A Dangerous Pragmatism
Herbert Zweibon

From the Editor
Rael Jean Isaac

Paradise Lost
by William Mehlman

Israel’s Election Results
by Roger A. Gerber

Was Moses Jewish?
by Jack Engelhard

Popular Culture and Islam
by Fjordman

The Muslim Brotherhood And The Copts
by Magdi Khalil .

The Code of Olmerta
by Ruth King

OUTPOST
Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Herbert Zweibon, Ruth King

Outpost is distributed free to
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Herbert Zweibon

A new evangelical pro-Israel lobby, Christians United for Israel, should be welcomed enthusiastically by all friends of Israel. As Iran threatens to obliterate Israel, a Hamas-led government abandons all shred of pretense that Palestinian Arabs seek peace and everywhere the forces denying the very legitimacy of the state gather strength, the advent of a group that can energize the Republican base on behalf of Israel is a cause for celebration. Instead it is encountering carping and criticism from Jewish organizations pretending to promote Israel’s interests.

Abraham Foxman of the ADL, who has never encountered an evangelical group which did not “frighten him,” worries “Will they be able to differentiate between their biblical prophecy mode and their pragmatic pro-Israel mode?” Then there’s Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, who announces “If they oppose the government, it’s an anti-Israel lobby as far as I’m concerned.” (This is comical from Yoffie, who has never hesitated to oppose policies of the Israel government when they conflict with his capitulationist beliefs.) According to Yoffie, if the new group opposes “territorial flexibility,” “I would consider that dangerous to Israel.”

In short, what people like Foxman and Yoffie fear is that Christians United for Israel will be a lobby against further Israeli unilateral retreats (only the euphemisms change, from “peace process” to “disengagement” to the current term “convergence”). The motivation of its leader the Rev. John Hagee (who has raised millions of dollars for Israel) and his supporters is of course belief in the Biblical covenant that gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people.

We at Americans for a Safe Israel profoundly hope that Christians United for Israel will throw its weight against the policy of continued surrender-to-terror advocated by Israel’s current Prime Minister, a policy that not only negates the Biblical covenant but, far from being “pragmatic,” negates all reason. The Oslo peace process failed so Prime Minister Sharon embarked on a unilateral retreat from Gaza. That failed. Beautiful and agriculturally bountiful Jewish settlements like Neve Dekalim and Morag have been converted into Hamas training bases and launching pads for rocket attacks on southern Israel, the stones of the former homes used for Hamas guardhouses. Prime Minister Olmert now vows to make Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria Hamas terror bases and launching pads to destroy what remains of Israel. This is pragmatism? What happens when the PA, from the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria which Olmert proposes to empty of Jews, launches missiles against Israeli civilian planes over Lod airport? Or when rockets, launched from the now judenrein Gaza Strip, destroy crucial infrastructure, like the plant in Ashkelon which provides much of Israel with electricity?

Israeli military commanders have sounded the warning. On January 23, recent chief of staff General Moshe Yaalon declared “The 1967 borders are not defensible borders for Israel and are strategically damaging.” The retreat from Gaza, says Yaalon (in the Spring issue of Azure) is interpreted by the Arabs “as an Israeli ‘breakdown’ to be exploited as a victory for the resistance.” Similarly, former deputy chief of military intelligence Yaakov Amidror says that abandonment of the high ground dominating Tel Aviv leaves the “central stretch of Israel’s coastal strip where most of its population and industrial capacity are located completely exposed.”

So we hope Christians United for Israel will not be intimidated by false counselors like Foxman and Yoffie and will be forthright in defense of Israel’s legitimate rights. This is where true pragmatism and genuine safety for Israel lie.

Rael Isaac

IRAN AT THE UN

On April 10 the UN voted by acclamation to make an Iranian vice-chairman of the UN Disarmament Commission. American Jewish Congress chairman Jack Rosen characterized this as "a rude slap in the face of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN Security Council." On the contrary, it's a blowing of trumpets by those who set the tone of the world organization. In its new role Iran, which almost daily promises to wipe Israel off the map, promptly demanded that Israel open all its nuclear sites to international inspection. Rosen declares that "The UN Disarmament Commission was the last international body where we thought we'd see Iran as a member.” Yet another reason to believe the AJC inhabits an alternative universe. The UN Disarmament Commission is precisely the place one expects Iran to be. Even more suitable than the UN Human Rights Commission.

ON ROBERT NOVAK
I
n his most recent anti-Israel column (April 17), Robert Novak sounds every imaginable anti-Israel stop. His piece, datelined "Aboud, West Bank" begins with Novak standing atop "the remnant of the Santa Barbara shrine, destroyed by the Israeli Defense Forces." From here he can see properties confiscated to make room for Israel's security wall "at the cost of centuries-old olive trees." (If the destruction of a "shrine" -- the place in question had been a terrorist base -- doesn't get you sufficiently riled up, perhaps your religion is environmentalism, so there's those olive trees.) Novak goes on to say the wall threatens Israel's tiny Christian minority, endangering Aboud's "Christian roots going back two millennia." (If multiculturalism is your thing, there's Israel's attack on a minority and if tradition moves you, he throws in two thousand years.) How does it "threaten" them? Well, these people used to work in Tel Aviv, and now have nothing to do. Israel, it appears, "owes" them a living even though they live in Palestinian Authority territory.

Novak lapses into the downright ludicrous. He describes “a conscious Israeli policy of getting rid of the Christian minority” and says --with the exception of a single Franciscan Father --"I could not find another Catholic layman or prelate who complained of anti-Christian bias by Muslims." That would suggest a truly impressive level of intimidation by the PA. for of course the real threat to Christians are the Muslims of the PA, who have succeeded in driving most of them out through massive harassment, stealing of Christian property etc. And with an Islamist Hamas government, the situation for Christians can only deteriorate further.

The funniest item is a quote from Latin Patriarch Michael Sabbah that Novak mournfully passes on: “The world has abandoned the Palestinians.” This when it would be more accurate to say the world “community” seems to think of nothing else.

The very day Novak spouts his litany of falsity and trivia, the front page of the New York Sun describes vicious assaults on Copts in Egypt. Meanwhile Christians flee en masse from Iraq and in Afghanistan a man has to be spirited out of the country after he narrowly escaped judicial murder for the crime of converting to Christianity 15 years earlier.

Novak has demonstrated an intense, obsessive hatred for Israel for decades. In this column it takes him over the edge.

JOEL CARMICHAEL Z'L

We mourn the passing of Joel Carmichael, who edited Midstream for 24 years, making it one of the very few Jewish publications prepared to expose the organizations of the anti-Israel left, whether Jewish (like Breira) or simply “progressive” (like the Institute for Policy Studies). He persisted despite the difficulties his right-wing politics, including his resolute anti-Communism, caused him with the magazine’s liberal board.

Carmichael was truly, as his successor at Midstream Leo Haber described him, a polymath, a man of encyclopedic knowledge. Adept at languages (he studied Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic at Oxford), he translated Anna Karenina from the Russian (for Bantam), Dan Theodore’s The Origins of Bolshevism from the French and wrote a full length study of Arabic. He wrote a series of books on the origins and development of Soviet Communism, a number of books on the Arab and Islamic world, and many books on the origins of Christianity and development of Christian anti-Semitism. One book, The Death of Jesus, was translated into eight languages. Always original, often controversial, Carmichael’s impact on many fields of study will be ongoing.

ON IMMIGRATION

Theodore Roosevelt’s words in 1907 were never more pertinent than today:

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American and nothing but an American...We have room for but one flag, the American flag…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

U.S. COUNSELS RESTRAINT

The U.S. response to terror attacks on Israel was always silly. It just sounds sillier now. In the wake of the most recent suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declared that the U.S. “as always, ask them [Israel] to consider the effect of their actions upon the prospects, future prospects for peace.”

Peace? The Prime Minister and Interior Minister of the new Hamas government met with disgruntled unpaid PA officers and urged them to attack Israel, so as to be eligible for funds from Iran and other countries. And the PA has appointed Juval Abu Samhadana director general of the Interior Ministry. He won the post for his work as head of the Popular Resistance Committees responsible for most of the homemade rockets launched at Israel over recent weeks.

PERFIDIOUS ALBION

It didn’t take long. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says “Hamas now heads the PA government, and [Britain] wants to maintain normal relations with them as we did with the previous government.” No need to “recognize” Israel, says Straw. England would be satisfied with the group “accepting” the existence of the Jewish state. One can anticipate the formula ahead. Hamas will acknowledge that Israel exists (that should be no problem; Hamas agrees it exists and vows to extirpate it) and England and the EU go back to funding-as-usual.

William Mehlman

“Zionism has lost its magic dimension over the souls of Jews. There is a danger that the pure Zionist pathos and the pure Zionist enthusiasm will evaporate. It is the demand of the hour that we proclaim that the aim of Zionism is, in fact, the solution of the Jewish problem…”

When Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Zionism’s towering intellect, penned those words in 1931, the essence of Zionism, the fierce divide between its Socialist and bourgeois proponents notwithstanding, could still be captured in the popular Hebrew slogan livnot u’lehibanot, -- to build the Land of Israel and to resurrect one’s spiritual attachment to the Land. Could either Jabotinsky or even his bitterest foes on the Left have imagined that Zionism was so elastic it could be redefined 75 years later as “disengagement” from the Land and the delegitimization of its most dedicated pioneers?

In his 1896 landmark work The Jewish State, Theodor Herzl, modern Zionism’s founding father, argued that if the Israel-to-come was to serve as no more than a historical necessity for a beleaguered people, its mission would go down as incomplete. He didn’t confine his concept of Zionism to the mere “ingathering of exiles“ and certainly not to a political end in itself. Secular, assimilated, as far removed from Jewish practice as one could get, he yet viewed his imagined Jewish State as the physical embodiment of a process of spiritual redemption. Zionism, if it were to leave a lasting mark on the destiny of the Jewish people, would have to become the conduit for the achievement of Jewish “spiritual and moral wholeness.”

Herzl’s goal remains a dream. Israel has never been more spiritually and morally fractured. The venom directed against the religious Zionist and settler population by Israel’s ruling establishment and its media handmaidens is little short of breathtaking. Those who have clung most steadfastly to the banner of livnot u’lehibanot have been cast as “hooligans,” “extremists,” “criminals,” infernal impediments to the holy grail of “peace” with Israel’s sworn terminators -- even as Hamas, unconditionally rejecting any acceptance of Israel’s right to exist, is anointed leader of the Palestinian Authority; even as IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz confesses himself at a loss for an adequate response to the metamorphosis of abandoned Gaza – 60 minutes from Tel Aviv -- into the largest terrorist base in the Arab world.

Compounding the tragedy is the fact that the Left and its supporters, even as they cheered the destruction of Gush Katif, never really believed in the efficacy of Ariel Sharon’s “unilateral disengagement” peace strategy. On the contrary, as one observer pointed out, “they were willing to embrace its certain failure because their hatred of the settlers and the pro-active Zionism they symbolize more than compensated for any lack of confidence in the integrity of the protagonist of ‘disengagement.’ What counted most for them was Sharon’s reconfiguration of Israel’s political map, his conversion to their post-Zionist ideology and his success in injecting it into the aorta of Israeli public discourse.” What other than the profoundest contempt for Herzlian Zionism could have justified this manic jubilation at the further erosion of Israel’s borders and defensive perimeter at precisely the moment, as Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick recently noted, “when its neighbors are in unprecedented flux and not one of their societies is prepared to accept Israel’s right to survive within any borders?”

