The Ground Zero mosque

July 3rd, 2010

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones? — Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man

Today marks 234 years since the US declared its independence from Britain. Slightly less well known, but almost as important is the date April 9, 1865, the end of our Civil War. Other memorable dates for Americans include December 7, 1941 and September 2, 1945, which bracket our involvement in WWII. And September 11, 2001. These will be on the test, history students.

Does 9/11 belong on the above list? Does it mark a turning point in our history as a nation, or is it simply a rather large ‘man-caused disaster’, in the words of Janet Napolitano, horrible but with no long-term significance? Or something in between?

Since shortly after 9/11 the US has been at war, and as far as I know we’ve never fought a war against an enemy so poorly defined. From fighting ‘terrorism’ — clearly a tactic and not an entity — we’ve gone to fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban, groups that seem to be the tip of the spear of something much larger, which is unmentionable.

Today’s enemies can’t compare to Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan in military capability, and yet somehow they keep going. In Iraq, we defeated Saddam in a matter of months. But American soldiers are still fighting someone or other there.

My father was asked (OK, told) to spend the first few years of his son’s life at war in the Pacific because the Japanese, rapidly conquering East Asia, had bombed Pearl Harbor, killing 2459 Americans and severely damaging the Pacific fleet. The US entered the war to stop the Japanese aggression and incidentally to help save Europe from Hitler. This made sense to him and many others. Today our ‘leaders’ cannot name the enemy.

Many of us are confused about the significance of events. Here’s something that should wake us up, an issue that separates those who get it from those that don’t:

The proposed Islamic center, two blocks from Ground Zero

The proposed Islamic center, two blocks from Ground Zero

The Imam of a mosque in lower Manhattan, Feisal Abdul Rauf, has proposed building a 13-story, $100 million structure that will house a mosque and community center, in place of the former Burlington Coat Factory building which was damaged by debris on 9/11. Incidentally, this picture, which seems to deemphasize the relative size of the building, appears to be the only one available on the web. It will overlook the site of the destroyed World Trade Center.

Abdul Rauf’s group claims that

This proposed project is about promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture.  Cordoba House will provide a place where individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, will find a center of learning, art and culture; and most importantly, a center guided by universal values in their truest form – compassion, generosity, and respect for all.

New York’s mayor Bloomberg doesn’t have a problem with a mosque at this location, and neither did 29 out of 30 members of a local community board, in a non-binding vote. But five to ten thousand New Yorkers had enough of a problem to join a massive demonstration against it.

It’s a fascinating question. Does Abdul Rauf represent a moderate, conciliatory, tolerant Islam — one that is not previously found in history, I might add — or is he following in the tradition of the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, who built the Dome of the Rock over the ruins of the Second Temple in 692 CE? Is it a work of peace or a triumphal celebration of a successful act of war?

Maybe we can get a hint from this news story:

The imam behind a proposed mosque near Ground Zero is a prominent member of a group that helped sponsor the pro-Palestinian activists who clashed violently with Israeli commandos at sea this week.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a key figure in Malaysian-based Perdana Global Peace Organization, according to its Website.

Perdana is the single biggest donor ($366,000) so far to the Free Gaza Movement, a key organizer of the six-ship flotilla that tried to break Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip Monday.

Perdana’s ‘peace’ website contains lies and libels more vicious than usual about the Mavi Marmara incident, including assertions that IDF videos of the ambush were fake.

Does the ‘tolerant’ imam support the highly intolerant Hamas?

But there’s more. Abdul Rauf’s bio on the Cordoba Initative site describes some of his publications thus:

His publications include the books, Islam: A Search for Meaning, Islam: A Sacred Law (What every Muslim Should Know About the Shariah), and What’s Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West, which the Christian Science Monitor rated among its five best books of 2004…

Interestingly, the profile on the Perdana site is a bit more explicit:

He is the author of Islam: A Search for Meaning, in which he defines Islam as the universal religion that goes beyond the cultural settings of the Prophet Muhammad, and Islam: A Sacred Law, What Every Muslim should know about the Shari`ah.

…far enough beyond, to include New York City, right?

