A fourth round of indirect talks between Syrian and Israeli representatives was concluded in Istanbul this week and as the Turkish mediators kept themselves in shape conveying messages between the hotel rooms of the two countries’ delegations, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was keen to stress the urgency of the hour.

The time was approaching, the prime minister said, when gestures would no longer be enough. Rather, it would soon be time for the Syrians to make their choice between the “Iranian grip” and their partnership in the “axis of evil,” and rejoining the “family of nations” in pursuit of peace and “economic development.”

Actions and statements from Syria and its allies, however, convey a distinctly less pressing sense of the negotiations. More indirect contacts have been tentatively scheduled for later this month, but for the Syrians, the already considerable benefits derived from the very act of talking are more important than the talks themselves. Damascus’s allies in Iran have also given no sign of real concern that their most important Arab allies are about to jump ship.

Damascus’s main aim in entering the talks was to use them as a means to rebuild relations with the US and other Western powers, in particular France. These reached a nadir in recent years, most importantly because of Syrian subversion in Lebanon, and suspicions of Damascus’s involvement in the murder of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri and a string of subsequent political murders in that country. Syria is determined to prevent the functioning of the international tribunal into the Hariri murder.

The talks with Israel are intended to demonstrate Syria’s willingness to conform with Western hopes for a peace breakthrough in the region. They are part of a sort of “carrot and stick” strategy pursued by Syria, whereby its clients - for example Hizbullah - make tangible gains through the brute employment of political violence. Once it has been established that Syria and its friends cannot be ignored, Damascus then sets out to reap diplomatic gains by offering a cautious hand of reconciliation.

But this hand of reconciliation is intended to add a layer to the gains achieved through violence - not to bargain them away. This strategy has served Syria well in the past. It has been likened to an arsonist who offers his service to the fire brigade.

With regard to Syria’s contact with Israel, the terms have been clear from the outset. Damascus is in no hurry. Syrian officials, speaking in Arabic, have made clear that they believe the negotiations would likely take between one and three years for completion, and that no summit meeting would be likely in the foreseeable future.

The Syrians have also made clear that Damascus’s long-standing alliance with Iran is not a subject of discussion in the talks, which are concerned with regaining the Golan Heights by Syria only. As Samir Taqi, the Syrian “independent researcher” who handled the initial contacts preceding the negotiations put it, “It would be naive to think Syria will neglect or abandon its strategic alliances that do not stem from the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

So far, the strategy seems to be paying dividends. For the cost of the flight tickets and hotel rooms in Istanbul, Assad has ended Syria’s isolation. He and his wife found themselves feted in Paris in early July where Syria was welcomed into French President Sarkozy’s new Mediterranean Forum. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem beamed after his meetings with French officials that the Hariri tribunal had not even been mentioned.

The reception in Washington has been more cautious, of course. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welsh made it clear that he was not prepared to meet with Syrian official Riad Daoudi as part of talks with an “unofficial” Syrian delegation in the US last week.

But here, given Syria’s projected time frame for negotiations with Israel, it is evident that Damascus is looking beyond its foes in the Bush Administration. Assad evidently expects a more friendly face in the White House by early 2009, and this offers a further reason for Syria’s lack of haste.

With all this rapprochement going on, the alliance with Iran seems safe and sound. Muallem was in Teheran this week, and met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. The two reconfirmed what Ahmedinejad called their “regional cooperation,” and the Iranian president lauded the foiling of “the Zionist regime” and America’s plans in Lebanon and Syria.

Thus, the act of talking in Istanbul seems a worthy investment. But it is the side benefits of the conversation which interests Damascus.

This was perhaps most eloquently summed up yesterday on the Web site of the official Syrian newspaper Tishreen. While the regional newspaper Sharq al-Awsat devoted two editorials this week to dissecting the negotiations, on the same day that the talks resumed, Tishreen’s homepage failed even to acknowledge that they were taking place. Instead, the lead story on its Web site informed readers that his excellency President Bashar Assad met with a delegation of American churchmen. In the meeting, we are told, his excellency stressed the importance of dialogue between nations.

There could be few more eloquent demonstrations of Syrian intentions. When it comes to negotiating with Israel, Assad is keen to take the dowry, while showing little enthusiasm for embracing the bride.

It’s bizarre. We hear all this belly-aching about how awful it was to dump Afghanistan after the Soviets were evicted. And it was awful to leave Afghanistan in the hands of the Mujahideen.

But now we hear that we should abandon Iraq “immediately.” The result would be the same as abandoning Afghanistan: the vacuum would be filled by Islamist terrorists.

al-Qaeda’s home was Afghanistan, as guests of the Taliban. Why do people think al-Qaeda is trying so hard to destabilize Iraq?

DOH! This current failure-in-Iraq-at-all-costs thinking by “progressives” is just plain nonsensical. To think that they would have the U.S. abandon a nascent democracy — just because of sour grapes over President Bush — is really petty.

Even Obama has soft-peddled his immediate withdrawal promise.

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Folks: I am getting many articles on the Balkan Mess. I am still no expert but what must be admitted is this: The West, including America, has been “had” in terms of signing on to only one acceptable narrative: The Christian Serbs are the evil aggressors and the Muslim separatists and imperialists are the innocent victims. (Where have we heard this before?)

The truth: That all sides committed war crimes but not genocide is apparently too complicated to bear. Anyway, I am reposting an entire article that has just appeared. Once again, dear reader, tell me what you know and what you think about this. … (Continue reading…)

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Press and pundits applauded George Bush’s decision last month to send a representative to Geneva to join a meeting with Iran’s nuclear negotiator. Barack Obama, the 2008 presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said, “Now that the United States is involved, it should stay involved with the full strength of our diplomacy.” Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, said the decision might be “the most welcome flip flop in diplomatic history”.

To bring the Islamic Republic into compliance with its international commitments through peaceful means is a noble goal. Nevertheless, the White House reversal was the wrong move at the wrong time. Just as democracy is about more than elections, diplomacy is about more than just a willingness to talk. Absent the preliminary work necessary for its success and attention to timing, diplomacy can accelerate conflict.

Washington’s insistence that Tehran cease its nuclear enrichment makes sense. While proponents of diplomacy call this a precondition, abandoning such a demand both unilaterally sets aside three UN Security Council resolutions and enables Iranian officials to run down the clock as they near irreversible nuclear capability.

Even if the White House waffles back to its earlier position, the damage is done. By establishing–and then voiding–the redline laid down by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the United States would not talk until the Islamic Republic suspended its uranium enrichment, the Bush administration undercut the credibility of future redlines. Indeed, this is the message that many Iranians have taken. On August 1, 2008, for example, Ali Reza Hosseini, an employee at the Strategic Studies Institute at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, urged the Iranian leadership “not to take the secretary of state’s ultimatums seriously”.

