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Monday, January 31, 2011

MICHIGAN CONGRESSMAN THAD MCCOTTER ON EGYPTIAN CRISIS: IF WE FAIL...WE WILL TOO LATE AWAKE IN A NIGHTMARE WORLD

"Freedom's radicalized enemies are subverting Egypt and our other allies...“If we fail to meet today's enemy on the same determined, principled terms, we will too late awake in a nightmare world."
-- US Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)

Michigan's 11th District US Congressman Thaddeus McCotter demonstrates once again why he is a prized anomoly. Though so many of his congressional colleagues -- along with so many talking heads who are nothing more than airheads -- have shown themselves to be dangerously ignorant on the crisis now quaking the Mideast, Rep. McCotter is a clear-thinking voice reflecting an incisive understanding of recent history, geopolitical realities,  and what is at stake for the world. 

In this FOX interview with Neil Cavuto


and in a statement released by his office, the ever-erudite and articulate Congressman crystalizes the dangers to Mideast stability, American national security and global freedom if the Muslim Brotherhood rises to power in Egypt.

"For if Egypt is radicalized, all of the reforms sought by the Egyptian people and supported by the United States with them - including consensual and constitutional government; free elections; open and unbridled media; and Egyptian control of their natural resources - will be lost.  Nascent democratic movements in the region will be co-opted and radicalized. The world's free and open access to the Suez Canal's vital commercial shipping lanes will be choked.  And the Sinai Accord between Egypt and Israel - which must be protected as the foundation and principal example for Mideast peace - will be shredded.

“Though many will be tempted to superficially interpret the Egyptian demonstrations as an uprising for populist democracy, they must recall how such similar initial views of the 1979 Iranian Revolution were belied by the mullahs' radical jackbooted murderers, who remain bent upon grasping regional hegemony and nuclear weaponry."
Make sure you take just 3 mininutes to watch the interview and read his statement and make sure you forward it to others. 

McCotter, it should be recalled, is perhaps the most outspoken Member of Congress to have persistently challenged the Administration's deafening silence during the 2009 Iranian Green Revolution and to criticize the selection of Iran to serve on the UN's Commission on the Status of Women.  McCotter, in a moving tribute on the floor of Congress,  honored the memory of Neda Soltan, the Iranian dissident who became the face of the revolution.  Our nation's failure to heed his prescient warnings may have greased the skids for catastrophic consequences in Egypt and the Mideast.
As Congressman McCotter so eloquently stated on the eve of Iranian tyrant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's adderss before the UN last fall:


Clear minds know we heirs of liberty cannot barter with butchers. To prevent an Iran possessed of nuclear weapons, America must promote this inhumane regime's peaceful implosion beneath its own citizens' aspirations for liberty while peaceful freedom seekers such as Neda Soltan and Taraneh Mousavi are being imprisoned, tortured and murdered by the mullahs. A naive administration's appeasement of this brutal regime must be replaced with the adoption of a constructive quarantine policy.
Appeasement is evil's accomplice.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

HEDGE ON PLEDGE; BOW TO ALLAH; DETROIT ISLAMIC PUBLIC SCHOOLS

"Schools are therefore fertile grounds where the seeds of Islam can be sowed inside the hearts of non-Muslim students." -- DawaNet





Friends out East have called attention to the irony of a school system in Brookline, Mass. struggling to reprise its policy vis-a-vis weekly recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance, requiring parents to sign off on their children's participation, while the Wellesley, Mass. Middle School required no such soul-searching of parents when it led a field trip to the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center where students were herded to bow to Allah during the the mid-day call to prayer and were subjected to Islamist indoctrination, including the increasingly popular fabrication that women of ancient Islam enjoyed greater rights -- including suffrage -- than American women.

The shocking footage was captured on video by a parent chaperoning the trip and later released to and exposed by Americans for Peace and Tolerance. The organization has been outfront alerting the community to the Anti-Semitic incitement and radical leadership of the Saudi-funded mega-mosque.  As noted by APT,
The Islamic Society of Boston was founded by Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who is currently serving 23 years in jail on terror charges. For years, its board of trustees included Yusuf al Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was banned by Bill Clinton from the United States in 1999. Qaradawi now chairs the Muslim American Society’s university, which offers classes inside the mosque.  Over half the mosque’s $15.5 million price tag was funded by wealthy Saudis and since it opened, several of its leaders, donors and members have been implicated in Islamic extremism.
Two extremists tied to the ISB are now fugitives after being indicted on al Qaeda-related charges.  Another ISB congregant Aafia Siddiqui, is reportedly an Al Qaeda member awaiting sentencing for  attempting to murder FBI agents in Afghanistan.


Of particular note to metro Detroiters is APT's conclusion:
In various parts of the country, public schools are allowing Muslim extremists to promote Islam to our children. Something’s broken here. Our leadership is failing. It’s now up to ordinary citizens to fix it.
We in Michigan know better than most. Apparently following the lead of Dearborn Public Schools,  the Detroit Public Schools is also submitting to Islam.  Though it flew below radar, Robert Bobb, special manager for the sinking Detroit Public Schools, told the Arab American News that the Cleveland School in Detroit, "which is now Detroit International Academy, made changes to accommodate Muslim students from diet and dress code perspectives and also had prayer rooms as well, which is a model that can be applied to future schools if need be."


