Bulldog, Chihuahua and who even cares!

Tragic as the Va. Tech killings were every day Israelis face similar insanity on the part of terrorists. (See 1, 2, 3 and 4 below.)

Then we have articles about the English press boycotting Israel because of Israeli actions against Palestinians and Lebanese and an article whether France can be saved.

As for Britain, the once proud and defiant bulldog has turned into a pitiful pip-squeaking Chihuahua and as for France who really gives a damn whether it can be saved. Both countries are engaged in denial and appeasement and will pay with their freedom given time. Recently, Britain decided to eliminate all reference to The Holocaust in their schools and school texts so as not to inflame their Muslim citizens.(See 5,6 and 7.)

Meanwhile the foreign press is having a field day accusing our nation of having double standards and being a lawless society because of events at Va. Tech. If you are interested in what the world says about our country click on Watching America.Com

Dick


1) Hamas threatens to start abducting Israelis and Jews overseas.


The threat, issued Sat. April 21, is in response to Israel’s refusal to bow to the terms for releasing the Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit and BBC correspondent Alan Johnston. Israeli security sources: Lacking networks outside the Gaza Strip and West Bank, Hamas is expected to employ the extensive Lebanese Hizballah covert infrastructure which branches out across the Middle East, Africa and Europe, for its threatened kidnap offensive abroad.

Regarding the Palestinian group’s previous vow to kidnap more Israeli soldiers, its spokesmen say that there enough Zionist figures and agents in various parts of the world who can be targeted equally. The Shin Bet security service has circulated a kidnap alert to Israeli embassies, overseas firms and Jewish institutions. The Hamas escalation is taken very seriously. It is also seen as further confirmation of its close working ties with Hizballah under active orchestration by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

In the next 24 hours, Palestinian spokesmen plan to release another false bulletin purporting progress in the negotiations for the release of Gilead Shalit who has now been held for nine months without a word on his fate. Sources stress these bulletins are fabricated deliberately to deceive.

2) Three generations of terrorists
By Zvi Bar'el

The Algerians were angry at the publication of the warning and the image it created, as though U.S. intelligence knew something that Algerian intelligence did not. The Algerian Foreign Minister, Noureddine Yazid Zehrouni, could not agree to this. Zehrouni, responsible for internal security in the country, controls the information about terror groups, and when a warning is published that is not coordinated with him, he suspects an American plot to humiliate his intelligence service.

This confrontation did not calm anyone. On the contrary, the impression that the countries of the Maghreb - Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya - are concerned about a renewal of terror acts of the sort that occurred in the 1990s has only been reinforced. The nightmare of those years, which exacted about 200,000 deaths, calmed down significantly in recent years; some of the local terror organizations even "repented," and their members were granted amnesty in the national reconciliation that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika declared. Even small terror groups that refused to join this arrangement are now asking the president to extend the amnesty period and include them in the process.

The fear today is of a new sort of terror that does not rely on local political justifications and operates along the lines of Al-Qaida. In Algeria they are pointing the finger at Iraq, the new exporter of international Islamic terror. In a series of reports on the new terror in the London-based Arabic daily Al Hayat, impressive data exists on entire groups of civilians, especially from the Maghreb, Jordan and Syria, who since the beginning of the Iraq war have volunteered to go out to fight the Americans.

The Algerian volunteers would fly with that country's airline to Syria, where an Iraqi representative of the terror organizations would wait for them and take them across the border. They would do the first part of their military training in Algerian camps, and get their baptism of fire in Iraq. Iraq has thus become the new Afghanistan, a production line for creating and training foreign terrorists.

Upon their return to their homeland, in the attempt to import the religious ideology and fighting methods they learned in Iraq, it became clear to most of them that their names were already in the hands of the intelligence services, information that appears to be the fruit of cooperation between Algeria and Syria. Some of these volunteers have even been extradited from Syria to Algeria, and a number of them have been tried. Algerian law imposes a punishment of life imprisonment on anyone who cooperates with an illegal organization outside the country.

