Memorial Day Weekend Message

This weekend, we pause to remember and to pay homage to those Americans who have sacrificed so much for this great, free nation, the leader of the civilized world.

Please participate in the fight to protect the West by joining up with fellow like-minded individuals in the United American Committee (UAC). Many are signing up all over America to join the United American Committee. They are doing their part, to assure that awareness and vigilance keeps America free from the Islamic extremist threats which currently exist within our borders.

Here is some suggested reading material to get you started:

Onward Muslim Soldiers:by Robert Spencer
In this book the author uncovers the cause of global violence that the established media would rather you ignore. He reveals why the threat of violent jihad is growing daily...

Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allah’s Prophet:by Ali Sina
This is not a biography, but a psychobiogaphy. Psychobiography focuses on the “why” rather than the “what”. It explains the motivations and impulses of the person it analyzes. This book analyzes Islam's prophet.

The Sword of the Prophet:by Srdja Trifkovic
In The Sword of the Prophet, the reader receives the unvarnished truth about the rise of Islam and the patterns set by its founder, Muhammad; the historical meaning of jihad against the (non-Muslim) infidel that we see today in the al-Qaeda terror network; the broad sweep of the global military, political, moral, and spiritual struggle that faces us; and what we must do if we wish to survive.

American Jihad:by Steven Emerson
Who are these people? Where did they come from? And how could there be so many terrorists or suspected terrorists living among us without action being taken? In American Jihad, Steven Emerson, the world's leading authority on domestic Islamic terrorist networks, tells the full story of the rise of those who wish to destroy the United States from within.

The Islamization of America:By Abdullah Al-Araby
After the collapse of Communism, almost everyone heaved a sigh of relief. Many thought that all threats to the American way of life had finally vanished. Then, came in the sad events of 9/11/01 which proved our hopes were just wishful thinking.A great book from a Christian perspective, but offers excellent insights for all members of the UAC, not only the Christian members.

Now They Call Me Infidel:By Nonie Darwish
One woman’s story of why she left the culture of Islamic Jihad to support American liberty and tolerance.

Jihad Incorporated:By Steve Emerson
A Guide to Militant Islam in the US. Steven Emerson has compiled this thorough factual overview of the Islamist terrorist threat to the United States.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam :By Robert Spencer Michelle Malkin, bestselling author and columnist states:"The courageous Robert Spencer busts myths and tells truths about jihadists that no one else will tell."

The Myth of Islamic Tolerance:By Robert Spencer "Robert Spencer has here assembled a collection of documents devastating to PC myth and multiculturalist wishful thinking. Anyone concerned about the dangers of politically motivated distortions of Islamic theology and history should not miss this explosive and enlightening volume."

The Truth About Muhammad:By Robert Spencer
Muhammad: a frank look at his influential (and violent) life and teachings. In The Truth about Muhammad, New York Times bestselling author and Islam expert Robert Spencer offers an honest and telling portrait of the founder of Islam-perhaps the first such portrait in half a century-unbounded by fear and political correctness, unflinching, and willing to face the hard facts about Muhammad's life that continue to affect our world today.

Islam Unveiled:By Robert Spencer
Spencer proclaims that Islam is not the religion of peace that many claim it to be. Opinions on his conclusions differ (to put it mildly), but it's difficult to argue with Robert Spencer's method of inquiry: It's lawyerly, in the best sense of that term. Spencer considers the testimony of many sources--of the West and the "House of Islam"--from which he deduces meaning, intent, and possible consequences. This approach makes his findings sound valid and credible--like them or not.

Infiltration:By Paul Sperry
As Americans continue to worship at the altar of cultural diversity and endorse religious tolerance for tolerance sake, Muslims masquerading as "moderates" have insinuated themselves into the very fabric of American society. In this startling book, investigative journalist Paul Sperry uses revealing new interviews and classified documents to courageously explain how these Islamist extremists have been covertly working to destroy our constitutional government and the Judeo-Christian ethics on which our nation was built.

The Looming Tower:By Lawrence Wright
The Looming Tower may be the most informative accounts yet of the men who shaped 9/11 (New York Times Book Review). The focus on individuals gives the book its emotional punch, but it is also a narrative bold in conception and historical sweep. Lawrence Wright conducted more than 500 interviews, from bin Laden's best friend in college to Richard A. Clarke, Saudi royalty, Afghan mujahideen, and reporters for Al Jazeera. The result, while evenhanded in its analysis of the complex motives, ideals, and power plays that led to 9/11, leaves few nefarious details uncovered. An abrupt ending did little to sway critics that Looming Tower is nothing less than "indispensable" reading (Cleveland Plain Dealer).

They Just Don't Get It:by Col. David Hunt
How Washington Is Still Compromising Your Safety--and What You Can Do About It.Hunt, a Fox TV News military analyst and retired army colonel, shows what must be done in America if we are to win the war on terror. Highly recommended reading.

The Legacy of Jihad:by Andrew G Bostom
The Legacy of Jihad provides a comprehensive, meticulously documented corrective to the genre of ahistorical assessments decried by Ellul. This unique, extensive compilation includes Muslim theological and juridical texts, eyewitness historical accounts by both Muslim and non-Muslim chroniclers, and essays by preeminent scholars analyzing jihad war and the ruling conditions imposed upon the non-Muslim peoples conquered by jihad campaigns.

