Friday, September 02, 2005

  • Friday, September 02, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon

10K

This blog now has 10,000 hits.

It's a bit too soon after my one-year anniversary to get all philosophical. But I will give shout-outs to AbbaGav, Zibbibo, Redneck Texan, and Ze'ev for their nice comments then, in an attempt to pump up their rankings as well.

You might want to check out Blogshares, which is another interesting attempt to rank blogs by popularity. I added a chart on my sidebar to show how my blog has been doing lately in the blog market. People who actually play that market probably have way too much time on their hands, but it is still a cool idea.
  • Friday, September 02, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Hating Jews makes strange bedfellows.
THERE HAVE BEEN rumblings of late about the developing alliance between Islamic radicals and neo-Nazis. In late May, Israeli president Moshe Katzav gave a speech before the German parliament in which he warned, 'Let's not be surprised if terror organizations use neo-Nazis for carrying out terror attacks.' And on August 5, WorldNetDaily reported, 'Neo-Nazi skinheads are working with radical Islamists in a growing unholy alliance that has European law enforcement officials concerned about a new front in the war on terrorism.'

Such an alliance seems unlikely on its face; after all, neo-Nazis view most Muslims as racially inferior, while Islamic extremists believe that neo-Nazis are just another flavor of infidel. However, a closer examination reveals that many white-supremacist groups have expressed solidarity with Islamic terrorists recently, and in turn some white supremacists and far-right Holocaust deniers have found newfound supporters among the Islamists.

Read it all.
  • Friday, September 02, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
This interesting editorial seems to look at diplomatic relations with Israel as a prize for nations of the Indian subcontinent, with India falling behind in the race.

It is not often you see nations vying for Israel's affections!
Despite establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, India deliberately avoided political visits at the highest levels. It took 11 years for an Israeli premier to visit India.

While the President and PM of Israel have visited India, Delhi has been unwilling so far to schedule return visits by either the PM or the President. Despite the fact that the Palestinians have often sought a greater Indian role in promoting the peace process with Israel, the presumed need for domestic political posturing appears to have overwhelmed the strategic sense of the Indian leadership.

While this ideological compulsion appears stronger within the UPA, the NDA too was paralysed by a presumed need to ‘‘balance’’ its ties with Israel and the Arabs.

If the UPA does not get its act together on Israel, Delhi might find Tel Aviv doing the balancing act between India and Pakistan.

More immediately, if the Indian PM and President do not find time to visit Israel, Musharraf could become the first head of government or state from the sub-continent to be serenaded in Israel.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

  • Thursday, September 01, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
More lovely words of peace from the Palestinians.
New York – Last week Sheikh Muhammad Ali, deputy director of the Palestinian Clerics Association, said in an interview on Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV that “we will enter Palestine as conquerors and liberators, not through negotiations, but through Jihad and the Muslim would kill the Jews...we will wipe out the Zionist enemy.” (Translation courtesy of MEMRI)

The following are excerpts from Sheikh Muhammad Ali’s TV interview: “Any land, any piece of land, over which flies the banner of ‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger,” and which at a certain point belonged to the Muslims...plundering and occupying such land (by non-Muslims) is forbidden, and it is the duty of all Muslims to do what they can to liberate this land, wherever it may be. ...many precious Muslim lands are under occupation today....Andalusia (Spain) is one example....

“When a piece of Muslim land is occupied, the duty of liberating it falls, first of all, upon the local residents. But when they are too few, or they cannot – it is the duty of the next in line to liberate this land.

“...But if they are unable to do it either, it becomes the duty of all Muslims to do what they can to liberate it. According to the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, not only when an entire homeland is occupied, but when ‘even an inch of Muslim land is occupied, Jihad is a personal duty, a religious obligation incumbent upon everyone....’They must liberate this land – and this is when only an inch is occupied, let alone when it is Palestine, Jerusalem, and Al-Aqsa that are occupied.

...”The Prophet Muhammad foretold in a hadith that ‘Judgment Day would come only when the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims would kill the Jews...

