By Phyllis Chesler

People often romanticize outlaws. Ballads galore have been written about Billy the Kid and Jesse James; both a book and a movie portrayed India’s Bandit Queen Phoolan Devi. She was a lower-caste Hindu who had been publicly gang-raped by higher-caste goons and she ran away and literally became their worst nightmare. I must admit, I have always been fond of this true story.

Now, Samina Malik, Britain’s “lyrical terrorist,” has been sentenced to a nine month suspended sentence and 100 hours of volunteer work. She is the British based poet who valorizes be-heading and jihad. The argument she presented is very au courant among western civil libertarians, leftists, and feminists. (Please understand: I am a feminist too but I hold the minority opinion on diverse issues ranging from prostitution to motherhood).

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

… Not surprisingly, though citing his [Hitler’s] victories and ‘bitter’ fall in great detail, the Holocaust is not mentioned… This is consistent with Palestinian education in general which erases the Holocaust from history. …

This from Israel’s “partner” for peace, the Palestinian Authority, which “was part of the official Palestinian Authority-run radio’s Ramadan quiz - rebroadcast this past week…” From IsraelNN.com:

A Palestinian Authority radio contest featured a laudatory biography of Adolf Hitler replete with his military victories, heroism and no mention of the Holocaust.

“His golden year was 1940, when his armies invaded Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Holland, and Belgium and defeated France…By mid 1942, his country controlled the largest land area in Europe…He refused to surrender and continued to fight for two more years, but, his bitter end came in the spring of 1945 when he took his own life…Who is he?” was the question broadcast as a Voice of Palestine radio contest on November 27. …

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by M. Zuhdi Jasser*

On November 20, 2006, airline officials in Minneapolis removed six imams from U.S. Airways flight 300 to Phoenix after their behavior raised the suspicion of fellow travelers.[1] The imams decried the incident as racist and evidence of discrimination. On March 12, 2007, they filed suit against the airline, airport, and fellow passengers. Some of the imams’ claims are exaggerated; many are false. In reality, the incident was a tactical move to support the imams’ claim to leadership over the American Muslim community. Indeed, the “flying imams” case, Ahmed Shqeirat et al. vs. U.S. Airways,[2] appears to mark just the latest front in the war between Islamists and mainstream, pluralistic American Muslims.

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By Phyllis Chesler

I have a “secret” life. I study Jewish religious texts and observe the holy days. ‘Twas not always thus. There was a time when I fled from a Judaism that had no place for women in terms of religious learning and ritual. I returned to religion as a feminist and helped create many feminist Jewish, life-cycle and inter-faith rituals.

On December 1st, 1988, in Jerusalem, I was privileged to be among the Jewish women who prayed for the first time in the women’s section at the Western Wall (or Kotel). While there are no exact parallels, this was analogous to Catholic women officiating at an all-female Mass in the Vatican. On that day, I was asked to open the Torah for the women to read from and it wedded me faithfully to the ensuing struggle for Jewish women’s religious rights which involved grassroots activism, consciousness raising, fundraising, and a lawsuit in the Israeli Supreme Court. You may read about some of this in a book I co-authored with Rivka Haut, Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism’s Holy Site.

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by Daniel Pipes*

“Far from being the source of anti-Americanism in Turkey, the AKP represents an ideal partner for the United States in the region.” So asserts Joshua W. Walker, a former Turkey desk officer at the State Department now studying at Princ­eton University, referring to the Justice and Development Party (known as the AKP). Writing in The Washington Quarterly, Walker supports his thesis by noting the constructive Turkish role in Iraq, praising “how carefully the AKP has guarded the [U.S.] alliance and tried to work with the Bush administration, partic­ularly when compared to other European nations.”

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By Ted Belman, Israpundit

“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” Pres Bush said after 9/11. He went on to identify N. Korea, Iran and Iraq, the “axis of evil” and to declare the “war on terror”. The last thing he wanted to do was to identify the enemy. N. Korea was included in the list for fear that someone might think, G-d forbid, that Moslems were the enemy or that Islam was the enemy just as Communists and Communism were during the cold war.

It’s not that he didn’t know who the enemy was. After all, 15 of the 19 highjackers were Saudis who were inspired by Saudi supported Wahabbism. Its not that he viewed the use of terror as the enemy because the US had created al Qaeda to use terror to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan. It is not that this was the first time that the US was attacked by Arabs or Muslims starting with the Islamic revolution in Iran and the hostage taking of US diplomats.

Angelo Codeville, a professor of international relations at Boston University, wondered and wrote a startling article in the Fall of ‘02, Post Mortem to a Phony War. If you missed this article, don’t miss it now. It’s a classic. Read it here.

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by Michael Rubin*

Congressional Democrats have seized upon the latest National Intelligence Estimate - which says Iran stopped pursuing nuclear weapons in 2003 - with great relish. They suggest it proves that not only did the Bush administration exaggerate the threat of a nuclear Iran, but that the White House, in its drive for hard-line sanctions backed by military force, has been far too skeptical of diplomacy.

