Posted on 08/07/2006 3:43:15 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
Tehran & Damascus Move to Lebanon Lebanon-born Walid Phares is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Author of the recent book Future Jihad, he was also one of the architects of 2004’s United Nations resolution 1559, which called for the disarming of Hezbollah. NRO editor Kathryn Lopez recently talked to Phares about what’s going on in the Mideast, what happened to the Cedar Revolution, and this war we’re all in.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: What is “Future Jihad”? Are we seeing it in the Mideast now?
Walid Phares: “Future Jihad,” which has already begun, refers to a new and potent form of Islamic terrorism, characterized by a Khumeinist-Baathist axis. These are the two trees of jihadism, so to speak — the Salafism and Wahabism embodied in al Qaeda and the sort of jihadism led by Iran and also including Syria, Hezbollah, and their allies in Lebanon.
The alliance has not been in entire agreement as to strategy. The al Qaeda branch began its “Future Jihad” in the 1990s; its efforts culminated on 9/11 and have continued explosively since then. The international “Salafists” aimed at the U.S. in the past decade in order to strengthen their jihads on various battlefields (Chechnya, India, Sudan, Algeria, Indonesia, Palestine, etc.). “Weaken the resolve of America,” their ideologues said, “and the jihadists would overwhelm all the regional battlefields.”
As I argue in Future Jihad, bin Laden and his colleagues miscalculated on the timing of the massive attack against the U.S. in 2001. While they wounded America, they didn’t kill its will to fight (as was the case, for instance, in the Madrid 3/11 attacks). I have heard many jihadi cadres online, and have seen al Jazeera commentators on television, offering hints of criticism about the timing. They were blaming al Qaeda for shooting its imagined “silver bullet” before insuring a strategic follow up. But bin Laden and Zawahiri believe 9/11 served them well, and has put a global mobilization into motion. Perhaps it has, but the U.S. counter strategy in the Middle East, chaotic as the region currently appears, has unleashed counter jihadi forces. The jury is still out as to the time factor: when these forces will begin to weaken the jihadists depends on our perseverance and the public understanding of the whole conflict.
The other “tree” of jihadism, with its roots in Iran, withheld fire after 9/11. They were content to watch the Salafists fight it out with the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention within the West, as terror cells were hunted down. Ahmedinejad, Assad, and Nasrallah were analyzing how far the US would go, and how far the Sunnis and Salafis would go as well.
The fall of the Taliban and of the Baath in Iraq, however, changed Iran and Syria’s patient plans. The political changes in the neighborhood, regardless of their immediate instability, were strongly felt in Tehran and Damascus (but unfortunately not in the U.S., judging from the political debate here), and pushed the Khumeinists and the Syrian Baathists to enter the dance, but carefully. Assad opened his borders to the jihadists in an attempt to crumble the U.S. role in Iraq, while Iran articulated al Sadr’s ideology for Iraq’s Shiia majority.
A U.S.-led response came swiftly in 2004 with the voting of UNSCR 1559, smashing Syria’s role in Lebanon and forcing Assad to withdraw his troops by April 2005. In response, the “axis” prepared for a counter attack on the Lebanese battlefield by assassinating a number of the Cedar Revolution leaders, including MP Jebran Tueni. In short, the attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah and the kidnappings of soldiers were the tip of an offensive aimed at drawing attention away from Iran’s nuclear weapons programs and Syria’s assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri. Hezbollah was awaiting its moment for revenge against the Cedar Revolution too.
What we see now is 1) a Syro-Iranian sponsored offensive aimed at all democracies in the region and fought in Lebanon; 2) Israel’s counter offensive (which it seems to have prepared earlier); and 3) an attempt by Hezbollah to take over or crumble the Lebanese government.
Lopez: So…did the Cedar Revolution fail?
Phares: Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the Cedar Revolution was failed. The masses in Lebanon responded courageously in March 2005 by putting 1.5 million people on the streets of Beirut. They did it without “no-fly-zones,” expeditionary forces, or any weapons at all, for that matter, and against the power of three regimes, Iran, Syria, and pro-Syrian Lebanon, in addition to Hezbollah terror. The “revolution” was for a time astoundingly successful; since then it has been horribly failed, and first of all by Lebanon’s politicians themselves. One of their leaders, General Michel Aoun, shifted his allegiances to Syria and signed a document with Hezbollah. Other politicians from the “March 14 Movement” then stopped the demonstrations, leaving them with the support of God knows what. They failed in removing the pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud and brought back a pro-Syrian politician to serve as a speaker of the house, Nabih Berri. Meanwhile, even as they were elected by the faithful Cedar Revolution masses, they engaged in a round table dialogue with Hezbollah, a clear trap set by Hassan Nasrallah: “Let’s talk about the future,” he said — with the implication, of course, that they forget about the Cedar Revolution and the militia’s disarming. While political leaders sat for months, enjoying the photo ops with Hassan Nasrallah, he was preparing his counter offensive, which he unleashed just a few days before the Security Council would discuss the future of Iran’s nuclear programs.
The Lebanese government of Prime Minister Seniora also abandoned the Cedar Revolution. His cabinet neither disarmed Hezbollah nor called on the U.N. to help in implementing UNSCR 1559. This omission is baffling. The government was given so much support by the international community and, more importantly, overwhelming popular support inside Lebanon: 80 percent of the people were hoping the Cedar Revolution-backed government would be the one to resume the liberation of the country. Now Hezbollah has an upper hand and the government is on the defensive.
