Levitt Letter Extra News

By Phyllis Chesler, pajamasmedia.com

Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Muslim teenager who converted to Christianity at least four years ago but who only recently ran away, has been taken away from the two good Samaritan Christian pastors who took her in and is now in state custody in Florida. On Friday, a judge will decide whether her case should be heard in Florida or in Ohio. Her parents have “lawyered” up, her father Mohamed Bary, a jeweler, insists that he never threatened to kill her, that he wants her to come home. The mainstream media is getting nervous. What if they believe what Rifqa says and they end up sued? Or worse?

After all, the Columbus police have challenged the girl’s claim that she is in danger. Sgt Jerry Cupp, chief of the Columbus police missing person’s bureau, has said that “Mohamed Bary comes across to me as a loving, caring, worried father about the whereabouts and the health of his daughter.”

So much for Ohio. But allow me to point out that for weeks, Mohammed Shafi and his second wife, Rona Amir Mohammed, wept, mourned, and generally carried on about the deaths of their three daughters and of Mohammed’s first wife–until the police arrested both Mohammed and Rona, along with one of their sons, for having been behind these heinous, heartless, murders.

Now, Florida Imam Hatim Hamidullah, with the Islamic Society of Central Florida, has informed us that the Muslim faith does not call for a father to hurt his child, should she convert to another religion.

“It is not Islam for the father to bring harm upon his blood daughter or any other human being because of anger,” he said. “Our position is to exhaust all measures that would bring peace and harmony back to the family,” Hamidullah said. “Being angry and threatening the life of someone is not one of those methods.”

Someone has got to explain the technique of taqiyya (the high Islamic Art of disinformation) to the Ohio police, to the judiciary in both Ohio and Florida, and to the mainstream media.

A Muslim is a human being who, like all other human beings, will lie to save his life. In addition, a Muslim might also lie to save his…honor. No Muslim is going to tell the world that “Oh yes, by the way, some Muslims (either due to their non-religious ethno-national-cultural traditions, their misinterpretation of the Koran–or to their very clear understanding of what the Koran says about apostates), might actually kill another Muslim. Or one of their own women. Or, for that matter, infidels in general.”

Thus, the attacks on 9/11 were really not Muslim or even Saudi “operations.” True, most of the hijackers were Arab Muslims from Saudi Arabia but that is entirely beside the point. These attacks were, rather, undertaken by a) Muslims who hijacked an otherwise “peaceful” religion; b) in fact, the attacks were an “anti-Islamic” operation undertaken specifically to give “peaceful” Islam a bad name; c) everyone knows that 9/11 was an inside CIA and Zionist plot meant to justify America’s attack on al-Qaeda/Afghanistan/Iraq.

This is taqiyya in action.

Therefore, when an honor killing of a daughter, wife, or female cousin occurs in the West, Muslim leaders almost immediately insist that the crime has absolutely nothing to do with Islam or with the Koran; that the murderer is just one more domestically violent man, just like the violent men who exist everywhere, even in the West.

This is not true.

According to my study, published in Middle East Quarterly, it is true: Most Muslims do not kill their female family members; but some Muslims do. Or rather: So far, the honor killings that we know about in the West, including in North America, have been committed mainly by Muslims. Muslim girls and women are killed when their actions are perceived as “too Western,” “too independent,” “too assimilated.” Honor murders are undertaken by the entire family whose ability to totally control their women has failed and therefore, whose honor has been compromised and must be avenged.

Only blood will do.

Teenage girls in America and in Canada have been killed by their fathers for refusing to wear hijab; for having friends, both girls and boys, who are not Muslims; for having actual boyfriends; for refusing to marry their first cousins back in the Old Country; for wanting to choose their own husbands; for wanting to attend college; for wanting to assimilate into the West. Often, Muslim girls are kept in line by death-threats and by routine, normalized beatings. They are also kept in line when even one other Muslim girl or woman is honor murdered. These murders are meant to keep Muslim women cowed, careful, grateful to be allowed to live.

Honor killings are primarily Muslim-on-Muslim crimes.

In 2008, poor Amina and Sarah Said, teenagers both, were honor murdered in Dallas by their father Yaser Said, (with their mother Tissie’s complicity). They were beaten, threatened, and also sexually abused by their father. What was their ultimate sin? They had finally fled Yaser’s tyranny at home–and they fled with Christian boyfriends. They did not convert to Christianity but, who knows? They might have ended up marrying a Christian. This is also shameful, forbidden. Their mother, a Christian convert to Islam, lured them back home with promises of reconciliation; within the hour both girls were murdered. Yaser has never been found.

All the above teenage “crimes” are not as important as converting to another religion, away from Islam. A boyfriend is bad enough. Another God? Unthinkable. Shameful. Christianity and Judaism are seen, at best, as lesser, earlier, failed religions which should have embraced Islam as the more “perfect” and perfected religion but which refused to do so. The serious persecution of Christians and Jews in Muslim lands is known.

Fathima Rifqa Bary apparently converted to Christianity more than four years ago. If so, it is impossible for the Pastors, Beverly and Blake Lorenz to have “kidnapped” or “influenced” her. According to one media report,

“Rifqa, a high school junior in well-off suburban New Albany, had been questioning her faith for several months, her father said. She attended church with friends from school and later attended services at another church, Xenos Christian Fellowship, a megachurch that emphasizes small groups meeting at home….After Rifqa proselytized with a Bible at school, Mohamed Bary said, the family asked her to stop because it wasn’t an appropriate activity in school. They also told her she had an obligation to study her original faith first, before choosing another.”

One wonders whether or not such an obligation to study Islam might not be considered a life-long obligation. All Muslims, even parents, have an obligation to kill any Muslim who converts to another religion. This is why many Muslim apostates write under pseudonyms.

Now, if Rifqa’s family were an assimilated, anti-religious or non-religious Muslim family with many non-Muslim friends, relatives, and business colleagues–perhaps with family members who themselves had converted to another religion–it might be a different matter. That does not seem to be the case here.

Religious freedom and religious tolerance are Western values. Such tolerance does not exist in Muslim countries, certainly not today. Also, no matter where a Muslim might have grown up, Islamic identity today, even among second and third generation immigrants, but especially among first generation and recent immigrants, (which the Barys are), is increasingly a globalized identity, and one which is highly radical.

One hopes that the Florida judge will seriously consider the information about how Muslims utilize taqiyya, treat apostates, as well as Christians in the Middle East and Asia, and why Muslims honor murder their daughters and female relatives. Based on such information, perhaps the judge will not return Rifqa to Ohio. If she or he does, one hopes that the Ohio judge will never return Rifqa to the custody of her parents.

We should trust what Rifqa says, and consider placing her in the equivalent of a federal witness protection program until she is an adult. Even then, she will never, ever be safe.

James Hider, Richard Beeston, and Michael Evans   www.TimesOnline.co.uk

Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb, Western intelligence sources have told The Times.

The sources said that Iran completed a research program to create weaponized uranium in the summer of 2003 and that it could feasibly make a bomb within a year of an order from its Supreme Leader.

A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate two years ago concluded that Iran had ended its nuclear arms research program in 2003 because of the threat from the American invasion of Iraq. But intelligence sources have told The Times that Tehran had halted the research because it had achieved its aim — to find a way of detonating a warhead that could be launched on its long-range Shehab-3 missiles.