...”Allah willing, we will enter [Palestine] as conquerors and liberators, not through negotiations, but through Jihad and resistance, because the Hadith goes: ‘And the Muslims would kill the Jews’ – there is killing involved...

“The Jews acknowledge (that it is only a matter of time that the Muslims will eventually liberate Jerusalem and regain Palestine). They acknowledge this because they find it in their forged torah, in their Talmud.

“Since they believe that the Zionist entity will disappear...They are only trying to stall. They are not trying to establish themselves but to delay the fulfillment of the divine prophecy of the liberation of all of Palestine and the wiping out of the Zionist entity. If the Jews and the Zionist were to leave Palestine now, the war would be over, and the Middle East and the entire world could sigh in relief. But the Jews, these Zionists, are against humanity, not just against Muslims.”


Those pesky Jews, threatening world peace by refusing to die quietly.
  • Thursday, September 01, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • Thursday, September 01, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Islamic extremists rejoiced in America's misfortune, giving the storm a military rank and declaring in Internet chatter that ``Private'' Katrina had joined the global jihad. With ``God's help,'' they declared, oil prices would hit US$100 a barrel this year.
UPDATE:
Senior Kuwaiti Official: ‘Katrina is a Wind of Torment and Evil from Allah Sent to This American Empire’
  • Thursday, September 01, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
But I thought that Islamists had no problem with Jews, only Israel?

For some reason, as of this morning CAIR has failed to condemn these attempted attacks in the name of Islam. I'm sure there's a good reason.
LOS ANGELES -- The head of a radical Islamic prison gang and three others were indicted Wednesday on federal charges of planning terrorist attacks against U.S. military facilities, the Israeli Consulate and other Los Angeles-area targets.

The four conspired to wage war against the U.S. government through terrorism, kill armed service members and murder foreign officials, among other charges, according to the indictment.

Named in the indictment were Levar Haley Washington, 25, Gregory Vernon Patterson, 21, Hammad Riaz Samana, 21, and Kevin James, 29.

Washington, Patterson and Samana _ who attended the same Inglewood mosque _ allegedly conducted surveillance of military facilities, the Israeli Consulate and synagogues in the Los Angeles area as well as Internet research on Jewish holidays. Law enforcement officials have previously said that the military facilities included National Guard sites, though the indictment does not specify.

The attacks were to be carried out with firearms and other weapons at synagogues during Jewish holidays "to maximize the number of casualties," authorities said. Patterson allegedly bought a .223-caliber rifle in July.

In Los Angeles, authorities said the suspects could have attacked as soon as the Yom Kippur Jewish holiday in October.

"Make no mistake about it _ we dodged a bullet here, perhaps many bullets," Los Angeles police Chief William Bratton said at a news conference.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

  • Wednesday, August 31, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Israel has historically done a awful job of explaining its position to the world. It is way past time to start rectifying this.

If only someone would listen....
The old diplomacy is dead
By ZVI MAZEL

You may remember me. I was the Israeli ambassador to Sweden who was confronted with a so-called art installation in Stockholm in January 2004 that glorified suicide bombing. It was a representation of the suicide bomber who murdered 22 innocent people and maimed dozens more gliding serenely on a pool of blood on a little craft labeled "Snow White."

The "art" showed me there are no limits to the lies told against Israel or the hatred of the Jewish people. I also felt we had given up trying to reverse the terrible decline of our image, especially among European public opinion.

And so I decided to damage the display, and shut down the lights illuminating it. Not a very diplomatic step, perhaps, but one that brought the issue into the open and led to a healthy discussion in Sweden and elsewhere. Israel needs a hasbara offensive. While I was an ambassador, I was stunned to discover that many people in Europe - journalists included - are convinced that in 1948 Israel occupied a sovereign Palestinian state in a classic case of colonialism. The generation that witnessed the rebirth of Israel is gradually disappearing and younger people don't know the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So when Arab propaganda speaks about "occupation," it sounds easy to understand why Israel is being asked to terminate this anachronistic situation.

