"Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus"

"Jesus was executed by a proper rabbinical court for contempt of rabbinical authoritiy"
"But no-one would say anything publicly about Jesus for fear of the Jews."
(The Bible, John 7:13)

The Herald Sun, Australia, 08 June 2003

Religious row over Mel's film

MEL Gibson has declared war on two of the most powerful religious groups in America.

By MICHAEL McKENNA in Los Angeles

The actor has threatened a lawsuit against the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Jewish-run Anti-Defamation League over a report criticising the depiction of Jews in his controversial new film about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The two bodies want changes to the script.

Gibson co-wrote, directed and funded the $40 million "The Passion", which finished shooting in Rome last month.

The film, starring Monica Bellucci and James Caviezel, is spoken entirely in Latin and Aramaic and will be released without subtitles. Gibson has yet to find a distributor for the film, scheduled for release next year.

"According to the Talmud, Jesus was executed by a proper rabbinical court for idolatry, inciting other Jews to idolatry, and con-tempt of rabbinical autho-ritiy. All classical Jewish sources which mention his execution are quite happy to take responsibility for it; in the talmudic account the Romans are not even mentioned."

Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Pluto Press, London 1994, p. 97

Gibson is reportedly a member of a traditionalist Catholic movement, operating outside the mainstream church, that embraces a 16th century form of the religion that uses only Latin in mass.

The movement rejects the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 that eliminated the belief that Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus.

Catholic and Jewish scholars said they feared Gibson was going to use his celebrity status and film to promote his views.

Sister Mary Boys, professor of practical theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York, said: "The Anti-Defamation League and US Conference of Catholic Bishops reviewed the script and we wrote a report that was sent to Mr Gibson's company.

"We have concerns about the role of Jews in the movie and we were hoping to get some changes. Mr Gibson's company has retaliated by threatening a lawsuit."

Sister Boys declined to detail the exact concerns about the script.

Gibson and Bruce Davey, his partner in Icon Productions, would not comment.

Earlier, Gibson lashed out before a newspaper published the ultra-conservative views of his father, Hutton, 85.

Mr Gibson Sr, a traditionalist Catholic, was quoted as saying the holocaust never happened and the World Trade Centre was destroyed by remote control.

Gibson said at the time people were trying to denigrate his father because he was making the movie, and admitted some Jews might be offended by the movie, although that was not intended.

"I've never seen a rendering that equals this for reality," he said. "The versions I've seen (are) more like fairy tales.

"This actually happened. But, when you look at the reasons behind why Christ came, why he was crucified - he died for all mankind and he suffered for all mankind - anybody who transgresses has to look at their part or look at their culpability."

Father William Fulco, a Jesuit priest and Los Angeles-based professor of Mediterranean studies, said he had seen no evidence of anti-Semitism while working on the script. He translated the script.

"The Passion" is the first film Gibson has directed since winning an Academy Award for Braveheart.

"It must be admitted at the outset that the Talmud and the talmudic literature ... contain very offensive statements and precepts directed specifically against Christianity. For example, in addition to a series of scurrilous allegations against Jesus, the Talmud states that his punishment in hell is to be immersed in boiling excrement ...

Jewish children are actually taught - passages such as that which commands every Jew, whenever passing near a cemetery, to utter a blessing if the cemetery is Jewish, but to curse the mothers of the dead if it is non-Jewish."

Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Pluto Press, London 1994
pages 20-24, 94 (ISBN 0 7453 0818 X)

Why not invade Israel?

If rogue nations are to be brought into line by the US, shouldn’t Israel be punished for ignoring UN resolutions? Gerald Kaufman is just asking...

The unprecedented security measures for President Bush’s visit to Britain this week prove that the war against terrorism, launched by the United States two years ago, has certainly not been won. If further proof were needed, the atrocious terrorist acts against two synagogues in Istanbul at the weekend provide blood-spattered confirmation.

But if the invasion of Iraq last spring was not about Saddam Hussein’s alleged links to international terrorism, what was its rationale and what was its justification? Tony Blair has proclaimed, with total sincerity I have no doubt, that one consideration was the danger of weapons of mass destruction.

From the outset, Bush was perfectly ready to rest his case on the need for regime change in Iraq. ...

So, let it be accepted that, despite the death and destruction deplorably concomitant with the process, the removal of Saddam was an indubitably good thing. But, if the removal by armed force of one disagreeable regime under one objectionable head of government is a good thing, why stop there? ...

It is true that the United Nations Security Council resolutions of which Iraq was in violation for a dozen years were mandatory and carried penalties, while those criticising Israel were not. That does not excuse successive Israeli governments during the past 36 years for failing to conform to Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. They would have violated even more if the United States, otherwise so assiduous in stressing the importance of international order, had not vetoed them.

"Israelis have killed mostly innocent civilians, including babies and pregnant women."

Since the present regime in Israel came to office, there has been unprecedented repression of the Palestinians who the Israelis govern. The world is rightly horrified at the cruel and bloody deaths of Israeli civilians, including babies and small children, inflicted by terrorist suicide bombers. Grievous though every one of these deaths most certainly is, it cannot be denied that during the three years of the Second Intifada the Israelis have killed three times as many Palestinians, some of them terrorists (in illegal targeted assassinations) but most of them innocent civilians, including babies and pregnant women.

Now the Israelis are building an illegal security wall, reaching far into Palestinian territory, which is equally illegally annexing that territory, separating farmers from their homes, students from universities, children from schools, and which will violate the sanctity of Bethlehem. Roads into villages are being bulldozed, and the trenches which render them impassable are being filled with sewage. Some Palestinians need written permission to live in their own homes. There are 482 Israeli military checkpoints dividing Palestinian land into 300 small clusters. ...

No wonder that only three weeks ago the Israeli chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Ya’alon, expressed concern about the building of the wall, said the Israeli government’s policies were ‘operating contrary to our strategic interests,’ argued that the restrictions were increasing hatred of Israel and encouraging terrorism, and lamented: ‘There is no hope, no expectations for the Palestinians in the Gaza strip, nor in Bethlehem and Jericho’ (whose agricultural and horticultural economy is being ruined). No wonder that a member of the Israeli government, the infrastructure minister, Yosef Paritzky, has said recently: ‘The failure to differentiate between civilians and terrorists turns all the Palestinians into potential suicide bombers.’ ...

Sharon was the prime mover in the only war that Israel has ever lost, the invasion of Lebanon. The Kahan commission inquiring into the Sabra-Chatilla massacre of Palestinians outside Beirut recommended that, for his connection with those events, Sharon should leave the Israeli Cabinet. It was Sharon who triggered the Second Intifada in 2000 by his provocative visit to the Temple Mount. And is it not members of the Sharon family, including the Prime Minister himself, who have been the object of investigations by the Israeli legal authorities? ...

If the United States is keen to invade countries that disrupt international standards of order, should not Israel, for example, be considered as a candidate? ...

After all, has not the United States, on the basis of dubious legality, invaded nearby countries on the American continent, such as Panama and Grenada? Has it not got a questionable human rights record, with the level of capital punishment, including the execution of mentally retarded prisoners, one of the worst in the democratic world? Is it not keeping a collection of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, whose detention appears to have no legal basis whatever? And does it not have a president who was never elected, but appointed by the Supreme Court after electoral finagling in the electorally clinching state which just happens to be governed by that president’s brother? Who, then, should invade the United States? The despised United Nations?

Global Holocaust-Deniers Bill Passed In Knesset

I certainly do not deny the Holocaust although it is of little importance given the fact that 60 million people were killed in World War II, most of which were far more valuable to the civilized world than a few Jews which nobody misses.

By Nina Gilbert
8-4-5


Legislation that would make Holocaust-denial committed overseas an offense under Israeli legal jurisdiction was approved unanimously in first reading by the Knesset on Tuesday.

The passage of the measure would enable Israel to demand the extradition of Holocaust-deniers for prosecution.

The bill was drafted by MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) as a move against former Palestinian Authority prime minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) for his doctoral dissertation 20 years ago in which he estimated that the Nazis killed less than a million Jews.

It is likely to serve as a deterrence against Holocaust-deniers visiting Israel, although the possibility of countries consenting to extradition on the offense is unlikely.

The legislation expands the territorial jurisdiction of the Israeli law against Holocaust-denying outside of it borders.


Comment
Alton Raines
8-4-5

Who do these arrogant bastards think they are? The audacity to think that a group of Jews can control the thoughts and ideas of others outside of their own nation?! To attempt control them, silence them, hold power and sway --- ah! --- can anyone read this report without seeing the obvious? When someone says these people are too small and insignificant in the world to be part of some evil cartel seeking world domination... doesn't something like this just flash a bright light in ones eyes and wake you up to what is apparent?! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that they seek the power over the very minds of everyone else on earth and want to bring them into their own jurisdiction and meet out punishment for just the suggestion, just the mere thought that Holocaust numbers might be exaggerated or inaccurate. Anyone who can read this and not see the sickening arrogance of the Zionists in Israel has a screw loose.