Doesn't the 'P' in Detroit Public Schools stand for public???  Special diet, dress codes and prayer rooms to accommodate Muslim students in the American taxpayer-funded public schools?  And this is one of the nation's worst performing public school systems, so academically-bereft, financially unstable and ravaged by years of widely-documented corruption and graft that former Governor Jennifer Granholm had to appoint Robert Bobb as special financial manager, a sort of educational receivership, to avert outright bankruptcy. Is this the way to solvency for US schools?  Church-state separation was such a quaint idea in its time.

Surely, our new governor Rick Snyder and new state legislature cannot countenance this "model" of religious preference in a public school that Bobb hinted could be "applied to future schools if need be." What exactly is the "need be" that would force these additional Islamist accommodations?

Cited in the  APT report is a source used by schools to develop curriculum on Islam, DawaNet [Dawa means proselytizing], whose target couldn't be more transparent : "Schools are therefore fertile grounds where the seeds of Islam can be sowed inside the hearts of non-Muslim students."

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, like other elected officials APT charges buckle to Islamist pressures, not only failed to protest the prayer rooms in the public schools, but was a featured speaker, along with Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, at the recent ISNA conference here. You remember the ISNA from previous posts, in which we've discussed easily available and uncontradicted evidence of the ISNA's ties to the terrorist group Hamas.


Presumably, these two gentleman don't have the knowledge that they should have when it comes to the ISNA, which along with CAIR, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land terror-financing trial. They are busy and their days are filled with other concerns. But what about our Jewish community "leaders?" Couldn't they have informed Bing and Ficano, and perhaps let them know that they would be speaking in behalf of unsavory groups of individuals who fronted for a terror organization whose charter calls for the murder of Jews and whose chief goal is the replacement of the U.S. Constitution with Sharia law?

Why the low profile? If we examine previous ages, we can see that it has done the Jews no good to ignore those who are out to destroy us. Our enemies are willing to use every stratagem of war to conquer us. We are at our best when we are fighting back. We might not win every battle, but by fighting back at the constant provocations, we raise ourselves from victims to be mourned to defenders, who, win or lose, can be celebrated. 

---posted by MT Beadle, Cowznofski

California man jailed in alleged attempt to blow up Dearborn mosque

I don't mean to minimize the latest attempted terrorist attack in Dearborn. This could have turned into a very dangerous situation. Somebody could have had an eye put out. This is, I'm sure going to get a lot of news time in order to demonstrate the rising tide of Islamophobia in our nation. According to the Detroit Free Press,
A California man is in jail on a terrorism charge after he was arrested in Dearborn for allegedly trying to blow up the biggest mosque in metro Detroit, Dearborn officials said today.

The suspect was arrested in the parking lot of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn on Monday, while hundreds were inside the mosque that sits along Ford Road, police said. He came to the city because of its large Arab-American and Muslim population, police said.

Roger Stockham, 63, was arraigned Wednesday on one count on a threat of terrorism or false report and one count of explosive-possession of bombs with unlawful intent for possession of Class C fireworks, Dearborn Police said.
Class C fireworks, eh? According to Section 750.243a of the Michigan Penal Code,
“Class C fireworks” means toy smoke devices, toy caps containing not more than .25 grains of explosive mixture, toy propellant devices, cigarette loads, trick matches, trick noise makers, smoke candles, smoke pots, smoke grenades, smoke signals, hand signal devices, Very signal cartridges, sparklers, explosive auto alarms, and other similar devices.
As you can see, this is pretty serious stuff. Besides getting an eye put out, think of all of the dangerous smoke that may have been inhaled.
"He's very dangerous," Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad told the Free Press. "We took his threat to be very serious."
See? Dangerous, very dangerous. If the Dearborn police chief says so, it's got to be true.

Even the most inept of Islamic terrorists at least tries to put together some sort of effective explosive device. They travel to exotic places like Yemen and Afghanistan to learn how to build IEDs, truck bombs, underwear bombs, and other nasty things. This demented schmuck had a carload of toy caps and smoke bombs.

I will do my best to take this threat seriously, but it's not going to be easy.

by Cowznofski

Monday, January 24, 2011

NOTORIOUS ISRAEL BASHER TO SPEAK WEDNESDAY AT U-M DEARBORN


Norman Finkelstein
"His views feed the ugliest anti-Semitic stereotypes"
Norman Finkelstein, the notorious Israel-basher  who was denied tenure by DePaul University,  will be making a return engagement to the University of Michigan as the featured speaker this Wednesday at a 1 PM presentation:  FREEDOM DENIED:  PALESTINE UNDER SIEGE. ” The program is being sponsored by the Students for Islamic Awareness and Arab Student Union in conjunction with Humanitarian Organization for Palestinian Equality, Students United for Peace and Justice and Jewish Voice for Peace. 


