Free speech for the intolerant: The anti-Israel rally in London

Some delicious irony at The Guardian, with the usual amount of leftist cluelessness:

By Peter Tatchell

In London, this year's al-Quds demonstration - held last Sunday - had the themes of: "End Child Killing! End Oppression! End Israeli Apartheid!" It was supported by the left-wing Respect Party, 1990 Trust, the Muslim Association of Britain, the Islamic Human Rights Commission, Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Federation of Student Islamic Societies. The post-march Trafalgar Square rally was addressed by the Respect Party MP, George Galloway, and by the former Daily Express journalist, Yvonne Ridley.

As a long-time supporter of justice for the Palestinian people, I decided to join the protest. I am against Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, its divisive Berlin-style wall, its illegal nuclear weapons programme and its often indiscriminate military operations that kill innocent Palestinian civilians.

But I object to the way the al-Quds Day marches invariably hijack the Palestinian cause and use the occasion to also support the tyrannical, Holocaust-denying Iranian regime and its fundamentalist, terrorist offshoots, Hamas and Hizbullah - two organisations that mirror the Israeli disregard for international law, human rights and innocent civilians. Defenders of Hamas and Hizbullah claim that these two movements have popular support. True. So did the Nazis. Hitler won the most votes in the 1933 elections. But that did not make him right or justify his anti-humanitarian policies.

By aligning justice for Palestine with the injustice of the Iranian autocracy, al-Quds Day undermines international sympathy and support for the Palestinian people. While it suits the public relations purposes of the tyrants in Tehran to pose as anti-imperialists and defenders of an oppressed people, Iran's support for Palestine is the kiss of death.

The London al-Quds march was almost exclusively Muslim and fairly devout, judging by the preponderance of hijabs and beards. I joined the marchers, carrying two placards. One with a Palestinian flag and the slogan "Free Palestine", and the other emblazoned with the words: "Oppose the government of Iran, Support the people of Iran."

The latter placard included a photograph of a 16-year-old Iranian girl, Atefeh Rajabi Sahaaleh, who was publicly hanged in 2004 in the city of Neka for "crimes against chastity", after having been sexually abused during her early teenage years. Tehran hanged the female victim of abuse, not the male perpetrators. Then the ayatollahs lied that she was 22, to cover up the fact that they had hanged a minor, contrary to international human rights laws that Iran has signed.

This case of state-sponsored murder is, of course, just one aspect of a much wider pattern of human rights abuses by the Iranian regime, including the arrest and torture of student and trade union activists; the execution of Sunni Muslim leaders and ethnic Arabs and Baluchs; the closure of newspapers and detention without trial of journalists; and the arrest of more than 100,000 women for the crime of dressing "immodestly" (such as letting a few wisps of hair show from under their hijab).

The Iranian regime has all the characteristics of fascism, albeit in a clerical form. Its suppression of human rights is on a par with Franco's Spain, PW Botha's South Africa and Pinochet's Chile. But whereas the latter three dictatorships provoked global protests, Tehran's tyranny elicits mostly silence and inaction from left and liberal opinion. Why the double standards?

As soon as I turned up at the al-Quds demo, I was subjected to a barrage of violent, threatening invective from large sections of the crowd. Some started chanting: "Tatchell is a Zionist, Tatchell is a paedophile. Get out! Get out! Get out!'"

This paedophile slander was accompanied by allied falsehoods that I support "western attacks on Muslim lands" - despite my long-standing opposition to Russia's war in Chechnya, the war in Iraq and plans for a US attack on Iran.

Such lies show the moral depravity of many Islamists, who readily borrow from the tactics of Stalinists and the BNP to smear and discredit anyone who disagrees with them. Indeed, some fundamentalist leaders have admitted that it is morally acceptable for Muslims to lie in order to defeat "infidels" and to advance the Islamist cause.

I was treated to a torrent of hatred all the way from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square. Some of the al-Quds marchers shouted things like: "You are all Zionists and CIA agents. How much money did Bush pay you to come here today?" Others claimed: "Stop posing as a supporter of Palestine. You have never supported Palestine" - malevolently disregarding the fact that I was a founder member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in 1982.

Six of the al-Quds marchers made attempts to physically attack me. It was only police intervention that stopped them.

What I found odd is that the people who abused and attacked me were supposedly ultra-devout Muslims. Yet their manner was more thuggish than pious. Like their Iranian mentors, they no doubt claim to represent true, pure Islam. In my view they behaved in a most un-Islamic and unreligious way; offering very negative, unattractive caricatures of the Islamic faith and the Muslim community.

Many of the marchers appeared to identify with pro-Iranian Shia fundamentalism, which preaches a gospel of hatred and violence against Jews, gay people and even against other Muslims who disagree with their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.

None of my Muslim friends believe this bigoted nonsense, and most Muslims in Britain reject such intolerance. In my prison and asylum work, helping many gay and straight Muslims, I am constantly encouraged by imams who show great compassion and tolerance. They happily work with me, despite my atheism and gayness. This is the kind, gentle face of Islam that never seems to be newsworthy.

A different kind of Muslim predominated last Sunday. Many of the marchers were carrying Hizbullah flags and chanting: "We are all Hizbullah now." When I pointed out that Hizbullah kills innocent Israeli civilians, and endorses the execution of women and gay people who transgress their extremist version of Islam, I was told things like: "That's good. Society has to have order. These punishments are necessary for the good of society."

To Taichell's credit, he recognizes that human rights issues should apply to all. His characterizations of British Muslims appear to be a bit too sunny, as I would guess that most of those who treat him with respect have very little problem with Hamas or Islamic Jihad targeting Israeli civilians. Moreover, the fact that the British leftists who co-sponsored this hatefest did not speak out against physical attacks by the protesters on one of the few non-Muslims marching.

And just imagine - if, in the UK, a die-hard supporter of Palestinian Arabs gets physically attacked in public during a rally with many police around, how safe can Jews feel walking around Trafalgar Square? It appears that Great Britain is replacing a free culture with a fear culture.

This violent, hateful rally did not get any coverage in the mainstream British press, nor was there any condemnation of the sponsors.

Blogger Edgar Davidson was there and mentions:

What amazed me was that, on what should have been a lovely Sunday afternoon for London's tourists and shoppers alike to enjoy the centre of town, the police not only allowed this demonstration but actually closed the whole of Piccadilly and the streets around it for what turned out to be several hours. Anyway, when we got to the demonstrators we held up some Israeli flags; the police told us to put them away (although, to be fair, they did tell us that there was a counter-demonstration we could join). But it is a bit ironic that the Islamafascists are allowed to carry Hizbollah flags and placards inciting terrorism (all funded by a regime that is killing British soldiers in Iraq) but the police would not allow an Israeli flag to be held up for 'fear of inciting them'. I cannot begin to describe how disgusting were the scumbags on this march. Their contempt for Western values and hatred of Israel, was accompanied with a barrage of vicious anti-semitic abuse. Make no mistake this lot (despite the Neturai Karta idiots walking alongside them) were openly calling for death to Jews (not just Israel). They chanted "Kill, kill kill the Jews at us when they saw us with the Israeli flags.

Harry's Place blog shows the counter-demonstration, which was really an anti-Iran demo, not a pro-Israel one.

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The British and the Wall

Yisrael Medad points out that the PalArabs are claiming ownership of the Western Wall and notes the claimed basis for this in international law, from a British commission in 1930 that was established in wake of the 1929 Muslim pogroms against Jews. Read his posting first.

From reading the report, I believe that one of the reasons that the British sided with the Muslims is because the very idea of "ownership" of the holiest place on the planet was so totally repugnant to the rabbis who testified as to its Jewish character:

The Jewish Side do not claim any proprietary right to the Wall. The Jewish Counsel are of opinion that the Wall does not constitute a property in the ordinary sense of that word, the Wall falling under the category of res divinum or res extra commercium. On the basis of that point of view the Jewish Side protest against any and every form of innovation in the structure of the Wall and its immediate surroundings carried out by the Moslems. The Jewish Side have submitted to the Commission a detailed "Note on recent Moslem innovations at the Wailing Wall," which is annexed to this document (Appendix XI). The plaintiffs refer to a pronouncement made by Sheikh Hafez, when he was examined as a witness before the Commission, with reference to the properties dedicated as Waqfs (pages 711-712), to the effect that some learned lawyers and some jurists would say that such property is the property of God while some say that it is the property of nobody. In this connection the Jewish Counsel ask the Commission to accept the above definition which would have the advantage of solving entirely the problem.

