Confessions of a BBC liberalI was too tired to read the whole thing, so I did a search for these words, to see if the article mentioned them:
The BBC has finally come clean about its bias, says a former editor, who wrote Yes, Minister
Technorati Tag: Israel and BBC and Media Bias.
It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.The BBC bias seems to be in favor of multiculturalism--so that would explain the pro-Moslem and anti-American bias that the BBC is known for.
A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.
It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.
At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.
The full account of the meeting shows how senior BBC figures queued up to lambast their employer.What it does not explain is the anti-Israel bias.
Political pundit Andrew Marr said: 'The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.'
Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to 'correct', it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it 'no moral weight'.
Former BBC business editor Jeff Randall said he complained to a 'very senior news executive', about the BBC's pro-multicultural stance but was given the reply: 'The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it.'
Technorati Tag: Israel and BBC and Medias Bias.
Jack Straw writes that "wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult".
A British education minister says he supports universities that ban Islamic students from wearing veils.
Saleh seems to be echoing something more controversial that Amir Taheri wrote back in 2004:Saleh, known in Egypt as “the women’s mufti” for her numerous fatwas, or religious edicts relating to women, rebutted on daily al-Sharq Al-Awsat, that hers was “a personal comment on an increasingly common phenomenon but which was not meant in any way to offend women.”
“There is a significant difference between the hijab, a simple veil which frames the face, and the niqab, which leaves only the eyes visible” she added. “The first is a religious duty, but the second is a sheer cultural convention, which has no raison d’etre in Islamic sources” she said.
The headgear in question has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet.This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shi'ite community.
In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told this writer that the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings. (A casual visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the Louvres in Paris, would reveal the original of the neo-Islamist hijab in numerous paintings depicting Virgin Mary and other female figures from the Old and New Testament.)
Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear, Shi'ite women would be clearly marked out, and thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the time controlled southern Lebanon.
Sadr's neo-hijab made its first appearance in Iran in 1977 as a symbol of Islamist-Marxist opposition to the Shah's regime. When the mullahs seized power in Tehran in 1979, the number of women wearing the hijab exploded into tens of thousands.
In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic, announced that "scientific research had shown that women's hair emitted rays that drove men insane." To protect the public, the new Islamist regime passed a law in 1982 making the hijab mandatory for females aged above six, regardless of religious faith. Violating the hijab code was made punishable by 100 lashes of the cane and six months imprisonment.
By the mid 1980s, a form of hijab never seen in Islam before the 1970s had become standard gear for millions of women all over the world, including Europe and America.
But the bottom line is, just what does Europe think they are doing?
Of all the ways to confront the growing problem of Islamist violence in Europe, why tackle an issue that is more likely to encourage moderates to join the extremists in protesting what they interpret as an assault on their religion?
Europe is going after veils while failing to go after those who in speech and action encourage the Islamist extremists.Technorati Tag: Hijab and Blair and Amir Taheri.
Pope Benedict said on Wednesday Christians could not allow their beliefs and identity to be diluted for the sake of dialogue with other religions.Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that Europe may be re-evaluating its approach:
"We have to remember that this identity of ours calls for strength, clarity, and courage in the world in which we live," he told pilgrims and tourists at his weekly general audience.
Since he made controversial comments on Islam a month ago, the question of how much dialogue Catholics should have with other religions has become a point of debate in the Church.
..."But this path of dialogue that is so necessary must not lead us to forget the duty to firmly underscore the tenets and identity of our Christian faith that cannot be renounced."
...The leader of more than one billion Catholics has several times expressed regret for the reaction to the speech, saying his words were misunderstood. But he has stopped short of the unequivocal apology wanted by Muslims.
Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values....[a worry] shared by centrists across Europe angry at terror attacks in the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.
For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.
So you have Christians on the one side taking a stronger stand for their religion even while leaving the possibility of dialog open. On the other side you have the Europeans, who have decided that there are limits, even to tolerance.
Technorati Tag: Pope Benedict and Jack Straw and Islam.
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Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil havalim, Israel, Judaism.John Branchizio, 37, of Texas; John Linde Jr., 30, of Missouri; and Mark Parsons, 31, of New Jersey, all died in Gaza as a direct result of Palestinian terror. They are among the more than 50 American citizens murdered by Palestinian terrorists since the signing of the Oslo accords, and none of their killers have yet to pay for their actions.Also, October means that once again Bush is due to sign another waiver of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987, the congressionally mandated downgrade of the status of the PLO Office in the United States.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Palestinians and Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig and Terrorism and Gaza.
