Reform of Islam is Not Bush’s or the Pope’s business – The Pope Rejects Muslim Outreach

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Reform of Islam is Not Bush’s or the Pope’s business

Interfaith Dialogue Should Focus on Man not God

The Pope Rejects Muslim Outreach

(Speech given at Northeastern University, Chicago, Nov 13,2007)

By: Ali Baghdadi

I was invited to talk to you about Islam. After serious consideration I declined. I am the wrong person. My views about
Islam are not the norm. They are controversial. A few weeks ago I received an email, an assassination threat, from an Indian Muslim who will be traveling to the United States to accomplish his “holy” mission. My co-religionist, who works for the Arab American oil company in Saudi Arabia, accused me of being a “murtad”, a renegade. He was angered by an article in which I stated that Moses, according to archeology, a science, is a myth. He actually never existed. Muslims respect Moses as a prophet. My Indian Muslim “friend”, Z. T. Minhas, an insane and a coward, has not arrived yet. The U.S. intelligence, which intercepts our electronic, particularly international mail, has not reacted. Muslims, killing one another, is consistent with U.S. policy.

I was born in Islam. Documents of old torn up paper that I inherited claim that my family descends from Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. I spent the first twenty-three years of my life in the shadow of al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which according to the Quran, Islam’s holy book, Prophet Muhammad had journeyed to, and then ascended to heaven, and returned home to Medina in Arabia, all in one night. Some influential Muslim scholars say that the journey was only a dream. Others, with the Dark Ages mentality, insist that it was physical.

For twenty-three years, without any interruption, I listened to al-Azan, the Muslim call for prayer, five times a day. Prior to starting public school at age 7, I attended a kuttab, a madrasa, a private religious school, at age 4. The elderly teacher, a sheikh, a former officer in the Ottoman army, dressed in a long black robe and a white turban, was occasionally paid with a few loaves of bread, or eggs, or a live chicken. My family couldn’t afford it. I rewarded
my sheikh with a daily kiss of his hand, and a prayer, asking God to give him a comfortable and everlasting life in heaven. At age nine or ten I was able to recite most of the chapters of the Quran from memory. I studied the Quran, Islamic thought, Islamic history, Islamic culture and Arabic as language at all educational levels. I also attended lectures on political Islam given underground by some controversial scholars.

Things, however, have changed. My association with Islam throughout my adulthood has become political and not religious. I don’t go to a mosque. As you can tell, I don’t fast. I have no intention of ever performing the pilgrimage to Mecca. I suspended giving al-Zakat, charity, when Bush has designated almost all Muslim charitable organizations that aided the orphans and widows in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, as terrorists, and forced them to close.

I am not concerned about Islam. Islam has survived all foreign invasions. Bush’s crusade will be no exception. I am, however, concerned about Muslims, as well as Christians, in the Muslim World, who are targeted by the West, particularly the United States government, which possesses the most savage and destructive war machinery in human history.

Usually, I don’t defend religion, but people. Religion is faith not science. I insist that every individual has the right to believe or not to believe. Each man or woman has the right to accept a religion or to reject it. A person has the right also to choose to be an atheist. People must be judged by their deeds, and contributions, not their faith. I stand for justice, freedom, equality, peace, and prosperity for all. I support women and gay and lesbian rights.

The question that you may ask is why I am here? What changed my mind? The answer is the Pope. Yes, the Pope.

I was greatly disturbed by the Pope, who, citing the Quran as an obstacle, rebuffed a massive outreach effort by Muslims. Coming at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, three weeks ago, a 29-page letter was sent to leaders of major Christian dominations by 138 high-level Muslim leaders and scholars, representing 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. The letter appeals to religious tolerance, dialogue and understanding. It calls on Christian and Muslim religious leaders to work in unison for world peace, cooperation and prosperity. It emphasizes the similarities between Christianity and Islam as monotheistic religions. It speaks of the affinity between the Bible and the Quran. Both religions worship one God and call for the love of one’s neighbor.

Fortunately, the letter titled “a Common Word between Us and You”, was welcomed by various Christian leaders and institutions. It was well received by the Baptist World Alliance and the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Britain.

However, Pope Benedictine’s reaction was negative, and arrogant. It is also insulting to Christian Arabs, who are culturally Muslims. He chose to close the door to an idea which was very dear to his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who, when the Quran was presented to him, bowed and kissed it.

Benedictine’s hostility to Muslims is nothing new. In his speech in Germany, last year, he spoke of Islam as a violent and irrational religion. He quoted Emperor Manuel II of the Byzantine Empire, who said that Muhammad had brought only “evil and inhuman” things.

The office of interfaith dialogue established by John Paul II, was shut down, but later, under pressure, was reinstated.

Dr. Karen Armstrong of Oxford, a former nun, who is amongst the most renowned theologians and has written numerous bestsellers on the great religions and their founders, disagrees:

“Certainly not. There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur’an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam. The Qur’an forbids aggressive warfare and permits war only in self-defense; the moment the enemy sues for peace, the Qur’an insists that Muslims must lay down their arms and accept whatever terms are offered, even if they are disadvantageous. Later, Muslim law forbade Muslims to attack a country where Muslims were permitted to practice their faith freely; the killing of civilians was prohibited, as were the destruction of property and the use of fire in warfare.”

The Vatican says: “Muslims do not accept that one can discuss the Quran in depth, because they say it was written by dictation from God. With such an absolute interpretation, it is difficult to discuss the contents of faith.”

As a precondition for a dialogue, the Vatican demands that Muslims change their belief that the Quran is the word of God.

I say with a great certainty that the Pope’s action and conduct are not inspired by God, on whose behalf, “his holiness” speaks. It is dictated by politics, racism, ignorance and hatred. It is a part of the cruel crusade that George W. Bush, has declared against Muslims. Since his ascension to the papal throne, Benedictine, a former Hitler youth, has been putting the papacy, as well as Christianity, in the service of the U.S. empire.

Muslims are not asking for a theological dialogue. They are not trying to convince anyone that the Quran was dictated by God himself. Unlike Christians who are asking Jews to come to the Church, Muslims are not calling on Christians to come to the Mosque. Muslims are not demanding that Christians abandon the trinity and recognize Jesus only as a prophet. Though they don’t believe in the crucifixion and vindicate Jews from murdering Jesus, Muslims don’t see any reason for Christians to bring down the cross and raise up the crescent.

Muslims and non-Muslims ought to focus attention on common goals that are more important to humanity than theology, such as world peace, justice, freedom, equality, love, understanding, respect for one another, tolerance, cooperation, as well as mother earth and the environment.

In Muslim lands, Muslims, Christians and Jews have lived as neighbors for almost fifteen hundred years. They didn’t dialogue. They didn’t debate. They lived in peace and tranquility. The fact that Christianity and Judaism continued to exist alongside Muslims, who were and still are the majority, speaks of Muslim tolerance. The fact that Jews throughout the centuries fled Christian lands and took refuge in Muslim countries, demonstrates, beyond a doubt, Muslims’ respect of non-Muslims’ beliefs.

I do admit that the reform of Islam is urgently needed. But this is not the business of Jews or Christians. It is a Muslim problem. It requires a Muslim solution. It must be addressed and dealt with as a Muslim concern. Christians and Jews have their own enormous problems to acknowledge and resolve.

George W. Bush has been pushing for a new Islam that welcomes occupiers as liberators and labels oppression as democracy. He is promoting an Islam that requires his adherents to turn the other cheek to U.S. and Israeli soldiers, who are ordered to kill, maim, torture, burn, and destroy. He has been working hard to restrict Islam to spirituality, only to issues that deal with God but not man. No jihad! Jihad is not suicide, which is a great sin in Islam, but a struggle against injustice, oppression, occupation and aggression. Jihad is a legitimate resistance to daily murder of men, women and children. Bush’s Islam calls on Muslims to capitulate, kneel down in submission, not the Lord of the Universe, but to the
satanic” god” who resides in the White House. Muslims’ answer came clear, brief and swift, “hell, no.”

Hitler, who proclaimed himself a “Christian” and a fighter for “his Lord and Savior”, didn’t claim to have spoken to God. George W. Bush did.

“God told me to strike at Al-Qaeda and I struck them. And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.”

However, God warned Bush, “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile.” Here, Bush’s destructive god is right. “The mother of all battles” will continue until all foreign troops return home.

His “obedience” to his killer god has resulted in the murder of over a million Iraqis. Iraqi death due to war and economic sanctions are three and a half million. Iraqi orphans number five million and widows are three million. Six million people fled Iraq or were displaced. Museums, libraries and educational institutions were bombed and ransacked. Their contents were stolen or burned. Thousands of scholars and scientists were assassinated. Seven thousand years of human civilization is leveled to the ground. The only ministry building that was left standing is the Ministry of Oil. What a coincidence!

What about Western achievements the Pope attempts to protect? The Church cannot take credit for the awakening, enlightenment, progress, and freedoms men and women enjoy in the West today. On the contrary, the Church resisted and continues to resist reform and change until this very moment.

