Thomas Friedman's "Petropolitics"

The NYT's Thomas Friedman, who is a bit too egocentric for my tastes, mentions something interesting in the middle of a much longer article about the necessity of the US to be a leader in energy conservation and alternate energy (something I've been talking about for years):

No, I don’t want to bankrupt Saudi Arabia or trigger an Islamist revolt there. Its leadership is more moderate and pro-Western than its people. But the way the Saudi ruling family has bought off its religious establishment, in order to stay in power, is not healthy. Cutting the price of oil in half would help change that. In the 1990s, dwindling oil income sparked a Saudi debate about less Koran and more science in Saudi schools, even experimentation with local elections. But the recent oil windfall has stilled all talk of reform.

That is because of what I call the First Law of Petropolitics: The price of oil and the pace of freedom always move in opposite directions in states that are highly dependent on oil exports for their income and have weak institutions or outright authoritarian governments. And this is another reason that green has become geostrategic. Soaring oil prices are poisoning the international system by strengthening antidemocratic regimes around the globe.

Look what’s happened: We thought the fall of the Berlin Wall was going to unleash an unstoppable tide of free markets and free people, and for about a decade it did just that. But those years coincided with oil in the $10-to-$30-a-barrel range. As the price of oil surged into the $30-to-$70 range in the early 2000s, it triggered a countertide — a tide of petroauthoritarianism — manifested in Russia, Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Egypt, Chad, Angola, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. The elected or self-appointed elites running these states have used their oil windfalls to ensconce themselves in power, buy off opponents and counter the fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall tide. If we continue to finance them with our oil purchases, they will reshape the world in their image, around Putin-like values.

You can illustrate the First Law of Petropolitics with a simple graph. On one line chart the price of oil from 1979 to the present; on another line chart the Freedom House or Fraser Institute freedom indexes for Russia, Nigeria, Iran and Venezuela for the same years. When you put these two lines on the same graph you see something striking: the price of oil and the pace of freedom are inversely correlated. As oil prices went down in the early 1990s, competition, transparency, political participation and accountability of those in office all tended to go up in these countries — as measured by free elections held, newspapers opened, reformers elected, economic reform projects started and companies privatized. That’s because their petroauthoritarian regimes had to open themselves to foreign investment and educate and empower their people more in order to earn income. But as oil prices went up around 2000, free speech, free press, fair elections and freedom to form political parties and NGOs all eroded in these countries.

The motto of the American Revolution was “no taxation without representation.” The motto of the petroauthoritarians is “no representation without taxation”: If I don’t have to tax you, because I can get all the money I need from oil wells, I don’t have to listen to you.

It is no accident that when oil prices were low in the 1990s, Iran elected a reformist Parliament and a president who called for a “dialogue of civilizations.” And when oil prices soared to $70 a barrel, Iran’s conservatives pushed out the reformers and ensconced a president who says the Holocaust is a myth. (I promise you, if oil prices drop to $25 a barrel, the Holocaust won’t be a myth anymore.) And it is no accident that the first Arab Gulf state to start running out of oil, Bahrain, is also the first Arab Gulf state to have held a free and fair election in which women could run and vote, the first Arab Gulf state to overhaul its labor laws to make more of its own people employable and the first Arab Gulf state to sign a free-trade agreement with America.

People change when they have to — not when we tell them to — and falling oil prices make them have to. That is why if we are looking for a Plan B for Iraq — a way of pressing for political reform in the Middle East without going to war again — there is no better tool than bringing down the price of oil. When it comes to fostering democracy among petroauthoritarians, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a neocon or a radical lib. If you’re not also a Geo-Green, you won’t succeed.

There is some truth here, but Friedman pointedly tries to avoid making this an Arab issue and tries to generalize it to any authoritarian regime heavily dependent on oil.

Obviously if dictatorships have the ability to act without worrying about the consequences, they will be emboldened to act in ways that will keep them in power.

But there is a flip-side to his observation that he doesn't want to mention: when enlightened societies become richer, their citizens and other nations benefit. The US is not only the richest nation but also the most generous, and this is a direct result of being built with ingrained ideals of freedom and democracy. Israel's economic might pays dividends to not only her citizens but also to the entire world in the areas of scientific research, help during disasters and anti-terror training.

Friedman is specifically applying this "rule" to oil-rich nations but it would apply to any nation with a fundamentally immoral outlook and access to any valuable resource.

Oil isn't the problem; it is the underlying mindset of the entire nation that encourages corruption.

Egypt and Jordan may indeed have been more amenable to signing a peace agreement with Israel because they do not have huge oil reserves, but the point is that acting in peaceful ways goes against their very nature and only economic incentives could push them into reluctantly abandoning their pan-Arab, anti-Israel "principles." While this is probably better than no peace at all, one must remember that it was not based on a natural longing for peaceful co-existence with their neighbor, but rather on external economic factors. This is starkly apparent in that Egypt is literally being paid off by the US to the tune of billions of dollars a year just to maintain the paper peace treaty with Israel.

