Posted 12/30/2004 03:41:00 PM

1. Newspeak at Haaretz:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16466
Haaretz's Travesty of Language
By P. David Hornik
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 30, 2004


A Haaretz story from Monday, December 27 informs us:

. . an Israel Defense Forces tank opened fire and killed two Hamas
activists early Sunday morning near the fence along the Green Line. . . .
The two were seen crawling some 200 meters from the fence, and the IDF
believes they were planning to set an explosive charge. Hamas confirmed
the two were members of its organization.



Activists? What were they, campaigners against whale farming, or for a
higher minimum wage, or a shorter school day? Activist is a strange term
for people who were seeking to commit mass murder, and who belong to an
organization whose charter states:



Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate
it, just as it obliterated others before it. . . . There is no solution
for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. . . . Jihad is [our]
path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of [our] wishes. . .
.



When Haaretz isnt referring to terrorists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or the
various PLO offshoots as activists, it calls them militantsua word that
connotes, or used to connote, hard-boiled labor leaders and the like. And
what, exactly, would Haaretz have called people in Germany in the 1930s
who called for the destruction of the Jews and incited and perpetrated
attacks against themmilitants? Activists?



Last week the residents of Gush Katif, a Jewish community in the Gaza
Strip, set off a firestorm in Israel by donning orange badges in the shape
of the Star of David. The badges were meant to stir associations with the
yellow Stars of David that Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis. Gush
Katif is not only slated for destruction as part of the Israeli
governments disengagement plan; it is alsoas a gesture of the Gaza
terrorists appreciation for the planbeing subjected to round-the-clock
bombardment with mortars and missiles. According to reports, not only the
Gush Katif residents but IDF officers in the area are exasperated by the
governments refusal to give the IDF the green light to quash the
bombardment, a refusal allegedly aimed at softening up the residents for
their evacuation several months from now.



In other words, the Gush Katif residents are living in nonstop mortal
danger and feel doubly abandoned by their governmentboth because theyre
slated for evacuation and because theyre not being militarily protected.
Nevertheless, their signaling of their despair with the orange stars
sparked fierce protest in Israel across the political spectrum. Even
right-wing politicians who oppose disengagement and sympathize with the
Gaza Jews objected that this was going too far. The Gaza residents, even
if eventually evacuated, will be financially compensated and reabsorbed in
Israela far cry from the fate of Jews deported by the Nazis. After a
couple of days, the Gaza residents heeded the protests and ended the
campaign.



Fair enough; but if were going to protest offensive, inappropriate usages,
why not pass it around equally? Which brings us back to Haaretz.



It struck me that during and since the orange-stars uproar, Haaretz,
quietly and seemingly unnoticed, continues with its outrageous travesty of
language in which cold-blooded genocidists are referred to in neutral,
objective, politically-correct terms. After all, there may be someone out
there who views the latest suicide bombers or knife murderers as freedom
fighters, and whose feelings might be hurt if a word like terrorist was
used to describe them.



And, of course, the world must know that Haaretz is an objective,
nonpartisan observer. This Israeli newspaper will only use the language of
CNN, the BBC, and the New York Times to describe ideological murders in
Israel. The editors of Haaretz will not refer to the potential or actual
killers of their own children as terrorists, but as activists. Theyre,
after all, part of the bigger, sophisticated world, not of little,
parochial Israel.



Haaretzs use of delicate terminology for todays Nazis is no less an
offense against truth, against the memory of what Jews have suffered, than
the Gaza Jews use of the orange starsarguablywas. The difference is that
the Gaza Jews gesture was protested, and they heeded, respected, and
responded to the protest. Haaretz, though, gets away with it.



P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Jerusalem
whose work has appeared in many Israeli, Jewish, and political
publications. Reach him at pdavidh2001@yahoo.com.


2. A Palestinian really for peace:
http://www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=4531


3. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1204/wilson_homicide_bombers.php3
Jewish World Review Dec. 29, 2004 / 17 Teves, 5765
What Makes a Terrorist?
By James Q. Wilson

4. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0452/hentoff.php
Liberty Beat
by Nat Hentoff
Telling it like it is
There Is More To Be Explored

5. Mikey Lerner's Buddy of Color:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/media/pdf/OurBlackJeremiah.pdf

6. The Likud's Spokesman for Meretz:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1104291022831

7. Lies, Damned Lies, and Post-Zionism:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1104291022963&p=1006953079865

8. Duke's New Logo:
http://chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=12024

9. For a good laugh:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006085

10. Defend the American Jews in Israel!
http://www.jewishindy.com/article.php?sid=4185

Posted 12/30/2004 10:48:00 AM

http://www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=4542

Religious Coercion, Reform Style
Posted 12/29/2004
By Steven Plaut

The political interference by the rabbis is getting more and more
unbearable. The attempt to impose their opinions and lifestyles upon us,
regardless of the preferences of the majority of their fellow citizens, is
outrageous. They are intolerant, increasingly fundamentalist, arrogant,
anti-democratic and coercive.

I refer, of course, to the Reform rabbis of America.

I should state here that I do not criticize the Reform movement because of
the level of observance of Jewish ritual and tradition of its members. I
do not consider it my business or right to tell other Jews how much ritual
and tradition they should be observing or not observing in their private
lives. I have no problem with those who wish to choose non-observant or
secularist lifestyles. I acknowledge the right of Reform Jews to live as
they please. I am all in favor of religious pluralism.

I should also state up front that the Reform synagogue movement contains
quite a few thoughtful and intelligent leaders and members. I believe that
individual Reform Jewish leaders collectively share the blame for only one
thing - allowing the Reform movement to be hijacked by leftist extremists
and not doing more to stop them.

Let me also point out that I am hardly uncritical of Orthodox rabbis,
especially here in Israel, when they engage in political partisanship,
misbehavior, or general silliness. I have no problem with those promoting
religious pluralism in Israel or anywhere else.

The only problem is that the same Reform leaders who are so enthusiastic
about religious pluralism have made it clear that political pluralism has
no room in the their own movement.

Yes, like the tired plot of a late-night science fiction movie, the Reform
movement has been taken over - by those who believe religion and liberal
social activism are synonyms. While not every rabbi or every member of the
Reform movement has been recruited into the Political Liberalism as
Judaism school, enough have, and that school's philosophy dominates the
pronouncements by the official institutions of the movement as a whole.

This is the philosophy also known as Tikkun Olam Paganism, due to its
compulsive misuse of the notion of "tikkun olam" by holding that all of
Judaism can be reduced to the agenda of politically correct liberalism.

It is a form of political fundamentalism, impervious to challenge. It
believes that the best chances of survival for the eternal and timeless
religion of Judaism are through repackaging it so that it can appeal to
college students in Berkeley, drag queens in Provincetown, and actors in
Hollywood.

The "Political Liberalism as Judaism" pseudo-religion dominates the main
institutions of the Reform synagogue movement, including its Central
Council of American Rabbis (CCAR), which regularly claims to represent 1.5
million Jews and 900 congregations in the U.S. and Canada.

And of course the leftist SWAT team for the Reform movement is the
Religious Action Center (RAC) based in Washington, whose "religious
action" rarely has anything to do with Jewish religion.

The RAC has been under the leadership of David Saperstein for almost as
long as Libya has been under the personal rule of Moammar Khaddafi.
Saperstein, who is a Reform rabbi and an attorney, is also active in such
outfits as People For the American Way, set up by the television producer
Norman Lear to save the world from Republicans.

The RAC and the CCAR regularly compose and approve political fatwas, the
collection of which is online and virtually identical in content with the
platform of the furthest-left wing of the Democrat Party. These cover
everything from "globalization" (they essentially oppose it) to "animal
rights" (they want Jews to be vegetarians).

Homosexuality has a special interest for them, bordering on a fixation.
Saperstein recently expressed shock when Boston's Rabbi Chaim Schwartz,
writing in the Boston Globe, compared homosexual relations with
bestiality. In Sapersteins words: "That a rabbi would... demean the
committed and loving relationships that many people share, is not only
irresponsible and hurtful, but wrong."

Only one little problem here. The Torah itself explicitly compares
homosexual relations with bestiality and in fact declares both to be
capital offenses. Maybe Saperstein should actually try reading the Torah.
Maybe the RAC should actually base some of its "religious action" on the
Jewish religion. Does the RAC regard the Torah itself as "irresponsible
and hurtful and wrong?"

A few years back, the Passover cause celebre of the Reform establishment
was Tibet, with Tibetan officials invited to Passover seders and Jews
urged to hold Tibetan "freedom seders" to show solidarity. The eleventh
commandment handed down by Moses is, in their opinion, "Thou Shalt be
Trendy!"

The RAC is so radical it has motivated many an observer, just a bit
unfairly, in my opinion, to question whether Reform Judaism should even be
regarded as a branch of Judaism, rather than a form of leftist political
agitprop, little more than a sister organization of Tikkun, A.N.S.W.E.R.
and MOVE ON.

But the Reform establishment goes beyond PC goofiness. In recent years it
has been increasingly hostile to Israel and attempts by Israel to defend
itself. The CCAR is on record supporting Palestinian statehood, eviction
of Jewish settlers, and a return by Israel to more or less its 1949
borders.

The CCAR and RAC recently launched an attack against Israels attempts to
defend its children from terrorists by constructing a "security wall". The
CCAR actually condemned Israel for this in a resolution passed at its
annual meeting. It has also denounced Israel for demolishing homes of
terrorists. It has openly endorsed the leftist-extremist Israeli splinter
group "Rabbis for Human Rights" (which might more properly be named
"Rabbi for Human Rights"). The resolution and other recent statements
by RAC have been exercises in "even-handedness", that is, balanced
condemnation of both Palestinian terror and Israeli attempts to defend its
citizens from that terror.

The Reform establishment, few of whose leading lights live in Israel, has
in recent years canceled youth trip after youth trip to the Jewish state,
does not like Israels "security wall" because it makes Palestinians unhappy,
and in general counsels Israel against using arms if there's any
possibility
that Palestinian civilians might be injured. Since no one has ever fought
a war in which only uniformed fighters get hurt, and since Palestinian
terrorists hide among civilians and never wear uniforms, this counsel
amounts to an insistence that Israel not fight terror at all.

