WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

By Mantiq al-Tayr * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1. Something else bothered Orlich. Yee mentioned he had studied in Damascus. Orlich wondered about a man who would go to Syria - a state sponsor of terrorism - to find God.

Maj. Jason Orlich

Why not put together a huge bullshit-filled KKK-like anti-Muslim briefing up on the internet? Oh, and make sure to put your name and military rank on it so that the whole world will know, as I demonstrated last week in my most recent post, that the US government is rife with anti-Muslim bigots. (Go here for the downloadable power point presentation and go here to see it in html format.)

You can read about this guy's antics in the links below, but for your amusement, I have also drawn a few quotes from the relevant articles:

Of course the quality of language work at Guantamo was always superb as we can see from this article on how totally fucked up the government's case was:

Another accusation, that he distributed radical literature to the detainees, was based on an erroneous translation of an Islamic symbol in Ottoman-style calligraphy.

Later on in the same expose of government malfeasance we read of more great language work being done:

Airman Al Halabi's lawyers also made a charge of misconduct after a government translator contacted them to say that one of the prosecutors, Capt. Dennis Kaw, had discouraged her from alerting the court when she found a mistake in her translation of the Syrian government's letter. Captain Kaw had insisted, rather improbably, that the Syrian government had given Airman Al Halabi permission in the letter to travel not only to Syria but also to Qatar; instead, the relevant word meant "the homeland."

And read this:

As recently as a week ago, reports suggested that at least 17 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have been subjected to the program. But Maj. Jason Orlich, a creator of Guantánamo Bay's "incentives" program that uses long-term sleep deprivation as a punishment for those who misbehave or fail to cooperate, testified that nearly all of the 350 to 400 prisoners held in two Guantánamo Bay prison camps were subject to the program, which entails waking the prisoners, shackling them, and moving them to a different cell along with all their belongings. Maj. Orlich was reluctant to specify the frequency of the moves, but testified that three-hour intervals "would not be abnormal."

Maj. Orlich also revealed that the Frequent Flyer Program was Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), although it did not appear in writing in the SOPs of that time-begging the question of what other detainee treatment policies were omitted from the written records. According to Maj. Orlich, Guantánamo Bay leadership was aware that the Frequent Flyer Program was in use, and the program was a routine included in what the military calls its "daily synchronization matrix." Maj. Orlich also said that the Frequent Flyer Program was ongoing at the time of his departure from Guantánamo Bay in April 2005, and he had never heard of any order to stop the program. This is despite previous government claims that the program had been discontinued in March 2004.

And here are some excerpts from the extremely bigoted and ignorant slide show this guy has put up on the web apparently subsequent to his tour in Guantanomo. I wonder if he gives this briefing to other people in the military and the US government. On the first slide of his presentation he mentions his PACOM affiliation. Maybe you all investigative journalists out there could ask PACOM if this means that they endorse his presentation.

You know it's gonna be good when it starts off with a quote from the fraud Walid Shoebat which I will spare you. Note to Shas Party members: the headlines in bold are mine, not from the presentation by Maj. Jason Orlich – though I can understand why people could get that confused. The quotes from the slide show are in italics.

Also, the author of the presentation states:

This brief is based upon Extensive Research, Islamic texts, history, and lessons learned at JTF GTMO

So let's take a look at some of the fruits of this extensive foray into Islamic texts.

Yahweh be good, Allah be bad:

Yahweh = Allah

* Yahweh is a loving Father, who, along with the Son and the Holy Spirit, is One God.

* To Muslims, the concept of a triune God is a blasphemy.

"They do blaspheme who say God is one of three...,for there is no God except one God." Surah 5:73

. . .

God." Surah 8:30 * Allah of Islam is frightening.

"It is God whom ye should more justly fear, if you believe." Surah 9:13

Muslims are Moonies:

2 Different Spiritual Worlds

Yahweh and Allah

* Before Islam came into existence, the Sabbeans in Arabia worshipped the moon-god Allah who was married to the sun-goddess.

* Common practice to use the name of the moon-god in personal names in Muhammad's tribe.

* Allah was a pagan deity in pre-Islamic times.

* An Allah idol was set up at the Kabah along with all the other idols of the time.

* The pagans prayed towards Mecca and the Kabah because that is where their gods were stationed.

* The idol of their moon god, Allah, was at Mecca, they prayed towards Mecca.

* The worship of the moon-god extended far beyond Allah-worship in Arabia. The entire fertile crescent was involved in moon-worship.

* The early success Islam had amongst Arab groups that had traditionally worshipped Allah, the moon-god.

* The use of the crescent moon as the symbol of Islam, and which appears on dozens of flags of Islamic nations in Asia and Africa, and surmounts minerets and mosque roofs, is a throwback to the days when Allah was worshipped as the moon-god in Mecca.

Moohammad he a bad man and Khadijah, she be a bad girl getting her daddy drunk and all.

Genesis of the Islamic Faith

570 C.E. Muhammad born in Mecca

– Both parents died before Muhammad was 6

Abandoned by Mother, Amina, and passed around, rejected and possibly abused by 2 men (Ishaq 71, 72)

– Muhammad was raised by his Grandfather Abd al-Muttalib who almost

Sacrificed Muhammad's Father Abd-Allah in the Ka'aba while praying to Allah and

Practicing divination. (Tab VI 2,5)

– He also liked to constantly stroke/pet Muhammad. After his Grandfather's death, his Uncle Abu Talib raised him. (Ishaq 73)

-Muhammad became a trade agent for a rich female merchant named Khadijah who was 40 years old.

Khadijah who was 15 years his senior invited Muhammad and his uncles to her home. She got her father so drunk that he married them. Her Father later regretted marrying them. His sons, Al-Qasim, Al-Tayyib and Al-Tahir died in infancy; He had Fatima (wife of Ali) and 2 other daughters. (Tab VI 49)

Mongol invaders good, resistance to them very very bad and Ibn Taymiyya is a hadith.

Ibn Taymiya and NO TOLERANCE

PRINCIPLE: MUSLIMS SHOULD RESIST, FIGHT AND OVERTURN ANY ISLAMIC GOVERNMENT THAT DOESN'T GOVERN THE LAND ACCORDING TO THE ISLAMIC LAW ONLY!

PRINCIPLE: MUSLIMS SHOULD ENFORCE JIHAD ON ANYBODY WHOSE BELIEFS DIFFER FROM ISLAM, ESPECIALLY JEWS AND CHRISTIANS.

1263 A.D. – Born in Syrian town of Haran

Fought Mongolian invaders of Syria (1299-1303) and taught that Mongolians

were not true Muslims and that fellow countrymen should not submit to their authority.

Declared that anyone who submitted to Mongolians, helped them or dealt with
them was an infidel.

Taymiya acted as if he were a military leader, declaring the Muslims to be
infidels and attacking them.

Taymiya established the mind-set of NO TOLERANCE and refinforced principles that were practiced centuries earlier in the times of Muhammad.

REMEMBER: Today's terrorism is a result of this mindset and Taymiya is one of most widely read Hadiths.

2. Yes, it's already video time. Now the first video below is one that I found on Rick B's site http://ww3zionism.blogspot.com/ Check his site out.

And no doubt many of you have seen it. But I'm linking to it because:

A. It is very well done. I take my hat off to the people at the Onion. They are superb.

B. Listen to the little girl's Arabic at near the end of the video. Shows you what happens when David Gaubatz types are teaching people Arabic.

C. It is short, so Shas Party and Tea Party members can follow it.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CqpEacxdS0

And now for some serious study of the gifts that Yahweh er, Allah, has bestowed upon us. Kind of makes you all want to shout out in unison الحمد لله doesn’t it?

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mezDRxqI7x0

As we all know from Peter King’s (Asshole, New York) inquisition, Shakira law made it to Nashville. Maybe that’s not so bad after all.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTdV6dn_3_0

نشكر الله

* Mantiq al-Tayr is a blogger who is attempting to wake up other American citizens to the true dangers and challenges which face their country and is devoted to justice for the Palestinian people. Truth is his objective, satire is his tool. He also enjoys reading the Qur'an from time to time. See his website.

No related posts.

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

By Mantiq al-Tayr * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1. Today I just want to do a couple of things quickly. First of all, Skulz Fontaine has been sending me some great stuff and I've been a bit remiss in not sharing some of these with you. I like this one.

But of course the land theft continues, as does the killing – killing Palestinians being the Israeli national pass time. Plus it just seems that attacking, harrasing and shooting at Palestinians is as Israeli as assaulting the USS Liberty.

2. But I want to address something else as the main topic today. What some people like to call Islamophobia – I call it what it is – Anti-Muslim Bigotry – in the United States is getting out of hand. Our country is sick and we need to understand the source of this sickness and do something about it. One good place for you to go as you begin searching for the source is an article I've linked to before by Max Blumenthal. It is here. And here's another real interesting one. And you should read all about David Horowitz – who pays Robert Spencer something like 132k a year to write his bullshit. I strongly recommend you go to Loonwatch and do a search on David Horowitz. Oh hell, I'll do it for you.

And this brings me to:

3. But I also want to draw your attention to something else. Islamphobia is being actively supported by local, state and federal governments and law enforcement. Anti-Muslim hatemongers routinely train local, state and federal officials to hate Islam and Muslims and it looks like they get good money for it. I tell you, I am in the wrong business, but I digress.

It is very possible that these hate mongers have trained people in your community and your state and for sure some of them have been saying some real interesting bullshit to people in the federal government. I mean real wackos like Nonie Darwish and Walid Phares and Steve Coughlin.

I can hear you know, "Okay, Mantiq, prove this. How come you haven't provided one single link under this topic whereas you are always linking everything to everything else and we can't even finish your goddamn posts because we are running of all over hell's half acre reading your links?

Never, fear. Your link is here. It is to a new 80-page study of this phenomenon done by Thomas Cincotta of Political Research Associates. It is entitled:

Manufacturing the Muslim Menace: Private Firms, Public Servants and the Threat to Rights and Security. It's a nice PDF file and you can download the whole thing for free.

Here is an excerpt from the preface to the report about how effectively your public officials are being trained:

"Kill them, including the children."

That's how to solve the threat of violent militant Muslims?

The above quote is from what one official involved in homeland security said was how she understood the underlying theme of a speech by Walid Shoebat at an anti-terrorism training in Las Vegas in October 2010. Our investigator had turned around after Shoebat's speech and asked the woman seated one row back what she thought was the solution offered by Shoebat.

The report focuses on three private training outfits and the loons who work for them. They are:

A. the International Counter-Terrorism Officers Association (ICTOA)
B. Security Solutions International, LLC (SSI)
C. The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI Centre)

I like how the CI Centre (where Walid Phares plies his trade) spells centre the British way. Makes them look cool.

And the report has a section on each of the following people who work for one of the three firms mentioned above:

Mark A. Gabriel – ICTOA guest speaker
David Gaubatz – SSI guest speaker
Walid Phares – CI Centre Faculty
Clare M. Lopez – CI Centre Faculty
Tawfik Hamid – CI Centre Faculty
Stephen Coughlin – CI Centre Faculty
Nonie Darwish – CI Centre Faculty
Detective Ebrahim Ashabi – SSI Expert
Walid Shoebat – ICTOA Guest Speaker

This report is a must read and it is free. Send it to your congressmen and your state representatives and demand that your state, local and federal governments stop funding these modern-day equivalents of the Ku Klux Klan.

