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By Carl Teichrib, Chief Editor Forcing Change: www.forcingchange.org.

Note: this article is a condensed version of a longer report published in the December 2007 edition of Forcing Change, which contains an expanded historical overview – including the role of Special Drawing Rights – and an examination of Global Central Bank scenarios. Excerpts of this article appeared on page 13 of the February 2011 Levitt Letter.
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“A global economy requires a global currency.”
— Paul Volcker, former Chair of the US Federal Reserve.[1]
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“I fully support a single global currency.”

Flabbergasted, I waited for an explanation.

“That way farmers in Africa get the same pay as farmers in North America, and workers in Asia would receive the same as their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere.”

Hmmm…an interesting perspective. I asked the gentleman sitting across the lunch table; “Have you ever seriously studied banking or the historical role of money?”

His response to the negative didn’t surprise me; after all, wage equality and production values are not currency issues per se, albeit currency matters do play a role. Much of our lunch hour, therefore, was spent reviewing the relationship between money, banking, and power.

This provocative discussion, enjoyed over a steaming bowl of soup, took place at the annual meeting of a multi-million dollar Christian-based relief organization. And the person I was dining with wasn’t just an interested attendee; he was a board member representing a significant regional arm of this organization. Granted, he was only one man in a large administrative structure, but his decisions – combined with other board members – impact projects around the globe. Thus, I found his supportive statement for a world currency even more disturbing; here was an individual involved in economic decisions that impacted projects around the globe, yet he didn’t understand what he was asking for.

During the course of our lunch-hour, it was obvious that he had no conception of the incredible power-shift that would occur under such a scheme – a shift that would effectively create a global master of untouchable proportions. All he could see was an international-sized band-aid solution, “a single global currency,” to address the problem of world poverty.

I replayed this conversation after returning home, perplexed by the ease in which a person with the right motives was willing to embrace such a risky global venture. Turning to the banking and economics section of my library, I thumbed through a variety of books and documents in an attempt to wrap my mind around this thorny issue. A number of interesting quotes jumped from the pages.

“The great struggle of history has been for the control over money. It is almost tautological to affirm that to control the production and distribution of money is to control the wealth, resources, and people of the world.”
— Jack Weatherford, anthropologist and author.[2]

“The control of money and credit strikes at the very heart of national sovereignty.”
— A.W. Clausen, President of Bank of America, in a response to the suggestion of a global central bank. [Clausen later became the President of the World Bank].[3]

“Once a nation parts with control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes that nation’s laws.”
— W.L. Mackenzie King, [former Prime Minister of Canada].[4]

All of this brings up an interesting question: Does the world need a global central bank? If you want a single world currency, it requires an international banking structure armed with a monetary policy on a planetary scale. Essentially, the requirement for a single global currency is a bank that has power over all countries, kindred, and tongues. Former Canadian Member of Parliament, Paul Hellyer, criticized this development in 1994, saying that under such a global currency/banking system “the interests of citizens, of individual countries must be subordinate…to the interests of international finance.”[5]

“…[countries] would no longer be able to pursue any kind of independent policy. Sovereignty over the most powerful of all economic tools would be turned to an international monster…A world bank run by a world kingship of international appointees collectively not accountable to anyone? Heavenly days!”[6]

Unknown to my lunchtime counterpart, the idea of a single global currency has been quietly batted around in banking and economist circles since the closing days of the Second World War.[7] Over the years this call has increased in intensity. Consider some quotes,

1969: “Let me turn from digging away at the opposition to something more positive, and start with the best and worst of international monetary systems. The first-best, in my judgment, is a world money with a world monetary authority.”[8] — Charles P. Kindleberger, [Professor of Economics, MIT], speaking at a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston conference.

1984: “I have put forward a radical alternative scheme for the next century: the creation of a common currency for all the industrial democracies with a common monetary policy and a joint Bank of Issue to determine that monetary policy…This proposal is far too radical for the near future, but it could provide a ‘vision’ or goal which can guide interim steps…”[9] — Richard N. Cooper [professor, Harvard], speaking at a Federal Reserved Bank of Boston conference.

1998: “…the transition to a single currency for the entire world could come with a speed that might surprise many. The world might easily move from having almost 200 currencies today to having one within a decade, and twenty-five years from now, historians would wonder why it took so long to eliminate the Babel of currencies which existed in the twentieth century.” — Bryan Taylor, Chief Economist at Global Financial Data.[10]

2001: “When VISA was founded twenty-five years ago, the founders saw the world as needing a Single Global Currency for exchange. Everything we’ve done from a global perspective has been about trying to put one piece in place after another to fulfill that global vision.”[11] — Sarah Perry, Director of VISA’s Strategic Investment Program.

2004: “…if the global market economy is to thrive over the decades ahead, a global currency seems the logical concomitant.” — Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator for the Financial Times, former senior economist at the World Bank.[12]

In 2007, the Council on Foreign Relations propelled the idea of a planet-wide currency restructuring by publishing an article in it journal, Foreign Affairs, titled “The End of National Currency.” [Note: on the cover of this Foreign Affairs issue, the article is titled “One World, Too Many Monies.”]

Benn Steil, the Director of International Economics at the CFR, wrote that national money systems should be abandoned, “Since economic development outside the process of globalization is not longer possible…”[13] Stated even more succinctly, “Monetary nationalism is simply incompatible with globalization.”[14] And, “In order to globalize safely, countries should abandon monetary nationalism and abolish unwanted currencies…”[15]

This is quite the leap. To Steil’s credit, he pinpoints the potential chink in the world economy that could lead us towards a new financial arrangement: the weakening state of the US dollar at the global level.

Over the decades, the US dollar has become the unquestionable global currency, with nations around the world required to hold American greenbacks in order to buy and sell in various international markets, especially in relationship to petroleum. Steil writes,

“…the dollar’s privileged status as today’s global money is not heaven-bestowed. The dollar is ultimately just another money supported only by faith that others will willingly accept it in the future in return for the same sort of valuable things it bought in the past. This puts a great burden on the institutions of the institutions of the U.S. government to validate that faith. And those institutions, unfortunately, are failing to shoulder that burden. Reckless U.S. fiscal policy is undermining the dollar’s position even as the currency’s role as a global money is expanding.”[16]

Recognizing the possible dollar-value scenario, Steil points to the growing concern over China and other “dollar-rich central banks.” Keep in mind, China alone holds over a trillion dollars in reserves, and rumblings from the East over liquidating US dollars have started to cause a stir.

Even though Steil doesn’t ask the question, it becomes painfully obvious: What happens if China and other nations “fear the unbearable lightness of their holdings”? What becomes of the world economy if the US dollar is rapidly dumped by central banks?

All of this underscores a strategic reality that can be summed up in three words: Crisis equals opportunity. As banking mogul A.W. Clausen once said, “new comprehensive politico-economic systems across peoples almost always arise out of conquest or common crisis…”[17]

Robert Mundell, “the father of the euro,” and one of the world’s most respected economists, also views crisis as the starting point for change. In a May, 2007 lecture, Mundell related, “International monetary reform usual becomes possible only in response to a felt need and the threat of a global crisis.”