This raises the probability that Iranian officials will misread the determination of Bush or his successor administration to prevent the Islamic Republic from achieving a military nuclear capability. Where self-described realists and progressives see flexibility, Iranian officials see weakness. “America has no other choice but to leave the Middle East region beaten and humiliated,” stated Mohammad Ja’far Assadi, newly-appointed chief of the Revolutionary Guards’ ground forces, on July 16, 2008.

Diplomacy absent opponent sincerity does more harm than good. The West has already suffered for its efforts to accommodate Tehran. Between 2000 and 2005, European Union engagement with Iran led to a near-tripling of trade. Rather than use its hard currency windfall to build civilian infrastructure and improve the economy, the Iranian leadership invested perhaps 70 percent of its hard currency and oil windfall into its military and nuclear programs.

Such an allocation is not the result of regime hardliners controlling appropriations, for the bulk of the work on Iran’s covert nuclear program coincided with a period of reformist resurgence and so-called dialogue of civilizations. On June 15, 2008, the semi-official Fars News Agency provided lengthy excerpts from a panel discussion with Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami-era government spokesman. He lambasted not the content of President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad’s nuclear policy but rather its style, and urged a return to Khatami-style diplomacy. “We had an overt policy that was one of negotiation and confidence-building,” he explained, “and a covert policy that was continuation of [our nuclear] activities.” He recommended that the Iranian government should “prove to the entire world that we want the power plants for electricity [but] afterwards we can continue with other activities.”

Indeed, he signaled that Tehran may see the incentive package the White House signed on to in an entirely different light than the western diplomats who offered it. “As long as we were not subjected to sanctions, and during our negotiations, we could import technology,” Ramezanzadeh explained. “We should have negotiated for so long, and benefited from the atmosphere of negotiations to the extent that we could import all the technology we needed.”

Iranian officials gloat. They welcomed US concessions as affirmation that defiance succeeds. Meanwhile, with 6,000 P-1 centrifuges and a 4.8 percent enriched feed Tehran can produce 20 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium in just 16 days, a period between International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

Iranians play chess while Americans play checkers. That Tehran’s nuclear program has progressed so far is a testament to the Iranian strategy. In contrast, Bush’s move has little to do with a well-thought out strategy and is more a flailing attempt to change legacy. As Iranian centrifuges continue to spin, the price of Bush’s flip-flop will be high: Iranian overconfidence, erosion of future UN Security Council resolution effectiveness and forfeiture of future redline credibility. With its diplomatic card wasted, the next US president will have a stark choice: allow the Islamic Republic to go nuclear or accelerate the application of far more costly measures.

Michael Rubin, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.

*Bitterlemons International
August 7, 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1967
Cross-posted with permission

I’ve often wondered why Russia freed itself from communism, only to slide back to the paternalistic ways of authoritarian rule (e.g., Putin). Even though there’s been obvious vote rigging, and squelching of the media, it’s probably fair to say that the major of Russians voted for Putin because he makes them feel secure. While skimming some headlines this week, I finally found some insight into Russia’s love for paternalism — literally.

Recently, a Russian judge threw a woman’s sexual harassment case out of court on the grounds that, “If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children.” Huh? Read the statistics — and weep. From the Telegraph:

… According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.

Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.

Women also report that it is common to be browbeaten into sex during job interviews, while female students regularly complain that university professors trade high marks for sexual favours.

Only two women have won sexual harassment cases since the collapse of the Soviet Union, one in 1993 and the other in 1997.

Human rights activists say that Russian women remain second-class citizens and are subjected to some of the highest levels of domestic abuse in the world.

Who can understand Balkan history–that cursed region whose fiery nationalisms led to World War One? Not I. East Europeans remember how especially brutal Muslim Nazi- and Arab-empowered soldiers were during World War Two. Yes, there once were some pockets of European-style assimilation and sophistication among Caucasus-based Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the region. Has anyone read the incomparably charming and popular novel, Ali and Nino: A Love Story written by the very Jewish Lev Nuissimbaum whose pen name was Khurbain Said? The romance captured everyone’s longing for operatic harmony between Christians and Muslims. (For the Jews, it was always more complicated). Tom Reiss has written a must-read biography of Nuissembaum titled The Orientalist: Solving The Mystery of A Strange and Dangerous Life. … (Continue reading…)

Persuading Western Muslim leaders to repudiate Shari’a-sanctioned violence against apostates can be a frustrating exercise, as Prince Charles discovered in 2004. Troubled by the treatment of Muslims who convert to Christianity in Islamic nations, the prince convened a summit of senior figures from both religious communities. It ended in disappointment. The Islamic representatives failed to issue a declaration condemning the practice, which the Christians had requested; they also cautioned non-Muslims not to discuss such matters in public, arguing that moderates would be more likely to make progress if the debate were kept internal.

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, the outspoken Anglican prelate of Rochester, attended the meeting but rejected their advice. While continuing to highlight the perils faced by those who leave Islam in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, he now has turned his focus to the harassment of apostates in the West. Last year the bishop warned that a convert could die in Britain unless prominent Muslims affirm the right of all people to change their faith. There have been few takers, despite the dire need for this message: a poll indicates that 36% of younger British Muslims believe death to be an appropriate punishment for renouncing Islam.

Their views are grounded in Shari’a law. All major schools of Islamic jurisprudence stipulate that a sane adult male must be put to death for abandoning Islam, though varying interpretations persist on whether females should be killed or merely imprisoned. Many Islamic states outlaw apostasy and seven list it as a capital offense. However, freelancers such as angry relatives present the greatest danger to ex-Muslims, as Sunni and Shiite scholars largely agree that Shari’a empowers individuals to punish converts. This tradition has followed Muslims to the Western world.

Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and other high-profile apostates have brought needed attention to the risks that ex-Muslims encounter, even in liberal democracies. Pope Benedict XVI recently underscored the plight of this vulnerable population by baptizing the Italian journalist and former Muslim Magdi Allam on the most public of stages: Easter Vigil mass at the Vatican. Having suffered threats for opposing Islamic fundamentalism, Allam now speculates that he will endure “another death sentence for apostasy.”

Ordinary Muslim apostates face similar fears, which were palpable when Christian converts from Islam met in Virginia four years ago at the first Muslim Background Believers Convention. One woman admitted that she had not yet told her family about embracing a new faith. “I know they’re going to disown me,” she said, “if they don’t kill me.” Another relayed that her brothers were not speaking to her because she had married an American. “Can you imagine what they would do if they found out I was a Christian?”

