From AP:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan –  A doctor who helped the CIA hunt down Osama bin Laden was convicted Wednesday of conspiring against the state and sentenced to 33 years in prison, adding new strains to an already deeply troubled relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan.

U.S. officials had urged Pakistan to release the doctor, who ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify the al-Qaida leader's presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos killed him in May 2011 in a unilateral raid.

The lengthy sentence against Dr. Shakil Afridi will be taken as another sign of Pakistan's defiance of American wishes. It could give further fuel to critics in the United States that Pakistan — which has yet to arrest anyone for helping shelter bin Laden — should no longer be treated as an ally.... 

The earthquake in Italy the other day did terrible damage to the parmigiano producers. Three hundred thousand wheels ("meules") of parmigiano were damaged or destroyed.

So in addition to saving your copper pennies, you should now hold onto your parmigiano. Prices may go sky-high. Or you can teach yourself to like the argentinean version.

From lefigaro.fr:

TOUT UN FROMAGE – Le parmesan, l’autre victime du séisme en Italie

Un producteur découvre les dégâts dans son entrepôt de San Giovanni, à Persiceto, le 21 mai 2012 - AP/Luca Bruno

Alors que le séisme de dimanche a fait sept morts et privé plus de cinq mille personnes de toit dans les provinces de Bologne, Modène, Ferrare et Mantoue, c'est désormais une course contre la montre qui est lancée pour sauver le fleuron de la gastronomie locale, le parmesan. Trois cent mille meules ont été endommagées ou détruites quand les étagères de stockage ont été brisées par les chocs sismiques.

"Toutes les étagères se sont renversées comme de gros dominos , et seulement 20 à 30 % de mes meules sont indemnes", a déclaré au Guardian, Ivano Chezzi, gestionnaire d'un entrepôt de quatre-vingt-dix mille meules. Un autre producteur dit qu'il lui faudra une vingtaine de jours pour faire le tri entre les fromages intacts et ceux qui ont été endommagés, qui seront vendus à bas prix pour être râpés.

"J'ai trente-deux mille pièces de Parmigiano Reggiano à terre. La moitié va être déclassée et revendue à perte. Même si la production continue – trente-cinq meules de 40 kilos par jour nécessitant chacune 550 litres de lait –, c’est une catastrophe économique", témoigne un troisième producteur, Dante Caretti, au quotidien suisse 24 heures.

Le parmesan représente un vrai trésor. Chaque meule peut être vendue jusqu'à 420 euros à maturation. Le coût des dégâts dépasserait ainsi les 250 millions d'euros pour le parmesan et le grana padano, un fromage à pâte dure similaire mais au goût moins âpre, également produit dans la région.

Pour être considéré comme du véritable parmesan, une appellation d'origine contrôlée, le fromage doit être affiné dans la région pendant une durée de douze à vingt-quatre mois. Le "faux" parmesan, le grana padano, à la zone de production plus large, a également connu des pertes, avec près de cent trente mille meules endommagées. Pour autant, le "vrai" et le "faux" parmesan ne devraient pas voir leur prix s'envoler, rassurent les producteurs, en raison d'une augmentation récente de la production.

For more than 50 years, ever since the Sudan gained independence in 1956, the northern Muslims, who like to think of themselves as "Arabs" -- that is, the people to whom Islam was given, and therefore the best of all peoples -- have been conducting, with occasional breaks, a Jihad against the black Africans, Christian and animist, in the south. The northern Muslims have been responsible for the deaths of 2.5 million black Africans in the south. But that Jihad received very little attention, despite the efforts of some -- apparently easy to dismiss because some could be linked to Christian missionaries -- and Gaston Biro, the U.N. special rapporteur for Sudan, was constantly frustrated and ignored in his efforts to draw attention to this Jihad, conducted by a member state of the U.N. and, of course, backed to the hilt by its fellow members in the Arab League.

It was only when the northern Muslims turned to rape, pillage, and mass murder of fellow, but African rather than Arab, blacks in Darfur (formerly Dar Fur), that the West started to pay attention. Pressure built, and all kinds of Hollywood celebrities made it to Darfur, and there is nothing like having George Clooney on your side to help make your case in the corridors of power. The northern Sudanese finally saw that they might lose too much, so they pretended to acquiesce in independence for the South Sudan. But they had their eyes on the prize -- the oil that by rights belongs entirely to the South Sudan, given where it is located -- and since that splitting of Sudan into two states, have conducted war by proxy against black Africans in the states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, in the hope of killing or driving out so many that they could solidify their position, in territories peopled by black Africans with ties to the South Sudan, and expand their power southward, into more and more of the oil regions.

The world paid no attention, save for a few experts such as Professor Eric Reeves at Smith, to this aggression in Blue Nile and South Kordofan. And when the Southern Sudanese, who after all had lost 2.5 million people over many decades of slow Jihad, decided to fight back, this was depicted as "aggression" by them -- see the remarks of American ambassador Princeton Lyman, who apparently has forgotten the last fifty years of Sudanese history and mass murder.

Now that war continues, and it is a war that the Americans should enter, quickly, by simply eliminating the air force of the Muslim Arabs in the north. That would take a few hours, to destroy their planes and helicopters and helicopter gunships. And that would be it. That would be enough. That would be a signal, as the Americans are leaving Afghanistan as they left Iraq, that there will be no more nation-buidling, no more transfer of wealth to grasping Muslim states and peoples, no more attempt to win unwinnable hearts and minds, but there would be opposition to violent Jihad, met with and suppressed by the more effective violence of the non-Muslim West. This would alarm the Arabs, and the Muslims, and we want them to be alarmed. And this would hearted Christians in black Africa, and we want them to be heartened.

That's it.

Here's the story, from Reuters:

JUBA/KHARTOUM (Reuters) - South Sudan said Sudan attacked it with aerial bombing raids and ground artillery on Monday and Tuesday, accusing Khartoum of trying to sabotage international efforts for peace talks which the African Union hopes to restart next week.

Juba said its armed forces could retaliate if Sudan made further assaults, raising the prospect of a return to the fighting which the United Nations and the AU are seeking to prevent.

The two armies fought in border skirmishes last month after disputes over oil exports and border demarcation boiled over, following South Sudan's birth as an independent nation in July.

The attacks on Monday and Tuesday targeted the area of Werguet, about 30km (19 miles) inside South Sudan's territory in Northern Bahr Al Ghazal state, officials told a news conference.

Sudan's army spokesman, al-Sawarmi Khalid, could not be reached on his mobile phone. There was no immediate independent confirmation of South Sudan's allegations, and limited access to remote border areas makes such verification difficult.

South Sudanese Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said Sudan's "acts of aggression" violated a May 2 resolution by the U.N. Security Council which ordered both sides to cease hostilities and settle their differences through negotiations or face sanctions.

Juba has accused Sudan of other attacks since May 2.

"This is a slap in the face of the United Nations and the African Union," Benjamin said.

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has been shuttling between Khartoum and Juba as AU mediator in the past few days, said he expected talks between the neighbors to resume next week.

"So the (AU) panel will be convening that meeting next week as agreed by the presidents of two countries," Mbeki said after meeting Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in Khartoum. He had met South Sudan's President Salva Kiir on Monday.

"Now we have an agreement between President Bashir and President Salva Kiir that the two panels of negotiation ... they will meet next week and look at all elements of the decision taken by the AU and the U.N. Security Council," he added.

Neither side immediately confirmed a meeting next week.

Barnaba said South Sudan's delegation was ready to fly to Addis Ababa but the question was whether Sudan wanted to talk. "We are ready to talk anytime," he told Reuters.

Ibrahim Ghandour, a senior official in Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP), repeated the government position that Sudan wanted to make peace but security issues had to be treated as priority.

"President Bashir told President Mbeki that Sudan was committed to long lasting peace with South Sudan," he told reporters after the meeting. He did not say when talks might resume.

Khartoum accuses Juba of supporting rebels in Sudan's border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, charges denied by South Sudan.

From Voice of America:

Lebanese Shi’ites Kidnapped in Syria; Hezbollah Appeals for Calm

The leader of Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah militant group has appealed for calm after protests erupted in Beirut following the kidnapping of at least 11 Lebanese Shi'ites near the Syrian city of Aleppo as they returned home from a pilgrimage.

Tuesday's abductions are the latest spillover of the neighboring Syrian conflict to sow unrest in Lebanon.

Lebanese security officials and eyewitnesses confirmed the kidnapping, but it was not immediately clear who had seized the group or exactly how many people were abducted.

