1) Suresnes,France. A total of 1541
2) St.Mihiel,France. A total of 4153
3) Somme,France. A total of 1844
4) Sicily,Italy. A total of 7861
5)Rhone,France. A total of 861
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This from a prominent and brilliant Atlanta lawyer also in support of Nahmias to be re-appointed to Ga. Supreme Court... (See 1 below.)
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Have just finished "Brute" by Robert Coram. It is the biography of Legendary Marine Lt. Gen Victor Krulak. Krulak is most remembered (died at 96) for fist adopting the helicopter for tactical ship to land invasion, for getting the Marine Crops to embrace the concept of winning the minds and hearts of the civilian population and not just taking and holding land (unlike Gen Westmoreland who refused to change tactics and strategy used in the European theatre in Viet Nam) and finally for laying the political ground for saving the Marine Corps from being disbanded and absorbed into other military branches.
Kurlak would have been Commandant had he not told LBJ he was fighting the wrong way in Viet Nam. One of his sons did become Commandant.
Krulak ran his household as if it were a Marine Barracks and thus, his three sons had later life issues. .
He was born into a religious Jewish family, denied he was Jewish in order to get into Annapolis and advance in the ranks of The Corps.
For any Marine who wants to know more Corps history "Brute" is a must and enjoyable read.
Robert Coram, who lives in Atlanta, was kind enough to inscribe his book to us.
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Obama brags about unity and accomplishments in Lisbon. He must have visited another city.
It is one thing to be lied to but it is even worse when you lie to yourself. (See 2below.)
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Netanyahu wants it on paper. It better be gold threaded because a commitment from Obama will not be worth anything even if on paper. (See 3 below.)
Another view from a a former U.S. Ambassador who sees the settlement issue turning into a bribery. (See 3a below.)
Meanwhile, Obama continues to be stung by his own stupidity in having made settlements an issue. (See 3b and 3c below.)
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Just who is Rep. Keith Ellison? (See 4 below.)
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Palestinians just cannot tell the truth to their children. They are raising an entire generation of haters. (See 5 below.)
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The Left's agenda has boomeranged and hit them in the face but have no fear they will persevere because they know they are always right! (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)Thanks for putting out the plug for David Nahmias. I had not met Nahmias before his appointment by the governor, but had a chance to meet him in a roundtable where he was discussing his judicial philosophy and history with several lawyers. He is brilliant, and while he has written one opinion I disagree with (caps on pain and suffering), his logic and intelligence is at a level that has been missing from the Georgia high court for many years.
I expect that only about one-tenth the number of voters will turn out on November 30 as opposed to November 2. So every vote counts. Typically in a judicial election in georgia, the first name on the ballot gets about 7% by default more than anyone else. Don't ask me why that is so, but several people I know have watched this over the years and it seems to be pretty consistent. So if any one voter can get informed enough to have an opinion, and can make it to the polls in a judicial race, it is a meaningful vote for the rule of law and a better legal system.
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2)West marks another military retreat at NATO summit
The NATO summit's agreement of Saturday Nov. 2010 on staged handovers to Afghanistan security forces by 2014 is a good fit for Taliban's longstanding fundamental demand for foreign troops to quit Afghanistan as the precondition for talks on an end to the war that will restore them to power in Kabul, debkafile's military sources report.
Taliban's response Saturday night addressed elements left out of the NATO statement: The Americans and NATO face defeat in Afghanistan, said Taliban - notwithstanding US troops reinforcements and changes of generals – a jab at Gen. David Petraeus, who recently too over command of the war.
The Afghan insurgents took the NATO statement as the Western alliance's admission that it cannot defeat them, had in lost the will to do so and sought only an elegant way out of spelling out the word defeat; "transition" to Afghan security forces sounds more honorable.
But even that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not willing to concede. Therefore, the fighting will continue to rage as Washington uses the NATO blueprint for maneuvers to open indirect or direct negotiations with the Taliban for ending the war.
The insurgents will moreover press their attacks – less to seize more territory than to drive bigger wedges among Western allies, taking advantage of the badly disunited front US President Barack Obama found in Lisbon.
According to the summit document, "The transition process towards Afghan control of security matters is to begin in July of next year and end with full Afghan control by the end of 2014." The alliance also signed a document reinforcing its long-term commitment to Afghanistan's security even after NATO combat operations end.
2014 was not defined explicitly as the date for ending combat operations.
On administration official said Saturday that the President would personally decide when conditions were ready for US troops to draw down. The Pentagon called 2014"aspirational" and US Secretary of State called it "a goal not a timeline."
Meanwhile, two of the larger NATO contingents are not waiting for any goals or timelines; they are on their way out of Afghanistan.
President Nicolas Sarkozy is getting ready to recall 3,850 French troops next year, while British Prime Minister David Cameron has withdrawn the 9,500-strong British contingent from direct combat activity. On Nov. 14, British Commander-in-Chief Gen. Sir David Richards said bluntly, "You can't defeat the Taliban or al Qaeda militarily, only contain them…"
The Western powers are even more at odds on the Iranian nuclear issue than they are on Afghanistan. No coherent, agreed plan for dealing with Iran's approaching attainment of a nuclear weapon has been laid out in Washington, London, Paris or Berlin – or even an agreed strategy for their nuclear talks with Iran early next month. Tehran, like the Taliban, is therefore preparing to harden its bargaining stance at those talks, encouraged by US-led Western retreats from Iraq, Lebanon and now Afghanistan to assume that Washington will continue to give way.
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3)Netanyahu: No settlement freeze vote without U.S. offer in writing
Premier tells members of his Likud party that he will continue to insist on written draft of proposal, but says he is certain ministers will approve offer; also says he won't prioritize talks on borders.
By Barak Ravid
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told lawmakers on Sunday that he had not yet received a written draft from the United States over a proposed package of incentives in exchange for a freeze on West Bank construction.
"We still have not received from the Americans a written summary of the principle understandings," Netanyahu told eight MKs from his Likud party, adding that he would not bring the offer for cabinet vote until he saw the proposal in its entirety.
"I am committed to reaching the decision that best serves the State of Israel and its national interests, primarily security," Netanyahu told MKs from his Likud party, many of whom oppose his willingness to agree to a 90-day construction moratorium.
Netanyahu said that once the offer was presented to him by the U.S., he would bring it to cabinet for a vote. "I am sure that the ministers will approve it because it is what is good for the State of Israel," said the prime minister.
But in the case that the U.S. does not offer a written summary of the understandings, Netanyahu said, he would not bring the proposal forth.
"As prime minister I am obligated to seeing the general picture and to decide what is good for the State of Israel," said Netanyahu. "This is my responsibility and it is exactly what I will do."
Netanyahu also played down rumors that the understandings with the U.S. included reaching a conclusion on the issue of borders immediately following the end of the freeze.
"There is absolutely no agreement that within 90 days we would reach an agreement on the issue of borders," Netanyahu said. "No request of the sort has been made and neither any commitment."
"We will not hold separate conversations regarding the borders, but will rather discuss all the significant issues," he added. "We plan to begin serious debate on all matters."
Likud MKs who participated in the meeting said Netanyahu sounded pessimistic about the chances of receiving a written document that would formalize the understandings.
"One could understand from him that he was hesitant, and not at all sure that the freeze would be implemented," one of the participants said. "It was clear in the course of the meeting that Netanyahu was having difficulty getting from the Americans the document of understandings that he's working on."
3a)Kurtzer: US needs strategy Photo: Tzvika Tischler, Yedioth Aharonoth
Former US Ambassador Dan Kurtzer calls American offer of perks such as 20 warplanes in exchange for halting settlement construction 'unprofessional'. Such haggling casts doubt on Israel's security issues, he says.
By Attila Somfalvi
The former US ambassador to Israel, Dan Kurtzer, says the state's security is being harmed by the haggling over an additional moratorium on West Bank settlement construction.
Ex-American envoy Kurtzer says US rewarding Israel's bad behavior with settlement freeze deal. 'Washington will almost certainly come to regret bribing Israel; Israel may regret receiving such bribe even more,' he says
Kurtzer explained in an interview with Ynet Sunday why he had referred to Israel and US attempts at striking a freeze deal "bribery".
In the future, will we be able to trust that Israel has security issues? asked Kurtzer, who served as an adviser to US President Barack Obama during his presidential campaign.
He added that the US offer saying, "Ok, you want 20 planes, freeze construction" could take away from 30 years of enforcing Israel's security needs. Kurtzer called the deal "unprofessional".
The former ambassador also criticized the lack of US strategy regarding the Middle East peace process, saying that the freeze deal was causing settlements to appear divorced from the rest of the issues with which peace negotiations are concerned.
