Levitt Letter Extra News

Israeli youths embrace as a siren marking the annual Holocaust remembrance day sounds in Jerusalem. Photo: AP

Israelis stand outside their cars as a siren marking the annual Holocaust remembrance day sounds in Tel Aviv. Photo: AP

By Hillel Fendel, www.IsraelNN.com

Jews around the world, and particularly in Israel, will commemorate the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, as well as those who were able to fight back, beginning Wednesday evening.

Yom HaShoah V’Hagvurah, Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, begins this evening at 8 PM with a public ceremony at Warsaw Ghetto Square in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will speak, survivors will light six torches (see below), the Chief Rabbis will recite prayers, and Cantor Asher Heinowitz will sing the El Malei Rachamim prayer.

The central theme of this year’s commemorations is “Choose Life.” Last year, it was “Bearing Witness.” At 10 PM, a symposium will be held on the topic of “Choose Life,” with the participation of Holocaust survivors and Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev.

The six survivors lighting the torches are the following:

Esther Samuel-Cahn, born in 1933 in Norway. A religiously observant professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she was awarded the Israel Prize in Statistics in 2004. When she was 9, her father, Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Samuel, the rabbi of Norwegian Jewry, was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. Several months later, she and her family were hidden behind potato sacks and smuggled to Sweden. At age 13, a year after World War II ended, she immigrated to Israel with her mother and two brothers.

Meir Brand, born in 1936 in Poland. In 1943, closed up in a Nazi-built ghetto, his parents decided to smuggle him out, and after many narrow escapes, he arrived in Budapest, Hungary. He was on the Kastner Train - a trainload of almost 1,700 Jews who escaped from Hungary to safety in Switzerland - but was one of the few dozen who was detained in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After his rescue in 1945, he was brought to Israel via the Jewish Agency’s Aliyat HaNoar (Youth Immigration) project. Here he learned that his parents had been murdered. Meir lived in the Jordan Valley’s Kibbutz N’vei Eitan, and fought in most of Israel’s wars.

Naomi Shadmi, born in 1931 in Hungary. At age 13, her father, older brother and mother were abducted, one after the other, by the Nazis. Naomi and her remaining younger brother were taken to the Budapest Ghetto. After their release, they found that their relatives had been murdered. They came to Israel, where Naomi worked for Israel Police for 20 years.

Tzvi Ungar, born in 1929 in Poland. He survived the Birkenau and Buchenwald concentration camps, as well as the infamous Death March, but the remainder of his family was murdered. In 1948, he immigrated to Israel, fought in the War of Independence, and helped found Kibbutz Malkiyah, practically atop Israel’s border with Lebanon, where he still resides.

Menachem Katz, born in 1925 in Poland. At age 17, he and his family were taken to a ghetto, then banished to the Belzec concentration camp in Poland, where an estimated 600,000 people were murdered. He escaped, and was later followed by his family. In 1946, they were caught on their way to Palestine and taken to Cyprus, where they remained for about a year. A prominent architect, Menachem designed the museum at Kibbutz Baram in memory of the Jews of Berezhany, his birthplace.

Michael Maor, born in Germany in 1933. His family fled to Yugoslavia, then to Italy, and then to the forests with the partisans when Italy came under Nazi influence. In 1944, the Nazis murdered his parents, and he was taken to an orphanage. In Israel, he worked for the Mossad Intelligence Agency, collected evidence against Adolph Eichmann, and established the Border Guard’s intelligence department.

The date of Yom HaShoah was chosen to mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Although the day became official by an act of Knesset, it has been traditionally commemorated by Jewish communities around the world. Some religious communities prefer not to commemorate the Holocaust on this day, which falls in the generally happy month of Nissan, but rather on Tisha B’Av or on the Tenth of Tevet, which the Chief Rabbinate of Israel fixed as the day for the recital of the Kaddish prayer for those murdered during the Holocaust whose date of death is not known.

By Stuart Winer, www.Israel21c.com

A new development that will one day enable the removal of breast lumps and tumors with a device that is no more invasive than a needle prick is very cool. Literally.

Israel’s Arbel Medical hopes that its IceSense technology will pave the way for simple cryotherapy, a method of surgery that uses extreme cold to kill diseased tissue.

There are 15 million women in the United States suffering from benign breast lumps. Every year one million women are sliced open on the operating table in expensive surgery to remove breast lumps.