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Hurting Jews trumps helping Arabs, again

July 2nd, 2010

The Arab world tells us they care a great deal for the ‘Palestinian people’. But the truth, as I’ve written many times, is that it’s always more important to hurt Jews than to help Arabs — which explains the following:

Palestinian refugees demand basic civil rights

(Beirut, AFP): Thousands of Palestinian refugees gathered yesterday outside UN headquarters in Beirut to demand basic civil rights in Lebanon, such as a choice of jobs and ownership of property…

The Palestinians traveled in buses from Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps for the Beirut gathering organized by Palestinian and Lebanese non-governmental organizations.

“Working is a right,” “We want to live in dignity,” read placards carried by the protesters.

“I have the right to own property,” said another, summing up the frustration of the tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees who live in dire conditions in Lebanon…

The majority of UNRWA-registered refugees live in dire conditions in the camps across and are denied basic civil rights. Under Lebanese law, Palestinian refugees can not own property or hold most white collar jobs (doctors, engineers, lawyers, architects) and are stuck in low-paid employment.

They are also denied social security and medical aid in state hospitals.

There is a long history of similar behavior, even by the Palestinian Arabs’ own leaders. For example, when Israel occupied Gaza and Judea and Samaria after the 1967 war, they almost immediately began programs to move refugees out of the camps and into permanent housing that they would own. But the PLO — and the UN — bitterly opposed it:

What is perhaps surprising is that the United Nations also opposed the program, and passed harsh resolutions demanding that Israel remove the Palestinians from their new homes and return them to the squalid camps. For example, UN General Assembly Resolution 31/15 of Nov. 23, 1976:

Calls once more upon Israel:

(a) To take effective steps immediately for the return of the refugees concerned to the camps from which they were removed in the Gaza Strip and to provide adequate shelters for their accommodation;

(b) To desist from further removal of refuges and destruction of their shelters.

Similarly, UNGA Resolution 34/52 of November 23, 1979 declared that:

measures to resettle Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip away from their homes and property from which they were displaced constitute a violation of their inalienable right to return;

1. Calls once more upon Israel to desist from removal and resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and from destruction of their shelters;

Perhaps thanks to this support from the UN, the PLO began threatening to kill any refugee who would move out of the camps. After a few such attacks, the build-your-own-home program died, and that is why there are still Palestinians [in] refugee camps in Gaza. — CAMERA

The only way a ‘refugee’ could leave the camp, said the PLO, was by returning to his ancestral home in Israel, even if he was a multi-generational descendant of an original refugee, and today there are about 4-1/2 million claiming this status. Unlike all other refugees, Palestinian refugee status — which entails both a deprivation of human rights and a lifetime welfare benefit — is hereditary.

UNRWA, the agency that feeds them, has structured its benefits so that it is profitable for refugees — for whom there is no work or who are not allowed to work — to have large families. The truth of the matter is that the so-called refugees have three functions: a moral club to beat Israel with, a reservoir of violently hostile and unemployed young people to serve as terrorists, and an army with which to overwhelm Israel demographically.

A clearer-cut case of the denial of human rights — a hereditary denial of human rights yet — cannot be found anywhere. Funny that it hasn’t been taken up by the UN Human Rights Council, isn’t it?

Palestinians protest denial of rights in Lebanon

Palestinians protest denial of rights in Lebanon

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Saudi King: Israel and Iran don’t deserve to exist

July 1st, 2010

Recently there have been credible rumors that Saudi Arabia is prepared to allow Israeli warplanes to cross its airspace on the way to bombing Iran. It’s even been said that Israel has been allowed to preposition equipment inside Saudi Arabia, which normally doesn’t allow even non-Israeli Jews to set foot on its holy sand. Israel and Saudi Arabia have denied this, of course, but what else would you expect?

Now compare this, by Georges Malbrunot in Le Figaro (translation by Google with my help, h/t to David Kenner in Foreign Policy):

The Saudi monarch, who met with Barack Obama in the White House Tuesday, did not mince words during the recent visit to Jeddah of Hervé Morin, [French] Minister of Defense. “There are two countries in the world that do not deserve to exist: Iran and Israel,” said King Abdullah on June 5.

I suppose Abdullah would like nothing better than to see Israel save his corrupt, medieval, racist, misogynist, antisemitic, homophobic, slaveholding, terrorism-financing child-molesting regime and then be destroyed itself in the ensuing conflict.

It is truly bizarre to see the worldwide opprobrium directed at democratic, free, liberal Israel when the real Satan among nations is treated as an exemplary world citizen (and its absolute monarch even receives a deep bow from the President of the United States).

The famous bow. Can you imagine Netanyahu getting this treatment?

