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To: Mensch
RAMALLAH, West Bank- Israeli soldiers arrested the Islamic militant group Hamas' top political leader in the West Bank on Saturday in a raid on his Ramallah hide-out.

Blindfolded and clutching a bottle of water, Hasan Yousef was taken out of the house in the center of the West Bank city into an Israeli military vehicle. The capture was filmed by Associated Press Television News.

Another blindfolded man was led out with Yousef, but his identity was not known. Israeli soldiers conducted a wider sweep in downtown Ramallah on Saturday, pulling out men and leading them away blindfolded. It was not known how many Palestinians were arrested.

Yousef heads the political wing of Hamas in the West Bank, and the Israeli army said it had been hunting for him for some time. Military sources said a substantial amount of money was found in Yousef's hide-out, but they gave no exact figure.

"Israel is playing with fire and the continuation of arrests, assassinations and aggression against our people and against our leaders will not stop the resistance," said Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader in Gaza, upon hearing the news of Yousef's arrest.

"We warn the occupation against any attempt on the life of Sheik Yousef and all the others arrested," he said.

Hamas has claimed responsibility for scores of suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israelis in the near two-year conflict.

The arrest came at the start of a new Palestinian school year Saturday, with a million children trying to get to their classrooms amid heavy Israeli restrictions hampering the movement of goods and people.

Israel lifted its curfew for part of the day in several main West Bank towns, but the curfew remained in place in the town of Jenin and the Israeli-controlled section of Hebron, keeping students at home.

In other parts of the West Bank, Palestinian schoolchildren heading for school lined up outside checkpoints, opening their backpacks for Israeli soldiers to check.

Dressed in uniforms, some students avoided roadblocks by traveling on dirt roads or mountain paths to reach their schools, said Education Minister Naim Abu Hommos. Teachers, too, braved long lines.

"Moving 45,000 teachers to their schools is not easy, they have to walk through the mountains and valleys to reach their schools, and we are determined to keep our schools open," he said.

More than one million students were expected to begin their studies, the Palestinian Ministry of Education said in a statement.

"Our experience from the last school year was not encouraging at all," said the ministry, adding that 216 students were killed, 2,514 injured and 164 arrested during Israel's crackdown.

Palestinian officials urged Israel to allow students to move freely and to lift curfews and roadblocks.

"We need the curfew to be lifted all day or it will be impossible to go ahead with the regular education process," said Jouman Qarman, head of the Palestinian education office in Nablus.

After a spate of suicide bombings in June, Israel sealed off much of the Palestinian territories and imposed stiff curfews. Many Palestinians have been confined to their homes for days at a time. The result has been economic devastation, with poverty and unemployment rates rising dramatically.

Israel says its measures are necessary to keep out suicide bombers.

Also Saturday, Interior Minister Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, who heads the Palestinian security forces, met U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield as part of talks aimed at reducing tensions.

Satterfield told reporters afterward that he was meeting both sides to discuss "how best to move forward in a manner that restores comprehensive, lasting and sustained calm to Israelis and Palestinians and how best to advance the political vision outlined by President Bush in June."

In the West Bank town of Tulkarem late Friday, an 18-year-old Palestinian woman was killed by militants who accused her of planting the bomb which killed a local militant leader, Raed Karmi, on Jan. 13. The militants were from the Al Aqsa Brigades, affiliated to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

Al Aqsa members told The Associated Press that the woman, Rajaa Ibrahim, was given the bomb by Israeli intelligence.

The woman's mother, Yusriya Ibrahim, said she knew nothing about her daughter's alleged involvement in Karmi's death.

"I'm afraid for myself and my children," she said.

13 posted on 08/31/2002 11:55:55 AM PDT by SamAdams76
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To: SamAdams76
"Israel is playing with fire and the continuation of arrests, assassinations and aggression against our people and against our leaders will not stop the resistance," said Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader in Gaza, upon hearing the news of Yousef's arrest.

That kind of talk could get someone killed. /sarcasm>

21 posted on 08/31/2002 12:00:30 PM PDT by GVnana
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To: SamAdams76
****"Israel is playing with fire and the continuation of arrests, assassinations and aggression against our people and against our leaders will not stop the resistance," said Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader in Gaza, upon hearing the news of Yousef's arrest.****

That's ok. You just keep it up and when all of your men are dead, and all of your terrorist youth .... the rest of you should be driven back into the true Islamist paradise surrounding Israel.
40 posted on 08/31/2002 12:13:09 PM PDT by mercy
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To: SamAdams76
Bump


I've been trying to say this since 9-11. I guess I will be labeled as a bigoted American. By: An American Airlines Pilot - Captain ???? ?????????


