CNN has reported that Adam Gadahn, also known as Azzam the American, appeared in a video that has been made available on the Internet. Gadahn was portrayed as though he had offered "condolences" for innocent victims.
“On the heels of a U.S. announcement of a massive troop surge for Afghanistan," CNN reported, "an al-Qaida spokesman Saturday appeared to be trying to improve the group's image in the region with a new audio message in English.
Adam Gadahn, also known as Azzam the American, appeared in a 17-minute video released on Islamist online forums late Friday, offering condolences to the families of innocent people killed in al Qaeda attacks.”
It is important to note that many could perceive that the title CNN used as a positive al-Qaida step, yet careful observation and analysis of what has been said clearly reveals that the condolences were offered only to Muslims and non Muslims were not included.
Gadahn’s video statement : "We express our condolences to the families of the Muslim men, women and children killed in these criminal acts and we ask Allah to have mercy on those killed and accept them as shohadaa [martyrs]," he says. "We also express the same in regard to the unintended Muslim victims of the mujahedeen's operations against the crusaders and their allies and puppets, and to the countless faceless and nameless Muslim victims of the murderous crusades" in Afghanistan, Pakistan's Waziristan regions and Swat Valley, and elsewhere.”
The title that fits more with what Gadahn actually has said is “al-Qaida offers 'condolences' ONLY for Muslim victims” rather than “al-Qaida offers 'condolences' for innocent victims."
Sincere condolences should be offered for all innocents who are killed, irrespective of their faith.
The message of Adam Gadahn was portrayed as if it is a good thing, yet in actuality it only confirmed that many Islamists do not see a need to offer condolences for innocent victims if they are non-Muslims.
Failure to include non-Muslims in the condolences indicates serious disregard for the lives of non-Muslims.
Undervaluing the lives of non-Muslims, which is taught widely within mainstream Islamic jurisprudence and various Shariah books, is one of the main factors that leads some devout Muslims to develop the mind of a terrorist that does not show respect for human lives of the "others."
Dr. Tawfik Hamid is the author of "Inside Jihad." A former associate of Dr. al-Zawahiri (second in command of al-Qaida), he now is a reformer of Islam. For information, visit www.tawfikhamid.com. Hamid's writings in this blog represent only his thoughts and not the views of the institute where he works.
Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, came out of hiding to talk to CNN about the military operation in South Waziristan and the Taliban's planned response:
"We will wait till January for our offensive since we are stronger during the snowing season," Mehsud said.
He told CNN he remains confident despite the large-scale military operation currently targeting him and his fighters in the province of South Waziristan.
"We have conserved our energy and have not lost our morale," he said.
The leadership of his organization is safe, he said, but he didn't say where they are taking refuge.
The military operation in South Waziristan appears to be winding down, and the Taliban appear to have slipped the Army offensive intact.
The press releases issued over the past two weeks by the military's Inter-Services Public Relations show this; there are few engagements, and most days there are no Taliban fighters killed or captured.
It will be interesting to see if the Army stays in the Mehsud tribal areas, and if they do, will they be able to withstand a Taliban insurgency.
That is assuming Hakeemullah is correct and the Taliban counterattack is just a month away.
A column on a "right wing" website suggesting an Islamic motivation for last week's Fort Hood shooting massacre may help generate a backlash against American Muslim soldiers, according to CNN.
On CNN's American Morning show yesterday, reporter Carol Costello quoted the mother of a Muslim U.S. soldier as fearing "a backlash against Muslim American soldiers."
"She knows some are already reaching conclusions as to why Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly opened fire on his fellow soldiers," Costello stated.
Continued Costello: "The right-wing website, Pajamas Media, is an example. Phyllis Chesler writing, 'I knew in my bones that the shooter or shooters were Muslim. We must connect the dots before it's too late.'"
Chesler wrote, "The only answer most people want to hear is that a lone, psychiatrically deranged shooter did it. All by himself, on his own."
"They may be right. Sometimes. And yet…The same Instant Personal Jihad Syndrome once led another Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, to shoot Robert Kennedy in cold blood."
Newsbusters notes Chesler herself does not exactly fit with CNN's grouping of "right wing."
Chesler, professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island, has been a noted feminist activist who co-founded the National Women's Health Network and the Association for Women in Psychology. She is the author of thirteen books, including "Women and Madness," "Woman's Inhumanity to Woman" and "The Death of Feminism."
In a 1998 interview with Time magazine about feminism, Chesler stated that 'a woman’s body is her own, and she should not be invaded against her will by a rapist, nor should she be prevented from having an abortion."
"Clearly, Chesler is no huge 'right-winger,' as Costello would have one believe," noted Newsbusters.
Chesler is a prominent critic of Islamic extremism and is a supporter of Israel.
In her 2003 book, "The New Anti-Semitism," Chesler argues that anti-Zionism and attacks against Israel are nearly indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.
A website run by Revolution Muslim honored Hasan, the man accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas, as an "officer and a gentleman," saying his actions should not be denounced.