So while I agree that economics, and specifically energy economics, is a hugely important vector in minimizing tyranny, it is fundamentally cosmetic and coerced. These societies, and specifically those that are based on Arab/Muslim honor/pride ideas, are inherently against transparency in leadership, freedom, equal rights and democratic principles and

Economic coercion is a tool but it will not fix the real problems they have.

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Background information: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

There was a brief kerfuffle over the weekend when the Vatican threatened to boycott a Holocaust ceremony in Israel because they were upset that Yad Vashem captioned a picture of Pope Pius XII with the words "even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest." Yad Vashem stands by its research, and invited the Vatican to open its archives if it had evidence to the contrary.

A very good and fair article about Pius' role during the Holocaust can be seen at the Jewish Virtual Library. While there are some of accounts showing that the Pope did save a number of Jews and that the Vatican itself sheltered 477 Jews, the overwhelming evidence is that he refused to do anything to save the Jews that he clearly knew were being systematically murdered until it was obvious that the Allies were going to win the war. Even then his actions were half-hearted and seemed to be more motivated by politics than by any true concern over human beings being butchered. Read the whole thing.

Interestingly, a joint Catholic/Jewish commission appointed by the Vatican itself issued its own preliminary report on Pius' actions in 2000 showed clearly that the Pope was aware of Nazi atrocities as early as 1941. The report poses a series of questions that the Vatican apparently failed to answer and the Commission itself disbanded shortly thereafter. Two of the unanswered questions were:

14. On several occasions Konrad von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin, had vainly appealed to the Pope to protest specific Nazi actions, including those directed at the Jews. On 17 January 1941 he wrote to Pius XII, noting that "Your Holiness is certainly informed about the situation of the Jews in Germany and the neighboring countries. I wish to mention that I have been asked both from the Catholic and Protestant side if the Holy See could not do something on this subject, issue an appeal in favor of these unfortunates.²⁷" This was a direct appeal to the Pope, which bypassed the nuncio. What impression did von Preysing's words make on Pius XII; what discussions if any, took place about making such a public appeal as the German bishop requested, and was any further information about Nazi anti-Jewish policy sought?

10. At the end of August 1942, the Greek Catholic Metropolitan of Lviv (Lwow), Andrzeyj Szeptyckyj, wrote to the Pope and described with stark clarity the atrocities and mass murder being carried out against the Jews and the local population.²⁴ No other high-ranking Catholic Churchman, to the best of our knowledge, provided such direct eye-witness testimony and expressed concern for Jews qua Jews (and as primary targets of German bestiality) in the same way. Moreover, he indicated to the Pope that he had protested to Himmler himself. Finally, he publicly denounced the massacres of Jews in circumstances in which some Ukrainian Catholics themselves were collaborating with the Germans in these murders. Is there evidence of a discussion or a reply to Szeptyckyj's plea? (In a separate citation: "The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to 'bear adversity with serene patience.'⁽⁸⁾)

A separate chapter of Pius' attitude towards Jews opened after the war, as thousands of Jewish children who had hidden in convents throughout Europe had to be dealt with.

In 2005, the New York Times published a letter that originated in the Vatican instructing Catholic institutions on how to handle requests from Jewish families and institutions to take Jewish children back. A critique of that letter's translation and veracity was printed in Beliefnet.

Even if the critical article cited is 100% accurate, it still shows that there was a concerted effort on the part of Pius' church to stop orphaned children from being taken care of by Jews, and almost certainly from even letting them know that they were Jewish to begin with. Not to take away from the bravery of those who hid these Jewish children, but in the end these children were not to ever know their true heritage.

The Vatican is now going through the process of promoting Pius to sainthood. It is even possible that the Vatican wants to mollify Yad Vashem to help make its case for sainthood.

But by any yardstick, he had the ability to actively appeal for the lives of Jews before millions of them were murdered - and he refused.

This is not how a saint would act.

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British reporters condemn Israel as BBC reporter reported executed

Ya gotta hand it to British leftist journalists - they have a great sense of timing.

The day after the National Union of Journalists called for a far from even-handed boycott of Israeli goods, and in another vote called Israeli actions "savage," a previously unknown terror group in Gaza claimed that they executed BBC reporter Alan Johnston and said a video will be released soon.

The NUJ had nothing to say about their fellow British journalist in their orgy of condemnations. After all, why pretend to be fair when your pre-defined agenda is so much more important? After all, isn't that the underlying premise of British journalism to begin with?

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Christian bookstore bombed in Gaza

From YNet:

Three explosions rocked Gaza City early Sunday, damaging two Internet cafes and a Christian bookstore.

No one was hurt and no group claimed responsibility for the blasts, which took place around 3 a.m. local time, Palestinian security officials said.

Heavy external damage was visible at the three stores. At the bookstore, which is funded by American Protestants and known as the Bible Society, a number of books were also burned in the explosion.

This is not the first time that the Bible Society has been threatened or bombed. It is a proselytizing group.

The irony is, as documented by Michael Oren in his book about America's history in the Middle East, that the pro-Arab tilt of the State Department is a result of the early American Protestant missionary involvement there as their children gravitated towards jobs at State. Now the spiritual descendants of the original missionaries are reaping the results of the influence of their forefathers.