Muslim leaders who enjoy the support and blessing of the United States are the obstacle for social change and development. The Saudi dynasty continues to forbid women from driving, and deny Saudi citizens the right to vote.

However, Islamic reform is taking place slowly but steadily. Polygamy was outlawed in Tunisia. Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, a former head of the Sudanese National Assembly, one of the most influential thinkers that I had the honor to meet several times, issued a fatwa, a religious ruling, which gives the right to Muslim females to marry non-Muslims, and for women to lead Muslim prayers.

Revolutionary change is taking place in Iran, U.S. enemy number one. A divorced woman has the property right to a half of the wealth her husband amassed while being married. Sex change is legal. The surgery is paid for by the state.

I must remind you that four Muslim countries, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia had women as heads of state.

I regret that the Pope’s stand has forced me to end my public silence on issues pertaining to religion, and make comparison between faiths.

The Pope wants Muslims to tailor Islam to fit Judeo-Christians values. However, in terms of peace, universal brotherhood, equality, freedom, logic and simplicity, Islam is far more rational and progressive than Christianity and Judaism. No Vatican. No sainthood. No priesthood. No present day miracles. No spiritual healing of the sick. Those who may claim to have the power of healing, end in a mental institution of a jail. The Old Testament, an integral part of the Bible, as described by Christian and Jewish researchers and historians, is blood and sex. The God of Israel, Jehovah, orders his “Chosen People”, to destroy burn, kill, enslave, and rape virgins of the goyem, non-Jews.

Furthermore, Islam’s religious affairs are not a hierarchy for clerics. Islamic affairs are not confined to graduates from al-Azhar University or other Islamic institutions. As a matter of fact, the greatest Muslim scholars are intellectuals, such as writers, physicians, engineers, lawyers, and other professionals.

According to an interpretation the Old Testament, Noah’s three sons were the founders of the populations of the three known continents, Japheth/Europe, Shem/Asia, and Ham/Africa. Ham’s children had been “blackened” by sin and a curse. Ham made fun of his lying down, drunk and naked father. Noah’s two other sons who covered him were blessed. Their descendents were not black.

In Islam black is not a curse, but a beautiful color in the rainbow of the human race. Muhammad declared that all men are equal. The Quran says, “O mankind! We (God) created ye from a single (pair) of a male and female, and made ye into nations and tribes, that ye may know one another, (not that ye may despise each other). Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of God is he who is the most Righteous of you.” Chapter 49, verse 13.

Islam has no confession and no intermediary. A man or a woman has direct and private line of communication with God, free of charge, anytime and anywhere. In the Quran, God stresses that He is close to all. He responds if he is called.

In Islam, no one represents God on earth. No one is infallible. Muhammad, Jesus, Moses and all prophets are not divine, but humans.

All efforts and promises for a better life made by the Vatican and other Christian groups to convince Muslims throughout the world to convert have failed. What disturbs Christian missionaries is the fact that Islam today is the fastest growing religion. According to the Seattle Times, Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group. Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she’s ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she’s also been a Muslim.

To multiply the number of his constituents, Benedictine, in his visit to Latin America, last year, demanded from its poverty stricken natives not to use condoms. When it comes to sex, what or how, in the privacy of their bedroom, has always been the job of a married couple, not Muslim clergy.

The Quran reveres Bible prophets, not insults them. The Old Testament presents Abraham as a pimp. He gave his wife Sarah to the Pharaoh to sleep with and enjoy. In return, the Pharaoh granted him slaves, cattle, silver and gold. Abraham repeated the same trade with one of the kings of Jordan. What a bargain.

Read the Bible. I can go on and on and on.

Religion, particularly Judaism and Christianity which were written with fire and blood, have brought more evil and less good to humanity throughout history. Interfaith dialogue should not debate theology. It should work to end death, destruction and misery. Dialogue should concentrate on building bridges of good will and coexistence. It should put less emphasis on God and more on fellow man.

Muslims are condemned for their rejection to Western values. The question is why should they? They have their own values that were developed over seven thousand years of civilization. The decision to drop the two atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki took, according to President Truman, a snap of a finger. Non-whites’ life is worthless. A couple of weeks ago, in Israel, actually occupied Palestine, a young woman was savagely beaten by five of her fellow students of the Torah, because she refused to move to the back of the bus. Muslim men promptly evacuate their seats for women, anytime and anywhere. Muhammad assured his followers that Paradise is underneath the feet of mothers and entry is allowed only by their blessings and approval. Those values should remain.

Islamofascism, a new word coined by Norman Podhoretz, a former editor of Commentary Jewish magazine, the home of the neoconservatives. Bush loves the new word and sings it like a puppet, to drum up American support against Muslims, and to wage a new Zionist-white supremacist war against Iran, which insists on using nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The October 22nd to 26th Islamofascism Awareness Week organized by the Jewish lobby and the neo conservatives, on 100 campuses, turned out to be a great disaster. Students protested and heckled the speakers. David
Horowitz, author of Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left), Jump to: navigation, search

Who received more than $15 million in handouts from ultra conservative foundations, was forced to flee. In the sixties, he was a Marxist and a member of the new left. His Jewish parents were long-standing members of the Communist Party. Horowitz later discovered that leftism doesn’t pay. The Zionist propagandist describes so-called Islam as the moral and historical equivalent of Nazism. Margaret Kimberley, a writer and a senior columnist, together with a group of influential anti-fascist activists, are calling for a counter-event: “Christian/Jewish Fascism Awareness Week.”

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Islam has replaced communism as an imaginary enemy, and thus justified the astronomical military spending in service of big business. It does not take a nuclear or a space scientist to conclude that the 911 tragedy was a home-made conspiracy. It is naïve to believe that a man with a turban on his head and a cane in his hand hiding eleven thousand miles away in the caves of Tora Boro is responsible for such an almost impossible mission. 51% of the American people question the official story. Evidence points a finger at Bush, Cheney, their lieutenants, the Israeli Mossad and certain segments in U.S. intelligence. We must demand the creation of an independent commission of scholars, scientists, engineers, and experts on demolition and intelligence to find the truth and bring the criminals to justice

The watch list of suspected terrorists, compiled by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has swelled to over 755,000. Certainly, if you oppose war and stand against genocide, regardless of your religion, or nationality, you can be sure that you are on this list. Ironically, it mainly contains scholars, academics, writers, journalists, artists, and anti-war activists.

What about Islamic “radicalism”?

Fifty years ago, in most Arab countries, one could seldom see a Muslim girl or a woman covering her hair. Today, one can rarely encounter a Muslim female without a headscarf. I must admit, all are beautiful, with or without a cover. However, I do hate the burqa, a veil, which covers the face. It is not a religious requirement. Those who impose it, as well as the women who accept it, bring shame and disgrace to the overwhelming majority of Muslims.

Muslims females wear the scarf mostly by choice. It is mainly a sign of political protest. It is a rejection to Western values, Western culture, Western domination, Western hypocrisy and Western occupation. It is a stand against theft of resources, ethnic cleansing, and genocide to which Muslims are subjected.

Muhammad said, “If you see evil, your duty is to stop it by your hand. If you cannot, you must oppose it by your mouth. But if you cannot, you should undo it in your heart.” In Muslim lands, Muslim fighters oppose U.S. and Israeli tanks and bombers with gun, and sometimes by an explosive belt. In the Quran, God says, “Think not that those who fall while resisting aggression will ever die. They are alive, in the company of their Lord.” Muslims believe that that is the highest form of martyrdom and the greatest honor.

Finally, I have been a U.S. citizen for over forty years. My country of origin, Palestine, is occupied, and my country men, women and children are killed daily. The United States has become my second home. I am grateful. Two of my children served in the U.S. military. Both took the oath to defend their country. Both were honorably discharged.

Regardless of my convictions and beliefs, Islam has formed my identity. It remains a source of my personal behavior and conduct. I will not abandon my heritage, my culture, my roots, or my people. The F.B.I. visited me twice, a year ago. I refuse to be intimidated. As long as the crusade against Muslims continues, as long as there is war on earth, and as long as there is hunger and disease, the least I must do is to not be in the silent majority.

Professor Bernard Lewis, the “orientalist” historian who supported US intervention in Iraq, went so far as to warn, quite seriously, that Tehran might drop a nuclear bomb (which it does not have) on Israel on 22 August 2006, because that is the day the Muslim calendar commemorates the prophet Muhammad’s flight to Jerusalem and thence to heaven

The evangelical Christian political and economical support for Israel is motivated by their desire to convert all Jews to Christianity. The will accelerate the second coming of Jesus and the birth of a perfect world.

(arabjournl@aol.com or arabjournl@hotmail.com)

The full story in
www.montrealmuslimnews.net

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Proof Of The Brilliance Of Islam Number 1001 Found In New Statesman Article : Wash your hands

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Proof Of The Brilliance Of Islam Number 1001 Found In New Statesman Article : Wash your hands

Barbara Gunnell

 

Every day, 5,000 children die because of poor sanitation. Villagers in Madagascar tell Barbara Gunnell how cheap interventions can transform their chances

“What did we tell you last time we were here?” shouts the man with the microphone.

