Levitt Letter Extra News

By Nines Lathem
New York Post

The head of Islamic chaplains in the New York City Department of Correction said in a recent speech that the “greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House,” Jews control the media, and Muslims are being tortured in Manhattan jails.

The outlandish remarks were made by one of the city’s most prominent Islamic leaders, Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil, the executive director of ministerial services for the city Department of Correction. He spoke at a conference of Islamic leaders in Tucson, Ariz., and was secretly recorded by the counterterrorism organization, The Investigative Project.

The recordings capture Abdul-Jalil — speaking at two separate symposiums on Islam in America held by the Muslim Students Association on April 15 and 16 of 2005 — making incendiary charges and espousing extremist views.

Abdul-Jalil, 56, who is also imam of the Masjid Sabur mosque in Harlem, initially denied making the comments — but later admitted to The Post that the tape was most likely accurate and said his words are being “taken out of context.”

At one conference session, Abdul-Jalil charged that Muslims jailed after the 9/11 attacks were being tortured in Manhattan, according to the tape.

“They [some Muslim inmates] are not charged with anything, they are not entitled to any rights, they are interrogated. Some of them are literally tortured and we found this in the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in Manhattan. But they literally are torturing people,” Abdul-Jalil said.

Abdul-Jalil also accused the Bush administration of being terrorists, according to the tape.

“We have terrorists defining who a terrorist is, but because they have the weight of legitimacy, they get away with it… We know that the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House, without a doubt,” he said.

At another session, Abdul-Jalil urged American Muslims to stop allowing “the Zionists of the media to dictate what Islam is to us” and said Muslims must be “compassionate with each other” and “hard against the kufr [unbeliever].”

Abdul-Jalil, a Bronx resident who said he converted to Islam while at Attica prison in 1970.

By Shannon Blosser
National Review

A recent act of terrorism at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill left students and faculty in disbelief, wondering why a former student would ram an SUV into a crowded group of students. Many of them extended their disbelief to include a willful denial that the attack was an act of terrorism at all.

Mohammad Reza Taheri-azar, a 22-year-old Iranian native who graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in December, rented a Jeep Cherokee Laredo from a local rent-a-car dealership and launched his attack at a popular gathering place for students known as “the Pit,” located near the student union and campus libraries. Nine people were injured — none seriously — in Taheri-azar’s rampage. Three days later, he made his first appearance in Orange County District Court, where prosecutors read out the 18 charges levied against him, including nine counts of attempted murder.

Coverage of the offense has focused on two themes: the reasons for the attack and the reaction of the campus community. The two story lines would presumably be closely related: The motives are revealed, and the campus proceeds to denounce them. But it hasn’t been that simple, and the second story line has become oddly disconnected from the first.

Taheri-azar has not exactly been ambiguous about his motives. “I’m thankful you’re here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah,” Taheri-azar said to District Court Judge Pat DeVine. Taheria-azar intended his attack as a response to U.S. foreign policy, and by doing so he thought that he would be viewed as a martyr by radical Islamists who promote terror worldwide.

UNC-Chapel Hill officials released an audio of Taheri-azar’s 911 call to dispatchers turning himself in, just moments after he ran over the students.

In the four-minute call, Taheri-azar sounded as though he couldn’t wait to be arrested. When the dispatcher asked why he ran over the students, Taheri-azar responded, “The reason is to punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world.”

Perhaps Taheri-azar’s decision to attack UNC-Chapel Hill had something to do with a cartoon published recently in The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper of UNC-Chapel Hill, depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

There is more to Taheri-azar than just his words to police. His actions in court, and the images of him in the media, suggest that he views himself as a hero in the Muslim world. A smug smile as he walked out of the courthouse and an exuberant wave to the TV cameras indicated that he thinks someone in the Middle East, or maybe in the United States, will look upon him as a leader and follow his example. He reportedly told detectives that “people all over the world are being killed in war and now it is the people in the United States’ turn to be killed.” If this comment doesn’t lead people to conclude that this was an act of terrorism, it is difficult to see what could.

Some students took the initiative to denounce the attack and stage a rally to label it as an act of terrorism. Jillian Bandes, a columnist who was fired from The Daily Tar Heel in September for comments she made about Muslims and terrorism, told The News & Observer, “Why not label terrorism? Not doing so suggests a certain leniency toward that kind of thing.”

But many of the attendees at the rally were there to denounce the use of the term. Muslim students told the media they were offended by those who believe it was an act of terrorism. By Monday afternoon, signs were seen in the Pit that called the rally organizers racists and asking about 100,000 people killed in Iraq.