Comment
Nathan Milstein
8-4-5

Jeff - I have read your site for years and often don't agree with the articles and essays on the site. However, as an American Jew, I cannot believe what has happened to my once peaceful and gentle people under the power and psychopathic dominance of Zionsim. This new 'law' is beyond belief.

I am repulsed by this supreme elitist idiocy. With this kind of megalomaniacal crap, Zionism continues to CREATE and fuel anti-Jewish sentiment around the world. Think about it. This Zionist lunacy only goes to confirm what many 'anti-semites' have been saying for years!

Americans must also keep in mind how Zionists have forced Bush/Cheney to install an entirely new division in the US Dept of State to monitor 'anti-semitism' everywhere on the planet. This is all utter madness.

'Anti-semitism', of course, has been recently redefined to include *any* criticism of the Zionist-controlled state of Israel and any of its inhuman policies towards the Palestinians.

I hope Americans can remember that all Jews do NOT condone or support this Israeli 'law'. And if anyone doubts the control Zionism has over Jews, just read the research articles by Jewish scholars Lenni Brenner, Dr. Henry Makow, Prof Norman Finkelstein and Israel Shamir among others. Thanks to Lenni Brenner, we now know that the Nazis had agreed to give all Jews safe passage out of Europe in 1942-43 for the paltry sum of $2 million dollars.

However, when top Rabbis went to Switzerland to world Zionist headquarters and asked for the money, the Zionists told them NO and to paraphrase the quote from Brenner: "Unless large amounts of Jewish blood is spilled during the war, we won't be able to so easily secure our new homeland in Palestine after the war."

So, in a pivotal sense, the Zionists were ultimately responsible for the Holocaust - as it was they who decided this catastrophe of death and suffering in the War had to continue to serve THEIR purposes. They sacrificed us - 'burnt offerings' - and they are still using us and Judaism today. Read it and weep: http://www.rense.com/general31/Zionist.htm

America must reject the new Zionist-Israeli 'law' and especially the idea that American citizens - or ANY citizen of ANY nation - might somehow be threatened with extradition to Israel to 'stand trial' for 'denying the Holocaust' ...which means, apparently, even asking questions about the 'official version' of what happened to us in the war.

As I said, this is total, utter insanity and seeks to destroy freedom of speech worldwide and instill fear of Zionist Israel and its masters. None of my friends that I have spoken to can believe this is happening...they think I am joking.

Wake up America, the clock is running and terminal madness is in the air.

The Destruction Of Mecca

Saudi Hardliners Wiping Out Their Own Heritage
By Daniel Howden
The Independent - UK
8-5-5


Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots.

Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the holy city is gone. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades.

Now the actual birthplace of the Prophet Mohamed is facing the bulldozers, with the connivance of Saudi religious authorities whose hardline interpretation of Islam is compelling them to wipe out their own heritage.

It is the same oil-rich orthodoxy that pumped money into the Taliban as they prepared to detonate the Bamiyan buddhas in 2000. And the same doctrine - violently opposed to all forms of idolatry - that this week decreed that the Saudis' own king be buried in an unmarked desert grave.

A Saudi architect, Sami Angawi, who is an acknowledged specialist on the region's Islamic architecture, told The Independent that the final farewell to Mecca is imminent: "What we are witnessing are the last days of Mecca and Medina."

According to Dr Angawi - who has dedicated his life to preserving Islam's two holiest cities - as few as 20 structures are left that date back to the lifetime of the Prophet 1,400 years ago and those that remain could be bulldozed at any time. "This is the end of history in Mecca and Medina and the end of their future," said Dr Angawi.

Mecca is the most visited pilgrimage site in the world. It is home to the Grand Mosque and, along with the nearby city of Medina which houses the Prophet's tomb, receives four million people annually as they undertake the Islamic duty of the Haj and Umra pilgrimages.

The driving force behind the demolition campaign that has transformed these cities is Wahhabism. This, the austere state faith of Saudi Arabia, was imported by the al-Saud tribal chieftains when they conquered the region in the 1920s.

The motive behind the destruction is the Wahhabists' fanatical fear that places of historical and religious interest could give rise to idolatry or polytheism, the worship of multiple and potentially equal gods.

The practice of idolatry in Saudi Arabia remains, in principle at least, punishable by beheading. This same literalism mandates that advertising posters can and need to be altered. The walls of Jeddah are adorned with ads featuring people deliberately missing an eye or with a foot painted over. These contrived imperfections are the most glaring sign of an orthodoxy that tolerates nothing which fosters adulation of the graven image. Nothing can, or can be seen to, interfere with a person's devotion to Allah.

"At the root of the problem is Wahhabism," says Dr Angawi. "They have a big complex about idolatry and anything that relates to the Prophet."

The Wahhabists now have the birthplace of the Prophet in their sights. The site survived redevelopment early in the reign of King Abdul al-Aziz ibn Saud 50 years ago when the architect for a library there persuaded the absolute ruler to allow him to keep the remains under the new structure. That concession is under threat after Saudi authorities approved plans to "update" the library with a new structure that would concrete over the existing foundations and their priceless remains.

Dr Angawi is the descendant of a respected merchant family in Jeddah and a leading figure in the Hijaz - a swath of the kingdom that includes the holy cities and runs from the mountains bordering Yemen in the south to the northern shores of the Red Sea and the frontier with Jordan. He established the Haj Research Centre two decades ago to preserve the rich history of Mecca and Medina. Yet it has largely been a doomed effort. He says that the bulldozers could come "at any time" and the Prophet's birthplace would be gone in a single night.

He is not alone in his concerns. The Gulf Institute, an independent news-gathering group, has publicised what it says is a fatwa, issued by the senior Saudi council of religious scholars in 1994, stating that preserving historical sites "could lead to polytheism and idolatry".

Ali al-Ahmed, the head of the organisation, formerly known as the Saudi Institute, said: "The destruction of Islamic landmarks in Hijaz is the largest in history, and worse than the desecration of the Koran."

Most of the buildings have suffered the same fate as the house of Ali-Oraid, the grandson of the Prophet, which was identified and excavated by Dr Angawi. After its discovery, King Fahd ordered that it be bulldozed before it could become a pilgrimage site.

"The bulldozer is there and they take only two hours to destroy everything. It has no sensitivity to history. It digs down to the bedrock and then the concrete is poured in," he said.

Similarly, finds by a Lebanese professor, Kamal Salibi, which indicated that once-Jewish villages in what is now Saudi Arabia might have been the location of scenes from the Bible, prompted the bulldozers to be sent in. All traces were destroyed.

This depressing pattern of excavation and demolition has led Dr Angawi and his colleagues to keep secret a number of locations in the holy cities that could date back as far as the time of Abraham.

The ruling House of Saud has been bound to Wahhabism since the religious reformer Mohamed Ibn abdul-Wahab signed a pact with Mohammed bin Saud in 1744. The combination of the al-Saud clan and Wahhab's warrior zealots became the foundation of the modern state. The House of Saud received its wealth and power and the hardline clerics got the state backing that would enable them in the decades to come to promote their Wahhabist ideology across the globe.

On the tailcoats of the religious zealots have come commercial developers keen to fill the historic void left by demolitions with lucrative high-rises.

"The man-made history of Mecca has gone and now the Mecca that God made is going as well." Says Dr Angawi. "The projects that are coming up are going to finish them historically, architecturally and environmentally," he said.

With the annual pilgrimage expected to increase five-fold to 20 million in the coming years as Saudi authorities relax entry controls, estate agencies are seeing a chance to cash in on huge demand for accommodation.

"The infrastructure at the moment cannot cope. New hotels, apartments and services are badly needed," the director of a leading Saudi estate agency told Reuters.

Despite an estimated $13bn in development cash currently washing around Mecca, Saudi sceptics dismiss the developers' argument. "The service of pilgrims is not the goal really," says Mr Ahmed. "If they were concerned for the pilgrims, they would have built a railroad between Mecca and Jeddah, and Mecca and Medina. They are removing any historical landmark that is not Saudi-Wahhabi, and using the prime location to make money," he says.

Dominating these new developments is the Jabal Omar scheme which will feature two 50-storey hotel towers and seven 35-storey apartment blocks - all within a stone's throw of the Grand Mosque.

Dr Angawi said: "Mecca should be the reflection of the multicultural Muslim world, not a concrete parking lot."