“Half the medical world is dealing with removing these [lumps],” says Didier Toubia, CEO of the Yokneam-based company. “At present there are no non-invasive treatments for benign breast lumps.”

According to Dr Rafi Klein, a senior surgeon specializing in breast surgery at the Ramban Medical Center in Haifa and an advisor for Arbel, the threat of cancer prompts doctors to recommend removing all breast lumps even from young women.

“There is a lot of demand for finding a solution to surgery without causing scars,” he told ISRAEL21c.

IceSense provides that solution by offering the hope of efficient treatment in local clinics without the need for hospitalization, recuperation, or scarring. The IceSense mechanism enables the local application of super-cold temperatures and a fine control of the temperature itself. Liquid nitrogen is pumped to the end of a thin needle probe cooling the tip to the extreme cold required for cryotherapy. Utilizing ultrasound, surgeons can then guide the needle to the exact location of the lump and then freeze the unwanted tissue inside the body.

About the same size as a washing machine, the IceSense apparatus can be operated even in local clinics and medical centers. Providing treatment for breast lumps in local medical centers would be a big step towards the current trend in the US to conduct as much surgery as possible in local clinics by using non-invasive methods. This keeps expensive and over-worked operating rooms and teams free for more serious surgical procedures that require a hospital environment.

An hour-long surgery to remove a breast lump requires a full operating room team, costs about $2,000 and takes up several hours of the patient’s time with pre and post operation procedures. And the scars left behind will last a lifetime. An IceSense treatment will cost less than half that amount, take less than an hour at the clinic, and patients will be able to walk out right after the procedure.

While the theory of cryotreatment has been around for over 30 years, practical restraints have prevented its use for internal medicine. Although widely used today to treat external skin problems such as warts, moles, and cysts, using the same method for internal disorders is problematic. Effective treatment demands temperatures well below freezing point and generating such low temperatures in a way that is also convenient for the tightly controlled environment of invasive surgery is fraught with difficulties.

The most popular method of achieving cryotemperatures, that is temperatures well below freezing point, is by using liquid nitrogen. Nitrogen, the gas that makes up nearly 80% of the air that we breathe, is still viscous at 170 degrees centigrade below zero. This super-cold liquid is used in a variety of applications to provide extreme cooling. However, applying liquid nitrogen to internal tissue without using invasive surgery to cut a clear path to the target is impractical. The storage and handling of liquid nitrogen is awkward, requiring cumbersome vacuum-insulated storage vats and expensive piping to deliver the liquid before it boils into a gas. In addition, most liquid nitrogen systems are designed to supply the liquid at high pressure that is at odds with the delicacy of surgery.

Arbel engineer Alexander Levin explains that building a system to work with surgically small and precise amounts of liquid nitrogen was a challenge. Just keeping the nitrogen as a liquid while it is transferred to the probe required a newly designed siphon, but the real problem was concentrating the nitrogen in the end of the probe without freezing the entire length of the shaft. If the temperature of the shaft became super-cold it would freeze healthy tissue along its length.

“We needed to overcome all of these problems,” Levin recalls.

Levin resolved the difficulties by pulsing the nitrogen instead of using a steady flow. The pulses of just 0.2 grams of nitrogen do not cool the shaft of the probe but when collected in the tip the liquid boils into gas drawing heat from the end of the probe and the surrounding body tissue. The gaseous nitrogen is then drawn off back down the probe. As the temperature at the end of the probe plummets, an ice-ball forms around the tip freezing the surrounding body tissue.

The pulse mechanism enables precise and subtle temperature control at the tip of the probe ensuring the resulting ice-ball freezes only the target tissue. The IceSense pulse system gives surgeons precise control over the size and application of the ice-ball to minimize any collateral damage and target only the intended tissue.

The freezing procedure has several advantages over invasive knife surgery. It is easier to perform and does not require an operating room and team. In addition, the extreme cold acts as a form of anesthetic numbing the patient’s sensations in the area around the probe and reducing the need for chemical anesthetics.

Recuperation from cryosurgery is also healthier for the patient. The sudden surgical plundering of diseased tissue is traumatic for the body, but with cryotherapy the frozen tissue remains in place and is then dissolved out of the body by the immune system.

