However, the PA has had a less than stellar record of reliability when they report finds like these. Pretty much anything they "discover" during serious negotiations with Israel can be regarded as either fabrications or gross exaggerations.

UPDATE: Nablus' mayor denied that it was a rocket that they found, saying it was a pipe bomb.

Was the NIE report a brilliant piece of misinformation?

A report in the IHT last week brings up an interesting consequence of the NIE report:

A rift is emerging between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, suggesting that the president no longer enjoys the full backing of Khamenei, as he did in the years after his election in 2005.

In the past, when Ahmadinejad was attacked by political opponents, the criticisms were usually silenced by Khamenei, who has the final word on state matters and who regularly endorsed the president in public speeches. But that public support has been conspicuously absent in recent months.

There are numerous possible reasons for Ahmadinejad's loss of support, but analysts here all point to one overriding factor: the U.S. National Intelligence Report last month, which said that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure. The report sharply decreased the threat of a military strike against Iran, allowing the authorities to focus on domestic issues, with important parliamentary elections looming in March.

"Now that Iran is not under the threat of a military attack, all contradictions within the establishment are surfacing," said Saeed Leylaz, an economic and political analyst. "The biggest mistake that Americans have constantly made toward Iran was adopting radical approaches, which provided the ground for radicals in the country to take control."

While the pressure was on, the leadership was reluctant to let any internal disagreements show. Senior officials, including Khamenei, constantly called for unity and warned that the enemy, a common reference to the United States, could take advantage of such differences.

The Iranian presidency is a largely ceremonial post. But Ahmadinejad used the office as a bully pulpit, espousing an economic populism that built a strong following among the middle and lower classes and made him a political force to be reckoned with. That popularity won him the strong backing of the supreme leader.

But the relationship began to sour even before the National Intelligence Report was released. A source close to Khamenei, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said Khamenei had been especially disappointed by Ahmadinejad's economic performance, which had led to steep inflation in basic necessities, from food to property values.

"Mr. Khamenei supported Mr. Ahmadinejad because he believed in his slogans of helping the poor," the source said. "But his economic performance has been disastrous. Their honeymoon is certainly over."

Economists have long criticized Ahmadinejad's economic policies, warning that his reliance on oil revenues to finance loans to the poor and to buy cheap imports would lead to inflation and cripple local industries. Inflation has risen from 12 percent in October 2006 to 19 percent this year, according to figures released by the Iranian Central Bank.

The rift between Khameni and Ahmadinejad has been obvious for months and the external threat was the major factor keeping it from becoming blatant. Bush couldn't backtrack on his approach to Iran without raising eyebrows, but the NIE was a neat way to get the US to back off on pressuring Iran - the press seized on the document, misinterpreting it to be far more damning to the Bush administration than it really is.

The idea of backing off from a belligerent tone with Iran for the purpose of weakening it was raised in another IHT article by academic Roger Stern:

Tehran seems unimpressed by administration war talk, perhaps because it has confidence in its navy. Lots of other people are scared, though. Take oil traders. Oil prices used to have a tight relationship with Saudi spare capacity. When capacity went up, prices went down. After two years of escalating threats between Tehran and Washington, however, new capacity no longer calms the market.

Under the old market rules, prices would be $50, not $100. So war talk sends an extra $20 billion a year to Tehran. The Bush administration's bellicose rhetoric thus makes a mockery of the president's pledge to "do everything in our power to defeat the terrorists."

If it wanted to honor this commitment, the administration would stop saying things that drive up oil prices. As it is, the long parade of threats just makes the mullahs richer.

Yet they spend their $90 a barrel windfall faster than ever, trying to buy legitimacy with pork. Deeply unpopular, the Iranian regime now relies on constantly rising oil prices for survival.

Its spending has quadrupled in the last six years, a remarkable rise that's evolved in lockstep with oil prices. Here, at last, is our adversary's weakness: An oil price decline would be a mortal threat.