4. There are five million decoy Muslims in the US. They are here to trick you and then to kill you.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drQETQ2iprU
(I bet Shas Party members won't get this.)

5. Shakira law spreads to MUST (Missouri University for Science and Technology)

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=626Z2wmieUo

* Mantiq al-Tayr is a blogger who is attempting to wake up other American citizens to the true dangers and challenges which face their country and is devoted to justice for the Palestinian people. Truth is his objective, satire is his tool. He also enjoys reading the Qur'an from time to time. See his website.

Related posts:

• Hollywood-inspired anti-Muslim prejudices
• Updated-2 | In the Wake of “Obsession” Hate-DVDs: Muslim Children Gassed in Ohio Mosque
• America’s True Believers and the Great Muslim Scare

By Paul J. Balles * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

There's a sick mentality in the world that demands scapegoats and feeds witch hunts.

"Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment or blame. A scapegoat may be a child, employee, peer, ethnic or religious group, or country," reports Wikipedia.

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, one of the most famous short stories ever written, reveals the evils of village scapegoating.

The village has an annual lottery resulting in the winner being stoned to death. Explaining what she hoped the story would convey, Shirley Jackson said:

"I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."

Pointless violence and general inhumanity still reign supreme in tribes, villages, countries and the world.

They function in part on established ritual. Often, the only thing required to enshrine a new scapegoat is a compulsive need for someone to despise.

It doesn't matter who wins the lottery; and it makes no difference what happens to the winner. The winner is always the loser.

If it happens that the chosen scapegoat has multiple numbers, the next step can become a witch hunt.

The term "witch-hunt" since the 1930s has been used as a metaphor to refer to moral panics in general (frantic persecution of perceived enemies).

Wikipedia points out that "This usage is especially associated with the Second Red Scare of the 1950s (the McCarthyist persecution of communists in the United States)."

That brings us to the present and US Congressman Peter King. As chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, King is holding hearings to investigate the domestic threat of what he calls the "radicalization of the American Muslim community."

King apparently decided that Islam is to be the scapegoat for America's ills; and he is now on a witch hunt for Muslims to burn. King's anti-Islamic bias discredits him as a bigot.

According to the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, "King once complained that 'we have too many mosques in this country' (USA), and on another occasion offered the ludicrous opinion that '80 to 85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists.' His claim to be free of anti-Muslim bias lacks credibility."

That's putting it mildly. Adding to his statement about 85 percent of the mosques in the US being controlled by Muslim extremists, King told Sean Hannity of Fox News, that they make up "an enemy living amongst us."

Not only have mosques coloured King's bigotry. He complained that "There are too many people sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully and finding out how we can infiltrate them."

King has accused Muslims of failing to help expose terrorist plots in America. This is patently untrue, as Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina terrorist expert reveals:

"...in exposing alleged terrorist plots, the largest single source of initial information (48 of 120 cases) involved tips from the Muslim American community."

If King had a serious concern about a lack of Muslim cooperation with authorities, he would have invited Muslim leaders to his hearings. He has invited only one.

He should have invited law enforcement officials to corroborate or correct the biased figures he has been spouting. He did not.

Witch hunts like King's do nothing to increase security. They feed fear and breed hatred. According to a Time magazine poll, 43 percent of Americans view Muslims negatively.

Scapegoating and witch hunts have always been pointless, inhumane activities.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

Related posts:

• British Girl, 8, ‘was tortured for being witch’
• A Closer Look At The Attacks
• Who shall protest the Saudi government’s plans to tear down Prophet Muhammad’s house in Mecca?

Here is a new Christmas video for Palestine.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0wpyhHFOTg

Once again the Israelis/Zionists felt threatened by a video that reminds the world of the linkage between Christmas and Palestine, on many different levels.

It seems they made a organized effort to remove this video from YouTube by flagging it and voting it down.

So far, they only managed to get it restricted to "adults only" on the grounds that includes "inappropriate material". That means that only people with a youtube account can see it, thus severely restricting viewership. The same happened last Christmas when our video Christmas video was indeed removed.

Anyway, we need all the help we can get to spread this video, especially since people can see the video if it is embedded on a website or blog. For those with a youtube or gmail account (you login to youtube using any gmail account), you can also help by voting (pressing the "like" or "thumbs up" button) and putting a comment.

Hat tip: The Never Before Campaign Team

Related posts:

• STL-PSC Flash Mob: Boycott Israeli Apartheid in Palestine! (YouTube Censors the Video)
• Christmas in the Holy Land – 2009 [Video]
• Palestine: Roadmap to Peace? [Video]

By Lawrence Davidson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The Great Muslim Scare

In the year 1951 the American working class intellectual Eric Hoffer described those he called the True Believers.These are people who are alienated from their present conditions and suffer feelings of insecurity and uncertainty about the way their lives and communities are heading. To set things straight they seek out movements, either of the right or the left, that claim to have assured answers to problems while offering comfort and solidarity in a fellowship of like believers. The leaders of such movements often can be demagogues who expect their followers to be, well, true believers. The one and the many are made for each other in this regard. The solution to problems almost always entails conspiracy theories and the confronting of enemies, both internal and external. In generally uncertain and fearful times, more and more of the citizenry can be pulled into such movements, attracted by leaders who are assertive in a mesmerizing way. All societies have such true believers in them and today’s America is no exception.

Since the end of the Cold War, communism has been replaced by a new enemy, the religion of Islam and the billion Muslims who make it up. Even before 9/11 there was an on-going effort by radical Zionists to focus American fears and uncertainties on the Muslim world. The 9/11 attacks seemed to be proof positive of their position and, with the media’s full cooperation, increasing numbers of citizens began to think a new crusader war was justified. After all, did not President George W. Bush say that the attackers "hate our values?"

In truth, the terrorism that came home to America on 9/11 was the result of decades of American foreign policies that had killed and injured incalculably more Middle Easterners than the 2,973 victims of that fateful day. But most US citizens were (and still are) unfamiliar with the realities of their country’s foreign policies and the government, along with the media, was not about to educate them. And so the nation entered a time of high anxiety allegedly made understandable through a mixture of propaganda, bigotry and official lies. It was (and still is for the era continues) a time made for true believers.

Introducing Pamela Geller

Zionist Pamela Geller likes to splash around in the Atlantic Ocean wearing a bikini, declaiming 'here I am in my chador, my burka'

1. Geller is a 51 year old ex-employee of the New York Daily News (she worked in marketing) and then, until 1994, was an associate publisher of something called The New York Observer. After that she seems to have devoted herself to political advocacy and blogging.
2. She is co-founder of the Freedom Defense Initiative which is dedicated to stopping "Islamic supremacist initiatives in American cities" and identifying "infiltrators of our federal agencies". She is also a founder of the organization Stop Islamization of America which, in the finest Orwellian fashion, describes itself as a "human rights organization”. It recently raised enough money to place advertisements on the sides of New York City buses identifying the Islamic religion with the 9/11 attacks. The organization’s motto is "Racism is the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense."
3. She is a pal of any number of right wing politicians known for their anti-Islamic positions such as Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, Gary Berntsen and the Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders.
4. She is a right-wing Zionist with connections to the West Bank settler movement. This may be the real root of her anti-Islamic sentiments.
5. And finally, Ms Geller may very well be a megalomanic. She likes to go around dressed in superman customs and has taken to calling herself "Atlas" (after Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged). She also likes to splash around in the Atlantic Ocean wearing a bikini, declaiming "here I am in my chador, my burka". When she is accused of obvious anti-Islamic statements and positions, she gets huffy and offers a flat denial made at suspiciously high volume. It is all a "gross misrepresentation", according to Geller. It should be kept in mind that just because it is tough to elect a female president does not mean that there is no American constituency for a female demagogue

As suggested above, there are millions of Americans who may find Geller’s message attractive. For example, most of the followers of Glenn Beck, Franklin Graham, Michael Evans, Rob Grant and the late Jerry Falwell are probably on the same page as Pamela Geller. Taken altogether they might account for about 10 per cent of the adult population (that is roughly 30 million people). These are the sort of people who think that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim and that there is an Islamic plot to take over the country and institute Shari’ah law. These are Hoffer’s hard core true believers. However, there are many additional Americans who are ready to see it Geller’s way on single issues. Again, take the Manhattan Islamic centre that Geller thinks is the launching pad for the "Islamization of America". About one third of the US do not think that American Muslims have a constitutional right to build at that spot. One half of all Americans think it is legal to ban Muslims from building mosques anywhere in the US. About 31 per cent would be OK with doing just that.

A partial explanation

How are we to understand this phenomenon? How could millions upon millions of at least potentially sensible people stereotype an entire religion of a billion people (the vast majority of whom disavow the likes of Osama bin Laden) as enemies?

I suggest consulting Walter Lippman for at least part of the answer. Walter Lippman was a Pulitzer Prize winning political commentator. He was born in 1889 and lived on until 1974. Lippman wrote a book in 1922 entitled Public Opinion. In this work he considered the problem of the individual’s knowledge of events and situations beyond his or her local environment. Here is how Lippman explained what is really a universal predicament:

Each of us lives and works on a small part of the earth's surface, moves in a small circle... Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine.

Inevitably, for most, those opinions of things beyond the local will be based on indirectly acquired information. Indeed, the further from home we look the more dependent we are on limited and often distorted information coming from sources which we assume to be knowledgeable but the biases of which we know little. This information underpins the "pictures in our heads" as Lippman characterized them, and it fleshes out the superficial views upon which make our judgments.

It is in times of high tension involving problems coming from beyond our local environment that we become most aware of our ignorance. To compensate for that ignorance we automatically place the unfamiliar situation within a culturally prescribed context and simultaneously turn to others of our group whom, it is assumed, know what is going on. The primary medium that brings us these "experts" – government officials, news pundits, academics and sometimes the likes of Pamela Geller – is the news media in all its forms. However, as Lippman tells us, "news and truth are not the same thing". One of the reasons for the divergence is the fact that the former is filtered through the minds of those "in the know" and their media facilitators. Thus, Lippman continues, we can assume that the guidance offered by the "experts" is "in some vital measure constructed out of his [or her] own stereotypes … and by the urgency of his [or her] own interest". One can think of no better examples of this than Pamela Geller and Fox News.

Conclusion

We have two factors working here, one is limited and the other ubiquitous. We have the limited but ever present subset of the population who are potential true believers. And in addition, we have a ubiquitous ignorance of that which is going on beyond our local environment. You might argue that, in an era of globalization and the web, this cannot be so. Unfortunately it is so. While there might be a lot of information out there, some of it even reliable information, most people do not seek it out nor do they necessarily have the background to recognize truth if it happens to run counter to their culturally influenced stereotypes and favourite "news" sources. These two factors are not uniquely American. You find them in all societies, including Muslim ones. Regardless, they are increasingly serious and dangerous factors right here in the USA.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

Related posts:

• Is America’s Military Prepared For The Israeli Threat? Can America Stop An Israeli “Nuclear” 9/11?
• Mass Assassinations Lie at the Heart of America’s Military Strategy in the Muslim World
• America’s Holy Crusade against the Muslim World

By Justin Raimondo* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Randy Bish, Pittsburgh, PA - The Tribune Review

Three people are dead because US "pastor" Terry Jones, in collaboration with the American media, staged (or threatened to stage) an anti-Muslim Koran-burning exhibition, which predictably stoked anti-American protests in Afghanistan: also predictably, US troops fired on demonstrators. The result: yet more "collateral damage."

