Monday, December 31, 2007

“Surrender Is Not An Option”—Perhaps, Perhaps Not*

Paul Eidelberg

Two Munichs occurred in 2007: (1) the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, and (2) the U.S-sponsored Annapolis Conference. The two Munichs may lead to a world war that destroys what is left of a decaying Western civilization.

The National Intelligence Estimate reported that Iran had stopped its nuclear-weapons development program in 2003. This gives Iran the green light to complete that program. A nuclear-armed Iran will control Saudi Arabia as well as pacifist Europe on which America’s economy and survival depend. Of course, a nuclear-armed Iran dooms Israel.

The Annapolis Conference buys time for the United States, while Israel retreats to its indefensible 1949 borders to accommodate the establishment of Palestinian state which, in a second stage orchestrated by Iran, will cover all of Palestine.

Pundits attribute the first mentioned Munich to a “shadow government” in the American State Department working in conjunction with dovish elements in American intelligence agencies. The same shadow government is committed to Israel extinction.

This marks a stunning victory of the godless Left and satanic Islam—allied in a war against the nation-state and the source of West civilization, the Bible of Israel.

The trans-nationalism that animates the American State Department is more dangerous than the trans-nationalism of Islam! Let us probe this department with the help of John Bolton, whose book, Surrender Is Not an Option, was published only a few months ago. By the way, President Bush’s appointment of Bolton to a full term as U.S ambassador to the UN was blocked by Senate Democrats because of Bolton’s reputation for “muscular diplomacy.”

Returning to America’s “shadow government”: it is simply the State Department’s permanent bureaucracy. It consists of highly educated Machiavellians who know how to manipulate secretaries of state as well as American ambassadors. These secretaries and ambassadors are political appointees. Generally speaking, they have little or no professional experience in foreign affairs. In theory, they are supposed to implement the president’s foreign policy. Yet State and the CIA blocked implementation of the Iraqi Liberation Act, which provided for drawing up a constitution for post-Saddam Iraq; developing an interim legal code; and training thousands of Iraqis for police functions. The president was not on top of events: State and the CIA thwarted his policies.

Condoleezza Rice, like her predecessor, Colin Powell, has been captured by the State Department’s permanent bureaucracy. This bureaucracy is dominated by liberal-leftists. Leftwing ideologues have dominated State for more than seventy years, and it requires a strong-willed and an intellectual fortified president to counter State’s leftist approach to foreign affairs. Such presidents are rare.

One consequence is that American ambassadors often succumb to what Bolton calls “clientitis.” They end up representing not American interests so much as the foreign policies of the countries to which they have been posted—with Israel a notable exception.

Moreover, the very training or experience of the permanent bureaucracy in the domain of diplomacy inclines them to overestimate the efficacy of negotiations when dealing with Arab dictatorships. (I have written extensively on this subject in my book Jewish Statesmanship, where I discuss the inability of democratic diplomacy to compete with martial diplomacy.)

Not only is the State Department dominated by liberal leftists, and not only do they tend to be internationalists or globalists, but they know how to forge links with their ideological counterparts in Congress, especially when Congress and its foreign relations committees are controlled by Democrats. When Congress is controlled by Republicans, or when the president is himself a Republican, State knows how to obstruct conservative or nationalist oriented foreign policies. President Bush simply failed to appoint competent, conservative secretaries of state to implement his foreign policy agenda. Let us probe even deeper.

Few countries are more anti-American than America’s own State Department! State has been anti-American for many decades. In my book Beyond Detente: Toward an American Foreign Policy, published in 1977, I pointed our that the State Department, which consists of the most highly educated civil servants in American government, has long been tainted by the university-bred doctrine of moral or cultural relativism. This doctrine denies the existence of good and evil.

It undermines confidence in the justice of a nation’s cause. It erodes Americanism and patriotism. The anti-Americanism rampant among academics has become notorious.

In Surrender Is Not an Option, John Bolton emphasizes that relativism or “moral equivalency” permeates the State Department. The left-wing culture of moral equivalency has very much contributed to America’s fainthearted foreign policy; especially its anything but “even-handed diplomacy” in the Middle East, as witness Annapolis. Secretary Rice’s moral equivalency in dealings with Israel and the Palestinian Authority is nothing less than moral reversal.

Bolton—a man of superior intellectual and moral courage—may have chosen the title of his book, Surrender Is Not An Option, because he feared that America, like England and Europe, is in danger of surrendering its national sovereignty to Islam or to an Islamic-dominated United Nations.

Surrender seems to be the option of Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who confessed, before a New York audience, “We are tired of being courageous.” It seems that President Bush is also tired of being courageous.

The defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the toppling of Saddam Hussein were not enough to sustain his post-9/11 momentum. What stopped him was not simply an underestimation of the military forces required to prevent or overcome the insurgency in Iraq. Such errors are made and overcome in many wars. More significant is Mr. Bush’s inability to define America’s enemy.

The enemy is not “terrorism,” a vacuous concept. The enemy is Islam, more specifically, Islamic imperialism, which dates back to Muhammad. But one cannot say such a thing in a liberal, pluralistic democracy, especially one whose intellectual elites are steeped in moral relativism, or in the multiculturalism that prompted the eminent American political scientist Samuel Huntington to write Who Are We? Mr. Bush can speak of an “Axis of Evil,” but he dares not attribute evil to any religion. That would be unadulterated racism!

And so, the day after 9/11 he called Islam a “religion of peace” and does so even now! Americans are given to believe that Islam was hijacked by “extremists.” Many experts foster intellectual dishonesty by defining the enemy as “Islamism” or “radical” Islam” or “Islamic fundamentalism.” Today, “IslamoFascists”—a more subtle piece of obscurantism”—has become au courant.

We are told of “Muslim moderates,” and we are happy to learn of these exceptional Muslims. But take a random sample of the thousand mosques in the United States to learn about these moderates. See whether these mosques denounce Islamic extremists and preach peace with “infidels” as readily as they preach hatred of America, Jews, and Christians.

How can American politicians criticize Islam without violating the law? How can they expose a religion whose devotees danced in the streets on 9/11 and admire Osama bin Laden? How can America confront a religion whose faithful slaughtered more that 200 million people since the seventh century? But this means that American liberalism has become obsolete vis-à-vis Islamic imperialism. It cannot muster the ruthlessness required to confront an enemy that exults is suicidal murder.

And so America, like Israel, is committing national suicide. National suicide is inevitable given the moral relativism American universities have been propagating for more than sixty years.

These universities provided the people that dominate the “shadow government” entrenched in the American State Department. Therein you will find the doctrine that led to the National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 and Annapolis. Therein you will find that surrender is no longer an option because it has already taken place—first in the minds of men.**

—————————————
*Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, December 31, 2007.

**For a happier conclusion, read my book A Jewish Philosophy of History. Order it online at Lightcatcherbooks.com. And to hasten that happier conclusion, support the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy—the pace setter on systematic in-depth analysis on Israel.

Here is the link to LISTEN NOW (Click to listen):
http://www.israelnationalradio.com/

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Israel has been "afflicted by a non-nation and a loathsome people"

excerpt from
A Jewish Philosophy of History by Paul Eidelberg

. . . since the military victory in 1967, the governments of Israel have turned away from its roots and identity; they have spurned the nation’s birthright. As part of Israel’s retreat from these historical imperatives, from itself, since September 2000 the Arabs have engaged in Jew-killing and pillage that cripples prosperity and seems to make peace a pipe dream. Indeed, so perverse are our times that in regard to Israel and the Jews settled there, "peace" has been defined as the expulsion of Jews from Judea and Samaria overseen by a long-time hero of the IDF. Moreover, the Executive Branch of Israel’s "best friend,’ America, particularly its State Department is committed to creating a terror state named Palestine in the heartland of Israel and airbrushing from history 3700-years of Jewish presence and worship there, airbrushing, too perhaps, the West’s indebtedness to Israel. And if that means cutting America off from its own roots, well, that is essential to fashioning a "Brave New World.’

* * *
. . . the State and people of Israel have been ‘in the wilderness’since then [1967], led by "a government of fools" that chases the mirage of peace through alienation rather than grasping the joys of identity, settlement, abundance and sovereignty. And so Israel has been "afflicted by a non-nation and a loathsome people," a rabble whose "nationhood’ may be the greatest political fraud of a century of horrible frauds by which "the past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, and the lie became truth." But, as Eidelberg often has written, the historical function of this non-nation, the "Palestinians’ was to prevent Jews from forgetting who they are and to remind them that only by grasping and fulfilling their entire mission and morasha will they secure its rewards.

excerpt from
A Jewish Philosophy of History by Paul Eidelberg
Reviewed by Dr. Eugene Narrett
Examining God’s Plan: A Book Review of A Jewish Philosophy of History

About the reviewer…

Eugene Narrett earned his BA, MA, and PhD from Columbia University in New York City. During the past twenty-five years he has been teaching literature, philosophy and art in the Boston area and has written extensively on culture, politics, and art. He currently Directs and teaches in the Baccalaureate Program in Multidisciplinary Studies at Cambridge College.


More about Israel, "Land for Peace," and the futility of creating a "'Palestinian' State"

Two excerpts

Links for full texts given at end

The Camp David formula “land for peace,” the basis of the forthcoming Annapolis Summit, is rooted in an erroneous and fatal assumption. That certain Arab leaders agree to negotiate with Israel on the basis of this formula has induced politicians in Israel and abroad to regard such Arabs as “moderates.” This assumption stands in striking contrast to principles of statecraft enunciated by Prince Metternich, the great 19th century Austrian statesman on whom Henry Kissinger wrote his doctoral dissertation.

