Muslims are victims of Islam
What strikes me most about the video Steven posted last week is that Islam brutalizes Muslims.

In the Middle East, Islam is seen as the answer to life's problems, and notions such as human rights and fairness are thrown out the window. This puts Muslims themselves in a dire position, being manipulated by their incompetent, corrupt, and brutal leaders into accepting them, as they are Islamic, and are fighting the non-Islamic 'other.' Most frequently, the 'non-Islamic other' is a fellow Muslim, who is Shia rather than Sunni, or vice versa, or perhaps is not pious enough. Or, perhaps the individual walked through the wrong neighborhood by accident.

In short, Islam has become the ultimate wedge issue, and it is Muslims who are the victims! :(

Is Islam 'inherently' violent? Is that 'true Islam'? I largely agree with this very abridged history of the religion (and explanations of core beliefs). That means that it is easier to convince neutral parties that Islam is violent, rather than peaceful. Combine that with the feeling the brutal dictators of the Arab world (not to mention many Western imams, funded by them) inculcate into their followers that they are victims, and the only way to step out of their victimhood is to be the most pious Muslim ever (rather than, say, doing constructive activities), and you have a recipe for disaster, if 'pious,' means 'violent jihad on non-believers.'

The solution? At one point, many neocons thought the solution was to democratize Iraq, and to spread freedom, thereby removing the influence of a major player who was breeding hatred (and paying $25,000 per family to suicide bombers in Israel). There is a certain logic to it. Perhaps it will work long term. But certainly it will not work if there is no true American commitment to it. We do not have the will to win, and so we will not win. We are also being run by incompetants who have fought the war poorly, and who largely ignored the sectarian conflict within Iraq. I am not 100% convinced that immediate democracy ever was the solution. A better solution probably would have been to have installed a benevolent dictator, who would teach a generation of students democratic and non-hateful ideals through new school curriculums, and stressed learning, knowledge, and advancement over jihad. In a generation's time, the Iraqis would have been ready for a democracy. (But then again, 'benevolent' and 'dictator' often do not go hand in hand, and Lord Acton did say "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Perhaps that would have been doomed to fail as well.

What to do? At this point, if we leave, we guarantee that the civil war in Iraq will devolve into total bloodshed. If we stay, there will be a somewhat lesser civil war, but we will be blamed for it. We also will be protecting a government with American lives that increasinglly appears it will be a Shia religious dictatorship in line with Iran. Both are horrible scenarios, but between the two, I say it makes more sense to leave.

What is in our interests, then?

Fortify Kurdistan, stay in Kurdistan, leave the rest of Iraq to its own devices, and throw full support behind the good regimes in the Arab world - Kurdistan, obviously, Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan. Have a full scale development of alternative fuel resources, and develop a long term strategy of pressuring the House of Saud to stop teaching their impressionable children that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is fact. Actually, do the same to Egypt. Stop supporting both countries with the amount of arms and funds that are being sent. Show there is a difference in the way the US treats a good, democratic, non-hate mongering regime, and a bad, despotic, hate-mongering regime.

And for godsakes, quit the mealy mouthed message of quasi support for Israel, and come out as a proud supporter for this great nation, on the basis of its adherance to democratic values. Stop asking for one millimeter of land to be conceded to the Palestinians until they de-hateify themselves and show a true commitment to peace and prosperity, or for Israel to not fire back when its citizens are being killed.

And Syria should be lambasted, not engaged with talks! Lebanon and March 14 is the nation the US needs to throw 100% of support behind. March 8 and Syria need to be vilified, not negotiated with. If Iran has nuke facilities that the US finds and finds a particular target, it should be taken out. There should be no nice talk with a regime that is cool with annhilation talks about another nation. (Israel)

Maybe then, it will be shown that the US means business, is not speaking out of both sides of the mouth, and is not a paper tiger, all roar and no teeth. The US needs to treat its friends better than its enemies. (please read a Christopher Hitchens article about that!)

And this long term vision enables Muslims to stop being brutalized by fellow Muslims. I want Muslims to succeed, just as I root for the whole world to succeed. The only way to ensure their said success is to dismember the support for the victim death cult that permeates the Mideast (and parts of the west) in the name of Islam.
posted by Red Tulips at 4:34 AM on Dec 02 2006

Mary Rizzo's islamo-fascist friends stunned by the truth!

