Global analysts anticipate fiercer, broader Jihad war & infiltration under prospect of Obama presidency

The prospects for an Obama presidency (blogs the Daily Mail's, Don Surber) has international newspaper columnists worried.

Add Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of the Australian, to the list of members of the foreign press who worry about a President Obama.

In a column in the Australian, “This is no time for a celebrity in the Oval Office,” Sheridan reasoned that far from calming the Middle East, a President Obama might trigger a a new Middle East war.

Sheridan joins Gerard Baker of the Times of London and Gabor Steingart of Der Spiegel in warning Americans that this is not Amateur Hour when it comes to foreign policy.

The civilized world looks to America for leadership and intestinal fortitude when it comes to standing up to evil — not fealty and Kumbaya when dealing with tyranny in the world. Heed the warning.

Blogger and law-school professor Ann Althouse dissects Obama's rhetorical slip-dance around debate challenger, Tim Russert's, challenging him to reject the support of black-supremacist clergy, like Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, in "Obama, Farrakhan, and how Hillary Clinton took the opening and then squandered it. "

CLINTON: "No. I'm just saying that you asked specifically if he would reject it.
And there's a difference between denouncing and rejecting." ...

OBAMA: "Tim, I have to say I don't see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. "
He doesn't miss the opportunities. He just drove in the knife, yet it sounded lighthearted and funny. 

"There's no formal offer of help from Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it. But if the word "reject" Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word "denounce," then I'm happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce." 

This is the part everyone notices. It's hilarious. We love him. And she now seems ridiculous. Come back up for air, Hillary! Fight it! He gave you an opening! Point out where he failed.

CLINTON: "Good. Good. "

Excellent. Astounding! Hillary Clinton does not have the instinct for blood. She either gave up or she lacks the chops to keep up with him. 

(APPLAUSE) Ah, see? They like you when you concede to him. Hopeless.

DemoCast-contributor, the London-based rabbinic scholar, Jeff Berger, reccommended this Wall St. Journal piece, "The Sderot Calculus." It exposes the world's hypocrisy against Israel's defending itself from the almost 3-years 'un-occupied' Palestinian autonomy in Gaza. How would a President Barack Hussein Obama's executive administration deter Islamist imperialism from Palestine to reclaim Jerusalem from inspiring global Jihad-questers?

But technology addresses neither the Islamic fanaticism that animates Hamas nor the moral torpor of Western policy makers and commentators who, on balance, find more to blame in Israel's behavior than in Hamas's. Nor, too, would an Iron Dome or the Phalanx absolve the Israeli government from the necessity of
punishing those who seek its destruction. Prudence is an important consideration
of statesmanship, but self-respect is vital. And no self-respecting nation can
allow the situation in Sderot to continue much longer, a point it is in every
civilized country's interest to understand.

On March 9, 1916, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa attacked the border town of Columbus, N.M., killing 18 Americans.

President Woodrow Wilson ordered Gen. John J. Pershing and 10,000 soldiers into Mexico for nearly a year to hunt Villa down, in what was explicitly called a "punitive expedition." Pershing never found Villa, making the effort something of a failure. 

Then again, Villa's raid would be the last significant foreign attack on continental U.S. soil for 85 years, six months and two days.

Finally, the Pallywood/al-Durah Affair trial against Philippe Karsenty was reported yesterday with a live audiocast from Prof. Richard Landes from outside the courtroom. Check it out on Joo-Tube.com, The Jews' News.

Iran just months from having nukes: Israel

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he believes that there are no more than a few months before Iran develops a nuclear weapons capacity.

Speaking on his way to Tokyo for a state visit, Mr Olmert told reporters that Iran is putting substantial energy into developing what he called a "non-conventional" capacity.

He added that it would still be possible to stop them.

(Source ABC News, Australia)

But Pres. Bush is prioritizing a chance at a Republican election victory as more important than preserving the continuation of the human race. Does he care that his legacy will go down as facilitator of 'the nuclear holocaust that didn't have to happen?' Or is he as apocalyptic as Ahmadinejad, so it won't matter?