The U.S. and its allies can be accused of certain shortcomings as well. While the speeches by the U.S. president, congressional leaders from both parties, Tony Blair, and Jacques Chirac were right on target regarding Lebanon, and while the U.S. and its counterparts on the Security Council were diligent in their follow up on the Hariri assassination and on implementing UNSCR 1559, there was no policy or plan to support the popular movement in Lebanon. Incredibly, while billions were spent on the war of ideas in the region, Lebanese NGOs that wanted to resume the struggle of the Cedar Revolution and fighting alone for this purpose were not taken seriously at various levels. Policy planners thought they were dealing with the “Cedar Revolution” when they were meeting Lebanon’s government and Lebanese politicians. The difference between the high level speeches on Lebanon and the laissez-faire approach from lower levels is amazing. Simply put, there was no policy on supporting the Cedar Revolution against the three regimes opposing it and the $400 million received by Hezbollah from Iran.
The Cedar Revolution was basically betrayed by its own politicians and is now essentially without a head. Nevertheless, as long as the international support remains, the Revolution will find its way and will face the dangers. The one and a half million ordinary citizens who braved all the dangers didn’t change their minds about Hezbollah’s terror. The resistance and counter-attack was to be expected. Unfortunately, thus far Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah have outmaneuvered the West and are at the throats of the Cedar Revolution. The international community must revise its plans, and, if it is strongly backed by the U.S. and its allies, including France, the situation can be salvaged. The good seeds are still inside the country.
More at link...
From Monsters and Critics.com
Europe News
Russia may down planes taken by terrorists
By UPI
Aug 11, 2006, 19:00 GMT
MOSCOW, Russia (UPI) -- Russia`s air force chief says his country may shoot down passenger planes seized by terrorists if they are a threat to vital installations.
Commander Vladimir Mikhailov`s comments came in the wake of the discovery of an alleged airline terror plot in London, reports Novosti. Russia enacted a law last March, allowing its air defense forces to shoot down passenger planes hijacked by terrorists.
'Should an airliner that has been seized by terrorists fly in from another country and refuse to obey our orders, we will definitely take measures to shoot it down,' Mikhailov said. 'In any event, the situation should be treated on a case-by-case basis. There can be no universal rules here.'
Mikhailov said decisions in such circumstances must be prompt and added that rules of conduct in emergency situations had been worked out and practiced, the report said.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
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From Monsters and Critics.com
Europe News
Spreading fires in Spain sends vacationers fleeing
By DPA
Aug 11, 2006, 19:00 GMT
La Coruna, Spain - Devastating forest fires in north-west Spain sent thousands of vacationers fleeing the region on Friday.
Hotel occupancy has dropped by up to 30 per cent, according to press reports. The fires, which have been burning for a week, spread even further Friday.
Despite the deployment of 7,000 firefighters, the inferno has spread to areas which had so far been left untouched by the flames. They include the Costa da Morte which has only just recovered from a catastrophic oil spill when the Prestige tanker sank in 2002.
Firefighting teams were battling a total of 135 blazes, authorities said.
Dramatic scenes unfolded in the city of Ourense as a huge wall of fire came within 50 metres of a residential area on the outskirts of the city of 110,000. Several houses had to be evacuated.
'We have to concentrate on protecting the dwellings,' said Mayor Manuel Cabezas. Extinguishing the fire burning in the hills outside the city was unthinkable.
Many vacationers, who had initially remained calm, have since departed holiday areas in region.
'This is the most devastating season in history,' said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the Hoteliers Association in Pontevedra.
A vacationer called Charo from the Basque region said: 'We couldn't go anywhere and in five days, we have not even seen the sea.'
The camping grounds in Louro, operated by German national Wolfgang Heinrich, had to be evacuated several times because of approaching flames.
'Every evacuation costs me 7,000 euros,' said Heinrich.
The tourist branch in the region is worrying about Galicia's unique countryside.
'Nothing is green here any more, everything is black,' said hotelier Jose Porrua. After the third forest fire, nothing will grow any more.
A total of 130,000 vacationers have fled the region or changed their bookings because of the flames, according to the daily La Voz de Galicia.
The newspaper estimated the damage at around 760 million euros (976 million dollar) and said fires had ravaged 50,000 hectares of forests and thickets.
Police have so far arrested 20 suspected arsonists including a 72- year-old retired woman and two firefighters, who are alleged to have lit dozens of fires, the Spanish interior ministry said.
A 30-year-old woman died when she became trapped in her car by a forest fire in central Portugal.
Fires in the Porto de Mos region near Leiria are threatening several villages. Five firefighters have been injured in Evora.
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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Middle East News
Iran warns Putin of regional 'explosion' against Israel
By DPA
Aug 11, 2006, 19:00 GMT
Tehran - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a telephone contact with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, on Friday warned of a regional 'explosion' against Israel.
'The more this war in Lebanon and the violations (by Israel) there continue, the more the anger of the regional people, especially Muslim youth will increase,' ISNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as telling Putin.
'We are seriously worried of an explosion by regional people, the dimensions of would could seriously get out of control,' he added.
Ahmadinejad has accused the United Nations Security Council of having so far acted 'helplessly' and charged the United States and Britain of 'following a political game for just giving (Israel) more time to continue their aggressions.'
'If the UN Security Council continues this tendency, then this council will eventually lose all credibility and we will have grave problems in the future in maintaining global security,' Ahmadinejad said.
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/printer_1189472.php
History's Greatest Lie: The Latest Incarnation
By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 11, 2006
Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terror group that started war on Israel July 12, trusts in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Hezbollah insists the text, which has twice proven to be an 1895 forgery by Tsarist officials in Paris, is the transcript of the First Zionist Congress in Basle Switzerland in 1897.
So potent is this blood libel--and so well matched to Hezbollah's lethal designs--that the terror group collaborated with Iran to produce a Protocols television series for its Al Manar TV. Broadcast in Lebanon during Ramadan in October 2003, the programs were then aired in Iran in 2004. Among other horrors, they feature the murder of a Christian child to bake Passover Matzah.
