Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Abourezk, part 5

More fun from the comments section of the California Literary Review:

Brad Brzezinski Says:
September 23rd, 2007 at 2:38 pm
My goodness! You’re all still at it. I salute your indefatigability.

Mr. Abourezk’s mention of Camp David piqued my interest as this was the issue that led me to takes sides on the Israeli/Arab confab. Given that we had the Israelis and the Palestinians in failed negotiations, why would one simply believe either side? It seems reasonable to at least turn to the mediators for some understanding. In this case, the two chief functionaries were Clinton and Ross, both of whom categorically blamed Arafat.

Given the enormous cachet that would have attached to solving this issue, it seems highly likely that the mediators did in fact seek a real solution and the balance of probability strongly suggests their accounts should be reliable.

Even if not, even if the stories about how it was a bad deal are true, it was the best offer ever. (I know this because the media in general was quite adamant and even at that time when I paid less attention to world affairs, I knew the general media was hardly pro-Israel.) Given that Israel was bending so far, what on earth was the point of not only not negotiating further, but starting an Intifada? It speaks volumes.

James Abourezk Says:
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:41 pm
I’m given to wonder whether both Elder and Brzezinski are in touch with reality. When Dennis Ross left the government, he returned to a component of the Israeli Lobby to work. I guess it’s OK to identify Wolf Blitzer as a part of the Lobby, mostly because he worked for AIPAC. If these folks deny that AIPAC is part of the Lobby, then I find it impossible to continue this debate.

And yes, I think Bill Clinton lied a lot about a lot of issues when he was president.

Brad Brzezinski Says:
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Fair enough Mr. Abourezk, but I offered an argument even if Clinton & Ross were wrong. You have not countered what I said for that case.

It also strikes me that if someone working for “a component” of The Lobby is automatically disqualified from talking on this issue, then the same must apply to you on the other side for you have made your biases very plain.

Elder Says:
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:21 pm
I appreciate that Mr. Abourezk finally acknowledged a couple of my comments, even if they were extremely peripheral to the major points I was making. (Wolf Blitzer indeed edited an AIPAC newsletter some thirty years ago although he never lobbied for AIPAC, and Dennis Ross indeed works for a pro-Israel think tank now - although I am not aware of any earlier work he may have done for the “Lobby” that Mr. Abourezk implies from the word “returned.”)

The implication that Mr. Abourezk is making, of course, is that anyone who is pro-Israel on any level is assumed to be a liar.

While I gave specific reasons why the books written by Ilan Pappe and Clayton Swisher can be considered unreliable, from their own words and/or omissions as well as my own original research, the best that Mr. Abourezk can do to cast aspersions of Ross’ book is to mention that he now works for that evil “Lobby.” Using that logic, of course, would allow us to assume that Abourezk is equally suspect for being an uncompromising supporter of Arab causes. I prefer to stick with facts, not guilt by association, and any problems I have with Mr. Abourezk come from his own words, most specifically his praise for Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists that was mentioned earlier in this thread and that he has studiously ignored so far.

In the end, the biggest flaw with Abourezk’s positions is that he consistently ascribes the best of intentions to Arab and Muslim countries and the worst of intentions to Israel and, often, the US. In one particularly hilarious paragraph in his review above he says that “both Iran and Syria have proposed a nuclear weapons free Middle East.” The reported events of recent weeks by British journalists who can hardly be considered pro-Israel indicate that not only did Syria have a clandestine nuclear weapons program, but also that there was a major chemical weapons accident this past summer killing dozens of Syrians and Iranian engineers with WMD that were meant to be placed on missiles. But Abourezk, quite willing to publicly assume that anybody who supports Israel is not trustworthy, has no such skepticism about the public pronouncements of dictators and the world’s worst human rights abusers.

This, in a nutshell, is the problem with Mr. Abourezk’s positions on the Middle East and of the “Israel Lobby.”

A Hamas member who was shot four days ago by Fatah in the "Shati" camp in Gaza has died.

The Central Gaza headquarters of Fatah al-Yasser was set on fire.

Fatah arrested a Hamas leader in Nablus.

Hamas confiscated a car belonging to a Palestinian Arab TV director.

A peaceful women's rally in Ramallah was hit with tear gas from PalArab security forces.

Our 2007 count of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other is now at 527.