For other ex-Muslims, the intimidation is far more concrete. Khaled emigrated from Iraq to the Netherlands, hoping to freely practice his new religion; instead he receives death threats from Islamists. Sofia was beaten and told by her father that she deserves to die; she ultimately was thrown out of their London house. Hannah, the daughter of a British imam, has changed residences forty-plus times since converting to Christianity; she went underground in 1994 when her home was attacked by a horde of men that included her father, whom she describes as “shouting through the letter box, ‘I’m going to kill you.’” In April Dutch politician Ehsan Jami announced that he is closing down his Central Committee for Ex-Muslims after less than a year of operation because people are too scared to join.

Aiding apostates begins with acknowledging what endangers them: the prescription of death under Shari’a law. Yet Islamist lobby groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations labor to obscure the facts. During the diplomatic crisis that centered on Abdul Rahman, a convert to Christianity who faced capital punishment in “liberated” Afghanistan two years ago, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper initially shrugged, “We haven’t dealt with that issue.” Once media interest in the story had made silence untenable, CAIR released a statement claiming that “Islamic scholars say the original rulings on apostasy were similar to those for treasonous acts in legal systems worldwide and do not apply to an individual’s choice of religion.”

Other leading Western Muslims justify, or even promote, the punishment of apostates. For example, Syed Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, argues that freedom of religion implies the ability to be governed by one’s religious laws. From this he concludes that, in the spirit of “tolerance,” Canada must allow Muslims to discipline people who abandon the faith. He does grant that these penalties would not necessarily include death, but one may wonder whether his position is just a matter of expediency. After all, he surely recognizes that multiculturalism has its limits.

Given the prevailing climate, Bishop Nazir-Ali has called for governments to do more to protect former Muslims. However, it is clear that many officials are too swayed by political correctness to comprehend the dangers associated with leaving Islam. This sad reality is demonstrated by the case of Nissar Hussein, a British citizen and Christian convert. When he reported to police that locals had threatened to burn down his home, he says he was told to “stop being a crusader and move to another place.”

Intimidation of ex-Muslims has not succeeded in dissuading Christian missionaries from going about their usual business, even when they themselves face bullying in Islamist-heavy neighborhoods. Nazir-Ali recently stirred controversy by chiding the Church of England for its oversensitivity toward Muslims. He recommends more proselytization instead. At the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem on June 24, he observed that “just as Muslims have a right to invite others to join Islam, Christians have a right to invite others to Jesus.”

His statement reflects the thriving marketplace of religious ideas that has characterized the West for several centuries. Yet the perils suffered by Muslim apostates offer a powerful reminder that upholding such freedoms demands vigilance. How our societies respond to this challenge will help set the parameters of freedom in the twenty-first century by determining whether fundamental rights truly are guaranteed for all.

David J. Rusin is a research associate at Islamist Watch and a Philadelphia-based editor for Pajamas Media. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Pennsylvania. Please feel free to contact him at rusin@meforum.org.

*American Thinker
August 3, 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1966
Cross-posted with permission

Yaser Abdul Said, who honor murdered his two beautiful and brilliant daughters Sarah and Amina earlier this year in Dallas, is alive and well and has been using a calling card to allegedly threaten various Christian members of his formerly Christian wife’s family. He did so as recently as three weeks ago. … (Continue reading…)

By Fern Sidman

Defiant chants of “Condemn Muslim Terrorism Now” and “Jewish Blood Is Not Cheap” could be heard in streets of downtown Toronto, on Thursday afternoon, July 31st, as 30 members of Toronto’s Jewish Defense League staged an angry demonstration in front of the offices of the Canadian Arab Federation. Responding to the dramatic rise in anti-Semitic attacks on Jews by Muslims in the Toronto area, Meir Weinstein, director of the JDL in Toronto said, “The abject silence on the part of the Canadian Arab Federation in the face of vitriolic attacks on Jews by Muslim perpetrators is tantamount to tacit approval of anti-Semitism and gives a green light to others who would entertain the notion of attacking Jews.”

Weinstein was specifically referring to an attack that occurred on November 3, 2006, when a Jewish teenager and her three friends were viciously assaulted at a Toronto train station by Mustafa Taj, 21, who was recently sentenced to one year in prison by provincial court judge, Bill Cummings who ruled that the attack was racially motivated.

According to a report in the Canadian newspaper, The Calgary Sun dated July 24, 2008, on November 2, 2006, “Taj approached the group (of teenagers) around 10:45 pm, and asked “who’s Jewish.” Nichola Cordato, then 16 stated “me” and Taj grabbed her and said, “I’m Muslim and hate Jews.” The report continues: “He then slapped her in the face and pulled her hair before her friends, Jessica Motta, Kayla Hungle and Daniel Ball attempted to intervene. Hungle attempted to prevent Taj from further attacking Cordato and was punched in the face by him. Motta then intervened and was punched in the face, pulled to the ground by her hair and kicked in the stomach and ribs. When Ball tried to stop the assaults, he was thrown onto the C-Train tracks where he fell onto his back and was spat upon by Taj.. During the melee, Taj called Cordato a “Jewish piece of (crap).”

Prosecutors Ken McCaffrey and Inayat Jetha had sought a sentence of up to two years for the hate crime. Prior to sentencing, McCaffrey called in to evidence a similar assault perpetrated by Taj a year earlier when he approached a black male at an LRT station and assaulted him.

“The Canadian Arab Federation has not only not uttered one word of condemnation for this horrific attack, but they have remained silent in the face of arson attacks in Canada directed against shuls and Jewish community centers and violent attacks on Jewish students on local university campuses” said Weinstein. He also noted that yet another anti-Semitic attack occurred as recently as Friday, July 18th, 2008, when, “a Jewish camp in northern Ontario was attacked. No one was hurt but property was smashed and tires slashed, sending a clear message. The camp staff was told by the town that Jews were no longer welcome in their stores.”

According to Weinstein, the Canadian Arab Federation holds the dubious distinction of being an organization that has lent its support and succor to the forces of Islamic terrorism and has worked assiduously to promote both anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment. He charges that members of the CAF attended a Cairo conference last year sponsored by the notoriously anti-Israel organization, The Muslim Brotherhood that featured speakers who were high ranking members of Hamas and Hezbollah and that the CAF justifies the terrorist acts that these organizations engage in. He adds that, “Jewish businesses in Canada are picketed by groups supported by the CAF, claiming these businesses support ‘Israeli Apartheid’.

