Los Angeles Times writer Ashraf Khalil complains that the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera isn’t available in the US, and as evidence of their excellent reporting he shows a video clip by an Al Jazeera reporter trolling hospital beds in Gaza: In praise of Al Jazeera.
The report Khalil praises is blatant propaganda, with the sole purpose of inflaming emotions against Israel.
And of course, this is the cleaned-up, sanitized Al Jazeera for Western consumption. If you watch them in Arabic you get the real stuff.
For example, this incredibly vile birthday party for released terrorist Samir Kuntar—who shot a child’s father in front of her, then bashed the little girl’s brains out with a rifle butt.
This sickening, utterly depraved show alone should prevent Al Jazeera from ever being picked up by US cable providers, but people like Ashraf Khalil are doing their best to trick the American public into looking elsewhere. Source: LGF
Antwerp: Arab riots, Jewish neighborhood sealedHow do you protest violence against a civilian population? Attack a civilian population, of course. These riots were expected, given the massive incitement that accompanied the organization of the demonstrations. The demonstration that the Arab European League (AEL) in Borgerhout (Antwerp) organized against the bombardments of the Gaza Strip, has gotten completely out of hand. After the protest disbanded the demonstrators marched towards the Jewish neighborhood in Antwerp, clashing with the police. In particular car windows suffered, but also trams and buses were attacked. Read more ... Source: HLN (Dutch) H/T: Islam in EuropeAEL
Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award
While many other Dutch will be sleeping it off, a group of Muslim will be up at the crack of dawn on New Year's Day cleaning the streets. These will be members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Amsterdam, according to spokesperson Fahim Dieffenthaler Wednesday.
The faithful will be out at a 6:15 for the first prayer of the New Year. At 8am they will collect litter on the Papaverweg in Amsterdam-Noord. According to Dieffenthaler other branches of the Muslim community will probably go out later in January to clean up streets in other parts of the country.
The Ahmadiyya Muslims had held similar operations in the past. They do this since they think their task is to contribute to society. The Ahmadiyya community is a separate movement within Islam, aside from the Sunnis and Shiites. Many members in the Netherlands are of Pakistani origin. Source: Telegraaf (Dutch) H/T: Islam in Europe
 "Israel is waging a struggle, but this struggle is not Israel's alone. Israel is standing on the frontlines of the Western world’s war against terror, and we expect support for doing the right thing and fighting the war of the entire free world.
"It is true: the pictures broadcast on television all over the world are provoking harsh public opinion against Israel. Unfortunately, some of the world’s decision makers are swayed by public opinion and the media, even though they know what is true and what is not, and how they would act in a similar situation."
- Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni's recent speech before the Israeli Knesset AS ISRAELIS WHO NEVER THOUGHT THEY WOULD FACE TERRORIST ROCKETS TRY TO HIDE FROM FALLING ORDNANCE, their elected officials are attempting to avoid a more structurally catastrophic obstacle: pressure from the "international community." Overnight, the Olmert government wisely rejected a 48-hour "humanitarian truce" hammered out by French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, on behalf of the 27 member nations of the European Union, in consultation with foreign ministers continent-wide. Sarkozy and Kouchner plan to spend the day haranguing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni to accept a two-day standoff under the pretext of allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, with the spoken desire to make the ceasefire "lasting." The very concept has been described as "a diplomatic victory" for Hamas, with negotiations threatening to elevate Hamastan to the standing of an international quasi-state in its own right. Read more ...Source: FrontPage Magazine
Demented Clown SocietyTEHRAN (Reuters) - A group of Iranian hard-line clerics is signing up volunteers to fight in the Gaza Strip in response to Israel's air strikes that have killed at least 300 Palestinians, a news agency reported on Monday. "From Monday the Combatant Clergy Society has activated its website www.rohaniatmobarez.com for a week to register volunteers to fight against the Zionist regime (Israel) in either the military, financial or propaganda fields," the semi-official Fars news agency said. Israel patrols the coastal waters around Gaza and has declared areas around the enclave a "closed military zone." The hard-line Iranian group, which is headed by some leading clergy, says it has no affiliation with the government and was formed shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a religious decree to Muslims around the world on Sunday, ordering them to defend Palestinians in Gaza against Israeli attacks "in any way possible." Read more ...Source: ReutersH/T: Jihad WatchCombatant Clergy Society
Latest recipient of the Evil Dumbass Award
 Riyadh, 30 Dec. (AKI) - A doctor in Saudi Arabia was able to stop the wedding of a five and 11 year-old whose family wanted to marry them to protect financial assets. "Thanks to the law that compels spouses to carry out blood analyses before marriage, we were able to stop a wedding with underage girls, among them a five year-old," said Hani Harsani, the doctor in charge of laboratory analysis in an interview with Saudi daily al-Watan.
