Rael Jean Isaac
 
JIHAD IN NEW JERSEY

Daniel Pipes gives some background reinforcing the likelihood that the Armanious family massacre was motivated by Islamic radicalism. His information comes from Robert Spencer of jihadwatch who spoke to a close friend of the murdered father.

This friend reports that the family had sought to convert several Moslems to Christianity but these converts were practicing taqiyya, or religious deception. The Coptic community believes that it is likely these converts murdered the family. It sees the murder as a warning to Copts that the first amendment and American law enforcement will not protect them.

Spencer believes the fate of the Armanious family is akin to Theo van Gogh’s murder in Holland, an indication that Moslems in the United States do not unanimously accept American pluralism.

PA HATE SPEECH IS BACK

After a lull of a few weeks, the PA is back promoting hatred. In a Jan. 5 speech broadcast on PA TV stations Prime Minister Abbas twice referred to Israel as the "Zionist enemy." (Abbas, often described in the West as a leader "uncompromised by terror," was one of the chief architects of the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes -- no less an authority than Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, the coordinator of the attack, has said that Abu Mazen/Abbas provided the funds and instructions to carry it out.)

The Friday sermons, broadcast by PA TV, are again as venomous as ever. Sample from Sheik Ibrahim Madiras' Friday sermon of Dec. 31: "No to the return to the 1967 borders. We are interested in returning to our genuine borders...We are interested in returning to the 1936 borders, to the revolution...and we are interested in returning to 1929 borders...[when] a group of our grandfathers and fathers became Martyrs for Allah in the Al-Buraq revolution, as they were defending the Al-Aqsa mosque from the Hagana gangs, Allah curse them and curse those who supported them." And here is the Sheik on Jan. 7: "Oh Muslims. The Jews are Jews. Their character and custom are corruption and destruction of this land. We keep warning you: the Jews are a cancer that spreads inside the body of the Islamic and Arab nation."

TSUNAMI AID

Israel has taken great pride in its generosity toward the victims of the tsunami, most of them, of course, Moslem. As far as the half million dollars it has sent to Indonesia, Israel should have saved its money -- and its dignity. Indonesia has long treated Israel as an enemy: it maintains no diplomatic relations with Israel and does not even allow El Al planes to fly over its territory, let alone land in the country. The "reward" Israel is reaping for its generosity is more hatred and abuse. An Indonesian government minister even denies the country has received aid from Israel (he says aid from individual Jews is acceptable, but aid from Israel "will not happen"). Moslem "intellectuals" have already begun to accuse "global Zionism" of pretending to provide aid and instead abducting children orphaned by the tsunami. For example, MEMRI's TV Project reports that Yemeni "professor" Al-'Ajai announced that "Zionist companies" are "abducting these children, while exploiting the circumstances of these painful events, and trading in them. Many studies have proven that a large percent of the slave market belongs to the forces of global Zionism, whose octopus tentacles spread evil throughout the world."

DOD VS. SY HERSH

The Department of Defense, which usually submits silently to Seymour Hersh's junk journalism in the New Yorker (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith are regular Hersh targets) has come out swinging this time against a Hersh piece "The Coming Wars" in the New Yorker of January 24. Hersh (who confidently predicted war with Iran by summer on CNN's Lou Dobbs program of Jan. 17) claims super secret commando units are preparing the way by monitoring Iran's nuclear sites. The sources are the usual collection of anonymous characters, a former intelligence officer here, a former consultant there, a recently retired official, you name it, and what Hersh produces, as Michael Ledeen explicates so well (in "The Hersh File" on NationalReview.com of Jan. 25) is his usual incoherent output. The DOD declared of this article what is true of almost everything Hersh writes: "Mr. Hersh's article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed."

While even CBS has now cleaned house, the New Yorker persists in publishing this meretricious stuff and journalism continues to shower its awards on Hersh (in 2004 the National Magazine Award).

While we don't hold our breath, we have our own touchstone for evidence of improvement in media standards: it's when Hersh is relegated to the supermarket tabloids (Two Year Old Gives Birth to 90 Year Old Woman) where he belongs.

ADOPTING A SETTLEMENT

We have a request from Israel that synagogues in North America "adopt" a settlement in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, most especially (but not only) those under immediate threat of evacuation. It will be an important encouragement to the beleaguered communities, and helpful in making both the Israeli and American government understand that these people are not isolated and alone, but that Jews abroad support their right to live freely in the Land of Israel. Any synagogue or other organization wishing to join in such an effort should contact AFSI and we can put them in touch with the Gaza or Yesha Council or with any individual community with which they might wish to link.

ON POST ZIONISM

Edited by Shlomo Sharan, Israel and the Post-Zionists: A Nation at Risk brings together a frightening series of essays that focus on the collapse of much of Israel's intellectual "elite" into self-hatred and yes, anti-Semitism. Edward Alexander's essay "Israeli Intellectuals and Israeli Politics" is alone worth the price. The book is available through http://www.sussex-academic.co.uk.

A PROPHECY

Israel's great nationalist poet Uri Zvi Greenberg was famous for his prescience. He foresaw the Holocaust, writing of the murder of millions of Jews in Europe in 1922. He even foresaw specific horrors that would indeed take place: in his poem "Holy of Holies" he described the murder of his mother -- he would say that he simply recorded what he saw in a dream with his mind's eye. In his book Free Jerusalem (Devora Publishers, 2003), Zev Golan reports on the dream that, by his own account, led Greenberg to write "I'll Tell It to a Child", which had an enormous influence in bringing young people, including Menachem Begin, to the Jewish underground. “I dreamt one night...I saw the Temple Mount, above it an eagle, and around it circles and circles of Jews, and from the Mount a slope inclined straight to the sea. On either side were lines of soldiers from all the world's armies. In the dream I felt that the Divine Presence, Shechinat Israel, was leaving the Mount.”

As we watch the folly of Israel's leaders, we are forced to wonder if Greenberg will again prove to be a painful prophet.

JIHAD ON CAMPUS

Some campuses have already gone beyond mere anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations. Joe Kaufman (FrontpageMagazine.com of Jan. 21) describes the way Florida Atlantic University has become a center of Islamic radicalism with professors tied to Hamas and invited lecturers including neo-Nazis and others who have been convicted of raising money for Islamic terror organizations.