Archived news and commentary: November 20 - 26, 2006

2006/11/20 - 2006/11/26
2006/11/13 - 2006/11/19
2006/11/06 - 2006/11/12
2006/10/30 - 2006/11/05
2006/10/23 - 2006/10/29
2006/10/16 - 2006/10/22

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Sunday, November 26, 2006

News and commentary:

"Turkish demonstrators wave national flags and display anti-pope banners..."
(Murad Sezer, AP, 2006/11/26)
"Turkish demonstrators wave national flags and display anti-pope banners during a protest in Istanbul, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 26, 2006."
Examples of banners: "Aggressive Slaughterer Exploiter CROSS CIVILIZATION" and "No to an alliance of crusaders, let the pope not come!".

"Thousands in Turkey denounce papal visit" (Brian Murphy, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/26)
Pope II. Double standards on the streets of Istanbul: "ISTANBUL, Turkey - Tens of thousands of protesters denounced Pope Benedict XVI as an enemy of Islam at a rally Sunday that underlined deep divisions straining Turkey ahead of the pontiff's visit this week.

Officials hoping to promote closer ties with the West urged calm, but Islamic groups wary of Western ways united in anger over Benedict's remarks two months ago linking Islam to violence.

Chants of "No to the pope!" rose among nearly 25,000 demonstrators at every mention of his remarks on violence and the Prophet Muhammad. Many protesters wore headbands with anti-pope slogans and waved placards that included a depiction of Benedict as the grim reaper. ...

"The pope is not wanted here," said Kubra Yigitoglu, a 20-year-old protester wearing a head scarf, ankle-length coat and cowboy boots.

Nearby, a large banner was raised amid a sea of red flags of the Saadet, or Felicity, party. It called the Vatican "a source of terror." ...

"The pope was disrespectful to us and he needs to apologize," said one banner at the demonstration."

"Pope death threats put Turkey on high alert" (Malcolm Moore, The Sunday Telegraph, 2006/11/26)
Pope I: "An army of snipers, riot police, secret agents and bomb disposal experts has been mobilised for the Pope's four-day visit to Turkey. Naval units will patrol the Bosphorus armed with machine guns after warnings to police and security services that the life of Benedict XVI may be threatened by Islamic extremists after he arrives on Tuesday. ...

Celalettin Cerrah, the police chief in Istanbul, said that the city would have maximum security and warned that he would "call for reinforcements from nearby cities" if needed. Fears within the Vatican, which has been making preparations on the ground for the past month, were heightened when a man lunged at Archbishop Pierluigi Celata, the former papal ambassador to Turkey, who was on a advance scouting mission in his Catholic robes.

The archbishop said he hoped the attack was an "isolated case" and that the Pope would be met with the 'hospitality that is typical of the Turkish and Muslim people.'"

"They Report, You Decide (with update from Mark Steyn)" (Mark Steyn, Power Line, 2006/11/26)
Steyn on "The 'Eurabia' Myth" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2006/11/26), in which Peters argues that Muslims will never be able to conquer Europe. On the contrary, he foresees that Europe will try to exterminate their Muslims: "Don't let Europe's current round of playing pacifist dress-up fool you: This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebrenica.":
"When Mr Peters cites the success of Jean Marie Le Pen’s National Front, he overlooks not only Le Pen’s recent overtures to Muslims but also the fact that M Le Pen is pushing 80. As a general rule, when 600 octogenarians are up against 200 teenagers, bet on the teens. In five or ten years’ time, who precisely is going to organize mass deportations from French cities in which the native/Muslim youth-population ratio is already – right now - 55/45?

As I’ve said innumerable times, the native European population is split three ways: some will leave, as the Dutch (and certain French) are already doing; some will shrug and go along with the Islamization of the continent, as the ever-accelerating number of conversions suggests; and so the ones left to embrace Fascism will be a minority of an aging population. It will be bloody and messy, as I write in America Alone, but it will not alter the final outcome. If you don’t breed, you can’t influence the future. And furthermore a disinclination to breed is a good sign you don’t care much about the future. That’s why the Spaniards, who fought a brutal bloody civil war for their country in the 1930s, folded instantly after those Madrid bombings. When you’ve demographically checked out of the future, why fight for it?"

"Back to the Future" (Fouad Ajami, USNews.com, 2006/11/26)
"The sin of George W. Bush, to hear his critics tell it, is that he unleashed the forces of freedom in Arab-Islamic lands only to beget a terrible storm. In Iraq and in Lebanon, the furies of sectarianism are on the loose; and in that greater Middle East stretching from Pakistan to Morocco, the forces of freedom and reform appear chastened. Autocracy is fashionable once again, and that bet on freedom made in the aftermath of the American venture into Iraq now seems, to the skeptics, fatally compromised. ...

But in truth there can be no return to the bosom of the old order. American power and the very force of what had played out in the Arab-Islamic lands in recent years have rendered the old order hollow, mocked its claims to primacy and coherence. The moment our soldiers flushed Saddam Hussein from his filthy spider hole, we had put on display the farce and swindle of Arab authority.

We can't shy away from the very history we unleashed. We had demonstrated to the Arabs that the rulers are not deities; we had given birth to the principle of political accountability. In the same vein, we may not be comfortable with all the manifestations of an emancipated Arab Shiism--we recoil, as we should, from the Mahdi Army in Iraq and from Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut--but the Shiite stepchildren of the Arab world have been given a new claim on the Arab political order of primacy and power. In the annals of Arab history, this is nothing short of revolutionary."

"Quartet of ladies shows where we're headed" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 2006/11/26)
"'The great majority of Palestinian people,' said the secretary of state to Cal Thomas the other day, "they just want a better life. This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don't believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that's what people are going to do."

