LET US TALK ABOUT ISRAEL

<span style="color: rgb(204 , 0 , 0); font-size: 130%;">PRESIDENT OBAMA’S CONTINUING ROLE IN HELPING TO DESTROY ISRAEL: DEJUDAIZATION OF JERUSALEM</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204 , 0 , 0); font-size: 130%;"><br /></span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQG4NrXB9_YKkhkuKXGjYXIYujUsGg93avpeBUya-tgNlYaRv5Ld_jigtpoDHjYc8Lby0CDOlE-uPBqHIb4_MuWLP65QBAaFoEI95mkS3Lh4KgTRytx7rdTv3iQ93PwN0AYK51PK6iym8/s400/sidewlaks+brennan.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQG4NrXB9_YKkhkuKXGjYXIYujUsGg93avpeBUya-tgNlYaRv5Ld_jigtpoDHjYc8Lby0CDOlE-uPBqHIb4_MuWLP65QBAaFoEI95mkS3Lh4KgTRytx7rdTv3iQ93PwN0AYK51PK6iym8/s400/sidewlaks+brennan.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 333px; margin: 0pt 10px 0px 0pt; width: 280px;" /></a>In a recent speech at New York University in February, at a forum co-hosted by the White House and the Islamic Center at New York University, John Brennan, the White House’s top counterterrorism adviser, called Jerusalem by its Arabic name “Al-Quds,” praised Saudi Arabia for its religious tolerance, and encouraged Hizbullah while calling Jihad a legitimate tenet of Islam (<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/27/counterterror-adviser-defends-jihad-legitimate-tenet-islam/">Read more here</a>)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While these comments normally would be considered outrageous, disgraceful and a source of derision by rational individuals, especially those who know and understand history, one must realize that his words may easily be construed as a deliberate action of the Obama administration to help Muslims dejudaize Jerusalem and Israel and thereby, help bring about Israel’s destruction and that of the Jewish people. One must realize that the Obama administration has a great advantage in spreading its venom since it is working with a pastiche consisting of the unrelenting anti-Israel/antisemitic attacks of the political left, the Arab Muslim propaganda machine and a compliant antisemitic world-wide media. Similarly, one should not forget that hate is the most powerful human emotion and that religiously inspired hate is more powerful than any other stimulant – including nationalism – unless it is the marriage of religion with nationalism, in its broadest sense, which is exceedingly prevalent in the Muslim world.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Before you think me mad and paranoid, let us look at some of the evidence in addition to that most recent and obvious action of President Obama’s very public and undeserved attempt at humiliating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his disgraceful and cowardly beating up of Israel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, Brennan’s statements leave me puzzled as to where to begin an analysis.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Why would President Obama select John Brennan as his surrogate? Certainly, as head of the counterterrorism department, his would be a powerful voice for whitewashing Saudi Arabia and the Muslim nations of their anti-civilized behavior. Who could be better to provide exoneration, grant dispensation and help change the American public’s negative perception of Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations and Israel’s positive perception than John Brennan, a man who, as a result of his education and environment, has been primed all of his life to have an animus towards Israel and Jews and who, as a result of his professional employment in the state department, who had or developed a predilection for Israel’s enemies to carry out such a two pronged task? John Brennan is a Roman Catholic who was born and raised in Bergen, NJ, one of the more notorious communities in the country having an infamous past and present with respect to Nazism and antisemitism, who was educated in the Roman Catholic educational system and who spent a good part of his adult life representing the Muslim Mid-East to America (Chief of Station, Middle East, CIA; Deputy Director, Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis, CIA; Deputy Division Chief, Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis, CIA; Middle East Specialist and Terrorism Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; Political Officer, U.S. Embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Department of State).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the same speech, Brennan also spoke of his time at the American University in Cairo in the 1970s, referring to the common aspirations of his former Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian classmates, including the freedom “to practice our faith freely … In Saudi Arabia, I saw how our Saudi partners fulfilled their duty as custodians of the two holy mosques at Mecca and Medina.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Yet, while these Muslims refer to practicing their Muslim religion, they refuse the same right to others. But such uncivil actions do not seem bother John Brennan since he has no compunctions about outright lying about his Muslim charges by praising Saudi Arabia for its religious tolerance.