By Fern Sidman

Hip Hop artists and graffiti virtuosos from New York painting their way throughout Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Sderot? Who’d a thunk it, but it appears that a new organization called Artists 4 Israel will be doing just that. Founded about a year ago following Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, young artists in the New York area had just about enough of the incessant anti-Israel propaganda being spewed forth by the “politically correct” denizens of the radically left-wing enclaves that figure so prominently in the eclectic world of the New York artist and decided to do something about it.

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By Barry Rubin

I’ve been having a dialogue through correspondence lately with someone describing himself as a moderate Palestinian who lives in the United States. What most impressed me in the exchanges–both from what my interlocutor said and how he described the views of other Palestinians–is the total lack of comprehension on their part–those who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip along with those who live elsewhere, both moderate and radical–about Israeli positions toward peacemaking that are easily available on the public record.

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by Daniel Pipes and Wafa Sultan*

Can there be a truly moderate Islam compatible with liberal-democratic notions of human rights and democracy? Is “radical Islam” a modern phenomenon or is Islam itself inherently radical? Such were the questions addressed in a recent debate between Dr. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, and Dr. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born American psychiatrist. James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal moderated.

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WASHINGTON (December 10, 2009) — The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has released a new study detailing the U-6 unemployment rates among native born workers. U-6 is a broader measure of employment that includes the unemployed, people who would like to work but who have not looked for a job recently, and those involuntarily working part-time. A look at these numbers shows the situation is particularly bad for minorities, the young, and less-educated Americans. These are the workers who face the most competition from immigrants — legal and illegal.

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by Michael J. Metrinko*

In August 2008, the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute and the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, jointly published a manual entitled, The American Military Advisor: Dealing with Senior Foreign Officials in the Islamic World.[1] Authored by Michael J. Metrinko, a leading U.S. government expert on the eastern Islamic world, the 95-page manual is a refreshing and blunt how-to guide for civil affairs and political affairs officers, excerpts from which follow. Metrinko brings to bear considerable experience. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey and Iran and spent fourteen months as a hostage when Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. Subsequent to the 9/11 attacks, Metrinko reentered government service. After assignments in Yemen and Iraq, he spent four years on provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan and eighteen months interfacing with the new Afghan National Assembly as an advisor on parliamentary affairs for the U.S. embassy in Kabul. –The Editors

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

In recent House hearings dedicated to examining Islamic extremism, I stressed that the fundamental stumbling block to effective policy-making is educational and epistemological. What people are taught about Islam needs a serious overhaul before we can expect to formulate strategies that make sense.

Worth heeding is former top Pentagon official William Gawthrop’s 2006 lament that “the senior service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

There’s an old expression that, “No good deed goes unpunished.” This is especially true of decent, good-hearted Palestinians who dare to reach out to their Israeli-Jewish neighbors. I am not talking about the liars and murderers whom politically-correct Westerners want to believe will change their stripes to spots, like Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists — they will never agree to peace with Israel. I am talking about the real Palestinian peace-makers — those who are ignored by many in our “mainstream” media — like Wafaa Younis. She dared to try to teach Palestinian children to turn away from violence and channel their energies into music and making peace with Israel. Even “worse,” Younis dared expose her kids to the history of the Holocaust. Of course, she has been promptly punished by the Palestinian establishment. Martin Fletcher of MSNBC today revealed the sad story of Younis:

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Fox News interview with Daniel Pipes*

Eric Shawn: Are our children being taught a politically correct version of Islam? Well, this study from the American Textbook Council says some school textbooks portray Islam in the most favorable light, while downplaying Islamic extremism. One junior high school book described jihad this way: “jihad is defined as a struggle within each individual to overcome difficulties and strive to please God. Sometimes it may be a physical struggle for protection against enemies.” Muslim activists say the attention should not be on terrorism or extremists, but others say youngsters are not getting the full story.