This Nobel Prize winner also pointed his finger to the possible trigger event, saying that the “global crisis would have to involve the dollar,” and that a world currency should be viewed as “a contingency” to a global dollar disaster.[18]

With a similar crisis in mind, Benn Steil offers what appears to be an altruistic solution. In order to avert the crisis, all that nations need to do is relinquish sovereignty before the problem become insurmountable.

“Governments must let go of the fatal notion that nationhood requires them to make and control the money used in their territory. National currencies and global markets simply do not mix; together they make a deadly brew of currency crisis and geopolitical tension and create ready pretexts for damaging protectionism.”[19]

So how should monetary sovereignty by expunged? Steil candidly asserts that the world needs to re-group itself into three regional monetary units: the Dollar, the Euro, and a new Asian currency.[20] This proposal mirrors the work of Robert Mundell, who has been traveling the globe lecturing on a new international monetary unit based on the US dollar, Euro, and Yen. Under Mundell’s plan these three currencies would form the basis of a “world currency unit” called the DEY, and the International Monetary Fund would be its manager.[21]

The implementation of Mundell’s plan may not be too distant as major currency blocks, led by Europe’s success with the euro, are forming in different parts of the globe. South America, the South Eastern Asian nations, and Africa are all looking to create regional currency zones. The Middle East too is going down this road. In fact, in 2010, if all goes according to plan, the Gulf Cooperation Council – which is made up of a number of Middle Eastern countries, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia – will have their own regional monetary system. And the world’s fastest growing city, Dubai, is located in a key member-nation of the GCC, the United Arab Emerites.[22]

North America is also embracing currency integration. For years the concept of a North American monetary system has cropped up in central banking circles, with the Amero as the suggested name for the new continental currency.[23] [See the July 2007 issue of Forcing Change for a 19-page report on this development]. And if not the Amero, then some believe the US dollar should become the tri-national staple.

In May 1999, economist Judy Shelton suggested the dollarization of North America to the US House Committee on Banking and Financial Services.[24] Others have likewise been examining currency options for the continent, and the momentum towards a new regional economic system binding Canada, the US, and Mexico has grown in intensity.

But how do regional monetary blocks play into a Single Global Currency? Morrison Bonpasse, President of the Single Global Currency Association (SGCA), a group of economists working towards a world currency, answers that question, “The monetary unions of the twenty-first century, and those which survived the twentieth, are the milestones on the path to the future, and to the Global Monetary Union.”[25]

Bonpasse elaborates on this point further,

“Thanks to the success of the European and other monetary unions, we now know how to create and maintain the 3-Gs: a Global Monetary Union, with a Global Central Bank and a Single Global Currency.”[26]

“The world is ready to begin preparing for a Single Global Currency, just as Europe prepared for the euro and as the Arabian Gulf countries are preparing for their common currency. After the goal of a Single Global Currency is established by countries representing a significant proportion of the world’s GDP, then the project can be pursued like its regional predecessors.”[27]

Simply put, the regional model becomes the steppingstone to a one-world currency. However, the problem of nationalism prevails. Discussing this “problem,” Bonpasse writes,

“The task can be stated quite simply: how to move from the current 147 currencies to 1. Developing the political will to overcome the residual strength of nationalism is the major challenge for the movement to a 3-G world. As with the implementation of the euro, the economics and politics of monetary union are inextricably bound together; and the logic of both point toward the 3-G world.

The question now is not whether the world will adopt a Single Global Currency but When? and How smooth, inexpensive, and planful OR rough, costly, and chaotic will the journey be?”[28] [Italics and capitals in original]

To the internationalist, national sovereignty is the overriding obstacle. In order for a Global Central Bank and world currency to exist, some other political arrangements will have to be formed. Robert Mundell understood this political problem when giving a lecture in 2003 titled, “The International Monetary System and the Case for a World Currency.” His response was frank: “a global single currency could not be achieved without a global government. To enforce a single currency would involve big problems of organization.”[29]

But this reality isn’t stopping the SGCA and others of like mind from progressive planning. As Bonpasse asserts, “It is now time to seriously pursue the goal of a Single Global Currency as managed by a Global Central Bank within a Global Monetary Union.”[30]

Already the SGCA has a date in mind: 2024. Regarding a headquarters for the Global Central Bank, Bonpasse suggests Basel, Zurich, or Geneva. “Switzerland has a reputation for sound money, and locating the GCB in Switzerland just might be the necessary incentive for that country to join the Global Monetary Union as a member.”[31]

“The governing structure of the GCB should be relatively easy to design, given the available, successful models of the US Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations, and associated organizations such as the World Health Organization. Not everyone is happy with the structure of all those organizations, but it’s a negotiable political question…”[32]

He’s right: it is a political question. This was evident to Richard Cooper when he brought up the idea of a global central bank and currency while at a 1984 Federal Reserve conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. “The idea is so far from being politically feasible at present – in its call for a real pooling of monetary sovereignty – that it will require many years of consideration before people become accustomed to the idea.”

However, even then Cooper advanced a specific timetable to begin taking this idea seriously: “This one-currency regime is much too radical to envisage in the near future. But it is not too radical to envisage 25 years from now…”[33]

In retrospect, Cooper’s timing appears fairly accurate: Twenty-five years after 1984 brings us to 2009, and today the idea of a single global currency is starting to gain traction through organizations like the SGCA and through major advocates such as Robert Mundell. Moreover, the Bank for International Settlements – which is viewed as the central bank for the world’s central bankers – has publicly considered the potential for a one-world currency built around regional groupings.[34]

But will all of this “help the farmer in Africa,” or bring wage equality to the worker’s of the world?

Probably not: it will, however, give unprecedented powers to an international banking cartel, the likes of which has never been seen or experienced before. As a critic of global banking once wrote, “Money is money, and banking is banking, and neither recognizes any allegiances that don’t bear compound interest.”[35]

