By Andrew L. Jaffee

I tell ya,’ when I’m waiting for, boarding, or riding on a good ole jet liner, I get nervous when I see Vikings — you know, with their battle axes, swords, and especially those horned helmets. And, ya’ know, some of them have names like, “Skull-splitter.” I guess I’ll have to take flak from the local Scandinavian community, but hey, that’s how I feel. Note the widely acclaimed animated hit, “The Secret of Kells,” didn’t portray Vikings in a positive light as Vikings were the terrorists of their era.

OK, that was a bit metaphorical, but now-former National Public Radio (NPR) commentator Juan Williams similarly spoke from the heart:

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The Globe and Mail has a problem with a reporter, Patrick Martin, who doesn’t know and/or doesn’t care about the difference between editorializing and news. He recently wrote an anti-Israeli rant in the “World -> News -> Africa-Mideast” section of the Globe and Mail. He’s completely wrong about Israel’s standing in the world, and HonestReporting tells us why, and in great detail:

… A recent violator of the most basic precepts of neutral and objective reporting comes from the Globe and Mail’s Mideast bureau chief, Patrick Martin, for his engagement in anti-Israel advocacy journalism. …

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by Daniel Pipes*

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

It occurred to me that I should try and fit what I know into the mission of this organisation, so I will try something new. It will be a certain level of abstraction and I invite you in the Q&A to become far more specific.

I am a historian of the Muslim world and, in addition to the day-to-day issues that come up, I look at this civilisational unit as a whole. That’s what I’ll do now.

To start with, the Islamic religion prevails in majority-Muslim countries stretching from Senegal to Indonesia, and is not simply a Middle Eastern phenomenon. Muslim people can now be found in substantial numbers in Europe, North America, Latin America, and indeed, Oceania.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Sir Isaac Newton — no slouch, inventor of calculus, discoverer of the basic principles of planetary orbital motion, a father of optics, who elucidated gravity — predicted the world will end in 2060. Correspondingly, consider the list of “10 Failed Doomsday Predictions.” Now consider that evidence has surfaced showing that the much-over-hyped Mayan “prediction” of the end of the world in 2012 may be off-target:

… A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook “Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World” (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. That would throw the supposed and overhyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events. (The doomsday worries are based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, much as our year ends on Dec. 31.) …

Hmmm… I’m still not convinced that the Maya “predicted” anything for 2012. Rather, their civilization collapsed, their astronomers lost their jobs, and probably stopped calculating calendric events (maybe just simple dates) when they reached 2012.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

For centuries, the Copts — Egypt’s Christian, indigenous inhabitants — have been subject to persecution, discrimination, humiliation, and over all subjugation in their homeland (etymologically, “Copt” simply means “Egyptian”). In the medieval era, such treatment was a standard aspect of sharia’s dhimmi codes, first ratified under Caliph Omar in the 7^th century and based on Koran 9:29. Conversely, during the colonial era and into the mid 20^th century, as Egypt experimented with westernization and nationalism, religious discrimination was markedly subdued. Today, however, as Egypt all but spearheads the Islamist movement — giving the world Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Aymen Zawahiri in the process — that is, as Egypt reverts to its medieval character, the Copts find themselves again in a period of severe persecution.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

… Before the court hearing, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, visiting one of the synagogues, said all four “wanted to commit jihad”. …

BBC, 10/18/2010

FINALLY… Some moral clarity about “jihad.” Why did Kelly say this? Because today:

Four men accused of plotting to bomb New York synagogues and fire missiles at aircraft have been described as “extremely violent men” by prosecutors. …

“This was a very tightly-controlled operation but these individuals did place bombs - or what they thought were bombs - right in front of the building in which we are standing and the temple a few blocks away,” Mr Kelly said. …

Mr Cromitie [one of the accused] allegedly pointed out Jews in the street, saying “if he had a gun, he would shoot each one in the head”, according to the district attorney’s statement. …

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. No beating around the bush. No walking on eggshells. No tiptoeing around Muslim “sensibilities.” The desire to commit heinous acts of terrorism IS “jihad.” I’m tired of proving my point, but I’ll do it again:

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by Jonathan Gelbart*

UC Berkeley history professor Beshara Doumani came to Stanford University on September 29, 2010, to give a lecture sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies titled, “The Iron Law and Ironies of Palestinian History.” He was introduced by notorious Stanford University history professor Joel Beinin, who managed to insert his repeated, and unfounded, claim that academic freedom in the post-9/11 era is “very much still in jeopardy.” Beinin, quoting from Doumani’s faculty bio, noted that he specializes in “recovering the history of social groups, places and time periods that have been silenced or erased by conventional scholarship on the modern Middle East.” This seemingly innocuous description belied a very specific, partisan subtext.