How ethical Germans acquiesced to genocide against Jews

Laurence Rees, writer/producer of "Auschwitz : Inside the Nazi State," (aired on PBS & BBC) explains why this series is important:

"Auschwitz is a physical place-the site of the single largest mass murder in the history of humanity. More people died on that one single spot than the British and the Americans lost militarily in the course of the entire war. It is unique. Coming up now to the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the camp, we're able to draw on all of the new information that's come out of the East: the plans of Auschwitz that have been discovered and all the new research that's been done in the academic world relating to Auschwitz and its role in the whole Nazi scheme.

What greater purpose can history have than to try and lead people toward a possible understanding of how this crime could ever have happened? Without an understanding of how it happened, you can't begin to look around the world and think why it might happen again."

Watch these 2 excerpts and try to understand the mechanized extermination of an entire people. More available on PBS website.

Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism Spawns New Coalition Led by Irwin Cotler & UK MP's

Maqsood Ahmed, senior adviser on Muslim communities at the British Department for Communities and Local Government, told the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism on Sunday, "Islam and the Koran have been politicized" by extremists and "there's a lack of capacity in the Muslim community [in Britain ]" to hear liberal, tolerant Muslims.

The inability to hear the voices of tolerant Islam "isn't someone else's problem. It's a problem of the Muslim community," Ahmed, one of Britain 's most senior interfaith officials, told the gathering at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.

It is important not to let radicals use the accusation of "Islamophobia" to hide their prejudice, Ahmed continued, but it was also important "to look at how interfaith can prevent Islamophobia."

One of the initiators of a London conference of imams and rabbis in 2006, Ahmed noted that "in Britain, there is a need for mutual partnership between the Jewish and Muslim communities, and this could be facilitated by the infrastructure established by the majority religion, the Church of England."

British MP Jonathan Mann, overseer of the UK Report on Antisemitism also participated in this international conference.

Hear him speak in Arutz Sheva's coverage of this story from 2:30 - 5:30 into their report.

The Forum heard the announcement of the launch of a new international coalition of governments and NGOs intended to combat anti-Semitism and a new scholarly organization intended to advance the study of the "oldest hatred."

The International Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism (ICCA) was announced Sunday evening by Canadian MP Irwin Cotler and British MP Jon Mann. The organization will fill what many anti-racism activists see as a gap in international efforts to coordinate the many organizations and government initiatives worldwide dealing with anti-Semitism to bring "a critical mass of inquiry and advocacy" to the issue worldwide, according to Cotler.

"We're witnessing a new, global, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism without parallel or precedent since World War II," said Cotler of the initiative. "It is not only essential to sound the alarm, but it's time to act."

The ICCA will deal with two forms of anti-Semitism, Cotler told The Jerusalem Post. The "most benign form" is the escalation of anti-Semitic hate crimes in Europe and elsewhere, Holocaust denial, the singling out of Israel and boycotts of Jews and Israeli nationals. Anti-Semitism's "lethal form," he continued, "is state-sanctioned incitement to genocide, with its epicenter in Ahmadinejad's Iran and including terrorist movements which have genocide as their objective, anti-Semitism as their ideology and terrorism as their instrument."

"We must now concern ourselves specifically with anti-Semitic terrorism, in which Jews are targeted as Jews," Cotler added.

In announcing the new initiative with Cotler, Mann called for the Global Forum to be held in London next year.

Of combating anti-Semitism, Mann said: "The question for everyone here and for elected politicians is this: 'If not me, then who? If not now, then when?' The question is not 'what would I have done?' The question is 'what will I do?'" (Source: The Jerusalem Post).

Study: 3 out of every 4 U.S. mosques preach anti-West extremism

'Secret survey exposes widespread radicalism'- reported in WorldNetDaily, February 23

"An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism, WND has learned.

The Mapping Sharia in America Project, sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, has trained former counterintelligence and counterterrorism agents from the FBI, CIA and U.S. military, who are skilled in Arabic and Urdu, to conduct undercover reconnaissance at some 2,300 mosques and Islamic centers and schools across the country.

"So far of 100 mapped, 75 should be on a watchlist," an official familiar with the project said.
Many of the Islamic centers are operating under the auspices of the Saudi Arabian government and U.S. front groups for the radical Muslim Brotherhood based in Egypt.