Highly unbalanced report mostly ignores plight of Israeli civilians, portrays Israelis as soldiers and politicians in suits, while coverage from Lebanon features in-depth interviews with Lebanese civilians and images of children and ruins; no mention of large number of Israelis displaced from their homes in northIn a separate report on the media in general, YNet notes that media bias, so evident during the war, continued after the war as well. In this CNN is consistent:
As a tentative ceasefire appeared to take hold, CNN reported on the "thousands of refugees (who) poured back into southern Lebanon, trying to return home." There was, however, no coverage given in the report to the thousands of displaced Israelis in central and southern Israel, who are waiting to go back to their own homes in northern Israel, some of which have been destroyed.AP actually did cover northern Israel and Haifa; BBC continued to produce one-sided reporting, going so far as to prominently feature anti-war protests in Israel on their website while ignoring Lebanese dissent against Hezbollah.
During its television coverage of the war in Lebanon on Sunday, CNN chose the word "resistance" to describe Hizbullah's actions in Lebanon – a term used by Hizbullah - as well as Hamas, and Iraqi jihadis - to describe their own attacks. 'Resistance' is however a value laden term, which implicitly argues that armed jihad organizations are 'resisting' and defending against aggression, rather than initiating it.On way to get a real sense of what Israelis feel and experience is to go to israelvoices.com
CNN also twice described Israeli leaflets dropped over Lebanon as "propaganda." While it has done the same with American army leaflets dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan, CNN appears to shy away from describing leaflets issued by jihadi and terror organizations as "propaganda," using instead terms like "urge" and "called on" to describe leaflets issued by Hamas in Gaza or the Taliban in Afghanistan.
IsraelVoices.com was established in the midst of the 2006 summer war that erupted between Israel and Hizballah terrorists, operating with close guidance and support from Iran and Syria. In its first month, the violence claimed over a thousand lives on both sides of Israel’s northern border and deliberately brought thousands of deadly missiles directly into Israeli civilian neighborhoods. While Israelis endured the pain of war as they stood up united against terror, they were shocked by the horror of seeing their nation vilified in the world press day-after-day, night-after-night by reporters, photographers and editors who allowed themselves – wittingly or not – to be directed, misled and callously used by terrorists to misinform global audiences about Israel’s fight for security, freedom and survival.o Reuters is infested with faked and staged photos and has admitted to appeasing terrorists.
Their actions are not without consequence. Across the globe, no less than hundreds of millions of people follow the story of modern Israel with great interest and intensity. Many are inspired by religious passions, yearning for the peace of Jerusalem that is central to three main world religions. Many more recognize that as goes Israel, so goes the fate of the free world. Even a cursory glance of a regional map shows a sliver of land surrounded by boundless territories ruled by dictators, monarchs, sheiks, and fanatics for whom the basic values of western society are the very antithesis of their vision for their own nations, peoples and the world. In the battle for the future of the free world, typical Israelis find themselves on the front lines.
These are their stories, in their own words, of their own search for relatively normal lives in a dangerous, hostile region of the world; opportunities for love and work; leisure and liberty; a chance to dream, build, risk and sacrifice; the freedom to live their lives and contribute to a better world.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Media Bias and CNN and Reuters and BBC.
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Reuters' head of PR Moira Whittle said in response: "Reuters has suspended a photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to a photograph showing smoke billowing from buildings following an air strike on Beirut. Reuters takes such matters extremely seriously as it is strictly against company editorial policy to alter pictures."
"As soon as the allegation came to light, the photograph, filed on Saturday 5 August, was removed from the file and a replacement, showing the same scene, was sent. The explanation for the removal was the improper use of photo-editing software," she added.
In his analysis of the doctored photo, LGF also noted the identity of the person who took the picture:
The photographer who took this picture (probably also the person who doctored it), Adnan Hajj, is rather well-known to LGF readers. In fact, rather well-known to the entire world.
He also took this infamous photograph from Qana of the guy in the green helmet, parading a dead body around for pictures, featured on the front pages of newspapers worldwide: Yahoo! News Photo.
Meanwhile Honest Reporting has 3 basic questions that Reuters needs to answer:
That same Honest Reporting communique also features a piece on media manipulation by Hizbollah--it features an article by Tom Gross in the National Review entitled The Media Aims Its Missles.
