FULL ARTICLES

AL-JAZEERA CONTRIBUTING TO “DEATH AND DESTRUCTION”

Iraqi Government: Al-Jazeera Channel contributing to the spread of death
Asharq Al-Awsat
February 8, 2007

The Iraqi government has accused Al Jazeera satellite channel of “contributing to the spread of death and destruction” through its news coverage of the events in Iraq. This comes two years following the closure of the channel’s office in Baghdad.

In a statement, the Iraqi cabinet said that, “Al Jazeera channel continues to adopt a clear and blatant hostile position towards the Iraqi public, contributing to the spread of death and destruction on Iraq’s noble land through its adoption of an antagonistic project that is obviously against Iraq and its people.

Al Jazeera described the Iraqi cabinet’s statement as “without justification or basis.”

Ahmed al Sheikh, the editor-in-chief of Al-Jazeera television said, “What have we done… Nothing.” He sees that, “the Iraqi government is searching for a scapegoat to justify its failure to achieve security and stability for the Iraqi people,” according to Reuters news agency. The Iraqi government had banned Al-Jazeera channel from operating in Iraq two years ago despite the fact that the English service of the channel has an office in Baghdad and continues to broadcast from the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq.

The Iraqi government believes that, “Al Jazeera channel aired programs through which it tried to spread confusion and distort the facts, in addition to diverting international public opinion away from the catastrophic crimes committed by the death squads and the rampant destruction and organized terrorism on Iraqi land.” The ministerial statement added, “we invite the representatives of the Iraqi people in the House of Representatives to take a firm and clear stand against the channel, and to use legal ways to persecute and deter it away from its approach that is hostile to the aspirations and expectations of Iraq’s people and its national government.”

The Iraqi government did offer an explanation for this new criticism; however an official from the ruling Shiaa coalition said that a talk show, which was broadcast the day before last, criticized the government and the Shiaa parties.

An Iraqi media official had issued a request to the parliament to take a ‘clear and decisive’ stance towards the Qatari satellite channel, accusing Al-Jazeera of airing “discrimination and outright animosity, also propagating confusion and distorting the facts.”

According to the head of the national media center of the cabinet’s secretariat, “Al-Jazeera adopts a blatantly antagonistic position against Iraq’s people and is a tool for spreading discord among the sons of one nation. It is a means of [spreading] killing, death and destruction,” as related by Agence France-Press (AFP).

 

“KNOWING ABOUT THE WORLD IS NOT A LUXURY; IT IS AN URGENT NECESSITY”

Demise of the Foreign Correspondent
By Pamela Constable
The Washington Post
February 18, 2007

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021601713.html

When I think back on the most momentous events of my professional life, they include scenes of both devastation and deliverance. The boulevards of Manila, flooded with peaceful demonstrators chanting for Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos to abandon power. The slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where a joyful, gyrating mob of slum-dwellers is celebrating the election of populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president. The highlands of Guatemala or Peru, where grave sites conceal the victims of atrocity.

If the Boston Globe had not sent me abroad as a foreign correspondent in 1983, and allowed me to spend a decade in Latin America and other regions of the world, I would never have been able to witness these historic changes – and bring them alive to readers back home. Even then, the Globe was one of only a handful of American newspapers willing to invest in the luxury of its own foreign staff, and I was keenly aware of how privileged I was to do all this while drawing a steady paycheck.

Today, Americans’ need to understand the struggles of distant peoples is greater than ever. Our troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries that we did not know enough about when we invaded them and that we are still trying to fathom. We have been victimized by foreign terrorists, yet we still cannot imagine why anyone would hate us. Our economy is intimately linked to global markets, our population is nearly 20 percent foreign-born, and our lives are directly affected by borderless scourges such as global warming and AIDS. Knowing about the world is not a luxury; it is an urgent necessity.

But instead of stepping up coverage of international affairs, American newspapers and television networks are steadily cutting back. The Globe, which stunned the journalism world last month by announcing that it would shut down its last three foreign bureaus, is the most recent example.

Between 2002 and 2006, the number of foreign-based newspaper correspondents shrank from 188 to 141 (excluding the Wall Street Journal, which publishes Asian and European editions). The Baltimore Sun, which had correspondents from Mexico to Beijing when I went to work there in 1978, now has none. Newsday, which once had half a dozen foreign bureaus, is about to shut down its last one, in Pakistan. Only four U.S. papers – the Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and The Washington Post – still keep a stable of foreign correspondents.

It takes a lot of money to maintain an office in a foreign capital. A typical newspaper bureau overseas costs at least $250,000 a year, according to foreign editors, and a large, security-conscious news operation in a city such as Baghdad can hemorrhage four times that.

But today many readers are switching to other information sources – including Web sites and even blogs – that have left newspapers struggling to survive. Many family-owned papers have been acquired by corporations that see foreign coverage as an indulgence they can’t afford.

In an effort to cut costs, newspapers are replacing bureaus – which require staffs and cars and family housing – with mobile, trouble-shooting individual correspondents. The erstwhile bureau chief in New Delhi or Cairo, chatting with diplomats over rum punches on the veranda, is now an eager kid with a laptop and an Arabic phrase book in her backpack. Freelancers can help cover more remote or incremental stories, and newswire agencies can cover breaking news in global hot spots – but neither is enough.

Television, meanwhile, continues to bring us instant images of the latest Baghdad market bombing or flimsy refugee shacks in Sudan’s Darfur region, but its coverage of the world is increasingly selective as well as superficial.

Although more than 80 percent of the public obtains most of its foreign and national news from TV, the major networks are also closing down foreign bureaus, concentrating their resources on a few big stories such as Iraq.

In the 1980s, American TV networks each maintained about 15 foreign bureaus; today they have six or fewer. ABC has shut down its offices in Moscow, Paris and Tokyo; NBC closed bureaus in Beijing, Cairo and Johannesburg. Aside from a one-person ABC bureau in Nairobi, there are no network bureaus left at all in Africa, India or South America – regions that are home to more than 2 billion people.

In a speech at Columbia University last week, veteran TV news anchor Walter Cronkite warned that pressure by media companies to generate increasing profits is threatening our nation’s values and freedom by leaving people less informed. In today’s complicated world, “the need for high-quality reporting is greater than ever,” he said. “It’s not just the journalist’s job at risk here. It’s American democracy.”

Even at their best, newspapers are also a limited medium. I have always been acutely aware that no matter how deeply I burrowed into a society or how many people I interviewed, I was only peeling back the most superficial layers of complex, murky worlds in which people routinely lied, every incident had a contradictory version, and no 1,500-word article could possibly do justice to the truth.

Yet newspapers can also fill an important niche between television and academe, offering an accessible way for busy people to learn about distant events and an outlet for writing that captures the essence of a time and place without polemics or pedantry. They can put events in context, explain human behavior and belief, evoke a way of life. Foreign correspondents can burrow into a society, cultivate strangers’ trust, follow meandering trails and dig beneath layers of diplomatic spin and government propaganda.

As a young reporter, I devoured the work of famous foreign correspondents and yearned to follow in their footsteps as they chronicled human travails and endeavors: the flight into exile, the search for work, the upheaval of war, the pilgrimage of faith. Joe Lelyveld, accompanying black workers on their daily bus commute into a South African city. Michael Herr, following a psychedelic trail of tears through the jungles of Vietnam. Freya Stark in the 1930s, following the great frankincense road: “On its stream of padding feet the riches of Asia travelled; along its slow continuous thread the Arabian empires rose and fell.” Some may call this highbrow tourism, but I agree with the late Polish correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski: There is something more valuable and more enduring than facts.

The best work that I produced over the years, and that resonated most with readers, were the stories that took the time and space to portray an alien world in detail. The road trip across Afghanistan during Taliban rule, where veiled women told me they finally felt safe from marauding militias. The train ride across India with a family to baptize their son in the Ganges, which they fervently believed would protect him for life. The portrait of a poor Afghan village where tiny children begged me not to destroy the family’s opium poppy crop. The trial of the Pakistani man who carved up his wife’s face in a jealous rage, and then told me with great satisfaction that he had avenged his family honor.

Although many people have a glamorous image of foreign correspondents, theirs is a lonely, gritty and often dangerous way of life. During my years on the road, I have landed in capitals where I knew no one, all hell was breaking loose and I had 10 hours until deadline. I have lain in sweltering hotel rooms staring at spiders, outrun drunken soldiers waving pistols, interviewed hysterical teenagers who vowed to murder all Americans, inhaled tear gas with angry mobs, gone weeks without a hot meal or shower.

I never regretted a minute of it – and I never thought I’d be a member of a dying breed. I know that change is inevitable, that fewer people are buying our products and that the news business must adapt or sink. But putting aside my nostalgia for literary nomadism, I am convinced that cutting back on first-hand reporting from abroad and substituting cheaper, simpler forms of overseas news delivery is a false economy and a grave mistake.

Don’t we learn more about Islam from Anthony Shadid’s wide-ranging Post interviews with thoughtful Muslims in Egypt and Turkey than from images of the latest bombing in Baghdad? Don’t we identify more with Sharon LaFraniere’s New York Times portraits of village customs in Malawi and Mozambique than with dry reports about the grim toll of AIDS across Africa? If newspapers stop covering the world, I fear we will end up with a microscopic elite reading Foreign Affairs and a numbed nation watching terrorist bombings flash briefly among a barrage of commentary, crawls and celebrity gossip.

Even amid the broader wave of newspaper cutbacks, the announcement that the Globe was shutting down its foreign bureaus hit a special nerve among newspaper journalists. Somehow it seemed a watershed in the inexorable surrender of an honorable craft to the bottom line.

Many of us knew and admired Elizabeth Neuffer, a Globe correspondent who spent several years searching for mass killers in Rwanda and Bosnia, and later published a riveting book about her findings. Elizabeth, who died in a car accident in Iraq in 2003, believed in following the truth to its source, and the paper she worked for gave her the space and resources to do so. Now I fear we are witnessing the demise of the kind of journalism that permitted such quests at all.

FULL ARTICLE

ARABS KNOW EXCAVATION WORKS NOT DAMAGING MOSQUE

Truth and punishment
Arabs know excavation works not damaging mosque
By Elyakim Haetzni
Yediot Ahronot
February 12, 2007

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3364001,00.html

There’s nothing like the Mugrabi Gate affair to prove the futility of the dream of reconciliation with the Arabs. After all, it is clear to all, even to Leftist Jews, that the Arabs know the truth, but this doesn’t change a thing.

Sheikh Ra’ad Salah stood there at the excavation site – expressly outside the Temple Mount compound, far from the mosques – and shamelessly announced: “This is a crime. Israel is destroying part of the al-Aqsa Mosque.”