How did it all go wrong – this betrayal of Zionism’s basic tenets, this massive inversion of livnot u’lehibanot? Daniel Doron, an astute observer of the Israeli economic scene, points to “economic exhaustion on top of exhaustion caused by the prolonged struggle to survive” as primarily responsible for the undermining of Israel’s Zionist ethos. “Most Israelis,” he avers,” can barely keep from drowning on an average salary of $1,200 a month,” what with prices as high as in America. Unrelenting economic pressure plus incessant danger equals too much. It is at the core of what he describes as Israel’s “yearning for a ‘quick fix,’ the messianism of ‘Peace Now’ and ‘unilateral disengagement.’” For Doron, it is because of this exhaustion that the Israeli public allowed the Left to get away with "transforming the terrorist chieftain and mega-thief Arafat into a statesman, even a peace partner.”

While economic difficulties superimposed on terrorism have surely been contributing factors to Israel’s spiritual malaise, they do not fully explain the national lowering of the Zionist flag. Even with 25 percent of its citizenry allegedly below the poverty line, Israel has faced far worse economic trials without throwing in the towel.

Where disease is concerned, there are no “contributing factors” without a root cause. Any diagnosis of that cause must inevitably collide head-on with Israel’s retreat from Herzl’s conception of Zionism as the medium, the mechanism – not the end product – for the achievement of the “spiritual and moral wholeness” of the Jewish people.

Looking at the malaise from a different standpoint is Rabbi Berel Wein. From its very outset, Wein avers, “the Zionist movement has been devoutly secular, disdainful and hostile to traditional Jewish beliefs, values and practices.” Unadjusted over the ensuing 110 years, that syndrome has evolved into the costliest zero-sum game in Israel’s 57-year history. How at this late stage, after all the damage that has been done, after decades of portraying the panoply of Jewish religious values, laws and morality as objects of ridicule, inimical to a land of “high-tech,” discos and dance parties, how is one now to convince Israelis that the Arab-Israel conflict is “at its core a religious dispute,” one in which a de-spiritualized, de-Judaized Zionism is at a perilous disadvantage? The Arabs simply refuse to adopt the Israeli left's secular path. They won’t play ball. They regard a Jewish State in “Dar el Salaam" i.e., wherever Islam has planted its foot, as a mote in Allah’s eye. Its removal, no matter how constricted its boundaries, is a Koranic categorical imperative.

To address Hamas, as Israel has done, as a purely terrorist entity is to completely miss the point, Wein asserts. “Hamas is also an Islamic religious organization…Osama bin Laden is a Muslim religious leader.” What resources can a spiritually depleted Zionism rally at this late date in response to that Islamic religious challenge?

Ironically, the most effective Biblical-based defense of Judaism’s God-given right to the Land of Israel emanates today not from Israel, not from Jews, but from the substantial majority of America’s 70 million Bible-oriented Christians -- the Christian Zionists, as they proudly identify themselves. Only those unfamiliar with the intense love and familial attachment that brings tens of thousands of them to Israel’s shores each year would be surprised by the fact that up near the top of the list of major concerns enumerated by the U.S. Christian Coalition in the millions of voter guides it is distributing for the 2006 Congressional elections is Israel, its security and its spiritual and territorial integrity.

While nobody is compelled to sign off on the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s dictum that “to stand against Israel is to stand against God,” the denigration by so-called liberals of Israel’s most devoted, most influential support group surpasses all reasonable understanding. If Christian Zionist allegiance to Israel is too “complicated,” too “problematic” for the tastes of a liberal American constituency more concerned with “women’s reproductive rights” than a nuclear-armed Iran’s existential threat to Israel, then Christian Zionists can proudly plead guilty. Their belief in God’s promise of the Land of Israel as an eternal legacy to Abraham and his descendants is indeed a problem and a complication for those – Jews and Christians – prepared to turn their backs to that legacy at the first flashing signal of the post-Zionist zeitgeist.

The Jewish liberal demonization of the Bible-oriented Christian community, including its large Christian Zionist component, for allegedly trying to “Christianize” America parallels the demonization of 250,000 overwhelmingly Bible-oriented residents of Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the 10,000 former residents of Gaza for their efforts to reinfuse Zionism with the spiritual content that informed and motivated its resurrection after a 2,000-year sleep.

“I believe in the integrity of the world, in the power of a just cause,” Jabotinsky wrote in 1932. “I believe that the great questions are decided by the power of moral pressure and that the Jewish people is a tremendous power of moral pressure…”

In its post-election efforts to form a new government, it will be for Israel to determine whether it still has a Zionist future. In the months ahead, the West, confronted by the growing shadow of a nuclear-armed Iran, will have to decide whether Judeo-Christian civilization east of the Mediterranean still has a future. It should be an interesting time.

William Mehlman is the chairman of AFSI in Israel

Roger A. Gerber

On March 28th, Israel held its fourth national election in only seven years, and the inconclusive results portend further political instability. Despite Olmert's claim, echoed by much of the media, that Israel's voters gave his Kadima party a mandate in support of Olmert's so-called convergence plan, entailing the expulsion of tens of thousands of Jewish citizens from the West Bank, the fact is that no such mandate exists. It is likely that another election will be required well before the end of the term of the recently elected 17th Knesset which was sworn in on April 17th.

As has been widely noted, the apparent lack of appeal of the three principal candidates for prime minister resulted in the lowest voter turnout in Israel's history (62.3%), which might seem surprising considering the crucial political crossroad at which Israel finds itself. The results of the Gaza "disengagement" are hardly inspiring; the increased tempo of rockets fired from Gaza now threatens the life of Israeli communities in the Gaza vicinity, not to mention the critical infrastructure in and around Ashkelon. The IDF has expressed concern over the buildup of weaponry and terrorist cells within the Gaza Strip. 'We are at war" with the Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, declares Maj.-Gen. Yitzhak "Haki" Harel, head of the IDF's Planning Directorate and a senior member of the IDF General Staff. (Jerusalem Post, April 13).

Hamas has assumed the reins of government
in the Palestinian Authority and has vowed never to recognize the permanent presence of a Jewish state. At the same time, Israel faces an unprecedented existential threat from Iran whose President has promised that Israel will soon be "annihilated". Yet Israel's voting population remained relatively apathetic in this election, and the new Gil (Pensioners) Party received a surprising seven seats in the Knesset -- presumably drawing in large part on those protesting their unsatisfactory choices among the established parties.

As further evidence of the alienation of a large portion of Israel's voters from the candidates presented in this election, the combined total of the three parties with candidates for prime minister, Ehud Olmert's Kadima, Bibi Netanyahu's Likud and Amir Peretz's Labor Party, garnered only 60 seats among them, or less than a majority of the 120 seat Knesset. Israel's voter turnout of 62.3% might seem high when compared to American elections (voter turnout in the nine preceding U.S. elections ranged from a low of 49% to a high of 60% in the last election) but it must be compared to Israel's participation of 78.7% in 1999 and 68.9% in 2003.

In Israel, the voter does not vote directly for a prime ministerial candidate but for a party headed by the ostensible candidate. In this case, Ehud Olmert's Kadima party won only 22% of the vote, resulting in 29 out of 120 Knesset seats. In no city in Israel did Kadima win as much as 30% of the vote.

Clearly, if the election was a "referendum" on Olmert's plan for withdrawals and expulsions of Jewish settlers, as Olmert asserts, the results were less than a clear endorsement of his policies. The combined total of seats won by his party, and the two Zionist parties clearly in favor of the expulsions, Labor and Yachad (Meretz), is only 53 (I am excluding the seats won by the three anti-Zionist Arab parties) while the parties on the right have an aggregate of 50 seats. Further, the 29 seats won by Olmert must be compared to the 40 seats won by Sharon's Likud in the last election and the 40-44 seats that had been projected for Kadima not long before the election.

Within Kadima itself there is such an incongruous group, with sharply differing views on a wide variety of issues, that it is difficult to see how they will form a cohesive bloc. Kadima Knesset members range from Shimon Peres, Dalia Itzik and Chaim Ramon, from the Labor Party’s left wing, to Tzachi Hanegbi and Shaul Mofaz, formerly of Likud. Whether this disparate group will be prepared to follow the lead of Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, both once of the Likud "nationalist" group, remains to be seen.

Although as of this writing no coalition has yet been formed, there are three groups, according to Moshe Arens, that will "set the tone in the Knesset": Kadima with 29 seats, Labor-Meimad with 19 and the Ultra-Orthodox (Shas and United Torah Judaism) with 18 seats between them. In addition, it should be noted that the combined Ichud Leumi-Mafdal (National Union-National Religious Party) has another 9 seats and they will presumably be allied with Shas and United Torah Judaism on national security issues. Consequently, regardless of the composition of the final coalition, the government to be formed by Olmert does not appear to be a very stable one. Arens cites "the seeming inability to assign key ministerial portfolios to the most suitable members of the coalition" as a sign of the instability of the government in the process of formation.

Even the press, which consistently supported withdrawal plans previously, has voiced doubts. For example, Ari Shavit, a commentator for Haaretz, the flagship newspaper of the Israeli left, recently wrote that "The basic law of the Israel-Palestinian jungle is that Israeli withdrawal does not restrain the conflict, but escalates it." His colleague on the paper, long time Labor supporter Yoel Marcus, described by Yoram Hazony as “perhaps Israel’s most respected columnist” noted in an April 18th column “that in light of the fact that the evacuation of Gush Katif put Hamas in office, increased the Qassams, and Israel is still in Gaza via cannons, and maybe soon with tanks, I suddenly doubt if the Ehud Olmert government will be able to evacuate 60 thousand settlers.”

Sever Plocker, a member of the editorial board of Yediot Achronot, Israel's largest newspaper and an enthusiastic supporter of the Gaza “disengagement”, wrote in his column of April 16th, that "We didn't disengage: What is happening, and particularly what is not happening, in Gaza, continues to haunt us." He raises numerous critical questions regarding Olmert's “convergence” plan and notes that, with regard to Gaza, "Almost nothing has materialized in the way pullout supporters promised us would happen."

Support within Israel for Olmert's government will depend on a multitude of factors such as relations with the United States, the perceived imminence of the threat from Iran's nuclear ambitions, and the measures taken to combat Hamas and the other terrorist organizations, as well as the status of Israel's economy. In view of the fragility of any likely coalition, the divergent views among Kadima members, and the stresses among coalition members regarding economic and social issues -- particularly the extreme demands of Labor's Amir Peretz -- the odds favor another election well before the end of the prime minister's term of office.

Roger A. Gerber’s most recent article for Outpost was the “Missing Moral Dimension”, June 2005

Jack Engelhard

In this ABC made-for-TV production of “The Ten Commandments” we have a new Moses, ethnically and religiously cleansed.

As played by Dougray Scott (Charlton Heston, not), Moses has been homogenized, pasteurized, sanitized and dry-cleaned so as not to offend any race, religion or creed. This Moses (as opposed to the Moses of the Bible and even the Moses of Cecil B. DeMille) is not Hebrew, and in fact he’s not anything but multi-cultural.

Along both parts of this series (new and improved over DeMille!!!) that ran Monday and Tuesday, April 10 and 11, the word “Hebrew” never came up, neither attached to him or to his people, yes, the Hebrews. The best this fat-free, low-calorie script could do was refer to Moses as a “slave” and later, as the “leader” of a “people.”

What people? That, we do not know, and that we must not know for then it will be assumed that our heritage is (dear Lord!) Judeo/Christian. To let that word get out (if you ask the film-makers and ABC) would be a sin. So if you tuned in late and missed the promo hoopla, you would not know that this is a Biblical event, but rather just another episode of “Survivor” or “LOST” or “The Amazing Race.”

