FATAH LEADER, SCHOOL BOOKS SUPPORT TERROR V. U.S. IN IRAQ

Fatah leader, school books support terror against US in Iraq (Jihad Watch)
But remember: they sincerely want peace! "Fatah Leader, School Books Supports Terrorism Against US in Iraq," by Ezra HaLevi for Israel National News:

(IsraelNN.com) A leader of Mahmoud Abbas's US-backed Fatah party has come out in support of the terrorist war being fought against US and British forces in Iraq. PA text books for school children also push attacks on American and British forces.

Mahmoud Ismail, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, expressed his support for the war on the US during an interview on official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV, which is under the control of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The clip was recorded and translated by Palestinian Media Watch, which monitors incitement on PA television.

Ismail further defined the US -Britain alliance fighting in Iraq as the Arab Nation's "enemies, the imperialists," and justified the "right to struggle and to resistance [euphemism for terror -PMW] in all possible ways in all the occupied lands." Those occupied lands, he said, include "Palestine" and Iraq....

According to PMW, the PA schoolbooks were published with foreign money, primarily from Belgium....

A JEWISH MILITARY CHAPLIN IN IRAQ

A Jewish Military Chaplain in Iraq - Anna Badkhen (Boston Globe) Mortar and rocket attacks occasionally jolt Camp Victory, the American military complex around Baghdad International Airport where U.S. Army Captain Andrew Shulman, 41, lives.  An Orthodox Jew from Malden, Mass., he has been stationed there since May, counseling soldiers of all faiths, holding Jewish holiday services, and providing spiritual guidance to Jewish service members all over Iraq.

Most of the troops he counsels are Christians from the Third Infantry Division, grappling with family lives disrupted by lengthy deployments. Shulman seems to revel in the paradoxes that accompany his deployment, like the time the Catholic chaplain ordered kosher Manischewitz wine for Communion - apparently, it keeps well.

THOSE SYRIAN NUKES

What Happened to Saddam's WMD? - Caroline Glick (Jerusalem Post)
Former federal prosecutor and the head of the non-governmental International Intelligence Summit, John Loftus, has released a report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, based on a private study of captured Iraqi documents.

As Loftus summarized, "Roughly one-quarter of Saddam's WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid-1990s. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid-to-late-1990s. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war."

"The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam's nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003. His nuclear weapons equipment was hidden in enormous underwater warehouses beneath the Euphrates River. Saddam's entire nuclear inventory was later stolen from these warehouses."

Loftus then cites Israeli sources who claim that the Iraqi nuclear program was transferred to Deir az Zour province in Syria. Israel reportedly destroyed a Syrian nuclear installation at Deir az Zour.

IRAQI JEWS

Iraqi Jews (Contentions)
Readers may recall a Time magazine article from July, “The Last Jews of Baghdad,” reporting that, in the Iraqi capital, only eight Jews remain of a population that numbered around 150,000 in the 1940’s, before decades of anti-Semitic persecution forced them to flee. This Diaspora is the subject of a moving, deftly written 1975 memoir Farewell Babylon: Coming of Age in Jewish Baghdad by the Baghdad-born Canadian author Naïm Kattan (born 1928). The book is newly reprinted by David Godine Publishers.

In his book, Kattan describes the culture of Baghdad’s ancient Jewish community, which produced the Babylonian Talmud. By the modern era it was a teeming, multi-lingual society that was doubtless inspiring to a young writer. One of Kattan’s boyhood friends, described in Farewell, Babylon, was Elie Kedourie (1926-1992), the distinguished anti-Marxist historian (who memorably asserted that Marxism turned the Middle East into a “wilderness of tigers”).

Kattan poignantly offers an eyewitness account of the 1941 anti-Jewish pogroms, which incited a mass exile of Jews from Iraq. During the so-called Farhud or “violent dispossession” of June 1 and 2, 1941, hundreds of Iraqi Jews were murdered. As Kattan related at a 2004 Jewish Book Week event in London, he was twelve years old at the time and

suddenly felt that I was going to be killed. We were sitting on the roof and then we tried to hide and listening to firearms coming closer and closer…. And all that my father could do to protect us, the only thing that he had to protect us, was to recite the psalms. He spent all the night praying and reciting psalms. Fortunately he knew a lot of psalms by heart.

