The Official Flag of Palestine

"Until the 1960s, name “Palestine” resonated as something Jewish to peoples ears. The 4,000 year old Jewish homeland or “Land of Israel” or the “Holy Land” were all synonymous!! The British as legal Mandatory over the Mandate managed or mismanaged the state partially with Jewish Auxiliary until Jews regained official sovereignty in 1948, by declaring independence. The U.N. did not recreate Israel as some people claim." the full story of the flag

Edinburg Votes to Join Texas, Accelerating Mexico Crisis

Stolen from Gates of Vienna

An amusing take on the Crimean crises.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The latest on the Mexican crisis, from Reuters:

EDINBURG, Mexico (Reuters) March 6, 2022 — Edinburg’s legislature voted to join Texas on Thursday and its Washington-backed government set a referendum within 10 days on the decision in a dramatic escalation of the crisis over Tamaulipas state in Mexico.

The Edinburg region of Texas — which was ceded to Mexico in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama to satisfy domestic political pressures — consists on the former counties of Webb, Zapata, Jim Hogg, Starr, Hidalgo, Willacy, and Cameron. The region is now part of Tamaulipas state.

The sudden acceleration of moves to bring Edinburg, which has an Anglo majority and has effectively been seized by Texan forces, formally under Austin’s rule came as UN leaders gathered for an emergency summit to find ways to pressure Texas to back down.

Russian President Vladimir Putin took steps to punish those involved in threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Mexico, ordering the freezing of their Russian assets and a ban on travel into Russia.

The Russian Navy announced a guided-missile destroyer, the Archangel, was heading to the Gulf of Mexico in what it said was a long-planned training exercise and not a show of force.

The Edinburger legislature voted unanimously “to enter into the Republic of Texas with the rights of a citizen of the Republic of Texas”.

The vice-governor of Edinburg, home to Texas’ Gulf of Mexico military base in Port Isabel, said a referendum on the status would take place on March 16. He said all state property would be “nationalized”, the U.S. dollar could be adopted and Mexican troops would be treated as occupiers and be forced to surrender or leave.

The announcement, which diplomats said could not have been made without U.S. President Rand Paul’s approval, raised the stakes in the most serious east-west confrontation since the beginning of the Great Collapse.

U.S. stocks fell and the dollar weakened further after the news. Moody’s ratings agency said the stand-off was negative for Texas’ creditworthiness.

Texas said it would make it easier to give passports to native English speakers who have lived in Texas or the United States. Paul has cited the threat to American citizens to justify military action in the Caribbean in 2019 and now in Mexico.
Far from seeking a diplomatic way out of the crisis, Paul appears to have chosen to create facts on the ground before the East can agree on
more than token action against him.

UN leaders had been set to warn but not sanction the U.S. over its military intervention after Washington rebuffed Eastern diplomatic efforts to persuade it to pull forces in Edinburg, with a population of about 2 million, back to their bases. It was not immediately clear what impact the Edinburger moves would have.

French President Dominique Strauss-Kahn told reporters on arrival at the summit: “There will be the strongest possible pressure on Texas to begin lowering the tension and in the pressure there is, of course, eventual recourse to sanctions.”

A Edinburger legislature official said voters will be asked two questions: should Edinburg be part of the Republic of Texas, and should Edinburg return to an earlier constitution (2017) that gave the region more autonomy?

“If there weren’t constant threats from the current illegal Mexican authorities, maybe we would have taken a different path,” deputy legislature speaker Donald McTeague told reporters outside the legislature building in Edinburg’s main city, also named Edinburg.

“I think there was an annexation of Edinburg by Mexico, if we are going to call things by their name. Because of this mood and feeling we took the decision to join Texas. I think we will feel much more comfortable there.”

To provide some perspective on the Ukraine crisis, the imaginary article above was created by modifying this Reuters story (which has already been altered by Reuters via several updates since I downloaded it).
The Crimea was a part of the Russian state from 1783 — when Catherine the Great wrested it from the Ottomans — until 1954, when Nikita Khrushchev assigned it to the Ukrainian S.S.R. for internal Soviet political reasons.

Shackles Of The NEW American Slavery ~~~~By J.D. Longstreet

Stolen from Faultline USA

Long before the Progressives got hold of our Public Education system in the United States, educators used to actually teach history. Those days, however, are long, long, gone.

Knowledge of one’s history is integral to the character of a person, of a people and of a nation. History is OUR story. It is the record of our victories and our failures. It tells us where we have been and tells us how we got here. It forms the basic foundation for any plans we formulate for where we intend to go in our collective future. History is vital.

For history to yield a true course into the future it is absolutely necessary that the records be absolutely complete. That means history should always tell the whole story — the good, the bad, and the ugly — ALL of it. The records should always include those events of which we are justly proud — and — justly ashamed. For without the entire record, studying our history would be akin to reading a newspaper from which articles of critical importance have been cut out and discarded.

A scholar attempting to study our history would never get the entire story, the entire record, and any decisions made, or actions taken, based on his study of recorded history would, of necessity, be flawed. But the scholar would never know those decisions and actions were indeed, flawed, because his own studies were, to put it mildly, incomplete.

Insufficient knowledge often referred to (commonly) as ignorance, has been the root cause of the downfall of many nations. And it now appears it has become the root cause of the downfall of The United States of America.

Today, America faces one of its worst crises ever. A Constitutional Crisis looms on America’s horizon as the current government seeks to expand its powers into areas where it has no constitutional authority. Congress continues to cross constitutional lines and into legislative territory held sacrosanct by the constitution for the states and/or the people… not the federal government. Our President simply by passes Congress, and the constitution, and makes law himself and then decrees its existence.

Nullification laws used by the southern states prior to the American Civil War to try to warn Congress they were “out of bounds” are being dusted off and returned to use by several states while many other states are actively considering them.

How did we come to this?

National Ignorance.

I contend that had it not been for ignorance of the constitution, ignorance of America’s collective history, ignorance of the history of western civilization, the current government of the US would not be in power today. There is simply no way, short of rebellion, for a leadership so bent on transforming America from a constitutional republic into a socialist/communist nation, to have ever come to power.

Americans are a “breed apart.” Unlike our European cousins we tend to abhor government intrusion and intervention in our lives. We fought a war against a world superpower when we were only 13 colonies stuck on the eastern seaboard of a vast mostly unknown, and certainly un-conquered, continent, to break free from the shackles of a government which resembles, far too closely, the government we have today in our nation’s capital. It is a vital part of our story — of our history.

But ignorance has taken a toll, a horrible toll, on America. A generation, or more, of Americans do not know who they are. They don’t know that Americans fought a war to free themselves from a tyrannical government much like the one currently ruling over us today in Washington, DC. Too, they are ignorant of their rights, which were granted by God and the US Constitution. It is THIS ignorance that has brought America to the precipice to which she desperately clings today.