A UNC sophomore, Johnathan Pourzal, told the Durham Herald-Sun that the mission of the event organizers offended him. “By calling it religious violence, you are telling people that Muslims are violent,” he said.

Wesley Pruden,
Washington Times

George W. Bush wants to be remembered as the president who rose to the challenge of Islamic terrorism, and he’ll no doubt get his wish. But he might not be regarded as quite the Teddy Roosevelt of his century.

The challenge in Iraq grows ever more unfathomable to the civilized world. Only yesterday the bodies of 20 Iraqi civilians were discovered with nooses around their necks, hands tied behind them, grisly work done in the name of Allah. This was a day after 40 others were found beheaded and the Iraqi interior minister blames American soldiers. But beheading is an Islamic taste; Christians and Jews have no beheading tradition.

All presidents, Republican or Democrat, have to say things sometimes they don’t really mean, sometimes delivered with a wink and a nudge, sometimes not. When George W. talks about “the religion of peace” as if the Islamists are just a little confused, like a congregation of wayward Episcopalians, we have to think he doesn’t really mean it. Presidents, like governors and even mayors, have to keep in mind that in a country as big as ours there’s always the criminal element to consider. We don’t want our crazies to get any ideas, like Shi’ite imams in pursuit of Sunni holy men.

But this president and his men (and women) should keep in mind, as certain presidents before them didn’t, that Americans think for themselves, and they’re always skeptical of what their government tells them. Americans keep Ronald Reagan’s famous caution in mind at all times: “Trust, but verify.”

President Bush has discarded the mantra of “weapons of mass destruction” as the reason he went to war in Iraq, replacing it with “promoting democracy,” and a lot of Americans look at the neighborhood where the promotion and nation-building is taking place and reward the idea with a Bronx cheer. The Bronx cheer is getting louder. Most of us know better than to imagine that men fiercely dedicated to a religion that hasn’t changed much in a thousand years will embrace a philosophy of government based on liberty, equality, tolerance and brotherhood (and treating women with humanity and respect). The Golden Rule — “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — is usually translated in the Middle East as “do it unto others before they do it unto you.” How can anyone build a nation with clay like this?

“The better idea,” Francis Fukuyama and Adam Garfinkle, two Bush-friendly intellectual observers, write in the Wall Street Journal, “consists of separating the struggle against radical Islamism from promoting democracy in the Middle East, focusing on the first struggle, and dramatically changing our tone and tactics on the democracy promotion front, at least for now.”

The problem the Bush administration has created for itself, they argue, is that has tried to cure one disease — radical Islam — by prescribing for another, the absence of a coherent political system in Arabia. This problem is complicated by the insistence of millions of Muslims that their religion is also a political ideology, that the state cannot be separated from the religion. It’s a hostile ideology.

George W. is never more eloquent, or as persuasive, as when he describes American aims in the Middle East in terms of American security. Joe Sixpack — and even Mike Merlot and Cherie Chablis — will always rally to the ramparts to defend American security once it’s clearly explained to them, hang the cost. But nothing provokes a good ol’ boy like somebody blowing smoke at him. A lot of us have reluctantly concluded that neither the power of American arms nor the grandeur of American ideals is likely to cool the passion of madness; the Islamists are at war with the 21st century (as well as the 12th through the 20th). The Islamists for their part recognize the fragility of a religious ideology that can be threatened by a Danish newspaper cartoon or the conversion of a single Muslim to another faith, and fight all the more irrationally.

Dealing with the grave Islamist threat to American security won’t be easy. The West — actually, the United States — must find a way to kill the guilty while encouraging and supporting moderate and peaceful Muslims. Americans will rise with the president to the challenge if the president will just tell it like it is. That won’t be easy, either.

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times.

By Daniel Pipes
www.danielpipes.org

What are the long-term consequences of the Muhammad cartoon furor? I predict it is helping bring on not a clash of civilizations but their mutual pulling apart. This separation, which has been building for years, has dreadful implications.

Signs of disengagement are all around.