A somewhat more direct irony is that one of the activities of the Society has been:

Visiting Palestinian injured during the Intifada uprising, and helping them with moral and financial support.

One wonders if this organization distinguishes between innocent victims and terrorists themselves when supporting them financially. Could some of the "victims" paid by the PBS have been behind this bombing?

On another note, I wonder how long it will take for thousands of enraged Christians worldwide to violently protest the purposeful desecration of many Christian Bibles.

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Iranian nuclear accident watch

Here's the earthquake activity in Iran for just the past few days:

Quake jolts southern Iran Thursday April 12, 2007
Shiraz, Fars prov, April 12, IRNA
Iran-Quakes-South
There are no reports of any casualty or damage to property caused by the quake.

Quake hits southeastern Iranian city Thursday April 12, 2007
Iran-Quake
The seismological base of the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University registered the quake at 16:29 hours local time (12:59 GMT).
The quake was epicentered in an area measuring 56.09 degrees in longitude and 32.17 degrees in latitude, the report added.

Quake jolts southeastern Iranian city Saturday, April 14, 2007
Iran-Quake
The seismological base of the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University registered the quake at 16:36 hours local time (1306 GMT).
The quake was epicentered in an area measuring 57.35 degrees in longitude and 30.73 degrees in latitude, the report added.

Quake hits southwestern city Sunday April 15, 2007
Iran-Qal'e Khajeh-Quake
The seismological base of the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University registered the quake at 07:26 hours local time (0356 GMT).
The quake was epicentered in an area measuring 49.44 degrees in longitude and 32.16 degrees in latitude, the report added.

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More proof of UN worthlessness

On Saturday, Mahmoud Abbas met with the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy.

According to Wafa (Arabic only):

Ms. Coomaraswamy was pleased to hear about a deal to exchange prisoners, and that the deal would include the release of prisoners of children.

She added, "I am also happy to hear from Mr. President and his commitment to promoting the culture of peace among children and the development of sports activities."

She said : "Peace is the most important thing at this moment, we in the United Nations support the Palestinian president in his efforts to bring peace to this region."

A small reminder of the great efforts that Mahmoud Abbas has undertaken to promoting a culture of peace among Palestinian Arab children: (all examples from Palestinian Media Watch):

• Mohammed Al-Dura music video includes
  

  Narrator: "How sweet is the fragrance of the shahids [people who have died for Allah]. How sweet is the fragrance of the earth. Tts thirst quenched by the gush of blood flowing from the youthful body. How sweet is the fragrance of the earth."

  Vocalist: "The boy cried, 'O father, 'til we meet, O father, 'til we meet, 'til we meet, father, 'til we meet. I will go with no fear and without crying. How sweet is the fragrance of the shahids. I will go, father, to my place in heaven. How sweet is the fragrance of the shahids. O father, 'til we meet, O father, 'til we meet."
  [PATV 2000-2003, and PATV June 28-29, 2006]

• Interview with an 11-year old girl on PATV:

  Interviewer: You described Shahada as something beautiful. Do you think it is beautiful?

  Walla: Shahada is a very beautiful thing. Everyone yearns for Shahada. What could be better than going to paradise?

  Interviewer: What is better, peace and full rights for the Palestinian people or Shahada?

  Walla: Shahada. I will achieve my rights after becoming a shahid. We won't stay children forever.

• PATV February 2006:
  "Daddy brought me a present
  A machine gun and a rifle
  When I am big I will join the liberation army
  The liberation army has taught us
  How to liberate our homeland"
  [PA TV, February 26, 2006]

• Tarashibo, a talking chicken:
  
  Girl: If a boy comes in front of your house, where a tree is planted, and cuts it down, what would you do?

  Tarabisho: I have two trees in front of my house.

  Girl: If a little boy cuts them down, what will you do to him?

  Tarabisho: What will I do to him? I'll fight him and make a big riot! I'll call the whole world and make a riot! I'll bring AK-47s and the whole world. I'll commit a massacre in front of the house.
  [PA TV, October 22, 2004]

This is all PA TV, made mostly under Fatah leadership (even after Hamas was voted into power, the PA TV remained pro-Fatah.)

The UN representative had a golden opportunity to pressure Abbas to do something about inciting children to war, and instead she praises him as teaching them about peace.

Once again, the UN is shown to be a worthless organization on every level.

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Who are those masked men? Terror webpage banner gallery

See if you can see all the things these have in common.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (Fatah) website:


Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas):


Al-Quds Brigades (Islamic Jihad):


Yup - they all feature those scary ski masks!

Just like these members of the "special forces" that were training today in Gaza:


Notice the liberal use of jungle camouflage - on a beach. You can hardly see them.

But nothing beats these Fatah terrorists, who are so intent on covering their faces while they wear their faek suicide bomb belts that they don't even bother with holes for their eyes:


Nothing says "I'm proud of who I am and what I do" like covering your face in public.

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Want some refreshing Zionist MelonAIDS?