Abourezk, part 4

James Abourezk continues to dodge commenting on his terror-supporting performance on Al Manar while trying desperately to find more verbal missiles to shoot at the anti-Palestinian terror crowd:

James Abourezk Says:
September 21st, 2007 at 11:50 am
I neglected to mention one other book that will help those who are historically deprived with respect to the Middle East. It is: “The Truth About Camp David,” by Clayton Swisher, who interviewed dozens of witnesses to the events both at the U.S.- Syrian summit when Ehud Barak backed away from a promise of a deal, and the Palestinian-Israeli talks later. Unfortunately, as Swisher points out, Israel’s negotiators refused to compromise, but Dennis Ross, who was supposedly a neutral U.S. mediator, got to the press first and told the world that both the Syrians and the Palestinians refused the best deal they were ever offered–just the opposite of what happened.

Also, my regards to the person who claims to be Wolf Blitzer’s mother. Not realizing that my description of him could be interpreted as anti-Semitic, I had said he was short and asked hostile questions. I probably should have said he was just “not tall,” and that his questions were as “sweet as honey.”

But you can see how easy it is to be thrown off the subject. We are now discussing Wolf Blitzer’s height rather than his work for the Israeli Lobby back then.

As well, Alan Dershowitz attacked my in his column which he wrote for the Jerusalem Post. I tried to respond with a comment, but apparently Arabs are not allowed onto that website.

Mr. Dershowitz came up with something original–he said my remarks on a television interview I did with Almanar television, which is actually Hisbollah’s station, were anti-Semitic.

I had always thought that Mr. Dershowitz and I could have been friends, except for his support of torture, his efforts to have Norman Finkelstein thrown off the faculty of De Paul University, his plagiarism, which Norman caught him doing, and his defense of O.J. Simpson during the famous murder trial. Mr. Dershowitz will most likely be busy now with O.J.’s latest venture into the world of crime.

He did a magnificent job, however, of trying to change the subject of what Israel is doing to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which is to brutally occupy an unwilling population.

Elder Says:
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:43 am
Ah, so now Dennis Ross - who was actually at Camp David - is a liar.

Of course, Mr. Abourezk is silent on whether Bill Clinton is also a liar for saying that Barak accepted Clinton’s plan and Arafat rejected it. But if he accepts the words of graduate student Clayton Swisher over what Clinton and Ross have said, that is indeed what he is saying.

(Swisher seems to base much of account on interviews with Saeb Erekat, who is an accomplished liar in his own right - see http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/08/laughing-it-up-with-liar.html for some examples. But Swisher’s agenda is clear when he completely fails to mention the official PLO response to Clinton’s offer, where they reject virtually all of it - and it is still on their web site: http://www.nad-plo.org/inner.php?view=nego_nego_clinton_nclinton2p )

So I just documented proof of what Dennis Ross said from the PLO’s own words that Abourezk’s recommended source inexplicably ignores.

Another innovation brought to us courtesy of Mr. Abourezk is saying that Wolf Blitzer’s “hostility” towards him is evidence that Blitzer is himself a member of that amazingly powerful Lobby. It appears that the definition of this “lobby” has been watered down to pretty much anyone who is not lockstep with the Abourezks of the world in supporting Syrian and Palestinian terror.

Apparently, there is another liar in the room: Mr. Abourezk himself. Dershowitz did not call Abourezk anti-semitic in his article in the Jerusalem Post, although he does broadly imply it - in much the same way Abourezk broadly implies that Jews (i.e., “Zionists”) were behind 9/11. I don’t know whether Abourezk’s comments to JPost were indeed censored, but I for one would love to see him actually address what he said on Al-Manar rather than change the subject repeatedly as he has done on this thread (notice that he chooses to attack the weaker Zionist posters on minor topics and ignores my substantive responses and challenges.)

Since I wrote that I saw that Dershowitz has posted essentially the same piece at The Huffington Post, and Abourezk did not comment. Was he being censored there as well?

I emailed The Jerusalem Post to ask if they in fact received any comments from Abourezk.

The book by Clayton Swisher is a partisan joke that invoked Rachel Corrie for dramatic effect. Parts are online here. He does seem to have done a good job documenting what the Camp David participants ate, though. To see a takedown of that book, which no one takes seriously outside the pro-terror crowd, see this post at Peace with Realism, which is where I found out that the book ignored the PLO January 1 2001 response to Clinton.