• Trade: Boycotts now exist in both directions. Even as the U.S. government sanctions Iranian products, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says his government will “revise and cancel economic contracts” with countries where newspapers published the cartoons. Several Muslim countries have suspended trade with Denmark, while Muslim-owned stores in Canada have removed Danish products. The Pakistani medical association even announced a boycott of medicines from five European countries.
• Consumer items: Muslims are increasingly replacing Western consumer items with their own. They purchase the extremely modest Fulla and Razanne dolls rather than the busty Barbie. In France, Beurger King provides halal food, competing with Burger King, just as Mecca Cola takes the place of Coke and Pepsi. Al-Jazeera is starting an English-language channel to go up against CNN and the BBC.
• Financial investments: As a result of freezes on funds and the designation of terrorist entities, Muslims have moved large amounts of capital out of the West and invested these either in their own countries or in other places around the world, such as East Asia. Middle Eastern oil exporters before 9/11 annually put as much as US$25 billion into American investments; since then, the amount is about US$1 billion a year.
• Emigration: 9/11 caused a significant increase in obstacles to Muslims traveling to the West, so fewer Muslim business executives, students, hospital patients, conference goers, and workers are reaching there.
• Tourism: Islamist atrocities such as the murder of 60 Japanese, German, and Swiss tourists in Luxor in 1997 or the abduction of 32 German and other travelers in the Sahara in 2003 had already led some Westerners to avoid discretionary travel in the Muslim world. Cartoon-related violence has prompted a Danish advisory warning citizens against travel to fourteen Muslim countries. Scandinavian tourist companies have cancelled many tours to North Africa.
• Foreign aid: Muslim aggression against aid workers in Indonesia, Lebanon, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Authority have led to the partial or complete withdrawal of European missions. In Chechnya, the Danish aid mission was expelled and the Iraqi transport ministry has rejected any future offers of Danish reconstruction money.
• Embassies: From the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1978 to the multiple attacks on Danish and other European embassies this month, the assault on Western diplomatic missions in Muslim countries is causing them to take on the features of armed fortresses, to be removed from the center of towns to the peripheries, and in some cases to be closed down.
• Westerners providing services: Zayed University in Dubai fired an American professor, Claudi Keepoz, for distributing the Muhammad cartoons to her students. Rampaging Palestinians caused the foreign observers staffing the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, or TIPH, to flee Hebron.

These developments suggest what the prime minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has called a “huge chasm” between the Muslim world and the West. Or, in the more bellicose wording of the influential Sunni imam Youssef al-Qaradawi, “We must tell Europeans, we can live without you. But you cannot live without us.”

Should the chasm widen, with its concomitant lessening of human interaction, commercial relations, and diplomatic engagement, the Muslim world will likely fall further behind than it already has. As I wrote in 2000, “Whatever index one employs, Muslims can be found clustering toward the bottom – whether measured in terms of their military prowess, political stability, economic development, corruption, human rights, health, longevity, or literacy.”

Disengagement will only worsen the Muslim predicament. Reduced contact with the world’s most modern, powerful, and advanced countries would likely cause Muslims to do even worse in those indices and lapse deeper into a condition characterized by self-pity, jealousy, resentment, anger, and aggression.

Especially when contrasted with Muslim successes in premodern times, these traumatic circumstances help explain the crisis in identity that often causes Muslims to seek solace in radical Islam. For everyone’s sake, it is important that Muslims begin more successfully to negotiate their path to modernity, not to isolation.

Washington Times
by Arnold Beichman

Few peoples in the world have suffered as much needlessly under tyranny, in this case a theocracy, as have the people of Iran.

I say “needlessly” because if Iran were a working democracy and actively seeking solutions to its internal problems, 40 percent of its 68 million inhabitants would not be living below the poverty line. The country might be able to address its air pollution, industrial effluents; overgrazing; deforestation; desertification; oil pollution in the Persian Gulf; wetlands lost to drought; soil degradation (salination); inadequate potable water; and pollution from raw sewage and industrial waste.

Known as Persia until 1935 and slightly larger than Alaska, Iran is heir of one of the world’s oldest civilizations. The country’s resources are enormous. It is the world’s fourth-largest petroleum producer. It is blessed with huge natural gas reserves and strategic location on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, vital maritime pathways for petroleum.

Such good fortune, however, is not enough for the clerical regime which would like to convert the entire Islamic Sunni world into a Shi’ite paradise. To do so, Iran is devoting its resources to establishing its version of an Islamic empire. There was the eight-year war with Iraq at the cost of a million casualties on the Iranian side alone. Facing a new threat — an Iraqi democracy on Iran’s borders, Iran’s bellicose mullahs are now at war with the coalition forces in Iraq. Why? To create a puppet theocratic regime in that country which would support Shi’ite, not Sunni, Islam.

Its fundamentalist leaders wage an undeclared war using suicide bombers against countries Iran defines as enemies. The theocrats operate with confidence there will be no reprisals by their victims. Thus far, their confidence has been justified.

