"Period of relative calm" Claimed Over 100 Palestinian Lives

According to AP:
"The bombings also ended a period of relative calm. Previously the last bombing inside Israel was Nov. 21..."
http://www.channelonenews.com/articles/2003/01/06/ap_israel/

This is how AP describes the period when Israelis killed over 100 Palestinians including many children (a nine year old girl was shot while playing -- see above), yet the Palestinians weren't deemed important enough to mention this. Indeed, during that period of calm, there were few reports in the US media of Palestinian children being killed.

In fact, fair.org did a study which showed that Palestinian victims were more likely to be mentioned if they were armed and far less likely to be mentioned if they were children. On the other hand, Israelis were far more likely to be mentioned if they were children and less likely if soldiers.

More than that, US media often describes soldiers killed as civilians or sometimes even as "worshippers." Daily killings of Palestinians are almost never mentioned, so that when Palestinians finally play into Sharon's hands and commit a shocking crime, it looks like its just out of the blue with nothing else happening before that -- no occupation, no starvation, no "curfews" forcing Palestinians to stay in their homes for 24 hour periods for *months* on end, no Palestinians killed without reason, no confiscation of land, very little water (while Israelis enjoy swimming pools), no checkpoints, etc.

Most people have no other window on the region except through TV, newspapers, and magazines -- all of which with little exception are pro-Israeli to the hilt. That is why I suspect pro-Israelis are so disturbed by the internet. It has the ability to bring suppressed information to the surface.

That's exactly what they say about Israelis.

Welcome to the hellish world of Islam, the filthy faith - legalized rape, murder and torture. Leftists admire Islam because they wish that they too can kill their enemies and critics.

Gunmen kill writer: A strict Islamic code applies in the author's province

Paul Anderson
BBC correspondent in Islamabad

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2685151.stm

Police in northern Pakistan say unidentified attackers have shot dead a writer whose work was viewed as critical of fundamentalist Islam. The 40-year-old writer, Fazal Wahab, was shot at a local shop.

Fatwas, or religious edicts, declaring his work un-Islamic had been issued by senior clerical figures after the publication of two books challenging the role of mullahs. Police say three or four gunmen burst into the shop in the town of Mingora, in North-West Frontier Province, where Mr Wahab was sitting.

The gunmen opened fire indiscriminately, killing Mr Wahab and the shop owner on the spot. The attack will be a test of the mullahs' power. A teenage shop assistant died on his way to hospital. Two of Mr Wahab's books were critical of the Taleban, the role of the mullahs and Osama bin Laden.

Mr Wahab, who was married with five children, called a press conference last month to say he was receiving death threats. He was not well-known nationally, but locally was engaged in a hostile debate with Islamic leaders through his writings.

After provincial and national elections last year, North-West Frontier Province came under the control of an alliance of religious parties. The provincial government has begun imposing strict interpretations of the Islamic code - much as the Taleban did in Afghanistan - on dress, women's freedom of movement and public entertainment.

Buy Israeli Goods - support Israel!!!

http://www.ou.org/programs/5762/buyisrael.htm

"Next time you're thinking about heading over to the rainbow collective"

Thanks for reminding everyone we need to continue to support them. Actually, I'll probably be going soon, maybe this weekend. See you there maybe?

The thing I love about Rainbow is how good it feels just to be there, to know that workers there were willing to put their jobs on the line for what they believed in.

Plus the cherry turnovers are excellent, and vegan.

"The thing I love about Rainbow is how good it feels just to be there, to know that workers there were willing to put their jobs on the line for what they believed in." Hahahahahaha - when the boycott was exposed they surrendered faster than an Iraqi solder. I enjoy buying my Israeli goods at Rainbow, but I prefer to do business with Israeli owned companies.

Go back and read some of the posts from the right-wing pro-Israeli Zionists. I'm not a betting man, but I'd venture a guess that some belong the doomsday cult of Fundamentalist/S.Baptist Christianity. The same folks who show up at demonstrations and scream at Jewish leftists that they are anti-Semites.

Speaking of hatecrimes:
The following is a list of people who were Arab, or perceived as so, killed after September 11th by name and location. The list was compiled by the Coalition for Collateral Compassion, a Chicago-area based community group that is advocating recognition for victims of suspected post-September 11th related hate crimes.