Frank Gaffney, a former Pentagon official who runs the Center for Security Policy, says the results of the survey have not yet been published. But he confirmed that "the vast majority" are inciting insurrection and jihad through sermons by Saudi-trained imams and anti-Western literature, videos and textbooks." Please read it all.

Jihad Watch's Robert Spencer comments: "It isn't as if we haven't seen this coming. For years now I have pointed out the shallowness and flimsiness of condemnations of terror by American Islamic groups, and noted that American mosques and schools have no programs to teach against the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism, as one might have expected them to institute after 9/11 if they really stood where they claimed they stood.

And in 1999, the Naqshbandi Sufi Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani testified before a State Department open forum that eighty percent of American mosques had extremist leadership. And then there was the January 2005 report from the Center for Religious Freedom, "Saudi publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques" (pdf here).

5th Jerusalem Conference Presentations- Multimedia

Israel National Radio offers audio to listen to the 5th Jerusalem Conference speakers in their own voices.

Yuval Steinitz & US Generals; Amb. Danny Ayalon; Morton Klein; Natan Sharansky;
Rabbi Shalom Gold; Rabbi Yehuda Glick; Tikva Org from Russia; Yishai Fleisher
Yossi BenAharon; Robert Rechnitz; Prof. Richard Landes; Sen. Sam Brownback; Dr. Bernard Lewis, Daniel Seaman; Rachel Ehrenfeld; Tzafrir Ronen; MK Uzi Landau; IDT- Bortz and Schwell;
Isi Liebler; Anne Bayefsky; Prof. Manfred Gerstenfeld; Rabbi Abraham Cooper;
Gerald Steinberg; Sara Brownstein; Prof. Robert Wistrich; Mina Fenton; Jim Vineyard; Charles Jacobs; Melanie Phillips.

Jihad is a cultural power-quest driven by Arab oil-money. Israel/Palestine won't resolve it.

Here, in a new DemoCast-filmed exclusive, Dr. Tawfik Hamid rectifies the misconception that global Jihadist imperialism is motivated by the Israel/Palestine conflict. Contrary to conventional presumption, he explains that the imperialist Jihad (and associated, terror-intimidation) is actually fueled by an Arab oil-funded, Islamist cultural network of mosques, schools, clergy. It is this religious dogma, he claims, which drives hatred and domination of non-Muslims, particularly Jewish people and the Jewish state.



Democracy Broadcasting News was today awarded the internet-wide recognition, "Blog of the Day." Many thanks to all our loyal, generous supporters!

Video Simulcast of Jerusalem Conference in Israel

Benjamin Netanyahu addresses global and local defense strategies against militant Islamism, starting with deferring the potential establishment of a Jihadist, Palestinian state. He warns that carving-up Jerusalem to permit Palestinian authority would create 'a Mecca for all the world's terrorists.'

The mainstream media has avoided mention of this important conference. Even the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz are lacking. DemoCast salutes Israel National News with full video coverage of the Jerusalem Conference, including an interview with Boston University Prof. Richard Landes about news media distortion on Israel vs Palestine reporting. Click title above for list of all videos.

'We Are at War'

Melanie Phillips notes how Professor Gwyn Prins, one of the authors of the RUSI report
(RUSI is the leading forum in the UK for national and international Defence and Security) referencing the report on BBC Radio observed that 'we are at war', although we are behaving as if we are in peacetime. As the report asks:

Is there any longer a clear distinction between being at war and not being at war? A declaration of war is almost inconceivable today, and yet both our defence and security services are in action against active forces, abroad and at home, at this moment.

The resulting confusion and unease, the report suggests, has produced

uneasy similarities with the years just before the First World War.

Too many in that establishment cannot get their heads round the fact that, while what we are up against is not war as conventionally understood, ie aggression between states, it is much more than terrorism (not to mention ‘crime’ as the government would have it) because of the strategic goals, which are the overthrow of the west. Partly because the establishment persists in thinking that as this is such a preposterous proposition (how can people stuck in the 7th century possibly ever overthrow the most powerful civilisation in the history of the planet? Too ridiculous for words, dear boy!) it could never happen and therefore should not be taken seriously, and partly because that establishment is so terrified by the implications of a religious war of cultural conquest that it takes refuge in a myriad different fatuous other explanations for what is happening.