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WASHINGTON (February 17, 2009) – The Center for Immigration Studies has prepared a detailed employment breakdown for immigrants and native-born Americans based on December 2008 data, the latest publicly available. (The Department of Labor generally does not separate out unemployment statistics for immigrants and the native-born.) Among US-born blacks and Hispanics without a high school degree, unemployment is 24.7 percent and 16.2 percent respectively — two to three times the national rate.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

Editor’s note: Substantial portions of the following essay made up part of Mr. Ibrahim’s written testimony that was presented to Congress on February 12, 2009

Today, in a time of wars and rumors of wars emanating from the Islamic world — from the current conflict in Gaza, to the saber-rattling of nuclear-armed Pakistan and soon-to-be Iran — the need for non-Muslims to better understand Islam’s doctrines and objectives concerning war and peace, and everything in between (treaties, diplomacy), has become pressing. For instance, what does one make of the fact that, after openly and vociferously making it clear time and time again that its ultimate aspiration is to see Israel annihilated, Hamas also pursues “peace treaties,” including various forms of concessions from Israel — and more puzzling, receives them?

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by Pam Meister*

Those of us who get the bulk of our news from the Internet are probably aware of pro-Hamas rallies that have taken place across the nation over the last couple of weeks. To name just a couple: in Los Angeles, the Islamists chanted “Heil Hitler,” “death to the Jews,” “death to Israel” and “down, down, USA!” In Fort Lauderdale, Jews were exhorted to “go back to the ovens.” As Spencer noted, “Never before in American history have we seen people openly, on American soil, and in full light of video cameras, saying that they want to see a renewal of a genocidal ambition, and they want to see a whole people exterminated.”

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by Rachel Sharon-Krespin*

As Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) begins its seventh year in leadership, Turkey is no longer the secular and democratic country that it was when the party took over. The AKP has conquered the bureaucracy and changed Turkey’s fundamental identity. Prior to the AKP’s rise, Ankara oriented itself toward the United States and Europe. Today, despite the rhetoric of European Union accession, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has turned Turkey away from Europe and toward Russia and Iran and reoriented Turkish policy in the Middle East away from sympathy toward Israel and much more toward friendship with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria. Anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic sentiments have increased. Behind Turkey’s transformation has been not only the impressive AKP political machine but also a shadowy Islamist sect led by the mysterious hocaefendi (master lord) Fethullah Gülen; the sect often bills itself as a proponent of tolerance and dialogue but works toward purposes quite the opposite. Today, Gülen and his backers (Fethullahcılar, Fethullahists) not only seek to influence government but also to become the government.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

President-Elect Barack Obama has once again assuaged my previous misgivings about his future foreign and domestic policies. He has continually defied pressure from the extreme left-wing of his (Democratic) party. Obama is making independent decisions; proving his maturity, adeptness, and managerial competence; and keeping his promise of trying to unite the country. So far, he has risen above partisan pettiness. Case in point: Today, Obama tapped John Brennan to “take charge of counterterrorism on the National Security Council.” Brennan served under the Bush administration at the CIA as top-dog of the National Counterterrorism Center.

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by Cinnamon Stillwell*

With fatal terrorist attacks on the decline worldwide and al Qaeda apparently in disarray, it would seem a time for optimism in the global war on terrorism. But the war has simply shifted to a different arena. Islamists, or those who believe that Islam is a political and religious system that must dominate all others, are focusing less on the military and more on the ideological. It turns out that Western liberal democracies can be subverted without firing a shot.

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By Andrew Whitehead

On 31 May, Erica Mellon posted a blog entry to the “School Zone” titled “Friendswood superintendent: Islam presentation not meant for students”. (The “School Zone” blog is sponsored by the Houston Chronicle; Ms. Mellon is the Chronicle’s education reporter.)

In the blog post, Ms. Mellon quotes a letter by Trish Hanks, Friendswood Independent School District Superintendent. From the letter:

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