UPDATE:

Elder Says:
September 23rd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Sorry, but I just had to mention a couple of other things:

It is difficult to respond to the accusations that Israel-bashers are fond of hammering away at that the Zionists who built Israel were racist bigots hell-bent on ethnically cleansing Palestine of Arabs. How can someone prove that the mindset of the vast majority of Zionists were the exact opposite, that they truly wanted to live in peace with the Arabs despite the daily terror that the Jews of Palestine were subjected to?

I posted something last week that does in fact go a long way towards proving exactly that - http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/09/zionism-and-intense-desire-for-peace.html . I took a single issue of the Zionist Palestine Post from March 10, 1946 and analyzed exactly how the Zionists quoted there, as well as the editors of the paper, wrote about Arabs. The desire to live in peace with the Palestinian Arabs was not just empty words - it was pervasive. I invite anyone to look at the archives of the old Palestine Post and try to find articles that disprove what I am saying. You have two decades of issues available online. The tendency of historians to take individual quotes out of context is reprehensible when it is done for partisan purposes - but here is real source material that cannot be faked that shows, pretty clearly, that Abourezk and Pappe are not being honest in their slander against Zionism.

I also noticed that the Dershowitz column was also published in the Huffington Post, and Abourezk didn’t have a reply printed there either. Is the HuffPo part of the Israel Lobby as well? (I emailed the Jerusalem Post to ask them whether they censored Abourezk’s reply to Dershowitz.)

Cheers!

Couple of Sunday morning links

Daled Amos has a good update on the latest from Columbia University inviting Ahmadinejad to speak.
Columbia's "free speech" fig leaf would be more convincing if they would invite someone like David Duke to speak.

Israel Matzav analyzes the latest report about Syrian nukes.
He's been skeptical from the start, always convinced it was chemical WMD, which at this point in time is possibly worse.

Yom Kippur in Afghanistan (h/t Sophia)

Crossing the Rubicon presents A Hard Day's Night - in Yiddish.

Israeli dates sold in Morocco - Muslims freak out

One of the top stories at IslamOnline.net:

RABAT — Branded with Israeli trademark "Bat Sheva", Israeli dates are flooding Moroccan markets during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

"I found dates carrying Israeli trademark in the markets," Abdel-Jalil, a teacher, told IslamOnline.net Saturday, September 22.

Trademarked "Bat Sheva" – the Hebrew name of the town of Beersheba (well, no it isn't - it is the Hebrew name for Bathsheba - EoZ) – the Israeli dates can been seen in abundance on the shelves in eastern and central Morocco.

The "Made in Israel" label is obviously seen on the packages.

"We used to buy dates from Arab countries such as Tunisia," said hajj Mohamed, a dates vendor.

"I myself would not buy dates produced by our enemy," he said.

Mohamed said some merchants are greedy and uncaring.

"They disrespect the sensibilities of Moroccans and are only after money," he said.

He said some retailers are baffling merchants like him and mix Israeli dates with Arab ones.

"The other day, I was shocked to know that some of the dates were made in Israel," he said.

Abdel-Jalil, the teacher, says merchants tend to remove the Israeli label and sell the dates as if they were made in Arab countries like Egypt.

"This is provocative," said Khaled Al-Sufiany, coordinator of the national group for the support of Iraq and Palestine.

"The pro-Israel camp is exploiting Ramadan and slam dunk a trade normalization on the laypeople," he added.

The advocates "are funding the Zionist regime to continue its daily crimes against the Palestinians," he said.

Morocco repeatedly denies any trade relations with Israel.

The North African kingdom closed its trade office in Tel Aviv and the Israeli trade office in Rabat following the outbreak of the 2000 Al-Aqsa intifada.

But non-government groups say that the two countries are having booming ties, especially in the agricultural field.

A recent report by Israel Export Institute said that Israeli exports to Morocco mushroomed by 5.3 percent in the first quarter of 2006.

The comments on the article are even funnier:

could be harmfull

By bilade on 2007-09-22 16:55 (GMT)

israel is known to put chemicals in food they export to arab countries that make you steral. there not harmful chemicals but they make you not have children anymore. so good luck with that!!

