Alas, a detailed reading reveals that this book is a highly ideologically driven political manifesto, with a glaring lack of attention both to details and to the broader context. In part, this perspective can be explained as the product of a postmodern/postcolonial deconstructionist approach to the social sciences. In this review, I will try to focus on several points that I believe point to three cardinal weaknesses of the book: the anti-Zionist/anti-Israeli agendas that taint its very foundations; a glaring misunderstanding and lack of intimate knowledge of details; and the exasperating "tunnel vision" that assumes that Zionism and the State of Israel exist in a vacuum...

Abu el-Haj's attempt to present a damning picture of Israeli archaeology backfires. Although archaeology in Israel has been misused for nationalist purposes during the twentieth century, this is now a thing of the past. In contemporary Israel, mainstream archaeology-and most of the rest of society-attaches little or no importance to the political and historical underpinnings of archaeological interpretation. If one looks at archaeological thought and interpretation in contemporary Israel, only marginal elements act in accordance or identify with the nonscientific agendas that she attempts to delineate.

Likewise, like many before her, Abu el-Haj shows that Israeli archaeologists were relative latecomers in the implementation of modern theory and methodology. Although this has changed in the last two decades (despite what she writes), the paramount reason behind this slow development is not a hidden colonial agenda but, rather, that Israeli archaeology was, to a large extent, an offspring of European classical archaeology.

Throughout the volume, in her discussions of the political undertones of various archaeological projects in Israel and the generalizations that she draws from this, her failure to note relevant and parallel phenomena in other societies is somewhat disconcerting. Not only is her lack of attention to the ongoing misuse of archaeological interpretation elsewhere in the Middle East quite surprising; the lack of reference to similar patterns in various Western and non-Western countries is inexplicable. This tunnel vision is most striking in the discussion of the use of bulldozers in Israeli excavations. In a book published in 2001, Abu el-Haj's failure even to mention the wanton destruction of antiquities on the Temple Mount/Haram esh-Sharif by the Muslims in Jerusalem is quite strange.

Throughout the book she repeatedly quotes anonymous archaeologists to support her contentions. Although it might be claimed that she does this to "protect" her sources, one wonders whether the real purpose is to protect the verifiability of these statements. To quote a tour guide's explanation as to how an excavation is run and subsequently interpreted is somewhat ludicrous from a scientific perspective (p. 214). At most, this indicates the low level of archaeological knowledge that this, and perhaps other, guides had acquired. At other points she gives ample space to quotations of the views of the most extremist groups in Israeli society (e.g., pp. 216-228, 266) without giving the rational or scientific opinions on the same topics sufficient representation.

Although Abu el-Haj scathingly attacks the state of method and theory in Israeli archaeology, her own understanding of archaeological method is inadequate. For example, her discussion of carbon 14 radiometric dating is simplistic, and her lack of comprehension of the most basic archaeological (and scientific) interpretative tool is glaring: it is not enough to have a hypothesis; one has to have supporting evidence to prove it-or at least the high probability of proof-before it can be accepted. In her discussion of the "Jewish Quarter" in Jerusalem, Abu el-Haj argues against the "standard" explanation (Roman destruction at Jerusalem in 70 C.E.); she prefers a ludicrous explanation, relating the archaeological evidence of wide-scale destruction in Jerusalem to internal disputes, that flies in the face of available evidence.

Abu el-Haj repeatedly reverts to a tactic more appropriate for television depictions of jury trials than in scholarly discourse. She has a tendency to bring up a topic that appears to support her thesis but to refrain from discussing it in detail (the "question withdrawn" syndrome). On pages 313-314, she quotes a discussion between a guide and a tourist in which the guide claimed that Jerusalem had been saved from Assyrian conquest in 701 B.C.E. through the judicious actions of the Judean king Hezekiah and the participant dissented, claiming that Hezekiah's actions resulted in the destruction of the neighboring Israelite kingdom. Although the tourist's objection would appear to undermine the guide's interpretation (Abu el-Haj ends the note by stating that the guide felt uneasy), this is a ludicrous claim, since the Israelite kingdom had been conquered twenty-one years earlier! Abu el-Haj seeks to undermine the "normative" narrative but in fact demonstrates the limited knowledge of her informants, as well as her own lack of relevant knowledge-or her willingness to "skim over" the "damning details."

Abu el-Haj's anti-Israeli ideology pervades the book. An outstanding example is her reference to "the indigenous Arab inhabitants (some of whom were Jews)" (p. 4). Such terminology simply denies the right of Jewish national selfdetermination. Coming from a "postcolonialist," this is surprising, but revealing. One cannot escape the conclusion that Abu el-Haj's problem is not the misuse of archaeology in the State of Israel but, rather, its very existence.

Perhaps the most astonishing part of the book is a discussion on the last page of the text (p. 281). Abu el-Haj describes and condones the attack, and subsequent ransacking, by a Palestinian mob on what is known as "Jacob's Tomb" in Nablus in 2001. Several people were killed as a result of this attack; the gleeful tone in which she describes this act of vandalism exemplifies how her political agenda completely overcame her duties as a social scientist.

This book is the result of faulty and ideologically motivated research. One can but wonder how the 1995 dissertation on which it is based was authorized at Duke University and how a respected publisher like the University of Chicago Press could have published such unsubstantiated work.

Question: "Are the only obstacles that prevent the organization and influence of the Muslim community obstacles related to its internal affairs?"

Dewidar: "Of course not. Many are interested in preventing our influence in society – first and foremost the Zionist lobby, which influences the media at present, so that we cannot spread our ideas and spotlight our leaders and our successful models. Even when a Muslim tries to work in the media, he has to contend with five million media employees who are controlled by the Jews. If he is a genius, and they are forced to employ him, he works behind the camera, not in front of it...

The bull's-eye on the divestment target was Caterpillar because its machinery has been used to clear a path for the separation barrier that protects Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers.

Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick said recently that Caterpillar is still on the target list, although no final action on divestment has been taken.

But Caterpillar also produced a financial windfall for the PCUSA during the year. The per-share value of Caterpillar stock rose from $77.98 on July 2, 2004, the date of the divestment vote, to $97.86 at the close of the New York Stock Exchange June 28.

That means the PCUSA's 37,100 shares have increased in value by $737,548 - from $2,893,058 to $3,630,606. The gain is 25.5 percent, five times the 5 percent gain of the Dow Jones Industrials.

Whatever the case, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is out one championship ring, and President Vladimir Putin of Russia has scooped up some very flashy bling.

At a meeting of American business executives and Putin on Saturday in Russia, according to Russian news reports, Kraft showed his 4.94-carat, diamond-encrusted 2005 Super Bowl ring to the Russian president, who, after trying it on, put it in his pocket and left.

It was unclear yesterday whether Kraft intended to give Putin the ring. It was just two weeks ago that he presented this year's championship baubles to Patriots players at his Brookline manse. A Patriots spokesman said yesterday that Kraft was still traveling overseas and could not be reached for comment.

While gifts to heads of state are customary, a token of this magnitude would be highly unusual because of its cost, one specialist said.

''That's sort of something that's outside the box," said Walter C. Carrington, Simmons College professor and a former US ambassador to Senegal and Nigeria. ''A personal thing, a piece of clothing or a ring like that, that is sort of unusual."

This year's ring, billed as the heaviest in Super Bowl history, is studded with 124 diamonds, including a marquise for each of the three Vince Lombardi trophies depicted on its face. Under Kraft's ownership, the Patriots have won three of the last four Super Bowls. Each year's ring, which the team helps design, has been more glitzy than the last. The team would not disclose the value of Kraft's 2005 ring, saying only that it is ''a lot more" than $15,000...

It was good to hear the commander-in-chief remind people that this is still the war against terror. Specifically, against Islamo-fascists who slaughtered 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001. Who spent the eight years before those atrocities murdering and promising to murder Americans — as their leader put it in 1998, all Americans, including civilians, anywhere in the world where they could be found.

It is not the war for democratization. It is not the war for stability. Democratization and stability are not unimportant. They are among a host of developments that could help defeat the enemy.

But they are not the primary goal of this war, which is to destroy the network of Islamic militants who declared war against the United States when they bombed the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, and finally jarred us into an appropriate response when they demolished that complex, struck the Pentagon, and killed 3000 of us on September 11, 2001.

That is why we are in Iraq...

"They tell you, the approach is not a balanced one," said [EU Parliamentary President Josep Borrell Fontelles]. "But our position is very well known. We have said, 'yes' to the state of Israel, 'yes' to the state of Palestine, both living within secure borders. And 'yes' to a viable Palestinian state with contiguous territories. Our position is very clear," he said.