It was not always like that. Until the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel had an information policy that, while not optimal, didn't abandon the field completely to the other side.

But immediately after Oslo, the information department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was shut down; since Israel was presumably on the road to peace, it was not necessary to continue to explain our policies. Unfortunately, the other side had a different idea, and redoubled its propaganda.

It was during the implementation of Oslo that the Arab narrative of the conflict succeeded in flooding campuses, rallying the extreme Left and even capturing the more moderate Left, while Israel was conspicuously absent from the arena. The results were played out in the 2001 Durban conference, when the world ignored Israel's plight and condemned it without considering the facts.

Traditional diplomacy doesn't work anymore. Secret conversations between heads of states and foreign ministers, and the demarches carried out daily by ambassadors and other diplomats are no match for the media's ceaseless torrent of images and information.

One cannot win a war in the media alone, but one can weaken an opponent's messages; one can help change perspectives.

On a governmental level, such efforts are called public diplomacy; the academic world thinks of it as a form of "soft power."

ISRAEL MUST launch a large-scale, proactive campaign of public diplomacy to turn back the tide of anti-Semitic ignorance that is closing in on us. We have to move from our current policy - if you can even call it a policy - of delayed reactions, excuses and apologies to a potent strategy that will challenge the Arabs - taking the battle into their own media and propaganda castles and putting them on the defensive.

We have to face a cluster of factors - from blatant Muslim anti-Semitism, lies and distortion to the new anti-Semitism of European acquiescence, and the negative attitude of the Left with its calls for boycotts and divestment.

We need to tell the truth, publicly and repeatedly: the Arabs themselves are to blame for their underdevelopment, and as long as they ignore basic civil rights their peoples will remain poor and illiterate, a prey to unemployment and illness.

This situation, it needs to be emphasized over and over, has nothing to do with Israel or the conflict in the Middle East.

At the same time, we should ask them to condemn terror and stop calling it resistance. We should demand their apology for calling us pigs and monkeys, for stepping on our flag, for all the lies they write about Israel and the Jews. We should analyze their declarations and writings and lay bare their false contentions. We should remind them of their part in promoting slavery in East Africa.


We should urge governments, clerics and intellectuals in Arab countries to search their souls, and not hide behind lip-service condemnations, as some of them did after the bombing in London.

In Europe and America we should ask the media to forgo the tendency to close their eyes to terror - for instance, not one Western paper condemned the abduction and murder of the Egyptian ambassador in Iraq - and to condemn terrorism unequivocally. The time has come to understand that appeasement will not work, and that membership in the Third World doesn't confer a free pass to murder.

Europe should be reminded of its long history of persecution and suffering inflicted on the Jews - well before the Holocaust. Europeans too have some soul searching to do.

The time has come to switch to a proactive campaign. Israel finds itself dangerously isolated, and that isolation could get worse, since I don't believe many of us think the conflict is going to be resolved any time soon.

Moreover, European silence in the face of Arab pretensions only gives the Arabs more courage and fewer incentives to compromise. Arab hatred for Israel is on the rise in spite of the disengagement and the so-called improvement of relations with Egypt.

Two things need to be done. First, Israeli politicians must realize that there is no time to lose; the government must tackle this issue as part of its strategy to end the cruel terrorist war being waged against us.

Second, we need to set up an Arab television station broadcasting news, commentaries and programs that will deliver our case to Arab homes throughout the region.

The writer was a career diplomat for 38 years, and ambassador to Romania, Egypt and Sweden. He retired last year.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

  • Tuesday, August 30, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Notice how hard the Boston Globe tries to spin this as being a bad thing.
WASHINGTON -- A Rhode Island lawyer trying to collect a $116 million terrorism judgment against the Palestinian Authority has obtained a court-ordered freeze on all its US-based assets, severely limiting most Palestinian economic and diplomatic activities in the United States at a critical moment for the fledgling government.