By Ahmed on 2007-09-22 20:16 (GMT)

I fully support the previous comment by Bilade commented. I really disappointed by our Muslim bothers not only in Morroco but sadly almost everywhere. And this is prove of that ahadith of our beloved Rassullu allah (S.A.W). Which says that. There is the time will come we (Muslims) will be many but fibble.

I feel very sorry for our brothers in Palestine

By Nawale on 2007-09-22 22:54 (GMT)

I'm a Moroccan girl and I feel manupilated from our government and those merchants that sell us those Israely products without our knowledge.
It's a shame . Hasbona Allah Wani3ema Alewakile

UPDATE: I just saw that Israellycool beat me to this story. But he does have a six hour advantage :)

Israel thwarts Yom Kippur Tel Aviv suicide attack

From Ha'aretz:

A suicide attack in Tel Aviv was thwarted on Saturday when security forces found an explosives belt in an apartment in the city, designated to be used in an attack over the Yom Kippur holiday.

The belt was found Saturday morning in an apartment near the southern end of Allenby Street by the Shin Bet security service, operating with Yarkon District Police.

The apartment was occupied by Palestinians residing there illegally. It was apparently smuggled in parts from the West Bank City of Nablus.

The belt was intended to be used in an attack to be carried out by a suicide bomber who was arrested in Nablus late Thursday, after a three-day operation by the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet officers.

The IDF had deployed large forces in the Beit Ilma refugee camp in Nablus, in an effort to capture a cell of militants that included members of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The security services had received intelligence information that the cell was planning to carry out a suicide bombing attack in central Israel during the holidays.

The Shin Bet security service had picked up the trail to the explosives belt when it arrested Nihad Shkirat, the head of the joint Hamas-PFLP cell on Thursday, the army said. Shkirat told investigators he passed the belt to another Palestinian who works in Tel Aviv.

Police arrested that suspect Friday night and were led to the Tel Aviv apartment where they found the belt.

During the three-day operation, IDF Staff Sergeant Ben-Zion Henman was killed, as were two Palestinians, a civilian and an armed PFLP militant.

During the entire week the Palestinian Arabs were complaining about the Israeli operation near Nablus (except, of course, for the part where an IDF soldier was killed - they bragged about that part.)

The world sees Israel arresting Palestinian Arabs (the PalArabs call it "abducting") they it is always condemned as being disproportionate or inflammatory. The 24-hour news cycle can't be expected to relate what happened last week with the fact that possibly dozens of lives were saved this week as a direct result of they perceive as Israeli cruelty.

Objectively speaking, it would be much crueler to let the PalArabs bomb Israeli civilians at will, but the world is not objective.

G'mar chatima tovah 5768 - גמר חתימה טובה

At the moment, my most popular post is one I made 3 years ago wishing everyone a G'mar Chatima Tovah, as many people are now Googling that phrase. (Also popular are my Yom Kippur wishes from 2005 and 2006.) It is nice to see so many people wishing each other to be sealed in the Book of Life!

I wish all of my Jewish readers an easy fast and a meaningful Yom Kippur. I unconditionaly forgive anyone who may have wronged me during this year, and I ask forgiveness for anyone I may have wronged as well.

May we all be sealed in the Book of Life and have a year of peace, prosperity, unity and wisdom.

The Syrian concept of democracy

From Israel HaYom (translated via Daily Alert):

In the last two years, Syria has assassinated its major opponents in Lebanon one after another.

First and foremost, their efforts are directed at killing off members of the Lebanese parliament who oppose Damascus and its policies. Thus, the majority which the anti-Syrian camp in parliament has enjoyed has been narrowed from 72 to 68.

Another one or two assassinations and this camp will equal the pro-Syrian camp, which is led by Shiite organizations at the head of which is Hizbullah.

If you can't get a majority of people to vote your way, just murder those who disagree until the only ones left are on your side!

Of course, not everyone blames Syria for the assassinations:

Hosseini blamed Israel, Iran’s arch regional enemy, for Wednesday’s murder of MP Antoine Ghanem in a mainly Christian neighbourhood of Beirut.

“It comes from ominous plots of the Zionist regime, which has always been threatening Lebanese sovereignty, independence, security and people’s solidarity,” he said in a statement.