The massacre, which also left more than two dozen injured, was called a "pre-emptive attack" by supporters of the group.
Hasan, a Muslim psychiatrist who reportedly had been disciplined for pushing Islam on his patients at one point in his career, had given away his furniture and handed out Qurans before allegedly going to the military post and firing on soldiers at a processing center where soldiers prepared to deploy.
"Get Well Soon Major Nidal We Love You," said the website run by radicals who follow an imam once jailed in Britain. "Major Nidal Hasan M.D. An officer and a gentleman was injured while partaking in a pre-emptive attack."
The Army psychiatrist believed to have killed 13 people at Fort Hood warned a roomful of senior Army physicians a year and a half ago that to avoid “adverse events,” the military should allow Muslim soldiers to be released as conscientious objectors instead of fighting in wars against other Muslims. . . . In late June 2007, he stood before his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members and lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, both Muslim countries, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by The Washington Post.
“It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,” he said in the presentation.
“It was really strange,” said one staff member who attended the presentation and requested anonymity because of the investigation of Hasan. “The senior doctors looked really upset” at the end. These medical presentations occurred each Wednesday afternoon, and other students had lectured on new medications and treatment of specific mental illnesses. . . . The last bullet point on that page reads simply: “We love death more then (sic) you love life!”
Afghan women have seen their status rise and fall repeatedly over the past three decades, attaining a measure of equality in the early 1990s before the strictly Islamic Taliban muscled their way to power and forced women to again wear the burqa and stay out of school.
The U.S. bombardment of Afghanistan in 2001 drove the Taliban from the halls of power, again lifting women to a better place.
But now, a leading female member of the Afghan parliament says, those hard-won gains are retreating.
"After 2001, I call it like a golden opportunity for woman in the first five -- three, four, five -- five years," Fawzia Koofi, one of 68 female members of the parliament, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Thursday.
"However, like you had women in the parliament, you have several movements of women. You have girls going back to school. You have female doctors in the hospitals. You have female teachers who are going to school. With all this, I think the past three years, the situation of women is getting worse."
The problem, she said, lies in political attitudes.
"Unfortunately, there are certain elements within the government, outside the government, nowadays mainly within the government, who don't believe in women's progress, because they think, if women becomes stronger, they will lose the power," Koofi said.
"I think there is need for a strong political government and a civil government that actually is committed to equal rights and opportunities and to the rule of law," she said. "Everybody, according to the Constitution, is equal before the law."
"This is first. Rule of law is the key for progress of women."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared Monday that the United States will remain in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, no matter what President Obama decides on immediate troop levels.
"We're not leaving Afghanistan," Gates said in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour that also included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"There should be no uncertainly in terms of our determination to remain in Afghanistan and to continue to build a relationship of partnership ... with the Pakistanis," Gates said. "That's a strategic objective."
Because of our inability and the inability, frankly, of our allies to put enough troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban now have the momentum," Gates said.
Gates added that an eventual Taliban victory would provide "added space" for al Qaeda to set up in the country and enhance recruiting and fundraising, bolstered by the perspective of a second victory over a superpower by Muslim forces after driving out the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
Retired South African Judge Richard Goldstone told an interviewer Sunday on the CNN cable news network that as a Jew, he had an "obligation" to investigate war crimes, such as the ones the he claimed the IDF committed in Gaza.
Goldstone headed a panel on behalf of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, which issued a report accusing the IDF of committing "war crimes" against residents of Gaza.
While parts of the interview were dedicated to enumerating the supposed war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers – for example, he accused troops of killing thousands of chickens and destroying the egg industry in Gaza – Goldstone spent a good portion of the interview reflecting on his personal philosophy, and how the fact that he is Jewish figured into his investigation.
Speaking to CNN host Fareed Zakariah on the GPS program, Goldstone said that he tried to be fair to both sides, and that any limitations on his investigation was due to a lack of resources.
For example, he said, his panel was unable to verify whether Israeli accusations that Hamas used Gaza Arabs as human shields in hospitals and schools were true or not. "We investigated specific incidents, we didn't find the Israeli claims to be justified," he told Zakaria, but added that did not mean that Israel's claims weren't true.
And, Goldstone said, he was certainly not anti-Israel. "I have great love for Israel and have worked for many Israeli causes. What saddens me is that Jews, whether inside or outside of Israel, think that because I am a Jew, I should not investigate Israel.
However, I believe I have a greater responsibility, as a Jew, to do so. If I have investigated war crimes in other countries, why should Israel be different? That should be welcomed," Goldstone said.
In general, he said, he believed Israel had the wrong idea about his mission. "We didn't question the right [of Israel] to defend itself, we looked at the method," he said.
Goldstone added that despite the report, Israel's actions could not be compared to war crimes around the world that have taken place in recent years, such as those committed in Yugoslavia. "I don't like making comparisons," he said.
He added that Israel's relationship to Gaza "is also not apartheid. I don't like that comparison, there are some similarities but there are more differences."
