A bleak period in history!

From time to time Israeli journalists show they have keen insight and an ability to express themselves. Rosner does just that. Maybe it is because he and I see eye to eye vis a vis the meaning of the Riyadh meeting but I have been much harsher in my comments. I just returned from a meeting with him. He is here this weekend as a scholar in residence.

Rosner's outlook for any near term peace is rather bleak. He also believes it is highly likely Iran will become nuclear by default and the impact on Israel and the region will be significant. Israel, because it could impede external investing and this could lead to a scientific brain drain and ultimately a diminished standard of living and a nation whose future would be very circumscribed. The remaining Arab world because it would hasten the nuclearization of the region.

He does not quite understand Russia's intentions beyond wanting to make our own life diplomatically difficult but why at the expense of a nuclear shared border with Iran? But, then of course, China seems willing to live with a nuclear neighbor as long as it gives the West grief. (See 1 below.)

And when Israeli reporters want to do a hatchet job they are also expert. This time the mea culpa is against their own profession. (See 2 below.)

A professor examines Vietnam in view of the current actions of Democrats vis a vis funding Iraq. (See 3 below.)

It never hurts to hear what Arabs and Muslims say to their own and in their own language. (See 4 below.)

Predictions are seldom worth the writing so I am not going to make ant but I thought it might prove instructive to give the pro and con sides of a few pressing issues.

PRO:

Leave Iraq because it has been a failure, has disrupted the region, given Arabs another reason to hate us and has been costly in both human and economic terms.

Con:

It signals our word is unreliable, our commitment questionable and the vaccuum created will simply strengthen Iran's spreading influence and will drive any "moderate" Arab nations to draw closer to Iran.

PRO:

How can we not negotiate with our adversaries. Contact provides an opportunity to probe and find areas of common ground .

CON:

Contact is useful when your adversaries are interested in reaching a compromise but when they is are a position of perceived strength they are not likely to make concessions. Specifically in Israel's case what is to be gained from negotiating with those who seek your annihilation and any concession is deemed a signal of weakness.

Pro:

Since WW 2 any nation that has become a nuclear power has restrained from using that weapon and this will be the case with Iran. Nuclear proliferation cannot be prevented.

CON:

A nuclear Iran would be a different matter if there were a regime change and the nation was not ruled by those intent on rectifying Christianity's "domination" of the Islamic World.

Pro:

Illegal immigration is a fact of life and we should accept reality and improve the economic climate of countries bordering on our own.

CON:

Any nation that is unwilling to defend its borders has cheapened its own freedom and cherished values of the price of citizenship and made respect for enforcing its own laws suspect. Where does it stop?

Dick








1) 'Dancing with a corpse'
By Shmuel Rosner

WASHINGTON D.C. - No one knows the origin of the word "Hoyas," the name attached to the sports teams of Georgetown University, in Washington. Nor is there any certainty concerning the intention of the person who came up with the name. Apparently, he was a Greek- and Latin-speaking student back in the 1920s. But the one thing that's certain is this: The assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, David Welch, was this week - like all Georgetown basketball fans - in "Hoya heaven," the paradise reserved for winners.

Against all odds and expectations, Georgetown's Hoyas will play in the semifinals of the college basketball championship tournament this weekend, after defeating powerful North Carolina in a flip-flop, breathtaking game. And Welch watched the game. The whole thing. This is no trivial thing, because it was played in the midst of this week's visit to the Middle East by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in which Welch played a key role. The staff of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv also gave him a handsome gift: a blue skullcap bearing the team's familiar mascot, Jack the Bulldog. Welch took it with him to a meeting with an avid soccer fan, who also happened to be the prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert.

It's almost Passover eve, and with the theme of four (questions, brothers, cups of wine, etc.) in mind, the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament has produced better news than what was generated by the "Arab Quartet." Furthermore, Rice's achievements were modest; from the outset no one pinned exaggerated hopes on her mission. Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland quoted an "admirer" of Rice as saying, to memorable effect: "Condi is doing everything she can. But she is dancing with a corpse that just keeps flopping over in another direction every time she tries to move it."

That is exactly what happened to her with Olmert. In the eyes of many, he too is a type of political corpse. Rice could not help but discern the change in his approach, the enthusiasm that has now cooled. The Americans came with a plan, but when they heard Olmert they realized that they would have to modify it. Even if they would have preferred that he behave differently, his interlocutors did not find it difficult to understand his reasons - political distress, but also, and no less serious, obstacles on the ground. How can he talk with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) about a political horizon before the latter brings about the return home of Gilad Shalit, the abducted soldier?