Whereas proposals for high-rise developments in Jerusalem have prompted a worldwide outcry and the Taliban's demolition of the Bamiyan buddhas was condemned by Unicef, Mecca's busy bulldozers have barely raised a whisper of protest.

"The house where the Prophet received the word of God is gone and nobody cares," says Dr Angawi. "I don't want trouble. I just want this to stop."

What is a Deist?

A deist is someone who believes in an impersonal creator. This "God" is just the "timekeeper" with no interest in getting involved with anyone or anything.

The early free-mason movement, which sparked the "Enlightenment" 250 years ago, had the belief in God as their first precept. This discouraged being burnt at the stake, which was a popular church activity. The free-masons then avoideed all talk of god, as so to observe science without prejustice. Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the constitution were free-masons. Most masons were deists, as so was Einstein.

I love how most religious people think we don't believe in God, just so we can do "bad" things. Most have never thought of anything real in their life anyways. They are always thinking about, "what they're going to get". They want to "get" heaven, AND NO ONE BETTER GET IN THEIR WAY! They are the evil greedy humanity you've heard so much about. These same people are all about the ten commandments, yet ask them to name them in order, most can't. Ask them how many are even actually laws, which is only half, and they can't. Argue this with them and the first point they want to make is; "SO, YOU THINK PEOPLE SHOULD KILL EACH OTHER". Going along with the crowd is a very simple system practiced by simple people.

Intelligent Design pushed by anti-science extremists

By ERIC BAERREN


Right after Sept. 11, folks tut-tutted over how the Arab world had fallen.

Muslims had a beautiful civilization, they said. They cherished art, women's rights and science and mathematics. Then they got religion and the whole thing fell apart.

We're rather better off than that, but, the president this week let us know which direction we're headed.

Responding to questions, he said that Intelligent Design – warmed-over creationism – should be taught in science classes alongside evolution.

His reasoning, if you know nothing about the issue, might sound reasonable: Give kids a chance to weigh both options and let them make up their minds. As if science classes are the right place for popularity contests.

Unfortunately, Intelligent Design has benefited from its framing as just another issue pitting religion versus the secular. The truth is far different.

It isn't conservative-liberal politics. Prominent conservatives have harshly criticized Intelligent Design. Uberhawk Charles Krauthammer condemned it in a Time Magazine column earlier this week, adding that any creationism-based ridicule heaped upon religion wasn't just expected, but earned.

It's also not a traditional conflict between the godless and the religious. Scientists of all disciplines and all faiths jibe beliefs in creation and scientific fact. Only those who exist on the fringe, for whom ignorance is the ratification of belief, genuinely see this as a conflict of faith and secularism – the same kind of fear of knowledge credited for the Arab world's fall from glory.

No, this really is an issue of fruit.

In one hand, you've got an orange (evolution). In the other, you've got an apple (Intelligent Design).

If you engage in a broad discussion about fruit (why we exist), it's proper to weigh the two. If you're talking about citrus fruits (science), you steer clear of apples.

Why? The apple isn't a citrus fruit. It's a fine fruit – it's kept many a doctor away, and knowledge of how to pie it made mom all-American – it's just not a member of the citrus family.

The president, however, looked at both and said, "I think this apple just might be citrus fruit.“

Further muddling the issue is that creationists have recently reframed the issue as evolution's holes and unanswered questions. The point of science is to fill those holes and answer those questions, however, and 150 years of discovery since Darwin have given us far more to support evolution than discredit it.

Regular people can be forgiven if they've bought into the Intelligent Design dog and pony show, because mainstream reporting on the topic is nothing more than a game of dueling quotes. Particularly bad was a Detroit News report last month that concluded with this quote from one of the quacks at the pro-creationist Discovery Institute:

"The scientific evidence is what will lead the way,“ (Seth) Cooper said. "It won't be political maneuvering.“

Indeed. The Discovery Institute likes to say that Intelligent Design is science, even as the same report quoted an e-mail from a high school student five paragraphs above that said this:

"I'm not sure how connected it is, but next fall (the high school) will be offering a Bible as Literature class,“ the student wrote. "Also, I took (advanced placement) biology this past school year and the program was already more sensitive to treating evolution as a theory and not a fact. I believe publicity like this is another way God is getting his truth out.“

Of course evolution is a theory. Scientific theories are carefully built on hypothesis, testing, observation, and coming to a conclusion best fitting the facts. They also get reviewed by peers, many times over. Theories are explanations of facts, and it takes longer than a morning cup of coffee to produce one. Intelligent Design can't be tested in the lab, so it's not even a hypothesis.

Reportage by dueling quotes, however, means not having to sort out what they mean, or if they contradict. Ironically, the News provided a better insight into Intelligent Design in a pro-creationist column published in 2003. The religious overtones are very obvious.

Poor reporting makes it easy to see why folks might wonder whether an apple just might be a citrus fruit.

If the president really thinks Intelligent Design is science, however, he's a buffoon. His own science adviser panned the idea earlier this year, and the president could get the world's top scientific minds on the phone if he wanted a second opinion. The president's word carries a lot of weight, and it's reasonable to expect that he'd educate himself a little before throwing his weight behind an issue.

If not, it was pure cynicism, a bone of poor policy thrown to his base. But, we all lose.

How's that?

Although this kind of announcement might have generated genuine outrage, it isn't the first time the president has said this kind of thing. So, it only generated some lazy anger, perhaps best summed up by The Editors at Thepoorman.net, with this:

"The silver lining is that school is going to be a lot less stressful when the answer to every question on the midterm is ëbecause it is God's will.' So there is that.“

Words that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby didn't want to hear

By swopa
Aug 4 2005 - 8:32pm

From Knight Ridder this evening:

The Justice Department indicted two top former officials with a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group Thursday for allegedly conspiring to communicate classified defense information.

U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty said the men were attempting to influence U.S. foreign policy. He said trafficking in information is commonplace in the nation's capital but a "clear line separates classified information from everything else."

"Today's charges are about crossing that clear line," McNulty said.

Mark Kleiman explains further:

The indictments were for "communication of national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it," in violation of 18 U.S.C. 793 (d), otherwise known as the Espionage Act, and for conspiracy to do so.

(There are also charges of communicating such information to foreign officials, but the press release on the indictment issued by the U.S. Attorney specifically mentions "unlawful communication, delivery and transmission to persons not entitled to receive it, including members of the media.") . . .

There seems to be no evidence that money changed hands, or that there was any intention to damage U.S. interests. Franklin is simply charged with giving classified information to those without security clearances, in pursuit of a political agenda.

So it turns out that the Espionage Act isn't a dead letter after all, and that it can be used to prosecute non-commercial, non-hostile revelations of sensitive information to the press, as opposed to giving secrets to hostile foreign powers.

Looking ahead to the future of Plamemania for a moment, let's imagine the closest adviser to the President of the United States. And the chief of staff to the Vice President of the United States. Indicted for violations of the Espionage Act.

I wonder how well they'll be able to spin that.

Threat to Divest Is Church Tool in Israeli Fight

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. announced Friday that it would press four American corporations to stop providing military equipment and technology to Israel for use in the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and that if the companies did not comply, the church would take a vote to divest its stock in them.

The companies - Caterpillar, Motorola, ITT Industries and United Technologies - were selected from a list of several dozen possibilities by a church investment committee that met Friday in Seattle. The Presbyterians accused these companies of selling helicopters, cellphones, night vision equipment and other items Israel uses to enforce its occupation.

In an effort to appear even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the church committee also included Citigroup on its list of targets, alleging it had a connection to a bank accused of having a role in funneling money from Islamic charities to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The church said it included Citigroup because it was mentioned in an article in The Wall Street Journal.

A spokeswoman for Citigroup called the church's assertion "an outrage," a reaction echoed at several of the other corporations.

The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. is in the forefront of a campaign now spreading to other mainline Protestant churches to use corporate divestment as a tactic in the Middle East conflict, a tactic that is roiling relations with Jewish groups.

The Episcopal Church U.S.A., the United Church of Christ, two regions of the United Methodist Church, as well as international groups like the World Council of Churches and the Anglican Consultative Council have all urged consideration of divestment or economic pressure in recent months, though the tone and emphasis of each resolution varies. The Disciples of Christ passed a resolution last month calling on Israel to tear down the barrier it has built to wall off the occupied territories, and other churches are considering similar resolutions.

Some Jewish groups accuse the churches of singling out Israel for blame and failing to address the Palestinians' role in perpetuating the violence. Several have even said they see anti-Semitism behind the churches' moves.

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., said in an interview: "It's not a campaign to divest from the state of Israel. We're fully committed to the state of Israel. But it is a campaign to divest from particular activities that are doing damage and creating injustice and violence, whether that's the building of the separation barrier, construction related to the occupation, or weapons and materials that lead to suicide bombings."