If Bush wants to hit the regime where it hurts, conciliation should become his byword. In the price collapse that would follow, he'd find a brand new Iranian appetite for negotiation.

This is because, unlike sanctions that might take years bite, a peace initiative would threaten the mullahs tomorrow. Talking peace, which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will certainly scorn, would also help reformers in the approaching Iranian elections.

So before the president begins another war whose risks may be greater than he thinks, General Van Riper should be heard. And if the president really wants to regime change, he should talk peace, now.

He doesn't even have to mean it. At today's oil prices, just the threat of peace will do.

It is somewhat possible, although I wouldn't judge it as likely, that the Bush administration was one step ahead of this analysis, using the NIE report as a backhanded way to cool things off. Bush will still be quoted as being intransigent and as disavowing the NIE memo, but all the while wheels are in motion that could hurt Iran economically far more and far faster than any sanctions can.

Of course, oil price have risen since the NIE report, not dropped, so this wishful thinking is somewhat lacking. But there still may be more behind the scenes than is being "leaked."

Britney in a burqa?

Yes, in the quest for more pageviews I will allow myself to post a Britney Spears story.

From the Sun (UK):

SINGER Britney Spears will be ordered to cover her face with a veil and wear a full-length Islamic dress when she weds her British boyfriend, it was revealed last night.

She is planning marriage No3 to Muslim Adnan Ghalib, 35, who she hopes will help keep her on the straight and narrow so she can win back custody of her two sons.

But the only way Brummie cameraman Adnan’s strictly religious family will accept her is if she converts to the Islamic faith.

Astonishingly, party girl Brit, 26, is keen to do it – even though it will mean ditching the booze. The singer, famed for stepping out without her knickers, has even told friends she plans to wear a burka, or even a naqib, which leaves only the eyes visible.

One of her pals said: “She is really keen to do it.

“It would be a mark of respect to Adnan and his family, and it would give her the anonymity she’s craving.

“Adnan’s Muslim beliefs could be Britney’s saviour.”

Friends believe the couple had planned to tie the knot on a trip to Mexico last week, but put it on hold.

Her relationship with Adnan has stunned his parents, too. His mum Saghar teaches the Koran at home, while his dad Hussain attends the mosque daily.

Now, that would be a great reality show.

The ad that the "moderate" Arab newspapers refused to run

From JPost:

The Lebanese government has apparently blocked the Beirut-based Daily Star from running the Simon Wiesenthal Center's advertisement, which calls for the United Nations General Assembly to convene a special session on suicide terror.
The Editor-in-Chief of the Lebanese newspaper, Hanna Anbar, initially expressed his support for the ad but later indicated that the newspaper was barred by "security authorities" from running the full-page advertisement. Three other Arab publications, Saudi Arabia's Arab News, the London-based Al-Sharq al Awsat, and Lebanon's Dar Al-Hayat never responded to the Wiesenthal Center's repeated attempts to place the ad.

Here's the ad that is too controversial for our moderate Arab friends to run:

The new Odd Couple:: "Jesus and the Mahdi"

You've heard of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Bert and Ernie. But you haven't seen anything until you've seen the hilarious new TV series, "Jesus and the Mahdi!"

From AFP:

TEHRAN (AFP) — A director who shares the ideas of Iran's hardline president has produced what he says is the first film giving an Islamic view of Jesus Christ, in a bid to show the "common ground" between Muslims and Christians.

Nader Talebzadeh sees his movie, "Jesus, the Spirit of God," as an Islamic answer to Western productions like Mel Gibson's 2004 blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ," which he praised as admirable but quite simply "wrong".

Even in Iran, "Jesus, The Spirit of God" had a low-key reception, playing to moderate audiences in five Tehran cinemas during the holy month of Ramadan, in October.

The film, funded by state broadcasting, faded off the billboards but is far from dead, about to be recycled in a major 20 episode spin-off to be broadcast over state-run national television this year.