Rice, who in her talks with Israelis in the past occasionally mentioned that "we also have abductees," this week acceded to a request to meet with the families of Israel's kidnapped soldiers. That was no small matter, given the stack of excuses she cited in order to evade such requests in the past. The issue of these soldiers is being dealt with by the United Nations, and that is for the best, she explained in the past. The flexibility she showed this week came only after she grasped that her refusal to meet was signaling to the Israelis that she was making light of their grief.

Washington. Embarrassment

President Lyndon Johnson once gave somewhat cruel but amusing expression to the problem of the rather clumsy Gerald Ford: "He can't walk and chew gum at the same time," Johnson said, long before Ford became president. Like old gum, that image stuck to him and refused to go away. For his part, Ford went on to add hitches and stumbles to his already long list, which only heightened the embarrassment and amusement. One prominent example occurred when Ford hosted Anwar Sadat, then the president of Egypt, and raised a toast to the distinguished guest. Sadat, who was standing next to the table smiling, was astonished to hear the U.S. president greet him "and the people of Israel."

Egyptian suspiciousness regarding U.S. policy was certainly not diminished by that incident. Nor was it this week, either. On Tuesday, on the eve of the Arab summit meeting in Riyadh, the White House issued a soft-toned but clear statement. The subject: democratic reforms in Egypt. The timing: the completion of the ludicrous referendum conducted by President Hosni Mubarak. "We will continue to raise these issues [of reforms and democratization] at the highest levels, in an effort to help the government of Egypt fulfill the aspirations of the Egyptian people for democracy," the statement said.

Rice and President George Bush, it turns out, are undergoing a process of becoming more pragmatic, but their basic beliefs have not changed: Without democratization, they believe, the Middle East will know no peace. In any event, the foundation on which American policy is now resting - unification of a front of moderates in the face of the forces of darkness that are rocking the Middle East - looked very rickety this week. It's convincing on paper, but the concrete results are dubious. The Egyptians are angry, the Saudis are conducting an independent policy, the Jordanians are distancing themselves, and the Lebanese are trembling.

If this is the forecast, it's no wonder the Iranians are guffawing. Last week they poured more oil on troubled waters by abducting sailors of the Royal Navy. In the game of chicken that Iran is playing with the West, the first to get scared were Iran's Arab neighbors. The Saudi monarch informed the Americans that he would not be visiting Washington mid-month, as had been scheduled. They are having trouble deciphering this move, as is Israel. The television broadcasts from the summit were the most credible source of information for all those people holding out hopes that something good is happening to the Arab League. The assessments of statesmen concerning the likely outcome in Riyadh was more a reflection of their character and desires than it was of any hard information that they are harboring.

Rice's delegation tried to play up modest accomplishments in the visit. The agreement between Rice and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni relates to the decisive issue of the future of the talks. In Livni's words, "There are two possibilities - to wait for things to work out, which isn't happening, or to keep working on it." And another remark, voiced by a senior figure in the U.S. delegation, who tried to explain why Rice intends to go on investing in the "corpse": "Absent the effort, all the alternatives are worse."

The speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, demonstrated her clout, albeit not by a large majority, when she succeeded in pushing through a resolution calling for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. If anyone had any doubts, they disappeared this week: The Democratic Party seriously intends - and has the means available - to make the president's life miserable. On Sunday, Pelosi will talk about Iraq with someone who looks askance at her withdrawal plans: Prime Minister Olmert.

Jerusalem. Dinner

Pelosi's visit to Israel will be the first by a speaker of the House since Newt Gingrich attended the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, a visit that was accompanied by a well-publicized political scandal. Gingrich got a lift on the plane of President Bill Clinton, and made a big deal out of the affront to his dignity when he was asked to leave by the plane's rear door, the one the president does not use. It wasn't one of Gingrich's great moments.

Pelosi's visit was arranged almost by chance. Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik came to her office accompanied by the diplomat who serves as the liaison to Congress in the U.S., Alon Ushpiz.

"I would like to host you in the Knesset," Itzik said.

"When will we do it?" Pelosi asked her aide. A rumor had reached her that one doesn't refuse a stubborn person like Itzik.