They said that, should Ayatollah Khamenei approve the building of a nuclear device, it would take six months to enrich enough uranium and another six months to assemble the warhead. The Iranian Defense Ministry has been running a covert nuclear research department for years, employing hundreds of scientists, researchers, and metallurgists in a multibillion-dollar program to develop nuclear technology alongside the civilian nuclear program.

“The main thing (in 2003) was the lack of fissile material, so it was best to slow it down,” the sources said. “We think that the leader himself decided back then (to halt the program), after the good results.”

Iran’s scientists have been trying to master a method of detonating a bomb known as the “multipoint initiation system” — wrapping highly enriched uranium in high explosives and then detonating it. The sources said that the Iranian Defense Ministry had used a secret internal agency called Amad (“Supply” in Farsi), led by Mohsin Fakhri Zadeh, a physics professor and senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Council.

The system operates by creating a series of explosive grooves on a metal hemisphere covering the uranium, which links explosives-filled holes opening onto a layer of high explosives enveloping the uranium. By detonating the explosives at either pole at the same time, the method ensures simultaneous impact around the sphere to achieve critical density.

“If the Supreme Leader takes the decision (to build a bomb), we assess they have to enrich low-enriched uranium to highly-enriched uranium at the Natanz plant, which could take six months, depending on how many centrifuges are operating. We don’t know if the decision was made yet,” said the intelligence sources, adding that Iran could have created smaller, secret facilities, other than those at the heavily guarded bunker at Natanz to develop materials for a first bomb. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency only keep tabs on fissile material produced at monitored sites and not the number of centrifuges that Iran has built.

Washington has given Iran until next month to open talks on resolving the nuclear crisis, although hopes of any constructive engagement have dimmed since the regime’s crackdown on pro-reformist protesters after June’s disputed presidential elections.

Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defense Minister, last week reiterated that a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities was still an option, should the talks fail. Israeli officials estimate that a raid on Natanz and a nuclear facility at Arak, in central Iran, would set Iran’s nuclear program back by two to three years.

An Israeli official said that Iran had poured billions of dollars over three decades into a two-pronged “master plan” to build a nuclear bomb. He said that Iran had enriched 1,010kg of uranium to 3.9 per cent, which would be sufficient for 30kg of highly enriched uranium at 95 per cent. About 30kg is needed to build one bomb.

British intelligence services are familiar with the secret information about Iran’s experiments, sources at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said. Although British agencies did not have their own “independent evidence” that Iran had successfully tested the explosive component of a nuclear warhead, they said there was no reason to doubt the assessment.

If Iran’s leader does decide to build a bomb, he will have two choices, intelligence sources said. One would be to take the high-risk approach of kicking out the international inspectors and making a sprint to complete Iran’s first bomb, as the country weathered international sanctions or possible air strikes in the ensuing crisis. The other would be to covertly develop the materials needed for an arsenal in secret desert facilities.

Last week, during a series of high-level U.S. visits to Israel, officials outlined Washington’s plans to step up sanctions on Iran, should Tehran fail to agree on talks. Robert Gates, the Defense Secretary, and General James Jones, the National Security Adviser, said that Iran had until the end of next month, when the UN General Assembly is to meet, to make a positive move towards engagement.

If Tehran fails to respond, Washington aims to build a tough international coalition to impose harsh sanctions focusing on petroleum products — an area where Iran is particularly vulnerable because it sends almost all of its crude abroad for refinement.

Experts believe that the unrest of the summer will make Iran particularly vulnerable to sanctions. They would also hit the Revolutionary Guards Council, which finances its operations by running a huge conglomerate of international companies, rather than drawing directly from state coffers.

by Robert Maginnis   www.HumanEvents.com

Burden sharing among allies in Afghanistan is declining as the battlefield demands increase and the consequences of quitting remain unacceptable.  What should the U.S. do?

The U.S. has at least three options in Afghanistan: pull out and accept the consequences, increase our level of effort, and/or try to compel our allies to increase their contributions.  In any case, it will be years before the Afghans can take over the mission.

For the U.S., Afghanistan is a war of necessity because the former Taliban regime enabled al-Qaeda to mount the 9/11 attacks that killed almost 3,000 Americans and because many terrorist groups could quickly resume their safe haven operations from there if we fail.  Our goal is to create a self-sustaining Afghanistan able to deny safe havens to terrorists.

Quitting Afghanistan before it is ready to secure itself may be tempting but it isn’t a viable option because the consequences of failure are unacceptable.  The possible consequences include the Taliban returning to power, which could lead to a regional civil war that might destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan and restore al-Qaeda’s safe haven.  It would also embolden jihadists and weaken regional allies.

Alternatively, the U.S. could increase its troop levels.  More troops are required because President Obama launched a counterinsurgency strategy that focuses on securing Afghanistan’s 33 million mostly rural population scattered across that Texas-size country.  He also needs the resources to develop each community to help win the population’s “hearts and minds.”

To address that formula, Obama promises to increase our troops by 21,000 personnel to 68,000 by year end.  But this increase is woefully insufficient to secure the Afghan population, even when combined with our few willing allies.  The best estimate of how many troops are needed is being determined by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan.  He delivers his assessment to the president next month.

McCrystal’s analysis is complicated by a number of emerging factors.  The Taliban increased by 57% its attacks over the same period last year and recent operations are encountering unforeseen resilience among Pashtun militants in western and northern Afghanistan, and even Kandahar, the country’s second largest city, is coming “under stress.”

The general also warns that the security mission and winning “hearts and minds” will be slow – translated: expect numerous troop rotations in the coming years.  “Until we hit the point where the insurgent fighters decide they cannot force us out or cannot discourage us, I think they’re likely to stay significantly,” McChrystal said.

That’s why Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cautioned, “This problem will not be over in two years.  This is, let’s be honest, a long-term commitment that we are involved in Afghanistan, if we are to ultimately be successful.”

The American public appears to accept an extended effort in Afghanistan.  A recent Gallup Poll found that 54% of Americans believe the Afghan war is going at least “moderately well,” and an April 2009 Roper Public Affairs & Media Poll found 53% of Americans approve of Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan.   But Gates cautions progress must be made in Afghanistan in the next 18 months in order to maintain public support for the mission.

Sending more troops is getting serious consideration.  Last week, Gates said he will soon decide whether to temporarily grow the army from 547,000 in order to cope with the dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  His objective is to extend the “dwell time” for troops between tours of combat.  That decision could also provide the president more flexibility to increase force levels in Afghanistan if it becomes necessary.

For now, Gates is waiting on McCrystal’s review of the operation and possible troop request.  “I think there will not be a significant increase in troop levels in Afghanistan … at least probably through the end of the year,” Gates said.  However, that leaves open the possibility more troops could be sent next year after we begin accelerating our withdraw from Iraq.

Even with a larger Army, America’s military is severely stretched with 26% of the force deployed overseas.  We should ask why our allies aren’t doing more to help in Afghanistan.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is a United Nations-sanctioned coalition of 42 nations in Afghanistan to assist that government in the establishment of a secure and stable environment.  It has 61,130 personnel, of which 28,850 are Americans, and is also commanded by Gen. McChrystal.