The EU, which provides the Palestinian Authority with half of the $1 billion in European aid, is not an altruistic player in the Middle East, said Borrell.

With its growing Muslim population, Europe is finding that violence in the Middle East leads to unrest within its own borders, he said.

"The conflict in the Middle East is dangerous for us. We are not just here, as the good guy who says, please do not fight between you. We need this conflict to be finished because of its impact on life in Europe.

"As European society faces the problem of xenophobia, it can destabilize our society," said Borrell explaining that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fuels anti-Semitism, "Islamophobia," and anti-globalization feelings.

Borrell denied charges that Europe was making political overtures to Hamas, adding that Europe's attitude toward the organization had not changed.

I believe that we, along with most Presbyterians, long for the same outcome for the people of the region, which is a secure future for both Israelis and Palestinians within viable, internationally recognized borders, in which there is no justification or need for violence, one against the other. Or, as the Bible puts it, "…neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall all sit under their own fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid." (Micah 4:3-4)

At any rate, this serves to illustrate the quagmire of our policies toward the Middle East -- in which, as Christians, we appear to be endorsing violence.

Wary of offending European neighbors who enjoy a close but sometimes testy friendship with Britain, organizers decided to dispense with details such as who won and who lost. Instead of depicting the battle as a contest between countries, they assigned the fleets colors -- red and blue -- and left it up to the spectators to figure out which was which.

Nelson's great, great, great granddaughter called it a "pretty stupid" idea. [emph. mine. -Sol]

"I am sure the French and Spanish are adult enough to appreciate we did win that battle," said Anna Tribe, 75. "I am anti-political correctness. Very much against it. It makes fools of us." [indeed!]

The Battle of Trafalgar was one of the most spectacular naval successes of all times. Nelson routed Napoleon Bonaparte's larger French and Spanish fleet and ensured that Britain ruled the waves for more than a century. Though the battle cost Nelson his life, he didn't lose a single ship...

This is the first time Jews have been invited to take part in what was previously an Islamic-Christian conference held for the past two years in the Gulf Arab state.

Organizers said Egypt's Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, one of the Sunni Muslim world's most respected clerics, and Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, an outspoken Egyptian Sunni cleric, were boycotting the forum, which starts tomorrow in Doha.

"They said they would not attend the conference due to political reasons. ... Opposition is not to Judaism, it is a protest against Israeli aggression against the Palestinians," said Aisha al-Manai, head of the organizing committee...

The Supreme Court on Monday rendered two more hairsplitting, migraine-inducing decisions about when religious displays on public property do and do not violate the First Amendment protection against "establishment'' of religion.

In a case from Texas, where a Ten Commandments monument stands outside the state Capitol, the court, splintered six ways from Sunday, said: We find no constitutional violation. The second case came from Kentucky, where the Commandments displayed in several courthouses are surrounded by historical symbols and documents — e.g., copies of the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Star Spangled Banner — to comply with the "reindeer rule,'' more about which anon. On Monday the court recoiled from Kentucky's displays, saying, they are unconstitutionally motivated by a "predominately religious purpose.'' Not enough reindeer?

Never mind the court's minute reasoning about the finely tuned criteria it has spun over the years. Instead, consider — as the court should have done years ago, when it began policing religious displays — a few facts about the era in which the Establishment Clause was written.

In 1789, the First Amendment was drafted by the first Congress — after it had hired a chaplain. Although President Jefferson's religion was a watery deism, he regularly attended Christian worship services, often with the Marine band participating, in the hall of the House of Representatives. The House was used because of the shortage of suitable venues in the newly founded District of Columbia. Jefferson, who coined the metaphor "wall of separation'' about relations between church and state, also allowed the War Office and Treasury to be used for religious services that were open to the public. The Supreme Court chamber also was used for services...

Unlike many other Sunnis in Fallujah, Marwan had little love for Saddam's Sunni-led regime. Yet once the dictator fell, he turned against the Americans...

The IDF court also found al-Heib guilty of obstruction of justice and giving false testimony.

The incident took place in the Rafah refugee camp, where Hurndall, a student, was photographing the work of International Solidarity Movement activists. ISM members often place themselves between IDF troops and Palestinians in an effort to prevent military operations...

The move, presented as a message of solidarity with Palestinian Christians, immediately came under attack by Jewish groups, with some calling it ill timed and predicting a likely chill in Anglican-Jewish relations.

By voting to support the divestment measure, the Anglican Consultative Council, the church's most representative advisory group, recommended to its 38 provinces that they support a September 2004 report by the council's Peace and Justice Network. [Uh oh, there's that 'J' word again. - Sol]

That report, which condemns Israel's treatment of Palestinians, calls on the 75-million-member church to challenge and exert moral pressure on companies in its investment portfolio that support the occupation. The report's authors said the step should be considered only as a last resort, and the recommendations were strictly voluntary.

The council advised the provinces to "take appropriate action" regarding financial investments that bolster the occupation or that lead to "violence against innocent Israelis," through, for example, the acts of suicide bombers.

It is unclear how much weight the decision will carry. Last month, the Church of England's Ethical Investment Advisory Group opted not to withdraw a large investment in the Caterpillar Group and is unlikely to change its position. Caterpillar bulldozers have been used by the Israeli Army to raze Palestinian homes.

Before the vote, the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal, who helped lead the effort, talked about the occupation's effect on Palestinian Christians. He urged council members to support the resolution, saying it would send a strong message of disapproval to Israel.

Canon James Rosenthal, the council's communications director, said the remarks, and those by others, resonated with group members...

According to Riah Abu Asal, Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East, martyers receive eternal life: "Do not consider those that were killed for the sake of God as dead, but alive with their Lord".

Fasl Al-MaQal, Feb 6, 2003

"Greetings of appreciation to all martyrs that were killed on the Land of Palestine". These were the words used by Riah Abu Asal, the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East, in the opening of lecture in Ramallah two weeks ago.

Bishop Abu Asal added that all martyrs receive eternal life and they "live in the Kingdom of Heaven". He supported that statement by quoting the Koran verse: "Do not consider those that were killed for the sake of God as dead, but alive with their Lord".

Bishop Abu Asal was speaking about the Christian Arabs and their unique role through History within the Arab World. The lecture was given in the Arab Anglican Episcopalian Center in Ramallah. The crowd included several religious and community figures from the town.

...According to the Israeli doctor who attended Wafa at the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, she received blood transfusions during her treatment. "I told her, with a laugh, that now she has Jewish blood in her veins," he said, adding sadly that she had "seemed so nice - we got a lovely thank you letter from her family.''

Wafa had been sent on her mission by the Abu Rish Brigade, the small militant faction with links to Fatah. She did not, she said later, regret it, though she stressed that her decision had had nothing to do with her scarring. "My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she said. "Today I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one in which I was treated. But since lots of Arabs come to be treated there, I decided I would go to another, maybe the Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews …''

Asked whether she had considered the consequences of her planned attack, that it might have now precluded access to Israel for Palestinian patients who meant no harm and needed special medical treatment that could be achieved only here, she answered: "So what?" With a flat look in her eyes, she said: "They pay you the cost of the treatment, don't they?"

And what about babies? Would you have killed babies and children? she was asked. "Yes, even babies and children. You, too, kill our babies. Do you remember the Doura child?"...

On Monday, she was was caught at the Erez crossing from the Gaza Strip wearing explosives stitched to her underwear and admitted that her goal was to kill dozens of people at the hospital, including as many children as possible.

I conduct research at the hospital's Genetic Institute, and Soroka has become my home away from home. I have built warm and professional relations with my colleagues in the obstetrics and gynecology department and other units.

I make a point, whenever I'm at the hospital, of visiting Palestinian patients. I also schedule appointments for other Gaza residents, and even bring medication from Soroka to needy patients in the Strip.

I have nothing but praise for the doctors, nurses and other medical staff at Soroka Hospital. They show compassion, sympathy and kindness. I was therefore extremely shocked and upset to hear that Wafa Biss, from the Jabalya refugee camp, was wired with explosives to blow herself up at Soroka, a place where she had been treated with kindness and mercy...

Wafa was sent to kill the very people in Israel who are healing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and West Bank. What if Israeli hospitals now decide to bar Palestinians seeking treatment? How would those who sent Biss feel if their own relatives, in need of medical care in Israel, are refused treatment?

As for Biss herself, she should have been a messenger for peace among her people, and should have been bringing flowers and appreciation to the Soroka doctors for healing her burns. Instead she targeted the very people who treated her with such compassion.