According to Metternich, “to base one’s conduct in an important undertaking on faith in the moderation of one of the contracting parties is asking for trouble … to build on air, to gamble the future on one throw.” This faith animated Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, the architects of the disastrous Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement of 1993. The same faith animates Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on “reciprocity” when dealing with Arab leaders. It was this historically unfounded faith that led him to sign the Wye River Memorandum, which surrendered large areas of Judea and Samaria to Yasser Arafat—a major step toward an Arab Palestinian state.

As Metternich saw, to expect the leaders of a dictatorship (such as the Fatah- or Hamas-led Palestinian Authority) to be moderate is like asking them to destroy the foundation of their existence.
SACRIFICING ISRAEL - AGAIN

and

“The idea of creating another Arab state in addition to the 21 already in existence, has no chance to survive. The creation of a Palestinian state will only bring chaos and steps toward it have not brought any good to Palestinians on the ground,”
NO "PALESTINIAN" STATE

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Does the Release of Arab Terrorists Contradict Jewish Law
and the Commandment to Obliterate Amalek?*

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Introduction: Some 700 years ago, the great Rabbi Meir of Rotenberg was abducted and imprisoned in Germany, then under the reign of Rudolph I. Rabbi Meir’s community offered a vast sum of money for his release, but he refused to be ransomed by more than the amount prescribed by Halacha, Jewish law, lest it encourage the abduction of other Jews. The great sage died in prison, after having been incarcerated for seven years.

This raises the question whether a Jewish soldier abducted by Arab terrorists should be ransomed by Israel’s release of Arab terrorists, or whether, if the soldier could affect the issue, should accept his release under that quid pro quo? This is not a question that can be answered by tyros. Here I offer some historical facts and some thoughts about Jewish law.

Historical Facts

In May 1985, Israel’s cabinet, in an unprecedented and unanimous decision, agreed to exchange 1,150 Arab terrorists for three Jewish soldiers captured in Lebanon by the PLO. 600 terrorists were allowed to return to their homes in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. In December 1987, the first intifada erupted, led by some of those released terrorists. Arab violence increased in dramatic fashion, including the kidnapping, murder and rape of Jewish men, women, and children.

On December 4, 2007, the day after the Olmert Government announced its intention to free 429 Arab terrorists, the Almagor Terror Victim Association reported that, between 1993 and 1999, Israeli governments had released 6,912 terrorists. Of that number, 854 were arrested subsequently for lethal terrorist acts which claimed the lives of 123 Israelis.

During Ariel Sharon’s 2001-2005 premiership, some 600 terrorists were released, 435 to recover the bodies of three dead soldiers in Lebanon and Elchanon Tannenbaum, an Israeli drug dealer who had collaborated with Hezbollah. During Sharon’s reign, 177 Israelis were killed by terrorists who had been previously released from Israeli jails on the basis that they were “without blood on their hands.” (35 were murdered by prisoners released in Tannenbaum deal.)

Thus, since 1985, Israeli governments released more than 9,000 terrorists who subsequently murdered at least 300 Israelis. Religious parties collaborated in these decisions, presumably on the Jewish principle of pikuach nefesh (פיקוח נפש), the saving of Jewish life—a position which seems to contradict the teaching of Rabbi Meir of Rotenberg.

Be this as it may, allow me to examine the issue as a layman. I do so to encourage people to think about the subject in Jewish and not merely in political terms, for which purpose they should inquire of their rabbis.
Jewish Law

The Jerusalem Talmud declares: “If gentiles [surrounding Israel] demand, ‘Surrender one of yourselves to us and we will kill him; otherwise we shall kill all of you,’ they must all suffer death rather than surrender a single Israelite to them” (Trumot 8, 9).

The Talmud rules that handing over a Jew who will be killed is itself an act of murder (שפיכות דמים). The prohibition against murder trumps the law of pikuach nefesh.

The question arises whether the act of releasing terrorists from Israel jails may result in the murder of Jews. Some rabbis say that since it is not definite or immediate that freeing terrorists will result in the death of future victims, we do not have an act of murder here. For example, some years ago a Jewish soldier was abducted by Arab terrorists who, for his freedom, demanded the release of other terrorists. A most learned rabbi suggested that the IDF, immediately after making the exchange, should launch a devastating attack on the terrorists—a provocative position not likely to win acceptance by the government, but worth thinking about.

The rabbinic opinion about freeing terrorists because of the uncertainty as to whether that will result in future terrorist victims may have been valid when it was rendered before Oslo. Whether it remains valid today is problematic in view of Israel’s experience since 1993, and especially since Arafat’s terror war broke out in September 2000. Israel is now at war with an enemy that has a more professional army equipped with increasingly deadly weapons.

Jewish law is not an intellectual strait-jacket. An underlying principle of Jewish law is probability. For example: in a town in which nine butcher shops sell kosher meat and one sells non-kosher meat, any meat found in the town is halachically kosher. What determines the status of the meat is not whether it was ritually slaughtered, but the supervening halachic principle of probability (Hullin 11a).

This principle is so stringent in capital cases that the most compelling circumstantial evidence is not sufficient to permit the Sanhedrin to convict a person accused of murder. However, if murder has become frequent in Israel, the Sanhedrin can delegate capital cases to the King, under whose authority circumstantial evidence may be sufficient for conviction.

Since the probability principle applies to Jews accused of murder or threatened with death, it may arguably apply to Arab terrorists whose release from Israeli jails has repeatedly resulted in the murder of more Jews. This is not all.

Amalek

Some commentators identify the Arabs as Amalek, Israel’s world-historical enemy. In Exodus 17:14, Moses is told, “Write this for a memorial in the Book … I will utterly obliterate the memory of Amalek.” Rashi comments that the Name of God will not be whole until the name of Amalek is blotted out.

Amalek’s hatred of Israel is manifested in two ways: (1) murdering the weak—like blowing up a school bus—and (2) degrading Judaism—like building mosques on Jewish holy sites.

After one-third of world Jewry had perished in the Holocaust, and on the very day a homeland was established for the Jewish people after millennia of exile—on that very day the organized armies of the Arabs attacked the fledgling, unarmed Jewish state. Now ponder Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Exodus 17:14:
Esau’s grandson, Amalek, was the first and only nation that, completely unprovoked and unthreatened, attacked Israel on their way to national independence. However weak and tired out they were by their wanderings, this people with women and children seeking a homeland must have appeared … [yet] it was only Amalek … who hurried out of his way to gain renown and take up arms against [Israel] … Amalek’s renown-seeking sword knows no rest so long as one single pulse beats in freedom, and pays no homage to it, so long as any modest, quiet happiness exists which does not tremble before Amalek’s might….

In Israel Amalek sees an object of mortal hate and complete disdain…. In [Israel], in the idea of the greatness that Man can attain by Peace—in that Jewish idea—Amalek sees the utter scorn of all his own [bellicose] principles. Sees in [Israel] his one real enemy, and senses somehow his own ultimate demise.

This is the core of the Arabs’ eternal hatred of Israel. Maimonides says of them: “Never did a nation molest, degrade, and hate us so much as they. Thus, when [King] David, of blessed memory, inspired by the Holy Spirit, envisaged the future tribulations of Israel, he bewailed and lamented their lot only in the Kingdom of Ishmael.”

Consider the obscene vilification and hatred of Jews appearing in the media of the Ishmael’s descendants. Add Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threat to wipe Israel off the map. Some halachic authorities suggest that any nation that arises against the Jewish people to wipe them out has the same status as Amalek, hence, that it would be incumbent upon Israel to wipe them out!
Well, I will leave you with these thoughts to ponder if and when Israel’s government releases more Arab terrorists.
_______________________
*Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, December 24, 1007.

Saturday, December 22, 2007



WHAT'S WRONG WITH ISRAEL?

Why has it deteriorated from a state respected by the world and feared by the Arabs into a punching bag for whomever sits in the White House and for the Europeans?

Listen . . .

Nothing ever changes! The Jewish people learns nothing from History, repeats the same tragedies. I cannot begin to tell you, the hate, the sheer psychopathic hate, which is raging today in the state of Israel. Not against . . . ["Palestinians"] . . . and not against Syria but against Jews!

* * *

"Three years ago I served in the army [IDF], I was stationed near Ramallah, in Samaria, the West Bank. And the Arabs rioted in Ramallah so they sent me to put down the riots. I want to tell you, not more than five minutes passed, and the whole town heard "Kahane is here!" there was absolute silence in that town, the riots stopped. It is imperative you understand what the name Kahane means to the Arabs. For them it is a monster, it is terror, they hear Kahane and they are terrified! And that is good because that is the only language they understand."
-Rabbi Meir Kahane

Rav Kahane was murdered November 1st, 1990 by an Arab informant infiltrated in a group not too well know at that time: Al-Quaida. Rabbi Kahane's prediction that the following elections were between Kahane or Arafat became true, thus Oslo* was born and the subsequent deaths of thousands of innocent Jews.

http://www.kahanetzadak.com/
http://www.kahanetzadak.com/index2.html

KAHANE TZADAK'S WEBSITE

ISRAEL: REVOLUTION OR REFERENDUM?

By RABBI MEIR KAHANE

Published in 1990. Rabbi Meir Kahane's last work which was published in 1990 shortly before his assassination. In this book, Rabbi Kahane outlines a blueprint of survival for Israel based on an emergency national referendum.

Start reading it now! At http://www.kahane.org/books/revolution.htm !

Here's an excerpt:

. . . the army of Israel that in 1967 was able to smash Arab armies, nations, and win a war in six days, is apparently unable to put an end to rioting by Arab women and children who attack the soldiers with stones and firebombs-unafraid, taunting, cursing, hating.

And the soldiers of Israel stand in frustration, hobbled by insane orders, drafted by confused politicians who are, themselves, ideologically bewildered and guilt-ridden, unsure of the justice of their own cause and fearful of world reaction.