Books: ‘Stupid Black Men’ by Larry Elder

Hat tip to MarkLevinFan. Talk radio host Mark Levin spoke with fellow talk-radio host and author Larry Elder about his new book Stupid Black Men. While the interview with Larry Elder was set up weeks ago, Larry Elder had already written about Barack Obama’s racist and anti-Semitic pastor in his book. Click here for the audio.

Book: Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism, and the Roots of 9/11

Nothing that Islamists do is original. Their idea to send two planes as missiles into the World Trade Towers came from their mentor and idol, the genocidal and maniacal Adolph Hitler. Martin Rubin reviews JIHAD AND JEW-HATRED: ISLAMISM, NAZISM AND THE ROOTS OF 9/11 by Matthias Kuntzel. An excerpt:

This brief but important book begins with an all too familiar image: "[T]he skyscrapers turning into huge burning torches and falling hither and thither, and the reflection of the disintegrating city in the dark sky." The skyscrapers are Manhattan's, but it is not September 11, 2001. Adolf Hitler is salivating over his plan to use suicide bombers to attack the United States, as reported by Albert Speer, who confided to his diaries that:

"In the latter stages of the war, I never saw Hitler so beside himself as when, as if in a delirium, he was picturing to himself and to us the downfall of New York in towers of flame."

As German historian Matthias Kuntzel tells us, the fuhrer was planning such an attack:

"Not only Hitler's fantasy but also his plan for realising it, recall what happened in 2001: the idea was for Kamikaze pilots to fly explosive-crammed light aircarft lacking landing gear into the Manhattan skyscrapers.

"The drawings for the Daimler-Benz "Amerikabomber" from spring 1944 actually exist . . . The rapture into which Hitler was plunged by the thought of Manhattan in flames indicates the motive behind this fantasy. Hitler did not merely wish to fight a military adversary. He wanted to kill Jews to liberate mankind."

Book: "The Unknown Black Book "

Previously censored accounts of Nazi genocide in the Soviet territories. Via the WSJ:

"The Unknown Black Book" is the first publication of materials excluded for political reasons from "The Black Book," a collection of survivors' testimony that was compiled toward the end of the war but then ran afoul of the Stalinist regime -- even after it was heavily censored -- and fell into political limbo for decades. The project traces its roots to February 1942, when the Soviet government established the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) in an effort to drum up international support as the Red Army struggled to withstand the onslaught of the German Wehrmacht.

Headed by the Yiddish actor Solomon Mikhoels and staffed by other well-known actors, writers and poets, the JAC did its job for a year, publishing articles, making radio broadcasts and hosting visitors in Moscow. But when the fortunes of war changed after the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in 1943, the regime began to have second thoughts about the JAC.

It is impossible to convey the full impact of these testimonies in a short review. But a few examples may provide an inkling of the nature of the material. Sara Gleykh described the destruction of the Jewish population of Mariupol, a city in the Ukraine. The Germans arrived there on Oct. 8, 1941, and immediately instituted anti-Jewish measures. On Oct. 18, Sara's family was ordered to leave their apartment for resettlement: Neighbors, told that they could "take whatever they wanted," Sara recalled, "all rushed into the apartment" and "quarreled over things before my eyes, snatching things out of each other's hands and dragging off pillows, pots and pans, quilts." That day, the 9,000 Jews of the city were murdered. Sara, who lost her entire family, climbed out of the mass grave and eventually reached the Soviet lines.

Time in Judaism vs. Time in Islam

I have not read this book, but it is a title I will add to my reading list. It's called Time and Process in Ancient Judaism, available here. One may read more about the title here. Littman Books writes:

This fascinating book investigates time in ancient Judaism. After a comprehensive study of the Rabbinic sources Stern is forced to conclude that time as a concept simply did not exist in ancient Jewish society. Time-wasting for example is never mentioned as a bad thing, calendars are predicated on the idea of a sequence of events not on the idea of time, indeed there isn't even really a word for time in Jewish Hebrew and Aramaic sources. The book examines the implications for this in the study of Ancient Jewish society, and looks at the impact of Hellenic culture on these issues. Ultimately Stern concludes that this shows the Near Eastern rather than Mediterranean context of Jewish thought. 144p (Littman 2007)

For Muslims, on the other hand, time renews itself each day. For Muslims, their calendar begins with Mohammed's journey to Medina in the year 622 AD. His flight marks Year 1 of the Islamic calendar, which was immortalized in Islam as the Hegira. The Islamic calendar is only 1,386 years old.

This is why Muslims destroy archaelogy when provided with irrefutable archaeological evidence that proves the pre-existence - and therefore the legitimacy - of the Jewish people who want to live near their Jewish religious holy sites.

If Jewish archaelogy and its artifacts therein are not a legitimate argument for the Jewish people to be able to live amongst their holy sites, and the left wants to embrace Islam by defending it with anthropology instead, then I say let’s go at it. Let’s talk about what Andrew Bostom correctly frames as the archetypal Jew hatred from the Koran, which include verses labeling Jews as enemies of Islam (5:82), and slayers of their own prophets who suffered justifiable abasement (2:61), and apes and pigs (5:60).