America’s current national leadership is only the tip of an iceberg. It is just the tip a movement that has been toiling, for nearly a century, behind the scenes to bring about this transformation of America into some sort of collectivist state, a socialist/communist state, if you will. If they are finally successful they will install an all powerful central government which will impose it’s will on every American at a whim. Representative government will be gone. “Consent of the Governed” will have no meaning, whatsoever. It will, effectively, re-impose slavery in America – and this time – we will ALL be slaves.

Even today the powerful Obama Administration has extended its tentacles into practically every aspect of our lives. What is truly frightening, however, is this: Now that Obamacare is law; bonds have been forged that will enslave every American and tether us to the government as slaves forever.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A quote to remember:

Only a nation that remembers its past has a future.
~~~~~ Napoleon  Bonaparte

Every Time A New Pope Is Elected...

Stolen From Simply Jews

There are many rituals in accordance with tradition, but there is one tradition that very few people know about.

Shortly after a new Pope is enthroned, the Chief Rabbi of Rome seeks an audience. He is shown into the Pope's presence, whereupon he presents the Pope with a silver tray bearing a velvet cushion. On top of the cushion is an ancient, shriveled envelope. The Pope symbolically stretches out his arm in a gesture of rejection. The Chief Rabbi then retires, taking the envelope with him and does not return until the next Pope is elected.

A new Pope's reign was shortly followed by a new Chief Rabbi. He was intrigued by this ritual and that its origins were unknown to him. He instructed the best scholars of the Vatican to research it, but they came up with nothing.

When the time came and the Chief Rabbi was shown into his presence, they faithfully enacted the ritual rejection but, as the Chief Rabbi turned to leave, the Pope called him back.

"My brother," the Pope whispered, "I must confess that we Catholics are ignorant of the meaning of this ritual enacted for centuries between us and you, the representative of the Jewish people. I have to ask you, what is it all about?"

The Chief Rabbi shrugged and replied: "We have no more idea than you do. The origin of the ceremony is lost in the traditions of ancient history."

The Pope said: "Let us retire to my private chambers and enjoy a glass of kosher wine together; then with your agreement, we shall open the envelope and discover the secret at last." The Chief Rabbi agreed.

Fortified in their resolve by the wine, they gingerly pried open the curling parchment envelope and with trembling fingers, the Chief Rabbi reached inside and extracted a folded sheet of similarly ancient paper.

As the Pope peered over his shoulder, he slowly opened it. They both gasped with shock —

It was a bill for the Last Supper — from "Moishe the Caterer."

Remark: that joke is probably as old as Papacy, but right now it's relevant again, for a while...

You Think Mass Killings Of Political Dissidents Couldn’t Happen In The United States? Think Again.

Hat tip to a12iggymom

You think mass killings of political dissidents couldn’t happen in the United States? Think again.

America, Flirting with the Dark Side of History



If video will not load click here.

Remember this:

Adolf Hitler was elected into office, he did not take it by revolt.
First he registered and then took away the guns.
The German people welcomed the Hitler Regime.  They loved their Führer.  They shouted and screamed when ever he showed himself.  Many women fainted at Hitler's sight.  Yet at the end of the war not one German said that he was a Nazi.

Without guns a dictatorship can do whatever they want to their people.  Every dictator, every nation, every time.  Without failure.

History 101

I received this from my friend James Shott


For those that don't know about history ... Here is a condensed version:

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: Liberals, and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.

Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. Those became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud Lite, Bud or Miller. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, engineers, corporate executives, athletes, members of the military, airline pilots and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America . They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history:

It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it or responding to it.

A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers and to more liberals just to tick them off.

And there you have it.

Let your next action reveal your true self.

Do You Remember?

These events are actually historical.

1. In 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by a Muslim male.

2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by Muslim males.

3. In 1972 a Pan Am 747 was hijacked and eventually diverted to an Arab country where a fuse was lit on final approach and it was blown up shortly after landing by Muslim males.

4. In 1973 a Pan Am 707 was destroyed in Rome, with 33 people killed, when it was attacked with grenades by Muslim males.

5. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by Muslim males.

6. During the 1980's a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by Muslim males.

Leon Klinghoffer

7. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by Muslim males.

8. In 1985, the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by Muslim males.

9. In 1985, TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by Muslim males. 10. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by Muslim males.

11. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by Muslim males.

12. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Muslim males.

13. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take down the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by Muslim males.

14. In 2002, the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against Muslim males.

15. In 2002, reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded by--you guessed it Muslim males

No, I really don't see a pattern here to justify profiling, do you? So, to ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics intent on killing us, airport security screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people.Absolutely No Profiling!

They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President's security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winner and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim Males alone lest they be guilty of profiling.

IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG HERE OR AM I JUST NOT GETTING WHO HAS ATTACKED AMERICA??

He Who Controls The Present Controls The Past

Is one of the slogans of the Party in the novel 1984 by George Orwell.  In the novel the Party changes the facts of history to suit their purposes.  And it seems that the White House under Big Brother Barack Hussein Obama is doing the same.

The Obama White House is drawing ridicule for appending the official online biographies of nearly every president over the last century in order to link President Obama's accomplishments to the former commanders in chief.

The Obama team went into the pages of U.S. presidents dating back to Calvin Coolidge to add friendly looking "Did you know?" fact boxes to the end of their bios. Those additions were used to plug a host of Obama administration initiatives, ranging from the health care overhaul to the so-called "Buffett Rule" to his green-energy policies.

For instance, the following line was added to the official bio of the late President Ronald Reagan:

"In a June 28, 1985, speech, Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multimillionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule."

Thus stating that President Obama is just like Ronald Reagan.

The White House is coming under heavy criticism from conservatives for the changes, and not just to Reagan's page.

Late Tuesday, the White House defended itself, claiming the staff was merely adding links to other pages.

"No biographies have been altered," a White House official told Fox News. "We simply added links at the bottom of each page to related whitehouse.gov content, which is a commonly used best practice to encourage people to browse more pages on a site."