In an op-ed piece appearing in The National Post of Canada of July 11, 2008, The Canadian Arab Federation is “making a strong case that it is every bit as radical and unhinged” as The Canadian Islamic Congress. The article cited the CAF’s “recent sponsorship of an essay contest on “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” in which it urged high school students to channel the group’s own fervid hatred of Israel for prizes. Now, the group is promoting September 11th conspiracy theories by announcing a July 14th Toronto speaking event entitled “The 9/11 deception continues.”

Concerning the essay contest Weinstein asserts that, “Under the guise of ‘Islamophobia”, the CAF is promulgating hatred for Jews in a fashion similar to that of the Nazis during World War II. Just as the Nazis accused worldwide Jewry of maintaining a secret cabal with the intent of dominating and oppressing the ‘poor’ and ‘downtrodden’ Germans, so too is the CAF actively working to promote the fallacious and patently ridiculous claim that the Jews ‘run the world’, while Muslims represent a powerless minority, even though there are 1.4 billion Muslims in the world and only 13.5 million Jews.”

A Canadian news wire service called CNews reported on June 15, 2007 that the CAF honored a man who referred to Canada as “a fully paid up member of the Anglo-Saxon mafia” at its 2007 gala dinner in Toronto for his “unwavering” support of Palestine. Besides calling the country of Canada a member of the mafia, Zafar Bangash, editor of Crescent International, an Islamist newsletter, refers to the vast majority of Canadians - or non-Muslims as ‘kuffar or kufr” meaning infidels and wrote in a 1999 editorial that, “Muhammed is the Messenger of Allah and those who are with him are harsh towards the kuffar and compassionate towards each other.”

Weinstein strongly asserts that “It is the ideology of The Muslim Brotherhood that justifies and promotes attacks on Jews in Canada.” Regarding the issue of the burgeoning rate of Muslim immigrants to Canada, Weinstein declares that, “some kind of form must be signed that prohibits entry into Canada of people that believe in the Muslim Brotherhood ideology. This would make it possible to conduct denaturalization and deportation proceedings .”

For now, Weinstein says, “our major concern is the safety of Jews in our community and to that end, we (the JDL) are offering security training to the community. We will not just train anyone. The JDL is not seeking a confrontation with adversarial forces, but because of the level of violence and intimidation against the Jewish community it is important to teach Jews how to defend themselves, should a situation arise.”

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict long ago spilled over into America’s departments of Middle East studies. In an attempt to appear balanced in the face of charges of anti-Israel biases, some departments or programs of Middle East studies have added Israeli scholars to their ranks—a move that at first glance appears welcome.

Yet many of these Israeli academics have built their reputation on scholarship that is harshly critical not only of Israeli policy, but of Israel’s very existence. Anti-Israel scholars who hail from Israel are cited favorably by the entire range of Israel’s critics, from pro-Palestinian groups like PSM, the Committee to Stop Demolition of Houses in Palestine, the Committee to Stop Torture, and Breaking the Silence to Jewish anti-Zionist groups like the American Council for Judaism, from neo-Nazis to Islamists.

The international standing of such scholars received a boost in the mid-1980s with the rise of the so-called “new historians” in Israeli universities. These scholars sought to debunk what they claim is a distorted “Zionist narrative” in Israeli historiography. In practice, they twisted the history of Israel’s rebirth by, among other tricks, dismissing the efforts of the Arab states to destroy the new-born Jewish state as a Zionist myth, and claiming that Israel is built on ethnic cleansing and brutality towards the Palestinians.

Given this hostility to Israel’s very existence, Middle East studies departments in the United States are tempted to hire anti-Israeli Israelis: they inoculate the employer against charges of anti-Semitism while seemingly legitimizing their claims of ideological balance gained through presenting an Israeli viewpoint. All this is achieved without changing the radical, anti-Israel, Arabist prejudices of their departments.

This problem is noted by leading Middle East historian Efraim Karsh, who in his book Fabricating Israeli History observes that propaganda in the field of Middle East Studies has become the accepted norm. In other disciplines, this would have created a serious crisis of credibility. Yet, Karsh notes:

Not so in contemporary Middle East Studies. For such is the politicization of this field that the New Historiography’s partisanship has been its entry ticket to the Arabist club and its attendant access to academic journals, respected publishing houses, and the mass media.

Today, these “new historians” teach at many North American and European universities. In practice, it ensures that students are taught an ahistorical, one-sided interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Some recent examples illustrate the problem:

• Ilan Pappe formally of Haifa University and now with the University of Exeter in England, was one of the driving forces behind the academic boycott movement against Israeli academics that began in the United Kingdom. Pappe believes that Zionism is a genocidal, racialist movement. Here he describes the founding years of the Jewish state:

The number of Jews coming into the country increased by the day—although even at that point, during the 1930s, the Jews were just a quarter of the population, possessing 4 percent of the land. As resistance to colonialism strengthened, the Zionist leadership became convinced that only through a total expulsion of the Palestinians would they be able to create a state of their own. From its early inception and up to the 1930s, Zionist thinkers propagated the need to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population of Palestine if the dream of a Jewish state were to come true.

• Neve Gordon of Ben Gurion University of the Negev was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan this academic year. He has been described by Alan Dershowitz as, “One of the world’s most extreme anti-Israel academics, [Gordon] belongs to the class of rabidly anti-Israel far-left professors whose trademark is the delight they take in comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany.” Gordon believes that:

Israel is not a democracy. One-third of the demos does not enjoy a series of basic rights which make up the pillars of liberal democracies. The state of Israel has existed for 55 years and has controlled the Palestinian population in the occupied territories without giving them political rights for two-thirds of this period. Accordingly, the notion that the occupation is provisional or temporary should, by now, be considered an illusion concealing the reality on the ground.

• Oren Yiftachel, a geography professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a Diller Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, states that:

The failed Oslo process, the violent intifada and—most acutely—Israel’s renewed aggression and brutality toward the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, have cast a dark shadow over the joint future of the state’s Palestinian and Jewish citizens …The actual existence of an Israeli state (and hence citizenship) can be viewed as an illusion. Israel has ruptured, by its own actions, the geography of statehood, and maintained a caste-like system of ethnic-religious-class stratification.

Sanford and Helen Diller endowed Yiftachel’s position at Berkeley. Helen Diller admits that she was motivated by the pro-Palestinian activism on campus: “With the protesting and this and that, we need to get a real strong Jewish studies program in there…. Hopefully, it will be enlightening to have a visiting professor and it’ll calm down over there more.” Her comments, though well-intentioned, illustrate the core assumption that the presence of an Israeli scholar guarantees ideological balance in a department.

Sanford Diller has noted the risks involved in trusting the university to fulfill his and his wife’s wishes, and stated that it was never their foundation’s intent to supply a platform at Berkeley for someone of Yiftachel’s views, to which he and his wife are strongly in disagreement.