In other words, the Jews' intense knowledge of the extreme holiness of the Temple Mount was interpreted by the secular British as an admission of non-ownership, thus strengthening the Muslim case.

The Muslims, on the other hand, had no problem claiming complete ownership:

It is here a question about property which has belonged to the Moslems for many centuries.

Obviously, from a legal perspective the Jewish claim was not the best argument, but it proves beyond a doubt to whom the area is more important.

But interestingly, the current Arab claim that the Wall is theirs under international law based on this document is contradicted by their very own words in the document itself:

The Palestine Arab nation have rejected continually and in every opportunity the British Mandate over Palestine, and therefore they cannot be bound by any arrangement or regulation derived from that. Mandate; nor can they be bound by anything pertaining to what is known as the national home policy. My statement in this direction should not be taken as indicating any departure from that attitude which was adopted by this nation in exercise of its right to determine its own future.

Second: Moslems state that all contentions relative to Moslem sacred places should be dealt with only by competent bodies as prescribed by the Sharia Law. Other bodies can have no jurisdiction whatever by the Sharia Law. Other bodies can have no jurisdiction whatever on these places.

The Muslims, in their arguments before the Commission, already said that they do not consider the Commission to have any legal right to determine anything. It is rather hypocritical for them now to claim that they have the right to the Wall under international law when they themselves explicitly reject that document itself by their own words in this very report.

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"Do what we want or we'll kill you" redux

This seems to be a recurring theme....

From al-(ha)Aretz:

Also Thursday, senior Fatah official and former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia warned that if the upcoming regional peace summit does not yield results, Palestinians are likely to respond with a third, more intensified uprising, Army Radio reported.

"If the talks fail, we can expect a third and much more severe intifada," Qureia, who is also known as Abu Ala, was quoted as saying. Qureia currently heads the Palestinian negotiating team.

He warned that there would likely be heavy bloodshed in the case of failed talks at the summit, which is scheduled to take place in November in Annapolis, Maryland. The Second Intifada began shortly after the Camp David accords in 2000.

This is standard operating procedure for Arabs and Muslims, in venues throughout the world. And when the threats aren't as explicit as this, they are always there - because the West knows that when there's a pissed-off group of Arabs, violence is never far behind.

And when given a choice to pressure the reasonable, compromise-minded Israelis or the blackmailing, terror-threatening, take-it-or-leave it Arabs, is it any wonder that the world chooses to push Israel to make more concessions? Israel's not going to attack the world if it doesn't get its way, and Arabs have already proven that they are more than happy to threaten mass murder - and follow through.

(h/t Eye on the World)

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Today's Walt/Mearsheimer lie

From JPost, on a W/M talk at MIT:

"A critically important issue when talking about America's terrorism problem is the matter of how US support for Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians relates to what happened on September 11," said Mearsheimer, who played the role of attack dog, while Walt set the stage.

Mearsheimer suggested that the notion of payback for injustices suffered by the Palestinians is perhaps the "most powerfully recurrent in [Osama] Bin Laden's speeches," who, he said, had been deeply concerned about the plight of the Palestinians since he was a young man. He said that Bin Laden's concern had been reflected in his public statements throughout the 1990's - "well before 9-11." Citing the 9-11 Commission report, Mearsheimer and Walt argued that Bin Laden wanted to make sure the attackers struck Congress because it is "the most important source of support for Israel in the United States," adding that Bin Laden twice tried to move up the dates of the attacks because of events involving Israel. Mearsheimer and Walt went on to argue that 9-11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences in the United States as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with US foreign policy favoring Israel. "Its hard to imagine more compelling evidence of the role US support for Israel played in the 9-11 attacks," said Mearsheimer.

"In short, the present relationship between Washington and Jerusalem is helping to fuel America's terrorism problem," he went on to say.

I addressed the purposeful misreading of the 9/11 Commission Report, that time by Walt, last year. The 9/11 Commission emphatically said that OBL's animosity towards the US was at best only peripherally affected by US support of Israel.

Notice also Mearsheimer's sleight of hand - by saying that OBL was "deeply concerned" about Palestinian Arabs he is implying that this was his main motivation for 9/11. This logic is flawed - would they say that OBL's fighting the Soviets was also motivated by his "deep concern" for Palestine?

Most of all, Bin Laden's own statements make it clear that his concern for US support of Israel is almost an afterthought. Two fatwas from the 1990s can be found online calling on Muslims to kill all Americans. The 1996 fatwa is named "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places" which makes it abundantly clear that it is American troops on holy Muslim soil that got his panties in a bunch, not its support for Israel - he buries that reason in the long text. And his 1998 fatwa spelled out his major three reasons to kill Americans, and support for Israel was a distant third:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have formerly debated the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it.

The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, still they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So now they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.

Obviously OBL and his like-minded Islamists hate Israel with a passion. But they also hate America - possibly even more - for reasons quite independent of Israel, as OBL's words make clear. These "academics" once again fall into a trap of creating a theory to begin with and then finding facts to support that theory afterwards, ignoring any counter-evidence. This is not scholarship.

In short, Walt and Mearsheimer are liars when they say that support for Israel is the major reason for Islamic terror against America. Anyone who reads the entire OBL fatwas would see that clearly - but W/M know that most people won't bother. And the inconvenient facts that terror attacks in the UK, France and elsewhere cannot be so neatly explained by their absurd theory are just not going to be mentioned.

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Tunnel collapse in Gaza - another mega-attack thwarted?

From Ma'an:

Gaza – Ma'an – A tunnel collapsed in the Al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Thursday, injuring a number of people.

The casualties are believed to have suffocated in the incident, according to Mu'awiya Hassanain, the director of emergency and ambulance department in the Palestinian ministry of health.

Tunnels on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt are frequently used for smuggling goods, particularly weapons into Gaza from Egypt.

The last sentence seems irrelevant. The Al-Bureij camp is in central Gaza, far from the border with Egypt.

It is, however, relatively close to the Israeli security border in Gaza (see here for a huge detailed map.)

The most obvious explanation is that a large effort was underway to tunnel under the border to attack Israeli civilians, or to attempt to kidnap another Israeli soldier. Judging from the map, it could easily have been a mile long.

Imagine what Gazans could accomplish if they put their energy, creativity and talents to purposes other than killing Jews?

cross-posted to Yourish

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Lakewood attacker screamed "Jew! Jew!" - WCBS

More details on the attack:

LAKEWOOD, N.J. (CBS) ―
A New Jersey rabbi on his way to synagogue was brutally beaten with a baseball bat just steps from his home and left a bloody mess on the ground, police say, and many believe he was targeted because of his religion.

Gauze and rubber gloves still litter the ground where 53-year-old Lakewood rabbi Mordechai Moskowitz was savagely attacked with an aluminum bat. His face and head were so badly damaged that the paramedic who responded was his own nephew and didn't even recognize him.

"You wouldn't recognize him. It doesn't look like him, like anything like he used to look," said another one of Moskowitz's nephews, Moshe Rotberg.

Rotberg spent all night at the hospital with his uncle, who had to be placed into a medicated coma because of his condition.

"This was totally instigated by somebody's either sickness or hate," said Rotberg.

Moskowitz was attacked under the darkness of night in the middle of Princeton Avenue near 12th Street in Lakewood. While he was being attacked, residents tell CBS 2 they heard his attacker yelling at him.

"He started screaming, 'Jew! Jew! Jew!' Every time he hit him with the bat he banged and screamed 'Jew' again," said a neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous.

Lakewood police say they have no evidence that the attack was a hate or bias crime, but were able to find the baseball bat used and have a description of the attacker.