“Wash Your Hands!” yell back 200 children aged around 5-11. They are seated on the grass verges of the crossroads at Amparatanana, a village on Madagascar’s east coast, the audience for a travelling marionette show spreading the word about hygienic use of latrines, keeping water uncontaminated and, above all, hand-washing.

As Mr Clean upbraids Mr Dirty for his bad habits, the children scold along; as Mr Dirty goes home to his wife clutching his stomach with diarrhoea pains, they giggle uncontrollably.

The puppets are part of this region’s response to the international rural water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) project that got under way in Madagascar soon after the country suffered a severe cholera outbreak early in 2000. Water Aid, the key international NGO in this field in the country, is working here with local partners, the Frères Saint-Gabriel.

Yvon, one of the FSG hygiene educators, regularly updates the puppet-show scripts to keep the children hooked on the message. His aim, he told me, is to use storylines as close to the children’s home lives as possible, so that hand-washing becomes second nature. This sounds easy until you consider that, in the middle of our own culture of abundant soap and hot water, medical staff still manage to spread MRSA because they fail to wash their hands between patients.

In fact, educators like Yvon have to work miracles. The wood and thatch huts of these east-coast villages are tightly packed in to small compounds without running water. Soap is a luxury and such latrines as exist are poorly designed, badly sited and almost always a health hazard.

Yet the children do absorb the hand-washing message and the impact of the singing, dancing, 12-foot-high marionettes has been rapid in the schools. Albertine-Rosalie Clode, a teacher for 37 years, whom we met fetching water at the new water kiosk, told us that her school of 1,686 pupils aged 6-17 was already seeing improvements.

“Awareness has changed in just one year [since WaterAid and FSG came to this village], particularly among the children. When the ice-cream seller comes by, they ask him, ‘What water did you use to make it?’ The puppets show families as they know them. In the past we could have 20 children off sick out of a class of 44-60, particularly in the rainy season,” says Mme Clode, who lives alongside the families of her pupils, and whose many grandchildren are as vulnerable to the debilitating water-borne diseases of the area as the children of poorer neighbours.

The hand-washing message – enormously effective in its own right – also underscores the urgent need to speed up provision of clean water and appropriate sanitation. The poorest villagers here still depend on river collection for some water and still manage without toilets. The few existing wells, some provided only in the past few years, are uncovered and vulnerable to impurities from the buckets of different users. And, as the area has an unusually high water table, there is considerable risk of groundwater contamination from badly designed and sited latrines.

The proportion of people with safe water and adequate sanitation in the villages of the Analanjirofo district (to which New Statesman subscri bers’ contributions are directed) is estimated to be as low as 9 per cent, inflicting a heavy penalty on the local economy in hours lost to education and productive work.

Persuading officialdom of the economic good sense of developing a national sanitation strategy has been an important part of WaterAid’s work in Madagascar. In 2003, its research showed that the country was losing five million working days and 3.5 million schooldays each year as a result of ill-health caused by dirty water and inadequate sanitation. To this must be added the human cost. Every day around the globe, 5,000 children die from the diarrhoeal diseases associated with contaminated water; it is the second-biggest childhood killer after tuberculosis and respiratory disease.

“Sanitation is the invisible sector,” says Lucky Lowe, WaterAid’s representative in Madagascar. She confirms that it is far easier to get politicians to talk about water and to promise pumps and new mains supplies than it is to get a constructive debate going about pit latrines. Clean water is a good election promise. Talking about building latrines that help make that possible isn’t.

On top of the hard statistics must be added less tangible human costs: the drudgery of walking miles each day to collect contaminated water for the family, or the sheer unpleasantness and indignity of using a foul-smelling, poorly draining communal latrine day in and day out. Or, for those who have nowhere else, a patch of land that has become accepted as the local open-air toilet. We should not suppose that force of habit appreciably lessens the disgust.

Disgust was certainly written on the face of eight-year-old Sidonie when we talked to her mother before the puppet show about the field “toilet” in her village. We had gone there with Claudia Lemalade, FSG’s hygiene educator for Amparatanana, to talk to a family due to receive one of the project’s new latrines. We stood on a pathway that led down to a small river with the typical wooden huts on one side and lush vegetation – banana plants, coconut palms and vivid, flowering shrubs – on the other.

The path, even before the rainy season, was wet in patches and drained into the small river below, as, inevitably, would the open-air defecation site a few yards from the path.

Claudia chatted with three generations of one family: Toto Suzanne, her daughter Marceline and Sidonie, Marceline’s daughter. Finally the family was to get a latrine – paying around 10 per cent of the cost price (approximately £30). They had been able to pay their £3 contribution as and when they liked, in whatever instalments suited them, but the contribution had to be paid upfront before work could begin on the structure. The family had been targeted because of financial need; FSG has set families’ contributions low enough to put latrines within reach of most of the poorest.

It is not hard to understand why Marceline wanted to divert her family’s limited budget to pay for a latrine. “Down there is where we have to go. After dark it is really horrible for the children.” Sidonie refused to discuss the matter though she had been lively enough before. As we talked, a young woman came up the hill from the river carrying a bucket. “This is to wash my baby’s feet,” she told us, as if to assure us that the murky water would not be used for drinking or cooking. For household use, she explained, she had limited access to a neighbour’s well (itself also contaminated, according to Claudia). She understood clearly the WASH message that the puppets would later be blasting out across the village, but what, she asked us, could she do?

There is a standard image of hopeless poverty that we see on television and in poster campaigns, images usually connected with appeals for emergency aid. Yet life in these villages is far from miserable or hopeless. Men and women are visibly industrious – most have family members in work as fishermen or farmers; good-quality food is available and at this time of year the trees are laden with coconuts, lychees and jackfruit. The literacy rate of 71 per cent is reasonably high and, despite a high poverty rate of 70 per cent, when news spreads of a visit from the WaterAid people, the women come out to meet us in well-kept best clothes.

Quite small investments in sanitation could turn around that high poverty rate. But at the moment, for the vast majority of Madagascar’s people, energy that could be put into education and wealth creation is being dissipated by avoidable ill-health. The Madagascan economy loses to illness around 300 times the amount the government has allocated to sanitation in its national budget, according to WaterAid.

WaterAid estimates that if Madagascar is to achieve its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the country has to increase the number of rural households being newly supplied with adequate sanitation, from roughly 485 households per month now to more than 12,000.

More and carefully focused international aid is, as always, one solution. Determined local politicians unafraid to champion an unpopular cause is another. Mme Clode said she intends to run as a local councillor next year and wants politicians to speak up for the Cinderella sector of sanitation.

Of Madagascar’s local MDG targets, she said: “I expected things to move faster. Many things need doing. For example, there is no water in the market in Fenerive Est [the nearby town]. And we need more latrines.” Against current orthodoxy, Mme Clode believes in communal latrines as a way of speeding things up, while government and international policy very much favours and directs finance towards family-based facilities, on the grounds that only families will keep them clean enough to prevent water-borne disease.

But her concern about the slippage in local millennium targets exactly mirrors WaterAid’s concern about the big picture. The millennium goals included halving the proportion of those living without water and sanitation by 2015. Of all the targets (including poverty, education, health and environmental concerns), sanitation is most off-track. At the present rate of progress, the goal would be reached 61 years late. Yet hopes of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger depend more on sorting out safe sanitation than on any other intervention.

A report commissioned by WaterAid and released in October spelled out that, for every dollar spent on sanitation, the return on investment is roughly $9. Worldwide, the need is enormous, but tiny interventions and local ingenuity can still have a big impact. In Madagascar, a puppet show costing just £31 can make 200 children laugh. And possibly save their lives.

Sanitation by numbers

• £15 Cost per head of hygiene education and good sanitation
• £31 Cost of puppet show promoting hand-washing
• £31.25 Cost of effective latrine with simple concrete pit lining
• $23.4m Most expensive toilet in the world (for space shuttle)
• $10bn Annual cost of achieving Millennium Goals
• $20bn Global annual spending on bottled mineral water
• 1.1bn People worldwide without access to clean water
• 2.6bn People worldwide without an adequate toilet

The full story in
http://www.newstatesman.com/200711290026

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD ~~ HOW THE WORLD VIEWS THE PALESTINIANS

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Lies from Annapolis

From Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

That is the concept the world has of the Palestinian people. For 60 years a people without a land that was taken from them with the approval of most of that world.

For 40 years whatever hopes remained of starting over were crushed, again, with the world standing by silently….

Then we come to the Annapolis Conference…. the world saw an option to end this all…. but in reality all that ended was the Conference itself… with no changes and a new barrage of lies instead.

The ‘players’ are satisfied, ‘mission accomplished’ as far as they are concerned… but the reality is far from that as can be seen in the following piece sent to me this morning by the author, A Palestinian living in the Occupied West Bank. To get a feel of what the ‘children of a lesser God’ think about this you must read it….

The peoples of the world are being subjected to a fresh dose of lies, this time coming from Annapolis, Maryland, in the United States.