American Yom Kippurs in 19th century newspapers

This article from the 1875 Brooklyn Daily Eagle shows how Yom Kippur was celebrated in 1875 in Brooklyn (when there were only 3 shuls there!):

And this one from the Deseret (Utah) News, written by a Jew who converted to Mormonism in 1889, is also interesting if a bit biased:

40% of Egyptian women have been sexually abused

From YNet:

Yousra, the queen of the silver screen in the Arab world, is not only a beauty but also a highly opinionated actress who views her status as a springboard for conveying social messages. Every year during the Ramadan fast, the peak season for TV viewing in the Arab world, Yousra pushes urgent social issues to the forefront...
"A Case of Public Opinion," the latest Ramadan series, has become the talk of the town even before being aired in 22 Arab countries. Ratings are sky high; no one dares miss the show. This time the queen of the screen from Cairo chose to focus on a topic that Arab society has insisted on burying deep underground: Violent rape and sexual abuse .

The series recounts the story of three young female doctors who work in a respectable hospital in the heart of Cairo; the three are summoned in the middle of the night to treat an urgent case. As they race to the destination from a remote neighborhood, drugged thugs pounce on them from behind the shadows. They are attacked and raped, including the doctor whose pregnancy is very obvious. They weep, cut and bruised, while three knife cuts are evident on the cheek of the department head, portrayed by Yousra.

Ahead of the broadcasts, one of the human rights organizations in Egypt held a referendum among tens of thousands of women. The findings were shocking: 40 percent of respondents admitted that they had been raped and forced to remain silent. An additional 10 percent revealed that they are forced to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace. If they open their mouths, they will lose their jobs.

In a "Case of Public Opinion", the marriage of the star doctor is falling apart. Her husband insists on ignoring the facts, and the legal authorities remove the complaint against one of the rapists, the son of a senior government minister. Even the fate of her two colleagues plays against them, when the hospital director hints that "if they don't shut up, they will be fired."

YNet seems to be mistaken; it is not 40% that have been raped but 40% that have been victims of "inappropriate touching":

Results from our preliminary research efforts (conducted entirely on a volunteer basis) show that sexual harassment is not only a persistent threat to some women, but that it is a widespread issue for all of Egyptian society. Survey results attest that harassment is not limited by age or social class, but hinders the progress of women across demographics. Service workers, housewives and professionals alike all report experiencing sexual harassment. The most common form is inappropriate touching (40% of all respondents), followed by verbal harassment (38%). 30% of respondents reported being harassed on a daily basis and another 12% are harassed almost daily. Only 12% of respondents approached police when harassed, expressing a complete lack of confidence in Egypt's police and legal system to protect them from harassers.

Al Jazeera adds:

Many Egyptian women have stories, usually branded as "shameful" and "embarrassing", of public harassment and even outright sexual assault in public.

...In October 2006, Wael Abbas, a human rights activist, captured video images of throngs of men pulling scarves off veiled women and ganging up on two or three women at a time in downtown Cairo.

One picture even showed a group of girls taking sanctuary in a downtown store, crowds of men waiting at the door as a number of police officers seemed unable to contain the pandemonium.

Apparently, the honor of women is not quite as important in Arab societies as they have been claiming.
(H/T EBoZ)

Why is Rafah closed? Hint: It isn't because of Israel

Jeremy Bowen of the BBC has written another slanted piece about how Israel has turned Gaza into a giant prison, although he threw in a short reference to Sderot to keep his pretense at being impartial.

What he doesn't mention (along with the rest of the MSM) is that the Rafah border crossing into Egypt is not closed because of Israel, but because of Hamas.

When Hamas won the Palestinian Arab elections in January 2006, the EU stopped its supervision of Rafah as per the November 2005 agreement because that agreement was that the EU would only work with Fatah, not Hamas. In April 2006, a new agreement was hammered out where the Rafah crossings came under the responsibility of Mahmoud Abbas, not Hamas, and they re-opened until Gilad Shalit's kidnapping.

Now, with Hamas in control of Gaza, the EUBAM/Rafah team cannot legally reopen Rafah and it has remained closed since June 9th, when Hamas took over. The EUBAM is still there waiting for a change in the situation, but as long as Hamas is in control, they cannot do anything. And the thousands of Palestinian Arabs stranded on the Egyptian side of Rafah were stuck there because of Hamas - the only way to resolves the situation was for Egypt and Israel to go around Hamas and use a border crossing that Hamas could not control.

But blaming Hamas for Gaza's troubles is too close to the Zionist way of thinking, and the BBC cannot bear to be accused of that heinous crime. Much easier, and lazier, to call Gaza a big Israeli "prison."