Gross writes about the BBC featuring audience comments that Israeli attacks are likely to increase support for Hizbollah, and then notes that it is not Israel who will attract recruits to Hizbollah as much as the biased and inflammatory reporting from the Western TV stations:
While the slanted comments and interviews are bad enough, the degree of pictorial distortion is even worse. From the way many TV stations worldwide are portraying it, you would think Beirut has begun to resemble Dresden and Hamburg in the aftermath of World War II air raids. International television channels have used the same footage of Beirut over and over, showing the destruction of a few individual buildings in a manner which suggests half the city has been razed.Gross also quotes journalists who admit that Hizbollah has controlled their reports and notes the lack of balanced coverage in regards to Hizbollah's attacks and their effect in Israel.
A careful look at aerial satellite photos of the areas targeted by Israel in Beirut shows that certain specific buildings housing Hezbollah command centers in the city’s southern suburbs have been singled out. Most of the rest of Beirut, apart from strategic sites like airport runways used to ferry Hezbollah men and weapons in and out of Lebanon, has been left pretty much untouched.
Read the entire National Review article.
Update: Pajamas Media has all kinds of information about Reutersgate, including the news that Reutersgate is now an entry in Wikipedia.
Over at The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez wonders about what may be another Adnan Hajj production.
Reuters own article on the story is here, including the photographers claim that it was an accident due to poor lighting and an ettempt to get rid of dust marks.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Media Bias and Lebanon and Hizbollah and Hezbollah.
With Arab talk of "Israeli Occupation," you might forget that what are today Arab countries today were not always that way. In The Arab Mind, Raphael Patai gives a short rundown:
Within eighty years after the death of Muhammad (632), the Arabs held sway over Spain, North Africa, Egypt, the Fertile Crescent and several contiguous areas, most of which have remained both Arab and Muslim to the present day. Successive generations carried the banner of Islam into more remote parts of the world, including, in the east, Central Asia as far as Mongolia, the Indian Peninusla, and Southeast Asia; in the west, the Balkans and Hungary; and in the south the wide Sudan belt of Africa. (p. 48)Bernard Lewis makes the point even more clearly. In What Went Wrong, Lewis notes
In the course of the seventh century, Muslim armies advancing from Arabia conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, all until then part of Christendom, and most of the new recruits to Islam, west of Iran and Arabia, were indeed converts from Christianity. (p.4, emphasis added)Lewis describes how the Moslem invasions did not stop there.
At the peak of Islamic power, there was only one civilization that was comparable in the level quality and variety of achievement; that of course was China. (p. 6)The difference being that China was limited to one area.
In The Crisis of Islam, Lewis writes
By this time the jihad had become almost entirely defensive--resisting the Reconquest in Spain and Russia, resisting the movements for national self-liberation by the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and finally, as Muslims see it, defending the very heartlands of Islam against infidel attack. (p. 34 emphasis added)By contrast, pre-1948 Palestine was a bargain--where Jews were willing to share a land that never lacked for some Jewish presence, in spite of its desolation at the hands of the Arab occupation, as recorded by Mark Twain in Innocents Abroad:
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies...Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is becorme a pauper village...But the Arab occupier-as-occupied claim goes along with similar claims made regarding the Taj Mahal and their continued claim to Spain. As Ephraim Karsh writes:
...Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land? (online here)
the fact is that the fuel of Islamic imperialism remains as volatile as ever, and is very far from having burned itself out. To deny its force is the height of folly, and to imagine that it can be appeased or deflected is to play into its hands. Only when it is defeated, and when the faith of Islam is no longer a tool of Islamic political ambition, will the inhabitants of Muslim lands, and the rest of the world, be able to look forward to a future less burdened by Saladins and their gory dreams.But the first step is to recognize the threat, and we are not even up to that point yet.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Islamism and Middle East and Occupation and Arab.
For a theocratic regime that claims a mandate from God, the very idea of compromise is anathema. Great issues of war and peace will be resolved by God's will, not by human negotiators. Better to lose than to bargain with the devil. Better to suffer physical hardship than humiliation.He points to similar difficulties with Al-Qaeda and the fact that bin Laden has expressed the willingness to show patience and wait for the West to tire--"being patient and steady is much better, and the end counts."
