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Nation of Islam flyer calls for gangs to unite against cops
www.worldnetdaily.com

The Nation of Islam in Los Angeles is calling on the Crips and Bloods street gangs to stop fighting each other — and to unite in a jihad against the LAPD.

That’s the essence of a flyer obtained by KFI News and circulated in South Los Angeles, calling on members of two violent street gangs to start a “holy war” against the police department.

The telephone number listed for the Nation of Islam’s Los Angeles mosque near 87th and Vermont has been disconnected, but a check of a reverse directory reveals the phone number on the flyer is connected to the mosque at the same address, according to KFI.

The Nation of Islam’s L.A. leader, Minister Tony Muhammad, has claimed he was the victim of an unprovoked attack by LAPD officers at the scene of a vigil for a murdered gang member.

The LAPD last week released an audio tape of some garbled radio transmissions in which they say Muhammad can be heard challenging officers.

The photograph on the flyer appears to have been taken at a news conference held just after Muhammad was released from jail. Muhammad and the Nation of Islam have not returned calls for comment.

It’s unclear who created the flyer so the LAPD has declined to comment, other than saying officers have been aware of them for several days.

“This is deeply disturbing,” Los Angeles Police Protective League President Bob Baker told KFI. “Quite frankly, this is a case in which I hope our mayor, our police commission and our community leaders can step in to remind everyone of our shared priorities.”

by Shaikh Azizur Rahman (in Churachandpur)
www.scotsman.com

After almost three millennia in exile the Bnei Menashe Jews of India believe they are about to be returned to the Promised Land.

More than 7,000 mainly impoverished Indian Jews will convert to orthodox Judaism in the coming weeks, thereby gaining the right to live in Israel.

In April Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi, announced in Jerusalem that he accepted the Bnei Menashe, which means “Children of the Messiah”, as one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel.

A Beit Din, or rabbinical court, arrived in India last week on a mission to convert the Bnei Menashes of India’s Mizoram and Manipur states to orthodox Judaism, giving hope to thousands of a new life in Israel.

Despite his grinding poverty and occasional bouts of depression, David Haokip, a Bnei Menashe youth leader who embraced Judaism five years ago, remains a devout follower of his adopted religion and goes to nearby Beth Shalom synagogue to pray three times every day.

The 23-year-old goes before the Beit Din today. “The moment we knew that we were recognised by the Chief Rabbinate it was the happiest news of my life,” he said. “The Beit Din will change my life selecting me for the conversion, I hope.”

His devotion is without question. Each morning, he and his wife Shalomi with about 200 other members of his tribe attend a Hebrew school run by Shavei Israel in this dusty hill town in the north-east Indian state of Manipur. When he has no sewing to do, he sits at his machine and studies the Siddur — the Jewish book of daily prayers. At Sabbath gatherings at the synagogue he regularly urges young people to pray for return to Israel, “their long-lost homeland”.

Haokip said: “The conversion is the final step before the ‘Aliyah’ right to return to our homeland, ending our 2,726r 2,726
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Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based organisation that has been trying to locate descendants of lost Jewish tribes around the world and bring them to Israel, believes that all Chins in Burma, Mizos in Mizoram and Kukis in Manipur — three prominent tribes of the region — are descendants of Menashe.

According to the organisation there are up to two million Bnei Menashes living in the hilly regions of Burma and north-east India.

After an Assyrian invasion in around 722BC, Jewish tradition says 10 tribes from Israel were enslaved in Assyria. Later the tribes fled and wandered through Afghanistan, Tibet and China.

In around 100AD, one group moved south from China and settled around north-east India and Burma. These Chin-Mizo-Kuki people, who speak Tibeto Burmese dialects and resemble Mongols in appearance, are believed to be the Bnei Menashes.

According to Shavei Israel, there are more than one million ethnic Bnei Menashes in India. Because they lived for centuries in north-east India, mingling with local people, many of their Jewish traditions became diluted. And after Welsh missionaries arrived in the area in 1894, nearly all Bnei Menashes, Kukis and Mizos were converted from their animistic beliefs to Christianity.