Talebzadeh insists it aims to bridge differences between Christianity and Islam, despite the stark divergence from Christian doctrine about Christ's final hours on earth.

"It is fascinating for Christians to know that Islam gives such devotion to and has so much knowledge about Jesus," Talebzadeh told AFP.

"By making this film I wanted to make a bridge between Christianity and Islam, to open the door for dialogue since there is much common ground between Islam and Christianity," he said.

The director is also keen to emphasise the links between Jesus and one of the most important figures in Shiite Islam, the Imam Mahdi, said to have disappeared 12 centuries ago but whose "return" to earth has been a key tenet of the Ahmadinejad presidency.

...In Talebzadeh's movie, God saves Jesus, depicted as a fair-complexioned man with long hair and a beard, from crucifixion and takes him straight to heaven.

"It is frankly said in the Koran that the person who was crucified was not Jesus" but Judas, one of the 12 Apostles and the one the Bible holds betrayed Jesus to the Romans, he said. In his film, it is Judas who is crucified.
...
Shiite Muslims, the majority in Iran, believe Jesus will accompany the Imam Mahdi when he reappears in a future apocalypse to save the world.

And Talebzadeh said the TV version of his film will further explore the links between Jesus and the Mahdi -- whose return Ahmadinejad has said his government, which came to power in 2005, is working to hasten.

Shiites believe the Mahdi's reappearance will usher in a new era of peace and harmony.

"We Muslims pray for the 'Return' (of Imam Mahdi) and Jesus is part of the return and the end of time," Talebzadeh said.

"Should we, as artists, stand idle until that time? Don't we have to make an effort?"

The laughs come fast and furious as Jesus and the Mahdi team up to save the world from evil Zionists and Crusaders. Every week, a new decadent Western country gets some major whoop-ass from the Dynamic Duo (PBUT). You'll be amazed and amused at how the sons of apes and pigs get what's coming to them!

Coming this spring to Iranian TV!

When scholarship can get you killed

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article about the revelation that a decades-old photo archive of ancient handwritten Korans, thought to be lost, still exists and is in the hands of a scholar (who is keeping it to herself.)

On the night of April 24, 1944, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college here housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. The 16th-century building crumpled in the inferno. Among the treasures lost, later lamented Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, was a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran.

The 450 rolls of film had been assembled before the war for a bold venture: a study of the evolution of the Quran, the text Muslims view as the verbatim transcript of God's word. The wartime destruction made the project "outright impossible," Mr. Spitaler wrote in the 1970s.
[Photo]

Mr. Spitaler was lying. The cache of photos survived, and he was sitting on it all along. The truth is only now dribbling out to scholars -- and a Quran research project buried for more than 60 years has risen from the grave.

"He pretended it disappeared. He wanted to be rid of it," says Angelika Neuwirth, a former pupil and protégée of the late Mr. Spitaler. Academics who worked with Mr. Spitaler, a powerful figure in postwar German scholarship who died in 2003, have been left guessing why he squirreled away the unusual trove for so long.

...The Quran is viewed by most Muslims as the unchanging word of God as transmitted to the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. The text, they believe, didn't evolve or get edited. The Quran says it is "flawless" and fixed by an "imperishable tablet" in heaven. It starts with a warning: "This book is not to be doubted."

Quranic scholarship often focuses on arcane questions of philology and textual analysis. Experts nonetheless tend to tread warily, mindful of fury directed in recent years at people deemed to have blasphemed Islam's founding document and the Prophet Muhammad.

A scholar in northern Germany writes under the pseudonym of Christoph Luxenberg because, he says, his controversial views on the Quran risk provoking Muslims. He claims that chunks of it were written not in Arabic but in another ancient language, Syriac. The "virgins" promised by the Quran to Islamic martyrs, he asserts, are in fact only "grapes."