Most of ISAF’s assigned forces are hamstrung by “78-80 caveats” imposed by their nations to restrict where their troops can be deployed or the tasks they can perform, said recently retired Gen. John Craddock, NATO’s former Supreme Allied Commander Europe.   Craddock said the caveats “… increase the risk to every service member deployed in Afghanistan and bring increased risk to mission success.”  He argues they are “… a detriment to effective command and control, unity of effort, and … command.”

Troops with too many caveats are not available for the types of counterinsurgency missions the U.S. Marines are now conducting in Helmand province.  Rather, caveat-bound ISAF troops conduct support missions and stay behind the walls of their heavily protected forward operating bases rather than embedding in Afghan villages.  Ask American warriors in Afghanistan what ISAF means and you might hear something like “I Saw Americans Fight.”

Only a few ISAF countries like Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Britain, and Australia are “in the fight” with the Americans.   Other NATO members, notably Germany and France, avoid danger by operating in the country’s relatively safe north and west.

The lack of sufficient NATO fighters to augment American forces undermines Obama’s troop intensive counterinsurgency strategy.  Recently, Gen. Craddock said he failed to find a NATO ally willing to replace 2,000 U.S. Marines now conducting counterinsurgency operations in war-torn South Afghanistan and scheduled to leave in November.

Unfortunately, the lack of NATO fighters will get worse.  The Dutch plan to give up the lead role in Uruzgan province next year and Canada intends to bring its troops home from Kandahar by 2011.

Ultimately, Obama’s strategy rests on the hope that the Afghan National Army (ANA) will quickly become large and competent enough to relieve coalition forces.  But the ANA is unlikely to be capable of that mission for several years. Today, the ANA has 89,500 personnel and the plan is to increase it to 134,000 by the end of 2011.

A 2009 Rand Corporation study sponsored by the Pentagon concludes “… the ANA is a long way from being able to assume primary responsibility for Afghanistan’s security.”  The study states it will be “a matter of years” before the ANA is capable of securing the country and even then “some form of security assistance will have to continue for the foreseeable future.”

The Afghanistan war will be long and any further increase in fighters should come from caveat-free stingy allies and/or the maturing ANA.  The last resort for additional forces should be America and only after President Obama makes a convincing case that Afghanistan is worth more sacrifice.

By Ronald Kessler, www.NewsMax.com

Reaction to President Obama’s speech to a Muslim audience in Cairo in early June has drawn a range of reaction from many Jewish leaders. Detractors condemned it as a revision of the long and close relationship between the U.S. and Israel. But many who backed Obama were also surprised and dismayed over Obama’s speech. Such reactions from major Jewish leaders have largely remained beneath the surface, exchanged privately among them.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, spoke out. “I have no problem with addressing the Muslim world. We here at the conference have done it for about 12 or 15 years. But the question is, what is the message they get? It’s not so much what he says, but how do they perceive what he says?”

On the one hand, Hoenlein says, “His reference to Israel and the special relationship being unbreakable is important, and references to persecution and Holocaust denial were important.”

But Hoenlein is disturbed that Obama did not mention the Jewish people’s ancient connection with the land of Israel. “There was no reference to the 3,000 years of Jewish connection to this land,” he says. “And that is one of the propaganda lines that the Arabs use: that the Jews are interlopers, that the two Temples never existed, that there was never any Jewish history in Israel. I don’t believe that was the president’s intent, but not making those references is troubling.”

Jews have claimed a connection to the land of their forefathers since 1400 B.C. Even after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., many Jews continued to reside in Jerusalem through the centuries, surviving various invasions. An 1845 Ottoman census of Jerusalem showed Jews outnumbered Muslim Arabs by almost 2 to 1 and were the dominant ethnic group in the region.

In his speech, President Obama addressed the issue of the Holocaust head-on, saying “Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.” But he quickly changed the subject, comparing Hitler’s genocide of the Jews to the Palestinian struggle.

Hoenlein doesn’t buy Obama’s line of reasoning. “The Palestinian refugee problem, or dislocation as he said, didn’t come about because of the creation of the Jewish state,” Hoenlein says. “It came about because the Arab states declared war on Israel and warned the Arabs that they would suffer the same fate as the Jews if they didn’t get out. And then they kept them as political pawns. The reason the Palestinians don’t have a state is because their leaders rejected every offer for peace. Whether it was in 1937 or 1947 or 1967, or later on, up until Ehud Olmert’s offer and Ehud Barak’s offer, they rejected everything, even when they were getting virtually everything they had asked for.”

That is because, “The problem really is not what Israel does, it’s that Israel is,” Hoenlein says. “And they’re not ready to accept the existence of the Jewish state.”

Obama also failed to mention the other refugee problem involving nearly a million Jews. In 1948, Jews populated the major Arab cities from Baghdad in the east to Casablanca in the west. After Israel saw its rebirth, Jews “were driven out of Arab countries penniless, and some of their families had lived there for a thousand years, and yet there was no reference to them.” Hoenlein adds, “It’s a question of the realities that are communicated to a vast audience in the Arab Muslim world.”

 By Sara Terry, The Christian Science Monitor, www.csmonitor.com

 KABUL, AFGHANISTAN –As odd as it may sound, I thought that a burqa might be the answer to my problems. Here on a five-week assignment to shoot photos for a humanitarian organization, I was dismayed to realize that I wasn’t going to be able to move freely. There was a standing threat against Western women working for aid organizations — prime targets for kidnapping and sale to the Taliban. Understandably enough, the organization restricted my movements, rarely allowing me out on the street unless I was in a car — and never allowing me to go anywhere alone.

My exasperation grew as I discovered that even when I could go out, I couldn’t take a step without being the center of attention. It wasn’t unfriendly attention; I actually never felt unsafe or threatened. It’s just that wherever I went, everyone watched me. Heads swiveled the moment I stepped out of the car. People were curious about the presence of a foreigner, and even more so when I held up my camera. In other words, the pictures I love to make — street scenes and moments of gesture and interaction between people, all taken as if I’d had gone unnoticed — were impossible.

 So, I began eyeing those voluminous blue burqas, still ubiquitous in Kabul. I wondered if I could “hide” underneath one and find a way to work comfortably on the street.

 The irony didn’t escape me — looking for a measure of freedom in a garment that had come to symbolize the brutal repression of women during the Taliban era.

 At my request, my driver asked his wife to find a burqa for me. He delivered it early one morning, and I hurried upstairs, threw it over my head, went straight to the bathroom mirror, and made the first of several discoveries. The burqa has an oddly comforting quality at first — reminiscent of the cozy intrigue of a kid hiding in a makeshift tent under the dining room table. But it’s also hot and stuffy. It’s tricky to walk in because it allows no peripheral vision and catches on things like bushes and doorknobs. And the headpiece is so tight that it’s impossible to shoot with a regular camera from inside — there’s only an inch or two of space between one’s eyes and the mesh screen that hides the face.

So I picked up my cell phone and slipped it up between my nose and the mesh. I began with the most obvious pictures of all — self-portraits in the bathroom mirror.

I’d seen many pictures of women in burqas, but here was a whole new point of view – pictures from inside the burqa.

I was eager to see if my theory of anonymity would work on the streets of Kabul. But I didn’t get past the front door. My driver and the organization’s security officials objected, arguing that I’d be immediately identifiable as a foreigner — by my shoes and the way I walk — and that the police would suspect that I was trying to hide something.