The frozen assets include US holdings in a $1.3 billion Palestinian investment fund meant to finance economic development as well as bank accounts used to pay Palestinian representatives in Washington, according to lawyers and court documents filed in Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., and New York. Also frozen are about $30 million in assets from the Palestinian Monetary Authority, the Palestinian equivalent of the US Federal Reserve.

Providence attorney David Strachman, who is representing the orphaned children of a couple killed in Israel by Palestinian militants, has also initiated a court action to seize and sell the Palestinian-owned building in New York that serves as the Palestine Liberation Organization observer mission to the United Nations.

The aggressive collection effort comes as the Palestinian Authority is struggling to create economic opportunity and set up a viable government. Now, Palestinian officials say, the unpaid claim in the Rhode Island court, resulting from a 2004 ruling, threatens to complicate their efforts to become a credible emerging state.


The second half of the first paragraph could have said "giving hope to dozens of American victims of Palestinian terror."

And perhaps the continued Palestinian support for terror "complicates their efforts to become a credible emerging state" more than the lack of money?

Nah, we cannot expect a reporter to understand such nuance.

UPDATE: SoccerDad tackled this last December, and includes many links to other attempts to get damages for Islamic terrorism in US courtrooms. He also points out the original list of criminals who are the defendants:
THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY (A.K.A. “THE PALESTINIAN INTERIM SELF-GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY”); THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION; YASSER ARAFAT; JIBRIL RAJOUB; MUHAMMED DAHLAN; AMIN AL-HINDI; TAWFIK TIRAWI; RAZI JABALI; HAMAS – ISLAMIC
RESISTANCE MOVEMENT (A.K.A. “HARAKAT AL-MUQAWAMA AL-ISLAMIYYA”) ABDEL RAHMAN ISMAIL ABDEL RAHMAN GHANIMAT; JAMAL ABDEL FATAH TZABICH AL HOR; RAED FAKHRI ABU HAMDIYA; IBRAHIM GHANIMAT; AND IMAN MAHMUD HASSAN FUAD KAFISHE, Defendants.

A veritable who's who!
  • Tuesday, August 30, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Mofaz orders Hebron outpost evacuation

Although the legality of the Rinat Shalhevet neighborhood may be questionable under Israeli law, there are bigger issues here. This war is not only about facts but, especially on the Arab side, it is about symbolism. And the symbolism of Jews being forced out from what had been a Jewish neighborhood for hundreds of years a second time under an Israeli government is extraordinarily dangerous. (Hebron's Jews were massacred and forced out in the 1929 Arab riots.)

Hebron is the second-holiest city in Judaism. Morally, Jews should have the right to move there if they wish with no limitations. The ones that moved back to Hebron after 1967 were nothing short of heroic. There certainly has been friction between the Jews and Arabs of Hebron. Nevertheless, there is a huge symbolic importance to maintaining - and increasing - the Jewish areas of Hebron.

Even more symbolic is the fact that the neighborhood was named after Shalhevet Pas, the 10-month old girl murdered by a sniper in her baby carriage in Hebron. The single most effective response to Palestinian terror is to take back Jewish land, irrevocably, after every terror attack.

The Arabs understand the symbolism of Israel giving up on historically Jewish land. That is why they fight, beyond all logic, for the tiniest slivers of land, far beyond its useful value. That is why they never compromise on land. If there were no Jews there, they wouldn't care in the least - they do not fight because it is Arab land but because it is Jewish land.

When Israel gives away the indisputably Jewish parts of Israel, then it loses part of its character. Israel's claim to the land is not based only on logic, it is not based only on the law - it is based on emotions. When the Jewish state suppresses its emotions and its historic ties to the land in the name of an illusory "peace process" it loses far more than land. Emotions and symbols are important, and Israel is at a disadvantage because the world expects the Jews to be logical and Arabs emotional. Logical people can compromise, emotional people cannot. Hebron is not a logical issue.

Some things are worth fighting for, and Hebron is one of them.

