By Barry Rubin

The world was shocked by Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip, and the damage done to any hope for peace or regional stability is generally recognized. But a second, even more serious, extremist takeover is in the works for which Western inaction would bear far more responsibility.

This time the victim would be Lebanon and the perpetrator is Hizballah, backed by Syria and Iran.

Today, Lebanon is ruled by a Christian-Sunni Muslim-Druze coalition determined to maintain a moderate and independent Lebanon. This partnership arose after Syria assassinated former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005, coming out of a mass movement which successfully demanded the Syrian withdrawal after two decades in which Lebanon was looted as a satellite state by its next-door neighbor.

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by Nicole Brackman and Asaf Romirowsky*

Recent violent events in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon, as well as the internecine Palestinian fighting raging in Gaza, are a stark reminder of the inherent instability of the current Palestinian political culture and the rise of extremism within the population.

Along with the explosion in Lebanon, there have been weeks of street fighting in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah activists. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for resumed negotiations with Israel while Hamas has rejected this possibility. The inter-Palestinian violence also heralded a new barrage of Kassem rockets launched at Israel — more than 150 in the past weeks.

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by Daniel Pipes*

Navigating the fractious currents of émigré politics is never easy, and especially for the Iranian opposition group known as the Mujahedeen-e Khalq or the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran. Simply put, the rogue oil state regime it opposes terrifies one half the West and tempts the other, and the MEK is itself accused of being a superannuated Marxist-Islamist terrorist cult.

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All the worry about Palestinians suffering from a financial crunch, but what of Israelis living in bunkers, never knowing when the next Hamas rocket will come crashing into their homes? Honest Reporting points out that Palestinians have rewarded Israel for its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza with 2,000 missiles, and the mainstream media uses terms like “ineffective,” “homemade,” “cheap,” and “inaccurate” to sanitize Hamas’ weapons of mass destruction. In reality, the people of Sderot, Israel live in constant fear of being obliterated by their Gazan “neighbors.”

15 seconds isn’t a long time, unless you are a resident of Sderot. That’s about as much warning as they receive once missiles are launched and headed to their homes and schools. One of the goals of HonestReporting is to achieve wider news coverage of images like these. As our short film shows, there is no child who survives those 15 seconds who will live a life unharmed. Together we CAN make a difference in media coverage of Israel. Please take a few moments to click on and view the film below or to help us continue our efforts by making a financial contribution today by clicking here.

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A personal, historical vignette

By Cainnech Ó Sullibhain

The ship M/V Ganges had just come into port. It was January 1963 and everyone was rearing to get ashore. We had arrived in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanganyika, East Africa, and we were handed our subs (cash advances). I took off for the main drag to have a look-see of what this famous port, of Al-Bussaied dynasty fame, had to offer me. I wandered through the market district and the shopping center and was getting a bit hungry, so I thought that I would stop at some African restaurant and get something to eat. But, as I was on my way, I noticed a lone U.S. seaman from the troopship in port. The guy was down on his luck, because he had spent the little money he had the day before.

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A Broken Clock is Right Twice A Day

by Bill Levinson

We have little use for Abraham Foxman and the so-called Anti-Defamation League, not only because of their role in whitewashing MoveOn.org’s hate speech but also Foxman’s recent suggestion that we support the “nice” terrorists of Fatah. It is, however, to Foxman’s credit that he condemned the National Jewish Democratic Council’s anti-Christian hate video, as shown here.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Hmmm… Doctors plotting to wreak terror in the U.K., one of the world’s great liberal democracies? I was raised to believe that doctors were sworn to the protection of life, not its destruction. The Hippocratic Oath — or the hypocritical oath for the London and Glasgow terrorists? “To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause his death. … In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction…” Yet the Muslim Glasgow would-be bombers drove an explosive-laden SUV into a house of travel. The London creeps planned to create a slew of dead people — or at least critically-injured patients. And these Muslim “medical practitioners” wanted to devastate a country which welcomed them with open arms, gainfully employed them, and guaranteed them inalienable human rights. Maintaining such double-think, such glaring contradictions, no wonder these “medical professionals” wanted to blow themselves up in order to blow up innocent bystanders. Here are profiles of a segment of Islam’s “intelligentsia:”

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…while spewing anti-Christian hate and whitewashing vicious anti-Semitism

by Bill Levinson

We think Michael Savage is highly intelligent, because he agrees with us ninety percent of the time. More importantly, he is a powerful voice against Islamofascism, and he does not mince words in describing how militant Islamic terrorists want to kill or enslave all of us. Every so often, he goes a bit overboard, but we recognize that his program involves considerable bombastic showmanship. The National Jewish Democratic Council (double oxymoron, there is nothing Jewish or Democratic about it), is so totally without shame–imagine the Klan’s David Duke or the National Action Network’s Al Sharpton calling someone a racist with a straight face–that it has the unmitigated gall to accuse Michael Savage of dealing in hate speech.