The suspect is being described as a black male, 30- to 40-years-old, clean shaven, wearing a dark plaid shirt and dark baggy pants. He is described as being approx. 5-foot-10 to 6-feet tall. He was last seen running south on Princeton Avenue.

Meanwhile, the principal at Lakewood Cheder School where Moskowitz teaches third grade says the children there are anxious for their favorite teacher to come back.

"They know that he was wounded, that he was in the hospital. I think most of them knew he was beaten. We're just hoping and praying for him that he should recover quickly," said Lakewood Cheder School Rabbi Yehuda Pirutinsky.

Moskowitz remains in critical condition at the Jersey Shore University Medical Center.

And more, which contradicts the story above:

Six people saw the attack on Mordechai Moskowitz, 53, of Lakewood, just before 8 p.m. Tuesday, at Princeton Avenue and Carey Street, police said. Neighbors said he was heading to a synagogue on Squankum Road, said Detective Lt. Joseph Isnardi.

Witnesses told police they did not see or hear any apparent reason for the attack, Isnardi said. There was no evidence to classify the assault as a bias crime, police said Wednesday, and nothing was stolen from Moskowitz.

The victim's nephew, Moshe Rothberg, said he did not believe his uncle was targeted because of his religion. However, he said he was eager to see what police uncover.

Isnardi said Moskowitz is conscious and able to speak.

Rothberg, of Lakewood, said his family was comforted by more than three dozen people who came to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, where Moskowitz was taken Tuesday night.

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Another college newspaper article blaming Israel for all evil

The author of this article, for the Daily Campus of the University of Connecticut, takes pains to appear objective in his brief history of the Arab/Israeli conflict - but he really tries to demonize Israel as much as possible.

Here was my reply:

It is literally impossible to describe the conflict in such a small space, but that doesn't mean that George Maynard has the right to be extraordinarily selective in some facts and wrong in others.

This history completely ignores Arab attacks against Jews in Palestine that started as early as the 1880s and continued through pogroms in 1921, 1929, and 1936-39. This context is critical in understanding why Palestinian Jews even armed themselves to begin with.

In 1967, Israel had very few arms from the US - they was mostly from France - and Maynard again chooses to ignore the extreme rhetoric and daily threats to destroy Israel by Egypt's Nasser and other Arab leaders. He also ignores Nasser expelling the UN troops from Sinai and closing the Straits of Tiran from Israeli ships, an act of war. It is also disingenuous to refer to the West Bank in 1967 as "Palestinian territories" as Jordan had annexed them, with Palestinian Arab approval, around 1950. And his characterization of Israel somehow "causing" Jordan to join the war is laughably biased - Israel warned Jordan repeatedly not to attack and Nasser lied to King Hussein that he was winning the war to bring him in.

UN Resolution 242 does not call for Israel to withdraw from all the territories.

It is fascinating that Egypt and Syria's sneak attack on Yom Kippur, 1973 doesn't rate a mention in this history. Neither does Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, giving up the Sinai, with its oil fields and air fields and dismantling settlements, all for peace. Perhaps these events don't put Israel into a bad enough light for Mr. Maynard?

This "history" goes on and on - ignoring the constant Palestinian Arab terror attacks against Israel as well as the West in the 1970s, the Palestinian attacks from Lebanon that sparked the first Lebanon war, mischaracterizing Camp David and the beginnings of the intifada, and generally whitewashing Palestinian Arab crimes while twisting history for his own purposes.

It would be far more accurate to say that for nearly a century, Jews have attempted to live in peace with their Arab neighbors and the Arabs have been a bit less amenable.

For a series I am working on about the history of Palestinian Arabs, see my blog entry here: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/05/psychological-history-of-palestinian.html

If you can find any errors of fact in there, I would be most happy to correct it.

It takes time to correct articles like this, and the number of people who read it is probably tiny, but it is far worse to leave them unanswered.

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My Qassam numbers are very low

The IDF just announced that since Hamas' takeover in Gaza there have been about 350 rocket attacks and 650 mortar attacks against Israel.

My count of Qassam rockets, looking only at articles I happen to catch in the Israeli press, is roughly half this number in that time period.

Which means that not only do Israelis have to worry about rockets coming at the rate of nearly 3 a day, but also that the attacks happen so often that many do not even get into the news.

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Misoziony, hate speech and freedom

Continuing on my musings of misoziony...

If we accept at face value the claim that the rabid misoziony of Israel-bashers is not motivated by Jew-hatred, would it still qualify as hate speech?

To wit: Yesterday there were protests at Columbia University supporting a black professor who saw a noose hung on her office door. It is obvious that this was a purposeful act of hate, a veiled threat of violence and a purposeful evocation of historic lynchings of blacks.

Why isn't anyone considering this free speech? Why is such an act not protected as is offensive art or flag burning is?

The answer seems to be that there is a visceral horror at the pure racism that this event evokes. We have become conditioned to treat racism and selected other types of bigotry against ethnic or religious groups as reprehensible.

Now, there is no doubt that if someone left a sign on her door saying "death to blacks" or, more likely, a worse word this would also be considered beyond the pale and a clear example of hate speech. So would "death to Arabs" or "death to Italians" or "death to Jews" (at least in America.)

Would "death to America" or "death to Israel" qualify?

A quick Google on "death to..." various countries found that the vast majority of references were to Israel and America, with a fair number for the UK and Canada, a few for Western European countries and a smattering for Arab countries. Practically all of the links referred to Arabs and Muslims saying these words. (For example, there was an uptick of "Death to Denmark" references in the wake of the Mohammed cartoon kerfuffle.)

It is a fair bet that when Arabs say "death to..." some nation, they are advocating actual deaths of human beings, not an abstract concept. The fact they celebrate actual deaths of Israelis and Americans would seem to prove that point (notwithstanding that Sami al-Arian claimed otherwise.)

Is this hate speech? Is the hatred of a nation - and its people - as reprehensible as the hatred of an ethnic or religious group?

Last year, Salt Lake City allowed a "death to Israel" rally to take place. The same words can be heard at leftist rallies across the nation, by people who wholeheartedly support Palestinian Arab "resistance" - meaning terror against Israeli civilians.

Saying "death to Israel" is not just an expression; it is a call for mass murder and it is just as bigoted and hateful as any threats against any group. The question is, why is it so easily tolerated as free speech when equivalent expressions against other groups are considered disgusting hate speech?

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Ohio Statehouse to host pro-Hamas activist

From FrontPage:

The Ohio State Capitol in Columbus will be the setting for a curious convocation later this month when it hosts an event featuring several well-known Islamic extremists as part of an “interfaith” conference entitled, “The Many Faces of Islam”. The conference, which is to be held in the atrium of the Statehouse on Sunday, October 28^th, will feature two well-known speakers with multiple connections to the HAMAS international terrorist organization, a host of convicted terrorist leaders, and colleagues who fled the US to avoid prosecution on terrorism-related charges. The event is sponsored by the Interfaith Association of Central Ohio.

One of the featured speakers at the conference will be Anisa Abd El Fattah, the chair of the National Association of Muslim American Women based in Columbus....

As one of the foremost spokesman for HAMAS in the US, Fattah has published a litany of screeds denouncing “Zionism” and promoting violence against Israeli civilians. A letter to the editor she had published last month in the Columbus Dispatch (“Israelis in Gaza aren’t civilians”), Fattah indicated that any Israeli man, woman or child in Gaza was fair game for terror attacks: “There are no Israeli civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are only illegal Jewish settlers, who, by Israeli law, are also citizen-soldiers. They are heavily armed with fully automatic weapons.”

In a May 2006 article, “Condemning Zionism is crucial to world peace”, Fattah rages against Israel, arguing that Zionism is an “evil and racist ideology that not only directly contrasts everything we profess to stand for as a country, but that also violates every relevant divine, human rights, or other law, including our own laws, as well as every norm of decency known to the human species.” She concludes her article by adding that Zionism was attempting “to expand into Sudan through Darfur”, and thus, responsible for the genocidal violence there, rather than the Islamic government in Khartoum.

