Solutions? Here We Are!

The long-awaited speech by the President of the United States of America on the cusp of meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been received with truly mixed feelings. Mostly the feelings are mixed between incredulous and disbelieving.

Mind, the president relieved himself of his impressions and feelings about the eventuality of a Palestinian state alongside that of the State of Israel, in the context of a longer, large speech of the general conditions currently prevailing in the Middle East and North Africa. Where support of long-time allies were disposed of, and a selective attack mounted on another.

It isn't entirely clear why a speech focusing primarily on the "Arab Spring" also mentioned Israel and President Barack Obama's view of how Israel should comport itself officially in the prosecution of reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority, for the 'political awakening', confrontations and state brutality taking place really have nothing to do with Israel.

Other than the occasional reported outburst from protesters in Libya, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt about the Israeli aggressors. And the equally pointed expressions of exasperation by the ruling elite masquerading as benevolent dictators that the protests have been fomented by the Israeli Mossad.

But it is President Obama's considered opinion, one to which he has given great weight, that Israel must seriously consider and follow through with a series of concessions to the demands of the Palestinians to create an environment where the Palestinians might consider sitting down at the negotiating table for serious talks about peace with the Israelis.

No one seems to expect any manner of concessions to be available from the Palestinians.

The 'right of return' remains sacrosanct; the PA's Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's admission of his belief that returning Palestinians should be absorbed within the new Palestinian State is not favoured by the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Hamas, and Mr. Fayyad is definitely out of favour.

The borders issue has received an unequivocal - almost - endorsement by President Obama; back to 1948, and bargain if you can for 'mutually agreed swaps'.

With a Palestinian Authority that has visions of sugar plums in the shape, colour and fragrance of swapping promises for accessing the entirety of the region, usurping the very ground that the State of Israel sits upon. The mourning of the Nakba will be concluded in the triumph of accession, righting a wrong that the United Nations imposed upon the poor Palestinians.

And the accursed, usurping Jews can just go back from where they came from - anywhere but the Middle East. And that nicely settles the issue of an undivided Jerusalem.

A State By Any Other Name

As Israel finishes celebrating the anniversary of its creation the Palestinian Authority with help from Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon and Gaza converge at border points to express their peaceful protest against the existence of the State of Israel. Molotov cocktails and rocks aside, the issue was that people have a right to protest that which grieves them. And the existence of a State within the Middle East, comprised of Jews is horribly aggravating.

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images Two Palestinian men with rocks during clashes with the Israeli police on Sunday near Ramallah.

As the Middle East and the Arab States within it are gripped with the drama of people agitating for their rights and the obligations of those who govern them to recognize their human rights, the core issues slip by as protesters are urged to vent their frustration not at those who govern them but at the existence of a Jewish State. Positioned where it is for the express purpose of irritating the Arab population to infuriated distraction.

The United Nation's plan for Partition was unacceptable to Arab Palestinians, and no less so to to the Arab States surrounding Israel. One attempt after another with combined Arab armies was launched to dislodge the new country from existence in a rage of exclusion and hatred. The original 1948 borders were increased to reflect the last of those attacks, enabling Israel to better defend itself.

And now that the Palestinians are united politically as well as in their incessant and indomitable need to express their outrage at the existence of Israel and to continue mounting their 'resistance' against the 'occupier', there is no longer any need at the pretense of searching for a peace agreement. United, Fatah and Hamas see themselves as conquerors.

But for international consumption the fable of the search for peace continues, and the Palestinian Authority has laid out its preconditions. These preconditions have a limited shelf life, for when, once again, elections take place at a time when Fatah can no longer stave them off, it may very well be Hamas that constructs the preconditions, and Hamas's precondition for peace is war.

Meanwhile the PLO's call for the right of "return" of the Palestinian people to land upon which Israel now sits is considered an 'inalienable right' under international law. A newly-constructed international law that has been practised nowhere else in the world. The popular' struggle' against the West Bank settlements must be re-commenced.

The infamous "refugee camps" for which the international community has footed the bill for over 60 years must remain as a living blight. Until such time - and it cannot be too soon - as the State of Israel is but a dim and bad memory. When such profound errors of judgement from within the international community take place, they must be reversed. There is a first time for everything.

The United Nations must recognize the racist character of the State of Israel which designates itself a Jewish State. That characterization of a Jewish state is clearly apartheid in nature, placing the status of Arabs in question for what kind of Arab would agree to live in a Jewish state? The fact that the Jewish state still honours equitable justice and citizenship for all is insultingly irrelevant.

With the dissolution of the Jewish state and the eventual absence of the State of Israel, there will be but one state, that of the Palestinians. It will be named the State of Palestine. And it will be recognized as an Islamic state.

Like Oil and Water

How many countries of the world are there who while celebrating their creation, must contemplate that their neighbours view that event as a black day of mourning? Pakistan came into being at roughly the same time, Bangladesh some years later; who contests their creation? British colonial rule left arbitrary borders around geographic areas that later became 'nations', countries whose tribal adversities have never resulted in peace; who suggests their destruction?

Palestinians continue to claim that Israel exists on land that is rightfully that of the Palestinians. Yet the Palestinians who remained within Israel at its declaration remain there yet, with full civil rights equally administered under the law. It is claimed that 700,000 Palestinians fled out of fear and at the urging of surrounding Arab governments that they could return once the new state was demolished by a combined Arab military assault.

That original 700,000 now numbers roughly six million who live in neighbouring Arab state as refugees for their neighbours, other Arabs, always refused them citizenship and equality, with the exception of Jordan. The world, through the United Nations which established a special refugee agency just for the Palestinians, have paid ever since for their welfare.

It is estimated that some 800,000 Jews were expelled at the same time from the Arab countries they had lived in for millennia. Their worldly goods were confiscated, there was never any compensation, nor was any offered since 1948. Their long history in Arab lands was simply an inconvenience; the affront of the creation of Israel resulted in their expulsion.

No international outcry was heard at that event, nor did the world offer assistance to the refugee Jews. But the endless plight of refugee Arabs whom other states refused to absorb, while Israel absorbed the refugee Jews remains highly visible and an ongoing incendiary issue. The Palestinians urge a return to Israel, but it would not be Israel, it would be Palestine; a Jewish state no longer.

Because of a heritage tradition within Islam of land consecrated to Islam never permitted to be absorbed into another religion or heritage, just as within Islam secession from Islam is considered a capital offence, it is not the 1948 or 1969 borders that are contested for a new Palestinian State; it is the entirety of the geography dedicated to the State of Israel that is to be re-claimed; in Arabic, not English.

While Middle East countries are grappling with inner unrest fomented by civil protests against authoritarian governments, Israel waited warily for the inevitable. And Syria's administration has sought a diversion from its brutal crackdown on regime protests by urging Palestinians to cross their border into Israel. Another FaceBook revolution taking place, ushering in the Third Intifada with young Palestinians planning a concerted mass entry into Israel.

From Lebanon, from Jordan and from Syria and Gaza, they came, declaring their intention to return to the land their grandparents occupied. A clear diversion for the heads of government, and an obvious disavowal of recognition of a Jewish State in the midst of Arab Muslim states.

Captivity and Forgiveness

When the news media were full of the kidnapping details in 2005 in Iraq of four men representing a Christian peace group, it seemed a lunatic enterprise on the part of those held hostage to enter the country for the purpose of attempting to turn Iraqis toward peace and away from violence. The Iraqis themselves were fully invested in their tribal and sectarian hatred toward one another. Their focus was on the capture, torture and murder of Shia or Sunni by Sunni or Shia.

But the Christian Peacemaker Team sent a delegation of four committed members to preach sweetness and light, courtesy fundamentalist Christians who believe in forgiveness and redemption to fundamentalist Muslims who practise violent jihad and martyrdom. One of the abductees who had been held for 118 days as hostages before a joint commando raid freed them, has written a memoir of the experience.