He added that he hoped his report would be an impetus for both Israel and Hamas to settle their differences in a peaceful manner. "No South African can be pessimistic regarding the chances for peace. We [South Africans] had an impossible situation and we were positive there would be a bloodbath. And thanks to good leadership, this was prevented.
And I am proud to say that today we have a wonderful democracy in South Africa. True, there are problems, but we are progressing in the right direction," he said.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the renowned U.S. writer and broadcaster, was on Anderson Cooper 360 last night (Wednesday, September 23), discussing his noble and admirable activism against Ahmadinejad’s and Gadhafi’s visit to the United States.
The Rabbi was involved in demonstrations outside the U.N. and had also helped block plans for Gadhafi to set up a tent on the grounds of a Libyan compound next door to his home in Englewood, N.J.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s pronouncements against Ahmadinejad on Cooper’s program were superb and to the point. He should be applauded and commended.
But the Rabbi made a curious comment while denouncing Ahmadinejad and calling for Muslims worldwide to shun him. He said: “Islam was never an anti-Semitic faith.”
Is this really so?
If Islam was never an anti-Semitic faith, I would like to ask the following:
Why was the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, a devout admirer of Adolf Hitler? Why did the Nazis help create the organization? And why, by the end of World II, did the Muslim Brotherhood have a half million Arab Nazis as members?
Why did the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, meet with Hitler on November 28, 1941 and request Nazi assistance in engendering a Middle Eastern Final Solution?
Why, for Sayyid Qutb, an Islamist Godfather, did the Jews represent the “eternal enemy” of Islam?
Why is Mein Kampf circulated so widely in the Muslim world? Why is it a bestseller among Palestinians? Read more ...
Brad Norington, Washington correspondent | July 14
BARACK Obama has ordered his national security team to investigate allegations the US helped cover up the murder of about 2000 Taliban prisoners in the early stages of the Afghanistan war.
The US President's directive re-opens official US government interest in the circumstances behind a mass grave in northern Afghanistan that dates back to late 2001.
The murders were allegedly carried out at the behest of a local warlord backed by the US-led Northern Alliance.
According to the original reports of the incident just months after it happened, captured Taliban fighters were allegedly killed while being transported in cramped container trucks.
Last week the allegations re-emerged when it was reported that the Bush administration had "repeatedly discouraged" efforts to inquire into killings.
In an interview with CNN, Mr Obama said indications the deaths had not been properly investigated had only recently been brought to his attention.
"So what I've asked my national security team to do is to collect the facts for me that are known, and we'll probably make a decision in terms of how to approach it once we have all of the facts gathered up," he said.
His comments were aired yesterday after an interview pre-recorded in Ghana, the last leg of the President's trip to Russia and the G8 meeting in Italy.
Asked directly whether he would support an investigation, Mr Obama said: "I think that, you know, there are responsibilities that all nations have, even in war. And if it appears that our conduct in some way supported violations of laws of war, then I think that, you know, we have to know about that."
The Taliban fighters killed were reportedly in the custody of soldiers controlled by General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord who has switched sides over the years.
General Dostum, who was recently re-appointed as the military chief of staff to Afghan President Hamid Karzai after a period of exile in Turkey, was first named in a 2002 Newsweek article that cited a confidential UN memo about the murders.
It said the Taliban prisoners, who had surrendered to General Dostum's forces, were believed to have suffocated while being taken in cramped container trucks for the two-day journey from their northern Afghanistan stronghold in Konduz to Sheberghan prison, west of the General's headquarters at Mazar-e Sharif. There were also reports shots were fired into the containers by troops.
A Massachusetts-based group called Physicians for Human Rights raised the issue soon after it allegedly occurred, saying it had found a mass grave in nearby Dasht-e Leili where, according to witnesses, the bodies of Taliban prisoners were buried.
The human rights group's claims prompted US General Tommy Franks, then leader of the Afghanistan invasion, to back an inquiry. But little appears to have come of it, amid claims that neither the Defence Department nor the FBI followed through with full investigations.
The New York Times reported on Friday that the Bush administration "repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode" and that many other alleged executions of Taliban fighters by local warlords were overlooked.
CNN ran a report Monday about Youssef Megahed, the Egyptian resident alien and former University of South Florida student (where convicted terror supporter Sami Al-Arian was once a professor and the current leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ramadan Shallah, also taught). Megahed was acquitted in U.S. District Court in Tampa of federal explosives charges stemming from an ill-fated road trip to South Carolina with an associate who pled guilty to providing material support to terrorists. After Megahed's acquittal, the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Tampa took Megahed into custody and charged him with removal (deportation) violations, ostensibly on terrorism/security related violations that are believed to rely on evidence related to his criminal case, even though he was not convicted.
