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Ingrid Mattson, director of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary and president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), has been all over the news lately. Mattson was one of the speakers at an interfaith gathering at the Democratic National Convention in August, and now word comes that she's a member of the "leadership group" for the U.S. Muslim Engagement Project. The latter consists of a bipartisan coalition of American leaders from a variety of backgrounds, which, as described at its website, seeks to form "a clear and strong consensus on...

A word to the wise: if you are posting news articles that are related to Islam: Sharia Law, Jihad, and other "religion of peace" pleasantries, it would behoove you to post the entire text of the article here rather than an excerpt. News articles that show Islam in a less than favorable light have mysteriously been disappearing from the news websites at a rapid rate. There is a lot of pressure being put on media outlets, and it is working. If we want to have access to the truth, we are going to have to take steps to protect it....

A poster promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace at an AC Transit bus stop in front of UC Berkeley’s Eshelman Hall has been repeatedly vandalized with anti-Semitic slogans and swastikas, authorities said. The poster—part of the “Only in Israel” public awareness campaign launched by San Francisco-based BlueStarPR and sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation and Foundation of the Greater East Bay—has a picture of Israeli Arab soccer star Sowan Abbas calling for coexistence among communities. The poster also gives an example of a soccer team consisting of Jews and Arabs training together in the Arab-Israeli town of Sakhnin. Gabe Weiner, a campus coordinator...

Georgetown University's Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) will be hosting a conference on October 23 that asks the loaded question: "Is There a Role for Shari'ah in Modern States?" The Saudi-funded ACMCU and its founding director, John Esposito, one of the foremost apologists for radical Islam in the academic field of Middle East studies, have certainly been doing their bit to make the idea more palatable. The Saudi prince for whom ACMCU was named has been pumping millions of dollars into Middle East studies at Georgetown, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and beyond, and as the case of Esposito demonstrates,...

Federal prosecutors are trying again to convict leaders of a Muslim charity on charges of financing terrorism. The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was back on trial Monday in Dallas. The charity is accused of funneling millions of dollars to the Middle Eastern group Hamas, which the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization.

Spokane, Wash. (AP) -- Sherry Jones knew it would be hard to get her first novel published. Getting "The Jewel of Medina" into bookstores was even harder. After overcoming the formidable hurdles any new author faces, Jones was overjoyed to sell the book to Random House. Then Random House canceled its publication at the last minute for fear the historical novel about Aisha, child bride of the prophet Muhammad, would incite riots in the Muslim world.

Mickey Mouse is a corrupting influence and must die, a Muslim cleric has declared. Sheikh Muhammad Munajid claimed the mouse is "one of Satan's soldiers" and makes everything it touches impure. But he warned that depictions of the creature in cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, and Disney's Mickey Mouse, had taught children that it was in fact loveable. The cleric, a former diplomat at the Saudi embassy in Washington DC, said that under Sharia, both household mice and their cartoon counterparts must be killed. Mr Munajid was asked to give Islam's teaching on mice during a religious affairs programme...

This weekend, the "Popular Palestinian Conference 2008" will be held in Chicago, and if past is prologue, a slew of anti-Israel propaganda will be part of the repertoire. The organizers make no effort to conceal their nefarious intentions, titling one of the workshops [emphasis added], "Inserting Palestine into High School Curricula in the US & Empowering Students to Challenge Dominant Narratives" and subtitling the conference, "Palestinians in the US: Reclaiming Our Voice, Asserting Our Narrative." Unfortunately, this "narrative" is a false one in which Israel is the oppressor, the Palestinians its perpetual victims, and the United States an accomplice in...

OAKLAND -- The former head of Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland and an associate of the now-defunct business pleaded no contest today to vandalism in connection with the trashing of two liquor stores in the city in 2005. Yusuf Bey IV, 22, the son of the bakery's late leader, Yusuf Bey, pleaded no contest to all eight charges against him, including vandalism, false imprisonment, hate-crime and civil-rights violations. He is expected to be sentenced to three years in state prison.Bakery associate Dyamen Williams, 21, pleaded no contest to vandalism and could face up to a year in county jail.On...