The Hezbollah leadership and family members described the men as religious pilgrims transiting Syria by bus on their way back from visiting holy Shi'ite shrines in Iraq.

Lebanese media reports said members of the rebel Free Syrian Army kidnapped 13 men, while the Syrian news agency reported that 11 Lebanese and a Syrian driver were seized by “an armed terrorist group.” The women were released.

Members of the Free Syrian Army denied the group was responsible.

As news of the kidnapping spread, residents of Beirut's southern suburbs – a Shi'ite area – briefly took to the streets, burning tires and blocking roads in protest. The Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, later urged restraint in an address broadcast by Lebanese television stations, saying contacts with Syrian authorities were under way for a quick resolution.

Meanwhile, activists said Syrian security forces attacked the town of Azaz – in Aleppo province, where the abductions took place – within hours of the kidnapping.

Earlier, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a bomb attack at a Damascus restaurant killed five people Tuesday. The group said the blast targeted the Qaboun neighborhood, which has been the center of several protests against President Bashar al-Assad.

Also Tuesday, Lebanese authorities released on $330 bail an outspoken anti-Assad Sunni Muslim cleric whose arrest earlier this month sparked deadly unrest in a region of northern Lebanon that backs the revolt against the Syrian leader.

Shadi al-Moulawi's detention ushered in several days of clashes between Sunni Islamist foes of Mr. Assad and the Lebanese army and pro-Assad Alawites, killing eight people.

Those battles moved to the capital after the Lebanese army killed two people, one of them a prominent anti-Assad cleric, in northern Lebanon on Sunday.

A raucous funeral for Sheikh Ahmed Abdul-Wahid was held on Monday. The Lebanese military says it is investigating his shooting.

Why? Because in his view, it is not Believers in Islam, and in the contents of Qur'an and Hadith, the millilons of Muslims who are inculated with contempt and hatred for non-Muslims (that not all of them act on this, and not all of them believe it deeply, for now, should be no consolation, and is certainly not to be relied on), who are a threat to the "republican ideals" of France but, rather, the Front National, which came into being only because Muslim immigration became, for those French who had to deal with it, an intolerable burden and threat. 

Here's the story: from www.lefigaro.fr:

Mélenchon veut "éradiquer" le FN

Un des objectifs du Front de Gauche est d'"éradiquer politiquement" le Front national, a expliqué Jean-Luc Mélenchon à l'occasion d'un meeting de soutien aux candidats de son parti pour les législatives à Strasbourg. "Le Front de Gauche, au contraire de tous les autres, ne se contentera pas de quelques bonnes paroles à intervalle régulier pour déplorer les progrès du Front national", a déclaré lors d'une conférence de presse avant ce meeting l'ex-candidat à la présidentielle.

Le FN "est une organisation politique qui pose un problème extrêmement grave à l'identité républicaine de la patrie des Français. Il doit donc être éradiqué politiquement, c'est le but que se donne le Front de Gauche", a-t-il poursuivi, estimant qu'il fallait utiliser pour cela la méthode du "débat argumenté". "En Alsace, il y a une influence du Front national choquante, compte tenu du passé patriotique extrêmement ardent" de la région, a-t-il dit.

"Le problème de la France, ce n'est pas l'immigré mais le financier", a ensuite lancé M. Mélenchon depuis une estrade installée sur une place du centre-ville de Strasbourg, devant une foule dense venue assister à cette réunion de soutien aux candidats du Front de Gauche aux législatives dans les trois circonscriptions de la ville. Sous les applaudissements nourris d'un public où les jeunes étaient nombreux, il a une nouvelle fois appelé le gouvernement à faire en sorte que "le ministère public interrompe les procédures engagées contre des syndicalistes" sous la présidence de Nicolas Sarkozy.

The late David Littman ("Mural"), Israeli President Shimon Peres and Shmuel Toledano

Number 2 under legendary Mossad chief Isser Harel

A tip of the hate to Imre H.

by: Michael Garrote, Dreuz.info

I met the late David Littman and his wife, the author Bat Ye'or, in 1983 in Geneva. Since then, their respective works have often guided me. I would like  to tell here a little known episode of his career.

The late David Littman, representated  several NGO’s at the UN. Few know, however, he was also a sayan ( Hebrew for "helper ") for  Mossad.

For over twenty years, Littman fought the influence of Islamic countries at the United Nations with his legendary composure. David Littman was the first to invite the famous Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky to speak at the UN on March 5, 1987. The USSR delegation left the hall in protest. No other speaker has so disturbed the dictatorships of the Middle East. In 2008, he  caused an outcry by referring to the lack of women's rights in Muslim countries. In 2009, Littman was again taken to task by the Egyptian Ambassador to the UN Council on Human Rights, for having aroused the ire of Pakistan.   His courage was not new.

In 1961, the young idealistic Littman landed in Morocco, where, at the age of 27, he became an undercover agent to help Jewish children in the Kingdom emigrate to Israel. Aliyah was prohibited at that time and Jews suffered humiliation and persecution in an Arab world inflamed by Egyptian President Nasser’s nationalism.

A few months before Littman had started his mission, Moroccan security dismantled a Mossad human smuggling ring. The officers captured were mercilessly tortured. However,  the Mossad refused to abandon the Jews of Morocco.

They decided to mount a new operation and awarded substantial resources to the Mossad Moroccan network. The legendary director general at the time, Isser Harel, who had captured the Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, had appointed Alex Gatmon as station chief in Casablanca. Gatmon was one of the most experienced field officers of the service.  In Tel Aviv  the mission was overseen by the number two in Mossad, Shmuel Toledano, a specialist on the Arab world. The operation was officially headed by the Jewish Agency, operating through an NGO, the Work to Save the Children (OSE), based in Geneva.

The idea was to send someone to Morocco, to take  the children out of the country under false pretenses and secretly transfer them to Israel. Mossad found in Littman a  providential man. They gave him a codename, "Mural".

Over the period from March to July 1961,  Littman went  to Casablanca and was introduced into high society as an Anglican who came to Morocco to promote holidays for disadvantaged children.  He explained to Moroccan authorities, that his NGO had set up a  camp in Morgins, in Western Switzerland. Supported by his wife Gisele, and Diana, their 5 month old daughter, the young Englishman organized the clandestine departure of hundreds of Jewish children. Littman did not know he was working for Israeli intelligence, and thought that he was working for a humanitarian organization (OSE) and the Jewish Agency. Yet his contacts with Mossad agents in Morocco, "George" (Gad Shahar) and "Jacques" (Pinhas Katzir), enabled him to accomplish this mission beyond all expectations. Secret transmissions , clandestine meetings, false identities, Littman spent 130 days in hostile territory, under exceptionally hazardous conditions.

If he had been discovered, he could have been condemned to life imprisonment and possibly death. Thanks to his ingenuity and his innate sense of communication, Littman facilitated the emigration of  530 children  to Israel. The "collective passports" that Littman had obtained for Moroccan Jewish children  were reused by the Mossad to negotiate with King Hassan II for the departure of most Moroccan Jews.  100,000 of them were able to emigrate to Israel during "Operation Yakhin" between 1962 and 1964. David Littman was celebrated in Israel on May 1,1986 by Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Shamir, his deputy, and Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek.  He was also recognized in January 2004 in Ashdod by the  then  Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz [now Deputy Prime minister in the new unity government in Israel].

Arianna, you've got to be kidding. This comes from the Washington Free Beacon:

A devout Muslim who has praised Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and publicly branded all non-believers as mentally ill “animals” was recently hired to serve as the Huffington Post’s political director in the U.K.

Mehdi Hasan, a controversial British media figure whom insiders have billed as a mouthpiece for the Iranian regime, recently left his job at the left-wing New Statesman magazine to join the Huffington Post as a senior staffer, according to reports in the British press.

The Huffington Post merged with Internet giant AOL in February 2011 to form the Huffington Post media group.

Hasan formerly served as political editor of the New Statesman, which is affiliated with a socialist political party and has faced criticism for publishing articles that many observers have deemed anti-Semitic. In one instance, the New Statesman published an article titled “A Kosher Conspiracy” that purported to expose the great power of Britain’s “pro-Israel lobby.” The cover of that issue featured a Star of David piercing a Union Jack.

Hasan can be seen on tape delivering multiple religious screeds in which he accuses non-Muslims of being animals and mentally inferior.

“We do not bend our law, or morality for short term aims,” Hasan is seen saying in one video recording of his lecture. “Never. And we never lose the moral high ground.”

“Once we lose the moral high ground we are no different from the rest, of the non-Muslims, from the rest of those human beings who live their lives as animals, bending any rule to fulfill any desire,” Hassan said.