Before this savage violence, despite ambient anti-Semitism, Kattan and his fellow Jews felt at home in Baghdad. An avid filmgoer, Kattan explains that he never went to the movies alone: “As I was a Jew, the young boys of my age, Christians or Muslims, would have attacked me with kicks and slaps.” Still, he recalls exulting in the Arabic films of the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum (1898-1975) who made audiences “throb with joy.”

I myself met Naïm Kattan, a diminutive, mustachioed gentleman, at a 2003 Quebec writer’s conference at the time of the invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime. I recall that Kattan kept silent as other Canadian writers around him expressed their outrage with anti-American tirades. Despite its context of grief and exile, Farewell Babylon has a tone of secure survival, inspired by the faith expressed by Kattan at London’s Jewish Book Week: “The Jews have this kind of difference: it is that they have a Book. Wherever they go they can refer to a Book…. They live by that Book and I hope they will continue to do so.”

HILLARY'S STRANGE FOREIGN POLICY STATEMENTS

First, she states that Iran's nuclear threats to destroy Israel is not a good enough reason to bomb Iran but that Iran's threat to America's supply of oil is. Now she states that if the U.S. surrenders in Iraq and pulls out, peace will bloom between Israel and her enemies.

SYRIA SENDING SUICIDE BOMBERS TO IRAQ TO KILL U.S. TROOPS

Report: Syria to Iraq Homicide Bomb Trail (FOXNEWS)
Homicide bombers are making a trail from Damascus, Syria, to Iraq to target American troops, according to a report.

A London Times' reporter interviewed a 23-year-old homicide bomber with knowledge about explosives and a degree in chemistry about his trek to kill Americans.

Ahmed talked with steady self-assurance about his plans to follow in his brother's footsteps, who blew himself up at a drinks stall in Iraq where American soldiers were nearby.

The young man helped his brother get ready for his mission, packing TNT into pouches with some nails and strapping the bomb to his 19-year-old brother's waist. He also slipped wire rings onto his brother's fingers and attached them to a fourth detonator in the palm of his hand, with directions to head towards the American soldiers.

“Go sell them some Pepsi,” Ahmed told him gently. “We will meet in heaven, you and I, and that’s a promise.”

Ahmed says his brother kissed him, turned and walked away without a moment’s hesitation.

JONAH'S DILEMMA

Jonah's Dilemma by MICHAEL B. OREN and MARK GERSON
(WSJ)
This year, as on every Yom Kippur, Jews throughout the world will recite the Book of Jonah, one of the Hebrew Bible's shortest and most enigmatic texts. Jonah is the only Israelite prophet to preach to Gentiles, and the only prophet who clearly hates his job. And yet Jews read the book on their holiest day of the year because of its message of atonement and forgiveness. But Jonah also conveys crucial lessons for all Americans as they grapple with crises in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and yearn for far-sighted leadership.

ISRAEL WAS OPPOSED TO IRAQ WAR

The “Israel Lobby” Strikes Again by Emanuele Ottolenghi (Contentions)
It’s hardly a secret that Israel was always skeptical about the war in Iraq, as this commentary from the eminent scholar Martin Kramer shows.

Now, for those tempted to dismiss Kramer as a tool of the Zionist conspiracy, there’s this recent, widely circulated report. It repeats the points Kramer made: Israel warned the U.S. against an Iraq invasion in 2002, and Israelis were adamant in their objections to the war. This time, however, the news comes from an unimpeachable source: Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff. (I’d like to see people paint him as a lackey of the neocons.)

And all this time, I thought the war in Iraq was launched at the behest of the Lobby, to serve Israel’s interests.