“There’s no excuse for the excavation works that are undermining the sacredness of Islam.” I would have understood had the head of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch said this, but it’s surprising to hear King Abdullah of Jordan, a sought-after and beloved partner who knew about the excavations in advance, saying so. How can he accuse us of something he knows isn’t true, and that we know that he knows? And what does Olmert say to himself when Mahmoud Abbas, who received funds, arms and kisses from him, when Abbas attacked Israel “for changing the character of the place and making it Jewish” – when even he knows the truth.

This false protest is consciously backed by countries such as Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan - all described by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni as “moderate Arab states with whom we not only share the same values but also the same interests.” How will Livni explain that her new friends are now setting her up?

Slap in the face from Siniora

This question should concern the peace camp, because it is seeking to mortgage our future against the words and signatures of such people and regimes. Either the “partners” have remained enemies within, or despite them being “moderate” they are being pressured by their people to attack. Either way, the result is the same; we shall surrender the heart of our country, threaten our security, and risk a civil war in exchange for a commitment that is worthless.

Olmert received a similar slap in the face from Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who is presenting the deployment of troops in the south of Lebanon as an “achievement” of the last war. Even Siniora was informed of the plan to carry out excavation works in our sovereign territory, and knowing the truth he sent his army to fire at us and condemn us for our “Israeli aggression.”

The new Arab colleagues are no different than Arafat, who also knew that the Western wall Tunnel and Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount did not undermine the mosques, yet despite this, with cold cynicism, he turned both these incidences into a casus belli for two wars.

The defense minister, who is folding under anti-truth terror, is reminiscent of Katherina in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew.

Petruchio: I say it is the moon that shines so bright.

Katherina: I know it is the sun that shines so bright.

Petruchio: Now by my mother’s son, and that’s myself,
It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,
Or ere I journey to your father’s house.
Go on and fetch our horses back again.
Evermore cross’d and cross’d; nothing but cross’d!

Hortensio: Say as he says, or we shall never go.

Katherina: Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please;
And if you please to call it a rush-candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.

Petruchio: I say it is the moon.

Katherina: I know it is the moon.

Petruchio: Nay, then you lie; it is the blessed sun.

Katherina: Then, God be bless’d, it is the blessed sun;
But sun it is not, when you say it is not;
And the moon changes even as your mind.
What you will have it nam’d, even that it is,
And so it shall be so for Katherine.

 

WHY WALLS ARE GOING UP ALL OVER THE WORLD?

Why walls are going up all over the world?
By Gwynne Dyer
Arab News
February 18, 2007

www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=92084&d=13&m=2&y=2007

If good fences make good neighbors, then the world is experiencing an unprecedented outbreak of neighborliness. They used to wall cities. Now they wall whole countries.

The latest country to start building a wall – sorry, a “security fence” – is Thailand, which has just announced plans to build a physical barrier along the most inaccessible 75 km. (50 miles) of its frontier with Malaysia. The goal, says Bangkok, is to stop “terrorists” from crossing into Thailand’s restive Muslim-majority southern provinces from northern Malaysia, whose people share the same language and religion. If experience elsewhere is any guide, the whole border will be walled sooner or later.

India is well on the way to being walled (except along the Himalayas, where the mountains do the job for free). The barrier along its 3,000-km. (1,800-mile) border with Pakistan is largely complete except in the parts of Kashmir where the steep and broken terrain precludes the construction of the usual two-row, three-meter-high (ten-foot-high) fence, with concertina wire and mines between the two fences. And India is now building an even longer barrier (3,300 km., 1,950 miles) to halt illegal immigration from Bangladesh.

While India’s walls keep unwelcome intruders out, the barriers around North Korea are meant to keep North Koreans in. The original fortifications along the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea, which have been continually improved since the 1950s, were built mainly to stop infiltration by North Korean troops or saboteurs. However, the fence that Beijing is now building along its own frontier with North Korea is a precautionary measure to stop an immense wave of refugees from entering China if the regime in Pyongyang collapses.

The majority of the new walls springing up around the world are there to stop either terrorist attacks or illegal immigration, but sometimes they also serve as a unilateral way of defining a country’s desired borders. That is certainly true of the 2,700 km. (1,600 miles) of high sand or stone berms, backed by wire fences, mines, radar, troop bunkers and artillery bases, that seal off Western Sahara, annexed by Morocco in 1975, from the camps in Algeria from which many of the former inhabitants waged a guerrilla war until the 1991 cease-fire.

It is equally true of the wall that Israel is building through the occupied West Bank. The country has long had heavily mined and monitored barrier fences along its external frontiers with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon and around the Gaza Strip, but the wall in the West Bank does not follow the cease-fire line of 1967. Instead it penetrates deep into the Palestinian territories at a number of points to leave Jewish settlement blocs on the Israeli side, and it cuts off (Arab) East Jerusalem from the West Bank entirely.

Pakistan is building a 1,500-mile fence with Afghanistan, Uzbekistan has built a fence along its border with Tajikistan, the United Arab Emirates is erecting a barrier along its frontier with Oman, and Kuwait is upgrading its existing 215-km (125-mile) wall along the Iraqi frontier. But the most impressive barriers are certainly around Saudi Arabia.

Saudis have been quietly pursuing an $8.5 billion project to fence off the full length of its porous border with Yemen for some years, but the highest priority now is to get a high-tech barrier built along the 900-km (550-mile) border with Iraq. “If and when Iraq fragments, there’s going to be a lot of people heading south,” said Nawaf Obaid, head of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, “and that is when we have to be prepared.”

By comparison, the apparently endless debate about building a relatively low-tech fence along the 3,360-km (1,920-mile) US border with Mexico to cut illegal immigration seems like an echo from an innocent past.

The European Union’s feeble gestures toward curbing illegal immigration from Africa (fences around the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan coast, naval patrols off the Canary Islands) seem merely pathetic. But these are probably the last of the Good Old Days, at least in Europe.

The reason that the United States is incapable of controlling its Mexican border is political, not financial or technological: Powerful domestic lobbies work to ensure a steady supply of “undocumented” Mexican workers who will accept very low wages because they are in the United States illegally. President Bush has now been authorized by Congress to build a fence along about 1,125 km (700 miles) of the Mexican border, but he will stall as long as he can while experimenting with a so-called “virtual fence.”

No equivalent lobby operates in the European Union, and it is only a matter of time before really serious barriers appear on the EU’s land frontiers, especially with Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Turkey. The walls are going up all over the world, and most of them will not come down for a long time, if ever.

FULL ARTICLES

“WOULD AN APARTHEID STATE AWARD ITS TOP LITERARY PRIZE TO AN ARAB?”

Irshad Manji: Modern Israel is a far cry from old South Africa
It’s absurd to apply the term apartheid to one of the most progressive states in the world, maintains Irshad Manji
The Australian
February 9, 2007

www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21194124-7583,00.html

In the past year, a stream of thinkers across the West – from Australian writer Antony Loewenstein to US academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt – has punctured the usual parameters of debate about Israel. I, for one, welcome any effort to prevent ideas from calcifying into ideologies. As a Muslim refusenik, that’s what I do by defying the conventional prejudices of my fellow Muslims. Why would I resent refuseniks of a different kind?

It’s precisely because I embrace intellectual pluralism that I respectfully challenge Jimmy Carter’s recent critique of Israel as an apartheid state. To be sure, I’ve long admired the former US president. In my book The Trouble with Islam Today I cite him as an example of how religion can be invoked to tap the best of humanity. In no small measure, it was Carter’s appreciation of spiritual values that brought together Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, compelling these former foes to clasp hands over a peace deal.

Which is why Carter’s new book disappoints so many of us who champion co-existence. Entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the book argues that Israel’s conduct towards Palestinians mimics South Africa’s long-time demonisation of blacks. Of course, certain Israeli politicians have spewed venom at Palestinians, as have some Arab leaders towards Jews, but Israel is far more complex – and diverse – than slogans about the occupation would suggest. In a state practising apartheid, would Arab Muslim legislators wield veto power over anything? At only 20per cent of the population, would Arabs even be eligible for election if they squirmed under the thumb of apartheid? Would an apartheid state extend voting rights to women and the poor in local elections, which Israel did for the first time in the history of Palestinian Arabs?

Would the vast majority of Arab Israeli citizens turn out to vote in national elections, as they’ve usually done? Would an apartheid state have several Arab political parties, as Israel does? In recent Israeli elections, two Arab parties found themselves disqualified for expressly supporting terrorism against the Jewish state. However, Israel’s Supreme Court, exercising its independence, overturned both disqualifications. Under any system of apartheid, would the judiciary be free of political interference?

Would an apartheid state award its top literary prize to an Arab? Israel honoured Emile Habibi in 1986, before the intifada might have made such a choice politically shrewd. Would an apartheid state encourage Hebrew-speaking schoolchildren to learn Arabic? Would road signs throughout the land appear in both languages? Even my country, the proudly bilingual Canada, doesn’t meet that standard.

Would an apartheid state be home to universities where Arabs and Jews mingle at will, or apartment blocks where they live side by side? Would an apartheid state bestow benefits and legal protections on Palestinians who live outside of Israel but work inside its borders? Would human rights organisations operate openly in an apartheid state? They do in Israel.

For that matter, military officials go public with their criticisms of government policies. In October 2003, the Israel Defence Forces’ chief of staff told the press that road closures in the West Bank and Gaza were feeding Palestinian anger. Two weeks later, four former heads of the Shin Bet security service blasted the occupation and called on Ariel Sharon to withdraw troops unilaterally, which later happened in Gaza. Would an apartheid state stomach so much dissent from those mandated to protect the state?

Above all, would media debate the most basic building blocks of the nation? Would a Hebrew newspaper in an apartheid state run an article by an Arab Israeli about why the Zionist adventure has been a total failure? Would it run that article on Israel’s independence day? Would an apartheid state ensure conditions for the freest Arabic press in the Middle East, a press so free that it can demonstrably abuse its liberties and keep on rolling? To this day, the East Jerusalem daily Al-Quds hasn’t retracted an anti-Israel letter supposedly penned by Nelson Mandela but proven to have been written by an Arab living in The Netherlands.

Even the eminence grise of Palestinian nationalism, the late Edward Said, stated flat out that “Israel is not South Africa”. How could it be when an Israeli publisher translated Said’s seminal work, Orientalism, into Hebrew? I’ll cap this point with a question that Said himself asked of Arabs: “Why don’t we fight harder for freedom of opinions in our own societies, a freedom, no one needs to be told, that scarcely exists?”