Ms. Neuwirth, the Berlin professor now in charge of the Munich archive, rejects the theories of her more radical colleagues, who ride roughshod, she says, over Islamic scholarship. Her aim, she says, isn't to challenge Islam but to "give the Quran the same attention as the Bible." All the same, she adds: "This is a taboo zone."

So she is keeping the research secret - for possibly the next couple of decades - even as she demonstrates that she is not open to unorthodox interpretations of the Koran.

The photos of the old manuscripts will form the foundation of a computer data base that Ms. Neuwirth's team believes will help tease out the history of Islam's founding text. The result, says Michael Marx, the project's research director, could be the first "critical edition" of the Quran -- an attempt to divine what the original text looked like and to explore overlaps with the Bible and other Christian and Jewish literature.

A group of Tunisians has embarked on a parallel mission, but they want to keep it quiet to avoid angering fellow Muslims, says Moncef Ben Abdeljelil, a scholar involved in the venture. "Silence is sometimes best," he says. Afghan authorities last year arrested an official involved in a vernacular translation of the Quran that was condemned as blasphemous. Its editor went into hiding.

Many Christians, too, dislike secular scholars boring into sacred texts, and dismiss challenges to certain Biblical passages. But most accept that the Bible was written by different people at different times, and that it took centuries of winnowing before the Christian canon was fixed in its current form.

Muslims, by contrast, view the Quran as the literal word of God. Questioning the Quran "is like telling a Christian that Jesus was gay," says Abdou Filali-Ansary, a Moroccan scholar.

With the slight difference that writing an article claiming that Jesus was gay will not get you a host of Christians vying to behead you.

More fun examples of Islamic tolerance for secular Koranic scholars:

In the early 1980s, when the archive was still thought to be lost, two German scholars traveled to Yemen to examine and help restore a cache of ancient Quran manuscripts. They, too, took pictures. When they tried to get them out of Yemen, authorities seized them, says Gerd-Rüdiger Puin, one of the scholars. German diplomats finally persuaded Yemen to release most of the photos, he says.

Mr. Puin says the manuscripts suggested to him that the Quran "didn't just fall from heaven" but "has a history." When he said so publicly a decade ago, it stirred rage. "Please ensure that these scholars are not given further access to the documents," read one letter to the Yemen Times. "Allah, help us against our enemies."

Berlin Quran expert Ms. Neuwirth, though widely regarded as respectful of Islamic tradition, got sideswiped by Arab suspicion of Western scholars. She was fired from a teaching post in Jordan, she says, for mentioning a radical revisionist scholar during a lecture in Germany.

Even the Wall Street Journal remains elliptic when discussing the very real dangers of scholars looking critically at the Koran as they have looked at every other holy work. Rather than mention the very real risk of being murdered, the WSJ only says that they can "provoke" and "anger" Muslims - even making a comparison to how Christians feel when confronted with unorthodox interpretations of the New Testament.

Peaceful PalArab weekend

From Ma'an:

Palestinian medical sources on Saturday announced that the body of a Palestinian resident of Ash-Shati' refugee camp west of Gaza City, has been found.

Mu'awiya Hassanein, the director of ambulance and emergency services in the Palestinian health ministry said thirty-three-year-old Sami Ar-Rawwagh was shot dead and his body was found in a Bedouin village in the northern Gaza Strip.

Palestine Press Agency mentions that this was the second body found in a few hours:

It is noteworthy that the citizen is the second Alrwag found dead a few hours in the Gaza Strip, where the citizen found Shaaban Dughmosh dead and lying in the hole Deek central sector this morning. "

Dughmosh was a police officer.

There was also a clan clash in the West Bank, injuring 5.

The American School in Gaza was attacked again, rooms ransacked, windows smashed and its computers stolen.

A group called Army of Believers-al-Qaida in Palestine claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack and accused the school of corrupting Palestinian teenagers.