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Yet the reality of Saudi Arabian attitudes towards others is grounded in its government and belies his statement. It is well known that Islam is the official religion of Saudi Arabia and all Saudi citizens must be Muslims and, therefore, there can be no freedom of religion, no separation of Church and State and there are no guarantees of freedom of religion. In fact, Saudi Arabia prohibits the public practice of any religion other than Islam. The Saudi government does not permit its citizens to view this internet web sites primarily devoted to religious freedom and tolerance. The Christian cross, the Magen David (Star of David, the symbol of Judaism) or the symbol of any other religion is not permitted to be displayed in public. Only Muslim holy days are permitted to be celebrated. There is widespread discrimination against women. There is no tolerance for the LGBT community as evidenced by the punishment that can be inflicted, ranging from imprisonment, lashes, to execution. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are greatly restricted: as is access to the internet and there can be no criticism of the government Saudi Arabia bans Trade Unions and political organizations..</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The political, antisemitic, mean spirited, hypocritical and irresponsible political left has gone insane labeling the open, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, culturally diverse, democratic Israeli society an apartheid state while there is no comparable criticism of what is clearly the apartheid state of Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia is an undemocratic, monarchical dictatorship devoid of a written constitution and an elected legislature that is beholden to an extreme and murderous fundamentalist sect of Islam.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The inability of the political left to acknowledge its overt hypocrisy is an absolute condemnation of its basic philosophy and its actions based thereon. There is no real need on my part, other than recognizing their existence, to refer to the more traditional antisemites since, by their definition or ideology, anything a Jews does, except die, is unacceptable behavior.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The inability of the political left to discern differences, their herd mentality and their willingness to permit ideology to override evidence, science and reason is definitive evidence of the hate-filled animus the left evinces towards Israel and Jews. These are the reasons why their continuous criticism of Israel is nonsensical: it is rarely based on fact but, unfortunately, all too often based on a very selective presentation of information – not necessarily facts – and its outright distortions. Such hatred of Israel on the part of the political left by its self-proclaimed intellectuals easily can be explained by the intense smug arrogance of true believers in and adherents of an ignorant and false ideology. But, then again, one of the hallmarks of the modern political left is its inability to think rationally. After all, this is group that came up with the idiotic non-scientific concept that all scientific knowledge is relative. However, when a friend offered one of the proponents of this philosophy to come to the roof of a building so they could jump off to test the relativeness of the concept of gravity, the individual refused. Yet, the same individual still insists on teaching that scientific knowledge is relative. Once again, such inability to think rationally, is another manifestation of the deadly influence of a false ideology in society. And, unfortunately, to the detriment to the public at large, the political left exerts a deadly influence in society especially when it comes to Israel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Brennan has also been quoted as having said: “Hizbullah is a very interesting organization,” that evolved from “purely a terrorist organization” to a militia and now to an organization that has members within the parliament and the cabinet. “There is certainly the elements of Hizbullah that are truly a concern to us, what they’re doing,” Of course what Brennan fails to say is that Hizbullah is a Lebanese-Iranian proxy terrorist group that continually calls for the destruction of Israel and has launched thousands of missiles into Israel civilian communities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In his speech, Brennan referred to Jerusalem by its Arabic name, AL Quds. As far as I could tell, this was an overt indication of Obama’s attempts to dejudaize Jerusalem and perhaps even deny Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Why use the name Al-Quds when the name Jerusalem is at least 3,000 years older than the arabic name and the entire world has always known this city as Jerusalem unless there is another agenda?. Is Obama, through Brennan, providing another signal to the Arab and Muslim worlds that he is amenable to help them sate their unquenchable hatred of Israel and Jews and fulfill their equally insatiable desire to destroy Israel?