I disagree: some people still need to be told that Arab “freedoms” don’t compare to those of Israel. The people who need reminding are those who now push the South Africa analogy a step further by equating Israel with Nazi Germany. To them, Zionists are committing hate crimes under the totalitarian nightmare that they dub “Zio-Nazism” (like neo-Nazism).

When it comes to granting citizenship, Israel discriminates in the same way as an affirmative action policy, giving the edge to a specific minority that has faced genocidal injustice. Does this amount to Nazism? Spare me. As a Muslim, I could become a citizen of Israel without having to convert. After all, Israel was one of the few countries anywhere to grant shelter, then citizenship, to the Vietnamese boatpeople who sought political asylum in the late 1970s. I don’t have to wonder how Syria compares on that score.

Now for the ultimate proof of Israel’s flimsy credentials as a bunker of Hitlerian hate: It’s the only country in the Middle East to which Arab Christians are voluntarily migrating. And they are also thriving there, notching much higher university attendance rates than the Arab Muslim citizens of Israel, and enjoying better overall health than Jews.

The Holy Land is gut-wrenching and complicated. As much as I applaud Israel’s efforts to foster pluralism, I condemn its illegal Jewish settlements and less visible crimes such as the diversion of water away from Palestinian towns. These contradictions of the Israeli state should be exposed, discussed, even pilloried. And they are: openly as well as often. So there’s little point in deciding whose camp is the paragon of vice or virtue. The better question might be: who’s willing to hear what they don’t want to hear? That’s the test of whether a country is more than black or white.

 

“WORSE THAN APARTHEID”

Worldwide events mark ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’
Israeli-Arab MK Zahalka to speak at ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ event in Montreal; Organizers call for sanctions against Israel
By Moran Rada
Yediot Ahronot
February 9, 2007

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3362888,00.html

“Israeli Apartheid Week” will take place for the third consecutive year starting next Monday through to Saturday.

Israeli-Arab MK Jamal Zahalka was invited to speak at one of the events marking the week in Montréal on Thursday.

“Calling the occupation apartheid isn’t an overstatement, it’s an understatement,” Zahalka told Ynet, “The Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are worse than apartheid.”

“Israel Apartheid Week” will be comprised of several events including lectures, informational booths, cultural events, film screenings and demonstrations held at various North American and European campuses.

Organizer’s of the events said on the week’s official website, “The past few years have seen an explosion of literature and analysis that has placed Israel alongside other settler-colonial states like South Africa, arguing that Israel is in fact an apartheid state, not just a belligerent occupying power.”

According to the organizers, the week’s goal was to “push forward the analysis of Israel as an apartheid state and to bolster support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign in accordance with the demands outlined in the July 2005 Statement: full equality for Arab citizens of Israel, an end to the occupation and colonization of the West Bank and Gaza, and the implementation of the right of return and compensation for Palestinian refugees pursuant to UN resolution 194.”

Zahalka told Ynet he would speak about the situation in the territories during his speech in Montréal. “An apartheid situation exists in the West Bank. There are settlements and there are Palestinians, and there is a complete separation between them,” he said.

“There are roads for Jews only, there are checkpoints, and there is a curfew. The population is separated. The human rights of the Palestinians are completely violated,” Zahalka added.

He also pointed out that during the apartheid, blacks and whites were separated, but the current situation was of Palestinians being separated from Palestinians, through the use of fences, roadblocks, and limited travel.

“It’s worse,” he said, “Even those arriving from South Africa say the situation in the occupied territories is worse than the apartheid.”

Zahalka said it was his dream for there to be equality amongst Palestinians and Israelis, and that he wanted Israel to be a country for all its citizens.

FULL ARTICLES

“IRAN’S WAR CURRICULUM IS A DANGER TO THE WORLD’S PEACE AND SECURITY”

Iran schools feed pupils “war curriculum” – report
By Mark John
Reuters
January 30, 2007

today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L30464650

Iran’s schools are nurturing a siege mentality in children with textbooks showing preparations for war and depicting Israel and the West as the enemy, an Israel-based think tank said on Tuesday.

One textbook gave 13-year-olds a basic overview of light arms while one early reader book depicted the murder of a Palestinian toddler by an Israeli soldier, a survey by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP) found.

“Iran’s war curriculum is a danger to the world’s peace and security. This is the way the books develop a siege mentality in the minds of the students,” CMIP director of research Arnon Groiss told a news conference in Brussels.

CMIP has produced surveys of school material in Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority and said its survey of 115 textbooks published in Iran in 2004 was the first of its kind.

Groiss said all the textbooks were underpinned by the belief that Iran was a world power preparing for global “jihad”, or holy struggle, with the aim of world dominance of Islam.

“This has been a structural component of the Iranian regime since (the Islamic Revolution in) 1979. It is not a product of (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad,” he said of Iran’s firebrand president who has called for the destruction of Israel.

Stories and poems aimed at primary school-age children hailed martyrs killed in defence of their country and faith, such as those who died in the 1980 to 1988 war with Iraq, with one illustrated with a rainbow dripping with martyr’s blood.

Akbar Nabavi, an Iranian war veteran and now documentary maker, said the report was intended to misrepresent Iran.

“The American nation respects its soldiers and their cause though they are being killed in a foreign land (Iraq), thousands of miles from home,” he said. “Why shouldn’t we commemorate the sacrifice of our martyrs killed defending their country and their faith?”

MILITARY TACTICS

Groiss highlighted one passage in a reading book for eight-year-olds:

“At that time the Israeli officer pounded (three-year-old) Mohammed’s head with his rifle stock and his warm blood was sprinkled upon his (six-year-old) brother Khaled’s hands.”

Another picture book for 10-year-olds showed veiled girls carrying rifles while material for 13-year-olds provided a basic acquaintance with weaponry, explosives and military tactics.

Israel was consistently referred to as “the regime that occupies Jerusalem” and marked out on maps as “Occupied Palestine”. The United States was the “Great Satan”, the “World Devourer” or the “Arrogant One”.

Despite official opposition to the U.S. government, many Iranians remain sympathetic to the American people and held spontaneous vigils to show support for them after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Groiss acknowledged he had no recent information on the influence the textbooks were having on Iranian children.

While the concept of martyrdom is central to the Shi’ite Islam which is predominant in Iran, no Iranians are thought to have directly executed suicide bombings in recent years.

However, one Iranian group, which insists it has no government affiliation, says it has signed up thousands of would-be martyrs to target U.S. or British interests if Iran was attacked over its nuclear programme.

(Additional reporting by Alireza Ronaghi and Edmund Blair)

 

U.S. MEDIA REJECT CAMPAIGN AGAINST AHMADINEJAD

US media reject campaign against Ahmadinejad
By Mathew Wagner and Laura Rheinheimer
The Jerusalem Post
February 4, 2007

Leading American news media have refused to sell Internet site ad space to the Jewish Agency for a campaign against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to Jewish Agency (JA) Spokesman Yarden Vatikay.

The JA and the World Zionist Organization (WZO) recently approached over 40 of the US’s leading news media through Network Solutions, an Internet ad company, said Vatikay. But none agreed to sell banner space.

“They claimed the ad was a political statement and, therefore, disqualified,” said Vatikay. “I find it unbelievable that a campaign against hatred and anti-Semitism could be considered political.”

Shlomo Molla, the head of the WZO’s Department for Zionist Institutions, who also heads the Jewish Agency’s campaign against anti-Semitism, said that he was “deeply disappointed” with America’s news media for refusing to sell the JA space on their Web sites.

“It seems as if history is repeating itself,” said Molla, 39. “People stood by passively when Hitler rose to power also.”

The only Internet sites that agreed to sell the banner space to the JA and WZO were JTA Global Jewish News, Haaretz’s English edition, Google, Network and The Jerusalem Post.

CNN, one of the news media that Network Solutions said it approached, admitted that it refused to sell the banner space to the JA and the WZO.

“CNN International has for many years had in place strict and broad guidelines in relation to political and advocacy advertising on its international services, in respect to the diverse and often strict advertising laws in the many countries in which it operates,” CNN said in an official response. “These mean that CNN does not accept advertisements that are deemed to fall into this category.”

The Jerusalem Post contacted several additional media outlets that appear on a list supplied by the JA – including ABC News, the Boston Herald, Cox news, and Clear Channel for responses. All denied knowledge of the JA ad campaign.

Rob Klein, vice president of Integrated Sales at the Village Voice, who also said he knew nothing about the campaign, said his paper reserved the right to reject advertising at its discretion for a variety of reasons.

“It could be because of the way something is written or the political content,” said Klein. “It goes on a case-by-case basis. Each one has to be reviewed.”

Michael Cohen, publisher of the Village Voice, said he hadn’t heard of any advertisement being rejected, including the JA’s ad. He said it was “highly unlikely” that the ad had been rejected without his knowledge because “sales representatives work based on commission and it is in their interest to sell as much ad space as possible.”

The ad, which was designed by Arad Communications, pictures Ahmadinejad with subtitles of his most virulently anti-Zionist statements flashing in red letters.

“As the imam said, ‘Israel must be wiped off the map,’ and “Anyone who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury” are some of the quotes.

A recording of Ahmadinejad addressing a cheering crowd is played over and over. The site also invites viewers to sign a petition censuring the Iranian president for his anti-Semitic comments.

The banner with an AOL link to the site shows flies buzzing around a light bulb. “When you ignore the risks you get burned,” states the banner.

 

IRAN CEMENTS TIES WITH PALESTINIAN ISLAMIC JIHAD

Iran’s parliament speaker meets Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement head
ISNA
February 6, 2007

Iran’s parliament speaker, Gholam Ali Hadadeadel stated that the conflicts and disaccords among Muslims sects was a great victory to the Zionist regime and the enemies of Islam.

In the meeting with Palestine’s Islamic Jihad movement secretary general, Ramadan Abdullah, Gholam Ali Hadadeadel remarked that the U.S. In the meeting with Islamic Jihad Palestine’s movement secretary general, remarked that the world and the Zionist regime propose the danger of the Islamic Republic of Iran in order “to divert the attention of the world from Palestine, which is Islam’s main issue”.

He also expressed disappointment regarding the neutrality and approval of some small neighboring countries before the plots of the Zionist regime. He also expressed disappointment regarding the neutrality and approval of some small neighboring countries before the plots of the codes regime.

“It’s very disappointing that some countries state their protests against Iran and propose the idea of Sunni and Shiite sects among Muslims in stead of stating their oppositions against the murder and crimes of the Zionists and the U.S. against the oppressed Palestinian, Lebanese and Iraqi nation,” he said.

He went on to say that on one hand these countries spread the red carpet for Israel and on the other hand they recognized Iran as a dangerous country. He went on to say that on one hand these countries spread the red carpet for Israel and on the other hand they recognized Iran as a dangerous country.