In more 9/11 anniversary news: a rally sponsored by the David Horowitz-affiliated "Jihad Watch," in alliance with Pamela "Shrieking Harpy" Geller's "Stop the Islamization of America" grouplet and the British neo-fascist "English Defense League," attracted a few thousand wackos to a site a few blocks from Ground Zero, where uber-wacko Geert Wilders (Dutch neo-fascist and leading Islamophobe) made the case for banning Islam in the name of ... "Dutch tolerance":

"America, New York and Shariah are incompatible in New York. New York stands for openness and tolerance. Suppose there was a place and it only allowed people of one persuasion within its walls. It would not be New York. It would be Mecca."

Maybe Wilders has been smoking too much of that strong Dutch weed, but to argue that we're too tolerant to tolerate the intolerant seems a bit odd. Then again, Dutch neo-fascism no doubt suffers in translation.

Wilders, Geller, and "Jihad Watch" anti-Islam guru Robert Spencer want to import Europe's Muslim-hating racist fringe to America: their thesis is that Islam is not a religion, but a political conspiracy to impose Sharia law on non-Muslims. They raise the specter of an Islamic States of America, with American women draped in the chador and mandatory mosque attendance - a scenario that doesn't even qualify as credible science fiction.

And if you think it doesn't get any kookier than that, then you didn't listen to John Bolton's speech to the anti-mosque rally, delivered via videotape, wherein he attacked the effort by "politicians" to "impose tolerance and understanding on us, whether we like it or not." He also indirectly attacked his own former boss, George W. Bush, when he lashed out against Imam Feisal Rauf's role as a State Department emissary of good will to Muslim nations. It was Bush's State Department who first sponsored him in that role. Shortly before delivering his remarks, Bolton confirmed he is considering a presidential run: can he ride the wave of hate all the way to the White House?

Another aspiring anti-Muslim Know-Nothing demagogue who spoke at the rally is one Ilario Pantano, whose credentials as a murderous hater are surely impeccable. We last heard about Pantano when Army prosecutors accused him of murdering two Iraqis in some very cold blood, as Mother Jones relates:

"The central facts of the incident that made Ilario Pantano famous are not in dispute. On April 15, 2004, Pantano, a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, led a small group of Marines to search a suspected insurgent hideout in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, outside of Fallujah. As the patrol neared the house, two men tried to leave in a car. The Marines stopped, searched, and handcuffed the men. A Marine scoured the vehicle, but didn't find anything incriminating. After other Marines found weapons in the house, Pantano had the men uncuffed and ordered them to search the car themselves. At some point during that search, Pantano felt threatened by the two men. He shot them both-pausing to load a second magazine into his M-16 before emptying that clip too. Then he placed a cardboard sign reading 'No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy'-the motto of his Marine battalion-on top of the car. He wanted 'to send a message to these Iraqis and others,' he said later.

"For a time in 2005, it looked like Pantano might be court-martialed for killing the two Iraqis. One of his subordinates claimed the shooting was unjustified. But the prosecution's case collapsed in an early hearing, and Pantano was never even tried. The judge in charge of the hearing recommended non-judicial punishment-but Pantano's commander didn't agree, and he was never disciplined."

This is the kind of person at the head of the "anti-Islamization" movement - an escaped war criminal.

Pantano is now running for Congress in North Carolina - as a Republican, naturally.

Joe Conason made an important point about this hate movement, and that is its intensely partisan nature. Go here to listen to hate-monger Geller, aka Pamela Oshry, at a pro-Israel rally earlier this year. She ends her ultra-Likudist diatribe - "There is no Israeli occupation: the Arabs are occupying Israel!" - by urging her audience to "Dump Chuck!" Chuck Schumer, that is, the Democratic US Senator from New York who "dared" oppose John Bolton's nomination for UN ambassador: after all, "reasons" Geller, Bolton is "the best friend Israel ever had!" What else do we need to know?

If you think this gathering of pro-Israel fanatics, British football hooligans, and a Dutch neo-fascist is just a fringe phenomenon, ask yourself how many Americans believe Obama is a "secret Muslim"? The answer is depressing: and Republicans like Newt Gingrich are already using the anti-Muslim hysteria to target the President and his party in a display of shameless opportunism that is a new low, even for the GOP.

Part of this is due to internal Republican party politics: with the economics-driven "tea party" faction rapidly overturning the GOP Establishment, the neoconservative remnants are trying to stage a comeback by diverting the movement's energy to anti-Muslim scapegoating - anything other than holding Republicans as well as Democrats accountable for spending us into penury.

The impetus for this comes, as I detailed in last Friday's column, from the pro-Israel lobby, which is moving into high gear with its bomb Iran campaign, with Bolton calling on both the US and Israel to launch an immediate military strike. Millions of dollars are being poured into this effort, with Spencer's "Jihad Watch" and various and sundry other pro-Israel groups on the receiving end of the moolah. Like many right-wing movements, the anti-Islam activists have founded a new industry, marketing books, videos, and t-shirts, and throwing up "celebrities," e.g. the exhibitionistic bikini-wearing Geller, whose nude body painted gold adorns her blog's masthead. Follow the money!

As nutty and improbable as the idea of an "Islamic States of America" might be, there is real potential for a mass anti-Muslim movement in this country. All we need is another terrorist attack, not even one on the scale of 9/11, and the smoldering fires of unfocused anger that burn just beneath the surface of polite society will burst through to the surface. Ask any Japanese-American.

Languishing for the lack of a proper enemy in the post-cold war world, the neoconservative right was saved from extinction by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The specter of militant Islam is, for them, the perfect villain, one who represents a threat not just to the US but also to Israel, a country which is to them as the old Soviet Union was to American Communists: a model and a fatherland. Their strategy is to replicate in the US the anti-Muslim xenophobia that swept Likud into power in Israel, and which has catapulted Avigdor Lieberman, head of an anti-Muslim ultra-nationalist party, into the Foreign Ministry. Bolton is our Lieberman, and hopes to take the same route to power.

"I don't think anybody has a problem with Muslims in America," opines Reason.com editor Nick Gillespie on PBS. Is that why the anti-mosque campaign has gone national, and with some success? Is that why "mainstream" Republican politicians like Newt Gingrich and Speaker John Boehner are weighing in against the Park51 community center? Is it because there's never been a mass political movement in America targeting a vulnerable religious minority?

I'd like to believe these people won't get far: after all, how many Americans feel threatened by the possible imposition of Sharia law? On the other hand, it takes very little to drive people over the edge, especially in these troubled times.

The only way to defeat these bastards is to counter-attack immediately, and mercilessly: don't let them get away with it for one moment. The very idea of forbidding the building of a mosque, or any religious edifice, is anti-American to the core, and must be fought tooth and nail. What could be a clearer confirmation of the libertarian contention that a foreign policy of global intervention necessarily means the rollback of our civil liberties here at home? For libertarians, there is no question but that Muslims must be defended against the gathering lynch mob.

How to do this is another question, but that's a subject for a future column. Suffice to say here that the defense of the Muslim minority in the US is the acid test for all those who claim to believe in "freedom" and "liberty."

* Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (ISI, 2008), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996).He is a contributing editor for The American Conservative, a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, and an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He writes frequently for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

Rallies, demonstrations, "Collateral Murder" film screenings, whistle-blowing parties and forums will be held around the world between the 16th and 19th of this month as vital expressions of international solidarity with Bradley Manning. To find out how you can show your support for the brave young man who dared expose US war crimes, go here.

I'm taking my show on the road this autumn, to campuses around the country, talking about some of the ideas expressed in last Wednesday's column on "Anti-Interventionism: The Left-wing Tradition." My talk is entitled "Why Has the Left Sold Out the Antiwar Movement?" - which is sure to provoke a controversy, or at least that's the hope.

If you're interested in booking me at your campus, write wendy@antiwar.com, or call the Antiwar.com office, at: 510-217-8665.

Source: AntiWar

Related posts:

• Bashing Islam is Freedom of Speech Criticizing Israel is a Hate Crime
• The Zionist Strategy of Demonizing Islam – by Anait Brutian
• Mass Assassinations Lie at the Heart of America’s Military Strategy in the Muslim World

Religion And Democracy Are Incompatible, This Is Why We Learn History

By Gordon Duff* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"As more and more devout rural congregations across America were organized as political pressure groups, it didn't take long for extremist doctrines to be imposed and for cheap, dirty politics to move onto the pulpit."

Where to we start? Do we try to clear up the mythologies, alright we can simply call them lies, about the "founding fathers?" Hey, they were atheists! These were men from "The Age of Reason." This meant they rejected all religion as superstition. All this talk about Jefferson or Franklin being "theists" or trying to negotiate and "lawyer" some religion into the Constitution through the "back door" is simply pandering.

Divide and Conquer

All the talk about the constitution, federalism and America founded as a Christian state is a phony hustle, meant to play on one religion hating another. As more and more devout rural congregations across America were organized as political pressure groups, it didn't take long for extremist doctrines to be imposed and for cheap, dirty politics to move onto the pulpit.

Fear and hate have always been great political tools. Richard Nixon helped hone these failings with the help of a young and bellicose Donald Rumsfeld and his "sidekick" Dick Cheney. The "dynamic duo" of the Watergate years became the cheerleaders for the post 9/11 phobias. Where Nixon used class envy to divide and conquer, the new game is religious hate.

It was easy to take this model global. What had been a ploy to steal an election by Nixon became a political movement under Reagan and eventually a tool of global mayhem and endless wars. Now it appears Israel has taken the helm with the total failure of any American political movement to remain out of Zionist political control.

I have spent many meetings with Arabs and Israelis, chaired a few. They are cordial, productive and never demonstrate any of the conflicts spoken of in the press. People are people, business is business and intelligent and decent people of all religions hate the ignorant and destructive.

This is reality.

WRD's, Weapons of Religious Destruction

Religion and religious wars had destroyed Europe as religion and religious wars are destroying the world today. In America, in France, they saw it, pushed out the churches and the monarchs. What we forget, what we lie about, is that established churches were part of a monarchical system. The French Revolution was a revolution against, not just the monarchy but the Catholic Church which had impoverished the nation for centuries and led a holocaust of murder.

Religion had impeded civilization, science and human values and is doing so today more than ever. Religion used to be flat earth. Today it is "clean coal" and tax cuts for billionaires. Religious beliefs that used to follow "stupid" now chase bucks.

You don't have to burn a Koran or hunt down Afghan villagers for sport to be a religious nutcase.

Do we want to talk about the ethical argument? "Why do you go to church?"

"Without the bible, I wouldn't know how to act, I would blaspheme, kill, have sex with children, steal....treat homosexuals with dignity, love all humans equally...."

If I've heard this once, I have heard it a thousand times. Whenever a sex criminal that preys on children is caught, one of the first things logged into evidence is a bible. It is always "dog-eared"....well used with lots of underlining.