This natural method of disposal has an added bonus; regular knife surgery to remove cancerous tissue is always likely to leave behind some cancerous cells that escape the surgeon’s efforts. The remaining cells can spawn a return of the cancer in the same location. However, the dead tissue left behind after cryosurgery triggers a vigorous immune reaction. This heightened immune response has proved effective in killing off lingering cancerous tissue and may safe-guard against a resurgence of the disease.

According to Klein the procedure is similar to a needle biopsy. Although at first only a qualified general surgeon will be authorized to use IceSense, Klein predicts the procedure may follow the course of needle biopsies that were at first performed only by surgeons, but today are conducted by x-ray technicians as well. Once a surgeon has approved the procedure, an x-ray technician would be authorized to remove the lump.

Klein says that the benefits to the patient of non-invasive surgery outweigh the disadvantages to surgeons who tend to prefer a more tactile approach to surgery.

“Surgeons are like children - they like to feel things in their hands,” he says. “At first if feels like you are missing something but we are doctors and if you can do something that the patient feels better with and leaves no scars you feel better about it because it is better for the patient.”

At present Arbel intends to focus on benign breast lumps before expanding the technology for use to treat breast cancer as well. Benign lumps are easier to treat and the paperwork required to perform the procedures is easier. Toubia will begin trials on patients at the end of the year in Israel and intends to apply for FDA clearance to start clinical trials in the US by spring next year.

“It is an attractive business venture,” says Toubia who hopes to capture some 40% of the $500 million breast-lump market after IceSense becomes available to the public in 2009.

Toubia envisions breast cancer clinics using IceSense to treat women in a simple and quick procedure that only requires a local anesthetic. If successful IceSense will increase the number of women that can be treated on a daily basis as well as alleviate the difficult dilemma that many young women face when diagnosed with a breast lump.

“The whole decision as to whether or not to take out a lump will be made much easier,” Klein says. “Today women have to consider if they want to have surgery whereas like this it is much easier to do and more young women will choose to do it.”

By Stephen Brown, www.FrontPageMagazine.com

Some countries protect their children and others exploit theirs.

While America was watching authorities do their duty and seize children from a Mormon compound in Texas in order to protect them from potential underage marriage and sexual abuse, a single-minded girl with no police or legal protection bravely defied sharia law and her country’s male-dominated culture to divorce her husband. And, she is just eight years old.

Born in the year 2000, Nujood Ali was married two-and-a-half months ago to a man twenty years her senior after she was made to sign a marriage contract, arranged between her father and her “suitor.” The contract, a strictly commercial transaction which usually involves the groom paying a “bride price,” was supposed to allow Nujood to reside with her parents until she was 18. However, only a few days later, those same parents forced their daughter to move in with her new “husband,” who then brutally tormented her.

“Always, when I wanted to play in the garden, he hit me and said I should go with him into the bedroom,” Ali told the Yemen Times, adding that she would then run from room to room to escape him, but in vain. “In the end, he always got me.”

Finally, after two months of horrendous sexual abuse, in which Nujoud said her husband did “bad things with me,” the unwilling child bride turned to her father and an aunt for help. The aunt did nothing while the father, who had also been physically abusive towards her, told his daughter in response to her plea for assistance in getting a divorce: “I can’t do anything for you. If you want, go to the court alone.”

And that is exactly what the eight-year-old did. Facing what appeared to be a hopeless situation in such a male-dominated society and armed with nothing but her courage, Ali ran away to a maternal uncle and then bravely appeared before a court in the Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, to file cases against both her father and husband, demanding the dissolution of her marriage.

In her overwhelming desire to escape her marital hell, Nujood gave as grounds for her divorce: “My husband was very harsh with me and when I implored him to have pity, he would hit me, box my ears and abuse me. I want a decent life and the divorce.”

The judge took pity on what a reporter described as a “sweet but sad” child, who “knows and comprehends so many things,” and had both her father and husband taken into custody. The judge also allowed the little girl to reside in his house for several days before turning her over to the sympathetic uncle.

The husband was furious that his “wife” had the audacity to seek a divorce. However, this is an attitude all too common in countries where wives are bought as slaves and thus regarded as a husband’s commercial property.

“I will not divorce her, and it is my right to keep her,” said the outraged spouse to the Yemen Times. “It is not a matter of loving her; I don’t. But it is just a challenge to her and her uncle who think that they can keep me in jail and also the judge has no right to put me here. How did she dare to complain about me?”