“Muslims in all parts of world must not forget the main enemies of Islam,” he asserted.

In the final parts of his talk, Hadadeadel insisted on preserving the unity among Palestinian groups by avoiding interior conflicts in the present sensitive regional circumstances.

For his part, Ramadan Abdullah appreciated the perpetual material and spiritual support of the Iranian nation and government.

Referring to the defeat of the Zionist regime in the 33 day war against the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Abdullah stated that sowing seeds of disaccord among Muslims in the region was the new strategy of the Zionist regime and the U.S.

“Unity among Muslims is the greatest threat to the U.S. and the Zionist regime,” he added.

He also referred to the triangle composed by the U.S., the Zionist regime and some other countries. “They do not look at Israel as an enemy but look up on Iran as the danger,” he concluded.

 

100 EXILED IRANIANS CONDEMN HOLOCAUST DENIAL CONFERENCE

Letter by 100 Iranians condemning Holocaust Conference sponsored by government of Iran in Tehran
On the Holocaust conference sponsored by the government of Iran
By Gholam Reza Afkhami and over one hundred others
The New York Review of Books
Volume 54, Number 2
February 15, 2007

www.nybooks.com/articles/19831

To the Editors:

We the undersigned Iranians,

Notwithstanding our diverse views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict;

Considering that the Nazis’ coldly planned “Final Solution” and their ensuing campaign of genocide against Jews and other minorities during World War II constitute undeniable historical facts;

Deploring that the denial of these unspeakable crimes has become a propaganda tool that the Islamic Republic of Iran is using to further its own agendas;

Noting that the new brand of anti-Semitism prevalent in the Middle East today is rooted in European ideological doctrines of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and has no precedent in Iran’s history;

Emphasizing that this is not the first time that the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has resorted to the denial and distortion of historical facts;

Recalling that this government has refused to acknowledge, among other things, its mass execution of its own citizens in 1988, when thousands of political prisoners, previously sentenced to prison terms, were secretly executed because of their beliefs;

Strongly condemn the Holocaust Conference sponsored by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Tehran on December 11-12, 2006, and its attempt to falsify history;

Pay homage to the memory of the millions of Jewish and non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and express our empathy for the survivors of this immense tragedy as well as all other victims of crimes against humanity across the world.

Abadi, Delnaz (Filmmaker, USA)
Abghari, Shahla (Professor, Life University, USA)
Abghari, Siavash (Professor/Chair, Department of Business Administration,
Morehouse College, USA)
Afary, Janet (Faculty Scholar/Associate Professor of History, Purdue
University, USA)
Afkhami, Gholam Reza (Senior Scholar, Foundation for Iranian Studies, USA)
Afkhami, Mahnaz (Executive Director, Foundation for Iranian Studies/Women’s
Rights Advocate, USA)
Afshar, Mahasti (Arts/Culture Executive, USA)
Afshari, Ali (Human Rights Advocate/Political Activist, USA)
Ahmadi, Ramin (Associate Professor, Yale School of Medicine/Founder, Griffin
Center for Health and Human Rights, USA)
Akashe-Bohme, Farideh (Social Scientist/Writer, Germany)
Akbari, Hamid (Human Rights Advocate/Chair/Associate Professor, Department
of Management and Marketing, Northeastern Illinois University, USA)
Akhavan, Payam (Jurist/Senior Fellow, Faculty of Law of McGill University,
Canada)
Amin, Shadi (Journalist/Women’s Rights Activist, Germany)
Amini, Bahman (Publisher, France)
Amini, Mohammad (Writer/Political Activist, USA)
Amjadi, Kurosh (Human Rights Advocate)
Apick, Mary (Actress/Playwright/Producer/Human Rights Advocate, USA)
Ashouri, Daryoush (Writer/Translator, France)
Atri, Akbar (Student Rights and Political Activist, USA)
Bagher Zadeh, Hossein (Human Rights Advocate/Former Professor, Tehran
University, Great Britain)
Bakhtiari, Abbas (Musician/Director, Pouya Iranian Cultural Center, France)
Baradaran, Monireh (Human Rights Advocate/Writer, Germany)
Behnoud, Massoud (Writer/Journalist, Great Britain)
Behroozi, Jaleh (Human Rights Advocate/Iranian Mothers’ Committee for
Freedom, USA)
Beyzaie, Niloofar (Theater Director/Playwright, Germany)
Boroumand, Ali-Mohammad (Lawyer, France)
Boroumand, Ladan (Historian/Research Director, Boroumand Foundation, USA)
Boroumand, Roya (Historian/Human Rights Advocate, USA)
Chafiq, Chahla (Sociologist/Writer/ Women’s Rights Advocate, France)
Dadsetan, Javad (Filmmaker)
Daneshvar, Abbas (Chemist, Netherlands)
Daneshvar, Hassan (Mathematician, Netherlands)
Daneshvar, Reza (Writer, France)
Davari, Arta (Painter, Germany)
Djalili, Mohammad Reza (Professor, L’Institut Universitaire de Hautes Études
Internationales, Switzerland)
Ebrahimi, Farah (USA)
Eskandani, Ahmad (Entrepreneur, France)
Fani Yazdi, Reza (Political Activist, USA)
Farahmand, Fariborz (Engineer, USA)
Farssai, Fahimeh (Writer, Germany)
Ghahari, Keivandokht (Historian/Journalist, Germany)
Ghassemi, Farhang (Professor in Strategic Management, France)
Hejazi, Ghodsi (Professor/Researcher, Frankfurt University, Germany)
Hekmat, Hormoz (Human Rights Advocate/Editor, Iran Nameh, USA)
Hojat, Ali (Entrepreneur/Human Rights Advocate, Great Britain)
Homayoun, Dariush (Writer, Switzerland)
Idjadi, Didier (Professor/Associate Mayor, France)
Jahangiri, Golroch (Women’s Rights Advocate, Germany)
Jahanshahi, Marjan (Professor, Institute of Neurology, University College
London, Great Britain)
Karimi Hakkak (Director, Center for Persian Studies, University of Maryland,
USA)
Kazemi, Monireh (Women’s Rights Advocate, Germany)
Khajeh Aldin, Minoo (Painter, Germany)
Khaksar, Nasim (Writer, Germany)
Khazenie, Nahid (Remote Sensing Scientist/Program Director, NASA, USA)
Khodaparast Santner, Zari (Landscape Architect, USA)
Khonsari, Mehrdad (Political Activist, Great Britain)
Khorsandi, Hadi (Poet/Writer, Great Britain)
Khounani, Azar (Educator/Human Rights Advocate, USA)
Mafan, Massoud (Publisher, Germany)
Malakooty, Sirus (Composer/Chairman, Artists Without Frontiers, Germany)
Manafzadeh, Alireza (Writer, France)
Mazahery, Ahmad (Engineer/Political Activist, USA)
Mazahery, Lily (Lawyer, President of the Legal Rights Institute/Human Rights
Advocate, USA)
Memarsadeghi, Mariam (Freedom House, USA)
Mesdaghi, Iraj (Human Rights Advocate/Writer, Sweden)
Milani, Abbas (Director, Iranian Studies Program, Stanford University, USA)
Mohyeddin, Samira (Graduate Student, University of Toronto, Canada)
Moini, Mohammadreza (Journalist/ Human Rights Advocate, RSF, France)
Molavi, Afshin (Journalist, USA)
Monzavi, Faeze (Women’s Rights Advocate, Germany)
Moradi, Golmorad (Political Scientist/Translator, Germany)
Moradi, Homa (Women’s Rights Advocate, Germany)
Moshaver, Ziba (London Middle East Institute, SOAS, Research Fellow, Great
Britain)
Moshkin-Ghalam, Shahrokh (Ballet Dancer/Actor, France)
Mourim, Khosro (Sociologist, France)
Mozaffari, Mehdi (Professor of Political Science, Denmark)
Naficy, Majid (Poet/Writer, USA)
Nafisi, Azar (Writer/Johns Hopkins University, USA)
Nassehi, Reza (Human Rights Advocate/Translator, France)
Pakzad, Jahan (Teacher/Researcher, France)
Parham, Bagher (Writer/Translator, France)
Parsipour, Shahrnush (Writer, USA)
Parvin, Mohammad (Human Rights Advocate/Founding Director of Mehr/Adjunct
Professor, California State University, USA)
Pirnazar, Jaleh (Professor, Iranian Studies, University of California,
Berkeley, USA)
Pourabdollah, Farideh (Human Rights Advocate, USA)
Pourabdollah, Saeid (Human Rights Advocate, USA)
Rashid, Shahrouz (Poet/Writer, Germany)
Royaie, Yadollah (Poet, France)
Rusta, Mihan (Human Rights Advocate/Refugee Adviser, Germany)
Sadr, Hamid (Writer, Austria)
Sarchar, Houman (Independent Scholar, USA)
Sarshar, Homa (Journalist, USA)
Satrapi, Marjane (Writer, France)
Sayyad, Parviz (Actor/Playwright, USA)
Shahriari, Sheila (World Bank, USA)
Soltani, Parvaneh (Actor/Theater Director, Great Britain)
Tabari, Shahran (Journalist, Great Britain)
Taghvaie, Ahmad (Founding Member, Iranian Futurist Association, USA)
Toloui, Roya (Human Rights Advocate, USA)
Vaziri, Hellen (Germany)
Wahdat-Hagh, Wahied (Social Scientist, USA)
Zarkesh Yazdi, Fathieh (Human Rights and Refugee Rights Advocate, Great
Britain)
Ziazie, Arsalan (Writer, Germany)

FULL ARTICLES

BUSH USED SAUDI WARNING TO STOP THE BAKER PLAN

Bush used Saudi warning to scuttle Baker plan for Iran talks
Geostrategy-Direct
February 7, 2007

www.geostrategy-direct.com

President Bush didn’t like the recommendation of the Iraq Study Group that the United States should negotiate with Iran. But Bush’s biggest card was that Saudi Arabia, a major U.S. oil supplier, was dead set against the Iranian negotiations option.

The Saudis sent a series of messages to Bush warning that the ISG’s recommendation of a U.S.-sponsored accommodation with Iran would endanger Gulf stability. A diplomatic source said Riyad warned through an unofficial channel that any U.S. deal that would strengthen Iran’s hold over the Gulf region would be seen as a hostile act. With Saudi Arabia providing about six percent of U.S. oil requirements, the threat was clear.

The Saudi argument helped Bush win his battle against ISG within his administration and in Congress. Even the most ardent advocates of appeasement in the State Department realized that ISG cochairman James Baker had misread the Middle East map and U.S. strategic considerations. Sources said Bush discussed these issues with Baker, and the former secretary of state quietly backed down.