Also, in this drama, Pharaoh comes off better than Moses, really. Pharaoh is a nicer guy, or just as nice, to keep the storyline on an Equal Opportunity level so that nobody or everybody gets offended, equally, in case ABC has plans to distribute this in today’s Egypt. (The gods of Al-Jazeera and the ACLU must be appeased.)

The lapses in this (Hallmark?) telling are so enormous (spirituality? zero) that this ABC God of this ABC Moses is less all-powerful than Donald Trump.

Jews (by the number Six Million and still counting in Israel itself) of course know what it means to be religiously cleansed, and so do Christians, who dare not pray or display any piety outside of church and home. Any sign of Christianity (even during holy days) in schoolyards and courtyards – well, strictly forbidden.

Who thought this day would come, when a Biblical story is consigned to the heaping Sheol of political correctness? I did, and I’ll bet you did.

Imagine, please, the story of Jesus with no mention of the Christian faith that followed? That must be next in ABC’s made-for-TV pipeline -- Christianity cleansed of Christians. But there will be no riots. Imagine, however, the story Mohammed with no mention of Islam? ABC and all the rest of the mainstream media would not dare!

The people who make the movies for the big screen and small screen, they know that Jews and Christians can take a joke, and even an insult. Complaints, yes, over “The Da Vinci Code” and there were even some letters to the editor when the Brooklyn Museum of Art featured Jesus in association with “dung art.”

We (Christians and Jews) don’t much appreciate being hustled, so we sign petitions, or just shrug.

But the Religion of Peace? We all saw what happened when the (false) rumor circulated about a Koran being flushed down a toilet at Gitmo. Riots everywhere. We know what happened to Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh when he stepped out to film some grim truth about Islam’s treatment of women.

Hollywood (which raised nary a voice in protest) sure took note.

Hands off, then, for Islam. Don’t mess with that crowd. The rest of us, by contrast, are open to cleansing and even ridicule. In that movie “Meet the Fockers” there’s a dog in there, and the dog’s name is Moses, and what happens to this dog? He is flushed down a toilet.

Imagine a flick with a dog named Mohammed – and then flushed down a toilet. That would never happen, and shouldn’t.

But we took it from that (horrible) movie and we’ll take again from this sorry ABC spectacle that refuses to let us know what “people” gave us the ten rules of behavior that regulate us and keep us civilized to this day. There is always next week, when DeMille’s version gets broadcast, and that’s not perfect, either (many liberties taken of Biblical truth), but here at least when Heston says “let my people go,” he means the Jewish people. (Known then as Hebrews.)

But that, remember, was filmed when Christianity and Judaism were not yet secularized and cleansed but still Gospel and kosher.

Read the Book!

Jack Engelhard’s newest novel, The Bathsheba Deadline is serialized on Amazon.com

Fjordman

I have heard some people say that Western popular culture will destroy Islam. What if the opposite happens? Sometimes the barbarians also influence the civilized people, and there is a disturbing amount of “understanding” for terrorists in Western movies and media these days. And I’m not just talking about the Oscar-nominated suicide bomber film Paradise Now.

“V for Vendetta” is a recent movie made by the Wachowski brothers, the men behind the modern sci-fi classic “The Matrix.” It is set in Britain about a generation from now. The U.S. has dissolved into chaos and civil war after its involvement in a prolonged war in the Middle East. Great Britain has become a Fascist state. The protagonist, a “freedom fighter” named V, wants to ignite a revolution and brags about how blowing up a building [the British Parliament] can change the whole world. During the movie, we see a gay man keeping a 14th century Koran in a secret room in his house, because he enjoys “the beautiful poetry and imagery” in it. He is later executed when the authorities discover this, as the Koran is now banned and Muslims are oppressed. At the same time, the Church is shown to be a place of filth, corruption and hypocrisy.

In Hollywoodistan, gays admire the beauty of the Koran. In real life, gays are physically attacked in increasing numbers by Muslims in Europe, and death squads are targeting gays in Islamic countries such as Iraq. A gay man, Pim Fortuyn, was de facto executed for criticizing Islam, after having been demonized by Dutch media and the Dutch establishment for “Islamophobia” and “hate speech.” In Hollywoodistan, Muslims in London are ruthlessly persecuted. In real life, London has become the Islamic terrorist capital of the world, as demonstrated by Melanie Phillips in her book Londonistan.

After the Jihadist terror bombings in London in July 2005, not a single Muslim cleric was expelled from Britain. A Chester professor, Ron Geaves, has stated that the attacks that killed 52 people were not the acts of terrorists but “just an extreme Muslim demonstration” and that “the word terrorism is a political word which always seems to be used to demonize people.” The BBC is busy as always in campaigning against “Islamophobia” and reminding everybody that Islam is rich in diversity and that Western civilization would have been impossible without huge Islamic contributions, for which we should be eternally grateful.

Luckily, even though Hollywood won’t tell the truth, there are still a few people who will. Mullah Krekar, an Al Qaeda-linked Islamic leader who was granted refugee status in Norway told an Oslo newspaper that there’s a war going on between the West and Islam. He said he’s sure that Islam will win. Muslims could indeed win this, if they could just sit tight, remain quiet and continue the demographic Jihad. But too many of them boast and brag about their plans. Listening to Mullah Krekar talking is like watching one of those old James Bond movies, where the villain just has to tell Bond everything about his evil plans, just in time so that 007 can prevent it. “I’m so smart and evil, you can’t stop me, bwuahahaha!” Then again, given the state of things in Al-Britannia these days, James Bond would probably have been working for the other team. “There’s a nasty case of Islamophobia going on at the Telegraph newspaper today. Take care of it, will you, 007. How do you want your Koran, Mr. Bond?” “Shaken, not stirred.”

In another movie, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” directed by actor George Clooney, CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow is shown standing up against Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. I assume Clooney’s motivation for making this movie now was to insinuate that the War on Terror is “just like” the paranoia of the 50s. First of all, although McCarthy went too far and destroyed the lives of many innocent people, the Communist threat to the USA and the West was in fact very real during the Cold War. And second: Who decided that a new “political witch hunt” necessarily has to come from the Right?

“McCarthyism” is sometimes defined as “the use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods in order to suppress opposition.” Some would claim that this describes very well how critics of Muslim immigration in the West have been demonized for many years, especially by Leftists. Carl I. Hagen, leader of the right-wing Progress Party, was for several decades virtually the only Norwegian politician of some stature that warned against the madness of the current immigration policies. And he was hated for it by the establishment, denounced as a racist pig, Nazi and subject to every insult in the dictionary. During the 1990s, when there were still many people who took the “Oslo Peace Process” seriously, he demonstrated in support of Israel with the slogan “No money for Arafat.” The public now understands that he was right, which is why his party has grown from being a tiny protest party to being at the brink of replacing the Labor Party as the largest political party in Norway. Why doesn’t Mr. Clooney or other Hollywood personalities make a movie about Carl I. Hagen, Pia Kjærsgaard of the Danish People’s Party, Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands or others that have been warning against the madness of Muslim immigration? They are the real victims of the “new McCarthyism.”

Glorification of anti-democratic fanatics has penetrated Western popular culture in other ways. Che Guevara’s face is cropping up everywhere, from posters to t-shirts. Che is famous for helping Fidel Castro shape the Cuban revolution. Later, he was in charge of La Cabana prison, where he oversaw a military tribunal which condemned scores of counterrevolutionaries to death without trial. “Hatred,” he said, is important, for it makes you “into an effective, violent, selective and cold-blooded killing machine.” After negotiating the stationing of Soviet nuclear weapons on Cuba in 1962, Che became furious when Moscow removed them following the Cuba Crisis. “If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all...” This murderer and symbol of an ideology that killed 100 million people during the 20th century is treated as a pop icon in the democratic West.

Phyllis Chesler has written about the Culture War in academia, where both Western leftists and Islamists systematically misuse language, writing about “insurgents,” not “terrorists,” calling them “freedom fighters,” not “well educated evil men.” Meanwhile, hateful anti-American and anti-Israel demonstrators are described as “peace activists." She believes that the Western academy has been “utterly Palestinianized.” Yale University admitted a former Taliban spokesman, Rahmatullah Hashemi, as a student. When female Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya said Hashemi was one of the Taliban’s top propagandists and called his status as a student at Yale “disgusting,” people at Yale fired back and said it was the critics of Yale and Rahmatullah Hashemi who were the real Taliban, and that excluding him would “take us one step closer into the Taliban-like suppression of views that challenge the party line.”

Ironically, it seems as if some of the chief defenders of democracy and Western civilization now are immigrants. Britain’s first black Archbishop, the Ugandan born Archbishop of York Dr. John Sentamu made a powerful attack on multiculturalism, urging English people to reclaim their national identity. He writes: “Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains.” Says Sentamu: “When you ask a lot of people in this country, ‘What is English culture?’ they are very vague. It is a culture that whether we like it or not has given us parliamentary democracy. It is the mother of it.” Author Ibn Warraq asks: “How can we expect immigrants to integrate into western society when they are at the same time being taught that the west is decadent, a den of iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to be despised? Why should they, in the words of the African-American writer James Baldwin, want to integrate into a sinking ship?”

These are encouraging words, but they cannot conceal the fact that there is a very powerful undercurrent of self-loathing and guilt-obsession in the West at the beginning of the 21st century. Where does it come from?

Lars Hedegaard, writer and columnist for the newspaper Berlingske Tidende, has, together with colleagues Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen, been one of the leading forces behind making tiny Denmark into a frontline country in the battle against Islam. In his book While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within,” Bruce Bawer gives an account of a meeting with Hedegaard and Brix in Copenhagen: “Hedegaard was of the view, however, that the Danish establishment’s benign neglect of Islamic extremism must have deeper causes than snobbism or hippie nostalgia. After all, he said, the Islamicization of the Nordic countries was “the most fundamental transformation” they’d experienced in a millennium.” “Heavy consequences,” he insisted, “must have heavy causes.” His theory was that Western Europe’s ongoing surrender to radical Islam had its roots in the psychic devastation of the First World War. For while that conflict marked America’s ascent to the rank of Great Power, Europeans took it as a devastating proof, Hedegaard said, “that our culture was worthless. It was basically destroyed. And that prepared the way for two sorts of totalitarianism” — Nazism and Communism — and for “atrocities of a magnitude that is hard to imagine.” Those atrocities, in turn, placed upon Europeans an unbearable burden of guilt. The Nazis, he said, “made Europe think it is doomed and sinful...and deserves what it has coming.”

Lars Hedegaard’s view seems to mirror that of French philosopher and cultural critic Alain Finkielkraut, who thinks that “Europe does not love itself.” Finkielkraut says that it’s not forces from outside that are threatening Europe as much as the voluntary renunciation of European identity, its wish of freeing itself from itself, its own history and its traditions. The European Union thus isn’t just post-national, but post-European. Europe is now built upon an oath: Never again. Never again extermination, never again war, but also never again nationalism. According to Finkielkraut, Auschwitz has become part of the foundation of the EU, a culture based on guilt. But this is a vague ideology saying that “We have to oppose everything the Nazis were for.” Consequently, nationalism or any kind of attachment to your own country, including what some would say is healthy, non-aggressive patriotism, is frowned upon. This didn’t just happen in Germany, but in all of Europe. Writes Finkielkraut: “I can understand the feeling of remorse that is leading Europe to this definition, but this remorse goes too far. It is too great a gift to present Hitler to reject everything that led to him.” This is said by the Jewish son of an Auschwitz prisoner.