He goes on in the recording to praise Iran’s Khamenei for issuing a religious ban or “fatwa” against nuclear weapons, despite that country’s continuing pursuit of nuclear arms.

In a separate audio recording, Hasan can be heard describing disbelief in Islam as an “infirmity” or mental illness.

“His views as you can hear through those infamous videos, are grossly intolerant and hateful towards non-Muslims,” Raheem Kassam, the executive editor of The Commentator, a conservative online journal, told the Free Beacon. “I see no legitimate way to contextualize things like that. It’s the extreme of the extremes.”

Kassam also called into question whether Hasan’s comments fall foul of U.K. legislation set out to combat extremists.

In his writings, Hasan has defended the Iranian regime on multiple occasions and has tried to rationalize President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s many calls for Israel’s destruction.

In addition, Hasan offered a vociferous defense of Jenny Tonge, a liberal British politician who said, “Israel will not last forever.”

Moreover, Hasan has come under fire for fabricating defamatory information about his political rivals.

Andrew Gilligan, London editor of the Telegraph newspaper, noted that Hasan falsely accused him of being a tool of Iran’s state-run media due to the pair’s political disagreements.

The Commentator’s Kassam argued Hasan might have parted ways with the New Statesman due to his toxic political views.

“There is the ongoing speculation around Westminster as to whether he was dropped due to the sheer scale of negative attention he brought to the New Statesman magazine,” said Kassam, who has thoroughly documented Hassan’s favorable coverage of Iran.

“Everyone knew that the status quo couldn’t continue with Hasan,” he added. “It was only a matter of time until he was rightly held to account for what became increasingly nonsensical journalism and a repeated refusal to comment on his extreme views as highlighted by the videos.”

Kassam said that Hasan’s appointment at the Huffington Post shows the website is committed to radical reporting and that Hasan’s star has fallen.

“Something like the appointment of Mehdi Hasan tells you they’ve got their heads in the far leftist clouds,” he explained. ”Huffington Post is seen as a major step down for Mehdi. It’s an embarrassment. It’s pretty much the end of someone’s career.”

The Huffington Post Media Group did not return a request for comment.

From The Telegraph and The Mirror

The parents of a Muslim teenager suffocated her in front of one of their other daughters and later disposed of her body beside a Cumbrian river, a court has heard.

An article entitled "Top Commander Reiterates Iran's Commitment to Full Annihilation of Israel" published by the Fars News Agency, reaffirms the Iranian leadership's wish to destroy Israel despite the pressure of sanctions. The article features the pronouncements of one Hassan Firouzabadi, the "Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces". He made assertions such as "The Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel". Such statements should make it more difficult for the many Western apologists of the regime, who are willing to play fast and loose with the lives of millions of innocents by condemning any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities by minimising the shocking fanaticism of the regime, casting doubt on the translation of a certain famous statement, and ignoring prolific number of other genocidal threats that eminate from the Iranian elite.

 
It is widely acknowledged that Iran sends hundreds of millions of Dollars each year to Hamas and Hizbullah, as well as providing arms and assistance with the training of these terrorist organisations. However, the article goes on to state that during a sermon at Tehran University in the month of February, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei openly acknowledged that Iran got "directly" involved in the 2006 Lebanon War.
 
Although it is unclear what "directly" strictly means in this instance, it may constitute some form of actual engagement with the IDF. Khamenei’s comments also suggest Iran may have been involved to a similar extent in the 2008-09 Gaza War. Such an admission makes it clear Iran is engaged in an unofficial fracas with Israel, and further justifies an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities from a moral perspective, easily conforming to Just war theory.
 
The Fars News Agency is widely understood to be affiliated with the Iranian government so any issues about "translations" should not be open to debate.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi said threats and pressures cannot deter Iran from its revolutionary causes and ideals, and stressed that the Iranian nation will remain committed to the full annihilation of the Zionist regime of Israel to the end.

Addressing a defense gathering here in Tehran on Sunday, General Firouzabadi said that nations should realize the threats and dangers posed by the Zionist regime of Israel. He reiterated the Iranian nation and Supreme Leader's emphasis on the necessity of support for the oppressed Palestinian nation and its causes, and noted, "The Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel." The top military official reminded that the Iranian Supreme Leader considers defending Palestine as a full religious duty and believes that any kind of governance and rule by anyone other than the Palestinians as an instance of usurpation....

This exhibition is a must see. From The Telegraph:

Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery, has promised it will "set our imaginations alight".

I prefer a mere Vermeer, but what do I know? And what about forgeries? Here's one I tried to pass off as a Warhol, but they weren't buying it:

And they wouldn't accept my invisible entry fee either.

Among the chief attractions is a bare pillar which Andy Warhol once briefly stepped on, which Mr Rugoff said would allow viewers to be in the presence of the artist's "celebrity aura".

There are two works by American conceptual artist Tom Friedman: 1000 Hours of Staring, a blank piece of paper which Mr Friedman made into art by looking at it repeatedly over a five-year period, and Untitled (A Curse), an empty space which has been cursed by a witch.

Works by Klein, the French artist who pioneered the concept of invisible art in the 1950s, are also included along with a series of typed instructions by Ono telling viewers to imagine they are looking at art.

Other exhibits include Jeppe Heine's Invisible Labyrinth, an invisible maze through which visitors are directed by instructions issued via headphones, and a movie by Jay Chung which he spent two years shooting with no film in his camera.

Mosque leaders in Rochdale and Dewsbury pronounced the exhibition offensive to Muslims on the grounds that it contained pictures of invisible naked twelve-year-old girls: "Portraits of living creatures -- even invisible -- are haram, and Allah SWT knows best." Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Canterbury admitted that he saw invisible art but through a glass darkly.

Exaggerated self-criticism would be a harmless luxury of civilization if there were no enemy at the gate condemning democracy’s very existence. But it becomes dangerous when it portrays its mortal enemy as always being in the right. Extravagant criticism is a good propaganda device in internal politics. But if it is repeated long enough, it is finally believed. And where will the citizens of democratic societies find reasons to resist the enemy outside if they are persuaded from childhood that there civilization is merely an accumulation of failures and a monstrous imposture?  -- Francois Revel

Last week I posted an entry on CAMERA’s blog, Snapshots, about the monomaniacal obsession exhibited by the overseas arm of two mainline Protestant churches – the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ.

In the blog entry, I detailed how the newsfeed of the Common Global Ministries of these two churches encourages people to focus intensely on Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians while downplaying the mistreatment of Christians in the Middle East. In 2011 and 2012, approximately 35 percent of the links on this newsfeed are to articles that deal with this conflict.

By way of comparison, less than two percent of the articles posted on the newsfeed deal with Syria, where more than 12,000 people have been killed in fighting between rebels and the Assad regime in the past 15 months. And Nigeria, where Christians have been attacked for years by Islamists intent on imposing Shariah, is hardly even mentioned in this newsfeed.[i]

In this newsfeed, reality is inverted. Israel, which sets the gold standard for human rights in the Middle East, is portrayed as a monstrous nation while the palpable misdeeds of its adversaries are ignored.

In light of this, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ has become part of the campaign to de-legitimize Israel in the minds of the American people and to demoralize the supporters of the Jewish state in the United States.[ii] In other words the Global Ministries of the UCC and the Disciples of Christ has been enlisted in a campaign of cognitive warfare against Israel and ultimately, the United States.

As detailed by Stuart Green, Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy in his dissertation on cognitive warfare (linked above), Israel’s and America’s adversaries have rightly concluded that they cannot defeat the U.S. or Israel in a straight up military fight. In order to overcome this reality, Islamists have focused their efforts from the battlefield, from the physical world, into the ideological arena.

In this campaign, the institutions we rely on to give us the information, knowledge and spiritual strength and discipline we need to govern ourselves and defend ourselves from outside ideological challenge – our newspapers, our colleges, and yes, even our churches – are used against us. They are enlisted in an effort into getting us to believe that our societies are no good, our history is made up of one episode of oppression and violence after another, and that our belief in ourselves and individual rights and freedom is misplaced and that the civilization we live in is not worthy of a defense against those hate it. We are encouraged to believe that even thinking we have enemies who must be defeated, not appeased, is the hallmark of a disturbed, uncivilized and uncouth mind.

In the story told by these institutions, we are encouraged to believe that the only way we can atone for our sins is to throw Israel under the bus, keep our mouths shut about Islam’s impact on human rights and pretend it’s a religion of peace and tolerance when events in Muslim-majority countries give us good reason to think it is not.