Finkelstein’s appearance at U-M Dearborn is scheduled in the lead-up to Israel Apartheid Week activities on campuses all across the country this March and will no doubt serve as an accelerant fueling the fires of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement raging globally.  In fact, one of the sponsoring organizations for Finkelstein's talk, the Arab Student Union, coordinated Divestment Week at U-M Dearborn last year, built upon the BDS campaign. The programming featured a U-M Dearborn professor instrumental in building support among his colleagues for divestment.


Finkelstein’s ‘talk,’ according to the event publicity, will focus on the “brutal and atrocious siege of Gaza (which) remains while the innocent are in anguish due to vicious occupation.”  Facts-be-damned SOP for Finkelstein and his hosts! Israel’s “blockade of Palestine is a blatant insubordination of international laws that has caused mass suffering and countless civilian deaths among the Palestinians,” blasts an event notice.
Par for the course for a classic revisionist.  Convenient not to mention that more than 1 million tons of humanitarian supplies have passed through Israel’s pipeline to Gaza including foodstuffs, medicine and first aid supplies, diesel fuel and even construction supplies, equaling over a ton of aid for every individual there, according to a report just released Sunday by the Israel Project.[See post on report below] No mention that Gazans are the beneficiaries of top-notch Israeli medical care, with 6,354 Gazans having entered into Israel for medical treatment last year through May.  And this, in spite of the unabated reign of terror and rain or rockets from Hamasistan into Israel.  No mention of Hamas’ endemic corruption and brutal “siege” of Gaza and the widespread suffering it has caused or the violent fratricide between Hamas and PA factions. No mention of the Islamic Resistance’s ruthless crackdown forcing women to submit to shariah orthodoxy. No mention of the violent assault by the Gaza flotilla crewed by armed militants to provoke a conflagration with Israel.  No mention of Hamas’ violence and intimidation against the Christian community.
Recently back from Lebanon, Finkelstein was noted by StandWithUs to have earlier expressed, “I was of course happy to meet the Hizbullah people, because it is a point of view that is rarely heard in the United States. I have no problem saying that I do want to express solidarity with them.”  Finkelstein, son of Holocaust survivors, has denigrated  Elie Weisel as“resident clown of the Holocaust circus” and  called Allan Dershowitz “that hoodlum from Harvard.” According to a StandWithUS profile, he is “equally vicious about Zionism and Israel and relentlessly promotes Palestinian propaganda and its distortions.”
Finkelstein’s extreme rhetoric is a lightning rod for criticism. He has pronounced that “The US qualifies as the main terrorist government in the world today”and he routinely likens Israelis to Nazis:  “Yet, if Israelis don't want to stand accused of being Nazis they should simply stop acting like Nazis.”
The metro Detroit Jewish community should be troubled about the impact of Finkelstein’s incendiary anti-Zionist polemics fomenting anti-Semitism on the Dearborn campus of U-M and in the larger community.  Given the alarming rise in anti-Semitism as documented by the just-released FBI hate crime statistics (72 percent of religiously-based hate crimes are directed against Jews) and increasingly intimidating climate for Jewish students and Israel supporters on campus,  concern is warranted. StandWithUs  says of Finkelstein: "his views feed the ugliest anti-Semitic stereotypes."


As we are reminded in an article published in the Jewish Political Studies Review of the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs examining anti-Zionist expression on campus in the UK:
"The justification for tolerating anti-Zionist expression on campus is always "academic freedom" and the response of the universities has been one of inaction. This justification is without merit. University codes of conduct and UK law recognize that an important university goal is the promotion of equality of opportunity for minority students and their protection from discrimination, including harassment. Given the growing consensus that anti-Zionism is in fact anti-Semitism in a new guise, this goal is flouted with respect to Jewish students every time that anti-Zionist expression takes place on a university campus."
We should pay heed to the alarms sounding from Britain. The same feeble justifications for anti-Zionist expression cited above apply to American universities and colleges as well. We must insist that our civil rights laws, enancted to safeguard minorities against discrimination and harassment, protect Jewish students. If we do not respond effectively, our students and our society will pay the same price as the UK.
We would hope the event will be closely monitored by those frontline Jewish organizations charged with the welfare of our students, communal Israel advocacy and safeguarding against anti-Semitism,  i.e., Hillel, JCRC, ADL, etc.   Students have reported that Hillel of Metro Detroit is aware of the event. 
As a community funding these organizations, we should expect from them a vigorous defense of Israel and a hospitable environment for our students and Israel-supporters on campus.  Moreover, given that the University of Michigan is a publicly-funded institution which enjoys great Jewish philanthropy, there should be transparency as to which, if any, of the event sponsors, is university-supported.
Talking Tachlis shares the concerns of students locally and experts nationwide and internationally about the role of colleges and universities as fertile breeding grounds of anti-Semitism and recruitment and radicalization to militant Islamism. 
We’ll be watching campus developments closely and will share additional information with you.
Posted by MT Beadle, AK45