DNA studies at the Central Forensic Institute in Calcutta conclude that while the tribe’s males show no links to Israel, the females share a family relationship to the genetic profile of Middle-Eastern people.

Rabbi Eliyahu Birnbaum, a dayan or rabbinical court judge who is leading the Beit Din conversion mission in India, said the decision to accept Indian Bnei Menashes as a lost Jewish tribe followed a careful study of the issue.

“After the conversion the Bnei Menashes can apply for immigration to Israel under the Law of Return, which grants the right of citizenship to all Jews,” said Birnbaum.

After Israel’s Interior Ministry allocated an annual quota of 100 immigrants from the Indian tribe in 1993, Shavei Israel helped about 800 Bnei Menashes convert and settle in Israel.

Bnei Menashes who migrated to Israel in the past mostly lived in settlements in Gaza. Their evacuation from that area last month has not affected the zeal of the Indian Bnei Menashes who are planning to emigrate to Israel.

Since Christian influence is strong in north-east India, only about 9,000 of the Bnei Menashe population — less than 1% of the total — have adopted Judaism in the past 30 years. But some tribal leaders expect more Christian Bnei Menashes are likely to convert.

“After they knew that they were recognised by Israel, many have started to feel an inner urge to return to their roots,” said Liyon Fanai, a Mizo Bnei Menashe leader in Aizawl, capital of India’s Mizoram state.

Since the landmark announcement, about 1,800 Christians in Mizoram and Manipur have been circumcised and adopted Judaism.

“More than 2,000 of them want to be converted in Manipur and now they are in touch with our synagogue leaders. We know many more Christians will surface in the society, willing to return to their original faith of Judaism soon,” said Tongkhohao Aviel Hangshing, a Bnei Menashe Jewish leader in the Manipur state capital of Imphal.

But some Christian leaders object to targeting Christians for conversion. “Acceptance of our people as Israelites is the work of Satan,” said Dr PC Biaksama, an ethnic Mizo and former government bureaucrat who now studies Christian theology.

“We don’t believe these people ever came from Israel. Christianity is at stake here, and we should never take what is happening now lightly.”

L Thanggur, a church leader in Churachandpur, believes the converts are just trying to escape poverty.

“They are economic refugees. If they had better employment and income prospects here, they would have never dreamt of going to Israel,” said Thanggur.

In Israel too, recognition of the Indian tribe by the Chief Rabbi has been attacked by some groups.

Social scientist Lev Grinberg said that right-wing Jewish groups were promoting conversion of distant people simply to boost the Jewish population in occupied territories claimed by the Palestinians.

New UN document refutes Palestinian claims
By Israel Zwick
israelinsider.com

In the fall of 2005, the UN Development Programme released its Human Development Report 2005. If carefully reviewed, this report has widespread implications for the Arab-Israeli conflict. While the UN is eager to condemn Israel for violating Palestinian rights, its own data suggests otherwise. The data disputes Palestinian claims that they are suffering as a result of a harsh Israeli military occupation. On the contrary, the Palestinians have actually benefited from their association with the State of Israel and their difficulties are the result of self-inflicted wounds.

Palestinian problems stem from their intolerance, hostility, violence, and corruption, not from Israeli occupation. Those in the world who are concerned about the “plight of the Palestinian refugees” should carefully review this report. They may want to reconsider their support for establishing a Palestinian state.

Two other reports from the UNDP, the Arab Human Development Report 2004, and HDR 2004, also raise serious questions regarding the wisdom of establishing a Palestinian State in lands currently controlled by Israel.

The mammoth 372-page report is titled Human Development Report 2005: International cooperation at a crossroads. The introductory material notes that 2.5 billion people in the world, which is 40% of the world’s population, are living on less than US$2 per day. About half of that population, 20% of humanity, is living on less than $1 per day (p.4, 24). The report emphasizes the significance of violent conflict as a barrier to progress: “Conflict undermines nutrition and public health, destroys education systems, devastates livelihoods, and retards prospects for economic growth… Part of the challenge posed by human insecurity and violent conflict can be traced to weak, fragile, and failing states. Compounded failures to protect people against security risks, to provide for basic needs and to develop political institutions perceived as legitimate are standing features of conflict-prone states.” (p.12).