Long before James Loney wrote his memoir he had issued a public expression of forgiveness toward his captors. Recalling his statements at that time he seemed like a delusional and fearfully stupid man, determined to support his faith by declarations of unflagging hope in the decency and goodness of humankind. Failing to make a distinction between social environments and hereditary antipathies.

"I know I'm speaking out of school here, but I'm going to say it anyway. You have no idea how many people were involved, how many people risked their lives to get you out. I want you to tell your people that. Just tell them to think about that before they decide to send someone else here. I'm not saying anything else. Just tell them. Tell them to think about all the people that risked their lives to get you out."

This was spoken to James Loney in an icily chiding lecture by one of the soldiers who had been tasked to rescue him and the three other abductees. It was a joint British-U.S. task force, whose formation had the purpose of hunting for al-Qaeda operatives and rescuing foreign hostages. Everything comes at a price. The men who rescued Loney and the two others risked their lives.

The fourth man was beyond rescue. An American, Tom Fox, had earlier been removed from the squalid site where he had been kept along with James Loney, Norman Kember and Harmeet Singh. He was murdered, his body found on a street in Baghdad. And the following is what illuminates the peculiar mind-set of a man like James Loney.

Determined to forgive, he will not permit himself to feel any kind of rancour or blame against his abductors. He lived for all the time he was in captivity in the fear of their discovering that he is gay knowing that they would make an attempt to cure his homosexuality; the cure for which in many Muslim societies is death.

Like the jihadis that captured him and his three colleagues determined to turn the face of peace toward their captors, he believes in self-discipline and self-sacrifice; where they believe in the sacrifice of martyrdom with its great reward of attentive virgins in Paradise, he believes in the martyrdom of self to a greater ideal of Godly virtue.

Neither he nor the two others who were rescued from their miserable captivity and possible even future torture and death, would agree to testify against their captors in the prosecution of the death of the American Tom Fox, by trial in Iraq by its Central Criminal Court. "They took Tom away from us, but they did not take away our ability to forgive.

"We did not lose ourselves. We were not infected with the poison of hate. They may have changed our lives, but they did not change us." This is how James Loney celebrates his victory over the events that occurred to him as a tormented prisoner of the Swords of Righteousness Brigade who held them for ransom.

In pledging forgiveness and refusing to testify against their captors they effectively denied justice to the man whom their captors murdered. This kind of moralistic hubris does not reflect a humble mind but a sadly delusional one. Obtusely, deliberately delusional.

The Civility of Islam, Religion of Peace

It is a religion based on a collection of writing. Held to be sacred. As the direct word of God, given to a human interlocutor.

Perhaps some of the utterances and proclamations of that virtuous and perfect spirit were misinterpreted when they were transcribed. Perhaps it was the inclination of a man steeped in the Bedouin way of life where tribal animosities and constant warfare and assassinations being the order of the culture and the heritage of the desert, to tinge the words of ineffable wisdom with the stirring battle cries of a warring people.

The out
cry to defend Islam from humiliation and insult and the spurning of its primacy as the pinnacle of religious righteousness and paramount positioning in a world where other communities of peoples have their own spiritual head-of-mission reigning in the wide blue heavens, remains of primary and paramount importance. Jihad is urged on the faithful, and martyrdom to the cause represents the highest order of human endeavour in the honouring of Islam.

It is a militant creed within a religion based on utter and total surrender of the inner and outer self. The sacred writings betray an unequivocal belligerence toward those who would oppose the first-place status of Islam. As for those who would be foolish enough to question the rights, priorities and values held within Islam, and the pedigree and purpose of its founder, the Prophet, woe betide them for they are destined to perish.

The final words they will hear in their fearful ears informing them they are doomed to death is Allahu Akbar! This frequent and deadly attention is purveyed not only toward infidels but also toward Muslims considered to be insufficiently dedicated to their religion's fundamentalist principles. It can be said of a certainty that the countries of the Middle East where Islam surfaced in the wake of Judaism and Christianity, remain broadly dysfunctional.

As the religion is one of a tyrannical spiritual ruler, so too are the theocratic and titular and totalitarian heads of state and governance of Muslim countries. As long as these remained somewhat closed societies with scant interaction with other, non-Muslim countries of the world on a population-to-population basis, the Muslim ummah seemed content to eke out their lives as their rulers saw fit for them.

With the advent of instant technological communication things appear to have gone awry; the people have become alert to the fact that other countries, particularly those of the West, given to democratic governance, do not subjugate their people. There is law and order and there is respect for peoples' rights and there are values that are fundamental to decent human behaviour and there are opportunities to be had elsewhere.

Why not where they live? So young, unemployed and educated Egyptians protested. As did Tunisians. Bahrainians. Yemenites. Syrians, Libyans, Iranians. In Egypt there is a transition government toward civil rule, and Egyptian Muslims mount attacks against Egyptian Copts. In Iran, the people no longer dare protest and remain simmeringly quiescent. In Yemen military forces fire at protesters.

In Libya, the dictator sends out his military forces to bomb and strafe residents of cities that have been taken by rebels, some of whom are Islamists, looking to profit through their fanatical al-Qaeda connections. In Pakistan, as in Afghanistan, Islamist fundamentalists calling themselves the scholars, are Talib who make a common pact with other Islamists and slaughter those Muslims who are insufficiently pious.

Afghan police and the Afghan national military practise sexual abuse and exploitation of young boys, because this is an age-old accepted practise, little spoken of but endemic in society, somewhat like the overwhelming incidence of base corruption and rapacious tribal war-lordism.
While in Syria its president is intent on putting down a popular insurrection much as his father before him did.

The uprising having begun with fifteen young Syrian boys writing graffiti on their school walls demanding the end of police rule - causing their arrest and incarceration, the first in a long line of some eight thousand arrested protesters some of whom have undergone torture and rape. And in Syria as well the military has been charged to fire with live ammunition upon the people.

Who is prepared to stand forward and make sense of this conundrum of a professed religion of peace inspiring so much 'misunderstanding' of what peace represents?

Sadistic Cynicism

Britain has formally withdrawn the wedding invitation extended to the Embassy of Syria, in London. And the Syrian Ambassador, surprised and somewhat crestfallen at the dis-invitation, does not in fact think it advisable that he attend. Will they courteously usher him out of Westminster Abbey should he defy them, waving his invitation as proof that he was invited - or put him in the stocks on public display for further humiliation?

Not that there is any really good reason to feel compassion for the man. He does, after all, represent the government and the leader of his country while abroad. And the government and President Bashar al-Assad deserve little respect from the international community, much less Britain and the Royal Family. Both of which, truth be told, saw nothing amiss in sending out the original invitation until the embarrassment of public criticism had them take a second look.

After all, if Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and Sara Ferguson are persona non grata, it does look rather peculiar if Syria's representative appears as an honoured guest. But that's Britain, after all, the country that personifies eccentricity and the class-culture structure, and entitlements. If we think that Britain's sordid and dilatory attention to class-corrective actions and cultural niceties leave something to be desired, look to the United Nations.

Ah, the United Nations, where there are no class distinctions and where all countries are considered to be equally endowed and equally entitled. Belying reality, but making for political correctness, which is the standard-bearer of conduct within that august body. The UN's Human Rights Council presents as one of those creatures of the UN that stands above and apart; perhaps that should be descends below standards.

Canada, among another 36 co-sponsors requesting the scheduling of an emergency session on exploring what can be done about Syria's brutal crackdown on its own citizens clamouring for freedom from classic repression, would like some accountability. It was largely responsible for introducing into the UN the "responsibility to protect" doctrine, which the UN is now grappling with, pleading with Bashar al-Assad to stop killing Syrian protesters.