Cal Thomas asked a sharp follow-up: "Do you think this or do you know this?"

"Well, I think I know it," said Dr. Rice.

"You think you know it?"

"I think I know it."

So many of our present woes are due to thinking we know things. To our four Jills in the jeep, let's add one Jim, apparently back at the steering wheel in the current war: James Baker, renowned foreign policy "realist" and the man Beltway wags are currently referring to as "the acting secretary of state." The "realists" think that "containment" and "stability" are wise strategies. In fact, they're the absence of strategy. The fertility rate in the Gaza Strip is one of the highest on earth. If you measure the births of the Muslim world against the dearth of Bishop Kate's Episcopalians, you have the perfect snapshot of why there is no "stability": With every passing month, there are more Muslims and fewer Episcopalians, and the Muslims export their manpower to Europe and other depopulating outposts of the West. It's the intersection of demography and Islamism that makes time a luxury we can't afford."

"The law that lets women be raped changes... a little" (Christina Lamb, The Sunday Times, 2006/11/26)
"ONE by one and silently, Shahnaz Bokhari lays out what she calls her “broken lives”. Large coloured sheets of paper are pasted with press cuttings and photographs, each headed with a girl’s name or occasionally two. Soon both her desk and the table are covered with the sheets, and then the floor.

“Uzma, Nadia, Sobia, Nazish . . .” she chants. Next to many of the names is the word “raped”. Underneath each of these is written “victim of the Hudood ordinance”, a draconian law that makes it almost impossible to prosecute a rapist and often lands the victim in jail.

As chief co-ordinator of Pakistan’s Progressive Women’s Association, Bokhari takes up their cases and often ends up sheltering the women in her house, despite receiving threats. “Look,” she says, pointing at a green sheet of cuttings from August 2005 headed “Fatima”. “She was just three years old and he raped her, then killed her . . . Of course the man has gone free.”

Shockingly, the pile of papers on Bokhari’s floor represents cases just from the past year or so and only in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. “Here alone we had 580 cases of women behind bars last year because of the Hudood ordinance,” she says.

One woman is raped every two hours and one gang-raped every eight hours, according to the country’s independent Human Rights Commission. But under the ordinance introduced in 1979 by the dictator General Zia ul-Haq as part of an Islamisation campaign, rape cases have to be dealt with in sharia courts. Victims need four male witnesses to the crime — or face prosecution for adultery.

More than 2,000 women are in jail for intercourse — either victims of rape or those who have eloped to marry for love and have then been reported, usually by one of their parents."

"Loyalists of al-Sadr seize Iraqi TV station" (Hannah Allam and Mohamed al Dulaimy, The Seattle Times, 2006/11/26)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq — Followers of the militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took over state-run television Saturday to denounce the Iraqi government, label Sunnis "terrorists" and issue what appeared to many viewers as a call to arms.

The two-hour broadcast from a community gathering in the heart of the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City included three members of al-Sadr's parliamentary bloc, who took questions from outraged residents demanding revenge for a series of car bombings that killed some 200 people Thursday. ...

Al-Maliki's administration acknowledged it was powerless to interrupt the pro-Sadr program on the official Iraqiya channel, during which Sadr City residents shouted, "There is no government! There is no state!" Several speakers described neighborhoods and well-known Sunni politicians as "terrorists" and threatened them with reprisal.

"We'll obviously try to control them as much as we can, but when they [lose] more than 150 people in bombings, they have the right to speak," said Bassam al-Husseini, one of al-Maliki's top advisers. 'What are we going to do? We can't stop this. It's too hot right now.'" (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

"Palestinian attacks go on despite truce" (Amy Teibel and Ibrahim Barzak, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/26)
"Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip as a last-minute cease-fire deal took hold Sunday morning, but two major Palestinian militant groups, saying they had no intention of stopping their attacks, fired volleys of homemade rockets into Israel.

The ongoing rocket attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad tempered hopes for a lasting truce, which was meant to end five months of deadly clashes. The rockets landed in open fields and caused no injuries. ...

Hamas' own militants claimed responsibility for firing rockets into Israel after 6 a.m., clouding prospects for the truce's longevity. The Hamas militants said they continued their attacks because some Israeli troops remained inside Gaza, an accusation Israel denied.

"(We) reiterate that our attacks against the enemy continue," the group said in a statement posted on its Web site.

Islamic Jihad also claimed responsibility for firing rockets into Israel after the truce. A spokesman for the group, Abu Hamza, denied his group had signed on to truce. However, top Islamic Jihad leaders had said they were part of the deal, and the new rocket fire suggested they were not in complete control of their fighters."

Added today:
"Getting The News From The Enemy" (Curt, Flopping Aces, 2006/11/25)
"The Gemayel warning" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/11/24)
"Why Most Americans Hate the MSM: More Lies About Iraq" (Brian Duffy, One Oar in the Water, 2006/11/17)

Saturday, November 25, 2006

News and commentary:

"Getting The News From The Enemy" (Curt, Flopping Aces, 2006/11/25)
"Yesterday there were two incidents that I wrote about involving the use of enemy propagandists by our MSM. Now take a look at the latest “all hell is breaking loose” report on Iraq, from the AP of course:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen broke into two Shiite homes and killed 21 men in front of their relatives in an Iraqi village, police said Saturday, as Vice President Dick Cheney sought Saudi Arabia’s help in calming. ...

The U.S. military said Saturday that Iraqi soldiers securing the Hurriyah area had found only one burned mosque and could not confirm reports that six Sunni civilians had been burned to death with kerosene.