The report observes that in 2003 there were 29 ongoing violent conflicts, down from 51 in 1991. In Sudan alone, the conflict has claimed two million lives and displaced 6 million people (p.153). Yet the focus of world sympathy and concern seems to be directed towards 3 million Arabs living in Israeli territories who are receiving the highest amount of aid in the world on a per capita basis.

The HDR 2005 views human progress through a human development index (HDI) which is a composite indicator of three dimensions of human welfare: income, education, and health. The HDI is a barometer for changes in human well-being and for comparing progress in different regions (p.21). The numerous tables include data for 175 UN member countries, along with Hong Kong, China (SAR), and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Countries and areas are ranked in descending order by their HDI value (p.211.) The report notes that “large gaps between wealth and HDI rankings are usually an indicator of deep structural inequalities that block the transmission from wealth creation to human development. They also point to shortcomings in public policy, with governments failing to put in place strategies for extending opportunities among poor, marginalized, or disadvantaged groups” (p.24).

While the world laments over the treatment of Arabs at Israeli checkpoints, almost 10 million children die each year before their fifth birthday. More than 850 million people in the world are suffering from malnutrition and its effects (p.24). The risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes ranges from 1 in 18 in Nigeria to 1 in 8,700 in Canada (p.32). Sub-Saharan Africa had almost 100 million more people living on less than $1 per day in 2001 than in 1990. In contrast, the share of people living on less than $1 per day in the Middle East and North Africa decreased from 5.1% in 1981 to 2.4% in 2001. The report observes that “Aid has not always played a positive role in supporting human development, partly because of failures on the side of aid recipients and partly because donor countries have allowed strategic considerations to override development concerns” (p.75).

The HDR chapter that is most relevant to the Arab-Israeli conflict is Chapter 5, dealing with violent conflict. The chapter opens with a quote from UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, “What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations.” The report notes that since 1990 more than 3 million people have died in armed conflict, mostly in developing countries. About 25 million people are currently internally displaced because of conflict or human rights violations (p.151). Yet the most international aid is still directed towards 3 million Arabs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and the State of Israel is most often cited by the UN for human rights violations. The data provided by HDR 2005 suggests that the difficulties experienced by the Palestinian Arabs largely results from their own policies, not from oppression by the State of Israel.

The Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are cited as an example of how human development is being reversed (p.158). In the 1990′s the OPT registered some improvement in human development but the second intifada beginning in Sept. 2000 resulted “in a sharp deterioration in living standards and life chances.” The poverty rate more than doubled from 20% in 1999 to 55% in 2003. The town of Nablus was cited as a prosperous commercial hub prior to September 2000. The intifada resulted in shops closing, workers selling their tools, and farmers selling their land (p.158). HDR observes that “violent conflict is one of the surest and fastest routes to the bottom of the HDI table” (p.154). “Violent conflict creates losses that are transmitted across whole economies, undermining the potential for growth. With fewer assets and less capacity to respond to losses in income and assets, poor people are especially vulnerable to the economic impact of the conflict” (p.155).

Much of the blame for the deterioration in human conditions is placed on government failures: “The collapse of effective authority in some countries has undermined capacity to prevent and resolve conflict. Governments lacking either the means or the will to fulfill their core functions, including territorial control, provision of basic services, management of public resources and protection of the livelihoods of the poorest people, are both a cause and consequence of violent conflict… In security terms, a cohesive and peaceful international system is far more likely to be achieved through the cooperation of effective states… than in an environment of fragile, collapsed, fragmenting or generally chaotic state entities” (p.162).