In Middle East studies, politicized writing and teaching have displaced scholarship, and academic freedom has been redefined as the liberty to dispense with academic standards. Hence, Middle East departments at Columbia, University of Michigan, Georgetown, and elsewhere are populated or even run by individuals like Rashid Khalidi, Juan Cole, and John Esposito. Hiring token Israeli Jews who share their views eliminates debate while providing the illusion of balance.

Asaf Romirowsky is an adjunct scholar for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, and manager of Israel & Middle East Affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.

*Washington Times
August 4, 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1965
Cross-posted with permission

In February 2008, Gwyn Prins, a professor at the London School of Economics, and Robert Salisbury, the marquess of Salisbury and a privy counselor, published a breakthrough essay in the RUSI Journal on the incongruity between current British defense discourse and the threat posed by radical Islam.[1] The essay, a portion of which is excerpted below, represents the consensus view not only of the authors but also of ten former military chiefs, diplomats, analysts and academics. As important as are the authors is the place of publication: The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) sits at the heart of Britain’s defense establishment and is recognized internationally as an authority on defense and security issues. Their paper highlights the profound conceptual flaws at the heart of Britain’s strategy for combating the threats facing the country, criticism made more devastating by the combined weight and authority of its authors.

The RUSI paper is a direct challenge to current British government policy that pursues a strategy of cultural appeasement in order to buy off—as it believes—the worse prospect of terrorism and urban violence. But the British government’s misguided approach merely enables radical Islamism to achieve its goals. By chance, the paper was published during the uproar generated by the archbishop of Canterbury who, on February 7, 2008, suggested that the British state should accommodate Islamic law, so that British Muslims could choose whether to be regulated by English law or Shari‘a in certain civil matters.[2]

The public was appalled at the archbishop’s prescription for the Balkanization of Britain. But in fact, the British government is already affording Islam a special status provided to no other religion or culture, thus bringing about the development of parallel jurisdictions and the growth of an Islamic state within a state.

Multiple wives of Muslim men can now receive welfare benefits, effectively sanctioning polygamy. Banks now offer “Shari‘a-compliant” mortgages, and the Treasury is currently considering the introduction of Shari‘a bonds—regardless of the links with terrorism. A number of people serving on the Shari‘a advisory boards for British and Western banks have connections with Islamist extremism. In addition, a number of experts have said that Shari‘a finance offers an obvious camouflage for terrorist financing.

While the British security service says it is monitoring thousands of British Islamist terrorists and hundreds of terror groupings, [3] the government and many within the security establishment refuse to acknowledge that religious war is the motivation for these Islamists; too often, they describe such terrorism instead in Orwellian terms as “anti-Islamic.”

Meanwhile, Ibrahim Moussawi, the head of Al-Manar, Hezbollah’s anti-Semitic television station, is welcomed into Britain on a speaking tour, and Hizb ut-Tahrir—banned around the world—continues freely to recruit countless thousands of impressionable young British Muslims to the cause of the Islamic takeover of Britain and the West.

It is against this backdrop that the true importance of the RUSI paper becomes clear. It asserts for the first time that the core problem is Britain’s profound loss of confidence in itself. British society is fragmenting under the pressures of multiculturalism, which have paralyzed any attempt to draw a line in the sand against Islamist demands. Both at home and abroad, Britain has lost any shared understanding of the threats that must be faced and how to do so. Indeed, with its steady loss of the power of self-governance to the European Union, there is no longer any clear idea of where political responsibility lies.

In short, the RUSI paper asserts that Britain’s security is being put at greater risk from without because British democracy itself is at risk from within. In allowing the progressive fragmentation of British society and the weakening of its military and defense infrastructure, the government has left Britain open to the pincer movement of cultural colonization and terrorist attack. The only solution is for Britain to rediscover its historic identity, restore its power to rule itself, and reassert the mutual obligations between government and people. As such, the Prins and Salisbury paper should resonate not only within Britain but also within other Western countries struggling to balance immigration, assimilation, and identity.

Security

… The security of the United Kingdom is at risk and under threat. The mismatch between the country’s military commitments and the funding of its defense moved Lords Bramall, Boyce, Craig, Guthrie, and Inge—five former Chiefs of the Defense Staff—to take the unusual step of raising their concerns publicly in a House of Lords Defense debate on 22 November 2007 … Security is not only a question for Chiefs of the Defense Staff. It matters to every citizen of the United Kingdom. Security is the primary function of the state, for without it there can be no state, and no rule of law. The former Chiefs of the Defense Staff have stepped outside their traditional reticence to speak on behalf of all. Anxiety about defense and security runs far and wide. This essay addresses the bases of that anxiety: the sources of risk and threat, both overseas and at home. It argues that weaknesses at home, particularly divisions in our attitudes to our defense, contribute to turning risks into threats. It proposes that positive steps to strengthen and update our defense and security efforts involve returning to long established constitutional arrangements of the Queen in Parliament. Thus we may meet the needs of today and tomorrow. … Repeated assertions by ministers that all is well, that the matter is well in hand and can be safely left to them to manage in-house, no longer carry conviction.

Uncertainty

The electorate is uncertain and anxious … The “war on terror” is with us now in all its ugliness. Both current military operations and the war on terror together raise a deeper point. Is there any longer a clear distinction between being at war and not being at war? A declaration of war is almost inconceivable today, and yet both our defense and security services are in action against active forces, abroad and at home, at this moment.

The electorate sees this paradox. It also worries about the way we were committed to war, especially in Iraq, and about Washington’s sway and leadership. But equally, the electorate is disturbed by an undertow of doubt about the wider muddling of political responsibilities between Westminster and Brussels. Who actually holds, or will take, responsibility for our foreign relations, for our defense, and for our security? Who—for instance—should guarantee our borders?

Such uncertainty should be of primary concern because it weakens the bond between government and the governed, which is precisely what terrorists seek to achieve and what other enemies of the United Kingdom will exploit. For this reason, it is not enough for anyone (even Her Majesty’s Government) to say, “Don’t worry, we have it in hand.” The uncertainty has to be addressed. The confidence and loyalty of the people are the wellspring from which flows the power with which all threats to defense and security are ultimately met. Our constitutional arrangements and institutional dispositions must both deserve and grow out of that loyalty and confidence. The present uncertainty suggests our arrangements need review and renewal.