The soldiers' hands are tied by limitations on their freedom to act in self-defense (the Central Command insists that soldiers attacked by stone-throwing Arabs only fire into the air and warn the mob to stand back; then, if still alive or not seriously hurt, to shoot at one of the stone throwers, and then-assuming G~d has been good-to shoot at the crowd [**]).

Is it any wonder that so many soldiers simply do not enter areas of danger? Or, worse, back away from confrontation, knowing that if they do not shoot they may be seriously injured or worse, and if they do, they may be court-martialed, as so many of the finest elite soldiers already have been?

And as the Arabs see the soldiers back away; and as they see that army policy is to allow them, more and more, to do whatever they wish in their own villages-should it surprise us that they grow bolder and more confident, attacking soldiers and vehicles almost with impunity?

Is it surprising that little, autonomous Palestine "states" are springing up daily in various Arab villages where one can see PLO flags flying boldly from minarets and private armies of youth training openly with hatchets and swords?

http://www.kahane.org/books/revolution.htm#3


[Note: This excerpt has been re-formatted for ease of reading. lw]


Copyright © KahaneTzadak, 2007. All articles may be shared freely as long as no profit is made. Sharing knowledge and teaching Torah is a positive commandment. If you save one Jew, you save the world.


Also see
NO "PALESTINIAN" STATE!
http://islamic-danger.blogspot.com/2007/10/no-palestinian-state-idea-of-creating.html

___________
FOOTNOTES:
_____________________________________
*http://www.masada2000.org/oslo.html

Home Page: http://www.masada2000.org/index.html

Note: as of October 28, 2007, Masada2000 is down.

**For why Israeli soldiers (same holds true for U.S. Troops) are not allowed to do what soldiers exist for--kill the enemy, we must look at the "Just War Theory.(1)" The moral code inherent in Just War Theory defines rules that undercut, inhibit, and subvert any hope of success in war, because it demands that one regard one's own life as the sacrificial object of others. The moral code of rational self-interest, by contrast, defines principles to attain the values that one's life and happiness require—including success in war and national self-defense. Altruism is the morality of defeat, and rational self-interest is the morality of victory.

1. http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-spring/just-war-theory.asp

Also, for the same idiotic Rules of Engagement for our U.S. Troops, see Once More . . . THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (ROE) IN IRAQ . . .



فلسطين‎ delenda est




Palaestina arabica delenda est




Islam delenda est


APPENDIX

WHAT IS "PALESTINE?"

WHAT ARE THE "PALESTINIANS" OF TODAY?

From http://www.masada2000.org/index.html

The term "Palestine" came from the name that the conquering Roman Empire gave the ancient Land of Israel in an attempt to obliterate and de-legitimize the Jewish presence in the Holy Land. The name "Palestine" was invented in the year 135 C.E. Before it was known as Judea, which was the southern kingdom of ancient Israel. The Roman Procurator in charge of the Judean-Israel territories was so angry at the Jews for revolting that he called for his historians and asked them who were the worst enemies of the Jews in their past history. The scribes said, "the Philistines." [Pleshti , Heb.] Thus, the Procurator declared that Land of Israel would from then forward be called "Philistia" [further bastardized into "Palaistina"] to dishonor the Jews and obliterate their history. Hence the name "Palestine."

One more thing. Very often one hears the revisionists and propagandists finding ancient historical links between the "Philistines" ("Invaders" in Hebrew) and the Arab "Palestinians." There is no truth to this claim! The Philistines were one of a number of Sea Peoples who reached the eastern Mediterranean region approximately 1250-1100 B.C.E. They were actually an amalgamation of various ethnic groups, primarily of Aegean and south-east European origin [Greece, Crete and Western Turkey] and they died out over 2500 years ago! Those Philistines were not Arab... and neither was Goliath! The Arabs of "Palestine" are just that... Arabs! And these Arabs of "Palestine" have about as much historical roots to the ancient Philistines as Yasser Arafat has to the Eskimos!

. . . . Arabs weren’t even in Palestine until the mid-7th century C.E., over a thousand years later, after Palestine’s 1,300-year Jewish history. Arabs later living in Palestine never developed themselves or the land, but remained nomadic and quasi-primitive.

Even the word "Palestine" has no meaning in Arabic - every word in Arabic has some meaning deriving from the Koran, but the word "Palestine" does not. Even the term "Palestinian people" is rather ironic since the letter "P" is non-existent in the Arab language.

[The Arabs that occupy the Israeli land of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza started to call themselves "Palestinian" in 1967. they pronounce it Falasteen, because, as stated above, there is no "P" in Arabic].

Read on and more about this at http://www.masada2000.org/index.html

Note; October 28, 2007 - as of this date, Masada2000 website is down. Taken down by Jew-haters.

Why True Zionists Oppose All [U.S.] "Foreign Aid"

http://www.jtf.org/

Israel's dependence on U.S. foreign aid handouts from a Jew-hating Washington puts her very survival at risk

With polls showing nearly universal opposition among Americans to the wasting of their tax dollars on so-called "foreign aid," it is only due to the intensive lobbying and arm-twisting of the self-hating cowards in Jewish establishment organizations that the foreign aid bill passes each year.

The number one priority for the so-called "Jewish lobby" is to ensure passage of this legislation in each session of Congress.

We have been told a million times that if not for the $3 billion that Israel receives each year in foreign aid, the Jewish state would not exist.

What sick, cowardly, faithless ignorance!

The opposite is true. Foreign aid to Israel is the worst curse imaginable. It creates a dependence which cripples Israel and endangers her survival on every level.

Giving a nation foreign aid is like giving drugs to a drug addict or welfare to a welfare recipient. The recipient is never helped by the slavish dependence created by the hand-out.

No healthy economy has ever been or ever will be created by hand-outs. Only total self-sufficiency and independence can build a prosperous and healthy society.

This is especially true with Israel.

http://www.jtf.org/

Also, see
NO "PALESTINIAN" STATE!
http://islamic-danger.blogspot.com/2007/10/no-palestinian-state-idea-of-creating.html

Falasteen delenda est



Islamic Danger - Home

Friday, December 21, 2007



[By the rivers of Babylon* —]





Psalm 137
by Zack Lieberberg









By the rivers of Babylon —

there we sat down

and there we wept

when we remembered Zion.


On the willows there

we hung up our harps.

For there our captors

asked us for songs,

and our tormentors asked for mirth,

saying,“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”


How could we sing the Lord's song

in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

let my right hand wither!

Let my tongue cling to the roof

of my mouth,

if I do not remember you,

if I do not set Jerusalem

above my highest joy.


Remember, O Lord,

against the Edomites

the day of Jerusalem's fall,

how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down!

Down to its foundations!“

O daughter Babylon,

you devastator!

Happy shall they be

who pay you back

what you have done to us!

Happy shall they be

who take your little ones

and dash them against the rock!



[Zack Lieberberg speaking]


Long time ago, as a young man, fresh out of Moscow University, I lived for a few years in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, which was, at the time, one of the 15 Soviet republics. Those were not the most enjoyable years of my life, but they gave me my first-hand experience of living among Muslims and the basis for understanding them, their grievances, and their dreams. More often than not, those bits of understanding were gained from isolated, seemingly meaningless episodes.


One such episode occurred on a summer morning, before dawn, when, for a reason I no longer remember, I had to go somewhere with a friend of mine. I was waiting for him near the Aeroflot ticket office where he was supposed to pick me up. He was late. I felt sleepy and bored. The streets were empty, with the exception of a small group of people standing in a tight circle near the corner at the end of the block. Judging by their clothes and by the heavy bags they were holding, they were Azeri peasants on their way to the marketplace. They were all looking at something located at their feet inside the circle. They resembled people watching the victim of a fatal accident while waiting for the authorities to pick up the body.


Citizens of Calais by Auguste Rodin














But there had been no accident. I decided to come closer to take a look. The group paid no attention to me. They were completely absorbed in the spectacle unfolding on the sidewalk in front of them. They were watching it in reverent silence. Their rough, peasant faces were solemn and seemed illuminated by an inner light of the kind that can sometimes be seen on the face of a man when he is reading a favorite book which he hadn't touched for years. He knows what's going to happen, but that knowledge does not diminish his pleasure. Not having ever witnessed an execution, I imagine that those who have might have a somewhat similar expression on their faces: the complex combination of the sadness of the event, the physical revulsion at the inevitable details, and, overall, the profound feeling of rightfulness of what's happening.


Inside their circle, nervously glancing at the silent, immobile spectators, two stray dogs were hurriedly mating.


For a few moments after they disengaged and went their separate ways, the peasants continued standing there, looking at the now empty stage, keeping their dramatic silence while the light gradually faded from their unshaven faces. Finally, one of them moved, and the entire group slowly came back to life. Without a single word, they looked at each other's faces, and the degree of mutual understanding I saw in their eyes could only be a result of shared intimacy. At last, they too began moving apart, and, for a fraction of a second, the disintegrating group looked almost as dramatic as Rodin's The Citizens of Calais.


I was reminded of that completely inconsequential episode when I saw a photograph showing a group of Muslims burning a Danish flag. They looked just as immobile and as solemnly satisfied as those Azeri peasants. The resemblance was not accidental. In both cases, the Muslims, cruelly deprived of the real thing, found comfort in whatever substitution was available.
The Azeri peasants, in accordance with Muslim laws and traditions were deprived of a normal sex life to such a degree that I don't think they knew such a thing existed. Everything about sex that we consider normal constitutes the most depraved debauchery to the Muslims; we, on the other hand, gently disapprove of their zoo- and pedophilia.


The flag-burners, on the other hand, were deprived by cruel circumstances of an immediate opportunity to wash their hands in the blood of the infidel, which, under the same Muslim laws and customs, is both their sacred right and sacred duty. In both cases, the substitution was precious and, at the same time, lacking.