This accusation comes from an organization that is on record as:
(1) Portraying Christians in a “This is the Enemy” context in its online videos
(2) Posting anti-Semitic hate speech similar to that used in the past to incite pogroms
(3) Using its purported Jewish identity to excuse, whitewash, and explain away genuine anti-Semitic (and other) hate speech by MoveOn.org.

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By Jonathan Spyer

Israeli responses to the news that Tony Blair has accepted the post of Quartet Middle East Envoy have ranged from the warmly supportive, via the mildly bemused, to the downright opposed. The former British prime minister is generally regarded as warmly disposed to Israel. He has often expressed himself in this regard. Blair’s latest mission, however, is flawed in its very definition.

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by Bill Levinson

Now that the National Jewish Democratic Council has excoriated the Scooter Libby sentence commutation, we would like to ask where it stands on William Jefferson Clinton’s outright pardon of Democratic Party donor Marc Rich. Ira Forman, the same individual who leant his organization’s purportedly Jewish identity to a whitewash of MoveOn.org’s anti-Semitic hatefest, posted the following in NJDC’s blog today.

Romney thinks it OK to commute a sentence of a White House insider— a friend of the Vice President— but he felt it was important that as Governor to twice deny a pardon to Anthony Circosta, who at age 13 was convicted of assault for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB gun — a shot that didn’t break the skin.

If the useful idiots only knew what they were doing… A short film from Jewlarious at Aish.com pokes fun at the PC crowd’s desire for boycotting Israel. It’ll have you splitting your sides:

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by Daniel Pipes*

Allies in the Cold War trenches generally, but not always, still work together against radical Islam.

Take the key question of which Muslims are on the enemy’s side and which on ours. With exceptions, the Right shuns non-violent Islamists, while the Left welcomes them as friends. Conservatives accept as moderates only those Muslims who actively oppose the Islamist goal of imposing the Shari‘a (Islamic law) worldwide; just because Muslim organizations or individuals denounce terrorism or work through the system does not make them, in their view, either moderate or mainstream, nor a suitable partner for government, media, or the academy.

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By Jonathan Spyer

The Hamas coup that took place in Gaza last week is an event of historic importance. For the first time in the region, Islamist fighters took on the internationally recognised forces of a western-subsidised Arab nationalist client - and beat them hands down. Fatah was revealed to be the empty, corrupted shell that most Palestinians and many observers of Palestinian politics have known it to be for a long time. The implications of the bloody putsch in tiny, crowded Gaza have not yet presented themselves in full. But it is already possible to make a number of observations, and draw some tentative conclusions.

Three observations:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Maulana Abdul Aziz doesn’t do homicide bombings, he just orders them. And when faced with arrest, he disguises himself as a woman to evade authorities. Some hero:

Security forces besieging a radical mosque in the Pakistani capital captured its top cleric Wednesday as he tried to sneak out of the complex in a woman’s burqa, and more than 1,000 of his followers surrendered. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

As I spent the holidays in Diné Bikéyah, the Navajo Nation, it seems only appropriate to celebrate our great country’s independence in Navajo style. The Navajo people are testament to the strength of America’s tapestry of ethnic traditions. The U.S.’s diverse cultures meld in infinite combinations to form a land of opportunity unparalleled in human history. Despite the horrors suffered by the Navajo during America’s frontier-days of ethnic cleansing, these people have risen from the ashes like a phoenix, and become “known as a wealthy nation in a world of its own.” Diné is “striving to sustain a viable economy for an ever increasing population that now surpasses 250,000.” The Navajo have built a democratically-elected Tribal Council which “has evolved into the largest and most sophisticated form of American Indian government.” What struck me the most during my visit to Diné was Navajo patriotism — for both Diné and the U.S.

Instead of hearing a litany of self-indulgent pity when visiting and talking with Navajo, I encountered “United We Stand” t-shirts emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes. I had the honor of shaking hands with a Navajo Code Talker who risked his life in WWII fighting for the U.S. I met a family whose matriarch is striving to keep the Diné language alive, all while commanding English fluently. Her oldest son is working hard in the traditional livestock industry, while a younger boy is pursuing studies in computer science and engineering. I was honored to meet Jocelyn Billy, Miss Navajo Nation 2006-2007, whose philanthropic efforts aim to move Navajo young people forward while at the same time preserving their ancestral culture. Note that Jocelyn is fluent in Navajo and is planning to pursue a law degree from one of America’s great institutions of higher learning.

What better way to celebrate the 4th of July than to look at independence through the eyes of the Navajo. They are an American people who once were denied the rights set forth in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers, but are now sharing in and evolving through those same inaliable human rights. Please enjoy these patriotic images from Diné:

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