America Calls Retreat

Steven Emerson gave a chilling interview to Bill Bennett this past week about the unraveling of eight years of the American war against radical Islamic jihad.

You can listen to it here.

FBI Finally Wakes Up and Smells the Coffee About CAIR

We've been talking about this for a while. ("FBI Stops Returning CAIR's Phone Calls. Finally"). But here are some good points from Andrew McCarthy at NRO Online:

CAIR’s Well-Deserved Expulsion

Terrorism is only one expression of jihad — there are others as dangerous.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

A week ago, the FBI officially announced that it has cut ties with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The self-styled civil-rights organization is characteristically squawking, but the FBI’s move was patently overdue — so much so that we ought to be asking: Why on earth did the FBI have ties with CAIR in the first place?

While we should applaud the government for finally doing the right thing, we also must seize this moment to consider why this action was necessary, and what it says about the threat we are up against.

That threat is not, essentially, about terrorism. Given the life-and-death stakes involved, it is understandable that government is preoccupied by terrorism (or what Obama’s homeland-security secretary, Janet Napolitano, absurdly calls “man-caused disasters”). But jihadist terror is merely the means to a specific end: the installation of sharia, the Islamic legal code, which Muslim fundamentalists regard as the necessary precondition for the achievement of Islam’s universalist ambitions.

Sharia should be of grave concern to us because it is antithetical to the U.S. Constitution and to our way of life. It rejects several core American propositions: that liberty cannot co-exist with an established state religion, that free people have a right to govern themselves irrespective of any religious code’s dictates, that
there should be freedom of conscience (sharia holds that apostasy from Islam is not merely a crime but a capital offense), sexual liberty (homosexuality is also a death-penalty offense), and equal protection under the law (sharia privileges Muslims over non-Muslims and men over women). Sharia, furthermore, is the rationale commonly trotted out by militants to justify the use of force (whether we call it “terrorism” or employ such sophistries as “resistance” or “man-caused disasters”) for resolving policy disputes — under the rationale that policies that do not privilege Islam constitute an attack on Islam and therefore justify jihadist violence.

Incrementally establishing sharia is the central imperative of CAIR and several other organizations to which our government has recklessly been reaching out for years, since long before the 9/11 attacks. In sum, administrations of both parties, and executive branch agencies including the FBI, have taken the position that government’s only legitimate concern is the comparatively tiny cohort of terrorists who construe Islamic scriptures to command mass-murder attacks.

Not only have we averted our eyes from the ideology that motivates jihadism. We have affirmatively anointed as Muslim “moderates” the purveyors of this ideology, who are anything but moderate.

Worse, the effect has been to empower anti-American elements at the expense of authentic Muslim moderates and reformers who crave liberty.

CAIR is an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian organization founded in 1928 that today boasts divisions throughout the world. The Brotherhood has been operating in the United States since the 1960s in a manner fully consistent with its motto: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Its website makes no bones about the fact that it seeks “the introduction of the Islamic Shariah as the basis for controlling the affairs of state and society.”

Last year, the government won convictions in a terrorism-financing trial that targeted an ostensible Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation, along with several of its top operatives. CAIR has complained long and loud because prosecutors identified it as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. Its argument that this was a smear is specious. The issue is not whether the government named CAIR on a list disseminated pretrial; what’s germane is the basis for that listing. The government richly supported its assertion with evidence, and no citizen or organization has a right to expunge that which is proved in the public’s courts.

At trial, the jury was treated to a 1991 Brotherhood memorandum that described the organization’s “work in America” as “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.” CAIR has been the linchpin of that strategy.

Some history is in order. In 1987, the Brotherhood had established Hamas (or “the Islamic Resistance Movement,” as it describes itself). As its charter professes, Hamas is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times. It is characterized by its deep understanding, accurate comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgment, the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam.

In a memorandum filed in a Texas federal court, prosecutors further elaborated that, through the early 1990s, “the Muslim Brotherhood was controlled by Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood members, and the leader of the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood was Mousa Abu Marzook, who in 1989 was selected to be the leader of HAMAS, a position that he held while residing in the United States and controlling the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood.” To support Hamas, the Brotherhood established a “Palestine Committee” in the United States.

