Augean Stables

I am helping a terrorism expert in D.C. conduct research for his upcoming book on Israeli counter-terrorism. We are currently looking at Israel’s attitude toward Hamas in its formative stages. Everything that I have found indicates that, in contrast to what many claim, while Israel allowed Hamas to operate in Gaza before it became a violent group, it gave Hamas no active aid.  Has anyone come across any evidence that Israel did indeed actively help or cooperate with Hamas in the 80s?

Reports surfaced recently that Israel was weighing a non-aggression pact with Lebanon. It is not self-evident what the purpose of this pact, or at least floating the idea of the pact, would be. A non-aggression pact with the government will in no way prevent Hezbollah from acting. It would also invite the wrath of much of the Arab world against Lebanon. Perhaps Israel knows that such a pact will never be signed, but wants to gain something from floating the idea.  It is conceivable that with election in Lebanon approaching, Israel wants to remind Lebanese voters that they have no fight with Israel, but are dragged into conflict by Hezbollah. A vote against Hezbollah is a vote for Lebanon.

Michael Totten considers the idea of the pact on Commentary’s website. He is also pessimistic about the possibility of such an agreement actually being signed, but he explores the reception such an idea might have in Lebanon. (more…)

I spoke today with a  professor who holds senior positions in government institutions and security think-tanks. Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to disclose who the gentleman is, but he is someone who is full of inside knowledge regarding the American military and the war on terror.

He had several interesting anecdotes to relate. Not long ago, a Pakistani brigadier general studying at one of the American war colleges remarked in a trip to Ground Zero, after being at the war college for a year, that Jews were warned to stay home on 9/11. This is not a new rumor, but it is striking that a Pakistani general studying for an extended period of time in America takes that conspiracy theory as fact.

The professor took the general to a memorial containing all the names of the victims. “Maybe you don’t know how to read names ethnically”, he said, “but your story simply isn’t true.” He then showed the general the many Jewish names on the memorial.

The professor also told me that Rupert Murdoch caught wind of the brigadier’s statement (though he did not tell me how) and called President Bush to ask him what kind of war college the country was running, if such statements are made by students who have been studying there for a year.

Osama Bin Laden understands the importance of the information war, the professor said.  He told me of intelligence that indicates that Bin Laden intended to strike on Yom Kippur in order to lend credence to the idea that Jews were behind the attacks. It is not known why the timing was changed, but it does speak to Bin Laden’s appreciation of propaganda.

A friend of mine asked me to comment on a list-serv he was creating about the apocalyptic dimensions of this election. Here’s my response. I’d welcome any corrections and links readers might have to suggest.

Richard, I can’t help but think that we may be heading for a world calamity with the potential election of the McCain/Palin ticket. After all McCain is well known for his hair trigger temper (”bomb, bomb, bomb!”), and Palin is a far right wing, religious fanatic.

So as someone who’s familiar with Apocalyptic Writings, I’d be interested in your thoughts and if you’d be interested in posting them.

Apocalyptic Dimensions of the 2008 Election

The first clear apocalyptic elements in the race arose with the charismatic personality of Barack Obama. Many of us got our first taste of it with the release of the video “Yes we can…” which, esp to those who are culturally literate in todays youth scene, was a very powerful statement that appealed to a messianic yearning. “Yes, this will bring that transformation we all yearn for.”

The issue of Obama’s messianism is complicated. He has neither denied nor discouraged it, indeed he played with tropes like “we are the hope we’ve been waiting for.” His world tour played on that hope, and the Europeans loved it. It has gotten him in trouble with a public that doesn’t like pretension, even as it’s got him a highly committed base.

In an ironic way, Sarah Palin might be in the process of taking the prophetic mantle from him. Obama made it clear that Americans yearn for some kind of a savior — someone they can get enthused about, someone they can pin outrageous hopes on; but they may still be in the market. Obama didn’t close the deal, and she stole the ball. And we don’t even know who she is.

Now there are religious issues as well as personality ones in this apocalyptic brew. Palin is a member of a Pentecostalist (they talk in tongues/babble) evangelical church that adheres to the doctrine of Christian premillennial dispensationalism — the apocalyptic scenario whereby the return of the Jews to Israel will set in motion the final events — terrible tribulations that will only cease with the return of Jesus… at which point all the surviving Jews will convert.