"Two sisters came to us accompanied by their parents to undergo pre-marital blood analyses. The first one was five, and the other 11 years-old. When we asked the mother why they wanted to do the tests, she told us that she wanted to marry the girls to cousins to preserve the family's property rights."
During the interview, Harsani remembers an episode when a 10-year-old orphan was brought to do pre-marital blood tests by her brother, who wanted to marry the sister to a 40-year-old friend who already had two other wives.
"We cannot technically impede a marriage with a girl of this age. However, we can delay the process (by refusing to carry out the tests)," said Harsani.
"I hope a law can be passed sooner rather than later to establish a minimum age for marriage."
Pre-marital blood tests are compulsory in Saudi Arabia to ensure the spouses are in good health, but also to prevent the spread of hereditary diseases to the children. Source: AKI
 Culture shock ... Muslim women walk along an Indonesian beach
past a topless foreign tourist.By Georgina Robinson Conservative MP Fred Nile says he wants topless bathing banned in NSW to protect Sydney's Muslim and Asian communities. The Reverend Nile has rejected allegations that prudishness is behind a bill he has prepared to ban nudity, including topless sunbathing, on the state's most popular beaches. Australia's reputation as a conservative but culturally inclusive sociery was at risk of erosion by more liberal overseas visitors, he said. "Our beaches should be a place where no one is offended, whether it's their religious or cultural views," he said. "If they've come from a Middle Eastern or Asian country where women never go topless - in fact they usually wear a lot of clothing - I think it's important to respect all the different cultures that make up Australia." The practice was at risk of raising the ire of Muslim men in particular, Mr Nile said. "I don't want to have any provocations or disturbances on our public beaches," he said. Acting Premier Carmel Tebbutt and the NSW Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, have both said that topless bathing is an issue for local councils, not state governments. Read more ...Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
 By Beila Rabinowitz and William Mayer December 30, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, the director of the American Muslim Association of North America [AMANA] has been given an award by the Miami Dade Citizen Corps Council for "outstanding service to the Miami- Dade community during 2008." According to a letter sent by the Emergency Management Coordinator, Lorenzo Sanchez, "The Miami-Dade County, Department of Emergency Management & Homeland Security and the Miami-Dade Citizen Corps are truly thankful for the support you have given to our community by preparing, or responding to the residents of Miami-Dade County for all-hazard events." Zakkout has also received funding from the Department of Homeland Security despite the exposure of his Islamist ties by these authors in an April feature story [see, Why Is The Department Of Homeland Security Funding The "Hardening" Of Florida Mosques?]. Though purged of much of the anti-Christian hate-speech AMANA's website still contains anti-Jewish and anti-homosexual material and a hyperlink to www.islamonline.net, a site which features religious/legal opinions in support of suicide bombings. Read more ...Source: Militant Islam MonitorMiami Dade Citizen Corps Council
Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award
 Predictably, it's started. Europe's pro-Palestinian lobby, instinctive anti-war campaigners, Muslim extremists and the so-called Arab street have all been demonstrating against Israel's military operations in Gaza.
In London, Muslim and leftist protesters rallied raucously outside the Israeli embassy. Marchers protesting the Palestinian "holocaust" were held in Copenhagen, Paris and Madrid. A protest by the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party in the northern city of Mosul ended abruptly when a suicide bomber on a bicycle blew himself up, killing one and wounding 16. Some might wonder why al-Qaida would attack other Sunni anti-Zionists. Plainly, the extremists' lust for chaos and bloodshed trumps all.
Pro-Hamas rallies were organized from Teheran to Beirut, and from Baghdad to Cairo. Arab citizens of Israel observed a general strike, accompanied by sporadic rock-throwing and tire-burning. An Arab minister in the Israeli government protested by refusing to attend a cabinet meeting; Palestinian youths in east Jerusalem rioted as their elders honored the strike.
We find it curious that the weekend deaths of 13 schoolchildren in Afghanistan at the hands of an Islamist bomber; the Taliban suicide attack in Pakistan, which claimed 30 Muslim lives, and the unremitting internecine slaughter in Iraq (9,000 dead in 2008 alone) fail to incense the Arab street half as much as the Jews exercising their right to self-defense.
