ALERT

Jimmy Carter Caught on Tape
“Move over Rev. Wright, here comes Jimmy Carter caught on tape. Many people know Carter is hostile to Israel. He’s devoted to demonizing the Jewish state and is hyper-focused on alienating Christians from it. But recently, it has come to light that Carter may have a more traditional problem with the Jews than their nationalism: He doesn’t much like their religion either. And maybe that hostility came first. Excerpts from his CD series of Sunday morning Bible talks, Sunday Mornings in Plains, recorded between 1998 and 2003, are pretty shocking.” AlertToday thanks Alan Altman in Boston for alerting us to this probing look at the probable foundations of Carter’s hostility to Israel. Read More

Sunni-Shiite United by Common Hatred
“The truth is that Sunni and Shiite extremists have always been united in their hatred of the U.S., and in their desire to bring it to destruction, in the words of Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar…to understand the problem with extremists, it is important to set aside the Sunni-Shiite divide and focus on their common hatred of America. Theology is useless here. What we are dealing with is politics.” Read More

Fatah No Longer Alternative to Hamas
“…while Fatah, the core of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), may have its roots in the revolutionary, secular-oriented ideologies of the 1960s and 1970s, Islamist discourse is also integral to the movement. Indeed, even as Western diplomats seek to bolster Fatah’s Abbas as an alternative to Hamas, they underestimate the degree to which Palestinian nationalism now intertwines itself with Islam. Since the 2000 Palestinian uprising, Fatah has fused national and religious symbols in order to use Islam as an instrument of mobilization”. Read More

Fitna Followup: Israel National News Shows Banned Movie
“The movie, which shows the Western world some of the aims and means of its latest mortal enemy, extremist Islam, was banned first by the internet registrar Network Solutions and LiveLeak. The full version can now be seen in full on Arutz Sheva. Arutz Sheva provides this service in order educate the Western world as to the dangers facing non-Muslims and Western democracies all around the world…The movie ends with a call for Europe to defeat Islamic ideology, just as it defeated the threats of Nazism and Communism in the past.”

See Fitna Live!

In keeping with Wilders‘ views on the existence of a strong partnership between Jews and Christians in the face of what he calls the threat of Islam, the film showed calls to kill Jews in at least five different places. The film reportedly received 1 million viewers in the first 30 minutes of its release. Read more

Live Leak, the U.K. based video sharing Web site, has withdrawn Fitna, “Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers. This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else.”

Anticipating Live Leak’s decision, enterprising individuals swiftly downloaded the video which you can watch here.

Courageous Conversion in Rome

Magdi Allam, the most famous Muslim in Italy, and one of the leading and most courageous intellectuals in Europe today, converted to Christianity last Saturday night. The fact that the baptism was held at Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome during Easter midnight Mass - the so-called “mother of all masses” - and was performed by Pope Benedict XVI himself, has made huge waves in Italy and throughout the Christian and Muslim worlds. The exalted occasion also transformed Allam’s conversion from a private act of faith into a public political event…In 2003, Hamas declared a death sentence on him because of his criticism of terror attacks in Israel. Read More

Looking for Inclusion in Wrong Places

“Yet another African-American, fooled by pigmentation, identifying with Arabs/Muslims/terrorists over the Jews who have over a century of history with black Americans and who marched for their rights and helped found and fund the NAACP,” deplores journalist and conservative stand-up comic Jule Gorin of singer Erykah Badu’s statement prior to a performance in Tel Aviv this evening that she “identifies with Palestinian hip-hop and expressed support for Louis Farrakhan before a crowd of Israeli fans and journalists Thursday.” Read the entirety of the Gorin Political Mavens post titled Israelis Desperate for Inclusion-Even by Black Anti-Semites.

Which Candidate Do Anti-Semities Support?

An interesting post on the Political Mavens blog by Sam Schulman titled For Whom Should the Thinking Anti-Semite Vote? repeats the well-known facts that Jews are well represented in the Obama campaign, and that the support of American Jewish Democrats is split about evenly between the two candidates for the party’s nomination, but contends that “the point is not who Jews support but who anti-Semites support. And here, there is no contest. The Obama campaign is a safe place for anti-Semitism. Consider. The largest gathering of Jews in the world is in one place: Israel. If you dislike Jews, you’ll hate Israel. And the list of Israel-haters and Jew-demonizers at the very highest levels of the Obama campaign, and among his closest supporters, is legion.” Read more

Who is the Real Obama?

In the WSJ James Taranto points out that a “year-old article from ElectronicIntifada suggests that Obama has, fairly recently, held views on the subject (Israel & Palestinians) that are completely at variance with those he now espouses. The author, Ali Abunimah, is a co-founder of the site…

“…It is possible that Obama had a sincere change of heart–that he came to see the merits of the Israeli side of the argument. It is also possible that Obama has no sincere views on the subject–that when he was traveling in radical-chic Chicago circles, he told people like Abunimah what they wanted to hear, and now that he has gone national, he has switched to telling a more mainstream Democratic constituency what it wants to hear.