George Bush, the Fuehrer of the White House, who has destroyed two nation-states and killed a million human beings, and then had the chutzpa to claim that the Almighty told him to do so, displayed some of his characteristically morbid magic this week.

He invited delegates from 50 nations to watch Israel, a state whose modus operandi consists of murder, theft and mendacity, and the miserable Palestinian Authority, which claims to represent the most uninterruptedly oppressed people on the face of earth, to pledge peace and reconciliation that would end decades of violence and bloodshed.

Speaking from a prepared text, Bush re-asserted his proverbial vision of seeing two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace. He didn’t forget to warn that the would-be Palestinian state “must govern justly and dismantle the infrastructure of terror.”

Bush tried to create an artificial aura of optimism by claiming that he was convinced that the leaders of both sides, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, were finally willing and ready to make peace.

Well, Bush’s convictions are many, but are evidently mostly silly.

There is no doubt that Abbas earnestly wants peace for his nearly decimated people, constantly coerced, bullied and raped by an imperialistic Israel that very much resembles Nazi Germany during the heydays of its insolence and arrogance of power.

After all, the Palestinians, who have almost miraculously survived in spite of history, are the main victim of this sinister lingering outrage which allows Israel to constantly steal more Palestinian land for the purpose of creating more lebensraum for Jewish settlement expansion.

But Palestinian national survival can’t really be take for granted no matter how many “peace” conferences are organized and how many foreign dignitaries are invited and how many nice-sounding speeches are given.

Zionism’s aggressive blitz of ethnic cleaning against non-Jews west of the River Jordan is more than alarming for the starved and blockaded Palestinians. It is nothing short of a slow-motion genocide that no amount of verbal assurances can mitigate, let alone stop.

Of course, Bush doesn’t and wouldn’t pay attention to these real issues. He is too ignorant, too biased toward Israel and, yes, too unchristian, to call the spade a spade, especially when it is in the hands of Zionist imperialists.

This is why his claim that Israel wants peace and that Ehud Olmert is sincere about the quest for peace has no iota of truth.

Let us be frank and honest about this. Israel is not about to make peace with the Palestinians. Israel has not made a strategic decision to make peace with the Palestinians. Israel is not about to give up the spoils of the 1967 war. Israel is not about to give up occupied East Jerusalem.

Indeed, Israel is not about to come to terms with the paramount right of return for Palestinian refugees, unjustly uprooted from their homes and villages when the Zionist state was created nearly sixty years ago.

And above all of this, Israel is insisting that it be recognized as an exclusively Jewish state whereby Israel’s non-Jewish citizens (25% of the population) would be treated not only as lesser citizens with more or less transient and uncertain status, but actually as children of a lesser God.

So, how can we possibly expect peace with attitudes like these, and with the outrageous willingness on the part of the West to entertain Israel’s racist whims?

Moreover, it is amply clear that George Bush is not an honest broker. Needless to say, a dishonest broker can’t be a true peace maker, even if he invokes all the deceptive theatrics he can muster.

Real peace requires true commitment and above all honesty, characteristics that Bush and his nefarious administration obviously lack.

In truth, the last thing Israel would want to see in the Middle East is a true peace settlement based on justice, even a semblance of justice. Such an equitable settlement would be anathema for Zionism, a fascist-minded movement that is antithetical to peace and calm and stability and human decency.

This is why Israel insists on “bilateral negotiations” with the weak Palestinian Authority not out of good will toward its Palestinian neighbors but rather in order to further bully and blackmail the vulnerable Palestinian leadership to give more and more and more concessions. Israel simply wants to be left alone with the Palestinians, its enduring helpless victims. And all that Bush is doing is to tell the rapist and the victim to sort it out without any external interference.

In fact, Israel becomes almost spasmodic and gets very angry whenever the rule of international law and human rights are invoked as a basis of any prospective resolution of the conflict.

Israel wants any prospective settlement with the Palestinians to reflect Israeli military supremacy, political hegemony and Jewish predominance over American politics and policies.

Israel pretends to accept UN resolutions 242 and 338 as the guiding principles for the peace process. However, Israel has its own skewed and twisted interpretation of these resolutions, which really render them void of substance.

And when Israeli leaders are offered the choice of international arbitration, e.g. by the International Court of Justice in the Hague, to rule on the matter, they vehemently reject any third party interference, probably save the US, claiming that the world out there is anti-Semitic and that it can’t be entrusted to do justice to Jews.

For these reasons, I am certain that this endeavor will meet the same failure that previous endeavors ultimately met. And then, another American administration might invite the “sides,” along with another multitude of false witnesses, to a new peace conference.

But then, it might be too late for a Palestinian state, or even for peace.

The full story in
http://desertpeace.blogspot.com/2007/11/children-of-lesser-god-how-world-views.html

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Youngest Palestinian prisoner leaves Israeli detention camp

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Youngest Palestinian prisoner leaves Israeli detention camp

A must read story. I could not find words to comment on this inhumanity

by Hadeel Wahdan – BBC

Translated by Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC News

November 22, 2007

They say life is just stories someone did not have the chance to tell yet. With this in mind, I tried to manage the boredom I felt while waiting in front of the Israeli detention camp of Telmond for the release of Aisha Eliyan, the youngest Palestinian political detainee to be released by the Israeli army this week.

3-years-old Aisha

Aisha was born three years ago in Telmond Detention Camp. For three years she was unable to see the blue sky or play freely, her crime was that she was the daughter of a Palestinian woman, Itaf Eliyan, who is detained for being a member of a political group that Israeli considers hostile.

Aisha walking out of the detention camp with the attorney
Um Waleed, the grandmother of Aisha sat waiting on a stone installed by the army in front of the main gate of the detention camp; Um Waleed is Aisha’s only remaining family member, since the army kidnapped her father several days before.

Aisha’s father has never held her; he used to see her during a visit just once a week and he was unable to hold her.

Aisha’s grandmother asked me to ask the soldiers guarding the gate when the release was going to take place, and before I even had the chance to reply to her request, the loud noise of the gate filled the area, and there she was; Aisha, holding the hand of the family lawyer. Um Waleed rushed to her granddaughter to hold her and kiss her.

To begin with, Aisha did not accept Um Waleed and started to pull the lawyer back toward the detention center gate while shouting and screaming for her mother, who in addition was crying because of being separated from her child.

Eventually, with fear and hesitant steps, Aisha made her first steps out of the jail. The lawyer said that Aisha should have been released a year ago, as Israeli law says children of prisoners should not stay with their parents above the age of two years old.

Aisha meeting her grandmother for the first time

There were five Palestinian babies in Israeli detention centers, three were released directly after being born due to health complications, one died at birth and Aisha stayed with her mother because her mother wanted to breastfeed her.

Quickly my cell phone caught Aisha’s attention because of its constant ringing and this led her to the car that took her home. When in her new home she was jumping everywhere and looking around, exploring the place. Um Waleed looked at Aisha and said, “How I am going to take care of her, I am old and sick; they did not leave anyone from the family to take care of Aisha except me.”

Aisha misses her mother
Aisha disappeared for some time and when she returned she was holding a photo of her parents on their wedding day. She did not recognize her father but of course she recognized her mother. I asked if I could speak to her and said “who are they?”, she gave me an angry look because of my ignorance, and just cried “Mom, where is mom? I want go to mommy” all the while looking at the photo.

Aisha playing with the BBC reporter

Just as I was leaving, Aisha grabbed onto my bag and said in her baby language, “I go with you, to bring mommy”. At three years old, she knew a lot, including that this detention center would not allow her to see her mother.

The full story in
http://hussamayloush.blogspot.com/2007/11/youngest-palestinian-prisoner-leaves.html

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Video of zionist soldier killing unarmed man in cold blood

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Video of zionist soldier killing unarmed man in cold blood

http://chiwulltun.blogspot.com/2007/11/video-tres-soldados-israelies-asesinan.html

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Ariel Sharon – A Terror master

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

A Powerpoint Presentastion PPS File About Ariel Sharon ‘A Man of Peace’, That You Won’t Find in A Newspaper

Ariel Sharon – A Terror Master

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CAIR WELCOMES ‘PRELIMINARY VICTORY’ IN IMAMS’ SUIT AGAINST AIRLINE

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

CAIR WELCOMES ‘PRELIMINARY VICTORY’ IN IMAMS’ SUIT AGAINST AIRLINE

Federal judge’s ruling calls U.S. Airways/MAC defense ‘dubious’

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 11/20/2007) The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) welcomed a ruling today by a federal judge in Minnesota that rejected almost all of the arguments made by U.S. Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission in the case of six imams, or Islamic religious leaders, removed from a flight last year in Minneapolis, then arrested and denied further service.

In her 41-page ruling and order, U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery said the question of whether airport officers had probable cause for the actions taken against the imams must be determined by the facts available at the time.

Montgomery termed “dubious” the often-repeated allegation that the imams were intent on interfering with the flight. According to the judge, the plaintiffs have a plausible claim that their constitutional rights were violated.

She said the facts “support the existence of an unconstitutional custom of arresting individuals without probable cause based on their race.”

