My Muslim friends: another View of Muslim Women
Susan Roylance
Issue date: 6/17/09 Section: Opinion

The word “Muslim,” for many people in the United States, conjures up memories of 9-11 and fears of terrorism. But for me, the word invokes deep gratitude for my dear Muslim friends, and also for official Delegates to the United Nations from Muslim countries, who work tirelessly on international treaty and document policies that protect families.

While you hear much about the subjugation of women in Islamic cultures, the women I have met portray a totally different image.

Dr. Rasha is professor of Islamic Studies at the University of California. I met her at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in China, where she served as a translator and interpreter for Arabic speaking delegates. As we parted for home, at the Beijing airport, I hugged her as a “sister.” But later, I was embarrassed to learn that while I slept, she and other Muslim women stayed up all night during the final negotiations – to support the delegates from Muslim countries. Their efforts helped remove the words “sexual orientation” from the document, and a paragraph proposing abortion on demand. They also retained language which supported “cultural and religious values.”

A few weeks later, Dr. Rasha stayed in our home, as she prepared to participate in a “Women and Development” seminar at Brigham Young University. I observed her respect for the modest clothing and head cover of the Muslim women, and her diligence in performing daily prayers and sacred washings. She was a devout Muslim, but she was also a well educated woman – a teacher of Islamic Studies at the University of California. She was also grateful for her role as a mother and wife.

I met Laila in Rome, at the World Food Summit. As we talked about the various proposals in the Summit document, we discovered that we had much in common. Later, she invited me to participate in a Women’s Conference in her home country of Sudan. I soon discovered that Laila owns several businesses in Khartoum, and exerts considerable political influence.
Laila and I shared our Muslim and Christian faiths at the close of the
conference. We were struggling to compile the conclusions of several
workshops into a proposed Khartoum Declaration. I asked if she would
mind if I said a Christian prayer, to ask God to help us in preparing
the Declaration. She agreed, and after the prayer she asked if I would
say a prayer at the end of the conference. I hesitated, but finally
agreed to say a Christian prayer, if she would also say a Muslim
prayer. To say the least, it was an unexpected experience for the
conference participants, but a spiritual unity we will not forget.

Camilla
is a happy, bubbly, woman from Egypt. I met her in the halls of the
U.N. in New York City. At the time, I was also struggling to learn
Arabic. By example, she taught me three phrases: “shukran” (thank you),
“insha’allah” (God willing), and “alhamdulillah” (thank God). Whatever
the project or plan we discussed, she always added “insha’allah”.
Camilla had great faith that Allah would help us, if we gave all honor
and glory to Him.
Eleven months before 9/11, I was invited to speak
at the creation of a Pakistan Islamic Women’s organization, and the
opening of a new Women’s University in Islamabad.

My guide and
interpreter in Pakistan was another well educated woman – but she had
to give up her participation in theater and music when she married a
devout Muslim. I was sad for her. But she was not sad – she loved her
husband and her children.

The invitation to Pakistan followed an
amazing pro-family victory at the five-year review of the Women’s
Conference in Beijing. It was the Pakistan delegation that saved the
“family friendly” language in the final document.

It was the
Iranian Delegation that provided leadership at the U.N. Commission for
Social Development – to re-establish the International Year of the
Family. And the country of Qatar hosted an international conference
which drafted the Doha Declaration – a landmark document recognizing
the importance of the family unit in society.

Through my experiences with Muslim women, I discovered that they are just like me. They love their husbands, and their children, and they want to preserve a world where their children can live in peace.

The Zionist Gang that Bankrupted General Motors

Christopher Bollyn
Thursday, 18 June 2009
http://www.ziopedia.org/articles/money/the_zionist_gang_that_bankrupted_general_motors/

General Motors did not fall due to natural forces. Like the twin towers on 9-11, GM was taken down. Like 9-11, GM was sabotaged from the inside. The corporate raiders who took down GM are part of the same network of Jewish Zionists who brought down the World Trade Center.

The bankruptcy of General Motors (GM) is very similar to the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Both catastrophic events are described in the controlled media as having occurred due to natural forces, while actually they are both the results of sabotage carried out by insiders. In both cases, the people who brought down the operation were Trojan Horses, people who had bought their way into positions of control in order to destroy them. The people behind the destruction of GM and the WTC are corporate raiders of the worst kind.

General Motors did not simply collapse as a result of market forces; it was bankrupted by corporate raiders who had infiltrated the company and taken control of its finances. Likewise, the evidence indicates that the twin towers of the World Trade Center did not collapse due to the stresses associated with the plane crashes; they were prepared in advance to be demolished using extremely powerful explosives, including tons of nano-thermite, or super-thermite. This was facilitated by the people who had obtained control of the towers shortly before 9-11, namely Larry Silverstein and the former Israeli commando Frank Lowy.

What is most remarkable is that these events are closely related. The same people are involved in the conspiracy to plunder and destroy both the World Trade Center and General Motors. This article identifies some of the key people and reveals the strategy behind the destruction of one of America’s oldest companies.

BANKRUPTING GENERAL MOTORS

General Motors Corp. filed for bankruptcy on June 2, 2009, as the Zionist-run Obama administration provided unprecedented federal funding and oversight. The bankruptcy filing by GM was the third-largest in American history and the largest ever in U.S. manufacturing. Now that GM is facing restructuring, its assets will be taken over for pennies on the dollar. The notorious corporate raider Carl C. Icahn, for example, is reportedly looking at taking over Delphi Chassis Systems.

So, how did GM go bankrupt? If one looks at the sales figures for GM, it simply does not make sense. In 2007, GM was the largest producer of vehicles in the world, manufacturing 13 percent of the total, and had the largest slice of the U.S. car and truck market with 23.4 percent of domestic sales.

In 2007, GM led in global production and U.S. market share. Graphics from Wikinvest.

Globally, GM sold 9.4 million cars and trucks in 2007, an increase of 3 percent over 2006. GM’s 2007 tally was, in fact, the second best global sales total in the company’s 100-year history and marked the third consecutive year the company had sold more than 9 million vehicles. That doesn’t sound like a company on the brink of collapse, does it? In its 100-year history GM had been through much worse downturns, such as the Great Depression and the Second World War, yet GM managed to survive and thrive. What is so different about the management at GM in the past few years that it caused America’s biggest auto manufacturer to go into bankruptcy despite three consecutive bumber years of global sales?

George Richard (Rick) Wagoner became president and chief executive officer of GM on June 1, 2000. The value of GM stock started the month of May 2000 at its peak of over $93 per share. The day Wagoner became CEO the stock finished at $69.81. By the end of the year it was worth less than $51 per share. GM stock had fallen to about $35 when Wagoner was elected chairman on May 1, 2003. Why promote a CEO who was clearly taking the company down the drain?

Despite the falling stock price, Wagoner remained CEO and chairman of GM until March 29, 2009. Under Wagoner’s leadership GM suffered more than $85 billion in losses — losing $82 billion in the last 4 years! Why wasn’t Wagoner replaced earlier? How was GM selling more cars than ever but losing more and more money? It simply doesn’t make sense.