Marzook (deported in 1995, he is currently wanted on a U.S. terrorism indictment in Chicago) led the Palestine Committee. One of its most important members was Omar Ahmad, who became president of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which Marzook had formed years earlier. In 1993, the Palestine Committee convened a meeting in Philadelphia to plot a strategy for destroying the Oslo Accords’ vision of a two-state solution — Palestine peacefully co-existing with Israel, which Hamas
is pledged to destroy. The meeting was secretly surveilled by the FBI, which caught Ahmad conversing with Nihad Awad, the IAP’s public-relations director, about strategies for deceiving Americans about their true intentions.

Less than a year later, Ahmad and Awad formed CAIR. The Holy Land Foundation, which was ultimately shuttered by the government and finally convicted for providing millions of dollars to Hamas, contributed part of the seed money. To serve as CAIR’s communications director, Ahmad and Awad tapped Ibrahim Hooper, another IAP veteran who has publicly acknowledged that his purpose is to establish sharia as the law of the United States.

Since its founding, several CAIR officials have been convicted or deported for terrorism-related activities and for other criminal offenses. CAIR, meanwhile, has sought to undermine national security — and the FBI specifically — at every turn: frequently mounting public-relations campaigns for indicted terror suspects, vigorously opposing the Patriot Act and the surveillance of suspected al-Qaeda communications, and even distributing a “Muslim community safety kit” that discourages cooperation with the FBI.

Despite that sordid record, government officials regarded CAIR as a representative and leader of American Muslims. Our law-enforcement and national-security agencies consulted with it closely and even permitted it to indoctrinate our agents during compulsory “sensitivity training” lectures. Doing so, they raised its profile, facilitated its radical, anti-American agenda, and dispirited our allies in the Muslim community, many of whom are in the United States precisely because they don’t
want to live in the totalitarian misery the Muslim Brotherhood and its satellites would impose.

The major threat we face today is not what al-Qaeda may do to the grand structures that house our government and our institutions. It is what radical Islam is accomplishing inside those structures. Thankfully, the FBI has shown CAIR the door. But that only begins to address the problem.


— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).

Hamas's Road Map Gets You Nowhere Fast

From the American Thinker blog:

Hamas and Jihadism

By Moshe Dann

Problems without solutions are frustrating, especially when the disputes are between warring groups and countries; so politicians, diplomats and envoys spend their time negotiating and trying to hammer out a deal, anything that will show progress.

Sometimes it works, at least temporarily, and sometimes it's just a prelude to confrontation. That's the quicksand of the Middle East.

Attempts to resolve conflicts based on false assumptions, inadequate information, and denial are doomed to failure. That's why American foreign policy in the Middle East, especially concerning the Arab-Israeli dispute, has been a disaster costing thousands of lives and wasting billions of dollars.

The "peace process" that began in Oslo, through Camp David and Annapolis, via agreements and "Road Maps" was based on the "two-state" solution. Reasonable in theory, it failed in practice. Now, with a self-declared jihadist regime in Gaza, even the theory has collapsed.

Efforts to resuscitate the "peace process" by Pres. Obama's envoy, Sen. George Mitchell, will fail again because there seems to be no awareness of what Hamas jihadism means. [Read Hamas' Charter: "all Israeli territory is irrevocably Muslim land; Israel must be destroyed; the struggle against the Jews is a religious obligation for every Muslim."]

Although focused locally, Hamas is linked with every other jihadist group and terror-supporting countries, especially Iran.

Jihadists are not attacking "infidels" like Israel and Americans because they want justice, equality, more freedom, higher standards of living - or even land. They are engaged in a religious struggle to annihilate the enemy, 'the other,' non-Moslems, their entire societies and cultures.

Jihadists don't represent another culture or civilization. They are a world-wide movement that includes Al Qaida and the Moslem Brotherhood. Their goal is the destruction of all cultures and civilizations that are different as a prelude to the Caliphate, the End of Days.