The famous bow. Can you imagine Netanyahu getting this treatment?

Here’s my modest proposal:

Saudi Arabia, a nation created by violent conquest which flouts all the standards of civilized society, clearly does not deserve to exist. Let’s give the Hejaz (the area containing Mecca and Medina) back to the Hashemites from whom it was stolen, and establish a UN mandate over the rest, where the oil is. The King and his family of parasites should all get honest jobs.

Update [2 Jul 0828 PDT]: A Saudi spokesman has denied the report.  And put a bridge up for sale.

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NPR ignores its own watchdog

June 30th, 2010

You may recall that I ripped NPR a new, er, antenna, a couple of weeks ago because of their over-the-top bias against Israel. I pointed out that their reporter

  • used the Emotive Bias Technique to ensure that the Arab side of the story would stick with the listener while the Israeli side would be forgotten,
  • used the Selective Omission Technique to mislead without explicitly lying, and
  • quoted false statements without comment or challenge.

I sent a link to the local Public Radio station — which, by the way, was in the middle of one of its periodic schnorrs fund drives. I pointed out that NPR gets a great deal of funding from the local stations and that maybe they would clean up their act if the stations complained. I wasn’t surprised when I did not even get a “your opinion is important to us” in return, because I’m sure the local management is quite happy with NPR’s ideological slant.

I also sent it to NPR. They did send a response, and although it was boilerplate that did not relate to my specific concerns, it’s worth a further look. After saying that “there’s no room for bias in our organization” and drawing attention to their code of ethics, they add,

…in an effort to continually monitor the way we cover the Middle East, NPR has hired a freelance researcher to conduct quarterly reviews of our coverage. The reports are prepared by John Felton, a former foreign affairs reporter and NPR foreign editor who covered international affairs and U.S. policy for more than 30 years, and submitted to NPR’s ombudsman.

So I looked at some of Felton’s reports. While he claims that NPR coverage is fair overall, many of his specific reports are damning. For example, here is one about a story aired in March 2009 (emphasis is mine):

In a March 26 piece for Morning Edition [Eric] Westervelt reported on several allegations that the Israeli army used excessive force during the war. Westervelt’s piece centered around two reports in the Israeli news media: A March 21 report by Israel’s Channel 10 quoting an Israeli officer, in briefing his soldiers, as expressing little or no regard for the lives of Palestinian civilians; and reports in [left-wing papers — ed] Haaretz and Maariv on March 19-20 quoting Israeli soldiers as citing accounts of unprovoked killings of civilians.

Westervelt’s piece also quoted Yehuda Shaul, director of a leftist veterans group, Breaking the Silence, who said he had interviewed soldiers who told similar stories of abuses of civilians during the war. In addition, the piece dealt with allegations that the army’s chief rabbi and his aides had encouraged soldiers to show no quarter when dealing with Palestinians. Finally, the story cited Human Rights Watch allegations that the Israeli army improperly used white phosphorous as an illuminating device, injuring innocent civilians when the phosphorous descended to the ground…

Although I am glad that NPR brought this story to its listeners’ attention, I do have concerns about this particular piece:

– The piece relied heavily on Shaul’s accounts without telling listeners that he is an active, vocal campaigner against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. Shaul is far from an unbiased source. While the information Shaul collected might well be true, he had an agenda in making this type of information public. Listeners should have been told more about him and his agenda.

– The central element of the Israeli atrocities allegations came from a February 13 meeting of Israeli veterans of the Gaza war held at the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon. Haaretz, and later Maariv, published stories on March 19-20 based on that transcript. Israeli soldiers told several stories, including accounts of the unprovoked shootings of an elderly Palestinian woman and of a woman and child. Westervelt cited both incidents but did not make clear (as additional Israeli media reporting had found prior to March 26) that the soldiers recounting these incidents had not witnessed the events and had only heard about them.

– In the days after Haaretz first broke the story (on March 19) about Israeli soldiers accusing colleagues of committing atrocities, subsequent stories in the Israeli news media began to cast doubt on some allegations. The Jerusalem Post, YNet news, and other Israeli news organizations quoted soldiers as disputing both the specific atrocity accounts and the general idea that soldiers had disregarded Palestinian lives. Westervelt’s piece, however, did not mention any of these subsequent reports, which emerged before the piece was aired.