Star Jon Voight names Frank Gaffney, "a 'National Treasure' We Must Protect and Abide By"

Filmed following Mr. Frank Gaffney's (President of the Center for Security Policy and author of "War Footing") presentation at Pepperdine University. DemoCast.TV exclusive.

Saudi Prince Bandar Blackmailed British Enquiry with 'Another 7/7'

From The Guardian: Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

Read Hugh Fitzgerald's superb contextual analysis in JihadWatch.

This is Prince Bandar, smiling Prince Bandar. The one with the estate in Virginia. The one with the vast chalet in Aspen, where he had the top of an entire mountain removed so as to improve his view. The one who has that Plantagenet hunting-lodge outside London. The one who became the longest-serving diplomat in Washington, who entertained so lavishly all of his many good and great friends of both parties. The one who defended the massive thievery of the Al-Saud with his usual actor's routine, as he served the port and distributed the box of cigars, that "after all, all governments are corrupt and it is only a matter of degree" -- and how, after all, could the Americans present, all of them recognizing the corruption in their own government, and of which some of them were no doubt more than observers, disagree?

Prince Bandar, the Smiler With the Knyf Under the Cloke, the one who was allowed in, or rather allowed himself in, to secret policy-planning sessions just before the war in Iraq. Prince Bandar, the one who was a regular tennis partner of Colin Powell, to whose wife he gave a jaguar, the very same one she had once possessed, and had let drop in conversation how much she missed it. Prince Bandar –whom did he not touch? Was there a President, or a Secretary of State, or a National Security Advisor, or members of key Congressional committees, or generals preparing arms sales of all kind, from AWACS back in 1980 to the most advanced weaponry now, or people in the Energy Department who never managed to come up with even the semblance of an intelligent energy policy, who never met Prince Bandar?

After all, those Energy Department officials never came up with taxes on gasoline of the kind needed, and never suggested any subsidies to trains and rebuilding of track by the Federal government, no subsidies to urban mass transit, no subsidies to solar energy, as the Germans finally did, no intelligent campaign to recognize the need for nuclear plants that required government planning, as the French did, no nothing at all, save measures largely ineffective, late, and in some cases, counter-productive.

They must all be very proud of themselves, all the people in the American government who for so long said such nice things about Saudi Arabia, trusted Saudi Arabia, "our staunch ally," to do the right thing. They must be very proud of all they have managed to do, and not to do, since 1973, when the massive price rises came, a period during which the Muslim nations of OPEC (that is, almost all of OPEC) were the recipients of the largest transfer of wealth in human history, some ten trillion dollars -- with the results we all see.

They must be very proud to have learned that Saudi Arabia has spent nearly $100 billion in the last years to pay for mosques, madrasas, campaigns of Da'wa, and small armies of propagandists all over the Western world, to make sure that Saudi Arabia, with its blend of Islamic fanaticism and ruling-class decadence and smiling malevolence toward Infidels, always with just enough of an appearance (and some gravelly-voiced assurances that seem so...so reasonable...if you are already inclined to be impressed by friendly billionaires, bearing or likely to bear gifts), could always satisfy the doubts of the slightly-doubting.

And at the center of it all, in Washington, there was one man. Prince Bandar.

Hate-crime assaults in UK: 4-times greater against Jews than Muslims - sets British-record

Britain's Community Security Trust’s annual Anti-Semitic Incidents Report reveals 2007 saw a record 114 violent assaults against Jewish people in Britain, the highest number since CST began its records in 1984.

In at least six cases, the victims required hospital treatment. And in the one case classed as involving extreme violence, defined as the victims life was endangered, an elderly rabbi in the north east of England was walking along a pavement when a car driver mounted the pavement at speed, knocked him over, then reversed and tried to run him over again. The rabbi required hospital treatment for injuries to his head, arms and legs. The driver of the car has so far not been identified.

The Telegraph newspaper details here that Muslim claims of rampant Islamophobia in Britain are exaggerated. Jewish people are four times more likely to be attacked because of their religion than Muslims, according to figures released by police.

