Zionist Conspiracy

1. Good point:
http://americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=6452
Speaking of detention camps

The next time some British politician talks about how awful Guantanamo Bay
is, it is time to remind him of some scenes depicted in the movie Exodus,
about the British military detention camps set up on Cyprus after WW II to
hold Jewish refugees caught trying to go to Palestine. As long as they are
decrying good conditions, let us remind them about really harsh ones.
Quote:

The Decision to Detain Jews in Cyprus Transshipment and detention camps
on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, in which the British authorities
held Jewish .illegal. immigrants, most of them European survivors of the
Holocaust trying to enter Palestine. On August 7, 1946, the British
government made a decision to detain these Jews in Cyprus, hoping that
this deterrent would put an end to Jewish illegal immigration. The
decision was geared to the British policy of breaking the power of the
.Hebrew resistance movement. in Palestine. But before long, the British
came to realize that detention was not achieving the desired aim; the
would . be immigrants continued their attempts to reach Palestine despite
violent clashes with British troops and transshipment to Cyprus. The use
of the Cyprus detention camps began on August 13, 1946, and ended on
February 10, 1949, when the last group of detainees left for what had
become the state of Israel. During this period, fifty two thousand Jews
passed through the Cyprus camps, having been taken off thirty . nine boats
in their attempts to get to Palestine. To this number must be added twenty
. two hundred children who were born in the camps. Some detainees spent
only a few months in Cyprus, but many were held there for a year or
longer.
Jack Kemp (not the politician) 10 26 06

2. George Soros' Guppies attack Jews:
http://americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=6451

3. Zionphobia:
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/30691/format/html/displaystory.html
Daniel Pearl.s parents fighting .Zionophobia. one journalist at a time

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

You know what Judea Pearl could do without? Sentences that begin: .It.s a
shame your son was kidnapped and murdered, but . .

He.s getting really tired of the .but..

.I am not happy with the typical response we get from the Muslim world,
which is that so many Muslims are being slaughtered in Iraq and Kashmir
and Palestine and Chechnya, so what.s all this fuss about an American
Jewish journalist?. recalls Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl, the Wall
Street Journal reporter killed by terrorists four years ago in Pakistan.

.This is a technique of blurring the definition of terrorism,. he said in
a phone interview. .The argument is based on counting bodies regardless of
intention. It.s an attempt to say that everybody is a terrorist..

Pearl has fighting words for many in both the Muslim and Jewish
communities, but he isn.t fighting with fists or missiles. Through the
Daniel Pearl Foundation . he.s the president and his wife, Ruth, is the
CFO . he.s working to combat hatred and intolerance through the mediums
his son excelled in: journalism, music and dialogue.

.We are trying to change the world. We are trying to bring some sanity
into this world,. says Ruth Pearl.

The couple, both 70 and both American-Israeli dual citizens, were at
Stanford on Tuesday, Oct. 17 for the inaugural Daniel Pearl Memorial
Lecture; CNN.s Christiane Amanpour spoke to a capacity crowd of roughly
800.

The lecture series is just one of many projects that have become full-time
jobs for the Pearls. Ruth is running the foundation, and Judea, a computer
science professor at UCLA, is burning the midnight oil as well.

Most readers know of Daniel Pearl only in the context of his death and the
hostage crisis which led up to it, so it may come as a surprise that Pearl
was a funny guy who played the violin and mandolin in a number of bands.
The Pearl foundation has helped to organize roughly 360 concerts in 36
countries to spread the message of tolerance and cooperation through music
and dialogue, just as Daniel Pearl did in life.

The foundation has also started a program in which journalists from Muslim
nations are given the chance to work at American newspapers, either as
working writers or as observers.

So far, writers and editors from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen and Nepal
have gotten the chance to contribute at the Los Angeles Times and,
intriguingly, the L.A. Jewish Journal.

.We met the editor of the Saudi Gazette at the airport and spent time with
him, and he turned to me and said, .You two are the first Jewish people I
have ever met,.. recalled Ruth Pearl.

Another journalist .went back to Yemen and organized training seminars. He
also publicly responded to the Arab journalist organization that suggested
no Arab journalist should be trained in the West. We have strong
connections with these people. A journalist has an impact that is far
greater than one person.s. An editor has even more..

Daniel Pearl.s murder at age 39 changed his parents. world forever, as it
would for anyone who outlived their child. But the Pearls decided to do
more than just grieve.

.Everything we do now, we have never done before. I was dealing with
equations, and Ruth was dealing with computer software,. said Judea Pearl.
.Now we are engaged with social activism..

Pearl blames .classical anti-Semitism. for fueling the men who killed his
son, but also sees .Zionophobia,. a term he coined. Zionophobia is
different from anti-Semitism, and he feels the organized Jewish community
has been slow and incompetent in fighting it.

.Denying Jewish people the right for nationhood is straight racism, not
anti-Semitism. Jews fight Zionophobia by labeling it anti-Semitism, which
is a mistake. It is so easily deflected by saying .My best friends are
Jewish. or .I.ll go to prison to defend a Jew.s right to wear a yarmulke
or eat kosher food. but still want Israel to be abolished,. argues Pearl.

Bandying about the term anti-Semitism .makes us look paranoid. It makes
the whole fight against anti-Semitism lose its edge..

4. The next war:
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/30719/format/html/displaystory.html

5. Lying about Corrie:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1161811222098&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

6. Tikkunizing Mount Scopus?
The Hebrew University is hosting a joint Jewish-Palestinian conferences
devtored to making peace through promiting the use of cannabis. Really.
See http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3319707,00.html

At .First Israeli-Arab Joint. conference at Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, pro-marijuana party presents its vision for Mideast peace .
through pot: .Cannabis brings about a basis for common identity.

Weed for peace? Marijuana may achieve the end of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict - or at least so believe members of the Green Leaf party, which
organized the First Israeli-Arab Joint conference at Jerusalem.s Hebrew
University Wednesday.

7. Sleaze and sleazette:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=114297

8. Interesting piece:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3319847,00.html

# posted by Steven Plaut : 3:37 AM

1. The Knesset Traffics in Legislative Foolishness
by Steven Plaut

The Knesset has just given its final approval to one of the stupidest
pieces of legislation in recent years. It is ostensively a law against
"human trafficking". In fact, it is a legislative excursion into the
trafficking of political correctness that will produce considerable harm.
The new law's damages go well beyond the scope of trying to legislate away
"trafficking" of prostitutes.

First, I guess I must have been out of the room when prostitution morphed
into "human trafficking". Prostitution is prostitution, not human
trafficking, and calling it "human trafficking" is highly misleading.
Prostitutes may be a lot of things, but they are generally not slaves,
media mythology notwithstanding. Certainly today in industrialized
countries, most of them (of both genders) ply their trade by choice,
pathetic as that fact may be. And in Israel, any "working girl" seeking
to leave the profession need only walk into any shelter, police station,
or dial 100 (Israel's 911).

Israel, like every single other society in history, has plenty of hookers.
Prostitution is by and large out in the open, with the daily newspapers,
tourist magazines, and sometimes billboards filled with ads for "escort
services" and "massages". The Caring Classes have never had much to say
against those. Their only initiatives over the years have been to try to
"institutionalize" prostitution, meaning prohibiting the vice squads from
jailing the prostitutes. Bleeding Hearts have proposed trying to control
prostitution by "regulating it", requiring health checks for the "working
girls", income tax arrangements, etc. Leftist journalists and professors
regularly call for recognizing the "sex industry" as a productive sector
contributing to the gross national product, and oppose massive roundups of
prostitutes.

Some of the hookers in Israel are recruits from overseas, mainly from the
poorer parts of Eastern Europe. These are sometimes smuggled into Israel
by pimps or "brokers" of sorts, while in other cases they enter as
tourists, the "trafficked humans" for whom the Caring Classes are suddenly
concerned. The press likes to carry lurid stories about prostitutes
being "enslaved" by their pimps and beaten, abused, etc.. It is
especially fond of stories about nice innocent Ukrainian girls having been
tricked off their farms into entering Israel, thinking they would work as
cashiers or models, and then being leased out to pimps.

Yeah, sure.

Let me say that I have no personal acquaintance at all with this "market."
But that does not stop me from dismissing these media "enslavement"
stories for the nonsense they are. I do not believe there is a single
prostitute in Israel who came to the country as part of being "deceived"
into thinking she would get work as a stenographer. And if there WERE
such a person, she could go to any cop, any lawyer, or any women's shelter
to get a combative feminist attorney to set things right and sue the pants
off any pimps or "traffickers" involved.

Previous Israeli laws already granted free public legal representation to
women claiming they had been defrauded as part of "human trafficking" and
also set up taxpayer-financed shelters for them. And since most of the
prostitutes evidently speak Russian, along with a million ordinary
Israelis, they have no problems communicating nor getting all the
information they need about their rights.

The new law passed a few days ago again makes "human trafficking" illegal
(but not prostitution itself), which it already had been. It makes
beating up prostitutes illegal, but only by "traffickers", apparently not
by customers. The new law was the initiative of the far-leftist Meretz
party, along with some other individual Knesset members and leftist NGOs.

Before the new law, "human trafficking" was already illegal in Israel,
including when it involves any fraudulent acts to get someone to leave her
own country to come to work in Israel in prostitution or "slave labor".
The new law prohibits pimps from "buying" and "selling" street walkers
among themselves, which was already illegal in any case. No doubt these
prohibitions will make prostitution in Israel as unknown as it already is
in Las Vegas. In any case, all a "trafficker" now need do to get around
the law is to sign the working girl on a notarized affidavit that says she
knows what kind of work awaits her in the Land of Israel.