One of the most salient characteristics of the Islamist campaign is that Israel is accused of crimes its adversaries are guilty of. Israel is accused of ethnic cleansing and genocide while the ethnic cleansing of Christians from Iraq has been largely ignored. Israel is condemned for occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip while Syria’s occupation of Lebanon, which lasted for many years, was ignored or downplayed. And the deaths of Palestinian civilians as a result of Israeli attacks on terrorists are condemned and highlighted again and again. The fact that groups like Hamas and Hezbollah attack Israeli civilians while hiding behind civilians, thus guaranteeing civilian casualties, is ignored.

In this campaign, Israeli efforts to defend the Jewish state are ideologically constrained while the violent actions of its adversaries are given free rein. As a result of this campaign we have forgotten a basic fact of life in the modern era: Zionism as a movement and Israel as a state exhibit more regard for the humanity of their adversaries than any other political movement or state in the Middle East. Israel treats its enemies, dissidents and minorities and its own citizens with greater humanity than any other country in the region. And yet it is the country that is the singular target of the BDS campaign on college campuses and churches.

To top it off, some of Israel’s adversaries are promoting a one-state solution as a way to improve the lives of its non-Jewish citizens and the rights of Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

If you really think that dismantling the Jewish state will improve the rights of Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East then why begin (and end) the process with Israel? How about dismantling Syria to save the Alawites (who right now are using the government to oppress the Muslim majority in their country), Egypt to save the Copts from the Arab-Muslim majority, and Iraq and Turkey to save the Kurds?

This cognitive assault on Israel is part of a larger propaganda campaign against the West, in which we are being cowed, bullied and blackmailed into abandoning our heritage, our dignity and our future by people who have no respect for human rights or freedom, and they are using the language of human rights and freedom to achieve this goal. It is really quite astonishing, really.

But as astonishing as it is, we’ve seen campaigns like this before. In his book, How Democracies Perish (Doubleday 1984) Jean-Francois Revel detailed a similar process by which the United States (and the West) was attacked on an ideological level by communists during the Cold War. The Soviets used institutions like the World Council of Churches to attack the legitimacy of Western governments while protecting the USSR from criticism.

Clearly a similar process is taking place today, except this time it’s not the Communists, but Islamists, who exhibit the same contempt for human rights that the Communists did a few decades ago. The main thrust of Revel’s book is that self-critical democracies are at a disadvantage when confronted with totalitarian movements that cannot be held accountable by the people they dominate. “Self-criticism is,” Revel writes, “of course, one of the vital springs of democratic civilization and one of the reasons for its superiority over all other systems. But constant self-condemnation, often with little or no foundation, is a source of weakness and inferiority in dealing with an imperial power that has dispensed with scruples.”[iii]

As it turned out, Communism fell, largely because people didn’t want to live like that. But the collapse didn’t happen until after millions of lives were ruined over the course of several decades. Still, Revel’s book reminds us is that totalitarians can work magic when it comes to spreading propaganda, but for some reason lead the people they govern to physical and moral disaster. And yet totalitarians never lack for people willing to work on their behalf, spreading their message in free societies.

And despite the millions who suffered and died under communism, the people who worked to oppose Communism were depicted as angry, bitter cranks, as if Joseph McCarthy was typical of the entire anti-Communist movement. People like Whittaker Chambers, who risked everything to expose the evils of Communism were assailed in a vicious and cruel manner by their adversaries even after it became clear that indeed, the Communists were monsters, and Alger Hiss was indeed a spy for the Soviets, and that he wasn’t the only one.

And just as the word “anti-Communist” is, in many places, still synonymous with crank, or nutjob, as anyone who opposes Islamist imperialism and expansionism is accused of Islamophobia.

In the current Islamist campaign against the West, our desire for peace, our empathy, our commitment to human rights and our practice of self-criticism are being used as weapons against us just as they were used during the Cold War. The goal is to convince us to abandon the victims of Islamist violence in the name of peace. This is what happened at the UN’s conference on racism that took place in Durban South Africa in 2001 where Israel was demonized and the plight of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East was ignored.

The process goes like this: First we are encouraged to feel empathy for the Palestinians, Palestinian Christians especially, as if they are a true representation of the entire society. Then we are barred from condemning the misdeeds of the Palestinians and their leaders because they have less power than the Israelis.[iv] Then we are encouraged to focus solely on Israel’s misdeeds. This gives us leave to feel contempt for Israel and its supporters (many of them Jews). What starts with empathy for the Palestinians ends with contempt for Israel and Jews.

And once we’ve convinced ourselves that Israel has no right to exist because of its sins, we will have to acknowledge that if Israel has no right to defend itself against Islamism, then how can we justify defending the nations in which we live given the enormity of our sins?[v]

The Global Ministries newsfeed serves as an electronic archive of this campaign.

Peter Makari, Cognitive Warrior

What was really shocking about the newsfeed is the near absence of articles about the plight of the Coptic Christians in Egypt. This is simply incomprehensible that Global Ministries would remain silent about their plight because the organization’s executive, Rev. Dr. Peter Makari is an Egyptian American, whose father, Victor, immigrated to the United States to work for the Presbyterian Church (USA). In the newsfeed, less than 10 percent of the links are to articles dealing with Egypt, where Christians are regularly attacked by violent mobs and where Islamists are poised to take control of the government. Couldn’t Rev. Dr. Peter Makari have posted a few links to highlight the suffering of his fellow Christians in Egypt?

It is not as if he doesn’t know about their suffering. His expertise on this subject is one of the reasons why he serves as executive for Europe and the Middle East for Global Ministries. An Egyptian American, Makari is fluent in Arabic, has a Ph.D. in politics with a concentration in Middle East Studies from New York University. Syracuse University Press published his dissertation on Christian-Muslim relations in Egypt as a book titled Conflict & Cooperation: Christian Muslim Relations in Contemporary Egypt in 2007. According to the book jacket for this text, Makari “has lived in the Middle East, including Egypt and Cyprus, for many years.”

Makari put his expertise on display in his review of Paul Merkley’s book Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001). In his review which appeared in the Journal of Palestine Studies in 2004, Makari recounts in painstaking detail some the “errors and inconsistencies” in Merkley’s text:

A comprehensive listing is impossible in this space, but a small sampling of the author’s treatment of Arabic words and names gives us a sense. Merkley transliterates the Arabic word for Islamic law variously as “shar’ia (p. 84), “Shar’ia” (p. 91), and “shari’a” (p. 92). Similarly, he uses “Qu’ran” and “Qur’an” (p. 105). Merkley provides an incorrect Arabic transliteration of People of the Book, “ahl al-khatib” (p. 107), instead of “ahl al-kitab.” Later on the same page, he transcribes the Arabic for “protected” as “dhimmii,” and on the next page as “dhimmi” (p. 108). He refers to the bishop of Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem as Riad Abu El Assal (pp. 71, 73), when the bishop’s name is Riah. I could go on.

To be fair, Makari, took advantage of an opening Merkley gave to reviewers when he complained in his text about commentators who “simply will not stoop to enter into the thought-world of the adversary, even for purposes of understanding their arguments or learning how to spell them.” Merkley gave his critics an opening and Makari charged right in.

Still, there is something pedantic and evasive about Makari’s takedown. No matter how you spell it, Islamic law regarding non-Muslims represents a serious human rights problem, particularly for Jews and Christians living in Muslim-majority countries.

It is one of the reasons why Jews and their supporters are so adamant about the need for a Jewish state. It’s why Christians and other religious minorities are calling for the creation of an autonomous province in the Ninevah Plains in Iraq. It is why Christians are leaving Egypt and Iraq by the thousands.

Simply put, Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia are open-air gulags for Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East. Under normal circumstances, Christians interested in promoting human rights and well-being would address this problem, but many of them don’t.

This was the point Merkley was trying to get at in his book even if he got his transliteration for “People of the Book” wrong, put his apostrophes in the wrong place and wasn’t consistent with his use of italics.

Makari does not respond to this issue in a substantive way in his review, as if he had nothing more to say in response to Merkley’s concerns other than to point out his misspellings. Again, this is odd because the status of Christians in Muslim-majority environment – at least in Egypt – is of great interest to Makari. As noted above, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation, and eventually, a book about the subject.

Makari’s Book

Makari’s text highlights the prospects for peace between the Coptic minority and Muslim majority in Egypt. Makari states “the focus of the book is on examples and incidents of cooperation” in Egypt. Makari does not completely ignore Muslim hostility toward Christians, which has clearly become a problem with the rise of Islamism in the 20^th century, and states that despite his book’s emphasis on cooperation, “one should not be lulled into a false sense that the state of affairs is harmonious.”