An April 2006 article by Fattah, “A Religious History of Justice and Palestine”, begins with her pronouncement that “[t]he racist and colonizing legacy of the Zionist Christian Church, and the Synagogue continues into the 21^st Century…”.

This is one of the featured speakers at the “interfaith” conference at the Ohio State Capitol.

Read the whole thing, plus followups by the same author, Patrick Poole.

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More details on Lakewood beating

From the Asbury Park Press:

LAKEWOOD — Police have released a composite sketch of the man being sought in the attack on a third-grade Orthodox school teacher Tuesday night.

The investigation into the attack of Mordechai Moskowitz, 53, of Lakewood, is being conducted by Lakewood Police Detectives Greg Staffordsmith and Steve Wexler, along with Investigator Carlos Trujillo-Tovar from the Ocean County Prosecutors Office.

Police are asking the public to call if they have any information or saw anything out of the ordinary about 8 p.m. Tuesday on Princeton Avenue, Isnardi said.

The first comment on the article is somewhat less than sympathetic towards the Orthodox Jews of Lakewood:

It's terrible that this man was almost killed. That being said, why should anyone from outside of the orthodox cult get involved in solving this crime?. I doubt any of them would do likewise. The orthodox want nothing to do with Lakewood outside of their own interests (segregated housing, segregated schools, welfare, etc.)

UPDATE here.

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EUdiots show their love for terrorists again

From JPost:

Calling Gaza a "prison" and a "ghetto," European Union parliamentarians harshly condemned Israeli actions there in a special session held in Brussels on Wednesday.

During the hour-long, heated debate in advance of a Thursday vote on a resolution, parliamentarians, as well as EU officials, called on Israel to open the Gaza borders to alleviate the growing humanitarian crisis in the impoverished area where 1.1 million of the 1.4 m. population are dependent on the international donations for basic food supplies.

In one of the more impassioned speeches, Belgian MEP Veronique De Keyser called Gaza a "ghetto" where "people are dying little by little with cameras trained on them."

While the IDF is working on a proposal to close the borders between Gaza and Israel in favor of Egyptian crossings, EU parliamentarians called on Israel to find a solution to the problem.

In particular, it urged Israel to live up to its commitment to ensure pedestrian passage at Rafah and full commercial movement in Karni.

The Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June forced the closure of the main commercial crossing into Israel at Karni and the pedestrian one into Egypt at Rafah. The third major crossing into Israel at Erez has been opened for limited pedestrian traffic.

Since June, the IDF, along with the United Nations, has worked to bring basic supplies, agricultural products and limited goods into the area through alternative crossings at Sufa and Kerem Shalom.

Among the stumbling blocks to opening the crossing have been continued mortar attacks by Hamas on the passages and the absence of a viable plan to replace the Fatah personnel who had manned the Gaza borders on the Palestinian side.

In a more measured speech than some of the others, Portuguese Secretary of State for European Affairs Manuel Antunes Lobo attacked Israel's decision last month to declare Gaza a "hostile territory" and said that such a move "exacerbated" an already bad situation.

"The European Union recognizes Israel's legitimate right of self defense but asks Israel to carefully consider the consequences of its decision." He added that "access and movement" agreements regarding the borders need to still be respected even in the current situation.

The EU, he said, remains committed to helping out the Palestinians financially both in the West Bank and Gaza. In 2006, it gave out €688 million in humanitarian assistance and this year it has already shelled out €425m., he said.

EU Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said she was particularly disturbed by the fact that the border closures had forced the suspension of important water and sanitation projects.

But even as she took spoke of the EU's continued financial commitment to the Palestinians, she called on the Arab states - who have not contributed in the same way we did - to step up and "do their part in the future."

One British MEP, Chris Davies, said it should be Israel and not EU taxpayers who should foot the bill to solve the Palestinian humanitarian crisis.

"What does it have to do with the EU? Gaza is an Israeli prison camp. It is the Israelis who should be responsible. They are the ones that keep them in misery," said Davis.

The level of EU depravity and hypocrisy stays pegged at 11 on a scale of 10.

They pay lip service to Israel's security needs but do not blame Hamas for anything that is happening in Gaza. They say that all responsibility for Gaza is Israel's, not their Arab brethren who they admit contribute next to nothing to solve the "humanitarian crisis." They blame the closing of Karni on Israel and do not acknowledge the terrorist attacks at that border crossing.

The hypocrisy really hits home when they blame Israel for Rafah being closed. Somehow, Egypt manages to open it for wanted terrorists to travel to Gaza and the EU which is supposed to monitor it disappears.

So it is Israel's fault that the Rafah (and Karni) agreement stipulations have been abrogated by Hamas' takeover of the Strip?

So the EU can insist that Israel negotiate with a group sworn to destroy it?

So when a people democratically elect terrorists, they must eb shielded from the consequences?

So Egypt has no responsibility for Gaza, and only Israel does?

So the EU cannot deign to mention weapons smuggling, Hamas/Fatah civil war, religious coercion, torture and all the other things that make life in Gaza hell that are quire independent of Israel?

These moral midgets love to stand up and accuse Israel of crimes - and their use of the word "ghetto" is no accident as they try so label Israel as being Nazis without actually saying it - when they have histories of colonization whose associated atrocities have dwarfed anything Israel could dream of.

Perhaps most tellingly, they promote the stereotype of Arabs as savages, saying that the Arab people cannot possibly be expected to take care of their own, or to act like human beings. No, only Israel is responsible for taking care of the poor animals, in th EU's twisted and bigoted viewpoint. The very idea of Arab responsibility for their role in creating and prolonging a fake "refugee" problem is never to be mentioned - and the idea that somehow Palestinian Arabs have the ability to fix their own messes is not even entertained.

Gaza is not sub-Saharan Africa, and PalArab children are not sitting with distended stomachs and fleas begging for a morsel of bread. Gazans are educated and clothed and fed; they have cars and houses and designer clothes and the Internet. A billion dollars a year flows into Gaza legally, who knows how much more smuggled in suitcases from Saudi and Iranian petrodollars. Gaza could have turned into a Singapore or a Hong Kong if the Arabs had the ability to take responsibility for themselves rather than spend their entire existence whining that somehow they deserve more and more Western support. Gazans have created a successful industry of building rockets and tunnels - efforts that could have been building real businesses where they could export their wonderful goods to Europe itself.

This is the ultimate irony: a group of politically correct Europeans saying, in effect, that Gazans are less than human and must be treated as if they are all mentally ill.

Arabs taking responsibility for their own actions? Mon Dieu!

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Speaking of free speech....

One rarely finds the same people who agitate for "free speech" to allow, say, neo-Nazi messages to be broadcast on TV, to be nearly as concerned when a US ally does this:

A Jordanian security court has sentenced former Jordanian MP Ahmad Al-'Abadi to two years in prison for criticizing the royal family in speeches before U.S. Congressmen.

Al-'Abadi's wife called the sentence a political move aimed at distancing her husband from the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Source: Al-Jarida, Kuwait, October 10, 2007

Yes, our friends the Jordanians jail people who say things that tick them off.

Perhaps it is just me, but this seems to be a teensy bit greater violation of free speech than forcing any media to give space and time to any crackpot's ravings. Yet not a single English-language news source mentions this story.

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The disastrous idea of "land swap"

Palestinian Arab negotiators are flocking to wire service reporters to float ideas, and today another one came up - the idea of a "land swap" where PalArabs get the same number of square kilometers from Israel that Israel keeps from settlements.

Once again, we have a situation that would sound reasonable if both sides were reasonable, and it utterly disastrous once one understands the Arab psyche.

People tend to forget that before the Six Day War, Israel's borders were just armistice lines. The Arab world did not accept those borders as being anything close to final and they were using military, terrorist and diplomatic ways to try to shrink the Jewish state.