Not dyslexic lemonade, but only the latest insane rumor going around Saudi Arabia:

"Beware of Israeli melons infected with AIDS arriving in Saudi Arabia!" is the latest rumor being spread throughout Saudi Arabia like a wildfire.

An SMS message being sent around the country this week said, "The Saudi Interior Ministry warns its citizens of a truck loaded with AIDS infected melons that Israel brought into the country via a 'ground corridor.'"

The Interior Minister's spokesman General Mansour al Turki responded to news of the message and made it clear to a-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper that the Ministry "did not issue any such announcement. This is just a rumor."

The rumor, despite being denied several times, has gained so much steam in the Arab world that it made it to the front page of one of the most important Arabic language newspapers.

But is it so unreasonable when Jews are "known" to gouge out Arab kids' eyes for transplants, fly poison balloons over Lebanon, and create a virus that only attacks Arabs?

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Ba'al and the Palestinian Arabs

Commenter ER mentioned a strange chapter of PalArab history that I was unaware of.

Palestinian Arabs, especially their terror leader Arafat, have always claimed that today's PalArabs are descendants of the ancient Canaanites. Just as the PalArabs want to deny Jewish history they also have a habit of making up their own. While the Canaanite claim is of course nonsense (Canaanites were not Arab,) a funny episode occurred as a result.

Embracing their fake Canaanite origins, the PA issued a postage stamp honoring an ancient Canaanite god, known as Ba'al.

There were in fact a number of local dieties named Ba'al, but the characteristics of the Ba'al worshipers are perhaps appropriate for today's Palestinian Arab death cult.

Ba'al Hammoun and Ba'al of Moloch were said to sacrifice their children. This could be why Ba'al was such an attractive symbol to Arafat, as the PalArab tradition of sacrificing their own children in the name of Jihad is entrenched if not quite as ancient.

Ba'al Peor, in Jewish tradition, was worshipped via excrement, also an appropriate symbol for a people who prefer to use sewage pipes to create rockets.

Interestingly, the Italian Muslim Association known to be pro-Israel issued a fatwa against any Muslim owning or using this stamp. What is amazing is that no principled Arab Muslim issued any similar fatwa as far as I can tell, which makes it appear as if Muslim religious law is more concerned about politics than religion. It cannot be denied that Islam would consider Ba'al as a false god and the sin of blasphemy is deserving of death in Islamic law.

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18 weeks in a row

For the 18th consecutive week, according to PCHR statistics and my own, more Palestinian Arabs have been violently killed by their own actions than by Israeli actions.

This week was close, though - from last Thursday to Wednesday of this week, PCHR reports 2 killed and 3 dying from previous wounds that they blame on Israel. I count 6 killed in PalArab self-violence.

Ironically, the PalArab media still refers to this time period after the Mecca agreement between Fatah and Hamas as "the calm." While most of the deaths this week were not from Fatah/Hamas fighting, there still were some non-fatal clashes between them this week.

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Another "honor killing" in Gaza

From PCHR:

PCHR’s preliminary investigation indicates that at approximately 1:00 on Thursday, 12 April 2007, medical sources in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City announced the death of Amna Maher Kalloub (19) from Beach Camp in Gaza City. She died of a serious bullet wound to the head sustained at approximately 10:15 on Monday, 9 April 2007. According to Police investigations, her brother shot her in what is known as an “honor” killing.

I could not find any mention of this murder in any Palestinian Arab newspaper, English or Arabic.

The PalArab self-death count is now at 171 for 2007.

UPDATE: Unidentified body found buried off central Gaza coast. It appears that he was killed a few days ago. (Also another video store in Gaza bombed.) 172.

UPDATE 2: Fatah terrorist killed by those unknown gunmen, and another dude was killed as well in Khan Younis. 174.

UPDATE 3: In a cryptic autotranslated article that only appeared on Maan Arabic, a story is told of a murder that took place on April 6. Unfortunately, Google translates rather than transliterates his name, so he is called "citizenship ostrich Fahmi spring." But since I cannot find anyone murdered in that time frame in the West Bank, it seems to be another one for the books. 175. (Another update: It was a woman.)

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Heroism, Islamic Jihad style

The crushing self-image that PalArab terrorists have of themselves can be seen in how low they set their expectations.

Here's a story from Arutz-7 today:

Israelis who drove past Tekoa on Thursday afternoon reported hearing gunfire. None of the drivers were injured. IDF soldiers are scanning the area.

The army says the two cars were damaged. It is unclear at this time if the damage was caused by bullets or by rocks.

And here is the Islamic Jihad press release shown on the Saraya.ps website, the official website of the Al-Quds Brigades:(autotranslated)

Military statement issued by the Al-Quds Brigades

The targeting a convoy of cars settlers east of Tekoa East Bethlehem

Praising God and God declared Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, claimed responsibility for today's attack on the car near the settlement of the settlers "Tekoa" east of the city of Bethlehem.

In this today, Thursday, approved the first 24 spring 1428 H, approved April 12, 2007, managed a group of Al-Quds Brigades mujahid attack from automatic weapons on cars east of Tekoa settlers east of the town of Bethlehem.