Nujood is not Yemen’s first famous child bride. Zana Muhsen was a 15-year-old English schoolgirl of Arab-British descent when her Yemenite father sold her in England in 1983 for $3000 dollars to a countryman as a wife for his 14-year-old son. Her sister, Nadia, also 14, was sold for the same purpose and bride price to another Yemenite, whose son was 13.

The two sisters were detained against their will in Yemen for eight years with husbands they did not want, having babies they did not want, before diplomatic pressure and assistance from the international media finally freed Zana. Nadia stayed behind because of her children, who, due to the bride price, always remain with the father in case of a divorce.

In her best-selling book, Sold: A Story of Modern-Day Slavery, Zana outlined the two British sisters’ years of suffering, physical abuse and primitive living and working conditions in Yemen, during which time the authoress met child brides as young as ten.

The 2007 UNICEF photo of the year also made the world aware of the millions of girls sold as child brides every year, denied forever the opportunity to determine their own lives. In it, a forty-year-old man is seen sitting beside 11-year-old fiancée, named Ghulam, who appears to be giving him a contemptuous look on the day of their engagement.

When asked by American photographer, Stephanie Sinclair, what she felt that day, the slightly confused girl, whose answer Nujood would probably have matched word for word (had she been asked) upon meeting her husband, responded: “Nothing. I don’t know this man. What should I feel?”

According to UNICEF, there are more than 60 million underage brides worldwide with half of these living in South Asia. The parents, like Ghulam’s and Nujood’s, are most often poor and marry their daughters off, sometimes while still children, for the bride price. Once married, the task of these infants, almost as soon as they reach puberty, is to bear their husband children.

Nujood’s divorce became final two weeks ago. The spurned husband, who at first rejected her divorce demand, accepted a pay-off from an anonymous donor to agree to the end of the “marriage.” Incredibly, neither he nor Nujood’s father will face any charges over their cruel treatment of the innocent girl, since there is no law in Yemen against child marriages. They have legally committed no crime.

According to the International Center For Research On Women, Yemen ranks thirteenth on a list of twenty countries where marriages of female minors (girls under 18) are common. In one area of the Middle Eastern country, according to the Yemen Times, new brides average ten years of age while in another girls usually marry at age eight. The ICRW states that about 50 percent of the Yemen’s marriages involve underage girls. Niger tops the list with 76 percent.

But Nujood’s courage may change things for hundreds of other girls in Yemen facing the horrific fate of a child marriage. Her brave act in coming forward against tradition, family and the will of her husband to seek a divorce, probably the youngest girl, it is noted, ever to have asked for one in that country, is viewed by women’s groups and sympathetic politicians as a good opportunity to enact legislation designating 18 as a minimum age for marriage for all.

However, the Yemeni Parliament’s Jurisprudence Committee says “there are no legislative grounds to impose such a law based on its understanding of Islam.” Well, there you have it. Forget the barbarity of rape and thirteen-year-olds having babies, plus all the subsequent psychological and emotional damage; banning such practices is just not religiously correct for some.

“Those who approve of girls marrying at 13, 14, or even below 18 are barbaric men who abuse childhood and are irresponsible,” correctly noted Yahiya Al-Najar, a former Yemeni government minister and religious scholar in the Times of those who oppose a minimum age.

Nujood is still concerned about her younger sisters suffering her cruel fate, as her two older sisters did before her. Nevertheless, the resolute youngster, who used to “hate the nights” because of the unwanted sexual encounters, is looking forward to the bright days of a husband-less future.

“I am so happy to be free and I will go back to school and never think of getting married again,” she told the Times. “It is a good feeling to be rid of my husband and his bad treatment.”

To which one can only add: it is heartening to see that even within the horrifying and obscene structures of Islamic gender apartheid, women, even as young as eight, can sometimes triumph over injustice.

www.honestreporting.com

As Israel gears up to celebrate, the demonization campaign prepares to escalate.

As the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence approaches, so the campaign of demonization against her is likely to escalate. After all, what better way to delegitimize Israel than to claim that the state was born in sin, attributing criminal charges to those who fought to create a democratic home for the Jewish people after 2000 years of exile.

As part of this campaign, anti-Israel activists are placing opinion pieces in local newspapers. An unpleasant preview of what is to come has arrived in the pages of the Charlotte Observer and Bangor Daily News.