After 1967 and especially after 1973, however, the Arab attitude changed. Once they saw that they could not defeat Israel militarily they dedicated their efforts to get back the land - and the honor - that they lost. Sadat famously said that he'd rather go to war than lose a single grain of sand of the Sinai, and the entire existence of the PLO is largely due to Arab governments using them to get the West Bank away from Jewish control. While they never truly gave up on the idea of Israel's destruction, their more immediate concern was to get back the 1967 losses and that forced them to implicitly recognize the Green Line as being meaningful. In other words, 1967 and 1973 allowed Israel to solidify its hold on the 1949 borders to the point that the world accepted them far more than they did before 1967.

A land swap would smash the idea of the 1949 Green Line as a border of Israel, and it would bring Israel back to its pre-1967 situation, in more was than one. The Arab world would still consider the settlements to be Arab land - there is no question about that - and now they would also gain leverage on 1949 Israeli lands, which haven't been on the table in decades. Every point of contact has the potential of becoming another Shebaa Farms, another excuse to whittle Israel down, another set of terror attacks coupled with impassioned pleas against the intransigent Israelis refusing to give only a couple of kilometers here and there of ancient Arab land - and Westerners believing them. They will insist on a land corridor between Gaza and the West Bank, cutting Israel in half, and that corridor will have to grow in width year after year.

The Green Line was an impossible border for Israel to live securely, and moving it towards the West - allowing even more of Israel to be in rocket range - is not only stupid militarily and from a security point of view, but it will open the doors for the entire Arab world to again believe that they can drive the Jews into the sea.

cross-posted at Yourish

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No-man's land: the difference between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs

The AP quotes Abbas' demands:

In a television interview, Abbas said the Palestinians want to establish a state on 6,205 square kilometers (2,400 square miles) of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was the first time he has given a precise number for the amount of land he is seeking.

"We have 6,205 square kilometers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip," Abbas told Palestine TV. "We want it as it is."

According to Palestinian negotiating documents obtained by The Associated Press, the Palestinian demands include all of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, east Jerusalem and small areas along the West Bank frontier that were considered no-man's land before the 1967 war.

Let's talk about those small areas:

Two Bay Area visionaries have teamed up to turn a Jerusalem battlefield into a peace park.

San Francisco environmentalist and philanthropist Richard Goldman, the man behind the Goldman Environmental Prize known as the "Green Nobel," and celebrated landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, designer of the FDR Memorial in Washington and the new Sigmund Stern Grove, will receive a special award in June for their part in creating a 1 1/2-mile promenade linking East and West Jerusalem.

The promenade was built across Government Hill Ridge, a mountainside in southern Jerusalem that was no-man's land between Jordan and Israel from 1948 to 1967.

According to the New Testament, this was the Hill of Evil Counsel, where 2,000 years ago Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver on the eve of the crucifixion. More recently, it was where the Six Day War erupted in Jerusalem in 1967.

Thanks to Goldman and Halprin, the site is today a vast, tranquil park with a picture-postcard view that is shared by Muslims, Jews and Christians from across the city and around the world.

The Haas Promenade -- named in honor of Goldman's parents-in-law of the Levi Strauss family, and designed by Halprin -- was completed in 1987. It allows visitors to enjoy a spectacular view of the ancient Old City of Jerusalem, the surrounding biblical landscape and the new neighborhoods of East and West Jerusalem across a park with more than a mile of twisting pathways among olive trees and shrubbery.

The same team extended the park to create the Goldman Promenade, which was opened in 2002. This smaller path meanders eastward through a forest of Jerusalem pines toward an observation point overlooking the Judean Desert, the Dead Sea and the Mountains of Moab in Jordan.

Rather than "Judaizing" Jerusalem, as the Arabs always claim, these Jews worked with the Israeli government to build a beautiful park and promenade for all of Jerusalem to enjoy - Arabs, Jews and Christians.

Now, Mahmoud Abbas, that man of peace, not only wants all of East Jerusalem - not only does he want the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, not only does he want the Western Wall of the Temple Mount - but he is also "demanding" an area that was never even Jordanian.

An area that Jews cultivated and beautified for all of mankind - he wants to take away so it could become another Arab slum. He would prefer to see it turn into another Hamastan rather than let the hated Jews control it.

In the mind of even the most "moderate" Palestinian Arab, Jews must be restored to their rightful, second-class dhimmi status by any means possible. Negotiations, terror false promises of peace - they are all the same as long as the end result is that Jews control less land in the Middle East.

The contrast between Abbas' bigotry and extremism, and Israel's desire to compromise and find solutions for everybody, has never been more striking. His demand for an area that was never "Palestinian" on any map proves yet again that the goal of Fatah is identical with the goals of Hamas - not to gain "Palestinian" Arab lands but to take away land from Jews.

From 1948 to 1967, Palestinian Arabs didn't care when they were under Jordanian or Egyptian rule. their desire for a state was close to non-existent, and their efforts were aimed towards taking away Jewish land, not establishing a "Palestinian" Arab state. And this has not changed one bit.

The international community, cowed by fears of Arab terror, are more than willing to convince themselves that yet another Arab state in part of Western Palestine will help keep bombs out of their cities for a few years. It is that fear, rather than any real desire for truth of justice, that fuels the relentless pressure on Israel to keep on conceding more and more land over and over again in exchange for worthless promises that usually get broken within months. Annapolis is yet another exercise in this chapter of the vast effectiveness of terrorism in accomplishing its goals.

And the diabolical brilliance of Yasir Arafat was in his starting his major terror campaigns against Western airplanes - and then stopping to concentrate only on Israel. He understood that continuing to directly confront the West would bring his downfall, but to offer the West a deal where they only have to sacrifice Israel to mollify the terrorists was an irresistable offer to a world that has no love for Jews to begin with.

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Denying reality to promote misoziony

Here's a useful place to use the word I coined yesterday.

A few days ago, the Iranian ambassador to Chile showed up at the launch party of a book about Hashomer Hatzair and he chatted a bit with the Israeli ambassador:

Shortly after the beginning of their conversation, Jalali leaned over and whispered: "I have to tell you something, but don't be offended, it's nothing personal. We are forbidden from speaking with Israeli diplomats."

How does Iran react to this horrible breach of Iranian etiquette? By denying that it ever happened:

An informed source at Foreign Ministry on Tuesday denied certain media reports that Iran's ambassador to Santiago, Chile, had held talks with a Zionist regime diplomat.

The source told IRNA that the news has been published by a daily based in the occupied lands.

He said such propaganda raised by the Zionist media was not something new and authenticity of such claims has never been confirmed.

This is not the first time this has occurred - only last month we saw very similar circumstances:

Officials from Israel and Iran put aside political animosity Tuesday to work together in using Israeli forensics expertise to identify their dead from the crash of a jetliner on a Thai resort island.

"It's human nature to help in solving this problem as soon as possible," Safdar Shafiee said at the Iranian Embassy in Bangkok after shaking hands with Yaki Oved, head representative of Israeli police in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

"In situations like this, you forget the division," Oved said. "The main thing is to help. You don't think about the politics."

And the Iranian reaction?

Iran's envoy to Thailand has denied the allegations that Iranian and Israeli teams had cooperated to identify the Thai plane crash's victims.

Mohsen Pak Aeen said that the Iranian team received help from Thai experts, Iranian and Thai travel agencies and Iranian nationals living in Thailand to identify the crash victims.

Pak Aeen added there was no contact between the Iranian consulate in Phuket and Israeli nationals.

This is pure misoziony - the seething hatred of all things Israeli causes Iranians to deny events that were witnessed by dozens of people. (It is so pathological that they cannot bring themselves to say the word "Israel.")

The inherent irrationality of misoziony discredits anything that Iran says - yet it is so strong that they hate Israel more than they value their own credibility.

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Jew severely beaten in Lakewood

From the Star Ledger:

An Orthodox Jewish man was hit on the head with a baseball bat in Lakewood last night, leaving him with life-threatening injuries as authorities searched for suspects, police said.

The unidentified beating victim, who appeared to be in his mid-20s, was found lying unconscious in the street on Princeton Avenue, near 12th Street, about 8 p.m., Lt. Michael Mooney said. Mooney added injuries appeared to be life-threatening.