As we have learned quite well over the years the enemy will try to stir the pot with doctored photo’s or outright lies as Patterico documented. Now the story about those Sunni’s being burned alive appears to have been a fairy tale also.

You think we will hear that this raid on two houses maybe embellished also? ...

But it appears that our MSM is getting the “anarchy” stories from the enemy themselves. That cannot be trusted. I mean the big story yesterday was these six burned alive and now no one can find any evidence that this happened except the word of the enemy.

How many more of these stories are embellished?" (Hat tip: LGF. See also: "New savage twist to violence in Baghdad" (Steven R. Hurst, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/24). Also: "Why Most Americans Hate the MSM: More Lies About Iraq" (Brian Duffy, One Oar in the Water, 2006/11/17))

"Israel, Palestinians agree to cease-fire" (Amy Teibel, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/25)
"JERUSALEM - Israel and the Palestinians agreed to a cease-fire Saturday to end a five-month Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip and the firing of rockets by Palestinian militants into the Jewish state — a major step toward reviving long-stalled peace talks.

The cease-fire was to go into effect at 6 a.m. Sunday (11 p.m. Saturday EST), both sides said. ...

The sides announced the cease-fire after Abbas telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert late Saturday to tell him he had arrived at an agreement with all Palestinian factions — including those allied with Hamas — to stop all rocket attacks and suicide bombings from Gaza.

Abbas asked that Israel, in turn, stop its military operations in Gaza and withdraw its forces, and Olmert agreed, spokespeople for both leaders said. ...

"Hamas' supreme leader, Khaled" Mashaal said his group was willing to give peace negotiations with Israel six months to reach an agreement for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. If the talks failed, however, he threatened a new armed uprising. ...

If an agreement is not reached within that time frame, Mashaal threatened a new confrontation with Israel. "Hamas will become stronger and the resistance will resume ... and will go on with a third uprising," he said."

"MSM Terror Propaganda Roundup" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2006/11/25)
Mobilized II: "AP writer Diaa Hadid is Australian, and in an article from May 2002 she explains that she has such personal animosity for Israelis that she can’t even look at them: My Israel, my Palestine. (Hat tip: Right Side.)

The intensity of Hadid’s involvement over the last nine months has had a strong impact on her views. When she first arrived in the Middle East, Hadid expressed a desire to make more Israeli friends. Now she has trouble separating the personal from the political.

“I can’t look at Israelis anymore. I can’t separate your average Israeli citizen from the occupation, I don’t want to be friends with them, I don’t want to talk to them,” says Hadid.

This, of course, means she’s perfectly qualified to write stories about Israel for the Associated Press."

"Female activists mobilized" (Tim Blar, timblair.net, 2006/11/25)
Mobilized I: "An Hamas granny may have blown herself to pieces, but, as Associated Press reports, Palestinian feminists still face many years of struggle before liberation is achieved:

A grandmother-turned-suicide bomber, a small army of women marching into a battlefield, thousands of veiled volunteers hitting the streets in an election campaign - the Islamic militant group Hamas is increasingly mobilizing its network of female activists.

Correction to my intro: the grandmother wasn’t blown to pieces. She was mobilized. ...

But even in the rigidly conservative [ahem—ed] movement, whose manifesto defines women as “manufacturers of men,” some female activists are demanding a say in politics and in Hamas’ military wing, which has carried out scores of deadly attacks against Israelis in recent years.

Say it loud, sisters! Say it explosively loud!

A suicide bombing on Thursday by a 64-year-old grandmother who blew herself up [was “mobilized”—ed] near Israeli soldiers in Gaza was an exception, not the rule, said Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’ military wing. He suggested she was chosen because it would have been more difficult for a man to approach the target.

Mere tokenism. True equality will only come when the Sisterhood lies dead and bleeding all over the Middle East. Also, what’s with the sexism of that 72 virgins deal? (By the way, note the hilariously mild headline on this piece: “Hamas women seek bigger political role”.)" (See also: "Hamas women seek bigger political role" (Diaa Hadid, AP/seattlepi.com, 2006/11/24). Also: "Grandmother in first Hamas suicide attack in two years" (Breitbart.com, 2006/11/23))

"A tense time for a papal visit" (Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, 2006/11/25)
"Turkey, which doesn't recognize the Roman Catholic Church, is still rankled by Benedict's comments on Islam.":
"ISTANBUL, TURKEY — To reach Turkey's most important Roman Catholic church, a visitor must scour a traffic-choked street to find the metal doors, walk down a flight of stairs, cross a courtyard and finally step into the consecrated basilica.

Inside the Holy Spirit Cathedral here, the lights remain low until a minute before evening Mass, and then reveal frescoed ceilings with gold-trimmed arches, 22 crystal chandeliers and blond-marble columns. On this night, 14 worshipers dot the pews.

In the Turkish capital, Ankara, the only Catholic church is even more discreet: It is marked simply by a French flag. ...

The Roman Catholic Church is not legally recognized in Turkey. It functions largely attached to foreign embassies; its priests do not wear their collars in public.

Most Christians in Turkey are of the Armenian, Greek and other Orthodox denominations, and although most of these are recognized in the Turkish Constitution as minority communities, they face severe restrictions on property ownership and cannot build places of worship or run seminaries to train their clerics.

Such hardships make it almost impossible for Christians to sustain and expand their communities, advocates say. The Greek Orthodox, for example, have dwindled to no more than 3,000, just 2% of the community's size in the 1960s.