The RAC is more worried about inconveniencing the Palestinians with a
security wall than it is about the rights of Jewish children to ride buses
in Beer Sheba without being blown up. It is often more critical of the Boy
Scouts for not hiring gay scout leaders than it is of the Palestinian
Authority.

Adopting a balanced condemnation of both the Palestinians and Israel is
about as morally high-minded, principled and courageous in 2004 as would
have been a balanced condemnation of both Nazi Germany and the armies and
partisans fighting against it in 1943. After all, the anti-German forces
sometimes mistreated innocent Germans, were insensitive toward
homosexuals, and even ate meat.

The Jerusalem Post recently attacked the armchair peaceniks in the CCAR
and their "even-handed" anti-Israel propagandizing, accusing them of
hypocritical moral grandstanding. Saperstein himself took time off from
demonizing the Boy Scouts and fighting for the promotion of lesbian Reform
rabbis to respond to the Post. He insisted, predictably, that Reform
leaders in the U.S. have as much right to voice their views on Israeli
security and issues of war and peace as do Israel's own leftists.

Actually, U.S. Reform leaders have no such right. If Saperstein and his
comrades
wish to promote their agenda, let them make aliyah, pay Israeli taxes,
serve in the army, and suffer on their own persons the consequences of
leftist folly, just like Israel's home-grown leftists.

But even then, while they'd have the right to promote their agenda, they
wouldn't have the right to misrepresent leftist political extremism as
Judaism.

No less outrageous are the efforts of Reform rabbis who attempt to impose
their liberal political theology not only on fellow American Jews, but on
the U.S. as a whole. While whining about supposed Orthodox religious
coercion in Israel, the Reform establishment today embodies the worst
forms of Jewish religious coercion on earth, with the religion in question
being liberal politics and liberation theology.

The Reform establishment has adopted the entire agenda of the American
Left, down to and including bashing Israel for daring to defend itself. It
is barely distinct politically from the sages of the Tikkun-Renewal cult
of Michael Lerner and Arthur Waskow. It is becoming so extreme that it
increasingly resembles the old anti-Israel Reform break-off group the
American Council for Judaism.

The Reform establishment opposes school choice for Jews; supports every
wacky idea to emerge from the most extreme environmentalist movements; and
endorses affirmative action programs even if they discriminate against
Jews. The number-one item on its agenda these days is gay marriage. David
Saperstein's comments opposing welfare reform were so outrageous that a
few years back they were cited with approval by the American Communist Party
newspaper.

The Reform establishment blocks school vouchers by trotting out the old
bogeyman of religious coercion, while at the same time its modus operandi
is religious coercion of the liberal variety. It has no patience for
policy trade-offs nor nuanced policy analysis, no time for subtle
cost-benefit evaluation, and refuses even to acknowledge that there are
trade-offs involved in real-life policy decisions. It prefers empty moral
posturing and liberal recreational compassion combined with ignorance
about markets and social science.

The Reform establishment supports partial-birth abortion of innocent
babies but vehemently opposes execution of convicted murderers and
terrorists. The Reform movement in Israel has led the local
"anti-globalization" hooligans seeking to make the world safe for Marxism.
The U.S. Reform movement has conscripted itself on behalf of Lori
Berenson, jailed in Peru for her involvement with a murderous group of
leftist terrorists.

I have a serious question for David Saperstein and the Reform
establishment (and for certain parts of the Conservative synagogue
movement as well). I am not being facetious:

In your considered opinions, are Michael Moore, Ted Kennedy, Ralph Nader
and Dennis Kucinich Jewish?

I am quite serious. If being Jewish constitutes nothing more than liberal
political activism, why are these people not to be regarded as Jews? It
can't be because Reform doctrine holds that in order to be an authentic
Jew one must eat kosher and keep the Sabbath. We know, after all, that these
are hardly universal practices among Reform Jews.

And it can't be because Reform Judaism insists that authentic Jews base
their politics and belief system on the Bible. Where in Jewish scripture
do we find acceptance, much less endorsement, of homosexuality,
Palestinian statehood on the West Bank, and abortion on demand? (Besides
which, many of the Reform leaders I have met know less of the Bible than
your average Mormon schoolboy.)

Seriously, if Judaism is basically just an ethnic version of sanctimonious
liberal agitprop, why can't Moore, Kennedy, Kucinich or Nader be
considered Jewish? And if a Jewish liberal marries a non-Jewish liberal,
why should anyone consider that an intermarriage? After all, they have
exactly the same religion!

As for religious coercion by the Orthodox in Israel - that's little more
than an urban legend. There is virtually no religious coercion in Israel.
True, the politicized religious parties once forced the cinemas closed on
Sabbath, but today every Israeli owns DVDs. True, the Orthodox politicos
once forced the buses to stop running on Sabbath, but these days everyone
has a car.

I would venture to say that almost no secularist Israeli is ever forced to
observe any religious ritual against his or her will. And other than some
minor difficulties for those wishing to have a "civil wedding", which is
quite possible today in Israel, no secularist in Israel has to have any
contact whatsoever with Orthodox institutions if he or she prefers not to.

The religious parties and their members are not the ones responsible for
Israel's self-destructive policies, for the deepening national
demoralization, for the carnage heaped upon the country in the wake of
liberal peace schemes. The secularists deserve the lion's share of the
blame, though the religious parties certainly have displayed plenty of
cowardice in not attempting to stop all that. (One wag famously suggested
that if the Israeli government ever decided to turn over the Golan Heights
to Syria, the National Religious Party's main concern would be that the
eviction of the "settlers" there not take place on the Sabbath.)

Contrast the extremely limited nature of religious coercion by Orthodox
parties in Israel with political interference and pressure on the part of
the Reform movement in the U.S. In an era when true believers in
fundamentalist liberalism are an endangered species outside of Hollywood
and parts of Manhattan and Massachusetts, the Reform establishment lobbies
in the name of Judaism and biblical ethics to impose its leftist political
biases on all Jews and, indeed, on the entire United States. It seeks to
hijack Judaism, Jewish holidays and Jewish ethical authority on behalf of
any given week's leftish fads and fancies.

The time has come to get these rabbis and other Reform leaders out of our
bedrooms, out of our politics, and back to their proper roles.

It is time to introduce some political pluralism into the Reform movement
itself. It is time to stop CCAR-RAC from hijacking the moral authority of
Judaism for its campaign on behalf of pseudo-Jewish liberal
fundamentalism.

Steven Plaut is a professor at Haifa University. His book "The Scout" is
available at amazon.com. He can be contacted at steven_plaut@yahoo.com

Posted 12/29/2004 03:19:00 PM

1. Subject: Auld Lang Zion 2005
(Haifa, Israel)


Should auld accomplice be forgot,
And never brought to trial?
Should auld Osloids, friend, be forgot,
And days of auld lang Zion?


For betraying auld lang Zion, my dear,
For abasing auld lang Zion.
Should their accomplice be forgot,
And days of auld lang Zion?


We yids hae run aboot the world,
Under fire the whole time.
We've wandered mony a weary foot,
To reach auld lang Zion.


Save auld lang Zion, my dear,
Save auld lang Zion,
Indict those Oslo blaggards, dear,
For auld lang Zion!!!

2. REVIEW & OUTLOOK

A Great Natural Disaster
Prosperity is the best defense against a tsunami.

Tuesday, December 28, 2004 12:01 a.m.

The world's thoughts are with the victims of the tsunamis that swept
across South Asia Sunday, killing at least 23,000 and leaving millions
homeless. In the coming weeks and months, the priority must be to render
the survivors every possible assistance. The response so far has been
admirably swift.
One might think that a disaster of this scale would transcend normal
national or political considerations. But in the world of environmental
zealotry, even an event such as this is seen as an opportunity to press
the agenda. Thus, the source of the South Asian tsunami is being located
in global warming.

In an interview with the Independent newspaper in Britain, Stephen
Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: "No one can ignore the
relentless increase in extreme weather events and so-called natural
disasters, which in reality are no more natural than a plastic Christmas
tree." Speaking to the same newspaper, Friends of the Earth Director Tony
Juniper pressed the argument home: "Here again are yet more events in the
real world that are consistent with climate change predictions." It is
perhaps appropriate that the strongest, recent refutation to such feverish
assertions may be found in Michael Crichton's new thriller--also about
environmental extremists, a tsunami and the myths of global warming.




People prone to hysteria often become further unhinged in the face of a
great disaster, and that may explain these remarkable comments on the
tsunami disaster. Still, these comments by the movement's leadership may
serve as a case study of how such imaginings work their way into public
discussion of the environment. That is all the more reason to come to
grips with the real causes of calamities such as this.
Geologists say that groups of giant earthquakes hit Sumatra every 230
years or so. The last quakes there were in 1797 and 1833--and surely not
even Greenpeace would blame those on greenhouse gases--and so Sunday's
latest quake was more or less on schedule.

It is preposterous to blame the inexorable forces of nature on the
development of industry and infrastructures of modern society. The more
sensible response to natural disasters is to improve forecasting, put in
place efficient communications and evacuation procedures and, should the
worst arrive, conduct relief efforts and rebuild what nature has
destroyed. Those cautionary measures, as is now clear, cost money. The
national income necessary to afford them is made possible only by economic
growth of the sort too many of environmentalists retard with their policy
extremism.

Rich countries suffer fewer fatalities from natural disasters because
their prosperity has allowed them to create better protective measures.
Consider the 41,000 death toll in last December's earthquake in Iran
compared with the 63 who died when a slightly stronger earthquake hit San
Francisco in 1989.




The principal victims of the tidal waves in Sri Lanka and elsewhere Sunday
were the poor people living in coastal shanty towns. The wealthier
countries around the Pacific Rim have an established early-warning system
against tsunamis, while none currently exists in South Asia. Developing
countries that have resisted the Kyoto climate-change protocols have done
so from fear that it will suppress their economic growth. These countries
deserve an answer from the proponents of those standards. How are they
supposed to pay for such protection amid measures that are suppressing
global economic growth?
As we mourn the loss of life and unite to help the survivors rebuild their
lives and communities, let's also bear in mind that the best long-term
help is an economic environment that allows these nations to put in place
better manmade defenses against future depredations from nature.