In Egypt, the Ministries of Information and Culture vetted and approved the 41-part TV series, Horseman without a Horse: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which aired in late 2002. Despite U.S. State Department condemnation, Minister Safwat El-Sherif announced that it “contains no anti-Semitic material” and refused to halt broadcasts. The editor of Al-Akhbar newspaper even called international opprobrium “a barbaric attack on Egyptian and Arab art.”
The 2005 centennial of the Protocols was truly cause for international mourning. Despite its age, the lie--that a shadowy group of Jewish leaders plans to dominate the world and is even now implementing the final stages of their strategy--will not die.
This is the subject addressed by former Israeli Supreme Court justice Hadassa Ben-Itto in her masterful book, The Lie that Wouldn't Die--The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which capped six years of investigation into the forgery's etymology and its dark power, and was recently published in English. The book is an important reminder of why the U.S. should veto any U.N. ceasefire resolution that caves in to Hezbollah's terrorist demands.
Ben-Itto first encountered the political use of the Protocols in 1965 at the United Nations General Assembly. At the invitation of Golda Meir, then Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ben-Itto was in Israel's delegation to Third Committee deliberations on human rights when a Russian delegate referred to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Despite receiving the customary “right of reply,” Ben-Itto's rebuttal neglected to debunk the notorious forgery. Later, a friendly non-Jewish diplomat chided her for her silence. Take heed from history, he warned her. “This book is dangerous.”
Over time, Ben-Itto many times heard bigots exploit the Protocols to foment hatred, but she found time to read them only in 1988, after headlines announced publication of a new edition. While titles varied, she found, the unnamed speaker in all editions presents “in concise form, a comprehensive program for the annihilation of all Christian states, proposing practical methods for achieving world domination by the Jews.”
The book then describes the Jewish people as a satanic sect, “united in purpose, acting under the leadership of a group of elders, who lacked any moral consideration.” Each of 24 sections elaborates on the means to achieve predominance of a “Jewish super-government.”
Although it is the very antithesis of Jewish thought, over a century the text has nevertheless convinced masses of dupes that the malicious fraud is true.
In 1988, Ben-Itto was invited to lecture in Berne Switzerland, where she met the petite Odette Brunschvig, 70, whose late husband Georges Brunschvig, in October 1934 prosecuted a case against the Protocols, under a 1916 Swiss statute prohibiting publication of “obscene literature.” The statute targeted pornography, but offered no definition of “obscene literature,” and judge Walter Meyer, a Christian, in November 1933 determined to try the case on its merits. A year later Judge Meyer appointed independent experts. And in 1935--given testimony and affidavits by several witnesses to the Tsarist crime--Meyer ruled the text a forgery, plagiarized to malign Jews and incite their mass murder in Russia.
The story of how Tsarists viciously leveraged Maurice Joly's anti-Napoleonic 1864 novel, Dialogues in Hell, is a tale of court intrigue, Russian Orthodox mysticism, peasant anti-Semitism and counter-revolutionary tactics so complex as to confound the mind. But Ben-Itto's meticulous search through French, Russian, British, South African and Swiss archives, private libraries, journalists' notes and court records on three continents, plus interviews with dozens of witnesses, proves (again) that truth is often stranger than fiction.
Many books previously detailed the facts. But before Ben-Itto's book appeared in Hebrew in 1998, no one had examined the strange confluence of characters that created the forgery--much less why the Protocols took on a life of their own. While disclosing many undisclosed intricacies in the plot, Ben-Itto created a fast-paced, real-life adventure story, impossible to put down.
In 1864, the daring Maurice Joly anonymously published his Dialogues in Geneva, against the better advice of many friends. He thought to oppose the oppressive regime of Napoleon III with a 324-page Dialogues, staged between Niccolo Machiavelli and the fictional Charles de Secondat Montesqieu. On his return to France, however, Joly was arrested, imprisoned and “charged with inciting hatred and contempt of the French government.” The novel was immediately banned, and remained out of print from 1865 until 1933; the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris had few copies.
But the virtually inaccessible book Joly had intended as a force for good was soon put to nefarious use. In 1882, the Catholic Union Bank collapsed, ruining many middle class French families, while Jewish banks flourished. Edouard Drumont began publishing his anti-Semitic La Libre Parole newspaper, spreading the idea that Jews intended to economically and politically dominate the world. Thus the “Jewish conspiracy” myth gained wide French support.
In January 1895, France convicted its only Jewish Captain, Alfred Dreyfus, of treason. In 1896, Drumont boasted he had influenced the verdict--which was eventually proved the result of two letters forged by a French anti-Semite. But it took 11 years--and backing from novelist Emile Zola--before Dreyfus was completely cleared in a third trial in 1906.
Meanwhile, the decline and fall of Russia's Romanov dynasty also fueled the 1895 plot to forge the Protocols. In November 1894, political turmoil roiled the Russian empire. A restless population, supported by liberal Russian nobles and zemstvo representatives, demanded a constitution. They harbored grave doubts about young Prince Nikolai II's suitability to lead 187 million people. But Nikolai favored continuing Alexander III's reactionary policies over political reform--evoking “a crushing feeling of betrayal” from Geneva's expatriate Revolutionary Executive Committee.
The new tsar further empowered Piotr Ivanovich Rachkovskii, who had operated the foreign arm of Russia's Okhrana police in Paris since 1884. To spy on suspected revolutionaries, Rachkovskii bribed building concierges, intercepted mail, bought photographs and compiled dossiers on every Russian emigrant to Paris. Thus equipped--and often assisted by carefully crafted forgeries--he campaigned to discredit and bankrupt some, and then renumerated his unfortunate victims to spy on others.