Why John Bolton deserves to be US-UN Ambassador
Anne Bayefsky;
EyeonUN;
November 20, 2006
On November 17, 2006 the UN General Assembly
"reconvened" its "Tenth" Emergency Session to condemn
Israel. The Tenth Session began in 1997 and has now been
reconvened 14 times. No other emergency session of the
General Assembly has occurred on any other subject in these
ten years - not even on Darfur, Sudan with 2.5 million
people displaced and over 400,000 dead. And once again, the
General Assembly adopted another resolution condemning
Israel without mentioning Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran or Syria,
which are openly acting to bring about Israel's
annihilation. Just seven of the UN member states voted
against the resolution - the United States, Australia, the
Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau. The European
Union voted in favor.
In the midst of this display of visceral hatred of
the Jewish state and the Jewish people, inimical to
everything the UN was created to oppose, came a singularly
powerful voice for reason, dignity and honesty - Ambassador
John Bolton. The crowd assembled in the General Assembly
hall was hostile to the man and to the country he
represents. But Ambassador Bolton took the podium and spoke
with no rancor and no double-talk. Here is part of what he
said "This problem of anti-Israel...is endemic to the
culture of the United Nations. It is a decades-old, systemic
problem that transcends the whole panoply of UN
organizations and agencies...The consequences of this
persistent, unconstructive, biased approach are painfully
clear - not one single Palestinian is helped and the United
Nations continues to be discredited by its inability to
confront...the Israel-Palestinian conflict in a serious,
responsible manner."
Nobody clapped - in contrast to the applause which
the same crowd had lavished on Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez when he referred to President Bush this past
September as the devil. John Bolton, however, wasn't looking
for accolades. In a room where the US has one vote among 192
states, he simply spoke truth to power. "We believe that the
United Nations is ill served when its members seek to
transform the organization into a forum that is little more
than a self-serving and polemical attack against Israel or
the United States."
The strength of his conviction and the veracity of
his message reverberated around the room. Ambassador Bolton
used his role to explain what America stands for and what it
does not. This is exactly what makes an ambassador great,
and United States UN Ambassador Bolton one of the greatest.

Umkahlil lies

Joe90, Scottish neo-nazi and sheep intestine stuffer lies about Pollard.
Recently, joe90 spammed this blog with a lot of BS concerning Joanthan Pollard. Of course, joe90 wouldn't know the truth if it bit him in the ass. Since he was raised by a pair of Nazi camp guards, it is understanable that his brains are fried.


In 1983, shortly after Israel and the US signed a memorandum on intelligence sharing, then deputy director of the CIA Admiral Bobby Ray Inman unilaterally breached the agreement by stopping all intelligence transfers to Israel on Arab and Muslim states not directly bordering Israel. This included Iraq, Iran, Libya, Tunis and Pakistan. Inman was hired after leaving the agency by a company called International Signal and Control. The company's owner, James Guerin, was imprisoned later for transferring military technology to Iraq and South Africa.

Pollard, who was privy to the now embargoed intelligence, believed that Israel faced the specter of chemical and biological warfare attacks from these countries. Pollard claims that he considered all legal venues for ending the embargo but felt that informing the media, testifying before Congress or involving the US Jewish leadership of the situation would all be ineffective. He claims also that "there was an incident during Operation Peace for the Galilee that provided me with my introduction to the US-Israel 'special relationship.' I saw the incredible cynicism with which the US views Israel. It flew in the face of everything that I thought was the point of the relationship. The way I viewed the world was destroyed. I had never before thought that my loyalties towards the US and Israel were in contradiction. But then I understood." What did you understand? "I understood that we are alone."

Pollard argues that his decision to spy for Israel, and thus betray the US, stemmed from his conviction that he "was preventing a second Holocaust." One can question whether it was necessary for him to prevent it personally, or whether he could simply have quit his position, informed the responsible Israel officials of the mounting dangers and let Israel – with its intelligence agencies and military -- contend with the issue as a sovereign state. But the fact is that Pollard chose himself for the task and Israel, too, in employing Pollard as its agent, chose him for the task.