It’s a troubling source of piety for Christian Zionism, and many Jews, especially on the left, have warned against it in no uncertain terms. For intellectuals, Palin’s piety, with its fundamentalist positions on abortion and creationism, with its demons, speaking in tongues and cell-phone annointing strikes us as the height of regressive folly. and for some, the threat goes all the way to ambitions to make the US into a Christian theocracy.

Would that we were offered a choice between this kind of apocalyptic weirdness and grounded sanity. But Obama’s issues with religion raise similar if not more dangerous problems. Reverend Wright is a key to Obama’s religiosity, and it’s not pretty (Obama’s protestations that he wasn’t there/didn’t hear those sermons, are like Clinton saying he didn’t inhale).

Wright is paranoid (US Govt invented AIDS to kill black people), he’s deeply anti-American, he’s more than a bit of a racist. And his theology is also millennialist, just instead of apple pie pre-millennial dispensationalism (in which the Lord has to intervene in order to set off the destruction), it’s a roll-your-own blend of Marxist, racist, post-millennialism (ie, we bring about the messianic age ourselves by destroying the system and imposing equality).

Nor is this the only problem. The proponents of this kind of neo-marxist, revolutionary, post-colonialism — America (and Israel) is the source of all evil — (Chomsky is the intellectual version), have an informal but broad alliance with Jihadis, in common cause against the West which is responsible for the world’s woes.

Now jihadis are apocalyptic, and the worst kind. active, cataclysmic: the passage from this world (where infidels are the most powerful and admired people on the planet) to the next, perfected world (global Dar al Islam) is one of immense destruction which we are Allah’s servants in bringing about. Making an alliance with them is insane (as the Iranian communists learned to their woe in 1979).

i’m not saying Obama has the slightest notion of this — indeed that’s the problem. with his pleasant youthful experiences with Islam and his adult life in an aggressive liberation church, he’s a prime candidate for manipulation by jihadis masquerading as “human rights” advocates. protect my right to teach hatred; protect my right not to be insulted by people who criticize me. i.e., Obama’s a perfect dupe for demopaths.

McCain is at least understands the Muslim threat better (as does Lieberman, who is apparently teaching Palin intl affairs). Obama is part of the world whose primary response to the collapse of the “Oslo Peace Process” and 9-11 is to ask what did “we” do to make “them” hate us so, and what can we do to make them love us enough to stop trying to kill us any chance they get?

As Amir Taheri puts it, Obama’s 9-10, McCain is 9-11; or as a French woman remarked to me back in 2003: “There are two kinds of people in the world after 9-11, those who understand that we’re at war, and those who don’t.” And it’s not a matter of whether you’re a war-monger or a peace-lover. It’s not a war we declared, and pretending it doesn’t exist does promote peace.

So i’d say, we’re between Scylla and Charybdis. Both candidates are, from the perspective of an “apocalyptic” analysis, carriers of dangerous tendencies. We have to figure out which is less dangerous.

In my universe of priorities, the threat from Islam is greater than that from Christianity which, even in very “fundamentalist” or evangelical circles, is far more committed to democratic culture. And right now, the folly of the left strikes me as far more dangerous and entrenched in its way of thinking than the folly of the right.

Seeing this photo from a Denver demonstration taken by Zombietime

reminded me of an article from CNN about a mosque run by Al Sadr’s army that had its own torture chamber… for fellow Muslims. Alas! “Peace” militants as tools of Jihad.

Chain wrapped around ‘old man’s body’ found in mosque
By Arwa Damon
CNN

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — “There are the bloodstains on the wall, and here it is dried on the floor,” Abu Muhanad said as he walked through a torture chamber in a Baghdad mosque where more than two dozen bodies have been found.

“And here, a woman’s shoes. She was a victim of the militia. We found her corpse in the grave.”

Chunks of hair waft lazily across the floor in the hot Baghdad breeze.

“This was the torture room,” said Muhanad, the leader of a U.S.-backed armed group that now controls the mosque.