Thwarted, I still couldn’t let the idea go. So I took the burqa with me in a bag everywhere I went, looking for moments when my driver would let me wear it. At the Mughal garden I clumsily threw the burqa over my head — there’s a trick to writhing through yards of fabric to find the three-inch-wide spot for your eyes. When I stood up in it from the back of our SUV, my long-suffering driver looked at me and smiled and said, “You look nice.”

I nearly fell over – both from the disorienting tiny mesh screen and amazement at what I’d just heard. “But, Abdullah,” I countered. “You can’t see me. How can you possibly say I look nice?”

He smiled and turned away.

 I wore the burqa whenever I could — in the park, the countryside, a bazaar. Stumbling, at first, and coping with the uncomfortable confinement of the cheap polyester, I took pictures of the world around me, through a veil that for many Afghan women is the way the public world is seen every minute of every day.

I took my burqa to Bamiyan, where the Taliban in 2001 dynamited the ancient Buddha statues carved into sandstone cliffs. I walked up a short incline and threw on the burqa, and heard one of the local guides shout up to me, “Can you see?”

I turned around, covered in the robe. “Of course, I can’t see anything,” I yelled back. “I’m wearing a burqa.” Later, I assured the four men who’d accompanied me that if men had to wear burqas, there’d soon be no burqas in Afghanistan.

In the end, I made a series of photos I call “Circle Vision,” because of the way the circles in the burqa mesh screen divide up the field of vision. For me, they ultimately came to represent little intersecting boundaries that remind me of the many woven boundaries encircling the lives of Afghan women every day.

It was the briefest of encounters with their world — but an enlightening one. I saw a bit of what they see, and learned, in surprising ways, what it means to be seen inside a burqa.

I was, in fact, stopped by the police — twice. They wanted to know who I was and why I was wearing a burqa; each time, my guides explained I was just interested in seeing the world the way Afghan women do, so that I could share it back home.

The last day I wore my burqa, I’d been out in the neighborhood with one of the security guards, an educated young man who’d told me a lot about his life, including the fact that he had many girlfriends and no plans to marry. When I took the deep-blue burqa off for the last time, I turned to see the young man smiling. “You look good in a burqa,” he said, much to my astonishment. “You put that on again, and I just might pop the question.”

www.americanthinker.com

 

Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter of www.TimesOnline.co.uk are reporting that Israeli defense officials have assured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Saudi Arabia would look the other way if Israeli warplanes flew over the Kingdom on their way to Iran.

Or, at least, they might have. Now that the information has been leaked, it is doubtful that the Royals would risk the backlash from their fundamentalist base:

 Earlier this year Meir Dagan, Mossad’s director since 2002, held secret talks with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility.

The Israeli press has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, held meetings with Saudi colleagues. The reports were denied by Saudi officials.

“The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia,” a diplomatic source said last week.

Although the countries have no formal diplomatic relations, an Israeli defence source confirmed that Mossad maintained “working relations” with the Saudis.

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations who recently visited the Gulf, said it was “entirely logical” for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace.

Bolton, who has talked to several Arab leaders, added: “None of them would say anything about it publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn’t trumpet it as a big success.”

Arab states would condemn a raid when they spoke at the UN but would be privately relieved to see the threat of an Iranian bomb removed, he said.

 Bolton is absolutely correct. The Saudis would not mind at all if Iran’s nuclear threat were to disappear. The same goes for any other sane regime in the Middle East. No one wants Iran to get the bomb  – not with that crew in charge in Tehran.

But it is now an open question whether the royal family could actually allow such overflights. It would certainly rile the Wahabbists [sic] who wield great influence with ordinary Saudis and that might endanger the family’s hold on power. If the overflights had occurred without advance warning, they could have feigned surprise. That option is now out the window.

Still, the threat is so great they may yet allow the Israeli air force to traverse their air space without saying anything.

By Rosslyn Smith, www.AmericanThinker.com

Are the Ayatollahs learning that hell hath no fury like 34 million women scorned, forced out of the workplace, harassed, and humiliated by religious police for three decades? I have noticed some of the bravest protesters in Iran have been women, including a few who have been without headscarves and showing a great deal more of their figures than the regime would approve. Roger Cohen of the NY Times has noticed this, too.

…. Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”

CNN has noted that for at least some of these women it is about far more than a stolen election.

Like thousands of other Iranian women, Parisa took to Tehran’s streets this week, her heart brimming with hope. “Change,” said the placards around her.

The young Iranian woman eyed the crowd and pondered the possibility that the rest of her life might be different from her mother’s. She could see glimmers of a future free from discrimination—and all the symbols of it, including the head-covering the government requires her to wear every day.

Earlier stories about the Iran election noted that Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, is a formidable political force in her own right, having been the first woman chancellor of an Iranian university since the Revolution. That she may have lost that position in a purge of reformists after Ahmadinejad was elected President in 2005 helps explain some of the enmity between the candidates. Unusual for Iran, Rahnavard’s actively campaigned for her husband, particularly among university students and women. On the campaign trail she noticeably flouted violations of the dress codes that tightened up after Ahmadinejad’s 2006 election. Her head covering was a brightly colored scarf, her use of makeup was noticeable, and her chador was worn so you could glimpse the outfit underneath.

The flouting of the moral police was probably political theater. A more substantive reason that Rahnavard’s active campaign presence excited women is this dismal fact about how the kleptocracy of misogynist ayatollahs has thwarted human expectations: More than 60 percent of Iran’s university students are women, but women make up only perhaps 15 percent of the workforce. One sector often favored by college educated American women, that of civil service, has been increasing hard for women to access under Ahmadinejad.

Women left alone with children after the death or desertion of a husband are particularly hard hit in a culture that openly discriminates in employment. So are those in abusive relationships with fathers or husbands. One of Iran’s dirty little secrets is how many women are forced into prostitution. News stories from 2002 reported as many as 300,000 women were engaged in prostitution in greater Tehran. In an area with a population then estimated at 12 million that is close to 5% of the total female population.

The religious fig leaf for the business of selling sexual favors is a practice allowed in Shiite branch of Islam know as sigheh, or a marriage contracted for a fixed period of time. Supposedly the woman contracted in such a marriage is not to enter into a new contract until one menstrual cycle has passed. This was obviously not the case because the reason prostitution came to official attention in 2002 was that two women engaging in the trade infected over 1,100 men with the HIV virus.

I am not a bit surprised that women are among the leaders of this revolt. Several years ago I read Azar Nafisi’s memoir of life in Iran during and after the 1979 revolution, Reading Lolita in Tehran. Educated in the West where she was active on the political left, Dr, Nafisi returned to Iran in 1979 to teach English language literature. Some of the best passages in the book relate to her fight not to have to wear the head covering and shapeless cloak increasingly being mandated by Iran’s new rulers. Those forcing her to become a walking mummy included Marxists who went along with the Islamic fundamentalists on the issue before they, too, were squeezed out of the power structure. The Marxists argued that staying with Western-style dress was a symbol of solidarity with colonial oppressors! When Nafisi lost the fight on the chador, she vowed to teach her own children, sons and daughters alike, about the injustice of such restrictions on women.