A leaflet issued by the hitherto unknown group said: "Polytheists and enemies of Islam are pursuing each day their work to destroy our youths, who are falling by the dozens into the swamps of vice and moral decadence. That is why we must re-establish the truth and warn everyone who might try to corrupt our youths or try to open such places of corruption."

The previous attack was claimed by another al-Qaida-inspired group called Warriors of Jerusalem. It said the attack, which took place hours before Bush's meeting in Ramallah with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, was aimed at wiping out the "last symbol of US presence in the Gaza Strip."

The "Al Qaeda" group leader was interviewed by Palestine Press Agency (autotranslated):

And talked about the emergence of organization in the Gaza Strip and said: If we look at the situation in Palestine, and read the history of movements and organizations that have, we note the existence of factions patriotic and nationalistic Then came the National Islamic factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and these Islamic and national factions and not purely Islamic, and this is the difference between us and them.

He said: "We come purely Islamic perspective, and we consider ourselves part of the Muslims throughout the world, whether in America or India or China, and if Palestine is liberated Our jihad is continuing and that the will of God proceeded on the ground.

He added: "We are working without any names or ranks.

The Army describes the same trend Islamic nation struggling, which aims to establish the rule of Allah on earth and liberate the land of Isra and Mi'raaj, and take the approach of jihad for the advancement of the nation Zlha and underdevelopment.

The literature emphasizes that the current army aims to transfer the community of democratic and secular infidel to Islam, through the revival of the spirit of Islamic law and its application to the doctrine of Islam, worship and the life.

The literature indicates that the nation is an army of Muslims embrace Islamic project to meet the project western crusade in the world, based on the revival of Jihad, and to return the nation to the belief Ancestors based on the book year.

Of course, the fact that Gaza nutcases are running around blasting Hamas and Islamic Jihad for not being dedicated enough to worldwide Jihad must be blamed on Israel somehow.

The 2008 Palestinian Arab self-death count rises to 6.

Palestinian Police Phunnies XXX

The bloated Palestinian Arab security forces find a stolen car in their newfound love of law and order. So what do they do with it?

1. Return it to its original owner, if he is in the territories, or return it to Israel if it is from there?
2. Sell it at auction to help add money to the coffers of the PA?
3. Steal it to use it themselves?
4. Burn it?

Palestinian security officers stand next to a burning car they set on fire in the northern West Bank village of Anin, Thursday, Jan 10, 2008. The car, which was reportedly stolen, was set on fire as part of a police law-and-order campaign.
(AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)

It is a testament to Palestinian Arab poverty that they can afford to burn vehicles.

Two Arabs write that it is up to the Arabs to make peace

MEMRI offers a tiny spark of hope, as it translates essays by two liberal Arabs who have the extraordinarily rare ability to think in terms of peace. Excerpts:

Mamoun Fandy: 99% of the Cards are In the Arabs' Hand

"And perhaps the time has come for the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, to seriously consider Israel's strategic apprehensions. The Israeli question on the nature of the Palestinian state is a logical and legitimate question. Will this state add stability to the region, or add instability? The Gaza model says that it [will be] a state that in no way participates in regional stability, whereas the West Bank model indicates that the newborn state will move the region towards stability...

"As I said earlier, visits by heads of state do not produce immediate results. But George Bush is a practical man, and he managed to impose the Annapolis document on the Palestinians and the Israelis - even though the two sides announced, before the conference, that they had not reached agreement.

"The Arabs can make Bush's visit into an historic visit by focusing on working with the pragmatic side of the president's personality, in place of the old Arab way, which wastes the time allotted for the meetings by entering into the labyrinthine history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and by grumbling about a 'double standard.'

"The Arabs hold the playing cards today. The question is: Will they play them well?"

Kamal Gabriel: The Cultural Elites Have an Allergy to 'Normalization with the Zionist Enemy'

"Many are the allergic diseases from which our audacious cultural elites suffer... but the greatest and harshest allergic symptom among the heroes of the microphone, the satellite channel, the car bomb, and the explosives belt is the allergy to 'normalization with the Zionist enemy'...

