APRIL - MAY 2006 NEWS ARCHIVE

Thursday, May 11, 2006
JERUSALEM: BLOODCURDLING GRAPHITTI
Journalist Michael Totten's Middle East Journal carries several recent travelogues on the state of the border between Lebanon and Israel ("Everything could explode at any moment") to a comparison of Tel Aviv ("Miami Beach on the Mediterranean") and Jerusalem ("Tel Aviv is fun. Jerusalem isn’t fun. There is too much Reality in Jerusalem for it to be fun... Jerusalem makes most places in Europe seem spanking new like Los Angeles or Vancouver by comparison"):

"The city is ground zero in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There were far more suicide-bombings there during the intifada than in Tel Aviv. This is partly due to Jerusalem’s proximity to the West Bank. It’s just an easier target. But it’s also more contested than Tel Aviv. Liberal and moderate Palestinians who don’t wish to destroy Israel still want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future sovereign Palestinian state.

But most Arabs who live there now don’t want to belong to a Palestinian state. They prefer, for the most part, to remain Israeli.

Jerusalem is stressful and unnervingly borderless, even with the wall up and in place. Some Israelis feel an existential dread in that city. “Jerusalem is a terrifying place to spend a lot of time in,” Benjamin Kerstein said over coffee. “There is so much tortured history and conflict.” He told me the city would be twice as intense for me if I could read the sometimes bloodcurdling Arabic and Hebrew graffiti."

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: I HATED JEWS
Moslem Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the script for the film Submission which critiques the Islamic treatment of women and which got movie producer Theo Van Gogh killed in the Netherlands has accepted an award (May 4th) from the American Jewish Committee. The news blog Little Green Footballs carries the audio of the event. Audio (and more information) is at the American Jewish Committee web site here:

"I have a confession to make, if you are Jewish. It's a testimony from my dark past, when I lived in ignorance.

I used to hate you. I hated you because I thought you were responsible for the war that took my father away from me for so long. When the Soviet Union allied with our homegrown dictator in Somolia, I was told the Jews were behind that. In Saudi Arabia I saw poor people from a place called Palestine, men, women and children huddled together in despair. I was told you drove them out of their homes. I hated you for that.

When we had no water, I thought you closed the tap. I don't know how you did it, but you did it. If my mother was unkind to me, I knew you were definetly behind it.

And when I failed an exam, I knew it was your fault. I don't know how you did all these things, but then I didn't need proof. You are by nature Evil, and you have evil powers, and you used them to evil ends.

Learning to hate you was easy, unlearning it was difficult. Even after I had learned about the Holocaust in Europe, and the terrible outcome of centuries of anti-semitism, I still found it difficult to find the courage to take a stand against it.

When my half-sister told me that the Holocaust was the best thing that had happened to the Jews, I refrained from arguing with her because I did not want to risk breaking the family ties.

When she showed me holy verses to support her hatred of you, I feared arguing with Allah, for Allah would burn me.

Isn't it ironic that the American Jewish Committee has decided to give me the "Moral Courage Award"?

I am ashamed of my prejudices against you in the past. The good news is that I am not alone in learning to not blame you for my misfortunes. Many others like me who are taught in the name of Islam to hate you have stopped hating you. The tragedy is, however, is that those unlearning to hate are far fewer in number than those who still do."

The AJC also awarded their "Moral Courage Award" to Bangladeshi journalist Sohail Choudhury, a Moslem who was imprisoned in Bangladesh and is threatened with a death sentence for advocating for diplomatic ties between Bangladesh and Israel. News articles about this are here and here.

LOOSE CHANGE MOVIE: NEO-CONS, PENTAGON & ZIONISTS
AOL has a news story from USA Today that talks about the burgeoning popularity of a documentary film on the 9/11 Al-Qaeda attacks which "prove" that the event was actually staged by a combination of the U.S. military, political conservatives and Zionists as an excuse for war in Iraq.

"Called Loose Change, it is being downloaded from the Internet and shown in small screenings here and overseas. It is not alone in the genre, and it is not unusual in American history either to offer simplistic explanations or demonize opponents. Presidents from Andrew Jackson to Lyndon Johnson were accused by their contemporaries of massive government conspiracies.

The film appears especially popular among young people immersed in a Web culture brimming with sites that question the credibility of government. They see 9/11 as the defining moment of their lives.

"This is our generation's Vietnam, our generation's Kennedy assassination," says Korey Rowe, 23, the film's producer."

The magazine Popular Mechanics covers the movie's popularity also:

"What's alarming is the fact that it's being screened for free on campuses across the U.S. To help promote the free screenings, which are spontaneously organized by students, the filmmakers have provided downloadable flyers at the Loose Change site. And not to point any fingers, but a screening at Arizona's Scottsdale Community College was organized by a professor. There's certainly nothing wrong with students being exposed to a variety of viewpoints. But what's troubling is that there doesn't seem to be any effort on these campuses to balance the conspiracy viewpoint with accurate commentary from scientists, engineers, witnesses and other experts who could put these extravagant claims to rest.