Many American churches used divestment in the 1980's to pressure the South African government to end apartheid. But applying the tactic to Israel has alarmed many American Jewish groups and caused a breach in what has been a long-term alliance between Jews and mainline Protestant churches, like the Presbyterians, that have leaned politically liberal. In decades past, Jewish and Protestant groups have worked together on a range of social issues, from racism to global poverty to women's rights.

"This is a brilliantly organized political campaign to hurt Israel, and it's not going to help a single Palestinian," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish watchdog group based in Los Angeles. "When you look at the list of companies, this is basically a recipe for Israel to disarm."

Rabbi Cooper said the Protestant churches were ignoring the current "reality on the ground" - that Israel is preparing to withdraw this month from Gaza and remove settlements there. "Instead of divesting, these churches should be investing," he said. "There is so much humanitarian need on the ground in the Holy Land. We're not telling them: 'Stay out of it. It's not your business.' There's a ton of work to be done."

He called the churches' actions "functionally anti-Semitic." But he said that after attending the conventions of the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ this year, he concluded that the resolutions were being "rammed through" by denominational leaders and were not reflective of the churches' grassroots membership.

However, David Elcott, director of interreligious affairs in the United States for the American Jewish Committee, said that he made a distinction between the different church resolutions. He said he found the Presbyterian Church's resolution "morally reprehensible" because it singled out Israel for blame, but that the United Church of Christ had been more evenhanded, condemning violence in the Middle East no matter the source.

The Presbyterian Church owns hundreds of thousands of shares of stock in the five companies through its pension fund for retired church workers and through church foundations. It did not say how much money it has invested in these companies, but judging by the numbers of shares it said it owns, the church's investment in the companies totals about $60 million in holdings.

The Presbyterian Church's committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment has brought similar economic pressure against other companies accused of abetting human rights abuses in countries like China, the Sudan, Myanmar, Nigeria and Guatemala. But church staff members said this was the first time it had focused on companies doing business in Israel.

The Presbyterians gave a variety of reasons for choosing these five companies. It accused Caterpillar of selling Israel heavy equipment used for demolishing Palestinian homes, and of constructing roads and infrastructure in the occupied territories and Israeli settlements.

The company released a statement saying: "For the past four years, activists have wrongly included Caterpillar in a publicity campaign aimed at advancing their much larger political agendas. Over that same period of time we've repeatedly evaluated our position, as have our shareholders, and determined that while the protests occasionally succeed in getting headlines, they neither change the facts nor our position."

The Presbyterian committee said in its announcement that it included United Technologies Corporation, a military contractor, because a subsidiary provides helicopters used by the Israeli military "in attacks in the occupied territories against suspected Palestinian terrorists."

A company spokesman, Paul Jackson, responded by e-mail: "UTC has been widely recognized as an ethical and responsible corporation. Work on military programs is stringently regulated by the U.S. government, and UTC complies wholly with all policies and related regulations."

The church said it identified Motorola because the company has a contract to develop wireless encrypted communications for the Israeli military in the territories and is a "majority investor in one of Israel's four cell phone companies."

Norman Sandler, a manager for Motorola on global issues, said the church's action "came completely out of the blue." He said the company supplies radio products to Israel, as well as to many Arab countries.

ITT also made the church's list because, the committee said, it supplies the Israeli military with "communications, electronic and night vision equipment used by its forces in the occupied territories." A spokesman for ITT did not respond to a message left on Friday afternoon.

Leah Johnson, a spokeswoman for Citigroup, said: "Any assertion that Citigroup supports terrorism in any way is an outrage. We take all possible measures to ensure that our institution is not used by criminals or as a conduit to fund terrorist activities."

Despite the bitterness the divestment moves have evoked among Jewish organizations, Christian and Jewish leaders alike said these developments had prompted intensive and productive dialogue sessions both at the national level and between "hundreds" of churches and synagogues nationwide.

A delegation of prominent Jewish and Christian leaders is set to travel to Jerusalem in September.

Much Ado About Gaza

*The pull-out is just part of the game;
it is always followed by a push-in, as in a rape scene.*
By Israel Shamir
8-5-5

An Englishman leaves without bidding farewell, a Jew says his farewells but does not leave, says a Jewish joke. This is the case with Israeli withdrawals from Bethlehem, Ramallah and now the grand slam, Gaza disengagement. A fortnight ago, Israeli army left Tul Karem amid fanfares. Newspapers described it a "trust-building measure" the Palestinians have to work hard to justify. A few days later, Israeli tanks rolled back into Tul Karem; they killed a few policemen in cold blood, carried away a wagonload of captives and were ready for the next well-publicised withdrawal. We went through this motion so many times, that one should be a great enthusiast to care about Gaza show provided by courtesy of Ariel Sharon.
Gaza disengagement is nothing. This is a non-event, though presented as a great news. This one is not the first, and surely not the last. In Palestinian history, Gaza withdrawals are a dime a dozen. I remember even Gaza withdrawal of 1956, but people with shorter memory probably remember the ballyhoo around Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 1993, in accordance with Oslo Accords. There were so many arguments, whether there should be 'Gaza first to go', or 'Gaza and Jericho first to go". After plenty of acrimony, the Palestinians "got" Gaza and Jericho. Eventually it turned out that Israel granted some prisoner autonomy to what became Gaza Concentration Camp and Jericho Open Prison, on a par with the five-star VIP prison of Ramallah.
Disengagement is sham, but the wall is real. The Israeli News agency announced that "*The IDF is to build another security fence around the Gaza Strip. In the end, the system will comprise of three fences, state-of-the-art electronic and optical sensors as well as remote control machine guns. The system should be completed in less than a year for a total cost of $220 million", *naturally, paid by the US taxpayer.
If for some reason, the prisoners will become restive, Israel has enough planes to bomb them into submission without moving a single soldier. The disengagement is good for Israel of Sharon, as it allows him to cut expenses, to cut down unpopular reserve duty and to make servicing of the Gaza Concentration Camp so much easier. This is no secret: Israeli officials expressed this view on numerous occasions.
Our friend Uri Avnery called upon the Palestinian resistance "not to play into the hands of Sharon" and refrain from all military activity until the withdrawal is completed. The sad reality is that the Palestinians have no options. If they keep quiet, they will be immured beyond the high walls of Gaza. If they misbehave, they will be bombed, strafed and immured beyond the high walls of Gaza. There is no carrot, just a stick.
Our friend Ilan Pappe warned us of a possibility of large-scale killings in Gaza Strip when the pull-out is completed. He called upon us 'to keep our eyes on Gaza'. But I doubt there will be something that dramatic. There are too many people in Gaza to kill them off; there is no place to expel them to, either. No reason to rush: the imprisoned population will be there for future punitive actions whenever they will be required.
The pull-out is just part of the game; it is always followed by a push-in, as in rape. Gaza will remain a jail, without even an air or sea link to freedom. But it is a mistake to concentrate on access only: for ordinary Gazans air link will not feed their families. Gaza can't stand on its own feet - no city, neither Tel Aviv nor London can. Gazans will have but a little chance to make living by working the fields that belonged to their families, for Israeli farmers prefer cheaper and undemanding Thais. Gaza will become the preferred place of exile of Palestinian activists from the West Bank and Jerusalem, a big jail, nay, a place of entombment.
Recently I went to the Biblical village of Bethany in vicinity of Jerusalem where the deep rock-cut tomb of Lazarus forever reminds of faith's ability to bring back to life even the stinking dead soul of man from under thick shell of stone and masonry. It is a powerful and relevant symbol for there are forces that bring spiritual death to souls, immuring them in pursuit of material goods and casting off sunlight of God. But the broad well-paved highway to Bethany was abruptly cut off by a huge monstrosity of a wall; 25 feet tall concrete slabs blocked the way and dimmed sunlight. A paint-sprayed sign read: Welcome to the Ghetto of Bethany.
Beyond the wall, blue-eyed and suntanned Palestinian children in their best Sunday clothes stared in disbelief on the Israeli workers' team that relentlessly erected the slabs entombing them in their village. They reminded me of a Gothic story[1] mhtml:mid://00000587/#_ftn1 by Edgar Allan Poe, about a vindictive Spaniard who immured his chained live victim in a cellar of his castle after enticing him to come down and try his amontillado wine. He laid a brick upon a brick, poured mortar with gusto, vigorously walled up the entrance of the niche, while disbelief in the eyes of the victim was turning into horror of recognition. His lips wisped 'Amontillado!' as the last brick immured him for his slow and dreadful death in darkness of the cellar. Poe knew we fear entombment more than we fear death.
We can't stop Israel from entombing a million of Gazans. But we may and should stop Israel from earning feathers on his hat by this dastardly act. Thanks for nothing, General Sharon. You do the evil deed of Zimri, and demand the reward of righteous Phineas, as Bible-minded folk says. We should attend to people who let him sell redeployment as a great sacrifice - meople in the media. Instead of watching with shudder one million live human beings being immured, the vast world-wide Jewish media machine, from Sulzberger's New York Times to Rothschild's Liberacion, concentrates on "the settlers' plight". This is another sham. Last month Israelis destroyed the village of Tana and expelled its population, practically unreported; but tears of each settler are avidly documented and served to the viewers all over world.
Nobody pushes these settlers away but their own government. They may stay as equals in Gaza. Probably they would be able even to keep much of their illegally obtained assets. The PNA may do well stating that publicly. The hullabaloo is done to enforce the idea that Jews may not live with goyim together. Alas, this idea is supported by Jewish pro-peace activists: Michael Warshawski stated that "the priority of the anti-occupation forces should be to denounce and to fight against the settlement policy, ... to impose on Israel an immediate and total freeze on settlements activities, including the wall and the bypass roads, and to establish, under the hospices of the UN, an International Settlements Freeze Watch, mandated to implement this freeze."
Warshawsky's call amounts to support of Sharon's concept of separation from the left. He is against the wall being built away from the Green Line; so the Gaza Wall should suit him perfectly. But it is too little, too late to ask for a freeze that never comes, for the walls being build along old armistice lines. 'Anti-occupation' became the shibboleth of Zionism-lite. There is just one possible solution: instead of removing settlers and building more walls, to integrate Gaza and the West Bank in Israel, warts and all.