A Small Miracle
Nearly four decades had passed when the Swiss Jewish community, alarmed by the circulation of the Protocols, hired an inexperienced Jewish attorney Georges Brunschvig in 1933 to prove them false. Yet Brunschvig found several non-Jewish witnesses to corroborate Rachkovskii's routine practice of forgery, detail several examples of his more “modest” efforts--and expose his “most outstanding” work, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
First was Sergei Svatikov, a former St. Petersburg and Heidelberg law professor, whom Russia's provisional government sent to Paris after Tsar Nikolai's March 1917 abdication. Assigned to dissolve Okhrana's foreign offices, the 37-year-old Social Democrat met Henri Bint, formerly Rachkovskii's most trusted agent, and a 37-year Okhrana veteran.
Okhrana had long indulged in forgery, Bint told Svatikov. On his 1884 arrival in Paris, Rachkovskii immediately followed suit, and he grew ever more devious over time. Rachkovskii had often fabricated letters, pamphlets and anti-revolutionary provocations. Bint followed a precedent established by Frenchman Edouard Drumont, a fantastic anti-Semitic fabrication entitled La France Juive, which had been published more than 200 times.
Bint himself paid Rachkovskii's two regular forgers, including Matvei Golovinskii, who copied Maurice Joly's 1864 book, in the Bibliotheque Nationale. In 1901, the Okhrana had falsely ascribed the manuscript to the Jews as “The Zion Syndrome.” Svatikov took scrupulous notes.
By 1921, Svatikov had emigrated to Paris. Bint was cynical and incredulous that “this proven forgery is now being published in many languages,” particularly since he could personally testify to having “renumerated the forgers.” Svatikov now himself went to the Bibliotheque Nationale and reviewed four copies of Joly's Dialogues. In one, he found dozens of “marked passages corresponding” to those in the Protocols. Bint told Svatikov, “Rachikovskii must be laughing in his grave.”
Following his Berne testimony, Svatikov showed the court a rare original copy of the “Zionist document,” which Bint's widow had given him in the late 1920s.
Corroboration on forger Matvei Golovinskii came from Vladimir Burtsev, the former editor of Russia's historical Byloe journal, and another emigre to Paris. Golovinskii, while gifted man, was a known and rabidly anti-Semitic Okhrana agent--who completely lacked principles and had often maintained that a “Jewish world conspiracy” supported revolutionary parties to achieve “world domination.”
Burtsev first read the Protocols in 1906 and decided that publicizing this “crude and absurd fabrication,” even to discredit it, would lend the text “undeserved recognition.” But others lacked such scruples. In 1917, Burtsev was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks and was horrified to learn that his cell mate, former police chief Stepan Petrovich Beletskii, had in 1911 helped prosecute Mendel Beilis, who was falsely accused of ritually murdering a Christian child. Moreover, Beletskii had told Burtsev, while “everybody” knew the Protocols to be a “crude forgery,” they were disseminated widely anyway--to falsely discredit the Jews for “revolutionary activities.”
Brunschvig also called Graf Armand Alexander du Chayla, who in 1909 had spent nine months at the Russian Orthodox monastery at Optina Pustyn, where he became well acquainted with Sergei Nilus, the virulently anti-Semitic, albeit deeply religious publisher of the first 1905 edition of the Protocols.
Nilus obtained a copy of The Protocols in France. After losing his farm income and Kavkaz investigating judgeship, Nilus in the 1890s had fled to France with his mistress, Nataliia Komarovskaia. There, Nilus told du Chayla, she acquired the book from Okhrana chief Rachkovskii. In 1900, they returned to Russia in utter financial ruin--which Nilus blamed on the Jews. But the forgery gave Nilus new power.
Tsar Nikolai deeply hated the Jews and was fascinated by the Protocols. But he overruled their use after interior minister Piotr Arkadevich Stolypin reported the document to be an Okhrana forgery. “Drop the Protocols,” he ordered. “One cannot defend a pure cause by dirty methods.”
Nilus was not dissuaded, however. In 1901, he published The Great in the Small, a reactionary mystical tract that deeply impressed Tsarina Alexandra's religious sister, Princess Elizaveta Fedorovna. In 1902, Elizaveta introduced Nilus to the tsarina's lady in waiting, Elena Alexandrovna Ozerova, whom he shortly thereafter married. Both Ozerova's influence and support from Princess Elizaveta convinced the Russian censorship committee to reverse the tsar's ruling. Nilus published The Protocols in the appendix of his 1905 edition of The Great in the Small.
Not coincidentally, also in 1905, the tsar recalled Paris Okhrana chief Rachkovskii to Russia--as deputy director of political affairs. Given Rachkovskii's long history of mass producing forgeries to foment false suspicions, The Protocols' sudden proliferation in Russia was entirely predictable.
The Orthodox church later refused to ordain Nilus as a priest. He, Ozerova and his disabled mistress Komarovskaia decamped to the Optina Pustyn monastery, where he met du Chayla in 1909. But the damage was done.
Justice, Muted
In 1935, after 18 months, Judge Walter Meyer ruled for the Jewish people. “I hope that a time will come when nobody will understand how in the year 1935 almost a dozen sane and reasonable men could for 14 days torment their brains before a Berne court over the authenticity of these so-called Protocols, these Protocols which, despite the harm they have caused and may yet cause, are nothing more than ridiculous nonsense.”
Although it reversed the decision in 1937 on a technicality--that “obscene” under the Swiss law applied solely to pornography--the appeals court also vilified the defendants. “This scurrilous work contains unheard of and unjustified attacks against the Jews and must without reservation be judged to be immoral literature,” the court ruled, while castigating the defendants for disseminating “libelous and insulting writings of the greatest possible coarseness.”