Carl Teichrib, a Canadian-based researcher and writer on globalization, is Chief Editor of Forcing Change – a monthly intelligence journal engaged in analyzing and documenting global economic, political, and socio-religious trends.
Endnotes:
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[1] As quoted by Morrison Bonpasse, The Single Global Currency (Single Global Currency Association, 2006), p.264.
[2] Jack Weatherford, The History of Money (Crown Publishers, 1997), p.246.
[3] A.W. Clausen, in a 1979 interview with the Freeman Digest, “International Banking,” p.21.
[4] William Lyon Mackenzie King, in a radio address, August 2, 1935. Quote printed in Walter Stewart’s book, Bank Heist (HarperCollins, 1997), p.71.
[5] Paul Hellyer, Funny Money (Chimo Media, 1994), p.57.
[6] Ibid, pp.57-58.
[7] Paul Volcker raises this point in his co-authored book, Changing Fortunes: The World’s Money and the Threat to American Leadership (Times Books, 1992), p.9. Volcker’s co-author was Toyoo Gyohten.
[8] Charles P. Kindleberger, speaking at a Federal Reserve conference. The International Adjustment Mechanism, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 1969, Conference Series 2, p.105.
[9] Richard N. Cooper, “Is there a Need for Reform?” Speech given at a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston conference, May 1984. See, The International Monetary System: Forty Years After Bretton Woods
(Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 1984), pp.37.
[10] Quoted in The Single Global Currency, p.230.
[11] Sarah Perry, Director of VISA’s Strategic Investment Program, as reprinted in The Single Global Currency (Single Global Currency Association, 2006), p.7.
[12] Martin Wolf, writing for the Financial Times, August 3, 2004. Also quoted in The Single Global Currency, p.216. Wolf also stated, “This is a world I am unlikely ever to see. But maybe my children or grandchildren will do so.”
[13] Benn Steil, “The End of National Currency,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007, p.95.
[14] Ibid. p.89.
[15] Ibid. p.84.
[16] Ibid. p.93.
[17] A.W. Clausen, in a 1979 interview with the Freeman Digest, “International Banking,” p.23.
[18] Robert Mundell, “A Decade Later: Asia New Responsibilities in the International Monetary System,” presentation given in Seoul, South Korea, May, 2-3, 2007.
[19] Benn Steil, “The End of National Currency,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007, p.84.
[20] Ibid. p.95.
[21] Robert Mundell, “A Decade Later: Asia New Responsibilities in the International Monetary System,” presentation given in Seoul, South Korea, May, 2-3, 2007.
[22] For more information on the formation of regional blocks, see the Bank for International Settlement report, Regional Currency Areas and the Use of Foreign Currencies, September, 2003.
[23] See my article in the Fall 2007 issue of Hope for the World Update on the formation of a North American monetary union. For more information on this topic, check out the July, 2007 issue of Forcing Change (www.forcingchange.org).
[24] See the Testimony of Judy Shelton before The United States House of Representatives Committee On Banking And Financial Services, Hearing on Exchange Rate Stability in International Finance, May 21, 1999.
[25] Morrison Bonpasse, The Single Global Currency (Single Global Currency Association, 2006), p.134.
[26] Ibid. p.229.
[27] Ibid. p.281.
[28] Ibid. p.229.
[29] Robert A. Mundell, “The International Monetary System and the Case for a World Currency,” Leon Kozminski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management and TIGER, Distinguished Lectures Series Number 12, Warsaw, Poland, 23 October 2003.
[30] The Single Global Currency, p.282.
[31] Ibid. p.294.
[32] Ibid. p.295.
[33] Richard N. Cooper, “Is there a Need for Reform?” Speech given at a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston conference, May 1984. See, The International Monetary System: Forty Years After Bretton Woods (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 1984), p.34.
[34] See the BIS 75th Annual Report, page 151.
[35] Cliff Ford, Blood, Money, and Greed (Western Front, 1998), p.50.

By Chana Ya’ar, www.IsraelNationalNews.com

An Iranian athlete forced to stand next to Israel’s champion last fall during the World Masters Weightlifting Championships in Poland has now forfeited his career, as has the head of his delegation.

The Iranian champion, Hossein Khodadadi, was the target of withering criticism from his own government authorities following the award ceremony for those in the 105 kilogram category for ages 35 to 39.

Khodadadi took his place as a silver medalist on the medals podium prior to the announcement that Israeli medalist Sergio Britva had won the gold. It was the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran that an Iranian athlete had appeared beside an Israeli in an official championship.

The Iranian weightlifter said the team was not able to remove its flag from the hall, and that had he not attended the ceremony, the team would have been forced to return all the medals they had won on previous days. Furthermore, Iran would have been disqualified from future competitions.

To compensate, Khodadadi appeared in unofficial attire, and he declined to shake Britva’s hand when he extended it to his fellow athlete on the podium. Nevertheless, he stood respectfully during the playing of Israel’s national anthem, HaTikva.

According to numerous Iranian media reports, both Khodadadi and Mir Rasool Raisi, head of the Iranian Delegation’s Weightlifting Team, have paid a high price for their professionalism, having subsequently been banned by the Iranian government from all sport activities for life.

The ban was announced by Jalal Yahya-Zadeh, head of the Physical Education Committee for Youth Committee.

Yahya-Zadeh told Iranian media, “The fact that an Iranian weightlifting veteran has competed against an Israeli during the worldwide competitions and has stood beside him during the distribution of medals is unjustifiable. Unfortunately, those who supposedly had the primary responsibility in this regard did not see any problem in this matter, however, and did not see it fit to be distributed within the public, which itself is an obvious mistake on their end.”

Raisi allegedly said in prior remarks that all photos and CDs of the event had been destroyed by the Iranian expeditionary team, which apparently did not expect publicity of the incident to get out. [Here is the video.]

The committee said the Cultural Commissioners had been informed and the president had been alerted to the matter. It was not clear whether there would be further government retribution against the two professional athletes.

This article by Byron Acohido served as the basis for Mark’s Wise As A Serpent column on page 21 of the November 2010 Levitt Letter.

By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY

For generations, U.S. consumers have relied on banks to bear the primary responsibility for keeping their hard-earned cash deposits out of the hands of thieves. Now, banks want consumers to share the load.

About 80% of U.S. households have come to do their banking over the Internet, banking consultancy Novantas says. Many consumers believe online banking is every bit as safe as branch banking. But that’s clearly not the case, banking and tech security specialists say.

Cyber-attacks against individual online accounts have become so sophisticated and pervasive that the American Bankers Association (ABA) is now asking consumers to “partner” with banks to keep cyber-robbers in check.

The banking industry wants consumers to monitor their online accounts for unauthorized transactions on a “continuous, almost daily, basis,” says Doug Johnson, the ABA’s vice president of risk-management policy. That’s because PCs and smartphones have become “the online bank branch for a lot of individuals,” he says. “The customer needs to really recognize that security is most effective when they work in partnership with their financial institution.”

This shifting burden has come about because of developments that the banking industry did not anticipate a decade ago, when it began promoting personal computers as convenient venues for consumer banking. Ambitious online attacks soon followed. Banks have spent heavily to shore up cyber-defenses, and they’ve kept a policy of reimbursing individual online account holders who can verify that they’ve been ripped off, Johnson says.

Even so, cyber-robbery has evolved into a multifaceted, multibillion-dollar global industry that shows little sign of cooling. Last year, the number of malicious software programs designed to pilfer online bank accounts — referred to as banking Trojans — rose to 65,098 in December, up from 4,295 at the start of 2009, according to Panda Security, a Madrid-based antivirus software supplier.

Writers of malicious software code are prolific, always focusing on new ways to get past the latest defenses erected by banks and antivirus companies, says Panda Security researcher Sean-Paul Correll.