Jews Indicted

Two Charged in Pentagon Information Leak

Thursday August 4, 2005 8:31 PM

By MARK SHERMAN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two former employees of a pro-Israel lobbying organization were indicted Thursday on charges they conspired to obtain and disclose classified U.S. defense information.

An indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., named Steven Rosen, formerly the director of foreign policy issues for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and Keith Weissman, the organization's former senior Iran analyst.

The five-count indictment also spells out in greater detail the government's case against Pentagon analyst Lawrence A. Franklin, who already was facing charges that he leaked classified military information to an Israeli official and the AIPAC employees.

Rosen and Weissman disclosed sensitive information as far back as 1999 on a variety of topics that included terrorist activities in Central Asia, the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, al-Qaida and U.S. policy in Iran, the indictment said. Among their contacts were U.S. and foreign government officials and reporters, the indictment said.

Lawyers for Rosen and Weissman denied the accusations. ``The charges in the indictment announced today are entirely unjustified,'' said Abbe Lowell, Rosen's attorney. John Nassikas, Weissman's lawyer, said, ``We are disappointed that the government has decided to pursue these charges, which Mr. Weissman strongly denies.''

Franklin's relationship with the men dates to 2003, the indictment said. Franklin pleaded innocent to the charges when his indictment was first unsealed in June.

Paul McNulty, the U.S. attorney in Alexandria, said the men apparently were motivated by a desire to advance their personal agendas and careers by trading on prized information. ``The facts alleged today tell a story of individuals who put their own interests and their own views of foreign policy ahead of American national security,'' McNulty said at a news conference.

Although the indictment refers to other U.S. officials who gave Rosen classified materials, McNulty said no other charges are planned, but noted the investigation continues.

Plato Cacheris, Franklin's lawyer, said he had been expecting additional charges. He said Franklin cooperated with investigators for three months in 2004.

The FBI's long-running investigation has focused on whether Franklin, of Kearneysville, W.Va., passed classified U.S. material on Iran to AIPAC, the influential main pro-Israel lobbying organization in Washington, and whether that group in turn passed it on to Israel. Both AIPAC and Israel deny any wrongdoing. Franklin has pleaded innocent.

AIPAC fired Rosen and Weissman in April. Rosen, quoted in The New Yorker magazine last month, denied knowingly receiving classified information.

---

Associated Press reporter Matthew Barakat in Alexandria, Va., contributed to this report.

And if you think this is bad ...

A new AP-Ipsos poll puts George W. Bush's approval rating at its lowest point yet.

Only 42 percent of the public approve of the president's job performance; 55 percent don't. The same poll shows that, by a 50-48 percent margin, Americans now believe that their president is dishonest. Only 38 percent of them approve of the way in which he's handling the war in Iraq.

As bad as those numbers are, it's important to keep them in perspective. Things could be worse. Iraq could be, say, Plamegate. According to the latest CBS News poll, 77 percent of the American public believe that the Bush administration is either lying or hiding something about the outing of Valerie Plame. Only 12 percent say the White House is telling "the entire truth."

-- T.G.

What Michael Moore (and the neocons) don't know about Saudi Arabia

New Saudi King Abdullah listens to a tribal chief on Wednesday as he receives oaths of loyalty from hundreds of top Islamic clerics, tribal chiefs and other prominent Saudis.

The left and the right have both crudely demonized the desert kingdom. But the ascension of King Abdullah gives the U.S. a chance to solidify relations with this flawed but key ally.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Juan Cole

Aug. 5, 2005 | The late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who died on Aug. 1, should have been nicknamed "King Blowback." Along with his ideological soul mate, Ronald Reagan, who shared his long twilight, Fahd played a key, if inadvertent, role in nurturing Islamist extremism. Together, Reagan and Fahd -- one using proxy armies and arms, the other petrodollars -- launched a worldwide crusade against what they saw as the radical specters of communism and Khomeinism. To fight this battle, they gave massive support to Sunni Muslim fundamentalists as well as Saddam Hussein's Stalinist Baath Party. The rash decisions taken by the two leaders are in large part responsible for the crisis the world faces today.

The good news is that Fahd's successor, King Abdullah, is a far more cautious man, not given to his half-brother's dangerous adventurism. His ascension -- in fact, he has held power for a long time -- gives the United States an opportunity to improve relations with Saudi Arabia. As America faces the long, daunting task of recovering from George W. Bush's catastrophic foreign-policy blunders, solidifying relations with this key, if problematic, ally is high on the list of priorities.

The devout Abdullah ("the servant of God"), who has the smile and goatee of a genial beatnik, has been in de facto control of the kingdom since 1995, when Fahd ("the panther") had a debilitating stroke. He has now formally become king. Abdullah has reigned during difficult times and has responded with a mixture of caution and flexibility. This past spring, he held popular elections for municipal councils, among the first Saudi steps toward representative institutions. The elections were carefully circumscribed, with only half the seats on the councils filled through the polls, the other half being appointed by the central government. But neither were the elections meaningless. Muslim political activists, dubbing themselves the "Golden List," used grass-roots campaign techniques and networking to do very well in the elections. Optimists hope the victory will allow the religious faction to blow off some steam.

With regard to the problem of al-Qaida and terrorism within the kingdom, Abdullah has deployed both the stick and the carrot. While high-level support for al-Qaida was never as widespread as Westerners sometimes imagined, such support does exist and needs to be confronted. As Peter Bergen has pointed out, Abdullah's military and intelligence forces have aggressively moved against militants, killing 90 of them in pitched battles, and arresting 800 more, over the past two years. But he has also launched an active program to win over the Saudi public. Saudi television shows explicit images of the grisly results of terrorist attacks. Senior clerics of the Wahhabi branch of Islam, the de facto state religion known for its strict Puritanism, have been persuaded to condemn in no uncertain terms all acts of terrorism against innocents, including the Sept. 11 attacks. Some 2,000 Saudi clerics, out of 100,000, were temporarily removed from their positions for being too militant and only allowed to return after schooling to retrain them. Saudi religious officials, Bergen says, have gone on Internet chat sites to argue with the militants on Islamic grounds, a technique that has been shown to have some success.

Abdullah has been bolder on foreign policy than on domestic. In spring 2002 he sent an envoy to President George W. Bush with some tough words. Something would have to be done about the Sharon government's treatment of the Palestinians if the region were to avoid a big blow-up that would endanger the U.S.-Saudi relationship.

The then-crown prince put forward a comprehensive peace plan with Israel that offered it full recognition and relations, a plan adopted by the entire Arab League. The plan, which called for Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders and the establishment of a Palestinian state, was never taken seriously by the expansionist government of Ariel Sharon in Israel, nor by the stridently pro-Israeli politicians in Washington. Within the context of Arab politics, it was an audacious step, and no one who knows that world can doubt its entire sincerity.