Jihadists, therefore, can't compromise, reconcile, or accommodate because that would deny their reason to exist. Apocalyptic, they yearn for the end of everything - which is why - for them -- life means nothing.

Jihadism is a form of nihilism, the negation of pluralism and progress, the end of notions of good and evil. Hurtling towards a void in which nothingness is everything, martyrdom and death is the ultimate fulfillment.

This is why negotiations with Hamas are futile; any deviation from their Covenant violates their identity. Concessions are a betrayal of Islam. 'Peace-makers' are traitors.

"But," many argue, "Hamas was democratically elected, and therefore has legitimacy."

Although Hamas rules with the consent of many Palestinians, that does not give it the right to commit terrorist attacks. Nor does it mean that Israel must refrain from self-defense. Hamas cannot claim the right to rule without being held accountable.

To suggest that Hamas may change with sanctions or appeasement, or that the people will rise up against the regime is absurd. Hamas controls all schools, media and mosques. This is a locked-down society.

Where then does that leave us? A stand-off can only be resolved within Gaza, not by any outside force, but with caution and patience. Although not an ideal position, it is realistic and offers clear policy guidelines.

Making a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a precondition for rapprochement with the Muslim/Arab world and developing a coalition to confront Iran forces Israel into an untenable position and prevents any realistic alternatives.

The Arab-Israel conflict is not a territorial dispute; every Palestinian leader has said this for the last 70 years and we must believe them.

Ending the addiction to "the two-state solution" -- a quick fix that only makes the problem worse - opens the door to new and more creative possibilities. Not everyone who wants a state deserves one; a privilege, it must be earned. Neither Hamas nor Fatah have shown that they are capable of governing responsibly, maturely or wisely. Why then should they be offered a state?

The author, a former assistant professor of History, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.

Ask Not at Whom They Throw Soles--They Throw Soles at Thee

Around the Arab world, if you want to escalate a situation, by saying for example "I'm going to thump you", add the words "with a shoe" and you're literally adding insult to injury, at least the threat of injury.

It's that cultural significance that has added real sting to assault by an Iraqi journalist against US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference.

In Arab culture it's considered rude even to display the sole of one's shoe to a fellow human being.

Certainly, crossing one's legs ankle-on-knee style should never be done in a public place for fear of offending the person next to you.

The sensitivity is related to the fact shoes are considered ritually unclean in the Muslim faith. In addition to ritual ablutions before prayer, Muslims must take off their shoes to pray, and wearing shoes inside a mosque is forbidden.

Shoes should either be left at the door of the mosque, or carried (preferably in the left hand with the soles pressed together).

But beyond the Islamic significance, the dirty and degrading implication of the sole of a shoe crosses all religious boundaries in the Middle East. (“Bush shoe-ing worst Arab insult”).

See how much we can learn from the BBC?

Read any of the thousands of articles published today explaining the Islamic significance of throwing your shoes at someone, and you would think the Western media had a mission to educate kuffars on the fine points of Muslim antagonism towards infidels.

Far from it. The AP, The New York Times, the BBC, CNN, and the rest are only piling on because they imagine they’re on the same side as Muntadar al-Zaidi. They have passively-aggressively denominated this ungrateful son of a bitch a hero by unanimous republication of Arab press propaganda calling him a hero. These media people are the journalistic equivalent of those white guys in the audience at Def Jam, laughing their asses off every time some comic in Timberlands starts off, “you ever notice how white people always…?”

As we well know around here, those same news organizations have made it their solemn duty to mention as little as possible about what they know about the worldview and motivations of Islam. Mumbai terrorists shouting “Allahu Akhbar” are “gunmen”, or even “alleged gunmen.” The mission and motivations of jihadist murderers are passed over in delicate silence by the media, the way Victorians are supposed to have refused uttering even the politer names for female body parts.