A 2009 ABA survey of 170 U.S. banks revealed that 85% of big banks are incurring losses stemming from cyber-attacks on consumer online accounts. Banks responding to the survey rated the “threat level” of online attacks at 2.58 on a scale of zero to five; that’s up from a 1.84 rating in 2007.

“Every single bank I’ve talked to in the last six months, big and small, has seen these attacks,” says Avivah Litan, banking security analyst at research firm Gartner. “It’s an arms race. There are solutions — until the next kind of attack comes along. And if you’re caught in the middle, you’re screwed.”

Successful robbers are patient

Janis Stuart, a retired San Diego personal trainer, barely dodged one recent cutting-edge attack. Returning from an out-of-town trip in April, Stuart booted up her desktop PC and began checking e-mail. She found a notice from her community bank advising her that all future e-mails would be sent to a new e-mail address, as per her online instructions. Stuart never requested such a change.

“My immediate reaction was that they had confused accounts, and this was a big mistake,” she recalls. Stuart drove down to the branch office. A clerk informed her that $5,836.66 was about to be transferred from her savings account to a woman Stuart had never heard of, in the form of a bill-payment check. Payment was stopped.

Stuart says bank officials advised her that she most likely had a computer infection that allowed an attacker to gain access to her account, change the e-mail address and set the bill payment in motion. The bank authorized the transfer because the thief knew the answers to Stuart’s “secret questions” — such as her mother’s maiden name and the city of her birth — and because a similar bill-payment check had been sent from Stuart’s account to the same woman 12 months earlier. That initial check was never cashed, Stuart says.

It was a ruse that allowed the attacker to remain undetected while establishing the woman as an approved recipient of bill-payment checks from Stuart. After waiting a year, the attacker triggered the second payment. “It was a fluke that I caught it in time before the money disappeared,” says Stuart. “I was very upset.” Stuart says she “felt the bank was somehow responsible” for enabling an intruder access to her account.

Stuart’s experience illustrates a prerequisite for accomplished cyber-robbers: patience. The cyber-underground has advanced to the point where very powerful hacking tools and tutorials are readily available for free, and a highly efficient and organized support infrastructure has been established to help thieves. Taking full advantage of such tools takes time.

Chasing thieves’ technology

Instead of holding up a bank branch at gunpoint, modern-day cyber-robbers do their homework.

“To maximize their effectiveness and streamline their ability to move money quickly, criminals take the time to learn your online banking platform and do account reconnaissance,” says Terry Austin, CEO of Guardian Analytics, which supplies fraud-detection systems.

First, they acquire valid account log-ons, often by purchasing them from specialist data thieves. Next, they quietly access accounts, making note of high cash balances and access to credit lines. They also familiarize themselves with the bank’s protocols for authorizing the creation of new online accounts and approving cash transfers.

They look for coding security holes — and invariably find them in the Web browser, the tool banks rely on to run programs that serve as a virtual bank teller. But Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome and Apple Safari are designed to let users navigate the entire Internet; they weren’t meant to execute secure financial transactions. Cyber-robbers craft banking Trojans that inject software code into the Web browser, letting the attacker take control of online banking sessions, alter what the account holder sees and make stealthy transactions.

“With the exception of some rare cases, the current online banking systems are at least one full generation behind the current techniques employed by cyber-crooks,” says Costin Raiu, Kaspersky Lab research director.

Cyber-robbers also take great care in setting up “drop” accounts — online accounts they control, usually at the same bank as victims — poised to receive cash transfers. They typically recruit “money mules,” accomplices who execute the final, riskiest step of withdrawing cash from drop accounts and forwarding proceeds to the ring leaders.

Mules are recruited through work-at-home advertisements on employment websites and, increasingly, on popular social networks. Typical pitches promise high earnings for minimal work involving accepting deposits and handling cash transfers. Kaspersky Lab researcher Dmitry Bestuzhev recently tracked down one Facebook-based mule recruiter who had 224,000 friends. “Who knows how many of them accepted the offer to be a money mule?” Bestuzhev says.

In one caper recently investigated by SecureWorks, the attacker embedded a banking Trojan in the victim’s Web browser by getting the person to click on a corrupted Web link in an instant message. The Trojan watched for when the victim next accessed his online bank account and sent a copy of the user name and password to the attacker. It also automatically injected a spoofed bank form into the legitimate banking Web pages.

The bank form asked for the last four digits of the user’s debit card number, ostensibly to complete a security update. The victim complied and filled out the form. The attacker now had a key piece of information necessary to execute large cash transfers.

On a Wednesday shortly before noon, the attacker logged on and began a series of transactions. He changed the e-mail address associated with the account, so notices of any questionable transfers wouldn’t reach the account holder. He next accessed a credit card line of credit and transferred the maximum loan amount into checking.

He then emptied the account of more than $20,000, via a series of transfers into a drop account. To execute the transfers, the thief had to answer this question: “What are the last four digits of your debit card account number?” It took four days for the bank to reimburse the victim.

Such attacks are likely to continue to be commonplace, says Joe Stewart, senior threat researcher at SecureWorks. “Cybercriminals can steal credentials for thousands of accounts at a time with very little effort,” he says. “They have access to more accounts than they could possibly ever use, and most of those are personal accounts.”

Consumer distrust increases

To slow down cyber-robberies, banks increasingly are asking “knowledge-based authentication” questions at key junctures of online banking sessions, says Johnson, the bankers association risk expert. Such questions, derived from data amassed by the big three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion and by data aggregators LexisNexis and Axiom, ask about obscure personal details such as the name of one’s mortgage holder or father-in-law, a previous address, even the color of one’s car.

“The questions are going to get more difficult over time,” Johnson says. “The threat is real, and (banks) are providing the tools to help customers protect themselves.”

Citibank and Bank of America rank third and seventh among the top 10 most frequently attacked banks in the world, according to Kaspersky Lab. Each uses a variety of security systems and relies on consumers to help protect their online accounts.

“It is paramount that our customers know how to protect themselves,” says Bank of America spokeswoman Tara Burke. “We recommend that customers always protect their passwords, ensure the bank has up-to-date contact information and review their accounts on a regular basis.”

Litan, the Gartner banking security analyst, says banks need to move away from technologies that rely on common Web browsers, which is where banking Trojans thrive. Handheld optical readers, a more advanced technology, are available from Gemalto and Cronto. These devices must be used to take a picture of a visual cryptogram — a secure image produced by the bank — as part of authorizing any cash transfers.

Mandatory use of a verification device that operates separately from the browser would enable banks to ensure “secure transactions no matter what is on the customer’s PC,” says Paul Beverly, executive vice president at Gemalto.

But Litan says banks are a long way from even thinking about widely distributing such devices to consumers. “They don’t want to get into the business” of providing hardware to customers, she says.

Banking and security experts say the only thing that will change the banking industry’s current approach is widespread consumer backlash. Stuart’s reaction to her brush with a near robbery could be a harbinger. The experience prompted her to get offline and revert to branch banking.