Fueled by a vitriolic, and growing, potion of nationalism and Islamic radicalism, spasms of violence have led to the killing of one priest this year, the beatings of two others and the burning of a Christian prayer center. Christian tombstones are often vandalized and property frequently confiscated by authorities." (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

"Islamic fears kill off children's thriller" (Murray Waldren and Jodie Minus, The Australian, 2006/11/25)
"A LEADING children's publisher has dumped a novel because of political sensitivity over Islamic issues.

Scholastic Australia pulled the plug on the Army of the Pure after booksellers and librarians said they would not stock the adventure thriller for younger readers because the "baddie" was a Muslim terrorist.

A prominent literary agent has slammed the move as "gutless", while the book's author, award-winning novelist John Dale, said the decision was "disturbing because it's the book's content they are censoring".

"There are no guns, no bad language, no sex, no drugs, no violence that is seen or on the page," Dale said, but because two characters are Arabic-speaking and the plot involves a mujaheddin extremist group, Scholastic's decision is based "100 per cent (on) the Muslim issue".

This decision is at odds with the recent publication of Richard Flanagan's bestselling The Unknown Terrorist and Andrew McGahan's Underground in which terrorists are portrayed as victims driven to extreme acts by the failings of the West.

The Unknown Terrorist is dedicated to David Hicks and describes Jesus Christ as "history's first ... suicide bomber".

In McGahan's Underground, Muslims are executed en masse or herded into ghettos in an Australia rendered unrecognisable by the war on terror." (Hat tip: Andrew Bolt. See also: Blasphemy - News and commentary on free speech cases and blasphemy law apologetics.)

Friday, November 24, 2006

News and commentary:

"The Gemayel warning" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/11/24)
"Why would Syrian President Bashar Assad wish to make people mad at him now by killing yet another anti-Syrian politician in Lebanon? What a casual observer misses is the simple fact that events in Lebanon do not stand on their own. Like Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon is a front in a regional war being waged against the US, Israel and their allies by Iran and Syria. Iraq is another front in this war and Gemayel's murder is intimately tied to developments in Iraq.

The Democratic Party's victory in the November 7 Congressional elections convinced Iran and Syria that they are on the verge of a great victory against the US in Iraq. Iranian and Syrian jubilation is well founded in light of the Democratic leadership's near unanimous calls for the US to withdraw its forces in Iraq; Bush's firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his appointment of his father's CIA director Robert Gates to replace him; and Bush's praise for the Congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group charged with revisiting US strategy in Iraq, which is being co-chaired by his father's secretary of state James Baker III.

Although his committee has yet to formally submit its recommendations, Baker made clear that he will recommend that the administration negotiate a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq with Iran and Syria. That is, he is putting together a strategy not for victory, but for defeat."

"New savage twist to violence in Baghdad" (Steven R. Hurst, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/24)
UPDATE 2006/11/25: Curt at Flopping Aces questions the accuracy of this horrendous story in an interesting post on "Getting the news from the enemy": "The only person stating that this incident happened was one Capt. Jamil Hussein."
One reason I posted it, though, was that it was confirmed by other sources as well. But of course it is wise to be skeptical:

"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left Friday prayers and burned them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking the Iraqi capital a day after suspected Sunni insurgents killed 215 people in Baghdad's main Shiite district.

Iraqi soldiers at a nearby army post failed to intervene in Friday's assault by suspected members of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia or subsequent attacks that killed at least 19 other Sunnis, including women and children, in the same neighborhood, the volatile Hurriyah district in northwest Baghdad, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein. ...

But Imad al-Hasimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriyah, confirmed Hussein's account of the immolations. He told Al-Arabiya television he saw people who were drenched in kerosene and then set afire, burning to death before his eyes.

Two workers at Kazamiyah Hospital also confirmed that bodies from the clashes and immolation had been taken to the morgue at their facility. They refused to be identified by name, saying they feared retribution.

And the Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni organization in Iraq, said even more victims were burned to death in attacks on the four mosques. It claimed a total of 18 people had died in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque."

"What Can I Do to Make Your Flight More Uncomfortable" (Ann Coulter, FrontPageMagazine, 2006/11/24)
"Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.

Witnesses said the imams stood to do their evening prayers in the terminal before boarding, chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah" – coincidentally, the last words heard by hundreds of airline passengers on 9/11 before they died.

Witnesses also said that the imams were talking about Saddam Hussein, and denouncing America and the war in Iraq. About the only scary preflight ritual the imams didn't perform was the signing of last wills and testaments.

After boarding, the imams did not sit together, and some asked for seat belt extensions, although none were morbidly obese. Three of the men had one-way tickets and no checked baggage.

Also, they were Muslims.

The idea that a Muslim boycott against US Airways would hurt the airline proves that Arabs are utterly tone-deaf. This is roughly the equivalent of Cindy Sheehan taking a vow of silence. How can we hope to deal with people with no sense of irony? The next thing you know, New York City cab drivers will be threatening to bathe." (See also: "A Profiling In Courage" (Investors.com, 2006/11/22), "Angry Muslim scholars return home" (Chris Kahn, AP/azstarnet.com, 2006/11/22) and "Minneapolis Airport Incident Update" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2006/11/21))

Added today:
"A Profiling In Courage" (Investors.com, 2006/11/22)
"Angry Muslim scholars return home" (Chris Kahn, AP/azstarnet.com, 2006/11/22)
"Minneapolis Airport Incident Update" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2006/11/21)
"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)
"Afghan women commit suicide by fire" (Alisa Tang, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/18)
"The 751 No-Go Zones of France" (Daniel Pipes, danielpipes.org, 2006/11/14)

Thursday, November 23, 2006

News and commentary:

"Handout picture released from the Hamas media office..."
(Reuters, 2006/11/23)
"Handout picture released from the Hamas media office shows 57-year-old female suicide bomber, Fatima al-Nejar, in Gaza November 23, 2006.."