Finkielkraut says that Europe has made human rights its gospel, to such an extent that it threatens European history and culture. “When hatred of culture becomes itself a part of culture, the life of the mind loses all meaning.”

But why does this guilt complex also apply to Britain, which defeated the Nazis, or Denmark, which saved most of its Jews? Why do we detect some of the same currents even in the United States? And why on earth can’t Europeans give stronger support to the survivors of the Holocaust in Israel?

Yes, we have been sold out by our elites through the creation of Eurabia and the wiping out of our own cultures through Multiculturalism. But this is only half of the story. In democratic societies, even if sometimes flawed ones, this would never have been possible if there wasn’t a profound undercurrent of self-loathing present in the general public already. The trauma caused by the events of 70 years ago is clouding our judgment this time, since any talk at all about the threat posed by Muslim immigration or about preserving our own culture is being dismissed as “the same rhetoric as the Nazis used against the Jews.”

V.S. Naipaul has called India “a wounded civilization.” But maybe it’s really Europe that is the wounded civilization, the difference being that India’s wounds were inflicted from the outside, whereas Europe’s wounds are largely self-inflicted. Islam isn’t destroying Europe, Europe is destroying itself. Just as a patient with AIDS may formally die from flu or even a common cold, the real cause is the long, slow decay of his immune system. It resembles euthanasia on an entire civilization: Europe is tired of living. Islam just puts it out of its misery.

It is fascinating to see how self-loathing and West-bashing make scores of people in the media and the academia misunderstand and misrepresent the threat we are facing. The good guys become the bad guys and vice versa, or alternatively, we’re all equally good and bad, since all cultures are equal. Some would say that I am reading too much into a few simple movies. Perhaps. But these are the same people that claim that popular culture will destroy Islam.

Pop culture matters. It both reflects and shapes the values of a civilization. Judging from the message in too many films, almost five years after 9/11 we have hardly even begun to understand the scale of the Islamic challenge. On the contrary, many Westerners are busy demonstrating “understanding,” even sympathy, towards the enemies of civilization.

Britain in “V for Vendetta” is a totalitarian state where the authorities promise peace in return for total submission. Peace for submission, where have we heard this mantra before? I know: Islam. “Islam” means submission, and comes from the same root as “salaam,” which means “peace”. It is curious to notice that in the previous movie by the Wachowski brothers, “The Matrix,” people are turned into slaves and passive tools by living in a make-belief reality designed to pacify them and keep them in chains. In the real world, one fifth of humanity are proud to proclaim themselves “the slaves of Allah,” and consider it their mission in life to make the rest of mankind share their mental bondage.

Islam is the Matrix. Somebody better give the Wachowski brothers their red pills.

Fjordman is a noted Scandinavian blogger. This is an edited version of an article that appeared on the blogsite Gates Of Vienna

Magdi Khalil

Editor’s Note: In recent weeks the State Department has reached out to a series of Moslem Brotherhood linked groups in both the U.S. and Europe.

Many have wondered about the Copts’ evident concern over the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory of 88 seats in the last parliamentary elections in Egypt. Why, exactly, are the Copts so upset?

Actually, the Copts are not the only ones to have serious misgivings about this latest development in Egypt’s political life; women, liberals, civil society supporters, leftists, and other advocates of democracy share the same sentiment.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s main slogan is “Islam is the Solution,” a mysterious slogan that excludes “infidels” such as Christians and Jews. Its proclaimed purpose is to “restore the Islamic Caliphate (Islamic political system and rule).”

I have met Muslim Brotherhood leaders more than once in the course of television interviews, and it did not take me long to realize that we come from two different worlds and spoke different languages: our civil perspective versus their religious perspective. However, they have been strangely determined to force the delusion of a “common civil ground” on their audience by using a plethora of mysterious expressions and misleading theories.

The problem with the Muslim Brotherhood is that they are hard to pin down, with their elusive style, word play, taqiyya (deceit), contradictory statements, and double language. They are all-set to accommodate different clients: The West and Americans, the Copts, women, liberals, as well as Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri. To this day they refuse to condemn the writings of

Meanwhile, the Copts have particular reasons to fear the Muslim Brotherhood. First is the Muslim Brotherhood’s racist declarations against the Copts. A famous fatwa (a legal pronouncement in Islam) prohibited the construction of new churches in Egypt. The fatwa was published in Al-Dawaa magazine, which speaks for the Muslim Brotherhood, in December 1980, and was issued by Mohammed Al-Khatib who was, and still is, a member of the guidance council of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Twenty-five years later, the Muslim Brotherhood still acknowledges the validity of this fatwa.

Another outrageous fatwa issued by Mustafa Mashhour, the brotherhood’s former supreme guide, stated: “Islamic law, Shari’a, is the principal point of reference (authority) for governance. Copts must pay the jizyah instead of joining the army, lest they ally themselves with the enemy, if that enemy happens to be a Christian country" (Al-Ahram Weekly 13 April 1997).

In an interview with the newspaper Azzaman, Mohammed Habib said: “When the movement will come to power, it will replace the current constitution with an Islamic one, according to which a non-Muslim will not be allowed to hold a senior post, whether in the state or the army, because this right should be exclusively granted to Muslims. If the Egyptians decide to elect a Copt for the presidential post, we will issue a protest against such an action, on the basis that this choice should be ours” (Azzaman 17 May 2005).

he danger here lies in the reasoning behind such statements: the presidential post is considered welaya kobra (major governance) and in this case a non-Muslim is not allowed to govern a Muslim, which completely shatters the basic notion of citizenship. It is a given that a non-Muslim Egyptian will have serious obstacles to be elected president. But, the problem is if an obstacle is based on a religious rule advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In an interview with Sameh Fawzi in 1996, Mamoun Al-Hudaibi answered the question whether the Copts were considered citizens or dhimmi by replying that they were both. When pressed for a specific answer, he clearly states: “They are dhimmi” (Al-Hayat, 30 Nov 2005).

The Muslim Brotherhood’s discourse bears a religious and superior tone, with constant references to the “other”, often in a belittling and hurtful manner. The discourse can turn downright hostile: Hassan Al-Banna was quoted as saying: “it is necessary to kill ahl el-ketab (Christians and Jews), and God will give a double recompense for those who fight them.”

At best, the Muslim Brotherhood resorts to vague conciliatory statements such as the famous one: “They (Christians) have the same rights as we do and the same duties as we do.” Yet, there is no way to reconcile the theory of peaceful coexistence on the basis of equality and citizenship and the prospect of a religious majority imposing its rules on the minority – in that case, we are no longer talking about citizenship status but dhimmi status.

The Muslim Brotherhood and their allies insist that the Coptic population amounts to only 6% of Egypt’s total population, in spite of a recent official declaration by Osama Al-Baz that the Copts constitute 12.5% of Egypt’s population, and despite the fact that other organizations have estimated the number of Copts to be 15 million, i.e. 20% of the population. This purposeful twisting of numbers is a strategy used by the Muslim Brotherhood to deny the rights of their opponents.

Finally, Egyptian advocates of democracy strive towards “national integration” for all elements of society, while the Muslim Brotherhood has in mind for the Copts a sort of “religious assimilation,” and there is a big difference between the two. The Brotherhood pushes for the religious assimilation of the Coptic minority through a gradual desertion of their faith, or at the very least through a loss of their cultural and religious identity as it melts into the majority’s Islamic culture.

Throughout the history of Christianity, many martyrs have paid the price for resisting such religious assimilation, but none as much as the Copts. For Copts the idea that religion should become the framework for the state is not even open for debate or compromise.

This is an edited version of an article by Magdi Khalil, a political analyst and executive editor of the Egyptian weekly Watani International.

Ruth King

Israel’s usually fractious media exhibits a curious restraint when it comes to investigating Ehud Olmert, and the Israeli public, normally addicted to scandal and gossip about its leaders, is passive and reluctant to probe any of the rumors and suggestions of impropriety that have emerged about their new Prime Minister. In Italy there is a code of “Omerta” that prohibits speaking or divulging information about certain people and their activities. In Israel, I call this conspiracy of silence the code of “Olmerta.”

Where are the questions about Olmert’s military service? According to some accounts Olmert never served because of illness. If so, what illness? A Reuters report on March 22, 2006 states “Olmert was denied his dream of serving as an army commando due to orthopedic problems.” Well, was it a herniated disc, a spinal column injury or bunions?

Differing accounts, including semi official bios, claim he was a military press correspondent, an infantry officer in the Golani Brigades and a reporter for the Israeli army journal. So, which was it? The American media was obsessed with the military records of William Clinton and George Bush. After all, Israel’s citizen army conscripts all citizens, and the public deserves to know, but “Olmerta” is the rule.

Then there are the rumors of serious and serial corruption: possibly illegal political appointments of cronies; possible bribery; hints of murky dealings alleging as minister he used fictitious arbitration, enabling the dishonest extraction of 6.2 million shekels from the Betar soccer team; Olmert’s sale of his home for $2.7 million to American billionaire Danny Abraham, and the peculiar arrangement whereby Olmert and his wife Aliza can remain living in the house for several years to come, paying below market rent. Oh yes, I almost forgot, Mr. S. Daniel Abraham is an ardent pacifist and contributed $193,000 shekels to Olmert’s campaign.

This is not to say there is irrefutable evidence of malfeasance, but in 1977 Rabin had to resign as prime minister and party leader after it became known that his wife had violated the regulations on currencies, by having a bank account in the USA. The Israeli media skewered the Prime Minister who was then thought of as hawkish. In October of 1999 police aggressively searched the Netanyahu home, alleging that after leaving office Bibi and his wife kept government belongings, including (gulp!) a gold letter opener from US Vice President Al Gore. The media reported this and allegations of fraud, never proven, in hourly communiqués and editorials. The public could not get enough of it.

That same year the late President Ezer Weizman, a famed combat hero, was reputed to have taken large contributions from businessmen without reporting it to the proper authorities. Although he was never prosecuted the media hounded him and he resigned from office. But when it comes to a real investigation of Ehud….. it’s “Olmerta”.

Then there is the question of his family. His pretty wife has been a long time member of Peace Now, an organization which, from its inception, favored a return to the 1949 lines including Jerusalem. So, while he was an admittedly good mayor of Jerusalem, did his wife agree to his ruling only West Jerusalem? Did his support of the holy shrines in old Jerusalem put him in the dog house? To quote his dear friend Moshe Amirav : "He has a very open approach. He can see things from the other side. If he can see things through the eyes of his wife, he can also see things through the eyes of Hamas." Well, that’s a valid point his friend inadvertently made.

His children have gone way beyond Peace Now…..two of them support frankly seditious organizations. The Olmerts' daughter Danna is a member of Machsom Watch, a group of Israeli women who monitor checkpoints for human rights abuses and often confront Israeli soldiers on behalf of Palestinians. Their website lists dreadful behavior by Israeli soldiers, often denied by the IDF. Oh, by the way, they don’t comment on the number of terrorist acts that have been aborted by the crossing points.

The Olmerts' son Shaul completed his military service, signed a petition of Yesh G'vul, a group of Israeli Defense Force soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied territories, and now lives in New York. Yesh G’vul’s latest brochure tries to convince high school students not to join the Israeli army and offers a flat $750(US) a month for anyone who is jailed for desertion from the IDF. The Olmerts’ son Ariel dodged military service altogether and is studying French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris.

When Chelsea Clinton accompanied her mother on a trip to Africa and spoke about the drug problems and cynicism that afflict American teenagers, many newspapers scolded her for the impropriety of criticizing the nation where her father is President. Nonetheless, the Israeli media with the notable exception of Jerusalem Post columnist Sarah Honig, treathe outrageous behavior of the Olmert children with typical “Olmerta.”