The additions do include links, but they're more than that. Each one finds a way to tout an Obama administration policy or practice in the process.

There's this at the bottom of the Franklin D. Roosevelt biography, for instance:

"On August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. Today the Obama administration continues to protect seniors and ensure Social Security will be there for future generations."

And this, at the end of President Lyndon Johnson's, drawing a link between his signing of Medicare and Obama's signing of the health care overhaul:

"President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law in 1965 -- providing millions of elderly health care stability. President Obama's historic health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, strengthens Medicare, offers eligible seniors a range of preventive services with no cost-sharing, and provides discounts on drugs when in the coverage gap known as the 'donut hole.'"

The changes also link Harry Truman's call for civil rights to the Obama administration's push to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." And they link Jimmy Carter's creation of the Department of Energy to Obama's push for an "all of the above" energy approach today.

The Obama accomplishments cited range from the significant to the mundane. On the bio of John F. Kennedy, the Obama staff cited the current president's decision to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps with a "presidential proclamation," as a way to link the current administration to Kennedy's -- which launched the Peace Corps.

The only post-Coolidge president whose page is so far untouched is that of Gerald Ford.

Conservative blogs and publications ripped the White House Tuesday for the move, even starting a Twitter hashtag #ObamaInHistory to mock him. The Republican National Committee launched a tumble page called: "Obama in History -- World Changing Events You Didn't Know Obama Played A Part In."

The page goes on to show pictures of Obama standing with historical figures ranging from Einstein to Elvis to The Beatles. It also shows Obama at the Berlin Wall and Stonehenge.

Source

I guess that when you don't have a record you are proud of to run on you have to associate yourself with Presidents past.  And when you are the President you can control what is written about you and your predecessors on the White House website.

A Time for Choosing

This is an excerpt of the 30 minute speech supporting the Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. Reagan speaks of big government, high taxation, and the "war on poverty." He addresses foreign policy issues including the risk of appeasement, "peace through strength," and the Vietnam War. The speech establishes Reagan as an important figure in the conservative wing of the Republican party.

To a significant degree, Ronald Reagan's election to the presidency stems from this speech, given on national television on behalf of, and sponsored by, Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. The speech remains amazingly fresh as a statement of modern American conservative philosophy four decades after it was delivered.

Ronald Reagan - A Time for Choosing (October 27, 1964)



Words to remember yesterday, today and especially on November 6, 2012 when you enter the voting booth.

One People

Genes do not lie!  That is a scientific fact.  You can dispute archeology, biblical studies, even historical documents and monuments, but you cannot dispute the basic genetic fact:  Jews are one people and the indigenous people of Israel.

The Jews have been not only a national and religious group since the 2nd century BCE but also have common genetic links derived in the ancient Middle East despite their dispersion throughout the world, sophisticated genetic analysis based in New York has concluded.

The study, which was published on Thursday in the online edition of The American Journal of Human Genetics, also provides the first-ever detailed genetic maps of the three major Jewish subpopulations – a precious resource that can be used to study the genetic origins of disease in non-Jews as well.

The important study, called “Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry,” was conducted by Dr. Gil Atzmon and Prof. Edward Burns at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Prof. Harry Ostrer of New York University’s School of Medicine. It also included Prof. Eitan Friedman, head of oncogenetics at Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, and others.

They performed a genome-wide analysis of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews; Italian, Greek and Turkish Sephardi Jews; and Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian Jews. A total of 237 participants from diverse Jewish communities in the metropolitan New York region, Seattle, Israel, Athens and Rome underwent blood tests. The 237 Jews were included only if all four grandparents came from the same Jewish community.

The results were compared with a genetic analysis of 418 people from non-Jewish groups around the world.

Jews from the different regions of the world were found to share many genetic traits that are distinct from other groups and that date back to ancient times.

The researchers wrote in the 10-page article to appear in the journal’s print edition that Jews from the major Diaspora groups formed a distinct population cluster, albeit one that is closely related to European and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations. Each of the Diaspora groups also formed its own cluster within the larger Jewish cluster.

In addition, each group demonstrated Middle Eastern ancestry and varying degrees of mixing with surrounding populations. The genetic analysis showed that the two major groups – Middle Eastern and European Jews – split from from each other about 2,500 years ago.

For more than a century, Jews and non-Jews alike have tried to define the relatedness of contemporary Jewish people, the article states.

“Previous genetic studies of blood group and serum markers suggested that Jewish groups had Middle Eastern origin with greater genetic similarity between paired Jewish populations. However, these and successor studies of monoallelic Y chromosomal and mitochondrial genetic markers did not resolve the issues of within- and between-group Jewish genetic identity.”

The new research, however, showed “distinctive Jewish population clusters – each with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, proximity to contemporary Middle Eastern populations and variable degrees of European and North African admixture.”

Thus, this study demonstrates that European/Syrian and Middle Eastern Jews represent “a series of geographical isolates or clusters woven together by shared identity-by-descent (IBD) genetic threads.”

It also disproved claims of large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry.

“This study provides new genomic information that can benefit not only those of Jewish ancestry, but the population at large,” said Burns, the executive dean and a pathologist at Einstein.

“The study supports the idea of a Jewish people linked by a shared genetic history,” added Ostrer. “Yet the admixture with [non-Jewish] European people explains why so many European and Syrian Jews have blue eyes and blond hair.”

Asked to comment, Prof. Karl Skorecki – director of medical and research development at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and director of nephrology and molecular medicine at the Technion’s Rappaport Medical School – stated that he was “familiar with this excellent study.”

Skorecki made headlines around the world with his landmark 1997 discovery that the majority of kohanim (Jews of the priestly tribe) were descended from a single common male ancestor, and has conducted extensive research in Jewish genetics.

“I have had discussions with Dr. Atzmon, who visits Israel often and whom I know well. He will be visiting our faculty of medicine and give a lecture on June 9.”

“The goal of the study was to determine a genomic baseline,” said lead author Atzmon. “With this established, we’ll be able to more easily identify genes associated with complex disorders like diabetes that are determined by multiple variants across the genome. Armed with this information, we will be better positioned to treat patients.”