(Confirmed by both CAIR and ADC)
1. Balbir Sodhi - Mesa, AZ
2. Adel Karas - San Gabriel, CA
3. Ali Almansoop - Lincoln Park, MI
4. Ali Ali- Minneapolis, MN


(Names Confirmed only by CAIR)
5. Yasser Al-Ghurazy - Clovis, CA
6. Saed Mujtahid - Dallas, TX
7. Mohammad Omary - Denton, TX
8. Kimberly Lowe - Tulsa, OK

9. Jawed Wassel - Queens, NY
10. Ibrahim Mohammad - Chattanooga, TN

(Names Confirmed only by ADC)
11. Waqar Hasan -Dallas, TX
12. Jayantilal Patel - Haines City, FL
13. Surjit Singh Samra - Ceres, CA
14. Abdo Ali Ahmed - Reedly, CA
15. Abdullah Mohammed Nimer - Los Angeles, CA
16. Vasudev Patel - Mesquite, TX

(Reported by ADC, not confirmed as potential hate crime as of
yet.)
17. Ramez Younan - Los Angeles, CA

I think it is important to show Israeli deaths as the media does. All I say is show all the suffering including that of Palestinians and let people make up their own minds.

Right now, when Palestinians die there is no mention of their deaths, but as soon as an Israeli is killed their is talk of a break in "the relative calm or quiet" -- as though it were unprovoked attack just out of the blue.

What is the media afraid of? Show all the injustices (including the vastly greater Israeli atrocities) and let the American people make up their own minds. Isn't that how a democracy is supposed to function?

Full story Jawed Wassel's tragic death.

Police: Afghan filmmaker killed by investor 10/06/2001

http://www.afghan-info.com/Entertainment/Jawed_Wassel.htm

MINEOLA, New York (CNN) --A 38-year-old film investor and employee of a moving and storage company was charged Saturday with second-degree murder in the killing and dismemberment of an Afghan filmmaker, whose movie opened Wednesday in New York.

Police said they found the body parts of Jawed Wassel, 42, in two cardboard boxes in the back of a van driven by Nathan Chandler Powell, who had invested in Wassel's film. Wassel's head was found later in the refrigerator in Powell's apartment, police said.

Lt. Frank Guidice, commanding officer of the homicide squad for the Nassau County Police Department said officers stopped Powell near the entrance to Bethpage State Park, where he was speeding in a 1999 blue Chevrolet van with its lights turned off late Thursday night. Powell told Officer Peter McGinn that a pickax and shovel were in the rear of the van because he was trying to dig up $10,000 he had buried in the park three years earlier, Guidice said. He said McGinn then saw that the two boxes in the van were splattered with what appeared to be blood. Powell was arrested, and police found the arms and legs of Wassel in one of the boxes and his torso in the other, Guidice said. No head was found.

A search Friday of Powell's apartment -- in the same building as the moving company for which he worked in Queens -- turned up the missing head in the refrigerator, Guidice said. Wassel wrote "FireDancer," a film about his life in Afghanistan and the United States. The film opened this week in New York. Guidice said Powell had invested in the film in exchange for 30 percent of the profits. "He indicated to us he thought the film would make a million dollars," Guidice said. But Wednesday afternoon, after a meeting with other investors, Wassel returned with Powell to his apartment and told him he would pay him no more than 10 percent, Guidice said.

At that point, Powell became angry and struck Wassel with a pool cue, then stabbed him twice in the back, Guidice said. He dismembered the body later that night, Guidice said. Wassel's family and friends had been concerned since Wednesday night, when Wassel failed to show up at the film's opening in a Manhattan cinema. Powell was at the event, Guidice said.

Powell is being held in Nassau County Jail. He was arraigned Saturday morning. "He intimated that he was really being coerced into trying to sign these things," Guidice said about contracts reducing his percentage of the profits. "He felt the guy may have been a danger to him because he was from Afghanistan." In an article published in Wednesday editions of the Daily News, Wassel said it took him six years to make the film.
The Associated Press reports that Wassel was smuggled out of his native Afghanistan by his mother after the Soviet invasion of 1979. He lived in Pakistan, Germany and France before moving to New York. "I wanted to bring Afghanistan and its people and the role of Afghan-Americans to a wider audience," he said. "The movie couldn't have been made anywhere else but in America," he said. "It's the one place where everybody has a chance."