"It's possible in the first half of April," the aide said.

And so, out of the blue, a visit by the third- ranking personage in the United States was worked out.

Pelosi will meet with Olmert and Livni at the beginning of the week. Before that, tomorrow, she will meet Abu Mazen in Ramallah and will be invited to a meal by Shimon Peres. On Sunday evening, Itzik will host an official dinner in her honor in the Knesset, and Pelosi will also deliver a speech. Her talk with Olmert, which will touch on Iraq, among other subjects, will be of interest. Two weeks ago, in a controversial step, the prime minister stated in his speech to the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israel lobby in Washington, that Israel objects to a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. He will reiterate this to Pelosi, if she asks. This is a matter of Israeli interest, and he is the prime minister of Israel. According to Olmert, such a comment does not constitute intervention in American internal politics.

Pelosi is unlikely to be persuaded. Informed Israelis say that she is cruising on a tail wind and that Olmert has sent a message that will have little effect: One way or the other, the Americans will get out of Iraq, earlier than Bush would like, unless there is a dramatic change, which is not currently foreseeable in the situation in Baghdad. This is yet another reason for Saudi, Egyptian and Jordanian anxiety. Their analysis of U.S. policy in the years ahead detects confusion: The hands will still be the hands of Bush, but the voice will be that of Pelosi.

2) Media malfunction
By Ari Shavit

There is nothing left to say about Ehud Olmert. There are no words. On the first anniversary of his election, even the comparison to Richard Nixon has exhausted itself. Tricky Dick was a statesman of stature and a political scoundrel. By contrast, Cynical Udi is both a political scoundrel and a failed statesman. Israel has never had a worse prime minister. Israel has never had a more corrupt prime minister. Israel has never been put at risk by an unworthy leader to the extent to which it is being put at risk by Ehud Olmert.

Thus, on the first anniversary of this catastrophic government, the question is not about Olmert. The question is who catapulted Olmert into power. Who is responsible for the fact that in the 80 days that passed between the traumatic night of prime minister Ariel Sharon's collapse and the grotesque night of Olmert's victory, the truth about the deputy was not exposed? Who is responsible for the fact that during 12 fateful weeks, a thick layer of cotton wool enveloped the rotten fruit of Israeli politics and marketed it to the public like a worthy, glowing etrog, a fruit to be treasured? Who is responsible for the fact that between January 5, 2006, and March 28, 2006, the Israeli public was deceived?

The answer is clear: we, the journalists, are responsible. We are responsible for the fact that Ehud Olmert is now the prime minister of Israel. We are responsible for the fact that the helm of the world's most complicated country was placed in the hands of a hollow, corrupt man. We are indirectly responsible for the fact that the Second Lebanon War erupted as it did, was managed the way it was and exacted the price in human life that it did. In an indirect manner, we are responsible for the fact that Shula Zaken became the queen of the country and that Abraham Hirchson was entrusted with the state treasury. We are responsible for the fact that the current Israeli government is irresponsible, dysfunctional and tainted.

Why is our responsibility, that of the journalists, so preponderant? Because in the run-up to the 2006 elections Ehud Olmert was a very brittle candidate. Support for him was broad but wafer-thin. The fact is that when, on his Web site, investigative journalist Yoav Yitzhak performed the work journalists are supposed to do (he made public Olmert's real estate affairs in February 2006), support for Olmert eroded. In the same way, when Uri Blau did the real journalistic work (he published a comprehensive investigative report about Olmert in this magazine on February 24, 2006), support for Olmert plummeted.

If other journalists - more senior, more influential - had also done what journalists are supposed to do, the Israeli public would already have known during Purim 2006 much of what it knows now, at Pesach 2007. Kadima would have been forced to replace Olmert with Tzipi Livni or Shimon Peres. The Second Lebanon War would not have erupted the way it did and would not have been managed the way it was. The corruption would not have reached the levels it has. Last year would have looked different. Israel would have looked different. We would not be poised on the brink of the abyss.

Ehud Olmert evaded a television debate during the 2006 election campaign. Although the media criticized him for this, it did not press the issue. However, it cannot be said that Olmert avoided TV exposure. In a period of under two months he granted four interviews to three television channels. Given Olmert's vulnerability, each one could have provided the formative moment of the campaign.