We learn history for a reason, or we used to. The French turned their churches into public toilets, barns, smashed statues, took the endless church lands in a frenzy of anger. The people of France lived like animals for centuries because of religion. Every state with an established church was the same, intolerance, brutality, massive taxation and it didn't stop in the Middle Ages. Over 50,000 people have come forward in the small nation of Ireland, sexually abused by the Church. The Church ran the schools, it ran public welfare organizations, even ran much of the government and everything it touched was stained with violence, injustice and bigotry.

Religion and Superstition

Americans have no idea how few people in Western Europe are Christians. A good guess is 10 to 15%. All they have to do is look around them, every day, and see where history took place. Religion was a nightmare for Europe, a holocaust that lasted centuries. Their rejection of religion is them saying, "never again."

With so much of the world's religious disruption supposedly about the hatred between Judaism and Islam, lets get real here. Most Israelis are atheists, most Jews are atheists. We all know this and, frankly, this is what I like most about Jews, what I respect most. These are educated people, scientists, thinkers. If they can't see it, touch it or prove it scientifically, legally, rationally, they don't believe it. You don't get all those Nobel Prizes for talking to dead people and howling at the moon.

The issues between Israel and others, more the United States than any Muslim country, even Iran, is about money, always has been. Jews were persecuted for two reasons, one tied to religious mythology written into what some call "gospels." A couple of minor points, it is impossible to prove in the remotest way that Jews were ever in Egypt for a minute and it is also even more impossible to learn anything about Christ, whether he was real or not or what he taught from reading gospels written for a "pagan" emperor, Constantine, and gleaned, edited and debauched by the Catholic Church.

This was 2000 years ago, Constantine was a monster, the church was corrupt and the Romans had become the most corrupt people on earth. Saying anything else is silly.

The other reason Jews were persecuted was because of money. There is history here, available to all. Learn it. It is still going on. You will ask yourself, "Why didn't they teach me this at school?" Europe depended on money for wars. Europe was in the business of murdering itself. We called this "feudalism." It was the 'dark ages.' People wore armor and beat each other to death with hammers for amusement. This was not a time to be proud of and certainly not a period to learn from.

Then again, Christianity, or what passed for it, had a few minor faults. The religion that Constantine personally designed, the one we have today, is a real piece of work. Talk about fear of burning Korans. The real fear is examining the roots of Christianity, how the Roman Empire excised everything of value and recreated a hierarchical religion of idolators and feudal warlords under the guise of Bishops, Cardinals and Popes.

These people burned every courageous and decent human they could get their hands on, burned them alive, and did so for centuries. These were the Christians. Religious conclaves that defined Christianity and selected which works were included in the bible were little more than political caucuses and the bible was seen as a party platform.

Would you believe anything they told you? The French and America's founding fathers knew better. Studies of early Christian history clearly show that a fabricated pagan religion repackaged to look something like Christianity, we will never know for sure, killed off the real followers of Christ. The original Christians were hunted down like animals and killed, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions.

They were called "heretics."

The real Christians weren't into money and power enough for the Romans and had to go. A church run by money hungry "bishops" and backed by military enforcers killed off Christianity.

Christians were hunted down and slaughtered until the 14th century with the last of them chased into the Pyrenees and burned alive by the hundreds. This is the not so secret history of Christianity. Next time you are in Southern France, drive the "Cathar Trail" and follow the last vestiges of Christianity as it fled the politicized state religion. If you want to be a Christian, learn about your religion, the real Christianity and who the real martyrs were.

Louis XIV, the "Sun King" worked hard to erase the last vestige of Christianity from history. It threatened his personal divinity.

This is why we learn history.

Today's Circus

Today's "flavor or the month" is Koran burning. Nobody would care, you can burn pretty-much anything you want, here in the US, flags, bibles, anything. The ACLU tells us that burning a Koran is a First Amendment right. Tell me this, why is this such a big deal? A Koran is not a holy book to a backwoods preacher in Florida, it is only paper. We know what is going on, an idiot, and we have millions of them in America, is screaming for attention.

The only reason he is getting attention is because the media needs something to talk about. Nobody is invading Iran, there is a news blackout on Gaza and Israel and nobody cares about Afghanistan. We tried to get some news recently out of WikiLeaks. When that didn't work, poor Julian Assange was accused of rape, in Sweden no less. Think about it. If you can sell that one, you can sell anything.

Oh, I forgot, Pakistan is giving billions of dollars to the Taliban. Last week, the Taliban was making billions selling drugs. Now we hear they get it from Pakistan.

Does Pakistan have billions to give? I have been there. Pakistan is broke. Anything left lying around is stolen by politicians, they would take food out of a rat's mouth. Money from Pakistan? Tell me another one.

What, exactly, would the "Taliban" do with money? There are no stores. They can't travel. They must be using it on the internet. Have we checked to see if the Taliban is buying everything with Paypal?

With their billions of dollars of aid from Pakistan, what is it that the Taliban buys? Do Taliban own things? An AK 47 costs $50 bucks. Since America "misplaced" 250,000 of them a couple of years ago, the only place you can sell one is at a gun show. Everyone in Afghanistan is given one, nearly at birth. A can opener is harder to find and more expensive.

Everyone else in the world has one.

Do this, go to an ATM, take out a few hundred dollars, if you still have that much, and head off into the most remote area you can still afford to drive to. Get out of the car, walk into the woods, desert, mountains. Take the money out of your pocket and try to spend it.

Welcome to Afghanistan.

Some Things Don't Make Any Sense

Let's take a minute to discuss Islam and terrorism. There wasn't any terrorism until the Palestine stuff. It started with the Jews against the British. This is history, lied about, suppressed but more than available. If Muslims were going to be angry at the west, it would have been about Britain, France and, later on, the United States, putting the "stooge" governments in place that enslaved them for decades.

They had been enslaved by the Turks for centuries anyway. If you don't know what that is about, rent Lawrence of Arabia. It is a great film, David Lean was a super director. It is history in a movie, watered down but somewhere to start from.

Learn history, please. Ignorance is embarrassing.

Those governments that Israel loves telling the world are corrupt dictatorships were put in power by us. They are as much our creation as Israel. We did it all. Do you think Jordan or Saudi Arabia were created by a "people's" revolt or Islamic fundamentalists?

There is one of those, it is Iran and nobody, not Russia, not China, certainly not America or Israel wants them around. Why? Is it because they have crazy Islamic laws?

Hey, they cut people's heads off every day in Saudi Arabia and nothing is said. If Iran threatens to stone someone, it hits the papers around the world. The whole thing is a game. Iran stones people, Israel blows up hospitals full of sick people, Americans shoot people in Afghanistan just to watch them bleed.

They world is screwed up. Funny thing, we hear all this but nobody ever threatens to fix any of it, they just love bitching about it.

What Are They Hiding?

Is this because two million Americans are sleeping in cars tonight because they have no homes? Two million Americans are sleeping in prison cells tonight also. Why is that? Why so many? For those of you living in America, have you noticed how short tempered people are getting? Some think it is the anger and alienation Americans feel during elections when faced with the prospect of voting for candidates everyone hates.

Hey, this is how democracy works, live with it or change it.

Why are people angry? Is it because they are broke, busted, no money, facing homelessness, starvation, no future?

Is the freakish sideshow, the religion game, hating homosexuals, burning Korans, imaginary terrorists, and the big spending Taliban, all entertainment to keep people from noticing that there is a real war.

There is real terrorism. Terrorism is stealing the future. The tool wasn't bombs, it isn't bombs, it isn't guns or extremists. The real terrorists own the newspapers, the television networks, the banks, the insurance companies, the hospitals, not just in America but all over the world. They are the phone company, the internet, the oil companies.

The real terrorism is corporate culture and organized crime. If you wonder why there are no candidates that talk about the real issues, why nothing is made in America, why corporations pay no taxes, why we fight war after war for no reason, the answer is simple.

Our government, along with Britain, Germany, Italy and so many others, are owned by corporations, banks, all slaves to a real international conspiracy that we call the "world economy." Al Capone would be ashamed of what we have done. Who pulls the strings?

Figure it out for yourself. It isn't hard. The first step is to turn off the television, the radio and to stop reading newspapers. Then check your internet habits. Are you reading websites like Newsmax or WorldNetDaily or FamilySecurityMatters?

Then, even your attempts to get around corporate brainwashing have been hijacked.

You won't find the truth in a church, mosque or synagogue. You won't find it easily. It won't make you feel better. The truth is a process of admitting that everything you have learned may be and probably is a lie. 95% of the great mysteries of life I have solved have been me buying in on delusion, accepting one cartoon reality for another.

How do we fix this? This is me trying.

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

No related posts.

By Gus Bridi - www.zeropartypolitics.com

"There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over."- Newt Gingrich

Has Lebanon officially become more tolerant and progressive than the United States?

Let's talk about Lebanon's Ground Zero and you can decide for yourself.

One must first understand what "Ground Zero" means to most Lebanese.

In a country with about the same land mass as Los Angeles County which has been at war off and on for nearly four decades, "Ground Zero" for the Lebanese is arguably their entire country-and at the center of their Ground Zero is downtown Beirut, captured and occupied by the Israeli Defense Force in 1982 and which was almost entirely reduced to rubble from Muslim West Beirut to Christian East Beirut, and all points in between.

Once upon a time not too long ago, there was scarcely a building left standing or unscarred by shrapnel in all of Beirut. I know, because I was in Beirut in 1991, and witnessed first hand a city once described as "the Paris of the Middle East" reduced to ruins, pock marked with unexploded munitions and a haphazard "network" of open sewers.

Miraculously, Beirut was rebuilt and reclaimed its prominence. It once again became the jewel of the Arab world, remarkably able to bridge the ancient mystique of the east with the modern allure of the west.

Upon the first completion of its "rebuilding" process however--after 15 years and tens of billions of dollars spent on reconstructing Lebanon and its Ground Zero from rubble to splendor, Israel did what Israel does...

In July and August of 2006, Israel again followed through on its promise to "bomb Lebanon back into the Stone Age," and in so doing displaced 1,000,000 Lebanese civilians (nearly a quarter of the country's population), completely destroyed the country's infrastructure (again), its only airport, at least 64 bridges, leveled entire buildings and neighborhoods to rubble (again), including the country's largest milk factory, a food factory, two pharmaceutical plants, water treatment centers, power plants, grain silos, a Greek Orthodox Church, several mosques, and a handful of hospitals (in a country which only had a handful of hospitals to begin with).

Over 1,200 hundred Lebanese civilians were killed and over 5,000 wounded.

Israel routinely talks about "proportionality" when comparing their "terrorism deaths" to American 9/11 deaths. In order to shock the sensibilities of a gullible American public, they portray a figure "in American terms," by multiplying their dead by a number which reflects their population in comparison to the American population.

Well, what's good for the Israeli goose is good for the Lebanese gander. I will play their game: 1,200 dead Lebanese civilians are the "proportional equivalent" to 90,000 American dead when accounting for the two countries' population differences. Therefore, according to Israeli goose math, that's the equivalent of roughly thirty 9/11's Israel exacted on Lebanon in July and August 2006 over the course of 34 days-nearly one 9/11 a day for an entire month without relent.