The malicious libels in the Protocols have been twice tried in South Africa--in Grahamstown (1934) and Johannesburg (1991)--and twice disproved. In 1991, South Africa's Publications Appeals Board unanimously declared the Protocols of the Elders of Zion an “undesirable document,” and prohibited both its publication and its possession. In Germany, the publication is banned; it was also outlawed in France in 1990, after a neo-Nazi attack on a Jewish cemetery. Even in Russia a judge, in 1993, agreed that the Protocols are a crass forgery. In the U.S., the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 1964 unanimously adopted a report on the Protocols' fabrication, and entered the report into the public record.
In spite of all the contrary evidence, however, history's most potent lie seems more dangerous now than ever before. Millions of copies have been sold since Hitler used the forgery to fuel the Holocaust and the destruction of 6 million Jews.
Since the 1940s, the Protocols have spread throughout the Arab and Muslim world, in Middle Eastern Sunni and Shi'ite nations, and across Asia. Indeed, excepting Israel, the book is available almost everywhere in the Muslim world--not only in bookstores, but in five-star hotels--and is often promoted by government-controlled media and the highest ranking, government appointed religious clerics.
The Protocols, along with traditional Islamic beliefs, form the basis of the Hamas Charter, which openly calls for the annihilation of Israel and the Jewish people. Indeed, the list of Arab and Muslim figures attesting to the “truth” of the Protocols is virtually endless. Often, they are well-known clerics--like Sheik Muhammad Al-Mussayer of Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the most prominent school of Sunni Islam, and Palestinian Authority-appointed Jerusalem Mufti Ikrima Sabri. And if that weren't enough, many Islamist websites, including Radio Islam and the Arabic Hamasna, also publish them, in RadioIslam's case, with translations into at least 16 languages.
Islamic acceptance: No accident
Unfortunately, Ben-Itto does not understand that Islam's widespread and easy acceptance of the Protocols in the last 66 years is no simple accident of history.
In fact, anti-Semitism fits neatly into Islamic ideology, as exhibited in the Qu'ran, Hadith, classical Islamic jurisprudence and in end-time eschatology, according to Islamic scholar Dr. Andrew G. Bostom. He cites, for example, a 1937 essay by Georges Vajda, noting that Muslim eschatology from the Hadith (deeds and sayings attributed to Mohammed) hostilely describes Jews as “adherents of the Dajjal--the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ--and as per another tradition, the Dajjal is in fact Jewish.” Elsewhere, it is said that the Dajjal will appear, accompanied by 70,000 Jews, who when he is defeated, will be slaughtered.
Then there is the revered Hadith, (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985), when a Jew seeks refuge under a tree or a stone, they will speak and tell Muslims: “There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him!”
Many Qu'ranic verses openly and hatefully label Jews. In 5:82, Jews are described as “the worst enemies of the believers;” in 2:61, their disobedience makes them “laden with God's anger.” Still elsewhere (5:60), they are transformed into apes and swine. It is also reported, both by Ibn Hisham (d. 834), in The Life of The Prophet, and by Sahih Muslim, that a Jewish woman poisoned Mohammed and caused his lengthy, agonizing death.
Ironically, while accepting the Protocols, and indeed all their classical religious portrayals of Jews (and all other non-Muslim infidels), Muslims are themselves methodically doing that of which they accuse the Jews--attempting to reign supreme over the world.
As Shi'ite cleric al-Amili (d. 1622) explained concerning jihad in the Persian Jami-i-Abbas, on Shi'ite jurisprudence,
Islamic Holy war [jihad] against followers of other religions, such as Jews, is required unless they convert to Islam or pay the poll tax.
That is to say, pay homage to Islam, or die.
But Ben-Itto's book is an important read for everyone concerned about the terrorists' war on the West--and their adoption of the greatest lie of all time.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=23784
Hezbollah's Final Solution
By Alan M. Dershowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 11, 2006
The uniqueness of the Holocaust was not the Nazi's determination to kill the Jews of Germany and even of neighboring Poland. Other genocides, such as those by the Cambodians and the Turks, sought to rid particular areas of so called undesirables by killing them. The utter uniqueness of the Holocaust was the Nazi plan to "ingather" all the Jews of the world to the death camp and end the Jewish "race" forever.
It almost succeeded. The Nazis ingathered tens of thousands of Jews (including babies, women, the elderly) from far flung corners of the world--from the Island of Rhodes from Salonika and from other obscure locations -- in order to gas them at Auschwitz and at other death camps.
The official leader of the Palestinian Muslims, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, collaborated in the Nazi genocide, declaring that he sought to "solve the problems of the Jewish element in Palestine and other Arab countries" by employing "the same method" being used "in the Axis countries". Husseini, who spent the war years in Berlin and was later declared a Nazi war criminal at Nuremberg, wrote the following in his memoirs:
Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: "The Jews are yours."
Husseini planned a death camp for Jews modeled on Auschwitz, to be located in Nablus. He broadcast on Nazi Radio, calling for genocide against all the world's Jews: "kill the Jews wherever you find them--this pleases God, history, and religion." Professor Edward Said has acknowledged that this Nazi collaborator and genocidal anti-Semite "represented the Palestinian Arab consensus" and was "the voice of the Palestinian people." Yasser Arafat referred to Husseini as "our hero."
Never before or since in world history has a tyrannical regime sought to murder all of the members of a particular racial, religious, ethnic or cultural group, regardless of where they live--not until now. Hezbollah's aim is not to "end the occupation of Palestine," or even to "liberate all of Palestine." Its goal is to kill the world's Jews. Listen to the words of its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah: "If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." (NY Times, May 23, 2004, p. 15, section 2, column 1.) Nasrallah is one of the most admired men in the Muslim and Arab world today. Hitler made similar threats in Mein Kampf but they were largely ignored. Nasrallah has a reputation for keeping his promises.