SEE: Judge Rejects Dismissal of Imams’ Suit (Star Tribune)

SEE ALSO: Judge Rejects Defense Arguments to Dismiss Imams’ Lawsuit (AP)

In a statement reacting to the judge’s ruling, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said:

“We are pleased that despite the tremendous level of misinformation, unsubstantiated smears and Islamophobic rhetoric surrounding this case, an impartial examination of the facts lead the judge to rule in the imams’ favor. At its core, this case has always been about the ability of all Americans to practice their faith without fear of intimidation or harassment.”

The attorney in the case, Omar Mohammedi, said: “This preliminary victory shows that any American can have a day in court. The case is about civil rights violations and constitutional principles that we all cherish. Our judicial system has always been, and will remain, the hope for all minorities who seek to redress civil rights violations.”

CAIR, America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 33 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

– END –

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 28 November 2007

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 28 November 2007

Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org

• Resistance car bomb destroys two US vehicles in ar-Rutbah Wednesday evening.
• US admits five seven troops wounded when woman Resistance fighter blows herself up in Ba’qubah Tuesday.
• Resistance forces battle collaborator “al-Anbar Awakening” puppet police in the area of ath-Tharthar, north of ar-Ramadi Wednesday morning.
• Resistance blasts US base near al-Fallujah with rockets Wednesday morning.
• Resistance fighters kill two puppet policemen in al-Mawsil Wednesday morning.

http://uruknet.info/?p=m38701&hd=&size=1&l=e

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Clinton and Rove Revise History on War: It Turns Out That No One Actually Supported the Iraq War

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Clinton and Rove Revise History on War: It Turns Out That No One Actually Supported the Iraq War

Published 1, November 28, 2007 Bizarre , Congress , Politics , Society

As the election approaches, it is becoming apparent that no one actually supported going to war in Iraq. In separate statements this week, Bill Clinton and Karl Rove revised history and their roles in supporting the Iraq War.

Clinton stated in Iowa this week that he “opposed the Iraq from the beginning.” The war remains a significant problem for the Clintons with democrats. Yet, in 2003 in a commencement speech when the war was still popular, Clinton said that “I supported the President when he asked Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

However, Clinton’s slight revision is nothing like effort this week by Karl Rove to airbrush Bush and himself out of the war effort entirely: blaming Congress for the war. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Rove insisted that they did not want to rush the war vote and that Congress was simply gung ho for a war that Bush desperately wanted to avoid:

ROVE: [O]ne of the untold stories about the war is why did the United States Congress, the United States Senate, vote on the war resolution in the fall of 2002?ROSE: Why?

ROVE: This administration was opposed to it. I’m going to talk about that in my book… [T]he administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002.ROSE: Because?

ROVE: Because we didn’t think it belonged in the confines of the election. We thought it made it too political. We wanted it outside the confines of the election. It seemed it make things move too fast. There were things that needed to be done to bring along allies and potential allies abroad and yet…But you were opposed to the vote.

ROVE: It happened. We don’t determine when the Congress vote on things. The Congress does.

ROSE: You wish it hadn’t happened at that time. You would have preferred it did not happen at that time.

ROVE: That’s right.

ROSE: Because your argument– your argument is you would have had maybe more inspections. You would have been able to build a broader coalition. You could have done a whole lot other things if you didn’t have to have a vote, right?

ROVE: Right, right, exactly.

For a video of the interview, click here

In reality, Bush pushed for approval of the war resolution before the elections and praised the vote to do so. Some Democrats (unfortunately not enough) spoke out against giving the President the authority at that time.

The full story in
http://jonathanturley.org/2007/11/28/clinton-and-rove-revise-history-on-war-it-turns-out-that-no-one-actually-supported-the-iraq-war/

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Racist Rabbi: Cleanse country of Arabs

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Kobi Nahshoni

Prominent right-wing rabbis gather for ’emergency meeting’ ahead of Annapolis conference, state no peace can be achieved if Arabs stay on Israel’s land

Published: 11.27.07, 10:36 / Israel Jewish Scene

“We must cleanse the country of Arabs and resettle them in the countries where they came from,” head of the Yesha Rabbis Council, Rabbi Dov Lior, declared Monday, adding that, “If this means we have to pay them, we will. Without doing so, we will never enjoy peace in our land.”

Lior made the statement during an “emergency meeting” of the Association of Rabbis for the People of Israel and the Land of Israel held in Jerusalem ahead of the Annapolis peace conference.

“You have no cause for concern, no peace will come out of all these conferences and agreements,” Lior told the participants. The rabbi stated that although he was interested in peace, Israel could never hope to achieve peaceful relations “with evil people of this kind.”

MK Uri Ariel (National Union), who also attended the meeting, said that the prime minister aimed to convince the public that Judea and Samaria should be given to the Palestinians. Ariel also called on the attendees not to waste their time on trying to change the minds of MKs and ministers. “This is a struggle of good versus evil,” he exclaimed.

‘No leader has the right to give away land’

Rabbi Zalman Melamed stated that assisting or participating in the handing over of parts of Eretz Israel to non-Jews was strictly prohibited. “We must declare clearly that we will not do anything that is against our holy Torah. We shall fight all those who attempt to violate the Torah’s mitzvot.”

At the conclusion of the meeting, the association’s secretary, Rabbi Yosef Artziel, read out the decisions agreed upon in the gathering: “No leader, in any generation, has the right to give away Eretz Israel… we call on the Jews abroad, and especially on community leaders and rabbis, to join us in our efforts against this treaty and its implications.

“Together, we will save the people of Israel from the government’s terrible plan.”

The full story in
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3476150,00.html

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The Sharon’s Corruption File

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

The Sharon’s Corruption File

http://www.israel-wat.com/temp/tiksharon_eng.pdf

The Institute for the Study of Corruption in Israel P.O. Box 37036

Jerusalem, Israel

Preface

The material you will read in this pamphlet is based on openly published reports. Sometimes the reports were comprehensive and at other times they were limited, sometimes direct and sometimes incidental, but it was all available and accessible to citizens of the state of Israel. The only thing that had to be done was to gather and collate material and put all the details and events together in order to get the frightening overall picture of the man who heads the state of Israel. However, the gist of the material you will read here depicts the Sharon family, led by its patriarch, as a family of criminals engaged in gaining financial profit and taking over governmental positions of power. In the Sharon family, it is a matter of involvement of suspected criminals in all of the existential affairs of the state, the appointment of every key figure in public administration and the control of the billions of shekels in the state coffers. Appointments are made on the basis of loyalty. The head of the Shin Bet General Security Service, the Mossad chief, the police inspector general, the chief of staff – dismissals or appointments to all these key positions were made as punishment or in reward for loyalty.

Sharon and his son managed to instill into public life a rule of paralyzing fear. In May 2003, following the State Comptroller’s report on Sharon’s involvement in changing decision 755, Member of Knesset Ophir Pines said: “If Sharon were an ordinary citizen, within three days there would have been an indictment drawn up against him.” Member of Knesset Mickey Eitan, the chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee said in January 2004: “The actions of Sharon, his sons and his former bureau chief, Uri Shani, have brought the country to an intolerable situation…”

Sycamore Ranch

Sharon’s home, Sycamore Ranch, sits on the road between Sderot and the Beit Kama junction. Sharon, who left the army with the rank of major general after not being appointed chief of staff, enjoys a respectable pension, but not one that would enable him to buy a ranch with thousands of dunams (according to reports: between 3,500 and 5,000 dunams). In 1972, upon his discharge from the army Sycamore Ranch was bought for two million liras. Two American millionaires provided Sharon with the means to purchase the ranch: Sam Wachs and Meshulam Riklis. Riklis also helped fund Sharon’s libel suit against Time Magazine. Riklis’ explanation for his generosity: “I like Arik.” And Arik? He, of course, did not object to or turn down the gratis gifts, rather on the contrary.

In 1994, it was uncovered that Thai workers were employed on the ranch without the necessary permits and by bypassing the usual procedures. The embarrassing affair ended after the Ministry of Labor’s legal adviser was forced to halt his inquiry due to the disappearance of the evidence file. Now it turns out that when it comes to this gigantic ranch as well, the Sharon family is insatiable. A team of surveyors from the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) is reviewing how hundreds of dunams were annexed to the ranch without obtaining the necessary permits required by the state authorities. The lease agreement for the ranch expired over three years ago, but ILA officials held up the renewal of the contract because of the surprising expansion of the ranch’s area.

The Kfar Mallal Land Scandal

Arik Sharon himself has rights to lands in Kfar Mallal. At the ILA, he is registered as the owner of 4-5 dunams. In 1996, the ILA council approved a decision formalizing the matter of leasing agricultural lands to farmers in order to build commercial enterprises. It was determined that renting the assets out for industrial and commercial purposes would not be permitted. Sharon intervened to change resolution 755 of the ILA, even though his intervention, in the words of the State Comptroller: “had the potential to obtain perks and benefits for the prime minister’s family.” The comptroller noted that despite warning Sharon repeatedly about the problematic nature of his involvement in formalizing land leasing due to his family’s holdings in Kfar Mallal, Sharon worked to change the ILA resolution. The comptroller noted that Sharon publicly stated that he could not take part in the discussions due to a conflict of interests, but in fact behind the scenes created a juggernaut to compel the ILA to adopt his position. MK Ophir Pines, currently the interior minister, said in the wake of the comptroller’s report that “If Sharon were an ordinary citizen, within three days there would have been an indictment drawn up against him.”