"The US needs a strategy, something wider than the demand to freeze settlements," he said, adding that it was necessary to sit down with both sides in order to devise a plan on how to proceed before haggling over conditions.
Kurtzer would not say who was to blame for the stalled peace talks, Israel or the US, but accused both sides of approaching negotiations incorrectly. In answer to whether a plan was needed, he said, "A plan sounds like dictation. I don't believe in dictation. I want an American strategy on how to bring both sides to negotiations."
He added that it was entirely possible to get the peace process back on track "and be somewhere else in six months", adding that if talks were not restarted soon violence may ensue.
3b) Abbas insists on Jerusalem in settlement freez
By BEN HUBBARD
The Obama administration's troubled attempt to revive Mideast peace talks took another blow Sunday when the Palestinian president rejected the latest U.S. plan to get the sides talking again.
Mahmoud Abbas said a proposed 90-day freeze on Israeli settlement construction wouldn't get him back to the negotiating table unless it includes east Jerusalem, a condition Israel staunchly opposes.
Palestinians claim east Jerusalem for their future capital. For decades, Israel has built Jewish sections around the city's periphery, and about 200,000 Jews live there now. Palestinians consider the large neighborhoods as illegal settlements.
The impasse highlights the gaps the U.S. must bridge — not to just to achieve a peace deal, but even to get the sides to sit down and talk about one.
In Cairo Sunday, Abbas said any construction freeze must include east Jerusalem "first and foremost," along with the West Bank.
"If the moratorium does not apply to all Palestinian territories, including east Jerusalem, we will not accept it," Abbas said after consultations with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
The issue of Israeli settlements has bedeviled the latest round of peace talks since their launch in September. They broke down three weeks later when a previous 10-month slowdown on West Bank construction expired.
Since then, the U.S. has been pushing Israel to impose a new, 90-day moratorium to draw the Palestinians back to talks. The U.S. hopes the sides can reach a deal on future borders during that time, in effect determining which settlements Israel will get to keep in a peace agreement and defusing the issue of where it can build.
To entice Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pro-settlement coalition government, the U.S. has offered a fleet of next-generation stealth warplanes and promises to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations.
Speaking to lawmakers from his Likud Party late Sunday, Netanyahu said he was waiting for the U.S. to put the offer in writing so he could bring it before his Cabinet.
Netanyahu also said the proposed 90-day moratorium was not specifically meant to deal with borders.
"There is no such request and there is no such commitment," he said. Instead, the sides would discuss "all topics of substance as a whole."
Cabinet minister Eli Yishai of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said Shas seeking clarifications from the U.S. that the measure will not apply to east Jerusalem and that the U.S. will not ask Israel to freeze settlement construction again once the 90 days are up.
The U.S. has been seeking a compromise. American officials said they were not pushing to include east Jerusalem in the new freeze but were also resisting Israel demands to declare the area exempt. They spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations are ongoing.
East Jerusalem was not officially included in the previous freeze, but Israel quietly curbed new construction there. The U.S. appears to be seeking a similar compromise now.
Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war and immediately annexed the eastern sector — a move the international community has not recognized. Israel now considers east Jerusalem an integral part of its capital, though the Palestinians hope to establish their capital there.
Previous unsuccessful negotiations have included a formula under which Israel would keep the Jewish sections and the Palestinians would receive the Arab areas. Netanyahu has not repeated that formula.
While the Israeli Cabinet met Sunday, hundreds of Jewish settlers — many of them youths who were excused from school and bused in — demonstrated against the U.S. plan outside Netanyahu's office. Some held posters accusing Netanyahu of "giving in" to U.S. pressure.
Highlighting its de facto control, Israel approved a five-year renovation plan near the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, and in the adjacent Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's hotly contested Old City.
Government spokesman Mark Regev said the project was for maintenance only and would not touch disputed shrines holy to both Jews and Muslims.
"The Western Wall brings millions of tourists each year," Regev said. "This money is for upkeep and preservation and in no way does this change the status quo."
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib condemned the plan, saying it was bad for the peace process.
"Any Israeli activities in the occupied part of Jerusalem are illegal," Khatib said. "It's not healthy as far as the peace process is concerned because peace would require the end of the occupation of east Jerusalem."
The Israeli renovation plan does not include the Mughrabi Gate entrance to the disputed hilltop, next to the Western Wall. Israeli construction there sparked violent Palestinians protests in 2007.
3c) View from Mideast: Obama's a problem
By: Ben Smith
Vowing to change a region that has resisted the best efforts of presidents and prime ministers past, Barack Obama dove head first into the Middle East peace process on his second day in office.
He was supposed to be different. His personal identity, his momentum, his charisma and his promise of a fresh start would fundamentally alter America’s relations with the Muslim world and settle one of its bitterest grievances.
Two years later, he has managed to forge surprising unanimity on at least one topic: Barack Obama. A visit here finds both Israelis and Palestinians blame him for the current stalemate – just as they blame one another.
Instead of becoming a heady triumph of his diplomatic skill and special insight, Obama’s peace process is viewed almost universally in Israel as a mistake-riddled fantasy. And far from becoming the transcendent figure in a centuries-old drama, Obama has become just another frustrated player on a hardened Mideast landscape.
The current state of play sums up the problem. Obama’s demand that the Israelis stop building settlements on the West Bank was met, at long last, by a temporary and partial freeze, but its brief renewal is now the subject of intensive negotiations.
Meanwhile, Palestinian leaders have refused American demands to hold peace talks with the Israelis before the freeze is extended. Talks with Arab states over gestures intended to build Israeli confidence – a key part of Obama’s early plan — have long since been scrapped.
The political peace process to which Obama committed so much energy is considered a failure so far. And in the world’s most pro-American state, the public and its leaders have lost any faith in Obama and – increasingly — even in the notion of a politically negotiated peace.
Even those who still believe in the process that Obama has championed view his conduct as a deeply unfunny comedy of errors.
“He’s like rain,” said a top Israeli official involved in diplomacy with the U.S., speaking of Obama’s role in negotiations. “You can do all kinds of things to cope with it.”
Some fret that not only has Obama failed to move the process forward, but that he and his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts may have dealt it a setback that will leave it worse off than when they began.
“Each of them has exacerbated the mistakes of the other,” said Michael Herzog, a retired general who still plays an informal role advising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s negotiators. He worries that the result of the bumbling could be “disastrous: people will lose hope in the possibility of a two-state solution.”
The White House declined to comment for this story. But in general, the Americans point fingers back at the region. They’re unsure whether Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, has the will to make peace. They’ve been surprised and disappointed by Arab leaders’ unwillingness to bolster Israel’s confidence in the process with diplomatic concessions or financial support for the Palestinian Authority. And they are dissatisfied with the domestic political excuses of an Israeli Prime Minister they see as having chosen his own intractable coalition, and who is now – in the view of one American official – “running out the clock.”
Peel back any corner of the current negotiations, and the problems quickly become evident.
In August, the Obama administration announced that it would sell 84 F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, part of the largest arms deal in American history.
The plan drew some grumbles from pro-Israel members of the Congress, who worried that the sale would tip the balance of power in the region. But Israel’s government remained publicly silent. Privately, in August – a top Israeli official told POLITICO -- they asked the Obama administration to match the Saudi sale with 20 F-35 jets for the Israeli Air Force, a move that would maintain the “qualitative military advantage” that has long been a principle of American policy toward Israel.
Those F-35s are now at the heart of a proposed deal between the U.S. and Israel over the renewed 90-day freeze.
The notion that Israel would get $2 billion worth of military hardware for a three-month delay in the construction of a few houses appears incomprehensible, and has drawn criticism for two reasons: Netanyahu’s conservative coalition partners worry that the Americans are selling them yesterday’s carpet, making a condition of something that was already in the works. His American critics, meanwhile, expressed astonishment that Obama would pay so much for so little.
The reality is more complicated, and emblematic of the stilted relationship between the United States and its ally, and of the Israeli angst over American support, its mistrust of Obama, and its assumption that peace talks will fail. The Israelis are using the talks – viewed by most of the government as a fantasy – as a bridge to their more immediate security needs.
“It’s not connected to the 90 days – it’s connected to the Saudi deal,” said a senior aide to Netanyahu. “It’s not something [Netanyahu] had in his pocket.”
Still, a visitor finds no shortage of good news on the ground. Israel’s tech sector is booming, Tel Aviv’s cafes bustle and Israel has enjoyed a period largely free of suicide bombings and rocket attacks. In the Palestinian territories, there is also a positive tale to tell: The robust economic growth in West Bank cities patrolled by a functioning Palestinian police force.
