Rael Jean Isaac

BAHRAINI RUNNER LOSES CITIZENSHIP

As Condoleezza Rice races around the world to produce “Arab-Israel peace,” small events reveal how unpromising the terrain is for the genuine article. A Kenya-born Bahraini citizen Mushir Salem Jawher competed in – and won—the Tiberias marathon in Israel this summer. Far from celebrating their athlete’s achievement, the committee of sport and government authorities decided (shades of the Nazi’s eradication of the records of Jewish athletes) to strike Jawher’s name off the sport union’s records and strip him of his Bahraini citizenship.

And then there’s Salah Uddin Choudhury, on trial for his life in Bangladesh, for the “crime” of wanting to address the Tel Aviv Writer’s Association and advocating better relations with Israel.

LET THEM DRINK OIL

After decades of false promises of “alternative energy,” technology at last offers genuine promise of progress toward energy independence. Former CIA director James Woolsey writes in The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 30) that over the next 20 years cellulosic ethanol (based on biomass, not corn) could produce half the fuel needed by U.S. passenger vehicles at a cost of 70 cents per gallon, this on just 7% of U.S. farmland, the amount now in the Soil Bank. That doesn’t even include the potential of thermal processes that can convert industrial, municipal and animal wastes into energy.

In the more immediate future electricity will increasingly replace liquid fuels in transportation thanks to advanced batteries based on nanotechnology, with the cost as much as 90% lower than gasoline. Utilities are enthusiastic because plug-ins will exploit unutilized capacity, given that batteries will normally be charged in off-peak nighttime hours.

And then there’s gasification of coal, in which GE is already making investments, which promises an alternative fuel for commercial and military airplanes.

Sooner than anyone thought possible, the Middle East may be restored to its rightful place in world affairs, as a primitive impoverished backwater.

SPANISH BISHOPS AWAKE

While Europe sleeps, to use Bruce Bawer’s book title, Spain’s bishops have belatedly woken up to the prospect that resurgent Islam will lay claim to southern Spain. The English paper The Independent (Jan. 5) reports they are alarmed by plans to recreate the city of Cordoba, the heart of the ancient Islamic kingdom of al-Andalus, as a pilgrimage site for Moslems throughout Europe. Plans include construction of a half-size replica of Cordoba’s eighth century Great Mosque. The bishops are also alarmed by increasingly assertive Spanish Moslems demanding the right to pray in what was once the Great Mosque itself, now a cathedral which was built to consolidate Catholic rule after the Moslems were expelled in 1492.

ELLISON STALKS BUSH
I
n May 2006, while still a state representative, Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in Congress, introduced a bill in the Minnesota House that would have put the legislature on record – it didn’t pass -- to urge the impeachment of President Bush. Expect Ellison, now on the Judiciary Committee, to return to the assault. He already promises an agenda for “the restoration of American citizen’s civil liberties” and banning racial profiling. Read, Ellison is committed to making the U.S. open to the kind of terror attacks depicted on Fox’s hit show 24.

This is the man whose election the Minneapolis Jewish Herald endorsed and whose victory Rabbi Aaron Bergman (in a January 9 op-ed in The Detroit News) says Americans “should celebrate.” Bergman may be right that “history may show that the most significant event of the recent elections” was Ellison’s victory. But if so, it will not be, as Bergman rosily (and insanely) proclaims, because “this is one of the best things that could happen to America…the beginning of a larger shift to democracy throughout the world.” It foretells a far darker future.

SELECTIVE OUTRAGE?

In last month’s Outpost Ruth King pointed out the double standard American Jewish leaders have employed, with deserved outrage at Iran’s anti-Holocaust conference not matched by outrage at similar behavior from Israel’s Arab neighbors. A recent case in point: on December 27 the Egyptian Arab Socialist Party held its own Holocaust denial conference in Cairo. It was ignored by most Jewish organizations. And when the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an honorable exception, urged Olmert to protest when he met Mubarak at Sharm el Sheikh, a craven Olmert said nothing about it and instead, as Caroline Glick notes, heaped superlatives on him for his leadership of “moderate” Arab states.

A FOUR STATE SOLUTION?

What is called a “two state solution,” as Outpost has pointed out many times, is a three state solution, with Jordan, Israel and a third Palestinian state carving up Mandatory Palestine. But can world backing of a fourth Palestinian state be far behind? Israeli Arabs are organizing a new front against Israel. Daniel Pipes reports that the Mossawa Center in Haifa (funded in part by American Jews) has issued “The Future Vision of Palestinian Arabs in Israel,” which insists Israel become a “joint homeland” in which the Law of Return will be cancelled, the flag and anthem altered, Arabs will have a veto over decisions by Jewish Israelis and will have separate representation in international forums. Even the Israeli media has reacted negatively to these demands, but no doubt they will soon call them “moderate” – after all there’s no mention of putting the Jewish population out to sea.

AFSI foresaw these developments long ago. In May 1955 Outpost published “Israeli Arab (Dis)Loyalty” by Erich Isaac, which noted that “the territorial dwarfing of Israel will lead to an immensely powerful release of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment among Israel’s Arab citizens.”

SADR'S U.S. FOLLOWERS

Dearborn, Michigan is the face of what many more cities in the U.S. will look like, if this country does not quickly clamp down on Moslem immigration. Debbie Schlussel reports on a rally in Dearborn celebrating Saddam’s hanging. While it was widely reported in the press, what was not mentioned was that the leaders were major supporters of the Shiite anti-American militia headed by Moqtada al Sadr. Take Hushem al-Hussainy, the imam who organized the celebrations. He heads one of Dearborn’s three largest Shi’ite mosques. He’s been invited to the Pentagon and hugged by President Bush, but he’s no moderate. Schlussel points out that he led almost daily protests by thousands of Hezbollah supporters last summer in Dearborn and Detroit and has led pro-Hamas and pro-Arafat rallies. Writes Schlussel: “Shiites who hate Sunnis to death in Iraq, love Sunnis in Israel when they’re killing the Jews.”

CHURCHILL ON IRAQ

“At present we are paying 8 millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.”
Even taking inflation into account, the cost of sitting on the volcano has gone way up – but what we get out of it is likely to be exactly the same.

POLITICIDE: VICTOR SHARPE

“Politicide” is a word coined by Abba Eban to describe the act of murdering a state…that state being Israel. In his book, dedicated to Zeev Jabotinsky “a fighter for his people whom so few chose to follow,” Sharpe details the relentless attempts by the Arab world to destroy the Jewish state. In thirty five cogent essays, Sharpe skillfully traces the historical background as well as the current conflict, including the Israeli government’s acquiescence to its own destruction. The book is available online at www.lulu.com .