The new law simply makes the punishments for pimps stronger, with
imprisonment up to 20 years (for trafficking in a minor) and in other
cases 16 years, plus forfeit of all property of the "trafficker". By
making it harder for the prosecution to strike plea bargains with pimps,
the law actually guarantees that few will do real jail time.

There are other "feel-good" laws on the books in Israel, but in the case
of this new law, the damages go well beyond those already noted. There
are several reasons for this.

First, the definition of "human trafficking" and "enslavement" in the law
is so loose that it can be applied to any foreign worker who is employed
in Israel in legitimate, legal jobs, anything from home-care work to
construction. Anytime one of these now wishes to breach a labor contract,
or anytime some liberal lawyer or other bleeding heart decides that such
workers are "underpaid", for example when they are paid less than Israeli
citizens, the flood of litigation will commence. The bleeding hearts have
long sought to price all such foreign workers out of the Israeli labor
market altogether, by requiring artificially high wages and benefits for
them. Should they success in eliminating the employment of "guest
workers," they will damage the Israeli economy enormously, while forcing
those same workers to return home to jobs that offer them wages at a fifth
or less of what they get "underpaid" in Israel. It remains to be seen
whether all ordinary Israeli labor contracts will become breachable by
people claiming they have been "enslaved" by them.

Second, the law contains several "add-ons" that have nothing to do with
prostitution but nevertheless could be enormously harmful. The law
prohibits "trafficking in human organs" and also "trafficking in children
or minors", which could make some international adoptions problematic.

The prohibition on "trafficking in human organs" makes it illegal to buy
or sell body parts, such as organ donations from living or from dead
donors. The prohibition is general and even applies to voluntary donors.
Now it may well be that it is more dignified and ethical when organ
donations are made by donors (or their immediate family members when the
donor has died) with no monetary remuneration. But it is also true that
the quantity of such donations is only a tiny fraction of the need for
organs. It is a fact of life that allowing people to pay for and receive
payment for organ donations makes the supply of donor organs increase
significantly. Prohibition of such payment arrangements amounts to a
death sentence for many of those awaiting organs. It is true that
sometimes the sources for these organs may be poorer countries, where
people (and surviving family members) are willing to sell them. But the
squeamishness we all feel about such commerce ends the moment someone we
knows really needs such an organ.

There are also potential problems in the blanket prohibition on
transporting minors from outside Israel into Israel. As long as the
prohibition refers to transport for purposes of employment in
prostitution, all such laws are welcome. But the language of the law's
prohibition might make it difficult for infertile Israeli families to
adopt children from overseas. For many years, such families have adopted
children from other countries, in many cases making large payments for the
children, and in some cases using "gray" and "informal" channels for the
adoptions. (There are very few children inside Israel available for
adoption, in part thanks to Israel's abortion-on-demand rules.) Could
such families now face prosecution for "human trafficking" in minors?

Since the time of Genesis, no one has known how to eliminate prostitution
as a social ill. My personal preference is to use zoning to confine it to
special geographic areas, well away from residential neighborhoods and
minors and economists. In the case of Israel, Nablus, Kalkiliya and Khan
Yunis strike me as promising potential locations. But the new Knesset
initiative is not at all designed to end this scourge. It is a
"feel-good" law whose ability to end mistreatment of prostitutes by their
"traffickers" is dubious, while at the same time it creates quite a few
other unintended damages.

(Text of draft of new law in Hebrew is at
http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/word/210703.rtf )

2. Ida Nudel speaks out:
A Former Refusenik's Disillusionment

I arrived in Israel exactly 19 years ago . on the same date, in
fact, that I write these words . from the USSR, where Zionist life was
thriving. I had come to the land of my dreams not as a refugee seeking a
small place under the sun in whatever country was available, but as
someone who knew why and for what purpose I had paved . for over 17 years
and often at risk to my life . the road to Israel for myself and for many
other Jews who shared my feelings and aspirations.

Israel.s mass media, Jewish Agency publications, and Voice of Israel
radio all declared that every Jewish citizen of Israel lived on his or her
land with dignity. All too soon, however, I discovered that most of the
proclaimed advantages of the Jewish state belonged to its glorious past.

The word Zionism has acquired a negative connotation in Israel. The
mass media, i.e., the country.s intellectual elite, inspire hatred between
Jewish immigrants from different countries and obstruct the revival of a
homogenous Jewish people after 2,000 years of dispersion.

The disdain of the weak and poor is actively and cynically
cultivated by the mass media. Schools actively practice selection of
children according to their families. material means.

The national bureaucracy hinders the integration of young people
into Israel.s economic life and thus pushes them to leave the country.

After 2001, when mention of national identity was removed from
Israeli IDs, the word .Jewish. virtually disappeared not only from
official documents but also from the pages of newspapers. Even the
anti-Semitic Soviet regime was never able to deliver such a blow to the
national dignity of Jews.

In the last decades of the 20th century, the interests of Jewish
national revival and those of Israel.s national bureaucracy came into real
conflict . one that endangers the idea of the Jewish national home. We
have witnessed how a persecuted and humiliated people.s glorious dream of
a resurrected Israel has been reduced, by the national bureaucracy, to a
venal vision of nurturing as many millionaires as possible.

The same individuals sit in the Knesset for decades. The
intellectuals are concerned only with their personal success, while the
mass media have turned into a mass brainwashing machine targeting poor,
semi-literate and politically na.ve citizens. New millionaires are
appearing at a striking rate, while the reverse process of mass
impoverishment is also accelerating. The middle class is gradually
vanishing from the country.s economic life.

A few days ago the world learned of this year.s winner of the Nobel
Peace Prize . a Bangladeshi millionaire banker who, at his own initiative
and in spite of bureaucratic obstacles, began fighting poverty and
illiteracy in his country. His hard and devoted work has won him
well-deserved worldwide acclaim.

This great citizen of a poor country has saved from poverty six
million of his compatriots and has given them a chance for a dignified
life. It looks like a fairy tale . a kind and resourceful wizard arriving
to make the poor people happy.

It turns out that even a lone millionaire, providing he is a genuine
patriot, can solve a national-level problem. Instead of making money on
poor people.s misfortune and gaining 400% annual profit . as often is the
case in Israel . he disdainfully puts the bureaucracy aside and addresses
the problem himself.

The myth of unemployment being impossible to eliminate has been
debunked by a one-man initiative. Can such a thing happen here in Israel,
among our people who declare their mission to be one of bringing light and
justice to humankind?

In light of the Bangladesh phenomenon, the economic and moral morass
in Israel appears more than ever to be attributable to Israel.s national
bureaucracy and political leadership.

Ida Nudel

Karme Yosef, Israel

(Editor.s Note: Ms. Nudel is a former Soviet Prisoner of Zion and a
winner of the Jabotinsky Prize.)
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/19758/Letters_To_The_Editor.html

3. How to fix things:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193522365&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

4. Leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch smears Elie Wiesel:
http://counterpunch.com/mcgowan10252006.html

5. Mikey Moonbeam gets spanked:

False charges

Sir, - So let me see if I understand this: Michael Lerner writes an
article in which he asks me to stop attacking him, after he accuses me of
supporting torture and assassination, of being "one of the most detested
figures in liberal American circles" and of calling him an "anti-Semitic
rabbi" ("Alan Dershowitz! stop your personal attacks," October 24).

He knows that each of these charges is false. I oppose torture, but favor
accountability if and when it is applied. I only support targeted
assassination as a last resort to prevent imminent terrorist attacks. I
continue to be invited by and to receive awards from liberal organizations
(though not from the kind of far-left groups that Lerner admires; then
again, I never was a favorite of either political extreme).

And as I noted in my original column, though Lerner rationalizes his lies
about me by saying that I called him an "anti-Semitic rabbi," what I
actually wrote is that Lerner's support for divestment from Israel proves
that "even a rabbi can support anti-Semitic actions." Quite a difference!

Lerner claims that the genesis of our dispute is that he "criticized" me
for being a member of the OJ Simpson defense team. His exact words were
that my "hands" were "still dripping from the blood of the victims whose
assassins [Dershowitz] protected." So much for the rights of the accused.
(And Lerner says that my views are anathema to liberalism!)

Finally, Lerner's claim that he now disavows the Finkelstein
assassination-masturbation article that he forwarded insults our
intelligence. When's the last time he forwarded a David Duke article to
his friends?

So here's my counteroffer to Michael Lerner. If Lerner promises to stop
lying about me, I promise to stop telling the truth about him.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ
Cambridge, Massachusetts
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193522357&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

(Prof. Dershowitz has one error in his letter: Lerner is not a rabbi)

# posted by Steven Plaut : 5:43 AM

1. For those who expected the anti-democratic doctrine of "judicial
activism" to disappear once its main advocate in Israel, Chief Justice
Aharon Barak, retired - think again!

Yesterday the Supreme Court proved that judicial activism (which
is a form of judicial tyranny holding that unelected judges should be
free just to make up laws as they go along, laws that the elected reps of
the people oppose) is still around.

By a vote of 2 against 1, a Supreme
Court panel voted that a senior poice officer be barred from being
promoted (and in effect be forced to resign) , in spite of a decision by
the executive branch of the Israeli
government and an official commission of inquiry that it appointed
that he NOT be so barred. The officer had been criticized in a
report on the behavior of the police in the 2000 pogroms launched by
Israeli Arabs against Jews. In those pogroms, the police used live
ammunition. Captain Bentsi Sau (spelling?) was criticized in the
later state report of inquiry into the events, a report that
deliberately downplayed the violent provocations and behavior of Arab
rioters. Nothing in that report specifically called for Sau's
resignation, dismissal, or denial of promotion. Recently, an Arab NGO and
some families of Arabs killed in the
suppression of those pogroms petitioned the court to block all further
promotions for Sau. There is no legal basis that allows the court
to impose its own conclusions on such personnel decisions nor to override
what the government decided. In other words, the Court thinks it is in
its power to impose on the executive branch what executive policy must be!