THE LAST JEWS OF BAGHDAD

The Last Jews of Baghdad (Time)
Baghdad was once one of the great cradles of Jewish culture and wisdom, but now, according to the Christian priest who has been looking after them, there are only eight Jews left in the Iraqi capital, and their situation is "more than desperate." The Rev. Canon Andrew White, the Anglican chaplain to Iraq, says that the small group is in considerable danger. However, the community has been unable to agree to emigrate as a whole. Some of its members, without identifying themselves as Jews, have attempted to leave individually, but have been turned down. White says that only one of the Jews, a woman, still regularly goes to a Baghdad synagogue, though he will give no details.

BAGHDAD'S 8 JEWS STAYING PUT

Baghdad’s Jews stay put
Baghdad’s eight remaining Jews, the last remnant of a 2,700-year-old Jewish community, are increasingly desperate, but they still don’t want to leave Iraq. (The Associated Press)

JEWISH SOLDIER MOURNED IN SOUTH FLORIDA

'G.I. Jew' mourned in South Florida (JTA)
NORTH LAUDERDALE, Fla. (JTA) – The Army had big plans for Daniel Agami when he returned from Iraq. "They were going to use his talents and center an advertising campaign around him as an ambassador for the United States Army," said Lt. Col. Douglas Maddox Jr., a casualty assistance officer. "The campaign was slated to commence in three months when Daniel was to return stateside." Agami never made it back. Maddox was speaking following his funeral on June 26.

The 25-year-old Army specialist affectionately known as "G.I. Jew" was killed five days earlier in Baghdad when an improvised explosive device detonated near the Humvee in which he and four other soldiers were riding.

His funeral at the Star of David Cemetery in North Lauderdale drew more than 1,000 mourners, including several area rabbis and representatives of Jewish organizations. He was buried with full military honors. Instead of the usual 21-gun salute, the Honor Guard fired 18 rounds to signify "chai," the Jewish symbol for life.

Agami, who lived in South Florida, was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Army Commendation Medal. He also was promoted from private first class to specialist.

"Daniel did not consult with anyone when he enlisted. He simply felt a calling," said Rabbi Yossi Denburg, dean of the Hebrew Academy Community School in Margate and spiritual leader of the Chabad of Coral Springs, who officiated at the funeral. "He always knew his life was meant for a greater significance and purpose and, first and foremost, Daniel was a soldier in God's army."

Denburg said Agami kept kosher in the Army, and slept with an American and Israeli flag over his bunk. "His rifle had a sign titled 'The Hebrew Hammer,' and he named the U.S. Army issued yarmulke his 'Combatika,' " the rabbi said. "Daniel’s sense of humor and love of life was evident in all that he did."

According to Capt. Jared Purcell, the Army's public affairs officer in Baghdad, Agami was a mentor to orphans in Iraq.

IRAN'S JEWISH CONSPIRACY THEORY OF THE DAY

YESTERDAY IN IRAQ, SUNNI MUSLIMS BLEW UP A SHIITE MOSQUE. ACCORDING TO IRAN, THIS CHARMING LITTLE MUSLIM ON MUSLIM HATE-CRIME WAS PLANNED BY ..... THE JOOOOOOOOOOOOZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!

I WISH WE WERE AS POWERFUL AS THESE PARANOID NUTBAGS THINK WE ARE. THEN I'D USE MY MIND-CONTROLLED LASER TO DRILL A HOLE IN KHAMENEI'S HEAD (AND LET THE TAPIOCA RUN OUT).

IRAN'S PARANOID RANTING WOULD BE A LOT FUNNIER IF THE WORLD WEREN'T PASSIVELY WATCHING THEM DEVELOP A NUKE.