Israeli hospitals extend humanitarian treatment to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and West Bank. These efforts continued when all other cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis came to a halt during the most recent intifada.

To plan an operation of this kind against a hospital is an act of evil. Children, women, patients, doctors and nurses were the target. Is this a reward for kindness? Is this an advertisement for Islam, a religion which respects and sanctifies human life? This is aggression and a violation of humanity.

What are we going to say if Israel now clamps down on Palestinian patients seeking medical treatment inside Israel? All of us know that we are suffering from restrictions and acts of collective punishment imposed by the Israelis. We now risk imposing additional suffering on Palestinians in need of medical care.

Soroka is a hospital that has opened its doors to treat Palestinians without discrimination, offering the best care available. I want to tell my friends and colleagues at Soroka that all the Gaza residents I have spoken to have expressed their condemnation of this this evil and brainless act. At a time when we badly need to build bridges of trust and tolerance, Soroka is the only door left open when other hospitals are closed to Gaza residents.

We should all denounce any attempts to attack hospitals and harm their patients. The Biss family members have, themselves, issued a statement condemning the use of their daughter.

I hope that despite this incident Soroka Hospital will continue to be an oasis of peace and coexistence. That is the correct message to defeat the enemies of peace.

The writer is an obstetrician and gynecologist from the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and works at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba.

The PA's official news service even interviewed Hawarah Mayor Mansour Dmaidi, who backed these ludicrous and incendiary statements.

It is not surprising that Abbas brazenly lied to Rice about PA-sponsored incitement against Israel. After all, he lied to her about everything else. Most importantly, Abbas told Rice that he is opposed to terrorism. And yet, Abbas fervently supports terrorism.

Abbas complained to Rice – as he complains to anyone who will listen – that Israel's actions to defend its citizens against terrorism make it impossible for him to fight terrorists. This is a logically unsupportable statement. If Abbas opposes terrorism, then he should support Israel's counterterrorist operations...

While the end-time scenarios offered by some evangelicals, are indeed disturbing for Jews – and many Christians – the hostility toward Israel encouraged by liberal Protestants poses a much greater near-term threat to Jews than anything the evangelicals espouse.

Despite repeated assertions that they have removed all traces of anti-Semitism from their theology, the leadership of mainline Protestant denominations in the US have helped breathe new life into the teachings of contempt for Jews in their indiscriminate support for Palestinian theologians such as Naim Ateek, a former Anglican canon who serves as president of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. Ateek is regarded as a "peacemaker" in the US even as he recycles the deicide charge against the Jews and directs the hostility it arouses against the Jewish state.

For example, in December 2000, Ateek wrote that Palestinian Christmas celebrations were "marred by the destructive powers of the modern-day "Herods" who are represented in the Israeli government."

In his 2001 Easter Message, Ateek wrote: "The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull." And in a February 2001 sermon, Ateek likened the Israeli occupation to the boulder sealing Christ's tomb.

With these three images, Ateek has figuratively blamed Israel for trying to kill the infant Jesus, crucifying Jesus the prophet and blocking the resurrection of Christ the Savior. The use of such images is not the language of peacemaking, but part of an inexcusable effort to breathe new life into Christian theological hostility toward Jews and focus its vile energy on the Jewish state...

To do so would be "conceding too much to the enemy," Bush said at a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari at the White House.

"This is an enemy that will be defeated."

Bush said the insurgents were trying to scare Iraqis and Americans into giving up their efforts.

"We are there to complete a mission, and it's an important mission," he said. "A democratic Iraq is in the interests of the United States, and it's in the interests of laying the foundation for peace."

Al-Jaafari also said now isn't the "time to fall back."

"We owe it to those who have made sacrifices to continue toward the goals they fought," he said. "I see from up close what's happening in Iraq, and I know we are making steady and substantial progress."...

"Why should we leave Iraq now when the basic conditions have not been met?" El Salvador's president, Tony Saca, said in an interview with The Associated Press in Paris, where he met with President Jacques Chirac at the end of a three-nation European tour.

Saca said a president, a constitution and a public police force need to be in place in Iraq before his troops will leave.

"I believe that what we begin, we have to finish correctly," Saca said.

He said he would decide in August whether to send a contingent of replacements for the 380 Salvadoran soldiers operating in Iraq mainly in humanitarian roles or leave the current force in place.

"The elections are not enough; democratic processes take time. When the moment comes, I will have to make the decision about pulling out," he said.

After handcuffing the guards and disarming the museum's video cameras, the intruders, who had apparently stolen the uniforms, proceeded to take apart one of this country's finest private art collections. Painstakingly assembled by the flamboyant Boston socialite Isabella Gardner at the end of the 19th century, the collection had been housed since 1903 in the Venetian-style palazzo she built to display her treasures "for the education and enjoyment of the public forever."

But less than a century elapsed before Mrs. Gardner's high-minded plans for eternity began to crumble. During their 90-minute assault on the museum, the thieves managed to make off with three Rembrandts (including the Dutch master's only known seascape, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee), a much-loved oil by Johannes Vermeer titled The Concert, a Govaert Flinck landscape, a bronze Chinese beaker from the Shang era, five Degas drawings, the bronze eagle finial from a flag of Napoleon's Imperial Guard and a jaunty oil portrait of a man in a top hat, titled Chez Tortoni, by Edouard Manet. By some miracle, they left what is possibly the most valuable painting in the collection, Titian's Europa, untouched in its third-floor gallery.

Fifteen years later the case remains unsolved, despite wide-ranging probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with assists from Scotland Yard, museum directors, friendly dealers, Japanese and French authorities, and a posse of private investigators; despite the Gardner Museum's promise of a $5 million reward; despite a coded message the museum flashed to an anonymous tipster through the financial pages of the Boston Globe; despite advice from psychics and informants; despite oceans of ink and miles of film devoted to the subject. It is as if the missing stash-now valued as high as $500 million-simply vanished into the chilly Boston night, swallowed up in the shadowy world of stolen art. Or has it?...

Indeed, both countries seem intent on serving Saudi interests first of all. That’s the problem. But the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005 could change all that. It calls upon the Saudis to take genuine anti-terror steps, including to cooperate openly and fully with American anti-terror efforts; to close all “charities, schools, or other organizations or institutions” both inside and outside the Kingdom that aid in terrorism anywhere around the world, “including by means of providing support for the families of individuals who have committed acts of terrorism.” And it calls for sanctions to punish noncompliance. Such measures are the only way that Saudi Arabia could today become a genuine ally of the United States. Senator Specter and the other senators who sponsored this bill are to be commended — and every American should hope that their efforts bear fruit.

The article in question, entitled "Jerusalem, A Concise History," appeared on the website of the American Committee for Jerusalem, an organization of which Khalidi was founding president, that aimed, according to its website, to "present an Arab-American consensus position on Jerusalem." The organization has since become the American Task Force on Palestine, a Washington-based group that "aims to articulate the national security interests of the United States in establishing a Palestinian state."

The report provides a history of Jerusalem, arguing that the majority of native Palestinians today are descendents of the Canaanites, a tribe that inhabited Jerusalem in the second millennium BCE, making the Palestinians "the historic people of the land."

A Columbia historian doing Internet research discovered that from a total of 14 paragraphs in the article, significant portions of approximately seven paragraphs were nearly identical to material that appeared in a 1994 piece published by K. J. Asali in the Arab Studies Quarterly, entitled "Jerusalem in History." Although the historian has remained anonymous for fear of professional repercussions, the charges were picked up by the blog Solomonia in a June 8 post and by Rick Shenckman and Ralph Luker of History News Network...

Dershowitz told the Jewish Advocate: "It sounds to me like an open and shut case. As I understand the facts as they appear on Solomonia, he allowed an article to appear with his own byline for almost four years, that was copied almost word for word from an article by a different person. It's classic plagiarism."

Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies and Literature at Columbia, responded in an email to the Jewish Advocate: "I never wrote any such article, never claimed it as mine, and indeed it was never 'published' in any real sense of the word. It was a compilation of material that was mistakenly ascribed to me on the defunct website of a defunct organization." He added: "This story is being disseminated by people ignorant of scholarly standards who have been peddling this story as a means of slandering me."

Rafi Dajani, executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine, explained: "The article was compiled from a variety of sources by people working in the ACJ office, one being Asali's book. Khalidi contributed to it and it was mistakenly labeled written by Khalidi." He added the information on the website has not been updated in three to four years, since the organization no longer exists, but the Khalidi byline was changed after the mistake was pointed out.