Zionist sources acknowledged as one of the cars back injury, alleging lack of casualties among the herds of settlers.

We in the Al-Quds Brigades declare our responsibility for this heroic operation, which comes in the framework of the series of natural reply to the continuous Zionist aggression against our people in the West Bank territories, and stress the choice of resistance and struggle till the liberation of the entire territory of Palestine.

...God is great victory of the mujahideen ... Shame on the Zionists and the criminals

It is a Jihad, Jihad .. Victory or martyrdom

They managed to shoot a car and this is worthy of a hugely self-congratulatory press release?

Is there any greater evidence that the terrorists have reached the depths of low self-esteem after being so spectacularly unsuccessful at killing Jews as they would like? Even they admit that Israel's active targeting of them is making their attempts to kill Israelis more difficult.

Reading between the lines, one can see that Israel's policies of aggressively going after terrorists is paying off every day.

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Goodwill gestures never work with Arabs

Today, an Arab member of Knesset suggested that Israel release every Israeli-Arab terrorist in jail - some 150 of them - as this move would "open a new page in Israeli-Arab relations."

On Tuesday,

Jordan's King Abdullah II urged Israel to end its occupation of Arab land to guarantee peaceful coexistence with the world's Muslims. "Israel, the European states and the United States should realize that the Palestinian issue does not only concern the Palestinians but also has the sympathy of all Muslims from Indonesia to the Maghreb states," the king said in an interview with AFP. "If Israel wants to coexist with more than a billion Muslims, it should end its occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands."

In both cases the Arabs are advocating Israel make unilateral concessions to gain the goodwill of the Arab world and therefore peace will result.

Sounds great, right?

Except for the fact that pretty much every single concession Israel made in the past for peace has been met with more hatred and terror, not less.

• Israel withdrew from large areas of the West Bank after Oslo - and was rewarded with a huge terror infrastructure being built there.
• Israel withdrew from Lebanon behind UN-drawn boundaries - and was rewarded with a more powerful Hezbollah that turned southern Lebanon into a terror statelet.
• Israel withdrew from Gaza - and was rewarded with a terrorist haven that attracts Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda as well as many other homegrown Palestinian Arab terror groups.
• Israel unilaterally stopped essentially all operations in Gaza for four months - and was rewarded with hundreds of rockets being sent almost daily into Israel.
• Israel has released thousands from prison in the past for very few abducted Israelis - and was rewarded with more terror, more kidnappings, and 20%-25% of the released terrorists reverting to terror again.

So, "goodwill gestures" simply do not work.

They are treated not as confidence-building measures, but rather as signs of weakness that can then be exploited.

Which means that Arabs asking for "goodwill gestures" do not plan to reciprocate in the least. Even King Abdullah's statement is a joke - he knows as well as anyone that most of the billion Muslims he is backhandedly threatening Israel with will not accept Israel even within the Green Line. And the 10% or 25% or whatever that may feel slightly better about Israel after such a suicidal move will revert to their hate as soon as Palestinian Arabs find another al-Dura or Koran desecration or wild rumor to rile up the Arab street against Israel again.

The romantic Western notion of how good deeds will inevitably follow good deeds simply does not apply in this region of the world, and it is always a fatal error to ascribe Western notions of reciprocity to Arabs.

Let's see some real goodwill on the part of the Arabs - real concessions. Because the fact is, only Israel will respond to goodwill gestures favorably.

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Let's see how those anti-Israel boycotts are doing

From Globes:

The IMF has raised its growth outlook for Israel by 0.3 percentage points in a new World Economic Outlook report published today, on the eve of the World Bank Group and IMF 2007 Annual Meeting. ...It now predicts 4.8% growth in 2007, and 4.2% growth in 2008. The IMF’s growth forecast for Israel is one of the highest for developed countries; the IMF categorizes Israel as such. The IMF predicts higher growth rates in 2007 for Hong Kong and Singapore, at 5.5% each, and for Ireland, at 5%. It predicts 4.4% growth for South Korean, 2.9% growth for the UK, 2.3% for Japan, 2.2% for the US, and 1.8% for Germany. The IMF also predicts 0.1% deflation for Israel this year; the only developed country for which it predicts this. The IMF predicts that Israel’s unemployment rate will fall to 7.5% of the civilian labor force in 2007 and 7.2% in 2008, down from 9% in 2005 and 8.4% in 2006.

I've mentioned before how when Arab nations enforced a boycott against Palestinian Jews in 1946 it backfired spectacularly. One would think that they and their Jew-hating colleagues would learn by now.

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PalArab news accidentally shows Israeli sensitivity to Arabs

The Ma'an News headline says:

Israeli soldiers force women wearing 'niqab' to reveal their faces at Huwwara checkpoint

Sounds like an insult to Islamic law is being perpetrated! Sounds like there's going to be some rioting over Islamic women's "honor!"

But then the story actually gives some details:

Nablus - Salfit - Ma'an - The Israeli female soldiers at the Huwwara checkpoint, south of Nablus city in the north of the occupied West Bank, intend to search women wearing the face veil, the 'niqab', who wish to pass through the checkpoint.