Incidentally, July and August of 2006 only tell a small part of the story when it comes to Israeli aggression against Lebanon. There have been decades of invasion, devastation, and occupation which predated 2006. Several thousands of Lebanese have been killed at the hands of the Israeli Defense Force. Tens of billions of dollars of damage have been levied on the Lebanese infrastructure and private and public property courtesy of the IDF over the course of decades.

"Ground Zero" for Lebanon is an ever expanding, never ending, open wound that never heals.

So what now Newt?

Should you expect the Lebanese to allow a synagogue to be built on their Ground Zero, in the aftermath of a 9/11 that occurred 5 years after ours and which, "proportionately" speaking, was 30 times the size of ours?

Well guess what you hateful, misguided, twit?

THEY DID.

In the process of re-building Beirut yet again, in 2008, renovations began and have now been completed on the Maghen Abraham Synagogue located in the middle of newly renovated downtown Beirut in an area known as the "Solidere" which has become the focal point and showcase of Lebanon's rebirth.

This isn't some hole in the wall, nondescript, "excuse me" synagogue hidden out of view so as to not "offend" Lebanese non-Jews-this is an elaborate, ornate, beautifully designed, cathedral-style house of worship built for a Lebanese Jewish population that totals less than 500 in a country of more than 4,000,000 (in stark contrast to the eight million American Muslims living in the United States).

And wait until you hear Hezbollah's response to the building of this Ground Zero Synagogue.

(To those expecting a Newt Gingrich equivalent response, prepare to be woefully disappointed).

Courtesy of Hassan Nasrallah himself: "We respect Judaism, just as we respect Christianity. Our only problem is with Israel."

Did you hear that Newt (and the rest of you idiots)?

An Arab democracy, with a Muslim Prime Minister and a Christian President, allowed the building of a synagogue, squarely in the center of their "Ground Zero" in the heart and pride of downtown Beirut which used to be a dumping ground for Israeli military ordinances.

An Arab democracy allowed this, without so much as a protest being made by its citizens, or allegations by politicians that this was sacrilege, or hateful commentary by the media that the Jewish faith was barbaric, or any of the other stupidity I have seen and heard plastered all over American television, talk radio, and internet-blogs regarding a certain "Ground Zero Mosque" and the Islamic faith.

Regardless of whether you perceive Israel to be justified in perpetrating the devastation it did on Lebanon is irrelevant. The purpose of this article is not to debate that. What cannot be debated, is that Israel (a Jewish State, flying a Jewish flag) unleashed hell on Lebanon for 34 straight days in July and August of 2006 (and for decades prior in its wars against Lebanon). Regardless of whether or not you feel Israel had a right to do that, you cannot deny that Lebanese civilians harbored, and continue to harbor, a very real resentment against the government of Israel-this Jewish state-for those actions and the devestation those actions caused.

Yet these very Lebanese, who are so quickly labeled as "blood thirsty terrorists" by Newt Gingrich and his army of xenophobic morons, were able to draw a distinction between the Jews "flying those planes" in July and August of 2006 working at the behest of the Israeli government, and the Jews whom are citizens of Lebanon who had no connection with those attacks.

Lebanon rebuilt that Ground Zero Synagogue for its Jews.

Not for Israel. Not for the world's Jewry. Not as a monument to mark a "Jewish victory" over Lebanon.

Lebanon rebuilt that Ground Zero Synagogue because its Jews lived in that neighborhood and they had every right to build a house of worship in a place they called home.

For crying out loud, Hassan Nassrallah and Hezbollah can even draw the distinction between a Lebanese Jew and an Israeli soldier who happens to be a Jew. So how is it that Americans can't distinguish between American Muslims who were victims of 9/11 and Saudi Muslims who were the perpetrators of 9/11?

Thank you Mr. Gingrich for allowing Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah to outclass you and the Republican Party (and you Democrats aren't too far behind--yes Harry Reid, I'm talking to you). When the former Republican Speaker of the House and the current Democratic Senate Majority Leader start sounding less tolerant and less reasonable than a "terrorist," we need to start sounding the alarm bells.

What a sad state of affairs for America.

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By Khalid Amayreh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The prevailing disputation over the right of Muslim Americans to build a community centre and mosque a short distance from the site of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks has garnered plenty of headlines in the past few days. The controversy calls for an honest reappraisal of the precise position of Muslim Americans in the United States. The altercation has polarised US public opinion and raised tension in the Arab and Muslim world.

"It saddens me to think that people don't understand what building this mosque on hallowed ground really represents," pontificated Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, infamous running mate of 2008 Republican Party presidential candidate John McCain, and an iconic figure of the war-mongering neoconservatives and discredited Republican far-right.

Another icon of the bellicose right, Newt Gingrich, was quoted in Fox News as lambasting the construction of an Islamic centre "right at the edge of a place where, let's be clear, thousands of Americans were killed in an attack by radical Islamists."

The irony, wrote Anthony DiMaggio, author of Permanent War and who taught Middle East politics at Illinois State University, is that the brouhaha is "a manufactured controversy". DiMaggio dismissed the fracas a "racist uproar" and denounced the right-wing radio and television campaign in America for framing Islam as "radical, fundamentalist and a threat to national security".

Worse, US President Barack Obama was denigrated as a "closet Muslim terrorist" for publicly lending support to the construction of the Islamic centre so close as it is to Ground Zero in New York. "Obama is a non-citizen," his detractors contended. This latter accusation strikes at the very heart of the concept of citizenship rights and national identity.

The complexities of belonging cannot be relegated to the realm of academic treatises. The vast majority of Muslim Americans are law- abiding citizens intent on exercising their right to freely exercise the tenants of their own religion. This particular right lies at the heart of the perceiving identity -- including religious identity -- as a political problem in a nation that prides itself in the secular dispensation of its constitution and raison d'être.

Moreover, this particular fundamental right is in accordance with the First Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights that has constituted the foundation of American freedom for over 200 years. Be that as it may, religion from the inception of the US has been a major marker of identity.

Gender and race have traditionally been the key prerequisites of identity politics in the US. Since 9/11 religion has become the primary focus of political identity in the US. Shifting criterion for eligibility to a notion of "American belonging" is underway.

An African-American candidate has, theoretically at least, as much a chance of winning a presidential election as an Irish American. The possibility of a Muslim American winning a landslide victory in any presidential election in the near future is slim, to say the least.

The pertinent question is why? According to Moataz Abdel-Fattah, associate professor of Middle East Studies at Central Michigan University, Obama's comments must be viewed in context of the forthcoming congressional elections. The growing schism between conservatives and liberals in the US undermines the political stability of the country, the world's superpower. "The impediments to the rights of Muslims in the US tend to be cultural rather than political or legal. The curtailment of the freedoms of Muslims is two-fold. First, the theological bias of the Judeo-Christian tradition prevalent in the US perpetuates the myth that Islam is an exotic religion, alien to the American people and culture and there is a widespread belief that Mohamed is not a prophet".

"Moreover, Muslims tend to adopt more conservative lifestyles and rarely intermingle with non-Muslims. This insular aspect of Muslim culture in predominantly non-Muslim America, coupled with taboos on preaching Islam has traditionally worked to isolate Muslims in America and perpetrate stereotypes about Islam."

Abdel-Fattah, however, noted that one positive side effect of 9/11 was the increased curiosity of ordinary Americans about Islam. "I personally meet hundreds of people who ask me about Islam as a religion and there has been an increase in the number of Muslim faculty members at Michigan University. Indeed, Muslim Studies departments in institutions of higher learning have replaced the Black Studies departments as the new novelty in American academia."

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the American Muslim community was in disarray. Their reticence was only part of the problem. Into the breach stepped President Obama, the first African-American to hold America's top job. He was also the first US president whose father was a Muslim and whose sister is a practising Muslim. His middle name is Hussein.

It is not unusual for Americans to speak frankly about their presidents' foibles. Obama isn't quite the secular saint of legend. Nor is he a liberal per se. Obama's defence of building a Muslim community centre in lower Manhattan was applauded as a "brave step".

It is astonishing to recall how little was known publicly about Islam as a world religion, or about America's Muslims before 9/11.

Far from undermining the myth of Muslim Americans as fifth columnists, Muslims in America were dismissed as self-serving, conniving and exploitative.

This year, Eid Al-Fitr coincides with the ninth anniversary of 9/11. This brings the story up to date through the post-Bush years when the Obama administration set the tone of the new face of America. An African-American president of partially Muslim familial background led America from the front and championed the rights of the underdog, or so he was celebrated. "We understand that he wants to change the agenda. We also understand the constraints, tremendous pressures and limitations he must labour under," noted Abdel-Fattah. "Obama's message that America is not at war with Islam was well-received."

* Khalid Amayreh a journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian town of Dura. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983.

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Illustration by Khalil Bendib

By David Rosen* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The building of a Muslim community center in an abandoned building two blocks from the site of New York's former World Trade Center has become the latest controversy in America's long fought religious wars. The construction of the center, often referred to as a mosque, has become the latest rallying issue for the Christian right, Tea Party proponents and Republican operatives in their war to impose moralistic and corporatist values on America.

It is too early to know how the Muslim center issue will be resolved, but it is clear that the rantings of Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Abe Foxman (of the Anti-Defamation League) and others have played an important role pushing a local issue into the center-stage of national politics. Since the horrendous attacks of 9/11, Muslims in general and American Muslims in particular have been the targets of an undeclared religious war promoted by Christian fundamentalists and self-serving Republicans. For some among these religious zealots, Islam is a threat to their belief that the U.S. is a white Protestant nation. Over the last four centuries, Quakers, Mormons, Catholics, Jews and many others have been targets of religious persecution, often the victims of imprisonments, hangings, lynchings and other acts of violence.

Rightwing ranters might well not know the history of religious intolerance in America, but they are surely aware that they are fueling a deep-seated rage among a certain scary segment of the Christian populous. This round in the ongoing religious culture wars has yet to explode into the ugly violence that took place in the aftermath of 9/11, and one can only hope that the current controversy will not lead to attacks on Muslims.

Sadly, like the attacks the followed 9/11, rightwing ranters like Palin and Gingrich will act "shocked" by the violence if it occurs and will claim innocence as to their roles fomenting it. With a knowing sneer, they will wash their hands of the blood they have caused and seek out other innocent victims.

In an excellent article on Tomdispatch, Stephen Salisbury details the current Manhattan Muslim center controversy and the spreading anti-Muslim hysteria being whipped up around the country over the opening of new local mosques. As Salisbury opines, "The angry 'debate' over whether the building should exist has a kind of glitch-in-the-Matrix feel to it, leaving in its wake an aura of something-very-bad-about-to-happen." [tomdispatch.com, August 11, 2010]

Salisbury discusses the ongoing protests against mosques also taking place in New York's Brooklyn and Staten Island as well as in California, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Wisconsin. He connects these controversies to the headline-grabbing opportunist comments by Palin (in true Palin-speak, "peaceful Muslims" need to "refudiate" the center) and Gingrich (who calls on Saudi Arabia to open churches and synagogues).

He also draws attention to the pernicious role played by Rick Lazio, New York State Republican gubernatorial candidate, who assails the center as subverting the right of New Yorkers "to feel safe and be safe." Because New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York State Attorney General (and likely Democratic gubernatorial candidate) Andrew Cuomo have come out in support of the Muslim center, it will like be a major issue in the November election.