The most revealing data in HDR 2005 can be found in the tables beginning on page 211. The 177 countries in the HDI are classified into three clusters by achievement in human development: high human development with an HDI of 0.8 or above, medium human development with an HDI of 0.5 to 0.8, and low human development with an HDI of less than 0.5. The data is based on information from the year 2003. In these tables, Israel is listed in the high cluster with a rank of 23 and HDI of 0.915 (p.219). The Occupied Palestinian Territories are in the medium cluster with a rank of 102 and HDI of 0.729 (p.220). That means that there are 75 countries listed below OPT. Overall, the Arab states have an HDI of 0.679 which suggests that the Arabs living in OPT have better human conditions than their counterparts in other Arab-Muslim countries.

Even more revealing are the income and poverty tables (p.228). On the Human Poverty Index, the OPT is ranked seventh on a list of 103 developing countries. It is on par with Cuba, Singapore, and Colombia. The other Arab countries are ranked below the OPT. Wealthy Saudi Arabia is ranked 32. Egypt is ranked 55.

The table on page 281 lists the amount of official development assistance (ODA) received among the 177 HDI areas. OPT received 288.6 US$ per capita in 2003, which is the second highest amount in the entire list. Only Cape Verde received more, with 305.7 US$ per capita. Yet, because of violent conflict, the OPT experienced a decline in HDI. This suggests that all of this aid was not being used to improve human welfare in the OPT. On page 312, there is a table titled, “Gender inequality in economic activity.” The OPT has the lowest rate of female economic activity among the 177 countries, with a rate of 9.6%, or 14% of the male rate. This suggests that almost all of the aid money is going to provide employment for males. This may explain how the various militias in OPT are being funded. The implication is that the high amount of aid going to OPT is funding militias and promoting violent conflict instead of improving the lives of the population. Israel, as the occupying power, should be absolved of any blame because the area is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Arabs are suffering from deep, self-inflicted wounds, not from Israeli occupation. The population would not benefit from the establishment of an independent state that would only continue a policy of intolerance, discrimination, corruption, and violence.

In the interest of brevity, this article is being divided into two parts. Part II, which will be released on Tuesday, Sept 20, will deal with the other two UNDP reports: the Arab HDR 2004, from April 5, 2005l 5, 2005
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By Ryan Jones

www.jnewswire.com

Emulating the blunder of their patriarch’s elder brother Esau, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s new Kadima Party Monday said Israel has no choice but to sell its birthright for the “bowl of pottage” it believes will ease the nation’s current ills.

“The people of Israel have a national and historical right to all of Israel, and together with that the need for a Jewish majority, and so we must concede part of the land of Israel in order that a Jewish and democratic state may exist,” Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said as she read out the party’s official platform at its first official meeting as a Knesset faction.

The manifesto makes clear reference to a demographic threat that has been proved false by recent studies.

Conducted by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, one such survey found that population figures quoted by those advocating the establishment of an Arab state west of the Jordan River have been artificially inflated by as much as one-and-a-half million persons.

A more detailed look at the numbers showed a Palestinian Arab population numbering no more than 2.5 million persons in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, giving the Jews a firm 60 percent majority west of the Jordan River.

That ratio has remained largely unchanged since 1967 and is not expected to shift in the Arabs’ favor any time soon, considering the Jewish birth rate is only slightly lower than that of the Arabs and is constantly augmented by Jewish immigration.

Some have argued that the real demographic threat lies in allowing the establishment of a sovereign “Palestinian” entity in Judea and Samaria, which will quickly flood with so-called “refugees,” providing the Arabs an indisputable majority between the river and the sea.

This state with its rapidly ballooning population will continue to rely heavily on Israeli public services, putting the Jewish state under tremendous strain, and eventually resulting in Israel’s Arabs reuniting with their “Palestinian” brothers and demanding the reunification of “their” lands.

So says Michael Wise of One State Plan, a movement that advocates a one-state solution under the current Jewish sovereignty.

The Kadima platform also insists a government headed by Sharon will preserve Jewish control over a united Jerusalem. But similar declarations in the past regarding issues such as negotiating with terrorists have all been broken down under waves of international pressure.

Meanwhile, other voices, such as prominent Chabad Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe’s, have urged Israel’s religious public to more fervently seek the replacement of the “current rule, which is called ‘the State of Israel’ with the true Kingdom of David.”