Abdullah also had his envoy tell Bush that he believed Iraq was an "arms control," not a "war on terrorism" issue, and should be resolved legally. Unlike Fahd, who was persuaded to welcome 500,000 foreign troops into his kingdom for the Gulf War of 1990-91, and who later allowed an unpopular long-term U.S. military presence, Abdullah was signaling that he would not join the younger Bush's crusade. The hawks in Washington responded by smearing the cautious and moderate Abdullah as a coddler of terrorism. (In July, the campaign against Abdullah and Saudi Arabia hit an apex -- or nadir -- when a Rand Corp. analyst, at neocon strategist Richard Perle's invitation, gave a presentation to the influential Defense Policy Board in which he called on the United States to invade Saudi Arabia and seize its oil fields. After a diplomatic flap ensued, U.S. officials distanced themselves from the presentation.)

That Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, with a poor human rights record and an inexplicable determination to stop women from driving or voting, is indisputable -- and a fair basis for criticism. But many myths persist about the kingdom. Often Saudis are hated for being rich (ironically suffering this fate with Americans). While the top tier of princes is made up of billionaires, few of them can compete with the leading American CEOs. As for the Saudis in general, the kingdom's estimated per capita income in 2004 was only $12,000 a year. That of Spain is about $23,000. Moreover, such a figure is artificial in an oil economy, since the petroleum income fluctuates a good deal (in 2000 the per person income was $8,000 a year). And, of course, it is not divided up equally, as the figure implies. In fact, if the government attempted simply to distribute so much money to individuals, it would cause enormous inflation and eat up the value of the money. There is plenty of poverty in Saudi Arabia.

With regard to foreign policy, though, you might think that an Arab leader who courageously sought a comprehensive peace in the Middle East for both Israelis and Palestinians, who opposed the disastrous Iraq war, and who helps keep the U.S. economy afloat by recycling vast petrodollars into investments in this country would inspire at least mixed feelings among the American left.

Instead, Saudi Arabia has been pilloried by figures such as Michael Moore, whose film "Fahrenheit 9/11" crudely demonizes the kingdom as part of its simple-minded effort to paint George W. Bush as a pawn of Big Oil. In the film, Moore ominously points out that dozens of Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, departed the United States on Sept. 13 and 14, 2001, after the terror attacks. But there was nothing shady about the Saudis leaving when they did. Plane flights were allowed again on Sept. 13, and many people flew then. The Saudis certainly had reason to be afraid. Some 30 Saudis were interviewed by the FBI before they left, and all the flights were approved by the bureau, according to the 9/11 Commission report.

The idea that members of the Saudi elite knew about 9/11 beforehand, which the film at least hints at, is ridiculous. They would not have been in America if they had had any inkling of the plot, since anyone could foresee that they would be in danger from an enraged U.S. public. Moore admits that the Saudi government is heavily invested in the United States and, in fact, criticizes the extent of the investments, which most sources vastly overestimate. (No one who knows anything serious about economics would, in any case, consider it a bad thing that the Saudis put money into the U.S. economy.) So why, even if one discounted the genuine liking for America and Americans among educated Saudis, would they want to destroy the value of their own portfolios?

Bin Laden announced his goal of overthrowing the Saudi royal family and had his Saudi citizenship revoked in the early 1990s. The Saudi establishment plays hardball with such challengers. Although one often hears that 13 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudis, the statistic is meaningless. Nineteen persons is not a big enough number on which to base any generalization. The brains of the operation were an Egyptian, a Lebanese and a Baluchi from Pakistan brought up in Kuwait. Bin Laden clearly chose the Saudis he sent on the mission, for the most part just muscle to control the passengers, precisely in the hope of disrupting American-Saudi friendship. The al-Qaida members chosen, in exile in Qandahar, would have been shot on sight if they had shown up in Riyadh.

Moore and others also charge that the Saudi royal family has a special relationship with the Bush family. As Max Rodenbeck argued in the New York Review of Books, this charge is mainly based on circumstantial evidence that does not hold up well to scrutiny. Most of the Saudi investments or contracts cited have to do with defense corporations, one of which has been training royal bodyguards for decades. Some of these firms were owned for a time by the Carlyle Group, on the board of which George H.W. Bush served. But the Saudi relationship with the firms preexisted the Carlyle purchase of them and survived its sale of them. It is certainly true that the Saudis cultivate American leaders, but like all good lobbyists, they do so on a bipartisan basis.

The real question is how Abdullah, who has set policy for some time, differs from his now-deceased predecessor. Any comparison between the two would favor Abdullah.

In contrast to the new king's fair-minded caution, the hawk-faced Fahd never met an adventure he did not love. Saudi Arabia reaped a windfall when the price of petroleum quadrupled in the 1970s. Fahd, the power behind the throne from 1975 and formally king from 1982, energetically set about modernizing his society, even to the point of educating women. The amassing of petroleum billions made the kingdom, however, both a threat and a prize. Fahd responded to the revolutions and invasions of 1979 not with the cautious diplomacy of his predecessors, but an audacious set of covert actions aimed at reshaping the world to make it safe for Saudi oil billionaires.

In 1979 Muslim fundamentalists and millenarians rose up in the holy city of Mecca, and the rebellion was put down only with some difficulty. In the same year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to prop up a shaky communist military dictatorship that had come to power in a 1978 coup. Also in 1979, the radical theocratic republican, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, came to power in Iran. Khomeini, a Shiite, taught that monarchy is incompatible with Islam. If Khomeini's ideas spread across the sectarian divide to Sunni Islam, they could pose as dire a threat to the Saudi monarchy as did communism.

Fahd was a ruler of a small, defenseless country, and the only weapon he had was money. The Saudi population in 1980 was probably only 5 million, not counting guest workers. But between 1973 and 1980, annual government oil revenues jumped from $4.3 billion to $101.8 billion, in U.S. dollars. Fahd made the fateful decision to seek the security umbrella of the United States.

In exchange for sophisticated U.S. weaponry such as AWACS spy planes, F-15 accessories and Stinger shoulderheld missiles, he signed on to President Ronald Reagan's creation of anti-communist militias -- in effect private terrorist armies -- giving them Saudi money in Nicaragua, Angola and Ethiopia, and vastly increasing aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Although Saudi officials deny a formal relationship to Osama bin Laden, who was a fundraiser for the mujahedeen fighting the Soviets, it seems that he did have a relationship to Saudi intelligence in Pakistan. Some say that bin Laden was recruited as a fundraiser by Fahd's nephew, Turki al-Faisal, the then-minister of intelligence. (Abdullah recently appointed al-Faisal as the Saudi ambassador to Washington.)

Fahd mirrored Reagan administration policy in backing Saddam Hussein ("my brother," "my sword") against Khomeinist Iran. He gave Saddam around $25 billion to help prosecute the Iran-Iraq war. Then, when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, Fahd allowed himself to be convinced that Saddam posed a threat to Riyadh, and cooperated against Iraq in the Gulf War. In the aftermath, he gave the United States use of Prince Sultan Air Base on a long-term basis, incurring the wrath of pious Muslims who felt that the holy land was thus defiled and that the Saudi royal family had reduced itself to puppets. Among the outraged was bin Laden, who declared war on the Saudi dynasty years before he declared war on the United States and Israel. Fahd stripped bin Laden of his citizenship and banned him from the kingdom.

Fahd's adventurism, combined with Reagan's, helped create the al-Qaida network and reinforced the Iraqi Baath Party, with the results that we see today. His stroke in 1995 left him without the judgment to gauge the tragic aftermath of those decisions.

King Abdullah must labor to deal with the legacy of his predecessor. He faces significant internal unrest, though its extent is probably exaggerated by outsiders. He must deal with the threat of the Saudi al-Qaida organization, which has conducted several terror strikes in Riyadh and elsewhere. He is menaced by the instability in Iraq, which could easily spill over into the kingdom. He must find a way to open up Saudi politics to wider participation at a time when the restive educated middle classes are growing rapidly. (The kings of Egypt and Iran, Farouk and the Shah, faced the same imperative much earlier, and both failed.)

His relationship with the United States needs repair. Unfortunately, it is not clear that Turki al-Faisal, the former chief of intelligence who repeatedly met with bin Laden in the 1980s and as late as 1997, is the right man for that job. Many in Washington may see al-Faisal as tainted by his past associations.

However, the conjuncture of increased Indian and Chinese demand for oil, along with the uncertainties introduced by the ongoing Iraq war, have helped push petroleum prices to historic highs. This development gives Abdullah a windfall of unexpected resources to expend on the problems if he can muster the vision to resolve them.

What approach to the Saudis should the United States take? The American right often attempts to imply that the only two choices in foreign policy are either to coddle dictators or to send in the army for regime change. There is no reason, however, that the United States cannot exercise steadfast, firm pressure behind the scenes for increased human rights, more open politics, and more effective steps against terrorism in Saudi Arabia. In the Gulf, where frankness is appropriate only in private, humiliating criticisms of the kingdom by U.S. officials, or the brandishing of implicit threats, will wreak more harm than good.