Writing in the Charlotte Observer, Edith Garwood makes a number of claims including:

• “The indigenous Arabs — Muslim, Christian, secular — were systematically driven out of areas desired for a new Jewish state.”
• “Archives show armed Jewish militias expelled Arabs using home demolitions, massacres, rape, beatings, bombings and widespread threats of terror.”
• “The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, rocket fire into Israel, illegal settlement growth, checkpoints, suicide bombers, the crippled Palestinian economy, The Wall, and the lack of adequate access to medicine, food and clean water require attention, but are only outgrowths of the root problem — the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

Garwood concludes by calling for the recognition of the Palestinian “Right of Return” - a call for the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

Meanwhile, Bill Slavick launches an attack on US aid and support for Israel in the Bangor Daily News: “no good has come of it for 60 years except to assist Israel in becoming the bully of the block and giving us trouble.”

Again employing the inflammatory and inaccurate charge of “ethnic cleansing”, Slavick lists a litany of supposed Israeli criminal acts including:

• The “slaughter” of Palestinian civilians at Kibya in 1953.
• The “deliberate bombing” of the USS Liberty in 1967.
• The Jonathan Pollard spy affair.
• Selling arms to the South African apartheid regime.
• Abetting the 1982 Lebanese militia massacres in Sabra and Shatila.

It is, of course, all too easy to put together a long list of charges and claims without providing any details, context or explanation. The average reader will be unable to make any sense of the content without resorting to extensive research.

Ultimately, however, Slavick’s polemic is aimed at the close and valued friendship between Israel and the US, as Slavick directly connects the USS Cole and September 11 attacks to US support for Israel.

Please be on the lookout for more opinion pieces leading up to Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations and send in your comments. Remind the editors that in her 60th year, there is a vibrant, democratic, and dynamic Israel that also deserves op-ed space in response to the negative diatribes that have appeared in many papers.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

It isn’t all bad news however. In sharp contrast to the local titles above, Rocky Mountain News Editor John Temple does take a look at Israel’s life beyond the headlines:

The land of Israel that I found on a spring break visit this year was bursting with energy, in the midst of a boom only licked by the currents that are dragging down the U.S. economy.

Headlines from the region are usually of Gaza and rockets — of conflict. And, of course, that story deserves attention. But there are so many other stories, a few of which I would like to share with you today.

In this Israel, the spring air is rich with the sweet scent of the first blossoming fruit trees.

In this Israel, the streets of Jerusalem are mobbed with young and old, many in outlandish costumes, laughing and dancing, celebrating Purim, a holiday of revelry and abandon. The holiday’s story of Jewish survival is as real today as it was more than 2,000 years ago.

In this Israel, yes, the apartments have “safe rooms,” but they also have outdoor terraces abounding with flowers.

By Hillel Fendel, www.israelnationalnews.com

The CIA — the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency — is set to confirm that the Syrian installation destroyed by Israel on September 6, 2007 was a nuclear reactor. CIA representatives will brief members of a Congressional intelligence subcommittee.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the installation was meant to produce plutonium, and was partially funded by North Korea. Israel bombed the reactor before it attained its planned capacity to manufacture plutonium for nuclear weapons, the CIA says.

The Congressional subcommittee session is to deal with Syrian-North Korean relations, amidst reports that a possible deal is in the works to remove North Korea from the American list of state sponsors of terrorism.

At the presentation at Congress, which will be repeated afterwards to reporters, the intelligence officials will show video images showing Korean faces among the workers at the Syrian plant. Other pictures show what appears to be the construction of a reactor vessel inside the building.

Shortly after the Israel attack, Syria bulldozed the area and constructed a new building there, which it has not allowed foreign visitors to enter.

Israel, the U.S. and Syria have never divulged details about the attack, and today’s presentation is a major departure from this policy. Israel is reportedly not happy with the change, fearing that it will revive the tensions between Syria and Israel.

Syrian media reported that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has agreed in principle to hand over the entire Golan Heights to Syria. Syrian Immigration Minister Boutina Sha’ban confirmed the reports, while Olmert’s office was silent.

Two years ago, Olmert said, “As long as I serve as prime minister, the Golan Heights will remain in our hands because it is an integral part of the State of Israel.” He was quoted in Israeli newspapers as reported by the French news agency AFP.