One of the women wearing niqab told our Nablus correspondent, "The women soldiers asked the women in niqab for their identity cards and detained them to one side."

They added that the female soldiers forced every woman wearing niqab to enter a special room near the checkpoint where they were body-searched.

The female soldiers asked the veiled women to uncover their faces and lift their clothes to reveal their abdomens while the female soldier stays outside the room and gives orders through a small opening in the door of the small room.

So is there any Islamic law against Islamic women being seen by other women? Obviously not. Is this any worse than what happens at airports every day? Obviously not.

So why exactly is this a news story? Unless it is to show how the monstrous Zionists are bending over backwards to show cultural sensitivity towards those who would love to see them all dead.

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A true, religious, moderate Muslim leader

Reading this, one can almost have hope.

BY BRET STEPHENS
JAKARTA, Indonesia--Suppose for a moment that the single most influential religious leader in the Muslim world openly says "I am for Israel." Suppose he believes not only in democracy but in the liberalism of America's founding fathers. Suppose that, unlike so many self-described moderate Muslims who say one thing in English and another in their native language, his message never alters. Suppose this, and you might feel as if you've descended into Neocon Neverland.

In fact, you have arrived in Jakarta and are sitting in the small office of an almost totally blind man of 66 named Abdurrahman Wahid. A former president of Indonesia, he is the spiritual leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), an Islamic organization of some 40 million members. Indonesians know him universally as Gus Dur, a title of affection and respect for this descendant of Javanese kings. In the U.S. and Europe he is barely spoken of at all--which is both odd and unfortunate, seeing as he is easily the most important ally the West has in the ideological struggle against Islamic radicalism.

Conversation begins with some old memories. In the early 1960s, Mr. Wahid, whose paternal grandfather founded the NU in 1926 and whose father was Indonesia's first minister of religious affairs, won a scholarship to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, which for 1,000 years had been Sunni Islam's premier institution of higher learning. Mr. Wahid hated it.

"These old sheikhs only let me study Islam's traditional surras in the old way, which was rote memorization," he recalls, speaking in the excellent English he learned as a young man listening to the BBC and Voice of America. "Before long I was fed up. So I spent my time reading books from the USIS [United States Information Service], the Egyptian National Library, and at the cinema. I used to watch three, four movies a day."

As Mr. Wahid saw it, the basic problem with Al-Azhar was that the state interfered in its affairs and demanded intellectual conformity--a lesson he carries with him to the present day. In 1966 he left Cairo for Baghdad University, where he encountered much the same thing: "The teaching [suffered from] conventionalism. You were not allowed to go your own way."

Here Mr. Wahid digresses into Islamic history. "In the second century of Islam, the Imam al-Shafi'i began remodeling the religion," he says. "He put into place the mechanism of understanding everything through law [Shariah]. Now people can't talk about that anymore. We cannot attack al-Shafi'i."

The point is crucial to Mr. Wahid's understanding of Islam as being something broader, deeper and better than the tradition-bound view of life imposed by traditional schools of Islamic law (all the more striking because Mr. Wahid is himself a leading theologian of the Shafi'i school). It is equally crucial to Mr. Wahid's politics, not to mention his relaxed approach to social issues.

"The globalization of ethics is always frightening to people, particularly Islamic radicals," he says in reference to a question about the so-called pornoaksi legislation. For the past three years Indonesian politics have been roiled by an Islamist attempt to label anything they deem sexually arousing to be a form of "porno-action." Mr. Wahid sees this as an assault on pancasila, Indonesia's secularist state philosophy from the time of its founding. He also sees it as an assault on common sense. "Young people like to kiss each other," he says, throwing his hands in the air. "Why not? Just because old people don't do it doesn't mean it's wrong."

Mr. Wahid is equally relaxed about some of the controversies that have recently erupted between Muslims and the West. Pope Benedict's Regensburg speech from last September was "a good speech, though as usual he pointed to the wrong times and the wrong cases." As for the furor over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, he asks "why should we be angry?" And he dismisses Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the al-Jazeera preacher who helped incite the cartoon riots, as an "angry, conventional" thinker.

What really concerns Mr. Wahid is what he sees as the increasingly degraded state of the Muslim mind. That problem is becoming especially acute at Indonesian universities and in the pesantren--the religious boarding schools that graduate hundreds of thousands of students every year. "We are experiencing the shallowing of religion," he says, bemoaning the fact that the boarding schools persist in teaching "conventional"--that word again--Islam.

But Mr. Wahid's critique is not just of formal Islamic education. He also attacks the West's philosophy of positivism, which, he says, "relies too much on the idea of conquering knowledge and mastering scientific principles alone." This purely empirical and essentially soulless view of things, broadly adopted by Indonesia's secular state universities, gives its students a bleak choice: "Either they follow the process or they are outside the process."

