A briefing by Magdi Khalil*

Magdi Khalil is an Egyptian-born human rights activist and prominent figure on Arabic media, such as Al Jazeera and Al Ahram. He is director of the Middle East Freedom Forum, an Egyptian think-tank that campaigns for human rights, secularism, and democracy. On February 26, Mr. Khalil addressed the Middle East Forum via conference call on the situation of Egypt’s Copts.

If Islamists failed to terrorize America on Christmas Day, they amply succeeded in terrorizing the Copts, Egypt’s indigenous Christian minority, when they shot and murdered six Copts leaving church after Christmas mass. But according to Mr. Khalil, not only are the Copts increasingly being persecuted by Islamists; the Mubarak regime increasingly scapegoats them in order to redirect public anger from its own corruption and onto the Copts, exasperating an already intolerable situation for Egypt’s Christians. (Considering that Egypt bases its constitution on Shar’ia law, which mandates the subjugation of Christians, this is only to be expected.)

(more…)

by Phyllis Chesler

The Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUSA) is about to release a report which denounces Israel as a “racist” nation which has absolutely no historical, covenantal, or theological right to the Holy Land. The report calls for the United States to withhold financial and military aid to Israel and for boycotts and sanctions against Israel. That’s not all. The report also endorses a Palestinian “right of return” and “apologizes to Palestinians for even conceding that Israel has a right to exist.” According to the press release, it also states that Israel’s history begins only with the Holocaust and that Israel is “a nation mistakenly created by Western powers at the expense of the Palestinian people to solve the ‘Jewish problem’.” Continue reading…

(more…)

The good people over at HonestReporting have documented how some Muslims continue to live in the Stone Age and harbor the most terrible hatreds:

… Canadian investigative journalist Terry Glavin recently reported on an odious story that British Columbia Muslim newspaper Al-Ameen Post had carried, which “reported” on an alleged Israeli conspiracy to kidnap 25,000 Ukranian children in order to harvest their organs. The report was entitled “Ukrainian kids, new victims of Israeli organ theft.” …

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

As the Pentagon and Senate launch what one analyst dubs “dueling Fort Hood investigations,” will they confront the hard truth of the Islamic angle?

Despite encouraging references to “violent Islamists” by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Independent of Connecticut), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, there is reason to worry about a whitewash of the massacre that took place on Nov. 5; that is just so much easier than facing the implications of a hostile ideology nearly exclusive to Muslims.

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler

So, let me understand this.

If an Israeli diplomat visits a European country and the Foreign Ministry decides to protect him (even though he is not the Prime or Foreign Minister), then that exceptional Israeli is not vulnerable to being arrested as an alleged “war criminal.”

(more…)

Reviewed by Fern Sidman

It is that time of the year once again. The new school term will begin in a matter of weeks. As the excitement and anticipation escalates for some, entering college or university for the first time can be a daunting and intimidating experience for the Jewish student. Always a minority, the secular Jewish student faces the foreboding prospect of living on a campus that has morphed into a raging hotbed of anti-Israel fanaticism.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

An alliance — if one can call it that — of Arabs, Muslims, leftists, and fascists — has spent years trying to delegitimize Israel’s existence and deny the rights of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland. Yet any cursory look at these delegitimizers’ “proof” shows them to be ignorant, racist people — especially uninformed about archaeology. Yet more evidence has been found showing an ancient Jewish presence in the Holy Land:

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered an ancient quarry where they believe King Herod extracted stones for the construction of the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Monday. The archaeologists believe the 1,000-square-foot (100-square-meter) quarry was part of a much larger network of quarries used by Herod in the city. …

(more…)

by Elihu D. Richter and Alex Barnea*

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made international headlines when on October 27, 2005, he declared in Persian that Iran would “wipe Israel off the map.” Some commentators in the United States, most notably University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, argued that the phrase was a mistranslation and that Ahmadinejad did not have genocidal intent.[1] But, the Islamic Republic’s official English translation rendered the phrase “Israel must be wiped off the map,” [2] and the regime reiterated its English translation on billboards and murals.[3]