The Ayatollah Khamenei: US, Israel guilty of mosque attack in Iraq (YNet)
The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, spiritual leader of Iran, published a letter Thursday, accusing US and Israeli Intelligence services of planning the attack on the Shiite mosque in Iraq Wednesday. Khamenei's letter was published on the Iranian news agency, and in it he called on the Iraqi people "to be alert when faced with the dangerous policies of our enemies." (Dudi Cohen)

VIDEO: DOCUMENTARY ON IAF RAID ON IRAQI NUKE REACTOR

HERE'S SOME MANDATORY VIEWING FOR IRANIAN T.V. ON THE 26TH ANNIVERARY OF THE IAF'S ATTACK ON IRAQ'S NUCLEAR REACTOR, THE MILITARY CHANNEL IS AIRING, "RAID ON THE REACTOR."
Raid on the Reactor

If you're having trouble watching the video, try copying the following URL into your browser:
http://video.google.com /videoplay?docid=2295792449224502914&pr=goog-sl&hl=en

DID CARTER TRY TO SABOTAGE US-ISRAELI RELATIONS?

Carter failed tell Reagan about Israeli concerns with Osirak by Judith A. Klinghoffer (Political Mavens)
Did Jimmy and his men try to sabotage US - Israeli relations or were they just disorganized incompetents? You choose. One thing is clear, the Reagan administration's harsh response to the Osirak bombing was based on the faulty assumption that Israel failed to inform the US of its concerns. The following passages from his diary tell the story. The italics are mine:

June 7 - Got word Israeli bombing of Iraq - nuclear reactor. I swear Armageddon is near.Returned to W.H. at 3 P.M. More word on bombing. P.M. Begin informed us after the fact.

June 9 - Ended the day with an N.S.C. meeting re the bombing of Iraq. P.M. Begin insists the plant was preparing to produce nuclear weapons for use on Israel. If he waited ’til the French shipment of “hot” Uranium arrived he couldn’t order the bombing because to the radiation that would be loosed over Baghdad. I can understand his fear but feel he took the wrong option. He should have told us & the French, we could have done something to remove the threat.

June 11 - Then after lunch the U.N. phase started; 5 Arab St. Ambassadors, followed by the Israeli Amb. The 5 of course protested we hadn’t been hard enough on Israel. The Israeli deplored the harsh action we’d taken. I told all of them out goal was peace in the Middle East. The bombing was the result of the suspicions & hostilities that exist there. We are going to keep on trying to keep on trying to bring peace to Lebanon & then Between Arabs & Israelis.

The truth is the Arab indignation on behalf of Iraq is a waste. Saddam Hussein is a “no good nut” and I think he is trying to build a nuclear weapon. He has called for the destruction of Israel & he wants to be the leader of the Arab world - that’s why he invade Iran.

June 16 - We have just learned that Israel & the previous admin. did communicate about Iraq & the nuclear threat & the U.S. agreed it was a threat. There was never a mention of this to us by the outgoing admin. Amb. Lewis cabled word to us after the Israeli attack on Iraq & now we find there was a stack of cables & memos tucked away in St. Dept. files.

PALESTINIANS' HISTORY OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

Palestinian Arabs Doing Violence to Own Cause By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM (NY Sun)
Syria and Al Qaeda laid siege to northern Lebanon this week at the aptly named Nahr al-Bared, or "Cold River," Palestinian Arab refugee camp, but it fell to the ever-obliging Palestinians to do the killing. The ongoing fighting between the Palestinian Arabs and the Lebanese army in Tripoli says a lot about a skewered sense of entitlement felt by Palestinian refugees in many of the countries that play host to them and not much about their gratitude.

For its part, the Lebanese government has asserted that the Fatah al-Islam gang fighting its army is no more than a band of Syrian hired guns bent on disrupting Lebanon's latest effort to set up an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.

U.N. investigators have ascertained that virtually all of the defendants prosecutors are likely to name are Syrian officials, including President Al-Assad, his brother, and a brother-in-law, among others.

Mayhem is always to be expected from Syria, but why are the Palestinian Arabs offering themselves up as tools of Syria, destroying whatever sympathy is still left for their cause, and turning themselves into pariahs in the Arab world? And why do they keep doing it over and over?

In 1990, some 400,000 Palestinian Arab residents of Kuwait cheered on, and even collaborated with, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army during his invasion of the Gulf state; when the Gulf War liberated Kuwait a year and a half later, the Kuwaitis threw all their Palestinians out.

Twenty years earlier in Jordan, armed Palestinian Arab gangs waged the so-called Black September Civil War in an effort to overthrow King Hussein and take over the country.