THAT SAID, it is instructive to look beyond the mobs with their incendiary placards, shrill chants and de-rigueur burning of Israeli flags and take note of a remarkable rupture in the Arab and Muslim world.
The Arab elites, comprising statesmen, academics, journalists and businesspeople, may preface their criticism with references to Israel's "crimes," but a significant facet of this class - it would be simplistic to label them "moderates" - appreciates that Hamas is to blame for what is taking place in the Gaza Strip.
Moreover, their hearts may tell them to bankroll Hamas, but their brains tell them that the fanaticism, political intolerance and social backwardness championed by the Islamists pose a profound threat to the Arab future.
These predominantly Sunni elites - whether they sit in Cairo, Riyadh or Amman, in the Maghreb, the Gulf or in the West - don't want their societies to ape the Taliban or the ayatollahs.
HIZBULLAH leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, still in hiding two years after supposedly defeating Israel in the Second Lebanon War, has been denouncing this attitude as he seeks to salvage Hamas's fortunes - in which he and his Iranian patrons are heavily invested - by mobilizing the Arab street.
He has practically called for a revolution in Egypt. As Al Jazeera reported: "Nasrallah urged Egyptians... to force their government to open the country's border with Gaza. 'If the Egyptian people took to the streets by the millions, could the police kill millions of Egyptians? People of Egypt, you must open this border by the force of your chests.'"
What Hizbullah's demagogue in-chief pointedly neglected to tell the throngs watching him on a giant TV screen as he spoke from his bunker, was that Hizbullah and Iran were egging Hamas on to pick a fight with Israel while Egypt (and Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas) were working overtime to convince Hamas to honor the cease-fire.
Nasrallah is half-right.
Arab elites suffer from a sort of split personality disorder. Even as they are trying to pull Hamas's chestnuts out of the fire by pressing Washington to lean on Israel to back off, they know that Hamas (like Hizbullah and the Muslim Brotherhood) threatens not just their own regimes, but political development in the Arab world. If only the Jordanian and Saudi monarchs, Gulf emirs and the Egyptian president would stand up to the Islamists.
How? They should be incrementally fostering transparent government and the rule of law, and socializing their masses to the idea of tolerance and majority rule while respecting the minority. That would promote political institution-building and social stability.
The Arab elites need to offer their people an alternative to Islamist extremism. They could begin by redefining what it means to be pro-Palestinian and dissociating the Palestinian cause from anti-Israel rejectionism.
In this context, if Israel can deflate Hamas, it will be advancing an Arab interest as much as its own citizens' security. Source: Jerusalem Post
 In October 2008, Moussa Abu Marzouq, deputy head of the Damascus-based political wing of Hamas, gave an interview to the Qatari daily Al-Raya in which he expressed surprise at the UAE's demand for sovereignty over the three islands Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb, and Abu Moussa, which have been in Iranian possession since the Shah's era. Abu Marzouq's statements sparked anger against Hamas; in one reaction, a columnist for the UAE daily, Al-IttihadMuhammad Khalfan Al-Sawafi, extrapolated from Abu Marzouq's statements that Hamas's claim to Palestinian territory could likewise be questioned, and that the agendas of Hamas and Iran were political rather than religious. Following are excerpts from Al-Sawafi's article: Hamas Is Selling Arab Territories out of Greed"…Mussa Abu Marzouq, deputy of the political wing of Hamas… expressed surprise that the UAE had set a deadline for restoring [to its sovereignty] the three islands that are currently under [Iranian] occupation, [i.e.] Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb, and Abu Moussa. [Marzouq's statement] raises questions regarding [Hamas's] demands to regain control over the occupied Palestinian territories. In addition, these statements can be [construed as] undeniable proof that the religious groups' and movements' loyalty to an external [element] is greater than their loyalty to their respective homelands. Read more ...Source: MEMRI
By Patrick Poole The Jerusalem Post reported on Monday that Israeli Defense Forces aircraft bombed suspected Hamas terror laboratories located at the Hamas-run Islamic University of Gaza (IUG). According to the article, IUG professors were using the labs to build explosives for the terrorist organization. A BBC report confirmed that the IUG science building was the target of the Israeli retaliatory strikes. Thus far unreported is that the IUG science and technology lab was financed and constructed with the assistance of the Dublin, Ohio-based Arab Student Aid International (ASAI). In fact, the IUG website has a page dedicated to ASAI’s ongoing contributions to the Hamas institution and specifically mentions the labs financed by the Ohio Islamic group. Additionally, the ASAI website promotes its assistance in creating the IUG science and technology center, which was completed in 2002. In a previously published article I revealed ASAI’s extensive financial ties to the IUG, including direct cash payments to the Hamas school in addition to the facilities construction projects supported by ASAI. The Washington Post also revealed in April 2006 that ASAI had financed the Western education of a number of top Hamas leaders. Read more ...Source: Pajamas MediaASAI
Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award
By Aaron Klein JERUSALEM – A Palestinian girl who said she lost a 4-year-old sister yesterday during Israel's air strikes in the Gaza Strip squarely placed the blame for the violence on Hamas, making her statements live on the terrorist group's official television network. "We were sleeping seven girls in the room. We were asleep and didn't know what was happening. In the morning all the bricks were on top of my head, and the heads of all my sisters. My 4-year-old sister next to me was dead," the girl said, talking to Hamas' Al Aqsa TV. "How many were you?" the Hamas interviewer asked the girl. The girl responded: "Seven. In the other room were my mother, my father, my younger brother and another sister, who is 13 days old. "I say, Hamas is the cause, in the first place, of all wars," she declared. The interview was translated from Arabic by the Israeli-based Palestinian Media Watch organization. Israel yesterday hit multiple Hamas targets in Gaza, focusing on the terrorist organization's military installations, training camps and weapons storage, and production facilities. Also targeted were weapons-smuggling tunnels that snake under Gaza's border with neighboring Egypt. Read more ...Source: WNDUnnamed Palestinian Girl
Latest recipient of The MASH Award
 December 31, 2008
THE media took great delight in reporting the encounter between US President George W. Bush and a pair of flying shoes during his final visit to Iraq two weeks ago. But the great bastions of free speech missed the true significance of an Arab reporter throwing his shoes during a press conference in Baghdad.
Bush has long maintained that it would be a fine thing to see the emergence of some basic Western values in the Arab world. Values such as freedom of expression. Perhaps the return to Iraq of a bit of shoe-throwing as the ultimate sign of Arab disgust is a healthy sign of a democracy, warts and all, taking hold. Iraqis had to wait until Saddam Hussein was dead before they threw their shoes en masse at his toppling statue.
Puerile as it is as a form of expression, Iraqis can now throw shoes freely at any leader, including the outgoing leader of the free world. So maybe Bush’s final visit to Iraq is, after all, a healthy sign of democratic values taking root. What a shame those same values have, over a period of years, been uprooted in the West.
If 2006 will be remembered as the year the West rolled over when tested on free speech - think the Danish cartoons, which large swaths of the media refused to publish for fear of causing offence - two years on, things are worse.
The year 2008 deserves to be seen as a year of anticipatory surrender, a year when the West decided to roll over on free speech of its own accord. Just in case. No threats. No demands. Just suppress controversial speech in advance, just in case it causes offence. You understand, we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. In fact, such a trashing of core Western values is difficult to understand.
In no particular order, an audit of 2008 must begin with the comments of Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, who announced in October that Islam deserved different coverage in the media compared to other religions because Muslims were an ethnic minority.
While a spokesman for Thompson tried to play down the significance of what the head of the British public broadcaster had said by claiming that his boss was not calling for preferential treatment of Islam by the media, it’s hard to interpret Thompson’s words any other way.
The fact that a religion is identified with one or more ethnic minorities should surely have no bearing on other people’s freedom to probe, question and indeed lampoon that religion, in the same way that Christianity is regularly subjected to criticism and comedy spoofs.
It is deeply troubling that in response to claims by British comedian Ben Elton that the BBC would “let vicar gags pass but not imam gags”, Thompson said that it did take a different approach to Islam. A public broadcaster that openly admits self-censorship of important issues may get a mark for honesty, but the price is taxpayer-funded vandalism of Western values.
The same rank capitulation occurred in the private sector when, in August, Random House pulled the publication of The Jewel of Medina, a book by Sherry Jones that told the tale of Aisha, the child bride of Mohammed.
The publisher had received no threats, just “cautionary advice” that publishing the book “might cause offence to some in the community (and) incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment”.
Perhaps Random House took comfort, in a “we told you so” kind of way, that the publisher who did finally print the book in Britain, Gibson Square Books, was set on fire.