“It’s inconvenient not to be able to check my account whenever I feel like it. I have to go by the bank and ask for printouts,” says Stuart. “But at this point, I distrust the system of online banking.”

By James Zumwalt, www.HumanEvents.com

Islamic extremists quote the Koran to justify violence. They believe the words in the Koran are not open to interpretation by man. As the words are Allah’s, communicated to the Prophet Mohammed through the Archangel Gabriel, they have only the meaning Allah—and not man—intended.

Yet many words and phrases in the Koran are open to interpretation due to man’s imperfection in understanding Allah’s intent. Resolving this interpretation is difficult, as no single authoritative, spiritual leader exists for all Islam. While Muslims rely on the Koran for spiritual guidance, a schism within Islam after Mohammed’s death left Sunnis and Shias adhering to different beliefs and interpretations due to these ambiguities.

But these ambiguities provide the vehicle by which Islamic extremists issue their violent interpretations of Allah’s words. Lost upon followers in accepting them is, in offering their interpretation, the extremists violate their own basic tenet that the Koran’s words are those of Allah alone. If, as Islamic extremists suggest, the Koran is given Allah’s interpretation alone, upon what basis do they claim the right to interpret Allah’s message?

It is interesting to examine an origin of modern day Islamic extremist thinking, which, ironically, was triggered in the U.S. by an act of kindness seeking to include a visiting Muslim scholar.

Egyptian educator Sayyid Qutb came to the U.S. in 1948 to study the educational system. Invited to a church social dinner and dance, he fumed as he watched women dancing suggestively close to their male partners. A confirmed bachelor unable to find a woman of sufficient “moral purity and discretion” to marry, Qutb—in an article very critical of America’s immorality—recorded his observations: “The dance floor was replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was full of desire.”

Qutb’s revulsion over America’s animalistic sexuality dominated many of his later writings, which claimed only Islam offered salvation from the West’s decay. Returning to Egypt in 1950, he went on to lead the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood—before being executed in 1966 for plotting against the government. His writings and ideas ultimately were an inspiration for Osama bin Laden, shaping al-Qaeda.

It is interesting to compare Qutb’s criticism of Western moral decay to the debauchery of the afterlife the Koran promises loyal followers. What Qutb witnessed in America was quite tame in comparison.

Mohammad Asghar is a former Muslim who left Islam only after coming to understand its true teachings. In an interview with FrontPageMagazine a few years ago, he shared insights, described in the Koran, as to what believers and martyrs are told they can expect in Heaven’s “Gardens:”

“Everything in the Gardens will be for the enjoyment of their residents. In them, their male residents will have companions who will provide them with immense pleasure without feeling shame… Bashful with dark eyes and virgins … will provide them constant company and sex. Those men who will not have interest in sex with the female Hurs (maidens), Allah has made arrangement for them as well: they shall be attended by boys graced with eternal youth… Allah will make them drunk, so that they can serve their clients to their entire satisfaction… The male residents of the Gardens and their virgin companions will be doing only one thing: sex.”

The wives of Muslim men who make it to Heaven, Asghar says,

“will chase their husbands to satisfy their sexual needs. Orgies will always take place in the Gardens. With their male residents’ desire for sex always remaining present in them due to the presence in their midst of, perhaps, naked Hurs, they will have nothing to do, but to have sex with them with no barriers to shield their activity from the next copulating man and Hur. Fathers will be having sex with the Hurs before the eyes of their sons and daughters, and sons will be having sex with the Hurs before their fathers and mothers… Muslims believe in every word of the Koran, as it is from Allah. Many of them wish to die as martyrs so that they can drink and have sex with the Hurs. Not to make them wait, until the Day of Judgment, to enjoy the bliss He has promised to Muslims, Allah transports the martyrs to the Garden as soon as they lay down their lives in His cause.”

The Koran’s sex theme spills over to Hell and the fate of non-believers. Asghar reports there is an interpretation that even sinners will have sex “while burning in the fire of Hell.”

The Koran explains Allah uses deception, when necessary, to dupe mankind. It would appear in preaching their violent interpretations of the Koran, so too do Islamic extremists.

By Ludwig Schneider, Israel Today

There is only night or day. Everything else, whether dawn or twilight, leans towards either day or night. The same thing applies to our attitude toward Israel. We either bless Israel or we curse it (Numbers 24:9). It is not possible to be indifferent toward Israel.

In other words, there are just two camps. One teaches that God has abandoned the nation of Israel and set up the Church in its place. This is known as Replacement Theology. The other says that God will never abandon His people Israel. Both camps cite the Bible, but the former ignores the context.

For example, opponents of Israel refer to Jeremiah 7:29: “The Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.” The rejection of Israel was an issue even in the prophet’s time, as God bemoans in Jeremiah 33:23-24: “Have you not observed what this people have spoken, saying, ‘The two families [Judah and Israel] which the Lord chose, He has rejected them?’”

Friends of Israel on the other hand quote Judges 2:1: “I brought you…into the land (Israel) which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said [or promised], ‘I will never break My covenant with you.’”

God confirms this in Jeremiah 31:37- 38: “Thus says the Lord, ‘If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done.’”

The Bible is full of promises from God that He will not reject His people Israel, but also of warnings that He will reject Israel. Which is right? What is relevant for the times we are living in now?

The answer is in the timing—whether God has rejected Israel temporarily or permanently. The early Christians in Rome also had a problem with this issue, for Paul responds to the question as to whether God has rejected His people Israel with a clear, “May it never be!” (Romans 11:1). However, a few verses later, he writes that God has rejected His covenant people for a limited time through the “partial” hardening of their hearts. Why? So that during this period, salvation may come to the gentiles (11:25-29).

This rejection, however, is temporary; it will only last “until the fullness of the gentiles has come in”—i.e., until the full number of the chosen gentiles has entered the Church of God. Then “all Israel will be saved.” At that point, God’s permanent covenant with His people Israel will be restored. The bottom line: When God speaks of His rejection of Israel, this is only a temporary state.

Indeed, the “stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone” (Psalm 118:22). While Peter correctly interprets this as referring to Jesus (Acts 4:11), it also refers to the nation of Israel in the End Times.

Zechariah 8:23 clearly indicates that the Jewish people have not been permanently rejected and will still play a role in salvation history: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew[!] saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”’” At this time Israel will move out of the state of temporary rejection and will once again, in the sight of the whole world, become God’s eternal covenant nation.

Whenever Israel was disobedient to God, He rejected His people for a period of time—temporarily—in order to reinstate them after they had repented. He has not rejected Israel forever, for “the Lord will not abandon His people on account of His great name” (1 Samuel 12:22).

The Lord also says: “I have chosen you and not rejected you” (Isaiah 41:9); “Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them” (Leviticus 26:44). Here God confirms His eternal covenant with Israel, which was not annulled by His temporary rejection of the nation.