When a precise mapping of these volunteers was carried out, it emerged that some went to Iraq to fight the Americans, and some went to Iraq to join the branch of Al-Qaida that was established by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed last summer.

The distinction between these two groups has also been manifested in the punishments that have been meted out to the militants. The Algerian Al-Qaida activists received the stiffest sentences possible, whereas terrorists who operated against the American occupation in Iraq were sentenced to relatively light punishments.

Thus, for example, members of a group that carried out a terror attack against military armored vehicles in which American soldiers were killed were sentenced to only three years in prison. The classification is aimed at distinguishing between terror groups - the fight against whom requires international cooperation - and local terror groups. It presents three "generations" of terrorists: volunteers who were trained and fought in Afghanistan during the period of struggle against the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989, volunteers who fought the American occupation in Iraq who are now returning to their homeland, and the third generation of terrorists who are not active in any defined territory and are not under any specific religious authority. They obtain their knowledge and their missions via the Internet, and are prepared to act anywhere against opportune targets, especially Western targets.

The differences among these three generations are in the sense of mission, the possibility of locating them and keeping them under surveillance, and the loose connection between the terrorists and the state to which they belong. There are organizations that upgrade themselves in the spirit of the times. An example of this is the Algerian organization, the Salfite Group for Preaching and Struggle, which was founded in 1966 and to which the terror attack in Algiers this month has been attributed.

This is a group that broke off from the Militant Armed Islamic Group, which was itself for a short time part of the Islamic Salvation Front. The Front is the umbrella organization that won a sweeping victory in the local elections in Algeria in 1990, and in the first round of the parliamentary elections in 1991. After the authorities canceled the election process, fearing an absolute victory by supporters of the organization, the civil war in Algeria broke out in full force. This war showed for the first time the military abilities of volunteers who had fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and had returned to act on behalf of local interests in Algeria.

In effect, during the first decade of the civil war, during which groups split and established fighting organizations and terror gangs, it was clear the struggle was directed against the government, which was considered heretical and atheistic, and not against the West and its representatives. The aspiration to establish a government that would derive its authority from religion was the common denominator among most of the Algerian organizations, which differed from one another by their modes of action and the targets of their attacks.

The Salfite Group for Preaching and Struggle joined Al-Qaida - at least according to statements by its leadership - only at the end of 2006, shortly before the speech by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahari, on the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. From that moment the organization's name was changed, and it is now called Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb Countries.

However, from reading the organization's charter, it is difficult to know from where it derives its religious authority: Do they accept Zawahari of Al-Qaida as a spiritual leader, or is there an unknown religious sage who is distributing his words over the Internet? This compares with the previous period when this organization, like other organizations in Algeria, had sources of religious authority in their own country.

The "transition" from being a local organization to a branch of Al-Qaida does not necessarily indicate significant change in aims and ideology. The main goal was and remains harming the Algerian government and its "pagan army," as stated in the organization's aims. Though the organization has an aim that crosses borders - the destruction of the Arab governments that do not observe religious law - operational logic has it that an Algerian organization will move against the Algerian government and not in another country.

Not only ideology, but also past conflicts between leaders play a role in shaping the image of the organization. Thus, for example, last week the founding leader of the organization, Hassan Hattab, disassociated himself from the terror attacks that the group had carried out the previous week in Algiers. In the past, conflict developed between Hattab and the current leader of the organization, Abu Mus'ab Abed al Wadoud, over the control of the group and its modes of action. Hattab's successor in the role, Nabil Saharawi, who was killed two years ago, is the one who began the process of getting closer to Al-Qaida, mainly for economic reasons, and thus, in Hattab's opinion, distanced himself from the organization's primary aim.

Conflicts between commanders and changes in direction as a result of this characterize the organizations in Algeria and also in Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt. But the problem worrying those Arab governments is that in the past four years, out of the chaos, these organizations have "won" a country, Iraq. There they can train relatively conveniently, maintain relations with weapons dealers, teach combat in real battles, obtain funds and integrate into the supra-national hierarchy of the organizations. Here lies the terror threat that the Iraq war has engendered.