OAKLAND — Former employees and supporters of the defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery have scheduled a rally for Aug. 2 — the one-year anniversary of journalist Chauncey Bailey's killing — to call for an investigation into the business's demise. "This is the anniversary of the closing of the bakery and the event is about getting to the truth, getting to justice and making sure that whoever is guilty of any crime be brought before the bar of justice, because right now the truth is not being told," said rally organizer Henry Clark. The date was chosen to commemorate "police attacking...

A Georgia man appeared in court Monday on charges he killed his own daughter for disgracing his family. Chaudhry Rashid, wearing a red jumpsuit and shackles around his ankles, went before Chief Judge Daphne Walker at the Clayton County Magistrate Court where he was arraigned on a murder charge. The 54-year-old, who is of Pakistani descent, kept his head down as charges were read, and appeared to have difficulty understanding instructions from the judge, possibly the result of a language barrier. His two sons were also in attendance, watching their father from seats in the rear of the courtroom, joined...

While the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has long dominated the field, its highly politicized leadership's inability to withstand criticism, inattention to radical Islam, and apologetic approach towards the West's foes has left many Middle East studies scholars feeling unwelcome by their umbrella professional organization. Enter the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). Founded last year by Professors Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, ASMEA offers an alternative to MESA's post-colonialist biases and a venue for studying those elements of Islam and the Middle East that MESA's leaders ignore or downplay.ASMEA's emergence is cause for optimism....

Berkeley -- Cody's Books, the legendary Berkeley bookstore that catered to literati nationwide for more than half a century and was firebombed in the 1980s because of its support of the First Amendment, has closed its doors, the victim of lagging sales. The bookstore, which in recent years had closed its flagship store on Telegraph Avenue and its branches in San Francisco and on Berkeley's Fourth Street, finally settling in early April in one store on Shattuck Avenue, shuttered that store Friday. Calling it "a heartbreaking moment," Cody's owner, Hiroshi Kagawa of the Japanese firm IBC Publishing, said in a...

Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV kept the gun used to kill journalist Chauncey Bailey in his closet after the attack and bragged of playing "hella dumb" when investigators asked him about the shooting, according to a secretly recorded police video.He describes Bailey's shooting in detail on the video, then, laughing, he denies he was there, and boasts that his friendship with the case's lead detective protected him from charges.Bey IV has not been arrested in Bailey's Aug. 2 death; Devaughndre Broussard, a then-19-year-old bakery handyman, has been charged in the killing. In an interview last week at...

Hot on the heels of my column yesterday, "Islam in America's Public Schools: Education or Indoctrination?," which included mention of the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in Fairfax, Virginia, comes news that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has released its findings from a review of the school's textbooks and found that they promote hatred, intolerance, and violence. As reported by the Associated Press: -The authors of a 12th-grade text on Koranic interpretation state that apostates (those who convert from Islam), adulterers and people who murder Muslims can be permissibly killed. -The authors of a 12th-grade text on monotheism write...

With fatal terrorist attacks on the decline worldwide and al Qaeda apparently in disarray, it would seem a time for optimism in the global war on terrorism. But the war has simply shifted to a different arena. Islamists, or those who believe that Islam is a political and religious system that must dominate all others, are focusing less on the military and more on the ideological. It turns out that Western liberal democracies can be subverted without firing a shot. Nowhere is this more evident than in the educational realm. Islamists have taken what's come to be known as the...

The Muslim world has youth, numbers and global ambitions. The West is growing old and enfeebled, and lacks the will to rebuff those who would supplant it. It's the end of the world as we've known it. An excerpt from 'America Alone'. MARK STEYN Sept. 11, 2001, was not "the day everything changed," but the day that revealed how much had already changed. On Sept. 10, how many journalists had the Council of American-Islamic Relations or the Canadian Islamic Congress or the Muslim Council of Britain in their Rolodexes? If you'd said that whether something does or does not cause...

LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) -- Britain said Tuesday that it is granting asylum to a gay Iranian teenager who fears that he could face execution if forced to return to his homeland. Britain's Border Agency said it would allow asylum for Mehdi Kazemi, who traveled in 2005 to London to study English and while there learned that his lover in Iran had been charged with sodomy and hanged. Kazemi, 19, then sought asylum in Britain, but it was rejected, then in the Netherlands. The Netherlands' highest court rejected his claim in March, ruling that Britain was responsible for the case...

UNITED NATIONS, (AP) -- The top American envoy at the U.N. slammed terrorists and insurgents for using children to carry out violence, but said Tuesday that the U.S. tries to provide special treatment when it detains those young people. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's comments followed the release of a U.S. report that 2,500 people under age 18 have been detained, almost all in Iraq, since 2002 during the war on terror. Some had been held for periods up to a year or more. "We are heartbroken that terrorists and extremists use kids for their campaign of violence," said Khalilzad, a...

There's definitely something fishy about 25-year-old, Saudi, female, dissident blogger Hadeel Alhodaif's untimely death. Via the Arab News, we learn that Alhodaif "unexpectedly" fell into a coma and 25-days later, simply "passed away." But considering her legacy of activism, both within the blogosphere and without, and the fact that she insisted on blogging under her real name, it's more likely she was targeted for death by Saudi authorities. That she was a proponent of women's rights in this most backward of nations (and regions) is even more reason the enemies of progress would want her out of the way. The...

Likud Party Chairman and opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu called for early elections Monday, and said Prime Minister Olmert and the current government have no mandate to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority. "This government has no mandate to negotiate the borders of this country or to divide its capital city," he told a meeting of the Likud Knesset faction. "The government must go back to the people and allow the nation to choose its leadership once again." Netanyahu cited five reasons that Olmert should step down, including failures in the Second Lebanon War, ongoing rocket attacks on Israel, failures in the...

It isn’t often that characters based on the field of Middle East studies show up in current fiction, but the novels of author Daniel Silva are an exception. The last three novels of his series featuring Israeli secret agent/art restorer Gabriel Allon explore the intersection of Middle East studies and international intrigue. The sixth novel in the series, Prince of Fire, begins with a horrific terrorist attack at the Israeli embassy in Rome, explores the origins of the modern state of Israel, and ends in an archaeological excavation trench in Provence. Figuring throughout is the handsome and mysterious Paul Martineau,...

JERUSALEM, Israel (AP) -- The United States said Tuesday that reaching a Mideast peace agreement within the next eight months "might be improbable but it's not impossible," cautioning that no major breakthroughs are expected when President Bush arrives in Israel on Wednesday. Bush will attend ceremonies in Jerusalem marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state. He also will go to Saudi Arabia where he promises to press King Abdullah to increase oil production to ease soaring costs on consumers. Bush made a similar plea in January but it was ignored. The president's final stop will be...

DETROIT (AP) -- A federal judge in Detroit has dismissed the case of a Muslim woman who sued a judge for demanding she remove her veil in court. The judge ruled Monday against Ginnnah (ZHIN'-nuh) Muhammad's claims that her rights to freedom of religion and court access were violated. Judge Paul Paruk (per-ROOK) requested she remove her veil during a 2006 hearing in the town of Hamtramck (ham-TRA'-mick). She was contesting a $3,000 charge from a rental-car company to repair a vehicle she said thieves had broken into.

McLean, Va. (AP) -- Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad has changed his mind again and now wants to go forward with a federal appeal of his conviction and death sentence, according to his lawyers. In a handwritten letter from death row made public this week, Muhammad told the Virginia attorney general that he wanted to suspend all appeals on his 2003 death sentence and that appeals filed on his behalf were not authorized. But Muhammad's lawyer, James Connell, wrote a letter Thursday to a U.S. District judge saying Muhammad now wants to go forward with his appeal. "Mr. Muhammad expressly...

Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad asks prosecutors in a letter for help to put an end to his legal appeals from death row. Muhammad says in the letter released Tuesday that he is waiving all rights to appeal his 2003 conviction and death sentence for the sniper killings in 2002 that terrorized the Washington, D.C., region. Muhammad says he has tried without success to stop efforts by his defense lawyers,

Muslim rebels have forced hundreds of mainly Christian families off their farms in the southern Philippines, escalating tensions in the region ahead of the withdrawal of Malaysian peace monitors next week. Rolando Garcia, mayor of Kalamansig town on the troubled southern island of Mindanao, said that heavily-armed members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) claimed the farmers' land belonged to the Muslim minority. "We have about 1,200 people in our temporary shelter areas...afraid to return to their farms," Garcia told reporters, adding rice was about to be harvested when the rebels came late on Wednesday. The 11,000-strong MILF is...

In his 2002 Commentary article, "Jihad and the Professors," Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes makes a compelling case for "the nearly universal falsification of jihad on the part of American academic scholars." Rather than acknowledging the aggressively military nature of jihad (otherwise known as "holy war"), such academics would have us believe that it consists either of defensive warfare, a struggle for spiritual and personal improvement, or the promotion of social justice. Here are a few of the quotes he cites in the article: Jihad as "usually understood" means "a struggle to be true to the will of God...

A British citizen who converted to Christianity from Islam and then complained to police when locals threatened to burn his house down was told by officers to “stop being a crusader”, according to a new report. Nissar Hussein, 43, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who was born and raised in Britain, converted from Islam to Christianity with his wife, Qubra, in 1996. The report says that he was subjected to a number of attacks and, after being told that his house would be burnt down if he did not repent and return to Islam, reported the threat to the police. It...

Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.” Things have not gone according to plan. Only one-fifth of the 60 students at the Khalil Gibran International Academy are Arab-American. Since the school opened in Brooklyn last fall, children have been suspended for carrying weapons, repeatedly gotten into fights and...

Hamas faces unprecedented crisis, as Israel, Egypt prepare for flare-up Alex Fishman 4/16/08 Egypt asked Israel to put its forces along the Gaza Strip border on alert, while at the same time the Egyptian army is on special deployment on the Philadelphi Route and south of it. Officials in Israel and Egypt estimate that Gaza is on the brink of eruption that may be violently manifested on the Strip’s border with the two countries. Israeli security officials estimate that Hamas’ Gaza regime has reached a dead-end and is facing an unprecedented crisis not seen since it took over the Strip....

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- An Egyptian court convicted five men Wednesday on charges of homosexual behavior and sentenced them to three years in prison, officials said. Defense lawyer, Adel Ramadan, said the judge found the men guilty of the "habitual practice of debauchery" — a term used in the Egyptian legal system to denote consensual homosexual acts. The convictions were confirmed by a judicial official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to journalists. Homosexuality is not explicitly referred to in Egypt's legal code, but a wide range of laws covering obscenity, prostitution and...

(IsraelNN.com) The Islamic group “Samuh al-Islam” has begun a campaign to find husbands for the widows of deceased terrorists, according to Omedia. The group describes the campaign as an effort to revive an ancient Islamic custom. The group’s religious leaders point out that Mohammed, who Muslims hail as a prophet, married the widow of a follower who died in battle, despite the fact that she was less attractive than his other wives. Terrorists’ widows pose a challenge to the social structure in many areas, especially Palestinian Authority-controlled territories, where several thousand men have been killed while fighting the IDF or...

Several thousand Arabs led by Arab nationalist Knesset members participated in a procession through the Israeli city of Umm el-Fahm near Megiddo Tuesday evening. The demonstration was held in protest of Israeli military operations in Gaza and involved incidents of rock throwing at Israeli cars.The crowd chanted "Israel, the mother of terror" and held a sign that read "Stop the Zionazi" in English. Additional slogans were "Rest, O martyr, we will complete the task," "Warm blessings to the rock children," as well as the standard "With blood and spirit, we will redeem Palestine." The participants held Syrian and PLO...