Were his hands tied? Rick Wagoner (center) with Mark Neporent (left), COO of Cerberus, and Eric Feldstein (right), chief executive of GMAC and treasurer of General Motors Corp. This photo is from the 2006 announcement of the Cerberus deal for a majority stake in GMAC in which Bernard Madoff’s partner-in-crime, J. Ezra Merkin, became chairman of GMAC. Is Wagoner responsible for $85 billion in losses at GM – or was he just a useful idiot?

In 2008, GM sold 8.35 million cars and trucks globally under the following brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, GM Daewoo, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, Vauxhall and Wuling. GM’s largest market is the U.S., followed by China, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, and Germany. Despite three years of record sales, GM lost $18.8 billion during the first 6 months of 2008; by late October, its stock had dropped 76 percent, and it was considering a merger with Chrysler.

At the time the GM-Chrysler merger was being considered, Chrysler was primarily owned (80.1 percent) by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, L.P., headed by Stephen A. Feinberg and Jacob Ezra Merkin. Cerberus is named after the mythological three-headed dog of Hell. It should be noted that Feinberg and Merkin also controlled General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC), the financial services branch of GM.

GM sold 51 percent of GMAC in 2006 to Feinberg’s private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP, and Jacob Ezra Merkin became chairman of GMAC. Had the merger gone through, Feinberg and Merkin would have probably become majority owners of both GM and Chrysler. This appears to have been the plan. Feinberg and Merkin, the owners of GMAC, had plundered and conspired to bring down GM so that they could take it over.

When Cerberus gained control of GMAC, they hurt GM’s domestic sales by raising the credit requirements for car loans. Feinberg and Merkin reportedly raised the credit requirements so high that they caused a very sizable chunk of sales to be lost due to customers’ inability to secure financing. Cerberus reportedly used this tactic to pressure GM into selling or trading their remaining stake in GMAC.

Ezra Merkin became a controlling owner of Israel’s Bank Leumi shortly before he got his hands on GMAC in 2006. Here he shakes the hand of the notorious war criminal Ariel Sharon as he hands him a check for $500 million. Ehud Olmert (center) held secret meetings in New York City on September 10, 2001. Merkin’s private Israeli bank has a branch in Switzerland that contains billions of stolen dollars held in secret numbered accounts.

Merkin is clearly a criminal. He is one of the key players of the multi-billion dollar criminal fraud carried out by Bernard Madoff. Merkin secretly diverted untold billions to Madoff’s fraudulent investment fund. One of Merkin’s funds lost $1.8 billion of investor cash with Madoff. Merkin was seen as “the Golden Boy controlling the Golden Goose.”

Feinberg and Merkin were also controlling co-owners of Israel’s Bank Leumi, which had been privatized in 2005 under finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Bank Leumi also has off-shore banks and a branch in Switzerland in which billions of dollars are held in secret numbered accounts.

It was reported on December 30, 2008, that the U.S. Treasury would provide $6 billion more for GMAC, headed by Merkin and the extremely secretive Feinberg. Feinberg is so secretive his Who’s Who biography says he is deceased!

Stephen A. Feinberg, Ezra Merkin’s partner-in-crime.

The U.S. Trea
sury was reportedly buying a $5 billion stake in GMAC and lending $1 billion to GM. This “loan” was in addition to $13.4 billion of taxpayer dollars the Treasury had already lent to GM and Chrysler LLC. Once again, a plundered and bankrupted company was being “bailed-out” with taxpayer funds.

Merkin had been chairman of GMAC since November 2006. GMAC reportedly lost nearly $8 billion while Merkin was in charge. Despite Merkin’s huge losses at GMAC and his involvement in the Madoff criminal scam, the U.S. government evidently had no problem providing billions of taxpayer dollars to Merkin, whose Ariel Fund was one of the largest funds feeding billions to Bernie Madoff’s financial black hole. Madoff reportedly “lost” some $50 billion, or more.

Jacob Ezra Merkin, orthodox Jew and devoted Zionist, finally resigned as chairman of GMAC on January 9, 2009. How was Merkin allowed to remain in control of the privately-held GMAC operation for so long despite his history of financial fraud?

WHO RAN GMAC?

GMAC is a very interesting operation. A wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors since 1919, GMAC provided customers with more than $1.4 trillion in credit to finance more than 162 million vehicles. Originally designed to provide financing for people buying GM vehicles, it branched out into other fields, such as real estate. GMAC Commercial Mortgage (GMACCM), for example, provided the funds for Larry Silverstein and the former Israeli commando Frank Lowy to take over the World Trade Center in July 2001. The towers served as the collateral. GMAC Commercial Mortgage sold $563 million in bonds backed by a loan to Silverstein Properties for its purchase of the towers. If Silverstein and Lowy were part of the conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center, the people controlling GMACCM would probably also be. Who was controlling the purse strings at GMAC in 2001 when Silverstein was negotiating to obtain control of the World Trade Center?

Larry Silverstein, here with his daughter Lisa, made billions of dollars from the destruction of the World Trade Center. He is the former chairman of the UJA-Federation of New York, the largest Zionist fund-raising organization in the world.

At GMAC, the person in charge of the money was Eric A. Feldstein, born in Brookline, Mass. in 1959. Feldstein had worked in the office of the treasurer at GM Corp. from 1981-91 and was regional treasurer in Europe from 1991-93. In 1993, he returned to New York as assistant treasurer. In March 1996, he was named executive vice president and chief financial officer of GMAC and chairman of the GMAC Mortgage Group, where he oversaw corporate activities responsible for general finance, audit, and worldwide borrowings.

Feldstein became treasurer of General Motors in November 1997, and was elected vice president the following month. In June 2001, Feldstein was named General Motors’ vice president, finance, and corporate treasurer. When GM and GMAC failed in 2008, Feldstein went to work for Feinberg and Merkin at Cerberus, joining the team named after the three-headed dog of Hell. At Cerberus, Feldstein was made executive vice president.

Eric Feldstein, the treasurer of GM, laughs with Rick Wagoner and Mark Neporent, COO of Cerberus, as the Zionist-run fund took majority control of GMAC. By this point, GM was well on its way to losing $85 billion – all during Feldstein’s term as GM corporate treasurer and vice president in charge of finance.

Eric Feldstein is the son of Donald Feldstein, a high-ranking member of a number of Zionist organizations in New York and New Jersey. The elder Feldstein is one year older than Larry Silverstein and has a long history of leadership in the same Zionist organization as Silverstein. Donald Feldstein was an executive director of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation Jewish Philanthropies in New York City from 1976-81. This is the huge Zionist fund-raising organization that Larry Silverstein headed as the chairman of the board and where he is an honorary board member. The connection between Donald Feldstein and Larry Silverstein at this Zionist organization certainly played a role in Eric Feldstein’s decision to use GMAC money to back Silverstein’s bid for the World Trade Center. It is through such Zionist organizations like the UJA-Federation and the secretive order of B’nai B’rith, an international organization of Jewish Freemasons, that the Zionist network functions. In this way actions and decisions that affect whole nations can be made without anyone outside the “community” being aware.

GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., under the leadership of Donald Feldstein’s son, provided an $800 million loan to fellow Zionists Silverstein and Lowy to back their bid for the soon-to-be privatized World Trade Center in the summer of 2001. This privatization deal, initiated by the Zionist Ronald Lauder and managed by Lewis Eisenberg of the Port Authority, was finalized at the end of July 2001. The WTC complex was finally put into private hands – Zionist hands – only 6 weeks before it was demolished and pulverized with super-thermite.

FELDSTEIN JOINS ETON

After being fired from GMAC, Eric Feldstein went to work for Cerberus in March 2008. Three months later he became CFO at Eton Park Capital Management. Eton Park is a hedge fund run by 42-year-old Eric M. Mindich, formerly with Goldman Sachs, and Alan R. Batkin, the vice chairman of the fund. Batkin, 64, is the senior partner at Eton Park. Although Feldstein lost billions as the head of GMAC and was fired because he had destroyed the 90-year-old company, Mindich and Batkin made him chief financial officer at Eton Park. Feldstein’s colossal failure at GMAC evidently did not bother them. He was clearly being rewarded for a job well done.

Alan Batkin, the vice chairman at Eton Park, is very highly connected. Batkin was, for example, vice chairman of Kissinger Associates Inc. from 1990 through 2006. It is, however, his executive positions at some of the biggest companies of Israel, such as Israel Discount Bank (IDB) and Discount Investment Corporation, Ltd., that reveal the intense Israeli character of Eton Park. (The IDB has been privatized and is also closely tied to the Madoff scam.)

Alan R. Batkin is a member of the board of governors of Tel Aviv University and is treasurer of PEC Israel Economic Corp. (part of Discount Investment Corporation, Ltd.) where he has served as CEO, president, and director. He also served as the Chief Executive Officer and President of Orama Ltd. (a venture capital firm founded in 1999 to support companies in the Israeli technology sector; a subsidiary of IDB Group, Ltd.)

From 1972 to 1990, Batkin was an investment banker at Lehman Brothers, where he a Managing Director for 14 years. Batkin has been, since 1999, a director of Overseas Shipholding Group Inc. (OSG), which owns and manages a large fleet of transatlantic oil tankers. As a director of OSG, Batkin works with Solomon Merkin, the brother of Jacob Ezra Merkin. Their father, Hermann Merkin, was one of the owners of the company along with the Recanati family of Israel Discount Bank. Batkin is also vice chairman and a director of Hasbro Inc. since 1992.

Solomon Merkin

Batkin was a director of Infinity Broadcasting Corp. since April 1992. Infinity provided popular talk radio with a distinctly pro-Israel point of view. Foremost among Infinity’s talk show staff was Howard Stern, a vulgar and controversial radio personality. Other national radio performers employed by Infinity included Don Imus, Larry King, G. Gordon Liddy and Rush Limbaugh. Infinity merged with CBS Radio in 1997.

Alan Batkin is a scion of the intensely Zionist Batkin and Tenzer families and the son of Stanley Irving Batkin, a leading Zionist figure since the 1930s. Stanley Batkin is a recipient of Israel’s Prime Minister’s Medallion (1974) and the City of Jerusalem Medal (1976). These awards are given to Zionists for extraordinary service to Israel. The elder Batkin has served,
since the founding of the state of Israel, as an executive of the following organizations (among many others): the Zionist Organization of America; the State of Israel Bond Committee; the Jewish Theological Seminary; State of Israel Bonds; Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science; Friends of Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design, Inc.; and Yeshiva University Museum.

Recommended Reading:

Bollyn, Christopher, “The Israeli Who Will Run the Obama White House,” November 6, 2008
Bollyn, Christopher, “Update on Madoff’s Guilty Plea,” March 12, 2009
Bollyn, Christopher, “Who is Bernard Madoff, the man behind the $50 billion fraud?” updated March 24, 2009
General Motors Data, Wikinvest
General Motors’ U.S. Sales History, Domestic Brands, 1908-2008, Automotive News, June 1, 2009
General Motors’ Top Ten Markets in Europe, 2008
“Obama gambles on reviving GM from bankruptcy,” Reuters, June 2, 2009
Source: Christopher Bollyn

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WORLD VIEW NEWS SERVICE

Jewish terrorists rampage through Arab village

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Eyewitnesses: settlers went from house to house shooting indiscriminately

Israeli occupation troops and paramilitary Jewish settlers on Saturday rampaged through several Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, killing at least one Palestinian civilian and injuring several others, including three people suffering critical gunshot wounds.

The most serious incident took place at the village of Asira al Qibliyeh, south of Nablus, when heavily armed Jewish settler terrorists rampaged through the village, shooting indiscriminately on Palestinians and vandalizing their homes and property.

According to the head of the local village council, dozens of armed settlers took part in the rampage which lasted for several hours.

Hosni Sharaf said the settlers carried out their aggression in broad daylight as Israeli soldiers were watching passively.

“It was abundantly clear that the soldiers were not dealing seriously with the terrorists. The settlers behaved and acted as if they had received a green light from the army.”

According to local and hospital sources, at least six villagers were injured, including two who reportedly suffered critical gunshot wounds.

One eyewitness described the settler rampage as “barbarian acts against innocent civilians.”

“I am speaking about heavily armed rabid fanatics ganging up on innocent and unprotected men, women and children,” said Ibrahim Asayrah.

“And they did what they did in full view of Israeli occupation soldiers who did try to stop the thugs.”

The settlers said they were retaliating for an earlier incident in which a settler boy was lightly hurt reportedly at the hands of an Arab boy.

Palestinian sources described the incident as a small altercation between two boys. The settlers however insisted that Palestinian boy stabbed a 9-year-old settler minor.

There was no third-party affirmation of what exactly happened.

However, it was clear that the wanton settler rampage against Palestinian villagers had no justification, irrespective of the exact circumstances surrounding the earlier incident involving the two boys.

“There was an incident involving an Arab boy and a Jewish settler boy. Does that give these herds of barbarians (the settlers) the right to carry out a rampage of terror and bloodshed against our village,” asked Asayrah.

An Israeli peace group, Peace Now, denounced army flaccidity toward the settlers and urged the Israeli government to revoke the gun licenses of the settlers.

“It is obvious that the settlers don’t miss any opportunity to cause harm to Palestinians and endanger human lives,” said Peace Now Secretary General Yariv Oppenheimer.

Human rights organizations operating in the West Bank have argued forcefully that the Israeli army is effectively encouraging settler terror against Palestinian civilians by refusing to arrest let alone prosecute Jewish terrorists.

Indeed, following Saturday’s violence near Nablus, not a single armed settler was arrested despite the gravity of what happened.

The latest attempted pogrom by messianic Jewish terrorists near Nablus coincided with other terrorist acts by the Israeli army against Palestinian civilians, which observers in Palestine contend underscores the harsh treatment Palestinians are receiving at the hands of the Israeli occupiers.

