An East Jerusalem Palestinian hijacked a bulldozer today and began attacking buses, cars and the people in them. A few people were killed and around 60 were wounded. Fortunately, the terrorist was quickly killed.
While BBC Online currently covers the story “Bulldozer rampage hits Jerusalem,” this was not the original headline. Offering a glimpse into the BBC’s warped journalism, the initial headline read “Israel bulldozer driver shot dead”.
I am appalled to see that CNN is writing “terrorist” and MSNBC is writing ‘terrorist’ when these are TERRORISTS without quotation marks or apostrophes.
Credit for some of these links goes to Rabbi David in Iowa.
Now that the pro-Western government in Lebanon has been “put in its place” by Hezbollah - and by extension Iran and Syria - what is Israel up against - and what narrative will the Islamists use to heal the wounds and consolidate their victory?
Explaining why Lebanon’s Pro-West Sunni government is afraid of Hezbullah and Iran, Zaatera writes:
“The people of the Umma [the Muslim Nation] and in particular the Sunnis, are as captive as they are perplexed. On the one hand, they know that what’s happening in Lebanon is an integral part of the battle that the Americans and Israelis are waging against forces of resistance and opposition in the region. Read the rest of this entry »
Credulous, likely-senile Jimmy Carter had tea with the terrorist group Hamas and now, according to MSNBC, Hamas is asking for a 10-year “truce” while refusing to recognize the State of Israel on the condition that said State of Israel return to the nearly-indefensible 1967 (read 1949) borders.
This is nothing new from Hamas, which would love to import offensive weaponry for the next 10 years while ruling both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Hamas’ terrorist attacks will simply be farmed out to (or conveniently blamed upon) Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades etc…while Hamas claims to be at peace and that Israeli self-defense violates this ‘hudna’ (an Islamic temporary truce until victory can be attained over an unwary enemy).
Hamas had its chance to give up violence and become a constructive political organization when it won that so-called election. Hamas could have suppressed violence and dismantled the other terrorist groups (see above list) while working with Israel and the world community to ease the plight of its subjects. Did Hamas choose to grow up? No way! Hamas chose to blow its big chance and continue to bring misery to the Palestinian Arabs.
Only an ignorant, politically-correct, self-righteous moralizing fool would buy-into this nonsense.
We just posted at WORLDMEETS.US something that anyone interested in global affairs simply must watch.
Nearly every year at the annual Arab Summit, Libyan despot Muammar Qadhafi gives a speech to the collected rulers of the Arab world who in stony-faced silence, sit and listen to him. Invariably - it is absolutely priceless.
Two terrorists infiltrate rabbinical seminary in Kiryat Moshe quarter, open fire at dozens of students. At least eight people reported killed. Police still in pursuit of second gunman. Celebrations already underway in Gaza
This is why Egypt should take over Gaza and Jordan should take over most Arab portions of the West Bank. Neither country needs encouragement to rule with an iron hand.
This is why Israeli Arabs (who are Israeli citizens) should swear a loyalty oath to the State of Israel (and not commit crimes against the sovereignty of the state) or face deportation with revocation of citizenship.
Eight people were confirmed dead in a terror attack at Merkaz Harav Yeshiva, near the entrance to Jerusalem on Thursday evening. According to Channel 2, the “Galilee Freedom Brigades”, which claimed responsibility for the attack, is a Hizbullah-affiliated organization.
Magen David Adom have confirmed 10 wounded civilians, including three seriously. One terrorist was said to have been killed by a student.
Witnesses said that only one terrorist had entered the building and that he managed to fire 500-600 bullets over the course of 4-10 minutes before he was killed.
Although witnesses said only a single terrorist carried out the attack, police were searching the building for an additional terrorist, preventing the entrance of rescue workers. Later Police Chief David Cohen confirmed that there were no additional attackers.
The terrorist entered the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva in the neighborhood of Kiryat Moshe carrying weapons. He was not wearing a suicide-bomb belt as earlier reported.
The gunman entered the library where about 80 people were gathered, witnesses said, and opened fire.
Are the Israelis intentionally trying to derail progress on President Bush’s trip to the Palestinian territories and Israel - his first visit to the country? According to this op-ed article from the largest newspaper on Palestinian territory, Alhayat Aljadeeda, the Israelis are introducing issues of dispute and causing turmoil that have never been part of the peace talks, so that President Bush will be too busy putting out fires to make any real progress.
“Israel is preparing for President Bush’s visit by reshuffling the cards and by demonstrating that there are problems that were not included in any discussions before, such as the verbal escalation over political and security relations with Egypt!!!”