Dershowitz responded that the ACJ's explanation is "an after-the-fact excuse." He said: "A mistake can happen once. For a mistake to survive on a website for nearly four years is more than a mistake. And it would be plagiarism even if it was [labeled] 'compiled' without crediting the one main source."

Dershowitz is no stranger to the issue, having been accused of improper citations in his book "A Case for Israel" by Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky and Alex Coburn. Dershowitz was cleared of the charges, which he says were motivated by anti-Israel sentiment. He said: "My challenge to Finkelstein, Chomsky, and Coburn is to apply the same level of scrutiny and demand the same sanctions that you've demanded of pro-Israel writers of Khalidi, or else publicly acknowledge that you're hypocrites and apply double standards."

Other academics have also expressed concern. Boston University History Professor Richard Landes said: "If I had a student paper with that text, and someone showed me text from which it was taken with no footnotes, I'd consider it plagiarism."

Some defenders have noted that standards for a website may be different than for academic writing. Others point out that last week, historian Bryan LeBeau, a University of Missouri-Kansas City dean accused of plagiarism in a commencement speech, also not a published academic work, was placed on administrative leave with a salary reduction. Dershowitz said: "If you're a professor and allow your name to be used on a website, then you're bound by the usual rules."

Landes argued that even if plagiarism would only become a serious issue if the article were up for scholarly publication, the more serious consideration is what he called the article's shoddy, unscholarly quality. He said: "The idea that Palestinians are descended from Canaanites is ridiculous. There's no historical evidence to support it. Khalidi has done himself and his scholarship a disservice by putting out this silly propaganda."

Mitchell Bard, author of "Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict," explained: "The Palestinians themselves don't trace their connection to Palestine back more than 1,000 years. No one until recently said we've been here forever. The change is a propaganda effort to compete with the Jewish claim that we were there first. There's no historical scholarship to back it up."

Bard declined to comment on the plagiarism charges, saying: "If some things he's writing are lifted from words of others that's academically unacceptable. But I dont know if he did that."

They weren't the first to get this idea. When you have a huge community of people who dream of nothing but escape, it is inevitable that every possible means of doing so will be discussed. A "walking supply" is, in fact, a fat prisoner. If you have to, you can kill him and eat him. And until you need him, he is carrying the "food" himself.

The two men did as planned--they killed and ate the cook--but they had not bargained on the length of the journey. They began to get hungry again:

Both knew in their hearts that the first to fall asleep would be killed by the other. So both pretended they weren't tired and spent the night telling stories, each watching the other closely. Their old friendship made it impossible for either to make an open attack on the other, or to confess their mutual suspicions.

Finally, one fell asleep. The other slit his throat. He was caught, Buca claims, two days later, with pieces of raw flesh in his sack.

Although there is no way of knowing how often this type of escape occurred, there are enough similar stories, told by a wide enough range of prisoners, from camps from the early 1930s to the late 1940s, to be certain that they did take place, at least from time to time. Thomas Sgovio heard the death sentence pronounced on two such escapees--they had taken a boy prisoner, and salted his flesh after murdering him--when he was in Kolyma. Vatslav Dvorzhetsky was told a similar story in Karelia, in the mid-1930s.

Rafsanjani showed up at Tehran University in order to confront a gathering of students. In response to one student's query about the regime's authoritarianism, unconditional freedom of all political prisoners, a moritorium on shutting down newspapers, freedom of speech, Rafsanjani simply stated that: "everything must take place within the framework of our rule otherwise those who oppose it will pay the price."

Students became enraged after hearing Rafsjani's comments and began loudly chanting slogans:

"Unconditional freedom for all political prisoners,
Freedom of though, always, always,
Fascism must be destroyed."

Following the chanting of the slogans, they began singing the highly popular anthem "Ey Iran."

In fact, little is known of Serpantinka, largely because so few people emerged to describe it. Even less is known about punishment lagpunkts set up in other camps, such as Iskitim, for example, the punishment lagpunkt of the Siblag complex, which was built around a limestone quarry. Prisoners worked there without machines or equipment, digging limestone by hand. Sooner or later the dust killed many of them, through lung disease and other respiratory ailments. Anna Larina, Bukharin's young wide, was briefly incarcerated there. Most of Iskitim's other prisoners--and Iskitim's dead--remain anonymous.

They have not, however, been forgotten altogether. So powerfully did the suffering of the prisoners there work on the imagination of the local people of Iskitim that, many decades later, the appearance of a new freshwater spring on a hill just outside the former camp was greeted as a miracle. Because the gully below the spring was, according to local legend, the site of mass prisoner executions, they believed the sacred water God's way of remembering them. On a still, freezing day at the end of the Siberian winter, with a meter of snow still covering the ground, I watched parties of the faithful trooping up the hill to the spring, filling their plastic cups and bottles with the clean water, sipping it reverently--and occasionally glancing, solemnly, into the gully below.

Click here to see clip

Introduction

Promotion of Shahada, or death for Allah, has been the backbone of the Palestinian Authority's messages to its children since the start of the terror war in September 2000. Although the number of these messages has been reduced in recent months, the promotion and glorification of child Shahada continues nonetheless, as seen this week on PA TV.

This week's Shahada promotion was seen during the broadcast of The Palestinian Diaspora, a series presented as a factual dramatization of history that has been shown daily on PA TV in a prime time slot for the past month. Throughout the series, Israel's creation and ongoing existence has been presented as injustices that must be fought.

Click here to see clip

This episode was set in 1956, as Arab's mourn Israel's existence. A 12-year-old refugee reads his uncle a story he wrote. The scene has two explicit messages.

1. A child should be willing and anxious to fight and die in order to destroy Israel.

2. Arab 'refugees' can never resettle, but must 'return' to Israel.

The following is an excerpt from the scene

Boy: "His mother cried and said, 'My son! Swear to me! Don't leave me alone...! I'm afraid you
will be killed.'

"Her son said to her, 'Don't cry, my mother! Let me go and fight for the sake of the homeland. The enemy stole our beautiful land... We all must fight in order to redeem the lost paradise... We lived in joy and happiness, until the foreign enemy [Israel] came and expelled us from our land, and we became refugees in tents. But we will return, by Allah's will!'

"His mother told him, 'Farewell, my son. Allah be with you.' He kissed her and left to fight, and fought until he became a Shahid [martyr for Allah]."

Uncle: "...Let me ask you, if they come and tell you, we will give you a very big house, a car,
land and money, just resettle! Would you agree?"

Boy: "No!"

Uncle: "...the homeland is greater than individual possessions."

[PA TV, June 16, 2005]

It's important to note that the segment opens with the boy's friend writing "I shall return" over a map he drew of 'Palestine' - which removed Israel's existence.

They feared nothing and no one. The guards and camp bosses were scared to enter the separate barracks where the juveniles lived. It was there that the vilest, most cynical and cruel acts that took place in the camps occurred. If one of the prisoners' criminal leaders was gambling, lost everything and had staked his life as well, the boys would kill him for a day's bread ration or simply "for the fun of it." The girls boasted that they could satisfy an entire team of tree-fellers. There was nothing human left in these children and it was impossible to imagine that they might return to the normal world and become ordinary human beings again.

...Gaza resident Wafa Samir Ibraim Bas, 21 was carrying more than 10 kilograms (more than 22 pounds) of explosives and was picked up thanks to electronic anti-terror means utilized at the crossing.

Army officials said the woman surrendered only after attempting to detonate the charge at the crossing itself.

The woman was scheduled to arrive at Soroka hospital in the Southern town of Be’er Sheva for some tests Monday, and was hoping to take advantage of the medical appointment to carry out a suicide attack.

During her interrogation, the would-be bomber said she was sent by the Fatah’s al-Aqsa Brigades. The group sought to utilize the humanitarian permits issued to the woman and instructed her to carry out the attack at the hospital, she said...

A Palestinian woman jailed in Israel was caught flushing pages of the Koran down her toilet.

Sunday's incident at Shikma Prison, which comes as the Prisons Service says Palestinian charges that guards desecrated prisoners' Korans are fabricated, ended when a guard fished the torn pages out of the water and confiscated them. Reports of Koran abuse at U.S. prisons have been linked to deadly global protests by Muslims.

After Camryn Manheim introduced the pair as the new Lucy and Ethel, Mullally playfully fondled her friend's breasts...