Police responded to the scene on reports of a man down.

Although the victim was dressed in Orthodox Jewish clothing, police are not treating the incident as a bias crime at this point because they have no suspects or motive, Mooney said.

A baseball bat was found near the victim, and K-9 units were being used in the search.

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Egypt: Shalit in "good condition." How do they know?

From AFP:

An Israeli soldier held by Gaza militants for more than 15 months is in good condition, Egypt's intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was quoted as telling an Israeli minister today.

"Gilad Shalit is in good condition. He feels well and has even gained some weight because he does not do any exercise," Suleiman told Trade and Industry Minister Eli Yishai who held one-day talks in Cairo yesterday, one of his senior aides said.

Since the Red Cross is not permitted to visit Shalit, the only ways that Suleiman can know this is:

- He believes what Hamas says, showing that Egypt is hardly an honest broker.

- Shalit is in Egypt and Egypt is complicit.

- Suleiman has gone to Gaza to see him.

In any of these cases it seems to indicate that Egypt tilts more towards Hamas terrorists than to Israel.

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Aspen TV station considering airing Holocaust denial video

From the October 6 Aspen Times:

ASPEN — A controversial Holocaust denial film is raising questions about free speech at GrassRoots TV, the Aspen community-access station.

Steve Campbell, founder of Citizens for 9/11 Truth, asked the station to air “Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II” on Monday, but GrassRoots TV board members stopped the screening.

The one-hour program features Dr. Frederick Töben, an Australian national and member of the Adelaide Institute, an organization that denies that the Holocaust ever happened.

“This film is offensive not only to Jews in the world, but to any sensible person,” said GrassRoots TV Executive Director John Masters.

But the question of airing the film he called “like an homage to [Joseph] Goebbels” has stirred a “healthy debate” at the station, Masters said.

The newspaper itself is firmly on the side of the oxy-moronic "truthers":

Our local television station, GrassRoots TV, this week faces a tough question of whether to air a video that’s offensive to many of its board members and viewers. The video takes a “critical view” of the Holocaust and goes so far as to suggest that Hitler’s Germany was under attack by an “international Zionist elite,” and not the other way around.

We urge GrassRoots to run the video, “Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II” — not because we agree with it but because Aspen shouldn’t be frightened of a dissenting viewpoint.

The GrassRoots board meets Thursday to discuss not only what to do about this video, but what to do with other questionable material. We hope the management and the board choose a path of openness rather than censorship; it’s in keeping with democracy and the spirit of public access television....

This video shows the Holocaust deniers for the crackpots that they are. If viewers wish to see it, then let them. Suppressing this stuff only gives it power.

This has nothing to do with free speech.

TV stations, and newspapers, (and university daises for that matter) have limitations on what I'll call "bandwidth." By choosing to allow hate to be broadcast, printed or otherwise spewed, no matter what the context, they give it legitimacy. Choosing what to allow in bandwidth-limited media is not censorship, it is editing, and it necessarily happens all the time.

The only media that has no limitations on bandwidth is the Internet. As a result, people who want to see this video are free to do so. Nobody's free speech is limited in the least.

Would the enlightened editors at the Aspen Times allow the publication of an op-ed that argues for the re-establishment of slavery?

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Another Google "News" source with explicit anti-semitism

For some bizarre reason, Google started indexing as "news" a site called ProgressiveU.org which appears to be a bunch of drunk college students blogging random thoughts.

An example of pure anti-semitic drivel can be seen here. It is so over the top that I was convinced it was a joke ("Alot of people have known about the criminology of these Jews and since they own everything they are able to supress the victims from talking. well, not this victim. ReAD! Remember, the Nazi's were never found. Only a couple of scap goats were prosecuted. And they never found Hitlers body. I found out he was living with the British Monarchy up until his death in 2005. I met his son, in 1988. He was in his late teens back then. There has been a hugh cover up and it is time we did something to do about it! READ!") but then the author appended a long, more serious Jew-hating article.

There are other articles that are equally bad, all indexed by Google News.

Once again, if you want to complain to Google the URL is here.

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Misoziony

While the irrational hatred of Israel and Zionism is often a good indicator of a hatred of Jews as well, use of "anti-semitism" is often a distraction from the argument being made, and overuse of that term waters it down over time.

Misoziony , although I'm not sure how it is pronounced, is a word that may solve this problem. Miso- is a prefix, based on the Greek misos, that means "hatred." Misoziony - the hatred of Israel and Zionism - is a fundamentally irrational loathing that is just as disgusting as anti-semitism but without the baggage.

Misozionists like to say, for example, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not anti-semitic because he allows a number of Jews to live in relative peace in Iran, as long as they keep in their place. Arguing that this is but a more subtle form of anti-semitism - which it is - takes away from the prime argument that Ahmadinejad singlemindedly wants to see the Israel utterly destroyed. Arab and Islamic anti-semitism is generally more subtle nowadays than their naked misoziony.

Hating Israel in grossly disproportionate ways compared to the behavior of any other nation is a sickness that is closely related to anti-semitism but it is not identical. Misoziony shows itself to be no less reprehensible than pure anti-semitism, because the desire to see the destruction of Israel is as disgusting as any bigotry.

Israel-bashers like to claim that Zionists use the term "anti-semitism" as a club to crush all criticism of Israel. The problem is, of course, that the same crowd uses the claim of Zionist use of anti-semitism as a means to avoid discussing real issues. The word misoziony can neatly solve that problem and can help re-focus the arguments back on their fundamentally untenable bases. Pointing out misoziony can help to sharpen the debate and point out the basic irrationality of the Israel-bashers.

It is also a much more convenient term when talking about the Jimmy Carters or Walt/Mearsheimers of the world. While they claim that they are not against the existence of Israel, there is no doubt that they suffer from misoziony, uniquely blaming Israel for a large number of world problems and simultaneously absolving everyone else. It is probably not accurate to call them anti-semites but they are firmly in the misozionist camp.

What do you think?

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Egypt allows 30 Islamic Jihad terrorists into Gaza

Ma'an reports:

The Egyptian authorities on Tuesday morning permitted the entry of around thirty Palestinians into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah Crossing, between Egypt and Gaza.

The majority of returning Palestinians were members of the Islamic Jihad movement.

Sources from Islamic Jihad reported that the majority were members of the military wing of the movement, the Al-Quds Brigades, and one was a Hamas loyalist.

Egypt, which denied that it released some 75 Hamas terrorists in late September, is breaking all of its agreements with Israel.

The EU Rafah "observers," still on the EU payroll, are sitting idly by.

Israel remains silent.

And Gazans now have more terror to look forward to.

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Morning links

Front Page: Arab-Israeli Fatalities Rank 49th

Augean Stables: Insights into Honor-Shame Culture: Reflections of an American-born Israeli Officer among Bedouin Soldiers

Hot Air: Jimmy Carter on Darfur: What genocide?

Slate: Hitchens on The Price of Freedom

(h/t Omri, Backspin, LGF)

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Israel's terrible Internet hasbara

Last July I quoted an Omedia article highly critical of the IDF's information policies. At least by judging from the website, it appears to be even worse nowadays - and the IDF is not alone in its horrendous record of hasbara, and the Israeli government's web efforts highlight these shortcomings all too well.

The IDF web site's English section is a joke. There is nothing about current operations, no press releases, no substantive articles describing its philosophy - almost nothing. And there is an empty video section. In the era of YouTube, this is unforgivable. Even the photograph section is impossible to navigate in Firefox and woefully out of date.

It's Hebrew section seems marginally better - at least there are some videos - but in general it is just as hard to navigate, and the world audience is not conversant in Hebrew.

The IDF is not the only Israeli organization that is failing in its obligation to tell the world its story. Even the Foreign Ministry website - better than the IDF's, to be sure - has stories on its front page that are months old. Its video section is sparse as well, with no indication of even what year the videos were created.

Even the IsRealli blog, which was launched with much fanfare a year or so ago by the Israel Consulate in New York, is being updated only once or twice a week.