Dr. Nafisi knew that her favorite students mostly agreed with her on such issues, but she later learned she had also had a great influence on some others who had gone with the flow in 1979. Near the end of the her book, when she is preparing to emigrate to America, Dr. Nafisi runs into one of her students. This young woman had belonged to the Muslim Students’ Association. She had vocally objected with fellow MSA members on being made to read about “immoral” characters like Heathcliff and the foolish, unreasonable, stubborn, and equally immoral Daisy Miller. It seems the student had been far more engaged in the material than her classroom protests would have indicated. She told Nafisi she had continued to read literature “for her own heart” after leaving school. She was married now, with a newborn daughter she named after the professor! Not the name on the birth certificate. That was the name of a favorite aunt, now deceased.

…but I have a secret name for her. I call her Daisy. She said she had hesitated between Daisy and Lizzy. She had finally settled on Daisy. Lizzy was the one she had dreamed of, but marrying Mr. Darcy was too much wishful thinking. Why Daisy? Don’t you remember, Daisy Miller? Haven’t you heard that if you give your child a name with meaning she will become like her namesake? I want my daughter to be what I never was — like Daisy. You know, courageous.

When I read Nafisi’s words, I thought of how one of the events that helped the women’s movement initially resonate in America was the manner in which some women who had taken jobs outside the home during the labor shortages of WW II were summarily fired in peacetime. A good friend’s mother who taught at a noted left-wing university during and immediately after the war never let her son forget that she had lost her job just as soon as a male with a newly minted degree under the GI bill had became available. The injustice done American women pales besides that inflicted on the women of Iran. But in both situations the women made sure their sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews all knew that such discrimination was wrong. And like the student who wished she had spoken for herself instead of allowing the MSA to speak for her, many American women of the post-war era urged their own daughters to do what they had not dared to do.

When I watched the brave and often incredibly beautiful young Iranian women take to the streets the last few days, I also thought back to how Dr. Nafisi’s favorite students mocked a culture that allowed them a university education while attempting to confine them to gender roles more appropriate to 7^th-century warring Arab nomads. One favorite way to do so was to parody the opening sentence of their favorite novel from Dr. Nafisi’s syllabus:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Muslim man, regardless of his fortune, must be in want of a nine-year-old virgin wife.

I could see them marching through Iran’s cities, casting a wary eye at onlooking security forces even as they poked fun at then. They talk about how the Islamic Revolution was for men who couldn’t find a wife another way, and how Elizabeth Bennett wouldn’t go near a man who wanted a child bride — or multiple wives.

Iranian-American journalist Roya Hakakian, who left Iran in 1984 at the age of 18, echoed the sentiments of Nafisi and her students in a recent interview in which she noted that in the last ten years a new generation of women has organized in ways not seen since 1979. She notes the women of this generation learned an important lesson from their predecessors. (http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/17/political-climate-elections-iran-forbes-woman-power-feminism.html)

The feminist movement, which has been ongoing in Iran, has now joined the broader public movement against the regime. This happened in Iran in the late 1970s too, but it actually had a terrible effect on the women’s movement in Iran. Women were somehow “hoodwinked” to think that the veil wasn’t such an important issue, that it was more important to sacrifice for the greater good. So the Shah went and the veil stayed.

This generation is a lot smarter. The broader social movement is far more sympathetic to the cause of women than in the late 1970s. Thirty years later, Iranian men now realize that their fate is entwined with that of their female counterparts: If women are doing better, then men will do better too.

Azadeh Moaveni, born in Palo Alto of Iranian parents in 1976 and co author of Iran Awakening with Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, had this to say about the extent of the repression:

The weight of discrimination against women is felt most profoundly through Iran’s legal system, but Moaveni said Ahmadinejad added to the hardship by clamping down on women’s lifestyles. He mandated the way women dress and even censored websites that dealt with women’s health, Moaveni said. A woman would be hard-pressed to conduct a Google search for something as simple as breast cancer.

Azar Nafisi, now a professor at Johns Hopkins, told CNN she has been watching the footage from Iran with “inordinate pride.”

After Saturday, Dr. Nafisi probably wants to add “and great sorrow” to her statement.

Another Iranian woman not allowed to use her education, who has taken to the streets:

Artemis, a 41-year-old Tehran woman, is the proud holder of a law degree, but has never been allowed to work. She was clear about why she joined the million-plus men, women, and children who took to the streets of Tehran last Monday.

“People want freedom and justice,” she said. “They stole the vote. No one in his right mind believes this result.”

She said she had been afraid to voice criticism before. “The neighbors listen to you, and people go to prison just for what they say, or what they write. But this is contagious. What you are seeing, all these people, this comes from 30 years of oppression and now we have had enough.”

Perhaps the most poignant words about what is happening comes from an Iranian woman sending messages to Nico Pitney at the Huffington Post who has been living blogging events for a week now (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html). She wrote that she would be in Saturday’s demonstrations where she may be killed. Saturday evening she got out a message that she was okay, but that her ”sister” had died.

Here is the translation of part of her message.

I’m here to tell you, my sister who died was a decent person… and like me, yearned for a day when her hair would be swept by the wind… and like me, read “Forough” [Forough Farrokhzad]… and longed to live free and equal… and she longed to hold her head up and announce, “I’m Iranian”… and she longed to one day fall in love to a man with a shaggy hair… and she longed for a daughter to braid her hair and sing lullaby by her crib…

my sister died from not having life… my sister died as injustice has no end… my sister died since she loved life too much… and my sister died since she lovingly cared for people…

Much of the world has seen the video of this beautiful young woman, sister to us all, taking her last breath before our eyes. It is being reported that her name was Neda, which is said to be Farsi for voice or call. Her actions give voice to the oppressed women of Iran, and call out to all of us to stand with them against oppression.

www.IsraelToday.co.il

 In stark contrast to the overly cautious tone being sounded by U.S. President Barack Obama, Israeli President Shimon Peres on Sunday cheered on Iranians protesting the results of the recent presidential election in the Islamic Republic, and urged them to continue until they are freed from the clutches of the current regime.

 In remarks carried by the Israeli press, Peres said Iranians need to “raise their voice of freedom” until the oppressive and dangerous government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disappears.

 In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the demonstrations across Iran had finally unmasked the repressive nature of not only the Ahmadinejad regime, but the ayatollah-ruled theocratic system of government as a whole.

 On Monday, Netanyahu told German newspaper Bild he has no doubt that given the opportunity, the Iranian people would choose a totally different system of government and would ultimately make peace with Israel.

 ”There is no conflict between the Iranian and Israeli people and under a different regime, the peaceful relations that existed in the past could be reestablished,” said Netanyahu.

 In the U.S., Obama is under growing pressure from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to express greater support for Ahmadinejad’s opponents in Iran.

 But last week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak cautioned that backing Iranian presidential challenger Mir Moussavi would not be enough, since he shares many of the same dangerous views and policies as Ahmadinejad.

By Gerald A. Honigman, www.IsraelNationalNews.com

It was a moment in time never to be forgotten—July 4, 1976.

I was watching those spectacular tall sailing ships from numerous countries passing under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in Brooklyn in salute to America’s two hundredth birthday. Tears of pride were in many of our eyes that day.

I was there with my best friend Arie, who is from Israel. At almost the very same moment that those tall ships were sailing by, something else was happening which would link Israel and America together in many a mind forever after.

During the night before and the early morning hours of July 4, 1976, Israel launched Operation Thunderball AKA Operation Entebbe AKA Operation Yonatan.