His genocidal goals--to kill all Jews--were proven by two recent statements. He has warned the Arabs and Muslims to leave Haifa so that his rockets can kill only Jews. And he apologized for causing the deaths of three Israeli-Arabs in Nazareth, when a Katuysha struck that religiously mixed Israeli city. Hezbollah also worked hand-in-hand with Argentine neo-Nazis to blow up a Jewish community center, murdering dozens of Jews.
Nasrallah is a modern day Hitler, who currently lacks the capacity to carry out his genocide. But he is an ally of Iran, which will soon have the capacity to kill Israeli's five million Jews. Listen to what the former President of Iran has said about how Iran would use its nuclear weapons:
Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran, has threatened Israel with nuclear destruction, boasting that an attack would kill as many as five million Jews. Rafsanjani estimated that even if Israel retaliated by dropping its own nuclear bombs, Iran would probably lose only fifteen million people, which he said would be a small "sacrifice" from among the billion Muslims in the world.
Now listen to the current President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies the Nazi Holocaust, but calls for a modern Holocaust that would "wipe Israel off the map."
Despite these anti-Semitic and genocidal threats, some of the hard left admire Nasrallah and his bigoted organization, as well as Iran and its anti-Semitic president. Others do not seem to take his threats seriously.
For example, the notorious Jewish anti-Semite Norman Finkelstein has said, "looking back my chief regret is that I wasn't even more forceful in publicly defending Hezbollah against terrorist intimidation and attack."
Finkelstein's hatred of Jews runs so deep that he has actually implied that his own mother, who survived the Nazi Holocaust, may have collaborated with the Nazis. If so collaboration with evil seems to run in the family, because Finkelstein has clearly become a collaborator with Hezbollah anti-Semitism and Nazism. Finkelstein's website is filled with Hezbollah promotion, including breathless reprints of Nasrallah speeches. Noam Chomsky, who works closely with Finkelstein, has said of Finkelstein that he is "a person who can speak with more authority and insight on these topics [Israel and anti-Semitism] than anyone I can think of."
The Iran-Hezbollah axis is the greatest threat to world peace, to Jewish survival, to Western values, and to civilization. Those like Finkelstein, who support Hezbollah, and even those who refuse to fight against this evil, are on the wrong side of history. They are collaborators with Islamofascists -- today's version of Nazism.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=23823
Russian Arms For Hugo Chavez
By Stephen Brown
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 11, 2006
“The biggest threat which exists in the world is the empire of the United States.”
Thus spoke Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s anti-American leader, in Moscow recently at the unveiling of a bust of nineteenth-century South American liberator-hero Simon Bolivar. But while such poisonous, anti-American rhetoric is standard fare for El Presidente, who sees himself as a second Fidel Castro, the real purpose of the Venezuelan’s trip to the heart of the former Soviet empire was to receive political support for his anti-American position in the form of weapons sales and investment in energy projects. And in both, Chavez was successful.
As a result of the Venezuelan president’s visit, one Russian oil company will now explore in his country’s Orinoco Basin, while a Russian state energy company will carry out work in the Gulf of Venezuela. But, more importantly, in a deal the United States tried to block, Chavez successfully ordered 24 of Russia’s latest jet fighters and 53 helicopters during his time in Moscow. This is on top of the 40 helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles the Venezuelan military had already ordered in an earlier transaction from Russia that go to make up the $5 billion in arms Chavez may eventually buy.
Because Washington considers Chavez a dangerous and radical anti-American leftist, who in 1999 on a trip to China called himself “very Maoist all of my life”, American arms producers are forbidden from selling to Venezuela.
Chavez says the Russian arms purchases will help protect his country from an American invasion, a claim Washington calls ludicrous. The Venezuelan president has said that America may one day try to seize his countries oil reserves by force and called an earlier weapons deal with Russia ideal for a war of resistance. Venezuela is currently the world’s fifth-largest exporter of oil and provides America with about 15 per cent of its crude imports.
Chavez’s critics, however, say the large arms deals he is making with Russia are not for defensive purposes but rather to expand his own political position in South America. Stephen Blank, an international affairs analyst, wrote such weapons purchases are meant to back up Chavez’s plans to create an anti-American bloc among Latin American countries. Blank stated an arms purchase Chavez previously made suggests the Venezuelan leader is “prey to a megalomania borne of enormous oil revenue and a desire to emulate his mentor Castro.” Blank cited the fact that Venezuela probably cannot begin to maintain or even operate this arsenal as proof.
And the first country Washington fears Chavez may try to subvert in his quest to build his radical, anti-American bloc is Colombia, Venezuela’s neighbor. Weapons from the Russian purchases, such as the Kalashnikovs, it is believed, may make their way to such leftist Colombian terrorist groups as FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) or ELN (National Liberation Army). Chavez would use these groups, which his government refuses to call terrorists in order to remain “neutral”, to destabilize the pro-American Colombian government. Already in 2000, for example, Colombian drug dealers were inexplicably found in possession of a Russian Kilo-class submarine.
Blank also reports that Venezuela has allowed FARC guerillas to travel around the world using Venezuelan passports, indicating its involvement with that terrorist group and justifying the Colombian government’s charge of Venezuelan support for FARC. Moreover, a Washington Times story stated that the Chavez government also interfered with mayoral elections in Nicaragua in 2004 by funneling money to Marxist Sandinista candidates.
Chavez’s close association with Castro is already well known. There are currently about 15,000 Cuban advisors in Venezuela. Blank writes: “Venezuela has virtually subcontracted its intelligence and domestic security forces to Cuba.” As well, Cubans train Chavez’s private militia, the Bolivarian Circles, with some training carried out in Cuba itself.
