by Middle East Quarterly*

On March 9, 2007, Middle East Quarterly publisher Daniel Pipes interviewed Naser Khader, a prominent Danish parliamentarian, at the parliament building in Copenhagen, and Flemming Rose, who as culture editor of Jyllands-Posten commissioned the cartoons at the center of the controversy.[1] After a brief leave of absence while the controversy cooled, Flemming returned to his duties at the paper. At the height of the violence in February 2006, Khader founded the Democratic Muslims in Denmark to unite moderate Muslims to stand against the radical imams fueling violence and intolerance. On May 7, 2007, Khader announced he would leave the Social Liberal Party to form the New Alliance after a party member and immigration spokesman donned a Muslim headscarf in an effort to pander to religious conservatives.[2]

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By Barry Rubin

People don’t often threaten to murder me face to face. But in the spring of 2007, Alexis Debat, director of the terrorism program at the Nixon Center and consultant to ABC News, did so.

Precisely why is not clear to me even now, but it seemed to be part of a pattern of bizarre instability that he emanated. I had never met anyone who struck me as a more obvious fabulist. Yet after thirty years of studying the Middle East it was not surprising to meet people like that. The region is full of them, even at the highest political and intellectual levels, and they are by no means absent from the field of studying that area in the West.

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From David Horowitz’s Terrorism Awareness Project:

…This five minute video refutes the lies that Jimmy Carter has spread about the Jews and Israel in his books and speeches. It goes point by point, exposing the lies and showing Jimmy Carter’s duplicitous nature in regard to his defense of Arab tyranny while criticizing Israel democracy. It further exposes the truth in his taking funds from Arab sources, defending Palestinian terror at all costs and his coddling of the terrorist Yasir Arafat. …

by Joseph Puder*

Alireza Jafarzadeh, president of Washington-based Strategic Policy Consulting and spokesperson for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), was the guest of the Middle East Forum at Philadelphia’s Cozen O’Connor law offices last Wednesday over lunch. Bob Guzzardi, chairman of the Middle East Forum, introduced Jafarzadeh, who used his visit with the Middle East Forum to promote his new book, The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis.

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Obama calls resolution to support Petraeus “empty politics”

by Bill Levinson

Senate Approves Resolution Denouncing MoveOn.org Ad reports,

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — The Senate approved a resolution on Thursday denouncing the liberal antiwar group MoveOn.org over an advertisement that questioned the credibility of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq.

…Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, both Democratic candidates for president, voted against the resolution, which passed 72 to 25.

…Mr. Obama issued a statement calling the resolution, put forward by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, “a stunt.” Mr. Obama said, “By not casting a vote, I registered my protest against these empty politics.”

Res Ipsa Loquitur, the thing speaks for itself. Here is the roll call vote that shows who voted to support the Armed Forces of the United States, and who chose to stand with the anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic hate group MoveOn.org in defaming a distinguished four star general and gentleman.

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By Barry Rubin

Note: The following article was published as a response to an editorial in The Diplomat, a top Canadian international affairs magazine, which explicitly claimed that the Arab-Israeli conflict–and specifically Israel’s “occupation” policy–was at the root of all the problems in the Middle East, between the Middle East and the West, and between Islam and the West. This notion continues to be expressed (perhaps increasingly so) despite the fact that there is so much evidence to the contrary and that (though many in the West seem to have failed to nice this little detail) Israel has withdrawn from the Sinai, south Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, and much of the West Bank, as well as offering to leave the rest of the West Bank and the Golan Heights in exchange for full peace.

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by Daniel Pipes*

What has Campus Watch, a project to critique and improve Middle East studies in the United States and Canada, achieved since it opened its doors this week in 2002?

Along with like-minded organizations – the National Association of Scholars, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, National Review, and the Manhattan Institute – it assesses what professors are saying and doing, thereby helping to challenge academia’s status quo.

Critiquing professors is more revolutionary than it may sound, for academics have long been spared public criticism such as that directed toward politicians, business leaders, actors, and athletes. Who would judge them? Students suppress their views to protect their careers; peers are reluctant to criticize each other, lest they in turn suffer attacks; and laymen lack the competence to judge arcane scholarship. As a result, academics have long enjoyed a unique lack of accountability.

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By Bill Levinson

It is a well known principle from anthropology that someone who can name a person or thing controls that person or thing. To do so, however, requires considerable skill and experience. The name that MoveOn.org applied to General David Petraeus, “General Betray Us,” could have come from any grade school’s sandbox, and it will no more stick to this distinguished soldier than water will adhere to Teflon.