None of Olmert’s election posters included his family. Instead he was shown in carefully doctored photos with the spectral face of Ariel Sharon behind him. A member of Israel’s media told me that the curious lack of scrutiny exists because Olmert will carry on the legacy of Sharon. This is laughable because the Israeli media reviled Sharon the patriot and general. It is his legacy as wholesale salesman and liquidator of Israel that Olmert is expected to carry on.

No questions asked and no leads followed. Instead the “heir” of Sharon, the accidental Prime Minister elect, is given a free pass by the fraternity of bloodhounds in the Israeli media. They are so intent on not hampering his preemptive surrender of Israel’s heartland, patrimony and sovereignty that they have become scrupulous observers of the Code of Olmerta.

USEFUL IDIOTS
Herbert Zweibon

FROM THE EDITOR
Rael Jean Isaac

A PLACE CALLED SAUDI ARABIA
Lee Smith

THE FUTURE OF IRAQ
Rael Jean Isaac

TERROR MEETS DELUSION:THE MURDER OF TOM FOX
Rocco DiPippo

A PALESTINIAN NATIONALITY?
Hugh Fitzgerald

UNDER THE SCIMITAR OF DAMOCLES
Andrew G. Bostom. M.D.

JEWISH CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE UNITED STATES
Victor Sharpe

LOVE FOR SALE
Ruth King

Outpost
Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Herbert Zweibon, Ruth King

Outpost is distributed free to
Members of Americans For a Safe Israel
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Americans For a Safe Israel
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Herbert Zweibon

Three hundred and eighty seven rabbis have signed a letter to President Bush urging that the United States fund Hamas. The letter says Hamas won in “a free, fair, and democratic election” – no mention that the public’s “free” choice was for the party that promised most openly to continue terror and to eliminate Israel.

The letter was organized by Brit Tzedek v’Shalom (the Hebrew name designed to make it sound pro-Israel). In English it’s The Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace. (For years the words “justice” and “peace” in an organization’s name have been a dead giveaway that it is dedicated to the opposite.) The text (presumably as a sop to rabbis who are not unequivocal fans of Hamas) professes support for the President’s declaration that Hamas must “recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism, and work for lasting peace.” How far this is from Brit Tzedek’s real concern is apparent from the fact that it urges supporters to help defeat HR 4681, the Ros-Lehtinen/Lantos bill which forbids funding to the Hamas-led PA until it meets precisely such conditions.

What we have here is a resurrection of the defunct Breira (established in 1973) and New Jewish Agenda (established in 1979 after Breira’s collapse, following exposure of the anti-Israel credentials of its founders). Both were amalgams of left-wing activists and conservative and reform rabbis dedicated to creating a PLO state. Some of the same rabbis resurface in this decades-later incarnation: for example, from Breira, Leonard Beerman, Arnold Jacob Wolf , Everett Gendler, Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, Laura Geller, from New Jewish Agenda Gerold Serotta (its founder) and Brian Walt; from both groups radical left-winger Arthur Waskow, now reincarnated as a Reconstructionist rabbi. What all the signers have in common is their repulsive conviction that in identifying with Israel’s enemies, they demonstrate “prophetic morality.” If past is prologue (a safe bet) most of those on the new list are Hillel rabbis and the money (which seems to be plentiful) comes from left wing foundations.

President Bush is not apt to be overly influenced by the letter’s signatories, of whom one can say with a 99% level of certainty that not a single one voted for him. The importance of the letter is in providing the administration with American Jewish cover for continuing to pour money into the Palestinian Authority despite the Hamas victory. Important here is the testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of James Wolfensohn, who represents the administration under the title “Quartet Special Envoy for Disengagement.” Wolfensohn, the ultimate in useful idiots, is the man who organized the buyout of Jewish greenhouses to provide work and income for Gaza residents and saw those greenhouses in short order totally destroyed by the very Arabs who were supposed to benefit from them. A man who learns nothing, he now tells the Senate that “the election of a group that is designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States and the European Union and that advocates the destruction of Israel in its charter presents serious challenges” – but challenges the administration sees ways to overcome. The U.S., he says, should fund international and non-governmental organizations so as to avoid “legal issues that impede providing assistance to or through a new Hamas-led PA government.”

So prior to the Hamas government even being installed, the fix is in. Money will go to the PA as before and Jewish leaders as before will give the process legitimacy. There may be one difference. A large proportion of the billions going to the PA since 1993 were siphoned off by its corrupt leaders before they could be used against Israel. If Hamas turns out to be less corrupt, more money will be directed to the central purpose of the PA: Israel’s destruction.

Rael Jean Isaac

IN REMEMBRANCE

As we gather for Passover on April 12, we remember Passover 1944 and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising where for 63 days Jewish fighters revolted against the Nazis who had to call in reinforcements. Their struggle is part of Jewish history. We remember them with gratitude and pride.

OLMERT'S OFFSPRING

Steven Plaut describes Olmert's three children, (drawing on a column by Sarah Honig):

"One son never served in the Israeli army and today lives permanently in Paris. The other is an active member in Yesh Gvul, the seditious organization that foments mutiny and insurrection among Israeli soldiers, demanding that they refuse to serve until Israel completely capitulates to all Arab demands.

“The daughter of Olmert is an activist in Machsom Watch (Checkpoint Watch), which harasses Israeli soldiers and policemen checking Palestinian vehicles for explosives and weapons. In other words, she is trying to help Palestinians infiltrate Israel and murder Jewish children.

“This is the guy who will be Israel's next Prime Minister. The above is his own personal family track record in education and Zionism. A man who himself believes in nothing has raised a brood who believe in Israel's destruction."

RICE AIDS AL QUAEDA

Al Qaeda cells are operating in the West Bank and Gaza, this from PA head Mahmoud Abbas himself. In an interview published March 2 in the London based paper el-Hayat, Abbas said he was "very concerned" about Al Qaeda operatives streaming through the Rafah crossing. At Condoleeza Rice’s insistence, over Israel’s strenuous objections, this had been turned over to the PA. "This agreement is a good step forward" Rice said at the time. Rice is turning out to be a worthy follower of the ghastly Madeleine Albright.

LONDONISTAN

AFSI readers are urged to obtain Melanie Phillips' new book Londonistan. Its subject: how Britain became the principal hub of Islamist terrorism in Europe. Phillips reports that despite Tony Blair's image as cheerleader for America, Britain is now the weak link in the defense of the West, deep into appeasement and denial.

MEANWHILE IN THE BALKANS

On FrontPageMagazine.com (March 20) Julia Gorin reports that the West turns a blind eye as al Qaeda turns the Balkans into a jihadist launching pad. She notes that in November 2001 -- two months after 9/11 -- the Wall Street Journal's European edition ran what should have been an explosive article headed "Al Qaeda's Balkan Links." It reported that for ten years Ayman al-Zawahiri [bin Laden's second in command] had been operating terrorist training camps throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia.

The piper is being paid. An article in Britain's Sunday Mirror in December 2003 by an undercover reporter described his meeting with Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji, the deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army and a supplier of terrorists across Europe. Hulji boasted of new explosives, an improvement over Semtex, because they could not be detected at airports. Fast forward two years. According to London's Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy journal, Hulji is the man who supplied the explosives used in the London and Madrid attacks.

Bosnia today, says Gorin, is "the European 'one-stop shop' for terrorism needs--weapons, money, shelter, documents-- of Chechen and Afghani fighters passing through Europe before heading to Iraq." In Iraq, U.S. troops recovered one endearing Albanian Kosovar's application, reading "I have Kosovo Liberation Army combat experience against Serb and American forces...I recommend operations against parks like Disney."

IN A NUTSHELL

Israelis vote for peace. The Philadelphia Inquirer quotes Kiryat Gat's deputy major Michal Gabay: "The election is a referendum and people want peace. People want to make deals with our neighbors." Meanwhile Israel's neighbors have voted for war, with Hamas openly proclaiming war until Israel's death.

Shrouded in mental burqas, Israelis are impervious to any glimmer of reality.

ASSESSING IRAQ

"In Iraq...there is still no Iraqi people, but unimaginable masses of human beings, devoid of any patriotic ideal...connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil, prone to anarchy, and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatsoever. Out of these masses we want to fashion a people which we would train, educate, and refine...The circumstances being what they are, the immenseness of the efforts needed for this cannot be imagined."

No, this isn't a pundit discouraged by the current terrorism and sectarian violence. It's the assessment of Iraqi King Faisal shortly before his death in 1933, having ruled Iraq since 1921.

A SAUDI SUMMA

MEMRI (Middle East Research Institute) reports that a 2003 book based on a doctoral dissertation is gaining attention in the Arab world. It names more than 200 modern Arab intellectuals and authors whom the author, Said ibn Nasser Al-Ghamdi accuses of heresy, in effect urging their murder. Al-Ghamdi not only received his PhD for his lengthy fatwa, but was awarded the degree "summa cum laude."

DHIMMIS AT HA'ARETZ

Israel's would-be New York Times, Haaretz, produced an editorial on the cartoon controversy so subservient one would think it came from a Jewish paper in Teheran under orders of Iran's Ayatollahs. The editorial contains such gems as it is "impossible not to understand the feelings of insult among Muslims worldwide," "no society can remain apathetic to offensive publications that insult values held sacred by certain groups within it" (that's particularly laughable from Haaretz which routinely insults the Orthodox community within Israel), "the publication of these cartoons was a display of insensitivity and so was their reprinting by various European media outlets."

If Haaretz was going to talk about Muslim sensitivity, you would have thought it would at least take the occasion to point out that the Muslim world daily spews out incredibly offensive material to Jews. Not a single word on the subject from Haaretz.

CHURCHES ON CYPRUS

After Cyprus was divided in 1974, the northern part was occupied by Turkey. About 200,000 Christian Orthodox fled to the south while Turkish Moslem Cypriots in the south moved north. But while most mosques in Greek Cypriot territory were restored, when reporter Luigi Geninazzi was sent to Cyprus by Avvenire, the paper of the Italian Bishop's conference, he found a very different story in the north: "Almost the entire artistic patrimony of the Orthodox Church in the territory occupied by the Turks -- 520 buildings between churches, chapels and monasteries -- has been sacked, demolished or disfigured -- only three churches and one monastery, the monastery of St. Barnabas, which has been turned into a museum, are in a more or less dignified state.." As for the EU, which could bring pressure to bear upon Turkey, given its efforts to join, Cypriot Foreign Minister George Iacovic complains: "The ruin is before our eyes but the EU prefers to look the other way."

Lee Smith

I find it a little hard to believe Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's "The Israel Lobby" was written while sober. In their first sentence, the authors assert that, "For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel."

Pretty much any American who has ever been in a motorized vehicle knows that the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy is Washington's relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and has been so since the mid-30s. It is a vital national interest – not just because cheap fuel permits Americans to drive SUVs, but because protecting the largest known oil-reserves in the world ensures a stable world economy. Moreover, the US military counts on access to that oil in the event it has to wage war – an activity that demands a lot of oil.

Walt and Mearsheimer's article explains how "the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics," which I agree with, because like many Americans I believe that the ability to get people and things from one place to another is a big part of successful domestic politics. It's not entirely clear that the authors of this really long article have ever been in a car before, because when they're talking about domestic politics, they're not talking about cars, or the economy or even our military, but "the activities of the 'Israel Lobby.'"

So, how much credit should these guys get for staking out a "realist" position on US Middle Eastern policy that does not account for the existence of cars, or something even bigger than a Hummer – the Arabian Peninsula?