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Brennan seems to be holding Israel completely the blame for all that has and is going wrong in that part of the middle east while not holding the Palestinians accountable for anything, including their unrelenting terrorism and teaching of hate against Israel and the Jewish people.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Obama role in the eventual destruction of Israel also includes his efforts in changing the public’s favorable attitude towards Israel this can be best seen in his most egregious action when he outright lies about American soldiers losing their lives because of Israel; no American soldier has ever been sent by any American administration to defend Israel and, therefore, no American soldier has died from such a non-existent order.. All Israel has ever asked is that arms be made available to it so it can defend itself. The fact that Israel still exists is proof of its abilities to care for itself. What President Obama refused to acknowledge is that Israel took American arms and altered them with more advanced electronic technology to enhance their capabilities. Of course, he failed to inform the public that the successful Israeli technology was adopted by the US military and has helped save American lives. Ditto for the invaluable intelligence information the US obtains from the Mossad. None of this seems to matter to President Obama as he continues his war against Israel by falsely linking American national security interests to the inability of Israelis and Palestinians to make peace.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The media have been speculating about how President Obama is going to resolve the dilemma created by the Turkish/Israeli confrontation resulting from the sailing of the flotilla from Turkey and the very serious injury of an Israeli soldier and the unfortunate killing of several Turkish citizens. There is also the issue of the very vociferous, world-wide hypocritical condemnation of Israel. As a result of this incident there seems to be a fraying of the tripartite relationship amongst Turkey, Israel, and the United States. Turkey, a non-Arab state, is considered to be the one Muslim nation most favorable to Israel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But is this falling apart between Turkey and Israel so surprising or was it predictable? As long as Turkey was a secular oriented state, relations with Israel were excellent. In the past several years, the Muslim clerics have gained greater influence, much to the chagrin of the secularists, and relations with Israel began to deteriorate and, thereafter, have been worsening. Thus, this latest incident was an inevitable result of Turkey’s religiously based shifting of its national interests. Also, if Turkey is going to realize its aspirations of being an independent regional power, it will have to impress the surrounding Muslim Arab states and the rest of the Muslim world by start distancing itself from Israel while demonstrating an aggressive stance toward Israel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Indeed, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Foreign Minister, used similar language as his Saudi Arabian neighbors by describing the flotilla incident as “state terrorism,”"piracy,” “banditry” and “barbarism.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In view of the US’s relationship with Turkey, one has to question why the US did not use its influence with Turkey to have Turkey stop the flotilla and avoid any confrontation? Perhaps any influence the US had with the Turkish governments also waned pari passu the rise of the political influence of the Muslim clerics.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is another explanation. The President must have known that the flotilla expedition was organized not by peace activists, as the media insisted on portraying them, but by the IHH, a Turkish group that has ties to Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza. In view of President Obama’s changing America’s attitude towards Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds, it would not be surprising to learn that the US, behind the scene, sanctioned the sailing of the flotilla. And, in light of John Brennan’s speech, this explanation takes on greater credence. If President Obama wanted, he could have stopped the flotilla weeks before it left or he could have prepared the world for what was to come.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Further, President Obama successfully convinced Hillary Rodham-Clinton to change her positions on Israel that she supported for eight years she served as senator from NY. This may not have been a difficult task since her true leftist beliefs about Israel the Mid East are more in line with that of President Obama and the far left than what she propounded for political expediency as senator. For example: during the 1980’sand 1990a, in her pre-senate days, Hillary Rodham-Clinton had an appalling anti-Israel record, In the 1980s, she served on the board of the New World Foundation, which funded the Palestine Liberation Organization. This support was forthcoming despite the fact that the PLO was officially considered to be a terrorist organization by the United States. And, I doubt if anyone will ever forget Hillary Rodham-Clinton kissing Soha Arafat, the wife of Yasser Arafat, the head of the PLO, while never demonstrating similar affection to any Israeli, man or woman, who espoused freedom from terrorism.