“But what does Obama really believe–about the Middle East, about Wright’s black liberation theology or about any other complicated and sensitive topic? The question is a Rorschach inkblot; the answer reveals more about one’s emotional response to Obama than about Obama’s intellectual response to the world.” Read more

(editor’s note: we emphasize phrases above of most significance with a bold font)

A Video to Watch

Ruth Slawson, a friend of ALERT in Asheville North Carolina recently returned from two months with Hadassah in Israel, writes:

This video arrived at a perfect moment for me. I am reading a book for a new book group entitled Standing Alone by Asra Nomani. a former Wall Street journalist, and when her travels take her though Jerusalem, she distorts ( a nice word) the facts of history. I am very disappointed in her lack of professionalism as a journalist. I was just thinking how I would bring this up to a new book club and now maybe I will just asked them to look at this video. I get so tired of always trying to help people hear the truth; the entire story; to explain why Israel does what it does and also that Israel should not be held to a higher standard than the rest of the world, but it never seems to be enough. It is worth the time to watch the entire video and share the content, yet again, with others. Hit pause when you need to - some of it is too fast…..
Ruth

A friend of ALERT who prefers taking the bus to driving between towns in the Aspen Valley reports the following two incidents last week.

1 Waiting at the bus stop, she head a trio of rather unkempt high school girls intoning a crude ditty intended to insult someone with whom they were on the outs. Among the phrases intended to insult was: Even that dirty Jew is better than you.

2 Two days later our friend was on the bus when a nicely dressed well-mannered man struck up a conversation with her and upon hearing that she grew up in Chicago remarked that his brother will soon be going there for a job trading in futures, casually adding, though, I can’t see why he wants to crawl around on the floor with a bunch of Jews.

We find these quotes chilling. Where are they coming from? They’re airborne, like a plague. The period in which these two troubling incidents occurred was Holy Week, always a dangerous time for the Jewish population of Eastern Europe. This writer recalls being on a train four years ago and overhearing a conversation about Mel Gibson’s passion movie. One man remarked that the Jews are pissed off about it. It was disquieting to hear the term the Jews thus bandied about.

Several months later, I attended a meeting of our local peace group and heard an outburst of anti-Semitism, and recalled the remark overheard on the train.

Yes, it’s airborne, like the plague, and like the plague it can be dormant for a long time, then something in the environment activates the virus.

Please join us in combating the virus by passing this blog along to anyone whom you feel might be receptive to its message.

Read what a prominent blog has to say about Rev. Wright reproducing the writings of a Hamas supporter (thanks to Alan Altman, a friend of ALERT in Boston for alerting us to this information)

The Pastor & the Terrorist

Oh, and what did Obama miss on the 22nd if he indeed didn’t attend TUCC that day, pick up its bulletin, or read the bulletin online? Why, in the “Pastor’s Pages” that day, there was a reprint of “A Fresh View of the Palestinian Struggle” (pictured here). This article’s original appearance in the Los Angeles Times provoked justifiable howls of outrage. You see, author Mousa Abu Marzook is the deputy of the political bureau of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. That is, he is either a spokesman for terrorists and/or a terrorist himself. The Investigative Project goes with the latter conclusion, as does the government. The Rev. Wright apparently had no problem with reproducing the writings of a terrorist who, “during his tenure in the US ….. created an extensive network to support HAMAS’ terrorist activities.” Nice. Read more.

Gaffney on NY Times on Shariah

The New York Times marked a deplorable new milestone this weekend, however - a true nadir in collaborating with the enemy in the war of ideas. Its Sunday magazine featured an article by Harvard law professor Noah Feldman entitled “Why Shariah? Millions of Muslims think Shariah means the rule of law. Could they be right?” According to the Times’ Mr. Feldman, the answer is a resounding “Yes.”…

…Sunday’s New York Times article could be chalked up to another travesty by a paper that has long since lost its way, but for one fact: It comes at a moment when the Islamofascists are poised to make a potentially decisive breakthrough. Unless action is taken swiftly, they will achieve a strategic penetration of Wall Street in the form of “Shariah-Compliant Finance” (SCF). Confusion, let alone deliberate disinformation about the true nature of Shariah, constitutes an invitation to disaster. Read more.

Emerson on McCain, Iran & Al Qaeda

It turns out everyone is wrong - McCain, the reporters and the DNC. In the seventh year of the War on Terrorism there remains a dearth of knowledge of pertinent subjects among people who should know better.