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

Thanks to the work of many individuals, web-logs, and advocacy organizations, it seems that the rabid wave of neo-anti-Semitism — fanned no less by the United Nations — may finally be creating a backlash of sensibility. The UN’s first so-called “World Conference Against Racism,” which took place in Durban, South Africa in 2001, devolved into an anti-Semitic, hate-fest. The second UN Durban “conference,” now under way, was ushered in by Iranian President wipe-Israel-off-the-map Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called Israelis “racist perpetrators of genocide.” HonestReporting has a great summary of a potential change in attitudes — in favor of Israel:

(more…)

by Yücel Güçlü*

The debate over what happened to Armenians in World War I-era Ottoman Anatolia continues to polarize historians and politicians. Armenian historians argue that Ottoman forces killed more than one million Armenians in a deliberate act of genocide.[1] Other historians — most famously Bernard Lewis and Guenter Lewy — acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died but question whether this was a deliberate act of genocide or rather an outgrowth of fighting and famine.[2] In recent decades, the debate has shifted from academic to legislative grounds. In 2001, the French parliament voted to recognize an Armenian genocide.[3] In 2007, U.S. political leaders narrowly averted an Armenian genocide resolution in the House of Representatives. While Armenian activists lobby politicians to recognize an Armenian genocide formally, which is likely to be a first step toward a demand for collective reparations, and genocide studies scholars seek to close the book on the Armenian narrative, it is ironic that many of the archives that contain documentation from the period remain untapped.

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

It is silly to say that the Pat Oliphant Cartoon in the New York Times and many newspapers around the world is antisemitic.  But it’s also a bad mistake because the cartoon deserves serious analysis to show just how dangerous and wrong it is, in ways that not only hurt Israel but all Western democracies.

You can see the cartoon at this URL:

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20090325/cx_po_uc/po20090325

Let’s deconstruct the cartoon to show the basic ideas that underlie it and that make it lie.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s President, has shown his brazen disrespect for his own people, calling them “filth,” and has evicted Black Africans off their own lands. He has also instituted very racist policies towards his country’s remaining whites by confiscating their lands. Mugabe’s economic “leadership” has led Zimbabwe to have, “the world’s highest official inflation rate, a hunger crisis and a cholera epidemic that has killed about 4000 people since August.”

Mugabe stuffs his face while millions starve: “The celebration, which reportedly cost $US250,000 ($A391,570), was held as Zimbabwe’s new unity government failed to secure financial aid to rescue the country’s collapsed economy.”

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler*

On February 11, 2009, aggression against Jewish students at York University in Toronto reached new heights. The subject at hand had nothing to do with the Middle East. A press conference was underway in which student activists were reporting that they had obtained the necessary 5,000 signatures required to peacefully and lawfully impeach the existing student government that had supported the union that had shut down York University for three months.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

For years, it has been well-known that Palestinian terrorists, including Fatah, Hamas, and Hezbollah, have indoctrinated their children with poisonous hatred of Israel and the rest of the civilized, Western world. This is not conjecture, but well-documented history, known as fact to people like our new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. So why all the cheer-leading for Palestinian dysfunction, and the constant demonization of Israel?

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler

Today, we have grown used to seeing Palestinian and Hamas supporters goose-step, Nazi-style, shoot out their arms as they deliver the Hitlerian “Sieg Heil” salute. They also chant and scream: “Jews to the ovens,” “Hitler did not kill enough of you,” “Jews to the gas chambers.”

This is raw, rank, Jew-hatred or anti-Semitism; that much is clear. But we are also faced with a major paradox. These same Palestinian and Hamas supporters routinely hold signs that accuse Israel of being a “Nazi” state. To them, Gaza is “Auschwitz,” and the Israelis have “occupied” it with “genocidal” intentions. … (Continue reading…)

(more…)