Nationalist Knesset Members said Olmert was recklessly endangering Israel with his consent to give away the strategic heights.

By Gary Bauer, www.humanevents.com

Looking to take in a movie this weekend? Here’s one that’s not for the faint of heart.

The film “Fitna”–“ordeal” in Arabic — was released recently on the Internet by Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. “Fitna” juxtaposes scenes of violence and terrorism committed by devout Muslims with some of the Quran’s many verses that have been interpreted as justifying such violence and terrorism. The 17-minute movie makes the straightforward case that the jihadists who attack free societies are not distorting Islamic teachings but following them.

Muslims are less than pleased with the film. Islamic websites called for Wilders to be killed, as did a group of about 40 demonstrators in front of the Dutch Embassy in Indonesia. Many Islamic governments condemned the film, and demonstrators in a number of countries have demanded that western nations pass laws forbidding such criticism of Islam.

Why all the fuss? After all, the film’s main point — that Islam incites violence — is precisely the message many Muslim clerics spend much of their time trying to convince their followers to believe. A recent study sponsored by the Center for Security Policy found that of 100 American mosques and Islamic centers and schools it examined across the country, “75 should be on the watch list” for inciting insurrection and jihad through sermons and anti-western literature.

Evidence abounds that Muslim terrorism is very often a “faith-based initiative.” In one recent example, a report posted on Islam Watch, a site run by Muslims who oppose intolerant teachings and hatred of non-Muslims, exposes a prominent Islamic cleric and lawyer who supports extreme punishment for non-Muslims — including rape and murder. A question-and-answer session with Imam Abdul Makin in an East London mosque asks why Allah would tell Muslims to kill and rape innocent non-Muslims, including their wives and daughters. “Because non-Muslims are never innocent, they are guilty of denying Allah and his prophet,” the Imam says.

Western politicians and pundits often misidentify the source of Muslim outrage. Radicals calling for Wilders’ head don’t take issue with Fitna’s claim that Islam calls followers to murder millions of innocent people for the sake of Allah. The protesters’ outrage stems instead from the implied criticisms of such acts. Protestors are calling for Wilders’ death not because he misquoted the Quran’s incitements to violence but because he argues that the book should be outlawed.

There is a pattern here. In 2004, another Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gough, was murdered by a jihadist in Amsterdam for releasing a film about the mistreatment of women in Islamic societies. Van Gough was killed not because his film highlighted passages of the Quran that have been used to justify abuse and rape of women, but rather because the film criticized the abuse and rape. The same pattern has been seen in many of the violent reactions to even slight critiques of Islam, such as in the deadly riots that followed Pope Benedict’s remarks on faith and violence in Regensburg, Germany.

Predictably, many western leaders were quick to condemn Fitna. Australia’s foreign minister called the film “highly offensive.” Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende distanced himself from the movie, and on Monday, Dutch Foreign minister Maxime Verhagen met with ambassadors from Islamic countries to assure them the film “in no way reflects the opinion of the Dutch government.” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon condemned the film, insisting that “incitement” against a religious faith should never be allowed.

It is difficult to take the secretary general seriously. Everyday in the Palestinian territories — on T.V., in movies and in music — there is a steady diet of incitements against Jews, who are routinely compared to apes and monkeys. Palestinian students are taught that Jews use the blood of kidnapped Muslim children in Jewish religious ceremonies. Where are the condemnations from Europe or the U.N. for this incitement? The reaction of European politicians to Wilders’ film is proof that radical Islam has already cowed too many Western leaders into silence.

But even some who acknowledge a causal relationship between Islam and violence are often quick to contend that faith-based violence is confined to a few extremists and is opposed by the vast majority of Muslims. But a recent survey estimates that a quarter of America’s 2.4 million Muslims consider suicide bombing in the name of Islam acceptable in some circumstances. And various polls have found that a majority of Muslims in the Middle East and over one-third of Muslims in Europe are sympathetic to jihad and terrorism against the west.

Which is cause for concern given the Vatican’s announcement this week that Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world’s single largest religious denomination. According to the Vatican, Muslims have soared to nearly 20 percent of the world’s population, while Catholics comprise 17.4 percent. Although Christianity — with 2 billion adherents, 33 percent of the population — is still the world’s most popular religion, Islam is arguably its fastest growing, and it is certainly the fastest growing in Europe.