The mullahs have created five major agencies to carry out their global ambitions, the most important of which is the “Qods” (Jerusalem Force). This includes all of Iran’s intelligence and extraterritorial agencies numbering some 21,000 personnel, according to the National Council of Resistance, a longtime exile organization whose inside reports have proven remarkably accurate in the past. Qods headquarters are on the former site of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

In addition to terrorist operations, the “Qods” trains non-Iranian terrorists, including groups of 40-50 from Pakistan, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and other Middle East countries.

The great irony is the West finances Iran’s terrorist attacks in Iraq and elsewhere by buying its oil. Iran has financed terrorist operations in Basra, Al-Amara and Nassiriya and prevented Coalition armies from entering major population centers. Iran now recruits “suicide bomber” volunteers to be sent not only to Iraq but other Middle East countries. The Oods headquarters on Aug. 10, 2004, announced enlistment of an incredible 15,000 recruits. Today, they claim to have 40,000 volunteers.

Iran is working on producing nuclear weapons with this aim in mind: destruction of Israel. Iran’s new hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for destroying Israel following the declaration of former President Ali Rafsanjani who on Dec. 14, 2001, threatened Israel with a nuclear attack:

“If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists’ strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything [in Israel] while it will merely harm the Islamic world.”

At places like Davos and Harvard, the world’s sages rarely stop fretting about the dangers of a too powerful America. Well, if you want to know what the world looks like without U.S. leadership, Exhibit A is Darfur in Sudan.

Today’s leading authority on Darfur is the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who prophesied a world “nasty, brutish and short.” At least 200,000 civilians have been killed in the past three years and two million more have become refugees. The source of the problem is the Arab rulers in Khartoum, who have pursued an ethnic cleansing campaign against black Muslims in western Sudan. They’ve equipped the Janjaweed Arab tribesmen to do the dirty work, and that militia is now attacking civilians across the border in Chad, creating 20,000 more refugees.

To his credit, Kofi Annan started shouting about the problem two years ago, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell labeled it “genocide” not long after that. The U.N.’s mighty peace-making machinery then started to roll and… nothing.

The Chinese (who have close commercial ties to Khartoum) and Russians have blocked any serious intervention. Arab members of the Security Council have also opposed any attempt to single out Khartoum. The Arab League—so quick to denounce Danish cartoons—has also stymied any global intervention to stop the murder of their fellow Muslims.

Here’s League Secretary General Amr Musa earlier this month: “In Sudan, there is a problem related to Darfur. We will listen to the Sudanese state minister to explain to us the developments in the issue of Darfur…” The League plans to hold its meeting next week—in Khartoum. The African Union has at least sent 7,000 troops to the region, but they are under-funded and under-equipped to enforce a truce that Sudan blatantly flouts. But the African failure is also political. In January the Union held its own summit in Khartoum, and next year it plans to award Sudan its presidency. The rule seems to be never to say a discouraging word about other African leaders, no matter how murderous.

As for Europe, France would be ideal to lead an intervention force. The French have military bases in neighboring Chad and could establish a no-fly zone to stop Janjaweed bombing. However, Paris is already occupied with another intervention in the Ivory Coast, and with its own business interests in Sudan isn’t volunteering in any case.

Amid this global abdication, Mr. Annan finally decided last month to call in the American cavalry. He visited the White House and, with media fanfare, all but begged President Bush to do something. Despite U.S. obligations in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other places, Mr. Bush responded by proposing an expanded U.N. peacekeeping force under “NATO stewardship.”

But Sudan President Omar al-Beshir quickly played to type and withdrew support for a U.N. force. He also threatened that “Darfur will become the graveyard for the United Nations and foreign intervention.” And rather than stand up to such threats, U.N. envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk has wilted. He’s now talking up intelligence about al Qaeda terrorists in Khartoum who could retaliate against U.N. peacekeepers. And he’s warning against any NATO intervention without Security Council approval—as if that would be forthcoming. All of this is a repeat of the same feckless U.N. pattern we’ve seen in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq.

So that leaves… guess who? The cowboy President, the American unilateralists, the Yankee imperialists—or, to put it another way, the only nation with the will and wallet to provide order in an otherwise Hobbesian world. However, that will and wallet are being stretched today in Iraq and elsewhere, and Mr. Bush is rightly wary of committing more American blood and treasure to a conflict in Sudan that the rest of the world doesn’t seem serious about ending in any event. One lesson of Darfur is that there really are limits to American power, and in its absence the world’s savages have freer reign.

By Mark D. Tooley
www.frontpagemagazine.com

The chief lobbyist for the church to which President Bush belongs has become one of the angriest critics of the Iraq War, which he blames on Bush�s criminal �lies,� Israel, oil interests and American arrogance.