"Grandmother in first Hamas suicide attack in two years" (Breitbart.com, 2006/11/23)
Grandmother II. According to The Jerusalem Post, Najar was 68:
"Relatives said Najar had seven sons and two daughters, plus some 41 grandchildren, and that they were proud of her "martyrdom", which daughter Azhar said was a direct response to the Beit Hanun shelling.

"She did this operation in response to the Beit Hanun massacre. She was very moved by what happened," said Azhar, speaking from home in Jabaliya where relatives came to congratulate Najar's nearest and dearest.

Azhar also said her mother had taken part in a daring rescue operation, staged by Palestinian mothers and wives, who acted as human shields to free more than a dozen gunmen holed up in a Beit Hanun mosque on November 3.

Zuheir, Najar's 20-year-old son, told AFP from the family home: "We are really happy. It's a big operation. She told us last night that she would do a suicide operation. She prepared her clothes for that operation and we are proud.

''I don't want anything, only to die a martyr.' That's what she said.'"

"3 IDF troops wounded by 64-yr-old female suicide bomber" (The Jerusalem Post, 2006/11/23)
Grandmother I: "Three IDF soldiers were lightly wounded on Thursday evening when a female suicide bomber detonated near troops in Gaza's Jebalya refugee camp, the IDF said.

The army reported that soldiers had received an intelligence tip that the female suicide bomber was about to strike. The IDF said that the soldiers spotted the bomber and threw a stun grenade at her, causing her to set off the explosives she was carrying.

Hamas claimed responsibility and identified the bomber as Fatma Omar An-Najar. Her relatives said she was 64 - by far the oldest of the more than 100 Palestinian suicide bombers who have attacked Israelis over the past six years. ...

Hamas spokesman Abu Obeideh said both Palestinian men and women are committed to battling the Israelis. "We told the Zionist enemy we will meet it with many surprises ... and this is one of the surprises, presented by a 57-year old woman," he said."

"Muslim jailed for killing British queen's swan to break Ramadan fast" (AFP/Middle East Times, 2006/11/23)
"LONDON -- A Muslim man who was so hungry while fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that he killed a swan to eat was jailed for two months at a court in Britain Wednesday.

Shamsu Miah, 52, killed the mute swan at a boating pond in the north Welsh seaside resort of Llandudno September 25 - only the second day of fasting in Britain.

All mute swans in Britain belong to the sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II, an historical quirk dating from the twelfth century.

When challenged by police, Miah said: "I am a Muslim, I am fasting, I needed to eat."

Llandudno Magistrates Court heard that Miah had blood on his shirt and white feathers in his beard.

Prosecutor Jim Neary said: "When interviewed he said, 'I was hungry, I had to eat the swan so I killed it, I stabbed it. I did nothing wrong, it was just a bird, I needed to eat'."

'The officers told him the swan was the property of the queen and he replied, 'I hate the queen, I hate this country'.'" (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

"Attack on Baghdad Shiite slum kills 160" (Thomas Wagner, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/23)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - In the deadliest attack on a sectarian enclave since the beginning of the Iraq war, suspected Sunni-Arab militants used five car bombs and two mortar rounds on the capital's Shiite Sadr City slum to kill at least 160 people and wound 257 on Thursday, police said. ...

Beginning at 3:10 p.m., the three suicide car bomb attackers in Sadr City blew up their vehicles one after another, at 15 minute intervals, hitting Jamila market, al-Hay market and al-Shahidein Square. At about the same time, two mortar rounds struck al-Shahidein Square and Mudhaffar Square, said police Col. Hassan Challoub.

Two other parked car bombs exploded around the same time, one at the edge of Sadr City and another behind the main office of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Challoub said. A sixth car bomb was detected and detonated out of harm's way by Iraqi police, he said.

As the fiery explosions sent up huge plumes of black smoke up over northeastern Baghdad, and left streets covered with burning bodies and blood, angry residents and armed Shiite militiamen flooded the streets, hurling curses at Sunni Muslims and firing weapons into the air."

"SHOVE YOUR CIVIL WAR"
(Hussein Malla, AP, 2006/11/23)
"Lebanese supporters of assassinated Christian politician Pierre Gemayel burn posters carrying the portrait of Syrian President Bashar Assad and saying 'Shove your Civil War' in Martyrs' square before his funeral procession, Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday Nov.23, 2006."

"Throngs mourn slain Lebanese official" (Zeina Karam, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/23)
"BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese turned the funeral Thursday for a slain Christian government minister into a massive demonstration of anger against Syria and its allies.

The sprawling funeral for Pierre Gemayel reinvigorated suporters of the U.S.-backed government in a power struggle with Syrian-backed Hezbollah and its allies threatening to split this small Mideast nations along sectarian lines. Police estimated some 800,000 people participated in the rally and funeral.

"The second independence uprising was launched today for change and it will not stop," Gemayel's father, former President Amin Gemayel, told the crowd in downtown Beirut, speaking from behind a panel of bulletproof glass. "I pledge to you that we will soon take steps so that your efforts will not go in vain."

The throng applauded as the coffin, wrapped in the flag of Gemayel's Phalange Party — white with a green cedar emblem — was carried past the square to nearby St. George's Cathedral, where the packed congregation sang hymns. The 34-year-old Gemayel's wife wept in the church, leaning on his mother's shoulder.

The crowd poured out their anger at neighboring Syria, which dominated Lebanon for 29 years until it was forced to pull its troops out last year in the wake of the assassination of another anti-Syrian politician, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Many blame Syria for the killings of Hariri, Gemayel and other anti-Syrian figures but Damascus denies the charges."