In each interview, the leading candidate could have been asked about his past, his integrity and his suitability for the position. However, no such confrontation occurred. Five people interviewed Olmert without asking him the obvious question about his colossal failure as mayor of Jerusalem. Five people interviewed Olmert without asking him trenchantly and in detail about the affairs that have dogged him for 15 years. None of the interviewers exerted true pressure on the candidate. None of them tried to knock him off balance. None of them made a real effort to expose the truth beneath the mask.

Olmert granted the first - and most important - interview to Nissim Mishal on February 7, 2006. Mishal did a reasonable job. He noted that the Labor Party was claiming that Olmert was tainted by corruption. He pressed Olmert about a meeting he had had with the Gavrieli family. He asked critically about the evacuation of the outpost of Amona, about the strengthening of Hamas after the disengagement and about Olmert's lax leadership. However, the tone of the interview was soft and sympathetic. Mishal did not do to Olmert what he did to Ehud Barak in 1995 and to Benjamin Netanyahu in 1999. He allowed his interviewee to escape unscathed from the cordial chat.

Olmert granted the second interview to Ayala Hasson-Nesher on February 21, 2006. She, too, asked about the meeting with Gavrieli and she also inquired - with a smile - whether Olmert had any skeletons in his closet. She even went so far as to refer to the hot news item of the day: the sale of the house on Kaf Tet B'November Street in Jerusalem to Daniel Abrahams. However, the atmosphere of the interview was coquettish and sycophantic. The Channel 1 interviewer pitched Olmert a series of soft balls.

It was Yair Lapid, of all people, who proved to be a surprise. When his father's good friend sat down in the armchair across from his interview desk on March 6, 2006, Lapid Jr. fired six successive questions at him about his personal fortune, the suspicions against him and the antagonism he arouses. However, Lapid has a fixed repertoire. After four or five trenchant minutes, the conversation shifted to Olmert's morning jog, his diet and his wife's gentle nature. What did he want to be when he grew up? Yaron Zahavi, hero of the Hasamba youth books. Who would he take with him to a desert island? Aliza, the missus.

The most disgraceful Olmert interview of the 2006 campaign was conducted by the two beloved stars of Channel 10, London and Kirschenbaum. When they arrived at the deputy prime minister's office, just six days before the elections, Olmert's past affairs had already been published in Haaretz and the affair of the house on Jerusalem's Cremieux Street was already known.

However, these two veteran, experienced and critical journalists did not ask even one tough question. They did not mention the affairs of the past and did not touch on those of the present. The term "corruption" was not mentioned in their sycophantic conversation with the candidate. So much so, in fact, that when Kirschenbaum asked the last question, London remarked that, "Never before has it happened that an interviewer should throw his interviewee a ball like this." However, London himself immediately added that no interviewer in an enlightened country would have chosen to conclude an election-eve interview with a candidate for prime minister: "The athlete seated opposite was also perfectly fine," London told Olmert flatteringly.

Interviewers are not the only ones who can tilt elections. Researchers can, too. And when the leading candidate is a colorful person like Olmert, researchers can dig and dig. Amazingly, though, in the 80 days of the 2006 election campaign, not one biting investigative report about Olmert appeared in Yedioth Ahronoth or Ma'ariv, or on Channels 2, 10 or 1. Five of Israel's six major media outlets were silent. At a critical juncture they lost their offensive capability and their critical curiosity. All of a sudden the most professional of Israel's investigative journalists fell into a coma. The best and the brightest of us lapsed into a numbed daze.

It bears recalling: the investigation into the Bank Leumi affair began in November 2005, and the affair of the Investments Center inside the Ministry of Industry and Trade occurred in 2004-2005. Yet these two dramatic affairs were not brought to the public's attention before the March 2006 elections. While Yoav Yitzhak published the affair of the house on Cremieux Street a month before the elections, the major media outlets dismissed it as no-news. The affair over appointments in the Small Business Authority surfaced at the end of March but was either underplayed or portrayed misleadingly. With the exception of Haaretz and a few columnists in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's highest-circulation paper (Yigal Sarna, Mordechai Gilat, Moshe Krief and Yonatan Yavin), no media outlet returned to Olmert's fascinating past episodes (the grant to Muzi Wertheim, the land transfer to the Dankner family, aiding the Ofer family, the benefits granted Alfred Akirov, his close relationship with Benny Steinmetz). The investigative media in Israel seemingly decided it had no interest in the goldmine called the life and deeds of Ehud Olmert; that it had no interest in the intersection of capital and government that our pal Ehud embodies.