Copyright 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

3. Excellent piece: Watching the Watchers

Human rights: Watching the watchers


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GERALD M. STEINBERG, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 29, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why not champion the right to live in the face of terrorism?

In October 2004, Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, flew from
New York to Jerusalem for a day to publicize a 135-page report entitled
Razing Rafah - a scathing condemnation of the Israeli government's
policies along the border between Gaza and Egypt.

Roth's claims were immediately repeated on wire services, television and
radio news broadcasts, and in newspaper stories around the world.

The tragedy is that the credibility of HRW and the human rights movement
is being undermined. And without credibility, the activities of HRW,
Amnesty International, and Oxfam have no impact in a complex debate taking
place in Israel.

The issue is how to balance the core human right - the right to life in
the face of a terrorist onslaught - with the rights of noncombatant
Palestinians.

But this is not a problem that concerns HRW.

It has long departed from its origins as Helsinki Watch with its campaigns
for freedom in the former Soviet Union on behalf of Prisoners of Zion such
as Anatoly Sharansky.

As the Cold War ended, officials, including Roth and activists Joe Stork
and Sarah Leah Whitson, adopted a new agenda, exploiting the rhetoric of
universal human rights to promote narrow political and ideological
preferences.

In this framework, human rights are filtered through the subjective
distinction between "victims" - say Palestinians or Irish Republicans -
and "colonialist oppressors" - Zionists, Irish Unionists, and Americans.

As a result, in the past four years, despite terror attacks that clearly
violate any common-sense concept of basic human rights, HRW's reports and
press releases have focused - by a ratio of over six to one - on
allegations against Israel.

Roth has claimed a "two-to-one" ratio - which, even if true, would be
morally unjustified.

Reflecting the lack of a political agenda in Africa, HRW issued far fewer
reports these past four years on the mass killing in the Sudan than on the
Arab-Israel conflict.

Roth says he "does not do comparisons" of this sort.

BY FOLLOWING this political path Roth became a major public figure and
commentator. HRW has evolved into a superpower with an annual budget of
over $20 million and a staff of over 200.

In September 2001, HRW emerged as a key player during the nongovernmental
organization sessions of the infamous Durban anti-racism conference, which
were hijacked to demonize Israel.

Anne Bayefsy and other witnesses have described how HRW officials refused
to act when members of the Jewish caucus were evicted. And three years
later, HRW joined the movement to boycott Israel - another step in the
"South Africa strategy."

In contrast, the murder of over 1,000 Israelis did not lead Roth and HRW
to call for corporate sanctions against the Palestinian leadership.

To avoid serious debate and criticism of these dubious practices, Roth
chooses his platforms carefully, steering clear of confrontations with
well-informed critics able to refute his claims.

Although Roth told Natan Sharansky that he was too busy to participate in
the Global Forum on Anti-Semitism, he had time for friendly journalists at
the American Colony Hotel - an unofficial Palestinian press center - a few
days earlier.

And in the interview with the Post, Roth emphasized how he "grew up on his
father's stories of life in Nazi Germany until he fled in summer 1938" -
his standard response when confronted with the evidence of anti-Israel
political bias.

But such assertions do not address the substance or the evidence. And many
of Roth's other claims, such as the statement that "out of our staff of
200 people we have one researcher on Israel/Palestine" are less than
half-truths.

These incidents demonstrate the continued impact of the human rights halo
effect, which protects Roth from serious investigation.

Like other powerful organizations, HRW and its leaders should be subject
to a system of checks and balances to ensure that the claimed objectives -
moral and otherwise - are consistent with the choice of issues, the
presentation of evidence, and the hiring process.

Governments at all levels include independent comptrollers, and news
organizations have ombudsmen, but prior to the establishment of NGO
Monitor in the wake of the Durban conference no such mechanism existed to
watch the watchers in the realm of human rights.

NGO Monitor's analyses provide a foundation for assessing the credibility
of NGOs active in the Israeli-Palestinian and other political conflicts,
but its scope is still limited.

This work needs to be supplemented by parallel activities run by the NGO
network itself. By dedicating a portion of funds to a system of
independent controls, and by demanding transparency and accountability,
philanthropies and individual donors to groups such as HRW can begin to
restore lost credibility.

Perhaps in this way the lost moral force of the human rights movement,
reflecting exploitation of universal principles in support of private
political biases, can also be repaired.

The writer is editor of NGO Monitor and director of the Program on
Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University.


4. A Palestinian Academic. Will be be offered a job at Ben Gurion
University?
PA Academic on PA TV:
Killing of Jews is Mandatory
By Itamar Marcus & Barbara Crook


Introduction:
Much media attention has been given in recent weeks to a reported "drop"
in PA incitement. Unfortunately, while there have been some changes in PA
TV, the same hate messages continue to be espoused -- just by different
speakers.

For example, world attention has brought pressure on the PA to change the
content of the Friday sermons, in which religious leaders have repeatedly
called for the genocide of Jews. The PA has not eliminated the message,
however, but has merely transferred it to another framework.

For years, the PA religious establishment has repeatedly portrayed the
killing of Jews as a religious necessity. Today, PA TV chose to
rebroadcast this same call to genocide as a historical necessity -- this
time from a senior PA academic rather than from a religious leader. Dr.
Hassan Khater, founder of the Al Quds Encyclopedia and a TV lecturer,
cited the identical Hadith - Islamic tradition attributed to Mohammed -
that the religious leaders have used to demand this genocide. This was
part of a lecture focusing on what he described as the war of the Jews
against Palestinian trees.

These were his words quoting the Hadith:
"Mohammed said in his Hadith: 'The Hour [Day of Resurrection] will not
arrive until you fight the Jews, [until a Jew will hide behind a rock or
tree] and the rock and the tree will say: Oh Muslim, servant of Allah,
there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'" PA TV Dec. 27, 2004
[Rebroadcast from July 13, 2003]

The continued teaching that this Hadith applies today could well be a
dominant factor driving terror against Israeli civilians. By depicting
redemption as dependent on Muslims' killing of Jews, the PA world view
presents this genocide as a religious obligation and historical necessity
-- not related to the conflict over borders, but as something inherent to
Allah's world.

To view today's call to genocide click here:

To hear this call to genocide expressed earlier in the year
by a religious leader click here:

Sheik Ibrahim Madiras Friday sermon, PA TV Sept. 10, 2004:
"The Prophet said: the Resurrection will not take place until the Muslims
fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them. The Muslims will kill the Jews,
rejoice [in it], rejoice in Allah's Victory. The Muslims will kill the
Jews, and he will hide.
The Prophet said: the Jews will hide behind the rock and tree, and the
rock and tree will say: oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim this is a Jew
behind me, come and kill him!. Why is there this malice? Because there are
none who love the Jews on the face of the earth: not man, not rock, and
not tree everything hates them. They destroy everything they destroy the
trees and destroy the houses. Everything wants vengeance on the Jews, on
these pigs on the face of the earth, and the day of our victory, Allah
willing, will come."


5. Web site of those who left Islam:

http://www.faithfreedom.org/index.htm

6. I have posted several things related to the new Israeli watchdog group
"Israel Academia Moinitor" at www.israel-academia-monitor.com which keeps
tabs on tenured traitors in Israeli academia and exposes the academic
radicals.

They need your help! Please go to the web site and contribute to them
what you can and get others to do the same. They are operating on a
shoestring and we need to help keep them afloat. The work they are doing
is invaluable! Please help out! If you know anyone with deeper pockets
who wants to help Israel, let them know that THIS is the best way to do
so!
Thanks.

Posted 12/29/2004 02:22:00 PM

1. Kwanzaa and Afro-fascism:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16474


2. More infantile conspiracy theories:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16475


3. Attacking Academic Untouchables - An Idea whose time has come:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16448
Abolish Tenure
By Mike Adams
Townhall.com | December 29, 2004


After every article I write lamenting the deplorable state of higher
education, I get letters from readers that say thank God for tenure. I
guess that many have concluded that tenure is solely responsible for my
continued employment at the institution I so frequently criticize. I dont
see it that way.
Over the last couple of years, my columns have been read by millions of
people. Fortunately, many of my readers are among the finest lawyers in
the United States of America. Some of those lawyers have now become my
good friends. Put simply, I buy my ink by the barrel and I have far better
lawyers than those employed in the UNC system. Thats why I dont have to
feign respect for the people that employ me, just to keep my job.

However, my opposition to tenure isnt based solely upon my belief that it
does nothing for me. It is based instead on the problems I believe that it
causes for me and for others on a daily basis.

Sometimes the problems caused by tenure are minor. For example, some
untenured professors incessantly brown-nose me before they have gotten my
vote for tenure. After they find out they have achieved tenure, the same
professors will hardly smile or say hello when they pass in the hallway.
They become rude and withdrawn almost overnight. And, suddenly, they show
up late for every department meeting. They answer cell phones in the
middle of committee meetings, and so on.

Worse than the way the newly-tenured treat their colleagues is the way
they become suddenly inaccessible to students. I will grant that few ever
worked a 40-hour week before tenure, but some will never work a 20-hour
week after tenure. There are tenured professors I know who never come to
work before noon. In one extreme case, a professor down the hall from me
is so absent that I have considered putting a sign on my door saying No, I
have NOT seen your professor today! It wouldnt have much of an impact on
our relationship, since I only see that professor about twice a semester.

Then there are the really extreme cases of incivility, which are produced
by tenure. Recently, a tenured professor publicly accused me of creating a
hostile work environment for writing an article exposing her for making a
false accusation of sexual harassment against another professor. In her
mind, a false accusation of sexual harassment is only false if no one
talks about it. When they do, the false harassment becomes real because it
is difficult to work in a place where people stigmatize you for filing
false sexual harassment charges.