The London-based human rights organization Amnesty International has condemned Israel's attacks on Gaza, claiming they are "being carried out with reckless disregard for civilian life." "Israeli military attacks over the past few days have killed more than 75 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 10 children, and other unarmed civilian bystanders not involved in the confrontations" Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa program, said Sunday. "Israel has a legal obligation to protect the civilian population of Gaza. Such attacks are disproportionate and go beyond lawful measures which Israeli forces may take in response to rocket attacks...

PARIS, France (AP) -- Israeli writers will be the toast of the Paris international book fair in March but some Arab intellectuals argue that honoring Israel's literature has brought dishonor upon France. The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization urged its 50 member states this week to boycott the March 14-19 event. The fair's organizer said Friday that he regrets the uproar: He wanted to honor books, not take sides in international politics. "I'm not a government minister. My job is to bring literature to readers," Serge Eyrolles told The Associated Press. "I'm very surprised by how political this is...

Gaza Strip (AP) -- A bloody spike in Israel-Hamas fighting put the Israeli city of Ashkelon and its 110,000 residents at the center of an intensifying militant rocket barrage Thursday — and Israel's defense minister warned he would invade Gaza, if necessary, to halt the attacks. Israel sent a not-so-veiled warning to Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, killing 20 Palestinians in almost a dozen airstrikes, including a missile attack on a guard post outside Haniyeh's home. Hamas leaders have been in hiding in recent weeks, though Israel has so far only targeted militants, not Hamas politicians. The dead Thursday...

When a conservative talk show host introduced Sen. John McCain at an Ohio rally this week and referred to his possible opponent by his full name - "Barack Hussein Obama" - he highlighted a probable attack strategy, should Obama get the Democratic nomination: American xenophobia. If the ascendancy of Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic race shows that Americans' attitudes toward race and gender have evolved, the latest round of media images alluding - incorrectly - to an overseas Muslim upbringing for Obama will test the degree to which Americans fear foreigners in a post-Sept. 11 world....

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) -- Sudan has enacted a ban on Danish imports in reaction to the reprinting of a cartoon that satirizes Islam's Prophet Muhammad, the Sudanese state-run news agency said Tuesday. Seventeen Danish newspapers reprinted the cartoon — showing Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban — in a gesture of free speech on Feb. 13, a day after three men were arrested in an alleged plot to kill the drawing's creator. The reprinting prompted protests in Muslim countries and among Muslims in Denmark, though so far the reaction has been low-key in comparison to the 2006 riots that followed...

Police arrested a man who used his 13-year-old daughter as a human shield to thwart officers’ attempts to zap him with an electrical stun gun. Jad Mubarak, 37, was arrested Thursday night after a two-hour standoff at the America’s Best Value Inn and Suites off Merchants Drive where he had barricaded himself inside a room with his two children, police said. Mubarak was suspected of shoplifting four iPods, software and an MPS recorder on Wednesday from a Target store, where he also allegedly assaulted a male employee who confronted him about the thefts, said Knoxville Police Department spokesman Darrell DeBusk....

The German weekly Der Spiegel reported Saturday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert plans to declare the two soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah, Eldad Regev and Udi Goldwasser, dead. Olmert was in Germany last week, and the Germans are the chief mediators between Israel and Hezbollah on this issue. The likelihood that they are dead increases with every day that goes by with no sign of life from them. Israeli security sources confirmed last night that the intelligence community is reassessing the kidnapped soldiers' situation and is likely to make "difficult decisions" on the matter in the coming weeks. But Israel is...