But instead of surrendering to perceived threats and real violence aimed at ideas and words, the West ought to be stiffening its resolve, declaring such barbarism unacceptable in a free society committed to freedom of expression. That is not happening.
When Somalia-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali arrived in Australia in early August to talk about free speech and her right to criticise Mohammed, she was still accompanied by security to protect her from those who regard violence as a legitimate response to words and ideas.
Hirsi Ali won’t be silenced. Neither will Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who is also surrounded by security. The release in March of his short film Fitna, which is critical of Islam, was followed by a fatwa from al-Qa’ida, boycotts against Dutch products, and attempts by Muslim countries to censor the film from the internet.
In the face of real threats, the tendency to curtail free speech even before threats arrive rather than offend minority sensibilities is spreading like a virulent cancer. Recall the case of the controversial Dutch cartoonist who was arrested in May and interrogated for his cartoons that mocked Islam. At least Gregorius Nekschot did not suffer the fate of Shafeeq Latif, who was sentenced to death in June by a Pakistani judge for insulting Mohammed.
But the West is killing free speech slowly - by more subtle means - through state-sponsored censorship under the grand name of protecting human rights.
The insidious role of human rights commissions was exposed in June when Mark Steyn and Canadian magazine Macleans were hauled before the Canadian Human Rights Commission for islamophobia.
While the complaint was ultimately dismissed, the fact that words warrant oversight by a state tribunal points to a rank attitude to free speech where a person is required to spend copious amounts of time and money defending words and ideas.
The same thing had happened in April, when the Ontario Human Rights Commission dealt with complaints against Steyn and Macleans. And in January, when conservative commentator Ezra Levant had to defend his publication of the Danish cartoons to the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission.
As Steyn wrote of his experience of heavy-handed state censorship, the media “seems generally indifferent to a power grab that explicitly threatens to reduce them to a maple-flavoured variant of Pravda ... As some leftie website put it, ‘defending freedom of speech for jerks means defending jerks’. Well, yes. But, in this case, not defending the jerks means not defending freedom of speech for yourself. It’s not a Left-Right thing; it’s a free-unfree thing”.
If large sections of the media - normally devotees of free speech - cave into what the BBC’s Thompson called the “growing nervousness about discussion about Islam”, that self-censorship ripples out to all corners of society.
After the Danish cartoons fiasco, the onus was on the West to show its spine, to reassert its faith in freedom of expression. So far it has failed on that score. Let’s hope 2009 is a better year for free speech and the West’s confidence in itself.
Postscript: Beaufort Books of New York is the publisher of The Jewel of Medina. Miss Jones contacted me overnight saying the following:
Dear Ms. Albrechtson,
Your article on the West’s capitulation to radical Muslims on free speech was very thought-provoking—and you could have included many more examples! I applaud you for speaking out on this crucial issue. Silence is consent, the saying goes, and if we don’t exercise our freedom of speech to protest these attempts to muzzle it, we will certainly lose it.
I would like to make one minor correction regarding my novel, “The Jewel of Medina.” Gibson Square Books has not published it—nor, as far as I can ascertain, does publisher Martin Rynja intend to do so. Shortly after the Sept. 27 arson attempt at his London home office, Mr. Rynja issued a statement declaring that I had decided to indefinitely postpone publication of my book. This assertion, of course, was untrue. Although we have corresponded with Mr. Rynja, neither my agent nor I have been able to coax from him a prospective publication date or any indication of his intentions for the book.
My only English language publisher at this time is Beaufort Books of New York. With my consent, this courageous publisher published my book in a hurry, on Oct. 6, in order to counter the dangerous rumors that my book was pornographic. Our strategy appears to have worked, for the threats and tirades against “The Jewel of Medina” and me have ceased for the most part.
“Jewel” has been published in five countries—the US, Germany, Denmark, Serbia, and Italy—with no repercussions. We have had good sales throughout. In Serbia, the book was the number-one bestseller for at least two months and continues to sell well. It will debut in Spain Feb. 4.
For more information, feel free to visit my new website.
Thank you for standing up for this most important of rights—freedom of speech and expression. And thank you so much for your attention here. I wish you a very happy and healthy New Year!
Warm regards,
Sherry Jones
Author/Journalist
http://www.authorsherryjones.com Source: The Australian
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit harshly censured Hamas today (27 Dec), placing responsibility for the current situation on Hamas.
At a noon press conference broadcast on Egyptian television, he said that Egypt had repeatedly cautioned against continuing the situation and that whoever did not listen (Hamas) should assume responsibility and not blame others. He added that Israel had publicly warned that continued rocket fire would lead to military action.