The two judges who voted for this act of anti-democratic judicial tyranny
were Ayala Procaccia, who was sharply denounced in the media in recent
weeks for her ordering the jailing without trial of teenage girls for
holding politically incorrect political opinions (see
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=105914), and Salim Jubran, a
Christian Arab Supreme Court judge. Eliakim Rubinstein voted against the
decision.

2. The headline in Haaretz today is that Amir Peretz, the head of the
Israeli Labor Party, is willing to accept Avigdor Lieberman as a cabinet
minister if - in exchange - the government agrees to a list of payoffs and
concessions to Israeli Arabs.
SO if you were wondering who Peretz considers to be his actual
constituents, he has clarified that now.

3. Pro-terror journalist gets himself kidnapped by his terrorists:
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=114144
Here is another one:
http://counterpunch.com/phillips10242006.html

4. Drug-touting, pro-terror, anti-Semitic hippy pseudo-rabbi spreading
his manure again:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=2&cid=1159193504520&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

5. Israel leftist professors say WORSE things than THIS! Why are they
not prosecuted?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193506985&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

6. NO PEACE, NO PEACE PLANS, NO PRICE FOR PEACE
(A short guide to those obsessed with peace)

by Moshe Sharon

- Everybody says that his donkey is a horse.
- There is no tax on words.
(Two Arab proverbs)

On December 24th 1977, at the very beginning of the negotiations between
Israel and Egypt in Ismailia, I had the opportunity to have a short
discussion with Muhammad Anwar Sadat the president of Egypt. "Tell your
Prime Minister, he said, that this is a bazaar; the merchandize is
expensive." I told my Prime Minister but he failed to abide by the rules
of
the bazaar. The failure was not unique to him alone. It is the failure of
all the Israeli governments and the media.

On March 4, 1994, I published an article in the Jerusalem Post called
"Novices in Negotiations" The occasion was the conclusion of the "Cairo
Agreement." A short time later, Yasser Arafat, proved yet again that his
signature was not worth the ink of his pen let alone the paper to which it
was affixed, and his word was worth even less. Then, as in every
subsequent
agreement Israel was taken aback when her concessions had become the basis
for fresh Arab demands.

In Middle Eastern bazaar diplomacy, agreements are kept not because they
are
signed but because they are imposed. Besides, in the bazaar of the
Arab-Israeli conflict, the two sides are not discussing the same
merchandize. The Israelis wish to acquire peace based on the Arab-Muslim
acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. The objective of the Arabs is to
annihilate the Jewish state, replace it with an Arab state, and get rid of
the Jews.
To achieve their goal, the Arabs took to the battlefield and to the bazaar
diplomacy. The most important rule in the bazaar is that if the vendor
knows
that you desire to purchase a certain piece of merchandize, he will raise
its price. The merchandize in question is "peace" and the Arabs give the
impression that they actually have this merchandize and inflate its price,
when in truth they do not have it at all.

This is the wisdom of the bazaar, if you are clever enough you can sell
nothing at a price. The Arabs sell words, they sign agreements, and they
trade with vague promises, but are sure to receive generous down payments
from eager buyers. In the bazaar only a foolish buyer pays for something
he
has never seen.

There is another rule in the market as well as across the negotiating
table:
the side that first presents his terms is bound to loose; the other side
builds his next move using the open cards of his opponent as the starting
point.

In all its negotiations with the Palestinian Arabs, Israel has always
rushed
to offer its plans, and was surprised to discover that after an agreement
had been "concluded" it had become the basis for further demands.

Most amazing is the reaction in such cases. Israeli politicians, "experts"
and the media eagerly provide "explanations" for the Arabs' behavior. One
of
the most popular explanations is that these or other Arab pronouncements
are
"for internal use," as if "internal use" does not count. Other
explanations
invoke "the Arab sensitivity to symbols," "honor," "matters of emotion"
and
other more patronising sayings of this nature. Does Israel possess no
"sensitivities" or does it have no honor? What does all this have to do
with
political encounters?

It is therefore essential, as the late President Sadat advised, to learn
the
rules of the oriental bazaar before venturing into the arena of bazaar
diplomacy. The most important of all the rules is the Roman saying: "If
you
want peace - prepare for war." Never come to the negotiating table from a
position of weakness. Your adversary should always know that you are
strong
and ready for war even more than you are ready for peace.

In the present situation in the Middle East and in the foreseeable future
"Peace" is nothing more than an empty word. Israel should stop speaking
about "peace" and delete the word "peace" from its vocabulary together
with
such phrases as "the price of peace" or "territory for peace." For a
hundred
years the Jews have been begging the Arabs to sell them peace, ready to
pay
any price. They have received nothing, because the Arabs have no peace to
sell, but they have still paid dearly. It must be said in all fairness
that
the Arabs have not made a secret of the fact that what they meant by the
word "peace" was nothing more than a limited ceasefire for a limited
period.

Since this is the situation, Israel should openly declare that peace does
not exist as an option in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that it has
decided
to create a new state of affairs in the Middle East, compelling the Arab
side to ask for peace; and pay for it. Unlike the Arabs, Israel has this
merchandize for sale.

>From now on Israel should be the side demanding payment for peace. If the

Arabs want peace, Israel should fix its price in real terms. The Arabs
will
pay if they reach the conclusion that Israel is so strong that they cannot
destroy it. Because of this, Israel's deterrent power is essential.

Therefore, if anyone asks Israel for plans, the answer should be: no
"plans," no "suggestions," no "constructive ideas," in fact no
negotiations
at all. If the Arab side wants to negotiate, let it present its plans and
its "ideas." If and when it does, the first Israeli reaction should always
be "unacceptable! Come with better ones." If and when the time comes for
serious negotiations, once the Arabs have lost all hope of annihilating
the
Jewish state, here are ten rules for bargaining in the Middle Eastern
bazaar:

. Never be the first to suggest anything to the other side. Never
show
any eagerness "to conclude a deal." Let the opponent present his
suggestions
first.
. Always reject; disagree. Use the phrase: "Not meeting the minimum
demands," and walk away, even a hundred times. A tough customer gets good
prices.
. Don't rush to come up with counter-offers. There will always be
time
for that. Let the other side make amendments under the pressure of your
total "disappointment." Patience is the name of the game: "haste is from
Satan!"
. Have your own plan ready in full, as detailed as possible, with
the
red lines completely defined. However, never show this or any other plan
to
a third party. It will reach your opponent quicker than you think. Weigh
the
other side's suggestions against this plan.
. Never change your detailed plan to meet the other side "half way."
Remember, there is no "half way." The other side also has a master plan.
Be
ready to quit negotiations when you encounter stubbornness on the other
side.
. Never leave things unclear. Always avoid "creative phrasing" and
"creative ideas" which are exactly what your Arab opponent wants. Remember
the Arabs are masters of language. Playing with words is the Arab national
sport. As in the market, so also at the negotiating table, always talk
dollars and cents.
. Always bear in mind that the other side will try to outsmart you
by
presenting major issues as unimportant details. Regard every detail as a
vitally important issue. Never postpone any problem "for a later
occasion."
If you do so you will lose; remember that your opponent is always looking
for a reason to avoid honouring agreements.
. Emotion belongs neither in the marketplace nor at the negotiating
table. Friendly words as well as outbursts of anger, holding hands,
kissing,
touching cheeks, and embracing should not be interpreted as representing
policy.
. Beware of popular beliefs about the Arabs and the Middle East -
"Arab honour" for example. Remember, you have honour too, but this has
nothing to do with the issues under negotiation. Never do or say anything
because somebody has told you that it is "the custom." If the Arab side
finds out that you are playing the anthropologist he will take advantage
of
it.
. Always remember that the goal of all negotiations is to make a
profit. You should aim at making the highest profit in real terms.
Remember that every gain is an asset for the future, because there is
always
going to be "another round."
The Arabs have been practicing negotiation tactics for more than 2000
years.
They are the masters of words, and a mine of endless patience. In
contrast,
Israelis (and Westerners in general) want quick "results." In this part
of
the world there are no quick results, the hasty one always looses.

Moshe Sharon, Ph.D.
professor of Islamic History in the
Hebrew University, Jerusalem
See also http://acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/09-issue/sharon-9.htm

7. UN Terrorism:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDdmMzk4YTJlZDM0ZGZiZGY5NWYyY2E5OGJmMzgzOWM=

8. "Jewish" Billionaires versus AIPAC
By Isi Leibler October 24, 2006

There are ill winds of change hovering on the horizon.

Washington is signaling its intention to distance itself from Israel.
Pressures are being imposed on Israel to make further unilateral
concessions to Mahmoud Abbas, most of which would directly impact on her
security.

The new climate was exemplified in a recent address by Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice who compared the self-inflicted suffering of the
Palestinian people with segregation in the United States and said that
"there could be no greater legacy for America" than to bring about "a
Palestinian state for a people who have suffered too long, who have been
humiliated too long, who have not reached their potential for too long."
Rice failed to qualify these remarks by noting that Palestinian
"humiliation" and "suffering" would have been averted and a Palestinian
state could have been established a long time ago, had they curtailed
terror and ceased launching missiles against Israeli civilians, a
situation which prevails to this very day.