If you're one of Walt or Mearsheimer's drinking buddies, here's a quick quiz, with questions drawn from their article, so you know when to cut them off and send them home – but definitely not to write another article about Middle East affairs.

Discuss: "The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a strategic burden."

The first Gulf War, wherein roughly 500,000 US troops were committed to the Gulf to protect our friends in Kuwait and a country called Saudi Arabia, revealed that no matter how many arms we sold to our Gulf allies finally only real live US soldiers could protect them from predators. And yet in due course we also learned that while the Saudis could not protect their own oil, our protecting that oil further weakened the royal family and compromised their legitimacy, making them vulnerable to dangerous domestic forces – like Osama Bin Laden, for instance. Ruling over a country that cannot protect itself, or safely be protected, from foreign threats or its own citizens, a country whose wellbeing is a vital national interest makes the Saudi royal family the Liza Minnelli of "strategic burdens."

True or False. "As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire threat to vital US interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to Israel."

False. Of course Israel is concerned about the prospects of an Iranian nuclear program, but not as much as our allies in the Gulf, who have neither strong militaries nor nuclear arsenals. A nuclear Iran is a threat to that big country in the desert named Saudi Arabia and other tiny sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf, and getting Gulf oil to market is a vital US interest.

True or False. "…Unwavering support for Israel…has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world."

True. Nice work, boys – this Goldschlager's on me. But just remember, guys, that those flames of anti-Americanism do not always issue from organic sources; often they are fed by Arab regimes, including our allies in a place called Saudi Arabia. US taxpayers have spent a lot of money to protect the flow of oil over the last seven decades and ensure that the Saudi ruling family keeps collecting receipts. (Yes, just one family, Al Saud, with about 5000 princes on the pad.) Think this one over in the morning: Should we stop supporting Israel because that makes us hated by Arabs, or should we put more pressure on Arab allies like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who have institutionalized anti-US incitement at home in their press, schools and mosques, while also funding it lavishly abroad?

True or False: "By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby's task even easier."

Yeah, true if you exclude the obviously limited influence that oil companies have exercised in US policymaking over the last seventy years. And it's not just the oil companies doing Gulf bidding; virtually every American ambassador who's served in Riyadh winds up with a nice package to keep selling the Saudi line back in Washington. Yes, you're right, AIPAC's annual budget is a whopping $40 million dollars – or precisely equivalent to the private donation Saudi prince Walid Bin Talal recently gave to two US universities to start up Islamic centers. What? Come on Steve, he gave half of it to Harvard! OK, give me the car keys. The keys to the car, it's how you got here. In a car. It has four wheels and a motor. It runs on gas. Gas comes from a place called Saudi Arabia….

This is abridged from an article that appeared on MichaelTotten.com

Rael Jean Isaac

The Bush administration’s effort to bring liberal democracy to a unified Iraq is likely to fail, and for the same reason that its policy of fashioning a Palestinian state that will live peacefully beside Israel will certainly fail – the underlying conditions are against it.

What is worse, this should have been obvious all along. The administration is repeatedly blindsided by events that could easily have been foreseen. Thus Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice professed amazement at the victory of Hamas in the PA elections; no one in the State Department had prepared her for this possibility, she declared. Is it possible that no State Department policy wonk prepared a policy paper setting forth the likelihood of this outcome? Possessed of no special access to information, we predicted the Hamas victory in Outpost. After all, Hamas had recently swept local elections, and the expulsion of Jewish communities in Gaza, for which Hamas took credit, could only strengthen its electoral appeal.

Nor would the chances for fulfillment of Bush’s dream of a peaceful Palestinian state have been any better if Abbas and his coterie of brigands had won the elections. As AFSI’s pamphlet The Palestinians: A Political Masquerade pointed out in 1977 the Palestinians are an “anti-nation,” “one that derives its entire meaning and purpose from the desire to destroy another nation.”

In the case of Iraq, a book by two British political scientists, Liam Anderson and Gareth Stansfield, The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy or Division? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) sets out the underlying conditions there that the Bush administration has been ignoring at its peril. Since much of the book was apparently written in the months preceding the actual U.S. invasion of Iraq (the epilogue was written in November 2003, eight months after the body of the book was completed), it is not written in hindsight, but rather with foresight.

As Anderson and Stansfield see it, the underlying conditions of sectarian and ethnic conflict put the federal democracy the administration envisages out of reach and propel Iraq to either dictatorship or division. It is striking that what the authors describe as the most potent and threatening source of division is one that currently receives scarcely any attention: the determination of the Kurds (mostly Sunni Moslems but not Arabs) to achieve independence or failing that, a degree of autonomy little short of it. Compared to the rest of Iraq, Kurdistan has been a model of stability since the U.S. invasion. This is because the Kurds have achieved most of their goals: thanks to the “no-fly zone” the U.S. enforced over its territory after the first Gulf War, Kurdistan has become a de facto state with its own executive, parliament, judiciary, military force (the peshmerga), its own language and school system. A generation is growing up that does not even understand Arabic, the language of the rest of the country. The Kurds will not surrender these gains easily.

Kurds have been unwilling citizens of Iraq since the state’s inception. With the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the 1920 Treaty of Sevres had envisaged a separate Kurdish state to include the Kurds of Turkey as well. But Ataturk had other ideas and in the end the English decided to add the northernmost Ottoman province of Mosul, with its large Kurdish population, to the provinces of Baghdad and Basra to fashion the state of Iraq. Periodic revolts by the bitterly disappointed Kurds were put down with ever greater brutality.

The Kurds came close to toppling the Baath regime in 1974 with the support of Iran, the United States and Israel (which began its support for the Kurds as early as 1962). But then in March 1975 Secretary of State Kissinger brokered the so-called Algiers Agreement between the then Shah of Iran and Saddam, which settled a long-standing dispute over the Shatt Al-Arab in Iran’s favor; in exchange, within two days of the signing, all aid to the Kurds was cut off. The upshot was that Saddam was able to crush the Kurdish uprising within two weeks. When Kurds again rose up during the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam depopulated rural Kurdistan, launched a chemical attack on the town of Halabjah that killed thousands, laid waste 4,000 villages, forcibly relocated and massacred hundreds of thousands.

U.S. policy makers now put forward federalism as the answer to preserving a unified state while granting the Kurds self-government. But Anderson and Stansfield observe that while it is possible to fashion a constitution with the most elaborate checks and balances, federalism is a sophisticated form of democracy, presupposing a willingness to compromise, acceptance of the rule of law, and a strong judiciary to arbitrate disputes. They write that “in the absence of any developed sense of national identity, a basic consensus over the legitimacy of the Iraqi state and a reservoir of mutual trust and understanding to draw upon, it is difficult indeed to locate the foundation on which a liberal democratic Iraqi state can be constructed.” As the authors see it, the issue of federalism, which Iraq’s Parliament must soon face, is a political disaster-in-the-making, for each group has a wholly different idea of what this should entail and what the Kurds demand is far in excess of what the others are prepared to tolerate.

And that’s just the Kurds. The authors point out that while the ethnic Kurdish/Arab divide centers on the basic legitimacy of Iraq as a state, the Shia/Sunni divide concerns the state’s identity. To Anderson and Stansfield, the relations of Iraqi Sunnis and Shias are a less intractable problem -- after all, both groups are Arabs and Iraqi nationalists. Here the problem is that Iraq, throughout its history, has been dominated by Sunnis, who are as loathe to relinquish their hegemony as the Kurds are to give up their quasi-independence. But absent parties cutting across denominational lines (which have done poorly in the Iraqi elections), democracy empowers the Shia, with their large demographic edge. Recognition of this (and fear of rule by Shiite fundamentalists) has been a major factor in stoking the insurgency.

The authors note that while the Shia religious leadership has traditionally avoided politics, to the extent it becomes politicized, the consensual unity even of Arab Iraq is threatened. Anderson and Stansfield completed their book in 2003, but what they worried about is coming to pass. The influential cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has stayed on the political sidelines, but Moqtada al-Sadr represents politicized Islam in its most dangerous form -- with his Mahdi militia to boot. What seems like the aimless terror of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, with its attacks on ordinary Shiites and their holy places, has been successful in what it seeks to accomplish -- deepening the sectarian divide and bringing to the fore bad actors like al-Sadr. Zarqawi’s hope is that in the ensuing anarchy an Islamist Sunni strongman will emerge triumphant.

While all that has happened could not have been predicted, being prepared for some of the problems required only a basic knowledge of the country’s makeup and recent history. But the Bush administration has not taken the underlying conditions seriously enough. There is a naïve faith in “elections” and “representing all parties in the governing coalition,” as if this would in itself ensure agreement on basic issues will be reached. The Bush administration talks of disbanding the sectarian militias (eleven in all, now estimated to be almost as large as the army), including those of the Kurds (good luck) or integrating them into Iraq’s security forces. But this would only deepen public distrust of these forces and make it more likely army and police would fall apart in the face of sectarian violence.

If the authors of The Future of Iraq are correct, the choice in Iraq is between a ruthless new dictatorship -- precisely the kind of government the Bush administration set out to eliminate from the Middle East -- or division of the country. And while Anderson and Stansfield clearly believe division is the better of available bad choices – and a guided division far better than one emerging from civil war – they do not minimize the difficulties. Even in the case of the Kurds, whose “entity” comes closest to liberal democratic norms, the minefields are plentiful. Where would the boundaries be, with oil-rich Kirkuk a major area of contention? There are serious divisions within the Kurdish community which could be played upon by neighbors, including Turkey, which is adamantly opposed to an independent Kurdistan. And if a Shiite state were created in the south, Iranian influence is likely to be strong, providing yet another reason (as if more were needed) to achieve regime change in Iran.

There is another problem with Bush’s vision for Iraq, which Anderson and Stansfield do not mention. This is that democracy requires adults, people who take responsibility for their actions. The Arabs do not even seem to fathom that there is a relation between actions and consequences, with elites as well as the famed “street” forever blaming others. Polls have showed that a majority think the destruction of the World Trade Center was engineered by Israel and the CIA to enable the U.S. to engage in war on Islam. Moqtada al-Sadr insists it is American troops who are trying to drag Iraqis into “sectarian wars.”

And while the Bush administration fashions policy under the assumption Middle Eastern jihadists are recruited because of the frustration of their desire to obtain a voice in how their own countries are run, Iraqi writer Nibras Kazimi points out that what today’s Middle East really thirsts for is an avenger: “they long for whoever will wash away the humiliation of having their principal cities, once seats of far flung empires, now roamed by infidel troops or their perceived lackeys.” The West, says Kazimi, faces “a dark spiritual effervescence that sputters out periodically from the Middle East in fits of mayhem stemming from a revenge fantasy that has been festering for 300 years.”

In this country, the choices currently presented may well turn out to be beside the point. To simply cut and run will leave chaos. But to adhere to the model of a unified Iraq that will be a model of democracy for the Middle East invites catastrophic failure. The real model that inspires emulation in the region is the Hamas victory. In its wake, across the Middle East, Islamists have become convinced that democratic elections will pave their way to power. One of the first countries to experience what analysts in the region call “the Hamas effect” is Jordan. Islamists there have vowed to push through a reform to fully legalize opposition parties (by gerrymandering and other methods Islamists have been kept to under 15% representation in Parliament), confident that like their “brothers in Palestine” they will win in free and fair elections. “All over the Arab world, the Islamists have the majority in the street,” confidently proclaims Jordanian member of Parliament Azzam al-Huneidi.