But the Human Rights Council, having received from Syria a key membership prerequisite in the form of a written pledge to respect the human rights of its own population, and to promote human rights internationally - a standard document required of all potential members elected to the HRC - is prepared to proceed to induct Syria into its 47-member council for a 3-year term.

Like Britain's invitation, away back in January the UN Asian group submitted the names of Syria and three other countries to fill four vacant "Asian" seats. With that submission, the admission of the four are rubber-stamped for acceptance, requiring only a simple majority of the 192-member UN General Assembly in a month's time. The international community, let alone the Arab League, is making no fuss about the Syrian situation, unlike the attention given to Libya.

Neither Russia nor China are prepared to issue a condemnation of the Syrian government, unlike Europe and the U.S. and Canada. Russian Deputy Ambassador Alexander Pankin claims that the situation in Syria "does not present a threat to international peace and security", therefore it is clearly not needful that the Security Council get involved in anything distastefully interfering like sanctions against Syria.

Syria, a clear threat in the Middle East and beyond, with its support for and links to terrorist Islamists militias, Hezbollah and Hamas; with its active encouragement and support of Islamist jihadists entering Iraq to confront and attack both Iraqis and U.S. and British troops there; with its closely supportive friendship with Iran; with its own attempts to build nuclear installations; with its Lebanese occupation; with its involvement in political assassinations; with its violation of its citizens' human rights, was still seen as deserving of an invitation to the royal wedding.

And it stands now, as of May 20, to join the UN's Human Rights Council. This blatant parody of concern for human rights represents the ultimate in paradoxically sadistic cynicism.

Middle East Human Rights

Syrians are furious that their calls for human rights within their own country are being defied by their dictatorial government. More furious yet that government troops are opening fire on protesters. Funeral processions to mourn the death of civilians, of a child, fired upon with live bullets. More deaths, more funerals, more attacks.

President Bashar al-Assad is being informed by the international community that his handling of the situation defies human rights, that he is trampling on the aspirations of his people, that he is violating their rights. He has gone to great lengths to impress upon onlookers that what is occurring is the result of a foreign conspiracy, that it is 'gangs' and 'criminals' and jihadists who are defying his order.

Moammar Gadhafi has infuriated the West and his own Arab neighbours by dispatching his military to destroy the demonstrators and protesters who have assembled themselves into a righteous army determined to unseat him. They also represent 'gangs', 'criminals' and al-Qaeda in origin. And foreign interlopers; the Western crusaders are in league with them.

But for President al-Assad no such labelling as a human-rights violator, no threats of being hauled before the International Criminal Court, no concerted effort to assist the Syrians who scream their defiance of their dictator, shrieking that he should be turning his armed forces against the Golan-Heights-holding Zionists, not Syrians.

Syria, protector and patron of Hamas, whose leader lives in safety in Damascus, and the generously-supporting patron of Hezbollah, both of which terrorist groups are labelled as such by the West, appears to present as the known devil and conceivably tolerable. From the Arab League no condemnations, no intervention, no discussions similar to those taking place with Yemen.

Arab human rights groups, however, have an argument with the Arab League for their support of Syria's candidacy for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, set for a May vote. Egyptian, Bahraini, Algerian, Saudi, Yemeni, Syrian, Sudanese and Iraqi NGO groups claim the support of the Arab League "shows flagrant disregard for the feelings and rights of the Syrian people, who have broken the barrier of fear and risen up in revolt".

And so, what else is new? Libya too was on the UN's Human Rights Council. Iran has been lauded for its record on human rights through the Human Rights Council. Simply put, it's business as usual in the Middle East. And at the United Nations. That business represents utter failure in the areas of human rights and entitlements.

Another Urban Myth...

But one of monumental proportions in its incendiary lighting of a liberation candle that burned its way around the Arab and Muslim world. Long-simmering resentment of the iron grip of dictators on the lives of people under totalitarian rule erupted in a firestorm of unstoppable rebellion. The catalyst for the momentum fairly basic; not necessarily the freedom that was later espoused, but the lack of employment for the young and inexorably rising basic food prices.

Even where food staples were subsidized, it was not enough to keep gnawing hunger at bay. As energy and transportation costs rose, so too did food costs. And restless young people with no gainful employment have a propensity to seek out meaning in their lives. In the absence of responsibilities because they cannot afford housing, a wife, a family, they turn their attention to brainstorming a rebellion.

Once exceedingly difficult to accomplish under the watchful eye of a police state, made so much more accessible with the instant-transmission miracle of the Internet, cellphones and social networking sites, along with readily available news coverage become commonplace. Conspiracies to unsettle the status quo could be accomplished, alerting accomplices to a workable strategy to confront the oppressors.

And so began the domino effect of a peoples' awakening to their human rights. First in Tunisia, then Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, (Iran), Algeria and Saudi Arabia. Some successful in seeming to dislodge the canker that made life so miserable for the masses, others creating an actual or a prospective civil war with the loss of lives expendable to their elite governors.

But did it all begin when an officious policewoman insulted the dignity of a young street vendor? Popular modern romantic legend would have it so. And, after all, Fadia Hamdi, the policewoman, was ordered jailed by President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali before he was forced to exit the scene. However, a court heard her plea: "I'm innocent. I did not slap him", and discharged her.

And Mohamed Bouazizi's mother, Manoubia, explained her position before the court: "I leave things in God's hands. For me, it is enough that Mohamed's martyrdom has resulted in freedom and the fall of tyrants." Causing hundreds gathered outside the court to cheer as charges were dropped, shouting "Freedom, Freedom!".

However the protesting maelstrom is not yet fully concluded. The detested dictators that were opposed and deposed are gone, true. But this is the world of modern, political Islamism where the fanatics are in the ascendancy. And people may just discover that the kind of theocratic political tyranny that Iran is burdened with will become their own.

Suing for Statehood, Suing for Peace

The Palestinian Authority has pronounced itself ready for statehood. The United Nations has congratulated the Palestinian Authority for its work in resulting in producing nascent government departments, the administrative instruments of government required for the functioning of an independent state. Infrastructure development has been produced that will assist a new Palestinian State to govern well.

And there are 100 UN member-states prepared to support the PA's unilateral push for sovereign statehood.

Of these 100 state governments allied with the United Nations in the General Assembly and the United Nations administration itself, where are the questions looking for answers related to the PA's intentions toward its neighbour? Not much in the way of good will when the Palestinian Authority abrogates the necessary first step to living adjacent an established neighbour before seeking statehood.

That first step being a commitment to living in peace with Israel, the neighbour that the Palestinians have been attempting to dislodge from the geography since 1948.

Israel remains adamant that first things must be settled first, a not-unreasonable assumption that this would be in the best interests of both solitudes and by extension the entire Middle East. Agree on a peace settlement and in the process clean up the outstanding issues that have been a prickly matter of contention between both Israel and the Palestinians.

But to do so would be to clearly acknowledge that the Jewish State has a right to exist as a Jewish State. And that by extension the Palestinians agree to accept their portion of the geography, inside borders agreeable and practically useful to each.

The international community sees a Palestinian Authority claiming it has matured politically and socially and is prepared to take its place as a nation within a community of nations.

This is also the administration that continues to honour suicide bombers as 'martyrs'. In the process recruiting others to emulate the passionate and violent rejection of Israel's survival as a state. As a good neighbour the PA has chosen to use Passover as a jumping board to honour the PA terrorist responsible for the 2002 "Passover Massacre" in which 30 Israelis died.

The family of Abbas Al-Sayed who masterminded the deadly attack was officially awarded a "festive plaque, in celebration of the anniversary of the massacre". The bomber, Abdel-Basset Odeh detonated a bomb contained in a suitcase, killing outright 30 elderly civilians celebrating Passover, and maiming dozens more at the Park Hotel in Netanya.