The Malmud Scandal

The Malmud family is one of the most powerful and veteran families of Kfar Mallal. In the Sheinerman (Sharon) family’s conflicted history with the residents of the Kfar, the Malmud family was on the good side. During the work to pave the Trans-Israel Highway, lands were appropriated from the Malmud family in order to build an access road and railroad tracks. For ten years they waged a fight against the Public Works Council. Appeals to committees and legal proceedings were of no avail. What can they do? Approach Arik Sharon. Initially the Public Works Council proposed monetary compensation in the amount of $610,000; following Sharon’s intervention the sum increased to $700,000.

The Greek Island Scandal

The Greek Island Scandal provides some clear insights on what moves the Sharon family: lots of money, the use of power and connections, the father covering for the sons and vice versa, and finally reserving the right to remain silent. Dudi Appel is a Likud activist who became a multimillionaire. In the Greek Island Scandal, Appel sought to buy an island in Greece, not far from Athens, and build a giant tourist resort complex there. When the negotiations over the purchase of the Greek island hit a snag, Appel arranged a visit to Israel for a Greek delegation. Sharon, then the foreign minister, was invited to and attended a dinner in honor of the Greek undersecretary for foreign affairs in the home of Dudi Appel, which his son, Gilad also attended. What did Sharon receive in return for his assistance in promoting Appel’s interests? For Sharon the somewhat open benefit was the assistance he received in the Likud primaries, but there was also another perk, amazing in its scale: the hiring of Gilad Sharon as a marketing consultant with a contract for millions of dollars. What was his salary? $20,000 per month + VAT for consulting work. In addition, the ranch (that is how Gilad is defined in the contract) will be paid around $1.5 million upon receipt of the first permit and another $1.5 million when the first project commences operations. The total sum paid amounted to: $3 million! In March 2001, the month when Sharon was sworn in as prime minister, Appel transferred around NIS 1.15 million to Gilad Sharon.

What kind of experience did Gilad have? Gilad at the time was a 30-year-old young man, with a master’s degree in agriculture and no experience in his field. In June 2004, after State Prosecutor Edna Arbel had already prepared a draft of an indictment against Sharon and his sons, the new attorney general, Menachem Mazuz closed the Sharon case. As far as he was concerned, Gilad had received an appropriate salary and his dad was unaware that it was an attempt at bribery on the part of Appel.

The Ginaton Lands Scandal

The Ginaton Scandal, involving lands near the city of Lod, is another link in the Sharon-Appel relationship. This is a large agricultural plot purchased by Appel who hoped that with a little help from his friends, it would become land designated for building and its value would increase by hundreds of percent. To put it simply: an easy way to rake in profits of hundreds of millions of shekels and who came to his aid: Arik. The next stage revolved around Minister of National Infrastructure Ariel Sharon. Appel arranged a meeting for himself with Sharon and asked that he be permitted to build thousands of housing units on agricultural lands. Also present at the meeting were the heads of the Israel Lands Administration. Sharon instructed them on the spot to help fulfill Appel’s requests. When the head of the ILA, Bertie Brodo, and his aides tried to explain to Sharon their opposition to the plan they were reprimanded by him. At a certain point, Sharon even knocked his leg against the table and demanded that quick solutions be found. He threatened that whoever would not see to the arrangement of this matter by January would be dismissed from the ILA.

When the affair was revealed in the media, Sharon said the remarks were said jokingly and apparently those present didn’t understand them. What is Sharon’s explanation? As usual. There is no connection between the actions he took and the political and financial support Appel gave the Sharon family. He of course acted as he did for professional reasons and because this is a matter that he feels strongly about and not in order to help Appel. At the end of the police investigation of the members of the Sharon family, the State Prosecutor’s office decided to issue an indictment in this case. The new attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, decided that as far as he was concerned, there was no proof here of criminal intent.

The Sons’ Business Dealings

In 1999, the Israel Land Development Corporation bought a 42-month option for the purchase of the S.P. Hanegev company. In October 2002, Arik Sharon submitted a letter attesting to the integrity of Yaakov Nimrodi to the Tel Aviv magistrate court where the verdict in the case of Yaakov Nimrodi was about to issued. A month later, in November 2002, the Israel Land Development Corporation waived the exercising of the option. The significance of this waiving: NIS 1.3 million remained in the possession of a company whose owners include Omri and Gilad Sharon. Just like that the Israel Land Development Corporation waived the money.

The Sons’ Business Dealings continued

Omri Sharon appointed Shimon Katznelson chairman of Mifal Hapayis (the national lottery), one of the most economically powerful bodies in the country. Its chairman is able to inject huge sums into local authorities and diverse projects. Katznelson’s only experience is his service as a member of the Ashdod city council. The appointment came after Katznelson had been a prominent supporter of the Sharon family and had helped it with all of its political needs in the southern region. For example, he took care to set up a new immigrants forum for Arik and he helped Omri get elected to the Knesset. Omri, who was worried about running in his area of residence, in the Sderot branch of the Likud, ran in Ashdod instead.

The Straw Companies Scandal

During his campaign to head the Likud, Sharon also received tens of thousands of shekels in contributions from the Ofer family, one of the richest in Israel, which holds around 25 percent of the shares in the Israel Oil Refineries. Two and a half years later, in 2002, the government decided to break the refineries monopoly, but Sharon decided to overturn the government’s decision. Sharon did not disqualify himself from discussing the request of his financial backers and did not report his conflict of interest in the matter of the Ofer family.

The Cyril Kern Affair

The Cyril Kern affair actually consists of two episodes: one involved prohibited contributions totaling millions of shekels that Sharon received for his second campaign in the Likud waged in 1999 (the straw companies). The second is a result of the first: after the State Comptroller uncovered the prohibited contributions, he ordered Sharon to return NIS 4.7 million of the NIS 5.9 million he had received from Annex Research for his campaign to become the leader of the Likud party. However the

State Comptroller didn’t know that Annex Research was essentially a fictitious straw company. This led to the slow discovery of a long money trail that traveled circuitous routes around the world and was provided by businessmen with vested interests and came to be known as the Cyril Kern affair after the businessman who paid huge consulting fees to Gilad Sharon for vague and undocumented consulting services. The investigation still continues and the State Prosecutor and the police have yet to decide whether to issue an indictment. Gilad Sharon did not cooperate with police investigators and directed the police to his brother Omri and when his brother reserved the right to remain silent, Arik Sharon told the police that Omri is a big boy and must make his own decisions.

Former Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein said: “The use of the right to remain silent in public matters is unacceptable.” Minister Yosef Paritzky appealed to Sharon to direct his son to present all the relevant documents to the investigation. What did the Sharons do? Flouted the law. Here too, as in other affairs, Gilad Sharon, who lives with his father on Sycamore Ranch, is exploiting the immunity his father has, which prevents the police from searching the ranch. Sharon senior, needless to say, is not opening the doors to the police investigators. The police waged endless court battles to force Gilad to present the documents, but it was all of no avail. The son refuses, the father supports him and the court is helpless. This affair still awaits resolution and the ensuing decision of the attorney general.

Sharon’s visit to Russia

In June 1997 Sharon went to Russia. Joining him on that trip was Major General (res.) Yanush Ben-Gal who at the time was the chairman of the board of directors of the Israel Air Force Industries, in addition to being a private businessman. Ben-Gal claimed his trip to Russia was in his capacity as a private businessman in order to promote the import of natural gas to Israel. Sharon was questioned about this affair on suspicion of receiving perks in return for helping with the gas deal Ben-Gal was trying to promote.

Sharon-Gusinsky

In reference to the above trip, the question then arose whether businessman Vladimir Gusinsky had bribed Sharon in order to promote his own interests in the gas project. The investigation indicated that the entire trip of the Sharon delegation had been organized by Gusinsky and not by the Israeli foreign ministry and provided Sharon with assorted perks.

Weissglas, Schlaff and the Casino

In January 2001, three weeks after Arik Sharon was elected prime minister, Dov Weissglas, Yossi Ginossar and Omri Sharon visited Martin Schlaff, one of the owners of the Oasis Casino in Jericho, in his Vienna home. Muhammad Rashid, Arafat’s economic advisor and Leo Walner, the manager of the Casino Austria company, also joined them. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the compensation the Sharon government would pay the owners of the casino as a result of its closure due to Arab terror. The police, based on its findings in the Cyril Kern affair, concluded that Cyril Kern was essentially a pipeline for the transfer of funds to the Sharon family in that episode and that the twisting money channel was intended to conceal the identity of the real person behind the money – the Israeli-American businessman Arye Ganigar or the Austrian millionaire, Martin Schlaff, a close friend of Sharon’s, or a combination of the two.