As a result, Western-style education in Indonesia has come to represent not just secularism but the negation of religion, to which too many students have responded by embracing fundamentalism. At the University of Indonesia, for example, an estimated three in four students are members or sympathizers of the "Prosperous Justice Party," or PKS, an ultra-radical Islamic party.

This raises the subject of religion and politics. "For us, an Islamic party is not a thing to follow," he says, adding that "religion and morality is tied to person, not a party." To illustrate the point, he observes that religious parties in the Muslim world have more often been the handmaids of dictatorship than democracy. "Whenever governments tried to enforce their institutions they use 'Islamic' people as potential allies." The Front for the Defense of Islam (FPI), a radical vigilante group that uses violent means to suppress "un-Islamic" behavior, was, he observes, originally a creature of the Indonesian military.

So why did Mr. Wahid, as a religious leader, make the choice to go into politics himself? He demurs at the suggestion of choice. "I am against politics, so to speak. In 1984 I tried hard to convince people that the NU should not be in politics." He was overruled by others in the organization, and eventually he founded the Party of National Awakening, or PKB. Yet the party, he insists, is "based on non-Islamic principles," a fact he illustrates by pointing to a nearby aide who is an Indonesian Protestant. "We have to go for plurality, for tolerance."

He also believes that the "only solution" to the challenge of Islamic radicalization in Indonesia is more democracy. But what about the example of Hamas, which came to power through democratic means, and of other groups like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood that would probably do the same if given the chance? Mr. Wahid's answer is to distinguish between what he calls "full democratization" and the "hollow imitation of democracy" that he sees taking place in Indonesia as well as among Arabs in Palestine and Iraq.

"The problem is not personalities, it is institutions," he says. "For the past 250 years the Americans have had not just Jefferson's concept of the rights of the individual but also Alexander Hamilton's belief in a strong state." In order to function properly, democracy requires competent government that can effectively uphold the rule of law. It also requires a broadly understood concept of self-rule, which is missing in too much of the developing world: "Here, ordinary citizens expect the government to do everything for them."

He therefore takes a fairly dim view of Iraq's democratic prospects. "Iraqis understood that Saddam had caused them trouble," and were grateful to be rid of him, he says. "But as for the U.S. concept of democracy, they don't understand it at all." The problem, he adds, goes double in the rest of the Arab world, where, he says, the prevailing view is that being a democracy is an expression of weakness, while being a dictatorship is a sign of strength.

What's needed, in other words, is for countries like Indonesia and Iraq to find a way to combine effective government with a powerful respect for the rights of the citizen. But how one goes about doing that is itself a deeper problem, a problem of culture. "How do we follow the West without [becoming] Westerners? How do you do that? I don't know."

In fact, Mr. Wahid has begun to develop an answer through two organizations he chairs, the Wahid Institute, run by his daughter Yenny, and LibForAll, an Indonesia- and U.S.-based nonprofit run by American C. Holland Taylor, which works to discredit Islamism's ideology of hatred. "It's up to LibForAll to introduce both sides to Muslims; to show that common principles are also the principles of Islam," Mr. Wahid says. "Hundreds of thousands of Muslim youth learn in countries where there is technological modernity. We need to [nurture] the emergence of a new kind of people who think in terms of being modern but still relate to the past."

In fact, that perfectly describes Mr. Wahid, who is keenly aware of his own roots in both Islamic and Javanese traditions. Among his ancestors are the last Hindu-Buddhist king of the Javanese Majapahit dynasty, and Sunan Kalijogo, a Sufi mystic who married Islamic and local traditions and, according to lore, defeated Islamic extremism in the 16th century. Can Mr. Wahid, heir to this venerable tradition, accomplish the same feat? "Right now, the fundamentalists think they're winning," he once told a friend. "But they're going to wake up one day and realize we beat them."

Possibly the most unbelievable part of his website is a joke page, filled with religious humor (some stolen Jewish jokes reworked as Muslim, but still...)

Unlike the Muslims that too many people pin their hopes on (see my comments here,) who generally have much larger numbers of Western followers than Muslim followers, this guy seems like the real deal - someone who can speak about Islam in the Islamic playing field and not be dismissed easily as a heretic or crackpot.

40 million followers is of course only a small percentage of the Muslim world, and he probably has no Arab followers at all, but this is the sort of person who could truly effect change and show the world's Muslims that there is another way to remain Muslim and not have to blindly follow the corrupt, immoral and shortsighted sheikhs and ayatollahs.

(Robert Spencer disagrees, saying that Wahid's views of the religion are so against a literal reading of the Koran as to make him meaningless. But in any religion that has reformed and changed over time there are going to be new ways to adapt the religion and parts that end up being all but ignored, which is effectively what Wahid is doing - and more importantly, succeeding at. If he has millions of followers, that indicates that his message is being accepted as being a valid interpretation of Islam; that is more important than finding Koranic texts that seem to disprove him. Both Christianity and Judaism have source texts that contradict themselves when read literally; this does not stop the religions from continuing on. Similarly, Islam can thrive with a less-literal interpretation of the Koran as long as there are respected leaders espousing it.)