ISRAEL CLEARED BY INDEPENDENT FLOTILLA PANEL    

In a report released over the weekend, the Israel Project details the findings of Israel's public, autonomous independent investigation of the Mavi Marmara flotilla conflict in May of last year.  The report lends critical interpretation of international law and essential documentation exonerating Israel in its response to the flotilla crisis. The key conclusions of the inquiry, overseen by a committee which included a Nobel Peace Laureate are that: 
  • Israel abided by international law in its response
  • Israel fulfills its obligations under international law by allowing essential aid to enter Gaza
  • The imposition and enforcement of the naval blockage on Gaza does not constitute 'collective punishment' of hte population of the Gaza Strip
  • Evidence from four of the slain flotilla crew showed they wanted to be "shaheeds" or martyrs
  • The Mavi Marmara flotilla was organized by the Turkish group IHH, which suuports radical Islamic terror groups.  The IHH is illegal in Germany and Israel
  • There were no humanitarian goods found aboard the flotilla
Jerusalem, Jan. 23 - Israel abided by international law in trying to prevent the Mavi Marmara ship from accessing Iran-backed Hamas and Gaza’s waters, according to the findings of the Turkel Commission, Israel’s public, autonomous and independent investigation of the Gaza flotilla incident of May 31, 2010. The Commission presented the first part of its findings today.
It found that Israel acted in accordance with international law both in its approach to the Gaza Strip and those aboard the Marmara.
The Public Commission to Examine the Maritime Incident of May 31, 2010 was set up in the aftermath of the flotilla incident. Its purpose was to examine Israel’s security closure of Hamas-controlled Gaza and the intent of the 590-passenger Mavi Marmara....
                                           Read the full report here

Sunday, January 16, 2011

JCRC - Egg On Their Face


Richard Nodel

This week’s Jewish News (Fevered Rhetoric, Heightened Political Tensions - 1/13/2011) provides us with some insight into the exceptional expertise of the leaders of our local Jewish organizations!

Richard Nodel, President of the JCRC (Jewish Community Relations Council) offered the Detroit Jewish community these words of wisdom in response to the tragedy in Tucson, "The lesson to be learned from this tragedy is that a lack of civility in our political process creates an environment in which certain people can feel justified in taking such extreme measures."

Mr. Nodel must have unprecedented knowledge into the psyche of the shooter and a direct line to the FBI and the Tucson Police Department to have uttered such prophetic words.

Perhaps, Mr. Nodel in his capacity as the president of one of our local Jewish agencies would put his “talents” to better use by thinking before speaking.  Shame on Mr. Nodel and the JCRC for jumping into the fray of a tragedy of which they have no intimate knowledge. 

Once again, our “funded by the Federation - voice of the Detroit Jewish community,” JCRC, would be wise to wipe the egg off their face and keep this kind of over-easy comment, issued without qualification and deliberation, off the pages of our local Jewish paper. 

posted by Aerie

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Razing the Rauf: Ground Zero Mosque Imam, et al, Hazard to the Jews

Wall Street Journal:  Imam Rauf's calls for interfaith  understanding  are “hard to square with his support for a strategy of 'peace' in the service of Israel's long-term destruction.”
Feisal Abdul Rauf, the enigma who until yesterday was the driving force and public face of  the controversial Ground Zero Mosque, will be in Detroit tonight  to keynote the Islamic Society of North America’s (ISNA) Diversity conference.  The conference is being co-hosted by the Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan (CIOM), an umbrella organization of Detroit area Muslim groups, none of which condemned the hateful anti-Semitic rants of Helen Thomas at a local Arab American and Muslim forum last month. And that includes CIOM head Victor Begg with whom our Jewish Relations Community Council recently collaborated.   In fact, several of CIOM’s affiliates and area Muslim leaders voiced strong public support for Thomas and protested Wayne State University’s decision to retire an award named in her honor.
 