A close reading of Makari’s text however, reveals a serious problem – a profound tendency to downplay or ignore Islamist hostility toward Jews. In his book Makari describes Sayyd Tantawi, the Grand Mufti of Al Ahzar Univeristy in Cairo, who died of a heart attack on March 10, 2010, as one of several “Egyptian Muslim religious officials who have, since the 1990s, expressed fraternal feelings with Egypt's non-Muslims.”

Makari reports that Tantawi wrote “books on various topics, including Israel in the Holy Qur'an and Sunna” and describes Tantawi as a “moderate Islamic voice” who has spoken of “equality in rights and responsibilities” for Muslims and non-Muslims in Egypt, despite the fact that he supported “the imperative that Copts pay the jizya, a kind of tax paid by non-Muslims in the Muslim community to retain their protect status as ahl adh-dhimma.” (Makari, 2007, pages 98-99). (Remember the name of the book Makari mentions. It’s important.)

On page 100 of his text, Makari writes, Tantawi “has remained steadfast in his call for good relations between Egypt's Muslims and Christians, and among all people generally.”

The sheikh sounds like a good guy, doesn’t he. There’s just one problem. The late sheikh, simply put, was a notorious and inveterate anti-Semite who mined the Koran and the life of Muhammad for passages and teachings that justified Islamic Jew-hatred.

He did this in a 700-page text The Children of Israel in the Qur'an and the Sunna, originally published in Cairo in the 1960s and republished in 1986. (It’s the same book Makari mentioned in his text on Christian-Muslim relations.)

In this text, which has been excerpted in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: from Sacred Texts to Solemn History edited by Andrew G. Bostom (Prometheus Press, 2008), Tantawi uses passages from the Koran to depict Jews as enemies of God, his prophets and of Islam itself. In one particularly troubling passage Tantawi writes:

Qur'an describes people of the Book in general terms, with negative attributes like their fanaticism in religion, following a false path. It describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e., killing the prophets of God, corrupting his words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people's wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their […] deep rooted lasciviousness.

Later, after quoting some passages from the Koran, Tantawi writes “This means that not all Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims; the bad ones do not.” (Legacy, page 394). Elsewhere, Tantawi writes that the Jews “initiated hostilities against the Islamic call in Medina.” He continues: “They took every measure they could to extinguish its fire and vitiate its power.” Later he writes, “we are not exaggerating when we say that the Jews left no stone unturned in the attempt to snuff out the Islamic call, nor was any means considered out of bounds in order to denigrate Islam and its Prophet—they tried everything they could.” (Legacy, 399)

It doesn’t stop there. Matthias Küntzel, author of Jihad and Jew Hatred: Islamism and the Roots of 9/11, writes that “Tantawi, the highest Sunni Muslim theologian, quotes Hitlers remark in Mein Kampf that “in resisting the Jew, I am doing the work of the Lord.” Küntzel continues: “He praises The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, noting without the slightest trace of sympathy that “after the publication of the Protocols in Russia, some 10,000 Jews were killed.”

Tantawi made a number of other troubling statements. For example, in 2002, Tantawi declared that Jews are “the enemies of Allah, descendents of apes and pigs.” The following year, Tantawi issued an edict declaring that Jews should no longer be described in such a manner, apparently under pressure from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

While Tantawi did condemn the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 he later affirmed terrorism against Israelis. In 2002, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI),  reported that Tantawi “declared that martyrdom (suicide) operations and the killing of civilians are permitted acts and that more such attacks should be carried out. Tantawi's positions were posted on http://www.lailatalqadr.com/, a website associated with Al­Azhar.” This is MEMRI's translation of website:

“The great Imam of Al­Azhar Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, demanded that the Palestinian people, of all factions, intensify the martyrdom operations [i.e. suicide attacks] against the Zionist enemy, and described the martyrdom operations as the highest form of Jihad operations. He says that the young people executing them have sold Allah the most precious thing of all."

"[Sheikh Tantawi] emphasized that every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an Islamic commandment, until the people of Palestine regain their land and cause the cruel Israeli aggression to retreat…"

This same MEMRI report adds that “It should be noted that a March 18, 2002 demonstration at Al ­Azhar University featured eight students who had been trained to carry out suicide attacks against Israelis.” In other words, terrorist recruiting took place at the university where Tantawi served as Grand Mufti.

How could Makari, who found so many mistakes in Merkley’s book about Christian Zionism, miss these obvious problems with Tantawi’s career and the book he wrote? Did Makari even read Tantawi’s book about the Jews or did he cite it without having read it just to make it look like he had done his research? If Makari did read Tantawi’s book, but missed its obvious anti-Semitism, just how good is his command of Arabic?

Whatever its cause, Makari’s failure to acknowledge Tantawi’s notorious Jew-hatred seems like a pretty substantial error, something a lot more grievous than Merkley’s typographical, spelling and translation errors. Merkley’s errors can be fixed with some copy-editing. Fixing Makari’s omissions would require a complete reworking of the text in question; a reworking that would call into question his credibility. These simply are not the facts an expert would omit.

Talk about straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

Bystanders to Impending Catastrophe

Makari, for all his expertise on the Middle East is simply not a reliable source of information about Christian-Muslim relations and cannot be trusted to describe the problems faced by religious and ethnic minorities in the region, Egypt especially. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that at their last General Synods that took place in 2011, neither the United Church of Christ nor the Disciples of Christ said a word about the hostility and violence endured by Christians in Egypt, Iraq or Nigeria. They did however, pass resolutions condemning Islamophobia. Clearly, these two denominations have followed Makari’s lead and have failed to respond an impending catastrophe in the Middle East.

This silence is shameful. At a recent event titled “Pluralism, Peace and Prayer,” sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, the American Islamic Congress and the Boston Theological Institute, Elizabeth Prodromou and Samuel Tadros addressed a very troubling question: “Do Coptic Christians have a future in Egypt?” Their testimony was not very encouraging.

Tadros, a research fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for religious freedom, said that sine the collapse of state power with the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak last year, there is a growing culture of impunity in Egyptian society. This gives Salafists a much freer hand and as a result attacks against Coptic Christians are increasingly. Christians in Egypt worry about their neighbors attacking them, especially if this culture of impunity gives way to active of encouragement of violence.

Tadros described restrictions imposed on Copts who wanted to renovate a church in Aswan. These restrictions denied congregants the right to install a bell on their church building. They were not allowed use a microphone during church services, place a cross on top of their church and were prohibited from even putting a dome on their church.

In sum, Copts simply cannot visibly live as Christians and must accept the idea of second-class citizenship if they are to remain adherents of their faith in Egypt.

Tadros also described a brutal attack suffered by a Coptic high school student. The attacked was led by the classroom instructor. The other students joined in.

The boy who was attacked had a crucifix around his neck. The teacher asked him to take it off, prompting the student to ask “How am I to take this cross off?” while pointing to a tattoo of a cross on his wrist. The boy was beaten to death.

Tadros also described how Christians are being imprisoned for insulting Islam. One Christian could not even enjoy the right to council because of a mob of Muslim lawyers barred the entrance of his lawyers into the courthouse. In sum, Tadros described an atmosphere of increasing hostility toward Christians that threatens to drive Christians underground, out of the country or into Islam. For poorer Copts, there is no way out.

During her presentation, an audience member asked Prodomou, former Vice Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and professor at Boston University, what will happen in Syria if the Assad regime falls. She didn’t want to predict the future, but did say this: “If Assad stays, it will be bad. If he goes, it will be worse.”

Clearly, there is a human rights catastrophe in the making, unfolding right before our eyes, but for some reason, Peter Makari and the two churches he works for cannot be bothered to respond in a forceful way to events as they happen, unless of course they happen in the West Bank or Gaza and can be blamed on the Jewish state.

From the Toronto Star

SANAA—A suicide bomber blew himself up at a military parade rehearsal Monday in Yemen’s capital, killing 96 soldiers in one of the deadliest attacks in the city in years, officials said. Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch claimed responsibility for the attack.

The group said in an emailed statement that it had targeted the defence minister, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Nasser Ahmed, who arrived at the heavily secured city square to greet the assembled troops just minutes before the blast ripped through the area.

The bombing left a scene of carnage, with scores of bleeding soldiers lying on the ground as ambulances rushed to the scene. Several severed heads were on the pavement amid large pools of blood and human remains.

This is a real massacre,” said Ahmed Sobhi, one of the soldiers who witnessed the explosion. “There are piles of torn body parts, limbs and heads. This is unbelievable. I am still shaking. The place turned into hell. I thought this only happens in movies.”