As reported by the IPT in April and again in June, Megahed's supporters and apologists argue Megahed is being treated unfairly. Some even claim the immigration case amounts to double jeopardy. The law, however, is clear. Deportation proceedings are civil/administrative in nature, not criminal, and foreign nationals (aliens) in the United States may be subject to removal based on a lesser standard of evidence than "beyond a reasonable doubt" in criminal cases, even if the evidence is very similar.
There is no double jeopardy. This process is not used by the government frequently and a decision to proceed requires significant review by high-ranking officials within DHS, sometimes in consultation with the Department of Justice.
Today's CNN article contained 55 paragraphs. Of those, only five reflected the U.S. Government's position in the case. The rest of the article describe Megahed's "plight" and how the former foreman of Megahed's criminal case jury traveled to the Florida detention center to personally visit with Megahed and his family.
The network report did identify a few facts that are worth noting, including that a government search of a computer found at Megahed's residence found "numerous videos, documents and an internet search history that supports Islamic extremism, jihad against the United States..." Also, CNN quotes a former Miami U.S. Attorney as saying, "The government doesn't use this a lot, but I think this is an arrow in the quiver that needs to stay because there are those cases where the government needs to do everything in its power to keep us safe, from some of those same individuals." Also, Guy Lewis states, "In one context, the real question is, are you going to jail for a long time. The other context is, are you going to get to live among us?"
The other 50 paragraphs clearly side with Megahed.
This week, CNN and Money magazine ran an article focusing on the role of faith in the personal finances of certain families.
In the article which they published which deals with a Muslim family, we have discovered a whole slew of questions with regard to matters outside of personal finance which, not surprisingly, the lapdogs at CNN and Money totally overlooked, or perhaps ignored.
The article is about the Saroya family from Pakistan who have settled in Minneapolis and starts off with Kashif Saroya facing a dilemma since the Qu’ran forbids “paying or receiving riba, usually understood as interest.”
This is an interesting point (no pun intended) because there are actually Muslim scholars who dispute this very point. They claim that the prohibition of riba actually refers to usury and not all interest. It has only been since the rise of Jihadists and the promotion of Shariah that this prohibition has been interpreted widely as forbidding all interest.
So, right from the start, the article errs, or at least ignores the fact that there is indeed controversy over this fundamental matter. Once again, our media lapdogs have neglected to conduct proper research and demonstrate a lack of curiosity. Read more ...
Angry protests are a common sight in Pakistan. Crowds often gather to denounce the United States or the Pakistani government, which critics accuse of being an American puppet.
But in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore this week, several hundred protesters gathered on a scorching day to take on a very different target: the Taliban.
"I will fight them to my last breath and the last drop of my blood in my body. I'm not scared," vowed newspaper publisher Jugnu Mohsin.
She was leading a crowd of several hundred students, artists, writers and others, chanting "the Taliban is the enemy of Islam" in Urdu.
Public protests against the Taliban started cropping up in various Pakistani cities after a video emerged showing militants publicly flogging a teenage girl. The Taliban's recent declaration that the Pakistani government and judicial system are "unIslamic" has also outraged many educated Pakistanis.
Neha Mehdi moved to Lahore to study. Now, she fears her way of life is being threatened by the Taliban.
"I cannot give up my education, and I cannot give up the way I'm living," the 23-year-old student said. "These Talibans have ruined the reputation of Islam."
"There were threats here also from the Taliban that if we gather they might just bomb us," Mehdi said.
More than 250 miles away, Pakistan's military continued its assault against Taliban militants who want to impose a radical interpretation of Islamic law in the country's northwestern tribal regions.
Pakistan's government recently signed a deal that would allow Islamic law, or sharia, in the tribal belt as long as the law was imposed in accordance with the country's constitution.
Mehdi and others in Lahore fear that the Taliban's version of sharia -- which forbids girls from attending school, as well as music, poetry and dance -- is slowly creeping into Lahore, the center of Pakistani culture.
"Our way of life is being threatened," said Kamiar Rokni, a fashion designer who took part in the protest. "And if we don't do anything about it, then you're just going to be sitting around and one day the way you live and what this country's all about is going to stand for nothing."
Rokni said he fears the Taliban "want to change the way we exist."
Lahore may be hundreds of miles away from the Taliban-held areas outside Islamabad, but it is no stranger to militant attacks.
"Last year we lost 39 people in acts of terrorism and this year we have lost 17 people in Lahore alone," Lahore police Chief Parvez Rathore said.
As he speaks, a heavily armed escort is one step behind the police chief even as he walks outside the walls of the city's police headquarters.
In March, gunmen attacked a bus carrying the Sri Lankan national cricket team in Lahore, killing six Pakistani police officers and the team's driver.
Weeks later, militants dressed in police uniforms stormed a police training center in the city, prompting an eight-hour stand-off with police. Eight cadets were killed during the March 30 siege, which the government blamed on Pakistan's Taliban.
Police in Lahore said the attacks would not have been possible without local support. Residents say there is no doubt that the Taliban have support in Pakistan's second largest city.
"They're here in Lahore, this is the thing," said Jamal Rahman, who plays guitar for the Lahore-based band, "Lal" which means "Red."