Idiocy of this magnitude is difficult to discover, unless you spend time
with tenured professors. Usually, untenured professors are capable of the
same degree of idiocy but manage to keep it hidden until there is no
chance that it will get them fired.

Of course, there is a moral turpitude clause that can technically be used
to fire a tenured professor. A UNC professor was once fired under this
clause after he was caught having sex with a male prostitute in a downtown
alley. The second time he was arrested, the officer was a student. It was
a real Maalox moment for everyone involved.

If the same incident happened today, the student/police officer would be
expelled for sexually harassing (arresting) the gay professor. The gay
activists who run the campus diversity movement have successfully put the
notion of moral turpitude to rest. One result is that tenured professors
can now file numerous false accusations of sexual harassment with
impunity.

While these reasons are all good enough to abolish tenure, the best one is
called (if only by me) the McCarthy Effect. Put simply, this effect
explains how the abolition of tenure would do a better job of rooting
communists out of government work than Senator Joe McCarthy did in his
entire career. Better still, it would do so without a single false
accusation against an innocent party.

In order to understand the McCarthy Effect, one needs to understand the
concept of sample selection bias. One must also understand that communists
are inherently needy. They are not drawn to communism because of the part
of the doctrine that says from each according to his ability. They are
attracted, instead, by the part that says to each according to his need.
In other words, they are lazy people who do not want to compete in order
to get ahead in society. Instead, they want to do as little as possible
without any prospect of ending up with nothing. They believe that
communism will afford them this opportunity.

But since the fall of the Berlin Wall, many have had to seek an
alternative to the communist ideal. And many have found that alternative
at the American university. Of course, when Marxists become professors,
they do have to work for several years to get tenure. While it may not be
perfect, they know that things will be better after tenure. Paychecks,
pensions, and health benefits will be provided, regardless of
productivity.

Many of those who are unfit for any job besides that of a tenured
professor would be unemployed and homeless if we abolished tenure
tomorrow. Without tenure, these people would not be such an irritation at
work, although they would probably be just as irritating as panhandlers
once their unemployment checks ran out.

Tenure is supposed to foster academic freedom on our nations campuses.
Instead, it fosters socialism, laziness, and incivility. I would enjoy my
job a lot more without it. And, more importantly, our children would get a
much better education.



4. Speaking of Violating Tenure:

Prof. Franco Damiani was suspended from his teaching position at the =
University of Cittadella, Padova, due to his teaching holocaust denial.

A list of a few neofascists/Nazis protested the decision to authorities, =
claiming that he was suspended due to, of all things, him being a =
Catholic, by the ex 68er Pres. (supposedly ex Marxist) and that it is an =
"act of religious discrimination".=20

Denial is not mentioned, of course. As if all, or at least most, the =
other faculty are not Catholics...Standard nazi/marxist practice.

Tikkun Magazine has yet to protest his firing, nor have faculty members at
Ben Gurion University.


His "ideas":
http://www.politicaonline.net/forum/showthread.php?s=3D&postid=3D646654 =
(in Italian)

Posted 12/28/2004 08:45:00 PM

1. The Blood Libel against Jews related to the al-Durrah affair:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16432
The Israeli Crime That Wasnt
By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 28, 2004


More than four years have passed since the picture of Mohammed Al-Durrah
was aired across the world, but the public still imagines the boy's Sept.
30, 2000 presence at Netzarim junction in terms described by President
Clinton in My Life:

As the violence persisted, two vivid images of its pain and futility
emerged, he writes: a twelve year old Palestinian boy shot in the
crossfire and dying in his father's arms and two Israeli soldiers pulled
from a building and beaten to death, with their lifeless bodies dragged
through the streets and one of their assailants proudly showing his
bloodstained hands to the world on television.

Al-Durrah should never have been juxtaposed with a lynching, much less by
the leader of the free world. Two weeks after the al-Durrah tape aired,
two Jewish soldiers lost their way in Ramallah, where they were savagely
beaten to death, their innards eaten by hysterical and frenzied crowds
screaming Allah Akbar God is great and seeking revenge for the supposed
death of the boy. Indeed, the Al-Durrah case is nothing more than a
classic Islamic incitement to jihad.

But evidently, the shooting was merely photographic. The violence erupted
after the Al-Durrah incident, notes Daniel Seaman, director of Israel's
Government Press Office, who openly calls the incident a hoax, a staged
forgery.

Since Seaman made this charge publicly in late 2002, few mainstream news
media have picked up the story. These include the European Wall Street
Journal and New York Sun, which both ran columns in November, respectively
by Stephane Juffa, the Metula Press Agency (MENA) chief in Israel, and
Nidra Poller, an American expatriate writer living in France.

Nearly two years ago, France 2 Jerusalem bureau chief Charles Enderlin
also the vice president of Israel's foreign press association threatened
to sue. On Jan. 2, 2003, the legal adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
wrote to Enderlin, noting that Israel is a free country. Seaman named
neither Enderlin nor France 2. But if he felt injured by Seaman's remarks,
Enderlin was more than welcome to take appropriate legal action. The
counsel advised Enderlin that Israel had reliable information that the
case was indeed a fraud, the counsel advised Enderlin, however. At long
last, in November, attorneys of France 2 and Enderlin have sued in France
not Seaman, not Israel, not Metula, not the Wall Street Journal, but X.

Before detailing French statutes making such a preposterous case possible,
a brief recap of the Al-Durrah hoax is in order. On Sept. 30, 2000, dozens
of reporters and cameraman waited around for news as children lobbed
stones, Molotov cocktails and heavy appliances from the ground and nearby
buildings onto the roof of the only Israeli guard post at Netzarim
Junction. In a superb investigative coup, renowned Israeli physicist
Nacham Shahaf wrested three hours of raw Sept. 30 newsreels from Reuters
and the Associated Press. These rushes show very clearly that the Israelis
shot only when fired upon, and that Palestinians walked around without
fear.

Another important fact shows too: the Israeli post was situated at a very
wide angle to the position of Jamal and Mohammed Al-Durrah behind a
Palestinian warehouse two times its own height.

In other words, even if the Israelis were filmed shooting, which they
weren't, it was physically impossible for them to have wounded either
Mohammed or his father, Jamal Al-Durrah, who were crouched, entirely out
of view, behind a barrel topped by a cement cinder block. On the
Al-Durrahs' side, moreover, the barrel has no bullet holes. If bullets
penetrated it from the Israeli side, they did not come out.

Whoever shot at the Al-Durrahs that day, it was not the Israelis. Shooting
footage was Talal Abu Rahmeh, a Palestinian stringer for AP and Reuters,
who created the icon of supposed Israeli brutality. Abu Rahmeh said under
oath that he shot 27 minutes of film. In tapes broadcast worldwide, he
asserted that Israeli soldiers subjected the man and the boy to 45 minutes
of withering fire, that Israelis intentionally shot the boy dead.

Abu Rahmeh said the boy bled for 20 minutes. The father said he was shot
in the hand, arm and leg and that his elbow and pelvis were crushed--and
that a bullet ripped through his son's stomach and exited from his back.

But in the rushes, there is no blood on either the victims or the ground.
The supposed 27 minutes of footage was apparently less than three minutes.
Three hours of additional rushes from AP and Reuters obtained by Shahaf
show much more besides.

At the rear of the warehouse, inside a hollowed-out room, several armed
and uniformed Palestinian Arabs were filmed on Sept. 30, 2000, talking
calmly with directors. The latter then clear the area before takes. Since
when do fighters take their cues from civilians?

Later the same day, at least five AP and Reuters photographers taped the
same Palestinians firing through a large hole in the rear cinder block
wall into the empty warehouse room they had quietly occupied hours
earlier. At whom were they firing? The Israeli position was on the other
side of the warehouse, in a building half the size. Given their lack of
fear and the positive glee of bystanders, these men were surely acting.

Thirty people were reportedly killed and hundreds wounded that day, but
the rushes show not one critical injury. Every evacuation was careless of
its effects on the supposed patients. One man grabs his leg as if shot,
but like the Al-Durrahs remains unbloodied. He is then roughly loaded onto
a gurney on his injured leg. Another young man hands off a Molotov
cocktail before being swooped into his colleagues' arms and thrown into
the back of a waiting prop one of several Red Crescent and U.N.
ambulances. Actors clap and laugh as its doors close. Others were caught
sunbathing, talking on cell phones, standing nonchalantly, their backs
turned to the Israelis. Clearly, these are mises en scene.

Only Talal Abu Rahmeh, with alleged ties to terror groups, filmed the
supposed shooting of Mohammed Al-Durrah. No one taped the evacuation of
the wounded boy and his father.

Finally, a Reuters cameraman behind the Al-Durrahs caught many others
running by in supposed fear as the boy and his father talked calmly in the
background and stayed put behind their barrel.

Says Enderlin now: I am really fed up with this story. We are very
confident it was not staged, and there is no doubt about that. Our
cameraman caught the scene, and other cameramen were there and they caught
part of the scene.

Really? That is not what Enderlin said at the time. Indeed, on Sept. 30,
2000, he personally hand-delivered copies of the France 2 footage to every
major foreign news outfit at the Jerusalem Journalism Studio House,
according to MENA's Stephane Juffa. If the incident were real, wouldn't
other cameramen also have grabbed some footage?

Enderlin also says now: We NEVER got any formal request about any inquiry
or complaint about Mohammed Al-Durrah from any Israeli Authority. I wrote
the Israeli Army spokesman in November 2000 that our legal department
might consider an official request to participate in an inquiry. I NEVER
got any answer. By Enderlin's reckoning, the official Israeli
investigation under the direction of General Yom Tov Samia and Physicist
Nacham Shahaf was not official.

Now Enderlin is suing X. One of those ostensibly covered by this legal
appellation is Philippe Karsenty, who runs the Media-Ratings Agency in
Paris, the first organization in France to objectively critique and expose
the routine manipulations of its foreign print and broadcast media. The
agency has taken on many other issues, too, at its www.m-r.fr Web site.
The democracy in France stops when the press follows foreign affairs, says
Karsenty today.