Of more recent vintage was the attack on the Fogel family of five, one an infant, by two young men arrested later by Israeli Security. Amjad Awad, 19, and Hakim Awad, 18, both residents of the Arab village of Awarta, next to the Jewish community of Itamar, where the slaughter took place, were raised in families that had dedicated themselves to martyrdom.

They were proud of what they had accomplished, telling their interlocutors that had they known that two other children of the Fogel family were asleep in their rooms they would have killed them as well. They will be tried of the crimes of which they are accused in an Israeli court of law.

But not if Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has anything to say about it. For the Palestinian Authority and its Chairman now call upon Israel to release Palestinian prisoners as yet another condition of sitting down to discuss peace options. That these Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails are terrorists and murderers is not lost on the PA who consider them honourable martyrs.

This then, is the partner for peace that Israel is matched against. And to whom the international community and the United Nations is prepared to grant statehood on the basis of their having achieved the basic determinants for responsible governance. Absent the intention to live in peace with their neighbour.

Absent the determination to instruct their people otherwise than to continue to conduct violent raids against their neighbour. Reflecting, in fact, the issue seen but not recognized when Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, speaking at the United Nations, that Israel should be wiped from the map of the Middle East.

This is the responsible governing entity prepared to enter statehood, one that insists upon the release of all Palestinians in Israeli jails, encouraging its public to hold protests across the West Bank for the release of prisoners in Israeli jails. They speak not of Israel, but of the "1948 territories".

The PA's "Minister of Prisoner Affairs, Issa Qarage who has praised terrorists in his official capacity, was out encouraging people to mount their protests, stating "Struggle is the story of the Palestinian people". "Struggle" being code for conducting violent attacks against the "oppressor"; Israel.

In the PA's school system an hour was dedicated to the indoctrination of students that all Palestinian Authority prisoners, regardless of their crimes, irrespective of the lawful judgements brought against them, must be released. In the West Bank mosques and churches added their encouragement calling for the release of prisoners in speeches, and clanging bells in solidarity.

This is Israel's partner for peace; not eschewing violence and entreating its citizens to do likewise, but celebrating violence; encouraging and honouring it. And this is the Palestinian Authority that will present itself as the new administration of a new country to be respected for its ability to govern itself well and be a credit to the United Nations in its human rights record.

Palestinian Authority, Partner for Peace

PA Demands Release of Terrorist Killers
by Maayana Miskin

The Palestinian Authority called Sunday for the release of all PA Arab prisoners held by Israel, including terrorists and other murderers. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced that he will not make peace with Israel until all prisoners are released.

Abbas' demand came as Israeli forces announced that they had captured two PA Arab men responsible for the murder of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar. He is asking for the release of the men, along with many others convicted of similar crimes.

The face of the PA campaign for prisoner release, Nael Barghouti, is also a murderer. Barghouti has served 33 years of a life sentence for a murder committed in the course of a terrorist attack. He has spent the longest term in prison of any PA Arab, and is referred to as “dean of the Palestinian prisoners” or by the honorific “Abu An-Nur” (lit. “Father of the light”).

PA officials referred to Nael Barghouti as a “political prisoner” during Sunday's events calling for prisoner release.

Events to promote the release of all PA Arabs in Israeli jails were held throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza. In Jenin, prisoners' families protested outside the local Red Cross building. Mayor Kadoura Moussa expressed hope that “This year will be the year in which all prisoners from the West Bank, Gaza, Al-Quds [Jerusalem], and the 1948 territories [Israel], in all Israeli prison, will be released.”

In Shechem, a rally on behalf of terrorist prisoners was attended by Issa Qaraqe, the PA's “Minister of Prisoners' Affairs.” Qaraqe has frequently praised terrorists in the course of his work for the PA. On Sunday, he said, “Struggle is the story of the Palestinian people.”

Schools under PA rule dedicated one hour on Sunday to teaching students that all PA Arab prisoners should be released from jail. Mosques and churches joined the cause as well, calling to free prisoners in speeches and ringing the bells in a display of solidarity.

In Gaza, Hamas called to secure the release of PA terrorists by kidnapping Israeli soldiers.

As published online at ArutzSheva, 18 April 2011

Palestinian State Solution

Now, that is a dilemma. One that has been used as a threat, and now finally as an entitlement whose time has come. Or so its supporters claim.

The United Nations report Palestinian State-building: A Decisive Period is both congratulatory to the Palestinian Authority and to the United Nations itself which has helped guide the PA through a process of infrastructure-building. There has been another notable area of assistance which has helped guide the PA in the West Bank to realize prosperity and that is Israel.

On the theory that a budding and healthy economy with employment for a population eager to have a state of their own would leave them less inclined to restiveness at their unsolved condition as 'refugees' on their own land, and less willing to express violent tendencies toward a neighbour whom they see as an 'occupier', it has always been in everyone's best interests to guide the Palestinians toward nationhood.

When an agreement was made between the State of Israel and Fatah led by Yasser Arafat, with the creation of the Palestinian Authority and co-operation between Israel and the PA initiated, Arafat chose instead to declare an Intifada. The PA has since seen fit to incur a few other such sanctioned violent clashes with Israel, abrogating the mentor-client relationship, and expressing themselves through victimhood and hate-filled violence instead.

Having turned away from one opportunity after another to wrest a peace agreement out of hostile resentment and ongoing violence, the PA finally decided on two significant changes; an overt dismissal of violence even while covertly encouraging it among the population, and a refusal to continue peace talks with Israel. The international community has witnessed the PA speaking of peace, and Israel has heard the PA speaking martyrdom to its people.

Now, however, with a healthy economy and the infrastructure for a functioning state government at hand due to some needed internal discipline and a lot of help from the international community and its neighbour, the PA declares itself prepared for statehood. One it plans to achieve with the agreement of the General Assembly of the United Nations - 100 nations have already signed on - and without bothering to work out a peace agreement with Israel.

The Palestinians refuse to budge on their outright demands for 'right of return', division of Jerusalem and state borders, even though they are aware that it is entirely practicable and feasible to debate the borders, accept the return of Palestinians within a new Palestinian state and not Israel, and discuss side-by-side seats-of-government in Jerusalem; not necessarily that portion they envisage.

There would be no guarantees that any body, international or within the Middle East, could proffer to Israel that might guarantee its safety and security with the unilateral creation of a Palestinian State. The issue of a half-million Israelis living within the 'new borders' of a Palestinian state requiring the protection of the IDF from violent assaults by Palestinians would create a dilemma of huge proportions.

The two states existing side by side would create for Israel an even greater existential threat than currently presents if, having achieved statehood, the West Bank Authority continued to exhort its people to martyrdom, while the Gaza-Hamas faction stepped up its attacks against Israel. The resulting scenario would resemble a scene straight out of hell.

Unless that is precisely what the international community along with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and onlooking Arab states have in mind, to begin with.

J'Accuse!

Hamas Blames Israel for ISM Activist's Murder in Gaza
by Gavriel Queenann

Islamic organizations and terror groups in Gaza rushed to distance themselves from the murder-kidnapping of Italian ISM activist Vottorio Arrigoni.

Islamic terrorist organizations in Gaza decried the murder of Italian ISM activist Vittoria Arrigoni, who was kidnapped on Thursday. Arrigoni was found dead early Friday morning in the Strip.

Among those groups denouncing the murder was none other than Tawhid wal-Jihad, the al-Qaida-linked group who initially claimed responsibility for Arrigoni's kidnapping. Tawhid wal-Jihad said they were holding an Italian national and said they would only release him if their leader, held in Hamas custody, was released.

Hamas security personnel found Arrigoni's body in an abandoned house in Gaza following his abduction by 'militants,' a Hamas official said on Friday.

Two men were arrested and others were being sought in relation to Arrigoni's murder, the official added

Hamas condemned the murder and characterized it as "a shameful act, contrary to the tradition of the Palestinian people."