"Little groups of the Taliban are going around and intimidating people, causing fear, telling women to cover up and if they don't they'll shoot them."
Rahman and his cousin, Aider -- who plays flute for "Lal" -- are using their music to rally society against what he says is a growing threat by the Taliban.
"We want to try to get people aware, and try to get people activated and motivated to fight against this militancy," he said.
It is unclear if the protests and rallying cries from Rahman and the others in Lahore are the start of a mass movement or simply the swan song of Pakistan's wealthy, urban elite who could be the first to leave if the suicide bombers and insurgents succeed in further destabilizing the country.
Either way, their message is a sign that more Pakistanis believe the Taliban's threat is directed at them, and not just a reaction to the so-called U.S.-led "war on terror."
Mehdi said she fears her life as a student could come to a violent end if the people of Lahore do not stand up to Islamic extremists.
"If the Taliban take over then I'll be on the road being flogged by one of them like they did in Swat and I don't want that," she said.
Some Pakistanis are resorting to violence to defend their turf.
More than 30 people were killed in the southern port city of Karachi this week as members of the city's Mahajir ethnic majority group engaged in deadly clashes with ethnic Pashtuns. The Taliban is a mostly Pashtun movement.
The government in Karachi has issued a "shoot on sight" order to security forces, to try to maintain calm in the city.
A week before the clashes erupted, a leader of the MQM political party, which represents the Mahajir community in Karachi, said his supporters would fight back against what he called the "Talibanization" of his city.
"You have to take the nasty decisions now," Haider Abbas Rizvi told CNN last week. "You have to take effective measures to control these Taliban ...otherwise the Taliban will take over."
IN July 2005, al-Qa'ida's chief strategist Ayman al-Zawahiri outlined a critical element of his organisation's war against the West.
"We are in a battle and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. We are in a media battle for the hearts and minds of our umma (community)."
Al-Qa'ida has made "the media battle" a key front in its war, a strategy that helps explain why the jihadist movement continues to flourish. Yet intelligence and security agencies engaged in the so-called war on terror have been slow to seize this imperative, choosing instead to remain in the shadows, avoiding the vigorous media and public debate about terrorism and how it should be combated. Their reluctance has allowed the jihadists to gain the upper hand in the crucial battle for hearts and minds.
Al-Qa'ida's media strategy was deliberate and targeted from the outset, in keeping with an earlier directive from Zawahiri: "We must get our message across to the masses of the nation and break the media siege."
Osama bin Laden's first television interview in May 1997 was with CNN. The launch of his World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders in 1998 was announced at a press conference, where invited journalists were treated to a show staged by his entourage of mujaheddin, firing their AK47s and rocket-propelled grenades at the mountains. In 2004 bin Laden's videotaped "Message to America" was released for broadcast just before the US elections.
From its inception, al-Qa'ida established a media committee to run its propaganda offensive and a media production company, Al-Sahab, to film and distribute professionally produced videos, DVDs and other propaganda. Its activity has escalated markedly in recent years. In 2006, Al-Sahab released 58 videos, one every six days. In 2007 it issued 97, one every four days.
While one refers to the "foreign press" in Israel, most employees are local Israelis or Palestinians who are hired for their language skills, access and local knowledge. Sometimes it isn't enough just to monitor only the news stories and critique the media. The hiring practices of the media organizations can also impact significantly on what news is reported and how decisions are made as to the information reaching Western audiences.
It isn't only the personal attitudes or potential bias of a journalist influencing the final article or television report. Other media professionals can also have a major bearing on the construction and direction of a story.
Palestinian translators and fixers may be necessary but those with a political agenda can be selective with the information they feed the journalist or, at worst, mistranslate the words of the interview subjects. Writing on the influence of Palestinian organizations on foreign news reporting, the JCPA's Dan Diker noted:
According to senior foreign news sources based in Jerusalem, the vast majority of Palestinian fixers - often close friends of Palestinian employees of Jerusalem-based foreign news agencies - are ideologically motivated by the Palestinian cause, and actively encourage journalists to report exclusively on the "evils" of the Israeli occupation, rather than on the lack of democratic freedoms or human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza. Read more ...
CNN has the following report on Geert Wilders' visit to the United States. He explains once again that he has nothing against Muslims, but opposes the Islamization of Europe.
A: Al Qaeda uses Koranic verses to justify violence B: Geert Wilders exposes violent verses in the Koran and concludes that the Koran is the source of Islamic violence Conclusion: Geert Wilders is al Qaeda
A: Nazis use "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to justify anti-Semitic violence B: You expose anti-Semitism in "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and conclude that it is one of the sources of anti-Semitic violence Conclusion: You are a Nazi
Don't play into the deadly, cynical ploy of Hamas and blame Israel.