Prime Minister Olmert said just two days ago in an Al Arabiya TV interview that if Hamas did not stop the rocket fire, Israel would respond militarily. The Egyptian foreign minister added angrily that right before Foreign Minister Livnis arrival in Egypt on Thursday, 60 rockets were fired, meant to foil Egypts efforts to achieve quiet. Source: Europe News
Tuesday, December 30, 20085:00pm - 6:30pm Outside of Israeli Consulate in NYC Corner of E42nd & 2nd Ave. New York, NY Support Israel in the current situation with Hamas in Gaza. Israel is acting to prevent Hamas and other militant Palestinians from firing rockets into southern Israel. Hamas has been firing Kassam (Qassam) rockets into southern Israel/Sderot for the past 8 years. This reprisal has been long overdue to protect Israeli civilians. Come and show your support toward Israel. Signs and fact sheets will be provided. Source: Gateway PunditH/T: Banafsheh / Gramfan The only way to end Palestinian suffering is to completely destroy Hamas.
 By Art Moore When the five Muslims convicted this month of plotting to kill U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix were charged, the New Jersey mosque where four of the men worshipped reacted to negative publicity by holding an "emergency town hall meeting" to calm neighbors and persuade Americans that Islam poses no threat. But having investigated the Islamic Center of South Jersey one year ago, Middle East expert and former Air Force special agent Dave Gaubatz insists not only is the mosque a threat to national security, it represents a pattern that has prompted him to launch a massive project to systematically classify every known mosque in the U.S. Mapping Shariah in America: Knowing the Enemy seeks by the end of next year to document in a rigorous, scientific fashion the controversial premise that the more a mosque or community of Muslims adheres to Shariah, or Islamic law, the greater its threat to U.S. national security. "That's exactly, that's what the data are showing," Gaubatz told WND, who has charted about 100 of the estimated 2,300 mosques his team has identified across the country. "The more adherent you are to Shariah, the more likely you are going to find the material to back that up at the mosque." Read more ...Source: WND
 by Daniel Pipes | Tue, 30 Dec 2008
1) Arab-Israeli warfare is not the conventional battle to control territory of old. Since 1982, the primary goal in this theater is to persuade the world of the righteousness of one's cause. (I.e., who has the more affecting casualties?)
2) Palestinians have proven themselves more competent at the p.r. battle than the Israeli government, winning public support everywhere — with the lone but decisive exceptions of Israel and the United States.
3) Secondarily, Hamas's defiance should be seen in light of Iranian ambitions to wear down the Israeli body politic.
4) Most Arab regimes so fear Tehran that they can barely bestir themselves to denounce Israel's war on Hamas, much less do anything.
5) The PLO's Mahmoud Abbas condemns Israeli actions as intensely as he roots for the Israel Defense Forces to destroy Hamas.
6) The moral opprobrium for Palestinian rockets raining down on Israeli towns falls entirely on the Palestinians and their enablers.
7) Israel has made astounding tactical mistakes, including the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, long years of passively enduring rockets, and tacit acceptance of elaborate smuggling tunnels from Egypt to Gaza.
8) The IDF has learned from tactical mistakes made in 2006.
9) Still, the Israeli war effort remains problematic. For example, an unnamed Israeli defense official was quoted saying "Hamas knows our demands, and there's no use to talking about them publicly." Since when does one signal military intentions to the enemy and hide them from one's own population?
10) The Israeli goal should be victory, not ending terrorism.
11) The Bush administration must not save Hamas.
12) Nor should the Obama administration save Hamas.