“This is what they used for hanging,” he said, pointing to a cord dangling from the ceiling. “Here is a chain we found tied to an old man’s body.” Go inside the mosque’s torture chamber »

The horrific scene at this southwestern Baghdad mosque is what officials say was the work of a Shiite militia known as the Mehdi Army. Residents who live near the mosque say they could hear the victims’ screams.

The militia had been in control of the mosque, called Adib al-Jumaili, from at least January 2007 until May of this year. Residents say coalition forces weren’t in the region and the torture and killings went unchecked.

(more…)

I recently posted on the way the NYT packages discussions of the Middle East. Now we get a close look at how it packages book reviews. Below is a review of a book by Ken Pollack offering a grand strategy for the US to contribute significantly to resolving the Middle East conflict. It seems like a flawed book in many ways, but hardly in the terms in which the chosen reviewer critiques it. The reviewer is Max Rodenbeck, the Middle East correspondent for The Economist. It’s a case of washing away PCP1 with a dose of PCP2, rather than balancing it with a more sober appraisal of the situation (HSJP)

For a more valuable critique, see Michael Rubin’s review in the New York Sun. Thank civil society for multiple sources of opinion. Thank the NYT for sheltering you from painful realities, and loading up its pages with writers from the ship of fools.

War and Peace

By MAX RODENBECK
Published: August 22, 2008

Back in 2002, I ran into one of the Brookings Institution’s top Middle East hands at the inaugural session of the United States-Islamic World Forum, a now annual event that Brookings sponsors jointly with the government of Qatar. “How’s it going?” I asked, expecting to hear about clashing misperceptions across the cultural divide. “Good,” came the gruff reply. “They’re beginning to realize that they are the problem.”

A PATH OUT OF THE DESERT
A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East
By Kenneth M. Pollack
539 pp. Random House. $30
Related
First Chapter: ‘A Path Out of the Desert’ (August 24, 2008)

Reading this big, ambitious book by Kenneth M. Pollack, who is the head of research at Brookings’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, it is hard not to wish that what he refers to as Washington’s “policy community” would more often realize that they are the problem.

That’s pretty amazing. If he had written, “they are part of the problem,” okay. But “they are the problem.” That’s pure MOS: Masochistic Omnipotence Syndrome — as if there were no problem besides our bungled attempts to solve the problem. It’s a little like saying all health problems are iatrogenic. There are no diseases; it’s the doctors’ fault.

It would have been nice, for instance, had Pollack himself thought harder before arguing, in scholarly papers and his widely read 2002 book, “The Threatening Storm,” that America had “no choice” but to invade Iraq. That ostensibly sober appraisal, coming from a former C.I.A. analyst, Clinton official and self-described liberal, arguably added more gravitas to the shrill cries for war than any other voice.

Pollack has long since confessed to having been wrong about Iraq. “A Path Out of the Desert” includes other mea culpas. “There has been far too little asking the people of the region themselves what they thought and what they wanted,” he ruminates at one point, though the book offers slim evidence of his having pursued this advice. While the administration that Pollack served gets some light wrist-­slapping, it is the following eight years of Bush policy that he calls “breathtakingly arrogant, ignorant and reckless.”

Rudenbeck speaks as if it’s a) clear how to consult the people of the region, b) that they are clear on what they want, and c) they’ll give you a straight answer whether they are clear or not.

Many of Pollack’s other judgments are as sound as is this criticism of the Bush administration. Since most of the post-cold-war world has stabilized, democratized and prospered, it is probably correct to suggest, as he does, that America should commit itself to helping the messy Middle East come up to par.

Now there’s an breathtaking piece of ignorant and reckless arrogance. Who says they want democracy? And who is they? And even if they say they want it, who says they (and here I’m speaking of the key players, the alpha males) are willing to make the sacrifices necessary for democracy (like giving up honor-killings or self-help justice). What a mealy-mouthed homogenized view of post-war culture Rodenbeck offers up with this description of post-war culture and the [obvious] conclusions he thinks we should draw from it.
(more…)

Ze’ev Maghen, Senior Lecturer in Islamic Religion and Persian Language at Bar-Ilan University, and Chair of the Department of Middle East History, recently published “From Omnipotence to Impotence: A Shift in the Iranian Portrayal of the “Zionist Regime“. The article examines and challenges some of the prevailing notions about the prospects for and the price of an agreement with Iran, and what the implications would be for Israel.