Risk and Threat

Latent risks can become patent threats. What marks the change of a risk into a threat is usually the emergence of a factor which has been misjudged. It has been the reduction of traditional threats (aggression from nation states) combined with the increase of possible risk factors (most notably, Islamist terrorism, but there are many others) which has so destabilized world affairs and increased uncertainty. But linked to these changes is a loss in the United Kingdom of confidence in our own identity, values, constitution, and institutions. “This England that was wont to conquer others,” wrote Shakespeare, “hath made a shameful conquest of itself.” This is one of the main factors which have precipitated risks into threats. As long as it persists, it will have the power to do so again. Islamist terrorism is where people tend to begin. The United Kingdom presents itself as a target, as a fragmenting, post-Christian society, increasingly divided about interpretations of its history, about its national aims, its values and in its political identity. That fragmentation is worsened by the firm self-image of those elements within it who refuse to integrate. This is a problem worsened by the lack of leadership from the majority which in misplaced deference to “multiculturalism” failed to lay down the line to immigrant communities, thus undercutting those within them trying to fight extremism. The country’s lack of self-confidence is in stark contrast to the implacability of its Islamist terrorist enemy, within and without. We live under threat. We sense that now is a time of remission, between the frontal attack of 9/11, and its eventual successor, which may deliver an even greater psychological blow. Significant though they were in their different ways, neither the 2004 Madrid train bombings (which affected a national election), nor the London Underground and bus bombings of July 2005 (which exposed the weakness of the “multi-cultural” approach towards Islamists) were that successor. Thus, we are in a confused and vulnerable condition. Some believe that we are already at war; but all may agree that generally a peace-time mentality prevails. In all three ways—our social fragmentation, the sense of premonition, and the divisions about what our stance should be—there are uneasy similarities with the years just before the First World War.

We are fortunate in not having the specific external state enemies who once posed threats to the British state and against whom we could therefore define ourselves. There has been no straight substitution of the Cold War threat with another threat of different source but similar type. But the range and nature of the threats to the security of British citizens in 2008 are not confined solely to what the Islamists call their “jihad” against the West.

A shifting complex of risks faces us. An adequate approach to Britain’s security in the next few years must address questions that are intricate, delicate, and strange to our conventional way of thinking. The familiar categories of “home” and “abroad,” which have long reassured the British in a deep part of their national identity, are breaking down. We know much less about what threatens us and how it does so than our official policies assert.

Melanie Phillips is the author of Londonistan (New York: Encounter Books, 2006).

[1] Gwyn Prins and Robert Salisbury, “Risk, Threat and Security,” RUSI Journal, Feb. 2008.
[2] “Archbishop’s Lecture—Civil and Religious Law in England: A Religious Perspective,” Feb. 7, 2008.
[3] Jonathan Evans, address to the Society of Editors, Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Manchester, Eng., Nov. 5, 2007; The Times (London), Nov. 6, 2007.

*Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008, pp. 63-66
http://www.meforum.org/article/1964
Cross-posted with permission

WASHINGTON (July 30, 2008) — A new analysis of monthly Census Bureau data shows a significant decline in the number of less-educated Hispanic immigrants. The report is the first to show systematic evidence that the illegal population is decreasing. There is good evidence that recent immigration enforcement efforts are a key factor causing the decline.

The report, entitled “Homeward Bound: Recent Immigration Enforcement and the Decline in the Illegal Alien Population,” is available at the Center for Immigration Studies web site www.cis.org.

Among the findings:

• Our best estimate is that the illegal immigrant population has declined by 11 percent through May of this year after hitting a peak in August 2007.

• The implied decline in the illegal population is 1.3 million since last summer, from 12.5 in August 2007 to 11.2 million in May 2008.

• The estimated decline of the illegal population is at least 7 times larger than the number of illegal aliens removed by the government in the last 10 months, so most of the decline is due to illegal immigrants leaving the country on their own.

• One indication that stepped-up enforcement is responsible for the decline is that only the illegal immigrant population seems to be effected; the legal immigrant population continues to grow.

• Another indication enforcement is causing the decline is that the illegal immigrant population began falling before there was a significant rise in their unemployment rate.

• The importance of enforcement is also suggested by the fact that the current decline is already significantly larger than the decline during the last recession.

• While the decline began before unemployment rose, the evidence indicates that unemployment has increased among illegal immigrants, so the economic slowdown is likely to be at least partly responsible for the decline in the number of illegal immigrants.

• There is good evidence that the illegal population rose last summer while Congress was considering legalizing illegal immigrants. When that legislation failed to pass, the illegal population began to fall almost immediately.

Discussion: These findings are consistent with anecdotal evidence. They are also consistent with data showing a fall off in remittances sent home by immigrants. And they are in line with a drop in border apprehensions. While the evidence indicates that stepped-up immigration enforcement has played an important role in causing the decline, the economic downturn is also likely to be encouraging illegal immigrants to return home. The decline in the illegal population, whatever the cause, seems to directly challenge the argument that illegal aliens are so firmly attached to their lives in this country that it is not possible to induce many of them to return home. If the current trend were sustained, it could cut the illegal population in half within five years.

There is no way to know whether the current trend will continue. Future enforcement efforts as well as the state of the economy will likely determine if the number of illegal immigrants continues to drop. Both presidential candidates have recently stated their strong commitment to legalizing those in the country illegally. Pronouncements of this kind may have consequences. When Congress was considering legalizing illegal immigrants last summer, there is evidence that the illegal population grew. When that legislation failed to pass, the illegal population began to decline rapidly. It may be that the repeated promises of legalization by both candidates in recent weeks will encourage more illegal immigrants to enter the country or encourage those already in the country, who might otherwise leave, to stay in the hopes of being awarded legal status.

Methodology: This study uses monthly data from the Current Population Survey collected by the Census Bureau. The Department of Homeland Security, the former INS and other outside research organizations have used Census Bureau data to estimate the illegal immigrant population. We examine trends in the number of foreign-born less-educated young Hispanics. Prior research indicates that 80 percent of these individuals are in the country illegally. We estimate the range for the decline in the illegal immigrant population is 9 to 14 percent, with 11 percent as the most likely value.

For more information, contact Steven Camarota at (202) 466-8185 or sac@cis.org

The release of Samir Kuntar and his four colleagues, and the national jubilation that greeted their return to Lebanon, bring to a close a week of achievement for the regional bloc of which Hizbullah is a member. The events of the week, however, do not resolve any of the issues of which they form a part. Rather, they plant the seeds of further confrontation.

After six weeks of disputation, the formation of a new government was announced in Beirut on July 11, with Hizbullah gaining veto power in the new cabinet. The pro-Western parliamentary majority holds 16 cabinet seats, against 11 for the opposition (including Hizbullah) and three named directly by President Michel Suleiman.

