RAEL JEAN ISAAC

AZNAR SPEAKS UP

Yet another reason to regret the electoral defeat of former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar by the appeasement-minded Jose Luis Zapatero: In a speech at the Hudson Institute, commenting on the outraged Islamic response to Pope Benedict’s remarks on Islam and violence, Aznar declared that Moslems should apologize to Spain for occupying that country for 800 years. As for the UN backed program to encourage dialogue between Moslems and the West, Aznar had a word for it: “stupid.”

EVANGELICALS FOR ISRAEL

While mainline church bureaucracies line up to condemn and disinvest from Israel, evangelical Christians accurately describe themselves as “Israel’s best friends.” Minister of Tourism Isaac Herzog points out that one in every three American tourists is an evangelical Christian.

Of the 100,000 people participating in Jerusalem’s annual march saluting Israel’s defense forces in October, 5,000 were evangelical Christians from over 80 countries who had come for the annual Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkoth) celebration organized by the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem.
The Christian embassy recently raised $500,000 within a week to help families in the north and to revitalize Galilee. And the same organization, working with the Jewish Agency, invested $40 million to assist Soviet Jews to come and be absorbed in Israel. Indeed Christian support represents 2.5% of the Jewish Agency’s total budget.

MODERATE MOSLEMS? HOW MANY?

Syrian born political scientist Bassam Tibi, a German citizen since 1967, is a moderate Moslem. In an interview with Der Spiegel he urges Europe to stand up to Islamists and urges Moslems to integrate into European societies. He identifies what Moslems have to do to become Europeans: renounce jihad, give up shariah (it’s incompatible with the German constitution), and accept pluralism and tolerance.

Asked how many of the three million Moslems living in Germany would agree to these demands, Tibi replied: “A few thousand perhaps.”

NO BRAINERS

Propositions that should by now be no-brainers (appeasing Arab enemies won’t work) have not penetrated the skulls of Israeli politicians who, whatever their formal IQs, are themselves “no-brainers.”

Listen, for example, to Labor Knesset member Ephraim Sneh: worried that President Bush will not act, Sneh wants Israel to launch an emergency buildup of long-range military capabilities so that it could act alone to address the Iranian challenge. But then he insists Israel must rush to cut a deal with Mahmoud Abbas, and says “we know the price.” The price, which Abbas has made clear countless times, is withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, creation of a sovereign Palestinian state and opening Israel in its shrunken borders to millions of Palestinian Arab “refugees.”

In other words, the price is substituting an Arab state for Israel. At that point there would be no Jewish state for Ahmadinejad to incinerate. Why then advocate an emergency buildup against Iran?

FAIR WITNESS

There is a fine new organization Christians for Fair Witness in the Middle East, which advocates among mainline Protestants and Catholics in North America for fairness in the church’s witness on issues related to the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

We quote from a recent press release calling to account the Jesuit magazine America for an editorial entitled “Unending War:”

“Cluster bombs are very destructive weapons. But to attribute a motivation of ’ethnic cleansing’ to Israel — a charge we do not recall being leveled against NATO forces after their use of cluster bombs in Serbia and Kosovo — while ignoring more obvious motives such as delaying the return of Hezbollah terrorists to the region, is irresponsible at best.

“America’s allegation of’ ethnic cleansing is a canard that has no logical place in analyzing Israel’s tactics, added Fr. James Loughran. If there is any attempt to ‘cleanse’ this region of any group it is Hezbollah’s, Hamas’ and Iran’s openly stated policy to destroy the Jewish state.

“We must remind America that there is an ‘unending war’ in this region because Israel’s Arab neighbors have refused since 1936 to accept the presence of a Jewish state. Repeated Arab attacks in the
form of five wars and endless acts of terrorism have forced the state of Israel into an unending, unwanted
mode of self defense.”

JEWS FOR ISRAEL'S SOUL

As if Israel did not have enough tzoros (Yiddish for troubles) it now has Soros, who is creating a new political lobby to combine rich Jews and left-wing Jewish organizations to serve as a counterweight to the pro-Israel AIPAC.

Like the Jews of Breira and the New Jewish Agenda of earlier decades, this crop will claim to care deeply for Israel’s soul -- and if that means the real world state must be sacrificed, no problem. These groups never heard of an Israeli retreat they did not approve, an attack on Israel they did not excuse, or an instance of Israeli self-defense they did not condemn.

As Jews they can attack Israel more effectively than non-Jews. With Soros’ billions behind it, look for real trouble from this outfit.

FROM MINISKIRST TO HIJABS

Morocco is undergoing rapid Islamization. Counterterrorism expert Oliver Guitta reports in The Weekly Standard (October 2) that the government has arrested 59 people engaged in terror plots, staving off a repeat of the attacks three years ago in Casablanca by an Al-Qaeda linked group that left 45 dead.

Worried about infiltration of the army by jihadists, the government has ended compulsory military training. But the problem goes deeper. Writes Guitta: “In just a few years, Moroccan women have gone from the miniskirt to the hijab. Interviewed in the French daily Le Monde a few months ago, a Moroccan high school teacher named Soukaina (she said she was afraid to use her last name) said that she no longer recognizes her country. Twenty years ago her high school had only one veiled teacher. Today everyone is veiled, teachers and students alike.”

Guitta notes that both in Morocco's big cities and in its villages, street vendors sell Islamist propaganda calling for jihad, spewing anti-Semitism and hatred of the West, on audio and video tapes, CDs and DVDs. Most serious, the leading Islamist party--the terror-linked Justice and Development party--is projected to win 47 percent of the vote in the coming Parliamentary elections. The king would then be obliged to ask it to form a government.

REGISTERING FOR JIHAD

Jihad registration offices are to be opened in Mogadishu. The online JihadWatch observes: “If this catches on worldwide it will give Western officials something new to do: just as now they assure us that this or that incident had nothing to do with terrorism on the basis of the perpetrator not being a known member of Al-Qaeda or some other terrorist group, so then they will assure the public that the latest incident of violence and terror wasn’t really jihad, since the perpetrator was unregistered.”

PIRATES A ZIONIST PLOT

Poor Walt Disney. In his lifetime not known for friendship to Jews, his studio is now accused of engaging in Zionist plots. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has provided translations from Iran’s IRINN TV channel on which the Disney studio is described as a tool of the Zionist lobby. Both the recent Johnny Depp hit Pirates of the Caribbean and the older movie Aladdin (which supposedly was designed to denigrate Arabs) are specifically held up as examples of the Zionist effort to “gain control.”