One of the interesting points about his study concerns the wild swings of Iranian thinking on Israel. One minute it’s omnipotent, the next, impotent. Not only does this reflect the Iranian mullahs’ lack of touch with reality, but also their terrible lack of confidence which they must compensate for by using totalistic language. Profound imbalance, profound instability.

Maghen opens with a description of the banal, ubiquitious nature of calls for the destruction of the U.S. and Israel in Iran. After classical music performances, soccer goals, and even a speech by Ayatollah Khamenei meant to counter President Ahmadinejad’s extreme rhetoric about Israel, Iranians robotically call for Israel and America’s demise:

In January 2006, the Iranian daily Jomhuriya Eslami carried the text of a speech delivered in Tehran’s main mosque by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene’i. Attempting to defuse the diplomatic tension occasioned by newly elected President Ahmadinejad’s call for Israel’s destruction at the previous month’s “World without Zionism” conference, Khamene’i concluded his uncharacteristically moderate sermon with the following ringing remarks: “We Iranians intend no harm to any nation, nor will we be the first to attack any nation. We do not deny the right of any polity in any place on God’s earth to exist and prosper. We are a peace-loving country whose only wish is to live, and to let live, in peace.” Without missing a beat or evincing even a hint of irony, the reporter who had covered the event continued: “The congregation of worshippers, some seven thousand in number, expressed their unanimous support for the Supreme Leader’s words by repeatedly chanting: marg bar Omrika, marg bar Esra’il - ‘Death to America, Death to Israel!’”1

(more…)

Pascal Bruckner is one of my favorite French intellectuals, someone who cuts through the maze of post-modern morality like a lazer through butter. So I was pleased to find that he’s taken on Durban II.

Boycott Durban II
Sign and Sight, 16/06/2008
Pascal Bruckner

At the 2001 UN Conference against Racism in Durban, anti-colonialism bared its anti-Semitic face. Democracies should stay away from a repeat performance next year in Geneva. By Pascal Bruckner

In September 2001 the South African city of Durban played host to the third United Nations World Conference against Racism, which was aimed at achieving recognition for crimes related to slavery and colonialism. The event’s organisers hoped that the whole of mankind would use this ceremonious occasion to face up to its history and chronicle events with equanimity.

It was billed as a conference against racism, and had a “soft” millennial quality of hoping that the world would enter a new era where it left racism behind.

These good intentions rapidly degenerated into one-upmanship among victims and bloodlust directed at Israeli organisations and anyone else suspected of being Jewish. The original intent, which was to heal the wounds of the past through a sort of collective therapy and arrive at new standards for human rights, twisted into an outburst of hatred which, in the wake of the September 11 attacks that followed only days later, disappeared from the public eye.

It was an orgy of hatred aimed at Israel and the USA, and offers perhaps the single most concentrated example of demopathy available. Led by Arab nations, it excoriated the USA for her slavery (almost a century and a half ago) and Israel for her racism and genocide (with al Durah as poster boy and patron saint), when Arab states are currently the only ones actually engaged in both genocide and slavery (specifically of sub-Saharan Africans). The hypocrisy was suffocating, and the participation of “human rights NGOS’s” one of the most astounding expressions of the moral corruption of the “progressive” left on record.

It’s time we had another look. Against the wishes of the organisers, Durban became an arena where people screamed and hurled insults at each other in a re-enactment of the comedy of damned, in the face of the white exploiter. “The pain and anger are still felt. The dead, through their descendants, cry out for justice”, Kofi Annan said on August 31 of the same year – an astounding choice of words for a UN secretary general and more a call for revenge than reconciliation. The delegates at the conference, particularly those from the Arab-Muslim states, also understood it as such and, together with the African group, they transformed the conference into a stage for anti-colonialist revenge. The West, which is genocidal by nature, should recognise its crimes, beg for forgiveness and pay symbolic and financial reparations to the victims of its oppression. Emotions ran high and anger was brought to the boil by coverage of the second Intifada which was being violently quashed by the Israeli army.