In Hebron in the southern West Bank, an Israeli army military vehicle driving at high speed on Saturday ran over a Palestinian child.

The child, identified as Mehran al Jabaari, was reportedly critically injured with a brain hemorrhage. He was transferred to the emergency unit at the Ahli hospital.

Earlier, an Israeli army officer manning a notorious roadblock outside the city of Nablus deliberately prevented a Palestinian woman in labor from proceeding to hospital, causing her to give birth to a stillborn baby boy.

The woman’s husband said he pleaded with the officer in charge to allow his wife to proceed to hospital in order to save the baby, but to no avail.

“My wife, my mother, my sister and I arrived at the Huwwara checkpoint at 12:00 midnight after my wife started to feel the labor contractions. However, the officer was so callous and inhuman. He told me he would shoot me if stepped forward again.” said Muayad Abu Reeda.

“My wife gave birth to a baby boy we had decided to name Zayd. But Zayd needed a special care since he was two months premature. But because the Israelis wouldn’t allow my wife to reach hospital, the baby died a few minutes later.”

According to Palestinian eyewitnesses, when the Israeli officer in charge made sure that the baby was dead, he allowed the mother and the husband to proceed to Nablus .

“On the next day, said Muayad, “we carried our baby in a small cardboard box to bury him in the graveyard of the village. On our way home, and while passing through the same inauspicious checkpoint, the soldiers started to laugh telling each other ‘do you want to see a dead child, come over here. He is there inside the box.’ “

A spokesman for the Israeli army acknowledged the “gravity” of what happened, saying that the company commander involved in the incident has been sentenced to two weeks in jail for his role in the death of the Palestinian baby.”

In another deadly incident, Israeli occupation soldiers on Saturday shot and killed a Palestinian boy at the village of Tquo’o near Bethlehem .

The latest victim of organized Israeli terror was identified as 16-year-old Hassan Humeid.

The Israeli occupation army has killed and maimed hundreds of Palestinian civilians, especially children and minors, involved in the mostly innocuous stone-throwing.

Israeli troops are instructed to shoot to kill stone-hurling Palestinian boys even if soldiers’ lives are not directly at risk.

In contrast, however, soldiers have absolute orders to refrain from shooting at settlers under any circumstances, even if the settlers are seen committing acts of murder.

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The language that absolves Israel
A special political vocabulary prevents us from being able to recognize what’s going on in the Middle East.
By Saree Makdisi
June 19, 2009

On Sunday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech that — by categorically ruling out the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state — ought to have been seen as a mortal blow to the quest for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On Monday morning, however, newspaper headlines across the United States announced that Netanyahu had endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state, and the White House welcomed the speech as “an important step forward.”

Reality can be so easily stood on its head when it comes to Israel because the misreading of Israeli declarations is a long-established practice among commentators and journalists in the United States.

In fact, a special vocabulary has been developed for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. It filters and structures the way in which developing stories are misread here, making it difficult for readers to fully grasp the nature of those stories — and maybe even for journalists to think critically about what they write.

The ultimate effect of this special vocabulary is to make it possible for Americans to accept and even endorse in Israel what they would reject out of hand in any other country.

Let me give a classic example.

In the U.S., discussion of Palestinian politicians and political movements often relies on a spectrum running from “extreme” to “moderate.” The latter sounds appealing; the former clearly applies to those who must be — must they not? — beyond the pale. But hardly anyone relying on such terms pauses to ask what they mean. According to whose standard are these manifestly subjective labels assigned?

Meanwhile, Israeli politicians are labeled according to an altogether different standard: They are “doves” or “hawks.” Unlike the terms reserved for Palestinians, there’s nothing inherently negative about either of those avian terms.

So why is no Palestinian leader referred to here as a “hawk”? Why are Israeli politicians rarely labeled “extremists”? Or, for that matter, “militants”?

There are countless other examples of these linguistic double standards. American media outlets routinely use the deracinating and deliberately obfuscating term “Israeli Arabs” to refer to the Palestinian citizens of Israel, despite the fact that they call themselves — and are — Palestinian.

Similarly, Israeli housing units built in the occupied territories in contravention of international law are always called “settlements” or even “neighborhoods” rather than what they are: “colonies.” That word may be harsh on the ears, but it’s far more accurate (“a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state”).

These subtle distinctions make a huge difference. Unconsciously absorbed, such terms frame the way people and events are viewed. When it comes to Israel, we seem to reach for a dictionary that applies to no one else, to give a pass to actions or statements that would be condemned in any other quarter.

That’s what allowed Netanyahu to be congratulated for endorsing a Palestinian “state,” even though the kind of entity he said Palestinians might — possibly — be allowed to have would be nothing of the kind.

Look up the word “state” in the dictionary. You’ll probably see references to territorial integrity, power and sovereignty. The entity that Netanyahu was talking about on Sunday would lack all of those constitutive features. A “state” without a defined territory that is not allowed to control its own borders or airspace and cannot enter into treaties with other states is not a state, any more than an apple is an orange or a car an airplane. So how can leading American newspapers say “Israeli Premier Backs State for Palestinians,” as the New York Times had it? Or “Netanyahu relents on goal of two states,” as this paper put it?

Because a different vocabulary applies.

Which is also what kept Netanyahu’s most extraordinary demand in Sunday night’s speech from raising eyebrows here.

“The truth,” he said, “is that in the area of our homeland, in the heart of our Jewish homeland, now lives a large population of Palestinians.”

In other words, as Netanyahu repeatedly said, there is a Jewish people; it has a homeland and hence a state. As for the Palestinians, they are a collection — not even a group — of trespassers on Jewish land. Netanyahu, of course, dismisses the fact that they have a centuries-old competing narrative of home attached to the same land, a narrative worthy of recognition by Israel.

On the contrary: The Palestinians must, he said, accept that Israel is the state of the Jewish people (this is a relatively new Israeli demand, incidentally), and they must do so on the understanding that they are not entitled to the same rights. “We” are a people, Netanyahu was saying; “they” are merely a “population.” “We” have a right to a state — a real state. “They” do not.

And the spokesman for our African American president calls this “an important step forward”?

In any other situation — including our own country — such a brutally naked contrast between those who are taken to have inherent rights and those who do not would immediately be labeled as racist. Netanyahu, though, is given a pass, not because most Americans would knowingly endorse racism but because, in this case, a special political vocabulary kicks in that prevents them from being able to recognize it for exactly what it is.

Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. He is the author of, among other books, “Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation.”

How Women Were Lured Out of the Home in the USA

Areeba bint Khalid
Friday, June 26, 2009
http://www.ummid.com/news/June/26.06.2009/and_they_called_it_women%27s_liberation.htm

From the 1800s to the present day, family life in the West has
remarkably changed. While the West calls this change part of the
women freedom movement, a look at history may show otherwise.