Muslim flag burners







The major difference between the two groups is that the Azeri peasants will never have their dreams — whatever they might be — fully realized. Unlike them, the flag burners have a pretty fair chance to realize theirs.


The media report the latest fit of Muslim rage with even more sympathy than they displayed while reporting the recent Muslim riots in France. According to the New York Times, those riots were caused by France's failure to assimilate the immigrants.


Being an immigrant myself, I can comment on that with confidence. I came to the country of my choice, the United States of America, uninvited. I am forever grateful to America for letting me come and stay and for treating me equally under its laws. I have assimilated myself to the degree which made me feel comfortable, no more and no less. I never expected America to be assimilating me. What's more, I would never choose to live in a country that would make an effort at assimilating me. The Soviet Union kept trying to assimilate me for the first 34 years of my life, and failed.


Some of my friends are immigrants themselves. Their degrees of assimilation vary, and some of them are much less assimilated than I am. I know a lady from China who has lived in this country for 20 years. Once I invited her for lunch to an Italian restaurant. She was unfamiliar with even the most common dishes. She thought that the word Pizza was the name of a store chain, like Te Amo. She was surprised to discover that some of that foreign food was actually palatable. She was terribly unassimilated, and it caused her some very serious problems. Nevertheless, I guarantee that under no circumstances would she ever consider addressing her problems by burning a car. She was not a Muslim.


The excuse the Muslims have used this time seems almost reasonable in comparison. How many times have you read that they consider any image of Mohammad an insult to their religion? Guess what? That's just another Muslim lie.


There is a book sitting on my desk, The Legacy of Jihad by Dr. Andrew Bostom. Its cover is adorned with a depiction of the massacre of the Jews of Medina. Presiding over the massacre is the non-prophet himself, along with his (if I am not mistaken) cousin, Ali, and their faceless wives. You don't need to be an art expert to realize that it is a Muslim painting. Produced in the 19th century, it betrays its author's complete ignorance of the laws of perspective and other basic techniques used by European artists for many centuries. Flames in that painting look like a plywood model of a cactus, and it takes an effort to figure out which of the victims are already down and which are still standing.



Samples of Cro-Magnon art



In short, this Islamic masterpiece does not quite reach the level of sophistication achieved by Cro-Magnon artists some 30,000 years earlier. Nevertheless, it provides an accurate, even if artless, depiction of one of the many genocidal episodes comprising the entire history of Islam and the genocidal blood thirst that constitutes its essence. I have never heard that Muslims objected to that picture, even though their beloved fuehrer, if you look closely, appears to be severely constipated.

[see enlargement of the scene on the book's cover at end of this article for more details. lw]


Generally, I believe that people — individually or collectively — never deserve more respect than they show towards others. When was the last time observant Muslims demonstrated any respect for anything or anyone outside their death cult? The answer is, never. But then, the question itself is tricky, since, in the Muslim world, respect is synonymous with fear and submission. It gets even trickier if you recall that the so-called Muslim world — every square inch of it — was taken by them from its rightful owners by ways of jihad, the Islamic war of conquest and genocide continuing non-stop for 14 centuries.


Do you remember how, in 2002, a group of Arab terrorists escaping capture by the IDF barricaded themselves inside the Church of the Nativity and took hostage the priests who happened to be inside? The Arabs did not hesitate to urinate and defecate inside the church. Imagine the reaction of the Muslim world if “infidels” had done something similar to the most insignificant mosque on earth.


Although the Church of the Nativity constitutes one of the most important Christian holy places, not a single Muslim objected to its desecration. Christians did not demand any apology from that particular group of Muslims, or their leaders, or Islamic authorities in general. There was no anti-Muslim backlash in any Christian country. Instead, Christians, following their 2000-year-old tradition, blamed the Jews for the incident. Jews, faithful as ever to their own customs, did not respond to the new libel with a backlash against the Christians either.


This demonstrates the importance of anti-Semitism in the world affairs. To the villains, it offers a convenient scapegoat. To the majority of their intended victims, it offers a comforting delusion that the villains are after someone else. This simple tactic allows our common enemy to pluck us out one by one, and every time we lose one of ours, we delude ourselves into thinking that they will never come to our door.


They most certainly will, just as they have come to the door of Denmark. The Christian response is as cowardly as the Israeli response to the Arab atrocities on its territory. Take the boycott of Danish goods, for example. What would be the appropriate response of the civilized world? Any response as long as it is meaningful. But not a single Western country, not a single Western manufacturer has taken its goods off the shelves in the Muslim world out of solidarity with Denmark's stand for the freedom of expression.
Was there ever any danger of such a response? Of course, not. We are doing everything in our power to fulfill Lenin's prophecy about selling to our enemies the rope on which they will hang us.


What would be the appropriate American response to the accusation of mistreatment of the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay? The immediate confiscation of every single copy of the Koran from the prisoners. Is there any danger of that? Of course not. It is far more important for us to remain politically correct than to win the war unleashed on us by the Muslims.


Every lame anti-terror measure of the Bush administration is being malevolently scrutinized for possible violations of our constitutional rights and erosion of our freedoms. I'll tell you what constitutes the vilest, the most dangerous violation of my constitutional rights, what threatens my freedoms more than anything else. It is the ever growing influence of Islam in this country. How hard is it to understand that the most important component of freedom is not listed in the Bill of Rights because it is taken for granted like the oxygen in the air we breathe? How hard is it to understand that the most vital component of freedom is physical safety?


You cannot be free if you are not safe. You cannot be safe in your own country when its Muslim population is growing. You cannot be safe in this world when Islam is spreading like metastasized cancer, and Western governments, including our own, instead of doing anything at all to oppose it, compete with each other in their expressions of abject dhimmitude.


But there has not been any terrorist attack inside the country in more than 4 years, you might object. Very well, let us ask why. Is it due to the heroic efforts and unbelievable efficiency of the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA? To a degree, yes, although juries composed of decent American citizens routinely undermine their successes. But these organizations, by their very essence, can only provide passive, defensive measures, and you know as well as I do that no war can be won by passive, defensive measures alone.


The truth is that our enemies do not need to commit another atrocity right now. The mass migration of Muslims to the United States continues. In a couple of generations, there will be enough of them to vote the Constitution out and Sharia in. When our policies begin threatening the success of their venture, there will be another terrorist act in the US, and our leaders, along with their colleagues from Western Europe, will obediently make the necessary adjustments.


Our misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq do nothing to prevent that from happening. The administration must have realized long ago that our military presence there does nothing to diminish the threat of terrorism; that's why they substituted the original, unreacheable, goal of our invasion with the chimera of establishing democracy in the Middle East. That's why Osama bin Laden keeps dictating his letters to the American people.


The only tangible result of our absurdly benevolent conquest is the ongoing deterioration and impending destruction of the only democracy that is possible in that poisonous region.


Once the imams and ayatollahs established that Western voting rituals, although meaningless, do not contradict Sharia, the Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Arab-occupied territories of Israel went to the voting booths. In Afghanistan, the election was as meaningless as it used to be in the Soviet Union, where people were forced to cast their votes for the only candidate on the list. In Iraq, it brought to power people openly hostile to us and our goals, but that was inevitable since everyone in Iraq is hostile to us and our goals. In Israel, the Arabs cheerfully used the occasion to shamelessly demonstrate that they are not a "people", but a terrorist organization.


Nevertheless, we continue treating the nobody called Hamid Karzai as an ally. We continue pretending that the death of our soldiers in Iraq does something good to this country. And we are holding our breath waiting to see if Hamas will accepts Israel's right to exist. Why isn't Hamas worried whether Israel will accept its right to exist?


These are not signs of our defeat. These are signs of our disintegration.
Twenty-six years ago, Iran attacked the United States and took 66 of our citizens hostage. The general consensus was that the United States was powerless to respond to the Iranian aggression since that might lead to the execution of the hostages. Unfortunately, the United States accepted this cowardly point of view.


It was cowardly because, at that time, Iran could not, even in theory, harm more than the 66 hostages they were holding. The United States, however, could easily hold hostage their entire country, with a clear, credible promise to unleash the wrath of God on it for any harm they might have caused to their captives.


A minimally decent person in place of Jimmy Carter, would have given the ayatollahs 24 hours to deliver the hostages and the 500 “revolutionary students” who had invaded the embassy, and, if they failed to meet the deadline, proceed with the systematic and thorough destruction of Iran's “holy” places, elite residential areas, oil installations and whatever else it was necessary to incinerate in order to ensure that the new Iranian regime would forever remain the most convincing proof of Islam's unshakeable peacefulness. Even if the “revolutionary students” were stupid enough to harm their captives, no Muslim would ever again contemplate taking Americans hostage or flying our planes into our skyscrapers.


But Jimmy C. was not the kind of a guy who would take their little ones and dash them against the rock. He has always preferred to see our little ones dashed against the rock, which is exactly what earned him his Nobel Peace Prize. Today, 26 years later, one of the organizers of that attack on the United States is leading the Iranian front of global jihad in the official capacity of the president of the Islamic Republic and is about to acquire nuclear weapons. What are we going to do? What can we do?


We can do a lot. We are perfectly capable of stopping jihad forever by next Wednesday. Instead, we will do nothing, because taking Babylon's little ones and dashing them against the rock takes the courage we no longer possess.


We, my dear friends, are not really that different from those Azeri peasants. Only, instead of stray dogs, we are silently, passively watching the unfolding of a new holocaust.

(Translated by Yashiko Sagamori
February 7, 2006)

http://www.middleeastfacts.com/yashiko/Psalm137_eng.html


The article above is presented as a public service.
[by Yashito Sagamori]


It may be reproduced without charge — with attribution.

To read my other articles or to make a donation,
please visit http://www.middleeastfacts.com/yashiko/

To be added to or removed from my mailing list,please contact me at

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© 2002—2006 Yashiko Sagamori. All rights reserved.