Jim Winkler of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society has made the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq the special target of his ire over the last three years. Winkler�s agency has a $5 million annual budget and a staff of two dozen people.

From his perch in the prominently placed Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, sitting right across the street from the U.S. Capitol and the U.S. Supreme Court, Winkler routinely denounces Bush and fellow Methodist Vice President Cheney for their �unjust and illegal� war.

Whether making statements in the nation�s capital, or delivering speeches to liberal church activists around the country, Winkler is consistent in his conspiratorial allegations and assumption of the worst motives of the United States.

�High crimes have been committed against the people of the United States and Iraq,� Winkler told a gathering of liberal United Methodists meeting in Kentucky last November. �We were led into war under false premises. The manipulation of intelligence is staggering. The stench is so great; Bush has distanced himself from Vice President Cheney, another United Methodist. So much for unity.�

Winkler told the approving crowd, �The Bush White House systematically ignored the highest levels of Iraqi intelligence, and there are now more than 2000 plus troops dead.�

Repeating the usual canard that a supposedly secular Saddam Hussein would not align with radical Islam, Winkler drew this comparison: �This is like saying Timothy McVeigh [perpetrator of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing], who served in the U.S. Army, was connected to President Clinton.� He also opined, �As bad as Saddam Hussein was, he was not threatening.�

�The war is about oil,� Winkler charged, simplistically. �We would not have gone in there if the chief export was artichokes.� He explained, �If you are an American consumer, you are caught up in a system that perpetuates injustice.�

Last March, Winkler addressed another liberal Methodist caucus group, this time in Portland, Oregon, insisting that the �war in Iraq remains a disaster despite the seemingly good news of the election.�

�To date, I cannot think of a single person who has been held accountable for this illegal war of aggression,� Winkler complained, faulting the U.S. for 100,000 Iraqi war deaths and additional hundreds of thousands of victims under U.S. supported sanctions by the United Nations.

Winkler decried the �numerous atrocities perpetrated by our nation in Iraq.� He told of an ostensible conversation with a �young Marine� who described his unit�s massacring surrendering Iraqis. Faulting the U.S. led occupation for Iraqi suicide bombers, Winkler offered this scenario: �Imagine if such attacks took place very single day across the United States while a foreign military invasion force occupied our major cities, arresting and torturing Americans.�

Winkler faulted Israel and the United States as the causes of strife in the Middle East. �The starting place, the beginning point, the central, undisputable, inescapable, absolutely necessary foundation of a Middle East peace is the end of the twin illegal occupations maintained by the United States and Israel of Iraq, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. All else flows from there.�

In March 2003, immediately before Saddam�s ouster, Winkler shared this scenario with liberal United Methodist activists, in which he compared the impending U.S. led liberation of Iraq with a hypothetical overthrow of the U.S. government:

�Imagine if the most powerful nations in the world concluded that the United States government had to be overthrown by force and replaced with outside rule because we produced and possessed vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction, had an unelected leader, were the greatest destroyers of the global environment, consumed far more of the world�s resources than was our due, engaged in covert actions, resulting in the overthrow and destabilization of sovereign nations, carried out capital punishment against minors, aggressively redistributed our wealth to the rich at the expense of the poor and was a violent, racist society.�

Of course, Winkler never produced such a searing critique of Saddam Hussein�s regime, whose crimes apparently did not equal those of the Bush regime. Through the UN sanctions, Winkler surmised that the United States had �contributed� to the deaths of more Iraqis than Saddam had ever killed.

With typical sophistication, Winkler concluded that the Iraq invasion was about oil, to �avenge George W. Bush�s Daddy,� and in pursuit of �our unquestioning support for Israel� and �schemes cooked up by senior Bush officials in cahoots with Israeli leaders.�

Few of Winkler�s statements provide assurance that he has great affection for his own country. In his Puget Sound speech of February 2004, he uncharitably declared, �the United States was born, in a sense, of war. How can it be otherwise for those of us who live in a land stolen from its native people and built on the backs of slaves?� Indeed, Winkler urged Americans to confess to the myths that guide them: �male superiority; white supremacy, [and] Western, particularly American, exceptionalism.�

Winkler�s insistence that he is not na�ve about the world particularly persuasive. In his February 2004 speech, he described the Free World�s decades-long confrontation with the old Soviet bloc this way: �Some $13 trillion dollars was spent on the military and intelligence agencies from 1945 to 1989 in a Cold War against a phantom superpower.�

Winkler�s shrill protests, conspiracy theories, and anti-American bias notwithstanding, he still heads America�s largest church lobby office and is arguably the Religious Left�s chief spokesman in the nation�s capital. Like much of the Religious Left, he seems more preoccupied with building an imaginary human utopia than contributing to the eternal Kingdom of God.

