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THE BBC HELD HOSTAGE IN GAZA

A Reporter’s Fate
The BBC held hostage in Gaza
By Bret Stephens
The Wall Street Journal
May 22, 2007

www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bstephens/?id=110010108

Dozens of hostages were released in Gaza over the weekend, in the wake of a truce called between the warring factions of Hamas and Fatah. The BBC’s Alan Johnston, now in his 11th week of captivity, was not among them.

I last saw Mr. Johnston in January 2005, the day before Mahmoud Abbas was elected to succeed Yasser Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Johnston was by then the only Western correspondent living and working full time in Gaza, although the Strip was still considered a safe destination for day-tripping foreign journalists. He kindly lent me his office to interview Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, and asked whether I was still editing the Jerusalem Post. He seemed genuinely oblivious to the notion that my by-then former association with an Israeli newspaper was not the sort of information I wanted broadcast to a roomful of Palestinian stringers.

January 2005 was also the last time one could feel remotely optimistic about an independent Palestinian future. Mr. Abbas had campaigned for office promising “clean legal institutions so we can be considered a civilized society.” He won by an overwhelming margin in an election Hamas refused to contest. There had been a sharp decline in Israeli-Palestinian violence, thanks mainly to Israeli counterterrorism measures and the security fence. A Benetton outlet had opened in Ramallah, signaling better times ahead.

In Gaza things were different, however, and Mr. Johnston was prescient in reporting on the potential for internecine strife: “This internal conflict between police and the militants cannot happen,” one of his stories quotes a Palestinian police chief as saying. “It is forbidden. We are a single nation.” Yet in 2005 more Palestinians were killed by other Palestinians than by Israelis. It got worse in 2006, following Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Hamas’s victory in parliamentary elections. “The occupation was not as bad as the lawlessness and corruption that we are facing now,” Palestinian editor Hafiz Barghouti admitted to Mr. Johnston in a widely cited remark.

When Mr. Johnston was kidnapped by persons unknown on March 12 – apparently dragged at gunpoint from his car while on his way home – he became at least the 23rd Western journalist to have been held hostage in Gaza. In most cases the kidnappings rarely lasted more than a day. Yet in August FOXNews’s Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were held for two weeks, physically abused and forced to convert to Islam. Plainly matters were getting progressively worse for foreigners. So why did the BBC keep Mr. Johnston in place?

One answer is journalistic fidelity. Mr. Johnston had been the BBC’s man in Kabul during the Taliban era; he was used to hard places. His dispatches about the travails of ordinary Gazans brimmed with humane sympathy. And any news organization would prefer to have its own reporter on the scene than to rely on stringers.

Yet the BBC also seemed to operate in the Palestinian Authority with a sense of political impunity. Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti described Mr. Johnston as someone who “has done a lot for our cause” – not the sort of endorsement one imagines the BBC welcoming from an equivalent figure on the Israeli side. Other BBC correspondents were notorious for making their politics known to their viewers: Barbara Plett confessed to breaking into tears when Arafat was airlifted to a Parisian hospital in October 2004; Orla Guerin treated Israel’s capture of a living, wired teenage suicide bomber that March as nothing more than a PR stunt – “a picture that Israel wants the world to see.”

Though doubtlessly sincere, these views also conferred institutional advantages for the BBC in terms of access and protection, one reason why the broadcaster might have felt relatively comfortable posting Mr. Johnston in a place no other news agency dared to go.

By contrast, reporters who displeased Palestinian authorities could be made to pay a price. In one notorious case in October 2000, Italian reporter Riccardo Cristiano of RAI published a letter in a Palestinian newspaper insisting he had not been the one who had broadcast images of two Israeli soldiers being lynched in Ramallah. “We respect the journalistic regulations of the Palestinian Authority,” he wrote, blaming rival Mediaset for the transgression. I had a similar experience when I quoted a Palestinian journalist describing as “riff-raff” those of his neighbors celebrating the attacks of Sept. 11. Within a day, the journalist was chided and threatened by Palestinian officials for having spoken to me. They were keeping close tabs.

Still, whatever the benefits of staying on the right side of the Palestinian powers-that-be, they have begun to wane. For years, the BBC had invariably covered Palestinian affairs within the context of Israel’s occupation – the core truth from which all manifestations of conflict supposedly derived. Developments within Gaza following Israel’s withdrawal showed the hollowness of that analysis. Domestic Palestinian politics, it turned out, were shot through with their own discontents, contradictions and divisions, not just between Hamas and Fatah but between scores of clans, gangs, factions and personalities. Opposition to Israel helped in some ways to mute this reality, but it could not suppress it.

This is the situation – not a new one, but one the foreign media had for years mostly ignored – in which the drama of Mr. Johnston’s captivity is playing out. Initial reports suggested he had been kidnapped by the so-called Popular Resistance Committee; later an al Qaeda affiliate called the Army of Islam claimed to have killed him. More recently, evidence has come to light suggesting he’s alive and being held by a criminal gang based in the southern town of Rafah. The British government is reportedly in talks with a radical Islamist cleric in their custody, Abu Qatada, whose release the Army of Islam has demanded for Mr. Johnston’s freedom. What the British will do, and what effect that might have, remains to be seen.

For now, one can only pray for Mr. Johnston’s safe release. Later, the BBC might ask itself whether its own failures of prudence and judgment put its reporter’s life in jeopardy. The BBC’s Paul Adams has said of his colleague that it was “his job to bring us day after day reports of the Palestinian predicament.” For that act of solidarity one hopes a terrible price will not be paid.

 

“A SCURRILOUS PIECE OF JOURNALISM”

Weighing the risks
By Fran Unsworth
BBC editors’ blog
May 27, 2007

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/05/alan.html

A scurrilous piece of journalism appeared in the Wall Street Journal this week regarding Alan Johnston’s kidnapping. An article by Bret Stephens criticises BBC management for our failures of “prudence and judgment which put our reporter, Alan Johnston’s life in jeopardy.” Fair enough. It is not as though all of us responsible for Alan’s safety have not asked ourselves the same question many times over the course of the past 11 weeks.

But the article goes on to propose that our reasons for this complacency were as a result of our institutional pro-Palestinian views which meant we felt able to operate in the Palestinian authority with “political impunity”. He would appear to be suggesting that Alan was a Palestinian sympathiser and therefore we felt he would be protected by that. The author throws in the few other BBC correspondent names to stack up his case – saying Barbara Plett and Orla Guerin had also made their views known to the public.

He alleges we believed this stance gave us “institutional advantages in terms of access and protection” and that is why “we felt comfortable posting Alan in a place no other news agency dared to go”.

Aside from the lack of sympathy shown by the Wall Street Journal, who must have asked themselves a few questions over the appalling tragedy of Daniel Pearl, it also happens to be totally unfounded. I would have thought the writer would have attempted to establish some facts before committing to the page. Had he put a call into the BBC he might have discovered that we had been by no means complacent about Alan’s safety.

Alan was highly alert to the possibility of kidnap. He had come out of Gaza on several occasions in the months before he was taken; we had drawn up plans to avoid it happening and even a plan of what we would do if it should. He had spent the previous three years in Gaza during which time the security situation had progressively deteriorated. He had been due to come out two weeks before he was kidnapped, and the BBC was assessing whether Gaza was safe enough for western journalists in the immediate future.

Obviously none of this prevented the desperate situation in which Alan is now in. We, as his managers, have repeatedly asked ourselves what more we could and should have done to protect him, including the issue of whether he should have been there at all. But we do think very carefully about putting our staff into dangerous parts of the world and take every measure we can to minimise the risks. We continually talk to our correspondents on the ground, as we did with Alan, about how to do this. However, newsgathering is not, and can never be, an entirely risk free business.

But I am surprised that one of the US’s leading newspapers with a great tradition appears to think that a desire to provide first hand reporting for our audiences, on a key news story of major significance, was an enterprise to be regarded as foolish and complacent, rather than what journalism is supposed to be for.

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“A MORAL BLINDNESS”

Nobel laureate cancels UK trip over Israel boycott
By Debbie Andalo
The Guardian
May 24, 2007

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2087155,00.html

An academic and Nobel laureate has cancelled a planned visit to a London university because of what he perceives to be “a widespread anti-Israel and anti-semitic current in British opinion”.

Steven Weinberg, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, had been invited to Imperial College in July to speak in honour of a Pakistani physicist, Abdus Salam, and to deliver a talk at a conference on particle physics.

But today in a letter to his host at Imperial, Michael Duff, Prof Weinberg said he was withdrawing from the trip.

In the letter, the professor said his decision was triggered by an agreement by the National Union of Journalists at its national conference to boycott Israeli products.

He wrote: “I know that some will say that these boycotts are directed only against Israel, rather than generally against Jews.

“But given the history of the attacks on Israel and the oppressiveness and aggressiveness of other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, boycotting Israel indicated a moral blindness for which it is hard to find any explanation other than anti-semitism.”

A spokeswoman for Imperial said it was “very sad” about the professor’s decision.

Prof Weinberg said the only other reason he could imagine for the boycott was the NUJ’s “desire to pander to the growing Muslim minority in Britain”.

This is the second time Prof Weinberg, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 1979, has cancelled a visit to a UK university because of Israeli boycotts.

In 2006 he called off a trip to a conference at the University of Durham following what he saw as a boycott of Israeli academics by the then lecturers’ union Natfhe.

His decision comes a week before members of the University and College Union are to call for an academic boycott of Israel at their inaugural annual conference.

Academics are also expected to debate whether anti-semitism has become acceptable on UK campuses and whether members should be balloted before any decisions are taken on academic freedom.

The motion calling for an Israeli boycott has been laid down jointly by the University of Brighton and the University of East London. It condemns the “complicity of Israeli academia in the [Palestinian] occupation, which has provoked a call from the Palestinian trade unions for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions”.

The union is being urged to agree that “passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic”.

The motion calls on members to consider the “moral implications of existing proposed links with Israeli academic institutions”.

The issue of boycotting Israeli academics and institutions has been a standing feature of the annual conferences of the two former lecturers’ unions – the Association of University Teachers and Natfhe – before they merged to form the UCU last year.

An AUT motion was passed in 2005, but it caused such controversy that it had to hold another special meeting at which it was rejected.

Natfhe has supported boycotts in the past. Last year members agreed to continue the boycott, but the policy was dissolved when the union merged to form the UCU only hours later.

Since Natfhe’s motion was dissolved, UCU has no policy on the Israeli academic boycott.

 

“TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL TODAY WOULD BE LIKE BOYCOTTING CZECHOSLOVAKIA IN 1938”

Physicist who refused to lecture in U.K.: I’m not calling for boycott
By Charlotte Halle,
Ha’aretz
May 25, 2007

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/863233.html

An American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate who withdrew from a speaking engagement at a London university, citing anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment in the U.K., says he is not calling for a boycott of Britain.

“I’m not calling on anyone else not to go to Britain,” Prof. Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1979, told Haaretz on Thursday night. “I don’t want to say I’m cutting ties with the U.K. – I love England. I just feel personally uncomfortable going with the atmosphere there at the moment. It’s increasingly hostile to Israel, especially in the intellectual world.”

Weinberg told the Imperial College in London, where he had been invited to speak in July in honor of Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam, that his decision was motivated by a move by Britain’s National Union of Journalists to boycott Israeli products.

“I just felt this was too disgusting and I didn’t want to go there this summer,” Weinberg said. “I see in the British press and the BBC signs of a very strong anti-Israel bias – a kind of blind hostility that whatever Israel does, it is always in the wrong – so this is not an isolated action of a small group of anti-Semitic conspirators. This represents a widespread feeling among British journalists.”