The Americans, however, would be wise to see their relationship with the kingdom as a two-way street. When the Saudi king warns the White House that an explosion will come if progress is not made toward a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem, the warning should be taken seriously. When a Saudi ruler puts his enormous prestige on the line to advance a comprehensive peace plan, it should not be lightly tossed in the trash bin. When the Saudi establishment warns that American wars waged against regional powers might plunge the area into chaos, it should be listened to carefully.

With two-thirds of the world's proven petroleum reserves, the gulf is the cockpit of the global economy, and the Saudis are its pilots. King Abdullah is understandably worried about the Bush administration tossing grenades around in it.

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About the writer
Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and the author of "Sacred Space and Holy War" (IB Tauris, 2002).

There's something about Jenna

by John in Paris - 8/01/2005 03:43:00 PM

This just in from AMERICAblog's double super secret bar-hopping correspondent... (the pic to the left is a famous old one of Jenna having fun).

First daughter party girl Jenna Bush was spotted last Saturday night at Zucchabar in DC, only a hop, skip and a jump from AMERICAblog world headquarters (well, when we're not in exile in Europe).

Jenna was quite noticeable, our source tells us, because she was "straddling and dry-humping her boyfriend (or acquaintance) who was seated on one of the sofas." A young punk guy then went up and asked Jenna to dance. Jenna's dry-humping buddy reportedly told the punker: "hey dude, are you trying to ask a Bush daughter to dance or something?!" (Now that's a discrete friend.) Later on, punk guy was out dancing and Jenna came up and started pretending to dance with him, apparently to make fun of him.

When asked how our double super secret bar-hopping correspondent ID'd the first dirty-dancer as Jenna, we're told Jenna had on the same beads she was wearing in Africa two weeks ago, was trying to hide for a while behind her bangs (just as she'd done when spotted in a DC bar months ago by another AMERICAblog bar correspondent), and, most damningly, Jenna "had the same piglet eyes like her father."

Say what you will about her father, but I'm betting Jenna's a BIG Democrat.

Bush Urges Schools to Dump Old Evolution Curriculum for "New Biology"

CRAWFORD, TEXAS- For decades the United States has been lagging behind other countries when it comes to education, particularly in the sciences. Mainly this has been blamed on a lack of funding and national attention, but some pedagogical experts like President George W. Bush feel that other factors might be at work. For example, the President says that biology textbooks are horribly out of date, based on the 19th century writings of a man who wasn't even an American citizen.

If the US is to remain competitive in the world market, its young people are going to need an updated understanding of the world around them. To this end, the President today proposed a federal funding mechanism to encourage local schools to replace the antiquated notions of evolution and cosmology with the a origination theory making waves in Internet-based think tanks all over Middle America: Intelligent Design.

Like Whole Language and New Math, this New Biology takes a bold new approach to a tricky academic subject, getting students to think about the origins of the universe and the human species in a simple and safe way without all that bothersome scientific and philosophical inquiry.

ID is so simple that even a child could understand it. In fact, scientists assert that it takes a childlike mentality to fully grasp the ideas of Intelligent Design, which is why the President believes it is so vital to expose students to it as soon as possible.

"They showed me a picture of a giraffe and how if Darwin were right it's head would explode," said Bush as he removed his glasses for added effect. "Now, maybe I'm just ignorant about these things, but I'm not aware of a problem with exploding giraffe heads. Are you?"

So far, the idea appears to be quite popular. Initial polling indicates that parents are thrilled to hear that their children might soon be learning a cohesive story of human origins rather than some tall tale about slow biological change.

"Finally the government has come it its senses," said concerned father Bill J. Bryan. "I mean, it has the word 'intelligent' in the name, after all. What would you have them learn instead? Something less than intelligent?"

Intelligent Design is already being taught in some schools in America's ahead-of-the-curve Southern states. Given potential concerns about the religious implications of the course, though, it has always been presented as an alternative to traditional biology rather than a requirement.

"We offer kids a choice," said 9th grade science teacher Faye Lyew of Sweet Sugar, Mississippi. "I ask: do you want to spend half the year studying phylums, genuses, and species or would you rather just say 'God did it' and watch movies for the rest of the semester? To my surprise, they usually choose Intelligent Design. I think that says a lot about the theory's scientific validity."

If Congress is amenable, the President's New Biology initiative will roll out early next year as part of the second portion of the No Middle Class Child Left Behind program, an effort to improve America's school systems by removing the "root of all evil" that has corrupted them for so long and paring down educational services to a bare minimum.

"See, another big problem in America's school systems is that we teach too broad a curriculum," said Bush, referring to the wide variety of art and music courses offered in many high schools. "We need to get back to the basics, the three R's: readin', writin', and repentin'."

Even if Congress falters, the President has instructed his Secretary of Education to include questions on Intelligent Design on standardized graduation exams beginning in 2007, ensuring that classrooms all over America will be teaching to this faith-based test for years to come.

Roberts Donated Help to Gay Rights Case

By Richard A. Serrano Times Staff WriterThu Aug 4, 7:55 AM ET

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. worked behind the scenes for gay rights activists, and his legal expertise helped them persuade the Supreme Court to issue a landmark 1996 ruling protecting people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation.

Then a lawyer specializing in appellate work, the conservative Roberts helped represent the gay rights activists as part of his law firm's pro bono work. He did not write the legal briefs or argue the case before the high court, but he was instrumental in reviewing filings and preparing oral arguments, according to several lawyers intimately involved in the case.

Gay rights activists at the time described the court's 6-3 ruling as the movement's most important legal victory. The dissenting justices were those to whom Roberts is frequently likened for their conservative ideology: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Roberts' work on behalf of gay rights activists, whose cause is anathema to many conservatives, appears to illustrate his allegiance to the credo of the legal profession: to zealously represent the interests of the client, whoever it might be.

There is no other record of Roberts being involved in gay rights cases that would suggest his position on such issues. He has stressed, however, that a client's views are not necessarily shared by the lawyer who argues on his or her behalf.

The lawyer who asked for Roberts' help on the case, Walter A. Smith Jr., then head of the pro bono department at Hogan & Hartson, said Roberts didn't hesitate. "He said, 'Let's do it.' And it's illustrative of his open-mindedness, his fair-mindedness. He did a brilliant job."

Roberts did not mention his work on the case in his 67-page response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire, released Tuesday. The committee asked for "specific instances" in which he had performed pro bono work, how he had fulfilled those responsibilities, and the amount of time he had devoted to them.

Smith said the omission was probably just an oversight because Roberts was not the chief litigator in Romer vs. Evans, which struck down a voter-approved 1992 Colorado initiative that would have allowed employers and landlords to exclude gays from jobs and housing.

"John probably didn't recall [the case] because he didn't play as large a role in it as he did in others," Smith said Wednesday. "I'm sure John has a record somewhere of every case he ever argued, and Romer he did not argue. So he probably would have remembered it less."

Jean Dubofsky, lead lawyer for the gay rights activists and a former Colorado Supreme Court justice, said that when she came to Washington to prepare for the U.S. Supreme Court presentation, she immediately was referred to Roberts.

"Everybody said Roberts was one of the people I should talk to," Dubofsky said. "He has a better idea on how to make an effective argument to a court that is pretty conservative and hasn't been very receptive to gay rights."

She said he gave her advice in two areas that were "absolutely crucial."

"He said you have to be able to count and know where your votes are coming from. And the other was that you absolutely have to be on top of why and where and how the state court had ruled in this case," Dubofsky said.

She said Roberts served on a moot court panel as she prepared for oral arguments, with Roberts taking the role of a Scalia-like justice to pepper her with tough questions.

When Dubofsky appeared before the justices, Scalia did indeed demand specific legal citations from the lower-court ruling. "I had it right there at my fingertips," she said.

"John Roberts … was just terrifically helpful in meeting with me and spending some time on the issue," she said. "He seemed to be very fair-minded and very astute."

Dubofsky said Roberts helped her form the argument that the initiative violated the "equal protections" clause of the Constitution.

The case was argued before the Supreme Court in October 1995, and the ruling was handed down the following May. Suzanne B. Goldberg, a staff lawyer for New York-based Lambda, a legal services group for gays and lesbians, called it the "single most important positive ruling in the history of the gay rights movement."

In the blistering dissent, Scalia, joined by Rehnquist and Thomas, said "Coloradans are entitled to be hostile toward homosexual conduct." Scalia added that the majority opinion had "no foundation in American constitutional law, and barely pretends to."

The case was one of several Roberts worked on pro bono at Hogan & Hartson, a prominent Washington law firm that expects partners to volunteer time in community service.

In his answers to the Senate questionnaire, Roberts talked generally about his volunteer work.