The op-ed pages of two of the country's major papers were more or less fair. Both Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz provided a fine variety of opinions from both Olmert supporters and opponents. The ongoing coverage on the news pages of Haaretz was balanced - a bit less so in Yedioth Ahronoth. Ma'ariv leaned clearly in Olmert's favor, though in a few moments of grace it, too, tried to demonstrate integrity.

It follows that the essence of the Israeli media's failure in the 2006 election campaign lay not in the ongoing work. The essence of the failure lay in the questions that were not asked. No real attempt was made to clarify whether the leading candidate and acting prime minister would make a worthy prime minister. No real attempt was made to examine whether the buddy-buddy prime minister was a corrupt prime minister.

In complete contrast to the case of Richard Nixon, whom the liberal press examined under a magnifying glass, Ehud Olmert was neither examined nor checked. At the decisive moment of his political career, the media covered up for him and rebuffed any effort to seriously clarify what he is made of.

Yoav Yitzhak, Uri Blau, and to a certain extent also Motti Gilat, Yigal Sarna, Moshe Krief, Yonatan Yavin, Amir Oren and Ze'ev Sternhell deserve a collective Sokolov Prize for their behavior during this dark period in the history of the Israeli media. Channel 10's Raviv Drucker also deserves some commendation. However, most of the other senior journalists - each of us separately and all of us together - bear responsibility for the resounding failure of the profession at its moment of truth.

Those who bear most responsibility are Nahum Barnea and Dan Margalit.

Barnea, because he is the most influential journalist in Israel and has, in the past, made the lives of most prime ministers miserable, but this time around he became a poodle. When he interviewed Olmert (on March 10, 2006, together with Shimon Shiffer, another leading journalist from Yedioth Ahronoth) in an interview of strategic importance, he did not ask what he was duty-bound to ask and instead behaved almost like a pal. And also because in his weekly column he led the charge to undermine the state comptroller and to revoke the demand for moral integrity. In addition, he assured his readers that "Olmert is imbued with the experience and the self-confidence a leader requires."

Margalit, a columnist for Ma'ariv, bears responsibility because he did not deal honestly with Olmert's affairs. The multi-channel journalist, who in recent years has conducted a crusade against corruption in Israel, failed at the critical moment when the question of his good friend's being corrupt appeared on the horizon. "My friend of 35 years, Olmert, is not corrupt," he promised his readers. "It is good that Olmert is not corrupt and did not line his pockets," he reiterated in print. "I know him and I know that he is intelligent, connected to reality and sensitive - and is at a stage of his life in which the accumulated experience and his good health have ripened to place him at the top of the pyramid."

Nahum Barnea continues to defend Tricky Ehud even now, which is a pity. It would have been more deserving for the most impressive career in the contemporary Hebrew press to conclude on a more impressive note.

Dan Margalit is demonstrating greater courage and is trying to atone for his failure by means of incessant attacks on his former friend. For this he deserves congratulations. At the end of the day, the decent journalist in him triumphed. However, the rest of Israel's senior journalists still owe their readers explanations for how they failed, where they tripped up, and why they betrayed their mission at the critical moment.

I, too, owe an explanation. In February-March 2006, I published a number of pieces on the Haaretz op-ed page in which I attacked Kadima, its path and its leader. In the election-eve edition of Haaretz I published a piece in which I take special pride, about Israel being taken over by the country's wealthy families through Olmert's corporate party. However, looking back, it is clear to me that I did not do enough. I did not overturn every rock. I did not throw every stone. I saw disaster approaching and did not do all I could have done to prevent it.

I am hereby reporting my relative failure to my readers. I hope my colleagues will also report their failures to their readers. If there is a press in Israel, it must draw the lessons of its grave failure in the election campaign that brought Ehud Olmert into power. If there is a press in Israel, it must, as befits Pesach, engage in biur hametz - removing the impure - and thereby ensure that the shame of March 28, 2006, will not recur.

3) The Current Meaning of Vietnam
By Ben Voth

Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam. These are words we here with some regularity in today's media. The metaphorical lens through which all contemporary military conflicts must be viewed is Vietnam. For anyone championing a notion of American defeat, this metaphor is indispensable. Vietnam is taken to be a case study in American military failure. It is interesting to carefully examine this metaphor's relationship to current conflicts.