As Israel persists in its military efforts -- by ground, air and sea -- to protect its citizens from deadly Hamas rockets, and as protests against Israel increase around the world, the success of the abominable Hamas double war crime strategy becomes evident. The strategy is as simple as it is cynical: provoke Israel by playing Russian roulette with its children, firing rockets at kindergartens, playgrounds and hospitals; hide behind its own civilians when firing at Israeli civilians; refuse to build bunkers for its own civilians; have the TV cameras ready to transmit every image of dead Palestinians, especially children; exaggerate the number of civilians killed by including as "children" Hamas fighters who are 16 or 17 years old and as "women," female terrorists.
Hamas itself has a name for this. They call it "the CNN strategy" (this is not to criticize CNN or any other objective news source for doing its job; it is to criticize Hamas for exploiting the freedom of press which it forbids in Gaza).
The CNN strategy is working because decent people all over the world are naturally sickened by images of dead and injured children. When they see such images repeatedly flashed across TV screens, they tend to react emotionally. Rather than asking why these children are dying and who is to blame for putting them in harms way, the average viewer, regardless of their political or ideological perspective, wants to see the killing stopped. They blame those whose weapons directly caused the deaths, rather than those who provoked the violence by deliberately targeting civilians. They forget the usual rules of morality and law.
For example, when a murderer takes a hostage and fires from behind his human shield, and a policeman, in an effort to stop the shooting accidentally kills the hostage, the law of every country holds the hostage taker guilty of murder even though the policeman fired the fatal shot. The same is true of the law of war. The use of human shields, in the way Hamas uses the civilian population of Gaza, is a war crime -- as is its firing of rockets at Israeli civilians. Every human shield that is killed by Israeli self defense measures is the responsibility of Hamas, but you wouldn't know that from watching the media coverage.
The CNN strategy seems to work better, at least in some parts of the world, against Israel that it would against other nations.
There are many more protests -- and fury -- directed against Israel when it inadvertently kills fewer than 100 civilians in a just war of self defense, than against Arab and Muslim nations and groups that deliberately kill far more civilians for no legitimate reason.
It isn't the nature of the victims, since more Arabs and Muslim civilians are killed every day in Africa and the Mid East by Arab and Muslim governments and groups with little or no protests. (For example, on the first day of Israel's ground attack, approximately 30 Palestinians, almost all Hamas combatants, were killed. On the same day an Islamic suicide bomber blew herself up in a mosque in Iraq, killing 40 innocent Muslims. No protests. Little media coverage.)
It isn't the nature of the killings, since Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid killing civilians -- if for no other reason than that it hurts their cause -- while Hamas does everything in its power to force Israel to kill Palestinian civilians by firing its missiles from densely populated civilian areas and refusing to build shelters for its civilians. It isn't the nature of the conflict, because Israel is fighting a limited war of self defense designed to protect its own civilians from rocket attacks, while most of those killed by Arabs and Muslims are killed in genocidal and tribal warfare with no legitimate aim.
The world simply doesn't seem to care when Arabs and Muslims kill large numbers of other Arabs and Muslims, but a qualitatively different standard seems to apply when the Jewish state kills even a relatively small number of Muslims and Arabs in a war of self defense.
The international community doesn't even seem to care when Palestinian children are killed by rocket fire -- unless it is from Israeli rockets.
The day before the recent outbreak, Hamas fired an anti-personnel rocket at Israeli civilians but the rocket fell short of its target and killed two Palestinian girls. Yet there was virtually no coverage and absolutely no protests against these "collateral" civilian deaths. Hamas refused to allow TV cameras to show these dead Palestinian children, who were killed by their own rockets. Nor have there been protests against the cold blooded murders by Hamas and its supporters of dozens of Palestinian civilians who allegedly "collaborated" with Israel.
Indeed Hamas and Fatah have killed far more Palestinian civilians over the past several years than have the Israeli, but you wouldn't know that from the media, the United Nations or protesters who focus selectively on only those deaths caused by Israeli military actions.
The protestors who fill the streets of London, Paris and San Francisco were nowhere to be seen when hundreds of Jewish children were murdered by Palestinian terrorists over the years.
Moreover, the number of civilians killed by Israel is almost always exaggerated. First, it widely assumed that if a victim is a "child" or a "woman", he or she is necessarily a civilian.
Consider the following report in Thursday's NY Times: "Hospital officials in Gaza said that of the more than 390 people killed by Israeli fighter planes since Saturday, 38 were children and 25 women." Some of these children and women were certainly civilians but others were equally certainly combatants: Hamas often uses 14, 15, 16 and 17 year olds as well as women as terrorists.
Israel is entitled, under international law, to treat these children and women as the combatants they have become. Hamas cannot, out of one side of its mouth, boast that it recruits children and women to become terrorists, and then, out of the other side of its mouth, complain when Israel takes them at their word. The media should look closely and critically at the number of claimed civilian victims before accepting self-serving and self-contradictory exaggerations.
By any objective count, the number of genuinely innocent civilians killed by the Israeli Air Force in Gaza is lower than the collateral deaths caused by any nation in a comparable situation.