"The [purported] traitors to the 'unchanging national principles,' and the [so-called] agents of colonialism, think that 'normalization' is a goal for which all peoples should strive, and that wars and conflicts among all the nations of the earth must necessarily come to an end - and this end is always a return to peace and the reign of normal conditions - i.e. the reign of 'normalization.'

"As for the heroes and mujahideen of pan-Arabism and political Islamism, they don't reject peace and normalization in essence or in principle; they just make it conditional upon the preservation of 'our nation's unchanging principles.'

"While [the expression] 'our nation's unchanging principles' is fine and elegant, these principles are nothing more than the demand for 'destroying the rapacious Zionist entity' and turning Israel, through the return of all of the refugees, into one great democratic Islamic Palestinian mass republic...

"[According to these pan-Arabists and Islamists,] if the Zionist enemy and its supporters want peace, there is no need for negotiations and conferences... They need to accept 'our nation's unchanging principles' in a state of subjection, and let them return to us the land occupied since 1967, and allow the entry of 5 million Palestinian refugees into the land occupied in 1948. Only then can we consider the issue of normalization with them, and especially with the noble promises conferred by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, [i.e.] that it would allow Jews who immigrated [to Israel] to return whence they came without slaughtering them like sheep - despite the fact that they are basically the descendants of apes and pigs. And the Jews who were originally from Palestine will enjoy the excellent humane treatment that minorities enjoy in the other Arab regions!"

"How can he prove that the Arab regimes are capable of implementing peace and popular normalization when, with the president of the Palestinian Authority hardly controlling his own living quarters, the Palestinian street is contested by radical organizations of every kind... And this is the case also with the fighting masses in many Arab capitals...

"How can our negotiators give guarantees that normalization will continue, given that this is contingent on a culture of peace that doesn't exist. It is not absent just between the Arabs and the perfidious Zionist enemy; it is fundamentally absent among the internal components of the Arab countries. These countries have proven, throughout the years, their abject failure to normalize relations with their own minorities...So who will take seriously their promises of peace and normalization with the Jews, the enemies of Allah?

"The promise of normalization is like a promise of operations by armed forces whose arms have not yet been purchased, and who have not been mobilized or trained for combat...

"But in fact it is worse than that. The mission of preparing the capability and the readiness for peace does not just depend on a campaign of spreading the culture of peace; it demands first uprooting the culture of hostility and hatred that we have had an unparalleled success in planting in the region, and which has produced for us the blessed yield of internecine fighting in more than one Arab country.

"The problem with the normalization card is that it is like a check that doesn't have the funds to cover it. In order for it to be accepted, funds need to be put behind it, and it needs to be stamped with an 'acceptable for payment' stamp.

"[This stamp is] the spreading of the culture of peace, first of all among our peoples. We need to start practically putting it into practice long before we reap the fruits, as that is the nature of cultural transformations. [We need to do this] in order to convince the Israeli people that we have truly decided to accept it among us, and that the only thing standing between it and final peace is just the politicians sitting down together and signing peace agreements. The Israeli people could then force its government to submit to the requisites for peace. I say 'could,' since it is also possible that we will offer peace without receiving the minimum of our legitimate demands, in which case our governments would refrain from signing a final peace, and we would retreat from the path of normalization..."

This link came from Marty Peretz at TNR, whose article is worth reading:

Yet no one will promise -- let alone assure -- that when (and if) Israel withdraws from 90% or 96% of the West Bank the land it has left will not be turned into platforms from which rockets and missiles are launched against the population centers of the Jewish state...and against strategic positions like Ben Gurion International Airport. What then will the next American president or the one after counsel the Israelis to give up?

The fact is that the great impediment to peace with Israel is the fanatic obstinacy of the Palestinians. Does anyone have a strategy for negotiating with that?