Both episodes cost the Palestinian Arab cause dearly. Those in Kuwait lost some of the best living standards they ever enjoyed. In Jordan, after killing some 7,000 Palestine Liberation Organization fighters, Hussein threw the rest out along with their leader, Yasser Arafat, who had found his way to Lebanon by 1971.

Within a decade, Arafat and his PLO gangs had brought turmoil to Lebanon, in effect triggering the 1975 Lebanese Civil War and, in 1982, inviting an Israeli invasion of the country. Those travesties got the gangster leadership of the PLO evicted once again, this time to Tunisia, leaving behind some 350,000 Palestinian Arabs holed up in refugee camps of Lebanon, which quickly became 12 cesspools of radicalism. They are where Syria and Al Qaeda went to recruit the newest gang of mercenary Palestinian Arabs, Fatah al-Islam.

All of this invites the question of what makes our Palestinian Arab brethren gravitate constantly toward such lowest possible denominators and end up as the prime losers.

After the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993 offered a chance for much of the gang leadership to return to the West Bank and Gaza, it took Arafat's crew less than two years to alienate even the most die-hard Israeli doves. Suicide bombings led to checkpoints, which led to two intifadas, thus ending the Palestinian Spring.

Shortly after Prime Minister Sharon pulled the Israeli army out of Gaza in the summer of 2005, handing the Palestinian Arabs their own territory to govern for the first time ever, they quickly transformed it into a " Mad Max" arena of shootings, kidnappings, and lawlessness. Unable to agree on anything, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Brigades, Popular Resistance Committees, and the other factions all went for each other's throats.

Similarly self-destructive impulses were seen in Lebanon this week, as Fatah al-Islam gang members made their way back to their camp — from a bank robbery — with the Lebanese army in hot pursuit. Because of a Byzantine pan-Arab agreement brokered in 1969, Lebanese forces cannot set foot in any of the camps hosting Palestinian Arab "guests" of Lebanon.

As you read this, the-bank-robbers-turned-freedom-fighters are likely shooting at the Lebanese army in the name of a free Arab Palestine. Sadly, this is the sort of bankruptcy the Palestinian mind has come to.

But the times, they are a-changing. When the Tripoli episode is done, and internecine fighting among the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza resumes, the world will have moved further away from any sense of commitment to the Palestinian cause, and so will other Arabs.

Writing in a mass circulation Egyptian daily, Al-Akhbar, one of the most widely read columnists in Egypt, Ahmad Ragab, ended a biting commentary about the Palestinian infighting with what seems to be a spreading sentiment: "A curse upon all your houses."

IRANIAN MISCHIEF

Teheran Behind Escalation of Violence from Gaza; Officials Fear Longer Range Rocket Fire - Yaakov Katz, Khaled Abu Toameh, and Rebecca Anna Stoil
Iran's fingerprints were all over the recent escalation in Gaza and the Palestinian rocket attacks, Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said Monday. Teheran ordered the terrorist groups to escalate the conflict in an effort to distract the world's attention from its nuclear program, he said. "Everything is being organized by Iran," Sneh said. "All of the terrorist groups are supported directly by Iran, which pays for all of the military training and the weapons."

Government officials expressed concern that Palestinian rockets could reach southern Ashdod and the western reaches of Beersheba. "We are getting ready for the possibly that the range will increase," Sneh said. "They can increase the range and we need to be ready." A Hamas official in the Gaza said on Monday: "We call on our fighters to launch rockets attacks on the settlement of Ashkelon....We will force the settlers to run away from Ashkelon as they have already done in the settlement of Sderot. We will continue to fight until the Jews leave all of Palestine."

The IDF Home Front Command began distributing pamphlets to residents of Netivot and other southern towns on Monday, explaining what to do if the rockets come. Sneh said that fear of longer-range rockets was behind the decision to distribute the pamphlets throughout southern Israel. (Jerusalem Post)

Jane's: Iran to Buy Russian Arms via Syria (Reuters/Asharq Alawsat-UK)
Syria has agreed to supply Iran with at least 10 out of 50 Pantsyr-S1E air defense systems that Damascus is in the process of buying from Russia, Jane's Defense Weekly reported. Iran would take delivery of them in late 2008. To reward Syria, Tehran would part-finance Syria's Pantsyrs as well as paying for its own.