Under Bush, the U.S. effort in Iraq has been thoroughly coordinated with the Saudis. The Saudi royal family wants the U.S. military presence to remain for at least the next two years. King Abdullah has also obtained U.S. assurances that Iran would be “contained.”

In exchange, Riyad has agreed to become the unofficial sponsor of the Iraqi Sunni community in an effort to defeat Al Qaida’s domination. But translating the agreement into action is difficult amid the civil war in Baghdad.

 

“THE REPORT CAME OUT DEALING WITH THE ARAB-ISRAELI ISSUE IN AN UNSOPHISTICATED WAY”

Baker Group advisers ‘surprised,’ ‘upset’ at report’s Israel-Iraq link
By Nathan Guttman
The Forward
January 30, 2007

www.forward.com/articles/study-group-advisers-surprised-upset-by-israel-ir/

Several advisers to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group were surprised and upset by the decision of panel leaders to argue that American success in Iraq depends in part on progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Forward has learned.

Issued eight weeks ago, the Iraq Study Group’s final report asserted that “the United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict.” The two co-chairmen of the panel – James Baker, who served as secretary of state under the first President Bush, and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission – have since advanced the argument in media interviews. Supporters of an increased American role in kick-starting the peace process have hailed the final report, while some pro-Israel activists and Jewish groups have worried that it could lead to pressure on Jerusalem.

Baker and Hamilton appeared Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as part of the ongoing discussion in the committee on ways to solve the Iraq situation. The committee’s Democratic chair, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, has already stated that he rejects the linkage the study group made between Israel and Iraq. “Even if a peace treaty were signed tomorrow, it would not end the civil war in Iraq,” Biden said during a January 17 hearing.

In interviews with the Forward, several of the experts who advised the panel said they were shocked that the Israeli-Palestinian issue was included in the final report, since they had been told not to address the matter in their recommendations. “They kept on telling us it is a sensitive issue and that it has too many political implications,” one of the experts said.

The objections went beyond process, with some advisers arguing to the Forward that progress in Israeli-Palestinian talks is desirable but would have little impact on the situation in Iraq. “Desirable as it may be, we cannot obtain progress in the Israeli-Palestinian front right now, and even if we could, it would take years and the impact on Iraq would be less significant than some think,” said Wayne White, a former State Department official and one of the expert advisers.

The study group’s expert advisers were divided among four different working groups based on their areas of expertise and offered up recommendations to the panel. The panel’s professional staffers then took these suggestions and used them to produce the final report that was eventually approved by Baker, Hamilton and the other eight members of the Iraq Study Group.

According to several advisers, the staffers who wrote the chapter in question were Edward Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria and Israel with close ties to Baker, and Christopher Kojm, a former aide to Hamilton who held senior positions in the State Department and the 9/11 Commission.

One staff member argued that insisting on making a clear linkage between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the situation in Iraq was “stupid” and “exposed the report to criticism.” That staff member pointed to Djerejian as the person who inserted the language regarding Israel.

Through a spokesman, Djerejian declined to comment on this issue.

At the Senate committee hearing this past Tuesday, Baker defended the decision to link progress in the Israeli-Arab conflict and progress in Iraq.

The former secretary of state said: “Some have asked us: What does the Arab-Israeli conflict have to do with the war in Iraq? Why make one problem harder by taking on two? The answer is simple. It is difficult to establish regional stability in the Middle East without addressing the Arab-Israeli issue. We want other countries, especially the Sunni Arab countries, to help us. When we go to talk to them about Iraq, they will want to talk about the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

Baker commended Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her efforts to renew peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, but said that he and Hamilton “feel particularly strong” that the United States is missing an opportunity by refusing to talk with Syria.

Later in the hearing, Baker said that an American dialogue with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could lead Damascus to stop supporting Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and to pressure Hamas to recognize Israel, thus leading the way to a possible peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

One adviser, James Dobbins of the Rand Corporation, disputed the notion that the views on the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the final report reflects only Djerejian’s beliefs. “It is consistent with what most of the members thought,” Dobbins said. “No Middle East expert thinks that solving the conflict will bring an end to all of the region’s problems, but it surely can help.”

Members of the so-called strategic environment working group – the one that would in theory have offered recommendations on Palestinian talks – told the Forward that their discussions on the issue were not reflected in the final report.

The professional staff of the United States Institute of Peace – the federally funded think tank under whose auspices the Iraq Study Group operated – was also surprised to see the final language of the report when it was presented by Baker and Hamilton. “We saw it for the first time when it was published, and we were as surprised as anyone else,” said one staff member, speaking on condition of anonymity.

According to the staff member, the working group on strategic environment was never asked by the 10 members of the bipartisan panel to deal with the role that the United States should play in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and received no guidance on this issue. Two members of the working group confirmed this account of events.

By June, most of the work in the expert groups was completed, but the 10 panel members decided not to finish the report before November’s mid-term elections, in order to remain above the political fray. So, at the start of the summer, the structure of the four separate working groups became more flexible and the experts from each group were also asked to participate in discussions relating to other groups.

As an intellectual exercise, members of the group dealing with Iraq’s strategic environment were asked to compose a “wish list” that would detail all the changes they would like to see in the region, regardless of their feasibility or political implications. It was as part of this exercise that the need to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict based on United Nations resolutions 242 and 338 was mentioned.

Many staff members found the language of the final report disturbing, especially in the direct linkage it made between resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict and reaching stability in Iraq.

“Some of us were frustrated from the way it was all inserted in the last minute and from the language they chose,” said one of the professional staff members. “The report came out dealing with the Arab-Israeli issue in an unsophisticated way.”

Another staff member said that most of the advisers believed that it was senseless to assert a direct linkage between the Israeli-Arab conflict and Iraq. The staffer told of a joke that one of the advisers made when the issue came up: “Does anyone think that if we solve the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict the insurgent in Fallujah will say, ‘Great, now I can put back my AK-47 and go home.’”

Israeli officials were low key in their response to the Iraq Study Group report, though Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did make clear that he does not believe the Bush administration sees a linkage between the situations in Israel and Iraq.

Members of the Iraq Study Group staff also criticized the fact that Israeli officials were not consulted, while almost all Arab ambassadors in the United States were interviewed by the panel. Once Israeli officials learned of the work being done by the study group regarding Israel, they contacted the United States Institute of Peace and were told that one Israeli had been interviewed – the Labor Party’s Ephraim Sneh, who at the time was a member of Knesset (he is now deputy minister of defense).

In sharp contrast to the dissension on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the committee’s professional staff and expert advisers all agreed on the need for the United States to engage with Syria and Iran. They are very frustrated by the administration’s rejection of their recommendations on this issue.

“The issue of Iran was much more important for the future of Iraq than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the reaction of the president to our recommendations regarding Iran is much more significant,” White said. “It became clear from the beginning that the president is not interested in any aspect of the diplomatic chapter in the report.”

Dobbins offered two theories to explain Bush’s refusal to engage with Tehran – according to one, the president is using Iran to divert public attention from Iraq and to have a scapegoat for the ongoing American failures there; the other is that Bush will eventually talk to Iran, but he is toughening his stand now in order to come to the talks from a better bargaining position.

Paul Stares, who served as the secretariat of the strategic environment group in the Baker-Hamilton panel, said he believes that Congress and public opinion can still make the report relevant. “There are many in Congress who believe that the group did a good job and will continue pointing to the report as a road map for the U.S. policy toward Iraq,” Stares said. But, he added, the report will not remain relevant forever. “At some point, the conditions on the ground will change and the report will be OBE [overcome by events], but we’re not close to that yet.”

 

SAUDI RELIGIOUS POLICE SENTENCE FOREIGNERS TO RECEIVE LASHES FOR DANCING AT A PARTY

20 face lash for dancing in Saudi Arabia
The Associated Press
February 4, 2007

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070204/ap_on_re_mi_ea/saudi_foreigners_sentenced

A Saudi Arabian judge sentenced 20 foreigners to receive lashes and spend several months in prison after convicting them of attending a party where alcohol was served and men and women danced, a newspaper reported today.

The defendants were among 433 foreigners, including some 240 women, arrested by the kingdom’s religious police for attending the party in Jiddah, the state-guided newspaper Okaz said. It did not identify the foreigners, give their nationalities or say when the party took place.

Judge Saud al-Boushi sentenced the 20 to prison terms of three to four months and ordered them to receive an unspecified number of lashes, the newspaper said. They have the right to appeal, it added.

The prosecutor general charged the 20 with “drinking, arranging for impudent party, mixed dancing and shooting a video for the party,” Okaz said.

The paper said the rest of those arrested were awaiting trial.

Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam under which it bans alcohol and meetings between unrelated men and women.

The religious police, a force resented by many Saudis for interfering in personal lives, enjoys wide powers. Its officers roam malls, markets, universities and other public places looking for such infractions as unrelated men and women mingling, men skipping Islam’s five daily prayers and women with strands of hair showing from under their veil.

In May, the Interior Ministry restricted the powers of the religious police to just arresting suspects, because the police sometimes had held people incommunicado and insisted on taking part in ensuing investigations.

 

“THIS IS NOT ENGLAND. IT IS SAUDI ARABIA”

Saudi-funded school ‘teaches religious hatred’
By Caroline Davies and Graeme Paton
The (London) Daily Telegraph
February 6, 2007

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/05/nfahd105.xml

A Saudi-funded Islamic school in London has been accused of poisoning the minds of pupils as young as five years with a curriculum of hate.

Colin Cook, 57, claims text books used by children at the King Fahad Academy in Acton, west London, describe Jews as “repugnant” and Christians as “pigs”.

The father-of-three, a Muslim convert, allegedly heard some of them saying they wanted to “kill Americans”, praising 9/11 and idolising Osama bin Laden as a “hero”.

Mr Cook, who taught English for 18 years at the Academy, was sacked from his £35,000-a-year post in December for alleged misconduct relating to the exams procedure. He is claiming £100,000 compensation for unfair dismissal, race discrimination and victimisation.

In legal papers lodged with Watford Employment Tribunal, he claims the Academy used text books by the Saudi government’s Ministry of Education which taught religious hate.

“The schoolbooks presently in use describe Jews as ‘monkeys’ (or apes) and Christians as ‘pigs’,” he says in the documents. Students are asked to “mention some repugnant characteristics of Jews”, and Year 1 pupils are asked to “give examples of worthless religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, idol worship and others”, he adds.

He also alleges that when he complained to school chiefs about the content of the curriculum and questioned whether it complied with British laws, he was told: “This is not England. It is Saudi Arabia”.

Originally founded for the children of Saudi diplomats in London, it now caters for children of British Muslims and devotes half of lessons to religious education teaching almost all classes in Arabic.