On June 27, Air France Flight 139 was hijacked by Arabs and some European soul mates. The plane was taken to Idi Amin’s Uganda, where the hijackers were met with open arms.

The passengers were soon asked to form two lines—one for Jews, the other for gentiles. Most of the latter were freed, but the Jews became Idi Amin’s “guests.” Amin’s buddies next announced that the Jews would be killed if demands were not met.

This is an amazing, true story that sired several movies and accounts. Look it up on the Internet or rent one of the movies.

But what you need to know is that on July 4, 1976, Israel raided Entebbe, freed the hostages and showed the world that it was possible to defeat terror—a lesson some still need to learn today. It was a wonderful present commemorating America’s own liberty as well.

There was one Israeli combat fatality.

Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu, of Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal, had commanded the strike force and was killed by a Ugandan soldier. Yoni was a Dean’s List Harvard scholar who returned to Israel to resume his combat role during the stressful years leading up to the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He was a remarkable human being—both a man of the world, as well as a true son of Zion reborn.

When my own son was born, we named him Jonathan, in honor of King Saul’s son, Prince Yonatan—King David’s closest friend—and in honor of Yoni Netanyahu.

Today, the mainstream media would portray Yoni as a right-wing extremist. Just look at how most of it has dealt with Israel going after the non-stop terror machine and its willing supporters in Gaza. Any Jew who refuses to stick his head in the sand regarding what the Arabs’ true intentions are regarding the Jew of the Nations is branded this way.

Arabs claim twenty-one states to date in their Arab League, on over six million square miles of territory, forcibly Arabized from mostly non-Arab peoples; but how dare Jews claim a sole, minuscule, resurrected one of their own—practically invisible on a world map?

On July 4, 1976, Yonatan Netanyahu re-sent America and the entire world a message that Jews have been delivering for thousands of years.

Rabbi Hillel, who lived during the Roman occupation of Judaea, restated already ancient Jewish teachings when he proclaimed: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am not for others, what am I?”

Israel has tried very hard to come to fair accommodations with current “others”, who see the entire region as merely purely Arab patrimony. Justice, through Arab eyes only. That’s what Darfur and the south of the Sudan is about; that’s what gassed, massacred and subjugated Kurds, Copts, Berbers, and so forth, is about as well.

The compromises Israel has sought with the Arabs are light years beyond what Arabs have offered to the scores of millions of non-Arabs with whom they have clashed and competed themselves. But nothing will really change until the Arab mindset changes. Until then, Israel must concentrate on the first part of Hillel’s famous quote.

Given this reality check, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must send the same message his elder brother Yoni sent over three decades ago. He must demand—not beg—empathy for live Jews, not crocodile tears of sympathy for dead ones.

What would over three hundred million Americans in a three thousand mile wide America do given the true nature of the beast Israel faces? If I am not for myself, who will be for me….?

www.memri.org

 

In an Internet article posted in late 2007, ‘Aref ‘Alwan, an Iraqi author and playwright who resides in London and is the author of 12 novels, stated that the Jews have an historic right to Palestine because their presence there preceded the Arab conquest and has continued to this day.

 

In the article, titled “Do the Jews Have Any Less Right to Palestine than the Arabs?” ‘Alwan calls on the Arab world to acknowledge the Jews’ right to Palestine, because justice demands it and also because doing so would end the violence and the killing of Arabs, as well as intra-Arab strife. He adds that such a move would also open up new avenues for the Arab world that would be more consistent with the values and needs of modern society.

 

‘Alwan writes that the Arab League is to blame for the refusal to recognize the 1947 U.N. partition plan, for starting a war to prevent its implementation, and for the results of that war, which the Arabs call the Nakba (disaster). He points an accusing finger at the Arab regimes, the Arab League, and the educated circles in the Arab world, saying that they had all used the term “nakba” to direct popular consciousness toward a cultural tradition that neither accepts the other side nor recognizes its rights — thereby promoting bigotry, violence, and extremism. He also claims that there have been attempts to rewrite Palestinian history, in order to deny any connection between it and the Jewish people.

 

‘Alwan contends that the “Nakba mentality” among Arabs has boomeranged, giving rise to tyrannical rulers, extremist clerics, and religious zealots of every description. In his view, the Arab world will never shed the stigma of terrorism in the West unless it abandons this concept and all that it entails.

 

To boost his claim that the Jews have an historic right to Palestine, ‘Alwan provides an overview of Jewish history in the land of Israel. He questions the validity of the Islamic traditions underpinning the Arab claim to Palestine, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount, and presents evidence that religions that preceded Islam had conducted rituals on the Temple Mount.

 

As an example of the traditional Arab mentality that does not accept the other or recognize his rights, ‘Alwan discusses the Arabs’ abuse of the Kurds in Iraq and of the Christians in Egypt and Lebanon.

 

The following are excerpts from the article:

 

The Nakba: A Great Lie

 

“When the Salafi mob in Gaza tied the hands and feet of a senior Palestinian official and hurled him, alive, from the 14th floor, I asked myself: What political or religious precepts must have been inculcated into the minds of these young people to make them treat a human life with such shocking cruelty?

 

“Earlier, I had watched on TV as the bodies of two Israeli soldiers were thrown from the second floor [of a building] in a Palestinian city. Whether or not it was the same Salafi mob behind that incident, [one asks oneself]: What language, [or rather,] what historic linguistic distortion could have erased from the human heart [all] moral sensibilities when dealing with a living and helpless human being?

 

“Arabs who are averse to such inhuman behavior must help me expose and eliminate the enormous lie that has for 60 years justified, extolled, and supported brutality. [Such behavior] is no longer limited to the expression of unconscious [impulses] by individuals, but constitutes a broad cultural phenomenon, which began in Lebanon, [spread to] Iraq and Palestine, and then [spread] – slowly but surely – to other Arab states as well.

 

“This enormous lie is what the Arabs called the Nakba – that is, the establishment of two states in Palestine: the state of Israel, which the Jews agreed to accept, and the state of Palestine, which the Arabs rejected.

 

“In our times, when science, with its accurate instruments, can predict climatic changes that will lead to drought or the movement of tectonic plates that causes earthquakes, it is inconceivable that a modern man can, without making a laughingstock of himself, attribute the destruction of cities ancient or modern to the wrath of Allah. Nevertheless, today, 80% of Arabs claim this to be the case. They are neither embarrassed nor afraid of being laughed at.

 

“This high percentage includes not only the illiterates who densely populate rural areas, villages, and small and large cities, but also students, teachers, lecturers, graduates of institutions of higher education, scientists, technology experts, physicians, graduates of religious universities such as Al-Azhar, historians, and politicians who have held or are currently holding public office.

 

“It is those numerous educated elites who have forced the Arab mentality into a narrow, restrictive, and deficient cultural mold, spewing violence, terrorism, and zealotry, and prohibiting innovative thought… All this was done to instill a false sense of oppression in the hearts of the Arabs, and to destroy them with the infectious disease of despair and confusion.

 

“[This attitude] is rooted in the 1947 Arab League resolution stating that Palestine is a ’stolen’ land and that none but a Muslim Arab is entitled to benefit from it as an autonomous [political entity], even if another’s historic roots there predate those of the Muslims or the Arabs.”