Reuters banned the word “terrorist” years ago. And read mainstream reports of suicide bombings, massacres, and beheadings and we learn only that they’re committed by a variety of “militants”, “insurgents”, and “freedom fighters” sharing no ideology in common except their apparent hatred of the Republican Party platform.

Had the BBC spent this much time explaining to their audience the Islamic significance of

--cutting off Daniel Pearl’s head, (he was a Jew)

--or the meaning in the Muslim world of the 9/11 attacks, (bin Laden: “Jihad against the Kuffar in every part of the world, is absolutely essential” )

--or the Islamic significance of the Khomeinist revolution, (“Death to America”)

--or how the Koran invited the cartoon riots, (because insults against Allah must be avenged)

--or the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood and its kind (submission of the whole world to Islam by force)

--or the Islamic mission of Hamas (no solution to Palestinian question except the obliteration of Israel through jihad)

--or what the Saudi-funded Wahhabist madrasses teach kids (militant jihad against infidels is the summit of Islam)

--or the Qu’ran’s teaching about freedom of religion (apostates must be killed)

--or the Prophet’s opinions of unbelievers, (infidel lives are of no value)

--or the imams’ religious theories about Jews (they are the offspring of apes and pigs),

who knows how much better of we'd all be now.

There are many things that the audience of the BBC and CNN, and the readers of the New York Times don’t know about Muslims, things far more important than what a good job ungrateful Arabs are doing right now insulting George W. Bush. As it is, Times readers and NPR listeners are still foggily mistaken that what’s been going on the past seven years has been Bush’s war, rather than Our War.

They carelessly credit Muntadar al-Zaidi with hating George W. Bush for the same reasons they all hate him: for being an evangelical, for cutting taxes, for being pro-life, for being the anti-Clinton, for not giving a flying bleep what the Europeans or the editorial board at The New Republic think of him.

But that's not who al-Zaidi was throwing shoes at, or why. He will think no more highly of Obama when his time comes. And even if Obama bows and scrapes to the Muslim world, as some of us fear he will, the al-Zaidis will hate him all the more for being weak, as bin Laden despised America under Clinton. They've hated every American president since at least Jefferson. I clearly remember them burning Carter in effigy in Tehran, too. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

But these fools in the media think that because Muslims also hate George W. Bush, that they share a common brotherhood of peace and progressive values.

The fools.

Meanwhile, I am disgusted at the thought of how long the footage of George W. Bush ducking shoes will be replayed deathlessly in our childish media.

But regardless, no one can take this away from Bush: he at least had the sound instinct to duck, and did duck, in fact, without a trace of shock or flinching, smiling all the while.

While these boobs at the Times and BBC don't even know they have shoeprints all over their faces.

'Next Mission, We Shave'

A federal informant testifying in Camden, New Jersey Monday in the trial of the Fort Dix plotters described a “vacation” he took with three brothers, the Dukas, to the Poconos. Besnik Bakalli, a native Albanian in the U.S. illegally, was recruited by the FBI to make friends with the Dukas. His testimony about them is backed up by hours of tapes obtained through the wire Bakalli was wearing.

According to Bakalli, the Poconos vacation turned out to be a jihad training session. (Not the first time a romantic Poconos getaway turned out to be more than was expected).

He said the men talked constantly about Islam, war between the Muslim world and America, guns, and their respect for Osama bin Laden. They also shopped for guns, went to firing ranges and played paintball during the trip. (“Informant: Fort Dix suspects trained for 'jihad'”).

(DU is awaiting comment from Dawud Walid, spokesmen for all Muslims, (e.g., the Dukas), clarifying that the Dukas’ "respect for Osama bin Laden" does not extend to Zawahiri’s “house negro” crack about President-elect Obama, a remark the Dukas reportedly find “deeply disturbing.”)

Defense counsel are attacking the credibility of Bakalli and another paid informant because they’re receiving consideration in their own criminal cases in exchange for their cooperation. But the hours of tapes of the Dukas themselves confirms what Bakalli told the jury.

On the tapes, the men repeatedly discussed what they perceived as the oppression of Muslims around the globe - in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Palestinian territories and other locations. They talked about their own duties as Muslims to wage jihad and help their "brothers."