Most importantly, Salisbury provides an invaluable overview of the anti-Muslim campaign that arose in the wake of 9/11, reminding readers just how alarmingly vicious good-old Christian love can be.

Part of the "glitch-in-the-Matrix feel" that Salisbury notes is the absence of a recognition that the current Muslin center controversy is part of a long history of religious intolerance in American.

In the days following the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush, a born-again Christian, in a spontaneous and unscripted statement blurted out the unspoken truth that guided the U.S.'s initial military counter-attack campaign in Afghanistan: "This crusade," he said, "this war on terrorism." While Bush's admission was later repudiated and disappeared from the public discourse, it define the unstated goal of the ultra-reactionary Christians who were his core-constituency and knew full well what he meant.

At the heart of Bush's crusade agenda was an invocation of the "shock and awe" tradition that defined religious wars since the grand crusades of the Middle Ages and an acknowledgement that they needed to be applied in Afghanistan. The grand crusades waged by the Roman Church were against Muslims and Jews to capture and hold ancient Jerusalem and the Holy Lands, and to defeat Orthodox or Eastern Christianity. Many perished. Similar, crusaders were waged against Christian heretics, including early Protestants, and done so in the name of their absolutist god.

This tradition was brought over to the New World with the Pilgrims and other early British settlers. The worst and most sustained form of religious war in America has been waged against the Native people. For all the annual whitewashing that takes place at Thanksgiving Day parades, early Puritans fought the Pequot Indians in Eastern Connecticut until 1637 when the General Courts of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Colony launched a war of extermination against them. (Native people found that the Pilgrims stunk, literally; Europeans rarely bathed, believing it unhealthy, and seldom were naked, believing it immoral.) The white Christian race and religious crusade against Native North American people persisted for centuries.

Pilgrims also imposed religious intolerance on themselves. Early Massachusetts Bay Colony settlers were aligned with the Church of England and looked badly upon those who contested their orthodoxy. Those challenging Calvinist dogma were subject to banishment, whipping, branding, ear-lobbing and even hanging. Early leaders like Thomas Hooker, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were banished. Early Quaker settles in Plymouth were also banished and four were hung publicly.

Over the subsequent centuries, Americans have witnessed repeated bouts of religious intolerance. Not surprisingly, these episodes were often accompanied by the same shrill rhetoric we find shouted today by those opposing the Muslim center.

The Know Nothing movement grew out of the Second Great Awakening or the Great Revival of the 1830s and became the American Party that flourished during the late-'40s and early-'50s. It got its name when members where asked the party's positions and simply said, "I know nothing." It drew together Protestants who felt threatened by the rapid increase in European immigrants and, most especially, Catholics, flooding the cities. It felt that Catholics, as followers of the Pope, were not loyal Americans and were going to take over the country. It had strong support in the North that witnessed large-scale Irish immigration after 1848. The American Party captured the Massachusetts legislature in 1854 and, in 1856, backed Millard Fillmore for president, who secured nearly 1 million votes, a quarter of all votes cast.

The Ku Klux Klan was established in 1866 and, during Reconstruction, began a systematic campaign against freed African Americans. However, by the '80s, it had lost its way as a racialist organization. It was revitalized in the wake of the Atlanta trial of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman who had been falsely charged and convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old white Christian girl, in 1913. In 1915, after the Georgia governor commuted his sentence, Frank was forcibly removed from the state penitentiary where he was being held by a mob of white Christians and lynched. Subsequently, many of those who participated in Frank's murder came together to re-launch the Klan.

In the late-'10s, the Klan aligned with nativists, eugenicists and the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) to not only promote temperance but racialist and anti-immigrant policies. As WWI hysteria mounted, ASL's New York representative, William Anderson, equated being pro-German with being anti-American: German beer, saloons and breweries were the unnamed enemy. He had a deep antipathy toward Catholics, accusing the Church of mounting an "assault on law and order," of opposing Prohibition because it was promoted by Protestants and accusing it of engaging in "efforts to destroy [the Prohibition] victory and bring back the saloons." Anti-Catholic antipathy contributed to the defeat of the country's first Catholic nominee, Al Smith's, in the 1928 presidential election.

Many other episodes of religious intolerance have taken place since the '20s. However, John Kennedy's 1960 presidential victory marked the moment in American history when anti-Catholic appeals in national election were no longer acceptable. Similarly, the growing acceptance among Christian evangelicals of the notion of the "last days" has lead to a weird embrace of Jews and Israel and may have contributed to a moderation in anti-Semitism.

In the days before 9/11, most informed people accepted Islam as a variant within the Abrahamic tradition. However, in the aftermath of the attacks, even this claim came under suspicion. Earlier this summer, Ron Ramsey, a Republican candidate for governor of Tennessee, claimed that Islam is a "cult" that did not deserve First Amendment protection: "You can even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, a way of life, or a cult -- whatever you want to call it... ." Challenged by a diverse assortment of Tennesseans, including traditional conservatives, Ramsey has backed off this assertion.

If truth be told, the Manhattan Muslim center is both a real issue and a fictitious spectacle. It is real in the sense that its being built at the designated site on Park Place will be a victory for religious tolerance. America is undergoing a profound economic and cultural realignment. Traditional white society is giving way to a truly multi-cultural America; conventional Protestantism is giving way a significant increase in the Catholic populous (mostly Hispanics) and growing Muslim, Hindu and Sekh communities.

The Muslim center story, like that of Michelle Obama's holiday in Spain, is a false issue, a spectacle promoting social deception. Since Obama's victory, the Republican right has implemented a very effective wrecking-ball strategy, attempting to destroy every issue considered. Its guiding principle is simple: Obama and the Democrats can do no right. To realize this goal, it did anything and everything in its power to make sure as little as possible got through Congress, got honestly assessed in the media and got to help ordinary Americans. Sadly, the Christian Republican right is succeeding and the Obama leadership remains clueless.

A century-and-a-half ago white Protestants came to accept Irish immigrants as white. While hard to imagine today, early Irish immigrants, those who came to America in the wake of the 1848 famine, were seen by many traditional Protestants as "niggers," not really different from African Americans. Faced with the inevitabilities of post-Civil War modernization, old-world Protestants changed. And with it, racism changed.

The challenge that faces today's Anglo-American Protestant descendents, those who see Muslims as "niggers," is whether then can change and accept America as a multi-cultural society.

* David Rosen is the author of "Sex Scandals America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming" (Key, 2009); he can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com.a

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By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

A few weeks ago the Methodist Church's annual conference did a very courageous and praiseworthy thing. It voted to boycott products from Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestine, regarded as illegal under international law, and to encourage Methodists across Britain to do the same.

"The decision is a response to a call from a group of Palestinian Christians, a growing number of Jewish organisations, both inside Israel and worldwide, and the World Council of Churches," said the press release.

Christine Elliott, Secretary for External Relationships, remarked: "This decision has not been taken lightly, but after months of research, careful consideration and finally, today's debate at the Conference. The goal of the boycott is to put an end to the existing injustice. It reflects the challenge that settlements present to a lasting peace in the region."

Predictably the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which calls itself "the chief voice of British Jewry", blew a gasket. In a joint statement with the Jewish Leadership Council they said the Methodists should "hang their heads in shame". The Chief Rabbi led the verbal assault warning that the implications would "reverberate across the hitherto harmonious relationship between the faith communities in the UK".

What seemed to have inflamed the Chief Rabbi this time was the report 'Justice for Palestine and Israel' submitted to the Methodist Conference. Its recommendations include the following...

In listening to Church Leaders and our fellow-Christians in Israel Palestine as well as leaders of Palestinian civil society we hear an increasing consensus calling for the imposition of boycott, divestment and sanctions as a major strategy of non-violent resistance to the Occupation. The Conference notes the call of the WCC [World Council of Churches] in 2009 for an 'international boycott of settlement produce and services' and calls on the Methodist people to support and engage with this boycott of Israeli goods emanating from illegal settlements (some Methodists would advocate a total boycott of Israeli goods until the Occupation ends).

Elsewhere it says:

The Methodist Church has consistently expressed its concern over the illegal Occupation of Palestinian lands by the State of Israel. That Occupation continues not only compounds the state's illegal and immoral action but also makes any accommodation with the Palestinian people and future peace in the region much less possible.

The Chief Rabbi nevertheless denounced the report as "unbalanced, factually and historically flawed" without saying in what way it was inaccurate. Actually it is a very well put together document, which hits the mark and is hard to fault.

The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council said the authors of the Methodists' report had "abused the goodwill of the Jewish community, which tried to engage on this issue, only to find our efforts were treated as an unwelcome distraction". Here is the full text:

Statement on the Flawed Document Endorsed by the Annual Methodist Conference

This is a very sad day, both for Jewish-Methodist relations and for everyone who wants to see positive engagement with the complex issues of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The Methodist Conference has swallowed hook, line and sinker a report full of basic historical inaccuracies, deliberate misrepresentations and distortions of Jewish theology and Israeli policy. The deeply flawed report is symptomatic of a biased process: The working group which wrote the report had already formed its conclusions at the outset. External readers were brought in to give the process a veneer of impartiality, but their criticisms were rejected. The report's authors have abused the trust of ordinary members of the Methodist Church, who assumed that they were reading and voting on an impartial and comprehensive paper, and they have abused the goodwill of the Jewish community, which tried to engage with this issue, only to find that our efforts were treated as an unwelcome distraction.

This outcome is extremely serious and damaging, as we and others have explained repeatedly over recent weeks. Israel is at the root of the identity of Jews and of Judaism, and as an expression of Jewish spiritual, national and emotional aspirations, Zionism cannot simply be ruled as illegitimate in the way that the Methodist Conference has purported to do. This smacks of breathtaking insensitivity, as crass as it is misinformed. That this position should now form the basis of Methodist Church policy should cause the Conference to hang its head in shame, just as surely as it will cause the enemies of peace and reconciliation to cheer from the sidelines.

Empty barrels, they say, make the most noise.

If arrogance is the only response to serious concerns about Israel's unending barbarity towards Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land, it's time that implications did indeed "reverberate" across the faith communities, not only in the UK but around the world.

Zionist cuckoos in the Methodist nest

Lo and behold, before the dust could settle another new product from the Zionist drawing-board popped up, calling itself Methodist Friends of Israel. "We are Christians who are members or adherents of the Methodist Church, who love Israel and want to bless her and who fully accept God's everlasting covenant with His chosen people," they announced. "While recognising that the nation of Israel is, like all nations of the world, an unrighteous nation that does not always get things right, we firmly stand with her at all times and continue to support her in an increasingly hostile world. We will not turn our backs as so many did in the 1930s.

We see that anti Semitism is on the rise throughout the world with synagogues and graveyards vandalised and Jews being attacked both verbally and physically and that there appears to be a direct relationship between the increased attacks on Jews and the blanket condemnation of Israel by the media, many charitable organizations and world bodies such as the UN. We are concerned that the whole, true picture of what life is like in Israel is given to the world rather than the biased half truths, distortions and lies that are presently reported.

We are concerned that many churches are going down the politically correct line of condemning Israel's policies and are thus contributing to the strong anti Semitic views of the world.