Weinberg said he sent the letter before learning that 120,000 members of the University and College Union were asked to vote on a proposed boycott of Israeli universities at its annual congress in Bournemouth on Tuesday and before he knew about the call in March by 130 British doctors to boycott the Israeli Medical Association.

Weinberg said he is against boycotts, and specifically boycotts of Israel: “To boycott Israel today would be like boycotting Czechoslovakia in 1938 when Hilter was complaining the Czechs were being unpleasant to the Germans in the Sudetenland.”

Weinberg also pulled out of a 2006 conference at Durham University due to a boycott of Israeli academics imposed by the British National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education.

The International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom at Bar-Ilan University, which coordinates Israeli efforts against boycotts, said it respects but does not endorse Weinberg’s position.

“Although we respect Prof. Weinberg’s decision and sympathize with his feelings, we do not believe counter-boycotts are an effective way of dealing with the situation,” the board said in a statement.

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“A CLIENT OF THE SYRIAN AUTHORITIES… FOMENTING DISORDER”

Analysis: Why might Syria wish to sow chaos in Lebanon now?
By Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
May 20, 2007

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1178708647313&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Thirty eight people lost their lives on Sunday in fierce fighting between the Lebanese military and Sunni jihadist operatives near the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, close to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. This outbreak of violence represents the heaviest toll in intra-Lebanese violence since the conclusion of the Lebanese civil war of 1975-90. The events in Nahr al-Bared cast light on a side of the Lebanese crisis which has until now been largely ignored by the international media. This is the emergence in recent months of an organization of armed Sunni Islamist operatives in the largely-Sunni north of the country. So far, much of the coverage has suggested that the group in question, known as Fatah al-Islam, may be linked to the al-Qaida network. Nevertheless, informed opinion suggests caution before drawing the simple conclusion that Fatah al-Islam is merely Osama bin-Laden’s latest local franchise.

Fatah al-Islam is a breakaway of a Syrian-backed Palestinian organization called Fatah-intifada, which itself split from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah group in 1983. Fatah-intifada has little presence outside of the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon and Syria, and is widely regarded as a tool of the Syrian regime with little popular support. The group, led by a Palestinian called Shakir al-Abssi, surfaced in the Nahr al-Bared camp last November and is thought to contain around 100 fighters from the camp. The group includes Sunni Islamists of a variety of nationalities, about half of whom are drawn from the Sunni Lebanese community. Apart from Palestinians, there are also said to be Syrian and Saudi citizens among its ranks.

While Syrian officials have been keen from the outset to describe al-Abssi and his group as operating “in favor of al-Qaida,” Lebanese authorities suspect that the group may in fact be a client of the Syrian authorities themselves, established to act as an instrument of policy in Lebanon, fomenting disorder. The Assad regime has a long history of utilizing terrorist and paramilitary groups for such a purpose. Fatah-intifada itself was used by Hafez Assad in a power struggle with Yassir Arafat in the Lebanon refugee camps between 1985-88. The regime is known also to have engaged operatives of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party to carry out assassinations in Lebanon during the civil war period.

Suspicions regarding Fatah al-Islam center on the fact that Shakir al-Abssi was sentenced in 2003 to three years in prison in Syria after being convicted of plotting attacks inside the country. This was an unusually lenient sentence. By comparison, for example, Syrians suspected of involvement in the Muslim Brotherhood are routinely given 12-year terms. Al-Abssi, after his release, turned up among pro-Syrian Fatah-intifada circles in Nahr al-Bared and shortly afterward emerged as the leader of the new group, Fatah al-Islam. These facts have led General Ashraf Rifi, head of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces (FSI), to conclude that “this is a Syrian creation to sow chaos.” Which raises the question, why might the Syrians wish to sow chaos in Lebanon, and why now?

A draft resolution for the unilateral establishment of an international tribunal on the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was circulated in the UN Security Council by the US, France and Britain last week. It is known that the Syrian regime is determined to prevent this tribunal at all costs, since it is believed that senior Syrian officials may be found to have been involved in the Hariri killing. Could it be that the regime in Damascus might see an escalation of tension in Lebanon as currently helpful – as a tacit reminder to the international community of what Damascus is capable of when put in a corner? This is the view of senior officials in Lebanese government, and is in keeping with earlier practices of the Damascus regime.

 

“WAS OSAMA RIGHT?”

Was Osama Right?
Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won’t change their view
By Bernard Lewis
The Wall Street Journal
May 16, 2007

www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010080

During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: “What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?”

A few examples may suffice. During the troubles in Lebanon in the 1970s and ’80s, there were many attacks on American installations and individuals – notably the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, followed by a prompt withdrawal, and a whole series of kidnappings of Americans, both official and private, as well as of Europeans. There was only one attack on Soviet citizens, when one diplomat was killed and several others kidnapped. The Soviet response through their local agents was swift, and directed against the family of the leader of the kidnappers. The kidnapped Russians were promptly released, and after that there were no attacks on Soviet citizens or installations throughout the period of the Lebanese troubles.

These different responses evoked different treatment. While American policies, institutions and individuals were subject to unremitting criticism and sometimes deadly attack, the Soviets were immune. Their retention of the vast, largely Muslim colonial empire accumulated by the czars in Asia passed unnoticed, as did their propaganda and sometimes action against Muslim beliefs and institutions.

Most remarkable of all was the response of the Arab and other Muslim countries to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Washington’s handling of the Tehran hostage crisis assured the Soviets that they had nothing to fear from the U.S. They already knew that they need not worry about the Arab and other Muslim governments. The Soviets already ruled – or misruled – half a dozen Muslim countries in Asia, without arousing any opposition or criticism. Initially, their decision and action to invade and conquer Afghanistan and install a puppet regime in Kabul went almost unresisted. After weeks of debate, the U.N. General Assembly finally was persuaded to pass a resolution “strongly deploring the recent armed intervention in Afghanistan.” The words “condemn” and “aggression” were not used, and the source of the “intervention” was not named. Even this anodyne resolution was too much for some of the Arab states. South Yemen voted no; Algeria and Syria abstained; Libya was absent; the nonvoting PLO observer to the Assembly even made a speech defending the Soviets.

One might have expected that the recently established Organization of the Islamic Conference would take a tougher line. It did not. After a month of negotiation and manipulation, the organization finally held a meeting in Pakistan to discuss the Afghan question. Two of the Arab states, South Yemen and Syria, boycotted the meeting. The representative of the PLO, a full member of this organization, was present, but abstained from voting on a resolution critical of the Soviet action; the Libyan delegate went further, and used this occasion to denounce the U.S.

The Muslim willingness to submit to Soviet authority, though widespread, was not unanimous. The Afghan people, who had successfully defied the British Empire in its prime, found a way to resist the Soviet invaders. An organization known as the Taliban (literally, “the students”) began to organize resistance and even guerilla warfare against the Soviet occupiers and their puppets. For this, they were able to attract some support from the Muslim world – some grants of money, and growing numbers of volunteers to fight in the Holy War against the infidel conqueror. Notable among these was a group led by a Saudi of Yemeni origin called Osama bin Laden.

To accomplish their purpose, they did not disdain to turn to the U.S. for help, which they got. In the Muslim perception there has been, since the time of the Prophet, an ongoing struggle between the two world religions, Christendom and Islam, for the privilege and opportunity to bring salvation to the rest of humankind, removing whatever obstacles there might be in their path. For a long time, the main enemy was seen, with some plausibility, as being the West, and some Muslims were, naturally enough, willing to accept what help they could get against that enemy. This explains the widespread support in the Arab countries and in some other places first for the Third Reich and, after its collapse, for the Soviet Union. These were the main enemies of the West, and therefore natural allies.

Now the situation had changed. The more immediate, more dangerous enemy was the Soviet Union, already ruling a number of Muslim countries, and daily increasing its influence and presence in others. It was therefore natural to seek and accept American help. As Osama bin Laden explained, in this final phase of the millennial struggle, the world of the unbelievers was divided between two superpowers. The first task was to deal with the more deadly and more dangerous of the two, the Soviet Union. After that, dealing with the pampered and degenerate Americans would be easy.

We in the Western world see the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western, more specifically an American, victory in the Cold War. For Osama bin Laden and his followers, it was a Muslim victory in a jihad, and, given the circumstances, this perception does not lack plausibility.

From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that they expected this second task, dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks – on the World Trade Center in New York and on U.S. troops in Mogadishu in 1993, on the U.S. military office in Riyadh in 1995, on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 – all of which evoked only angry words, sometimes accompanied by the dispatch of expensive missiles to remote and uninhabited places.

Stage One of the jihad was to drive the infidels from the lands of Islam; Stage Two – to bring the war into the enemy camp, and the attacks of 9/11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage. The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then. The U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq indicated that there had been a major change in the U.S., and that some revision of their assessment, and of the policies based on that assessment, was necessary.

More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences – both for Islam and for America – will be deep, wide and lasting.

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DAVID IRVING EXPELLED FROM THE WARSAW BOOK FAIR

Holocaust denier David Irving expelled from Warsaw book fair
Reuters
May 19, 2007

British historian David Irving, a convicted Holocaust denier, was escorted out of an international book fair in Warsaw where he was planning to display his books, Polish organizers said Saturday.

Irving, who was arrested in Austria after his arrival on a visit in November 2005, spent more than a year in an Austrian jail for denying the Nazis organized mass murder of six million Jews during World War Two.

“We asked him to leave,” said Grzegorz Guzowski, the book fair organizer. “Our employees helped him pack up his things, and our car drove him to the address he specified.”

He said Irving’s publishers did not send materials detailing his work to the fair until a few hours before the deadline, giving organizers too little time to prevent the self-taught historian from setting up a table at the exhibition.

Unlike many European countries, Polish law does not expressly forbid Holocaust denial, Warsaw University law professor Piotr Kruszynski told Reuters.

“Polish laws prohibiting the promotion of fascism and defamation of people on racial and religious grounds could conceivably be extended to include Irving’s writings,” he added.

Irving plans to remain in the country for a few more days to visit Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps in Poland.

“It’s ironic that it’s come to a situation like this in Poland, which fought against restrictions on speech for such a long time,” Irving was quoted by daily Zycie Warszawy as saying.

 

“FINKELSTEIN IS A JEWISH DAVID IRVING”

DePaul’s disgrace
By Marty Peretz
The New Republic
May 12, 2007

www.tnr.com/blog/spine?pid=107268

Oh, for sure. At my campus and at your campus, there was usually a nutcase professor who had very odd views, really very odd, about this and that. A professor of engineering would believe that blacks were stupid or that woman should stay home and do the wash… or a professor of chemistry would believe that the Holocaust was a historical invention. It was unpleasant. Maybe even worse than unpleasant. But it somehow didn’t go to very heart of the university which was that teachers should be experts in their fields.

Well, you know about Norman Finkelstein who is truly a nutcase teacher in the field for which DePaul University is now considering him for tenure. Our Leon Wieseltier has called him “poison, he’s a disgusting self-hating Jew, he’s something you find under a rock.” Omer Bartov, the world-renowned scholar of genocide at Brown University, wrote in the New York Times that Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry is “an ideological fanatic’s view... by a writer so reckless and ruthless in his attacks... [His theory is] both irrational and insidious... an international Jewish conspiracy verges on paranoia and would serve anti-Semites.” If his these words from critics are not sufficient, how about those from his fans? The wife of the neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Ernst Zuendel has gushed, “I feel like a kid in a candy store... Finkelstein is a Jewish David Irving.”

OK, don’t take my word. Listen to him on YouTube for yourself. The following is a transcript.

If you can’t stand listening and watching, take the easy route...and just read.