3)A direct hit during the "ceasefire" - detailed report from Sderot
By Noam Bedein

At 8:30 PM on Saturday night, April 21st. 2007 , less than an hour after
the Bibiyen family finished the Sabbath with the traditional blessing over the
spices, wine and a candle-- all the symbols of the hope to begin a new week
of living -- a missile fired from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA) camp in Jabalya in the Gaza strip scored a direct hit on the
Bibiyen home.

The extended Bibiyen family consisting of two grandparents, Dvora 52 , and
Yigal, 64, had welcomed the families of their four sons and one daughter to
spend the Sabbath with them. Everything had ended on such a pleasant note.

This reporter spoke with the Bibiyen family on Sunday morning while they
were cleaning through the rubble.

All of them were stunned and still trying to comprehend the miracle that
occurred the previous night.

One of the sons, Yahav 31, still a bit shaken, said that he did not realize
until Sunday morning how close each family member was to being literally
blown to bits.

Yahav told the story, fresh in his mind, how the "Color Red" alarm had gone
off, and, only seconds later, how he heard a huge explosion upstairs on the
second floor; where his mother and his wife -- in her fifth month of
pregnancy-- were sitting and talking.

The missile tore through the staircase, flinging the stairs 30 meters away
to the street below, smashing into the roof of a car.

Yahav added that it took almost an one hour until his wife and mother were
evacuated from the second floor, from where a fire engine ladder lifted both
of them into a waiting ambulance -- both of whom diagnosed by a medic to be in
a an advanced state of shock and in need of immediate treatment. On the
Sunday morning after, they were both resting in the hospital in Ashkelon.

With a sigh of relief, Yahav said that "I am glad that everyone is ok
--physically-- , and when I think of how my brother had just left with his
two children 10 minutes before after watching TV exactly where the wall had
fallen down, how my other brother with his 8 months pregnant wife had left
5 minutes before, and how my sister and father had just come downstairs into
the kitchen, I am overwhelmed..."

Yahav walked through the house, and pointed out that the pictures of the
Rabbis on the walls weren't damaged, while all other pictures and fixtures were
destroyed, and carefully marked the places where each and every one from
the family was standing where one could see the hole that the rocket bore
through the wall and the staircase was blown away.

Yahav said that he could not understand how this miracle had happened,
because if anyone in the family had been standing a few steps away, from where they
were standing, this would have meant certain death.

"If we had 2 more seconds to start running down the staircase -- we
wouldn't be here today. If my brother would have decided to stay a bit longer with his children, who knows what could have happened" said Yahav, who also noticed
that the missile had barely missed the gas balloons.

Yuval, Yahav's older brother, was asked how his two children were doing
who had left the house only ten minutes before.

They heard the blast and ran back to the house and watched their grandmother
and Aunt being rescued from the second floor.

Yuval said that his children are only worried about their grandmother,
Devorah, and they keep asking what happened to her.

Yuval said that he would have trouble taking his children to visit their
grandparents' home again. They will simply not understand why and how it was
destroyed.

Yahav goes back to work on Lag B'omer, the day that wedding season resumes
on the Jewish calendar. That is because Yahav is a wedding video photographer
for his livelihood.

Yahav used a cover missile attacks for Israel TV and quit because he
wanted to film happier events. That is, happier events than the 212th
missile to hit the western Negev since Israel declared a self-imposed "cease-fire" on
November 26th, 2006.

4) Hamas calls for new attacks on Israel
By YAAKOV KATZ

Hamas on Sunday called for new attacks on Israel after nine Palestinians were killed in a surge of fighting over the weekend.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum urged Palestinians to be prepared for a new round of confrontation.

"The blood of our people is not cheap," he said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press. "Therefore we are calling on ... (Hamas's armed wing) and the Palestinian resistance groups to be united in the trench of resistance and to use all possible means of resistance and to respond to the massacres."