By Yehia Rbah, Translated By Jenny Oliver, Palestine - Alhayat Aljadeeda - Original Article (Arabic)
It appears that the Israeli ruling coalition led by Ehud Olmert isn’t satisfied with the bloody military escalation in the Gaza Strip that amounted to eight air-raids in one day. The air-raids target civilians, such as the Fayyad family [photo, right], as well as resistance fighters and homes. Additionally, dozens have been injured and abducted and the vicious encroachment of Jewish settlements continues. Meanwhile, statements by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have roiled relations with Egypt, which shows the real trend of Israeli policy.
[Editor’s Note: Israel has complained to Egypt that it isn’t doing enough to stop weapons smuggling into the Hamas-cntrolled Gaza strip. Foreign Minister Livni said on Monday, “What they [the Egyptians] are doing at Philadelphi is deplorable and problematic.” Egypt has promised to end the smuggling and says it is doing all it can].
This all shows quite clearly that the Israeli government is intent on putting huge obstacles in the path of George W. Bush’s visit to the region on the 9th of this month. His visit will not be confined to Israel and Palestine, as he will also tour the region in general. But the focus for this visit is to promote the opportunities for peace opened up after Annapolis conference and the donor’s conference held in Paris. However, Read the rest of this entry »
Hamas on Thursday called on the UN to rescind the 1947 decision to partition Palestine into two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs.
The group said in a statement, released on the 60th anniversary of the UN vote, that “Palestine is Arab Islamic land, from the river to the sea, including Jerusalem… there is no room in it for the Jews.”
Regarding the partition decision, Hamas said that “correcting mistakes is nothing to be ashamed of, but prolonging it is exploitation.”
Look at the headlines, and particularly if you’re someone in a Western country it’s all so incredibly puzzling: how can young men and women blow themselves up? Datelines to stories become interchangeable. Pakistan. Israel. Iraq. News reports (as usual) detail a Middle East seemingly in peril. And a recent story claims a new Al Qaeda “cell” may be heading to the U.S.
What’s the mentality? What’s the mindset? And why?
Trying to find a DVD that isn’t a long editorial to give you a clue is difficult. Most films quickly sketch good guys and bad guys. Few get you inside the terrorists’ skulls and let you see how they think, then let you judge for yourself.
A few months ago, I saw a DVD of a movie that dealt with suicide bomber and after it was done a friend said: “This is b.s. They clearly wanted us to feel sorry for those guys!” And he was right: the movie depicted an evil U.S. government as being the reason why key characters became terrorists or enemies of the U.S. You could tell the director’s viewpoint 15 minutes into the film.
So there has been gap for those who want to understand, as opposed to those who want to watch watch a two hour editorial. A gap until now.
Director Pierre Rehov (Hostages of Hatred) has filled the gap for us with Suicide Killers — a film that should be watched by all sides in this life-and-death debate and by people of all political parties. It is required viewing if you want to understand how some (we underline “some”) Muslims are happily ready to die as glorified martyrs by blowing up groups of innocent men, women and even tiny children with them.
Folks who live in the city of Sderot in southern Israel know full well that they are being used as pawns in a deadly game of chicken by Hamas. They don’t like it one bit.
Spiegel Online reports that a new black and white rodent has appeared on Palestinian television, and it’s not the Mickey Mouse you’re used to. This one teaches children about AK-47s and Jihad on behalf of the Islamist group Hamas.
A dancing mouse named Farfour says “The people firmly stand, singing this to you. … Its answer is an AK-47. We who do not know fear, we are the predators of the forest,” Farfour squeaks in one episode while miming the throwing of a grenade and the shooting of a rifle. In another, his mousey voice warns: “Oh Jerusalem we are coming. Oh Jerusalem, it is the time of death. Oh Jerusalem, we will never surrender to the enemy, and we will never be humiliated. It is beloved Palestine that taught us what to be. And taught us to be soldiers of the Lord.”
Hate has no bounds and the children are the victims.
May 3rd, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
India’s claims for over a decade about Pakistan’s links with terrorism in Kashmir, and elsewhere, stand vindicated again by a recent US state department’s report released in Washington on Monday.
The USA never took India’s repeated warnings seriously, and always shoved them under the carpet. The usual response is “Well, Pakistan is our front-line ally in war-against-terror.”
Now with repeated evidence surfacing in American intelligence reports, the US administration, which during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan itself encouraged Islamic militants, is finding it difficult to face the reality.
“Pakistan ‘remains a major source of Islamic extremism and a safe haven for some top terrorist leaders’, despite being a front-line ally of the United States in the ‘war on terror’, according to the US State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2006, says Pakistan’s Daily Times Monitor.