The article notes that Iraqi and Iranian Middle Eastern Jews date from communities that were formed in the Babylon and Persian empires in the 4th to 6th centuries BCE; Jewish communities in the Balkans, Italy, North Africa and Syria were formed during classical antiquity and then admixed with Sephardic Jews who migrated after their expulsion from Spain and Portugal in the late 15th century. Ashkenazi Jews are thought to have settled in the Rhine Valley during the first millennium CE and then to have migrated into Eastern Europe between the 11th and 15th centuries.

“Admixture with surrounding populations had an early role in shaping world Jewry, but, during the past 2,000 years, may have been limited by religious law as Judaism evolved from a proselytizing to an inward-looking religion,” the team wrote.

The study was supported by the Lewis and Rachel Rudin Foundation, the Iranian-American Jewish Foundation, the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation and private donors.

One People, One Nation!

Test Your Palestine IQ

Just a short quiz kiddies.  Nothing to it.  Relax, take your time, enjoy.

This will count towards your grade.

If, like many people, you have clear views on the Arab-Israel conflict, and/or you are convinced that you know how to bring peace to the Middle East--or you just want to see how much you know, you are invited to try the following quiz.

Answer the questions but don't check them until you are finished. Check your score at the bottom.

1. As is well known, Palestine is the Holy Land for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Palestine’s sanctity in Islam is expressed in the fact that the Koran mentions Palestine:
a) 1,034 times;
b) 837 times;
c) 408 times;
d) 1 time;
e) never.

2. Jerusalem is the third holiest city for Islam (after Mecca and Medina). In honour of this status, the Koran refers to Jerusalem as:
a) Al-Kuds (“The Holy”);
b) Al-Medina al-Kuds (“The Holy City”);
c) Urusalim (“Jerusalem”);
d) Al-Kibla al-Awalani (“The First Direction [of prayer]”);
e) By no name, because Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran.

3. The Dome of the Rock, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, is one of Islam’s holiest
shrines. In accordance with this sanctity, Moslems pray on the Temple Mount:
a) facing the Dome of the Rock;
b) in the north-west section, to face the Dome and Mecca simultaneously;
c) standing facing the Dome of the Rock, kneeling facing Mecca;
d) facing the Dome of the Rock for certain prayers, Mecca for others;
e) kneeling facing Mecca, their backsides towards the Dome of the Rock.

4. The Jewish claim to the Holy Land is that God promised it to them. Moses – the Jewish national leader – is quoted as saying: “O my people! Remember the bounty of God upon you…and gave you that which had not been given to anyone before you amongst the nations. O my people! Enter the Holy Land which God has decreed for you”. This speech of Moses is recorded in:
a) the Book of Exodus;
b) the Book of Isaiah;
c) the Talmud;
d) the Midrash;
e) the Koran (Sura 5:20-21).

5. In popular literature, historical discussions, political debates, and other forums, the Palestinians’ standard claim is that they are:
a) the descendants of the Biblical Philistines (a European tribe originating in Crete, who invaded the Holy Land in the early Biblical period);
b) the continuation of the Biblical Canaanites (a Hamatic tribe, in perpetual warfare against the Philistines);
c) the descendents of the earliest Christians (i.e. Jews);
d) an integral part of the Arab nation (a Semitic nation originating in Arabia, and entirely unconnected to the Philistines, the Canaanites, and the Jews);
e) all of the above.

6. In the period of history that Palestine was an independent country, its capital city was:
a) Jerusalem;
b) Jaffa;
c) Haifa;
d) Ramallah;
e) meaningless, because there was never in history an independent country called Palestine, so it never had a capital city.

7. The earliest mention of a place called Palestine in history is:
a) in the Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Genesis, when God commanded Abraham to go to
Palestine;
b) in the Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Joshua, when the Israelites conquered Palestine;
c) in a stone plaque dating from about 600 BCE, commemorating the Babylonian conquest of Palestine;
d) in the New Testament;
e) in the year 135 CE, after the European Roman invaders defeated the Jewish revolt in Judea, and re-named the province Palestine.

8. “There is no such country [as Palestine]! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us.”
Who said these words?
a) Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, in a speech to the American Zionist Organisation, 1972;
b) Moshe Dayan, Minister of Defence of Israel and former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces, addressing the General Staff, 1968;
c) Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, in his election victory speech, 1996;
d) Abba Eban, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, in a speech in 1981;
e) Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader, addressing the British Peel Commission, 1937.

9. “The ‘Palestinian People’ does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel.”
Who said this?
a) Egyptian dictator, President Gamal Abdul Nasser, addressing the Egyptian parliament, a month after the Six Day War, July 1967;
b) Jordanian King Hussein, a week before the Six Day War, May 1967;
c) Syrian dictator, President Hafez al-Assad, addressing the Arab League, 1994;
d) Iraqi dictator President Saddam Hussein, addressing the Iraqi nation in a televised speech, 2002;
e) Zahir Muhsein, executive member of the PLO, in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, March 1977.

10. On the eve of Israel’s independence in May 1948, approximately 600,000 Arabs lived in the areas that would soon become the State of Israel. When the War of Independence was over (March 1949), 150,000 Arabs were still there. This is why the UNRWA (United Nations Relief Works Agency) officially recognized that the number of Arab refugees was:
a) 450,000;
b) 600,000;
c) 850,000;
d) 1,000,000;
e) 1,300,000

11. In June 1982, the Israel Defence Forces entered south Lebanon to fight against the PLO, which had invaded Lebanon in 1975. The total population in southern Lebanon was about 400,000, of whom vast numbers – perhaps as many as 10% – fled northwards to escape the fighting. UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon)officially estimated the the number of refugees as:
a) 40,000;
b) 80,000;
c) 120,000;
d) 250,000;
e) 600,000.

12. The Palestine National Covenant (the constitution of the PLO) states that “Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit” (Article 2). 77% of this “indivisible territorial unit” is today:
a) the State of Israel, and the remaining 23% is Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) and Gaza;
b) Israel (including Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, i.e. the “occupied territories”), and the remaining 23% are the border areas of various neighbouring Arab states;
c) Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (the “occupied territories”), and the remaining 23% is divided between Israel and Jordan;
d) Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and the remaining 23% has been annexed to the State of Israel;
e) The Kingdom of Jordan, and the remaining 23% is Israel (including Judea, Samaria, and Gaza).

13. As its name suggests, the raison d’etre of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) is to liberate Palestine. Accordingly, the PLO has fought to establish its independent state in:
a) the whole of Israel, starting with Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (the “occupied territories”);
b) sovereign Israel alone, rejecting any claim to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (prior to the Six Day War);
c) Jordan (in the late 1960s and early 1970s)
d) Lebanon (from the mid-1970s until 1982);
e) All of the above.

14. The PLO’s purpose, as they and their supporters make clear, is to liberate the “occupied territories” which Israel captured in the Six Day War (5th-10th June 1967). This claim is proven by the historical fact that the PLO was founded:
a) in Ramallah, the biggest city in the West Bank, a month after the Six Day War;