One of those subjects is the relationship between Al Qaeda and Iran. McCain was incorrect. It is true that there is no public evidence that Iran is currently training Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) operatives. However, there is a well-documented and ongoing history of cooperation and support between Iran and Al Qaeda despite the fact that Iran is a Shiite country and Al Qaeda is a Sunni terrorist organization. This was spelled out in clear detail in the 9/11 Commission Report. Read more.

Wright Not Unique

Political Mavens is getting to core issues when it comes to the candidate and his clergyman. Our last post linked to a Mike Long commentary pointing out that Rev. Wright’s views on America are shared by much of the leftist establishment. Now Judith Klinghoffer points out that Rev. Wright’s rhetoric from the pulpit is not unusual among African-American pastors: Black pundits insist that Americans are naive if they believe that Jermiah Wright is a unique. The truth is that Whites have been fighting racism, Black preachers have been feeding their flock with a steady hate diet. Read more.

Chicago Spotlight

A New York Sun piece places Wright in the context of Obama’s political life in Chicago and wonders why Democrats longing for a new kind of politics are about to nominate a guy from the old greased-up influence factory of Chicago, explaining that simply by being a Chicago Democrat, Obama has had friends he’s had to denounce, such as Louis Farrakhan. He had a pastor who ran a theologically unusual black-power church. He is at least an acquaintance of two former Weather Underground fugitives now prominent in local leftist circles. All this and your quotidian Chicago political real estate deal, too. Read more.

Lacks Clear Definition

The same issue of The Sun has an article chronicling the complexities of the Jewish community’s concerns about Obama: “Right now, Obama’s big problem with the Jewish community is similar to his problem with other communities: He’s just not clearly defined among any voter groups,” the director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida-Gainesville, Kenneth Wald, said. “The fact he has a name that sounds Muslim and has a Muslim father underlines questions about what we do and what we do not know about him.” Read more.

McCain’s View of Israel

A friend of ALERT in the Aspen Valley referred us to an article in The New York Sun about Senator McCain’s upcoming visit to Israel. It begins with a clever and insightful quip once made by Natan Sharansky, referring to charges relating to various forms of corruption swirling around Israeli leaders: “Both Senator McCain and I know that it is better to go to jail before being elected to public office.”

The article examines McCain’s view of Israel in the context of international Islamic extremism: It seems the question for Mr. McCain is not the matter of securing a state for the Palestinian Arabs but rather a “struggle … between radical extremist Islamic forces throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East, and West[ern] values and standards and beliefs and everything that we stand for.” The conflict involving Israel, Mr. McCain said, “is all part of this struggle that we’re in.” Read more.

Conservative Columnist Critiques McCain Campaign

While many Israelis and American friends of Israel are enthused about McCain’s candidacy, Wall Street Journal conservative columnist Peggy Noonan describes the Republican nominee: He stands up to power. He faces them down. It’s not only a self image, it’s a self obsession.. But it has left him seeming passionate only about those issues on which he’s been able to act out his maverickness, such as campaign finance and immigration.

Reading this psychologically sophisticated premise by the discerning Noonan, we wonder why she does not see the nominee’s belief that Islamist aggression is the defining issue of our time as a patriotic position that is more than a reflection of his maverick style.

A Candidate and His Clergyman

In another WSJ column, Ronald Kessler says of questions about Senator Obama’s connection with his pastor Jeremiah Wright: The media have largely ignored Mr. Obama’s close association with Mr. Wright. This raises legitimate questions about Mr. Obama’s fundamental beliefs about his country. Those questions deserve a clearer answer than Mr. Obama has provided so far. Read more.

The Kessler column is referenced on the Political Mavens blog in a post by Mike Long who raises a pivotal point that no one else appears to be addressing: that Rev Wright’s perspective on America, which the public finds so shocking “is also the proudly and openly expressed opinion of every major and minor contributor to The Nation magazine, lots of folks at The New Republic, the loudest members of the anti-war faction, and if my memory for op-eds since the mid-1980s is right, apparently a majority of vocal members of the Democratic Party. Sounds to me like Mr. Wright’s a problem for Sen. Obama only in that he makes it more difficult for the candidate to disguise his and his followers’ beliefs during the general election.”

We came across this list of pivotal points to keep in mind when you’re talking with friends and colleagues who are repeating the standard misconceptions.

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam.
2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E. the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.
4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.
7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.
9. Arab and Jewish Refugees In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.
10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.
11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.
12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples’ lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.
13. The Arab - Israeli Conflict; The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.
14. The P.L.O.’s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them with weapons.
15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.
16. The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.
17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990,429 were directed against Israel.
18. The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.
19. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
20. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

ALERT friend Jerome Marks, an active member of the Aspen Valley Jewish community married to an Israeli, has sent us some substantial links, two of which we are now sharing with you.