Compare these with the Israel Insider website, the video site Israel Up Close, the excellent Israel21c site and its associated blog Israelity. These are professional, attractive and updated sites that do what Israel's official websites do not - inform the world about what is really going on and show a side of Israel that is never seen on the news.

The talent exists for Israel to do a better job in Internet hasbara. The poor track record needs to be improved, and quickly.

UPDATE: Two commenters mentioned Israelplug.com and it looks like a very good and entertaining site.

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This week's marriage fatwas

MEMRI uncovered two interesting fatwas today:

A sheikh from Al-Azhar, Farahat Al-Manji, decreed that a marriage ceremony acted out by two actors for a film or a television show is valid and binding.

According to the fatwa, if the woman is already married, the second marriage is considered bigamous.

Source: Islamonline.net, October 2, 2007

Egypt's Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs has decreed that misyar marriages – "pleasure marriages" in which the woman gives up some of the rights granted her by Islam, such as the right to housing and financial support from her husband – are permissible in Islam.

The council, which is the major fatwa-issuing body in Egypt, added that the marriages are allowed as long as all provisions specified by shari'a have been met, and as long as they are not banned by the state.

Source: Alarabiya.net, October 2 2007.

Misyar marriages, of course, are pretty much Muslim-sanctioned prostitution for Sunnis. Muslims will go on business trips and "marry" a local girl just for sex. (A similar type of temporary marriage for Shias is called Mut'ah and it is a marriage for a pre-determined set amount of time - Shiites and Sunnis each strongly feel that the other type of marriage is forbidden.)

These two fatwas show that Muslims have watered down the definition of marriage and divorce so much that the terms are almost meaningless, and any social safeguards that the "decadent" West has for monogamy and respect for women are not only non-existent in Islam, but the concomitant disrespect for women is religiously sanctioned.

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PA willingly cedes control of Jerusalem - to Jordan

From YNet:

Israel and the Palestinians have agreed that the Temple Mount as well as other parts of the Old City in Jerusalem will be under Jordanian control as part of a future peace deal, a Palestinian daily reported on Monday.

The London-based al-Quds al-Arabi reported that President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reached the agreement during recent talks in Jerusalem. Under the arrangement, the Old City's Arab residents will be granted Jordanian citizenship.

The newspaper did not say whether Israel would keep control of Jewish holy sites and neighborhoods in the Old City.

The arrangement will make the Jordanian monarchy a guardian of holy Muslim shrines in Jerusalem.

Forgetting the utter stupidity and breathtaking shortsightedness of Kadima allowing Jerusalem to be divided again:

If Jerusalem is so important to Palestinian Arabs and has been so important for so many centuries, why would they willingly give up control to another nation? Why is Jordan a preferable custodian of holy sites in Jerusalem than Israel from a PalArab perspective?

The reason is, of course, because Palestinian Arabs do not want control of these lands! They do not want the headaches of running a real state and solving real problems. Their attachment to "Al-Quds" is a farce, and the numerous photos of the Dome of the Rock that grace every Palestinian Arab website and TV broadcast are only for show. Their entire existence as a people is due to their leaders deliberately separating them from their Arab brothers for the past sixty years, for the singular purpose of using them as cannon fodder to help destroy Israel.

A real people, proud of their heritage and proud of Jerusalem, would never accede to giving their holiest and most important site to a completely different nation. The only goal here is to take away land from the Jews rather than to own and cherish it themselves. As long as Arabs own it, it matters little to them who controls it - just as long as they are not Jews. The entire idea of Palestinian Arab nationalism is shown to be a farce by this agreement.

(I am well aware of the irony of the first sentence of the last paragraph, as it shows that the Israeli Left is equally dismissive of their own religious and cultural heritage. If something is not done soon, we will in a couple of years witness Israeli policemen forcibly dragging Jews away from the Old City in the name of "peace" - proving that the blind pursuit of an illusory "peace process" is more irrational than most religions are.)

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EU "observers" still silent on Hamas terrorists crossing Rafah

As I mentioned last week, Egypt allowed some 85 Hamas terrorists to enter Gaza through the Rafah border crossing late last month.

Today, the EU BAM Rafah website still has not acknowledged that it was complicit in this event by allowing it to happen. Their last press release is from July 7, saying that even though Hamas had taken over Gaza they still plan to maintain their presence.

Now, that's a cushy job! Live in Israel, stay on the EU payroll and don't lift a finger to stop terrorists and weapons from freely entering Gaza.

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Fatah spokesman in Arabic: Negotiations with Israel just another form of "resistance"

The Palestine Press Agency reports in Arabic (autotranslated):

(Ahmed) Abdul Rahman (senior advisor to Mahmoud Abbas) confirmed that the negotiations are a form of work for the Palestinian resistance option and Palestinian ending the oppressive Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Abdul Rahman added, "If the Israelis Mtandin negotiator with the Palestinian side does not mean that despair, but we will continue to work through all possible means to us, explaining that one of the forms of struggle that is the international conference called for by President Bush, especially since many of the officials said that the hour is hours of an independent Palestinian state and an end to Israeli occupation....

Abdul Rahman stressed that the issue of concessions is not included final and the Palestinian side had nothing to give him, but we have what we want to Nabdeh to end the Israeli occupation.

The word "struggle" is a code word for "terror", so Abbas' senior advisor is mollifying the bloodthirsty Palestinian Arab population by saying that negotiations are just another form of "resistance" aimed at getting everything from Israel without any compromise on the Palestinian Arab side. He also makes very clear that terror is still a very viable option for Fatah as a means to extract more from Israel - even after successful negotiations.

You will not find any Western media translating this interview.

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Qods Day postscript

Qods Day has come and gone, but it is worth mentioning that this day that is meant to fake Islamic ties to Jerusalem was created by the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran in 1979.

Khomeini also was responsible for another novel legal ruling (warning - this is mind-bogglingly disgusting):

"A man can marry a girl younger than nine years of age, even if the girl is still a baby being breastfed. A man, however is prohibited from having intercourse with a girl younger than nine, while other sexual acts such as foreplay, rubbing, and kissing are allowed. A man having intercourse with a girl younger than nine years of age has not committed a crime, but only an infraction, if the girl is not permanently damaged. If the girl, however, is permanently damaged, the man must provide for her all her life. But this girl will not count as one of the man's four permanent wives. He also is not permitted to marry the girl's sister."^[34][35]

Khomeini specifically described an act known as thighing that allowed an adult male to simulate sex with a female child without penetration:

"Thighing is a means for an adult male to enjoy a young girl who is still in the age of weaning; meaning to place his penis between her thighs, and to kiss her."^[36]

With such a prestigious pedigree, it is no wonder that Qods Day has gained popularity among many Shi'a Muslims!

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Israel barred from international sports event - Iran brags

Iran's news agencies are reporting that Iran successfully blackmailed the International Military Sports Council (CISM) from allowing Israel to join:

Iran's efforts to establish a single stance among Islamic countries eventually succeeded in preventing the Zionist regime of Israel from joining the International Military Sports Council (CISM).

Speaking to FNA here on Sunday, General Mohammad Ali Sabour , a member of the presiding board of the International Military Sports Council, said Israel strives to attend international events and bodies in a bid to buy recognition for its illegitimate entity.

"The Zionist regime, backed by certain western countries, launched extensive efforts in 2001 to take part in the world armies' Olympic games," he said, adding, "But Israel's pressures were defused due to solidarity of the Islamic countries which had been created through the extensive consultations of Iran, and thus, they (Israeli regime and its western supporters) could not achieve their goal."

The General said that following the said efforts by the Israeli regime, Iran, supported and accompanied by Islamic countries, threatened to withdraw from CISM.

"And the officials of the International Military Sports Council were eventually made to oppose Israel's membership in the council, arguing that these games are meant to provide a place for peace and tranquility while the Zionist regime's participation would cause tension and instability of these games," he concluded.

Let's take a look at some of the CISM's goals and principles:

The International Military Sports Council, known by its acronym "CISM", is an international sports association composed of the armed forces of member nations accepted by the General Assembly. CISM is open to the armed forces of all nations.