Georgetown professor John Esposito, director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding has a reputation as an apologist for radical Islam. And it's one he lived up to with a Stanford University speech last week titled, "Dying for God? Suicide Terrorism and Militant Islam." Esposito claimed that Islamic terrorism grows primarily out of a sense of political and economic grievance and, of course, "occupation" on the part of "neo-colonial powers." This spin allowed him to deflect responsibility for Islamic terrorism to the West while negating the need for self-reflection among Muslims.When an attendee asked him why...

DAMASCUS BLAST ON TUESDAY KILLED SENIOR HEZBOLLAH MILITARY COMMANDER - LEBANESE POLITICAL SOURCE

Leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery dies before trial involving 30 years, many victims For 30 years, authorities did nothing to stop Your Black Muslim Bakery patriarch Yusuf Bey's sexual assault of minors and physical abuse of women, though at least six complaints were made to police and social workers and the attacks were well known within the bakery community. Then, one of the raped women told her story to Oakland police investigator Jim Saleda. Less than three months later, Yusuf Bey was arrested. The story of Saleda's methodical pursuit in 2002 of one of Oakland's most prominent and influential...

Public school children in grades K-12 are being assigned textbooks that misrepresent and, in some cases, glorify Islamic beliefs and history – often at the expense of other religions and cultures. The apologetics and indoctrination common in university Middle East studies programs is being carried into public schools by contentious, ahistorical, and inaccurate textbooks written by those same Middle East studies professors. History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, a textbook published by the Teachers' Curriculum Institute, was removed from the Scottsdale, Arizona school district in 2005 for this very reason. The textbook is now causing controversy in California and...

Like many others on the right, I have been a consistent critic of the Western feminist movement's veritable silence on the oppression of women in Muslim culture. Putting multiculturalism and leftist political preoccupations such as being anti-American and anti-Israel ahead of women's (and, indeed, human) rights, the movement is out to lunch on the great feminist calling of our time. In a recent SFGate column on the rise of so-called honor killings in the West, I elaborated on the subject: Fearful of giving offense or being branded with the ubiquitous "Islamophobia" label, law enforcement, journalists, social workers, government officials and,...

One month before the slaying of a journalist who was investigating Your Black Muslim Bakery, the bakery's young leader urged his followers to be "strong soldiers" and combat the many enemies he said were conspiring to bring down the embattled Oakland institution. "We fight the government, we fight the police, we fight our own families, we fight our own people, and we fight Caucasian people daily - just to do right," Yusuf Bey IV declared in a fiery videotaped sermon obtained recently by The Chronicle. "They use our own people to go against us - people like you or I...

An update in regards to the recent honor killings in Texas of Sarah Said, 17, and Aminah Said 18. This makes you sick, the audio shows that Sarah just sat there suffering until she slowly died, with her sister most likely already dead in the cab with her. This is the result of Islam, this is what an honor killing sounds like:http://www.courier-gazette.com/articles/2008/01/16/breaking_news/61.tnv Sarah & Aminah Said RIP, may we make sure others don't suffer the same fate The story:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,323265,00.html

A manhunt in Texas continued Friday for a father accused of shooting his teen daughters and leaving them to die in a taxi. Yaser Abdel Said, 50, of Lewisville, Texas, is wanted for shooting Sarah Yaser Said, 17, and Amina Yaser Said, 18, in his taxi Tuesday night. Police say they don't have a motive for the shootings, but believe a domestic issue may have led to the deaths. Friends gathered Thursday night for a vigil to remember the sisters. The girls' mother, who has been in hiding since the shootings, attended. The victims' brother made a statement at the...

Cinnamon Stillwell's recent column in SF Gate, "Savage vs. CAIR: The battle over free speech" on Dec. 19 offers a holiday assortment of misleading truths and omissions of facts. In her misguided defense of the "Savage Nation" radio show, Stillwell essentially defends anarchistic hate against minority groups including African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, immigrants and women. She does so under the pretense of defending free speech. Of course, most elementary school students will tell you that hate speech is not to be confused with free speech. CAIR, the California Council of Churches, Rabbi Haim Dov Beilak and other...