b) in Gaza City, which has traditionally been a centre of Palestinian nationalism, on the first anniversary of the Six Day War;
c) as a response to the establishment of the first Israeli settlement in Hebron in 1969;
d) on the 10th anniversary of the Six Day War, in June 1977, in Hebron;
e) 3½ years before the Six Day War, on 1st January 1964, in Cairo (the capital of Egypt).

15. In the 25-year period 1950-1974, the Arab countries (including Iran) donated a total of $26,476,750 in aid to Palestinian refugees, representing 0.04% (i.e. $1 out of every $2,500) of their combined oil revenue for 1974 alone. The only country in the entire Middle East which gave no aid at all to Palestinian refugees was:
a) Israel;
b) Iran;
c) Libya;
d) Jordan;
e) Algeria.

16. Israel has often been accused of “ethnic cleansing” of the Arabs in the “occupied territories”. The demography bears this out, because the Arab population of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza has:
a) plummeted from 6,500,000 in 1967 to 3,000,000 in 2009;
b) plummeted from an estimated 5,000,000 in 1967 to less than 2,000,000 in 2009;
c) remained steady at 3,000,000, despite huge natural growth in the rest of the world;
d) increased at one tenth of the pace of natural population growth;
e) increased from about 750,000 in 1967 to an estimated 3,700,000 in 2009, a population growth of nearly 500% in barely more than a generation, which is one of the highest rates of increase anywhere in the world.

17. Israel has also been accused of “ethnic cleansing” of Arabs who are citizens of the state, and deliberately enforcing policies designed to keep the Arab population small. This, too, is shown by the demography, in that the Israeli Arab population has:
a) dropped from slightly over 1,000,000 (40% of the overall population) in 1948 to 750,000 (20% of the population) in 2009;
b) remained at a steady 1,000,000 from 1948 to 2009, while the overall population has increased seven-fold;
c) increased from 500,000 in 1948 to 1,000,000 in 2009, representing a drop from 35% of the overall population to just 12% in 58 years;
d) decreased steadily by 2% per year from 1948 onwards;
e) increased from 150,000 (15% of the overall population) in 1948 to about 1,420,000 (22% of the overall population) in 2009.

18. As of 2009, there are five universities (the Islamic University of Hebron; Bir Zeit University; Bethlehem University; Al-Najah University in Shechem [Nablus]; and Al-Ahzar in Gaza), and five religious higher education academies, throughout the “occupied territories”. These institutes are:
a) all that remain of 25 institutes of higher education, the others having been destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces;
b) some of the oldest in the Arab world, with the Islamic University of Hebron having been founded under the original Caliphate in the 8th century;
c) forced to operate secretly, because the Israeli authorities have banned them;
d) barely tolerated by the Israeli authorities;
e) all founded since the Israeli “occupation” of 1967, under Israeli auspices, the oldest one being the Islamic University of Hebron, founded in 1971.

19. Since the Israeli “occupation” of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in 1967, nine Palestinians have been sentenced to death by the courts and judicially executed, and scores – probably hundreds – more have been executed in extra-judicial killings. All of them, without exception, were executed:
a) by the Israeli military occupation authorities;
b) by the Israeli Army after military courts-martial;
c) by the Israeli civil administration, following criminal trials in civilian courts;
d) by Israeli civilian courts, acting under special emergency regulations;
e) since September 1993 by the Palestinian Authority in the autonomous zones, because Israel, alone in the Middle East, does not use the death penalty.

20. In early October 2005, an estimated 650 people charged the security fence/separation barrier, and an estimated 350 succeeded in crossing it. Security forces responded with bayonets, shotguns, and rubber bullets, killing between ten and fifteen people and injuring dozens more. This incident was given minimal media attention, and has been entirely forgotten, because:
a) the world media is biased in Israel’s favour;
b) a dozen Palestinians killed is so commonplace, it is not even newsworthy;
c) the Israeli authorities imposed a media blackout;
d) Jewish settlers intimidated the journalists and photographers into silence;
e) the incident occurred along the security fence in Morocco, separating sovereign Morocco from the Spanish Sahara, and the security forces in question were Spanish.

Scoring

Every a) is worth 1 point; every b) is worth 2 points; every c) is worth 3 points; every d) is worth 4 points; every e) is worth 5 points.

Now add up your score.

If your score is 20, then you answered a) to every question. This means that you got every single answer wrong, and that you are politically correct and base your ideas of the Middle East on standard anti-Israel and pro-Arab propaganda lies rather than on the truth. Since you are more concerned with Israel-bashing than truth, and since you parrot every canard peddled by pro-Arab propagandists, you are ideally suited to become a European career diplomat accredited to the Middle East, or a BBC or CNN reporter, or a journalist for Haaretz.

If your score is between 21 and 99, then you might have a more open mind than others, and you might know slightly more than the average media report contains. You might be interested in studying more on the subject.

If your score is 100, then you answered e) to every question. This means that you got every answer right. This suggests that you have a good, solid knowledge of the issues involved and are uninfluenced by propaganda. Be careful: people infected by independent and honest thought tend to become targets of Islamic terrorists and their left-wing cohorts. At the very least, they get demonized as “right-wing fanatics”.

If your score is below 20 or above 100, this means that you cannot count properly. Why not consider a career as the Secretary General of the United Nations?

Missing Persian Army Found

And Ahmadinejad blames their failure on Israel.

In the year 525 BCE, Herodotus told the tale of Cambyses who sent an army of 50,000 troops to attack the Oracle of Amun at the Siwa Oasis. The army of 50,000 men was halfway across the desert when a massive sandstorm sprang up, burying them all. Although many egyptologists regard the story as a myth, people have searched for the remains of the soldiers for many years.

This army has been found.

Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.

Watch the video here.

"We have found the first archaeological evidence of a story reported by the Greek historian Herodotus," Dario Del Bufalo, a member of the expedition from the University of Lecce, told Discovery News.

According to Herodotus (484-425 B.C.), Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, sent 50,000 soldiers from Thebes to attack the Oasis of Siwa and destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun after the priests there refused to legitimize his claim to Egypt.

After walking for seven days in the desert, the army got to an "oasis," which historians believe was El-Kharga. After they left, they were never seen again.

"A wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops and caused them wholly to disappear," wrote Herodotus.

A century after Herodotus wrote his account, Alexander the Great made his own pilgrimage to the oracle of Amun, and in 332 B.C. he won the oracle's confirmation that he was the divine son of Zeus, the Greek god equated with Amun.

The tale of Cambyses' lost army, however, faded into antiquity. As no trace of the hapless warriors was ever found, scholars began to dismiss the story as a fanciful tale.

Read the full story here.

Strange things happen in deserts. Armies are lost, armies are found, things hidden from the world become exposed to the light, while explosives of great magnitude have been set off in one.

The world's deserts have many secrets that we haven't unlocked yet.

This Day In History

November 9:

1755:


Lisbon Earthquake

A great earthquake struck Lisbon, Portugal, destroying much of the city including the courthouse of the Inquisition.

1938:

Kristallnach (Germany)