American human rights group Freedom House highlighted some of the textbooks for anti-Western and anti-Semitic views in its 2006 report called “Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance” citing one book which instructed students to wage Jihad against “the infidel” to “spread the faith”.

The Saudi government at the time did admit some of the books were “inexcusable” but denied they were being used outside Saudi Arabia. A sister school of the Academy in Bonn, which has the same name, has previously been singled out by the German intelligence services as being a meeting place for extremists.

Speaking today Mr Cook, of Feltham, south London, said the school had been “very good” until the majority of British teachers left in 2005, and claimed “there had been a move towards a pro-Saudi agenda”.

He added: “It is clearly very divisive. The vast majority of Muslims, including myself, are law-abiding, tolerant of others and peaceful.”

Mr Cook claims he was sacked after blowing the whistle on pupils cheating to examining board Edexcel in August 2006. The school denies his allegations and says he was rightly dismissed.

The Academy declined to comment today. But its new female principal, Dr Sumaya Alyusuf, told the Daily Telegraph last month that it had dropped the Saudi curriculum following complaints from parents it failed to prepare children for life in the UK.

The move followed an investigation in 2004 which found that the Academy was teaching British children “fundamentalist” Islam and allegedly giving girl pupils an inferior education.

However, the school has denied that its pupils have ever been subjected to extremist teaching.

A report by Ofsted, the education watchdog, in March last year praised the school for offering pupils “a balanced education and opportunities to develop their intellect and skills”.

FULL ARTICLES

ONLY FIVE COUNTRIES HAVE LONGER LIFESPANS FOR MEN THAN ISRAEL

Israeli male lifespan among highest in developed countries
By Relly Sa’ar
Ha’aretz
January 25, 2007

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/817839.html

The average lifespan of Israeli men is among the highest in developed countries, according to an annual Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel report released Wednesday. Israeli women, meanwhile, rank close to the middle of the pack compared to their international counterparts.

Men in only five countries have longer lifespans than Israeli males, who live an average of 78 years: Iceland (79.2), Japan (78.6), Switzerland (78.6), Sweden (78.4), and Australia (78.1).

Even though Israeli women place lower than Israeli men, they live longer, with an average lifespan of 82.4 years.

The average lifespan is one measure for defining quality of life and differentiating between developed and undeveloped countries.

According to the report, the mortality rate in cities in the center of the country as well as Jerusalem is 7 to 8 percent lower than the average national rate.

The most prevalent causes of death here are heart and blood vessel diseases, which were responsible for 30 percent of all deaths in 2003, and cancer, at 25 percent.

“The quality and high level” of doctors and nurses “are not an insignificant source of the success of the Israeli health system,” the report said.

However, although the number of doctors in Israel is similar to the rate in other industrial countries – 3.4 per 1,000 people - not all residents equally benefit from such prevalence. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have more doctors than the national average – 4.2 and 3.9 per 1,000, respectively – while northern communities have only 2.3 doctors per 1,000 residents.

Residents of the periphery also have access to fewer hospital beds and an inferior medical infrastructure compared to those in the country’s center, the report said.

While the number of nurses has increased in many developed countries since the 1990s, there has been no similar increase in Israel. Israel’s 5:1,000 nurse-to-resident ratio places it at the bottom of the list of developed countries, along with Poland, Portugal, Greece and Turkey. Ireland, Norway and the Netherlands have three times as many nurses working in their health-care systems.

 

AN ISRAELI KAFIYEH

Entrepreneurs sell kafiyehs adorned with Stars of David
By Joshua Mitnick
The Washington Times
January 20, 2007

www.washtimes.com/world/20070119-102014-7791r.htm

It’s been four decades since Yasser Arafat made the back and white kafiyeh scarf the indelible symbol of Palestinian nationalism when it became part of his daily wardrobe.

Now, two Israeli entrepreneurs have repackaged the scarf with a distinctly Zionist motif, in the hope that their countrymen will adopt it as a patriotic fashion accessory.

“It’s going to be like the falafel,” said Ben Haim, a sculptor who dreamed up the idea with Moshe Harel, an industrial designer.

“Generations afterward will walk around in the kafiyeh,” Mr. Haim said.

Unlike the black and white scarf favored by the late Mr. Arafat, or the red and white version common in Jordan, the Israeli kafiyeh features sky-blue coloring.

A closer inspection reveals the scarf pattern is actually miniature Stars of David, while border stripes mimic the stripes on the Israeli flag.

Despite their Zionized take on the Arab head scarf, Mr. Harel acknowledges that his kafiyeh will encounter a reflex-like resistance before Israelis can overcome the political baggage from decades of violence to make the kafiyeh their own.

Across the divide, a parallel reflex is also likely among Palestinians, who are prone to see the Israeli kafiyeh as another Israeli appropriation of a piece of their culture.

Other examples include hummus, water pipes and belly dancing.

“If it was not already locally felt that the Israelis were overtaking all aspects of Palestinian life in order to erase it, chances are that this offensive version of the kafiyeh would not raise more than an eyebrow. Instead, a great deal of offense is being taken,” wrote the Palestinian National News service in a recent article on the Israeli kafiyeh.

Mr. Haim, a resident of Haifa who runs a shop near a mosque, said he’d been toying with the concept for years before deciding with Mr. Harel to work on developing the product.

“I see kafiyehs in every place, but an Israeli kafiyeh I still have never seen. The Palestinians have one, the Jordanians have one and the Saudis have one, why shouldn’t we?”

Mr. Harel said the kafiyeh helps fill a need of Israeli Jews to better integrate into the Middle East. Once Israelis adopt the accessory, it will create “a common denominator” with their neighbors.

“Until today, the kafiyeh has been identified with Palestinians or with the Palestinian struggle. The fact that we’re manufacturing a kafiyeh suddenly softens the effect that it has. That was the goal. To give the feeling that we’re integrating into the region, and that everyone has their own kafiyeh.”

 

ISRAEL AND JORDAN DECLARE WAR ON HOUSEFLIES

Jews and Arabs declare war – on houseflies
Al Bawaba
January 22, 2007

www.albawaba.com/en/countries/Jordan/208702

In a rare show of solidarity, citizens of Israel and Jordan came together to declare war recently, not on one another, but on a common enemy plaguing both – houseflies.

A delegation of Israelis and Jordanians met in the Jordanian city of Safi to discuss the problem facing residents of both sides of the Dead Sea as a result of sea’s shrinkage, according to Haaretz.

The delegation, along with officials of the Jordan Valley Authority and district governors, signed a breakthrough memorandum of understanding to work together against the flies and against the desiccation of the sea

In addition, they agreed to establish a border crossing for merchandise and workers on the Dead Sea’s southern shore, and to establish a regional peace park south of the Dead Sea.

“It is a rare event in which the representatives of so many Jordanian bodies meet with Israelis, as political pressure usually prevents such meetings,” said Gidon Bromberg the joint Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian Friends of the Earth-Middle East (FoEME) that organized the trip.

He added that the shared nature of the issues on the local level had created the level of trust needed to reach the understandings.

The source of the fly problem was finally discovered in the fields near Safi: a fertilizer that attracts the winged pests.

“People here are poor, and they don’t have money to buy suitable fertilizers,” said Dr. Farouk Arslan, a Jordanian ecologist accompanying the group.

“This fertilizer gets wet and attracts the female flies, and that’s how the next generation develops,” explained Shlomo Abadi, a pesticide expert advising both sides.

Most residents of the banks of the Dead Sea on both the Jordanian and Israeli sides have never visited one another. In many respects, however, they are mirror images of each other, complete with potash works and their evaporation pools and a large number of hotels.

The shrinkage of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the surface of the earth, requires intervention at high levels. Mayors on both sides are trying to raise international awareness of the importance of preserving the area, one of the most important geological formations on earth.

 

NAOMI RAGEN FIGHTS SEGREGATED BUS LINES

Naomi Ragen fights segregated bus lines
By Dan Izenberg
The Jerusalem Post
January 25, 2007

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467807683&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The Egged bus company operates 30 mehadrin (haredi) bus lines throughout the country where women are forced to enter the bus from the rear doors and sit in the back rows and are barred from boarding unless they wear “modest” clothing, according to a group of women who petitioned the High Court on Wednesday against the Egged and Dan bus companies and the Transportation Ministry.

The petitioners included author Naomi Ragen and the Israel Religious Action Committee of the Progressive (Reform) Movement.

The five women who petitioned the court recounted personal experiences riding on the mehadrin lines.

Ragan, for example, was riding on the No. 40, a municipal route connecting Strauss St. in downtown Jerusalem with her home in the Ramot Gimel neighborhood. On the occasion in question, the bus was empty and Ragen took a single seat towards the front of the bus.

As the bus began to fill up, several men approached her and demanded that she move to a seat at the back. Ragen replied that there was no sign posted in the bus stating that she had to do so. She also told them that as an observant woman, she knew that there was no halacha (Jewish law) preventing her from sitting where she was.

She then reportedly suffered insults and physical threats, including a scolding from a haredi man that lasted the duration of the trip. According to Ragen, the bus driver did not intervene to guarantee her safety or order the male passengers to leave her alone.

One of the other petitioners, a woman who is serving in the army, was returning to Kibbutz Revadim from Jerusalem on mehadrin No. 494 late one night when the driver ordered her to get off the bus in the middle of the highway after haredi passengers complained that she was dressed provocatively. The woman said she had been wearing a skirt that came to just above her knees.

A third petitioner was barred by the driver from entering the bus because she was wearing trousers.

The first mehadrin lines were introduced in 1977, after a committee appointed by the Transportation Ministry recommended introducing bus routes that would attract haredi customers. According to the plan, all passengers were to be allowed to alight from any door and the bus and drivers would not prohibit any passenger from sitting where he or she wanted. It would be up to the haredi community itself to “persuade” male and female passengers to enter the bus and take their seats separately.

There were originally four pilot routes, two in Jerusalem and two in Bnei Brak, all of which served haredi neighborhoods. After a certain period had elapsed, the Transportation Ministry and the bus companies were supposed to review the situation and decide whether or not to expand the lines.

No such review ever took place, but the number of mehadrin lines has been increasing ever since.

Today, 23 of the segregated Egged lines are intercity, meaning that they are not used exclusively by haredim. In some cases, the mehadrin line is the only one traveling directly between two destinations. Passengers who do not want to abide by the mehadrin restrictions must often take two buses, travel for longer, and pay more to get to the same place from the same starting point.

The petitioners demanded that the Transportation Ministry stop running the mehadrin lines until they operate in accordance with the law and that it conduct a study to assess the demand for mehadrin routes, rather than acceding automatically to the requests of haredi rabbis and communities for more segregated bus lines.