Meanwhile, IDF troops on Sunday morning shot and killed a Palestinian youth near Ramallah as he prepared to throw a Molotov cocktail at the soldiers.

Overnight Saturday, an IDF soldier was lightly wounded by gunfire during arrest operations in the West Bank city of Nablus, as troops killed two Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades operatives in the city.

The two Aksa terrorists, including a top bombmaker, were killed in the Casbah of Nablus after IDF troops surrounded a building where they were hiding and ordered people out, the group said. Most occupants came out, but the two operatives remained holed up inside. An exchange of fire broke out, and the two men were killed.

The group said the dead included Amin Lubadi, a bombmaker who had been wanted by the IDF for more than three years.

Palestinian medical officials confirmed the deaths of two men.

On Sunday morning, two Kassam rockets struck fired by Palestinian terrorists struck the western Negev, with one scoring a direct hit a Sderot home, lightly wounding three people.

On Saturday night, IAF helicopters killed a member of a Kassam rocket cell in a car in the northern Gaza Strip, wounding one of his confederates. It was the second such missile strike since Israel accepted a Gaza cease-fire in November.

Earlier Saturday, Gazans fired four Kassam rockets into Sderot; one scored a direct hit on a home, sending several people into shock.
Three terrorist organizations - Islamic Jihad, and Fatah's Aksa Martyrs Brigades - claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks in a joint statement.

They said they were carried out to avenge the deaths of three terrorists killed by border police in Jenin earlier in the day.

In the Jenin incident, an undercover Border Police unit killed three known terrorists belonging to the Aksa Martyrs Brigades who were driving in a car.

Later in the evening, a Palestinian teenager was killed in Jenin when security forces raided her house in search of her brother, a wanted terrorist.

Several hours earlier, gunfights broke out between troops and Palestinians in a village near Jenin. PA policeman Muhammad Said Abed, 22, was killed in the clashes.

Separately, a full closure was imposed on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip starting at midnight, to remain in effect until after Independence Day on Monday. IDF officials said its liaison office would allow Palestinians to enter Israel in cases deemed "exceptional."

5) Brits' new snit: Israel should honor journos' boycott
By Zev Chafetz

In 1930, Humbert Wolfe wrote his immortal ode to the English press.

You cannot hope to bribe or twist
(thank G-d) the British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do Unbribed,
there's no occasion to.


Eight decades have done nothing to alter the essential character of England's Fourth Estate. That was demonstrated last week, at the convention of the National Union of British Journalists when, by 66 to 54, delegates of the 40,000-member group voted to impose a boycott on Israeli goods.


This may not be as dire as it seems. Presumably, British journalists will now avoid Jaffa oranges, Negev tomatoes and other Zionist fruits and vegetables. They may swear off kosher wine, too. I sent an e-mail to the NUBJ in London, asking for details, but it has gone unanswered. This raises the possibility that British journalists will no longer be allowed by their union to talk to Israelis (although, as an Israeli, this seems a lot to hope for).


It's not every day that a community of western journalists takes such a clear stand against the pretense of neutrality. The "journalists" of Arab dictatorships routinely boycott Israel, but they're coerced. The Brits are, in Wolfe's phrase, unbribed.


The NUBJ accompanied its boycott decision with the sort of anti-Zionist rhetoric usually heard only in Tehran and Columbia University: It denounced Israel's "slaughter of civilians in Gaza" and the "savage pre-planned attack" in Lebanon.


These are strong words made stronger by their obvious lack of balance and proportion and other journalistic conventions. After all, Israel did leave Gaza a year ago. The slaughter taking place there is almost entirely carried out by Palestinian statesmen of rival factions.


Hamas, the elected government — which is officially dedicated to the destruction of Israel — routinely fires rockets at Israeli civilians. Israel does strike back, and painfully; evidently the British journalists regard this as unfair.