Desert Schmuck lays another goose egg.
DesertPeace: "The government caused them to be illegal residents without their consent.'"

Who consents to be illegal?

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid is so biased that it inevitably raises the question of what would motivate Jimmy Carter to write such an indecent book.

Sometimes you really can tell a book by its cover. President Jimmy Carter's decision to title his new anti-Israel screed "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" (Simon & Schuster, 288 pages, $27) tells it all. His use of the loaded word "apartheid," suggesting an analogy to the hated policies of South Africa, is especially outrageous, considering his acknowledgment buried near the end of his shallow and superficial book that what is going on in Israel today "is unlike that in South Africa -- not racism, but the acquisition of land." Nor does he explain that Israel's motivation for holding on to land it captured in a defensive war is the prevention of terrorism. Israel has tried, on several occasions, to exchange land for peace, and what it got instead was terrorism, rockets, and kidnappings launched from the returned land.

In fact, Palestinian-Arab terrorism is virtually missing from Mr. Carter's entire historical account, which blames nearly everything on Israel and almost nothing on the Palestinians. Incredibly, he asserts that the initial violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict occurred when "Jewish militants" attacked Arabs in 1939. The long history of Palestinian terrorism against Jews -- which began in 1929, when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem ordered the slaughter of more than 100 rabbis, students, and non-Zionist Sephardim whose families had lived in Hebron and other ancient Jewish cities for millennia -- was motivated by religious bigotry. The Jews responded to this racist violence by establishing a defense force. There is no mention of the long history of Palestinian terrorism before the occupation, or of the Munich massacre and others inspired by Yasser Arafat. There is not even a reference to the Karine A, the boatful of terrorist weapons ordered by Arafat in January 2002.

Mr. Carter's book is so filled with simple mistakes of fact and deliberate omissions that were it a brief filed in a court of law, it would be struck and its author sanctioned for misleading the court. Mr. Carter too is guilty of misleading the court of public opinion. A mere listing of all of Mr. Carter's mistakes and omissions would fill a volume the size of his book. Here are just a few of the most egregious:

Mr. Carter emphasizes that "Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times," but he ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem, and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.

Mr. Carter repeatedly claims that the Palestinian Arabs have long supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it. Yet he makes no mention of the fact that in 1938 the Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution, with Israel receiving a mere sliver of its ancient homeland and the Palestinians receiving the bulk of the land. The Jews accepted and the Palestinians rejected this proposal because Arab leaders cared more about there being no Jewish state on Muslim holy land than about having a Palestinian state of their own.

He barely mentions Israel's acceptance, and the Palestinian rejection, of the United Nation's division of the mandate in 1948.

He claims that in 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against Jordan. The fact is that Jordan attacked Israel first, Israel tried desperately to persuade Jordan to remain out of the war, and Israel counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing missiles into the center of the city. Only then did Israel capture the West Bank, which it was willing to return in exchange for peace and recognition from Jordan.

Mr. Carter repeatedly mentions Security Council Resolution 242, which called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition, and secure boundaries, but he ignores that Israel accepted and all the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected this resolution. The Arabs met in Khartum and issued their three famous "no's": "No peace, no recognition, no negotiation." But you wouldn't know that from reading the history according to Mr. Carter.

Mr. Carter faults Israel for its "air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor" without mentioning that Iraq had threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons if Iraq succeeded in building a bomb.

Mr. Carter faults Israel for its administration of Christian and Muslim religious sites, when in fact Israel is scrupulous about ensuring those of every religion the right to worship as they please -- consistent, of course, with security needs. He fails to mention that between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Hashemites destroyed and desecrated Jewish religious sites and prevented Jews from praying at the Western Wall. He also never mentions Egypt's brutal occupation of Gaza between 1949 and 1967.

Mr. Carter blames Israel, and exonerates Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal to accept statehood on 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza pursuant to the Clinton-Barak offers at Camp David and Taba in 2000–2001. He accepts the Palestinian revisionist history, rejects the eyewitness accounts of President Clinton and Dennis Ross, and ignores Saudi Prince Bandar's accusation that Arafat's rejection of the proposal was "a crime" and that Arafat's account "was not truthful" -- except, apparently, to Mr. Carter. The fact that Mr. Carter chooses to believe Arafat over Mr. Clinton speaks volumes.