If we can’t live in our own land, near our Holy Temple, amongst our forefather’s tombs, at the base of our holy mountains, close to the cemetaries where we buried our dead, the rivers with which we watered our animals, and in the villages from which we were exiled and to which we have returned, then we have every damn right to deconstruct the left’s arguments that Islam is peaceful and that the “occupation” is the cause of all the strife in the world. The lefty libtards can’t have it both ways.

Obituary - Mourad El-Kodsi

Brighton: December 24, 2007. Survived by wife, Rose; daughters, Esther Ovadia, Vivianne (Alfred) Marzouk; brother, Dr. Baroukh (Mireille) Kodsi; sister, Esther (Benoit) Massouda; grandchildren, Jerry, Jesse, Michelle & Robert; great-grandson,
Rafi.

Mourad was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1919. He earned a Bachelor's Degree in History from the University of Cairo, in 1942, and a Masters Degree in Education from the University of Rochester, in 1963. In Cairo he was a teacher and principal in both the Karaite Jewish School and Les Ecoles de la Communauté Juive du Caire from 1942 to 1959. As a member of the Karaite community in Cairo El-Kodsi served as the Secretary of the Karaite Religious Council and as chairperson of several of its committees.

In 1959 he immigrated to the United States. He taught French in Brighton Central Schools, and Arabic classes in both the University of Rochester and St. John Fisher College. In 1987 he published the first edition of "The Karaite Jews of Egypt from 1882-1986." In 1993 he published "The Karaite Communities in Poland, Lithuania, Russia and Crimea." In 2002 he published "Just for the Records in the History of the Karaite Jews in Egypt in Modern Times." In 2004 he published an article entitled "A History of the Two of Ben Asher Codices." In 2007 he published the 2nd edition of "The Karaite Jews of Egypt."

Funeral services will be held 10 AM Thursday, December 27th in the Rabbi Abraham Solomon Chapel at Temple Beth El, 139 Winton Road S. Contributions may be made Temple Beth El in his memory. Following the funeral the family will receive friends in the Garden Room at Temple Beth El from 12-2 PM.

http://www.legacy.com/DemocratAndChronicle/Obituaries.asp?Page=SearchResults

Books: History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression

History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression by DAVID MEIR-LEVI

Overview

In the United Nations, on university campuses, and among a growing number of our most prestigious Western newspapers, the historical record has been rewritten so thoroughly that Israel is seen as the worst of the oppressive Western occupiers of the Third World. So successful has this campaign been that Palestinian spinmeisters and their apologists have effectively declared that the Israelis, a people living in the shadow of the Holocaust, are themselves “Nazis.” How could this happen? How did unacceptable anti-Semitism morph into justifiable anti-Zionism, and odious Jew-hatred turn into a politically correct Israel-hatred?

In History Upside Down historian David Meir-Levi traces the ideological DNA behind Palestinian Nationalism and its ludicrous “alternative” histories, revealing how Nazi Fascism gave the Arab world’s amorphous hatred of the Jews an intellectual structure and how Soviet communism masked its genocidal intentions with the mantle of national liberation.

Meir-Levi then explodes the cornerstone myths that this movement created – myths that rationalize and celebrate decades of unremitting terror and genocidal ambitions, in effect turning the history of the Middle East upside down and inside out, making the victim the aggressor and the aggressor the victim.

History Upside-Down is the first wave in a counterattack against this Arab war on history. It rejects the idea that the basic situation in the Middle East has changed since the United Nations first established the Jewish state and the Palestinian state that would have stood alongside it. Sadly, argues Meir-Levi, the issue in the Middle East is today what it has been since the Muslim invasion in the seventh century: the Arabs’ hatred of the Jews.

MEMRI: Major Jihadi Cleric says 9/11 Was a Sin

Unheard of compunction from a Muslim radical. An important read excerpted from MEMRI:

Over the last few weeks, Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif, one of the least public yet most important figures in the global jihad movement, has published a long-awaited new work, Wathiqat Tarshid Al-'Aml Al-Jihadi fi Misr w'Al-'Alam ("Document of Right Guidance for Jihad Activity in Egypt and the World"), in which he calls for a stop to jihad activities in the West and also to those against the ruling regimes in Muslim countries.

The new book, which Imam wrote while serving a life sentence in Egypt, was published in serial form in two Arab dailies, the Kuwaiti Al-Jarida and the Egyptian Al-Masri Al-Yawm, and has been the subject of extensive discussion and polemic among Islamists and observers of Islamist movements. The document is at once a book and a formal initiative, and the majority of leaders and members of the Jihad organization in the Egyptian prisons have signed the document and promised to stop armed activities. This entire process was facilitated by the Egyptian authorities, and the document was reviewed by a commission of Al-Azhar scholars. [1]

The book has generated such interest due to its author's standing and importance among radical Islamists. In addition to his given name, Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif, he is also known as "Dr. Fadl" and "'Abd Al-Qader Bin 'Abd Al-'Aziz." His 1988 book on the laws of jihad, Al-'Umda fi I'dad Al-'Udda ("The Essentials of Making Ready [for Jihad]"), was used as a jihad manual in Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. [2]

Some of the most enthusiastic supporters of Sayyed Imam's new document have been leaders of Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya, another Egyptian jihad group which, in 1997, began its own process of ideological revisions. These revisions eventually led to a wide-ranging reassessment of their beliefs, and they published a number of polemical tracts against Al-Qaeda.