The problem is that Ignatius is himself misreads the enemy. What is dignity...what is respect? It is to be treated as an equal. Rodney Dangerfield's persona, in complaining about the lack of respect he got, was asking for nothing more than equality, to be treated like everyone else. However, what Islamists are demanding is not being treated as an equal.A word that recurs in radical Muslim proclamations is "dignity." That is not a political demand, nor one that can be achieved through negotiation. Indeed, for groups that feel victimized, negotiation with a powerful adversary can itself be demeaning. That's why the unyielding Yasser Arafat remained popular among Palestinians, despite his failure to deliver concrete benefits. He was a symbol of pride and resistance. Hamas, too, gains support because of its rigid steadfastness, and a strategy that seeks to punish pro-Hamas Palestinians into compromise will probably fail for the same reason.
The Muslim demand for respect isn't something that can be negotiated, but that doesn't mean the West shouldn't take it seriously. For as the Muslim world gains a greater sense of dignity in its dealings with the West, the fundamental weapon of Iran, al-Qaeda and Hamas will lose much of its potency.
Unfortunately for Spain's Muslims, the militants who swear loyalty to Osama bin Laden are history buffs too. In claiming responsibility for the March bombings, they cited the loss of "Al Andalus" as motivation.In a post from last year--Defender of the Faith--David Frum writes about “Islam in Britain,” a report by the UK Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, available from www.isic-centre.org. The report quotes Zaki Badawi, president of London’s Muslim College, holder of the Order of the British Empire, who is also widely recognized as the “unofficial leader, representative, and advocate of Britain’s mainline Muslims.” According to Mr. Badawi
"We will continue our jihad until martyrdom in the land of Tarik Ben Ziyad," they said in a communique issued after the massacre, alluding to the Moorish warrior and original Islamic conqueror of the Iberian peninsula.
”A proselytizing religion cannot stand still. It can either expand or contract. Islam endeavors to expand in Britain. … Islam is a universal religion. It aims at bringing its message to all corners of the earth. It hopes that one day the whole of humanity will be one Muslim community, the Umma...This reflects the historical fact that Muslims, from the start, lived under their own law. Muslim theologians naturally produced a theology with this in view – it is a theology of the majority. Being a minority was not seriously considered or even contemplated. … Muslim theology offers, up to the present, no systematic formulation of the status of being in a minority.” [ellipses added]The report concludes:
”Muslims find it difficult to assume minority status in a majority non-Muslim society. More than other minority communities, they constantly, sometimes subconsciously, strive to redress the balance and assume an expanding and dominant position in their host countries.”If, according to Ignatius, "as the Muslim world gains a greater sense of dignity in its dealings with the West, the fundamental weapon of Iran, al-Qaeda and Hamas will lose much of its potency," then why is it demanding ever more on the one hand, while seeking to put limits on the Western value of free speech and cultural symbols (going so far as to have the crown or the cross of St. George removed from police badges) on the other?
Technorati Tag: Islam and Islamists and Washington Post and Hamas and Moslem World and David Frum and Zaki Badawi.
FACT: Suicide terrorism is not primarily a product of Islamic fundamentalism.Pape's main point that is being widely quoted is that the current wave of terrorism is a response to occupation. Gateway Pundit writes about former Democratic Senator Jim Abourezk's reaction to the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in CounterPunch:
FACT: The world’s leading practitioners of suicide terrorism are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka–a secular, Marxist-Leninist group drawn from Hindu families.
FACT: Ninety-five percent of suicide terrorist attacks occur as part of coherent campaigns organized by large militant organizations with significant public support.
FACT: Every suicide terrorist campaign has had a clear goal that is secular and political: to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.
FACT: Al-Qaeda fits the above pattern. Although Saudi Arabia is not under American military occupation per se, one major objective of al-Qaeda is the expulsion of U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf region, and as a result there have been repeated attacks by terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden against American troops in Saudi Arabia and the region as a whole.
FACT: Despite their rhetoric, democracies–including the United States–have routinely made concessions to suicide terrorists. Suicide terrorism is on the rise because terrorists have learned that it’s effective.