Dov Weissglas is a vital player in everything involving Sharon. His business, defense and political contacts make him a key figure in the Sharon mystery. For years, Weissglas has been working with Sharon as his lawyer and consultant. Over the last four years, he has become Sharon’s political strategist and he is defined as the father of the plan to expel Jews from Gush Katif and northern Samaria. Weissglas is the owner of a finance company and also heads the law firm of Weissglas and Almagor. He is the Israeli representative of casino owner Martin Schlaff and his firm represents the other casino owners, including the Palestinian Authority and the Austrian company. Weissglas’ firm represents many Palestinian businesses, such as companies investing in developing Ramallah. He is also the lawyer of Muhammad Rashid, Arafat’s moneyman. When Weissglas became Sharon’s bureau chief, complaints were submitted to the Civil Service Commissioner about suspected conflicts of interest between his official position and his private dealings. The commissioner asked Weissglas to suspend his partnership in the financial company and the law firm, but instead of doing that, he deceived him and in the end did not fulfill the commissioner’s request.

These clients of Weissglas are also behind the plan to build another casino in Gush Katif after the expulsion of its Jews is completed. According to published reports, around 40 percent of the casino’s

profits went to Force 17, Arafat’s personal security force, but that didn’t bother Weissglas. This unfathomable link between so senior an Israel official and Rashid, the representative of the arch-murderer, seems like the most surreal thing that the reality of the Middle East could have produced.

The American public broadcast station agreed to air a film that reveals the truth about Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, the funds that disappeared and surfaced in the chairman’s personal bank accounts, and the direct link between Palestinian Authority funds and terrorist acts against Israel. The station had already signed a contract with the producers. The film’s backers also included some American Jewish supporters of the Likud. However, the film was never produced or aired. The reason: the film’s investors received a personal request from the director of the prime minister’s bureau, Dov Weissglas, asking them to withdraw their financial backing for the film. As a result, production work on the film ceased abruptly because no funds were available to go ahead with the project.

The Oasis Casino in Jericho was open from 1998 until October 2000, when Palestinian rioting started. One day during the rioting, IDF soldiers fired at the casino, causing damage to the place. The casino owners submitted a claim to their insurers, who said the claimants were not entitled to compensation since a battle was being waged from the casino. The Coordinator of Activities in the Territories, Major General Orr, also said that the IDF fire came in response to shooting from Palestinian snipers who were hiding in the building. He also said that the casino is a source of funding for Palestinian terrorism. In response, Major General Orr received a letter from the casino’s attorney threatening him with a libel suit. The attorney claimed that the IDF soldiers merely saw the concentrations of fire reflected in the casino’s glass panels and that the major general’s comments were libelous. Who is this attorney? Correct, none other than Weissglas.

In his autobiography, the late Shmuel Tamir, the minister of justice in the Begin government, illustrated the hypocrisy of politics with this anecdote starring none other than Ariel Sharon. In 1972, one day before his discharge from the IDF, Sharon contacted Tamir and asked to join the new centrist party he was forming. They met; Sharon listened, took interest and asked to see a copy of the party’s guidelines, folded it up and put it in his pocket. The two agreed to hold a press conference two days later and arranged to meet the following day, prior to their joint appearance, but Sharon didn’t call. On that day, Tamir was surprised to hear about a press conference Sharon was holding to announce the formation of a new party. Tamir heard it, but could not believe it. Sharon quoted word for word from the document Tamir had given him. Tamir took it all in and kept quiet. Two weeks later, Sharon called: “You’re probably angry with me,” Sharon chuckled. Tamir: “I’m stunned, astonished…” “I’m surprised,” Sharon told him. “The whole IDF knows that I’m contemptible and you didn’t know?”

“Corruption is the greatest threat to the existence of Israel.”
State Comptroller, Supreme Court Justice Eliezer Goldberg

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Israel’s Strategy for Permanent Occupation

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

When the Roadmap is a One Way Street

Israel’s Strategy for Permanent Occupation

JEFF HALPER

November 28, 2007

One may well think that the struggle inside the Jewish community of Israel is between those of the political right, who want to maintain the settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank so as to “redeem” the Greater Land of Israel as a Jewish country, and those of the left who seek a two-state solution with the Palestinians and are thus willing to relinquish enough of the “territories”, if not all, in order that a viable Palestinian state may emerge.

This is not really the case. Polls and the make-up of the Israeli government suggest that perhaps a quarter of Israeli Jews fall into the first group, the die-hards, while not more than 10 per cent support a full withdrawal from the occupied territories. (Virtually no Israeli Jews use the term “occupation,” which Israel denies it has.) The vast majority of Israeli Jews, stretching from the liberal Meretz party through Labour, Kadima and into the “liberal” wing of the Likud, excepting only the religious parties and the extreme right-wing led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the current minister of strategic affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, share a broad consensus: for both security reasons and because of Israel’s “facts on the ground”, the Arabs (as we [Israelis] call the Palestinians) will have to settle for a truncated mini-state on no more than 15-20 per cent of the country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

What’s more, it’s agreed that the decision whether to relinquish any territory and how much is an exclusively Israeli decision. We may proffer to the Palestinians some kind of a “generous offer” if they behave themselves and it suits our purpose, but any initiative in the direction of “peace” must be unilateral. The Palestinians may indicate a preference, but the decision is ours and ours alone. Our power, our all-encompassing concern for security and the plain fact that the Arabs just don’t count (except as a nuisance factor) limit any peace process to, at best, a willingness to grant them a tiny Bantustan on four or five cantons, all encircled by Israeli settlements and the military. Israeli control of the entire Land of Israel, whether for religious, national or security reasons, is a given, never to be compromised.

This is, of course, completely unacceptable to the Palestinians. That by itself doesn’t matter, but it does raise a fundamental problem. In any genuine negotiations leading to just, sustainable and mutually agreed-upon agreement, Israel would have to give up much more than it is willing to do. Negotiations must take place once in a while, if only to project an image of Israel as a country seeking peace–Annapolis being merely the latest charade–but they can never lead to any real breakthrough because two-thirds of the Jewish public support a permanent Israeli presence in the occupied territories, civilian and military, that forecloses a viable Palestinian state. How, then, does Israel retain its major settlements, a “greater” Jerusalem and control over territory and borders without appearing intransigent? How can it maintain its image as the only seeker of peace and the victim of Arab terrorism, effectively concealing its own violence and, indeed, the very fact of occupatio n in order to shift the blame to the Palestinians?

The answer for the past 40 years of occupation is the status quo, delay, while quietly expanding the settlements and strengthening its grip on Judea and Samaria (again, we do not use the terms “occupation” or “occupied territories” in Israel, not to mention “Palestinian”). Just look at the run-up to Annapolis and the negotiations Israel is promising. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said recently that “Annapolis is a landmark on the path to negotiations and of the genuine effort to achieve the realization of the vision of two nations: the State of Israel–the nation of the Jewish people; and the Palestinian state–the nation of the Palestinian people”. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Now look at the pre-conditions Israel has imposed just in the two weeks before Annapolis:

Redefining Phase 1 of the Road Map. The first phase of the Road Map, the very basis of negotiations, calls for Israel to freeze its settlement construction. That is something Israel will obviously not do. So, on the basis of a letter former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received from President Bush in 2004–a fundamental change in American policy that nevertheless does not commit the other members of the Road Map “Quartet”, Europe, Russia and the UN–Israel announced that it defines the areas considered “occupied” by the Quartet as only those areas falling outside its major settlement blocs and “greater” Jerusalem. Thus, unilaterally, Israel (and the US apparently) reduced the territory to be negotiated with the Palestinians from 22 per cent to a mere 15 per cent, and that truncated into fragmented cantons.

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ACHIEVEMENTS OF ISLAMIC SCIENTIFIC HERITAGE BELONG TO ALL

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

ACHIEVEMENTS OF ISLAMIC SCIENTIFIC HERITAGE BELONG TO ALL

[By Dr. Mohamed Elmasry] – Nov 24, 2007

The science of charting the Earth’s lands and waters was of primary importance to Muslim navigators, for next to faith itself and one’s obedience to it, commerce and travel fed the social economy and thus governed people’s daily lives.

In addition to improving the astrolabe (without which no Western mariner would feel safe on the open seas for centuries to come), Muslims were the first to apply the principle of magnetism to marine and land travel, perhaps as early as the 9th and 10th centuries.

Al-Khwarizmi and other leading Muslim scientists measured and standardized the length of a terrestrial degree, while Al-Biruni accurately determined latitude and longitude: in fact, six centuries before Galileo, he pondered the possibilities of the Earth’s rotation about its own axis.

The leading 12th-century geographer al-Idrisi, a star product of the brilliant Islamic culture that flourished in Sicily, was commissioned by the Norman King Roger II to compile a world atlas. With dozens of maps covering areas never before charted, al-Idrisi’s atlas became the best mapped representation of the known world in Medieval times. Muslim achievements in geography and cartography were still leading the world during the 15th-century. When Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama set out to sail down the coast of Africa, his ship was guided by a Muslim pilot using Muslim maps and sea-charts still unknown to Europeans.