___________________

*Tigris and Euphrates (present-day Iraq]


click on the picture for enlargement
showing details (can you see the "look of severe constipation on the face of their 'beloved fuehrer?'")











. . . taking Babylon's little ones and dashing them against the rock takes the courage we no longer possess.
-Zack Lieberberg








Islam delenda est








delenda est Islam

The Inevitability of Genocide by Yashiko Sagamori

If you haven't read it, don't miss it!


Click here

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Napoleon and the Jews
http://www.napoleon-series.org/ins/weider/c_jews.html
Thursday, December 20, 2007
State Department: no system for judging roadmap compliance, Israel can defend itself from rocket attacks but...

[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: "Certainly, Israel has a right to defend itself,
but we also want to make sure that, as always, any actions Israel takes it's
cognizant to the potential consequences of those actions." = Israel
doesn't has to allow its citizens to be killed unnecessarily - but hey, if
stopping Palestinians from killing Israelis might hurt the "peace process"
then that's an altogether different matter.

What would the United States say if another country were to state that
"Certainly, the United States has a right to defend itself, but we also want
to make sure that, as always, any actions America takes it's cognizant to
the potential consequences of those actions." ?]

============================
Daily Press Briefing
Tom Casey, Deputy State Department Spokesman
Washington, DC
December 19, 2007
TRANSCRIPT:
12:39 p.m. EST
www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2007/dec/97857.htm
...

QUESTION: On another subject, has the U.S. set up a specific system to
monitor and judge whether the Israelis and the Palestinians are sticking to
their commitments under the roadmap and various other --

MR. CASEY: Well, I think the roadmap is fairly self-explanatory. Certainly,
we're going to be working with them closely. We have a number of people
there working on various aspects related to that, from Tony Blair, who is of
course working on Palestinian institution building, to General Jones who
will be looking at some of the security structures. But I couldn't tell you,
Sue, that there is someone sitting out there with a specific report card or
check box that's --

QUESTION: Like a red, yellow and a green card?

MR. CASEY: Yeah, I don't think -- I don't think we have that kind of system
in place.

QUESTION: Speaking of General Jones, what are his plans, you know, travel?

MR. CASEY: That's a good question, Matt. You know, I don't think we've ever
gotten an update on him. We'll try and get something for you guys a little
later.

QUESTION: He's still there, though, right?

MR. CASEY: As far as I know, yeah.

QUESTION: On the same subject, does the United States regard the Israeli
military actions in Gaza as consistent with the spirit of and intent of
Annapolis?

MR. CASEY: Well, again, James, I think we're all aware of the problems that
exist in Gaza, particularly the continued rocket attacks on Israel.
Certainly, Israel has a right to defend itself, but we also want to make
sure that, as always, any actions Israel takes it's cognizant to the
potential consequences of those actions.
...
Released on December 19, 2007

http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=37296


[File under "Israel and its friend" or "with a friend like this, who needs . . . " Leslie White]
Political Anti-SemitismDriven By Islam

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

ANIMALS EXCRETE ON GRAVESITES

Arabs Desecrate Grave of Biblical Prime Minister Joshua
by Ezra HaLevi

Jewish worshippers Tuesday were stunned to find Arabs had desecrated the graves of the Biblical Joshua, Caleb and Nun (Joshua’s father).

Joshua served as the Jewish Nation's Prime Minister from the year 2488 until 2516 on the Hebrew calendar (1272 BCE - 1300 BCE).

Members of the One Shechem organization that organizes visits to the graves arrived in the village of Timnat (Kifl) Haress, near Ariel in Samaria, to prepare for a special prayer gathering, discovered that Arab vandals had desecrated the village’s Jewish tombs. The tombs of Yehoshua (Joshua) ben Nun, Nun, and Calev (Caleb) ben Yefuneh were covered with garbage and feces – both human and animal, and anti-Semitic and Nazi slogans and symbols had been painted in the area.

Nevertheless, worshippers gathered at the tombs Tuesday night for special prayers on the tenth of Tevet, the day Kaddish and other prayers are recited for those whose date of death is unknown, such as Calev ben Yefuneh. Organizers had cleaned up the damage and attendees reported a positive experience.

The prayers were also to mark the end of the 30-day increased-stricture mourning period for murdered Jewish father Ido Zoldan of Kedumim, by a Palestinian Authority police officer.

Organizers reported that a wide array of Jews – hareidi, national religious and traditional – took part in the visit and prayers. They also praised the cooperation of security forces, particularly the Efraim Division of the IDF.

The One Shechem organization issued a call to the public to do everything in their power to preserve the holy sites in Samaria, including Joseph’s Tomb in Shechem and to fight for the right of Jews to visit and worship there freely.

Click here for an Arutz-7 Exclusive Photo Essay of a midnight visit to the graves of Joshua, Calev and Nun.

http://www.web-view.net/Show/0XFE20F9864716B327E3ADFB8871BEAAE4FEA3853699539A080A2BFDDBE467C819.htm
To High Ranking Officers of the Israel Defense Forces



Whereas Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decided to release more than four hundred Arab terrorists (without even demanding the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was captured in a cross border raid by members of several Palestinian terrorist organizations on 25 June 2006);



Whereas Mr. Olmert, contrary to appeals of reserve IDF battalion commanders and soldiers, approved the shipment of two million bullets for AK-47 assault rifles and 50 advanced Russian armored carriers to the Palestinian (terrorist) Authority in Judea and Samara;



Whereas, despite the daily missile attacks on Sderot resulting from Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Mr. Olmert is committed to Israel’s withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, including Eastern Jerusalem;



Whereas this withdrawal will not only expose all cities in Israel to missile attacks, but will also entail the expulsion of as many as 200,000 Jews from their homes in Judea and Samaria, which expulsion cannot but demoralize the people of Israel lead to Israel’s demise;



Whereas the two parties in the Olmert Government, Shas and Israel Beiteinu, have refrained from resigning from, and thereby toppling, the Olmert government despite its suicidal policy of surrendering Jewish land to the implacable enemies of the Jewish people;



Whereas more than 90 percent of the people of Israel have no confidence in the Olmert government and live in anxiety about the future of their country;



The undersigned, a citizen of Israel and a former officer in the United States Air Force, wonders whether there is any general officer in the IDF—concerned about the lives of his soldiers and of Israel’s survival—has enough courage to seek an audience with Mr. Olmert and urge him to resign from his premiership lest further disasters lead to a military coup.



Prof. Paul Eidelberg


Coup d'etat.doc‏

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Stupidity and Avarice:

Two Bases of American Foreign Policy*



Paul Eidelberg



American foreign policy has two bases: stupidity and avarice. Admittedly, this may be said of the foreign policy of most countries. In Israel, however, whereas stupidity is the pilot and avarice the co-pilot, the reverse is the case of America.



Let’s first examine the evidence of stupidity in American foreign policy, since much of it is applicable to Israel’s government. And if you prefer the more polite term “naiveté” to stupidity, that may be nothing more than a distinction without a difference—only bear in mind there are different kinds of stupidity just as there are different kinds of intelligence.



According to historian W. P. Grady, “in the early years of WW II, American ambassador William Standley actually attempted to befriend the Russians by distributing Walt Disney Films.” Apparently, this was the State Department’s or President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s version of “confidence building” measures. (Perhaps Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, instead of releasing Arab terrorists, which arouses Arab contempt, should distribute Teddy Bears or Hershey Bars to the Palestinians to befriend them.)



FDR very much personalized American foreign policy. He believed he had the personality to charm “Uncle Joe” just as he had charmed so many Americans with his “fireside chats.” This naiveté (or conceit) was reinforced by another ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averill Harriman, who wrote to Roosevelt: “As you know, I am a confirmed optimist in our relations with Russia because of my conviction that Stalin wants, if obtainable, a firm understanding with you and America.”



This seems to be what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would like with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—“a firm understanding between Iran and the USA.” It was with this in mind that she invited Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to the November Annapolis Conference—Syria, a terrorist state. By the way, Condi was, for many years, a board member of Chevron, which merged with Texaco, a partner of Saudi Aramco.



Since her boss President George W. Bush regards Islam as a religion of peace, he is all the more anxious to have, for his legacy, the establishment of a Palestinian state. Ponder his fatuous affection for Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust denier. Foreign Minister Livni shares Mr. Bush’s puerile view of Islam and was therefore quite hurt when the Muslim delegates at Annapolis refused to shake hands with her. Yes, there are different degrees and different kinds of stupidity.



For example, Condi Rice and Tzipi Livni believe Israel must not retaliate against Gaza-based terrorists firing Kassam missiles every day on Sderot. They feel that putting an end to this terrorism, which has virtually destroyed a Jewish city, would hinder the peace process. How’s that for stupidity?—although, in the case of Livni, you may wish to call it cowardly stupidity. Shades of Ehud Olmert, who idiotically declared in New York that he was tired of being courageous.



Someone should write a history of stupidity. Shimon Peres once said that by yielding territory to the Arabs, Israel will have more Ph.D.s per square kilometer. Yes, Mr. Peres, and more idiots per square kilometer.



Turning to the avaricious basis of American foreign policy, can it be that Washington deliberately fosters conflict in the Middle East because such conflict enriches America’s defense industries, banks and the national economy?



Unknown to many observers, 74% of the $2.28 billion Israel receives in U.S. military aid must be spent in the United States. Moreover, military aid to Israel creates a demand for, and the purchase of, tens of billions of dollars worth of U.S. weaponry by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. U.S. military aid to Israel actually enriches the American economy. American arms manufacturers know this. So do Congressmen who represent states in which military defense corporations are located.



Many Congressmen become lobbyists for Saudi Arabia when they leave office. They have the connections to facilitate the twenty-billion dollar two-way trade between the U.S, and that oil-rich desert kingdom. In Sleeping with the Devil, former CIA operative Robert Baer reveals how the avarice of former American officials trumps patriotism. This is evident in the operations of the Washington-based Carlyle Group.