Israeli soldiers play soccer with Palestinian boys at the centre of West Bank city of Hebron June 16, 2005. The Palestinian militant group Hamas disclosed on June 16 that European Union diplomats had held talks with some of its members, an apparent shift in EU policy that drew sharp criticism from Israel. (Nayef Hashlamoun/Reuters)

A Palestinian police officer stands guard as a bulldozer runs over an unregistered vehicle in the West bank city of Jenin June 16, 2005. The Palestinian militant group Hamas disclosed on June 16 that European Union diplomats had held talks with some of its members, an apparent shift in EU policy that drew sharp criticism from Israel. (Saeed Dahlah/Reuters)

Yassmeen, an Iranian woman holds her passport after casting her vote at the Iranian embassy in the Jordanian capital Amman June 17, 2005. Iran holds a presidential election on Friday under international scrutiny over its nuclear programme, its rocky relationship with the United States and the direction the Islamic Republic will take after the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami. REUTERS/Ali Jarekji

The problem is not criticizing Israeli policies. The problem is efforts to de-legitimize Israel by singling it out for condemnation, or worse, invoking the Christian teachings of contempt against the Jewish state. And sadly enough, Sabeel — the group that held the anti-Israel conference at First Church in Salem, Unitarian — has done both.

Despite what Pastor Karl Gustafson reported at the beginning of the conference, Sabeel is not a peace organization, and its founder, Jerusalem-based Episcopalian theologian Naim Ateek, is not a bridge builder. Sabeel is a font of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian propaganda and Ateek is a weaponizer of Christian theology for use exclusively against the State of Israel.

For proof of Sabeel’s role as a source of propaganda, readers can go to the group’s website, sabeel.org, and read the statement written after Yasser Arafat’s death. This statement portrays Arafat as the father figure of the Palestinian people but makes no mention of his involvement in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed. Moreoever, it makes no mention of the Friday sermons encouraging violence against Israelis that were broadcast on Palestinian television with Arafat’s approval. Nor does Sabeel mention the billions in foreign aid he stole from the Palestinian people during his lifetime. Despite Sabeel’s efforts to portray Arafat as the next Nelson Mandela, Arafat was a tyrant responsible for great human suffering on both sides of the Arab/Israeli conflict.

Another problem with Sabeel in full evidence at the conference was the group’s habit of whitewashing Palestinian society of its problems. Hilary Rantisi, a Palestinian Christian, asserted that relations between Christians and Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza are fine and that both are suffering under the occupation. The reality is that Palestinian Christians suffer from daily acts of intimidation and humiliation from their Muslim neighbors and that the growing popularity of Hamas bodes ill for the already-beleaguered Christian minority. It has long been understood by close observers of the Arab/Israeli conflict that Palestinian Christians try to deflect Muslim hostility by demonstrating their value to the cause of Palestinian nationalism. Sabeel and its supporters want us to respond emotionally to the powerlessness of Palestinian Christians, but do not want us to consider the impact this powerlessness has on the story they tell to audiences in the U.S.

All of this raises an important question. If the cause of Palestinian nationalism is so righteous, innocent and non-violent, why is it necessary to use Palestinian Christians to make its case to audiences in the U.S? Why not have representatives from the Palestinian Authority come to the U.S. to tell us about the evils of Israeli policies? Representatives from the Palestinian Authority would be in a much better position to tell us what happened to the billions stolen from the people it was charged with helping and offer some “context” to the Jew-hatred broadcast on Palestinian Television — before and after Arafat’s death.

The answer is simple. An honest discussion of these issues would undermine confidence in the notion that the Palestinians are willing and able to live in peace next to their Israeli neighbors and offer some understanding as to why the separation barrier was necessary.

If the First Church of Salem is truly “a fellowship grounded in liberal Christianity,” it should offer an unequivocal condemnation of the teachings of contempt offered by Sabeel and its founder Naim Ateek. Moreover, the church has an obligation to promote an honest discussion of the problems of Palestinian society that encourage violence against Israel. Until then, the church cannot lay claim to informing the North Shore’s collective conscience, but will merely be regarded as a source of hostility toward Israel.

Dexter van Zile
The David Project
Boston

By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

Introduction

While the Palestinian Authority (PA) focuses on the West Bank and Gaza in international forums, to its own people delegitimizing Israel's existence as a state continues to be the cornerstone of its ideology. Two recent broadcasts on official PA television reinforced this hate message, presenting Israelis as killers and thieves who "stole" Arab land to create the state, and promoting the symbol of the "key" - the claim to be the rightful owners of all of Israel.

The first is from a so-called "historical" TV series depicting events before and during Israel's War of Independence in 1948. The daily broadcasts distort history, presenting Israelis as well armed evil soldiers fighting with British support against valiant Arabs defending their villages. The seven Arab armies that attacked Israel are not shown. In one of the many vicious libels in the series, actors portray Israeli soldiers murdering an infant in cold blood after destroying his family's village. See picture above.

To see this video online, click here

The second is through a cultural program in which dancers carry giant "keys" on their backs. Though burdened by the weight, they slowly dance. The "key" symbolizes the PA's claim to ownership of all of Israel and its plan to "return". See picture below.

To see this video online, click here

Mahmoud al-Zahar, senior Hamas terrorist in the Gaza Strip, said that “in the first place, we have to remember what Britain is. [Its] current leadership is conspiring with the United States to harm Arab and Islamic interests in the area, for instance in Afghanistan and Iraq…Hamas will never change itself or its rhetoric or its strategies. Its position is clear. This is occupied land which must be liberated… We will not be [counted] among those who would give up so much as an inch of Palestine…We think all of Palestine belongs to us”

Mushir Al-Massri, Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip , said that the movement would not give up the option of resistance [i.e., violence] and would not dismantle its military wing . Anything in the media supporting such a view, he said, was baseless

Sayyid Siyyam, a top Hamas official in the Gaza Strip , said that Hamas did not need a good conduct certificate from Straw, and that the movement would not renounce its principles

In an oral statement to be delivered at a meeting of the nuclear watchdog agency's board, the agency's deputy director, Pierre Goldschmidt, will say Iran made the admissions after being confronted with the result of laboratory tests conducted on samples collected from an Iranian nuclear site...

..."From what I understand of the report, which I haven't seen, it doesn't say as much about a new capability or intention as much as it says about Iran's lack of candor so far," Corey Hinderstein, deputy director of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington research organization that has been critical of Iran, said in a telephone interview.

"It shows that Iran has yet to come clean about its nuclear program," Ms. Hinderstein said. "Each new revelation that they haven't told the truth, especially at this late date, increases questions about what else they're hiding."

But an Iranian negotiator interviewed in Vienna, Cyrus Nasseri, denied that the disclosures regarding plutonium experiments indicated any effort by Iran to conceal activities.

"What difference would it make for us to say these tests were made 13 years ago or 10 years ago?" he said. "It would make no difference at all, so there cannot be any motive of concealment." He said the disclosure of new dates reflected the time required to examine the record rather than concealment.

"I can understand that some might want to make a big story out of this," he continued, "but I'm sorry, it's not a big story."...

There were three mothers there, and we were given a tiny room to ourselves in the barracks. Bedbugs poured down like sand from the ceiling walls; we spent the whole night brushing them off the children. During the daytime we had to go out to work and leave the infants with any old woman who we could find who had been excused from work; these women would calmly help themselves to the food we had left for the children.

Nevertheless, wrote Volovich,

Every night for a whole year, I stood at my child's cot, picking off the bedbugs and praying. I prayed that God would prolong my torment for a hundred years if it meant that I wouldn't be parted from my daughter. I prayed that I might be released with her, even if only as a beggar or a cripple. I prayed that I might be able to raise her to adulthood, even if I had to grovel at people's feet and beg for alms to do it. But God did not answer my prayer. My baby had barely started walking, I had hardly heard her words, the wonderful heartwarming word "Mama," when we were dressed in rags despite the winter chill, bundled into a freight car, and transferred to the "mother's camp." And here my pudgy little angel with the golden curls soon turned into a pale ghost with blue shadows under her eyes and sores all over her lips.

...

One nurse was assigned to seventeen children, which meant that she had barely enough time to keep all of the babies changed and fed, let alone cared for properly:

The nurse brought a steaming bowl of porridge from the kitchen, and portioned it out into separate dishes. She grabbed the nearest baby, forced its arms back, tied them in place with a towel, and began cramming spoonful after spoonful of hot porridge down its throat, not leaving it enough time to swallow, exactly as if she were feeding a turkey chick.

Slowly, Eleonora began to fade.

On some of my visits I found bruises on her little body. I shall never forget how she grabbed my neck with her skinny hands and moaned, "Mama, want home!" She had not forgotten the bug-ridden slum where she first saw the light of day, and where she'd been with her mother all of the time...

In the evening, when I came back with my bundle of firewood, her cot was empty. I found her lying naked in the morgue among the corpses of the adult prisoners. She had spent one year and four months in the world, and died on 3 March 1944...That is the story of how, in giving birth to my only child, I committed the worst crime there is.