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The world outrage against Israel was put into perspective by Thomas Friedman: “But I have a big problem when people get so agitated by Israel’s actions in Gaza but are unmoved by Syria’s involvement in the murder of the prime minister of Lebanon, by the Iranian regime’s killing of its own citizens demonstrating for the right to have their votes counted, by Muslim suicide bombers murdering nearly 100 Ahmadi Muslims in mosques in Pakistan on Friday and by pro-Hamas gunmen destroying a U.N.-sponsored summer camp in Gaza because it wouldn’t force Islamic fundamentalism down the throats of children.” Of course, to this list one could also add the thousands of missiles that Hamas rained down on Israeli civilians.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">All the uproar against Israel seems not to take into consideration what was the reason for the blockade: to deny Hamas the weaponry and raw materials it needs to continue its rocket attacks in Israel, killing innocent civilians, actions to which the world, by its silence, sanctioned. The silence was broken only when Israel dared to respond. There is not a single nation in the world that would tolerate having missiles attack its civilian populations without some immediate retaliation. Only Israel is expected not just to tolerate these attacks but is expected to accept the blame for their necessity. Instead of Israel being the victim, the Arab and Muslim worlds supported by their antisemitic cohorts, especially those in the media, insist on portraying the Israelis as the perpetrators and the so-called “Palestinians” as the victims. Orwell’s 1984 (or is it Brave New World?) had become a reality.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Even Vice President Biden – on the Charlie Rose show – recognized, perhaps in an unguarded moment which would seem to differ from the official Obama stance, that Israel has an “absolute right” to defend its security interests. He admitted that It is legitimate for Israel to say that it does not know what is on those ships.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What was not said by the antisemitic left and the Arabists is that maritime blockades are legal, legitimate and effective military measures of self-defense. No civilian nor military ship is permitted to enter the blockaded area once the recognized criteria for imposing a blockade have been met, which the Israelis did. Therefore Israel behaved correctly in exerting its right under international law to enforce the blockade against the flotilla terrorists who explicitly expressed their intention of breaking it, especially after Israel sent warnings to the captain’s of the ships that it intends to enforce the blockade. Similarly, Israeli soldiers had every right to defend themselves when their attempt to board the lead ship peacefully were met with violence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is not a country in the world that would have behaved differently under similar circumstances. Notice what happened when the US blockaded Cuba in the 1960s and President Kennedy’s response to the Soviet Union’s desire to break it. Although not a maritime blockade, Egypt did seal its borders between it and Gaza and even built a wall to separate the two areas thereby essentially imposing a land embargo.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There are a number of questions that could be raised about the failure of the so called humanitarians to protest or take actions against a variety of human rights violations by Arab and other Muslim nations, that do not involve Israel, that supports the allegations that the they are only protesting Israel to satisfy their antisemitic appetites.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The fact that President Obama has not fully backed Israel in this situation and not have his minions point out all the flaws in the reasoning of the protestors and their antisemitic supporters, suggests that he wants to curry factor with the Arab and Muslim worlds, and like Turkey, has to demonstrate his animus to Israel by distancing himself from it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">How much clearer can President Obama make it that through his use of people like John Brennan, he does intend to dejudaize Jerusalem and deligitimize the state of Israel and, thereby work for the ultimate destruction.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: <a href="http://www.alternet.org/">AlterNet.Org</a> | By <a href="http://blogs.alternet.org/floridadynamo/">Florida Dynamo</a> | June 7, 2010</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>