Westervelt’s piece did quote an Israeli army spokesman, Major Avital Leibovich as saying the alleged atrocities were under investigation and suggesting that the soldier’s accounts were “hearsay” [the effect was to make the IDF appear evasive — ed].

Five days after the piece aired, the army’s judge-advocate general closed his investigation into misconduct allegations during the war, saying the newspaper reports were based on “hearsay” and had proven to be false. The soldiers who made the allegations had not actually witnessed or participated in the events they had described, the judge-advocate general said. Several human rights groups protested the ending of the investigation and suggested it was a whitewash.

Westervelt reported the closing of the investigation in a [short –ed] news spot that aired on March 30.

In short, the NPR reporter parroted accusations of murderous atrocities made by highly biased sources — sources which he should have known were biased — and then NPR aired the report after the horrific allegations had been shown to be false!

I well remember my fury when I woke to hear this dishonest story, and posted this: “NPR’s shocking lack of journalistic integrity“.

But apparently the NPR brass doesn’t pay attention to Felton, because they keep doing the same thing, again, and again, and again.

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US PR firm paid to demonize Israel

June 28th, 2010

Think about this: there is at least one American business that is paid to demonize Israel.

The employees, well-paid professionals, go to work every day and think up ways to make Israel look like a moral monster, a rogue state dangerous to world peace for which the only remedy — as in the case of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or apartheid South Africa — is more than just regime change, rather, a fundamental change in the nature of the polity which can only be effected by force.

They are creative people and they know their jobs. Their trade is building or wrecking the public images of politicians, products, organizations, companies and even nations.

Today their goal is to prevent the Jewish state from defending itself by creating a mass of public opinion that sees its self-defense as war crimes. To prevent the Jewish state from defending itself, so that its enemies can finally succeed in doing what they have been trying to do since Israel was born, destroy it.

They are Fenton Communications, and they are working on their current project as diligently as they did for MoveOn.org, The Body Shop, Greenpeace, Ben and Jerry’s and numerous other clients:

Fenton Communications, which has offices in Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco, signed two contracts last year with Qatar to develop “a communications action plan for an 18-month campaign” aimed at delegitimizing Israel and generating international support for the Hamas-run Gaza strip, documents filed with the Department of Justice show.

The campaign, known as the “Al Fakhoora Project,” has a very visible Web presence that boasts of rallying 10,000 activists “against the blockade on Gaza.”

Fenton signed the contracts, worth more than $390,000, with the Office of Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, the wife of the Qatari ruler, and a separate foundation she chairs. The contracts are ongoing, according to Fenton’s Foreign Agent registration forms…

The cash from Qatar bought a sophisticated U.S. media campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion to generate support for the Hamas-led government and the people of the Gaza strip.

It also included a full-scale fundraising effort aimed at generating a war chest of up to $100 million in addition to the money the Qatari sheikha provided. — Ken Timmerman

You can see Fenton’s registration as a foreign agent here (h/t: The Israel Project). I’ve extracted the part which describes more work to be performed by Fenton this year:

Extract from Fenton contract for Al Fakhoora project

Extract from Fenton contract for Al Fakhoora project

Here is the top-notch website built for Her Highness by Fenton.

Fenton specializes in what they call “The Active Idea”: in this case the idea appears to be that Israel’s naval blockade and other restrictions on Hamas-controlled Gaza obstructs the ‘right to learn’ of Gaza’s children, thus denying them their human rights. In fact, the campaign has little to do with education per se, and everything to do with demonizing Israel.

A video statement made by Al Fakhoora’s director, Farooq Burney, describes his experiences as a passenger on one of the ships of the Free Gaza Flotilla (I presume that it was the Mavi Marmara, because he claims to have been next to a ‘peaceful activist’ who was shot to death). He claims that the passengers were attacked, etc. and asks that people ‘pressurize’ [sic] their governments to ‘punish’ Israel and to ‘bring them to justice’. He also asks that we sign a declaration demanding that all ships be allowed to land at Gaza without interference. So much for education.

Fenton also worked with The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in 2005 to “improve public understanding of the American Muslim community, promote pluralism, and inject the points of view of American Muslims into the national conversation.” Note that CAIR has been shown to have close connections with Hamas.

Of course, it’s entirely irrelevant to mention that Jeremy Ben Ami, director of the fake ‘pro-Israel’ group J Street, was a Senior Vice President at Fenton immediately before joining J Street.  Right.

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