America before the 1800s was a farming country and ninety percent of
the population lived and worked on private farms. Households were
mainly self-sufficient–nearly everything needed was produced in the
house. The few things that could not be produced at home were bought
from local craftsmen. Some other things, especially imports from
Europe, were bought from stores. Males would take care of the fields
and females would take care of the home. In addition, they would
engage in spinning, knitting, weaving, and taking care of the farm
animals.

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution, which began around the early 1800s,
brought a major change to this way of life. In 1807, in the wake of
the war between Great Britain and France, President Jefferson signed
the Embargo Act, which stopped all trade between Europe and America.
The Act meant that European goods would no longer be available in
the US and Americans would have to produce them. One major European
import to America was cloth, and so merchants used this opportunity
to create a cloth industry in America.

In 1814, Francis Cabot Lowell, a man from Boston opened the first
modern factory. Work here was to be done way faster than before.
Instead of manually making things in houses, things were to be made
at higher speeds in a factory and all stages of the work were to be
completed under the same roof. Now what Lowell needed were workers.
He found out that women, especially unmarried daughters of the
farmers, were more economical to use in labor than men. They were
also more willing to work as hired people in factories.

But Lowell had to make the working outside of home acceptable in a
society which was not used to it. He assured parents that their
daughters would be taken care of and kept under discipline. And he
built a boarding community where the women workers lived and worked
together.

Soon after, more and more factories emerged across America. Factory
owners followed Lowell’s example of hiring unmarried women. By 1850
most of the country’s goods were made in factories. As production of
goods moved from the country to the city, people too moved from the
country to the city.

For money to be earned, people had to leave their homes. When women
worked on the farm, it was always possible to combine work and
family. When work for women moved outside the home, however, the
only women who could follow it were those without family
responsibilities or those who had no husband or no income. Likewise,
the only women who could take care of their families were the ones
that didn’t have work.

This working out of home became a part of life for unmarried women.
They would work until their marriage. But as time passed, women
found family life interfering with their work life and instead of
viewing working out of home as optional, they viewed family life as
such. Many women started delaying marriage even more and some
decided to stay single.

Married women however stayed home and dedicated their time to their
children. Now that there wasn’t any farm work to do, women had even
more time to spend with the children. In 1900 less than about 5.6%
of married women worked outside. If a married woman were to work, it
would be considered that her husband was invalid or that she was
poor.

World War I

The first major entry of married women to the workforce came during
World War I in 1914. Men went to fight the war and the country
needed workers to take over the jobs they left behind. Unmarried
women were not sufficient for the labor needs, so employers started
to invite married women too, to work. By 1919, 25% of the women in
the workforce were married. But this was only the beginning.

Another change World War I brought was the entry of women to the
army. About 13,000 women enlisted in the US Navy, mostly doing
clerical work–the first women in US history to be admitted to full
military rank.

Great Depression

The Great Depression came in the 1930s. The unemployment rate
climbed from 3.2% in 1929 to 23.6% in 1932. Jobs became scarce for
skilled people and men. Fathers went to search for jobs. Some, under
despair, deserted their families. The responsibility of earning fell
on mothers in many families.

Most women and children, however, found jobs more easily than men
because of the segregation of work categories for men and women.
Although 80% of men during the Great Depression opposed their wives
entering the workforce under any circumstances, economic factors
made it necessary for the women to work. Hours were long and pay was
low. Twenty percent of white women were in the workforce.

World War II

World War II came in the early 1940s. Men were drafted to fight, and
America needed workers and supplies. Again, the employers looked
towards the women for labor. Unmarried and married women were
invited to work, as had been done during World War I.

But still, public opinion was generally against the working of
married women. The media and the government started a fierce
propaganda campaign to change this opinion. The federal government
told the women that victory could not be achieved without their
entry into the workforce. Working was considered part of being a
good citizen, a working wife was a patriotic person.

The government founded the Magazine Bureau in 1942. The Bureau
published Magazine War Guide, a guide which told magazines which
themes stories they should cover each month to aid war propaganda.
For September 1943, the theme was “Women at Work”. The slogan for
this was “The More Women at Work the Sooner We Win.” Magazines
developed stories that glorified and promoted the placement of women
into untraditional jobs where workers were needed. The idea was that
if smaller, unexciting jobs were portrayed as attractive and noble
more women would join the work force.

The media created Rosie the Riveter, a mythical character to
encourage women into the workforce. Rosie was portrayed as a
patriotic woman, a hero for all American women. “All the day long,
Whether rain or shine, She’s a part of the assembly line. She’s
making history, Working for victory, Rosie the Riveter… There’s
something true about, Red, white, and blue about, Rosie the
Riveter.”

The propaganda efforts worked. More than six million women joined
the workforce during the war, the majority of them married women. In
1940, before the war, only 36% of women workers were married. By
1945, after the war, 50% of women workers were married. The middle
class taboo against a working wife had been repealed.

Post World War II

The 1950s marked an era of prosperity in the lives of American
families. Men returned from war and needed jobs. Once again, the
government and media got together to steer the opinion of the
public. This time, however, they encouraged women to return home,
which shows that the women were brought out not for their free
dom
but because workers were needed.

But this effort was not as successful and was abandoned quickly.
First, women from lower economic ranks had to remain in the
workforce because of economic necessity. And second, there came the
rise of consumer culture.

The baby boom took place during the 1950s as well. Women who
returned home dedicated their lives once again to their children.
But around the same time an important change had come in the
American life. This was the spread of the television. By 1960, 90%
of the population owned at least one set. Families would gather
around the screen for entertainment. In the early days, everything
including commercials was watched with great interest.

Most middle-class families could not afford the goods the television
declared necessary to maintain or enhance quality of life with one
paycheck alone. Many women returned to work in order to live
according to “the American standard of living,” whatever that meant
to them.

The number of American women in the workforce from 1940 to 1950
increased by nine percent. From 1930 to 1940 there had only been a
three percent increase.

Effects

As mothers returned to work, the television became the most
important caretaker of a child. Children in the 1950s spent most of
their non-sleeping hours in front of the television screen.

In 1940, less than 8.6% of mothers with children under eighteen
worked. By 1987, 60.2% of women with children under eighteen were
working.

As wives assumed larger roles in their family’s financial support,
they felt justified in demanding that husbands perform more
childcare and housework. Across the years, divorce rates doubled
reaching a level where at least 1 out of 2 marriages was expected to
end in divorce. Marriage rates and birthrates declined. The number
of single parent families rapidly increased. People grew unhappy
with their lives, when compared to the lives of people on
television.

Women working affected the society in many different ways. The first
and most important of these was that children with working mothers
were left alone without the care of a mother. As the number of
working women increased, the number of children growing up
unsupervised increased, and with this increased crime among teens.

Since most women placed their career ahead of family life, family
life was greatly affected since unmarried women were generally able
to make more money than married ones. For example, according to a
study by a Harvard economist, women physicians who were unmarried
and had no children earned thirteen percent more per year than those
who were married and fifteen percent more than those with children.