In 1975, the United States Congress voted to cut off funding to the democratic government of South Vietnam. The political decision of the Congress constituted the final renunciation of the war in Vietnam for which 58,000 Americans and thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers gave their lives in a decade long struggle. Images of the American choppers lifting off from Saigon have become emblematic of war the US could never win, even though the military never lost a battle on the ground of Vietnam.

Congress accomplished with its vote to end funding of the South Vietnam government what Ho Chi Minh and North Vietnamese communist had been unable to accomplish on the battlefield-- the end of democratic governance in Vietnam.

The Congressional vote in 1975 signaled the North Vietnamese government that it was finally safe to launch an overwhelming military attack on the young democratic government of South Vietnam. What ensued in Vietnam was cataclysmic. Close to one million people in Vietnam were executed in "re-education camps" instituted by the now unified Communist government. These killings did not go unnoticed in Vietnam and elsewhere. The unified Communist government sought to kill anyone deemed a traitor by their cooperation with the American power that previously sustained the democratic government of South Vietnam.

These drastic measures unleashed a panicked migration from Vietnam that sent hundreds of thousands of people out into the ocean in feeble crafts. Sparking this migration were desperate hopes of reaching America-- the former ally that had sustained their hopes in the former homeland. Thousands of Vietnamese people died at sea trying to cross the South China Sea. Perhaps their drowning in that ocean of 'peace' was a fitting end to the disingenuous rhetoric that sent them there. Tens of thousands did successfully emigrate to the United States and found sanctuary from the violence of the North Vietnamese.

Next door in Cambodia, a man by the name of Pol Pot capitalized on the vacuum of America's abrupt military withdrawal and precipitous rejection of funding for democratic governance. Pol Pot instituted one of the most vicious and swift genocides of the modern era. Killing as many as 3 million people, Cambodia instituted one of the most bizarre spectacles of human hatred, wherein even children were forced to perform the execution of their own parents under the supervision of the Khmer Rouge state. Though American and international media provided front row seats to the carnage, the outcry for international action was easily subdued by political movements for "peace" in Southeast Asia and an end to "American imperialism." The American left helped seal the deal on yet another dark chapter of brother abandoning brother into the outrageous public celebrations of human hatred immortalized by the Khmer Rouge.

And so today, many of us are still wondering what academics and intellectuals are speaking of when they say the magical word of 'Vietnam.' Is this the world that you speak of? When you speak of "peace" and the end of "imperialism," do you mean to confirm the world of abandonment and unmitigated ethnic hatred ? Is the world that looks less like Bagdad, a world that looks more like Rwanda or Darfur? What do your words mean? I would really like to know.

4)“Islam will enter every house and will spread over the entire world,” says Hamas leader Al-Zahar
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

While the Hamas goal of destroying Israel is well known, its aspiration for Islamic subjugation of the entire world is just as basic to Hamas dogma. Both aims appear in the Hamas Charter as God's irrepressible will, and both aims were reiterated this week by senior Hamas leader and former PA Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahar.

At a mass rally in memory of Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin, Al-Zahar said that the Quran promises the "liberation of all of Palestine," meaning the destruction of Israel. He went so far as to challenge the Islamic faith of those who deny this goal: "No one can deny it. One who denies it must check his faith and his Islam.”

Regarding the Hamas religious goal of Islamic world domination, he said: “Islam will enter every house and will spread over the entire world.”

Below is the translation of Al-Zahar’s speech:

[Mahmoud] Al-Zahhar spoke at the mass rally held on the memorial day for Sheikh Ahmad Yassin…

Al-Zahhar emphasized that the Islamic Movement’s [Hamas'] position concerning the problem of the liberation of Palestine is clear and known, and said: "We have two important foundations: One is Quranic and the other is prophetic. The Quranic: The divine promise made in the ‘Al-Israa Sura’ [Chapter 17] is that we will liberate the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, 'and we will enter it as we have entered it the first time.' [paraphrasing Sura 17 (The Night Journey), verse 7]. And the prophetic foundation is the message of the prophet Muhammad, that Islam will enter every house and will spread over the entire world."

And added: "Our position is the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine. This is the final and strategic solution for us. There is a Quranic message for us, that we will enter the Al-Aqsa mosque, and the entrance to the mosque means the entrance into all of Palestine. This is the message, no one can deny it. Anyone who denies it must check his faith and his Islam.” [Al-Ayyam, March 25, 2007]