"The war with Islam has already started," Dritan Duka said on one of the tapes.

The men also talked extensively about where they could buy weapons and how much they cost. Dritan Duka said he had a source for guns in Camden but the source could not talk to him on the phone for fear of being overheard. "We don't want to get caught with guns," he said. "Especially that we have beards. They think we are terrorists." (“Fort Dix informant says he was scared”).

Notice just how deftly Dritan Duka has put his finger directly on what makes us think they’re terrorists.

Never mind the jihad talk and the guns and the laughing at the U.S. soldiers getting blown up. It’s their beards that make us think, “terrorist.”

CAIR Takes Stand Against Consciousnessness-Raising

As we noted briefly a couple weeks ago ("All One Community?"), there has been a minor kerfuffle about the distribution, as a free DVD in newspaper ad inserts, of the documentary "Obsession," a 2006 film that attempts to illustrate, according to filmmaker Raphael Shore, that "there is a war being waged against America by radical Islamic extremists."

Now the kerfuffle has become local, thought not losing its kerfuffle scale. According to Detroit News Islamic Affairs Correspondent Gregg Krupa, the DVD, "mailed to tens of thousands of households in Macomb and Oakland counties and distributed as advertising in local newspapers is being decried as bigotry by some Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders, who say it portrays radical Islam as a demonic force bent on world domination." ("Interfaith leaders call 'Obsession' DVD hateful").

Disclaimer: I haven’t managed to see this documentary, and I didn’t get the insert, because we get the Detroit News at our house. As seen in the article, both the Detroit News and Free Press decided not to distribute this piece of advertising for unstated reasons. (I’ll state them. They're afraid of being mau-maued by Dawud Walid, CAIR, and the ADC--probably with unannounced drop-in visits right before lunchtime). But I know the documentary was shown on both CNN and Fox News Channel in prime time, and I have no reason to doubt that the documentary is an informative and accurate piece of work. And my opinion includes Krupa's article, which nowhere calls into question the factual accuracy of "Obsession." [TR].

One Dearborn doctor complains about the documentary this way:

"What the movie is doing is trying to label all Muslims as supporting terrorists," said Mir Asghar of Dearborn, a doctor and a Muslim. "There is a small group of extremists, like al-Qaida and the Taliban, and we are 100 percent against them and behind all efforts against them. But we are 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide and we are a voice of moderation."

And the "interfaith" angle of the opposition sounds something like this:

Robert Bruttell, an adjunct professor of religion at the University of Detroit and a member of Interfaith Scholars, which is part of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity & Inclusion, said, "The movie is appalling, a piece of the most blatant sort of pernicious propaganda. We have formed a task force to see what we can do to countervail against it."

Cool! A task force!

Task Force Agenda:

Idea Number One: Employ censorship tactics to countervail against Islamo-critical information.

Idea Number Two: Create a countervailing documentary, (e.g., "Islam Means 'Peace'"), richly illustrated with example after example of the numerous, unequivocal, public, denunications of Islamist terrorism by Islamic political, religious, and cultural leaders, and examples of the uniform condemnation of violent Islamist attacks from within the greater Muslim community across the globe. . . .what's that? We don't? There aren't? We can't??

OK. Then as I was saying, returning to Idea Number One. . . .

Among the "distortions" the documentary is alleged to be spreading is that "[t]he sacred Islamic principle of jihad -- a personal or community struggle against evil -- is misidentified as a commandment to Muslims to make war against the United States and Europe."

But the most interesting bit to me is this:

The Council on American Islamic Relations has asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate whether the nonprofit group that distributed it is a "front" for pro-Israel groups aiming to affect the presidential election. A liberal Jewish organization, Tikun Olam, has asked the Internal Revenue Service to review the tax-free status of the Clarion Fund, questioning whether it is independent and nonpartisan, as required of nonprofits. . . .