But the American president has been diminished, even in an era without active hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians. His demands on the parties appear to shrink each month, with the path to a grand peace settlement narrowing to the vanishing point. The lack of Israeli faith in him and his process has them using the talks to extract more tangible security assurances – the jets. And though America remains beloved, Obama is about as popular here as he is in Oklahoma. A Jerusalem Post poll in May found 9 percent of Israelis consider Obama “pro-Israel,” while 48 percent say he’s “pro-Palestinian.”
Other polling in Israel shows a growing gap between aspirations for peace and the faith that it can happen. One survey last month found that 72 percent of Israelis favor negotiations, while only 33 percent think they can bear fruit. (Palestinians show a smaller gap, primarily because a smaller majority favors negotiations.)
Obama has resisted advisers’ suggestions that he travel to Israel or speak directly to Israelis as he has to Muslims in Egypt, Turkey, and Indonesia.
“Israelis really hate Obama’s guts,” said Shmuel Rosner, a columnist for two leading Israeli newspapers. “We used to trust Americans to act like Americans, and this guy is like a European leader.”
Many senior Israeli leaders have concluded that Hillary Clinton and John McCain were right about Obama’s naivete and inexperience.
“The naïve liberals who are at the heart of the administration really believe in all the misconceptions the Palestinians and all their friends all over the world are trying to place,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a former high-ranking military intelligence officer who is now deputy director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.
Kuperwasser, like other Israelis, bridled at the suggestion that the country’s dislike of Obama draws from the Muslim influences of his heritage – or even his name.
“It drives me crazy. Who cares that his middle name is Hussein? It’s the last thing we care about. [To suggest that] is just anti-Semitism,” he said. “There is one reason why we are hesitant about this guy: he doesn’t understand us.”
The deal on 90 more days of freeze currently hangs in the balance. Netanyahu is also trying to sell his coalition partners on an administration promise that there won’t be a demand for a third freeze, and on another promise – which has provoked the same claims that it’s too much, or too little – to veto a threatened attempt to advance Palestinian statehood through the United Nations.
The demand for a 90-day freeze in new construction has, all sides agree, a real internal logic: American leaders have said they hope the Israelis and Palestinians will resolve the question of the border of a Palestinian state. And once that’s resolved, the issue of settlements – which Obama raised at his Cairo speech last June, and which has emerged as a prime impediment to talks -- will, the theory goes, be resolved with it. The scenario: Most of the “settlements” will be put within mutually agreed borders of Israel, the rest will be clearly out of bounds, and the residents of far-flung Jewish communities on West Bank hilltops will be on notice that Israeli soldiers will soon be knocking on their doors to drag them out of the state of Palestine.
The problem is that virtually nobody in Israel who isn’t required by the logic of politics to express public faith in the political process of peace talks has much faith that the talks will lead anywhere. Netanyahu’s coalition is dominated by people with a profound skepticism about not just these talks, but of any negotiated peace.
“The only positive policy is to operate under the realistic assumption that as long as the PLO do not change fundamentally their thinking, no government of Israel can sign an agreement with them,” said Beni Begin, a cabinet minister from Netanyahu’s own Likud party and – like most of the Israeli government – a firm skeptic of the prospects for a Palestinian state any time soon.
The extremist group Hamas’s control of the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, “is not a ‘real problem’,” Begin says, mocking the diplomatic conversation on the topic. “It’s an insurmountable problem. Everyone knows it.”
Netanyahu’s close staff and his government share some of that skepticism.
“It might be that the reason you haven't had peace with the Palestinians is not because you haven’t had changes in policies, not because you haven’t had changes with the American approach, but because the Palestinians haven’t brought themselves to real reconciliation with Israel,” Netanyahu’s closest adviser, Ron Dermer, told POLITICO.
Netanyahu, oddly enough, given his perception around the world (and particularly in Washington) as an unyielding hawk, sounds like a virtual peacenik compared with many of his advisers. Almost alone on the right, the prime minister “thinks (Palestinian president) Abu Mazen may rise to the occasion,” Dermer said.
“The prime minister is not only more optimistic than his staff. The prime minister is more optimistic than his ministers,” he said, adding that unlike Begin, Netanyahu “does not believe that the status quo is sustainable.”
Netanyahu is almost alone in his party in suggesting that the peace process could go somewhere; one of the few others in Israeli public life who insists on that point is his chief rival and critic, opposition leader Tzipi Livni. Peace talks really could advance, she argues, if Israel had a leader whom the Americans and Palestinians could trust, as they did when she served as Foreign Minister when her party, Kadima, ran the government before the rightward correction that occurred just weeks after Obama’s own election.
“I believe it’s feasible, but I don’t have a 100 percent guarantee. What I don’t do is try to undermine the willingness of the other side,” Livni told POLITICO. “When we negotiated there was trust – there’s no trust now.... It depends on the way you negotiate.”
Livni scrupulously avoids criticizing Obama’s conduct of the peace talks, but those around her are blunter.
“If Obama wanted to be a transformational figure, he would never have led with the settlements,” said Eyal Arad, the architect of Livni’s campaign for prime minister. He argues – like most Israelis – that Obama inadvertently got talks hung up on a matter of irrelevant principle, rather than engaging the reality that some settlements can stay while others must go.
“The settlements were pushed by a bunch of left-wingers who were out of sync with the realities and were out of government too long,” he said. “The irony is that Obama went directly back to the place where George Bush the father left off.”
Another of Livni’s top lieutenants, her former party chairman and Knesset ally Yohanan Plessner, is among a surprising spectrum of Israeli leaders who have begun to imagine radically different alternatives to the negotiated, political peace that American and Palestinian officials insist must be the main road to a settlement.
“The whole focus on final status isn’t compatible with the political reality on the Israel side and the Palestinian side,” he said, arguing that a better option is a regime under which Israeli and Palestinian leaders would build the Palestinian economy, remove far-flung settlements and strengthen a de facto Palestinian state “as a tunnel to final status.”
To him, the endless talks about talks are a distraction. As for Obama, he said, “You have to create a crisis that serves an end. This crisis today – I don’t know what it’s serving.”
Palestinian leaders say they, too – for different reasons -- are losing faith in the political talks.
“[Netanyahu] has a chance and he’s wasting it,” said the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erakat. “Given the chance between settlements and peace he’s always chosen settlements.”
The advocacy director of the American Task Force on Palestine, Ghaith al-Omari, said the frustration in Ramallah isn’t only with Netanyahu.
Abbas and other Palestinian leaders are “personally fed up with the whole thing,” he said, and “losing faith in the process, both with the Israeli willingness to deliver and the Americans’ ability to deliver the Israelis.”
But Plessner’s suggestion of an interim process reflects Israeli disillusion with the notion of a negotiated peace process, one that some of its veterans fear is already on its last legs. It’s echoed by a surprising range of voices: Former Israeli U.N Ambassador Dore Gold, a hawkish Netanyahu ally, has cited the skepticism about the political process outlined by the left-leaning Rob Malley and Hussein Agha in the New York Review of Books.
Livni dismisses this alternative.
“For any deal you need two sides. The Palestinians are not going to accept that. It’s not going to happen, and it doesn't serve the Israeli interest to end the conflict,” she said.
She also says Obama’s unpopularity – now a fact of life – doesn’t matter.
“It’s not important: People in Israel can love him, admire him, hate him, dislike him – people can oppose everything he says – he is the United States ... we have the umbilical cord with the United States. We cannot cut this.”
Others aren’t so sure. If Netanyahu comes close to a deal, they expect Obama will have to play a key role in closing it.
“In the money time, the popularity of the president will matter a great deal,” said the senior official with a key role between the countries.
George Mitchell, Obama’s special envoy, often compares the stalled peace process here to his famous role in settling Northern Ireland’s Troubles, where he had “700 days of failure and one day of success.”
The 700th day since Mitchell began work will pass next month without, it appears safe to say, anything resembling political progress toward a Palestinian state. In Israel, indeed, the debate focuses largely on whether the American-led process has left negotiations at a standstill – or pushed them backwards.
“What will happen after 90 days if we haven’t decided the border?” asks Kuperwasser. “And we won’t settle the borders.”
Meanwhile the president who hoped to dramatically remake the regional landscape has, in the end, simply become part of it.
“Obama’s biggest problem is that we don’t buy what he’s selling, and that is hope,” said one Israeli veteran of past negotiations. “There’s this sincerity about the American approach that is heartbreaking to watch.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number and value of F-35 fighter jets a top Israeli official said were requested by Israel. The official said 20 F-35 jets, worth $2 billion, were requested from the Obama administration.