In a statement yesterday, Sen.Joseph Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chastised President Bush, saying his “actions are doubly dangerous because they undercut the cooperation we need from other countries for dealing with the real problems Iran continues to pose.”

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By Jeffrey Breinholt*

This last week while I was on vacation in California, two articles caught my attention. On the Counterterrorism Blog, Roderick Jones described how virtual worlds are helping Western governments combat terrorism, by offering realistic computer-based simulations to government personnel involved in operational decisionmaking, and as communication platforms. Meanwhile, an article in LifeScience, by Heather Whipps describes the utility of academic mathematics to fighting al Qaida.

These articles pick up on something I have been writing about - the need for more empiricism in counterterrorism. They came at a time when I was diving into a number of new books on applied math.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Although I knew and admired the late, great Dr. Margaret Mead and other pioneer-anthropologists, (Ruby Rohrlich and Eleanor “Happy” Leacock for starters), my ardor for anthropology gradually dimmed as the discipline became increasingly politicized. Ironically, anthropologists have judged western culture harshly and moralistically as “sexist, racist, class-ist, and anti-gay”—but have refused to judge Third World cultures even slightly by these same standards. Indeed, what began as a valiant attempt to understand the “Other” and the ravages of both poverty and oppression has degenerated into a valorization of barbarism and a demonization of any western attempts to either intervene or to introduce any principles of universal rights.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

… Chavez’s use of the words “for now” in his concession speech echo a statement he made after his failed attempt to overthrow the government in 1992. After that, “for now” became a rallying cry for his supporters. …

El Jefe Chavez lost yesterday’s election, but don’t think he’s given up on becoming Venezuela’s dictator-for-life. He blamed his own supporters for defeat, even after he tried to buy their votes. But the majority of Venezuelans saw through his cynical pandering, and instead rejected Chavez’s more megalomaniacal proposals. In the final analysis, Chavez’s election grandstanding (his big mouth) — threatening to “cut off exports of oil to the U.S., Venezuela’s biggest trading partner” — seemed to convince a majority of voters that he was a danger, not an asset, to the country.

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By Barry Rubin

Before the Annapolis meeting, some said the operation would save the patient; others that it would kill the patient. In fact, the patient is exactly the same but the doctors had a hell of a big party and congratulated themselves on doing a terrific job.

We’ll end the conflict by December 2008, says President Bush. We want to make peace and get along, say Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Western media cheers it as a big success since everyone showed up and said the right words; nobody walked out or hurled insults. It’s enough to make you believe that peace is at hand.

But there’s a huge gap between Western and Middle Eastern reactions to the meeting. While the former celebrates, the latter knows better than to expect anything.

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By Ted Belman

About a month ago, I wrote Annapolis is about wiping Israel off the map. A devotee of Israpundit wrote to say that I went too far in accusing the US of that. Since I believe that accepting the Saudi Peace Plan would place Israel in mortal danger, I advised him that in criminal law, when one proceeds in reckless disregard for the consequences, one is deemed to have intended them. That is not to say that there are not many in the State Department who do in fact want to see the end of Israel.

Recently I advised Why I hate Annapolis and this article was widely distributed. One lawyer wrote to say in effect “Hogwash”. I wrote him back with a few facts and he backed off and said there were two ways to look at things. I agree. The right way and the wrong way, but I am sure he didn’t mean it in that sense.

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By Andrew Whitehead

On November 27th, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington, D.C.-based Islamist hate group, called for a boycott of the Michael Savage radio program by advertisers. According to CAIR, Savage made comments about Islam that CAIR has found insulting to the faith.

CAIR, part of a new group called “Hate Hurts America Community and Interfaith Coalition” (HHA), has managed to get several advertisers to abandon Savage’s radio program in submission to CAIR’s/HHA’s calls to end sponsorship.

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By Fern Sidman

On Thursday evening, November 29th, the University of Toronto hosted a lecture by former De Paul University assistant professor of political science, Norman Finkelstein. Finkelstein, 53, is a controversial figure in the academic community, as he has assumed the position of chief apologist for Palestinian terrorism while espousing a hard line anti-Israel viewpoint, mixed with vociferous attacks on the legacy of the Holocaust, its victims and survivors. In June of 2007, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University and charged with “unprofessional attacks”. He was then placed on administrative leave for the 2007-2008 academic year, his single course having been cancelled. On September 5, 2007 he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on undisclosed terms.

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by Asaf Romirowsky and Jonathan Spyer*

For Israelis the United Nations is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they are fully aware of the anti-Israel sentiment that the United Nations perpetuates, but on the other hand they want to be part of it and to have their voices heard. This stance is understandable. But it produces positions which sometimes directly contradict Israel’s clear interest.

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