(more…)

On August 5th, The Guardian ran an article about the Jihadist attack in China. Two terrorists attacked Chinese paramilitary police on August 4th, killing sixteen and wounding many more. The attackers were Uighurs, part of the East Turkestan freedom movement. Uighurs are a Turkic Sunni ethnic group in China, central Asia, and scattered diaspora communitoes. Chinese authorities said the group plans to make 2008 into “a year of mourning” for the Chinese, to coincide with the increased publicity that comes with the Olympic games.

There is an interesting subtext to the article as well. (more…)

Salafi Islam, often called ‘Wahabbism’ (though its followers could see that term as derogatory- Wahabbism is a more recent subgroup within Salafism), is a fundamentalist movement that has become popular among jihadists across the Muslim world. The movement urges adherents to return to the original, pure Islam that was practiced by Muhammad and the first three generations of followers, or As-Salaf us-Salih. Salafists emphasize strict shari’a law, and seek to disassociate Islam from what they consider outside influences, such as philosophy and politics. They forbid innovations, or bid’ah, that they say have improperly been introduced into Islam. Salafists view many practices throughout the Muslim world as innovations, and as such, the movement causes deep rifts among Muslims. For instance, the Salafi teaching (from Salafipublications.com),
gives an idea of how staunchly opposed Salafists are to bid’ah. There is also an emphasis on monotheism, and Salafists condemn many common Muslim practices as shirk, or polytheism.

The Messenger (sallallaahu alaihi wasallam) also warned against the People of Innovation, from befriending, supporting or taking from them saying: “Whoever innovates or accommodates an innovator then upon him is the curse of Allaah, His Angels and the whole of mankind.” Reported by Bukhaaree (12/41) and Muslim (9/140)

Salafism has appealed to many disaffected young European Muslims, who are attracted to the simplicity and universality of its teachings. It has also spread rapidly via the internet, offering young Muslims in the “diaspora” a neo-Islamic identity that links them to a global movement very different from the more localized Islamic identities that their parents brought with them from the old world.

In a Jerusalem Post op-ed, Jonathan Spyer details the growing Salafi influence in Gaza and the West Bank. Not surprisingly, the growth of Salafism as borne a wave of violence associated with protecting fundamentalist Muslim beliefs.

Analysis: Salafism - the worrying process of self-radicalization
Published Jul. 24, 2008
Jonathan Spyer , THE JERUSALEM POST

Over the last two months, Israeli security forces have arrested six young Arab men suspected of seeking to form an extreme Islamist cell for the purpose of carrying out high-profile terror attacks in the capital. Two of the six held Israeli citizenship, while the other four were residents of east Jerusalem. It appears that they were radicalized through involvement in an Islamic study circle and via the Internet. Two Arab Israeli citizens from the town of Rahat were arrested in recent weeks on similar suspicions.

This is an especially worrying case. The two suspects are southern Bedouin. Southern Bedouin have been undergoing a worrying process of Islamization, as one can clearly see by the growing number of new mosques sprouting up in their towns. They were suspected of passing information on to Al-Qaeda.

In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these events reflect strange, unfamiliar patterns. Place them on a broader canvas, however, and the novelty sharply decreases. The latest events appear to reflect the arrival of global jihad methods and codes of practice to our shores.

(more…)

An Arab took control of a giant bulldozer and started charging up Jaffo St. in Jerusalem crushing cars and eventually overturning a bus.

Eyewitness Account

Photo by Noa Landes

At least four dead, 45 injured, some badly. Let’s see how he’s treated in the Arab and Muslim press. It’s not clear whether the driver was a known problem case from East Jerusalem, or whether he just was one of the construction workers on the scene. If the latter, this looks like a case of “Sudden Jihad Jerusalem syndrome,” if the former, a minor variant on 9-11 (use big transportation vehicle to do as much damage as possible).

There are still people (bodies?) under the tractor.

There’s footage of the attack with an man riding shotgun on the tractor. It’s a off-duty Israeli soldier who took a pistol from a policeman and shot the driver. He is a relative of the man who shot the terrorist who shot up the religious school Merkaz ha-Rav several months ago.