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said, "the goal of this depraved band of outlaws is to spread chaos and anarchy in the Gaza Strip, a desperate attempt to strike at the stable security situation."

Barhoum claimed the kidnapping and murder of Arrigoni was intended to scuttle the next Gaza flotilla, expected to depart next month. Barhoum explained that he believed the murder was meant to dissuade other foreign activists from arriving in the Strip.

In that vein, the Hamas spokesman accused Israel of perpetrating the murder noting Arrigoni had been a vocal opponent of Israel's policies in Gaza, and frequently blogged about 'Israeli crimes against Palestinians' equating Israeli policies to 'Nazi' crimes. Arrigoni had also been arrested twice by Israeli authorities, Barhoum alleged.

Accusing Israel of acts perpetrated by the terrorist groups themselves is a time-honored tradition among Arab terror leaders in Israel.

Tawhid wal-Jihad, a Jihadist Salafi group in Gaza, had threatened on Thursday to execute Arrigoni by 5 p.m. local time (2 p.m. GMT) unless their demands were met.

As published online at ArutzSheva, 15 April 2011

Not Our Fault, But Theirs!

He is described as a peace activist. One can only wonder what kind of mind it is that accommodates itself to living as a 'peace activist' concerned with the human rights of Palestinians living in Gaza, who finds that it accords with his vision of 'peace' to live under a Hamas-controlled society. Someone who identifies with the mission of Hamas, a jihadist group that clearly states its major concern is to destroy the State of Israel, while considering Israel, concerned with defending itself and its people from mayhem and slaughter, to be genocidal in intention.

A young Italian man who was obviously an idealist. He apparently eschewed the opportunities available to him to campaign against endemic corruption in Italy, against the customary sexual predations on women in Italy, against the violence of organized crime in Italy, against the poverty-stricken condition of many Italians, and opted instead for the more exotic allure of joining the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli movement intent on breaking an internationally lawful sea blockade.

So inspired by his mission to travel on one of the "Free Gaza" flotillas he decided to remain in Gaza, and from that vantage point write about the intolerable conditions defying human rights imposed upon Palestinians in Gaza - not by the rigorously theocratic Hamas, but by the IDF, charged by their nation to protect and defend the Israeli population from ongoing rocket attacks, and attempted suicide attacks that continually breached Israeli security and civilian lives.

He was abducted as a potential person of value to be exchanged for rival Islamist gang members whom Hamas has imprisoned. The same rabid-Islamist-Wahhabist inspiration that inspired bin Laden and al-Qaeda, a Salafist faction of Sunni Islam. A-Tawheed wal Jihad used him as a bargaining chip to free some of their own from incarceration. They may have used the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas as a template for their own escapade, kidnapping Vittorio Arrigoni.

Whom, when threats to kill him did not convince Hamas to free the Salafist prisoners they hold - quite unlike the actions of the State of Israel in permitting hundreds of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for a single Israeli held by Palestinians - tortured and killed the Italian man who had dedicated his life to the Palestinian cause. One supposes that Hamas did not feel sufficiently co-dedicated to the cause of Mr. Arrigoni's continued lifespan.

Palestinians are now in the throes of bewailing the man's unfortunate death. Another instance of Muslim Arabs dispatching their own, as it were. Here was a foreigner sacrificing his time, energies, passion and future to the cause of the Palestinians. And he is used as a chess piece, a disposable, dispensable object whose life can be bargained away with a check-mate. And then, the grieving Palestinians look about for answers to another of their little bloody tragedies.

A former member of Yasser Arafat's inner circle, now a fervent member of Hamas, bemoans the fact that it is more than obvious to him that the Salafist Muslim group has been infiltrated; no other way to explain how and why they would murder someone dedicated to the cause of the Palestinians. He could see, he said, furiously, Netanyahu's hand in all of this. It was an Israeli plot to avenge themselves on Mr. Arrigoni and upon Hamas.

That would be the same Hamas that pondered the choice of saving Mr. Arrigoni's life in exchange for Salafist prisoners they held, and their discretionary choice condemned Mr. Arrigono who had doubly dedicated his life in vain, to an untimely, and most unfortunate death. Which, of course, Hamas is not responsible for. But Israel, most decidedly is.

"Israel has every right to laugh and sing, even while it massacres its neighbour. Palestinians are only asking to die a different death, one of old age." Vittorio Arrigoni

There's a Stretch

Smirking George Galloway is at it again. Things have been too quiet for him. He's ready again to raise a stink. Easily enough done in his presence; a baleful odour of malice emanates from his persona; it has the stink of righteousness in the mind of an anti-Semite. A natural enough alliance with groups who claim Jews represent the oppressors of the world, and Palestinians the perennial victims.

He admires and seeks to promote the vision of Hamas, a terror group outlawed in many Western countries, including Canada. While a sitting member of Britain's Parliament representing the Labour party, he took it upon himself to travel to Gaza and personally meet with the Hamas leadership. He defends Hamas as a responsible political group waging a war against the 'terrorists of Israel'.

Handing over cash and vehicles and other representative items of his great esteem for their purpose and their work, George Galloway proudly presents as a supporter of Hamas, an adversary of genocidal Israel whose military slaughtered untold numbers of innocent civilians to hear him tell it, during Israel's incursion into Gaza to halt rocket attacks against its population.

And now George has identified another adversary. The Government of Canada, and its Immigration Minister under the Conservative-led government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Jason Kenney, invoking his authority as a Minister of the Crown responsible for issuing visas, denied one to Galloway on the basis of his support of a terror group.

A decision which was later overturned by a Canadian federal court which insisted that it was too much of a stretch to label him a Hamas supporter merely because he delivered an 'aid convoy' and money to Gaza in care of Hamas. That the ban on permitting him entry to Canada to speak at an anti-Israel rally was unwarranted.

And thus, George Galloway has launched a lawsuit, suing Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney for defamation. Holding him responsible, through his Toronto lawyer, of being the cause, by alerting British media of Canada's barring of his entry to Canada, of his later loss of his seat through a failed re-election to Parliament.

The Blair government of which he was once a part, tossed him out in 2003 for opposing Britain's role in the Iraq war. And when he ran as a candidate in his riding for the left-wing Respect party in 2010, he was voted a remote third. Which proves that he is singularly unpopular in his riding, not that his refusal of entry to Canada a year earlier motivated voters to deny him his seat.

Obviously, his political antics, his vainglorious search for publicity, his identification with terror groups and his slander of Israel have not endeared him to that particular voting public. Unless we assume too much of the discriminating voters in the riding he sought to represent.

That Palestinian State

The United Nations representatives in the Palestinian Territories are jubilantly self-congratulating. Their mission to assist the Palestinian Authority to finally establish civil authority and infrastructure as a precursor to establishing a sovereign Palestinian State has succeeded. The newly-issued United Nations report, Palestinian State-building: A Decisive Period, claims with pride that a functioning government is finally possible.

The Palestinian Authority can now boast, thanks to the invaluable assistance of the United Nations and funding by the international community, that it is governmentally functional in the areas of rule of law and human rights; livelihoods; education and culture; health; social protection; and infrastructure and water. Which is a considerable advance from the inchoate state it represented under Yasser Arafat.

Who preferred to launch the first destructive Intifada rather than continue on the imperfect road to establishing a decent civil infrastructure for his nascent country. He was unable to see past his violent militant wing's intention to entirely dislodge Israel from the map of the Middle East, and retake all of what Palestinians claim to be their rightful inheritance.

A declaration through the United Nations General Assembly, supported by over 100 countries prepared to recognize a unilateral declaration of statement for the Palestinians on pre-1967-war land, would most certainly present as a problem for neighbouring Israel. Without the establishment of a firm peace agreement that would settle the problems of Jerusalem and West Bank settlements such a declaration would be fraught with tension and danger and the prospect of another war.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is prepared to proceed with a unilateral declaration of statehood approved by the United Nations. He has issued a call for the international community to fund the transition to statehood over a period of years to the tune of a total of $5-billion in investment support. Which will assist the process immeasurably. And the initiative will proceed.