Combating Internet anti-Semitism

The first link is to a highly significant article from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs exploring online anti-Semitism:

Around 2004, changes in technology created Web 2.0.[1] As technology adapted, so did online antisemitism. With the new “social web” came a new “social antisemitism.” This Antisemitism 2.0 is the use of online social networking and content collaboration to share demonization, conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, and classical antisemitic motifs with a view to creating social acceptability for such content.

This phenomenon is spreading antisemitism and acceptability of antisemitism in new and increasingly effective ways. Social pressures are key to understanding Antisemitism 2.0, which is a combination of the technology and the emerging social environment.

The main threat posed by Web 2.0 to the Jewish people and their supporters is the creation of a culture where antisemitism has social acceptability, particularly among young people, resulting in the lowering of resistance and the establishment of hate networks.

To challenge Antisemitism 2.0, the Jewish community must as a strategy begin to engage online as an online community made up of individuals and organizations. The community has the talent to combat antisemitism online, but only if it is recognized, trained, funded, and given a shared sense of ownership in the fight against this newest manifestation of antisemitism. Read more

Future of Terrorism

Of a video featuring remarks by Newt Gingrich, Jerome wrote, I encourage you to take the time to watch this video….it’s not politically slanted, but rather a blunt and chilling answer to a serious question posed to Newt Gingrich. It’s a clearly worded warning I have yet heard from any public figure concerning the state of world affairs. This is one the most powerful and articulate summaries of the dangers of our current situation that I have ever heard, and a mystery to me why this is not painfully aware to every American and a subject of constant discussion.

Third Intifada?

The shooting attack in which at least eight religious students were killed yesterday in the heart of Jerusalem is reminiscent of past major campaigns of terror in Israeli cities - leading some Israelis to conclude that the Palestinian Arabs are launching a “third intifada.” Read more

Eulogy in Jerusalem

In his eulogy to the eight students gunned down Thursday in a shooting attack at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem, the religious school’s head rabbi Ya’akov Shapira declared the attack “a continuation of the 1929 massacre” of the Jewish community in Hebron. He said the gunman had targeted “everyone living in the holy city of Jerusalem.” Read more

Arab Press on Yeshiva Massacre

A news story from the Middle East in which the victims are Israelis has made the news.

This relatively rare occurrence has arisen because a terrorist shot up a Jewish school, thereby making it nearly impossible for the incident to be ignored, despite its victims being Jews.

Ordinarily, only the Israeli response to an attack, and not the attack that prompted it, makes the news, but this was too big a deal for even the inexplicably-pro-Palestinian press to ignore.

They have nevertheless found subtle ways to advance their agenda. Read more

“Understanding” Terrorism

The following excerpts are from an open letter in Haaretz by progressive Zionist Bradley Burston:

To the Westerner who “understands” the terrorist:

Spare us the explanations…Spare us the learned, sociology-drenched justifications. Spare us the reasons why you “get” Palestinians when they gun Jews down in cold blood…Spare us the chapter and verse on how the plight of the Palestinians is at the root of Islamic terrorism the world over, and if the Palestinians were to receive full justice, Islamic terrorism would pass from the world…Spare us…You may well believe, with the blind faith of the hopeful and the fear-stricken, that when these people are through with the Jews, they won’t come for you…Think again…

Spare us the post-modernism and the radical chic and the guff…Open your eyes.

…The best that the rulers of Gaza can do, is to bring an end to hope among their own people and ours as well…They believe that the Jewish state is temporary, and that they Jews will soon abandon it to Islamic rule…After all this time, you’d think they’d know the Jews a little better. Read more

Questioning Obama’s “Enchantment with Negotiation”

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Martin Peretz, editor in chief of the New Republic expresses his qualms about Obama’s stance on negotiating with tyrants:

My own qualms about Mr. Obama reflect his enchantment with negotiation. So far he has not allowed that there are conflicts in which negotiation is ipso facto futile, and conflicts in which there may be strategic consequences from the cult of talk. Talking certainly didn’t work with Hitler and Stalin, although Western leaders actually negotiated with these tyrants face-to-face. Our partners in those evil days traduced every agreement they made. The same was true of diplomacy with Yasser Arafat.

Mr. Obama says he would be open to a session with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And Mr. Obama’s Karen Hughes, Samantha Power, says, “we need to get in a room with him — if only to convey grave displeasure about his tactics, regionally and internationally.”

Maybe. But the president of the United States has many ways to communicate his opinion of a foreign leader. And when Mr. Ahmadinejad begs to differ, or expresses to the American president his low view of him, or walks out of the room, what then? Not military action, certainly, but the diplomatic option will have been squandered. Read more

A Bit of Good News from San Francisco

Thanks to our San Francisco correspondent Deanne Berger-Moudgil for bringing us a bit of positive news from a local campus.

A Video We All Need to Watch

Thanks to our Internet correspondent Jerome Marks for sending us this link to a video on worldwide anti-Semitism that we all need to watch.