That alone should keep our communal Jewish leadership on the warning track away from the ISNA conference.  The Anti-Defamation League Simon Wiesenthal Center and Zionist Organization of America are among leading Jewish organizations that have come out in opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque project and the American Jewish Committee has raised troubling questions about the project, its backers and its financing that continue to remain unanswered.  
 If that were not enough, even more troubling is that  ISNA is a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate and unindicted co-conspirator in Hamas terror-financing trial, at which the Holy Land Foundation and five  defendants were found guilty on all 108 charges -- including conspiracy to commit money laundering -- of routing millions to Hamas, a designated terror organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel.  ISNA’s attempt to have the designation removed was denied by a judge who ruled in July 2009 that the government produced “ample evidence” to keep it intact.  According to a Justice Department memorandum  submitted in the HLF case: 
During the early years of HLF’s operation, HLF raised money and supported Hamas through a bank account it held with ISNA. . . . Indeed, HLF (under its former name, OLF) operated from within ISNA, in Plainfield, Illinois. . . .  ISNA checks deposited into the ISNA/[North American Islamic Trust] account for the HLF were often made payable to “the Palestinian Mujahideen,” the original name for the Hamas military wing. . . .  From the ISNA/NAIT account, the HLF sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook . . . and a number of other individuals associated with Hamas.
 ISNA, as documented by the Investigative Project on Terrorism and cited in an earlier Talking Tachlis post,  continues to host toxically anti-Semitic speakers and unabashed supporters and apologists for the terror organizations.   AJC ‘s Yehudit Barsky is but one of scores of terrorism experts within Jewish  organizations and those recognized nationally and internationally who have warned about ISNA’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia and the North American Islamic Trust responsible for accelerating extremist Wahabbi-inspired mosque-building activity in the US.  ISNA is an outgrowth of the  The Muslim Student Association which according to the ADL, is  "responsible for organizing many of the most extreme anti-Israel events on campuses across the country over the past few years.
Both ISNA and the Islamic Institute of Thought (IIT), which is another allied organization of the Muslim Brotherhood as listed in its own documents, co-published a “special, non-commercial” edition of  Rauf’s book, initially released in Malaysia as Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post 9-11. According to Andrew McCarthy, “Both ISNA and IIIT have been up to their necks in the promotion of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ruthless Palestinian branch, pledged by charter to the destruction of Israel.”  In 1981, the Muslim Brotherhood morphed the MSA into ISNA and created the IIT as a Washington-area think tank dedicated to what it describes as “the Islamicization of knowledge.”
McCarthy’s analysis of Rauf’s  roots with the Muslim Brotherhood and its interlocking tentacles of  ISNA, IIT, Hamas, et al is a MUST-read to understand the Islamist agenda in this country and why the Ground Zero Mosque ,aka Cordoba House, aka Park 51 project is but an iconic symbol of a much grander plan steeped in a history of virulent and violent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic ideology.  As an assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, McCarthy led the prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other NYC landmarks.  He also assisted in the prosecutions of the bombers of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.  Following 9/11, he supervised the US Attorney’s Anti-Terrorism Command Post in NYC.

Rauf originally refused to recognize the US designation of Hamas as a terror organization, though asked three times in a WABC radio interview.  It was only after a PR recalculus  in the wake of the uproar of his failure to condemn Hamas that he wisely “reconsidered.”  Just as troubling, he favors a “one-state solution,” code for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.  Speaking to an audience in Australia in 2005, he said, “And I personally – my own personally analysis tells me that a one-state solution is a more coherent one than a two state solution.  Blogger Pamela Geller exposed Rauf’s radical statements in an exclusive Atlas Shrugs post:
A Wall Street Journal editorial this past September sheds light on Rauf’s  anti-Israel postures and pro-Israel posturing.  Encouraging his fellow Muslims in a 1977 letter to the New York Times to embrace Sadat’s historic peace overtures with Israel, Rauf  recalled the Treaty of Hudaybiyah, a 10-year hudna that eventually led to conquest.  In the same letter, the Journal points out, Rauf said:  "In a true peace it is impossible that a purely Jewish state of Palestine can endure. . . . In a true peace, Israel will, in our lifetimes, become one more Arab country, with a Jewish minority."
The Wall Street Journal challenges Rauf’s calls for interfaith harmony as “hard to square with his support for a strategy of "peace" in the service of Israel's long-term destruction.”
Rauf’s comments on Iran have also raised great concern.  Following Iran’s rigged election in June 2009 and the torture and killing of  dissidents that followed, Rauf proclaimed the “official” results of an Ahmadinejad landslide. Iran expert Michael Ledeen quotes Rauf as saying:  “Just as American democracy developed over many years, the United States recognizes that this election is part of the process of an evolving democracy in Iran.”  Notes Ledeen:  “That’s pure appeasement of Iranian tyranny.”
Rauf, he says, recommended to President Obama: 

He should say his administration respects many of the guiding principles of the 1979 revolution — to establish a government that expresses the will of the people; a just government, based on the idea of Vilayet-i-faqih, that establishes the rule of law.
Ledeen concludes that Rauf’s vision of bridge-building is “simple and straightforward:  applaud the murderers in Tehran.”
Rauf’s statements, coupled with his refusal in a recent ABC interview to rule out possible funding for his mosque development from Iran and many other recently reported connections to Iran, cast great suspicion on his motives for Ground Zero mosque/Islamic center and his  global outreach mission.
ZOA President Morton Klein has also called attention to the “time-honored Muslim supremacist tradition” of erecting mosques over or near hallowed ground of other faiths and cultures.  He cites the Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques built atop Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, where the former Jewish temples once stood, as two examples stretching across lands conquered by Muslims.  Klein also calls out Rauf’s wife and partner in this initiative, Daisy Khan, for comparing opposition to the mosque to a “metastasized anti-Semitim.”  