. . . Muslims and others point to the targeting of swing states like Michigan, Virginia and Missouri and areas like Macomb and Oakland counties by the Clarion Fund. Those critics say it is an attempt to influence the election by scaring the electorate, so voters are more likely to vote for the candidate they think will best defend national security.

Let’s think about this, because I think this is what's really going on here. The objection to “Obsession” by “Muslims and others” is that it might scare voters into voting “for the candidate they think will best defend national security.” But isn’t it a good thing to select the candidate who will better defend national security? And don’t Obama, and McCain both claim to be the better candidate to defend national security?

What’s really going on here is that the DVD--which mentions neither McCain nor Obama, Democrats nor Republicans--and which was made long before anyone knew who the party nominees would be--really is effective at raising “awareness of the threat of radical jihadism.” And on that issue there really has been a distinctive difference between the two parties on this issue both before and after 9/11, but especially after.

Which leaves this question:

Why do CAIR and the ADC care so much that voters select the president in November with a lower awareness of that threat?

Jihad, Old School

Andrew G. Bostom at FrontPage Magazine, has written a lengthy, in-depth article exploring the real roots of Islamic anitsemitism ("Jihad and Islamic Antisemitism").

No surprise, Bostom finds that Islamic antisemitism didn't originate after centuries of peaceful coexistence with Jews, as a justifiable response to the founding of modern Israel.

He describes how contemporary calumnies against Israel and the Jews are

part of a central antisemitic motif in the Koran which decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61/ reiterated at 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah. It should be noted that Koran 3:112 is featured in the pre-amble to Hamas’ foundational Covenant. This central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been “…cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary’s son” (5:78). Muhammad himself repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322), “He [Muhammad] then recited the verse [5:78]: ‘…curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who rejected Faith, by the tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary’ ”. And the related verse, 5:64, accuses the Jews—as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did in a January 2007 speech, citing Koran 5:64—of being “spreaders of war and corruption,” a sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Bostom also takes a close look at the true meaning of "jihad," (“wag[ing] war, against unbelievers”), and that even America's first encounter with jihadism goes all the way back to her first days as a new nation:

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, then serving as American ambassadors to France and Britain, respectively, met in 1786 in London with the Tripolitan [modern Libya] Ambassador to Britain, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja. These future American presidents were attempting to negotiate a peace treaty which would spare the United States the ravages of jihad piracy—murder, enslavement (with ransoming for redemption), and expropriation of valuable commercial assets—emanating from the Barbary states (modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya). During their discussions, they questioned Ambassador Adja as to the source of the unprovoked animus directed at the nascent United States republic. Jefferson and Adams, in their subsequent report to the Continental Congress, recorded the Tripolitan Ambassador’s justification:

… that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Thus an aggressive jihad was already being waged against the United States almost 200 years prior to America becoming a dominant international power in the Middle East. Moreover, these jihad depredations targeting America antedated the earliest vestiges of the Zionist movement by a century, and the formal creation of Israel by 162 years—exploding the ahistorical canard that American support for the modern Jewish state is a prerequisite for jihadist attacks on the United States.

Read the rest of this worthwhile article here.

How the Press & Guide Does 'Fair and Balanced'

We’re all for fair and balanced reporting here, but give us a break.

Sunday’s Dearborn Press & Guide ran an updated version of its Wednesday breaking news story on the arrest and arraignment of Houssein Zorkot, the man whose “personal jhad” commenced a week ago Friday when he deployed at Dearborn’s Hemlock Park with his just-purchased, and loaded, AK-47. Zorkot is now continuing his personal jihad in jail with a million-dollar bond. ("Man with AK-47 nabbed at Hemlock Park").

As much information as Mayor Jack O’Reilly’s office and law enforcement had been willing to release (the mayor and the police sat on this story for four days, finally issuing a press release only after Zorkot was arraigned in open court on Tuesday), the Press & Guide duly reported.

This in itself was a pleasant surprise from the Press & Guide, which has a firm editorial policy of avoiding publication of news or commentary critical of Dearborn’s Muslim population.