Today

The majority of women still work at the lower levels of the economic
pyramid. Most are employed in clerical positions, factory work,
retail sales, or service jobs. Around 50% of the workforce is
female. While about 78% of all cashiers and 99% of all secretaries
today are female, only 31% of managers and administrators are
female. Equality in the workplace has been a mirage but it has
conned millions of women into leaving their homes and destroying the
family structure.

It was only when economic or political factors made it necessary to
get more workers that women were called to work. The Industrial
Revolution, the Great Depression, and the World Wars, all the major
events which increased the proportion of women workers, were times
when the capitalists required more workers in order to be successful
in their plans and so they used women.

The move of women from home to the public workforce has been
gradual. First poor women went. Then unmarried women. Then married
women without children. Then married women without young children.
And then, all women. The same thing can be seen to be happening in
developing countries around the world, as the West spreads its
propaganda of freedom for women to work. The results of this move
will probably be the same too.

Bibliography

-Hawes, Joseph M., ed. American Families: A Research Guide and
Historical Handbook. New York: Greenwood Press,- 1990.

-Mintz, Steven. Domestic Revolutions. New York: the Free Press,
1988.

-Gary B. Nash, American Odyssey. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill,
2002.

-Wilson, Margaret Gibbons. The American Woman in Transition.
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1979.

-Goldstein, Joshua S. War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War
System and Vice Versa. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

-U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau. Women in the Force,
1900-2002. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/0/1/0/4/6/7/A0104673.html

-The Library of Congress Rosie the Riveter: Real Women Workers in
World War II. http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/journey/rosie-transcript.html

*

Israel Honors Jewish Terrorists Who Attacked America

Posted under:

• General

— @ 2:12 am

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.Far left: Golda Meir meeting with the man who planned the Lavon Affair: Pinhas Lavon. Next, the photo that appeared in Haaretz with the caption “President Katzav presented three surviving members of the ‘Lavon affair’ with certificates of appreciation at a Jerusalem ceremony Wednesday.”

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Listen to Broadcast or Download

Israel honors Jewish terrorists who attacked America
– Israeli President calls them “heroes”

By David Duke

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How does America deal with a country that commits terrorism against us and then honors the terrorists?

Answer: We give it billions of dollars every year as well as our most advanced military technology.

The Israeli President, Moshe Katzav, in recent formal ceremonies honored the Israeli agents who made terrorist attacks against American sites in Egypt hoping to provoke an American war with Egypt.

In ceremonies reported by the major Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, Israeli President Moshe Katsav stated the following at a ceremony honoring the Jewish terrorists who attacked American facilities:

“Although it is still a sensitive situation, we decided now to express our respect for these heroes,” President Moshe Katzav said after presenting the three surviving members of the bomber ring with certificates of appreciation at a Jerusalem ceremony.

In the Lavon Affair, named for the Israeli Defense Minister at the time, Pinhas Lavon, the Israeli government launched a false flag, terrorist operation against American sites in Egypt hoping to provoke American bombing, retaliation and war against that nation. The Israeli terrorists targeted American sites such as American Cinemas and American libraries around Cairo. Only the premature detonation of one of the Jewish terrorist’s bombs led to the exposure and halt of the plot before the extensive loss of life and property.

If this terrorist operation would have been successful, not only would it have cost many American lives, it would have launched an American war against an innocent nation which in turn would have caused the death of many thousands of innocent American and Egyptian lives as well as untold billions of dollars.

Israel’s terrorist plot against the United States in the Lavon Affair was one greatest acts of treachery that any nation has ever committed against an ongoing ally. There have certainly been many times in history where a nation attacked a supposed ally, but I know of no cases where an “ally” attacked another and then the attacked nation remained an ally and continued to support the attacking nation financially and militarily! For that to occur there has to be an incredible level of subversion in the attacked nation. And shockingly, this was only the first Israeli act of treachery against the nation that stood by Israel more than any other: America. There have repeated acts of Israeli terrorism and treachery against the United States of America.

In 1967, Israel attacked the USS Liberty with both fighter jets and torpedo boats in a surprise terrorist attack that killed 34 Americans and wounded 173. Both the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, Dean Rusk, and the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer, both have stated that it was a pre-meditated attack against the United States. (see “Attack on the Liberty” at www.davidduke.com)

In the Jonathan Pollard case, an Israeli spy devastated America’s Eastern European Intelligence Network, and Israel honors Pollard today as a hero and lobbies for his release from American prison. (see “The Pollard Case” at www.davidduke.com)

And very recently, important figures in the Israeli lobby AIPAC, arguably the most powerful lobby in Washington, D.C., are under investigation by the FBI for spying against the United States. The fact that the President of the United States and most of the members of Congress have close ties to this lobby for a foreign nation, a lobby which is now in the middle of spy scandal should obviously be a huge story in America’s press, but it is suppressed in the Jewish dominated American media.

Israel knew that the U.S. Government would certainly respond to terrorist attacks against it (supposedly by Egypt) — with bombing and war against that nation. Terrorist acts of war were committed against America and traditionally nations respond to such in kind.

But, once America discovered that it was Israel who committed such terrorist acts of war, why was there no military retaliation against the offending nation?

In fact, American money and even military equipment continued to Israel unabated. Such shows the high level of Israeli subversion and dare I say it, treason, in the United States Government. It also clearly reveals the Jewish supremacy in the press that has whitewashed and kept this treachery from the knowledge of 99 percent of American people. In fact, 99 percent of Americans will never hear of the Lavon Affair nor will they know anything about the recent Israeli government official ceremony that honored the Israelis who committed these terrorist acts against America.

For years Israel denied knowledge of the event, just as Israel denied the murderous attack on the USS Liberty, denied their involvement with the damaging spying of Jonathan Pollard, and denied the overwhelming evidence that indicates Israeli prior-knowledge of the 911 attack. (See my article, “How Israel Caused the 911 Attacks” at www.davidduke.com) The Israeli defense minister, Pinhas Lavon had to resign after the bungled terrorist attacks in Egypt, and the excuse was given that it was a “rogue operation.” Yet, obviously, launching terrorist attacks against United States installations in Egypt that included American cinemas and libraries, would have certainly had to have been approved by the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Golda Meir.

But now, the Israel government is having formal, public ceremonies honoring the Jewish terrorists that atta
cked American facilities! Now that’s enormous Chutzpah when one considers Israel is receiving billions of American tax dollars every year, the lion’s share of America’s entire foreign aid budget, and the fact that America is the only major nation that defends Israeli crimes against the Palestinians in the U.N. Yet, it shows just how firmly Israel has the government and media of America in its grip that they can get away with honoring terrorists who have attacked America!

How can America still support a nation that formally honors those Jews who clearly committed terrorism against the United States?

Any President, Congressman or Senator that who supports sending Israel American tax dollars after the clear record of unrepentant Israeli terrorism and treachery against the United States, is equivalent to any American who sent money to the Japan after the attack at Pearl Harbor!

It is important to note that no Arab or Muslim government, including that of Saddam Hussein, has ever launched a terrorist attack against America. No Arab or Muslim government has ever had even a single, highly placed spy do damage to the United States. No Arab or Muslim nation has corrupted our political process with massive bribery, threats and coercion of thousands of U.S. politicians.