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The next best thing to killing Jews

When Palestinian Arab terrorists get frustrated that they aren't killing as many Jews as they did in the good old days, they sit back and start thinking:

"Jews are smart. Jews like to read. Jews are cultured. Jews are progressive.

"Let's attack all the Palestinian Arab institutions that remind us of Jews!"

And so they do.

In Beit Hanoun one can find the "El-Ata Charitable Society," which offers social and cultural services to people in the area. El-Ata has a library and, today, El-Ata was to open up a new computer lab.

At 1:00 PM, people broke in and burned down the computer lab and library.

Back in February, a theatre and another library in a cultural center was burned down, that time in Jabalia.

What a great society!

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Witness the birth of an Arab lie

On the Hamas website, they report on Israel arresting 19 people connected with a plot to bomb Tel Aviv on Passover:

Zionist sources reported that its forces arrested 19 of Hamas members claiming that they were planning to explode e a car in Om Khalid city ( Tel Aviv).

The implication is that Tel Aviv was built on top of an ancient Arab city named "Om Khalid".

Of course, Tel Aviv was built on land purchased by Jews from Arabs. (See Wikipedia for details.)

A Google of "Om Khalid" found almost nothing. The only hit I saw was from the same Hamas source, where they called Netanya "Om Khalid" as well!

I couldn't find any mention of this Om Khalid in any maps that pre-dated Tel Aviv.

The town or village may be a complete fiction. More likely it is a forgotten hamlet that had nothing to do with Tel Aviv or Netanya.

So we may be in a position to witness exactly how Arab lies about Palestine have started. Just as other lies about Israel become commonly accepted "facts" in time due to Arab repetition, it will be worth looking at how this lie starts and spreads.

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"Destitute" PalArabs lose millions to con man

This story has a little of everything. From YNet:

Gun-battles ravaged Nablus on Tuesday as Palestinian security forces attempted to prevent members of the al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades from seizing property belonging to a local con man who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from dozens of Palestinian families.

The man is reportedly being held in a Palestinian Intelligence facility in Jericho where he is being questioned about his involvement in the alleged crimes.

A senior al-Aqsa source told Ynet that the man, who owns several exclusive auto-dealerships among other businesses, offered his victims lucrative investment deals. The man promised the potential investors they would receive over 10 percent in interest every month in return.

Many Palestinians – including families of members of al-Aqsa – bought into the scheme and gave the man large sums of money. The source told Ynet that his family gave the con man $97,000 and indeed, the next month they received a check for over $107,000.

Word spread quickly throughout Nablus and beyond the city limits, the businessman was heralded as an 'investment genius' and dozens of families rushed to offer him millions upon millions of dollars.

However for over a fortnight no one could locate the man, who had stopped answering phone calls and was nowhere to be found. In response members of Al-Aqsa seized control of homes and businesses owned by the con man, evicted the tenants and assumed ownership of them.

According to the source he himself took control of an auto-dealership, a house and three additional stores. "I don't know if this will compensate us," he said, "my family and the families of three other members gave him almost $500,000, but the dog vanished. We will bring him in and deal with him."

Palestinian security forces tried to prevent the takeover and exchanges of fire broke out between them and the Al-Aqsa gunmen.

When asked how their families were able to recruit such large sums of money at a time when most Palestinians are destitute, the al-Aqsa source said that the families sold their jewelry.

"My brother sold his Mercedes, the women sold their gold and the families spent every last cent they had. Now everything is gone. We are left with real estate we don't know the value of or who it will compensate."

Those poor, starving Palestinian Arabs who are forced to become Al Aqsa terrorists because of their extreme poverty and Israel's oppression were forced to liquidate their luxury cars and huge amounts of jewelry chasing a classic con.

The con man himself owned a luxury car dealership. In the poverty-stricken PA territories.

And now the families lost their gold although they seized his property. They must be really hungry by now as they are forced to drive their old, beat up BMWs to get their UN food handouts.

Here's an idea - sell the real estate to those Jews who are happy to pay double the going rate. A win-win! The only downside is that selling land to Jews is a crime that gets the death penalty. Very progressive, these PalArabs!

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"Boy" electrocutes himself hanging Hamas flag

Sometimes, the autotranslated Arabic cannot be improved upon:

Boy died Sameh Mahmoud Khalilih Raja (17 years) after exposure to electric shock while trying to raise the banner of the Hamas movement, one of the pillars of electricity in the town of Deir al Ghusun north of Tulkarm.

The correspondent quoted security sources as saying that the Boy Khalilih one of the Hamas activists, died instantly when exposed to a high-pressure electric waves on an electric pole in the town of Deir al Ghusun, where the public hospital in the city of Tulkarem lifeless corpse.

This brings the count of PalArabs violently killed by each other (in this case, by their own stupidity) to 163 for this year.

UPDATE: Clan clash! 3 dead. 166. (One more died Tuesday from the Clan Clash - 167.)

UPDATE 2:

Palestinian Preventive Security officer Tahsin Ghalban, 33, has died hours after he was shot by unknown gunmen in east Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources have reported.

168.

UPDATE 3: Clan clash! 2 more dead. 170.

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