Full Breakdown of anti-Semitic incidents in 2007:
114 Physical Assaults; 62 Damage & Desecrations of Jewish Property; 24 Violent Threats; 19 incidents of mass-produced, anti-Semitic literature; 328 incidents reported of Abusive Behaviour.

'Saudi Arabia (not Palestine) truly stokes Islamist imperialism against the West!'- whistleblower Dr. Tawfik Hamid, in "The Roots of Jihad"

Dr. Tawfik Hamid explains that Jihadism directly emanates from petro-Islam, i.e., the increase of wealth of Saudi Arabia and their promotion of Wahabism and Salafism (from the late 1970's), and not the existence of Israel, established in 1948 without inspiring a global Jihad phenomenon.

When he was in medical school, Dr. Hamid was himself an early participant in an Egyptian terrorist group, along with Dr. Zawaheri, now the #2 man in Al Qaeda. Here he is interviewed on the British show, "The Critic's Corner" about his book, "The Roots of Jihad."



Born in Egypt to a secular Muslim family, Tawfik Hamid joined the extremist Islamic group Jamma'a Islameia, when he was a student in medical school. In his studies he was learning to heal, but in his thoughts, as he says, he "dreamed to die for Allah and to share in terrorist acts." His colleague in these formative days of the terror movement was Dr. Al Zawaheri, then an acquaintance with whom Tawfik used to pray, and now the number 2 person of Al Qaeda.

Eventually Dr. Hamid questioned the hatred and impulses to violence that participation in extremist Islam was fomenting within him. He became a physician, specializing now in medical education, and also a scholar of Islamic texts. When he began to preach in Mosques to promote a message of peace instead of violence and hatred, however, he himself became a target of the Islamic extremists who had been his friends. They threatened his life, forcing him and his family to flee Egypt, and then Saudi Arabia. As Dr. Hamid says "The powers of darkness were overwhelming and I was forced to emigrate with my family to the West seeking freedom."

Dr. Hamid appears at Pepperdine University on February 13th.

Why Sharia Law Isn't Simply 'Kosher' for the West

"Britain is Being Islamised by Stealth," claims Melanie Phillips, being interviewed by CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck. British political commentator, Melanie Phillips, condemned the Archbishop of Canterbury's endorsement of authorizing enforcement of non-standardized, decentralized Sharia in Britain. Watch her video:



Christopher Hitchens used Archbishop Rowan Williams sanctioning of Sharia as justifying his ouster. From Slate:

"In the midst of this dismal verbiage and euphemism, the plain statement—"There's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said"—still stands out like a diamond in a dunghill. It stands out precisely because it is said simply, and because its essential grandeur is intelligible to everybody. Its principles ought to be just as intelligible and accessible to those who don't yet speak English, in just the same way as the great Lord Mansfield once ruled that, wherever someone might have been born, and whatever he had been through, he could not be subject to slavery once he had set foot on English soil. Simple enough?"

Sharia Law is not equivalent to Jewish or Hindu law in the West
Hugh Fitzgerald elucidates in Jihad Watch:

The difference between the imposition of any part of the Shari'a and whatever a very limited role is allotted to Jewish (or possibly Hindu) family law, is that there is no real challenge, by the latter, to the supremacy of English law. There is no long-term program to use whatever small place has been allowed for there to be some kind of use of Jewish (or Hindu?) family law, in very limited ways, and ONLY when those ways do not contradict English law, to undercut the supremacy of the law of the English state. There is no program to undo the legal and political institutions of the English state.

The situation is quite different from Islam. The pretense, that the uninformed and terminally naive Archbishop of Canterbury has fallen for, that Muslims "only" want this little concession, should be seen in light of the steady and inevitable Muslim desire to remove everything that stands in the way of the spread of Islam. Shari'a imposed on Muslims -- many of whom do not want it (see the example of Canada, where female Muslims led the fight against it) because their legal position under the Shari'a-supplied family law is far inferior to what it would be under the laws of any Infidel land -- in the supposedly limited area of family law may, and indeed does, contradict the law of the land in Great Britain. That is quite another matter. And so too is the fact that this is not a final demand, but merely an opening one. If granted, it will lead to more and more such demands -- demands that swell with each new victory, as a sense of triumphalism is at the heart of the matter. That sense must never be encouraged. It must always be discouraged and disappointed.