With this, Ms. Khan told a double untruth: she used the horror of anti-Semitism to malign legitimate opponents as bigots and perverted the meaning of anti-Semitism beyond recognition,” Klein charged. 9/11 mosque opponents are not dehumanizing Muslims. They are not advocating their forcible suppression or elimination. They are not opposing the construction of mosques and the practice of Muslim worship. Rather, they oppose a deeply suspect and breathtakingly insensitive proposal to build this mosque in this place.
Neither Jews nor Christians have committed any assaults upon Saudis - to the contrary, in 1990, U.S. servicemen came to their defense. Yet Saudi Arabia refuses to permit the building of a single church or synagogue and the practice of Christianity or Judaism anywhere in the country. That is genuine anti-Semitism and anti-Christian bigotry, pure and metastasized. But Ms. Khan has never seen fit to summon up outrage, or even interest, in that subject.
Given the recently released FBI hate crime statistics indicating once again that religiously motivated hate crimes directed at Jews top the list by an overwhelming margin (72percent) and given calls in the wake of the horrific shooting rampage in Tuscon for more modulated civil discourse,  our Jewish leaders should not only stay far away from tonight’s  ISNA (Jew)bash, they should also have used their influence as enthusiastic  boosters of the City of Detroit to prevail upon Mayor Dave Bing to reconsider his invitation to deliver welcoming remarks  to the ISNA program. 
[Pretend that a Jewish reporter had delivered a harangue slandering black Americans as racist as Helen Thomas’ Jew-bashing tirades.  Now imagine that no one in Jewish leadership denounced such hateful speech and on the contrary, defended it vigorously.  And now, pretend there was a  Jewish organization federal prosecutors linked to  groups designated by our government as terror organizations calling for the death of blacks.  Would Mayor Bing pander to such a crowd??]
Unless  there has been a philosophical course correction – and there are no indications to suggest so – it is likely that our Jewish leadership has been mute on this, eerily and dangerously reminiscent of the Jewish communal silence when then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrck and Detroit City Council presented the Key to the City and Spirit of Love Award to arch anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan in 2005.
Rauf,  an industrial filter salesman with no formal training as a Muslim cleric has, with US government and international choreography, masterfully packaged himself as the messiah of moderation. But critics point to his extremist connections, radical comments belying his unctuous dissembling and stubborn refusal to budge on the location of the Ground Zero Mosque, despite the anguished appeals of the survivors and families of 9-11 victims.  Rauf, who  is hailed by his admirers as the prince  of outreach, spurned outreach by the Archbishop of New York, former NY Governor  David Paterson,  Donald Trump, and the Russian head of the World Chess Federation, among others offering lucrative deals and appeals to common decency to move the mosque from Ground Zero.
Peter King, new chair of the Homeland Security Committee, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, reassuming her post as Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, blasted Rauf as an "anti-American radical, not a moderate" in a letter they sent to the Secretary of State protesting Rauf's trip to the Mideast as an enovy of the Department's Bureau of International Information Programs.

"Rauf's anti-American rhetoric and equivocation regarding violent extremism should render him unsuitable to conduct outreach for Amercia overseas…Abdul Rauf’s publicly-expressed views make clear that he is an anti-American radical, not a moderate. The United States should not be using our public diplomacy programs around te world to combat such extremism, not endorse it.”
--MT Beadle

Friday, January 14, 2011

TALKING TACHLIS REQUIRED READING: MB HATE CAMPAIGN AGAINST JEWS & ISRAEL

If you agree that facts – not propaganda – should be the gold standard upon which intelligent discourse and policy-making are based, you, Talking Tachlis readers, MUST take 10 minutes to peruse two documents which should be at the top of everyone’s reading list, particularly those in communal and religious leadership charged with our welfare and security.  

Bottom line:  if you care about the future of this country, the free world, the Jewish people, your kids and grandkids (and this is no hyperbole), you need to know about the strategic game plan -- the playbook -- of the Muslim Brotherhood here in America and in Europe and its hateful plans against Jews and Israel 
Familiarity with these foundational documents – the blueprint – for the Muslim Brotherhood (MB for short, also known as “Ikhwan”) is essential to understand the  overt and covert goals and operations of not just the MB and radical Islamists, but of its mind-boggling web of affiliates advancing its objective of “civilizational” jihad to support “the establishment of the global Islamic State wherever it is” (directly quoted from MB manifesto). 

 [Talking Tachlis will keep permanent the links to these documents for frequent, future reference.]
Regarded as the world’s seminal Islamist movement and the ideological inspiration driving many of the world’s terror organizations, the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, and dedicated to the credo:  “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
The mission and designs of the Brotherhood in America were laid bare in its “Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America” when the document (first published in 1991) was entered into evidence during the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial, in which the charity and five of its founders were found guilty on all 108 counts of funneling $12 million to Hamas.
While the plan lays out in shrewd  detail the tactics for achieving “Enablement of Islam in North America,” including an emphasis on “Dawa” (outreach and proselytizing) and the role of the mosque/Islamic center in spreading Islam, the overarching objective should convince all but the pathologically delusional that the MB and its allied organizations pose unfathomable danger to our pluralistic democracy as we know it.  According to the MB’s own document, “the role of the Muslim Brother in North America:

The process of settlement is a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious
over all other religions.
The Brotherhood doesn’t equivocate.  It’s charter plainly spells out its goal of achieving global Islamic hegemony, the establishment of a worldwide caliphate through stages designed to Islamize targeted nations by whatever means available. 
The Brotherhood’s European counterpart, known as The Project, SO CLEARLY AND BOLDLY articulates the means to its end that it almost  makes the US manifesto lame in comparison.  Among its dictates: 
·        Avoiding open alliances with known terrorist organizations and individuals to maintain the appearance  of “moderation”;
·        Infiltrating and taking over existing Muslim organizations to realign them towards the Muslim Brotherhood’s collective goals;
·        Using deception to mask the intended goals of Islamist actions, as long as it doesn’t conflict with shari’a law;
·        Inflaming violence and keeping Muslims living in the West “in a jihad frame of mind”;
And, of what should be of great alarm to Jews, the last five policy prescriptions in the Project focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and inciting hatred against Jews. 
  • Instigating a constant campaign to incite hatred by Muslims against Jews and rejecting any discussions of conciliation or coexistence with them;
  • Adopting the total liberation of Palestine from Israel and the creation of an Islamic state as a keystone in the plan for global Islamic domination;
The EU manifesto , was discovered by Swiss authorities in November 2001 during a raid at the home of one f the MB’s top financiers. Patrick Poole, an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military who first broke the story in America about the  MB Project, said  before the  Intelligence Summit

This strategic vision eering by Islamist organizations planning the eventual domination of the West seems to have originally been sparked by a 1980 publication by the Islamic Council of Europe entitled, Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States, which states that the ultimate goal of the strategy for Muslims in the West is that the Muslims should become a majority and the entire nation eventually be governed according to Islam.
Suggested additional readings:

"A Rare Look at Secretive Brotherhood in America", Chicago Tribune (09/19/  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/chi-0409190261sep19,0,3008717.story
"The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe
Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) Profile on The Muslim Brotherhood
The Truth About the Muslim Brotherhood


Thursday, January 13, 2011

Will the Real Imam Rauf Please Stand Up?


            Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, in his continuing bid to brand himself as a moderate Muslim, one interested only in peaceful outreach to those of other faiths here in the United States, will be barnstorming the country on his “Meet the Imam” Charm Offensive. His other motive in traveling the nation is to solicit donations for his Cordoba Initiative, you know, the proposed 13 story Islamic center near Ground Zero, the one we’re not supposed to refer to as the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
            Other aspects of this project we’re not supposed to question are: Where are they going to get the million  of dollars they need to build this project? Who will really be served, as there are so few Muslims in the surrounding communities? The main question that we’re not allowed to ask is: Why has there been so little investigation of Imam Rauf by the American mainstream press? Are they so ready to accept their dhimmi status according to Sharia law, that they accept whatever Imam Rauf and his supporters dish out? Is “speaking truth to power” only done when there are no consequences?
            Fortunately, our Talking Tachlis crack investigative team has taken the time that the MSM has been too afraid to do to discover whether Rauf is telling the truth, or if he is indulging in taqqiya. We want to get the skinny on Rauf’s real motives behind this initiative.
            After a simple survey of some of  the available knowledge on Imam Rauf, it’s easy to conclude that we should remain suspicious of the imam. Just a few of the documented facts discovered by Alyssa Lappen of ACT! for America that the mainstream press doesn’t think are important enough to report:

In 2001 on 60 Minutes, Rauf called U.S. policies “an accessory to the crime that happened,” and said, “In ... the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden was made in the USA.”

In the fiscal year ended Jun. 30, 2009, Feisal's ASMA accepted at least $1.3 million, including $576,312 from Qatar,13 whose government stands accused of funding international terrorism, has long harbored terror financiers, and for decades hosted Muslim Brotherhood spiritual chief Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Rauf is quite friendly with Qaradawi, a large, founding shareholder in terror-funding al-Taqwa Bank who champions sharia law, wife beating and suicide bombing.

Rauf seeks more U.S. legal “leeway” for sharia --- to put Muslims above the law --- by “[Inviting] voices of all religions to join the dialogue in shaping the nation’s practical
life, [and allowing] religious communities ... to judge ...according to their own laws.

In March 2010, also in Arabic, Rauf stridently denounced interfaith discussions. “I don't believe in interfaith dialogue,” he said in an article that highlighted his statement in its headline.

            There is much more, including Rauf’s connections to Hamas and The Muslim Brotherhood. And the fact that he has completely, and without challenges from those who should know better, misrepresented the contents of his book. The American edition is called, What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America. The earlier Malaysian edition though, was printed under the title, A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-911.Dawa”, like “jihad” is a word we need to understand. Dawa means to invite non-Muslims to accept the truth of Islam . . . by any means necessary.
Others have already done the digging. It’s up to us to read what they found and add our voices to those already informing the public and protesting this Islamic insult to our nation especially since, when Rauf does come to Dearborn on January 15, we can depend on both the Detroit News and Free Press to fawn over this alleged model of moderateness.
It’s interesting that Rauf’s first event on his tour will be the First Annual ISNA Diversity Forum, organized by the Islamic Society of North America. Diversity, eh? Will this be the Helen Thomas brand of diversity? Or will it be even worse?
by
Cowznofski