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)
"In some ways, the new anti-Semitism is much like the old. Consider Jenny Tonge, a legislator from the Liberal Democratic party who gained notoriety two years ago by empathizing publicly with Islamist suicide bombers. She thereby distinguished herself even among the ranks of her fellow Liberal Democrats, who have seized on resentments against Israel and the U.S. with all the zeal of a third party struggling to get noticed in a two-party system. Removed from her party post, though by no means disgraced, she was subsequently honored with a peerage. This summer’s war in Lebanon enabled her to go a crucial step beyond extolling suicide bombers by attacking not only Israel but Jews in general. “The pro-Israel lobby has got its grips on the Western world,” she said in a speech at a party conference in September. Pausing for effect, she added: “its financial grips.” Another pause. “I think they’ve probably got a certain grip on our party.” ...

A second example comes from the other side of the political spectrum. Sir Peter Tapsell, a senior Conservative member of parliament, claimed at the height of the Lebanon crisis that Blair was colluding with President Bush “in giving Israel the go-ahead” to commit “a war crime gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw.” ...

Not only do the Tapsells and Tonges go unreprimanded these days, they are admired and imitated. The loathing of Israel, once confined to oppositional groups, has penetrated to the very core of the British establishment. At the height of the Lebanon war, two peers of the realm reportedly came to blows within the hallowed precincts of the House of Lords. Apparently, Lord Janner, a prominent spokesman for Jewish causes, said something about Israel’s right to self-defense that so enraged the octogenarian Field Marshal Lord Bramall that he was moved to assault his seventy-eight-year-old interlocutor. One might have supposed that, like misogyny, anti-Semitism had ceased to be a characteristic vice of the English upper class; this incident suggests that it is back with a vengeance." (See also: "British MP warns Europe of 'new anti-Semitism'" (David Byers, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/11/22))

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

News and commentary:

"Father Peter Dougherty, 65, left, and Sister Mary Ellen Gundeck, 55, right..."
(Khalil Hamra, AP, 2006/11/22)
"Father Peter Dougherty, 65, left, and Sister Mary Ellen Gundeck, 55, right, both Michigan-based peace activists, sit on the roof top of the house of Mohammed weil Baroud, leader of the Popular Resistance Committees that Israel targeted for destruction, in Beit Layiha, northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2006. They are the first foreigners to join a week-long standoff between Palestinian 'human shields' and the Israeli air force."

"New in Gaza: Priest, nun human shields" (Ali Waked, ynetnews.com, 2006/11/22)
Via LGF: "Human shields for terrorists—exactly the kind of tactic that appeals to Western useful idiots":
"For the past two months, the IDF has been called activists and their family members in Gaza to warn them of their intent on bombing their homes.

Palestinians have found away to prevent the bombings; dozens, even hundreds, gather at the homes of those wanted, thereby thwarting the destruction. In recent days, Father Peter and Sister Mary Ellen of Michigan have joined them. ...

These homes have become pilgrimage sites in recent days not only for locals. Foreign peace activists have started to show interests in the phenomenon, and two Americans, a priest and a nun from Michigan, arrived at Jabalya from Michigan to take part in the human shield mission at the Brudi family home."

"A Profiling In Courage" (Investors.com, 2006/11/22)
Profiling II: "Then there's the case of Muhammed al-Qudhaieen and Hamdan al-Shalawi, two Arizona college students removed from an America West flight after twice trying to open the cockpit. The FBI suspected it was a dry run for the 9/11 hijackings, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. One of the students had traveled to Afghanistan. Another became a material witness in the 9/11 investigation.

Even so, the pair filed racial-profiling suits against America West, now part of US Airways. Defending them was none other than the leader of the six imams kicked off the US Airways flight this week.

Turns out the students attended the Tucson, Ariz., mosque of Sheikh Omar Shahin, a Jordan native. Shahin has been the protesters' public face, even returning to the US Airways ticket counter at the Minneapolis airport to scold agents before the cameras.

In an Arizona Republic interview after 9/11, he acknowledged once supporting Osama bin Laden through his mosque in Tucson. FBI investigators believe bin Laden set up a base in Tucson.

Hani Hanjour, who piloted the plane that hit the Pentagon, attended the Tucson mosque along with bin Laden's onetime personal secretary, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. Bin Laden's ex-logistics chief was president of the mosque before Shahin took over.

"These people don't continue to come back to Arizona because they like the sunshine or they like the state," said FBI agent Kenneth Williams. "Something was established there, and it's been there for a long time." And Shahin appears to be in the middle of it." (Hat tip: LGF.)

"Angry Muslim scholars return home" (Chris Kahn, AP/azstarnet.com, 2006/11/22)
Profiling I: "PHOENIX — Furious and travel weary, five Muslim scholars returned home from Minneapolis on Tuesday, 22 hours after a US Airways flight crew refused to welcome them aboard.

The five men — Omar Shahin, Mahmoud Sulaiman, Marwan Sadeddin, Didmar Faja and Ahmad Shqeirat — walked into a Sky Harbor International Airport terminal to chants of "Allah-U Akbar" (God is great) from family and friends, who'd been waiting for more than an hour.