This, despite that the Palestinian Authority agreed a few years back that final status would best be achieved through negotiations with Israel beforehand. Now Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, having two years ago cut off peace talks, has turned instead to gaining of international support for a PA state. Leaving Israel with the massive headache of considering the half-million Jews now living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

While The UN's Middle East envoy, Robert Serry, states that ideally it is vital yet that Israelis and Palestinians resume serious peace talks with an aim to settle all disputes, and while Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is prepared to pledge Israel to those talks, the PA's Mahmoud Abbas remains talk-shy, preferring to opt for unilateralism.

Leaving Israel in a truly untenable position.

Tinder Box

From Tunisia to Bahrain, Libya to Syria, Egypt to Yemen, the ferment and turmoil in the Middle East is either heartening or frightening, depending on one's perspective. All the problems that Algeria, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Iran are facing with their exploited populations finally raising their voices to demand their due as entitled citizens has certainly caused the world to sit up and take notice.

And, in the singular case of Libya, the West has once again come to the aid of an embattled Muslim population, to save it this time from their own. Of course, the Arab world is in there too, engaged along with NATO; Dubai and United Arab Emirates have flown a few sorties in the 'no-fly' UN-mandated interruption in Moammar Gadhafi's volatile and deadly response to his regime's opponents.

Syria is pounding the hell, if not the life, out of those of its population, like the citizen-denied Kurds who have the effrontery to defy the Baathist al-Assad dynasty. Just as Col. Gadhafi confides to the world at large that it is al-Qaeda that is responsible for the drug-addled young men who have attacked his cities, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad informs the world that the incitement to riot in his country emanates from the State of Israel.

Egyptians are newly surprised that the country's military which calmly and sternly took over from the protesters in Tahrir Square are not hastening the country into democracy. President Hosni Mubarak may be absent from the seat of power, but the power behind his throne is not. A blogger who dared to "insult the military" is now imprisoned, while human rights advocates claim countless people have been arrested and tried before military courts since the uprising.

Those who celebrated their triumph as successful protesters in Tahrir Square are now among many held in detention and subjected to torture, with virginity tests for female activists. The once-hated police who maintained order in the streets and neighbourhoods of Cairo are nowhere to be seen, but domestic crime is everywhere, untrammelled and threatening civic chaos.

"The revolution has so far managed to get rid of the dictator, but the dictatorship still exists", wrote the blogger for whom his posting may cost him three years of his life in prison should his secret trial unfold as it will. Perhaps the problem simply is that the military acts as an unguided missile and does not quite know how to react, and where to turn for guidance itself.

And a conflicted Hamas, torn between its political and its military wings, sues for a resumption of a cease-fire with Israel, while continuing to lob off rockets and anti-tank missiles across from Gaza into Israel. Israel, responding as she always does to ensure that the jihadists know of a certainty, that if they attack Israel, Israel attacks back. Hamas fighters, working out of the close confines of crowded Palestinian areas, deliberately invite responses from the IDF.

So that, when Palestinian Gazan civilians are wounded or killed - better yet, if there are children harmed or killed - Hamas can shout to the world at large - "see our oppressors, the killers of women and children - do something!" While firing off dozens of mortar rounds and rockets into southern Israel.

"The IDF regrets that the Hamas terrorist organization chooses to operate from within its civilian population, using it as a 'human shield'", explains a statement from the Israel Defence Forces, issuing its regret that "uninvolved civilians have apparently been injured", but the damage has been done. The only other option is to do what no country will agree to: stand by and allow itself and its population to be attacked.

It has proven to be a highly successful manoeuvre; for armed terror groups to fire off missiles from within crowded human settlements, inviting return fire that will most certainly impact on civilians. It is a ploy that was used by Hezbollah in Lebanon, and will doubtless be used again. And it is one used now by Libyan forces in Misurata and elsewhere in that embattled country, where NATO is now faced with the same kind of dilemmas that Israel is concerned with.

Human shields in military conflict appears to be a favourite choice for Arab terrorists. They can point to the dead civilians whom they claim to be protecting, and lament that the enemy, a state actor, has no respect for human life. In this part of the world where deadly animus against one's enemy, be it tribal, sectarian, ethnic or political, any morally primitive actions are considered fair game.

A Terrorist State

What is the definition of a terrorist state?

Well, for starters how about a fanatic theistic political cabal whose edicts stricture every facet of peoples' lives, instructing them on pain of punishment how they must agree to have their children educated - as recruits for future terrorist operations - how women must garb themselves, how they must agree to allow those who rule them to lob high-powered rockets across the border into a neighbouring state, from the crowded confines of their towns.

Since Hamas in Gaza does all of that, added to the fact that their signal purpose is to destroy the State of Israel, and to that end they spare no suicide bombers or rockets or smuggling of arms and armaments to supplement their already-burgeoning stores of weaponry, they must, ipso facto, be considered a terrorist state.

That same terrorist state, when faced with the result of their constant rocket attacks on Israeli border towns, clamoured for the international community and the United Nations to stop Israel's defensive foray into Gaza to quell the incessant attacks.

And the world responded with alacrity, condemning Israel for conducting a 'disproportionate' response to the killing and wounding and traumatizing of their citizens by returning rocket fire into Gaza from whence it emanated. And since Hamas fighters routinely and deliberately fire from the crowded confines of city streets, from schools and from mosques, when fire is returned, civilians, used as human shields by Hamas, are wounded and they die.

What is the definition of a terrorist? One who inspires terror. Armies are trained to battle. Soldiers know they will face an enemy and that they must comport themselves as the military has trained them to do, for the purpose of protecting their country and the civilian population. They also know that in accord with international law, let alone their own domestic judicial practices and law, it is immoral and unlawful to target civilians.

Hamas institutionally targets civilians. And so it was, yet again, that a rocket was fired into Israel and a school bus was hit by a rocket, its driver and a 16-year-old student critically wounded. This is Hamas's response to Israel's targeting of its militants who seek to destroy the country, and who are caught while they fire off rockets, and while they transport missiles and artillery from Sudan through Egypt into Gaza.

All countries have obligations under UN Security Council resolutions to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition. Which has not stopped Hamas from receiving said illicit arms from Syria and from Iran, which are terrorist countries themselves, sponsoring Hamas and Hezbollah, two creature militias they have spawned, all sharing the aspiration to destroy Israel.

And Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, concerned for Gazan Palestinians, urges the West to intervene "to stop this aggression", referring to the Israel Defence Force's response to Hamas's jihadist attacks against Israel, not the use of an advanced anti-tank weapon in an attack against civilians.

Another Martyr

But this time the cause was somewhat different. A Palestinian Arab whose dedication it was, through the influence of his Israeli-Jewish mother, to teach Palestinian children to reject the societal-taught views of considering Israelis and Jews as enemies to be violently crushed. In honour of his mother who herself dedicated to her life to that very issue, Juliano Mer Khamis continued her work at the theatre co-founded by himself and his mother, Arna Mer.

At that theatre Palestinian children were exposed to theatre arts. They were also exposed to the concept of rejecting murder and terrorism. That if they had a grievance with an authority that they felt violated their rights, that they regard the alternative to violent response: non-violent activism. While Mr. Khamis worked hand-in-glove with his mother, it was as a Palestinian Arab, like his father, with no acknowledgement of his Jewish blood.

In perfect accord with his mother's decision to devote herself to the cause of the Palestinians. Although he was recognized through his professional acting in Israel as an accomplished actor, there could be little doubt that he was a Palestinian Arab through his personal decision-making that saw him accept that mantle and reject the other half of his genetic inheritance. Which did not stop Hamas from loathingly naming him a "Zionist Jew whose hands should be cut off."