“The state department report also said the Bush administration had designated Islamic groups Harkatul Mujahideen (HUM), Jaish-e-Muhammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba– all said to be based in Pakistan - as foreign terrorist organisations,’ prohibiting US residents from extending material support to them.
“The report says HUM and JeM are politically aligned with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, and operate primarily in Indian-held Kashmir.”
The State Department report was released on Monday in Washington. Indian leaders and the media are so disillusioned and tired of the US administration’s stand that such ‘alarming’ news do not make headlines in the country. In fact, India has stopped complaining!!!
But there is another angle to this story. The US state department report is based on last year’s findings. Meanwhile perceptions in India and Pakistan are also undergoing a change.
Interestingly, India and Pakistan seem to have realised that they have no alternative but to engage in bilateral talks/strategies to promote trade, etc, and work towards ending the US interference in their affairs.
Both the countries are realising the dangers of remaining a pawn of the outside powers, especially in the wake of disastrous/adventurist US policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Behind-the-scene parleys have yielded dramatic results in bringing down terrorist killings and improved the trade between India and Pakistan.To read my earlier post please click here…
Whatever the dangers inherent in this, India has little choice but to enter into bilateral parleys with vigour.
I reprint in full an editorial on this subject in Pakistan’s Daily Times:
“Pakistan’s untamed militias”
“The US State Department’s annual country report says Pakistan ‘remains a major source of Islamic extremism and a safe haven for some top terrorist leaders’, despite being a frontline ally of the United States in the ‘war on terror’.
“The report names all the ‘Islamic groups’ that survive in Pakistan under assumed names after they were banned under their original names. President Pervez Musharraf made efforts to tame these groups but for reasons not very clear to most Pakistanis he has not been able to put the militias to rest.
“Militias are created when deniable covert wars are fought. Pakistan spawned them under the approving eye of the United States when it was helping defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Then Pakistan used them against India in Kashmir.
“Over time it so got used to its militias — named nicely in Urdu — that it forgot that they are the source of other things like terrorism and sectarian massacres too.
“Now they are embedded in civil society and rule through intimidation. Who is subject to this intimidation? The judiciary, clearly, but all the other institutions of the state, including the political parties and the media, are liable to attack. How can any state function like this?”
The Malaysia Sun has an interesting story on Pakistan and nuclear dimension. “Pakistani authorities prepared Wednesday to address potentially damaging new details contained in a report on the black market sale of sensitive technology by the former head of the country’s nuclear programme, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.” Please click here for more…
Meanwhile violent protests continue in Pakistan over the sacking, and the trial, of the Chief Justice. Read here…
“Where else can you sit down in a single evening and listen to senior people from Hamas, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood, people from the revolutionary left and people from the anti-war movement around the globe?”
In another Al-Ahram article, Eric Walberg reports that cooperation between Islamists and the left is growing. He’s not surprised, as “the traditional focus of the left on defending victims of torture” and the biggest victims of torture in the world today are Muslims.
Walberg avers that the left now realizes this and is finally overcoming its traditional resistance to the cultural conservatism of Islam and Muslims are reaching out to the left. The Cairo conference wasn’t the first indication of this convergence; Hizbullah had a “prominent” role at an “anti-imperialism” conference held last November in Beirut. That conference attracted close to 600 participants and observers from around the world, including a delegation of 80 South Koreans and 20 Canadians.
The “key forum” at the Cairo conference was “bridge building between the left and Islam,” which focussed on re-evaluating the relations of the left and the Islamists, and on ways to increase their cooperation.
Sadala Mazraani, a representative of the Lebanese Communist Party, said that his party “actively works with Hizbullah against the occupation and in elections, both trying to unite Lebanese society to fight Israel and Zionism.”
Ali Fayyad of Hizbullah averred that “[b]y working with Islamic groups in an open way, the left can have a positive impact on Islamic movements, and vice versa.”
The “international left,” says Walberg, emphasized practical ways to reach out to the broader Muslim community, as reflected in conference forums on such projects as twinning UK and Palestinian cities, countering the boycott of the Hamas government in Palestine with a boycott of Israel and Western firms that provide military equipment to Israel, and countering Islamophobia.
And who is Eric Walberg? Among other things, he’s a regular contributor to an Australian neo-Nazi Holocaust denial site.
April 22nd, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
It seems General Musharraf, President of Pakistan, has all the time in the world to mediate in the Israel-Palestine crisis…While his own country is in the throes of a bigger crisis. Some gallantry, social service and sacrifice this!!!
Maybe Israel should ask the General to take leave without pay and come over to Israel, as an adviser, after he has handed over the power to democratically elected representatives of Pakistan once the promised elections are completed in that country this year.