Mr. Carter's description of the recent Lebanon war is misleading. He begins by asserting that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. "Captured" suggests a military apprehension subject to the usual prisoner of war status. The soldiers were kidnapped, and have not been heard from -- not even a sign of life. The rocket attacks that preceded Israel's invasion are largely ignored, as is the fact that Hezbollah fired its rockets from civilian population centers.

Mr. Carter gives virtually no credit to Israel's superb legal system, falsely asserting (without any citation) that "confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts," that prisoners are "executed," and that the "accusers" act "as judges." Even Israel's most severe critics acknowledge the fairness of the Israeli Supreme Court, but not Mr. Carter.

Mr. Carter even blames Israel for the "exodus of Christians from the Holy Land," totally ignoring the Islamization of the area by Hamas and the comparable exodus of Christian Arabs from Lebanon as a result of the increasing influence of Hezbollah and the repeated assassination of Christian leaders by Syria.

Mr. Carter also blames every American administration but his own for the Mideast stalemate with particular emphasis on "a submissive White House and U.S. Congress in recent years." He employs hyperbole and overstatement when he says that "dialogue on controversial issues is a privilege to be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and withheld from those who reject U.S. demands." He confuses terrorist states, such as Iran and Syria, to which we do not extend dialogue, with states with whom we strongly disagree, such as France and China, but with whom we have constant dialogue.

And it's not just the facts; it's the tone as well. It's obvious that Mr. Carter just doesn't like Israel or Israelis. He lectured Golda Meir on Israeli's "secular" nature, warning her that "Israel was punished whenever its leaders turned away from devout worship of God." He admits that he did not like Menachem Begin. He has little good to say about any Israelis -- except those few who agree with him. But he apparently got along swimmingly with the very secular Syrian mass-murderer Hafez al-Assad. Mr. Carter and his wife Rosalynn also had a fine time with the equally secular Arafat -- a man who has the blood of hundreds of Americans and Israelis on his hands:

Rosalynn and I met with Yasir Arafat in Gaza City, where he was staying with his wife, Suha, and their little daughter. The baby, dressed in a beautiful pink suit, came readily to sit on my lap, where I practiced the same wiles that had been successful with our children and grandchildren. A lot of photographs were taken, and then the photographers asked that Arafat hold his daughter for a while. When he took her, the child screamed loudly and reached out her hands to me, bringing jovial admonitions to the presidential candidate to stay at home enough to become acquainted with is own child.
There is something quite disturbing about these pictures.

"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" is so biased that it inevitably raises the question of what would motivate a decent man like Jimmy Carter to write such an indecent book. Whatever Mr. Carter's motives may be, his authorship of this ahistorical, one-sided, and simplistic brief against Israel forever disqualifies him from playing any positive role in fairly resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. That is a tragedy because the Carter Center, which has done much good in the world, could have been a force for peace if Jimmy Carter were as generous in spirit to the Israelis as he is to the Palestinians.

This article originally appeared in the NY Sun.

Umakill tells another whopper!
umkahlil: "Olmert said he expected the Palestinian people to give up the paramount right of millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and villages from which they were expelled at gunpoint by Jewish gangs when Israel was created nearly sixty years ago."

Where did these millions come from? There certainly wasn't even a million who ran like cowards away from the tenent farms they worked for their masters eating figs in Egypt.

All Israel wants from these Arabs squatting on the disputed territories is to stop whining.

Another great lie from Umakill!umkahlil: "Olmert said he expected the Palestinian people to give up the paramount right of millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and villages from which they were expelled at gunpoint by Jewish gangs when Israel was created nearly sixty years ago."

Except there were not millions of palestinian refugees 60 years ago. And as every palestinian website screams and whines about the non-existant Palestinian genocide... Where did these millions come from?

What the Israeli people expect from the Arabs squatting in the disputed territories is peace. Stop commiting war crimes against the Jewish State. Stop pining for another holocaust. We will give you a state, honest.