In the archives of the Gulag, photographs of the type of camp nursery Volovich described have been preserved. One such album begins with the following introduction:

The sun shines in their Stalinist fatherland. The nation is filled with love for the leaders and our wonderful children are happy just as the whole young country is happy. Here, in wide and warm beds, sleep the new citizens of our country. Having eaten, the sleep sweetly and are certainly dreaming happy dreams...

Well, it was last December. I had just returned from the US a few months earlier and I was finally starting to grasp what the whole "War on Terror" thing was all about. You don't get to see it when you are in the states really, because of the polarizing effects of American politics and Media have on the discussion. It was right after I escaped the Taba bombing and witnessed the reaction of the Egyptian media (They blamed Israel for the actions of the Palestinian bomber that killed Israeli tourists and Egyptian nationals (that could've included me and my friends) on our own soil) that I fully realized that there is something sinister really going on in the media of middle-eastern countries in their attitude regarding Israel and the US. It's also when I fully realized that the whole "You are either with us or with the terrorists" thing is actually true and that Bush is right: You can't be passive against people who want you dead and you can't have tolerance for people who excuse their actions either, because those are the people who tolerate intolerance and defend those who want to kill you. It's either us or them, and I chose us.

Bearing that in mind, I realized that the terrorist apologists have total control over the media here, which in turn influences the public opinion of the average Egyptian and/or Arab. This isn't a coincidence or out of shared ideological beliefs amongst our media elites, but rather part of the Arab rulers/ dictators plan to misdirect their masses. They use their media to foster and feed anti-american sentiment in their countries in order to give their people an enemy to focus their hate and frustration on. They tell you that as long as the poor brave palestinains are getting slaughtered by the evil Zionist jews under the sanction of their evil American puppets, you can't complain about your life or your problems or the fact that you live in a tyrannical society where you have no freedom...

Such allegations, which were common under Yasser Arafat's rule, have resurfaced in recent weeks in the Palestinian media.

PA officials have also accused Israel of dumping toxic chemical waste in some areas in the West Bank with the intention of causing severe damage to the health of Palestinians.

Last month, PA-controlled newspapers claimed that Israel was using wild pigs to destroy crops and agricultural farms in the West Bank. The papers claimed that settlers and IDF soldiers were seen setting loose many wild pigs near Palestinian villages as part of a campaign designed to destroy the Palestinian economy...

"These drinks are specifically produced for Palestinian consumers in the Gaza Strip," Abu Safiyeh said.

He also claimed that the Egyptian authorities last March intercepted two Israeli trucks carrying children's toys that included carcinogenic and radioactive substances. The trucks were seized at the Rafah border crossing, he added...

Tarasyuk: What are they getting?

All 246 died within the month.

Such conversations were not unique, nor apocryphal, as archives show...

Khalidi is right about the importance of freedom of speech, but he misses the point. Academic freedom is meant to protect scholarship, not replace it. For any history professor, the core of scholarship is the ability to uncover and interpret primary source material. High school students might select sources uncritically in order to prove their thesis, but history professors must evaluate not only what the source says, but also its veracity and perspective. Judgment matters. Next to plagiarism—of which Khalidi has also been accused recently—deliberate omission, failure to judge sources, and eschewing primary source and field research are the greatest academic sins a professor can commit.

In 2004, Khalidi authored Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East in which he argued that U.S. government officials had entered into the Iraq conflict ignorant of Middle Eastern history. Unlike others academics and critics of Bush administration policy, Khalidi refused to travel to Iraq to conduct his research. Instead, he made Iraq a template upon which to impose his theories. His failure to engage Iraqis is reflected in his ignorance of Iraqi history. His narrative failed to mention Saddam Hussein’s murder of tens of thousands of Shi‘i Marsh Arabs, and the ethnic cleansing of cities like Kirkuk and Sinjar. Polemics may forgive sins of omission, but scholarship should not. Worse, while his narrative ignores Saddam’s chemical weapons attack on Kurdish civilians, in the Iraqi equivalent of Holocaust denial, he questions Saddam’s complicity in a footnote...

Seven Arab villages currently in northern Israel belong to Lebanon and should be ceded, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in an election rally in Lebanon Thursday.

Nasrallah’s demands regarding the villages have been voiced before and mark the latest attempt to deflect growing calls for the Hizbullah to disarm, Arab affairs expert Eyal Zisser told Ynet in response to the report.

“Nasrallah mentioned this several times in the past, including prior to the IDF’s withdrawal from Lebanon,” he said. “It should be viewed as a tactic in an attempt to… avoid disarmament.”

Nasrallah looking for excuses?

Meanwhile, political sources said Nasrallah’s remarks are an effort to extend the group’s “resistance” efforts, after other disputes with Israel on the Lebanese border have been resolved.

The villages in question were annexed to what is today Israel prior to the state’s establishment through agreements between France and Britain, but Nasrallah chose to provide his own reasoning for why the area should in fact be considered Lebanese territory...

Mr. Mahameed's newly opened Holocaust institute in the biblical town of Nazareth is a modest operation, with occasional lectures. About 60 photos documenting the genocide mounted on the walls.

But the effort is highly unusual if not unique in the Arab world, where the Holocaust often is played down or even denied.

One photo shows a Nazi officer pointing a gun to the head of a Jew who squats at the edge of a mass grave.

"Men like this man settled our land," Mr. Mahameed told five Arab visitors recently. "We have to understand the very deep trauma of this man."

Mr. Mahameed, 43, thinks that learning about the Holocaust could help Arabs understand Israel better and ultimately resolve the Middle East conflict.

A few of his neighbors have expressed support for his museum, but it has provoked strong opposition among Palestinians who say Israel used Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's genocide as an excuse to take Arab land.

Underlying this dispute is competition over victimhood, said Tom Segev, an Israeli author on the Holocaust.

"Arabs often feel that if they acknowledge the Holocaust, they give up their claim of being the real victim of this conflict," Mr. Segev said...

That indifference also has begun to fracture: A five-part documentary airing on Israeli television delivers a blunt indictment of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip...

Since the PA was established, it has worked diligently to bring all the various Christian sects under its direct control. In the 1990s this involved terrorizing priests and nuns into submission. In Jericho and Hebron, the PA took control of the convents and churches of the White Russian churches and transferred them to the pro-PLO Red Russian church. In 2002, Fatah terrorists laid siege to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and held the priests hostage for weeks while ostentatiously desecrating the holy site.

Until the sacking of Irineous last month, the Greek Orthodox Church was the only church operating in Israel and the PA that retained its independence from the PA. Before Easter, Ma'ariv published a report that Irineous had committed the "crime" of leasing church property by the Jaffa Gate of the Old City to Jews. Seeing an opportunity, the PA immediately pounced on Irineous. As columnist Nadav Haetzni reported in Ma'ariv on Friday, PA ministers and militia commanders, equipped with Israeli VIP travel documents, descended on the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and organized attacks against Irineous, who was immediately condemned as a "traitor" and a "collaborator."

Irineous was summoned for an interrogation by PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei. His lawyer's arm was broken and his financial adviser was brutally beaten. Under the gun of PA intimidation, the church's Holy Synod convened and excommunicated Irineous last month. The PA took over the church's finances and incited an international scandal which brought Greece's deputy foreign minister to Ramallah, where he apologized to Qurei for Irineous's terrible crime.

As all of this was happening, Israel's government sat quietly on the side and did nothing. The attacks against Irineous were organized by a PLO-sponsored Arab Israeli priest, Theodosius Atallah Hanna. Hanna has repeatedly glorified suicide bombers and, indeed, called for Palestinians to become bombers in interviews to the Arab press. He is positioning himself to become the first Arab patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church since the 16th century.

Aside from the fact that the current Arabization of the Greek Orthodox Church will signal the complete takeover of all Christian churches by the PA, it also has strategic significance for Israel's national security...

The hearing's announced topic was the USA Patriot Act, which granted broad new powers to federal law enforcement after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The Republicans had presented several witnesses at earlier hearings who supported the administration's call for reauthorizing the legislation. But yesterday, when four witnesses handpicked by the Democrats launched into a broad denunciations of President Bush's war on terrorism and the condition of detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) showed his pique.

He urged witnesses to "wrap it up" and repeatedly told committee members that their time for questioning had expired.

"We ought to stick to the subject," the chairman scolded at the end. "The Patriot Act has nothing to do with Guantanamo Bay. The Patriot Act has nothing to do with enemy combatants. The Patriot Act has nothing to do with indefinite detentions."