This achievement represents success for Hizbullah’s campaign of civil disobedience over the last 18 months.

Veto power will enable Hizbullah to protect the independent military infrastructure that it has developed with Iranian and Syrian help - for use against Israel at some future date.

In France, Syrian President Bashar Assad ended four years of isolation with a kingly welcome at the launch of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Forum. The simple act of receiving messages from an adjoining Israeli delegation in an Istanbul hotel appears to have been sufficient to wipe the slate clean, at least in the eyes of Paris. Assad, whose country is strongly suspected of involvement in the deaths of 59 French soldiers in Beirut in 1983, proudly reviewed the serried ranks of the French military assembled for July 14.

Even as Bashar and his wife, Asma, enjoyed the Bastille Day ceremonies, weapons and other aid for Hizbullah continues to make its way across Syria’s border with Lebanon, and southward to the movement’s strongholds. The organization is thought to have assembled some 40,000 missiles north of the Litani River, unmolested by either the Lebanese army or UNIFIL. The latter, sources suggest, has reached its own uneasy modus vivendi with Hizbullah, rather than risk confronting it.

The return of Kuntar and the prisoners will allow Hizbullah for a moment to present itself once again as the “shield” of Lebanon, achieving shared national goals through the use of its independent military capability.

Yet the singing and dancing in the Druse village of Aabey, as the locals welcome home Samir Kuntar, the son of whom they are so proud, should not be allowed to obscure some notable ambiguities and potential dangers now opening up for Hizbullah.

The movement’s planners are thought to consider that another round of fighting with Israel is inevitable. Hizbullah expects that the next time will not be limited to southern Lebanon. Rather, it is likely to spread north and eastward, into Hizbullah’s old heartland of the Bekaa.

Hizbullah is training hard for the anticipated conflict. The movement is attempting to acquire antiaircraft missiles for use against helicopters. But the IDF, away from the headlines, is training too. Military sources depict an army much transformed from the cumbersome, ill-prepared force of summer 2006. The change has come not only in training hours for infantry and armored forces; no less important, the IDF has moved away from a concept of limited operations designed to imprint a message in the enemy’s consciousness. The emphasis has returned to high-speed ground warfare, intended to conquer and clear territory.

Despite Wednesday’s fulsome praise of Hizbullah by the leaders of all factions in Lebanon, the scars left by May’s sectarian fighting in west Beirut have not been forgotten. The damage that Lebanon would suffer in another war with Israel would be immense. The resentment of Hizbullah, currently simmering beneath the facade of unity, would be of corresponding magnitude.

Away from the headlines and the slogans, the Shi’ite population of the South also suffered in the 2006 war, and is in no great hurry to repeat the experience. Rubble and ruins are still much in evidence in the border towns of Maroun a-Ras and Aita a-Sha’ab - sometimes not far from the posters lauding the 2006 victory.

Hizbullah is not, of course, a movement dictated to by public sentiment. Still, the movement can ill afford to ignore the concerns of its core constituency.

None of this is to detract from the very real successes of Hizbullah and its allies, only to note that they come with a price. The “formula” for Hizbullah’s success was to create a mode of warfare that supposedly neutralized Israel’s advantages in conventional warfare. Emphasis was placed on the willingness to sacrifice and the elusiveness of Hizbullah’s small cadre of fighters.

But as Hizbullah grows in political responsibilities and military strength, so it begins to look like something similar to a conventional power in its own right. Veteran Lebanon-watcher Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, recently said Hizbullah “has entered the cycle of full wars with Israel.” This, he considers, places the movement in a “terrible bind.” With power comes visibility. And with visibility - potentially - comes vulnerability.

So - will these underlying complexities and ambiguities serve eventually to stem the rise of a movement and bloc now rising to the zenith of its power? This, ultimately, will depend on whether Israel can (re-)acquire the focus, commitment, energy and imagination necessary to develop means to exploit these factors.

Oh dear, I have a live one here. Emily Brink has now posted three comments which take issue with what I’ve written about female suicide bombers. In each instance, she misses the boat–and the train, the plane, and the camel. She writes:

“The only problem I have with this article is that Chesler assumes that mentally ill people don’t know the difference between right and wrong. She also makes some comments about “inbreeding” among Arabs that I think are just meant to be mean and are not factual. But most troubling to me was the calling of these women mentally ill and thus furthering the stigma that mentally ill people must face all the time.” … (Continue reading…)

Over the last two months, Israeli security forces have arrested six young Arab men suspected of seeking to form an extreme Islamist cell for the purpose of carrying out high-profile terror attacks in the capital. Two of the six held Israeli citizenship, while the other four were residents of east Jerusalem. It appears that they were radicalized through involvement in an Islamic study circle and via the Internet. Two Arab Israeli citizens from the town of Rahat were arrested in recent weeks on similar suspicions.

In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these events reflect strange, unfamiliar patterns. Place them on a broader canvas, however, and the novelty sharply decreases. The latest events appear to reflect the arrival of global jihad methods and codes of practice to our shores.

They are the most visible part of a broader and little-remarked-upon process taking place in Jerusalem, the West Bank and (particularly) in Gaza. This is the growing presence of preachers, organizations and individuals committed to the extreme Sunni Islamist current known as “Salafiyya.” This is the ideology associated with al-Qaida. However, it is important to stress that what is happening is the penetration of ideas and models of activity, rather than the establishment of a new, centralized movement.

The process whereby young men become radicalized through contact with Islamist ideas via preachers or the Internet and then go on to form ad hoc terror cells has been observed in Muslim communities in Europe and further afield. So how is Salafism gaining its foothold west of the Jordan River? Through the relatively simple formula of preaching, education, the creation of groups of devotees, and the subsequent self-organization of those devotees.

In the West Bank, the removal of Hamas-affiliated imams in over 1,000 mosques has paradoxically opened the door for the rising prominence of Salafi-oriented preachers.

Some of the radical preachers are associated with the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT) party. This veteran Islamist group was long regarded as a curiosity because of its failure to maintain an armed wing and its refusal to engage in active politics. However, HT has enjoyed an unprecedented rise in popularity in the West Bank over the last 18 months. Many of its imams are known to be in contact with the broader, amorphous Salafi subculture. HT itself is not a Salafi grouping. But its role as a radicalizing force and then a conduit for young men to violent activity is a key concern.

Salafi Imams with significant regional links are also active. The presence of a certain Saudi-Palestinian sheikh in the city of Nablus, for example, is attracting the attention of the authorities. This individual, whose brother is in a Saudi jail accused of al-Qaida ties, has been in Nablus since early 2008. He has a lot of money (presumably from supporters in Saudi Arabia), and has been engaging in ‘Dawa’ (outreach) activities, gathering around himself a circle of young activists committed to the Salafi-Jihadi path.