My first press release comes in German from Ulrich Sahm:

Ein Terroranschlag, wie es ihn in Israel noch nicht gegeben hat. Ein mutmaßlich arabischer Traktorfahrer rast mit erhobener Bulldozerschaufel durch den dichten Verkehr auf der Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, einer Hauptverkehrsader. Er wirft einen Touristenbus um und auf der Strecke bleiben mehrere zerquetschte Personenwagen, bis er schliesslich noch einen Bus umwirft. Ein bewaffneter Polizist schießt auf den Traktorfahrer. Schon verletzt setzt er seine Amokfahrt fort. Schließlich steigt ein anderer Polizist auf das Dach des Traktors und erschießt den Mann. Beim Gebäude des ehemaligen Schaarei Zedek Hospitals kommt der Buldozer zum Stehen. Mindestens dreißig Verletzte und eine unbekannte Zahl von Toten soll es gegeben haben. Zwei Tote wurden schon nach einer halben Stunde bestätigt. Unklar ist, ob vielleicht sogar zwei Traktoren an dem Anschlag beteiligt waren.

Ein politischer Kommentator vergleicht die Amokfahrt mit dem 11.9., nicht wegen der Zahl der Toten, sondern wegen der Methode, ohne echte Waffe einen Mordanschlag zu veranstalten.

Eine halbe Stunde nach der Amokfahrt erklärt die Polizei schon, dass es sich bei dem Traktorfahrer um einen Palästinenser aus Ostjerusalem handle. Er sei der Polizei „bekannt“, wegen verschiedener Straftaten.

Unklar ist, ob er einer der Traktorfahrer ist, die auf der Jaffastreet beim Verlegen der Trasse für die künftige Straßenbahn beteiligt ist.

UPDATE FROM SAHM:

The bulldozer driver was a 32-year old Palestinian with two children [and no hope — rl] who was known to the Israeli police as involved in criminal activity.

Four dead and 44 seriously injured.

UPDATE from Pierre Lurcat:

Channel 2 news report:

Cell phone video of the event.

Further comments:

Terror Purposely Targets Civilians – The terrorist operating the bulldozer chose his victims deliberately - even starting his attack by motioning for a woman driver to precede him, before crushing her vehicle with his shovel. He went on to run-down pedestrians, ram two buses, and crush a number of civilian cars.

Among his innocent victims is an infant, who was injured in the attack and taken to hospital. Eyewitnesses told police that the murdered mother saved her baby, by throwing the child out the car window, just before the bulldozer crushed her to death.

Hateful Extremism vs. Cooperative Pragmatism – The terrorists of the region are indoctrinated and driven by a blind hate for Israelis, Jews and all non-Moslems, denying them their most basic rights, even their right to life. The attack took place in Jerusalem, a city which serves as Israel’s capital, yet is shared by Jews and Arabs, with freedom of movement for all its residents. While the terrorist was an Arab resident of Jerusalem, so too was the driver of the first bus he attacked. This bus driver, who serves as an example of cooperation that can be achieved between Jews and Arabs, was able to swerve his bus and minimize the damage of the bulldozer’s blade.

Terrorism despite Peace Efforts – The attack today comes as Israel is actively pursuing peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas. It also comes as an Egyptian-brokered state of calm was just achieved regarding Gaza, in which Israel demonstrated its desire to exhaust all efforts to achieve a halt to terrorist rocket attacks against its citizens, without having to resort to the use of force. Israel will continue its efforts to achieve peace with its pragmatic Palestinian neighbors, despite the efforts of the extremists to torpedo the process.

How will the MSM cover this? How will diplomats respond?

Editorial by David Horovitz of the Jerusalem Post (Hattip EG):

The security barrier has dramatically reduced the incidence of attacks inside Israel by West Bank Palestinians in recent years. But two months ago, in the last major terror attack in the capital, an east Jerusalem resident killed eight students in a Thursday night attack at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva. On Wednesday again, Jerusalem’s vulnerability to an attack from ‘within’ by a perpetrator with the residency rights to move freely around the city was murderously demonstrated.

Post by LB, additions by RL.