While Loose Change isn't about to hit the megaplex anytime soon, a sobering truth has crawled from the wreckage of 9/11--conspiracy theories aren't just for paranoid shut-ins anymore. With the advent of online forums and viral marketing, as well as the current upswell of anti-Bush sentiment, tall tales spread more quickly, and to more people."

And Scientific America weighs in:

"Noted French left-wing activist Thierry Meyssan's 9/11 conspiracy book, L'Effroyable Imposture, became a best-seller in 2002. But I never imagined such an "appalling deception" would ever find a voice in America. At a recent public lecture I was buttonholed by a Michael Moore–wannabe filmmaker who breathlessly explained that 9/11 was orchestrated by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Central Intelligence Agency as part of their plan for global domination and a New World Order. That goal was to be financed by G.O.D. (Gold, Oil, Drugs) and launched by a Pearl Harbor–like attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, thereby providing the justification for war. The evidence was there in the details, he explained, handing me a faux dollar bill (with "9-11" replacing the "1," a picture of Bush supplanting that of Washington) chockablock with Web sites.

In fact, if you type "World Trade Center" and "conspiracy" into Google, you'll get more than 250,000 hits. From these sites, you will discover that some people think the Pentagon was hit by a missile; that U.S. Air Force jets were ordered to "stand down" and not intercept Flights 11 and 175, the ones that struck the twin towers; that the towers themselves were razed by demolition explosives timed to go off soon after the impact of the planes; that a mysterious white jet shot down Flight 93 over Pennsylvania; and that New York Jews were ordered to stay home that day (Zionists and other pro-Israeli factions, of course, were involved)."

Tuesday, May 2, 2006
WILL ISRAEL ATTACK IRAN?
A UK London Times article from Dec., 2005 seriously broached that there were plans for a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities by the Israeli air force in the works:

"ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.

The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations."

A denial was issued from the Israeli foreign ministry and published in an interview that ran in the Jerusalem Post here.

Since then, the general development in this idea has been a conflict of opinion about whether Israel could effectively knock-out Iranian research and production facilities, especially since it has been stated in a number of places that Iran has spread out its nuclear capabilities in an effort to avoid the fate of Iraq's nuclear research, which was destroyed in one blow by Israeli aircraft in 1982.

However, the ability of the Israeli air forces to reach Iran was demonstrated in 2003 [read more at globalsecruity.com]:

"The 25 F-15Is operational since 1999 [and the 100 F-16Is] were procured first and foremost to deal with the Iranian threat. In August 2003 the Israeli Air Force demonstrated the strategic capability to strike far-off targets such as Iran [which is 1,300 kilometers away], by flying three F-15 jets to Poland 1,600 nautical miles away. After they celebrated that country's air force's 85th birthday, on their return trip, the IAF warplanes staged a fly-past over the Auschwitz death camp. "

The San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper carried a story discussing both the air attack capabilities of Israel, and possible submarine missile launches.

The Iranian brand of Islam allows no place for a Jewish state in the Middle East, and Israel points out often that Iran is the only member of the United Nations that publicly calls for destruction of another member. Israel's animosity toward Iran stems not only from the Iranian leadership's anti-Israel statements, but also its support of armed groups like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

...Tehran says its nuclear program is to generate electricity, not make bombs. But plans announced this week to build more nuclear power plants and to purchase 30 Tor-M1 surface-to-air missiles from Russia have raised fears.

Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" in October also set off alarms. On Thursday, the Iranian leader said the Jewish state should be moved to Europe and questioned whether the Holocaust took place.

Both Israel and the U.S. say diplomatic options should be exhausted before any military action is contemplated.

...U.S. officials have refrained from calling for military action, favoring diplomacy, inspections and trade sanctions. Still, President Bush has said the U.S. will not let Iran get the bomb."

However, the predictions of an Israeli attack by the end of March, 2006, have obviously not come to be.

For statements about President Bush's intentions regarding a fight between Iran and Israel, go here.

Friday, April 28, 2006
"UNITED STATES OF ISRAEL"
UK Independent carries the Robert Fisk article on how the United States 'Israel Lobby' influences the world negatively, at least according to his discussion of a recently-published Harvard University paper on the subject. The UK Independent newspaper also used a classic anti-jewish illustration to make sure the point was put across effectively:

"The two men have caused one of the most extraordinary political storms over the Middle East in recent American history by stating what to many non-Americans is obvious: that the US has been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of Israel, that Israel is a liability in the "war on terror", that the biggest Israeli lobby group, Aipac (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), is in fact the agent of a foreign government and has a stranglehold on Congress - so much so that US policy towards Israel is not debated there - and that the lobby monitors and condemns academics who are critical of Israel."