(See MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 309, "The Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya Cessation of Violence: An Ideological Reversal," December 22, 2006, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA30906 .)

In recent interviews and statements, members of Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya and other like-minded individuals have given an upbeat assessment of the new book's impact, expressing the hope that Sayyed Imam's revisions would lead to something similar in Al-Qaeda itself, or perhaps to an internal split or a weakening of support for Al-Qaeda. [3]

Al-Zawahiri addressed the issue of Sayyed Imam's new book even before it was published, in the course of a feature-length video produced by Al-Sahab called Quwwat Al-Haqq ("The Power of Truth"). He argued that the revisions, which he calls the "retractions," were simply the product of torture in the Egyptian prisons; he said that he didn't blame their author for having broken down, but rather those outside the prisons who were enthusiastically promoting his new book. These latter he compared to gravediggers, who as soon as they hear that someone is sick, rush to him and wait eagerly for him to die so they can earn their living by burying him.

This line of defense has since been taken up by other Al-Qaeda spokesmen and supporters.The most vocal of these is Hani Al-Siba'i, an Egyptian Islamist living in London, who appears frequently on the Arab satellite stations and in the press. He also heads the Al-MaqrezeCenter for Historical Studies, and runs the website http://www.almaqreze.net/.

A third category of responses is that of independent jihadists. The most important of these to date has been Abu Basir Al-Tartusi, a prominent radical sheikh. Unlike Al-Qaeda, he does not believe that Sayyed Imam was forced to write his new book, and he offers his reasons for believing that it was written out of conviction. Also unlike Al-Qaeda, he undertakes a refutation of the central arguments in the book, and pillories Sayyed Imam for employing what are, in his opinion, weak proofs to try to stop the jihad. He accuses Sayyed Imam of going from extreme to extreme, noting that in the past both he himself and Al-Zarqawi's erstwhile mentor, Sheikh Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi, had criticized Sayyed Imam for being too radical and too quick to declare other Muslims apostates. [4] (For more on Abu Basir Al-Tartusi, see MEMRI Special Report No. 40, "Expatriate Syrian Salafi Sheikh Al-Tartusi Comes Out Against Suicide Attacks," February 10, 2006, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR4006.)

It should be noted that Sayyed Imam's revisions are less far-reaching than those of Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya. He does not clearly state that he no longer considers the current rulers of Muslim countries to be apostates; the reason he forbids fighting them is primarily that this jihad has little or no chance of success, and thus does more harm than good. He has also not renounced his previous writings, and claims that they were merely misunderstood. He is much clearer on other topics, like the shari'a prohibition on killing Western tourists, civilians in Western countries, and so on. The question of what precisely the document says and does not say is a complex one that will be taken up in future reports.

In the coming weeks and months, MEMRI will be providing full coverage of Sayyed Imam's new book and the reactions to it. By way of introduction, the following are excerpts from the first two segments of a six-part interview granted by Sayyed Imam to the Al-Hayat daily. In the interview, he deals at length with the 9/11 attacks, his relationship with Al-Zawahiri, and the emergence of Al-Qaeda. He describes the 9/11 attacks as betrayal and perfidy; Al-Zawahiri as a charlatan prone to betraying his friends, bin Laden as lacking a solid religious education, and Al-Qaeda as an organization without a shari'a authority and without a moral compass.

Books: Zionist official was first to hear of Final Solution

Via JPost:

A senior Zionist official stationed in Switzerland during World War II was likely the first person to receive information from a German source regarding the plan for the systematic extermination of Europe's Jews, according to a new book published by Yad Vashem.

Chaim Pazner, head of the Jewish Agency's Palestine Office in Geneva, immediately forwarded the information to senior British officials and to Jewish officials in British-ruled Palestine, and the report reached the top echelons of the British government, according to the book, Chaim Pazner - The Man Who Knew.

The book - written in Hebrew by Menahem Michelson, with contributions from historian Sir Martin Gilbert - describes a report from a German source in the summer of 1942 about the Final Solution and the British government's refusal to make that information public.

Books: Jon Entine author of Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA

I have not read this book but am posting this media release that I received directly from the publisher:

“An epic tale of ‘The Chosen People’ [Entine’s ABRAHAM’S CHILDREN] serves as an excellent catalyst for discussion as many continue to ask the question, ‘What does it mean to be Jewish?’ Engaging and informative reading for Jews and non-Jews alike”
–– Kirkus Reviews

Can Identity or Religious Roots be Found in a Pinprick of DNA?

Geneticists Are Mapping the Threads of a Shared Ancestry between Modern Christians, Mormons, Muslims and Jews

ABRAHAM’S CHILDREN
Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People

Jon Entine

In a famous Harper’s Magazine article published in 1899, Mark Twain noted with some amazement that world Jewry, but one quarter of one percent of the human race, was “a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk . . . . What is the secret of his immortality?”

While Twain may have been writing about the stellar accomplishments of the world’s minority Jewish population, Jon Entine’s eye-opening new book, ABRAHAM’S CHILDREN: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People (Grand Central Publishing; $27.99 hardcover; $34.99 Canada; October 24, 2007), reveals another sort of Jewish “immortality” altogether. Why is it that Jews, Twain’s puff of stardust, dominate the lists of Nobel Prize winners and top achievers in so many categories?