 

 

The Nakba Boomerang

 

“[The upshot] of this confusion in [Arab] mentality is that the lie has boomeranged on the Arabs. [Thus] appeared [on the scene] Saddam Hussein, Hafez Al-Assad, Bashar Al-Assad, Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi, Hassan Nasrallah, Nabih Berri, Khaled Mash’al, Isma’il Haniya, and Mahmoud Al-Zahar, whose young [thugs] threw the senior Palestinian official from the 14th floor. Finally, from the foot of the eastern mountains bordering the Middle East came Ahmadinejad, who is committed to preparing the way for the anarchy and destruction that accompanies the advent of the long-awaited Mahdi, who will resolve the Palestinian problem.

 

“Today, owing to the ideological distortions that have afflicted the Arab popular consciousness since the so-called Nakba, and [also owing] to the lies that have accumulated around this notion, [the label of] ‘terrorism’ has become attached to Arabs, wherever they are.

 

“Despite the great political and cultural efforts by large and important Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and some Gulf states to restore Arab ties with the rest of the world, and to curb the culture of terrorism in Arab societies, they have all failed. This is because these attempts to rectify [the situation], from both within and without [the Arab countries], both stemmed from and were a logical extension of the concept of the Nakba.

 

“This proves that the Arabs have no hope of extricating themselves from the cultural and political challenge of terrorism unless they come up with [new] and different [fundamental] premises, and with an outlook completely free of the fetters of the religious ritual that they have devised in modern times and called the Nakba.

 

“Although Palestinian senior officials, leaders, educated circles, and public figures, whose patriotism is beyond doubt, have come to terms with the existence of the State of Israel, the aforementioned 80% of Arabs… do not accept this view, and consider it religious apostasy. Leaders of the [Arab] states in the region, and party leaders, inflame sentiment, entrancing them with the drumbeat of extremism.

 

“With the strident chorus of its secretaries, the Arab League ensures that every car crash in Gaza or the West Bank is interpreted as an Israeli conspiracy against the Arab future. This is because the Arab League… was established as a pan-Arab entity whose main function was to write reports and studies rife with distortions of fact so as to quell the conscience of any Arab who dared think independently and expunge [the concept of] the Nakba from his consciousness. [It has done] this instead of devising creative strategies for cultural and economic development, so as to improve the deteriorating standard of living in the Arab societies.”

 

 

The Nakba is Rooted in a Culture that Does Not Recognize the Right of the Other

 

“Why did the partition resolution, which gave a state in Palestine to the Jews and one to the Arabs next to it, become the Nakba – [the star] that rises and sets daily over the Arab lands without emitting even the tiniest ray of light to illuminate the path for their peoples?

 

“Did the Jews have any less right to Palestine than the Arabs? What historic criteria can be used to determine the precedence of one [nation's] right over that of the other?

 

“Refusing to recognize the right of the other so as to usurp his rights was a governing principle of the Islamic conquests from the time of ‘Omar bin Al-Khattab; during that historical period it was the norm. [But] at the turn of the [20th] century, this principle was abandoned and prohibited, because it sparked wars and [violent] conflict. The international community passed laws restricting the principle of non-acceptance of the other, in the founding principles of the League of Nations in 1919. Subsequently, with the U.N.’s establishment, these laws were developed [further], with appendices and commentary, to adapt them to the current historical era and to express the commonly accepted values of national sovereignty and peoples’ right to self-determination.

 

“But because of their sentimental yearning for the past and zealous adherence to [old] criteria, the Arabs purged their hearts of any inclination to adjust to the spirit of the age. They thus became captives of the principle of non-acceptance of the other and of denying the other [the right] to live, [among] other rights.

 

“As a result, damage was done to the rights and interests of non-Arab nations and ethnic groups in the Arab lands – among them the Kurds, the Copts, and the Jews. [Thus,] the Arabs still treat the numerous minorities that came under their dominion 1,400 years ago in accordance with the laws from the era of Arab conquest.

 

“Despite the consequences of denying the other the right to exist, not to mention other rights – that is, [despite] the oppression, conflicts, wars, and instability [resulting from this]… the Arabs have steadfastly clung to their clearly chauvinist position. All problems in the region arising from minorities’ increasing awareness of their rights have been dealt with by the Arabs in accordance with [the principle of non-acceptance]… [even] after the emergence of international institutions giving these rights legal validity, in keeping with the mentality and rationale of our time.”

 

 

Refusing to Accept the Other: The Kurds in Iraq; the Christians in Egypt and Lebanon

 

The Kurds

 

“The denial of the Kurds’ national rights by the Iraqi government, and the Arab League’s support for it, has brought on wars lasting 50 years – that is, three-quarters of the life span of the state that arose in Iraq…

 

“After fabricating arguments to justify the [1921] combining of the Basra region with the Baghdad region in order to establish a new state in Iraq, British colonialist interests demanded that a large area historically populated by Kurds be added to the new state. [This was done] to satisfy the aspirations of King Faisal bin Al-Hussein [bin Ali Al-Hashemi], who had been proposed as head of state in return for protecting British interests in the region.

 

“In his persistent refusal to grant the Kurds their rights, from 1988 through 1989 Saddam Hussein murdered approximately 180,000 Kurds, in an organized [genocidal] campaign he called ‘Al-Anfal.’ He then used mustard gas against one [Kurdish] city (Halabja), killing its residents (5,000 people). The Arab conscience silently acquiesced to this human slaughterhouse, while Arab League secretary-general (Shadhli Al-Qalibi) called the international press coverage of these events ‘a colonialist conspiracy against the Arabs and the Iraqi regime.’

 

“Syrian Kurds are considered second-class citizens, and are banned from using their language or [practicing] their culture in public.”

 

 

The Christians in Egypt and Lebanon

 

“The ethnic oppression of the Kurds [in Iraq] was echoed by sectarian extremism against the Copts [in Egypt]. In both cases, the Arabs used the principle of denying the existence of the other so as to strip him of his rights.

 

“The Copts, who [initially] assimilated Arabs into their society, but who have over time themselves assimilated into Arab society, discover time and again that this assimilated state is but a surface shell, which quickly cracks whenever they demand equality… As a result, Egypt, as a state, is gripped by constant social tensions that keep rising to the surface and threatening to undermine its stability…

 

“Sectarian extremism in Egypt took the form of an organized party with the 1928 emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood, with the aim of splitting Egyptian society into two mutually hostile and conflicting parts. This was in line with the Arab religious and political principle of denying legitimacy to all non-Muslims or non-Arabs, [a principle practiced] since the Muslim armies reached Egypt in 639 [CE]…

 

“In Lebanon, the presence of armed Palestinian militias – which was in accordance with the decision of the Arab states – encouraged the formation of Lebanese militias, both Sunni and Shiite. Chanting slogans proclaiming Palestinian liberation, they frightened Christians by appearing armed in streets swarming with Lebanese [citizens] and tourists.

 

“This eventually led to a confrontation with Christian militias, which had also armed themselves out of fear of the pan-Arab slogans and fear for the [preservation of] the rights of the Christian sects.