Monday, August 29, 2005

  • Monday, August 29, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
First, the Haaretz story:

A 14-year-old Palestinian boy carrying three pipe bombs was arrested by Israel Defense Forces paratroopers Monday at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus.

Sappers were summoned to the the Hawara roadblock and safely neutralized the bombs.

The boy, Hussain Abu Kalifeh, was placed under arrest.

Now, the version that will appear in Palestinian "news" sources:

The Zionist IOF cruelly arrested a Palestinian child today near his home. Witnesses said he was beaten with flashlights before his property was taken from him and destroyed. By the time he was forcibly taken away, he was barely moving, according to the witnesses.

The child, Hussain Abu Kalifeh, is now in jail, facing daily torture.

A Hamas official stated that in the light of increased Israeli provocations, Hamas will have no choice but to respond "with the crushing fury of a thousand wild camels" against the Zionists.

PA Prime Minister Qurei denounced the jailing, saying that the Zionists continue to practice "methodical and ritual child abuse" against thousands of Palestinian children and babies. "This is not acceptable. I call on the UN and human rights organizations to denounce this continuing aggression and attempts at genocide towards the peaceful Palestinian people," he continued.


  • Monday, August 29, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon

It is so nice to see that the Palestinians are wasting no time in quid pro quo peace moves. Just imagine how appreciative they would be if Israel gives them more stuff for free!

Sunday, August 28, 2005

  • Sunday, August 28, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
In what may be a first, Abbas actually used the "T" word to describe a terror attack by Palestinians. Of course, he has used the same word for Israeli self-defense operations in the past, he continues to condemn any Israeli moves to live in peace, and he continues to pay terrorist salaries, so the word has little meaning to him, but it shows that in one narrow sense he is now more dovish than Reuters!
RAMALLAH, August 28, 2005, (WAFA)- President Mahmoud Abbas denounced Sunday the 'anti civilians terrorist operation' took place in the city of Beir Sheva' this morning.
  • Sunday, August 28, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
I was surfing tonight and saw a rabidly anti-Israel article concerning another thinly-disguised anti-Jewish campaign for the town of Somerville, MA to divest from Israel. Among the hysterical, bigoted and demostrably false comments in this article were:

* Zionism is a "violent genocidal racist ideology";
* " Israel’s crimes are ongoing, and have included bombing the Church of the Nativity."
* "Are we safe with them living among us? What if they want to murder our family and steal our house? What if they get a Caterpillar bulldozer to root out non-Jews from Somerville? These are the kind of racists we are dealing with here."

The author of the article was "Karin Friedemann", a prolific author of anti-Israel diatribes who is also editor of the "World View News Service", and who is evidently also known as "Umm Yakoub" and "Maria Hussain."

As she lobbies Somerville about human rights and liberal ideals, perhaps someone should point out exactly how liberal she really is:

For example, she is quoted as having said
"Muslims ... are not seeking peace. We get peace from Allah. In Palestine, we will stop only at victory, which will be, inshaAllah, in the end, a just implementation of Islamic religion. We have to guard against the Palestine movement being represented primarily by homosexuals and feminists."


A little further research finds that she wrote this lovely liberal statement about Jews in the anti-semitic Jewish Tribal Review:
"Clearly, there are no moral guidelines in Jewish Law, other than genocide and enslavement, for the treatment of conquered peoples, as one would find in Islamic Law. While Islam views humans as stewards of the earth, and Muslims consider themselves God’s appointed defenders of religious freedom for people of all religions, Judaism neither proclaims respect for other people’s prophets nor guarantees any respect of other people, nor even of the environment, except in so far as they are useful to the Jewish community. "
Not surprisingly, she supports US Muslims murdering their fellow soldiers:
This is written in response to Stan Goff’s article "The Case of Hasan Akbar" in which he repeatedly asserted that he did not condone Hasan Akbar’s killing of two US soldiers. I was put off by his obscene moralizing and wrote to him that were I in Akbar’s shoes I would have done the same thing, and when I am president I will put Hasan Akbar on a postage stamp.