Source: National Review Online
 The global Muslim Brotherhood is reacting to the Israeli air attacks on Hamas in Gaza, generally describing the action as a “massacre or using similar inflammatory language.” Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, perhaps the most important leader of the global Brotherhood was reported to have criticized on Al Jazeera what he called the “silence” of the Arab world and urged “the entire Islamic nation to stand against this criminal and savage aggression.” A statement from the Egyptian Brotherhood called the Israeli actions a “bloody catastrophe:” Since decades, the Muslim Brotherhood has been following up on the events in Palestine and have resisted side by side with their Palestinian brothers all attempts of Israeli invasion, aggression, tyranny, and terrorism against the Palestinian people in the land of Palestine. After threatening to eliminate resistance, especially the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, the Israeli settlers now carry out their criminal operations attacking Palestinians in Gaza leaving hundreds of women and children killed and thousands injured and spreading destruction. Unfortunately, however, Arab and Islamic regimes remain silent, some even conspiring and conniving with Israelis in this bloody catastrophe after Israeli terrorist statements were made loud and clear from Cairo with officials” consent. The MB strongly declares its refusal of these criminal attacks, terrorist practices, plots and conspiracies that are being plotted in the night against the Palestinian resistance, Hamas” fighters, and their brothers in the remaining Palestinian factions. Read more ... Source: Family Security Matters
Along with expressing solidarity with the Hamas casualties in Gaza, PLO and Fatah officials criticize Hamas for its contribution to the escalation that led to the Israeli attack. They blamed Hamas for not listening to PLO's call to prolong the tahdiah, for not preparing properly for the possibility that Israel would attack, and for combining its government functions with its resistance activity, which made it vulnerable to an attack on its institutions. Hamas, for its part, accused the PLO and Fatah of collaborating with Israel. The following are excerpts from statements and articles in the Palestinian media: Abu Mazen: We Told [Hamas] - "Don't End the Tahdiah"In his visit to Egypt, PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) placed the responsibility for the Israeli attack on Hamas, saying, "We called the leaders of Hamas, and told them both directly and directly, through Arab parties and non-Arab parties. We talked with them on the phone. We told them, 'Please, do not end the tahdiah.'" Nimr Hammad, an advisor to Mahmoud Abbas, said: "The one responsible for the massacres is Hamas, and not the Zionist entity, which in its own view reacted to the firing of Palestinian missiles. Hamas needs to stop treating the blood of Palestinians lightly. They should not give the Israelis a pretext." He called upon the leaders of Hamas to stop carrying out "operations which reflect recklessness, such as the firing of missiles." Read more ...Source: MEMRI
By Barry Rubin Nothing is clearer than Hamas's strategy. It gives Israel the choice between rockets and media, and Hamas thinks it is a situation of, "We win or you lose." Option A: The Ceasefire Hamas ends a ceasefire giving it the peace and quiet needed to build up its army and consolidate its rule over the Gaza Strip. Israel would deliver supplies as long as there weren't attacks. From a Western-style pragmatic standpoint this is a great situation. But Hamas isn't a Western-style pragmatic organization. Peace and quiet is its enemy not only because of its ideology--the deity commands it to destroy Israel--or its self-image--as heroic martyrs--but also because battle is needed to recruit the masses for permanent war and unite the population around it. Hamas has no program of improving the well-being of the people or educating children to be doctors, teachers, and engineers. Its platform has but one plank: war, war, endless war, sacrifice, heroism, and martyrdom until total victory is achieved. Thus, it ends the ceasefire. Read more ...Source: Gloria Center
 By Kathy Shaidle In the wake of last month’s horrific Mumbai massacre, a recent warning about the spread of Islamic extremism in Russia is particularly chilling. On December 12, the Interfax news service quoted Major General Yury Tomchak, interior minister of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, as saying that “the wide-scale expansion of radical Islam into practically all regions of the Russian Federation” is a “source for concern.” He added that, “cells of international extremist organizations have developed intensive activities lately in individual constituent territories [of Russia], activities that include takeovers of “lucrative sectors of business.” This growth of Islamic extremism within Russia’s borders, especially in Chechnya and Dagestan, comes even after the Russian government banned seventeen radical Muslim organizations. For whatever reason, deadly atrocities of the recent past, such as the Moscow Theatre seige or the Beslan school massacre, are frequently attributed to regional, secular separatists rather than Muslim terrorists. This, despite statements made by the terrorists themselves, which reference “Allah” and the establishment of a caliphate “from the Red Sea to the Caspian.” Of course, the situation is extremely complex, and religion plays only one part, as Russia expert David Satter of the Hudson Institute explained to Front Page Magazine via email. In terms of Major General Tomchak’s Kabardino-Balkaria, which was rocked by attacks on police and security facilities in 2005, the spread of Islamic radicalism “is often fueled less by religious fervor than by the corruption of the local pro-Russian authorities and the brutality of the police,” said Satter. Read more ...Source: FrontPage Magazine
 By Jeff Robbins | December 30, 2008
LAST MONTH'S commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provided the occasion to ask difficult questions about societies whose political leadership serially violates them. What, for instance, is to be done about places like Darfur or Zimbabwe, or any one of a multitude of places governed by leaders whose consciences appear untouched by the suffering they are causing? To the list of grotesque human rights violators must be added Hamas, whose disdain for the suffering its policies cause the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip is exceeded only by its open, and even proud, infliction of atrocities on Israeli civilians.