It was particularly disconcerting that both the impotent Israeli
government and the usually highly vocal American Jewish establishment
failed to condemn these outrageous remarks.

These developments should be viewed in tandem with an intensifying
campaign by unrepresentative American left wing Jewish groups publicly
urging the US Administration to soften their policies in relation to the
Palestinians.

In order not to distress the strongly pro Israel Jewish community, the
"doves" employ Orwellian language. They do not demand that the Bush
Administration reverse its support for Israel. Instead they call for
Washington to become "more involved" and "even handed" in order to bring
an end to the "ongoing violence and retribution" -- code language for
downplaying terror and incitement which the Abbas factions indulge in no
less than their Hamas counterparts. It means urging Israel to negotiate
under fire, bring an end to sanctions against the PA, talk to Hamas, and
make concessions which will invariably lead to a greater toll in Israeli
lives.

Until recently, public support for Israel in the United States had reached
an all time high. President Bush is unquestionably the most pro Israel
president ever to have occupied the White House. Both Congress and the
Senate have been fully supportive of Israel and opposition has been
relegated to the fringes. The evangelicals have elevated support of Israel
to one of their top priorities.

Yet storm clouds were brewing. The charges of espionage against AIPAC
officers represent an unprecedented affront to an ally. The situation at
the campuses where anti Israeli activity has become the central focus
point of radical political activism is more than disconcerting. Segments
of the US electronic and print media were highly biased in their coverage
of the Lebanon war. The brouhaha over the Israel lobby initiated by
Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in a Harvard University paper
has led to widespread campaigns demonizing AIPAC and other pro Israel
lobbies. Tony Judt, the Jewish historian promoting the view that Israel
was a mistake and supporting a bi-national Israel-Palestinian entity has
provided an aura of respectability to the dismantling of the Jewish state.

These anti Israeli sentiments are now infiltrating into the Democratic
Party -- the party favored by the majority of American Jews. Senator
Joseph Lieberman, the former Democratic vice president candidate, lost his
pre-selection to a relatively unknown leftist who challenged his Middle
East policies and obtained the support of a large percentage of Jewish
voters.

In fact the most troublesome aspect to these trends is not that the public
profile of bodies like the Jewish Policy Forum and Brit Zedek V'Shalom
calling for more evenhandedness is growing. It is even more worrying that
reaction to these activities by all American Jewish agencies, other than
the hard line ZOA, has been extraordinarily muted.

Despite the misleading double-talk, this campaign represents a real and
serious threat to Israel. AIPAC is possibly the greatest success story of
any American lobbying group. It has one overriding role: To support Israel
and Israel government policies. Were AIPAC to initiate policies
conflicting or inconsistent with the objectives of the Israel government
it would lose its grassroots support overnight. Hence repeated allegations
that AIPAC is a "hawkish" body is language designed to undermine AIPAC and
support for Israel.

These leftwing bodies have already succeeded in diluting Congressional
legislation designed to cut off aid for the Palestinian Authority unless
it renounced terrorism. They also provided support to Washington in its
efforts to force Israel to make security concessions on border crossings
which resulted in a massive flow of arms into Gaza.

Even more alarming was the announcement by George Soros, one of the
world's ten wealthiest individuals, that he would employ his financial
clout and connections with other Jewish billionaires to create a new body
to balance "AIPAC's hawkish policies". Soros has no interest in visiting
Israel and no qualms about presenting himself as an anti Zionist. Despite
being a holocaust survivor, he describes the Bush Administration as
equivalent to a Nazi regime, accuses Israel of being largely to blame for
the resurgence of anti Semitism, and takes pride in being openly critical
of Israel which his charity foundation ignores, although it "supports the
rights of Arabs in Israel". Soros also promotes the bizarre belief that a
weak rather than a strong Israel could best achieve a peace settlement
with its neighbors.

The potential combination of Jewish leftists and liberal Jewish salon
billionaires is worrisome. It will embolden the radical Jewish doves and
reinforce them with chutzpa to more aggressively undermine the Bush
Administration's support of Israel. It is no coincidence that Dr. Yossi
Beilin strongly supports the creation of the new body which he says "would
not compete with AIPAC but would portray another facet of American Jewry".

Regrettably the lame duck Olmert government, which has the capacity to
neutralize a Jewish organization seeking to undermine Israel's prime US
lobbying vehicle, will in all probability lack the courage and the will to
take on the billionaires and will stand aside.

It will thus be left to the American Jewish establishment to stand up and
be counted and confront the Soros led anti AIPAC initiative. Regrettably
their former track record in standing up to the demands of Jewish
billionaires is hardly encouraging. Threats by major donors to cancel
contributions to parties resisting their demands usually succeeded in
intimidating organizations to back down.

It will truly be a sad day for the Jewish people if the Israeli government
buries its head in the sand and American Jewish organizations remain
silent, whilst a campaign proceeds to "softly" undermine and delegitimize
AIPAC by labeling it as a "hawkish" body.

Washington's backing for Israel is today more crucial than ever. If
American Jews are perceived as being divided over Israel, the long term
repercussions on the one superpower whose support is critical, could be
disastrous.

9. Racism on Campus:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25060

10. Animal Kooks in Hebrew attack MacDonald's:
http://bdidut.com/mac/

11. Take a look at this photo:
http://www.sfjff.org/sfjff22/news/filmmakers/yoko-and-john.gif

For those of you old enough to have prostate problems, you will no doubt
recognize this at once as one of the photos of Beatles' John Lennon and
Yoko Ono, in one of their infamous "love-ins", in which they confined
themselves to bed in 6 star hotels in order to protest materialism and
war. The photo I post here is where they are dressed, lest I lose my PG
rating.

The press at the time was obsessed with John and Oko's adventures in the
bedroom.

I am reminded of that because of the media obsession this week with the
bedroom actvities of Yigal Amir (assassin of Yitzhak Rabin) and his wife.
The courts are allowing the Amirs to have conjugal visits. Maybe
producing a baby.

The media Champions of Justice are all aghast at this. How can such a
murderer be allowed conjugal visits, they are all chanting in uniform
chorus. Well, Amir did indeed murder someone and someone important at
that. But the same bleeding hearts in the media never had a thing to say
about Arab terrorists and mass murderers in Israeli prisons also being
allowed conjugal visits. In many cases, the beneficiaries killed many
more people than did Yigal Amir.

Here is Haaretz, insisting Amir "enjoyed" his conjugal visit
(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/778929.html). Just how did the
Haaretz reporter know he enjoyed it and how did they know that Mrs. Amir
was not "in the feminine way" today?

Here is the Jerusalem Post condemning the decision to allow the Amirs to
pillow:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193514490&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Note: Not a word against Arab mass murderers engaging in pillowing in
prison!

Anyone know how Yoko Ono "enjoyed" her confinement in that room with John
Lennon?

# posted by Steven Plaut : 9:04 AM

1. In-classroom leftist indoctrination:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25014

2. Battling the Anti-Semites:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25030

3. More on Neve Gordon's guru:
Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein and Holocaust Denial:
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=245
When the Arab terrorist interviewing him claims there was never any
Holocaust and at most 50,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis, Finkelstein
has no response other than to tout his own "books".
But he calls "MEMRI" a nazi group.

4. October 23, 2006
Campus Jihad

By ANTHONY GLEES
October 23, 2006; Page A15

LONDON -- U.K. intelligence officials have just provided a chilling
assessment of the terrorist threat Britain faces. The country has become
"al Qaeda target No. 1," security sources told me, confirming last week's
press reports. Intelligence services now judge Britain's "home grown"
terrorists to be organized, trained and controlled either directly from
Pakistan or via Pakistani networks in Britain.

Until now, intelligence services thought British Islamist terrorists had
no hard links to al Qaeda despite sharing its ideology. "Clean skins" in
the security jargon, they were believed to have acted alone or in
self-constructed cells. This theory was the product of what MI5 thought it
knew about the terrorists before last year's July 7 bombings, which was
far too little. Just two months before the attacks, MI5's Joint Terrorism
Analysis Center concluded, "there is not a group with both the current
intent and capability to attack the U.K."

The ringleaders of the July 7 bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shahzad
Tanweer, both former students at Leeds Metropolitan University, showed up
on MI5's radar on as many as nine occasions before the attacks. According
to Whitehall sources, credible intelligence indicated that Mr. Khan had
visited Pakistan between November 2003 and February 2004 and sought to
contact al Qaeda. But MI5 discounted the significance of these visits at
the time and only started taking them more seriously early this year. The
London bombers' connections to Pakistan were initially dismissed as
harmless, requiring no further analysis. It was "obvious," security
sources explained in the aftermath of the attacks, that people of
Pakistani descent would visit "their families" back home or take a "long
holiday or gap year" there. The generally accepted theory was that the
terrorists had simply used information from the Internet to build their
organic peroxide bombs.

Senior military intelligence officers now dismiss this line as well,
believing the bombers received crucial weapons training in Pakistan. They
argue that if Britain is now al Qaeda's primary target, it makes sense to
look much more carefully at the Pakistan dimension and also at the links
between virulent Islamic groups in Pakistan and the U.K. Many British
Islamic colleges have ties to fundamentalist Pakistanis. Other links exist
to extremist Kashmiri groups, in turn allegedly connected to al Qaeda or
the Pakistani secret service.

MI5 has hugely upped its game, as recent arrests show. But MI5 also
believes that the number of extremists is rising and not just because it
now knows better where to look for them. MI5 keeps very close tabs on more
than 1,000 extremists; 14,000 British Muslims are considered potential
terrorist threats, security sources told me.