Despite the significance of their activities in the West Bank, it is Hamas-controlled Gaza that remains the key area of activity for the Salafis. In Gaza, the Salafis have been particularly engaged in activities associated with the enforcement of Islamic “morality,” as they define it. These have included a rash of “honor killings” of both women and men. For example, members of the Salafi al-Saif al-Haq al-Islam vigilante group are considered responsible for the murder of the owner of the Teachers Bookshop - the only Christian bookshop in Gaza - on October 7 of last year. In the same month, Lina Suboh, daughter of a prominent Gaza university professor, was also murdered. These are two of hundreds of such killings that have taken place in Gaza over the last 18 months. They have been accompanied by bombings of various dens of iniquity in the Strip - including restaurants and cafes that allowed mixed dining.

But the Salafis are not concerned only with Palestinian internal moral health. Prominent individuals within existing political organizations are known to sympathize with this trend. This is particularly noticeable in Hamas’s armed wing in Gaza, Izzadin Kassam. Sheikh Nizar Rayyan, a leading tactician in the group, is considered close to the Saudi-Palestinian imam mentioned above. Rayyan is the most prominent of a large number of individuals in Izzadin Kassam in Gaza who are known to adhere to the uncompromising ideas of Salafism.

With Fatah and Palestinian secular politics in decay, and Hamas facing the failures associated with governance in the real world, the stage is set for the further growth of the Salafi trend. Its growth should be placed within the context of a broader Islamization of Palestinian politics and society, in line with regional trends.

It is not possible to draw any causal link between the growth of Salafism and the “self-radicalization” associated with it, and the three acts of terror by apparently “self-radicalized” individuals in Jerusalem over the last months. Undoubtedly, however, behind the scenes, this is an angle of investigation energetically being pursued.

On Wednesday, the Israeli security cabinet held its first discussion ever on the issue of the global jihad. One may assume that this discussion was not held purely for the general education of cabinet members. Salafi-Jihadism, with its hard-to-trace links between idea and deed, its loose frameworks of organization, and its utterly uncompromising ambitions, has arrived among us.

Reuters reported today that, “Some International Olympic Committee officials cut a deal to let China block sensitive websites despite promises of unrestricted access, a senior IOC official admitted on Wednesday.” Now, why is it that so many people with consciences resent “international” organizations like the United Nations (UN) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC)? This moral relativism, this treating tyrannies like China and Iran as equals with democracies like Canada and Denmark, is downright repulsive. But the IOC is helping China erase human rights.

And it’s not just “international organizations,” but businesses like networking giant Cisco Systems, who’ve helped dictatorships like China repress their own people (also click on this link to read more on how China uses technology to strangle Internet access).

Here’s more distasteful news on the Beijing Olympics from Reuters:

Attempts at the main press centre to access the website of Amnesty International, which released a report on Monday slamming China for failing to honor its Olympic human rights pledges, continued to prove fruitless by mid-week.

Other websites, including those relating to the banned spiritual group Falun Gong, are also inaccessible.

The AP falsely reported that Israel is building a new settlement on the West Bank and linked this to a wrong-headed spin on an important national leader visiting Israel.

No, not Obama! He’s still just a candidate. I’m referring to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Curiously, Brown’s visit was highlighted for its criticism of Israel by the AP though his trip was seen in Israel as incredibly supportive. Indeed, Brown made the most pro-Israel statements of any British leader since Margaret Thatcher left the scene. This was especially significant since Brown is the Labour party leader and given the incredibly hostile anti-Israel sentiment in the British media and academia.

One wouldn’t know this from the AP story, "British leader presses Israel to halt settlements," posted July 21, by Mohammed Daraghmeh. Its lead was Brown demanding "Israel cease settlement construction." Ironically, another AP story a few days later, in criticizing a reported Israeli decision to build a new West Bank settlement, pointed out (only in the context of criticizing Israel of course) that Israel had not started a new settlement in years.

In fact, the report was false. In fact, Israel had authorized the building of 22 houses on a settlement created more than 25 years ago.

The story claimed Brown’s "strongest comments were reserved for the settlements: `I think the whole European Union is very clear on this matter: We want to see a freeze on settlements.’" But given the fact that no new settlement has been built for a long time what did he mean? The phrase used was "settlement expansion." But there is no expansion–settlements are not getting bigger though new buildings are built in existing settlements.

Even when an article reports facts fairly it sort of puts a spin on them. This article states:

"Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks late last year at a U.S.-backed conference in Annapolis, Md. Both sides had originally aspired to reach a final peace deal by the end of the year, but have backed away from that goal somewhat because of arguments over settlements and whether the Palestinians are capable of enforcing security in areas they control.

"Under the first phase of the internationally backed peace plan known as the road map, which is the basis of the negotiations, Israel was to freeze all settlement construction and Palestinians were to crack down on extremist groups."

Notice anything? Well, the AP gives a lot of attention to settlement construction but none to the Palestinian failure to "crack down on extremist groups" or enforce "security in areas they control." The fact is that the Palestinian Authority does very little or nothing in these directions but this is not presented as a problem or reported, virtually ever.

Where are the reports of the PA failing to stop terrorists, releasing them, glorifying them, putting them on its payroll, endorsing their goals, inciting to terrorism in its media, providing rationales for their actions in its schools, and so on? Why are radical speeches by PA and Fatah officials ignored?

This week, Palestinian Media Watch documents how the PA’s official newspaper claims that Jewish settlers are bringing in and releasing hundreds of super-rats that only attack Palestinians to drive Arabs out of east Jerusalem. Do Palestinians believe this? Many no doubt do, at least in part. But the point is that the PA wants them to believe it. By showing what is really going on it would be clear why peace is so unachievable and who is responsible.

Consider this simple question: If Israel withdrew from all the West Bank and/or freed all Palestinian prisoners would anything really change? Would the Palestinians reciprocate or alter their line, stopping terrorism and backing an end to the conflict. The evidence indicates not.

At any rate, the media gives no hint of such matters but only pursues its own agenda, which requires misstating Brown’s agenda.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth about Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley)

Four female suicide killers just murdered 57 people and wounded 300 others in Iraq. Many of their victims were on a religious pilgrimage.

This should no longer surprise us. Like men, women are human beings and are therefore as close to the apes as to the angels. Thus, like men, women are as likely to nourish as to destroy. Still, we live in a culture that on the one hand, suspects women of being sneaky, “bitchy,” even evil but on the other hand, idealizes women as morally superior to men and as Natural Born Mothers, not as Natural Born Killers. … (Continue reading…)