This year alone, Hamas, which expressly calls for the obliteration of Israel, has launched approximately 3,000 rockets and mortar bombs into Israeli civilian centers, always for the purpose of killing and maiming Israelis if possible, and terrifying those who are not actually hit. In the last week or so, Hamas has fired some 200 rockets and bombs into Israeli communities.
Under these circumstances - circumstances which would have continued without end had the Israelis failed to act - it seems clear that the Israeli military response was not merely a necessary one. It was, regrettably, the only one left.
Israeli author Amos Oz, whose call for peace with the Palestinians is shared by a majority of Israelis, succinctly described the brutalization of Israeli civilians in terms that cannot fairly be disputed. In a recent piece entitled "Israel Must Defend Its Citizens," the longtime advocate for reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis wrote: "The systematic bombing of the citizens in Israel's towns and cities is a war crime and a crime against humanity."
Oz is correct.
But it isn't only Israelis whose fundamental human rights Hamas is violating. It is those of the Palestinian population about whose welfare Hamas professes to care.
In direct contravention of international law, Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, utilizing homes, schools and community centers as launching pads, content in the knowledge that if innocent Palestinian civilians are caught in the cross-fire, it will be Israel that is criticized. This amounts to a sort of Daily Double of human rights violations: the use of innocent Palestinians as human shields for the infliction of violence upon innocent Israelis.
It is Hamas that perfected the use of the suicide bomb, by which young Palestinians were induced to kill themselves so that Israelis could also be killed. It is somehow apt that Hamas should be forever associated with the suicide bomb, for in a larger sense Hamas has proved to be an instrument of the demise of Palestinians in Gaza.
Hamas's persistent call for the annihilation of Israel through jihad, its unequivocal rejection of any peace with Israel under any circumstances, its seizure of Gaza through a coup d'etat, its repression of women and freedom of expression, and its embrace of Iran have all disgusted the international community, which will have little to do with it. Hamas has likewise repelled numerous Arab governments, which might otherwise have been expected to dip into their ample reserves of petrodollars to provide much-needed aid and foreign investment to Gaza, but which have steered clear of it.
Thus Hamas leads the Gazan population on a kamikaze course. The suffering of Gazans cannot conceivably be a genuine concern of the leadership, given the perpetuation of that suffering for which Hamas is responsible. And the suffering of Israelis is its avowed goal.
Whether it was South Africa or Sudan, the international community has understood that the way to deal with truly egregious human rights violators is not to placate them, but to speak the truth about them, and to them. If the truth is spoken plainly enough, and forcefully enough, to a Hamas leadership whose cruelty and callousness have reached alarming levels, it may be that the Palestinians and Israelis alike may be spared further suffering of the kind to which they have been relegated in the past.
Jeff Robbins, an attorney, was a US delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission during the Clinton administration.
Source: Boston Globe
 From correspondents in Jerusalem | December 30, 2008
THE Israeli navy has reportedly rammed a boat that was trying to deliver medical supplies to the Gaza Strip.
No one was injured in the collision between the patrol boat and the 20-metre Dignity, which was trying to take three tonnes of medical supplies into Gaza on day four of Israeli air strikes on the Palestinian territory.
Israeli army radio said the boat — operated by the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement — ignored both orders to turn around and warning shots across its bow before it was rammed.
The Free Gaza Movement, which has ran the blockade six times since August to take humanitarian supplies into Gaza, said the vessel could still sail after the ramming.
Paul Laurdee, one of the group's founders, said the Dignity had been "surrounded" in international waters about 70km off the Israeli coast and 135km from Gaza.
"It was surrounded by 11 Israeli naval vessels," he said.
"They ordered the boat to stop, and we didn't. They began firing over our boat and into the waters next to the boat. When the boat wouldn't turn back, one of the naval vessels rammed the boat, but not enough to disable the boat."
On its website, the Free Gaza Movement said the Dignity was on a "mission of mercy" carrying three tonnes of medical supplies "donated by the people of Cyprus," from where it set off on Monday.
"Our people are communicating with the Israelis as to what's next," Mr Laurdee said.
"We will try to dock in Egypt or in Lebanon, or all the way back to Cyprus. But there is doubt about fuel on board and whether they can make it all the way back to Cyprus as normally we refuel in Gaza." Source: The Australian
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