We do not question the good, even noble intentions of President Bush. But to fashion policy on the assumption that the Middle East is populated by oppressed masses yearning to breathe free is as out of touch with reality as the Israeli government’s policy, based on the premise that turning over territory “unilaterally” to enemies sworn to the state’s destruction will improve Israel’s security.

At the very least the Bush administration needs a Plan B, not just for Iraq but for the entire Middle East.

Rocco DiPippo

Editor's note: Fox's fellow peace activists, two Canadians, one Briton, were rescued by American and British forces on March 22. The lengthy statement of "joy" on their release from their organization Christian Peacemaker Teams gives no thanks to -- indeed does not even mention -- the Special Forces group that rescued them. Indeed it attacks the coalition forces as the culprit in their kidnapping: "We believe that the illegal occupation of Iraq by Multinational Forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping and so much pain and suffering in Iraq. The occupation must end." Finally, in London, the rescued Briton, Norman Kember, had a grudging word for his saviors: "I do not believe that a lasting peace is achieved by armed force, but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my rescue."

Tom Fox, along with fellow activists Harmeet Singh Sooden, Norman Kember, and James Loney was kidnapped in Baghdad on November 26, 2005.
All belonged to the leftwing Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), which provided “human shields” in Iraq at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, works side by side with the anti-Israel, quasi-terrorist International Solidarity Movement and takes the standard leftwing position that America, as the world’s biggest terrorist, got its comeuppance on 9/11/2001. CPT’s official motto is “Getting in the Way,” and it ran a program called “Adopt a Detainee,” which was sympathetic to suspected terrorists being detained by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Iraq.

So, the late Mr. Fox belonged to a group that essentially saw the “good guys” as being equal to, if not worse than, the bad guys. He believed he was doing a righteous thing by essentially throwing stones in the path of the U.S., Iraqi and Coalition soldiers, the same men and women who are trying to round up the Islamist terror-mongers washing the streets of Baghdad in blood and misery, terror-mongers like those who murdered him.

Everything I’ve read about Mr. Fox indicates that, though misguided in his worldview, he was in many ways a decent man. Fox played in the United States Marine Band for twenty years. A Quaker, he served as a youth leader at Langley Hill Friends Meeting. His daughter Katherine says that while he was in the military, he refused military discounts on principle.

But Fox also harbored hatred for his culture and an overall disdain for America, as indicated by statements he made on his blog. He also suffered from a terrible naiveté:

“I think it would be fair to say that a survey of opinion taken from news sources in various parts of the world would find people using the words ‘fear and hatred’ much more often than they would use the words ‘respect and love’ when it comes to describing the United States. Not only in the Middle East but in Europe and in much of Asia and other areas as well. We are seen more as an empire rather than a beacon of hope to the oppressed and downtrodden. We are seen more as a militaristic superpower, bent on imposing our will on others, rather than the keeper of the flame of the hope and promise of democracy,” said Thomas William Fox, ignoring, among other things, the fact that people fear America so much, that they flock to its shores in droves, seeking freedom and peace and economic opportunity.

After reading most of his blog entries, it seems to me that Fox’s tragic flaw, the one that ultimately got him killed, was that he did not really believe that some men are more evil than others.

Crippled by this moral confusion, Fox habitually ignored the greater of two evils. His blog entry on Fallujah hints at as much. Though in his writings he essentially described the liberation of Fallujah as a senseless act, he failed to mention that after U.S. forces chased out and killed the Islamists who had held the town hostage, they made the gruesome discovery of nearly two dozen torture chambers, awash in blood, some with bloated bodies and hacked off body parts dumped near them. Lt. Col. Gareth Brandl, a Marine said, “The face of Satan was here in Fallujah, and I’m absolutely convinced that that was true.”

Ultimately, Tom Fox saw that face up close and personal. It is the face of those who commit shocking evil while promising Heaven on Earth. I wonder if, in the end, he finally recognized it for what it was—and is.

The Utopian fanatics who killed Tom Fox could not have cared less whether or not he was sympathetic towards them, or if he hated them or whether he believed in God, or not. They could not have cared less if he had a family or friends who loved him. They did not care for his compassion. They did not care that, on some levels, he even empathized with them: they, who held him captive. They did not care that, in his way, he was trying to help alleviate the suffering of their brothers and sisters.

All Tom Fox was to his captors and murderers was filth—a piece of garbage; a weak, vile, subhuman infidel of the Western variety; a creature to be spit on and reviled and, when no longer useful, slaughtered like an animal and then discarded. They treated Mr. Fox like they would treat us all, as stones to be kicked aside while building the road to Paradise. They treated Mr. Fox, and if given the chance they’d treat us all, like the Nazis treated the Jews.

If there are lessons to be learned from the murder of Tom Fox, they are primarily for the Left: Like a person, it is never too late for it to abandon its suicidal march until the moment the executioner strikes.
Thomas William Fox (1951-2006) R.I.P.

Rocco DiPippo, a freelance political writer, publishes The Autonomist website. This article appeared in AmericanThinker.com of March 11.

Hugh Fitzgerald

Someone responded to my assertion that there are no “Palestinians” by arguing "A nation is an idea, a shared identity, and Palestinians have that in spades. They are not going away. Even when they travel the world, they consider themselves refugees and maintain their national consciousness."

But this does nothing to establish that the “Palestinian nationality” is not a politically-motivated construct. And that that politically-motivated construct of a “Palestinian people” out of local Arabs (those in Gaza and the area renamed by the Jordanians in 1948 as "the West Bank") can be undone by non-Arabs and non-Muslims. Simply expose the idea for what it is. Refuse to write the phrase without quotation marks: "Palestinian people." Quote endlessly from all the Arabs who made quite explicit why this phrase, and this idea, was developed. It has been foisted on the West. Remember there was, in 1938, great sympathy and understanding for the campaign of Henlein and his master Hitler to achieve "the legitimate rights" of the "Sudeteners."

Once the understanding spreads that the war against Israel is a classic Jihad, and is not, and never has been, a "clash of two tiny peoples" etc., this will bring a greater clarity not only to the confused Israeli public (and its largely unimpressive political leaders), but also to the larger Infidel world. The world needs to comprehend how Jihad against Israel is only a subset of the more general, worldwide Jihad effort. That effort is expressed locally, and uses different instruments depending on what is possible and effective, taking into account local conditions and the nature of the local Infidels.

Here's a sample of what should be better known: Before the Six-Day War, not a single Arab spokesman, at the U.N. or anywhere else, and not a single Arab document, referred to the local Arabs as the "Palestinian people." They appeared, as if by magic -- summoned by the public-relations advisors to Arafat -- only after that war made clear that the Arab dream of going in for the kill had been dashed, and that a different, long-term effort was necessary.

The intention of that effort was to persuade former supporters of Israel in the Western world that Israel had won territory to which it had no legal, moral, or historic claim. Since the area had been known in the West as "Palestine," then the local Arabs would become the "Palestinian people." As the older and better-educated generations died out, the young, the naive, the uninformed, would come to think something along the simple-minded lines of "well, there's a place called Palestine, and there's these people who are the Palestinian people, so of course they must be the ones whose land it is."

It was at that level that the “Palestinian people” was created -- a level that required an absence of any historic sense, any real and detailed knowledge of the history of that area, and of the Middle East, not merely in the 20th century, but during the 1300 years before. The men who served on the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, none of them Zionists, had a much better sense of why the Mandate's aims -- the establishment of a Jewish National Home - were not only justified, but also admirable. That is why those who had a wider sense of history, and who were untainted by that widespread mental pathology that takes different forms in different people (even the form fruste can be deadly), such as Churchill and Smuts, were Zionist sympathizers to a man.

While the Shukairy "drive them into the sea" line was muted for the Western world, and the "Palestinian people" theme drummed into Western minds, in black Africa, where the Israelis had had a very effective foreign-aid program before 1967, things went more quickly. All that was needed was bribery of key government officials and diplomats; and overnight most African states cut relations with Israel. Those agricultural projects, those irrigation projects that had been so useful, were forced to end. There was, of course, no real Arab aid ever given. It was only bribes to particular officials, and then, of course, money to extend the reach and power of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa. One result was the revolt of Nigeria's Christians against the new Muslim militancy -- the Jihad, as Col. Ojukwu called it, against those Christians.

Western leaders, as well as Israeli leaders, should cease to use the phrase "Palestinian people." Instead, they should start to use such carefully-constructed statements as "the autonomy for local Arabs will of course depend on to the extent that such autonomy is commensurate with Israeli security, since there are already twenty-two Arab states. Also, we cannot remain unaware of the doctrine of Jihad as a permanent duty, so that opposition to Israel as an Infidel state should not be expected to diminish no matter what its borders. Indeed, we have every reason to believe that further territorial concessions that cause Arab Muslims to perceive Israel as more vulnerable will only increase the likelihood of open warfare, and will whet rather than sate the desire for combat to further the aims of Jihad."

Who writes or says anything like that? It's all true, and necessary, but no one does. But perhaps they will start, as they realize that they, the entire West, the entire Infidel world, are in the same boat with Israel, and this is no time for that boat to become a ship of fools.

Hugh Fitzgerald is a frequent contributor. This article appeared on Jihadwatch.com of March 18.

Andrew G. Bostom. M.D.

Abdul Rahman faced death at the hands of our Afghan allies for the “crime” of converting to Christianity. Even though, following appeals by world leaders, including the Pope, Mr. Rahman appears to have received a “dispensation” by the Karzai Government -- for “mental health”, or other reasons -- he is and remains guilty as per Afghan religious leaders, and sacred Islamic Law (the Shari’a).

In the light of Koran 2:256 "There is no compulsion in religion", why has apostasy from Islam always been punished so harshly? In Leaving Islam, Ibn Warraq notes that the apostasy of a Muslim individual whose parents were Muslim is seen as an infectious, dangerous and incurable disease in the body of an ummah (people) threatening peoples lives, and that is why this rotten limb should be severed.

Punishment by death for apostasy is firmly rooted in the most holy Muslim texts. Koran 4:89 states: “They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah’s way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.”

One of the most authoritative Koranic commentators, Baydawi (d. 1315/16) interprets this passage thus: “Whosoever turns back from belief (irtada), openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel." Ibn Kathir’s (d. 1373) venerated commentary on Koran 4:89 concurs, maintaining that as the unbelievers have manifested their unbelief, they should be punished by death.

These draconian judgments are reiterated in a number of hadith (i.e., collections of the putative words and deeds of Muhammad, as compiled by pious transmitters). There is also a consensus by all four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (i.e., Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafi’i), as well as Shi’ite jurists, that apostates from Islam must be put to death.

The 1991 Al-Azhar (Cairo) Islamic Research Academy-endorsed Shafi’i manual of Islamic Law ‘Umdat al-Salik states: “Leaving Islam is the ugliest form of unbelief (kufr) and the worst…. When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostasizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed. In such a case, it is obligatory…to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed. “

At this stage, perhaps the only way to assure that Mr. Rahman avoids a tragic fate (“We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there’s nothing left,” maintained Abdul Raoulf a “moderate” cleric jailed for his previous opposition to the Taliban) is to find sanctuary for him outside of Afghanistan.

Denial or obfuscation of the role played by the very essence of Islam—Shari’a—will never remove this murderous scimitar of Damocles hanging over the heads of hapless “apostates” such as Abdul Rahman, and others, perhaps untold thousands, if not more, like him, throughout the Muslim world.

Andrew Bostom is author of The Legacy of Jihad. This is excerpted from AmericanThinker.com of March 26.

Victor Sharpe

Editors Note: As Jews are vilified in the academy for support of Israel, it is good to remember the major contributions Jews have made to this country, beginning in their early years on these welcoming shores.