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4)Keith Ellison's Stealth Jihad
By Denis MacEoin
Middle East Quarterly
"Who is Keith Ellison?" There are no simple answers. Throughout a checkered career, this liberal American politician has adopted many guises and presented different messages. He is an African-American who has moved from the fringe to the center of politics. He is a Democrat with a predictably liberal voting record, yet he consorts with groups and individuals that represent a threat to democracy and America. He is a convert to Islam but challenges Islamic orthodoxy on numerous issues legislatively. He identifies strongly with his faith, yet the details of his conversion and his current sentiments as a Muslim are obscure. He considers himself a friend of Israel[1] but, at other times, has appeared on the same platforms with speakers vocal in their opposition to the Jewish state and their support for terrorist groups that have murdered its citizens.
U.S. representative Keith Ellison places his hand on an English translation of the Qur'an once owned by Thomas Jefferson. His wife Kim (center) holds the book as he is sworn in as the first Muslim member of Congress by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (left) on Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., January 4, 2007.
For many, he holds out hope of increasing Muslim influence in the U.S. government. At present, he is only one of two Muslims serving in Congress, the other being André Carson. He has strongly encouraged his fellow Muslims to engage in politics saying,
Getting engaged, getting involved, running for office, helping people run for office, organizing your community—these are the things that are going to make a change come about. We have to build the kind of country that we want with the help of some people who are like-minded. We cannot leave that responsibility to anybody else.[2]
Others, however, worry that he has too great a sympathy for Islamist radicals, of being at best naïve in his associations, and at worst a fifth columnist, someone whose status within the House of Representatives provides cover for anti-American discourse and, possibly, anti-American actions.
He is forty-six and a relative newcomer to Congress with the potential to be reelected to office for some time to come. In due course, more Muslims will stand for state and federal office, which will almost certainly lead to the creation of a minority caucus in which Keith Ellison will be a senior member. It is time to look more closely at Congressman Ellison and his history.
The Nation of Islam
Ellison was born in 1963 into a Catholic family in Detroit. Almost nothing is known of his childhood and teenage years. He studied economics at Wayne State University and in 1982, in his sophomore year, converted to Islam. He has been extremely reluctant to reveal more than a glimpse of the motivations behind his conversion: In a December 2006 interview (about one month after his election to Congress), Ellison said,
I have been a Muslim since age 19, and I am 43 now. Of course my faith strengthens me and guides me. How I came to it is a deeply personal matter, and I'm not ready to talk about it now.[3]
However, in a more recent interview with Al-Jazeera's Riz Khan, he was more forthcoming:
I can't claim that I was the most observant Catholic at the time [of my conversion]. I had begun to really look around and ask myself about the social circumstances of the country, issues of justice, issues of change. When I looked at my spiritual life, and I looked at what might inform social change, justice in society … I found Islam.[4]
As testimonies about conversion to Islam go, this is somewhat atypical as it is rare for converts to have mulled over wide political and social issues before conversion.[5] The spiritual dimension of Ellison's conversion receives just a passing mention. Nothing seems to be known about what mosque he attended, what books he studied, whether he went to Islamic classes or conferences or engaged in any of the religious activities in which young converts usually involve themselves.
What is known is that, for several years, he associated with or belonged to the Nation of Islam (NOI). Ellison himself denies that he was ever a member of the NOI,[6] then as now under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, an anti-white, anti-Semitic, anti-establishment demagogue.[7] In a letter sent in May during the 2006 congressional campaign to the Minnesota Jewish Community Relations Council, Ellison claimed that his association with the NOI had lasted for only eighteen months about the time of the Million Man March in 1995.[8] However, there are problems with this assertion.
On the death of NOI founder Elijah Muhammad, his son Warith Deen Muhammad inherited the movement only to transform it soon after into a new group based on authentic Sunni Islamic principles (later, the American Society of Muslims). Louis Farrakhan remained with Warith Deen Muhammad's organization for a few years, only to break away in order to reestablish the original Nation of Islam in 1978. The NOI was widely condemned within the orthodox Muslim community, which considered Farrakhan's organization to be so far from doctrinal truth, it could not even be regarded as Islamic.[9] While NOI converts have often later moved into normative Islam, there seems to be no evidence of Muslim converts moving the other way; Ellison may be trying to conceal the truth behind both his conversion and the length of his tenure with the controversial NOI.
Despite these disclaimers, Ellison's open support for the NOI for over a decade is a matter of public record. After earning his economics degree in 1987, Ellison moved to Minneapolis and enrolled at the University of Minnesota Law School. While there, he wrote several columns under the pseudonym Keith E. Hakim, in which he spoke respectfully of Farrakhan and defended the NOI's national spokesman and Farrakhan's right-hand man, Khalid Abdul Muhammad, notorious for his anti-white, anti-Jewish, and anti-gay opinions.[10] Elsewhere, Ellison used other pseudonyms, including Keith X Ellison[11] and Keith Ellison Muhammad.[12]
Ellison's involvement with the NOI resurfaced in 1995. He helped to organize the Minnesota contingent of Farrakhan's Million Man March and appeared onstage alongside Khalid Abdul Muhammad, who, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune proclaimed, "If words were swords, the chests of Jews, gays and whites would be pierced." Muhammad was already infamous by the time of the march; indeed, by the 1970s and 1980s, his hate speech and Holocaust denials were well known and continued into the 1990s.[13] Just two years before the rally in a 1993 Kean College, New Jersey speech, Muhammad had described Jews as "hook-nosed, bagel-eatin', lox-eatin' impostors,"[14] a speech that elicited a 1994 resolution of censure from both houses of the U.S. Congress.[15] In his 2006 letter to the Minnesota Jewish Community Relations Council, Ellison wrote that he "did not adequately scrutinize the positions and statements of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and Khalid Muhammed [sic]."[16] As both men were nationally infamous, it is hard to lend credence to Ellison's seeming ignorance.
In fact, Ellison had defended Farrakhan in 1995. Writing as Keith X Ellison, he published a column for Insight News, in which he condemned a Star Tribune editorial cartoon lampooning NOI's leader as a role model for blacks because of his anti-Semitism. Ellison wrote:
Minister Farrakhan is a role model for black youth; however, he is not an anti-Semite. He is a sincere, tireless, and uncompromising advocate of the black community and other oppressed people around the world. Despite some of the most relentless negative propaganda anyone has ever faced, most Black people regard him as a role model for youth and increasingly, a central voice for our collective aspirations.[17]
Despite this spirited defense, Farrakhan's statements before and after this column belie the claim.[18]
In 1997, two years after the Million Man March, Ellison continued to defend the NOI while displaying further tolerance for hate speech. In October of that year, Joanne Jackson, executive director of the Minnesota Initiative Against Racism (MIAR), created an uproar by saying to a group meeting held in Temple Israel Synagogue that she considered Jews "the most racist white people I know."[19] At a subsequent MIAR board meeting, according to the Star Tribune, Ellison defended Jackson on behalf of the Nation of Islam, stating, "We stand by the truth contained in the remarks attributed to [Ms. Jackson], and by her right to express her views without sanction."[20]
His Record in Congress
A year later in 1998, Ellison ran for the Democratic-Farmers-Labor Party nomination for state representative, going by the name Keith Ellison-Muhammad. In this, his first outing, he was unsuccessful, but in 2002, having dropped Muhammad from his name, he was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives and reelected in 2004. As a state representative, he showed signs of a more balanced attitude, something that was later to emerge more clearly when he became a national representative. For example, in 2004, he led an ethics complaint against State Rep. Arlon Lindner after Lindner made remarks in the state congress, saying homosexuals had not died in the Holocaust.[21] Ellison was backed by sixty other members of the Minnesota State House and by U.S. Senator Norm Coleman.[22] In the end, the vote on the motion of censure failed in a 2-2 draw in the Minnesota House Ethics Committee.[23] Lindner was eventually denied the Republican nomination in the 2004 elections; for his efforts, Ellison picked up support from the local Jewish publication, American Jewish World.[24]
In 2006, Ellison ran for the U.S. Congress and won with 56 percent of the vote in Minnesota's fifth congressional district.[25] His election was controversial, sparking some extreme reactions to the fact that he was a Muslim[26] and asked to be sworn into office on a Qur'an.[27]
Ellison's record in Congress has been in line with broad Democratic and liberal policy, and he has made no attempt to use his position to advance projects with an overtly Islamic or Islamist bent. Sometimes, in fact, he has done quite the opposite. For example, on March 21, 2008, on the eve of the summer Olympics to be held in Beijing that year, he issued a statement criticizing both the Chinese and Sudanese governments over their policies in Tibet and Darfur[28]; many a Muslim would not have openly condemned a Muslim country such as Sudan in this way. Ellison has praised religious freedom in the United States, saying, "Religious tolerance has a much longer pedigree in America than some of the intolerance we've seen lately."[29] This perspective would run counter to the viewpoint, embodied in much Muslim jurisprudence, in which restrictions on nonbelievers are a doctrinal and legal requirement.[30]
Ellison defies Islamic norms in other ways. He is pro-choice, not just for the first trimester, but beyond. Most Muslim jurists do not permit abortion after four months; some not at all.[31] He supports emergency contraception for those serving in the armed forces while most Muslim scholars permit contraception only in limited circumstances and not for what may be deemed a licentious purpose.[32] He permits interest on credit cards; Islam forbids the taking of interest under any circumstances. He opposes job discrimination based on sexual orientation despite the fact that homosexuals are discriminated against by Islamic law in an extreme way and approves of same-sex marriage, something unthinkable in Islam. He has called for the enforcement of laws on anti-gay hate crimes while Islamic law demands the execution of homosexuals.[33] He opposes the death penalty, which is a regular punishment under Shari'a law and supports the regulation but not the banning of online gambling: In Islamic law, all forms of gambling, even insurance, are prohibited. He has also voted to support federal funding for homeland security, which some elements in the Muslim community denounce as a thinly-veiled assault on the umma (Islamic nation).[34]
On a personal level, when in Minneapolis, Ellison attends the Masjid an-Nur mosque,[35] whose imam, Makram El-Amin, he has known since 1996.[36] El-Amin has a reputation as an advocate of interracial harmony and, in particular, interfaith relations. In addition, Ellison has publicly denounced the architect of Muslim extremism, Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), calling him one of several theorists "responsible for what we would regard today as violent extremism with what I call a Muslim veneer."[37] All in all, Ellison could be viewed as a garden variety liberal politician, someone whose youthful associations have been jettisoned in favor of a more sober but still progressive approach to American governance and efforts to achieve social justice.