LET US TALK ABOUT ISRAEL

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S CONTINUING ROLE IN HELPING TO DESTROY ISRAEL: DEJUDAIZATION OF JERUSALEM In a recent speech at New York University in Febr...

LET US TALK ABOUT ISRAEL

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S CONTINUING ROLE IN HELPING TO DESTROY ISRAEL: DEJUDAIZATION OF JERUSALEM In a recent speech at New York University in Febr...

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Refuting Islamophobia Under Hutaree's Un-Chriistian Shadow

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxCXsUryatB954IO_eEpe5WQ4NyCIdK_5eZ4avaofrd9e_s93gxDQYtqSSj0JzrSRs-jHyYCO2Tq5RBzlpATuZkBp3TeEmw278rCKJI8nGU_mTtzHm16Exk4TZ8_gle7Oc4NvUl9qqEAM/s1600/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAv4AAAAJ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="157" data-original-width="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxCXsUryatB954IO_eEpe5WQ4NyCIdK_5eZ4avaofrd9e_s93gxDQYtqSSj0JzrSRs-jHyYCO2Tq5RBzlpATuZkBp3TeEmw278rCKJI8nGU_mTtzHm16Exk4TZ8_gle7Oc4NvUl9qqEAM/s1600/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAv4AAAAJ.jpg" /></a></div><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zahra-khan"><span style="font-size: large;">Zahra Khan</span></a><br /><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=zahra-khan" rel="nofollow"><i>Get Zahra Khan's RSS Feed</i></a><br /><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;">On the same day as anti-Islamic rhetoric intensified in the wake of a train blast by terrorists in Russia, the FBI was unraveling a scheme by another terrorist group, the Hutaree, as its members plotted to kill several US police officers in Michigan. The Hutaree's name, literally translating to "Christian warrior," sent shockwaves through mainstream Christians who preferred to denounce the group as a "fringe anti-government cult" instead of using the cringing "Christian terrorist" label, which by word connotation maligns the image of the entire faith. </div><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="more"></a><br /><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;">This reaction is reminiscent of numerous Muslim objections to negative media labels of Islam. However, the Muslim voice is constantly muffled in the public forum. Why? Although Islam is a religion, not a race, the majority of the six million modern-day adherents in the US are primarily ethnic persons. They form a vulnerable racial minority before a Caucasian-controlled media that has a carte blanche to insult the religion's ancient name, "Islam," by using it as a root word within the modern media-coined "Islamist" label for cult militant activities.<br /><br /></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;">This spurious terminology confuses a public that by word association commingles the values of the cult with the mainstream. The impact of identifying each terrorist by his faith is equivalent to hypothetical headlines stating, "Caucasian bank robber, member of church XYZ, shoots Mr. X"; or "In US, one woman every 12 minutes suffers domestic violence by Christian man"; or, "Jewish Madoff swindles countrymen"; or "Black Christian gang member kills five." These bigoted headlines would correctly create an outrage for implying that the disclosure of racial and religious information is relevant to a criminal action.<br /><br /></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;">Yet for mainstream US Muslims, these types of racist headlines are a daily reality. The media's use of terminology like "Islamic extremists" and "Muslim terrorists" is scripted to stereotype general Muslims under the umbrella of cult activists. This discriminatory reporting is most glaring when juxtaposed with coverage of non-Muslim-related acts of terrorism.<br /><br /></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;">So, recently, when in a single horrific instance an ethnic US army officer, Major Hasan, killed several of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, the media quickly explored his Muslim roots. In contrast, when it came to reporting on several Christian soldiers, like Sgt. John Russell, who shot uniformed comrades, the media -- correctly -- not only never used the word "Christian" but also attempted to explore those actions under the human backdrop of "post-traumatic stress disorder" rather than religious background.