As the number of Muslims increases, and as evidence mounts that a significant minority supports violence, the threat to western democracies built on free inquiry and debate is real.

To watch the Fitna movie, google the word Fitna.
Or, cut and paste the following address to watch the Fitna movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kx9mZBODZg

By Judy Siegel-Itzkovich , www.JPost.com

Sderot - the target of thousands of Gazan missile attacks - finally has something to celebrate.

The beleaguered city recently dedicated a new, state-of-the-art Magen David Adom emergency medical station. The facility, which replaces a makeshift building more than 30 years old that had recently been condemned due to structural problems, was made possible by funds raised by the American Friends of Magen David Adom (AFMDA).

The station is reportedly the first new construction in Sderot in the last five years. [See May ’08 Levitt Letter, pgs. 10-12]

Health Minister Ya’acov Ben-Yizri and Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal attended the opening alongside local Sderot paramedics and MDA friends from around the world.

The minister said the event was a cause for both celebration and sadness.

“We are excited that we can open such a grand and impressive facility, yet we are saddened by the knowledge that at least in the near future it will be called upon to treat the wounded from the surrounding areas,” he said. “When we see the work of these paramedics, we see examples of excellence. Despite the situation and the dangers, they always perform remarkably.”

Sderot’s mayor spoke of his city’s sincere appreciation for the goodwill that has been shown to them by the international community.

“While it may be that life is difficult here,” said Moyal, “the fact that people on the other side of the world care for us and support projects such as this new MDA station, this is what gives us strength to continue on, and I can promise you today that this city will never fall.”

On Monday evening, two Kassams were fired at the western Negev, causing no damage or injury.

The major gifts that enabled the station’s construction were made in memory of Judy Kaplan from Larchmont, New York, and Esther and Hyman Rapport of Cleveland, Ohio.

AFMDA president Daniel Allen saluted the donors who made the project possible and said the new facility would permanently enhance the already dedicated level of care MDA is able to provide Sderot and the surrounding areas.

“We have been able to take an old station desperately in need of repair and [replace it with] a new one that …the people of Sderot can be proud of and know is there for them should they ever need it. This town is a true symbol of courage and conviction.

“We, as American Jews, feel it is important to say that when the people of Sderot are under attack, we too feel their pain.”

The new station has a large ambulance bay area with a dispatch facility, offices and multiple rooms for crews to rest during shifts. The building was constructed according to new standards that make much of it protected against rocket attacks, allowing crews to easily move to safety when hearing the alert siren.

In 2007, AFMDA raised over $27 million to benefit MDA and the people of Israel, saving lives through the donation of ambulances and bloodmobiles, purchasing equipment and supplies and building new MDA stations.

By Barry Schweid, AP Diplomatic Writer

Saudi Arabia most likely would develop nuclear weapons if Iran acquires them, according to a report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

High-level American diplomats in Riyadh with excellent access to Saudi decision-makers said an Iranian nuclear weapon frightens the Saudis “to their core” and would compel the Saudis to seek nuclear weapons, the report said. The American diplomats were not identified.

Turkey also would come under pressure to follow suit if Iran builds nuclear weapons in the next decade, said the report prepared by a committee staff member after interviewing hundreds of individuals in Washington and the Middle East last July through December.

While Turkey and Iran do not see themselves as adversaries, Turkey believes a power balance between them is the primary reason for a peaceful relationship, the report said.

Egypt most likely would choose not to respond by pursuing its own nuclear weapons program, said the report prepared in late February and obtained in April. The impact on relations with Israel and the United States were cited as the primary reasons.

A U.S. intelligence estimate late last year said Iran worked on nuclear weapons programs until 2003 before abandoning them. However, the intelligence analysts also reported Iran was continuing to enrich uranium, a key weapons component, and possessed the capacity to produce nuclear weapons if it decided to do so.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., the senior Republican on the committee, directed staff member Bradley Bowman to conduct the study.

Among its conclusions, the report said demands for nuclear energy and for matching Iran’s nuclear progress virtually guarantees that three or four Middle Eastern countries will generate nuclear power by 2025.

And this, in turn, will reduce the obstacles to acquiring nuclear weapons, the report said.

The spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East could reduce regional security and endanger U.S. interests, the report said.