The CAIR Connection
But things are not as simple as they look, and Ellison may not be quite the reformed public official that he appears to be. Not long after sending the 2006 letter to the Minnesota Jewish Community Relations Council, Ellison received major funds to help finance his imminent election campaign from several Muslim organizations and individuals, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).[38] The donated money included thousands of dollars raised by Nihad Awad, CAIR's executive director (a man with a history of support for movements including Hamas).[39]
Founded in 1994, CAIR is ostensibly an advocate for religious pluralism and civil liberties, especially as applied to America's Muslim community. Its public image is that of a liberal, human rights-based group that seeks to bridge American Muslims and the secular democracy of the United States.[40] The council's many critics have argued, however, that it is a front for the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas. CAIR had close links to the Holy Land Foundation,[41] an Islamic charity that channeled millions of dollars to Hamas and which was found guilty in 2008 on charges including conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing material support to a foreign terrorist, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. In 2008, the FBI cut off contacts with CAIR over concerns that the organization had its roots in a Hamas-support network.[42] Ellison has continued to defend the group, but even before the FBI severed relations with CAIR, it had achieved such a level of notoriety that Ellison could not pretend to be unaware of problems with the organization.
CAIR's two founders, Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad, were formerly officers of the Islamic Association of Palestine, an organization intimately linked to the senior echelons of Hamas.[43] Awad has repeatedly shown support for Hamas and its military actions against Israel, has acted as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee, and has often defended Islamist organizations, including the Holy Land Foundation, against U.S. attempts to investigate and, where possible, indict them.[44] Ahmad is perhaps best known for a statement made before a crowd of Californian Muslims in 1998 and reported in the San Ramon Valley Herald: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."[45] Although the statement has been denied by Ahmed and CAIR over the years, Daniel Pipes has provided much evidence as to its veracity.[46] Ahmad has also served as president of the Islamic Association of Palestine, a fund-raising organization for Hamas.[47] Another donor and CAIR national board chairman, Parvez Ahmed, has also supported Hamas and Hezbollah.[48]
Thus, any connections Ellison might have to CAIR are, at best, unwise for a politician seeking to improve the nation's understanding of Islam and at worst an indication of his true sentiments. On October 14, 2006, shortly before the national congressional elections, Ellison appeared as the keynote speaker at a closed-door meeting of CAIR in Pembroke Pines, Florida.[49] While attending CAIR-Tampa's sixth annual banquet in 2008, Ellison called on listeners to a local Tampa radio station to support Sami al-Arian. Arian, a former professor at University of South Florida, confessed two years earlier to conspiring to supply goods and services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad,[50] a terrorist organization responsible for numerous suicide attacks on Israel.
In 2009, after the FBI cut off contact with CAIR, Ellison spoke at no fewer than three fundraising dinners for the organization and gave videotaped statements at others and has also appeared with CAIR officials at meetings on healthcare reform and Eid festival celebrations.[51] In October 2009, he rebuked four House of Representatives Republican members who called for an investigation of CAIR for infiltration of government committees.[52] Although the congressmen were focused on the question of CAIR's role, Ellison cast the inquiry as a modern-day witch hunt, declaring: "The idea that we should investigate Muslim interns as spies is a blow to the very principle of religious freedom that our Founding Fathers cherished so dearly."[53] Soon afterwards, he attended a CAIR fundraising event in Washington and called for CAIR supporters to apply for jobs in the incoming Obama administration.[54]
Associations with Other Islamist Groups
Muslim American Society: Ellison's connections to other groups such as the Muslim American Society (MAS) reinforce questions about where he stands. MAS was founded in 1993 following an arrangement reached between Muslim Brotherhood leaders in America and Egypt. MAS is, in fact, the Brotherhood's American chapter.[55] That the Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) represents a significant threat to Western civilization is made clear from this excerpt from a 1991 briefing captured by the FBI:
The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization-Jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all religions. … It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes.[56]
In December 2002, for example, MAS used its website to denigrate non-Muslims, speaking of "the degenerate moral condition of the Jews and Christians" and declaring: "If you gain a victory over the men of [the] Jews, kill them," and "May Allah destroy the Jews."[57] It also issued statements endorsing terrorism and praising Hamas.[58] According to an extensive dossier prepared by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, MAS has links to Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Its websites have praised Muslim Brotherhood ideologue and godfather of modern Islamism, Sayyid Qutb, and provided links to several extremist and terrorist organizations. Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation and the public face of the society, has claimed that the United States is engaged in a war against Islam and has defended a long list of terrorism-linked organizations and individuals. The MAS magazine, The American Muslim, often contains references to suicide bombings as "martyrdom operations" and to terrorists as "freedom fighters" while condemning U.S. antiterrorism actions. At MAS conferences, extremist speakers address their audiences while Islamist and jihadi literature is on sale.[59]
It is, then, disturbing to see that one year after his first election to Congress, Ellison was the keynote speaker at MAS-Minnesota's fourth annual convention in May 2007.[60] The following spring, Ellison was again the keynote speaker at the MAS-Minnesota convention, appearing alongside Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted coconspirator of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.[61]
Islamic Society of North America: Ellison also enjoys a relationship with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization that has been linked by several agencies to support for terrorism. In December 2003, U.S. senators Charles Grassley and Max Baucus of the Senate Committee on Finance formally identified ISNA as one of twenty-five American Muslim organizations in a probe into groups that might "finance terrorism and perpetuate violence."[62] More recently, in July 2008, Federal prosecutors in Dallas filed documents showing a link between ISNA and Hamas.[63] In an account of the 2008 conference, Dave Gaubatz, coauthor of Muslim Mafia, writes:
In 2008, ISNA had several booths with anti-American slogans on shirts, along with pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian, and anti-Israel garments … It was easy to find DVDs, books, manuals, and pamphlets calling America a terrorist organization and for the destruction of our country and Israel. It was very easy to find material calling for killing innocent men, women, and children in American [sic] who did not believe in an Islamic Ummah (Nation) worldwide and under Sharia law. … If you wanted Muslim Brotherhood material, this was the location to obtain the intelligence you desired.[64]
Despite these troubling connections, Ellison has spoken at ISNA's 2007, 2008, and 2009 conventions, events estimated to be the largest annual Muslim gatherings in the Western hemisphere.[65] In 2008, Ellison spoke on "mobilizing the Muslim political machine."[66]
Muslim Public Affairs Council: Ellison also spoke in December 2006 to the sixth annual convention of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC),[67] a seemingly moderate body that seeks to conceal its strong anti-Semitic,[68] pro-Hamas, and pro-Hezbollah views.[69] Again, he addressed a town hall forum during MPAC's "Activate '08 Election Campaign," at one of the Council's "Rock the Muslim Vote" events.[70]
North American Imams Federation: He also addressed the North American Imams Federation (NAIF) at their November 19, 2006 conference in Minneapolis.[71] Many of NAIF's imams, in charge of mosques across the United States, are trained through an institution called the American Open University (AOU), a distance-learning medium for Muslims wishing to train as clergy. The AOU is a radical school that emphasizes the paramount role of Shari'a law in an American context. Its chairman Jaafar Sheikh Idris regards democracy as "the antithesis of Islam," arguing that human beings have no right to make their own laws. "No one," he claims, "can be a Muslim who makes or freely accepts or believes that anyone has the right to make or accept legislation that is contrary to the divine law."[72] He also declared that no Muslim elected to Congress can swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution and remain a Muslim "for in order to pledge loyalty to the constitution, a Muslim would have to abandon part of his belief and embrace the belief of secularism—which is practically another religion."[73] That Keith Ellison supports an institution linked to someone who holds views in such deep conflict with normative American values is deeply troubling.