The Night of Broken Glass. Kristallnacht was triggered by the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Polish Jew. In a coordinated attack on Jewish people and their property, 99 Jews were murdered and 25,000 to 30,000 were arrested and placed in concentration camps. 267 synagogues were destroyed and thousands of homes and businesses were ransacked.

This was done by the Hitler Youth, Gestapo, SS and SA. Kristallnacht also served as a pretext and a means for the wholesale confiscation of firearms from German Jews.

While the assassination of Rath served as a pretext for the attacks, Kristallnacht was part of a broader Nazi policy of antisemitism and persecution of the Jews. Kristallnacht was followed by further economic and political persecutions and is viewed by many historians as the beginning of the Final Solution, leading towards the genocide of the Holocaust.

1965:

The Great Northeast Blackout

At dusk, the biggest power failure in U.S. history occurs as all of New York state, portions of seven neighboring states, and parts of eastern Canada are plunged into darkness. The Great Northeast Blackout began at the height of rush hour, delaying millions of commuters, trapping 800,000 people in New York's subways, and stranding thousands more in office buildings, elevators, and trains. Ten thousand National Guardsmen and 5,000 off-duty policemen were called into service to prevent looting.

The blackout was caused by the tripping of a 230-kilovolt transmission line near Ontario, Canada, at 5:16 p.m., which caused several other heavily loaded lines also to fail. This precipitated a surge of power that overwhelmed the transmission lines in western New York, causing a "cascading" tripping of additional lines, resulting in the eventual breakup of the entire Northeastern transmission network.

All together, 30 million people in eight U.S. states and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec were affected by the blackout. During the night, power was gradually restored to the blacked-out areas, and by morning power had been restored throughout the Northeast.

1989:




Fall of the Berlin Wall

East German officials today opened the Berlin Wall, allowing travel from East to West Berlin. The following day, celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down. One of the ugliest and most infamous symbols of the Cold War was soon reduced to rubble that was quickly snatched up by souvenir hunters.


The East German action followed a decision by Hungarian officials a few weeks earlier to open the border between Hungary and Austria. This effectively ended the purpose of the Berlin Wall, since East German citizens could now circumvent it by going through Hungary, into Austria, and thence into West Germany. The decision to open the wall was also a reflection of the immense political changes taking place in East Germany, where the old communist leadership was rapidly losing power and the populace was demanding free elections and movement toward a free market system.


The action also had an impact on President George Bush and his advisors. After watching television coverage of the delirious German crowds demolishing the wall, many in the Bush administration became more convinced than ever that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's statements about desiring a new relationship with the West must be taken more seriously. Unlike 1956 and 1968, when Soviet forces ruthlessly crushed protests in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, respectively, Gorbachev actually encouraged the East German action. As such, the destruction of the Berlin Wall was one of the most significant actions leading to the end of the Cold War.

The strangest thing about all this is that nothing seems to have changed. We still have earthquakes, anti-Semitism is on the rise, Europe and the US are bent on Socialism for their way of life, and the way things are going we can expect blackouts more frequently.

And they say:

History Repeats Itself!

A Message To Congress!

To the Congress:

The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775 - you have had 234 years to get it right; it is broke.

Social Security was established in 1935 - you have had 74 years to get it right; it is broke.

Fannie Mae was established in 1938 - you have had 71 years to get it right; it is broke.

The "War on Poverty" started in 1964 - you have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor"; it hasn't worked and our entire country is broke.

Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 - you've had 44 years to get it right; they are broke.

Freddie Mac was established in 1970 - you have had 39 years to get it right; it is broke.

Trillions of dollars were spent in the massive political payoffs called TARP, the "Stimulus", the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009... None show any signs of working, although ACORN appears to have found a new bitch, the American taxpayer.

And finally, to set a new record:

"Cash for Clunkers" was established in 2009 and went broke in 2009! It took cars (that were the best some people could afford) and replaced them with high-priced and less-affordable cars, mostly Japanese. A good percentage of the profits went out of the country. And the American taxpayers take the hit for Congress' generosity in burning three billion more of our dollars on failed experiments.

So with a perfect 100% failure rate and a record that proves that "services" you shove down our throats are failing faster and faster, you want Americans to believe you can be trusted with a government-run health care system?

20% of our entire economy?

With all due respect,

Are you crazy, are you just stupid, or do you just think that we are crazy or stupid?

What Golden Age? And For Whom?

Muslims love to talk about their Golden Age. A time that peace, love and mutual understanding ruled the entire Islamic world. President Obama in his speech to Cairo University reinforced this.

Yet what were the true facts about this time and what rights did a non-Muslim have under this system?

Mohammad and his followers conquered the Arabian Peninsula by force. Starting in Medina, then on to other cities. He could not convince the vast majority of the people to follow his new religion on words alone. This conquest was brutal, being the work of barbarians and not men following a Religion of Peace (Muslims love to call Islam that).

From The Golden Age of Islam is a Myth

The hatred of Western Civilization, and the corresponding urge to glorify anything outside it, especially if it can be depicted as a victim of the West, is a well-known phenomenon of the contemporary liberal mind. One of the forms it has taken in recent years is the attempt to artificially inflate the historic achievements of other civilizations beyond what the facts support. The noble savage myth is a commonplace; what is more complex is the myth that has been bandied about concerning the supposed "golden age" of Islamic civilization during what we know as the Middle Ages.

The myth of an Islamic Golden Age is needed by Islam’s apologists to save it from being damned by its present squalid condition; to prove, as it were, that there is more to Islam than the terrorism of Bin Laden and the decadence of the oil sheiks. It is, frankly, a confession that if the world judges it by what it is today, it comes up rather short, being a religion that has yet to produce a democratic or prosperous society, or social and cultural forms admired by neutral foreign observers the way anyone can admire American freedom, Japanese order, Israeli courage, or Italian style.

Some liberal academics openly admit that they twist the Muslim past to serve their present-day intellectual agendas. For example, some who propound the myth of an Islamic golden age of tolerance admit that their goal is,

"to recover for postmodernity that lost medieval Judeo-Islamic trading, social and cultural world, its high point pre-1492 Moorish Spain, which permitted and relished a plurality, a convivencia, of religions and cultures, Christian, Jewish and Moslem; which prized an historic internationality of space along with the valuing of particular cities; which was inclusive and cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan here meaning an ease with different cultures: still so rare and threatened a value in the new millennium as in centuries past."

In other words, a fairy tale designed to create the illusion that multiculturalism has valid historical precedents that prove it can work.