For in dedicating himself to encouraging young Palestinians to think of active resistance to an occupying force by rejecting violence, he was deliberately undermining the teaching of Hamas which encourages 'martyrdom' through the odious atrocities of suicide bombings. Mr. Khamis seemed to have little interest in complicating matters by explaining to the young Palestinians he sought to influence that the one-sided view of an 'occupier' nation and a 'victim' population did not reflect reality.

He was a Palestinian of his time and his place, himself tainted by the zeitgeist of Middle East politics, as an Arab who viewed the State of Israel as an affliction upon the victimized Palestinians. The complexities of a state attempting to protect itself and its people against constant physical attacks necessitating that the state use armed methods to meet armed militias seemed of little interest to him.

He accepted the prevailing Palestinian propaganda, that Arabs suffer and Israel oppresses. But the work he was engaged in also highlighted the violence, the aggression, the anger and determination to surmount their inferior state of an occupied people by lashing out and committing mass atrocities that young Palestinians grew up with. Taught that Israelis and Jews are evil, they feared and hated them.

And high-lighted the fact that peace is constantly beyond reach because the Palestinians have learned to cherish their victimhood, preferring it to a peace settlement because viewing themselves as victims allows them to appeal to the outside world to support them against the monstrous state mechanism that grinds them into miserable poverty. An imaginary situation but one supremely satisfying to the angst-ridden Palestinians.

The myth of martyrdom for the cause, the urgent need to 'resist', a camouflage term for mayhem and murder, to avenge themselves against a tormentor that exists only in their delusional minds, mired in tribal antipathies and traditional absorption with their victim status, remains the crown jewel in the Palestinians' heritage game of blame and hatred, slander and violence.

While Hamas detested the man, he was admired and loved within Jenin where the theatre was located. The young Palestinians that he went to such great pains to imbue with a more balanced view of choices open to them, must surely have learned something of value from him. Despite which it would appear that many of the children he taught eventually assumed their destinies as armed fighters and suicide-bombing terrorists.

His arguments not to resort to violence, to think that killing your enemy is the only solution open to intelligent human beings might not have been lost on all the young people he taught, however. His interference with the carefully scripted program of Hamas and the other terror groups who invested in training future generations to take up the cudgel with their foe, was intolerable to the terrorists.

They have no intention of putting a halt to the killing, for this is what motivates and satisfies their aspirations to succeed in destroying their target. And Mr. Khamis simply became one of those targets. A martyr to his own cause.

Turkey's Humanitarian Ships

Turkey, which displayed great reticence at the prospect of NATO entering the situation in overseeing the UN-mandated no-fly option over Libya to protect Libyan civilians from Moammar Gadhafi's forces against the militias of the regime's opposition, is playing its humanitarian card.

The Turkish government felt there was no need, originally, for any kind of intervention in what was turning into a civil war in Libya.

Germany and Turkey felt it would be rash to become involved in a protective venture that France and Britain were anxious to become involved with. Now Germany remains disgruntled that a potentially long and costly intervention has been undertaken by NATO, and Turkey has dispatched a hospital shop to Libya to do its part in the protection of Libyan civilians - and opposition forces.

It sent a transformed car ferry, now a hospital ship, the Ankara, to remove injured Libyans from Misrata into Benghazi, en route eventually to Turkey for extended hospital care. The Ankara and its medical crew received a resounding ovation as it arrived in port. "Allahu Akbar!" cried the Libyans waiting on shore, ecstatically.

Young and old men lay on blankets on the decks of the ship. People with limbs amputated, in wheelchairs, shrapnel-wounded, bandaged heads and limbs and torsos. "I was devastated, I never thought it would be like this" one of the 15 Turkish medics on board the ambulance ship said. "We weren't expecting this number of injured. We were prepared for 100 to 150 but we took more than our capacity out of humanity."

"I want to go back. I want to fight again. I want to kill Gadhafi", said one man, lying disabled on the deck of the Ankara. Turkey aiding another Islamic country, a neighbour in need. Pure compassion; response to a humanitarian crisis. It can then be assumed that Turkey is capable of recognizing Moammar Gadhafi as a tyrant, exploiting his people for far too long.

Although that fact never did quite stop any members of the Arab League from supporting Gadhafi at their many meetings. Nor has it ever been known that Gadhafi was ever confronted by any of the other Arab or Muslim leaders on his disturbing record. And Turkey was not known to have considered Col. Gadhafi previously as unfit to govern.

Nor does Turkey see Hamas as unfit to govern the Gaza Strip and Gazan Palestinians. For that matter the same could be said of Turkey's view of Syria and Iran, both countries run by tyrannies, both exploiting their people, both human-rights abusers. And Turkey is proudly prepared to launch another ship, in fact a flotilla of ships, for yet another humanitarian mission.

The same state-approved Turkish "humanitarian" group, IHH, a known Islamist organization along with a number of left-wing European groups stand prepared to send yet another flotilla to the Gaza Strip in May. Following to the month an earlier flotilla led by the Mavi Marmora which had aboard armed Islamists who had attacked and wounded Israeli marines who boarded the ship as neared their coastline.

And which event caused an international furor of condemnation of Israel when its marines, in seeking to defend themselves, shot dead some of the armed rebels who were attacking them. In the guise of a humanitarian mission to bring supplies and relief to Palestinians living in Gaza, when the obvious object of the mission was to confront and challenge the right of a sovereign country to protect itself from the violent actions of a terrorist group, Hamas.

Mavi Marmara - AP ">	Turks greeting the return of the Mavi Marmara last month.
	Photo by: AP

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon will summon foreign ambassadors to the ministry today to seek their help in stopping this year's flotilla, which is slated to contain at least 15 ships. The sailing date has not yet been finalized, but the ministry expects it to be sometime between May 15, when the Palestinians commemorate the "Nakba" ("catastrophe" ) of Israel's establishment, and May 31, the anniversary of last year's deadly interception.

Turkey is on a humanitarian roll.

American Intelligence; Unparallelled

"For decades, U.S. intelligence agencies have routinely shared critical information with the covert operations organizations of such allied countries as the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany and other NATO powers. However, these “old-line” powers do not possess the deep resources of human intelligence (“humintel”) required for understanding the new Middle East, U.S. State Department analyst Lazlo Toth told Fox News Reporters yesterday. “What is more, many of those countries have agendas that are in fact at odds with the development of new, fragile democratic movements in the Middle East. The old European powers, the Israelis, none of them have a vital agenda in the emergence of popular-driven government. In fact, some of them are actively opposed to it. So we realized that we needed to find new friends in the region. And now we have found them.”

Toth explained that U.S. intelligence agencies have for the past 12 months been working with new security partners: the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. “This once-controversial group, which long ago renounced the use of force, has an incredibly far-ranging web of connections,” Toth said. “Their assets extend through every Middle Eastern country, a number of nations in Asia, and even extend to a network of campus student organizations in the U.S. They have so much to offer us, now that we have won their trust,” Toth said. “It took time for us to convince some of the 'Old Guard' inside our intel agencies that we have no long-term quarrel with the Brothers,” Toth told Fox reporters. “But this administration has been unrelenting about this, making a number of transfers and forced retirements in order to clear away irrational opposition to our new approach.”