And lest the Massachusetts liberals still feel that Karin/Maria/Umm is still a kindred spirit, perhaps these words that she wrote in 2002 to fellow Muslims in a posting called "How Quickly Liberals Become Fascists" will make them think twice about what she thinks about them:

Salam alaikum

I am forwarding this to you all just so you can see how even liberals who seem to be on our side will quickly turn on you and attack you. [following is a story about a liberal who she feels attacked her in a letter....]

Live and learn. Don't trust any kaffirs, because if they knew what you really think they will turn on you at the drop of a hat. They only feel sorry for Muslims as long as we are being victimized. But if we ever were to gain domination they would cringe in horror.


Ms. Hussain's own rants, as disgusting and bigoted as they are, do not even hold a candle to the absurd filth she happily reprints in her "newsletter" from other anti-semites. Check out, for example, "Do Sinister Jews Rule the World?" (Guess what the answer is!) and "Nuclear Attack in United States `Imminent' As Jews Continuing Fleeing From North America" - just in recent weeks.

It is bitterly ironic that someone who is so strongly a Muslim supremacist, who openly despises "kaffirs", who viciously attacks the most liberal writers when they give even a mild rebuke to any Muslims worldwide, who clearly hates all Jews with a passion - that such a person can represent herself as someone who seeks "justice" and "equal rights."

UPDATE: Ms. Friedemann/Yakoub/Hussain married Joachim Martillo in 2004. Martillo is one of the most bizarre people in cyberspace history. Back in the early days of Usenet, around 1985, he represented himself as a Sephardic Jew who was rabidly anti-Arab and anti-Ashkenazic Jew. For example:

> In article <5...@jjmhome.UUCP> marti...@jjmhome.UUCP (Joachim Martillo) writes:
> >In practically every way, Palestinians are a thoroughly dispicable
> >community whose bigotry and fanaticism prevents them from joining
> >the modern world and who deserve much worse punishment than they
> >are receiving (apparently mostly at their own hands -- poetic
> >justice or the cunning of history, if I have ever seen it).

He changed in the mid-90s, claimed he was never Jewish, and now he is one of the most pro-Arab and anti-Jewish voices on the Web. As I recall, he was always beyond weird and in some ways quite intellectual, in other ways just off the wall.

A match made in heaven for the strange, psychopathic Ms. Yakoub.

Friday, August 26, 2005

  • Friday, August 26, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Another indispensable translation from MEMRI. One must marvel at the ability of these would-be mass murderers to call this a "counter-terrorism" conference.

The following are excerpts from a panel discussion at the counter-terrorism conference of religious scholars at Sharm Al-Sheikh, Egypt. The discussion aired on Iqra TV on August 22, 2005. (To view this clip, visit: http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=822.)

Dr. Muhammad Rafat 'Othman, Egyptian professor of Islamic law: "According to another opinion, a person who blows himself up is committing suicide. This opinion is based on sources that categorically forbid self-killing. The Koran says: 'Do not kill yourself, surely Allah is ever merciful to you.' There are also such sources in the Sunna and in the general consensus of scholars. No text in Islamic religious law permits a person to kill himself. Even in the case of Jihad, which is the pinnacle of religious duties, Islam does not permit a person to kill himself.

"What Islamic religious law does permit is for a person to wage Jihad, facing one of two options – victory or martyrdom. He may risk being killed by someone else, but may not kill himself."

[...]

Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: "Dr. Said Ramadhan [Al-Bouti] stressed the legitimacy of defense, saying it is a legitimate right in Palestine and Iraq. I think that saying it is a legitimate right is not enough, because a right is something that can be relinquished. It is a duty. All scholars say that defending an occupied homeland is an individual duty applying to every Muslim. Reducing this duty to a 'right,' which can be relinquished, is a kind of depreciation.

"We must stress this point, and emphasize that it is the rights of those defending their homeland. It is not only a right, but also their duty. I am amazed by what Dr. Muhammad Rafat 'Othman said.