"They are not regular people, you know," said Shahin's wife, Maisoon Skour. 'They're the leaders of our community.'" (Hat tip: LGF. See also: "Minneapolis Airport Incident Update" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2006/11/21))

"British MP warns Europe of 'new anti-Semitism'" (David Byers, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/11/22)
An interview with British Labor MP Dennis MacShane, "a close ally of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and co-author of a hard-hitting report on the rise of anti-Semitism across Europe":
"'You have a witches' brew. You have the rise of ideological Islamism across Europe which is openly anti-Semitic and subscribes to the appalling statements by the president of Iran that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth. Islamist ideological politics are rising in a coherent and organized way - Web sites, meetings, articles and preaching - which demonizes Jews,' he explained.

"Then you get the 'soft' anti-Semitism that you get from Muslim intellectuals - these are often religious. The Muslim Brotherhood, who say that there is a Zionist or Jewish control over the media and politics - whereas just in the 1930s you heard talk of the Jewish conspiracy, today you hear talk about the Jewish Lobby.

"And there is also traditional hard right-wing anti-Semitism," he continued. "Don't forget that in Austria, the far-right got 50 percent of the vote, and in France they knocked off the socialist candidate at the last presidential election, and in England the British National Party is now the second party in quite a number of working class constituencies.

'Then you have the Left, and it's not just the far-left but the legitimate Left's hatred of Israel - this kind of distorted association of Israel and America as the twin demons that have caused all the world's problems, and associate the 'Jewish influence' with all of this.'" (Hat tip: Melanie Phillips.)

"Protesters occupying building detained" (Benjamin Harvey, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/22)
"ISTANBUL, Turkey - Police on Wednesday detained about 40 members of a Turkish nationalist party who earlier had occupied one of Istanbul's most famous buildings, the Haghia Sophia, to protest the visit next week of Pope Benedict XVI.

The protesters belong to the Great Unity Party, a far right-wing group that has previously staged demonstrations against the planned Nov. 28-Dec. 1 visit.

They entered the 6th century former Byzantine church and mosque, shouting "Allahu akbar!" — "God is great!" — and then knelt to perform Islamic prayers.

They also shouted a warning to Benedict: "Pope, don't make a mistake, don't wear out our patience."

A group leader read a statement saying Benedict had offended Muslims with his comments linking violence and Islam, but the reading was interrupted by police.

When the protesters refused to surrender, a policeman used pepper spray on them. Police later rounded up the protesters against a wall outside a door of the Haghia Sophia."

"Jordanian: British are enemies of Islam" (Shafika Mattar, AP/chron.com, 2006/11/22)
"AMMAN, Jordan — A Jordanian accused of opening fire on Western tourists in Amman's Roman amphitheater, killing a Briton and wounding six others, insisted in court Wednesday that God "blessed" him for the attack and said the British are enemies of Islam.

Prosecutors say Nabeel Ahmed Issa al-Jaourah fired a pistol at Westerners visiting the historic site in September, killing British accountant Christopher Stokes. Five other tourists from Australia, Britain, the Netherlands and New Zealand were wounded, along with a Jordanian police officer.

"God blessed me when I killed a British man and hurt others, because they are fighting the Prophet and his soldiers since (the) Balfour Declaration," al-Jaourah told the military court. In the 1917 document, the British government promised to support the creation of Israel.

"The British people ... insulted the honorable Quran and women who wear the head cover," said al-Jaourah, who is a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin. He was apparently referring to comments by British House of Commons leader Jack Straw, who said in October that face-covering Muslim veils inhibit communication." (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

"Norway to Expel Former Leader of Iraqi Terror Group" (AP/FOX News, 2006/11/22)
"OSLO, Norway — A court Wednesday rejected an appeal by the founder of Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic terror group in Iraq, and upheld a government order to expel him from Norway as a threat to national security.

The Kurdish leader Mullah Krekar, a refugee in Norway since 1991, challenged the order to strip him of his refugee status and deport him to Iraq.

In its ruling, the Borgarting appeals court in Oslo rejected his appeal, found that the government has the right to expel him, and ordered Krekar to pay $44,960 in legal costs."

"Rage against Syria fuelled by minister's assassination" (Nicholas Blanford, The Times, 2006/11/22)
"The shooting came a week after six pro-Syrian ministers resigned from the 24-seat Government, plunging the country into turmoil. The resignations came after a deadlock over Hezbollah’s demand that it and its allies be given a greater stake in the Cabinet. Hezbollah says that unless the Government changes its mind the pro-Syrian opposition will begin pushing for early parliamentary elections.

Under the Lebanese Constitution, a government can continue functioning unless one third of the Cabinet resigns or is incapacitated. The resignations and Mr Gemayel’s murder mean that if another minister is removed the Government will fall. Three hours before Mr Gemayel’s murder gunmen opened fire at the offices of Michel Pharaon, the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs. No one was hurt.

Mr Gemayel, who was elected to parliament last year, is the fifth prominent anti-Syrian Lebanese to be killed since Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister, was murdered in February last year. The killings have been widely blamed on Syria, although the country has denied involvement."

Added today:
"Muslim leader sent funds to Irving" (Jamie Doward, The Observer, 2006/11/19)
"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

News and commentary:

"Minneapolis Airport Incident Update" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2006/11/21)
"The incident we reported last night, in which 6 Muslim men were removed from a plane at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, seems to have been a false alarm—and the Council on American Islamic Relations is right there, seething and complaining of prejudice: 6 Muslim Imams Removed From Plane, Group Was Saying Evening Prayers Prior To Boarding Plane In Minneapolis.

(AP) The Council on American-Islamic Relations called Tuesday for an investigation into the behavior of airline staff and airport security in the removal of six Muslim scholars from a US Airways flight a day earlier.

A passenger raised concerns about the imams — three of whom said their normal evening prayers in the airport terminal before boarding the Phoenix-bound plane, according to one — through a note passed to a flight attendant, according to Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways.