I’m going to try and be brief this afternoon, I know it’s hot, and so many people have already said so many important things. I want to make basically 3 points. Number one, in my view reasonable people can disagree about how the conflict in Lebanon began, but reasonable people cannot disagree about what’s happening now. The conflict is perfectly clear to anyone who looks at it honestly. Israel has embarked, in its own words, on a war of annihilation against the Lebanese people. Not a day passes when the language they use doesn’t escalate. One day they say for each Hizbullah rocket we will destroy 10 Lebanese homes. The next day they say we will flatten southern Lebanon. The next day they say we will cleanse southern Lebanon. The next day they say we will obliterate and pulverize southern Lebanon. We have to be honest about what they are saying. This is pure and simple Nazi language. They’re talking about – and we shouldn’t be afraid to use that analogy. They are waging a war of annihilation against the Lebanese people.

Number two, I heard a few days ago a member or several members of the House of Representatives say, “We are all Israelis now.” Now, I beg to differ. Right now, and I say it publicly, right now we are all Hizbullah. All of us. You can have differences, disagreements with their ideology, with their values, with their organization. But right now at this moment that is totally and utterly irrelevant; just as, for those of you who are older in this meeting, in the 1940s you can disagree with Stalin and Stalinism and the Soviet Union on this and on that. And there were excellent reasons for disagreeing. But every victory of the Red Army over the Nazi invaders was a victory for liberty and a victory for freedom. And every victory of Hizbullah over the vandals and the marauders, the invaders and the murderers; every victory by Hizbullah over Israel is also a victory for liberty and a victory for freedom.

One last point, and that is the question of Israel. I personally remain committed to the belief that ordinary people, Jewish and Muslim, Jewish and Arab, if left to their own devices, they can live together in peace, freedom, mutual dignity and mutual respect. But if Israel proves itself unable to live in mutual dignity and mutual respect with its Arab neighbors; if it chooses to become the garrison state for the United States whose only purpose and being is to enslave the Arab people; if it chooses, I am not saying it is, I am saying but if it chooses then it’s losing its right to be there in the Middle East. It’s no different than Da Nang airbase during the Vietnam War if your only purpose is to wreak murder, wreak havoc, destroy, level, pulverize, flatten, cleanse. If that’s your purpose, if that’s your raison d’etre, then you’ve lost your right to be there.

One last point. For those of you who are indifferent to moral arguments, there remains a, the fancy word is a realpolitik argument, a real world argument. And the real world is, Israel is courting its own disaster. Maybe the blind, the arrogant, those who are drunk with power, intoxicated with their weapons, they don’t see it; but rational people, reasonable people see what’s going on. Hizbullah is not, thank goodness, the PLO. They’re serious, they’re committed, they’re determined. Hopefully, and I mean hopefully, reasonable, sane people will see that, and will recognize that even if they don’t like the Arabs, and even if they don’t like Muslims, it’s a wiser strategy, it’s a more prudent strategy just from the vantage point of self interest. It’s wiser and more prudent to learn to live with your neighbors rather than try to destroy them, because sooner or later before you destroy them they will destroy you; which means at the end of the day we all have a common purpose, though maybe we don’t see it. And the common purpose is we are all fighting, resisting, struggling to make this world a decent place, a fair place, a place where dignity and mutual respect is allowed for; and where everyone can live, everyone to live who wants to live in mutual respect and mutual dignity. Those who do not – the monsters and freaks in the White House and their collaborators in Tel Aviv – so far as I’m concerned they can all drop dead. But let’s the rest of us struggle, work hard, reach out to everybody. Make it a common struggle for a common goal – truth and justice. Thank you.

 

ANOTHER JEW MURDERED IN ST. PETERSBURG

Jew stabbed to death in Russia
22 year-old St. Petersburg man found dead by mother minutes after stabbing; friends say murder ‘was anti-Semitic’
By Yaakov Lappin
Yediot Ahronot
May 12, 2007

A Russian Jew has been stabbed to death in northern St. Petersburg. Dimitri Nikoulinsky, 22, was found dead with knife wounds to his throat by his mother minutes after the assault, his friends said.

Two members of the Jewish community said the attack was “exactly” like other lethal assaults carried out by neo-Nazi groups against foreign students and an anti-fascist activist, and are convinced that the attack was a hate-crime.

The sources said the large number of stabbings by neo-Nazis caused them to feel unsafe, adding that they were too terrified to give their names.

“Today at ten in the morning, our friend and member of the Jewish community was assaulted by an unknown number of men. They left him with many throat knife wounds,” a male friend of Nikoulinsky told Ynetnews by phone.

“His mother found him dead minutes later on the stairs to his apartment,” the source added.

Nikoulinsky was a student at St. Petersburg State University, and was in his final year of studying for an MA. He also taught in a local Beit Chabad Yeshiva.

Although he did not wear a kippa, Nikoulinsky did “not look Russian at all, and had a very Jewish look,” a female employee of a Russian Jewish organization said.

“We are sure this was a hate crime because we have had a series of hate crimes of the same nature. The men who assaulted Dimitri took nothing from him,” Nikoulinsky’s friend said.

“I think this was a neo-Nazi crimes,” he added.

The female source said Nikoulinsky was “very shy, and from a good Jewish family. There was no personal reason that anyone could have to kill him.”

“Two years ago a man was killed in the same way in a central avenue of St. Petersburg,” Nikoulinsky’s friend said. “The reason he was killed was because he was an anti-fascist activist. After that, two foreign students from Vietnam were murdered, also in the same way. In addition, a girl from Tajikistan, who was 5 years-old, was murdered in an identical manner,” the source added.

Both sources said police had been informed, but added that they had lost trust in the police. “They are always working on these cases and nothing ever happens,” one source said, adding: “We don’t trust them at all.”

Nikoulinsky was described by his friend as a “very intelligent and open-minded person. He has never done any harm to anyone. He wasn’t political. His only passion was teaching young children, which he did on a full-time basis.”

FULL ARTICLE

“ISLAM STOPPED THINKING IN THE YEAR 900 AND HAS STOOD STILL FOR MORE THAN A THOUSAND YEARS”

Confronting Israeli realities with Dutch ones
Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
May 2007

In the past few years Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become known worldwide. In 2006, Reader’s Digest gave her the European of the Year award and said she best embodied Europe’s contemporary values. Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia in 1969 and granted asylum in the Netherlands in 1992. She left for the United States in spring 2006 after she had to resign from the Dutch parliament because of a minister’s ruling that she had never obtained the Dutch nationality.

Under parliamentary pressure, the minister’s decision was canceled a few weeks later. Over the past years, however, Hirsi Ali’s life had become almost unbearable because of ongoing Muslim threats and their consequences. Her last neighbors obtained a court injunction that she had to relocate because they felt the permanent protection she received affected their privacy.

ISRAEL: SOLVING IMMIGRATION PROBLEMS

Part of Hirsi Ali’s interest in Israel concerns its approach to solving immigration problems somewhat similar to those with which the Netherlands has such great difficulty. Her adoptive country is perplexed at the trouble it has in integrating numerous non-Western immigrants and their offspring, to a substantial extent of Muslim origin.

She says: “I visited Israel a few years ago, primarily to understand how it dealt so well with so many immigrants from different origins. My main impression was that Israel is a liberal democracy. In the places I visited, including Jerusalem as well as Tel Aviv and its beaches, I saw that men and women are equal. One never knows what happens behind the scenes, but that is how it appears to the visitor. The many women in the army are also very visible.

“I understood that a crucial element of success is the unifying factor among immigrants to Israel. Whether one arrives from Ethiopia or Russia, or one’s grandparents immigrated from Europe, what binds them is being Jewish. Such a bond is lacking in the Netherlands. Our immigrants’ background is diverse and also differs greatly from that of the Netherlands, including religion.”

SOCIALIST AND PALESTINIAN CORRUPTION

“I have visited the Palestinian quarters in Jerusalem as well. Their side is dilapidated, for which they blame the Israelis. In private, however, I met a young Palestinian who spoke excellent English. There were no cameras and no notebooks. He said the situation was partly their own fault, with much of the money sent from abroad to build Palestine being stolen by corrupt leaders.

“When I start to speak in the Netherlands about the corruption of the Palestinian Authority and the role of Arafat in the tragedy of Palestine, I do not get a large audience. Often one is talking to a wall. Many people reply that Israel first has to withdraw from the territories, and then all will be well with Palestine.

“Before I joined the VVD liberal party, I was a member of the Labor party. They have forgotten the positive role they played in the creation of Israel. Their great model thinker is the Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit, who promotes solidarity with those who are weak. In socialist eyes whoever isn’t white or Western is a victim, and this includes Muslims, Palestinians, and immigrants. My position is that I am not a victim. I am responsible for my acts like anybody else and so are all people.”

MINORITY RACISM

“I studied social work for a year in the Netherlands. Our teachers taught us to look with different eyes toward the immigrant and the foreigner. They thought racism was a phenomenon that only appears among whites. My family in Somalia, however, educated me as a racist and told me that we Muslims were very superior to the Christian Kenyans. My mother thinks they are half-monkeys.

“When I started to explain this truth in the class, the teacher responded that it was ‘untrue and impossible.’ I said, ‘Yes, it is true.” I mentioned that I was living in the center for asylum seekers in the town of Ede and that the Somalis I knew there talked about native Dutchmen as uncircumcised, irreligious, and dirty.

“When a Somali man in the Netherlands sees his sister with a Dutch friend, that is what he thinks and he usually becomes very angry. Such attitudes may spill over to behavior. There was a case in the Netherlands, for instance, where an Iraqi man killed his sister because she bore a child from a native Dutchman. That is extreme nonwhite racism, even if it is called honor-related violence. After my initiative in the Dutch parliament, a pilot investigation was carried out that found there had been eleven honor-related murders in the Netherlands over an eight-month period.”

DUTCH DOUBLE STANDARDS

“There are many other cases of minority racism. For instance, a nephew and a niece may have to get married because the family wants to keep its blood pure. Marrying someone from another race, of course, is completely out of the question. If, however, a native Dutch woman says, ‘I’m not interested in a Moroccan man,’ then it makes all the headlines. The Dutch think this manifests the decline of their society.

“If a Dutchman says he doesn’t want a Moroccan or a Turk as a neighbor, he is a racist. If a Moroccan says, ‘I want to live next to other Moroccans,’ that is viewed as a sign of group attachment, because he has been isolated by immigrating. So that is not considered racism. If a right-wing skinhead draws swastikas on a Jewish cemetery, that is Nazism and he will be punished. If a Moroccan immigrant does the same, it is an expression of his displeasure with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“A few years ago on 4 May when the Netherlands commemorated its World War II dead with two minutes of silence, Moroccan youngsters made a lot of noise in one Amsterdam location and played football with the memorial wreaths in another. Although there were angry reactions, even this was explained as a protest against the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

“Defining an individual as an eternal victim is a fundamental mistake. Colored people, Muslims, and other non-Western immigrants are not victims. They are individuals, like me, who have come to the Netherlands in search of a better life. It is my responsibility to improve my life, and I am not asking the authorities to do it for me. I request only to live in an environment of peace and security. The socialist worldview is different. Those who are not white and Christian, and do not share the ideas of Christian civilization, are victims by definition.

“Paradoxically enough, that attitude derives partly from the Holocaust, which created major guilt feelings in the Netherlands. Some people think the behavior of their countrymen toward the Jews during the war is something that should never be repeated. Thus they compensate by letting Muslims beat their wives and a few others beat up homosexuals or prepare to plant bombs. Such an attitude reflects mental illness.”

DOUBLE MORAL STANDARDS TOWARDS ISRAEL

“The crisis of Dutch socialism can be sized up in its attitudes toward both Islam and Israel. It holds Israel to exceptionally high moral standards. The Israelis, however, will always do well, because they themselves set high standards for their actions.

“The standards for judging the Palestinians, however, are very low. Most outsiders remain silent on all the problems in their territories. That helps the Palestinians become even more corrupt than they already are. Those who live in the territories are not allowed to say anything about this, because they risk being murdered by their own people.”