Attorney General nominee forcing Jew-haters out of woodwork

It appears that Michael Bernard Mukasey is a religious Jew, which is freaking out the usual suspects.

At The People's Voice, a 9-11 "truther" is quite upset as he painstakingly goes through Mukasey's family tree, digging up every Jewish-sounding name he can:

Michael B. Mukasey married Susan Bernstock Saroff in July 1974. They were married by Rabbi Judah Nadich, the first adviser on Jewish Affairs to General Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of the U.S. forces in Europe. Nadich involved in the displaced person (DP) camps and requested that the Jewish DPs have their own camps and receive preferable treatment in such things as food and emmigration to the United States.

See: Judah Nadich (1912 — 2007)

Susan is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Bernstock. Her marriage with Mr. Saroff had ended in divorce.

According to obits in the New York Times, Michael Bernard Mukasey was born in, or about 1941 to Albert Mukasey and his wife, the former Mae Fischer. He has a sister named Rhoda Eckstein, who evidently married a Norbert Eckstein.

Albert Mukasey died in September 1972 and Mae Fischer Mukasey died in February 1975.

At Vanguard News Network (sorry, I won't link to it), the headline is " SURPRISE! Bush Picks KIKE for Attorney General!". (One comment was "Ashkenazim Talmudic serpentilic creature from the black pit of the Lord of Darkness. Put a black brim hat on his head and a long black beard on his face and you will see him as he truly is.")

One person has been spamming investment forums with "This means this traitorous, piece of parasitic filth has dual citizenship with Israel, which is against The Constitution Of The United States Of America. "

On Yahoo Answers, someone posted a question:

"Was the nomination of Jew Michael Mukasey a taunting message to White Christians (like the middle finger)?"

I found this account of him during the 1993 WTC trial interesting:

Given that all of the defendants are Muslims and most of the defense lawyers are Jews, the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 10 others on terrorism charges has all along had a strange-bedfellows quality. And there was a rare moment of conflict involving religion at the trial last week when the defendants were out of the courtroom on a regular break so they could perform their afternoon Muslim prayers.

With the jury out of the courtroom, Judge Michael B. Mukasey took the bench and, clearly annoyed, announced that a problem had arisen. It seems, the judge said, that the marshals had summoned the defendants in the middle of their prayers and, feeling insulted, they "took the position" that "they are either starting all over, or don't want to come out, or whatever."

"I take the position," the judge said through clenched teeth, "that anybody who isn't in here in five minutes is voluntarily absenting himself. We're going to go ahead without them." And to make up for the lost time, he said, he would sit a bit later than usual.

Judge Mukasey generally is low-key, soft-spoken, kindly, but he clearly wants the trial to move along, and he is impatient when legal arguments, or what he sees as small complaints about the prison conditions of the defendants, slow things down. He frequently cuts lawyers off in mid-sentence and tells them to sit down, or answers a request with a curt "no," offering no explanation.

On the afternoon the defendants refused to return to court before their prayers were finished, Lynne Stewart, the lawyer for Mr. Abdel Rahman, pleaded with the judge to take into account that it is now Ramadan, the monthlong holiday during which Muslims take no food from before dawn until after nightfall.

"I don't care what it is," Judge Mukasey snapped. "I gave a 20-minute break."

Ms. Stewart: "I don't think if someone said, 'I don't care if it's Passover or not,' you would take that very kindly. I wouldn't take it so . . . "

Judge Mukasey interrupted: "Take it kindly or not, they were given 20 minutes. That's ample time. They were to be back here in 20 minutes, or we will go ahead without them. That's the way it is going to get done."

Ms. Stewart: "Judge . . . "

Judge Mukasey: "Period."

A little later, another lawyer, Anthony Ricco, passed along to the judge a request by the defendants to discuss the issue, but Judge Mukasey refused. "I'm not talking to them," he said. Still, he seemed to soften, and when every lawyer on the case promised to talk to the defendants over the weekend and let them know that they had to follow the judge's schedule, he relented in his insistence on proceeding without the defendants. A few minutes later, the 11 men, most of them carrying prayer rugs in their manacled hands, walked back into the courtroom.

Sounds exactly right - allow them to practice their religion properly but don't allow them to use religion to bully everyone else.

This will be interesting!