This is why He is leading Israel back again into the Land of the fathers; “and they will not again be rooted out from their land which I have given them” (Amos 9:15). Just as God keeps His oath regarding His people Israel, so He also keeps His word to the Christian household of faith.

PUTTING DOWN ROOTS: The Bible says Israel will never again be uprooted from the Promised Land

By Sara Lehmann, www.JewishPress.com

Non-Jews are no strangers to Israel’s policy of inclusivity in its government. What is strange is finding a non-Jewish Knesset member (MK) who is more Zionistic than most of his fellow parliamentarians. Ayoub Kara, a Druze Likud Knesset minister, is proud to consider himself one of the most right-wing members of the Knesset.

Kara, who was appointed deputy minister of the development of the Negev and Galilee by Prime Minister Netanyahu, was first elected to the Knesset in 1999. He was appointed Speaker of the Knesset, served as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Workers and later as chairman of the Anti-Drug Committee.

In a unique position to reach out to others, Kara spoke with the mufti of Turkey following the flotilla incident in an effort to mend bridges. He defended Israel as “the most humanitarian country in the Middle East” and urged the mufti to preach brotherhood “because there are no winners in war, and the way of peace and dialogue is preferable to the miseries of war.”

Kara lives in the Druze town of Daliyat al-Karmel near Haifa with his wife and five children.

The Jewish Press: Can you explain the history and attitudes of the Druze people?

Kara: The Druze descend from Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses. Both Jethro and Moses are prophets of the Druze, and we share the same book of religion as the Jews. The Druze believe, through the prophet Jethro, that the land of Israel is for the Jews and should be defended for the Jews.

Around a hundred years ago, when the Jews wanted to make a state of their own, the Druze helped them. They defended Jewish kibbutzim and gave the Jews in the North guns. They even cooperated with the Druze in Syria to support the Jews. There are around two million Druze in Israel living in the North, in the Galilee, the Carmel, the Golan Heights, and we serve in the Israeli army. Unlike the Palestinians, we have no aspirations for our own state.

Do Druze in other countries share the same beliefs regarding Israel?

This is the philosophy of most Druze, but they’re scared to speak out about it. The Druze are afraid of the Muslims. Privately they say they share a historical religion with the Jews, but out loud most of the Druze don’t speak like that. There is no democracy and free speech in Arab countries and many of the Druze are pressured to convert to Islam. In Israel it’s different because we have freedom to say we’re Druze, and we even have a Druze flag next to the Israeli flag. We can’t do this in Arab countries. I was in Lebanon and Syria, and I know how the Druze there feel. They feel like outsiders and are scared of the Muslims.

To what extent has your family been involved in Israel’s struggle for survival?

Before 1948, my grandfather helped the Jews and paid a big price. His son, my uncle, was the first Druze to be killed by the Arabs in 1939. He was an officer on the side of Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, and he was killed by Arabs in Acco [Acre] because they said that he supported the Jews. My father fought with Tzahal (IDF) in 1948 in the Galilee. Another uncle of mine was killed by Arabs at that time. And my two brothers were killed in the Lebanon War in 1982 near Beirut.

I was also severely injured in the Lebanon War, and my parents died soon after from heartbreak. I returned to my village near Haifa and started my own family after that. I need peace. I don’t like war, but I speak about my tragedy because it’s important to hear how my family paid such a price to defend Israel. I believe the ultimate importance for me, more than anything, is that I live in a democratic state with human rights. In all the surrounding Arab countries there are no human rights, no courts, no justice.

You serve as deputy minister of the Galilee and Negev. What do you consider the most significant challenges you face in these areas?

The big problem in the Galilee and Negev is the migration of people from these areas to the center of Israel. They move there to study and work because we don’t have companies and business in the north and south to provide work for the young people. And when they move to the center, that means the Arabs gain in these areas. President Peres keeps talking about demographics as the reason to give the Palestinians another state. In the future a new Peres could come and say we have to give the Arabs in the north and south another state. I am afraid of that because there will be more Arabs than Jews.

What efforts are you making to combat this problem?

I am trying to introduce new initiatives in the government. One is in the area of education. We now offer soldiers who finish the army the opportunity to study for free in the Galilee and Negev, and we’re also building a big college for medicine in the Galilee. We are trying to build new big roads for people to commute more quickly from the center [of Israel]. We support companies who come to these areas and provide incentives for them. We allowed Intel to open a big factory in the Negev with many rights from the government. This is our opportunity to change the demographics. If we don’t pursue this we will find ourselves with more Arabs than Jews in these areas. In 1948 there were 20,000 Bedouin in the Negev. Now, with no immigration, there are 200,000 Bedouin.

You spoke out very strongly against the Gaza Disengagement. Do you think the Israeli public has learned anything from the results of that withdrawal?

I think the Jewish people are very naïve. I was against the withdrawal from Lebanon and was alone in my opposition. I said that Hezbollah will be motivated from this. In 1982 most of the public in Lebanon were more liberal—Christian, Druze, and secular Muslims—and we were mostly at peace with them. I told [then-prime minister Ehud] Barak that it was important for us to support this group. But we withdrew quickly, and Hezbollah gained power in this area as a result of the withdrawal.

The same thing happened when Sharon withdrew from Gaza. I led the opposition to this plan in the government, but when I spoke out I was accused of opposing peace and supporting war. I tried to stop the Disengagement through the finance committee in the Knesset, but I was told if I don’t agree with them they will throw me out of the parliament. Now it’s different. More than 90 percent now understand that what happened in Gush Katif and South Lebanon was a mistake. They know that if there are any withdrawals in Yehudah and Shomron, the same thing would happen and there would be an Iranian ascendancy in those areas.

But we have the Supreme Court and other liberals in Israel who think we are negotiating with people who have the same mentality as Jews, Europeans, or Americans. But in the Middle East, the Arabs tell you what you want to hear and not what you have to hear. The Jews did not understand this until now.

I don’t want Israel to make another mistake. This is my state. For me the religion is not important—Druze, Jewish, or Christian. I am an Israeli patriot.

Yet you serve as a deputy minister in a Likud coalition whose prime minister endorsed the two-state solution and is in direct talks with the Palestinians. Do you see this as a contradiction?

I support Netanyahu and am one of his close friends. I don’t think Netanyahu would give up any land, but he’s realistic and knows he would look bad to the world if he opposes Obama. Obama has an agenda to give a state to the Palestinians. But he doesn’t live here. We do. When they pushed us on Gush Katif, we gave them land; and when we were attacked afterward, I didn’t see the U.S. come to defend us.

It’s very popular to say two states for two people, but when you speak about this you have to have a partner and leadership to give them a state. Who would lead this state? Abbas and Fayyad cannot cross the border of Hebron. If there were an election in the West Bank, Hamas would win. And Abbas and Fayyad don’t lead in Gaza. They are not relevant there. If they crossed the border into Gaza, Hamas would kill them. That’s why I laugh when they talk about two states.