The drill was a rehearsal for a parade for the celebration of Yemen’s National Day on Tuesday. Soldiers hand-picked by their commanders from different branches of the military had been practising together for the parade for a week, Sobhi said, citing that as evidence that the attacker was a soldier and not an infiltrator.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula vowed, “This is only the beginning of Jihad,” and said that its militants will continue staging attacks against the Yemeni leadership. It said the bombing was meant to take revenge for the government’s military offensive in a swath of southern Yemen seized by the militant movement last year.

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, was the site of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors. There have also been a spate of assaults on the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, including a 2008 bombing that killed 10 Yemeni guards and four civilians.

In the wake of a separate attack on Sunday, the Pentagon confirmed that three civilian contractors helping train Yemen’s coast guard were shot at Sunday in Yemen. Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a defence department spokesman, said Monday that injuries to the party were minor.

Sentencing in this case. From the Yorkshire Evening Post and The Star  

A Dewsbury man has been jailed for 11 years for raping a drunken 15-year-old girl who was filmed as she was sexually assaulted by a number of men. (Mohammed) Ali Rehman, 26, was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court for his part in the attack on the teenager in May 2010, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

The schoolgirl was "treated as little more than an object, something to use and abuse", an earlier hearing was told. Rehman admitted raping the victim earlier this year.

Sharon Beattie, prosecuting, told the court that the schoolgirl and a friend had been drinking before they went to Rehman’s house in Tanhouse Street, Dewsbury, to buy some cannabis from him. Her friend left and once alone with Rehman and at least four other men, she was taken up to a bedroom where she remembers Rehman telling one of the other men: “You have ten minutes with her.”

After a few minutes, Rehman returned and raped the young girl himself.  Miss Beattie said: “Somehow the men in the house were alerted that she was being sought ... and Rehman physically picked her up and carried her to another house.”

Once they arrived at Younas’ house in Textile Street, the victim was given more alcohol, and she was once more abused. She was then moved again, taken in a taxi driven by a third defendant, Larasab Hussain. It was at his house in Headfield Road that the group of men filmed the teenager being abused.

She was found by police back at Rehman’s house at 9am the next day.

Another man, Faisar Younas, who admitted sexual activity with a child, was jailed for four years. A third defendant, Larasab Hussain, will be sentenced later. Earlier this year, the trial was halted after pleas were entered by Rehman, Younas and Hussain.

 Mohammed Ali Rehman left, Faisar Younas right.

From The Sun

HOOK-handed Abu Hamza has changed his name by deed poll to try to shake off his hate-preaching past.The jailed rabble-rouser now wishes to be known as Mustafa Kamal Mustafa.

Staff at London’s top security Belmarsh Prison, where he is awaiting extradition to the US, have been instructed to address him by his new name instead of Abu Hamza al-Masri.

Last night a Whitehall source said: “He is trying to shed the enormous amount of baggage associated with his old name. He can call himself what he likes officially but he will be forever known as Abu Hamza.” He was actually named Mustafa Kamal Mustafa at birth in Egypt. But when he became involved in Islamic extremism he switched to Abu Hamza — which in Arabic means “strong and steadfast”.

The Prison Service said a serious deed poll name change “should be acknowledged officially”. European Court judges ruled Hamza, 54, can be sent to America to stand trial on terror charges which carry up to 99 years’ jail.

He has until July 10 to appeal. On Sunday, we revealed Hamza was issued a new British passport by bungling officials — without them checking with the Home Secretary. It was returned to the Identity and Passport Service

UNWRA Palestinian Refugee logo                 US Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL)

The Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) has been front running support for a new initiative by US Sen. Mark Kirk (R. IL) who has recovered from a stroke to return to the Senate to fight the legislative battle in Congress against the  perennial  Palestinan demands for “rights of return”.  Kirk is pushing a proposal to have the State Department conduct a census of the numbers of Palestinian refugees in those UNWRA  camps to exclude  several  ineligible generations.  From the start of the UNWRA program  in 1950, the population of Palestinian refugees  zoomed from 750,000 to more than 5 million, today. We noted  in a recent post  about Al Nakba day, what Arabs refer to as the catastrophe of the Israeli victory in the 1948-1949 War for Independence that spawned the UNWRA program:

Palestinain refugees have languished for nearly four generations in the squalor of UNWRA refugee camps in Arab countries surrounding Israel and in the Palestinian territories on the West Bank and in Gaza. The camps are unwanted eyesores. The residents are despised brethren in host Arab countries without absorption, jobs, adequate housing and no future.  There were originally [750,000] Palestinian refugees displaced at the conclusion of the War for Independence.  Now there are  [five] million living in UNWRA camps. Other refugee groups in camps administered by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees have been resettled, but not the Palestinian refugees. The UNWRA camps are cauldrons of hateful indoctrination supported by the generosity of international donors. The United States has contributed in excess of one third of the total annual cost approximately [$655] million [more than $4.4 billion contributed since inception of UNWRA].

 Cliff May , FDD President started off the campaign  with a  National Review On-line article on May 10^th, “The Real Palestinian Refugee Problem”.  May noted:

In 1950, UNRWA defined a refugee as someone who had “lost his home and his means of livelihood” during the war launched by Arab/Muslim countries in response to Israel’s declaration of independent statehood. Fifteen years later, UNRWA decided — against objections from the United States — to include as refugees the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of those who left Israel. And in 1982, UNRWA further extended eligibility to all subsequent generations of descendants — forever.

Under UNRWA’s rules, even if the descendant of a Palestinian refugee has become a citizen of another state, he’s still a refugee. For example, of the 2 million refugees registered in Jordan, all but 167,000 hold Jordanian citizenship. (In fact, approximately 80 percent of Jordan’s population is Palestinian — not surprising, since Jordan occupies more than three-fourths of the area historically referred to as Palestine.) By adopting such a policy, UNRWA is flagrantly violating the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which states clearly that a person shall cease to be considered a refugee if he has “acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality.”

But UNRWA’s plan is to continue expanding — rather than shrinking — the Palestinian refugee population ad infinitum. According to UNHCR projections, by 2030 UNRWA’s refugee list will reach 8.5 million. By 2060 there will be 25 times the number registered by UNRWA in 1950 — even though not one of those who actually left Israel is likely to still be breathing.

Everyone understands what it would mean if all these refugees were actually to be granted a “right to return” to Israel. “On numbers of refugees, it is illogical to ask Israel to take five million, or indeed one million,” Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas said on March 24, 2009. “That would mean the end of Israel.”

May’s colleague at FDD, Jonathan Schanzer, Vice President for Research  had a Status Update  of May’s piece published in Foreign Policy  on May 21^st, just prior to today’s markup  of  Senate legislation with an Amendment by Sen. Kirk that  “could slash the number of Palestinian refugees -- and open a world of controversy.”   Schanzer notes:

In recent years, politicians and policy wonks, including one former UNRWA administrator, have called for UNRWA reform. The agency hasn't merely demurred; it has girded for battle. UNRWA set up shop in Washington with two Hill-savvy professionals, despite the fact that its operations are entirely based in the Middle East, anticipating the need for what looks a full-scale lobby effort to defend its mission. The agency even toyed with changing its name last year in an attempt to burnish its image in the West.

UNRWA's time to defend itself has unquestionably arrived. The Kirk amendment would require the secretary of state to report to Congress on how many Palestinians serviced by UNRWA are true refugees from wars past -- those who could prove that they were personally displaced. That number is believed to be closer to 30,000 people. This new tally would then become the focus of America's assistance to UNRWA for refugee issues.

Despite congressional Republicans' current fervor to rein in America's out-of-control debt, the bill's proponents do not call for a full cutoff to the descendants. Rather, they seek to ensure that UNRWA services keep flowing to those who are needy. The United States would simply not view them as refugees -- just people living in the West Bank or Gaza and below the poverty line.

But funding for the future would not be guaranteed. As Kirk's office explains, Congress will soon need to consider tough questions, like whether U.S. taxpayers should be footing the bill for welfare programs in the West Bank and Gaza, or whether such services should be provided by the Palestinian Authority.

        [ . . ]

In Washington, a coalition is still forming. Rep. Howard Berman (D- CA), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, broadly backs this idea but has yet to introduce language on the House side. However, bipartisanship may not be enough: The State Department, which pledged an additional $10 million in UNRWA in March, is expected to put up a fight. The legislation would undoubtedly anger some of Washington's Arab allies, and Foggy Bottom tries to avoid that at all costs.