When asked whether the moral standards to which many Dutch hold Israel are often also far higher than those they apply to the Netherlands, Hirsi Ali replies: “The VVD and parts of the CDA Christian Democrats do not apply double standards to Israel, nor do the smaller Christian parties. Many other politicians do, however.

“This also has to be seen in a wider context. Not only the Netherlands, but many other European countries have changed their minds after more than fifty years of commemorations of the Holocaust. They are happy to free themselves of its history and of Israel’s history. Thus they apply these very unequal criteria. They also think they are entitled to have their double standards, whereas the Israelis are not.”

ISRAEL’S SECURITY NEEDS

Hirsi Ali fully understands Israel’s security needs. Her own history makes her very sensitive to them. She is no stranger to threats by other Muslims. In November 2004, Theo van Gogh made the movie Submission on extreme discrimination against women by Muslims, based on Hirsi Ali’s script. Soon after he was cruelly murdered by the radical Muslim Mohammed Bouyeri. The latter left a knife in his body to which a letter was attached that threatened several Dutch politicians with murder, of which Hirsi Ali was one.

She had already received many threats before that. This time Hirsi Ali had to leave her home and live for weeks in a Dutch army camp. Part of the time the Dutch sent her to the United States because they could not protect her in the Netherlands. She could not do her parliamentary work during that period. The same was the case for the Dutch conservative politician Geert Wilders.

Her preoccupation with security is felt throughout our conversation. Before she arrives in the hotel where we meet, one of her state-provided guards tells me she can only sit at one specific table in the lobby. Elsewhere she may be shot at through the windows. When she arrives surrounded by tall bodyguards, two young Danish men in the room come over to express their admiration for her.

When we start to talk, she is worried about somebody who remains seated too close to us for her taste. I explain that he is probably a foreigner who has no idea who she is. Finally the hotel manager, who is very honored by her visit, suggests that we continue our conversation in his office.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

The conversation moves to who is responsible for the Middle Eastern conflict. Hirsi Ali says: “It is hard to believe that there are Dutch people who say that if Israel would follow another foreign policy and withdraw from the territories, the problem would disappear entirely. This attitude is infantile and utopian wishful thinking, but one cannot get it out of their heads.

“Still I do try sometimes. For instance, I refer to the behavior of Arab countries that have no direct interaction with Israel. Their oil reserves have made them extremely rich, yet they remain very fundamentalist, hate the West, and want to destroy it. This Wahhabi thinking is promoted by the Saudis and not the Palestinians. To think that if Israel leaves the occupied territories, Saudi Arabia will suddenly propagate another religion is both too infantile for words and opportunistic.

“To counteract such attitudes, Israel first of all has to stand firm. A state’s prime responsibility is to guarantee the security of its citizens. If Israel doesn’t do that, its society is in danger. When I visited Israel, I found much firmness there. One such person I talked to there was Natan Sharansky, whom I have also met in the Netherlands.”

ISRAELI AND DUTCH FUNDAMENTALISM

Not all of Hirsi Ali’s reactions to what she saw in Israel were positive. “From my superficial impression, the country also has a problem with fundamentalists. The ultra-Orthodox will cause a demographic problem because these fanatics have more children than the secular and the regular Orthodox.

“Knowledge and realism are the basis for the well-being of a small country. Those who want to exclude their children from this so as to promote a certain type of religion are a danger for any state. Such an attitude also exists among nonfundamentalists in Dutch society. There are many who close their eyes to realities. All they want is entertainment; they do not want to read anything or find out anything more. People like that no longer understand what danger is.

“However, if there are bomb attacks in the Netherlands like those in London in July 2005, utopian socialism will increasingly give way to realism. The utopists, once Muslims throw a bomb at their house, will lose much of their leftist ideology and become more realistic human beings. There is already such a trend in the Netherlands. When the immigrants arrived, many of them refused to integrate. At that time the authorities refused to listen to the complaints of native Dutchmen.

“Thus more and more people left the big cities for the suburbs or the countryside. There is also some emigration from the Netherlands for a variety of reasons. Farmers have gone abroad and been successful. This will influence others who will want to do the same.

“On the other hand, some groups of native Dutch have begun to defend themselves through violence. Increasingly people want to join new political parties that make security and the fight against terrorism a central plank. The existing parties and the Dutch government will have to deal with developments more realistically. If they run away from their responsibility there will be small, or even large, explosions of violence.”

A FALSE IMAGE OF TOLERANCE

“Those who propagate the image of the Netherlands as a tolerant country talk nonsense. There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance. Many Dutchmen think they are very tolerant if they let others do whatever they want so long as it doesn’t threaten their own personal freedom.

“A few centuries ago, they did not have that attitude. They did not tolerate the Dutch Catholic Church because it was an intolerant religion. The Catholics then adapted themselves. Many Dutch baby-boomers in power nowadays, however, think that if you tolerate the actions of those who break the law that is a sign of great tolerance.”

One of the many occasions when Hirsi Ali received much publicity in the Netherlands was in March 2004. She wrote an open letter to Amsterdam socialist mayor Job Cohen, telling him he was a nice and involved person but was radically wrong in his understanding and approach to the Muslim issue in the Netherlands.

CRITICIZING THE MAYOR OF AMSTERDAM

Some of her observations in that letter were:

A consensus policy works only if all parties concerned agree to a pragmatic approach.... In what society do you want Muslims to integrate? In a secular individualistic society? In a democratic society where the law rules that has been created by human beings and not by God? In a society where parents try to educate their children-boys and girls-to become independent individuals, who after they are eighteen act as responsible citizens?

She added:

The adherents of Islam have diametrically opposed ideas to this... True Muslims see secular countries as sinner states, which regretfully are in power today. The head of the mosque... sees in you the confirmation that the secular power-holder is a sinner... In your conversations with them they [only] tell you what you so much want to hear.

She also referred to Cohen’s Jewishness:

The spirit of profound anti-Semitism that dominates the Muslims sees in you not a nice mayor of Amsterdam, who has the best intentions toward his citizens and wants to keep society together. They see a shrewd Jewish manager who wants to manipulate the world according to his will.

A JEW REMAINS A JEW

In our conversation Hirsi Ali also adds that Cohen has for some time been in need of bodyguards. “One would think that radical Muslims would be smart and not threaten somebody who gives them all they want. He provides their children with the possibility for segregated swimming and subsidies for segregated schools. He supports additional mosques. But some Muslims threaten him to make him understand that whatever the Jew does to please them, he always remains a Jew. For the head of the Amsterdam mosques, the mayor is the Jew Cohen.”

Hirsi Ali sees Cohen as a central figure in the mistaken approach toward Amsterdam’s problems with minorities. “He is indeed a sweet, cultured man, full of good intentions. He is also lonely and thus a true victim for whom I have a lot of sympathy. The more he does for the Muslims, the more he is criticized by them. He also gets a lot of criticism from the Jewish community because of the anti-Semitism in Amsterdam, while many native Dutchmen say: ‘We don’t feel secure. You, Mr. Mayor, speak all the time about keeping things together, but the city has already for a long time not been kept together.’ The task of a mayor is to see to it that living in his city is safe. His approach of, ‘I give a lecture here, I give a lecture there’ is of no interest in this context.

“Cohen finds the way I talk about Islam and Muslims harmful. He says it sets people against each other. I, however, tell the truth. If a homosexual is beaten up in Amsterdam by Muslim youngsters out of their religious convictions, it is my duty as a parliamentarian to make that known. It is his duty as a mayor to see that these Moroccan youngsters are treated severely. One shouldn’t tell pathetic stories about the difficult youth they may have had because that is irrelevant. They are criminals.

“As a nonnative Dutchman, I am always welcome as long as I agree with everybody. I am supposed to be extremely grateful if I am defined as a victim. If I have a dissenting opinion, I am ‘the other, the non-Dutch’ for the socialist. They tell me that I have just arrived. Cohen, when he talks to me or to Afshin Elian, an Iranian refugee who is both a Leiden University law professor and a poet, always refers to our background. When we disagree he says: ‘Yes, I can imagine that. You people have had such bad experiences in your home countries.’

“If I were the mayor of Amsterdam, I would follow Giuliani’s approach in New York, which worked. The Dutch national authorities have reached a state of mind where they would probably be willing to pay for such methods. Giuliani was called intolerant and a racist. Black Americans demonstrated against him, but New York in his time was safer than Amsterdam is today.”

Hirsi Ali says that what is true for Amsterdam also applies elsewhere in the country. “The Netherlands is only theoretically a state of law. Its legal reality is confronted by a major challenge. Only a small number of criminals are identified, of which only a limited number are sentenced.”

ISLAM STOPPED THINKING A THOUSAND YEARS AGO

Hirsi Ali’s criticism of Islam is more general. “Almost nobody in the West wants to understand that Islam’s problems are structural. Contemporary Islam hardly exists. Islam stopped thinking in the year 900 and has stood still for more than a thousand years. Western Muslims, however, live in an environment where you can think independently without your head being chopped off by somebody.

“If one wants to meet contemporary Muslims, one has to go the Ahmadiyya movement. The Muslim mainstream, however, considers them heretics. I have been educated as a Muslim, I want to change some of Islam’s tenets. This makes me a heretic and thus radicals want to eliminate me.”

Hirsi Ali explains why she is a danger to radical Muslims. “They realize that I know too much about Islam. I am also a woman. If a woman no longer believes, she frees herself. They are deathly afraid that if one drops out, others may follow; that is how herds function.”

INDUCING MUSLIMS TO COME OUT OF THE CLOSET

“The Western world is desperately in need of Muslims who use their freedom of thought and opinion. There are many Muslims who think like me. They contact me and when I appeal to them to come out of the closet, they say, ‘It is easy for you to talk. You have all these bodyguards, which I do not have. I must think about my family.’ It is crucial for the United States, Europe, and Israel to see to it that these people get adequate protection.

“Dissident Muslims in the Netherlands see how I and a few other dissidents have been threatened with murder. They do not go to the prime minister to complain about their situation, instead remaining silent. When van Gogh was murdered, the Dutch queen and the prime minister went to mosques instead of visiting the family of van Gogh, who was the true victim.

“The Muslims’ leaders had wept to the authorities: ‘We are such poor, pitiful, and threatened people now that Bouyeri has murdered van Gogh.’ This appeals to Dutch compassion. Add to this that the Labor party in particular, but also Christian Democrats, want to get Muslim votes, and one gets an idea of the functioning of the Netherlands today.

“The problem exists throughout the West. As long as there is no protection for those who want to change Islam, there will not be a contemporary Islam. It is my intention to start a fund and raise money so that dissident Muslims can be protected. It would have to be managed by others. That is my greatest dream.”

I ask Hirsi Ali what Muslims would do if there were a murderous attack in Amsterdam like the one in London. She replies: “The local authorities will go to the various Muslim organizations and say: ‘Please organize a demonstration to condemn it.’ Such an initiative would not come from Muslims themselves. It would be a totally artificial exercise.”

In June 2006, related to the parliamentary debate on the restoration of Hirsi Ali’s Dutch citizenship, the Dutch cabinet fell. She followed this from the United States, where she had started a new life. The fall of a government over the issue of a single person’s passport represented yet another Dutch absurdity. Another way of looking at this event is that for the first time, a European cabinet fell on an issue concerning migration. It is unlikely to be the last time. Also in that sense, Hirsi Ali has made European history.

FULL ARTICLES

IRAN TO EXPEL ONE MILLION AFGHANS

Iran defends plan to expel one million Afghans
Reuters
May 1, 2007

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=674092007

Iran on Tuesday defended its plan to repatriate one million Afghans living illegally in the Islamic Republic and said 50,000 had been sent home since the campaign was launched 11 days ago.