“We are concerned that crew members, passengers and security personnel may have succumbed to fear and prejudice based on stereotyping of Muslims and Islam,” Nihad Awad, the council’s executive director, said in a news release. ...

Why in the world would Americans be suspicious of Muslims loudly, publicly praying on airplanes? Go figure."

"Anti-Syria politician killed in Lebanon" (Sam F. Ghattas, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/21)
"BEIRUT, Lebanon - Pierre Gemayel, an anti-Syrian politician and scion of Lebanon's most prominent Christian family, was gunned down Tuesday in a carefully orchestrated assassination that heightened tensions between the U.S.-backed government and the militant Hezbollah.

Anti-Syrian politicians quickly accused Damascus, as they have in previous assassinations of Lebanese opponents of its larger neighbor. Gemayel, 34, an outspoken opponent of the Syrian-allied Hezbollah, was the fifth anti-Syrian figure killed in the past two years and the first member of the government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora to be slain. ...

Gemayel, Lebanon's industry minister and a member of the Phalange Party, had just left a church and was traveling through Jdeideh when a vehicle in front of him slammed to a stop, causing his car to ram it, security officials said. Witnesses said Gemayel's car was also struck from behind.

Three gunmen stepped out of the other vehicles and shot Gemayel at point-blank range with automatic weapons, security officials said."

"Muslim birthrate worries Russia" (Michael Mainville, The Washington Times, 2006/11/21)
"MOSCOW -- Low domestic birthrates and rising immigration from the former Soviet republics are producing explosive growth in Russia's Muslim community, which is on a track to account for more than half the population by midcentury.

"Russia is going through a religious transformation that will be of even greater consequence for the international community than the collapse of the Soviet Union," said Paul Goble, a specialist on Islam in Russia and research associate at the University of Tartu in Estonia. ...

Russia's Muslim population has increased by 40 percent since 1989, to about 25 million. By 2015, Muslims will make up a majority of Russia's conscript army and by 2020 one-fifth of the population.

"If nothing changes, in 30 years, people of Muslim descent will definitely outnumber ethnic Russians," Mr. Goble said." (See also: "Germany 'well on the way to becoming a Muslim state by 2050'" (Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, 2006/11/15))

Monday, November 20, 2006

News and commentary:

"Danes' Anti-Immigrant Backlash Marks Radical Shift" (Sylvia Poggioli, NPR, 2006/11/20)
"An anti-immigrant backlash, bordering on xenophobia, is sweeping across Europe. Sentiments once associated with ultra right-wing parties are becoming mainstream. Many taboos are being broken -- nowhere more starkly than in Denmark -- the erstwhile poster child of the welcoming and nurturing welfare state.

Earlier this year, that haven of solidarity and liberalism was shaken by violent protests and deaths in the Muslim world over cartoons of Mohammed that were published in a Danish paper. Suddenly, Danes began to see their own Muslim immigrants as a threat to their national identity. ...

The difficulty of integrating Muslims who don't share Western values is the No.1 topic of discussion.

Currently, the nation's best-selling book is called Islamists and Naivists.

"We compare Islamism to Nazism and communism because they are all three of them a totalitarian ideology," says Karen Jespersen, who co-wrote the book with her husband, Ralf Pittlekow.

Their politically incorrect analysis would suggest they're right-wingers. But they're diehard Social Democrats -- proud veterans of the student protests of the 1960s." (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch.)

"Belief in a better world should not become a casualty of Iraq" (Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/20)
"Margaret Hodge has introduced an interesting new concept into the discussion of post-war Iraq – "moral imperialism". In her reported comment last week, she seemed to be blaming Tony Blair for, in effect, having too much conviction: so convinced was he of the rightness and the virtue of his own political values that he was prepared to impose them on unwilling peoples in inappropriate parts of the world.

The epithet may have been novel but the argument – that the shambles in Iraq has been a consequence of the United States and Britain imperiously choosing to inflict democracy on people who were (in the old paternalist phrase) "not ready for it" – has become pretty much the received wisdom. It is intriguing to see how many politicians and commentators seem to accept this patronising colonial analysis.

What, after all, does it amount to? That some countries are better left with their genocidal dictatorships in place." (See also: "Compare bloodshed. Saddam is then the moral victor, not Bush" (Kevin Toolis, The Times, 2006/11/11))

"Fighting back: the city determined not to become al-Qaeda's capital" (Martin Fletcher, The Times, 2006/11/20)
"While the world’s attention has been focused on Baghdad’s slide into sectarian warfare, something remarkable has been happening in Ramadi, a city of 400,000 inhabitants that al-Qaeda and its Iraqi allies have controlled since mid-2004 and would like to make the capital of their cherished Islamic caliphate.

A power struggle has erupted: al-Qaeda’s reign of terror is being challenged. Sheikh Sittar and many of his fellow tribal leaders have cast their lot with the once-reviled US military. They are persuading hundreds of their followers to sign up for the previously defunct Iraqi police. American troops are moving into a city that was, until recently, a virtual no-go area. A battle is raging for the allegiance of Ramadi’s battered and terrified citizens and the outcome could have far-reaching consequences.

Ramadi has been the insurgency’s stronghold for the past two years. It is the conduit for weapons and foreign fighters arriving from Syria and Saudi Arabia. To reclaim it would deal a severe blow to the insurgency throughout the Sunni triangle and counter mounting criticism of the war back in America.

Sheikh Sittar and US commanders believe that the tide is turning in their favour. “Most of the people are now convinced that coalition forces are friends, and that the enemy is al-Qaeda,” the 35-year-old Sheikh claimed in his first face-to-face interview with a Western newspaper."

 

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

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