 

ISRAELI BILLIONAIRE HAIM SABAN TOPS LIST OF U.S. POLITICAL DONORS

Israeli billionaire Saban biggest donor to US politicians
Communications tycoon has donated at least USD 13 million to American politicians. As a close friend of the Clintons he contributed to the Democrats, but President Bush has not been deprived either
By Itamar Eichner
Yediot Ahronot
January 23, 2007

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3355786,00.html

Israeli billionaire and media mogul Haim Saban is at the top of the list of donors to political campaigns in the US.

Fox Network revealed over the weekend that Saban has donated approximately USD 13 million to various candidates.

According to the report, Saban, a close friend of the Clintons, is one of the major donors to the Democratic Party, though he has also contributed to republican candidates, including President George Bush and Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Next on the list of donors are Stephen Bing, father of Elizabeth Hurley’s son, who donated USD 10 million; Businessman Fred Eichner, who has given candidates USD 8 million; and Steve Forbes, owner of Forbes magazine, who has funded election campaigns at the sum of USD 7 million.

The last on the list is Jim Pederson, who was contender for US Senate for the State of Arizona, with a little over USD 6 million.

 

“ISRAEL’S IMAGE IS AT AN ALL-TIME LOW”

Israel’s image hits nadir
No great honor being an Israeli at Davos this year, but we deserve it
By Sever Plocker
Yediot Ahronot
January 24, 2007

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3356475,00.html

My advice to those planning to attend the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting at the prestigious Swiss ski resort of Davos is, I beg you, stay away if you haven’t yet boarded the plane. Please don’t come, because it’s no great honor being an Israeli this year at Davos. In fact, it’s humiliating.

Israel is no longer viewed as a thriving, high tech superpower or even as a brutal occupation power. It is viewed in a completely different light:

It’s seen as a declining and dysfunctional country whose president is about to face charges of rape, whose prime minister will be interrogated on suspicion of advancing his associates’ interests, whose finance minister will be ousted from his post due to an affair involving finances and non-profit organizations, whose army chief already resigned due to the failures of the war, and whose defense minister will soon be forced to follow suit.

This is the sate of affairs in Israel in the winter of 2007 as seen by the world’s surprised economic, political and academic elites, arriving in Davos for four days of sessions focusing on the fate of humanity.

Israel’s image is at an all-time low. On Wednesday, when the conference’s participants arrive at the local congress center to attend lectures, sessions, workshops and symposiums, they will be carrying European newspapers on whose front pages Israel will prominently star. And what kind of Israel emanates from these pages? The picture they will get is of a country of rapists and corruption at high levels, a country that is falling into moral decline.

‘What happened to you Israelis?’

Reports of the indictment against the president open every news broadcast in Europe, and the presenters sound as though they find it difficult to read the text in front of them: The State of Israel and sex scandals at the top? Jews and rape? Jews and corruption.

A dark shadow has fallen on Israel’s image worldwide. Until we remove it, these honorable people will hesitate to shake our hands, identify with us and invest in Israel. They are already hesitating.

Our long term friends, veterans of the Davos conferences, are pulling me aside and asking me in an embarrassing whisper: “What’s happened to you Israelis? How did you get this way? Are you a country full of rapists and corrupt people?”

The International Monetary Funds’ rosy reviews and the positive quotes forced out of some polite and stammering international CEO, or some Arab-Muslim statesman who didn’t understand the question, will be of no avail.

The bitter and embarrassing truth of the matter is that Israel’s image in Davos – a prism of the world’s elite – has reached its nadir.

It’s very unpleasant being an Israeli at Davos 2007; it’s unpleasant but we deserve it.

 

“THE BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL HAS BEEN CONSISTENTLY UNDERMINING ISRAEL’S EXISTENCE IN RECENT YEARS”

Berlin festival shuns Israel
Officials funnel funds to events that have wiped Israel off the map
By Eldad Beck
Yediot Ahronot
January 21, 2007

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3355212,00.html

Does Germany indeed recognize Israel’s right to exist? Officially, there have been diplomatic ties between the two countries for the past 41 years. German governments have reiterated their commitment to Israel’s right to exist. In the corridors of power in Jerusalem, the mantra that Germany is Israel’s second most important ally after the US is incessantly being sounded.

However, these facts are slow to penetrate the consciousness of significant parts of the German public, including government officials and the intellectual elite. Take, for example, the Berlin International Film Festival, which has been consistently undermining Israel’s existence in recent years.

Political correctness still obligatory

The festival’s management is careful, of course, to invite Israeli films to participate. After all, political correctness is still obligatory. However, those in charge of making the selections usually prefer more controversial films – preferably with an anti-Israeli tone, if not anti-Zionist. The controversy of several such films that reached the festival in recent years covered for the lack of cinematic quality.

The war of attrition is continuing this year as well, despite the invitation of an Israeli film to the official festival after several years of absence from this prestigious event. The notification announcing the festival’s official panel of judges noted that members would include “the Palestinian actress, film director and scriptwriter,” Hiam Abbass, who starred among other movies in the controversial film Paradise Now, and in the problematic TV screenplay of The Gate of the Sun, where Zionists and Israelis were compared to Nazis.

Abbass, a talented actress, was born in 1960 in the Galilee – 12 years after the founding of the State of Israel. As far as I recall, the Galilee still belongs to Israel. Although Abbass has been residing in Paris for the past 20 years, she still holds Israeli citizenship. According to Abbas, she is maintaining her Israeli citizenship for reasons of convenience only – so that she can travel internationally – but as long as she carries an Israeli passport, she is deemed an Israeli citizen for every purpose and intent.

Is this true friendship?

Are these facts not clear to the organizers of the Berlin festival, which is also financed by governmental funds? Obviously not. Abbass has every right to define herself as she sees fit. However, the organizers of the event don’t have the right to erase the State of Israel’s existence.

Complaints leveled at the festival’s conduct towards Israel have been rejected out of hand in the name of freedom of speech and art. Even government officials funding the festival are shirking responsibility lest they be accused of censorship. Yet despite this, we should no longer ignore the fact that Israel is being systematically erased throughout German cultural institutions.

While spokespersons representing the Berlin government openly condemn the Iranian president’s statement calling for “wiping Israel off the map,” German government officials are funneling funds to public events that have already wiped Israel off the map, while replacing it with “Palestine.” Is this true friendship?

FULL ARTICLES

“WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A THIRD WORLD WAR”

World War III has already begun, says Israeli spy chief
Former head of Israel’s intelligence service tells Portuguese newspaper it would take at least 25 years before battle against fundamentalist terrorism is won; says nuclear strike by Muslim terrorists ‘very likely’
Agence France Presse (AFP)
January 27, 2007

A third World War is already underway between Islamic militancy and the West but most people do not realize it, the former head of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad said in an interview published Saturday in Portugal.

‘We are in the midst of a third World War,’ former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy told weekly newspaper Expresso.

‘The world does not understand. A person walks through the streets of Tel Aviv, Barcelona or Buenos Aires and doesn’t get the sense that there is a war going on,’ said Halevy who headed Mossad between 1998 and 2003.

‘During World War I and II the entire world felt there was a war. Today no one is conscious of it. From time to time there is a terrorist attack in Madrid, London and New York and then everything stays the same.’

Violence by Islamic militants has already disrupted international travel and trade just as in the previous two world conflicts, he said.

Halevy, who was raised in war-time London, predicted it would take at least 25 years before the battle against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is won and during this time a nuclear strike by Islamic militants was likely.

‘It doesn’t have to be something very sophisticated, It doesn’t have to be the latest nuclear technology, it can be something simple like a dirty bomb which instead of killing millions only kills tens of thousands,’ he said.

Halevy served as an envoy for former Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres and is a former Israeli ambassador to the European Union.

 

“IT IS FORBIDDEN IN ISLAM TO HAVE ANY OF THESE HARAM SUBSTANCES IN OUR BODIES”

Muslim urged to shun ‘unholy’ vaccines
By Abul Taher
The Sunday Times (of London)
January 28, 2007

www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2570067,00.html

A Muslim doctors’ leader has provoked an outcry by urging British Muslims not to vaccinate their children against diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella because it is “un-Islamic”.

Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, is telling Muslims that almost all vaccines contain products derived from animal and human tissue, which make them “haram”, or unlawful for Muslims to take.

Islam permits only the consumption of halal products, where the animal has had its throat cut and bled to death while God’s name is invoked.

Islam also forbids the eating of any pig meat, which Katme says is another reason why vaccines should be avoided, as some contain or have been made using pork-based gelatine.

His warning has been criticised by the Department of Health and the British Medical Association, who said Katme risked increasing infections ranging from flu and measles to polio and diphtheria in Muslim communities.

Katme, a psychiatrist who has worked in the National Health Service for 15 years, wields influence as the head of one of only two national Islamic medical organisations as well as being a member of the Muslim Council of Britain. Moderate Muslims are concerned at the potential impact because other Islamic doctors will have to confirm vaccines are derived from animal and human products.

There is already evidence of lower than average vaccination rates in Muslim areas, reducing the prospect of the “herd immunity” needed to curb infectious diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella.

Katme’s appeal reflects a global movement by some hardline Islamic leaders who are telling followers to refuse vaccines from the West.

In Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of India, Muslims have refused to be immunised against polio after being told that the vaccines contain products that the West has deliberately added to make the recipients infertile.

Katme said he was bringing the message to Britain after analysing the products used for the manufacture of the vaccines. He claimed that Muslims must allow their children to develop their own immune system naturally rather than rely on vaccines.

He argued that leading “Islamically healthy lives” would be enough to ward off illnesses and diseases.

“You see, God created us perfect and with a very strong defence system. If you breast-feed your child for two years – as the Koran says – and you eat Koranic food like olives and black seed, and you do ablution each time you pray, then you will have a strong defence system,” he said.

“Many vaccines, especially those given to children, are full of haram substances – human parts, gelatine from pork, alcohol, animal/monkey parts, all coming from the West who do not have knowledge of halal or haram. It is forbidden in Islam to have any of these haram substances in our bodies.”

Katme singled out vaccines such as MMR as ones to avoid, despite doctors saying that they are essential to keep a baby healthy. Others included those for diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis and meningitis.

Dr Shuja Shafi, a spokesman for the health and medical committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “In terms of ingredients in vaccines, there are so many things that are probably haram, but in the absence of an alternative we are allowed to take it for the sake of our health.”

 

FRENCH MUSLIM JAILED FOR SIX MONTHS FOR ATTACKING GYNAECOLOGIST

French Muslim jailed for attacking gynaecologist
Reuters
January 26, 2007

www.stuff.co.nz/print/3940505a12.html

A French Muslim who attacked a male gynaecologist for examining his wife just after she had given birth, saying it was against Islam, has been jailed for six months by a Paris court.