Not only did MoveOn.org publish a defamatory advertisement that made the worst possible accusations–lying and betrayal–against a distinguished military officer, MoveOn.org’s Executive Director, Eli Pariser, stood behind the ad while the Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas dismissed the ad as a nonissue. Although Markos Moulitsas deserves a little credit for not overtly backing the ad, he failed to denounce it. Eli Pariser then went on to accuse General Petraeus of “spinning the facts,” thus reiterating his accusation of lying. Whom do you believe: the West Point graduate and leader of character with four stars on each shoulder and numerous service ribbons on his chest, or the proven liar?

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by Phyllis Chesler

Let me state what is painfully obvious. Despite our most hopeful illusions, people are not really “good” nor do they really practice “peace”. While power corrupts, absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely and there is no safe place, neither high nor low, for the most vulnerable of our citizens.

The world is always at war. People fight, it’s what we do. We quarrel, often in deadly ways with other family members and we fight bitter, brutal battles with anyone who is “different” in terms of gender, class, race, ethnicity, tribe, religion, and ideology. The planet is perpetually plagued by civil and national wars. Not to be outdone, persecuted peoples internalize the prejudice and hatred leveled against them and unleash it against others like themselves.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday to take over any private schools refusing to submit to the oversight of his socialist government, a move some Venezuelans fear will impose leftist ideology in the classroom. …

- Associated Press

First of all, there’s nothing “socialist” about Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan government. Marx and Engels wanted to create a utopian “state in which the working class and poor peasantry exercised direct control on management of industry and society through democratically elected soviets or councils.” Chavez is concentrating all power in his own hands. He’s clamping down on the free press and is paling around with the very anti-Semitic Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Chavez has taken direct control of Venezuela’s oil wealth, as well as the country’s electrical and telecommunications companies. The money will certainly go into his own pockets. Most recently, Chavez has moved to take direct control of Venezuela’s central bank and military, and is busy editing the constitution to make himself president for life.

There is nothing “socialist” going on in Venezuela, just the exploits of another cheap thug following in the Castro/Mugabe/Milosevic tradition: absolute power forever. Will Venezuelan students be able to differentiate between Chavez’s megalomania and Marx and Engels’ teachings?

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

…The [Saudi] driving ban applies to all women, Saudi and foreign, and forces families to hire live-in drivers. Women whose families cannot afford $300-$400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor’s. …

- Associated Press

Our “friends,” the Saudis, living in the Stone Age… Some Saudis have had the guts to defy convention, but have paid the price. Will they succeed in changing Saudi society? From the AP:

For the first time ever, a group of women in the only country that bans female drivers have formed a committee to lobby for the right to get behind the wheel, and they plan to petition King Abdullah in the next few days for the privilege. …

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by Bill Levinson

(A letter with similar content was sent to njdc “at” njdc.org and nynjdc “at” njdc.org (Wed, 12 Sep 2007 ))

Last week, MoveOn.org published a defamatory advertisement (http://pol.moveon.org/petraeus.html) in the New York Times. The advertisement makes accusations that would be insulting to any lady or gentleman of character, but especially to a serving military officer who follows a very strict code of honor.

MoveOn.org’s propaganda, like its derogatory cartoon of Pope Benedict waving a gavel in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, along with the anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic hate speech it promoted on its now-disgraced Action Forum, is admittedly less than competent. MoveOn.org took a very dignified picture of a gentleman with four stars on his shoulder, army skill badges that include Parachutist and Air Assault, and numerous service ribbons, and applied a name that any child in a grade school playground could develop. Now let’s take a look at MoveOn Executive Director Eli Pariser, the individual behind all this.

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by Asaf Romirowsky*

Today, pro-Israel students confront a demoralizing challenge on campus defending Israel’s right to exist as a democratic Jewish state, as well as expressing views that would be labeled as “conservative.”

Some examples:

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By Barry Rubin

When is the media or non-governmental organizations fair or unfair in discussing the Arab-Israeli conflict? Critical here is how they present each side’s motivations and actions. Below are some examples in both categories to give a sense of what is right, and wrong, with coverage.

First is a case study in one AP dispatch by Albert Aji of September 7, 2007, discussing Israel’s recent air operation in Syria. Here are the key paragraphs:

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by Robert G. Rabil*

The Iranian and Syrian relationship with Hezbollah developed from a combination of ideological, domestic, and regional factors. Both Tehran and Damascus found Hezbollah to be a useful proxy to further regional objectives. Today, however, Hezbollah’s position has changed. Tehran’s growing strength is matched by Damascus’s regional weakness. As overt Syrian suzerainty over Lebanon fades and Hezbollah increases its regional role without regard to the Lebanese government, the nature of Hezbollah’s relations to Syria has changed. The group has outgrown its subservient relationship to Damascus. Hezbollah is no longer the junior partner in the axis.

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