Syria struck a $730 million deal with Russia earlier this year for the self-propelled short-range gun and missile air defense systems. A Security Council resolution in March urged all states to exercise "vigilance and restraint" in the supply, sale or transfer of weaponry to Iran, including missile systems.

Iran's Secret Plan for Summer Offensive to Force U.S. Out of Iraq - Simon Tisdall (Guardian-UK)
Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaeda elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces, U.S. officials say.

"They [Iran] are behind a lot of high-profile attacks meant to undermine U.S. will and British will....The attacks are directed by the Revolutionary Guard who are connected right to the top [of the Iranian government]," a senior U.S. official in Baghdad warned.

SECURITY FENCE HYPOCRISY

Wall Papers (BackSpin)

After all the negative publicity Israel's security fence received, editors should be blushing over the descriptions of a wall the US wanted to build around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki halted construction, but not before we spotted the following headlines.

* Philadelphia Inquirer:

Sunnis denounce neighborhood wall

* Scotland on Sunday:

Alarm as US builds Baghdad safety wall

* And our favorite, courtesy the Washington Post:

'Gated Communities' For the War-Ravaged

Can anyone possibly imagine Israel's security fence getting such glowing headlines?

CARTOON

THIS CARTOON WAS INSPIRED BY YESTERDAY'S NEWS THAT THE NEW U.S. BACKED IRAQI GOVERNMENT IS ENFORCING A BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL.

IRAQ STEPS UP ANTI-ISRAEL BOYCOTT

Iraq steps up anti-Israel boycott. (JPost)
The US-backed Iraqi government is enforcing the Arab boycott of Israel with increasing frequency, The Jerusalem Post has learned, with the number of boycott-related incidents involving US firms operating in Iraq nearly quadrupling last year, according to official US statistics.

In its recently released annual report for 2006, the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security noted that there had been 31 cases in which the Iraqi government had engaged in restrictive trade practices last year.

In 2005, according to the previous year’s report, there were a total of just eight such cases involving Iraq.

US law bars American firms from complying with boycott-related requests and requires them to report any such incidents to the authorities. These might include demands made of companies to verify that their products do not contain components made in the Jewish state or signing forms attesting that they do not do business with Israel.

The most recent edition of the Business Guide for Iraq, a handbook that was published by the US Commerce Department last year, cautions American businessmen regarding Iraq’s participation in the anti-Israel boycott.

“Currently, some US companies are reporting requests from Iraq for adherence to the Arab League boycott of Israel,” says the guide, noting that, “compliance with such requests may be prohibited by the Export Administration Regulations.”

IS U.S. USING ISRAELI DRONES OVER IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN?

Maker: Israeli 'Drones' Fly Over Iraq (BREITBART)
JERUSALEM (AP) - Pilotless planes small enough for a single soldier to carry and operate are gathering intelligence for U.S.-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israeli manufacturer said Monday. Elbit Systems, one of Israel's leading defense electronics companies, said its little "Skylark" can cover an area within a range of 6 miles day or night. It is about 7 feet long with a wingspan of nearly 8 feet, the company said.

"Skylark is operational and currently deployed in the global war on terror in Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan," the statement said. It described the Skylark as suited for "close range, beyond-the-next hill, counter-terror missions."

Lt. Col. Matthew McLaughlin of CENTCOM, the American command that handles Iraq and Afghanistan, said the military "would not confirm the use of the drone," but is always looking for aircraft with such capabilities. ...

Earlier this month, state-owned arms-maker Rafael said it had won a contract to supply the U.S. Marine Corps with state-of the-art armored vehicles, and military analysts said Israeli firms had long been supplying and maintaining equipment for American ground and naval forces in Iraq, although both buyers and sellers generally preferred to keep a low profile.