Nonetheless, when the Press & Guide ran this story on Wednesday as breaking news, ("Man with AK-47 assault rifle arrested after leaving Dearborn's Hemlock"), it seemed to play the facts straight, though it failed to mention Zorkot's Hezbollah sympathies. In fairness, reporter Sean Delaney may not have had that information yet. But his coverage was more useful than the 130 words the Detroit Free Press gave it in their “News Briefs” section, (though Zorkot and his AK did get higher billing than the disbanding of Grosse Ile’s community theater).

But after the Hezbollah connection became undeniable, when Sean Delaney updated his Press & Guide article later in the week, the familiar reluctance of Dearborn's major newspaper to report hard facts about jihadist influence in Dearborn reappeared.

As Delaney reported, after police obtained a search warrant for Zorkot’s home,

“a laptop computer and several pictures were seized.

“According to Mayor Jack O'Reilly, several of the pictures were taken during a recent trip by Zorkot to Lebanon, and featured him standing in front of pro-Hezbollah billboards.”

By the time this appeared, we didn’t need Mayor O’Reilly to tell us about Zorkot's pictures of Lebanon, because Zorkot has a website we all visited, and the pictures posted there are probably the same ones. Looking at them, it is impossible to conclude anything else than that Zorkot is committed to Hezbollah, its mission, and its point of view on jihad.

Delaney also reported O’Reilly saying, “These pictures alone are not enough to connect him to Hezbollah, but his Web site suggests that he does have an affinity for the group.”

That’s when Delaney decides he needs to provides his readers with the following context:

"Hezbollah has been designated as a terrorist group by at least six countries, including the United States. In Lebanon, it represents one of the country's two major political parties.

"The group allegedly has been involved in numerous paramilitary activities, including a war between Lebanon and Israel in 2006.

"While Hezbollah is viewed as a terrorist threat by several nations, others regard the group as a resistance movement."

Now, some folks may think O’Reilly is being too kind because he won't come out and say the pictures "connect" Zorkot to Hezbollah. I happen to believe he is saying as much as he can, considering that the police and the prosecutor’s office have a very strict procedural course to follow in proving a case against Zorkot, that is, they're going to have to support all their charges with facts and evidence, and do it in careful obedience to due process and the rule of law. Officials shooting their mouths off before investigations are complete, and before Zorkot’s gotten his due process in court, is not the way to ensure maximum criminal penalties against a clearly dangerous man.

He is entitled, in other words, to his day in court to defend against the charges stemming from he did or didn’t do that night in Hemlock Park.

But Hezbollah is not entitled to its day in court. Hezbollah is not entitled to zealous advocacy that it is "not guilty" of terrorism, especialy advocacy from Dearborn's local newspaper.

Delaney’s need to provide balancing arguments to the overwhelming evidence of Hezbollah’s deserved reputation as a murderous terrorist organization is coming from who-knows-where. Hezbollah is not one of two political parties in Lebanon, like the Republicans or Democrats, but one of many; nor is it a home-grown party, as it has been well-demonstrated to be a creature of the Iranian revolution and a puppet of the Syrians.

And can Delaney seriously believe Hezbollah’s involvement in last year’s war against Israel has only been “alleged”? (“The United States Congress, angered over what some believe was Imperial Japan’s alleged involvement in the bombing attack on Pearl Harbor, declared war today…”).

And how is it that Delaney’s remark that “Hezbollah is viewed as a terrorist threat by several nations” seems so oddly familiar just now?

Oh yes! Zorkot has a prominently streaming banner on his website: “HIZBOLLAH IS NOT A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION! HIZBOLLAH IS A NATIONAL RESISTANCE ORGANIZATION!”

For Delaney to make room for this kind of thing is not balanced reporting, because it's got nothing to do with facts. It's either advocacy, or else just a wrongheaded fastidiousness about hurting the feelings of Hezbollah-supporters who read the Press & Guide.

Regardless of whether it’s motivated by fear of angry visits to the editor’s office from CAIR , or genuine partiality to the “Hezbollah is a resistance movement” credo, Hezbollah does not deserve this kind of benefit of the doubt.