As for Israel's "savage attack" in Lebanon last summer, it was precipitated by a Hezbollah border raid so blatantly aggressive that even the Saudis criticized it. Hezbollah, which proceeded to fire thousands of missiles at Israeli civilian targets, was supported by Iran, Syria and David Duke. Now the Party of Allah has a new ally in National Union of British Journalists.


Some of the less progressive members of the NUBJ decry such partisanship. But as a longtime observer of Middle Eastern journalism — I was director of the Israeli Government Press Office under Prime Minister Menachem Begin — I welcome it as a moment of exceptional clarity and even courage.


A more image-conscious group than the NUBJ would have postponed its endorsement of the Palestinian jihad until the release of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston from his captivity in Gaza. It would also have refrained from announcing its boycott of the Jewish state on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Points to the British journalists for standing up to the Zionist lobby.


Israel now faces a unique problem. No open society in history has ever been boycotted by Western journalists. Some in Jerusalem will be tempted to denounce it as a declaration of war by the British media. But I think this is shortsighted.


Israel, I believe, should not only respect the British boycott, but join it.


There are some journalists who — while prepared to forego Israeli dairy products and such — will find it difficult to break their habit of access to the story. The government of Israel can make this easier by removing temptation. It should ask all British correspondents stationed in Israel to leave, either by way of Ben Gurion Airport or, if they prefer, via Gaza.


And it should withhold visas and accreditation from members of the National Union of British Journalists (and the media companies that employ NUBJ members) until the journalists of Britain decide to resume at least the fiction of impartiality.

6) Can France Be Saved?
by Michel Gurfinkiel

French elections can be as entertaining as Russian roulette. Twelve years ago, in early 1995, it was taken for granted that Edouard Balladur, a conservative prime minister, would succeed the outgoing socialist president François Mitterrand without further ado. The Left was then a spent force. So, evidently, was Jacques Chirac, another conservative Gaullist and a former prime minister (and unsuccessful contender for the presidency). But then a satiric TV show, Les Guignols de l’Info (The News Puppets), started featuring Chirac as a French-style Forrest Gump who would answer questions on any topic, political or economic, with the phrase “Eat apples.” In April 1995, Jacques “Apple” Chirac won out over both Balladur and the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin.

Two years later, Chirac called a new parliamentary election, not in order to solve a crisis between the executive and the legislature but simply to suit his political convenience. This, though allowed under the constitution, had never been done before, and the public did not like it. His parliamentary majority was ousted and replaced by the socialists. Jospin now became prime minister and remained in place for five years.

The next presidential election, in 2002, was even more sensational. Bidding for a second seven-year term, Chirac was challenged again by Jospin, who this time looked sure to win. But then France’s two-ballot system came into play. In the first round, a plethora of left-wing candidates pulled so many votes away from Jospin that he was reduced to the third position, behind Chirac and the far-Right agitator Jean-Marie Le Pen, and was ejected from the race. On the second ballot, some 80 percent of the voters backed Chirac over Le Pen. Chirac was foolish enough to believe they had elected him.

And now we have the elections of 2007. First the presidential election, with its first ballot on April 22 followed by a runoff between the two top vote-getters on May 6; then the National Assembly elections in June. Two years ago, everyone would have sworn that the presidential winner would be the maverick conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s minister of the interior. Then Sarkozy’s fortunes declined sharply, while those of another star—and another maverick—were rising: Ségolène Royal, the socialist governor of Poitou-Charentes in western France. Early this year, Sarkozy made a strong comeback, and Royal fell from grace. At that point a third candidate, François Bayrou, a nice, decent, articulate, over-ambitious centrist, unexpectedly entered the picture, effectively challenging both Royal and Sarkozy. Complicating matters still further was the perennial candidacy of Le Pen.