In truth, the Iraq War is just another form of a false flag operation like the Lavon Affair.

It was spawned by Israeli loyalists in the United States, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and coterie of Jewish supremacists (including the man in charge of the evidence of Iraqi misdeeds in the CIA , Stuart Cohen, who was behind much of the false intelligence) that led America into a war against Iraq, a nation that had never harmed and posed absolutely no threat at all to America.

This treasonous war was never a war for America, but only a war for Israel. It has so far led to the death of almost 1600 Americans, grievous injuries of up to 20,000 of our men and women, expenditures of a national treasure of over 300 billion dollars, damage to American business around the world, trillions of dollars in higher costs for oil and gas, and has only increased hatred against America and increased support for Al Qaeda and other anti-American terrorists.

And again, for what is all this the blood and treasure lost?

For Israel, that’s what, a nation that honors terrorists who bombed American facilities!

My God in Heaven, when will real Americans wake up to this treachery and treason!

Here are some excerpts from the article in Haaretz and the article on the terrrorist attack in Wikpedia

Israel honors Egyptian spies 50 years after fiasco Wed., March 30, 2005 Adar 2 19, 5765

By Reuters

After half a century of reticence and recrimination, Israel on Wednesday honored nine Egyptian Jews recruited as agents-provocateur in what became one of the worst intelligence bungles in the country’s history. Israel was at war with Egypt when it hatched a plan in 1954 to ruin its rapprochement with the United States and Britain by firebombing sites frequented by foreigners in Cairo and Alexandria.

But Israeli hoped the attacks, which caused no casualties, would be blamed on local insurgents collapsed when the young Zionist bombers were caught and confessed at public trials. Two were hanged. The rest served jail terms and emigrated to Israel.

Embarrassed before the West, the fledgling Jewish state long denied involvement. It kept mum even after its 1979 peace deal with Egypt, fearing memories of the debacle could sour ties.

“Although it is still a sensitive situation, we decided now to express our respect for these heroes,” President Moshe Katzav said after presenting the three surviving members of the bomber ring with certificates of appreciation at a Jerusalem ceremony.

What went wrong in the “Lavon Affair” — after Pinhas Lavon, Israel’s defense minister when the plot came to light — remains a matter of debate in a country more used to tales of espionage coups…

The situation recurred in 1985, when U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States for passing military secrets to Israel’s scientific liaison office…

“As with Pollard, this (Lavon Affair) was a rogue operation,” said David Kimche, a former Mossad deputy chief. “We knew never to go down that road again…

Meanwhile, the agents locked up in Egypt were ignored, excluded from several prisoner exchanges with Israel after the wars of 1956 and 1967. Now that they have been officially recognised in Israel, the former agents are campaigning for a full account of their operation to be included in the high-school syllabus.

“This is a great day for all of us, those who were hanged and those who died,” said Marcelle Ninio, the only female member of the cell. “We are happy we’ve got our honour back.

And here is the Wikipedia article on this terroristic attack:

Lavon Affair
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from Lavon affair)

The aim of the 1954 Israeli Mossad project, codenamed Operation Suzannah was to bomb United States installations in Egypt, such as the United States Information Service offices, and blame Arabs, hoping it would harm Egyptian-American ties. It became known as the Lavon Affair or the Unfortunate Affair (Hebrew: ???? ???? pronounce: haesek habish), after the Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon who was forced to resign because of the incident.

Israeli Mossad agents from “Unit 131? 1 planted bombs in several buildings, including a United States diplomatic facility, and intentionally left behind evidence implicating Arabs as the culprits. The conspiracy was intended to disrupt U.S. relations with Egypt but one of the bombs detonated prematurely and the Egyptian police swiftly found one of the terrorists. This arrest quickly led to the capture of eleven of the thirteen members of the spy ring. Some of the spies were Israeli, while others were Egyptian Jews recruited by Mossad. Two of the conspirators were sentenced to death and executed. Six others were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

Lavon claimed that he had no knowledge of the conspiracy and he attempted to scapegoat and fire his deputy, Shimon Peres. The Prime Minister of Israel, Moshe Sharett, appointed a board of inquiry consisting of Israeli Supreme Court Justice Isaac Olshan and the first chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Ya’akov Dori. The board failed to uncover who had ordered the conspiracy yet Lavon resigned in disgrace from his position as minister of defense and David Ben-Gurion resumed the post under Sharett. Lavon became head of the Histadrut.

Six years later, a district court found the intelligence operations chief guilty of perjury and forgery during testimony presented to the Olshan-Dori board of inquiry. Lavon demanded that Ben-Gurion clear his name but Ben-Gurion refused. The controversy broke out into open Knesset debates, fatally wounding the ruling Mapai Party. Eventually the Mapai Central Committee voted to expel Lavon from his position in the Histadrut.

The legacy of the Lavon Affair was especially unpleasant for Egyptian Jews and for Jews living in other Arab countries. They faced suspicion as a potential Fifth column and even persecution (including having their banks accounts frozen). While the Lavon affair may have acted as one catalyst for emigration to Israel, it could add little to the overall persecution of Jews which started roughly at 1948, and which reached a peak in the wake of the 1956 Suez War, when the Egyptian government expelled almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews and confiscated their property, and sent approximately 1,000 more Jews to prisons and detention camps. The Lavon Affair also generated deep suspicion of Israeli intelligence practices and encouraged speculation and conspiracy theories that terrorist attacks against Arab and American targets could be the result of Israeli false flag int
elligence operations or agent provocateurs working on behalf of Israeli intelligence, a belief that is still popular (especially in Arab countries).

Islamic society grows in central Jersey

SOUTH BRUNSWICK — Dalya Youssef wants her son, Yousuf Abdelfatah, to feel more confident about practicing the Islamic faith than she did when she attended public schools.

The Franklin Township mother, who is also a lawyer, remembered feeling timid about doing her midday prayer ritual in school when she was growing up in Monroe Township.

She said she didn’t begin the Muslim practice of covering her hair with a headscarf known as a hajib until her freshman year in college. The practice of covering oneself usually begins at puberty.

“I delayed it because I didn’t have enough confidence,” she said.

Therefore, she and her husband sent their son to Noor-Ul-Iman School on the South Brunswick campus of the Islamic Society of Central New Jersey, which has a full-time parochial school covering pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. Enrollment at the Route 1 school was 480 last year and is expected to top 500 in September.

Now Youssef’s son prays alongside his classmates, not in isolation, as she did.

“Plus, I think he gets an excellent education,” she said.

Earlier this month, the society broke ground on $5 million of infrastructure improvements to be followed by the building of a new, two-story 70,000-square-foot school, which will have the library, auditorium and gymnasium the school now lacks.

More critical, though, is that the license from South Brunswick to use modular buildings for the school expires in December, said Islamic Society president Aly Aziz.

“We have to show the township we are working on permanent facilities,” he said.