Carlyle has made a fortune through buying up small defense contractors and flipping them to defense giants like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and TRW International, a major weapons provider of the Saudis. As the world’s largest consumer of U.S.-made armaments, Saudi Arabia virtually makes the secondary market for American fighter planes, missiles, tanks, armored vehicles, and other weaponry and supporting services.



As Baer points out, Washington’s franchise players—politicians, CIA and State Department officials—head straight for the Carlyle employment office as soon as they’re out of the government.



Carlyle’ most famous adviser is “Poppa” George Herbert Walker Bush, the forty-first president of the United States. Greatly admired among the moneyed classes in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for their leadership in the Gulf War, Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major traveled frequently to both places on Carlyle’s behalf, opening the doors to some of the world’s most well-heeled investors.



When Poppa’s son George II was Governor of Texas, the state teachers’ pension fund invested $100 million with the Carlyle Group. Nor is this all.



Between his stints as Secretary of Defense and Vice-President, Dick Cheney served as CEO of Halliburton, a frequent beneficiary of Saudi construction projects both during and after his tenure. As Halliburton chairman, Cheney was instrumental in securing a $489 million in loan guarantees from the Export-Import Bank for the scandal-plagued Tyumen Oil Company, a Russian entity formed to exploit the oil reserves in the Caspian Sea region.



During the Clinton years, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell joined former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger (Nixon and Ford) and George Shultz (Reagan) and other luminaries as company directors of Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, the luxury jet manufacturer.



Baer concludes that almost every Washington figure worth mentioning has served on the board of at least one company that dealt with Saudi Arabia. Is it any wonder that the agenda at the Annapolis Conference was based on the Saudi “Peace Plan”? But this suggests that avarice on the part of the United States trumped ideology at that Conference, indeed, that avarice dominates American foreign policy. To avarice we must of course add crass hypocrisy and ideological stupidity. For while President Bush hobnobs with the Saudis and refers to Islam as a religion of peace, hundreds of Saudi-financed mosques in the United States preach jihad and hatred of America.



None of today’s presidential candidates—Democrat or Republican—dares touch on either basis of American foreign policy. How can these candidates speak of the avarice of American foreign policy when they are spending millions of dollars nurturing their lust for the presidency?



How can they speak of the stupidity of American diplomatic overtures to tyrannies like Iran and Syria when they engage in frivolous debates in which they have only a few minutes—sometimes only 30 seconds—to answer questions that may require very different answers more than a year from now, when the next president assumes office?



In any event, regardless of which party gains control of the presidency, Washington will be sleeping with the devil—as it has since1933, when FDR was first elected to that office.



As for Israel, although avarice infects the ruling elites, more significant are the words of the Prophet Isaiah, “I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.”



_____________

*Edited version of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, December 17, 2007.
_____________

Also,

see

Sick of the Saudis (Sow-dis)? Well, So are we!

Monday, December 17, 2007

Islamic Antisemitism


by Ibn Warraq


17 April, 2007

Following is the introduction by Ibn Warraq to the forthcoming book by Andrew Bostom titled The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism:



Is Islamic antisemitism only a modern phenomenon? What of the so-called Golden Age of Islamic tolerance, above all as depicted in Islamic Spain? Here the willingness to accept the clichés of the Romantics is palpable. And those whom we expect to have done their own research and not merely to accept, and pass on, these clichés, so often disappoint.

Consider the case of Amartya Sen, a celebrated economist, and winner of the Nobel Prize. Sen has in recent years written on subjects outside his normal area of research. Unfortunately, he seems not to have bothered to check his history, something which would have been easy given the resources available to him.

Here is how Amartya Sen treats, for example, the Myth of Maimonides. Amartya Sen tells us twice in his book Identity and Violence that when “..the Jewish Philosopher Maimonides was forced to emigrate from an intolerant Europe in the twelfth century, he found a tolerant refuge in the Arab world.” 1 I do not know how to characterize this misinterpretation of history- “willful,” “grotesque,” “dishonest” or “typical?” It is certainly an indication that in the present intellectual climate that one can denigrate Europe any way one wishes, to the point of distorting history, without, evidently, any one of the distinguished scholars who blurbed the book raising an eyebrow. Ironically, the one reviewer who did object to Sen's “potted history” which “is tailored for interfaith dialogues” was Fouad Ajami in The Washington Post. 2 Ajami reminded Sen that

...this will not do as history. Maimonides, born in 1135, did not flee "Europe" for the "Arab world": He fled his native Córdoba in Spain, which was then in the grip of religious-political terror, choking under the yoke of a Berber Muslim dynasty, the Almohads, that was to snuff out all that remained of the culture of conviviencia and made the life of Spain's Jews (and of the free spirits among its Muslims) utter hell. Maimonides and his family fled the fire of the Muslim city-states in the Iberian Peninsula to Morocco and then to Jerusalem. There was darkness and terror in Morocco as well, and Jerusalem was equally inhospitable in the time of the Crusader Kingdom. Deliverance came only in Cairo -- the exception, not the rule, its social peace maintained by the enlightened Saladin.

Moses Maimonides [1135 -1204], Jewish rabbi, physician, and philosopher, was fleeing the Muslims, the intolerant Almohads who conquered Cordoba in 1148. The Almohads persecuted the Jews, and offered them the choice of conversion to Islam, death, or exile. Maimonides' family and other Jews chose exile. But this did not bring any peace to the Jews who had to be on the move constantly to avoid the all-conquering Almohads. After a brief sojourn in Morocco and the Holy Land, Maimonides settled in Fostat, Egypt, where he was physician to the Grand Vizier Alfadhil, and possibly Saladin, the Kurdish Sultan.

Maimonides's The Epistle to the Jews of Yemen 3 was written in about 1172 in reply to inquiries by Jacob ben Netan'el al-Fayyūmi, the then head of the Jewish community in Yemen. The Jews of Yemen were passing through a crisis, as they were being forced to convert to Islam, a campaign launched in about 1165 by 'Abd-al-Nabī ibn Mahdi. Maimonides provided them with guidance and with what encouragement he could. The Epistle to the Jews of Yemen gives a clear view of what Maimonides thought of Muhammad the Prophet, “the Madman” as he calls him, and of Islam generally. This is what Maimonides wrote:

You write that the rebel leader in Yemen decreed compulsory apostasy for the Jews by forcing the Jewish inhabitants of all the places he had subdued to desert the Jewish religion just as the Berbers had compelled them to do in Maghreb [i.e.Islamic West]. Verily, this news has broken our backs and has astounded and dumbfounded the whole of our community. And rightly so. For these are evil tidings, "and whosoever heareth of them, both his ears tingle (I Samuel 3:11)." Indeed our hearts are weakened, our minds are confused, and the powers of the body wasted because of the dire misfortunes which brought religious persecutions upon us from the two ends of the world, the East and the West, "so that the enemies were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side." (Joshua 8:22).

Maimonides points out that persistent persecutions of the Jews by the Muslims amounts to forced conversion:

…the continuous persecutions will cause many to drift away from our faith, to have misgivings, or to go astray, because they witnessed our feebleness, and noted the triumph of our adversaries and their dominion over us...

He continues: “After him arose the Madman who emulated his precursor since he paved the way for him. But he added the further objective of procuring rule and submission, and he invented his well known religion.” Many Medieval Jewish writers commonly referred to Muhammad as ha-meshugga', Madman—the Hebrew term, as Norman Stillman notes, being “pregnant with connotations.” 4

Maimonides points to one of the reasons for Muslim hatred of Jews:

Inasmuch as the Muslims could not find a single proof in the entire Bible nor a reference or possible allusion to their prophet which they could utilize, they were compelled to accuse us saying, “You have altered the text of the Torah, and expunged every trace of the name of Mohammed therefrom.” They could find nothing stronger than this ignominious argument.

He notes the depth of Muslim hatred for the Jews, but he also remarks on the Jewish tendency to denial, a feature that he insists will hasten their destruction:

Remember, my co-religionists, that on account of the vast number of our sins, God has hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us, as Scripture has forewarned us, 'Our enemies themselves shall judge us' (Deuteronomy 32:31). Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase and hate us as much as they .... Although we were dishonored by them beyond human endurance, and had to put with their fabrications, yet we behaved like him who is depicted by the inspired writer, "But I am as a deaf man, I hear not, and I am as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth." (Psalms 38:14). Similarly our sages instructed us to bear the prevarications and preposterousness of Ishmael in silence. They found a cryptic allusion for this attitude in the names of his sons "Mishma, Dumah, and Massa" (Genesis 25:14), which was interpreted to mean, "Listen, be silent, and endure." (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, ad locum). We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation, as Isaiah instructed us "I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair." (50:6). All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition, as David predicted, "I am all peace, but when I speak, they are for war." (Psalms 120:7). If, therefore, we start trouble and claim power from them absurdly and preposterously we certainly give ourselves up to destruction."

During the last fifteen years, certain Western scholars have tried to argue that, first, Islamic antisemitism, that is hatred of Jews, is only a recent phenomenon learnt from the Nazis during and after the 1940s, and, second, that Jews lived safely under Muslim rule for centuries, especially during the Golden Age of Muslim Spain. Both assertions are unsupported by the evidence. Islam 1, that is, the Islam of the texts, as found in the Koran, and Hadith (the sayings and deeds of the Prophet and his Companions) and in the Sira (the biography of Muhammad, which obviously overlaps with the Hadith), and Islam 2, that is the Islam developed or elaborated from those texts early on by the Koranic commentators and jurisconsults, and then set in stone more than a millennium ago, and even Islam 3, in the sense of Islamic Civilization, that is, what Muslims actually did historically, have all been deeply antisemitic. That is, all have been anti-Infidel so that Christians too are regarded with disdain and contempt and hatred, but the Jews have been served, or been seen to have merited, a special animus.