Note that they are concerned only with "what life is like in Israel", not the hell Israel has created in the Occupied Palestinian Territories for Christians and Muslims.

And what else do they believe in?

• They recognize that Israel is the land given by God to the Jews and Jerusalem is its only capital.
• They believe that God's word for, promises to, and covenants with Israel - people and land, through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Israel) are everlasting and that the church has not replaced Israel.
• They believe that Scripture prophesies the restoration of the Jews to the land of Israel and what they are seeing today is a fulfilment of prophecy. It is a privilege that they are witnesses to this fulfilment.
• They believe that Israel is central in the enactment of God's purposes as we move in these last days.
• They believe in finding out from many sources the whole picture of what is happening in Israel so that they can pass on the facts to those whose view is based solely on biased media coverage, and so correct mistaken beliefs (achingly funny, this).
• They believe in blessing Israel however possible including buying goods and produce from Israel and resisting all calls for boycotts.
• They believe in supporting Israel's defence of its people and their right to live without the threat of missile attacks, homicide bombings etc.
• They believe in standing against libelous attacks against Israel.
• They believe in fully supporting Israel's right to the land given them by God

According to The Jewish Chronicle, the group was set up by preacher Pam Smith from South Wales in reaction to her Church's call to boycott Israel. Naturally Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice chairman of the Zionist Federation, was overjoyed and said: "I hope this will be the start of a grass-roots movement within the Methodists to reverse the motion passed at the Methodist Conference, which was theologically invalid, maligned Zionism and demonised Israel."

Needless to say, the Methodist Friends of Israel website editorial reads like pages from some Israeli propaganda rag.

Have they not heard of The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism, a statement by the Latin Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued in 2006? It is neatly summed up in its first sentence:

We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.

Those guys are on the ground, in the front line. They know the score. It's time Preacher Pam visited Gaza and the West Bank (not by Israeli tour bus or as guests of Israel's 'establishment') and got a grip on reality. She and others have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked into supporting a sinister political movement that is intent on stealing the Holy Land from under our noses.

I wonder how long these cuckoos will be allowed to foul the Methodist Church's nest.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

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By Jonathan Cook* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Settlers step up "price tag" policy

A rabbi from one of the most violent settlements in the West Bank was questioned on suspicion of incitement last week as Israeli police stepped up their investigation into a book in which he sanctions the killing of non-Jews, including children and babies.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira is one of the leading ideologues of the extreme wing of the religious settler movement. He is known to be a champion of the "price tag" policy of reprisal attacks on Palestinians, including punishing them for attempts by officials to enforce Israeli law against the settlements.

So far the policy has chiefly involved violent harassment of Palestinians, with settlers inflicting beatings, attacking homes, throwing stones, burning fields, killing livestock and poisoning wells.

It is feared, however, that Shapira's book, The King's Torah, published last year, is intended to offer ideological justifications for widening the scope of such attacks to include killing Palestinians, even children.

Although Shapira was released a few hours after his questioning on 26 July, dozens of rabbis, as well as several members of parliament, rallied to his side, condemning the arrest.

Shlomo Aviner, one of the settlement movement's spiritual leaders, defended the book's arguments as a "legitimate stance" and one that should be taught in Jewish seminaries.

But in a sign of mounting official unease at Shapira's influence on the settlement movement, the Israeli military authorities also threatened last week to enforce a decade-old demolition order on Yitzhar's seminary, which was built without a permit.

Dror Etkes, a Tel Aviv-based expert on the settlements, said the order was unlikely to be carried out but was a way to pressure Yitzhar's 500 inhabitants to rein in their more violent attacks.

He said the authorities had begun taking a harder line against Yitzhar only since Shapira and several of his students were suspected of torching a mosque in the neighbouring village of Yasuf last December.

"Shapira is trying to redefine the conflict with the Palestinians, turning it from a national conflict into a religious one. That frightens Israel. It doesn't want to look as though it is fighting the whole Islamic world," Etkes said.

He added that the rabbi and his supporters were closely associated with Kach, a movement founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane that demands the expulsion of all Palestinians from a "Greater Israel". Despite Kach being banned, officials have largely turned a blind eye as its ideology has flourished in the settlements.

"It may be illegal to call oneself Kach but the authorities are more than tolerant of settlers who hold such views and carry out violent attacks. In fact, what Kahane was doing in the 1980s seems like child's play compared with today's settlers."

In the 230-page book, Shapira and his co-author, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, also from Yitzhar, argue that Jewish law permits the killing of non-Jews in a wide variety of circumstances. The terms "gentiles" and "non-Jews" in the book are widely understood as references to Palestinians.

They write that Jews have the right to kill gentiles in any situation in which "a non-Jew's presence endangers Jewish lives" even if the gentile is "not at all guilty for the situation that has been created".

The book sanctions the killing of non-Jewish children and babies: "There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults."

The rabbis suggest that harming the children of non-Jewish leaders is justified if it is likely to bring pressure to bear on them to change policy.

The authors also advocate committing "cruel deeds to create the proper balance of terror" and treating all members of an "enemy nation" as targets for retaliation, even if they are not directly participating in hostile activities.

The rabbis appear to be offering justifications in Jewish law for collective punishment and other war crimes of the kind committed by the Israeli army in its attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008.

Pamphlets similarly calling on soldiers to "show no mercy" were distributed by the army's rabbinate as troops prepared for the Gaza operation, in which 1,400 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, were killed. Religious settlers have come to dominate many combat units.

An investigation last year by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, found Shapira's seminary had received government funds worth at least 300,000 US dollars in recent years. American and British groups have also contributed tens of thousands of dollars in tax-deductible donations.

According to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, the Yitzhar settlers have responded to the demolition order against their seminary by threatening to publish documents showing that the housing and transport ministries were closely involved in the project too.

The settlers have repeatedly rampaged through nearby Palestinian villages, most notoriously in September 2008, when they were filmed shooting at homes in Assira al-Kabaliya, smashing properties and daubing Stars of David on homes. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of the time, termed the settlers' actions a "pogrom".

The same year a religious student from Yitzhar was arrested for firing home-made rockets at Palestinian villages close by.

In April, Yitzhar's settlers marched through the village of Huwara and pelted a Palestinian family's home with stones in "reprisal" for the arrest of 11 of their number.

A settler from Yitzhar was questioned last month over the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old Palestinian, Aysar Zaban, in May, reportedly after stones were thrown at the settler's car. The teenager was shot in the back.

Last week, the settlers attacked Burin, shooting at villagers and burning fields.

In most of these cases, the settlers who were arrested were released a short time later either by the police or the courts. In January, a Jerusalem judge freed Rabbi Shapira for lack of evidence in the arson attack on the mosque.

Yitzhak Ginsburg, an authority on Jewish law and a mentor to Shapira, was questioned by police on 29 July over his endorsement of the book. In the past Ginsburg has praised Baruch Goldstein, a settler who opened fire in Hebron's Ibrahimi mosque in 1994, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers.

In 2003 Ginsburg was accused of incitement for publishing a book that called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories, but the charges were dropped after he issued a "clarification statement".

A group calling itself "Students of Yitzhak Ginsburg" recently distributed a leaflet urging Israeli soldiers to "spare your lives and the lives of your friends and show no concern for a population that surrounds us and harms us".

What is Kach?

Kach was founded in 1971 by the late Meir Kahane, an American rabbi who immigrated to Israel. He won a seat in the Israeli parliament in 1984 on a platform of expelling all Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories. As an MP, he drafted legislation to revoke the Israeli citizenship of non-Jews and ban sexual relations between Jews and gentiles.

The political party was banned from running for the Israeli parliament in 1988 and the movement was outlawed six years later. Although the group is considered a terrorist organization in the United States and most of Europe, its ideology has been allowed to thrive in the settlements.

Today, dozens of rabbis espouse an interpretation of Jewish religious law identical to or worse than Kahane's.

Michael Ben Ari, a former Kach leader, was elected as an MP last year for the far-right National Union party, which holds four seats in the 120-member parliament.

Avigdor Lieberman, who leads the parliament's third largest party and is foreign minister, briefly joined the party before it was banned. His own party's anti-Arab "No loyalty, no citizenship" programme includes echoes of Kahane's ideology.

* Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Occupied Palestine.

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By Rabbi Michael Lerner* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Rabbi Michael Lerner

ADL leader Abe Foxman presented the position of this organization that claims to oppose discrimination by reading a formal statement that seemed to be a perfect example of "shooting and crying" (first you attack brutally, then you cry about how sad it is to be put into this difficult position, often blaming the victims for having "forced" us to attack them). The key to that statement was this:

"Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain - unnecessarily - and that is not right."

This kind of argument is deeply mistaken. It was not "Muslims" or Islam that attacked the World Trade Center, but some Muslims who held extreme versions of Islam and twisted what is a holy and peace-oriented tradition to justify their acts and their hatred. We see the same thing happening in the name of Christianity (many of those who justified the war in Iraq were Christians who felt they were acting from a Christian ethical perspective) or in the name of Judaism (the immoral behavior of some of the settlers who use Judaism as their cover for stealing land and destroying the olive trees of their Palestinian neighbors). Just as we would rebel against others dismissing Judaism or Christianity, or prohibiting Jews and Muslims from constructing our holy places of worship or community centers where we wish because some of those who had suffered from the immorality of some Jews or some Christians had decided that it was painful to them to see the presence of these institutions near the site of previous suffering, so we reject this claim.

Arthur Waskow asks us to imagine how we would feel if some group of Muslims in the US, identifying with the suffering of Palestinians, and including within them some who had lived in Israel and had to leave to protect themselves from the oppression of Occupation that they labeled as "Jewish oppression," had opposed the construction of a synagogue in their predominantly Muslim neighborhood because it would cause some of the victims of Israeli policy to experience more pain. Would we accept that? Certainly not.

Underlying the ADL position is its references to the Holocaust and the need to respect the feelings of its survivors. Sadly, the memory of Jewish suffering is appropriated by right-wing forces to justify special privilege for Jews in general and Israel in particular, now is to be extended to victims of 9/11 (but not, for example, to the survivors of US military assaults on civilians in Vietnam,Cambodia, Laos, El Salvador, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq, or Afghanistan). The aggression of others is always evil, ours always justifiable, to the political right. That's bad enough. But shame on ADL in particular for now using our suffering in the Holocaust to justify discrimination toward others, whether in Israel or in the U.S.

Actually, to those of us who take seriously the Torah command to "love the stranger" (the Other), it seems clear that the rebuilding of Ground Zero should include the construction of an interfaith center in which all of the world's religions could be represented, particularly that of Islam as a way of affirming and supporting those many Muslims who do not adopt an extreme anti-American or anti-Jewish perspective.

The American Jewish Committee tried to adopt a more nuanced position, but wanted to withhold endorsement till they can establish that the source of money for this building did not come from extremist elements in the Muslim world. Yet how would we feel if construction of a Jewish center was similarly conditional? Would money from those who support the settlers or others who believe that Jews have a right to all of the Biblical Land of Israel and have a right to use violence to achieve that end be sufficient reason to prevent the construciton of a Jewish center? Would a Church that received money from sources in the Christian community that believed it appropriate to engage in violence to create the world they wanted (e.g. to support a US military intervention in Iran) be sufficient reason to deny them the right to build their Christian center? I don't think so.