All the media are talking the same language and have corporate attitudes.
If the media says the moon is green, then the moon is green for everyone.
Since France 2 is, like the British Broadcasting Corporation,
government-funded and chartered, correcting this outrage can occur only
with help from French politicos.

To that end, Karsenty on Nov. 28 visited French Minister of Culture and
Communications Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and on Dec. 3 showed his
counselors MENA's film, exposing the fraud. They were shocked, he says,
adding that Media-Ratings will not be intimidated by the France 2 suit.

The network evidently hopes to use a statute most often applied to
criminal cases in which the perpetrators are unknown. By suing X, says
Juffa, they are saying, 'Please investigate and discover who did it'.
Enderlin himself confirms as much. For French justice, a name and address
on a Web site is not proof that the person is the author of the material,
he says. France 2 could file against these people, but since you have no
proof that they are a company registered under the law, [you] cannot file
a suit against [them]. The judge must file against these people. ... At
press time, Enderlin's attorney had not responded to questions.

But Metula, Media-Ratings, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Sun,
are well-known companies with published addresses. They have taken a big
risk, says Juffa. The prosecutor in this case must include the Wall Street
Journal in the procedure, must include the state of Israel, must include
Daniel Seaman. Moreover, some years ago, in a hearing before 40 witnesses,
Enderlin publicly refused to provide Israeli General Yom Tov Samia with a
full set of tapes. If France 2's case ever goes to trial, which Juffa and
Karsenty doubt, Enderlin will be obliged to produce the evidence that
seems to contradict almost everything he has said to date.

The list of anomalies goes on and on. The major ones:

1. The tapes show no blood on the Al-Durrahs or, following their
evacuation, at the scene.

2. Only Abu Rahmeh caught the incident on film, although several other
cameramen were present.

3. Doctors Juna Saka and Mohammed El Dawil at the Shifa hospital in
Gaza say the father and boy arrived at the hospital between noon and
1p.m., but Enderlin reported that the incident began at 3 p.m.

4. The evacuation was not filmed.

5. The tapes show no bullet holes on the Al-Durrahs' side of the
barrel.

6. No bullets were ever recovered.

7. Palestinian Arab officials ordered no autopsy and conducted no
investigation.

8. In three hours of Palestinian-produced rushes, Israelis were not
seen firing.

9. In the background, Palestinian cameramen loitered casually, without
fear.

10. At the hospital, France 2 tapes show a body much larger than that
of Mohammed Al-Durrah, with surgical abdominal wounds, not wounds from
high-powered gunshots, according to forensic medical experts who have seen
the France 2, Reuters and AP footage.

11. Shots fired at the Al-Durrahs triggered small round clouds of
smoke. Subsequent ballistic tests showed that only head-on shots could
produce such small circular clouds. Upon impact, shots fired at a wide
angle throw off great clouds of smoke in the opposite direction.

The bottom line: the tapes suggest that the man and boy were not shot,
period, least of all by the Israelis.

Speaking last summer, Foreign Ministry press director Gideon Meir said
that reopening this four-year-old case would only cause more damage to
Israel: The myth has taken on a life of its own, he said. Besides, some
Israeli newsmen say, exposing the lies of Palestinian newsmen and leaders
would be like reporting that it rains in the spring, or it's hot in
August. It's not news.

But the power of the myth may be precisely why Israel should make a
federal case of this affair. Perhaps the Jewish state will do so if France
2 ever presses its case. After all, Mohammed Al-Durrah played a huge role
in the incitement to global jihad; the episode has real significance as
the first blood libel of the 21st century.

Press behavior was equivalent to that in the 19th century Dreyfus Affair.
For the media industry, this case could be equivalent in scale to the
Enron accounting scandal.

In September and October 2000, the endless airing of newsreels and photos
from this non-event immediately wiped out all good will generated by Prime
Minister Ehud Barak's historic offer of peace at Camp David II. It
directly prompted Arab riots in Israel, resulting in the deaths of 13
youths two days later. I live in the Galilee with many Arabs, says Juffa.
After this incident, I went to talk to them. Until then, they knew (and
trusted) Israeli policy that forbade shooting at civilians. But after
seeing these tapes over and over, they thought the Israeli policy had
changed, he continues. They thought their lives were at stake and they
were in danger.

The affair also fired the largest worldwide wave of jihad attacks on Jews
in history. Daniel Pearl's murderers used Al-Durrah's image in their
grisly snuff film. Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi referred to the case,
as did even Osama bin Laden. If Mohammed Al-Durrah is the poster boy of
the 21st century jihad, Jews are at the epicenter of the hatred.

For the more than 30,000 attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in
Israel, 1,000 killed and thousands wounded, hundreds of far less
publicized incidents have occurred worldwide. Jewish schools and
synagogues have been firebombed in London, Munich and Paris, and rabbis
have been stabbed in broad daylight.

In Texas in August 2003, Ariel Sellouk was murdered by a longtime Muslim
friend. In France one year ago, Jewish shopkeeper Chantal Piekolek and
famed Parisian DJ Sebastian Sellam were brutally murdered within one
24-hour period. Sellam was the son of refugees from Morocco and spoke
fluent Arabic. He met his death in his parking garage, en route to work. A
Muslim that he had known since childhood slit his throat, carved up his
face with a fork and gouged out his eyes. The Muslim then climbed the
stairs to the Sellams' apartment and showed the horrified mother his
bloody hands. I have killed my Jew, he said. I will go to heaven.
Piekolek's 10-year-old daughter heard her mother's murder while cowering
in the shop storage room. Neither of these murders was reported in the
mainstream French press. In all three instances, officials dismissed
anti-Semitism as the motive. Shouldn't law enforcement officials call
jihad a motive?

The Western press corps in Israel too politicized to believe that
Palestinians might lie about the Al-Durrah episode, and much else besides
is almost certainly taken in daily by many more (albeit smaller) hoaxes.
Journalists are undoubtedly duped, in turn duping the global public, at
Jewish expense. Ultimately, the survival of Western civilization may hang
on press refusal to apply professional skepticism equally to both sides.

Consider these examples:

In April 2002, Rula Amin of CNN alleged, through photographs, that
Israel was imposing a Holocaust on Palestinians in the village of Rumana.
She appeared with a naked man, wrapped in an army blanket, who had been
incarcerated for only 36 hours but looked starved nearly to death. He was
probably ill. But this scene silently invoked the Holocaust, and her text
almost didn't matter. CNN apparently later edited or deleted the account.

This year, when terrorists forced young boys to carry suicide bombs,
one Irish newscaster suggested that Israel wants the world to see a young
boy, allegedly ready to kill. She stated Palestinian allegations, however,
as fact. For most commentators, this is routine.

In June 2003, a BBC special report on weapons of mass destruction
accused Israel of using poison gas on Palestinians. The report was based
solely on Palestinian allegations. The BBC excluded proof, issued the same
day, that the allegations were false. The reporters consulted no
scientists or medical officials and simply repeated the blood libel
perpetrated in 1983, described by Raphael Israeli in the book Poison.
Palestinians then alleged that Israel had used poison gas to contaminate a
girls school, a case later unequivocally proven to be mass hysteria.

Once errors have been made, says Malcolm Downing, a BBC assignment
editor, there is no effective way to make corrections. The truth is racing
away, and the correction is laying behind, he said. We never catch up, and
that's true for everyone else in addition to us. Asked if anything could
be done about that, he said, I don't think there is, to be honest. There
would be, if only the press would post its corrections under banner
headlines on the front pages. The Al-Durrah case deserves such treatment.

After cartoonist Dave Brown depicted Ariel Sharon eating babies, one
reporter asked British Cartoon Society director Dr. Tim Bensen why Arafat
was not depicted eating babies. Maybe because Jews don't issue fatwas, he
said. Well, if you upset an Islamic or a Muslim group, fatwas can be
issued by an ayatollah and such like. ... [Cartoonists] could be in
trouble ... [if they] depict an Arab leader in the same manner. They could
suffer death, couldn't they? It's rather different.

In other words, the media are not only political, they are also
intimidated.

Last summer, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ra'anan Gissin and Foreign
Ministry Press officer Gideon Meir suggested that the U.S. press is most
friendly to Israel. Certainly, the press outside the U.S. is more hostile
to Israel. Nevertheless, interviews with a few reporters at major U.S.
metropolitan dailies showed the differences are not all that great.

Take Washington Post bureau Chief John Anderson, who has spent the better
part of the last decade in Iran, Central Asia and Turkey, but learned not
a single language spoken in those places. In Israel for the last two
years, he and his wife, Molly Moore, speak neither Arabic nor Hebrew, and
rely totally on translators to conduct interviews and report. They were in
Istanbul for 13 months before moving as a twofer team to Jerusalem. They
planned the move for six months, but say they could not learn the
languages while working. In 13 years as foreign correspondents, the only
foreign language they learned was Spanish, while in Mexico.

Anderson admits that Israeli translators are unimpeachable, while
Palestinians are merely good. Their chief advantage, he says, is being on
the ground in the territories, where Israelis cannot go. As for context,
he admits to having read no regional history before or during his tenure
in Jerusalem. He sees himself as something of a fireman, what is known in
the trade as an ambulance chaser.

Furthermore, despite a decade of reporting from Islamic nations, Anderson
has never learned the dominant laws or tenets of Islam, much less the laws
of jihad. These laws require Muslims to invite infidels to Islam, and if
they reject the faith, to prosecute holy war. They apply even in modern
times.

Anderson contends that writing for 13 years with Farsi, Arabic, Kurdish,
Hebrew, Spanish, Tamil, Hindu and Pashtan translators, he and Moore have
learned enough to accurately weigh the veracity of translations. It is
sufficient, he says, to know an interpreter's level of English
proficiency, education and his political leanings which Moore and
Anderson ascertain while en route to appointments and from the types of
interviews he arranges.