I believe a significant number get radicalized and recruited on university
campuses. At least 13 convicted Islamist terrorists and four suicide
bombers have been students at British universities. Radical Islamist
student societies make full use of university resources. They operate Web
sites, hosted by university servers, which direct visitors to
organizations that glorify jihad and terror. These "religious" groups are
given "prayer rooms" on campus, which are also used to disseminate
extremist literature and DVDs. Muslim students concerned about these
developments tell me that at many of these Islamic societies terrorism is
portrayed as justified acts of "resistance." A leading imam in Birmingham
often preaches on British campuses that the London bombers have to be seen
as "martyrs."

Organizations like Hizb Ut Tahrir and Al Muhajiroun, which advocate a
world caliphate, demand that Britain adopt the Shariah and express a
violent hatred for the West and Jews, have repeatedly tried to gain
student converts at the University of East Anglia. It is only thanks to a
courageous campus imam that their infiltration attempts have been thwarted
so far. His colleague at London Metropolitan University, Sheikh Musa
Admani, repeatedly warns about Islamic radicalization at his and other
London campuses. Just two months ago, the head of an Islamic student
society and several fellow students at London Metropolitan were charged
with planning to smuggle explosives on a plane bound for America. Yet
university authorities usually consider these societies as "religious
gatherings," and thus off limits.

Government minister Ruth Kelly two weeks ago urged universities to monitor
their students more carefully and report signs of extremism to the
security services. But many British universities are reluctant to step up
security. Universities U.K., an association of British universities,
criticized Ms. Kelly's proposals as "unreasonable," saying "there are
dangers in targeting one particular group within our diverse communities."
When I suggested last year similar measures the government now proposes, I
was myself attacked by Universities U.K. The vice chancellor from the
University of Sunderland asked my own vice chancellor to "shut me up." I
was threatened with legal action if the name of a particular university
was mentioned in connection with terrorism. Unfortunately, my research
showed that Islamic radicalization is a threat on campuses nation-wide.

But British universities prefer burying their heads in the sand of
political correctness. When the Foreign Office invited 100 academics to
bid for 1.3 million of government funds to participate in a
counter-radicalization program, the academics said no. John Gledhill,
chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists, welcomed their move,
saying last week that "it did appear to be encouraging researchers to
identify subjects and groups involved with terrorism . . . that could be
interpreted as encouraging them to become informers." Martha Mundy, a
lecturer at the London School of Economics, dismissed the government plans
as having "an overtly security-research agenda" starting from the (false)
premise that there is a "link between Islamism, radicalization and
terrorism."

Is Ms. Mundy seriously saying there is no connection between Islamism and
terrorism? "Security" is not a dirty word, even if totalitarian regimes
have abused it. Every British university subscribes to the 1997 Dearing
Report, which states that the "aim of higher education is to play a major
role in shaping a democratic, civilized and inclusive society." This is
the basis on which the British taxpayer agrees to fund them.

Academic institutions should surely help protect Britain from those who
clearly do not believe in democracy, are not civilized, and who try to
harm us. Now that we are the prime target for Islamist terror, Britain's
universities must get real.

Mr. Glees is director for the Brunel Center for Intelligence and Security
Studies.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116155302363600240.html

5. Bulldozed by Naivete
Terror advocate dies in accident. Atrocious drama ensues.
http://opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110009131
BY TERRY TEACHOUT
Saturday, October 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

NEW YORK--Politics makes artists stupid. Take "My Name Is Rachel Corrie,"
the one-woman play cobbled together from the diaries, emails and
miscellaneous scribblings of the 23-year-old left-wing activist who was
run over by an Israeli Army bulldozer in 2003 while protesting the
demolition of a Palestinian house in the Gaza Strip. Co-written and
directed by Alan Rickman, one of England's best actors, "Rachel Corrie"
just opened off-Broadway after a successful London run. It's an
ill-crafted piece of goopy give-peace-a-chance agitprop--yet it's being
performed to cheers and tears before admiring crowds of theater-savvy New
Yorkers who, like Mr. Rickman himself, ought to know better.

So why don't they? Because Palestine is the new Cuba, a political cause
whose invocation has the effect of instantaneously anesthetizing the upper
brain functions of those who believe in it. Take Mr. Rickman, who
evidently intended "My Name Is Rachel Corrie" to be a pro-Palestinian
equivalent of "The Diary of Anne Frank." Alas, wishful thinking is not the
stuff of exciting theater. The script is disjointed to the point of
incoherence, the staging crude and blatant, while Megan Dodds's
performance as Rachel Corrie is frankly cartoonish.

Part of Ms. Dodds's problem, however, is that the real-life character she
is portraying was unattractive in the extreme, albeit pathetically so.
Whimsical, humorless and--above all--immature, Corrie burbles on about her
feelings ("The salmon talked me into a lifestyle change") without ever
troubling to test them against reality. When she finally does so by
thrusting herself into the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian blood feud,
she sees only what she passionately longs to see: "The vast majority of
Palestinians right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhian
nonviolent resistance."

In an act of unintended self-revelation, "My Name Is Rachel Corrie" ends
with a film clip of the 10-year-old Corrie prattling away like a baby
robot at her elementary school's Fifth Grade Press Conference on World
Hunger: "My dream is to give the poor a chance. . . . My dream can and
will come true if we all look into the future and see the light that
shines there." She grew older but no wiser, and in the end died a martyr
to her own naivet..

Needless to say, political drama has an impeccable theatrical pedigree.
Only last week New York playgoers were treated to the Roundabout Theatre's
revival of "Heartbreak House," the 1919 play in which George Bernard Shaw
sought to show on stage how the European leisure class plunged that
continent into a world war by heedlessly immersing itself in the pursuit
of pleasure. But Shaw was a great (if erratic) writer who dramatized his
ideas instead of merely asserting them. "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," by
contrast, is a scrappy, one-sided monologue consisting of nothing but the
fugitive observations of a young woman who, like so many idealists,
treated her emotions as facts. "I am disappointed," she declares, "that
this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in
it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world." To
mistake such jejune disillusion for profundity and turn it into the climax
of a full-length play is an act of piety, not artistry.
The cancellation of last season's New York Theatre Workshop production of
"My Name Is Rachel Corrie" triggered a noisy row in the New York theater
community, many of whose members jumped to the not-unreasonable conclusion
that the producers were cravenly bowing to backstage pressure from donors
who found the play's politics obnoxious. As a result, the belated opening
of "Rachel Corrie" at the Minetta Lane Theatre has had the predictable
result of bringing it far more attention than it would otherwise have
received.

That's the only lesson to be drawn from this exercise in theatrical
ineptitude. It is by far the worst political play I've covered in this
space, not excluding Tim Robbins's "Embedded," and no amount of earnest
hand-wringing can make it anything but dull.

Mr. Teachout is The Wall Street Journal's theater critic

6.
http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDhiODZkY2I1MTI0MTVhNjA2NzM1NjNiOGZiNzg5YmU=
Anti-Semitism on All Sides
[Carol Iannone 10/23 11:58 AM]

Anti-Semitism is truly now more a phenomenon of the Left rather than the
Right, but leave it to the present day academy to entertain the extreme
right when it can be counted on to condemn Israel and the Jews. A group
called The Pacifica Forum sponsors talks at the University of Oregon, and
one of their featured speakers this year is a man who describes himself as
a white separatist and racialist, and who is also anti-Israel,
anti-Semitic, and a Holocaust denier who finds "a lot of truth in Mein
Kampf." (registration may be required)

Other Pacifica Forum events at the university were talks on Holocaust
denier David Irving, and a program that featured a videotape on William
Luther Pierce, founder of the National Alliance white separatist group.

Programs described as "less controversial" this year have included
lectures and videos with such titles as "Israeli-American Militarism,"
"Kosher Apartheid" and "Washington, D.C.: Israeli-Occupied Territory."
Last year's offerings included programs that blamed the Jews for
Kristallnacht.

Although the Pacifica Forum may sound leftish in some of its aspects.its
founder describes himself as a lifelong pacifist.clearly it is in the camp
of the most extreme, utterly discredited, loony right, and yet it has a
perch at the University of Oregon because the founder is a former
professor. The university does not intend to take any action and defends
the forum's programs on the grounds of free speech. OK, as far as that
goes, but a university also has an obligation to the truth, no?

# posted by Steven Plaut : 11:53 AM

1. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3317154,00.html
Academics against 'post-Zionist' professors

'Israel Academia Monitor' website warns students of
anti-Israel professors and courses at Israeli universities
Anat Bereshkovsky

(The following is the abridged English version the paper ran. The full
longer Hebrew version can be read at
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3317154,00.htmlhttp://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3317154,00.html)

Many history and sociology professors and researchers with the common goal
of showing 'the other' less popular side of Zionism, earned the handle
'post-Zionists' for their participation in Palestinian propaganda against
government policies and efforts against Israel's definition as a Jewish
state.

These 'post-Zionist' professors don't hesitate to weave comments about
Israel.s injustices against the Palestinians, the lack of equality for
Israel.s Arab citizens, and democracy's limitations in a Jewish state,
into their lectures.

Israel's senior professors do not approve of this growing trend of younger
professors politicizing academia by inserting anti-Israel agendas into
Israeli institutions. Consequently, the 'Israeli Academia Monitor' website
was launched in order to warn student of such professors.

Posted on the 'Israeli Academia Monitor' homepage was a message saying,
'Israeli Universities are crawling with extremist staff members, many of
whom hate their country, encourage their country.s enemies, and
collaborate with international anti-Israel organizations, sometimes even
with declared anti-Semites.'