By John Zarocostas
Washington Times

U.S. and Israeli officials are concerned that Saudi Arabia may be breaking the promise it made when it entered the World Trade Organization last year by hosting a meeting next week on the Arab economic boycott of Israel.

“I think this is a bit too much,” said Itzhak Levanon, Israel’s ambassador to the WTO, noting it has been only three months since Saudi Arabia was admitted to the organization on terms that require it to treat Israel like any other WTO member.

The promise was that the Saudis would not seek an exemption for Israel from WTO requirements to treat all members equally. The exemption would have preserved its participation, along with other Arab states, in a boycott of Israel.

In Washington, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said officials from the Department of Commerce and other agencies have been in contact with the Saudis over the issue.

Shaun Donnelly, the assistant U.S. trade representative for Europe and the Middle East, will raise the matter during a visit to Saudi Arabia next week, she said.

Liaison officers from regional offices responsible for coordinating the boycott of Israel are to meet in Jidda from March 13 to 15, according to a schedule posted on the official Web site of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Salem el-Honi, high commissioner of the OIC office that runs the boycott, was quoted yesterday in the Jerusalem Post saying representatives of all 57 countries would attend the meeting “and we will discuss coordination among the various offices to strengthen the boycott.”

The boycott, imposed by the Arab League in 1945, seeks to isolate Israel by barring trade with the Jewish state and in some cases companies that do business in Israel. The OIC monitors compliance through its own Israeli Boycott Office, whose officers are to meet next week.

Adherence to the boycott has softened over the years even among Arab states as countries like Egypt and Jordan established diplomatic and economic links with Israel. Participation in the boycott by the United Arab Emirates has emerged as an issue during the debate in Washington over a deal giving a Dubai company control over six American seaports.

Acting under U.S. pressure, Saudi Arabia chose not to seek an exemption from WTO rules for its relations with Israel when it joined the organization. Mr. Levanon said in an interview yesterday that he considered the hosting of next week’s OIC meeting a violation of that commitment.

WTO chief Pascal Lamy and Eirik Glenne, chairman of the WTO’s ruling general council, “should call to the attention of Saudi Arabia that it must not violate the rules of the WTO,” he said. “We’re waiting to see what they do.”

As a new WTO member, Saudi Arabia “should be more cautious” about its actions toward another WTO member, Mr. Levanon added.

WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said the organization had not received a formal complaint about the Jidda meeting to date and noted that Saudi Arabia’s accession to the trade organization “was agreed by consensus.”

However, the issue is of concern in Washington, where U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman was asked during a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee in February about Saudi Arabia’s observance of the boycott.

“It’s a big concern of the United States, of course, because we worked with Saudi Arabia on the issue of their WTO accession,” Mr. Portman replied.

“Saudi Arabia did not, when they joined the WTO, invoke non-application [of WTO rules] with regard to Israel or anybody else. So as far as we’re concerned, Saudi Arabia is required under the WTO to provide that treatment to all the members of the WTO that they have agreed to,” he said.

Members of the Saudi delegation to the WTO could not be reached for comment.

An international trade lawyer, speaking on the condition that he not be identified, said that under WTO rules it was up to the Israelis to open legal proceedings against the Saudis if they feel they have a grievance.

Some trade diplomats noted that Israel and Saudi Arabia, while political adversaries, conduct de facto trade through third countries in the region.

Associated Press

The Rev. Franklin Graham, who outraged Muslims in 2001 when he said that Islam “is a very evil and wicked religion,” told an interviewer for Wednesday’s edition of ABC News “Nightline” that he hasn’t changed his mind about the faith.

Asked by ABC correspondent John Donvan whether Muslim groups had succeeded in altering his outlook about Islam, Graham said “No.” “Do they want to indoctrinate me? Yes. I know about Islam. I don’t need an education from Islam,” he said. “If people think Islam is such a wonderful religion, just go to Saudi Arabia and make it your home. Just live there. If you think Islam is such a wonderful religion, I mean, go and live under the Taliban somewhere. I mean, you’re free to do that.”

Franklin Graham is the successor to his father as head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, based in Charlotte, N.C. He was interviewed Sunday in New Orleans, where Franklin and Billy were leading an evangelistic festival.

The younger Graham angered Muslims following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when he told NBC News: “We’re not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He’s not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion.”