To be fair, the myth of the golden age of Islam does have a partially valid starting point: there were times in the past when Muslim societies attained higher levels of civilization and culture than they did at other times. There have been times, that is, when some Muslim lands were fit for a cultivated man to live in. Baghdad under Harun ar-Rashid (his well-documented Christian-slaying and Jew-hating proclivities notwithstanding), or Cordova very briefly under Abd ar-Rahman in the tenth century, come to mind. These isolated episodes, neither long nor typical, are endlessly invoked by Islam’s Western apologists and admirers.

This "golden" period in question largely coincides with the second dynasty of the Caliphate or Islamic Empire, that of the Abbasids, named after Muhammad’s uncle Abbas, who succeeded the Umayyads and ascended to the Caliphate in 750 AD. They moved the capital city to Baghdad, absorbed much of the Syrian and Persian culture as well as Persian methods of government, and ushered in the "golden age."

This age was marked by, among other things, intellectual achievement. A number of medieval thinkers and scientists living under Islamic rule, by no means all of them "Muslims" either nominally or substantially, played a useful role of transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic fruits of knowledge to Westerners. They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. But in doing this, they were but transmitting what they themselves had received from non-Muslim sources.

Three speculative thinkers, notably the three Persians al-Kindi, al-Farabi, and Avicenna, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam. Greatly influenced by Baghdad’s Greek heritage in philosophy that survived the Arab invasion, and especially the writings of Aristotle, Farabi adopted the view — utterly heretical from a Muslim viewpoint — that reason is superior to revelation. He saw religion as a symbolic rendering of truth, and, like Plato, saw it as the duty of the philosopher to provide guidance to the state. He engaged in rationalistic questioning of the authority of the Koran and rejected predestination. He wrote more than 100 works, notably The Ideas of the Citizens of the Virtuous City. But these unorthodox works no more belong to Islam than Voltaire belongs to Christianity. He was in Moslem culture but not of it, indeed opposed to its orthodox core. He examples the pattern we see again and again: the best Muslims, whether judged by intellectual or political achievement, are usually the least Muslim.

Read the full article. The author goes on to describe the other "achievements" the Muslim world brought to the West and where they originially came from.

OK, you say. Muslims didn't actually invent these things. The Romans didn't invent many things either, they borrowed the inventions of others, and made them their own.

That is true.

Muslims still cry out that the "Golden Age" was one of Equality, and Universal Brotherhood.

Let us now examine this:

And Dhimmitude For All

“A thing without a name escapes understanding,” warns preeminent Islamic scholar Bat Ye'or of jihad and dhimmitude—the Islamic institutions of, respectively, war and perpetual servitude imposed on conquered non-Muslim peoples. Both, Ye’or notes in an essay entitled “Historical Amnesia,” are in the process of globalization.

This is not the benign economic globalization that most Westerners laud. Islamic jihad and dhimmitude trade in every available means—military, political, technological and intellectual. And if the towering collection of 63 essays (including Ye’or’s) contained in the new book The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims is to be believed, these specific Islamic processes are globalizing at a disturbingly rapid pace. The book, courageously assembled by JihadWatch director and FrontPage columnist Robert Spencer, provides historical and contemporary profiles of jihad and dhimmitude.

In six sections, the book delineates how Islamic ideology has affected non-Muslims both historically and in the contemporary world. The first three sections cover the myth vs. historical realities and Islamic law and practice regarding non-Muslims. The last three sections cover how the myth of Islamic tolerance has affected contemporary geopolitics, power politics at the United Nations and, finally, academic and public discourse. It is Ibn Warraq's forward and the latter 400 pages in which this book really shines. He explains:

Islam is a totalitarian ideology that aims to control the religious, social and political life of mankind in all its aspects; the life of its followers without qualification; and the life of those who follow the so-called tolerated religions to a degree that prevents their activities from getting in the way of Islam in any way. And I mean Islam, I do not accept some spurious distinction between Islam and 'Islamic fundamentalism' or Islamic terrorism'.

The September 11, 2001 murderers acted canonically. They followed Sharia, a collection of theoretical laws and ideals “that apply in any ideal Muslim community.” This body of regulations, based on divine authority, according to devout Muslims “must be accepted without criticism, without doubts and questions.” It sacrifices the individual's desires and good to those of the community.

“Expressing one's opinion or changing one's religion” are punishable by death. That apostasy is not today mentioned in the legal codes of most Islamic countries, Warraq notes, hardly implies freedom of religion for Muslims in those states; their penal codes are filled with Islamic laws. The myth of Islamic tolerance is defied by the massacre and extermination of the Zoroastrians in Iran; the million Armenians in Turkey; the Buddhists and Hindus in India; the more than six thousand Jews in Fez, Morocco, in 1033; hundreds of Jews killed in Cordoba between 1010 and 1013; the entire Jewish community of Granada in 1066; the Jews in Marrakesh in 1232; the Jews of Tetuan, Morocco in 1790; the Jews of Baghdad in 1828; and so on ad nauseum.

Ironically, despite Islam's immutability, the myth evolved through the Western propensity to criticize its civilization. In 98 CE, Roman historian Tacitus in Germania compared the noble simplicity of the Germans with the vices of contemporary Rome. Michele do Montaigne (1533-1592) in circa 1580 painted noble savages based on dubious secondhand information in order to condemn his own civilization.

Later writers substituted Islam for savages to condemn Christendom and materialism. In 1686-89, for example, Huguenot pastor Pierre Jurieu exclaimed that Christians had spilt more blood on St. Bartholemew's Day than had the Saracens in all their persecutions of Christians. Of course, Islam had claimed millions of lives—in 1399, Taimur killed 100,000 Hindus in a single day. But during the 17th century, and later the Enlightenment, writers perpetuated the “two ideal prototypes, the noble savage and the wise and urbane Oriental,” substituting Turks for Muslims, and Islamic tolerance for Turkish tolerance.

Actually, 18th century Turkey was no interfaith utopia. In 1758, a British ambassador noted that Sultan Mustafa III had non-Muslim Christians and Jews executed for wearing banned clothing. In 1770, another ambassador reported that Greeks, Armenians and Jews seen outside their homes after dark were hanged. In 1785, a third noted that Muslim mobs had dismantled churches after Christians had secretly repaired them.

“The golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam,” Bernard Lewis wrote in 1968 in the Encyclopedia of Islam. “The myth was invented in 19th century Europe as a reproach to Christians—and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews....”

Until the late 19th century, Jews in North Africa, Yemen and other oriental Muslim lands, were obliged to live isolated, in special quarters, and “were constrained to wear distinctive clothing.” They could not carry arms (including canes), and could not give sworn testimony in Muslim jurisdictions. Even in 1968, an Egyptian sheikh explained at Cairo's preeminent Islamic University of al-Azhar, “we say to those who patronize the Jews that the latter are dhimmis, people of obligation, who have betrayed the covenant in conformity with which they have been accorded protection.” The late president Anwar el-Sadat declared in 1972, “They shall return and be as the Koran said of them: 'condemned to humiliation and misery'.”