Conclusion
Once, in an interview with CNN's Glenn Beck, Ellison said, "There's no one who is more patriotic than I am. And so, you know, I don't need to prove my patriotic stripes."[74] Judged by his legislative record, he is well within the mainstream of American life. But he has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution despite the fact that he fundraises for groups whose leadership would replace that Constitution with the laws of Islam.
Does Ellison simply display poor choice in his associates as he did when younger? Or should his motives be questioned at a higher level? Are there no moderate Muslim groups he can speak to or support? Why does he return again and again to address and support Islamist organizations, some with ties to terrorism?
What politician, careful of the press and the generality of his constituents, does not trouble himself or his staff to check out the bona fides of a group he may be speaking to, all the more so if that group already has a less than savory reputation? Ellison's constituents, the American public, and his fellow congressmen, deserve answers to the many questions his curious bipolarity raises. The mixed messages he gives may be an expression of deep-seated contradictions. Few politicians hold self-contradictory views for long and often abandon those they recognize to be potential irritants to voters. Ellison's worrisome affiliations have drawn little criticism from the mainstream media. It is possible that this reluctance to expose comes from a combination of a dislike to criticize Muslims and an ignorance of what links to CAIR, MAS, and other bodies and individuals really imply.
It is also not at all improbable that Ellison is aware of and makes use of the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya, the principle that it is permissible for a Muslim to lie in order to protect Islam and its reputation from harm, or to do so as part of waging jihad with nonbelievers. From CAIR to ISNA to MPAC, Muslim groups in the United States claim to be victims of discrimination or outright persecution at the hands of state agencies or individuals. They have mastered the art of being, in a British phrase, "economical with the truth." Keith Ellison may well be among them.
Denis MacEoin is editor of The Middle East Quarterly.
[1] Natasha Mosgovaya, "Head to Head/Rep. Keith Ellison, Do You Think the US Could Live with an Iranian Bomb?" Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv), May 24, 2010.
[2] "Ellison Inspires Voters at 1st 'Rock the Muslim Vote' Townhall Forum," Muslim Public Affairs Council, Sept. 24, 2008.
[3] Alan Tuttle, "Congressman-Elect Keith Ellison: An Interview with the First Muslim Congressman," The Philadelphia Jewish Voice, Jan. 2007.
[4] "Riz Khan's One on One—Keith Ellison," Al-Jazeera TV (Doha), Feb. 20, 2010.
[5] See, for example, Uriya Shavit and Frederic Wiesenbach, "Muslim Strategies to Convert Western Christians," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2009, pp. 3-14; "Converts (Reverts) to Islam," Islam Awareness website, accessed June 17, 2010; "Converts to Islam: Stories of New Muslims," accessed June 17, 2010.
[6] The Washington Post, Sept. 11, 2006.
[7] "Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam," The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University, accessed June 17, 2010.
[8] Scott W. Johnson, "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman," The Weekly Standard, Oct. 9, 2006.
[9] Michael Young, "The Problem with the Nation of Islam," Islam for Today, Aug. 1, 2001.
[10] Johnson, "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman."
[11] Keith X Ellison, "Editorial cartoon insulted our intelligence," Insight News (Graphic Services, Inc.), Nov. 6, 1995.
[12] "Keith Ellison-Muhammad will run for house 58B seat," Insight News, 1998; The Washington Post, Sept. 11, 2006.
[13] "Khalid Muhammad's Message," The Nizkor Project, accessed June 18, 2010; Barry Mehler, "African American Racism in the Academic Community," The Review of Education, Fall 1993; "Muslims and Afrocentrics speak out," conference, New York, Dec. 22, 1991; "Transcript of Mohammad's November 9 Speech," Barnard Bulletin, Nov. 23, 1992, p. 12-3, Dec. 7, 1992, pp. 14-6, Dec. 14, 1992, pp. 10-7.
[14] "Kean College Lecture 'Khalid Muhammad,'" The New Jersey Record, accessed June 18, 2010.
[15] Amendment 1368 to Senate bill 1150, U.S. Senate, 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., Feb. 2, 1994; H567: House res. 343, U.S. House of Representatives, 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., Feb. 3, 1994.
[16] Gabriel Schoenfeld, "Jews, Muslims, and the Democrats," Commentary Magazine, Jan. 2007; Andrew Walden, "Farrakhan's Candidate," FrontPageMagazine.com, Sept. 19, 2006.
[17] Ellison, "Editorial Cartoon Insulted Our Intelligence."
[18] "Farrakhan in His Own Words: On Jews: On 'Jewish Conspiracies,' On the Holocaust, On Jewish involvement in the slave trade, On Israel, On Dialogue with Jews," Anti-Defamation League, accessed June 18, 2010.
[19] Scott Johnson, "Who Is Keith Ellison? 2" PowerlineBlog, June 5, 2006; idem, "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman."
[20] Johnson, "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman."
[21] News and Features, Minnesota Public Radio, Apr. 24, 2003; "Minn. Kampf-Politics—Minnesota state representative Arlon Lindner," The Advocate, Apr. 15, 2003.
[22] Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Mar. 12, 2003.
[23] News and Features, Minnesota Public Radio, Apr. 24, 2003.
[24] Citypages, Sept. 1, 2006; Johnson, "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman."
[25] "Official Election Results—Nov. 7, 2006," Minnesota Secretary of State.
[26] WorldNetDaily, Dec. 6, 2006.
[27] USA Today, Dec. 1, 2006.
[28] The Minnesota Post, Mar. 24, 2008.
[29] McClatchy News Service, Mar. 7, 2007; Melissa Rogers, "Representative Ellison and State Department Join Hands on Public Diplomacy," Melissa Rogers, Mar. 7, 2007.
[30] See Yohanan Friedman, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2003).
[31] See, for example, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, "Abortion from an Islamic Perspective,"
Islam Online, Jan. 18, 2004; "Abortion: Forbidden at All Stages?" European Council for Fatwa and Research, Islam Online, Dec. 13, 2004.
[32] "Is Contraception allowed in Islam?" Islam Awareness, accessed June 18, 2010.
[33] "Islam and Homosexuality," Mission Islam, accessed June 18, 2010; Denis MacEoin, "Why Do Muslims Execute Innocent People?" Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2006, pp. 15-25.
[34] For Ellison's views on these and other issues, see "Representative Keith M. Ellison (MN)," Project Vote Smart, accessed June 18, 2010; "Keith Ellison," On the Issues, accessed June 18, 2010.
[35] Reuters, Sept. 18, 2006.
[36] The New York Times, Feb. 10, 2007.
[37] "Rep. Keith Ellison, the Islamists' Man on Capitol Hill," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Nov. 23, 2009.
[38] Joe Kaufman, "Keith Ellison's Dangerous Liaisons," FrontPage Magazine, May 30, 2007; "Keith Ellison's Muslim Brotherhood Support," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Apr. 22, 2010.
[39] "Apologists or Extremists: Nihad Awad," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed June 18, 2010; Joel Mowbray, "Democrats' Dilemma," The Washington Times, Sept. 24, 2006.
[40] Daniel Pipes, "CAIR: 'Moderate' Friends of Terror," The New York Post, Apr. 22, 2002.
[41] "Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR): Links to Holy Land Foundation," Anti-Defamation League, Mar. 2, 2010.
[42] Mary Jacoby, "FBI Cuts off CAIR over Hamas Questions," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jan. 29, 2009.
[43] Matthew Levitt, Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 149.
[44] "Apologists or Extremists: Nihad Awad," accessed June 18, 2010.
[45] San Ramon Valley Herald, July 4, 1998; Nonie Darwish, Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Rejected the Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror (New York: Sentinel HC, 2006), p. 140.
[46] Daniel Pipes, "CAIR and the San Ramon Valley Herald," DanielPipes.org, Oct. 20, 2003, updated Dec. 11, 2006.
[47] Matthew Epstein, "Saudi Support for Islamic Extremism in the United States," testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, Sept. 10, 2003.