<br /><br /></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;">Comparable to the outlawed "Muslim Taliban," the KKK is a legalized US organization, which, despite its deadly history of religion-justified violence, is identified as a "white supremacist" group rather than a "Christian terrorist" group. Analogous to the 9/11 scenario, a February suicide plane attack on an IRS building by an infuriated anti-government protester, Joseph Stack, is called "crazy" but not a "Christian terrorist act" on US soil. Muslims who become unruly in expressing political dissent earn a "terrorist" status, unlike the merely "uncivil" label for the perpetrators of last week's hate-fest against pro-health care bill senators, who were hounded by death threats and vandalism.<br /><br /></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;">The local nature of the Hutaree reminds me of another domestic terrorist act, the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, fifteen years earlier. I lived in an educated East coast community, working amongst some of the elite business professionals of the region. I mistakenly hoped for tolerance in this "intelligent" society. Yet within the first half-hour of the Oklahoma crisis, my angry and emotional supervisor menacingly addressed me in the presence of our lead manager, "Hey, you know what! We are going to find those terrorists, and when we do, we will bomb that country to shreds. Just you wait." The next week the hunt was on for a local white man, Timothy McVeigh, who, despite being hated by the public, has never been labeled a "Christian terrorist."<br /><br /></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;">In recent years, I have been residing in a Bible Belt state, where amongst Christian outreach and kindness are reminders of Christian insularity, a behavior that rejects diversity. Emblazoned in my memory is a particular time when my daughter was six. I had chuckled as she asked during the Christmas season, "Mommy, everyone at school keeps saying Jesus Crises, Jesus Crises. What is wrong with him, Mommy? Is he in trouble?" As believers in Jesus, I had previously taught her the Muslim reverence for the Islamic concept of Prophet Jesus but had never used the term "Jesus Christ." Once the mystery was clarified to her, my elated child returned to school, sharing with her classmates the fact that she now understood what they meant by "Jesus Christ!"<br /><br /></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;">A few days later, I was not laughing as she sobbed, recounting how a few kids at recess said that their "parents don't want them to play with someone who did not know who Jesus Christ was." Whether in the "cosmopolitan" East coast or the "God-loving" South, this insular mentality exhibited at work, at school, and in homes becomes the foundation for bias, building walls amongst our fellow citizens by eventually blinding opportunities to defend one another's civil liberties. The media capitalizes on this public complacency, receiving a carte blanche to insult certain groups without impunity.<br /><br /></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: georgia; text-align: justify;">Yet the emotional damage suffered by Muslim families, harassed at work and school by a public whose media-enabled prejudices foster a culture of broad-brush hate, is devastating. So this week I was able to relate to my Christian neighbors, who, because of the Hutaree saga, all of a sudden felt painfully attacked and defensive of a religion that helps them to lead more fulfilling and loving lives. Upstanding Christians made the correct media appeal to refrain from using the "Christian terrorist" label to refer to a fringe element that is actually "un-Christian." These same individuals should better appreciate the emotional scars inflicted by the name-calling media upon the mainstream American-Muslim community, in the spirit of the Christian golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself." It's time to work together to end Islamophobia, too.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="clear full" style="text-align: justify;"></div>