Christopher Hitchens elaborates on the importance of resisting Islamist imperialism in this essay published six months ago, "God-Fearing People: Why are we so scared of offending Muslims?"

... Not content with igniting copies of The Satanic Verses, Islamist lynch parties demanded the burning of its author as well. Many distinguished authors, Muslim and non-Muslim, are dead or in hiding because of the words they have put on pages concerning the unbelievable claims of Islam. And it is to appease such a spirit of persecution and intolerance that a student in New York City has been arrested for an expression, however vulgar, of an opinion.

This has to stop, and it has to stop right now. There can be no concession to sharia in the United States. When will we see someone detained, or even cautioned, for advocating the burning of books in the name of God? If the police are honestly interested in this sort of "hate crime," I can help them identify those who spent much of last year uttering physical threats against the republication in this country of some Danish cartoons. In default of impartial prosecution, we have to insist that Muslims take their chance of being upset, just as we who do not subscribe to their arrogant certainties are revolted every day by the hideous behavior of the parties of God.

It is often said that resistance to jihadism only increases the recruitment to it. For all I know, this commonplace observation could be true. But, if so, it must cut both ways. How about reminding the Islamists that, by their mad policy in Kashmir and elsewhere, they have made deadly enemies of a billion Indian Hindus? Is there no danger that the massacre of Iraqi and Lebanese Christians, or the threatened murder of all Jews, will cause an equal and opposite response? Most important of all, what will be said and done by those of us who take no side in filthy religious wars? The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant, or neutral, without inviting their own suicide. And the advocates and apologists of bigotry and censorship and suicide-assassination cannot be permitted to take shelter any longer under the umbrella of a pluralism that they openly seek to destroy.

Screenwriter of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ" Accuses Gibson of Perpetrating Deception and Fraud

(Los Angeles- Associated Press) A screenwriter has sued Mel Gibson and his production company, claiming he was misled by the actor-director into accepting a small payment for writing "The Passion of the Christ," and was refused extra money when the film became a blockbuster.

Benedict Fitzgerald claims that when he was asked to write a script about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, Gibson told him the movie would cost between $4 million to $7 million, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in Superior Court. Fitzgerald also alleged Gibson promised he wouldn't receive any money from the film and any profit would be distributed to people who worked on it.

Gibson stated he didn't want "money on the back of what he considered a personal gift to his (Roman Catholic) faith," the lawsuit said.

Fitzgerald, who shared screenwriting credits with Gibson, claimed he agreed to "a salary substantially less than what he would have taken had he known the true budget for the film," which the lawsuit claimed had an estimated budget of $25 million to $50 million. The 2004 movie went on to gross several hundred million dollars.The lawsuit doesn't specify how much Fitzgerald was paid.An after-hours call to a publicist for Gibson, 52, wasn't immediately returned.

The lawsuit claims fraud, breach of contract, unjust enrichment and seeks unspecified damages. It also names Gibson's Icon Productions LLC as a defendant.

Photo courtesy The Chief Source version 2.008

Related story from CNN.com Gibson: 'I am not an anti-Semite.' Actor in rehab after arrest on suspicion of DUI. Tuesday, August 1, 2006;

Actor Mel Gibson on Tuesday admitted making anti-Semitic remarks during his drunken driving arrest and appealed to the Jewish community to help him recover from his alcohol addiction.

The website TMZ reported that Gibson's alleged remarks included: "(Expletive) Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

The Anti-Defamation League, which combats anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred, issued a statement branding Gibson an anti-Semite.

"Mel Gibson's apology is unremorseful and insufficient. It's not a proper apology because it does not go to the essence of his bigotry and his anti-Semitism," said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman.

Gibson faced accusations of anti-Semitism during the publicity storm that surrounded his 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ." Foxman wrote that Gibson's "tirade finally reveals his true self" and shows his previous claims "that he is such a tolerant, loving person, were a sham."

Foxman added, "We would hope that Hollywood now would realize the bigot in their midst and that they will distance themselves from this anti-Semite."