[48] Parvez Ahmed, ISNA 44th Annual Conference in Rosemont, Illinois, Aug. 31 - Sept. 3, 2007, cited in "CAIR's True Colors," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jan. 30, 2009.
[49] Joe Kaufman, "Keith Ellison's Mysterious CAIR Meeting," FrontPage Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006; "Protesting CAIR's Candidates," Little Green Footballs, Oct. 13, 2006.
[50] The Tampa Tribune, Apr. 15, 2006; The St. Petersburg Times, Mar. 6, 2009.
[51] "Rep. Keith Ellison, the Islamists' Man on Capitol Hill."
[52] Keith Ellison, "Tri-Caucus Welcomes All Interns and Staff," U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., Congressional Record, 111th Congress (2009-10), 1st sess., Oct. 26, 2009; "Rep. Keith Ellison, the Islamists' Man on Capitol Hill."
[53] Ellison, "Tri-Caucus Welcomes All Interns and Staff"; "Rep. Keith Ellison, the Islamists' Man on Capitol Hill."
[54] "Rep. Keith Ellison, the Islamists' Man on Capitol Hill."
[55] "Muslim American Society: The Investigative Project on Terrorism Dossier," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed June 18, 2010.
[56] Mohamed Akram, "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America," May 19, 1991, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed June 18, 2010.
[57] Joe Kaufman, "Keith Ellison's MAS Hate Affair," FrontPage Magazine, May 30, 2008; "Violent and Hateful Statements Published by the Muslim American Society," screenshots from the MAS website, Americans against Hate, accessed June 18, 2010.
[58] Kaufman, "Keith Ellison's MAS Hate Affair"; "Mehdi Bray's Photos," of Ahmed Yassin, the founder of and ex-spiritual leader of Hamas, screenshots from the MAS website, Americans against Hate, Mar. 17, 2009.
[59] "Muslim American Society: The Investigative Project on Terrorism Dossier."
[60] Fox News, Jan. 8, 2009.
[61] Kaufman, "Keith Ellison's MAS Hate Affair"; The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 24, 2003.
[62] "Senators Request Tax Information on Muslim Charities for Probe," Militant Islam Monitor, Feb. 23, 2005.
[63] Fox News, Jan. 17, 2009.
[64] Dave Gaubatz, "The ISNA Conference," The American Thinker, July 2, 2009; "Conspiracy Theories, Terror Support Found In ISNA Convention Literature," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Aug. 27, 2009.
[65] "Congressman Keith Ellison at ISNA 2007," Mujahideen Ryder, Sept. 22, 2007; "Ramadan—A Time for Change," 45th Annual ISNA Convention program, Columbus, Oh., Aug. 29-Sept. 1, 2008, p. 11; Liali Albana, "Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness—ISNA 2009," Elan, July 9, 2009.
[66] "Ramadan—A Time for Change," p. 11.
[67] "Keith Ellison addresses MPAC and the Muslim American public," YouTube, posted Feb. 9, 2007.
[68] "Hate Speech Long an MPAC Specialty," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Feb. 10, 2010.
[69] "," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Mar. 25, 2010.
[70] 2008 MPAC Annual Report, Muslim Public Affairs Council, Washington, D.C., 2008.
[71] M. Zuhdi Jasser, "Congressman Ellison Carries the Islamists' Water," Pundicity, July 19, 2007.
[72] Dr. Ja'far Sheikh Idris, "Shoora and Democracy: A Conceptual Analysis," Islaam.com, accessed June 23, 2010.
[73] Dr. Jaafar [sic] Sheikh Idris, "Separation of Church and State," Jaafaridris.com, accessed June 23, 2010.
[74] CNN, Nov. 14, 2006.
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5) The Jews killed Arafat - Kids' hate speech rebroadcast on PA TV
By Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
"The Jews" killed Arafat- Kids' hate speech rebroadcast on PA TV
Young boy: "I don't know what he died from,
but I know it was by the Jews."
For this year's annual commemoration of Yasser Arafat's death, PA TV chose to rebroadcast video clips of Palestinian children's messages in honor of Arafat, which included hate speech against Jews.
Several of the selected messages feature children repeating the ongoing Palestinian Authority libel that the Jews killed Arafat by poisoning. One boy first states that Arafat was poisoned by the Jews, but then corrects himself, saying: "Well, I don't know what he died from, but I know it was by the Jews."
The teaching that evil originates with the Jews was the basis for much of the Antisemitism throughout history. It should be stressed that these were prerecorded interviews with the children, yet PA TV chose to include the hate speech in the compilation.
None of the children in the film speaks about peace; in fact, they do the opposite. One boy praises Arafat because he was a "fighter" who "did things through [violent] struggle," and who "did not make peace." The Martyrdom (Shahada) ideal is also chosen as a message in the film, with one boy quoting Arafat: "They want me dead, they want me prisoner, but I say: Martyr, Martyr, Martyr!"
As Palestinian Media Watch reported at the time, this film was first broadcast in 2009 on the fifth anniversary of Arafat's death as part of a televised memorial ceremony.
The boy's comment quoted above, "I know it was by the Jews," and the other children's beliefs that "the Jews" killed Arafat, indicate the PA's success in teaching Palestinian children hate libels and demonization of Jews. The decision by PA TV to rebroadcast this is a further indicator that the PA continues to promote the values of hatred, violence and Martyrdom that the children have adopted.
The following is the transcript of excerpts of the children's messages:
Ceremony host: "Blessings to Yasser Arafat, and here are messages from the children of Palestine." [From 2009 PA ceremony, not part of PA TV 2010 broadcast, - Ed.]
Boy: "I was very, very sad when Arafat died as a Shahid (Martyr), because he was a good man and he was a fighter. He did things through struggle, he participated in the struggle and did not make peace and so on. He wanted to fight."
Boy 2: "Yasser Arafat was a very, very important president. He stood up to all the enemies and was not afraid of anyone. And anyone who approached - he managed to stop him. All the Jews and the Israelis and the people who are against us, were afraid of him. When he died, he died of poisoning."
Girl: "I say that he died from poisoning by the Jews. That's what I say."
Boy 3: "Arafat used to say: "They want me dead, they want me prisoner, but I say to them: Martyr! Martyr! Martyr!"
Girl 2: "He [Arafat] was our former president. He was under siege in Ramallah, and when he was under siege we were very upset. The Jews poisoned him and I hate them very much. Allah will repay them what they deserve."
Boy 4: "He [Arafat] died from poisoning by the Jews. Well, I don't know what he died from, but I know it was by the Jews."
Boy 5: "They destroyed his whole house and he was left in one room and in the end the Jews poisoned him and blamed someone else."
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6)The Liberal Crisis
John Podhoretz
The defeat of Russ Feingold in the November 2 election has unexpectedly provided the most uncompromisingly left-wing Democrat in the U.S. Senate with a new job opportunity—that of candidate for the presidency of the United States. Feingold hinted in his concession speech on election night that he might challenge Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries. “It’s on to 2012,” Feingold said, “and it is on to our next adventure.”
The next day, a spokesman said that Feingold had “no interest” in running for the presidency, but such a denial is meaningless. The scale of the Democratic Party’s defeat and the parlous condition of the country’s finances inevitably raise the specter of a challenge to a first-term president from within his own party. Such challenges have been part of the political landscape for the past half-century. Eight presidents since 1960 have run for re-election. Four of them have had to fight off a significant primary opponent whose key message was that the president had betrayed his party’s core principles. In each case, the challenge preceded the president’s eventual ouster in the general election.
In 1968, Eugene McCarthy came at Lyndon Johnson from the anti-war left and, in losing in the New Hampshire primary by a mere seven points, convinced the man who had won the biggest landslide in American history three years earlier that he could not secure a second full term. Ronald Reagan went at Gerald Ford in 1976 in part on the grounds that Ford was capitulating to the Soviet Union; Reagan went on to win several major states, galvanized the Republican Convention far more than its actual nominee, and left Ford to close a 30-point gap in the polls with Jimmy Carter (which Ford almost did).
With stagflation at home and chaos abroad, Edward Kennedy confronted Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. Kennedy went on to win 10 primaries, upstage Carter at the Democratic Convention just as Reagan had upstaged Ford, and in general, presage Carter’s doom. Twelve years later, George H. W. Bush began his re-election campaign in the economic doldrums and came under unexpected pressure in New Hampshire from the paleoconservative Pat Buchanan, who got a stunning 38 percent. Ross Perot saw this and designed an independent bid against Bush on the single issue of the budget deficit, which Bush had actually taken aggressive measures to confront; Perot’s bid got Bill Clinton elected.1
There is great ideological irony here. McCarthy and Kennedy ran to their presidents’ left at the beginning of an election cycle that concluded with the victory of a hated conservative—Nixon in 1968, Reagan in 1980. Reagan ran to Ford’s right in an election that went to Carter. And by running to Bush’s right, Buchanan helped establish the conditions under which Clinton would achieve victory in 1992. Both Carter and Clinton ran as Southern moderates but began governing as aggressive liberals. Feingold, or any other Democrat who considers a challenge to Barack Obama, will have to contend with the knowledge that the better he does, the more likely it will be that a conservative Republican will occupy the White House come 2013.