Hamas does everything in its power to provoke Israel into killing as many Palestinian civilians as possible, in order to generate condemnation against the Jewish state. They have gone so far as firing rockets from Palestinian schoolyards and hiding their terrorists in Palestinian maternity wards. Lest there be any doubt about the willingness of Hamas to expose their families to martyrdom, remember that the Hamas terrorist leader recently killed in an Israeli air attack sent his own son to be a suicide bomber and then refused to allow his family to leave their house even after learning that he and his house had been placed on the list of military targets.
Nor is this double standard -- applied to Israel on the one hand, and Arab and Muslim nations and groups on the other hand -- limited to the current situation in Gaza. It has provided an excuse for the international community to remain silent in the face of massive human rights violations including genocides perpetrated by Arabs and Muslims around the world for years. Many of those who protest Israeli self-defense actions remain silent in the face of real genocides -- such as that in Darfur.
The reality is that the elected and de facto government of Gaza has declared war against Israel. Under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, they have committed an "armed attack" against the Jewish state.
The Hamas charter calls for Israel's total destruction. Under international law, Israel is entitled to take whatever military action is necessary to repel that attack and stop the rockets. It must seek to minimize civilian deaths consistent with the legitimate military goal, and it is doing precisely that, despite Hamas efforts to maximize civilian deaths on both sides.
The best outcome for purposes of producing peace would be the destruction or substantial weakening of Hamas, which rejects the two-state solution. Israel and the Palestinian Authority could then agree on a peace that would end both the Israeli occupation and the rocketing of Israeli civilians.
Mads Gilbert, the radical Marxist Norwegian doctor that was the focus of a Fox News report earlier today for being an anti-Israeli Hamas apologist, has been positively identified as one of two doctors caught faking CPR on a Palestinian boy that "died" in video featured today on CNN.
The segment with Gilbert shows him and another doctor badly faking chest compressions and other life-saving measures on a live boy faking death in what can only be described as political theater. The video claims to be filmed by the brother of a Palestinian teen that claims the boy was one of two purposefully killed by a missile fired at them by an Israeli drone as they played.
Lawhawk, has more on why the fake CPR is so pathetically obvious to those with actual CPR training.
CNN editors who swallowed the story of the poorly-acted video unquestioningly—no doubt because it fit the anti-Israeli narrative familiar to CNN viewers and critics—have now pulled the video without explanation, correction, or retraction.
It has also been determined that the videographer who filmed his brother's "death" is the general manager of a company that hosts web sites for Hamas.
Dr. Gilbert was allowed into Gaza by the Israelis just 2 days ago to provide medical care. He was involved in faking war crimes less than 48 hours later.
Update: The CNN cover-up continues. Saddam Hussein's favorite network has now pulled the video completely from their site, instead posting a text story that continues the propaganda.
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip are proof that Zionists are not true followers of Moses.
In a Thursday interview in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan, President Ahmadinejad said Israeli echelons pretend to be the followers of Prophet Moses but have proved with their violent attacks on Gaza that they have no moral values.
"These minority of criminals and thieves are liars because they represent themselves as followers of the prophet. If Moses had been present today, he would first punish the Zionists for their conduct which is even worse than that of the Pharaoh," he said according to press tv.
Israeli began air operations against the Gaza Strip - home to 1.5 million Palestinians - on Saturday. The Israeli attacks have so far lead to the death of some 417 Palestinians and the injury of over 2000.
Israel says through its military campaign, it seeks to topple the Hamas movement, which took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after winning the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections in January 2006.
In retaliation to the attacks on Gaza, Hamas has been launching rocket strikes against Israel. Unlike the state-of-the-art weapons and ammunition Israel holds, the homemade Qassam rockets rarely cause casualties.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, at least 25 percent of the Gazans killed in the Israeli onslaught are civilians - scores of whom are women and children.
Referring to the siege on Gaza, Ahmadinejad said Zionists have attempted to impose "barbarism" on the world with its bombing and rocket attacks, warning that such conduct will never be accepted by the people of the world, the report added.
Despite international calls for Israel to end its current military offensive into Gaza, which started on Saturday, Israel is reportedly preparing to launch a ground assault into the region.
The UN Security Council has also failed to force an end to the Israeli attacks due to US intervention and its use of veto powers against resolutions that require Tel Aviv to end the ongoing raids against the Gaza Strip.
The recent conflict is the latest of a series which started when world powers found a 'land without a people and a people without a land' in 1948 and created Israel.
President Ahmadinejad is an outspoken critic of Israeli crimes. For his condemnation of Zionist policies, the Iranian president has been regularly targeted by Western governments. He has been accused of having plans to wipe Israel "off the map."
In a September interview with CNN's Larry King Live, Ahmadinejad explained his stance on the issue, saying that he believes the Israeli regime would disappear in the same way as apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union.
The Iranian president did, however, warn on Tuesday that the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip would be the harbinger of major developments in the region.