The Afghan government on Sunday called on neighbouring Iran to suspend the repatriations because the country lacked the resources to resettle them.

After neighbouring Pakistan, Iran accounts for the largest number of Afghans who have left their home country during three decades of conflict – about two million. Many work in the construction sector or as domestic help.

But Iran says about half of them, or one million, have illegally entered and will be sent back.

Iran’s Interior Ministry issued a statement in response to Afghanistan’s concerns, stressing that refugees with valid documents could stay, the official IRNA news agency said.

“Each country has sensitivities about the presence of illegal citizens on its own territory which has different political, social, economic and security consequences,” the ministry said.

Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi was earlier this week quoted as saying 500,000 Afghans would leave Iran in the first half of this year, with the rest being repatriated during the second half. The Iranian year starts on March 21.

 

IHT: “ADVERTISING IS AN ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT IN THE BROAD CONCEPT OF A FREE PRESS”

‘Herald Tribune’ defends Iran nuke ad
By Michael Lando
The Jerusalem Post
May 3, 2007

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1178198606220&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The International Herald Tribune newspaper has defended its acceptance of an advertisement seeking bids for two large scale nuclear reactors in Iran. The ad appeared on April 20, including in the edition of the IHT distributed with the English version of the Haaretz daily.

Inviting bidders to help in the construction of two pressurized light water reactors in the Bushehr province, the ad also ran in the Financial Times on April 25.

This despite growing concern over Iran’s nuclear proliferation program, particularly in the light of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated threats of destruction against Israel.

“The Nuclear Power Production and Development Company of Iran (NPPD), an affiliate of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, invites sealed bids for contractors/companies for the Design, Supply of Equipment, Construction and Commissioning of two large-scale units (1000-16000 MWe each) with third generation nuclear power, pressurized Light Water Reactor in the Bushehr Province of Iran,” the ad says.

Iran announced on April 15 that it is seeking bids for two additional reactors to be located near Bushehr for producing electricity. The announcement came as Iran and Russia remained at loggerheads over funding for the first plant in the same region.

David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said in response that bidding on light water reactors “violates the spirit” of Security Council Resolution 1737, which prohibits all states from the supply, sale or transfer of goods and technologies which could contribute to Iran’s enrichment related processing or heavy water related activities of nuclear weapons delivery systems.

“It’s a bad idea, and I don’t think Iran should be sold reactors now,” he said. “The spirit of the Security Council is to grandfather certain existing reactors, but not to allow new ones.”

An IHT spokesman, asked whether accepting such an ad was appropriate, wrote: “We believe that advertising should be as free and open as the dictates of honesty and decency allow. In our view, advertising is an essential ingredient in the broad concept of a free press.”

Asked about the ad running in a newspaper published in Israel, which has been threatened by Ahmadinejad, a Haaretz advertising manager was quoting as saying that the newspaper does not see the International Herald Tribune material most of the time until after it is printed, and that Haaretz would likely not refuse to publish material from the International Herald Tribune.

FULL ARTICLES

SIX MONTHS AGO JOHNNY HALLYDAY, THE “FRENCH ELVIS,” TOOK UP SWISS CITIZENSHIP

Battle of France
Editorial
The National Review
May 7, 2007

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTk4N2YxNDU2ZTVmYjQzMjhhYTBmMjg4OGUxODQ2ZDI=

Six months ago Johnny Hallyday, the “French Elvis,” announced that he was taking up Swiss citizenship to escape France’s high tax rates, which absorbed about two-thirds of his income. Because Hallyday was known to be a supporter of then-candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, a political row immediately burst out. Showing some political courage, Sarkozy did not disavow Hallyday; instead he declared that the singer was quite justified. If he won the election, said Sarkozy, he would cut tax rates to entice France’s high earners back home.

That promise was important to many more people than Johnny Hallyday. Something like half a million young French people are estimated to be living in southern England. The Kent Corridor from London to Dover is known ironically as “France’s Silicon Valley.” And for every Parisian exile ten actual Parisians still seethe under high taxes and think about emigration. That sums up why Sarkozy won Sunday’s election.

Indeed, he did more than simply win an election. By any normal standard Sarkozy has established a clear mandate for sweeping conservative reform in France. He won the presidency by six points in an election that attracted a massive 85 percent turnout. He owed nothing of his victory to other parties or candidates – both the centrist François Bayrou and the ultra-rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen refused to support him. He made no secret of the character and extent of his reform program – indeed, as the Hallyday incident demonstrates, he rammed them home with enthusiasm. And it seems likely that he will be granted a friendly National Assembly with a large conservative majority in the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

So, if representative democracy works as it is supposed to do, Sarkozy will push through the market reforms that France has needed for at least two decades. He will deregulate its labor market, slim down the public-sector payroll, abandon the symbolic 35-hour work week, reduce public spending from its current 52 percent of GDP, and reform the French welfare state. Friends and admirers of France will hope that he succeeds. Americans will be especially supportive since he has said that with his election the U.S. has a “friend” – presumably he will end the anti-Americanism that has shaped French foreign policy under Jacques Chirac, his old patron and recent bitter rival. But will Sarkozy be able to push through such an ambitious and contentious program against opposition in the streets as well as in the corridors of power?

To say the least, it will be a high-risk project. In his first comments on the election, Sarkozy acknowledged that a passionate 47 percent of Frenchmen had opposed him. He denied that his victory was that of “one France over another” – even though the success of his program will require precisely that. He talked of the value of “social protection” and warned the European Union not to intrude on France’s social programs. (Sarkozy supports the European Constitution that the French rejected last year because they believed it would dismantle such programs.) Even if these remarks are merely the usual pseudo-generosity that winning politicians show to the other side to soothe their hurt feelings, they nonetheless suggest the scale of Sarkozy’s task.

That task is made harder and more complicated by non-economic problems – notably immigration and national identity. Young people in the banlieues around major cities, either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, are disproportionately unemployed because of France’s inflexible labor market. Economically and socially excluded, they fall prey to extremist ideologies, generally Muslim ones, and reject their identity as Frenchmen. That makes them less employable. To make matters worse, they are likely to fight against the very measures of labor-market flexibility that could help them.

Sarkozy’s greatest problem, however, is that with all its problems France is stable. Those Frenchmen in work, especially those in the public sector, have a guaranteed comfortable existence even under high tax rates. France has not yet suffered a “winter of discontent” – a collapse of the economy under strikes and labor unrest similar to the one that persuaded the British that there was no alternative to Thatcher’s economic and labor reforms. Taxes are high, jobs are scarce, and cars are burning in the banlieues, but life is far from unendurable. Most Frenchmen still see no urgent reason to change. Some will fight to protect their subsidies – the middle class in politics and cultural debate, the labor unions in the streets. Others who now favor Sarkozy’s program may abandon his cause when it becomes too much trouble.

None of this means that the Sarkozy’s reforms are doomed – merely (though it’s a big “merely”) that their success depends to a very great extent on Sarkozy personally. Sunday he beat all sides – including most leaders of his own party – to win the presidency. He is clearly a resourceful and tough politician as well as a clear economic thinker. He will need all his talents – and more – to win this Battle of France.

 

IS THE FRENCH ELECTION A BELATED ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF REALITY?

Shortest of honeymoons
By Mark Steyn
The New York Sun
May 7, 2007

www.nysun.com/article/53941

Is the French election a belated acknowledgment of reality or the latest attempt to dodge it? In other words, is it Britain voting for Mrs. Thatcher in 1979 and America for Ronald Reagan the following year? That’s to say, the electorate understands the status quo is exhausted and unsustainable and that unless catastrophe is to be avoided radical course correction is required. Or is it Germany voting tepidly and tentatively to give Angela Merkel the narrowest of victories in 2005? In other words, the electorate was irritated with the incumbents but recoiled from any meaningful change, with the result that Frau Merkel found herself presiding over a nominally fresh government with no agenda and no mandate for reform.

I’d bet on the latter. Just as Frau Merkel proved not to be Germany’s Thatcher, I would be surprised if Nicolas Sarkozy turned out to be France’s Reagan. Not because he doesn’t have Reaganite tendencies but because the French electorate, like the Germans, aren’t there yet. M Sarkozy did well in the first round because he co-opted many of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s concerns. I don’t mean the fascism and the anti-Semitism and the oven jokes. It’s a tribute to the shriveling of the French political sphere that, by the time of the last presidential election in 2002, an antiquated perennial loser was able to catapult himself into second place. But, in an advanced technocratic state, where almost any issue worth talking about has been ruled beyond the scope of partisan politics, you might as well throw away terms like “left” and “right.” The previous presidential election was meant to be a contest between the supposedly conservative Jacques Chirac and his supposedly socialist Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin. In practice, this boiled down to a candidate who’s left of right of left of center, and a candidate who’s right of left of right of left of center. Chirac and Jospin ran on identical platforms: they were both in favor of high taxes, high unemployment and high crime. Faced with a choice between Tweedleleft and Tweedleright, you couldn’t blame French voters for choosing to make it a real race by voting for the one guy running on an openly stated, clearly defined manifesto. In 2002, the political class considered most of M Le Pen’s preoccupations – immigration, crime, unemployment – beneath discussion.

This time round, Mr. Sarkozy didn’t make that mistake. The discontented citizenry often complain about the lack of croissance – that’s not a basket of crescent-shaped buttery breakfast pastries invented to mark Christendom’s victory over Islam at the gates of Vienna in 1693, but the French word for “growth.” The Fifth Republic has entirely missed out on the Reagan-Thatcher booms of the last quarter-century: its over-protected and over-regulated economy has led to permanently high unemployment and a lack of entrepreneurial energy, not to mention various social tensions from the blazing Citroens and Renaults lighting up the sky every night to entire suburbs that have effectively seceded from France to join the new Caliphate. It’s a measure of the torpor of French politics that M Chirac regarded a presidential election against an elderly fascist as little more than a mildly embarrassing social faux pas rather than a profound indictment of a failing system So he spent his second term as he did the first, governing as an elegant narcissistic complacent hack.

When you mention “the French riots,” most people assume you’re talking about the excitable chaps rampaging around in 2005. But it was another set of riots six months later that symbolizes the trap in which the political class is caught. The fall 2005 rioters were “youths” (ie Muslims from the suburbs), supposedly alienated by lack of economic opportunity. The spring 2006 rioters were “youths” (ie pampered deadbeats from the Sorbonne), protesting a new law that would enable employers to terminate the contracts of employees under the age of 26 in their first jobs, after two years.

To which the response of most Americans is: you mean, you can’t right now? No, you can’t. If you hire a 20-year-old and take a dislike to his work three months in, tough: chances are you’re stuck with him till mid-century. In France’s immobilized economy, it’s all but impossible to get fired. Which is why it’s all but impossible to get hired. Especially if you belong to that first category of “youths” from the Muslim ghettos, where unemployment is around 40 to 50 per cent. The second group of “youths” – the Sorbonne set – protesting the proposed new, more flexible labor law ought to be able to understand that it’s both necessary to the nation and, indeed, in their own self-interest: they are after all their nation’s elite. Yet they’re like lemmings striking over the right to a steeper cliff – and, naturally, the political class caved in to them.

When most of us on this side of the Atlantic think of “welfare queens,” our mind’s eye conjures some teenage crack whore with three kids by different men in a housing project. But France illustrates how absolute welfare corrupts absolutely. These Sorbonne welfare queens are Marie Antoinettes: unemployment rates for immigrants? Let ’em eat cake, as long as our pampered existence is undisturbed.