"My pro bono legal activities were not restricted to providing services for the disadvantaged," he wrote, explaining that he often donated behind-the-scenes time and expertise on projects.

He said he participated in a program sponsored by the National Assn. of Attorneys General to "help prepare representatives of state and local governments to argue before the Supreme Court." He said that several times a year he reviewed briefs in "selected cases" and met with state or local attorneys in moot court before their Supreme Court appearances.

He also said he had worked with high school and college students and teachers "studying the legal system and the Supreme Court." And he said he had "actively participated on a pro bono basis in efforts to achieve legal reform."

Roberts personally handled two pro bono cases.

In the first, Roberts was asked by Rehnquist — for whom he previously had been a clerk — to represent a man who had been convicted of Medicaid fraud, sentenced to prison and fined $5,000. The federal government also had filed a civil suit in the case and won a $130,000 judgment.

In U.S. vs. Halper, Roberts' first appearance before the high court, he argued that adding a civil penalty to a criminal one was double jeopardy and therefore unconstitutional.

In 1989, the court agreed unanimously. Eight years later the court reversed itself, again 9 to 0.

The second case was a Washington, D.C., welfare case that involved about 1,000 residents who lost benefits when the city cut programs amid a budget crisis.

Roberts, representing homeless people and others who could not work because of illness or injuries, argued before an appellate court that the city had erred in not first formally notifying recipients about the change in benefits.

The court ruled against him in December 1995 in one of Roberts' few appellate losses.

According to others who worked on the case, Roberts asked the court to reconsider, then appealed to the Supreme Court. The high court declined to hear the case.

"Mr. Roberts was essentially the principal counsel," recalled R. Scott McNeilly, a staff lawyer with the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. "He was very involved."

When the welfare recipients lost in the courts, McNeilly said, most "were put out on the streets. They lost the money they were using to take the bus to see a social worker or money they were paying to a friend to sleep on his couch."

In the questionnaire, Roberts described them as "the neediest people" in Washington.

Copyright © 2005 Los Angeles Times

Jew Goes Berserk

Jewish Settler Opens Fire on Bus, Killing at Least 4

By Scott Wilson

Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 4, 2005; 4:42 PM

JERUSALEM, Aug. 4 -- A Jewish settler absent without leave from the Israeli army opened fire Thursday on a public bus traveling to an Arab town in northern Israel, killing the driver and at least three passengers and wounding 10 others. In the immediate aftermath, passengers swarmed the gunman, killing him before he could leave the bus.

Israeli police officials described the shooting as a rare Jewish terrorist attack and suggested it was an attempt to derail the government's planned evacuation of Jewish settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank scheduled to begin later this month. The gunmen was identified as Eden Natan Zada, 19, whom Israeli police officials said recently moved to a West Bank settlement known as a stronghold of religious extremists opposed to the evacuation plan.

Witnesses said Zada, wearing the skull cap and thick beard of religiously observant Jews, boarded the Egged Bus No. 165 from Haifa wearing an Israeli army uniform. Both Jewish and Arab residents of Israel's Lower Galilee regularly ride the route, which passes through the Jewish community of Kiryat Ata before ending in the Arab city of Shfaram.

Ibtihaj Salame, 57, got on the bus at Kiryat Ata, usually the last stop for its Jewish passengers. In a telephone interview a few hours after the 5:30 p.m. shooting, she said she took a seat in front of a man dressed in an army uniform.

Salame said the bus driver asked the soldier to move to the front of the bus, but she said he refused. She got off the bus at the second stop inside Shfaram, a city of 34,000 people about 65 miles north of here, and heard shots ring out from inside the bus as she did.

"No one spoke to him on the bus other than the driver," Salame said. "No one thought or imagined that he was up to something. But maybe the driver did."

The driver was identified as Michel Bahoud, 55, an Arab Christian from the Lower Galilee region. Two of the other victims were women, one a Christian and one a Muslim. The fourth victim was a Muslim man, likely from the city's predominant Druze community.

The shooting was condemned by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who called it the work of "a blood-thirsty terrorist."

The event recalled for many Israeli commentators the 1994 attack carried out by Baruch Goldstein, who gunned down 29 Palestinians gathered in a mosque at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron. Goldstein, who was also dressed in an army uniform, was killed before he could leave the mosque. The shooting marked the beginning of a difficult period for the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians signed two years earlier.

Thursday's attack was condemned by leaders of the Yesha Council, the umbrella organizations of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The organization has staged large demonstrations against the disengagement plan, which Sharon has said is needed to insure Israel's security and the long-term viability of its Jewish majority.

Those rallies, including a large one this week in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, have ended without serious violence between Jewish protesters and Israeli security forces.

"We think there is no connection between this and our movement," said Shaul Goldstein, the council's deputy chairman. "He's a terrorist, a lunatic and immoral. He has no connection to my values. He's a criminal and should be treated like one."

Israeli police officials said Zada, the son of secular Jewish parents, had moved recently to the West Bank settlement of Tapuah. Many of the community's roughly 600 residents are followers of the late Meir Kahane, who favored the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the land occupied it occupied in the 1967 war. Many religious settlers believe the land was promised to the Jewish people by God.

A yeshiva, or Jewish religious academy, in the settlement was founded by Kahane followers. The religious-political movement he inspired, known as Kach, is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

Israeli military officials said Zada, originally from the Israeli town of Rishon LeTzion, had been absent from his unit in southern Israel since June 14 in apparent protest against the Gaza evacuation. In a letter he left at his base in southern Israel, Zada wrote that he "could not be part of an organization that expels Jews," according to copy published Thursday evening on the Israeli news Web site Ynet.

Nakad Nakad, 40, witnessed the shooting from the balcony of his home in the center of Shfaram. He said he heard shots from inside the bus, then watched as rifle fired sprayed from the windows into the street around it.

"It is clear he intended to kill Arabs inside Shfaram, to have a massacre," said Nakad, a political leader of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, a community movement. "That's why he waited for the bus to get inside the town."

In the ensuing hours, perhaps a thousand city residents encircled the bus and prevented the Israeli police from removing Zada's body. Scores of Israeli police officers were dispatched to the tense city from the south, where they have been occupied in recent days with the anti-disengagement marchers.

Special correspondent Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.

PRESIDENT DELIVERS INCONTROVERTIBLE DENUNCIATION OF DEMOCRATIC FAIRY TALE OF EVOLUTION

Press Briefing by the President

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This week sees the good people of the non-pollution-belching state of Ohio convening their Board of Education in an effort to ensure that future generations of mid-western children are educated in schools offering a fair & balanced approach to explaining how the Christian version of God invented white people in His image.

As you know, the latter half of the 20th century saw the fields of education and so-called "science" come to be hopelessly corrupted by a certain liberal fairy tale known as "evolution." This concept, which was so famously hatched in the midst of a fatal LSD overdose by the syphilitic homosexual Democrat and self-described earth-worshipping pagan Charles Darwin, has, with the passage of time, been embraced as gospel by the liberal, Christ-killing intellectual establishment that rules over our nation's institutions of higher learning like a jack-booted ideological Gestapo.

"Evolution" maintains that both yours and my grandparents are in fact rhesus monkeys - the very same vermin-infested walking carpets whose dissected eyes are so essential to corporate America's ongoing and valiant quest for the perfect kiwi-raspberry-scented shampoo. "Evolution" further asserts that upon death, each of us reverts back to a jungle-dwelling state in the afterworld, where we swing naked from trees, feast on rotten bananas, and shamelessly play with our private parts right out in the open - not unlike Jenna's UT roommate on her pay-per-view webcam.

Little more than a deranged fantasy, "evolution" is perverted liberalism gone wild - distorting the reality of our shared history as God's creatures. Were an evolutionist to remake "Back to the Future," little Alex P. Keaton would still emerge from his DeLorean (which, incidentally, was designed and built by my old nose candy buddy Johnny D.) and meet up with his grandmother - but instead of having an incestuous tryst, the two of them would just sit around grunting, pounding their monkey chests and heaving fistfuls of feces in each other's mouths! You call that science? My closet communist colleague Tom Daschle may think so, but I sure don't! And I think I'm on solid ground when I say that most Americans are with me on this one.

And so this morning, I want to take this opportunity to formally denounce the Democratic fairy tale of evolution, and to praise the vocal minority within the Republican-voting state of Ohio for its tireless efforts to introduce the theory of "Intelligent Design" - which, of course, isn't really a theory at all, inasmuch as it has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that God himself created our frail and cancer-prone bodies as perfect reflections of His own glory. Going forward, let us all look to Ohio as shining example of the just and sorely needed erosion of the separation of church and state within the public school system that this Christian nation so sorely needs.

Thank you. No questions, please.