CNN International's coverage of the weekend's fighting in Gaza concluded with a rush of images: mangled civilians writhing in the rubble, primitive hospitals overflowing with the wounded, fireballs mushrooming between apartment complexes, the funeral of a Palestinian child.
Missing from the montage, however, was even a fleeting glimpse of the tens of thousands of Israelis who spent last night and much of last week in bomb shelters; of the house in Netivot, where a man was killed by a Grad missile; or indeed any of the hundreds of rockets, mortar shells, and other projectiles fired by Hamas since the breakdown of the so-called ceasefire.
This was CNN at its unprincipled worst, grossly skewering its coverage of a complex event and deceiving its viewers.
Yet Israel should not have been surprised.
Over the past few weeks, as the tahdiyah ("period of calm" in Arabic, the term similarly preferred by the Hebrew press) unwound and finally dissipated, Israel's policy has been to refrain from responding militarily to Hamas rocket fire.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni went to Egypt and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appeared on al-Arabiya TV to bear the message that Israel did not want war with Hamas; instead, Israel was committed to renewing the tahdiyah. The purpose was to build up a moral case for retaliating against a recalcitrant Hamas and limiting the international fallout that invariably follows any Israeli attempt at self-defence.
But the tactic has never really worked and failed this time as well. Within minutes of the first Israeli air strike, the Arabs were screaming "massacre" and the media had all but forgotten the serial assaults that provoked it.
The press once again attached the word "disproportionate" and the term "continuing cycle of violence" to describe a supremely justified and largely surgical (the targets were exclusively military, the victims overwhelmingly Hamas gunmen) operation.
At the time of writing, the UN Security Council is meeting and will no doubt find Israel and Hamas equally guilty for disrupting the ceasefire and demand its immediate restoration.
One wonders why Israel even bothers. Instead of undermining the Zionist ethos of defending Jewish lives at all costs irrespective of bad publicity and perilously broadcasting weakness to its enemies, perhaps Israel should simply declare that the slightest violation of the ceasefire - a single Qassam - will precipitate an immediate and disproportionate response.
Since it's going to be condemned for it anyway, why shouldn't Israel smash Hamas promptly and massively and reap the benefits in terms of self-respect, deterrence, and a respite for its embattled citizens?
The confusion surrounding Israel's tactics in the Gaza - Israeli tank and infantry forces are now gathering for a possible ground incursion - is indicative of a deeper bewilderment.
The Government is purportedly divided over the operation's goals, with Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak in favour of toppling Hamas, while Olmert prefers to revive the tahdiyah.
Nobody seems to know how long Israel's operation will last or the criteria for deeming it successful. No Israeli leader, whether from Kadima, Labor or Likud, has articulated a clear vision for Israel's relationship with the obstreperous Strip.
Here, too, there is nothing original. In 1949, at the end of Israel's war of independence, Israeli forces surrounded Gaza in an attempt to conquer it and annex it to the nascent Jewish state. Frustrated in that gambit, Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion secretly sought to purchase Gaza from the Egyptians in the early 1950s, and then, during the 1956 Suez crisis, Israel briefly occupied the Strip.
Israeli soldiers in 1967 received unequivocal orders not to enter Gaza, but they did so anyway, and remained there for the next 20 years until prime minister Menachem Begin tried to convince the Egyptian leadership to take control of Gaza, fruitlessly.
Israel proceeded to build settlements in the Strip, but not enough to stake a firm territorial claim. It installed a Palestine Liberation Organisation administration there, but later disavowed it as corrupt and terror-ridden. It initially coddled and finally combated Hamas.
Finally, in 2005, prime minister Ariel Sharon, former champion of the Gaza settlements, uprooted all 21 of them and their 8100 inhabitants.
Once renowned for his brutal suppression of Gaza terrorists, Sharon also ignored the 1000 Qassam rockets that flew on the heels of Israel's withdrawal. Hamas was consequently empowered and eventually took over the Strip, creating the Hobbesian conditions that Israel faces today.
Olmert began his term with a boom - a war in Lebanon in 2006 - and is now leaving with a bang - the 2008 war in Gaza. Today, however, Olmert is more experienced, more sombre, less cocky. He now plays the role of the responsible adult.
Nevertheless, this latest round of fighting provides Israel with an opportunity to end its painful chronicle of indecision on Gaza and to embark on a lucid and realisable policy.
Can Israel co-exist with a Hamas-dominated Gaza? What are the alternatives (the re-introduction of Egyptian forces, for example) to a renewed Israeli occupation of the area? To what degree will the international community accept a zero-tolerance approach to rocket attacks against Israel, and, more crucially, will the incoming US administration of Barack Obama publicly endorse that stance?
These and other questions might be answered in the coming days if Israel, withstanding the media backlash, dares to ask them.
Michael B.Oren is a professor at the school of foreign service at Georgetown University. He is author of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present.
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CNN has reported that Adam Gadahn, also known as Azzam the American, appeared in a video that has been made available on the Internet. Gadahn was portrayed as though he had offered "condolences" for innocent victims.
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