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

GAY SCHLAFEN NO MORE!!! COMMUNAL CODE OF CONDUCT A MUST

Years ago, the national offices of the American Jewish Committee dispatched one of its finest to Detroit to have a heart to heart with our community on the dangers of promiscuity.   Not adolescent or teenage promiscuity, mind you.  No, Yehudit Barsky, AJC’s resident terrorism expert,  came here to address the troubling penchant of communal institutions to engage in indiscriminate outreach with interfaith dialog partners about whom we knew, and from which we expected,  distressingly little.
Since then,  Ms. Barsky has been back to brief our community about the increased risks to Jews here in the US and globally from radical Islamist terrorists.  Her assessment: "US Jews must wake up to homegrown terror threat” should certainly jar those in Jewish leadership she charges “are slow to open their eyes to this reality.”  It is a vital must-read going forward and also an important reminder of the importance of her admonition to our community years ago.
Ms. Barsky warned communal leaders not to be seduced by the temptation of outreach for outreach’s sake.  She stressed the critical importance of proper due diligence and vetting to determine whether interfaith 'partners' satisfy what should be certain non-negotiable baseline criteria.  Not rocket science.  Simple self-respect.   Bridge-building should be a two-way  street.  Don’t jump into bed with people who hate you or want to kill you or your children because you are Jewish.  Don’t legitimize those who don’t recognize the right of self-determination and legitimacy of the Jewish State of Israel.  Don’t be willfully blind to terror apologetics.
The ‘code of conduct’ she outlined for our community was also woven into part of an interview with the Jerusalem Post.  The article,  headlined Expert: Saudis have radicalized 80 percent of US mosques”, was published in December of 2005, but is just as instructive today as it was then.  After  discussing the influence of Saudi Wahhabism in radicalizing US mosques and the danger of “extremist organizations” which “claim the mantle of leadership” over American Muslims, Ms. Barsky cited the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) as two such “pro-Saudi and pro-Muslim Brotherhood” organizations.
Both were named by the US Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators for their roles as Muslim Brotherhood front groups funneling money in this country through the Holy Land Foundation to Hamas in the nation’s largest terror-financing trial.  And both, despite their history of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel,  terror-supporting activity, continue to make dangerous inroads with unwitting or worse, abetting metro Detroit Jewish institutions.
“When advising colleagues on interfaith work with their Muslim counterparts,“  the Jerusalem Post noted, “Barsky tells them to ‘proceed with caution, [since] some of the [extremist] organizations have concluded that interfaith dialogue is a good way to spread the ideology.’ “She continued, “Take time to learn who they are and what they’re saying.  It’s more complicated than just respecting each other.”
Barsky explained that Jewish groups must be wary not to fall prey to radical Islamist groups reaching out to exploit interfaith partnerships so as to earn Jewish cover or legitimacy. Though it’s been five years since Ms. Barsky exhorted Americans to “change the way they think about Wahhabi Islam,”  the public, and the Jewish community in particular, seem not to have heeded her warning. 
Indeed, her words were prophetic:
“The United States has a hard time understanding the exremists’ ideology.  Americans don’t like to interfere in the religion of other people.  But the reality is that this isn’t religion, but a politicized radical ideology.  It’s very dangerous.  If we don’t understand that [these groups] are dangerous, we’re going to suffer the consequences.”
We have seen our communal leaders trespass across these guidelines time and again, leaving our community increasingly more vulnerable.  We have witnessed in disbelief as they reach out, seemingly desperate for acceptance, to those who have demonized the Jewish people and/or the Jewish state.  And we have waited in vain repeatedly for our so-called frontline organizations to stand up and strongly defend our community, our children, when hostile groups or individuals cause us affront…and danger. We know the “sha- still” mentality of shtetl Jews didn’t save .  We should learn.  Each time we fail to respond to a new assault on our communal welfare and security and instead let it just slide, each slide adds up and it doesn’t take too long before the ground starts shifting and we are helpless in a landslide.
We will explore these troubling patterns in coming posts, but feel it important to build our blog on a common understanding of bedrock principles.  Ms. Barsky has led the way.  Let us hope we can inspire our communal organizations and agencies to follow.  

 




Heed Wakeup Call

We have excerpted from a letter to the editor of the Detroit Jewish News that was published in the 12/30/10 edition of the Jewish News.  A wake-up call indeed!
The failure of Metro Detroit's Arab American organizations to condemn Helen Thomas' anti-Semitic diatribes is as much as indictment of our community as it is theirs. Our Jewish organizations have dedicated time, energy and resources to bridge-building with Muslim and Arab groups and leaders, ostensibly to foster mutual respect and understanding...
Where is the outcry from "outreach partners" cultivated by our Federation-supported Jewish Community Relations Council, our synagogues, Hillels, the Children of Abraham project, the Greater Detroit Interfaith Round Table and others?
Instead of diverting our community's precious resources to groups and individuals who condone anti-Semitism and thus are complicit in its propagation, we would be well advised to focus instead on asserting for ourselves and defending our children and grandchildren from such menacing hatreds.