The infrastructure, consisting of water lines, electrical cables, a detention basin, new street entrances, a 600-car parking lot, and a concrete platform for the school building, is literally laying the groundwork for a much broader expansion plan that will take years to construct, he said.

South Brunswick has approved a master plan for a new mosque and an income-generating office building on the 16-acre campus. Four Rutgers University graduates seeking a sense of belonging founded the society 40 years ago.

“I’m pretty excited about it,” Youssef said. “I would love to see my son have a real high school with all the facilities.”

Another mother, Heba Macksoud, said she sent her twin daughters, Jenna and Jada, age 7, to the society’s preschool, but has since put them in public school. They come to the Islamic society for weekend religious education classes, she said.

Macksoud, a former vice president of marketing at MTV, said she loved the school’s attentive atmosphere, but hated paying tuition for substandard facilities.

“It’s a huge investment,” she said. “I’d rather save the money for college.”

Macksoud, a native New Yorker who first came to the Islamic Center at age 8, said the new school shows the Islamic community can sustain a parochial school system like other religions.

“We will soon have something that my kids can be proud of that is beautiful and institutional, rather than something slapped together from trailers,” she said.

School principal Janet Nazif said the new school will be more spacious and comfortable for students and staff. The essence of the program won’t change because it is the dedication of the teachers and the parents who support their efforts.

She started as a teacher with the school founded 16 years ago. There were only 27 students in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade. The school expanded by a couple of grades per year, until six years ago when the first class of high school seniors graduated.

“When it started, there were a lot of naysayers, who said we wouldn’t be able to help these children succeed, but they have been proven wrong,” she said.

All of the high school graduates have been accepted to college, including some Ivy League institutions, she said.

There are 220 Islamic schools in the U.S., including 17 in New Jersey, according to the Islamic Schools League of America based in Falls Church, Va.

The schools are growing the fastest in areas with large Muslim populations, including New York State, Michigan and Washington, D.C., according to the organization, which formed 11 years ago to help new schools benefit from the experience of established institutions.

Yet, as the Muslim community gains prominence in American society, members say they are unfairly associated with Middle Eastern terrorism.

Macksoud said terrorism comes from uneducated, unemployed youth who can be convinced the U.S. is the source of their misery.

By contrast, the Islamic Society of Central New Jersey comprises well-educated professionals with successful careers, she said, noting her pride that the society donated statutes to adorn the entrance to the South Brunswick Public Library.

“It shows that we love our community and want to get involved every which way,” she said.

The society includes immigrants from 20 nations around the globe and first-generation Americans like herself.

Aziz said the diverse 2,000-member society counters prejudice by issuing statements condemning terrorist acts.

He said Islam is at its essence a peaceful religion. Muslims greet each other with the words, “Assalamo Alikom” meaning “Peace be upon you.”

The response is to say it in reverse, “Alikom Assalamo.”

“We do not consider (terrorists) Muslims because Islam is a religion of peace,” Aziz said.

IndyStar.com | Thou Shalt | The Indianapolis Star

June 29, 2009
A remedy for fear of the American Muslim takeover

That noise you may now hear is the collective wailing from the small crowd of folks who are convinced America is on the verge of becoming an Islamic theocracy.

The sound erupting from the host of web sites that purport to keep us safe from the coming takeover is a result of two happenings: One of the nation’s most prominent Muslim groups announced Friday it will give copies of the Quran, Islam’s revealed text, to 100,000 state and national leaders. The other is the fact a second major Muslim organization is preparing to hold a convention that will bring 40,000 Muslims to Washington, D.C.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization is giving away the Qurans to leaders. In the past, it has attempted to raise money to put Qurans in every American library — all in the name of trying to educate them about Islam.

“Through this ground-breaking outreach initiative, we hope not only to educate policy-makers and opinion leaders about Islam, but also to provide an opportunity for American Muslims to reach out to their fellow citizens of other faiths,” CAIR Board Chairman Larry Shaw, a state senator from North Carolina, said in a press release.

The announcement of this “Share the Quran” campaign comes just ahead of this week’s 4-day convention in Washington of the Indiana-based Islamic Society of North America, which could draw as many as 40,000 Muslims to the nation’s capital over the Fourth of July weekend.

Both CAIR and ISNA are two groups that are frequent targets of criticism of the blog watchers. I know CAIR a little bit. They have a reputation of being bullies — toward reporters, toward businesses, toward politicians. But they are prized, among many Muslims, as a group willing to take a stand for their civil rights when few others will.

ISNA, however, is into such radical things as building friendships with Jews, Christians and people of other faiths. They have urged for the greater inclusion of women in mosques. They are working with government agencies to build better relationships between the U.S. and Muslim countries. Really subversive stuff.

For those who will go into a full-blown conniption over these moves over the apparent Muslim takeover, there is a remedy.

Call a local mosque. Ask if there is a Muslim there with you who will sit down and talk. Be polite. They might be afraid of such a rare entreaty. Sit down and talk to them about what they value about America. Report back here what you find. You might be surprised that what they treasure isn’t so different from you.

Most people who hate Muslims, I find, have never met and talked with a Muslim. But don’t rely on what you read on the Internet, even folks like me. See for yourself.

Sarkozy wrong over the burka – Halifax Today

Published Date: 01 July 2009
Prescott Street
Halifax
I write further to the recent comments made by the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, regarding the wearing of a veil and burka by Muslim women.
It is ironic that on the one hand the West raises allegations against Islam that it compels and is harsh, whereas on the other hand we have here a so-called democratic state meddling and interfering in personal matters of others.
Rather than promoting unity and understanding, President Sarkozy used his address on June 22, 2009, to perpetuate pre-existing false stereotypes.
His comments are extremely unhelpful and indeed regrettable, particularly coming from the head of state of acountry in which there are around five million Muslims. President Sarkozy’s comments also directly contradict comments made by President Barack Obama recently in a speech in Cairo on June 4 where he said:
“It is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practising religion as they see fit – for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We can’t disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.”
It appears that this is exactly what President Sarkozy is doing – he is hiding behind the veil of liberalism to disguise the hostility towards Islam.
Moreover, his views on the burka are both factually wrong and ill-informed. The burka is an item of religious dress which many Muslim women choose to wear. However no Muslim woman should be forced to wear it because a fundamental teaching of Islam is that “there shall be no compulsion in religion.” France should adopt the policy of Britain which is not to interfere in an individual’s personal matter which is exactly what a secular and democratic state should do.
Muslims in Britain are extremely fortunate that they can practice their religion freely – a right which is not even enjoyed in some so-called Muslim states.
There is no punishment in Islam for not wearing the veil yet here a so-called enlightened State is attempting to punish its citizens for the clothing they wear. What a tragedy.
Is the French Government now going to follow and show Taliban-like tendencies by dictating what people can and can’t do? I certainly hope not.
I do hope that France does not pursue this legislation which would contravene both Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and France’s Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen on which the French Constitution is based. These ensure freedom to practise religion and hold religious beliefs.
For freedom to reign, freedom must be preserved.
Farooq Aftab