Dana Barnett, who runs the website along with Professor Steven Plaut, said
that their goal was to expose what was going at universities with the
publics funding.

'We noticed a lot of Israeli academics, who receive their salary from the
state, use it for their own private ideology,' Barnett explained, 'They
spread lies about Israel and there are many people in the world who would
be happy to hear about it.'

Barnett claims that beneath the plethora of courses on civil rights, human
rights, feminism, and social justice supposedly working to expose students
to 'other ways of looking at the Israeli reality' actually lays
anti-Israeli propaganda.

One of the many professors listed on the 'Monitor' is Dr. Ilan Pappe, a
social sciences professor at Haifa University. Pappe is one of Israel's
leading spokesmen against the definition of Israel as a Jewish State, and
promoter of the 'country for all its citizens' stance.

Pappe dismissed calls for professors to remain objective saying, 'I am one
of the few professors that openly voices my opinions. I don.t like
academic members who say they are objective.'

He views the courses he gives as no less than a mission. He said, .Where,
if not in academia, would I promote my political agenda?.

According to the 'Monitor' website, there is a long line of Israeli
professors that share Pappe's views. A study conducted by Dr. Udi Label, a
political psychology professor at the Ben Gurion Institute, showed that
the trend was picking up speed.

The study revealed that syllabi of the social sciences departments in
Israel.s universities included increasing numbers of courses supporting
the 'post Zionist' ideas.

Israel Academia Monitor is at www.israel-academia-monitor.com, and it
NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT!

2. Nazi Norman outrages the Santa Cruz locals:

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/March/16/local/stories/01local.htm
http://judeosphere.blogspot.com/2006/03/finkelstein-comes-to-santa-cruz.html
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/March/12/edit/stories/01edit.htm

3. Another self-hating Jew for the destruction of Israel:
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/30789.html

4. Speaking of "cluster bombs":
www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000793.html

ONE OF THESE COUNTRIES GAVE HIZBULLAH CLUSTER BOMBS

[Note by Tom Gross]

There has been an enormous amount of reporting by the international
media on the Israeli use of cluster bombs in the recent conflict with
Hizbullah. By contrast, there has been virtually no reporting on
Hizbullah's use of cluster bombs, even though Hizbullah (unlike Israel)
deliberately aimed them at civilian targets.

Even the mainstream liberal media should have no excuses for their
continual refusal to report on Hizbullah's use of cluster bombs . the
first
time in the world they have been used by a non-state armed group .
following publication yesterday of a report by the New York-based Human
Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch confirm what Israeli officials have been saying
since mid-July: that Hizbullah fired cluster munitions into civilian areas
in northern Israel during the recent conflict.

Hizbullah's deployment of the Chinese-made Type-81 122mm rocket is also
the first confirmed use of this particular model of cluster munitions
anywhere in the world.

Five countries . China, Egypt, Italy, Russia, and Slovakia . produce
nine types of 122mm rockets carrying submunitions. Two other countries,
Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, also stockpile them.

ISRAELI ARABS AMONG THE VICTIMS

Human Rights Watch documented two Type-81 cluster strikes that took
place on July 25 in the Galilee village of Mghar. Each of the Type-81
cluster munition 122mm rockets used by Hizbullah carries 39 Type-90 or MZD
submunitions. Each submunition in turn shoots out hundreds of steel
spheres, about 3.5mm in diameter, with deadly force.

5. Soros against Israel:
http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/11016/

6. Rabbi Impersonator attacks Dershowitz (yet again):
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/30648/format/html/displaystory.html

# posted by Steven Plaut : 2:45 AM

1. Quick. Name the only country on earth where loyalty and
patriotism to that country are regarded by that country's own legislature
as a form of racism!

Well, if you said Israel, you win two points and a two-fer-one coupon to
Wonderland.

The Knesset yesterday rejected a proposed law that would require people to
sign a loyalty oath in order to vote or sit in the parliament of Israel
(see http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/776547.html ). The proposal was
the initiative of the National Union Party.

"Racism" is suddenly all the concern of Israel's Caring Left. In the
past few days, there have been negotiations between Olmert's people and
Avigdor Lieberman's party to see if the latter will join the coalition.
That triggered soiled panties among hordes of Israel's Caring Left. These
folks regard Lieberman as a "racist". Among those who regard Lieberman
as a racist are open anti-Semites, cheerleaders for terror, fans of
Holocaust Deniers, supporters of Iran, and people who openly demand that
Israel be destroyed.

Meanwhile, the Left has been denouncing the proposal for a "loyalty oath"
yet as another form of blatant Jewish racism against Arabs. After all, we
all know that many Israeli Arabs and also many Arab Knesset Members in
Israel's parliament are disloyal enemies of their own country, seeking its
destruction and cheering on genocidal terrorists. Azmi Bishara is
perhaps the most open about it, but lots of others, including many Arab
students enjoying subsidized classes at state-financed universities, hold
exactly the same political positions. So clearly asking such people to
sign a loyalty oath before allowing them into the voting booths or the
Knesset restrooms would violate their delicate sensitivities and offend
their sense of being as "The Other".

The majority of Jewish Knesset Members agree that it would be racist to
ask voters to swear allegiance to their own country. Really.

2. The Rwanda solution to the problem of the existence of Israel is
once again being raised by Israel's Caring Left. Indeed, it is the theme
of a long Op-Ed today in Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper printed in
Hebrew.

The Rwanda solution is where Israel would cease to exist at all and
instead would be folded into a new state with an Arab majority, covering
all of Israel and "Palestine" west of the Jordan river, and governed by a
democratic secular regime composed of genocidal Hamas and Jihad
terrorists. That new state would then solve all remaining demographic
issues the same way they were dealt with in Rwanda.

The Rwanda Solution, known by the Caring Left as the "One-State Solution"
(and no . by that they do NOT mean that all "Palestinian" or Israeli Arabs
be invited Kahane-style to move to some of those 22 Arab countries), is
being openly touted in Haaretz. Today's call for the annihilation of
Israel comes from one Aharon Amir. (Available only in Hebrew, at
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/776846.html ).

Amir is a member of the Israeli Literary Left, and once got the Israel
Prize for translation. He was a leader in the so-called "Canaanite"
movement, a flaky movement of Jewish "intellectuals" in the 1950s who
wanted to see a new non-Jewish Israeli emerge, a new "nationality" that
would transcend Jewishness and Arabness and so guarantee peace. You will
not be surprised to hear that the movement never had any Arab members, and
THAT fact - in and of itself - explains why its "ideas" were absurd.
Curiously, Amir was a member of a group in the 70s that wanted to annex the
"occupied territories", but not out of Zionist zealotry; rather, it was
out of anti-Zionist determination to see Israeli Jewishness drowned out,
producing those nice new mongrel "Canaanites". Here is a sample, in
English: http://www.azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=93&search_text=
and also
https://ofakim.secured.co.il/zope/home/en/1119245649/1119245922_en ).
His article in Haaretz today has pretty much the same agenda in mind.

He is so wacky that he is even celebrated on the official web site of the
Israeli Ministry of Education
(http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/PrasIsrael/Tashsag/AharonAmir/
)

3. The Columbia Madrassah:
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/19687/The_State_Of_Scholarship_At_Columbia_%2D_And_Of_Book_Reviewing_At_The_New_York_Times.html

4. How French TV fudged the death of Mohammed Al Durah.
Camera Obscura
by Richard Landes
http://www.tnr.com/user/nregi.mhtml?i=w061016&s=landes101706
10.17.06

THE NEW REPUBLIC

On September 30, 2000, images of 12-year-old Mohammed Al Durah and his
father--cowering behind a barrel at Netzarim Junction, in the Gaza
Strip--circulated globally, along with a claim that they had been the
targeted victims of Israeli fire. If Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple
Mount two days earlier had sparked riots, these images triggered all-out
war. The ensuing horror and outrage swept away any questions about its
reliability. Indignant observers dismissed any Israeli attempt to deny
responsibility as "blaming the victim."

But, by 2002, two documentaries--one German, one French--raised troubling
questions. The raw footage from that day reveals pervasive staging; no
evidence (certainly not the most widely circulated tape offers evidence of
Israeli fire directed at the barrel, much less of Israelis targeting the
pair; given the angles, the Israelis could scarcely have hit the pair at
all, much less 12 times (indeed the only two bullets that hit the wall
above them came from the Palestinian side, inexplicably 90 degrees off
target); there was no sign of blood on the ground where the father and son
reportedly bled for 20 minutes; there was no footage of an ambulance
evacuation or arrival at the hospital; there was no autopsy; and none of
the dozen cameraman present filmed anything that could substantiate the
claim that the father and son had been hit, much less that the Israelis
had targeted them. These documentaries had limited exposure, in part
thanks to France2's refusal to run the one by a sister station in Germany.
But they did spark a demonstration in Paris outside the France2 offices by
citizens outraged to discover that so horrendous an image may well have
been a fake.

The demonstrations apparently ruffled feathers. Some writers lambasted
France2's coverage--most prominently Philippe Karsenty, who called for Al
Durah beat chief Charles Enderlin and France2 chief Arlette Chabot to
resign, and, in response, Enderlin and France2 itself--using the same law
invoked against Emile Zola in the Dreyfus Affair--have accused three
critics (including Karsenty) of "striking at their honor and
respectability."

Now, four years later, the lawsuits are finally coming to trial in Room 17
of the Palais de Justice in Paris. The three suits (one for each
defendant) come in rapid succession--September 14, October 26, and
November 30--with judgments four weeks following each hearing. And, in at
least two of the trials, I, a medieval historian, have been asked to
testify.