Not all French youth is so self-deluded. I notice, for example, every time I’m across the pond in my corner of South Kensington that one hears more and more French spoken on the street. There are somewhere between 400 and 500,000 French citizens living in Britain’s capital. London is now the seventh biggest French-speaking city in the world. These are young talented dynamic people who like the same things about France the British and American tourists do – the vin, the cuisine, the couture, the Provencal farmhouses and the Cote d’Azur’s topless beaches – but have concluded that it is no longer a society in which you can fulfill your economic potential. They would presumably be Sarkozy supporters, but, like many who feel the odds are stacked against them, they chose in the end to bail out.

As for those who remain, they’re sick of crime and unemployment and on the whole could do with rather fewer Muslims on the streets, but they’re not yet willing to give up on the economic protectionism and lavish social programs that lead, inexorably, to the crime and unemployment and a general economic and demographic decline leaving the nation dependent on mass immigration and accelerating Islamization.

In my recent book, whose title escapes me, I cite one of those small anecdotes that seems almost too perfect a distillation of Continental politics. It was a news item from 2005: A fellow in Marseilles was charged with fraud because he lived with the dead body of his mother for five years in order to continue receiving her pension of 700 euros a month.

She was 94 when she croaked, so she’d presumably been enjoying the old government check for a good three decades or so, but her son figured he might as well keep the money rolling in until her second century and, with her corpse tucked away under a pile of rubbish in the living room, the female telephone voice he put on for the benefit of the social services office was apparently convincing enough. As the Reuters headline put it: “Frenchman Lived With Dead Mother To Keep Pension.”

Think of France as that flat in Marseilles, and its economy as the dead mother, and the country’s many state benefits as monsieur’s deceased mom’s benefits. To the outside observer, the French give the impression they can live with the stench of death as long as the government benefits keep coming. If that’s the case, the new president will have the shortest of honeymoons.

 

“FRENCH POLICY WILL NO LONGER BE CHARACTERIZED BY REFLEXIVE ANTI-ISRAELISM”

Netanyahu hails Sarkozy’s victory
Opposition leader, a person friend of elected French president, says his election symbolizes a positive change
By Benjamin Netanyahu
Yediot Ahronot
May 7, 2007

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3396675,00.html

Sarkozy and I met six years ago through a mutual friend, Meir Haviv, one of the managers of the umbrella organization of the Jewish community in France. I felt an immediate chemistry between us, and we met many times since, including for dinner in Jerusalem during his recent visit to Israel.

We even met for an hour when I was in Paris several weeks ago, although he was in the midst of an election campaign. The connection between us was created because we see many things eye-to-eye, first and foremost in terms of some of the international perceptions, the social perceptions and the economic perceptions.

Sarkozy has a positive attitude toward Israel and a supportive attitude toward the Jewish people, but he will first and foremost be the president of France.

I don’t think one can expect the French policy to change from one end to the other, but it is clear that it will no longer be characterized by reflexive anti-Israelism – a situation in which Israel is guilty until proven innocent.

I believe that the policy will be much more balanced, and this change will also derive from his attitude toward the United States. This is the first president since World War II who will not be imbued with De Gaulle’s attitude, which saw the US as a competitor, as this is a very refreshing change.

In terms of the great battle against radical Islam as well, Sarkozy’s election is an important change.

He faces a great task: His election symbolizes the French people’s huge desire for reforms – first and foremost in the economy. Sarkozy told me more than once about his plans and desires in terms of these issues.

It is clear that he will have to plan ahead in light of the political reality, but I have no doubt that he wants to renew the face of the French society and economy. He and his people understand that they have no immunity in the face of the globalization process.

I believe he will succeed. We are talking about an extremely determined and strong person. He has a map and a compass to navigate France’s road. His election symbolizes a change. For France it is a very big change, for Israel-France relations it is definitely a positive trend.

 

“JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE A FEMINIST, YOU DON’T VOTE FOR A WOMAN WHO DOES NOT HAVE THE ABILITY”

Women voters shun Segolene Royal
By Kerstin Gehmlich
Reuters
May 7, 2007

Socialist Segolene Royal failed to win over a majority of women voters in France’s presidential election and may have paid a price for focusing too much on her gender at the expense of promoting her policies.

Only 48 percent of women voted for Royal, according to an Ipsos poll conducted on election day on Sunday, while 52 percent supported rightist rival and overall winner Nicolas Sarkozy.

The weak female support is a bitter personal blow for Royal, who had played up her feminist credentials throughout the campaign, frequently defending policies she would want “as a mother” and accusing critics of male chauvinism.

Some women said the glamorous Royal, a mother of four, had focused too much on the symbolism linked to becoming France’s first female president.

“The reason she did not have the female vote is not because there was no solidarity but because she was not up to it,” said Tita Zeitoun, founder of the Action de Femme group which fights to get more women into top business positions.

“Just because you’re a feminist, you don’t vote for a women who does not have the ability. We’re talking about the presidential election here ... It’s too serious to link this to a phenomenon of femininity or feminism,” she said.

Many voters complained Royal’s policies lacked coherence compared to the proposals by Sarkozy, “the candidate for work”, who promised rewards for those who worked hard and said he would undermine the 35-hour work week by cutting taxes on overtime.

The Ipsos poll showed a majority of private sector workers, pensioners and self-employed voted for Sarkozy, while Royal gained support among the unemployed and those aged under 25.

Royal had campaigned on leftist economic plans, including an increase in the minimum wage. She also pledged to make France a fairer place, saying she would promote the equal treatment of men and women and to fight violence against women.

“IMAGE GAP”

Statistics show women in France are far from equal. Just 12 percent of lawmakers are female and only one woman heads a firm in the CAC-40 index of blue chip companies, and she is American.

“For some of you, it will not be obvious to say a woman can incarnate the highest responsibility,” Royal said in a televised debate last week, calling on voters to make an “audacious” choice.

But political analysts said Royal might have appeared aloof for some women from more modest backgrounds.

“There is a gap between her image, an image of a woman who belongs to the elite, who has done the ENA (elite school for civil servants), who has the look of women having acquired a high level of education,” said sociologist Mariette Sineau.

“She appears very different to working-class women,” Sineau added, noting that Royal had visited poorly paid women working as supermarket cashiers only towards the end of her campaign.

Royal’s support among older voters was particularly poor, with 64 percent of women above the age of 60 supporting Sarkozy, and only 36 percent voting for Royal, according to the Ipsos survey. Women under 35 were split between her and Sarkozy.

 

FRENCH JEWS CELEBRATE SARKOZY VICTORY

French Jews celebrate Sarkozy victory
By Rina Bassist
Jewish Telegraph Agency
May 7, 2007

www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=3157

Optimistic and celebratory, Jewish groups were quick to offer congratulations to Nicolas Sarkozy after his victory in French presidential elections.

Sarkozy, of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), defeated Socialist Party candidate Segolene Royal in Sunday’s runoff.

He garnered some 53 percent to Royal’s 47 percent in the election, which featured a huge voter turnout.

The former interior minister was seen by Jewish voters as a friend to Israel and an important figure in the fight against antisemitism. Soon after his opponent conceded, Jewish groups came out with their good wishes.

“At a time when French Jews felt directly threatened by the rise in violent antisemitism in Paris and elsewhere across France a few years ago, Sarkozy played a critical role in moving the French government to finally recognise the gravity of the problem and to do what is necessary to address the ill winds that not only threaten the largest Jewish community in Western Europe, but, as we know from history, would ultimately pose a threat to wider French society,” American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris said in a statement.

The AJCommittee recalled that Sarkozy during that period was instrumental in stepping up police protection around Jewish buildings and schools, and arresting and prosecuting those who committed anti-Semitic acts. He told the group in a Washington address in 2004 that he would “consider any insult against Jews an insult against France.”

CRIF, the French Jewish community’s umbrella group, addressed its “warmest and most respectful congratulations” to Sarkozy in a Sunday statement.

“Your position statements during the electoral campaign carry much hope for a France that needs to be reconciled with itself,” President Roger Cukierman wrote. “I was touched by what you said and I understand that you intend to be a standard bearer of the French values we so cherish, those of a republic that... respects every individual and leaves no room for intolerance, racism and antisemitism.”

In a race that offered a clear choice between conservative and liberal policy, the voters gave Sarkozy, 52, a clear mandate for his economic and social reforms when he takes office May 16.

The grandson of a Greek Jew and the son of a Hungarian aristocrat, Sarkozy has pledged to initiate tougher rules to make it more difficult for immigrants to bring extended families to France. Among the economic reforms Sarkozy has pledged to push through early on are abolishing a tax on overtime, cutting the inheritance tax and obligating the unemployed to take work that is offered.

Sarkozy, who will succeed Jacques Chirac, will become the first president of immigrant stock.

Known as an American-style, law-and-order politician, Sarkozy had earned points in the Jewish community for his hard line against Muslim unrest in France, including antisemitic attacks though he drew fire from some liberal and immigrant groups for referring to some of the rioters as “rabble.”

In his victory speech at party headquarters in Paris, Sarkozy mentioned France’s relationship with the United States. “True friends can accept each other even if they have differences of opinions,” he said.

Frederic Encel, professor at the prestigious Science-Po Institute, said that Sarkozy’s unusual willingness to be associated with the United States also strengthens hope for good relations between France and Israel. “Nicolas Sarkozy is by far the most pro-Israeli French presidential figure Israel could have hoped for,” he said.

The fact that Sarkozy had not been trained at France’s national public administration school or by the Foreign Ministry “is a great advantage for Israel, as he is not committed to traditional diplomacy,” Encel said. “Royal would have stuck with existing approach,” he added, allowing people like her adviser Jean Louis Baillancourt, a member of a pro-Palestinian organization, to lead French diplomacy.

Royal, 53, who trailed in the polls since Sarkozy won the first round of voting on April 22, had warned that electing Sarkozy might spark the kind of rioting that took place in the suburbs last year. She said his candidacy represented “a dangerous choice.”

“It is my responsibility to alert people to the risk of [his] candidature with regards to the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country,” said Royal, who during a televised debate May 2 accused Sarkozy of “political immorality.”

Both candidates symbolized a break with the old guard. Both were born after World War II and said they were intent on bringing a real change after Chirac’s 12-year rule. But the similarities ended there: French voters had to choose between two very distinct personalities, attitudes and political programs.

Sarkozy entered politics as a protege of Chirac, but the two had a falling-out that remains to this day when Sarkozy backed Chirac’s rival for the presidency in 1995.

The Jewish community has seen Sarkozy as a friend of Israel, though he maintains the Jewish state must make concessions to allow the Palestinians to establish a viable state. But he has made clear to the Palestinian Authority that there is no justification for violence to achieve its means.

In an interview in the Jerusalem Post, Sarkozy called the 2002 Saudi initiative “constructive.” Under the two-state proposal, Arab states would recognize Israel if it withdrew to its pre-1967 borders and calls for a “just solution” for Palestinian refugees.

In the interview, Sarkozy said, “Only if Israel is guaranteed that its existence will not be threatened and the Palestinians are allowed to form a viable state can we achieve a durable and viable solution.”

One Jewish voter said, “As far as Israel is concerned, Royal has nothing to offer us, compared to Sarkozy.”

Outside a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter, one Sarkozy voter rued some of Royal’s supporters. “As a Jew I don’t like the fact that many pro-Palestinian radical activists participate at her meetings,” said Armand, who asked that his last name not be used. “I think this is dangerous.

“Sarkozy, on the other hand, is one of the only [future] heads of states to have gone to the U.S. to meet President Bush. I’m not a fan of Bush, but still. In any case, I don’t think that Sarkozy is a fascist, as some people try to make us believe.”

 

“FRANCE’S GOVERNMENT LOOKS LIKE IT WILL FINALLY HAVE SOME ENERGETIC ADULT SUPERVISION”

L’Adulte: Can Sarkozy reform France?
By John Fund
The Wall Street Journal
May 7, 2007

www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110010037

Conservative Nikolas Sarkozy’s comfortable victory over Socialist Ségolène Royal in France’s presidential race may indicate that Europe’s slowest-growing major economy is finally ready for some change.