In a subsequent Wall Street Journal piece, Graham wrote that he doesn’t think Muslim believers “are evil people because of their faith. But I decry the evil that has been done in the name of Islam, or any other faith — including Christianity.”

That article said “the persecution or elimination of non-Muslims has been a cornerstone of Islamic conquests and rule for centuries.” Graham said the Quran “provides ample evidence that Islam encourages violence in order to win converts and to reach the ultimate goal of an Islamic world.”

Some of Graham’s fellow evangelicals subsequently expressed concern that his comments might endanger Christian missionaries working in Muslim countries, strain interfaith relations and make America’s war on terrorism seem to be a Christian crusade against Islam.

Billy Graham has avoided such comments about Islam and President Bush has consistently depicted mainstream Islam as a religion of peace. Another U.S. evangelist, the Rev. Pat Robertson, said of militant Muslims on his Monday telecast: “These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it’s motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it’s time we recognize what we’re dealing with.” “The goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, is world domination,” he said.

www.omegaletter.com

In the world according to the UN, the world’s two worst serial human rights abusers are the United States of America and the State of Israel. More UN resolutions have been passed condemning Israel than any other state — far more than those passed against all Islamic states — including Saddam’s Iraq — combined.

There are 52 Islamic states. But of the 700-plus General Assembly resolutions passed since the UN’s 1945 establishment, nearly 450 condemn Israel. There are 190 nations in the United Nations. And over sixty percent of all General Assembly resolutions condemn just ONE member, Israel!

Here are a few examples of the kinds of Israeli actions worthy of global condemnation:

• General Assembly Resolution 250 “calls on Israel to refrain from holding military parade in Jerusalem.”
• General Assembly Resolution 251 “deeply deplores Israeli military parade in Jerusalem in defiance of Resolution 250.”
• General Assembly Resolution 252 “declares invalid Israel’s acts to unify Jerusalem as her capital”
• General Assembly Resolution 271 “condemns’ Israel’s failure to obey UN resolutions on Jerusalem”
• General Assembly Resolution 476 “reiterates’ that Israel’s claims to Jerusalem are null and void”
• General Assembly Resolution 673 “deplores Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the United Nations”

In 2002, the State of Israel voted WITH the United States in 92.6% of all matters the US put before the UN. It is instructive to compare Israel’s loyalty to Washington with some of America’s other ‘allies’. Great Britain, our allegedly ‘closest’ ally, voted WITH the US about 60% of the time. Australia 56% France about 54%. Neighbor and trading partner Canada voted with the US about 49% of the time. America’s second largest trading partner, Japan, sided with Washington about 42% of the time. As to our Islamic and Arab ‘allies’, the UAE voted AGAINST the US 88% of the time. The Saudis, 90%. Pakistan, 87%. Egypt (who receives $2 billion in annual US aid) 86%.

Jordan, representing ‘moderate’ Islam, votes against the US at the UN 88% of the time. In May, 2001, the United States was kicked off the UN Human Rights Commission. Amnesty International concluded in its 2002 report to the UN that the United States “leads the world in human rights violations since September 2001.”

It is important to remember that, while the UN Security Council passed resolutions demanding Saddam’s compliance with existing resolutions, the General Assembly has NEVER issued a condemnation of an Arab state, including Saddam’s Iraq. Sudan held a seat on the UNHRC while simultaneously conducting genocide against its non-Islamic population.

The same year the UN kicked the US off the UNHRC, it elected Khadaffi’s Libya (33–3) to serve as the Commission’s chair. The United Nations opposed the US invasion of Iraq, claiming the invasion was an ‘illegal violation of the UN Charter’ — a position it maintains to the present time.

One can hear it repeated in virtually every liberal news report. What is buried, however, is the UN’s multi-billion dollar stake in keeping Saddam in power and the Oil-For-Food money flowing into the UN’s unregulated ‘trust’ fund. China, France, Germany and Russia led the opposition, demanding that the UN be allowed to continue its ‘peaceful, diplomatic efforts’ — something else that makes nearly every liberal news report dealing with the events leading up to the war.

What doesn’t get mentioned is that China, France, Germany and Russia were all up to their necks in illegal deals with Saddam Hussein. US forces found brand-new German chemical-warfare suits, brand-new French communication equipment, brand-new Chinese and Russian military equipment, and even some brand-new GPS jammers that would confuse US smart bombs into hitting the wrong targets.

In the interests of global international relations, Washington is keeping a low-profile about the serial violations of existing UN sanctions by our ‘allies’ and the UN’s rape of Iraq’s treasury. America’s only genuine ally is Israel. Israel’s only genuine ally is America. Interestingly, they are the only two nations denying what is, to the rest of the world, conventional wisdom.