When the subject of Jewish American contributions to American society and culture is discussed few ordinary Americans, and surprisingly few scholars, are aware Jews resided in North America long before America’s Revolution against British rule.

To understand why and when Jews first came to the Americas we need to understand the miseries and calamities that overtook them throughout Europe. In particular, we need to look back to the fifteenth century and the rise in the Iberian peninsula of the Catholic Inquisition.

In 1492, as the children’s poem goes, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It was the same year that the 2,000 year old Jewish population of Spain was given the stark choice; convert to Catholicism or be expelled. Most chose to depart, some to Holland and eventually northern Europe; others to North Africa and the Ottoman lands in modern Turkey. Some returned to the ancestral Jewish homeland in Ottoman occupied Palestine. Many perished at the hands of pirates or were sold into slavery.

Those that could not bear to leave all that they and their ancestors had known for centuries reluctantly accepted the cross and became conversos – outwardly Christian, but secretly Jews. Their Christian neighbors however gave them a more insulting Spanish name, Marranos. The Kingdom of Portugal followed the policy of forced conversion or expulsion soon after.

We know that at least five of Christopher Columbus’s crew in his fleet were conversos, and there remains scholarly speculation that Columbus may have been one himself.

Luis de Torres, a converso, a linguist, and great traveler in his own right served in the fleet along with two converso surgeons and two seamen. During the month of October 1492, Torres decided to remain behind and settled on an island in order to be free from the horrors of the Inquisition. He thus became the first Jew to settle in the New World.

Today we know that much of the discovery and charting of the New World was undertaken by secret Jews who knew each other and maintained strong trading links. Jewish mathematicians worked to assure the accuracy of the maps and charts necessary for nautical voyages in the Middle Ages. Among the most famous of the map makers was the Cresque family, and Abraham Cresque completed his greatest cartographic masterpiece in 1377, over a hundred years before the expulsion edict by the Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

In order to escape from the persecutions in Spain and Portugal, many Jews and conversos found their way to the Portuguese territories in Brazil. In 1502, Fernando de Loronha, a converso, was allowed by the Portuguese King Manoel to settle a part of Brazilian territory.Loronha was required to explore some 300 miles of coastline every year. He brought five shiploads of people to his new colony, many of then New Christians or conversos, who secretly remained steadfast in their Jewish beliefs.

But the Inquisition eventually followed them. Many fled to Holland while others joined Spanish Jews and conversos in North America’s southwest. In 1520, Bernando Lopez de Mendizabel became Governor of the New Mexico territory. A converso, he fell foul of the Inquisition when he was discovered changing his linen and bathing just prior to the Jewish Sabbath – a cause for imprisonment in which he died a pauper. His was the first instance in North America of the reach of the Catholic Inquisition.

The Portuguese territory in Brazil, to which many conversos had fled, was conquered by the Dutch who treated the Jews with respect and encouraged many Jewish families to sail from Holland to the new colony of Recife. However, the Portuguese returned and re-conquered Recife. Many of the conversos were sent back to Portugal for practicing Judaism and burned at the stake. Of those Jewish refugees who fled again from the re-imposed Inquisition, some twenty three eventually reached the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam.

Two Jews already had been allowed to live in New Amsterdam. They were Solomon Peterson, and Jacob Barsimson, a settler sent by the Dutch West India Company. When the 23 Jewish refugees arrived in the Dutch colony, penniless but well educated, they were resented by the Governor, Peter Stuyvesant. More concerned with keeping potential competitors out of his colony, Stuyvesant was a bigot who particularly disdained Quakers, Baptists and Presbyterians.

In 1655, the Jewish residents of New Amsterdam petitioned for the right to “stand guard” with all other citizens on the wall built against potential attacks on the colony. This same wall is now Wall Street inNew York City. They also petitioned for a cemetery and were granted a tiny plot of land in 1656 on land that today is known as Chatham Square in New York City’s Chinatown. It is the oldest known Jewish cemetery in the United States and burials continued there from 1683 to 1831.

Other Jewish communities were established in Newport, Philadelphia, Savannah and Charleston and were part of American life for 120 years prior to Independence and the Revolutionary War.

In 1664 Britain acquired New Amsterdam in a bloodless exchange. England encouraged traders and adventurers, Jews and Christians alike, to set up trading posts in the wilderness and remote areas of New England. The territories were explored and towns grew where the trading posts first were established. In time political unrest between the American colonies and Great Britain resulted in the Revolution.

Families were torn asunder by conflicting loyalties to the American colonies or to the British Crown. Like their Christian neighbors, Jews suffered the same tragic rifts but most Jews were patriots and rallied in defense of the new United States of America.

The British attacked Newport in Rhode Island laying waste the harbor and burning down nearly five hundred homes. Aaron Lopez, who was a foreign born and naturalized Jewish landowner, had built Newport’s first synagogue in 1763. A fervent backer of the Revolution, he was forced to escape with his family to Leicester, Massachusetts. In one of his letters to friends, he spoke of, “sudden alarums and the cruel ravages of an enraged enemy.”

Another Jewish patriot, Gershom Seixas, the first American-born rabbi, could not bear to remain in New York and see the city occupied by the British. With his congregation, Rabbi Seixas left the city and escaped to Philadelphia. After the War of 1812, Gershom Seixas was elected by the New York State Legislature as a member of the first Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York.

Earlier, in 1733, the colony of Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe who convinced the English King that the creation of his colony between Florida and the Carolinas would help keep the Spanish out. Soon after he received a charter from King George I, he welcomed new immigrants including Jewish colonists from England.

Georgia wanted to establish wine growing as a major industry and one of the first Jewish colonists was Abraham de Lyon, an experienced vintner. The colony was plagued with malaria: fortunately, another Jewish immigrant was Samuel Nunez Ribiero, a doctor with experience in treating the dread disease. Oglethorpe praised Ribiero for ending the plague, which had already carried off twenty colonists.

Among the earliest settlers was Benjamin Sheftall, a Jewish Englishman who became one of the staunchest Revolutionaries. He and his son helped supply the Continental Army and were captured along with 186 American soldiers. The Sheftalls were interrogated but refused to divulge where American supplies were hidden and were thrown into prison and denounced by the British as “very great rebels.” This was the same language used by the British Crown to denounce the signers of the Constitution.

Another Jewish Englishman, Francis Salvador, arrived in the neighboring colony of South Carolina, in 1773. He was elected to the first Provincial Congress of South Carolina and became a fighter for the Revolutionary cause. When the British governor refused to recognize the new Congress, the colonists began to arm themselves. In revenge, the British encouraged Indian tribes to massacre colonists. Salvador raised a force of five hundred men and led several attacks against loyalists and their Indian allies. During one such attack he was badly wounded, unaware that the Declaration of Independence, which he had passionately urged, had been adopted. As he lay in the woods, he was discovered by Indians and scalped. Salvador was one of the first Jews to die defending the new American nation.

In 1772, a Jewish immigrant from Poland arrived in New York. He was Haym Salomon and soon became an ardent supporter of the American cause. He accompanied General Schuyler and his army to Lake George. In September 1776, he was arrested as a spy by the British — they believed him to be a member of the outlawed Sons of Liberty who planned to burn the British fleet with fire ships.

While in prison, he managed to help free several American and French soldiers and to convince Hessian mercenaries to desert the British forces. During the Revolutionary War Salomon did yeoman service in ensuring that finances kept flowing so that the fledgling nation remained solvent and its international credit viable. After the war, Salomon gave away much of his wealth to the poor of Philadelphia, among them a future President, James Madison. He eventually died from the effects of his time in a British prison nine years earlier.

In Chicago, a statue of George Washington, Robert Morris, and Haym Salomon stands. The inscription for Haym Salomon reads: “Haym Salomon, Gentleman, Scholar and Patriot. A banker whose only interest was the interest of his country.”

Victor Sharpe writes on Jewish history and the Arab-Israel conflict.

Ruth King

There is a tale that George Bernard Shaw asked a lady….a doyenne of society, if he could bed her for a million pounds. When she replied “but of course” he offered her ten pounds. “Who do you think I am?” asked the enraged grande dame. Shaw retorted: “We’ve established that and now we are just negotiating your fee.”

This story is apposite as our former top officials troll for money among the Arab states. In the September 2004 Outpost I wrote about former diplomats and legislators who lobby for Saudi Arabia. This seedy group has recently been joined by a former president, a former minority leader in the Senate, and a former Secretary of State….two of them married to Senators.

In 1979, Marion Javits, wife of then Senator Jacob Javits, caused a brouhaha when she did PR work for Iran Air and the Shah. Mrs. Javits issued a public apology and severed her ties to the Shah. Remember the Shah? He was the “tyrant” that freedom and democracy groupies overthrew in order to clear the way for the mullahs….but that’s another story.

When Jimmy Carter’s smarter brother Billy Carter registered as a foreign agent of the Libyan government and took $250,000 to lobby his brother for the release of embargoed C-130 airplanes to Libya, public outrage led to investigations and Senate hearings on influence peddling which became known as "Billygate.” Billy famously defended his actions by stating “there is a hell of a lot more Arabians than there is Jews.” Well, he has a point and even former presidents are not immune to the lure of lucre….even when it entails denigrating our own country,

A prime example is former President Clinton. He is not a lobbyist, but he gets hefty fees for speaking and large contributions to his Presidential Library in Arkansas. Although his wife is a Senator and potential candidate for the presidency, he does not mind throwing in some nasty criticism of the United States. For example, in Dubai on November 16th, 2005 he told Arab students that the United States made a "big mistake" when it invaded Iraq, citing “poor planning” lack of enough troops and a litany of other errors.

Clinton’s Middle East enthusiasms lead him to some odd assessments. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in early 2005, he said: “Iran today is, in a sense the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority.” On a subsequent interview with Charlie Rose, he described Iran as “,,,the only country with elections including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: Two for president; two for the Parliament, the Majlis; two for the mayoralties. In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.”

Clinton is greedy and immoral but at least he is sharp and charismatic. Not so, his former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright whose policy “triumphs” include being a foreign policy adviser to vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. The Albright group, which she founded, lists as a client, DP World, the Dubai company of the recently aborted ports deal. Press releases hail Albright’s “keen observation skills.” How keen could those skills be if she discovered that she is Jewish at the age of 57?
Maybe it’s her tenacity they want. After dozens of failed efforts to get an agreement between Arafat and Barak, the trio met in Paris in October 2002. This is how the event was described by an Israeli correspondent who accompanied Barak: “Immediately after word of an agreement was released in the U.S. Embassy in the middle of the night, Arafat walked out in anger. Albright ran after him, begging him to stay, just like little kids - it was unbelievable! Arafat didn't stop, so then Albright ordered the gates locked so that he would not be able to get out!” Hours later when the staff assembled for signing of the agreement, “they were all standing around waiting for Arafat, but it turned out that he simply decided not to show up!” Her site advertises “Solution Services.” Hmm.

Then there is former Senator and Minority Leader Robert Dole. Although his wife is a Senator from North Carolina, Robert Dole also signed on to lobby for Dubai. Apparently his stint doing televised commercials for Viagra no longer gives him a rise and he’s out for bigger payments. When he was a candidate for President, Dole asked about opponent Clinton’s lies and ambiguities “Where is the outrage?” Where is it now?

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser under Clinton who became famous for stuffing purloined classified documents in his hosiery has also been wined and dined by the Arabs along with hot air enthusiast Al Gore, his wife Tipper, who is famous for gaining and losing weight, and Howard Dean, the current Democratic National committee Chairman.

Columnist Debbie Schlussel has disclosed that the President’s brother Neil gets direct and large “f