Given this history, what conceivable justification can there be for a primary challenge to Obama for an ideologically driven politician who would not wish his worst enemies to achieve power? The only principled justification is, precisely, principle: you do so because you think the president of your party has acted in ways that are especially injurious to the things you believe in most deeply by suborning those beliefs to his political ambitions. Pat Buchanan’s quixotic effort against George H. W. Bush was driven by this; he opposed the Gulf War, had become a Bryanesque economic populist, and wanted to fight for his (repugnant) vision of what the Republican Party ought to be.
In the case of McCarthy and Reagan and Kennedy, something rather more layered was at play. Kennedy’s 1980 bid was clearly opportunistic, so much so that he himself found it literally inexplicable when CBS’s Roger Mudd asked him why he wanted to be president. The plain fact is that he and his pseudo– royal court had seen an opening for him a decade after Chappaquiddick, but they couldn’t close the deal, and in the process did significant damage to the incumbent.2
Reagan certainly did believe that the policy of détente undertaken by Richard Nixon and continued by Ford was a moral and geopolitical abomination. But he also knew that Ford had not been elected to anything other than the Michigan House seat from which Ford had been elevated to the vice presidency only 10 months before Nixon slunk from office. For Ford to skate into the 1976 Republican nomination without having ever received a single vote as part of a presidential ticket seemed anti-democratic; the logic of the American political system dictated a challenge by someone.
It was the logic of the 1960s that dictated a challenge to Lyndon Johnson in 1968 from within his own party—notwithstanding the fact that he had received 61 percent and 486 electoral votes in November 1964 and had ushered in a new era of activist government with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the initiation of Medicare in 1966.
Indeed, one might say that Eugene McCarthy’s entry into the 1968 presidential primaries against Johnson was less a matter of his own choosing than it was a willed manifestation of the anti-war movement, which had turned out hundreds of thousands of demonstrators across the country in 1967. Members of the movement over 21 (then the voting age) were natural Democratic voters, but the policies they were protesting were being enacted by a Democratic administration. Their negative electoral energy had to go somewhere, and it was channeled into McCarthy in New Hampshire. But it did not belong to him; after McCarthy knocked off Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy entered the fray to steal McCarthy’s voters away. After Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, secured his party’s nomination— which was, to many on the left, no different from having nominated Johnson again. The Democratic Convention in Chicago at the end of August became the epicenter of a guerrilla war launched by leftists against traditional FDR Democrats (in the persons of Humphrey and Chicago mayor Richard Daley), with rioters setting upon Chicago cops, getting savagely beaten in response, and being placed under arrest by the thousands.
The carnage in the streets of Chicago figured prominently in the explanations for the electoral triumph of Richard Nixon in the 1968 general election. And the enduring memory of the way in which a policy disagreement within the Democratic Party had resulted in blood and panic in Grant Park may have contributed inchoately to Nixon’s own 20-point win in 1972.
It is tempting to look at this brief history and say that primary challenges are purely destructive. But that may overrate them. They may not have altered the political atmosphere against incumbents so much as they reflected a change that had already taken place within the body politic. For there is another reason these primary challenges arise, other than a principle or opportunism—a reason that is inchoate, hard to capture, and hard to define. They happen because the president has begun to look like a loser.
Does Barack Obama now look like a loser? It would be foolish to write Obama’s political epitaph, though it would be even more foolish to assume that his 2008 performance before the national electorate offers much in the way of guidance about how he will fare a second time. A recent president whose election results most closely compare with his is George H. W. Bush, who won 53.4 percent in 1988 (slightly better, in fact, than Obama’s 2008 tally) and had, moreover, a 91 percent approval rating in March 1991. Twenty months later, in November 1992, Bush went on to secure a shockingly low 38 percent of the vote.
Obama is certainly in political peril. In 2008 he won independent voters by 17 points in 2008; on November 2, independents preferred Republicans by eight points, an unprecedented 25-point shift. The percentage of the electorate that called itself Democratic shrank by 9 percent (from 39 percent in 2008 to 36 percent this year). Republicans’ participation grew from 32 percent to 36 percent—proportionately, a 12 percent gain. Let us assume that Obama succeeds in changing the trend line in 2012 by bringing back half the independents his party lost in 2010 and increasing Democratic participation by a percentage point or two over Republicans. If he does so, he will not suffer the kind of defeat his party did in November. But he will still lose.
Obama has acknowledged that he took a “shellacking” in the November 2 election, though in point of fact he had not personally been shellacked. Instead, more than 750 elected Democrats (or positions held by elected Democrats) from the House to the Senate to governors’ mansions to state legislatures were ousted from office in the largest and deepest partisan rout in American history.
It was perhaps more meaningful that Democrats who had had nothing to do with the controversies in Washington—the ones serving in state legislatures— were wiped out at the same time that 66 House seats went from Democratic to Republican control. You have to go back 37 national elections to find a larger number of Republicans in the House. You have to go back 82 years to find as many Republicans in state legislatures.
These numbers are particularly significant because they suggest the end of one of the shortest eras in American political history—a period lasting two elections, in which non-liberal, non-leftist voters in Republican-leaning states flirted with the possibility that the Democratic Party and a charismatic young liberal might have answers to problems the GOP was unable to address effectively. By assigning control of Congress after 2006 and veto-proof dominance of Washington after 2008 to Democrats, voters gave them the perfect opportunity to provide the answers.
And answer they did, with a vengeance. Democrats committed to increases in federal spending that will total, at a minimum, $2 trillion (and almost certainly more) if they come to full fruition—and all that in the wake of financial-bailout commitments of some $900 billion. Obama nationalized two of the Big Three carmakers and took a giant step toward the effective nationalization of the country’s health-care system. And he was stalwart in his insistence (at least until the election results came in) that he would allow the so-called Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 to expire, an effective tax increase of as much as $3 trillion. The answer Democrats provided was that they are activists who govern from the left.
It became common in the days following the election for conservatives and Republicans to say that the GOP should consider itself “on probation.” That is certainly true. But viewing the election as a warning shot to Republicans—which, astonishingly, Obama sought to do in his press conference the day after the voting by saying the election was a “message to Republicans” to “focus on our shared responsibilities and work together”—is wrong. The election was a referendum on left-liberal governance. Voters rejected it, and rejected it with even more of a vengeance than Democrats had shown in undertaking it.
That is why it matters just how deep and thoroughgoing the results were. It wasn’t just that voters wanted to punish Obama and the Washington Democrats because the economy was sour, or because they spent too much, or because they didn’t keep their eye on the ball when they took up health care.
Voters wanted to take governing power away from Democrats at all levels before liberals did more damage.
Presidents in political peril have proved capable of winning over parts of the electorate that had rejected them earlier. Nixon received only 43 percent of the vote in 1968 before going on to score 61 percent in 1972; Clinton got 43 percent in 1992 and 49 percent in 1996. Obama is in a better position than either of them because he needs only the voters who voted for him in 2008 to vote for him again in 2012. That is a tall order because of the way independents deserted the Democrats in November. It is not, however, unthinkable.
But what if the disaffection with Obama comes not only from the right, as was the case in this election, but also from his left? That is where a challenge from Russ Feingold or Howard Dean or someone else will be telling. Ever since Obama took office, leftists have issued complaints against him that, to the non-leftist ear, sound insane.
They claim he has been too moderate, too compromising, too much of a technocrat. They say the $863 billion stimulus was too small by half—an assertion impossible to prove, and pointless in any case, since the stimulus that did become law was as large as the political system in Washington controlled entirely by Democrats could stomach. Liberals were and are angry that Obama gave up the so-called public option on health care, when he had no choice but to do so to win Democratic support to get the bill through the Senate.
In point of fact, Obama has done everything in his power to advance the most unshakably leftist agenda since Johnson’s time, and possibly since the days of Franklin Roosevelt—with remarkable results. He should be celebrated by liberals and the left, not criticized by them, and certainly not abandoned by them. If Obama is indeed threatened by a candidate who comes at him from the left and who gains some traction doing so, that will suggest two things. First, that members of his own base are picking up the scent of a loser from him. And second, that many on the left will prefer to abandon a president they should be hailing as a tough-minded hero rather than confront the stark reality that the American electorate got a good look at what the left truly wants this country to become—and said, with a clarion’s clarity, no.
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