On the Empire Burlesque blog, Chris Floyd wrote a post entitled “Big Dog, Little Tail- The American Elite Decides on War with Iran“. In it, Floyd (willfully?) ignores the many indications that Iran’s intentions are not pure with regard to Israel and its nuclear program. While on the one hand, he dismisses the theories about the “Jewish lobby,” he turns his wrath on the US “military-industrial elite” manipulating world opinion and the U.N. because they “want to go to war,” and never takes a serious look at the evidence that runs counter to his world-view.

This pervasive disregard for evidence that contradicts deep-rooted convictions is reminiscent of the journalists who signed the petition supporting Charles Enderlin in June, 2008.

Let’s be clear about one thing: Israel will not attack Iran without the full knowledge and approval of the United States government.

That is quite a claim. Some analysts may agree, but does Floyd have any proof to make him so sure, besides his confident assertion that “The military-industrial elite control Israel”? Israel attacked Osirak in Iraq in 1981 without American knowledge, and many experts believe that Israel will do the same in Iran if it has to. “Israel will launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on its own if the rest of the world does not take action, said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and senior adviser to three presidents, including George W. Bush.

The trigger of the “warning shot” of Israel’s long-range air-strike exercise last week was actually pulled in Washington. The Israelis will not force or deceive the U.S. government into an attack on Iran; that attack - which grows more certain by the hour - will take place because America’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment and military-industrial complex (to the extent that there is any real difference between the two) want it to happen, or are willing to let it happen.

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Daniel Pipes has an important discussion on the links between forces that consider themselves radical “progressive” or communist (everyone knows they want what’d good for everyone) and Islamist movements, especially as incarnated in the alliance between Iran and Venezuela, an issue we’ve treated here in the past, in particular in the context of conspiracy theories.

Of course, keep your eye on all the balls in the air. Melanie Phillips sees trouble brewing from this toxic combination in Scotland; and people who embrace this worldview teem irrepressibly at Barack Obama’s website. And of course, Khoumeini already did this once to the Communists in 1979 — duped them into supporting his takeover and then turned on them. I guess if the thirst to “bring down the great Satan” overrides even the most formidable intelligences, it wouldn’t have too hard a time with the likes of Cesar Chavez.

There was a recent survey that argued that the top ten intellectuals in the world were Muslim. I can forgive them the vanity. They must look at us the way Bart (Cleavon Little) felt about the white folk he had just duped in Blazing Saddles:

Ooh, baby, you are so talented! And they are so DUMB!

[Pipes, as is his scholarly wont, gives a harvest of links to his text and additional material not available at the National Review version of the piece. Read his account.]

[The Islamist-Leftist] Allied Menace

Daniel Pipes
National Review

“Here are two brother countries, united like a single fist,” said socialist Hugo Chávez during a visit to Tehran last November, celebrating his alliance with Islamist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Che Guevara’s son Camilo, who also visited Tehran last year, declared that his father would have “supported the country in its current struggle against the United States.” They followed in the footsteps of Fidel Castro, who in a 2001 visit told his hosts that “Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees.” For his part, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (”Carlos the Jackal”) wrote in his book L’islam révolutionnaire (”Revolutionary Islam”) that “only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States.”

It’s not just Latin American leftists who see potential in Islamism. Ken Livingstone, the Trotskyite mayor of London, literally hugged prominent Islamist thinker Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. attorney general, visited Ayatollah Khomeini and offered his support. Noam Chomsky, the MIT professor, visited Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and endorsed Hezbollah’s keeping its arms. Ella Vogelaar, the Dutch minister for housing, neighborhoods, and integration, is so sympathetic to Islamism that one critic, the Iranian-born professor Afshin Ellian, has called her “the minister of Islamization.”

Dennis Kucinich, during his first presidential campaign in 2004, quoted the Koran and roused a Muslim audience to chant “Allahu akbar” (”God is great”) and he even announced, “I keep a copy of the Koran in my office.” Spark, youth paper of Britain’s Socialist Labour party, praised Asif Mohammed Hanif, the British suicide bomber who attacked a Tel Aviv bar, as a “hero of the revolutionary youth” who had carried out his mission “in the spirit of internationalism.” Workers World, an American Communist newspaper, ran an obituary lauding Hezbollah’s master terrorist, Imad Mughniyeh.