"Will the gentleman yield?" Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) asked.

"No, I will not yield," replied Sensenbrenner, 61, the heir to a paper fortune who is known for a brusque insistence on decorum. He completed his reproof of the witnesses and left the Rayburn House Office Building hearing room amid a cacophony of protests from Democrats seeking to be recognized...

"I think we all understand what's happening with you all," said Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, in remarks echoing Hillary Rodham Clinton's blaming a "vast right-wing conspiracy" for her husband's legal-ethical woes.

"The right wing has got the agenda moving. Fox [News Channel] and everybody's got the agenda. It's all about Howard Dean. You've bought into it," Mr. Durbin said.

"You can't let up on it. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

Mr. Dean, who took over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee four months ago, has caused a stir with a string of public statements that he "hates the Republican Party and everything it stands for" and that its members are "liars," "evil," "corrupt" and "brain-dead."

Senate Democrats emerged from a Capitol Hill meeting with Mr. Dean, a former Vermont governor, yesterday touting their message of the day: Change the subject...

Awwwwww.

Wilson raised his voice. And he didn't wait his turn. And he didn't ask "substantive" questions. Translation: He didn't genuflect before the Democratic leadership or the Beltway journalistic elite, and he asked exactly what viewers wanted to know...

Security from suicide bombers is ostensibly the reason behind the Wall. As we wrestle with a God of justice and compassion in prayerful contemplation, we acknowledge that security for Israel is extremely important. We abhor suicide bombings as acts of desperation that accomplish nothing more than to generate fear, anger, and further alienation. But is the Wall the answer? If God, for the sake of a few righteous ones, had been willing to spare Sodom and Gomorrah, should Israel (whose name means “wrestling with God”), for the sake of some evil acts, destroy an entire people?...

"His rhetoric is intemperate and extreme," Mr. Schwartz said. "I think the very idea of an Edward Said chair speaks for itself." ...

Compiled by ACJ from a variety of sources

Different dates have been given for the founding of the city of Jerusalem, in some cases for the most tendentious of political reasons. However, the actual age of Jerusalem, according to the best archaeological evidence, is five thousand years. The Israeli historian Zev Vilnay, in his Encyclopedia for Knowledge of the Land of Israel, and Ephraim and Menachem Tilmay in their book Jerusalem agree that the age of the city is 5,000 years.

[snip paragraph]

The oldest recorded name of the city, "Urusalem" is Amoritic. "Shalem" or "Salem" is the name of a Canaanite-Amorite god; "uru", means "founded by." The names of the two oldest rulers of the city, Saz Anu and Yaqir Ammo, were identified by the American archaeologist W.F. Albright as Amoritic. The Amorites had the same language as the Canaanites and were of the same Semitic stock. Many historians believe that they were an offshoot of the Canaanites, who came originally from the Arabian Peninsula. The Bible concurs that the Amorites are the original people of the land of Canaan.

Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem.
Thy birth and thy origin are of the land
of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite,
and thy mother a Hittite.
(Ezekiel, 16:1)

In the second millenium BC, Jerusalem was inhabited by the Jebusites, a Canaanite tribe, and the culture of the city was Canaanite. The Jebusites built a fortress, "Zion", in Jerusalem. Zion is a Canaanite word meaning "hill" or "height." Jerusalem was also known as Jebus. Canaanite society flourished for two thousand years, and many aspects of Canaanite culture and religion were later borrowed by the Hebrews.

According to a number of historians and scholars, many of the Arabs of Jerusalem today, indeed the majority of Palestinian Arabs, are descendants of the ancient Jebusites and Canaanites. In 1902, the British anthropologist Sir James Frazer wrote in his book The Golden Bough: "The Arabic-speaking peasants of Palestine are the progeny of the tribes which settled in the country before the Israelite invasion. They are still adhering to the land. They never left it and were never uprooted from it."

In 1927, the historian Delacy O'Leary wrote in Arabia Before Muhammad: "The majority of the present Palestinian peasants are descendants of those who preceded the Israelites." He reiterated this in his Palestine-Muhammadan Holy Land:

The simple fact is that the majority of the Arab people of Palestine are not descendants of those that arrived as part of the wave of Islamic-Arab conquest in the seventh century. The majority of the native Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim Arabs, are of a mixed race whose connection with the land reaches back into very early history. Conquerors and settlers who followed in the wake of military success and political control were only a small minority of the continuing historic population. This population of Palestinians are the historic people of the land.

[snip remainder of the piece]

[snip two paragraphs]

It is evident that neither anniversary is historically correct. It seems that both were chosen for touristic or artistic considerations, and that the choice of the second one was politically motivated. It is well-known that the correct age of the city, according to historical accounts, is five thousand years. This estimation is given by the Israeli historian Zev Vilnay, among other sources, in his comprehensive work in Hebrew, The Encyclopedia for the Knowledge of the Land of Israel, in the chapter titled "Jerusalem, the Capital of Israel.''[l] The same age is given by the Israeli historians Ephraim and Menachem Tilmay at the end of their book, Jerusalem. [2]

[snip two paragraphs]

Indeed, the oldest name of the city "Urusalem" is Amoritic. "Salem" or "Shalem" was the name of a Canaanite-Amorite god, while "uru" simply meant "founded by." [3] The names of the two oldest rulers of the city, Saz Anu and Yaqir Ammo, were identified by the American archaeologist W. F. Albright as Amoritic.[4] The Amorites, according to the Bible, are the original people of the land of Canaan. They had the same language as the Canaanites and were of the same Semitic stock. Many historians believe that the Amorites are an offshoot of the Canaanites who came originally from the Arabian Peninsula. In this regard it is apt to quote the Bible (Ezekiel:1 6):

Thus say the Lord God to Jerusalem. Your Origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites, your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite.[5]

In the second millennium, Jerusalem was inhabited by the Jebusites. In the Bible the Jebusites are considered to be Canaanites. It was the Jebusites who first built the fortress Zion in the town. Zion is a Canaanite word which means "hill" or "height."

The second name of Jerusalem was "Jebus". The culture of Jebus was Canaanite, an ancient society which built many towns with well-built houses, in numerous city-states, in industry and commerce and in an alphabet and religion which flourished for two thousand years and were later borrowed by the primitive Hebrews.

[snip five paragraphs]

As DeLacy O'Leary pointed out in Arabia Before Muhammad "The majority of the present Palestinian peasants are descendants of those who preceeded the Israelites." [8] In The Golden Bough, the British anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854-1941) stressed that, "the Arabic-speaking peasants of Palestine are the progeny of the tribes which settled in the country before the Israelite invasion. They are still adhering to the land. They never left it and were never uprooted from it." [9]

The American scholar Charles Matthews in his "Palestine--Muhammedan Holy Land" expressed the matter clearly:

Because the view is often held and expressed by sincere people that the "Arabs are mere interlopers in Palestine" and ought to give way to the "return" of the rightful and historic "owners" of the land of the Bible, a further word may be said regarding the ethnology of the land. The simple fact is that the majority of the "Arab" people of Palestine are not descendants of those "new arrivals" who intruded with the Islamic-Arab conquest in the seventh century.

The majority of the native Palestinians, both Christian and Moslem Arabs, are of a mixed race whose connection with the land reaches back into very early history. There is a natural tendency for history to be simplified by the concept that all Moslems of the conquered lands came in, and assumed control, from the outside: and it is an understandable fancy for most of the Moslem population to believe that their ancestors were of the conquering race. Of course, considerable numbers of real Arabs from Arabia did settle in the new possessions, and there are in the voluminous general and local histories of history-minded Islamic-peoples' records of such settlements.

But the conquerors and settlers who followed in the wake of military success and political control were only a small minority compared to the masses of the continuing, historic population. The designation "Arab" was gradually accepted by the majority along with the new religion, and the Arabic language was adopted by all. The change in religion was, in most cases, voluntary, for the sake of preferment and advantage, to escape the higher taxes on non-Moslems, and in a natural process of following the predominant environmental influence and practice. The simplicity and the virility of the new faith, in contrast with the often violent theological controversies over complex philosophical-religious doctrines of Christianity, also had their influence.

[snip remainder of piece]

"What the hell were you doing there man, you turned into a Shia?" I asked laughingly.

"No, I went there on a business trip. We had a meeting with a number of Iranian businessmen who are going to import our products. My American colleague John (not his real name) came with me. Man, I was scared to death before going there. I mean here I am an Egyptian guy accompanied by an American on a trip to Iran. You sure know that relations between Egypt and Iran are not so good, not to mention the US!! I was also afraid lest I break some religious rule and regret it! Or we get arrested because of John" he said.