Western failure to recognize this subservient condition, much less its historical or contemporary results, has put democratic civilization in danger. Organizations have been founded to promote jihad and dhimmitude through the imposition of the Sharia. The International Institute of Islamic Thought, for example, was established in 1981 to Islamify Western history and thought. Similarly, the Organization of Islamic Conference ruled in 1990 that the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam—implementing the Sharia—supersedes the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Even Arabist calls for universal mobilization of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are a form of jihad, as was Egyptian attorney Fouad Abdel-Moneim Riad's call to treat all Israeli civilians as war criminals. The notion here—categorization and demonization of all infidels—is fundamental to jihad. Thus when church spokesman Archbishop Desmond Tutu supports Riad's pronouncement, he too supports jihad.

In this context, “Servile flattery is the ransom [paid to avoid] economic and terrorist reprisals.” Thus Western thinkers succumb to jihad and dhimmitude when we refuse to identify the Turkish perpetration of Armenian genocide, or (conversely) present Andalusia—complete with harems, eunuchs, and Christian slaves—“as a perfect model of multicultural societies for the West” to emulate in the 21st century.

The West has built historical negationism as the “cornerstone of its economic, strategic, and security relationships with Muslim countries.” One sign is the increasingly hostile international attitude towards Israel. Failing to recognize the Muslim jihad against Israel, which “symbolizes the liberation of the Jewish people from dhimmitude in their homeland,” also adversely affects remnant indigenous Christian communities throughout the Middle East. Their dhimmitude has deteriorated since the Armenian genocide and the 1933 massacres of Christians in Iraq. Historical amnesia, Bat Ye'or warns, allowed the decolonization of Arab Muslim nations to be accompanied by re-introduction of jihad, dhimmitude and sharia.

Only testimony can counter the pathological trends. Thus, Walid Phares and Bat Ye'or tackle the forgotten tragedy of the Middle Eastern Christians—10 to 12 million Egyptian Copts; 1.5 Lebanese Maronites, Orthodox, Melkites and others; 7 million Anglican, Protestant and Catholic southern Sudanese Africans; 1 million Christian Syrians; 1 million Iraqi Assyrians, Nestorians, Chaldeans, and Jacobites; 500,000 Iranian Persian, Armenian and Assyrian Christians; and perhaps 100,000 Christian Arab Palestinians. Patrick Sookhdeo and Mark Durie also cover the alarming rise of anti-Christian persecutions in Nigeria, Sudan, Pakistan and Indonesia. After September 11, 2001, attacks on Christians increased precipitously.

Ironically, what caused obfuscation of minority Christians' situation was 19th and 20th century Christian involvement in the Arab-Islamic jihad—against Zionism and Israel. Whereas Christian oppression in the East is “rooted in the doctrine of jihad” and dhimmitude, projecting all evil onto Israel and Zionism prevented testimony and hid Eastern Christian history and suffering.

But for decades, secretly or openly, Middle Eastern Christians have praised the Israeli liberation model, and hoped to emulate it. The Arab reaction has been to falsely claim the Middle East as an Arab and Muslim region, denying the rights of all non-Arab, non-Muslim populations, to isolate these minorities from one another and somehow eliminate them within predominantly Arab and Muslim states.

Another arena requiring testimony is dhimmitude in Western institutions. This is “epitomized,” writes Mark Durie, “in the slavish attitude adopted by Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,” in a 2002 statement to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Symposium on Human Rights in Islam in Geneva. Like a dhimmi, she affirmed the greatness and moral superiority of Islam, implying inferiority of non-Muslim infidels, and denied any possible voice of protest against Islamic abuses of human rights.

Not surprisingly, Islamism is growing at the UN, too. On August 5, 1990, explains David Littman, the 19 members of the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI). This document very specifically subjugates all human rights to those accorded by Islam. [1] The CDHRI totally contradicts the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Yet the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in December 1997 published it, establishing its authority as a quotable UN source. For example, the 26-member Sub-Commission on Human Rights referred to it in the preamble of a resolution adopted on August 21, 1998. [2] That Islamic human rights is gaining ascendancy and credence at the UN should be of concern to all Human Rights activists and organizations.

Dhimmitude is also developing at universities and in governments worldwide. This owes to the nearly ubiquitous influence of Edward Said, according to Ibn Warraq, despite his “third world intellectual terrorism.” The tautology-filled Orientalism accuses orientalists of somehow preparing the ground for western imperialism, but haughtily dismisses “books and journals in Arabic (and doubtless in Japanese, various Indian dialects, and other Oriental languages)” revealing “contempt for the non-European, negative attitudes toward the Orient far greater than that of some imperialists he constantly condemns.” Worse, Said ignores innumerable orientalists—including the German school that created the Middle Eastern, Islamic and Arabic Studies field—and hailed from a nation with zero imperial interests.

The Dhimmi Contract

We are seeing in Europe the effects of the Dhimmification upon that continent. No go zones for police, women forced to wear the Hajib, the implementing of Shar'ia Law, the ending of Free Speech, the crimes against: Jews, Homosexuals, Christians, and Women.

Already here in the United States groups like CAIR, under the disguise of trying to fight discrimination, are in reality trying to impose Shar'ia Law on this nation, destroying the Freedoms granted under the Constitution.

This will be the look of their new America!

Or we can maintain our liberties and freedoms. Learn the truth, stay informed, speak out.

The choice is yours!

The State of Palestine Quiz

Once again Yaakov Kirschen, the creator of the very popular comic strip: Dry Bones, has brought the truth about the nature and history of Palestine to the forefront. Here is his latest strip:

Click on the picture to enlarge.

If you know someone who actually believes that there was ever a country or state called Palestine, don't argue with them. Just slip 'em a copy of "The Dry Bones State of Palestine Quiz".

What Really Happened In The Middle East

A 10 minute presentation on the history and background of the Arab-Israeli conflict that you will never see on CNN, BBC, MSNBC, or CBC. But you should.

From Front Page Magazine

It is an urgent matter to counteract the hatred and lies of radical Islam. Their lies are a formidable weapon in their jihad to defeat the West and to impose Islam across the globe. Their lies are used to justify their killing of innocent men, women and children, and their drive to take over country after country, to radicalize moderate Muslims, and to impose Sharia (Muslim) law on people everywhere.

They lie about America. But most of all they lie about Israel, telling the world that Israel is the aggressor in the Middle East, and especially that their grievances would end if Israel didn't exist.

Most Americans know that when Osama bin Laden says America is making war on Islam he is lying. When radical Islamists say that 9/11 was our fault, most Americans know they are lying.

But when they say that Israel stole land from the Palestinians . . . that Israel routinely brutalizes Palestinian civilians...that Israel initiates aggression against its neighbors - many Americans do not know they are lying.

An astonishing number of academics believe their lies. Israel-hating is so common at colleges and universities that it is taken for granted. On some campuses Muslim student groups host virulently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic speakers, disrupt Jewish and pro-Israel activities, and even physically intimidate Jewish students, without a peep from the administration.

What Really Happened In The Middle East



View at YouTube

Made by The Terrorism Awareness Project.