In short, the Kirk legislation would strip Palestinian the descendants of their political symbolism.It would be a landmark for this generations-old conflict, but whether it paves the way for peace or conflict remains to be seen. There are few more potent symbols of the Palestinian cause. Don't expect Palestinians to give it up easily.

Sen. Kirk’s interest in reining in the UNWRA program goes back to his days as a US House Representative.

When we interviewed him in 2008, the topic of the UNWRA camps came up.  He noted:

 When we use the term refugees we think about a person forced across an international border against their will. That applies to all refugees everywhere in the world except for people who left what is Israel. The definition for their refugee status is anyone pushed across international borders or their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and all descendents thereof. We end up with a “refugee” community that has never lived in Israel and now may be two to three generations from this bitter experience inside Israel proper. UNWRA is different. When you think about a UN agency conducting humanitarian operations. You think about Mexicans, Bolivians, Swiss and Japanese employees under the aegis of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. But UNWRA is run by 98% Palestinians. They have deep connections to the politics of both West Bank and Gaza including Hamas, the terrorist organization.

We wish Sen. Kirk continued success in his endeavors to roll back the UNWRA program eligibility and funding. Hopefully today’s mark up session will be the start of that long overdue process.

German Iranian Rapper Shehin Najahi

Source: Fox News

German Iranian-born rapper Shehin Najahi has more than 200,000 fans in the Islamic Republic.  He regularly uses the internet to criticize the corrupt Islamic Republic regime.  This time, he has gone too far. He’s reached out to  Ali al Hadi al-Naqi,  the 10^th of the Twelver Imams murdered in 868 C.E. by poisoning on orders of the Abbasid Caliph, using scatological lyrics against the regime in Tehran. That earned him two death fatwas from Shiite clerics in the Islamic offering a bounty of more than $100,000 for Najahi’s killing.  That has sent him into hiding in Germany, while his protectors have called foul in the Federal Republic whose constitution allegedly protects free speech.  This has angered more than 100,000 ex-pat Iranians living in the Federal Republic.

Here are excerots from a Fox News report, "Iranian Rapper in hiding, but defiant after call for his death":

The Iranian-born rapper marked for death for insulting a ninth-century imam and criticizing Tehran's regime as corrupt is determined to press his message to young fans, according to the German author who hid Shahin Najafi in his home.

Najafi, whose song "Ay Naghi" brought two fatwas, or calls for his death, within days of its release on Facebook, will not be intimidated, though he knows he cannot perform live, according to Gunter Wallraff, a non-fiction writer who hid Najafi until German police found him and placed him in a safe house.

“On the contrary, he feels responsible to himself and to his many young followers, especially in Iran, not to give in,” Wallraff said in an exclusive interview with FoxNews.com. “The death threats show that this regime needs the image of an enemy because it can no longer offer any values and is therefore looking for helpless victims.”

Najafi, 32, who is a German citizen and has lived in Cologne, is a star in his homeland, where he has 200,000 fans on his Facebook page. He fled to Germany in 2005 after being sentenced to a hundred lashes and three years in jail. But his new song brought the ultimate sentence because it is considered an insult to a ninth-century Shiite imam, Ali al Hadi al-Naqi, also known as Imam Naghi. Shiites venerate al-Naqi, a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. An Iranian website, Shia Online, has offered $100,000 to anyone who kills Najafi.

“We asked the foreign minister to make a statement of support for Shahin Najafi and for democratic Iranians who live here and to condemn the fatwa,” said Ulrike Becker, founder of Stop the Bomb, a European coalition that opposes Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. She referred to the fatwa as “a declaration of war against our values – our democracy.”

Najafi’s song calls on the revered Shia figure to come back and help the Iranians with problems like “hollow slogans” and “Chinese-made prayer rugs.”                            

The song, which is laced with profanity, includes the lyric: "I swear to you on bland and hollow slogans; Naghi, I swear on this shifting flocks of people; They say “Long Live” in the morning and “Death to” at night; On the heroes of fictional stories.”

        [. . .]

Najafi claims the regime wants to silence him because he deals with subjects that are taboo in puritanical Iran, such as sexuality, gays and drug addiction. He knows his career outlook is bleak.

“I can’t continue my work because a singer must appear in public," he told the paper. "I can’t do that anymore. I was advised to leave Cologne, but where should I go and how?”

Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, a senior fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy and one of Germany’s leading authorities on Iran, said fatwas can inhibit free speech far outside Iran's borders.

“This strategy is menacing the world,” said Wahdat-Hagh. “Fatwas are declaring war on the principles of free speech in the free world.”

This looks like another example of the long arm of Iranian Shiite Mahdist Blasphemy Codes threatening to silence what we consider protected speech under doctrine of the US Constitution. Shades of the late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Khomenei’s death threats against British Booker –prize winning author, Sir Salman Rushdie over his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses. We hope that German Iranian rapper Najafi  has similar protections under the German constitution, as he has now entered 24/7 federal police protection.

One month after the event police release CCTV photographs of persons wanted in connection with the attacks on the March for England St George's Day parade in Brighton last month. From the Argus

Pictures have been released of five people wanted by police investigating violence which flared during the March for England through Brighton last month.

A 10-year-old girl and two police officers were injured after bottles were hurled at the fifth annual nationalist gathering.

Sussex Police said there was a "considerable level of violence" directed at the 140 marchers and attempts were made to block them at several points along the route.

Mounted police were drafted in to maintain calm but Superintendent Steve Whitton said it was clear some people were intent on not protesting peacefully.

Apologists for the UAF, Antifa, the unions and the rest were denying that a child was hit. Had a child been hit by a flying bottle, they insisted it would have been reported in the Argus and mentioned by the police. That it was not in the immediate aftermath of the violence meant that. for them, it never happened.
I hope that now it is in the Argus, with photographs of people wanted for questioning, that they are prepared to believe the statements of people who were there under the barrage of bottles filled with urine, glass bottles pulled out of green and friendly 'community' re-cycling bins, dog and horse excrement picked up in plastic bags then thrown. 

From The Yorkshire Post, The Guardian and The Telegraph

The sister of a Bradford-born schoolgirl who went missing nine years ago saw their parents kill her, a court heard today. Iftikhar and Farzana murdered their 17-year-old daughter because they believed she was bringing shame on the family by having regular contact with westernised boys against their wishes, the court heard.

Today, as her parents Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed went on trial for murder, prosecutor Andrew Edis QC told Chester Crown Court they had killed her because she refused to obey them. Her parents controlled her so she didn't have freedom of movement, the court heard. She ran away from home in 2002 and early 2003, but always returned. In the year before she died, the prosecution said, her parents "embarked on a campaign of domestic violence and abuse directed at her and designed to force her to conform so that she behaved in a way that was expected".

Opening the case against the Ahmeds, Mr Edis told the jury of seven men and five women: “The defendants, having spent the best part of 12 months trying to really crush her, realised they were never going to be able to succeed and finally killed her because her conduct dishonoured the family, bringing shame on them.”

The court heard that Shafilea was "recaptured or abducted" by her father outside her school in February 2003 after she had run away from home. Shafilea, he said, was taken to Pakistan later in February 2003 and was "appalled" by the prospect of an arranged marriage to a man in rural Pakistan. She swallowed bleach at her grandparents' house in Pakistan as an act of self-harm or out of desperation. When she returned to the UK, she was taken to hospital as an emergency case and needed regular treatment on a stricture of her oesophagus.

Shafilia’s badly-decomposed body was found nearly five months later beside a river in the Lake District. Mr Edis said police carried out a lengthy investigation but failed to solve the mystery of her death.

However, in August 2010, Shafilia’s younger sister, Rukish, claimed she had been a witness to the killing. It was, said Mr Edis, the final piece in the puzzle. “Until that moment they had no direct evidence of murder,”
Rukish, who has since changed her name to Alesha, originally made the allegation to friends shortly after her sister’s disappearance. But she then retracted the claim and would not repeat it for another seven years.

She did so after being arrested for her part in a robbery at her parents’ home. Miss Ahmed, now 23, had been prosecuted over the crime and pleaded guilty.

Mr Edis told the jury: “You will have to decide whether you can really believe what she said or not. If she is telling the truth, she has lived for the last nine years under the most extraordinary circumstances. If she is telling the truth this whole family, since September 2003, has been living in extraordinary circumstances. What an extraordinary thing to say of your parents, if it is true, that you were there and watching them murder your sister.”

The prosecution alleges that her parents also withdrew money from her bank account that she'd saved from a part-time job.