For its part, Russia is supplying weapons to Venezuela to expand both its influence and market for arms in South America. By doing so, Russia is expressing its anger with America over its establishment of bases and influence in Central Asia and other territories near Russia, which that country regards as its own areas of influence. As well, observers have noted that there is still a Cold War attitude among some top Russians, who still view America as their main enemy and strategize accordingly. As a result, Russia is supporting Venezuela for a seat on the United Nations Security Council where, as one analyst notes, the South American country can adopt anti-American positions and use anti-American language these Russians support but wouldn’t use themselves.
Chavez’s visit to Moscow was only one of four countries he visited on his recent trip abroad. The other three, also unfriendly to America, were Cuba, Belarus and Iran. In Iran, the Venezuelan president received that country’s highest award for supporting Tehran’s nuclear development program, saying at the award ceremony: “Let’s save the human race. Let’s finish off the U.S. empire…”
But like most megalomaniacs, Chavez doesn’t realize that through his erratic actions, he will eventually just wind up finishing off himself first and, most tragically, probably many innocent people as well.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=23816
Israeli Cows 'Invade' South Lebanon
http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/story/F2C56AED26B9D32BC22571C6003B2B7B?OpenDocument
The grass is greener in Hizbullah-controlled territory. Literally.
Dozens of hungry cows whose pasture land in northern Israel has been reduced to ashes by the daily rain of rockets found a hole in the border fence and moved to Lebanon for healthier grazing, the Yediot Aharonot reported Thursday.
According to the daily, the more than 3,000 rockets that have been fired by Hizbullah have set fire to 100 sq km of pasture where cows used to graze.
The cows used a breach made in the border by Israeli units who have been battling the group since the start of a massive offensive in Lebanon on July 12.(AFP)
Beirut, 10 Aug 06, 13:49
__._,_.___
You are welcome, maybe you will keep an eye on the site for news.
There is so much in Israel that I do not understand, that I am almost afraid to post .
But then, I don't think they should give up anything, so maybe you will choose for us, the best articles.
Yes, those Irish names will do it every time.
I did find and post one on the english who had been arrested, that showed their english and muslim names.
Lebanese officials estimate that Iran and Syria will not oppose a ceasefire deal; this seems reasonable in light of the fact that the two countries have repeatedly called for a ceasefire, apparently in a bid to keep Hizbullah from collapsing so that it may take part in future confrontations with Israel. <<<
Maybe all this togatherness of the countries is wrong.
In the old days, a country went to war with another country.
Never mind all this talking to the neighbors.
Links?
Sources?
Thanks
Why do Bush/Rice pressure Israel to surrender? <<<
I can only guess, but think it may be to keep us out of the war.
If Israel continues, Iran and Syria will join in and then so will we and then comes the real danger of nukes.
Israel is right to fight the war, in my opinion, but will not win, as there are too many against her.
If a muslim country ever wins a war with Israel, they will vanish, as all the muslims will go after them.
Yes, that is about what will happen, if all the fighting is not stopped.
But there will not be a stop in the fighting.
LOL, yes that is a fantasy of mine.
Yes, I keep an eye out, looking for everything.
You never know what you will find or where it is hiding.
I agree, we have to educate people to the truth.
This will answer all your questions and more:
Hope it helps.......
http://www.google.com/search?q=world+muslim+population+in+2006&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681951/posts
40 Mid-Air Terror Plot Suspects Reported Arrested in Italy
Foxnews.com ^ | 8-11-06 | foxnews
Posted on 08/11/2006 11:02:56 AM PDT by standingfirm
Edited on 08/11/2006 11:35:06 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Pakistan: Suspected London Plane Terrorists Have Al Qaeda Connection
LONDON — Police arrested 40 people in cities throughout Italy in raids on Muslim gathering places in a security crackdown after Britain thwarted an alleged terror plot, the Interior Ministry said Friday, as Pakistani intelligence agents claimed there was an connection with ties to to the group of suspected terrorists arrested Thursday.
The arrests in Italy were made Rome, Milan, Venice, Florence, Naples and other cities on Thursday and Friday "as part of an extraordinary operation that followed the British anti-terrorist operation," the ministry said in a statement.
Excerpt
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681966/posts
Egyptian student arrested at O'Hare
Chicago Sun Times & AP ^ | August 10, 2006 | Nathaniel Hernandez
Posted on 08/11/2006 11:26:54 AM PDT by NoFoxholeAthiests
Six of the 11 Egyptian exchange students who recently entered the United States and failed to show up for their college program were in custody Thursday after three more were arrested, officials said.
Police arrested Ahmed Mohamed Mohamed Abou El Ela, 22, at O'Hare International Airport after he tried to check in for a Chicago-to-Montana flight using an invalid ticket marked for a New York departure, Chicago police said.
El Ela raised his voice and became unruly after an employee at a Delta ticket counter refused to let him exchange the ticket for a valid one, said Timothy J. Bolger, the Chicago police officer at the scene. "He was loud and causing people to be alarmed," Bolger said. The officer said El Ela calmed down when police arrived.
After federal officials confirmed El Ela was one of the students they were seeking, police turned him over to immigration agents, Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline said.
Two other students, El Sayed Ahmed Elsayed Ibrahim, 20, and Alaa Abd El Fattah Ali El Bahnasawi, 20, were arrested at a residence in Dundalk, Md., outside Baltimore, by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the FBI said.
All are being held on administrative immigration violations because they did not report on time to their monthlong program at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont.
A group of 17 students, six of whom reported to Bozeman on time, arrived in New York on July 29. After Montana State repeatedly tried to contact the missing students, it notified Department of Homeland Security officials and registered the Egyptians as no-shows in a system developed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to track foreign students.
None of the students is considered a terrorism risk, and FBI officials stressed there are no ties between the Egyptians and the alleged terror plot broken up by British authorities.
The other five students were still being sought. Relatives in Egypt explained the students' failure to show up at Montana State by saying they probably wanted to find work in the United States.