But Western reporters in Israel are 100 percent reliant on Palestinian
fixers, as reporters call them, say journalists and officials. The vast
majority come with political and ideological baggage. A few attempt to
report the truth about corruption, murder and censorship in the
territories, says one unusual Palestinian journalist, but 99 percent and
100 percent of the fixers for the Washington Post and New York Times are
allied with the PLO, Fateh, Hamas, Islamic Jihad or even Hezbollah. Their
understanding of the truth is correspondingly one-sided.

You can't blame the Palestinians, says the Palestinian. This is the way
they were trained, to be loyal, not to air the dirty laundry, this is
media in the Arab world, he says. Unfortunately, 100 percent of the fixers
see themselves as foot soldiers in the revolution. They will not tell
foreign journalists anything that reflects badly on the PA. As an Israeli
journalist notes, they are also starving, and most can be bought for $50.
Consequently, Western reporters rely too heavily on spokesmen like Nabil
Sha'ath and Sa'eb Erekat, and when a corruption scandal hits the news,
they are surprised.

Foreign journalists in Israel come in four stripes. They may be flown in
for one-shot coverage. They may know nothing and realize they know
nothing. They may know a little and assume they know much more. But more
often than not, they know nothing and don't want to know. The last type
are especially arrogant, [and] prejudiced against Israel, and do not let
the facts get in the way, says the Palestinian journalist. Even Americans
are overly sympathetic to Palestinians and hostile to Israel.

Dig deeply, and the picture of the foreign press in Israel deteriorates
further. Evidently, networks and newspapers rarely if ever investigate
reporters before hiring or posting them to assignments. A few cases in
point:

1. Lawahez Ga'abri, also known as Lawahez Burgal and for her membership
in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine since age 15, has
applied for a press pass under the auspices of NBC. Its producers and
indeed, the staff of the Columbia Journalism School seem unaware that she
belongs to a group listed by the State Department as a terror
organization.

2. Most Palestinian journalists have been imprisoned at some time for
genuine cause, says the Palestinian reporter.

3. Ali Durehmeh, a reporter for the Associated Press for nine months,
spent the prior two years as a field researcher for B'tselem, according to
spokesman Noam Hoffstater in Jerusalem. Its methods of verifying
information also seem extremely shoddy. They are based solely on
Palestinian allegations and generally lack rigorous crosschecks with
medical and other officials. It is one thing to allege murder, and another
to verify the identity of a body and scientifically establish the cause
of death.

4. Leileh Odeh, an Abu Dhabi network journalist whose press pass was
revoked in April 2002 but who continues stringing for foreign news
organizations, in 2003 appeared as a translator and mediator for the
family of Marwan Barghouti, who was then on trial for serial terrorism.
Odeh was instructing the children how to respond to questions, says the
GPO director Seaman, who personally witnessed the episode.

5. In March 2002, a German journalist was filmed instructing Arabs to
find him some good pictures featuring the devastation that was falsely and
widely reported worldwide.

6. Wafa Amer, a Jordanian reporter, printed false hearsay from an
unnamed Palestinian source accusing the Israel Defense Forces of beating
and murdering a victim whose brains he said had oozed out.

7. Charles Enderlin consults for French government officials and the
European Union, both clear conflicts of interest, say others who know him.

8. In March 2002, a prominent Israeli TV newsman, an immigrant from an
Arab country fluent in Arabic, overheard this conversation: in a Jerusalem
elevator, two Palestinians working for foreign news agencies plotted to
preserve bodies from the Jenin hospital, so as to inter them in mass
graves and later accuse Israel of mass murder.

9. Israeli officials allege that press passes provide cover for many
evils: one reporter passes information to Hamas in Samaria and Judea;
another works as a Russian spy; a third transferred suicide bombers in his
car; an Australian transported armed terrorists from one part of the
disputed territories to another. Following a suicide attack that killed
three, a reporter was caught photographing Israeli targets for its
enemies. Others charge that a key Ha'aretz reporter leaks information to
PA operatives in Hebron.

The first victims of the corrupt Palestinian Authority and press naÂ?vetÂ?
are Arabs. This peace is killing us, says another Palestinian reporter
who, after the Palestinian leadership, blames the Western press most of
all. An entire generation has been irretrievably destroyed.

In 1993, if the foreign press had reported on the corruption, murder and
totalitarianism in the Palestinian Authority, says this Palestinian
source, the current war might have been avoided. But the mainstream press
treats Palestinians with silk gloves.

The Washington Post's Anderson, however, admits none of this. Questioned
about alliances of his own Arab translators, he says: I don't believe all
the fixers are affiliated. If they are and you don't know it, you haven't
done a very good job. As for his own fixers, we use very independent
minded people, he says. Not according to others who know them.

Translators would not lie to the point of fabricating stories, says
Anderson. They have a point of view, they have an agenda, and they try to
get their point of view across. I try to play it down the middle.

But playing it down the middle, for him, means accepting the Palestinian
charge, for example, that Israelis once set up a roadblock outside
Ramallah simply to dismantle it for show and put it up again a few miles
down the road when no pressmen were looking. They made the cage a little
bit bigger. ... The whole thing was a scam, he says.

As to whether the Al-Durrah case was also a scam, Anderson last summer
thought it unlikely. There were so many camera crews, he says. You never
want to say never, but on a news story that big, if it was totally bogus,
it would have gotten out. ... There is not a vast conspiracy among
Palestinian journalists to keep that kind of thing quiet.

On the contrary, says a Palestinian journalist, the Arab press organizes
so as not to reflect badly on their leaders, whatever that requires.
Anderson thinks he knows better.

In other interviews with foreign journalists the results were pretty much
the same: a lot of skepticism greets the notion that Palestinians
fabricate news.

It's part of being a professional and a correspondent and a fireman, to be
able to assess the situation, get over the language barriers and get on
[the story], says Anderson. By this reckoning, foreign pressmen in Israel
are nothing more than cub reporters and most think, like Anderson, in fact
there is incitement on both sides.

So, was Mohammed Al-Durrah an incitement? Anderson of the Washington Post
would say no, and the vast majority would agree with him.

In the end, dismantling this press roadblock to the truth will take
another Emile Zola. Failing that, readers should assume that news fakery
will continue to erode the very underpinnings of our way of life. They
should also apply to reports from Palestinian Authority areas the
skepticism that newsmen do not.


2. Maybe she could become a Reform Rabbi instead?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=1&u=/ap/20041227/ap_on_re_us/methodists_gays

3. Subsidizing Fidel at UCD, but what will the yupopies do when they find
there is no cinnamon latte on the gulag?
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/12/27/135806.shtml


4.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer&cid=1104122542292&p=1078027574097
The Jerusalem Post, December 28, 2004

Gazan Launches ArabsforIsrael.com Website

by Michael Freund



As a child growing up in Egyptian-controlled Gaza in the 1950s, Nonie
Darwish remembers how she was taught to hate Jews from a very young age.

"I was told not to take any candy from strangers since it could be a Jew
trying to poison me," she recalls. "We were told Jews were devils and evil
and the enemies of God."

Now, nearly five decades later, Darwish has discarded the views with which
she was raised, and become a vocal activist on Israel's behalf. She
recently launched a Web site, ArabsforIsrael.com, and has begun lecturing
across the US about the need to stand behind Israel and support its
existence.

"It took me many years to realize that Israel is not a threat to the Arab
world and is actually an asset in the area," Darwish told The Jerusalem
Post. "When I moved to America in 1978 my first job was given to me by a
Jewish man. Both he and his parents were very kind to me."

Additional contacts with Jews in the US, who Darwish says taught her "to
be a humanitarian," led her to begin to rethink all that she had been
taught as a child.

This feeling was later reinforced after her brother's life was saved by
the Hadassah-University Hospital in Jerusalem.

The turning point, though, came with the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which was when Darwish
says she at last developed a fuller grasp of the realities of the region.

"The most crucial reason for me to support Israel was 9/11. That was when
I realized that Israel was the victim of Arab terrorism for all its
history," she says. "My culture of origin was responsible for this
unspeakable terror in New York and the Pentagon."

In the wake of the attacks, Darwish began to speak out, saying that she
could no longer be silent while "terrorism is destroying the moral fabric
of Muslim society."

Her message is twofold: stop pressuring Israel, and push for reform of the
Arab world as a means of developing a freer and more diverse Middle East.

"Some say that America needs to pressure Israel to achieve peace, but I
say the world needs to pressure all the Arab countries to pressure the
Palestinians to achieve peace," Darwish says, adding that the Palestinians
"have to end terrorism."

Israel, she asserts, is a convenient pretext that Arab leaders use to
deflect domestic criticism directed at their corruption and misrule. "The
game of using Israel as an excuse for their internal problems has to end
and be exposed for what it is."

The Arab world desperately needs democratic reform, she says, because if
change does not come soon, "the alternative will be devastating to all."

Driven by a sense of urgency, Darwish has traveled across the US,
addressing a wide variety of audiences, including on college campuses. She
also recently paid a visit to Israel to take part in the annual Jerusalem
Summit.

As she reaches out to a growing number of people, her Web site, which
contains articles and other material in both English and Arabic, has
rapidly started to serve as a platform for pro-Israel Christian and Muslim
Arabs to communicate their views.

"There are many Jews and Israelis who freely express compassion and
support for the Palestinians," the Web site says. "It is time that we
Arabs express reciprocal compassion and support."

While Darwish has been the target of some hostile mail as a result of her
activities, she says that after launching the site she received numerous
supportive e-mails from like-minded Arabs and Muslims.

"We are still few, but growing in numbers," she says, adding, "If some
Muslims and Arabs do not like it, then so be it." She is careful to
emphasize that her criticism is not aimed at Islam, nor does she think
that anti-Semitism is intrinsic to its worldview.

"I truly believe that anti-Semitism is more of a cultural phenomenon in
the Arab world rather than a religious phenomenon. It is up to Muslims who
practice and teach the religion they claim to love and cherish, to elevate
it and interpret it in the spirit of tolerance."

Though she is confident that the Arab world will eventually come to terms
with the existence of a Jewish state, she is less sanguine about the
growing danger posed to the West by Islamic fundamentalism.