The Ahmeds deny murder and the trial continues.

So farewell, then, Robin
Gibb, brother of the late
Maurice Gibb
Stayin' alive. That was your
Catch phrase. But not your
Strong point

© E. J. Gibb Thribb Throbb, aged 17¾

David G.  Littman  1933 - 2012

We are saddened to report the passing today after a long illness of David Littman in Geneva, Switzerland.  A funeral will be held in Geneva on Wednesday, May 23^rd with interment at the Jewish Cemetery in adjacent Veyrier, France. A memorial in his honor will be held subsequently.

The following is an excerpt from his biography:

David Gerald Littman was born in London on 4 July 1933. He was an historian and a human rights activist at the United Nations (Geneva) from 1986. For several years he was main representative of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ). In February 1992, he joined veteran human rights activist René Wadlow (editor of Transnational Perspectives), main representative of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), then the World Federalist Movement (WFM). Since 1997  he was  affilliated with of the Association of World Citizens (AWC) and the Association for World Education (AWE), for whom Littman was accredited as representative.

EDUCATION AND BACKGROUND

Littman – the youngest son of Joseph Aaron Littman – graduated in 1951 from Canford School, Dorset where he excelled more in sports than studies. A preference for history brought him to Trinity College Dublin where he earned a "Moderatores" (B.A. with honors) and an M.A. in Modern History and Political Science. From mid-October 1955, he toured historical and archaeological sites in Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel, returning to London in late March 1956.  While preparing for a family business career, he decided on postgraduate studies at London University's Institute of Archaeology, as one of two students under Kathleen Kenyon, director of the famed Jericho excavations, and Max Mallowan, head of Mesopotamian archaeology. Among other sites, he excavated at Hazor (Galilee) under Professor Yigal Yadin in the summer 1958.

In September 1959 he married Gisèle Orebi, a Cairo-born, French speaking fellow student  known by her nom de plume, Bat Ye’or, who had been forced to flee Egypt in 1957 as a stateless refugee. The next year they moved to Lausanne, Switzerland. Soon after the birth of their first child, he volunteered for a delicate humanitarian mission in Morocco. From 15 March to July 24, 1961, accompanied by his wife as secretary – and their baby daughter Diana – he ran the Casablanca office of the Geneva-based international NGO for children OSE. After returning to Geneva he continued university studies, but finally abandoned all thoughts of an archaeological career in 1963 to devote more time to the family business. Two more children were born to the Littmans in 1962 and 1964.

David Littman's own own body of work was impressive, as was his activism. He facilitated the early covert migration of Jewish children from Morocco to Israel in the early 1960’s known as Operation Mural for which he was to receive the “Hero of Silence” award, the highest intelligence honor from a grateful State of Israel in  2009. That exploit was the subject of a film, Operation Mural Casablanca 1961 premiered at the San Francisco Film Festival in 2007. 

During the past few years several articles by David Littman were published  in the New English Review.

Upon hearing of Littman’s passing we wrote Bat Ye’or:

We received word on David's passing today after a valiant fight. He had great courage and you were unstinting to attend to his needs. He was a loving and courageous husband who shared your causes and interests. He was a magnificent defender of human rights for fellow Jews, Christians and others at the UN Human Rights Council and other public forums.

We were pleased to have known him as a colleague in the fight against Islamic Jihad and for Israel's rightful place in the world at large.

His activism with your assistance and support enabled a great life saving migration of Moroccan Jewish children  to Eretz Yisroel for which he received the highest honor and praise from the State of Israel.

His research, writings, speeches, and published body of work have the mark of scholarship with impeccable Churchillian turns of phrase.

He was a life partner in assisting your path breaking scholarship in dhimmitude, Eurabia and the rising Caliphate of fundamentalist Islam seeking to conquer the West through a Grand Jihad.

He was a boon companion and raconteur during our encounters and engagements here in America.

He was perhaps the most illustrious Jewish scholar athlete to have graduated from Trinity College, Dublin.

Our deepest rachmonis and condolences to you, your daughters and grandchildren.

We deeply miss our friend and colleague, David Littman, z"l (of blessed memory).

Watch this excerpt from the film Operation Mural  Casablanca 1961 with the late David Littman:

To honor the passing of David Littman we are re-publishing a post on “The Oeuvre of David Littman”, authored by Guy Milliere:

The Oeuvre of David Littman

by Guy Milliere

Translated and edited from the French and published April 1, 2012 in Dreuz.info.

David Littman, a man I deeply value is afflicted with a dread disease. I promised a long article on his work, and it is the least we can do, really the least because his work, in every sense of the term, is important. I owe him much. We owe so much more to him than we can imagine.

He stayed for years, out of modesty, in the shadow of his wife, the great talented Islamic scholar Bat Ye'or. But he has accomplished much on his own.

As a humanitarian, he has with immense courage, risked his life, helping Jews facing very difficult situations to escape, survive, and achieve freedom and dignity. He led an organization called Work to Save the Children in North Africa and the legendary Operation Mural the subject of a film by Yehuda Kaveh, released in 2007.

He founded with his wife, the Center for Information and Documentation on the Middle East in Geneva in 1970. He acted tirelessly, with enthusiasm, tenacity and intelligence given every opportunity, to address the worst monstrosities emanating from a grotesque institution, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. since replaced by the equally grotesque United Nations Council for Human Rights.

He has written several monographs on the situation of Jews and Christians in the Muslim world. Among these is "The Truth About the Mideast; Fourteen Fundamental Facts about Israel and Palestine," published in 2002 in the National Review in the U.S. Ten years later, he has lost none of his incisiveness. He edited with Yehoshafat Harkabi a book of inestimable value, Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel a critical analysis of the Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research on the subject (1971), recently republished (4th ed. 2011).

He has published, with Paul Fenton, a book called Islam. This is one of the major references on the subject. It speaks so scrupulously and detailed about the "legal and social status of Jews in Islamic Maghreb between the Middle Ages and the era of French colonization." It contains translated excerpts and annotated historical chronicles in Arabic and Hebrew, Muslim theological texts, eyewitness accounts written by European travelers - prisoners, diplomats, doctors, clerics, and adventurers. This is the kind of book you read and to which you constantly return when you need details and accurate sources.

It is, above all, a work that constitutes a final and conclusive answer to the legend so widespread of a peaceful and fraternal coexistence between Jews and Muslims in Islamic lands. Page after page is a succession of damning stories of harassment, humiliation, and violence.

We understand, through the text, why the arrival of France in North Africa was seen as their deliverance by the Jewish communities.

It is understood that the subjugation of Jews in the lands of Islam and Muslim Antisemitism have a deeply rooted existence.

We better understand the Muslim anti-Semitism as it exists today and how it has spread in Europe with the consequences we have seen.

For this book alone David Littman has made more than a contribution to history: a crucial and indispensable tool for those who struggle against the lies and for the dignity of human beings. He is to be thanked. We hope he finds in these words my personal thanks and the testimony of my gratitude.

There is an English language report in Expatica

A German Islamist is calling for the murder of members of a far-right party that regularly provokes ultra-conservative Muslims using cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, a newspaper reported. According to an article due to appear Monday in the Tageszeitung daily, an Islamist from Bonn in western Germany has appeared in a video on an Islamic forum in which he encouraged "the killing of all activists from the Pro NRW party".

In his appeal, the Islamist urged the collection of personal information on Pro NRW members, including their home addresses and work schedules, with the goal of attacking them.

"We take this message seriously," an Interior Minister spokesman told the newspaper, which said the man had broadcast messages for the "Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan".

Tageszeitug itself gives the name of the jihadist as Yassin Chouka of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. He orders that information be collected on their homes, work and daily routine and that an attack would be best made either under cover of darkness or at dawn.

The threats were made during a seven minute video. The police say that no officials of Pro NRW were named and would not comment as to whether any of them are under police protection. Yassin Chouka and his brother Monir are well known for their jihadist propaganda. Arid Uka who shot two US soldiers in Frankfurt last year prepared himself with videos of the IMU and set out to murder singing one of the Chouka brother's battle songs, 'I'm in the jihad'.  That may have lost something in translation.

AFP: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan on Sunday blocked Twitter over a competition to make caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed on the social networking site, officials told AFP.

"The website has been banned by Ministry of Information Technology and the decision was conveyed to us. There was blasphemous material on Twitter," said Mohammad Younis Khan, spokesman for Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

Asked about the nature of the "blasphemous" content, Khan said there had been a planned competition to "post caricatures of Prophet Mohammed".

An official from the ministry said it had requested several times that no such competition be put on Twitter but the website had failed to respond.