Media bears responsibility for society (and vice versa) says father, Judea, on Daniel Pearl's 6th yahrtzeit

In this anniversary OpEd in the Wall St. Journal, Judea Pearl calls the press to uphold the standard of dignity that Danny died maintaining.

Who serves today as the moral compass of society, and, like the ancient prophets, risks his or her life by exposing corruption, institutional injustice, terrorism and fanaticism? The journalist.

The shocking element in Danny's murder was that he was killed, not for what he wrote or planned to write, but for what he represented -- America, modernity, openness, pluralism, curiosity, dialogue, fairness, objectivity, freedom of inquiry, truth and respect for all people. In short, each and every one of us was targeted in Karachi in January of 2002.

This new twist of killing journalists for what they represent has changed the course of journalism as well as the rest of society.

It was through Danny's face that people came to grasp the depth of cruelty and inhumanity into which this planet of ours has been allowed to sink in the past two decades. His murder proved that 9/11 was not an isolated event, and helped resurrect the age-old ideas of right and wrong, good and evil. Moral relativism died with Daniel Pearl in January 2002.

And unarmed journalists in regions of conflict became many times more vulnerable. They are no longer perceived as neutral, information-gathering agents, but rather as representing political or ideological entities. The press and media has indeed become more polarized and agenda-driven. Journalists today are pressured to serve the ideologies of those who pay their salaries or those who supply them with sources of information. CNN's admission, in 2003, that it concealed information about the Iraqi regime in order to keep its office in Baghdad is a perfect example of this pressure. In the recent Gaza chaos, Western news agencies have willingly reported Hamas propaganda stunts as truth.

One of the things that saddens me most is that the press and media have had an active, perhaps even major role in fermenting hate and inhumanity. It was not religious fanaticism alone.

This was first brought to my attention by the Pakistani Consul General who came to offer condolences at our home in California. When we spoke about the anti-Semitic element in Danny's murder she said: "What can you expect of these people who never saw a Jew in their lives and who have been exposed, day and night, to televised images of Israeli soldiers targeting and killing Palestinian children."

At the time, it was not clear whether she was trying to exonerate Pakistan from responsibility for Danny's murder, or to pass on the responsibility to European and Arab media for their persistent de-humanization of Jews, Americans and Israelis. The answer was unveiled in 2004, when a friend told me that photos of Muhammad Al Dura were used as background in the video tape of Danny's murder.

The Pakistani Consul was right. The media cannot be totally exonerated from responsibility for Daniel's murder, as well as for the "tsunami of hate" that has swept the world and continues to rise.

Surely they have an obligation to expose villainy and excess. This is what journalism is all about. But in a world infected with fanatics who run around with lit matches, journalists cannot simply pour gasoline into the street and pretend they bear no responsibility for the inevitable explosion.

Read original.

TV: "Blood & Tears" - The Arab-Israeli Conflict

Like an open wound that will not heal the Arab-Israeli conflict refuses to be resolved. Blood and Tears uncovers the truth beneath the hype and the headlines. Rosmarin and his team of Middle East experts have gone right to the source: the ministers and mullahs, the fanatics and peaceniks, the soldiers and terrorists, and the ordinary families battling extraordinary forces as they try to live a normal life.



Top officials from both sides are interviewed, from former Israeli Prime Ministers to senior Palestinian officials to the leaders of the militant extremist group Hamas. They have also interviewed experts, like renowned Mideast scholars Bernard Lewis, and the foremost Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi. Blood and Tears explores the origin of the confrontation itself, and challenges many of the most deep-rooted myths we all hold about this epicenter of human conflict.

Will murdered Jews (at the hands of ceaseless Islamic terrorists) serve as "A Light unto the Voting Nations?"

How will today's Jihadist terror against Israel motivate Americans to elect a different strategy to confront Islamist imperialism than Britain has?

Brits' "Newspeak" Rationalizes Failure to Understand Islamism; Stage-Set for Reversion

The ironic confluence of 4 items make this newsworthy:

1) Britain's Home Office issuing an Orwellian-Newspeak dictionary requiring police and other civil officials to self-censor all public references to Islam or Muslims when discussing political Islamist terror or the Iraq/Afghan War on Terror. Melanie Phillips remarks:

Talking about ‘shared values’ amounts to no more than meaningless platitudes if it is forbidden to talk about the ideology which seeks to supplant them. That ideology can only be defeated if its characteristics are talked about frankly, and that cannot be done if the entire subject is prohibited. Fanaticism cannot be fought if people refuse even to name what they are fighting.