Speaking Truth to Pollen: After Mouse Martyrdom on Hamas TV, Bumble Bee Calls for Jihad

Hamas TV’s recently martyred Mickey Mouse knockoff, Farfur, has been replaced by Bumble Bee Nahool. (“Bumble Bee Replaces Mickey Mouse Lookalike on Hamas TV”).

Nahool introduced himself this way to child MC Saraa:

"I am Nahool, Farfur's cousin...I want to continue the path of Farfur, -- the path of 'Islam is the solution; the path of heroism; the path of martyrdom; the path of the Jihad warriors. Me and my friends shall continue the path of Farfur.

"And in his name we shall take revenge upon the enemies of Allah, the murderers of the prophets [i.e. the Jews], the murderers of innocent children, until Al-Aqsa will be liberated from their filth."

Welcome to the show, chirps Saraa.

Sweet.

Religious Bridge-Building, Gaza Style

From the Jerusalem Post:

Gaza's Christians

ELWOOD MCQUAID , THE JERUSALEM POST
Jun. 30, 2007

For years realists on Middle East affairs said a Palestinian state would become a platform for radical Islamist terror and that the most dangerous merchants of death would populate the ministate created by the disastrous decisions finalized in Oslo, Norway, on August 20, 1993.

Fourteen years after Oslo, we are reaping the whirlwind of that awful agreement. Citizens of the Gaza Strip now know the force of diplomatic improprieties that crush lives and destroy future serenity.

In a recent, vicious coup, the Hamas terror organization seized control of Gaza and almost immediately announced its game plan for the new "Hamastan." Israel had already assured a Jewless ministate when it dismembered the Jewish communities there in August and September 2005, forcing 8,000 Israelis out of Gaza. Now Hamas is dealing with the next class of infidels: Christian Arabs.

In a June 19 WorldNetDaily (WND) article titled "Christians warned: Accept Islamic law," Aaron Klein reported what the future holds for Christians gullible enough to believe they could live in Gaza with the same freedoms they had under Israeli governance.

A Hamas leader told WND that Christians can only live safely in Gaza if they accept Islamic law. The speaker was Sheik Abu Saqer, leader of Jihadia Salafiya, an Islamic movement that recently opened a "military wing" to enforce Muslim law there.

Christians in Gaza, Saqer declared, who dare to engage in "missionary activity" will be "dealt with harshly," WND reported. Of course, women will be expected to follow the rules of Islamic dress and will not be allowed in the streets without acceptable garments. His threats came two days after a church and Christian school were attacked following Hamas's seizure of power in the territory.

"I expect," the sheik declared, "our Christian neighbors to understand the new Hamas rule means real changes. They must be ready for Islamic rule if they want to live in peace in Gaza... The situation has now changed 180 degrees."

Klein reported that Saqer accused leaders of the Gaza Christian community of "proselytizing and trying to convert Muslims with funding from American evangelicals."

Jihadia Salafiya is suspected of attacking a UN-run school in Gaza in May that allowed boys and girls to participate in the same sporting event. One person was killed in that attack.

Wrote Klein: "Abu Saqer claimed there was 'no need' for the thousands of Christians in Gaza to maintain a large number of institutions in the territory."

Furthermore, he plans to monitor them to be sure "they are not carrying out missionary activity."

About 2,000 Christians remain in the Gaza Strip. But those numbers will soon diminish significantly.

Any assessment of Islamic extremism will reveal a pattern of oppression and exclusion of any who differ from Islam's religiously intractable position. Therefore, any who operate under the delusion that Islamists will promote or even tolerate other faiths are badly mistaken.

To propose that organizations like Hamas be recognized as peace partners and responsible caretakers of the people over whom they rule is an embarrassment to freedom-loving people and sends a clear message to our enemies. The message is that it is okay to tell Christians and other minorities that they can kiss freedom goodbye, pack up, and get out - all with the blessing of liberal Western religionists and politicians who blindly countenance jihadist imperialism.

Gaza: a case in point.