I have become involved for two reasons. First of all, I noted almost
immediately that Palestinians and anti-Zionists, insisting that Israel
killed the boy on purpose, used Al Durah in a way familiar to
medievalists--as a blood libel. This was the first blood libel of the
twenty-first century, rendered global by cable and the Internet. Indeed,
within a week, crowds the world over shouted "We want Jewish blood!" and
"Death to the Jews!". For Europeans in particular, the libelous image came
as balm to a troubled soul: "This death erases, annuls that of the little
boy in the Warsaw Gherro," intoned Europe1 editorialist Catherine Nay. The
Israelis were the new Nazis.

And second, when I saw the raw footage in the summer of 2003--especially
when I saw the scene Enderlin had cut, wherein the boy(allegedly shot in
the stomach, but holding his hand over his eyes) picks up his elbow and
looks around--I realized that this was not a film of a boy dying, but a
clumsily staged scene.

On October 31, 2003, at the studios of France2 in Jerusalem in the company
of Charles Enderlin and his Israeli cameraman, I saw the raw footage of Al
Durah from the only Palestinian cameraman who actually captured the scene
on film--footage France2 still refuses to release for public examination.
I was floored. The tapes feature a long succession of obviously faked
injuries; brutal, hasty evacuation scenes; and people ducking for cover
while others stand around. One fellow grabbed his leg in agony, then, upon
seeing that no one would come to carry him away, walked away without a
limp. It was stunning. That was no cameraman's conspiracy: It was
everyone--a public secret about which news consumers had no clue.

But the real shock came when I mentioned this to Enderlin, who said he
trusted this cameraman. "They always do that," he said. "It's a cultural
style." So why wouldn't they have faked Al Durah? "They're not good
enough," he said. A year later, the higher-ups at France2 made the same
remark to three French journalists who also noted the pervasive staging:
"You know well that it's always like that," they said.

I tried unsuccessfully to interest the mainstream press in this obvious
fakery, but nobody was interested. "I don't know how much appetite there
is for this material here," one person at a major studio told me. So I
made Pallywood (Palestinian Hollywood)--a video-essay showing the
dishonesty and the still-more-astounding Western complicity in using this
footage to inform us about the Middle East. Then I made a follow-up, Al
Durah: The Making of an Icon (and soon, Icon of Hatred). I established a
website, The Second Draft, where I posted the movies along with my
evidence so that, unlike France2, people could check my sources. And now
the accused have asked me to testify.

Why did they want me? In trying to dismiss my first testimony, the
plaintiff's lawyer wondered, "what does he know about images? He's a
medievalist." Well, I know about the power of images, of narratives, and
of forgeries, and especially blood libels. And, since my first book,
Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History, was about a set of
forgeries that continued to fool historians for decades even after a
critic revealed them as fakes in the 1920s, I also know something about
the difficulty of getting specialists to acknowledge they were duped.

But this image goes beyond blood libel and anti-Semitism, beyond
blackening Israel's image and whitewashing Palestinian violence. Al Durah
became the icon not only of the Intifada, but of global jihad. Within
months of the incident, bin Laden came out with a recruiting video that
featured extensive Pallywood footage and highlighted Al Durah. Months
later, Pakistani jihadis killed Daniel Pearl, interweaving Al Durah's
image into their tape of the execution.

In 2000, anyone told of Muslim plans to Islamicize the West laughed with
scorn. It was the least of Western worries. Today, some have already given
up Europe for lost; others see it in the balance; and others are finally
awakening with shock to the radical shift in the balance of forces. And
every aspect of l'affaire Al Durah is emblematic of why: from the
Palestinian forces that staged it; to the Western mainstream press and the
NGOs that presented it as news without asking hard questions (and that
believed any subsequent Palestinian claims of Israelis killing children
and resisted efforts at correction); to the Muslim world that turned it
into an icon of hatred and a call to genocidal holy war; to the "leftist"
revolutionaries who jumped on the jihad bandwagon in Durban, South Africa;
to a public distressingly eager for "dirt" on Israel and unaware of the
forces empowered by diffusing such poisons.

Three court trials, then--in which France2 seeks to bury any serious
assessment of their coverage--are also trials of France's ability to
defend her republican values against an Islamist onslaught that it seems
ill-equipped to resist. And, as France goes, so goes Europe. (Would France
have it any other way?)

The plaintiff at the first trial, on September 14, was Philippe Karsenty of
Media-Ratings, the boldest of France2's critics. No one from France2
showed up. Its solitary lawyer had no witnesses, no questions for
Karsenty's witnesses, and no comments about the evidence damning her
clients. Her summation insisted on France2's honor and reputation, offered
a letter of praise from President Jacques Chirac, and cast aspersions on
the defense's witnesses.

Then the procureur de la republique (a court-appointed officer charged
with assessing the case in the interests of civil society) gave her
nonbinding opinion. She rebuked France2 for not addressing the evidence,
for not showing their raw footage, and for not even showing up in court.
She further admitted that, although Karsenty had impugned Enderlin's and
France2's reputations, he had offered enough evidence to make such
assertions a legitimate part of public discourse. Judgment on Karsenty's
case is Thursday. Next trial: October 26. So far, the best
coverage--surprise!--comes from the blogosphere.

Richard Landes , medieval history professor at Boston University,
established www.seconddraft.org and blogs at www.theaugeanstables.com. He
is the author of Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial
Experience (forthcoming).

5. The ghost of Edward Said:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/spine?pid=49044

6. Anti-Semitic scum and its friends:
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/19689/Friends_And_Foes_%2D_Within_And_Without.html

7. Interesting Hebrew (only) article by Prof. Asa Kasher (philosophy -
TAU), calling for the Israeli army to be LESS cautious about civilian
casualties when it operates! See
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3316557,00.html

8. "Humiliation":
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=6621

9. Peace Now's latest sedition:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193473238&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

10. October 19, 2006

Congress to Courts:
'Get Out of the
War on Terror'

By JOHN YOO
October 19, 2006; Page A18

During the bitter controversy over the military commission bill, which
President Bush signed into law on Tuesday, most of the press and the
professional punditry missed the big story. In the struggle for power
between the three branches of government, it is not the presidency that
"won." Instead, it is the judiciary that lost.

The new law is, above all, a stinging rebuke to the Supreme Court. It
strips the courts of jurisdiction to hear any habeas corpus claim filed by
any alien enemy combatant anywhere in the world. It was passed in response
to the effort by a five-justice majority in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld to take
control over terrorism policy. That majority extended judicial review to
Guantanamo Bay, threw the Bush military commissions into doubt, and tried
to extend the protections of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to
al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, overturning the traditional understanding
that Geneva does not cover terrorists, who are not signatories nor
"combatants" in an internal civil war under Article 3.

Hamdan was an unprecedented attempt by the court to rewrite the law of war
and intrude into war policy. The court must have thought its stunning
power grab would go unchallenged. After all, it has gotten away with many
broad assertions of judicial authority before. This has been because
Congress is unwilling to take a clear position on controversial issues
(like abortion, religion or race) and instead passes ambiguous laws which
breed litigation and leave the power to decide to the federal courts.

Until the Supreme Court began trying to make war policy, the writ of
habeas corpus had never been understood to benefit enemy prisoners in war.
The U.S. held millions of POWs during World War II, with none permitted to
use our civilian courts (except for a few cases of U.S. citizens captured
fighting for the Axis). Even after hostilities ended, the justices turned
away lawsuits by enemy prisoners seeking to challenge their detention. In
Johnson v. Eisentrager, the court held that it would not hear habeas
claims brought by alien enemy prisoners held outside the U.S., and refused
to interpret the Geneva Conventions to give new rights in civilian court
against the government. In the case of Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, the court
refrained from reviewing the operations of military commissions.

In Hamdan, the court moved to sweep aside decades of law and practice so
as to forge a grand new role for the courts to open their doors to enemy
war prisoners. Led by John Paul Stevens and abetted by Anthony Kennedy,
the majority ignored or creatively misread the court's World War II
precedents. The approach catered to the legal academy, whose tastes run to
swashbuckling assertions of judicial supremacy and radical innovations,
rather than hewing to wise but boring precedents.

Thoughtful critics point out that because the enemy fights covertly, the
risk of detaining the innocent is greater. But so is the risk of releasing
the dangerous. That's why enemy combatants who fight out of uniform, such
as wartime spies, have always been considered illegals under the law of
war, not entitled to the same protections given to soldiers on the
battlefield or ordinary POWs. Disguised suicide- bombers in an age of WMD
proliferation and virulent America-hatred are more immediately dangerous
than the furtive information-carriers of our Cold War past. We now know
that more than a dozen detainees released from Guantanamo have rejoined
the jihad. The real question is how much time, energy and money should be
diverted from winning the fight toward establishing multiple layers of
review for terrorists. Until Hamdan, nothing in the law of war ever
suggested that enemy status was anything but a military judgment.

While there may be different ways to strike a balance, this is a decision
for the president and Congress, not the courts. The Constitution gives
Congress the authority to determine the jurisdiction of federal courts in
peacetime, and also declares that habeas corpus can be suspended "in Cases
of Rebellion or Invasion" when "the public Safety may require it."
Congress's power is even greater when it is correcting the justices'
errors. Courts are ill-equipped to decide whether vast resources should be
devoted to reviewing military detentions. Or whether military personnel's
time should be consumed traveling back to the U.S. for detainee hearings.
Or whether we risk revealing information in these hearings that might
compromise the intelligence sources and methods that may allow us to win
the war.