ISLAM 1. Koran, Muhammad, Hadith, and Sunna.

Muhammad set the example for antisemitism. The oldest extant biography of Muhammad, that by Ibn Ishaq as transmitted by Ibn Hisham, is replete with the Prophet's evident hatred of Jews. He had individual Jews assassinated if he felt that they had somehow insulted or disobeyed him. When Muhammad gave the command “Kill any Jew that falls into your power,” 5one of his followers, Ibn Mas'ud, assassinated Ibn Sunayna, a Jewish merchant. Other followers of Muhammad were happy to obey similar orders from their leader: “Our attack upon God's enemy cast terror among the Jews, and there was no Jew in Medina who did not fear for his life.” 6 Other Jews killed included Sallam ibn Abu’l-Huqayq, 7Ka‘b b.al-Ashraf, 8 and al-Yusayr.9 The Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza, consisting of between 600-800 men, were exterminated, 10 while the Jewish tribe of Banu'l-Nadir were attacked, and all who remained alive banished. 11

Here are two additional examples of Muhammad's attitude to Jews; first from Ibn Sa‘d’s sira:

Then occurred the "sariyyah" [raid] of Salim Ibn Umayr al-Amri against Abu Afak, the Jew, in [the month of] Shawwal in the beginning of the twentieth month from the hijrah [immigration from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD], of the Apostle of Allah. Abu Afak, was from Banu Amr Ibn Awf, and was an old man who had attained the age of one hundred and twenty years. He was a Jew, and used to instigate the people against the Apostle of Allah, and composed (satirical) verses [about Muhammad].

"Salim Ibn Umayr who was one of the great weepers and who had participated in Badr, said, "I take a vow that I shall either kill Abu Afak or die before him. He waited for an opportunity until a hot night came, and Abu Afak slept in an open place. Salim Ibn Umayr knew it, so he placed the sword on his liver and pressed it till it reached his bed. The enemy of Allah screamed and the people who were his followers, rushed to him, took him to his house and interred him. 12

The second example comes from al-Bukhari’s canonical hadith collection:

Bani An-Nadir and Bani Quraiza fought, so the Prophet (Muhammad) exiled Bani An-Nadir and allowed Bani Quraiza to remain at their places. He then killed their men and distributed their women, children and property among the Muslims, but some of them came to the Prophet and he granted them safety, and they embraced Islam. He exiled all the Jews from Medina. They were the Jews of Bani Qainuqa', the tribe of 'Abdullah bin Salam and the Jews of Bani Haritha and all the other Jews of Medina. 13

Muhammad's intolerance of other religions is well-attested: “ …I was told that the last injunction the apostle [Muhammad] gave [before his death] was in his words ‘ Let not two religions be left in the Arabian peninsula’;” 14or as Abu Dawoud put it: "The Apostle of Allah said,“I will certainly expel the Jews and the Christians from Arabia.” 15

After September 11, 2001, many Muslims and apologists of Islam glibly came out with the following Koranic quote to show that Islam and the Koran disapproved of violence and killing: Sura V.32: “Whoever killed a human being shall be looked upon as though he had killed all mankind." Unfortunately, these wonderful sounding words, which come from a pre-existing Jewish text [Mishnah, IV Division], 16 are being quoted out of context. For the very next verse offers quite a different meaning from that of V:32. Here is V:33:

That was why We laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being , except as a punishment for murder or other villainy in the land , shall be looked upon as though he had killed all mankind; and that whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as though he had saved all mankind. Our apostles brought them veritable proofs: yet it was not long before many of them committed great evils in the land. Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder shall be put to death or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the country.

The supposedly noble sentiments of the first verse, taken from a Jewish source, are entirely undercut by the second verse, which has become a murderous menacing by Muhammad of the Jews. Far from abjuring violence, these verses aggressively insist that any who oppose the Prophet will be killed, or crucified, mutilated and banished.

As for the intolerance against Jews and Christians, and their inferior status as dhimmis we have IX verses 29–35:

Fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe neither in God nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His apostle have forbidden , and do not embrace the true faith, until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued.

The Jews say Ezra is the son of God, while the Christians say the Messiah is the son of God .Such are their assertions, by which they imitate the infidels of old. God confound them! How perverse they are!

They make of their clerics and their monks, and of the Messiah, the son of Mary, Lords besides God; though they were ordered to serve one God only. There is no god but Him .Exalted be He above those whom they deify besides Him!….

It is He who has sent forth His apostle with guidance and the true Faith to make it triumphant over all religions, however much the idolaters may dislike it

O you who believe! Lo! many of the Jewish rabbis and the Christian monks devour the wealth of mankind wantonly and debar men from the way of Allah; they who hoard up gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah, unto them give tidings of painful doom ….

The moral of all the above is clear: Islam is the only true religion, Jews and Christians are devious, and money-grubbing, who are not to be trusted, and even have to pay a tax in the most humiliating way: Koran: 17

II.61: Wretchedness and baseness were stamped upon them [that is, the Jews], and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah’s revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully. That was for their disobedience and transgression.

IV.44-46: Have you not seen those who have received a portion of the Scripture? They purchase error, and they want you to go astray from the path. But Allah knows best who your enemies are, and it is sufficient to have Allah as a friend. It is sufficient to have Allah as a helper. Some of the Jews pervert words from their meanings, and say, ‘We hear and we disobey,’ and ‘Hear without hearing,’ and ‘Heed us!’ twisting with their tongues and slandering religion. If they had said, ‘We have heard and obey,’ or ‘Hear and observe us’ it would have been better for them and more upright. But Allah had cursed them for their disbelief, so they believe not, except for a few.

IV.160-161: And for the evildoing of the Jews, We have forbidden them some good things that were previously permitted them, and because of their barring many from Allah’s way. And for their taking usury which was prohibited for them, and because of their consuming people’s wealth under false pretense. We have prepared for the unbelievers among them a painful punishment.

ISLAM 2. Koranic Commentators.

Baydawi [died c.1316], in Anwaar al-Tanziil wa-Asraar al-Ta’wiil, provided this gloss on Koran II:61: 18

…“humiliation and wretchedness” covered them like a dome, or stuck to them like wet clay to a wall—a metaphor for their denial of the bounty. The Jews are mostly humiliated and wretched either of their own accord, or out of coercion of the fear of having their jizya doubled….Either they became deserving of His wrath [or]…the affliction of “humiliation and wretchedness” and the deserving wrath which preceded this.

Ibn Kathir [died 1373], emphasized the Jews' eternal humiliation in accord with Koran II:61: 19

This ayah indicates that the Children of Israel were plagued with humiliation, and this will continue, meaning it will never cease. They will continue to suffer humiliation at the hands of all who interact with them, along with the disgrace that they feel inwardly.

ISLAM 3. Islamic Civilization.

Here are examples of the persecution of Jews in Islamic lands: the massacre of more than 6000 Jews in Fez (Morocco) in 1033; of the hundreds of Jews killed between 1010 and 1013 near Cordoba, and other parts of Muslim Spain; of the massacre of the entire Jewish community of roughly 4000 in Granada during the Muslim riots of 1066. Referring to the latter massacre, Robert Wistrich writes: “This was a disaster, as serious as that which overtook the Rhineland Jews thirty years later during the First Crusade, yet it has rarely received much scholarly attention.” Wistrich continues:

In Kairouan [Tunisia] the Jews were persecuted and forced to leave in 1016, returning later only to be expelled again. In Tunis in 1145 they were forced to convert or to leave, and during the following decade there were fierce anti-Jewish persecutions throughout the country. A similar pattern of events occurred in Morocco after the massacre of Jews in Marrakesh in 1232. Indeed, in the Islamic world from Spain to the Arabian peninsula the looting and killing of Jews, along with punitive taxation, confinement to ghettos, the enforced wearing of distinguishing marks on clothes (an innovation in which Islam preceded medieval Christendom), and other humiliations were rife. 20

Fouad Ajami in his review of Sen's book spoke of “the culture of conviviencia,” what others have called the Golden Age of Tolerance in Spain before it was destroyed by the intolerance of the Almohads. Unfortunately, “The Golden Age” also turns out to be a myth, invented, ironically, by the Jews themselves. The myth may well have originated as early as the twelfth century, when Abraham Ibn Daud in his Sefer ha-Qabbalah contrasted an idealised period of tolerance of the salons of Toledo in contrast to the contemporary barbarism of the Berber dynasty. But the myth took a firm grip on the imagination of the Jews in the nineteenth century thanks to the bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider and historian Heinrich Graetz, and perhaps the influence of Benjamin Disraeli's novel Coningsby, published in 1844. Here is a passage from the latter novel giving a romantic picture of Muslim Spain,

..that fair and unrivaled civilization in which the children of Ishmael rewarded the children of Israel with equal rights and privileges with themselves. During these halcyon centuries, it is difficult to distinguish the followers of Moses from the votary of Mohammed. Both alike built palaces, gardens and fountains; filled equally the highest offices of state, competed in an extensive and enlightened commerce, rivaled each other in renowned universities. 21

Ever since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Western intellectuals, from Pierre Bayle to Voltaire and Montesquieu, had used the putative tolerance of Islam with which to belabor Christianity and her relative intolerance. Against a background of a rise in the pseudo-scientific racism of the nineteenth century, Jane Gerber has observed that Jewish historians looked to Islam “...for support, seeking real or imagined allies and models of tolerance in the East. The cult of a powerful, dazzling and brilliant Andalusia in the midst of an ignorant and intolerant Europe formed an important component in these contemporary intellectual currents.” 22 But Gerber concludes her sober assessment of the Golden Age Myth with these reflections,