 

“Lebanon was engulfed by an ugly 15-year civil war, that ended only after Syria, which had played an ignominious role as instigator [of the hostilities], attained full protectorate status over Lebanese affairs and the Lebanese people – [and this] took on the nature of colonialist hegemony…

 

“After the Lebanese were liberated from this [Syrian] control, in 2005 the clouds of civil war – albeit of a different kind – reappeared on the Lebanese horizon. The Arab League is making no effort to prevent the eruption [of this civil war] for two main reasons. First, the Syrian regime still supports ethnic tension, in order to regain control of Lebanon; and second, the current majority government, which opposes the renewed Syrian influence, is predominantly Christian…

 

“We had hoped that the Arab national conscience would recover from the illness afflicting it since the time of the Nakba, and that it would adopt [views] which, if not ahead of their time, would at least be appropriate to our time. But a group of journalists, writers, and several Arab historians guided by the principle of non-acceptance of the other has twisted the facts and concocted a false and gloomy history of the region – thereby trampling these dreams to the ground.”

 

 

Jews Have a Rich and Ancient History in Palestine

 

“The Arabs see the Palestinian problem as exceedingly complicated, while it actually appears so only to them – [that is], from the point of view of the Arabs’ emotional attitudes and their national and religious philosophy. The Arabs have amassed false claims regarding their exclusive right to the Palestinian land, [and] these are based on phony arguments and on several axioms taken from written and oral sources – most of which they [themselves] created after the Islamic, and which they forbade anyone, Arab or foreigner, from questioning.

 

“When the Arabs agreed to U.N. arbitration… to resolve the Palestinian problem, it transpired that their axioms clearly contradicted reliable historical documents [that] this new international organization [had in its possession]. As a result, they wasted decades stubbornly defending the validity of their documents, which do not correspond to the officially accepted version of the region’s history – which is based on concrete and solid evidence [such as] archaeological findings in the land of Palestine, the holy books of the three monotheistic religions, accounts by Roman, Greek, and Jewish historians… and modern historical research…”

 

 

Jewish and Christian Ritual Sites in Jerusalem Predate Muslim Sites

 

“[A look at] the story of Al-Aqsa is now in order – a site considered holy by Muslim Arabs, who call it ‘Al-Haram al-Qudsi al-Sharif’ [The Noble Sanctuary] and [believe that] it was set aside for them by Allah since the time of Adam.

 

“[This site] contains several places of worship, including the Dome of the Rock, built by the [Umayyad Caliph] ‘Abd Al-Malik bin Marwan in the seventh century CE – that is, 72 years after the Muslim conquests. This religious public gathering place was erected over a prominent [foundation] stone at the peak of ‘Mount Moriah.’ [Mount Moriah] contains three ancient Jewish public worship sites, as well as [some] Christian sites… The octagonal structure of the Dome of the Rock Mosque was constructed on the site of an ancient Byzantine church, adjoining Solomon’s Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

 

“Since the majority of Muslims claim that the Temple Mount is an Islamic site to which no one else is entitled, they do not acknowledge the presence of Jewish and Christian places of worship predating the Dome of the Rock within its walls…

 

“The Arabs take great pride in their tolerance of and benign treatment of the Jews and Christians who lived under the Muslim rule since the Muslim conquests. This account is part of the distortions underpinning the edifice of the Arabs’ religious and national culture. [Arab] writers and historians keep eulogizing this epoch… while the truth is the opposite of what they claim. [Indeed,] the Pact of ‘Omar [compelled] the Jews and the Christians to choose between either abandoning their religion and embracing Islam, or paying the [poll] tax in return for being permitted to reside… and receive protection of life and property in their homeland. [The Pact of 'Omar] allowed them to practice their religion, build new houses of worship, and repair the old ones [only] with the permission of a Muslim ruler, and subject to numerous conditions.

 

“In subsequent historical periods, the Muslims imposed [additional restrictions] on the members of [these] two religions: They forbade them to raise their voices during prayer; [they forced them] to conduct their prayers and religious ceremonies in closed areas so as not [to disturb] passersby; they forbade them to carry weapons, ride saddled horses, or build houses taller than those of the Muslims. [Christians and Jews] were required to show respect for the Muslims, e.g. by giving up their seat to a Muslim if he wanted it. They were banned from holding government posts or from working in ’sensitive’ public places.

 

“The Koranic verses cursing the Jews and casting doubt on [the veracity of] their Holy Book [the Torah] promulgated a desire among Arabs to set themselves above the Jews who lived in their midst, humiliating and persecuting them even without pretext. In time, this treatment made large numbers of Jews abandon their cities and their land and emigrate… while those who stayed [in Palestine] until the 19th century remained marginalized, living among the Arabs like criminals in a foreign land…

 

“The Arabs claim that the ‘Wailing Wall’ has been their property since the Prophet Muhammad tied his horse Al-Buraq to one of its supports when Allah transported him by night from the Holy Mosque in Mecca to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem… Although this night-journey story seems dubious, Arab historiography after the advent of Islam contains such oddities as giving a horse the prerogative of making a wall weighing more than 2,000 tons into Muslim property. This is only one of thousands of examples of tales concocted by zealots, with which they swept away the Arab imagination.

 

“…When the U.N. resolution on the partition of Palestine was issued on November 29, 1947… the Arabs refused to recognize it. They thereby rejected the state set out by the resolution as the right of the Palestinians and the Arabs, with the aim of establishing legal and historical equity. The Arabs called this resolution the Nakba, while their new states, formed several years before the State of Israel, launched the first war against Israel, in which regular military operations were combined with local attacks by gangs comprising Palestinians and Arabs from Arab regions near and far. [That war] ended in [the Arabs'] defeat. Persisting in their error, the Arabs established refugee camps for the Palestinians who had fled during and after the war…

 

“Chairman Mahmoud ‘Abbas… was the first Palestinian leader to acknowledge that the Christian church in Gaza plundered by Hamas gangs had stood there ‘before [we] came to Gaza.’ By this he meant ‘we the Palestinians’ – particularly the current Gaza residents, [the descendants of] Bedouins from the Sinai and the Arabian Peninsula and of others, of unknown origin. [These people were] attracted by the wealth of the new Islamic state that extended from Persia to Southern Ethiopia, and came after the Muslim conquests and set themselves up over the local population – Christians, Jews, Phoenicians, Byzantines, and the remnants of the Sumerians…

 

 

Arabs Must Recognize the Jews’ Right to Palestine

 

“In order to prevent more bloodshed among the innocent [population]… and in order to keep the deteriorating situation in Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza, and the West Bank from making [these regions into] a quagmire that will spread to engulf all Arab states and societies, the Arabs must reassess the question of the Nakba and come up with a new, courageous vision for the region and for the future of its residents.

 

“[This vision] must involve public recognition of the Jews’ legitimate right to their state – which is based on historical fact – instead of [recognition] of the writings filled with anger and demagogy produced and formed into an ideology by the confused [Arab] consciousness – a consciousness built upon lies, myths, and distortions stemming from the principle of non-acceptance of the other.

 

“The most important factor in strengthening such a new vision is [the adoption of] a principle [requiring] official condemnation of all individuals, groups, companies, religious and political parties, and totalitarian regimes that built their glory and hollow leaderships upon the notion of the Nakba, and which are always ready to absorb other false claims and fabrications.

 

“This must be done, so that a modern Arab face is turned to the world – [a face reflecting] ethical values that will not allow any Arab, under any pretext, to oppress his son or his brother who differs from him in religion, ethnicity, or ideology.”