By the time this issue of COMMENTARY reaches subscribers, the first ballot will be over, and the two candidates with the highest number of votes will have begun battling it out for the May 6 runoff. But what does it all mean? Common wisdom—in America at least—is that the French are and will always remain an utterly fickle people, as individuals and as a nation. This may be true—up to a point. My own belief is that the vagaries of the French vote tell us a great deal about the profound uncertainties the country is now facing.

_____________

II

Books about “national decline” and the “growing national crisis” have been best-sellers in France for at least the past four years. The first and still the most trenchant was La France qui tombe (“Falling France,” 2003), by Nicolas Baverez, a lawyer and a graduate of the immensely prestigious Ecole nationale d’administration (National School of Public Administration, or ENA). The same year saw the publication of Le Grand Gaspillage (“The Great Waste”) by the distinguished Sorbonne historian Jacques Marseille, followed by the same author’s La Guerre des Deux France (“The War of the Two Frances,” 2004) and more recently Les Bons Chiffres pour ne pas voter nul en 2007 (“The Right Figures for a Sensible Vote in 2007”).

Both Baverez and Marseille can be described as moderately conservative free-marketeers; both write columns for Le Point, the right-of-center weekly of news and opinion. Two other declinists come from a very different background. Michel Godet, a professor of industrial economy, was originally close to the Christian Left but over time developed a robust critique of French industrial and social policy. His 2003 book Le Choc de 2006 (“The Shock of 2006”) pointed to the exorbitant price the country was paying for its extensive welfare state, a thesis elaborated this year in Le Courage du bon sens (“The Courage of Common Sense”). Claude Allègre, a geologist of repute, served as a minister in Jospin’s government, where he tried and failed to reform the French educational system. Subsequently he became one of the country’s best columnists, first at L’Express, the left-of-center weekly, and then at Le Point.

A fifth should be mentioned: Louis Chauvel, a young sociologist at the Institut de sciences politiques de Paris (Paris Institute for Political Science, or “SciencesPo,” as everybody calls it), who has produced a short, dry assessment of the collapse of the French middle class, Les Classes Moyennes à la dérive (“The Middle Class Adrift”). Like Godet and Allègre, Chauvel was seen initially as a man of the Left, and is still supposed to be close to that orientation—which makes his indictment all the more notable.

_____________

To understand where these various authors are coming from, it helps to bear in mind the bedrock fact that France is one of the founding nations of Europe—that is to say, one of its oldest nation-states. Since the Great Revolution of 1789, since Napoleon, it has been a modern, secular society. In the 19th and 20th centuries it grew into a world leader in science, technology, finance, culture, art, and literature. It conquered and then emancipated a large colonial empire. And it took a decisive role in the formation of what is set to become a 21st-century superpower, the European Union.

Very few countries can lay claim to such a glorious destiny, or to a more stable national identity. To be endowed with a special destiny and identity is, in itself, a political blessing. But what if that glory is challenged, and the national identity eroding? What if the actual stuff France is made of—its shared culture, its assurance of a common heritage—is disintegrating?

It has happened before. The early decades of the 20th century were a time when France, suddenly mired in a demographic and economic slowdown, seemed to hover between national pride and national despair. This culminated in the full-fledged disaster of 1940, when France was crushed by Germany and subjected to nation-wide occupation. Fortunately, Germany was crushed in turn by the Anglo-Saxon powers and Soviet Russia, and France was allowed to recover. And so it did, with a vengeance. From the 1950’s through the 1970’s, there was much talk in the world of a Japanese miracle, a German miracle, even an Italian miracle. France was a fourth and no less impressive miracle. National independence and national influence were restored, demographics improved, the economy boomed once more. France felt like France again.

Despite warning signs, like the simultaneous rise of Le Pen’s National Front on the far Right and of various Trotskyite and other radical groups on the far Left, this newfound optimism lasted for two more decades. Since the mid-1990’s, however, it has become untenable. Drawing from the works of our four or five whistleblowers and others, we can reliably paint the following portrait of France today.

7) In Memoriam:
This week, UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it "offended" the Moslem population which claims it never occurred.

This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and
how easily each country is giving into it. It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.