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Canada’s government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper continues to stand with Israel and against Islamo-fascism. From the Ottawa Citizen:

… So let us not miss this opportunity to praise the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper. He cost Canada a coveted seat on the UN Security Council, by refusing to sell out Israel. He withdrew our candidacy when it became apparent that the bloc vote of Arab and Islamic states (about a third of the UN membership) had been turned against us; thereby conceding the seat to Portugal, with her more flexible policy of moral appeasement.

In the course of scotching our bid, Harper allowed the announcement of an important trading agreement between Canada and Israel to go ahead, the very day before the vote. This could easily have been disguised or elided. …

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Watch this important video on out-of-the-ordinary illegal immigrants:

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Barack Obama won 77% of the Jewish vote in 2008 (unbelievable, to me), but his disastrous domestic and foreign policies have caused a drop in one of his “core constituencies.” Survey says!:

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by Phyllis Chesler

While Dutch politician Geert Wilders is on trial in Holland for telling the truth about Islam — especially about Islamic jihad — and while Danish cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, and American cartoonist Molly Norris, are both in hiding for having, presumably, “blasphemed” Islam — guess who the greatest “blasphemer” might really be?

His name is Dr. Naif al-Mutawa, and he is also a Kuwaiti clinical psychologist. He has created “99″ Muslim cartoon action superheroes. Ninety nine is the number of names given to Allah by the Koran. Each super-hero’s name corresponds to one of these 99 names.

Think about it. While I have no problem with Dr. al-Mutawa’s right to pen any cartoon he likes, the very Muslims who have protested the Western cartoons about Allah’s messenger, Muhammed, are now mercifully silent about this division of the One God into 99 parts, each part to be represented by a fully visual, visible, action hero. …Continue reading…

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

Iraq’s release of its full statistics for oil production in August 2010, illustrates the continuing decline of its oil industry since the end of 2009. In August, total output stood at 55.4 million barrels, compared to 61.3 million barrels in December, 2009. Consequently, government revenue from petroleum has dropped, with earnings at $3.9 billion in August compared to $4.4 billion only half a year earlier.

The reality of these trends lies in stark contrast to announcements from Iraqi officials that followed the completion of the second round of petroleum bids, which resulted in ten contracts being signed with foreign companies such as the Russian firm Lukoil and Royal Dutch Shell. The Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani had claimed that Iraq could boost production capacity from the current level of approximately 2.5 million bpd (barrels per day) to around 12 million bpd in six years, rivaling Saudi Arabia’s capacity of 12.5 million bpd. Similarly, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has affirmed that additional revenues generated by increased oil production would not only help to pay off Iraq’s foreign debts of roughly $120 billion, but also solve problems of reconstruction.

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by Alexander Maistrovoy

Clinton is right: “Russians” in Israel don’t really want peace, that kind of peace which Bill Clinton imposed on Serbs in Kosovo.

Clinton’s words that Russian-speaking Israelis are an obstacle to reaching peace can be understood in different ways. Excluding their emotional component, it is necessary to recognize that the immigrants from the former Soviet Union are most opposed to the Israeli/Palestinian peace process (or what is implied by this term). Let’s look at the root of this phenomenon.

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by Steven Shamrak

It might surprise some Jews, considering the disproportional anti-Israel coverage in the media and from international pressure the on Israeli government, that there are many non-Jews who strongly support the State of Israel. What is even more surprising is the fact that many of them enthusiastically approve the idea of the reunification of Jewish land, the creation of Eretz-Israel (Land of Israel), as it was designated by the League of Nations in July 1922, even more than most Jews.

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by Anna Borshchevskaya*

A decade into Bashar al-Assad’s rule, the Syrian economy is languishing. The police state Bashar inherited from his father Hafiz continues to obstruct any kind of reform whether in the political or economic spheres. Outspoken dissident Riad Seif, who as a member of parliament from 1994 to 1998 had firsthand exposure to the actual state of affairs, described the situation:

More often than not, the discussions were prefabricated by the speaker as if we were in a theatre rehearsing a play with a crew of talented speech makers … If any of the new members … insisted on going against the flow, he would be brought back to the “correct” path either through incentives if available or through terrorization and punishments if necessary.[1]

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