"The greatest misconception of the West is that their culture and
democracy is indestructible and that the forces of terror and evil are not
all that significant, but the bottom line is that many Muslims have their
eyes set to Islamize America and the West and will not let go even after
9/11."

Posted 12/27/2004 04:38:00 PM

1. Joint Announcement by the Prime Ministers of Malaysia and Indonesia:
The Jews caused the Tsunami!

Maiden Announcement by Minister of Interior Ophir Pines: The Settlers
Caused the Tsunami

New Michael Moore Film: Dumb White Men who Can't Spell Tsunami

Arthur Waskow and the "Eco-Judaism" Cult: Tsunamis are Great! At least
Tsunamis don't kill whales, only humans!


2. Israel's Seditious Leftists, you can't live with them and you can't
use them to make land fill:
http://www.israelnn.com/article.php3?id=4593

3. Sharansky's Initiative:
http://www.israelnn.com/article.php3?id=4594

4. More Oslo Success:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-ref24.html

5. More Jihad at Columbia U:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1103776317627&p=1074657885918

6. Statesmen for these times

A leading historian argues that Bush and Blair may one day be seen as akin
to Roosevelt and Churchill

Martin Gilbert
Sunday December 26, 2004
The Observer


People often ask how history will remember our generation of leaders
in comparison with Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Many
comment that today's leaders look small compared with the giants of the
past. This is, I believe, a misconception.
In their day, both Churchill and Roosevelt were frequently
criticised, often savagely, by their countrymen, including legislators who
had little knowledge of the behind-the-scenes reality of the war.
The passage of time both elevates and reduces reputations. Today
there is a cult of Churchill, particularly in the United States, but also
far greater scholarly criticism, which regards him, increasingly, as a
flawed war leader. The same is true of Roosevelt: his recent biographers
are constantly revealing - to their satisfaction, at least - feet of clay.
Although it can easily be argued that George W Bush and Tony Blair
face a far lesser challenge than Roosevelt and Churchill did - that the
war on terror is not a third world war - they may well, with the passage
of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and
Churchill. Their societies are too divided today to deliver a calm
judgment, and many of their achievements may be in the future: when Iraq
has a stable democracy, with al-Qaeda neutralised, and when Israel and the
Palestinian Authority are independent democracies, living side by side in
constructive economic cooperation.
If they can move this latter aim, to which Bush and Blair pledged
themselves on 12 November, it will be a leadership achievement of historic
proportions.
The leaderships of Churchill and Roosevelt in the Second World War
were conducted in such a way that only many years after the war were their
true parameters clear. This is also true of Bush and Blair: only when the
secret telegrams and conversations become available will we really know
who did what, who influenced whom. Before the war against Saddam Hussein,
Sir David Manning, Blair's emissary, was flying almost weekly to
Washington but it may be many years before we know what decisions were
reached during these journeys. Any accurate assessment of Bush and Blair
must wait, perhaps a decade or longer, until the record can be
scrutinised.
Yet some comparisons are already clear.
Controversy was never absent in the Second World War, either. When
Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940 he had to struggle to overcome
defeatists who urged a negotiated peace with Hitler. Similarly, Blair
overcame opposition from within the Labour party to the war in Iraq,
prevailing over the doubters in parliamentary debate on the eve of the
Iraq war.
President Roosevelt faced a Congress resolutely opposed to going to
war against Hitler. He used every means to circumvent America's neutrality
legislation and to provide Britain with essential war material (some of it
by the back door, across the border to Canada). Bush faced no such hurdle:
Congress approved the overthrow of Hussein.
It would be wrong to minimise the challenges facing Blair and Bush.
'Even in miniature,' Churchill once wrote, 'war is hideous and appalling.'
Both men had to deploy all their persuasive skills to make the case for
overthrowing Hussein, despite the obvious evil of his regime. Hitler's
bombing of civilians, including in Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coven try, London
and Belgrade, his submarine sinking of merchant ships, and his evil racial
policies left no room for doubt as to his nature.
Another burden Blair and Bush share with the earlier generation is
that of explaining the troubled course of the war. Between 1939 and 1945,
there were many setbacks that alarmed Britain and America, among them the
Dunkirk evacuation, the Dieppe raid and the loss of the Philippines, then
an American possession. Today, the war in Iraq continues with daily
casualty lists, suicide bombings and rebel violence.
Churchill wrote and delivered a series of now famous speeches as bombs
fell on British cities (with as many as 4,000 civilian deaths each week).
Those carefully crafted speeches gave people hope. Both Blair and Bush
also address their people in urgent appeals. Blair conveys his sense of
moral purpose in clear, articulate phrases. Bush seems less at ease with
words that, in many cases, others have crafted for him.
In 1940 Churchill made a point of ending political warfare in
Britain: 'Let pre-war hatreds die,' he declared. He brought in cabinet
ministers from the opposition, and gave the most demanding wartime tasks
to the most capable. Today Blair and Bush conduct war in partisan terms,
ensuring a vociferous opposition.
Yet they are great supporters of one another. Bush recently said at a
White House meeting with Blair: 'I am a lucky person, a lucky President,
to be holding office at the same time this man holds the prime
ministership.' This brings to mind Roosevelt's comment to Churchill: 'It
is fun being in the same decade as you.' Behind these words are a hidden
wealth of allied co-operation on the future.
Churchill and Roosevelt worked together to shape the postwar world.
The Atlantic Charter, which they both signed in August 1941, set out the
parameters of self-government, free elections and democracy for all those
nations that had been subjected to Nazi tyranny. In Iraq, Bush and Blair
have adhered to the Atlantic Charter concept. Hussein was overthrown in
order that a democratic Iraqi leader could be put in his place, and both
leaders are persevering in this task. One problem echoes that faced by
Churchill and Roosevelt: the opposition of a powerful ally.
After the Second World War, Stalin opposed the return of independent,
democratic states. By force of will and arms, he prevailed over Churchill
and Roosevelt. He used the Red Army to impose communist systems on eight
states of eastern and central Europe, leaving only Greece on the Western
side. Bush and Blair confront a different opponent: Muslim extremism, a
perversion of the Islamic creed. In November they faced, from the midst of
their ally Saudi Arabia, an edict issued by prominent religious scholars
prohibiting Muslims of Iraq from supporting military operations by
American or British forces.
A final parallel is most telling. Churchill planned a peace
conference after the war, at which he and Roosevelt could persuade the
king of Saudi Arabia to agree to the creation of a Jewish sovereign state
in Palestine. Roosevelt died and Churchill was thrown out of office before
the conference could take place. Instead of a Jewish state being created
with Arab approval, the United Nations proposed two states, one Jewish,
one Arab, with Jerusalem under international control. The Jews accepted.
The Arabs did not, and launched five armies against the Jewish state, a
failure of Arab leadership that has led to six decades of conflict.
It may be that in our time Bush and Blair will show the leadership
needed to set the two-state solution back on track. Both are now firmly in
the political saddle. Their leadership qualities will be put to the test
in bringing the Israelis and Palestinians together in working toward an
agreement. If they succeed, they will have completed what Churchill and
Roosevelt inspired and will, without doubt, have sealed their place in
history.

ú Among Sir Martin Gilbert's books are Churchill: A Life and Israel: A
History.


7. Rare sanity by the Bay:
http://www.tomjoad.org/jan16vigil.htm

8. I got to say that I see tremendous value in having the proofs of
communist barbarism engraved on the face of the head of the second largest
state in eastern europe, for all to see, as daily proof of the savagery of
the Far Left and the Marxist cult.

Posted 12/26/2004 07:18:00 PM

1. Well it is now official. The new Minister of the Interior in the new
coalition of appeasement to be composed of the Likud and the Labor Party
will include Ophir Pines as the Minister of the Interior. This is one of
the more powerful cabinet slots because the Minister is in charge of all
allotments of finances to local authorities. He also is in charge of
things like immigration rules and population registration (such as
registering gay "marriages".)

This is atrocious for several reasons. Pines is arguably the most
openly contemptuous Labor Party politician regarding free speech and
democracy. He has filed motions with the authorities regularly and
frequently, trying to urge the police and prosecution to indict and
investigate anyone who happens to disagree with the Left, include Rabbis
and journalists and other politicians
(http://web.israelinsider.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=ArticlePage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article^l2885&enZone=Politics&enVersion=0&
and http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.12.05/news8.treason.html and
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=160353&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
and
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer&cid=1094959652453&p=1078027574097
). He has made it his special cause to try to get the authorities to
persecute Rabbis (http://middleeastinfo.org/article.php?sid=3690 ) and
"Women in Green" and similar anti-Oslo protest groups.

Pines is an anti-democratic McCarthyist who
has even called for indicting Ariel Sharon for exercising his freedom
of speech (http://www.israeleconomy.org/opeds/oped6.htm ). He was the
leading spokesman for the "Netanyahu was guilty of Rabin's
asssassination" school of McCarthyism
(http://www.netaxs.com/home/r/afsi/OUTPOST/97NOV/nov2.htm).
He was one of the main promoters of the anti-democratic doctrine of
"judicial activism" by which non-elected judges can trump laws passed by
thge elected representatives of the people
(http://www.irac.org/article_e.asp?artid=193 ). He has campaigned against
Sharon's security wall
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer&cid=1088566588655&p=1078027574097
)

Moreover, Pines is one of the dumbest people in Israeli
politics. He tried to initiate a constitutional change making it an
automatic entitlement to receive lage welfare handouts from the government
(http://www.iasps.org/nbn/nbn463e.htm). He has been the father of some
equally dumb things.

The appointment does have one humorous side and that is Pines' name.
Ophir Pines is actually pronounced "Offer Penis". Really! (I usually
respond to hearing his name mentioned by saying Sure but not mine.)

In one of God's funnier moments of humor, "Penis" was a common name for
German Jews, and in Germany it did not carry the phallic connotations you
are all chuckling over. In fact there were a number of famous Rabbis with
the name, and if I am not mistaken they were even "Cohanim". In Germany
and in Hebrew you can write the name in a way that does not cause us all
to snicker like junior high kids. Most of the Jews with the name spell it
"Pines" when using Latin letters or addressing English speaking audiences
for obvious reasons, although a few courageous ones use the alternative
and pnenon-correct spelling. Some Jews also changed the pronunication to
sound like the Ponderosas. The kind with the cones on them, not the kind
Bill showed Monica.