This ‘new sophistication’ is simply all about giving in to terror and intimidation. It principal effect is to give Islamism in Britain a free pass and to systematically conceal from the British people what is happening to their country. For what it also does is to define the problem as ‘violent extremism’; but the threat is not from violence alone but from the religious extremism that seeks to Islamise Britain, and whose strategy is to use cultural creep as well as terrorism to achieve its ends.

2) This follows yesterday's Times of London's report that Scotland Yard apprehended a suspected al-Qaeda cell who arrived at London's Gatwick Airport with intent to detonate suicide attacks on the London Underground.

According to El Pais, the Spanish newspaper, a member of the Barcelona cell told
the Spanish civil police that it was planning attacks not just on Barcelona’s underground system but also against public transport in Britain and other
European countries.

The informant is said to have told police that pairs of suicide bombers planned to strap explosives to their bodies and blow themselves up on the rail and bus networks in Britain, France, Germany and Portugal.

Referring to the arrests of the Pakistanis at Gatwick, a senior British official said: “The intelligence from Spain was that there was to be another wave of attacks on the way to us after the attempted attacks in Barcelona. When it was followed up it led to this lot.”

Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP who last year helped to prepare a report on terror threats to crowded places, said: “This intelligence shows the breadth and span of international terrorism and anybody who thinks that the threat has either gone or is in abeyance is in cloud-cuckoo-land.”

3) A Palestinian homicide bombing in Israel's city of Dimona by the Abbas-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade & the PFLP (which infiltrated Israel from Gaza), which killed 3 and wounded 11 innocent civilians (and was celebrated by Palestinians by distributing candies and met with little public censure). This evidences the error in the West's $7 Billion plan to strengthen Palestinian leader, Abbas, because of his inability to fulfill the Palestinians' Road Map to Peace obligations to stop terror - a precondition for Israel granting them security/autonomy concessions.

4) All this on the eve of the US Presidential Primaries' Super Tuesday, which calls attention to the (lack of) progress that the West has made in:

(a) educating the public about the ideological motivations of political Islamists;

(b) our ability to distinguish the political Islamist movement from spiritual Islam; and

(c) the ability of the public and the Presidential candidates to confront and defeat this imperialist movement.

"In War against Islamism, We Must Listen to the Words of Our Enemies," American-Muslim physician M. Zuhdi Jasser examines the public's and the Candidates' understanding of political Islamism, and provides a checklist of questions to qualify the best candidate for defeating the imperialist ideology, including these questions:

"* International Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood are now conveniently condemning terrorism in order to mainstream themselves and fit into the Western construct of anti-terrorism. Is anti-terrorism enough? Shouldn’t anti-Islamism be a more defining litmus test for the organizations and networks we positively engage?

*Should we remain dangerously silent under the false guise of political correctness? Why would you not critically engage countries which enforce medieval laws against their populations in the name of Islam? Sudan tried to enforce medieval blasphemy laws against a British teacher. A Saudi court turned a rape victim into a criminal and an Afghani court tried a citizen for apostasy laws after he left Islam. At what point is it incumbent upon the President of the United States to set the stage for the contest of ideas between the west and our United Nations Declaration of Human rights and the Islamist world?

Never compromise the principle of freedom in the name of political expediency and fear of our enemies.

How can we speak about bringing liberty and freedom to the Muslim world when the Islamist mindset remains effectively unchallenged by mainstream media and politicians in our public arena? How can we liberate ideas we never engaged?

The core ideological conflict between Americanism and the militant Islamists remains inferred, rather than in front. It is time to bring it to the fore. It is time to expose Islamists – domestically and on foreign soil – who exploit our protections of religious freedom in exchange for the toxic advocacy of their own theocratic political agenda.

If the President will not lead and address these ideological chasms, one would have thought that the Presidential candidates vying for change would have been challenged to gain more clarity on them. Much to the contrary, they are even more evasive and dismissive of Islamism. "