"This has nothing to do with suicide. This man does not want to commit suicide, but rather to cause great damage to the enemy, and this is the only method he can use to cause such damage. Since this method did not exist in the past, we cannot find rulings about it in the ancient jurisprudence. We may find rulings about plunging into the [ranks of the] enemy and risking one's life, even in cases of certain death – so be it. The truth is that we should refrain from raising this issue, because doubting it is like joining the Zionists and Americans in condemning our brothers in Hamas, the Jihad, the Islamic factions, and the resistance factions in Iraq. It is as if we are joining them.

"We all condemn violence or terrorism, although, to tell the truth, I personally don't like the word 'terrorism.' I always say 'violence.' I have written a book called Islam and Violence. But since this word is so widespread, I use it. We all condemn the [terrorist] operations. We condemned them before we came to this conference. We condemned the bombings in London, Madrid, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Egypt. We condemned them as individuals and as institutions. This is something everyone agrees on. We cannot say we pat these misguided boys on the back, but we do want to listen to them. They have gone astray, so we want to treat them in a way that will set them straight, and bring them closer to us. We don't want to be like prosecutors, demanding their execution. We want to treat them the way clerics treat their students, the way fathers treat their sons."

[...]

Professor 'Abla Kahlawi, Al-Azhar University, Egypt: "We must be united in condemning this behavior, this terrorism or violence – call it what you will. We must declare loud and clear that resisting the aggression, and resisting the enemy is a legitimate right, and that a fighter who risks his life has that right. When he perishes along with his enemy, this is a resounding cry of truth, through which the martyr declares: 'This was mine and it has been plundered – let the whole world see.' This is how a Muslim should act when he defends what is his, and I don't accept anything else."

[...]

Iraqi Cleric Ahmad Al-Qubeisi:
"Does any Islamic government have the right to prevent individuals from resisting the occupiers? This is what happens. There are young people who thought it was bad that the Americans were occupying the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on. So they started the resistance, which might have been exaggerated, but this was an operational error. In principle, these are people who are trying to drive out the occupier, which is deemed legitimate by all earthly and divine laws. People are in dispute over the methods. Listen to what happens worldwide – things you may have forgotten: The officer who killed 400 children in the Bahr Al-Baqr elementary school in Egypt many years ago – they said he was depressed, and pardoned him.

[...]

"The arch-killer who murdered, at the Al-Aqsa Mosque many years ago in the days of [Israeli prime minister] Yitzhak Rabin, 38 people in the middle of prayer – they said he was depressed, and was pardoned.

[...]

"The pilot who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and killed 700,000 got a medal. Rustum and the Americans killed 700 prisoners in an Afghan prison – no one demanded they be held accountable. My question is: Why can't you show some mercy and say that these mujahideen are depressed, and pardon them? Thank you."

Sudanese Minister of Religious Endowments 'Issam Ahmad Al-Bashir: "The mujahideen are not depressed. Their faces shine."

Al-Qubeisi:
" But you are accusing them of heresy, here. If you had to choose between depression and heresy, which would you choose?"

[...]

Saudi scholar Abd Al-Muhsen Al-'Abikan: "The suicide operations that are called 'martyrdom operations' are forbidden by Islamic law. Those who carry them out, committing suicide, cannot be called martyrs, and their actions cannot be called martyrdom. It was forbidden even in cases of Jihad by a number of prominent Muslim scholars."

[...]

Al-Bashir: "We have agreed that resisting the occupier is a sacred right and an obligatory duty, approved by Islamic religious law and by [international] conventions. It has nothing to do with forbidden terrorism. Moreover, it is legitimate. As proposed by Sheikh Al-Bouti, we emphasize this point in this concluding statement."

Participant: "And one cannot call their deaths suicide."

Al-Bashir:
"Yes."

Participant
: "It is an obligatory duty."

Al-Bashir: "Yes. I've already said that. It is an obligatory duty and a legitimate right. Someone who carries out this duty cannot be said to have committed suicide."

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