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Welcoming all comments. Will post the best. (Thanks to my resident cartoonist — here, here, here, and here — Ellen Horowitz.)

For the original passage, see Numbers 22:

27. And the ass saw the angel of the LORD, and she lay down under Balaam; and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with his staff.
28. And the LORD opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam: ‘What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?’
29. And Balaam said unto the ass: ‘Because thou hast mocked me; I would there were a sword in my hand, for now I had killed thee.’
ַ30. And the ass said unto Balaam: ‘Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden all thy life long unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee?’ And he said: ‘Nay.’
31. Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, with his sword drawn in his hand; and he bowed his head, and fell on his face.
32. And the angel of the LORD said unto him: ‘Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times? behold, I am come forth for an adversary, because thy way is contrary unto me;
33. and the ass saw me, and turned aside before me these three times; unless she had turned aside from me, surely now I had even slain thee, and saved her alive.’
34. And Balaam said unto the angel of the LORD: ‘I have sinned; for I knew not that thou stoodest in the way against me; now therefore, if it displease thee, I will get me back.’
35. And the angel of the LORD said unto Balaam: ‘Go with the men; but only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou shalt speak.’ So Balaam went with the princes of Balak.

Speak soon, or forever hold your peace.

[NDLR: Il y a presque deux ans que j’ai écrit une analyse sur la façon dont Le monde a parlé du scandale “fauxtographie” dans la guerre du Liban, été 2006. A la suite de la decision étonnante de la cour au sujet de la plainte de Charles Enderlin contre Philippe Karsenty, et la pétition révélatirice au Novel Obs je mets une traduction française en ligne pour mieux permettre au lecteur francophone de déceler l’attitude des “journalistes” des grands médias, et de mieux evaluer les renseignements qui lui parviennent de leurs parts au sujets des “faux” issus du proche orient.]

Stuart, l’un des participants de ce site, nous a fait parvenir une traduction d’un article du Monde sur le scandale fauxtographique. Cet article illustre bien à quel point les médias français sont mal informés de ce qui se passe dans leurs coulisses, et comme ils sont mal outillés pour simplement comprendre les défis de la blogosphère, et encore moins s’en accommoder.

L’auteur, Claire Guillot, ne parait pas mal intentionnée ; au contraire, elle semble vouloir s’essayer à l’impartialité. Cependant, le résultat est révélateur.

[NDLR : les citations de l’article du Monde sont en gras, les citations autres sont en italiques ; la fin de ce texte reprend, en la développant, une publication précédente sur ce site]

Guerre du Liban et “fauxtographies”

Le conflit a suscité une polémique sur le Net, des bloggeurs conservateurs soupçonnant les images d’être manipulées. C’est par Little Green Footballs que le scandale est arrivé : début août, ce blog américain conservateur accuse Adnan Hajj, photographe pigiste de l’agence Reuters, d’avoir manipulé par informatique une photo de Beyrouth pour épaissir la fumée après un bombardement israélien. Effectivement, la retouche est grossière. L’agence présente ses excuses et retire la photo incriminée. Mais le blog met ensuite en évidence une autre photo de M. Hajj, où il a dupliqué une fusée tirée par un avion israélien. Le photographe, qui ne maîtrise apparemment pas bien le logiciel de retouche Photoshop, est renvoyé, toutes ses archives effacées. « Il y a eu un enchaînement d’erreurs humaines, plaide Tom Szlukovenyi, directeur de la photographie chez Reuters. Cette histoire est contraire à tous nos principes et ne s’est jamais produite auparavant. »

Là, bien sûr, un journaliste futé pourrait se demander « comment Tom Szlukovenyi peut-il le savoir, surtout s’il a été abusé par le travail, pourtant si maladroit, de son pigiste… et comment vérifier cette affirmation, puisqu’il a retiré des archives la collection des photos de ce pigiste manifestement indélicat, empêchant ainsi un examen approfondi de son œuvre ? » Et, dernière minute, Tom Glocer, le patron de Reuters, est d’un avis strictement contraire, et pense que