BBC reporter Alan Johnston has been killed by an al-Qaeda affilated Palestinian organization, according to an internet statement obtained by Ynetnews. The statement was signed by the Palestinian Jihad and Tawheed Brigades, an organization named after an Iraqi al-Qaeda group.
Responding to the statement, the BBC said it is “aware of these reports — but we have no independent verification of them. We are deeply concerned about what we are hearing — but we stress, at this stage, it is rumour with no independent verification.”
In the message, the group said the British and Palestinian governments were responsible for Johnston’s killing, and vowed to release a video of the execution.
Palestinian Authority security officials said Sunday they could neither confirm nor deny reports that kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston had been executed by his captors in the Gaza Strip.
A hitherto unknown group, calling itself the Tawheed and Jihad Brigades in Palestine, announced in a leaflet that was distributed in Gaza that its members had killed Johnston because of Israel’s refusal to release Palestinian prisoners.
The group, which PA security officials said was linked to al-Qaida, promised to release a video showing the execution of Johnston, 44, who was kidnapped in Gaza City more than a month ago.
April 12th, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
In Pakistan, more alarmingly even than usual, the flag of jihad is fluttering and extremists are marching on the state, says The Economist. “Amid a worrying surge in Islamic militancy, a fight between rival radicals may not be the good news Pakistan says it is.”
“Of several concurrent—partly co-ordinated—dramas involving Islamist militants, the bloodiest is in South Waziristan, a semi-autonomous tribal region on Pakistan’s north-western frontier. In three weeks of high-altitude battle there between local Taliban and foreign—mostly Uzbek—Islamists, more than 250 foreigners are reported to have been killed.
“The army, which has failed to clear the foreigners from South Waziristan in four years of trying, announced on April 9th that the Talibs had done so. Yet quite why this fight began, whether it has ended, and what it means for Pakistan and the broader ‘war on terror’ all remain unclear.
“A less obscure struggle was launched in Islamabad on April 6th by a mullah named Abdul Aziz. He gave the government a month to close the capital’s brothels and music shops, and tear down advertisements depicting women. He also declared sharia law within the high walls of his mosque and the adjoining madrassa. If the government were to respond with force, he promised it suicide-bombings.
“After hearing this sermon, Mr Aziz’s followers, allegedly more than 10,000 bearded males and burqa-clad females, set fire in the street to a pyre of music videos and CDs extracted from local traders.
“The mosque, Lal Masjid, on the roof of which these young zealots can be seen practising martial moves with staves, is barely a mile from Pakistan’s supreme court, parliament building and the headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI).
“For much of Pakistan’s history, the ISI, the army’s main spying outfit, has mobilised Islamists to fight its wars, in Afghanistan, Kashmir and elsewhere. This was consistent with a broader policy, pursued by successive—especially military—governments, of pandering to Islamists.
“Because it had made common cause with the fanatics, the army thought it could control them. If this were ever true, it is not now…”
That’s the deal the Palestinians proposed to Israel: Israel gets Cpl Gilad Shalit back in return she has to release between 350 and 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Isaac Herzog, an Israeli cabinet minister, said yesterday that “certain progress has been made compared with how things were until now”.
But he added: “There is still a long way to go. We are apparently approaching the truly difficult stage of the negotiations.”
Egyptian officials mediating with Hamas handed over the list to Israeli officials yesterday, which reportedly includes anything from 350 to 1,000 names,
However, Cpl Shalit’s release is not seen as imminent as Israel is expected to reject some of the names on the list.
One Israeli official described some of the named Palestinians as “murderers” who will not be set free.
Media reports said the list included Palestinian uprising leader Marwan Barghouthi, who is serving five consecutive life terms after being convicted of shooting attacks that killed four Israelis and a Greek monk.
Not exactly an offer Israel cannot refuse, I’d say.
On the other hand, Israel has a history of exchanging Palestinian / Arab prisoners for Israeli hostages:
In 1985, it set free 1,150 Arab prisoners for three Israelis held by a Palestinian group in Lebanon.
In January, 2004, it released 400 Palestinians, 21 Lebanese and 59 Lebanese corpses in exchange for three corpses of soldiers held by Hezbollah and a kidnapped businessman and senior reserve officer, Elhanan Tannenbaum.
The Israeli government should not agree to this. Giving in once again will reinforce the notion that kidnapping Israelis work.
If Israel is holding Palestinians without good reasons, she should be willing to talk about it, review the situation, and, if it is the right thing to do, release (some of) them. But not in exchange for a kidnapped Israeli. Terrorism should not pay.