The aims of CISM are to develop friendly relations between the Armed Forces of member nations, promote physical education and sports activities, provide mutual technical assistance, support less privileged members in the name of friendship and solidarity, contribute towards the balanced and harmonious development of military personnel, and contribute to the international effort for universal peace.

This ideal is encapsulated in the CISM motto "FRIENDSHIP THROUGH SPORT".

A. CISM is an apolitical organization which fosters, through sport, friendship between military athletes to promote international harmony.
B. CISM values sport in the Armed Forces as an essential pillar of international sport and universal peace.
C. CISM adheres to the universal principles of “mens sana in corpore sano”, and “all human beings are born free and equal, in dignity and in rights”, as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the United Nations Charter.
D. CISM rejects all forms of discrimination towards a nation or a person on the basis of race, religion, political belief, and any other discriminatory practice.

Putting these two together, one can see that the CISM is blatantly hypocritical in allowing a single nation, by its own admission, to exclude another nation in violation of its own published principles.

The CISM has 128 member nations, and it is telling that none of them are willing to stand up against Iran in its bullying tactics. I don't think that any Israelis are losing any sleep over what is essentially yet another bunch of hypocrites running obscure sporting events, but it shows that even today, with its explicit calls for genocide, Iran is a much more esteemed member of the family of nations than Israel is.

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Fatah is capable of goodwill too!

It is perhaps unfair to characterize Israel as being the only party in this conflict that hands out goodwill gestures like Arab candy after a terror attack. Fatah has its own version of goodwill gestures as well.

To Hamas.

This photo of terrorist man-love comes courtesy of our friends, the moderate PA.

A Palestinian member of the Hamas movement, who would not give his name, right, is embraced by a friend, left, after his release by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank city of Jenin, Sunday, Oct. 7, 2007. The Palestinian authority released 12 Hamas members from a prison in Jenin Sunday. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)

See? They can be nice too!

Interestingly, Reuters reported the story too, but rather than say "12" terrorists were released, it says "several." :

Palestinian Hamas supporters wait before being released from a Palestinian prison in the West Bank city of Jenin October 7, 2007. Several members of the Hamas movement were released from prison on Sunday by Palestinian security forces. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman (WEST BANK)

Reuters never misses an opportunity to minimize the terror threat!

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Katyusha fired from Gaza, hits Netivot

Palestinian militants on Sunday fired a Katyusha rocket from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel, police said. The rocket, identified as a Grad-type Katyusha, landed in the area of Netivot, in the Negev Desert.

The Popular Resistance Committees armed organization claimed responsibility for the attack, which coincided with a number of mortar attacks against the Negev on Sunday.

There were no damage or injuries caused.

The mayor of Netivot said that the government had denied the town funds intended to provide for civil rocket defense. He said the stated reason for denying the funds, was that the town is located 11 kilometers from the Gaza border, rather than within a 10-kilometer radius the government had set, Israel Radio reported.

The Russian-invented Katyusha has a longer range than the more makeshift Qassam rocket that has been fired by the thousands at Negev towns and villages. Most Katyushas fired in the area are fired by the pro-Iranian Lebanese Hezbollah organization. But Palestinians fired a Katyusha at the southern Israel city of Ashkelon a year ago.

Nice to see that all that goodwill Israel received from abandoning Gaza is being paid back in spades. Not to mention Israel's abandonment of the Philadephi corridor that allows weapons smuggling to be increased from Egypt.

A similar goodwill gesture from Judea and Samaria would bring a large part of Central Israel, all the way to the Mediterranean, vulnerable to similar attacks.

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Palestinian Christian bookstore owner murdered in Gaza

From JPost:

The body of a Christian official who was kidnapped over the weekend was discovered in Gaza City early Sunday, Palestinian sources said.

The man was identified as Rami Ayyad, 31, director of The Teacher's Bookshop, which is operated by the Palestinian Bible Society.

Although no group claimed responsibility for the murder, a number of Christians in Gaza City told The Jerusalem Post that Ayyad had received several death threats in the past from radical Muslims who accused him of conducting missionary activities.

His bookshop and the Palestinian Bible Society had been the target of repeated attacks over the past two years.

They noted that attacks on members of the 2,500-strong Christian community in the Gaza Strip had increased in recent months, especially since Hamas took full control over the area.

The PalArab self-death count for 2007 rises to 534.

UPDATE: Clan clash in Nablus, 32-year old man murdered. 535.

UPDATE 2: PalArab police shot and killed a man in a stolen car. 536.

UPDATE 3: Arab man found "riddled with bullets" near Hebron. 537.

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Palestinian Arabs depressed - but not over "occupation"

Near East Consulting recently polled Palestinian Arabs on their attitudes, as they do every month.

A whopping 70% described themselves as "extremely depressed" or "depressed." So obviously they must be depressed over that insidious Israeli occupation, right?

Well, not quite:

Main issue that makes you feel concerned:

		Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent
	The economic hardship of my household	338	34.7	35.4
	The absence of security for me and my family	193	19.8	20.2
	The internal power struggle	216	22.2	22.6
	The Israeli occupation	76	7.8	8.0
	Family problems	48	4.9	5.0
	I have no concerns	83	8.5	8.7
	Total	954	97.8	100.0

There has always been a major disconnect between the attitudes of real Palestinian Arabs and those of the people who pretend to speak for them - often their power-hungry so-called leaders, but also people of Palestinian Arab descent who moved to the West and and gained positions in academia or other professions where they can trumpet their extreme anti-Israel opinions that are increasingly divorced from how real Palestinian Arabs think. (The same poll in August showed that only 2.6 percent mentioned the Israeli "occupation" as their major concern.)

This has been a consistent pattern over recent decades - the Palestinian Arabs who have enough ambition to get the hell away from the territories are the ones who claim that they can speak for those who have stayed. They live privileged lives in the West as they rail against the Western countries that treat them best. Above all, they are complicit in the crime that allows Arab countries to keep up their apartheid uniquely against Palestinian Arabs, not allowing them to become citizens like any other Arabs.

Not only are Palestinian Arabs being betrayed by their own elected leaders, but they are being kept in misery by their own cousins who left them behind and pretend to speak for them. Because of them, the amount of pressure on Palestinian Arab leaders to truly reform in minimal while they spin their wheels railing against Israel, who the real Palestinian Arabs do not seem to have nearly as much of a problem with.
(h/t IMRA)

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Chag Sameach yet again

Time to gear up for another long Jewish holiday weekend. Have a good Yom Tov, everyone!

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Qods Day celebrations continue: Jerusalem prayers

Here is a list of all Muslim prayers that mention Jerusalem:







Once again, there are none.

As far as Jewish prayers that mention Jerusalem, here are a small sample:

3 times a day: "And to Jerusalem, Your city, may You return in compassion and may You rest within it, as You have spoken. May you rebuild it soon in our days as an eternal structure, and may you speedily establish the throne of David upon it. Blessed are You, Builder of Jerusalem."

After every meal: "Rebuild Jerusalem, the holy city, soon in our days. Blessed are You, Who rebuilds Jerusalem in His mercy, Amen."

At the end of the Passover Seder and at the end of Yom Kippur prayers: "Next year in Jerusalem!"

So now we have seen that there is no mention of Jerusalem in Islamic numismatics, art, poetry, and prayer that predate Zionism. The Muslim claim that Jerusalem is holy seems not to be evident from how Muslims have treated it throughout the centuries. The relatively recent innovation of Qods Day appears to have been created for purely political purposes, because Muslims, historically, have ignored the Holy City.

Qods Day has been moved up to this Friday, so I don't have the time I wanted to research Jerusalem being mentioned or ignored in Islamic folksongs or literature and compare them to Jewish mentions of Jerusalem throughout the centuries. I'm pretty sure that we would see the exact same results that we've seen so far. (We already know that Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran, as opposed to the hundreds of times it is mentioned in the Jewish Bible.)

So I want to once again thank Iran for giving me this opportunity to celebrate the city that is holy to Jews as well as Christians, and has been treated like garbage by Islam through most of its history.

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