A blog called hurryupharry.com has an exhibit of neo-nazi (and other) images which show a telling comparison between the UK Independent's illo and even more-obvious Jew-hatred from Britain.

Thursday, April 20, 2006
GERMAN HISTORIANS REVEAL NAZI PLANS TO ENLIST ARABS IN PLANNED HOLOCAUST IN 1940s PALESTINE
Yahoo News is carrying a Reuters story about two German historians and their forthcoming book ("Germans, Jews, Genocide: The Holocaust as History and the Present") which is based upon Einsatzgruppe records which show Nazi plans for culminating the extermination of the Jews in then-ruled British Palestine:

"The Middle East death squad, similar to those operating throughout eastern Europe during the war, was to be led by SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Walther Rauff, the historians say.

"The central plan for the group was the realization of the Holocaust in Palestine," the authors wrote in their study that appears in a book entitled "Germans, Jews, Genocide: The Holocaust as History and the Present."

But since Germany never conquered British-controlled Palestine, plans for bringing the Holocaust to what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories never came to fruition.

...In the battle of El Alamein, Egypt, British General Bernard Montgomery turned the tide of the war in north Africa by routing Rommel's "Afrika Korps" and ending his African campaign.

As they did in eastern Europe, the plan was for the 24 members involved in the death squad to enlist Palestinian collaborators so that the "mass murder would continue under German leadership without interruption."

Fortunately for the Jews in Palestine, "Einsatzgruppe Egypt" never made it out of Greece.

"The history of the Middle East would have been completely different and a Jewish state could never have been established if the Germans and Arabs had joined forces," the historians conclude."

Tuesday, April 18, 2006
NINE SUICIDE BOMBER ATTACKS SINCE "CEASE FIRE"
Yahoo News has a running total of suicide bomber attacks on Israel since the Hamas-Israeli 'cease fire' began:

• April 17, 2006: A bomber blows himself up at a Tel Aviv restaurant targeted previously, killing eight other people.

• March 30, 2006: A bomber disguised as a Jewish hitchhiker blows himself up in a car outside a West Bank settlement, killing four Israelis who stopped to pick him up.

• Jan. 19, 2006: A bomber disguised as a peddler blows himself up at a Tel Aviv felafel restaurant, wounding 20 people.

• Dec. 29, 2005: Explosion atan Israeli army checkpoint in the West Bank, kills an Israeli soldier and two Palestinians.

• Dec. 5, 2005: A bomber blows himself up at a shopping mall in the coastal town of Netanya, killing five.

• Oct. 26, 2005: A bomber blows himself up killing five in Hadera.

• Aug. 28, 2005: A bomber blows himself up in the southern city of Beersheba.

• July 12, 2005: A bomber blows himself up at a shopping mall in Netanya, killing five.

• Feb. 25, 2005: In the first attack after a truce is declared, a bomber blows himself up near a Tel Aviv nightclub, killing four.

Details on each event is at the Yahoo article here.

Meanwhile, following Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas condemnation of the suicide attack, Palestinian militant groups are demanding an apology from the Palestinian Authority Chairman for his stance on the recent violence:

“We ask President Abbas to apologize to the entire Palestinian people because of the offense he committed,” the groups said in a joint statement by a coalition of militants read by a masked gunman at an open-air news conference in Gaza.'

Following this latest attack, Japan has responded by suspending aid payments to the PA:

"...Japan - which has given $840 million in aid to Palestinians since 1993 -will however continue to offer fresh humanitarian aid if the need arises, said Akira Chiba, assistant press secretary for the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

"Our stance is that we want to see whether it [Hamas] will adopt peaceful measures and participate in the peace process," Chiba said.

"Until we have a clearer picture... there won't be a situation where new aid would be given," Chiba said.

Another Foreign Ministry official said that while Japan had stopped offering new aid, it planned to continue pre-existing aid projects, such as repairing roads and building residential homes.

Japan would also provide humanitarian assistance such as food aid, if warranted, ministry officials said.

Chiba said Japan decided last month to give e6.0 million in humanitarian food aid for Palestinians via international organisations such as the United Nations World Food Program.

In order for Japan to resume full-fledged assistance, Hamas must, for example, alter its stance toward Israel, Chiba said.

"Hamas has clearly had a hostile policy toward Israel, so if that doesn't change we won't be in a situation where we can offer aid," Chiba said, although he added that Japan had not set any concrete conditions. "

For an overview of Japanese-Israeli relations following Japan's siding with Nazi Germany during World War II, go here.

ARCHIVE OF OLD NEWS
2006 January - March here
2005 January - April here
2005 May - Sept here
2005 October - December here
2004 January - February here
2004 June - December here
2003 January - October here
2003 November - December here

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