Assessment: Both the United States and Israel are bucking a stacked deck when it comes to the international community. In the case of the Sudan, it took the UN almost four years to acknowledge that an Islamic regime wiping out it’s non-Islamic population was a human rights violation. So far, the UN has done nothing except talk about it as the massacres continue unabated. In the case of the United States, the UN has concluded that Guantanamo Bay is a place where “illegally held detainees are routinely tortured” and no less a personage than Kofi Annan himself has demanded the prison be closed.

The report was issued by a UN group who refused to even visit Guantanamo Bay when invited to do so by the Pentagon. In its refusal, the UN gave some bizarre explanation that visiting Gitmo would “contravene UN principles of human rights investigations.” The investigators particularly denounced the use of excessive violence, citing photographs that show how detainees were shackled, chained, hooded and forced to wear earphones and goggles. Since none of them ever visiting Gitmo, the investigators don’t know if the photos were OF Gitmo, but that doesn’t matter, since the UN declined to identify the source of the pictures in the first place.

“They also showed beating, kicking, punching, but also stripping and forced shaving of detainees who resisted,” the report said. “It is of particular concern that some of these violations have even been authorized by the authorities,” the report claimed without citing specific evidence. The investigators also mentioned ‘plentiful evidence’ (again, never specified,) that prisoners suffered serious mental health problems. Remember, the UN never visited. The source of the ‘plentiful evidence’ is evidently former detainees whose credibility the UN accepted without question.

There is one Jewish state in the UN. Its only ally is a nation widely criticized as the world’s only Christian nation. There are fifty-two Islamic states, with the remainder being avowedly secular. Virtually ALL of them stand in lockstep opposition to both Israel and the United States. The press calls it a ‘coming war of civilizations’ — but only someone with an incredible capacity for self-delusion could fail to recognize it as a war between the God of the Bible and the god of Islam.

The prophet Daniel had received his vision of the ‘Seventy Weeks’ (see “Daniel’s Seventieth Week”) but it greatly troubled him. “In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a thing was revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar; and the thing was true, but the time appointed was long: and he understood the thing, and had understanding of the vision. In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks.” (Daniel 10:1-2)

Daniel had seen a vision of the antichrist’s peace deal with Israel, and his abrogation of it halfway through. He prayed and fasted for three weeks as he waited for the angel to return to complete the vision. When the revealing Angel returned, he explained he had been held up in battle with the ‘Prince of Persia’ [Iran] until “Michael one of the chief princes, came to help me…” (Daniel 10:33) The Angel further reveals that Michael is “the great prince which standeth for the children of thy (Daniel’s) people.” (the Jews) (Daniel 12:1) But Daniel was concerned about the unveiling of the antichrist, an event Daniel acknowledges “was true, but the time appointed was long.”

Daniel’s understanding of the vision was delayed by the Prince of Persia. On the other end of the timeline, in this generation, we are like Daniel in that respect. Daniel was sick about the events of the tribulation as revealed to him. He waited for an explanation of the event itself, just as we are waiting for that event to take place in this generation. But the revelation to Daniel was stalled by conflict with the Prince of Persia.

On this end of the timeline, the current Prince of Persia (President Ahmadinejad of Iran) has outlined his intent to use nuclear war to start the conflict he believes will bring about the return of the Mahdi, whom Islamic scholars identify as the rider on the white horse of Revelation 6:3. The rider on the white horse of Revelation 6:3 is the same coming prince that threw Daniel into a three-week depression.

What about Daniel’s Revealing Angel? Daniel describes Him thusly: “His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.” (Daniel 10:6)

John describes the risen Christ in Revelation 1:13-15: “…One like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire; And His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and His voice as the sound of many waters.” America is the world’s national Christian representative, in this generation, whether Americans want to accept the title or not.

And Daniel’s Revealing Angel is the pre Incarnate Christ, the Head of the Church, according to the Apostle John. Israel is the world’s national Jewish representative. Israel’s guardian, as revealed by the pre-Incarnate Christ, is the archangel Michael.

America and Israel are the two most hated nations on earth, currently locked in an existential war with Islam, ‘the prince of Persia.’ There is no other nation on earth that ‘holds with’ the United States at the UN with the consistent reliability of the Israelis. Now, take all this information and plug it into Daniel 10:21 and see what YOU come up with. “But I will shew thee that which is noted in the Scripture of Truth: and there is none that holdeth with Me in these things, but Michael your prince.”

The deck is stacked, all right. But against the other side.