So the Ariel Sharon's national unity caper is about to impose a Minister
Pines upon us. And we will no doubt get endless laughs from all this (can
someone pass on the info to Leno and Letterman?), every time he steps up
to propose a new persecution of non-leftists exercising their freedom of
speech. And every such act of McCarthyism should trigger demands that
Sharon circumcize his cabinet of this minister!

And cut down the Ponderosa!


2. Down with the French!
http://nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200412230938.asp


3. More on the Rabbi Chief:
http://www.bnaibrith.ca/tribune/jt-041209-25.html


4. Those Orange Stars the Left is all of a sudden all upset over:
http://israelnn.com/article.php3?id=4579

Ah, those cuddly Israeli leftists. You can't live with them and can't
make pate out of them.


5. Bowling for Terror:
http://web.israelinsider.com/views/4647.htm


6. Worth reprinting:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=2299

Posted 12/24/2004 11:56:00 AM

1. Will the Chief become a Chief Rabbi?

2004/11/14 12:00:00 AM

Oy vey! Swazi royal becomes Orthodox rabbi

Born into African aristocracy, Nkosinathi Gamedzes love for languages led
him to Judaism, and to being a rabbi in Israel

CHANTELLE BENJAMIN

WHEN Nkosinathi Gamedze walked into the Hebrew department at Wits
University and said he wanted to study the language he was greeted with
stunned silence.

This week, 16 years later, he addressed members of the Jewish community in
Johannesburg in a mixture of Hebrew and English ? as Rabbi Natan Gamedze.

Gamedze, 41, converted to Judaism in 1991 and now lives in the northern
Israeli city of Tsfat, where he teaches various aspects of the Torah, the
Jewish scripture.

A descendant of the Swazi royal family, he lives the strict life of an
ultra-Orthodox Jew with his wife and children.

Entertaining the audience, Gamedze said he has often been referred to as a
Swazi prince, but in reality his family lost their rights two generations
back when the British recognised a rival clan as Swazilands leaders.

As consolation, his family was granted roles such as diplomatic posts.

His father, Aaron Gamedze, Swazilands former education minister and its
high commissioner to the UK, began travelling around the world with his
large family when Gamedze, the middle child, was eight years old.

Gamedze studied at the University of Witwatersrand and left South Africa
in 1988. He converted three years later.

The day after his conversion turned out to be a religious fasting day and
he joked with a friend: Â?I have just become a Jew and already Im suffering
... where is the teiglach (cookies)?

His friend told him things were not easy for Jews and welcomed him to the
club.

Gamedze returned to SA two weeks ago to take part in an SABC2 documentary
on his life, which saw him reunited with his five siblings and his mother,
Nina, who all live in SA.

My family, who are dedicated Christians, found my conversion very
difficult to deal with, he said. My grandfather abdicated so that he could
become a preacher and he named his children Aaron and Moses, so it was no
small thing when I decided to convert.

But his family has long since accepted his new life. The only thing they
now have to put up with is the fact that Gamedze can eat only kosher food
prepared according to religious rules.

My mother, who is a very good cook, still does not understand why I cannot
eat her food, he said with a smile.

Nina Gamedze, speaking from her home in Centurion this week, insisted that
Gamedze was the one battling with this problem.

I am a good cook, she said with a laugh. And he is finding it hard not
eating my food.


Gamedzes move to Israel came after a chance meeting with visiting
Professor Moshe Sharon, who held the Hebrew language chair at the Hebrew
University in Israel.

I was sitting in the cafeteria when he walked up to me and asked why I was
reading a Hebrew newspaper and I said that it claimed to be a newspaper
for people who think and I was a thinking person, said Gamedze.

The two men hit it off and during the conversation Sharon asked if Gamedze
had ever considered doing a post-doctorate degree in Hebrew.

An academic at heart, Gamedze ? who sppeaks 14 languages and holds an
honours degree in languages from Oxford University and a masters from Wits
in Italian and German ? was first attracted to the Jewish faith through
his fascination with Hebrew.

He is under no illusion, however, about the choice he made.

I knew it was always going to be difficult. Wherever I go I stick out like
a sore thumb, he said. Wherever I go in the Jewish community, I am the
only black guy, and I am not the kind of person who likes to be in the
limelight.

Speaking about his 16-year absence from Africa, Gamedze said his life in
Israel was far removed from his African roots.

I came from a background where people were living in dire poverty and
struggling day-to-day just to survive, while in Israel the people I met
were working simply to make enough money so that they could study further
and gather more knowledge on the scriptures.

It was the pursuit of spiritual growth and not survival that was the
priority, he said.

Rabbi Dovid Hazdan, of the Oaklands Great Park Synagogue in Johannesburg,
where Gamedze gave this weeks talk, said the young rabbi was an
inspiration to all who heard him.

(PS Interesting to see how it is responded to by the
Zionism-is-Racism crowd)


2. Another Palestinian "moderate"?
Arafat's successor: Palestinian state will replace Israel

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_9.html

Thursday, December 22, 2004

The new leader of the ruling Fatah movement said the Palestinians want to
replace Israel with a state of their own.

Fatah chief Farouk Khaddoumi said the Palestinian strategy toward Israel
was two-fold. In the first stage, he said, the Palestinians would accept a
Palestinian state alongside Israel. In the second stage, the Palestinians
would seek to eliminate the Jewish state.

In November, Khaddoumi replaced the late Yasser Arafat as leader of Fatah,
Middle East Newsline reported.

"At this stage there will be two states," Khaddoumi told Iran's Al Aram
television. "Many years from now, there will be only one."


3. Bowling for Jihad:
Report: Arafat had stake in NYC bowling alley
Palestinian leader invested $1.3 million in Village hotspot

The Associated Press
Updated: 8:11 a.m. ET Dec. 23, 2004


NEW YORK - Late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat invested $1.3 million in
a company that owns a popular bowling alley in Greenwich Village, newly
released documents show.

Arafat made the investment in New York City-based Strike Holdings, owner
of Bowlmor Lanes, through a holding company he created called Onyx Funds,
Bloomberg Markets Magazine reported Wednesday.

Bowlmor is located several blocks from the campus of New York University
and is popular with Manhattan hipsters, who pay about $8 a game per person
to play on evenings and weekends.

News of the investment disturbed some customers at the alley, which
advertises on its Web site as an ideal location for bar and bat mitzvahs
for Jewish teens.

If I had known, I wouldnt have come, but I promised the kids, said Steve
Saslow, 55.

Unaware of the investments
Zeid Masri, managing partner of SilverHaze Partners, a Virginia-based
investment firm, told Bloomberg Markets he invested the money in Strike
Holdings for Onyx because he had been a former classmate of Strike
Holdings founder, Thomas Shannon.

Strike Holdings, which also owns bowling alleys on Long Island and in
Maryland and Florida, said it was unaware the money had come from Arafat.

Had we known the source of these funds, which represents approximately 2
percent of our companys equity, we never would have accepted them, company
spokeswoman Marcia Horowitz told the News. She said Strike Holdings
planned to return the money.

The Bowlmor money was among $799 million in international investments by
Arafat detailed in the newly released documents. Other holdings included
$285 million in Orascom, an Egyptian cellphone company, and $3.2 million
in the U.S. software firm Simplexity, Bloomberg Markets reported.

2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6749443/



4. Subject: Live Report from Manger Square

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is Ritz Kahn from CNN,
broadcasting live to you this evening from Manger Square in the town of
Bethlehem. Tonight we will report to you on the most bizarre story ever. A
baby who should have been born three years ago in the year ZERO has
refused to leave its mothers womb. For three years she has stayed in the
manger, trying to convince her baby to be born. We have the babys father
here with us, Joseph the Carpenter. Tell me, Joe, how did all this get
started?"

"Well, Ritz, it all started when that moron King Herod decided to turn
Bethlehem over to the Philistines. They decorated the town with big
posters of this ugly face with a stubble, bobbing chin, and a kafiya. When
it was time for the baby to be born, he stuck his head out, took one look
at that horrid face and disappeared back inside. He has refused to come
out ever since!"

"Let us ask your wife how she is feeling."

"Ok, Mary, weve got a guest."

"Mrs. Carpenter, I am Ritz Kahn. I understand your baby refuses to be
born."

"Yes, it has been three years now. He was just so frightened by that awful
face."

(Voice coming from Mary's abdomen): "I taught I taw a terrorist. A
BAAAAAAAD terrorist."

"Mary, have you been watching cartoons again?"

"I am sorry Joseph, but there is just not much to do here in the manger
all day. And Oprah just has reruns."

"So let me get this straight, Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter. The unborn baby can
already talk?"

(Voice from Mary's abdomen): "Baby no likums dat bad man. He scare baby.
He
reminds baby of dat Joey Buttafuocca."

"And even worse is that no one comes here to visit me anymore, Joseph.
That nice John the Baptist was arrested for incitement against Herod and
our other friends all had their cars stolen by the Philistines."

"But, Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter, cant King Herod help you? Maybe get rid of
those scary posters?"

"Oh he is just lying about, doing nothing all day with Salame."

"Bet Salame would go well on a Ritz."

"Stick to the script, newsboy."

"The sad thing is that our baby was prophesized to start his own
religion."

"Well, why don't you just move with your Mrs. here to Los Angeles. Then
the baby will not see that ugly poster. And besides, a new religion is created
each day in Los Angeles. He can join the Hare Krishnas or the
Scientologists or the animal rights people."

"Ugh, Los Angeles, Mary says shed rather live in Gaza with the
Amalekites."

"Joseph I just cant stand it any longer. If junior does not come out now I
will have a fit."

"Oh, no, Mary, oh Jesus Christ."

"What was that you said, Joseph?"

"I said Oh Jesus Christ."

"Hey, you know what, Joseph, I think I like that better than Irving."

"Back to you in CNN headquarters. This has been Ritz Kahn."