No wonder, then, that we at Tikkun--seeking to build a world in which animosities among religions can be dramatically reduced so that all of us can recognize our common humanity (or what we Jews call "being created in the image of God") and recognize the immediate global environmental emergency to overcome national and religious antagonisms so that we can work together to save the planet and its peoples from destruction--strongly endorse and support the construction of the Muslim community center/mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero.

Shame on ADL and the American Jewish Committee for not understanding the moral imperatives of this moment! They not only betray Jewish values ("do not do unto others what you would not wish them to do to you") and American values (government should not interfere with the operations of religious communities), they unintentionally but nevertheless certainly increase the tensions between Jews and Muslims at a moment when all sane people in both communities recognize the need to build bridges of understanding, friendship and mutual caring as a prelude to supporting peace in Israel. Given that both ADL and the AJCommittee have consistently supported the most outrageous actions of the Israeli government toward Palestinians, is it possible that unconsciously they are taking these kinds of stands because they do not see the supreme importance of creating caring and sensitivity to the needs of the other? Yet it is this sensitivity which is the necessary prerequisite for a lasting peace with justice and security for both sides in the Middle East conflict. And that peace would be a major step toward undermining the support that terrorists have been able to amass, in part because such a peace is absent.

* Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine www.tikkun.org, chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in Berkeley, Ca. and author of eleven books, most recently the national best-seller The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country From the Religious Right. If you wish to support this kind of thinking, please join our Network of Spiritual Progressives at www.spiritualprogressives.org.

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The Anti-Defamation League has announced its opposition to the building of an Islamic community center (or mosque, as CNN and others put it) in Manhattan, near ground zero. It accepts that the builders have every right to do so, but believes that they should not because its presence there will cause offense and pain.

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain --unnecessarily -- and that is not right.

Perhaps the Anti-Defamation League could produce some helpful maps to delineate the areas in our cities where Muslims may live, work and pray without causing more pain.

The original statement was linked to here by others, but it's not currently available. Via CNN.

Source: boingboing

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By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation" – The Jerusalem Declaration

Not all Jews are Zionists. Many reject the Zionist project and fight against it.

So why on earth would a non-Jew wish to be one? Indeed, how could a genuine Christian seriously consider becoming a Zionist? It has puzzled me for a long time. The two ideas are incompatible, are they not?

So consider for a moment Anglican Friends of Israel, as an example. Their stated aims include:

• To support the people of Israel and to secure defensible borders for the State of Israel.
• To recall the Church to G-d's Covenant with the Jewish people and to call the Church to affirm the centrality of Israel to the Jewish faith.
• To call Anglicans to repentance for the wrongs - of both word and deed - inflicted by Christians on the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.
• To fight all libels against Israel and the Jewish people and their State.
• To protect the Christian communities threatened by Islamic extremism in the Middle East.

Are they Zionists? It sounds very much like it. For them Israel can do no wrong and Christians need to apologise to the Jewish people... er, what for?

And what makes them think that Muslims are more of a threat than Israeli extremists to Christian communities?

You should also see the sort of stuff the Anglican Friends of Israel post on their website.

AFI Press Release: The Mavi Marmara

Written by Anglican Friends of Israel

Wednesday, 02 June 2010

Anglican Friends of Israel are dismayed at international condemnation of Israel following attacks upon Israeli Defence Force personnel [by] a supposedly peaceful aid convoy... Israeli offers of peaceful means to deliver the aid into Gaza were refused. Video footage proves that the violence which tragically resulted in the deaths of some passengers and injuries to others including IDF personnel was begun by Aid convoy members... Terrorists in Gaza continue to fire rockets into Israel - over 60 this year so far - and to explode bombs in order to kill and maim Israeli citizens.

Western spokespersons might bear in mind that the terror threat to western nations springs from the same source as that faced daily by Israelis and be more circumspect in making demands on Israel before all relevant facts have emerged.

Anyone would be forgiven for thinking it was actually penned by the crapaganda unit in Tel Aviv. These Anglicans (if they are Anglicans) swallowed Israel's poisonous concoction hook, line and sinker and re-broadcast it while the abducted flotilla aid workers - witnesses to the murderous assault and executions - were incarcerated in Israeli jails and unable to tell the outside world what really happened.

I don't know of any danger to us from Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran, if those are the "terror" sources referred to. I doubt if groups who wish to see the Israeli nuclear threat to their region neutralised are also gunning for us, even though people like Anglican Friends of Israel and foreign secretary William Hague are doing their best to provoke them. But Israel of course wishes to make the British feel threatened and to draw us for strategic reasons into their schemes for permanent occupation and domination. There are always plenty of useful idiots to do their bidding.

A few days earlier the Anglicans issued a press release stating that the flotilla to Gaza was "a publicity stunt, not a genuine aid convoy". The item was actually a statement by the Israeli embassy repeated word for word and containing meaningless information like... "Since last year's January cease fire, 133 million liters of fuel entered Gaza from Israel - That's more than enough fuel to fill the fuel tank of every car and truck in Israel!" and "Since the ceasefire, well over a million tons of humanitarian supplies entered Gaza from Israel - That's almost a ton of aid for every man woman and child in Gaza."

Meaningless, because the figures lacked context. You have to go to the UN for that. Whatever Israel lets in, says the UN, it's only one-fifth of what's needed.

Some apparently responsible people, it seems, would rather accept without question the disinformation fed them by the Israeli authorities than on-the-spot assessments and reports by the UN and various charities.

Actually Israel is letting in only a quarter of what it let in before Hamas was elected.

Without question there was a publicity angle to the voyage. The organisers had a political point to make - the whole ugly US/UK-created mess out there is a political cesspit. The Israelis couldn't afford to see their illegal blockade breached. The evidence points to a planned execution raid on the Mavi Marmara in the dead of night with a pre-prepared hit-list.

And in a letter to the BBC these Anglicans insisted that Operation Cast Lead (Israel's blitzkrieg on Gaza after breaking the ceasefire with Hamas, subsequently killing 1400, maiming heaven knows how many and making hundreds of thousands homeless) was an act of "self-defense".

If you are as bewildered as I am why so-called Christians are persuaded to sign up to Zionism, a short paper explaining the phenomenon is available from Sadaka, The Ireland Palestine Alliance – see www.sadaka.ie. I found it very helpful.

"The destiny of the Jewish people is to return to the land of Israel and reclaim their inheritance promised to Abraham and his descendants forever. This inheritance extends from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates. Within their land, Jerusalem is recognised to be their exclusive, undivided and eternal capital, and therefore it cannot be shared or divided.

At the heart of Jerusalem will be the rebuilt Jewish temple, to which all the nations will come to worship God. Just prior to the return of Jesus, there will be seven years of calamities and war known as the tribulation, which will culminate in a great battle called Armageddon, during which the godless forces opposed to both God and Israel will be defeated.

Jesus will then return as the Jewish Messiah and king to reign in Jerusalem for a thousand years, and the Jewish people will enjoy a privileged status and role in the world."

That's the Zionist dream in a nutshell.

As I understand it, the Jews were expelled by the Roman occupation in 70AD, when the second temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and again in 135AD.

These days the right of return is regarded as an inalienable right. But it should be exercised as soon as the reason for expulsion (e.g. foreign occupation) ceases. In the Jews' case an opportunity would have occurred in the 4th century AD as the Roman Empire collapsed. But they didn't take it. They can hardly expect to change their mind 16 centuries later. Their right expired a very long time ago.

By comparison the Palestinians' right of return after being ethnically cleansed in 1948 and ever since is much stronger because the enemy occupation has not yet ended and the UN has endorsed their right.

Nevertheless Zionists claim Jerusalem is theirs by heavenly decree. However, this holiest of cities was already 2000 years old when King David captured it. It dates back 5000 years and was named after the Canaanite God of Dusk.

Historians say that Jerusalem, in its ‘City of David' form, lasted a mere 73 years. In 928BC the kingdom divided into Israel and Judah, and in 597BC the Babylonians conquered the city and destroyed Solomon's temple. The Jews recaptured it in 164BC but finally lost it to the Roman Empire in 63BC. Before the present-day conflict the Jews, in total, controlled Jerusalem for some 500 years, whereas it was subsequently ruled by Muslims for 1,277 years. Before the Jews it belonged to the Canaanites. And for nearly 90 years it was also a Christian kingdom. A lot of competing claims, then, which is probably why the UN declared it should be independently administered as an international city.

In 1187 Saladin restored the city to Islam while allowing Jews and Christians to remain. Today Jewish religious groups want control of the city for their spiritual centre and for a third temple to be built in accordance with ancient prophecies. The plan to make the Israeli occupation permanent threatens especially the Muslim but also the Christian holy places and serves to keep political tension boiling. It is no surprise, given Israel's reliance on ‘black' propaganda, that when the Iranian president quoted the late Ayatollah Khomeini as saying the unfriendly regime occupying Jerusalem "must vanish from the page of time", he was immediately reported as wanting to wipe Israel off the map.

Sadaka puts the genuine Christian position by quoting The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism, a statement by the Latin Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued in 2006...

We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.

We further reject the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organizations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine. This inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of allpeoples of the Middle East and the rest of world.

We reject the teachings of Christian Zionism that facilitate and support these policies as they advance racial exclusivity and perpetual war rather than the gospel of universal love, redemption and reconciliation taught by Jesus Christ. Rather than condemn the world to the doom of Armageddon we call upon everyone to liberate themselves from ideologies of militarism and occupation. Instead, let them pursue the healing of the nations!

The Declaration, explains Sadaka, asserts that "Christian Zionists have aggressively imposed an aberrant expression of the Christian faith and an erroneous interpretation of the Bible, which is subservient to the political agenda of the modern State of Israel... Christian Zionism thrives on a literal and futurist hermeneutic in which Old Testament promises made to the ancient Jewish people are transferred to the contemporary State of Israel in anticipation of a final future fulfillment."

I haven't yet seen credible response from the Christian Zionists.

Alarmingly, the US-based Unity Coalition for Israel brings together over 200 organisations and is the largest pro-Israel network in the world. They claim to have 40 million active members and lobby on behalf of Israel through 1,700 religious radio stations, 245 Christian TV stations and 120 Christian newspapers.

The question I'd like answered is this. Are we to believe that an all-powerful supernatural Being has chosen and elevated one group of humans to a position of supremacy above all others, and has approved the use any means including murder and brutal eviction to achieve their goal, and now mobilizes millions of lesser mortals from around the globe, like those who regard themselves as upstanding Christians, to serve as tools and sing the praises of this ‘Grand Design'?

In the meantime I'm with the Churches of Jerusalem on this one.

It took an 89-year old woman, the formidable White House correspondent Helen Thomas, to prick the Zionists' over-inflated balloon when she said last week that the Israelis should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home... to Germany, Poland, America and everywhere else."

The hatchet squad roaming America's den of iniquity promptly fell on her. They may have silenced her, and may even have destroyed this frail lady, but the power of her words will live on...

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

Related posts:

• Stuart Littlewood: Israel’s ‘friends’ still shamelessly swinging from the chandeliers at Westminster
• Spotlight on Palestine: an interview with Stuart Littlewood
• Lies of “International Fellowship of Christians and Jews” [Video]