"It must have been in his mind to stay where there are plenty of job opportunities," said Ibrahim el-Dessouki, the father of a student arrested Wednesday in Minnesota. "You know how much a dollar is worth here in Egypt."
He said he spoke to his son when he arrived in the United States but has not since.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681960/posts
Timmerman: Hezbollah Ties to British Plot
NewsMax ^ | Aug. 10, 2006
Posted on 08/11/2006 11:17:02 AM PDT by nuconvert
Timmerman: Hezbollah Ties to British Plot
Thursday, Aug. 10, 2006
NewsMax.com senior correspondent and Middle East expert Kenneth R. Timmerman said Hezbollah might be to blame for the terror plot thwarted by British security agencies Thursday.
Timmerman, appearing as a guest on MSNBC’s "Tucker with Tucker Carlson,” said the plot was reminiscent of one in 1986 that was foiled by French authorities.
"Hezbollah operatives had tried to bring in liquid explosives to launch terrorist attacks,” Timmerman said. "The French caught them and the explosives, which were brought in inside little liquor bottles. This is the kind of thing that has Hezbollah’s fingerprints all over it.”
Timmerman - who for the past several weeks has filed daily reports for NewsMax.com from Israel on the Middle East conflict – said he also suspects Iran has strong ties to al-Qaida that makes the prospect of nuclear proliferation in that region all the more troubling for the United States and Israel.
"The Bush administration is concerned that Iran has a clandestine nuclear program and we just don’t know when they will have nuclear weapons capability,” Timmerman said. While other nations, such as France, do possess nuclear capability, Iran is an obvious threat because of the theocracy that governs the nation, as reflected in the statements of its hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"The problem with Iran is not nuclear weapons per se,” he told Carlson. "Iran is a theocracy and its leaders believe that they take their cue from God. Ahmadinejad said his goal is the destruction of Israel and to destroy America. He believes that by setting off a worldwide jihad and a worldwide nuclear cataclysm, that he can bring about the end of the world and that Muslims will be free and be safe. This is an ideology we need to take very seriously.”
Timmerman’s book, "Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran," deals with this serious threat, and links the Iranian regime to al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations now actively battling the United States and Israel in the war on terrorism.
"As of 1993, the Iranian regime had started its liaison with al-Qaida,” he said. "They sent their top terrorist – who the Israelis now believe is in south Lebanon coordinating attacks against Israel – and they sent him to Sudan to meet with Osama bin Laden . . . We know this because the bodyguard of Osama bin Laden has become state’s evidence in the U.S. in several court cases . . . ”
Timmerman continues, laying the foundation for a possible conflict between Iran and what it considers the "Great Satan and Little Satan” – the United States and Israel.
"We have evidence of Iran helping al-Qaida all through the 1990s, training al-Qaida terrorists in Lebanon and taking them into Iran,” Timmerman said. "Experts of Islam that the CIA listens to said this could never happen because the Iranians are Shia and the al-Qaida people are Wahhabi Sunnis. But when it gets down to killing Jews and killing Americans, guess what, they get along very well.”
Timmerman: Hezbollah Ties to British Plot
NewsMax ^ | Aug. 10, 2006
Posted on 08/11/2006 11:17:02 AM PDT by nuconvert
Timmerman: Hezbollah Ties to British Plot
Thursday, Aug. 10, 2006
NewsMax.com senior correspondent and Middle East expert Kenneth R. Timmerman said Hezbollah might be to blame for the terror plot thwarted by British security agencies Thursday.
Timmerman, appearing as a guest on MSNBC’s "Tucker with Tucker Carlson,” said the plot was reminiscent of one in 1986 that was foiled by French authorities.
"Hezbollah operatives had tried to bring in liquid explosives to launch terrorist attacks,” Timmerman said. "The French caught them and the explosives, which were brought in inside little liquor bottles. This is the kind of thing that has Hezbollah’s fingerprints all over it.”
Timmerman - who for the past several weeks has filed daily reports for NewsMax.com from Israel on the Middle East conflict – said he also suspects Iran has strong ties to al-Qaida that makes the prospect of nuclear proliferation in that region all the more troubling for the United States and Israel.
"The Bush administration is concerned that Iran has a clandestine nuclear program and we just don’t know when they will have nuclear weapons capability,” Timmerman said. While other nations, such as France, do possess nuclear capability, Iran is an obvious threat because of the theocracy that governs the nation, as reflected in the statements of its hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"The problem with Iran is not nuclear weapons per se,” he told Carlson. "Iran is a theocracy and its leaders believe that they take their cue from God. Ahmadinejad said his goal is the destruction of Israel and to destroy America. He believes that by setting off a worldwide jihad and a worldwide nuclear cataclysm, that he can bring about the end of the world and that Muslims will be free and be safe. This is an ideology we need to take very seriously.”
Timmerman’s book, "Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran," deals with this serious threat, and links the Iranian regime to al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations now actively battling the United States and Israel in the war on terrorism.
"As of 1993, the Iranian regime had started its liaison with al-Qaida,” he said. "They sent their top terrorist – who the Israelis now believe is in south Lebanon coordinating attacks against Israel – and they sent him to Sudan to meet with Osama bin Laden . . . We know this because the bodyguard of Osama bin Laden has become state’s evidence in the U.S. in several court cases . . . ”
Timmerman continues, laying the foundation for a possible conflict between Iran and what it considers the "Great Satan and Little Satan” – the United States and Israel.
"We have evidence of Iran helping al-Qaida all through the 1990s, training al-Qaida terrorists in Lebanon and taking them into Iran,” Timmerman said. "Experts of Islam that the CIA listens to said this could never happen because the Iranians are Shia and the al-Qaida people are Wahhabi Sunnis. But when it gets down to killing Jews and killing Americans, guess what, they get along very well.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681955/posts
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