Long derided as a “center of social rest” for its cradle-to-grave welfare state, mandatory 35-hour work week, public-sector strikes and ossified employment rules, France has voted for a new president who claims he wants to shake things up. “France does not fear change,” Mr. Sarkozy told his supporters as the vote progressed yesterday, “France hopes for it.”

That’s unclear. It’s certainly true that Mr. Sarkozy styled himself as a reformer who wants to arrest the pessimism gripping a country where polls show 70% of voters think their country is in decline. He advocated tax cuts, allowing overtime, and shrinking the central government’s bloated bureaucracy by filling only half of the slots opened up by retirement. “The best social model is one that gives work to everyone,” he would tell audiences in calling for more dynamism in the economy. “That is no longer ours.”

But at the same time the former interior and finance minister has shown a willingness to bail out failing French companies and to embrace greater protectionism. Mr. Sarkozy is certainly no heir to Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair, but he is someone that free-market advocates can at least do business with.

So too can Americans. Mr. Sarkozy was willing to take a lot of heat back home from his visit to America last September on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. While in the U.S., he made it clear that although France’s foreign policy will often be opposed to America’s, he puts great importance on improving relations. “He’s very admiring of the dynamism of the American people, and of their capacity to give an opportunity to everyone,” says Michel Barnier, a former foreign minister who is advising Mr. Sarkozy.

By French standards Mr. Sarkozy is positively effusive about the need for the two countries to emphasize their points of agreement. “My dedication to our relationship with America if well known and has earned me substantial criticism in France,” he said. “But let me tell you something, I’m not a coward. I embrace that friendship. I’m proud of the friendship... and I proclaim it proudly.” He then went on to say that France’s foreign policy had often suffered from an arrogant and insensitive approach, a clear reference to the haughty attitudes of retiring president Jacques Chirac and his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin.

But the clearest break that Mr. Sarkozy represents from leaders like Mr. Chirac is in his background. The son of a Hungarian immigrant, he has always been viewed as an outsider by French elites. He failed to attend the prestigious National School of Administration, where almost every leading figure in French politics, including purported populist Ségolène Royal, went.

It is difficult for Americans to appreciate just how removed from the French people the nation’s bureaucratic elite is. Its arrogance is mind-boggling. One of Mr. Chirac’s ministers privately compared the public’s repudiation of the EU Constitution in 2005 to a temper tantrum. Listen to former president Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the prime architect of the now-rejected 448-article European Constitution, when he was asked to respond to complaints that voters would have trouble understanding the dense document: “The text is easily read and quite well phrased, which I can say all the more easily since I wrote it myself.”

Even Jean Michel Fourgous, a parliamentary member of Mr. Chirac’s own Union for a Popular Movement, bemoans his party’s refusal to adopt more-transparent and – consultative government. He told Time magazine that the country has “been hijacked by an intellectually brilliant elite that’s dangerously ignorant about the economy.” He notes that while the current government is made up largely of people who call themselves conservative, 80% of ministers have never worked at all in the private sector. The few who have “are tolerated, but shoved into subaltern posts.”

Mr. Sarkozy acknowledges he is now part of the elites of French society, but he pledges he will govern in a way that is beyond their interests. “If I’m elected,” he told reporters before yesterday’s balloting, “it won’t be the press, the polls, the elites who chose me. It will have been the people.” His clearest break with much of French elite opinion came last week when he made a dramatic speech about a “moral crisis” the nation entered in 1968, when the “moral and intellectual relativism” embodied by the 1968 student revolt that helped topple President Charles de Gaulle from power the next year. Today, many philosophers and media commentators routinely pay homage to “the élan of 1968” and lament that the revolutionary spirit of the time did not succeed in transforming bourgeois French society more than it did.

Mr. Sarkozy took on that ’60s nostalgia. He labelled Ms. Royal and her supporters the descendants of the nihilists of 1968, and even appealed to France’s “silent majority” to repudiate the false lessons of that period. He claimed that too many Royal backers continue to hesitate in reacting against riots by “thugs, troublemakers and fraudsters.” He declared this Sunday’s election would settle the “question of whether the heritage of May ’68 should be perpetuated or if it should be liquidated once and for all.”

It appears that Mr. Sarkozy may have found the ultimate “wedge” issue in France, judging by the solid margin he won many traditional working-class neighborhoods that normally support Socialist candidates. Mr. Sarkozy’s triumph provides at least a chance that there will be a real debate on the role of the state in France’s economy and, yes, even some discussion of whether France should be in perpetual conflict with America.

With the victory last year of Angela Merkel, the pro-U.S. leader of Germany, and the impending changeover in power in Britain from pro-American Tony Blair to equally pro-American Labor leader Gordon Brown, there is also at least a chance that Europe will begin to address its problems straight on and avoid needless scapegoating of the U.S. With Mr. Sarkozy’s victory, France’s government looks like it will finally have some energetic adult supervision.

FULL ARTICLE

SHE HAD HER HYMEN RE-SEWN, TECHNICALLY MAKING HER A VIRGIN AGAIN...

Muslim women in France regain virginity in clinics
By Alexandra Steigrad
Reuters / The Washington Post
April 29, 2007

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901554.html

Sitting in a cafe near the Champs Elysees, the 26-year-old French-born woman of Algerian descent looks like any other Parisian. But two months ago, she did something none of her friends have done.

She had her hymen re-sewn, technically making her a virgin again.

“I’m glad I had it done,” said the woman, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. “I wanted to reconstruct part of my life, to reconstruct myself so that I could feel better about myself.”

This 30-minute outpatient procedure, called “hymenoplasty” and costing between 1,500 and 3,000 euros ($2,000-$4,000), is increasingly popular among young women of North African descent in France.

No exact figures exist to say how many such operations are done, but the woman’s surgeon says he gets three to five queries and performs one to three hymenoplasties each week. Demand has been rising for the past three or four years.

Doctor Marc Abecassis, whose office is near the chic Champs Elysees, sees the rise in religion among France’s five million Muslims fuelling this trend. His patients are between 18 and 45 years old, Muslim, born both in France and in North Africa.

“Many of my patients are caught between two worlds,” said Abecassis. They have had sex already but are expected to be virgins at marriage according to a custom that he called “cultural and traditional, with enormous family pressure.”

For this woman, the decision to have the surgery came after she broke up with a boyfriend who had pressured her into having sex. Unable to cope with breaking family tradition, she felt a hymenoplasty would help put her life back together again.

Another of Abecassis’ patients, a 22-year-old Algerian immigrant who asked to be called Karima, said most young women had the operation to respect their culture or family tradition, not for religious reasons.

In fact, neither woman is a practicing Muslim. They dress, speak and act like other young Parisians, but are also part of a growing silent group of women who juggle traditional Muslim and modern French values.

All the women who spoke to Reuters did so condition that their identities not be revealed.

DON’T DISAPPOINT THE FIANCE

Karima also lost her virginity to an ex-boyfriend. She plans to marry soon and her fiance expects her to be a virgin. So last month, she commuted in from an eastern suburb of Paris, where she lives with her parents, and had the surgery.

The next day she was back at work. “I don’t want to disappoint my fiance,” she said, adjusting her glasses and brushing her highlighted brown hair from her face. “I wouldn’t have had the surgery if I hadn’t met him.”

A leading Muslim spokesman said Islam says bride and groom should be virgins before marriage, but did not take a clear stand for or against hymenoplasties.

“If someone committed a sin, the essential thing is to repent,” said Lhaj Thami Breze, head of the Union of French Islamic Organizations.

For many doctors, resewing the hymen goes against their ideals of sexual freedom and personal liberty.

“The surgery is an attack on women’s dignity,” said Professor Jacques Lansac, president of The National College of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians of France. “We will not take part in a market that places value on the quality of a woman – if she’s good or not. It is an attack on women’s liberty.”

He also argued that any doctor who performed these operations at state hospitals violated France’s legal separation of church and state.

The church-state issue flared up in 2004 when France passed a law banning religious garb, notably headscarves, from state primary and secondary schools.

Since then, Abecassis said, some Muslims in France have been putting much more emphasis on certain customs as a way of expressing their identity. “Today it’s the two ‘V’s’ – veil and virginity,” he said. “It’s a social phenomenon.”

Surprisingly, French social security reimburses some of the cost of the operation in cases of rape or trauma. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, the claim is a fraud,” he added.

Still, Abecassis defended the operations and said he helped patients who could not pay his 2,500 euro fee. “This surgery gives them another chance,” he said. “It’s a rehabilitation. For many, it’s the only solution.”

ANOTHER PATIENT AWAITS

Sitting in the same cafe, a 19-year-old Moroccan studying in Paris who asked to be called Amel spoke just before her first consultation with Abecassis.

“I dated a boy when I was 15 and I didn’t even realize what had happened,” she said, referring to her first and only sexual experience. “I didn’t understand what I did.”

Her parents introduced her to a young man earlier this year, and they plan to wed when she returns to Morocco in June. But he would not accept a non-virgin, so she needs the operation soon.

Amel is scraping together the monthly allowance sent by her parents and emptying her savings account to pay for it. Two friends back home will lend her the remaining 1,000 euros.

“If my mother ever found out about this, she would have a mental breakdown,” Amel said. “I don’t want to have this surgery, but I don’t have any choice.”

FULL ARTICLES

“PUFF PIECE ON MOSQUE FURTHER TARNISHES THE NY TIMES”

Another Pulitzer Prize disgrace
Puff piece on mosque that inspired murder further tarnishes the ‘Times’
By Jonathan Tobin
The Jewish Exponent
April 23, 2007

www.jewishexponent.com/article/12751

In 1932, one of the most prestigious honors in journalism, the Pulitzer Prize, was awarded to Walter Duranty, a New York Times reporter who was then serving as foreign correspondent in the Soviet Union.

Though many other Pulitzers – both deserved and undeserved – have been handed out over the years, Duranty’s is remembered more than most.

In the online archive of the prizes (www.pulitzer.org), Duranty’s award is noted in a bland, one-sentence explanation that reads simply: “For his series of dispatches on Russia especially the working out of the Five Year Plan.”

The reference is to Duranty’s reporting on Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s economic plan. Duranty’s dispatches helped build an image of Comrade Stalin’s totalitarian state as an idealistic work in progress.

But there were a few things missing from Duranty’s stories. These included the mass murder of Soviet peasants who resisted forced collectivization, and the deliberate attempt at starvation of the people of the Ukraine in what is now known as the “terror famine” that took up to 3 million lives. He also got the part about the disastrous five-year plan “working out” wrong.

In subsequent years, Duranty followed this up with further lies that whitewashed Stalin’s infamous show trials and purges that resulted in the deaths of millions more victims of communism.

Duranty’s work remains the gold standard of journalism malpractice primarily because of his political motives. The writer sympathized with the Soviet Union, and was willing to lie about it.

Sadly, efforts to get the Pulitzer Prize Board to revoke Duranty’s honor have been resisted by both the board and the Times, even though the latter admits Duranty’s reporting was, as current editor Bill Keller put it, “credulous” and “uncritical.”

A MISSING FACT

Unfortunately, that belated admission of fault might well apply to the latest member of the Times staff to win a Pulitzer. The 2007 Pulitzer for Feature Writing announced this week went to Andrea Elliot, the author of an 11,000-word, three-part story, “An Imam in America,” about Sheik Reda Shata of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The series, which first appeared on March 5-7, 2006, is touted on the newspaper’s Web site as the story of “the inner life of a mosque in Brooklyn, and the dynamic, creative, conflicted and fearful imam at its center: Sheik Reda Shata. Through study and conversation, persuasion and persistence, Elliott achieved an intimate, tough-minded exploration of the lives of immigrant Muslims after 9/11.”