Umkahlil lies
Palestinian Islamo-Fascist Terrorists Hide Behind Civilians

Some 45 dead terrorists in the IDF's anti-Kassam military operation of the past 5 days. Three civilians were killed; Olmert says terrorists continue to use "human shields." More Kassams at Sderot.


The IDF's Operation Autumn Clouds entered its fifth day today (Sunday), having killed 45 terrorists in Gaza and uncovering much ammunition and explosives. Both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz said that the objective of the current IDF offensive is to "reduce" - not uproot - "the Kassam rocket shootings from Gaza into Israel."

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter called for an even stronger military invasion of Gaza, saying only such activity could prevent increased terror activity from Gaza. Olmert said in response, "You generals, you always propose stronger measures after you leave your position; why didn't you make such proposals when you were in the Shabak?"

Peretz said that the offensive is going according to plan, and that the IDF is allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza.

In addition to the dead terrorists, a 12-year-old Arab girl was also killed - and Prime Minister Olmert blamed her death on the terrorists' desire to use civilians as cover and protection for their activities.

"The casualties among the Palestinians are chiefly armed men," Olmert told the Cabinet today. "Unfortunately, even under these circumstances, [the terrorists] use innocent people as human shields, and as a result, there are cases in which civilians who are not involved are hurt. The instructions given to the IDF forces are to make supreme efforts and to act cautiously and with sensitivity to prevent unnecessary deaths..."

The IDF attacked several terrorist cells over the weekend, including one that was in the midst firing Kassam rockets at Israel; at least four terrorists were killed in that attack. Arutz-7's Haggai Huberman says it can be disclosed that the rockets hit Kibbutz Saad, south of Sderot, since the launcher and the launching cell were destroyed immediately afterwards.

The forces also found many caches of ammunition, including rockets, explosives and other combat means.

School Children used by Arabs as Choice Weapon
THE USE OF PALESTINIAN CHILDREN
IN THE AL-AQSA INTIFADA
Justus Reid Weiner
Executive Summary / Creating Martyrs for the Media / "Improved" Palestinian Tactics / Incitement by Arafat and his Palestinian Authority / Negating the Raison D'etre of the Peace Process / The Parents' Motivations / Identifying Child Abuse and Possessing the Courage to Speak Out / Israeli Restraint: The IDF Rules of Engagement / International Law: Efforts to Protect Children from the Dangers of Armed Conflict / Conclusion and Outlook



Executive Summary
Watching the television coverage of the daily Palestinian riots, known as the Al-Aqsa intifada,1 one is immediately struck by the near total absence of adults. Indeed, most of those hurling Molotov cocktails and stones are teenagers; many are even younger. Intoxicated by the challenge of becoming a hero, lacking the maturity to calculate the dangers they are assuming, these young people are easily motivated to place themselves in harm's way.

Since the recent disturbances began, media reports have often highlighted instances in which Palestinian children have been killed or injured by Israeli troops or policemen. These reports have generated much criticism of Israeli policies, although few in the Western world have thought through the chaos they see on the news to consider whose interests are served by the violence. Even fewer have access to the information necessary to place in legal and historical context these weeks of death and disorder.

The appearance of Palestinian children in these riots, it will be demonstrated, is not accidental. The Palestinian Authority has intentionally mobilized Palestinian children to man the front line in its struggle against Israel, frequently using them as shields to protect Palestinian gunmen. This mobilization of Palestinian youth has, moreover, been facilitated by the long-term impact of Palestinian Authority (PA) curricula, government-controlled media, and summer camp programs, which indoctrinated the youth for armed confrontation with Israel even prior to the current crisis.

The utilization of children in armed conflicts has been increasingly condemned by the international community. It is barred by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and recent UN Security Council Resolution 1261, which specifically described the use of children as soldiers as a "violation of international law."

Moreover, the Palestinian leadership, in a classic case of bad faith, accuses Israel of committing human rights violations for the fatalities while evading its own responsibility for the orchestrated appearance of children at the front lines of the conflict. This constitutes a cynical exploitation of human rights concerns. While the Palestinian Authority is not formally bound by international human rights conventions, it nonetheless is required by the Oslo agreements, which PA Chairman Yasser Arafat signed, to honor "internationally accepted norms of human rights and the rule of law."