Refuting Islamophobia Under Hutaree's Un-Chriistian Shadow

Zahra Khan Get Zahra Khan's RSS Feed On the same day as anti-Islamic rhetoric intensified in the wake of a train blast by terrorists ...

Refuting Islamophobia Under Hutaree's Un-Chriistian Shadow

Zahra Khan Get Zahra Khan's RSS Feed On the same day as anti-Islamic rhetoric intensified in the wake of a train blast by terrorists ...

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Bin Laden and His CIA Connections Come Home To Roost

<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yaXfULMutWGomnNf716kXdyzjixKsRW7DimZ2F3YEF-kH2n0evBr7lbpbx3av9-MWzF3jerX_5yRYiIFWe7ZWq5cDktb829KptcexYsoP26oJ3z-vyGklVzcV4RttaWUQWJ5OnsbVAY/s1600/5v838k.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: -1em; padding-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yaXfULMutWGomnNf716kXdyzjixKsRW7DimZ2F3YEF-kH2n0evBr7lbpbx3av9-MWzF3jerX_5yRYiIFWe7ZWq5cDktb829KptcexYsoP26oJ3z-vyGklVzcV4RttaWUQWJ5OnsbVAY/s1600/5v838k.jpg" /></a></div><b>BIN LADEN & HIS CIA CONNECTIONS COME HOME TO ROOST</b><br /><b><br /></b>[Note that the date on this story is August 1998, by MSNBC's International Editor] Bin Laden comes home to roost His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful <u>story By <a href="http://msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1" target="_blank">Michael Moran MSNBC</a></u><br /><br /><br />NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 1998 - At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.<br /><br />BEFORE YOU CLICK on my face and call me naive, let me concede some points. Yes, the West needed Josef Stalin to defeat Hitler. Yes, there were times during the Cold War when supporting one villain (Cambodia's Lon Nol, for instance) would have been better than the alternative (Pol Pot). So yes, there are times when any nation must hold its nose and shake hands with the devil for the long-term good of the planet.<br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="more"></a><br />But just as surely, there are times when the United States, faced with such moral dilemmas, should have resisted the temptation to act. Arming a multi- national coalition of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan during the 1980s - well after the destruction of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 - was one of those times.<br /><br />BIN LADEN'S BEGINNINGS<br />As anyone who has bothered to read this far certainly knows by now, bin Laden is the heir to Saudi construction fortune who, at least since the early 1990s, has used that money to finance countless attacks on U.S. interests and those of its Arab allies around the world.<br /><br />Osama bin Laden's network<br />As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow's invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.<br /><br />What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation.<br /><br />By no means was Osama bin Laden the leader of Afghanistan's mujahedeen. His money gave him undue prominence in the Afghan struggle, but the vast majority of those who fought and died for Afghanistan's freedom - like the Taliban regime that now holds sway over most of that tortured nation - were Afghan nationals.<br /><br />Yet the CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to "read" than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the "reliable" partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.<br /><br />WHAT'S 'INTELLIGENT' ABOUT THIS?<br />Though he has come to represent all that went wrong with the CIA's reckless strategy there, by the end of the Afghan war in 1989, bin Laden was still viewed by the agency as something of a dilettante - a rich Saudi boy gone to war and welcomed home by the Saudi monarchy he so hated as something of a hero.<br /><br />America strikes back<br />In fact, while he returned to his family's construction business, bin Laden had split from the relatively conventional MAK in 1988 and established a new group, al-Qaida, that included many of the more extreme MAK members he had met in Afghanistan.<br /><br />Most of these Afghan vets, or Afghanis, as the Arabs who fought there became known, turned up later behind violent Islamic movements around the world. Among them: the GIA in Algeria, thought responsible for the massacres of tens of thousands of civilians; Egypt's Gamat Ismalia, which has massacred western tourists repeatedly in recent years; Saudi Arabia Shiite militants, responsible for the Khobar Towers and Riyadh bombings of 1996.<br /><br />Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. "It was worth it," he said. "Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union," he said.<br /><br />HINDSIGHT OR TUNNEL VISION<br />It should be pointed out that the evidence of bin Laden's connection to these activities is mostly classified, though its hard to imagine the CIA rushing to take credit for a Frankenstein's monster like this.<br /><br />It is also worth acknowledging that it is easier now to oppose the CIA's Afghan adventures than it was when Hatch and company made them in the mid-1980s. After all, in 1998 we now know that far larger elements than Afghanistan were corroding the communist party's grip on power in Moscow.<br /><br />Even Hatch can't be blamed completely. The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify its "mission," had conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy director William Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological capabilities in its annual "Soviet Military Power" report right up to 1990.<br /><br />Given that context, a decision was made to provide America's potential enemies with the arms, money - and most importantly - the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower.<br /><br />That decision is coming home to roost.<br />[Michael Moran is MSNBC's International Editor]<br />Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space<br />PO Box 90083<br />Gainesville, FL. 32607<br />(352) 337-9274<br /><a href="http://www.space4peace.org/">http://www.space4peace.org</a><br />globalnet@mindspring.com </div>

Bin Laden and His CIA Connections Come Home To Roost

BIN LADEN & HIS CIA CONNECTIONS COME HOME TO ROOST [Note that the date on this story is August 1998, by MSNBC's International Edito...

Bin Laden and His CIA Connections Come Home To Roost

BIN LADEN & HIS CIA CONNECTIONS COME HOME TO ROOST [Note that the date on this story is August 1998, by MSNBC's International Edito...

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