This time, Congress and the president did not take the court's power grab
lying down. They told the courts, in effect, to get out of the war on
terror, stripped them of habeas jurisdiction over alien enemy combatants,
and said there was nothing wrong with the military commissions. It is the
first time since the New Deal that Congress had so completely divested the
courts of power over a category of cases. It is also the first time since
the Civil War that Congress saw fit to narrow the court's habeas powers in
wartime because it disagreed with its decisions.

The law goes farther. It restores to the president command over the
management of the war on terror. It directly reverses Hamdan by making
clear that the courts cannot take up the Geneva Conventions. Except for
some clearly defined war crimes, whose prosecution would also be up to
executive discretion, it leaves interpretation and enforcement of the
treaties up to the president. It even forbids courts from relying on
foreign or international legal decisions in any decisions involving
military commissions.

All this went overlooked during the fight over the bill by the media,
which focused on Sens. McCain, Graham and Warner's opposition to the
administration's proposals for the use of classified evidence at terrorist
trials and permissible interrogation methods. In its eagerness to magnify
an intra-GOP squabble, the media mostly ignored the substance of the bill,
which gave current and future administrations, whether Democrat or
Republican, the powers needed to win this war.

Mr. Yoo, professor of law at Berkeley and visiting scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute, served in the Bush Justice Department from 2001-03.
He is the author of "War By Other Means" (Grove/Atlantic 2006).

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116121703953197111.html

# posted by Steven Plaut : 2:11 AM

1.
Neve Gordon justifies terrorism (yet again):
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2816/

"'Never before in history has a terrorist organization had such
state-of-the-art military equipment,' an Israeli general was quoted as
saying in the New York Times. And yet, 'Hezbollah has no armor or easily
visible storehouses or logistic lines,' the Times continued, 'and its
members live among the civilian population of southern Lebanon, storing
their weaponry in civilian buildings'....

"Article after article mentioned the homes used as repositories for
missiles, how the missiles were launched from village centers, and the way
Hezbollah guerrillas, after firing the missiles, immediately blended back
into the civilian population.

"What struck me about these descriptions was that there was really nothing
new about them; in fact, most guerilla warfare has been carried out in a
similar manner. Even the pre-state Jewish paramilitary groups that
attempted to drive the Brits out of Mandatory Palestine operated in
comparable ways....

"Israel is certainly responsible for crimes perpetrated in
Lebanon....After all, it was not due to Israel.s warmongering,
Hezbollah.s violent
provocations or even al-Qaeda.s horrific attacks that the human species
sharing this planet have passed a threshold where there is no horizon
beyond war. It was President Bush and his friend on 10 Downing Street who
have produced this apocalyptic reality and it is against them that our
rage must be channeled."

2. Pro-Israeli editor beaten in Bangladesh
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193464551&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

3. Anti-Semite running for election in Minnesota:
http://chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=24348

4. The 911 conpiracy nuts merging with the neo-nazis:
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/183809.php

5. The 655,000th Lie:
October 18, 2006

655,000 War Dead?

By STEVEN E. MOORE
October 18, 2006; Page A20

After doing survey research in Iraq for nearly two years, I was surprised
to read that a study by a group from Johns Hopkins University claims that
655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the war. Don't get me wrong, there
have been far too many deaths in Iraq by anyone's measure; some of them
have been friends of mine. But the Johns Hopkins tally is wildly at odds
with any numbers I have seen in that country. Survey results frequently
have a margin of error of plus or minus 3% or 5% -- not 1200%.

The group -- associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health -- employed cluster sampling for in-person interviews, which is the
methodology that I and most researchers use in developing countries. Here,
in the U.S., opinion surveys often use telephone polls, selecting
individuals at random. But for a country lacking in telephone penetration,
door-to-door interviews are required: Neighborhoods are selected at
random, and then individuals are selected at random in "clusters" within
each neighborhood for door-to-door interviews. Without cluster sampling,
the expense and time associated with travel would make in-person
interviewing virtually impossible.

However, the key to the validity of cluster sampling is to use enough
cluster points. In their 2006 report, "Mortality after the 2003 invasion
of Iraq: a cross-sectional sample survey," the Johns Hopkins team says it
used 47 cluster points for their sample of 1,849 interviews. This is
astonishing: I wouldn't survey a junior high school, no less an entire
country, using only 47 cluster points.

Neither would anyone else. For its 2004 survey of Iraq, the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) used 2,200 cluster points of 10 interviews each
for a total sample of 21,688. True, interviews are expensive and not
everyone has the U.N.'s bank account. However, even for a similarly sized
sample, that is an extraordinarily small number of cluster points. A 2005
survey conducted by ABC News, Time magazine, the BBC, NHK and Der Spiegel
used 135 cluster points with a sample size of 1,711 -- almost three times
that of the Johns Hopkins team for 93% of the sample size.

What happens when you don't use enough cluster points in a survey? You get
crazy results when compared to a known quantity, or a survey with more
cluster points. There was a perfect example of this two years ago. The
UNDP's survey, in April and May 2004, estimated between 18,000 and 29,000
Iraqi civilian deaths due to the war. This survey was conducted four
months prior to another, earlier study by the Johns Hopkins team, which
used 33 cluster points and estimated between 69,000 and 155,000 civilian
deaths -- four to five times as high as the UNDP survey, which used 66
times the cluster points.

6. Europe's answer to Sesame Street
October 18, 2006
cy
The Hamas Network

By MARK DUBOWITZ and JONATHAN SNOW
October 18, 2006

With its Al Manar television station launched in 1991, the Lebanese
terrorist group Hezbollah has pioneered the use of mass media as a weapon.
It uses the broadcaster to recruit suicide bombers, raise money for
terrorist operations, conduct pre-attack surveillance and incite violence.
This fall, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is poised to follow in
Hezbollah's footsteps.

Until now, Hamas's Al Aqsa television has been broadcast only within the
Gaza Strip. But this month it will begin satellite distribution via the
Nilesat satellite, the Palestinian News Agency (Ramattan) reported in
August. This would allow Hamas to spread its message of hatred across the
Middle East, North Africa and most of Europe. Nilesat, owned by the
Egyptian government, and Arabsat, majority-owned by the Saudi government,
are the only two satellites still carrying Al Manar despite joint
U.S.-European efforts to halt its broadcasts.

For a preview of things to come, it's worth looking into the Palestinian
terror group's media operations at home. Like Hezbollah, Hamas uses its
propaganda network to support terror activities, including recruiting
suicide bombers, inculcating hatred, raising funds and providing direct
operational support to terrorist operations.

Al Aqsa TV routinely broadcasts Hamas leaders calling for jihad, songs of
incitement to murder, and videos of Hamas gunmen. Just like Hamas
newspapers, magazines, and websites, Al Aqsa programs typically feature
splashy stories glorifying the actions of "martyrs" and assurances that
through their sacrifices the "Zionist Entity" will be destroyed.

Children are specifically targeted. Hamas produces radio and television
shows and publishes an online magazine geared at preteens. A recent issue
of the magazine opens with a cartoon of a smiling child riding a rocket
while the previous issue glorified suicide bombers and other "martyrs" in
cartoons and poetry.

Hamas websites have been used to raise money for terrorist activities,
both explicitly and under the guise of "humanitarian" aid. There have been
reports, citing Israeli intelligence, that Hamas field coordinators have
used Voice of Al Aqsa radio broadcasts to provide terrorists with exact
coordinates and trajectories to fire Qassam rockets at Israeli targets.

In short, there is no reason why the West should show more leniency toward
Al Aqsa than toward Al Manar. While a few free speech activists have
defended Hezbollah's television as a legitimate programmer, American and
European governments have correctly identified it as a danger to free
society. Washington designated Al Manar a terrorist organization, making
it the first media outlet to be sanctioned under U.S. anti-terrorism laws.
The European Union ruled that Al Manar contravened its broadcast laws and
requested that European satellite providers stop carrying their programs.
Private sector companies have taken action as well. Eight out of ten
satellite providers have removed Al Manar from distribution and numerous
multinational corporations have pulled more than $2 million in annual
advertising from the station.

Similar steps can be taken to curb Hamas. The U.S. government should
designate Al Aqsa TV as a terrorist organization. This would put strict
limits on U.S. companies and banks from doing business with Al Aqsa.
Multinational companies should refuse to advertise on Al Aqsa, denying it
revenues that will ultimately go to support terrorist operations.

Finally, U.S. and European officials must put more pressure on the
Egyptian government to deny Al Aqsa, as well as Al Manar, distribution
over the Nilesat satellite. Egyptian officials cannot be interested in
helping Hezbollah and Hamas radicalize their own citizens or the
Arabic-speaking citizens of their European allies.

Given Al Manar's experience in the U.S. and Europe, Hamas may try to
soften Al Aqsa's content to give it the veneer of a legitimate TV channel.
However, policy makers and private sector executives must recognize a
simple truth: Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of innocent civilians
and until that changes, its television broadcasts will be used to further
that goal.

A decade passed before the international community recognized the dangers
posed by Hezbollah's Al Manar. Similar mistakes must not be made with Al
Aqsa. Otherwise, in too many European and Middle Eastern homes, Hamas's
hate TV could become the must-see fall programming for a new generation of
terrorists.

Mr. Dubowitz leads the Coalition Against Terrorist Media, a project of the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Mr. Snow, who is writing a
book on Hamas media, is manager of research for FDD.

7. No comment:
http://haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=prostitute&itemNo=775515

# posted by Steven Plaut : 6:00 AM