In all history, there was never a Palestinian state. I don’t support the two-state solution. We have to look at the Palestinians’ intentions. Most of the Palestinians don’t believe Israel should exist. The state of the Palestinians is Jordan. More than 90 percent of Jordan is Palestinian. If they want us to go back to the 1967 borders, then Jordan should lead the Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria civilly, not in defense, while Israel should [maintain its presence] in the big cities and all the areas in between. And Egypt should retake control of Gaza. We should end any relationship with Gaza. We don’t have any other solution for Gaza. De facto, we have another state there.

But what if Egypt doesn’t want a relationship with Gaza?

So what? We are being pushed to give another state and we don’t want that either. If they want us to move to the 1967 borders, then they have too also. Egypt has problems with the Muslim Brotherhood, but we have our problems too. If the Egyptians kill a few thousand people in Gaza in broad daylight, no one would say anything; but if Israel kills one Palestinian, it makes news around the world. If we do not give Gaza to Egypt, there’s no other solution. The same thing with Jordan and the West Bank.

We need real peace in the Middle East, but I am not going to agree with Obama’s plan. No Obama and no Osama can push us to enable Iran to come into Jerusalem.

By Charles Krauthammer, www.WashingtonPost.com

The world is outraged at Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in.

But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel—a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.

In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded (“quarantined”) Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.

Oh, but weren’t the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel’s offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza—as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.

Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel’s inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.

Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?

But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel’s fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself—forward and active defense.

(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense—fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.

Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don’t have to fight them here.

But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies—and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.

Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land—evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.

(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense—military action to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.

The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel’s defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli—the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war—effectively de-legitimized any active Israeli defense against its self-declared terror enemies.

(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses—a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimization. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.

But, if none of these is permissible, what’s left?

Ah, but that’s the point. It’s the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who’ve had quite enough of the Jewish problem.

What’s left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last month, the U.S. reversed four decades of practice by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons—thus de-legitimizing Israel’s very last line of defense: deterrence.

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million—that number again—hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists—Iranian in particular—openly prepare a more final solution.

Here is the mailer mentioned in Mark Levitt’s article “Samaritan’s Purse Strings” in the October 2006 Levitt Letter.

Remarks by Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian, at the Duke University Counter-Terrorism Speak-Out

I’m proud and honored to stand here today, as a Lebanese speaking for Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. As someone who was raised in an Arabic country, I want to give you a glimpse into the heart of the Arabic world.

I was raised in Lebanon, where I was taught that the Jews were evil, Israel was the devil, and the only time we will have peace in the Middle East is when we kill all the Jews and drive them into the sea.

When the Moslems and Palestinians declared Jihad on the Christians in 1975, they started massacring the Christians, city after city. I ended up living in a bomb shelter underground from age 10 to 17, without electricity, eating grass to live, and crawling under sniper bullets to a spring to get water.

It was Israel who came to help the Christians in Lebanon. My mother was wounded by a Moslem’s shell, and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment. When we entered the emergency room, I was shocked at what I saw. There were hundreds of people wounded, Moslems, Palestinians, Christians, Lebanese, and Israeli soldiers lying on the floor. The doctors treated everyone according to their injury. They treated my mother before they treated the Israeli soldier lying next to her. They didn’t see religion, they didn’t see political affiliation, they saw people in need and they helped.

For the first time in my life I experienced a human quality that I know my culture would not have shown to their enemy. I experienced the values of the Israelis, who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments. I spent 22 days at that hospital. Those days changed my life and the way I believe information, the way I listen to the radio or to television. I realized I was sold a fabricated lie by my government, about the Jews and Israel, that was so far from reality. I knew for fact that, if I was a Jew standing in an Arab hospital, I would be lynched and thrown over to the grounds, as shouts of joy of Allahu Akbar, God is great, would echo through the hospital and the surrounding streets.

I became friends with the families of the Israeli wounded soldiers: one in particular Rina, her only child was wounded in his eyes.

One day I was visiting with her, and the Israeli army band came to play national songs to lift the spirits of the wounded soldiers. As they surrounded his bed playing a song about Jerusalem, Rina and I started crying. I felt out of place and started waking out of the room, and this mother holds my hand and pulls me back in without even looking at me. She holds me crying and says: “it is not your fault”. We just stood there crying, holding each other’s hands.

What a contrast between her, a mother looking at her deformed 19 year old only child, and still able to love me the enemy, and between a Moslem mother who sends her son to blow himself up to smithereens just to kill a few Jews or Christians.

The difference between the Arabic world and Israel is a difference in values and character. It’s barbarism verses civilization. It’s democracy verses dictatorship. It’s goodness verses evil.

Once upon a time, there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now, the intentional murder of Israeli children is legitimized as Palestinian “armed struggle.”

However, once such behavior is legitimized against Israel, it is legitimized every where in the world, constrained by nothing more than the subjective belief of people who would wrap themselves in dynamite and nails for the purpose of killing children in the name of god.

Because the Palestinians have been encouraged to believe that murdering innocent Israeli civilians is a legitimate tactic for advancing their cause, the whole world now suffers from a plague of terrorism, from Nairobi to New York, from Moscow to Madrid, from Bali to Beslan.

They blame suicide bombing on “desperation of occupation.” Let me tell you the truth. The first major terror bombing committed by Arabs against the Jewish state occurred ten weeks before Israel even became independent.

On Sunday morning, February 22, 1948, in anticipation of Israel’s independence, a triple truck bomb was detonated by Arab terrorists on Ben Yehuda Street, in what was then the Jewish section of Jerusalem. Fifty-four people were killed, and hundreds were wounded. Thus, it is obvious that Arab terrorism is caused not by the “desperation” of “occupation,” but by the VERY THOUGHT of a Jewish state.

So many times in history in the last 100 years, citizens have stood by and done nothing, allowing evil to prevail. As America stood up against and defeated communism, now it is time to stand up against the terror of religious bigotry and intolerance. It’s time to all stand up, and support and defend the state of Israel, which is the front line of the war against terrorism.

By Pierre Rehov, documentary filmmaker

On July 15, MSNBC’s “Connected” program discussed the July 7th London attacks.

One of the guests was Pierre Rehov, a French filmmaker who has filmed six documentaries on the intifada by going undercover in the Palestinian areas. Pierre’s upcoming film, “Suicide Killers,” is based on interviews that he conducted with the families of suicide bombers and would-be bombers in an attempt to find out why they do it. Pierre agreed to a request for a Q&A interview here about his work on the new film.

Q — What inspired you to produce “Suicide Killers,” your seventh film?

A — I started working with victims of suicide attacks to make a film on PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) when I became fascinated with the personalities of those who had committed those crimes, as they were described again and again by their victims. Especially the fact that suicide bombers are all smiling one second before they blow themselves up.

Q — Why is this film especially important?

A — People don’t understand the devastating culture behind this unbelievable phenomenon. My film is not politically correct because it addresses the real problem, showing the real face of Islam. It points the finger against a culture of hatred in which the uneducated are brainwashed to a level where their only solution in life becomes to kill themselves and kill others in the name of a God whose word, as transmitted by other men, has become their only certitude.