The Muslim Brotherhood shares America's concern with human rights, democratic governance, and the need for values-based political activism, Toth said. “We just needed to strongly motivate some of our senior staff in order to make them see it.” Posted by Roland Shirk on April 1, 2011 4:01 PM |on the Jihad Watch web site http://www.jihadwatch.org

And then there is another reality, one that appears to have bypassed U.S. Intelligence, but one that is shared by many writers who are knowledgeable about the Muslim Brotherhood, their very long history in Egypt, their agenda, and their spread throughout the world. Take, for example, the Canadian Muslim scholar Tarek Fatah and what he has to say about the Muslim Brotherhood in his book Chasing a Mirage, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State:

From India to Indonesia and Morocco to Malaysia, the Muslim Brotherhood ideology of jihad and Islamic supremacy is being challenged by fellow Muslims. However, in Canada, the United States, and the West it seems the Muslim Brotherhood and its Pakistani wing, the Jamaat-e-Islami of Abul Ala Maudoodi, dominate the Muslim narrative. The few voices that do stand up to the open exhibition of jihadi ideology in Canada and the United States face serious obstacles. For example, two Muslim experts who were hired by the US TV network PBS to advise it on a series on Islam ensured that Canadian filmmaker Martyn Burke's documentary Islam vs. Islamists was excluded. It was later widely reported that the two knew the very Islamist groups that were the subject of the documentary investigation. It took months of lobbying by the producer, including a viewing for members of the US Congress, to compel PBS to lift what amounted to a covert ban.

But it appears that although Muslims themselves who are aware of the Brotherhood agenda, through familiarity with their insiders are not taken seriously by those in the U.S. who claim they know better. After all, the Muslim Brotherhood have taken great pains to cultivate the impression that they share "America's concern for human rights, democratic governance and the need for values-based political activism". It's just that inconvenient little fact that's being overlooked that it is their particular view of values and the political activism that they support; quite unlike, in fact, that of the Americans.

The contacts within the Muslim Brotherhood of which U.S. State Department Toth is so proud of having disarmed and cultivated represent a cleverly integrated suspicion-disabling group whose agenda is clear to some, though not to those whom Toth represents: "Today's movement for an Islamic theocracy is structured around the creation of an Islamic State based on the works of Abul Ala Maudoodi and Hassan al-Banna of the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood." (Tarek Fatah)

There is also the opinion of an authoritative scholar on Middle Eastern affairs, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics who wrote in an article titled "The Left and the Jihad", speaking of political accommodation between Islamism and leftist groups:

"The latter show every indication of appearing to see some combination of al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas and (not least) Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as exemplifying a new form of international anti-imperialism that matches - even completes - their own historic project. This putative combined movement may be in the eyes of such leftist groups and intellectual trends hampered by "false consciousness", but this does not compromise the impulse to "objectively" support or at least indulge them.

And, it would appear, under the new accommodating spirit of the American administration led by President Barack Obama that is the unifying principle; taking from the left's accommodation of political Islamism and reaching an accord with the very groups whose hidden agenda, and sometimes not-so-hidden agenda, is to collapse the values and priorities, political structure and justice system of the Western world, into a Sharia-led global caliphate; by any means and stealth as good as any.

"We - the befuddled infidels - talk airily about "reforming" Islam. But what if the reform has already taken place and jihadism is it? What if the long percolation of Islam through Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian revolution, and contemporary Western-promoted whining over grievances such as "colonialism" is the reform? Mark Steyn, America Alone

Muslim victimhood crying aloud for understanding and commitment to their cause on the part of the West's judicial and political and intelligence establishment. Permitting their supporters to feel superior to others who view the poor misunderstood victims of Islamophobia as harbouring an agenda whose fulfilment will make victims of them, while allowing the triumph of political Islamism through both violent and disarmingly diplomatic overtures to the better natures of those in the West who do not want to be labelled anti-Islam.

In his book Descent Into Chaos, Ahmed Rashid documents compellingly just how stupidly blind the United States and Britain and their allies have been in going into Afghanistan, in being manipulated by Afghans and by Pakistan, allowing themselves to be used, bled of treasury and personnel, while sectarian, tribal and inter-country intrigues, drawing in Iran, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, along with Russia and nearby Uzbekistan have proceeded in a drawn-out, endless bloody conflict.

"Afghanistan had always tried to balance regional powers, taking money from the Soviets and the United States and balancing the demands of both Iran and Pakistan. However, Mohammed Daud overrode Afghanistan's balancing act and tilted decisively toward the Soviets, thereby increasing the influence of the two rival communist parties Khalq (the Masses) and Parcham (the Flag). Daud's tilt led to a crackdown on the country's nascent Islamic fundamentalist movement, which in order to avoid arrest fled across the border to Pakistan in 1975. The Afghan Islamists were linked with the Muslim Brotherhood and Pakistan's Jamiat-e-Islami, who gave them sanctuary."

In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood, throughout its long history has worked tirelessly to spread their gospel of violent jihad to overthrow moderate Islam, and it is their inspiration along with that of the Saudi's Wahhabist school of fundamentalist Islam that has promoted the concept of an re-awakening among the world's Muslims, to submit themselves entirely to Islam, to reject any accommodation with forbidden Western values. And, as Ahmed Rashid demonstrates, the Muslim Brotherhood remains an inspiring jihadist Islamist force to this day, despite its clever manoeuvres to intellectually disarm its detractors, those who are determined to look behind their veil of sinister intent:

Seizing the opportunity to weaken India, the ISI encouraged young Kashmiris to come to Pakistan for training. The ISI first trained secular and nationalist Kashmiri groups but quickly switched its support to Kashmiri Islamic groups, who were linked to Pakistan's own Islamic parties. These Kashmiris drew their inspiration from the Muslim Brotherhood and described their struggle as an Islamic war of national liberation, but not as a jihad. However, in 1995-1996, fearing that the insurgency was petering out, the ISI shifted its support again - this time to Pakistani and Kashmiri extremist groups belonging to the Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam, which believed in a jihad to defeat India and "Islamize" Kashmir. It was precisely at this juncture that the ISI also switched its support in Afghanistan from Gulbuddin Hikmetyar to the Deobandi-inspired Taliban. This decision had less to do with religion than with the fact that in both Kashmir and Afghanistan such groups were more extreme in their hatred for India and more willing to do the ISI's bidding. the ISI soon shifted many of the Kashmiri training camps to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

This just happens to be the very same tail-that-wags-the-dog ISI, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate that has been infiltrated through-and-through with Islamists that influences whatever the government of Pakistan has done, and with whom the United States intelligence services have traditionally done business with.

"Washington had lavishly aided Pakistan's military, and U.S. legislators now asked where were the results of that aid. Between 2002 and 2007, the Bush administration had provided Pakistan with $3.5 billion in aid, more than half of that for the military. Between 2002 and 2005 the military had received another $3.6 billion in payments for use of its facilities and services by the U.S. Defence Department, while the United States had forgiven Pakistani debt worth over $3.0 billion. The CIA had paid large secret sums to the ISI in order to improve its performance and provide reward money for catching al-Qaeda leaders. the army received another $30 to $40 million to improve border security. Washington provided for the computerization of all international passenger traffic at the country's airports, the creation of an air wing for the army to monitor FATA, the building of access roads in FATA* and police training in several fields, including crime scene analysis and a centralized fingerprint ID system. Officially by 2007, the United States had provided $10 billion in aid to Islamabad, and unofficially the figure was much higher, yet FATA and indeed Pakistan were now greater threats than ever before. With terrorism on the increase, U.S. legislators were asking the Bush administration where the money had gone. *Federally Administered Tribal Areas Ahmed Rashid, Descent Into Chaos

And now, in 2011, with a new Democratic American administration replacing the Republican-Bush era, legislators can look around them at the accomplishments of the State Department, the CIA, the diplomatic and the military-industrial machinery, and ask, even while their country is in the deep dudgeon of monumental debt, what has been achieved by liberally sprinkling their treasury funds around the Middle East and the Muslim world, to achieve a detente, and to better understand the Islamist agenda.

Quite outstanding intelligence work there. Understandable why they would not seek the assistance of countries whose intelligence networks traditionally and conventionally they had sought. It might be too embarrassing to admit how utterly gulled they have been.

Unparalleled professionalism.