In the next two or three years, the United States must take steps to restore Arab and Turkish confidence in U.S. security guarantees, the report concluded.

Otherwise, it said, “the future Middle East landscape may include a number of nuclear-armed or nuclear weapons-capable states vying for influence in a notoriously unstable region.”

Today’s Golden Oldie was published on April 17, 1992, exactly 16 years ago. We had seen another repressive empire go down.

We Jews have survived and maintained our unique civilization and identity through thousands of years of history …much of it dominated by anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist ideologies, empires, and mass movements. We have watched these great and powerful empires rise, each in turn bringing its own, twisted rewriting of the past.

To survive, however, we must remember. And so each year at Pessah, we sit together, in families, in Seders, around the world, linked with generations stretching back through time, and together we read the Haggadah, a manual of instruction on how to remember who and what we are.

Happy Pessah to us all!

By Daniel Pipes, www.FrontPageMagazine.com

Some analysts of Islam in Western Europe argue that the continent cannot escape its Eurabian fate; that the trend lines of the past half-century will continue until Muslims become a majority population and Islamic law (the Shari‘a) reigns.

I disagree, arguing that there is another route the continent might take, one of resistance to Islamification and a reassertion of traditional ways. Indigenous Europeans – who make up 95 percent of the population – can insist on their historic customs and mores. Were they to do so, nothing would be in their way and no one could stop them.

Indeed, Europeans are visibly showing signs of impatience with creeping Shari‘a. The legislation in France that prohibits hijabs from public school classrooms signals the reluctance to accept Islamic ways, as are related efforts to ban burqas, mosques, and minarets. Throughout Western Europe, anti-immigrant parties are generally increasing in popularity.

That resistance took a new turn last week, with two dramatic events. First, on March 22, Pope Benedict XVI himself baptized, confirmed, and gave the Eucharist to Magdi Allam, 56, a prominent Egyptian-born Muslim long living in Italy, where he is a top editor at the Corriere della Sera newspaper and a well-known author. Allam took the middle name Cristiano. The ceremony converting him to the Catholic religion could not have been higher profile, occurring at a nighttime service at St. Peter’s Basilica on the eve of Easter Sunday, with exhaustive coverage from the Vatican and many other television stations.

Allam followed up his conversion with a stinging statement in which he argued that beyond “the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive.” In other words, the problem is not just Islamism but Islam itself. One commentator, “Spengler” of Asia Times, goes so far as to say that Allam “presents an existential threat to Muslim life” because he “agrees with his former co-religionists in repudiating the degraded culture of the modern West, and offers them something quite different: a religion founded upon love.”

Second, on March 27, Geert Wilders, 44, released his long-awaited, 15-minute film, Fitna, which consists of some of the most bellicose verses of the Koran, followed by actions in accord with those verses carried out by Islamists in recent years. The obvious implication is that Islamists are simply acting in accord with their scriptures. In Allam’s words, Wilders also argues that “the root of evil is inherent” in Islam.

Unlike Allam and Wilders, I do distinguish between Islam and Islamism, but I believe it imperative that their ideas get a fair hearing, without vituperation or punishment. An honest debate over Islam must take place.

If Allam’s conversion was a surprise and Wilders’ film had a three-month run-up, in both cases, the aggressive, violent reactions that met prior criticisms of Islam did not take place. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Dutch police contacted imams to gauge reactions at the city’s mosques and found, according to police spokesman Arnold Aben, “it’s quieter than usual here today. Sort of like a holiday.” In Pakistan, a rally against the film attracted only some dozens of protestors.

This relatively constrained reaction points to the fact that Muslim threats sufficed to enforce censorship. Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende denounced Fitna and, after 3.6 million visitors had viewed it on the British website LiveLeak.com, the company announced that “Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, … Liveleak has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.” (Two days later, however, LiveLeak again posted the film.)

Three similarities bear noting: both Allam (author of a book titled Viva Israele) and Wilders (whose film emphasizes Muslim violence against Jews) stand up for Israel and the Jews; Muslim threats against their lives have forced both for years to live under state-provided round-the-clock police protection; and, more profoundly, the two share a passion for European civilization.

Indeed, Allam and Wilders may represent the vanguard of a Christian/liberal reassertion of European values. It is too soon to predict, but these staunch individuals could provide a crucial boost for those intent on maintaining the continent’s historic identity.