Q — What insights did you gain from making this film? What do you know that other experts do not know?

A — I came to the conclusion that we are facing a neurosis at the level of an entire civilization. Most neuroses have in common a dramatic event, generally linked to an unacceptable sexual behavior. In this case, we are talking of kids living all their lives in pure frustration, with no opportunity to experience sex, love, tenderness or even understanding from the opposite sex. The separation between men and women in Islam is absolute. So is contempt toward women, who are totally dominated by men. This leads to a situation of pure anxiety, in which normal behavior is not possible. It is no coincidence that suicide killers are mostly young men dominated subconsciously by an overwhelming libido that they not only cannot satisfy but are afraid of, as if it is the work of the devil.

Since Islam describes heaven as a place where everything on Earth will finally be allowed, and promises 72 virgins to those frustrated kids, killing others and killing themselves to reach this redemption becomes their only solution.

Q — What was it like to interview would-be suicide bombers, their families and survivors of suicide bombings?

A — It was a fascinating and a terrifying experience. You are dealing with seemingly normal people with very nice manners who have their own logic, which to a certain extent can make sense since they are so convinced that what they say is true. It is like dealing with pure craziness, like interviewing people in an asylum, since what they say, is for them, the absolute truth. I hear a mother saying “Thank God, my son is dead.” Her son had became a shaheed, a martyr, which for her was a greater source of pride than if he had became an engineer, a doctor or a winner of the Nobel Prize.

This system of values works completely backwards since their interpretation of Islam worships death much more than life. You are facing people whose only dream, only achievement goal is to fulfill what they believe to be their destiny, namely to be a Shaheed or the family of a shaheed.

They don’t see the innocent being killed, they only see the impure that they have to destroy.

Q — You say suicide bombers experience a moment of absolute power, beyond punishment. Is death the ultimate power?

A — Not death as an end, but death as a door opener to the after life. They are seeking the reward that God has promised them. They work for God, the ultimate authority, above all human laws. They therefore experience this single delusional second of absolute power, where nothing bad can ever happen to them, since they become God’s sword.

Q — Is there a suicide bomber personality profile? Describe the psychopathology.

A — Generally kids between 15 and 25 bearing a lot of complexes, generally inferiority complexes. They must have been fed with religion. They usually have a lack of developed personality. Usually they are impressionable idealists. In the western world they would easily have become drug addicts, but not criminals. Interestingly, they are not criminals since they don’t see good and evil the same way that we do. If they had been raised in an Occidental culture, they would have hated violence. But they constantly battle against their own death anxiety. The only solution to this deep-seated pathology is to be willing to die and be rewarded in the afterlife in Paradise.

Q — Are suicide bombers principally motivated by religious conviction?

A — Yes, it is their only conviction. They don’t act to gain a territory or to find freedom or even dignity. They only follow Allah, the supreme judge, and what He tells them to do.

Q — Do all Muslims interpret jihad and martyrdom in the same way?

A — All Muslim believers believe that, ultimately, Islam will prevail on earth. They believe this is the only true religion and there is no room, in their mind, for interpretation. The main difference between moderate Muslims and extremists is that moderate Muslims don’t think they will see the absolute victory of Islam during their lifetime, therefore they respect other beliefs. The extremists believe that the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Islam and ruling the entire world as described in the Koran, is for today. Each victory of Bin Laden convinces 20 million moderate Muslims to become extremists.

Q — Describe the culture that manufactures suicide bombers.

A — Oppression, lack of freedom, brain washing, organized poverty, placing God in charge of daily life, total separation between men and women, forbidding sex, giving women no power whatsoever, and placing men in charge of family honor, which is mainly connected to their women’s behavior.

Q — What socio-economic forces support the perpetuation of suicide bombings?

A — Muslim charity is usually a cover for supporting terrorist organizations. But one has also to look at countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are also supporting the same organizations through different networks. The ironic thing in the case of Palestinian suicide bombers is that most of the money comes through financial support from the Occidental world, donated to a culture that utterly hates and rejects the West (mainly symbolized by Israel).

Q — Is there a financial support network for the families of the suicide bombers? If so, who is paying them and how does that affect the decision?

A — There used to be a financial incentive in the days of Saddam Hussein ($25,000 per family) and Yasser Arafat (smaller amounts), but these days are gone. It is a mistake to believe that these families would sacrifice their children for money. Although, the children themselves who are very attached to their families, might find in this financial support another reason to become suicide bombers. It is like buying a life insurance policy and then committing suicide.

Q — Why are so many suicide bombers young men?

A — As discussed above, libido is paramount. Also ego, because this is a sure way to become a hero. The shaheeds are the cowboys or the firemen of Islam. Shaheed is a positively reinforced value in this culture. And what kid has never dreamed of becoming a cowboy or a fireman?

Q — What role does the U.N. play in the terrorist equation?

A — The U.N. is in the hands of Arab countries and third world or ex-communist countries. Their hands are tied. The U.N. has condemned Israel more than any other country in the world, including the regime of Castro, Idi Amin or Kaddahfi. By behaving this way, the U.N. leaves a door open by not openly condemning terrorist organizations. In addition, through UNRWA, the U.N. is directly tied to terror organizations such as Hamas, representing 65 percent of their apparatus in the so-called Palestinian refugee camps. As a support to Arab countries, the U.N. has maintained Palestinians in camps with the hope to “return” into Israel for more than 50 years, therefore making it impossible to settle those populations, which still live in deplorable conditions. Four hundred million dollars are spent every year, mainly financed by U.S. taxes, to support 23,000 employees of UNRWA, many of whom belong to terrorist organizations (see Congressman Eric Cantor on this subject, and in my film “Hostages of Hatred”).

Q — You say that a suicide bomber is a ‘stupid bomb and a smart bomb’ simultaneously. Explain what you mean.

A — Unlike an electronic device, a suicide killer has until the last second the capacity to change his mind. In reality, he is nothing but a platform representing interests which are not his, but he doesn’t know it.

Q — How can we put an end to the madness of suicide bombings and terrorism in general?

A — Stop being politically correct and stop believing that this culture is a victim of ours. Radical Islamism today is nothing but a new form of Naziism. Nobody was trying to justify or excuse Hitler in the 1930s. We had to defeat him in order to make peace one day with the German people.

Q — Are these men traveling outside their native areas in large numbers? Based on your research, would you predict that we are beginning to see a new wave of suicide bombings outside the Middle East?

A — Every successful terror attack is considered a victory by the radical Islamists. Everywhere Islam expands there is regional conflict. Right now, there are thousands of candidates for martyrdom lining up in training camps in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Inside Europe, hundreds of illegal mosques are preparing the next step of brain washing to lost young men who cannot find a satisfying identity in the Occidental world. Israel is much more prepared for this than the rest of the world will ever be. Yes, there will be more suicide killings in Europe and the U.S. Sadly, this is only the beginning.