September 11 Grievances

"You worry me. I wish you didn't. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country. But you don't blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me. I notice you because I can't help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don't fully understand their grievances and hate but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.

On September 11, nineteen ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children's mothers. So I notice you now. I don't want to be worried. I don't want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that has destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help. As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you, and the Arab/Muslim terrorist. How do I differentiate between the true Arab-Muslim-Americans and the Arab-Muslims in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter those very same good neighbors and children? The events of September 11th changed the answer. It is not my responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of it's religions, with ALL of it's different citizens, with all of it's faults. It is time for every Arab-Muslim in this country to determine it for me. I want to know, I demand to know, and I have a right to know whether or not you love America. Do you pledge allegiance to it's flag? Do you proudly display in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation, that He will protect and prosper it?

Or do you pray that Allah with destroy it in one of your "Jihads"? Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords? A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America? If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it. Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America.

Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent because I worry about who you regard as innocent. And no more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks because I worry about what is unprovoked to you. I am not interested in any more sympathy ...I am only interested in action. What will you do for America-our great country-at this time of crisis, at this time of war? I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting "Allah Bless America". I want to see young Arab-Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time, and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole.

The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are. Hand them over to us, now! But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action. Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals. The very few Arab-Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating. They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States prove who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing "leaders" like Khadafi, Hussein, Farrakhan, and Arafat. If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Koran are good and pure and true when your "leaders" are teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance. It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if large numbers of the world's Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion. A form that has been demonstrated to us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide. A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members defended Johnny Cochran and O. J. Simpson after the latter butchered his wife and murdered an innocent friend. A form whose members (some as young a five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America, the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted, that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.

Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because our women proudly show their faces in public rather than cover up like a shameful whore? Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because we drink wine with dinner, or celebrate Christmas? Do you and you fellow Muslims hate us because we have befriended Israel, the ONLY civilized democratic nation in the entire middle-east? And if you and your fellow Muslims hate us, then why in the world are you even here? Are you here to take our money? Are you here to undermine our peace and stability? Are you here to destroy us? If so, I want you to leave. I want you to go back to your desert sandpit where women are treated like rats and dogs. I want you to take your religion, your friends, and your family back to your Islamic extremists, and STAY THERE! We will NEVER give in to your influence, your retarded mentality, your twisted, violent, intolerant religion. We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us: Our rights under the greatest constitution in the world. I want to know where every Arab-Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family. I am pleading with you to let me know. I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American. But there can be no gray areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand." "Until then ... you worry me." ""




45 posted on 08/31/2002 12:25:27 PM PDT by B-Cause
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To: SamAdams76
" "Israel is playing with fire and the continuation of arrests, assassinations and aggression against our people and against our leaders will not stop the resistance," said Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader in Gaza, upon hearing the news of Yousef's arrest. "

Yes it will. Because the "resistance" is not motivated indigenously as much as externally by fascists fearful of the freedom exemplified by Israel.

If the leaders aren't safe, they won't continue and the uprising will fall.

61 posted on 08/31/2002 3:31:51 PM PDT by elfman2
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To: SamAdams76
Palestinian schoolchildren heading for school lined up outside checkpoints, opening their backpacks for Israeli soldiers to check.

This is the same thing Israel kids go through every day of the week in every Israeli school because of the Palestinian bombings. We also get to do it every store, every restaurant, every movie theater, every drug store, every pizza parlor (you get the picture). I have to stand in line inside Jerusalem and get searched about 20 times a day, complete with metal detectors.

The Palestinians got a lot of balls complaining about having to have their bags checked. Perhaps if they would stop blowing up discos and dancing in the streets over it, they might be able to be trusted ya think? This just pisses me off. They shred Children with bombs packed with nails and rat poison, and then complain when they have their bags checked!

What is worse is the leftists patting them on the back and saying How Horrible the mean Israelis… The Arabs are laughing their asses off at us. It is this stupid battered wife syndrom of the western mind that is causing the Jihad to continue.

I got an aunt that had an abusive husband. He would get drunk every night, come home and beat her up. One night after a very bad beating she sewed his sheets to the bed and woke him up with a iron skillet. She beat his ass to a pulp and told him you ever lift a hand on me again you not wake up next time. He stopped drinking and never hit her again.

This is a lesson that the entire western world needs to learn. Battered women always try to kiss up to their abusers. Moslems understand that, they beat their wives all the time. We need to stop being a bunch of pussys and kick their rears around the planet a couple of times or the killings will never stop.

75 posted on 08/31/2002 10:52:41 PM PDT by American in Israel
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To: SamAdams76
"...and we are determined to keep our schools open"

Wow, he does care the training and indoctrinating of new supply of homicide bombers to continue uninterrupted.

77 posted on 09/01/2002 7:24:48 AM PDT by Neophyte
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