The aristocratic bearing of a select class of courtiers and poets, however, should not blind us to the reality that this tightly knit circle of leaders and aspirants to power was neither the whole of Spanish Jewish history nor of Spanish Jewish society. Their gilded moments of the tenth and eleventh century are but a brief chapter in a longer saga. No doubt, Ibn Daud's polemic provided consolation and inspiration to a crisis-ridden twelfth century elite, just as the golden age imagery could comfort dejected exiles after 1492. It suited the needs of nineteenth century advocates of Jewish emancipation in Europe or the twentieth century contestants in the ongoing debate over Palestine....The history of the Jews in Muslim lands, especially Muslim Spain, needs to be studied on its own terms, without myth or countermyth. 23

And that is exactly what Andrew Bostom has done, provide a history of the Jews in Muslim lands, without myth. Bostom provides the necessary corrective to the idealized portraits of the golden age or the absolute tolerance of Ottoman Turkey. Patiently and methodically, he shows the real situation of Jews against a background of the institution of dhimmitude, which relentlessly persecuted all non-Muslims and reduced their lives to a misery, lives which were further punctuated with massacres and pogroms, all grimly recorded by him. Bostom also takes into account the discoveries of the Cairo Geniza, which forced even the great historian Shlomo Dov Goitein (d. 1985) to revise his ideas about the situation of Jews in Islamic lands. While the West has recognized her own shameful part in the slave trade, and antisemitic persecution, and has taken steps to make amends where possible, the Islamic lands remain in constant denial. Until Islamic countries acknowledge the realities of anti-Jewish persecution in their history, there is no hope of combating the continuing hatred of Jews in modern times, from Morocco to Indonesia.


NOTES:

1 Amartya Sen. Identity and Violence. The Illusion of Destiny. New York: W.W.Norton and Company. 2006, p.66, and also at p.16: "...distinguished Jewish philosopher fled an intolerant Europe."

2 Fouad Ajami: “Enemies, a Love Story.A Nobel laureate argues that civilizations are not clashing. The Washington Post. Sunday, April 2, 2006.

3 Moses Maimonides, Moses Maimonides' Epistle to Yemen: The Arabic Original and the Three Hebrew Versions, Edited from Manuscripts with Introduction and Notes by Abraham S. Halkin, and an English Translation by Boaz Cohen. New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1952.

4 Norman Stillman. The Jews of Arab Lands. A History and Source Book. 1979, Philadelphia p.236, and p. 236 note 8

5 The Life of Muhammad, p.369.

6 Ibid.,p.368.

7 Ibid.,pp.482-483.

8 Ibid.,p.364-369.

9 Ibid.,pp.665-666.

10 Ibid.,pp.461-469.

11 Ibid.,pp.437-445.

12 Ibn Sa‘d Kitab al-Tabaqat trans. S.M.Haq, 2 Vols., New Delhi, Vol.1 p.32.

13 Sahih Al-Bukhari trans. Dr. M .Muhsin Khan , New Delhi :Kitab Bhavan, 1987, Vol.5, Book 59: Book of al-Maghazi (Raids), Hadith No. 362. p241.

14 The Life of Muhammad , p.689.

15 Abu Dawoud Sunan, 3 Vols; Kitab Bhavan, New Delhi 1997, Vol.2 Hadith No. 3024, p.861

16 Mishnah. trans. by Jacob Neusner. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988, The Fourth Division: The Order of Damages, Sanhedrin 4:5.J.: "Therefore man was created alone, (1) to teach you that whoever destroys a single Israelite soul is deemed by Scripture as if he had destroyed a whole world." p. 591.

17 Here are some more quotes from the Koran:

IX.29-31: Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture [Jews and Christians] as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah has forbidden by His Messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute [poll-tax] readily, and are utterly subdued. The Jews say, “Ezra is the son of Allah," and the Christians say, “ The Messiah is the son of Allah." Those are the words of their mouths, conforming to the words of the unbelievers before them. Allah attack them! How perverse they are! They have taken their rabbis and their monks as lords besides Allah, and so too the Messiah son of Mary, though they were commanded to serve but one God. There is no God but He. Allah is exalted above that which they deify beside Him.

IX.34: O you who believe! Lo! many of the [Jewish] rabbis and the [Christian] monks devour the wealth of mankind wantonly and debar [men] from the way of Allah. They who hoard up gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah, unto them give tidings of a painful doom.

V.63-64: Why do not the rabbis and the priests forbid their evil-speaking and devouring of illicit gain? Verily evil is their handiwork. The Jews say, “Allah’s hands are fettered." Their hands are fettered, and they are cursed for what they have said! On the contrary, His hands are spread open. He bestows as He wills. That which has been revealed to you from your Lord will surely increase the arrogance and unbelief of many among them. We have cast enmity and hatred among them until the Day of Resurrection. Every time they light the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it. They hasten to spread corruption throughout the earth, but Allah does not love corrupters!

V.70-71: We made a covenant with the Israelites and sent forth apostles among them. But whenever an apostle came to them with a message that did not suit their fancies, some they accused of lying and others they put to death. They thought no harm would follow: they were blind and deaf. God is ever watching their actions.

V.82: Indeed, you will surely find that the most vehement of men in enmity to those who believe are the Jews and the polytheists.

V.51: O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who takes them for friends is one of them.

V.57: O you who believe! Choose not for friends such of those who received the Scripture [Jews and Christians] before you, and of the disbelievers, as make jest and sport of your religion. But keep your duty to Allah of you are true believers.

V.59: Say: O, People of the Scripture [Jews and Christians]! Do you blame us for aught else than that we believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed aforetime, and because most of you are evil-doers?

V.66: Among them [Jews and Christians] there are people who are moderate, but many of them are of evil conduct.

XXXIII.26: He brought down from their strongholds those who had supported them from among the People of the Book [Jews of Bani Qurayza] and cast terror into their hearts, so that some you killed and others you took captive.

V.60: Say: ‘Shall I tell you who will receive a worse reward from God? Those whom [i.e. Jews] God has cursed and with whom He has been angry, transforming them into apes and swine, and those who serve the devil. Worse is the plight of these, and they have strayed farther from the right path.

18 Baydawi. ed. Fleischer, H. O. Commentaius in Coranum. Anwaar al-Tanziil Wa-Asraar al-Ta’wiil. 1846—48. Reprint Osnabrück 1968, p. 63. English translation by Michael Schub.

More quotes from Baydawi:

…“because they disbelieved and killed the prophets unjustly” by reason of their disbelief in miracles, e.g. the splitting of the sea, the clouds giving shade, and the sending of the manna and quails, and splitting of the rock into twelve fountains/or, disbelief in the revealed books, e.g. the Gospel, Qur’an, the verse of stoning, and the Torah verse in which Muhammad is depicted; and their killing of the prophets like Shay`aa [Isaiah], Zakariyyaa, Yahyaa, et al., all killed unjustly because they considered that of these prophets nothing was to be believed and thus they deserved to be killed.

In addition [God] accuses them of following fantasy and love of this world, as he demonstrates in His saying [line 14] “this if for their transgression and sin” i.e. rebelliousness, contrariness, and hostility brought them into disbelief in the signs, and killing the prophets. Venal sins lead to serious sins, just as small bits of obedience lead to larger ones….God repeated this proof of what is inveterate [in the Jews], which is the reason for their unbelief and murder, and which is the cause of their committing sins and transgressing the bounds God set.

19 Ibn Kathir. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Riyadh, Vol. 1, 2000, pp. 245-246.

"Al-Hassan commented, “Allah humiliated them under the feet of the Muslims, who appeared at a time when the Majus (Zoroastrians) were taking the jizya from the Jews. Also, Abu Al-‘Aliyah, Ar-Rabi bin Anas and As-Suddi said that ‘misery’ used in that ayah means ‘poverty’. ‘Atiyah Al-‘Awfi said that ‘misery’ means, ‘paying the tilth (tax)’. In addition, Ad-Dahhak commented on Allah’s statement, “and they drew on themselves the wrath of Allah," ‘They deserved Allah’s anger.’ Also, Ibn Jarir said that, “and they drew on themselves the wrath of Allah” means, ‘They went back with the wrath. Similarly, Allah said, “Verily, I intend to let you draw my sin on yourself as well as yours” (Qur’an 5:29) meaning, ‘You will end up carrying my and your mistakes instead of me.’ Thus the meaning of the ayah becomes, “They went back carrying Allah’s anger: Allah’s wrath descended upon them; they deserved Allah’s anger.’

Allah’s statement, “That was because they used to disbelieve in the Ayat (proofs, evidence, etc.) of Allah and killed the Prophets wrongfully," means ‘This is what We rewarded the Children of Israel with: humiliation and misery.’ Allah’s anger that descended on the Children of Israel was a part of the humiliation they earned, because of their defiance of the truth, disbelief in Allah’s Law, i.e., the Prophets and their following. The Children of Israel rejected the Messengers even killing them. Surely there is no form of disbelief worse than disbelieving in Allah’s ayat and murdering the Prophets of Allah.”

20 Robert Wistrich. Antisemitism-The Longest Hatred. Schocken Books, New York, 1991, p.196

21 Benjamin Israel. Coningsby, Book IV, Ch. X, quoted in Bernard Lewis, Islam in History, New York, 1973, p.317 n.15.

22 Jane Gerber. Towards an Understanding of the Term: 'The Golden Age' as an Historical Reality in ed. Aviva Doron, The Heritage of the Jews of Spain, Tel Aviv: Levinsky College of Education Publishing House, 1994, p.16.

23 Ibid., pp.21-22.

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Ibn Warraq is the author of Why I Am Not a Muslim and the editor of The Origins of the Koran, The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, and What the Koran Really Says.

http://islam-watch.org/IbnWarraq/Islamic-Antisemitism.htm