I am realistic enough to know that, because the Congress is pretty much reliant on money from radical Zionists, stopping the flow of American taxpayers' money to Israel will not come soon. But the sooner it does end, the sooner the violence will stop...Racism against people of Arab descent is getting worse...Terrorism does not exist in a vacuum. It does not come from thin air. It is a result of people who believe that their lives cannot be improved by occupation and that there is nothing left for them to do except to commit acts of terrorism.The attempt to blame the current wave of Islamist terrorism around the world on 'occupation' in general--an on Israel and the US in particular--does not hold water.
there have been a great many foreign occupations and counterinsurgencies in the world that were not resisted with suicide bombings. Other than Japanese kamikaze (who in any case confined themselves to military targets), why are Muslims the only people who resist occupation with suicide bombings if Islamic fundamentalism is not the main cause of suicide bombings? Is this because moderate Muslims become suicide bombers? What, precisely, is his point?o Bernard Lewis, in The Crisis of Islam, notes the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late December 1979, which finally brought a watered-down condemnation from the UN General Assembly "strongly deploring the recent armed intervention in Afghanistan"--Syria and Algeria abstaind, South Yemen voted against, Libya was absent, and the PLO observer defended Russia. In the end:
it was left to the United States to organize, with some success , an Islamic counteratack to Soviet imperialism in Afghanistan. [p. 91-92]Where was the resistance to foreign occupation--and the suicide bombers?
the facts are that since 1980, suicide terrorist attacks from around the world over half have been secular. What over 95 per cent of suicide attacks around the world [are about] is not religion, but a specific strategic purpose - to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly and this is in fact a centrepiece of Al Qaeda's strategic logic, which is to compel the United States and Western countries to abandon military commitments on the Arabian Peninsula. [emphasis added]Besides insisting on limiting his model to modern democracies--letting Russia's invasion of Afghanistan off the hook--he applies his model to territory that is 'viewed' as homeland or 'prized'. Papes odd articulation avoids dealing with the history of 'Palestine' that was never a country of a Palestinian people. But it also allows any imagined right by Islamist terrorists as justification for murder. For example, the model would give legitimacy to the Moslem claim to the Taj Mahal. Another example: Dhimmi Watch quotes an article in the LA Times, commenting:
At least the article is honest enough to acknowledge the traditionalist basis of the jihadist claims to Spain:
Unfortunately for Spain's Muslims, the militants who swear loyalty to Osama bin Laden are history buffs too. In claiming responsibility for the March bombings, they cited the loss of "Al Andalus" as motivation."We will continue our jihad until martyrdom in the land of Tarik Ben Ziyad," they said in a communique issued after the massacre, alluding to the Moorish warrior and original Islamic conqueror of the Iberian peninsula.
o In A War On Jihadism -- Not 'Terror', Jonathan Rauch quotes Islamic Imperialism: A History by Efraim Karsh who writes that "The Islamic imperial dream of world domination has remained very much alive in the hearts and minds of many Muslims" and that "Declaring a holy war against the infidel has been a standard practice of countless imperial rulers and aspirants since the rise of Islam."
Technorati Tag: Israel and Terrorism and Jihad and Islamist and Robert Pape.
Abu Hattab, 27, said that if even he eventually gets paid for March, he'll have to give nearly half his paycheck to the neighborhood grocery for last month's expenses and may not have enough left for rent.While it is true that Fatah has the reputation for the corruption that created the current mess that Hamas is stuck with, apparently when it came to dealing with the deficits and shortfalls, Fatah had one thing going for it that Hamas will not:
If Hamas cannot provide for the Palestinians, it has no business remaining in power, he said.
"It's not simple for Hamas but we want to live, with or without Hamas," Abu Hattab said. "If it gets worse, then we can just say farewell (to Hamas)."
...Amin Makhboul, a clerk with the Palestinian Interior Ministry in the West Bank city of Nablus, said he believes the Palestinian people will throw Hamas out of power if the situation deteriorates further. The ministry doesn't even have office paper due to the lack of funds, Makhboul said.
"We will have a great mess without salaries," Makhboul said. "Hamas won't be able to stay in power more than three or four months like this."
moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and members of his Fatah Party made the payroll each month, often by borrowing from banks or appealing to foreign donors for more cash. Hamas does not have such an option.Meanwhile, Hamas does not have control over the other terrorist factions. It cannot prevent missiles being fired from Gaza at Israel, at a time that for the first time, Hamas' fortunes rely on their ability to stop the missiles, not fire them. Moreover, Fatah retains control over security services, including the police.