In his quest for the Lost Tribes – a central narrative for Christians and Jews alike – Entine examines how discoveries in the field of genetics are awakening Christians, Mormons, Muslims and others the world over to strands of a deeply persistent and far reaching shared Israelite ancestry in far flung corners of the globe. A scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, he, introduces readers to a black African tribe, the Lemba, almost certainly of Israelite ancestry and the probable builders of the only surviving architectural wonders of any note built in pre-industrial Africa. ABRAHAM’S CHILDREN recounts how some Hispanic Americans – unknowing descendants of Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition – are suddenly able to make sense of the Jewish practices their own parents and grandparents inexplicably incorporated into daily routines upon learning of genetic evidence of their own buried Jewish ancestry.

Judaism DNA is both a time machine and microscope, observes Entine, offering a fascinating journey back in history and an opportunity to reconnect with biblical ancestors. Tracking the mythic and actual migrations of Jews around the world, including Europe, South Africa, India, China and the United States (among Native Americans or Mormons), Entine examines the role of DNA in shaping ethnic and religious identity.

These advances in genetic research hold special significance for Jews and those interested in the Israelite roots of Western culture, according to the author.

“Like adoptees in search of their birth parents, Jewish men and women are besieging genetic researchers hoping to piece together the evidence of their ancestry erased during the Diaspora or Holocaust,” notes Entine.

While some search for evidence confirming ties to the Jewish Cohanim, a priestly line that traces its genetic lineage back to the time of biblical Aaron, others are on a life and death quest to determine if they carry certain disease mutations, including for breast cancer and neurological disorders, that disproportionately target Jews .

Entine’s insightful examination sheds new light on the relevance of issues of “chosen-ness,” the controversy over whether Arabs or Jews have an ancestral claim to ancient Palestine, the threat of Jewish assimilation, and more incendiary notions of racial strengths and weakness in this thought provoking book.

Those interested in learning more about what genealogists call their “deep ancestry,” will find more information about using the increasingly sophisticated tools genetic genealogy offers to probe ancestral vaults once thought lost to history in Entine’s book.
# # #
ABRAHAM’S CHILDREN
Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People
Jon Entine
Grand Central Publishing
$27.99 hardcover/$34.99 Canada
October 24, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-446-58063-2
420 pages
Non-Fiction

Jon Entine is an international columnist and adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. An Emmy winning TV producer for Tom Brokaw at NBC News and for 20/20 and PrimeTime Live at ABC News, Entine has been awarded numerous prizes and fellowships for his journalism. He is the author of the bestseller Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It.

Books: Naïve & Abroad: Pakistan Powerful, Timely New Book

I have not read this book but received this publicity email directly from the author, Marcus Wilder:

“The purpose of the burkah is to prevent arousing uncontrollable urges in passing men. Presumably, women cannot be expected to resist these uncontrollably urged men. In fairness, rape is common - burkah or no burkah. . . . To prove rape, a woman must have four male witnesses. Since the male witnesses are invariably the rapists, this defense tactic never works. If there are not four male witnesses to testify for her, the woman is blamed. She can be flogged. She can be stoned. At a minimum, her husband will beat her severely.”

“The burkah is not Islamic. Muslims adopted that custom from a primitive tribe they converted to Islam. The damage has been done.”

To get this book quickly click on this Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0595467113/

Books: G-d's Gold: A Quest for the Lost Temple Treasures of Jerusalem

Note: This book may be purchased at the linked website at a discount price.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jewish World Review Oct. 9, 2007 / 27 Tishrei 5768

New book takes us on the trail of objects taken from Second Temple By Richard Di Dio

The boundary between quest and obsession is not defined until it is crossed. By then it is too late — and extremely perilous. This is inevitable when the search is for some of the most precious and potentially explosive objects in the world: religious icons that, if found, will further agitate the roiling cauldron that is the Middle East.

In "G-d's Gold: A Quest for the Lost Temple Treasures of Jerusalem," archaeologist Sean Kingsley provides a dramatic account of his personal journey in search of the golden menorah, silver trumpets, and jewel-covered Table of Divine Presence taken from the Second Temple of Jerusalem in the year 70. These iconic artifacts were spirited away by the Roman emperor Vespasian and his son, Titus, during the razing of Jerusalem that followed the First Jewish Revolt. Back in Rome, the treasures became the centerpiece of a massive victory parade, the report of which can still be read 2,000 years later as intricate carvings on the Arch of Titus.

Although missing since antiquity, there are enough written references to them, and more than enough conspiracy theorists who claim that they reside in the Vatican, to suggest that the treasures were not melted down for pagan purposes. This is all Kingsley needs to launch what seems to be an impossible mission— one that is both delicate and dangerous because of the ever-present tensions that surround the jurisdiction of the Temple Mount.

In a narrative that is part history, part travelogue, and all action movie, Kingsley describes his 10 years of travels from the Holy Land to Rome to Tunis to Istanbul, digging for clues in the dusty texts of ancient scribes and the dangerous dirt of Hamas-controlled territory.