After Muslim extremists murdered over 3000 Americans in cold blood, one would expect a wave of bloody vengence attacks against Muslim and other foreigners in the US. However, except for a few isolated occurances, Americans did not lash out at their Muslim neighbors. One or two nuts did kill local Sikh store clerks who they believed were Muslims and today those fools are on death row where they belong. There were a few hundred other incidends (threats, assaults), but these were the exception. Of the millions of Arabs and Muslims in the US only a fraction of a percent reported any threats or attacks. Keep these facts in mind when you read the newspaper - the inter-religious rioting and mob attacks that are common in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Phillipines, Indonesia, Sudan and other parts of the world are absent in the US. Ask yourself not why a few lone nuts did attacks their neighbors, but why Americans did not lash out and what that says about the American people and their culture.

Americans just waited for the US army to drop cluster bombs on Afghanistan killing 30,000+ people. Americans are lazy that way, they would rather sit at home and watch their government kill for them...

But as with Nigeria this isnt really most of the population. Recent poll have show a quite large majority of the US population opposed to a war without international support...

--"Ask yourself not why a few lone nuts did attacks their neighbors, but why Americans did not lash out and what that says about the American people and their culture."

Americans are some of the most tolerant people on the face of the planet. There can be no question of that.

What is puzzling is how many who can be so polite and nice to say a Chinese immigrant in a restaurant could support bombing people in another country. I think it is much easier to commit atrocities from a distance -- detached. It's much more difficult to kill people after looking into their eyes and seeing some humanity in them than it is to bomb them from eight miles up.

30,000? Why not say 300,000 if you're going to lie? Oh, don't mention the fact that it is now legal in Afghanistan for a woman to go to school or see a doctor.

Read here about real intercommunal violence, the kind that you don't see in America.

http://members.tripod.com/Indianheart/_disc1/00000024.htm

How many people did die in Afghanistan... The US could have overestimated since the American public ws pretty blood thirsty at the time...remember all those news reposts about hundreds of Taliban killed (latter followed up by corrections that woops they were really US allies or wedding parties...)

'Palestine' for Dummies

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | I keep a special notebook handy whenever I watch a "Palestinian" spokesperson or leader or advocate speaking or interviewed on C-Span, the evening news or in newsprint. It helps me keep track of many of their inanities, but the one that is most amusing is the recurring line (which must be featured in their spin tutorials) that "we are the only occupied people in the world."

The great poobah Arafat himself has stated this claim in almost every recent interview--including chats with reporters who should know better like Bob Simon and Dan Rather. Alas, in each case, the script is the same. A Palestinian foghorn drops the line, and I lean forward hoping for an honest, studied-up member of our free press to ask: "But what about the Tibetans or the Kurds or the…"

I'm still waiting. As far I can tell no journalist has ever informed the Palestinians (or the Americans) that the former are but only one folk in a long and mottled line of national, ethnic, regional, religious and political groups who, if they got their wishes and fulfilled their dreams, would be sitting members of the United Nations.

Which leads to a follow-up question, also never asked by the hard-hitting foreign correspondents and news anchors: why exactly do the Palestinians deserve a state ahead of all those others? After all, American and Russian presidents, leaders of Europe, everyone spends late nights worrying about how to give the Palestinians what they want. Who does that for the separatist Christian Blacks of Sudan--against whom oil money has financed a Muslim-executed genocide of several million in the last few decades?

We might ask more pointedly why should the Palestinians, who have no separate religion, culture, history, national identity, ethnicity, or language from other Arabs be given a homeland ahead of say, the Kurds (an independent ethnic nation for thousands of years…or for that matter many American aboriginal peoples. Likewise, David Yeagley, a professor who teaches at the University of Oklahoma and is a descendent of the Commanche war-chief Bad Eagle, commented to me, "My people existed as a separate nation before the Ottomans invaded Europe...Why aren't we getting airplay for a homeland while some thug in Jenin is a media-darling?"

The answer is a brutal one: money talks and as Allan Dershowitz points out in his new book "terrorism works." The Palestinians are unique among the world's nation wannabes in several ways. First, they have the backing of most of the world's oil wealth and thus the industrial nations that kowtow in lust of it. The Gulf Caliphs caught on long ago that in order to preserve their own corrupt, profligate, illegal regimes they needed some perennial distraction for their ignorant masses--why not the Jews?

Nobody has ever been so calculatingly cruel before, mind you. My grandfather, for example, a Greek Christian, fought in a war with Turkey in the early Twenties. The Greeks lost the war and Turkey expelled 3,000,000 ethnic Greeks (whose ancestors had lived there since the Bronze Age). Greece, an impoverished country, did not torture their compatriots by keeping them in refugee camps: they absorbed them, the only humanitarian option possible for a humane people.