The BBC's Alan Johnston in Gaza says the new Palestinian government has a severe lack of experience. None of its ministers have been in government before and they have taken over ministries packed with officials loyal to the Fatah party.This of course is a recipe for trouble--if not for an outright civil war, then possibly the overthrow of the Hamas government:
Fatah leaders are planning to topple the new Hamas government through public pressure. The sources said senior Fatah members are planning to recruit armed factions affiliated to Fatah, such as the Al-Aq'sa Martyrs Brigades, as well as impoverished civilians, and organize mass protests against the government.And if Fatah does not overthrow Hamas, maybe Al Qaeda will--
Analysts believe that, as its fortunes wane in Iraq, Al-Qaeda thinks some form of coup in Gaza or the West Bank could help it increase support across the Middle East, where the fate of the Palestinians is a symbol of the wider Arab cause.According to The Counterrorism Blog:
Al Zawahiri's recent message to Hamas encouraging continuing their attack on Israel has been received coldly by some in the Hamas leadership. It seems as though there might be a fracture between the "political wing" and the military wing of Hamas. In fact, Hamas has been criticized by some of its own for running in the elections and implementing a "truce" with Israel.
That's why Al Qaeda is using this perceived weakness to recruit among disenchanted hardcore Hamas members.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Hamas and Fatah and Gaza and Al-Qaeda and Abbas.
Washington plans to curtail contacts with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction and other parties if they join a Palestinian government led by the militant group Hamas, Western diplomatic sources said on Monday.If only.
Fatah has so far said it has no intention of joining the new government, which the law states must be formed by the end of the month, unless Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, changes its political program. [emphasis added]Translation: Don't rock the boat! Fatah wishes Hamas would just hush up about wanting to destroy Israel. After all, Fatah wants the exact same thing. Just take a look at their website, where according to the Fateh Constitution in Chapter I, its goals include:
Article (12) Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.Now if only Hamas wouldn't be so loud about it, the US and Europe would be demanding that Israel support the new Hamas government as well.
Article (13) Establishing an independent democratic state with complete sovereignty on all Palestinian lands, and Jerusalem is its capital city, and protecting the citizens' legal and equal rights without any racial or religious discrimination.
Diplomatic sources said U.S. restrictions on contacts and assistance to Hamas would apply to members of Fatah and other parties if they joined a government under the militant group.Translation: the US will not penalize Fatah for associating with a terrorist organization unless they make it really, really, REALLY obvious.
"We have clearly declared that the Aksa Martyrs Brigades are part of Fatah. We are committed to them and Fatah bears full responsibility for the group."o In July 2004, Ahmed Qurei, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority stated:
"The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, military wing of the Fatah movement will not be dissolved and Fatah will never relinquish its military wing."Has Fatah ever disavowed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade? But as long as they don't make a big deal of it...
If Fatah joins as an organization, it would fall into the same category," said a diplomatic source involved in U.S. deliberations. "Of course, if Hamas and other government members accept the Quartet principles, that changes the situation."Translation: Just say you accept the Roadmap and we can continue with business as usual.
Israel says that peace talks, stalled for almost a year by violence, cannot resume unless Abbas dismantles militant groups and that it will not negotiate with a government led by Hamas or any group bent on destroying the Jewish state.Translation: Israel insists on Abbas following the Roadmap--or at least says it does.
Bringing Fatah, which is committed to seeking a negotiated peace with Israel, into the new government could help Hamas avoid political turmoil at home and undercut U.S. and Israeli efforts to isolate the group internationally.[emphasis added]Actually, that is a trick question. Don't confuse translation with a complete fabrication.
Israel?It is rabidly anti-American, and it is the biggest draw in town.
...In one scene, trigger-happy US troops massacre civilians at a wedding party.
In another they firebomb a mosque during evening prayer. There are multiple summary executions.
And for the first time, the real-life abuses by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison are played out on the big screen.
Even the doctor - played by Gary Busey - is evil, removing human organs from Iraqi prisoners to send to patients in the US, Israel and Britain.
And the movie even has an inspirational message:A virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war has provoked a storm of protest in Germany after it sold out to cheering audiences from the country's 2.5 million-strong Turkish community.
Valley of the Wolves, by the Turkish director Serdan Akar, shows crazed American GIs massacring innocent guests at a wedding party and scenes in which a Jewish surgeon removes organs from Iraqi prisoners in a style reminiscent of the Nazi death camp doctor Joseph Mengele.
In the closing sequence, the hero is shown plunging a dagger into the heart of a US commander called Sam, played by Billy Zane. The audience responded by standing up and chanting "Allah is great!"The movie defies all logic. It's as if the West has lost all sense of pride and doesn't care who is taken down.
Technorati Tag: Valley of the Wolves and Anti-semitism and Zane and Busey.
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Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil havalim, Israel, Judaism.