"So, tell me about it" I asked.

"Well, I stayed there for 5 days. I got drunk in the first 3! Man, there ain't a house or an office I entered that didn't have a mini bar in it full of smuggled booze from Smirnoff vodka to Heineken beer! I was shocked. Everyone drinks there. Their private life is the complete opposite of what you see on the street. We went up a mountain with a group of Iranians and had all the fun there. When they knew that John was American, they were like flies around him. They took his email, phone number, and stuff" he said...

The day before the conference was scheduled to convene, the Turkish Minister of Justice, Cemil Çiçek, rose in Parliament to denounce it, "This is a stab in the back to the Turkish nation... this is irresponsibility… We must put an end to this cycle of treason and insult, of spreading propaganda against the [Turkish] nation..."

With Turkish academics being accused of treason by the Minister of Justice, the Rector of the Bo gaziçi University felt compelled to cancel the meeting. The contrast with Germany’s encounter with its past could not be greater...

Three months ago, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) authorized the execution of the 50, who had been convicted of aiding Israeli security forces. Shortly thereafter, the head of the PA military tribunals, Saib al-Kidwa, said that 15 of the convicted men would be executed in the following weeks, after their sentences had been vetted by the senior religious authority in the PA, Sheikh Akrima Sabri...

Hundreds of local Palestinians, extreme leftist demonstrators, and Palestinian activists from Fatah, Hamas, and the National Front took part in the protest in the West Bank village of Bil'in, near Ramallah.

Military sources argued that the soldier's wound testified to the IDF's need to use controversial crowd control methods such as gas grenades and rubber bullets. According to the sources, it is common to see MKs and Israelis standing in the front lines of protests, creating a barrier between the soldiers and Palestinian demonstrators, some of whom exploit this barrier to throw stones...

But Marina Subirats, director of the Barcelona Municipal Institute of Education, or IMEB, avoided any explicit apology for the comparison, nor did she commit herself to any specific changes in the text.

“The only intention of this book was to render homage to the victims of the Holocaust and Nazism, and to preserve the historical memory of these events,” she said in a statement...

As for the security-fence analogy, she said, “This obviously relates to the authors’ own opinion. It is not the criteria of the IMEB in such cases to exercise censorship.”...

In its current form, the manual reads, “Of all the problems in the world at this moment, there are two … which bear many resemblances to the Nazi genocide, with the ghettos created by the Nazis to isolate Jews from other people and with the humiliations and indignities received by the Spanish Republicans and Catalonians and the rest of the prisoners in the concentration camps.

“These are the construction of the ‘wall of shame’ in Palestine, and the detention of the Taliban prisoners at the military base that the United States has on the island of Cuba, at Guantanamo,” the text says...

Military sources confirmed soldiers used the sound gun, which emits a painful burst of sound at a special frequency making it uncomfortable for protesters to remain in the area.

The IDF used the new weapon on Friday to disperse hundreds of protesters at the village of Bil'in near Har Adar in the Jerusalem corridor. A soldier lost an eye when hit by a rock during the protest.

IDF sources said the decision to use the non-lethal acoustic cannon represented a significant turning point in dealing with demonstrations.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Saturday, an IDF officer confirmed that soldiers operated "the Screamer," a small white box attached to a jeep that transmits the high-pitched sound waves...

...The high-pitched "voice frequencies" it emits are not only hard on the ears, but can cause some to feel nausea, "a little like sea sickness," the officer said. He stressed that the army would only use it in violent demonstrations and when soldiers were positioned a safe distance from the protesters. "The last thing we want to do is harm the soldiers," he said...

...The IDF Spokesman on Saturday issued a statement saying the new acoustic weapon "caused minimal injuries" to protesters while "dispersing them efficiently." The IDF has long tested various non-lethal weapon systems, but had always refrained from using them because there was too much uncertainty about injuries they could cause. One major barrier had been their effect on children who may fall into the path of the weapon...

Yet it was no worse than thousands of other news reports, editorials, commentaries, letters, cartoons and headlines published throughout Europe in recent years, in the guise of legitimate and reasoned discussion of Israeli policies...

...[A]lthough the French court ruling - the first of its kind in Europe - is a major landmark, no one in France seems to care. The country's most distinguished newspaper, the paper of record, has been found guilty of anti-Semitism. One would have thought that such a verdict would prompt wide-ranging coverage and lead to extensive soul-searching and public debate. Instead, there has been almost complete silence, and virtually no coverage in the French press.

And few elsewhere will have heard about it. Reuters and Agence France Presse (agencies that have demonstrated particularly marked bias against Israel) ran short stories about the judgment in their French-language wires last week, but chose not to run them on their English news services. The Associated Press didn't run it at all. Instead of triggering the long overdue reassessment of Europe's attitude toward Israel, the media have chosen to ignore it....

Al-Ittihad, May 28, 2005 (United Arab Emirates) President George W. Bush is depicted as a Jew in disguise. Caption: "(Palestinian President) Abu Mazen complains about Sharon to Bush."

Sorry about the late notice about this fascinating talk. Also, JAT will soon be announcing the establishment of a separate JAT list, JAT.Boston, for messages like this one that are of interest exclusively to people in the Boston area.

Eli Roditi and Rami Mangoubi will talk about their experiences growing up and living as Jews in Egypt, and will connect these experiences with the history of the Jewish community in that country.

Background:

The Ethnic Cleansing of Egyptian Jewry: History and Personal Experiences

Eli Roditi and Rami Mangoubi were born in Cairo to Jewish families that had lived in Egypt for generations. When Rami was a sixth grader, on the first day of the Six Day War, the Egyptian authorities knocked on his door, and took away his brother who was of college age. He was needed for ten minutes at the police station, they were told. Elie Roditi was also sumoned to his neighborhood's station for ten minutes.

The ten minutes lasted 6 months for Eli and 3 years for Rami's brother, during which Eli, Rami's brother, and nearly all Jewish adult males residing in Egypt, some up to 80 years old, were incarcerated in the notorious detention camps of Abu Zaabal and Tura, near Cairo. Detainees experienced torture; some were forced to walk on broken glass, humiliated. Some of the younger, fair skinned detainees were molested...

Eli and Rami's families lived in Egypt's for centuries. Yet 90% of Egyptian Jews were never granted Egyptian citizenship (Rami's family and his father's had it, but they were rare exceptions). As far back as 1860, the Egyptian government started passing decrees that denied citizenship to most Egyptian Jews. One decree after another culminated in Egypt's notorious 1929 Nationality Law, a law that denied citizenshsip to nearly all Egyptian Jews, as well as to other minorities such as the Syrian Christians and the Armenians; the great majority were declared "stateless". The nationality or citizenship laws were closely followed by employment laws that denied employment to non-citizens, regardless of how many generations they lived in Egypt. Finally, as a result of the 1947 Company Law, Egyptian Jews and other minorities were fired en masse. In 1948, Egypt went to war attempting to destroy Israel, the only country in the Middle East that would grant Egyptian Jews and other
Jews from Arab countries citizenship.

Anti-semitism and anti-Zionism were therefore two sides of the same coin: the desire to rid Israel and the countries that invaded her of Jews. Those who continued to stay in Egypt through the sixties were severely punished for it. We will also find out about Egyptians who were protective of their Jewish friends, and who still keep in touch more than three decades later.

Like many Jews from Arab countries, Elie and Rami grew up seeing, and hearing about, historical events that are rarely in the writings of today's Middle East historians. The incarceration in the detention camps of Abu Zaabal and Tura, the 1948 massacres in Cairo's Jewish quarter, Egypt's welcoming of Nazi war criminals fleeing justice, Egypt's granting of citizenship to these Nazis while simultaneously denying citizenship to Egyptian Jews, ... all this remains absent from the textbooks of history.

In this lecture, Eli Roditi and Rami Mangoubi will talk about their experiences growing up and living as Jews in Egypt, and will connect these experiences with the history of the Jewish community in that country.

University President Prof. Avishai Braverman said in response: "I don't understand Egypt's conduct in not permitting the well-known writer Ali Salem to come to Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva to receive the honorary doctorate, especially after every effort was made to enable his coming."

The university is involved in numerous projects to promote peace between Israel and its neighbors and has nurtured ties with Egypt since the peace treaty with Israel was signed. Anwar Sadat visited the campus in May 1979, accompanied by Hosni Mubarak, to receive the Star of Peace along with Menachem Begin. In 1995 the university bestowed an honorary doctorate on Egypt's then-ambassador to Israel, Mohammad Bassiouni...