Likewise, ethnic Germans illegally expelled from Poland and the eastern territories at the end of World War II were taken in by West Germany as brothers and citizens. The iron curtain was not lined with fetid camps.

Both sets of refugees weren't happy about their fate, but when was the last time you heard about a former Ost-German hijacking a Russian plane or a displaced Ionian Greek blowing up an Ankara pizza shop?

No, the Palestinians were the best investment ever made by the Oil Sheiks and it has paid off spectacularly. (But not for the Arab people, of course. A recent report by the U.N. found that the total GDP [including oil] of the Arab world does not exceed that of Spain).

Another reason the Palestinians are on the front-burner is violence. I recall during the Gulf war a Kurdish spokesperson was asked why the world didn't concern itself with the national hopes of his people. His answer was brutally cynical and absolutely correct: "We don't commit terrorism against Europeans." The Palestinians have ignited outrage after outrage, and each time the response of the jelly-kneed world politicians is to pay more attention to them and work harder to help them with cash and diplomatic initiatives. The bloodthirsty wheel gets the grease.

Thus, terrorism pays off and is richly rewarded: His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in contrast, will die in exile because his philosophy does not allow him to consider exponential violence.

Finally, the Palestinians are an accessible cause celebre of the Left. No big deal to have your crumpets with your artsy pals in a London teahouse in the morning and then fly down for the afternoon to "express solidarity" with Arafat's brownshirts. Dynamite-throwing Palestinians are chic; Tibetan orphans are not. When was the last time you saw any "human rights" activists rush to the southern Sudan to be human shields between black Christian babies and a Muslim Sudanese army aerial bombardment?

So this journalism professor and historian sits and waits for a brave journalist to ask an obvious, fact-driven question. And I fantasize that perhaps some foolhardy but honest --apparently none exist -- U.N. administrator will announce that "Frankly, there are hundreds of peoples more deserving of a homeland and we should be helping them and ignoring the Palestinians…"

Muslim cleric 'promised boys virgins for
martyrdom'

By Reuters

Muslim Cleric Abdullah El-Faisal arriving at the Old Bailey in central London on Thursday.
(Photo: AP)

LONDON - A London-based Muslim cleric accused of urging his followers to murder non-believers, promised teenage Muslim boys 72 virgins in paradise if they died as religious martyrs, a court was told Thursday.

Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, 39, denies five charges of incitement to murder by encouraging others to kill "enemies of Islam". He could face life imprisonment if convicted.

Faisal, based in central London, is also charged with stirring up racial hatred through use of threatening and abusive words and with video and audio tapes in the four years before his arrest by anti-terrorist police last year.

Prosecutor David Perry told the jury at London's Old Bailey Court that Faisal urged followers to wage a Jihad, or Holy War, against non believers, specifically Americans, Hindus, Jews, Britons and other Europeans, by terrorising and killing them.

In one tape played to the court, Faisal could be heard telling women it was their duty to raise their sons to e part of the holy cause.

"Your male children must have the Jihad [holy war] mentality... At 15 your Muslim boys must become soldiers. Jihad training must be compulsory," he could be heard telling the female members of his audience.

He promised that the boys would be rewarded for their martyrdom in paradise with 72 virgins, adding: "Religious martyrs are not dead. Do not cry for them."

Later he said: "Once the word of Islam was spread by the sword. Today we are going to spread the word with Kalashnikovs [rifles]."

Perry told the court that in one tape, Faisal said: "It is wonderful to kill a non-believer, crawl on their backs and push them down into the Hellfire."

In others, he allegedly condoned the use of chemical and nuclear weapons to wipe out Islam's enemies, naming those enemies as all Americans, Jews, Hindus, Britons and citizens of other European countries.

Faisal allegedly made a series of tapes, with names such as "Jihad", "No Peace with Jews" and "Them Versus Us," which were distributed for sale from Islamic bookshops.

One of the tapes made some time in the year 2000 was said to
include a cover picture and the voice of Osama bin Laden, head of the Al-Qaida network, which Washington blames for the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Perry told the jury prosecutors were unable to say what effect Faisal's speeches had on his audiences as the identity of his followers was unknown.

Before the trial started, the judge banned any Hindus or Jews or anyone married to someone of those faiths from serving on the jury.

The court was told Faisal was born in Jamaica and had been a practising Christian until the age of 16 when he converted to Islam.

He obtained a degree in Islamic studies at a university in Saudi Arabia before moving to Britain in the early 1990s where he set himself up as a cleric in London.