However, a few things were missing from these “tough-minded” pieces, which sympathetically portrayed the Egyptian-born Shata.

The most important was Elliot’s failure to mention anything about the role of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge in the murder of 16-year-old Ari Halberstam in a van filled with Jewish children on the Brooklyn Bridge. Not one of her 11,000 words refers to the fact that it was this same mosque that was the forum for the sermon that inspired one of its congregants, Rashid Baz, to go out and try to murder as many Jews as he could in March of 1994.

At Baz’s trial, it was revealed that Mohammed Moussa – Shata’s predecessor at the mosque – was quoted as saying the following in a sermon heard by the killer on the day of the rampage: “This takes the mask off of the Jews. It shows them to be racist and fascist as bad as the Nazis. Palestinians are suffering from the occupation and it’s time to end it.”

How, you may ask, could one write about any religious institution and ignore the most notorious aspect of its recent history?

In a subsequent article in The New York Sun, Halberstam’s mother, Devorah, related that she called Elliot to ask why she had omitted the story of her son’s murder from the feature on the mosque. Elliot replied that “she knew nothing about it.”

This was, at the very least, an indictment of the reporter’s research skills, which ought to have earned her the humiliation of an editor’s note acknowledging the mistake, not journalism’s greatest prize.

But there is more wrong here than just one missing fact. It is that the entire thesis of Elliot’s work (which ironically concluded on the 12th anniversary of Ari’s death) was to portray Shata and his mosque as a force for moderation.

Setting up her subject, Elliot insists that “imams like Shata – men who embrace American freedom and condemn the radicals they feel have tainted their faith – rarely make the news.”

While Shata did not give the sermon that inspired Baz, he did praise the Hamas terror group, and spoke of its leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, as a “lion of Palestine [who] has been martyred.” As even Elliot was constrained to note, Shata had also praised a Palestinian female suicide bomber, Reem Al-Reyashi, as a “martyr.”

Absent from the feature is any attempt at a serious discussion of how a religious leader who praises terrorists can, at the same time, pretend to be fostering interfaith dialogue with Jews and Christians. Shata utters coded responses such as, “What I may see as terrorism, you may not see that way,” without follow-up from his interviewer.

Though quite a bit of space in the piece was devoted to the imam’s attempts at matchmaking, serious issues about the way Islamist practices intersect with American life were left out. Their views of sensitive subjects such as “honor” killings of women or polygamy remain largely absent.

Instead, what Elliot – and presumably, her editors – were interested in was the supposed plight of American Muslims in a hostile society.

This is in spite of the fact that attacks on Muslims in post-9/11 America have been notably rare, and that American leaders have gone out of their way to distinguish Islam from Islamist extremists.

While the newspaper describes her beat as “focusing on the impact of 9/11 on American Muslims,” a better way to describe it might be to say its purpose is to divert us from the need to focus on Islamist extremism.

POLITICALLY-INSPIRED AGENDA

The Times had another use for their pages: making the rest of us feel guilty about the sensitivities of some Muslim-Americans whose views on terrorism are understandably unpopular. Facts that don’t feed into these assumptions are slighted or completely ignored.

Like more recent Times coverage of the Council on American Islamic Relations, in which those apologists for terror have been allowed to rebrand themselves as a “civil-rights group,” the reporting here leaves little doubt that this is a newspaper on a mission. The result is not only shoddy journalism; it is a politically inspired muddle that leaves us knowing only those elements of the life of Shata and his mosque that he wishes to present to us.

Both Elliot and Duranty crossed the same line when they allowed their agenda to dictate their coverage. While Duranty covered up genocide, dishonesty about Islamist extremism is no less egregious. What this proves is that those who imagined that Duranty was a relic of journalism’s past were wrong. That a travesty such as Elliot’s “imam” would bring a Pulitzer is a disgrace that again taints the reputation of both the prizes and the Times.

 

“AS MEANINGFUL AS VANUATU DECLARING WAR ON THE UNITED STATES”

Stephen Glover on the Press Why Israel but not Burma? The NUJ’s boycott astonishes me
The Independent
April 23, 2007

news.independent.co.uk/media/article2472433.ece

The motion by the National Union of Journalists to boycott Israeli goods is in one sense absurd. It is as meaningful as Vanuatu declaring war on the United States.

Many of the NUJ’s 38,000 members may not support the motion, which was passed by 66 to 54 at the delegates’ recent annual meeting. Even if they do, they are unlikely to be major consumers of Israeli goods. Presumably the NUJ would like its comrades in other trade unions to join the boycott, but I doubt the Israeli Government is quaking in its boots.

Nevertheless, on a symbolic level the motion is important, as was the vote last year by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education to boycott Israeli academics and universities. It is astonishing to me that any vaguely intelligent person could support such measures.

In the first place I am not sure that I am in favour of boycotts of any sort against any country, unless we happen to be at war. In the case of the university lecturers, and possibly the NUJ, the upshot is to cut off communication with one’s counterparts in other countries, to stifle debate and to impede whatever chances there may be of a peaceful and reasoned resolution to differences.

In the case of Israel there is an even more important objection. I do not at all write as an apologist for the country, and I can see that it has sometimes acted foolishly and even brutally, as, for example, in its invasion of Lebanon last year. But to single out Israel as being uniquely evil, and worthy of measures that are not contemplated against anyone else, is intellectually disreputable.

The NUJ has not passed any motion to boycott China, where there are hundreds of political prisoners. Nor has it picked on North Korea, a totalitarian state in which millions of people have been deprived of the bare necessities of life. The same could be said of Burma. I do not believe that the NUJ has puffed itself in indignation against Saudi Arabia, an autocratic state where women do not enjoy rights that are taken for granted in Israel.

Whatever criticisms can be justly made of Israel, it is a functioning democracy with a free Press and a robust tradition of free speech. Even if one takes the harshest view of its treatment of Palestinians, it is not to be compared with the genocidal policies of countries such as North Korea and Zimbabwe, against which the NUJ has applied no boycotts.

Why is Israel singled out? I hesitate to raise the charge of anti-Semitism since it is used too often and too carelessly by defenders of Israel in order to try to quash criticism of the country. But though laying aside that explanation, I confess that I am unable to find another one. Why Israel but not Burma? Perhaps someone would tell me.

Some people have suggested that, as result of the NUJ motion, journalists may report Israel unfairly. I doubt this is so, though there is a wider issue as to whether the country is habitually fairly treated. That the BBC has spent a lot of money trying to prevent the publication of a report on alleged bias in its reporting of Israel may indicate it has something to hide.

The issue for me has simply to do with the lack of fairness on the part of the NUJ, which has just celebrated its centenary. Has it ever done something as stupid as this in all its hundred years? I am not a member, but if I were I would most certainly tear up my card.

 

“THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH JEWS HERE”

Al Jazeera gathering draws a full minyan to heart of Arab world
By Orly Halpern
The Forward
April 27, 2007

www.forward.com/articles/al-jazeera-gathering-draws-a-full-minyan-to-heart/

Some participants at the third-annual forum of the Arab satellite network Al Jazeera were sorry they didn’t bring matzo with them – had they known how many fellow Jews were attending the media conference, they would have made a Passover Seder.

“We could have used the hotel wine to fill our cups,” Mark LeVine said only half-jokingly. A professor of Middle East studies at University of California in Irvine, LeVine was one of several Jewish participants who attended the invitation-only conference in Doha, organized by Al Jazeera.

Ethan Zuckerman, whose wife is a Reform rabbi, said that he had originally planned to hold a Seder in Doha. “I told my wife, and she wrote me a two-page Haggadah,” he said, shortly after speaking on a panel on Internet and the media. “But I didn’t bring the matzo.”

The Jewish participants were by no means relegated to the sidelines.

New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh gave the keynote address; LeVine and International Herald Tribune executive editor Michael Oreskes were panelists, and David Marash, the Washington bureau anchor of Al Jazeera English, logged a stint as a moderator.

The relatively high number of Jewish academics, journalists and media experts who attended the event stood in stark contrast to the view in some circles that the network is anti-Jewish and anti-Western. Some critics have gone so far to brand it “Osama Bin-Laden’s TV Network,” a name which Al Jazeera executives say comes from the Bush administration and conservative American television commentators.

The general atmosphere at the event was open and friendly among Arab and Western participants. “If there is any antisemitism lurking around here, it hasn’t been directed at me,” said Danny Schechter in a heavy New York accent. “They make a distinction between U.S. or Israeli policy and religion.”

Schechter, vice president of Globalvision, a documentary film production company, said that he attended the event because “in the post-9/11 world it is imperative to understand what people think and this forum provides the opportunity to mingle, discuss and even to get into arguments.”

Like many other participants, his main criticisms were that few women participated and panel discussions were not engaging enough. Indeed, whether dressed in sharp suits and ties or starched white floor-length dishdashas and white head coverings, the well-heeled forum panelists mostly agreed with each other. If anything, it appeared that some of the Al Jazeera moderators were avoiding conflict.

During breaks between panels, however, there was plenty of chatter in the elegantly appointed lobby outside the conference hall, where participants shmoozed over hors d’oeuvres, and journalists and academics feverishly networked.

“To be here with the media makers and icons of the Western world as they converge with those of the Arab world is really inspiring,” said Nora Friedman, as she sat around a round table where she shared a buffet lunch with a number of American and Arab journalists. A 28-year-old producer at Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, Calif., a left-wing radio network that tends to be fiercely critical of American foreign policy, Friedman said that the forum was “building a bridge between the Western and Arab media and confronting the prejudices in the so-called ‘War on Terror.’”

“There is no problem with Jews here,” said Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Arabic-daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, a regular commentator on Middle East affairs who opposes American support for Israel as long as it occupies Palestinian territory.

In general, Al Jazeera officials took the same line, insisting that the network does not make distinctions based on race, religion or gender. When asked by e-mail to provide contact details for Jewish employees to be interviewed for this story, Lana Khachan, the senior spokesperson at Al Jazeera English refused. “We are not interested in pursuing a story based on our staff’s religion,” Khachan wrote back. “We have over 900 highly experienced staff based [around the world]. We have qualified people on board of all nationalities and religions each employed for their merit. The staff comprises of more than 30 different nationalities 45 ethnicities, enabling Al Jazeera English to provide a unique grassroots perspective on important world events and report on the untold stories from the under-reported regions of the world.”

Several of the top employees at the network’s English operation are Jewish: Marash and his wife Amy work in the Washington bureau with an Israeli-American producer, and former BBC journalist Tim Sebastian moderates the televised monthly Doha Debates. Al Jazeera has been harshly criticized in the West for providing airtime to terrorists like Osama bin Laden, but it notes that American networks borrowed that material. It was also the first Arabic network to give Israelis air time. “Al Jazeera was seriously attacked by Arabs – Islamist, nationalist, and even governments like Saudi Arabia – for inviting Israeli journalists and government officials to present their point of view,” Atwan said.

Despite the network’s declared dedication to openness, not one member of the Israeli media was present at the forum, even though the Israeli YES satellite carrier pushed BBC Prime off air to make room for Al Jazeera English, which already boasts of having 500,000 homes viewing in Israel. The absence of Israelis was particularly noticeable given the theme of this year’s event: “Media and the Middle East, Beyond the Headlines.”

“I don’t know the reasons no Israeli journalists attended, but I think there is a general attitude of talking about peace with Israel but not talking to Israel,” said Yoav Stern, the Arab Affairs correspondent of the Israeli daily Ha’aretz.

“I think it’s a pity,” said Stern, who is frequently interviewed in Arabic on Al Jazeera. “I know that Al Jazeera specifically can make pioneering decisions in this regard, because it has credibility and trust from its viewers.”