Fouad ben Moussa burst into the delivery room at a Paris hospital last November and shoved, slapped and insulted Dr Jean-Francois Oury as he examined the woman after a complicated birth, the prosecution said in court. Police had to intervene to remove him.

Ben Moussa, a 23-year-old lorry driver, apologised for the attack and said he had requested a female doctor. French state hospitals comply with such requests when staffing permits but say patients must accept treatment from the doctors on duty.

“This is a public and secular place,” prosecution lawyer Georges Holleaux said of the state hospital where the attack occurred. “This is not the place where one can invoke religion to get different treatment.”

French media have reported cases in recent years of Muslim men barring male doctors from treating their wives, sometimes resorting to violence, but legal cases against them are rare.

France’s five million Muslims make up eight per cent of the French population, Europe’s largest Islamic minority.

 

YEMENI JEWS ACCUSED OF SORCERY AND IMMORAL ACTS

Yemen-rebels
By Ahmed Al-Haj
The Associated Press
January 30, 2007

About 45 Yemeni Jews have fled their homes and were taking refuge in a hotel under government protection after receiving threats from Shiite Muslim rebels, one member of the group said Monday.

Dawoud Yosef, 23, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from the hotel that they were accused of sorcery and immoral acts and were told they needed to leave their homes in the northern province of Saada. Yosef was not specific about the threats but said they had fled out of fear for their lives.

The 45, who include women and children, left about two weeks ago and were staying in a hotel elsewhere in the province, about 112 miles north of the capital San’a.

“This is the first time we face such serious threats or problems. We have always been living like the rest of Yemenis,” Yosef said.

About 70,000 Jews lived in Yemen before the creation of Israel in 1948. Most have left and only about 400 are believed to still live in the Persian Gulf Arab state.

The rebels, led by Abdel-Malek al-Hawthi, are known as “The Young Faithful Believers” and accuse the Yemeni government of being corrupt and too close to the West. The rebels first took up arms against the government in 2004.

On Monday, President Ali Abdullah Saleh warned the rebels to surrender after a weekend of fighting and artillery bombardments. Aides to al-Hawthi said seven rebels had been killed, and police reported six security forces killed in the clashes in Saada.

“The situation today is calm,” an Interior Ministry official said Monday, after a night of shelling of rebel positions. Security forces had detained 12 members of the rebel faction, the official added.

The al-Hawthi aides accused the government of rejecting a rebel call for a cease-fire. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because they fear government reprisal.

The rebellion began in June 2004 when Shiite cleric Hussein Badr Eddin al-Hawthi, the brother of the current leader, ordered his followers to revolt against the government, which had accused him of sedition, forming an illegal armed group and inciting anti-American sentiment.

The cleric was killed in clashes with government troops in September 2004.

The Young Faithful Believers is known for incitement against the United States and Israel, but is not linked to the al-Qaida terror network, whose members have carried out a number of attacks in Yemen.

 

MUSLIMS PROTEST AT BEING PORTRAYED AS HEARTLESS WRONGDOERS

Muslims protest terrorism role of hit series ‘24’
The Associated Press
The Jerusalem Post
January 22, 2007

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467785726&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Two years ago, Muslim groups protested when the plot of the hit Fox drama 24 cast Islamic terrorists as the villains who launched a stolen nuclear missile in an attack on America.

Now, after a one-year respite in which Russian separatists played the bad guys on the critically acclaimed series, Muslims are back in the evil spotlight.

Unlike last time, when agent Jack Bauer saved the day, the terrorists this time have already succeeded in detonating a nuclear bomb in a Los Angeles suburb.

Being portrayed again as the heartless wrongdoers has drawn renewed protests from Muslim groups, including one that had a meeting with Fox executives two years ago about the issue.

“The overwhelming impression you get is fear and hatred for Muslims,” said Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. She said Thursday she was distressed by this season’s premiere.

“After watching that show, I was afraid to go to the grocery store because I wasn’t sure the person next to me would be able to differentiate between fiction and reality.”

She said the council had a conference call last week with Fox executives to protest the plot line and request more positive portrayals of Muslims on the show, but was not promised anything.

After a January 2005 meeting with the council, Fox aired a commercial in which the show’s star, Kiefer Sutherland, urged viewers to keep in mind that the show’s villains are not representative of all Muslims.

In a written statement issued after last week’s meeting, the network said it has not singled out any ethnic or religious group for blame in creating its characters.

“24 is a heightened drama about anti-terrorism,” the statement read. “After five seasons, the audience clearly understands this, and realizes that any individual, family, or group (ethnic or otherwise) that engages in violence is not meant to be typical.

“Over the past several seasons, the villains have included shadowy Anglo businessmen, Baltic Europeans, Germans, Russians, Islamic fundamentalists, and even the (Anglo-American) president of the United States,” the network said. “The show has made a concerted effort to show ethnic, religious and political groups as multidimensional, and political issues are debated from multiple viewpoints.”

New season’s start

The current season began with Muslim terrorists waging an 11-week campaign of suicide bombings across America, culminating in the detonation of a suitcase-sized nuclear bomb in Valencia, Calif., about 25 miles north of Los Angeles. Estimated death toll: 12,000.

Sohail Mohammed, a New Jersey immigration lawyer who represented scores of detainees caught up in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, dragnet, watched the episode depicting the nuclear attack with an Associated Press reporter. “I was shocked,” he said. “Somewhere, some lunatic out there watching this will do something to an innocent American Muslim because he believes what he saw on TV.”

Engy Abdelkader, a member of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee from Howell, NJ, launched a campaign last week to encourage Muslims offended by the program to complain to Fox.

“I found the portrayal of American Muslims to be pretty horrendous,” she said. “It was denigrating from beginning to end. This is one of the most popular programs on television today. It’s pretty distressing.”

Concerns about Muslims’ civil rights, detention of terror suspects in Guantanamo-like holding centers, and stereotyping are given vastly expanded treatment on 24 this year.

In one exchange, the show depicts the president’s national security adviser challenging the White House chief of staff about the detention of Muslims without criminal charges.

“Right now, the American Muslim community is our greatest asset,” the security adviser says. “They have provided law enforcement with hundreds of tips, and not a single member of that community has been implicated in these attacks.”

“So far,” the chief of staff responds.

 

“WE SHOULD BE TRAINING AND ENCOURAGING MUSLIM YOUTH TO BECOME THE FUTURE JACK BAUERS OF AMERICA”

Why do they CAIR about Jack Bauer?
24 is an opportunity for American Muslims to fight the real enemy: Islamism
By M. Zuhdi Jasser
National Review
January 29, 2007

article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MjlmMTQzN2IxMTFlZTFlNzZiZmEzMjEzY2I2MDkzOWE

Yet again, the old, tired “major” American Muslim organizations have come out in full force to object to something unobjectionable. This time, they’re angry about the storyline of 24, the highly popular TV drama on Fox: When the recent premiere episode ended with a terrorist network detonating a nuclear device in a Los Angeles suburb, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced its fear that “this would serve to increase anti-Muslim prejudice in American society.” The show had begun with a depiction of an America gripped in fear after an eleven-week run of suicide bombings, apparently by radical Islamist terror cells, in cities across the country.

The show addresses a real concern. While the U.S. has not been the victim of an attack since 9/11, a vast array of networks have been dismantled around the world – including a plot run out of London that was targeting the U.S. And, since 9/11, there have been a number of successful attacks upon civilian populations in other parts of the globe – in Bali, Istanbul, Spain, London, Egypt, Jordan, and other places.

As an American and as a Muslim, I find 24 to be not only a profoundly engaging program, but one whose portrayal of Muslims in quite fair. In the show, the president’s sister works for a “leading” Muslim civil-rights organization in D.C.; she is portrayed as a protector of constitutional freedoms. The head of this Muslim organization, who is in detention, reports to authorities on prisoners’ terrorism-related conversations that have alarmed him.

The show also shows the darker, extremist side of Islam – for example, an Arab-Muslim youth, a previously beloved neighbor in suburban L.A., turns out to be a terrorist thug who provides a key part of the nuclear device while terrorizing his friend’s family. This is another, undeniable part of today’s Muslim reality: While suitcase nuclear devices have yet to be used, the threat is there, and such characters are probably quite true to life in their depiction of members of al Qaeda cells or other jihadist networks in the West.

Any ethnic group can, of course, voice complaints regarding its portrayal in pop culture. From the frequently maligned American Italian community in organized-crime dramas to the Russian community that was the focus of last year’s 24, no ethnic group is entirely safe from the silver screen. But the sad reality is that such crime rings or “networks,” which exploit ethnic and religious communities, exist; and they do affect our security.

For American Muslims, though, 24 offers an opportunity to address a key question: To the extent Muslims have a bad image on TV, what can we do to change that?

All patriotic American Muslims who watch 24’s evil Muslim characters unfold their plot to destroy the U.S. quite naturally are enraged. We have an overwhelming desire to reach into the TV set and let all the non-Muslim characters witness a Muslim leading the nullification of this radical Islamist threat.

But the public face of American Muslim activity against terror – and the against the ideology that feeds it – has so far been inadequate. Other than press-release condemnations, there has been virtually no palpable public effort from the greater Muslim community in this regard. If that public movement against Islamism existed, 24’s writers would probably have included it in the story line.

So if this drama hits too close to home, perhaps offended Muslims should use this TV program as an emotional stimulus for change. To this point, the Muslim community has been able to completely avoid any real debate over Islamism. In fact, we see now a movement in England and the West to blame the West’s foreign policy as a root cause of terror rather than the real root cause – theocratic Islamist ideology.

It’s time for hundreds of thousands of Muslims to be not only private but public in their outrage – and to commit themselves to specific, verbal engagement of the militants and their Islamism. We, as American Muslims, should be training and encouraging our Muslim-community youth to become the future Jack Bauers of America. What better way to dispel stereotypes than to create hundreds of new, real images of Muslims who are publicly leading this war on the battlefield and in the domestic and foreign media against the militant Islamists.

Condemnations by press release and vague fatwas are not enough. We need to create organizations – high-profile, well-funded national organizations and think tanks – which are not afraid to identify al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah by name, and by their mission as the enemies of America.

If Muslim organizations and the American Muslim leadership were seen publicly as creating a national, generational plan to fight Islamism – rather than searching for reasons to claim victimhood – then the issues and complaints surrounding such TV shows would disappear. The way to fight the realities of 24 is to create a Muslim CTU, a deep Muslim counterterrorism ideology and a national action plan for our security.