Has Kingsley crossed over, then, from quest to obsession? Perhaps. He is absolutely obsessive about knowing the objects of his search, although this is just excellent methodology. Part forensics investigator and part profiler, Kingsley is adamant that the key to any search is the understanding of both the material and psychological properties of the missing objects. It is not enough to know what the Temple treasures were made of, and their design; it is just as important to know their significance to Second-Temple Jews, and to the Romans and Vandals after them. It is Kingsley's hypothesis that the icons survived not because of their monetary value, but because they could be used to support the founding myths of all those who held them, an ultimate source of "via fide" — street cred — in a world breaking free from Roman rule.

An expert in the archaeology of the Holy Land, Kingsley has the credentials that make his quest more than quixotic. He also has a writing style that successfully mixes arcane archaeological details with set-piece depictions of historical events. His account of the Triumph of Vespasian and Titus, as the Jewish treasures are marched through the various pagan and political sites of bustling Rome, is itself a triumph of re-creation.

I will admit that Kingsley's approach is occasionally manipulative in its cinematic style. He is certainly not averse to playing up the inevitable Indiana Jones angle. But the power flows from the icons themselves, and Kingsley's quest to understand their essence.

Does this imply that finding the actual menorah, trumpets, and table is secondary to the search? Kingsley firmly believes that he knows where the treasures reside, because he understands what they are, and what they mean. Whether his startlingly confident prediction of their final resting place is true, or just the inevitable result of his obsession, Kingsley's analysis of the power of religious icons to
shape, and continue shaping, history seems as good as gold.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/people/book_gds_gold.php3?printer_friendly

Books: How to Understand Islam

If you want to understand how the enemy of G-d thinks. From How to Understand Islam:

A review of Arguing the Just War in Islam by John Kelsay, Islam: Past, Present and Future by Hans Kung, Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice by Michael Bonner, Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Secularism Confronts Islam by Olivier Roy.

The Saudi Roots of 9/11

From The Saudi Roots of 9/11:

In The Siege of Mecca, Wall Street Journal writer Yaroslav Trofimov pulls back the curtain surrounding events that the Saudis would very much rather the world forgot.

The November 1979 siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca laid the groundwork for al-Qaeda and the events of Sep. 11. Juhayman al-Uteybi led the siege. Driven by Wahhabi orthodoxy, Juhayman hated all infidels.

America's then-president Jimmy Carter's naive faith in peacemaking was no match for fundamentalist fury.

Carter's administration was busy propping up the Saudis even as outlandish conspiracy theories implicating the U.S. swept the Muslim world. Embassy staff fled murderous mobs from Pakistan to Libya.

Damage from the siege and the battle to recapture it meant reconstruction costing billions - payable to the Bin Laden Construction Company.

The "Israel Lobby" Myth

Written by George Shultz who was secretary of state from 1982 to 1989, this is excerpted from his introduction to The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control by Abraham Foxman. Via DailyAlert from The "Israel Lobby" Myth:

Israel is a free, democratic, open, and relentlessly self-analytical place. To hear harsh criticism of Israel's policies and leaders, listen to the Israelis. So questioning Israel for its actions is legitimate, but lies are something else.

The catalog of lies about Jews is long and astonishingly crude, matched only by the suffering that has followed their promulgation. Defaming the Jews by disputing their rightful place among the peoples of the world has been a long-running, well-documented, and disgraceful series of episodes across history. Again and again a time has come when legitimate criticism slips across an invisible line into what might be called the "badlands," a place where those who should be regarded as worthy adversaries in debate are turned into scapegoats, targets, all-purpose objects of blame.

In America, thousands of groups vie for influence. Among these are Jewish groups that have come under renewed criticism for being part of an all-powerful "Israel lobby," most notably in a book published last week by Profs. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. Jewish groups also largely agree that the United States should support Israel. But the notion that they have anything like a uniform agenda and that U.S. policy in Israel and the Middle East is the result of this influence is simply wrong.

Another tried and true method for damaging the well-being and security of the Jewish people and the State of Israel is a dangerously false analogy. Witness former President Jimmy Carter's book Palestine-Peace Not Apartheid. Here the association on the one hand is between Israel's existentially threatened position and the measures it has taken to protect its population from terrorist attacks, driven by an ideology bent on the complete eradication of the State of Israel, and, on the other, the racist oppression of South Africa's black population by the white Boer regime.

The United States supports Israel not because of favoritism based on political pressure or influence but because the American people, and their leaders, say that supporting Israel is politically sound and morally just.

Those who blame Israel and its Jewish supporters for U.S. policies they do not support are wrong. They are wrong because support for Israel is in our best interests. They are wrong because Israel and its supporters have the right to try to influence U.S. policy. And they are wrong because the U.S. government is responsible for the policies it adopts, not any other state or any of the myriad lobbies and groups that battle daily to win America's support.

Confirmed: Arafat Died of AIDS

Arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat’s doctor has confirmed the long-circulating rumors that the PLO chairman had AIDS – though the doctor insists Israel poisoned Arafat as well, causing his death. From INN:

Rumors have long circulated in both Israel and the Palestinian Authority that Arafat’s symptoms prior to his death were caused by AIDS. Within the PA, Israel has always been accused of poisoning the PLO chairman.

Now, Arafat’s private doctor has joined other PLO officials in acknowledging that Arafat had the HIV virus, but is holding on to the claim that Israel was responsible for his ultimate demise, in a French hospital.

Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi told the Jordanian Amman News Agency that Arafat did, in fact, have AIDS – but insisted that the HIV virus was injected into the chairman’s bloodstream, and not the result of illicit sexual activity.

Al-Jazeera interrupted an interview with al-Kurdi due to his mention of Arafat’s having had AIDS.

French doctors who treated Arafat insisted after his death that he had died of a massive stroke after suffering intestinal inflammation, jaundice and disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), a blood condition.

Another Arafat aide, Bassam Abu Sharif, accused former French President Jacques Chirac of withholding knowledge that Israel killed Arafat with a substance that destroys red blood cells.

Even before Arafat died, US author and intelligence expert John Loftus said on the John Batchelor Show on WABC radio on October 26 that it was widely known in CIA circles that Arafat was dying from AIDS. Loftus further said that was the reason the US kept preventing Israel from killing Arafat – to allow him to be discredited by the ailment.

A 1987 book by Lt.-Gen. Ion Pacepa, the deputy chief of Romania's intelligence service under Communist dictator Nicola Ceausescu, may explain how Arafat contracted the sexually transmitted disease.

In his memoirs "Red Horizons," Pacepa relates a 1978 conversation with the general assigned to teach Arafat and the PLO techniques to deceive the West into granting the organization recognition. The general told him about Arafat’s nightly relations with his young male bodyguards and multiple partners. “Beginning with his teacher when he was a teen-ager and ending with his current bodyguards. After reading the report, I felt a compulsion to take a shower whenever I had been kissed by Arafat, or even just shaken his hand," Pacepa wrote.

Senior US intelligence official James J. Welsh, the National Security Agency's former PA analyst, told WorldNetDaily, "One of the things we looked for when we were intercepting Fatah communications were messages about Ashbal [Lion cub] members who would be called to Beirut from bases outside of Beirut. The Ashbal were often orphaned or abandoned boys who were brought into the organization, ostensibly to train for later entry into Fedayeen fighter units. Arafat always had several of these 13-15 year old boys in his entourage. We figured out that he would often recall several of these boys to Beirut just before he would leave for a trip outside Lebanon. It proved to be a good indicator of Arafat's travel plans. While Arafat did have a regular security detail, many of those thought to be security personnel - the teenage boys - were actually there for other purposes."

I wrote about Arafat and Pacepa's book, Red Horizons, in 2004. But no one wanted to discredit Arafat, the mass murderer. Neither his murderous campaigns against Jews nor his pledge to kill Israelis whenever he could, nor his massive theft of millions of dollars slated for the "poorpalestinianpeople" could discredit this beast. He was the Nobel Peace Prize winner after all, which made him fashionable; a horrific award bestowed upon a murderer and an award fundamentally invalid in every aspect, in a world that only knows how to blame Jews and Israel for everything and anything.

Obituary: Raul Hilberg

Raul Hilberg, a world-renowned Holocaust scholar, has died from a recurrence of lung cancer, his wife said. He was 81.

Hilberg, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Vermont, died Saturday, said his wife, Gwen. Though he had lung cancer, he never smoked, she said. He died with her at his side at the Vermont Respite House in Williston.

Hilberg was the author of The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), a landmark study of the Nazi killings of more than 5 million Jews.

He was honored by the German government for his contributions and teaching on the Holocaust and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, according to the university.

Hilberg, who taught at the university from 1956 to 1991, started the school's Holocaust Studies program. The university later created the Center for Holocaust Studies in 1992 "to honor Hilberg's teaching and research accomplishments. "

"The entire university community is saddened by the loss of this great scholar, but comforted in the legacy of writing and research he leaves for those who seek to understand one of the darkest, defining chapters in human history," university president Daniel Mark Fogel said.

Hilberg and his parents left Austria in 1938 after the Nazi invasion emigrated to the United States, where Hilberg served in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II.

As a member of the War Documentation Project, he found Hitler's private library in crates stored in Munich, the university said. That prompted him to start investigating the Holocaust.

"Once the Nuremberg Trials were over and a few people judged guilty, no one wanted to talk about it. But I was driven by a desire to know what happened," he had said.

He earned a B.A. degree from Brooklyn College in 1948, and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1950 and 1955.

Hilberg also was author of Perpetrators Victims Bystanders (1992); The Politics of Memory (1996); and Sources of Holocaust Research (2001).

Holocaust memoirs author, Lundholm, dead at 89

One of Germany’s most prominent Holocaust survivors, Anja Lundholm, whose books recounted the horrors she experienced in a Nazi camp after she was allegedly denounced by her own father, has died aged 89, her publisher said Monday.

The Munich-based publishing house LangenMueller said Lundholm died Saturday in Frankfurt. It did not release the cause of death.

Lundholm published a series of books written in a chillingly distant tone about her time at the Ravensbrueck women’s concentration camp in eastern Germany, including her 1988 memoir "Hoellentor" ("Hell’s Gate").

As a political dissident and the daughter of a Jewish woman, Lundholm fled Nazi Germany for Italy with a fake passport in 1941 and joined the anti-fascist resistance there.

In 1943, six months after the birth of her daughter, Lundholm was denounced -- by her SS officer father, she said -- and arrested.

She was sent to Ravensbrueck the next year at the age of 26 where she became a slave labourer in degrading conditions including random punishment at the hands of merciless guards, hunger and a terrifying loneliness made vivid in her books.