Not surprisingly, Muslim geographical encyclopaedias and dictionaries were a mainstay of European libraries for centuries. Works such as al-Burini’s History of India and Yaqut’s Mu’jam al-Buldan lit the way for future Western explorers, traders, and historians.

Ibn Baas was one of the greatest traveler-authors of the Middle Ages. Covering 75,000 miles between North Africa and China during the 14th century, he recorded in his famous book, Rihla (meaning “journey”) everything from geography and politics to local religious and social customs wherever he visited. A later Muslim geographer produced the first authoritative account of Africa, which remained a basic source of European knowledge for two centuries.

The knowledge gained by Muslim geographers and cartographers was passed to the West largely through translators appointed by Christian kings, who were eager to advance their own nations by enriching them with Islamic scientific and intellectual achievements. Indeed, when the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II founded the University of Naples in 1224, one of his major aims was to enable Western scholars to learn from Islamic culture.

It is hard to imagine what modern life would be like without Arabic numerals. The history of the last seven centuries, particularly in the West, would certainly be different if 13th-century Europe had not adopted the Arabic style of counting and calculating.

Arabic numerals, as they came to be called throughout the world, also made it far easier to cope with simple everyday sums. Try solving even a simple arithmetic problem in Roman numerals — the system in general Western use until the 13th century – and you would find it extremely unwieldy and time- consuming! Thus the Muslims gave to Europe an essential tool on which all of the world’s science and commerce now depends.

The further mathematical development of Algebra – in which alpha-numeric symbols are capable of infinite potential or possibilities — was a crucial innovation by 9th-century Muslims, most notably al-Khwarizmi, one of the greatest scientific minds of his era. Here, at the heart of this pivotal achievement, is a reflection of the Islamic faith in the mathematical
concept of a universe whose creation by God is an unending, or infinitely living process.

Later Muslim scholars also made revolutionary advances in trigonometry and geometry. These new mathematical developments made it possible to reform the calendar to such a level of accuracy that it would be in error by only one day in five thousand years.

Armed with such flexible, yet precise methods of calculation, Muslim astronomers could explore the heavens in greater detail than had ever been possible. Their discoveries were not only important to science, but again both important and practical to their faith; for Muslims everywhere needed to know exactly in which direction to turn for prayers, what course to set for pilgrimages, and exactly when to begin the month-long fast of Ramadan.

In fact, it would take volumes to talk about Muslims contributions to mathematics and astronomy in the detail they deserve.

The 8th century scientists al-Fazari, al-Farghani, and al-Zarqali, as well as later scholars al-Battani, Ibn-Yunus and others, improved instruments such as the astrolabe and compass, built unprecedented large-scale astronomical observatories, and compiled planetary tables and star charts that were used throughout Europe for centuries.

In observing and mapping the movements of the sun, planets, stars and other heavenly bodies so comprehensively, Muslim astronomers expressed the fundamental aims of Islam, which urged a never-ending quest to understand God’s visible signs in the cosmos.

Through observing the material universe, Muslims came to better understand the works of God. Nothing that humans could investigate on earth or in space was considered alien by these scientists.

Thus throughout the Muslim world, it was not at all unusual for an astronomer to be also a mathematician, geographer, physician, or even something of a philosopher and certainly, to some degree, a theologian!

Such multi-disciplined scholars paved the way for the European “Renaissance man” concept – a kind of versatile genius represented by Leonardo da Vinci, among others. He and other gifted scientists throughout the West, such as Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, benefited from the fruits of disciplined Muslim mathematician-astronomers who passed on their methods of objective investigation, as well as their preserved transcriptions of early classical pioneers, including Aristotle and Ptolemy.

Without this great combined heritage, the European Renaissance and modern Western civilization could hardly have taken shape as they did.

Without their Muslim scientific forebears, would it indeed have been possible for 20th-century astronauts to set foot on the Moon?

The full story in
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Islamophobia acute : Nationalist leader says Danish identity under threat from Muslim immigrants

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Islamophobia acute :

Nationalist leader says Danish identity under threat from Muslim immigrants

2007-11-23 17:32:16 –

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – Raving xenophobe or fearless defender of Danish values

Nationalist leader Pia Kjaersgaard’s anti-Muslim outbursts have earned her many labels _ and many votes.

Despite predictions of her populist Danish People’s Party’s demise, Kjaersgaard remains a powerful force in domestic politics after winning 14 percent of the vote in last week’s election.

«The most important thing for the Danish People’s Party is to maintain the Danish identity,» Kjaersgaard, 60, told The Associated Press in an interview.

«I am convinced that the Islamists want to sneak Sharia (Islamic law) through the back door, that they want to combat Western society and they want Islam to become the main religion,» she said.

Her party _ Denmark’s third biggest _ has held the role of kingmaker since 2001, giving the center-right government the backing it needs for a majority in Parliament.

In return, Kjaersgaard has been able to press the government to adopt some of Europe’s strictest immigration laws, which she says have been instrumental in stemming the inflow of Muslims with radical views.

There are an estimated 200,000 Muslims among Denmark’s 5.4 million residents.

«The individual Muslim has never been a problem for Danish society. But their number has,» Kjaersgaard told AP in her office, decorated with Danish flags and paintings depicting Danish landscapes.

To emphasize her point, she said she shops at a grocery store owned by a Turkish Kurd who respects Danish laws and culture.

«He has a lot of great stuff _ fruits, vegetables _ and he’s a good friend of mine,» Kjaersgaard said.

The flow of asylum-seekers has dropped by 84 percent since Denmark tightened its immigration laws in 2001. There is now broad agreement across party lines to maintain the system.

But critics say the Danish People’s Party has polarized Danish society by bashing Islam and stereotyping immigrants as welfare cheats.

«She is a scare-mongering populist and opportunist,» said Holger K. Nielsen of the left-wing opposition Socialist People’s Party. He added Kjaersgaard was a skillful politician who has tapped into undercurrents of nationalism and worries over immigration among Danes.

During last year’s uproar over Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, Kjaersgaard and other leading party members took turns blasting Islam as incompatible with Danish traditions including free speech.

Ahead of the Nov. 13 election, one of the party’s campaign posters showed an artist’s hand drawing a picture of Muhammad, with the text «Freedom of speech is Danish, censorship is not.

«Sometimes I wonder what other people think about me _ ‘is she a monster?»’ Kjaersgaard conceded in a moment of introspection. «I need to brush these things off, otherwise I will go down.

Kjaersgaard, who lives with round-the-clock police protection, quickly added she has no regrets about anything she has said.

She rejects accusations of racism and comparisons to far-right parties across Europe such as the National Front in France.

«There is nothing racist about what I have said, I know that. I have a clean conscience,» she said. «My driving force is the love for my home country. … I want Denmark to be a safe and good and cozy nation that has a good relationship to the rest of the world.

When asked if she thought Islam can contribute to Danish society in any way, she replied: «I don’t think so at all.

The full story in
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Sixty years after ‘Al-Nakba’ in Palestine : Palestinian right of return still a fundamental demand

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Sixty years after ‘Al-Nakba’ in Palestine

Palestinian right of return still a fundamental demand

Richard Becker

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The struggle in Palestine can be complex and confusing even for the closest of observers.

Like all great struggles, it has had many twists and turns, and will have many more. But the root cause of the conflict­ the forcible expulsion of a people from their homeland­is neither ambiguous nor confusing. Sixty years ago, this is precisely what happened to the Palestinians in “The Catastrophe,” known as “Al-Nakba” in Arabic.

Al-Nakba, one of the key events in modern Middle Eastern history, began on Nov. 29, 1947. That day, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 to partition the British Mandate (colony) of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The United Nations made this decisive step without consulting the Palestinian Arabs, who at the time comprised two-thirds of the population.

Most of the Jewish population was made up of settlers who had arrived in the previous three decades, mainly from Europe. More than 100,000 were survivors of the Nazi genocide.

While the U.S. and British imperialists had done little before or during World War II to aid the Jewish victims of fascism, they used the horrors of Hitler’s death camps to rally support for the establishment of the state of Israel after the war.

The Palestinians­who had had nothing to do with European anti-Semitism or genocide­were not consulted before the U.N. vote. There was no plebiscite or vote of the people. If there had been, the outcome would not have been in doubt: One unitary state would have been the overwhelming choice. The U.N. vote was an illegitimate act and a violation of the Palestinians’ right of self-determination.

The two-thirds majority required to pass Resolution 181 was only achieved through intense U.S. pressure. The vote ended up 33 to 13 with 10 abstentions. The Truman administration leaned heavily on its neocolonies and client states, particularly the Philippines, Liberia, Haiti and Thailand, all of which initially opposed the resolution.

Without those four votes, the resolution would have failed. For narrow and short-term interests, the Soviet Union voted for the resolution. This represented a betrayal of the Arab anti-colonial struggle and one that did great harm to the socialist cause in the region. Later, the Soviet Union would become a major ally of the Arab national liberation movement.

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