In April 1945, shortly before the war ended, she joined thousands of other emaciated prisoners on an evacuation march and only returned to Germany in 1953, when she began to write to come to terms with her trauma.

She later contracted multiple sclerosis, which she blamed on the monstrous medical experiments to which she was subjected in Ravensbrueck.

After the war she worked in Brussels, Stockholm, Rome and London as a translator and journalist.

"Hollentor" was recently re-published to glowing praise.

"Anja Lundholm has a surreal life behind her, she had to face a fate that could hardly have been more inhumane," the broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote.

"Anja Lundholm found a language for the unspeakable, " public broadcaster WDR said.

Lundholm won several of Germany’s top literary prizes for her novels and memoirs. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1974.

She told the daily Frankfurter Rundschau in an interview in 2003 that her work had sought an answer to one question: "What turns a friendly, helpful neighbour into a psychopath?"

Rest in peace.

Death Threats To Author of Long Live Israel

The following is an example of why the term, "Islamofascism" was coined; the need is so great to define a group of people - Islamofascists - who believe in only their own corporeal property, so convinced of their own superiority, and because of their self-ordained superiority, are compelled to crush and kill their competition. Islamofascists hate to compete, because they know deep down, they are really inferior. Via One Jerusalem via Pajamas Media:

American Thinker reports on Magdi Allam, the Egyptian born, deputy chief editor of Italy's newspaper Il Corriere della Sera. He is receiving death threats because his memoir is titled Viva Israele. Read more here.

I wrote about Magdi Allam's book, here.

Books: The English edition of Dr. Israel Eldad's *Jewish Revolution* has been republished by Gefen Publishing House

Description:
Watch Dr. Israel Eldad talking to Teddy Kollek about the Temple Mount back in 1991

With The Jewish Revolution classical Zionism has found its true interpretation. In the highest tradition of the soldier-statesman, Dr. Israel Eldad advocates a form of Zionism that is unpopular in conventional society. He condemns “establishmentarian,” “social-club” Zionism as a belittling of Jewish history and a threat to Jewish lives. In its place, he calls for a revolutionary creed -- one that dares assert its right to the Jewish homeland; not as defined by diplomats, politicians and Security Council Resolutions, but in biblical, historical terms.

He boldly declares that Jewish “diplomacy” failed to save millions of European Jews, and he accuses world leaders of inviting new Holocausts by denying history’s lessons and ignoring its imperatives. He warns the Jewish people that it can rely only on its own forces, and he offers a solution to the Arab problem in the Middle East.

The Jewish Revolution combines the passion of the patriot, the logic of the scholar and the sweep of the historian.

About the Author

Scholar, writer and active Zionist revolutionary Israel Eldad was born in Galicia in 1910. After graduating from the Rabbinical Seminary in Vienna and obtaining his doctorate in philosophy, he returned to Poland to teach Jewish Studies at the Vilna Teachers’ Seminary. Invited by Menachem Begin, he joined the Warsaw leadership of B’rit Trumpeldor -- “Betar” -- the youth section of Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionist Party. In 1938 he first met Avraham Stern, founder of the underground Zionist movement Lohamei Heirut Israel, “The Fighters for the Freedom of Israel -- Lehi” (the Stern Group).

Arriving in Palestine in 1941, he joined the underground as a member of Lehi Headquarters Staff. During the crucial years of World War II, when the British Mandatory Government was attempting to appease the Arabs by conducting a policy of repression against Palestine’s Jewish community, Eldad made secret broadcasts, wrote articles for underground publications and edited the Wall Newspaper -- “illegal” bulletins pasted on the walls at night -- since compiled in book form as Let the Walls Speak.

While attempting to escape arrest by the British police, Eldad suffered a serious back injury. For two years he remained in British prisons, his entire body encased in a cast. Dramatically freed from his military guards by Lehi comrades in 1946, he resumed his work in the underground movement until the establishment of the State of Israel.

For many years he was editor of Sulam, a political and literary monthly recognized as the leading journal of its kind. He wrote Ma’aser Rishon (The First Tithe), which deals with the Hebrew underground movement and his part in it. He is the author of Hegyonot Mikrah, a highly original, challenging commentary on the Bible. For four years he edited the unique historical paper Chronicles -- News of the Past. He translated from German into Hebrew the complete writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, published four volumes of selected papers and with his son Arieh wrote Jerusalem: The Challenge (1976).

Dr. Eldad was a Professor in Humanistic Studies at the Haifa Technion and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva. He died in 1996 and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.


Table of Contents
*Introduction
*An Existence of Nonconformity
*The Fall of the Bastille
*Sources of Zionism -- Two Old and One New
*New Zionism vs. the New Left, or the Joseph Complex
*Zionism as Liberation, Revolution and Renaissance
*Right, Necessary and Possible
*The Zionist Front in Soviet Russia
*Intermezzo, Rhapsody, Caesura
*Eretz Yisrael or Palestine
*The Arab-Jewish Conflict
*Before Any Court of Justice
*Jordan Is a River Not a State
*Israel and Ishmael
*Three Points of No Return and Three Stages of Salvation
*Israel
*Afterword by Arieh Eldad

http://www.israelbooks.com/bookDetails.asp?book=614